Word: vaidens
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...Forge (TIME, March 23, 1931) Author Stribling gave the first spin to a projected three-novel cycle about the South. He told of the fortunes and misfortunes of the Vaiden family during the Civil War. The Store tells particularly of Col. Miltiades Vaiden and his rise to notoriety in Florence, Ala., about the time of Grover Cleveland's presidencies. Written in the great tradition of well-peopled novels, the book successfully commingles impartial observation and ubiquitous sympathy, tinged with a faintly subacid humor. In pitch, scope, execution it is easily the most important U. S. novel of the year...
...begin his climb. A drunken confession on the part of T. Handback, the town's wealthy merchant, gives him his chance. Years ago Handback had cheated Miltiades of his small fortune in cotton ; now, when the Colonel learns that the highly respectable Handback keeps a quadroon mistress, Gracie Vaiden, one of the old Vaiden slaves, he uses the information to pry himself, as a clerk at $7.50 a week, into Handback's store. Straight way he makes friends with the Negroes and poor whites, by selling 16-oz. pounds of goods instead of the customary twelve. Soon...
Trusted entirely by the rascally Handback, Miltiades oversees the collection of his crops. Chance brings him the opportunity to settle old scores ? he ships 500 bales of Handback cotton to New Orleans, puts the proceeds in a valise in Gracie Vaiden's attic. Though Handback's mistress, she is an old Vaiden slave and will never tell. Miltiades goes about his business, calmly awaits the storm. The whole town knows of his peculation, accepts it philosophically : "Hit's nachel ? hit's nachel . . . evahthing what's bad is nachel...
When the Civil War began the Vaidens, like their neighbors, were surprised but immediately set about to make short work of the Yankees. Before the young men went to the army there was to be a double wedding: Miltiades Vaiden and Drusilla Lacefield, A. Gray Lacefield and Marcia Vaiden. But the night before the wedding Drusilla eloped with Major Crowninshield, and Marcia was not sorry her wedding was postponed, because she too was really in love with the Major. Miltiades went grimly off to war and took orders from the man who had stolen his bride, until Crowninshield was killed...
Augustus joined the cavalry, was badly wounded in his first skirmish, fell in love with his hospital nurse and married her. Polycarp Vaiden and A. Gray Lacefield came through the war unhurt. But before they got home again the Yankees had been there and had not left much to come back to. When the reconstructed Negroes got uppity Miltiades organized and headed the local Ku Klux Klan. Then Polycarp was shot from ambush. Marcia had little excuse left for not marrying A. Gray, but at the last minute was won by Jerry Catlin, a Southerner who had fought...