Old Crossfire

This issue contains four speaker anthologies and sample excerpts from a serialized frontier novella. The *Dime Serio-Comic Speaker* (No. 19), *Dime Select Speaker* (No. 20), *Dime Funny Speaker* (No. 21), and *Dime Jolly Speaker* (No. 22) each list dozens of monologues and dramatic pieces—comic dialogues like "How tew pik out a wife," moral recitations like "Thanatopsis," character sketches with dialect ("De filosofy ub fos"), and humorous anecdotes. *Dime Dialogues* (No. 26) offers short dramatic pieces for multiple performers. The catalog also advertises numerous other instructional volumes on etiquette, letter-writing, dancing, and fortune-telling. The featured serialized fiction, "Old Crossfire: The Trailers of the Everglades" by Capt. Charles Howard, follows a scout named Sam and a boy named Frank Nesbit returning to a Florida plantation ravaged by the "Mixed Riders" during the Indian Wars. The opening chapter describes their discovery of the Grant mansion's dining room, where evidence of massacre—blood-stained dishes and washboarding—suggests Indian attack, though the narrative trails off.