| | 1 | Author: | Wharton, Edith, 1862-1937 | Add | | | Title: | Mrs. Manstey's View.  | | | | Published: | 1995 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | THE view from Mrs. Manstey's window was not a striking one, but to
her at least it was full of interest and beauty. Mrs. Manstey
occupied the back room on the third floor of a New York boarding-house, in a street where the ash-barrels lingered late on the
sidewalk and the gaps in the pavement would have staggered a
Quintus Curtius. She was the widow of a clerk in a large wholesale
house, and his death had left her alone, for her only daughter had
married in California, and could not afford the long journey to New
York to see her mother. Mrs. Manstey, perhaps, might have joined
her daughter in the West, but they had now been so many years apart
that they had ceased to feel any need of each other's society, and
their intercourse had long been limited to the exchange of a few
perfunctory letters, written with indifference by the daughter, and
with difficulty by Mrs. Manstey, whose right hand was growing stiff
with gout. Even had she felt a stronger desire for her daughter's
companionship, Mrs. Manstey's increasing infirmity, which caused
her to dread the three flights of stairs between her room and the
street, would have given her pause on the eve of undertaking so
long a journey; and without perhaps, formulating these reasons she
had long since accepted as a matter of course her solitary life in
New York. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
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