The Mystery of the Boule Cabinet
By Burton E. Stevenson
That is how it happened: an hour later, I walked toward Washington Square, just above the Avenue where the old Vantine mansion stood. It was almost the last survival of the old régime, for the tide of business had long since overflowed from the neighbouring streets into the Avenue and swept its fashionable folk far uptown. Tall office and loft buildings had replaced the brownstone houses; only here and there did some old family hold on, like a sullen and desperate rear guard defying the advancing enemy.
Philip Vantine was one of these. He had been born in the house where he still lived and declared that he would die there. He had no one but himself to please in the matter since he was unmarried and lived alone, and he mitigated the increasing roar and dust of the neighbourhood by long absences abroad. It was from one of these that he had just returned. I may as well complete this pencil sketch. Vantine was about fifty years of age, the possessor of a comfortable fortune, something of a connoisseur in art matters, a collector of old furniture, a little eccentric—though now that I have written the word, I find that I must qualify it, for his only eccentricity was that he persisted, despite many temptations, in remaining a bachelor.
Marriageable women had long since ceased to consider him; mothers with maturing daughters dismissed him with a significant shake. It was from them that he got the reputation of being eccentric. But his reasons for remaining single in no way concerned his lawyers—a position our firm had held for many years and the active work of which had gradually come into my hands.
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Burton E. Stevenson
Burton Egbert Stevenson (1872–1962) was an American author, anthologist, and librarian.
Biography.
He was born in Chillicothe, Ohio, on 9 November 1872 and attended Princeton University from 1890–1893. He married Elizabeth Shepard Butler (1869–1960) in 1895. He died on May 13, 1962, and was buried in Chillicothe, Ohio. While at Princeton, Stevenson was a correspondent for the United Press and the New York Tribune.
He was city editor for the Chillicothe Daily News (1894–1898) and worked for the Daily Advertiser (1898–1899). Stevenson became director of the Chillicothe Public Library in 1899 and held that position for 58 years. Stevenson was well known for his war efforts. At Camp Sherman, located in Chillicothe, Ohio, he established a library of 40,000 volumes and 22 branches.
The Camp Sherman library was said to be a model for national efforts to develop such libraries. In 1918, as Director of French operations for the Library War Service, he helped found what would grow to become the American Library in Paris. He was the director of this ALA outpost from 1918 until the library was privatized in 1920, and he returned from 1925 to 1930. He was then made European director of the American Library Association`s Library War Service, a position he held for seven years.
Burton E. Stevenson
