Sharon

“ Now for the first time in all their years of association he saw an immense gulf between himself and Sharon Whipple. Sharon was an old man, turning to look back as he went down a narrow way into a hidden valley. But he—Wilbur Cowan—was climbing a long slope into new light. How could they touch? How could this old man hold him to become another old man on the same soil—when he could be up and off, a happy world romper like his father before him? ”

“ With this reply Old Sharon held out his unwashed hand across the rickety ink-splashed table at which he was sitting.
Mr. Troy would not have touched him with the tips of his own fingers for a thousand pounds. He laid the guinea on the table.
Old Sharon burst into a fierce laugh—a laugh strangely accompanied by a frowning contraction of his eyebrows, and a frightful exhibition of the whole inside of his mouth. “I’m not clean enough for you—eh?” he said, with an appearance of being very much amused. “There’s a dirty old man described in this book that is a little like me.” ”

“ Sharon, you're a good deal of a damn fool. You think I'm going to deny flirting with Lily. I won't take the trouble to deny it! If you don't appreciate yourself, if you don't see that a man that's ever associated with you simply couldn't be interested in any other woman, then there's nothing I can say. Why, my God, Shara, you know what you are! I could no more be untrue to you than I could to my religion! ”

“ Nelson would do anything so foolish as to bury her securities. She would be too anxious, I imagine, to have them within reach, like a miser with his gold. I am tempted to believe that the ‘rose of Sharon’ does not refer to a bush or a tree, but to something else which we have not discovered as yet. ”

“ My love is beautiful and sweet; she is like a pale pink rose full of the glory of dew and sun. Sharon’s garden knows not a bloom so fair as she. Persia holds not a fragrance so heavenly in its perfumed bowers. Oh, my wondrous love, pour thy scented charm into the chalice of my longing heart; fill with thy fresh splendour the air I breathe; and give me youth to spend on thee, my well-beloved. I am the gardener, born to tend one flower. My flower is the radiance of a dawn in June. Like a veil of glowing pearls my love spreads her light ”

“ After the war, she married Benjamin Gannett, and the homestead in Sharon, where she lived for the rest of her life, is still standing, relics of her occupancy, her table and her Bible, being shown there to-day to interested visitors. [Pg 189]
In 1802 she made a successful lecturing tour, during which she kept a very interesting diary, which is still exhibited to those interested by her great-granddaughter, Mrs. Susan Moody. Her grave in Sharon is carefully preserved, a street has been named in her honour, and several patriotic societies have constituted her their principal deity. ”

“ Old Sharon resumed when he had joined his friends and had got his breath again, “let’s have a little talk about yourself, miss. Has Mr. Moody told you who I am, and what I want with you? Very good. May I offer you my arm? No! You like to be independent, don’t you? All right—I don’t object. I am an amiable old man, I am. About this Lady Lydiard, now? Suppose you tell me how you first got acquainted with her?”
In some surprise at this question, Isabel told her little story. Observing Sharon’s face while she was speaking, Moody saw that he was not paying the smallest attention to the narrative. ”

“ After days when Art Nichols, the cornetist, and Adolph Klebs, the violinist, had such heads at ten in the morning that they had to take pick-me-ups, would come days when all of them, even Art and Adolph, were hysterically religious; when quite privately they prayed and repented, and raised their voices in ululating quavers of divine rapture, till Sharon said furiously that she didn't know whether she preferred to be waked up by hell-raising or hallelujahs. Yet once she bought a traveling phonograph for them, and many records, half hectic dances and half hymns. ”

“ Wilbur Cowan met him at the gate.
It became Sharon's pretense that he was not hugging the boy, merely feeling the muscles in his shoulders and back to see if he were as good a lightweight as ever. He pounded and thumped and punched and even made as if to wrestle with the returned soldier, laughing awkwardly through it; but his florid face had paled with the excitement.
"I knew you'd come back! Old Sammy Dodwell happened to mention he'd seen you; said he hadn't noticed you before for most a month, he thought. But I knew you was coming, all right! Time and time again I told people you would. ”

“ Chesbro said.
Sharon permitted herself a frown, her face turned away. She said gaily, "Probably loving every minute of it, Arthur. It must be pretty exciting for her. Anyway," she added blandly, "Mickey Groff's probably taking good care of her."
"Mickey Groff?" He looked at her with surprise. "Polly?"
Sharon said, "Well, he did seem rather interested—"
Chesbro shook his head. "Oh, no. You don't know Polly. Believe me, men aren't her—" He hesitated, and said, "Believe me, she has too much sense to get involved with a two-bit operator like him. She's loyal, Sharon. Absolutely loyal to me." ”

“ No fantasy could compare with a dream that came true.
The summer had ended well. I reveled in the hours spent with Norm and his wife; it was easy to be with them, for their life appeared low-key and free of pretense. As we discovered many common interests, Tracy became the sister that Sharon was unable to be, living 80 miles distant. Toward Norm also, I developed a greater understanding, and a deep, yet unspoken bond formed between us; we discovered that we were quite alike, thinking in the same manner and sharing the same type of humor. ”

“ It was not her eloquence but her healing of the sick which raised Sharon to such eminence that she promised to become the most renowned evangelist in America. People were tired of eloquence; and the whole evangelist business was limited, since even the most ardent were not likely to be saved more than three or four times. But they could be healed constantly, and of the same disease. ”

“ Last night Mom and Dad brought pizza upstairs. It was nice. Sharon came for a Saturday bus excursion to a shopping area near Chicago. Mom, Sharon and Rosalind all went. Mom brought me a towel for my wash stand and a nifty wall basket with a lid.
Sharon's going to be coming more often; I'm glad. In some respects, she's like a second mother, yet different too. We share ideas and interests and can talk well.
I've been awfully fatigued lately. All day I can barely keep my eyes open, and writing is an incredible chore. I find myself nodding in the middle of thoughts ”

“ It developed that Sharon's idea of reasoning lacked subtlety. It developed that Gideon and Harvey D. reasoned themselves into sheer bewilderment in an effort to find reasons that would commend themselves to Merle; so that this first meeting of the conspirators was about to break up fruitlessly, when Sharon Whipple was inspired to a suggestion that repelled yet pricked the other two until they desperately yielded to it. This was that none other than Dave Cowan be called into consultation.
"He'll know more about his own son than we do," urged Sharon. ”

“ They was a lot thet had t’ be done—thet th’ missus allers made it a point t’ see was done—so this here rockery—an’ the hull garding fer thet matter—had t’ look out fer itself. We hadn’t no time fer flub-dubs.”
“Yes,” I interrupted, “but which is the rose of Sharon?”
“This here is th’ rose o’ Sharon, miss,” and he pointed with his spade to a tall shrub in the middle of the rockery, upon which the spring had not yet succeeded in coaxing forth any hint of green. ”

“ The Quest for the Rose of Sharon
Chapter I
Grandaunt Nelson
Grandaunt always was eccentric. Indeed, I was sometimes tempted to call her a much harsher name in the dark days when the clouds hung so heavy above us that I often doubted if there really was a sun behind them. But, as Mr. Whittier says, “Death softens all resentments, and the consciousness of a common inheritance of frailty and weakness modifies the severity of judgment;” ”

“ As more of a recurrent feeling rather than a philosophic framework, which he had constructed for himself on that silent car ride from Sharon's home to his own, he believed that subtle inconclusive looks could help him extort that which he knew could never be gained in compensation, and that by it being something that could never be compensated and extorting it all the same, he had found the means to achieve power. ”

“ Then, with the whole afternoon before me, I resolutely put away from me the thought of Dick’s treachery, and turned anew to the solution of the mystery.
“Abner,” I asked, as we turned back together to the house, “did you ever hear of an apple-tree called the rose of Sharon?”
“The rose o’ Sharon? Why, certainly, miss. It’s a big, red winter apple, but it don’t bear as well as it might, an’ it ain’t so very tasty. The Baldwin beats it.”
“But is there one in the orchard?”
“Yes—jest one—away over yonder in the corner near the fence. You can’t miss it. It’s the last tree as you cross the orchard. ”

“ Wilbur Cowan considered.
"Well, I had a pretty bad cold in the Argonne."
"I want to know!" said Sharon, much concerned. He pranced heavy-footedly before the other, thumping his chest. "Well, I bet you threw it off! A hard cold ain't any joke. But look here, come on for a ride!"
They entered the car and Sharon drove. But he continued to bubble with questions, to turn his head and gesture with one hand or the other. The passenger applied imaginary brakes as they missed a motor truck. ”

“ In ten years, at thirty-eight, I can be sales-manager of the Pequot--prob'ly ten thousand a year--and maybe some day the president, at thirty thou. I'm not looking for a job. But--Oh, I'm crazy about you! Except for my mother, you're the only person I've ever adored. I love you! Hear me? Damn it--yes, damn it, I said--I worship you! Oh, Sharon, Sharon, Sharon! It wasn't really bunk when I told 'em all tonight how you'd converted me, because you did convert me. Will you let me serve you? And will you maybe marry me?"
"No. I don't think I'll ever marry--exactly. ”

“ All this time the Rose of Sharon was comporting herself very quietly, and though he knew it not, a passionate love was growing up in her heart towards Grenville. To Dora only was this revealed. “I would die for a kind word from him,” she said.
“Rose, you mustn’t say that,” remonstrated Miss Winfield; “poor Dick is very kind to everybody, but he has such a weight of responsibility on his shoulders you can’t expect him to think of love-making; only let us get clear of this horrible country, and I’m sure he will soon see what a lovely little woman my dear sister Rose can be. ”

“ Moody, disheartened by Isabel’s silence, made no attempt to set the conversation going; he looked as if he meditated a hasty retreat to the railway station which he had just left. Fortunately, he had at his side the right man (for once) in the right place. Old Sharon’s effrontery was equal to any emergency.
“I am not a nice-looking old man, my dear, am I?” he said, leering at Isabel with cunning, half-closed eyes. “Bless your heart! you’ll soon get used to me! You see, I am the sort of color, as they say at the linen-drapers, that doesn’t wash well. It’s all through love; upon my life it is! ”

“ Take the woman's husband, for instance. He was chattering away to, of all people, sick-pup Dick McCue; but his eyes kept wandering to Mickey Groff.
Mrs. Goudeket scolded: "Sharon! The blanket for Mr. Starkman, you forgot it?"
"He can take mine," Sharon said—she didn't want to go back to the storeroom just then. She handed the holed, grease-spotted rag to the old man, then remembered and carefully draped it around his shoulders. "They stink," she told him cheerfully. "And I think they've got bugs; but they're better than pneumonia." She grinned at Mickey Groff. ”

“ Rincon voted for Sharon and Reese Moran in a solid roar, and Sharon voted for Rincon and Horace Boyd in a roar equally solid. So now each had a prize, and the whole place was applauding happily, and the band was beginning again, when the mothers with Cuba and Bosco jumped up beside me on the platform, and the sight of them produced immediate silence.
“There's a good many here has a right to feel satisfied,” said Mrs. Grady, looking about, “and they're welcome to their feelings. ”

“ I must simply let go and guard my sanity; it is not worth tearing yourself into emotional rages and tatters, however, I've never been able to rationalize having nice things if one doesn't care for them. Sharon seemed to need to stay a while longer. She was upset over so many concerns accompanying a loss of such consequence. I hope she will be able to find peace within herself. Perhaps it is easier to do so in her own home.
Nights always bring out the spooks which I conjure up inside my brain. I decided to lightly illuminate Norm's room to allow the shadows to disappear. ”

“ Rapp, Senior, voiced loud delight. Gideon Whipple merely stood safely back without comment, though there was a malicious waiting gleam in his eyes.
"You folks make something out of nothing," scolded Sharon, fussily. ”

“ Elihu Titus was also rendered nervous, and was safely on the ground before the car yielded to the invincible mass of a boxwood hedge that had been forty years in growing. Sharon pointed his eyebrows.
"It makes you feel like a helpless fool," he confided to his hireling.
"She's all right on this side," said Elihu Titus, cannily peering at the nether mechanism in pretense that he had left his seat to do just that. ”