CHAPTER VIII. Taken Prisoner

Vagabond Adventures

by Ralph KEELER (1840 - 1873)

Ralph Keeler failed as a novelist, but this autobiography reflects a life well-lived with humor and adventure. Keeler was in the same literary circle as satirist Bret Harte, novelist Charles Warren Stoddard, editor Thomas Bailey Aldrich, and essayist William Dean Howells. He so impressed Mark Twain that Twain wrote an essay about him called "Ralph Keeler". In 1873, on his way to Cuba, he reportedly was thrown overboard by a Spanish loyalist who objected to his backing of the revolutionary, anti-Spanish movement. - Summary by John Greenman

Listen next episodes of Vagabond Adventures:
BOOK II. THREE YEARS AS A NEGRO-MINSTREL. CHAPTER I. My First Company , BOOK III. THE TOUR OF EUROPE FOR $181 IN CURRENCY. CHAPTER I. Starting on a Cattle-Train , CHAPTER II. I become a Beneficiary , CHAPTER II. Taking to European Ways , CHAPTER III. Student Life and Wanderings , CHAPTER III. The Fate of the Serenaders , CHAPTER IV. A Fight with Famine , CHAPTER IV. The Trials and Triumphs of the “Booker Troupe” , CHAPTER IX. Squalor , CHAPTER IX. The Performer Socially , CHAPTER V. The Conclusion , CHAPTER V. The Last of the “Booker Troupe” , CHAPTER VI. “The Mitchells” , CHAPTER VII. On the Floating Palace , CHAPTER VIII. Wild Life , CHAPTER X. A Final Triumph , CHAPTER X. Adieu to the Stage