Read "My Cousin Fanny" by Thomas Nelson Page online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
We do not keep Christmas now as we used to do in old Hanover. We have / not time for it, and it does not seem like the same thing. Christmas, / however, always brings up to me my cousin Fanny; I suppose because she / always was so foolish about Christmas.
My cousin Fanny was an old maid; indeed, to follow St. Paul's turn / of phrase, she was an old maid of the old maids. No one who saw her a / moment could have doubted it. Old maids have from most people a feeling / rather akin to pity -- a hard heritage. They very often have this feeling / from the young. This must be the hardest part of all -- to see around them / friends, each "a happy mother of children," little ones responding to / affection with the sweet caresses of childhood, whilst any advances / that they, their aunts or cousins, may make are met with indifference / or condescension. My cousin Fanny was no exception. She was as proud as / Lucifer; yet she went through life -- the part that I knew of -- bearing the / pity of the great majority of the people who knew her.