Kummer, Frederic Arnold: The Blue Lights. v1. 5 Mar 2013
 

Frederic Arnold Kumme (5 August 1873, Catonsville, Maryland, USA; 22 November 1943, Baltimore, Maryland, USA) American author, playwright and screen writer Frederic Arnold Kummer was born on 5 August, 1873 at Cantonsville, Maryland, to Arnold and Mary Morris Kummer. His father, who had emigrated from Germany in 1859 and had fought in the American Civil War, was part owner of Kummer & Becker, a banking and brokerage house in Baltimore that also acted as agents for the North German Lloyd Steamship Line.

Before Kummer turned to writing full time in 1907, he had been the chief engineer for the American Wood Preserving Company and later general manager of the Eastern Paving Block Company. Kummer was an 1894 graduate of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where he had earned a degree in civil engineering. In 1901 he was awarded the Collingwood prize by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) for a paper he wrote on wood block paving techniques

Excerpt
Grace had encouraged her husband in the plan of giving up, for a time at least, his warfare against crime, his pursuit of criminals of the higher and more dangerous type, and had persuaded him to buy the farm which had once belonged to his mother's people, and settle down to the life of a country gentleman.
His office was still maintained, under the able direction of one of his assistants, but Duvall gave little or no attention to its affairs. He was gladto withdraw, for the first time in over nine years, from active work, and devote his energies to early potatoes, prize dogs, hunters, and geranium plants—and, above all, to the peaceful enjoyment of his honeymoon, and the making of Grace the happiest woman in the world.