Thomas Bailey Aldrich 
Queen of Sheba, and My Cousin the Colonel 

Excerpt: Masses of dark cloud still crowded the zenith, but along the eastern horizon, The book carry’s on the tradition of the Bangsian Fantasy and brings together an assortment of heavyweights from the history and mythology together to create a satire that showcase the power of vocal humor, for which Bangs was largely renowned for during his time. After the House-Boat was hijacked by Captain Kidd at the end of "A House-Boat on the Styx", the various members of its club decided that in order to track it down, a detective would have to be called in. So they hired Sherlock Holmes, who, at the time of the book’s publication, had indeed been declared dead by his creator.and minarets–an Oriental city, indeed, such as is inhabited by poets and dreamers and other speculative persons fond of investing their small capital in such unreal estate. Young Lynde, in spite of his prosaic profession of bookkeeper, had an opulent though as yet unworked vein of romance running through his composition, and he said to himself as he gave a slight twitch to the reins, "I’ll put up there to-night at the sign of the Golden Fleece, or may be I’ll quarter myself on one of those rich old merchants who used to do business with the bank in the colonial days." Before he had finished speaking the city was destroyed by a general conflagration; the round red sun rose slowly above the pearl-gray ruins, and it was morning.