Quotation from: The Strength of the Strong

Written by: Jack London


Six times she went between the cart and the stable, each time with
a full sack on her back, and beyond passing the time of day with me
she took no notice of my presence. Then, the cart empty, she
fumbled for matches and lighted a short clay pipe, pressing down
the burning surface of the tobacco with a calloused and apparently
nerveless thumb. The hands were noteworthy. They were large-
knuckled, sinewy and malformed by labour, rimed with callouses, the
nails blunt and broken, and with here and there cuts and bruises,
healed and healing, such as are common to the hands of hard-working
men. On the back were huge, upstanding veins, eloquent of age and
toil. Looking at them, it was hard to believe that they were the
hands of the woman who had once been the belle of Island McGill.
This last, of course, I learned later. At the time I knew neither
her history nor her identity.

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Old Dominion University CS Dept
Designed by Joan A. Smith for the CRATE project
Created: 2007-2-22T12:35:29Z
Part of the CratePreservation Project
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Part of a series of experiments in web preservation under the direction of Michael L. Nelson, Ph.D.