Library / Literature & Fiction
Mother
by Owen Wister
- Pages
- about 33
- Category
- Literature & Fiction
- Language
- English
- Reading time
- 36 min at 250 wpm
From the opening
When handsome young Richard Field--he was very handsome and very
young--announced to our assembled company that if his turn should really
come to tell us a story, the story should be no invention of his fancy,
but a page of truth, a chapter from his own life, in which himself was
the hero and a lovely, innocent girl was the heroine, his wife at once
looked extremely uncomfortable. She changed the reclining position in
which she had been leaning back in her chair, and she sat erect, with a
hand closed upon each arm of the chair.
“Richard,” she said, “do you think that it is right of you to tell any
one, even friends, anything that you have never yet confessed to me?”
“Ethel,” replied Richard, “although I cannot promise that you will be
entirely proud of my conduct when you have heard this episode of my
past, I do say that there is nothing in it to hurt the trust you have
placed in me since I have been your husband. Only,” he added, “I hope
that I shall not have to tell any story at all.”
“Oh, yes you will!” we all exclaimed together; and the men looked eager
while the women sighed.
The rest of us were much older than Richard, we were middle-aged, in
fact; and human nature is so constructed, that when it is at the age
when making love keeps it busy, it does not care so much to listen to
tales of others’ love-making; but the more it recedes from that period
of exuberance, and ceases to have love adventures of its own, the
greater become its hunger and thirst to hear about this delicious
business which it can no longer personally practice with the fluency of
yore. It was for this reason that we all yearned in our middle-aged way
for the tale of love which we expected from young Richard.
A short sample. Read the whole book
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