The Ungrateful House

August Derleth

May 2011 · eStar Books

About this ebook

MAN AND HIS MACHINES ARE DOING A GREAT JOB OF CONQUERING NATURE, OF COURSE. DOES ANYONE DOUBT IT? Excerpt The point about all these queer people you can run into from time to time is just that they aren't really certifiable," said Tex Harrigan in answer to a question of mine. "They're sane enough, and no alienist would give them any more than the normal amount of aberrant concepts or actions." "What's normal?" I asked. "You tell me. Take Peyton Farquahr," Harrigan went on, his pale gray eyes looking far back into the past. "I suppose he was one of the first of those I put into my File of Queer People. You've never heard of him; I needn't ask if you have. He was a gadget inventor; he had no less than sixty-four patents on household gadgets ranging all the way from his 'Little Gem Potato Peeler' and his 'Peerless Magic Eraser' down to his 'Patented Bed-warmer'." "He sounds like a handy man to have around a house," I said. Harrigan laughed long and heartily. "You don't know how ironic that is," he said. "Wait till you hear about him. Like all gadget inventors, he wanted to try his hand at something big, and at last he conceived it- a mechanical house. A house that did everything for you, like a combination maid and housekeeper and valet." "What a pipe dream!" "Take it easy. He built it." "Where?" "Not far outside Denver. I was on the Rocky Mountain Gazette at that time, just beginning my newspaper career. The city editor was a hard-boiled old boy named Davis, Hickman Davis! He called me in one day and gave me a lead. 'Go easy on this boy, ' he said. 'We used to go to school together. He's probably nuts, but he's made money on it. He's got a new invention.' So I went out to his place. Farquahr was a skinny, longhaired fellow with baggy pants and a sports coat, which he appeared never or seldom to change. Not that he was exactly dirty- just careless. I introduced myself and got down to the story. Was it true, I wanted to know, that he was building himself a mechanical house? He admitted it. But so far, he said, the story was under wraps. " What will it do?" I wanted to know. "Everything, Mr. Harrigan, everything," he said to me. "Except, of course, those more intimate little chores and duties performed by one's wife.""Interesting," I said. "But I'm skeptical.""It's your business to be," he agreed.

About the author

August Derleth was born on February 24, 1909 in Sauk City, Wisconsin. He sold his first story to Weird Tales at the age of 16. He received a Bachelor's of Arts degree from the University of Wisconsin. After college, he went to work for Fawcett Publications as an editor for Mystic Magazine. In 1932, the first of his Sac Prairie stories was published in various local papers. In 1935, his first book, a collection of related novellas entitled Place of Hawks, was published. In 1937, his first Sac Prairie novel, Still is the Summer Night, was published. He was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship in 1938 to help him continue the Sac Prairie saga. During his lifetime, he wrote more than 90 books including The Milwaukee Road, Still Small Voice, H.P.L.: A Memoir, Restless Is the River, The Hills Stand Watch, Sweet Genevieve, Evening in Spring, The Moon Tenders, The Captive Island, and Father Marquette and the Great River. He had upward of 3,000 works published in over 350 magazines including The Catholic World, The Yale Review, The New Republic, Redbook, The New Yorker, Good Housekeeping, and The American Mercury. He died on June 6, 1971.