Description for BANNER BY THE WAYSIDE by Samuel Hopkins Adams: Few of today's writers-if there are any at all-can evoke the color and sound and fragrance of life in the United States of a hundred years ago as successfully as Samuel Hopkins Adams. Thousands of delighted readers reveled in the magical pages of Canal Town. Now, in BANNER BY THE WAYSIDE, they can again be transported back in time to days when life moved with fullness and richness seldom encountered since. Essentially, BANNER BY THE WAYSIDE is the story of Durie and Jans: Durie, the foundling who grew to entrancing loveliness, and Jans, young man of inherited wealth and position who matched in daring and charm Durie's adventurous spirit. When Durie, whose foster parents died in violence, joined a roving theatrical troupe, fate soon threw her into the company of Jans, wandering in search of adventure after Harvard had expelled him for his wildness. Through the Erie Canal country the troupe traveled, and against a curtain of vivid action, in the midst of abundant success and abysmal failure, the romance of Durie and Jans unfolded. Teeming with characters from every walk of life, abounding in the pungent language that spiced the canal side chatter of those early days it is loaded with the brawling hurly-burly that filled days and nights with unending excitement. BANNER BY THE WAYSIDE is a superlative example of Samuel Hopkins Adams at his hypnotic best.
