The Project Gutenberg EBook of Mother, by Owen Wister

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Title: Mother

Author: Owen Wister

Posting Date: August 26, 2008 [EBook #1387]
Release Date: July, 1998

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MOTHER ***

Produced by Bill Brewer

MOTHER

By Owen Wister

To My Favourite Broker With The Earnest Assurance
That Mr. Beverly Is Not Meant For Him

NOTE

IN 1901, this story appeared anonymously as the ninth of a sequence of
short stories by various authors, in a volume entitled A House Party. It
has been slightly remodelled for separate publication.

June 7, 1907, OWEN WISTER

MOTHER

When handsome young Richard Field--he was very handsome and very
young--announced to our assembled company that if his turn should really
come to tell us a story, the story should be no invention of his fancy,
but a page of truth, a chapter from his own life, in which himself was
the hero and a lovely, innocent girl was the heroine, his wife at once
looked extremely uncomfortable. She changed the reclining position in
which she had been leaning back in her chair, and she sat erect, with a
hand closed upon each arm of the chair.

"Richard," she said, "do you think that it is right of you to tell any
one, even friends, anything that you have never yet confessed to me?"

"Ethel," replied Richard, "although I cannot promise that you will be
entirely proud of my conduct when you have heard this episode of my
past, I do say that there is nothing in it to hurt the trust you have
placed in me since I have been your husband. Only," he added, "I hope
that I shall not have to tell any story at all."

"Oh, yes you will!" we all exclaimed together; and the men looked eager
while the women sighed.

The rest of us were much older than Richard, we were middle-aged, in
fact; and human nature is so constructed, that when it is at the age
when making love keeps it busy, it does not care so much to listen to
tales of others' love-making; but the more it recedes from that period
of exuberance, and ceases to have love adventures of its own, the
greater become its hunger and thirst to hear about