Bodbank (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1916 Excerpt: ... XI THE DEAD CANARY--George Henry Gunn. Murder, shipwrecks, explosions, conspiracies, earthquakes and terrible love are such simple life as compared to life in Bodbank. Some things that go on here are much more exciting. Witness the incident of the Dead Canary. I never could see why they called her Gwendolin unless it was that her mother read too many novels. Halpin Denny was her father. Honest Halp he was called, and every one knows that when a man is called "Honest John " or " Honest So and So," it either is a cause to suspect him of being a gambler, sharper and wife-beater, or else is a notice to the public that a man is so honest that he suspects every one else of being honest, too, and is always on the market for dry cows, watered stock, subscription books, and correspondence school courses in lion taming. Honest Halp was the second kind. His was a life of taking worthless things off the hands of suffering humanity, but few appreciated him with his pale and astounded eyes and because folks do not like to be reminded of what they did to a living man, few attended his funeral. Old Bosville was there; he said in a hoarse whisper, "Halp wore the loudest squeaking shoes in this county." And even that was more descriptive than the eulogy. His daughter went to high school when I was teaching there; she was not very brilliant, but she had matured early and as the expression went in those days, she was always "being promoted on her looks." She grew a braid of hair that was as long as a sermon and thick as one of River Charley, the clam-fisher's wrists, and she was so healthy it used to give her mother, who, like a lot of good women, demand a certain amount of illness in the family, a great deal of worry. Somehow, when any one comes out on a porch and calls "Gwen...