Quotation from: The Valley of the Moon

Written by: Jack London


For a time Saxon sat crushed, helpless. Then smoldered protest,
revolt. Vainly she asked why God had it in for her. What had she
done to deserve such fate? She briefly reviewed her life in quest
of deadly sins committed, and found them not. She had obeyed her
mother; obeyed Cady, the saloon-keeper, and Cady's wife; obeyed
the matron and the other women in the orphan asylum; obeyed Tom
when she came to live in his house, and never run in the streets
because he didn't wish her to. At school she had always been
honorably promoted, and never had her deportment report varied
from one hundred per cent. She had worked from the day she left
school to the day of her marriage. She had been a good worker,
too. The little Jew who ran the paper box factory had almost wept
when she quit. It was the same at the cannery. She was among the
high-line weavers when the jute mills closed down. I And she had
kept straight. It was not as if she had been ugly or
unattractive. She had known her temptations and encountered her
dangers. The fellows had been crazy about her. They had run after
her, fought over her, in a way to turn most girls' heads. But she
had kept straight. And then had come Billy, her reward. She had
devoted herself to him, to his house, to all that would nourish
his love; and now she and Billy were sinking down into this
senseless vortex of misery and heartbreak of the man-made world.

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Old Dominion University CS Dept
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Created: 2007-2-22T12:35:29Z
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Part of a series of experiments in web preservation under the direction of Michael L. Nelson, Ph.D.