Virginian (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (60 page)

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Mrs. Wood is listing famous English and American poets and novelists.

Most likely Ivan Turgenev’s
Fathers and Sons
(1862).

“Broad gauge” refers to the distance between the rails of a railroad track that is wider than the standard width; “narrow gauge” rails measure less than the standard width. The Virginian sees himself in the novel’s protagonist, a “broad gauge” hero, whose death nearly makes him cry.

Odds and ends.

Swiss immigrant Lorenzo Delmonico established Delmonico’s Restaurant in New York City; it was one of the country’s foremost restaurants.

Puff-pastry shell filled with meat or fish in sauce.

Capricious prank; caper.

That is, cattle; “beeves” is a plural form of “beef.”

Nebraska town on the Missouri River at the mouth of the Platte River, just south of Omaha.

Range of mountains in eastern Wyoming and western South Dakota; now the site of the carved faces of four presidents at Mount Rushmore National Memorial.

Type of springless wagon.

Composed of incongruous parts or elements, as in a “mongrel.”

Small solid lumps of gold or other metal found in the earth.

Dandies; men who are overly fussy in dress or manner; in the Old West, the term also applied to city-dwellers.

Rock that contains large visible crystals.

Montana town that is halfway between Fargo, North Dakota, and Yellowstone National Park.

Car on a freight train used by workmen.

Indian pony, named for a tribe in the Pacific Northwest that traded horses on the Oregon Trail.

Specialist who treats diseases of the hands and feet.

Sleepwalker.

Sloughs; marshy or muddy places.

One of San Francisco’s grand luxury hotels, opened in 1875.

Person of Spanish descent; now used as a derogatory term.

Terrapin:
any of various freshwater turtles valued for their delicate, edible flesh;
croakeets:
possibly croakers, fish found in the Gulf of Mexico.

Desert in southern California.

Lines from Shakespeare’s
The Life of King Henry Fifth
(act 1, scene 2).

Reference to the Bible, Psalms 14:3.

Allusion to a line in Shakespeare’s
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
(act 1, scene 1): “The course of true love never did run smooth.”

Most likely referring to English Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834).

Two works by English novelist Jane Austen (published in 1816 and 1813, respectively).

For the Virginian, Shakespeare’s
King Henry the Fourth
is “bed-rock”—that is, fundamental or first-rate.

Quatrain by English poet Robert Browning (1812-1889) entitled “Parting at Morning.”

Novel (1849-1850) by English author Charles Dickens.

Member of a patriotic organization similar to the better-known “Daughters of the American Revolution,” founded in 1890 for descendants of those who fought in the Revolutionary War.

Card game ordinarily played by four people in two sets of partners.

Cowardly.

Jail (southern or western term).

BOOK: Virginian (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

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