Excerpt: CHAPTER III MRS. ADAMS had remained in Alice's room, but her mood seemed to have changed, during her daughter's little more than t momentary absence. "What did he say?" she asked, quickly, and her tone was hopeful. "'Say?'" Alice repeated, impatiently. "Why, nothing. I didn't let him. Really, mama, I think the best thing for you to do would be to just keep out of his room, because I don't believe you can go in there and not talk to him about it, and if you do talk we'll never get him to do the right thing. Never!" The mother's response was a grieving silence; she turned from her daughter and walked to the door. "Now, for goodness' sake!" Alice cried. "Don't go making tragedy out of my offering you a little practical advice!" "I'm not," Mrs. Adams gulped, halting. "I'm just -- just going to dust the downstairs, Alice." And with her face still averted, she went out into the little hallway, closing the door behind her. A moment later she could be heard descending the stairs, the sound of her footsteps carrying somehow an effect of resignation. Alice listened, sighed, and, breathing the words, "Oh, murder!" turned to cheerier matters. She put on a little apple-green turban with a dim gold band round it, and then, having shrouded the turban in a white veil, which she kept pushed up above her forehead, she got herself into a tan coat of soft cloth fashioned with rakish sever...

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In this 1918 Pulitzer Prize winning story, widower Roger Gale, struggles to deal with the way his children and grandchildren respond to the changing society. His family is the story of a sixty-year-old New York man who reflects on his life and the lives of his three daughters. The women represent three separate types--one, maternal, the second devoted to social movements, and the third living a happy and carefree existence--and the father sees something of himself in each. Ernest Poole was born in Chicago in 1888. He graduated from Princeton and worked as a journalist. He was active in social reforms, especially child labor.

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Although it won the Pulitzer Prize in 1922, this stirring novel about World War I remains far less known than Cather's established classics such as My Antonia and Death Comes for the Archbishop. In the lucid, unadorned prose that was her hallmark, Cather brings to life the simple Nebraska farm folk and their tranquil rural lifestyle, showing how the Great War, seemingly so far away on the Old Continent, eventually touches them all. More than half of the novel is devoted to the Wheeler homestead, the pace following the slow rhythms of the prairie farmland. The novel's protagonist, Claude Wheeler, a strong, healthy, red-headed farm boy, is physically a typical representative of his sturdy sodbuster family and hard-working neighbors. But mentally the boy has little in common with their narrow outlooks, and the limited horizons of his parochial community make him restless and filled with a barely suppressed discontent. Through a series of striking vignettes, Cather brilliantly reveals Claude's search for some greater purpose to his life beyond the routines of farm life. Gradually, the widening war in Europe sneaks up on the rural Nebraska region, as newspaper reports of refugees and German atrocities begin to stir the emotions of the local young men. When the United States finally enters the conflict, Claude is one of the first to enlist, seeing purpose, adventure, and commitment to some larger ideal in the call to arms. Claude's longings for radically new experiences are more than amply realized overseas in sobering encounters with suffering French women and children, the battle-scarred English "Tommies, " and the tenacious German enemy. The novel concludes with a memorable testament to theshattering effects of war on youth and ideals, a powerful depiction of mechanized battle, and its life-changing effects on one Nebraska farm boy and the people he left behind.

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This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER HI UNTIL he reached the age of twelve, Georgie's education was a domestic process; tutors came to the house; and those citizens who yearned for his taking down often said: "Just wait till he has to go to public school; then he'll get it!" But at twelve Georgie was sent to a private school in the town, and there came from this small and dependent institution no report, or even rumour, of Georgie's getting anything that ht. was thought to deserve; therefore the yearning still persisted, though growing gaunt with feeding upon itself. For, although Georgie's pomposities and impudence in the little school were often almost unbearable, the teachers were fascinated by him. They did not like h"n?he was too arrogant for that? but he kept them in such a state of emotion that they thought more about him than they did about all of the other ten pupils. The emotion he kept them in was usually one resulting from injured self- respect, but sometimes it was dazzled admiration.So far as their conscientious observation went, he "studied" his lessons sparingly; but sometimes, in class, he flashed an admirable answer, with a comprehension not often shown by the pupils they taught; and he passed his examinations easily. In all, without discernible effort, he acquired at this school some rudiments of a liberal education and learned nothing whatever about himself. The yearners were still yearning when Georgie, at sixteen, was sent away to a great "Prep School." "Now," they said brightly, "he'll get it! He'll find himself among boys just as important in their home towns as he is, and they'll knock the .stuffing out of him when he puts on his airs with them! Oh, but that would be worth something to see!" They were mistaken, it appeared, for when Georgie returned, a few months later, he still...

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