Wild Oats Author:James Oppenheim General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1910 Original Publisher: B.W. Huebsch Subjects: Fiction / Literary Fiction / Romance / 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 Books edition of this book yo... more »u get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER IV THE SECOND NIGHT ONE reason why Frank had never met a good woman was that since he was old enough to take to the streets he had not met his Mother. She was the type of woman one might call a shadow. Thin she was, frail, small, with large eyes and lips and fast-fading hair, and by dressing in black she made herself all the more obscure. Her husband was all bluster, emotion, impatience -- March weather, a short man with a hawk nose and blood-shot eyes. The mother was negative, passive, unprotesting. Wherefore when Frank came into the dining room that next morning and put his arms about her ancl gently kissed her, she was shocked, and feared he was ill. Her alarm increased as she noted his appearance. He had on a dark shirt and a black tie; his collar was low; his face pale. "What's the matter, Frank?" she asked. "Nothing, Mother." He smiled gently. "I thought " but shadows do not tell their thoughts. Gazing at her with curious eyes, Frank felt he was making a discovery. He began to realize how shabby her life was, lived possibly in an area of ten square city blocks. She never went anywhere; her sole pleasure was cards; her life was the common lot of the women of the poor -- washing, scrubbing, cooking, sewing, marketing. Frank saw the pitiful lines of her face, the large hungry eyes, the tragic want. It went through him like a needle of pain that this too was a woman with all a woman's passions. Poor Mother! Seven times had she brought to this world in pain a human child. Seven seasons had she ha...« less