Humor Paine, Albert B.: From Van-Dweller to Commuter (illus). v1. 31 May 2016

[GrannyGrump]

From Van Dweller to Commuter
By Albert Bigelow Paine (1861–1935)
Illustrated (unattributed)

First published 1901 (The Van Dwellers), 1904 (The Commuters), 1907 (this combined book).
This book is in the public domain in countries where copyright is “Life+70” or less, and in the USA

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Albert Bigelow Paine was an American author and biographer best known for his work with Mark Twain. He wrote in several genres, including fiction, humor, and verse, for children and adults. His most notable work was a three-volume biography of Mark Twain.

Subtitled “The Story of a Strenuous Quest for a Home and a Little Hearth and Garden”, this humorous “memoir” narrates the misadventures of a young family in New York City on an endless search for the ideal nesting place. Persons constantly on the move were said to live out of the moving van, thus: The Van Dwellers. Upon finally settling in suburbia, they become The Commuters. If the reader transposes incidental dated references (to gas lights, wood cook-stoves, horse-drawn wagons, and goodness, such prices!) to their modern counterparts, it can be plainly seen that such adventures can still occur today. Cramped apartments, slovenly janitors, stingy landlords, tardy delivery-men, lolly-gagging carpenters and painters – why, it might have been written last week!

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Text and images from archive.org. OCR errors were corrected; punctuation, italics and diacritics formatted; illustrations manually cleaned and enhanced. Chapter titles are cross-linked to Table of Contents. Embedded font for titling. I have re-inserted three chapters from the original Van Dwellers; those titles are marked with asterisks.

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I hope you enjoy the read!

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