'Death of Uncle Silas'

In the third of three initial Uncle Silas tales (see The Lily and The Wedding), Silas is rebellious and feisty to the end, filling his medicine bottles with elderberry and cowslip wine, shooting a blue jay in his garden, and tricking his housekeeper by slipping out at night.

Disbelieving that Silas could really be dying, his great-nephew bids a poignant and fond farewell to a man who "was so old that it had always been hard for me to realise that he had ever been born."

Published in:

• John O'London's Weekly (December 2, 1933)
• Story (May 1934)
• Story in America, 1933-1934: Thirty-Four Selections from the American Issues of 'Story'" (1934)
• The Woman Who Had Imagination and Other Stories (1934)
• Argosy (July 1936)
• My Uncle Silas (1939, with an initial "The" in the story title)
• The Complete My Uncle Silas Stories (Bloomsbury ebook, 2016)