The little fan whirring in the back room of the Thrift Shop was no more adequate for ventilation than a scrawny bird flapping its wings. The only thing it riffled was the sales chart thumbtacked on the wall directly above the fan and kept up to date by the volunteer who had a firmer grasp of arithmetic than any of the other ladies. She had filled in neatly, with black marking pencil, the weekly and monthly figures on the secondhand merchandise sold for charity; the totals for April, may, June and July had shot up so violently it looked as if the ladies had robbed a bank and added their loot to the take.

--Beauty Sleep (1977)

As an example of Mather's talents, Silas tells the rather ghoulish story of a mother who kept grieving because she hadn't had a picture taken of her teen-age son before he died. Six months after the funeral, she was still brooding about it, and a relative said, "I'll bet Mather could do it."

The glass-topped coffin was dug up, and Mather, happy over this interesting challenge, ordered it propped up endwise, against a hitching post. Silas, who was there as a helper, ends the tale, "And you know, he no sooner got a good picture than that corpse crumbled into dust. That kind of bothered Mather. He said, 'I don't think I'll take another job like this-- unless I need the money'."

-- from The Great Oildorado (1959)