Book Description

Excerpt from Behold This Dreamer! In a woman of Clara's temperament, a sick headache may be the prelude to unimaginable disaster. The throbbing pain at her temples, the tired ache in her back and thighs, the goading necessity of household drudgery which cannot be left undone, the consuming poison of fatigue, may impel her finally to a step of decision. Both sides 'of the family were agreed that Clara was a good Christian woman. Even Charley's mother admired her patience. When she was raising Charley, she often remarked, she never could stand him the way Clara stood him. The wonder was that Clara retained so much cheerfulness. She had not been raised to housework. Before marriage, her life had been quite different. But to-day Clara was getting a sick headache. It was Wednesday, which was ironing day. In the kitchen, Clara had laid out her ironing board, wrapped around with discarded bed-sheets, between the table and the back of an unpainted old chair. Over the board she was bent, moving a black iron forward and backward, in a jerky rhythm of fomenting dis content. She muttered to herself as she pressed the hot bottom of the iron against the starched fronts of Charley's shirts. On the gas stove, two other irons were heating above the humming circles of blue and yellow flames. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.