{"product_id":"2940012091536","title":"The Gayworthys - A Story of Threads and Thrums","description":"This ebook edition has been proofed and corrected and compiled to be read with without errors!\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e***\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePREFATORY.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOf threads and thrums: because a simple story of this mixed divine and human weaving we call Life; wherein are threads,—lines lying evenly along the loom, and made secure and perfect with a filling; wherein are also many thrums,—ends broken, or dropped midway, or reaching out unfinished lengths beyond the web. Wherein the fabric seems, so often, faulty; where much seems lost, left out, or wrongly joined; where correspondence is delayed, and full-matched beauty missed; where colors are confused; where the pattern, being vast, may never quite unroll to earthly vision; where Patience keeps her foot upon the treadle, and Faith must stand, with fervent eyes, beside the springing shuttle, knowing of breadths that shall be woven by and by!\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e***\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAn excerpt from the beginning of the first chapter:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCHAPTER I.\u003cbr\u003eDOCTOR GAYWORTHY'S WOMEN-FOLKS.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDid you ever eat strawberry short-cake? If not, I am afraid I cannot put you in the way of that delight, further than to tell you that it is a delicious mystery of cuisine, known among certain dwellers in certain hill counties of New England, where the glorious scarlet berry blushes indigenous and profuse all over pasture slopes and mountain-sides at the early outburst of the short and fervid summer. A mystery, the manner of whose compounding is a grand, masonic secret among the skilful and initiated few; for it is not every farmer's wife or daughter, you must know, who has passed that high degree which entitles her to call her neighbors together for such annual regale and marvel.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI can tell you this only; that on the June day wherefrom I date this story, in the great, snowy-clean, pewter-shining kitchen of the Gayworthys, solemn preparations were toward; that on the broad dresser stood a huge pan, heaped high with the glowing fruit, wherefrom the whole house was redolent of rich, wild fragrance; that beside it, on either hand, waited, in plentiful supply, flour of the whitest, and cream of the yellowest; and that, somehow, by a deft putting of this and that together, the mighty result was to come.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHuldah Brown stood, bare-armed and waiting, before the whole; and looked calculatingly upon the gathered material.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"It's an awful lot, to be sure; but then they'll every soul of 'em come, from all pints of the compass; and when they're scalt and mashed, they do s'rink down!\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHuldah's utterance must stand, in all its horrible ambiguity, as to who or what was to be \"scalt and mashed.\" I may not venture to throw light on one point, lest I trespass, with unwarranted illumination, upon another.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"And there's a manifest providence, comin' across the chip-yard!\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe \"manifest providence\" was a sharp-nosed, little, elderly woman, in a striped sun-bonnet, with a three-quart tin pail full of strawberries, which she changed from one hand to the other, wearily, as she came up to the open door.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Miss Vorse!\" cried Huldah, from the stair-foot: \"I b'lieve my soul, we hain't got berries enough, arter all!\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"You don't think it, Huldah!\" came back, in a sharp explosive consternation.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Well, I do then!\" returned Huldah, \"and here's Widder Horke jest comin' along with a pailful. I call that clear luck!\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"See what she asks for 'em. I'll be down in a minute.\" Huldah Brown knew very well at which end to present a suggestion. The way to bring people to your own conclusion is to give them, not your last thought, but your first.","brand":"Leila's Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47081104605424,"sku":"2940012091536","price":1.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940012091536_p0.jpg?v=1763552609","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940012091536","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}