The best short stories of 1922, and the yearbook of the American short story
General
The best short stories of 1922, 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
Well, I thought they wouldn’t never go home and I and Mother was
in misery trying to keep awake, as the both of us generally always
takes a nap after dinner. Finally they went, after we had made an
engagement to meet them in the Park the next morning, and Mrs.
Hartsell also invited us to come to their place the next night and
play five hundred. But she had forgot that they was a meeting of the
Michigan Society that evening, so it was not till two evenings later
that we had our first card game.
Hartsell and his wife lived in a house on Third Avenue North and had
a private setting room besides their bedroom. Mrs. Hartsell couldn’t
quit talking about their private setting room like it was something
wonderful. We played cards with them, with Mother and Hartsell
partners against his wife and I. Mrs. Hartsell is a miserable card
player and we certainly got the worst of it.
After the game she brought out a dish of oranges and we had to
pretend it was just what we wanted, though oranges down there is like
a young man’s whiskers; you enjoy them at first, but they get to be a
pesky nuisance.
We played cards again the next night at our place with the same
partners and I and Mrs. Hartsell was beat again. Mother and Hartsell
was full of compliments for each other on what a good team they made,
but the both of them knowed well enough where the secret of their
success laid. I guess all and all we must of played ten different
evenings and they was only one night when Mrs. Hartsell and I come
out ahead. And that one night wasn’t no fault of hern.
When we had been down there about two weeks, we spent one evening as
their guest in the Congregational Church, at a social give by the
Michigan Society. A talk was made by a man named Bitting of Detroit,
Michigan, on How I was Cured of Story Telling. He is a big man in
the Rotarians and give a witty talk.
A woman named Mrs. Oxford rendered some selections which Mrs.
Hartsell said was grand opera music, but whatever they was my
daughter Edie could of give her cards and spades and not made such a
hullaballoo about it neither.
Then they was a ventriloquist from Grand Rapids and a young woman
about forty-five years of age that mimicked different kinds of birds.
I whispered to Mother that they all sounded like a chicken, but she
nudged me to shut up.
After the show we stopped in a drug store and I set up the
refreshments and it was pretty close to ten o’clock before we finally
turned in. Mother and I would of preferred tending the movies, but
Mother said we mustn’t offend Mrs. Hartsell, though I asked her had
we came to Florida to enjoy ourselves or to just not offend an old
chatterbox from Michigan.
I felt sorry for Hartsell one morning. The women folks both had an
engagement down to the chiropodist’s and I run across Hartsell in the
Park and he foolishly offered to play me checkers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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