The Story of a Country TownHowe, E. W. (Edgar Watson)
General
The Story of a Country Town
Howe, E. W. (Edgar Watson)
Frontier and pioneer life -- Kansas -- Fiction
Together they established a lodge of Good Templars at Fairview, although
the people were all sober and temperate, and once a week they met to
call upon the fallen brother to shun the cup, and to redeem the country
from debauchery and vice. Barker said they spent one-half the evening in
“opening” and the other half in “closing.” He also said once that his
sister was very much offended that my father preached without pay, for
she would have enjoyed making fancy work, to the neglect of her
brother’s house, to sell at fairs to pay the minister’s salary, and that
she was a brilliant woman at festivals. Barker often criticised her,
half in jest and half in earnest, and once when Jo and I were at his
house for dinner, and something had been lost, he remarked that if B.
were as familiar with her home as she was familiar with the number of
gallons of liquor consumed annually, or with the Acts of the Apostles,
things would be more comfortable. I think he disliked her because she
paid so much attention to other people’s faults and so little to her
own; but he treated her courteously, although he appeared to avoid her,
and they were not much together. B. frequently left home for days at a
time, compelling her patient brother to prepare his own meals or do
without, but he never complained unless she chose to construe
half-jesting, half-earnest raillery into complaint. At such times she
had a way of replying to his light words with a seriousness that I
thought disgusted him, and made him resolve never to mention the matter
again.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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