“A fine copy in original wrappers of the anonymous novelette Ella Cameron recently fell into our dragnet. The daughter of an ex-governor of South Carolina, Ella is the toast of late 1850s Washington society, with Walter Moreland, ‘a young Texan of high birth but reduced fortune,’ in hot pursuit. Stuffy old Colonel Leonard stands in the way, but Moreland strategically ‘wings’ him in a duel, then replenishes the family fortune with $25,000 won at cards at ‘a magnificent gambling saloon’… Hastening off to New York’s dodgy Five Points district, Moreland hires a band of lowlifes to ‘kidnap’ Leonard and his still-virginal bride, but the bumblers kill him instead. Crazed by greed, they demand Ella’s diamonds at gunpoint, but Moreland appears and now proves a surer shot. Still, both Ella and Moreland take bullets. ‘Their wounds were found to be quite serious but not necessarily mortal,’ and following a respectable recuperation/courtship, they are finally wed.” Quite a perplexing plot summary — I suspect that the names might have gotten switched around a bit, though one never knows with early American fiction — but it sounds delightful nonetheless. An anonymous novelette published 1861.
