Our Mr. Wrenn
contributor: Eric Lease Morgan (Infomotions, Inc.)
creator: Lewis, Sinclair
date: 0000-00-00
extent: 466855
format: text/plain
language: en
publisher: Wiretap Electronic Text Archive
rights: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/GPL/2.0/
source: wrenn.txt
subject: wrenn
subject: istra
subject: nelly
subject: represented
subject: public
subject: domain
subject: lewis
subject: sinclair
subject: american
subject: literature
type: text
local mirror: lewis-our-202.txt
concordance: http://infomotions.com/alex/cgi-bin/concordance.pl
plain html: lewis-our-202.htm
sort title: Our Mr. Wrenn
full text: OUR MR. WRENN, by SINCLAIR LEWIS Digitized by Cardinalis Etext Press, C.E.K. Posted to Wiretap in July 1993, as wrenn.txt. Italics are represented as _italics_. This text is in the PUBLIC DOMAIN. OUR MR. WRENN THE ROMANTIC ADVENTURES OF A GENTLE MAN BY SINCLAIR LEWIS HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS NEW YORK AND LONDON MCMXIV COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY HARPER & BROTHERS PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA PUBLISHED FEBRUARY, 1914 TO GRACE LIVINGSTONE HEGGER CHAPTER I MR. WRENN IS LONELY The ticket-taker of the Nickelorion Moving-Picture Show is a public personage, who stands out on Fourteenth Street, New York, wearing a gorgeous light-blue coat of numerous brass buttons. He nods to all the patrons, and his nod is the most cordial in town. Mr. Wrenn used to trot down to Fourteenth Street, passing ever so many other shows, just to get that cordial nod, because he had a lonely furnished room for evenings, and for daytime a tedious job that always made his head stuffy. He stands out in the correspondence of the Souvenir and Art Novelty Company as "Our Mr. Wrenn," who would be writing you directly and explaining everything most satisfactorily. At thirty-four Mr. Wrenn was the sales-entry clerk of the Souvenir Company. He was always bending over bills and columns of figures at a desk behind the stock-room. He was a meek little bachlor--a person of inconspicuous blue ready-made suits, and a small unsuccessful mustache. To-day--historians have established the date as April 9, 1910--there had been some confusing mixed orders from the Wisconsin retailers, and Mr. Wrenn had been "called down" by the office manager, Mr. Mortimer R. Guilfogle. He needed the friendly nod of the Nickelorion ticket-taker. He found Fourteenth Street, after office hours, swept by a dusty wind that whisked the skirts of countless plump Jewish girls, whose V-necked blouses showed soft throats of a warm brown. Under the elevated station he secretly made believe that he was in Paris, for here beautiful Italian …