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Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

Eleanor Hallowell Abbott Biography

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“Incidentally her head ached and her shoulders ached and her lungs ached and the ankle-bones of both feet ached quite excruciatingly. But nothing of her felt permanently incapacitated except her noble expression. Like a strip of lip-colored lead suspended from her poor little nose by two tugging wire-gray wrinkles her persistently conscientious sickroom smile seemed to be whanging aimlessly against her front teeth. The sensation certainly was very unpleasant.”

SmileNurseExhaustion
Book:The White Linen Nurse
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“Then Night came down like the feathery soot of a smoky lamp, and smutted[9] first the bedquilt, then the hearth-rug, then the window-seat, and then at last the great, stormy, faraway outside world. But sleep did not come. Oh, no! Nothing new came at all except that particularly wretched, itching type of insomnia which seems to rip away from one's body the whole kind, protecting skin and expose all the raw, ticklish fretwork of nerves to the mercy of a gritty blanket or a wrinkled sheet. Pain came too, in its most brutally high night-tide; and sweat, like the smother of furs in summer; and thirst like the scrape of hot sand-paper; and chill like the clammy horror of raw fish.”

PainNightInsomnia
Book:Molly Make-Believe
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“What? Do you dare smile and suggest for a moment that just because of the Absence between us I cannot make myself vivid to you? Ho! Silly boy! Don't you know that the plainest sort of black ink throbs more than some blood—and the touch of the softest hand is a harsh caress compared to the touch of a reasonably shrewd pen? Here—now, I say—this very moment: Lift this letter of mine to your face, and swear—if you're honestly able to—that you can't smell the rose in my hair!”

AbsenceLetterLove Letter
Book:Molly Make-Believe
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“Why, I've been all over the world, I tell you, and fairly loafed and lolled in every conceivable sort of ease and luxury, but the Soul of me—the wild, restless, breathless, discontented soul of me—never sat down before in all its life—I say, until my frightened hand cuddled into his broken one. I tell you I don't pretend to explain it, I don't pretend to account for it; all I know is—that smothering there under all that horrible wreckage and everything—the instant my hand went home to his, the most absolute sense of serenity and contentment went over me.”

HandsPeaceLovers
Book:The Indiscreet Letter
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“the time to grant anybody a favor is the day the favor is asked, for that day is the one psychological moment of the world when supply and demand are keyed exacty to each other's limits, and can be mated beatifically to grow old, or die young, together. But after that day -- !”

WorldMomentsTogetherYoungDiesGrowsDemandLimitsFavorsPsychologicalGrantsDie YoungSupply And Demand
Book:The Sick-a-bed Lady: And Also Hickory Dock, The Very Tired Girl, The Happy-day, The Runaway Road, Something that Happened in October, The Amateur Lover, Heart of the City, The Pink Sash, Woman's Only Business
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“And while you and the rest of your kind are battling together-year after year-for this special privilege of being 'bored to death,' the 'real girl' that you're asking about, the marvelous girl, the girl with the big, beautiful, unspoken thoughts in her head, the girl with the big, brave, undone deeds in her heart, the girl that stories are made of, the girl whom you call 'improbable'-is moping off alone in some dark, cold corner-or sitting forlornly partnerless against the bleak wall of the ballroom-or hiding shyly up in the dressing-room-waiting to be discovered!”

YearsHeartKindMadeRealStoriesBigsTogetherBeautifulGirlWaitingDarkRoomsSpecialWallColdSittingAskingBravePrivilegeDeedsCornersBoredHidingMarvelousDressingsUndoneUnspokenBleakImprobableBallroomDressing RoomsBeing BoredReal GirlBored To Death
Book:Little Eve Edgarton
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