Joseph Crosby Lincoln

CHAPTER I "I'm going up to the village," I told Dorinda, taking my cap from the hook behind the dining-room door. "What for?" asked Dorinda, pushing me to one side and reaching for the dust-cloth, which also was behind the door. "Oh, just for the walk," I answered, carelessly. "Um-hm," observed Dorinda. "Um-hm" is, I believe, good Scotch for "Yes." I... more...

CHAPTER I A LAMB FOR THE SACRIFICE "Perez," observed Captain Eri cheerfully, "I'm tryin' to average up with the mistakes of Providence." The Captain was seated by the open door of the dining room, in the rocker with the patched cane seat. He was apparently very busy doing something with a piece of fishline and a pair of long-legged rubber boots. Captain Perez, swinging back... more...

CHAPTER I Overhead the clouds cloaked the sky; a ragged cloak it was, and, here and there, a star shone through a hole, to be obscured almost instantly as more cloud tatters were hurled across the rent. The pines threshed on the hill tops. The bare branches of the wild-cherry and silverleaf trees scraped and rattled and tossed. And the wind, the raw, chilling December wind, driven in, wet and salty,... more...

THE COD-FISHER Where leap the long Atlantic swellsIn foam-streaked stretch of hill and dale,Where shrill the north-wind demon yells,And flings the spindrift down the gale;Where, beaten 'gainst the bending mast,The frozen raindrop clings and cleaves,With steadfast front for calm or blastHis battered schooner rocks and heaves. To same the gain, to some the loss,To each the chance, the risk, the... more...

TWO PAIRS OF SHOES I don't exactly know why Cap'n Jonadab and me went to the post-office that night; we wa'n't expecting any mail, that's sartin. I guess likely we done it for the reason the feller that tumbled overboard went to the bottom—'twas the handiest place TO go. Anyway we was there, and I was propping up the stove with my feet and holding down a chair with the... more...

CHAPTER I “ Ostable!” screamed the brakeman,opening the car door and yelling his loudest, so as to be heard above the rattle of the train and the shriek of the wind; “Ostable!” The brakeman’s cap was soaked through, his hair was plastered down on his forehead, and, in the yellow light from the car lamps, his wet nose glistened as if varnished. Over his shoulders the shiny ropes of rain... more...

CHAPTER I 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... more...

AT THE DEPOT Mr. Simeon Phinney emerged from the side door of his residence and paused a moment to light his pipe in the lee of the lilac bushes. Mr. Phinney was a man of various and sundry occupations, and his sign, nailed to the big silver-leaf in the front yard, enumerated a few of them. "Carpenter, Well Driver, Building Mover, Cranberry Bogs Seen to with Care and Dispatch, etc., etc.," so... more...

MR. SETH ATKINS The stars, like incandescent lights fed by a fast weakening dynamo, grew pale, faded, and, one by one, went out. The slate-colored sea, with its tumbling waves, changed color, becoming a light gray, then a faint blue, and, as the red sun rolled up over the edge of the eastern horizon, a brilliant sapphire, trimmed with a silver white on the shoals and along the beach at the foot of the... more...

CHAPTER I The Metropolitan Dry Goods and Variety Store at Trumet Centre was open for business. Sam Bartlett, the boy whose duty it was to take down the shutters, sweep out, dust, and wait upon early-bird customers, had performed the first three of these tasks and gone home for breakfast. The reason he had not performed the fourth—the waiting upon customers—was simple enough; there had been no... more...