His Own Home Town Author:Larry Evans General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1917 Original Publisher: The H.K. Fly Company Subjects: Fiction / General Fiction / Classics Fiction / Literary Fiction / Romance / General Fiction / Short Stories Fiction / Westerns Literary Criticism / American / General Notes: This is a black and white OCR r... more »eprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER IV THE GIRL CALLED MELODY HANLON'S Hotel, a four-square structure of red brick better known as Pegleg's Place, stood in a hollow square formed by three built-up sides of the city block and "the river." The outlook, therefore, which guests of this doubtful hostelry enjoyed was scarcely one to be recommended with pride, though as a matter of record Hanlon's patrons were little given to a consideration of the unsavory litter surrounding the back doors of these edifices of better repute, or the stream of water, iridescent with oil and acid, which edged the hotel "park," a court of crumpled cement, innocent of tree or other living, green thing, and aquiver with August heat. In fact, whenever one of his patrons began to frequent too persistently the rusted iron benches with which this latter expanse was dotted, brooding too openly over the sluggish current, Hanlon, watching without seeming to watch, invariably found an excuse to suggest a change of scene. Conduct unbecoming a gentleman or a lady, evinced by a desire to swing a chair or scream epithets in a tone which might penetrate the alley to Main Street, served as often as any; general arrears in bar andboard not at all. For those who lived in Hanlon's were of a peculiar sensitiveness in some matters, of a peculiar punctility as well -- a trait which would have surprised an outside world had it become general knowledge. Gue...« less