Summary

The novel opens in the spring of 1876. The protagonist, a young man named William Johnson, is a freshman at Yale College. His father, Silas Johnson, is a wealthy businessman in the shipping industry. The narration describes William Johnson as intelligent but generally lazy and reckless. Johnson’s arch-rival at Yale is a fellow freshman named Harold Hannibal Marlin. Marlin bets Johnson $1,000 that Johnson does not have the courage to join the paleontological expedition in the west that is led by Yale’s Professor Othniel Marsh each summer. Johnson accepts the wager. Johnson acquires a place on the expedition by untruthfully telling Marsh that he is a photographer, as Marsh needs a photographer for the expedition. Johnson then sets about learning photography before the summer. He pays for lessons from a local photographer, and the spoiled and lazy Johnson finds that he is easily...