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THE PEE-WEE HARRIS SERIES |
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Titles |
| All readers of the Tom Slade and the Roy Blakeley books
are acquainted with Pee-Wee Harris. These stories record the true facts
concerning his size (what there is of it) and his heroism (such as it is),
his voice, his clothes, his appetite, his friends, his enemies, his victims.
Together with the thrilling narrative of how he foiled, baffled,
circumvented and triumphed over everything and everybody (except where he
failed) and how even when he failed he succeeded. The whole recorded in a
series of screams and told with neither muffler nor cut-out. --- Grosset & Dunlap advertisement
The Pee-wee Harris books are much lighter in tone than Fitzhugh's Tom Slade and Roy Blakeley series. Through blind luck and strange twists of fate, the goofily oblivious (but always debonair) Walter "Pee-Wee" Harris stumbles into one adventure after another -- things always, however, turning out for the best at the end. The first two volumes (possibly more?) were reprinted by Whitman. Excerpt from Pee-Wee Harris on the Trail: "Little boy," Mrs. Bartlett called in her sweetest tone, "here is some money for you. You go into that store and -- gracious me, it's Walter Harris! What are you doing here, Walter? I thought you were a poor little -- I thought you were hungry." The sturdy but diminutive form and the curly head and frowning countenance which stood confronting her were none other than those of Pee-Wee Harris, B.S.A. (Boy of Special Appetite or Boy Scouts of America, whichever you please), and he stared her full in the face without shame. "That's the time you guessed right," he said. "I am." "Give him the money," laughed Mr. Bartlett. "I will do no such thing," said his wife. "I thought you were a poor little starving urchin, Walter. Wherever did you get that sweater?" "I don't believe he's had anything to eat for half an hour," said Mr. Bartlett. "Well, how is my old college chum, Pee-Wee? You make her give you the twenty-five cents, Pee-Wee." "A scout can't accept money like that," said Mrs. Bartlett reprovingly, "it's against their rules. Don't you know that?" Pee-Wee cast a longing glance back at the window of Pfiffel's Bakery and then proceeded to set Mrs. Bartlett right on the subject of the scout law. "It -- it depends on what you call rules; see?" he said. "And on what you call hungry," added Mr. Bartlett. "If -- if you -- kind of -- want to do a good turn, I haven't any right to stop you, have I?" Pee-Wee said. "Because good turns are the main things. Gee whiz, I haven't got any right to interfere with those. I haven't got any right to accept money for a service, but suppose -- suppose there's a jelly roll --" "There is," said Mr. Bartlett, "but in two minutes there isn't going to be." |
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Source: *Advertisement in Roy Blakeley's Silver Fox Patrol, by Percy Keese Fitzhugh. Illustrated by Howard L. Hastings. Grosset & Dunlap. New York. 1920. WorldCat holdings. |