Beadle's Half Dime Library, No. 603

About this issue

This February 1889 Beadle and Adams dime novel presents "The Member from Way Back" by Jo Pierce, credited to the New York Detective Force. The story concerns Jonathan Berry, an honest but unsophisticated farmer newly elected assemblyman from Green Hills, arriving in Albany by train. Wide-Awake Bert, a street runner for Mrs. Cleopatra Clyde's boarding house, accosts Berry with rapid-fire solicitations. After some confusion, Berry accepts lodging there. Attempting to retrieve a newspaper, Bert leaves Berry unattended at a street corner. A man in a grotesque mask and hairy robe suddenly startles a horse-drawn wagon, causing it to overturn and disgorge a coffin. Two figures seize it and flee. Berry pursues but loses them. When he returns, the driver has vanished and no trace remains of the incident. A policeman arrives and misunderstands the rural assemblyman's account; mutual confusion ensues until Bert reappears to translate between them. The narrative combines frontier dialect, mistaken identities, and an unexplained theft of a corpse, with elements of detective fiction and urban adventure.