Miscellany: Literature

The dreadful little note lay on the kitchen table. It was full of worn words, stale phrases used a thousand times in stories and plays: “Couldn’t stand it any longer. . . am taking the children out of their misery because the boy is already beginning to show characteristics of his father.” Strychnine, antidote for an ominous heredity, had twisted the limbs and belly ‘of the male child, 18 months old—had screwed the face of his sister, 3, into a last grimace. The woman, one Mrs. M. D. Tilman of Chicago, had finished the bottle herself. She lay dead, face down on a soiled rug, while the breath of a spring evening ruffled her skirt and played with the fringe of the curtain. Clutched in her hand was a copy of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House.