Oh, them Albany State students...

 I open the Primer and choose a page:
                                  THE OLD WOMAN
    The cat lay dead beneath the rocker's rung.   Its crushed back curled in resignation, opposite the way of normal bending.  The rocker, tilted at a crazy angle, was just as lifeless and the woman in it, too.  Thus it had been since the clock struck five a day and a half ago.  Thus it had been and thus it was now---all still.
    She had been a lover of cats.  There had been many , and she cherished them all with the same close attention. But the years, slipping stealthily away, had taken one cat each, until just one cat remained. It was all she had.
   A forgotten dish lay empty of its milk.  A spool of thread spilled dead upon the floor.  A rubber mouse cowered wonderingly in a corner of the room.  No light breath disturbed the heavy air.
    The old woman's hair was disheveled, but the cat's had a brush-telling sheen.  Under her smock, her bones jutted sharply from their angled joints, uncushioned, as the cat's, with smooth firm flesh.  Her ragged shawl, moth-eaten, worn, hung where the thick, bright cat's-bed-blanket should have been. She had been a lover of cats.
    She had not heard the curdling screech, or the crushing of small vertebrae.  Nor could she tell why her rocker stopped and stuck, 'til she dropped her arm to the rung below and felt the warm wet fur.  And the last year slipped away.
                        This was the publication of 1959.      This selection written by Cecil Blum.  I wonder what became of him.  His writing style could have used help.  I could have edited this cheesy passage. I would begin by advising him to learn the parts of a rocking chair.  The "rung" is not the "rocker."