Sube Cane — Story, Setting & Ideas

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In Category - Historical Psychological Social Fiction

Authors: Partridge, Bellamy, 1877-1960 Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 2010 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: Friendship -- Juvenile fiction; Boys -- Juvenile fiction; Manners and customs -- Juvenile fiction Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

Edition facts

Words 69,886

Reading time 304 min

Text sections 9

Sube Cane — Story, Setting & Ideas can be approached with a clearer sense of reading commitment from its source measurements: 69,886 words, 5 hr 4 min estimated reading time, and 9 detected text sections.

The text analysis averages about 13.5 words per sentence, while the detected sections provide another way to judge how the source is divided.

Project Gutenberg metadata also associates the work with “Friendship -- Juvenile fiction,” connecting these edition facts with the source record’s subject description.

Source: Project Gutenberg record #32731

Sube Cane, a twelve-year-old boy in knickerbockers, uses a stolen hair restorer to grow a mustache and later paints a friend's skin with black paint, leading to comic misadventures. The excerpts show his inventive schemes, dialogue with friends like Gizzard and Biscuit, and a narrative voice that blends boyish mischief with ironic asides.

Editorial Edition Score 4.7/5

★★★★★ ★★★★★

Calculated from edition completeness, EPUB availability, text structure and catalogue metadata. Not a user rating.

How this score is calculated

Description quality20 pts
Title & short description10 pts
Source metadata20 pts
Text length15 pts
Chapters / structure15 pts
EPUB file integrity20 pts

Total of 100 points, scaled to a 2.5-5.0 range. Editions with an empty description or a missing EPUB file are not scored.

Edition quality

File: pg32731

Read the Text

As Cathead reached the bottom of the stairs, Sube dived under the bed. And as Cathead entered the pantry, Sube darted up the attic stairs and threw the tainted clothes far into the darkness. From the splash that followed he feared they might have landed in the rain water tank, but that could not be helped now. As he rapidly slid down the attic stairs he was thoroughly in sympathy with those who shed their brothers' blood so far as disposing of the _corpus delicti_ was concerned.

Sube had reached his room in safety when he heard Cathead angrily scuffing up the stairs; and, wishing to have the appearance of doing something, he stepped over to the bureau and picked up a hairbrush. But when he took off his cap the hairbrush dropped from his nerveless fingers. His mutilated scalp fairly screamed at him!

In the excitement of the fight he had forgotten all about it. But there was no time to lose. Cathead was at the door. Sube mechanically pulled his cap far on his head, and sank limply down on the bed as Cathead came into the room peevishly charging him with being the biggest fibber out of captivity.

"There wasn't a cookie there, and you know it!" he cried.

"Annie must've hid 'em," returned Sube feebly.

Cathead's anger subsided as he caught sight of his brother's livid countenance. "What's the matter of you?" he asked.

"You're as white as paper," declared Cathead. Then catching sight of his brother's swollen lip which in the semi-darkness of the hallway had escaped his notice, he asked, "How'd you hurt your lip?"

The natural thing would have been to tell Cathead the truth, all the truth, and nothing _but_ the truth. But Sube did not care to do this. Not that he was afraid Cathead would tell; he had no thought of that. In regard to their joint delinquencies Cathead had always been absolutely leak-proof. Sube simply did not wish to put himself in Cathead's power; so he took what he considered to be the easiest way.

"Huh? My lip?" he temporized as he tried to think of a plausible explanation. "Why,--why, I--I bumped 'at against the door," he got out finally.

"Prob'ly that's what makes you so pale," suggested Cathead. "Lay down a minute and you'll be all right."

Sube was glad to follow this advice.

"You ain't told me what you're all dressed up for," Cathead reminded him presently.

"I can't find my other clo's, I tole you," growled Sube. "I'll bet mama's gone and given 'em to the Salvation Army or something."

"How long since you couldn't find 'em?"

"Took 'em off jus' soon as I got home, and I ain't seen 'em since."

"That's funny," muttered Cathead as he began a cursory search for the missing garments. A moment later he called from the bathroom, "Hey, Sube, I've found out what smells so bad!"

"What?" asked Sube with a note of alarm.

"It's the water! Something must of got into the cistern. I'll bet it's another cat."

Sube gave one long futile breath that put into words would have said, "What next!" It was a bad matter. But it was not so pressing as a certain other bad matter. Something had to be done about his incompleted haircut--and done quickly. No explanation could be made that was not likely to lead to very unpleasant disclosures. His only salvation was a _real haircut_. And that of necessity involved the expenditure of a sum of money he did not possess.

Sube knew Cathead had money--Cathead always had money--and he at once began a series of flattering offers to sell anything he possessed. But Cathead was thrifty. The commercial instinct was strong in him. He realized that the time to buy is when the other fellow wants to sell; but he did not become over anxious. He said he was not in the market. Neither was he conducting a loan office. Of course, if it was made worth his while, why,--he might think of it.

This bickering nearly drove Sube mad. Time for the evening meal was drawing near. He could hear his father's voice downstairs. In his desperation he made up a job lot containing everything of his in which Cathead had ever betrayed an interest, and struck it off for thirty pieces of copper.

Cathead grasped the psychology of the moment. "I'll take you up," he said promptly. "Come on down stairs while I get the money out of my bank."

Sube went only too willingly. In the library he encountered his father.

"Where is your cap, Sube?" reminded Mr. Cane.

"Yes, I know it," Sube explained. "I didn't forget it; you see, I'm goin' right out again."

Continue Reading →

Sube Cane opens with its twelve-year-old protagonist astride his father's stable ridgepole, pretending to ride a horse while rubbing his upper lip with hair restorer he has stolen from a doctor's sample. The narrator notes that Sube is “set upon the propagation of a mustache,” and the scene establishes a pattern of scientific curiosity applied to mischief. The prose is brisk and ironic, describing Sube's experiments with a deadpan tone that treats his schemes as serious undertakings. The first chapter's title, “Before Using,” hints at the gap between intention and outcome that will drive the story.

A Boy's Logic and Its Limits

The excerpts show Sube reasoning in ways that are logical to him but disastrous in practice. When he hears that hair restorer “would grow hair on the side of a house,” he tests it on the house—then applies it to his own lip. Later, when he paints Biscuit's back with black paint, he justifies it as an initiation: “we've got to 'nitiate you, ain't we?” The narrator does not condemn these actions but presents them as the natural outcome of a boy who takes adult claims literally and applies them to his own world. Readers should watch for how Sube's interpretations of what he hears—from doctors, parents, or friends—lead him into trouble.

The Social World of Boys

The excerpts introduce a cast of boys with nicknames like Gizzard, Biscuit, and Cathead. Their interactions are governed by a rough code: Sube is the leader, Gizzard the accomplice, and Biscuit the victim. The swimming-hole scene shows how quickly play can turn into coercion—Biscuit is held down while Sube paints him. Yet the tone remains comic, with Sube declaiming like a showman: “Watch me closely, ladies and gent'mun.” The narrator uses formal language for absurd situations, creating a gap between the boys' crude actions and the elevated description. This social hierarchy and its rituals of initiation and revenge are central to the novel's comedy.

Narrative Voice and Ironic Distance

The narrator frequently steps back to comment on Sube's motives with dry humor. When Sube chases Biscuit, the narrator notes that “if Sube had put his thoughts in words they would have sounded something like this,” then gives a panicked internal monologue. This technique reveals Sube's real fears—meeting someone, failing to catch Biscuit, Biscuit reaching his mother—while maintaining the pretense of revenge. The illustrations listed in the contents, such as “Professional jealousy” and “A great light broke on him,” suggest that the visual humor matches the verbal. Readers should attend to the narrator's asides, which often undercut Sube's self-image as a master planner.

Recurring Details and Patterns

Several details recur across the excerpts. Sube's mustache project appears only in the first chapter, but the hair restorer bottle is mentioned again in the illustration list. Paint appears as a tool for both art and vandalism: Sube leaves Biscuit's initials on a bridge railing and later uses black paint on skin. The setting includes a mill, a swimming-hole, and a stable, all places where boys gather away from adults. The chapter titles suggest a sequence of schemes: “A Flyer in Cats,” “The Barnstormers,” “Sube Goes To the Movies.” These patterns indicate that the novel is structured around Sube's entrepreneurial attempts, each ending in comic failure or unexpected success.

The excerpts from Sube Cane present a protagonist whose energy and inventiveness are matched only by his lack of foresight. Readers will find that the humor depends on the gap between Sube's confidence and the actual results of his plans. The narrative rewards attention to its ironic voice and to the ways Sube misapplies adult logic to his own world. The book is best read as a series of episodes rather than a tightly plotted novel, with each chapter offering a new scheme and its consequences.

I recall painting my own eyebrows with shoe polish at eleven, certain I’d become someone else by supper. Sube Cane caught that same giddy, doomed itch, the way invention tangles with shame and laughter. It reminded me of reading The Girls of Hillcrest Farm; Or, The Secret of the Rocks — A Closer Reading, where hidden things surface slowly, and every secret costs a little more innocence than planned.