The Project Gutenberg eBook, Vandover and the Brute, by Frank Norris

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Title: Vandover and the Brute

Author: Frank Norris

Release Date: January 17, 2005 [eBook #14712]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

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VANDOVER AND THE BRUTE

By

Frank Norris

1914

Chapter One

It was always a matter of wonder to Vandover that he was able to recall
so little of his past life. With the exception of the most recent events
he could remember nothing connectedly. What he at first imagined to be
the story of his life, on closer inspection turned out to be but a few
disconnected incidents that his memory had preserved with the greatest
capriciousness, absolutely independent of their importance. One of these
incidents might be a great sorrow, a tragedy, a death in his family; and
another, recalled with the same vividness, the same accuracy of detail,
might be a matter of the least moment.

A certain one of these wilful fillips of memory would always bring
before him a particular scene during the migration of his family from
Boston to their new home in San Francisco, at a time when Vandover was
about eight years old.

It was in the depot of one of the larger towns in western New York. The
day had been hot and after the long ride on the crowded day coach the
cool shadow under the curved roof of the immense iron vaulted depot
seemed very pleasant. The porter, the brakeman and Vandover's father
very carefully lifted his mother from the car. She was lying back on
pillows in a long steamer chair. The three men let the chair slowly
down, the brakeman went away, but the porter remained, taking off his
cap and wiping his forehead with the back of his left hand, which in
turn he wiped against the pink palm of his right. The other train, the
train to which they were to change, had not yet arrived. It was rather
still; at the far end of the depot a locomotive, sitting back on its
motionless drivers like some huge sphinx crouching along the rai