Glenway Wescott

“ There were daguerreotypes in cases closed by a metal clasp. or a loop of worn cord, which Alwyn opened and tried to read as if they were a library of miniature books. At the left a leaf of red satin, at the right in a mat of beaded gilt the portraits: heads and busts and family groups, pygmy men and women as if seen through a telescope the men in a daydream, the women anxious about their children, their lovers, their clothes. Mouths like bits of carved wax, nostrils of an insatiable arrogance ”

“ Even her young husband's passion did not wake her from a resentful daydream. She gave birth to two perfect children; they died of scarlet fever. Her father was believed to be guilty of fraud and died mysteriously. Finally Will Allen was killed; a magnificent spotted bull gored him and trod him underfoot. After his body had been rescued, Laura-Belle stood staring over the fence at the beast until she had to be taken away by force.
When she came to her senses she was a new woman. She never shed a tear for the dead man, but grew more and more emaciated. ”

“ But he knew what she knew and tried to forget: that each picture was a tomb where a dead heart (or merely the youth and freshness of a heart which was now old) lay buried-buried with its affections, its apathy, its fury. He knew that on each insignificant grave there stood (though he could only guess what it was) a secret like hers, wild and perfect as a wild flower, nodding in its everlasting leaves, or dangling from a broken stem. ”

“ The lots of his relatives were well kept, in proportion to the degree of kinship. The original families, with the single exception of his own, having left the community, the rest of the graveyard was a thicket of weeds, lilies, bushes, roses, and birds' nests; the conquered wilderness had reasserted itself, in miniature, over the conquerors' bodies.
Alwyn's grandmother said, "The neglect of the graveyard is a shame to the present generation," and held herself responsible for its general upkeep. ”

“ Listless boys with their hands full of stones took the windows for targets, and the rooms were never dismantled, except when someone looked in who was poor enough to want a tin pail, a cup without a handle, a three-legged chair, or a piece of a rusty iron bed.
Alwyn's grandmother enjoyed exciting the children with talk of the undiscovered gold. From time to time they visited the tumble-down house, and found nickel spoons in a drawer, mismated shoes inhabited by mice, and a curious collection of nails all bent in the same way. Alwyn was not tall enough to look into the chimney cupboard ”

“ If young people realized how life ended, they would not want to live; so she would hide her despair and say nothing. Therefore, during the last years, she said very little about Leander, or her husband, or their close relatives, or her sons. Instead she drew near to those who had never been near her heart, and preferred to talk about them.
Accompanied by her grandson, she made a round of afternoon visits to old men and women whom she had known indifferently for years, who had never been more than neighbors. ”

“ This boy was the perfect soldier. Fifteen years old when the Civil War broke out, he ran away to a town in Dodge County where a company was preparing to go south. Every day or two he sent someone to find out if his family would let him enlist. At last his father consented: "He might as well go. He'll never be good for anything else."
The child took three prisoners, and was made a captain before peace was declared.
Laughing sturdily, Alwyn's grandmother said: "I guess old John Hawks wouldn't have been much put out if something had happened to Ed down South. ”

“ So in the autumn she drove about the country in search of a man not too busy with the harvest to mow it, offering to pay him well, even willing to have the work done on the Sabbath. As the community filled up with German Catholic immigrants who bought the farms of the old settlers, she made it her business to see that the latter were not forgotten; as one of a proud, subjugated race would try to teach the history of the land and the names of its heroes to ignorant invaders. ”

“ Alwyn's grandmother laughed heartily at the face he made when she told him what he had eaten, and laughed. still, after thirty years, whenever she remembered it.
Baltus Valentine
A portly face full of blood, with ruffled whiskers. This was the man who suffered from violent toothache. When it afflicted him he ran outdoors, bellowing so that he could be heard half a mile away. A heavy man clutching his head with both hands, elbows in the air, galloping round and round the strawstack in the blazing sunshine. ”

“ Barry, born Laura-Belle Allen and married in her youth to her cousin Will Allen, had once been plump, melancholy, and ravishing—to which the portrait that Alwyn's grandmother kept because both her brothers had been in love with the lady, bore witness. Her father was the merchant in Aaronsville in the days when stores were few and far apart, and any price could be asked for the necessities of life ”

“ Apparently unconscious of the sound of her own laughter, Alwyn's grandmother said, "Nobody could make a sound like that when she laughed if a hard life hadn't been too much for her. But it was enough to put the fear of God into your heart, and gave a bad impression."
Mr. Sam Peters and wife, born Melissa Duff
A little man as vague as the wisp of yellow beard between his mouth and his Adam's apple. An unkind, vigorous, and well-dressed woman. She was Alwyn's great-aunt on his mother's side of the house. ”

“ Those who were old belonged to death, as if by contract; she was willing that nature should take its course. But the death of a lovely, unmarried girl was intolerable and against nature. She herself should have been allowed to go instead ”

“ His grandmother Tower would say, in his mother's presence: "That was the most miserable woman that ever lived. I never knew anybody else too mean to give a slice of bread to a tramp that asked for it. Your ma is a wonderful woman; my only complaint is that your pa married into the same family as Melissa Peters."
Alwyn's great-aunt Melissa ruled and humiliated her small husband. On one occasion he rose in revolt. ”

“ A multitude of laughing or irritable people dragging awe-stricken children by one hand. Many spoiling their appetites with the unwholesome refreshments that are for sale—some of these hiding afterward because they are sick. Some stingy, some extravagant; nearly everyone wanting to be more prosperously dressed; everyone tired to death. Women indignant at the neglect of their men ”

“ In York State in the early days there was a man named Lucas who had a son who was a terror. Old Lucas was a godless kind of man himself and a widower, and he'd not given his boy a very strict bringing-up, I reckon; but he turned religious and got baptized. The boy was wilder than ever—drank and swore and got girls into trouble and wouldn't work for more'n a few days at anything. ”

“ Games of chance—the players always losing, the proprietors always poor. Eager or scandalized blushes in the tents where there is nakedness to be seen and music to be heard. Shouting around the pits in which human anomalies and sick wild animals are exhibited. ”

“ On a high platform the jugglers, inexpensively gorgeous in spangles and skullcaps, in the red, yellow, or blue nudity of tights, automatically running great risks and making patterns in the air, and seeming to find the loud applause inadequate. ”

“ She took bands of children to the woods to make wreaths and bouquets, and attended the exercises, shepherding the scholars from grave to grave, speaking to those who showed a little reverence, often laughed at by those who had been badly brought up. ”

“ The little boy ran out the back door and hid in a cornfield. Carty struck the old woman and forgot the money. The neighbors heard the old woman scream. The murderer was found before midnight, shuddering and moaning in a haystack.
The next morning a neighbor's wife, a strong, sick woman, went around from house to house with the child Chris; she shouted and rolled her eyes, and the little boy whimpered all the time. Women stood on front porches wringing their hands; men in barns leaped for their axes and pitchforks, not knowing what to do with them ”

“ LEANDER TOWER did not live to be an old man. In fact, Alwyn's grandmother survived most of the friends of her youth. In 1912 her husband passed away; Mary, Nancy, her sister Adelaide, and two of her brothers, were dead ”