Excerpt from Hard-Pan: A Story of Bonanza Fortunes Dinner was coming to an end. The Chinaman, soft-footed in his immaculate white, had just finished his circuit of the table, leaving a tiny gold-rimmed coffee-cup at each of the four plates. Into hers Letitia was lowering a lump of sugar, when a thought occurred to her, and she dropped the sugar into the cup with a little splash, and looking across at her vis-a-vis, said: "Oh, John, I've been going to ask you half a dozen of times, and have always forgotten: did you know that Colonel Ramsay Reed had a daughter?" To see the effect of her question, she stretched forward a plump white hand and tilted to one side one of the pink silk petticoats that veiled the candle-flames. The obstruction removed, she looked with vivacious interest at the person to whom she had addressed her query. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."

Excerpt from Hard-Pan: A Story of Bonanza FortunesLetitia, who was twelve years her sister's junior, and, even if she had not been, would not have felt sensitive about her accumulating birthdays, answered Oh, long ago. Colonel Reed's always been a widower ever since I can remember.

Geraldine Bonner was born on Staten Island, New York. Her father, John Bonner, was a journalist and historical writer. As a child, the family moved to Colorado and she lived in mining camps. After moving to San Francisco, California, she worked at a newspaper, the Argonaut, in 1887, and subsequently, she wrote the novel Hard Pan (1900) and used the name "Hard Pan" as a pseudonym. Bonner also wrote short stories which were published in Collier's Weekly, Harper's Weekly, Harper's Monthly, and Lippincott's.

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