Waifs and Strays: Twelve Stories

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Doubleday, Page, 1917 - Short stories, American - 305 pages
 

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Page 207 - Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutored mind Sees God in clouds, or hears Him in the wind; His soul proud Science never taught to stray Far as the solar walk or Milky Way...
Page 193 - tis true. 'Tis just one wake ago this day I helped ye lay out the third floor, back. A pretty slip of a colleen she was to be killin' herself wid the gas — a swate little face she had, Mrs. Purdy, ma'am.
Page 191 - He ran from the haunted room downstairs and to a door that showed a crack of light. She came out to his knock. He smothered his excitement as best he could. "Will you tell me, madam," he besought her, "who occupied the room I have before I came?
Page 189 - One evening after dark a young man prowled among these crumbling red mansions, ringing their bells. At the twelfth he rested his lean hand-baggage upon the step and wiped the dust from his hatband and forehead. The bell sounded faint and far away in some remote, hollow depths. To the door of this, the twelfth house whose...
Page 190 - No, I don't remember the name. Them stage people has names they change as often as their rooms. They comes and they goes. No, I don't call that one to mind." No. Always no. Five months of ceaseless interrogation and the inevitable negative. So much time spent by day in questioning managers, agents, schools and choruses; by night among the audiences of...
Page 191 - Then suddenly, as he rested there, the room was filled with the strong, sweet odor of mignonette. It came as upon a single buffet of wind with such sureness and fragrance and emphasis that it almost seemed a living visitant. And the man cried aloud : "What, dear?
Page 190 - ... some most elegant people in it last summer— no trouble at all, and paid in advance to the minute. The water's at the end of the hall. Sprowls and Mooney kept it three months. They done a vaudeville sketch. Miss B'retta Sprowls— you may have heard of her— Oh, that was just the stage names— right there over the dresser is where the marriage certificate hung, framed.
Page 137 - I'd like to be down South, where I could happen over to Miss Ethel's or Miss Sallie's and sit down on the porch — not on a chair — on the edge of the porch, and lay my straw hat on the steps and lay my head back against the honeysuckle on the post — and just talk. And Miss Ethel would go in directly (they say "presently" up here) and bring out the guitar. She would complain that the E string was broken, but no one would believe her; and pretty soon all of us would be singing the "Swanee River"...
Page 251 - ... be at odds with life, in such an embrace of destiny? The great tall sides of buildings fly open, the human hive is there, beautiful and arduous beyond belief. Here is our worship and here our lasting joy, here is our immortality of encouragement. Yes, perhaps O. Henry did say the secret after all: "He saw no longer a rabble, but his brothers seeking the ideal.
Page 75 - Say, Mr. Marshal," growled the glum-faced man. "This isn't quite fair. I'm needin' a drink, and haven't had a smoke all day. Haven't you talked long enough? Take me in the smoker now, won't you? I'm half dead for a pipe." The bound travelers rose to their feet, Easton with the same slow smile on his face. "I can't deny a petition for tobacco,

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