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STREET DUST and Other Stories
STREET DUST and Other Stories
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Scanned, proofed and corrected from the original hardcover edition for enjoyable reading. (Worth every penny spent!)
***
An excerpt from the beginning of the first story:
STREET DUST
Their mother was dead.
She had lived only thirty years, and a few months; but she had died before her time, as so many do, of over-toil and little food, some days no food at all, only grass seeds and leaves of wild sage. She was dead; a mere skeleton, brown and dry as a mummy, lying on her bed of dry ferns, from which swarms of lice and fleas were hurrying in their knowledge of and horror of a lifeless thing; only the torpid flies remained, gathering together in black dots upon her as the day advanced.
Her two children, who had seen her die, and had exhausted themselves in shrieks and sobs, went up to her again and kissed her and pressed their heads against her body. But there was no warmth, no response.
"She must be dead—dead—dead," said the elder of them; and then they fell again to weeping, and they screamed loudly and long. But the echoes of their screams were the only answer that they had.
The day was now bright, and the great grass plains were hushed in their morning calm. A little greenfinch was hopping to and fro on a slab of broken marble, pecking at some seed or insect invisible to any eyes except his own: the small bird was the only living thing near.
The woman had come there three years earlier. She had been the wife or leman of a shepherd who had had some share, through his revelations, in the capture of a noted brigand whose head-quarters had been at Palombaro. For that share the shepherd had been quieted for ever, by a dagger stroke between the shoulders, one evening as he took his flocks to drink at the Anio water.
***
An excerpt from the beginning of the first story:
STREET DUST
Their mother was dead.
She had lived only thirty years, and a few months; but she had died before her time, as so many do, of over-toil and little food, some days no food at all, only grass seeds and leaves of wild sage. She was dead; a mere skeleton, brown and dry as a mummy, lying on her bed of dry ferns, from which swarms of lice and fleas were hurrying in their knowledge of and horror of a lifeless thing; only the torpid flies remained, gathering together in black dots upon her as the day advanced.
Her two children, who had seen her die, and had exhausted themselves in shrieks and sobs, went up to her again and kissed her and pressed their heads against her body. But there was no warmth, no response.
"She must be dead—dead—dead," said the elder of them; and then they fell again to weeping, and they screamed loudly and long. But the echoes of their screams were the only answer that they had.
The day was now bright, and the great grass plains were hushed in their morning calm. A little greenfinch was hopping to and fro on a slab of broken marble, pecking at some seed or insect invisible to any eyes except his own: the small bird was the only living thing near.
The woman had come there three years earlier. She had been the wife or leman of a shepherd who had had some share, through his revelations, in the capture of a noted brigand whose head-quarters had been at Palombaro. For that share the shepherd had been quieted for ever, by a dagger stroke between the shoulders, one evening as he took his flocks to drink at the Anio water.
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