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Advanced ­Materials
for Biomechanical
­Applications
Mathematical Engineering, Manufacturing,
and Management Sciences
Series Editor:
Mangey Ram
Professor, Assistant Dean (International Affairs), Department of Mathematics,
Graphic Era University, Dehradun, India

The aim of this new book series is to publish the research studies and articles that
bring up the latest development and research applied to mathematics and its appli-
cations in the manufacturing and management science areas. Mathematical tools
and techniques are the strength of engineering sciences. They form the common
foundation of all novel disciplines as engineering evolves and develops. The series
will include a comprehensive range of applied mathematics and its applications in
engineering areas such as optimization techniques, mathematical modeling and
simulation, stochastic processes and systems engineering, safety-critical system
performance, system safety, system security, high-assurance software architecture
and design, mathematical modeling in environmental safety sciences, finite element
methods, differential equations, and reliability engineering.

Swarm Intelligence: Foundation, Principles, and Engineering Applications

Abhishek Sharma, Abhinav Sharma,
Jitendra Kumar Pandey, and Mangey Ram
Advances in Sustainable Machining and Manufacturing Processes
Kishor Kumar Gajrani, Arbind Prasad, and Ashwani Kumar
Advanced Materials for Biomechanical Applications
Edited by Ashwani Kumar, Mangey Ram, and Yogesh Kumar Singla
Biodegradable Composites for Packaging Applications
Edited by Arbind Prasad, Ashwani Kumar, and Kishor Kumar Gajrani
Computing and Stimulation for Engineers
Edited by Ziya Uddin, Mukesh Kumar Awasthi,
Rishi Asthana, and Mangey Ram

For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/

Mathematical-Engineering-Manufacturing-and-Management-Sciences/book-series/
­
CRCMEMMS
Advanced ­Materials
for Biomechanical
­Applications

Edited by
Ashwani Kumar
Mangey Ram
Yogesh Kumar Singla
MATLAB ® is a trademark of The MathWorks, Inc. and is used with permission. The MathWorks
does not warrant the accuracy of the text or exercises in this book. This book’s use or discussion
of MATLAB ® software or related products does not constitute endorsement or sponsorship by
The MathWorks of a particular pedagogical approach or particular use of the MATLAB ® software.

First edition published 2022

by CRC Press
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and by CRC Press

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CRC Press is an imprint of Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

© 2022 selection and editorial matter, Ashwani Kumar, Mangey Ram and Yogesh Kumar Singla;
individual chapters, the contributors

Reasonable efforts have been made to publish reliable data and information, but the author and
publisher cannot assume responsibility for the validity of all materials or the consequences of
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Library of Congress Cataloging‑in‑Publication Data

Names: Kumar, Ashwani, 1989- editor. | Ram, Mangey, editor. | Singla,
Yogesh Kumar, editor.
Title: Advanced materials for biomechanical applications / edited by
Ashwani Kumar, Mangey Ram, Yogesh Kumar Singla.
Description: First edition. | Boca Raton : CRC Press, 2022. | Series: MEMMS
series | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021058010 (print) | LCCN 2021058011 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781032054490 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032261515 (paperback) |
ISBN 9781003286806 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Biomedical materials.
Classification: LCC R857.M3 A378 2022 (print) | LCC R857.M3 (ebook) |
DDC 610.28—dc23/eng/20220222
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021058010
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021058011

ISBN: 9781032054490 (hbk)

ISBN: 9781032261515 (pbk)
ISBN: 9781003286806 (ebk)

DOI: 10.1201/9781003286806

Typeset in Times
by codeMantra
Contents
Aim and Scope..........................................................................................................vii
Preface.......................................................................................................................ix
Editors..................................................................................................................... xiii
Acknowledgments..................................................................................................... xv
Contributors............................................................................................................xvii

Chapter 1 ­Bio-Mechanical Engineering and Health..............................................1

Vishal Parasha, Shashank Mishra, and Chitresh Nayak

Chapter 2 Introduction to Cross Rolling of Biomedical Alloys........................... 15

V. Murugabalaji and Matruprasad Rout

Chapter 3 Additive Manufacturing and Characterisation of

Biomedical Materials.......................................................................... 29
Mainak Saha and Manab Mallik

Chapter 4 ­Cellulose – A Sustainable Material for Biomedical Applications...... 59

N. Vignesh, K. Chandraraj, S.P. Suriyaraj, and R. Selvakumar

Chapter 5 Magnetic Iron Oxide Nanoparticles for Biomedical Applications...... 85

Vikram Hastak, Suresh Bandi, and Ajeet K. Srivastav

Chapter 6 ­Magnesium-Based Nanocomposites for Biomedical Applications..... 113

Bhaskar Thakur, Shivprakash Barve, and Pralhad Pesode

Chapter 7 Magnesium Alloy for Biomedical Applications................................ 133

Pralhad Pesode, Shivprakash Barve, and Dr. Vishwanath Karad

Chapter 8 Investigation of Titanium Lattice Structures for Biomedical

Implants............................................................................................. 159
Vijay Kumar Meena, Prashant Kumar, Tarun Panchal,
Parveen Kalra, and Ravindra Kumar Sinha

v
vi Contents

Chapter 9 Cost Estimation of Polymer Material for Biomedical Application ....169

Suya Prem Anand, Ashwin Sunil Kumar, Grreshan Ramesh,
and Abel Eldho Jose

Chapter 10 Nanostructured Biomaterials for Load-Bearing Applications ......... 187

Moumita Ghosh and A. Thirugnanam

Chapter 11 Improved Biodegradable Implant Materials for Orthopedic

Applications...................................................................................... 203
Kundan Kumar, Shashi Bhushan Prasad, Ashish Das,
and Mukul Shukla

Chapter 12 Fracture Performance Evaluation of Additively Manufactured

Titanium Alloy ................................................................................. 215
Manvendra Tiwari and Pankaj Kumar

Chapter 13 Design of a Low-Cost Prosthetic Leg Using Magnetorheological

Fluid ................................................................................................. 229
Ganapati Shastry, T. Jagadeesha, Ashish Toby,
Seung-Bok Choi, and Vikram G. Kamble

Chapter 14 FEA of Humerus Bone Fracture and Healing.................................. 255

Ashwani Kumar, Yatika Gori, Brijesh Yadav, Sachin Rana,
and Neelesh Kumar Sharma

Chapter 15 Design of Energy Harvesting Mechanism for Walking

Applications...................................................................................... 273
Ankit Meena, T. Jagadeesha, Manoj Nikam, Seung-Bok Choi,
and Vikram G. Kamble

Index ...................................................................................................................... 303

Aim and Scope
The modern era of advanced materials, the latest manufacturing techniques, product
modeling and analysis, complex geometry analysis, and nonlinear analysis have been
shifted from traditional methods to advanced techniques that provide precise solu-
tions. Advanced Materials for Biomechanical Applications provides in-depth knowl-
edge to readers about easier, fast, efficient, and reliable methods for understanding
orthopedic and dental implant problems with the help of advanced techniques using
simulation and experiments.
The book Advanced Materials for Biomechanical Applications consists of
details about advanced materials like titanium, titanium alloys, cobalt–chromium
alloys, stainless steel, and composite materials for biomechanical applications like
joint replacements, bone plates, bone cement, artificial ligaments and tendons, hip
implants, and dental implants for tooth fixation. The book consists of 15 chapters
dedicated to biomechanical and biomedical applications of advanced materials.
Modern medicine takes advantage of the progress in engineering, physical, and
chemical sciences. One of the best examples of such a combination is biomaterials
used for biomedical applications. The basic requirement of a biomaterial is that it
should be compatible with the body, and problems with biocompatibility must be
resolved before a product can be used in a clinical setting. Production and synthesis
of biomaterials require various technologies and methods. These methods produce
the best-suited materials. The book presents the inventory of the latest achievements
in the development and production of modern biomaterials that are used in modern
medicine and dentistry application.
The content of the book is focused on orthopedic and dental implants. The authors
covered two key topics in 15 chapters, which are quite interesting and with the poten-
tial for further research. The book covers basic and advanced research, which makes
it useful for researchers, postgraduate students, and working professionals in the field
of orthopedics and dentistry. With lucidity presenting the book Advanced Materials
for Biomechanical Applications to all readers.

Editors
Dr. Ashwani Kumar
Prof. Mangey Ram
Dr. Yogesh Kumar Singla

vii
Preface
The book Advanced Materials for Biomechanical Applications consists of the design,
simulation, and manufacturing of advanced materials and their characterization for
medicine and dentistry applications. Materials for orthopedic and dentistry applica-
tions are the central theme of the book. These two key topics have been explained
in 15 chapters. All chapters are well organized and easy to follow. The above could
help to ensure the completeness of the book and to satisfy the needs of the poten-
tial researchers and postgraduate students (MSc, PhD) in areas having biomaterial
applications.
In origin, biomaterials can be obtained from nature or be synthesized in the labo-
ratory with a variety of approaches that use metals, polymers, ceramics, or composite
materials. They are often used or adapted for medical applications. Biomaterials are
commonly used in orthopedic and dental applications such as joint replacements,
bone plates, bone cement, surgical sutures, clips, and staples to close wounds, pins
and screws to stabilize fractures, surgical mesh, breast implants, artificial ligaments
and tendons, dental implants for teeth stabilization, blood vessel prostheses, heart
valves, vascular grafts, stents, nerve conduits, skin repair devices, intraocular lenses
in eye surgery, contact lenses and drug delivery systems.
Chapter 1 provides details about the influence of technology under the umbrella
of bio-mechanical engineering on the health of humans in the society. Different types
of implants, instruments used in surgery, development of prosthetics, etc. are also
explained in this chapter. It creates an environment of biomechanics and provides
a push for further reading of chapters. Chapter 2 deals with the biocompatibility of
materials. In this chapter, the processing of biomedical alloys through cross rolling
(CR), a rolling process where the strain path is changed by 90° in between two passes,
is discussed. The earlier reported works indicate that CR can serve as an effective
technique to obtain the desired microstructure, texture, and mechanical properties,
which promotes the biocompatibility of the processed material. In continuation,
Chapter 3 deals with additive manufacturing in the context of biomedical materials.
At present, additively manufactured biomedical materials find extensive applications
in a wide range of avenues ranging from orthopedics to urology. Additive manufactur-
ing (AM) techniques based on layer-wise deposition of materials allow for fabrication
of complex-shaped biomedical components with a high level of accuracy.
Chapter 4 highlights the use of cellulose for biomedical applications. Cellulose is
the most abundantly available organic resource. As a result of its promising features
such as high mechanical strength, renewability, biocompatibility, biodegradability,
and low toxicity, it has been widely explored as an ideal substitute for synthetic poly-
mers especially in biomedical applications such as the development of drug delivery
systems, production of wound dressing materials, construction of tissue engineering
scaffolds, fabrication of wearable electronic biosensors, etc. Like cellulose, mag-
netic iron oxide nanoparticles are promising materials in the biomedical field due
to their superparamagnetic behavior. Chapter 5 deals with the use of magnetic iron
oxide nanoparticles for biomedical applications. Chapters 6 and 7 highlight the use

ix
x Preface

of magnesium and its nanocomposites for biomedical applications. Nowadays, the

popularity of magnesium alloys in biomedical applications is increasing as they have
excellent mechanical properties and the capacity for precipitation of a bone-like apa-
tite layer on their outer layer. Also, after clinical use, magnesium totally degrades in
the human body as it is a biodegradable material, which makes magnesium alloys
most suitable for many biomedical applications.
Chapter 8 puts a focus on the investigation of titanium lattice structures for bio-
medical implants. In this study, three different types of AM-manufactured metal lat-
tice/porous structures (Gyroid, Diamond, and Schwarz W) and their three different
pore sizes (0.4, 0.5, and 0.6 mm) are investigated for tailoring the elastic modulus of
a Ti6Al4V ELI material to match that of cancellous bone. Chapter 9 deals with the
economic analysis of biomaterials. In this chapter, cost estimation of polymer mate-
rials has been done for biomedical application of human knee implants. Chapter 10
highlights improvement methods in the mechanical properties of biomaterials. The
chapter describes various SPD techniques characterization and the process param-
eters to achieve ultra-fine grains. In continuation to Chapter 10, Chapter 11 describes
an improved biodegradable material for orthopedic implant applications. The chapter
provides a rigorous insight into the various possible strategies to develop improved
biodegradable implant materials for futuristic orthopedic applications.
In Chapter 12, the stress shielding effect, i.e. premature failure of the implant
material for orthopedic applications, has been investigated. The extended finite ele-
ment method (XFEM) is utilized to numerically investigate the performance against
a ductile fracture from crack nucleation till fracture during tensile loading. Further,
elasto-plastic crack growth simulations are accomplished by XFEM through enrich-
ing the standard approximation for an SLM-processed TNTZ alloy. Chapter 13 deals
with important aspects of this book where the design of a low-cost prosthetic leg is
described. It deals with the design and modeling of a prosthetic leg for above-knee
amputees using MR fluid. MR fluids are smart materials, which change their rheo-
logical properties according to the magnetic field around them. Chapter 14 deals with
the analysis of humerus bone fracture and healing. A hairline fracture is investigated
using FEA. In this chapter, hand vibration and whole-body vibration are explained.
Chapter 15 proposes a new design for energy harvesting. A new configuration is pro-
posed, which is oriented vertically and excited in the transverse direction at its base,
and attempts to find out the motion parameters to maximize the energy harvesting
capability. The model of a low-cost shaker is developed and analyzed.
Having a high quality of content, this book will serve as a reference book for
understanding orthopedic and dentistry problems with literature review, solution,
methodology, experimental setup, results, validation, and future scope. Lucidly pre-
senting the book Advanced Materials for Biomechanical Applications provides a
foundational link to more specialized research work in biomechanical engineering.

Editors
Dr. Ashwani Kumar
Prof. Mangey Ram
Dr. Yogesh Kumar Singla
Preface xi

MATLAB® is a registered trademark of The MathWorks, Inc. For product information,

please contact:
The MathWorks, Inc.
3 Apple Hill Drive
Natick, MA 01760-2098 USA
Tel: 508-647-7000
Fax: 508-647-7001
E-mail: [email protected]
Web: www.mathworks.com
Editors
Dr. Ashwani Kumar received a Ph.D. (Mechanical
Engineering) in the area of Mechanical Vibration and Design.
He is currently working as Senior Lecturer, Mechanical
Engineering (Gazetted Officer Class II) at Technical Education
Department, Uttar Pradesh (Government of Uttar Pradesh), India
since December 2013. He has worked as an Assistant Professor
in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Graphic Era
University, Dehradun, India from July 2010 to November 2013.
He has more than 12 years of research and academic experience
in mechanical and materials engineering. He is Series Editor of
the book series Advances in Manufacturing, Design and Computational Intelligence
Techniques published by CRC Press (Taylor & Francis) USA. He is Associate Editor for
the International Journal of Mathematical, Engineering and Management Sciences
(IJMEMS) Indexed in ESCI/Scopus and DOAJ. He is an editorial board member
of four international journals and acts as a review board member of 20 prestigious
(Indexed in SCI/SCIE/Scopus) international journals with high impact factors, i.e.
Applied Acoustics, Measurement, JESTEC, AJSE, SV-JME, and LAJSS. In addition, he
has published 90 research articles in journals, book chapters, and conferences. He has
authored/co-authored and edited 17 books of Mechanical and Materials Engineering.
He is associated with international conferences as Invited Speaker/Advisory Board/
Review Board member. He has delivered many invited talks in webinars, FDP, and
workshops. He has been awarded as the Best Teacher for excellence in academics
and research. He has successfully guided 12 B.Tech., M.Tech., and Ph.D. theses. In
administration, he is working as a coordinator for AICTE, E.O.A., Nodal officer for the
PMKVY-TI Scheme (Government of India), and an internal coordinator for the CDTP
scheme (Government of Uttar Pradesh). He is currently involved in the research area
of Machine Learning, Advanced Materials, Machining & Manufacturing Techniques,
Biodegradable Composites, Heavy Vehicle Dynamics, and Coriolis Mass Flow Sensor.

Prof. Mangey Ram received a Ph.D. degree major in

Mathematics and minor in Computer Science from G. B. Pant
University of Agriculture and Technology, Pantnagar, India.
He has been a Faculty Member for around 13 years and has
taught several core courses in pure and applied mathemat-
ics at undergraduate, postgraduate, and doctorate levels. He
is currently the Research Professor at Graphic Era (Deemed
to be University), Dehradun, India and Visiting Professor at
Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University, Saint
Petersburg, Russia. Before joining Graphic Era, he was a
Deputy Manager (Probationary Officer) with Syndicate Bank
for a short period. He is Editor-in-Chief of International Journal of Mathematical,

xiii
xiv Editors

Engineering and Management Sciences; Journal of Reliability and Statistical

Studies; Journal of Graphic Era University; Series Editor of six Book Series with
Elsevier, CRC Press-A Taylor and Francis Group, Walter De Gruyter Publisher
Germany, and River Publisher, and a Guest Editor and Associate Editor with vari-
ous journals. He has published 250 plus publications (journal articles/books/book
chapters/conference articles) in IEEE, Taylor & Francis, Springer Nature, Elsevier,
Emerald, World Scientific, and many other national and international journals and
conferences. Also, he has published more than 50 books (authored/edited) with
international publishers like Elsevier, Springer Nature, CRC Press Taylor & Francis
Group, Walter De Gruyter Publisher Germany, and River Publisher. His fields of
research are Reliability Theory and Applied Mathematics. Dr. Ram is a Senior
Member of the IEEE, Senior Life Member of Operational Research Society of India,
Society for Reliability Engineering, Quality and Operations Management in India,
Indian Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics, He has been a member of
the organizing committee of many international and national conferences, seminars,
and workshops. He has been conferred with the “Young Scientist Award” by the
Uttarakhand State Council for Science and Technology, Dehradun, in 2009. He has
been awarded the “Best Faculty Award” in 2011; “Research Excellence Award” in
2015; and “Outstanding Researcher Award” in 2018 for his significant contribution
in academics and research at Graphic Era Deemed to be University, Dehradun, India.
Recently, he has received the “Excellence in Research of the Year-2021 Award” from
the Honorable Chief Minister of Uttarakhand State, India.

Dr. Yogesh Kumar Singla associated with Case Western

Reserve University, USA has done his Ph.D. from IIT Roorkee.
He has more than 6 years of research and teaching experience.
He is working in the area of Manufacturing, Welding, Surface
Engineering, Tribology, Materials Characterization, Welding
Metallurgy, and Mechanical Behavior of Metals. He has ten
SCI publications and five Scopus Indexed publications. Apart
from this, four SCI papers are in-process. In his career, he has
successfully guided one Ph.D. and four M.E. theses. He is a
reviewer of many SCI journals of Elsevier and Springer hav-
ing impact factors ranging from 0.7 to 5.289. He is about to submit one patent on
a solar dryer. He has given many expert talks at state- and central-level institutes/
universities. He also has the experience of conducting a 10-day Faculty Development
Program. In addition to this, he is an Editor of two international books entitled
Advanced Computational Methods in Mechanical and Materials Engineering and
Advanced Materials for Bio-Mechanical Applications to be published by CRC Press
(Taylor & Francis Group, https://taylorandfrancis.com/books/) in 2021.
Other documents randomly have
different content
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Possession
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States
and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no
restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it
under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the
United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where
you are located before using this eBook.

Title: Possession
a novel

Author: Louis Bromfield

Release date: March 17, 2024 [eBook #73188]

Language: English

Original publication: NYC: Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1924

Credits: Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team

at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from
images generously made available by The Internet Archive)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK

POSSESSION ***
 FOREWORD
CHAPTER 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17,
18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33,
34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49,
50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65,
66, 67.

POSSESSION
A NOVEL

BY
LOUIS BROMFIELD
Author of “The Green Bay Tree"

NEW YORK
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
MCMXXVI

Copyright, 1925, by
Frederick A. Stokes Company

All rights reserved

Published September 30, 1925
Second Printing (before Publication), Sept. 26, 1925
Third Printing October 20, 1925
Fourth Printing November 14, 1925
Fifth Printing November 25, 1925
 Sixth Printing December 9, 1925
Seventh Printing January 25, 1926
Eighth Printing February 15, 1926
Ninth Printing May 1, 1926
Printed in the United States of America
To
MARY

“Life is hard for our children. It isn’t as simple as it was for us. Their
grandfathers were pioneers and the same blood runs in their veins, only they
haven’t a frontier any longer. They stand—these children of ours—with
their backs toward this rough-hewn middle west and their faces set toward
Europe and the East and they belong to neither. They are lost somewhere
between.”

“Wherever she goes, trouble will follow. She’s born like most people
with a touch of genius, under a curse. She is certain to affect the lives of
every one about her ... because, well, because the threads of our lives are
hopelessly tangled.... Marry her if you will, but don’t expect happiness to
come of it. She would doubtless bear you a son ... a fine strong son, because
she’s a fine cold animal. But don’t expect satisfaction from her. She knows
too well exactly where she is bound.”
 FOREWORD
“Possession” is in no sense a sequel to “The Green Bay Tree.” The
second novel does not carry the fortunes of the characters which appeared
in the first; it reveals, speaking chronologically, little beyond the final page
of the earlier book. On the contrary both novels cover virtually the same
period of time, from the waning years of the nineteenth century up to the
present time. The two are what might be called panel novels in a screen
which, when complete, will consist of at least a half-dozen panels all
interrelated and each giving a certain phase of the ungainly, swarming,
glittering spectacle of American Life.
Those who read “The Green Bay Tree” must have felt that one character
—that of Ellen Tolliver—was thrust aside in order to make way for the
progress of Lily Shane. With the publication of the present novel, it is
possible to say that the energetic Miss Tolliver was neglected for two
reasons; first, because she was a character of such violence that, once given
her way, she would soon have dominated all the others; second, because the
author kept her purposely in restraint, as he desired to tell her story in
proportions worthy of her.
In Ellen’s story, the author, knowing that much which pertains to the life
of a musician is boring and of little interest to any one outside the realm of
music, has endeavored to eliminate all the technical side of her education.
He does this not because he lacks knowledge of the facts but because they
are in themselves uninteresting. Ellen Tolliver might have been a sculptor, a
painter, an actress, a writer; the interest in her lies not in the calling she
chose but in the character of the woman herself. She would, doubtless, have
been successful in any direction she saw fit to direct her boundless energy.
“Possession” is the second of several novels in which familiar characters
will reappear and new ones will make their entrance.
L. B.
Cold Spring Harbor
May 1, 1925
Long Island.
POSSESSION
 1

I N the fading October twilight Grandpa Tolliver sat eating an apple and
reading The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. The ponderous book
(volume III) lay spread open upon his bony knees, for it was too heavy to
be supported in any other way, and he read by leaning far over and peering
at the pages through steel rimmed spectacles which were not quite clear, as
they never were. The dimness of lens, however, did not appear to annoy
him; undisturbed he read on as if the spectacles sharpened his vision instead
of dimming it. Things were, after all, what you believed them to be;
therefore the spectacles served their purpose. He was not one to be bothered
by such small things....
The room in which he sat was square and not too large. On two sides
there were windows and in one corner an enormous and funereal bed of
black walnut (the nuptial bed of three generations in the Tolliver family)
which bore at the moment the imprint of the perverse and angular old body.
He had lain there to think. Sometimes he lay thus for hours at a time in a
sort of coma, ruminating the extraordinary and imbecile diversity of life.
But it was the number of books which contributed the dominating
characteristic of the room. There was row upon row of them rising from
floor to ceiling, rows added year by year out of Grandpa’s infinitesimal
income until at last they had walled him in. There were books bound in fine
leather and books in cheap leather, worn and frayed at the corners, books in
cheap boards and an immense number of books bound in yellow paper.
Pressed close against the books on the north wall of the room there stood an
enormous desk of the same funereal black walnut—a desk filled with
innumerable pigeonholes into which had been stuffed without order or
sequence bits of paper scribbled over with a handwriting that was fine and
erratic like the tracks of a tiny bird strayed into an inkpot. The papers
ranged through every variety of shade from the yellowish bisque of ancient
documents to the gray white of comparatively new ones. Of all the room it
was the desk alone that had an appearance of untidiness; it lay under a pall
of dust save for two small spots rubbed clean by the sharp elbows of
Grandpa Tolliver.
 What did he write? What was contained in this immense collection of
documents? No one knew that; not even the curiosity of his daughter-in-law
Hattie, who entered the room each morning to throw open the windows (an
action he detested) and force the old man out into the chill air of the streets,
had been able to penetrate the mysteries of the extraordinary bird tracks. A
word with luck, here or there.... Nothing more. And she had examined them
often enough in a fierce effort to penetrate the secret of his strength. From
years of breathless, headlong writing the words had lost all resemblance to
combinations of letters. The letters themselves were obscured; they flowed
into one another until each one, in the fashion of the Chinese, had become a
symbol, a mystery to which the old man alone held the key. It was the
writing of a man whose pen had never been able to keep pace with the
lightning speed of his thoughts. It may have been that the old man himself
could not have deciphered the writing on those sheets which long since had
turned to a yellow bisque. So far as any one could discover, he never took
them from the pigeonholes and read them a second time. They were simply
thrust away to turn yellow and gather dust, for Grandpa Tolliver had
suffered for years from a sense of the immense futility of everything.
As he sat in the fading light in his decrepit rocking chair the appearance
of the old man struck faintly a note of the sinister. Something in the shape
of his great, bony head, in the appearance of his unkempt gray beard, in the
remarkable angularity of his lean body gave him the appearance of one in
alliance with the powers of darkness. The peculiar gray green of his
glittering eyes had a way of piercing through pretense, through barriers of
reserve and secrecy. They were the eyes of one who knew far too much.
They were the eyes that got somehow at the core of things, so that a person
—even his bitterest enemy, the vigorous and unsubtle Hattie—winced
before the shattering light that gathered in their depths. They looked out
from under shaggy brows with a knowledge bred of solitude that was
something more than human. And he had a terrible way of using them, of
watching people, of silently and powerfully prying open their shells. For
Grandpa Tolliver there were no longer any illusions; he was therefore a
horrid and intolerable old man.

At length when the light grew too dim even for the unearthly eyes of the
old man, he closed The Decline and Fall and devoted himself to finishing
his apple, absorbed for the time being in reflecting triumphantly upon
passages in the ponderous work which proved without any doubt that the
human race lay beyond the possibility of improvement.
When his strong pointed teeth had finished with the apple, he cast it
aside for Hattie to sweep out in the morning and, lifting The Decline and
Fall as high as possible, he dropped it to the floor with a resounding crash.
As the echo died there rose from belowstairs the sound of clattering pans
shaken by the crash from the startled hands of Hattie, and then an
inarticulate rumble of exasperation at this latest bit of minute deviltry.
The old man leaned back in his chair and chuckled, wickedly. It was one
more skirmish in the state of war which had existed between him and his
daughter-in-law over a period of years.
Through the closed window the homely sounds of a dozen backyards
filtered into the room ... the sharp slam of a refrigerator door, the sudden
mad barking of a dog playing with a child, the faint whicker of a horse in
one of the stables and then the sound of Hattie’s vigorous voice, still
carrying a persistent, unmistakable note of irritation, summoning her small
sons from the far reaches of the neighborhood.
The sound of the voice rose and hung in the autumn night, rich, full-
blooded, vigorous, redolent of energy, beautiful in its primitive strength. At
the faint note of irritation Grandpa Tolliver, rubbing his teeth with a skinny
finger, chuckled again.
The voice wavered, penetrating the remote distances of the back yards,
and presently there came an answering cry in the shrill, high treble of a boy
of twelve arrested suddenly in the midst of his play.
“Yay-us! Yay-us! We’re coming!”
Primitive it was, like a ewe calling to her lambs, or more perhaps
(thought the old man) like a lioness summoning her cubs. It was Robert
who answered, the younger of the two. It was difficult for Fergus to yell in
the same lusty fashion; his voice had reached the stage where it trembled
perilously between a treble and a bass. The sounds he made shamed him.
Fergus, like his father, disliked making a spectacle of himself. (Too
sensitive, thought Grandpa Tolliver. Like his father he would be a failure in
life, because he had no indifference.)
The room grew darker and after a time the sweet, acrid odor of
smoldering leaves, stirred into flame by the children who played beneath
the window, drifted through the cracks in the glass. As if the scent, the soft
twilight, the sound of Hattie’s voice, had set fire to a train of memories,
Grandpa Tolliver began to rock gently. The chair made a faint squeaking
sound which filled the room as if it had been invaded by a flock of bats
which, circling wildly above the old man’s head, uttered a chorus of faint
shrill cries.... The old man chuckled again. It was a bitter, unearthly
sound....
The room in which Grandpa Tolliver sat had been added to the Tolliver
house during one of those rare intervals, years ago, when his son had
prospered for a time. The house itself stood back from the street in the older
part of a town which within a generation had changed from a frontier
settlement into a bustling city whose prosperity centered about the black
mills and the flaming furnaces of a marshy district known as The Flats, a
district black and unsightly and inhabited by hordes of Italians, Poles,
Slovaks and Russians who never emerged from its sooty environs into the
clear air of the Hill where the old citizens had their homes. Among these
houses the Tollivers’ was marked by the need of paint, though this shameful
fault was concealed somewhat by masses of vines—roses, honeysuckle, ivy
—which overran all the dwelling and in summer threw a cloud of beauty
over the horrid, imaginative trimmings conceived by some side-whiskered
small town architect of the eighties. There was in the appearance of the
house nothing of opulence. It was gray, commonplace and ornamented with
extravagant jig-saw decorations. Also it suffered from a slate roof of a
depressing shade of blue gray. But it was roomy and comfortable.
Houses occupied for a long period by the same family have a way of
taking on imperceptibly but surely the characteristics of their owners. The
Tollivers, Hattie and Charles, had come into the house as bride and
bridegroom, in the days when Charles Tolliver had before him a bright
future, years before he gave up, at the urging of his powerful wife, a
commonplace adequate salary for a more reckless and extravagant career in
the politics of the growing county. By now, twenty years after, the house,
the lawn and the garden expressed the essence of the Tolliver family. The
grass sometimes went in grave need of cutting. The paint had peeled here
and there where it lay exposed to the middle-western winter. At the eaves
there were streaks of black made by soot which drifted from the roaring
Mills in the distant Flats. The shrubs were unpruned and the climbing roses
would have been improved by a little cutting; yet these things, taken all in
all, produced an effect of charm far greater than any to be found in the other
neat, painted, monotonous houses that stood in unspectacular rows on either
side of Sycamore Street. In the careless growth of the shrubs and vines
there was a certain wildness and inspiring vigor, something full-blooded
and lush which elsewhere in the block was absent. There was nothing
ordered, pruned or clipped into a state of patterned mediocrity. Here, within
the hedge that enclosed the Tolliver property there reigned a marked
abandon, a sense of life lived recklessly with a shameless disregard for
smug security. The Tollivers clearly had no time for those things which lay
outside the main current.
Yet there was no rubbish in evidence. The whole was spotlessly clean
from the linden trees which stood by the curb to the magenta-colored stable
at the end of the garden. You might have walked the length of the block
without consciousness of the other houses; but in front of the Tollivers’ you
would have halted, thinking, “Here is a difference indeed. Some careless
householder without proper pride in his grounds!”
Yet you would have stopped to notice it. At least it would have interested
you by the wild, vigorous, disheveled character of its difference.
In the beginning the room which Gramp occupied had been built for a
servant and through its doors, in the spasmodic periods of Tolliver
prosperity, had passed a procession of weird and striking “hired girls” ...
country maidens come to town in search of excitement, Bohemian and
Russian girls, the offspring of the Flat-dwellers; one or two who had been,
to Hattie’s shocked amazement, simply daughters of joy. With the passing
of Myrtle, the last of these, who was retired in order to bear a child of
uncertain paternity, the Tollivers’ ship of fortune had slipped into one of the
periodical doldrums and the stormy, unsatisfactory era of the hired girl
came to an end forever. Almost as if he had divined the event, Grandpa
Tolliver appeared on the same day seated beside the driver on a wagon
laden with books, to announce that he had come to take up his abode with
the family of his son. There was nothing to be done. The books were moved
into the room above the kitchen and there the old man settled himself. He
had been there now for ten years, a gadfly to torment the virtuous, bustling
existence of his daughter-in-law. He seldom stirred from his room. He had,
indeed, done nothing in all his life which might be scored under the name of
accomplishment. As a young man he had been trained for the church, but
when his education had been completed, he discovered that he had learned
too much and so believed nothing. He bothered no one. His crime was
inertia. He possessed an indifference of colossal proportions.

As the room fell into a thick blackness, the rocking chair, under the urge
of flooding memories, acquired a greater animation. It may have been that
there was something in the homely sounds of the backyard vista and the
pleasant smell of burning leaves that pierced by way of his senses the wall
of the old man’s impregnable solitude. Presently he chuckled again in a
triumphant fashion, as if the memory of Hattie Tolliver’s irritation still rang
in his ears.
Ah, how she hated him! How they all scorned him! Even on his rare and
solitary ramblings along the sidewalks of the Town, prosperous citizens
regarded him with hostile looks. “Old Man Tolliver ... The Failure!” They
pointed him out to their children as the awful example of a man without
ambition, a man who drifted into a lonely and desolate old age, abhorred
and unwanted, a burden to his own children and grandchildren. That’s what
came of not having energy and push!
Old Man Tolliver ... The Failure! At the thought, the wicked old man
chortled more loudly than ever. Failure! Failure! What did they know of
whether he was a failure or not. Failure! That was where he had the joke on
the lot of them. He alone had fixed his ambition, captured his ideal; he had
done always exactly what he wanted to do.
In sudden satisfaction over his secret triumph the old man was very
nearly overcome by his own chuckling.
Old? Yes, he felt very old to-night. Perhaps he hadn’t many years before
him. Maybe it was only a matter of months. Then he would die. What was it
like to die? Just a passing out probably, into something vast and dark.
Oblivion! That was it. Why wasn’t that the ideal end? Oblivion, where you
were nothing and had no mind and no memory and no books, where you
simply did not exist. Just nothingness and eternal peace. Aratu, that
kingdom where reigned mere oblivion. He wasn’t looking forward to
Heaven and harps. (Imagine Hattie strumming a harp!) He was filled with a
sense of great completeness, of having done everything there was to do, of
having known all of life that it was possible for one man to know. Sin?
What was sin? He didn’t regret anything he had done. He had no remorse,
no regrets. On the contrary he was glad of all the things he had done which
people called sin. It gave him a satisfactory feeling of completeness. Now
when he was so old, he needn’t wish he had done this or done that. He had.
To be sure, he hadn’t murdered any one! He hadn’t been guilty of theft. It
was very satisfactory ... that feeling of completeness.
Nothing remained. Death.... Deadness.... Why he was dead already.
Death must be like this room, blank, dark, negative, neither one thing nor
the other. He had been dead for weeks, for months, for years; and here he
was walled up in a tomb of books. “La Pucelle” (a rare edition). What
would become of it? Like as not Hattie would burn it, never knowing its
value. Think how she would suffer if ever she discovered she had burned up
a great pile of banknotes! Candide, The Critique of Pure Reason, Spinoza,
Montaigne, Darwin, Huxley. (What a row they’d caused! How well he
remembered the chatter.) Plato. And there was Verlaine and George Sand
and all of Thackeray. Colonel Newcome and Rebecca Sharp with her
pointed nose and green eyes. What an amusing creature she was! Amelia
Sedley, that tiresome, uninteresting, virtuous bore! And Charles Honeyman.
(Ah! He knew things they didn’t dream of in this town!) And there in the
corner by the old desk, Emma Bovary tearing voluptuously at her bodice.
But they were not all ghosts of books. There were ghosts too of reality,
ghosts born of memories, which came dimly out of the past, out of a youth
that, dried now at its source, had been hot-blooded and romantic and
restless; such ghosts as one called Celeste (in a poke bonnet with a camelia
pinned just above the brim) who seemed forever peeping round the corner
of a staircase as she had once peeped, in a glowing reality round the corner
of a staircase in the Rue de Clichy. Nina who was more alive now than she
had ever been.... And they thought him a failure!
Yes, they were amusing ghosts. He had lived with them so many years.
Lonely? How was it possible to be lonely among such fascinating
companions? He had lived with them too long. He knew them too well,
inside and out. They kept him company in this tomb of books. He seldom
left it. Once a week, perhaps, to walk around the block; and then the
children ran from him as if they saw the Devil himself.
Grandpa Tolliver began to rock more gently now. Yes, he’d been wicked
enough. He’d known everything there was to know and didn’t regret it.
They shut him up in this room and didn’t address him for days at a time, but
he had Emma Bovary and Becky Sharp to amuse him; and Celeste who
belonged to him alone. Grandpa Barr didn’t even have them. His children
had left him—all but his daughter Hattie—to go to Iowa, to Oregon, to
Wyoming, always toward the open country. Your friends might die and your
children might go away, but your memories couldn’t desert you, nor such
friends as Emma and Becky.
Outside it began presently to rain, at first slowly with isolate, hesitating
drops, and then more and more steadily until at last the whole parched earth
drank up the autumn downpour.
 2

I N the sound of rain falling through soft darkness there is a healing quality
of peace. Its persistence—the very effortless unswerving rhythm of the
downpour—have the power of engulfing the spirit in a kind of sensuous
oblivion. Even upon one of so violent and unreflective a nature as Ellen
Tolliver, one so young, so impatient and so moody, the sound of the autumn
rain falling on the roof and in the parched garden had its effect. It created a
music of its own, delicate yet primitive, abundant of the richness of earth
and air, so that presently in a room a dozen feet from her grandfather, Ellen
stopped sobbing and buried her face in the pillow of her great oak bed,
soothed, peaceful; and presently in the darkness of her room she lay at last
silent and still, her dark hair tossed and disheveled against the white of the
pillowcase. She lay thus in a solitude of her own, separated only by the
thinness of a single wall from the solitude in which her grandfather sat
enveloped. If the sound of her sobbing had been audible, there was another
wall that would have stopped it ... the wall of warm autumn rain that beat
upon the earth and shut her away from all the world.
She knew no reason for this outburst of weeping. If there had been a
reason she would not have locked herself in her room to weep until she had
no more tears. She could not say, “I weep because some one has been
unkind to me,” or “I weep because I have suffered a sudden
disappointment.” She wept because she could not help herself; because she
had been overcome by a mood that was at once melancholy and heroic, sad
yet luxuriously sensuous. After a fashion, her weeping gave her pleasure.
Now that the sound of the rain had quieted her, she lay bathing her soul in
the darkness. Somehow it protected her. Here in a locked room where no
splinter of light penetrated, she was for a little time completely herself. That
was the great thing.... She was herself.... There was no one about her....
Sometimes this same triumphant aloofness came to her from music.... It too
was able to set her apart where she was forced to share nothing of herself
with any one. In the darkness people couldn’t pry their way into your soul.
All this she understood but vaguely, with the understanding of a sensitive
girl who has not learned to search her own soul. And this understanding she
kept to herself. None knew of it. The face she showed to the world betrayed
nothing of loneliness, of wild and turbulent moods, of fierce exasperation.
To the world she was a girl very like other girls, rather more hasty and bad-
tempered perhaps, but not vastly different—a girl driven alone by a wild
vague impulse hidden far back in the harassed regions of her impatient soul.
It is one of the tragedies of youth that it feels and suffers without
understanding.
For an hour she lay quite still listening to the rain; and at the end of that
time, hearing sounds from below stairs which forecast the arrival of supper,
she rose and lighted the gas bracket above her dressing table.
At the first pin point of flame, the world of darkness and rain vanished
and in its place, as if by some abracadabra, there sprang into existence the
hard, definite walls of a room, square and commonplace, touched with
quaint efforts to create an illusion of beauty. The walls were covered with
wall paper bearing a florid design of lattices heavily laden with red roses on
anemic stalks. Two Gibson pictures, faithfully copied by an admirer, hung
on either side of the oak dresser. They were “The Eternal Question” and
“The Queen of Hearts.” The bed, vast and ugly, and still bearing in the
white counterpane the imprint of Ellen’s slim young body, fitted the room
as neatly as a canal barge fits a lock. The chairs varied in type from an old
arm chair of curly maple, brought across the mountains into the middle-
west by Ellen’s great-grandfather and now relegated to the bedroom, to a
damaged patent rocker upholstered in red plush with yellow tassels. On the
top of the dressing table lay a cover made elaborately of imitation
Valenciennes and fine cambric, profusely ornamented by bow knots of pink
baby ribbon.
By the flickering light, the girl arranged her hair before the mirror. It was
dark, heavy, lustrous hair with deep blue lights. Hastily tossing it into a
pompadour over a wire rat, she washed her eyes with cold water to destroy
the redness. She was preparing the face she showed the world. It was not a
beautiful face though it had its points. It was too long perhaps and the nose
was a trifle prominent; otherwise it was a pleasant face, with large dark
eyes, fine straight lips and a really beautiful chin. It held the beginnings of a
beauty that was fine and proud. The way the chin and throat leapt from her
shoulders was a thing at which to marvel. The line was clear, triumphant,
determined. Even Ellen was forced to admire it. What she lacked in beauty
was amply compensated by the interest which her face inspired. The
pompadour, to be sure, was ridiculous. It was but a week or two old, the
sign of her emancipation from the estate of a little girl.
For a long time she studied the reflection in the mirror. This way and that
she turned her proud head, admiring all the while the line of the throat and
tilted chin. It delighted her as music sometimes delighted her, with a strange
leaping sensation of triumph over people about her.
She thought, “Am I to be great one day? Am I to be famous? Is it written
in my face? I will be or die ... I must be!”

Early in the afternoon, before the long rain settled in for the night, she
had walked out of Miss Ogilvie’s little house down the brick path under the
elms with a heart singing in triumph. Before she arrived home, the sense of
triumph had faded a little, and by the time she reached her room it was gone
altogether, submerged by a wave of despair. It seemed that her triumph only
made life more difficult; instead of being an end it was only a beginning. It
created the most insuperable difficulties, the most perilous and agitating
problems.
Miss Ogilvie lived in a weathered old house that withdrew from the
street behind a verdant bulwark of lilacs, syringas, and old apple trees
abounding in birds,—wrens, blackbirds, finches and robins. In the warm
season, as if the wild birds were not enough, a canary or two and a pair of
love-birds hung suspended from the roof of the narrow piazza high above
the scroll-work of the jig-saw rail. There were those who believed that Miss
Ogilvie, in some earlier incarnation, was herself a bird ... a wren perhaps, or
a song sparrow flitting in and out of hedges and tufts of grass, shaking its
immaculate tail briskly in defiance of a changing world.
When she sat in her big rocker listening to the horrible exercises of her
pupils, she resembled a linnet on a swaying bough. She rocked gently as if
she found the motion soothing to some wildness inside her correct and
spinsterish little body. Always she rocked, perhaps because it helped her to
endure the horrible renderings of Schumann and Mendelssohn by the
simpering daughters and the sullen sons of the baker, the butcher, the
candle-stick maker. For Miss Ogilvie understood music and she was
sensitive enough. In her youth, before her father failed in the deluge that
followed the Civil War, she had been abroad. She had heard music, real
music, in her day. In all the Town she and Grandpa Tolliver alone knew
what real music could be. She had even studied for a time in Munich where
she lived in her birdlike way in a well chaperoned pension. The other girls
fluttered too, for in her day women were all a little birdlike; it was a part of
their training.
In the early afternoon when Ellen Tolliver came for her weekly lesson,
Miss Ogilvie, dressed in a tight-fitting basque of purple poplin ornamented
with pins of coral and cameo, received her formally into the little drawing-
room where she lived in a nest of pampas grass, conch shells, raffia baskets,
and spotless bits of bric-a-brac. There was in the reception nothing unusual;
Miss Ogilvie permitted herself no relaxation, even in the privacy of her own
bed-chamber. She remained a lady, elegantly so, who supported herself in a
genteel fashion by giving music lessons. But with Ellen a certain warmth
and kindliness, seldom to be found in her contact with other pupils,
occasionally tempered the formality. To-day her manner carried even a hint
of respect.
Ellen sat at the upright piano and played. She played with a wild
emotionalism unhampered by problems of technique. She poured her
young, rebellious soul into the music until the ebony piano rocked and the
ball-fringe of the brocade piano-cover swayed. Miss Ogilvie sat in her big
rocking chair in a spot of sunlight and listened. It was significant that she
did not rock. She sat quite still, her tiny feet barely touching the floor, her
thin blue-veined hands lying quietly like little birds at rest in her purple
poplin lap. The canaries too became still and listened. A hush fell upon the
garden.
“And now,” said Miss Ogilvie, when Ellen paused for a moment, “some
Bach,” and the girl set off into the tortuous, architectural beauties of a
fugue. She played without notes, her eyes closed a little, her body swaying
with a passionate rhythm which arose from something far more profound
than the genteel precepts of Miss Ogilvie. It was savage. It must have
terrified the gentle little old woman, for she knew that to play Bach
savagely was sacrilege. And yet ... somehow it didn’t matter, when Ellen
did it. There was in the music a smoldering, disturbing magnificence.
Then she played some Chopin, delicately, poetically; and at last she
finished and turned about on the piano stool to await the criticism of her
teacher.