The End of the World: A Love Story

rough a contempt for his neighbors, that he liked anybody who did not belong to his own people. If a Turk had emigrated to Clark township, Andrew would have fal

imes called, could exorcise his demon of misanthropy, whic

. Your bookish man at the West has never learned to mark the distinction between the world of ideas and the world of practical life. Instead of writing poems or romances, he falls to living them, or at least trying to. Ad

rily appear odd. Had he drifted into communities of more culture, his eccentricity, begotten of a sense of superiority to his surroundings, would have worn away. Had he been happily married, his oddities would have been softened; but n

ckwoods Philosopher warns you. I pray you give good heed. I do not know Julia. She is my niece. It ill becomes me to doubt h

m at peace now. But look at me. Do you not see the marks of the ravages of a great storm? A sort of a qualified happiness I have in philosophy. But what I might have b

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omenade with him in the large apartment up and down an alley

e a great author and a philosophical thinker, one must not be a man of society. I never went to a wood-chopping, to an apple-peeling, to a corn-shucking, to a barn-raising, nor indeed to any of our rustic feasts. I suppose this piqued the vani

as beautiful. She was industrious. The best housekeeper in the state! She was high-strung. I liked her all the more for

her slave, and she did. She read books that she thought I liked. She planned in various ways to seem to like what I liked, and yet she had sense enough to differ a l

d to my imagination to be. I think most lovers love an ideal that hovers in the air a little above the real recipient of their love

ir for a woman, like Samson. I tried to dress more decently, and made myself ridiculous no doubt,

er vanity. I came back here and ignored her. She broke with Samuel and tried to regain my affections. I scorned her. I trod on her heart! I stamped her pride into the dust! I was cruel. I was contemptuous. I was well-nigh insane. Then she went back to Samuel, and made him marry her. Then she forced my imbecile old father, on his death-bed, to will all the property to Samuel, except this piece of rough hill-land and one thousand dollars. But here I built this castle. My thousand dollars I put in b