Sam Vaknin - "Issues in Population and Bioethics"

James Elroy Flecker - "Hassan: The Story of Hassan of Baghdad and How He Came to"

George Bernard Shaw - "Press Cuttings"

Zane Grey - "The Man of the Forest"

New Philadelphia Book Publisher Highlights Local Talent
Book and Publishing News from Publishers Newswire(tm)

Looking for Child to be on Cover of a New Book, 'The Model Child'
PHILADELPHIA, Pa. -- The Philadelphia literary world will celebrate the launch of two new players today, April 10th: Kay Square Press, a new publishing company focused on Philadelphia-area artists, their stories, and their art; and Kay Square's first release, 'With the Rich and Mighty: Emlen Etting of Philadelphia' (ISBN: 978-0-9815129-0-7), a critical biography by Kenneth C. Kaleta.

FlatSigned Press Alleges Don Imus Remarks Damage Legacy of President Gerald R. Ford
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Nathan Yungerberg, an accomplished model scout and professional child photographer is launching a nation-wide casting call to find the cover model for his highly anticipated book release, 'The Model Child: A Parents Guide to the Child Modeling Industry' (ISBN: 978-0-9817018-0-6).

Books: Martie The Unconquered

K >> Kathleen Norris >> Martie The Unconquered




"Lord, I wish we could have a punch," Rodney complained. The girls
laughed.

"Oh, Rod--Pa would explode!"

"Darn it," the boy mused, "I don't see WHY. He's not a teetotaler."
"Well, I know," Martie conceded. "But that's different, of course!
No--we can't have punch. I don't know how to make it, anyway--" She
was hardly following her own words. Under them lay the wonderful
consciousness that Rodney Parker was here at the house, sitting on
the porch steps on a warm November morning, as much at home as
Leonard himself. The sun was looking down into the dark garden, damp
paths were drying in sudden warmth after a rain.

In such an hour and such a mood, Martie felt absolutely confident
that the dance would be a great success. More; it seemed to her in
the heartening morning sunlight that it would be the first of many
such innocent festivities, and that before it was over--before it
was over, she and Rodney might have something wonderful to tell the
girls and boys of Monroe.

But in the long winter afternoons her confidence waned a little, and
at night, dreaming over her cards, she began to have serious
misgivings. Then the old house seemed cold and inhospitable and the
burden of carrying a social affair to success fell like a dreadful
weight on the girl's soul. Mama, Lydia, and Sally would cooperate to
the best of their power, of course; Pa and Len might be expected to
make themselves as annoying as possible.

Supper, decorations, even the question of gowns paled before the
task of making a list of guests. Sally and Martie early realized
that they must inevitably hurt the feelings and disappoint the trust
of more than one old friend. Mrs. Monroe and Lydia grew absolutely
sick over the necessity.

"Ma, this is just for the younger set," Martie argued. "And if
people like Miss Fanny and the Johnsons expect to come to it, why,
it's ridiculous, that's all!"

"I know, dear, but it's the first party we have given in YEARS" her
mother said plaintively, "and one hates to--"

"What I've DONE" said Martie in a worried tone, "is write down all
the POSSIBLE boys in Monroe, even counting Len and Billy Frost, and
Rod, and Alvah Brigham. Then I wrote down all the girls I'd like to
ask if I COULD, and there were about fourteen too many. So now I'm
scratching off all the girls I CAN--"

"I do think you ought to ask Grace Hawkes!" Lydia said firmly and
reproachfully.

"Well, I can't!" Martie answered quickly. "So it doesn't matter what
you think! I beg your pardon, Lyd," she added penitently, laying her
hand on Lydia's arm. "But you know Rodney's sisters would die if
Grace came!"

"Well, I think it's a mistake to slight Grace," Lydia persisted.

Martie studied her pencilled list gloomily for a few seconds.

"Sometimes I wish we weren't having it!" she said moodily.

"Oh, Martie, when we've always said we'd give ANYTHING to entertain
as other people do!" Sally exclaimed. "I DO think that's
unreasonable!"

Martie made no answer. She was looking at a memorandum which read:
"Invitations--cream--Angela--stamps--illusion--slippers."

As the days went by the thought of the dance grew more and more
troublesome. The details of the affair were too strange to be
entered into with any confidence, any rush of enthusiasm and
spontaneity. Every hour brought her fresh cause for worry.

Nothing went well. The thought of her dress worried her. She had
conceived the idea of a black gown ornamented with cretonne roses,
carefully applied. She and Sally cut out the flowers, and applied
them with buttonhole stitch, sewing until their fingers were sore,
their faces flushed, and their hair in frowsy disorder. It was slow
work. Miss Pepper, the seamstress, engaged for one day only to do
the important work on both Sally's and Martie's gown, kept
postponing, as she always did postpone, the day, finally appointing
the Wednesday before Thanksgiving Day. Pa's cousin, a certain Mrs.
Potts, wrote from Portland that she was coming down for the holiday,
and Sally and Martie could have wept at the thought of the
complication of having her exacting presence in the house. Worse
than this Pa, who was to have gone to San Francisco on business on
Friday morning--whose decision to do so had indeed been one of
Martie's reasons for selecting this date for the affair--suddenly
changed his plan. He need not go until December, he said.

Leonard, who at first had been faintly interested in the
proceedings, later annoyed his sisters by intimating that he would
not be present at the dance. Martie and Sally did not want him for
any social qualities he possessed, but he was a male; he would at
least help to offset the alarming plurality of females.

Acceptances came promptly from the young women of Monroe, even from
Ida and May Parker. Florence Frost regretted; she was smitten even
now with the incurable illness that would end her empty life a few
years later. Such men as Martie and Sally had been able to list as
eligible--the new young doctor from the Rogers building, little
Billy Frost, the Patterson boys, home from college for Thanksgiving,
Reddy Johnson, and Carl Polhemus--answered not at all, as is the
custom with young men. Sally and Martie did not like the Patterson
boys; George was fat and stupid; Arthur at eighteen sophisticated
and blase, with dissipated eyes; both were supercilious, and the
girls did not really believe that they would come. Still, there was
not much to lose in asking them.

There had been a debate over Reddy Johnson's name; but Reddy was a
wonderful dancer. So he was asked, and Martie went so far as to say
that had Joe Hawkes possessed an evening suit, he and Grace might
have been asked, too. As it was, Sally and Martie hoped they would
not meet Grace until the affair was over.

They fumed and fussed over the list until they knew it by heart.
They wondered who would come first, how soon they should begin
dancing, how soon serve supper. Mrs. Monroe thought supper should be
served at half-past ten. Martie groaned. Oh, they couldn't serve
supper until almost midnight, she protested.

Dinner was at noon on Thanksgiving Day, and the Monroes, sated and
overwarm, were sitting about the fire when Rodney Parker and his
friend, Alvah Brigham, came to take Martie and Sally walking. The
girls were sewing at the endless roses; but they jumped up in a
flutter, and ran for hats and sweaters. They did not exchange a
word, nor lose a second, while they were upstairs, running down
again immediately to end the uncomfortable silence that held the
group about the fire.

It was a cold, bleak day, and the pure air was delicious to Martie's
hot cheeks after the close house. She had immediately taken
possession of Alvah; Sally and Rodney followed. They took the old
bridge road, which the girls loved for the memory of bygone days,
when they had played at dolls' housekeeping along the banks of the
little Sonora, climbed the low oaks, and waded in the bright shallow
water. Even through to-day's excitement Martie had time for a memory
of those long-ago summer afternoons, and she said to herself with a
vague touch of pain that it would of course be impossible to have
with any man the serene communion of those days with Sally.

Mr. Brigham was a pale, rather fat young man with hair already
thinning. He did not have much to say, but he was always ready to
laugh, and Martie saw that he had cause for laughter. She rattled on
recklessly, anxious only to avoid silence; hardly conscious of what
she said. The effect of the cool, fresh air was lost upon Martie to-
day; she was fired to fever-pitch by Rodney's nearness.

He had not ever said anything exactly loverlike, she said to
herself, with a sort of breathless discontent, when she was setting
the table for a cold supper that night. But he had brought his
friend to them after all! She must not be exacting. She had so much-
-

"I beg your pardon, Cousin Allie?" she stammered. Her obnoxious
relative, a stout, moustached woman of fifty, warming her skirts at
the fire, was smiling at her unkindly.

"You always was a great one to moon, Martha!" said Mrs. Potts, "I's
asking you what you see in that young feller to make such a to-do
about?"

"Then you don't like him?" Martie countered, laughing. Mrs. Potts
bridled. Her favourite attitude toward life was a bland but
suspicious superiority; she liked to be taken seriously.

"I didn't say I didn't like him," she answered, accurately, a little
nettled. "No, my dear, I didn't say that. No. I wouldn't say that of
any young man!" she added thoughtfully.

Smiling a dark smile, she looked into the fire. Martie, rather
uncomfortable, went on with her task.

"He's seemed to admire our Mart in a brotherly sort of way since the
very beginning," Lydia explained, anxious as usual to say the kind
thing, and succeeding as usual in saying the one thing that could
hurt and annoy. "He's quite a boy for the girls, but we think our
Martie is too sensible to take him seriously, yet awhile!" And Lydia
gave her sister a smile full of sweet significance.

"HOPE she is!" Mrs. Potts said heavily. "For if that young feller
means business I miss MY guess!"

"Oh, for pity's sake--can't a man ask a girl to go walking without
all this fuss!" Martie burst out angrily. "I NEVER heard so much--
crazy--silly--talk--about--nothing!"

The last words were only an ashamed mumble as she disappeared
kitchenward.

"H'm!" said Mrs. Potts, eying Lydia over her glasses. "Kinder touchy
about him just the same. Well! what's he to that young feller used
to come see you, Lydia? Ain't the Frosts and the Parkers kin?"

"I really think she's the most detestable old woman that ever was!"
Martie said, when the three girls were going to bed that night.
Lydia, loitering in her sister's room for a few minutes, made no
denial.

"Well, by this time to-morrow night the party will be nearly over!"
yawned Sally.

Martie looked at the clock. A quarter past eleven. What would be
happening at quarter past eleven to-morrow night?

The girls awakened early, and were early astir. A rush of
preparation filled the morning, so soothing in its effect upon
nerves and muscles that Martie became wild with hope. The parlours
looked prettier than the girls had ever seen them; the pungent
sweetness of chrysanthemums and evergreen stealing into the clean,
well-aired spaces, and bowls of delicious violets sending out
currents of pure perfume. Martie swept, straightened, washed gas
globes, shook rugs. She gathered the flowers herself, straightening
the shoulders that were beginning to ache as she arranged them with
wet, cool fingers. Sally was counting napkins, washing china and
glass. Belle dragged through the breakfast dishes. Lydia was capably
mixing the filling for sandwiches. Outside, the morning was still;
fog dripped from the trees. Sometimes the sudden sputtering chuckle
of disputing chickens broke the quiet; a fish cart rattled by
unseen, the blare of the horn sending Mrs. Monroe with a large empty
platter to the gate.

At two o'clock Lydia and Martie walked down town for the last
shopping. Martie was aware, under the drumming excitement in her
blood, that she was already tired. But to buy bottled cherries for
the lemonade, olives for the sandwiches, and flat pink and white
mint candies was exhilarating, and Reddy Johnson's cheery "See you
to-night, Martie!" made her blue eyes dance with pleasure. After
all, a dance was no such terrible matter!

They were in Mason and White's, seated at a counter, in consultation
over a purchase of hairpins, when two gloved hands were suddenly
pressed over Martie's eyes, and a joyous voice said "Hello!" The
next instant Rose's eyes were laughing into hers.

"Rose Ransome!" Martie and Lydia said together. The two younger
girls began to chatter eagerly.

Why, when had she gotten home? Only this morning. And oh, it did
seem so good to be home! And how was everybody? And how was college?
Oh, fine! And was she still at the same house? Oh, yes! And so poor
old Mrs. Preble was dead? Uncle Ben had felt so badly--

"Say, Rose, we're having a sort of party to-night," Martie said
awkwardly, and with a certain hesitation. Details followed. Rose, as
pretty as a bird in her little checked suit and feathered hat,
listened with bright interest. "Why can't you come?" Martie finished
eagerly. "The more the merrier!"

"Well--no." Rose hesitated prettily. "My first evening at home, you
know--I think I hadn't better. I'd love to, Martie. And about the
picnic to-morrow; that I CAN do! What'll I bring?"

"Rose is a sweet little thing," Lydia said, when the sisters were
walking home again. "I'm sorry she can't come to-night; she has a
way of making things GO."

Martie did not answer. She was mentally, for the hundredth time,
putting on the black gown with the pink roses stitched all about the
flounce, and piling up her bronze hair.

The short afternoon waned, fog closing in the village again with the
dark. Martie and Sally came down to supper with thin little crepe
wrappers over their crisp skirts and best stockings and slippers.
Both girls had spent the late afternoon in bathing, taking last
stitches, laughing and romping over the upper floor, but the blazing
colour in their faces now was as much from nervous fatigue as from
excitement. Neither was hungry, nor talkative, and Mrs. Potts and
their father monopolized the conversation.

Len was sulky because he had played his usual game badly this
evening, and chance failing him had favoured the girls. He had asked
to be excused from the party, to their deep but unexpressed
indignation, and had almost won his father's consent to a request to
go down town a while, when a casual inquiry from Malcolm as to what
he intended to do down town inspired Len to a reminiscent chuckle
and an artless observation that gee! he might get a chance to sit
outside of the hotel and watch Colonel Frost's new automobile for
him, if the Colonel, as was usual, came down to the monthly meeting
of the Republican Club.

For a few seconds Malcolm did not sense the full indignity of his
son's position as groom for Cyrus Frost. When he did, Leonard had a
bad quarter of an hour, and was directed to get into his Sunday
suit, make himself as useful and agreeable to his sisters as was
possible, and let his father hear no more of this nonsense about old
Frost and his automobile.

Chuckling over this turn of events, the girls went upstairs to
finish dressing. Sally, in an old pink gown, freshly pressed, was
pretty; but Martie, turning flushed and self-conscious from the dim
old mirror, was quite lovely. The black gown made her too-generous
figure seem almost slender; the cretonne roses glowed richly against
the black, and Martie's creamy skin and burnished hair were all the
more brilliant for the contrast. Her heart rose buoyantly as she
realized the success of the gown, and she ran downstairs with sudden
gay confidence in herself and her party.

Her father and mother, with Mrs. Potts, had considerately
disappeared. Malcolm had gone down town; the ladies, wrapped in
shawls, were gossiping in Mrs. Potts's vaultlike chamber. Lydia was
moving about in the downstairs rooms.

"Oh, Martie, Rose telephoned," Lydia said as her sister came in,
"and she says that Mr. Rice and her mother say she must come up to-
night, if it's only for a little while. She's going to bring her
violin."

"Oh, that's good," Martie answered absently, sitting down to play
"The Two Grenadiers" with great spirit. "There's some one now, Lyd!"
she added in a half panic, as the doorbell rang. Lydia, her colour
rising suddenly, went to the door, raising her hand above as she
passed under the gaslight to turn the lights to their full
brilliancy. The first arrival was Angela Baxter, with her music roll
under her arm. She kissed Lydia, and went upstairs with Sally.

Then there were other feet on the porch: in came the German girls
and Laura Carter, hooded in knitted fragile scarfs, and wrapped in
pale blue and pink circular capes edged narrowly with fluffy
eiderdown. Elmer King, hoarsely respectful, and young Potter Street
followed. Martie, taking the girls upstairs, called back to them
that she would send Len down. While they were all in Lydia's room,
laying off wraps and powdering noses, Maude Alien came up, and
"Dutch" Harrison's older sister Kate, and Amy Scott, and Martie was
so funny and kept them all in such roars of laughter that Sally was
conscious of a shameless wish that this was what Monroe called a
"hen party," with no men asked. Then they could have games, Proverbs
and even Hide-the-Thimble, and every one would feel happy and at
home.

When they went down Robert Archer, a quiet mild young man who was in
the real estate business, had come; and he and Elmer and Potter were
sitting silently in the parlour. Martie and Sally and the other
girls went in, and every one tried to talk gaily and naturally as
the young men stood up, but there seemed to be no reason why they
should not all sit down, and, once seated, it seemed hard to talk.
What Martie said was met with a nervous glimmer of laughter and a
few throaty monosyllables.

Sally wanted to suggest games, but did not dare. Martie, and indeed
every one else, would have been glad to play Proverbs and Twenty
Questions, but she did not quite like to begin anything so childish
at a real dance. She looked at the clock: just nine. The evening was
yet young.

Suddenly Angela Baxter stopped murmuring to Lydia, and began to
rattle a quick two step from the piano. Robert Archer, sitting next
to Martie, asked her at once to dance, and Potter Street asked
Sally, but both girls, glancing self-consciously at their guests,
declined, and the young men subsided. So nobody danced the first
dance, and after it there was another lull. Then Martie cheerfully
asked Angela for a waltz, and said bravely:

"Come on, some of you, DO dance this! I can't because I'm hostess."

At this there was some subdued laughter, and immediately the four
young men found partners, and two of the girls danced together. Then
little Billy Frost came in, and after him, as fresh and sweet as her
name, came Rose with the Monroe's only dentist, Bruce Tate. Dr. Tate
was a rather heavy young man, flirtatious and conceited.

Rose put her violin on the piano, and explained that she had met
Rodney Parker that afternoon, "hadn't seen him for YEARS!" and that
he had talked her into coming. No--she wouldn't play until later
laughed Rose; now she wanted to dance.

The hours that followed seemed to Martie like years. She never
forgot them. She urged her guests into every dance with almost
physical force; she felt for the girls who did not dance a nervous
pity. Ida and May came in: neither danced, nor was urged to dance.
They went home at ten o'clock. It was immediately afterward that
Rodney came with his friend. Martie met them in the hall, ready for
the intimate word, the smile that should make all this tiresome
business of lights and piano and sandwiches worth while. Rodney was
a little flushed and noisy, Alvah red-faced, breathing and speaking
a little thickly. They said they were thirsty.

"Lemonade?" Martie suggested confidently.

Rodney glanced quickly at his friend. "Oh, Gawd!" said Mr. Brigham
simply.

Then they were in the hot parlour, and Martie was introducing them
to a circle that smiled and said "Pleased to meet choo," over and
over. Alvah would not dance, remarking that he hated dancing. And
Rodney--Rodney had eyes for no one but Rose. Martie saw it, every
one saw it.

Rose was at her best to-night. She knew college songs that Rodney
and Alvah knew, she dimpled and coquetted with the pretty confidence
of a kitten. She stood up, dainty and sweet in her pink gown, and
played her violin, with the gaslight shining down into her brown
eyes, and her lace sleeve slipping back and forth over her white arm
as the bow whipped to and fro.

Rodney did not leave her side, except for a dance with Martie and
one with Sally. After a while he and Rose went out to sit on the
stairs. Alvah grew noisy and familiar, and Martie did not know quite
how to meet his hilarity, although she tried. She was afraid the
echoes of his wild laugh would greet her father's ears, if he had
come in and was upstairs, and that Pa might do something awful.

The evening wore on. Lydia looked tired, and Sally was absolutely
mute, listening politely to Robert Archer's slow, uninteresting
narration of the purchase of the Hospital site. Martie felt as if
she had been in this dreadful gaslight forever; she watched the
clock.

At eleven they all went out to the dining room, and here the first
real evidences of pleasure might be seen on the faces of the guests.
Now Lydia, too, was in her favourite element, superintending coffee
cups, while Sally, alert again, cut the layer cakes. The table
looked charming and the sandwiches and coffee, cream and olives,
were swiftly put in circulation. Under the heartening rattle of
cutlery and china every one talked, the air was scented with coffee,
the room so warm that two windows by general consent were opened to
the cool night.

Martie took her share of the duties of hospitality as if in an
oppressive dream. Rodney sat beside her, and Rose on his other side.
To an outsider Martie might have seemed her chattering self, but she
knew--and Sally knew--that the knife was in her heart. She said
good-night to Rodney brightly, and kissed Rose. Rodney was to take
Rose home because, as she explained to Martie in an aside, it was
almost on his way, and it seemed a shame to take Dr. Tate so far.

"I've been scolding Rod terribly; those boys had highballs or
something before they came here," Rose said, puckering her lips and
shaking her head as she carefully pinned a scarf over her pretty
hair. "So silly! That's what we were talking about on the stairs."

She tripped away on Rodney's arm. Alvah, complaining of a splitting
head, went off alone. Somehow the others filtered away; Angela
Baxter, who was to spend the night with Lydia, piled the last of the
dishes with Lydia in the kitchen. Sally, silent and yawning, sank
into an armchair by the dying fire. Martie, watching the lanterns,
and hearing the voices die away after the last slamming of the gate,
stood on the dark porch staring into the night. The trees scarcely
showed against a heavy sky, a restless wind tossed their uppermost
branches; a few drops of rain fell on a little gust of air. The
night was damp and heavy; it pressed upon the village almost like a
soft, smothering weight. Martie felt as if she could hear the world
breathe.

With miserable, dry eyes, she looked up at the enveloping blackness;
drops of rain on her burning face, a chill shaking her whole body in
the thin gown. Martie wanted to live no longer; she longed to press
somehow into that great silent space, to cool her burning head and
throbbing heart in those immeasurable distances on distances of
dark. She did not want to go back into the dreadful house, where the
chairs were pushed about, and the table a wreck of wilted flowers
and crumbs, where the air was still laden with the odour of coffee
and cigarettes. She did not want to reclaim her own shamed and
helpless little entity after this moment of escape.

Her own pain and mortification--ah, she could have borne those. But
to have Lydia and Sally and Len and all Monroe sorry for her ...

Martie did not sleep that night. She tossed in a restless agony of
remembering, and the pitiable party seemed a life-failure, as she
lay thinking of it in the dark, a colossal blunder never to be
obliterated. They were unlucky--the Monroes. They never could do
things like other people.

Early in the cold dawn she heard the quiet slop and spatter of rain.
Thank God there could be no picnic to-day! Exhausted, she slept.




CHAPTER VI


Whatever Lydia, her mother, and Sally agreed between themselves the
next day they never told, but there was a conspiracy immediately on
foot. Little was said of the party, and nothing of Rodney Parker,
for many days. And if Martie in her fever of hurt pride was not
openly grateful, at least they knew her benefited by the silence.
Rose had no such compunction.

On the afternoon of the long rainy Saturday that was to have been
filled with a picnic, Rose telephoned. She just wanted to see how
every one was--and say what a lovely time she'd had! Ida Parker had
just telephoned, and Rose was going up there at about four o'clock
to stay for dinner, just informally, of course. She would go back to
Berkeley to-morrow night, but she hoped to see the girls in the
meantime.

Silently, heavily, Martie went on wiping the "company" dishes,
carrying them into the pantry shelves where they had been piled
untouched for years, and where they would stand again unused for a
long, long time. Sally was tired, and complained of a headache.
Lydia was irritatingly cheerful and philosophical. Len had
disappeared, as was usual on Saturday, and Mrs. Monroe and Mrs.
Potts were talking in low tones over the sitting-room fire. Outside,
the rain fell and fell and fell.