Category: Novels
The Gates Ajar
To my father, whose life, like a perfume from beyond the Gates, penetrates every life which approaches it, the readers of this little book will owe whatever pleasant thing they may find within its pages.
Chapters
1. Part 1
To my father, whose life, like a perfume from beyond the Gates, penetrates every life which approaches it, the readers of this little book will owe whatever pleasant thing they...
2. Part 2I begin to understand what I never understood till now,--what people mean by the luxury of grief. No, I am sure that I never understood it, because my pride suffered as much as...
3. Part 3“I beg your pardon,” she said, “but I thought you would not be in bed, and I came in to say,--let me sit somewhere else at the breakfast-table, if you like. I saw that I had tak...
4. Part 4There was a great hot sunbeam striking directly on my black bonnet. My fan was broken. I gasped for air. The choir went over and over and _over_ the words, spinning them into on...
5. Part 5I laughed in spite of myself; nor did the laugh seem to jar upon the sacred stillness of the place. Her words were drawing away the bitterness, as the sun was blotting the dull,...
6. Part 6“But it meant living, thinking, enjoying; for ‘To-day thou shalt _be with me_.’ Paul’s beautiful perplexed revery, however, would be enough if it stood alone; for he did not kno...
7. Part 7“Of course you wouldn’t. Imagine yourself in a state of being where you and Roy had lost your past; all that you had borne and enjoyed, and hoped and feared, together; the prett...
8. Part 8I looked him over again,--hat, hoe, shirt, and all; scanned his obstinate old face with its stupid, good eyes and animal mouth. Then I glanced at Aunt Winifred as she leaned for...
9. Part 9Abinadab eyed the white hands, as his huge fingers just touched them, with a sort of awe; and, sighing, sat down on the very edge of the garden bench beside her. After a singula...
10. Part 10“We must be busily at work certainly; but I think there must naturally be more communion with Him then. Now, this phrase “communion with God” has been worn, and not always well...
11. Part 11Dr. Bland gave us a good sermon yesterday. There is an indescribable change in all his sermons. There is a change, too, in the man, and that something more than the haggardness...
12. Part 12“She’s ben there all day long,” said Phœbe, wiping her eyes, “and she won’t go home for a mouthful of victuals, poor creetur! but she jest sets there and cries and cries, an’ th...