Birth

by Zona Gale

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1918 edition. Excerpt: ... on a night of warm rain, he was aware that Little Platt was hovering on the walk, inobviously waiting for him. "He hasn't an umbrella," Jeffrey deduced, and offered to share. But Little Platt, turning up his collar and turning down his hat, walked by Jeffrey's side, but out of shelter. It was a few minutes after six o'clock, and the Burage business world was going home. But Hoey's, the barber shop, the bakery, Tait's billiard hall, and all the twenty-seven saloons remained indifferent to the hour, their guardians standing in doorways, one foot, toe down, heel up, crossed negligently over the other. The west broke, and a shine of pale light made a lovely surface on the cream-brick fronts and lay yellow in the puddles on the cedar blocks. There was the tramp of feet. "Nice little rain," every one said. Just before their ways diverged, Little Platt spoke. "Say," he said, " I wanted to ask you: Had I ought to keep on working without my pay, or hadn't I?" "Without your pay? Good Lord, haven't you been getting your pay?" "It's nine weeks now," said Little Platt. Jeffrey banished the particular meanness of unwillingness to seem to share the predicament of the boy. Perhaps this triumph was solely because of a desire to talk it over. He grinned. "Same here, for four weeks," he said. "What do you make it?" Little Platt had an appearance of his own to maintain, it seemed, and drew down his brows like a man of affairs. "What do you make it?" "I'll be jumped up if I know," Jeffrey said. They stood by Tait's billiard hall, and consulted. This social center for the youth of the town was under the barber shop. Standing by the iron railing, one might look down through the window tops into the hall itself, see the green tables, the moving figures, smell a...

100 pages, Paperback

First published February 11, 2010

About the author

American author, playwright, and the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, in 1921 for Miss Lulu Bett , her dramatic adaptation of her novel of the same name.