The Unspeakable Perk

Samuel Hopkins Adams

Oct 2004 · 1st World Publishing

About this ebook

The man sat in a niche of the mountain, busily hating the Caribbean Sea. It was quite a contract that he had undertaken, for there was a large expanse of Caribbean Sea in sight to hate; very blue, and still, and indifferent to human emotions. However, the young man was a good steadfast hater, and he came there every day to sit in the shade of the overhanging boulder, where there was a little trickle of cool air down the slope and a little trickle of cool water from a crevice beneath the rock, to despise that placid, unimpressionable ocean and all its works and to wish that it would dry up forthwith, so that he might walk back to the blessed United States of America. In good plain American, the young man was pretty homesick.

About the author

Samuel Hopkins Adams was born on January 26, 1871 in Dunkirk, N.Y. He graduated from Hamilton College in 1891. He was a reporter for the New York Sun and McClure's Magazine where his articles focused on the the conditions of public health in the United States. He also wrote a series of eleven articles in Collier's Weekly exposing patent medicines and accusing their producers of making false claims and in some cases, damaging the health of their users. These articles were a huge influence on the passage of the first Pure Food and Drugs Act. He not only wrote for magazines, he also wrote fiction and nonfiction. His most popular novel, Revelry was based on the scandals of the Harding administration. His other titles include The Harvey Girls, The Grandfather Stories, and Tenderloin. Adams died Nov. 15, 1958 in Beaufort, South Carolina.