Читать книгу The 13th District. A Story of a Candidate онлайн

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Failing in literature, a few of the more determined of these youths essayed music, but when she played for them Chopin’s nocturnes and asked if they liked Brahms, whose name they could never learn to pronounce, they gave her up, and fled with relief to the banjo, the mandolin, and the coon songs that echoed not inharmoniously on summer nights along the borders of Silver Lake, as they called the muddy pond where the aquatic needs of Grand Prairie society are appeased. Emily could not follow them thither, for she would not consent to buggy rides, even on moonlight nights. And so the young men of Grand Prairie voted her “stuck up,” and to themselves justified their verdict by the fact that she made them by some silent spiritual coercion call her Miss Harkness instead of Em, or Emily at least.

As for the clubs, she continued to attend them occasionally, for she was needed to prepare papers on literary topics for the federated meetings held monthly in the Presbyterian church. The matrons of the town would listen to her with the folds in their chins multiplying as their faces lengthened and their bodies yielded to the cushioned pews of the warm tabernacle, but however conscientiously they tried to follow her, their winks would develop into nods, and they would fail asleep. At the conclusion of her papers, of course, they gave Emily their gloved hands in congratulation, but the gulf between them yawned wider and wider, until Emily became a mere intellectual rather than a human personality.