title: A Good Day for Uncle Elmo: Stories from a Schoolteacher's Journal
author: Molly Barnes
description: Molly Barnes, Author biography Molly Barnes has been a classroom teacher and administrator in a small unconventional elementary school on the Gulf of Mexico for thirty years. Born in Geneva, New York, she was educated at Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design. She has been a resident of Florida for almost forty years, and considers herself a native flower that needs the humidity of the semi tropics. Recently retired, she now lives on a ranch in Dade City, Florida, with her husband, a herd of cows, a miniature dachshund, and countless wild creatures. She welcomes many children, grandchildren, and young adults.
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  Uncle Cornelius, His Story  
    
  
  This page copyright © 2001 Blackmask Online.
  
  
  http://www.blackmask.com
  
  
  # Uncle Cornelius, His Story
  
  
  ### George MacDonald
  
  
  This page copyright © 2001 Blackmask Online.
  
  
  http://www.blackmask.com  
    
  
  
  It was a dull evening in November. A drizzling mist had been falling all day
  about the old farm. Harry Heywood and his two sisters sat in the house-place,
  expecting a visit from their uncle, Cornelius Heywood. This uncle lived alone,
  occupying the first floor above a chemist's shop in the town, and had just
  enough of money over to buy books that nobody seemed ever to have heard of but
  himself; for he was a student in all those regions of speculation in which
  anything to be called knowledge is impossible.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "What a dreary night!" said Kate. "I wish uncle would come and tell us a
  story."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "A cheerful wish," said Harry. "Uncle Cornie is a lively companion-isn't he?
  He cant even blunder through a Joe Mill