Frank Merriwell's Chase, Or, Exciting Times Afloat, Classics To Go
Excerpt: "The White Wings swung in near to the other yachts anchored in the harbor, her anchor went over and her sails came down smoothly. Then Frank got into the small boat, and Diamond and Hodge rowed him over to the wharf where the cyclists awaited him. They gathered around him as he came up the step onto the wharf, and the one who had hailed the yacht grasped him by the hand, saying: “You are Mr. Merriwell, I presume?” “That is my name,” smiled Frank. “Mr. Merriwell, I am delighted to know you. We are all delighted. My name is Dustan—Howard Dustan. These gentlemen are members of the Belfast Bicycle Club. We heard you were coming. There was a Camden man on the City of Bangor, which passed you on its way here from Searsport, and he reported that you were headed this way. It didn’t take long to get the boys together when they learned that Frank Merriwell was coming in here. Let me introduce them to you.” So Frank was introduced to each of the lads in gray as they came forward. “Gentlemen,” he laughed, in his charming way, “I assure you this is an unexpected pleasure. It will be a long time before I shall forget my reception in Belfast. I am glad to know you all.” “And we are glad you did not slight us by skipping Belfast,” said Mart Woodock. “We heard you were in Camden and Rockland, but, as you left there more than a week ago, we thought you were not coming to Belfast. You will find just as good people here as there are in the State of Maine.” “I haven’t a doubt of it,” bowed Merry; “and I am charmed with the people of Maine. It is my first visit this way, but I am sure it will not be my last.” Then he uttered a sudden exclamation of surprise and sprang toward the door of the freight-house."
Burt L. Standish
William George Gilbert Patten (October 25, 1866 - January 16, 1945) was a writer of dime novels and is best known as author of the Frank Merriwell stories, with the pen name Burt L. Standish. Gilbert Patten was born in Corinna, Maine in 1866. His father, a carpenter, and his mother were deeply religious pacifists. They were Seventh Day Adventists. He entered Corinna Union Academy at fourteen, but when his father threatened that he would be put to work if he did not improve at school, Patten ran away to Biddeford, Maine where he worked in a machine shop. When he returned home and told his father that he would become an author, he was given thirty days to prove himself. He sold his first two stories in this period to the dime novel company of Erastus Flavel Beadle, and combined his resumed studies for the next four years with writing and publishing stories. When he was twenty, he married Alice Gardner, and in 1892 their son Harvan Barr Patten was born. They later divorced and Gilbert Patten would marry twice more. Patten worked at the Pittsfield Advertiser before creating in 1888 his own newspaper, the Corinna Owl. He sold it the next year to the Advertiser, and devoted his time to the stories, mostly westerns, for Beadle's Half-Dime Library. Meanwhile, he managed a semi-professional baseball team in 1890-1891 in Camden, Maine before leaving for New York City. But after this season he again mostly worked as an author, working for Norman Munro, and for most of his career for Street& Smith. He was a writer of dime novels. His first published dime novel was The Diamond Sport; or, The Double Face of Bed Rock, published in 1886 by Beadle. He wrote westerns with the pen name Wyoming Bill, but is best known for his sporting stories in the Frank Merriwell series, written as Burt L. Standish. Patten started writing the Merriwell stories in April 1896 for the publisher Street & Smith and produced one each week, at a length of twenty thousand words, for twenty years. The series, which appeared in Tip-Top Weekly, was immensely popular, selling some 135,000 copies a week, and the brothers Frank and Dick Merriwell became icons of All-American sportsmanship, entering the jargon of sports commentators. Patten, however, never received any royalties for them, being paid up to $150 per story as a hack writer. The series was originally inspired by the success of the British Penny Dreadfuls like Jack Harkaway. Gibert Patten also contributed to the Frank Merriwell comic strip from 1928, and supervised the 1934 NBC radio series. In 1893, he hired Edward Stratemeyer as a writer for the Street & Smith publication Good News. From 1927 to 1930, Gilbert Patten would start a new series of Frank Merriwell stories, aided now by a few ghostwriters. In 1930, Patten started his own publication, The Dime Novel, but only one issue appeared. Apart from the Merriwell stories, Patten wrote 75 complete novels and an unknown number of stories. He estimated that he had written 40 million words as an author. In total, some 500 million of his books were in print, making him one of the best-selling fiction authors of all time. He lived most of his life in Camden, Maine, but moved to California in 1941. He died aged 78 in his sleep at the home of his son H. V. Patten in Vista, California in 1945.
