Read "The Cream of the Jest" by James Branch Cabell online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
"Come to me in my dreams, and then By day I shall be well again! For then the night will more than pay The hopeless longing of long day. "Come, as thou cam'st a thousand times, A messenger from lovelier climes, To smile on our drear world, and be As kind to others as to me! "
He was looking down at the most repulsive old woman he had ever seen. Hers was the abhorrent fatness of a spider; her flesh appeared to have the coloring and consistency of dough. She sat upon the stone pavement, knitting; her eyes, which raised to his unblinkingly, were black, secretive, and impersonally malevolent; and her jaws stirred without ceasing, in a loose chewing motion, so that the white hairs, rooted in the big mole on her chin, twitched and glittered in the sunlight.