eBooks - Literature - Modern Fiction - Grace E. King - Balcony Stories
Balcony Stories eBooks
by Grace E. King
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Platforms
Windows Vista / XP / 2000, Mac OS X, Sony Reader Features
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Availability:
Download Now Price: $2.39
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Platforms
Windows Vista / XP / 2000, Mac OS X, Sony Reader Features
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Availability:
Download Now Price: $3.99
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Balcony Stories Summary
| She said she had, and in truth she had, no other name than "little Mammy"; and that was the name of her nature. Pure African, but bronze rather than pure black, and full-sized only in width, her growth having been hampered as to height by an injury to her hip, which had lamed her, pulling her figure awry, and burdening her with a protuberance of the joint. Her mother caused it by dropping her when a baby, and concealing it, for fear of punishment, until the dislocation became irremediable. All the animosity of which little Mammy was capable centered upon this unknown but never-to-be-forgotten mother of hers; out of this hatred had grown her love--that is, her destiny, a woman's love being her destiny. Little Mammy's love was for children. |
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| There is much of life passed on the balcony in a country where the summer unrolls in six moon-lengths, and where the nights have to come with a double endowment of vastness and splendor to compensate for the tedious, sun-parched days. And in that country the women love to sit and talk together of summer nights, on balconies, in their vague, loose, white garments, - men are not balcony sitters, - with their sleeping children within easy hearing, the stars breaking the cool darkness, or the moon making a show of light - oh, such a discreet show of light! - through the vines. And the children inside, waking to go from one sleep into another, hear the low, soft mother-voices on the balcony, talking about this person and that, old times, old friends, old experiences; and it seems to them, hovering a moment in wakefulness, that there is no end of the world or time, or of the mother-knowledge; but, illimitable as it is, the mother-voices and the mother-love and protection fill it all, - with their mother's hand in theirs, children are not afraid even of God, - and they drift into slumber again, their little dreams taking all kinds of pretty reflections from the great unknown horizon outside, as their fragile soap-bubbles take on reflec-tions from the sun and clouds. |
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eBooks - Titles - Authors - Literature - Modern Fiction - Grace E. King - Balcony Stories