Explore "The Adventure of William Hicks" by Wardon Allan Curtis on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Young William Hicks was a native of the village of Bensonville, in the / southern part of Illinois. Having, at the age of twenty, graduated at / the head of a class of six in the village school, his father thought / to reward him for his diligence in study by a short trip to the city / of Chicago, which metropolis William had never beheld. Addressing him / in a discourse which, while not long, abounded in valuable advice, Mr. / Hicks presented his son with a sum of money sufficient for a stay of a / week, provided it were not expended imprudently.
One evening, William was walking along Wabash Avenue, feeling somewhat / lonely as he soberly reflected that not one in all that vast multitude / cared anything about him, when he heard himself accosted in a most / cheery manner, and looking up, beheld a beautiful lady smiling at him. / It was plain that she belonged to the upper classes. A hat of very / large proportions, ornamented with a great ostrich plume, shaded a / head of lovely yellow hair. She was clothed all in rustling purple / silk and sparkled with jewelry. Her cheeks and lips glowed with a / carmine quite unknown among the fair but pale damosels of Bensonville, / which is situated in a low alluvial location, surrounded by flat / plains, the whole being somewhat damp and malarial. William had never / imagined eyes so wide open and glistening.