Lucy Gayheart by Willa Cather — Read

One winter afternoon, twenty-five years after Lucy Gayheart's death, the good people of Haverford met at the burying-ground for another funeral. Mr. Gayheart's body had been sent home from the hospital in Chicago where he had gone for an operation. It was four o'clock in the afternoon, an unusual hour for a funeral, but the hour had been determined by the arrival of the railway train. The coffin was taken from the express car to the Lutheran church in an automobile hearse (these are modern times, 1927), and after a short service it was brought to the graveyard.

Scarcely anyone could remember so large a funeral. Old Mr. Gayheart, as he had been called for years now, had many friends. Since Pauline's death, five years ago, he had gone on living in his own house, with one of the tailor's daughters as his housekeeper. He had kept his shop open, and he continued to practise a little on his clarinet, though he complained that his wind was failing him. On Sundays, in summer, he sometimes practised out in the old orchard--which had never been cut down.