The Whole Family

The Whole Family

The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Whole Family, A Novel by
Twelve Authors by William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman,
Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jordan, John
Kendrick Bangs, Henry James, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Edith Wyatt,
Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews, Alice Brown, and Henry Van Dyke
Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing
this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook.
This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project
Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the
header without written permission.
Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the
eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is
important information about your specific rights and restrictions in how
the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a
donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved.
**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since
1971**
*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of
Volunteers!*****
Title: The Whole Family
Author: Howells et al.
Release Date: February, 2004 [EBook #5066] [Yes, we are more than
one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on April 13,

2002]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE
WHOLE FAMILY ***

Title: The Whole Family, A Novel by Twelve Authors
Authors: William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary
Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jordan, John Kendrick
Bangs, Henry James, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Edith Wyatt, Mary
Raymond Shipman Andrews, Alice Brown, Henry Van Dyke
Language: English
Etext prepared by Dianne Bean, Prescott Valley, Arizona.

THE WHOLE FAMILY
CONTENTS
I. The Father by William Dean Howells II. The Old-Maid Aunt by
Mary E. Wilkins Freeman III. The Grandmother by Mary Heaton Vorse
IV. The Daughter-in-Law by Mary Stewart Cutting V. The School-Girl
by Elizabeth Jordan VI. The Son-in-Law by John Kendrick Bangs VII.
The Married Son by Henry James VIII.The Married Daughter by
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps IX. The Mother by Edith Wyatt X. The
School-Boy by Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews XI. Peggy by Alice
Brown XII. The Friend of the Family by Henry Van Dyke

THE WHOLE FAMILY
I. THE FATHER
by William Dean Howells
As soon as we heard the pleasant news--I suppose the news of an
engagement ought always to be called pleasant--it was decided that I
ought to speak first about it, and speak to the father. We had not been a

great while in the neighborhood, and it would look less like a bid for
the familiar acquaintance of people living on a larger scale than
ourselves, and less of an opening for our own intimacy if they turned
out to be not quite so desirable in other ways as they were in the
worldly way. For the ladies of the respective families first to offer and
receive congratulations would be very much more committing on both
sides; at the same time, to avoid the appearance of stiffness, some one
ought to speak, and speak promptly. The news had not come to us
directly from our neighbors, but authoritatively from a friend of theirs,
who was also a friend of ours, and we could not very well hold back.
So, in the cool of the early evening, when I had quite finished rasping
my lawn with the new mower, I left it at the end of the swath, which
had brought me near the fence, and said across it,
"Good-evening!"
My neighbor turned from making his man pour a pail of water on the
earth round a freshly planted tree, and said, "Oh, good-evening! How
d'ye do? Glad to see you!" and offered his hand over the low coping so
cordially that I felt warranted in holding it a moment.
"I hope it's in order for me to say how very much my wife and I are
interested in the news we've heard about one of your daughters? May I
offer our best wishes for her happiness?"
"Oh, thank you," my neighbor said. "You're very good indeed. Yes, it's
rather exciting--for us. I guess that's all for to-night, Al," he said, in
dismissal of his man, before turning to lay his arms comfortably on the
fence top. Then he laughed, before he added, to me, "And rather
surprising, too."
"Those things are always rather surprising, aren't they?" I suggested.
"Well, yes, I suppose they are. It oughtn't be so in our case, though, as
we've been through it twice before: once with my son--he oughtn't to
have counted, but he did--and once with my eldest daughter. Yes, you