Ella Wheeler Wilcox - "Poems of Sentiment"

Rabindranath Tagore (trans.) - "The King of the Dark Chamber"

James Sheridan Knowles - "The Hunchback"

Sam Vaknin - "Moral Deliberations in Modern Cinema"

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: The Heart of Rachael

K >> Kathleen Norris >> The Heart of Rachael




The thought of all these things used to distress his mother when
she was old and much alone. She attempted to belittle the luxury
of Clarence's boyhood. She told Rachael that he was treated just
as the other boys were. Her conscience was never quite easy about
his upbringing.

"You can't hold a boy too tight, you know, or else he'll break
away altogether," old lady Breckenridge would say to Rachael,
sitting before a coal fire in the gloomy magnificence of her old-
fashioned drawingroom and pressing the white fingers of one hand
against the agonized joints of the other. "I was often severe with
Clarence, and he was a good boy until he got with other boys; he
was always loving to me. He never should have married Paula
Verlaine," she would add fretfully. "A good woman would have
overlooked his faults and made a fine man of him, but she was
always an empty-headed little thing! Ah, well"--and the poor old
woman would sigh as she drew her fluffy shawl about her shoulders-
-"I cannot blame myself, that's my great consolation now, Rachael,
when I think of facing my Master and rendering an account. I have
been heavily afflicted, but I am not the first God-fearing woman
who has been visited with sorrow through her children!"

Clarence had visited his mother often in the weeks that preceded
her death, but she did not take much heed of his somewhat
embarrassed presence, nor, to Rachael's surprise, did her last
hours contain any of those heroic joys that are supposedly the
reward of long suffering and virtue. An unexpressed terror seemed
to linger in her sickroom, indeed to pervade the whole house; the
invalid lay staring drearily at the heavy furnishings of her
immense dark room, a nurse slipped in and out; the bloody light of
the westering sun, falling through stairway windows of colored
glass, blazed in the great hallway all through the chilly October
afternoons. Callers came and went, there were subdued voices and
soft footsteps; flowers came, their wet fragrance breaking from
oiled paper and soaked cardboard boxes, the cards that were wired
to them resisting all attempts at detachment. Clergymen came, and
Rachael imitated their manner afterward, to the general delight.

On the day before she died Mrs. Breckenridge caught her son's
plump cool hand in her own hot one, and made him promise to stop
drinking, and to go to church, and to have Carol confirmed.
Clarence promised everything.

But he did not keep his promises. Rachael had not thought he
would; perhaps the old lady herself had not thought he would. He
was sobered at the funeral, but not sober. Six weeks later all the
bills against the estate were in. Florence had some of the family
jewels and the family silver, Rachael had some, some was put away
for Billy; the furniture was sold, the house rented for a men's
club, and a nondescript man, calling upon young Mrs. Breckenridge,
notified her that the stone had been set in place as ordered. They
never saw it; they paid a small sum annually for keeping the plot
in order, and the episode of Ada Martin Langhorne Breckenridge's
life was over.

Clarence drank so heavily after that, and squandered his
magnificent heritage so recklessly, that people began to say that
he would soon follow his mother. But that was four years ago, and
Rachael looking dispassionately at him, where he lay dozing in his
pillows, had to admit that he had shown no change in the past
four--or eight, or twelve--years. Like many a better woman, and
many a better wife, she wondered if she would outlive him, vaguely
saw herself, correct and remote, in her new black.

Involuntarily she sighed. How free she would be! She wished
Clarence no ill, but the fact remained that, loose as was the bond
between them, it galled and checked them both at every step. Their
conversations were embittered by a thousand personalities, they
instinctively knew how to hurt each other; a look from Clarence
could crush his poised and accomplished wife into a mere sullen
shrew, and she knew that it took less than a look from her--it
took the mere existence of her youth and health and freshness--to
infuriate him sometimes. At best, their relationship consciously
avoided hostility. Rachael was silent, fuming; Clarence fumed and
was silent; they sank to light monosyllables; they parted as
quickly as possible. Would Clarence like to dine with this friend
or that? Rachael didn't think he would, but might as well ask him.
No, thank you! he wouldn't be found dead in that bunch. Did
Rachael want to go with the Smiths and the Joneses to dine at the
Highway, and dance afterward? Oh, horrors! no, thank you!

It was only when she spoke of Billy that Rachael was sure of his
interest and attention, and of late she perforce had for Billy
only criticism and disapproval. Rachael read the girl's vain and
shallow and pleasure-loving little heart far more truly than her
father could, and she was conscious of a genuine fear lest Billy
bring sorrow to them all. Society was indulgent, yes, but an
insolent and undeveloped little girl like Billy could not snap her
fingers at the law without suffering the full penalty. Rachael
would suffer, too. Florence and her girls would suffer, and
Clarence--well, Clarence would not bear it. "What an awful mix-up
it is!" Rachael thought wearily. "And what a sickening, tiresome
place this world is!"

And then suddenly the thought of Warren Gregory came back, and the
new curious sensation of warmth tugged at her heart.




CHAPTER IV


Mrs. Gardner Haviland, whirling home in her big car, after church,
was hardly more pleased with life than was her beautiful sister-
in-law, although she was not quite as conscious of dissatisfaction
as was Rachael. Her position as a successful mother, wife,
housekeeper, and member of society was theoretically so perfect
that she derived from it, necessarily, an enormous amount of
theoretical satisfaction. She could find no fault with herself or
her environment; she was pleasantly ready with advice or with an
opinion or with a verdict in every contingency that might arise in
human affairs, as a Christian woman of unimpeachable moral
standing. She knew her value in a hectic and reckless world. She
did not approve of women smoking, or of suffrage, but she played a
brilliant game of bridge, and did not object to an infinitesimal
stake. She belonged to clubs and to their directorates, yet it was
her boast that she knew every thought in her children's hearts,
and the personal lives and hopes and ambitions of her maids were
as an open book to her.

Still, she had her moments of weakness, and on this warm day of
the spring she felt vaguely disappointed with life. Rachael's
hints of divorce had filled her with a real apprehension; she felt
a good aunt's concern at Billy's reckless course, and a good
sister's disapproval of Clarence and his besetting sin.

But it was not these considerations that darkened her full
handsome face as she went up the steps of her big, widespread
country mansion; it was some vaguer, more subtle discontent. She
had not dressed herself for the sudden warmth of the day, and her
heavy flowered hat and trim veil had given her a headache. The
blazing sunlight on white steps and blooming flowers blinded her,
and when she stepped into the dark, cool hall she could hardly
see.

The three girls were there, well-bred, homely girls, in their
simple linens: Charlotte, a rather severe type, eyeglassed at
eighteen, her thick, light-brown hair plainly brushed off her face
and knotted on her neck, was obviously the opposite of everything
Billy was; conscientious, intellectual, and conscious of her own
righteousness, she could not compete with her cousin in Billy's
field; she very sensibly made the best of her own field. Isabelle
was a stout, clumsy girl of sixteen, with a metal bar across her
large white teeth, red hair, and a creamy skin. Little Florence
was only nine, a thin, freckled, sensitive child, with a shy,
unsmiling passion for dogs and horses, and little in common with
the rest of the world.

Their mother had expected sons in every case, and still felt a
little baffled by the fact of her children's sex. Charlotte
proving a girl, she had said gallantly that she must have a little
brother "to play with Charlotte." Isabelle, duly arriving,
probably played with Charlotte much more amiably than a brother
would have done, and Mrs. Haviland blandly accepted her existence,
but in her heart she was far from feeling satisfied. She was, of
course, an absolutely competent mother to girls, but she felt that
she would have been a more capable and wonderful mother to boys.

More than six years after Isabelle's birth Florence Haviland began
to talk smilingly of "my boy." "Gardner worships the girls," she
said, with wifely indulgence, "but I know he wants a son--and the
girlies need a brother!" A resigned shrug ended the sentence with:
"So I'm in for the whole thing again!"

It was said that Mrs. Haviland greeted the news that the third
child was a daughter with a mechanically bright smile, as one
puzzled beyond all words by perverse event, and that her spoken
comment was the single mild ejaculation: "Extraordinary!"

Now the two older Haviland girls, following their mother into her
bedroom, seated themselves there while she changed her dress.
Florence junior, in passionate argument with the butler over the
death of one of the drawing-room goldfish, remained downstairs.
Mrs. Haviland, casting the hot, high-collared silk upon the bed,
took a new embroidered pongee from a box, and busied herself with
its unfamiliar hooks and straps. Charlotte and Isabelle were never
quite spontaneous in their conversations with their mother, their
attitude in talking with her being one of alert and cautious self-
consciousness; they did not breathe quite naturally, and they
laughed constantly. Yet they both loved this big, firm, omnipotent
being, and believed in her utterly and completely.

"We met Doctor Gregory and Charlie near the club this morning,
M'ma," volunteered Isabelle.

"And they asked about Mrs. Bowditch's dance," Charlotte added with
a little innocent craft. "But I said that M'ma had been unable to
decide. Of course I said that we would LIKE to go, and that you
knew that, and would allow it if you possibly could."

"That was quite right, dear," Mrs. Haviland said to her oldest
daughter, calmly ignoring the implied question, and to Isabelle
she added kindly: "M'ma doesn't quite like to hear you calling a
young man you hardly know by his first name, Isabelle. Of course,
there's no harm in it, but it cheapens a girl just a LITTLE. While
Charlotte might do it because she is older, and has seen Charlie
Gregory at some of the little informal affairs last winter, you
are younger, and haven't really seen much of him since he went to
college. Don't let M'ma hear you do that again."

Isabelle turned a lively scarlet, and even Charlotte colored and
was silent. The younger girl's shamed eyes met her mother's, and
she nodded in quick embarrassment. But this tacit consent did not
satisfy Mrs. Haviland.

"You understand M'ma, don't you, dear?" she asked. Isabelle
murmured something indistinguishable.

"Yes, M'ma!" said that lady herself, encouragingly and briskly.
Isabelle duly echoed a husky "Yes, M'ma!"

"Did you give my message to Miss Roper, Charlotte?" pursued the
matron.

"She wasn't at church, M'ma," said Charlotte, taken unawares and
instinctively uneasy. "Mrs. Roper said she had a heavy cold; she
said she'd been sleeping on the sleeping porch."

"So M'ma's message was forgotten?" the mother asked pleasantly.

Charlotte perceived herself to be in an extremely dangerous
position. Long ago both girls had lost, under this close
surveillance and skilful system of cross-examination, their
original regard for truth as truth. That they usually said what
was true was because policy and self-protection suggested it.
Charlotte had time now for a flying survey of the situation and
its possibilities before she answered, somewhat uncertainly:

"I asked Mrs. Roper to deliver it, M'ma. Wasn't that--" Her voice
faltered nervously. "Was it something you would have rather
telephoned about?"

"Would rather have telephoned about?" Mrs. Haviland corrected
automatically. "Well, M'ma would rather FEEL that when she sends a
message it is given to JUST the person to whom she sent it, in
JUST the way she sent it. However, in this case no harm was done.
Don't hook your heel over the rung of your chair, dear! Ring the
bell, Isabelle, I want Alice."

"I'll hook you, M'ma!" volunteered Charlotte.

"Thank you, dear, but I want to speak to Alice. And now you girls
might run along. I'll be down directly."

A moment later she submitted herself patiently to the maid's
hands. Florence was a conscientious woman, and she felt that she
owed Alice as well as herself this little office. Charlotte might
have hooked her gown for her; indeed, she might with a small
effort have done it herself, but it was Alice's duty, and nothing
could be worse for Alice, or any servant, than to have her duties
erratically assumed by others on one day and left to her on the
next. This was the quickest way to spoil servants, and Florence
never spoiled her servants.

"They have a pleasant day for their picnic," she observed now,
kindly. Alice was on her knees, her face puckered as she busied
herself with the hooks of a girdle, but she smiled gratefully. Her
two brothers had borrowed their employer's coal barge to-day, and
with a score of cherished associates, several hundred sandwiches,
sardines, camp-chairs, and bottles of root beer, with a smaller
number of chaperoning mothers and concertinas, and the inevitable
baby or two, were making a day of it on the river. Alice had
timidly asked, a few days before, for a holiday to-day, that she
might join them, but Mrs. Haviland had pointed out to her
reasonably that she, Alice, had been at home, unexpectedly,
because of her mother's illness, not only the previous Sunday, but
the Saturday, too, and had got half-a-day's leave of absence for
her cousin's wedding only the week before that. Alice was only
eighteen, and her little spurt of bravery had been entirely
exhausted long before her mistress's pleasant voice had stopped.
Nothing more was said of the excursion until to-day.

"I guess they'll be eating their lunch, now, at Old Dock Point,"
said Alice, rising from her knees.

"Well, I hope they'll be careful; one hears of so many accidents
among foolish young people there!" Mrs. Haviland answered, going
downstairs to join her daughters in the hall, and, surrounded by
them, proceeding to her own lunch.

For a while she was thoughtfully silent, and the conversation was
maintained between the older girls and their governess. Charlotte
and Isabelle chatted both German and French charmingly. Little
Florence presently began to talk of her goldfish, meanwhile
cutting a channel across her timbale through which the gravy ran
in a stream.

Usually their mother listened to them with a quiet smile; they
were well-educated girls, and any mother's heart must have been
proud of them. But to-day she felt herself singularly dissatisfied
with them. She said to herself that she hated Sundays, of all the
days of the week. Other days had their duties: music, studies,
riding, tennis, or walks, but on Sundays the girls were a dead
weight upon her. Somehow, they were not in the current of good
times that the other girls and boys of their ages were having. If
she suggested brightly that they go over to the Parmalees' or the
Morans' and see if the young people were playing tennis, she knew
that Charlotte would delicately negative the idea: "They've got
their sets all made up, M'ma, and one hates to, unless they
specially ask one, don't you know?" They might go, of course, and
greet their friends decorously, and watch the game smilingly for a
while. Then they would come home with Fraulein, not forgetting to
say good-bye to their hostess. But, although Charlotte played a
better game than many of the other girls, and Isabelle played a
good game, too, there were always gay little creatures in dashing
costumes who monopolized the courts and the young men, and made
the Haviland girls feel hopelessly heavy and dull. They would come
home and tell their mother that Vivian Sartoris let two of the
boys jump her over the net, and that Cousin Carol wore Kent
Parmalee's panama all afternoon, and called out to him, right
across the court, "Come on down to the boathouse, Kent, and let's
have a smoke!"

"Poor Vivian--poor Billy!" Mrs. Haviland would say. "Men don't
really admire girls who allow them such familiarities, although
the silly girls may think they do! But when it comes to marrying,
it is the sweet, womanly girls to whom the men turn!"

She did not believe this herself, nor did the girls believe it,
but, if they discussed it when they were alone together, before
Mamma, they were always decorously impressed.

"Any plans for the afternoon, girlies?" she asked now, when the
forced strawberries were on the table, and little Florence was
trying to eat the nuts out of her cake, and at the same time
carefully avoid the cake itself and the frosting.

"What's Carol doing, M'ma?"

"When M'ma asks you a question, Isabelle, do not answer with
another question, dear. I dropped Carol at the club, but I think
Aunt Rachael means to pick her up there later, and go on to Mrs.
Whittaker's for tea."

"We met Mrs. Whittaker in the Exchange yesterday, M'ma, and she
very sweetly said that you were to--that is, that she hoped you
would bring us in for a little while this afternoon. Didn't she,
Isabelle?"

"I don't want to go!" Isabelle grumbled. But her mother ignored
her.

"That was very sweet of Aunt Gertrude. I think I will go over to
the club and see what Papa is planning and how his game is going,
and then I could pick you girls up here."

"I'm going over to play with Georgie and Robbie Royce!" shrilled
Florence. "They're mean to me, but I don't care! I hit George in
the stomach---"

Mrs. Haviland looked as pained as if the reported blow had fallen
upon her own person, but she was strangely indulgent to her
youngest born, and now did no more than signal to the nurse, old
Fanny, who stood grinning behind the child's chair, that Miss
Florence might be excused. Florence was accordingly borne off, and
the girls drifted idly upstairs, Isabelle confiding to her sister
as she dutifully brushed her teeth that she wished "something"
would happen! Alice muttered to Sally, another maid, over her
strong hot tea, that you might as well be dead as never do a thing
in God's world you wanted to do, but the rest of the large staff
enjoyed a hearty meal, and when Percival brought the car around at
three o'clock, Mrs. Haviland, magnificent in a change of costume,
spent the entire trip to the club in the resentful reflection that
the man had obviously had coffee and cream and mutton for his
lunch--disgusting of him to come straight to his car and his
mistress still redolent of his meal, but what could one do? In
Mrs. Haviland's upper rear hall was a framed and typewritten list
of rules for the maids, conspicuous upon which were those for
daily baths and regular use of toothbrushes. But Percival never
had seen this list, and he was a wonderful driver and a special
favorite with her husband. She decided that there was nothing to
be done, unless of course the thing recurred, although the
moment's talk with Percival haunted and distressed her all day.

She duly returned to the house for her daughters a little after
four o'clock, and in amicable conversation they went together to
the tea, a crowded, informal affair, in another large house full
of rugs and flowers, rooms dark and rich with expensive tapestries
and mahogany, rooms bright and gay with white enamel and chintz
and wicker furniture.

Everybody was here. Jeanette and Phyllis, as well as Elinor
Vanderwall, Peter Pomeroy and George, the Buckneys and Parker
Hoyt, the Emorys, the Chases, Mrs. Sartoris and old Mrs. Torrence
and Jack, all jumbled a greeting to the Havilands. Of Carol they
presently caught a glimpse standing on a sheltered little porch
with Joe Pickering's sleek head beside her. They were apparently
not talking, just staring quietly down at the green terraces of
the garden. Rachael was pouring tea, her face radiant under a
narrowbrimmed, close hat loaded with cherries, her gown of narrow
green and white stripes the target for every pair of female eyes
in the room.

Charlotte Haviland, in her mother's wake, chanced to encounter
Kenneth Moran, a red-faced, well-dressed and blushing youth of her
own age. Her complacent mother was witness to the blameless
conversation between them.

"How do you do, Kenneth? I didn't know you were here!"

"Oh, how do you do, Charlotte? How do you do, Isabelle? I didn't
know you were here!"

Isabelle grinned silently in horrible embarrassment but Charlotte
said, quick-wittedly:

"How is your mother, Kenneth, and Dorothy?"

"She's well--they're well, thank you. They're here somewhere--at
least Mother is. I think Dorothy's still over at the Clays',
playing tennis!"

He laughed violently at this admission, and Charlotte laughed,
too.

"It's lovely weather for tennis," she said encouragingly. "We--"

"You--" Mr. Moran began. "I beg your pardon!"

"No, I interrupted you!"

"No, that was my fault. I was only going to say that we ought to
have a game some morning. Going to have your courts in order this
year?"

"Yes, indeed," Charlotte said, with what was great vivacity for
her. "Papa has had them all rolled; some men came down from town--
we had it all sodded, you know, last year."

"Is that right?" asked Mr. Moran, as one deeply impressed. "We
must go to it--what?"

"We must!" Charlotte said happily. "Any morning, Kenneth!"

"Sure, I'll telephone!" agreed the youth enthusiastically. "I'm
trying to find Kent Parmalee; his aunt wants him!" he added
mumblingly, as he began to vaguely shoulder his way through the
crowd again.

"You'd better take a microscope!" said Charlotte wittily. And Mr.
Moran's burst of laughter and his "That's right, too!" came back
to them as he went away.

"Dear fellow!" Mrs. Haviland said warmly.

"Isn't he nice!" Charlotte said, fluttered and glowing. She hoped
in her heart that she would meet him again, but although the
Havilands stayed until nearly six o'clock they did not do so;
perhaps because shortly after this conversation Kenneth Moran met
Miss Vivian Sartoris, and they took a plateful of rich, crushy
little cakes and went and sat under the stairs, where they took
alternate bites of each other's mocha and chocolate confections,
and where Vivian told Kenneth all about a complicated and
thrilling love affair between herself and one of the popular
actors of the day. This narrative reflected more credit upon the
young woman's imagination than upon her charms had the listener
but suspected it, but Kenneth was not a brilliant boy, and they
had a lovely time over their confidences.

Charlotte's romantic encounter with the gentleman, however, made
her happy for several hours, and colored her cheeks rosily.

"You're getting pretty, Carlotta!" said her Aunt Rachael,
observing this. "Don't drink tea, that's a good child! You can
stuff on cakes and chocolate of course, Isabelle," she added, "but
Charlotte's complexion ought to be her FIRST THOUGHT for the next
five years!"

"I don't really want any," asserted Charlotte, feeling wonderfully
grown-up and superior to the claims of a nursery appetite. "But
can't I help you, Aunt Rachael?"

"No, my dear, you can't! I'm through the worst of it, and being
bored slowly but firmly to death! Gertrude, I'm just saying that
your party bores me."

"So sorry about you, Rachael!" said the slim, laceclad hostess
calmly. "Here's Judy Moran! Nearly six, Judy, and we dine at seven
on Sundays. But never mind, eat and drink your fill, my child."

"Billy's flirtin' her head off out there!" wheezed stout Mrs.
Moran, dropping into a chair. "Joe and Kent and young Gregory and
half a dozen others are out there with her."

Mrs. Breckenridge, who had begun to frown, relaxed in her chair.

"Ah, well, there's safety in numbers!" she said, reassured. "You
take cream, Judy, and two lumps? Give Mrs. Moran some of those
little damp, brown sandwiches, Isabelle. A minute ago she had some
of the most heavenly hot toast here, but she's taken it away
again! I wish I could get some tea myself, but I've tried three
times and I can't!"

She busied herself resignedly with tongs and teapot, and as Mrs.
Moran bit into her first sandwiches, and the Haviland girls moved
away at a word from their mother, Rachael raised her eyes and met
Warren Gregory's look.

He was standing, ten feet away, in a doorway, his eyelids half
dropped over amused eyes, his hands sunk in his coat pockets.
Rachael knew that he had been there for some moments, and her
heart struggled and fluttered like a bird in a snare, and with a
thrill as girlish as Charlotte's own she felt the color rise in
her cheeks.