Study needed inventions … … …. . 7.00-9.00 P.M.
GENERAL RESOLVES
No wasting time at Shafters or [a name, indecipherable]
No
more
smokeing
or
chewing
Bath
every
other
day
Read one improving book or magazine per week Save
$5.00
[crossed
out]
$3.00
per
week
Be better to parents
‘I come across this book by accident,’ said the old man. ‘It just shows you, don’t it?’
‘It just shows you.’
‘Jimmy was bound to get ahead. He always had some resolves like this or something. Do you notice what he’s got about improving his mind? He was always great for that. He told me I et like a hog once and I beat him for it.’
He was reluctant to close the book, reading each item aloud and then looking eagerly at me. I think he rather expected me to copy down the list for my own use.
A little before three the Lutheran minister arrived from Flushing and I began to look involuntarily out the windows for other cars. So did Gatsby’s father. And as the time passed Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com
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and the servants came in and stood waiting in the hall, his eyes began to blink anxiously and he spoke of the rain in a worried uncertain way. The minister glanced several times at his watch so I took him aside and asked him to wait for half an hour. But it wasn’t any use. Nobody came.
About five o’clock our procession of three cars reached the cemetery and stopped in a thick drizzle beside the gate—first a motor hearse, horribly black and wet, then Mr.
Gatz and the minister and I in the limousine, and, a little later, four or five servants and the postman from West Egg in Gatsby’s station wagon, all wet to the skin. As we started through the gate into the cemetery I heard a car stop and then the sound of someone splashing after us over the soggy ground. I looked around. It was the man with owl-eyed glasses whom I had found marvelling over Gatsby’s books in the library one night three months before.
I’d never seen him since then. I don’t know how he knew about the funeral or even his name. The rain poured down his thick glasses and he took them off and wiped them to see the protecting canvas unrolled from Gatsby’s grave.
I tried to think about Gatsby then for a moment but he was already too far away and I could only remember, without resentment, that Daisy hadn’t sent a message or a flower.
Dimly I heard someone murmur ‘Blessed are the dead that the rain falls on,’ and then the owl-eyed man said ‘Amen to that,’ in a brave voice.
We straggled down quickly through the rain to the cars.
Owl-Eyes spoke to me by the gate.
‘I couldn’t get to the house,’ he remarked.
1
The Great Gatsby
‘Neither could anybody else.’
‘Go on!’ He started. ‘Why, my God! they used to go there by the hundreds.’
He took off his glasses and wiped them again outside and in. ‘The poor son-of-a-bitch,’ he said.
