ffred's
nearly-forgotten treasuresLatterly, however, Mr. Gish's feelings had undergone a mysterious change. He could not himself have explained the phenomenon, but he could lay his finger, as he often declared to himself, upon the exact moment when the idea first took hold of him. They were coming home from Monday-night prayer-meeting; his mother was on his arm; the girls trailed along behind, two and two. A light streamed out from the wide-open windows of a house set well back from the street and embowered in roses; a rhythmic strain of waltz music pulsated on the air; couples embracing each other moved down the long room, floating, floating, as if borne on unseen wings. It was but a flash, a momentary glance; "but that done it," groaned Mr. Gish, inwardly, "and I've never been the same man since."
I encountered this collection by Mollie Evelyn Moore Davis while browsing UNC's Library of Southern Literature. Despite the author's attempts at regional lingual transliteration (an anathema for spelling checks! witness Widow Bedott), I was struck immediately by the romantic realism of the "Jim-Ned Creek" stories—reminiscent of John Steinbeck—and quickly considered this work worth publishing in Kindle format. While overall the author's warm, wistful style is undeniably no example of historical objectivity, I cannot help but enjoy its richly painted characters as a guilty pleasure.
The text of this edition was taken from this e-text, reformatted, and checked and corrected against this scan of the original 1897 edition. Any obvious typographical errors in the original edition were also corrected. A few inconsistencies in spelling, such as 'ain't vs. ain't, were standardized.
So here it is: the master HTML version, the home-brew Kindle version, and the actual Amazon publication.
August 4, 2024