The Spread Eagle and Other Stories

The Spread Eagle and Other Stories is a collection of short stories by Gouverneur Morris. Morris was an American writer of pulp tales and short stories. Excerpt:" They drove first of all to Gaston Rennette's gallery, where Fitz celebrated the glorious Fourth with a real duelling pistol and real bullets, aiming at a life-size sheet-iron man, who, like a correct, courteous, and courageous opponent, never moved. And all the way to the gallery and all the way back there was here and there an American flag, as is customary in Paris on the Fourth. And to these Fitz, standing up in the victoria, dipped and waved his hat. While he was shooting, his mother took a «little turn» and then came back to fetch him; a stout man in a blue blouse accompanying him to the curb, tossing his hands heavenward, rolling up his eyes, and explaining to madame what a «genius at the shoot was the little mister,» and had averaged upon the «mister of iron» one «fatal blow» in every five. Madame «invited» the stout man to a five-franc piece for himself and she smiled, and he smiled, and bowed off backward directly into a passing pedestrian, who cried out upon the «sacred name of a rooster.» And everybody laughed, including Cunningham, whose face from much shaving looked as if a laugh must crack it; and so the glorious Fourth was begun."