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Various

"The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story"


Above her shoulder on the wall was a large sheet of fashions: women with
wasp waists, smirking, rolling: stiff men, all clothes, with little
heads. Under the table--where Meyer sits with his big feet so much to
look at--Flora played, a soiled bundle, with a ball of yarn and a huge
gleaming scizzors.--No one perhaps comes, and then I do not mind sitting
and keeping the store. I saw a dead horse in the street.--A dead horse,
two days dead, rotting and stiff. Against the grey of the living street,
a livid dead horse: a hot stink was his cold death against the street's
clean-ness. There are two little boys, wrapped in blue coat, blue
muffler, leather caps. They stand above the gaunt head of the horse and
sneer at him. His flank rises red and huge. His legs are four strokes
away from life. He is dead. The naughty boys pick up bricks. They stand,
very close, above the head of the horse. They hurl down a brick. It
strikes the horse's skull, falls sharp away. They hurl down a brick. It
cuts the swollen nostril, falls soft away. The horse does not mind, the
horse does not hurt. He is dead.
--Go away, you two! Throwing stones at a dead horse! Go away, I say! How
would you like--When one is dead, stones strike one's skull and fall
sharp away, one is moveless. When one is dead, stones strike the soft of
one's throat and fall soft away, one is hurtless.


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