The best short stories of 1915, and the yearbook of the American short story
General
The best short stories of 1915, and the yearbook of the American short story
American fiction -- 20th century; Short stories -- 20th century -- Bibliography; Short stories -- 20th century -- Indexes; Short stories, American
The gates, sliding back, opened the way for the officers who led the
procession with which Isador Framberg came back to the city of his
adoption. The crowd yawned to give space to the guard of honor, walking
erectly beside the flag-draped coffin, to the mourners, men and women
alien as if they had come from Kiev but yesterday, to the little group
of men, public officials and rabbis, who trailed in their wake, and to
James Thorold and Peter, reverently following. Then it closed in upon
the cortège, urging it silently down the broad stairways and out into
the street where other crowds fell in with the strange procession.
Surging away after the shabby hearse, drawn by its listless horses and
attended by the marines, the crowd left the Thorolds, father and son,
on the pavement beside the station. "Don't you want to go?" There was
a wistfulness in Peter's voice that told his father that the boy had
sensed some lack of responsiveness in him. "He's going to lie in state
to-day at the city hall. Don't you think we should go, dad?" Not Peter's
query but Peter's eyes won his father's answer. "After a while," he
promised. "Then let's find a breakfast," the boy laughed. "I spent my
last dollar sending you that telegram."
All the way over to his father's club on Michigan Avenue, and all
through the breakfast that he ordered with lusty young appetite, Peter
kept up a running fire of reminiscence of his European adventures. That
the fire held grapeshot for his father when he talked of the latter's
worthiness for the ambassadorship to Forsland he could not guess; but
he found that he was pouring salt in a wound when he went back to
comment upon Isador Framberg's death. "Why make so much of a boy who
happened to be at Vera Cruz?" the older man said at last, nettled that
even his son found greater occasion for commendation in the circumstance
of the Forquier Street hero than in his father's selection to the most
important diplomatic post in the gift of the government. Peter's brows
rose swiftly at his father's annoyance. He opened his lips for argument,
then swiftly changed his intention. "Tell me about Judge Adams, dad," he
said, bungling over his desire to change the topic, "the fellow who knew
his Pericles."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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