The Art of Disappearing Author:John Talbot Smith General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1902 Original Publisher: William H. Young and Company Subjects: Fiction / General Fiction / Literary History / General Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Bo... more »oks edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER III. THE ABYSSES OF PAIN. Horace Endicott, though not a youth of deep sentiment, had capacities in that direction. Life so far had been chiefly of the surface for him. Happiness had hidden the deep and dangerous meanings of things. He was a child yet in his unconcern for the future, and the child, alone of mortals, enjoys a foretaste of immortality, in his belief that happiness is everlasting. The shadow of death clouding the pinched face of Tim Hurley was his first glimpse of the real. He had not seen his father and mother die. The thought that followed, Sonia's beloved face lying under that shadow, had terrified him. It was the uplifting of the veil of illusion that enwraps childhood. The thought stayed his foot that night as he turned into the avenue leading up to his own house, and he paused to consider this new dread. The old colonial house greeted his eyes, solemn and sweet in-the moonlight, with a few lights of human comfort in its windows. He had never thought so before, but now it came stnugTit to his heart that this was his home, his old friend, steadfast and unchanging, which had welcomed him into the world, and had never changed its look to him, never closed its doors against him ; all that remained of the dear, but almost forgotten past; the beautiful stage from which all the ancient actors had made irrevocable exit. What beauty had graced it for a century back ! What honors its children had brought to it from councils of state and of war ! What true human worth ha...« less