Carolyn Wells

A poem in which every letter of the alphabet decribes a different aspect of Christmas and its celebration.

A poem in which every letter of the alphabet decribes a different aspect of Christmas and its celebration.

The Campanile was a fashionable apartment building in the heart of Manhattan. It was known for its elaborate façade and an ornate lobby featuring large onyx pillars. It was a perfectly respectable place with perfectly respectable well-to-do tenants -- that is, until one of them, Sir Herbert Binney, owner of the well known Binney’s Buns Company, is found dead in its lobby, clutching a paper on which he had scrawled “women did it.” But which women? The chorus girls of which Sir Herbert was so fond? Girls from the building’s staff with whom he had taken liberties? Or the two middle-aged women who had been feuding for twenty years, one of whom was the aunt to his nephew and heir? With a fortune involved and the secret recipe for Binney’s Buns at stake, there are more than enough suspects and clues to what happened . . . in the Onyx Lobby.

This collection includes verse by: Edward Lear; William Makepeace Thackeray; George Barr Barker; Alfred E. Dickey; Ruth McEnery Stuart; Thomas Chatterton; John Kendrick Bangs; and others.