Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 37: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

By LORING BRENT Author of ‘‘ Vingo’s Roving Romeo,’’ ‘*‘ Vingo’s Mysterious Stranger,’ ” etc. A NOVELETTE—COMPLETE IN THIS ISSUE in the sense that flowers and luscious fruit grew there all year round, or that rivers of milk and honey flowed down the middle of golden streets. Paradise is generally a state of mind, anyhow. It’s like happiness, grief and other high voltage emo- tions—a comparison between what was and what is or what’s next. A man with both legs smashed can be the happiest fool on earth when he learns he isn’t, after all, going to cash in, just as a man who has inherited a million dollars can be the unhappiest when the only girl in the world coldly and flatly says.no. Nope; Vingo is no botanical paradise. Malaria lurks in the bushes and hookworms live in the soil; there are rattlesnakes on the high ground and water moccasins and alligators on the low; but in spite of these natural disadvantages, Vingo was, before Alvina S nee: no; Vingo wasn’t a paradise Barnes came along, about as peaceful and contented as any town has a right to be. Yes, sir. On that basis, Vingo was a para-- dise until Alvina came and gave us a gor- geous view of Hades with the doors wide open. From the outset of our acquaintance I had good and sufficient cause to associate Alvina Barnes, or Viney, as she was known to a devoted few, with snakes and other dangerous reptiles. She was one of the most beautiful young women I ever knew, and I have often wondered if maybe Cleo- patra, Helen of Troy, Katherine de Medici, and Lucretia Borgia didn’t have the same kind of eyes and the same capacity for starting trouble by doing nothing but being among those present. Loosely speaking, there are just two kinds of women, the kind that would make men purr if they were cats, and the kind that would make them arch 347 Eomichbooks (E@)