The Half Dime Library No. 1062

Catalog Note *Beadle's Dime Novels* (November 8, 1897, No. 1062) contains "The Rival School Sports" by Bracebridge, a multi-chapter serial about Left-Hand Joe Manley, an eighteen-year-old athlete at Seaview Academy on Long Island. Joe's guardian, the ship broker Mr. Hardy, and Hardy's secretary Paul Panton plot Joe's death to control his inheritance. Alfonso Diaz, a Cuban student nicknamed the Cuban Giant, secretly allies with them, harboring jealous hatred beneath feigned friendship. After Joe triumphs in the day's athletic competitions—winning races, jumps, stone-throwing, and other contests—Alfonso challenges him to a extraordinary match: man versus a large python at a snake charmer's tent. The serial intersperses athletic rivalry with melodramatic villainy, including a failed strangling attempt in New York. The adventure culminates in Joe's confrontation with the constricto r snake on stage before witnesses, as his enemies scheme his demise.