Mr. Keegan's Elopement

Mr. Keegan's Elopement was the first published story by the American author, Winston Churchill. It was published in magazine format in 1896, probably in Cosmopolitan magazine, of which he was the managing editor at the time. It was later published in 1903 by Macmillan & Co. as a short story in hard cover book format. The story is that of a young U.S. Naval officer meeting and eloping with a young British lady on the island of Madeira and of the, sometimes humorous, secretive arrangements made by one of his friends from the crew of the ship to facilitate the elopement. The island of Madeira is part of a Portuguese group of islands about 360 miles off the coast of Africa and 535 miles from Lisbon, Portugal. Funchal (the setting for this story) is on the south coast of Madeira, and is the capital city with a population of about 100,000 residents today.