The Damnation of Theron Ware

Name: The Damnation of Theron Ware
Author: Harold Frederic

by Harold Frederic

Pages: about 430
Category: Literature & Fiction
Language: English
Reading time: 7.9 h at 250 wpm

Start readingThe whole book, as cards or one word at a time. 4.4 h at 450 wpm in Read mode.

From the opening

No such throng had ever before been seen in the building during all its eight years of existence. People were wedged together most uncomfortably upon the seats; they stood packed in the aisles and overflowed the galleries; at the back, in the shadows underneath these galleries, they formed broad, dense masses about the doors, through which it would be hopeless to attempt a passage.
The light, given out from numerous tin-lined circles of flaring gas-jets arranged on the ceiling, fell full upon a thousand uplifted faces--some framed in bonnets or juvenile curls, others bearded or crowned with shining baldness--but all alike under the spell of a dominant emotion which held features in abstracted suspense and focussed every eye upon a common objective point.
The excitement of expectancy reigned upon each row of countenances, was visible in every attitude--nay, seemed a part of the close, overheated atmosphere itself.
An observer, looking over these compact lines of faces and noting the uniform concentration of eagerness they exhibited, might have guessed that they were watching for either the jury's verdict in some peculiarly absorbing criminal trial, or the announcement of the lucky numbers in a great lottery. These two expressions seemed to alternate, and even to mingle vaguely, upon the upturned lineaments of the waiting throng--the hope of some unnamed stroke of fortune and the dread of some adverse decree.
But a glance forward at the object of this universal gaze would have sufficed to shatter both hypotheses. Here was neither a court of justice nor a tombola. It was instead the closing session of the annual Nedahma Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and the Bishop was about to read out the list of ministerial appointments for the coming year.

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The Damnation of Theron Ware

From the opening

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