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The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today

by Mark Twain

Pages
about 576
Category
Literature & Fiction
Language
English
Reading time
11 h at 250 wpm
Start readingThe whole book, as cards or one word at a time. 5.9 h at 450 wpm in Read mode.

From the opening

CHAPTER V Adoption of the Little Girl Laura--Arrival at Missouri--Reception by Colonel Beriah Sellers

CHAPTER VI Trouble and Darkness in the Hawkins Family--Proposed Sale of the Tennessee Land

CHAPTER VII Colonel Sellers at Home--His Wonderful Clock and Cure for Rheumatism

CHAPTER VIII Colonel Sellers Makes Known His Magnificent Speculation Schemes and Astonishes Washington Hawkins

June 18--. Squire Hawkins sat upon the pyramid of large blocks, called the “stile,” in front of his house, contemplating the morning.

The locality was Obedstown, East Tennessee. You would not know that Obedstown stood on the top of a mountain, for there was nothing about the landscape to indicate it--but it did: a mountain that stretched abroad over whole counties, and rose very gradually. The district was called the “Knobs of East Tennessee,” and had a reputation like Nazareth, as far as turning out any good thing was concerned.

The Squire's house was a double log cabin, in a state of decay; two or three gaunt hounds lay asleep about the threshold, and lifted their heads sadly whenever Mrs. Hawkins or the children stepped in and out over their bodies. Rubbish was scattered about the grassless yard; a bench stood near the door with a tin wash basin on it and a pail of water and a gourd; a cat had begun to drink from the pail, but the exertion was overtaxing her energies, and she had stopped to rest. There was an ash-hopper by the fence, and an iron pot, for soft-soap-boiling, near it.

This dwelling constituted one-fifteenth of Obedstown; the other fourteen houses were scattered about among the tall pine trees and among the corn-fields in such a way that a man might stand in the midst of the city and not know but that he was in the country if he only depended on his eyes for information.

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