Publisher's Synopsis
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. 1900 edition. Excerpt: ... zekiel obadiah sykes leaned over the tumble-down split-picket fence that had once kept the pigs and chickens from his mother's humble flower-garden, and gazed fixedly at the mountain before him. His was not a striking figure, being lank and somewhat round-shouldered. It was not even picturesque. A pair of worn jean trousers covered his lower limbs, and were held in place by knit " galluses," which crossed the back of his cotton shirt exactly in the middle and disappeared over his shoulders in well-defined grooves. A stained and battered wool hat hung like a bell over his head, which rested by his chin upon a red, rough hand. The face was half covered by a reddish brown beard, the first of his budding manhood. The sun had just sunk beyond the mountain, and the great shadow that crept across the single field of starving corn and the tobacco patch deepened into twilight, and still the young man rested on the picket-fence. Occasionally he would eject into the half-denned road, which came around one side of the mountain and disappeared around the other, a stream of tobacco-juice, and pensively watch it as it lined the gravel and vanished into the soil with something like a human gasp. Once he lifted a bare foot, and with a prolonged effort scratched with its horny toes the calf of the supporting leg. But by no motion did he dissipate the air of listlessness and despondency that hung about him. Fortune had not smiled upon the Sykes family for many moons. There were no pigs to disturb the flower-garden overrun with prince's-feathers, bachelor's-buttons, four-o'clocks, old-maids, and sunflowers, and the dismounted gate leaned restfully against the post on which it had once hung. Somehow everything in the neighborhood of the Sykes cottage seemed...
