Mary-'Gusta

Name: Mary-'Gusta
Author: Joseph Crosby Lincoln

by Joseph Crosby Lincoln

Pages: about 422
Category: Literature & Fiction
Language: English
Reading time: 7.7 h at 250 wpm

Start readingThe whole book, as cards or one word at a time. 4.3 h at 450 wpm in Read mode.

From the opening

On the twentieth day of April in the year 19--, the people--that is, a majority of the grown people of Ostable--were talking of Marcellus Hall and Mary-'Gusta.
A part of this statement is not surprising. The average person, no matter how humble or obscure, is pretty certain to be talked about on the day of his funeral, and Marcellus was to be buried that afternoon. Moreover, Marcellus had been neither humble nor obscure; also, he had been talked about a good deal during the fifty-nine years of his sojourn on this planet. So it is not at all surprising that he should be talked about now, when that sojourn was ended. But for all Ostable--yes, and a large part of South Harniss--to be engaged in speculation concerning the future of Mary-'Gusta was surprising, for, prior to Marcellus's death, very few outside of the Hall household had given her or her future a thought.
On this day, however, whenever or wherever the name of Marcellus Hall was mentioned, after the disposition of Marcellus's own bones had been discussed and those of his family skeleton disinterred and articulated, the conversation, in at least eight cases out of ten, resolved itself into a guessing contest, having as its problem this query:
Mr. Bethuel Sparrow, local newsgatherer for the Ostable Enterprise, seated before his desk in the editorial sanctum, was writing an obituary for next week's paper, under the following head:
An ordinary man would probably have written “Dies”; but Mr. Sparrow, being a young and very new reporter for a rural weekly, wrote “Passes Away” as more elegant and less shocking to the reader.
It is much more soothing and refined to pass away than to die--unless one happens to be the person most concerned, in which case, perhaps, it may make little difference.

A short sample. Read the whole book

Mary-'Gusta

From the opening

More to read