Ancestors by William Maxwell

Author:William Maxwell [Maxwell, William]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-48145-0
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2012-04-10T16:00:00+00:00

Because of my grandfather’s failing health—so intricately are the strands of human life woven together—Professor Hieronymous met with his comeuppance. Given though the Disciples were to arguing among themselves, there was one principle that was held by all Campbellite preachers and teachers to be self-evident and never disputed—namely, that they should never put up at a hotel if there was anywhere else that would take them in. One evening a year or so after my father had withdrawn from college, Professor Hieronymous turned up, at dinner time. He was fed and stayed on, waiting to be asked to spend the night. My grandfather was upstairs in bed, ill. My grandmother and my Aunt Maybel could not invite the professor to stay because it was my father’s place, as acting head of the family, to do this. At nine o’clock they excused themselves and retired, while my father sat up with the guest. Professor Hieronymous talked on and on pleasantly, and my father listened. At eleven o’clock, thinking to force my father’s hand, he stood up and said, “I guess I’d better go to a hotel,” and my father said, “I think so too.” The satisfaction of this moment stayed with him, undiluted, for sixty years.

When my father came home from work he went straight up to my grandfather’s bedroom and had his supper there, while he poured out all that had happened to him during the day. And during one of the periods when my grandfather was not confined to his bed, he allowed my father to persuade him to enter a saloon and, with his foot on the brass rail, drink a glass of beer. It is hard to see how love could go any farther.

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