Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 624

# Museum Catalog Note

This Beadle and Adams publication from July 9, 1889 (Vol. XXIV, No. 98) contains the opening chapters of The Preacher of Pokerville by Edward L. Wheeler, author of the "Deadwood Dick" novels. The primary serial features an eccentric, red-haired preacher named Rev. Jim Jimson who arrives in the gambling-dominated Nevada town of Pokerville after a cyclone and rents an abandoned shanty to establish the Church of Zion. Despite warnings that the mining town's rough gamblers and sharps will kill him, Jimson remains undeterred, frequently drinking whisky at the local saloon. A secondary serial, apparently Deadwood Dick, Jr., in Nevada, follows detective Dick Bristol as he travels to St. Louis investigating a mining stock fraud. Simeon Snip, a Cincinnati businessman, invested ten thousand dollars in the Electric Mine at Pokerville based on false claims from school-friend David Dale; though Dale claimed the mine failed, recent reports suggest it prospers greatly. Snip has departed for Nevada seeking restitution, and his daughter Sally enlists Bristol to pursue him. Both narratives converge toward the Nevada setting.