Neighborhood Stories

So I said what I had to say about them I’d been to see, and what they had said about the club. And then I come to the heart of it, and I held up David’s little clock. I told ’em...

I told Mis’ Puppy, private, what his father had said to me about his not hearing anything spoke cross; and she nodded, like it was something she’d got all thought out, with tags...

Mis’ Merriman was bending over, setting out her peony bulbs, with her back to me. When I first spoke, she looked over her shoulder, and then she went right on setting them out,...

“What’s that got to do with it?” shouts Silas. “Of course they are. Of course we want to help ’em. But _they_ ain’t got anything to do with it. All they got to do with it is to...

He looked down at me, frowning a little. One of the little yellow chicks in the coop got out between the bars just then, and was just falling on its nose when he caught it--I s’...

“How much religion really, _really_, do they let you talk on these calls?” I ask’ him. “Don’t it seem kind of bad taste if you say much about it? And as a matter of fact, don’t...

“Once,” says Eddie Newhaven, “when they was selling the Christmas trees here, they kept right on selling ’em after dark. And they stood ’em around here and put a little light in...

“Leave her come out any time now,” she says, “we’re ready for her. Mebbe she’ll be mad but, land--even if she is, I can’t be sorry we done it. It’s been as enjoyable,” she says,...

“Well,” says I, “then you let me put a wet cloth over your head and eyes, and you set still and stop talkin’. You’ll be wore to a thread,” says I.

When the young minister had finished, we stood for a moment in silent prayer. You can _not_ stand still in the woods and empty out your own will, without prayer being there inst...

It struck me, even then, how united folks are on a piece of gossip. For the Home-coming some had thought have printed invitations and some had thought send out newspapers, some...

“Mr. President,” he says, so nice and dignified. And when Silas had done his nod, Absalom went on in his soft, unstarched voice: “It’s a real nice idear,” he says, “to get up th...

“Pshaw,” says Mis’ Sykes, “you ladies don’t understand politics. In politics you can’t fly up this way and imagine out vain things. You got to do ’em like they’ve been done. As...

“Doin’ nice things for folks,” I says over--and I wanted to remember them words of Silas and I longed to feed ’em to him some time. But I just took up my pound of prunes and wen...

_That is like Calliope. And that is like the village. Blunt and sometimes bitter speech there is, and now and again what we gently call “words”; but the faith of my experience i...

“Yes, lambin’, yes,” I says, and had to pretend I didn’t understand. And when I looked back at him, he was setting there, still and watching; but two big tears was going down hi...