FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   12   13   14   15   16   17   18   19   20   21   22   23   24   25   26   27   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36  
37   38   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   >>   >|  
t body from head to foot. Then she rose resolutely and sweeping the back of her hand across her eyes, took down her writing materials. On one side of a post card she wrote the address of Alexis Bowinski, and on the other she penned in her cramped neat writing, one line: "Her name is Lois Chalmers. Hotel LeRoy." This done she unpacked her basket, put her half dozen carnations in a tumbler of water and carried them into the dark parlor, pulled her chair up to the kitchen table, drew the lamp closer and patiently went back to her buttonholes. A DARLING OF MISFORTUNE A shabby but joyous citizen of the world at large was Mr. Phelan Harrihan, as, with a soul wholly in tune with the finite, he half sat and half reclined on a baggage-truck at Lebanon Junction. He wag relieving the tedium of his waiting moments by entertaining a critical if not fastidious audience of three. Beside him, with head thrust under his ragged sleeve, sat a small and unlovely bull-terrier, who, at each fresh burst of laughter, lifted a pair of languishing eyes to the face of his master, and then manifested his surplus affection by ardently licking the buttons on the sleeve of the arm that encircled him. It was a moot question whether Mr. Harrihan resembled his dog, or whether his dog resembled him. That there was a marked similarity admitted of no discussion. If Corp's nose had been encouraged and his lower jaw suppressed, if his intensely emotional nature had been under better control, and his sentimentality tempered with humor, the analogy would have been more complete. In taste, they were one. By birth, predilection, and instinct both were philosophers of the open, preferring an untrammeled life in Vagabondia to the collars and conventions of society. Both delighted in exquisite leisure, and spent it in pleased acquiescence with things as they are. Some twenty-five years before, Phelan had opened his eyes upon a half-circle of blue sky, seen through the end of a canvas-covered wagon on a Western prairie, and having first conceived life to be a free-and-easy affair on a long, open road, he thereafter declined to consider it in any other light. The only break in his nomadic existence was when a benevolent old gentleman found him, a friendless lad in a Nashville hospital, cursed him through a fever, and elected to educate him. Those were years of black captivity for Phelan, and after being crammed and coached for what seemed a
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   12   13   14   15   16   17   18   19   20   21   22   23   24   25   26   27   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36  
37   38   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

Phelan

 

sleeve

 

resembled

 

writing

 

Harrihan

 

instinct

 

delighted

 

predilection

 

Vagabondia

 
exquisite

conventions
 
society
 

untrammeled

 
collars
 

preferring

 
philosophers
 
analogy
 

encouraged

 

suppressed

 

marked


similarity

 

admitted

 
discussion
 
intensely
 

emotional

 

complete

 

leisure

 

nature

 

control

 

sentimentality


tempered

 

twenty

 

benevolent

 

gentleman

 

friendless

 

existence

 

nomadic

 
Nashville
 

crammed

 

coached


captivity

 

cursed

 
hospital
 

elected

 

educate

 

declined

 
opened
 
circle
 

acquiescence

 
pleased