Page:Wolfe - Look Homeward, Angel.djvu/327

You can mark my words everything will go to the tax-collector under the hammer before we’re done. The temperature was 7 above when I looked this morning, coal has gone up seventy-five cents a ton. The Sunny South. Keep off the grass said Bill Nye. Jesus God! I passed the Southern Fuel Co. yesterday and saw old Wagner at the window with a fiendish smile of gloatation on his face as he looked out on the sufferings of the widows and orphans. Little does he care if they all freeze. Bob Grady dropped dead Tuesday morning as he was coming out of the Citizen’s Bank. I had known him twenty— five years. He’d never been sick a day in his life. All, all are gone, the old familiar faces. Old Gant will be the next. I have been eating at Mrs. Sales’since your mother went away. You’ve never seen such a table as she keeps in your life—a profusion of fruits piled up in pyramids, stewed prunes, peaches, and preserves, big roasts of pork, beef, lamb, cold cuts of ham and tongue, and a half dozen vegetables in an abundance that beggars description. How in God’s name she does it for thirty-five cents I don’t know. Eugene is staying with the Leonards while your mother’s away. I take him up to Sales’with me once or twice a week and give him a square meal. They look mighty serious when they see those long legs coming. God knows where he puts it all—he can eat more than any three people I ever saw. I suppose he gets pretty lean pickings at the school. He’s got the lean and hungry Gant look. Poor child. He has no mother any more. I’ll do the best I can for him until the smash comes. Leonard comes and brags about him every week. He says his equal is not to be found anywhere. Every one in town has heard of him. Preston Carr (who’s sure to be the next governor) was talking to me about him the other day. He wants me to send him to the State university law school where he will make lifelong friends among the people of his own State, and then put him into politics. It’s what I should have done. I’m going to give him a good education. The rest is up to him. Perhaps he’ll be a credit to the name. You haven’t seen him since he put on long pants. His mother picked out a beautiful suit at Moale’s Christmas. He went down to Daisy’s for Christmas and put them on. I bought him a cheap pair at the Racket Store