My mother was expecting a baby and so, my father and mother had no choice, to, but to take me to my father’s sister’s house where we were not comfortable. It was a dark, gloomy house. I can best suggest the quality of the house by saying, in the living room there was a framed photograph of my grandfather in his coffin. It was a very strange room, there was a vase with peacock feathers in it and my aunt didn’t know, I don’t know that anybody else in Lincoln knew that peacock feathers bring bad luck.

-William Maxwell