Shaming the Speed Limit, Classics To Go
Excerpt: "When Miss Elizabeth Wiggin settled herself comfortably in the shade of the spreading oak in Libby’s pasture, she looked forward eagerly to a pleasant and quiet hour with her book, “Wooed, Won, and Wedded.” As may be surmised from the title of the book, Miss Wiggin was romantic. She was likewise just eighteen years of age, and the daughter of Judge Nathan P. Wiggin, of Greenbush, the village that could be seen nestling in the valley something like a mile distant from that hillside oak. Miss Wiggin lived in Greenbush, but on pleasant afternoons she had a habit of wandering away, accompanied only by an aged shepherd dog, in search of some spot where she could read without fear of interruption. For her grim old father objected to trashy love stories, and her ascetic spinster aunt, who had acted as the judge’s housekeeper since the death of Mrs. Wiggin, held all such fiction in abhorrence. Indeed, the animus of Aunt Sally Wiggin against stories depicting the ravages wrought by the little god of the bow and arrow was so extreme that, by consigning such terrible tales to the flames whenever she found them about the house, she conscientiously did her best to prevent them from turning the head of her niece. She even forbade the village news dealer to sell Bessie any more books of that type. In these days, however, it is no easy matter to deprive any one of the mental pabulum that is desired, and Aunt Sally had set herself a task that she could not accomplish. Lemuel Dodd, Judge Wiggin’s hostler and man of all work, red-headed, freckled, and homely as a slump fence, undeterred by the discouraging fact that his persistent efforts to make love to Bessie seemed merely to arouse her amusement, became her secret and faithful ally. Twice a week, at least, he spent twenty-five cents of his wages for a paper-covered novel to be smuggled into her possession, and invariably he chose the ones whose titles seemed to promise that their contents would come up to Elizabeth’s requirements. “There ain’t many single fellers left round this town,” Lemuel told himself, “and mebbe if she reads enough of them yarns she’ll git so desprit she’ll have to grab what’s handy. And when she gits the notion to grab, I’m going to take keer that I’m the handiest thing in reach.” And so, on this sunny September afternoon, Bessie Wiggin was seeking the shade of the oak in Libby’s pasture, presumably afar from interruption, and prepared thoroughly to enjoy Lemuel’s latest contribution. Her face was almost hidden by one of Aunt Sally’s extremely old-fashioned sunbonnets, which she had hastily taken when she slipped out of the house with the book. Shep, the old dog, stretched himself in the short grass at her feet and prepared to go to sleep comfortably."
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.
