Beadle's New York Dime Library No. 884

This issue contains "The Man of Muscle," a serial by J.E. Badger Jr., serialized in this weekly publication. The story opens in a saloon called the Alhambra in a mining camp. Whooping Tom Hooper, a drunken miner who has struck it rich at the New Find claim, squanders his money on drinks and poker with unscrupulous gamblers. His younger partner Rodney Church attempts to stop him, arguing that Hooper wastes their shared profits. After taunts from the gamblers, Hooper publicly humiliates Church by spanking him. Church retaliates with a knife attack, drawing blood. A tall, powerfully-built man named Carlos Houghton intervenes between the enraged partners, separating them with commanding authority. The narrative emphasizes frontier mining camp dialect and character conflict, with drinking and gambling as central plot elements.