The Morgesons: A Novel

Helen was called home by the illness of her father and did not return to Rosville. She would write me, she said; but it was many weeks before I received a letter. Ben Somers abo...

The atmosphere of my two lives was so different, that when I passed into one, the other ceased to affect me. I forgot all that I suffered and hated at Miss Black's, as soon as I...

At eleven o'clock the next day I was ready for departure. All stood by the open hall door, criticising Murphy's strapping of my trunks on a hack. Messrs. Digby and Devereaux, in...

When we went to Boston we went to a new hotel, as Ben had advised, deserting the old Bromfield for the Tremont. It was dusk when we arrived, and tea was served immediately, in a...

"Yes, I am fond of whist parties. You noticed that Charles has not a remarkable talent that way. Did he speak to Mr. Somers at all, while you played? I was too busy to come in....

Aunt Mercy had not introduced me to Miss Black as the daughter of Locke Morgeson, the richest man in Surrey, but simply as her niece. Her pride prevented her from making any exh...

Alice and I were preparing for the first ball, when Charles came home, having been absent several weeks. The conservatory was finished, and looked well, jutting from the garden-...

The paper on the wall was ash-colored, with penciled lines. She had cloudy days probably. A large-eyed Saint Cecilia, with white roses in her hair, was pasted on the wall. This...

I heard from home regularly; father, however, was my only correspondent. He stipulated that I should write him every other Saturday, if not more than a line; but I did more than...

The next evening I dressed my hair after the fashion of the Barmouth girls, with the small pride of wishing to make myself look different from the Surrey girls. I expected they...

Another week passed. Ben had received a letter from Veronica, informing him that letter-writing was a kind of composition she was not fond of. He must come to her, and then ther...

It was true. Locke Morgeson had been insolvent for five years. All this time he had thrown ballast out from every side in the shape of various ventures, which he trusted would l...

Temperance stayed to the house-cleaning. It was lucky, she could not help saying, as house-cleaning must always be after a funeral, that it should have happened at the regular c...

I was preaching one day to mother and Aunt Merce a sermon after the manner of Mr. Boold, of Barmouth, taking the sofa for a desk, and for my text "Like David's Harp of solemn so...

A few days after, I went to Milford with father, to make some purchases. I sought a way to speak to him about the future, intending also to go on with various remarks; but it se...

I was soon well enough to go home. Father came for me, bringing Aunt Merce. There was no alteration in her, except that she had taken to wearing a false front, which had a clare...

Rosville was a county town. The courts were held there, and its society was adorned with several lawyers of note who had law students, which fact was to the lawyers' daughters t...

It was November when we returned from Boston. One morning when the frost sparkled on the dead leaves, which still dropped on the walks, Helen Perkins and I were taking a stroll...

Helen's letters followed me. She had heard from Rosville all that had happened, but did not expatiate on it. Her letters were full of minute details respecting her affairs. It w...

One afternoon in the following July, tired of walking in the mown fields, and of carrying a nest of mice, which I had discovered under a hay-rick, I concluded I would begin a sy...

I took a cold that night. Belem was damp always, but its midnight damp was worse than any other. Mrs. Somers sent me medicine. Adelaide asked me, with an air of contemplation, w...

On Tuesday morning Adelaide sent out invitations to a farewell entertainment, as she called it, for Tuesday evening. Mrs. Somers, affecting great interest in it, engaged my serv...

Alice called me to her chamber window one morning. "Look into the lane. Charles and Jesse are there with that brute. He goes very well, now that they have thrown the top of the...

One pleasant afternoon Adelaide and I started on a walk. We must go through the crooked length of Norfolk Street, till we reached the outskirts of Belem, and its low fields not...

The day came. Alice Morgeson, and Helen with her baby, arrived the night before; and Ben and Mr. Somers drove from Milford early in the afternoon. Mr. Somers was affable and pat...

I looked across the bay from my window. "The snow is making 'Pawshee's Land' white again, and I remain this year the same. No change, no growth or development! The fulfillment o...

"How time do fly," remarked Mrs. Saunders, mopping her wrinkled face with a dark-blue handkerchief. "The winter's sass is hardly put in the cellar 'fore we have to cut off the s...

It was sunset when we arrived in Rosville, and found Mr. Morgeson waiting for us with his carriage at the station. From its open sides I looked out on a tranquil, agreeable land...

Before spring there were three public events in Surrey. A lighthouse was built on Gloster Point, below our house. At night there was a bridge of red, tremulous light between my...

their ears, like the far-off sounds we hear at night from woods or the sea, whose face was ineffaceably marked, whose air impressed with a sense of mystery. I think both would h...

A few days after my arrival, some friends dined with Mrs. Somers. The daughters of a senator, as Ann informed me, and an ex-governor, or I should not have known this fact, for I...

I was going home! When we rode over the brow of the hill within a mile of Surrey, and I saw the crescent-shaped village, and the tall chimneys of our house on its outer edge, in...

The house was thronged till after the funeral. We sat in state, to be condoled with and waited upon. Not a jot of the customary rites was abated, though I am sure the performers...

It was five o'clock on Saturday afternoon when father left me. Aunt Mercy continued her preparations for tea, and when it was ready, went to the foot of the stairs, and called,...

The next September we moved. Our new house was large and handsome. On the south side there was nothing between it and the sea, except a few feet of sand. No tree or shrub interc...

With misgivings she went, stayed a month, and returned with Alice. I felt a throe of pain when we met, which she must have seen, for she turned pale, and the hand she had extend...

She cleared away my breakfast things and left me. I sat by the window an hour, looking over the water, my thoughts drifting through a golden haze, and then went up to my room an...

When Ben left Surrey, I sent no message or letter by him, and he asked for none. But at once I wrote to Desmond, and did not finish my letter till after midnight. Intoxicated wi...

One winter morning before daylight, Veronica came to my room, and asked me if I had heard any walking about the house during the night. She had, and was going to inquire about i...

At this time I was ten years old. We lived in a New England village, Surrey, which was situated on an inlet of a large bay that opened into the Atlantic. From the observatory of...

My life at Grandfather Warren's was one kind of penance and my life in Miss Black's school another. Both differed from our home-life. My filaments found no nourishment, creeping...

When my aunt said this I was climbing a chest of drawers, by its knobs, in order to reach the book-shelves above it, where my favorite work, "The Northern Regions," was kept, to...

at me. When I could speak of the accident at Rosville, would I tell her all? And would I describe my life there; what friends I had made; would they visit me? She hoped so. And...