Other Fiction Smith, Francis Hopkinson: Peter. v1. 6 Aug 2014

[crutledge]

Francis Hopkinson Smith (October 23, 1838 – April 7, 1915) was a United States author, artist and engineer. He built the foundation for the Statue of Liberty, wrote many famous stories and received awards for his paintings.

Excerpt
There are no such banks at the present time—were no others then, and this story begins not so very many years’ ago—A queer, out-of-date, mouldy old barn of a bank, you would say, this Exeter—for an institution wielding its influence. Not a coat of paint for half a century; not a brushful of whitewash for goodness knows how much longer. As for the floor, it still showed the gullies and grooves, with here and there a sturdy knot sticking up like a nut on a boiler, marking the track of countless impatient depositors and countless anxious borrowers, it may be, who had lock-stepped one behind the other for fifty years or more, in their journey from the outer door to the windows where the Peters of the old days, and the Peter of the present, presided over the funds entrusted to their care.

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