The End of the World: A Love StoryEggleston, Edward
General
The End of the World: A Love Story
Eggleston, Edward
Fiction; Love stories
One of the little things to be picked up is Norman Anderson. Very
little, if measured soul-wise. When his father had read the proclamation
of Andrew and divined that Norman was interested in the riot, he became
thoroughly indignant; the more so, that he felt his own lack of power to
do anything in the premises against his wife. But when Mrs. Abigail
heard of the case she was in genuine distress. It showed Andrew's
vindictiveness. He would follow her forever with his resentments, just
because she could not love him. It was not her fault that she did not
love him. Poor Norman had to suffer all the persecutions that usually
fall to such innocent creatures. She must send him away from home,
though it broke her mother's heart to do it; for if Andrew didn't have
him took up, the old Dutchman would, just because his son had turned out
a burglar. She said burglar rather emphatically, with a look at Julia.
And so Samuel Anderson took his son to Louisville, and got him a place
in a commission and produce house on the levee, with which Mr. Anderson
had business influence. And Samuel warned him that he must do his best,
for he could not come back home now without danger of arrest, and Norman
made many promises of amendment; so many, that his future seemed to him
barren of all delight. And, by way of encouraging himself in the austere
life upon which he had resolved to enter, he attended the least
reputable place of amusement in the city, the first night after his
father's departure.
In Clark township the Millerite excitement was at white heat. Some of
the preachers in other parts of the country had set one day, some
another. I believe that Mr. Miller, the founder, never had the temerity
to set a day. But his followers figured the thing more closely, and
Elder Hankins had put a fine point on the matter. He was certain, for
his part, that the time was at midnight on the eleventh of August. His
followers became very zealous, and such is the nature of an infection
that scarcely anybody was able to resist it. Mrs. Anderson, true to her
excitable temper, became fanatic--dreaming dreams, seeing visions,
hearing voices, praying twenty times a day[2], wearing a sourly pious
face, and making all around her more unhappy than ever. Jonas declared
that ef the noo airth and the noo heaven was to be chockful of sech as
she, 'most any other place in the univarse would be better, akordin' to
his way of thinkin'. He said she repented more of other folkses' sins
than anybody he ever seed.
[Footnote 2: Mrs. Anderson was less devout than some of her
co-religionists; the wife of a well-known steamboat-clerk was accustomed
to pray in private fifty times a day, hoping by means of this praying
without ceasing to be found ready when the trumpet should sound.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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