The Corral, Volume 1, Number 3, December, 1907 Page: 1
19 p. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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THE CORRAL
'I'WO CHlltlIS'I'MAS PRESENT'I'S.
IY ('1-IItISTINE COFFEE.
It was on a lll, foggy, slushy night, the. night before
C(hristmas that ('liarice Hardin iplodded her way along the crowd-
(ed. jostling streets in one madl effort to reach the little spot
on the fifth fk or of a crowded hunched up, I)oarding house, she
called home, before her little stock of stored ul) energy should
fail. The air was heavy with the cold, penetrating moisture that
strikes through every covering, and chills the .warmest heart.
('Iarice's heart was not warm. It felt like a lump in her
chest. She wonldered sometimes if it really was the organ, that
had once throbbed warm and strong in answer to her emic-
lions. Life was tugging at her with an inordinate strain this
(velnilng, and she had a (ldull, )puckered( look, almost of terror
about her ('yes, and hopelessness, and something of (lesl)air..
Slowly she pIloddled along the remaining steps, seeming almost
to force each foot from its palace to take the next step. One.
pai;sing long enou gh to look, who ,( ili( have seen a face pale and
\\an. framed with a mass of dark waving hair, and as the feat-
111ie iiost . l)rominenlt )y count rast, sear'le't lips drawn tigth inward
in a Ietermined line. Clarice's lips were nearly always (hrawn
in those (lays, or else puckered, for they indexed her feelings.
Perhaps in other (lays they had smiled, Ibut as she began to meet
the realities of col;l, rainy, soggy days, and attic rooms, and fa-
tigue, and utter loneliness. and rubbers that, wouldn't stay on.
and a fellow-boarder who persisted in looking at her-all
these various things attend-and on a girl alone in the city-her
lips had tightened into a firm little line, which seemed almost
to hold,her being together.
Sometimes I wondered if she should let them go, if the
cord which held her lips together would not snap. For we are all
held together by cords, as it were. Some large strong, hempen
cords, some twine, and little Clarice, I think, must have had
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Simmons College. The Corral, Volume 1, Number 3, December, 1907, periodical, December 1907; Abilene, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth109336/m1/1/: accessed April 24, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Hardin-Simmons University Library.