Gilead P. Beck struck oil in Canada and carries a golden butterfly, a freak of nature from a California mining town, as the talisman of his fortune. Arriving in London, he falls in with a circle of young friends, a girl raised in strange seclusion, and a pair of elderly brothers whose literary pretensions are a running joke.
The best known of the Besant and Rice collaborations, a warm, crowded comic novel with a fine American eccentric at its centre. Download the free EPUB.