Saddest Story

I like to teach Hemingway and Fitzgerald side-by-side.  They construct sentences so differently.  Generally speaking Fitzgerald's are long and flowy with lots of adjectives, Hemingway's are short and crisp with very few adjectives.  I like to make my students describe their prose and try to imitate it, or take a Fitzgerald sentence and re-write it the way Hemingway might have done it. 

Anyway, I can't remember when I first heard about the short story Hemingway wrote that was only six words long.  Maybe one of my professors mentioned it in undergrad?  I seem to recall that he supposedly wrote it to settle a bar bet, or to make a point to some of his fellow-authors that they were unnecessarily wordy.  I can't really remember the backstory, but every one in a while those six words float into my head.  Because not only is it the shortest story I know, it's also the very saddest story I've ever read:

For sale:
baby shoes,
never worn. 

Evidently Hemingway himself thought it was one of the best stories he'd ever written.  And also the saddest.

* * *
If I lived in the nineteenth century, tonight I would be diagnosed with melancholia.  I am not hysterical, I am not consumptive, I am not clinically depressed.  But I am really feeling melancholy tonight, as I think about Eliza and all of her cute little things.  A wardrobe of baby girl clothes, packed away in plastic bins.  Never worn.

It's getting redundant to say I miss her, but the old news is still true.

* * *
In new news...  our deep freeze melted, I spilled primer all over our patio furniture, and I've decided to paint our living room ceiling.  I promise 'round the house updates tomorrow, when the melancholia has subsided.