Poor White
CHAPTER I Hugh McVey was born in a little hole of a town stuck on a mud bank on the western shore of the Mississippi River in the State of Missouri. It was a miserable place in which to be born. With the exception of a narrow strip of black mud along the river, the land for ten miles back from the town--called in derision by river men "Mudcat Landing"--was almost entirely worthless and unproductive. The soil, yellow, shallow and stony, was tilled, in Hugh's time, by a race of long gaunt men who seemed as exhausted and no-account as the land on which they lived. They were chronically discouraged, and the merchants and artisans of the town were in the same state. The merchants, who ran their stores--poor tumble-down ramshackle affairs--on the credit system, could not get pay for the goods they handed out over their counters and the artisans, the shoemakers, carpenters and harnessmakers, could not get pay for the work they did. Only the town's two saloons prospered. The saloon keepers sold their wares for cash and, as the men of the town and the farmers who drove into town felt that without drink life was unbearable, cash always could be found for the purpose of getting drunk.
rock jutting out of the quiet earth: never ruffled, never changing
either on the surface or at heart, bearing whatever falls upon me, be
it frost or sun, and warranted to waste away only by a sort of
impersonal disintegration at the rate of half an inch to the thousand
years. Meantime she exacts for herself the privilege of dwelling near
as the delighted cave of the winds. The part of wisdom in me then is
not to heed each sallying gust, but to capture the cave and drive the
winds away.
For I know in whom I have believed; I know that this myriad caprice is
but the deepening of excitement on the verge of captivity; I know that
on ahead lie the regions of perpetual calm--my Islands of the Blest.
Georgiana does not play upon the pianoforte; or, as Mrs. Walters would
declare, she does not perform upon the instrument. Sylvia does; she
performs, she executes. There are times when she will execute a piece
called "The Last Hope" until the neighbors are filled with despair and
ready to stretch their heads on the block to any more merciful
executioner. Nor does Georgiana sing to company in the parlor. That
is Sylvia's gift; and upon the whole it was this unmitigated practice
in the bosom--and in the ears--of her family that enabled Sylvia to
shine with such vocal effulgence in the procession on the last Fourth
of July and devote a pair of unflagging lungs to the service of her
country.
But Georgiana I have never known to sing except at her sewing and
CHAPTER I Hugh McVey was born in a little hole of a town stuck on a mud bank on the western shore of the Mississippi River in the State of Missouri. It was a miserable place in which to be born. With the exception of a narrow strip of black mud along the river, the land for ten miles back from the town--called in derision by river men "Mudcat Landing"--was almost entirely worthless and unproductive. The soil, yellow, shallow and stony, was tilled, in Hugh's time, by a race of long gaunt men who seemed as exhausted and no-account as the land on which they lived. They were chronically discouraged, and the merchants and artisans of the town were in the same state. The merchants, who ran their stores--poor tumble-down ramshackle affairs--on the credit system, could not get pay for the goods they handed out over their counters and the artisans, the shoemakers, carpenters and harnessmakers, could not get pay for the work they did. Only the town's two saloons prospered. The saloon keepers sold their wares for cash and, as the men of the town and the farmers who drove into town felt that without drink life was unbearable, cash always could be found for the purpose of getting drunk.