



Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images available at The Internet Archive)










                                  The
                            Merry-go-round

                        By W. Somerset Maugham




                          THE MERRY-GO-ROUND




                          The Merry-go-round

                        By W. Somerset Maugham

                            [Illustration]

                               NEW YORK
                       DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
                                 1904

                      COPYRIGHT, SEPT., 1904, BY
                          W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM




PART ONE




THE MERRY-GO-ROUND




CHAPTER I


All her life Miss Elizabeth Dwarris had been a sore trial to her
relations. A woman of means, she ruled tyrannously over a large number
of impecunious cousins, using her bank-balance like the scorpions of
Rehoboam to chastise them, and, like many another pious creature, for
their soul’s good making all and sundry excessively miserable. Nurtured
in the evangelical ways current in her youth, she insisted that her
connections should seek salvation according to her own lights; and, with
harsh tongue and with bitter gibe, made it her constant business to
persuade them of their extreme unworthiness. She arranged lives as she
thought fit, and ventured not only to order the costume