Public Domain Readers discussion

Each month we will read a public domain book in a certain genre, about a particular subject, or by an specific author. Report which book or story you've decided to read. Feel free to discuss what you're reading and the author's writing style. Don't forget to leave a review of your selected work.

August's chosen author is Louis Tracy.

Louis Tracy was born into a comfortable upper middle class family in Liverpool, England on March 18, 1863. His parents had the resources to give him a private education, first at his home in Yorkshire, and then for three years at the French Seminary.

Growing up in relative leisure he amused himself with “sport, volunteering, fishing, and riding,” but also joined the 1st Volunteer Battalion of the Yorkshire Regiment. He showed an affinity for the army and by his eighteenth birthday had earned a full certificate for a captaincy, an unusual accomplishment at the time.

After Tracy's death, his wife found this poem among his papers,

“I am content if, when the struggle’s o’er,
And humbled, quelled, I reach the father shore,
A voice shall say : ‘Brother, I bid thee rest,
Because, though not unstained, some worth is manifest,
Nor hast thou basely used the life I lent’ —
I am content.”

I just finished reading Cynthia's Chauffeur. I don't think it's my favorite Tracy book, but it's still very good.

I really enjoyed all the talk about automobiles at that time. Even back then, motorists liked to drive above the speed limit :)

One thing I didn't enjoy in the story was the fighting over the heiress. It got old. And the ending seemed rushed.