The Long Run: A Novel
()
About this ebook
Halston Merrick, a once vibrant and adventurous young man, has settled into a mundane life of conformity in his middle years. Upon meeting up with an old friend after a twelve year absence, Merrick reveals his history in the years since his friend knew him, and the quiet way that he let life slip by him.
HarperPerennial Classics brings great works of literature to life in digital format, upholding the highest standards in ebook production and celebrating reading in all its forms. Look for more titles in the HarperPerennial Classics collection to build your digital library.
Edith Wharton
Edith Wharton (1862 - 1937) was an acclaimed American novelist. Known for her use of dramatic irony, she found success early in her career with The House of Mirth, which garnered praise upon its publication. In 1921, she won the Pulitzer Prize for her tour-de-force novel, The Age of Innocence.
Read more from Edith Wharton
The Children Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSummer Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Glimpses of the Moon Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Collected Short Stories of Edith Wharton Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Custom of the Country Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Mother's Recompense Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Touchstone Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Writing of Fiction: The Classic Guide to the Art of the Short Story and the Novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Reef Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Son at the Front Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Manhattan Noir 2: The Classics Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Greatest American Short Stories: 50+ Classics of American Literature Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRoman Fever and Other Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Complete Works of Edith Wharton. Illustrated: The Age of Innocence, The House of Mirth, Ethan Frome and others Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Backward Glance: An Autobiography Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Old Maid: The 'Fifties Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/550 Feminist Masterpieces you have to read before you die (Golden Deer Classics) Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Roman Fever: Short Story Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Custom of the Country Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Twilight Sleep Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Here and Beyond Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Age of Innocence: The Wild and Wanton Edition Volume 1 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to The Long Run
Related ebooks
The Long Run: 1916 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Long Run Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Essential Winston Churchill Collection Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Celebrity, Complete Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGlasses Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Celebrity, Volume 01 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMiss Hurd: An Enigma Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGlasses: Classic Short Story Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Dancing Floor Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Celebrity (Barnes & Noble Digital Library) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Arrow of Gold: A Story Between Two Notes Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Sacred Fount by Henry James (Illustrated) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Dead Secret (Barnes & Noble Digital Library) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Wayward Governess Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe American Short Story. A Chronological History: Volume 3 - Mark Twain to Mary E Wilkins Freeman Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Dead Secret Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsJane Austen: The complete Novels Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Complete Works of Jane Austen Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsJane Austen: The Complete Novels ( A to Z Classics) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Complete Works of Jane Austen: Unveiling the Literary Genius of a Timeless Storyteller Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Sacred Fount Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Dead Secret: A Novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsChance Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mr. Menace Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Celebrity, Volume 03 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsIn the Name of the People Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
General Fiction For You
The Priory of the Orange Tree Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mythos Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Cloud Cuckoo Land: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern's Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Man Called Ove: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Silmarillion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Covenant of Water (Oprah's Book Club) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The City of Dreaming Books Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Fellowship Of The Ring: Being the First Part of The Lord of the Rings Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Life of Pi: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Alchemist: A Graphic Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dante's Divine Comedy: Inferno Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The King James Version of the Bible Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5It Ends with Us: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Shantaram: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Unhoneymooners Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Nineteen Claws and a Black Bird: Stories Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Meditations: Complete and Unabridged Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Labyrinth of Dreaming Books: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ulysses: With linked Table of Contents Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Rebecca Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Everything's Fine Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Canterbury Tales Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pet Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Nettle & Bone Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Other Black Girl: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5You: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related categories
Reviews for The Long Run
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
The Long Run - Edith Wharton
The Long Run
Short Story
Edith Wharton
HarperPerennialClassicsLogo.jpgCONTENTS
Epigraph
The Long Run
About the Author
About the Series
Copyright
About the Publisher
Epigraph
The shade of those our days that had no tongue.
The Long Run
I
It was last winter, after a twelve years’ absence from New York, that I saw again, at one of the Jim Cumnors’ dinners, my old friend Halston Merrick.
The Cumnors’ house is one of the few where, even after such a lapse of time, one can be sure of finding familiar faces and picking up old threads; where for a moment one can abandon one’s self to the illusion that New York humanity is a shade less unstable than its bricks and mortar. And that evening in particular I remember feeling that there could be no pleasanter way of re-entering the confused and careless world to which I was returning than through the quiet softly-lit dining room in which Mrs. Cumnor, with a characteristic sense of my needing to be broken in gradually, had contrived to assemble so many friendly faces.
I was glad to see them all, including the three or four I did not know, or failed to recognize, but had no difficulty in passing as in the tradition and of the group; but I was most of all glad—as I rather wonderingly found—to set eyes again on Halston Merrick.
He and I had been at Harvard together, for one thing, and had shared there curiosities and ardours a little outside the current tendencies: had, on the whole, been more critical than our comrades, and less amenable to the accepted. Then, for the next following years, Merrick had been a vivid and promising figure in young American life. Handsome, careless, and free, he had wandered and tasted and compared. After leaving Harvard he had spent two years at Oxford; then he had accepted a private secretaryship to our Ambassador in England, and had come back from this adventure with a fresh curiosity about public affairs at home, and the conviction that men of his kind should play a larger part in them. This led, first, to his running for a state senatorship which he failed to get, and ultimately to a few months of intelligent activity in a municipal office. Soon after being deprived of this post by a change of party he had published a small volume of delicate verse, and, a year later, an odd uneven brilliant book on municipal government. After that one hardly knew where to look for his next appearance; but chance rather disappointingly solved the problem by killing off his father and placing Halston at the head of the Merrick Iron Foundry at Yonkers.
His friends had gathered that, whenever this regrettable contingency should occur, he meant to dispose of the business and continue his life of free experiment. As often happens in just such cases, however, it was not the moment for a sale, and Merrick had to take over the management of the foundry. Some two years later he had a chance to free himself; but when it came he did not choose to take it. This tame sequel to an inspiriting start was disappointing to some of us, and I was among those disposed to regret Merrick’s drop to the level of the prosperous. Then I went away to a big engineering job in China, and from there to Africa, and spent the next twelve years out of sight and sound of New York doings.
During