Explore "Asiatic Breezes" by Oliver Optic on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The biography of Captain Penn Sharp had been quite romantic within the preceding year. In company with his brother he had been a detective in New York during the greater portion of his lifetime. He had been an honest and upright man; but in spite of this fact he had saved a competence for a man of small desires before he was fifty years old. He had never been married till the last year of his life.
He had what he called a "profession," and he had attended to it very closely for twenty years or more. When he "had a case to 'work up," he took it to his humble lodging with him, and studied out the problem. There was nothing in his room that could be called a luxury, unless a library of two hundred volumes were classed under that head; and he spent all his leisure time in this apartment, having absolutely no vices. He was a great reader, had never taken a vacation, and saved all his money, which he had prudently invested.