Excerpt from Cousin Julia<br><br>J C. Bradford's rise to fortune was not sudden as those things go in America, but the change in his sur roundings had been. Many 'years had gone by and many hundreds of thousands were piled up before Mrs. J C. Realized their wealth and its potentialities. The girls could remember as young children the small frame house where Louise was born. It stood, surrounded by a shady yard, on an unfashionable thoroughfare, and was lighted by gas and heated by glowing coal stoves. The dining room harbored a sewing machine and a rock ing chair and the dinner table wore at breakfast and between meals a Turkey red substitute for the white tablecloth. The girls ate from it bread spread with New Orleans molasses, when they returned afternoons from the public kindergarten, and many brown stains appeared during the week and darkened its splendor. The best remembered feature of the living room was the great worn easy chair. It had seemed colossal to the children, and planted squarely under the blazing Welsbach light, was occupied during the day by the large gray cat (there had been an unending succession of loud-purring gray cats - or was it always the same and during the evening by father and the eve ning paper. He read this exhaustively and in unbroken silence, while his wife sewed and the girls did what little lessons they had to learn. There were seldom visitors and the evening ended at nine or half past. Everybody went upstairs at the same time, but their father's light was always streaming through their half Opened door when the girls went to sleep.<br><br>About the Publisher<br><br>Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com<br><br>This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.