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    7 best short stories by Zona Gale
    7 best short stories by Zona Gale
    7 best short stories by Zona Gale
    Ebook130 pages1 hour

    7 best short stories by Zona Gale

    By Zona Gale and August Nemo

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    About this ebook

    Zona Gale was the first woman to win Pulitzer Prize for Drama, for the theatrical adaptation of her novel Miss Lulu Bett. His fiction brings the theme of life in the Midwest and the condition of women, the cause for which he worked throughout his life.
    In this edition you will find seven specially selected short stories and you will be able to immerse yourself in the universe of this amazing American storyteller:

    - Friday
    - Sucess and Artie Cherry
    - The Dance
    - The Way thw World Is
    - White Bread
    - Human
    - Exit Charity
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTacet Books
    Release dateMay 14, 2020
    ISBN9783968585864
    7 best short stories by Zona Gale

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      7 best short stories by Zona Gale - Zona Gale

      Publisher

      The Author

      Zona Gale determined at an early age to be a writer. She graduated from the University of Wisconsin in 1895 and for six years was a newspaper reporter for the Evening Wisconsin and then the Milwaukee Journal, during which time she received her master’s degree in literature from Wisconsin (1899). In 1901 she moved to New York City and joined the staff of the Evening World.

      In 1903 Gale became a freelance writer and sold her first story to Success magazine. In 1905 she began publishing a series of local-colour stories set in Friendship Village, based on her hometown of Portage, Wisconsin. Her first novel, Romance Island, appeared in 1906, followed by several novels and story collections in the same setting. A prize from Delineator magazine in 1911 for an uncharacteristically realistic and unsentimental story enabled her to return to Portage to live, but it also marked the beginning of a slow growth in her writing toward maturity.

      Heart’s Kindred (1915) was a weak novel propagandizing against war; the suspicion aroused during World War I by her pacifism and her involvement in such organizations as the Women’s Trade Union League and the American Civic Association forced her to reassess the meaning of small-town life in the Midwest. A Daughter of the Morning (1917) dealt with working conditions of women, and Birth (1918) depicted an entirely different side of Portage, here called Burage. Miss Lulu Bett (1920) was a village comedy depicting a spinster’s attempts at self-assertion; her dramatized version opened on Broadway in 1920 and won the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1921.

      In her subsequent works, which included novels, biography, poetry, and short stories, Gale displayed a new, impressionistic style and later a leaning toward mysticism. Notable were her novels Faint Perfume (1923) and Preface to Life (1926). Her last work, Magna, a novel, was published posthumously in 1939. She also wrote several plays, including Mister Pitt (1924), based on Birth. She was active in politics as an ardent supporter of many liberal causes of the day. She sat on the board of regents of the University of Wisconsin in 1923–29.

      Friday

      Hempel had watched the hands of the clock make all the motions of the hour, from the trim segment of eleven to the lazy down-stretch of twenty minutes past, the slim erectness of the half-hour, the promising angles of the three quarters, ten, five to twelve, and last the unanimity and consummation of noon.

      Before all the whistles had ceased he was on the street. It was Thursday, but he was going home; he had told them that he must get home. He had even told one of them why he must get home. Look alive! he wanted to shout to somebody. She may be going through it now. Only of course there was nobody to whom a man could shout a thing like that, so he sent the message flooding through all the little secret cells that faithfully worked to let him hurry. Thus he dashed through West Twenty-eighth Street, and came to a halt at Fifth Avenue.

      A procession was passing.

      Hold on, young fellow, an officer said, serene in the law's backing of constituted authority for easy familiarity. Can't you see the doin's?

      But I must—I must! I tell you I must! Hempel cried. And when the thick neck continued to shake the great, faintly smiling face, Hempel, the boy, stepped close to the policeman and said something to him, man to man.

      The officer lifted his chin in the first half of a nod, passed the business on to his eyebrows, and threw his glance down the avenue.

      Set tight, then, he said, till I tip you the go.

      So Hempel waited on the curb. For the first time his eye took in the procession passing, and he saw that the paraders were women. At first this fact made on him small impression. Then he found himself thinking:

      These women here are well and strong, and she may be dying. But that thought he put violently away, and seized on something, anything, to crowd it back. So he fixed his mind on the women.

      Some were young, ruddy, erect; some were young, narrow-chested, stooped; some were old, and dragged their feet; one who passed near Hempel scuffled at every step. But, decently or shabbily or showily dressed, all were looking up, intent on something.

      What's the matter with 'em? Hempel asked.

      That there big fire, the policeman answered—that there last factory fire. It et into 'em some. These are striking; a grand sight o' good it 'll do 'em.

      Hempel looked at them now with a new impression. He too had shuddered at that thing—the flimsy loft, the locked doors, the broken bodies, the charred remains. Poor things, trying to earn their living! He straightened his young shoulders. She did n't have to do that. Thank God! he had saved her from this kind of thing. That poor young creature there, carrying the heavy pole of a rude banner: GIVE US THE CHANCE TO SAY HOW WE WORK, it said. Already the girl was dropping with weariness. Every day must be to her weariness. But the girl's face was intent on something, as the faces of all were intent. And Letty was there in the flat, just waiting. But she might be going through it now, and he three miles away from her. Even as he turned fiercely on the policeman, he saw the gray helmet execute a mighty nod.

      Skin! said the officer, and through a break in the ranks Hempel tore across the avenue and fled toward the subway.

      As he ran, a sickening thought swept him. It was true that Letty need never march like that,—she was safe, with him to work for her,—but suppose it should be a girl—Hempel shrank abashed from daughter—suppose it should be a girl, and she should go to work sometime!

      O God! something in him said as he ran, I wanted a boy. Here's another reason. Let it be a boy!

      The little flat was very still as Hempel fitted his key. He had dreaded finding some alien confusion. Now the silence seemed more ominous. He ran tiptoeing across the passage and turned the knob. The afternoon sun flooded the sitting-room. In the willow rocker his wife sat sewing.

      Letty! he cried. I thought maybe-

      Not yet, she said, and one moment smiled up at him, the next caught at a button of his coat with a whimpering breath. Dicko, I'm so glad you 've come! he heard her say.

      Instead of going into the dark dining-room, the noisy, loud-voiced, kindly maid, a luxury which they had never known until of late, brought a covered dish or two to Letty's sewing-table, and they ate by the window, in the sun. A book lay open on the window-sill. Some one had sent in a pink hyacinth. A child in a red dress was playing with two colored balls in the street below. When luncheon was finished, the well-being in the small, bright room, and the thrilling suspense of the time, possessed Hempel as the chief fact in life. He looked at his wife in her gray gown and cap of lace, at her soft, white work. She was so little! He stretched out his big, brown hand, and laid it on her knee.

      Letty, he said, see me, strong as an ox; and it does n't help any.

      She looked at him strangely, beautifully.

      Strength is n't the only thing, she said. I was thinking that just when you came in. I'd found something—

      She took up the book on the window-sill. Sometimes the things which she read to him from books had made Hempel uneasy with the sense that he was not seeing in them what she saw; then gradually he had grown to feel that very likely she saw more than was really there. But now he felt that in this hour whatever she had found would be there for him, too. He followed her, even when he began to perceive that what she was reading aloud was verse, which someway always confused him, like several exposures on the same film. But this, he understood quickly, was man's verse, man's talk, straight from the shoulder:

      Force rules the world still. Has ruled it, shall rule it; Meekness is weakness, Strength is triumphant, Over the whole earth Still it is Thor's Day!

      Bully! said Hempel, spontaneously.

      She shook her head, smiling.

      It is n't true, she said.

      What is n't? asked Hempel.

      Well, she said, there's something else. It is n't just strength that's going to pull me through to-night, if it's to-night. It's something else—something that's weak and great and small, not a bit like strength, Dicko.

      He wondered what she meant. He reached out, and took in his somewhat roughened fingers a hem of the soft, white stuff of her work. He saw that it was a little skirt. A strange sweetness ran current with his blood.

      Strength is the greatest thing in the world though, I guess, Letty, he was saying.

      She laughed, and for a moment leaned her face close to his. Then she met his puzzled eyes gravely, sweetly.

      Men don't know it, she said. They don't know how to know it. Women know; I know now, and I 'll know to-night.

      Abruptly, as he looked at her, Hempel saw something in her face that he had never seen there before—a strange intentness, a strangely uplifted, radiant intentness. He had seen faces intent like that only a little while before in a marching line. It gave him the instance that he needed.

      Why, look here, said Hempel. Talk about strength not being the biggest thing ever. If you 'd seen what I saw to-day—the whole street full of miserable, half-starved women, some of 'em left out o' that last factory fire, some of 'em striking out o' sympathy and on account o' their own troubles. And a grand sight o' good it 'll do 'em, Hempel repeated. Look at 'em, what they are, just because they 've got no strength. All they can do, the poor things, is to get out there and go marching.

      Ah, Letty said, but they were marching. They were marching. And they 'll get what they 're after in the end. And without strength.

      She dropped

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