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قراءة كتاب For the Major: A Novelette

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For the Major: A Novelette

For the Major: A Novelette

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دار النشر: Project Gutenberg
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FOR THE MAJOR

A Novelette

BY
CONSTANCE FENIMORE WOOLSON
AUTHOR OF "ANNE"


ILLUSTRATED


NEW YORK
HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE
1883



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1883, by

HARPER & BROTHERS,

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

All rights reserved.


 

CONTENTS
 
Chapter I.
Chapter II.
Chapter III.
Chapter IV.
Chapter V.
Chapter VI.
Chapter VII.
Chapter VIII.
Chapter IX.
ILLUSTRATIONS.
 
———
 
"SARA HAD PREFERRED TO WALK." Frontispiece.
"'HAPPY GIRL,' INTERPOLATED SARA." To face p. 8
"HE CAME OFTEN TO THEIR FLOWER GARDEN." " 94
"THE GIRL DREW HER MOTHER MORE CLOSELY TO HER SIDE." " 126
"THE LAST LOOK ON EARTH." " 144
"I AM AFRAID, MAJOR, THAT YOU ARE GROWING INDOLENT." " 176

FOR THE MAJOR.

CHAPTER I.

EDGERLEY the first lay on the eastern flank of Chillawassee Mountain; Edgerley the second six hundred feet above. The first Edgerley, being nearer the high civilization of the state capital, claimed the name, and held it; while the second Edgerley was obliged to content itself with an added "far." Far Edgerley did not object to its adjective so long as it was not considered as applying especially to the distance between it and the lower town. It was "far," if you pleased—far from cities, far from traffic, from Babylon, from Zanzibar, from the Pole—but it was not "far" from Edgerley. Rather was Edgerley far from it, and—long may she keep so! Meanwhile Edgerley the first prospered, though rather plebeianly. She had two thousand inhabitants, cheese factories, saw-mills, and a stage line across Black Mountain to Tuloa, where connection was made with a second line, which went eastward to the railway. An Edgerley merchant, therefore, could reach the capital of his state in fifty-five hours: what could man want more? The merchants were of the opinion that they wanted nothing; they fully appreciated their advantages, and Edgerley. But their neighbors on top of the mountain, who looked down upon them in more senses than one, did not agree with them in their opinion; they infinitely preferred their own village, though it had no factories, no saw-mills, no stage line to Tuloa, and no necessity for one, and no two thousand inhabitants—hardly, indeed, and with stretching, a bare thousand. There would seem to have been little in these lacks upon which to found a pride, if the matter had been viewed with the eyes of that spirit of progress which generally takes charge of American towns; but, so far at least, the Spirit of Progress had not climbed Chillawassee Mountain, and thus Far Edgerley was left to its prejudiced creed.

The creed was ancient—both towns boasting an ante-Revolutionary origin—but, though ancient, Madam Carroll of the Farms had been the first to embody it in a portable phrase; brief (for more words would have given too much importance to the subject), calmly superior, as a Carroll phrase should be. Madam Carroll had remarked that Edgerley seemed to her "commercial." This was excellent. "Commercial!" Nothing could be better. Whatever Far Edgerley was, it certainly was not that.

Madam Carroll of the Farms, upon a certain evening in May, 1868, was sitting in her doorway, her eyes fixed upon the dull red line of a road winding down the mountain opposite. This road was red because it ran through red clay; and a hopelessly sticky road it was, too, at most seasons of the year, as the horses of the Tuloa stage line knew to their cost. But the vehicle now coming through the last fringes of the firs was not a stage; and it was drawn, also, by two stout mules that possessed a tenacity of purpose greater even than that of red clay. It was the carriage of Major Carroll of the Farms, Far Edgerley, and at the present moment it was bringing home his daughter from the western terminus of the railway.

A gentleman's carriage drawn by mules might have seemed something of an anomaly in certain localities farther eastward. But not here. Even Edgerley regarded this possession of its rival with a respect which included the mules, or rather, which effaced them in the general aroma of the whole, an aroma not actual (the actual being that of ancient leather not unacquainted with decay), but figurative—the aroma of an undoubted aristocracy. For "the equipage," as it was called, had belonged to the Carrolls of the Sea Islands, who,

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