- end_line
- 5577
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:52.921Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 5513
- text
- not to be cruel to me; she would call me to her, and speak cheerfully to
me, and I thanked--not God, for I had been taught no God--I thanked the
bright human summer, and the joyful human sun in the sky; I thanked the
human summer and the sun, that they had given me the woman; and I would
sometimes steal away into the beautiful grass, and worship the kind
summer and the sun; and often say over to myself the soft words, summer
and the sun.
"Still, weeks and years ran on, and my hair began to vail me with its
fullness and its length; and now often I heard the word beautiful,
spoken of my hair, and beautiful, spoken of myself. They would not say
the word openly to me, but I would by chance overhear them whispering
it. The word joyed me with the human feeling of it. They were wrong not
to say it openly to me; my joy would have been so much the more assured
for the openness of their saying beautiful, to me; and I know it would
have filled me with all conceivable kindness toward every one. Now I
had heard the word beautiful, whispered, now and then, for some months,
when a new being came to the house; they called him gentleman. His face
was wonderful to me. Something strangely like it, and yet again unlike
it, I had seen before, but where, I could not tell. But one day, looking
into the smooth water behind the house, there I saw the
likeness--something strangely like, and yet unlike, the likeness of his
face. This filled me with puzzlings. The new being, the gentleman, he
was very gracious to me; he seemed astonished, confounded at me; he
looked at me, then at a very little, round picture--so it seemed--which
he took from his pocket, and yet concealed from me. Then he kissed me,
and looked with tenderness and grief upon me; and I felt a tear fall on
me from him. Then he whispered a word into my ear. 'Father,' was the
word he whispered; the same word by which the young girls called the
farmer. Then I knew it was the word of kindness and of kisses. I kissed
the gentleman.
"When he left the house I wept for him to come again. And he did come
again. All called him my father now. He came to see me once every month
or two; till at last he came not at all; and when I wept and asked for
him, they said the word _Dead_ to me. Then the bewilderings of the
comings and the goings of the coffins at the large and populous house;
these bewilderings came over me. What was it to be dead? What is it to
be living? Wherein is the difference between the words Death and Life?
Had I been ever dead? Was I living? Let me be still again. Do not speak
to me."
And the stepping on the floor above; again it did resume.
"Months ran on; and now I somehow learned that my father had every now
and then sent money to the woman to keep me with her in the house; and
that no more money had come to her after he was dead; the last penny of
the former money was now gone. Now the farmer's wife looked troubledly
and painfully at me; and the farmer looked unpleasantly and impatiently
at me. I felt that something was miserably wrong; I said to myself, I am
one too many; I must go away from the pleasant house. Then the
bewilderings of all the loneliness and forlornness of all my forlorn and
lonely life; all these bewilderings and the whelmings of the
bewilderings rolled over me; and I sat down without the house, but could
not weep.
"But I was strong, and I was a grown girl now. I said to the woman--Keep
me hard at work; let me work all the time, but let me stay with thee.
But the other girls were sufficient to do the work; me they wanted not.
The farmer looked out of his eyes at me, and the out-lookings of his
eyes said plainly to me--Thee we do not want; go from us; thou art one
too many; and thou art more than one too many. Then I said to the
woman--Hire me out to some one; let me work for some one.--But I spread
too wide my little story. I must make an end.
- title
- Chunk 2