Average Jones

Samuel Hopkins Adams

Sep 2005 · 1st World Publishing

About this ebook

Purchase one of 1st World Library's Classic Books and help support our free internet library of downloadable eBooks. Visit us online at www.1stWorldLibrary.ORG - - Three men sat in the Cosmic Club discussing the question: "What's the matter with Jones?" Waldemar, the oldest of the conferees, was the owner, and at times the operator, of an important and decent newspaper. His heavy face wore the expression of good-humored power, characteristic of the experienced and successful journalist. Beside him sat Robert Bertram, the club idler, slender and languidly elegant. The third member of the conference was Jones himself. Average Jones had come by his nickname inevitably. His parents had foredoomed him to it when they furnished him with the initials A. V. R. E. as preface to his birthright of J for Jones. His character apparently justified the chance concomi-tance. He was, so to speak, a composite photograph of any thousand well-conditioned, clean-living Americans between the ages of twenty-five and thirty. Happily, his otherwise commonplace face was relieved by the one unfailing charac-teristic of composite photographs, large, deep-set and thought-ful eyes. Otherwise he would have passed in any crowd, and nobody would have noticed him pass. Now, at twenty-seven, he looked back over the five years since his graduation from college and wondered what he had done with them; and at the four previous years of undergraduate life and wondered how he had done so well with those and why he had not in some manner justified the parting words of his favorite professor.

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.