{"product_id":"2940013740563","title":"A Lost Lady","description":"Thirty or forty years ago, in one of those grey towns along the\u003cbr\u003eBurlington railroad, which are so much greyer today than they were\u003cbr\u003ethen, there was a house well known from Omaha to Denver for its\u003cbr\u003ehospitality and for a certain charm of atmosphere.  Well known,\u003cbr\u003ethat is to say, to the railroad aristocracy of that time; men who\u003cbr\u003ehad to do with the railroad itself, or with one of the \"land\u003cbr\u003ecompanies\" which were its by-products.  In those days it was enough\u003cbr\u003eto say of a man that he was \"connected with the Burlington.\"  There\u003cbr\u003ewere the directors, the general managers, vice-presidents,\u003cbr\u003esuperintendents, whose names we all knew; and their younger\u003cbr\u003ebrothers or nephews were auditors, freight agents, departmental\u003cbr\u003eassistants.  Everyone \"connected\" with the Road, even the large\u003cbr\u003ecattle- and grain-shippers, had annual passes; they and their\u003cbr\u003efamilies rode about over the line a great deal.  There were then\u003cbr\u003etwo distinct social strata in the prairie States; the homesteaders\u003cbr\u003eand hand-workers who were there to make a living, and the bankers\u003cbr\u003eand gentlemen ranchers who came from the Atlantic seaboard to\u003cbr\u003einvest money and to \"develop our great West,\" as they used to tell\u003cbr\u003eus.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen the Burlington men were travelling back and forth on business\u003cbr\u003enot very urgent, they found it agreeable to drop off the express\u003cbr\u003eand spend a night in a pleasant house where their importance was\u003cbr\u003edelicately recognized; and no house was pleasanter than that of\u003cbr\u003eCaptain Daniel Forrester, at Sweet Water.  Captain Forrester was\u003cbr\u003ehimself a railroad man, a contractor, who had built hundreds of\u003cbr\u003emiles of road for the Burlington,--over the sage brush and cattle\u003cbr\u003ecountry, and on up into the Black Hills.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe Forrester place, as every one called it, was not at all\u003cbr\u003eremarkable; the people who lived there made it seem much larger and\u003cbr\u003efiner than it was.  The house stood on a low round hill, nearly a\u003cbr\u003emile east of town; a white house with a wing, and sharp-sloping\u003cbr\u003eroofs to shed the snow.  It was encircled by porches, too narrow\u003cbr\u003efor modern notions of comfort, supported by the fussy, fragile\u003cbr\u003epillars of that time, when every honest stick of timber was\u003cbr\u003etortured by the turning-lathe into something hideous.  Stripped of\u003cbr\u003eits vines and denuded of its shrubbery, the house would probably\u003cbr\u003ehave been ugly enough.  It stood close into a fine cottonwood grove\u003cbr\u003ethat threw sheltering arms to left and right and grew all down the\u003cbr\u003ehillside behind it.  Thus placed on the hill, against its bristling\u003cbr\u003egrove, it was the first thing one saw on coming into Sweet Water by\u003cbr\u003erail, and the last thing one saw on departing.","brand":"WDS Publishing","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47070198333680,"sku":"2940013740563","price":2.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940013740563_p0.jpg?v=1763589611","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940013740563","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}