'Charge It': Keeping Up With Harry Read online

  Produced by Roger Frank and the Online DistributedProofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net

  "SHE WISHED ME TO SUGGEST SOMETHING FOR HER TO DO" [Seepage 56]]

  "CHARGE IT"

  OR

  KEEPING UP WITH HARRY

  A story of fashionable extravagance and of thesuccessful efforts to restrain it madeby The Honorable Socrates Potterthe genial friend of Lizzie

  BY

  IRVING BACHELLER

  ILLUSTRATED

  HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS

  NEW YORK AND LONDON

  MCMXII

  Books by

  IRVING BACHELLER

  Charge It. Ill'd. 12mo net $1.00 Keeping Up With Lizzie. Ill'd. Post 8vo net 1.00 Eben Holden. Ill'd. Post 8vo 1.50 Edition de Luxe 2.00 Eben Holden's Last Day A-Fishing. 16mo .50 Dri and I. Ill'd. Post 8vo 1.50 Darrell of the Blessed Isles. Ill'd. Post 8vo 1.50 Vergilius. Post 8vo 1.35 Silas Strong. Post 8vo 1.50 The Hand-Made Gentleman. Post 8vo 1.50 In Various Moods. Poems. Post 8vo net 1.00

  HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK

  COPYRIGHT, 1912. BY HARPER & BROTHERS

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER, 1912

  K-M

  TO MY DEAR FRIEND

  LEDYARD PARK HALE

  ANOTHER HONEST LAWYER

  CONTENTS

  CHAP. PAGE I. In Which Harry Swiftly Passes from One Stage of His Career to Another 1 II. Which Begins the Story of the Bishop's Head 11 III. Which Is the Story of the Pimpled Queen and the Black Spot 33 IV. In Which Socrates Encounters "New Thought" and Psychological Hair 45 V. In Which Socrates Discusses the Over-Production of Talk 55 VI. In Which Betsey Commits an Indiscretion 69 VII. In Which Socrates Attacks the Worst Doers and Best Sellers 75 VIII. In Which Socrates Attacks the Helmet and the Battle-Ax 84 IX. In Which Socrates Increases the Supply of Splendor 91 X. In Which Socrates Breaks the Drag and Tandem Monopoly in Pointview 99 XI. In Which Sundry People Make Great Discoveries 106 XII. In Which Harry Is Forced to Abandon Swamp Fiction and Like Follies and to Study the Geography and Natives of a Land Unknown to Our Heiristocracy 118 XIII. In Which the Minister Gets Into Love and Trouble 127 XIV. In Which Socrates Discovers a New Folly 139 XV. In Which Harry Returns to Pointview and Goes to Work 148 XVI. Which Presents an Incident in Our Campaign Against New New England 171 XVII. Which Presents a Decisive Incident in Our Campaign Against Old New England 176

  ILLUSTRATIONS

  "SHE WISHED ME TO SUGGEST SOMETHING FOR HER TO DO" Frontispiece "WHAT DIDN'T THEY SAY? THEY FLEW AT ME LIKE WILDCATS." 60 "'IT'S THE VAN ALSTYNE CREST,' I SAID. 'IT'S A PROOF OF RESPECTABILITY.'" 86 "RADIANT IN SILK, LACE, DIAMONDS, PEARLS, AND RUBIES" 94 "HARRY'S PET COLLIE HAD COME UP TO THE BACK DOOR WITH A HUMAN SKULL IN HIS MOUTH" 148 "HE LOOKED LIKE A MAN WITH A WOODEN LEG" 188

  FOREWORD

  It may interest, if it does not comfort, the reader to know thatthis little story is built upon facts. The ride of Harry, thehundred-dollar pimple, the psychological hair, the downfall of Roger,all happened, while the Bishop's Head is one of the possessions of aNew England family.

  I. B.