Synopsis

SITTING down calmly to write the story of Dick Selby and all that came to him because of the Brown Lady, his "O.C.," I am terribly tempted to skip what may seem to be the unimportant periods of his life, and go straight to that wonder time of his. But were I to plunge into the heart of my story, and were I to begin my narrative with such a phrase as "This is the story of Selby, who from being a third-rate clerk, became the—" you might well call me to task for the strain I put upon credulity. If, reading this story, you happen upon improbable combinations of circumstances, unlikely situations, events that stand on the outward rim of your belief, I would ask you to that Dick Selby had up to this time lived a most ordinary life. If the Brown Lady, Elise, had been your conventional prune and prism miss, this story would not have been written at all, for I could not bring myself to the recording of such thin romance as a conventional suburban courtship would afford.