Читать книгу A Battle for Right; Or, A Clash of Wits онлайн

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The place was known as the Savoy, and the hotel part of it was rather better than is generally found in the northern lumber regions.

It was on a summer night, when it was comfortable to sit out of doors, that a vaudeville entertainment was in progress on the lawn stage of the Savoy.

A monologue had just been delivered by a middle-aged comedian, in evening clothes, who had been a singer in bygone times, but, finding his voice gone, had been wise enough to “frame up” a “talking turn.”

The audience liked him, calling him “good old Joe Stokes,” many of the men inviting him to join them in a glass of beer at their tables, when he came out from the sacred precincts “back stage.”

This is a custom in many of the free-and-easy places of amusement in the West and Northwest, in small communities, and Joe Stokes accepted the invitations in the good-natured spirit in which they were tendered.

There was a large gathering, including men from the mines, from the lumber woods, and from the other industries existing for twenty miles around, including a sprinkling of workers on the railroad, with some tourists, who were there because they wanted to be.