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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12732 ***
+
+A Collection of Short-Stories
+
+EDITED BY
+L.A. PITTENGER, A.M.,
+CRITIC IN ENGLISH, INDIANA UNIVERSITY
+
+New York:
+THE MACMILLAN COMPANY,
+1914
+
+
+Set up and electrotyped. Published November, 1913. Reprinted January,
+1914.
+
+Norwood Press,
+J.S. Cushing Co.—Berwick & Smith Co.,
+Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+ A PREFATORY NOTE
+ INTRODUCTION:
+      History of the Short-story
+      Qualities of the Short-story
+      Composition of the Short-story
+      Books for Reference
+      Collections of Short-stories
+ THE FATHER. 1860. Björnstjerne Björnson.
+ THE GRIFFIN AND THE MINOR CANON. 1887. Frank R. Stockton.
+ THE PIECE OF STRING. 1884. Guy de Maupassant.
+ THE MAN WHO WAS. 1889. Rudyard Kipling.
+ THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER. 1839. Edgar Allan Poe.
+ THE GOLD-BUG. 1843. Edgar Allan Poe.
+ THE BIRTHMARK. 1843. Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+ ETHAN BRAND. 1848. Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+ THE SIRE DE MALÉTROIT'S DOOR. 1878. Robert Louis Stevenson.
+ MARKHEIM. 1884. Robert Louis Stevenson.
+
+
+
+
+A PREFATORY NOTE
+
+
+This collection of short-stories does not illustrate the history of
+short-story writing, nor does it pretend that these are the ten best
+stories ever written, but it does attempt to present selections from a
+list of the greatest short-stories that have proved, in actual use,
+most beneficial to high school students.
+
+The introduction presents a concise statement of the essentials of the
+history, qualities, and composition of the short-story. A brief
+biography of each author and a criticism covering the main
+characteristics of his writings serve as starting points for the
+recitation. The references following both the biography and criticism
+are given in order that the study of the short-story may be amplified,
+and that high school teachers may build a systematic and serviceable
+library about their class work in the teaching of the story. The
+collateral readings, listed after each story, will aid in the creation
+of a suitable atmosphere for the story studied, and explain many
+questions developed in the recitation. Only such definitions as are not
+easily found in school dictionaries are included in the notes.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+HISTORY OF THE SHORT-STORY
+
+Just when, where, and by whom story-telling was begun no one can say.
+From the first use of speech, no doubt, our ancestors have told stories
+of war, love, mysteries, and the miraculous performances of lower
+animals and inanimate objects. The ultimate source of all stories lies
+in a thorough democracy, unhampered by the restrictions of a higher
+civilization. Many tales spring from a loathsome filth that is
+extremely obnoxious to our present day tastes. The remarkable and
+gratifying truth is, however, that the short-story, beginning in the
+crude and brutal stages of man's development, has gradually unfolded to
+greater and more useful possibilities, until in our own time it is a
+most flexible and moral literary form.
+
+The first historical evidence in the development of the story shows no
+conception of a short-story other than that it is not so long as other
+narratives. This judgment of the short-story obtained until the
+beginning of the nineteenth century, when a new version of its meaning
+was given, and an enlarged vision of its possibilities was experienced
+by a number of writers almost simultaneously. In the early centuries of
+story-telling there was only one purpose in mind—that of narrating for
+the joy of the telling and hearing. The story-tellers sacrificed unity
+and totality of effect as well as originality for an entertaining
+method of reciting their incidents.
+
+The story of _Ruth_ and the _Prodigal Son_ are excellent short tales,
+but they do not fulfill the requirements of our modern short-story for
+the reason that they are not constructed for one single impression, but
+are in reality parts of possible longer stories. They are, as it were,
+parts of stories not unlike _Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde_ and _A Lear of
+the Steppes_, and lack those complete and concise artistic effects
+found in the short-stories, _Markheim_ and _Mumu_, by the same authors.
+Both _Ruth_ and the _Prodigal Son_ are exceptionally well told, possess
+a splendid moral tone, and are excellent prophecies of what the
+nineteenth century has developed for us in the art of short-story
+writing.
+
+The Greeks did very little writing in prose until the era of their
+decadence, and showed little instinct to use the concise and unified
+form of the short-story. The conquering Romans followed closely in the
+paths of their predecessors and did little work in the shorter
+narratives. The myths of Greece and Rome were not bound by facts, and
+opened a wonderland where writers were free to roam. The epics were
+slow in movement, and presented a list of loosely organized stories
+arranged about some character like Ulysses or AEneas.
+
+During the mediaeval period story-tellers and stories appeared
+everywhere. The more ignorant of these story-tellers produced the
+fable, and the educated monks produced the simple, crude and disjointed
+tales. The _Gesta Romanorum_ is a wonderful storehouse of these
+mediaeval stories. In the _Decameron_ Boccaccio deals with traditional
+and contemporary materials. He is a born story-teller and presents many
+interesting and well-told narratives, but as Professor Baldwin[1] has
+said, more than half are merely anecdotes, and the remaining stories
+are bare plots, ingeniously done in a kind of scenario form. Three
+approach our modern idea of the short-story, and two, the second story
+of the second day and the sixth story of the ninth day, actually attain
+to our standard. Boccaccio was not conscious of a standard in
+short-story telling, for he had none in the sense that Poe and
+Maupassant defined and practiced it. Chaucer in England told his
+stories in verse and added the charm of humor and well defined
+characters to the development of story-telling.
+
+In the seventeenth century Cervantes gave the world its first great
+novel, _Don Quixote_. Cervantes was careless in his work and did not
+write short-stories, but tales that are fairly brief. Spain added to
+the story a high sense of chivalry and a richness of character that the
+Greek romance and the Italian novella did not possess. France followed
+this loose composition and lack of beauty in form. Scarron and Le Sage,
+the two French fiction writers of this period, contributed little or
+nothing to the advancement of story-telling. Cervantes' _The Liberal
+Lover_ is as near as this period came to producing a real short-story.
+
+The story-telling of the seventeenth century was largely shaped by the
+popularity of the drama. In the eighteenth century the drama gave place
+to the essay, and it is to the sketch and essay that we must go to
+trace the evolution of the story during this period. Voltaire in France
+had a burning message in every essay, and he paid far greater attention
+to the development of the thought of his message than to the story he
+was telling. Addison and Steele in the _Spectator_ developed some real
+characters of the fiction type and told some good stories, but even
+their best, like _Theodosius and Constantia_, fall far short of
+developing all the dramatic possibilities, and lack the focusing of
+interest found in the nineteenth century stories. Some of Lamb's
+_Essays of Elia_, especially the _Dream Children_, introduce a delicate
+fancy and an essayist's clearness of thought and statement into the
+story. At the close of this century German romanticism began to seep
+into English thought and prepare the way for things new in literary
+thought and treatment.
+
+The nineteenth century opened with a decided preference for fiction.
+Washington Irving, reverting to the _Spectator_, produced his sketches,
+and, following the trend of his time, looked forward to a new form and
+wrote _The Spectre Bridegroom_ and _Rip Van Winkle_. It is only by a
+precise definition of short-story that Irving is robbed of the honor of
+being the founder of the modern short-story. He loved to meander and to
+fit his materials to his story scheme in a leisurely manner. He did not
+quite see what Hawthorne instinctively followed and Poe consciously
+defined and practiced, and he did not realize that terseness of
+statement and totality of impression were the chief qualities he needed
+to make him the father of a new literary form. Poe and Maupassant have
+reduced the form of the short-story to an exact science; Hawthorne and
+Harte have done successfully in the field of romanticism what the
+Germans, Tieck and Hoffman, did not do so well; Bjornson and Henry
+James have analyzed character psychologically in their short-stories;
+Kipling has used the short-story as a vehicle for the conveyance of
+specific knowledge; Stevenson has gathered most, if not all, of the
+literary possibilities adaptable to short-story use, and has
+incorporated them in his _Markheim_.
+
+France with her literary newspapers and artistic tendencies, and the
+United States with magazines calling incessantly for good
+short-stories, and with every section of its conglomerate life
+clamoring to express itself, lead in the production and rank of
+short-stories. Maupassant and Stevenson and Hawthorne and Poe are the
+great names in the ranks of short-story writers. The list of present
+day writers is interminable, and high school students can best acquire
+a reasonable appreciation of the great work these writers are doing by
+reading regularly some of the better grade literary magazines.
+
+For a comprehensive view of specimens representing the history and
+development of the short-story, students should have access to Brander
+Matthews' _The Short Story_, Jessup and Canby's _The Book of the
+Short-Story_, and Waite and Taylor's _Modern Masterpieces of Short
+Prose Fiction_.
+
+NOTE: [1] _American Short-Stories_, by Charles Sears Baldwin, New York:
+Longmans, Green, & Company, 1904.
+
+
+
+
+QUALITIES OF THE SHORT-STORY
+
+It was not until well along in the nineteenth century that any one
+attempted to define the short-story. The three quotations given here
+are among the best things that have been spoken on this subject.
+
+"The right novella is never a novel cropped back from the size of a
+tree to a bush, or the branch of a tree stuck into the ground and made
+to serve for a bush. It is another species, destined by the agencies at
+work in the realm of unconsciousness to be brought into being of its
+own kind, and not of another,"—W.D. Howells, _North American Review_,
+173:429.
+
+"A true short-story is something other and something more than a mere
+story which is short. A true short-story differs from the novel chiefly
+in its essential unity of impression. In a far more exact and precise
+use of the word, a short-story has unity as a novel cannot have it…. A
+short-story deals with a single character, a single event, a single
+emotion, or the series of emotions called forth by a single
+situation.—Brander Matthews, _The Philosophy of the Short-Story_.
+
+"The aim of a short-story is to produce a single narrative effect with
+the greatest economy of means that is consistent with the utmost
+emphasis."—Clayton Hamilton, _Materials and Methods of Fiction_.
+
+The short-story must always have a compact unity and a direct
+simplicity. In such stories as Björnson's _The Father_ and Maupassant's
+_The Piece of String_ this simplicity is equal to that of the anecdote,
+but in no case can an anecdote possess the dramatic possibilities of
+these simple short-stories; for a short-story must always have that
+tensity of emotion that comes only in the crucial tests of life.
+
+The short-story does not demand the consistency in treatment of the
+long story, for there are not so many elements to marshal and direct
+properly, but the short-story must be original and varied in its
+themes, cleverly constructed, and lighted through and through with the
+glow of vivid imaginings. A single incident in daily life is caught as
+in a snap-shot exposure and held before the reader in such a manner
+that the impression of the whole is derived largely from suggestion.
+The single incident may be the turning-point in life history, as in
+_The Man Who Was_; it may be a mental surrender of habits fixed
+seemingly in indelible colors in the soul and a sudden, inflexible
+decision to be a man, as in the case of _Markheim;_ or it may be a
+gradual realization of the value of spiritual gifts, as Björnson has
+concisely presented it in his little story _The Father_.
+
+The aim of the short-story is always to present a cross-section of life
+in such a vivid manner that the importance of the incident becomes
+universal. Some short-stories are told with the definite end in view of
+telling a story for the sake of exploiting a plot. _The Cask of
+Amontillado_ is all action in comparison with _The Masque of the Red
+Death. The Gold-Bug_ sets for itself the task of solving a puzzle and
+possesses action from first to last. Other stories teach a moral.
+_Ethan Brand_ deals with the unpardonable sin, and _The Great Stone
+Face_ is our classic story in the field of ideals and their
+development. Hawthorne, above all writers, is most interested in
+ethical laws and moral development. Still other stories aim to portray
+character. Miss Jewett and Mrs. Freeman veraciously picture the
+faded-put womanhood in New England; Henry James and Björnson turn the
+x-rays of psychology and sociology on their characters; Stevenson
+follows with the precision of the tick of a watch the steps in
+Markheim's mental evolution.
+
+The types of the short-story are as varied as life itself. Addison,
+Lamb, Irving, Warner, and many others have used the story in their
+sketches and essays with wonderful effect. _The Legend of Sleepy
+Hollow_ is as impressive as any of Scott's tales. The allegory in _The
+Great Stone Face_ loses little or nothing when compared with Bunyan's
+_Pilgrim's Progress_. No better type of detective story has been
+written than the two short-stories, _The Murders in the Rue Morgue_ and
+_The Purloined Letter_. Every emotion is subject to the call of the
+short-story. Humor with its expansive free air is not so well adapted
+to the short-story as is pathos. There is a sadness in the stories of
+Dickens, Garland, Page, Mrs. Freeman, Miss Jewett, Maupassant, Poe, and
+many others that runs the whole gamut from pleasing tenderness in _A
+Child's Dream of a Star_ to unutterable horror in _The Fall of the
+House of Usher_.
+
+The short-story is stripped of all the incongruities that led Fielding,
+Scott, and Dickens far afield. All its parts harmonize in the simplest
+manner to give unity and "totality" of impression through strict unity
+of form. It is a concentrated piece of life snatched from the ordinary
+and uneventful round of living and steeped in fancy until it becomes
+the acme of literary art.
+
+
+
+
+COMPOSITION OF THE SHORT-STORY
+
+Any student who wishes to express himself correctly and pleasingly, and
+desires a keener sense for the appreciation of literary work must
+write. The way others have done the thing never appears in a forceful
+light until one sets himself at a task of like nature. Just so in the
+study of this text. To find and appreciate the better points of the
+short-story, students must write stories of their own, patterned in a
+small way on the technique of the masterpieces.
+
+The process of short-story writing follows in a general way the
+following program. In the first place the class must have something
+interesting and suggestive to write about. Sometimes the class can
+suggest a subject; newspapers almost every day give incidents worthy of
+story treatment; happenings in the community often give the very best
+material for stories; and phases of the literature work may well be
+used in the development of students' themes. Change the type of
+character and place, reconstruct the plot, or require a different
+ending for the story, leaving the plot virtually as it is, and then
+assign to the class. Boys and girls should invariably be taught to see
+stories in the life about them, in the newspapers and magazines on
+their library tables, and in the masterpieces they study in their class
+work.
+
+After the idea that the class wishes to develop has been definitely
+determined and the material for this development has been gathered and
+grouped about the idea, the class should select a viewpoint and proceed
+to write. Sometimes the author should tell the story, sometimes a third
+person who may be of secondary importance in the story should be given
+the rôle of the story-teller, sometimes the whole may be in dialogue.
+The class should choose a fitting method.
+
+Young writers should be very careful about the beginning of a story. An
+action story should start with a striking incident that catches the
+reader's attention at once and forecasts subsequent happenings. In
+every case this first incident must have in it the essence of the end
+of the story and should be perfectly logical to the reader after he has
+finished the reading. A story in which the setting is emphasized can
+well begin, with a description and contain a number of descriptions and
+expositions, distributed with a sense of propriety throughout the
+theme. A good method to use in the opening of a character story is that
+of conversation. An excellent example of a sharp use of this device is
+Mrs. Freeman's _Revolt of Mother_, where the first paragraph is a
+single spoken word.
+
+Every incident included in the story should be tested for its value in
+the development of the theme. An incident that does not amplify certain
+phases of the story has no right to be included, and great care should
+be used in an effort to incorporate just the material necessary for the
+proper evolution of the thought. The problem is not so much what can be
+secured to be included in the story, but rather, after making a
+thorough collection of the material, what of all these points should be
+cast out.
+
+The ending must be a natural outgrowth of the development found in the
+body of the composition. Even in a story with a surprise ending, of
+which we are tempted to say that we have had no preparation for such a
+turn in the story, there must be hints—the subtler the better—that
+point unerringly and always toward the end. The end is presupposed in
+the beginning and the changing of one means the altering of the other.
+
+Young writers have trouble in stopping at the right place. They should
+learn, as soon as possible, that to drag on after the logical ending
+has been reached spoils the best of stories. It is just as bad to stop
+before arriving at the true end. In other words there is only one place
+for the ending of a story, and in no case can it be shifted without
+ruining the idea that has obtained throughout the theme.
+
+There are certain steps in the development of story-writing that should
+be followed if the best results are to be obtained. The first
+assignment should require only the writing of straight narrative. _The
+Arabian Nights Tales_ and children's stories represent this type of
+writing and will give the teacher valuable aid in the presentation of
+this work. After the students have produced simple stories resembling
+the Sinbad Voyages, they should next add descriptions of persons and
+places and explanations of situations to develop clearness and interest
+in their original productions. Taking these themes in turn students
+should be required to introduce plot incidents that complicate the
+simple happenings and divert the straightforward trend of the
+narrative. Now that the stories are well developed in their
+descriptions, expositions, and plot interests they should be tested for
+their emotional effects. Students should go through their themes, and
+by making the proper changes give in some cases a humorous and in
+others a pathetic or tragic effect. These few suggestions are given to
+emphasize the facts that no one conceives a story in all its details in
+a moment of inspiration, and that there is a way of proceeding that
+passes in logical gradations from the simplest to the most complex
+phases of story writing.
+
+Franklin and Stevenson knew no rules for writing other than to practice
+incessantly on some form they wished to imitate. Hard work is the first
+lesson that boys and girls must learn in the art of writing, and a
+systematic gradation of assignments is what the teacher must provide
+for his students. Walter Besant gave the following rules for novel
+writers. Some of them may be suggestive to writers of the high school
+age, so the list is given in its complete form. "(1) Practice writing
+something original every day. (2) Cultivate the habit of observation.
+(3) Work regularly at certain hours. (4) Read no rubbish. (5) Aim at
+the formation of style. (6) Endeavor to be dramatic. (7) A great
+element of dramatic skill is selection. (8) Avoid the sin of writing
+about a character. (9) Never attempt to describe any kind of life
+except that with which you are familiar. (10) Learn as much as you can
+about men and women. (11) For the sake of forming a good natural style,
+and acquiring command of language, write poetry."
+
+
+
+
+SHORT-STORY LIBRARY
+
+_BOOKS FOR REFERENCE_:
+
+_American Short-Stories_, Charles Baldwin, Longmans, Green, & Co.
+
+_A Study of Prose Fiction_, Chapter XII, Bliss Perry, Houghton, Mifflin
+Co.
+
+_Composition Rhetoric_, T.C. Blaisdell, American Book Co.
+
+_Forms of Prose Literature_, J.H. Gardiner, Charles Scribner's Sons.
+
+_Materials and Methods of Fiction_, Clayton Hamilton, The Baker and
+Taylor Co.
+
+_Principles of Literary Criticism_, C.T. Winchester, The Macmillan Co.
+
+_Short-Story Writing_, C.R. Barrett. The Baker and Taylor Co.
+
+_Specimens of the Short-Story_, G.H. Nettleton, H. Holt & Co.
+
+_Story-Writing and Journalism_, Sherwin Cody, Funk & Wagnalls Co.
+
+_Talks on Writing English_, Arlo Bates, Houghton Mifflin Co.
+
+_The Writing of the Short-Story_, L.W. Smith, D.C. Heath & Co.
+
+_The Philosophy of the Short-Story_, Brander Matthews, Longmans, Green,
+& Co.
+
+_The World's Greatest Short-Stories_, Sherwin Cody, A.C. McClurg & Co.
+
+_The Short-Story_, Henry Canby, Henry Holt & Co.
+
+_The Short-Story_, Evelyn May Albright, The Macmillan Co.
+
+_The Book of the Short-Story_, Jessup and Canby, D. Appleton & Co.
+
+_Modern Masterpieces of Short Prose Fiction_, Waite and Taylor, D.
+Appleton & Co.
+
+_The Short-Story_, Brander Matthews, American Book Co.
+
+_Writing the Short-Story_, Esenwein, Hinds, Noble & Eldredge.
+
+_A Study of the Short-Story in English_, Henry Seidel Canby, Henry Holt
+& Co.
+
+
+
+
+COLLECTIONS OF SHORT-STORIES:
+
+_American Short-Stories_, Charles S. Baldwin, Longmans, Green, & Co.
+
+_Great Short-Stories_, 3 vols., William Patten, P.F. Collier & Son.
+
+_Little French Masterpieces_, 6 vols. Alexander Jessup, G.P. Putnam's
+Sons.
+
+_Short-Story Classics_ (American), 5 vols., William Patten, P.F.
+Collier & Son.
+
+_Short-Story Classics_ (Foreign), 5 vols., William Patten, P.F. Collier
+& Son.
+
+_Stories by American Authors_, 10 vols., Charles Scribner's Sons.
+
+_Stories by English Authors_, 10 vols., Charles Scribner's Sons.
+
+_Stories by Foreign Authors_, 10 vols., Charles Scribner's Sons.
+
+_Stories New and Old_ (American and English), Hamilton W. Mabie, The
+Macmillan Co.
+
+_World's Greatest Short-Stories_, Sherwin Cody, A.C. McClurg & Co.
+
+_The American Short-Story_, Elias Lieberman.
+
+
+
+
+THE FATHER[1]
+
+
+_By Björnstjerne Björnson (1838-1910)_
+
+
+The man whose story is here to be told was the wealthiest and most
+influential person in his parish; his name was Thord Överaas. He
+appeared in the priest's study one day, tall and earnest.
+
+"I have gotten a son," said he, "and I wish to present him for
+baptism."
+
+"What shall his name be?"
+
+"Finn,—after my father."
+
+"And the sponsors?"
+
+They were mentioned, and proved to be the best men and women of Thord's
+relations in the parish.
+
+"Is there anything else?" inquired the priest, and looked up. The
+peasant hesitated a little.
+
+"I should like very much to have him baptized by himself," said he,
+finally.
+
+"That is to say on a week-day?"
+
+"Next Saturday, at twelve o'clock noon."
+
+"Is there anything else?" inquired the priest,
+
+"There is nothing else;" and the peasant twirled his cap, as though he
+were about to go.
+
+Then the priest rose. "There is yet this, however." said he, and
+walking toward Thord, he took him by the hand and looked gravely into
+his eyes: "God grant that the child may become a blessing to you!"
+
+One day sixteen years later, Thord stood once more in the priest's
+study.
+
+"Really, you carry your age astonishingly well, Thord," said the
+priest; for he saw no change whatever in the man.
+
+"That is because I have no troubles," replied Thord. To this the priest
+said nothing, but after a while he asked: "What is your pleasure this
+evening?"
+
+"I have come this evening about that son of mine who is to be confirmed
+to-morrow."
+
+"He is a bright boy."
+
+"I did not wish to pay the priest until I heard what number the boy
+would have when he takes his place in the church to-morrow."
+
+"He will stand number one."
+
+"So I have heard; and here are ten dollars for the priest."
+
+"Is there anything else I can do for you?" inquired the priest, fixing
+his eyes on Thord.
+
+"There is nothing else."
+
+Thord went out.
+
+Eight years more rolled by, and then one day a noise was heard outside
+of the priest's study, for many men were approaching, and at their head
+was Thord, who entered first.
+
+The priest looked up and recognized him.
+
+"You come well attended this evening, Thord," said he.
+
+"I am here to request that the banns may be published for my son: he is
+about to marry Karen Storliden, daughter of Gudmund, who stands here
+beside me."
+
+"Why, that is the richest girl in the parish."
+
+"So they say," replied the peasant, stroking back his hair with one
+hand.
+
+The priest sat a while as if in deep thought, then entered the names in
+his book, without making any comments, and the men wrote their
+signatures underneath. Thord laid three dollars on the table.
+
+"One is all I am to have," said the priest.
+
+"I know that very well; but he is my only child; I want to do it
+handsomely."
+
+The priest took the money.
+
+"This is now the third time, Thord, that you have come here on your
+son's account."
+
+"But now I am through with him," said Thord, and folding up his
+pocket-book he said farewell and walked away.
+
+The men slowly followed him.
+
+A fortnight later, the father and son were rowing across the lake, one
+calm, still day, to Storliden to make arrangements for the wedding.
+
+"This thwart[2] is not secure," said the son, and stood up to
+straighten the seat on which he was sitting.
+
+At the same moment the board he was standing on slipped from under him;
+he threw out his arms, uttered a shriek, and fell overboard.
+
+"Take hold of the oar!" shouted the father, springing to his feet, and
+holding out the oar.
+
+But when the son had made a couple of efforts he grew stiff.
+
+"Wait a moment!" cried the father, and began to row toward his son.
+
+Then the son rolled over on his back, gave his father one long look,
+and sank.
+
+Thord could scarcely believe it; he held the boat still, and stared at
+the spot where his son had gone down, as though he must surely come to
+the surface again. There rose some bubbles, then some more, and finally
+one large one that burst; and the lake lay there as smooth and bright
+as a mirror again.
+
+For three days and three nights people saw the father rowing round and
+round the spot, without taking either food or sleep; he was dragging
+the lake for the body of his son. And toward morning of the third day
+he found it, and carried it in his arms up over the hills to his
+gard[3].
+
+It might have been about a year from that day, when the priest, late
+one autumn evening, heard some one in the passage outside of the door,
+carefully trying to find the latch. The priest opened the door, and in
+walked a tall, thin man, with bowed form and white hair. The priest
+looked long at him before he recognized him. It was Thord.
+
+"Are you out walking so late?" said the priest, and stood still in
+front of him.
+
+"Ah, yes! it is late," said Thord, and took a seat.
+
+The priest sat down also, as though waiting. A long, long silence
+followed. At last Thord said,—
+
+"I have something with me that I should like to give to the poor; I
+want it to be invested as a legacy in my son's name."
+
+He rose, laid some money on the table, and sat down again. The priest
+counted it.
+
+"It is a great deal of money," said he.
+
+"It is half the price of my gard. I sold it to-day."
+
+The priest sat long in silence. At last he asked, but gently,—
+
+"What do you propose to do now, Thord?"
+
+"Something better."
+
+They sat there for a while, Thord with downcast eyes, the priest with
+his eyes fixed on Thord. Presently the priest said, slowly and softly,—
+
+"I think your son has at last brought you a true blessing."
+
+"Yes, I think so myself," said Thord, looking up, while two big tears
+coursed slowly down his cheeks.
+
+NOTES
+
+[1] This story was written in 1860. Translated from the Norwegian by
+Professor Rasmus B. Anderson. It is printed by permission of and
+special arrangement with _Houghton Mifflin Co._, publishers.
+
+[2] 3:28 thwart. A seat, across a boat, on which the oarsman, sits.
+
+[3] 4:21 gard. A Norwegian farm.
+
+BIOGRAPHY
+
+Björnstjerne Björnson, Norse poet, novelist, dramatist, orator, and
+political leader, was born December 8, 1832, and died in Paris, April
+26, 1910. From his strenuous father, a Lutheran priest who preached
+with tongue and fist, he inherited the physique of a Norse god. He
+possessed the mind of a poet and the arm of a warrior. At the age of
+twelve he was sent to the Molde grammar school, where he proved himself
+a very dull student. In 1852 he entered the university in Christiana.
+Here he neglected his studies to write poetry and journalistic
+articles.
+
+In politics Björnson was a tremendous force. Dr. Brandes has said; "To
+speak the name of Björnson is like hoisting the colors of Norway." He
+was honored as a king in his native land. He won this recognition by no
+party affiliation, but by his natural gifts as a poet. His magnetic
+eloquence, great message, and sterling character compelled his
+countrymen to follow and honor him. He says of his success in this
+field: "The secret with me is that in success as in failure, in the
+consciousness of my doing as in my habits, I am myself. There are a
+great many who dare not, or lack the ability, to be themselves." For
+his views on political issues the following references may well be
+used: _Independent_. January 31, 1901, pp. 253-257; _Current
+Literature_, November, 1906, p. 581; and _Independent_, July 13, 1905,
+pp. 92-94.
+
+Björnson and Ibsen, the two foremost men of Norway, were very closely
+associated throughout life. They were schoolmates, and both were
+interested in writing and producing plays. Ibsen's son, Dr. Sigurd
+Ibsen, married Björnson's daughter, Bergilot. These two great writers
+were direct contrasts in nearly everything: Björnson lived among his
+people, Ibsen was reserved; Björnson played the rôle of an optimistic
+prophet, Ibsen, that of a pessimistic judge; the former was always a
+conciliatory spirit, the latter a revolutionist; and Björnson proved
+himself a patriotic Norwegian, Ibsen, a man of the entire world.
+
+Lack of space forbids the inclusion of a list of Björnson's writing's.
+High school teachers will find suitable selections in the list of
+collateral readings that follows. Those who wish a complete
+bibliography of his works will find it in _Bookman_, Volume II, p. 65.
+Translations of his works by Rasmus B. Anderson, Houghton Mifflin Co.,
+and Edmund Gosse, the Macmillan Co., will furnish students extensive
+and standard readings of this master story-teller.
+
+CRITICISMS
+
+Björnson, in his masterly character delineations, seldom produces
+portraits. He gives the reader suggestive glimpses often enough and of
+the right quality and arrangement to produce a full and vigorous
+conception of his characters. His female parts are especially well
+done. His characters present themselves to the reader by unique
+thinking and choice expressions. Students should analyze _The Father_
+for this phase of character building. Note also the simplicity of the
+words, sentences, paragraphs, and complete story arrangement, the
+author's originality of story conception and expression, his short,
+passionate, panting sentences, the poetic atmosphere that sweetens and
+enriches his virile writing, and the correct, religious pictures he
+paints of his beloved northland.
+
+After having read a number of selections from Björnson, students will
+see that he has a wonderful breadth of treatment for every imaginable
+subject. He is so universal in his choice of subjects that Lemaître in
+his _Impressions of the Theatre_ half-humorously and half-ironically
+puts these words in Björnson's mouth, "I am king in the spiritual
+kingdom," and "there are two men in Europe who have genius, I and
+Ibsen, granting that Ibsen has it."
+
+GENERAL REFERENCES
+
+_Adventures in Criticism_, A.T.Q. Couch.
+
+_Essays on Modern Novelists_, William Lyon Phelps.
+
+"Björnsoniana," _Dial_, January 16, 1903, pp. 37-38.
+
+"Prophet-Poet of Norway," _Cosmopolitan_, April, 1903, pp. 621-631.
+
+"Three Score and Ten," _Dial_, December, 1902, pp. 383-385.
+
+COLLATERAL READINGS
+
+_Lectures_, Volume I, John L. Stoddard.
+
+_The Making of an American_, Chapters 1, 7, and Jacob Riis.
+
+_Myths of Northern Lands_. Guerber.
+
+_Synnove Solbakken_, Björnson.
+
+_A Happy Boy_, Björnson.
+
+_The Fisher Maiden_, Björnson.
+
+_The Bridal March_, Björnson.
+
+_Magnhild_, Björnson.
+
+_A Dangerous Wooing_, Björnson.
+
+_The Eagle's Nest_, Björnson.
+
+_The Bear Hunter_, Björnson.
+
+_Master and Man_, Leo Tolstoi.
+
+_The Doll's House_, Henrik Ibsen.
+
+_The Minister's Black Veil_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_The Ambitious Guest_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_The Beeman of Orn_, Frank R. Stockton.
+
+_A Branch Road_, Hamlin Garland.
+
+_Mateo Falcone_, Prosper Mérimée.
+
+_The Death of the Dauphin_, Alphonse Dadoed.
+
+_The Birds' Christmas Carol_, Kate Douglas Wiggin.
+
+_Tennessee's Partner_, Bret Harte.
+
+
+
+
+THE GRIFFIN AND THE MINOR CANAAN[1]
+
+
+_By Frank R. Stockton (1834-1902)_
+
+
+Over the great door of an old, old church which stood in a quiet town
+of a far-away land there was carved in stone the figure of a large
+griffin. The old-time sculptor had done his work with great care, but
+the image he had made was not a pleasant one to look at. It had a large
+head, with enormous open mouth and savage teeth; from its back arose
+great wings, armed with sharp hooks and prongs; it had stout legs in
+front, with projecting claws; but there were no legs behind,—the body
+running out into a long and powerful tail, finished off at the end with
+a barbed point. This tail was coiled up under him, the end sticking up
+just back of his wings.
+
+The sculptor, or the people who had ordered this stone figure, had
+evidently been very much pleased with it, for little copies of it, also
+in stone, had been placed here and there along the sides of the church,
+not very far from the ground, so that people could easily look at them,
+and ponder on their curious forms. There were a great many other
+sculptures on the outside of this church,—saints, martyrs, grotesque
+heads of men, beasts, and birds, as well as those of other creatures
+which cannot be named, because nobody knows exactly what they were; but
+none were so curious and interesting as the great griffin over the
+door, and the little griffins on the sides of the church.
+
+A long, long distance from the town, in the midst of dreadful wilds
+scarcely known to man, there dwelt the Griffin whose image had been put
+up over the churchgoer. In some way or other, the old-time sculptor had
+seen him, and afterward, to the best of his memory, had copied his
+figure in stone. The Griffin had never known this, until, hundreds of
+years afterward, he heard from a bird, from a wild animal, or in some
+manner which it is not now easy to find out, that there was a likeness
+of him on the old church in the distant town. Now this Griffin had no
+idea how he looked. He had never seen a mirror, and the streams where
+he lived were so turbulent and violent that a quiet piece of water,
+which would reflect the image of anything looking into it, could not be
+found. Being, as far as could be ascertained, the very last of his
+race, he had never seen another griffin. Therefore it was, that, when
+he heard of this stone image of himself, he became very anxious to know
+what he looked like, and at last he determined to go to the old church,
+and see for himself what manner of being he was. So he started off from
+the dreadful wilds, and flew on and on until he came to the countries
+inhabited by men, where his appearance in the air created great
+consternation; but he alighted nowhere, keeping up a steady flight
+until he reached the suburbs of the town which had his image on its
+church. Here, late in the afternoon, he alighted in a green meadow by
+the side of a brook, and stretched himself on the grass to rest. His
+great wings were tired, for he had not made such a long flight in a
+century, or more.
+
+The news of his coming spread quickly over the town, and the people,
+frightened nearly out of their wits by the arrival of so extraordinary
+a visitor, fled into their houses, and shut themselves up. The Griffin
+called loudly for some one to come to him, but the more he called, the
+more afraid the people were to show themselves. At length he saw two
+laborers hurrying to their homes through the fields, and in a terrible
+voice he commanded them to stop. Not daring to disobey, the men stood,
+trembling.
+
+"What is the matter with you all?" cried the Griffin. "Is there not a
+man in your town who is brave enough to speak to me?"
+
+"I think," said one of the laborers, his voice shaking so that his
+words could hardly be understood, "that—perhaps—the Minor Canon—would
+come."
+
+"Go, call him, then!" said the Griffin; "I want to see him."
+
+The Minor Canon, who filled a subordinate position in the church, had
+just finished the afternoon services, and was coming out of a side
+door, with three aged women who had formed the week-day congregation.
+He was a young man of a kind disposition, and very anxious to do good
+to the people of the town. Apart from his duties in the church, where
+he conducted services every week-day, he visited the sick and the poor,
+counseled and assisted persons who were in trouble, and taught a school
+composed entirely of the bad children in the town with whom nobody else
+would have anything to do. Whenever the people wanted something
+difficult done for them, they always went to the Minor Canon. Thus it
+was that the laborer thought of the young priest when he found that
+some one must come and speak to the Griffin.
+
+The Minor Canon had not heard of the strange event, which was known to
+the whole town except himself and the three old women, and when he was
+informed of it, and was told that the Griffin had asked to see him, he
+was greatly amazed, and frightened.
+
+"Me!" he exclaimed. "He has never heard of me! What should he want with
+_me?_"
+
+"Oh! you must go instantly!" cried the two men.
+
+"He is very angry now because he has been kept waiting so long; and
+nobody knows what may happen if you don't hurry to him."
+
+The poor Minor Canon would rather have had his hand cut off than go out
+to meet an angry griffin; but he felt that it was his duty to go, or it
+would be a woeful thing if injury should come to the people of the town
+because he was not brave enough to obey the summons of the Griffin.
+
+So, pale and frightened, he started off.
+
+"Well," said the Griffin, as soon as the young man came near, "I am
+glad to see that there is some one who has the courage to come to me."
+
+The Minor Canon did not feel very courageous, but he bowed his head.
+
+"Is this the town," said the Griffin, "where there is a church with a
+likeness of myself over one of the doors?"
+
+The Minor Canon looked at the frightful creature before him and saw
+that it was, without doubt, exactly like the stone image on the church.
+"Yes," he said, "you are right."
+
+"Well, then," said the Griffin, "will you take me to it? I wish very
+much to see it."
+
+The Minor Canon instantly thought that if the Griffin entered the town
+without the people knowing what he came for, some of them would
+probably be frightened to death, and so he sought to gain time to
+prepare their minds.
+
+"It is growing dark, now," he said, very much afraid, as he spoke, that
+his words might enrage the Griffin, "and objects on the front of the
+church cannot be seen clearly. It will be better to wait until morning,
+if you wish to get a good view of the stone image of yourself."
+
+"That will suit me very well," said the Griffin. "I see you are a man
+of good sense. I am tired, and I will take a nap here on this soft
+grass, while I cool my tail in the little stream that runs near me. The
+end of my tail gets red-hot when I am angry or excited, and it is quite
+warm now. So you may go, but be sure and come early to-morrow morning,
+and show me the way to the church."
+
+The Minor Canon was glad enough to take his leave, and hurried into the
+town. In front of the church he found a great many people assembled to
+hear his report of his interview with the Griffin. When they found that
+he had not come to spread ruin and devastation, but simply to see his
+stony likeness on the church, they showed neither relief nor
+gratification, but began to upbraid the Minor Canon for consenting to
+conduct the creature into the town.
+
+"What could I do?" cried the young man, "If I should not bring him he
+would come himself and, perhaps, end by setting fire to the town with
+his red-hot tail."
+
+Still the people were not satisfied, and a great many plans were
+proposed to prevent the Griffin from coming into the town. Some elderly
+persons urged that the young men should go out and kill him; but the
+young men scoffed at such a ridiculous idea. Then some one said that it
+would be a good thing to destroy the stone image so that the Griffin
+would have no excuse for entering the town; and this proposal was
+received with such favor that many of the people ran for hammers,
+chisels, and crowbars, with which to tear down and break up the stone
+griffin. But the Minor Canon resisted this plan with all the strength
+of his mind and body. He assured the people that this action would
+enrage the Griffin beyond measure, for it would be impossible to
+conceal from him that his image had been destroyed during the night.
+But the people were so determined to break up the stone griffin that
+the Minor Canon saw that there was nothing for him to do but to stay
+there and protect it. All night he walked up and down in front of the
+church-door, keeping away the men who brought ladders, by which they
+might mount to the great stone griffin, and knock it to pieces with
+their hammers and crowbars. After many hours the people were obliged to
+give up their attempts, and went home to sleep; but the Minor Canon
+remained at his post till early morning, and then he hurried away to
+the field where he had left the Griffin.
+
+The monster had just awakened, and rising to his fore-legs and shaking
+himself, he said that he was ready to go into the town. The Minor
+Canon, therefore, walked back, the Griffin flying slowly through the
+air, at a short distance above the head of his guide. Not a person was
+to be seen in the streets, and they proceeded directly to the front of
+the church, where the Minor Canon pointed out the stone griffin.
+
+The real Griffin settled down in the little square before the church
+and gazed earnestly at his sculptured likeness. For a long time he
+looked at it. First he put his head on one side, and then he put it on
+the other; then he shut his right eye and gazed with his left, after
+which he shut his left eye and gazed with his right. Then he moved a
+little to one side and looked at the image, then he moved the other
+way. After a while he said to the Minor Canon, who had been standing by
+all this time:
+
+"It is, it must be, an excellent likeness! That breadth between the
+eyes, that expansive forehead, those massive jaws! I feel that it must
+resemble me. If there is any fault to find with it, it is that the neck
+seems a little stiff. But that is nothing. It is an admirable
+likeness,—admirable!"
+
+The Griffin sat looking at his image all the morning and all the
+afternoon. The Minor Canon had been afraid to go away and leave him,
+and had hoped all through the day that he would soon be satisfied with
+his inspection and fly away home. But by evening the poor young man was
+utterly exhausted, and felt that he must eat and sleep. He frankly
+admitted this fact to the Griffin, and asked him if he would not like
+something to eat. He said this because he felt obliged in politeness to
+do so, but as soon as he had spoken the words, he was seized with dread
+lest the monster should demand half a dozen babies, or some tempting
+repast of that kind.
+
+"Oh, no," said the Griffin, "I never eat between the equinoxes. At the
+vernal and at the autumnal equinox I take a good meal, and that lasts
+me for half a year. I am extremely regular in my habits, and do not
+think it healthful to eat at odd times. But if you need food, go and
+get it, and I will return to the soft grass where I slept last night
+and take another nap."
+
+The next day the Griffin came again to the little square before the
+church, and remained there until evening, steadfastly regarding the
+stone griffin over the door. The Minor Canon came once or twice to look
+at him, and the Griffin seemed very glad to see him; but the young
+clergyman could not stay as he had done before, for he had many duties
+to perform. Nobody went to the church, but the people came to the Minor
+Canon's house, and anxiously asked him how long the Griffin was going
+to stay.
+
+"I do not know," he answered, "but I think he will soon be satisfied
+with regarding his stone likeness, and then he will go away."
+
+But the Griffin did not go away. Morning after morning he came to the
+church, but after a time he did not stay there all day. He seemed to
+have taken a great fancy to the Minor Canon, and followed him about as
+he pursued his various avocations. He would wait for him at the side
+door of the church, for the Minor Canon held services every day,
+morning and evening, though nobody came now. "If any one should come,"
+he said to himself, "I must be found at my post." When the young man
+came out, the Griffin would accompany him in his visits to the sick and
+the poor, and would often look into the windows of the schoolhouse
+where the Minor Canon was teaching his unruly scholars. All the other
+schools were closed, but the parents of the Minor Canon's scholars
+forced them to go to school, because they were so bad they could not
+endure them all day at home,—griffin or no griffin. But it must be said
+they generally behaved very well when that great monster sat up on his
+tail and looked in at the schoolroom window.
+
+When it was perceived that the Griffin showed no signs of going away,
+all the people who were able to do so left the town. The canons and the
+higher officers of the church had fled away during the first day of the
+Griffin's visit, leaving behind only the Minor Canon and some of the
+men who opened the doors and swept the church. All the citizens who
+could afford it shut up their houses and travelled to distant parts,
+and only the working people and the poor were left behind. After some
+days these ventured to go about and attend to their business, for if
+they did not work they would starve. They were getting a little used to
+seeing the Griffin, and having been told that he did not eat between
+equinoxes, they did not feel so much afraid of him as before. Day by
+day the Griffin became more and more attached to the Minor Canon. He
+kept near him a great part of the time, and often spent the night in
+front of the little house where the young clergyman lived alone. This
+strange companionship was often burdensome to the Minor Canon; but, on
+the other hand, he could not deny that he derived a great deal of
+benefit and instruction from it. The Griffin had lived for hundreds of
+years, and had seen much; and he told the Minor Canon many wonderful
+things.
+
+"It is like reading an old book," said the young clergyman to himself;
+"but how many books I would have had to read before I would have found
+out what the Griffin has told me about the earth, the air, the water,
+about minerals, and metals, and growing things, and all the wonders of
+the world!"
+
+Thus the summer went on, and drew toward its close. And now the people
+of the town began to be very much troubled again.
+
+"It will not be long," they said, "before the autumnal equinox is here,
+and then that monster will want to eat. He will be dreadfully hungry,
+for he has taken so much exercise since his last meal. He will devour
+our children. Without doubt, he will eat them all. What is to be done?"
+
+To this question no one could give an answer, but all agreed that the
+Griffin must not be allowed to remain until the approaching equinox.
+After talking over the matter a great deal, a crowd of the people went
+to the Minor Canon, at a time when the Griffin was not with him.
+
+"It is all your fault," they said, "that that monster is among us. You
+brought him here, and you ought to see that he goes away. It is only on
+your account that he stays here at all, for, although he visits his
+image every day, he is with you the greater part of the time. If you
+were not here, he would not stay. It is your duty to go away and then
+he will follow you, and we shall be free from the dreadful danger which
+hangs over us."
+
+"Go away!" cried the Minor Canon, greatly grieved at being spoken to in
+such a way. "Where shall I go? If I go to some other town, shall I not
+take this trouble there? Have I a right to do that?"
+
+"No," said the people, "you must not go to any other town. There is no
+town far enough away. You must go to the dreadful wilds where the
+Griffin lives; and then he will follow you and stay there."
+
+They did not say whether or not they expected the Minor Canon to stay
+there also, and he did not ask them any thing about it. He bowed his
+head, and went into his house, to think. The more he thought, the more
+clear it became to his mind that it was his duty to go away, and thus
+free the town from the presence of the Griffin.
+
+That evening he packed a leathern bag full of bread and meat, and early
+the next morning he set out on his journey to the dreadful wilds. It
+was a long, weary, and doleful journey, especially after he had gone
+beyond the habitations of men, but the Minor Canon kept on bravely, and
+never faltered. The way was longer than he had expected, and his
+provisions soon grew so scanty that he was obliged to eat but a little
+every day, but he kept up his courage, and pressed on, and, after many
+days of toilsome travel, he reached the dreadful wilds.
+
+When the Griffin found that the Minor Canon had left the town he seemed
+sorry, but showed no disposition to go and look for him. After a few
+days had passed, he became much annoyed, and asked some of the people
+where the Minor Canon had gone. But, although the citizens had been
+anxious that the young clergyman should go to the dreadful wilds,
+thinking that the Griffin would immediately follow him, they were now
+afraid to mention the Minor Canon's destination, for the monster seemed
+angry already, and, if he should suspect their trick, he would
+doubtless become very much enraged. So every one said he did not know,
+and the Griffin wandered about disconsolate. One morning he looked into
+the Minor Canon's schoolhouse, which was always empty now, and thought
+that it was a shame that every thing should suffer on account of the
+young man's absence.
+
+"It does not matter so much about the church," he said, "for nobody
+went there; but it is a pity about the school. I think I will teach it
+myself until he returns."
+
+It was the hour for opening the school, and the Griffin went inside and
+pulled the rope which rang the schoolbell. Some of the children who
+heard the bell ran in to see what was the matter, supposing it to be a
+joke of one of their companions; but when they saw the Griffin they
+stood astonished, and scared.
+
+"Go tell the other scholars," said the monster, "that school is about
+to open, and that if they are not all here in ten minutes, I shall come
+after them." In seven minutes every scholar was in place.
+
+Never was seen such an orderly school. Not a boy or girl moved, or
+uttered a whisper. The Griffin climbed into the master's seat, his wide
+wings spread on each side of him, because he could not lean back in his
+chair while they stuck out behind, and his great tail coiled around, in
+front of the desk, the barbed end sticking up, ready to tap any boy or
+girl who might misbehave. The Griffin now addressed the scholars,
+telling them that he intended to teach them while their master was
+away. In speaking he endeavored to imitate, as far as possible, the
+mild and gentle tones of the Minor Canon, but it must be admitted that
+in this he was not very successful. He had paid a good deal of
+attention to the studies of the school, and he determined not to
+attempt to teach them anything new, but to review them in what they had
+been studying; so he called up the various classes, and questioned them
+upon their previous lessons. The children racked their brains to
+remember what they had learned. They were so afraid of the Griffin's
+displeasure that they recited as they had never recited before. One of
+the boys far down in his class answered so well that the Griffin was
+astonished.
+
+"I should think you would be at the head," said he. "I am sure you have
+never been in the habit of reciting so well. Why is this?"
+
+"Because I did not choose to take the trouble," said the boy, trembling
+in his boots. He felt obliged to speak the truth, for all the children
+thought that the great eyes of the Griffin could see right through
+them, and that he would know when they told a falsehood.
+
+"You ought to be ashamed of yourself," said the Griffin. "Go down to
+the very tail of the class, and if you are not at the head in two days,
+I shall know the reason why."
+
+The next afternoon the boy was number one.
+
+It was astonishing how much these children now learned of what they had
+been studying. It was as if they had been educated over again. The
+Griffin used no severity toward them, but there was a look about him
+which made them unwilling to go to bed until they were sure they knew
+their lessons for the next day.
+
+The Griffin now thought that he ought to visit the sick and the poor;
+and he began to go about the town for this purpose. The effect upon the
+sick was miraculous. All, except those who were very ill indeed, jumped
+from their beds when they heard he was coming, and declared themselves
+quite well. To those who could not get up, he gave herbs and roots,
+which none of them had ever before thought of as medicines, but which
+the Griffin had seen used in various parts of the world; and most of
+them recovered. But, for all that, they afterward said that no matter
+what happened to them, they hoped that they should never again have
+such a doctor coming to their bedsides, feeling their pulses and
+looking at their tongues.
+
+As for the poor, they seemed to have utterly disappeared. All those who
+had depended upon charity for their daily bread were now at work in
+some way or other; many of them offering to do odd jobs for their
+neighbors just for the sake of their meals,—a thing which before had
+been seldom heard of in the town. The Griffin could find no one who
+needed his assistance.
+
+The summer had now passed, and the autumnal equinox was rapidly
+approaching. The citizens were in a state of great alarm and anxiety.
+The Griffin showed no signs of going away, but seemed to have settled
+himself permanently among them. In a short time, the day for his
+semi-annual meal would arrive, and then what would happen? The monster
+would certainly be very hungry, and would devour all their children.
+
+Now they greatly regretted and lamented that they had sent away the
+Minor Canon; he was the only one on whom they could have depended in
+this trouble, for he could talk freely with the Griffin, and so find
+out what could be done. But it would not do to be inactive. Some step
+must be taken immediately. A meeting of the citizens was called, and
+two old men were appointed to go and talk to the Griffin. They were
+instructed to offer to prepare a splendid dinner for him on equinox
+day,—one which would entirely satisfy his hunger. They would offer him
+the fattest mutton, the most tender beef, fish, and game of various
+sorts, and any thing of the kind that he might fancy. If none of these
+suited, they were to mention that there was an orphan asylum in the
+next town.
+
+"Any thing would be better," said the citizens, "than to have our dear
+children devoured."
+
+The old men went to the Griffin, but their propositions were not
+received with favor.
+
+"From what I have seen of the people of this town," said the monster,
+"I do not think I could relish any thing which was prepared by them.
+They appear to be all cowards, and, therefore, mean and selfish. As for
+eating one of them, old or young, I could not think of it for a moment.
+In fact, there was only one creature in the whole place for whom I
+could have had any appetite, and that is the Minor Canon, who has gone
+away. He was brave, and good, and honest, and I think I should have
+relished him."
+
+"Ah!" said one of the old men very politely, "in that case I wish we
+had not sent him to the dreadful wilds!"
+
+"What!" cried the Griffin. "What do you mean? Explain instantly what
+you are talking about!"
+
+The old man, terribly frightened at what he had said, was obliged to
+tell how the Minor Canon had been sent away by the people, in the hope
+that the Griffin might be induced to follow him.
+
+When the monster heard this, he became furiously angry. He dashed away
+from the old men and, spreading his wings, flew backward and forward
+over the town. He was so much excited that his tail became red-hot, and
+glowed like a meteor against the evening sky. When at last he settled
+down in the little field where he usually rested, and thrust his tail
+into the brook, the steam arose like a cloud, and the water of the
+stream ran hot through the town. The citizens were greatly frightened,
+and bitterly blamed the old man for telling about the Minor Canon.
+
+"It is plain," they said, "that the Griffin intended at last to go and
+look for him, and we should have been saved. Now who can tell what
+misery you have brought upon us."
+
+The Griffin did not remain long in the little field. As soon as his
+tail was cool he flew to the town-hall and rang the bell. The citizens
+knew that they were expected to come there, and although they were
+afraid to go, they were still more afraid to stay away; and they
+crowded into the hall. The Griffin was on the platform at one end,
+flapping his wings and walking up and down, and the end of his tail was
+still so warm that it slightly scorched the boards as he dragged it
+after him.
+
+When everybody who was able to come was there the Griffin stood still
+and addressed the meeting.
+
+"I have had a contemptible opinion of you," he said, "ever since I
+discovered what cowards you are, but I had no idea that you were so
+ungrateful, selfish, and cruel as I now find you to be. Here was your
+Minor Canon, who labored day and night for your good, and thought of
+nothing else but how he might benefit you and make you happy; and as
+soon as you imagine yourselves threatened with a danger,—for well I
+know you are dreadfully afraid of me,—you send him off, caring not
+whether he returns or perishes, hoping thereby to save yourselves. Now,
+I had conceived a great liking for that young man, and had intended, in
+a day or two, to go and look him up. But I have changed my mind about
+him. I shall go and find him, but I shall send him back here to live
+among you, and I intend that he shall enjoy the reward of his labor and
+his sacrifices. Go, some of you, to the officers of the church, who so
+cowardly ran away when I first came here, and tell them never to return
+to this town under penalty of death. And if, when your Minor Canon
+comes back to you, you do not bow yourselves before him, put him in the
+highest place among you, and serve and honor him all his life, beware
+of my terrible vengeance! There were only two good things in this town:
+the Minor Canon and the stone image of myself over your church-door.
+One of these you have sent away, and the other I shall carry away
+myself."
+
+With these words he dismissed the meeting, and it was time, for the end
+of his tail had become so hot that there was danger of its setting fire
+to the building.
+
+The next morning, the Griffin came to the church, and tearing the stone
+image of himself from its fastenings over the great door, he grasped it
+with his powerful fore-legs and flew up into the air. Then, after
+hovering over the town for a moment, he gave his tail an angry shake
+and took up his flight to the dreadful wilds. When he reached this
+desolate region, he set the stone Griffin upon a ledge of a rock which
+rose in front of the dismal cave he called his home. There the image
+occupied a position somewhat similar to that it had had over the
+church-door; and the Griffin, panting with the exertion of carrying
+such an enormous load to so great a distance, lay down upon the ground,
+and regarded it with much satisfaction. When he felt somewhat rested he
+went to look for the Minor Canon. He found the young man, weak and
+half-starved, lying under the shadow of a rock. After picking him up
+and carrying him to his cave, the Griffin flew away to a distant marsh,
+where he procured some roots and herbs which he well knew were
+strengthening and beneficial to man, though he had never tasted them
+himself. After eating these the Minor Canon was greatly revived, and
+sat up and listened while the Griffin told him what had happened in the
+town.
+
+"Do you know," said the monster, when he had finished, "that I have
+had, and still have, a great liking for you?"
+
+"I am very glad to hear it," said the Minor Canon, with his usual
+politeness.
+
+"I am not at all sure that you would be," said the Griffin, "if you
+thoroughly understood the state of the case, but we will not consider
+that now. If some things were different, other things would be
+otherwise. I have been so enraged by discovering the manner in which
+you have been treated that I have determined that you shall at last
+enjoy the rewards and honors to which you are entitled. Lie down and
+have a good sleep, and then I will take you back to the town."
+
+As he heard these words, a look of trouble came over the young man's
+face.
+
+"You need not give yourself any anxiety," said the Griffin, "about my
+return to the town. I shall not remain there. Now that I have that
+admirable likeness of myself in front of my cave, where I can sit at my
+leisure, and gaze upon its noble features and magnificent proportions,
+I have no wish to see that abode of cowardly and selfish people."
+
+The Minor Canon, relieved from his fears, lay back, and dropped into a
+doze; and when he was sound asleep the Griffin took him up, and carried
+him back to the town. He arrived just before daybreak, and putting the
+young man gently on the grass in the little field where he himself used
+to rest, the monster, without having been seen by any of the people,
+flew back to his home.
+
+When the Minor Canon made his appearance in the morning among the
+citizens, the enthusiasm and cordiality with which he was received were
+truly wonderful. He was taken to a house which had been occupied by one
+of the vanished high officers of the place, and every one was anxious
+to do all that could be done for his health and comfort. The people
+crowded into the church when he held services, so that the three old
+women who used to be his week-day congregation could not get to the
+best seats, which they had always been in the habit of taking; and the
+parents of the bad children determined to reform them at home, in order
+that he might be spared the trouble of keeping up his former school.
+The Minor Canon was appointed to the highest office of the old church,
+and before he died, he became a bishop.
+
+During the first years after his return from the dreadful wilds, the
+people of the town looked up to him as a man to whom they were bound to
+do honor and reverence; but they often, also, looked up to the sky to
+see if there were any signs of the Griffin coming back. However, in the
+course of time, they learned to honor and reverence their former Minor
+Canon without the fear of being punished if they did not do so.
+
+But they need never have been afraid of the Griffin. The autumnal
+equinox day came round, and the monster ate nothing. If he could not
+have the Minor Canon, he did not care for any thing. So, lying down,
+with his eyes fixed upon the great stone griffin, he gradually
+declined, and died. It was a good thing for some people of the town
+that they did not know this.
+
+If you should ever visit the old town, you would still see the little
+griffins on the sides of the church; but the great stone griffin that
+was over the door is gone.
+
+NOTE: [1] Written in 1887. This story is used by permission of and
+special arrangement with _Charles Scribner's Sons_, publishers.
+
+BIOGRAPHY
+
+Frank Richard Stockton, one of America's foremost story-tellers and
+humorists, was born in Philadelphia in 1834. His father was a
+Presbyterian minister who devoutly wished that his son might study
+medicine. This wish was shattered early, for the son showed symptoms of
+being a writer while yet in the Central High School of Philadelphia. In
+competition with many of his schoolmates for a prize offered for the
+best story, young Stockton won easily.
+
+After finishing his high school course, he adopted the profession of
+wood-engraver. Although he earned his living for several years by
+carving wood, he never lost his desire to write, and practised, at
+every spare moment, his favorite avocation. It was this careful and
+patient training during his apprenticeship that finally made him the
+expert story-teller that he is. It is very interesting to any one who
+cares for the acquirement of an excellent style to note how all the
+authors contained in this text have had to work with almost a
+superhuman force to reach the heights of successful short-story
+writing.
+
+His first important publication, _Kate_, appeared in the _Southern
+Literary Messenger_ in 1859. He then joined the staff of the
+_Philadelphia Morning Post_, where he did regular newspaper work and
+contributed to the _Riverside Magazine_ and _Hearth and Home_. In 1872
+his _Stephen Skarridge's Christmas_ appeared in _Scribner's Monthly_.
+Dr. J.G. Holland, editor of _Scribner's_, was so impressed with the
+story that he made Mr. Stockton an assistant editor and persuaded him
+to move to New York. In 1873 he joined the staff of the _St. Nicholas
+Magazine_. His publication of the _Rudder Grange_ series in
+_Scribner's_ _Monthly_ in 1878 made him famous. In 1882 he resigned all
+editorial work and spent his entire time in literary composition.
+
+Mr. Stockton possessed a frail body and very little physical endurance.
+In spite of this physical handicap he was very vivacious and gay. He
+was a genial and companionable man, loved by all who knew him. He was
+very modest, even to the point of shyness, exceptionally sincere, and
+quaintly humorous. He established homes in New Jersey and West
+Virginia, where he spent the greater part of his time from 1882 until
+his death in 1902.
+
+BIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES
+
+_Famous Authors_ (107-122), B.F. Harkness.
+
+_American Authors_ (59-73), F.W. Halsey.
+
+"Character Sketch," _Book-Buyer_, 24:355-357.
+
+"Home at Claymont," _Current Literature_, 30:221.
+
+"Sketch," _Outlook_, 70: 1000-1001,
+
+"Stockton and his Work," _Atlantic Monthly_, 87:136-138.
+
+CRITICISMS
+
+The writings of Frank R. Stockton are excellent representatives of the
+man himself. How closely allied writer and writings are is very well
+stated by Hamilton W. Mabie in the _Book-Buyer_ for June, 1902, "His
+talk had much of the quality of his writing; it was full of quaint
+conceits, whimsicalities, impossible suggestions offered with perfect
+gravity. He was always perfectly natural; he never attempted to live up
+to his part; in talk, at least, he never forced the note. His attitude
+toward himself was slightly tinged with humor, and he knew how to foil
+easily and pleasantly too great a pressure of praise."
+
+His tales are extravagantly impossible but extremely realistic in
+effect, filled with humorous situations and singular plots, and peopled
+with eccentric characters that afford amusement on every page. His most
+successful writing is done when he explains contrivances upon which his
+story depends. He is an original and inventive expert juggler who moves
+with careless ease to the most effective ends. His characters are
+little more than pieces of mechanism that act when he pulls the string.
+They have little emotion and even in their love-making they show their
+emotion mostly for the sake of the reader's amusement. His negro
+characters are exceptions to his general treatment and are true to
+life. He inveigles the reader into believing the most extravagant
+incidents by having a reliable witness narrate them.
+
+Stockton never stoops to the burlesque, cynic, or vulgar phases of life
+to secure amusement. He is grotesque and droll in his manner, and above
+all always restrained. His literary life is full of sprites and gnomes
+that frolic before young children and once before mature people. _The
+Griffin and the Minor Canon_ is a beautiful fairy story lifted from
+childhood's thought and diction into a mature realm. His humor is plain
+and simple, cool and keenly calculating. A friendly critic has said of
+one of his stories, "With a gentle, ceaseless murmur of amusement, and
+a flickering twinkle of smiles, the story moves steadily on in the calm
+triumph of its assured and unassailable absurdity, to its logical and
+indisputable impossibility." This observation is very largely true of
+all his stories.
+
+GENERAL REFERENCES
+
+_Frank R. Stockton_, A.T.Q. Couch.
+
+"Stockton's Method of Working," _Current Literature_, 32:495.
+
+"Criticism," _Atheneum_, 1:532.
+
+"Estimate," _Harper's Weekly_, 46:555.
+
+COLLATERAL READINGS
+
+_The Beeman of Orn, and Other Fanciful Tales_, Frank R. Stockton.
+
+_The Lady or the Tiger_, Frank R. Stockton.
+
+_Rudder Grange_, Frank R. Stockton.
+
+_A Tale of Negative Gravity_, Frank R. Stockton.
+
+_The Remarkable Wreck of the Thomas Hyde_, Frank R. Stockton.
+
+_His Wife's Deceased Sister_, Frank R. Stockton.
+
+_Legend of Sleepy Hollow_, Washington Irving.
+
+_Monsieur du Miroir_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_At the End of the Passage_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+_The Vacant Lot_, Mary Wilkins Freeman.
+
+_The Princess Pourquoi_, Margaret Sherwood.
+
+_What Was It? A Mystery_, Fitz-James O'Brien.
+
+_Wandering Willie's Tale_, Walter Scott.
+
+
+
+
+THE PIECE OF STRING[1]
+
+
+_By Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893)_
+
+
+On all the roads about Goderville the peasants and their wives were
+coming toward the town, for it was market day. The men walked at an
+easy gait, the whole body thrown forward with every movement of their
+long, crooked legs, misshapen by hard work, by the bearing down on the
+plough which at the same time causes the left shoulder to rise and the
+figure to slant; by the mowing of the grain, which makes one hold his
+knees apart in order to obtain a firm footing; by all the slow and
+laborious tasks of the fields. Their starched blue blouses, glossy as
+if varnished, adorned at the neck and wrists with a bit of white
+stitchwork, puffed out about their bony chests like balloons on the
+point of taking flight, from which protrude a head, two arms, and two
+feet.
+
+Some of them led a cow or a calf at the end of a rope. And their wives,
+walking behind the beast, lashed it with a branch still covered with
+leaves, to hasten its pace. They carried on their arms great baskets,
+from which heads of chickens or of ducks were thrust forth. And they
+walked with a shorter and quicker step than their men, their stiff,
+lean figures wrapped in scanty shawls pinned over their flat breasts,
+their heads enveloped in a white linen cloth close to the hair, with a
+cap over all.
+
+Then a _char-à-bancs[2]_ passed, drawn by a jerky-paced nag, with two
+men seated side by side shaking like jelly, and a woman behind, who
+clung to the side of the vehicle to lessen the rough jolting.
+
+On the square at Goderville there was a crowd, a medley of men and
+beasts. The horns of the cattle, the high hats, with a long, hairy nap,
+of the wealthy peasants, and the head dresses of the peasant women,
+appeared on the surface of the throng. And the sharp, shrill,
+high-pitched voices formed an incessant, uncivilized uproar, over which
+soared at times a roar of laughter from the powerful chest of a sturdy
+yokel, or the prolonged bellow of a cow fastened to the wall of a
+house.
+
+There was an all-pervading smell of the stable, of milk, of the
+dunghill, of hay, and of perspiration—that acrid, disgusting odor of
+man and beast peculiar to country people.
+
+Master Hauchecorne, of Bréauté, had just arrived at Goderville, and was
+walking toward the square, when he saw a bit of string on the ground.
+Master Hauchecorne, economical like every true Norman, thought that it
+was well to pick up everything that might be of use; and he stooped
+painfully, for he suffered with rheumatism. He took the piece of
+slender cord from the ground, and was about to roll it up carefully,
+when he saw Master Malandain, the harness-maker, standing in his
+doorway and looking at him. They had formerly had trouble on the
+subject of a halter, and had remained at odds, being both inclined to
+bear malice. Master Hauchecorne felt a sort of shame at being seen thus
+by his enemy, fumbling in the mud for a bit of string. He hurriedly
+concealed his treasure in his blouse, then in his breeches pocket; then
+he pretended to look on the ground for something else, which he did not
+find; and finally he went on toward the market, his head thrust
+forward, bent double by his pains.
+
+He lost himself at once in the slow-moving, shouting crowd, kept in a
+state of excitement by the interminable bargaining. The peasants felt
+of the cows, went away, returned, sorely perplexed, always afraid of
+being cheated, never daring to make up their minds, watching the
+vendor's eye, striving incessantly to detect the tricks of the man and
+the defect in the beast.
+
+The women, having placed their great baskets at their feet, took out
+their fowls, which lay on the ground, their legs tied together, with
+frightened eyes and scarlet combs.
+
+They listened to offers, adhered to their prices, short of speech and
+impassive of face; or else, suddenly deciding to accept the lower price
+offered, they would call out to the customer as he walked slowly away:—
+
+"All right, Mast' Anthime. You can have it."
+
+Then, little by little, the square became empty, and when the
+Angelus[3] struck midday those who lived too far away to go home betook
+themselves to the various inns.
+
+At Jourdain's the common room was full of customers, as the great yard
+was full of vehicles of every sort—carts, cabriolets,[4]
+_char-à-bancs_, tilburys,[5] unnamable carriages, shapeless, patched,
+with, their shafts reaching heavenward like arms, or with their noses
+in the ground and their tails in the air.
+
+The vast fireplace, full of clear flame, cast an intense heat against
+the backs of the row on the right of the table. Three spits were
+revolving, laden with chickens, pigeons, and legs of mutton; and a
+delectable odor of roast meat, and of gravy dripping from the browned
+skin, came forth from the hearth, stirred the guests to merriment, and
+made their mouths water.
+
+All the aristocracy of the plough ate there, at Mast' Jourdain's, the
+innkeeper and horse trader—a shrewd rascal who had money.
+
+The dishes passed and were soon emptied, like the jugs of yellow cider.
+Every one told of his affairs, his sales and his purchases. They
+inquired about the crops. The weather was good for green stuffs, but a
+little wet for wheat.
+
+Suddenly a drum rolled in the yard, in front of the house. In an
+instant everybody was on his feet, save a few indifferent ones; and
+they all ran to the door and windows with their mouths still full and
+napkins in hand.
+
+Having finished his long tattoo, the public crier shouted in a jerky
+voice, making his pauses in the wrong places:—
+
+"The people of Goderville, and all those present at the market are
+informed that between—nine and ten o'clock this morning on the
+Beuzeville—road, a black leather wallet was lost, containing five
+hundred—francs, and business papers. The finder is requested to carry
+it to—the mayor's at once, or to Master Fortuné Huelbrèque of
+Manneville. A reward of twenty francs will be paid."
+
+Then he went away. They heard once more in the distance the muffled
+roll of the drum and the indistinct voice of the crier.
+
+Then they began to talk about the incident, reckoning Master
+Houlbrèque's chance of finding or not finding his wallet.
+
+And the meal went on.
+
+They were finishing their coffee when the corporal of gendarmes
+appeared in the doorway.
+
+He inquired:—
+
+"Is Master Hauchecorne of Bréauté here?"
+
+Master Hauchecorne, who was seated at the farther end of the table,
+answered:—
+
+"Here I am."
+
+And the corporal added:—
+
+"Master Hauchecorne, will you be kind enough to go to the mayor's
+office with me? Monsieur the mayor would like to speak to you."
+
+The peasant, surprised and disturbed, drank his _petit verre[6]_ at one
+swallow, rose, and even more bent than in the morning, for the first
+steps after each rest were particularly painful, he started off,
+repeating:—
+
+"Here I am, here I am."
+
+And he followed the brigadier.
+
+The mayor was waiting for him, seated in his arm-chair. He was the
+local notary, a stout, solemn-faced man, given to pompous speeches.
+
+"Master Hauchecorne," he said, "you were seen this morning, on the
+Beuzeville road, to pick up the wallet lost by Master Huelbrèque of
+Manneville."
+
+The rustic, dumfounded, stared at the mayor, already alarmed by this
+suspicion which had fallen upon him, although he failed to understand
+it.
+
+"I, I—I picked up that wallet?"
+
+"Yes, you."
+
+"On my word of honor, I didn't even so much as see it."
+
+"You were seen."
+
+"They saw me, me? Who was it saw me?"
+
+"Monsieur Malandain, the harness-maker."
+
+Thereupon the old man remembered and understood; and flushing with
+anger, he cried:—
+
+"Ah! he saw me, did he, that sneak? He saw me pick up this string,
+look, m'sieu' mayor."
+
+And fumbling in the depths of his pocket, he produced the little piece
+of cord.
+
+But the mayor was incredulous and shook his head.
+
+"You won't make me believe, Master Hauchecorne, that Monsieur
+Malandain, who is a man deserving of credit, mistook this string for a
+wallet."
+
+The peasant, in a rage, raised his hand, spit to one side to pledge his
+honor, and said:—
+
+"It's God's own truth, the sacred truth, all the same, m'sieu' mayor. I
+say it again, by my soul and my salvation."
+
+"After picking it up," rejoined the mayor, "you hunted a long while in
+the mud, to see if some piece of money hadn't fallen out."
+
+The good man was suffocated with wrath and fear.
+
+"If any one can tell—if any one can tell lies like that to ruin an
+honest man! If any one can say—"
+
+To no purpose did he protest; he was not believed.
+
+He was confronted with Monsieur Malandain, who repeated and maintained
+his declaration. They insulted each other for a whole hour. At his own
+request, Master Hauchecorne was searched. They found nothing on him. At
+last the mayor, being sorely perplexed, discharged him, but warned him
+that he proposed to inform the prosecuting attorney's office and to ask
+for orders.
+
+The news had spread. On leaving the mayor's office, the old man was
+surrounded and questioned with serious or bantering curiosity, in
+which, however, there was no trace of indignation. And he began to tell
+the story of the string. They did not believe him. They laughed.
+
+He went his way, stopping his acquaintances, repeating again and again
+his story and his protestations, showing his pockets turned inside out,
+to prove that he had nothing.
+
+They said to him:—
+
+"You old rogue, _va!_"
+
+And he lost his temper, lashing himself into a rage, feverish with
+excitement, desperate because he was not believed, at a loss what to
+do, and still telling his story. Night came. He must needs go home. He
+started with three neighbors, to whom he pointed out the place where he
+had picked up the bit of string: and all the way he talked of his
+misadventure.
+
+During the evening he made a circuit of the village of Bréauté, in
+order to tell everybody about it. He found none but incredulous
+listeners.
+
+He was ill over it all night.
+
+The next afternoon, about one o'clock, Marius Paumelle, a farmhand
+employed by Master Breton, a farmer of Ymauville, restored the wallet
+and its contents to Master Huelbrèque of Manneville.
+
+The man claimed that he had found it on the road; but, being unable to
+read, had carried it home and given it to his employer.
+
+The news soon became known in the neighborhood; Master Hauchecorne was
+informed of it. He started out again at once, and began to tell his
+story, now made complete by the dénouement. He was triumphant.
+
+"What made me feel bad," he said, "wasn't so much the thing itself, you
+understand, but the lying. There's nothing hurts you so much as being
+blamed for lying."
+
+All day long he talked of his adventure; he told it on the roads to
+people who passed; at the wine-shop to people who were drinking; and
+after church on the following Sunday. He even stopped strangers to tell
+them about it. His mind was at rest now, and yet something embarrassed
+him, although he could not say just what it was. People seemed to laugh
+while they listened to him. They did not seem convinced. He felt as if
+remarks were made behind his back.
+
+On Tuesday of the next week, he went to market at Goderville, impelled
+solely by the longing to tell his story.
+
+Malandain, standing in his doorway, began to laugh when he saw him
+coming. Why?
+
+He accosted a farmer from Criquetot, who did not let him finish, but
+poked him in the pit of his stomach, and shouted in his face: "Go on,
+you old fox!" Then he turned on his heel.
+
+Master Hauchecorne was speechless, and more and more disturbed. Why did
+he call him "old fox"?
+
+When he was seated at the table, in Jourdain's Inn, he set about
+explaining the affair once more.
+
+A horse-trader from Montvilliers called out to him:—
+
+"Nonsense, nonsense, you old dodger! I know all about your string!"
+
+"But they've found the wallet!" faltered Hauchecorne.
+
+"None of that, old boy; there's one who finds it, and there's one who
+carries it back. I don't know just how you did it, but I understand
+you."
+
+The peasant was fairly stunned. He understood at last. He was accused
+of having sent the wallet back by a confederate, an accomplice.
+
+He tried to protest. The whole table began to laugh.
+
+He could not finish his dinner, but left the inn amid a chorus of
+jeers.
+
+He returned home, shamefaced and indignant, suffocated by wrath, by
+confusion, and all the more cast down because, with his Norman cunning,
+he was quite capable of doing the thing with which he was charged, and
+even of boasting of it as a shrewd trick. He had a confused idea that
+his innocence was impossible to establish, his craftiness being so well
+known. And he was cut to the heart by the injustice of the suspicion.
+
+Thereupon he began once more to tell of the adventure, making the story
+longer each day, adding each time new arguments, more forcible
+protestations, more solemn oaths, which he devised and prepared in his
+hours of solitude, his mind being wholly engrossed by the story of the
+string. The more complicated his defence and the more subtle his
+reasoning, the less he was believed.
+
+"Those are a liar's reasons," people said behind his back.
+
+He realized it: he gnawed his nails, and exhausted himself in vain
+efforts.
+
+He grew perceptibly thinner.
+
+Now the jokers asked him to tell the story of "The Piece of String" for
+their amusement, as a soldier who has seen service is asked to tell
+about his battles. His mind, attacked at its source, grew feebler.
+
+Late in December he took to his bed.
+
+In the first days of January he died, and in his delirium, of the death
+agony, he protested his innocence, repeating:
+
+"A little piece of string—a little piece of string—see, here it is,
+m'sieu' mayor."
+
+NOTES
+
+[1] _The Piece of String_ was written in 1884. Reprinted from _Little
+French Masterpieces_, by permission of the publishers, _G.P. Putnam's
+Sons_.
+
+[2] 34:5 char-à-bancs. A pleasure car.
+
+[3] 35:26 Angelus. A bell tolled at morning, noon, and night, according
+to the Roman Catholic Church custom, to indicate the time of the
+service of song and recitation in memory of the Virgin Mary. The name
+is taken from the first word of the recitation.
+
+[4] 35:30 cabriolet. A cab. Originally a light, one-horse pleasure
+carriage with two seats.
+
+[5] 35:30 tilbury. An old form of gig, seating two persons.
+
+[6] 37:20 petit verre. Little glass.
+
+BIOGRAPHY
+
+Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant, French novelist, dramatist, and
+short-story writer, was born in 1850. Until he was thirteen years old
+he had no teacher except his mother, who personally superintended the
+training of her two sons. Life for the two boys, during these early
+years, was free and happy, Guy was a strong and robust Norman,
+overflowing with animal spirits and exuberant with the joy of youthful
+life.
+
+When thirteen years of age Maupassant attended the seminary at Yvetot,
+where he found school life irksome and a most distasteful contrast to
+his former free life. Later he became a student in the Lycée in Rouen.
+His experience as a student here was very pleasant, and he easily
+acquired his degree. In 1870 he was appointed to a clerkship in the
+Navy, and a little later to a more lucrative position in the Department
+of Public Instruction. His work in these two positions suffered very
+materially because of his negligence and daily practice in writing
+verses and essays for Flaubert, the most careful literary technicist in
+the history of literature, to criticize. For seven years Maupassant
+served this severe task-master, always writing, receiving criticisms,
+and publishing nothing.
+
+Immediately after the publication of his first story Maupassant was
+hailed as a finished master artist. From 1880 to 1890 he published six
+novels, sixteen volumes of short-stories, three volumes of travels, and
+many newspaper articles. This gigantic task was performed only because
+of his regular habits and splendid physique. He wrote regularly every
+morning from seven o'clock until noon, and at night always wrote out
+notes on the impressions from his experiences of the day.
+
+Maupassant was a natural artist deeply in love with the technique of
+his work. He did not write for money, although he believed that a
+writer should have plenty of this world's possessions, nor did he write
+for art's sake. In fact he avoided talking on the subject of writing
+and to all appearances seemed to despise his profession. He wrote
+because the restless, immitigable force within him compelled him to
+work like a slave. He thought little of morals, or religion, but was
+enamored with physical life and its insolvable problems. He was, above
+everything else, a truthful man. Sometimes his subjects are unclean and
+he treats them as such, but, if his subject is clean, his treatment is
+undefiled.
+
+In 1887 the shadows of insanity began to creep athwart his life. Even
+in 1884 he seemed to feel a premonition of his coming catastrophe when
+he wrote: "I am afraid of the walls, of the furniture, of the familiar
+objects which seem to me to assume a kind of animal life. Above all, I
+fear the horrible confusion of my thought, of my reason escaping,
+entangled and scattered by an invisible and mysterious anguish." The
+dreaded disease developed until, in 1890, he had to suspend his
+writing. In 1892 he became wholly insane and had to be committed to an
+insane asylum where he died in a padded cell one year later.
+
+BIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES
+
+_The New International Encyclopaedia_.
+
+_Encyclopaedia Britannica_.
+
+_Bookman_, 25:290-294_.
+
+CRITICISMS
+
+Maupassant's short-stories are generally conceded to be the best in
+French literature. He handles his materials with great care, and his
+descriptions of scenes and characters are unequalled. In his first
+writings he seems impassive to the point of frigidity. He is a recorder
+who sets down exactly the life before him. This is one of the lessons
+he learned from Flaubert. He was not interested in what a character
+thought or felt, but he noted and fondled every action of his
+characters.
+
+He loved life, despite the lack of solutions. At times his fondness for
+mere physical life leads him to the brutal stage. In his story, _On the
+Water_, he gives a confession of a purely sensual man: "How gladly, at
+times, I would think no more, feel no more, live the life of a brute,
+in a warm, bright country, in a yellow country, without crude and
+brutal verdure, in one of those Eastern countries in which one falls
+asleep without concern, is active and has no cares, loves and has no
+distress, and is scarcely aware that one is going on living!"
+
+Maupassant was a keen observer, possessed an excellent but not lofty
+imagination, and never asserted a philosophy of life. His writings are
+all interesting, terse, precise, and truthful, but lack the glow that
+comes with a sympathetic and spiritual outlook on life. Zola says of
+him: "…. a Latin of good, clear, solid head, a maker of beautiful
+sentences shining like gold…." He chooses a single incident, a few
+characteristics and then moulds them into a compact story. Nine-tenths
+of his stories deal with selfishness and hypocrisy.
+
+Tolstoi wrote: "Maupassant possessed genius, that gift of attention
+revealing in the objects and facts of life properties not perceived by
+others; he possessed a beautiful form of expression, uttering clearly,
+simply, and with charm what he wished to say; and he possessed also the
+merit of sincerity, without which a work of art produces no effect;
+that is he did not merely pretend to love or hate, but did indeed love
+or hate what he described."
+
+GENERAL REFERENCES
+
+_Inquiries and Opinions_, Brander Matthews.
+
+"A Criticism," _Outlook_, 88:973-976.
+
+"Greatest Short Story Writer that Ever Lived," _Current Literature_,
+42:636-638.
+
+COLLATERAL READINGS
+
+_Happiness_ (Odd Number), Guy de Maupassant.
+
+_The Wolf_, Guy de Maupassant.
+
+_La Mère Sauvage_, Guy de Maupassant.
+
+_The Confession_, Guy de Maupassant.
+
+_On the Journey_, Guy de Maupassant.
+
+_The Beggar_, Guy de Maupassant.
+
+_A Ghost_, Guy de Maupassant.
+
+_Little Soldier_, Guy de Maupassant.
+
+_The Wreck_, Guy de Maupassant.
+
+_The Necklace_, Guy de Maupassant.
+
+_A Note of Scarlet_, Ruth Stuart.
+
+_Expiation_, Octave Thanet.
+
+_Fagan_, Rowland Thomas.
+
+_La Grande Bretêche_ ("Jessup and Canby"), Honoré de Balzac.
+
+
+
+
+THE MAN WHO WAS[1]
+
+
+_By Rudyard Kipling (1865-   )_
+
+
+Let it be clearly understood that the Russian is a delightful person
+till he tucks his shirt in. As an Oriental he is charming. It is only
+when he insists upon being treated as the most easterly of Western
+peoples, instead of the most westerly of Easterns, that he becomes a
+racial anomaly[2] extremely difficult to handle. The host never knows
+which side of his nature is going to turn up next.
+
+Dirkovitch was a Russian—a Russian of the Russians, as he said—who
+appeared to get his bread by serving the czar as an officer in a
+Cossack regiment, and corresponding for a Russian newspaper with a name
+that was never twice the same. He was a handsome young Oriental, with a
+taste for wandering through unexplored portions of the earth, and he
+arrived in India from nowhere in particular. At least no living man
+could ascertain whether it was by way of Balkh, Budukhshan, Chitral,
+Beloochistan, Nepaul, or anywhere else. The Indian government, being in
+an unusually affable mood, gave orders that he was to be civilly
+treated, and shown everything that was to be seen; so he drifted,
+talking bad English and worse French, from one city to another till he
+forgathered with her Majesty's White Hussars[3] in the city of
+Peshawur,[4] which stands at the mouth of that narrow sword-cut in the
+hills that men call the Khyber Pass. He was undoubtedly an officer, and
+he was decorated, after the manner of the Russians, with little
+enameled crosses, and he could talk, and (though this has nothing to do
+with his merits) he had been given up as a hopeless task or case by the
+Black Tyrones[5], who, individually and collectively, with hot whisky
+and honey, mulled brandy and mixed spirits of all kinds, had striven in
+all hospitality to make him drunk. And when the Black Tyrones, who are
+exclusively Irish, fail to disturb the peace of head of a foreigner,
+that foreigner is certain to be a superior man. This was the argument
+of the Black Tyrones, but they were ever an unruly and self-opinionated
+regiment, and they allowed junior subalterns of four years' service to
+choose their wines. The spirits were always purchased by the colonel
+and a committee of majors. And a regiment that would so behave may be
+respected but cannot be loved.
+
+The White Hussars were as conscientious in choosing their wine as in
+charging the enemy. There was a brandy that had been purchased by a
+cultured colonel a few years after the battle of Waterloo. It has been
+maturing ever since, and it was a marvelous brandy at the purchasing.
+The memory of that liquor would cause men to weep as they lay dying in
+the teak forests of upper Burmah[6] or the slime of the Irrawaddy[7].
+And there was a port which was notable; and there was a champagne of an
+obscure brand, which always came to mess without any labels, because
+the White Hussars wished none to know where the source of supply might
+be found. The officer on whose head the champagne choosing lay was
+forbidden the use of tobacco for six weeks previous to sampling.
+
+This particularity of detail is necessary to emphasize the fact that
+that champagne, that port, and above all, that brandy—the green and
+yellow and white liqueurs did not count—was placed at the absolute
+disposition of Dirkovitch, and he enjoyed himself hugely—even more than
+among the Black Tyrones.
+
+But he remained distressingly European through it all. The White
+Hussars were—"My dear true friends," "Fellow-soldiers glorious," and
+"Brothers inseparable." He would unburden himself by the hour on the
+glorious future that awaited the combined arms of England and Russia
+when their hearts and their territories should run side by side, and
+the great mission of civilizing Asia should begin. That was
+unsatisfactory, because Asia is not going to be civilized after the
+methods of the West. There is too much Asia, and she is too old. You
+cannot reform a lady of many lovers, and Asia has been insatiable in
+her flirtations aforetime. She will never attend Sunday school, or
+learn to vote save with swords for tickets.
+
+Dirkovitch knew this as well as any one else, but it suited him to talk
+special-correspondently and to make himself as genial as he could. Now
+and then he volunteered a little, a very little, information about his
+own Sotnia[8] of Cossacks, left apparently to look after themselves
+somewhere at the back of beyond. He had done rough work in Central
+Asia, and had seen rather more help-yourself fighting than most men of
+his years. But he was careful never to betray his superiority, and more
+than careful to praise on all occasions the appearance, drill, uniform,
+and organization of her Majesty's White Hussars. And, indeed, they were
+a regiment to be admired. When Mrs. Durgan, widow of the late Sir John
+Durgan, arrived in their station, and after a short time had been
+proposed to by every single man at mess, she put the public sentiment
+very neatly when she explained that they were all so nice that unless
+she could marry them all, including the colonel and some majors who
+were already married, she was not going to content herself with one of
+them. Wherefore she wedded a little man in a rifle regiment—being by
+nature contradictious—and the White Hussars were going to wear crape on
+their arms, but compromised by attending the wedding in full force, and
+lining the aisle with unutterable reproach. She had jilted them
+all—from Basset-Holmer, the senior captain, to Little Mildred, the last
+subaltern, and he could have given her four thousand a year and a
+title. He was a viscount, and on his arrival the mess had said he had
+better go into the Guards, because they were all sons of large grocers
+and small clothiers in the Hussars, but Mildred begged very hard to be
+allowed to stay, and behaved so prettily that he was forgiven, and
+became a man, which is much more important than being any sort of
+viscount.
+
+The only persons who did not share the general regard for the White
+Hussars were a few thousand gentlemen of Jewish extraction who lived
+across the border, and answered to the name of Pathan. They had only
+met the regiment officially, and for something less than twenty
+minutes, but the interview, which was complicated with many casualties,
+had filled them with prejudice. They even called the White Hussars
+"children of the devil," and sons of persons whom it would be perfectly
+impossible to meet in decent society. Yet they were not above making
+their aversion fill their money belts. The regiment possessed carbines,
+beautiful Martini-Henri carbines, that would cob a bullet into an
+enemy's camp at one thousand yards, and were even handier than the long
+rifle. Therefore they were coveted all along the border, and since
+demand inevitably breeds supply, they were supplied at the risk of life
+and limb for exactly their weight in coined silver—seven and one half
+pounds of rupees[9], or sixteen pounds and a few shillings each,
+reckoning the rupee at par. They were stolen at night by snaky-haired
+thieves that crawled on their stomachs under the nose of the sentries;
+they disappeared mysteriously from armracks; and in the hot weather,
+when all the doors and windows were open, they vanished like puffs of
+their own smoke. The border people desired them first for their own
+family vendettas[10] and then for contingencies. But in the long cold
+nights of the Northern Indian winter they were stolen most extensively.
+The traffic of murder was liveliest among the hills at that season, and
+prices ruled high. The regimental guards were first doubled and then
+trebled. A trooper does not much care if he loses a weapon—government
+must make it good—but he deeply resents the loss of his sleep. The
+regiment grew very angry, and one night-thief who managed to limp away
+bears the visible marks of their anger upon him to this hour. That
+incident stopped the burglaries for a time, and the guards were reduced
+accordingly, and the regiment devoted itself to polo with unexpected
+results, for it beat by two goals to one that very terrible polo corps
+the Lushkar Light Horse, though the latter had four ponies apiece for a
+short hour's fight, as well as a native officer who played like a
+lambent flame across the ground.
+
+Then they gave a dinner to celebrate the event. The Lushkar team came,
+and Dirkovitch came, in the fullest full uniform of Cossack officer,
+which is as full as a dressing-gown, and was introduced to the
+Lushkars, and opened his eyes as he regarded them. They were lighter
+men than the Hussars, and they carried themselves with the swing that
+is the peculiar right of the Punjab[11] frontier force and all
+irregular horse. Like everything else in the service, it has to be
+learned; but unlike many things, it is never forgotten, and remains on
+the body till death.
+
+The great beam-roofed mess room of the White Hussars was a sight to be
+remembered. All the mess plate was on the long table—the same table
+that had served up the bodies of five dead officers in a forgotten
+fight long and long ago—the dingy, battered standards faced the door of
+entrance, clumps of winter roses lay between the silver candlesticks,
+the portraits of eminent officers deceased looked down on their
+successors from between the heads of sambhur[12], nilghai[13], maikhor,
+and, pride of all the mess, two grinning snow-leopards that had cost
+Basset-Holmer four months' leave that he might have spent in England
+instead of on the road to Thibet, and the daily risk of his life on
+ledge, snowslide, and glassy grass slope.
+
+The servants, in spotless white muslin and the crest of their regiments
+on the brow of their turbans, waited behind their masters, who were
+clad in the scarlet and gold of the White Hussars and the cream and
+silver of the Lushkar Light Horse. Dirkovitch's dull green uniform was
+the only dark spot at the board, but his big onyx eyes made up for it.
+He was fraternizing effusively with the captain of the Lushkar team,
+who was wondering how many of Dirkovitch's Cossacks his own long, lathy
+down-countrymen could account for in a fair charge. But one does not
+speak of these things openly.
+
+The talk rose higher and higher, and the regimental band played between
+the courses, as is the immemorial custom, till all tongues ceased for a
+moment with the removal of the dinner slips and the First Toast of
+Obligation, when the colonel, rising, said, "Mr. Vice, the Queen," and
+Little Mildred from the bottom of the table answered, "The Queen, God
+bless her!" and the big spurs clanked as the big men heaved themselves
+up and drank the Queen, upon whose pay they were falsely supposed to
+pay their mess bills. That sacrament of the mess never grows old, and
+never ceases to bring a lump into the throat of the listener wherever
+he be, by land or by sea. Dirkovitch rose with his "brothers glorious,"
+but he could not understand. No one but an officer can understand what
+the toast means; and the bulk have more sentiment than comprehension.
+It all comes to the same in the end, as the enemy said when he was
+wriggling on a lance point. Immediately after the little silence that
+follows on the ceremony there entered the native officer who had played
+for the Lushkar team. He could not of course eat with the alien, but he
+came in at dessert, all six feet of him, with the blue-and-silver
+turban atop, and the big black top-boots below. The mess rose joyously
+as he thrust forward the hilt of his saber, in token of fealty, for the
+colonel of the White Hussars to touch, and dropped into a vacant chair
+amid shouts of "_Rung ho_! Hira Singh!" (which being translated means
+"Go in and win!"). "Did I whack you over the knee, old man?" "Ressaidar
+Sahib, what the devil made you play that kicking pig of a pony in the
+last ten minutes?" "Shabash, Ressaidar Sahib!" Then the voice of the
+colonel, "The health of Ressaidar Hira Singh!"
+
+After the shouting had died away, Hira Singh rose to reply, for he was
+the cadet of a royal house, the son of a king's son, and knew what was
+due on these occasions. Thus he spoke in the vernacular:—
+
+"Colonel Sahib and officers of this regiment, much honor have you done
+me. This will I remember. We came down from afar to play you; but we
+were beaten." ("No fault of yours, Ressaidar Sahib. Played on our own
+ground, y' know. Your ponies were cramped from the railway. Don't
+apologize.") "Therefore perhaps we will come again if it be so
+ordained." ("Hear! Hear, hear, indeed! Bravo! Hsh!") "Then we will play
+you afresh" ("Happy to meet you"), "till there are left no feet upon
+our ponies. Thus far for sport." He dropped one hand on his sword hilt
+and his eye wandered to Dirkovitch lolling back in his chair. "But if
+by the will of God there arises any other game which is not the polo
+game, then be assured, Colonel Sahib and officers, that we shall play
+it out side by side, though _they_"—again his eye sought
+Dirkovitch—"though _they_, I say, have fifty ponies to our one horse."
+And with a deep-mouthed _Rung ho_! that rang like a musket butt on
+flagstones, he sat down amid shoutings.
+
+Dirkovitch, who had devoted himself steadily to the brandy—the terrible
+brandy aforementioned—did not understand, nor did the expurgated[14]
+translations offered to him at all convey the point. Decidedly the
+native officer's was the speech of the evening, and the clamor might
+have continued to the dawn had it not been broken by the noise of a
+shot without that sent every man feeling at his defenseless left side.
+It is notable that Dirkovitch "reached back," after the American
+fashion—a gesture that set the captain of the Lushkar team wondering
+how Cossack officers were armed at mess. Then there was a scuffle, and
+a yell of pain.
+
+"Carbine stealing again!" said the adjutant, calmly sinking back in his
+chair. "This comes of reducing the guards. I hope the sentries have
+killed him."
+
+The feet of armed men pounded on the veranda flags, and it sounded as
+though something was being dragged.
+
+"Why don't they put him in the cells till the morning?" said the
+colonel, testily. "See if they've damaged him, sergeant."
+
+The mess-sergeant fled out into the darkness, and returned with two
+troopers and a corporal, all very much perplexed.
+
+"Caught a man stealin' carbines, sir," said the corporal.
+
+"Leastways 'e was crawling toward the barricks, sir, past the main-road
+sentries; an' the sentry 'e says, sir—"
+
+The limp heap of rags upheld by the three men groaned. Never was seen
+so destitute and demoralized an Afghan. He was turbanless, shoeless,
+caked with dirt, and all but dead with rough handling. Hira Singh
+started slightly at the sound of the man's pain. Dirkovitch took
+another liqueur glass of brandy.
+
+"_What_ does the sentry say?" said the colonel.
+
+"Sez he speaks English, sir," said the corporal.
+
+"So you brought him into mess instead of handing him over to the
+sergeant! If he spoke all the tongues of the Pentecost you've no
+business—"
+
+Again the bundle groaned and muttered. Little Mildred had risen from
+his place to inspect. He jumped back as though he had been shot.
+
+"Perhaps it would be better, sir, to send the men away," said he to the
+colonel, for he was a much-privileged subaltern. He put his arms round
+the rag-bound horror as he spoke, and dropped him into a chair. It may
+not have been explained that the littleness of Mildred lay in his being
+six feet four, and big in proportion. The corporal, seeing that an
+officer was disposed to look after the capture, and that the colonel's
+eye was beginning to blaze, promptly removed himself and his men. The
+mess was left alone with the carbine thief, who laid his head on the
+table and wept bitterly, hopelessly, and inconsolably, as little
+children weep.
+
+Hira Singh leaped to his feet with a long-drawn vernacular oath
+"Colonel Sahib," said he, "that man is no Afghan, for they weep '_Ai!
+Ai_!' Nor is he of Hindustan, for they weep,'_Oh! Ho_!' He weeps after
+the fashion of the white men, who say '_Ow! Ow_!'"
+
+"Now where the dickens did you get that knowledge, Hira Singh?" said
+the captain of the Lushkar team.
+
+"Hear him!" said Hira Singh, simply, pointing at the crumpled figure
+that wept as though it would never cease.
+
+"He said, 'My God!'" said Little Mildred, "I heard him say it."
+
+The colonel and the mess room looked at the man in silence. It is a
+horrible thing to hear a man cry. A woman can sob from the top of her
+palate, or her lips, or anywhere else, but a man cries from his
+diaphragm, and it rends him to pieces. Also, the exhibition causes the
+throat of the on-looker to close at the top.
+
+"Poor devil!" said the colonel, coughing tremendously, "We ought to
+send him to hospital. He's been manhandled."
+
+Now the adjutant loved his rifles. They were to him as his
+grandchildren—the men standing in the first place. He grunted
+rebelliously: "I can understand an Afghan stealing, because he's made
+that way. But I can't understand his crying. That makes it worse."
+
+The brandy must have affected Dirkovitch, for he lay back in his chair
+and stared at the ceiling. There was nothing special in the ceiling
+beyond a shadow as of a huge black coffin. Owing to some peculiarity in
+the construction of the mess room this shadow was always thrown when
+the candles were lighted. It never disturbed the digestion of the White
+Hussars. They were, in rather proud of it.
+
+"Is he going to cry all night?" said the colonel, "or are we supposed
+to sit up with Little Mildred's guest until he feels better?"
+
+The man in the chair threw up his head and stared at the mess. Outside,
+the wheels of the first of those bidden to the festivities crunched the
+roadway.
+
+"Oh, my God!" said the man in the chair, and every soul in the mess
+rose to his feet. Then the Lushkar captain did a deed for which he
+ought to have been given the Victoria Cross—distinguished gallantry in
+a fight against overwhelming curiosity. He picked up his team with his
+eyes as the hostess picks up the ladies at the opportune moment, and
+pausing only by the colonel's chair to say, "This isn't _our_ affair,
+you know, sir," led the team into the veranda and the gardens. Hira
+Singh was the last, and he looked at Dirkovitch as he moved. But
+Dirkovitch had departed into a brandy paradise of his own. His lips
+moved without sound, and he was studying the coffin on the ceiling.
+
+"White—white all over," said Basset-Holmer, the adjutant. "What a
+pernicious renegade[15] he must be! I wonder where he came from?"
+
+The colonel shook the man gently by the arm, and "Who are you?" said
+he.
+
+There was no answer. The man stared round the mess room and smiled in
+the colonel's face. Little Mildred, who was always more of a woman than
+a man till "Boot and saddle" was sounded, repeated the question in a
+voice that would have drawn confidences from a geyser. The man only
+smiled. Dirkovitch, at the far end of the table, slid gently from his
+chair to the floor, No son of Adam, in this present imperfect world,
+can mix the Hussars' champagne with the Hussars' brandy by five and
+eight glasses of each without remembering the pit whence he has been
+digged and descending thither. The band began to play the tune with
+which the White Hussars, from the date of their formation, preface all
+their functions. They would sooner be disbanded than abandon that tune.
+It is a part of their system. The man straightened himself in his chair
+and drummed on the table with his fingers.
+
+"I don't see why we should entertain lunatics," said the colonel; "call
+a guard and send him off to the cells. We'll look into the business in
+the morning. Give him a glass of wine first, though."
+
+Little Mildred filled a sherry glass with the brandy and thrust it over
+to the man. He drank, and the tune rose louder, and he straightened
+himself yet more. Then he put out his long-taloned hands to a piece of
+plate opposite and fingered it lovingly. There was a mystery connected
+with that piece of plate in the shape of a spring, which converted what
+was a seven-branched candlestick, three springs each side and one on
+the middle, into a sort of wheel-spoke candelabrum[16]. He found the
+spring, pressed it, and laughed weakly. He rose from his chair and
+inspected a picture on the wall, then moved on to another picture, the
+mess watching him without a word.
+
+When he came to the mantelpiece he shook his head and seemed
+distressed. A piece of plate representing a mounted hussar in full
+uniform caught his eye. He pointed to it, and then to the mantelpiece,
+with inquiry in his eyes.
+
+"What is it—oh, what is it?" said Little Mildred. Then, as a mother
+might speak to a child, "That is a horse—yes, a horse."
+
+Very slowly came the answer, in a thick, passionless guttural: "Yes,
+I—have seen. But—where is _the_ horse?"
+
+You could have heard the hearts of the mess beating as the men drew
+back to give the stranger full room in his wanderings. There was no
+question of calling the guard.
+
+Again he spoke, very slowly, "Where is _our_ horse?"
+
+There is no saying what happened after that. There is but one horse in
+the White Hussars, and his portrait hangs outside the door of the mess
+room. He is the piebald drum-horse the king of the regimental band,
+that served the regiment for seven-and-thirty years, and in the end was
+shot for old age. Half the mess tore the thing down from its place and
+thrust it into the man's hands. He placed it above the mantelpiece; it
+clattered on the ledge, as his poor hands dropped it, and he staggered
+toward the bottom of the table, falling into Mildred's chair. The band
+began to play the "River of Years" waltz, and the laughter from the
+gardens came into the tobacco-scented mess room. But nobody, even the
+youngest, was thinking of waltzes. They all spoke to one another
+something after this fashion: "The drum-horse hasn't hung over the
+mantelpiece since '67." "How does he know?" "Mildred, go and speak to
+him again." "Colonel, what are you going to do?" "Oh, dry up, and give
+the poor devil a chance to pull himself together!" "It isn't possible,
+anyhow. The man's a lunatic."
+
+Little Mildred stood at the colonel's side talking into his ear. "Will
+you be good enough to take your seats, please, gentlemen?" he said, and
+the mess dropped into the chairs.
+
+Only Dirkovitch's seat, next to Little Mildred's, was blank, and Little
+Mildred himself had found Hira Singh's place. The wide-eyed mess
+sergeant filled the glasses in dead silence. Once more the colonel
+rose, but his hand shook, and the port spilled on the table as he
+looked straight at the man in Little Mildred's chair and said,
+hoarsely, "Mr. Vice, the Queen." There was a little pause, but the man
+sprang to his feet and answered, without hesitation, "The Queen, God
+bless her!" and as he emptied the thin glass he snapped the shank
+between his fingers.
+
+Long and long ago, when the Empress of India was a young woman, and
+there were no unclean ideals in the land, it was the custom in a few
+messes to drink the Queen's toast in broken glass, to the huge delight
+of the mess contractors. The custom is now dead, because there is
+nothing to break anything for, except now and again the word of a
+government, and that has been broken already.
+
+"That settles it," said the colonel, with a gasp. "He's not a sergeant.
+What in the world is he?"
+
+The entire mess echoed the word, and the volley of questions would have
+scared any man. Small wonder that the ragged, filthy invader could only
+smile and shake his head.
+
+From under the table, calm and smiling urbanely[17], rose Dirkovitch,
+who had been roused from healthful slumber by feet upon his body. By
+the side of the man he rose, and the man shrieked and groveled at his
+feet. It was a horrible sight, coming so swiftly upon the pride and
+glory of the toast that had brought the strayed wits together.
+
+Dirkovitch made no offer to raise him, but Little Mildred heaved him up
+in an instant. It is not good that a gentleman who can answer to the
+Queen's toast should lie at the feet of a subaltern of Cossacks.
+
+The hasty action tore the wretch's upper clothing nearly to the waist,
+and his body was seamed with dry black scars. There is only one weapon
+in the world that cuts in parallel lines, and it is neither the cane
+nor the cat. Dirkovitch saw the marks, and the pupils of his eyes
+dilated—also, his face changed. He said something that sounded like
+"Shto ve takete"; and the man, fawning, answered, "Chetyre."
+
+"What's that?" said everybody together.
+
+"His number. That is number four, you know." Dirkovitch spoke very
+thickly.
+
+"What has a Queen's officer to do with a qualified number?" said the
+colonel, and there rose an unpleasant growl round the table.
+
+"How can I tell?" said the affable Oriental, with a sweet smile. "He is
+a—how you have it?—escape—runaway, from over there."
+
+He nodded toward the darkness of the night.
+
+"Speak to him, if he'll answer you, and speak to him gently," said
+Little Mildred, settling the man in a chair. It seemed most improper to
+all present that Dirkovitch. should sip brandy as he talked in purring,
+spitting Russian to the creature who answered so feebly and with such
+evident dread. But since Dirkovitch appeared to understand, no man said
+a word. They breathed heavily, leaning forward, in the long gaps of the
+conversation. The next time that they have no engagements on hand the
+White Hussars intend to go to St. Petersburg and learn Russian.
+
+"He does not know how many years ago," said Dirkovitch, facing the
+mess, "but he says it was very long ago, in a war, I think that there
+was an accident. He says he was of this glorious and distinguished
+regiment in the war."
+
+"The rolls! The rolls! Holmer, get the rolls!" said Little Mildred, and
+the adjutant dashed off bareheaded to the orderly room where the rolls
+of the regiment were kept. He returned just in time to hear Dirkovitch
+conclude, "Therefore I am most sorry to say there was an accident,
+which would have been, reparable if he had apologized to our colonel,
+whom he had insulted."
+
+Another growl, which the colonel tried to beat down. The mess was in no
+mood to weigh insults to Russian colonels just then.
+
+"He does not remember, but I think that there was an accident, and so
+he was not exchanged among the prisoners, but he was sent to another
+place—how do you say?—the country. _So_, he says, he came here. He does
+not know how he came. Eh? He _was_ at Chepany[18]"—the man caught the
+word, nodded, and shivered—"at Zhigansk[19] and Irkutsk[20]. I cannot
+understand how he escaped. He says, too, that he was in the forests for
+many years, but how many years he has forgotten—that with many things.
+It was an accident; done because he did not apologise to our colonel.
+Ah!"
+
+Instead of echoing Dirkovitch's sigh of regret, it is sad to record
+that the White Hussars livelily exhibited unchristian delight and other
+emotions, hardly restrained by their sense of hospitality. Holmer flung
+the frayed and yellow regimental rolls on the table, and the men flung
+themselves atop of these.
+
+"Steady! Fifty-six—fifty-five—fifty-four," said Holmer. "Here we are.
+'Lieutenant Austin Limmason—_missing_.' That was before Sebastopol[21].
+What an infernal shame! Insulted one of their colonels, and was quietly
+shipped off. Thirty years of his life wiped out."
+
+"But he never apologized. Said he'd see him——first," chorussed the
+mess.
+
+"Poor devil! I suppose he never had the chance afterward. How did he
+come here?" said the colonel.
+
+The dingy heap in the chair could give no answer.
+
+"Do you know who you are?"
+
+It laughed weakly.
+
+"Do you know that you are Limmason—Lieutenant Limmason, of the White
+Hussars?"
+
+Swift as a shot came the answer, in a slightly surprised tone, "Yes,
+I'm Limmason, of course." The light died out in his eyes, and he
+collapsed afresh, watching every motion of Dirkovitch with terror. A
+flight from Siberia may fix a few elementary facts in the mind, but it
+does not lead to continuity of thought. The man could not explain how,
+like a homing pigeon, he had found his way to his own old mess again.
+Of what he had suffered or seen he knew nothing. He cringed before
+Dirkovitch as instinctively as he had pressed the spring of the
+candlestick, sought the picture of the drum-horse, and answered to the
+Queen's toast. The rest was a blank that the dreaded Russian tongue
+could only in part remove. His head bowed on his breast, and he giggled
+and cowered alternately.
+
+The devil that lived in the brandy prompted Dirkovitch at this
+extremely inopportune moment to make a speech. He rose, swaying
+slightly, gripped the table edge, while his eyes glowed like opals, and
+began:—"Fellow-soldiers glorious—true friends and hospitables. It was
+an accident, and deplorable—most deplorable." Here he smiled sweetly
+all round the mess. "But you will think of this little, little thing.
+So little, is it not? The czar! Posh! I slap my fingers—I snap my
+fingers at him. Do I believe in him? No! But the Slav who has done
+nothing, _him_ I believe. Seventy—how much?—millions that have done
+nothing—not one thing. Napoleon was an episode." He banged a hand on
+the table. "Hear you, old peoples, we have done nothing in the
+world—out here. All our work is to do: and it shall be done, old
+peoples. Get away!" He waved his hand imperiously, and pointed to the
+man. "You see him. He is not good to see. He was just one little—oh, so
+little—accident, that no one remembered. Now he is _That_. So will you
+be, brother-soldiers so brave—so will you be. But you will never come
+back. You will all go where he has gone, or"—he pointed to the great
+coffin shadow on the ceiling, and muttering, "Seventy millions—get
+away, you old people," fell asleep.
+
+"Sweet, and to the point," said Little Mildred. "What's the use of
+getting wroth? Let's make the poor devil comfortable."
+
+But that was a matter suddenly and swiftly taken from the loving hands
+of the White Hussars. The lieutenant had returned only to go away again
+three days later, when the wail of the "Dead March" and the tramp of
+the squadrons told the wondering station, that saw no gap in the table,
+an officer of the regiment had resigned his new-found commission.
+
+And Dirkovitch—bland, supple, and always genial—went away too by a
+night train. Little Mildred and another saw him off, for he was the
+guest of the mess, and even had he smitten the colonel with the open
+hand the law of the mess allowed no relaxation of hospitality.
+
+"Good-by, Dirkovitch, and a pleasant journey," said Little Mildred.
+
+"_Au revoir[22]_ my true friends," said the Russian.
+
+"Indeed! But we thought you were going home?"
+
+"Yes; but I will come again. My friends, is that road shut?" He pointed
+to where the north star burned over the Khyber Pass.
+
+"By Jove! I forgot. Of course. Happy to meet you, old man, any time you
+like. Got everything you want,—cheroots, ice, bedding? That's all
+right. Well, _au revoir_, Dirkovitch."
+
+"Um," said the other man, as the tail-lights of the train grew small.
+"Of—all—the—unmitigated[23]—"
+
+Little Mildred answered nothing, but watched the north star, and hummed
+a selection from a recent burlesque that had much delighted the White
+Hussars. It ran:—
+
+     "I'm sorry for Mister Bluebeard,
+
+     I'm sorry to cause him pain;
+
+     But a terrible spree there's sure to be
+
+     When he comes back again."
+
+NOTES
+
+[1] _The Man Who Was_ was written in 1889.
+
+[2] 46:6 anomaly. Deviation from type.
+
+[3] 47:1 Hussars. Light-horse troopers armed with sabre and carbine.
+
+[4] 47:1 Peshawur. City in British India.
+
+[5] 47:7 Tyrones. From a county in Ireland by this name.
+
+[6] 47:26 Burmah. In southeastern Asia. Part of the British Empire.
+
+[7] 47:27 Irrawaddy. Chief river of Burma.
+
+[8] 48:27 Sotnia. Company of the Cossacks.
+
+[9] 50:14 rupee. Indian coin worth about forty-eight cents.
+
+[10] 50:21 vendettas. Private blood-feuds.
+
+[11] 51:14 Punjab. Country of five rivers, tributaries of the Indus.
+
+[12] 81:26 Sambhur. A rusine deer found in India.
+
+[13] 51:26 nilghai. Antelope with hind legs shorter than its fore-legs.
+
+[14] 54:9 expurgated. Purified.
+
+[15] 57:23 renegade. One who deserts his faith.
+
+[16] 58:26 candelabrum. Stand supporting several lamps.
+
+[17] 61:3 urbanely. Politely.
+
+[18] 63:2 Chepany. Town in Siberia.
+
+[19] 63:4 Zhigansk. Town in Siberia.
+
+[20] 63:4 Irkutsk. Province and city in Siberia.
+
+[21] 63:17 Sebastopol. Seaport in Russia.
+
+[22] 65:26 Au revoir. Till we meet again.
+
+[23] 66:6 unmitigated. As bad as can be.
+
+BIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES
+
+_Essays on Modern Novelists_, William Lyon Phelps.
+
+_A Kipling Primer_, Knowles.
+
+_Rudyard Kipling_, Richard Le Galliene.
+
+"Kipling to French Eyes," _Bookman_, 26: 584.
+
+"Life of Kipling," _Encyclopaedia Britannica.
+
+"Life of Kipling," _The Universal Encyclopedia_.
+
+BIOGRAPHY
+
+Rudyard Kipling, the most vigorous, versatile, and highly endowed of
+the present-day writers of fiction, was born in Bombay, India, December
+30, 1865. His place of birth and extensive travelling make him more
+Anglo-Saxon than British. His father was for many years connected with
+the schools of art at Bombay and Lahore in India. His mother, Alice
+MacDonald, was the daughter of a Methodist clergyman.
+
+Kipling was brought to England when he was five years old to be
+educated. While in college at Westward Ho he edited the _College
+Chronicle_. For this paper he contributed regularly, poetry and
+stories. After his school days and on his return to India, he served on
+the editorial staff of the Lahore _Civil and Military Gazette_ from
+1882 to 1887, and was assistant editor of the _Pioneer_ at Allahabad
+from 1887 to 1889.
+
+Kipling has travelled extensively. He is at home in India, China,
+Japan, Africa, Australia, England, and America. The odd part about his
+realistic observations, however, is that his notes, whether written
+about California or India, are often repudiated by the people whom he
+has visited. After visiting England and the United States in a vain
+effort to find a publisher for his writings, he returned to India and
+published in the _Pioneer_ his _American Notes_, which were immediately
+reproduced in book form in New York in 1891.
+
+He married Miss Balestier of New York in 1892. They settled at
+Brattleboro, Vermont, immediately after their marriage and lived there
+until 1896. Kipling revisited the United States in 1899. While on this
+trip he suffered a severe attack of pneumonia which brought out a
+demonstration of interest from the American people that clearly showed
+their appreciation of him as a man and a writer.
+
+CRITICISMS
+
+Kipling is journalistic in all his writings. Oftentimes his material is
+very thin, flippant, and sensational, but he always is interesting, for
+he possesses the expert reporter's unerring judgment for choosing the
+essentials of his situation, character, or description, that catch and
+hold the reader's attention. In his earlier writings, like _Plain Tales
+from the Hills_ or _The Jungle Books_, the radical racial differences
+between his characters and readers, and the background of primitive,
+mysterious India caught the reading world and instantly established
+Kipling's fame.
+
+His technique is brilliant, his wit keen, and his energy of the bold
+and dashing military type. This audacious energy leads him very often
+into sprawling situations, a worship of imperialism, and reckless
+statements concerning moral and spiritual laws. Unlike Bret Harte, who
+was in many respects one of Kipling's ideals, he leaves his bad and
+coarse characters disreputable to the end. This is due in a large
+measure to the lack of warmth and light in his writings. In
+contradiction to this type of his works his _William the Conqueror_ and
+_An Habitation Enforced_ are filled with a gentle-human sympathy that
+causes us to forget and forgive any vulgarity he may have used in his
+more primitive and coarse characters. Even Kipling partisans must
+sometimes wish that Kipling's vision were not so dimmed by the British
+flag and that he might forget for a time the British soldier he loves
+so ardently.
+
+His writings since 1899 are much more mechanical than his earlier
+works. He seems, at times, to resort to the orator's superficial tricks
+in his attempts to attract readers. The _Athenaeum_, a friendly organ,
+says of his later work: "In his new part—the missionary of Empire—Mr.
+Kipling is living the strenuous life. He has frankly abandoned story
+telling, and is using his complete and powerful armory in the interests
+of patriotic zeal."
+
+Whatever may be the final judgment of the world concerning Kipling's
+claim to literary genius, the young student may rest assured that there
+is no one in England who can compare with this strenuous and versatile
+writer. He is original and powerful, interesting and realistic. He is a
+lover of the men who earn their bread by the sweat of their faces and a
+despiser of "flannelled fools." He lacks the day-dreams of Stevenson
+and preaches from every housetop the gospel of virile, acting morality.
+Many of his readers have criticised adversely his spiritual teachings,
+because of the furious energy with which he denounces an apathetic
+religion and eulogizes the person who works with all his might, day
+after day, for the highest he knows and never fears the day of death
+and judgment.
+
+GENERAL REFERENCES
+
+_The Book of the Short Story_, Alexander Jessup.
+
+_The Short Story in English_, Henry Seidel Canby.
+
+_Bibliography of Kipling's Works_, Eugene P, Saxton.
+
+"Contradictory Elements in Rudyard Kipling," _Current Literature_, 44:
+274.
+
+"Where Kipling Stands," _Bookman_, 29: 120-122.
+
+"Are there two Kiplings?" _Cosmopolitan_, 31: 653-660.
+
+"Literary Style of Kipling," _Lippincott_, 73: 99-103.
+
+COLLATERAL READINGS
+
+_The Man Who Would be King_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+_William the Conqueror_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+_Phantom Rickshaw_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+_The Finest Story in the World_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+_Under the Deodars_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+_An Habitation Enforced_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+_Plain Tales from the Hills_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+_The Light that Failed_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+_Wee Willie Winkie_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+_Baa Baa Black Sheep_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+_Captains Courageous_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+_The Jungle Books_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+_They_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+_The Brushwood Boy_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+_Christ in Flanders_, Honoré de Balzac.
+
+_The Old Gentleman of the Black Stock_, Thomas Nelson Page.
+
+_A New England Nun_, Mary Wilkins Freeman.
+
+_Outcasts of Poker Flat_, Bret Harte.
+
+_The Siege of Berlin_, Alphonse Dadoed.
+
+_The Prisoner of Assiout_, Grant Allen.
+
+_A Terribly Strange Bed_, Wilkie Collins.
+
+_The Prisoners_, Guy de Maupassant.
+
+_Mr. Isaacs_, F. Marion Crawford.
+
+_Where Love Is, There God Is Also_, Leo Tolstoi.
+
+
+
+
+THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER [1]
+
+
+_By Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)_
+
+
+     Son coeur est un luth suspendu;
+
+     Sitôt qu'on le touche il résonne.
+
+                                     —De Béranger.[2]
+
+During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of
+the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had
+been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of
+country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew
+on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. I know not how it
+was; but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of
+insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I say insufferable; for the
+feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurable, because poetic,
+sentiment, with which the mind usually receives even the sternest
+natural images of the desolate or terrible. I looked upon the scene
+before me—upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the
+domain—upon the bleak walls—upon the vacant eye-like windows—a few rank
+sedges—and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees—with an utter
+depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation more
+properly than to the after-dream of the reveller upon opium—the bitter
+lapse into every-day life—the hideous dropping off of the veil. There
+was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart—an unredeemed
+dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture
+into aught of the sublime. What was it—I paused to think—what was it
+that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of Usher? It was
+a mystery all insoluble; nor could I grapple with the shadowy fancies
+that crowded upon me as I pondered. I was forced to fall back upon the
+unsatisfactory conclusion that while, beyond doubt, there _are_
+combinations of very simple natural objects which have the power of
+thus affecting us, still the analysis of this power lies among
+considerations beyond our depth. It was possible, I reflected, that a
+mere different arrangement of the particulars of the scene, of the
+details of the picture, would be sufficient to modify, or perhaps to
+annihilate its capacity for sorrowful impression; and, acting upon this
+idea, I reined my horse to the precipitous brink of a black and lurid
+tarn[3] that lay in unruffled lustre by the dwelling, and gazed
+down—but with a shudder even more thrilling than before—upon the
+remodelled and inverted images of the gray sedge, and the ghastly tree
+stems, and the vacant and eye-like windows.
+
+Nevertheless, in this mansion of gloom I now proposed to myself a
+sojourn of some weeks. Its proprietor, Roderick Usher, had been one of
+my boon companions in boyhood; but many years had elapsed since our
+last meeting. A letter, however, had lately reached me in a distant
+part of the country—a letter from him—which, in its wildly importunate
+nature, had admitted of no other than a personal reply. The Ms. gave
+evidence of nervous agitation. The writer spoke of acute bodily
+illness, of a mental disorder which oppressed him, and of an earnest
+desire to see me, as his best, and indeed his only, personal friend,
+with a view of attempting, by the cheerfulness of my society, some
+alleviation of his malady. It was the manner in which all this, and
+much more, was said—it was the apparent _heart_ that went with his
+request—which allowed me no room for hesitation; and I accordingly
+obeyed forthwith what I still considered a very singular summons.
+
+Although, as boys, we had been even intimate associates, yet I really
+knew little of my friend. His reserve had been always excessive and
+habitual. I was aware, however, that his very ancient family had been
+noted, time out of mind, for a peculiar sensibility of temperament,
+displaying itself, through long ages, in many works of exalted art, and
+manifested, of late, in repeated deeds of munificent, yet unobtrusive,
+charity, as well as in a passionate devotion to the intricacies,
+perhaps even more than to the orthodox and easily recognizable
+beauties, of musical science. I had learned, too, the very remarkable
+fact that the stem of the Usher race, all time-honored as it was, had
+put forth, at no period, any enduring branch; in other words, that the
+entire family lay in the direct line of descent, and had always, with
+very trifling and very temporary variation, so lain. It was this
+deficiency, I considered, while running over in thought the perfect
+keeping of the character of the premises with the accredited character
+of the people, and while speculating upon the possible influence which
+the one, in the long lapse of centuries, might have exercised upon the
+other—it was this deficiency, perhaps, of collateral issue, and the
+consequent undeviating transmission, from sire to son, of the patrimony
+with the name, which had, at length, so identified the two as to merge
+the original title of the estate in the quaint and equivocal
+appellation of the _House of Usher_—an appellation which seemed to
+include, in the minds of the peasantry who used it, both the family and
+the family mansion.
+
+I have said that the sole effect of my somewhat childish experiment of
+looking down within the tarn had been to deepen the first singular
+impression. There can be no doubt that the consciousness of the rapid
+increase of my superstition—for why should I not so term it?—served
+mainly to accelerate the increase itself. Such, I have long known, is
+the paradoxical law of all sentiments having terror as a basis. And it
+might have been for this reason only, that, when I again uplifted my
+eyes to the house itself, from its image in the pool, there grew in my
+mind a strange fancy—a fancy so ridiculous, indeed, that I but mention
+it to show the vivid force of the sensations which oppressed me. I had
+so worked upon my imagination as really to believe that about the whole
+mansion and domain there hung an atmosphere peculiar to themselves and
+their immediate vicinity—an atmosphere which had no affinity with the
+air of heaven, but which had reeked up from the decayed trees, and the
+gray wall, and the silent tarn—a pestilent and mystic vapor, dull,
+sluggish, faintly discernible, and leaden-hued.
+
+Shaking off from my spirit what _must_ have been a dream, I scanned
+more narrowly the real aspect of the building. Its principal feature
+seemed to be that of an excessive antiquity. The discoloration of ages
+had been great. Minute fungi overspread the whole exterior, hanging in
+a fine, tangled web-work from the eaves. Yet all this was apart from
+any extraordinary dilapidation. No portion of the masonry had fallen;
+and there appeared to be a wild inconsistency between its still perfect
+adaptation of parts, and the crumbling condition of the individual
+stones. In this there was much that reminded me of the specious
+totality of old woodwork which has rotted for years in some neglected
+vault, with no disturbance from the breath of the external air. Beyond
+this indication of extensive decay, however, the fabric gave little
+token of instability. Perhaps the eye of a scrutinizing observer might
+have discovered a barely perceptible fissure, which, extending from the
+roof of the building in front, made its way down the wall in a zigzag
+direction, until it became lost in the sullen waters of the tarn.
+
+Noticing these things, I rode over a short causeway to the house. A
+servant in waiting took my horse, and I entered the Gothic archway of
+the hall. A valet, of stealthy step, thence conducted me, in silence,
+through many dark and intricate passages in my progress to the _studio_
+of his master. Much that I encountered on the way contributed, I know
+not how, to heighten the vague sentiments of which I have already
+spoken. While the objects around me—while the carvings of the ceilings,
+the sombre tapestries of the walls, the ebon blackness of the floors,
+and the phantasmagoric armorial trophies which rattled as I strode,
+were but matters to which, or to such as which, I had been accustomed
+from my infancy—while I hesitated not to acknowledge how familiar was
+all this—I still wondered to find how unfamiliar were the fancies which
+ordinary images were stirring up. On one of the staircases I met the
+physician of the family. His countenance, I thought, wore a mingled
+expression of low cunning and perplexity. He accosted me with
+trepidation and passed on. The valet now threw open a door and ushered
+me into the presence of his master.
+
+The room in which I found myself was very large and lofty. The windows
+were long, narrow, and pointed, and at so vast a distance from the
+black oaken floor as to be altogether inaccessible from within. Feeble
+gleams of encrimsoned light made their way through the trellised panes,
+and served to render sufficiently distinct the more prominent objects
+around; the eye, however, struggled in vain to reach the remoter angles
+of the chamber, or the recesses of the vaulted and fretted ceiling.
+Dark draperies hung upon the walls. The general furniture was profuse,
+comfortless, antique, and tattered. Many books and musical instruments
+lay scattered about, but failed to give any vitality to the scene. I
+felt that I breathed an atmosphere of sorrow. An air of stern, deep,
+and irredeemable gloom hung over and pervaded all.
+
+Upon my entrance, Usher arose from a sofa on which he had been lying at
+full length, and greeted me with, a vivacious warmth which had much in
+it, I at first thought, of an overdone cordiality—of the constrained
+effort of the _ennuyé_[4] man of the world. A glance, however, at his
+countenance convinced me of his perfect sincerity. We sat down; and for
+some moments, while he spoke not. I gazed upon him with a feeling half
+of pity, half of awe. Surely, man had never before so terribly altered,
+in so brief a period, as had Roderick Usher! It was with difficulty
+that I could bring myself to admit the identity of the wan being before
+me with the companion of my early boyhood. Yet the character of his
+face had been at all times remarkable. A cadaverousness of complexion;
+an eye large, liquid, and luminous beyond comparison; lips somewhat
+thin and very pallid, but of a surpassingly beautiful curve; a nose of
+a delicate Hebrew model, but with a breadth of nostril unusual in
+similar formations; a finely moulded chin, speaking, in its want of
+prominence, of a want of moral energy; hair of a more than web-like
+softness and tenuity; these features, with an inordinate expansion
+above the regions of the temple, made up altogether a countenance not
+easily to be forgotten. And now in the mere exaggeration of the
+prevailing character of these features, and of the expression they were
+wont to convey, lay so much of change that I doubted to whom I spoke.
+The now ghastly pallor of the skin, and the now miraculous lustre of
+the eye, above all things startled, and even awed me. The silken hair,
+too, had been suffered to grow all unheeded, and as, in its wild
+gossamer texture, it floated rather than fell about the face, I could
+not, even with effort, connect its arabesque expression with any idea
+of simple humanity.
+
+In the manner of my friend I was at once struck with an incoherence—an
+inconsistency; and I soon found this to arise from a series of feeble
+and futile struggles to overcome an habitual trepidancy, an excessive
+nervous agitation. For something of this nature I had indeed been
+prepared, no less by his letter than by reminiscences of certain boyish
+traits, and by conclusions deduced from his peculiar physical
+conformation and temperament. His action was alternately vivacious and
+sullen. His voice varied rapidly from a tremulous indecision (when the
+animal spirits seemed utterly in abeyance) to that species of energetic
+concision—that abrupt, weighty, unhurried, and hollow-sounding
+enunciation—that leaden, self-balanced, and perfectly modulated
+guttural utterance, which may be observed in the lost drunkard, or the
+irreclaimable eater of opium, during the periods of his most intense
+excitement.
+
+It was thus that he spoke of the object of my visit, of his earnest
+desire to see me, and of the solace he expected me to afford him. He
+entered, at some length, into what he conceived to be the nature of his
+malady. It was, he said, a constitutional and a family evil, and one
+for which he despaired to find a remedy—a mere nervous affection, he
+immediately added, which would undoubtedly soon pass off. It displayed
+itself in a host of unnatural sensations. Some of these, as he detailed
+them, interested and bewildered me; although, perhaps, the terms and
+the general manner of the narration had their weight. He suffered much
+from a morbid acuteness of the senses. The most insipid food was alone
+endurable; he could wear only garments of certain texture; the odors of
+all flowers were oppressive; his eyes were tortured by even a faint
+light; and there were but peculiar sounds, and these from stringed
+instruments, which did not inspire him with horror.
+
+To an anomalous species of terror I found him a bounden[5] slave. "I
+shall perish," said he, "I _must_ perish, in this deplorable folly.
+Thus, thus, and not otherwise, shall I be lost. I dread the events of
+the future, not in themselves, but in their results. I shudder at the
+thought of any, even the most trivial, incident, which may operate upon
+this intolerable agitation of soul. I have, indeed, no abhorrence of
+danger, except in its absolute effect—in terror. In this unnerved—in
+this pitiable condition—I feel that the period will sooner or later
+arrive when I must abandon life and reason together, in some struggle
+with the grim phantasm, FEAR."
+
+I learned, moreover, at intervals, and through broken and equivocal
+hints, another singular feature of his mental condition. He was
+enchained by certain superstitious impressions in regard to the
+dwelling which he tenanted, and whence, for many years, he had never
+ventured forth—in regard to an influence whose supposititious force was
+conveyed in terms too shadowy here to be restated—an influence which
+some peculiarities in the mere form and substance of his family
+mansion, had, by dint of long sufferance, he said, obtained over his
+spirit—an effect which the _physique_ of the gray walls and turrets,
+and of the dim tarn into which they all looked down, had, at length,
+brought about upon the _morale_ of his existence.
+
+He admitted, however, although with hesitation, that much of the
+peculiar gloom which thus afflicted him could be traced to a more
+natural and far more palpable origin—to the severe and long-continued
+illness—indeed to the evidently approaching dissolution—of a tenderly
+beloved sister, his sole companion for long years, his last and only
+relative on earth. "Her decease," he said, with a bitterness which I
+can never forget, "would leave him (him the hopeless and the frail) the
+last of the ancient race of the Ushers." While he spoke, the lady
+Madeline (for so was she called) passed slowly through a remote portion
+of the apartment, and, without having noticed my presence, disappeared.
+I regarded her with an utter astonishment not unmingled with dread[6];
+and yet I found it impossible to account for such feelings. A sensation
+of stupor oppressed me, as my eyes followed her retreating steps. When
+a door, at length, closed upon her, my glance sought instinctively and
+eagerly the countenance of the brother; but he had buried his face in
+his hands, and I could only perceive that a far more than ordinary
+wanness had overspread the emaciated fingers through which trickled
+many passionate tears.
+
+The disease of the lady Madeline had long baffled the skill of her
+physicians. A settled apathy, a gradual wasting away of the person, and
+frequent although transient affections of a partially cataleptical
+character, were the unusual diagnosis. Hitherto she had steadily borne
+up against the pressure of her malady, and had not betaken herself
+finally to bed; but on the closing in of the evening of my arrival at
+the house, she succumbed (as her brother told me at night with
+inexpressible agitation) to the prostrating power of the destroyer; and
+I learned that the glimpse I had obtained of her person would thus
+probably be the last I should obtain—that the lady, at least while
+living, would be seen by me no more.
+
+For several days ensuing her name was unmentioned by either Usher or
+myself; and during this period I was busied in earnest endeavors to
+alleviate the melancholy of my friend. We painted and read together; or
+I listened, as if in a dream, to the wild improvisations[7] of his
+speaking guitar. And thus, as a closer and still closer intimacy
+admitted me more unreservedly into the recesses of his spirit, the more
+bitterly did I perceive the futility of all attempt at cheering a mind
+from which darkness, as if an inherent positive quality, poured forth
+upon all objects of the moral and physical universe, in one unceasing
+radiation of gloom.
+
+I shall ever bear about me a memory of the many solemn hours I thus
+spent alone with the master of the House of Usher. Yet I should fail in
+any attempt to convey an idea of the exact character of the studies, or
+of the occupations in which he involved me, or led me the way. An
+excited and highly distempered ideality threw a sulphurous luster over
+all. His long, improvised dirges will ring forever in my ears. Among
+other things, I hold painfully in mind a certain singular perversion
+and amplification of the wild air of the last waltz of von Weber[8].
+From the paintings over which his elaborate fancy brooded, and which
+grew, touch by touch, into vaguenesses at which I shuddered the more
+thrillingly because I shuddered knowing not why,—from these paintings
+(vivid as their images now are before, me) I would in vain endeavor to
+educe more than a small portion which should lie within the compass of
+merely written words. By the utter simplicity, by the nakedness of his
+designs, he arrested and overawed attention. If ever mortal painted an
+idea, that mortal was Roderick Usher. For me, at least, in the
+circumstances then surrounding me, there arose out of the pure
+abstractions which the hypochondriac contrived to throw, upon his
+canvas, an intensity of intolerable awe, no shadow of which felt I ever
+yet in the contemplation of the certainly glowing yet too concrete
+reveries of Fuseli.[9]
+
+One of the phantasmagoric conceptions of my friend, partaking not so
+rigidly of the spirit of abstraction may be shadowed forth, although
+feebly, in words. A small picture presented the interior of an
+immensely long and rectangular vault or tunnel, with low walls, smooth,
+white, and without interruption or device. Certain accessory points of
+the design served well to convey the idea that this excavation lay at
+an exceeding depth below the surface of the earth. No outlet was
+observed in any portion of its vast extent, and no torch or other
+artificial source of light was discernible; yet a flood of intense rays
+rolled throughout, and bathed the whole in a ghastly and inappropriate
+splendor.
+
+I have just spoken of that morbid condition of the auditory nerve which
+rendered all music intolerable to the sufferer, with the exception of
+certain effects of stringed, instruments. It was, perhaps, the narrow
+limits to which he thus confined himself upon the guitar, which gave
+birth, in great measure, to the fantastic character of his
+performances. But the fervid _facility_ of his _impromptus_ could not
+be so accounted for. They must have been, and were, in the notes, as
+well as in the words of his wild fantasias (for he not unfrequently
+accompanied himself with rimed verbal improvisations), the result of
+that intense mental collectedness and concentration to which I have
+previously alluded as observable only in particular moments of the
+highest artificial excitement. The words of one of these rhapsodies I
+have easily remembered. I was, perhaps, the more forcibly impressed
+with it, as he gave it, because, in the under or mystic current of its
+meaning, I fancied that I perceived, and for the first time, a full
+consciousness on the part of Usher, of the tottering of his lofty
+reason upon her throne. The verses, which were entitled "The Haunted
+Palace,"[10] ran very nearly, if not accurately, thus:—
+
+I
+
+
+     In the greenest of our valleys,
+
+       By good angels tenanted,
+
+     Once a fair and stately palace—
+
+       Radiant palace—reared its head.
+
+     In the monarch Thought's dominion—
+
+       It stood there!
+
+     Never seraph spread a pinion
+
+       Over fabric half so fair.
+
+II
+
+
+     Banners yellow, glorious, golden,
+
+       On its roof did float and flow;
+
+     (This—all this—was in the olden
+
+       Time long ago)
+
+     And every gentle air that dallied,
+
+       In that sweet day,
+
+     Along the ramparts plumed and pallid,
+
+       A wingèd odor went away.
+
+III
+
+
+     Wanderers in that happy valley
+
+       Through two luminous windows saw
+
+     Spirits moving musically
+
+       To a lute's well-tunèd law,
+
+     Round about a throne, where sitting
+
+       (Porphyrogene!)[11]
+
+     In state his glory well befitting,
+
+       The ruler of the realm was seen.
+
+IV
+
+
+     And all with pearl and ruby glowing
+
+       Was the fair palace door,
+
+     Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing,
+
+       And sparkling evermore,
+
+     A troop of Echoes whose sweet duty
+
+       Was but to sing,
+
+     In voices of surpassing beauty,
+
+       The wit and wisdom of their king.
+
+V
+
+
+     But evil things, in robes of sorrow,
+
+       Assailed the monarch's high estate
+
+     (Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow
+
+       Shall dawn upon him, desolate!);
+
+     And, round about his home, the glory
+
+       That blushed and bloomed
+
+     Is but a dim-remembered story
+
+        Of the old time entombed.
+
+VI
+
+
+     And travelers now within that valley,
+
+       Through the red-litten windows, see
+
+     Vast forms that move fantastically
+
+       To a discordant melody;
+
+     While, like a rapid ghastly river,
+
+       Through the pale door,
+
+     A hideous throng rush out forever,
+
+       And laugh—but smile no more.
+
+I well remember that suggestions arising from this ballad led us into a
+train of thought wherein there became manifest an opinion of Usher's
+which I mention not so much on account of its novelty (for other
+men[12] have thought thus) as on account of the pertinacity with which
+he maintained it. This opinion, in its general form, was that of the
+sentience of all vegetable things. But, in his disordered fancy, the
+idea had assumed a more daring character, and trespassed, under certain
+conditions, upon the kingdom of inorganization. I lack words to express
+the full extent or the earnest _abandon_ of his persuasion. The belief,
+however, was connected (as I have previously hinted) with the gray
+stones of the home of his forefathers. The conditions of the sentience
+had been here, he imagined, fulfilled in the method of collocation of
+these stones—in the order of their arrangement, as well as in that of
+the many _fungi_ which overspread them, and of the decayed trees which
+stood around—above all, in the long-undisturbed endurance of this
+arrangement, and in its reduplication in the still waters of the tarn.
+Its evidence—the evidence of the sentience—was to be seen, he said (and
+I here started as he spoke), in the gradual yet certain condensation of
+an atmosphere of their own about the waters and the walls. The result
+was discoverable, he added, in that silent, yet importunate and
+terrible influence which for centuries had molded the destinies of his
+family, and which made _him_ what I now saw him—what he was. Such
+opinions need no comment, and I will make none.
+
+Our books—the books which, for years, had formed no small portion of
+the mental existence of the invalid—were, as might be supposed, in
+strict keeping with this character of phantasm. We pored together over
+such works as the _Ververt et Chartreuse_[13] of Gresset; the
+_Belphegor_[14] of Machiavelli; the _Heaven and Hell_[15] of
+Swedenborg; the _Subterranean Voyage of Nicholas Klimm_[16] by Holberg;
+the _Chiromancy_[17] of Robert Flud, of Jean D'lndaginé, and of De la
+Chambre[18]; the _Journey into the Blue Distance_ of Tieck[19]; and the
+_City of the Sun_[20] of Campanella. One favorite volume was a small
+octavo edition of the _Directorium Inquisitorium_[21] by the Dominican
+Eymeric de Cironne; and there were passages in _Pomponius Mela_,[22]
+about the old African Satyrs and Oegipans,[23] over which Usher would
+sit dreaming for hours. His chief delight, however, was found in the
+perusal of an exceedingly rare and curious book in quarto Gothic—the
+manual of a forgotten church—the _Vigiliae Mortuorum secundum Chorum
+Ecclesiae Maguntinae_.[24]
+
+I could not help thinking of the wild ritual of this work, and of its
+probable influence upon the hypochondriac, when, one evening, having
+informed me abruptly that the lady Madeline was no more, he stated his
+intention of preserving her corpse for a fortnight (previously to its
+final interment) in one of the numerous vaults within the main walls of
+the building. The worldly reason, however, assigned for this singular
+proceeding, was one which I did not feel at liberty to dispute. The
+brother had been led to his resolution, so he told me, by consideration
+of the unusual character of the malady of the deceased, of certain
+obtrusive and eager inquiries on the part of her medical men, and of
+the remote and exposed situation of the burial ground of the family, I
+will not deny that when I called to mind the sinister countenance of
+the person whom I met upon the staircase, on the day of my arrival at
+the house, I had no desire to oppose what I regarded as at best but a
+harmless, and by no means an unnatural precaution.
+
+At the request of Usher, I personally aided him in the arrangements for
+the temporary entombment. The body having been encoffined, we two alone
+bore it to its rest. The vault in which we placed it (and which had
+been so long unopened that our torches, half smothered in its
+oppressive atmosphere, gave us little opportunity for investigation)
+was small, damp, and entirely without means of admission for light;
+lying, at great depth, immediately beneath that portion of the building
+in which was my own sleeping apartment. It had been used, apparently,
+in remote feudal times, for the worst purposes of a donjon-keep, and in
+later days, as a place of deposit for powder, or some other highly
+combustible substance, as a portion of its floor, and the whole
+interior of a long archway through which we reached it, were carefully
+sheathed with copper. The door, of massive iron, had been also
+similarly protected. Its immense weight caused an unusually sharp
+grating sound as it moved upon its hinges.
+
+Having deposited our mournful burden upon tressels within this region
+of horror, we partially turned aside the yet unscrewed lid of the
+coffin, and looked upon the face of the tenant. A striking similitude
+between the brother and sister now first arrested my attention; and
+Usher, divining, perhaps, my thoughts, murmured out some few words from
+which I learned that the deceased and himself had been twins, and that
+sympathies of a scarcely intelligible nature had always existed between
+them. Our glances, however, rested not long upon the dead—for we could
+not regard her unawed. The disease which had thus entombed the lady in
+the maturity of youth, had left, as usual in all maladies of a strictly
+cataleptical character, the mockery of a faint blush upon the bosom and
+the face, and that suspiciously lingering smile upon the lip which is
+so terrible in death. We replaced and screwed down the lid, and having
+secured the door of iron, made our way, with toil, into the scarcely
+less gloomy apartments of the upper portion of the house.
+
+And now, some days of bitter grief having elapsed, an observable change
+came over the features of the mental disorder of my friend. His
+ordinary manner had vanished. His ordinary occupations were neglected
+or forgotten. He roamed from chamber to chamber with hurried, unequal,
+and objectless step. The pallor of his countenance had assumed, if
+possible, a more ghastly line—but the luminousness of his eye had
+utterly gone out. The once occasional huskiness of his tone was heard
+no more; and a tremulous quaver, as if of extreme terror, habitually
+characterized his utterance. There were times, indeed, when I thought
+his unceasingly agitated mind was laboring with some oppressive secret,
+to divulge which he struggled for the necessary courage. At times,
+again, I was obliged to resolve all into the mere inexplicable vagaries
+of madness; for I beheld him gazing upon vacancy for long hours, in an
+attitude of the profoundest attention, as if listening to some
+imaginary sound. It was no wonder that his condition terrified—that it
+infected me. I felt creeping upon me, by slow yet certain degrees, the
+wild influence of his own fantastic yet impressive superstitions.
+
+It was, especially, upon retiring to bed late in the night of the
+seventh or eighth day after the placing of the lady Madeline within the
+donjon, that I experienced the full power of such feelings. Sleep came
+not near my couch, while the hours waned and waned away, I struggled to
+reason off the nervousness which had dominion over me. I endeavored to
+believe that much, if not all of what I felt, was due to the
+bewildering influence of the gloomy furniture of the room—of the dark
+and tattered draperies, which, tortured into motion by the breath of a
+rising tempest, swayed fitfully to and fro upon the walls, and rustled
+uneasily about the decorations of the bed. But my efforts were
+fruitless. An irrepressible tremor gradually pervaded my frame; and, at
+length, there sat upon my very heart an incubus of utterly causeless
+alarm. Shaking this off with a gasp and a struggle, I uplifted myself
+upon the pillows, and peering earnestly within the intense darkness of
+the chamber, hearkened—I know not why, except that an instinctive
+spirit prompted me—to certain low and indefinite sounds which came,
+through the pauses of the storm, at long intervals, I knew not whence.
+Overpowered by an intense sentiment of horror, unaccountable yet
+unendurable, I threw on my clothes with haste (for I felt that I should
+sleep no more during the night), and endeavored to arouse myself from
+the pitiable condition into which I had fallen, by pacing rapidly to
+and fro through the apartment.
+
+I had taken but few turns in this manner, when a light step on an
+adjoining staircase arrested my attention. I presently recognized it as
+that of Usher. In an instant afterward he rapped, with a gentle touch,
+at my door, and entered, bearing a lamp. His countenance was, as usual,
+cadaverously wan—but, moreover, there was a species of mad hilarity in
+his eyes—and evidently restrained hysteria in his whole demeanor. His
+air appalled me—but anything was preferable to the solitude which I had
+so long endured, and I even welcomed his presence as a relief.
+
+"And you have not seen it?" he said abruptly, after having stared about
+him for some moments in silence—"you have not then seen it?—but stay!
+you shall." Thus speaking, and having carefully shaded his lamp, he
+hurried to one of the casements, and threw it freely open to the storm.
+
+The impetuous fury of the entering gust nearly lifted us from our feet.
+It was, indeed, a tempestuous yet sternly beautiful night, and one
+wildly singular in its terror and its beauty. A whirlwind had
+apparently collected its force in our vicinity; for there were frequent
+and violent alterations in the direction of the wind; and the exceeding
+density of the clouds (which hung so low as to press upon the turrets
+of the house) did not prevent our perceiving the lifelike velocity with
+which they flew careering from all points against each other, without
+passing away into the distance. I say that even their exceeding density
+did not prevent our perceiving this—yet we had no glimpse of the moon
+or stars—nor was there any flashing forth of the lightning. But the
+under surfaces of the huge masses of agitated vapor, as well as all
+terrestrial objects immediately around us, were glowing in the
+unnatural light of a faintly luminous and distinctly visible gaseous
+exhalation which hung about and enshrouded the mansion.
+
+"You must not—you shall not behold this!" said I, shudderingly, to
+Usher, as I led him, with a gentle violence, from the window to a seat.
+"These appearances, which bewilder you, are merely electrical phenomena
+not uncommon—or it may be that they have their ghastly origin in the
+rank miasma of the tarn. Let us close this casement—the air is chilling
+and dangerous to your frame. Here is one of your favorite romances. I
+will read and you shall listen; and so we will pass away this terrible
+night together."
+
+The antique volume which I had taken up was the _Mad Trist_ of Sir
+Launcelot Canning[25]; but I had called it a favorite of Usher's more
+in sad jest than in earnest; for, in truth, there is little in its
+uncouth and unimaginative prolixity which could have had interest for
+the lofty and spiritual ideality of my friend. It was, however, the
+only book immediately at hand; and I indulged a vague hope that the
+excitement which now agitated the hypochondriac, might find relief (for
+the history of mental disorder is full of similar anomalies) even in
+the extremeness of the folly which I should read. Could I have judged,
+indeed, by the wild, overstrained air of vivacity with which he
+hearkened, or apparently hearkened, to the words of the tale, I might
+well have congratulated myself upon the success of my design.
+
+I had arrived at that well-known portion of the story where Ethelred,
+the hero of the "Trist," having sought in vain for peaceable admission
+into the dwelling of the hermit, proceeds to make good an entrance by
+force. Here, it will be remembered, the words of the narrative run
+thus:—
+
+"And Ethelred, who was by nature of a doughty heart, and who was now
+mighty withal, on account of the powerfulness of the wine which he had
+drunken, waited no longer to hold parley with the hermit, who, in
+sooth, was of an obstinate and maliceful turn; but, feeling the rain
+upon his shoulders, and fearing the rising of the tempest, uplifted his
+mace outright, and, with blows, made quickly room in the plankings of
+the door for his gauntleted hand; and now pulling therewith sturdily,
+he so cracked, and ripped, and tore all asunder, that the noise of the
+dry and hollow-sounding wood alarummed[26] and reverberated throughout
+the forest."
+
+At the termination of this sentence I started, and for a moment paused;
+for it appeared to me (although I at once concluded that my excited
+fancy had deceived me)—it appeared to me that, from some very remote
+portion of the mansion, there came, indistinctly, to my ears what might
+have been, in its exact similarity of character, the echo (but a
+stifled and dull one certainly) of the very cracking and ripping sound
+which Sir Launcelot had so particularly described. It was, beyond
+doubt, the coincidence alone which had arrested my attention; for, amid
+the rattling of the sashes of the casements, and the ordinary
+commingled noises of the still increasing storm, the sound, in itself,
+had nothing, surely, which should have interested or disturbed, me. I
+continued the story:—
+
+"But the good champion Ethelred, now entering within the door, was sore
+enraged and amazed to perceive no signal of the maliceful hermit; but,
+in the stead thereof, a dragon of a scaly and prodigious demeanor, and
+of a fiery tongue, which sate in guard before a palace of gold, with a
+floor of silver; and upon the wall there hung a shield of shining brass
+with this legend enwritten:—
+
+     Who entereth herein, a conqueror hath been;
+
+     Who slayeth the dragon, the shield he shall win.
+
+"And Ethelred uplifted his mace, and struck upon the head of the
+dragon, which fell before him, and gave up his pesty breath, with a
+shriek so horrid and harsh, and withal so piercing, that Ethelred had
+fain[27] to close his ears with his hands against the dreadful noise of
+it, the like whereof was never before heard."
+
+Here again I paused abruptly, and now with a feeling of wild
+amazement—for there could be no doubt whatever that, in this instance,
+I did actually hear (although from what direction it proceeded I found
+it impossible to say) a low and apparently distant, but harsh,
+protracted, and most unusual screaming or grating sound—the exact
+counterpart of what my fancy had already conjured up for the dragon's
+unnatural shriek as described by the romancer.
+
+Oppressed, as I certainly was, upon the occurrence of this second and
+most extraordinary coincidence, by a thousand conflicting sensations,
+in which wonder and extreme terror were predominant, I still retained
+sufficient presence of mind to avoid exciting, by any observation, the
+sensitive nervousness of my companion. I was by no means certain that
+he had noticed the sounds in question; although, assuredly, a strange
+alteration had, during the last few minutes, taken place in his
+demeanor. From a position fronting my own, he had gradually brought
+round his chair, so as to sit with his face to the door of the chamber;
+and thus I could but partially perceive his features, although I saw
+that his lips trembled as if he were murmuring inaudibly. His head had
+dropped upon his breast—yet I knew that he was not asleep, from the
+wide and rigid opening of the eye as I caught a glance of it in
+profile. The motion of his body, too, was at variance with this
+idea—for he rocked from side to side with a gentle yet constant and
+uniform sway. Having rapidly taken notice of all this, I resumed the
+narrative of Sir Launcelot, which thus proceeded:—
+
+"And now the champion, having escaped from the terrible fury of the
+dragon, bethinking himself of the brazen shield, and of the breaking up
+of the enchantment which was upon it, removed the carcass from out of
+the way before him, and approached valorously over the silver pavement
+of the castle to where the shield was upon the wall; which in sooth
+tarried not for his full coming, but fell down at his feet upon the
+silver floor, with a mighty, great and terrible ringing sound."
+
+No sooner had these syllables passed my lips, than—as if a shield of
+brass had indeed, at the moment, fallen heavily upon a floor of
+silver—I became aware of a distinct, hollow, metallic and clangorous,
+yet apparently muffled reverberation. Completely unnerved, I leaped to
+my feet; but the measured rocking movement of Usher was undisturbed. I
+rushed to the chair in which he sat. His eyes were bent fixedly before
+him, and throughout his whole countenance there reigned a stony
+rigidity. But, as I placed my hand upon his shoulder, there came a
+strong shudder over his whole person; a sickly smile quivered about his
+lips; and I saw that he spoke in a low, hurried, and gibbering murmur,
+as if unconscious of my presence. Bending closely over him, I at length
+drank in the hideous import of his words.
+
+"Not hear it?—yes, I hear it, and _have_ heard it. Long—long—long—many
+minutes, many hours, many days, have I heard it—yet I dared not—oh,
+pity me, miserable wretch that I am!—I dared not—I _dared_ not speak!
+_We have put her living in the tomb!_ Said I not that my senses were
+acute? I _now_ tell you that I heard her first feeble movements in the
+hollow coffin. I heard them—many, many days ago—yet I dared not—_I
+dared not speak!_ And now—to-night—Ethelred—ha! ha!—-the breaking of
+the hermit's door, and the death-cry of the dragon, and the clangor of
+the shield!—say, rather, the rending of her coffin, and the grating of
+the iron hinges of her prison, and her struggles within the coppered
+archway of the vault! Oh, whither shall I fly? Will she not be here
+anon? Is she not hurrying to upbraid me for my haste? Have I not heard
+her footstep on the stair? Do I not distinguish that heavy and horrible
+beating of her heart? Madman!"—here he sprang furiously to his feet,
+and shrieked out his syllables, as if in the effort he were giving up
+his soul—"_Madman! I tell you that she now stands without the door!_"
+
+As if in the superhuman energy of his utterance there had been found
+the potency of a spell—the huge antique panels to which the speaker
+pointed threw slowly back, upon the instant, their ponderous and ebony
+jaws. It was the work of the rushing gust—but then without those doors
+there _did_ stand the lofty and enshrouded figure of the lady Madeline
+of Usher. There was blood upon her white robes, and the evidence of
+some bitter struggle upon every portion of her emaciated frame. For a
+moment she remained trembling and reeling to and fro upon the
+threshold—then, with a low, moaning cry, fell heavily inward upon the
+person of her brother, and in her violent and now final death-agonies,
+bore him to the floor a corpse, and a victim to the terrors he had
+anticipated.
+
+From that chamber, and from that mansion, I fled aghast. The storm was
+still abroad in all its wrath as I found myself crossing the old
+causeway. Suddenly there shot along the path a wild light, and I turned
+to see whence a gleam so unusual could have issued; for the vast house
+and its shadows were alone behind me. The radiance was that of the
+full, setting, and blood-red moon, which now shone vividly through that
+once barely discernible fissure, of which I have before spoken as
+extending from the roof of the building, in a zigzag direction, to the
+base. While I gazed, this fissure rapidly widened—there came a fierce
+breath of the whirlwind—the entire orb of the satellite burst at once
+upon my sight—my brain reeled as I saw the mighty walls rushing
+asunder—there was a long tumultuous shouting sound like the voice of a
+thousand waters—and the deep and dank tarn at my feet closed sullenly
+and silently over the fragments of the "_House of Usher_."
+
+NOTES
+
+[1] _The Fall of the House of Usher_ was written in 1839 and published
+at the end of the same year in his Tales of the Grotesque and of the
+Arabesque.
+
+[2] 70: Motto de Béranger. Popular French lyric poet (1780-1857). "His
+heart is a suspended lute; as soon as it is touched it resounds."
+
+[3] 71:23 tarn. A small mountain lake.
+
+[4] 76:7 ennuyé. Mentally wearied or bored.
+
+[5] 78:11 bounden. An archaic word.
+
+[6] 79:19 Dread. Reading of the first edition, "Her figure, her air,
+her features,—all, in their very minutest development, were those—were
+identically (I can use no other sufficient term), were identically
+those of the Roderick Usher who sat beside me. A feeling of stupor,"
+etc.
+
+[7] 80:16 Improvisations. Extemporaneous composition of poetry or
+music.
+
+[8] 81:4 von Weber. The celebrated German composer (1786-1826).
+
+[9] 81:20 Fuseli. An artist and professor of painting at the Royal
+Academy in London (1741-1825).
+
+[10] 82:24 "The Haunted Palace." First published in the _Baltimore
+Museum_ for April, 1839.
+
+[11] 83:18 Porphyrogene. Of royal birth.
+
+[12] 84:16 for other men. Watson, Dr. Percival, and especially the
+Bishop of Llandaff. See "Chemical Essays," Vol. V.
+
+[13] 85:16 Ververt et Chartreuse. Two poems by Jean Baptiste Cresset
+(1709-1777).
+
+[Footenote 14] 85:17 Belphegor. Satire on Marriage by Machiavelli
+(1469-1527).
+
+[15] 85:17 Heaven and Hell. Extracts from "Arcana Coelestia" by
+Swedenborg (1688-1772).
+
+[16] 85:18 Subterranean Voyage of Nicholas Klimm. A celebrated poem by
+Ludwig Holberg (1684-1754).
+
+[17] 85:19 Chiromancy. Palmistry applied to the future. Poe refers
+rather to physiognomy. The book was written by the English mystic,
+Robert Fludd (1574-1637).
+
+[18] 85:19 Jean d'Indaginé and De la Chambre. Two continental writers
+of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries respectively.
+
+[19] 85:21 Tieck. A great German romanticist (1773-1853).
+
+[20] 85:21 City of the Sun. A sketch of an ideal state by Campanella
+(1568-1639).
+
+[21] 85:23 Directorium Inquisitorium. A detailed account of the methods
+of the Inquisition by Cironne, inquisitor-general for Castile, in 1356.
+
+[22] 85:24 Pomponius Mela. Spanish geographer in the first century A.D.
+Author of "De Chorographia," the earliest extant account of the
+geography of the ancient world.
+
+[23] 85:25 Oegipans. An epithet applied to Pan.
+
+[24] 85:30 Vigiliae Mortuorum. No such book is known.
+
+[25] 90:30 Mad Trist. No such book is known.
+
+[26] 91:29 alarummed. Alarmed.
+
+[27] 92:25 had fain. In the sense of was glad.
+
+BIOGRAPHY
+
+Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston, January 19, 1809. His parents, who
+were actors, died before their son was three years old. Mr. Allan, a
+wealthy Richmond merchant, adopted the child and gave him a splendid
+home. How scantily Poe appreciated and improved the advantages of this
+kindness he himself confesses in a letter to Lowell in 1844. "I have
+been too deeply conscious of the mutability and evanescence of temporal
+things to give any continuous effort to anything—to be consistent in
+anything. My life has been _whim_—impulse—passion—a longing for
+solitude—a scorn of all things present in an earnest desire for the
+future." He was a dreamer who had a fair chance to be happy, but he
+flung the opportunity away. He was a spoiled child who remained
+ignorant of life even unto his death.
+
+He entered the University of Virginia in 1826, where his conduct was so
+bad that he was, after a year, removed from the college. This action
+broke the strong friendship Mr. Allan had long held for his adopted
+son. Poe, urged by a hot temper or possibly by a remorse for his
+actions, ran away and enlisted in the regular army. In 1829 Mr. Allan
+became partially reconciled with Poe, and again came to his assistance.
+In 1830 Poe entered West Point, but was there only a short time when he
+was dismissed for wilful neglect of duty.
+
+Following this dismissal Poe went to Baltimore, where he did hack work
+for newspapers. This was the beginning of a process of writing that has
+brought him high rank and an imperishable honor. His narrative is
+clear, compressed, and powerful, and throughout his writings choice
+symbols abound. He was fond of themes of death, insanity, and terror.
+The wonder of it all is that this struggling, poverty-stricken
+craftsman, irregular in his habits of living, using only negative life
+and shadowy abstractions, should, from out his disordered fancies,
+weave stories and poems of such undying beauty and force.
+
+Poe married his thirteen-year-old cousin, Virginia Clemm. Her health
+was always delicate and her death confirmed Poe's tendency toward
+dissipation. His life was filled with dire poverty and a hard struggle
+for a livelihood. His home relations were happy. The last years of his
+life were spent at Fordham, a suburb of New York. He died in a
+Baltimore hospital, October 7, 1849.
+
+BIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES
+
+_Introduction to American Literature_, Brander Matthews.
+
+_Studies in American Literature_, Charles Noble.
+
+_Introduction to American Literature_, F.V.N. Painter.
+
+_Life of Poe_, Richard Henry Stoddard.
+
+_Edgar Allan Poe_, G.E. Woodberry.
+
+_Makers of English Fiction_, W.J. Dawson.
+
+"Art of Poe, _Independent_, 66: 157-8. January 21, 1909.
+
+"Dual Personality," _Current Literature_, 43: 287-8.
+
+CRITICISMS
+
+Some critics have maintained that Poe is our only original genius in
+American Literature. Lowell wrote in his _Fable for Critics_:—
+
+"There comes Poe with his raven, like Barnaby Rudge, Three-fifths of
+him genius, and two-fifths sheer fudge."
+
+Whatever judgments the various critics may give of Poe and his
+writings, they must all agree that he is original. He is a clever
+writer in a limited field. His writings have a glow and burnish that
+have their origin in his fondness for sensations, color, and vividness
+of details. He loves mystery and terror,—not the fancies and fears of a
+child, but overwrought nerves. His material is unreal, and remote from
+ordinary life. His characters are abnormal, and the world they live in
+is exceptional. He is inventive, original in arranging his material,
+and shallow but keen in his thinking.
+
+He believed that art and life have little in common, and in his
+writings seemed to be unmoved by friendship, loyalty, patriotism,
+courage, self-sacrifice or any of the great positive attributes of life
+that make living worth while. His writings lack the human touch,
+tenderness, and the buoyancy of sympathy. He is an artist who does his
+work with a clear-cut, hard finish. His choice of words, vivid
+pictures, and clearly evolved plots make his writings excellent studies
+for any one who wishes to develop literary appreciation and to learn to
+write.
+
+GENERAL REFERENCES
+
+_Studies and Appreciations_, L.E. Gates.
+
+_American Prose Masters_, William Crary Brownwell.
+
+_The Short Story in English_, Henry Seidel Canby.
+
+_Edgar Poe_, R.H. Button.
+
+_Inquiries and Opinions_, Brander Matthews.
+
+"Life of Edgar Allan Poe," _Nation_, 89: 100-110.
+
+"Weird Genius," _Cosmopolitan_, 46:243-252.
+
+COLLATERAL READINGS
+
+_Ligeia_, Edgar Allan Poe.
+
+_The Cask of Amontillado_, Edgar Allan Poe.
+
+_The Assignation_, Edgar Allan Poe.
+
+_Ms. Pound in Bottle_, Edgar Allan Poe.
+
+_The Black Cat_, Edgar Allan Poe.
+
+_Berenice_, Edgar Allan Poe.
+
+_The Tell-Tale Heart_, Edgar Allan Poe.
+
+_The White Old Maid_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_Moonlight_ ("Odd Number"), Guy de Maupassant.
+
+_A Journey_, Edith Wharton.
+
+_The Brushwood Boy_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+_At the Pit's Mouth_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+
+
+
+THE GOLD-BUG[1]
+
+
+_By Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)_
+
+
+     What ho! what ho! this fellow is dancing mad!
+
+     He hath been bitten by the Tarantula.
+
+                                  —_All in the Wrong_.[2]
+
+Many years ago I contracted an intimacy with a Mr. William Legrand. He
+was of an ancient Huguenot[3] family, and had once been wealthy; but a
+series of misfortunes had reduced him to want. To avoid the
+mortification consequent upon his disasters, he left New Orleans, the
+city of his forefathers, and took up his residence at Sullivan's
+Island, near Charleston, South Carolina.
+
+This island is a very singular one. It consists of little else than the
+sea sand, and is about three miles long. Its breadth at no point
+exceeds a quarter of a mile. It is separated from the mainland by a
+scarcely perceptible creek, oozing its way through a wilderness of
+reeds and slime, a favorite resort of the marsh-hen. The vegetation, as
+might be supposed, is scant, or at least dwarfish. No trees of any
+magnitude are to be seen. Near the western extremity, where Fort
+Moultrie[4] stands, and where are some miserable frame buildings,
+tenanted, during summer, by the fugitives from Charleston dust and
+fever, may be found, indeed, the bristly palmetto; but the whole
+island, with the exception of this western point, and a line of hard,
+white beach on the seacoast, is covered with a dense undergrowth of the
+sweet myrtle, so much prized by the horticulturists of England. The
+shrub here often attains the height of fifteen or twenty feet, and
+forms an almost impenetrable coppice, burthening the air with its
+fragrance.
+
+In the utmost recesses of this coppice, not far from the eastern or
+more remote end of the island, Legrand had built himself a small hut,
+which he occupied when I first, by mere accident, made his
+acquaintance. This soon ripened into friendship, for there was much in
+the recluse to excite interest and esteem. I found him well educated,
+with unusual powers of mind, but infected with misanthropy, and subject
+to perverse moods of alternate enthusiasm and melancholy. He had with
+him many books, but rarely employed them. His chief amusements were
+gunning and fishing, or sauntering along the beach and through the
+myrtles, in quest of shells or entomological specimens—his collection
+of the latter might have been envied by a Swammerdam.[5] In these
+excursions he was usually accompanied by an old negro, called Jupiter,
+who had been manumitted[6] before the reverses of the family, but who
+could be induced, neither by threats nor by promises, to abandon what
+he considered his right of attendance upon the footsteps of his young
+"Massa Will." It is not improbable that the relatives of Legrand,
+conceiving him to be somewhat unsettled in intellect, had contrived to
+instil this obstinacy into Jupiter, with a view to the supervision and
+guardianship of the wanderer.
+
+The winters in the latitude of Sullivan's Island are seldom very
+severe, and in the fall of the year it is a rare event indeed when a
+fire is considered necessary. About the middle of October, 18—, there
+occurred, however, a day of remarkable chilliness. Just before sunset I
+scrambled my way through the evergreens to the hut of my friend, whom I
+had not visited for several weeks—my residence being at that time in
+Charleston, a distance of nine miles from the island, while the
+facilities of passage and re-passage were very far behind those of the
+present day. Upon reaching the hut I rapped, as was my custom, and
+getting no reply, sought for the key where I knew it was secreted,
+unlocked the door, and went in. A fine fire was blazing upon the
+hearth. It was a novelty, and by no means an ungrateful one. I threw
+off an over-coat, took an armchair by the crackling logs, and awaited
+patiently the arrival of my hosts.
+
+Soon after dark they arrived, and gave me a most cordial welcome.
+Jupiter, grinning from ear to ear, bustled about to prepare some
+marsh-hens for supper. Legrand was in one of his fits—how else shall I
+term them?—of enthusiasm. He had found an unknown bivalve, forming a
+new genus, and, more than this, he had hunted down and secured, with
+Jupiter's assistance, a _scarabaeus_[7] which he believed to be totally
+new, but in respect to which he wished to have my opinion on the
+morrow.
+
+"And why not to-night?" I asked, rubbing my hands over the blaze, and
+wishing the whole tribe of _scarabaei_ at the devil.
+
+"Ah, if I had only known you were here!" said Legrand, "but it's so
+long since I saw you; and how could I foresee that you would pay me a
+visit this very night of all others? As I was coming home I met
+Lieutenant G——, from the fort, and, very foolishly, I lent him the bug;
+so it will be impossible for you to see it until the morning. Stay here
+to-night, and I will send Jup down for it at sunrise. It is the
+loveliest thing in creation!"
+
+"What!—sunrise?"
+
+"Nonsense! no!—the bug. It is of a brilliant gold color—about the size
+of a large hickory-nut—with two jet-black spots near one extremity of
+the back, and another, somewhat longer, at the other. The _antennae[8]_
+are—"
+
+"Dey ain't _no_ tin in him, Massa Will, I keep a tellin' on you," here
+interrupted Jupiter; "de bug is a goolebug, solid, ebery bit of him,
+inside and all, 'sep him wing—neber feel half so hebby a bug in my
+life."
+
+"Well, suppose it is, Jup," replied Legrand, somewhat more earnestly,
+it seemed to me, than the case demanded; "is that any reason for your
+letting the birds burn? The color"—here he turned to me—"is really
+almost enough to warrant Jupiter's idea. You never saw a more brilliant
+metallic lustre than the scales emit—but of this you cannot judge till
+to-morrow. In the meantime I can give you some idea of the shape."
+Saying this, he seated himself at a small table, on which were a pen
+and ink, but no paper. He looked for some in a drawer, but found none.
+
+"Never mind," said he at length, "this will answer;" and he drew from
+his waistcoat pocket a scrap of what I took to be very dirty foolscap,
+and made upon it a rough drawing with the pen. While he did this I
+retained my seat by the fire, for I was still chilly. When the design
+was complete, he handed it to me without rising. As I received, it, a
+loud growl was heard, succeeded by a scratching at the door. Jupiter
+opened it, and a large Newfoundland, belonging to Legrand, rushed in,
+leaped upon my shoulders, and loaded me with caresses; for I had shown
+him much attention during previous visits. When his gambols were over,
+I looked at the paper, and, to speak the truth, found myself not a
+little puzzled at what my friend had depicted.
+
+"Well!" I said, after contemplating it for some minutes, "this _is_ a
+strange _scarabaeus_, I must confess: new to me: never saw anything
+like it before—unless it was a skull, or a death's-head—which, it more
+nearly resembles than, anything else that has come under _my_
+observation."
+
+"A death's-head!" echoed Legrand. "Oh—yes—well, it has something of
+that appearance upon paper, no doubt. The two upper black spots look
+like eyes, eh? and the longer one at the bottom like a mouth—and then
+the shape of the whole is oval."
+
+"Perhaps so," said I; "but, Legrand, I fear you are no artist. I must
+wait until I see the beetle itself, if I am to form any idea of its
+personal appearance."
+
+"Well, I don't know," said he, a little nettled, "I draw
+tolerably—_should_ do it at least—have had good masters, and flatter
+myself that I am not quite a blockhead."
+
+"But, my dear fellow, you are joking then," said I; "this is a very
+passable _skull_—indeed, I may say that it is a very _excellent_ skull,
+according to the vulgar notions about such specimens of physiology—and
+your _scarabaeus_ must be the queerest _scarabaeus_ in the world if it
+resembles it. Why, we may get up a very thrilling bit of superstition
+upon this hint. I presume, you will call the bug _scarabaeus caput
+hominis_,[9] or something of that kind—there are many similar titles in
+the natural histories. But where are the _antennae_ you spoke of?"
+
+"The _antennae_!" said Legrand, who seemed to be getting unaccountably
+warm upon the subject; "I am sure you must see the _antennae_. I made
+them as distinct as they are in the original insect, and I presume that
+is sufficient."
+
+"Well, well," I said, "perhaps you have—still I don't see them;" and I
+handed him the paper without additional remark, not wishing to ruffle
+his temper; but I was much surprised at the turn affairs had taken; his
+ill-humor puzzled me—and, as for the drawing of the beetle, there were
+positively _no antennae_ visible, and the whole _did_ bear a very close
+resemblance to the ordinary cuts of a death's-head.
+
+He received the paper very peevishly, and was about to crumple it,
+apparently to throw it in the fire, when a casual glance at the design
+seemed suddenly to rivet his attention. In an instant his face grew
+violently red—in another as excessively pale. For some minutes he
+continued to scrutinize the drawing minutely where he sat. At length he
+arose, took a candle from the table, and proceeded to seat himself upon
+a sea-chest in the farthest corner of the room. Here again he made an
+anxious examination of the paper, turning it in all directions. He said
+nothing, however, and his conduct greatly astonished me; yet I thought
+it prudent not to exacerbate the growing moodiness of his temper by any
+comment. Presently he took from, his coat pocket a wallet, placed the
+paper carefully in it, and deposited both in a writing-desk, which he
+locked. He now grew more composed in his demeanor; but his original air
+of enthusiasm had quite disappeared. Yet he seemed not so much sulky as
+abstracted. As the evening wore away he became more and more absorbed
+in reverie, from which no sallies of mine could arouse him. It had been
+my intention to pass the night at the hut, as I had frequently done
+before, but, seeing my host in this mood, I deemed it proper to take
+leave. He did not press me to remain, but, as I departed, he shook my
+hand with even more than his usual cordiality.
+
+It was about a month after this (and during the interval I had seen
+nothing of Legrand) when I received a visit, at Charleston, from his
+man Jupiter. I had never seen the good old negro look so dispirited,
+and I feared that some serious disaster had befallen my friend.
+
+"Well, Jup," said I, "what is the matter now?—how is your master?"
+
+"Why, to speak de troof, massa, him not so berry well as mought be."
+
+"Not well! I am truly sorry to hear it. What does he complain of?"
+
+"Dar! dat's it!—him nebber 'plain of notin'—but him berry sick for all
+dat."
+
+"_Very_ sick, Jupiter!—why didn't you say so at once? Is he confined to
+bed?"
+
+"No, dat he ain't!—he ain't 'find nowhar—dat's just whar de shoe
+pinch—my mind is got to be berry hebby 'bout poor Massa Will."
+
+"Jupiter, I should like to understand what it is you are talking about.
+You say your master is sick. Hasn't he told you what ails him?"
+
+"Why, massa, 'tain't worf while for to git mad 'bout de matter—Massa
+Will say noffin' at all ain't de matter wid him—but den what make him
+go about looking dis here way, wid he head down and he soldiers up, and
+as white as a gose? And den he keep a syphon all de time—"
+
+"Keeps a what, Jupiter?"
+
+"Keeps a syphon wid de figgurs on de slate—de queerest figgurs I ebber
+did see. Ise gittin' to be skeered I tell you. Hab for to keep mighty
+tight eye pon him noovers.[10] Todder day he gib me slip fore de sun
+up, and was gone de whole ob de blessed day. I had a big stick ready
+cut for to gib him d——d good beating when he did come—but Ise sich a
+fool dat I hadn't de heart after all—he look so berry poorly."
+
+"Eh?—what? Ah, yes!—upon the whole, I think you had better not be too
+severe with the poor fellow—don't flog him, Jupiter, he can't very well
+stand it—but can you form an idea of what has occasioned this illness,
+or rather this change of conduct? Has anything unpleasant happened
+since I saw you?"
+
+"No, massa, dey ain't bin noffin' onpleasant _since_ den—'twas _'fore_
+den, I'm feared—'twas de berry day you was dare."'
+
+"How? what do you mean?"
+
+"Why, massa, I mean de bug—dare now."
+
+"The _what?_"
+
+"De bug—I'm berry sartain dat Massa Will bin bit somewhere 'bout de
+head by dat goole-bug."
+
+"And what cause have you, Jupiter, for such a supposition?"
+
+"Claws enuff, massa, and mouff, too. I nebber did see sich a d——d
+bug—he kick and he bite ebery ting what cum near him. Massa Will cotch
+him fuss, but had for to let him go 'gin mighty quick, I tell you—den
+was de time he must ha' got de bite. I didn't like de look ob de bug
+mouff, myself, nohow, so I wouldn't take hold ob him wid my finger, but
+I cotch him wid a piece ob paper dat I found. I wrap him up in de paper
+and stuff piece ob it in he mouff—dat was de way."
+
+"And you think, then, that your master was really bitten by the beetle,
+and that the bite made him sick?" "I don't t'ink noffin' 'bout it—I
+nose it. What make him dream 'bout de goole so much, if 'tain't cause
+he bit by de goole-bug? Ise heerd 'bout dem goole-bugs 'fore dis."
+
+"But how do you know he dreams about gold?"
+
+"How I know? why, 'cause he talk about it in he sleep—dat's how I
+nose."
+
+"Well, Jup, perhaps you are right; but to what fortunate circumstances
+am I to attribute the honor of a visit from you to-day?"
+
+"What de matter, massa?"
+
+"Did you bring any message from Mr. Legrand?"
+
+"No, massa, I bring dis here 'pissel;" and here Jupiter handed me a
+note, which ran thus:
+
+My dear ———:
+
+Why have I not seen you for so long a time? I hope you have not been so
+foolish as to take offence at any little _brusquerie_[11] of mine; but
+no, that is improbable.
+
+Since I saw you I have had great cause for anxiety. I have something to
+tell you, yet scarcely know how to tell it, or whether I should tell it
+at all.
+
+I have not been quite well for some days past, and poor old Jup annoys
+me, almost beyond endurance, by his well-meant attentions. Would you
+believe it?—he had prepared a huge stick, the other day, with which to
+chastise me for giving him the slip, and spending the day, _solus_,
+among the hills on the mainland. I verily believe that my ill looks
+alone saved me a flogging.
+
+I have made no addition to my cabinet since we met.
+
+If you can, in any way, make it convenient, come over with Jupiter.
+_Do_ come. I wish to see you _to-night_, upon business of importance. I
+assure you that it is of the _highest_ importance.
+
+Ever yours,
+
+William Legrand.
+
+There was something in the tone of this note which gave me great
+uneasiness. Its whole style differed materially from that of Legrand.
+What could he be dreaming of? What new crotchet possessed his excitable
+brain? What "business of the highest importance" could _he_ possibly
+have to transact? Jupiter's account of him boded no good. I dreaded
+lest the continued pressure of misfortune had, at length, fairly
+unsettled the reason of my friend. Without a moment's hesitation,
+therefore, I prepared to accompany the negro.
+
+Upon reaching the wharf, I noticed a scythe and three spades, all
+apparently new, lying in the bottom of the boat in which we were to
+embark.
+
+"What is the meaning of all this, Jup?" I inquired.
+
+"Him syfe, massa, and spade."
+
+"Very true; but what are they doing here?"
+
+"Him de syfe and de spade what Massa Will 'sis' 'pon my buying for him
+in de town, and de debbil's own lot of money I had to gib for 'em."
+
+"But what, in the name of all that is mysterious, is your 'Massa Will'
+going to do with scythes and spades?"
+
+"Dat's more dan _I_ know, and debbil take me if I don't b'lieve 'tis
+more dan he know, too. But it's all come ob de bug."
+
+Finding that no satisfaction was to be obtained of Jupiter, whose whole
+intellect seemed to be absorbed by "de bug," I now stepped into the
+boat and made sail. With a fair and strong breeze we soon ran into the
+little cove to the northward of Fort Moultrie, and a walk of some two
+miles brought us to the hut. It was about three in the afternoon when
+we arrived. Legrand had been awaiting us in eager expectation. He
+grasped my hand with a nervous _empressement_[12] which alarmed me and
+strengthened the suspicions already entertained. His countenance was
+pale even to ghastliness, and his deep-set eyes glared with unnatural
+lustre. After some inquiries respecting his health, I asked him, not
+knowing what better to say, if he had yet obtained the _scarabaeus_
+from Lieutenant G——.
+
+"Oh, yes," he replied, coloring violently, "I got it from him the next
+morning. Nothing could tempt me to part with that _scarabaeus_. Do you
+know that Jupiter is quite right about it!"
+
+"In what way?" I asked, with a sad foreboding at heart.
+
+"In supposing it to be a bug of _real gold_." He said this with an air
+of profound seriousness, and I felt inexpressibly shocked.
+
+"This bug is to make my fortune," he continued, with a triumphant
+smile, and reinstate me in my family possessions. Is it any wonder,
+then, that I prize it? Since Fortune has thought fit to bestow it upon
+me, I have only to use it properly and I shall arrive at the gold of
+which it is the index. Jupiter, bring me that _scarabaeus_!"
+
+"What! de bug, massa? I'd rudder not go fer trubble dat bug—you mus'
+git him for your own self." Hereupon Legrand arose, with a grave and
+stately air, and brought me the beetle from a glass case in which it
+was enclosed. It was a beautiful _scarabaeus_, and, at that time,
+unknown to naturalists—of course a great prize in a scientific point of
+view. There were two round black spots near one extremity of the back,
+and a long one near the other. The scales were exceedingly hard and
+glossy, with all the appearance of burnished gold. The weight of the
+insect was very remarkable, and, taking all things into consideration,
+I could hardly blame Jupiter for his opinion respecting it; but what to
+make of Legrand's agreement with that opinion, I could not, for the
+life of me, tell.
+
+"I sent for you," said he, in a grandiloquent tone when I had completed
+my examination of the beetle, "I sent for you, that I might have your
+counsel and assistance in furthering the views of Fate and of the bug"—
+
+"My dear Legrand," I cried, interrupting him, "you are certainly
+unwell, and had better use some little precautions. You shall go to
+bed, and I will remain with you a few days, until you get over this.
+You are feverish and"—
+
+"Feel my pulse," said he.
+
+I felt it, and, to say the truth, found not the slightest indication of
+fever.
+
+"But you may be ill and yet have no fever. Allow me this once to
+prescribe for you. In the first place, go to bed. In the next"—
+
+"You are mistaken," he interposed; "I am as well as I can expect to be
+under the excitement which I suffer. If you really wish me well, you
+will relieve this excitement."
+
+"And how is this to be done?"
+
+"Very easily, Jupiter and myself are going upon an expedition into the
+hills, upon the mainland, and, in this expedition, we shall need the
+aid of some person in whom we can confide. You are the only one we can
+trust. Whether we succeed or fail, the excitement which you now
+perceive in me will be equally allayed."
+
+"I am anxious to oblige you in any way," I replied; "but do you mean to
+say that this infernal beetle has any connection with your expedition
+into the hills?"
+
+"It has."
+
+"Then, Legrand, I can become a party to no such absurd proceeding."
+
+"I am sorry—very sorry—for we shall have to try it by ourselves."
+
+"Try it by yourselves! The man is surely mad!—but stay!—how long do you
+propose to be absent?"
+
+"Probably all night. We shall start immediately, and be back, at all
+events, by sunrise."
+
+"And will you promise me upon your honor, that when this freak of yours
+is over, and the bug business (good God!) settled to your satisfaction,
+you will then return home and follow my advice implicitly, as that of
+your physician?"
+
+"Yes; I promise; and now let us be off, for we have no time to lose."
+
+With a heavy heart I accompanied my friend. We started about four
+o'clock—Legrand, Jupiter, the dog, and myself. Jupiter had with him the
+scythe and spades, the whole of which he insisted upon carrying, more
+through fear, it seemed to me, of trusting either of the implements
+within reach of his master, than from any excess of industry or
+complaisance. His demeanor was dogged in the extreme, and "dat d——d
+bug" were the sole words which escaped his lips during the journey. For
+my own part, I had charge of a couple of dark lanterns, while Legrand
+contented himself with the _scarabaeus_, which he carried attached to
+the end of a bit of whipcord, twirling it to and fro, with the air of a
+conjurer, as he went. When I observed this last plain evidence of my
+friend's aberration of mind, I could scarcely refrain from tears. I
+thought it best, however, to humor his fancy, at least for the present,
+or until I could adopt some more energetic measures with a chance of
+success. In the meantime I endeavored, but all in vain, to sound him in
+regard to the object of the expedition. Having succeeded in inducing me
+to accompany him, he seemed unwilling to hold conversation upon any
+topic of minor importance, and to all my questions vouchsafed no other
+reply than "We shall see!"
+
+We crossed the creek at the head of the island by means of a skiff,
+and, ascending the high grounds on the shore of the mainland, proceeded
+in a northwesterly direction, through a tract of country excessively
+wild and desolate, where no trace of a human footstep was to be seen.
+Legrand led the way with decision, pausing only for an instant, here
+and there, to consult what appeared is to be certain landmarks of his
+own contrivance upon a former occasion.
+
+In this manner we journeyed for about two hours, and the sun was just
+setting when we entered a region infinitely more dreary than any yet
+seen. It was a species of table-land, near the summit of an almost
+inaccessible hill, densely wooded from base to pinnacle, and
+interspersed with huge crags that appeared to lie loosely upon the
+soil, and in many cases were prevented from precipitating themselves
+into the valleys below, merely by the support of the trees against
+which they reclined. Deep ravines, in various directions, gave an air
+of still sterner solemnity to the scene.
+
+The natural platform to which we had clambered was thickly overgrown
+with brambles, through which we soon discovered that it would have been
+impossible to force our way but for the scythe; and Jupiter, by
+direction of his master, proceeded to clear for us a path to the foot
+of an enormously tall tulip-tree, which stood, with some eight or ten
+oaks, upon the level, and far surpassed them all, and all other trees
+which I had ever seen, in the beauty of its foliage and form, in the
+wide spread of its branches, and in the general majesty of its
+appearance. When we reached this tree, Legrand turned to Jupiter, and
+asked him if he thought he could climb it. The old man seemed a little
+staggered by the question, and for some moments made no reply. At
+length he approached the huge trunk, walked slowly around it, and
+examined it with minute attention. When he had completed his scrutiny,
+he merely said:
+
+"Yes, massa, Jup climb any tree he ebber see in he life."
+
+"Then up with you as soon as possible, for it will soon be too dark to
+see what we are about."
+
+"How far mus' go up, massa?" inquired Jupiter.
+
+"Get up the main trunk first, and then I will tell you which way to
+go—and here—stop! take this beetle with you."
+
+"De bug, Massa Will! de goole-bug!" cried the negro, drawing back in
+dismay, "what for mus' tote de bug way up de tree?—d——n if I do!"
+
+"If you are afraid, Jup, a great big negro like you, to take hold of a
+harmless little dead beetle, why, you can carry it up by this string;
+but if you do not take it up with you in some way, I shall be under the
+necessity of breaking your head with this shovel."
+
+"'What de matter, now, massa?" said Jup, evidently shamed into
+compliance; "always want fur to raise fuss wid old nigger. Was only
+funnin' anyhow. _Me_ feered de bug! what I keer for de bug?" Here he
+took cautiously hold of the extreme end of the string, and, maintaining
+the insect as far from his person as circumstances would permit,
+prepared to ascend the tree.
+
+In youth the tulip-tree, or _Liriodendron tulipifera_, the most
+magnificent of American foresters, has a trunk peculiarly smooth, and
+often rises to a great height without lateral branches; but, in its
+riper age, the bark becomes gnarled and uneven, while many short limbs
+make their appearance on the stem. Thus the difficulty of ascension, in
+the present case, lay more in semblance than in reality. Embracing the
+huge cylinder as closely as possible with his arms and knees, seizing
+with his hands some projections, and resting his naked toes upon
+others, Jupiter, after one or two narrow escapes from falling, at
+length wriggled himself into the first great fork, and seemed to
+consider the whole business as virtually accomplished. The _risk_ of
+the achievement was, in fact, now over, although the climber was some
+sixty or seventy feet from the ground.
+
+"Which way mus' go now, Massa Will?" he asked.
+
+"Keep up the largest branch, the one on this side," said Legrand. The
+negro obeyed him promptly, and apparently with but little trouble;
+ascending higher and higher, until no glimpse of his squat figure could
+be obtained through the dense foliage which enveloped it. Presently his
+voice was heard in a sort of halloo.
+
+"How much fudder I's got for go?"
+
+"How high up are you?" asked Legrand.
+
+"Ebber so fur," replied the negro; "can see de sky fru de top ob de
+tree."
+
+"Never mind the sky, but attend to what I say. Look down the trunk and
+count the limbs below you on this side. How many limbs have you
+passed?"
+
+"One, two, three, four, fibe—I done pass fibe big limb, massa, 'pon dis
+side."
+
+"Then go one limb higher."
+
+In a few minutes the voice was heard again, announcing that the seventh
+limb was attained.
+
+"Now, Jup," cried Legrand, evidently much excited, "I want you to work
+your way out upon that limb as far as you can. If you see anything
+strange, let me know."
+
+By this time what little doubt I might have entertained of my poor
+friend's insanity was put finally at rest. I had no alternative but to
+conclude him stricken with lunacy, and I became seriously anxious about
+getting him home. While I was pondering upon what was best to be done,
+Jupiter's voice was again heard.
+
+"Mos' feerd for to ventur' 'pon dis limb berry far—'tis dead limb putty
+much all de way."
+
+"Did you say it was a _dead_ limb, Jupiter?" cried Legrand, in a
+quavering voice.
+
+"Yes, massa, him dead as de door-nail—done up for sartain—done departed
+dis here life."
+
+"What in the name of heaven shall I do?" asked Legrand, seemingly in
+the greatest distress.
+
+"Do!" said I, glad of an opportunity to interpose a word, "why, come
+home and go to bed. Come now!—that's a fine fellow. It's getting late,
+and, besides, you remember your promise."
+
+"Jupiter," cried he, without heeding me in the least, "do you hear me?"
+
+"Yes, Massa Will, hear you ebber so plain,"
+
+"Try the wood well, then, with your knife, and see if you think it
+_very_ rotten."
+
+"Him rotten, massa, sure nuff," replied the negro in a few moments,
+"but not so berry rotten as mought be, Mought ventur' out leetle way
+'pon de limb by myself, dat's true."
+
+"By yourself! What do you mean?"
+
+"Why, I mean de bug. 'Tis _berry_ hebby bug. S'pose I drop him down
+fust, and den de limb won't break wid just de weight of one nigger."
+
+"You infernal scoundrel!" cried Legrand, apparently much relieved,
+"what do you mean by telling me such nonsense as that? As sure as you
+drop that beetle, I'll break your neck. Look here, Jupiter, do you hear
+me?"
+
+"Yes, massa, needn' hollo at poor nigger dat style."
+
+"Well!—now listen! if you will venture out on the limb as far as you
+think safe, and not let go the beetle, I'll make you a present of a
+silver dollar as soon as you get down."
+
+"I'm gwine, Massa Will—deed I is," replied the negro very
+promptly—"mos' out to de eend now."
+
+"_Out to the end_!" here fairly screamed Legrand; "do you say you are
+out to the end of that limb?"
+
+"Soon be to de eend, massa—o-o-o-o-oh! Lor-gol-a-marcy! what _is_ dis
+here 'pon de tree?"
+
+"Well," cried Legrand, highly delighted, "what is it?"
+
+"Why, 'taint noffin' but a skull—somebody bin lef' him head up de tree,
+and de crows done gobble ebery bit ob de meat off."
+
+"A skull, you say! Very well; how is it fastened to the limb? What
+holds it on?"
+
+"Shure 'nuff, massa; mus' look. Why, dis berry curous sarcumstance,
+'pon my word—dare's a great big nail in do skull, what fastens ob it on
+to de tree."
+
+"Well now, Jupiter, do exactly as I tell you—do you hear?"
+
+"Yes, massa."
+
+"Pay attention, then!—find the left eye of the skull."
+
+"Hum! hoo! dat's good! why, dare ain't no eye lef' at all."
+
+"Curse your stupidity! do you know your right hand from your left?"
+
+"Yes, I nose dat—nose all 'bout dat—'tis my lef' hand what I chops de
+wood wid."
+
+"To be sure! you are left-handed; and your left eye is on the same side
+as your left hand. Now, I suppose you can find the left eye of the
+skull, or the place where the left eye has been. Have you found it?"
+
+Here was a long pause. At length the negro asked:
+
+"Is de lef' eye ob de skull 'pon de same side as de lef' hand ob de
+skull, too?—'cause the skull ain't got not a bit ob a hand at
+all—nebber mind! I got de lef' eye now—here de lef' eye! what mus' do
+wid it?"
+
+"Let the beetle drop through it, as far as the string will reach, but
+be careful and not let go your hold of the string."
+
+"All dat done, Massa Will; mighty easy ting for to put de bug fru de
+hole; look out for him dar below!"
+
+During this colloquy no portion of Jupiter's person could be seen; but
+the beetle, which he had suffered to descend, was now visible at the
+end of the string, and glistened, like a globe of burnished gold, in
+the last rays of the setting sun, some of which still faintly illumined
+the eminence upon which we stood. The _scarabaeus_ hung quite clear of
+any branches, and if allowed to fall, would have fallen at our feet.
+Legrand immediately took the scythe, and cleared with it a circular
+space, three or four yards in diameter, just beneath the insect, and,
+having accomplished this, ordered Jupiter to let go the string and come
+down from the tree.
+
+Driving a peg, with great nicety, into the ground, at the precise spot
+where the beetle fell, my friend now produced from his pocket a
+tape-measure. Fastening one end of this at that point of the trunk of
+the tree which was nearest the peg, he unrolled it till it reached the
+peg, and thence farther unrolled it, in the direction already
+established by the two points of the tree and the peg, for the distance
+of fifty feet—Jupiter clearing away the brambles with the scythe. At
+the spot thus attained a second peg was driven, and about this, as a
+centre, a rude circle, about four feet in diameter, described. Taking
+now a spade himself, and giving one to Jupiter and one to me, Legrand
+begged us to set about digging as quickly as possible.
+
+To speak the truth, I had no especial relish for such amusement at any
+time, and, at that particular moment, would most willingly have
+declined it; for the night was coming on, and I felt much fatigued with
+the exercise already taken; but I saw no mode of escape, and was
+fearful of disturbing my poor friend's equanimity by a refusal. Could I
+have depended, indeed, upon Jupiter's aid, I would have had no
+hesitation in attempting to get the lunatic home by force; but I was
+too well assured of the old negro's disposition, to hope that he would
+assist me, under any circumstances, in a personal contest with his
+master. I made no doubt that the latter had been infected with some of
+the innumerable Southern superstitions about money buried, and that his
+fantasy had received confirmation by the finding of the _scarabaeus_,
+or, perhaps, by Jupiter's obstinacy in maintaining it to be "a bug of
+real gold." A mind disposed to lunacy would readily be led away by such
+suggestions—especially if chiming in with favorite preconceived
+ideas—and then I called to mind the poor fellow's speech about the
+beetle's being "the index of his fortune." Upon the whole, I was sadly
+vexed and puzzled, but, at length, I concluded to make a virtue of
+necessity—to dig with a good will, and thus the sooner to convince the
+visionary, by ocular demonstration, of the fallacy of the opinions he
+entertained.
+
+The lanterns having been lit, we all fell to work with a zeal worthy a
+more rational cause; and, as the glare fell upon our persons and
+implements, I could not help thinking how picturesque a group we
+composed, and how strange and suspicious our labors must have appeared
+to any interloper who, by chance, might have stumbled upon our
+whereabouts.
+
+We dug very steadily for two hours. Little was said; and our chief
+embarrassment lay in the yelping of the dog, who took exceeding
+interest in our proceedings. He at length became so obstreperous, that
+we grew fearful of his giving the alarm to some stragglers in the
+vicinity—-or, rather, this was the apprehension of Legrand; for myself,
+I should have rejoiced at any interruption which might have enabled me
+to get the wanderer home. The noise was, at length, very effectually
+silenced by Jupiter, who, getting out of the hole with a dogged air of
+deliberation, tied the brute's mouth up with one of his suspenders, and
+then returned, with a grave chuckle, to his task.
+
+When the time mentioned had expired, we had reached a depth of five
+feet, and yet no signs of any treasure became manifest. A general pause
+ensued, and I began to hope that the farce was at an end. Legrand,
+however, although evidently much disconcerted, wiped his brow
+thoughtfully and recommenced. We had excavated the entire circle of
+four feet diameter, and now we slightly enlarged the limit, and went to
+the farther depth of two feet. Still nothing appeared. The gold seeker,
+whom I sincerely pitied, at length clambered from the pit, with the
+bitterest disappointment imprinted upon every feature, and proceeded,
+slowly and reluctantly, to put on his coat, which he had thrown off at
+the beginning of his labor. In the meantime I made no remark. Jupiter,
+at a signal from his master, began to gather up his tools. This done,
+and the dog having been unmuzzled, we turned in profound silence
+towards home.
+
+We had taken, perhaps, a dozen steps in this direction, when, with a
+loud oath, Legrand strode up to Jupiter and seized him by the collar.
+The astonished negro opened his eyes and mouth to the fullest extent,
+let fall the spades, and fell upon his knees.
+
+"You scoundrel," said Legrand, hissing out the syllables from between
+his clenched teeth, "you infernal black villain! speak, I tell you!
+answer me this instant, without prevarication! which—which is your left
+eye?"
+
+"Oh, my golly, Massa Will! ain't dis here my lef' eye for sartain?"
+roared the terrified Jupiter, placing his hand upon his _right_ organ
+of vision, and holding it there with a desperate pertinacity, as if in
+immediate dread of his master's attempt at a gouge.
+
+"I thought so! I knew it! hurrah!" vociferated Legrand, letting the
+negro go, and executing a series of curvets and caracoles[13], much to
+the astonishment of his valet, who, arising from his knees, looked
+mutely from his master to myself, and then from myself to his master.
+
+"Come! we must go back," said the latter; "the game's not up yet;" and
+he again led the way to the tulip-tree.
+
+"Jupiter," said he, when he reached its foot, "come here! was the skull
+nailed to the limb with the face outwards, or with the face to the
+limb?"
+
+"De face was out, massa, so dat de crows could get at de eyes good,
+widout any trouble."
+
+"Well, then, was it this eye or that through which you dropped the
+beetle?"—here Legrand touched each of Jupiter's eyes.
+
+"'Twas dis eye, massa—de lef' eye—jis as you tell me," and here it was
+his right eye that the negro indicated.
+
+"That will do—we must try it again."
+
+Here my friend, about whose madness I now saw or fancied that I saw,
+certain indications of method, removed the peg which marked the spot
+where the beetle fell, to a spot about three inches to the westward of
+its former position, Taking now the tape-measure from the nearest point
+of the trunk to the peg, as before, and continuing the extension in a
+straight line to the distance of fifty feet, a spot was indicated,
+removed by several yards from the point at which we had been digging.
+
+Around the new position a circle, somewhat larger than in the former
+instance, was now described, and we again set to work with the spades,
+I was dreadfully weary, but scarcely understanding what had occasioned
+the change in my thoughts, I felt no longer any great aversion from the
+labor imposed, I had become most unaccountably interested—nay, even
+excited. Perhaps there was something, amid all the extravagant demeanor
+of Legrand—some air of forethought, or of deliberation, which impressed
+me. I dug eagerly, and now and then caught myself actually looking,
+with something that very much resembled expectation, for the fancied
+treasure, the vision of which had demented my unfortunate companion. At
+a period when such vagaries of thought most fully possessed me, and
+when we had been at work perhaps an hour and a half, we were again
+interrupted by the violent howlings of the dog. His uneasiness in the
+first instance had been, evidently, but the result of playfulness or
+caprice, but he now assumed a bitter and serious tone. Upon Jupiter's
+again attempting to muzzle him, he made furious resistance, and,
+leaping into the hole, tore up the mould frantically with his claws. In
+a few seconds he had uncovered a mass of human bones, forming two
+complete skeletons, intermingled with several buttons of metal, and
+what appeared to be the dust of decayed woolen. One or two strokes of a
+spade upturned the blade of a large Spanish knife, and, as we dug
+farther, three or four pieces of gold and silver coin came to light.
+
+At sight of these the joy of Jupiter could scarcely be restrained, but
+the countenance of his master wore an air of extreme disappointment. He
+urged us, however, to continue our exertions, and the words were hardly
+uttered when I stumbled and fell forward, having caught the toe of my
+boot in a large ring of iron that lay half buried in the loose earth.
+
+We now worked in earnest, and never did I pass ten minutes of more
+intense excitement. During this interval we had fairly unearthed an
+oblong chest of wood which, from its perfect preservation and wonderful
+hardness, had plainly been subjected to some mineralizing
+process—perhaps that of the bichloride of mercury. This box was three
+feet and a half long, three feet broad, and two and a half feet deep.
+It was firmly secured by bands of wrought iron, riveted, and forming a
+kind of trellis-work over the whole. On each side of the chest, near
+the top, were three rings of iron—six in all—by means of which a firm
+hold could be obtained by six persons. Our utmost united endeavors
+served only to disturb the coffer very slightly in its bed. We at once
+saw the impossibility of removing so great a weight. Luckily, the sole
+fastenings of the lid consisted of two sliding bolts. These we drew
+back—trembling and panting with anxiety. In an instant, a treasure of
+incalculable value lay gleaming before us. As the rays of the lanterns
+fell within the pit, there flashed upwards a glow and a glare, from a
+confused heap of gold and of jewels, that absolutely dazzled our eyes.
+
+I shall not pretend to describe the feelings with which I gazed.
+Amazement was, of course, predominant. Legrand appeared exhausted with
+excitement, and spoke very few words. Jupiter's countenance wore, for
+some minutes, as deadly a pallor as it is possible, in the nature of
+things, for any negro's visage to assume. He seemed
+stupefied—-thunder-stricken. Presently he fell upon his knees in the
+pit, and, burying his naked arms up to the elbows in gold, let them
+there remain, as if enjoying the luxury of a bath. At length, with a
+deep sigh, he exclaimed, as if in a soliloquy:
+
+"And dis all cum ob de goole-bug! de putty goole-bug! de poor little
+goole-bug, what I 'boosed in dat sabage kind ob style! Ain't you
+'shamed ofa yourself, nigger?—answer me dat!"
+
+It became necessary, at last, that I should arouse both master and
+valet to the expediency of removing the treasure. It was growing late,
+and it behooved us to make exertion, that we might get everything
+housed before daylight. It was difficult to say what should be done,
+and much time was spent in deliberation—so confused were the ideas of
+all. We, finally, lightened the box by removing two-thirds of its
+contents, when we were enabled, with some trouble, to raise it from the
+hole. The articles taken out were deposited among the brambles, and the
+dog left to guard them, with strict orders from Jupiter neither, upon
+any pretence, to stir from the spot, nor to open his mouth until our
+return. We then hurriedly made for home with the chest, reaching the
+hut in safety, but after excessive toil, at one o'clock in the morning.
+Worn out as we were, it was not in human nature to do more just now. We
+rested until two, and had supper, starting for the hills immediately
+afterwards, armed with three stout sacks, which, by good luck, were
+upon the premises. A little before four we arrived at the pit, divided
+the remainder of the booty as equally as might be among us, and,
+leaving the holes unfilled, again set out for the hut, at which, for
+the second time, we deposited our golden burdens, just as the first
+streaks of dawn gleamed from over the treetops in the east.
+
+We were now thoroughly broken down; but the intense excitement of the
+time denied us repose. After an unquiet slumber of some three or four
+hours' duration, we arose, as if by preconcert, to make examination of
+our treasure.
+
+The chest had been full to the brim, and we spent the whole day, and
+the greater part of the next night, in a scrutiny of its contents.
+There had been nothing like order or arrangement. Everything had been
+heaped in promiscuously.
+
+Having assorted all with care, we found ourselves possessed of even
+vaster wealth than we had at first supposed. In coin there was rather
+more than four hundred and fifty thousand dollars—estimating the value
+of the pieces, as accurately as we could, by the tables of the period.
+There was not a particle of silver. All was gold of antique date and of
+great variety—French, Spanish, and German money, with a few English
+guineas, and some counters[14] of which we had never seen specimens
+before. There were several very large and heavy coins, so worn that we
+could make nothing of their inscriptions. There was no American money.
+The value of the jewels we found more difficulty in estimating. There
+were diamonds—some of them exceedingly large and fine—a hundred and ten
+in all, and not one of them small; eighteen rubies of remarkable
+brilliancy; three hundred and ten emeralds, all very beautiful; and
+twenty-one sapphires, with an opal. These stones had all been broken
+from their settings and thrown loose in the chest. The settings
+themselves, which we picked out from among the other gold, appeared to
+have been beaten up with hammers, as if to prevent indentification.
+Besides all this, there was a vast quantity of solid gold
+ornaments—nearly two hundred massive finger and ear rings; rich
+chains—thirty of these, if I remember; eighty-three very large and
+heavy crucifixes; five gold censers of great value; a prodigious golden
+punch-bowl, ornamented with richly chased vine-leaves and
+Bacchanalian[15] figures; with two sword handles exquisitely embossed,
+and many other smaller articles which I cannot recollect. The weight of
+these valuables exceeded three hundred and fifty pounds avoirdupois;
+and in this estimate I have not included one hundred and ninety-seven
+superb gold watches, three of the number being worth each five hundred
+dollars, if one. Many of them were very old, and as time-keepers
+valueless, the works having suffered, more or less, from corrosion; but
+all were richly jewelled and in cases of great worth. We estimated the
+entire contents of the chest, that night, at a million and a half of
+dollars; and, upon the subsequent disposal of the trinkets and jewels
+(a few being retained for our own use), it was found we had greatly
+undervalued the treasure.
+
+When, at length, we had concluded our examination, and the intense
+excitement of the time had in some measure subsided, Legrand, who saw
+that I was dying with impatience for a solution of this most
+extraordinary riddle, entered into a full detail of all the
+circumstances connected with it.
+
+"You remember," said he, "the night when I handed you the rough sketch
+I had made of the _scarabaeus_. You recollect, also, that I became
+quite vexed at you for insisting that my drawing resembled a
+death's-head. When you first made this assertion I thought you were
+jesting; but afterwards I called to mind the peculiar spots on the back
+of the insect, and admitted to myself that your remark had some, little
+foundation in fact. Still, the sneer at my graphic powers irritated
+me—for I am considered a good artist—and, therefore, when you handed me
+the scrap of parchment, I was about to crumple it up and throw it
+angrily into the fire."
+
+"The scrap of paper, you mean," said I.
+
+"No; it had much of the appearance of paper, and at first I supposed it
+to be such, but when I came to draw upon it, I discovered it at once to
+be a piece of very thin parchment. It was quite dirty, you remember.
+Well, as I was in the very act of crumpling it up, my glance fell upon
+the sketch at which you had been looking, and you may imagine my
+astonishment when I perceived, in fact, the figure of a death's-head
+just where, it seemed to me, I had made the drawing of the beetle. For
+a moment I was too much amazed to think with accuracy. I knew that my
+design was very different in detail from this, although there was a
+certain similarity in general outline. Presently I took a candle, and
+seating myself at the other end of the room, proceeded to scrutinize
+the parchment more closely. Upon turning it over, I saw my own sketch
+upon, the reverse, just as I had made it. My first idea, now, was mere
+surprise at the really remarkable similarity of outline—at the singular
+coincidence involved in the fact that, unknown to me, there should have
+been a skull upon the other side of the parchment, immediately beneath
+my figure of the _scarabaeus_, and that this skull, not only in
+outline, but in size, should so closely resemble my drawing. I say the
+singularity of this coincidence absolutely stupefied me for a time.
+This is the usual effect of such coincidences. The mind struggles to
+establish a connection—a sequence of cause and effect—and being unable
+to do so, suffers a species of temporary paralysis. But when I
+recovered from this stupor, there dawned upon me gradually a conviction
+which startled me even far more than the coincidence. I began
+distinctly, positively, to remember that there had been _no_ drawing
+upon the parchment when I made my sketch of the _scarabaeus_. I became
+perfectly certain of this; for I recollected turning up first one side
+and then the other, in search of the cleanest spot. Had the skull been
+then there, of course, I could not have failed to notice it. Here was
+indeed a mystery which I felt it impossible to explain; but, even at
+that early moment, there seemed to glimmer, faintly, within the most
+remote and secret chambers of my intellect, a glowworm-like conception
+of that truth which last night's adventure brought to so magnificent a
+demonstration. I arose at once, and putting the parchment securely
+away, dismissed all further reflection until I should be alone.
+
+"When you had gone, and when Jupiter was fast asleep, I betook myself
+to a more methodical investigation of the affair. In the first place I
+considered the manner in which the parchment had come into my
+possession. The spot where we discovered the _scarabaeus_ was on the
+coast of the mainland, about a mile eastward of the island, and but a
+short distance above high water mark. Upon my taking hold of it, it
+gave me a sharp bite, which caused me to let it drop. Jupiter, with his
+accustomed caution, before seizing the insect, which had flown towards
+him, looked about him for a leaf, or something of that nature, by which
+to take hold of it. It was at this moment that his eyes, and mine also,
+fell upon the scrap of parchment, which I then supposed to be paper. It
+was lying half buried in the sand, a corner sticking up. Near the spot
+where we found it, I observed the remnants of the hull of what appeared
+to have been a ship's long-boat. The wreck seemed to have been there
+for a very great while; for the resemblance to boat timbers could
+scarcely be traced.
+
+"Well, Jupiter picked up the parchment, wrapped the beetle in it, and
+gave it to me. Soon afterwards we turned to go home, and on the way met
+Lieutenant G——. I showed him the insect, and he begged me to let him
+take it to the fort. Upon my consenting, he thrust it forthwith into
+his waistcoat pocket, without the parchment in which it had been
+wrapped, and which I had continued to hold in my hand during his
+inspection. Perhaps he dreaded my changing my mind, and thought it best
+to make sure of the prize at once—you know how enthusiastic he is on
+all subjects connected with Natural History. At the same time, without
+being conscious of it, I must have deposited the parchment in my own
+pocket.
+
+"You remember that when I went to the table, for the purpose of making
+a sketch of the beetle, I found no paper where it was usually kept, I
+looked in the drawer, and found none there. I searched my pockets,
+hoping to find an old letter, when my hand fell upon the parchment. I
+thus detail the precise mode in which it came into my possession; for
+the circumstances impressed me with peculiar force.
+
+"No doubt you will think me fanciful, but I had already established a
+kind of _connection_. I had put together two links of a great chain.
+There was a boat lying upon a seacoast, and not far from the boat was a
+parchment—_not a paper_—with a skull depicted upon it. You will, of
+course, ask, 'Where is the connection?' I reply that the skull, or
+death's-head, is the well-known emblem of the pirate. The flag of the
+death's-head is hoisted in all engagements.
+
+"I have said that the scrap was parchment, and not paper. Parchment is
+durable—almost imperishable. Matters of little moment are rarely
+consigned to parchment, since, for the mere ordinary purposes of
+drawing or writing, it is not nearly so well adapted as paper. This
+reflection suggested some meaning—some relevancy—in the death's-head. I
+did not fail to observe, also, the _form_ of the parchment. Although
+one of its corners had been, by some accident, destroyed, it could be
+seen that the original form was oblong. It was just such a slip,
+indeed, as might have been chosen for a memorandum—for a record of
+something to be long remembered and carefully preserved."
+
+"But," I interposed, "you say that the skull was _not_ upon the
+parchment when you made the drawing of the beetle. How, then, do you
+trace any connection between the boat and the skull—since this latter,
+according to your own admission, must have been designed (God only
+knows how or by whom) at some period subsequent to your sketching the
+_scarabaeus_?"
+
+"Ah, hereupon turns the whole mystery; although the secret, at this
+point, I had comparatively little difficulty in solving. My steps were
+sure, and could afford but a single result. I reasoned, for example,
+thus: When I drew the _scarabaeus_, there was no skull apparent upon
+the parchment. When I had completed the drawing I gave it to you, and
+observed you narrowly until you returned it, _You_, therefore, did not
+design the skull, and no one else was present to do it. Then it was not
+done by human agency. And nevertheless it was done.
+
+"At this stage of my reflections I endeavored to remember, and _did_
+remember, with entire distinctness, every incident which occurred about
+the period in question. The weather was chilly (oh, rare and happy
+accident!), and a fire was blazing upon the hearth. I was heated with
+exercise, and sat near the table. You, however, had drawn a chair close
+to the chimney. Just as I placed the parchment in your hand, and as you
+were in the act of inspecting it, Wolf, the Newfoundland, entered, and
+leaped upon your shoulders. With, your left hand you caressed him and
+kept him off, while your right, holding the parchment, was permitted to
+fall listlessly between your knees, and in close proximity to the fire.
+At one moment I thought the blaze had caught it, and was about to
+caution you, but before I could speak you had withdrawn it, and were
+engaged in its examination. When I considered all these particulars, I
+doubted not for a moment that _heat_ had been the agent in bringing to
+light, upon the parchment, the skull which I saw designed upon it. You
+are well aware that chemical preparations exist, and have existed time
+out of mind, by means of which it is possible to write upon either
+paper or vellum, so that the characters shall become visible only when
+subjected to the action of fire. Zaffre[16], digested in _aqua
+regia_[17], and diluted with four times its weight of water, is
+sometimes employed; a green tint results. The regulus[18] of cobalt,
+dissolved in spirit of nitre, gives a red. These colors disappear at
+longer or shorter intervals after the material written upon cools, but
+again become apparent upon the re-application of heat.
+
+"I now scrutinized the death's-head with care. Its outer edges—the
+edges of the drawing nearest the edge of the vellum—were far more
+_distinct_ than the others. It was clear that the action of the caloric
+had been imperfect or unequal. I immediately kindled a fire, and
+subjected every portion of the parchment to a glowing heat. At first,
+the only effect was the strengthening of the faint lines in the skull;
+but, upon persevering in the experiment, there became visible, at the
+corner of the slip diagonally opposite to the spot in which the
+death's-head was delineated, the figure of what I at first supposed to
+be a goat. A closer scrutiny, however, satisfied me that it was
+intended for a kid."
+
+"Ha! ha!" said I; "to be sure I have no right to laugh at you—a million
+and a half of money is too serious a matter for mirth—but you are not
+about to establish a third link in your chain: you will not find any
+especial connection between your pirates and a goat; pirates, you know,
+have nothing to do with goats; they appertain to the farming
+interests."
+
+"But I have said that the figure was _not_ that of a goat."
+
+"Well, a kid, then—pretty much the same thing."
+
+"Pretty much, but not altogether," said Legrand.
+
+"You may have heard of one _Captain_ Kidd[19]. I at once looked on the
+figure of the animal as a kind of punning or hieroglyphical signature.
+I say signature because its position upon the vellum suggested this
+idea. The death's-head at the corner diagonally opposite had, in the
+same manner, the air of a stamp, or seal. But I was sorely put out by
+the absence of all else—of the body to my imagined instrument—of the
+text for my context."
+
+"I presume you expected to find a letter between the stamp and the
+signature."
+
+"Something of the kind. The fact is, I felt irresistibly impressed with
+a presentiment of some vast good fortune impending. I can scarcely say
+why. Perhaps, after all, it was rather a desire than an actual belief;
+but do you know that Jupiter's silly words, about the bug being of
+solid gold, had a remarkable effect upon my fancy? And then the series
+of accidents and coincidences—these were so _very_ extraordinary. Do
+you observe how mere an accident it was that these events should have
+occurred upon the _sole_ day of all the year in which it has been, or
+may be, sufficiently cool for fire, and that without the fire, or
+without the intervention of the dog at the precise moment in which he
+appeared, I should, never have become aware of the death's-head, and so
+never the possessor of the treasure?"
+
+"But proceed—I am all impatience."
+
+"Well; you have heard, of course, the many stories current—the thousand
+vague rumors afloat about money buried, somewhere, upon the Atlantic
+coast, by Kidd and his associates. These rumors must have had some
+foundation in fact. And that the rumors have existed so long and so
+continuously could have resulted, it appeared to me, only from the
+circumstance of the buried treasure still _remaining_ entombed. Had
+Kidd concealed his plunder for a time, and afterwards reclaimed it, the
+rumors would scarcely have reached us in their present unvarying form.
+You will observe that the stories told are all about money-seekers, not
+about money-finders. Had the pirate recovered his money, there the
+affair would have dropped. It seemed to me that some accident—say the
+loss of a memorandum indicating its locality—had deprived him of the
+means of recovering it, and that this accident had become known to his
+followers who otherwise might never have heard that treasure had been
+concealed at all, and who, busying themselves in vain, because unguided
+attempts to regain it had given first birth, and then universal
+currency, to the reports which are now so common. Have you ever heard
+of any important treasure being unearthed along the coast?"
+
+"Never."
+
+"But that Kidd's accumulations were immense is well known. I took it
+for granted, therefore, that the earth still held them; and you will
+scarcely be surprised when I tell you that I felt a hope, nearly
+amounting to certainty, that the parchment so strangely found involved
+a lost record of the place of deposit."
+
+"But how did you proceed?"
+
+"I held the vellum again to the fire, after increasing the heat; but
+nothing appeared. I now thought it possible that the coating of dirt
+might have something to do with the failure; so I carefully rinsed the
+parchment by pouring warm water over it, and, having done this, I
+placed it in a tin pan, with the skull downwards, and put the pan upon
+a furnace of lighted charcoal. In a few minutes, the pan having become
+thoroughly heated, I removed the slip, and to my inexpressible joy,
+found it spotted, in several places, with what appeared to be figures
+arranged in lines. Again I placed it in the pan, and suffered it to
+remain another minute. Upon taking it off, the whole was just as you
+see it now."
+
+Here Legrand, having reheated the parchment, submitted it to my
+inspection, The following characters were rudely traced, in a red tint
+between the death's-head and the goat:
+
+     "53‡‡†305))6*;4826)4‡.);806*;48†8
+     ¶60))85;1‡(;:‡*8†83(88)5*†;46(;88*96
+     ?;8)*‡(;485);5*†2:*‡(;4956*2(5*—4)8
+     ¶8*;4069285);)6†8)4‡‡;1(‡9;48081;8:8‡
+     1;48†85;4)485†528806*81(‡9;48;(88;4 (‡?34;48)4‡;161;:188;‡?;"
+
+"But," said I, returning him the slip, "I am as much in the dark as
+ever. Were all the jewels of Golconda[20] awaiting me on my solution of
+this enigma, I am quite sure that I should be unable to earn them."
+
+"And yet," said Legrand, "the solution is by no means so difficult as
+you might be led to imagine from the first hasty inspection of the
+characters. These characters, as any one might readily guess, form a
+cipher, that is to say, they convey a meaning; but then, from what is
+known of Kidd, I could not suppose him capable of constructing any of
+the more abstruse cryptographs[21]. I made up my mind, at once, that
+this was of a simple species—such, however, as would appear, to the
+crude intellect of the sailor, absolutely insoluble without the key."
+
+"And you really solved it?"
+
+"Readily; I have solved others of an abstruseness ten thousand times
+greater. Circumstances, and a certain bias of mind, have led me to take
+interest in such riddles, and it may well be doubted whether human
+ingenuity can construct an enigma of the kind which human ingenuity may
+not, by proper application, resolve. In fact, having once established
+connected and legible characters, I scarcely gave a thought to the mere
+difficulty of developing their import.
+
+"In the present case—indeed, in all cases of secret writing—the first
+question regards the _language_ of the cipher; for the principles of
+solution, so far especially as the more simple ciphers are concerned,
+depend upon, and are varied by, the genius of the particular idiom. In
+general, there is no alternative but experiment (directed by
+probabilities) of every tongue known to him who attempts the solution,
+until the true one be attained. But, with the cipher now before us, all
+difficulty was removed by the signature. The pun upon the word 'Kidd'
+is appreciable in no other language than the English. But for this
+consideration I should have begun my attempts with the Spanish and
+French, as the tongues in which a secret of this kind would most
+naturally have been written by a pirate of the Spanish main[22]. As it
+was, I assume the cryptograph to be English.
+
+"You observe there are no divisions between the words. Had there been
+divisions, the task would have been comparatively easy. In such case I
+would have commenced with a collation and analysis of the shorter
+words; and had a word of a single letter occurred, as is most likely
+(_a_ or _I_, for example), I should have considered the solution as
+assured. But there being no divisions, my first step was to ascertain
+the predominant letters, as well as the least frequent,
+
+"Counting all, I constructed a table thus;—
+
+     Of the character 8 there are 33.
+
+                      ;     "     26.
+
+                      4     "     19.
+
+                     ‡)     "     16.
+
+                      *     "     13.
+
+                      5     "     12.
+
+                      6     "     11.
+
+                     †1     "      8.
+
+                      0     "      6.
+
+                     92     "      5.
+
+                     :3     "      4.
+
+                      ?     "      3.
+
+                      ¶     "      2.
+
+                    —.     "      1.
+
+"Now, in English, the letter which most frequently occurs is _e_.
+Afterwards, the succession runs thus: _a o i d h n r s t u y c f g l m
+w b k p q x z_. E predominates, however, so remarkably that an
+individual sentence of any length is rarely seen in which it is not the
+prevailing character.
+
+"Here, then, we have, in the very beginning, the groundwork for
+something more than a mere guess. The general use which may be made of
+the table is obvious—but in this particular cipher we shall only very
+partially require its aid. As our predominant character is 8, we will
+commence by assuming it as the _e_ of the natural alphabet. To verify
+the supposition, let us observe if the 8 be seen often in couples—for
+_e_ is doubled with great frequency in English—in such words, for
+example, as 'meet,' 'fleet,' 'speed,' 'seen,' 'been,' 'agree,' etc. In
+the present instance we see it doubled no less than five times,
+although the cryptograph is brief.
+
+"Let us assume 8, then, as _e_. Now of all _words_ in the language,
+'the' is most usual; let us see, therefore, whether there are not
+repetitions of any three characters, in the same order of collocation,
+the last of them being 8. If we discover repetitions of such letters,
+so arranged, they will most probably represent the word 'the.' Upon
+inspection, we find no less than seven such arrangements, the
+characters being ;48. We may, therefore, assume that the semicolon
+represents _t_, that 4 represents _h_, and that 8 represents _e_—the
+last being now well confirmed. Thus a great step has been taken.
+
+"But, having established a single word, we are enabled to establish a
+vastly important point; that is to say, several commencements and
+terminations of other words. Let us refer, for example, to the last
+instance but one, in which the combination ;48 occurs—not far from the
+end of the cipher. We know that the semicolon immediately ensuing is
+the commencement of a word, and, of the six characters succeeding this
+'the,' we are cognizant of no less than five. Let us set these
+characters down, thus, by the letters we know them to represent,
+leaving a space for the unknown—
+
+     t eeth.
+
+"Here we are enabled, at once, to discard the '_th_,' as forming no
+portion of the word commencing with the first _t_; since by experiment
+of the entire alphabet for a letter adapted to the vacancy, we perceive
+that no word can be formed of which this _th_ can be a part. We are
+thus narrowed into
+
+     t ee,
+
+and, going through the alphabet, if necessary, as before, we arrive at
+the word 'tree,' as the sole possible reading. We thus gain another
+letter, _r_, represented by (, with the words 'the tree" in
+juxtaposition.
+
+"Looking beyond these words, for a short distance, we again see the
+combination ;48, and employ it by way of _termination_ to what
+immediately precedes. We have thus this arrangement:
+
+     the tree ;4 (‡?34 the,
+
+or, substituting the natural letters, whereknown, it reads thus:
+
+     the tree thr‡?3h the.
+
+"Now, if, in place of the unknown characters, we leave blank spaces, or
+substitute dots, we read thus:
+
+     the tree thr…h the,
+
+when the word '_through_' makes itself evident at once. But the
+discovery gives us three new letters, _o, u_, and _g_, represented by ‡
+? and 3.
+
+"Looking now, narrowly, through the cipher for combinations of known,
+characters, we find, not very far from the beginning, this arrangement.
+
+     83(88, or, egree,
+
+which, plainly, is the conclusion of the word 'degree' and gives us
+another letter, _d_, represented by †.
+
+"Four letters beyond the word 'degree,' we perceive the combination.
+
+     ;46(;88*.
+
+"Translating the known characters, and representing the unknown by
+dots, as before, we read thus:
+
+     th.rtee,
+
+an arrangement immediately suggestive of the word 'thirteen,' and again
+furnishing us with two new characters, _i_, and _n_, represented by 6
+and *.
+
+"Referring, now, to the beginning of the cryptograph, we find the
+combination,
+
+     53 ‡‡†.
+
+"Translating, as before, we obtain
+
+     .good,
+
+which assures us that the first letter is _A_, and that the first two
+words are 'A good.'
+
+"To avoid confusion, it is now time that we arrange our key, as far as
+discovered, in a tabular form. It will stand thus:
+
+     5 represents a †      "     d 8      "     e 3      "     g 4     
+     "     h 6      "     i *      "     n ‡      "     o (      "    
+     r ;      "     t
+
+"We have, therefore, no less than ten of the most important letters
+represented, and it will be unnecessary to proceed with the details of
+the solution. I have said enough to convince you that ciphers of this
+nature are readily soluble, and to give you some insight into the
+rationale[23] of their development. But be assured that the specimen
+before us appertains to the very simplest species of cryptograph. It
+now only remains to give you the full translation of the characters
+upon the parchment, as unriddled. Here it is:
+
+     "'_A good glass in the bishop's hostel in the devil's seat
+     twenty-one degrees and thirteen minutes northeast and by north
+     main branch seventh limb east side shoot from the left eye of the
+     death's-head a bee-line from the tree through the shot fifty feet
+     out_.'"
+
+"But," said I, "the enigma seems still in as bad a condition as ever.
+How is it possible to extort a meaning from all this jargon about
+'devil's seats,' death's-heads,' and 'bishop's hotels'?"
+
+"I confess," replied Legrand, "that the matter still wears a serious
+aspect, when regarded with a casual glance. My first endeavor was to
+divide the sentence into the natural divisions intended by the
+cryptographist."
+
+"You mean to punctuate it?"
+
+"Something of that kind."
+
+"But how was it possible to effect this?"
+
+"I reflected that it had been a _point_ with the writer to run his
+words together without divisions, so as to increase the difficulty of
+solution. Now, a not over acute man, in pursuing such, an object, would
+be nearly certain to overdo the matter. When, in the course of his
+composition, he arrived at a break in his subject which would naturally
+require a pause, or a point, he would be exceedingly apt to run his
+characters, at this place, more than usually close together. If you
+will observe the Ms. in the present instance, you will easily detect
+five such cases of unusual crowding. Acting on this hint, I made the
+division thus:
+
+     "'_A good glass in the bishop's hostel in the devil's
+     seat—twenty-one degrees and thirteen minutes—northeast and by
+     north—main branch seventh limb east side—shoot from the left eye
+     of the death's-head—a bee-line from the tree through the shot
+     fifty feet out_.'"
+
+"Even this division," said I, "leaves me still in the dark."
+
+"It left me also in the dark," replied Legrand, "for a few days, during
+which I made diligent inquiry, in the neighborhood of Sullivan's
+Island, for any building, which went by the name of the 'Bishop's
+Hotel'—for of course I dropped the obsolete word 'hostel.' Gaining no
+information on the subject, I was on the point of extending my sphere
+of search, and proceeding in a more systematic manner, when, one
+morning, it entered into my head, quite suddenly, that this 'Bishop's
+Hostel' might have some reference to an old family, of the name of
+Bessop, which, time out of mind, had held possession of an ancient
+manor-house, about four miles to the northward of the island. I
+accordingly went over to the plantation, and reinstituted my inquiries
+among the older negroes of the place. At length one of the most aged of
+the women said that she had heard of such a place as _Bessop's Castle_
+and thought that she could guide me to it, but that it was not a
+castle, nor tavern, but a high rock.
+
+"I offered to pay her well for her trouble, and, after some demur, she
+consented to accompany me to the spot. We found it without much
+difficulty, when, dismissing her, I proceeded to examine the place. The
+'castle' consisted of an irregular assemblage of cliffs and rocks—one
+of the latter being quite remarkable for its height as well as for its
+insulated and artificial appearance, I clambered to its apex, and then
+felt much at a loss as to what should be next done.
+
+"While I was buried in reflection, my eyes fell upon a narrow ledge in
+the eastern face of the rock, perhaps a yard below the summit upon
+which I stood. This ledge projected about eighteen inches, and was not
+more than a foot wide, while a niche in the cliff just above it gave it
+a rude resemblance to one of the hollow-backed chairs used by our
+ancestors. I made no doubt that here was the 'devil's seat' alluded to
+in the Ms., and now I seemed to grasp the full secret of the riddle.
+
+"The 'good glass,' I knew, could have reference to nothing but a
+telescope; for the word 'glass' is rarely employed in any other sense
+by seamen. Now here, I at once saw, was a telescope to be used, and a
+definite point of view, _admitting no variation_, from which to use it.
+Nor did I hesitate to believe that the phrase 'twenty-one degrees and
+thirteen minutes' and 'northeast and by north,' were intended as
+directions for the levelling of the glass. Greatly excited by these
+discoveries, I hurried home, procured a telescope, and returned to the
+rock.
+
+"I let myself down to the ledge, and found that it was impossible to
+retain a seat upon it except in one particular position. This fact
+confirmed my preconceived idea. I proceeded to use the glass. Of course
+the 'twenty-one degrees and thirteen minutes' could allude to nothing
+but elevation above the visible horizon, since the horizontal direction
+was clearly indicated by the words 'northeast and by north.' This
+latter direction I at once established by means of a pocket-compass;
+then, pointing the glass as nearly at an angle of twenty-one degrees of
+elevation as I could do it by guess, I moved it cautiously up or down,
+until my attention was arrested by a circular rift or opening in the
+foliage of a large tree that over-topped its fellows in the distance.
+In the centre of this rift I perceived a white spot, but could not, at
+first, distinguish what it was. Adjusting the focus of the telescope, I
+again looked, and now made it out to be a human skull.
+
+"On this discovery I was so sanguine as to consider the enigma solved;
+for the phrase 'main branch, seventh limb, east side' could refer only
+to the position of the skull on the tree, while 'shoot from the left
+eye of the death's-head' admitted also of but one interpretation, in
+regard to a search for buried treasure. I perceived that the design was
+to drop a bullet from the left eye of the skull, and that a bee-line,
+or in other words, a straight line, drawn from the nearest point of the
+trunk through 'the shot' (or the spot where the bullet fell) and thence
+extended to a distance of fifty feet, would indicate a definite
+point—and beneath this point I thought it at least _possible_ that a
+deposit of value lay concealed."
+
+"All this." I said, "is exceedingly clear, and, although ingenious,
+still simple and explicit. When you left the Bishop's Hotel, what
+then?"
+
+"Why, having carefully taken the bearings of the tree, I turned
+homewards. The instant that I left the 'devil's seat,' however, the
+circular rift vanished; nor could I get a glimpse of it afterwards,
+turn, as I would. What seems to me the chief ingenuity in this whole
+business is the fact (for repeated experiment has convinced me it _is_
+a fact) that the circular opening in question is visible from no other
+attainable point of view than that afforded by the narrow ledge on the
+face of the rock.
+
+"In this expedition to the 'Bishop's Hotel' I had been attended by
+Jupiter, who had no doubt observed for some weeks past the abstraction
+of my demeanor, and took especial care not to leave me alone. But, on
+the next day, getting up very early, I contrived to give him the slip,
+and went into the hills in search of the tree. After much toil I found
+it. When I came home at night my valet proposed to give me a flogging.
+With the rest of the adventure I believe you are as well acquainted as
+myself."
+
+"I suppose," said I, "you missed the spot, in the first attempt at
+digging, through Jupiter's stupidity in letting the bug fall through
+the right instead of through the left eye of the skull."
+
+"Precisely. This mistake made a difference of about two inches and a
+half in the 'shot'—that is to say, in the position of the peg nearest
+the tree—and had the treasure been _beneath_ the 'shot,' the error
+would have been of little moment; but the 'shot,' together with the
+nearest point of the tree, were merely two points for the establishment
+of a line of direction; of course the error, however trivial in the
+beginning, increased as we proceeded with the line, and by the time we
+had gone fifty feet, threw us quite off the scent. But for my
+deep-seated convictions that treasure was here somewhere actually
+buried, we might have had all our labor in vain."
+
+"I presume the fancy of _the skull_—of letting fall a bullet through
+the skull's eye—was suggested to Kidd by the piratical flag. No doubt
+he felt a kind of poetical consistency in recovering his money through
+this ominous insignium[24]."
+
+"Perhaps so; still, I cannot help thinking that common-sense had quite
+as much to do with the matter as poetical consistency. To be visible
+from the Devil's seat, it was necessary that the object, if small,
+should be _white_: and there is nothing like your human skull for
+retaining and even increasing its whiteness under exposure to all
+vicissitudes of weather."
+
+"But your grandiloquence, and your conduct in swinging the beetle—how
+excessively odd! I was sure you were mad. And why did you insist on
+letting fall the bug, instead of a bullet, from the skull?"
+
+"Why, to be frank, I felt somewhat annoyed by your evident suspicions
+touching my sanity, and so resolved to punish you quietly, in my own
+way, by a little bit of sober mystification. For this reason I swung
+the beetle, and for this reason I let it fall from the tree. An
+observation of yours about its great weight suggested the latter idea."
+
+"Yes, I perceive; and now there is only one point which puzzles me.
+What are we to make of the skeletons found in the hole?"
+
+"That is a question I am no more able to answer than yourself. There
+seems, however, only one plausible way of accounting for them—and yet
+it is dreadful to believe in such atrocity as my suggestion would
+imply. It is clear that Kidd—if Kidd indeed secreted this treasure,
+which I doubt not—it is clear that he must have had assistance in the
+labor. But this labor concluded, he may have thought it expedient to
+remove all participants in his secret. Perhaps a couple of blows with a
+mattock were sufficient, while his coadjutors were busy in the pit;
+perhaps it required a dozen—who shall tell?"
+
+NOTES
+
+[1] _The Gold-Bug_ was first published in _The Dollar Magazine_ in
+1843. The story won a prize of one hundred dollars.
+
+[2] 100:3 All in the Wrong. The title of an amusing comedy by Arthur
+Murphy (1730-1805).
+
+[3] 100:4 Huguenot. French Protestants, many of whom settled in South
+Carolina.
+
+[4] 100: 18 Fort Moultrie. Erected in. 1776. Defended against the
+British by Colonel William Moultrie.
+
+[5] 101:23 Swammerdam. A famous Dutch naturalist (1637-1680).
+
+[6] 101:25 manumitted. Freed from slavery.
+
+[7] 102:27 scarabaeus. The Latin for beetle.
+
+[8] 103:15 antennae. The feelers.
+
+[9] 105:8 scarabaeus caput hominis. Man's-head beetle.
+
+[10] 107:20 noovers. Manoeuvres.
+
+[11] 109:10 brusquerie. Lack of cordiality.
+
+[12] 110:26 empressement. Demonstrativeness.
+
+[13] 123:20 curvets and caracoles. Leaping and prancing of a horse.
+
+[14] 128:9 counters. Various coins.
+
+[15] 128:28 Bacchanalian. Revelling like the worshippers of Bacchus,
+the god of wine.
+
+[16] 134:28 Zaffre. An oxide of cobalt. See dictionary.
+
+[17] 134:28 aqua regia. Royal water—a mixture of nitric and
+hydrochloric acids.
+
+[18] 134:30 regulus. An old chemical term.
+
+[19] 135: 28 Captain Kidd. A Scottish sea captain who lived in New York
+in the seventeenth century.
+
+[20] 138:19 Golconda. A town in India noted for its diamond market.
+
+[21] 138:28 cryptographs. Secret forms of writing.
+
+[22] 139:27 Spanish main. The northeastern portion of South America,
+the Caribbean Sea, and the coast of North America to the Carolinas were
+harassed by the Spaniards.
+
+[23] 144:6 rationale. Reasonable basis.
+
+[24] 149:19 insignium. Sign.
+
+COLLATERAL READINGS
+
+_The Murders in the Rue Morgue_, Edgar Allan Poe.
+
+_The Mystery of Marie Rogêt_, Edgar Allan Poe.
+
+_The Purloined Letter_, Edgar Allan Poe.
+
+_The Sign of the Four_, A. Conan Doyle.
+
+_A Scandal in Bohemia_, A. Conan Doyle.
+
+_The Chronicles of Addington_, B. Fletcher Robinson.
+
+_The Mystery of the Steel Disk_, Broughton Brandenburg.
+
+_The Rajah's Diamond_, R.L. Stevenson.
+
+_The Doctor, his Wife, and the Clock_, Anna Katharine Green.
+
+_The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes_, A. Conan Doyle.
+
+_The Hound of the Baskervilles_, A. Conan Doyle.
+
+_A Double-Barrelled Detective Story_, Mark Twain.
+
+_Gallegher_, Richard Harding Davis.
+
+
+
+
+THE BIRTHMARK[1]
+
+
+_By Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1862)_.
+
+
+In the latter part of the last century there lived a man of science, an
+eminent proficient in every branch of natural philosophy, who not long
+before our story opens had made experience of a spiritual affinity more
+attractive than any chemical one. He had left his laboratory to the
+care of an assistant, cleared his fine countenance from the
+furnace-smoke, washed the stain of acids from his fingers, and
+persuaded a beautiful woman to become his wife. In those days, when the
+comparatively recent discovery of electricity and other kindred
+mysteries of Nature seemed to open paths into the region of miracle, it
+was not unusual for the love of science to rival the love of woman in
+its depth and absorbing energy. The higher intellect, the imagination,
+the spirit, and even the heart might all find their congenial aliment
+in pursuits which, as some of their ardent votaries believed, would
+ascend from one step of powerful intelligence to another, until the
+philosopher should lay his hand on the secret of creative force and
+perhaps make new worlds for himself. We know not whether Aylmer
+possessed this degree of faith in man's ultimate control over nature.
+He had devoted himself, however, too unreservedly to scientific studies
+ever to be weakened from them by any second passion. His love for his
+young wife might prove the stronger of the two; but it could only be by
+intertwining itself with his love of science and uniting the strength
+of the latter to his own.
+
+Such a union accordingly took place, and was attended with truly
+remarkable consequences and a deeply impressive moral. One day, very
+soon after their marriage, Aylmer sat gazing at his wife with a trouble
+in his countenance that grew stronger until he spoke.
+
+"Georgiana," said he, "has it never occurred to you that the mark upon
+your cheek might be removed?"
+
+"No, indeed," said she, smiling; but, perceiving the seriousness of his
+manner, she blushed deeply. "To tell you the truth, it has been so
+often called a charm, that I was simple enough to imagine it might be
+so."
+
+"Ah, upon another face perhaps it might," replied her husband; "but
+never on yours. No, dearest Georgiana, you came so nearly perfect from
+the hand of Nature that this slightest possible defect, which we
+hesitate whether to term a defect or a beauty, shocks me, as being the
+visible mark of earthly imperfection."
+
+"Shocks you, my husband!" cried Georgiana, deeply hurt; at first
+reddening with momentary anger, but then bursting into tears. "Then why
+did you take me from my mother's side? You cannot love what shocks
+you!"
+
+To explain this conversation, it must be mentioned that in the centre
+of Georgiana's left cheek there was a singular mark, deeply interwoven,
+as it were, with the texture and substance of her face. In the usual
+state of her complexion—a healthy though delicate bloom—the mark wore a
+tint of deeper crimson, which imperfectly defined its shape amid the
+surrounding rosiness. When she blushed it gradually became more
+indistinct, and finally vanished amid the triumphant rush of blood that
+bathed the whole cheek with its brilliant glow. But if any shifting
+emotion caused her to turn pale, there was the mark again, a crimson
+stain upon the snow, in what Aylmer sometimes deemed an almost fearful
+distinctness. Its shape bore not a little similarity to the human hand,
+though of the smallest pygmy size. Georgiana's lovers were wont to say
+that some fairy at her birth-hour had laid her tiny hand upon the
+infant's cheek, and left this impress there in token of the magic
+endowments that were to give her such sway over all hearts. Many a
+desperate swain would have risked life for the privilege of pressing
+his lips to the mysterious hand. It must not be concealed, however,
+that the impression wrought by this fairy sign-manual varied
+exceedingly according to the difference of temperament in the
+beholders. Some fastidious persons—but they were exclusively of her own
+sex—affirmed that the bloody hand, as they chose to call it, quite
+destroyed the effect of Georgiana's beauty and rendered her countenance
+even hideous. But it would be as reasonable to say that one of those
+small blue stains which sometimes occur in the purest statuary marble
+would convert the Eve of Powers[2] to a monster. Masculine observers,
+if the birthmark did not heighten their admiration, contented
+themselves with wishing it away, that the world might possess one
+living specimen of ideal loveliness without the semblance of a flaw.
+After his marriage,—for he thought little or nothing of the matter
+before,—Aylmer discovered that this was the case with himself.
+
+Had she been less beautiful,—if Envy's self could have found aught else
+to sneer at,—he might have felt his affection heightened by the
+prettiness of this mimic hand, now vaguely portrayed, now lost, now
+stealing forth again and glimmering to and fro with every pulse of
+emotion that throbbed within her heart; but, seeing her otherwise so
+perfect, he found this one defect grow more and more intolerable with
+every moment of their united lives. It was the fatal flaw of humanity
+which Nature, in one shape or another, stamps ineffaceably on all her
+productions, either to imply that they are temporary and finite, or
+that their perfection must be wrought by toil and pain. The crimson
+hand expressed the ineludible gripe in which mortality clutches the
+highest and purest of earthly mould, degrading them into kindred with
+the lowest, and even with the very brutes, like whom their visible
+frames return to dust. In this manner, selecting it as the symbol of
+his wife's liability to sin, sorrow, decay, and death, Aylmer's sombre
+imagination was not long in rendering the birthmark a frightful object,
+causing him more trouble and horror than ever Georgiana's beauty,
+whether of soul or sense, had given him delight.
+
+At all the seasons which should have been their happiest he invariably,
+and without intending it, nay, in spite of a purpose to the contrary,
+reverted to this one disastrous topic. Trifling as it at first
+appeared, it so connected itself with innumerable trains of thought and
+modes of feeling that it became the central point of all. With the
+morning twilight Aylmer opened his eyes upon his wife's face and
+recognized the symbol of imperfection, and when they sat together at
+the evening hearth his eyes wandered stealthily to her cheek, and
+beheld, flickering with the blaze of the wood-fire, the spectral hand
+that wrote mortality where he would fain have worshipped, Georgiana
+soon learned to shudder at his gaze. It needed but a glance with the
+peculiar expression that his face often wore to change the roses of her
+cheek into a deathlike paleness, amid which the crimson hand was
+brought strongly out, like a bas-relief of ruby on the whitest marble.
+
+Late one night, when the lights were growing dim so as hardly to betray
+the stain on the poor wife's cheek, she herself, for the first time,
+voluntarily took up the subject.
+
+"Do you remember, my dear Aylmer," said she, with a feeble attempt at a
+smile, "have you any recollection of a dream last night about this
+odious hand?"
+
+"None! none whatever!" replied Aylmer, starting: but then he added, in
+a dry, cold tone, affected for the sake of concealing the real depth of
+his emotion, "I might well dream of it; for, before I fell asleep, it
+had taken a pretty firm hold of my fancy."
+
+"And you did dream of it?" continued Georgiana, hastily; for she
+dreaded lest a gush of tears should interrupt what she had to say. "A
+terrible dream! I wonder that you can forget it. Is it possible to
+forget this one expression?—'It is in her heart now; we must have it
+out!' Reflect, my husband; for by all means I would have you recall
+that dream."
+
+The mind is in a sad state when Sleep, the all-involving, cannot
+confine her spectres within the dim region of her sway, but suffers
+them to break forth, affrighting this actual life with secrets that
+perchance belong to a deeper one. Aylmer now remembered his dream. He
+had fancied himself with his servant Aminadab attempting an operation
+for the removal of the birthmark; but the deeper went the knife, the
+deeper sank the hand, until at length its tiny grasp appeared to have
+caught hold of Georgiana's heart; whence, however, her husband was
+inexorably resolved to cut or wrench it away.
+
+When the dream had shaped itself perfectly in his memory, Aylmer sat in
+his wife's presence with a guilty feeling. Truth often finds its way to
+the mind close muffled in robes of sleep, and then speaks with
+uncompromising directness of matters in regard to which we practice an
+unconscious self-deception during our waking moments. Until now he had
+not been aware of the tyrannizing influence acquired by one idea over
+his mind, and of the lengths which he might find in his heart to go for
+the sake of giving himself peace.
+
+"Aylmer," resumed Georgiana, solemnly, "I know not what may be the cost
+to both of us to rid me of this fatal birthmark. Perhaps its removal
+may cause cureless deformity; or it may be the stain goes as deep as
+life itself. Again; do we know that there is a possibility, on any
+terms, of unclasping the firm gripe of this little hand which was laid
+upon me before I came into the world?"
+
+"Dearest Georgiana, I have spent much thought upon the subject,"
+hastily interrupted Aylmer. "I am convinced of the perfect
+practicability of its removal."
+
+"If there be the remotest possibility of it," continued Georgiana, "let
+the attempt be made, at whatever risk. Danger is nothing to rue; for
+life, while this hateful mark makes me the object of your horror and
+disgust,—life is a burden which I would fling down with joy. Either
+remove this dreadful hand, or take my wretched life! You have deep
+science. All the world bears witness of it. You have achieved great
+wonders. Cannot you remove this little, little mark, which I cover with
+the tips of two small fingers? Is this beyond your power, for the sake
+of your own peace, and to save your poor wife from madness?"
+
+"Noblest, dearest, tenderest wife," cried Aylmer, rapturously, "doubt
+not my power. I have already given this matter the deepest
+thought,—thought which might almost have enlightened me to create a
+being less perfect than yourself. Georgiana, you have led me deeper
+than ever into the heart of science. I feel myself fully competent to
+render this dear cheek as faultless as its fellow; and then, most
+beloved, what will be my triumph when I shall have corrected what
+Nature left imperfect in her fairest work! Even Pygmalion[3], when his
+sculptured woman assumed life, felt not greater ecstasy than mine will
+be."
+
+"It is resolved, then," said Georgiana, faintly smiling. "And, Aylmer,
+spare me not, though you should find the birthmark take refuge in my
+heart at last."
+
+Her husband tenderly kissed her cheek,—her right cheek,—not that which
+bore the impress of the crimson hand.
+
+The next day Aylmer apprised his wife of a plan that he had formed
+whereby he might have opportunity for the intense thought and constant
+watchfulness which the proposed operation would require, while
+Georgiana, likewise, would enjoy the perfect repose essential to its
+success. They were to seclude themselves in the extensive apartments
+occupied by Aylmer as a laboratory, and where, during his toilsome
+youth, he had made discoveries in the elemental powers of nature that
+had roused the admiration of all the learned societies in Europe.
+Seated calmly in this laboratory, the pale philosopher had investigated
+the secrets of the highest cloud-region and of the profoundest mines;
+he had satisfied himself of the causes that kindled and kept alive the
+fires of the volcano; and had explained the mystery of fountains, and
+how it is that they gush forth, some so bright and pure, and others
+with such rich medicinal virtues, from the dark bosom of the earth.
+Here, too, at an earlier period, he had studied the wonders of the
+human frame, and attempted to fathom the very process by which Nature
+assimilates all her precious influences from earth and air, and from
+the spiritual world, to create and foster man, her masterpiece. The
+latter pursuit, however, Aylmer had long laid aside in unwilling
+recognition of the truth—against which all seekers sooner or later
+stumble—that our great creative Mother, while she amuses us with
+apparently working in the broadest sunshine, is yet severely careful to
+keep her own secrets, and, in spite of her pretended openness, shows us
+nothing but results. She permits us, indeed, to mar, but seldom to
+mend, and, like a jealous patentee, on no account to make. Now,
+however, Aylmer resumed these half-forgotten investigations; not, of
+course, with such hopes or wishes as first suggested them; but because
+they involved much physiological truth and lay in the path of his
+proposed scheme for the treatment of Georgiana.
+
+As he led her over the threshold of the laboratory Georgiana was cold
+and tremulous. Aylmer looked cheerfully into her face, with intent to
+reassure her, but was so startled with the intense glow of the
+birthmark upon the whiteness of her cheek that he could not restrain a
+strong convulsive shudder. His wife fainted.
+
+"Aminadab! Aminadab!" shouted Aylmer, stamping violently on the floor.
+
+Forthwith there issued from an inner apartment a man of low stature,
+but bulky frame, with shaggy hair hanging about his visage, which was
+grimed with the vapors of the furnace. This personage had been Aylmer's
+under-worker during his whole scientific career, and was admirably
+fitted for that office by his great mechanical readiness, and the skill
+with which, while incapable of comprehending a single principle, he
+executed all the details of his master's experiments. With his vast
+strength, his shaggy hair, his smoky aspect, and the indescribable
+earthiness that incrusted him, he seemed to represent man's physical
+nature; while Aylmer's slender figure, and pale, intellectual face,
+were no less apt a type of the spiritual element.
+
+"Throw open the door of the boudoir, Aminadab," said Aylmer, "and burn
+a pastil."
+
+"Yes, master," answered Aminadab, looking intently at the lifeless form
+of Georgiana; and then he muttered to himself, "If she were my wife,
+I'd never part with that birthmark."
+
+When Georgiana recovered consciousness she found herself breathing an
+atmosphere of penetrating fragrance, the gentle potency of which had
+recalled her from her deathlike faintness. The scene around her looked
+like enchantment. Aylmer had converted those smoky, dingy, sombre
+rooms, where he had spent his brightest years in recondite[4] pursuits,
+into a series of beautiful apartments not unfit to be the secluded
+abode of a lovely woman. The walls were hung with gorgeous curtains,
+which imparted the combination of grandeur and grace that no other
+species of adornment can achieve; and, as they fell from the ceiling to
+the floor, their rich and ponderous folds, concealing all angles and
+straight lines, appeared to shut in the scene from infinite space. For
+aught Georgiana knew, it might be a pavilion among the clouds. And
+Alymer, excluding the sunshine, which would have interfered with his
+chemical processes, had supplied its place with perfumed lamps,
+emitting flames of various hue, but all uniting in a soft, impurpled
+radiance. He now knelt by his wife's side, watching her earnestly, but
+without alarm; for he was confident in his science, and felt that he
+could draw a magic circle round her within which no evil might intrude.
+
+"Where am I? Ah, I remember," said Georgiana, faintly; and she placed
+her hand over her cheek to hide the terrible mark from her husband's
+eyes.
+
+"Fear not, dearest!" exclaimed he. "Do not shrink from me! Believe me,
+Georgiana, I even rejoice in this single imperfection, since it will be
+such a rapture to remove it."
+
+"O, spare me!" sadly replied his wife. "Pray do not look at it again. I
+never can forget that convulsive shudder."
+
+In order to soothe Georgiana, and, as it were, to release her mind from
+the burden of actual things, Aylmer now put in practice some of the
+light and playful secrets which science had taught him among its
+profounder lore. Airy figures, absolutely bodiless ideas, and forms of
+unsubstantial beauty came and danced before her, imprinting their
+momentary footsteps on beams of light. Though she had some indistinct
+idea of the method of these optical phenomena, still the illusion was
+almost perfect enough to warrant the belief that her husband possessed
+sway over the spiritual world. Then again, when she felt a wish to look
+forth from her seclusion, immediately, as if her thoughts were
+answered, the procession of external existence flitted across a screen.
+The scenery and the figures of actual life were perfectly represented,
+but with that bewitching yet indescribable difference which always
+makes a picture, an image, or a shadow so much more attractive than the
+original. When wearied of this, Aylmer bade her cast her eyes upon a
+vessel containing a quantity of earth. She did so with little interest
+at first; but was soon startled to perceive the germ of a plant
+shooting upward from the soil: Then came the slender stalk; the leaves
+gradually unfolded themselves; and amid them was a perfect and lovely
+flower.
+
+"It is magical!" cried Georgiana. "I dare not touch it."
+
+"Nay, pluck it," answered Aylmer,—"pluck it, and inhale its brief
+perfume while you may. The flower will wither in a few moments and
+leave nothing save its brown seed-vessels; but thence may be
+perpetuated a race as ephemeral as itself."
+
+But Georgiana had no sooner touched the flower than the whole plant
+suffered a blight, its leaves turning coal black as if by the agency of
+fire.
+
+"There was too powerful a stimulus," said Aylmer, thoughtfully.
+
+To make up for this abortive experiment, he proposed to take her
+portrait by a scientific process of his own invention. It was to be
+effected by rays of light striking upon a polished plate of metal.
+Georgiana assented; but, on looking at the result, was affrighted to
+find the features of the portrait blurred and indefinable; while the
+minute figure of a hand appeared where the cheek should have been.
+Alymer snatched the metallic plate and threw it into a jar of
+corrosive[5] acid.
+
+Soon, however, he forgot these mortifying failures. In the intervals of
+study and chemical experiment he came to her flushed and exhausted, but
+seemed invigorated by her presence, and spoke in glowing language of
+the resources of his art. He gave a history of the long dynasty of the
+alchemists, who spent so many ages in quest of the universal solvent by
+which the golden principle might be elicited from all things vile and
+base, Aylmer appeared to believe that, by the plainest scientific
+logic, it was altogether within the limits of possibility to discover
+this long-sought medium. "But," he added, "a philosopher who should go
+deep enough to acquire the power would attain too lofty a wisdom to
+stoop to the exercise of it." Not less singular were his opinions in
+regard to the elixir vitae[6]. He more than intimated that it was at
+his option to concoct a liquid that should prolong life for years,
+perhaps interminably; but that it would produce a discord in nature
+which all the world, and chiefly the quaffer of the immortal nostrum,
+would find cause to curse.
+
+"Aylmer, are you in earnest?" asked Georgiana, looking at him with
+amazement and fear. "It is terrible to possess such power, or even to
+dream of possessing it."
+
+"O, do not tremble, my love," said her husband. "I would not wrong
+either you or myself by working such inharmonious effects upon our
+lives; but I would have you consider how trifling, in comparison, is
+the skill requisite to remove this little hand."
+
+At the mention of the birthmark, Georgiana, as usual, shrank as if a
+red-hot iron had touched her cheek.
+
+Again Aylmer applied himself to his labors. She could hear his voice in
+the distant furnace-room giving directions to Aminadab, whose harsh,
+uncouth, misshapen tones were audible in response, more like the grunt
+or growl of a brute than human speech. After hours of absence, Aylmer
+reappeared and proposed that she should now examine his cabinet of
+chemical products and natural treasures of the earth. Among the former
+he showed her a small vial, in which, he remarked, was contained a
+gentle yet most powerful fragrance, capable of impregnating all the
+breezes that blow across a kingdom. They were of inestimable value, the
+contents of that little vial; and, as he said so, he threw some of the
+perfume into the air and filled the room with piercing and invigorating
+delight.
+
+"And what is this?" asked Georgiana, pointing to a small crystal globe
+containing a gold-colored liquid. "It is so beautiful to the eye that I
+could imagine it the elixir of life."
+
+"In one sense it is," replied Aylmer; "or rather, the elixir of
+immortality. It is the most precious poison that ever was concocted in
+this world. By its aid I could apportion the lifetime of any mortal at
+whom you might point your finger. The strength of the dose would
+determine whether he were to linger out years, or drop dead in the
+midst of a breath. No king on his guarded throne could keep his life if
+I, in my private station, should deem that the welfare of millions
+justified me in depriving him of it."
+
+"Why do you keep such a terrific drug?" inquired Georgiana, in horror.
+
+"Do not mistrust me, dearest," said her husband, smiling; "its virtuous
+potency is yet greater than its harmful one. But see! here is a
+powerful cosmetic. With a few drops of this in a vase of water,
+freckles may be washed away as easily as the hands are cleansed. A
+stronger infusion[7] would take the blood out of the cheek, and leave
+the rosiest beauty a pale ghost."
+
+"Is it with this lotion that you intend to bathe my cheek?" asked
+Georgiana, anxiously.
+
+"O no," hastily replied her husband; "this is merely superficial. Your
+case demands a remedy that shall go deeper."
+
+In his interviews with Georgiana, Aylmer generally made minute
+inquiries as to her sensations, and whether the confinement of the
+rooms and the temperature of the atmosphere agreed with her. These
+questions had such a particular drift that Georgiana began to
+conjecture that she was already subjected to certain physical
+influences, either breathed in with the fragrant air or taken with her
+food. She fancied likewise, but it might be altogether fancy, that
+there was a stirring up of her system,—a strange, indefinite sensation
+creeping through her veins, and tingling, half painfully, half
+pleasurably, at her heart. Still, whenever she dared to look into the
+mirror, there she beheld herself pale as a white rose and with the
+crimson birthmark stamped upon her cheek. Not even Aylmer now hated it
+so much as she.
+
+To dispel the tedium of the hours which her husband found it necessary
+to devote to the processes of combination and analysis, Georgiana
+turned over the volumes of his scientific library. In many dark old
+tomes she met with chapters full of romance and poetry. They were the
+works of the philosophers of the Middle Ages, such as Albertus
+Magnus[8], Cornelius Agrippa[9], Paracelsus[10], and the famous friar
+who created the prophetic Brazen Head. All these antique naturalists
+stood in advance of their centuries, yet were imbued with some of their
+credulity, and therefore were believed, and perhaps imagined themselves
+to have acquired from the investigation of nature a power above nature,
+and from physics a sway over the spiritual world. Hardly less curious
+and imaginative were the early volumes of the Transactions of the Royal
+Society[11], in which the members, knowing little of the limits of
+natural possibility, were continually recording wonders or proposing
+methods whereby wonders might be wrought.
+
+But, to Georgiana, the most engrossing volume was a large folio from
+her husband's own hand, in which he had recorded every experiment of
+his scientific career, its original aim, the methods adopted for its
+development, and its final success or failure, with the circumstances
+to which either event was attributable. The book, in truth; was both
+the history and emblem of his ardent, ambitious, imaginative, yet
+practical and laborious life. He handled physical details as if there
+were nothing beyond them; yet spiritualized them all, and redeemed
+himself from materialism by his strong and eager aspiration towards the
+infinite. In his grasp the veriest clod of earth assumed a soul.
+Georgiana, as she read, reverenced Aylmer and loved him more profoundly
+than ever, but with a less entire dependence on his judgment than
+heretofore. Much as he had accomplished, she could not but observe that
+his most splendid successes were almost invariably failures, if
+compared with the ideal at which he aimed. His brightest diamonds were
+the merest pebbles, and felt to be so by himself, in comparison with
+the inestimable gems which lay hidden beyond his reach. The volume,
+rich with achievements that had won renown for its author, was yet as
+melancholy a record as over mortal hand had penned. It was the sad
+confession and continual exemplification of the shortcomings of the
+composite man, the spirit burdened with clay and working in matter, and
+of the despair that assails the higher nature at finding itself so
+miserably thwarted by the earthly part. Perhaps every man of genius, in
+whatever sphere, might recognize the image of his own experience in
+Aylmer's journal.
+
+So deeply did these reflections affect Georgiana that she laid her face
+upon the open volume and burst into tears. In this situation she was
+found by her husband.
+
+"It is dangerous to read in a sorcerer's books," said he with a smile,
+though his countenance was uneasy and displeased. "Georgiana, there are
+pages in that volume which I can scarcely glance over and keep my
+senses. Take heed lest it prove as detrimental to you."
+
+"It has made me worship you more than ever." said she.
+
+"Ah, wait for this one success," rejoined he, "then worship me if you
+will. I shall deem myself hardly unworthy of it. But come. I have
+sought you for the luxury of your voice. Sing to me, dearest."
+
+So she poured out the liquid music of her voice to quench the thirst of
+his spirit. He then took his leave with a boyish exuberance of gayety,
+assuring her that her seclusion would endure but a little longer, and
+that the result was already certain. Scarcely had he departed when
+Georgiana felt irresistibly impelled to follow him. She had forgotten
+to inform Aylmer of a symptom which for two or three hours past had
+begun to excite her attention. It was a sensation in the fatal
+birthmark, not painful, but which induced a restlessness throughout her
+system. Hastening after her husband, she intruded for the first time
+into the laboratory.
+
+The first thing that struck her eye was the furnace, that hot and
+feverish worker, with the intense glow of its fire, which by the
+quantities of soot clustered above it seemed to have been burning for
+ages. There was a distilling-apparatus in full operation. Around the
+room were retorts, tubes, cylinders, crucibles, and other apparatus of
+chemical research. An electrical machine stood ready for immediate use.
+The atmosphere felt oppressively close, and was tainted with gaseous
+odors which had been tormented forth by the processes of science. The
+severe and homely simplicity of the apartment, with its naked walls and
+brick pavement, looked strange, accustomed as Georgiana had become to
+the fantastic elegance of her boudoir. But what chiefly, indeed almost
+solely, drew her attention, was the aspect of Aylmer himself.
+
+He was pale as death, anxious and absorbed, and hung over the furnace
+as if it depended upon his utmost watchfulness whether the liquid which
+it was distilling should be the draught of immortal happiness or
+misery. How different from the sanguine and joyous mien that he had
+assumed for Georgiana's encouragement!
+
+"Carefully now, Aminadab; carefully, thou human machine; carefully,
+thou man of clay," muttered Aylmer, more to himself than his assistant.
+"Now, If there be a thought too much or too little, it is all over."
+
+"Ho! ho!" mumbled Aminadab. "Look, master! look!"
+
+Aylmer raised his eyes hastily, and at first reddened, then grew paler
+than ever, on beholding Georgiana. He rushed towards her and seized her
+arm with a gripe that left the print of his fingers upon it.
+
+"Why do you come thither? Have you no trust in your husband?" cried he,
+impetuously. "Would you throw the blight of that fatal birthmark over
+my labors? It is not well done. Go, prying woman! go!"
+
+"Nay, Aylmer," said Georgiana with the firmness of which she possessed
+no stinted endowment, "it is not you that have a right to complain. You
+mistrust your wife; you have concealed the anxiety with which you watch
+the development of this experiment. Think not so unworthily of me, my
+husband. Tell me all the risk we run, and fear not that I shall shrink:
+for my share in it is far less than your own."
+
+"No, no, Georgiana!" said Aylmer, impatiently; "it must not be."
+
+"I submit," replied she, calmly. "And, Aylmer, I shall quaff whatever
+draught you bring me; but it will be on the same principle that would
+induce me to take a dose of poison if offered by your hand."
+
+"My noble wife," said Aylmer, deeply moved, "I knew not the height and
+depth of your nature until now. Nothing shall be concealed. Know, then,
+that this crimson hand, superficial as it seems, has clutched its grasp
+into your being with a strength of which I had no previous conception.
+I have already administered agents powerful enough to do aught except
+to change your entire physical system. Only one thing remains to be
+tried. If that fail us we are ruined."
+
+"Why did you hesitate to tell me this?" asked she.
+
+"Because, Georgiana," said Aylmer, in a low voice, "there is danger."
+
+"Danger? There is but one danger,—that this horrible stigma shall be
+left upon my cheek!" cried Georgiana. "Remove it, remove it, whatever
+be the cost, or we shall both go mad!"
+
+"Heaven knows your words are too true," said Aylmer, sadly. "And now,
+dearest, return to your boudoir. In a little while all will be tested."
+
+He conducted her back and took leave of her with a solemn tenderness
+which spoke far more than his words how much was now at stake. After
+his departure Georgiana became rapt in musings. She considered the
+character of Aylmer, and did it completer justice than at any previous
+moment. Her heart exulted, while it trembled, at his honorable love,—so
+pure and lofty that it would accept nothing less than perfection, nor
+miserably make itself contented with an earthlier nature than he had
+dreamed of. She felt how much more precious was such a sentiment than
+that meaner kind which would have borne with the imperfection for her
+sake, and have been guilty of treason to holy love by degrading its
+perfect idea to the level of the actual; and with her whole spirit she
+prayed that, for a single moment, she might satisfy his highest and
+deepest conception. Longer than one moment she well knew it could not
+be; for his spirit was ever on the march, ever ascending, and each
+instant required something that was beyond the scope of the instant
+before.
+
+The sound of her husband's footsteps aroused her. He bore a crystal
+goblet containing a liquor colorless as water, but bright enough to be
+the draught of immortality. Aylmer was pale; but it seemed rather the
+consequence of a highly wrought state of mind and tension of spirit
+than of fear or doubt.
+
+"The concoction of the draught has been perfect," said he, in answer to
+Georgiana's look. "Unless all my science have deceived me, it cannot
+fail."
+
+"Save on your account, my dearest Aylmer," observed his wife, "I might
+wish to put off this birthmark of mortality by relinquishing mortality
+itself in preference to any other mode. Life is but a sad possession to
+those who have attained precisely the degree of moral advancement at
+which I stand. Were I weaker and blinder, it might be happiness. Were I
+stronger, it might be endured hopefully. But, being what I find myself,
+methinks I am of all mortals the most fit to die."
+
+"You are fit for heaven without tasting death!" replied her husband.
+"But why do we speak of dying? The draught cannot fail. Behold its
+effect upon this plant."
+
+On the window-seat there stood a geranium diseased with yellow
+blotches, which had overspread all its leaves. Aylmer poured a small
+quantity of the liquid upon the soil in which it grew. In a little
+time, when the roots of the plant had taken up the moisture, the
+unsightly blotches began to be extinguished in a living verdure.
+
+"There needed no proof," said Georgiana, quietly. "Give me the goblet.
+I joyfully stake all upon your word."
+
+"Drink, then, thou lofty creature!" exclaimed Aylmer, with fervid
+admiration. "There is no taint of imperfection on thy spirit. Thy
+sensible frame, too, shall soon be all perfect."
+
+She quaffed the liquid and returned the goblet to his hand.
+
+"It is grateful," said she, with a placid smile. "Methinks it is like
+water from a heavenly fountain; for it contains I know not what of
+unobtrusive fragrance and deliciousness. It allays a feverish thirst
+that had parched me for many days. Now, dearest, let me sleep. My
+earthly senses are closing over my spirit like the leaves around the
+heart of a rose at sunset."
+
+She spoke the last words with a gentle reluctance, as if it required
+almost more energy than she could command to pronounce the faint and
+lingering syllables. Scarcely had they loitered through her lips ere
+she was lost in slumber. Aylmer sat by her side, watching her aspect
+with the emotions proper to a man, the whole value of whose existence
+was involved in the process now to be tested. Mingled with this mood,
+however, was the philosophic investigation characteristic of the man of
+science. Not the minutest symptom escaped him. A heightened flush of
+the cheek, a slight irregularity of breath, a quiver of the eyelid, a
+hardly perceptible tremor through the frame,—such were the details
+which, as the moments passed, he wrote down, in his folio volume.
+Intense thought had set its stamp upon every previous page of that
+volume; but the thoughts of years were all concentrated upon the last.
+
+While thus employed, he failed not to gaze often at the fatal hand, and
+not without a shudder. Yet once, by a strange and unaccountable
+impulse, he pressed it with his lips. His spirit recoiled, however, in
+the very act; and Georgiana, out of the midst of her deep sleep, moved
+uneasily, and murmured, as if in remonstrance. Again Aylmer resumed,
+his watch. Nor was it without avail. The crimson hand, which at first
+had been strongly visible upon the marble paleness of Georgiana's
+cheek, now grew more faintly outlined. She remained not less pale than
+ever; but the birthmark, with every breath that came and went, lost
+somewhat of its former distinctness. Its presence had been awful; its
+departure was more awful still. Watch the stain of the rainbow fading
+out of the sky, and you will know how that mysterious symbol passed
+away.
+
+"By Heaven! it is well-nigh gone!" said Aylmer to himself, in almost
+irrepressible ecstasy. "I can scarcely trace it now. Success! success!
+And now it is like the faintest rose color. The lightest flush of blood
+across her cheek would overcome it. But she is so pale!"
+
+He drew aside the window-curtain and suffered the light of natural day
+to fall into the room and rest upon her cheek. At the same time he
+heard a gross, hoarse chuckle, which he had long known as his servant
+Aminadab's expression of delight.
+
+"Ah, clod! ah, earthly mass!" cried Aylmer, laughing in a sort of
+frenzy, "you have served me well! Matter and spirit—earth and
+heaven—have both done their part in this! Laugh, thing of the senses!
+You have earned the right to laugh."
+
+These exclamations broke Georgiana's sleep. She slowly unclosed her
+eyes and gazed into the mirror which her husband had arranged for that
+purpose. A faint smile flitted over her lips when she recognized how
+barely perceptible was now that crimson hand which had once blazed
+forth with such disastrous brilliancy as to scare away all their
+happiness. But then her eyes sought Aylmer's face with a trouble and
+anxiety that he could by no means account for.
+
+"My poor Aylmer!" murmured she.
+
+"Poor? Nay, richest, happiest, most favored!" exclaimed he. "My
+peerless bride, it is successful! You are perfect!"
+
+"My poor Aylmer," she repeated, with a more than human tenderness, "you
+have aimed loftily; you have done nobly. Do not repent that, with so
+high and pure a feeling, you have rejected the best the earth could
+offer. Aylmer, dearest Aylmer, I am dying!"
+
+Alas! it was too true! The fatal hand had grappled with the mystery of
+life, and was the bond by which an angelic spirit kept itself in union
+with a mortal frame. As the last crimson tint of the birthmark—that
+sole token of human imperfection—faded from her cheek, the parting
+breath of the now perfect woman passed into the atmosphere, and her
+soul, lingering a moment, near her husband, took its heavenward flight.
+Then a hoarse, chuckling laugh was heard again! Thus ever does the
+gross fatality of earth exult in its invariable triumph over the
+immortal essence which, in this dim sphere of half-development, demands
+the completeness of a higher state. Yet, had Aylmer reached a
+profounder wisdom, he need not thus have flung away the happiness which
+would have woven his mortal life of the selfsame texture with the
+celestial. The momentary circumstance was too strong for him; he failed
+to look beyond the shadowy scope of time, and, living once for all in
+eternity, to find the perfect future in the present.
+
+NOTES
+
+[1] Published in the March, 1843, number of _The Pioneer_, edited by J.
+R. Lowell. Republished in _Mosses from an Old Manse_ in 1846.
+
+[2] 154:29 "Eve," of Powers. A noted American sculptor (1805-1873).
+"Eve," "The Fisher Boy," and "America" are some of his chief works.
+
+[3] 168:28 Pygmalion. A sculptor and king of Cyprus.
+
+[4] 181:16 recondite. Abstruse or secret.
+
+[5] 168:27 corrosive. Destructive of tissue.
+
+[6] 184:12 vitae. Of life.
+
+[7] 166:3 infusion. The act of pouring in.
+
+[8] 167:1 Albertus Magnus. A famous scholastic philosopher and member
+of the Dominican order (1193-1280).
+
+[9] 167:1 Cornelius Agrippa. A German philosopher and student of
+alchemy and magic (1486-1535).
+
+[10] 167:1 Paracelsus. A German-Swiss physician, and alchemist
+(1492-1541).
+
+[11] 167:10 Royal Society. An association for the advancement of
+science, founded in London a little before 1660.
+
+BIOGRAPHY
+
+Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in Salem, Massachusetts, July 4, 1804. His
+ancestors were prominent in the affairs of the colony: John Hawthorne
+was one of the judges who tried the witches in 1620; and another John
+Hawthorne was a member of the dignified school committee of Salem in
+1796. Hawthorne's father, a ship captain, died in a foreign land when
+his son was only four years old; his mother lived for forty years after
+the death of her husband the life of a recluse in her own house. The
+family's star was in the decline and the people of Salem looked on
+Nathaniel as a lazy and very queer boy. He grew up in a unique
+solitude. During these years of seclusion Hawthorne acquired the habit
+of keeping silent on all occasions, and reading a few books frequently
+and thoroughly. The _Newgate Calendar_ must have supplied him with many
+subtle suggestions for his later writings on sin and crime, for in
+almost all of his productions his imagination is tinged with, this old
+Puritanic philosophy and theology.
+
+He entered Bowdoin College in 1821 and graduated from this institution
+in 1825. He had as classmates Longfellow, and Franklin Pierce, who
+afterward became president of the United States. After his graduation
+Hawthorne returned to Salem, where he lived with his mother and sisters
+in almost absolute seclusion for fourteen years. During this period he
+wrote daily, and spent his nights in burning what he had written in the
+daytime.
+
+He was clerk of the Boston Custom House from 1839 to 1841, when the
+Whig party removed him for being ultra-partisan in behalf of the
+Democrats. At this time Hawthorne wrote: "As to the Salem people, I
+really thought I had been exceedingly good-natured in my treatment of
+them. They certainly do not deserve good usage at my hands, after
+permitting me to be deliberately lied down, not merely once, but at two
+separate attacks, and on two false indictments, without hardly a voice
+being raised in my behalf." He married Sophia Peabody, July 9, 1842.
+From 1842 until 1846 they lived in Concord in the house formerly
+occupied by Emerson. These were the happiest years of his life. In 1846
+he returned to Salem as surveyor in the Salem Custom House. He retired
+from this office in 1850 and lived in Lenox, Massachusetts, for two
+years. In 1852 he settled in Concord. President Pierce appointed him
+consul at Liverpool in 1853, and he served in this position until 1857.
+
+After leaving Liverpool he travelled three years in England and on the
+continent. He returned to Concord in 1860. He died in the White
+Mountains, May 18, 1864. Although a silent man and a seeker of solitude
+during his life, few writers have ever experienced such wide publicity
+of their inmost lives as has Hawthorne since his death. The publication
+of his _Notes_ has opened his desk and work-shop to every one, and has
+revealed to us a magnanimous, sympathetic, and pure man, who realized
+his responsibilities as a writer and improved all his literary
+opportunities.
+
+BIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES
+
+_History of American Literature_, Moses Coit Tyler.
+
+_Introduction to American Literature_, Henry S. Pancoast.
+
+_Studies in American Literature_, Charles Noble.
+
+_Introduction to American Literature_, Brander Matthews.
+
+"Gloom and Cheer in Hawthorne," _Critic_, 45: 28-36.
+
+"Hawthorne and his Circle," _Nation_, 77: 410-411.
+
+"Hawthorne as seen by his Publisher," _Critic_, 45: 51-55.
+
+"Hawthorne from an English Point of View." _Critic_, 45: 60-66.
+
+"Hawthorne's Last Years," _Critic_, 45: 67-71.
+
+"Life of Hawthorne," _Atlantic Monthly_, 90: 563-567,
+
+CRITICISMS
+
+Many influences in Hawthorne's environment served to condition and mold
+him as a writer. Salem had reached its highest prosperity in all lines
+and was just beginning its retrogression in Hawthorne's time; the
+primeval forests of Maine produced a subtle and lasting influence on
+him during his sojourn in Maine for his health; transcendentalism was
+the ruling thought at the time when Hawthorne was in his most plastic
+and solitary age; his interest in _Brook Farm_ brought him in contact
+with all the good and bad points of that social movement; his life in
+the _Old Manse_ in Concord and in the Berkshire Hills contributed
+largely to the deepening of his convictions and sympathies; and over
+all, like a sombre cloud, hung his ancestral Puritanic training which
+penetrated and suffused all his writings. He is the most native and the
+least imitative of all our fiction writers.
+
+Hawthorne did not write on the common subjects and facts of his day,
+but chose to have his readers go with him, away from prosaic life, out
+into a world of mysteries where we may revel in all kinds of imaginary
+sports. By this process he succeeded in producing poetic effects from
+the most unpromising materials. His writings are fanciful. He enjoyed
+subjects that deal with the occult, such as mesmerism, hypnotism, and
+subtle suggestions. He harked back to the rigid beliefs and laws of the
+Puritans, but he and his subjects are spiritually advanced far above
+the crude, ponderous, and highly theological tenets of his forefathers.
+
+Hawthorne is very provincial. He travelled little until he was fifty
+years old. He naturally loved the antique and poetic countries, but he
+always qualified his admiration of these foreign lands by praising
+something in his own New England. He conceded that there was little or
+nothing in this prosperous and crude country to inspire a writer to
+produce poetry, but his patriotism was so strong that he could never
+free himself wholly from its provincial effects. All his works were
+produced in the stress created by this pull of opposing forces—his high
+poetic ideals and his love of country.
+
+In form he tends toward the polish of a classicist; in quality and
+freedom of thought he is very responsive to the mysteries of
+romanticism. He is introspective in his thinking and symbolical in his
+writing. Naturally he thinks abstractly, but is compelled to construct
+concrete methods of presenting his ideas. He never describes a strong
+emotion in detail, but delights in using suggestions and sidelights.
+His pure and refined manhood, his delicate fancy and deep interest in
+moral and religious questions, his conscience in its most artistic
+form, all are presented to the reader in the choicest garb of well
+chosen words and attuned to a subtle rhythm that adds beauty and
+attractiveness to his style.
+
+GENERAL REFERENCES
+
+_Hours in a Library_, Leslie Stephen.
+
+_A Literary History of America_, Barrett Wendell.
+
+_American Literature_, William P. Trent.
+
+_Makers of English Fiction_, W.J. Dawson.
+
+_Leading American Novelists_, J. Erskine.
+
+_Studies and Appreciations_, L.E. Gates.
+
+"An Estimate," _Scribner's Magazine_, 43: 69-84.
+
+"Unknown Quantity in Hawthorne's Personality," _Current Literature_,
+42: 517-518.
+
+COLLATERAL READINGS
+
+_Biographical Stories for Children_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_Mosses from an Old Manse_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_The Wonder Boot_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_The Blithedale Romance_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_Tanglewood Tales_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_Lady Eleanore's Mantle_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_The Great Stone Face_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_The Prophetic Pictures_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_The Necklace_, Guy de Maupassant.
+
+_A Solitary_, Mary Wilkins Freeman.
+
+_The Lady or the Tiger_, Frank R. Stockton.
+
+_The Strange Ride_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+_Rikki-Tikki-Tavi_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+_They_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+_The Twelfth Guest_, Mary Wilkins Freeman.
+
+_The Shadows on the Wall_, Mary Wilkins Freeman.
+
+
+
+
+ETHAN BRAND[1]
+
+
+A Chapter From An Abortive Romance
+
+
+_By Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)_
+
+
+Bartram the lime-burner, a rough, heavy-looking man, begrimed with
+charcoal, sat watching his kiln, at nightfall, while his little son
+played at building houses with the scattered fragments of marble, when,
+on the hillside below them, they heard a roar of laughter, not
+mirthful, but slow, and even solemn, like a wind shaking the boughs of
+the forest.
+
+"Father, what is that?" asked the little boy, leaving his play, and
+pressing betwixt his father's knees.
+
+"O, some drunken man, I suppose," answered the lime-burner; "some merry
+fellow from the bar-room in the village, who dared not laugh loud
+enough within doors lest he should blow the roof of the house off. So
+here he is, shaking his jolly sides at the foot of Graylock."
+
+"But, father," said the child, more sensitive than the obtuse,
+middle-aged clown, "he does not laugh like a man that is glad. So the
+noise frightens me!"
+
+"Don't be a fool, child!" cried his father, gruffly. "You will never
+make a man, I do believe; there is too much of your mother in you. I
+have known the rustling of a leaf startle you. Hark! Here comes the
+merry fellow now. You shall see that there is no harm in him."
+
+Bartram and his little son, while they were talking thus, sat watching
+the same lime-kiln that had been the scene of Ethan Brand's solitary
+and meditative life, before he began his search for the Unpardonable
+Sin. Many years, as we have seen, had now elapsed, since that
+portentous night when the IDEA was first developed. The kiln, however,
+on the mountain-side stood unimpaired, and was in nothing changed since
+he had thrown his dark thoughts into the intense glow of its furnace,
+and melted them, as it were, into the one thought that took possession
+of his life. It was a rude, round, towerlike structure, about twenty
+feet high, heavily built of rough stones, and with a hillock of earth
+heaped about the larger part of its circumference; so that the blocks
+and fragments of marble might be drawn by cart-loads, and thrown in at
+the top. There was an opening at the bottom of the tower, like an
+oven-mouth, but large enough to admit a man in a stooping posture, and
+provided with a massive iron door. With the smoke and jets of flame
+issuing from the chinks and crevices of this door, which seemed to give
+admittance into the hillside, it resembled nothing so much as the
+private entrance to the infernal regions, which the shepherds of the
+Delectable Mountains[2] were accustomed to show to pilgrims.
+
+There are many such lime-kilns in that tract of country, for the
+purpose of burning the white marble which composes a large part of the
+substance of the hills. Some of them, built years ago, and long
+deserted, with weeds growing in the vacant round of the interior, which
+is open to the sky, and grass and wild flowers rooting themselves into
+the chinks of the stones, look already like relics of antiquity, and
+may yet be overspread with the lichens of centuries to come. Others,
+where the lime-burner still feeds his daily and night-long fire, afford
+points of interest to the wanderer among the hills, who seats himself
+on a log of wood or a fragment of marble, to hold a chat with the
+solitary man. It is a lonesome, and, when the character is inclined to
+thought, may be an intensely thoughtful, occupation; as it proved in
+the case of Ethan Brand, who had mused to such strange purpose, in days
+gone by, while the fire in this very kiln was burning.
+
+The man who now watched the fire was of a different order, and troubled
+himself with no thoughts save the very few that were requisite to his
+business. At frequent intervals he flung back the clashing weight of
+the iron door, and, turning his face from the insufferable glare,
+thrust in huge logs of oak, or stirred the immense brands with a long
+pole. Within the furnace were seen the curling and riotous flames, and
+the burning marble, almost molten with the intensity of heat; while
+without, the reflection of the fire quivered on the dark intricacy of
+the surrounding forest, and showed in the foreground a bright and ruddy
+little picture of the hut, the spring beside its door, the athletic and
+coal-begrimed figure of the lime-burner, and the half-frightened child,
+shrinking into the protection of his father's shadow. And when again
+the iron door was closed, then reappeared the tender light of the
+half-full moon, which vainly strove to trace out the indistinct shapes
+of the neighboring mountains; and, in the upper sky, there was a
+flitting congregation of clouds, still faintly tinged with the rosy
+sunset, though thus far down into the valley the sunshine had vanished
+long and long ago.
+
+The little boy now crept still closer to his father, as footsteps were
+heard ascending the hillside, and a human form thrust aside the bushes
+that clustered beneath the trees.
+
+"Halloo! who is it?" cried the lime-burner, vexed at his son's
+timidity, yet half infected by it, "Come forward, and show yourself,
+like a man, or I'll fling this chunk of marble at your head !"
+
+"You offer me a rough welcome," said a gloomy voice, as the unknown man
+drew nigh. "Yet I neither claim nor desire a kinder one, even at my own
+fireside."
+
+To obtain a distincter view, Bartram threw open the iron door of the
+kiln, whence immediately issued a gush of fierce light, that smote full
+upon the stranger's face and figure. To a careless eye there appeared
+nothing very remarkable in his aspect, which was that of a man in a
+coarse, brown, country-made suit of clothes, tall and thin, with the
+staff and heavy shoes of a wayfarer. As he advanced, he fixed his
+eyes—which were very bright—intently upon the brightness of the
+furnace, as if he beheld, or expected to behold, some object worthy of
+note within it.
+
+"Good evening, stranger," said the lime-burner; "whence come you, so
+late in the day?"
+
+"I come from my search," answered the wayfarer; "for, at last, it is
+finished."
+
+"Drunk!—or crazy!" muttered Bartram to himself. "I shall have trouble
+with the fellow. The sooner I drive him away, the better."
+
+The little boy, all in a tremble, whispered to his father, and begged
+him to shut the door of the kiln, so that there might not be so much
+light; for that there was something in the man's face which he was
+afraid to look at, yet could not look away from. And, indeed, even the
+lime-burner's dull and torpid sense began to be impressed by an
+indescribable something in that thin, rugged, thoughtful visage, with
+the grizzled hair hanging wildly about it, and those deeply sunken
+eyes, which gleamed like fires within the entrance of a mysterious
+cavern. But, as he closed the door, the stranger turned towards him,
+and spoke in a quiet, familiar way, that made Bartram feel as if he
+were a sane and sensible man, after all.
+
+"Your task draws to an end, I see," said he. "This marble has already
+been burning three days. A few hours more will convert the stone to
+lime."
+
+"Why, who are you?" exclaimed the lime-burner. "You seem as well
+acquainted with my business as I am myself."
+
+"And well I may be," said the stranger; "for I followed the same craft
+many a long year, and here, too, on this very spot. But you are a
+newcomer in these parts. Did you never hear of Ethan Brand?"
+
+"The man that went in search of the Unpardonable Sin?" asked Bartram,
+with a laugh.
+
+"The same," answered the stranger. "He has found what he sought, and
+therefore he comes back again,"
+
+"What! then you are Ethan Brand himself?" cried the lime-burner, in
+amazement. "I am a newcomer here, as you say, and they call it eighteen
+years since you left the foot of Graylock, But, I can tell you, the
+good folks still talk about Ethan Brand, in the village yonder, and
+what a strange errand took him away from his lime-kiln. Well and so you
+have found the Unpardonable Sin?"
+
+"Even so!" said the stranger, calmly.
+
+"If the 'question is a fair one." proceeded Bartrarn, "where might it
+be?"
+
+Ethan Brand laid his finger on his own heart.'
+
+"Here!" replied he.
+
+And then, without mirth in his countenance, but as if moved by an
+involuntary recognition of the infinite absurdity of seeking throughout
+the world for what was the closest of all things to himself, and
+looking into every heart, save his own, for what was hidden in no other
+breast, he broke into a laugh of scorn. It was the same slow, heavy
+laugh that had almost appalled the lime-burner when it heralded the
+wayfarer's approach.
+
+The solitary mountain side was made dismal by it. Laughter, when out of
+place, mistimed, or bursting forth from a disordered state of feeling,
+may be the most terrible modulation of the human voice. The laughter of
+one asleep, even if it be a little child,—the madman's laugh,—the wild,
+screaming laugh of a born idiot,—are sounds that we sometimes tremble
+to hear, and would always willingly forget. Poets have imagined no
+utterance of fiends Or hobgoblins so fearfully appropriate as a laugh.
+And even the obtuse lime-burner felt his nerves shaken, as this strange
+man looked inward at his own heart, and burst into laughter that rolled
+away into the night, and was indistinctly reverberated among the hills.
+
+"Joe," said he to his little son, "scamper down to the tavern in the
+village, and tell the jolly fellows there that Ethan Brand has come
+back, and that he has found the Unpardonable Sin!"
+
+The boy darted away on his errand, to which Ethan Brand made no
+objection, nor seemed hardly to notice it. He sat on a log of wood,
+looking steadfastly at the iron door of the kiln. When the child was
+out of sight, and his swift and light footsteps ceased to be heard
+treading first on the fallen leaves and then on the rocky mountain
+path, the lime-burner began to regret his departure. He felt that the
+little fellow's presence had been a barrier between his guest and
+himself, and that he must now deal, heart to heart, with a man who, on
+his own confession, had committed the one only crime for which Heaven
+could afford no mercy. That crime, in its indistinct blackness, seemed
+to overshadow him. The lime-burner's own sins rose up within him, and
+made his memory riotous with a throng of evil shapes that asserted
+their kindred with the Master Sin, whatever it might be, which it was
+within the scope of man's corrupted nature to conceive and cherish.
+They were all of one family; they went to and fro between his breast
+and Ethan Brand's, and carried dark greetings from one to the other.
+
+Then Bartram remembered the stories which had grown traditionary in
+reference to this strange man, who had come upon him like a shadow of
+the night, and was making himself at home in his old place, after so
+long absence that the dead people, dead and buried for years, would
+have had more right to be at home, in any familiar spot, than he. Ethan
+Brand, it was said, had conversed with Satan himself in the lurid blaze
+of this very kiln. The legend had been matter of mirth heretofore, but
+looked grisly now. According to this tale, before Ethan Brand departed
+on his search, he had been accustomed to evoke a fiend from the hot
+furnace of the lime-kiln, night after night, in order to confer with
+him about the Unpardonable Sin; the man and the fiend each laboring to
+frame the image of some mode of guilt which could neither be atoned for
+nor forgiven. And, with the first gleam of light upon the mountain-top,
+the fiend crept in at the iron door, there to abide the intensest
+element of fire, until again summoned forth to share in the dreadful
+task of extending man's possible guilt beyond the scope of Heaven's
+else infinite mercy.
+
+While the lime-burner was struggling with the horror of these thoughts,
+Ethan Brand rose from the log, and flung open the door of the kiln. The
+action was in such accordance with the idea in Bartram's mind, that he
+almost expected to see the Evil One issue forth, red-hot from the
+raging furnace.
+
+"Hold! hold!" cried he, with a tremulous attempt to laugh; for he was
+ashamed of his fears, although they overmastered him. "Don't, for
+mercy's sake, bring out your Devil now!"
+
+"Man!" sternly replied Ethan Brand, "what need have I of the Devil? I
+have left him behind me, on my track. It is with such halfway sinners
+as you that he busies himself. Fear not, because I open the door. I do
+but act by old custom, and am going to trim your fire, like a
+lime-burner, as I was once."
+
+He stirred the vast coals, thrust in more wood, and bent forward to
+gaze into the hollow prison-house of the fire, regardless of the fierce
+glow that reddened upon his face. The lime-burner sat watching him, and
+half suspected his strange guest of a purpose, if not to evoke a fiend,
+at least to plunge bodily into the flames, and thus vanish from the
+sight of man. Ethan Brand, however, drew quietly back, and closed the
+door of the kiln.
+
+"I have looked," said he, "into many a human heart that was seven times
+hotter with sinful passions than yonder furnace is with fire. But I
+found not there what I sought. No, not the Unpardonable Sin!"
+
+"What is the Unpardonable Sin?" asked the lime-burner; and then he
+shrank farther from his companion, trembling lest his question should
+be answered.
+
+"It is a sin that grew within my own breast," replied Ethan Brand,
+standing erect, with a pride that distinguishes all enthusiasts of his
+stamp. "A sin that grew nowhere else! The sin of an intellect that
+triumphed over the sense of brotherhood with man and reverence for God,
+and sacrificed everything to its own mighty claims! the only sin that
+deserves a recompense of immortal agony! Freely, were it to do again,
+would I incur the guilt. Unshrinkingly I accept the retribution!"
+
+"The man's head is turned," muttered the lime-burner to himself. "He
+may be a sinner, like the rest of us,—nothing more likely,—but, I'll be
+sworn, he is a madman too."
+
+Nevertheless, he felt uncomfortable at his situation, alone with Ethan
+Brand on the wild mountain side, and was right glad to hear the rough
+murmur of tongues, and the footsteps of what seemed a pretty numerous
+party, stumbling over the stones and rustling through the under-brush.
+Soon appeared the whole lazy regiment that was wont to infest the
+village tavern, comprehending three or four individuals who had drunk
+flip beside the bar-room fire through all the winters, and smoked their
+pipes beneath the stoop through all the summers, since Ethan Brand's
+departure. Laughing boisterously, and mingling all their voices
+together in unceremonious talk, they now burst into the moonshine and
+narrow streaks of firelight that illuminated the open space before the
+lime-kiln. Bartram set the door ajar again, flooding the spot with
+light, that the whole company might get a fair view of Ethan Brand, and
+he of them.
+
+There, among other old acquaintances, was a once ubiquitous[3] man, now
+almost extinct, but whom we were formerly sure to encounter at the
+hotel of every thriving village throughout the country. It was the
+stage-agent. The present specimen of the genus was a wilted and
+smoke-dried man, wrinkled and red-nosed, in a smartly cut, brown,
+bob-tailed coat, with brass buttons, who, for a length of time unknown,
+had kept his desk and corner in the bar-room, and was still puffing
+what seemed to be the same cigar that he had lighted twenty years
+before. He had great fame as a dry joker, though, perhaps, less on
+account of any intrinsic humor than from a certain flavor of brandy
+toddy and tobacco smoke, which impregnated all his ideas and
+expressions, as well as his person. Another well-remembered though
+strangely altered face was that of Lawyer Giles, as people still called
+him in courtesy; an elderly ragamuffin, in his soiled shirt-sleeves and
+tow-cloth trousers. This poor fellow had been an attorney, in what he
+called his better days, a sharp practitioner, and in great vogue among
+the village litigants; but flip, and sling, and toddy, and cocktails,
+imbibed at all hours, morning, noon, and night, had caused him to slide
+from intellectual to various kinds and degrees of bodily labor, till,
+at last, to adopt his own phrase, he slid into a soap vat. In other
+words, Giles was now a soap boiler, in a small way. He had come to be
+but the fragment of a human being, a part of one foot having been
+chopped off by an axe, and an entire hand torn away by the devilish
+grip of a steam engine. Yet, though the corporeal hand was gone, a
+spiritual member remained; for, stretching forth the stump, Giles
+steadfastly averred that he felt an invisible thumb and fingers with as
+vivid a sensation as before the real ones were amputated. A maimed and
+miserable wretch he was; but one, nevertheless, whom the world could
+not trample on, and had no right to scorn, either in this or any
+previous stage of his misfortunes, since he had still kept up the
+courage and spirit of a man, asked nothing in charity, and with his one
+hand—and that the left one—fought a stern battle against want and
+hostile circumstances.
+
+Among the throng, too, came another personage, who, with certain points
+of similarity to Lawyer Giles, had many more of difference. It was the
+village doctor; a man of some fifty years, whom, at an earlier period
+of his life, we introduced as paying a professional visit to Ethan
+Brand during the latter's supposed insanity. He was now a
+purple-visaged, rude, and brutal, yet half-gentlemanly figure, with
+something wild, ruined, and desperate in his talk, and in all the
+details of his gesture and manners. Brandy possessed this man like an
+evil spirit, and made him as surly and savage as a wild beast, and as
+miserable as a lost soul; but there was supposed to be in him such
+wonderful skill, such native gifts of healing, beyond any which medical
+science could impart, that society caught hold of him, and would not
+let him sink out of its reach. So, swaying to and fro upon his horse,
+and grumbling thick accents at the bedside, he visited all the sick
+chambers for miles about among the mountain towns, and sometimes raised
+a dying man, as it were, by miracle, or quite as often, no doubt, sent
+his patient to a grave that was dug many a year too soon. The doctor
+had an everlasting pipe in his mouth, and, as somebody said, in
+allusion to his habit of swearing, it was always alight with hell-fire.
+
+These three worthies pressed forward, and greeted Ethan Brand each
+after his own fashion, earnestly inviting him to partake of the
+contents of a certain black bottle, in which, as they averred, he would
+find something far better worth seeking for than the Unpardonable Sin.
+No mind, which has wrought itself by intense and solitary meditation
+into a high state of enthusiasm, can endure the kind of contact with
+low and vulgar modes of thought and feeling to which Ethan Brand was
+now subjected. It made him doubt—and, strange to say, it was a painful
+doubt,—whether he had indeed found the Unpardonable Sin and found it
+within himself. The whole question on which he had exhausted life, and
+more than life, looked like a delusion.
+
+"Leave me," he said bitterly, "ye brute beasts, that have made
+yourselves so, shrivelling up your souls with fiery liquors! I have
+done with you. Years and years ago, I groped into your hearts, and
+found nothing there for my purpose. Get ye gone!"
+
+"Why, you uncivil scoundrel," cried the fierce doctor, "is that the way
+you respond to the kindness of your best friends? Then let me tell you
+the truth. You have no more found the Unpardonable Sin than yonder boy
+Joe has. You are but a crazy fellow,—I told you so twenty years
+ago,—neither better nor worse than a crazy fellow, and a fit companion
+of old Humphrey, here!"
+
+He pointed to an old man, shabbily dressed, with long white hair, thin
+visage, and unsteady eyes. For some years past this aged person had
+been wandering about among the hills, inquiring of all travellers whom
+he met for his daughter. The girl, it seemed, had gone off with a
+company of circus performers; and occasionally tidings of her came to
+the village, and fine stories were told of her glittering appearance as
+she rode on horseback in the ring, or performed marvellous feats on the
+tight rope.
+
+The white-haired father now approached Ethan Brand, and gazed
+unsteadily into his face.
+
+"They tell me you have been all over the earth," said he, wringing his
+hands with earnestness. "You must have seen my daughter, for she makes
+a grand figure in the world, and everybody goes to see her. Did she
+send any word to her old father, or say when she was coming back?"
+
+Ethan Brand's eye quailed beneath the old man's. That daughter, from
+whom he so earnestly desired a word of greeting, was the Esther of our
+tale, the very girl whom, with such cold and remorseless purpose, Ethan
+Brand had made the subject of a psychological experiment, and wasted,
+absorbed, and perhaps annihilated her soul, in the process.
+
+"Yes," murmured he, turning away from the hoary wanderer; "it is no
+delusion. There is an Unpardonable Sin!"
+
+While these things were passing, a merry scene was going forward in the
+area of cheerful light, beside the spring and before the door of the
+hut. A number of the youth of the village, young men and girls, had
+hurried up the hillside, impelled by curiosity to see Ethan Brand, the
+hero of so many a legend familiar to their childhood. Finding nothing,
+however, very remarkable in his aspect,—nothing but a sunburnt
+wayfarer, in plain garb and dusty shoes, who sat looking into the fire,
+as if he fancied pictures among the coals,—these young people speedily
+grew tired of observing him. As it happened, there was other amusement
+at hand. An old German Jew, travelling with a diorama[4] on his back,
+was passing down, the mountain road towards the village just as the
+party turned aside from it, and, in hopes of eking out the profits of
+the day, the showman had kept them company to the lime-kiln.
+
+"Come, old Dutchman," cried one of the young men, "let us see your
+pictures, if you can swear they are worth looking at!"
+
+"O yes, Captain," answered the Jew,—whether as a matter of courtesy or
+craft, he styled everybody Captain,—"I shall show you, indeed, some
+very superb pictures!"
+
+So, placing his box in a proper position, he invited the young men and
+girls to look through the glass orifices of the machine, and proceeded
+to exhibit a series of the most outrageous scratchings and daubings, as
+specimens of the fine arts, that ever an itinerant showman had the face
+to impose upon his circle of spectators. The pictures were worn out,
+moreover, tattered, full of cracks and wrinkles, dingy with tobacco
+smoke, and otherwise in a most pitiable condition. Some purported to be
+cities, public edifices, and ruined castles in Europe; others
+represented Napoleon's battles and Nelson's sea fights; and in the
+midst of these would be seen a gigantic, brown, hairy hand,—which might
+have been mistaken for the Hand of Destiny, though, in truth, it was
+only the showman's,—pointing its forefinger to various scenes of the
+conflict, while its owner gave historical illustrations. When, with
+much merriment at its abominable deficiency of merit, the exhibition
+was concluded, the German bade little Joe put his head into the box.
+Viewed through the magnifying glasses, the boy's round, rosy visage
+assumed the strangest imaginable aspect of an immense Titanic[5] child,
+the mouth grinning broadly, and the eyes and every other feature
+overflowing with fun at the joke. Suddenly, however, that merry face
+turned pale, and its expression changed to horror, for this easily
+impressed and excitable child had become sensible that the eye of Ethan
+Brand was fixed upon him through the glass.
+
+"You make the little man to be afraid. Captain." said the German Jew,
+turning up the dark and strong outline of his visage, from his stooping
+posture, "But look again, and, by chance, I shall cause you to see
+somewhat that is very fine, upon my word!"
+
+Ethan Brand gazed into the box for an instant, and then starting back,
+looked fixedly at the German. What had he seen? Nothing, apparently;
+for a curious youth, who had peeped in almost at the same moment,
+beheld only a vacant space of canvas.
+
+"I remember you now," muttered Ethan Brand to the showman.
+
+"Ah, Captain," whispered the Jew of Nuremburg, with a dark smile, "I
+find it to be a heavy matter in my show-box,—this Unpardonable Sin! By
+my faith, Captain, it has wearied my shoulders, this long day, to carry
+it over the mountain."
+
+"Peace," answered Ethan Brand, sternly, "or get thee into the furnace
+yonder!"
+
+The Jew's exhibition had scarcely concluded, when a great, elderly
+dog—who seemed to be his own master, as no person in the company laid
+claim to him—saw fit to render himself the object of public notice.
+Hitherto, he had shown himself a very quiet, well-disposed old dog,
+going round from one to another, and, by way of being sociable,
+offering his rough head to be patted by any kindly hand that would take
+so much trouble. But now, all of a sudden, this grave and venerable
+quadruped, of his own mere motion, and without the slightest suggestion
+from anybody else, began to run round after his tail, which, to
+heighten the absurdity of the proceeding, was a great deal shorter than
+it should have been. Never was seen such headlong eagerness in pursuit
+of an object that could not possibly be attained; never was heard such
+a tremendous outbreak of growling, snarling, barking, and snapping,—as
+if one end of the ridiculous brute's body were at deadly and most
+unforgivable enmity with the other. Faster and faster, round about went
+the cur; and faster and still faster fled the unapproachable brevity of
+his tail; and louder and fiercer grew his yells of rage and animosity;
+until, utterly exhausted, and as far from the goal as ever, the foolish
+old dog ceased his performance as suddenly as he had begun it. The next
+moment he was as mild, quiet, sensible, and respectable in his
+deportment, as when he first scraped acquaintance with the company.
+
+As may be supposed, the exhibition was greeted with universal laughter,
+clapping of hands, and shouts of encore, to which the canine performer
+responded by wagging all that there was to wag of his tail, but
+appeared totally unable to repeat his very successful effort to amuse
+the spectators.
+
+Meanwhile, Ethan Brand had resumed his seat upon the log, and moved, it
+might be, by a perception of some remote analogy between his own case
+and that of this self-pursuing cur, he broke into the awful laugh,
+which, more than any other token, expressed the condition of his inward
+being. From that moment, the merriment of the party was at an end; they
+stood aghast, dreading lest the inauspicious sound should be
+reverberated around the horizon, and that mountain would thunder it to
+mountain, and so the horror be prolonged upon their ears. Then,
+whispering one to another that it was late,—that the moon was almost
+down,—that the August night was growing chill,—they hurried homewards,
+leaving the lime-burner and little Joe to deal as they might with their
+unwelcome guest. Save for these three human beings, the open space on
+the hillside was a solitude, set in a vast gloom of forest. Beyond that
+darksome verge, the firelight glimmered on the stately trunks and
+almost black foliage of pines, intermixed with the lighter verdure of
+sapling oaks, maples, and poplars, while here and there lay the
+gigantic corpses of dead trees, decaying on the leaf-strewn soil. And
+it seemed to little Joe—a timorous and imaginative child—that the
+silent forest was holding, its breath, until some fearful thing should
+happen.
+
+Ethan Brand thrust more wood into the fire, and closed the door of the
+kiln; then looking over his shoulder at the lime-burner and his son, he
+bade, rather than advised, them to retire to rest.
+
+"For myself, I cannot sleep." said he, "I have matters that it concerns
+me to meditate upon. I will watch the fire, as I used to do in the old
+time."
+
+"And call the Devil out of the furnace to keep you company, I suppose,"
+muttered Bartram, who had been making intimate acquaintance with the
+black bottle above mentioned. "But watch, if you like, and call as many
+devils as you like! For my part, I shall be all the better for a
+snooze. Come, Joe!"
+
+As the boy followed his father into the hut, he looked back at the
+wayfarer, and the tears came into his eyes, for his tender spirit had
+an intuition of the bleak and terrible loneliness in which this man had
+enveloped himself.
+
+When they had gone, Ethan Brand sat listening to the crackling of the
+kindled wood, and looking at the little spirits of fire that issued
+through the chinks of the door. These trifles, however, once so
+familiar, had but the slightest hold of his attention, while deep
+within his mind he was reviewing the gradual but marvellous change that
+had been wrought upon him by the search to which he had devoted
+himself. He remembered how the night dew had fallen upon him,—how the
+dark forest had whispered to him,—how the stars had gleamed upon him,—a
+simple and loving man, watching his fire in the years gone by, and ever
+musing as it burned. He remembered with what tenderness, with what love
+and sympathy for mankind, and what pity for human guilt and woe, he had
+first begun to contemplate those ideas which afterwards became the
+inspiration of his life; with what reverence he had then looked into
+the heart of man, viewing it as a temple originally divine, and,
+however desecrated, still to be held sacred by a brother; with what
+awful fear he had deprecated the success of his pursuit, and prayed
+that the Unpardonable Sin might never be revealed to him. Then ensued
+that vast intellectual development, which, in its progress, disturbed
+the counterpoise between his mind and heart. The Idea that possessed
+his life had operated as a means of education; it had gone on
+cultivating his powers to the highest point of which they were
+susceptible; it had raised him from the level of an unlettered laborer
+to stand on a starlit eminence, whither the philosophers of the earth,
+laden with the lore of universities, might vainly strive to clamber
+after him. So much for the intellect! But where was the heart? That,
+indeed, had withered,—had contracted.—had hardened,—had perished! It
+had ceased to partake of the universal throb, He had lost his hold of
+the magnetic chain of humanity. He was no longer a brother-man, opening
+the chambers of the dungeons of our common nature by the key of holy
+sympathy, which gave him a right to share in all its secrets; he was
+now a cold observer, looking on mankind as the subject of his
+experiment, and, at length, converting man and woman to be his puppets,
+and pulling the wires that moved them to such degrees of crime as were
+demanded for his study.
+
+Thus Ethan Brand became a fiend. He began to be so from the moment that
+his moral nature had ceased to keep the pace of improvement with his
+intellect. And now, as his highest effort and inevitable
+development,—as the bright and gorgeous flower, and rich, delicious
+fruit of his life's labor,—he had produced the Unpardonable Sin!
+
+"What more have I to seek? what more to achieve?" said Ethan Brand to
+himself, "My task Is done, and well done!"
+
+Starting from the log with a certain alacrity in his gait and ascending
+the hillock of earth that was raised against the stone circumference of
+the lime-kiln, he thus reached the top of the structure. It was a space
+of perhaps ten feet across, from edge to edge, presenting a view of the
+upper surface of the immense mass of broken marble with which the kiln
+was heaped. All these innumerable blocks and fragments of marble were
+red-hot and vividly on fire, sending up great spouts of blue flame,
+which quivered aloft and danced madly, as within a magic circle, and
+sank and rose again, with continual and multitudinous activity. As the
+lonely man bent forward over this terrible body of fire, the blasting
+heat smote up against his person with a breath that, it might be
+supposed, would have scorched and shrivelled him up in a moment.
+
+Ethan Brand stood erect, and raised his arms on high. The blue flames
+played upon his face, and imparted the wild and ghastly light which
+alone could have suited its expression; it was that of a fiend on the
+verge of plunging into his gulf of intensest torment.
+
+"O Mother Earth," cried he, "who art no more my Mother, and into whose
+bosom this frame shall never be resolved! O mankind, whose brotherhood
+I have cast off, and trampled thy great heart beneath my feet! O stars
+of heaven, that shone on me of old, as if to light me onward and
+upward!—farewell all, and forever. Come, deadly element of
+Fire,—henceforth my familiar frame! Embrace me, as I do thee!"
+
+That night the sound of a fearful peal of laughter rolled heavily
+through the sleep of the lime-burner and his little son; dim shapes of
+horror and anguish haunted their dreams, and seemed still present in
+the rude hovel, when they opened their eyes to the daylight.
+
+"Up, boy, up!" cried the lime-burner, staring about him. "Thank Heaven,
+the night is gone, at last; and rather than pass such another, I would
+watch, my lime-kiln, wide awake, for a twelvemonth. This Ethan Brand,
+with his humbug of an Unpardonable Sin, has done me no such mighty
+favor, in taking my place!"
+
+He issued from the hut, followed by little Joe, who kept fast hold, of
+his father's hand. The early sunshine was already pouring its gold upon
+the mountain tops; and though the valleys were still in shadow, they
+smiled cheerfully in the promise of the bright day that was hastening
+onward. The village, completely shut in by hills, which swelled away
+gently about it, looked as if it had rested peacefully in the hollow of
+the great hand of Providence. Every dwelling was distinctly visible;
+the little spires of the two churches pointed upwards, and caught a
+fore-glimmering of brightness from the sun-gilt skies upon their gilded
+weathercocks. The tavern was astir, and the figure of the old,
+smoke-dried stage-agent, cigar in mouth, was seen beneath the stoop.
+Old Graylock was glorified with a golden cloud upon his head. Scattered
+likewise over the breasts of the surrounding mountains, there were
+heaps of hoary mist, in fantastic shapes, some of them far down into
+the valley, others high up towards the summits, and still others, of
+the same family of mist or cloud, hovering in the gold radiance of the
+upper atmosphere. Stepping from one to another of the clouds that
+rested on the hills, and thence to the loftier brotherhood that sailed
+in air, it seemed almost as if a mortal man might thus ascend into the
+heavenly regions. Earth was so mingled with sky that it was a day-dream
+to look at it.
+
+To supply that charm of the familiar and homely, which Nature so
+readily adopts into a scene like this, the stage-coach was rattling
+down the mountain road, and the driver sounded his horn, while echo
+caught up the notes, and intertwined them into a rich and varied and
+elaborate harmony, of which the original performer could lay claim to
+little share. The great hills played a concert among themselves, each
+contributing a strain of airy sweetness.
+
+Little Joe's face brightened at once.
+
+"Dear father," cried he, skipping cheerily to and fro, "that strange
+man is gone, and the sky and the mountains all seem glad of it!"
+
+"Yes," growled the lime-burner, with an oath, "but he has let the fire
+go down, and no thanks to him if five hundred bushels of lime are not
+spoiled. If I catch the fellow hereabouts again, I shall feel like
+tossing him into the furnace!"
+
+With his long pole in his hand, he ascended to the top of the kiln.
+After a moment's pause, he called to his son.
+
+"Come up here, Joe!" said he.
+
+So little Joe ran up the hillock, and stood by his father's side. The
+marble was all burnt into perfect, snow-white lime. But on its surface,
+in the midst of the circle,—snow-white too, and thoroughly converted
+into lime,—lay a human skeleton, in the attitude of a person who, after
+long toil, lies down to long repose. Within the ribs—strange to say—was
+the shape of a human heart.
+
+"Was the fellow's heart made of marble?" cried Bartram, in some
+perplexity at this phenomenon. "At any rate, it is burnt into what
+looks like special good lime; and, taking all the bones together, my
+kiln is half a bushel the richer for him."
+
+So saying, the rude lime-burner lifted his pole, and, letting it fall
+upon the skeleton, the relics of Ethan Brand were crumbled into
+fragments.
+
+NOTES
+
+[1] Written in 1848; published in Holden's _Dollar Magazine_ in 1851.
+
+[2] 182:26 Delectable Mountains. A range of mountains referred to in
+Bunyan's _Pilgrim's Progress_.
+
+[3] 190:22 ubiquitous. Being present everywhere.
+
+[4] 194:29 diorama. A series of paintings arranged for exhibition. See
+dictionary.
+
+[5] 195:30 Titanic. Characteristic of the Titans; therefore large.
+
+COLLATERAL READINGS
+
+_The Scarlet Letter_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_The House of Seven Gables_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_The Marble Faun_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_The Gray Champion_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_The Wedding Knell_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_The Great Carbuncle_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_Dr. Heidegger's Experiment_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_The Haunted Mind_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_Feathertop_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_Rip Van Winkle_, Washington Irving.
+
+_The Elixir of Life_, Honoré de Balzac.
+
+_The Leather Funnel_, A. Conan Doyle.
+
+_The Return of Imray's Ghost_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+_A Gentle Ghost_, Mary Wilkins Freeman.
+
+
+
+
+THE SIRE DE MALETROIT'S DOOR[1]
+
+
+_By Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)_
+
+
+Denis de Beaulieu was not yet two-and-twenty, but he counted himself a
+grown man, and a very accomplished cavalier into the bargain. Lads were
+early formed in that rough, warfaring epoch; and when one has been in a
+pitched battle and a dozen raids, has killed one's man in an honorable
+fashion, and knows a thing or two of strategy and mankind, a certain
+swagger in the gait is surely to be pardoned. He had put up his horse
+with due care, and supped with due deliberation; and then, in a very
+agreeable frame of mind, went out to pay a visit in the gray of the
+evening. It was not a very wise proceeding on the young man's part. He
+would have done better to remain beside the fire or go decently to bed.
+For the town was full of the troops of Burgundy and England under a
+mixed command; and though Denis was there on safe-conduct, his
+safe-conduct was like to serve him little on a chance encounter.
+
+It was September, 1429; the weather had fallen sharp; a flighty piping
+wind, laden with showers, beat about the township; and the dead leaves
+ran riot along the streets. Here and there a window was already lighted
+up; and the noise of men-at-arms making merry over supper within came
+forth in fits and was swallowed up and carried away by the wind. The
+night fell swiftly: the flag of England, fluttering on the spire top,
+grew ever fainter and fainter against the flying clouds—a black speck
+like a swallow in the tumultuous, leaden chaos of the sky. As the night
+fell the wind rose, and began to hoot under archways and roar amid the
+tree-tops in the valley below the town.
+
+Denis de Beaulieu walked fast and was soon knocking at his friend's
+door; but though he promised himself to stay only a little while and
+make an early return, his welcome was so pleasant, and he found so much
+to delay him, that it was already long past midnight before he said
+good-by upon the threshold. The wind had fallen again in the meanwhile;
+the night was as black as the grave; not a star, nor a glimmer of
+moonshine, slipped through the canopy of cloud. Denis was
+ill-acquainted with the intricate lanes of Chateau Landon; even by
+daylight he had found some trouble in picking his way; and in this
+absolute darkness he soon lost it altogether. He was certain of one
+thing only—to keep mounting the hill; for his friend's house lay at the
+lower end, or tail, of Chateau Landon, while the inn was up at the
+head, under the great church spire. With this clew to go upon he
+stumbled and groped forward, now breathing more freely in the open
+places where there was a good slice of sky overhead, now feeling along
+the wall in stifling closes. It is an eerie and mysterious position to
+be thus submerged in opaque blackness in an almost unknown town. The
+silence is terrifying in its possibilities. The touch of cold window
+bars to the exploring hand startles the man like the touch of a toad;
+the inequalities of the pavement shake his heart into his mouth; a
+piece of denser darkness threatens an ambuscade or a chasm in the
+pathway; and where the air is brighter, the houses put on strange and
+bewildering appearances, as if to lead him further from his way. For
+Denis, who had to regain his inn without attracting notice, there was
+real danger as well as mere discomfort in the walk; and he went warily
+and boldly at once, and at every corner paused to make an observation.
+
+He had been for some time threading a lane so narrow that he could
+touch a wall with either hand, when it began to open out and go sharply
+downward. Plainly this lay no longer in the direction of his inn; but
+the hope of a little more light tempted him forward to reconnoitre. The
+lane ended in a terrace with a bartizan[2] wall, which gave an outlook
+between high houses, as out of an embrasure, into the valley lying dark
+and formless several hundred feet below. Denis looked down, and could
+discern a few tree-tops waving and a single speck of brightness where
+the river ran across a weir. The weather was clearing up, and the sky
+had lightened, so as to show the outline of the heavier clouds and the
+dark margin of the hills. By the uncertain glimmer, the house on his
+left hand should be a place of some pretensions; it was surmounted by
+several pinnacles and turret-tops; the round stern of a chapel, with a
+fringe of flying buttresses, projected boldly from the main block; and
+the door was sheltered under a deep porch carved with figures and
+overhung by two long gargoyles[3]. The windows of the chapel gleamed
+through their intricate tracery with a light as of many tapers, and
+threw out the buttresses and the peaked roof in a more intense
+blackness against the sky. It was plainly the hotel of some great
+family of the neighborhood; and as it reminded Denis of a town house of
+his own at Bourges, he stood for some time gazing up at it and mentally
+gauging the skill of the architects and the consideration of the two
+families.
+
+There seemed to be no issue to the terrace but the lane by which he had
+reached it; he could only retrace his steps, but he had gained some
+notion of his whereabouts, and hoped by this means to hit the main
+thoroughfare and speedily regain the inn. He was reckoning without that
+chapter of accidents which was to make this night memorable above all
+others in his career; for he had not gone back above a hundred yards
+before he saw a light coming to meet him, and heard loud voices
+speaking together in the echoing narrows of the lane. It was a party of
+men-at-arms going the night round with torches. Denis assured himself
+that they had all been making free with the wine bowl, and were in no
+mood to be particular about safe-conducts or the niceties of chivalrous
+war. It, was as like as not that they would kill him like a dog and
+leave him where he fell. The situation was inspiriting but nervous.
+Their own torches would conceal him from sight, he reflected; and he
+hoped that they would drown the noise of his footsteps with their own
+empty voices. If he were but fleet and silent, he might evade their
+notice altogether.
+
+Unfortunately, as he turned to beat a retreat, his foot rolled upon a
+pebble; he fell against the wall with an ejaculation, and his sword
+rang loudly on the stones. Two or three voices demanded who went
+there—some in French, some in English; but Denis made no reply, and ran
+the faster down the lane. Once upon the terrace, he paused to look
+back. They still kept calling after him, and just then began to double
+the pace in pursuit, with a considerable clank of armor, and great
+tossing of the torchlight to and fro in the narrow jaws of the passage.
+
+Denis cast a look around and darted into the porch. There he might
+escape observation, or—if that were too much to expect—was in a capital
+posture whether for parley or defence. So thinking, he drew his sword
+and tried to set his back against the door. To his surprise it yielded
+behind his weight; and though he turned in a moment, continued to swing
+back on oiled and noiseless hinges until it stood wide open on a black
+interior. When things fall out opportunely for the person concerned, he
+is not apt to be critical about the how or why, his own immediate
+personal convenience seeming a sufficient reason for the strangest
+oddities and revolutions in our sublunary things; and so Denis, without
+a moment's hesitation, stepped within and partly closed the door behind
+him to conceal his place of refuge. Nothing was further from his
+thoughts than to close it altogether; but for some inexplicable
+reason—perhaps by a spring or a weight—the ponderous mass of oak
+whipped itself out of his fingers and clanked to, with a formidable
+rumble and a noise like the falling of an automatic bar.
+
+The round, at that very moment, debouched[4] upon the terrace and
+proceeded to summon him with shouts and curses. He heard them ferreting
+in the dark corners; the stock of a lance even rattled along the outer
+surface of the door behind which he stood; but these gentlemen were in
+too high a humor to be long delayed, and soon made off down a corkscrew
+pathway which had escaped Denis' observation, and passed out of sight
+and hearing along the battlements of the town.
+
+Denis breathed again. He gave them a few minutes' grace for fear of
+accidents, and then groped about for some means of opening the door and
+slipping forth again. The inner surface was quite smooth, not a handle,
+not a moulding, not a projection of any sort. He got his finger nails
+round the edges and pulled, but the mass was immovable. He shook it, it
+was as firm as a rock, Denis de Beaulieu frowned, and gave vent to a
+little noiseless whistle. What ailed the door? he wondered. Why was it
+open? How came it to shut so easily and so effectually after him? There
+was something obscure and underhand about all this, that was little to
+the young man's fancy. It looked like a snare, and yet who could
+suppose a snare in such a quiet by-street and in a house of so
+prosperous and even noble an exterior? And yet—snare or no snare,
+intentionally or unintentionally—here he was, prettily trapped; and for
+the life of him he could see no way out of it again. The darkness began
+to weigh upon him. He gave ear; all was silent without, but within and
+close by he seemed to catch a faint sighing, a faint sobbing rustle, a
+little stealthy creak—as though many persons were at his side, holding
+themselves quite still, and governing even their respiration with the
+extreme of slyness. The idea went to his vitals with a shock, and he
+faced about suddenly as if to defend his life. Then, for the first
+time, he became aware of a light about the level of his eyes and at
+some distance in the interior of the house—a vertical thread of light,
+widening toward the bottom, such as might escape between two wings of
+arras over a doorway.
+
+To see anything was a relief to Denis; it was like a piece of solid
+ground to a man laboring in a morass; his mind seized upon it with
+avidity; and he stood staring at it and trying to piece together some
+logical conception of his surroundings. Plainly there was a flight of
+steps ascending from his own level to that of this illuminated doorway,
+and indeed he thought he could make out another thread of light, as
+fine as a needle and as faint as phosphorescence, which might very well
+be reflected along the polished wood of a handrail. Since he had begun
+to suspect that he was not alone, his heart had continued to beat with
+smothering violence, and an intolerable desire for action of any sort
+had possessed itself of his spirit. He was in deadly peril, he
+believed. What could be more natural than to mount the staircase, lift
+the curtain, and confront his difficulty at once? At least he would be
+dealing with something tangible; at least he would be no longer in the
+dark. He stepped slowly forward with outstretched hands, until his foot
+struck the bottom step; then he rapidly scaled the stairs, stood for a
+moment to compose his expression, lifted the arras and went in.
+
+He found himself in a large apartment of polished stone. There were
+three doors, one on each of three sides, all similarly curtained with
+tapestry. The fourth side was occupied by two large windows and a great
+stone chimney-piece, carved with the arms of the Malétroits. Denis
+recognized the bearings, and was gratified to find himself in such good
+hands. The room was strongly illuminated; but it contained little
+furniture except a heavy table and a chair or two; the hearth was
+innocent of fire, and the pavement was but sparsely strewn with rushes
+clearly many days old.
+
+On a high chair beside the chimney, and directly facing Denis as he
+entered, sat a little old gentleman in a fur tippet. He sat with his
+legs crossed and his hands folded, and a cup of spiced wine stood by
+his elbow on a bracket on the wall. His countenance had a strong
+masculine cast; not properly human, but such as we see in the bull, the
+goat, or the domestic boar; something equivocal and wheedling,
+something greedy, brutal and dangerous. The upper lip was inordinately
+full, as though swollen by a blow or a toothache; and the smile, the
+peaked eyebrows, and the small, strong eyes were quaintly and almost
+comically evil in expression. Beautiful white hair hung straight all
+round his head, like a saint's, and fell in a single curl upon the
+tippet. His beard and mustache were the pink of venerable sweetness.
+Age, probably in consequence of inordinate precautions, had left no
+mark upon his hands; and the Malétroit hand was famous. It would be
+difficult to imagine anything at once so fleshy and so delicate in
+design; the taper, sensual fingers were like those of one of
+Leonardo's[5] women; the fork of the thumb made a dimpled protuberance
+when closed; the nails were perfectly shaped, and of a dead, surprising
+whiteness. It rendered his aspect tenfold more redoubtable, that a man
+with hands like these should keep them devoutly folded like a virgin
+martyr—that a man with so intent and startling an expression of face
+should sit patiently on his seat and contemplates people with an
+unwinking stare, like a god, or a god's statue. His quiescence seemed
+ironical and treacherous, it fitted so poorly with his looks.
+
+Such was Alain, Sire de Malétroit.
+
+Denis and he looked silently at each other for a second or two.
+
+"Pray step in," said the Sire de Malétroit. "I have been expecting you
+all the evening."
+
+He had not risen, but he accompanied his words with a smile and a
+slight but courteous inclination of the head. Partly from the smile,
+partly from the strange musical murmur with which the sire prefaced his
+observation, Denis felt a strong shudder of disgust go through his
+marrow. And what with disgust and honest confusion of mind, he could
+scarcely get words together in reply.
+
+"I fear," he said, "that this is a double accident. I am not the person
+you suppose me. It seems you were looking for a visit; but for my part,
+nothing was further from my thoughts—nothing could be more contrary to
+my wishes—than this intrusion."
+
+"Well, well," replied the old gentleman indulgently, "here you are,
+which is the main point. Seat yourself, my friend, and put yourself
+entirely at your ease. We shall arrange our little affairs presently."
+
+Denis perceived that the matter was still complicated with some
+misconception, and he hastened to continue his explanation.
+
+"Your door," he began.
+
+"About my door?" asked the other raising his peaked eyebrows. "A little
+piece of ingenuity." And he shrugged his shoulders. "A hospitable
+fancy! By your own account, you were not desirous of making any
+acquaintance. We old people look for such reluctance now and then; when
+it touches our honor, we cast about until we find some way of
+overcoming it. You arrive uninvited, but believe me, very welcome."
+
+"You persist in error, sir," said Denis. "There can be no question
+between you and me. I am a stranger in this countryside. My name is
+Denis, damoiseau de Beaulieu. If you see me in your house it is only—"
+
+"My young friend," interrupted the other, "you will permit me to have
+my own ideas on that subject. They probably differ from yours at the
+present moment," he added with a leer, "but time will show which of us
+is in the right."
+
+Denis was convinced he had to do with a lunatic. He seated himself with
+a shrug, content to wait the upshot; and a pause ensued, during which
+he thought he could distinguish a hurried gabbling as of a prayer from
+behind the arras immediately opposite him. Sometimes there seemed to be
+but one person engaged, sometimes two; and the vehemence of the voice,
+low as it was, seemed to indicate either great haste or an agony of
+spirit. It occurred to him that this piece of tapestry covered the
+entrance to the chapel he had noticed from without.
+
+The old gentleman meanwhile surveyed Denis from head to foot with a
+smile, and from time to time emitted little noises like a bird or a
+mouse, which seemed to indicate a high degree of satisfaction. This
+state of matters became rapidly insupportable; and Denis, to put an end
+to it, remarked politely that the wind had gone down.
+
+The old gentleman fell into a fit of silent laughter, so prolonged and
+violent that he became quite red in the face. Denis got upon his feet
+at once, and put on his hat with a flourish.
+
+"Sir," he said, "if you are in your wits, you have affronted me
+grossly. If you are out of them, I flatter myself I can find better
+employment for my brains than to talk with lunatics. My conscience is
+clear; you have made a fool of me from the first moment; you have
+refused to hear my explanations; and now there is no power under God
+will make me stay here any longer; and if I cannot make my way out in a
+more decent fashion, I will hack your door in pieces with my sword."
+
+The Sire de Malétroit raised his right hand and wagged it at Denis with
+the fore and little fingers extended.
+
+"My dear nephew," he said, "sit down."
+
+"Nephew!" retorted Denis, "you lie in your throat;" and he snapped his
+fingers in his face.
+
+"Sit down, you rogue!" cried the old gentleman, in a sudden, harsh
+voice like the barking of a dog. "Do you fancy," he went on, "that when
+I had made my little contrivance for the door I had stopped short with
+that? If you prefer to be bound hand and foot till your bones ache,
+rise and try to go away. If you choose to remain a free young buck,
+agreeably conversing with an old gentleman—why, sit where you are in
+peace, and God be with you."
+
+"Do you mean, I am a prisoner?" demanded Denis.
+
+"I state the facts," replied the other. "I would rather leave the
+conclusion to yourself."
+
+Denis sat down again. Externally he managed to keep pretty calm, but
+within, he was now boiling with anger, now chilled with apprehension.
+He no longer felt convinced that he was dealing with a madman. And if
+the old gentleman was sane, what, in God's name, had he to look for?
+What absurd or tragical adventure had befallen him? What countenance
+was he to assume?
+
+While he was thus unpleasantly reflecting, the arras that overhung the
+chapel door was raised, and a tall priest in his robes came forth, and,
+giving a long, keen stare at Denis, said something in an undertone to
+Sire de Malétroit.
+
+"She is in a better frame of spirit?" asked the latter.
+
+"She is more resigned, messire," replied the priest.
+
+"Now the Lord help her, she is hard to please!" sneered the old
+gentleman. "A likely stripling—not ill-born—and of her own choosing,
+too? Why, what more would the jade have?"
+
+"The situation is not usual for a young damsel," said the other, "and
+somewhat trying to her blushes."
+
+"She should have thought of that before she began the dance! It was
+none of my choosing, God knows that; but since she is in it, by our
+Lady, she shall carry it to the end." And then addressing Denis,
+"Monsieur de Beaulieu," he asked, "may I present you to my niece? She
+has been waiting your arrival, I may say, with even greater impatience
+than myself."
+
+Denis had resigned himself with a good grace—all he desired was to know
+the worst of it as speedily as possible; so he rose at once, and bowed
+in acquiescence. The Sire de Malétroit followed his example and limped,
+with the assistance of the chaplain's arm, toward the chapel door. The
+priest pulled aside the arras, and all three entered. The building had
+considerable architectural pretensions. A light groining sprang from
+six stout columns, and hung down in two rich pendants from the centre
+of the vault. The place terminated behind the altar in a round end,
+embossed and honeycombed with a superfluity of ornament in relief, and
+pierced by many little windows shaped like stars, trefoils, or wheels.
+These windows were imperfectly is glazed, so that the night air
+circulated freely in the chapel. The tapers, of which there must have
+been half a hundred burning on the altar, were unmercifully blown
+about; and the light went through many different phases of brilliancy
+and semi-eclipse. On the steps in front of the altar knelt a young girl
+richly attired as a bride. A chill settled over Denis as he observed
+her costume; he fought with desperate energy against the conclusion
+that was being thrust upon his mind; it could not—it should not—be as
+he feared.
+
+"Blanche," said the sire, in his most flute-like tones, "I have brought
+a friend to see you, my little girl; turn round and give him your
+pretty hand. It is good to be devout; but it is necessary to be polite,
+my niece."
+
+The girl rose to her feet and turned toward the newcomers. She moved
+all of a piece; and shame and exhaustion were expressed in every line
+of her fresh young body; and she held her head down and kept her eyes
+upon the pavement, as she came slowly forward. In the course of her
+advance her eyes fell upon Denis de Beaulieu's feet—feet of which he
+was justly vain, be it remarked, and wore in the most elegant
+accoutrement even while travelling. She paused—started, as if his
+yellow boots had conveyed some shocking meaning—and glanced, suddenly
+up into the wearer's countenance. Their eyes met; shame gave place to
+horror and terror in her looks; the blood left her lips, with a
+piercing scream she covered her face with her hands and sank upon, the
+chapel floor.
+
+"That is not the man!" she cried. "My uncle, that is not the man!"
+
+The Sire de Malétroit chirped agreeably. "Of course not," he said; "I
+expected as much. It was so unfortunate you could not remember his
+name."
+
+"Indeed," she cried, "indeed, I have never seen this person till this
+moment—I have never so much as set eyes upon him—I never wish to see
+him again. Sir," she said, turning to Denis, "if you are a gentleman,
+you will hear me out. Have I ever seen you—have you ever seen me—before
+this accursed hour?"
+
+"To speak for myself, I have never had that pleasure," answered the
+young man. "This is the first time, messire, that I have met with your
+engaging niece."
+
+The old gentleman shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"I am distressed to hear it," he said. "But it is never too late to
+begin. I had little more acquaintance with my own late lady ere I
+married her; which proves," he added, with a grimace, "that these
+impromptu marriages may often produce an excellent understanding in the
+long run. As the bridegroom is to have a voice in the matter, I will
+give him two hours to make up for lost time before we proceed with the
+ceremony." And he turned toward the door, followed by the clergyman.
+
+The girl was on her feet in a moment. "My uncle, you cannot be in
+earnest," she said. "I declare before God I will stab myself rather
+than be forced on that young man. The heart rises at it; God forbids
+such marriages; you dishonor your white hair. Oh, my uncle, pity me!
+There is not a woman in all the world but would prefer death to such a
+nuptial. Is it possible," she added, faltering—"is it possible that you
+do not believe me—that you still think this"—and she pointed at Denis
+with a tremor of anger and contempt—"that you still think _this_ to be
+the man?"
+
+"Frankly," said the old gentleman, pausing on the threshold, "I do. But
+let me explain to you once for all, Blanche de Malétroit, my way of
+thinking about this affair. When you took it into your head to dishonor
+my family and the name that I have borne, in peace and war, for more
+than threescore years, you forfeited, not only the right to question my
+designs, but that of looking me in the face. If your father had been
+alive, he would have spat on you and turned you out of doors. His was
+the hand of iron. You may bless your God you have only to deal with the
+hand of velvet, mademoiselle. It was my duty to get you married without
+delay. Out of pure goodwill, I have tried to find your own gallant for
+you. And I believe I have succeeded. But before God and all the holy
+angels, Blanche de Malétroit, if I have not, I care not one jack-straw.
+So let me recommend you to be polite to our young friend; for, upon my
+word, your next groom may be less appetizing."
+
+And with that he went out, with the chaplain at his heels; and the
+arras fell behind the pair.
+
+The girl turned upon Denis with flashing eyes.
+
+"And what, sir," she demanded, "may be the meaning of all this?"
+
+"God knows," returned Denis, gloomily, "I am a prisoner in this house,
+which seems full of mad people. More I know not; and nothing do I
+understand."
+
+"And pray how came you here?" she asked.
+
+He told her as briefly as he could. "For the rest," he added, "perhaps
+you will follow my example, and tell me the answer to all these
+riddles, and what, in God's name, is like to be the end of it."
+
+She stood silent for a little, and lie could see her lips tremble and
+her tearless eyes burn with a feverish lustre. Then she pressed her
+forehead in both hands.
+
+"Alas, how my head aches!" she said, wearily—"to say nothing of my poor
+heart! But it is due to you to know my story, unmaidenly as it must
+seem. I am called Blanche de Malétroit; I have been without father or
+mother for—oh! for as long as I can recollect, and indeed I have been
+most unhappy all my life. Three months ago a young captain began to
+stand near me every day in church. I could see that I pleased him; I am
+much to blame, but I was so glad that any one should love me; and when
+he passed me a letter, I took it home with me and read it with great
+pleasure. Since that time he has written many. He was so anxious to
+speak with me, poor fellow! and kept asking me to leave the door open
+some evening that we might have two words upon the stair. For he knew
+how much my uncle trusted me." She gave something like a sob at that,
+and it was a moment before she could go on. "My uncle is a hard man,
+but he is very shrewd," she said, at last. "He has performed many feats
+in war, and was a great person at court, and much trusted by Queen
+Isabeau in old days. How he came to suspect me I cannot tell; but it is
+hard to keep anything from his knowledge; and this morning, as we came
+from mass, he took my hand into his, forced it open, and read my little
+billet, walking by my side all the while.
+
+"When he finished, he gave it back to me with great politeness. It
+contained another request to have the door left open; and this has been
+the ruin of us all. My uncle kept me strictly in my room until evening,
+and then ordered me to dress myself as you see me—a hard mockery for a
+young girl, do you not think so? I suppose, when he could not prevail
+with me to tell him the young captain's name, he must have laid a trap
+for him; into which, alas! you have fallen in the anger of God. I
+looked for much confusion; for how could I tell whether he was willing
+to take me for his wife on these sharp terms? He might have been
+trifling with me from the first; or I might have made myself too cheap
+in his eyes. But truly I had not looked for such a shameful punishment
+as this? I could not think that God would let a girl be so disgraced
+before a young man. And now I tell you all; and I can scarcely hope
+that you will not despise me."
+
+Denis made her a respectful inclination.
+
+"Madam," he said, "you have honored me by your confidence. It remains
+for me to prove that I am not unworthy of the honor. Is Messire de
+Malétroit at hand?"
+
+"I believe he is writing in the _salle[6]_ without," she answered.
+
+"May I lead you thither, madam?" asked Denis, offering his hand with
+his most courtly bearing.
+
+She accepted it; and the pair passed out of the chapel, Blanche in a
+very drooping and shamefast condition, but Denis strutting and raffling
+in the consciousness of a mission, and the boyish certainty of
+accomplishing it with honor.
+
+The Sire Malétroit rose to meet them with an ironical obeisance.
+
+"Sir," said Denis, with the grandest possible air, "I believe I am to
+have some say in the matter of this marriage; and let me tell you at
+once, I will be no party to forcing the inclination of this young lady.
+Had it been freely offered to me, I should have been proud to accept
+her hand, for I perceive she is as good as she is beautiful; but as
+things are, I have now the honor, messire, of refusing."
+
+Blanche looked at him with gratitude in her eyes; but the old gentleman
+only smiled and smiled, until his smile grew positively sickening to
+Denis.
+
+"I am afraid," he said, "Monsieur de Beaulieu, that you do not
+perfectly understand the choice I have offered you. Follow me, I
+beseech you, to this window." And he led the way to one of the large
+windows which stood open on the night. "You observe," he went on,
+"there is an iron ring in the upper masonry, and reeved through that, a
+very efficacious rope. Now, mark my words: if you should find your
+disinclination to my niece's person insurmountable, I shall have you
+hanged out of this window before sunrise. I shall only proceed to such
+an extremity with the greatest regret, you may believe me. For it is
+not at all your death that I desire, but my niece's establishment in
+life. At the same time, it must come to that if you prove obstinate.
+Your family, Monsieur de Beaulieu, is very well in its way; but if you
+sprung from Charlemagne[7], you should not refuse the hand of a
+Malétroit with impunity—not if she had been as common as the Paris
+road—not if she was as hideous as the gargoyle over my door. Neither my
+niece nor you, nor my own private feelings, move me at all in this
+matter. The honor of my house has been compromised; I believe you to be
+the guilty person, at least you are now in the secret; and you can
+hardly wonder if I request you to wipe out the stain. If you will not,
+your blood be on your own head! It will be no great satisfaction to me
+to have your interesting relics kicking their heels in the breeze below
+my windows, but half a loaf is better than no bread, and if I cannot
+cure the dishonor, I shall at least stop the scandal."
+
+There was a pause.
+
+"I believe there are other ways of settling such imbroglios among
+gentlemen," said Denis. "You wear a sword, and I hear you have used it
+with distinction."
+
+The Sire de Malétroit made a signal to the chaplain, who crossed the
+room with long silent strides and raised the arras over the third of
+the three doors. It was only a moment before he let it fall again; but
+Denis had time to see a dusky passage full of armed men.
+
+"When I was a little younger, I should have been delighted to honor
+you, Monsieur de Beaulieu," said Sire Alain: "but I am now too old.
+Faithful retainers are the sinews of age, and I must employ the
+strength I have. This is one of the hardest things to swallow as a man
+grows up in years; but with a little patience, even this becomes
+habitual. You and the lady seem to prefer the _salle_ for what remains
+of your two hours; and as I have no desire to cross your preference, I
+shall resign it to your use with all the pleasure in the world. No
+haste!" he added, holding up his hand, as he saw a dangerous look come
+into Denis de Beaulieu's face. "If your mind revolt against hanging, it
+will be time enough two hours hence to throw yourself out of the window
+or upon the pikes of my retainers. Two hours of life are always two
+hours. A great many things may turn up in even as little a while as
+that. And, besides. If I understand her appearance, my niece has
+something to say to you. You will not disfigure your last hours by a
+want of politeness to a lady?"
+
+Denis looked at Blanche, and she made him an imploring gesture.
+
+It is likely that the old gentleman was hugely pleased at this symptom
+of an understanding; for he smiled on both, and added sweetly: "If you
+will give me your word of honor, Monsieur de Beaulieu, to await my
+return at the end of the two hours before attempting anything
+desperate, I shall withdraw my retainers, and let you speak in greater
+privacy with mademoiselle."
+
+Denis again glanced at the girl, who seemed to beseech him to agree.
+
+"I give you my word of honor," he said.
+
+Messire de Malétroit bowed, and proceeded to limp about the apartment,
+clearing his throat the while with that odd musical chirp which had
+already grown so irritating in the ears of Denis de Bealieu. He first
+possessed himself of some papers which lay upon the table; then he went
+to the mouth of the passage and appeared to give an order to the men
+behind the arras; and lastly he hobbled out through the door by which
+Denis had come in, turning upon the threshold to address a last smiling
+bow to the young couple, and followed by the chaplain with a hand lamp.
+
+No sooner were they alone than Blanche advanced toward Denis with her
+hands extended. Her face was flushed and excited, and her eyes shone
+with tears.
+
+"You shall not die!" she cried, "you shall marry me after all."
+
+"You seem to think, madam," replied Denis, "that I stand much in fear
+of death."
+
+"Oh, no, no," she said, "I see you are no poltroon[8]. It is for my own
+sake—I could not bear to have you slain for such a scruple."
+
+"I am afraid," returned Denis, "that you underrate the difficulty,
+madam. What you may be too generous to refuse, I may be too proud to
+accept. In a moment of noble feeling toward me, you forget what you
+perhaps owe to others."
+
+He had the decency to keep his eyes on the floor as he said this, and
+after he had finished, so as not to spy upon her confusion. She stood
+silent for a moment, then walked suddenly away, and falling on her
+uncle's chair, fairly burst out sobbing. Denis was in the acme of
+embarrassment. He looked round, as if to seek for inspiration, and,
+seeing a stool, plumped down upon it for something to do. There he sat,
+playing with the guard of his rapier, and wishing himself dead a
+thousand times over, and buried in the nastiest kitchen-heap in France.
+His eyes wandered round the apartment, but found nothing to arrest
+them. There were such wide spaces between the furniture, the light fell
+so badly and cheerlessly over all, the dark outside air looked in so
+coldly through the windows, that he thought he had never seen a church
+so vast, nor a tomb so melancholy. The regular sobs of Blanche de
+Malétroit measured out the time like the ticking of a clock. He read
+the device upon the shield over and over again, until his eyes became
+obscured; he stared into shadowy corners until he imagined they were
+swarming with horrible animals; and every now and again he awoke with a
+start, to remember that his last two hours were running, and death was
+on the march.
+
+Oftener and oftener, as the time went on, did his glance settle on the
+girl herself. Her face was bowed forward and covered with her hands,
+and she was shaken at intervals by the convulsive hiccough of grief.
+Even thus she was not an unpleasant object to dwell upon, so plump and
+yet so fine, with a warm brown skin, and the most beautiful hair, Denis
+thought, in the whole world of womankind. Her hands were like her
+uncle's: but they were more in place at the end of her young arms, and
+looked infinitely soft and caressing. He remembered how her blue eyes
+had shone upon him, full of anger, pity, and innocence. And the more he
+dwelt on her perfections, the uglier death looked, and the more deeply
+was he smitten with penitence at her continued tears. Now he felt that
+no man could have the courage to leave a world which contained so
+beautiful a creature; and now he would have given forty minutes of his
+last hour to have unsaid his cruel speech.
+
+Suddenly a hoarse and ragged peal of cockcrow rose to their ears from
+the dark valley below the windows. And this shattering noise in the
+silence of all around was like a light in a dark place, and shook them
+both out of their reflections.
+
+"Alas, can I do nothing to help you?" she said, looking up.
+
+"Madam," replied Denis, with a fine irrelevancy, "if I have said
+anything to wound you, believe me, it was for your own sake and not for
+mine."
+
+She thanked him with a tearful look.
+
+"I feel your position cruelly," he went on. "The world has been bitter,
+hard on you. Your uncle is a disgrace to mankind. Believe me, madam,
+there is no young gentleman in all France but would be glad of my
+opportunity, to die in doing you a momentary service."
+
+"I know already that you can be very brave and generous," she answered.
+"What I _want_ to know is whether I can serve you—now or afterward,"
+she added, with a quaver.
+
+"Most certainly," he answered, with a smile. "Let me sit beside you as
+if I were a friend, instead of a foolish intruder; try to forget how
+awkwardly we are placed to one another; make my last moments go
+pleasantly; and you will do me the chief service possible."
+
+"You are very gallant," she added, with a yet deeper sadness—"very
+gallant—and it somehow pains me. But draw nearer, if you please; and if
+you find anything to say to me, you will at least make certain of a
+very friendly listener. Ah! Monsieur de Beaulieu," she broke forth—"ah!
+Monsieur de Beaulieu, how can I look you in the face?" And she fell to
+weeping again with a renewed effusion.
+
+"Madam," said Denis, taking her hand in both of his, "reflect on the
+little time I have before me, and the great bitterness into which I am
+cast by the sight of your distress. Spare me, in my last moments, the
+spectacle of what I cannot cure even with the sacrifice of my life."
+
+"I am very selfish," answered Blanche. "I will be braver, Monsieur de
+Beaulieu, for your sake. But think if I can do you no kindness in the
+future—if you have no friends to whom I could carry your adieux. Charge
+me as heavily as you can; every burden will lighten, by so little, the
+invaluable gratitude I owe you. Put it in my power to do something more
+for you than weep."
+
+"My mother is married again, and has a young family to care for. My
+brother Guichard will inherit my fiefs; and if I am not in error, that
+will content him amply for my death. Life is a little vapor that
+passeth away, as we are told by those in holy orders. When a man is in
+a fair way and sees all life open in front of him, he seems to himself
+to make a very important figure in the world. His horse whinnies to
+him; the trumpets blow and the girls look out of window as he rides
+into town before his company; he receives many assurances of trust and
+regard—sometimes by express in a letter—sometimes face to face, with
+persons of great consequence falling on his neck. It is not wonderful
+if his head is turned for a time. But once he is dead, were he as brave
+as Hercules[9] or as wise as Solomon[10], he is soon forgotten. It is
+not ten years since my father fell, with many other knights around him,
+in a very fierce encounter, and I do not think that any one of them,
+nor so much as the name of the fight, is now remembered. No, no, madam,
+the nearer you come to it, you see that death is a dark and dusty
+corner, where a man gets into his tomb and has the door shut after him
+till the judgment day. I have few friends just now, and once I am dead
+I shall have none."
+
+"Ah, Monsieur de Beaulieu!" she exclaimed, "you forget Blanche de
+Malétroit."
+
+"You have a sweet nature, madam, and you are pleased to estimate a
+little service far beyond its worth."
+
+"It is not that," she answered. "You mistake me if you think I am
+easily touched by my own concerns. I say so because you are the noblest
+man I have ever met; because I recognize in you a spirit that would
+have made even a common person famous in the land."
+
+"And yet here I die in a mousetrap—with no more noise about it than my
+own squeaking," answered he.
+
+A look of pain crossed her face and she was silent for a little while.
+Then a light came into her eyes, and with a smile she spoke again.
+
+"I cannot have my champion think meanly of himself. Any one who gives
+his life for another will be met in paradise by all the heralds and
+angels of the Lord God. And you have no such cause to hang your head.
+For—Pray, do you think me beautiful?" she asked, with a deep flush.
+
+"Indeed, madam, I do," he said.
+
+"I am glad of that," she answered heartily. "Do you think there are
+many men in France who have been asked in marriage by a beautiful
+maiden—with her own lips—and who have refused her to her face? I know
+you men would half despise such a triumph; but believe me, we women
+know more of what is precious in love. There is nothing that should set
+a person higher in his own esteem; and we women would prize nothing
+more dearly."
+
+"You are very good," he said; "but you cannot make me forget that I was
+asked in pity and not for love."
+
+"I am not so sure of that," she replied, holding down her head. "Hear
+me to an end, Monsieur de Beaulieu. I know how you must despise me; I
+feel you are right to do so; I am too poor a creature to occupy one
+thought of your mind, although, alas! you must die for me this morning.
+But when I asked you to marry me, indeed, and indeed, it was because I
+respected and admired you, and loved you with my whole soul, from the
+very moment that you took my part against my uncle. If you had seen
+yourself, and how noble you looked, you would pity rather than despise
+me. And now," she went on, hurriedly checking him with her hand,
+"although I have laid aside all reserve and told you so much, remember
+that I know your sentiments toward me already. I would not, believe me,
+being nobly born, weary you with importunities into consent. I too have
+a pride of my own: and I declare before the holy mother of God, if you
+should now go back from your word already given, I would no more marry
+you than I would marry my uncle's groom."
+
+Denis smiled a little bitterly.
+
+"It is a small love," he said, "that shies at a little pride."
+
+She made no answer, although she probably had her own thoughts.
+
+"Come hither to the window," he said with a sigh. "Here is the dawn."
+
+And indeed the dawn was already beginning. The hollow of the sky was
+full of essential daylight, colorless and clean; and the valley
+underneath was flooded with a gray reflection. A few thin vapors clung
+in the coves of the forest or lay along the winding course of the
+river. The scene disengaged a surprising effect of stillness, which was
+hardly interrupted when the cocks began once more to crow among the
+steadings[11]. Perhaps the same fellow who had made so horrid a clangor
+in the darkness not half an hour before, now sent up the merriest cheer
+to greet the coming day. A little wind went bustling and eddying among
+the tree-tops underneath the windows. And still the daylight kept
+flooding insensibly out of the east, which was soon to grow
+incandescent and cast up that red-hot cannon-ball, the rising sun.
+
+Denis looked out over all this with a bit of a shiver. He had taken her
+hand, and retained it in his almost unconsciously.
+
+"Has the day begun already?" she said; and then illogically enough:
+"the night has been so long! Alas! what shall we say to my uncle when
+he returns?"
+
+"What you will," said Denis, and he pressed her fingers in his.
+
+She was silent.
+
+"Blanche," he said, with a swift, uncertain, passionate utterance, "you
+have seen whether I fear death. You must know well enough that I would
+as gladly leap out of that window into the empty air as to lay a finger
+on you without your free and full consent. But if you care for me at
+all do not let me lose my life in a misapprehension; for I love you
+better than the whole world; and though I will die for you blithely, it
+would be like all the joys of Paradise to live on and spend my life in
+your service."
+
+As he stopped speaking, a bell began to ring loudly in the interior of
+the house; and a clatter of armor in the corridor showed that the
+retainers were returning to their post, and the two hours were at an
+end.
+
+"After all that you have heard?" she whispered, leaning toward him with
+her lips and eyes.
+
+"I have heard nothing," he replied.
+
+"The captain's name was Florimond de Champdivers," she said in his ear.
+
+"I did not hear it," he answered, taking her supple body in his arms,
+and covered her wet face with kisses.
+
+A melodious chirping was audible behind, followed by a beautiful
+chuckle, and the voice of Messire de Malétroit wished his new nephew a
+good morning.
+
+NOTES
+
+[1] Published in 1878. Acknowledgment is due to the Charles Scribner's
+Sons Company, Publishers, for the use of the text of their edition of
+Stevenson's works.
+
+[2] 207:18 bartizan. A small overhanging turret with loop-holes and
+embrasures projecting from the parapet of a medieval building.
+
+[3] 208:1 gargoyles. Mouths of spouts, in antic shapes.
+
+[4] 209:30 debouched. Passed out.
+
+[5] 212:29 Leonardo. (1452-1519.) A famous Italian painter, architect,
+sculptor, scientist, engineer, mechanician, and musician.
+
+[6] 222:7 salle. French word for hall or room.
+
+[7] 223:13 Charlemagne. (742 or 747-814.) A great king of the Franks
+and emperor of the Romans.
+
+[8] 225:25 poltroon. A coward, a dastard.
+
+[9] 229:12 Hercules. A mighty hero in Greek and Roman mythology.
+
+[10] 229:13 Solomon. Son of David. King of Israel, 993-953 B.C.
+
+[11] 231: 26 steadings. A farmstead—barns, stables, cattle-sheds, etc.
+
+BIOGRAPHY
+
+Robert Louis Stevenson was born November 13, 1850, in Edinburgh. He was
+an only child. On his mother's side he came from a line of Scotch
+philosophers and ministers; on his father's, from a line of active
+workers and scientists. His grandfather, Robert Stevenson, and his
+father, Thomas Stevenson, gained world-wide reputations in engineering.
+
+Robert inherited from his mother throat and lung troubles. His health
+was very poor from his birth and his life was preserved only by the
+careful watchfulness of his mother and his devoted nurse, Alison
+Cunningham. As a child he was very lovable and possessed a very active
+imagination.
+
+He went to school in Edinburgh between the years 1858-1867. He first
+attended a preparatory school, then the Edinburgh academy. He spent
+considerable time at his maternal grandfather's home. It was there that
+he first tasted the delights of romance. In his school work he was none
+too studious, but all his teachers were charmed by his pleasing manner
+and general intelligence. Though an idler in other things, he worked
+constantly on the art of writing. Throughout his study in Edinburgh
+University and his unsuccessful efforts in engineering and the practice
+of law, literature became more and more a passion with him.
+
+The period between 1875 and 1879 was one of improved health and
+considerable literary activity. During this time he published _A
+Lodging for the Night, Will o' the Mill, The New Arabian Nights_, and
+an _Inland Voyage_.
+
+While in southern Europe he met and fell in love with Mrs. Osbourne. So
+after she returned to her home in California, Stevenson received the
+news that she was seriously ill. He immediately sailed for San
+Francisco, travelling as a steerage passenger because of lack of funds
+and a desire for literary material. Out of this experience grew a
+number of stories and essays. Exposure on the voyage affected his
+health and caused a very dangerous illness. After his recovery he
+married Mrs. Osbourne and returned to England with his wife and
+stepson.
+
+For a few years his work was more or less spasmodic on account of his
+bitter struggle with poor health, in 1883 he achieved success by the
+publication of _Treasure Island_. _Markheim_ appeared in 1884.
+_Kidnapped_ and _Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde_ were published in 1886.
+
+After the death of his father in 1887, Stevenson and his family sailed
+to America, where they settled in the Adirondacks for the winter of
+1888. Here his health was good and he wrote a number of essays for
+_Scribner's Magazine_. In the spring of the same year they started on a
+cruise of the south seas. They visited many of the southern islands and
+settled at Vailima, Samoa. Stevenson was interested in the Samoaas and
+took an active part in their political affairs. The tropical climate
+agreed with him and his creative power was renewed. He wrote a number
+of short stories, a series of letters on the South Seas, and the novel
+_David Balfour_.
+
+Political reverses and failing strength took away for a time his power
+to write. He was again stimulated, however, by the love and
+appreciation of his Samoan followers, and started on what promised to
+be his period of highest achievement. This promise was soon blighted by
+his untimely death from a stroke of apoplexy, December 13, 1894. He was
+buried in Samoa.
+
+BIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES
+
+_Life of Robert Louis Stevenson_, 2 vols., Graham Balfour.
+
+_Robert Louis Stevenson_, Isobel Strong.
+
+_Memories and Portraits_, Robert Louis Stevenson.
+
+_Friends on the Shelf_, Bradford Torrey.
+
+"Personal Recollections," Edmund Gosse, _Century Magazine_, 50:447.
+
+"Character Sketch," _Atlantic Monthly_, 89:89-99.
+
+"The Real Stevenson," _Atlantic Monthly_, 85:702-5.
+
+_A Bibliography of the Works of Robert Louis Stevenson_, W.F. Prideaux.
+
+CRITICISMS
+
+Fundamentally Stevenson's style is marked by a conscious aim to
+entertain. His engaging humor, free of all affectation, sentimentality,
+and exaggeration, is spontaneous and natural. His most original writing
+is _The Child's Garden of Verses_. His touch is light and his thought
+is clear and lucid. _Across the Plains_ is written in his most
+straightforward and natural style.
+
+Stevenson was a careful writer, doing with great skill any established
+piece of art. He practised diligently, and gained, as he himself
+states, his high rank by constantly drilling himself in the art of
+writing. This imitation of form to the point of perfection, rather than
+an expression of a great and moving idea, gives an air of insincerity
+to some of Stevenson's works. Yet, although seemingly artificial, he
+never chose words for the sake of mere sounds, but for their accuracy
+in truth and fitness. He was as an ephemeral shadow with an optimistic
+and real spirit. He infused an intimacy and spirituality into his
+writings that prove delightful to all his readers.
+
+The subject of Markheim, a man failing through weakness, was a favorite
+topic for Stevenson. Markheim is almost an ideal specimen of the
+impressionistic short-story. It has a plot in which Hawthorne might
+justly have revelled, a treatment as intellectual as that of Poe,
+descriptions not unlike those of Flaubert's, and a moral ending true to
+the Puritanic type. The movement of the story is swift and possesses
+perfect unity. The surprise at the end comes as a shock although the
+author has consistently and logically constructed his plot.
+
+GENERAL REFERENCES
+
+_Emerson and Other Essays_, John Jay Chapman.
+
+_Robert Louis Stevenson_, L. Cope Cornford.
+
+_Modern Novelists_, William Lyon Phelps.
+
+_Makers of English Fiction_, W.J. Dawson.
+
+"Art of Stevenson," _North American Review_, 171: 348-358.
+
+"Criticism," _Dial_, 30:345. May 18, 1901.
+
+COLLATERAL READINGS
+
+_The Suicide Club (New Arabian Nights)_, Robert Louis Stevenson.
+
+_Story of the Physician and the Saratoga Trunk_, Robert Louis
+Stevenson.
+
+_The Adventure of the Hansom Cab_, Robert Louis Stevenson.
+
+_The Rajah's Diamond_, Robert Louis Stevenson.
+
+_The Story of the House with the Green Blinds_, Robert Louis Stevenson.
+
+_The Adventure of Prince Florizel and the Detective_, Robert Louis
+Stevenson.
+
+_A Lodging for the Night_, Robert Louis Stevenson,
+
+_Providence and the Guitar_, Robert Louis Stevenson.
+
+_In the Valley_, Robert Louis Stevenson.
+
+_With the Children of Israel_, Robert Louis Stevenson.
+
+_The Lotus and the Cockleburrs_, "O. Henry."
+
+_Two Bites at a Cherry_, Thomas Bailey Aldrich.
+
+_The Notary of Perigueux_, Henry W. Longfellow.
+
+
+
+
+MARKHEIM[1]
+
+
+_By Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)_
+
+
+"Yes," said the dealer, "our windfalls[2] are of various kinds. Some
+customers are ignorant, and then I touch a dividend[3] on my superior
+knowledge. Some are dishonest," and here he held up the candle, so that
+the light fell strongly on his visitor, "and in that case," he
+continued, "I profit by my virtue."
+
+Markheim had but just entered from the daylight streets, and his eyes
+had not yet grown familiar with the mingled shine and darkness in the
+shop. At these pointed words, and before the near presence of the
+flame, he blinked painfully and looked aside.
+
+The dealer chuckled. "You come to me on Christmas Day," he resumed,
+"when you know that I am alone in my house, put up my shutters, and
+make a point of refusing business. Well, you will have to pay for that;
+you will have to pay for my loss of time, when I should be balancing my
+books; you will have to pay, besides; for a kind of manner that I
+remark in you to-day very strongly. I am the essence of discretion, and
+ask no awkward questions; but when a customer cannot look me in the
+eye, he has to pay for it." The dealer once more chuckled; and then,
+changing to his usual business voice, though still with a note of
+irony, "You can give, as usual, a clear account of how you came into
+the possession of the object?" he continued. "Still your uncle's
+cabinet? A remarkable collector, sir!"
+
+And the little pale, round-shouldered dealer stood almost on tiptoe,
+looking over the top of his gold spectacles, and nodding his head with
+every mark of disbelief. Markheim returned his gaze with one of
+infinite pity, and a touch of horror.
+
+"This time," said he, "you are in error. I have not come to sell, but
+to buy. I have no curios to dispose of; my uncle's cabinet is bare to
+the wainscot: even were it still intact, I have done well on the Stock
+Exchange, and should more likely add to it than otherwise, and my
+errand to-day is simplicity itself. I seek, a Christmas present for a
+lady," he continued, waxing more fluent as he struck into the speech he
+had prepared; "and certainly I owe you every excuse for thus disturbing
+you upon so small a matter. But the thing was neglected yesterday; I
+must produce my little compliment at dinner; and, as you very well
+know, a rich marriage is not a thing to be neglected."
+
+There followed a pause, during which the dealer seemed to weigh this
+statement incredulously. The ticking of many clocks among the curious
+lumber of the shop, and the faint rushing of the cabs in a near
+thoroughfare, filled up the interval of silence.
+
+"Well, sir," said the dealer, "be it so. You are an old customer after
+all; and if, as you say, you have the chance of a good marriage, far be
+it from me to be an obstacle. Here is a nice thing for a lady, now," he
+went on, "this hand glass—fifteenth century, warranted; comes from a
+good collection, too; but I reserve the name, in the interests of my
+customer, who was just like yourself, my dear sir, the nephew and sole
+heir of a remarkable collector."
+
+The dealer, while he thus ran on in his dry and biting voice, had
+stooped to take the object from its place; and, as he had done so, a
+shock had passed through Markheim, a start both of hand and foot, a
+sudden leap of many tumultuous passions to the face. It passed as
+swiftly as it came, and left no trace beyond a certain trembling of the
+hand that now received the glass.
+
+"A glass," he said hoarsely, and then paused, and repeated it more
+clearly. "A glass? For Christmas? Surely not."
+
+"And why not?" cried the dealer. "Why not a glass?"
+
+Markheim was looking upon him with an indefinable expression. "You ask
+me why not?" he said. "Why, look here—look in it—look at yourself! Do
+you like to see it? No! nor I—nor any man."
+
+The little man had jumped back when Markheim had so suddenly confronted
+him with the mirror; but now, perceiving there was nothing worse on
+hand, he chuckled. "Your future lady, sir, must be pretty hard
+favored," said he.
+
+"I ask you," said Markheim, "for a Christmas present, and you give me
+this—this damned reminder of years and sins and follies—this
+hand-conscience! Did you mean it? Had you a thought in your mind? Tell
+me. It will be better for you if you do. Come, tell me about yourself,
+I hazard a guess now, that you are in secret a very charitable man?"
+
+The dealer looked closely at his companion. It was very odd, Markheim
+did not appear to be laughing; there was something in his face like an
+eager sparkle of hope, but nothing of mirth.
+
+"What are you driving at?" the dealer asked.
+
+"Not charitable?" returned the other, gloomily. "Not charitable; not
+pious; not scrupulous; unloving; unbeloved; a hand to get money, a safe
+to keep it. Is that all? Dear God, man, is that all?"
+
+"I will tell you what it is," began the dealer, with some sharpness,
+and then broke off again into a chuckle. "But I see this is a love
+match of yours, and you have been drinking the lady's health."
+
+"Ah!" cried Markheim, with a strange curiosity, "Ah, have you been in
+love? Tell me about that."
+
+"I!" cried the dealer. "I in love! I never had the time, nor have I the
+time to-day for all this nonsense. Will you take the glass?"
+
+"Where is the hurry?" returned Markheim. "It is very pleasant to stand
+here talking; and life is so short and insecure that I would not hurry
+away from any pleasure—no, not even from so mild a one as this. We
+should, rather cling, cling to what little we can get, like a man at a
+cliff's edge. Every second is a cliff, if you think upon it—a cliff a
+mile high—high enough, if we fall, to dash us out of every feature of
+humanity. Hence it is best to talk pleasantly. Let us talk of each
+other; why should we wear this mask? Let us be confidential. Who knows,
+we might become friends?"
+
+"I have just one word to say to you," said the dealer. "Either make
+your purchase, or walk out of my shop."
+
+"True, true," said Markheim. "Enough fooling. To business. Show me
+something else."
+
+The dealer stooped once more, this time to replace the glass upon the
+shelf, his thin blond hair falling over his eyes as he did so. Markheim
+moved a little nearer, with one hand in the pocket of his greatcoat; he
+drew himself up and filled his lungs; at the same time many different
+emotions were depicted together on his face—terror, horror, and
+resolve, fascination, and a physical repulsion; and through a haggard
+lift of his upper lip, his teeth looked out.
+
+"This, perhaps, may suit," observed the dealer; and then, as he began
+to re-arise, Markheim bounded from behind upon his victim. The long,
+skewer-like[4] dagger flashed and fell. The dealer straggled like a
+hen, striking his temple on the shelf, and then tumbled on the floor in
+a heap.
+
+Time had some score of small voices in that shop, some stately and slow
+as was becoming to their great age, others garrulous and hurried. All
+these told out the seconds in an intricate chorus of tickings. Then the
+passage of a lad's feet, heavily running on the pavement, broke in upon
+these smaller voices and startled Markheim into the consciousness of
+his surroundings. He looked about him awfully. The candle stood on the
+counter, its flame solemnly wagging in a draught; and by that
+inconsiderable movement, the whole room was filled with noiseless
+bustle and kept heaving like a sea: the tall shadows nodding, the gross
+blots of darkness swelling and dwindling as with respiration, the faces
+of the portraits and the china gods changing and wavering like images
+in water. The inner door stood ajar, and peered into that leaguer[5] of
+shadows with a long slit of daylight like a pointing finger.
+
+From these fear-stricken rovings, Markheim's eyes returned to the body
+of his victim, where it lay both humped and sprawling, incredibly small
+and strangely meaner than in life. In these poor, miserly clothes, in
+that ungainly attitude, the dealer lay like so much sawdust. Markheim
+had feared to see it, and, lo! it was nothing. And yet, as he gazed,
+this bundle of old clothes and pool of blood began to find eloquent
+voices. There it must lie; there was none to work the cunning hinges or
+direct the miracle of locomotion—there it must lie till it was found.
+Found! aye, and then? Then would this dead flesh lift up a cry that
+would ring over England, and fill the world with the echoes of pursuit.
+Ay, dead or not, this was still the enemy. "Time was that when the
+brains were out[6]," he thought; and the first word struck into his
+mind. Time, now that the deed was accomplished—time, which had dosed
+for the victim, had become instant and momentous for the slayer.
+
+The thought was yet in his mind, when, first one and then another, with
+every variety of pace and voice—one deep as the bell from a cathedral
+turret, another ringing on its treble notes the prelude of a waltz—the
+clocks began to strike the hour of three in the afternoon.
+
+The sudden outbreak of so many tongues in that dumb chamber staggered
+him. He began to bestir himself, going to and fro with the candle,
+beleaguered by moving shadows, and startled to the soul by chance
+reflections. In many rich mirrors, some of home designs, some from
+Venice or Amsterdam, he saw his face repeated and repeated, as it were
+an army of spies; his own eyes met and detected him; and the sound of
+his own steps, lightly as they fell, vexed the surrounding quiet. And
+still as he continued to fill his pockets, his mind accused him, with a
+sickening iteration[7], of the thousand faults of his design. He should
+have chosen a more quiet hour; he should have prepared an alibi; he
+should not have used a knife; he should have been more cautious, and
+only bound and gagged the dealer, and not killed him; he should have
+been more bold, and killed the servant also; he should have done all
+things otherwise; poignant regrets, weary, incessant toiling of the
+mind to change what was unchangeable, to plan what was now useless, to
+be the architect of the irrevocable past. Meanwhile, and behind all
+this activity, brute terrors, like the scurrying of rats in a deserted
+attic, filled the more remote chambers of his brain with riot; the hand
+of the constable would fall heavy on his shoulder, and his nerves would
+jerk like a hooked fish; or he beheld, in galloping defile, the dock,
+the prison, the gallows, and the black coffin. Terror of the people in
+the street sat down before his mind like a besieging army. It was
+impossible, he thought, but that some rumor of the struggle must have
+reached their ears and set on edge their curiosity; and now, in all the
+neighboring houses, he divined them sitting motionless and with
+uplifted ear—solitary people, condemned to spend Christmas dwelling
+alone on memories of the past, and now startlingly recalled from that
+tender exercise: happy family parties, struck into silence round the
+table, the mother still with raised finger; every degree and age and
+humor, but all, by their own hearths, prying and hearkening and weaving
+the rope that was to hang him. Sometimes it seemed to him he could not
+move too softly; the clink of the tall Bohemian goblets rang out loudly
+like a bell; and alarmed by the bigness of the ticking, he was tempted
+to stop the clocks. And then, again, with a swift transition of his
+terrors, the very silence of the place appeared a source of peril, and
+a thing to strike and freeze the passer-by; and he would step more
+boldly, and bustle aloud among the contents of the shop, and imitate,
+with elaborate bravado, the movements of a busy man at ease in his own
+house.
+
+But he was now so pulled about by different alarms that, while one
+portion of his mind was still alert and cunning, another trembled on
+the brink of lunacy. One hallucination in particular took a strong hold
+on his credulity. The neighbor hearkening with white face beside his
+window, the passer-by arrested by a horrible surmise on the
+pavement—these could at worst suspect, they could not know; through the
+brick walls and shuttered windows only sounds could penetrate. But
+here, within the house, was he alone? He knew he was; he had watched
+the servant set forth sweethearting, in her poor best, "out for the
+day" written in every ribbon and smile. Yes, he was alone, of course;
+and yet, in the bulk of empty house about him, he could surely hear a
+stir of delicate footing—he was surely conscious, inexplicably
+conscious, of some presence. Ay, surely; to every room and corner of
+the house his imagination followed it; and now it was a faceless thing,
+and yet had eyes to see with; and again it was a shadow of himself; and
+yet again behold the image of the dead dealer, reinspired with cunning
+and hatred.
+
+At times, with a strong effort, he would glance at the open door which
+still seemed to repel his eyes. The house was tall, the skylight small
+and dirty, the day blind with fog; and the light that filtered down to
+the ground story was exceedingly faint, and showed dimly on the
+threshold of the shop. And yet, in that strip of doubtful brightness,
+did there not hang wavering a shadow?
+
+Suddenly, from the street outside, a very jovial gentleman began to
+beat with a staff on the shop door, accompanying his blows with shouts
+and railleries[8] in which the dealer was continually called upon by
+name. Markheim, smitten into ice, glanced at the dead man. But no! he
+lay quite still; he was fled away far beyond earshot of these blows and
+shoutings; he was sunk beneath seas of silence; and his name, which
+would once have caught his notice above the howling of a storm, had
+become an empty sound. And presently the jovial gentleman desisted from
+his knocking and departed.
+
+Here was a broad hint to hurry what remained to be done, to get forth
+from, this accusing neighborhood, to plunge into a bath of London
+multitudes, and to reach, on the other side of day, that haven of
+safety and apparent, innocence—-his bed. One visitor had come: at any
+moment it another might follow and be more obstinate. To have done the
+deed, and yet not to reap the profit, would be too abhorrent a failure.
+The money, that was now Markheim's concern: and as a means to that, the
+keys.
+
+He glanced over his shoulder at the open door, where the shadow was
+still lingering and shivering; and with no conscious repugnance of the
+mind, yet with a tremor of the belly, he drew near the body of his
+victim. The human character had quite departed. Like a suit
+half-stuffed with bran, the limbs lay scattered, the trunk doubled, on
+the floor; and yet the thing repelled him. Although so dingy and
+inconsiderable to the eye, he feared it might have more significance to
+the touch. He took the body by the shoulders, and turned it on its
+back. It was strangely light and supple, and the limbs, as if they had
+been broken, fell into the oddest postures. The face was robbed of all
+expression; but it was as pale as wax, and shockingly smeared with
+blood about one temple. That was, for Markheim, the one displeasing
+circumstance. It carried him back, upon the instant, to a certain fair
+day in a fishers' village: a gray day, a piping wind, a crowd upon the
+street, the blare of brasses, the booming of drums, the nasal voice of
+a ballad singer; and a boy going to and fro, buried over head in the
+crowd and divided between interest and fear, until, coming out upon the
+chief place of concourse, he beheld a booth and a great screen with
+pictures, dismally designed, garishly[9] colored: Brownrigg[10] with
+her apprentice; the Mannings[11] with their murdered guest; Weare in
+the death grip of Thurtell[12]; and a score besides of famous crimes.
+The thing was as clear as an illusion; he was once again that little
+boy; he was looking once again, and with the same sense of physical
+revolt, at these vile pictures; he was still stunned by the thumping of
+the drums. A bar of that day's music returned upon his memory; and at
+that, for the first time, a qualm came over him, a breath of nausea, a
+sudden weakness of the joints, which he must instantly resist and
+conquer.
+
+He judged it more prudent to confront than to flee from these
+considerations; looking the more hardily in the dead face, bending his
+mind to realize the nature and greatness of his crime. So little a
+while ago that face had moved with every change of sentiment, that pale
+mouth had spoken, that body had been all on fire with governable
+energies; and now, and by his act, that piece of life had been
+arrested, as the horologist[13], with interjected finger, arrests the
+beating of the clock. So he reasoned in vain; he could rise to no more
+remorseful consciousness; the same heart which had shuddered before the
+painted effigies of crime, looked on its reality unmoved. At best, he
+felt a gleam of pity for one who had been endowed in vain with all
+those faculties that can make the world a garden of enchantment, one
+who had never lived and who was now dead. But of penitence, no, not a
+tremor.
+
+With that, shaking himself clear of these considerations, he found the
+keys and advanced toward the open door of the shop. Outside, it had
+begun to rain smartly; and the sound of the shower upon the roof had
+banished silence. Like some dripping cavern, the chambers of the house
+were haunted by an incessant echoing, which filled the ear and mingled
+with the ticking of the clocks. And, as Markheim approached the door,
+he seemed to hear, in answer to his own cautious tread, the steps of
+another foot withdrawing up the stair. The shadow still palpitated
+loosely on the threshold. He threw a ton's weight of resolve upon his
+muscles, and drew back the door.
+
+The faint, foggy daylight glimmered dimly on the bare floor and stairs;
+on the bright suit of armor posted, halbert in hand, upon the landing;
+and on the dark wood carvings and framed pictures that hung against the
+yellow panels of the wainscot. So loud was the beating of the rain
+through all the house that, in Markheim's ears, it began to be
+distinguished into many different sounds. Footsteps and sighs, the
+tread of regiments marching in the distance, the chink of money in the
+counting, and the creaking of doors held stealthily ajar, appeared to
+mingle with the patter of the drops upon the cupola and the gushing of
+the water in the pipes. The sense that he was not alone grew upon him
+to the verge of madness. On every side he was haunted and begirt by
+presences. He heard them moving in the upper chambers; from the shop,
+he heard the dead man getting to his legs; and as he began with a great
+effort to mount the stairs, feet fled quietly before him and followed
+stealthily behind. If he were but deaf, he thought, how tranquilly he
+would possess his soul! And then again, and hearkening with ever fresh
+attention, he blessed himself for that unresting sense which held the
+outposts and stood a trusty sentinel upon his life. His head turned
+continually on his neck; his eyes, which seemed starting from their
+orbits, scouted on every side, and on every side were half rewarded as
+with the tail of something nameless vanishing. The four-and-twenty
+steps to the first floor were four-and-twenty agonies.
+
+On that first story the doors stood ajar, three of them like three
+ambushes, shaking his nerves like the throats of cannon. He could never
+again, he felt, be sufficiently immured and fortified from men's
+observing eyes; he longed to be home, girt in by walls, buried among
+bed-clothes, and invisible to all but God. And at that thought he
+wondered a little, recollecting tales of other murderers and the fear
+they were said to entertain of heavenly avengers. It was not so, at
+least, with him. He feared the laws of nature, lest, in their callous
+and immutable procedure, they should preserve some damning evidence of
+his crime. He feared tenfold more, with a slavish, superstitious
+terror, some scission[14] in the continuity of man's experience, some
+wilful illegality of nature. He played a game of skill, depending on
+the rules, calculating consequence from cause; and what if nature, as
+the defeated tyrant overthrew the chessboard, should break the mould of
+their succession? The like had befallen Napoleon (so writers said) when
+the winter changed the time of its appearance. The like might befall
+Markheim: the solid walls might become transparent and reveal his
+doings like those of bees in a glass hive; the stout planks might yield
+under his foot like quicksands and detain him in their clutch; aye, and
+there were soberer accidents that might destroy him: if, for instance,
+the house should fall and imprison him beside the body of his victim;
+or the house next door should fly on fire, and the firemen invade him
+from all sides. These things he feared; and, in a sense, these things
+might be called the hands of God reached forth against sin. But about
+God himself he was at ease; his act was doubtless exceptional, but so
+were his excuses, which God knew; it was there, and not among men, that
+he felt sure of justice.
+
+When he got safe into the drawing-room, and shut the door behind him,
+he was aware of a respite from alarms. The room was quite dismantled,
+uncarpeted besides, and strewn with packing cases and incongruous
+furniture; several great pier glasses, in which he beheld himself at
+various angles, like an actor on a stage; many pictures, framed and
+unframed, standing, with their faces to the wall; a fine Sheraton[15]
+sideboard, a cabinet of marquetry[16], and a great old bed, with
+tapestry hangings. The windows opened to the floor; but by great good
+fortune the lower part of the shutters had been closed, and this
+concealed him from the neighbors. Here, then, Markheim drew in a
+packing case before the cabinet, and began to search among the keys. It
+was a long business, for there were many; and it was irksome, besides;
+for, after all, there might be nothing in the cabinet, and time was on
+the wing. But the closeness of the occupation sobered him. With the
+tail of his eye he saw the door—even glanced at it from time to time
+directly, like a besieged commander pleased to verify the good estate
+of his defences. But in truth he was at peace. The rain falling in the
+street sounded natural and pleasant. Presently, on the other side, the
+notes of a piano were wakened to the music of a hymn, and the voices of
+many children took up the air and words. How stately, how comfortable
+was the melody! How fresh the youthful voices! Markheim gave ear to it
+smilingly, as he sorted out the keys; and his mind was thronged with
+answerable ideas and images; church-going children and the pealing of
+the high organ; children afield, bathers by the brookside, ramblers on
+the brambly common, kite-flyers in the windy and cloud-navigated sky;
+and then, at another cadence of the hymn, back again to church, and the
+somnolence of summer Sundays, and the high, genteel voice of the parson
+(which he smiled a little to recall), and the painted Jacobean[17]
+tombs, and the dim lettering of the Ten Commandments in the chancel.
+
+And as he sat thus, at once busy and absent, he was startled to his
+feet. A flash of ice, a flash of fire, a bursting gush of blood, went
+over him, and then he stood transfixed and thrilling. A step mounted
+the stair slowly and steadily, and presently a hand was laid upon the
+knob, and the lock clicked, and the door opened.
+
+Fear held Markheim in a vice. What to expect he knew not, whether the
+dead man walking, or the official ministers of human justice, or some
+chance witness blindly stumbling in to consign him to the gallows. But
+when a face was thrust into the aperture, glanced round the room,
+looked at him, nodded and smiled as if in friendly recognition, and
+then withdrew again, and the door closed behind it, his fear broke
+loose from his control in a hoarse cry. At the sound of this the
+visitant returned.
+
+"Did you call me?" he asked pleasantly, and with that he entered the
+room, and closed the door behind him.
+
+Markheim stood and gazed at him with all his eyes. Perhaps there was a
+film upon his sight, but the outlines of the newcomer seemed to change
+and waver like those of the idols in the wavering candlelight of the
+shop: and at times he thought he knew him; and at times he thought he
+bore a likeness to himself; and always, like a lump of living terror,
+there lay in his bosom the conviction that this thing was not of the
+earth and not of God.
+
+And yet the creature had a strange air of the commonplace, as he stood
+looking on Markheim with a smile; and when he added: "You are looking
+for the money, I believe?" it was in the tones of everyday politeness.
+
+Markheim made no answer.
+
+"I should warn you," resumed the other, "that the maid has left her
+sweetheart earlier than usual and will soon be here. If Mr. Markheim be
+found in this house, I need not describe to him the consequences."
+
+"You know me?" cried the murderer.
+
+The visitor smiled. "You have long been a favorite of mine," he said;
+"and I have long observed and often sought to help you."
+
+"What are you?" cried Markheim: "the devil?"
+
+"What I may be," returned the other, "cannot affect the service I
+propose to render you."
+
+"It can," cried Markheim; "it does! Be helped by you? No, never; not by
+you! You do not know me yet; thank God, you do not know me!"
+
+"I know you," replied the visitant, with a sort of kind severity or
+rather firmness. "I know you to the soul."
+
+"Know me!" cried Markheim. "Who can do so? My life is but a
+travesty[18] and slander on myself. I have lived to belie my nature.
+All men do; all men are better than this disguise that grows about and
+stifles them. You see each dragged away by life, like one whom bravos
+have seized and muffled in a cloak. If they had their own control—if
+you could see their faces, they would be altogether different, they
+would shine out for heroes and saints! I am worse than most; myself is
+more overlaid; my excuse is known to me and God. But, had I the time, I
+could disclose myself."
+
+"To me?" inquired the visitant.
+
+"To you before all," returned the murderer. "I supposed you were
+intelligent. I thought—since you exist—you would prove a reader of the
+heart. And yet you would propose to judge me by my acts! Think of it;
+my acts! I was born and I have lived in a land of giants; giants have
+dragged me by the wrists since I was born out of my mother—the giants
+of circumstance. And you would judge me by my acts! But can you not
+look within? Can you not understand that evil is hateful to me? Can you
+not see within me the clear writing of conscience, never blurred by any
+wilful sophistry[19] although too often disregarded? Can you not read
+me for a thing that surely must be common as humanity—the unwilling
+sinner?"
+
+"All this is very feelingly expressed," was the reply, "but it regards
+me not. These points of consistency are beyond my province, and I care
+not in the least by what compulsion you may have been dragged away, so
+as you are but carried in the right direction. But time flies; the
+servant delays, looking in the faces of the crowd and at the pictures
+on the hoardings, but still she keeps moving nearer; and remember, it
+is as if the gallows itself were striding toward you through the
+Christmas streets! Shall I help you—I, who know all? Shall I tell you
+where to find the money?"
+
+"For what price?" asked Markheim.
+
+"I offer you the service for a Christmas gift," returned the other.
+
+Markheim could not refrain from smiling with a kind of bitter triumph,
+"No," said he, "I will take nothing at your hands; if I were dying of
+thirst, and it was your hand that put the pitcher to my lips, I should
+find the courage to refuse. It may be credulous, but I will do nothing
+to commit myself to evil."
+
+"I have no objection to a death-bed repentance," observed the visitant.
+
+"Because you disbelieve their efficacy[20]!" Markheim cried.
+
+"I do not say so," returned the other; "but I look on these things from
+a different side, and when the life is done my interest falls. The man
+has lived to serve me, to spread black looks under color of religion,
+or to sow tares[21] in the wheat field, as you do, in a course of weak
+compliance with desire. Now that he draws so near to his deliverance,
+he can add but one act of service—to repent, to die smiling, and thus
+to build up in confidence and hope the more timorous of my surviving
+followers. I am not so hard a master. Try me. Accept my help. Please
+yourself in life as you have done hitherto; please yourself more amply,
+spread your elbows at the board; and when the night begins to fall and
+the curtains to be drawn, I tell you, for your greater comfort, that
+you will find it even easy to compound your quarrel with your
+conscience, and to make a truckling peace with God. I came but now from
+such a death-bed, and the room was full of sincere mourners, listening
+to the man's last words; and when I looked into that face, which had
+been set as a flint against mercy, I found it smiling with hope."
+
+"And do you, then, suppose me such a creature?" asked Markheim. "Do you
+think I have no more generous aspirations than to sin, and sin, and
+sin, and, at last, sneak into heaven? My heart rises at the thought. Is
+this, then, your experience of mankind? or is it because you find me
+with red hands that you presume such baseness? and is this crime of
+murder indeed so impious as to dry up the very springs of good?"
+
+"Murder is to me no special category[22]," replied the other. "All sins
+are murder, even all life is war. I behold your race, like starving
+mariners on a raft, plucking crusts out of the hands of famine and
+feeding on each other's lives. I follow sins beyond the moment of their
+acting; I find in all that the last consequence is death; and to my
+eyes, the pretty maid who thwarts her mother with such taking graces on
+a question of a ball, drips no less visibly with human gore than such a
+murderer as yourself. Do I say that I follow sins? I follow virtues
+also; they differ not by the thickness of a nail, they are both scythes
+for the reaping angel of Death. Evil, for which I live, consists not in
+action but in character. The bad man is dear to me; not the bad act,
+whose fruits, if we could follow them far enough down the hurtling[23]
+cataract of the ages, might yet be found more blessed than those of the
+rarest virtues. And it is not because you have killed a dealer, but
+because you are Markheim, that I offered to forward your escape."
+
+"I will lay my heart open to you," answered Markheim. "This crime on
+which you find me is my last. On my way to it I have learned many
+lessons; itself is a lesson, a momentous lesson. Hitherto I have been
+driven with revolt to what I would not; I was a bondslave to poverty,
+driven and scourged. There are robust virtues that can stand in these
+temptations; mine was not so: I had a thirst of pleasure. But to-day,
+and out of this deed, I pluck both warning and riches—both the power
+and a fresh resolve to be myself. I become in all things a free actor
+in the world; I begin to see myself all changed, these hands the agents
+of good, this heart at peace. Some thing comes over me out of the past;
+something of what I have dreamed on Sabbath evenings to the sound of
+the church organ, of what I forecast when I shed tears over noble
+books, or talked, an innocent child, with my mother. There lies my
+life; I have wandered a few years, but now I see once more my city of
+destination."
+
+"You are to use this money on the Stock Exchange, I think?" remarked
+the visitor; "and there, if I mistake not, you have already lost some
+thousands?"
+
+"Ah," said Markheim, "but this time I have a sure thing."
+
+"This time, again, you will lose," replied the visitor, quietly.
+
+"Ah, but I keep back the half!" cried Markheim.
+
+"That also you will lose," said the other.
+
+The sweat started upon Markheim's brow. "Well, then, what matter?" he
+exclaimed. "Say it be lost, say I am plunged again in poverty, shall
+one part of me, and that the worse, continue until the end to override
+the better? Evil and good ran strong in me, hailing me both ways. I do
+not love the one thing, I love all. I can conceive great deeds,
+renunciations, martyrdoms; and though I be fallen to such a crime as
+murder, pity is no stranger to my thoughts. I pity the poor; who knows
+their trials better than myself? I pity and help them; I prize love, I
+love honest laughter; there is no good thing nor true thing on earth
+but I love it from my heart. And are my vices only to direct my life,
+and my virtues to lie without effect, like some passive lumber of the
+mind? Not so; good, also, is a spring of acts."
+
+But the visitant raised his finger. "For six-and-thirty years that you
+have been in this world," said he, "through many changes of fortune and
+varieties of humor, I have watched you steadily fall. Fifteen years ago
+you would have started at a theft. Three years back you would have
+blenched at the name of murder. Is there any crime, is there any
+cruelty or meanness, from which you still recoil?—five years from now I
+shall detect you in the fact! Downward, downward lies your way; nor can
+anything but death avail to stop you."
+
+"It is true," Markheim said huskily, "I have in some degree complied
+with evil. But it is so with all: the very saints, in the mere exercise
+of living, grow less dainty, and take on the tone of their
+surroundings."
+
+"I will propound to you one simple question," said the other; "and as
+you answer, I shall read to you your moral horoscope. You have grown in
+many things more lax; possibly you do right to be so; and at any
+account, it is the same with all men. But granting that, are you in any
+one particular, however trifling, more difficult to please with your
+own conduct, or do you go in all things with a looser rein?"
+
+"In any one?" repeated Markheim, with an anguish of consideration.
+"No," he added, with despair, "in none! I have gone down in all."
+
+"Then," said the visitor, "content yourself with what you are, for you
+will never change; and the words of your part on this stage are
+irrevocably written down."
+
+Markheim stood for a long while silent, and indeed it was the visitor
+who first broke the silence. "That being so," he said, "shall I show
+you the money?"
+
+"And grace?" cried Markheim.
+
+"Have you not tried it?" returned the other. "Two or three years ago,
+did I not see you on the platform of revival meetings, and was not your
+voice the loudest in the hymn?"
+
+"It is true," said Markheim; "and I see clearly what remains for me by
+way of duty. I thank you for these lessons from my soul; my eyes are
+opened, and I behold myself at last for what I am."
+
+At this moment, the sharp note of the door-bell rang through the house;
+and the visitant, as though this were some concerted signal for which
+he had been waiting, changed at once in his demeanor.
+
+"The maid!" he cried. "She has returned, as I forewarned you, and there
+is now before you one more difficult passage. Her master, you must say,
+is ill; you must let her in, with an assured but rather serious
+countenance—no smiles, no overacting, and I promise you success! Once
+the girl within, and the door closed, the same dexterity that has
+already rid you of the dealer will relieve you of this last danger in
+your path. Thenceforward you have the whole evening—the whole night, if
+needful—to ransack the treasures of the house and to make good your
+safety. This is help that comes to you with the mask of danger. Up!" he
+cried: "up, friend; your life hangs trembling in the scales: up, and
+act!"
+
+Markheim steadily regarded his counsellor. "If I be condemned to evil
+acts," he said, "there is still one door of freedom open—I can cease
+from action. If my life be an ill thing, I can lay it down. Though I
+be, as you say truly, at the beck of every small temptation, I can yet,
+by one decisive gesture, place myself beyond the reach of all. My love
+of good is damned to barrenness; it may, and let it be! But I have
+still my hatred of evil; and from that, to your galling disappointment,
+you shall see that I can draw both energy and courage."
+
+The features of the visitor began to undergo a wonderful and lovely
+change: they brightened and softened with a tender triumph; and, even
+as they brightened, faded and dislimned[24]. But Markheim did not pause
+to watch or understand the transformation. He opened the door and went
+downstairs very slowly, thinking to himself. His past went soberly
+before him; he beheld it as it was, ugly and strenuous like a dream,
+random as chance-medley—a scene of defeat. Life, as he thus reviewed
+it, tempted him no longer; but on the farther side he perceived a quiet
+haven for his bark. He paused in the passage, and looked into the shop,
+where the candle still burned by the dead body. It was strangely
+silent. Thoughts of the dealer swarmed into his mind, as he stood
+gazing. And then the bell once more broke out into impatient clamor.
+
+He confronted the maid upon the threshold with something like a smile.
+
+"You had better go for the police," said he: "I have killed your
+master."
+
+NOTES
+
+[1] Written in 1884. This story is used by permission of and special
+arrangement with the Charles Scribner's Sons Company, Publishers.
+
+[2] 237:1 windfalls. Unexpected gains.
+
+[3] 237:3 dividend. His knowledge a business asset that draws interest.
+
+[4] 241:22 skewer-like. Like a wooden pin now used to fasten meat.
+
+[5] 242:11 leaguer. Place besieged with shadows.
+
+[6] 242:27 Time was that when the brains were out. See Macbeth, Act
+III, sc. 4, line 78.
+
+[7] 243:16 iteration. Repetition.
+
+[8] 246:25 railleries. Merry jesting or ridicule.
+
+[9] 247:7 garishly. A blinding, gaudy effect.
+
+[10] 247:7 Brownrigg. A notorious murderess living in England in the
+middle of the eighteenth century. She was hanged and her skeleton is
+still preserved.
+
+[11] 247:8 Mannings. Marie Manning and her husband murdered a former
+suitor. They were given, a death sentence.
+
+[12] 247:9 Thurtell. A gambler who quarrelled with Weare and killed him
+after he had professed peace. He designed his own gallows.
+
+[13] 247:25 horologist. One who makes timepieces.
+
+[14] 249:27 scission. A cleaving or a dividing.
+
+[15] 250:25 Sheraton. Next to Chippendale the greatest furniture
+designer and cabinet-maker.
+
+[16] 250:25 marquetry. An inlay of some thin material in the surface of
+a piece of furniture or other object.
+
+[17] 251:23 Jacobean. Pertaining to the time of James I of England.
+
+[18] 253:12 travesty. A grotesque imitation.
+
+[19] 254:3 sophistry. Methods of the Greek sophists.
+
+[20] 254:29 efficacy. Effective energy.
+
+[21] 255:5 sow tares, etc. See Matthew XII, 24-30.
+
+[22] 255:29 category. A class, condition, or predicament.
+
+[23] 256:14 hurtling. Rushing headlong or confusedly.
+
+[24] 280:10 dislimned. Erased or effaced.
+
+COLLATERAL READINGS
+
+_Treasure Island_, R.L. Stevenson.
+
+_Kidnapped_, R.L. Stevenson.
+
+_Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde_, R.L. Stevenson.
+
+_Prince Otto_, R.L. Stevenson.
+
+_Across the Plains_, R.L. Stevenson.
+
+_Travels with a Donkey_, R.L. Stevenson.
+
+_An Inland Voyage_, R.L. Stevenson.
+
+_Essays on Burns and Thoreau_, R.L. Stevenson.
+
+_Virginibus Puerisque_, R.L. Stevenson.
+
+_The Child's Garden of Verses_, R.L. Stevenson.
+
+_The Masque of the Red Death_, Edgar Allan Poe.
+
+_The Pit and the Pendulum_, Edgar Allan Poe.
+
+_A Coward_, Guy de Maupassant.
+
+_The Substitute_, François Coppée.
+
+_The Revolt of Mother_, Mary Wilkins Freeman.
+
+_Flute and Violin_, James Lane Alien.
+
+_A Lear of the Steppes_, Ivan Turgeneff.
+
+_Rappacini's Daughter_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12732 ***
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+<body>
+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12732 ***</div>
+
+<h1>A Collection of Short-Stories</h1>
+
+<h2 class="no-break">EDITED BY<br/>
+L.A. PITTENGER, A.M.,<br/>
+CRITIC IN ENGLISH, INDIANA UNIVERSITY</h2>
+
+<p class="center">
+New York:<br/>
+THE MACMILLAN COMPANY,<br/>
+1914
+</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+Set up and electrotyped. Published November, 1913. Reprinted January, 1914.
+</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+Norwood Press,<br/>
+J.S. Cushing Co.&mdash;Berwick &amp; Smith Co.,<br/>
+Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
+</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2>Contents</h2>
+
+<table summary="" style="">
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap00">A PREFATORY NOTE</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap01">INTRODUCTION:</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap01.1">     History of the Short-story</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap01.2">     Qualities of the Short-story</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap01.3">     Composition of the Short-story</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap01.4">     Books for Reference</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap01.5">     Collections of Short-stories</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap02">THE FATHER. 1860. Björnstjerne Björnson.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap03">THE GRIFFIN AND THE MINOR CANON. 1887. Frank R. Stockton.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap04">THE PIECE OF STRING. 1884. Guy de Maupassant.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap05">THE MAN WHO WAS. 1889. Rudyard Kipling.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap06">THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER. 1839. Edgar Allan Poe.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap07">THE GOLD-BUG. 1843. Edgar Allan Poe.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap08">THE BIRTHMARK. 1843. Nathaniel Hawthorne.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap09">ETHAN BRAND. 1848. Nathaniel Hawthorne.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap10">THE SIRE DE MALÉTROIT'S DOOR. 1878. Robert Louis Stevenson.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap11">MARKHEIM. 1884. Robert Louis Stevenson.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+</table>
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap00"></a>A PREFATORY NOTE</h2>
+
+<p>
+This collection of short-stories does not illustrate the history of
+short-story writing, nor does it pretend that these are the ten best
+stories ever written, but it does attempt to present selections from a
+list of the greatest short-stories that have proved, in actual use,
+most beneficial to high school students.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The introduction presents a concise statement of the essentials of the
+history, qualities, and composition of the short-story. A brief
+biography of each author and a criticism covering the main
+characteristics of his writings serve as starting points for the
+recitation. The references following both the biography and criticism
+are given in order that the study of the short-story may be amplified,
+and that high school teachers may build a systematic and serviceable
+library about their class work in the teaching of the story. The
+collateral readings, listed after each story, will aid in the creation
+of a suitable atmosphere for the story studied, and explain many
+questions developed in the recitation. Only such definitions as are
+not easily found in school dictionaries are included in the notes.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap01"></a>INTRODUCTION</h2>
+
+<h3><a name="chap01.1"></a>HISTORY OF THE SHORT-STORY</h3>
+
+<p>
+Just when, where, and by whom story-telling was begun no one can say.
+From the first use of speech, no doubt, our ancestors have told
+stories of war, love, mysteries, and the miraculous performances of
+lower animals and inanimate objects. The ultimate source of all
+stories lies in a thorough democracy, unhampered by the restrictions
+of a higher civilization. Many tales spring from a loathsome filth
+that is extremely obnoxious to our present day tastes. The remarkable
+and gratifying truth is, however, that the short-story, beginning in
+the crude and brutal stages of man's development, has gradually
+unfolded to greater and more useful possibilities, until in our own
+time it is a most flexible and moral literary form.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The first historical evidence in the development of the story shows no
+conception of a short-story other than that it is not so long as other
+narratives. This judgment of the short-story obtained until the
+beginning of the nineteenth century, when a new version of its meaning
+was given, and an enlarged vision of its possibilities was experienced
+by a number of writers almost simultaneously. In the early centuries
+of story-telling there was only one purpose in mind&mdash;that of narrating
+for the joy of the telling and hearing. The story-tellers sacrificed
+unity and totality of effect as well as originality for an
+entertaining method of reciting their incidents.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The story of <i>Ruth</i> and the <i>Prodigal Son</i> are excellent short tales,
+but they do not fulfill the requirements of our modern short-story for
+the reason that they are not constructed for one single impression,
+but are in reality parts of possible longer stories. They are, as it
+were, parts of stories not unlike <i>Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde</i> and <i>A
+Lear of the Steppes</i>, and lack those complete and concise artistic
+effects found in the short-stories, <i>Markheim</i> and <i>Mumu</i>, by the same
+authors. Both <i>Ruth</i> and the <i>Prodigal Son</i> are exceptionally well
+told, possess a splendid moral tone, and are excellent prophecies of
+what the nineteenth century has developed for us in the art of
+short-story writing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Greeks did very little writing in prose until the era of their
+decadence, and showed little instinct to use the concise and unified
+form of the short-story. The conquering Romans followed closely in the
+paths of their predecessors and did little work in the shorter
+narratives. The myths of Greece and Rome were not bound by facts, and
+opened a wonderland where writers were free to roam. The epics were
+slow in movement, and presented a list of loosely organized stories
+arranged about some character like Ulysses or AEneas.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+During the mediaeval period story-tellers and stories appeared
+everywhere. The more ignorant of these story-tellers produced the
+fable, and the educated monks produced the simple, crude and
+disjointed tales. The <i>Gesta Romanorum</i> is a wonderful storehouse of
+these mediaeval stories. In the <i>Decameron</i> Boccaccio deals with
+traditional and contemporary materials. He is a born story-teller and
+presents many interesting and well-told narratives, but as Professor
+Baldwin[1] has said, more than half are merely anecdotes, and the
+remaining stories are bare plots, ingeniously done in a kind of
+scenario form. Three approach our modern idea of the short-story, and
+two, the second story of the second day and the sixth story of the
+ninth day, actually attain to our standard. Boccaccio was not
+conscious of a standard in short-story telling, for he had none in the
+sense that Poe and Maupassant defined and practiced it. Chaucer in
+England told his stories in verse and added the charm of humor and
+well defined characters to the development of story-telling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the seventeenth century Cervantes gave the world its first great
+novel, <i>Don Quixote</i>. Cervantes was careless in his work and did not
+write short-stories, but tales that are fairly brief. Spain added to
+the story a high sense of chivalry and a richness of character that
+the Greek romance and the Italian novella did not possess. France
+followed this loose composition and lack of beauty in form. Scarron
+and Le Sage, the two French fiction writers of this period,
+contributed little or nothing to the advancement of story-telling.
+Cervantes' <i>The Liberal Lover</i> is as near as this period came to
+producing a real short-story.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The story-telling of the seventeenth century was largely shaped by the
+popularity of the drama. In the eighteenth century the drama gave
+place to the essay, and it is to the sketch and essay that we must go
+to trace the evolution of the story during this period. Voltaire in
+France had a burning message in every essay, and he paid far greater
+attention to the development of the thought of his message than to the
+story he was telling. Addison and Steele in the <i>Spectator</i> developed
+some real characters of the fiction type and told some good stories,
+but even their best, like <i>Theodosius and Constantia</i>, fall far short
+of developing all the dramatic possibilities, and lack the focusing of
+interest found in the nineteenth century stories. Some of Lamb's
+<i>Essays of Elia</i>, especially the <i>Dream Children</i>, introduce a
+delicate fancy and an essayist's clearness of thought and statement
+into the story. At the close of this century German romanticism began
+to seep into English thought and prepare the way for things new in
+literary thought and treatment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The nineteenth century opened with a decided preference for fiction.
+Washington Irving, reverting to the <i>Spectator</i>, produced his
+sketches, and, following the trend of his time, looked forward to a
+new form and wrote <i>The Spectre Bridegroom</i> and <i>Rip Van Winkle</i>. It
+is only by a precise definition of short-story that Irving is robbed
+of the honor of being the founder of the modern short-story. He loved
+to meander and to fit his materials to his story scheme in a leisurely
+manner. He did not quite see what Hawthorne instinctively followed and
+Poe consciously defined and practiced, and he did not realize that
+terseness of statement and totality of impression were the chief
+qualities he needed to make him the father of a new literary form. Poe
+and Maupassant have reduced the form of the short-story to an exact
+science; Hawthorne and Harte have done successfully in the field of
+romanticism what the Germans, Tieck and Hoffman, did not do so well;
+Bjornson and Henry James have analyzed character psychologically in
+their short-stories; Kipling has used the short-story as a vehicle for
+the conveyance of specific knowledge; Stevenson has gathered most, if
+not all, of the literary possibilities adaptable to short-story use,
+and has incorporated them in his <i>Markheim</i>.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+France with her literary newspapers and artistic tendencies, and the
+United States with magazines calling incessantly for good
+short-stories, and with every section of its conglomerate life
+clamoring to express itself, lead in the production and rank of
+short-stories. Maupassant and Stevenson and Hawthorne and Poe are the
+great names in the ranks of short-story writers. The list of present
+day writers is interminable, and high school students can best acquire
+a reasonable appreciation of the great work these writers are doing by
+reading regularly some of the better grade literary magazines.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For a comprehensive view of specimens representing the history and
+development of the short-story, students should have access to Brander
+Matthews' <i>The Short Story</i>, Jessup and Canby's <i>The Book of the
+Short-Story</i>, and Waite and Taylor's <i>Modern Masterpieces of Short
+Prose Fiction</i>.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+NOTE: [1] <i>American Short-Stories</i>, by Charles Sears Baldwin, New
+York: Longmans, Green, &amp; Company, 1904.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h3><a name="chap01.2"></a>QUALITIES OF THE SHORT-STORY</h3>
+
+<p>
+It was not until well along in the nineteenth century that any one
+attempted to define the short-story. The three quotations given here
+are among the best things that have been spoken on this subject.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The right novella is never a novel cropped back from the size of a
+tree to a bush, or the branch of a tree stuck into the ground and made
+to serve for a bush. It is another species, destined by the agencies
+at work in the realm of unconsciousness to be brought into being of
+its own kind, and not of another,"&mdash;W.D. Howells, <i>North American
+Review</i>, 173:429.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A true short-story is something other and something more than a mere
+story which is short. A true short-story differs from the novel
+chiefly in its essential unity of impression. In a far more exact and
+precise use of the word, a short-story has unity as a novel cannot
+have it…. A short-story deals with a single character, a single
+event, a single emotion, or the series of emotions called forth by a
+single situation.&mdash;Brander Matthews, <i>The Philosophy of the
+Short-Story</i>.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The aim of a short-story is to produce a single narrative effect with
+the greatest economy of means that is consistent with the utmost
+emphasis."&mdash;Clayton Hamilton, <i>Materials and Methods of Fiction</i>.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The short-story must always have a compact unity and a direct
+simplicity. In such stories as Björnson's <i>The Father</i> and
+Maupassant's <i>The Piece of String</i> this simplicity is equal to that of
+the anecdote, but in no case can an anecdote possess the dramatic
+possibilities of these simple short-stories; for a short-story must
+always have that tensity of emotion that comes only in the crucial
+tests of life.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The short-story does not demand the consistency in treatment of the
+long story, for there are not so many elements to marshal and direct
+properly, but the short-story must be original and varied in its
+themes, cleverly constructed, and lighted through and through with the
+glow of vivid imaginings. A single incident in daily life is caught as
+in a snap-shot exposure and held before the reader in such a manner
+that the impression of the whole is derived largely from suggestion.
+The single incident may be the turning-point in life history, as in
+<i>The Man Who Was</i>; it may be a mental surrender of habits fixed
+seemingly in indelible colors in the soul and a sudden, inflexible
+decision to be a man, as in the case of <i>Markheim;</i> or it may be a
+gradual realization of the value of spiritual gifts, as Björnson has
+concisely presented it in his little story <i>The Father</i>.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The aim of the short-story is always to present a cross-section of
+life in such a vivid manner that the importance of the incident
+becomes universal. Some short-stories are told with the definite end
+in view of telling a story for the sake of exploiting a plot. <i>The
+Cask of Amontillado</i> is all action in comparison with <i>The Masque of
+the Red Death. The Gold-Bug</i> sets for itself the task of solving a
+puzzle and possesses action from first to last. Other stories teach a
+moral. <i>Ethan Brand</i> deals with the unpardonable sin, and <i>The Great
+Stone Face</i> is our classic story in the field of ideals and their
+development. Hawthorne, above all writers, is most interested in
+ethical laws and moral development. Still other stories aim to portray
+character. Miss Jewett and Mrs. Freeman veraciously picture the
+faded-put womanhood in New England; Henry James and Björnson turn the
+x-rays of psychology and sociology on their characters; Stevenson
+follows with the precision of the tick of a watch the steps in
+Markheim's mental evolution.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The types of the short-story are as varied as life itself. Addison,
+Lamb, Irving, Warner, and many others have used the story in their
+sketches and essays with wonderful effect. <i>The Legend of Sleepy
+Hollow</i> is as impressive as any of Scott's tales. The allegory in <i>The
+Great Stone Face</i> loses little or nothing when compared with Bunyan's
+<i>Pilgrim's Progress</i>. No better type of detective story has been
+written than the two short-stories, <i>The Murders in the Rue Morgue</i>
+and <i>The Purloined Letter</i>. Every emotion is subject to the call of
+the short-story. Humor with its expansive free air is not so well
+adapted to the short-story as is pathos. There is a sadness in the
+stories of Dickens, Garland, Page, Mrs. Freeman, Miss Jewett,
+Maupassant, Poe, and many others that runs the whole gamut from
+pleasing tenderness in <i>A Child's Dream of a Star</i> to unutterable
+horror in <i>The Fall of the House of Usher</i>.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The short-story is stripped of all the incongruities that led
+Fielding, Scott, and Dickens far afield. All its parts harmonize in
+the simplest manner to give unity and "totality" of impression through
+strict unity of form. It is a concentrated piece of life snatched from
+the ordinary and uneventful round of living and steeped in fancy until
+it becomes the acme of literary art.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h3><a name="chap01.3"></a>COMPOSITION OF THE SHORT-STORY</h3>
+
+<p>
+Any student who wishes to express himself correctly and pleasingly,
+and desires a keener sense for the appreciation of literary work must
+write. The way others have done the thing never appears in a forceful
+light until one sets himself at a task of like nature. Just so in the
+study of this text. To find and appreciate the better points of the
+short-story, students must write stories of their own, patterned in a
+small way on the technique of the masterpieces.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The process of short-story writing follows in a general way the
+following program. In the first place the class must have something
+interesting and suggestive to write about. Sometimes the class can
+suggest a subject; newspapers almost every day give incidents worthy
+of story treatment; happenings in the community often give the very
+best material for stories; and phases of the literature work may well
+be used in the development of students' themes. Change the type of
+character and place, reconstruct the plot, or require a different
+ending for the story, leaving the plot virtually as it is, and then
+assign to the class. Boys and girls should invariably be taught to see
+stories in the life about them, in the newspapers and magazines on
+their library tables, and in the masterpieces they study in their
+class work.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After the idea that the class wishes to develop has been definitely
+determined and the material for this development has been gathered and
+grouped about the idea, the class should select a viewpoint and
+proceed to write. Sometimes the author should tell the story,
+sometimes a third person who may be of secondary importance in the
+story should be given the rôle of the story-teller, sometimes the
+whole may be in dialogue. The class should choose a fitting method.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Young writers should be very careful about the beginning of a story.
+An action story should start with a striking incident that catches the
+reader's attention at once and forecasts subsequent happenings. In
+every case this first incident must have in it the essence of the end
+of the story and should be perfectly logical to the reader after he
+has finished the reading. A story in which the setting is emphasized
+can well begin, with a description and contain a number of
+descriptions and expositions, distributed with a sense of propriety
+throughout the theme. A good method to use in the opening of a
+character story is that of conversation. An excellent example of a
+sharp use of this device is Mrs. Freeman's <i>Revolt of Mother</i>, where
+the first paragraph is a single spoken word.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Every incident included in the story should be tested for its value in
+the development of the theme. An incident that does not amplify
+certain phases of the story has no right to be included, and great
+care should be used in an effort to incorporate just the material
+necessary for the proper evolution of the thought. The problem is not
+so much what can be secured to be included in the story, but rather,
+after making a thorough collection of the material, what of all these
+points should be cast out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The ending must be a natural outgrowth of the development found in the
+body of the composition. Even in a story with a surprise ending, of
+which we are tempted to say that we have had no preparation for such a
+turn in the story, there must be hints&mdash;the subtler the better&mdash;that
+point unerringly and always toward the end. The end is presupposed in
+the beginning and the changing of one means the altering of the other.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Young writers have trouble in stopping at the right place. They should
+learn, as soon as possible, that to drag on after the logical ending
+has been reached spoils the best of stories. It is just as bad to stop
+before arriving at the true end. In other words there is only one
+place for the ending of a story, and in no case can it be shifted
+without ruining the idea that has obtained throughout the theme.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There are certain steps in the development of story-writing that
+should be followed if the best results are to be obtained. The first
+assignment should require only the writing of straight narrative. <i>The
+Arabian Nights Tales</i> and children's stories represent this type of
+writing and will give the teacher valuable aid in the presentation of
+this work. After the students have produced simple stories resembling
+the Sinbad Voyages, they should next add descriptions of persons and
+places and explanations of situations to develop clearness and
+interest in their original productions. Taking these themes in turn
+students should be required to introduce plot incidents that
+complicate the simple happenings and divert the straightforward trend
+of the narrative. Now that the stories are well developed in their
+descriptions, expositions, and plot interests they should be tested
+for their emotional effects. Students should go through their themes,
+and by making the proper changes give in some cases a humorous and in
+others a pathetic or tragic effect. These few suggestions are given to
+emphasize the facts that no one conceives a story in all its details
+in a moment of inspiration, and that there is a way of proceeding that
+passes in logical gradations from the simplest to the most complex
+phases of story writing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Franklin and Stevenson knew no rules for writing other than to
+practice incessantly on some form they wished to imitate. Hard work is
+the first lesson that boys and girls must learn in the art of writing,
+and a systematic gradation of assignments is what the teacher must
+provide for his students. Walter Besant gave the following rules for
+novel writers. Some of them may be suggestive to writers of the high
+school age, so the list is given in its complete form. "(1) Practice
+writing something original every day. (2) Cultivate the habit of
+observation. (3) Work regularly at certain hours. (4) Read no rubbish.
+(5) Aim at the formation of style. (6) Endeavor to be dramatic. (7) A
+great element of dramatic skill is selection. (8) Avoid the sin of
+writing about a character. (9) Never attempt to describe any kind of
+life except that with which you are familiar. (10) Learn as much as
+you can about men and women. (11) For the sake of forming a good
+natural style, and acquiring command of language, write poetry."
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h3>SHORT-STORY LIBRARY</h3>
+
+<h3><a name="chap01.4"></a><i>BOOKS FOR REFERENCE</i>:</h3>
+
+<p>
+<i>American Short-Stories</i>, Charles Baldwin, Longmans, Green, &amp; Co.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>A Study of Prose Fiction</i>, Chapter XII, Bliss Perry, Houghton,
+Mifflin Co.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Composition Rhetoric</i>, T.C. Blaisdell, American Book Co.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Forms of Prose Literature</i>, J.H. Gardiner, Charles Scribner's Sons.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Materials and Methods of Fiction</i>, Clayton Hamilton, The Baker and
+Taylor Co.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Principles of Literary Criticism</i>, C.T. Winchester, The Macmillan Co.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Short-Story Writing</i>, C.R. Barrett. The Baker and Taylor Co.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Specimens of the Short-Story</i>, G.H. Nettleton, H. Holt &amp; Co.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Story-Writing and Journalism</i>, Sherwin Cody, Funk &amp; Wagnalls Co.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Talks on Writing English</i>, Arlo Bates, Houghton Mifflin Co.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Writing of the Short-Story</i>, L.W. Smith, D.C. Heath &amp; Co.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Philosophy of the Short-Story</i>, Brander Matthews, Longmans,
+Green, &amp; Co.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The World's Greatest Short-Stories</i>, Sherwin Cody, A.C. McClurg &amp; Co.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Short-Story</i>, Henry Canby, Henry Holt &amp; Co.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Short-Story</i>, Evelyn May Albright, The Macmillan Co.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Book of the Short-Story</i>, Jessup and Canby, D. Appleton &amp; Co.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Modern Masterpieces of Short Prose Fiction</i>, Waite and Taylor, D.
+Appleton &amp; Co.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Short-Story</i>, Brander Matthews, American Book Co.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Writing the Short-Story</i>, Esenwein, Hinds, Noble &amp; Eldredge.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>A Study of the Short-Story in English</i>, Henry Seidel Canby, Henry
+Holt &amp; Co.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h3><a name="chap01.5"></a>COLLECTIONS OF SHORT-STORIES:</h3>
+
+<p>
+<i>American Short-Stories</i>, Charles S. Baldwin, Longmans, Green, &amp; Co.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Great Short-Stories</i>, 3 vols., William Patten, P.F. Collier &amp; Son.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Little French Masterpieces</i>, 6 vols. Alexander Jessup, G.P. Putnam's
+Sons.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Short-Story Classics</i> (American), 5 vols., William Patten, P.F.
+Collier &amp; Son.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Short-Story Classics</i> (Foreign), 5 vols., William Patten, P.F.
+Collier &amp; Son.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Stories by American Authors</i>, 10 vols., Charles Scribner's Sons.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Stories by English Authors</i>, 10 vols., Charles Scribner's Sons.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Stories by Foreign Authors</i>, 10 vols., Charles Scribner's Sons.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Stories New and Old</i> (American and English), Hamilton W. Mabie, The
+Macmillan Co.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>World's Greatest Short-Stories</i>, Sherwin Cody, A.C. McClurg &amp; Co.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The American Short-Story</i>, Elias Lieberman.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap02"></a>THE FATHER[1]</h2>
+
+<p class="center">
+<i>By Björnstjerne Björnson (1838-1910)</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The man whose story is here to be told was the wealthiest and most
+influential person in his parish; his name was Thord Överaas. He
+appeared in the priest's study one day, tall and earnest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I have gotten a son," said he, "and I wish to present him for
+baptism."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What shall his name be?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Finn,&mdash;after my father."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And the sponsors?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They were mentioned, and proved to be the best men and women of
+Thord's relations in the parish.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Is there anything else?" inquired the priest, and looked up. The
+peasant hesitated a little.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I should like very much to have him baptized by himself," said he,
+finally.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That is to say on a week-day?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Next Saturday, at twelve o'clock noon."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Is there anything else?" inquired the priest,
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"There is nothing else;" and the peasant twirled his cap, as though he
+were about to go.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then the priest rose. "There is yet this, however." said he, and
+walking toward Thord, he took him by the hand and looked gravely into
+his eyes: "God grant that the child may become a blessing to you!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One day sixteen years later, Thord stood once more in the priest's
+study.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Really, you carry your age astonishingly well, Thord," said the
+priest; for he saw no change whatever in the man.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That is because I have no troubles," replied Thord. To this the
+priest said nothing, but after a while he asked: "What is your
+pleasure this evening?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I have come this evening about that son of mine who is to be
+confirmed to-morrow."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He is a bright boy."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I did not wish to pay the priest until I heard what number the boy
+would have when he takes his place in the church to-morrow."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He will stand number one."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"So I have heard; and here are ten dollars for the priest."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Is there anything else I can do for you?" inquired the priest, fixing
+his eyes on Thord.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"There is nothing else."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thord went out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Eight years more rolled by, and then one day a noise was heard outside
+of the priest's study, for many men were approaching, and at their
+head was Thord, who entered first.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The priest looked up and recognized him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You come well attended this evening, Thord," said he.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am here to request that the banns may be published for my son: he
+is about to marry Karen Storliden, daughter of Gudmund, who stands
+here beside me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why, that is the richest girl in the parish."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"So they say," replied the peasant, stroking back his hair with one
+hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The priest sat a while as if in deep thought, then entered the names
+in his book, without making any comments, and the men wrote their
+signatures underneath. Thord laid three dollars on the table.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"One is all I am to have," said the priest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I know that very well; but he is my only child; I want to do it
+handsomely."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The priest took the money.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"This is now the third time, Thord, that you have come here on your
+son's account."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But now I am through with him," said Thord, and folding up his
+pocket-book he said farewell and walked away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The men slowly followed him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A fortnight later, the father and son were rowing across the lake, one
+calm, still day, to Storliden to make arrangements for the wedding.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"This thwart[2] is not secure," said the son, and stood up to
+straighten the seat on which he was sitting.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the same moment the board he was standing on slipped from under
+him; he threw out his arms, uttered a shriek, and fell overboard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Take hold of the oar!" shouted the father, springing to his feet, and
+holding out the oar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But when the son had made a couple of efforts he grew stiff.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Wait a moment!" cried the father, and began to row toward his son.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then the son rolled over on his back, gave his father one long look,
+and sank.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thord could scarcely believe it; he held the boat still, and stared at
+the spot where his son had gone down, as though he must surely come to
+the surface again. There rose some bubbles, then some more, and
+finally one large one that burst; and the lake lay there as smooth and
+bright as a mirror again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For three days and three nights people saw the father rowing round and
+round the spot, without taking either food or sleep; he was dragging
+the lake for the body of his son. And toward morning of the third day
+he found it, and carried it in his arms up over the hills to his
+gard[3].
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It might have been about a year from that day, when the priest, late
+one autumn evening, heard some one in the passage outside of the door,
+carefully trying to find the latch. The priest opened the door, and in
+walked a tall, thin man, with bowed form and white hair. The priest
+looked long at him before he recognized him. It was Thord.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Are you out walking so late?" said the priest, and stood still in
+front of him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ah, yes! it is late," said Thord, and took a seat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The priest sat down also, as though waiting. A long, long silence
+followed. At last Thord said,&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I have something with me that I should like to give to the poor; I
+want it to be invested as a legacy in my son's name."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He rose, laid some money on the table, and sat down again. The priest
+counted it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is a great deal of money," said he.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is half the price of my gard. I sold it to-day."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The priest sat long in silence. At last he asked, but gently,&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What do you propose to do now, Thord?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Something better."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They sat there for a while, Thord with downcast eyes, the priest with
+his eyes fixed on Thord. Presently the priest said, slowly and
+softly,&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I think your son has at last brought you a true blessing."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, I think so myself," said Thord, looking up, while two big tears
+coursed slowly down his cheeks.
+</p>
+
+<h4>NOTES</h4>
+
+<p>
+[1] This story was written in 1860. Translated from the Norwegian by
+Professor Rasmus B. Anderson. It is printed by permission of and
+special arrangement with <i>Houghton Mifflin Co.</i>, publishers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[2] 3:28 thwart. A seat, across a boat, on which the oarsman, sits.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[3] 4:21 gard. A Norwegian farm.
+</p>
+
+<h4>BIOGRAPHY</h4>
+
+<p>
+Björnstjerne Björnson, Norse poet, novelist, dramatist, orator, and
+political leader, was born December 8, 1832, and died in Paris, April
+26, 1910. From his strenuous father, a Lutheran priest who preached
+with tongue and fist, he inherited the physique of a Norse god. He
+possessed the mind of a poet and the arm of a warrior. At the age of
+twelve he was sent to the Molde grammar school, where he proved
+himself a very dull student. In 1852 he entered the university in
+Christiana. Here he neglected his studies to write poetry and
+journalistic articles.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In politics Björnson was a tremendous force. Dr. Brandes has said; "To
+speak the name of Björnson is like hoisting the colors of Norway." He
+was honored as a king in his native land. He won this recognition by
+no party affiliation, but by his natural gifts as a poet. His magnetic
+eloquence, great message, and sterling character compelled his
+countrymen to follow and honor him. He says of his success in this
+field: "The secret with me is that in success as in failure, in the
+consciousness of my doing as in my habits, I am myself. There are a
+great many who dare not, or lack the ability, to be themselves." For
+his views on political issues the following references may well be
+used: <i>Independent</i>. January 31, 1901, pp. 253-257; <i>Current
+Literature</i>, November, 1906, p. 581; and <i>Independent</i>, July 13, 1905,
+pp. 92-94.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Björnson and Ibsen, the two foremost men of Norway, were very closely
+associated throughout life. They were schoolmates, and both were
+interested in writing and producing plays. Ibsen's son, Dr. Sigurd
+Ibsen, married Björnson's daughter, Bergilot. These two great writers
+were direct contrasts in nearly everything: Björnson lived among his
+people, Ibsen was reserved; Björnson played the rôle of an optimistic
+prophet, Ibsen, that of a pessimistic judge; the former was always a
+conciliatory spirit, the latter a revolutionist; and Björnson proved
+himself a patriotic Norwegian, Ibsen, a man of the entire world.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lack of space forbids the inclusion of a list of Björnson's writing's.
+High school teachers will find suitable selections in the list of
+collateral readings that follows. Those who wish a complete
+bibliography of his works will find it in <i>Bookman</i>, Volume II, p. 65.
+Translations of his works by Rasmus B. Anderson, Houghton Mifflin Co.,
+and Edmund Gosse, the Macmillan Co., will furnish students extensive
+and standard readings of this master story-teller.
+</p>
+
+<h4>CRITICISMS</h4>
+
+<p>
+Björnson, in his masterly character delineations, seldom produces
+portraits. He gives the reader suggestive glimpses often enough and of
+the right quality and arrangement to produce a full and vigorous
+conception of his characters. His female parts are especially well
+done. His characters present themselves to the reader by unique
+thinking and choice expressions. Students should analyze <i>The Father</i>
+for this phase of character building. Note also the simplicity of the
+words, sentences, paragraphs, and complete story arrangement, the
+author's originality of story conception and expression, his short,
+passionate, panting sentences, the poetic atmosphere that sweetens and
+enriches his virile writing, and the correct, religious pictures he
+paints of his beloved northland.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After having read a number of selections from Björnson, students will
+see that he has a wonderful breadth of treatment for every imaginable
+subject. He is so universal in his choice of subjects that Lemaître in
+his <i>Impressions of the Theatre</i> half-humorously and half-ironically
+puts these words in Björnson's mouth, "I am king in the spiritual
+kingdom," and "there are two men in Europe who have genius, I and
+Ibsen, granting that Ibsen has it."
+</p>
+
+<h4>GENERAL REFERENCES</h4>
+
+<p>
+<i>Adventures in Criticism</i>, A.T.Q. Couch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Essays on Modern Novelists</i>, William Lyon Phelps.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Björnsoniana," <i>Dial</i>, January 16, 1903, pp. 37-38.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Prophet-Poet of Norway," <i>Cosmopolitan</i>, April, 1903, pp. 621-631.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Three Score and Ten," <i>Dial</i>, December, 1902, pp. 383-385.
+</p>
+
+<h4>COLLATERAL READINGS</h4>
+
+<p>
+<i>Lectures</i>, Volume I, John L. Stoddard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Making of an American</i>, Chapters 1, 7, and Jacob Riis.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Myths of Northern Lands</i>. Guerber.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Synnove Solbakken</i>, Björnson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>A Happy Boy</i>, Björnson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Fisher Maiden</i>, Björnson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Bridal March</i>, Björnson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Magnhild</i>, Björnson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>A Dangerous Wooing</i>, Björnson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Eagle's Nest</i>, Björnson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Bear Hunter</i>, Björnson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Master and Man</i>, Leo Tolstoi.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Doll's House</i>, Henrik Ibsen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Minister's Black Veil</i>, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Ambitious Guest</i>, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Beeman of Orn</i>, Frank R. Stockton.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>A Branch Road</i>, Hamlin Garland.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Mateo Falcone</i>, Prosper Mérimée.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Death of the Dauphin</i>, Alphonse Dadoed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Birds' Christmas Carol</i>, Kate Douglas Wiggin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Tennessee's Partner</i>, Bret Harte.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap03"></a>THE GRIFFIN AND THE MINOR CANAAN[1]</h2>
+
+<p class="center">
+<i>By Frank R. Stockton (1834-1902)</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Over the great door of an old, old church which stood in a quiet town
+of a far-away land there was carved in stone the figure of a large
+griffin. The old-time sculptor had done his work with great care, but
+the image he had made was not a pleasant one to look at. It had a
+large head, with enormous open mouth and savage teeth; from its back
+arose great wings, armed with sharp hooks and prongs; it had stout
+legs in front, with projecting claws; but there were no legs
+behind,&mdash;the body running out into a long and powerful tail, finished
+off at the end with a barbed point. This tail was coiled up under him,
+the end sticking up just back of his wings.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sculptor, or the people who had ordered this stone figure, had
+evidently been very much pleased with it, for little copies of it,
+also in stone, had been placed here and there along the sides of the
+church, not very far from the ground, so that people could easily look
+at them, and ponder on their curious forms. There were a great many
+other sculptures on the outside of this church,&mdash;saints, martyrs,
+grotesque heads of men, beasts, and birds, as well as those of other
+creatures which cannot be named, because nobody knows exactly what
+they were; but none were so curious and interesting as the great
+griffin over the door, and the little griffins on the sides of the
+church.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A long, long distance from the town, in the midst of dreadful wilds
+scarcely known to man, there dwelt the Griffin whose image had been
+put up over the churchgoer. In some way or other, the old-time
+sculptor had seen him, and afterward, to the best of his memory, had
+copied his figure in stone. The Griffin had never known this, until,
+hundreds of years afterward, he heard from a bird, from a wild animal,
+or in some manner which it is not now easy to find out, that there was
+a likeness of him on the old church in the distant town. Now this
+Griffin had no idea how he looked. He had never seen a mirror, and the
+streams where he lived were so turbulent and violent that a quiet
+piece of water, which would reflect the image of anything looking into
+it, could not be found. Being, as far as could be ascertained, the
+very last of his race, he had never seen another griffin. Therefore it
+was, that, when he heard of this stone image of himself, he became
+very anxious to know what he looked like, and at last he determined to
+go to the old church, and see for himself what manner of being he was.
+So he started off from the dreadful wilds, and flew on and on until he
+came to the countries inhabited by men, where his appearance in the
+air created great consternation; but he alighted nowhere, keeping up a
+steady flight until he reached the suburbs of the town which had his
+image on its church. Here, late in the afternoon, he alighted in a
+green meadow by the side of a brook, and stretched himself on the
+grass to rest. His great wings were tired, for he had not made such a
+long flight in a century, or more.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The news of his coming spread quickly over the town, and the people,
+frightened nearly out of their wits by the arrival of so extraordinary
+a visitor, fled into their houses, and shut themselves up. The Griffin
+called loudly for some one to come to him, but the more he called, the
+more afraid the people were to show themselves. At length he saw two
+laborers hurrying to their homes through the fields, and in a terrible
+voice he commanded them to stop. Not daring to disobey, the men stood,
+trembling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What is the matter with you all?" cried the Griffin. "Is there not a
+man in your town who is brave enough to speak to me?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I think," said one of the laborers, his voice shaking so that his
+words could hardly be understood, "that&mdash;perhaps&mdash;the Minor
+Canon&mdash;would come."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Go, call him, then!" said the Griffin; "I want to see him."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Minor Canon, who filled a subordinate position in the church, had
+just finished the afternoon services, and was coming out of a side
+door, with three aged women who had formed the week-day congregation.
+He was a young man of a kind disposition, and very anxious to do good
+to the people of the town. Apart from his duties in the church, where
+he conducted services every week-day, he visited the sick and the
+poor, counseled and assisted persons who were in trouble, and taught a
+school composed entirely of the bad children in the town with whom
+nobody else would have anything to do. Whenever the people wanted
+something difficult done for them, they always went to the Minor
+Canon. Thus it was that the laborer thought of the young priest when
+he found that some one must come and speak to the Griffin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Minor Canon had not heard of the strange event, which was known to
+the whole town except himself and the three old women, and when he was
+informed of it, and was told that the Griffin had asked to see him, he
+was greatly amazed, and frightened.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Me!" he exclaimed. "He has never heard of me! What should he want
+with <i>me?</i>"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh! you must go instantly!" cried the two men.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He is very angry now because he has been kept waiting so long; and
+nobody knows what may happen if you don't hurry to him."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The poor Minor Canon would rather have had his hand cut off than go
+out to meet an angry griffin; but he felt that it was his duty to go,
+or it would be a woeful thing if injury should come to the people of
+the town because he was not brave enough to obey the summons of the
+Griffin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So, pale and frightened, he started off.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well," said the Griffin, as soon as the young man came near, "I am
+glad to see that there is some one who has the courage to come to me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Minor Canon did not feel very courageous, but he bowed his head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Is this the town," said the Griffin, "where there is a church with a
+likeness of myself over one of the doors?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Minor Canon looked at the frightful creature before him and saw
+that it was, without doubt, exactly like the stone image on the
+church. "Yes," he said, "you are right."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, then," said the Griffin, "will you take me to it? I wish very
+much to see it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Minor Canon instantly thought that if the Griffin entered the town
+without the people knowing what he came for, some of them would
+probably be frightened to death, and so he sought to gain time to
+prepare their minds.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is growing dark, now," he said, very much afraid, as he spoke,
+that his words might enrage the Griffin, "and objects on the front of
+the church cannot be seen clearly. It will be better to wait until
+morning, if you wish to get a good view of the stone image of
+yourself."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That will suit me very well," said the Griffin. "I see you are a man
+of good sense. I am tired, and I will take a nap here on this soft
+grass, while I cool my tail in the little stream that runs near me.
+The end of my tail gets red-hot when I am angry or excited, and it is
+quite warm now. So you may go, but be sure and come early to-morrow
+morning, and show me the way to the church."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Minor Canon was glad enough to take his leave, and hurried into
+the town. In front of the church he found a great many people
+assembled to hear his report of his interview with the Griffin. When
+they found that he had not come to spread ruin and devastation, but
+simply to see his stony likeness on the church, they showed neither
+relief nor gratification, but began to upbraid the Minor Canon for
+consenting to conduct the creature into the town.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What could I do?" cried the young man, "If I should not bring him he
+would come himself and, perhaps, end by setting fire to the town with
+his red-hot tail."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Still the people were not satisfied, and a great many plans were
+proposed to prevent the Griffin from coming into the town. Some
+elderly persons urged that the young men should go out and kill him;
+but the young men scoffed at such a ridiculous idea. Then some one
+said that it would be a good thing to destroy the stone image so that
+the Griffin would have no excuse for entering the town; and this
+proposal was received with such favor that many of the people ran for
+hammers, chisels, and crowbars, with which to tear down and break up
+the stone griffin. But the Minor Canon resisted this plan with all the
+strength of his mind and body. He assured the people that this action
+would enrage the Griffin beyond measure, for it would be impossible to
+conceal from him that his image had been destroyed during the night.
+But the people were so determined to break up the stone griffin that
+the Minor Canon saw that there was nothing for him to do but to stay
+there and protect it. All night he walked up and down in front of the
+church-door, keeping away the men who brought ladders, by which they
+might mount to the great stone griffin, and knock it to pieces with
+their hammers and crowbars. After many hours the people were obliged
+to give up their attempts, and went home to sleep; but the Minor Canon
+remained at his post till early morning, and then he hurried away to
+the field where he had left the Griffin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The monster had just awakened, and rising to his fore-legs and shaking
+himself, he said that he was ready to go into the town. The Minor
+Canon, therefore, walked back, the Griffin flying slowly through the
+air, at a short distance above the head of his guide. Not a person was
+to be seen in the streets, and they proceeded directly to the front of
+the church, where the Minor Canon pointed out the stone griffin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The real Griffin settled down in the little square before the church
+and gazed earnestly at his sculptured likeness. For a long time he
+looked at it. First he put his head on one side, and then he put it on
+the other; then he shut his right eye and gazed with his left, after
+which he shut his left eye and gazed with his right. Then he moved a
+little to one side and looked at the image, then he moved the other
+way. After a while he said to the Minor Canon, who had been standing
+by all this time:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is, it must be, an excellent likeness! That breadth between the
+eyes, that expansive forehead, those massive jaws! I feel that it must
+resemble me. If there is any fault to find with it, it is that the
+neck seems a little stiff. But that is nothing. It is an admirable
+likeness,&mdash;admirable!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Griffin sat looking at his image all the morning and all the
+afternoon. The Minor Canon had been afraid to go away and leave him,
+and had hoped all through the day that he would soon be satisfied with
+his inspection and fly away home. But by evening the poor young man
+was utterly exhausted, and felt that he must eat and sleep. He frankly
+admitted this fact to the Griffin, and asked him if he would not like
+something to eat. He said this because he felt obliged in politeness
+to do so, but as soon as he had spoken the words, he was seized with
+dread lest the monster should demand half a dozen babies, or some
+tempting repast of that kind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, no," said the Griffin, "I never eat between the equinoxes. At the
+vernal and at the autumnal equinox I take a good meal, and that lasts
+me for half a year. I am extremely regular in my habits, and do not
+think it healthful to eat at odd times. But if you need food, go and
+get it, and I will return to the soft grass where I slept last night
+and take another nap."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The next day the Griffin came again to the little square before the
+church, and remained there until evening, steadfastly regarding the
+stone griffin over the door. The Minor Canon came once or twice to
+look at him, and the Griffin seemed very glad to see him; but the
+young clergyman could not stay as he had done before, for he had many
+duties to perform. Nobody went to the church, but the people came to
+the Minor Canon's house, and anxiously asked him how long the Griffin
+was going to stay.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I do not know," he answered, "but I think he will soon be satisfied
+with regarding his stone likeness, and then he will go away."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the Griffin did not go away. Morning after morning he came to the
+church, but after a time he did not stay there all day. He seemed to
+have taken a great fancy to the Minor Canon, and followed him about as
+he pursued his various avocations. He would wait for him at the side
+door of the church, for the Minor Canon held services every day,
+morning and evening, though nobody came now. "If any one should come,"
+he said to himself, "I must be found at my post." When the young man
+came out, the Griffin would accompany him in his visits to the sick
+and the poor, and would often look into the windows of the schoolhouse
+where the Minor Canon was teaching his unruly scholars. All the other
+schools were closed, but the parents of the Minor Canon's scholars
+forced them to go to school, because they were so bad they could not
+endure them all day at home,&mdash;griffin or no griffin. But it must be
+said they generally behaved very well when that great monster sat up
+on his tail and looked in at the schoolroom window.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When it was perceived that the Griffin showed no signs of going away,
+all the people who were able to do so left the town. The canons and
+the higher officers of the church had fled away during the first day
+of the Griffin's visit, leaving behind only the Minor Canon and some
+of the men who opened the doors and swept the church. All the citizens
+who could afford it shut up their houses and travelled to distant
+parts, and only the working people and the poor were left behind.
+After some days these ventured to go about and attend to their
+business, for if they did not work they would starve. They were
+getting a little used to seeing the Griffin, and having been told that
+he did not eat between equinoxes, they did not feel so much afraid of
+him as before. Day by day the Griffin became more and more attached to
+the Minor Canon. He kept near him a great part of the time, and often
+spent the night in front of the little house where the young clergyman
+lived alone. This strange companionship was often burdensome to the
+Minor Canon; but, on the other hand, he could not deny that he derived
+a great deal of benefit and instruction from it. The Griffin had lived
+for hundreds of years, and had seen much; and he told the Minor Canon
+many wonderful things.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is like reading an old book," said the young clergyman to himself;
+"but how many books I would have had to read before I would have found
+out what the Griffin has told me about the earth, the air, the water,
+about minerals, and metals, and growing things, and all the wonders of
+the world!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thus the summer went on, and drew toward its close. And now the people
+of the town began to be very much troubled again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It will not be long," they said, "before the autumnal equinox is
+here, and then that monster will want to eat. He will be dreadfully
+hungry, for he has taken so much exercise since his last meal. He will
+devour our children. Without doubt, he will eat them all. What is to
+be done?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To this question no one could give an answer, but all agreed that the
+Griffin must not be allowed to remain until the approaching equinox.
+After talking over the matter a great deal, a crowd of the people went
+to the Minor Canon, at a time when the Griffin was not with him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is all your fault," they said, "that that monster is among us. You
+brought him here, and you ought to see that he goes away. It is only
+on your account that he stays here at all, for, although he visits his
+image every day, he is with you the greater part of the time. If you
+were not here, he would not stay. It is your duty to go away and then
+he will follow you, and we shall be free from the dreadful danger
+which hangs over us."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Go away!" cried the Minor Canon, greatly grieved at being spoken to
+in such a way. "Where shall I go? If I go to some other town, shall I
+not take this trouble there? Have I a right to do that?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No," said the people, "you must not go to any other town. There is no
+town far enough away. You must go to the dreadful wilds where the
+Griffin lives; and then he will follow you and stay there."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They did not say whether or not they expected the Minor Canon to stay
+there also, and he did not ask them any thing about it. He bowed his
+head, and went into his house, to think. The more he thought, the more
+clear it became to his mind that it was his duty to go away, and thus
+free the town from the presence of the Griffin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That evening he packed a leathern bag full of bread and meat, and
+early the next morning he set out on his journey to the dreadful
+wilds. It was a long, weary, and doleful journey, especially after he
+had gone beyond the habitations of men, but the Minor Canon kept on
+bravely, and never faltered. The way was longer than he had expected,
+and his provisions soon grew so scanty that he was obliged to eat but
+a little every day, but he kept up his courage, and pressed on, and,
+after many days of toilsome travel, he reached the dreadful wilds.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When the Griffin found that the Minor Canon had left the town he
+seemed sorry, but showed no disposition to go and look for him. After
+a few days had passed, he became much annoyed, and asked some of the
+people where the Minor Canon had gone. But, although the citizens had
+been anxious that the young clergyman should go to the dreadful wilds,
+thinking that the Griffin would immediately follow him, they were now
+afraid to mention the Minor Canon's destination, for the monster
+seemed angry already, and, if he should suspect their trick, he would
+doubtless become very much enraged. So every one said he did not know,
+and the Griffin wandered about disconsolate. One morning he looked
+into the Minor Canon's schoolhouse, which was always empty now, and
+thought that it was a shame that every thing should suffer on account
+of the young man's absence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It does not matter so much about the church," he said, "for nobody
+went there; but it is a pity about the school. I think I will teach it
+myself until he returns."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was the hour for opening the school, and the Griffin went inside
+and pulled the rope which rang the schoolbell. Some of the children
+who heard the bell ran in to see what was the matter, supposing it to
+be a joke of one of their companions; but when they saw the Griffin
+they stood astonished, and scared.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Go tell the other scholars," said the monster, "that school is about
+to open, and that if they are not all here in ten minutes, I shall
+come after them." In seven minutes every scholar was in place.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Never was seen such an orderly school. Not a boy or girl moved, or
+uttered a whisper. The Griffin climbed into the master's seat, his
+wide wings spread on each side of him, because he could not lean back
+in his chair while they stuck out behind, and his great tail coiled
+around, in front of the desk, the barbed end sticking up, ready to tap
+any boy or girl who might misbehave. The Griffin now addressed the
+scholars, telling them that he intended to teach them while their
+master was away. In speaking he endeavored to imitate, as far as
+possible, the mild and gentle tones of the Minor Canon, but it must be
+admitted that in this he was not very successful. He had paid a good
+deal of attention to the studies of the school, and he determined not
+to attempt to teach them anything new, but to review them in what they
+had been studying; so he called up the various classes, and questioned
+them upon their previous lessons. The children racked their brains to
+remember what they had learned. They were so afraid of the Griffin's
+displeasure that they recited as they had never recited before. One of
+the boys far down in his class answered so well that the Griffin was
+astonished.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I should think you would be at the head," said he. "I am sure you
+have never been in the habit of reciting so well. Why is this?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Because I did not choose to take the trouble," said the boy,
+trembling in his boots. He felt obliged to speak the truth, for all
+the children thought that the great eyes of the Griffin could see
+right through them, and that he would know when they told a falsehood.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You ought to be ashamed of yourself," said the Griffin. "Go down to
+the very tail of the class, and if you are not at the head in two
+days, I shall know the reason why."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The next afternoon the boy was number one.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was astonishing how much these children now learned of what they
+had been studying. It was as if they had been educated over again. The
+Griffin used no severity toward them, but there was a look about him
+which made them unwilling to go to bed until they were sure they knew
+their lessons for the next day.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Griffin now thought that he ought to visit the sick and the poor;
+and he began to go about the town for this purpose. The effect upon
+the sick was miraculous. All, except those who were very ill indeed,
+jumped from their beds when they heard he was coming, and declared
+themselves quite well. To those who could not get up, he gave herbs
+and roots, which none of them had ever before thought of as medicines,
+but which the Griffin had seen used in various parts of the world; and
+most of them recovered. But, for all that, they afterward said that no
+matter what happened to them, they hoped that they should never again
+have such a doctor coming to their bedsides, feeling their pulses and
+looking at their tongues.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As for the poor, they seemed to have utterly disappeared. All those
+who had depended upon charity for their daily bread were now at work
+in some way or other; many of them offering to do odd jobs for their
+neighbors just for the sake of their meals,&mdash;a thing which before had
+been seldom heard of in the town. The Griffin could find no one who
+needed his assistance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The summer had now passed, and the autumnal equinox was rapidly
+approaching. The citizens were in a state of great alarm and anxiety.
+The Griffin showed no signs of going away, but seemed to have settled
+himself permanently among them. In a short time, the day for his
+semi-annual meal would arrive, and then what would happen? The monster
+would certainly be very hungry, and would devour all their children.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now they greatly regretted and lamented that they had sent away the
+Minor Canon; he was the only one on whom they could have depended in
+this trouble, for he could talk freely with the Griffin, and so find
+out what could be done. But it would not do to be inactive. Some step
+must be taken immediately. A meeting of the citizens was called, and
+two old men were appointed to go and talk to the Griffin. They were
+instructed to offer to prepare a splendid dinner for him on equinox
+day,&mdash;one which would entirely satisfy his hunger. They would offer
+him the fattest mutton, the most tender beef, fish, and game of
+various sorts, and any thing of the kind that he might fancy. If none
+of these suited, they were to mention that there was an orphan asylum
+in the next town.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Any thing would be better," said the citizens, "than to have our dear
+children devoured."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The old men went to the Griffin, but their propositions were not
+received with favor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"From what I have seen of the people of this town," said the monster,
+"I do not think I could relish any thing which was prepared by them.
+They appear to be all cowards, and, therefore, mean and selfish. As
+for eating one of them, old or young, I could not think of it for a
+moment. In fact, there was only one creature in the whole place for
+whom I could have had any appetite, and that is the Minor Canon, who
+has gone away. He was brave, and good, and honest, and I think I
+should have relished him."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ah!" said one of the old men very politely, "in that case I wish we
+had not sent him to the dreadful wilds!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What!" cried the Griffin. "What do you mean? Explain instantly what
+you are talking about!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The old man, terribly frightened at what he had said, was obliged to
+tell how the Minor Canon had been sent away by the people, in the hope
+that the Griffin might be induced to follow him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When the monster heard this, he became furiously angry. He dashed away
+from the old men and, spreading his wings, flew backward and forward
+over the town. He was so much excited that his tail became red-hot,
+and glowed like a meteor against the evening sky. When at last he
+settled down in the little field where he usually rested, and thrust
+his tail into the brook, the steam arose like a cloud, and the water
+of the stream ran hot through the town. The citizens were greatly
+frightened, and bitterly blamed the old man for telling about the
+Minor Canon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is plain," they said, "that the Griffin intended at last to go and
+look for him, and we should have been saved. Now who can tell what
+misery you have brought upon us."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Griffin did not remain long in the little field. As soon as his
+tail was cool he flew to the town-hall and rang the bell. The citizens
+knew that they were expected to come there, and although they were
+afraid to go, they were still more afraid to stay away; and they
+crowded into the hall. The Griffin was on the platform at one end,
+flapping his wings and walking up and down, and the end of his tail
+was still so warm that it slightly scorched the boards as he dragged
+it after him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When everybody who was able to come was there the Griffin stood still
+and addressed the meeting.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I have had a contemptible opinion of you," he said, "ever since I
+discovered what cowards you are, but I had no idea that you were so
+ungrateful, selfish, and cruel as I now find you to be. Here was your
+Minor Canon, who labored day and night for your good, and thought of
+nothing else but how he might benefit you and make you happy; and as
+soon as you imagine yourselves threatened with a danger,&mdash;for well I
+know you are dreadfully afraid of me,&mdash;you send him off, caring not
+whether he returns or perishes, hoping thereby to save yourselves.
+Now, I had conceived a great liking for that young man, and had
+intended, in a day or two, to go and look him up. But I have changed
+my mind about him. I shall go and find him, but I shall send him back
+here to live among you, and I intend that he shall enjoy the reward of
+his labor and his sacrifices. Go, some of you, to the officers of the
+church, who so cowardly ran away when I first came here, and tell them
+never to return to this town under penalty of death. And if, when your
+Minor Canon comes back to you, you do not bow yourselves before him,
+put him in the highest place among you, and serve and honor him all
+his life, beware of my terrible vengeance! There were only two good
+things in this town: the Minor Canon and the stone image of myself
+over your church-door. One of these you have sent away, and the other
+I shall carry away myself."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With these words he dismissed the meeting, and it was time, for the
+end of his tail had become so hot that there was danger of its setting
+fire to the building.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The next morning, the Griffin came to the church, and tearing the
+stone image of himself from its fastenings over the great door, he
+grasped it with his powerful fore-legs and flew up into the air. Then,
+after hovering over the town for a moment, he gave his tail an angry
+shake and took up his flight to the dreadful wilds. When he reached
+this desolate region, he set the stone Griffin upon a ledge of a rock
+which rose in front of the dismal cave he called his home. There the
+image occupied a position somewhat similar to that it had had over the
+church-door; and the Griffin, panting with the exertion of carrying
+such an enormous load to so great a distance, lay down upon the
+ground, and regarded it with much satisfaction. When he felt somewhat
+rested he went to look for the Minor Canon. He found the young man,
+weak and half-starved, lying under the shadow of a rock. After picking
+him up and carrying him to his cave, the Griffin flew away to a
+distant marsh, where he procured some roots and herbs which he well
+knew were strengthening and beneficial to man, though he had never
+tasted them himself. After eating these the Minor Canon was greatly
+revived, and sat up and listened while the Griffin told him what had
+happened in the town.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do you know," said the monster, when he had finished, "that I have
+had, and still have, a great liking for you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am very glad to hear it," said the Minor Canon, with his usual
+politeness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am not at all sure that you would be," said the Griffin, "if you
+thoroughly understood the state of the case, but we will not consider
+that now. If some things were different, other things would be
+otherwise. I have been so enraged by discovering the manner in which
+you have been treated that I have determined that you shall at last
+enjoy the rewards and honors to which you are entitled. Lie down and
+have a good sleep, and then I will take you back to the town."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As he heard these words, a look of trouble came over the young man's
+face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You need not give yourself any anxiety," said the Griffin, "about my
+return to the town. I shall not remain there. Now that I have that
+admirable likeness of myself in front of my cave, where I can sit at
+my leisure, and gaze upon its noble features and magnificent
+proportions, I have no wish to see that abode of cowardly and selfish
+people."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Minor Canon, relieved from his fears, lay back, and dropped into a
+doze; and when he was sound asleep the Griffin took him up, and
+carried him back to the town. He arrived just before daybreak, and
+putting the young man gently on the grass in the little field where he
+himself used to rest, the monster, without having been seen by any of
+the people, flew back to his home.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When the Minor Canon made his appearance in the morning among the
+citizens, the enthusiasm and cordiality with which he was received
+were truly wonderful. He was taken to a house which had been occupied
+by one of the vanished high officers of the place, and every one was
+anxious to do all that could be done for his health and comfort. The
+people crowded into the church when he held services, so that the
+three old women who used to be his week-day congregation could not get
+to the best seats, which they had always been in the habit of taking;
+and the parents of the bad children determined to reform them at home,
+in order that he might be spared the trouble of keeping up his former
+school. The Minor Canon was appointed to the highest office of the old
+church, and before he died, he became a bishop.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+During the first years after his return from the dreadful wilds, the
+people of the town looked up to him as a man to whom they were bound
+to do honor and reverence; but they often, also, looked up to the sky
+to see if there were any signs of the Griffin coming back. However, in
+the course of time, they learned to honor and reverence their former
+Minor Canon without the fear of being punished if they did not do so.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But they need never have been afraid of the Griffin. The autumnal
+equinox day came round, and the monster ate nothing. If he could not
+have the Minor Canon, he did not care for any thing. So, lying down,
+with his eyes fixed upon the great stone griffin, he gradually
+declined, and died. It was a good thing for some people of the town
+that they did not know this.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If you should ever visit the old town, you would still see the little
+griffins on the sides of the church; but the great stone griffin that
+was over the door is gone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+NOTE: [1] Written in 1887. This story is used by permission of and
+special arrangement with <i>Charles Scribner's Sons</i>, publishers.
+</p>
+
+<h4>BIOGRAPHY</h4>
+
+<p>
+Frank Richard Stockton, one of America's foremost story-tellers and
+humorists, was born in Philadelphia in 1834. His father was a
+Presbyterian minister who devoutly wished that his son might study
+medicine. This wish was shattered early, for the son showed symptoms
+of being a writer while yet in the Central High School of
+Philadelphia. In competition with many of his schoolmates for a prize
+offered for the best story, young Stockton won easily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After finishing his high school course, he adopted the profession of
+wood-engraver. Although he earned his living for several years by
+carving wood, he never lost his desire to write, and practised, at
+every spare moment, his favorite avocation. It was this careful and
+patient training during his apprenticeship that finally made him the
+expert story-teller that he is. It is very interesting to any one who
+cares for the acquirement of an excellent style to note how all the
+authors contained in this text have had to work with almost a
+superhuman force to reach the heights of successful short-story
+writing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His first important publication, <i>Kate</i>, appeared in the <i>Southern
+Literary Messenger</i> in 1859. He then joined the staff of the
+<i>Philadelphia Morning Post</i>, where he did regular newspaper work and
+contributed to the <i>Riverside Magazine</i> and <i>Hearth and Home</i>. In 1872
+his <i>Stephen Skarridge's Christmas</i> appeared in <i>Scribner's Monthly</i>.
+Dr. J.G. Holland, editor of <i>Scribner's</i>, was so impressed with the
+story that he made Mr. Stockton an assistant editor and persuaded him
+to move to New York. In 1873 he joined the staff of the <i>St. Nicholas
+Magazine</i>. His publication of the <i>Rudder Grange</i> series in
+<i>Scribner's</i> <i>Monthly</i> in 1878 made him famous. In 1882 he resigned
+all editorial work and spent his entire time in literary composition.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Stockton possessed a frail body and very little physical
+endurance. In spite of this physical handicap he was very vivacious
+and gay. He was a genial and companionable man, loved by all who knew
+him. He was very modest, even to the point of shyness, exceptionally
+sincere, and quaintly humorous. He established homes in New Jersey and
+West Virginia, where he spent the greater part of his time from 1882
+until his death in 1902.
+</p>
+
+<h4>BIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES</h4>
+
+<p>
+<i>Famous Authors</i> (107-122), B.F. Harkness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>American Authors</i> (59-73), F.W. Halsey.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Character Sketch," <i>Book-Buyer</i>, 24:355-357.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Home at Claymont," <i>Current Literature</i>, 30:221.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Sketch," <i>Outlook</i>, 70: 1000-1001,
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Stockton and his Work," <i>Atlantic Monthly</i>, 87:136-138.
+</p>
+
+<h4>CRITICISMS</h4>
+
+<p>
+The writings of Frank R. Stockton are excellent representatives of the
+man himself. How closely allied writer and writings are is very well
+stated by Hamilton W. Mabie in the <i>Book-Buyer</i> for June, 1902, "His
+talk had much of the quality of his writing; it was full of quaint
+conceits, whimsicalities, impossible suggestions offered with perfect
+gravity. He was always perfectly natural; he never attempted to live
+up to his part; in talk, at least, he never forced the note. His
+attitude toward himself was slightly tinged with humor, and he knew
+how to foil easily and pleasantly too great a pressure of praise."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His tales are extravagantly impossible but extremely realistic in
+effect, filled with humorous situations and singular plots, and
+peopled with eccentric characters that afford amusement on every page.
+His most successful writing is done when he explains contrivances upon
+which his story depends. He is an original and inventive expert
+juggler who moves with careless ease to the most effective ends. His
+characters are little more than pieces of mechanism that act when he
+pulls the string. They have little emotion and even in their
+love-making they show their emotion mostly for the sake of the
+reader's amusement. His negro characters are exceptions to his general
+treatment and are true to life. He inveigles the reader into believing
+the most extravagant incidents by having a reliable witness narrate
+them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Stockton never stoops to the burlesque, cynic, or vulgar phases of
+life to secure amusement. He is grotesque and droll in his manner, and
+above all always restrained. His literary life is full of sprites and
+gnomes that frolic before young children and once before mature
+people. <i>The Griffin and the Minor Canon</i> is a beautiful fairy story
+lifted from childhood's thought and diction into a mature realm. His
+humor is plain and simple, cool and keenly calculating. A friendly
+critic has said of one of his stories, "With a gentle, ceaseless
+murmur of amusement, and a flickering twinkle of smiles, the story
+moves steadily on in the calm triumph of its assured and unassailable
+absurdity, to its logical and indisputable impossibility." This
+observation is very largely true of all his stories.
+</p>
+
+<h4>GENERAL REFERENCES</h4>
+
+<p>
+<i>Frank R. Stockton</i>, A.T.Q. Couch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Stockton's Method of Working," <i>Current Literature</i>, 32:495.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Criticism," <i>Atheneum</i>, 1:532.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Estimate," <i>Harper's Weekly</i>, 46:555.
+</p>
+
+<h4>COLLATERAL READINGS</h4>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Beeman of Orn, and Other Fanciful Tales</i>, Frank R. Stockton.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Lady or the Tiger</i>, Frank R. Stockton.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Rudder Grange</i>, Frank R. Stockton.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>A Tale of Negative Gravity</i>, Frank R. Stockton.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Remarkable Wreck of the Thomas Hyde</i>, Frank R. Stockton.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>His Wife's Deceased Sister</i>, Frank R. Stockton.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Legend of Sleepy Hollow</i>, Washington Irving.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Monsieur du Miroir</i>, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>At the End of the Passage</i>, Rudyard Kipling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Vacant Lot</i>, Mary Wilkins Freeman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Princess Pourquoi</i>, Margaret Sherwood.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>What Was It? A Mystery</i>, Fitz-James O'Brien.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Wandering Willie's Tale</i>, Walter Scott.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap04"></a>THE PIECE OF STRING[1]</h2>
+
+<p class="center">
+<i>By Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893)</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On all the roads about Goderville the peasants and their wives were
+coming toward the town, for it was market day. The men walked at an
+easy gait, the whole body thrown forward with every movement of their
+long, crooked legs, misshapen by hard work, by the bearing down on the
+plough which at the same time causes the left shoulder to rise and the
+figure to slant; by the mowing of the grain, which makes one hold his
+knees apart in order to obtain a firm footing; by all the slow and
+laborious tasks of the fields. Their starched blue blouses, glossy as
+if varnished, adorned at the neck and wrists with a bit of white
+stitchwork, puffed out about their bony chests like balloons on the
+point of taking flight, from which protrude a head, two arms, and two
+feet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Some of them led a cow or a calf at the end of a rope. And their
+wives, walking behind the beast, lashed it with a branch still covered
+with leaves, to hasten its pace. They carried on their arms great
+baskets, from which heads of chickens or of ducks were thrust forth.
+And they walked with a shorter and quicker step than their men, their
+stiff, lean figures wrapped in scanty shawls pinned over their flat
+breasts, their heads enveloped in a white linen cloth close to the
+hair, with a cap over all.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then a <i>char-à-bancs[2]</i> passed, drawn by a jerky-paced nag, with two
+men seated side by side shaking like jelly, and a woman behind, who
+clung to the side of the vehicle to lessen the rough jolting.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the square at Goderville there was a crowd, a medley of men and
+beasts. The horns of the cattle, the high hats, with a long, hairy
+nap, of the wealthy peasants, and the head dresses of the peasant
+women, appeared on the surface of the throng. And the sharp, shrill,
+high-pitched voices formed an incessant, uncivilized uproar, over
+which soared at times a roar of laughter from the powerful chest of a
+sturdy yokel, or the prolonged bellow of a cow fastened to the wall of
+a house.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was an all-pervading smell of the stable, of milk, of the
+dunghill, of hay, and of perspiration&mdash;that acrid, disgusting odor of
+man and beast peculiar to country people.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Master Hauchecorne, of Bréauté, had just arrived at Goderville, and
+was walking toward the square, when he saw a bit of string on the
+ground. Master Hauchecorne, economical like every true Norman, thought
+that it was well to pick up everything that might be of use; and he
+stooped painfully, for he suffered with rheumatism. He took the piece
+of slender cord from the ground, and was about to roll it up
+carefully, when he saw Master Malandain, the harness-maker, standing
+in his doorway and looking at him. They had formerly had trouble on
+the subject of a halter, and had remained at odds, being both inclined
+to bear malice. Master Hauchecorne felt a sort of shame at being seen
+thus by his enemy, fumbling in the mud for a bit of string. He
+hurriedly concealed his treasure in his blouse, then in his breeches
+pocket; then he pretended to look on the ground for something else,
+which he did not find; and finally he went on toward the market, his
+head thrust forward, bent double by his pains.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He lost himself at once in the slow-moving, shouting crowd, kept in a
+state of excitement by the interminable bargaining. The peasants felt
+of the cows, went away, returned, sorely perplexed, always afraid of
+being cheated, never daring to make up their minds, watching the
+vendor's eye, striving incessantly to detect the tricks of the man and
+the defect in the beast.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The women, having placed their great baskets at their feet, took out
+their fowls, which lay on the ground, their legs tied together, with
+frightened eyes and scarlet combs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They listened to offers, adhered to their prices, short of speech and
+impassive of face; or else, suddenly deciding to accept the lower
+price offered, they would call out to the customer as he walked slowly
+away:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"All right, Mast' Anthime. You can have it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then, little by little, the square became empty, and when the
+Angelus[3] struck midday those who lived too far away to go home
+betook themselves to the various inns.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At Jourdain's the common room was full of customers, as the great yard
+was full of vehicles of every sort&mdash;carts, cabriolets,[4]
+<i>char-à-bancs</i>, tilburys,[5] unnamable carriages, shapeless, patched,
+with, their shafts reaching heavenward like arms, or with their noses
+in the ground and their tails in the air.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The vast fireplace, full of clear flame, cast an intense heat against
+the backs of the row on the right of the table. Three spits were
+revolving, laden with chickens, pigeons, and legs of mutton; and a
+delectable odor of roast meat, and of gravy dripping from the browned
+skin, came forth from the hearth, stirred the guests to merriment, and
+made their mouths water.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All the aristocracy of the plough ate there, at Mast' Jourdain's, the
+innkeeper and horse trader&mdash;a shrewd rascal who had money.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The dishes passed and were soon emptied, like the jugs of yellow
+cider. Every one told of his affairs, his sales and his purchases.
+They inquired about the crops. The weather was good for green stuffs,
+but a little wet for wheat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Suddenly a drum rolled in the yard, in front of the house. In an
+instant everybody was on his feet, save a few indifferent ones; and
+they all ran to the door and windows with their mouths still full and
+napkins in hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Having finished his long tattoo, the public crier shouted in a jerky
+voice, making his pauses in the wrong places:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The people of Goderville, and all those present at the market are
+informed that between&mdash;nine and ten o'clock this morning on the
+Beuzeville&mdash;road, a black leather wallet was lost, containing five
+hundred&mdash;francs, and business papers. The finder is requested to carry
+it to&mdash;the mayor's at once, or to Master Fortuné Huelbrèque of
+Manneville. A reward of twenty francs will be paid."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then he went away. They heard once more in the distance the muffled
+roll of the drum and the indistinct voice of the crier.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then they began to talk about the incident, reckoning Master
+Houlbrèque's chance of finding or not finding his wallet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And the meal went on.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They were finishing their coffee when the corporal of gendarmes
+appeared in the doorway.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He inquired:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Is Master Hauchecorne of Bréauté here?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Master Hauchecorne, who was seated at the farther end of the table,
+answered:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Here I am."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And the corporal added:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Master Hauchecorne, will you be kind enough to go to the mayor's
+office with me? Monsieur the mayor would like to speak to you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The peasant, surprised and disturbed, drank his <i>petit verre[6]</i> at
+one swallow, rose, and even more bent than in the morning, for the
+first steps after each rest were particularly painful, he started off,
+repeating:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Here I am, here I am."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And he followed the brigadier.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The mayor was waiting for him, seated in his arm-chair. He was the
+local notary, a stout, solemn-faced man, given to pompous speeches.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Master Hauchecorne," he said, "you were seen this morning, on the
+Beuzeville road, to pick up the wallet lost by Master Huelbrèque of
+Manneville."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The rustic, dumfounded, stared at the mayor, already alarmed by this
+suspicion which had fallen upon him, although he failed to understand
+it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I, I&mdash;I picked up that wallet?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"On my word of honor, I didn't even so much as see it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You were seen."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"They saw me, me? Who was it saw me?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Monsieur Malandain, the harness-maker."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thereupon the old man remembered and understood; and flushing with
+anger, he cried:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ah! he saw me, did he, that sneak? He saw me pick up this string,
+look, m'sieu' mayor."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And fumbling in the depths of his pocket, he produced the little piece
+of cord.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the mayor was incredulous and shook his head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You won't make me believe, Master Hauchecorne, that Monsieur
+Malandain, who is a man deserving of credit, mistook this string for a
+wallet."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The peasant, in a rage, raised his hand, spit to one side to pledge
+his honor, and said:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It's God's own truth, the sacred truth, all the same, m'sieu' mayor.
+I say it again, by my soul and my salvation."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"After picking it up," rejoined the mayor, "you hunted a long while in
+the mud, to see if some piece of money hadn't fallen out."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The good man was suffocated with wrath and fear.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If any one can tell&mdash;if any one can tell lies like that to ruin an
+honest man! If any one can say&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To no purpose did he protest; he was not believed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was confronted with Monsieur Malandain, who repeated and maintained
+his declaration. They insulted each other for a whole hour. At his own
+request, Master Hauchecorne was searched. They found nothing on him.
+At last the mayor, being sorely perplexed, discharged him, but warned
+him that he proposed to inform the prosecuting attorney's office and
+to ask for orders.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The news had spread. On leaving the mayor's office, the old man was
+surrounded and questioned with serious or bantering curiosity, in
+which, however, there was no trace of indignation. And he began to
+tell the story of the string. They did not believe him. They laughed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He went his way, stopping his acquaintances, repeating again and again
+his story and his protestations, showing his pockets turned inside
+out, to prove that he had nothing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They said to him:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You old rogue, <i>va!</i>"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And he lost his temper, lashing himself into a rage, feverish with
+excitement, desperate because he was not believed, at a loss what to
+do, and still telling his story. Night came. He must needs go home. He
+started with three neighbors, to whom he pointed out the place where
+he had picked up the bit of string: and all the way he talked of his
+misadventure.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+During the evening he made a circuit of the village of Bréauté, in
+order to tell everybody about it. He found none but incredulous
+listeners.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was ill over it all night.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The next afternoon, about one o'clock, Marius Paumelle, a farmhand
+employed by Master Breton, a farmer of Ymauville, restored the wallet
+and its contents to Master Huelbrèque of Manneville.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The man claimed that he had found it on the road; but, being unable to
+read, had carried it home and given it to his employer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The news soon became known in the neighborhood; Master Hauchecorne was
+informed of it. He started out again at once, and began to tell his
+story, now made complete by the dénouement. He was triumphant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What made me feel bad," he said, "wasn't so much the thing itself,
+you understand, but the lying. There's nothing hurts you so much as
+being blamed for lying."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All day long he talked of his adventure; he told it on the roads to
+people who passed; at the wine-shop to people who were drinking; and
+after church on the following Sunday. He even stopped strangers to
+tell them about it. His mind was at rest now, and yet something
+embarrassed him, although he could not say just what it was. People
+seemed to laugh while they listened to him. They did not seem
+convinced. He felt as if remarks were made behind his back.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On Tuesday of the next week, he went to market at Goderville, impelled
+solely by the longing to tell his story.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Malandain, standing in his doorway, began to laugh when he saw him
+coming. Why?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He accosted a farmer from Criquetot, who did not let him finish, but
+poked him in the pit of his stomach, and shouted in his face: "Go on,
+you old fox!" Then he turned on his heel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Master Hauchecorne was speechless, and more and more disturbed. Why
+did he call him "old fox"?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When he was seated at the table, in Jourdain's Inn, he set about
+explaining the affair once more.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A horse-trader from Montvilliers called out to him:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Nonsense, nonsense, you old dodger! I know all about your string!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But they've found the wallet!" faltered Hauchecorne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"None of that, old boy; there's one who finds it, and there's one who
+carries it back. I don't know just how you did it, but I understand
+you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The peasant was fairly stunned. He understood at last. He was accused
+of having sent the wallet back by a confederate, an accomplice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He tried to protest. The whole table began to laugh.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He could not finish his dinner, but left the inn amid a chorus of
+jeers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He returned home, shamefaced and indignant, suffocated by wrath, by
+confusion, and all the more cast down because, with his Norman
+cunning, he was quite capable of doing the thing with which he was
+charged, and even of boasting of it as a shrewd trick. He had a
+confused idea that his innocence was impossible to establish, his
+craftiness being so well known. And he was cut to the heart by the
+injustice of the suspicion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thereupon he began once more to tell of the adventure, making the
+story longer each day, adding each time new arguments, more forcible
+protestations, more solemn oaths, which he devised and prepared in his
+hours of solitude, his mind being wholly engrossed by the story of the
+string. The more complicated his defence and the more subtle his
+reasoning, the less he was believed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Those are a liar's reasons," people said behind his back.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He realized it: he gnawed his nails, and exhausted himself in vain
+efforts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He grew perceptibly thinner.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now the jokers asked him to tell the story of "The Piece of String"
+for their amusement, as a soldier who has seen service is asked to
+tell about his battles. His mind, attacked at its source, grew
+feebler.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Late in December he took to his bed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the first days of January he died, and in his delirium, of the
+death agony, he protested his innocence, repeating:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A little piece of string&mdash;a little piece of string&mdash;see, here it is,
+m'sieu' mayor."
+</p>
+
+<h4>NOTES</h4>
+
+<p>
+[1] <i>The Piece of String</i> was written in 1884. Reprinted from <i>Little
+French Masterpieces</i>, by permission of the publishers, <i>G.P. Putnam's
+Sons</i>.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[2] 34:5 char-à-bancs. A pleasure car.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[3] 35:26 Angelus. A bell tolled at morning, noon, and night,
+according to the Roman Catholic Church custom, to indicate the time of
+the service of song and recitation in memory of the Virgin Mary. The
+name is taken from the first word of the recitation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[4] 35:30 cabriolet. A cab. Originally a light, one-horse pleasure
+carriage with two seats.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[5] 35:30 tilbury. An old form of gig, seating two persons.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[6] 37:20 petit verre. Little glass.
+</p>
+
+<h4>BIOGRAPHY</h4>
+
+<p>
+Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant, French novelist, dramatist, and
+short-story writer, was born in 1850. Until he was thirteen years old
+he had no teacher except his mother, who personally superintended the
+training of her two sons. Life for the two boys, during these early
+years, was free and happy, Guy was a strong and robust Norman,
+overflowing with animal spirits and exuberant with the joy of youthful
+life.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When thirteen years of age Maupassant attended the seminary at Yvetot,
+where he found school life irksome and a most distasteful contrast to
+his former free life. Later he became a student in the Lycée in Rouen.
+His experience as a student here was very pleasant, and he easily
+acquired his degree. In 1870 he was appointed to a clerkship in the
+Navy, and a little later to a more lucrative position in the
+Department of Public Instruction. His work in these two positions
+suffered very materially because of his negligence and daily practice
+in writing verses and essays for Flaubert, the most careful literary
+technicist in the history of literature, to criticize. For seven years
+Maupassant served this severe task-master, always writing, receiving
+criticisms, and publishing nothing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Immediately after the publication of his first story Maupassant was
+hailed as a finished master artist. From 1880 to 1890 he published six
+novels, sixteen volumes of short-stories, three volumes of travels,
+and many newspaper articles. This gigantic task was performed only
+because of his regular habits and splendid physique. He wrote
+regularly every morning from seven o'clock until noon, and at night
+always wrote out notes on the impressions from his experiences of the
+day.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Maupassant was a natural artist deeply in love with the technique of
+his work. He did not write for money, although he believed that a
+writer should have plenty of this world's possessions, nor did he
+write for art's sake. In fact he avoided talking on the subject of
+writing and to all appearances seemed to despise his profession. He
+wrote because the restless, immitigable force within him compelled him
+to work like a slave. He thought little of morals, or religion, but
+was enamored with physical life and its insolvable problems. He was,
+above everything else, a truthful man. Sometimes his subjects are
+unclean and he treats them as such, but, if his subject is clean, his
+treatment is undefiled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In 1887 the shadows of insanity began to creep athwart his life. Even
+in 1884 he seemed to feel a premonition of his coming catastrophe when
+he wrote: "I am afraid of the walls, of the furniture, of the familiar
+objects which seem to me to assume a kind of animal life. Above all, I
+fear the horrible confusion of my thought, of my reason escaping,
+entangled and scattered by an invisible and mysterious anguish." The
+dreaded disease developed until, in 1890, he had to suspend his
+writing. In 1892 he became wholly insane and had to be committed to an
+insane asylum where he died in a padded cell one year later.
+</p>
+
+<h4>BIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES</h4>
+
+<p>
+<i>The New International Encyclopaedia</i>.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Encyclopaedia Britannica</i>.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Bookman</i>, 25:290-294_.
+</p>
+
+<h4>CRITICISMS</h4>
+
+<p>
+Maupassant's short-stories are generally conceded to be the best in
+French literature. He handles his materials with great care, and his
+descriptions of scenes and characters are unequalled. In his first
+writings he seems impassive to the point of frigidity. He is a
+recorder who sets down exactly the life before him. This is one of the
+lessons he learned from Flaubert. He was not interested in what a
+character thought or felt, but he noted and fondled every action of
+his characters.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He loved life, despite the lack of solutions. At times his fondness
+for mere physical life leads him to the brutal stage. In his story,
+<i>On the Water</i>, he gives a confession of a purely sensual man: "How
+gladly, at times, I would think no more, feel no more, live the life
+of a brute, in a warm, bright country, in a yellow country, without
+crude and brutal verdure, in one of those Eastern countries in which
+one falls asleep without concern, is active and has no cares, loves
+and has no distress, and is scarcely aware that one is going on
+living!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Maupassant was a keen observer, possessed an excellent but not lofty
+imagination, and never asserted a philosophy of life. His writings are
+all interesting, terse, precise, and truthful, but lack the glow that
+comes with a sympathetic and spiritual outlook on life. Zola says of
+him: "…. a Latin of good, clear, solid head, a maker of beautiful
+sentences shining like gold…." He chooses a single incident, a few
+characteristics and then moulds them into a compact story. Nine-tenths
+of his stories deal with selfishness and hypocrisy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tolstoi wrote: "Maupassant possessed genius, that gift of attention
+revealing in the objects and facts of life properties not perceived by
+others; he possessed a beautiful form of expression, uttering clearly,
+simply, and with charm what he wished to say; and he possessed also
+the merit of sincerity, without which a work of art produces no
+effect; that is he did not merely pretend to love or hate, but did
+indeed love or hate what he described."
+</p>
+
+<h4>GENERAL REFERENCES</h4>
+
+<p>
+<i>Inquiries and Opinions</i>, Brander Matthews.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A Criticism," <i>Outlook</i>, 88:973-976.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Greatest Short Story Writer that Ever Lived," <i>Current Literature</i>,
+42:636-638.
+</p>
+
+<h4>COLLATERAL READINGS</h4>
+
+<p>
+<i>Happiness</i> (Odd Number), Guy de Maupassant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Wolf</i>, Guy de Maupassant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>La Mère Sauvage</i>, Guy de Maupassant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Confession</i>, Guy de Maupassant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>On the Journey</i>, Guy de Maupassant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Beggar</i>, Guy de Maupassant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>A Ghost</i>, Guy de Maupassant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Little Soldier</i>, Guy de Maupassant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Wreck</i>, Guy de Maupassant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Necklace</i>, Guy de Maupassant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>A Note of Scarlet</i>, Ruth Stuart.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Expiation</i>, Octave Thanet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Fagan</i>, Rowland Thomas.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>La Grande Bretêche</i> ("Jessup and Canby"), Honoré de Balzac.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap05"></a>THE MAN WHO WAS[1]</h2>
+
+<p class="center">
+<i>By Rudyard Kipling (1865-   )</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Let it be clearly understood that the Russian is a delightful person
+till he tucks his shirt in. As an Oriental he is charming. It is only
+when he insists upon being treated as the most easterly of Western
+peoples, instead of the most westerly of Easterns, that he becomes a
+racial anomaly[2] extremely difficult to handle. The host never knows
+which side of his nature is going to turn up next.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dirkovitch was a Russian&mdash;a Russian of the Russians, as he said&mdash;who
+appeared to get his bread by serving the czar as an officer in a
+Cossack regiment, and corresponding for a Russian newspaper with a
+name that was never twice the same. He was a handsome young Oriental,
+with a taste for wandering through unexplored portions of the earth,
+and he arrived in India from nowhere in particular. At least no living
+man could ascertain whether it was by way of Balkh, Budukhshan,
+Chitral, Beloochistan, Nepaul, or anywhere else. The Indian
+government, being in an unusually affable mood, gave orders that he
+was to be civilly treated, and shown everything that was to be seen;
+so he drifted, talking bad English and worse French, from one city to
+another till he forgathered with her Majesty's White Hussars[3] in the
+city of Peshawur,[4] which stands at the mouth of that narrow
+sword-cut in the hills that men call the Khyber Pass. He was
+undoubtedly an officer, and he was decorated, after the manner of the
+Russians, with little enameled crosses, and he could talk, and (though
+this has nothing to do with his merits) he had been given up as a
+hopeless task or case by the Black Tyrones[5], who, individually and
+collectively, with hot whisky and honey, mulled brandy and mixed
+spirits of all kinds, had striven in all hospitality to make him
+drunk. And when the Black Tyrones, who are exclusively Irish, fail to
+disturb the peace of head of a foreigner, that foreigner is certain to
+be a superior man. This was the argument of the Black Tyrones, but
+they were ever an unruly and self-opinionated regiment, and they
+allowed junior subalterns of four years' service to choose their
+wines. The spirits were always purchased by the colonel and a
+committee of majors. And a regiment that would so behave may be
+respected but cannot be loved.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The White Hussars were as conscientious in choosing their wine as in
+charging the enemy. There was a brandy that had been purchased by a
+cultured colonel a few years after the battle of Waterloo. It has been
+maturing ever since, and it was a marvelous brandy at the purchasing.
+The memory of that liquor would cause men to weep as they lay dying in
+the teak forests of upper Burmah[6] or the slime of the Irrawaddy[7].
+And there was a port which was notable; and there was a champagne of
+an obscure brand, which always came to mess without any labels,
+because the White Hussars wished none to know where the source of
+supply might be found. The officer on whose head the champagne
+choosing lay was forbidden the use of tobacco for six weeks previous
+to sampling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This particularity of detail is necessary to emphasize the fact that
+that champagne, that port, and above all, that brandy&mdash;the green and
+yellow and white liqueurs did not count&mdash;was placed at the absolute
+disposition of Dirkovitch, and he enjoyed himself hugely&mdash;even more
+than among the Black Tyrones.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But he remained distressingly European through it all. The White
+Hussars were&mdash;"My dear true friends," "Fellow-soldiers glorious," and
+"Brothers inseparable." He would unburden himself by the hour on the
+glorious future that awaited the combined arms of England and Russia
+when their hearts and their territories should run side by side, and
+the great mission of civilizing Asia should begin. That was
+unsatisfactory, because Asia is not going to be civilized after the
+methods of the West. There is too much Asia, and she is too old. You
+cannot reform a lady of many lovers, and Asia has been insatiable in
+her flirtations aforetime. She will never attend Sunday school, or
+learn to vote save with swords for tickets.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dirkovitch knew this as well as any one else, but it suited him to
+talk special-correspondently and to make himself as genial as he
+could. Now and then he volunteered a little, a very little,
+information about his own Sotnia[8] of Cossacks, left apparently to
+look after themselves somewhere at the back of beyond. He had done
+rough work in Central Asia, and had seen rather more help-yourself
+fighting than most men of his years. But he was careful never to
+betray his superiority, and more than careful to praise on all
+occasions the appearance, drill, uniform, and organization of her
+Majesty's White Hussars. And, indeed, they were a regiment to be
+admired. When Mrs. Durgan, widow of the late Sir John Durgan, arrived
+in their station, and after a short time had been proposed to by every
+single man at mess, she put the public sentiment very neatly when she
+explained that they were all so nice that unless she could marry them
+all, including the colonel and some majors who were already married,
+she was not going to content herself with one of them. Wherefore she
+wedded a little man in a rifle regiment&mdash;being by nature
+contradictious&mdash;and the White Hussars were going to wear crape on
+their arms, but compromised by attending the wedding in full force,
+and lining the aisle with unutterable reproach. She had jilted them
+all&mdash;from Basset-Holmer, the senior captain, to Little Mildred, the
+last subaltern, and he could have given her four thousand a year and a
+title. He was a viscount, and on his arrival the mess had said he had
+better go into the Guards, because they were all sons of large grocers
+and small clothiers in the Hussars, but Mildred begged very hard to be
+allowed to stay, and behaved so prettily that he was forgiven, and
+became a man, which is much more important than being any sort of
+viscount.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The only persons who did not share the general regard for the White
+Hussars were a few thousand gentlemen of Jewish extraction who lived
+across the border, and answered to the name of Pathan. They had only
+met the regiment officially, and for something less than twenty
+minutes, but the interview, which was complicated with many
+casualties, had filled them with prejudice. They even called the White
+Hussars "children of the devil," and sons of persons whom it would be
+perfectly impossible to meet in decent society. Yet they were not
+above making their aversion fill their money belts. The regiment
+possessed carbines, beautiful Martini-Henri carbines, that would cob a
+bullet into an enemy's camp at one thousand yards, and were even
+handier than the long rifle. Therefore they were coveted all along the
+border, and since demand inevitably breeds supply, they were supplied
+at the risk of life and limb for exactly their weight in coined
+silver&mdash;seven and one half pounds of rupees[9], or sixteen pounds and
+a few shillings each, reckoning the rupee at par. They were stolen at
+night by snaky-haired thieves that crawled on their stomachs under the
+nose of the sentries; they disappeared mysteriously from armracks; and
+in the hot weather, when all the doors and windows were open, they
+vanished like puffs of their own smoke. The border people desired them
+first for their own family vendettas[10] and then for contingencies.
+But in the long cold nights of the Northern Indian winter they were
+stolen most extensively. The traffic of murder was liveliest among the
+hills at that season, and prices ruled high. The regimental guards
+were first doubled and then trebled. A trooper does not much care if
+he loses a weapon&mdash;government must make it good&mdash;but he deeply resents
+the loss of his sleep. The regiment grew very angry, and one
+night-thief who managed to limp away bears the visible marks of their
+anger upon him to this hour. That incident stopped the burglaries for
+a time, and the guards were reduced accordingly, and the regiment
+devoted itself to polo with unexpected results, for it beat by two
+goals to one that very terrible polo corps the Lushkar Light Horse,
+though the latter had four ponies apiece for a short hour's fight, as
+well as a native officer who played like a lambent flame across the
+ground.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then they gave a dinner to celebrate the event. The Lushkar team came,
+and Dirkovitch came, in the fullest full uniform of Cossack officer,
+which is as full as a dressing-gown, and was introduced to the
+Lushkars, and opened his eyes as he regarded them. They were lighter
+men than the Hussars, and they carried themselves with the swing that
+is the peculiar right of the Punjab[11] frontier force and all
+irregular horse. Like everything else in the service, it has to be
+learned; but unlike many things, it is never forgotten, and remains on
+the body till death.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The great beam-roofed mess room of the White Hussars was a sight to be
+remembered. All the mess plate was on the long table&mdash;the same table
+that had served up the bodies of five dead officers in a forgotten
+fight long and long ago&mdash;the dingy, battered standards faced the door
+of entrance, clumps of winter roses lay between the silver
+candlesticks, the portraits of eminent officers deceased looked down
+on their successors from between the heads of sambhur[12],
+nilghai[13], maikhor, and, pride of all the mess, two grinning
+snow-leopards that had cost Basset-Holmer four months' leave that he
+might have spent in England instead of on the road to Thibet, and the
+daily risk of his life on ledge, snowslide, and glassy grass slope.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The servants, in spotless white muslin and the crest of their
+regiments on the brow of their turbans, waited behind their masters,
+who were clad in the scarlet and gold of the White Hussars and the
+cream and silver of the Lushkar Light Horse. Dirkovitch's dull green
+uniform was the only dark spot at the board, but his big onyx eyes
+made up for it. He was fraternizing effusively with the captain of the
+Lushkar team, who was wondering how many of Dirkovitch's Cossacks his
+own long, lathy down-countrymen could account for in a fair charge.
+But one does not speak of these things openly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The talk rose higher and higher, and the regimental band played
+between the courses, as is the immemorial custom, till all tongues
+ceased for a moment with the removal of the dinner slips and the First
+Toast of Obligation, when the colonel, rising, said, "Mr. Vice, the
+Queen," and Little Mildred from the bottom of the table answered, "The
+Queen, God bless her!" and the big spurs clanked as the big men heaved
+themselves up and drank the Queen, upon whose pay they were falsely
+supposed to pay their mess bills. That sacrament of the mess never
+grows old, and never ceases to bring a lump into the throat of the
+listener wherever he be, by land or by sea. Dirkovitch rose with his
+"brothers glorious," but he could not understand. No one but an
+officer can understand what the toast means; and the bulk have more
+sentiment than comprehension. It all comes to the same in the end, as
+the enemy said when he was wriggling on a lance point. Immediately
+after the little silence that follows on the ceremony there entered
+the native officer who had played for the Lushkar team. He could not
+of course eat with the alien, but he came in at dessert, all six feet
+of him, with the blue-and-silver turban atop, and the big black
+top-boots below. The mess rose joyously as he thrust forward the hilt
+of his saber, in token of fealty, for the colonel of the White Hussars
+to touch, and dropped into a vacant chair amid shouts of "<i>Rung ho</i>!
+Hira Singh!" (which being translated means "Go in and win!"). "Did I
+whack you over the knee, old man?" "Ressaidar Sahib, what the devil
+made you play that kicking pig of a pony in the last ten minutes?"
+"Shabash, Ressaidar Sahib!" Then the voice of the colonel, "The health
+of Ressaidar Hira Singh!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After the shouting had died away, Hira Singh rose to reply, for he was
+the cadet of a royal house, the son of a king's son, and knew what was
+due on these occasions. Thus he spoke in the vernacular:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Colonel Sahib and officers of this regiment, much honor have you done
+me. This will I remember. We came down from afar to play you; but we
+were beaten." ("No fault of yours, Ressaidar Sahib. Played on our own
+ground, y' know. Your ponies were cramped from the railway. Don't
+apologize.") "Therefore perhaps we will come again if it be so
+ordained." ("Hear! Hear, hear, indeed! Bravo! Hsh!") "Then we will
+play you afresh" ("Happy to meet you"), "till there are left no feet
+upon our ponies. Thus far for sport." He dropped one hand on his sword
+hilt and his eye wandered to Dirkovitch lolling back in his chair.
+"But if by the will of God there arises any other game which is not
+the polo game, then be assured, Colonel Sahib and officers, that we
+shall play it out side by side, though <i>they</i>"&mdash;again his eye sought
+Dirkovitch&mdash;"though <i>they</i>, I say, have fifty ponies to our one
+horse." And with a deep-mouthed <i>Rung ho</i>! that rang like a musket
+butt on flagstones, he sat down amid shoutings.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dirkovitch, who had devoted himself steadily to the brandy&mdash;the
+terrible brandy aforementioned&mdash;did not understand, nor did the
+expurgated[14] translations offered to him at all convey the point.
+Decidedly the native officer's was the speech of the evening, and the
+clamor might have continued to the dawn had it not been broken by the
+noise of a shot without that sent every man feeling at his defenseless
+left side. It is notable that Dirkovitch "reached back," after the
+American fashion&mdash;a gesture that set the captain of the Lushkar team
+wondering how Cossack officers were armed at mess. Then there was a
+scuffle, and a yell of pain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Carbine stealing again!" said the adjutant, calmly sinking back in
+his chair. "This comes of reducing the guards. I hope the sentries
+have killed him."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The feet of armed men pounded on the veranda flags, and it sounded as
+though something was being dragged.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why don't they put him in the cells till the morning?" said the
+colonel, testily. "See if they've damaged him, sergeant."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The mess-sergeant fled out into the darkness, and returned with two
+troopers and a corporal, all very much perplexed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Caught a man stealin' carbines, sir," said the corporal.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Leastways 'e was crawling toward the barricks, sir, past the
+main-road sentries; an' the sentry 'e says, sir&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The limp heap of rags upheld by the three men groaned. Never was seen
+so destitute and demoralized an Afghan. He was turbanless, shoeless,
+caked with dirt, and all but dead with rough handling. Hira Singh
+started slightly at the sound of the man's pain. Dirkovitch took
+another liqueur glass of brandy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>What</i> does the sentry say?" said the colonel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Sez he speaks English, sir," said the corporal.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"So you brought him into mess instead of handing him over to the
+sergeant! If he spoke all the tongues of the Pentecost you've no
+business&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Again the bundle groaned and muttered. Little Mildred had risen from
+his place to inspect. He jumped back as though he had been shot.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Perhaps it would be better, sir, to send the men away," said he to
+the colonel, for he was a much-privileged subaltern. He put his arms
+round the rag-bound horror as he spoke, and dropped him into a chair.
+It may not have been explained that the littleness of Mildred lay in
+his being six feet four, and big in proportion. The corporal, seeing
+that an officer was disposed to look after the capture, and that the
+colonel's eye was beginning to blaze, promptly removed himself and his
+men. The mess was left alone with the carbine thief, who laid his head
+on the table and wept bitterly, hopelessly, and inconsolably, as
+little children weep.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hira Singh leaped to his feet with a long-drawn vernacular oath
+"Colonel Sahib," said he, "that man is no Afghan, for they weep '<i>Ai!
+Ai</i>!' Nor is he of Hindustan, for they weep,'<i>Oh! Ho</i>!' He weeps after
+the fashion of the white men, who say '<i>Ow! Ow</i>!'"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Now where the dickens did you get that knowledge, Hira Singh?" said
+the captain of the Lushkar team.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Hear him!" said Hira Singh, simply, pointing at the crumpled figure
+that wept as though it would never cease.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He said, 'My God!'" said Little Mildred, "I heard him say it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The colonel and the mess room looked at the man in silence. It is a
+horrible thing to hear a man cry. A woman can sob from the top of her
+palate, or her lips, or anywhere else, but a man cries from his
+diaphragm, and it rends him to pieces. Also, the exhibition causes the
+throat of the on-looker to close at the top.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Poor devil!" said the colonel, coughing tremendously, "We ought to
+send him to hospital. He's been manhandled."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now the adjutant loved his rifles. They were to him as his
+grandchildren&mdash;the men standing in the first place. He grunted
+rebelliously: "I can understand an Afghan stealing, because he's made
+that way. But I can't understand his crying. That makes it worse."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The brandy must have affected Dirkovitch, for he lay back in his chair
+and stared at the ceiling. There was nothing special in the ceiling
+beyond a shadow as of a huge black coffin. Owing to some peculiarity
+in the construction of the mess room this shadow was always thrown
+when the candles were lighted. It never disturbed the digestion of the
+White Hussars. They were, in rather proud of it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Is he going to cry all night?" said the colonel, "or are we supposed
+to sit up with Little Mildred's guest until he feels better?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The man in the chair threw up his head and stared at the mess.
+Outside, the wheels of the first of those bidden to the festivities
+crunched the roadway.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, my God!" said the man in the chair, and every soul in the mess
+rose to his feet. Then the Lushkar captain did a deed for which he
+ought to have been given the Victoria Cross&mdash;distinguished gallantry
+in a fight against overwhelming curiosity. He picked up his team with
+his eyes as the hostess picks up the ladies at the opportune moment,
+and pausing only by the colonel's chair to say, "This isn't <i>our</i>
+affair, you know, sir," led the team into the veranda and the gardens.
+Hira Singh was the last, and he looked at Dirkovitch as he moved. But
+Dirkovitch had departed into a brandy paradise of his own. His lips
+moved without sound, and he was studying the coffin on the ceiling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"White&mdash;white all over," said Basset-Holmer, the adjutant. "What a
+pernicious renegade[15] he must be! I wonder where he came from?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The colonel shook the man gently by the arm, and "Who are you?" said
+he.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was no answer. The man stared round the mess room and smiled in
+the colonel's face. Little Mildred, who was always more of a woman
+than a man till "Boot and saddle" was sounded, repeated the question
+in a voice that would have drawn confidences from a geyser. The man
+only smiled. Dirkovitch, at the far end of the table, slid gently from
+his chair to the floor, No son of Adam, in this present imperfect
+world, can mix the Hussars' champagne with the Hussars' brandy by five
+and eight glasses of each without remembering the pit whence he has
+been digged and descending thither. The band began to play the tune
+with which the White Hussars, from the date of their formation,
+preface all their functions. They would sooner be disbanded than
+abandon that tune. It is a part of their system. The man straightened
+himself in his chair and drummed on the table with his fingers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't see why we should entertain lunatics," said the colonel;
+"call a guard and send him off to the cells. We'll look into the
+business in the morning. Give him a glass of wine first, though."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Little Mildred filled a sherry glass with the brandy and thrust it
+over to the man. He drank, and the tune rose louder, and he
+straightened himself yet more. Then he put out his long-taloned hands
+to a piece of plate opposite and fingered it lovingly. There was a
+mystery connected with that piece of plate in the shape of a spring,
+which converted what was a seven-branched candlestick, three springs
+each side and one on the middle, into a sort of wheel-spoke
+candelabrum[16]. He found the spring, pressed it, and laughed weakly.
+He rose from his chair and inspected a picture on the wall, then moved
+on to another picture, the mess watching him without a word.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When he came to the mantelpiece he shook his head and seemed
+distressed. A piece of plate representing a mounted hussar in full
+uniform caught his eye. He pointed to it, and then to the mantelpiece,
+with inquiry in his eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What is it&mdash;oh, what is it?" said Little Mildred. Then, as a mother
+might speak to a child, "That is a horse&mdash;yes, a horse."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Very slowly came the answer, in a thick, passionless guttural: "Yes,
+I&mdash;have seen. But&mdash;where is <i>the</i> horse?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+You could have heard the hearts of the mess beating as the men drew
+back to give the stranger full room in his wanderings. There was no
+question of calling the guard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Again he spoke, very slowly, "Where is <i>our</i> horse?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There is no saying what happened after that. There is but one horse in
+the White Hussars, and his portrait hangs outside the door of the mess
+room. He is the piebald drum-horse the king of the regimental band,
+that served the regiment for seven-and-thirty years, and in the end
+was shot for old age. Half the mess tore the thing down from its place
+and thrust it into the man's hands. He placed it above the
+mantelpiece; it clattered on the ledge, as his poor hands dropped it,
+and he staggered toward the bottom of the table, falling into
+Mildred's chair. The band began to play the "River of Years" waltz,
+and the laughter from the gardens came into the tobacco-scented mess
+room. But nobody, even the youngest, was thinking of waltzes. They all
+spoke to one another something after this fashion: "The drum-horse
+hasn't hung over the mantelpiece since '67." "How does he know?"
+"Mildred, go and speak to him again." "Colonel, what are you going to
+do?" "Oh, dry up, and give the poor devil a chance to pull himself
+together!" "It isn't possible, anyhow. The man's a lunatic."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Little Mildred stood at the colonel's side talking into his ear. "Will
+you be good enough to take your seats, please, gentlemen?" he said,
+and the mess dropped into the chairs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Only Dirkovitch's seat, next to Little Mildred's, was blank, and
+Little Mildred himself had found Hira Singh's place. The wide-eyed
+mess sergeant filled the glasses in dead silence. Once more the
+colonel rose, but his hand shook, and the port spilled on the table as
+he looked straight at the man in Little Mildred's chair and said,
+hoarsely, "Mr. Vice, the Queen." There was a little pause, but the man
+sprang to his feet and answered, without hesitation, "The Queen, God
+bless her!" and as he emptied the thin glass he snapped the shank
+between his fingers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Long and long ago, when the Empress of India was a young woman, and
+there were no unclean ideals in the land, it was the custom in a few
+messes to drink the Queen's toast in broken glass, to the huge delight
+of the mess contractors. The custom is now dead, because there is
+nothing to break anything for, except now and again the word of a
+government, and that has been broken already.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That settles it," said the colonel, with a gasp. "He's not a
+sergeant. What in the world is he?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The entire mess echoed the word, and the volley of questions would
+have scared any man. Small wonder that the ragged, filthy invader
+could only smile and shake his head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From under the table, calm and smiling urbanely[17], rose Dirkovitch,
+who had been roused from healthful slumber by feet upon his body. By
+the side of the man he rose, and the man shrieked and groveled at his
+feet. It was a horrible sight, coming so swiftly upon the pride and
+glory of the toast that had brought the strayed wits together.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dirkovitch made no offer to raise him, but Little Mildred heaved him
+up in an instant. It is not good that a gentleman who can answer to
+the Queen's toast should lie at the feet of a subaltern of Cossacks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The hasty action tore the wretch's upper clothing nearly to the waist,
+and his body was seamed with dry black scars. There is only one weapon
+in the world that cuts in parallel lines, and it is neither the cane
+nor the cat. Dirkovitch saw the marks, and the pupils of his eyes
+dilated&mdash;also, his face changed. He said something that sounded like
+"Shto ve takete"; and the man, fawning, answered, "Chetyre."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What's that?" said everybody together.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"His number. That is number four, you know." Dirkovitch spoke very
+thickly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What has a Queen's officer to do with a qualified number?" said the
+colonel, and there rose an unpleasant growl round the table.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"How can I tell?" said the affable Oriental, with a sweet smile. "He
+is a&mdash;how you have it?&mdash;escape&mdash;runaway, from over there."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He nodded toward the darkness of the night.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Speak to him, if he'll answer you, and speak to him gently," said
+Little Mildred, settling the man in a chair. It seemed most improper
+to all present that Dirkovitch. should sip brandy as he talked in
+purring, spitting Russian to the creature who answered so feebly and
+with such evident dread. But since Dirkovitch appeared to understand,
+no man said a word. They breathed heavily, leaning forward, in the
+long gaps of the conversation. The next time that they have no
+engagements on hand the White Hussars intend to go to St. Petersburg
+and learn Russian.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He does not know how many years ago," said Dirkovitch, facing the
+mess, "but he says it was very long ago, in a war, I think that there
+was an accident. He says he was of this glorious and distinguished
+regiment in the war."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The rolls! The rolls! Holmer, get the rolls!" said Little Mildred,
+and the adjutant dashed off bareheaded to the orderly room where the
+rolls of the regiment were kept. He returned just in time to hear
+Dirkovitch conclude, "Therefore I am most sorry to say there was an
+accident, which would have been, reparable if he had apologized to our
+colonel, whom he had insulted."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Another growl, which the colonel tried to beat down. The mess was in
+no mood to weigh insults to Russian colonels just then.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He does not remember, but I think that there was an accident, and so
+he was not exchanged among the prisoners, but he was sent to another
+place&mdash;how do you say?&mdash;the country. <i>So</i>, he says, he came here. He
+does not know how he came. Eh? He <i>was</i> at Chepany[18]"&mdash;the man
+caught the word, nodded, and shivered&mdash;"at Zhigansk[19] and
+Irkutsk[20]. I cannot understand how he escaped. He says, too, that he
+was in the forests for many years, but how many years he has
+forgotten&mdash;that with many things. It was an accident; done because he
+did not apologise to our colonel. Ah!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Instead of echoing Dirkovitch's sigh of regret, it is sad to record
+that the White Hussars livelily exhibited unchristian delight and
+other emotions, hardly restrained by their sense of hospitality.
+Holmer flung the frayed and yellow regimental rolls on the table, and
+the men flung themselves atop of these.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Steady! Fifty-six&mdash;fifty-five&mdash;fifty-four," said Holmer. "Here we
+are. 'Lieutenant Austin Limmason&mdash;<i>missing</i>.' That was before
+Sebastopol[21]. What an infernal shame! Insulted one of their
+colonels, and was quietly shipped off. Thirty years of his life wiped
+out."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But he never apologized. Said he'd see him&mdash;&mdash;first," chorussed the
+mess.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Poor devil! I suppose he never had the chance afterward. How did he
+come here?" said the colonel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The dingy heap in the chair could give no answer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do you know who you are?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It laughed weakly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do you know that you are Limmason&mdash;Lieutenant Limmason, of the White
+Hussars?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Swift as a shot came the answer, in a slightly surprised tone, "Yes,
+I'm Limmason, of course." The light died out in his eyes, and he
+collapsed afresh, watching every motion of Dirkovitch with terror. A
+flight from Siberia may fix a few elementary facts in the mind, but it
+does not lead to continuity of thought. The man could not explain how,
+like a homing pigeon, he had found his way to his own old mess again.
+Of what he had suffered or seen he knew nothing. He cringed before
+Dirkovitch as instinctively as he had pressed the spring of the
+candlestick, sought the picture of the drum-horse, and answered to the
+Queen's toast. The rest was a blank that the dreaded Russian tongue
+could only in part remove. His head bowed on his breast, and he
+giggled and cowered alternately.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The devil that lived in the brandy prompted Dirkovitch at this
+extremely inopportune moment to make a speech. He rose, swaying
+slightly, gripped the table edge, while his eyes glowed like opals,
+and began:&mdash;"Fellow-soldiers glorious&mdash;true friends and hospitables.
+It was an accident, and deplorable&mdash;most deplorable." Here he smiled
+sweetly all round the mess. "But you will think of this little, little
+thing. So little, is it not? The czar! Posh! I slap my fingers&mdash;I snap
+my fingers at him. Do I believe in him? No! But the Slav who has done
+nothing, <i>him</i> I believe. Seventy&mdash;how much?&mdash;millions that have done
+nothing&mdash;not one thing. Napoleon was an episode." He banged a hand on
+the table. "Hear you, old peoples, we have done nothing in the
+world&mdash;out here. All our work is to do: and it shall be done, old
+peoples. Get away!" He waved his hand imperiously, and pointed to the
+man. "You see him. He is not good to see. He was just one little&mdash;oh,
+so little&mdash;accident, that no one remembered. Now he is <i>That</i>. So will
+you be, brother-soldiers so brave&mdash;so will you be. But you will never
+come back. You will all go where he has gone, or"&mdash;he pointed to the
+great coffin shadow on the ceiling, and muttering, "Seventy
+millions&mdash;get away, you old people," fell asleep.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Sweet, and to the point," said Little Mildred. "What's the use of
+getting wroth? Let's make the poor devil comfortable."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But that was a matter suddenly and swiftly taken from the loving hands
+of the White Hussars. The lieutenant had returned only to go away
+again three days later, when the wail of the "Dead March" and the
+tramp of the squadrons told the wondering station, that saw no gap in
+the table, an officer of the regiment had resigned his new-found
+commission.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And Dirkovitch&mdash;bland, supple, and always genial&mdash;went away too by a
+night train. Little Mildred and another saw him off, for he was the
+guest of the mess, and even had he smitten the colonel with the open
+hand the law of the mess allowed no relaxation of hospitality.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Good-by, Dirkovitch, and a pleasant journey," said Little Mildred.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>Au revoir[22]</i> my true friends," said the Russian.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Indeed! But we thought you were going home?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes; but I will come again. My friends, is that road shut?" He
+pointed to where the north star burned over the Khyber Pass.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"By Jove! I forgot. Of course. Happy to meet you, old man, any time
+you like. Got everything you want,&mdash;cheroots, ice, bedding? That's all
+right. Well, <i>au revoir</i>, Dirkovitch."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Um," said the other man, as the tail-lights of the train grew small.
+"Of&mdash;all&mdash;the&mdash;unmitigated[23]&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Little Mildred answered nothing, but watched the north star, and
+hummed a selection from a recent burlesque that had much delighted the
+White Hussars. It ran:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+     "I'm sorry for Mister Bluebeard,<br/>
+
+     I'm sorry to cause him pain;<br/>
+
+     But a terrible spree there's sure to be<br/>
+
+     When he comes back again."
+</p>
+
+<h4>NOTES</h4>
+
+<p>
+[1] <i>The Man Who Was</i> was written in 1889.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[2] 46:6 anomaly. Deviation from type.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[3] 47:1 Hussars. Light-horse troopers armed with sabre and carbine.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[4] 47:1 Peshawur. City in British India.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[5] 47:7 Tyrones. From a county in Ireland by this name.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[6] 47:26 Burmah. In southeastern Asia. Part of the British Empire.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[7] 47:27 Irrawaddy. Chief river of Burma.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[8] 48:27 Sotnia. Company of the Cossacks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[9] 50:14 rupee. Indian coin worth about forty-eight cents.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[10] 50:21 vendettas. Private blood-feuds.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[11] 51:14 Punjab. Country of five rivers, tributaries of the Indus.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[12] 81:26 Sambhur. A rusine deer found in India.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[13] 51:26 nilghai. Antelope with hind legs shorter than its
+fore-legs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[14] 54:9 expurgated. Purified.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[15] 57:23 renegade. One who deserts his faith.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[16] 58:26 candelabrum. Stand supporting several lamps.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[17] 61:3 urbanely. Politely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[18] 63:2 Chepany. Town in Siberia.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[19] 63:4 Zhigansk. Town in Siberia.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[20] 63:4 Irkutsk. Province and city in Siberia.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[21] 63:17 Sebastopol. Seaport in Russia.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[22] 65:26 Au revoir. Till we meet again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[23] 66:6 unmitigated. As bad as can be.
+</p>
+
+<h4>BIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES</h4>
+
+<p>
+<i>Essays on Modern Novelists</i>, William Lyon Phelps.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>A Kipling Primer</i>, Knowles.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Rudyard Kipling</i>, Richard Le Galliene.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Kipling to French Eyes," <i>Bookman</i>, 26: 584.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Life of Kipling," _Encyclopaedia Britannica.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Life of Kipling," <i>The Universal Encyclopedia</i>.
+</p>
+
+<h4>BIOGRAPHY</h4>
+
+<p>
+Rudyard Kipling, the most vigorous, versatile, and highly endowed of
+the present-day writers of fiction, was born in Bombay, India,
+December 30, 1865. His place of birth and extensive travelling make
+him more Anglo-Saxon than British. His father was for many years
+connected with the schools of art at Bombay and Lahore in India. His
+mother, Alice MacDonald, was the daughter of a Methodist clergyman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Kipling was brought to England when he was five years old to be
+educated. While in college at Westward Ho he edited the <i>College
+Chronicle</i>. For this paper he contributed regularly, poetry and
+stories. After his school days and on his return to India, he served
+on the editorial staff of the Lahore <i>Civil and Military Gazette</i> from
+1882 to 1887, and was assistant editor of the <i>Pioneer</i> at Allahabad
+from 1887 to 1889.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Kipling has travelled extensively. He is at home in India, China,
+Japan, Africa, Australia, England, and America. The odd part about his
+realistic observations, however, is that his notes, whether written
+about California or India, are often repudiated by the people whom he
+has visited. After visiting England and the United States in a vain
+effort to find a publisher for his writings, he returned to India and
+published in the <i>Pioneer</i> his <i>American Notes</i>, which were
+immediately reproduced in book form in New York in 1891.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He married Miss Balestier of New York in 1892. They settled at
+Brattleboro, Vermont, immediately after their marriage and lived there
+until 1896. Kipling revisited the United States in 1899. While on this
+trip he suffered a severe attack of pneumonia which brought out a
+demonstration of interest from the American people that clearly showed
+their appreciation of him as a man and a writer.
+</p>
+
+<h4>CRITICISMS</h4>
+
+<p>
+Kipling is journalistic in all his writings. Oftentimes his material
+is very thin, flippant, and sensational, but he always is interesting,
+for he possesses the expert reporter's unerring judgment for choosing
+the essentials of his situation, character, or description, that catch
+and hold the reader's attention. In his earlier writings, like <i>Plain
+Tales from the Hills</i> or <i>The Jungle Books</i>, the radical racial
+differences between his characters and readers, and the background of
+primitive, mysterious India caught the reading world and instantly
+established Kipling's fame.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His technique is brilliant, his wit keen, and his energy of the bold
+and dashing military type. This audacious energy leads him very often
+into sprawling situations, a worship of imperialism, and reckless
+statements concerning moral and spiritual laws. Unlike Bret Harte, who
+was in many respects one of Kipling's ideals, he leaves his bad and
+coarse characters disreputable to the end. This is due in a large
+measure to the lack of warmth and light in his writings. In
+contradiction to this type of his works his <i>William the Conqueror</i>
+and <i>An Habitation Enforced</i> are filled with a gentle-human sympathy
+that causes us to forget and forgive any vulgarity he may have used in
+his more primitive and coarse characters. Even Kipling partisans must
+sometimes wish that Kipling's vision were not so dimmed by the British
+flag and that he might forget for a time the British soldier he loves
+so ardently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His writings since 1899 are much more mechanical than his earlier
+works. He seems, at times, to resort to the orator's superficial
+tricks in his attempts to attract readers. The <i>Athenaeum</i>, a friendly
+organ, says of his later work: "In his new part&mdash;the missionary of
+Empire&mdash;Mr. Kipling is living the strenuous life. He has frankly
+abandoned story telling, and is using his complete and powerful armory
+in the interests of patriotic zeal."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Whatever may be the final judgment of the world concerning Kipling's
+claim to literary genius, the young student may rest assured that
+there is no one in England who can compare with this strenuous and
+versatile writer. He is original and powerful, interesting and
+realistic. He is a lover of the men who earn their bread by the sweat
+of their faces and a despiser of "flannelled fools." He lacks the
+day-dreams of Stevenson and preaches from every housetop the gospel of
+virile, acting morality. Many of his readers have criticised adversely
+his spiritual teachings, because of the furious energy with which he
+denounces an apathetic religion and eulogizes the person who works
+with all his might, day after day, for the highest he knows and never
+fears the day of death and judgment.
+</p>
+
+<h4>GENERAL REFERENCES</h4>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Book of the Short Story</i>, Alexander Jessup.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Short Story in English</i>, Henry Seidel Canby.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Bibliography of Kipling's Works</i>, Eugene P, Saxton.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Contradictory Elements in Rudyard Kipling," <i>Current Literature</i>, 44:
+274.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Where Kipling Stands," <i>Bookman</i>, 29: 120-122.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Are there two Kiplings?" <i>Cosmopolitan</i>, 31: 653-660.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Literary Style of Kipling," <i>Lippincott</i>, 73: 99-103.
+</p>
+
+<h4>COLLATERAL READINGS</h4>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Man Who Would be King</i>, Rudyard Kipling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>William the Conqueror</i>, Rudyard Kipling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Phantom Rickshaw</i>, Rudyard Kipling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Finest Story in the World</i>, Rudyard Kipling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Under the Deodars</i>, Rudyard Kipling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>An Habitation Enforced</i>, Rudyard Kipling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Plain Tales from the Hills</i>, Rudyard Kipling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Light that Failed</i>, Rudyard Kipling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Wee Willie Winkie</i>, Rudyard Kipling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Baa Baa Black Sheep</i>, Rudyard Kipling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Captains Courageous</i>, Rudyard Kipling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Jungle Books</i>, Rudyard Kipling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>They</i>, Rudyard Kipling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Brushwood Boy</i>, Rudyard Kipling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Christ in Flanders</i>, Honoré de Balzac.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Old Gentleman of the Black Stock</i>, Thomas Nelson Page.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>A New England Nun</i>, Mary Wilkins Freeman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Outcasts of Poker Flat</i>, Bret Harte.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Siege of Berlin</i>, Alphonse Dadoed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Prisoner of Assiout</i>, Grant Allen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>A Terribly Strange Bed</i>, Wilkie Collins.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Prisoners</i>, Guy de Maupassant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Mr. Isaacs</i>, F. Marion Crawford.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Where Love Is, There God Is Also</i>, Leo Tolstoi.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap06"></a>THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER [1]</h2>
+
+<p class="center">
+<i>By Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+     Son coeur est un luth suspendu;<br/>
+
+     Sitôt qu'on le touche il résonne.<br/>
+
+                                     &mdash;De Béranger.[2]
+</p>
+
+<p>
+During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of
+the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had
+been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of
+country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew
+on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. I know not how it
+was; but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of
+insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I say insufferable; for the
+feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurable, because
+poetic, sentiment, with which the mind usually receives even the
+sternest natural images of the desolate or terrible. I looked upon the
+scene before me&mdash;upon the mere house, and the simple landscape
+features of the domain&mdash;upon the bleak walls&mdash;upon the vacant eye-like
+windows&mdash;a few rank sedges&mdash;and upon a few white trunks of decayed
+trees&mdash;with an utter depression of soul which I can compare to no
+earthly sensation more properly than to the after-dream of the
+reveller upon opium&mdash;the bitter lapse into every-day life&mdash;the hideous
+dropping off of the veil. There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening
+of the heart&mdash;an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of
+the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime. What was
+it&mdash;I paused to think&mdash;what was it that so unnerved me in the
+contemplation of the House of Usher? It was a mystery all insoluble;
+nor could I grapple with the shadowy fancies that crowded upon me as I
+pondered. I was forced to fall back upon the unsatisfactory conclusion
+that while, beyond doubt, there <i>are</i> combinations of very simple
+natural objects which have the power of thus affecting us, still the
+analysis of this power lies among considerations beyond our depth. It
+was possible, I reflected, that a mere different arrangement of the
+particulars of the scene, of the details of the picture, would be
+sufficient to modify, or perhaps to annihilate its capacity for
+sorrowful impression; and, acting upon this idea, I reined my horse to
+the precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn[3] that lay in
+unruffled lustre by the dwelling, and gazed down&mdash;but with a shudder
+even more thrilling than before&mdash;upon the remodelled and inverted
+images of the gray sedge, and the ghastly tree stems, and the vacant
+and eye-like windows.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nevertheless, in this mansion of gloom I now proposed to myself a
+sojourn of some weeks. Its proprietor, Roderick Usher, had been one of
+my boon companions in boyhood; but many years had elapsed since our
+last meeting. A letter, however, had lately reached me in a distant
+part of the country&mdash;a letter from him&mdash;which, in its wildly
+importunate nature, had admitted of no other than a personal reply.
+The Ms. gave evidence of nervous agitation. The writer spoke of acute
+bodily illness, of a mental disorder which oppressed him, and of an
+earnest desire to see me, as his best, and indeed his only, personal
+friend, with a view of attempting, by the cheerfulness of my society,
+some alleviation of his malady. It was the manner in which all this,
+and much more, was said&mdash;it was the apparent <i>heart</i> that went with
+his request&mdash;which allowed me no room for hesitation; and I
+accordingly obeyed forthwith what I still considered a very singular
+summons.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Although, as boys, we had been even intimate associates, yet I really
+knew little of my friend. His reserve had been always excessive and
+habitual. I was aware, however, that his very ancient family had been
+noted, time out of mind, for a peculiar sensibility of temperament,
+displaying itself, through long ages, in many works of exalted art,
+and manifested, of late, in repeated deeds of munificent, yet
+unobtrusive, charity, as well as in a passionate devotion to the
+intricacies, perhaps even more than to the orthodox and easily
+recognizable beauties, of musical science. I had learned, too, the
+very remarkable fact that the stem of the Usher race, all time-honored
+as it was, had put forth, at no period, any enduring branch; in other
+words, that the entire family lay in the direct line of descent, and
+had always, with very trifling and very temporary variation, so lain.
+It was this deficiency, I considered, while running over in thought
+the perfect keeping of the character of the premises with the
+accredited character of the people, and while speculating upon the
+possible influence which the one, in the long lapse of centuries,
+might have exercised upon the other&mdash;it was this deficiency, perhaps,
+of collateral issue, and the consequent undeviating transmission, from
+sire to son, of the patrimony with the name, which had, at length, so
+identified the two as to merge the original title of the estate in the
+quaint and equivocal appellation of the <i>House of Usher</i>&mdash;an
+appellation which seemed to include, in the minds of the peasantry who
+used it, both the family and the family mansion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I have said that the sole effect of my somewhat childish experiment of
+looking down within the tarn had been to deepen the first singular
+impression. There can be no doubt that the consciousness of the rapid
+increase of my superstition&mdash;for why should I not so term it?&mdash;served
+mainly to accelerate the increase itself. Such, I have long known, is
+the paradoxical law of all sentiments having terror as a basis. And it
+might have been for this reason only, that, when I again uplifted my
+eyes to the house itself, from its image in the pool, there grew in my
+mind a strange fancy&mdash;a fancy so ridiculous, indeed, that I but
+mention it to show the vivid force of the sensations which oppressed
+me. I had so worked upon my imagination as really to believe that
+about the whole mansion and domain there hung an atmosphere peculiar
+to themselves and their immediate vicinity&mdash;an atmosphere which had no
+affinity with the air of heaven, but which had reeked up from the
+decayed trees, and the gray wall, and the silent tarn&mdash;a pestilent and
+mystic vapor, dull, sluggish, faintly discernible, and leaden-hued.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Shaking off from my spirit what <i>must</i> have been a dream, I scanned
+more narrowly the real aspect of the building. Its principal feature
+seemed to be that of an excessive antiquity. The discoloration of ages
+had been great. Minute fungi overspread the whole exterior, hanging in
+a fine, tangled web-work from the eaves. Yet all this was apart from
+any extraordinary dilapidation. No portion of the masonry had fallen;
+and there appeared to be a wild inconsistency between its still
+perfect adaptation of parts, and the crumbling condition of the
+individual stones. In this there was much that reminded me of the
+specious totality of old woodwork which has rotted for years in some
+neglected vault, with no disturbance from the breath of the external
+air. Beyond this indication of extensive decay, however, the fabric
+gave little token of instability. Perhaps the eye of a scrutinizing
+observer might have discovered a barely perceptible fissure, which,
+extending from the roof of the building in front, made its way down
+the wall in a zigzag direction, until it became lost in the sullen
+waters of the tarn.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Noticing these things, I rode over a short causeway to the house. A
+servant in waiting took my horse, and I entered the Gothic archway of
+the hall. A valet, of stealthy step, thence conducted me, in silence,
+through many dark and intricate passages in my progress to the
+<i>studio</i> of his master. Much that I encountered on the way
+contributed, I know not how, to heighten the vague sentiments of which
+I have already spoken. While the objects around me&mdash;while the carvings
+of the ceilings, the sombre tapestries of the walls, the ebon
+blackness of the floors, and the phantasmagoric armorial trophies
+which rattled as I strode, were but matters to which, or to such as
+which, I had been accustomed from my infancy&mdash;while I hesitated not to
+acknowledge how familiar was all this&mdash;I still wondered to find how
+unfamiliar were the fancies which ordinary images were stirring up. On
+one of the staircases I met the physician of the family. His
+countenance, I thought, wore a mingled expression of low cunning and
+perplexity. He accosted me with trepidation and passed on. The valet
+now threw open a door and ushered me into the presence of his master.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The room in which I found myself was very large and lofty. The windows
+were long, narrow, and pointed, and at so vast a distance from the
+black oaken floor as to be altogether inaccessible from within. Feeble
+gleams of encrimsoned light made their way through the trellised
+panes, and served to render sufficiently distinct the more prominent
+objects around; the eye, however, struggled in vain to reach the
+remoter angles of the chamber, or the recesses of the vaulted and
+fretted ceiling. Dark draperies hung upon the walls. The general
+furniture was profuse, comfortless, antique, and tattered. Many books
+and musical instruments lay scattered about, but failed to give any
+vitality to the scene. I felt that I breathed an atmosphere of sorrow.
+An air of stern, deep, and irredeemable gloom hung over and pervaded
+all.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Upon my entrance, Usher arose from a sofa on which he had been lying
+at full length, and greeted me with, a vivacious warmth which had much
+in it, I at first thought, of an overdone cordiality&mdash;of the
+constrained effort of the <i>ennuyé</i>[4] man of the world. A glance,
+however, at his countenance convinced me of his perfect sincerity. We
+sat down; and for some moments, while he spoke not. I gazed upon him
+with a feeling half of pity, half of awe. Surely, man had never before
+so terribly altered, in so brief a period, as had Roderick Usher! It
+was with difficulty that I could bring myself to admit the identity of
+the wan being before me with the companion of my early boyhood. Yet
+the character of his face had been at all times remarkable. A
+cadaverousness of complexion; an eye large, liquid, and luminous
+beyond comparison; lips somewhat thin and very pallid, but of a
+surpassingly beautiful curve; a nose of a delicate Hebrew model, but
+with a breadth of nostril unusual in similar formations; a finely
+moulded chin, speaking, in its want of prominence, of a want of moral
+energy; hair of a more than web-like softness and tenuity; these
+features, with an inordinate expansion above the regions of the
+temple, made up altogether a countenance not easily to be forgotten.
+And now in the mere exaggeration of the prevailing character of these
+features, and of the expression they were wont to convey, lay so much
+of change that I doubted to whom I spoke. The now ghastly pallor of
+the skin, and the now miraculous lustre of the eye, above all things
+startled, and even awed me. The silken hair, too, had been suffered to
+grow all unheeded, and as, in its wild gossamer texture, it floated
+rather than fell about the face, I could not, even with effort,
+connect its arabesque expression with any idea of simple humanity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the manner of my friend I was at once struck with an
+incoherence&mdash;an inconsistency; and I soon found this to arise from a
+series of feeble and futile struggles to overcome an habitual
+trepidancy, an excessive nervous agitation. For something of this
+nature I had indeed been prepared, no less by his letter than by
+reminiscences of certain boyish traits, and by conclusions deduced
+from his peculiar physical conformation and temperament. His action
+was alternately vivacious and sullen. His voice varied rapidly from a
+tremulous indecision (when the animal spirits seemed utterly in
+abeyance) to that species of energetic concision&mdash;that abrupt,
+weighty, unhurried, and hollow-sounding enunciation&mdash;that leaden,
+self-balanced, and perfectly modulated guttural utterance, which may
+be observed in the lost drunkard, or the irreclaimable eater of opium,
+during the periods of his most intense excitement.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was thus that he spoke of the object of my visit, of his earnest
+desire to see me, and of the solace he expected me to afford him. He
+entered, at some length, into what he conceived to be the nature of
+his malady. It was, he said, a constitutional and a family evil, and
+one for which he despaired to find a remedy&mdash;a mere nervous affection,
+he immediately added, which would undoubtedly soon pass off. It
+displayed itself in a host of unnatural sensations. Some of these, as
+he detailed them, interested and bewildered me; although, perhaps, the
+terms and the general manner of the narration had their weight. He
+suffered much from a morbid acuteness of the senses. The most insipid
+food was alone endurable; he could wear only garments of certain
+texture; the odors of all flowers were oppressive; his eyes were
+tortured by even a faint light; and there were but peculiar sounds,
+and these from stringed instruments, which did not inspire him with
+horror.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To an anomalous species of terror I found him a bounden[5] slave. "I
+shall perish," said he, "I <i>must</i> perish, in this deplorable folly.
+Thus, thus, and not otherwise, shall I be lost. I dread the events of
+the future, not in themselves, but in their results. I shudder at the
+thought of any, even the most trivial, incident, which may operate
+upon this intolerable agitation of soul. I have, indeed, no abhorrence
+of danger, except in its absolute effect&mdash;in terror. In this
+unnerved&mdash;in this pitiable condition&mdash;I feel that the period will
+sooner or later arrive when I must abandon life and reason together,
+in some struggle with the grim phantasm, FEAR."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I learned, moreover, at intervals, and through broken and equivocal
+hints, another singular feature of his mental condition. He was
+enchained by certain superstitious impressions in regard to the
+dwelling which he tenanted, and whence, for many years, he had never
+ventured forth&mdash;in regard to an influence whose supposititious force
+was conveyed in terms too shadowy here to be restated&mdash;an influence
+which some peculiarities in the mere form and substance of his family
+mansion, had, by dint of long sufferance, he said, obtained over his
+spirit&mdash;an effect which the <i>physique</i> of the gray walls and turrets,
+and of the dim tarn into which they all looked down, had, at length,
+brought about upon the <i>morale</i> of his existence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He admitted, however, although with hesitation, that much of the
+peculiar gloom which thus afflicted him could be traced to a more
+natural and far more palpable origin&mdash;to the severe and long-continued
+illness&mdash;indeed to the evidently approaching dissolution&mdash;of a
+tenderly beloved sister, his sole companion for long years, his last
+and only relative on earth. "Her decease," he said, with a bitterness
+which I can never forget, "would leave him (him the hopeless and the
+frail) the last of the ancient race of the Ushers." While he spoke,
+the lady Madeline (for so was she called) passed slowly through a
+remote portion of the apartment, and, without having noticed my
+presence, disappeared. I regarded her with an utter astonishment not
+unmingled with dread[6]; and yet I found it impossible to account for
+such feelings. A sensation of stupor oppressed me, as my eyes followed
+her retreating steps. When a door, at length, closed upon her, my
+glance sought instinctively and eagerly the countenance of the
+brother; but he had buried his face in his hands, and I could only
+perceive that a far more than ordinary wanness had overspread the
+emaciated fingers through which trickled many passionate tears.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The disease of the lady Madeline had long baffled the skill of her
+physicians. A settled apathy, a gradual wasting away of the person,
+and frequent although transient affections of a partially cataleptical
+character, were the unusual diagnosis. Hitherto she had steadily borne
+up against the pressure of her malady, and had not betaken herself
+finally to bed; but on the closing in of the evening of my arrival at
+the house, she succumbed (as her brother told me at night with
+inexpressible agitation) to the prostrating power of the destroyer;
+and I learned that the glimpse I had obtained of her person would thus
+probably be the last I should obtain&mdash;that the lady, at least while
+living, would be seen by me no more.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For several days ensuing her name was unmentioned by either Usher or
+myself; and during this period I was busied in earnest endeavors to
+alleviate the melancholy of my friend. We painted and read together;
+or I listened, as if in a dream, to the wild improvisations[7] of his
+speaking guitar. And thus, as a closer and still closer intimacy
+admitted me more unreservedly into the recesses of his spirit, the
+more bitterly did I perceive the futility of all attempt at cheering a
+mind from which darkness, as if an inherent positive quality, poured
+forth upon all objects of the moral and physical universe, in one
+unceasing radiation of gloom.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I shall ever bear about me a memory of the many solemn hours I thus
+spent alone with the master of the House of Usher. Yet I should fail
+in any attempt to convey an idea of the exact character of the
+studies, or of the occupations in which he involved me, or led me the
+way. An excited and highly distempered ideality threw a sulphurous
+luster over all. His long, improvised dirges will ring forever in my
+ears. Among other things, I hold painfully in mind a certain singular
+perversion and amplification of the wild air of the last waltz of von
+Weber[8]. From the paintings over which his elaborate fancy brooded,
+and which grew, touch by touch, into vaguenesses at which I shuddered
+the more thrillingly because I shuddered knowing not why,&mdash;from these
+paintings (vivid as their images now are before, me) I would in vain
+endeavor to educe more than a small portion which should lie within
+the compass of merely written words. By the utter simplicity, by the
+nakedness of his designs, he arrested and overawed attention. If ever
+mortal painted an idea, that mortal was Roderick Usher. For me, at
+least, in the circumstances then surrounding me, there arose out of
+the pure abstractions which the hypochondriac contrived to throw, upon
+his canvas, an intensity of intolerable awe, no shadow of which felt I
+ever yet in the contemplation of the certainly glowing yet too
+concrete reveries of Fuseli.[9]
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One of the phantasmagoric conceptions of my friend, partaking not so
+rigidly of the spirit of abstraction may be shadowed forth, although
+feebly, in words. A small picture presented the interior of an
+immensely long and rectangular vault or tunnel, with low walls,
+smooth, white, and without interruption or device. Certain accessory
+points of the design served well to convey the idea that this
+excavation lay at an exceeding depth below the surface of the earth.
+No outlet was observed in any portion of its vast extent, and no torch
+or other artificial source of light was discernible; yet a flood of
+intense rays rolled throughout, and bathed the whole in a ghastly and
+inappropriate splendor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I have just spoken of that morbid condition of the auditory nerve
+which rendered all music intolerable to the sufferer, with the
+exception of certain effects of stringed, instruments. It was,
+perhaps, the narrow limits to which he thus confined himself upon the
+guitar, which gave birth, in great measure, to the fantastic character
+of his performances. But the fervid <i>facility</i> of his <i>impromptus</i>
+could not be so accounted for. They must have been, and were, in the
+notes, as well as in the words of his wild fantasias (for he not
+unfrequently accompanied himself with rimed verbal improvisations),
+the result of that intense mental collectedness and concentration to
+which I have previously alluded as observable only in particular
+moments of the highest artificial excitement. The words of one of
+these rhapsodies I have easily remembered. I was, perhaps, the more
+forcibly impressed with it, as he gave it, because, in the under or
+mystic current of its meaning, I fancied that I perceived, and for the
+first time, a full consciousness on the part of Usher, of the
+tottering of his lofty reason upon her throne. The verses, which were
+entitled "The Haunted Palace,"[10] ran very nearly, if not accurately,
+thus:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<h5>I</h5>
+
+<p>
+     In the greenest of our valleys,<br/>
+
+       By good angels tenanted,<br/>
+
+     Once a fair and stately palace&mdash;<br/>
+
+       Radiant palace&mdash;reared its head.<br/>
+
+     In the monarch Thought's dominion&mdash;<br/>
+
+       It stood there!<br/>
+
+     Never seraph spread a pinion<br/>
+
+       Over fabric half so fair.
+</p>
+
+<h5>II</h5>
+
+<p>
+     Banners yellow, glorious, golden,<br/>
+
+       On its roof did float and flow;<br/>
+
+     (This&mdash;all this&mdash;was in the olden<br/>
+
+       Time long ago)<br/>
+
+     And every gentle air that dallied,<br/>
+
+       In that sweet day,<br/>
+
+     Along the ramparts plumed and pallid,<br/>
+
+       A wingèd odor went away.
+</p>
+
+<h5>III</h5>
+
+<p>
+     Wanderers in that happy valley<br/>
+
+       Through two luminous windows saw<br/>
+
+     Spirits moving musically<br/>
+
+       To a lute's well-tunèd law,<br/>
+
+     Round about a throne, where sitting<br/>
+
+       (Porphyrogene!)[11]<br/>
+
+     In state his glory well befitting,<br/>
+
+       The ruler of the realm was seen.
+</p>
+
+<h5>IV</h5>
+
+<p>
+     And all with pearl and ruby glowing<br/>
+
+       Was the fair palace door,<br/>
+
+     Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing,<br/>
+
+       And sparkling evermore,<br/>
+
+     A troop of Echoes whose sweet duty<br/>
+
+       Was but to sing,<br/>
+
+     In voices of surpassing beauty,<br/>
+
+       The wit and wisdom of their king.
+</p>
+
+<h5>V</h5>
+
+<p>
+     But evil things, in robes of sorrow,<br/>
+
+       Assailed the monarch's high estate<br/>
+
+     (Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow<br/>
+
+       Shall dawn upon him, desolate!);<br/>
+
+     And, round about his home, the glory<br/>
+
+       That blushed and bloomed<br/>
+
+     Is but a dim-remembered story<br/>
+
+        Of the old time entombed.
+</p>
+
+<h5>VI</h5>
+
+<p>
+     And travelers now within that valley,<br/>
+
+       Through the red-litten windows, see<br/>
+
+     Vast forms that move fantastically<br/>
+
+       To a discordant melody;<br/>
+
+     While, like a rapid ghastly river,<br/>
+
+       Through the pale door,<br/>
+
+     A hideous throng rush out forever,<br/>
+
+       And laugh&mdash;but smile no more.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I well remember that suggestions arising from this ballad led us into
+a train of thought wherein there became manifest an opinion of Usher's
+which I mention not so much on account of its novelty (for other
+men[12] have thought thus) as on account of the pertinacity with which
+he maintained it. This opinion, in its general form, was that of the
+sentience of all vegetable things. But, in his disordered fancy, the
+idea had assumed a more daring character, and trespassed, under
+certain conditions, upon the kingdom of inorganization. I lack words
+to express the full extent or the earnest <i>abandon</i> of his persuasion.
+The belief, however, was connected (as I have previously hinted) with
+the gray stones of the home of his forefathers. The conditions of the
+sentience had been here, he imagined, fulfilled in the method of
+collocation of these stones&mdash;in the order of their arrangement, as
+well as in that of the many <i>fungi</i> which overspread them, and of the
+decayed trees which stood around&mdash;above all, in the long-undisturbed
+endurance of this arrangement, and in its reduplication in the still
+waters of the tarn. Its evidence&mdash;the evidence of the sentience&mdash;was
+to be seen, he said (and I here started as he spoke), in the gradual
+yet certain condensation of an atmosphere of their own about the
+waters and the walls. The result was discoverable, he added, in that
+silent, yet importunate and terrible influence which for centuries had
+molded the destinies of his family, and which made <i>him</i> what I now
+saw him&mdash;what he was. Such opinions need no comment, and I will make
+none.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Our books&mdash;the books which, for years, had formed no small portion of
+the mental existence of the invalid&mdash;were, as might be supposed, in
+strict keeping with this character of phantasm. We pored together over
+such works as the <i>Ververt et Chartreuse</i>[13] of Gresset; the
+<i>Belphegor</i>[14] of Machiavelli; the <i>Heaven and Hell</i>[15] of
+Swedenborg; the <i>Subterranean Voyage of Nicholas Klimm</i>[16] by
+Holberg; the <i>Chiromancy</i>[17] of Robert Flud, of Jean D'lndaginé, and
+of De la Chambre[18]; the <i>Journey into the Blue Distance</i> of
+Tieck[19]; and the <i>City of the Sun</i>[20] of Campanella. One favorite
+volume was a small octavo edition of the <i>Directorium
+Inquisitorium</i>[21] by the Dominican Eymeric de Cironne; and there were
+passages in <i>Pomponius Mela</i>,[22] about the old African Satyrs and
+Oegipans,[23] over which Usher would sit dreaming for hours. His chief
+delight, however, was found in the perusal of an exceedingly rare and
+curious book in quarto Gothic&mdash;the manual of a forgotten church&mdash;the
+<i>Vigiliae Mortuorum secundum Chorum Ecclesiae Maguntinae</i>.[24]
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I could not help thinking of the wild ritual of this work, and of its
+probable influence upon the hypochondriac, when, one evening, having
+informed me abruptly that the lady Madeline was no more, he stated his
+intention of preserving her corpse for a fortnight (previously to its
+final interment) in one of the numerous vaults within the main walls
+of the building. The worldly reason, however, assigned for this
+singular proceeding, was one which I did not feel at liberty to
+dispute. The brother had been led to his resolution, so he told me, by
+consideration of the unusual character of the malady of the deceased,
+of certain obtrusive and eager inquiries on the part of her medical
+men, and of the remote and exposed situation of the burial ground of
+the family, I will not deny that when I called to mind the sinister
+countenance of the person whom I met upon the staircase, on the day of
+my arrival at the house, I had no desire to oppose what I regarded as
+at best but a harmless, and by no means an unnatural precaution.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the request of Usher, I personally aided him in the arrangements
+for the temporary entombment. The body having been encoffined, we two
+alone bore it to its rest. The vault in which we placed it (and which
+had been so long unopened that our torches, half smothered in its
+oppressive atmosphere, gave us little opportunity for investigation)
+was small, damp, and entirely without means of admission for light;
+lying, at great depth, immediately beneath that portion of the
+building in which was my own sleeping apartment. It had been used,
+apparently, in remote feudal times, for the worst purposes of a
+donjon-keep, and in later days, as a place of deposit for powder, or
+some other highly combustible substance, as a portion of its floor,
+and the whole interior of a long archway through which we reached it,
+were carefully sheathed with copper. The door, of massive iron, had
+been also similarly protected. Its immense weight caused an unusually
+sharp grating sound as it moved upon its hinges.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Having deposited our mournful burden upon tressels within this region
+of horror, we partially turned aside the yet unscrewed lid of the
+coffin, and looked upon the face of the tenant. A striking similitude
+between the brother and sister now first arrested my attention; and
+Usher, divining, perhaps, my thoughts, murmured out some few words
+from which I learned that the deceased and himself had been twins, and
+that sympathies of a scarcely intelligible nature had always existed
+between them. Our glances, however, rested not long upon the dead&mdash;for
+we could not regard her unawed. The disease which had thus entombed
+the lady in the maturity of youth, had left, as usual in all maladies
+of a strictly cataleptical character, the mockery of a faint blush
+upon the bosom and the face, and that suspiciously lingering smile
+upon the lip which is so terrible in death. We replaced and screwed
+down the lid, and having secured the door of iron, made our way, with
+toil, into the scarcely less gloomy apartments of the upper portion of
+the house.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And now, some days of bitter grief having elapsed, an observable
+change came over the features of the mental disorder of my friend. His
+ordinary manner had vanished. His ordinary occupations were neglected
+or forgotten. He roamed from chamber to chamber with hurried, unequal,
+and objectless step. The pallor of his countenance had assumed, if
+possible, a more ghastly line&mdash;but the luminousness of his eye had
+utterly gone out. The once occasional huskiness of his tone was heard
+no more; and a tremulous quaver, as if of extreme terror, habitually
+characterized his utterance. There were times, indeed, when I thought
+his unceasingly agitated mind was laboring with some oppressive
+secret, to divulge which he struggled for the necessary courage. At
+times, again, I was obliged to resolve all into the mere inexplicable
+vagaries of madness; for I beheld him gazing upon vacancy for long
+hours, in an attitude of the profoundest attention, as if listening to
+some imaginary sound. It was no wonder that his condition
+terrified&mdash;that it infected me. I felt creeping upon me, by slow yet
+certain degrees, the wild influence of his own fantastic yet
+impressive superstitions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was, especially, upon retiring to bed late in the night of the
+seventh or eighth day after the placing of the lady Madeline within
+the donjon, that I experienced the full power of such feelings. Sleep
+came not near my couch, while the hours waned and waned away, I
+struggled to reason off the nervousness which had dominion over me. I
+endeavored to believe that much, if not all of what I felt, was due to
+the bewildering influence of the gloomy furniture of the room&mdash;of the
+dark and tattered draperies, which, tortured into motion by the breath
+of a rising tempest, swayed fitfully to and fro upon the walls, and
+rustled uneasily about the decorations of the bed. But my efforts were
+fruitless. An irrepressible tremor gradually pervaded my frame; and,
+at length, there sat upon my very heart an incubus of utterly
+causeless alarm. Shaking this off with a gasp and a struggle, I
+uplifted myself upon the pillows, and peering earnestly within the
+intense darkness of the chamber, hearkened&mdash;I know not why, except
+that an instinctive spirit prompted me&mdash;to certain low and indefinite
+sounds which came, through the pauses of the storm, at long intervals,
+I knew not whence. Overpowered by an intense sentiment of horror,
+unaccountable yet unendurable, I threw on my clothes with haste (for I
+felt that I should sleep no more during the night), and endeavored to
+arouse myself from the pitiable condition into which I had fallen, by
+pacing rapidly to and fro through the apartment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had taken but few turns in this manner, when a light step on an
+adjoining staircase arrested my attention. I presently recognized it
+as that of Usher. In an instant afterward he rapped, with a gentle
+touch, at my door, and entered, bearing a lamp. His countenance was,
+as usual, cadaverously wan&mdash;but, moreover, there was a species of mad
+hilarity in his eyes&mdash;and evidently restrained hysteria in his whole
+demeanor. His air appalled me&mdash;but anything was preferable to the
+solitude which I had so long endured, and I even welcomed his presence
+as a relief.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And you have not seen it?" he said abruptly, after having stared
+about him for some moments in silence&mdash;"you have not then seen
+it?&mdash;but stay! you shall." Thus speaking, and having carefully shaded
+his lamp, he hurried to one of the casements, and threw it freely open
+to the storm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The impetuous fury of the entering gust nearly lifted us from our
+feet. It was, indeed, a tempestuous yet sternly beautiful night, and
+one wildly singular in its terror and its beauty. A whirlwind had
+apparently collected its force in our vicinity; for there were
+frequent and violent alterations in the direction of the wind; and the
+exceeding density of the clouds (which hung so low as to press upon
+the turrets of the house) did not prevent our perceiving the lifelike
+velocity with which they flew careering from all points against each
+other, without passing away into the distance. I say that even their
+exceeding density did not prevent our perceiving this&mdash;yet we had no
+glimpse of the moon or stars&mdash;nor was there any flashing forth of the
+lightning. But the under surfaces of the huge masses of agitated
+vapor, as well as all terrestrial objects immediately around us, were
+glowing in the unnatural light of a faintly luminous and distinctly
+visible gaseous exhalation which hung about and enshrouded the
+mansion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You must not&mdash;you shall not behold this!" said I, shudderingly, to
+Usher, as I led him, with a gentle violence, from the window to a
+seat. "These appearances, which bewilder you, are merely electrical
+phenomena not uncommon&mdash;or it may be that they have their ghastly
+origin in the rank miasma of the tarn. Let us close this casement&mdash;the
+air is chilling and dangerous to your frame. Here is one of your
+favorite romances. I will read and you shall listen; and so we will
+pass away this terrible night together."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The antique volume which I had taken up was the <i>Mad Trist</i> of Sir
+Launcelot Canning[25]; but I had called it a favorite of Usher's more
+in sad jest than in earnest; for, in truth, there is little in its
+uncouth and unimaginative prolixity which could have had interest for
+the lofty and spiritual ideality of my friend. It was, however, the
+only book immediately at hand; and I indulged a vague hope that the
+excitement which now agitated the hypochondriac, might find relief
+(for the history of mental disorder is full of similar anomalies) even
+in the extremeness of the folly which I should read. Could I have
+judged, indeed, by the wild, overstrained air of vivacity with which
+he hearkened, or apparently hearkened, to the words of the tale, I
+might well have congratulated myself upon the success of my design.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had arrived at that well-known portion of the story where Ethelred,
+the hero of the "Trist," having sought in vain for peaceable admission
+into the dwelling of the hermit, proceeds to make good an entrance by
+force. Here, it will be remembered, the words of the narrative run
+thus:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And Ethelred, who was by nature of a doughty heart, and who was now
+mighty withal, on account of the powerfulness of the wine which he had
+drunken, waited no longer to hold parley with the hermit, who, in
+sooth, was of an obstinate and maliceful turn; but, feeling the rain
+upon his shoulders, and fearing the rising of the tempest, uplifted
+his mace outright, and, with blows, made quickly room in the plankings
+of the door for his gauntleted hand; and now pulling therewith
+sturdily, he so cracked, and ripped, and tore all asunder, that the
+noise of the dry and hollow-sounding wood alarummed[26] and
+reverberated throughout the forest."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the termination of this sentence I started, and for a moment
+paused; for it appeared to me (although I at once concluded that my
+excited fancy had deceived me)&mdash;it appeared to me that, from some very
+remote portion of the mansion, there came, indistinctly, to my ears
+what might have been, in its exact similarity of character, the echo
+(but a stifled and dull one certainly) of the very cracking and
+ripping sound which Sir Launcelot had so particularly described. It
+was, beyond doubt, the coincidence alone which had arrested my
+attention; for, amid the rattling of the sashes of the casements, and
+the ordinary commingled noises of the still increasing storm, the
+sound, in itself, had nothing, surely, which should have interested or
+disturbed, me. I continued the story:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But the good champion Ethelred, now entering within the door, was
+sore enraged and amazed to perceive no signal of the maliceful hermit;
+but, in the stead thereof, a dragon of a scaly and prodigious
+demeanor, and of a fiery tongue, which sate in guard before a palace
+of gold, with a floor of silver; and upon the wall there hung a shield
+of shining brass with this legend enwritten:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+     Who entereth herein, a conqueror hath been;<br/>
+
+     Who slayeth the dragon, the shield he shall win.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And Ethelred uplifted his mace, and struck upon the head of the
+dragon, which fell before him, and gave up his pesty breath, with a
+shriek so horrid and harsh, and withal so piercing, that Ethelred had
+fain[27] to close his ears with his hands against the dreadful noise
+of it, the like whereof was never before heard."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here again I paused abruptly, and now with a feeling of wild
+amazement&mdash;for there could be no doubt whatever that, in this
+instance, I did actually hear (although from what direction it
+proceeded I found it impossible to say) a low and apparently distant,
+but harsh, protracted, and most unusual screaming or grating
+sound&mdash;the exact counterpart of what my fancy had already conjured up
+for the dragon's unnatural shriek as described by the romancer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Oppressed, as I certainly was, upon the occurrence of this second and
+most extraordinary coincidence, by a thousand conflicting sensations,
+in which wonder and extreme terror were predominant, I still retained
+sufficient presence of mind to avoid exciting, by any observation, the
+sensitive nervousness of my companion. I was by no means certain that
+he had noticed the sounds in question; although, assuredly, a strange
+alteration had, during the last few minutes, taken place in his
+demeanor. From a position fronting my own, he had gradually brought
+round his chair, so as to sit with his face to the door of the
+chamber; and thus I could but partially perceive his features,
+although I saw that his lips trembled as if he were murmuring
+inaudibly. His head had dropped upon his breast&mdash;yet I knew that he
+was not asleep, from the wide and rigid opening of the eye as I caught
+a glance of it in profile. The motion of his body, too, was at
+variance with this idea&mdash;for he rocked from side to side with a gentle
+yet constant and uniform sway. Having rapidly taken notice of all
+this, I resumed the narrative of Sir Launcelot, which thus
+proceeded:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And now the champion, having escaped from the terrible fury of the
+dragon, bethinking himself of the brazen shield, and of the breaking
+up of the enchantment which was upon it, removed the carcass from out
+of the way before him, and approached valorously over the silver
+pavement of the castle to where the shield was upon the wall; which in
+sooth tarried not for his full coming, but fell down at his feet upon
+the silver floor, with a mighty, great and terrible ringing sound."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No sooner had these syllables passed my lips, than&mdash;as if a shield of
+brass had indeed, at the moment, fallen heavily upon a floor of
+silver&mdash;I became aware of a distinct, hollow, metallic and clangorous,
+yet apparently muffled reverberation. Completely unnerved, I leaped to
+my feet; but the measured rocking movement of Usher was undisturbed. I
+rushed to the chair in which he sat. His eyes were bent fixedly before
+him, and throughout his whole countenance there reigned a stony
+rigidity. But, as I placed my hand upon his shoulder, there came a
+strong shudder over his whole person; a sickly smile quivered about
+his lips; and I saw that he spoke in a low, hurried, and gibbering
+murmur, as if unconscious of my presence. Bending closely over him, I
+at length drank in the hideous import of his words.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not hear it?&mdash;yes, I hear it, and <i>have</i> heard it.
+Long&mdash;long&mdash;long&mdash;many minutes, many hours, many days, have I heard
+it&mdash;yet I dared not&mdash;oh, pity me, miserable wretch that I am!&mdash;I dared
+not&mdash;I <i>dared</i> not speak! <i>We have put her living in the tomb!</i> Said I
+not that my senses were acute? I <i>now</i> tell you that I heard her first
+feeble movements in the hollow coffin. I heard them&mdash;many, many days
+ago&mdash;yet I dared not&mdash;<i>I dared not speak!</i> And
+now&mdash;to-night&mdash;Ethelred&mdash;ha! ha!&mdash;-the breaking of the hermit's door,
+and the death-cry of the dragon, and the clangor of the shield!&mdash;say,
+rather, the rending of her coffin, and the grating of the iron hinges
+of her prison, and her struggles within the coppered archway of the
+vault! Oh, whither shall I fly? Will she not be here anon? Is she not
+hurrying to upbraid me for my haste? Have I not heard her footstep on
+the stair? Do I not distinguish that heavy and horrible beating of her
+heart? Madman!"&mdash;here he sprang furiously to his feet, and shrieked
+out his syllables, as if in the effort he were giving up his
+soul&mdash;"<i>Madman! I tell you that she now stands without the door!</i>"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As if in the superhuman energy of his utterance there had been found
+the potency of a spell&mdash;the huge antique panels to which the speaker
+pointed threw slowly back, upon the instant, their ponderous and ebony
+jaws. It was the work of the rushing gust&mdash;but then without those
+doors there <i>did</i> stand the lofty and enshrouded figure of the lady
+Madeline of Usher. There was blood upon her white robes, and the
+evidence of some bitter struggle upon every portion of her emaciated
+frame. For a moment she remained trembling and reeling to and fro upon
+the threshold&mdash;then, with a low, moaning cry, fell heavily inward upon
+the person of her brother, and in her violent and now final
+death-agonies, bore him to the floor a corpse, and a victim to the
+terrors he had anticipated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From that chamber, and from that mansion, I fled aghast. The storm was
+still abroad in all its wrath as I found myself crossing the old
+causeway. Suddenly there shot along the path a wild light, and I
+turned to see whence a gleam so unusual could have issued; for the
+vast house and its shadows were alone behind me. The radiance was that
+of the full, setting, and blood-red moon, which now shone vividly
+through that once barely discernible fissure, of which I have before
+spoken as extending from the roof of the building, in a zigzag
+direction, to the base. While I gazed, this fissure rapidly
+widened&mdash;there came a fierce breath of the whirlwind&mdash;the entire orb
+of the satellite burst at once upon my sight&mdash;my brain reeled as I saw
+the mighty walls rushing asunder&mdash;there was a long tumultuous shouting
+sound like the voice of a thousand waters&mdash;and the deep and dank tarn
+at my feet closed sullenly and silently over the fragments of the
+"<i>House of Usher</i>."
+</p>
+
+<h4>NOTES</h4>
+
+<p>
+[1] <i>The Fall of the House of Usher</i> was written in 1839 and published
+at the end of the same year in his Tales of the Grotesque and of the
+Arabesque.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[2] 70: Motto de Béranger. Popular French lyric poet (1780-1857). "His
+heart is a suspended lute; as soon as it is touched it resounds."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[3] 71:23 tarn. A small mountain lake.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[4] 76:7 ennuyé. Mentally wearied or bored.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[5] 78:11 bounden. An archaic word.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[6] 79:19 Dread. Reading of the first edition, "Her figure, her air,
+her features,&mdash;all, in their very minutest development, were
+those&mdash;were identically (I can use no other sufficient term), were
+identically those of the Roderick Usher who sat beside me. A feeling
+of stupor," etc.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[7] 80:16 Improvisations. Extemporaneous composition of poetry or
+music.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[8] 81:4 von Weber. The celebrated German composer (1786-1826).
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[9] 81:20 Fuseli. An artist and professor of painting at the Royal
+Academy in London (1741-1825).
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[10] 82:24 "The Haunted Palace." First published in the <i>Baltimore
+Museum</i> for April, 1839.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[11] 83:18 Porphyrogene. Of royal birth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[12] 84:16 for other men. Watson, Dr. Percival, and especially the
+Bishop of Llandaff. See "Chemical Essays," Vol. V.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[13] 85:16 Ververt et Chartreuse. Two poems by Jean Baptiste Cresset
+(1709-1777).
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[Footenote 14] 85:17 Belphegor. Satire on Marriage by Machiavelli
+(1469-1527).
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[15] 85:17 Heaven and Hell. Extracts from "Arcana Coelestia" by
+Swedenborg (1688-1772).
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[16] 85:18 Subterranean Voyage of Nicholas Klimm. A celebrated poem by
+Ludwig Holberg (1684-1754).
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[17] 85:19 Chiromancy. Palmistry applied to the future. Poe refers
+rather to physiognomy. The book was written by the English mystic,
+Robert Fludd (1574-1637).
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[18] 85:19 Jean d'Indaginé and De la Chambre. Two continental writers
+of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries respectively.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[19] 85:21 Tieck. A great German romanticist (1773-1853).
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[20] 85:21 City of the Sun. A sketch of an ideal state by Campanella
+(1568-1639).
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[21] 85:23 Directorium Inquisitorium. A detailed account of the
+methods of the Inquisition by Cironne, inquisitor-general for Castile,
+in 1356.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[22] 85:24 Pomponius Mela. Spanish geographer in the first century
+A.D. Author of "De Chorographia," the earliest extant account of the
+geography of the ancient world.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[23] 85:25 Oegipans. An epithet applied to Pan.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[24] 85:30 Vigiliae Mortuorum. No such book is known.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[25] 90:30 Mad Trist. No such book is known.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[26] 91:29 alarummed. Alarmed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[27] 92:25 had fain. In the sense of was glad.
+</p>
+
+<h4>BIOGRAPHY</h4>
+
+<p>
+Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston, January 19, 1809. His parents, who
+were actors, died before their son was three years old. Mr. Allan, a
+wealthy Richmond merchant, adopted the child and gave him a splendid
+home. How scantily Poe appreciated and improved the advantages of this
+kindness he himself confesses in a letter to Lowell in 1844. "I have
+been too deeply conscious of the mutability and evanescence of
+temporal things to give any continuous effort to anything&mdash;to be
+consistent in anything. My life has been <i>whim</i>&mdash;impulse&mdash;passion&mdash;a
+longing for solitude&mdash;a scorn of all things present in an earnest
+desire for the future." He was a dreamer who had a fair chance to be
+happy, but he flung the opportunity away. He was a spoiled child who
+remained ignorant of life even unto his death.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He entered the University of Virginia in 1826, where his conduct was
+so bad that he was, after a year, removed from the college. This
+action broke the strong friendship Mr. Allan had long held for his
+adopted son. Poe, urged by a hot temper or possibly by a remorse for
+his actions, ran away and enlisted in the regular army. In 1829 Mr.
+Allan became partially reconciled with Poe, and again came to his
+assistance. In 1830 Poe entered West Point, but was there only a short
+time when he was dismissed for wilful neglect of duty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Following this dismissal Poe went to Baltimore, where he did hack work
+for newspapers. This was the beginning of a process of writing that
+has brought him high rank and an imperishable honor. His narrative is
+clear, compressed, and powerful, and throughout his writings choice
+symbols abound. He was fond of themes of death, insanity, and terror.
+The wonder of it all is that this struggling, poverty-stricken
+craftsman, irregular in his habits of living, using only negative life
+and shadowy abstractions, should, from out his disordered fancies,
+weave stories and poems of such undying beauty and force.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Poe married his thirteen-year-old cousin, Virginia Clemm. Her health
+was always delicate and her death confirmed Poe's tendency toward
+dissipation. His life was filled with dire poverty and a hard struggle
+for a livelihood. His home relations were happy. The last years of his
+life were spent at Fordham, a suburb of New York. He died in a
+Baltimore hospital, October 7, 1849.
+</p>
+
+<h4>BIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES</h4>
+
+<p>
+<i>Introduction to American Literature</i>, Brander Matthews.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Studies in American Literature</i>, Charles Noble.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Introduction to American Literature</i>, F.V.N. Painter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Life of Poe</i>, Richard Henry Stoddard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Edgar Allan Poe</i>, G.E. Woodberry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Makers of English Fiction</i>, W.J. Dawson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Art of Poe, <i>Independent</i>, 66: 157-8. January 21, 1909.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Dual Personality," <i>Current Literature</i>, 43: 287-8.
+</p>
+
+<h4>CRITICISMS</h4>
+
+<p>
+Some critics have maintained that Poe is our only original genius in
+American Literature. Lowell wrote in his <i>Fable for Critics</i>:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"There comes Poe with his raven, like Barnaby Rudge, Three-fifths of
+him genius, and two-fifths sheer fudge."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Whatever judgments the various critics may give of Poe and his
+writings, they must all agree that he is original. He is a clever
+writer in a limited field. His writings have a glow and burnish that
+have their origin in his fondness for sensations, color, and vividness
+of details. He loves mystery and terror,&mdash;not the fancies and fears of
+a child, but overwrought nerves. His material is unreal, and remote
+from ordinary life. His characters are abnormal, and the world they
+live in is exceptional. He is inventive, original in arranging his
+material, and shallow but keen in his thinking.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He believed that art and life have little in common, and in his
+writings seemed to be unmoved by friendship, loyalty, patriotism,
+courage, self-sacrifice or any of the great positive attributes of
+life that make living worth while. His writings lack the human touch,
+tenderness, and the buoyancy of sympathy. He is an artist who does his
+work with a clear-cut, hard finish. His choice of words, vivid
+pictures, and clearly evolved plots make his writings excellent
+studies for any one who wishes to develop literary appreciation and to
+learn to write.
+</p>
+
+<h4>GENERAL REFERENCES</h4>
+
+<p>
+<i>Studies and Appreciations</i>, L.E. Gates.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>American Prose Masters</i>, William Crary Brownwell.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Short Story in English</i>, Henry Seidel Canby.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Edgar Poe</i>, R.H. Button.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Inquiries and Opinions</i>, Brander Matthews.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Life of Edgar Allan Poe," <i>Nation</i>, 89: 100-110.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Weird Genius," <i>Cosmopolitan</i>, 46:243-252.
+</p>
+
+<h4>COLLATERAL READINGS</h4>
+
+<p>
+<i>Ligeia</i>, Edgar Allan Poe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Cask of Amontillado</i>, Edgar Allan Poe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Assignation</i>, Edgar Allan Poe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Ms. Pound in Bottle</i>, Edgar Allan Poe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Black Cat</i>, Edgar Allan Poe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Berenice</i>, Edgar Allan Poe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Tell-Tale Heart</i>, Edgar Allan Poe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The White Old Maid</i>, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Moonlight</i> ("Odd Number"), Guy de Maupassant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>A Journey</i>, Edith Wharton.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Brushwood Boy</i>, Rudyard Kipling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>At the Pit's Mouth</i>, Rudyard Kipling.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap07"></a>THE GOLD-BUG[1]</h2>
+
+<p class="center">
+<i>By Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+     What ho! what ho! this fellow is dancing mad!<br/>
+
+     He hath been bitten by the Tarantula.<br/>
+
+                                  &mdash;<i>All in the Wrong</i>.[2]
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Many years ago I contracted an intimacy with a Mr. William Legrand. He
+was of an ancient Huguenot[3] family, and had once been wealthy; but a
+series of misfortunes had reduced him to want. To avoid the
+mortification consequent upon his disasters, he left New Orleans, the
+city of his forefathers, and took up his residence at Sullivan's
+Island, near Charleston, South Carolina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This island is a very singular one. It consists of little else than
+the sea sand, and is about three miles long. Its breadth at no point
+exceeds a quarter of a mile. It is separated from the mainland by a
+scarcely perceptible creek, oozing its way through a wilderness of
+reeds and slime, a favorite resort of the marsh-hen. The vegetation,
+as might be supposed, is scant, or at least dwarfish. No trees of any
+magnitude are to be seen. Near the western extremity, where Fort
+Moultrie[4] stands, and where are some miserable frame buildings,
+tenanted, during summer, by the fugitives from Charleston dust and
+fever, may be found, indeed, the bristly palmetto; but the whole
+island, with the exception of this western point, and a line of hard,
+white beach on the seacoast, is covered with a dense undergrowth of
+the sweet myrtle, so much prized by the horticulturists of England.
+The shrub here often attains the height of fifteen or twenty feet, and
+forms an almost impenetrable coppice, burthening the air with its
+fragrance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the utmost recesses of this coppice, not far from the eastern or
+more remote end of the island, Legrand had built himself a small hut,
+which he occupied when I first, by mere accident, made his
+acquaintance. This soon ripened into friendship, for there was much in
+the recluse to excite interest and esteem. I found him well educated,
+with unusual powers of mind, but infected with misanthropy, and
+subject to perverse moods of alternate enthusiasm and melancholy. He
+had with him many books, but rarely employed them. His chief
+amusements were gunning and fishing, or sauntering along the beach and
+through the myrtles, in quest of shells or entomological
+specimens&mdash;his collection of the latter might have been envied by a
+Swammerdam.[5] In these excursions he was usually accompanied by an
+old negro, called Jupiter, who had been manumitted[6] before the
+reverses of the family, but who could be induced, neither by threats
+nor by promises, to abandon what he considered his right of attendance
+upon the footsteps of his young "Massa Will." It is not improbable
+that the relatives of Legrand, conceiving him to be somewhat unsettled
+in intellect, had contrived to instil this obstinacy into Jupiter,
+with a view to the supervision and guardianship of the wanderer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The winters in the latitude of Sullivan's Island are seldom very
+severe, and in the fall of the year it is a rare event indeed when a
+fire is considered necessary. About the middle of October, 18&mdash;, there
+occurred, however, a day of remarkable chilliness. Just before sunset
+I scrambled my way through the evergreens to the hut of my friend,
+whom I had not visited for several weeks&mdash;my residence being at that
+time in Charleston, a distance of nine miles from the island, while
+the facilities of passage and re-passage were very far behind those of
+the present day. Upon reaching the hut I rapped, as was my custom, and
+getting no reply, sought for the key where I knew it was secreted,
+unlocked the door, and went in. A fine fire was blazing upon the
+hearth. It was a novelty, and by no means an ungrateful one. I threw
+off an over-coat, took an armchair by the crackling logs, and awaited
+patiently the arrival of my hosts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Soon after dark they arrived, and gave me a most cordial welcome.
+Jupiter, grinning from ear to ear, bustled about to prepare some
+marsh-hens for supper. Legrand was in one of his fits&mdash;how else shall
+I term them?&mdash;of enthusiasm. He had found an unknown bivalve, forming
+a new genus, and, more than this, he had hunted down and secured, with
+Jupiter's assistance, a <i>scarabaeus</i>[7] which he believed to be
+totally new, but in respect to which he wished to have my opinion on
+the morrow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And why not to-night?" I asked, rubbing my hands over the blaze, and
+wishing the whole tribe of <i>scarabaei</i> at the devil.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ah, if I had only known you were here!" said Legrand, "but it's so
+long since I saw you; and how could I foresee that you would pay me a
+visit this very night of all others? As I was coming home I met
+Lieutenant G&mdash;&mdash;, from the fort, and, very foolishly, I lent him the
+bug; so it will be impossible for you to see it until the morning.
+Stay here to-night, and I will send Jup down for it at sunrise. It is
+the loveliest thing in creation!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What!&mdash;sunrise?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Nonsense! no!&mdash;the bug. It is of a brilliant gold color&mdash;about the
+size of a large hickory-nut&mdash;with two jet-black spots near one
+extremity of the back, and another, somewhat longer, at the other. The
+<i>antennae[8]</i> are&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Dey ain't <i>no</i> tin in him, Massa Will, I keep a tellin' on you," here
+interrupted Jupiter; "de bug is a goolebug, solid, ebery bit of him,
+inside and all, 'sep him wing&mdash;neber feel half so hebby a bug in my
+life."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, suppose it is, Jup," replied Legrand, somewhat more earnestly,
+it seemed to me, than the case demanded; "is that any reason for your
+letting the birds burn? The color"&mdash;here he turned to me&mdash;"is really
+almost enough to warrant Jupiter's idea. You never saw a more
+brilliant metallic lustre than the scales emit&mdash;but of this you cannot
+judge till to-morrow. In the meantime I can give you some idea of the
+shape." Saying this, he seated himself at a small table, on which were
+a pen and ink, but no paper. He looked for some in a drawer, but found
+none.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Never mind," said he at length, "this will answer;" and he drew from
+his waistcoat pocket a scrap of what I took to be very dirty foolscap,
+and made upon it a rough drawing with the pen. While he did this I
+retained my seat by the fire, for I was still chilly. When the design
+was complete, he handed it to me without rising. As I received, it, a
+loud growl was heard, succeeded by a scratching at the door. Jupiter
+opened it, and a large Newfoundland, belonging to Legrand, rushed in,
+leaped upon my shoulders, and loaded me with caresses; for I had shown
+him much attention during previous visits. When his gambols were over,
+I looked at the paper, and, to speak the truth, found myself not a
+little puzzled at what my friend had depicted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well!" I said, after contemplating it for some minutes, "this <i>is</i> a
+strange <i>scarabaeus</i>, I must confess: new to me: never saw anything
+like it before&mdash;unless it was a skull, or a death's-head&mdash;which, it
+more nearly resembles than, anything else that has come under <i>my</i>
+observation."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A death's-head!" echoed Legrand. "Oh&mdash;yes&mdash;well, it has something of
+that appearance upon paper, no doubt. The two upper black spots look
+like eyes, eh? and the longer one at the bottom like a mouth&mdash;and then
+the shape of the whole is oval."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Perhaps so," said I; "but, Legrand, I fear you are no artist. I must
+wait until I see the beetle itself, if I am to form any idea of its
+personal appearance."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, I don't know," said he, a little nettled, "I draw
+tolerably&mdash;<i>should</i> do it at least&mdash;have had good masters, and flatter
+myself that I am not quite a blockhead."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But, my dear fellow, you are joking then," said I; "this is a very
+passable <i>skull</i>&mdash;indeed, I may say that it is a very <i>excellent</i>
+skull, according to the vulgar notions about such specimens of
+physiology&mdash;and your <i>scarabaeus</i> must be the queerest <i>scarabaeus</i> in
+the world if it resembles it. Why, we may get up a very thrilling bit
+of superstition upon this hint. I presume, you will call the bug
+<i>scarabaeus caput hominis</i>,[9] or something of that kind&mdash;there are
+many similar titles in the natural histories. But where are the
+<i>antennae</i> you spoke of?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The <i>antennae</i>!" said Legrand, who seemed to be getting unaccountably
+warm upon the subject; "I am sure you must see the <i>antennae</i>. I made
+them as distinct as they are in the original insect, and I presume
+that is sufficient."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, well," I said, "perhaps you have&mdash;still I don't see them;" and
+I handed him the paper without additional remark, not wishing to
+ruffle his temper; but I was much surprised at the turn affairs had
+taken; his ill-humor puzzled me&mdash;and, as for the drawing of the
+beetle, there were positively <i>no antennae</i> visible, and the whole
+<i>did</i> bear a very close resemblance to the ordinary cuts of a
+death's-head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He received the paper very peevishly, and was about to crumple it,
+apparently to throw it in the fire, when a casual glance at the design
+seemed suddenly to rivet his attention. In an instant his face grew
+violently red&mdash;in another as excessively pale. For some minutes he
+continued to scrutinize the drawing minutely where he sat. At length
+he arose, took a candle from the table, and proceeded to seat himself
+upon a sea-chest in the farthest corner of the room. Here again he
+made an anxious examination of the paper, turning it in all
+directions. He said nothing, however, and his conduct greatly
+astonished me; yet I thought it prudent not to exacerbate the growing
+moodiness of his temper by any comment. Presently he took from, his
+coat pocket a wallet, placed the paper carefully in it, and deposited
+both in a writing-desk, which he locked. He now grew more composed in
+his demeanor; but his original air of enthusiasm had quite
+disappeared. Yet he seemed not so much sulky as abstracted. As the
+evening wore away he became more and more absorbed in reverie, from
+which no sallies of mine could arouse him. It had been my intention to
+pass the night at the hut, as I had frequently done before, but,
+seeing my host in this mood, I deemed it proper to take leave. He did
+not press me to remain, but, as I departed, he shook my hand with even
+more than his usual cordiality.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was about a month after this (and during the interval I had seen
+nothing of Legrand) when I received a visit, at Charleston, from his
+man Jupiter. I had never seen the good old negro look so dispirited,
+and I feared that some serious disaster had befallen my friend.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, Jup," said I, "what is the matter now?&mdash;how is your master?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why, to speak de troof, massa, him not so berry well as mought be."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not well! I am truly sorry to hear it. What does he complain of?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Dar! dat's it!&mdash;him nebber 'plain of notin'&mdash;but him berry sick for
+all dat."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>Very</i> sick, Jupiter!&mdash;why didn't you say so at once? Is he confined
+to bed?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, dat he ain't!&mdash;he ain't 'find nowhar&mdash;dat's just whar de shoe
+pinch&mdash;my mind is got to be berry hebby 'bout poor Massa Will."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Jupiter, I should like to understand what it is you are talking
+about. You say your master is sick. Hasn't he told you what ails him?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why, massa, 'tain't worf while for to git mad 'bout de matter&mdash;Massa
+Will say noffin' at all ain't de matter wid him&mdash;but den what make him
+go about looking dis here way, wid he head down and he soldiers up,
+and as white as a gose? And den he keep a syphon all de time&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Keeps a what, Jupiter?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Keeps a syphon wid de figgurs on de slate&mdash;de queerest figgurs I
+ebber did see. Ise gittin' to be skeered I tell you. Hab for to keep
+mighty tight eye pon him noovers.[10] Todder day he gib me slip fore
+de sun up, and was gone de whole ob de blessed day. I had a big stick
+ready cut for to gib him d&mdash;&mdash;d good beating when he did come&mdash;but Ise
+sich a fool dat I hadn't de heart after all&mdash;he look so berry poorly."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Eh?&mdash;what? Ah, yes!&mdash;upon the whole, I think you had better not be
+too severe with the poor fellow&mdash;don't flog him, Jupiter, he can't
+very well stand it&mdash;but can you form an idea of what has occasioned
+this illness, or rather this change of conduct? Has anything
+unpleasant happened since I saw you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, massa, dey ain't bin noffin' onpleasant <i>since</i> den&mdash;'twas
+<i>'fore</i> den, I'm feared&mdash;'twas de berry day you was dare."'
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"How? what do you mean?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why, massa, I mean de bug&mdash;dare now."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The <i>what?</i>"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"De bug&mdash;I'm berry sartain dat Massa Will bin bit somewhere 'bout de
+head by dat goole-bug."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And what cause have you, Jupiter, for such a supposition?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Claws enuff, massa, and mouff, too. I nebber did see sich a d&mdash;&mdash;d
+bug&mdash;he kick and he bite ebery ting what cum near him. Massa Will
+cotch him fuss, but had for to let him go 'gin mighty quick, I tell
+you&mdash;den was de time he must ha' got de bite. I didn't like de look ob
+de bug mouff, myself, nohow, so I wouldn't take hold ob him wid my
+finger, but I cotch him wid a piece ob paper dat I found. I wrap him
+up in de paper and stuff piece ob it in he mouff&mdash;dat was de way."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And you think, then, that your master was really bitten by the
+beetle, and that the bite made him sick?" "I don't t'ink noffin' 'bout
+it&mdash;I nose it. What make him dream 'bout de goole so much, if 'tain't
+cause he bit by de goole-bug? Ise heerd 'bout dem goole-bugs 'fore
+dis."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But how do you know he dreams about gold?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"How I know? why, 'cause he talk about it in he sleep&mdash;dat's how I
+nose."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, Jup, perhaps you are right; but to what fortunate circumstances
+am I to attribute the honor of a visit from you to-day?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What de matter, massa?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Did you bring any message from Mr. Legrand?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, massa, I bring dis here 'pissel;" and here Jupiter handed me a
+note, which ran thus:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+My dear &mdash;&mdash;&mdash;:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Why have I not seen you for so long a time? I hope you have not been
+so foolish as to take offence at any little <i>brusquerie</i>[11] of mine;
+but no, that is improbable.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Since I saw you I have had great cause for anxiety. I have something
+to tell you, yet scarcely know how to tell it, or whether I should
+tell it at all.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I have not been quite well for some days past, and poor old Jup annoys
+me, almost beyond endurance, by his well-meant attentions. Would you
+believe it?&mdash;he had prepared a huge stick, the other day, with which
+to chastise me for giving him the slip, and spending the day, <i>solus</i>,
+among the hills on the mainland. I verily believe that my ill looks
+alone saved me a flogging.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I have made no addition to my cabinet since we met.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If you can, in any way, make it convenient, come over with Jupiter.
+<i>Do</i> come. I wish to see you <i>to-night</i>, upon business of importance.
+I assure you that it is of the <i>highest</i> importance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ever yours,
+</p>
+
+<p>
+William Legrand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was something in the tone of this note which gave me great
+uneasiness. Its whole style differed materially from that of Legrand.
+What could he be dreaming of? What new crotchet possessed his
+excitable brain? What "business of the highest importance" could <i>he</i>
+possibly have to transact? Jupiter's account of him boded no good. I
+dreaded lest the continued pressure of misfortune had, at length,
+fairly unsettled the reason of my friend. Without a moment's
+hesitation, therefore, I prepared to accompany the negro.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Upon reaching the wharf, I noticed a scythe and three spades, all
+apparently new, lying in the bottom of the boat in which we were to
+embark.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What is the meaning of all this, Jup?" I inquired.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Him syfe, massa, and spade."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Very true; but what are they doing here?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Him de syfe and de spade what Massa Will 'sis' 'pon my buying for him
+in de town, and de debbil's own lot of money I had to gib for 'em."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But what, in the name of all that is mysterious, is your 'Massa Will'
+going to do with scythes and spades?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Dat's more dan <i>I</i> know, and debbil take me if I don't b'lieve 'tis
+more dan he know, too. But it's all come ob de bug."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Finding that no satisfaction was to be obtained of Jupiter, whose
+whole intellect seemed to be absorbed by "de bug," I now stepped into
+the boat and made sail. With a fair and strong breeze we soon ran into
+the little cove to the northward of Fort Moultrie, and a walk of some
+two miles brought us to the hut. It was about three in the afternoon
+when we arrived. Legrand had been awaiting us in eager expectation. He
+grasped my hand with a nervous <i>empressement</i>[12] which alarmed me and
+strengthened the suspicions already entertained. His countenance was
+pale even to ghastliness, and his deep-set eyes glared with unnatural
+lustre. After some inquiries respecting his health, I asked him, not
+knowing what better to say, if he had yet obtained the <i>scarabaeus</i>
+from Lieutenant G&mdash;&mdash;.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, yes," he replied, coloring violently, "I got it from him the next
+morning. Nothing could tempt me to part with that <i>scarabaeus</i>. Do you
+know that Jupiter is quite right about it!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"In what way?" I asked, with a sad foreboding at heart.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"In supposing it to be a bug of <i>real gold</i>." He said this with an air
+of profound seriousness, and I felt inexpressibly shocked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"This bug is to make my fortune," he continued, with a triumphant
+smile, and reinstate me in my family possessions. Is it any wonder,
+then, that I prize it? Since Fortune has thought fit to bestow it upon
+me, I have only to use it properly and I shall arrive at the gold of
+which it is the index. Jupiter, bring me that <i>scarabaeus</i>!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What! de bug, massa? I'd rudder not go fer trubble dat bug&mdash;you mus'
+git him for your own self." Hereupon Legrand arose, with a grave and
+stately air, and brought me the beetle from a glass case in which it
+was enclosed. It was a beautiful <i>scarabaeus</i>, and, at that time,
+unknown to naturalists&mdash;of course a great prize in a scientific point
+of view. There were two round black spots near one extremity of the
+back, and a long one near the other. The scales were exceedingly hard
+and glossy, with all the appearance of burnished gold. The weight of
+the insect was very remarkable, and, taking all things into
+consideration, I could hardly blame Jupiter for his opinion respecting
+it; but what to make of Legrand's agreement with that opinion, I could
+not, for the life of me, tell.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I sent for you," said he, in a grandiloquent tone when I had
+completed my examination of the beetle, "I sent for you, that I might
+have your counsel and assistance in furthering the views of Fate and
+of the bug"&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"My dear Legrand," I cried, interrupting him, "you are certainly
+unwell, and had better use some little precautions. You shall go to
+bed, and I will remain with you a few days, until you get over this.
+You are feverish and"&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Feel my pulse," said he.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I felt it, and, to say the truth, found not the slightest indication
+of fever.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But you may be ill and yet have no fever. Allow me this once to
+prescribe for you. In the first place, go to bed. In the next"&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You are mistaken," he interposed; "I am as well as I can expect to be
+under the excitement which I suffer. If you really wish me well, you
+will relieve this excitement."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And how is this to be done?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Very easily, Jupiter and myself are going upon an expedition into the
+hills, upon the mainland, and, in this expedition, we shall need the
+aid of some person in whom we can confide. You are the only one we can
+trust. Whether we succeed or fail, the excitement which you now
+perceive in me will be equally allayed."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am anxious to oblige you in any way," I replied; "but do you mean
+to say that this infernal beetle has any connection with your
+expedition into the hills?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It has."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then, Legrand, I can become a party to no such absurd proceeding."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am sorry&mdash;very sorry&mdash;for we shall have to try it by ourselves."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Try it by yourselves! The man is surely mad!&mdash;but stay!&mdash;how long do
+you propose to be absent?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Probably all night. We shall start immediately, and be back, at all
+events, by sunrise."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And will you promise me upon your honor, that when this freak of
+yours is over, and the bug business (good God!) settled to your
+satisfaction, you will then return home and follow my advice
+implicitly, as that of your physician?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes; I promise; and now let us be off, for we have no time to lose."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With a heavy heart I accompanied my friend. We started about four
+o'clock&mdash;Legrand, Jupiter, the dog, and myself. Jupiter had with him
+the scythe and spades, the whole of which he insisted upon carrying,
+more through fear, it seemed to me, of trusting either of the
+implements within reach of his master, than from any excess of
+industry or complaisance. His demeanor was dogged in the extreme, and
+"dat d&mdash;&mdash;d bug" were the sole words which escaped his lips during the
+journey. For my own part, I had charge of a couple of dark lanterns,
+while Legrand contented himself with the <i>scarabaeus</i>, which he
+carried attached to the end of a bit of whipcord, twirling it to and
+fro, with the air of a conjurer, as he went. When I observed this last
+plain evidence of my friend's aberration of mind, I could scarcely
+refrain from tears. I thought it best, however, to humor his fancy, at
+least for the present, or until I could adopt some more energetic
+measures with a chance of success. In the meantime I endeavored, but
+all in vain, to sound him in regard to the object of the expedition.
+Having succeeded in inducing me to accompany him, he seemed unwilling
+to hold conversation upon any topic of minor importance, and to all my
+questions vouchsafed no other reply than "We shall see!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We crossed the creek at the head of the island by means of a skiff,
+and, ascending the high grounds on the shore of the mainland,
+proceeded in a northwesterly direction, through a tract of country
+excessively wild and desolate, where no trace of a human footstep was
+to be seen. Legrand led the way with decision, pausing only for an
+instant, here and there, to consult what appeared is to be certain
+landmarks of his own contrivance upon a former occasion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In this manner we journeyed for about two hours, and the sun was just
+setting when we entered a region infinitely more dreary than any yet
+seen. It was a species of table-land, near the summit of an almost
+inaccessible hill, densely wooded from base to pinnacle, and
+interspersed with huge crags that appeared to lie loosely upon the
+soil, and in many cases were prevented from precipitating themselves
+into the valleys below, merely by the support of the trees against
+which they reclined. Deep ravines, in various directions, gave an air
+of still sterner solemnity to the scene.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The natural platform to which we had clambered was thickly overgrown
+with brambles, through which we soon discovered that it would have
+been impossible to force our way but for the scythe; and Jupiter, by
+direction of his master, proceeded to clear for us a path to the foot
+of an enormously tall tulip-tree, which stood, with some eight or ten
+oaks, upon the level, and far surpassed them all, and all other trees
+which I had ever seen, in the beauty of its foliage and form, in the
+wide spread of its branches, and in the general majesty of its
+appearance. When we reached this tree, Legrand turned to Jupiter, and
+asked him if he thought he could climb it. The old man seemed a little
+staggered by the question, and for some moments made no reply. At
+length he approached the huge trunk, walked slowly around it, and
+examined it with minute attention. When he had completed his scrutiny,
+he merely said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, massa, Jup climb any tree he ebber see in he life."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then up with you as soon as possible, for it will soon be too dark to
+see what we are about."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"How far mus' go up, massa?" inquired Jupiter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Get up the main trunk first, and then I will tell you which way to
+go&mdash;and here&mdash;stop! take this beetle with you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"De bug, Massa Will! de goole-bug!" cried the negro, drawing back in
+dismay, "what for mus' tote de bug way up de tree?&mdash;d&mdash;&mdash;n if I do!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If you are afraid, Jup, a great big negro like you, to take hold of a
+harmless little dead beetle, why, you can carry it up by this string;
+but if you do not take it up with you in some way, I shall be under
+the necessity of breaking your head with this shovel."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"'What de matter, now, massa?" said Jup, evidently shamed into
+compliance; "always want fur to raise fuss wid old nigger. Was only
+funnin' anyhow. <i>Me</i> feered de bug! what I keer for de bug?" Here he
+took cautiously hold of the extreme end of the string, and,
+maintaining the insect as far from his person as circumstances would
+permit, prepared to ascend the tree.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In youth the tulip-tree, or <i>Liriodendron tulipifera</i>, the most
+magnificent of American foresters, has a trunk peculiarly smooth, and
+often rises to a great height without lateral branches; but, in its
+riper age, the bark becomes gnarled and uneven, while many short limbs
+make their appearance on the stem. Thus the difficulty of ascension,
+in the present case, lay more in semblance than in reality. Embracing
+the huge cylinder as closely as possible with his arms and knees,
+seizing with his hands some projections, and resting his naked toes
+upon others, Jupiter, after one or two narrow escapes from falling, at
+length wriggled himself into the first great fork, and seemed to
+consider the whole business as virtually accomplished. The <i>risk</i> of
+the achievement was, in fact, now over, although the climber was some
+sixty or seventy feet from the ground.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Which way mus' go now, Massa Will?" he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Keep up the largest branch, the one on this side," said Legrand. The
+negro obeyed him promptly, and apparently with but little trouble;
+ascending higher and higher, until no glimpse of his squat figure
+could be obtained through the dense foliage which enveloped it.
+Presently his voice was heard in a sort of halloo.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"How much fudder I's got for go?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"How high up are you?" asked Legrand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ebber so fur," replied the negro; "can see de sky fru de top ob de
+tree."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Never mind the sky, but attend to what I say. Look down the trunk and
+count the limbs below you on this side. How many limbs have you
+passed?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"One, two, three, four, fibe&mdash;I done pass fibe big limb, massa, 'pon
+dis side."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then go one limb higher."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In a few minutes the voice was heard again, announcing that the
+seventh limb was attained.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Now, Jup," cried Legrand, evidently much excited, "I want you to work
+your way out upon that limb as far as you can. If you see anything
+strange, let me know."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+By this time what little doubt I might have entertained of my poor
+friend's insanity was put finally at rest. I had no alternative but to
+conclude him stricken with lunacy, and I became seriously anxious
+about getting him home. While I was pondering upon what was best to be
+done, Jupiter's voice was again heard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mos' feerd for to ventur' 'pon dis limb berry far&mdash;'tis dead limb
+putty much all de way."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Did you say it was a <i>dead</i> limb, Jupiter?" cried Legrand, in a
+quavering voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, massa, him dead as de door-nail&mdash;done up for sartain&mdash;done
+departed dis here life."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What in the name of heaven shall I do?" asked Legrand, seemingly in
+the greatest distress.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do!" said I, glad of an opportunity to interpose a word, "why, come
+home and go to bed. Come now!&mdash;that's a fine fellow. It's getting
+late, and, besides, you remember your promise."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Jupiter," cried he, without heeding me in the least, "do you hear
+me?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, Massa Will, hear you ebber so plain,"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Try the wood well, then, with your knife, and see if you think it
+<i>very</i> rotten."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Him rotten, massa, sure nuff," replied the negro in a few moments,
+"but not so berry rotten as mought be, Mought ventur' out leetle way
+'pon de limb by myself, dat's true."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"By yourself! What do you mean?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why, I mean de bug. 'Tis <i>berry</i> hebby bug. S'pose I drop him down
+fust, and den de limb won't break wid just de weight of one nigger."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You infernal scoundrel!" cried Legrand, apparently much relieved,
+"what do you mean by telling me such nonsense as that? As sure as you
+drop that beetle, I'll break your neck. Look here, Jupiter, do you
+hear me?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, massa, needn' hollo at poor nigger dat style."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well!&mdash;now listen! if you will venture out on the limb as far as you
+think safe, and not let go the beetle, I'll make you a present of a
+silver dollar as soon as you get down."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'm gwine, Massa Will&mdash;deed I is," replied the negro very
+promptly&mdash;"mos' out to de eend now."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>Out to the end</i>!" here fairly screamed Legrand; "do you say you are
+out to the end of that limb?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Soon be to de eend, massa&mdash;o-o-o-o-oh! Lor-gol-a-marcy! what <i>is</i> dis
+here 'pon de tree?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well," cried Legrand, highly delighted, "what is it?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why, 'taint noffin' but a skull&mdash;somebody bin lef' him head up de
+tree, and de crows done gobble ebery bit ob de meat off."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A skull, you say! Very well; how is it fastened to the limb? What
+holds it on?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Shure 'nuff, massa; mus' look. Why, dis berry curous sarcumstance,
+'pon my word&mdash;dare's a great big nail in do skull, what fastens ob it
+on to de tree."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well now, Jupiter, do exactly as I tell you&mdash;do you hear?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, massa."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Pay attention, then!&mdash;find the left eye of the skull."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Hum! hoo! dat's good! why, dare ain't no eye lef' at all."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Curse your stupidity! do you know your right hand from your left?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, I nose dat&mdash;nose all 'bout dat&mdash;'tis my lef' hand what I chops
+de wood wid."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"To be sure! you are left-handed; and your left eye is on the same
+side as your left hand. Now, I suppose you can find the left eye of
+the skull, or the place where the left eye has been. Have you found
+it?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here was a long pause. At length the negro asked:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Is de lef' eye ob de skull 'pon de same side as de lef' hand ob de
+skull, too?&mdash;'cause the skull ain't got not a bit ob a hand at
+all&mdash;nebber mind! I got de lef' eye now&mdash;here de lef' eye! what mus'
+do wid it?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Let the beetle drop through it, as far as the string will reach, but
+be careful and not let go your hold of the string."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"All dat done, Massa Will; mighty easy ting for to put de bug fru de
+hole; look out for him dar below!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+During this colloquy no portion of Jupiter's person could be seen; but
+the beetle, which he had suffered to descend, was now visible at the
+end of the string, and glistened, like a globe of burnished gold, in
+the last rays of the setting sun, some of which still faintly
+illumined the eminence upon which we stood. The <i>scarabaeus</i> hung
+quite clear of any branches, and if allowed to fall, would have fallen
+at our feet. Legrand immediately took the scythe, and cleared with it
+a circular space, three or four yards in diameter, just beneath the
+insect, and, having accomplished this, ordered Jupiter to let go the
+string and come down from the tree.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Driving a peg, with great nicety, into the ground, at the precise spot
+where the beetle fell, my friend now produced from his pocket a
+tape-measure. Fastening one end of this at that point of the trunk of
+the tree which was nearest the peg, he unrolled it till it reached the
+peg, and thence farther unrolled it, in the direction already
+established by the two points of the tree and the peg, for the
+distance of fifty feet&mdash;Jupiter clearing away the brambles with the
+scythe. At the spot thus attained a second peg was driven, and about
+this, as a centre, a rude circle, about four feet in diameter,
+described. Taking now a spade himself, and giving one to Jupiter and
+one to me, Legrand begged us to set about digging as quickly as
+possible.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To speak the truth, I had no especial relish for such amusement at any
+time, and, at that particular moment, would most willingly have
+declined it; for the night was coming on, and I felt much fatigued
+with the exercise already taken; but I saw no mode of escape, and was
+fearful of disturbing my poor friend's equanimity by a refusal. Could
+I have depended, indeed, upon Jupiter's aid, I would have had no
+hesitation in attempting to get the lunatic home by force; but I was
+too well assured of the old negro's disposition, to hope that he would
+assist me, under any circumstances, in a personal contest with his
+master. I made no doubt that the latter had been infected with some of
+the innumerable Southern superstitions about money buried, and that
+his fantasy had received confirmation by the finding of the
+<i>scarabaeus</i>, or, perhaps, by Jupiter's obstinacy in maintaining it to
+be "a bug of real gold." A mind disposed to lunacy would readily be
+led away by such suggestions&mdash;especially if chiming in with favorite
+preconceived ideas&mdash;and then I called to mind the poor fellow's speech
+about the beetle's being "the index of his fortune." Upon the whole, I
+was sadly vexed and puzzled, but, at length, I concluded to make a
+virtue of necessity&mdash;to dig with a good will, and thus the sooner to
+convince the visionary, by ocular demonstration, of the fallacy of the
+opinions he entertained.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The lanterns having been lit, we all fell to work with a zeal worthy a
+more rational cause; and, as the glare fell upon our persons and
+implements, I could not help thinking how picturesque a group we
+composed, and how strange and suspicious our labors must have appeared
+to any interloper who, by chance, might have stumbled upon our
+whereabouts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We dug very steadily for two hours. Little was said; and our chief
+embarrassment lay in the yelping of the dog, who took exceeding
+interest in our proceedings. He at length became so obstreperous, that
+we grew fearful of his giving the alarm to some stragglers in the
+vicinity&mdash;-or, rather, this was the apprehension of Legrand; for
+myself, I should have rejoiced at any interruption which might have
+enabled me to get the wanderer home. The noise was, at length, very
+effectually silenced by Jupiter, who, getting out of the hole with a
+dogged air of deliberation, tied the brute's mouth up with one of his
+suspenders, and then returned, with a grave chuckle, to his task.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When the time mentioned had expired, we had reached a depth of five
+feet, and yet no signs of any treasure became manifest. A general
+pause ensued, and I began to hope that the farce was at an end.
+Legrand, however, although evidently much disconcerted, wiped his brow
+thoughtfully and recommenced. We had excavated the entire circle of
+four feet diameter, and now we slightly enlarged the limit, and went
+to the farther depth of two feet. Still nothing appeared. The gold
+seeker, whom I sincerely pitied, at length clambered from the pit,
+with the bitterest disappointment imprinted upon every feature, and
+proceeded, slowly and reluctantly, to put on his coat, which he had
+thrown off at the beginning of his labor. In the meantime I made no
+remark. Jupiter, at a signal from his master, began to gather up his
+tools. This done, and the dog having been unmuzzled, we turned in
+profound silence towards home.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We had taken, perhaps, a dozen steps in this direction, when, with a
+loud oath, Legrand strode up to Jupiter and seized him by the collar.
+The astonished negro opened his eyes and mouth to the fullest extent,
+let fall the spades, and fell upon his knees.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You scoundrel," said Legrand, hissing out the syllables from between
+his clenched teeth, "you infernal black villain! speak, I tell you!
+answer me this instant, without prevarication! which&mdash;which is your
+left eye?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, my golly, Massa Will! ain't dis here my lef' eye for sartain?"
+roared the terrified Jupiter, placing his hand upon his <i>right</i> organ
+of vision, and holding it there with a desperate pertinacity, as if in
+immediate dread of his master's attempt at a gouge.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I thought so! I knew it! hurrah!" vociferated Legrand, letting the
+negro go, and executing a series of curvets and caracoles[13], much to
+the astonishment of his valet, who, arising from his knees, looked
+mutely from his master to myself, and then from myself to his master.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Come! we must go back," said the latter; "the game's not up yet;" and
+he again led the way to the tulip-tree.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Jupiter," said he, when he reached its foot, "come here! was the
+skull nailed to the limb with the face outwards, or with the face to
+the limb?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"De face was out, massa, so dat de crows could get at de eyes good,
+widout any trouble."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, then, was it this eye or that through which you dropped the
+beetle?"&mdash;here Legrand touched each of Jupiter's eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"'Twas dis eye, massa&mdash;de lef' eye&mdash;jis as you tell me," and here it
+was his right eye that the negro indicated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That will do&mdash;we must try it again."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here my friend, about whose madness I now saw or fancied that I saw,
+certain indications of method, removed the peg which marked the spot
+where the beetle fell, to a spot about three inches to the westward of
+its former position, Taking now the tape-measure from the nearest
+point of the trunk to the peg, as before, and continuing the extension
+in a straight line to the distance of fifty feet, a spot was
+indicated, removed by several yards from the point at which we had
+been digging.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Around the new position a circle, somewhat larger than in the former
+instance, was now described, and we again set to work with the spades,
+I was dreadfully weary, but scarcely understanding what had occasioned
+the change in my thoughts, I felt no longer any great aversion from
+the labor imposed, I had become most unaccountably interested&mdash;nay,
+even excited. Perhaps there was something, amid all the extravagant
+demeanor of Legrand&mdash;some air of forethought, or of deliberation,
+which impressed me. I dug eagerly, and now and then caught myself
+actually looking, with something that very much resembled expectation,
+for the fancied treasure, the vision of which had demented my
+unfortunate companion. At a period when such vagaries of thought most
+fully possessed me, and when we had been at work perhaps an hour and a
+half, we were again interrupted by the violent howlings of the dog.
+His uneasiness in the first instance had been, evidently, but the
+result of playfulness or caprice, but he now assumed a bitter and
+serious tone. Upon Jupiter's again attempting to muzzle him, he made
+furious resistance, and, leaping into the hole, tore up the mould
+frantically with his claws. In a few seconds he had uncovered a mass
+of human bones, forming two complete skeletons, intermingled with
+several buttons of metal, and what appeared to be the dust of decayed
+woolen. One or two strokes of a spade upturned the blade of a large
+Spanish knife, and, as we dug farther, three or four pieces of gold
+and silver coin came to light.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At sight of these the joy of Jupiter could scarcely be restrained, but
+the countenance of his master wore an air of extreme disappointment.
+He urged us, however, to continue our exertions, and the words were
+hardly uttered when I stumbled and fell forward, having caught the toe
+of my boot in a large ring of iron that lay half buried in the loose
+earth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We now worked in earnest, and never did I pass ten minutes of more
+intense excitement. During this interval we had fairly unearthed an
+oblong chest of wood which, from its perfect preservation and
+wonderful hardness, had plainly been subjected to some mineralizing
+process&mdash;perhaps that of the bichloride of mercury. This box was three
+feet and a half long, three feet broad, and two and a half feet deep.
+It was firmly secured by bands of wrought iron, riveted, and forming a
+kind of trellis-work over the whole. On each side of the chest, near
+the top, were three rings of iron&mdash;six in all&mdash;by means of which a
+firm hold could be obtained by six persons. Our utmost united
+endeavors served only to disturb the coffer very slightly in its bed.
+We at once saw the impossibility of removing so great a weight.
+Luckily, the sole fastenings of the lid consisted of two sliding
+bolts. These we drew back&mdash;trembling and panting with anxiety. In an
+instant, a treasure of incalculable value lay gleaming before us. As
+the rays of the lanterns fell within the pit, there flashed upwards a
+glow and a glare, from a confused heap of gold and of jewels, that
+absolutely dazzled our eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I shall not pretend to describe the feelings with which I gazed.
+Amazement was, of course, predominant. Legrand appeared exhausted with
+excitement, and spoke very few words. Jupiter's countenance wore, for
+some minutes, as deadly a pallor as it is possible, in the nature of
+things, for any negro's visage to assume. He seemed
+stupefied&mdash;-thunder-stricken. Presently he fell upon his knees in the
+pit, and, burying his naked arms up to the elbows in gold, let them
+there remain, as if enjoying the luxury of a bath. At length, with a
+deep sigh, he exclaimed, as if in a soliloquy:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And dis all cum ob de goole-bug! de putty goole-bug! de poor little
+goole-bug, what I 'boosed in dat sabage kind ob style! Ain't you
+'shamed ofa yourself, nigger?&mdash;answer me dat!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It became necessary, at last, that I should arouse both master and
+valet to the expediency of removing the treasure. It was growing late,
+and it behooved us to make exertion, that we might get everything
+housed before daylight. It was difficult to say what should be done,
+and much time was spent in deliberation&mdash;so confused were the ideas of
+all. We, finally, lightened the box by removing two-thirds of its
+contents, when we were enabled, with some trouble, to raise it from
+the hole. The articles taken out were deposited among the brambles,
+and the dog left to guard them, with strict orders from Jupiter
+neither, upon any pretence, to stir from the spot, nor to open his
+mouth until our return. We then hurriedly made for home with the
+chest, reaching the hut in safety, but after excessive toil, at one
+o'clock in the morning. Worn out as we were, it was not in human
+nature to do more just now. We rested until two, and had supper,
+starting for the hills immediately afterwards, armed with three stout
+sacks, which, by good luck, were upon the premises. A little before
+four we arrived at the pit, divided the remainder of the booty as
+equally as might be among us, and, leaving the holes unfilled, again
+set out for the hut, at which, for the second time, we deposited our
+golden burdens, just as the first streaks of dawn gleamed from over
+the treetops in the east.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We were now thoroughly broken down; but the intense excitement of the
+time denied us repose. After an unquiet slumber of some three or four
+hours' duration, we arose, as if by preconcert, to make examination of
+our treasure.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The chest had been full to the brim, and we spent the whole day, and
+the greater part of the next night, in a scrutiny of its contents.
+There had been nothing like order or arrangement. Everything had been
+heaped in promiscuously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Having assorted all with care, we found ourselves possessed of even
+vaster wealth than we had at first supposed. In coin there was rather
+more than four hundred and fifty thousand dollars&mdash;estimating the
+value of the pieces, as accurately as we could, by the tables of the
+period. There was not a particle of silver. All was gold of antique
+date and of great variety&mdash;French, Spanish, and German money, with a
+few English guineas, and some counters[14] of which we had never seen
+specimens before. There were several very large and heavy coins, so
+worn that we could make nothing of their inscriptions. There was no
+American money. The value of the jewels we found more difficulty in
+estimating. There were diamonds&mdash;some of them exceedingly large and
+fine&mdash;a hundred and ten in all, and not one of them small; eighteen
+rubies of remarkable brilliancy; three hundred and ten emeralds, all
+very beautiful; and twenty-one sapphires, with an opal. These stones
+had all been broken from their settings and thrown loose in the chest.
+The settings themselves, which we picked out from among the other
+gold, appeared to have been beaten up with hammers, as if to prevent
+indentification. Besides all this, there was a vast quantity of solid
+gold ornaments&mdash;nearly two hundred massive finger and ear rings; rich
+chains&mdash;thirty of these, if I remember; eighty-three very large and
+heavy crucifixes; five gold censers of great value; a prodigious
+golden punch-bowl, ornamented with richly chased vine-leaves and
+Bacchanalian[15] figures; with two sword handles exquisitely embossed,
+and many other smaller articles which I cannot recollect. The weight
+of these valuables exceeded three hundred and fifty pounds
+avoirdupois; and in this estimate I have not included one hundred and
+ninety-seven superb gold watches, three of the number being worth each
+five hundred dollars, if one. Many of them were very old, and as
+time-keepers valueless, the works having suffered, more or less, from
+corrosion; but all were richly jewelled and in cases of great worth.
+We estimated the entire contents of the chest, that night, at a
+million and a half of dollars; and, upon the subsequent disposal of
+the trinkets and jewels (a few being retained for our own use), it was
+found we had greatly undervalued the treasure.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When, at length, we had concluded our examination, and the intense
+excitement of the time had in some measure subsided, Legrand, who saw
+that I was dying with impatience for a solution of this most
+extraordinary riddle, entered into a full detail of all the
+circumstances connected with it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You remember," said he, "the night when I handed you the rough sketch
+I had made of the <i>scarabaeus</i>. You recollect, also, that I became
+quite vexed at you for insisting that my drawing resembled a
+death's-head. When you first made this assertion I thought you were
+jesting; but afterwards I called to mind the peculiar spots on the
+back of the insect, and admitted to myself that your remark had some,
+little foundation in fact. Still, the sneer at my graphic powers
+irritated me&mdash;for I am considered a good artist&mdash;and, therefore, when
+you handed me the scrap of parchment, I was about to crumple it up and
+throw it angrily into the fire."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The scrap of paper, you mean," said I.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No; it had much of the appearance of paper, and at first I supposed
+it to be such, but when I came to draw upon it, I discovered it at
+once to be a piece of very thin parchment. It was quite dirty, you
+remember. Well, as I was in the very act of crumpling it up, my glance
+fell upon the sketch at which you had been looking, and you may
+imagine my astonishment when I perceived, in fact, the figure of a
+death's-head just where, it seemed to me, I had made the drawing of
+the beetle. For a moment I was too much amazed to think with accuracy.
+I knew that my design was very different in detail from this, although
+there was a certain similarity in general outline. Presently I took a
+candle, and seating myself at the other end of the room, proceeded to
+scrutinize the parchment more closely. Upon turning it over, I saw my
+own sketch upon, the reverse, just as I had made it. My first idea,
+now, was mere surprise at the really remarkable similarity of
+outline&mdash;at the singular coincidence involved in the fact that,
+unknown to me, there should have been a skull upon the other side of
+the parchment, immediately beneath my figure of the <i>scarabaeus</i>, and
+that this skull, not only in outline, but in size, should so closely
+resemble my drawing. I say the singularity of this coincidence
+absolutely stupefied me for a time. This is the usual effect of such
+coincidences. The mind struggles to establish a connection&mdash;a sequence
+of cause and effect&mdash;and being unable to do so, suffers a species of
+temporary paralysis. But when I recovered from this stupor, there
+dawned upon me gradually a conviction which startled me even far more
+than the coincidence. I began distinctly, positively, to remember that
+there had been <i>no</i> drawing upon the parchment when I made my sketch
+of the <i>scarabaeus</i>. I became perfectly certain of this; for I
+recollected turning up first one side and then the other, in search of
+the cleanest spot. Had the skull been then there, of course, I could
+not have failed to notice it. Here was indeed a mystery which I felt
+it impossible to explain; but, even at that early moment, there seemed
+to glimmer, faintly, within the most remote and secret chambers of my
+intellect, a glowworm-like conception of that truth which last night's
+adventure brought to so magnificent a demonstration. I arose at once,
+and putting the parchment securely away, dismissed all further
+reflection until I should be alone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"When you had gone, and when Jupiter was fast asleep, I betook myself
+to a more methodical investigation of the affair. In the first place I
+considered the manner in which the parchment had come into my
+possession. The spot where we discovered the <i>scarabaeus</i> was on the
+coast of the mainland, about a mile eastward of the island, and but a
+short distance above high water mark. Upon my taking hold of it, it
+gave me a sharp bite, which caused me to let it drop. Jupiter, with
+his accustomed caution, before seizing the insect, which had flown
+towards him, looked about him for a leaf, or something of that nature,
+by which to take hold of it. It was at this moment that his eyes, and
+mine also, fell upon the scrap of parchment, which I then supposed to
+be paper. It was lying half buried in the sand, a corner sticking up.
+Near the spot where we found it, I observed the remnants of the hull
+of what appeared to have been a ship's long-boat. The wreck seemed to
+have been there for a very great while; for the resemblance to boat
+timbers could scarcely be traced.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, Jupiter picked up the parchment, wrapped the beetle in it, and
+gave it to me. Soon afterwards we turned to go home, and on the way
+met Lieutenant G&mdash;&mdash;. I showed him the insect, and he begged me to let
+him take it to the fort. Upon my consenting, he thrust it forthwith
+into his waistcoat pocket, without the parchment in which it had been
+wrapped, and which I had continued to hold in my hand during his
+inspection. Perhaps he dreaded my changing my mind, and thought it
+best to make sure of the prize at once&mdash;you know how enthusiastic he
+is on all subjects connected with Natural History. At the same time,
+without being conscious of it, I must have deposited the parchment in
+my own pocket.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You remember that when I went to the table, for the purpose of making
+a sketch of the beetle, I found no paper where it was usually kept, I
+looked in the drawer, and found none there. I searched my pockets,
+hoping to find an old letter, when my hand fell upon the parchment. I
+thus detail the precise mode in which it came into my possession; for
+the circumstances impressed me with peculiar force.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No doubt you will think me fanciful, but I had already established a
+kind of <i>connection</i>. I had put together two links of a great chain.
+There was a boat lying upon a seacoast, and not far from the boat was
+a parchment&mdash;<i>not a paper</i>&mdash;with a skull depicted upon it. You will,
+of course, ask, 'Where is the connection?' I reply that the skull, or
+death's-head, is the well-known emblem of the pirate. The flag of the
+death's-head is hoisted in all engagements.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I have said that the scrap was parchment, and not paper. Parchment is
+durable&mdash;almost imperishable. Matters of little moment are rarely
+consigned to parchment, since, for the mere ordinary purposes of
+drawing or writing, it is not nearly so well adapted as paper. This
+reflection suggested some meaning&mdash;some relevancy&mdash;in the
+death's-head. I did not fail to observe, also, the <i>form</i> of the
+parchment. Although one of its corners had been, by some accident,
+destroyed, it could be seen that the original form was oblong. It was
+just such a slip, indeed, as might have been chosen for a
+memorandum&mdash;for a record of something to be long remembered and
+carefully preserved."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But," I interposed, "you say that the skull was <i>not</i> upon the
+parchment when you made the drawing of the beetle. How, then, do you
+trace any connection between the boat and the skull&mdash;since this
+latter, according to your own admission, must have been designed (God
+only knows how or by whom) at some period subsequent to your sketching
+the <i>scarabaeus</i>?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ah, hereupon turns the whole mystery; although the secret, at this
+point, I had comparatively little difficulty in solving. My steps were
+sure, and could afford but a single result. I reasoned, for example,
+thus: When I drew the <i>scarabaeus</i>, there was no skull apparent upon
+the parchment. When I had completed the drawing I gave it to you, and
+observed you narrowly until you returned it, <i>You</i>, therefore, did not
+design the skull, and no one else was present to do it. Then it was
+not done by human agency. And nevertheless it was done.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"At this stage of my reflections I endeavored to remember, and <i>did</i>
+remember, with entire distinctness, every incident which occurred
+about the period in question. The weather was chilly (oh, rare and
+happy accident!), and a fire was blazing upon the hearth. I was heated
+with exercise, and sat near the table. You, however, had drawn a chair
+close to the chimney. Just as I placed the parchment in your hand, and
+as you were in the act of inspecting it, Wolf, the Newfoundland,
+entered, and leaped upon your shoulders. With, your left hand you
+caressed him and kept him off, while your right, holding the
+parchment, was permitted to fall listlessly between your knees, and in
+close proximity to the fire. At one moment I thought the blaze had
+caught it, and was about to caution you, but before I could speak you
+had withdrawn it, and were engaged in its examination. When I
+considered all these particulars, I doubted not for a moment that
+<i>heat</i> had been the agent in bringing to light, upon the parchment,
+the skull which I saw designed upon it. You are well aware that
+chemical preparations exist, and have existed time out of mind, by
+means of which it is possible to write upon either paper or vellum, so
+that the characters shall become visible only when subjected to the
+action of fire. Zaffre[16], digested in <i>aqua regia</i>[17], and diluted
+with four times its weight of water, is sometimes employed; a green
+tint results. The regulus[18] of cobalt, dissolved in spirit of nitre,
+gives a red. These colors disappear at longer or shorter intervals
+after the material written upon cools, but again become apparent upon
+the re-application of heat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I now scrutinized the death's-head with care. Its outer edges&mdash;the
+edges of the drawing nearest the edge of the vellum&mdash;were far more
+<i>distinct</i> than the others. It was clear that the action of the
+caloric had been imperfect or unequal. I immediately kindled a fire,
+and subjected every portion of the parchment to a glowing heat. At
+first, the only effect was the strengthening of the faint lines in the
+skull; but, upon persevering in the experiment, there became visible,
+at the corner of the slip diagonally opposite to the spot in which the
+death's-head was delineated, the figure of what I at first supposed to
+be a goat. A closer scrutiny, however, satisfied me that it was
+intended for a kid."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ha! ha!" said I; "to be sure I have no right to laugh at you&mdash;a
+million and a half of money is too serious a matter for mirth&mdash;but you
+are not about to establish a third link in your chain: you will not
+find any especial connection between your pirates and a goat; pirates,
+you know, have nothing to do with goats; they appertain to the farming
+interests."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But I have said that the figure was <i>not</i> that of a goat."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, a kid, then&mdash;pretty much the same thing."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Pretty much, but not altogether," said Legrand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You may have heard of one <i>Captain</i> Kidd[19]. I at once looked on the
+figure of the animal as a kind of punning or hieroglyphical signature.
+I say signature because its position upon the vellum suggested this
+idea. The death's-head at the corner diagonally opposite had, in the
+same manner, the air of a stamp, or seal. But I was sorely put out by
+the absence of all else&mdash;of the body to my imagined instrument&mdash;of the
+text for my context."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I presume you expected to find a letter between the stamp and the
+signature."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Something of the kind. The fact is, I felt irresistibly impressed
+with a presentiment of some vast good fortune impending. I can
+scarcely say why. Perhaps, after all, it was rather a desire than an
+actual belief; but do you know that Jupiter's silly words, about the
+bug being of solid gold, had a remarkable effect upon my fancy? And
+then the series of accidents and coincidences&mdash;these were so <i>very</i>
+extraordinary. Do you observe how mere an accident it was that these
+events should have occurred upon the <i>sole</i> day of all the year in
+which it has been, or may be, sufficiently cool for fire, and that
+without the fire, or without the intervention of the dog at the
+precise moment in which he appeared, I should, never have become aware
+of the death's-head, and so never the possessor of the treasure?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But proceed&mdash;I am all impatience."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well; you have heard, of course, the many stories current&mdash;the
+thousand vague rumors afloat about money buried, somewhere, upon the
+Atlantic coast, by Kidd and his associates. These rumors must have had
+some foundation in fact. And that the rumors have existed so long and
+so continuously could have resulted, it appeared to me, only from the
+circumstance of the buried treasure still <i>remaining</i> entombed. Had
+Kidd concealed his plunder for a time, and afterwards reclaimed it,
+the rumors would scarcely have reached us in their present unvarying
+form. You will observe that the stories told are all about
+money-seekers, not about money-finders. Had the pirate recovered his
+money, there the affair would have dropped. It seemed to me that some
+accident&mdash;say the loss of a memorandum indicating its locality&mdash;had
+deprived him of the means of recovering it, and that this accident had
+become known to his followers who otherwise might never have heard
+that treasure had been concealed at all, and who, busying themselves
+in vain, because unguided attempts to regain it had given first birth,
+and then universal currency, to the reports which are now so common.
+Have you ever heard of any important treasure being unearthed along
+the coast?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Never."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But that Kidd's accumulations were immense is well known. I took it
+for granted, therefore, that the earth still held them; and you will
+scarcely be surprised when I tell you that I felt a hope, nearly
+amounting to certainty, that the parchment so strangely found involved
+a lost record of the place of deposit."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But how did you proceed?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I held the vellum again to the fire, after increasing the heat; but
+nothing appeared. I now thought it possible that the coating of dirt
+might have something to do with the failure; so I carefully rinsed the
+parchment by pouring warm water over it, and, having done this, I
+placed it in a tin pan, with the skull downwards, and put the pan upon
+a furnace of lighted charcoal. In a few minutes, the pan having become
+thoroughly heated, I removed the slip, and to my inexpressible joy,
+found it spotted, in several places, with what appeared to be figures
+arranged in lines. Again I placed it in the pan, and suffered it to
+remain another minute. Upon taking it off, the whole was just as you
+see it now."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here Legrand, having reheated the parchment, submitted it to my
+inspection, The following characters were rudely traced, in a red tint
+between the death's-head and the goat:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+     "53‡‡†305))6*;4826)4‡.);806*;48†8
+     ¶60))85;1‡(;:‡*8†83(88)5*†;46(;88*96
+     ?;8)*‡(;485);5*†2:*‡(;4956*2(5*&mdash;4)8
+     ¶8*;4069285);)6†8)4‡‡;1(‡9;48081;8:8‡
+     1;48†85;4)485†528806*81(‡9;48;(88;4
+     (‡?34;48)4‡;161;:188;‡?;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But," said I, returning him the slip, "I am as much in the dark as
+ever. Were all the jewels of Golconda[20] awaiting me on my solution
+of this enigma, I am quite sure that I should be unable to earn them."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And yet," said Legrand, "the solution is by no means so difficult as
+you might be led to imagine from the first hasty inspection of the
+characters. These characters, as any one might readily guess, form a
+cipher, that is to say, they convey a meaning; but then, from what is
+known of Kidd, I could not suppose him capable of constructing any of
+the more abstruse cryptographs[21]. I made up my mind, at once, that
+this was of a simple species&mdash;such, however, as would appear, to the
+crude intellect of the sailor, absolutely insoluble without the key."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And you really solved it?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Readily; I have solved others of an abstruseness ten thousand times
+greater. Circumstances, and a certain bias of mind, have led me to
+take interest in such riddles, and it may well be doubted whether
+human ingenuity can construct an enigma of the kind which human
+ingenuity may not, by proper application, resolve. In fact, having
+once established connected and legible characters, I scarcely gave a
+thought to the mere difficulty of developing their import.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"In the present case&mdash;indeed, in all cases of secret writing&mdash;the
+first question regards the <i>language</i> of the cipher; for the
+principles of solution, so far especially as the more simple ciphers
+are concerned, depend upon, and are varied by, the genius of the
+particular idiom. In general, there is no alternative but experiment
+(directed by probabilities) of every tongue known to him who attempts
+the solution, until the true one be attained. But, with the cipher now
+before us, all difficulty was removed by the signature. The pun upon
+the word 'Kidd' is appreciable in no other language than the English.
+But for this consideration I should have begun my attempts with the
+Spanish and French, as the tongues in which a secret of this kind
+would most naturally have been written by a pirate of the Spanish
+main[22]. As it was, I assume the cryptograph to be English.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You observe there are no divisions between the words. Had there been
+divisions, the task would have been comparatively easy. In such case I
+would have commenced with a collation and analysis of the shorter
+words; and had a word of a single letter occurred, as is most likely
+(<i>a</i> or <i>I</i>, for example), I should have considered the solution as
+assured. But there being no divisions, my first step was to ascertain
+the predominant letters, as well as the least frequent,
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Counting all, I constructed a table thus;&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+     Of the character 8 there are 33.<br/>
+
+                      ;     "     26.<br/>
+
+                      4     "     19.<br/>
+
+                     ‡)     "     16.<br/>
+
+                      *     "     13.<br/>
+
+                      5     "     12.<br/>
+
+                      6     "     11.<br/>
+
+                     †1     "      8.<br/>
+
+                      0     "      6.<br/>
+
+                     92     "      5.<br/>
+
+                     :3     "      4.<br/>
+
+                      ?     "      3.<br/>
+
+                      ¶     "      2.<br/>
+
+                    &mdash;.     "      1.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Now, in English, the letter which most frequently occurs is <i>e</i>.
+Afterwards, the succession runs thus: <i>a o i d h n r s t u y c f g l m
+w b k p q x z</i>. E predominates, however, so remarkably that an
+individual sentence of any length is rarely seen in which it is not
+the prevailing character.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Here, then, we have, in the very beginning, the groundwork for
+something more than a mere guess. The general use which may be made of
+the table is obvious&mdash;but in this particular cipher we shall only very
+partially require its aid. As our predominant character is 8, we will
+commence by assuming it as the <i>e</i> of the natural alphabet. To verify
+the supposition, let us observe if the 8 be seen often in couples&mdash;for
+<i>e</i> is doubled with great frequency in English&mdash;in such words, for
+example, as 'meet,' 'fleet,' 'speed,' 'seen,' 'been,' 'agree,' etc. In
+the present instance we see it doubled no less than five times,
+although the cryptograph is brief.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Let us assume 8, then, as <i>e</i>. Now of all <i>words</i> in the language,
+'the' is most usual; let us see, therefore, whether there are not
+repetitions of any three characters, in the same order of collocation,
+the last of them being 8. If we discover repetitions of such letters,
+so arranged, they will most probably represent the word 'the.' Upon
+inspection, we find no less than seven such arrangements, the
+characters being ;48. We may, therefore, assume that the semicolon
+represents <i>t</i>, that 4 represents <i>h</i>, and that 8 represents <i>e</i>&mdash;the
+last being now well confirmed. Thus a great step has been taken.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But, having established a single word, we are enabled to establish a
+vastly important point; that is to say, several commencements and
+terminations of other words. Let us refer, for example, to the last
+instance but one, in which the combination ;48 occurs&mdash;not far from
+the end of the cipher. We know that the semicolon immediately ensuing
+is the commencement of a word, and, of the six characters succeeding
+this 'the,' we are cognizant of no less than five. Let us set these
+characters down, thus, by the letters we know them to represent,
+leaving a space for the unknown&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+     t eeth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Here we are enabled, at once, to discard the '<i>th</i>,' as forming no
+portion of the word commencing with the first <i>t</i>; since by experiment
+of the entire alphabet for a letter adapted to the vacancy, we
+perceive that no word can be formed of which this <i>th</i> can be a part.
+We are thus narrowed into
+</p>
+
+<p>
+     t ee,
+</p>
+
+<p>
+and, going through the alphabet, if necessary, as before, we arrive at
+the word 'tree,' as the sole possible reading. We thus gain another
+letter, <i>r</i>, represented by (, with the words 'the tree" in
+juxtaposition.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Looking beyond these words, for a short distance, we again see the
+combination ;48, and employ it by way of <i>termination</i> to what
+immediately precedes. We have thus this arrangement:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+     the tree ;4 (‡?34 the,
+</p>
+
+<p>
+or, substituting the natural letters, whereknown, it reads thus:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+     the tree thr‡?3h the.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Now, if, in place of the unknown characters, we leave blank spaces,
+or substitute dots, we read thus:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+     the tree thr…h the,
+</p>
+
+<p>
+when the word '<i>through</i>' makes itself evident at once. But the
+discovery gives us three new letters, <i>o, u</i>, and <i>g</i>, represented by
+‡ ? and 3.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Looking now, narrowly, through the cipher for combinations of known,
+characters, we find, not very far from the beginning, this
+arrangement.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+     83(88, or, egree,
+</p>
+
+<p>
+which, plainly, is the conclusion of the word 'degree' and gives us
+another letter, <i>d</i>, represented by †.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Four letters beyond the word 'degree,' we perceive the combination.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+     ;46(;88*.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Translating the known characters, and representing the unknown by
+dots, as before, we read thus:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+     th.rtee,
+</p>
+
+<p>
+an arrangement immediately suggestive of the word 'thirteen,' and
+again furnishing us with two new characters, <i>i</i>, and <i>n</i>, represented
+by 6 and *.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Referring, now, to the beginning of the cryptograph, we find the
+combination,
+</p>
+
+<p>
+     53 ‡‡†.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Translating, as before, we obtain
+</p>
+
+<p>
+     .good,
+</p>
+
+<p>
+which assures us that the first letter is <i>A</i>, and that the first two
+words are 'A good.'
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"To avoid confusion, it is now time that we arrange our key, as far as
+discovered, in a tabular form. It will stand thus:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+     5 represents a
+     †      "     d
+     8      "     e
+     3      "     g
+     4      "     h
+     6      "     i
+     *      "     n
+     ‡      "     o
+     (      "     r
+     ;      "     t
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We have, therefore, no less than ten of the most important letters
+represented, and it will be unnecessary to proceed with the details of
+the solution. I have said enough to convince you that ciphers of this
+nature are readily soluble, and to give you some insight into the
+rationale[23] of their development. But be assured that the specimen
+before us appertains to the very simplest species of cryptograph. It
+now only remains to give you the full translation of the characters
+upon the parchment, as unriddled. Here it is:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+     "'<i>A good glass in the bishop's hostel in the devil's seat
+     twenty-one degrees and thirteen minutes northeast and by
+     north main branch seventh limb east side shoot from the left
+     eye of the death's-head a bee-line from the tree through the
+     shot fifty feet out</i>.'"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But," said I, "the enigma seems still in as bad a condition as ever.
+How is it possible to extort a meaning from all this jargon about
+'devil's seats,' death's-heads,' and 'bishop's hotels'?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I confess," replied Legrand, "that the matter still wears a serious
+aspect, when regarded with a casual glance. My first endeavor was to
+divide the sentence into the natural divisions intended by the
+cryptographist."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You mean to punctuate it?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Something of that kind."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But how was it possible to effect this?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I reflected that it had been a <i>point</i> with the writer to run his
+words together without divisions, so as to increase the difficulty of
+solution. Now, a not over acute man, in pursuing such, an object,
+would be nearly certain to overdo the matter. When, in the course of
+his composition, he arrived at a break in his subject which would
+naturally require a pause, or a point, he would be exceedingly apt to
+run his characters, at this place, more than usually close together.
+If you will observe the Ms. in the present instance, you will easily
+detect five such cases of unusual crowding. Acting on this hint, I
+made the division thus:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+     "'<i>A good glass in the bishop's hostel in the devil's
+     seat&mdash;twenty-one degrees and thirteen minutes&mdash;northeast and
+     by north&mdash;main branch seventh limb east side&mdash;shoot from the
+     left eye of the death's-head&mdash;a bee-line from the tree
+     through the shot fifty feet out</i>.'"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Even this division," said I, "leaves me still in the dark."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It left me also in the dark," replied Legrand, "for a few days,
+during which I made diligent inquiry, in the neighborhood of
+Sullivan's Island, for any building, which went by the name of the
+'Bishop's Hotel'&mdash;for of course I dropped the obsolete word 'hostel.'
+Gaining no information on the subject, I was on the point of extending
+my sphere of search, and proceeding in a more systematic manner, when,
+one morning, it entered into my head, quite suddenly, that this
+'Bishop's Hostel' might have some reference to an old family, of the
+name of Bessop, which, time out of mind, had held possession of an
+ancient manor-house, about four miles to the northward of the island.
+I accordingly went over to the plantation, and reinstituted my
+inquiries among the older negroes of the place. At length one of the
+most aged of the women said that she had heard of such a place as
+<i>Bessop's Castle</i> and thought that she could guide me to it, but that
+it was not a castle, nor tavern, but a high rock.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I offered to pay her well for her trouble, and, after some demur, she
+consented to accompany me to the spot. We found it without much
+difficulty, when, dismissing her, I proceeded to examine the place.
+The 'castle' consisted of an irregular assemblage of cliffs and
+rocks&mdash;one of the latter being quite remarkable for its height as well
+as for its insulated and artificial appearance, I clambered to its
+apex, and then felt much at a loss as to what should be next done.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"While I was buried in reflection, my eyes fell upon a narrow ledge in
+the eastern face of the rock, perhaps a yard below the summit upon
+which I stood. This ledge projected about eighteen inches, and was not
+more than a foot wide, while a niche in the cliff just above it gave
+it a rude resemblance to one of the hollow-backed chairs used by our
+ancestors. I made no doubt that here was the 'devil's seat' alluded to
+in the Ms., and now I seemed to grasp the full secret of the riddle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The 'good glass,' I knew, could have reference to nothing but a
+telescope; for the word 'glass' is rarely employed in any other sense
+by seamen. Now here, I at once saw, was a telescope to be used, and a
+definite point of view, <i>admitting no variation</i>, from which to use
+it. Nor did I hesitate to believe that the phrase 'twenty-one degrees
+and thirteen minutes' and 'northeast and by north,' were intended as
+directions for the levelling of the glass. Greatly excited by these
+discoveries, I hurried home, procured a telescope, and returned to the
+rock.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I let myself down to the ledge, and found that it was impossible to
+retain a seat upon it except in one particular position. This fact
+confirmed my preconceived idea. I proceeded to use the glass. Of
+course the 'twenty-one degrees and thirteen minutes' could allude to
+nothing but elevation above the visible horizon, since the horizontal
+direction was clearly indicated by the words 'northeast and by north.'
+This latter direction I at once established by means of a
+pocket-compass; then, pointing the glass as nearly at an angle of
+twenty-one degrees of elevation as I could do it by guess, I moved it
+cautiously up or down, until my attention was arrested by a circular
+rift or opening in the foliage of a large tree that over-topped its
+fellows in the distance. In the centre of this rift I perceived a
+white spot, but could not, at first, distinguish what it was.
+Adjusting the focus of the telescope, I again looked, and now made it
+out to be a human skull.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"On this discovery I was so sanguine as to consider the enigma solved;
+for the phrase 'main branch, seventh limb, east side' could refer only
+to the position of the skull on the tree, while 'shoot from the left
+eye of the death's-head' admitted also of but one interpretation, in
+regard to a search for buried treasure. I perceived that the design
+was to drop a bullet from the left eye of the skull, and that a
+bee-line, or in other words, a straight line, drawn from the nearest
+point of the trunk through 'the shot' (or the spot where the bullet
+fell) and thence extended to a distance of fifty feet, would indicate
+a definite point&mdash;and beneath this point I thought it at least
+<i>possible</i> that a deposit of value lay concealed."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"All this." I said, "is exceedingly clear, and, although ingenious,
+still simple and explicit. When you left the Bishop's Hotel, what
+then?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why, having carefully taken the bearings of the tree, I turned
+homewards. The instant that I left the 'devil's seat,' however, the
+circular rift vanished; nor could I get a glimpse of it afterwards,
+turn, as I would. What seems to me the chief ingenuity in this whole
+business is the fact (for repeated experiment has convinced me it <i>is</i>
+a fact) that the circular opening in question is visible from no other
+attainable point of view than that afforded by the narrow ledge on the
+face of the rock.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"In this expedition to the 'Bishop's Hotel' I had been attended by
+Jupiter, who had no doubt observed for some weeks past the abstraction
+of my demeanor, and took especial care not to leave me alone. But, on
+the next day, getting up very early, I contrived to give him the slip,
+and went into the hills in search of the tree. After much toil I found
+it. When I came home at night my valet proposed to give me a flogging.
+With the rest of the adventure I believe you are as well acquainted as
+myself."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I suppose," said I, "you missed the spot, in the first attempt at
+digging, through Jupiter's stupidity in letting the bug fall through
+the right instead of through the left eye of the skull."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Precisely. This mistake made a difference of about two inches and a
+half in the 'shot'&mdash;that is to say, in the position of the peg nearest
+the tree&mdash;and had the treasure been <i>beneath</i> the 'shot,' the error
+would have been of little moment; but the 'shot,' together with the
+nearest point of the tree, were merely two points for the
+establishment of a line of direction; of course the error, however
+trivial in the beginning, increased as we proceeded with the line, and
+by the time we had gone fifty feet, threw us quite off the scent. But
+for my deep-seated convictions that treasure was here somewhere
+actually buried, we might have had all our labor in vain."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I presume the fancy of <i>the skull</i>&mdash;of letting fall a bullet through
+the skull's eye&mdash;was suggested to Kidd by the piratical flag. No doubt
+he felt a kind of poetical consistency in recovering his money through
+this ominous insignium[24]."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Perhaps so; still, I cannot help thinking that common-sense had quite
+as much to do with the matter as poetical consistency. To be visible
+from the Devil's seat, it was necessary that the object, if small,
+should be <i>white</i>: and there is nothing like your human skull for
+retaining and even increasing its whiteness under exposure to all
+vicissitudes of weather."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But your grandiloquence, and your conduct in swinging the beetle&mdash;how
+excessively odd! I was sure you were mad. And why did you insist on
+letting fall the bug, instead of a bullet, from the skull?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why, to be frank, I felt somewhat annoyed by your evident suspicions
+touching my sanity, and so resolved to punish you quietly, in my own
+way, by a little bit of sober mystification. For this reason I swung
+the beetle, and for this reason I let it fall from the tree. An
+observation of yours about its great weight suggested the latter
+idea."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, I perceive; and now there is only one point which puzzles me.
+What are we to make of the skeletons found in the hole?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That is a question I am no more able to answer than yourself. There
+seems, however, only one plausible way of accounting for them&mdash;and yet
+it is dreadful to believe in such atrocity as my suggestion would
+imply. It is clear that Kidd&mdash;if Kidd indeed secreted this treasure,
+which I doubt not&mdash;it is clear that he must have had assistance in the
+labor. But this labor concluded, he may have thought it expedient to
+remove all participants in his secret. Perhaps a couple of blows with
+a mattock were sufficient, while his coadjutors were busy in the pit;
+perhaps it required a dozen&mdash;who shall tell?"
+</p>
+
+<h4>NOTES</h4>
+
+<p>
+[1] <i>The Gold-Bug</i> was first published in <i>The Dollar Magazine</i> in
+1843. The story won a prize of one hundred dollars.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[2] 100:3 All in the Wrong. The title of an amusing comedy by Arthur
+Murphy (1730-1805).
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[3] 100:4 Huguenot. French Protestants, many of whom settled in South
+Carolina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[4] 100: 18 Fort Moultrie. Erected in. 1776. Defended against the
+British by Colonel William Moultrie.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[5] 101:23 Swammerdam. A famous Dutch naturalist (1637-1680).
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[6] 101:25 manumitted. Freed from slavery.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[7] 102:27 scarabaeus. The Latin for beetle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[8] 103:15 antennae. The feelers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[9] 105:8 scarabaeus caput hominis. Man's-head beetle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[10] 107:20 noovers. Manoeuvres.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[11] 109:10 brusquerie. Lack of cordiality.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[12] 110:26 empressement. Demonstrativeness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[13] 123:20 curvets and caracoles. Leaping and prancing of a horse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[14] 128:9 counters. Various coins.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[15] 128:28 Bacchanalian. Revelling like the worshippers of Bacchus,
+the god of wine.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[16] 134:28 Zaffre. An oxide of cobalt. See dictionary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[17] 134:28 aqua regia. Royal water&mdash;a mixture of nitric and
+hydrochloric acids.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[18] 134:30 regulus. An old chemical term.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[19] 135: 28 Captain Kidd. A Scottish sea captain who lived in New
+York in the seventeenth century.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[20] 138:19 Golconda. A town in India noted for its diamond market.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[21] 138:28 cryptographs. Secret forms of writing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[22] 139:27 Spanish main. The northeastern portion of South America,
+the Caribbean Sea, and the coast of North America to the Carolinas
+were harassed by the Spaniards.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[23] 144:6 rationale. Reasonable basis.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[24] 149:19 insignium. Sign.
+</p>
+
+<h4>COLLATERAL READINGS</h4>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Murders in the Rue Morgue</i>, Edgar Allan Poe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Mystery of Marie Rogêt</i>, Edgar Allan Poe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Purloined Letter</i>, Edgar Allan Poe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Sign of the Four</i>, A. Conan Doyle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>A Scandal in Bohemia</i>, A. Conan Doyle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Chronicles of Addington</i>, B. Fletcher Robinson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Mystery of the Steel Disk</i>, Broughton Brandenburg.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Rajah's Diamond</i>, R.L. Stevenson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Doctor, his Wife, and the Clock</i>, Anna Katharine Green.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes</i>, A. Conan Doyle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Hound of the Baskervilles</i>, A. Conan Doyle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>A Double-Barrelled Detective Story</i>, Mark Twain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Gallegher</i>, Richard Harding Davis.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap08"></a>THE BIRTHMARK[1]</h2>
+
+<p class="center">
+<i>By Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1862)</i>.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the latter part of the last century there lived a man of science,
+an eminent proficient in every branch of natural philosophy, who not
+long before our story opens had made experience of a spiritual
+affinity more attractive than any chemical one. He had left his
+laboratory to the care of an assistant, cleared his fine countenance
+from the furnace-smoke, washed the stain of acids from his fingers,
+and persuaded a beautiful woman to become his wife. In those days,
+when the comparatively recent discovery of electricity and other
+kindred mysteries of Nature seemed to open paths into the region of
+miracle, it was not unusual for the love of science to rival the love
+of woman in its depth and absorbing energy. The higher intellect, the
+imagination, the spirit, and even the heart might all find their
+congenial aliment in pursuits which, as some of their ardent votaries
+believed, would ascend from one step of powerful intelligence to
+another, until the philosopher should lay his hand on the secret of
+creative force and perhaps make new worlds for himself. We know not
+whether Aylmer possessed this degree of faith in man's ultimate
+control over nature. He had devoted himself, however, too unreservedly
+to scientific studies ever to be weakened from them by any second
+passion. His love for his young wife might prove the stronger of the
+two; but it could only be by intertwining itself with his love of
+science and uniting the strength of the latter to his own.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Such a union accordingly took place, and was attended with truly
+remarkable consequences and a deeply impressive moral. One day, very
+soon after their marriage, Aylmer sat gazing at his wife with a
+trouble in his countenance that grew stronger until he spoke.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Georgiana," said he, "has it never occurred to you that the mark upon
+your cheek might be removed?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, indeed," said she, smiling; but, perceiving the seriousness of
+his manner, she blushed deeply. "To tell you the truth, it has been so
+often called a charm, that I was simple enough to imagine it might be
+so."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ah, upon another face perhaps it might," replied her husband; "but
+never on yours. No, dearest Georgiana, you came so nearly perfect from
+the hand of Nature that this slightest possible defect, which we
+hesitate whether to term a defect or a beauty, shocks me, as being the
+visible mark of earthly imperfection."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Shocks you, my husband!" cried Georgiana, deeply hurt; at first
+reddening with momentary anger, but then bursting into tears. "Then
+why did you take me from my mother's side? You cannot love what shocks
+you!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To explain this conversation, it must be mentioned that in the centre
+of Georgiana's left cheek there was a singular mark, deeply
+interwoven, as it were, with the texture and substance of her face. In
+the usual state of her complexion&mdash;a healthy though delicate
+bloom&mdash;the mark wore a tint of deeper crimson, which imperfectly
+defined its shape amid the surrounding rosiness. When she blushed it
+gradually became more indistinct, and finally vanished amid the
+triumphant rush of blood that bathed the whole cheek with its
+brilliant glow. But if any shifting emotion caused her to turn pale,
+there was the mark again, a crimson stain upon the snow, in what
+Aylmer sometimes deemed an almost fearful distinctness. Its shape bore
+not a little similarity to the human hand, though of the smallest
+pygmy size. Georgiana's lovers were wont to say that some fairy at her
+birth-hour had laid her tiny hand upon the infant's cheek, and left
+this impress there in token of the magic endowments that were to give
+her such sway over all hearts. Many a desperate swain would have
+risked life for the privilege of pressing his lips to the mysterious
+hand. It must not be concealed, however, that the impression wrought
+by this fairy sign-manual varied exceedingly according to the
+difference of temperament in the beholders. Some fastidious
+persons&mdash;but they were exclusively of her own sex&mdash;affirmed that the
+bloody hand, as they chose to call it, quite destroyed the effect of
+Georgiana's beauty and rendered her countenance even hideous. But it
+would be as reasonable to say that one of those small blue stains
+which sometimes occur in the purest statuary marble would convert the
+Eve of Powers[2] to a monster. Masculine observers, if the birthmark
+did not heighten their admiration, contented themselves with wishing
+it away, that the world might possess one living specimen of ideal
+loveliness without the semblance of a flaw. After his marriage,&mdash;for
+he thought little or nothing of the matter before,&mdash;Aylmer discovered
+that this was the case with himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Had she been less beautiful,&mdash;if Envy's self could have found aught
+else to sneer at,&mdash;he might have felt his affection heightened by the
+prettiness of this mimic hand, now vaguely portrayed, now lost, now
+stealing forth again and glimmering to and fro with every pulse of
+emotion that throbbed within her heart; but, seeing her otherwise so
+perfect, he found this one defect grow more and more intolerable with
+every moment of their united lives. It was the fatal flaw of humanity
+which Nature, in one shape or another, stamps ineffaceably on all her
+productions, either to imply that they are temporary and finite, or
+that their perfection must be wrought by toil and pain. The crimson
+hand expressed the ineludible gripe in which mortality clutches the
+highest and purest of earthly mould, degrading them into kindred with
+the lowest, and even with the very brutes, like whom their visible
+frames return to dust. In this manner, selecting it as the symbol of
+his wife's liability to sin, sorrow, decay, and death, Aylmer's sombre
+imagination was not long in rendering the birthmark a frightful
+object, causing him more trouble and horror than ever Georgiana's
+beauty, whether of soul or sense, had given him delight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At all the seasons which should have been their happiest he
+invariably, and without intending it, nay, in spite of a purpose to
+the contrary, reverted to this one disastrous topic. Trifling as it at
+first appeared, it so connected itself with innumerable trains of
+thought and modes of feeling that it became the central point of all.
+With the morning twilight Aylmer opened his eyes upon his wife's face
+and recognized the symbol of imperfection, and when they sat together
+at the evening hearth his eyes wandered stealthily to her cheek, and
+beheld, flickering with the blaze of the wood-fire, the spectral hand
+that wrote mortality where he would fain have worshipped, Georgiana
+soon learned to shudder at his gaze. It needed but a glance with the
+peculiar expression that his face often wore to change the roses of
+her cheek into a deathlike paleness, amid which the crimson hand was
+brought strongly out, like a bas-relief of ruby on the whitest marble.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Late one night, when the lights were growing dim so as hardly to
+betray the stain on the poor wife's cheek, she herself, for the first
+time, voluntarily took up the subject.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do you remember, my dear Aylmer," said she, with a feeble attempt at
+a smile, "have you any recollection of a dream last night about this
+odious hand?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"None! none whatever!" replied Aylmer, starting: but then he added, in
+a dry, cold tone, affected for the sake of concealing the real depth
+of his emotion, "I might well dream of it; for, before I fell asleep,
+it had taken a pretty firm hold of my fancy."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And you did dream of it?" continued Georgiana, hastily; for she
+dreaded lest a gush of tears should interrupt what she had to say. "A
+terrible dream! I wonder that you can forget it. Is it possible to
+forget this one expression?&mdash;'It is in her heart now; we must have it
+out!' Reflect, my husband; for by all means I would have you recall
+that dream."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The mind is in a sad state when Sleep, the all-involving, cannot
+confine her spectres within the dim region of her sway, but suffers
+them to break forth, affrighting this actual life with secrets that
+perchance belong to a deeper one. Aylmer now remembered his dream. He
+had fancied himself with his servant Aminadab attempting an operation
+for the removal of the birthmark; but the deeper went the knife, the
+deeper sank the hand, until at length its tiny grasp appeared to have
+caught hold of Georgiana's heart; whence, however, her husband was
+inexorably resolved to cut or wrench it away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When the dream had shaped itself perfectly in his memory, Aylmer sat
+in his wife's presence with a guilty feeling. Truth often finds its
+way to the mind close muffled in robes of sleep, and then speaks with
+uncompromising directness of matters in regard to which we practice an
+unconscious self-deception during our waking moments. Until now he had
+not been aware of the tyrannizing influence acquired by one idea over
+his mind, and of the lengths which he might find in his heart to go
+for the sake of giving himself peace.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Aylmer," resumed Georgiana, solemnly, "I know not what may be the
+cost to both of us to rid me of this fatal birthmark. Perhaps its
+removal may cause cureless deformity; or it may be the stain goes as
+deep as life itself. Again; do we know that there is a possibility, on
+any terms, of unclasping the firm gripe of this little hand which was
+laid upon me before I came into the world?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Dearest Georgiana, I have spent much thought upon the subject,"
+hastily interrupted Aylmer. "I am convinced of the perfect
+practicability of its removal."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If there be the remotest possibility of it," continued Georgiana,
+"let the attempt be made, at whatever risk. Danger is nothing to rue;
+for life, while this hateful mark makes me the object of your horror
+and disgust,&mdash;life is a burden which I would fling down with joy.
+Either remove this dreadful hand, or take my wretched life! You have
+deep science. All the world bears witness of it. You have achieved
+great wonders. Cannot you remove this little, little mark, which I
+cover with the tips of two small fingers? Is this beyond your power,
+for the sake of your own peace, and to save your poor wife from
+madness?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Noblest, dearest, tenderest wife," cried Aylmer, rapturously, "doubt
+not my power. I have already given this matter the deepest
+thought,&mdash;thought which might almost have enlightened me to create a
+being less perfect than yourself. Georgiana, you have led me deeper
+than ever into the heart of science. I feel myself fully competent to
+render this dear cheek as faultless as its fellow; and then, most
+beloved, what will be my triumph when I shall have corrected what
+Nature left imperfect in her fairest work! Even Pygmalion[3], when his
+sculptured woman assumed life, felt not greater ecstasy than mine will
+be."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is resolved, then," said Georgiana, faintly smiling. "And, Aylmer,
+spare me not, though you should find the birthmark take refuge in my
+heart at last."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her husband tenderly kissed her cheek,&mdash;her right cheek,&mdash;not that
+which bore the impress of the crimson hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The next day Aylmer apprised his wife of a plan that he had formed
+whereby he might have opportunity for the intense thought and constant
+watchfulness which the proposed operation would require, while
+Georgiana, likewise, would enjoy the perfect repose essential to its
+success. They were to seclude themselves in the extensive apartments
+occupied by Aylmer as a laboratory, and where, during his toilsome
+youth, he had made discoveries in the elemental powers of nature that
+had roused the admiration of all the learned societies in Europe.
+Seated calmly in this laboratory, the pale philosopher had
+investigated the secrets of the highest cloud-region and of the
+profoundest mines; he had satisfied himself of the causes that kindled
+and kept alive the fires of the volcano; and had explained the mystery
+of fountains, and how it is that they gush forth, some so bright and
+pure, and others with such rich medicinal virtues, from the dark bosom
+of the earth. Here, too, at an earlier period, he had studied the
+wonders of the human frame, and attempted to fathom the very process
+by which Nature assimilates all her precious influences from earth and
+air, and from the spiritual world, to create and foster man, her
+masterpiece. The latter pursuit, however, Aylmer had long laid aside
+in unwilling recognition of the truth&mdash;against which all seekers
+sooner or later stumble&mdash;that our great creative Mother, while she
+amuses us with apparently working in the broadest sunshine, is yet
+severely careful to keep her own secrets, and, in spite of her
+pretended openness, shows us nothing but results. She permits us,
+indeed, to mar, but seldom to mend, and, like a jealous patentee, on
+no account to make. Now, however, Aylmer resumed these half-forgotten
+investigations; not, of course, with such hopes or wishes as first
+suggested them; but because they involved much physiological truth and
+lay in the path of his proposed scheme for the treatment of Georgiana.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As he led her over the threshold of the laboratory Georgiana was cold
+and tremulous. Aylmer looked cheerfully into her face, with intent to
+reassure her, but was so startled with the intense glow of the
+birthmark upon the whiteness of her cheek that he could not restrain a
+strong convulsive shudder. His wife fainted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Aminadab! Aminadab!" shouted Aylmer, stamping violently on the floor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Forthwith there issued from an inner apartment a man of low stature,
+but bulky frame, with shaggy hair hanging about his visage, which was
+grimed with the vapors of the furnace. This personage had been
+Aylmer's under-worker during his whole scientific career, and was
+admirably fitted for that office by his great mechanical readiness,
+and the skill with which, while incapable of comprehending a single
+principle, he executed all the details of his master's experiments.
+With his vast strength, his shaggy hair, his smoky aspect, and the
+indescribable earthiness that incrusted him, he seemed to represent
+man's physical nature; while Aylmer's slender figure, and pale,
+intellectual face, were no less apt a type of the spiritual element.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Throw open the door of the boudoir, Aminadab," said Aylmer, "and burn
+a pastil."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, master," answered Aminadab, looking intently at the lifeless
+form of Georgiana; and then he muttered to himself, "If she were my
+wife, I'd never part with that birthmark."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When Georgiana recovered consciousness she found herself breathing an
+atmosphere of penetrating fragrance, the gentle potency of which had
+recalled her from her deathlike faintness. The scene around her looked
+like enchantment. Aylmer had converted those smoky, dingy, sombre
+rooms, where he had spent his brightest years in recondite[4]
+pursuits, into a series of beautiful apartments not unfit to be the
+secluded abode of a lovely woman. The walls were hung with gorgeous
+curtains, which imparted the combination of grandeur and grace that no
+other species of adornment can achieve; and, as they fell from the
+ceiling to the floor, their rich and ponderous folds, concealing all
+angles and straight lines, appeared to shut in the scene from infinite
+space. For aught Georgiana knew, it might be a pavilion among the
+clouds. And Alymer, excluding the sunshine, which would have
+interfered with his chemical processes, had supplied its place with
+perfumed lamps, emitting flames of various hue, but all uniting in a
+soft, impurpled radiance. He now knelt by his wife's side, watching
+her earnestly, but without alarm; for he was confident in his science,
+and felt that he could draw a magic circle round her within which no
+evil might intrude.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Where am I? Ah, I remember," said Georgiana, faintly; and she placed
+her hand over her cheek to hide the terrible mark from her husband's
+eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Fear not, dearest!" exclaimed he. "Do not shrink from me! Believe me,
+Georgiana, I even rejoice in this single imperfection, since it will
+be such a rapture to remove it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"O, spare me!" sadly replied his wife. "Pray do not look at it again.
+I never can forget that convulsive shudder."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In order to soothe Georgiana, and, as it were, to release her mind
+from the burden of actual things, Aylmer now put in practice some of
+the light and playful secrets which science had taught him among its
+profounder lore. Airy figures, absolutely bodiless ideas, and forms of
+unsubstantial beauty came and danced before her, imprinting their
+momentary footsteps on beams of light. Though she had some indistinct
+idea of the method of these optical phenomena, still the illusion was
+almost perfect enough to warrant the belief that her husband possessed
+sway over the spiritual world. Then again, when she felt a wish to
+look forth from her seclusion, immediately, as if her thoughts were
+answered, the procession of external existence flitted across a
+screen. The scenery and the figures of actual life were perfectly
+represented, but with that bewitching yet indescribable difference
+which always makes a picture, an image, or a shadow so much more
+attractive than the original. When wearied of this, Aylmer bade her
+cast her eyes upon a vessel containing a quantity of earth. She did so
+with little interest at first; but was soon startled to perceive the
+germ of a plant shooting upward from the soil: Then came the slender
+stalk; the leaves gradually unfolded themselves; and amid them was a
+perfect and lovely flower.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is magical!" cried Georgiana. "I dare not touch it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Nay, pluck it," answered Aylmer,&mdash;"pluck it, and inhale its brief
+perfume while you may. The flower will wither in a few moments and
+leave nothing save its brown seed-vessels; but thence may be
+perpetuated a race as ephemeral as itself."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Georgiana had no sooner touched the flower than the whole plant
+suffered a blight, its leaves turning coal black as if by the agency
+of fire.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"There was too powerful a stimulus," said Aylmer, thoughtfully.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To make up for this abortive experiment, he proposed to take her
+portrait by a scientific process of his own invention. It was to be
+effected by rays of light striking upon a polished plate of metal.
+Georgiana assented; but, on looking at the result, was affrighted to
+find the features of the portrait blurred and indefinable; while the
+minute figure of a hand appeared where the cheek should have been.
+Alymer snatched the metallic plate and threw it into a jar of
+corrosive[5] acid.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Soon, however, he forgot these mortifying failures. In the intervals
+of study and chemical experiment he came to her flushed and exhausted,
+but seemed invigorated by her presence, and spoke in glowing language
+of the resources of his art. He gave a history of the long dynasty of
+the alchemists, who spent so many ages in quest of the universal
+solvent by which the golden principle might be elicited from all
+things vile and base, Aylmer appeared to believe that, by the plainest
+scientific logic, it was altogether within the limits of possibility
+to discover this long-sought medium. "But," he added, "a philosopher
+who should go deep enough to acquire the power would attain too lofty
+a wisdom to stoop to the exercise of it." Not less singular were his
+opinions in regard to the elixir vitae[6]. He more than intimated that
+it was at his option to concoct a liquid that should prolong life for
+years, perhaps interminably; but that it would produce a discord in
+nature which all the world, and chiefly the quaffer of the immortal
+nostrum, would find cause to curse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Aylmer, are you in earnest?" asked Georgiana, looking at him with
+amazement and fear. "It is terrible to possess such power, or even to
+dream of possessing it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"O, do not tremble, my love," said her husband. "I would not wrong
+either you or myself by working such inharmonious effects upon our
+lives; but I would have you consider how trifling, in comparison, is
+the skill requisite to remove this little hand."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the mention of the birthmark, Georgiana, as usual, shrank as if a
+red-hot iron had touched her cheek.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Again Aylmer applied himself to his labors. She could hear his voice
+in the distant furnace-room giving directions to Aminadab, whose
+harsh, uncouth, misshapen tones were audible in response, more like
+the grunt or growl of a brute than human speech. After hours of
+absence, Aylmer reappeared and proposed that she should now examine
+his cabinet of chemical products and natural treasures of the earth.
+Among the former he showed her a small vial, in which, he remarked,
+was contained a gentle yet most powerful fragrance, capable of
+impregnating all the breezes that blow across a kingdom. They were of
+inestimable value, the contents of that little vial; and, as he said
+so, he threw some of the perfume into the air and filled the room with
+piercing and invigorating delight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And what is this?" asked Georgiana, pointing to a small crystal globe
+containing a gold-colored liquid. "It is so beautiful to the eye that
+I could imagine it the elixir of life."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"In one sense it is," replied Aylmer; "or rather, the elixir of
+immortality. It is the most precious poison that ever was concocted in
+this world. By its aid I could apportion the lifetime of any mortal at
+whom you might point your finger. The strength of the dose would
+determine whether he were to linger out years, or drop dead in the
+midst of a breath. No king on his guarded throne could keep his life
+if I, in my private station, should deem that the welfare of millions
+justified me in depriving him of it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why do you keep such a terrific drug?" inquired Georgiana, in horror.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do not mistrust me, dearest," said her husband, smiling; "its
+virtuous potency is yet greater than its harmful one. But see! here is
+a powerful cosmetic. With a few drops of this in a vase of water,
+freckles may be washed away as easily as the hands are cleansed. A
+stronger infusion[7] would take the blood out of the cheek, and leave
+the rosiest beauty a pale ghost."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Is it with this lotion that you intend to bathe my cheek?" asked
+Georgiana, anxiously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"O no," hastily replied her husband; "this is merely superficial. Your
+case demands a remedy that shall go deeper."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In his interviews with Georgiana, Aylmer generally made minute
+inquiries as to her sensations, and whether the confinement of the
+rooms and the temperature of the atmosphere agreed with her. These
+questions had such a particular drift that Georgiana began to
+conjecture that she was already subjected to certain physical
+influences, either breathed in with the fragrant air or taken with her
+food. She fancied likewise, but it might be altogether fancy, that
+there was a stirring up of her system,&mdash;a strange, indefinite
+sensation creeping through her veins, and tingling, half painfully,
+half pleasurably, at her heart. Still, whenever she dared to look into
+the mirror, there she beheld herself pale as a white rose and with the
+crimson birthmark stamped upon her cheek. Not even Aylmer now hated it
+so much as she.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To dispel the tedium of the hours which her husband found it necessary
+to devote to the processes of combination and analysis, Georgiana
+turned over the volumes of his scientific library. In many dark old
+tomes she met with chapters full of romance and poetry. They were the
+works of the philosophers of the Middle Ages, such as Albertus
+Magnus[8], Cornelius Agrippa[9], Paracelsus[10], and the famous friar
+who created the prophetic Brazen Head. All these antique naturalists
+stood in advance of their centuries, yet were imbued with some of
+their credulity, and therefore were believed, and perhaps imagined
+themselves to have acquired from the investigation of nature a power
+above nature, and from physics a sway over the spiritual world. Hardly
+less curious and imaginative were the early volumes of the
+Transactions of the Royal Society[11], in which the members, knowing
+little of the limits of natural possibility, were continually
+recording wonders or proposing methods whereby wonders might be
+wrought.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But, to Georgiana, the most engrossing volume was a large folio from
+her husband's own hand, in which he had recorded every experiment of
+his scientific career, its original aim, the methods adopted for its
+development, and its final success or failure, with the circumstances
+to which either event was attributable. The book, in truth; was both
+the history and emblem of his ardent, ambitious, imaginative, yet
+practical and laborious life. He handled physical details as if there
+were nothing beyond them; yet spiritualized them all, and redeemed
+himself from materialism by his strong and eager aspiration towards
+the infinite. In his grasp the veriest clod of earth assumed a soul.
+Georgiana, as she read, reverenced Aylmer and loved him more
+profoundly than ever, but with a less entire dependence on his
+judgment than heretofore. Much as he had accomplished, she could not
+but observe that his most splendid successes were almost invariably
+failures, if compared with the ideal at which he aimed. His brightest
+diamonds were the merest pebbles, and felt to be so by himself, in
+comparison with the inestimable gems which lay hidden beyond his
+reach. The volume, rich with achievements that had won renown for its
+author, was yet as melancholy a record as over mortal hand had penned.
+It was the sad confession and continual exemplification of the
+shortcomings of the composite man, the spirit burdened with clay and
+working in matter, and of the despair that assails the higher nature
+at finding itself so miserably thwarted by the earthly part. Perhaps
+every man of genius, in whatever sphere, might recognize the image of
+his own experience in Aylmer's journal.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So deeply did these reflections affect Georgiana that she laid her
+face upon the open volume and burst into tears. In this situation she
+was found by her husband.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is dangerous to read in a sorcerer's books," said he with a smile,
+though his countenance was uneasy and displeased. "Georgiana, there
+are pages in that volume which I can scarcely glance over and keep my
+senses. Take heed lest it prove as detrimental to you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It has made me worship you more than ever." said she.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ah, wait for this one success," rejoined he, "then worship me if you
+will. I shall deem myself hardly unworthy of it. But come. I have
+sought you for the luxury of your voice. Sing to me, dearest."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So she poured out the liquid music of her voice to quench the thirst
+of his spirit. He then took his leave with a boyish exuberance of
+gayety, assuring her that her seclusion would endure but a little
+longer, and that the result was already certain. Scarcely had he
+departed when Georgiana felt irresistibly impelled to follow him. She
+had forgotten to inform Aylmer of a symptom which for two or three
+hours past had begun to excite her attention. It was a sensation in
+the fatal birthmark, not painful, but which induced a restlessness
+throughout her system. Hastening after her husband, she intruded for
+the first time into the laboratory.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The first thing that struck her eye was the furnace, that hot and
+feverish worker, with the intense glow of its fire, which by the
+quantities of soot clustered above it seemed to have been burning for
+ages. There was a distilling-apparatus in full operation. Around the
+room were retorts, tubes, cylinders, crucibles, and other apparatus of
+chemical research. An electrical machine stood ready for immediate
+use. The atmosphere felt oppressively close, and was tainted with
+gaseous odors which had been tormented forth by the processes of
+science. The severe and homely simplicity of the apartment, with its
+naked walls and brick pavement, looked strange, accustomed as
+Georgiana had become to the fantastic elegance of her boudoir. But
+what chiefly, indeed almost solely, drew her attention, was the aspect
+of Aylmer himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was pale as death, anxious and absorbed, and hung over the furnace
+as if it depended upon his utmost watchfulness whether the liquid
+which it was distilling should be the draught of immortal happiness or
+misery. How different from the sanguine and joyous mien that he had
+assumed for Georgiana's encouragement!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Carefully now, Aminadab; carefully, thou human machine; carefully,
+thou man of clay," muttered Aylmer, more to himself than his
+assistant. "Now, If there be a thought too much or too little, it is
+all over."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ho! ho!" mumbled Aminadab. "Look, master! look!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Aylmer raised his eyes hastily, and at first reddened, then grew paler
+than ever, on beholding Georgiana. He rushed towards her and seized
+her arm with a gripe that left the print of his fingers upon it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why do you come thither? Have you no trust in your husband?" cried
+he, impetuously. "Would you throw the blight of that fatal birthmark
+over my labors? It is not well done. Go, prying woman! go!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Nay, Aylmer," said Georgiana with the firmness of which she possessed
+no stinted endowment, "it is not you that have a right to complain.
+You mistrust your wife; you have concealed the anxiety with which you
+watch the development of this experiment. Think not so unworthily of
+me, my husband. Tell me all the risk we run, and fear not that I shall
+shrink: for my share in it is far less than your own."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, no, Georgiana!" said Aylmer, impatiently; "it must not be."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I submit," replied she, calmly. "And, Aylmer, I shall quaff whatever
+draught you bring me; but it will be on the same principle that would
+induce me to take a dose of poison if offered by your hand."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"My noble wife," said Aylmer, deeply moved, "I knew not the height and
+depth of your nature until now. Nothing shall be concealed. Know,
+then, that this crimson hand, superficial as it seems, has clutched
+its grasp into your being with a strength of which I had no previous
+conception. I have already administered agents powerful enough to do
+aught except to change your entire physical system. Only one thing
+remains to be tried. If that fail us we are ruined."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why did you hesitate to tell me this?" asked she.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Because, Georgiana," said Aylmer, in a low voice, "there is danger."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Danger? There is but one danger,&mdash;that this horrible stigma shall be
+left upon my cheek!" cried Georgiana. "Remove it, remove it, whatever
+be the cost, or we shall both go mad!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Heaven knows your words are too true," said Aylmer, sadly. "And now,
+dearest, return to your boudoir. In a little while all will be
+tested."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He conducted her back and took leave of her with a solemn tenderness
+which spoke far more than his words how much was now at stake. After
+his departure Georgiana became rapt in musings. She considered the
+character of Aylmer, and did it completer justice than at any previous
+moment. Her heart exulted, while it trembled, at his honorable
+love,&mdash;so pure and lofty that it would accept nothing less than
+perfection, nor miserably make itself contented with an earthlier
+nature than he had dreamed of. She felt how much more precious was
+such a sentiment than that meaner kind which would have borne with the
+imperfection for her sake, and have been guilty of treason to holy
+love by degrading its perfect idea to the level of the actual; and
+with her whole spirit she prayed that, for a single moment, she might
+satisfy his highest and deepest conception. Longer than one moment she
+well knew it could not be; for his spirit was ever on the march, ever
+ascending, and each instant required something that was beyond the
+scope of the instant before.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sound of her husband's footsteps aroused her. He bore a crystal
+goblet containing a liquor colorless as water, but bright enough to be
+the draught of immortality. Aylmer was pale; but it seemed rather the
+consequence of a highly wrought state of mind and tension of spirit
+than of fear or doubt.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The concoction of the draught has been perfect," said he, in answer
+to Georgiana's look. "Unless all my science have deceived me, it
+cannot fail."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Save on your account, my dearest Aylmer," observed his wife, "I might
+wish to put off this birthmark of mortality by relinquishing mortality
+itself in preference to any other mode. Life is but a sad possession
+to those who have attained precisely the degree of moral advancement
+at which I stand. Were I weaker and blinder, it might be happiness.
+Were I stronger, it might be endured hopefully. But, being what I find
+myself, methinks I am of all mortals the most fit to die."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You are fit for heaven without tasting death!" replied her husband.
+"But why do we speak of dying? The draught cannot fail. Behold its
+effect upon this plant."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the window-seat there stood a geranium diseased with yellow
+blotches, which had overspread all its leaves. Aylmer poured a small
+quantity of the liquid upon the soil in which it grew. In a little
+time, when the roots of the plant had taken up the moisture, the
+unsightly blotches began to be extinguished in a living verdure.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"There needed no proof," said Georgiana, quietly. "Give me the goblet.
+I joyfully stake all upon your word."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Drink, then, thou lofty creature!" exclaimed Aylmer, with fervid
+admiration. "There is no taint of imperfection on thy spirit. Thy
+sensible frame, too, shall soon be all perfect."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She quaffed the liquid and returned the goblet to his hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is grateful," said she, with a placid smile. "Methinks it is like
+water from a heavenly fountain; for it contains I know not what of
+unobtrusive fragrance and deliciousness. It allays a feverish thirst
+that had parched me for many days. Now, dearest, let me sleep. My
+earthly senses are closing over my spirit like the leaves around the
+heart of a rose at sunset."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She spoke the last words with a gentle reluctance, as if it required
+almost more energy than she could command to pronounce the faint and
+lingering syllables. Scarcely had they loitered through her lips ere
+she was lost in slumber. Aylmer sat by her side, watching her aspect
+with the emotions proper to a man, the whole value of whose existence
+was involved in the process now to be tested. Mingled with this mood,
+however, was the philosophic investigation characteristic of the man
+of science. Not the minutest symptom escaped him. A heightened flush
+of the cheek, a slight irregularity of breath, a quiver of the eyelid,
+a hardly perceptible tremor through the frame,&mdash;such were the details
+which, as the moments passed, he wrote down, in his folio volume.
+Intense thought had set its stamp upon every previous page of that
+volume; but the thoughts of years were all concentrated upon the last.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While thus employed, he failed not to gaze often at the fatal hand,
+and not without a shudder. Yet once, by a strange and unaccountable
+impulse, he pressed it with his lips. His spirit recoiled, however, in
+the very act; and Georgiana, out of the midst of her deep sleep, moved
+uneasily, and murmured, as if in remonstrance. Again Aylmer resumed,
+his watch. Nor was it without avail. The crimson hand, which at first
+had been strongly visible upon the marble paleness of Georgiana's
+cheek, now grew more faintly outlined. She remained not less pale than
+ever; but the birthmark, with every breath that came and went, lost
+somewhat of its former distinctness. Its presence had been awful; its
+departure was more awful still. Watch the stain of the rainbow fading
+out of the sky, and you will know how that mysterious symbol passed
+away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"By Heaven! it is well-nigh gone!" said Aylmer to himself, in almost
+irrepressible ecstasy. "I can scarcely trace it now. Success! success!
+And now it is like the faintest rose color. The lightest flush of
+blood across her cheek would overcome it. But she is so pale!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He drew aside the window-curtain and suffered the light of natural day
+to fall into the room and rest upon her cheek. At the same time he
+heard a gross, hoarse chuckle, which he had long known as his servant
+Aminadab's expression of delight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ah, clod! ah, earthly mass!" cried Aylmer, laughing in a sort of
+frenzy, "you have served me well! Matter and spirit&mdash;earth and
+heaven&mdash;have both done their part in this! Laugh, thing of the senses!
+You have earned the right to laugh."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+These exclamations broke Georgiana's sleep. She slowly unclosed her
+eyes and gazed into the mirror which her husband had arranged for that
+purpose. A faint smile flitted over her lips when she recognized how
+barely perceptible was now that crimson hand which had once blazed
+forth with such disastrous brilliancy as to scare away all their
+happiness. But then her eyes sought Aylmer's face with a trouble and
+anxiety that he could by no means account for.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"My poor Aylmer!" murmured she.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Poor? Nay, richest, happiest, most favored!" exclaimed he. "My
+peerless bride, it is successful! You are perfect!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"My poor Aylmer," she repeated, with a more than human tenderness,
+"you have aimed loftily; you have done nobly. Do not repent that, with
+so high and pure a feeling, you have rejected the best the earth could
+offer. Aylmer, dearest Aylmer, I am dying!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alas! it was too true! The fatal hand had grappled with the mystery of
+life, and was the bond by which an angelic spirit kept itself in union
+with a mortal frame. As the last crimson tint of the birthmark&mdash;that
+sole token of human imperfection&mdash;faded from her cheek, the parting
+breath of the now perfect woman passed into the atmosphere, and her
+soul, lingering a moment, near her husband, took its heavenward
+flight. Then a hoarse, chuckling laugh was heard again! Thus ever does
+the gross fatality of earth exult in its invariable triumph over the
+immortal essence which, in this dim sphere of half-development,
+demands the completeness of a higher state. Yet, had Aylmer reached a
+profounder wisdom, he need not thus have flung away the happiness
+which would have woven his mortal life of the selfsame texture with
+the celestial. The momentary circumstance was too strong for him; he
+failed to look beyond the shadowy scope of time, and, living once for
+all in eternity, to find the perfect future in the present.
+</p>
+
+<h4>NOTES</h4>
+
+<p>
+[1] Published in the March, 1843, number of <i>The Pioneer</i>, edited by
+J. R. Lowell. Republished in <i>Mosses from an Old Manse</i> in 1846.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[2] 154:29 "Eve," of Powers. A noted American sculptor (1805-1873).
+"Eve," "The Fisher Boy," and "America" are some of his chief works.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[3] 168:28 Pygmalion. A sculptor and king of Cyprus.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[4] 181:16 recondite. Abstruse or secret.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[5] 168:27 corrosive. Destructive of tissue.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[6] 184:12 vitae. Of life.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[7] 166:3 infusion. The act of pouring in.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[8] 167:1 Albertus Magnus. A famous scholastic philosopher and member
+of the Dominican order (1193-1280).
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[9] 167:1 Cornelius Agrippa. A German philosopher and student of
+alchemy and magic (1486-1535).
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[10] 167:1 Paracelsus. A German-Swiss physician, and alchemist
+(1492-1541).
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[11] 167:10 Royal Society. An association for the advancement of
+science, founded in London a little before 1660.
+</p>
+
+<h4>BIOGRAPHY</h4>
+
+<p>
+Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in Salem, Massachusetts, July 4, 1804.
+His ancestors were prominent in the affairs of the colony: John
+Hawthorne was one of the judges who tried the witches in 1620; and
+another John Hawthorne was a member of the dignified school committee
+of Salem in 1796. Hawthorne's father, a ship captain, died in a
+foreign land when his son was only four years old; his mother lived
+for forty years after the death of her husband the life of a recluse
+in her own house. The family's star was in the decline and the people
+of Salem looked on Nathaniel as a lazy and very queer boy. He grew up
+in a unique solitude. During these years of seclusion Hawthorne
+acquired the habit of keeping silent on all occasions, and reading a
+few books frequently and thoroughly. The <i>Newgate Calendar</i> must have
+supplied him with many subtle suggestions for his later writings on
+sin and crime, for in almost all of his productions his imagination is
+tinged with, this old Puritanic philosophy and theology.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He entered Bowdoin College in 1821 and graduated from this institution
+in 1825. He had as classmates Longfellow, and Franklin Pierce, who
+afterward became president of the United States. After his graduation
+Hawthorne returned to Salem, where he lived with his mother and
+sisters in almost absolute seclusion for fourteen years. During this
+period he wrote daily, and spent his nights in burning what he had
+written in the daytime.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was clerk of the Boston Custom House from 1839 to 1841, when the
+Whig party removed him for being ultra-partisan in behalf of the
+Democrats. At this time Hawthorne wrote: "As to the Salem people, I
+really thought I had been exceedingly good-natured in my treatment of
+them. They certainly do not deserve good usage at my hands, after
+permitting me to be deliberately lied down, not merely once, but at
+two separate attacks, and on two false indictments, without hardly a
+voice being raised in my behalf." He married Sophia Peabody, July 9,
+1842. From 1842 until 1846 they lived in Concord in the house formerly
+occupied by Emerson. These were the happiest years of his life. In
+1846 he returned to Salem as surveyor in the Salem Custom House. He
+retired from this office in 1850 and lived in Lenox, Massachusetts,
+for two years. In 1852 he settled in Concord. President Pierce
+appointed him consul at Liverpool in 1853, and he served in this
+position until 1857.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After leaving Liverpool he travelled three years in England and on the
+continent. He returned to Concord in 1860. He died in the White
+Mountains, May 18, 1864. Although a silent man and a seeker of
+solitude during his life, few writers have ever experienced such wide
+publicity of their inmost lives as has Hawthorne since his death. The
+publication of his <i>Notes</i> has opened his desk and work-shop to every
+one, and has revealed to us a magnanimous, sympathetic, and pure man,
+who realized his responsibilities as a writer and improved all his
+literary opportunities.
+</p>
+
+<h4>BIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES</h4>
+
+<p>
+<i>History of American Literature</i>, Moses Coit Tyler.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Introduction to American Literature</i>, Henry S. Pancoast.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Studies in American Literature</i>, Charles Noble.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Introduction to American Literature</i>, Brander Matthews.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Gloom and Cheer in Hawthorne," <i>Critic</i>, 45: 28-36.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Hawthorne and his Circle," <i>Nation</i>, 77: 410-411.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Hawthorne as seen by his Publisher," <i>Critic</i>, 45: 51-55.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Hawthorne from an English Point of View." <i>Critic</i>, 45: 60-66.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Hawthorne's Last Years," <i>Critic</i>, 45: 67-71.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Life of Hawthorne," <i>Atlantic Monthly</i>, 90: 563-567,
+</p>
+
+<h4>CRITICISMS</h4>
+
+<p>
+Many influences in Hawthorne's environment served to condition and
+mold him as a writer. Salem had reached its highest prosperity in all
+lines and was just beginning its retrogression in Hawthorne's time;
+the primeval forests of Maine produced a subtle and lasting influence
+on him during his sojourn in Maine for his health; transcendentalism
+was the ruling thought at the time when Hawthorne was in his most
+plastic and solitary age; his interest in <i>Brook Farm</i> brought him in
+contact with all the good and bad points of that social movement; his
+life in the <i>Old Manse</i> in Concord and in the Berkshire Hills
+contributed largely to the deepening of his convictions and
+sympathies; and over all, like a sombre cloud, hung his ancestral
+Puritanic training which penetrated and suffused all his writings. He
+is the most native and the least imitative of all our fiction writers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hawthorne did not write on the common subjects and facts of his day,
+but chose to have his readers go with him, away from prosaic life, out
+into a world of mysteries where we may revel in all kinds of imaginary
+sports. By this process he succeeded in producing poetic effects from
+the most unpromising materials. His writings are fanciful. He enjoyed
+subjects that deal with the occult, such as mesmerism, hypnotism, and
+subtle suggestions. He harked back to the rigid beliefs and laws of
+the Puritans, but he and his subjects are spiritually advanced far
+above the crude, ponderous, and highly theological tenets of his
+forefathers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hawthorne is very provincial. He travelled little until he was fifty
+years old. He naturally loved the antique and poetic countries, but he
+always qualified his admiration of these foreign lands by praising
+something in his own New England. He conceded that there was little or
+nothing in this prosperous and crude country to inspire a writer to
+produce poetry, but his patriotism was so strong that he could never
+free himself wholly from its provincial effects. All his works were
+produced in the stress created by this pull of opposing forces&mdash;his
+high poetic ideals and his love of country.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In form he tends toward the polish of a classicist; in quality and
+freedom of thought he is very responsive to the mysteries of
+romanticism. He is introspective in his thinking and symbolical in his
+writing. Naturally he thinks abstractly, but is compelled to construct
+concrete methods of presenting his ideas. He never describes a strong
+emotion in detail, but delights in using suggestions and sidelights.
+His pure and refined manhood, his delicate fancy and deep interest in
+moral and religious questions, his conscience in its most artistic
+form, all are presented to the reader in the choicest garb of well
+chosen words and attuned to a subtle rhythm that adds beauty and
+attractiveness to his style.
+</p>
+
+<h4>GENERAL REFERENCES</h4>
+
+<p>
+<i>Hours in a Library</i>, Leslie Stephen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>A Literary History of America</i>, Barrett Wendell.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>American Literature</i>, William P. Trent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Makers of English Fiction</i>, W.J. Dawson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Leading American Novelists</i>, J. Erskine.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Studies and Appreciations</i>, L.E. Gates.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"An Estimate," <i>Scribner's Magazine</i>, 43: 69-84.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Unknown Quantity in Hawthorne's Personality," <i>Current Literature</i>,
+42: 517-518.
+</p>
+
+<h4>COLLATERAL READINGS</h4>
+
+<p>
+<i>Biographical Stories for Children</i>, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Mosses from an Old Manse</i>, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Wonder Boot</i>, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Blithedale Romance</i>, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Tanglewood Tales</i>, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Lady Eleanore's Mantle</i>, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Great Stone Face</i>, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Prophetic Pictures</i>, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Necklace</i>, Guy de Maupassant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>A Solitary</i>, Mary Wilkins Freeman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Lady or the Tiger</i>, Frank R. Stockton.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Strange Ride</i>, Rudyard Kipling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Rikki-Tikki-Tavi</i>, Rudyard Kipling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>They</i>, Rudyard Kipling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Twelfth Guest</i>, Mary Wilkins Freeman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Shadows on the Wall</i>, Mary Wilkins Freeman.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap09"></a>ETHAN BRAND[1]</h2>
+
+<p class="center">
+A Chapter From An Abortive Romance
+</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+<i>By Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bartram the lime-burner, a rough, heavy-looking man, begrimed with
+charcoal, sat watching his kiln, at nightfall, while his little son
+played at building houses with the scattered fragments of marble,
+when, on the hillside below them, they heard a roar of laughter, not
+mirthful, but slow, and even solemn, like a wind shaking the boughs of
+the forest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Father, what is that?" asked the little boy, leaving his play, and
+pressing betwixt his father's knees.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"O, some drunken man, I suppose," answered the lime-burner; "some
+merry fellow from the bar-room in the village, who dared not laugh
+loud enough within doors lest he should blow the roof of the house
+off. So here he is, shaking his jolly sides at the foot of Graylock."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But, father," said the child, more sensitive than the obtuse,
+middle-aged clown, "he does not laugh like a man that is glad. So the
+noise frightens me!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Don't be a fool, child!" cried his father, gruffly. "You will never
+make a man, I do believe; there is too much of your mother in you. I
+have known the rustling of a leaf startle you. Hark! Here comes the
+merry fellow now. You shall see that there is no harm in him."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bartram and his little son, while they were talking thus, sat watching
+the same lime-kiln that had been the scene of Ethan Brand's solitary
+and meditative life, before he began his search for the Unpardonable
+Sin. Many years, as we have seen, had now elapsed, since that
+portentous night when the IDEA was first developed. The kiln, however,
+on the mountain-side stood unimpaired, and was in nothing changed
+since he had thrown his dark thoughts into the intense glow of its
+furnace, and melted them, as it were, into the one thought that took
+possession of his life. It was a rude, round, towerlike structure,
+about twenty feet high, heavily built of rough stones, and with a
+hillock of earth heaped about the larger part of its circumference; so
+that the blocks and fragments of marble might be drawn by cart-loads,
+and thrown in at the top. There was an opening at the bottom of the
+tower, like an oven-mouth, but large enough to admit a man in a
+stooping posture, and provided with a massive iron door. With the
+smoke and jets of flame issuing from the chinks and crevices of this
+door, which seemed to give admittance into the hillside, it resembled
+nothing so much as the private entrance to the infernal regions, which
+the shepherds of the Delectable Mountains[2] were accustomed to show
+to pilgrims.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There are many such lime-kilns in that tract of country, for the
+purpose of burning the white marble which composes a large part of the
+substance of the hills. Some of them, built years ago, and long
+deserted, with weeds growing in the vacant round of the interior,
+which is open to the sky, and grass and wild flowers rooting
+themselves into the chinks of the stones, look already like relics of
+antiquity, and may yet be overspread with the lichens of centuries to
+come. Others, where the lime-burner still feeds his daily and
+night-long fire, afford points of interest to the wanderer among the
+hills, who seats himself on a log of wood or a fragment of marble, to
+hold a chat with the solitary man. It is a lonesome, and, when the
+character is inclined to thought, may be an intensely thoughtful,
+occupation; as it proved in the case of Ethan Brand, who had mused to
+such strange purpose, in days gone by, while the fire in this very
+kiln was burning.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The man who now watched the fire was of a different order, and
+troubled himself with no thoughts save the very few that were
+requisite to his business. At frequent intervals he flung back the
+clashing weight of the iron door, and, turning his face from the
+insufferable glare, thrust in huge logs of oak, or stirred the immense
+brands with a long pole. Within the furnace were seen the curling and
+riotous flames, and the burning marble, almost molten with the
+intensity of heat; while without, the reflection of the fire quivered
+on the dark intricacy of the surrounding forest, and showed in the
+foreground a bright and ruddy little picture of the hut, the spring
+beside its door, the athletic and coal-begrimed figure of the
+lime-burner, and the half-frightened child, shrinking into the
+protection of his father's shadow. And when again the iron door was
+closed, then reappeared the tender light of the half-full moon, which
+vainly strove to trace out the indistinct shapes of the neighboring
+mountains; and, in the upper sky, there was a flitting congregation of
+clouds, still faintly tinged with the rosy sunset, though thus far
+down into the valley the sunshine had vanished long and long ago.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The little boy now crept still closer to his father, as footsteps were
+heard ascending the hillside, and a human form thrust aside the bushes
+that clustered beneath the trees.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Halloo! who is it?" cried the lime-burner, vexed at his son's
+timidity, yet half infected by it, "Come forward, and show yourself,
+like a man, or I'll fling this chunk of marble at your head !"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You offer me a rough welcome," said a gloomy voice, as the unknown
+man drew nigh. "Yet I neither claim nor desire a kinder one, even at
+my own fireside."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To obtain a distincter view, Bartram threw open the iron door of the
+kiln, whence immediately issued a gush of fierce light, that smote
+full upon the stranger's face and figure. To a careless eye there
+appeared nothing very remarkable in his aspect, which was that of a
+man in a coarse, brown, country-made suit of clothes, tall and thin,
+with the staff and heavy shoes of a wayfarer. As he advanced, he fixed
+his eyes&mdash;which were very bright&mdash;intently upon the brightness of the
+furnace, as if he beheld, or expected to behold, some object worthy of
+note within it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Good evening, stranger," said the lime-burner; "whence come you, so
+late in the day?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I come from my search," answered the wayfarer; "for, at last, it is
+finished."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Drunk!&mdash;or crazy!" muttered Bartram to himself. "I shall have trouble
+with the fellow. The sooner I drive him away, the better."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The little boy, all in a tremble, whispered to his father, and begged
+him to shut the door of the kiln, so that there might not be so much
+light; for that there was something in the man's face which he was
+afraid to look at, yet could not look away from. And, indeed, even the
+lime-burner's dull and torpid sense began to be impressed by an
+indescribable something in that thin, rugged, thoughtful visage, with
+the grizzled hair hanging wildly about it, and those deeply sunken
+eyes, which gleamed like fires within the entrance of a mysterious
+cavern. But, as he closed the door, the stranger turned towards him,
+and spoke in a quiet, familiar way, that made Bartram feel as if he
+were a sane and sensible man, after all.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Your task draws to an end, I see," said he. "This marble has already
+been burning three days. A few hours more will convert the stone to
+lime."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why, who are you?" exclaimed the lime-burner. "You seem as well
+acquainted with my business as I am myself."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And well I may be," said the stranger; "for I followed the same craft
+many a long year, and here, too, on this very spot. But you are a
+newcomer in these parts. Did you never hear of Ethan Brand?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The man that went in search of the Unpardonable Sin?" asked Bartram,
+with a laugh.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The same," answered the stranger. "He has found what he sought, and
+therefore he comes back again,"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What! then you are Ethan Brand himself?" cried the lime-burner, in
+amazement. "I am a newcomer here, as you say, and they call it
+eighteen years since you left the foot of Graylock, But, I can tell
+you, the good folks still talk about Ethan Brand, in the village
+yonder, and what a strange errand took him away from his lime-kiln.
+Well and so you have found the Unpardonable Sin?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Even so!" said the stranger, calmly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If the 'question is a fair one." proceeded Bartrarn, "where might it
+be?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ethan Brand laid his finger on his own heart.'
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Here!" replied he.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And then, without mirth in his countenance, but as if moved by an
+involuntary recognition of the infinite absurdity of seeking
+throughout the world for what was the closest of all things to
+himself, and looking into every heart, save his own, for what was
+hidden in no other breast, he broke into a laugh of scorn. It was the
+same slow, heavy laugh that had almost appalled the lime-burner when
+it heralded the wayfarer's approach.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The solitary mountain side was made dismal by it. Laughter, when out
+of place, mistimed, or bursting forth from a disordered state of
+feeling, may be the most terrible modulation of the human voice. The
+laughter of one asleep, even if it be a little child,&mdash;the madman's
+laugh,&mdash;the wild, screaming laugh of a born idiot,&mdash;are sounds that we
+sometimes tremble to hear, and would always willingly forget. Poets
+have imagined no utterance of fiends Or hobgoblins so fearfully
+appropriate as a laugh. And even the obtuse lime-burner felt his
+nerves shaken, as this strange man looked inward at his own heart, and
+burst into laughter that rolled away into the night, and was
+indistinctly reverberated among the hills.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Joe," said he to his little son, "scamper down to the tavern in the
+village, and tell the jolly fellows there that Ethan Brand has come
+back, and that he has found the Unpardonable Sin!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The boy darted away on his errand, to which Ethan Brand made no
+objection, nor seemed hardly to notice it. He sat on a log of wood,
+looking steadfastly at the iron door of the kiln. When the child was
+out of sight, and his swift and light footsteps ceased to be heard
+treading first on the fallen leaves and then on the rocky mountain
+path, the lime-burner began to regret his departure. He felt that the
+little fellow's presence had been a barrier between his guest and
+himself, and that he must now deal, heart to heart, with a man who, on
+his own confession, had committed the one only crime for which Heaven
+could afford no mercy. That crime, in its indistinct blackness, seemed
+to overshadow him. The lime-burner's own sins rose up within him, and
+made his memory riotous with a throng of evil shapes that asserted
+their kindred with the Master Sin, whatever it might be, which it was
+within the scope of man's corrupted nature to conceive and cherish.
+They were all of one family; they went to and fro between his breast
+and Ethan Brand's, and carried dark greetings from one to the other.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then Bartram remembered the stories which had grown traditionary in
+reference to this strange man, who had come upon him like a shadow of
+the night, and was making himself at home in his old place, after so
+long absence that the dead people, dead and buried for years, would
+have had more right to be at home, in any familiar spot, than he.
+Ethan Brand, it was said, had conversed with Satan himself in the
+lurid blaze of this very kiln. The legend had been matter of mirth
+heretofore, but looked grisly now. According to this tale, before
+Ethan Brand departed on his search, he had been accustomed to evoke a
+fiend from the hot furnace of the lime-kiln, night after night, in
+order to confer with him about the Unpardonable Sin; the man and the
+fiend each laboring to frame the image of some mode of guilt which
+could neither be atoned for nor forgiven. And, with the first gleam of
+light upon the mountain-top, the fiend crept in at the iron door,
+there to abide the intensest element of fire, until again summoned
+forth to share in the dreadful task of extending man's possible guilt
+beyond the scope of Heaven's else infinite mercy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While the lime-burner was struggling with the horror of these
+thoughts, Ethan Brand rose from the log, and flung open the door of
+the kiln. The action was in such accordance with the idea in Bartram's
+mind, that he almost expected to see the Evil One issue forth, red-hot
+from the raging furnace.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Hold! hold!" cried he, with a tremulous attempt to laugh; for he was
+ashamed of his fears, although they overmastered him. "Don't, for
+mercy's sake, bring out your Devil now!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Man!" sternly replied Ethan Brand, "what need have I of the Devil? I
+have left him behind me, on my track. It is with such halfway sinners
+as you that he busies himself. Fear not, because I open the door. I do
+but act by old custom, and am going to trim your fire, like a
+lime-burner, as I was once."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He stirred the vast coals, thrust in more wood, and bent forward to
+gaze into the hollow prison-house of the fire, regardless of the
+fierce glow that reddened upon his face. The lime-burner sat watching
+him, and half suspected his strange guest of a purpose, if not to
+evoke a fiend, at least to plunge bodily into the flames, and thus
+vanish from the sight of man. Ethan Brand, however, drew quietly back,
+and closed the door of the kiln.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I have looked," said he, "into many a human heart that was seven
+times hotter with sinful passions than yonder furnace is with fire.
+But I found not there what I sought. No, not the Unpardonable Sin!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What is the Unpardonable Sin?" asked the lime-burner; and then he
+shrank farther from his companion, trembling lest his question should
+be answered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is a sin that grew within my own breast," replied Ethan Brand,
+standing erect, with a pride that distinguishes all enthusiasts of his
+stamp. "A sin that grew nowhere else! The sin of an intellect that
+triumphed over the sense of brotherhood with man and reverence for
+God, and sacrificed everything to its own mighty claims! the only sin
+that deserves a recompense of immortal agony! Freely, were it to do
+again, would I incur the guilt. Unshrinkingly I accept the
+retribution!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The man's head is turned," muttered the lime-burner to himself. "He
+may be a sinner, like the rest of us,&mdash;nothing more likely,&mdash;but, I'll
+be sworn, he is a madman too."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nevertheless, he felt uncomfortable at his situation, alone with Ethan
+Brand on the wild mountain side, and was right glad to hear the rough
+murmur of tongues, and the footsteps of what seemed a pretty numerous
+party, stumbling over the stones and rustling through the under-brush.
+Soon appeared the whole lazy regiment that was wont to infest the
+village tavern, comprehending three or four individuals who had drunk
+flip beside the bar-room fire through all the winters, and smoked
+their pipes beneath the stoop through all the summers, since Ethan
+Brand's departure. Laughing boisterously, and mingling all their
+voices together in unceremonious talk, they now burst into the
+moonshine and narrow streaks of firelight that illuminated the open
+space before the lime-kiln. Bartram set the door ajar again, flooding
+the spot with light, that the whole company might get a fair view of
+Ethan Brand, and he of them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There, among other old acquaintances, was a once ubiquitous[3] man,
+now almost extinct, but whom we were formerly sure to encounter at the
+hotel of every thriving village throughout the country. It was the
+stage-agent. The present specimen of the genus was a wilted and
+smoke-dried man, wrinkled and red-nosed, in a smartly cut, brown,
+bob-tailed coat, with brass buttons, who, for a length of time
+unknown, had kept his desk and corner in the bar-room, and was still
+puffing what seemed to be the same cigar that he had lighted twenty
+years before. He had great fame as a dry joker, though, perhaps, less
+on account of any intrinsic humor than from a certain flavor of brandy
+toddy and tobacco smoke, which impregnated all his ideas and
+expressions, as well as his person. Another well-remembered though
+strangely altered face was that of Lawyer Giles, as people still
+called him in courtesy; an elderly ragamuffin, in his soiled
+shirt-sleeves and tow-cloth trousers. This poor fellow had been an
+attorney, in what he called his better days, a sharp practitioner, and
+in great vogue among the village litigants; but flip, and sling, and
+toddy, and cocktails, imbibed at all hours, morning, noon, and night,
+had caused him to slide from intellectual to various kinds and degrees
+of bodily labor, till, at last, to adopt his own phrase, he slid into
+a soap vat. In other words, Giles was now a soap boiler, in a small
+way. He had come to be but the fragment of a human being, a part of
+one foot having been chopped off by an axe, and an entire hand torn
+away by the devilish grip of a steam engine. Yet, though the corporeal
+hand was gone, a spiritual member remained; for, stretching forth the
+stump, Giles steadfastly averred that he felt an invisible thumb and
+fingers with as vivid a sensation as before the real ones were
+amputated. A maimed and miserable wretch he was; but one,
+nevertheless, whom the world could not trample on, and had no right to
+scorn, either in this or any previous stage of his misfortunes, since
+he had still kept up the courage and spirit of a man, asked nothing in
+charity, and with his one hand&mdash;and that the left one&mdash;fought a stern
+battle against want and hostile circumstances.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Among the throng, too, came another personage, who, with certain
+points of similarity to Lawyer Giles, had many more of difference. It
+was the village doctor; a man of some fifty years, whom, at an earlier
+period of his life, we introduced as paying a professional visit to
+Ethan Brand during the latter's supposed insanity. He was now a
+purple-visaged, rude, and brutal, yet half-gentlemanly figure, with
+something wild, ruined, and desperate in his talk, and in all the
+details of his gesture and manners. Brandy possessed this man like an
+evil spirit, and made him as surly and savage as a wild beast, and as
+miserable as a lost soul; but there was supposed to be in him such
+wonderful skill, such native gifts of healing, beyond any which
+medical science could impart, that society caught hold of him, and
+would not let him sink out of its reach. So, swaying to and fro upon
+his horse, and grumbling thick accents at the bedside, he visited all
+the sick chambers for miles about among the mountain towns, and
+sometimes raised a dying man, as it were, by miracle, or quite as
+often, no doubt, sent his patient to a grave that was dug many a year
+too soon. The doctor had an everlasting pipe in his mouth, and, as
+somebody said, in allusion to his habit of swearing, it was always
+alight with hell-fire.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+These three worthies pressed forward, and greeted Ethan Brand each
+after his own fashion, earnestly inviting him to partake of the
+contents of a certain black bottle, in which, as they averred, he
+would find something far better worth seeking for than the
+Unpardonable Sin. No mind, which has wrought itself by intense and
+solitary meditation into a high state of enthusiasm, can endure the
+kind of contact with low and vulgar modes of thought and feeling to
+which Ethan Brand was now subjected. It made him doubt&mdash;and, strange
+to say, it was a painful doubt,&mdash;whether he had indeed found the
+Unpardonable Sin and found it within himself. The whole question on
+which he had exhausted life, and more than life, looked like a
+delusion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Leave me," he said bitterly, "ye brute beasts, that have made
+yourselves so, shrivelling up your souls with fiery liquors! I have
+done with you. Years and years ago, I groped into your hearts, and
+found nothing there for my purpose. Get ye gone!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why, you uncivil scoundrel," cried the fierce doctor, "is that the
+way you respond to the kindness of your best friends? Then let me tell
+you the truth. You have no more found the Unpardonable Sin than yonder
+boy Joe has. You are but a crazy fellow,&mdash;I told you so twenty years
+ago,&mdash;neither better nor worse than a crazy fellow, and a fit
+companion of old Humphrey, here!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He pointed to an old man, shabbily dressed, with long white hair, thin
+visage, and unsteady eyes. For some years past this aged person had
+been wandering about among the hills, inquiring of all travellers whom
+he met for his daughter. The girl, it seemed, had gone off with a
+company of circus performers; and occasionally tidings of her came to
+the village, and fine stories were told of her glittering appearance
+as she rode on horseback in the ring, or performed marvellous feats on
+the tight rope.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The white-haired father now approached Ethan Brand, and gazed
+unsteadily into his face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"They tell me you have been all over the earth," said he, wringing his
+hands with earnestness. "You must have seen my daughter, for she makes
+a grand figure in the world, and everybody goes to see her. Did she
+send any word to her old father, or say when she was coming back?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ethan Brand's eye quailed beneath the old man's. That daughter, from
+whom he so earnestly desired a word of greeting, was the Esther of our
+tale, the very girl whom, with such cold and remorseless purpose,
+Ethan Brand had made the subject of a psychological experiment, and
+wasted, absorbed, and perhaps annihilated her soul, in the process.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes," murmured he, turning away from the hoary wanderer; "it is no
+delusion. There is an Unpardonable Sin!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While these things were passing, a merry scene was going forward in
+the area of cheerful light, beside the spring and before the door of
+the hut. A number of the youth of the village, young men and girls,
+had hurried up the hillside, impelled by curiosity to see Ethan Brand,
+the hero of so many a legend familiar to their childhood. Finding
+nothing, however, very remarkable in his aspect,&mdash;nothing but a
+sunburnt wayfarer, in plain garb and dusty shoes, who sat looking into
+the fire, as if he fancied pictures among the coals,&mdash;these young
+people speedily grew tired of observing him. As it happened, there was
+other amusement at hand. An old German Jew, travelling with a
+diorama[4] on his back, was passing down, the mountain road towards
+the village just as the party turned aside from it, and, in hopes of
+eking out the profits of the day, the showman had kept them company to
+the lime-kiln.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Come, old Dutchman," cried one of the young men, "let us see your
+pictures, if you can swear they are worth looking at!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"O yes, Captain," answered the Jew,&mdash;whether as a matter of courtesy
+or craft, he styled everybody Captain,&mdash;"I shall show you, indeed,
+some very superb pictures!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So, placing his box in a proper position, he invited the young men and
+girls to look through the glass orifices of the machine, and proceeded
+to exhibit a series of the most outrageous scratchings and daubings,
+as specimens of the fine arts, that ever an itinerant showman had the
+face to impose upon his circle of spectators. The pictures were worn
+out, moreover, tattered, full of cracks and wrinkles, dingy with
+tobacco smoke, and otherwise in a most pitiable condition. Some
+purported to be cities, public edifices, and ruined castles in Europe;
+others represented Napoleon's battles and Nelson's sea fights; and in
+the midst of these would be seen a gigantic, brown, hairy hand,&mdash;which
+might have been mistaken for the Hand of Destiny, though, in truth, it
+was only the showman's,&mdash;pointing its forefinger to various scenes of
+the conflict, while its owner gave historical illustrations. When,
+with much merriment at its abominable deficiency of merit, the
+exhibition was concluded, the German bade little Joe put his head into
+the box. Viewed through the magnifying glasses, the boy's round, rosy
+visage assumed the strangest imaginable aspect of an immense
+Titanic[5] child, the mouth grinning broadly, and the eyes and every
+other feature overflowing with fun at the joke. Suddenly, however,
+that merry face turned pale, and its expression changed to horror, for
+this easily impressed and excitable child had become sensible that the
+eye of Ethan Brand was fixed upon him through the glass.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You make the little man to be afraid. Captain." said the German Jew,
+turning up the dark and strong outline of his visage, from his
+stooping posture, "But look again, and, by chance, I shall cause you
+to see somewhat that is very fine, upon my word!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ethan Brand gazed into the box for an instant, and then starting back,
+looked fixedly at the German. What had he seen? Nothing, apparently;
+for a curious youth, who had peeped in almost at the same moment,
+beheld only a vacant space of canvas.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I remember you now," muttered Ethan Brand to the showman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ah, Captain," whispered the Jew of Nuremburg, with a dark smile, "I
+find it to be a heavy matter in my show-box,&mdash;this Unpardonable Sin!
+By my faith, Captain, it has wearied my shoulders, this long day, to
+carry it over the mountain."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Peace," answered Ethan Brand, sternly, "or get thee into the furnace
+yonder!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Jew's exhibition had scarcely concluded, when a great, elderly
+dog&mdash;who seemed to be his own master, as no person in the company laid
+claim to him&mdash;saw fit to render himself the object of public notice.
+Hitherto, he had shown himself a very quiet, well-disposed old dog,
+going round from one to another, and, by way of being sociable,
+offering his rough head to be patted by any kindly hand that would
+take so much trouble. But now, all of a sudden, this grave and
+venerable quadruped, of his own mere motion, and without the slightest
+suggestion from anybody else, began to run round after his tail,
+which, to heighten the absurdity of the proceeding, was a great deal
+shorter than it should have been. Never was seen such headlong
+eagerness in pursuit of an object that could not possibly be attained;
+never was heard such a tremendous outbreak of growling, snarling,
+barking, and snapping,&mdash;as if one end of the ridiculous brute's body
+were at deadly and most unforgivable enmity with the other. Faster and
+faster, round about went the cur; and faster and still faster fled the
+unapproachable brevity of his tail; and louder and fiercer grew his
+yells of rage and animosity; until, utterly exhausted, and as far from
+the goal as ever, the foolish old dog ceased his performance as
+suddenly as he had begun it. The next moment he was as mild, quiet,
+sensible, and respectable in his deportment, as when he first scraped
+acquaintance with the company.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As may be supposed, the exhibition was greeted with universal
+laughter, clapping of hands, and shouts of encore, to which the canine
+performer responded by wagging all that there was to wag of his tail,
+but appeared totally unable to repeat his very successful effort to
+amuse the spectators.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meanwhile, Ethan Brand had resumed his seat upon the log, and moved,
+it might be, by a perception of some remote analogy between his own
+case and that of this self-pursuing cur, he broke into the awful
+laugh, which, more than any other token, expressed the condition of
+his inward being. From that moment, the merriment of the party was at
+an end; they stood aghast, dreading lest the inauspicious sound should
+be reverberated around the horizon, and that mountain would thunder it
+to mountain, and so the horror be prolonged upon their ears. Then,
+whispering one to another that it was late,&mdash;that the moon was almost
+down,&mdash;that the August night was growing chill,&mdash;they hurried
+homewards, leaving the lime-burner and little Joe to deal as they
+might with their unwelcome guest. Save for these three human beings,
+the open space on the hillside was a solitude, set in a vast gloom of
+forest. Beyond that darksome verge, the firelight glimmered on the
+stately trunks and almost black foliage of pines, intermixed with the
+lighter verdure of sapling oaks, maples, and poplars, while here and
+there lay the gigantic corpses of dead trees, decaying on the
+leaf-strewn soil. And it seemed to little Joe&mdash;a timorous and
+imaginative child&mdash;that the silent forest was holding, its breath,
+until some fearful thing should happen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ethan Brand thrust more wood into the fire, and closed the door of the
+kiln; then looking over his shoulder at the lime-burner and his son,
+he bade, rather than advised, them to retire to rest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"For myself, I cannot sleep." said he, "I have matters that it
+concerns me to meditate upon. I will watch the fire, as I used to do
+in the old time."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And call the Devil out of the furnace to keep you company, I
+suppose," muttered Bartram, who had been making intimate acquaintance
+with the black bottle above mentioned. "But watch, if you like, and
+call as many devils as you like! For my part, I shall be all the
+better for a snooze. Come, Joe!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As the boy followed his father into the hut, he looked back at the
+wayfarer, and the tears came into his eyes, for his tender spirit had
+an intuition of the bleak and terrible loneliness in which this man
+had enveloped himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When they had gone, Ethan Brand sat listening to the crackling of the
+kindled wood, and looking at the little spirits of fire that issued
+through the chinks of the door. These trifles, however, once so
+familiar, had but the slightest hold of his attention, while deep
+within his mind he was reviewing the gradual but marvellous change
+that had been wrought upon him by the search to which he had devoted
+himself. He remembered how the night dew had fallen upon him,&mdash;how the
+dark forest had whispered to him,&mdash;how the stars had gleamed upon
+him,&mdash;a simple and loving man, watching his fire in the years gone by,
+and ever musing as it burned. He remembered with what tenderness, with
+what love and sympathy for mankind, and what pity for human guilt and
+woe, he had first begun to contemplate those ideas which afterwards
+became the inspiration of his life; with what reverence he had then
+looked into the heart of man, viewing it as a temple originally
+divine, and, however desecrated, still to be held sacred by a brother;
+with what awful fear he had deprecated the success of his pursuit, and
+prayed that the Unpardonable Sin might never be revealed to him. Then
+ensued that vast intellectual development, which, in its progress,
+disturbed the counterpoise between his mind and heart. The Idea that
+possessed his life had operated as a means of education; it had gone
+on cultivating his powers to the highest point of which they were
+susceptible; it had raised him from the level of an unlettered laborer
+to stand on a starlit eminence, whither the philosophers of the earth,
+laden with the lore of universities, might vainly strive to clamber
+after him. So much for the intellect! But where was the heart? That,
+indeed, had withered,&mdash;had contracted.&mdash;had hardened,&mdash;had perished!
+It had ceased to partake of the universal throb, He had lost his hold
+of the magnetic chain of humanity. He was no longer a brother-man,
+opening the chambers of the dungeons of our common nature by the key
+of holy sympathy, which gave him a right to share in all its secrets;
+he was now a cold observer, looking on mankind as the subject of his
+experiment, and, at length, converting man and woman to be his
+puppets, and pulling the wires that moved them to such degrees of
+crime as were demanded for his study.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thus Ethan Brand became a fiend. He began to be so from the moment
+that his moral nature had ceased to keep the pace of improvement with
+his intellect. And now, as his highest effort and inevitable
+development,&mdash;as the bright and gorgeous flower, and rich, delicious
+fruit of his life's labor,&mdash;he had produced the Unpardonable Sin!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What more have I to seek? what more to achieve?" said Ethan Brand to
+himself, "My task Is done, and well done!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Starting from the log with a certain alacrity in his gait and
+ascending the hillock of earth that was raised against the stone
+circumference of the lime-kiln, he thus reached the top of the
+structure. It was a space of perhaps ten feet across, from edge to
+edge, presenting a view of the upper surface of the immense mass of
+broken marble with which the kiln was heaped. All these innumerable
+blocks and fragments of marble were red-hot and vividly on fire,
+sending up great spouts of blue flame, which quivered aloft and danced
+madly, as within a magic circle, and sank and rose again, with
+continual and multitudinous activity. As the lonely man bent forward
+over this terrible body of fire, the blasting heat smote up against
+his person with a breath that, it might be supposed, would have
+scorched and shrivelled him up in a moment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ethan Brand stood erect, and raised his arms on high. The blue flames
+played upon his face, and imparted the wild and ghastly light which
+alone could have suited its expression; it was that of a fiend on the
+verge of plunging into his gulf of intensest torment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"O Mother Earth," cried he, "who art no more my Mother, and into whose
+bosom this frame shall never be resolved! O mankind, whose brotherhood
+I have cast off, and trampled thy great heart beneath my feet! O stars
+of heaven, that shone on me of old, as if to light me onward and
+upward!&mdash;farewell all, and forever. Come, deadly element of
+Fire,&mdash;henceforth my familiar frame! Embrace me, as I do thee!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That night the sound of a fearful peal of laughter rolled heavily
+through the sleep of the lime-burner and his little son; dim shapes of
+horror and anguish haunted their dreams, and seemed still present in
+the rude hovel, when they opened their eyes to the daylight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Up, boy, up!" cried the lime-burner, staring about him. "Thank
+Heaven, the night is gone, at last; and rather than pass such another,
+I would watch, my lime-kiln, wide awake, for a twelvemonth. This Ethan
+Brand, with his humbug of an Unpardonable Sin, has done me no such
+mighty favor, in taking my place!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He issued from the hut, followed by little Joe, who kept fast hold, of
+his father's hand. The early sunshine was already pouring its gold
+upon the mountain tops; and though the valleys were still in shadow,
+they smiled cheerfully in the promise of the bright day that was
+hastening onward. The village, completely shut in by hills, which
+swelled away gently about it, looked as if it had rested peacefully in
+the hollow of the great hand of Providence. Every dwelling was
+distinctly visible; the little spires of the two churches pointed
+upwards, and caught a fore-glimmering of brightness from the sun-gilt
+skies upon their gilded weathercocks. The tavern was astir, and the
+figure of the old, smoke-dried stage-agent, cigar in mouth, was seen
+beneath the stoop. Old Graylock was glorified with a golden cloud upon
+his head. Scattered likewise over the breasts of the surrounding
+mountains, there were heaps of hoary mist, in fantastic shapes, some
+of them far down into the valley, others high up towards the summits,
+and still others, of the same family of mist or cloud, hovering in the
+gold radiance of the upper atmosphere. Stepping from one to another of
+the clouds that rested on the hills, and thence to the loftier
+brotherhood that sailed in air, it seemed almost as if a mortal man
+might thus ascend into the heavenly regions. Earth was so mingled with
+sky that it was a day-dream to look at it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To supply that charm of the familiar and homely, which Nature so
+readily adopts into a scene like this, the stage-coach was rattling
+down the mountain road, and the driver sounded his horn, while echo
+caught up the notes, and intertwined them into a rich and varied and
+elaborate harmony, of which the original performer could lay claim to
+little share. The great hills played a concert among themselves, each
+contributing a strain of airy sweetness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Little Joe's face brightened at once.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Dear father," cried he, skipping cheerily to and fro, "that strange
+man is gone, and the sky and the mountains all seem glad of it!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes," growled the lime-burner, with an oath, "but he has let the fire
+go down, and no thanks to him if five hundred bushels of lime are not
+spoiled. If I catch the fellow hereabouts again, I shall feel like
+tossing him into the furnace!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With his long pole in his hand, he ascended to the top of the kiln.
+After a moment's pause, he called to his son.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Come up here, Joe!" said he.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So little Joe ran up the hillock, and stood by his father's side. The
+marble was all burnt into perfect, snow-white lime. But on its
+surface, in the midst of the circle,&mdash;snow-white too, and thoroughly
+converted into lime,&mdash;lay a human skeleton, in the attitude of a
+person who, after long toil, lies down to long repose. Within the
+ribs&mdash;strange to say&mdash;was the shape of a human heart.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Was the fellow's heart made of marble?" cried Bartram, in some
+perplexity at this phenomenon. "At any rate, it is burnt into what
+looks like special good lime; and, taking all the bones together, my
+kiln is half a bushel the richer for him."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So saying, the rude lime-burner lifted his pole, and, letting it fall
+upon the skeleton, the relics of Ethan Brand were crumbled into
+fragments.
+</p>
+
+<h4>NOTES</h4>
+
+<p>
+[1] Written in 1848; published in Holden's <i>Dollar Magazine</i> in 1851.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[2] 182:26 Delectable Mountains. A range of mountains referred to in
+Bunyan's <i>Pilgrim's Progress</i>.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[3] 190:22 ubiquitous. Being present everywhere.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[4] 194:29 diorama. A series of paintings arranged for exhibition. See
+dictionary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[5] 195:30 Titanic. Characteristic of the Titans; therefore large.
+</p>
+
+<h4>COLLATERAL READINGS</h4>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Scarlet Letter</i>, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The House of Seven Gables</i>, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Marble Faun</i>, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Gray Champion</i>, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Wedding Knell</i>, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Great Carbuncle</i>, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Dr. Heidegger's Experiment</i>, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Haunted Mind</i>, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Feathertop</i>, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Rip Van Winkle</i>, Washington Irving.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Elixir of Life</i>, Honoré de Balzac.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Leather Funnel</i>, A. Conan Doyle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Return of Imray's Ghost</i>, Rudyard Kipling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>A Gentle Ghost</i>, Mary Wilkins Freeman.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap10"></a>THE SIRE DE MALETROIT'S DOOR[1]</h2>
+
+<p class="center">
+<i>By Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Denis de Beaulieu was not yet two-and-twenty, but he counted himself a
+grown man, and a very accomplished cavalier into the bargain. Lads
+were early formed in that rough, warfaring epoch; and when one has
+been in a pitched battle and a dozen raids, has killed one's man in an
+honorable fashion, and knows a thing or two of strategy and mankind, a
+certain swagger in the gait is surely to be pardoned. He had put up
+his horse with due care, and supped with due deliberation; and then,
+in a very agreeable frame of mind, went out to pay a visit in the gray
+of the evening. It was not a very wise proceeding on the young man's
+part. He would have done better to remain beside the fire or go
+decently to bed. For the town was full of the troops of Burgundy and
+England under a mixed command; and though Denis was there on
+safe-conduct, his safe-conduct was like to serve him little on a
+chance encounter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was September, 1429; the weather had fallen sharp; a flighty piping
+wind, laden with showers, beat about the township; and the dead leaves
+ran riot along the streets. Here and there a window was already
+lighted up; and the noise of men-at-arms making merry over supper
+within came forth in fits and was swallowed up and carried away by the
+wind. The night fell swiftly: the flag of England, fluttering on the
+spire top, grew ever fainter and fainter against the flying clouds&mdash;a
+black speck like a swallow in the tumultuous, leaden chaos of the sky.
+As the night fell the wind rose, and began to hoot under archways and
+roar amid the tree-tops in the valley below the town.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Denis de Beaulieu walked fast and was soon knocking at his friend's
+door; but though he promised himself to stay only a little while and
+make an early return, his welcome was so pleasant, and he found so
+much to delay him, that it was already long past midnight before he
+said good-by upon the threshold. The wind had fallen again in the
+meanwhile; the night was as black as the grave; not a star, nor a
+glimmer of moonshine, slipped through the canopy of cloud. Denis was
+ill-acquainted with the intricate lanes of Chateau Landon; even by
+daylight he had found some trouble in picking his way; and in this
+absolute darkness he soon lost it altogether. He was certain of one
+thing only&mdash;to keep mounting the hill; for his friend's house lay at
+the lower end, or tail, of Chateau Landon, while the inn was up at the
+head, under the great church spire. With this clew to go upon he
+stumbled and groped forward, now breathing more freely in the open
+places where there was a good slice of sky overhead, now feeling along
+the wall in stifling closes. It is an eerie and mysterious position to
+be thus submerged in opaque blackness in an almost unknown town. The
+silence is terrifying in its possibilities. The touch of cold window
+bars to the exploring hand startles the man like the touch of a toad;
+the inequalities of the pavement shake his heart into his mouth; a
+piece of denser darkness threatens an ambuscade or a chasm in the
+pathway; and where the air is brighter, the houses put on strange and
+bewildering appearances, as if to lead him further from his way. For
+Denis, who had to regain his inn without attracting notice, there was
+real danger as well as mere discomfort in the walk; and he went warily
+and boldly at once, and at every corner paused to make an observation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had been for some time threading a lane so narrow that he could
+touch a wall with either hand, when it began to open out and go
+sharply downward. Plainly this lay no longer in the direction of his
+inn; but the hope of a little more light tempted him forward to
+reconnoitre. The lane ended in a terrace with a bartizan[2] wall,
+which gave an outlook between high houses, as out of an embrasure,
+into the valley lying dark and formless several hundred feet below.
+Denis looked down, and could discern a few tree-tops waving and a
+single speck of brightness where the river ran across a weir. The
+weather was clearing up, and the sky had lightened, so as to show the
+outline of the heavier clouds and the dark margin of the hills. By the
+uncertain glimmer, the house on his left hand should be a place of
+some pretensions; it was surmounted by several pinnacles and
+turret-tops; the round stern of a chapel, with a fringe of flying
+buttresses, projected boldly from the main block; and the door was
+sheltered under a deep porch carved with figures and overhung by two
+long gargoyles[3]. The windows of the chapel gleamed through their
+intricate tracery with a light as of many tapers, and threw out the
+buttresses and the peaked roof in a more intense blackness against the
+sky. It was plainly the hotel of some great family of the
+neighborhood; and as it reminded Denis of a town house of his own at
+Bourges, he stood for some time gazing up at it and mentally gauging
+the skill of the architects and the consideration of the two families.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There seemed to be no issue to the terrace but the lane by which he
+had reached it; he could only retrace his steps, but he had gained
+some notion of his whereabouts, and hoped by this means to hit the
+main thoroughfare and speedily regain the inn. He was reckoning
+without that chapter of accidents which was to make this night
+memorable above all others in his career; for he had not gone back
+above a hundred yards before he saw a light coming to meet him, and
+heard loud voices speaking together in the echoing narrows of the
+lane. It was a party of men-at-arms going the night round with
+torches. Denis assured himself that they had all been making free with
+the wine bowl, and were in no mood to be particular about
+safe-conducts or the niceties of chivalrous war. It, was as like as
+not that they would kill him like a dog and leave him where he fell.
+The situation was inspiriting but nervous. Their own torches would
+conceal him from sight, he reflected; and he hoped that they would
+drown the noise of his footsteps with their own empty voices. If he
+were but fleet and silent, he might evade their notice altogether.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Unfortunately, as he turned to beat a retreat, his foot rolled upon a
+pebble; he fell against the wall with an ejaculation, and his sword
+rang loudly on the stones. Two or three voices demanded who went
+there&mdash;some in French, some in English; but Denis made no reply, and
+ran the faster down the lane. Once upon the terrace, he paused to look
+back. They still kept calling after him, and just then began to double
+the pace in pursuit, with a considerable clank of armor, and great
+tossing of the torchlight to and fro in the narrow jaws of the
+passage.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Denis cast a look around and darted into the porch. There he might
+escape observation, or&mdash;if that were too much to expect&mdash;was in a
+capital posture whether for parley or defence. So thinking, he drew
+his sword and tried to set his back against the door. To his surprise
+it yielded behind his weight; and though he turned in a moment,
+continued to swing back on oiled and noiseless hinges until it stood
+wide open on a black interior. When things fall out opportunely for
+the person concerned, he is not apt to be critical about the how or
+why, his own immediate personal convenience seeming a sufficient
+reason for the strangest oddities and revolutions in our sublunary
+things; and so Denis, without a moment's hesitation, stepped within
+and partly closed the door behind him to conceal his place of refuge.
+Nothing was further from his thoughts than to close it altogether; but
+for some inexplicable reason&mdash;perhaps by a spring or a weight&mdash;the
+ponderous mass of oak whipped itself out of his fingers and clanked
+to, with a formidable rumble and a noise like the falling of an
+automatic bar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The round, at that very moment, debouched[4] upon the terrace and
+proceeded to summon him with shouts and curses. He heard them
+ferreting in the dark corners; the stock of a lance even rattled along
+the outer surface of the door behind which he stood; but these
+gentlemen were in too high a humor to be long delayed, and soon made
+off down a corkscrew pathway which had escaped Denis' observation, and
+passed out of sight and hearing along the battlements of the town.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Denis breathed again. He gave them a few minutes' grace for fear of
+accidents, and then groped about for some means of opening the door
+and slipping forth again. The inner surface was quite smooth, not a
+handle, not a moulding, not a projection of any sort. He got his
+finger nails round the edges and pulled, but the mass was immovable.
+He shook it, it was as firm as a rock, Denis de Beaulieu frowned, and
+gave vent to a little noiseless whistle. What ailed the door? he
+wondered. Why was it open? How came it to shut so easily and so
+effectually after him? There was something obscure and underhand about
+all this, that was little to the young man's fancy. It looked like a
+snare, and yet who could suppose a snare in such a quiet by-street and
+in a house of so prosperous and even noble an exterior? And yet&mdash;snare
+or no snare, intentionally or unintentionally&mdash;here he was, prettily
+trapped; and for the life of him he could see no way out of it again.
+The darkness began to weigh upon him. He gave ear; all was silent
+without, but within and close by he seemed to catch a faint sighing, a
+faint sobbing rustle, a little stealthy creak&mdash;as though many persons
+were at his side, holding themselves quite still, and governing even
+their respiration with the extreme of slyness. The idea went to his
+vitals with a shock, and he faced about suddenly as if to defend his
+life. Then, for the first time, he became aware of a light about the
+level of his eyes and at some distance in the interior of the house&mdash;a
+vertical thread of light, widening toward the bottom, such as might
+escape between two wings of arras over a doorway.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To see anything was a relief to Denis; it was like a piece of solid
+ground to a man laboring in a morass; his mind seized upon it with
+avidity; and he stood staring at it and trying to piece together some
+logical conception of his surroundings. Plainly there was a flight of
+steps ascending from his own level to that of this illuminated
+doorway, and indeed he thought he could make out another thread of
+light, as fine as a needle and as faint as phosphorescence, which
+might very well be reflected along the polished wood of a handrail.
+Since he had begun to suspect that he was not alone, his heart had
+continued to beat with smothering violence, and an intolerable desire
+for action of any sort had possessed itself of his spirit. He was in
+deadly peril, he believed. What could be more natural than to mount
+the staircase, lift the curtain, and confront his difficulty at once?
+At least he would be dealing with something tangible; at least he
+would be no longer in the dark. He stepped slowly forward with
+outstretched hands, until his foot struck the bottom step; then he
+rapidly scaled the stairs, stood for a moment to compose his
+expression, lifted the arras and went in.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He found himself in a large apartment of polished stone. There were
+three doors, one on each of three sides, all similarly curtained with
+tapestry. The fourth side was occupied by two large windows and a
+great stone chimney-piece, carved with the arms of the Malétroits.
+Denis recognized the bearings, and was gratified to find himself in
+such good hands. The room was strongly illuminated; but it contained
+little furniture except a heavy table and a chair or two; the hearth
+was innocent of fire, and the pavement was but sparsely strewn with
+rushes clearly many days old.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On a high chair beside the chimney, and directly facing Denis as he
+entered, sat a little old gentleman in a fur tippet. He sat with his
+legs crossed and his hands folded, and a cup of spiced wine stood by
+his elbow on a bracket on the wall. His countenance had a strong
+masculine cast; not properly human, but such as we see in the bull,
+the goat, or the domestic boar; something equivocal and wheedling,
+something greedy, brutal and dangerous. The upper lip was inordinately
+full, as though swollen by a blow or a toothache; and the smile, the
+peaked eyebrows, and the small, strong eyes were quaintly and almost
+comically evil in expression. Beautiful white hair hung straight all
+round his head, like a saint's, and fell in a single curl upon the
+tippet. His beard and mustache were the pink of venerable sweetness.
+Age, probably in consequence of inordinate precautions, had left no
+mark upon his hands; and the Malétroit hand was famous. It would be
+difficult to imagine anything at once so fleshy and so delicate in
+design; the taper, sensual fingers were like those of one of
+Leonardo's[5] women; the fork of the thumb made a dimpled protuberance
+when closed; the nails were perfectly shaped, and of a dead,
+surprising whiteness. It rendered his aspect tenfold more redoubtable,
+that a man with hands like these should keep them devoutly folded like
+a virgin martyr&mdash;that a man with so intent and startling an expression
+of face should sit patiently on his seat and contemplates people with
+an unwinking stare, like a god, or a god's statue. His quiescence
+seemed ironical and treacherous, it fitted so poorly with his looks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Such was Alain, Sire de Malétroit.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Denis and he looked silently at each other for a second or two.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Pray step in," said the Sire de Malétroit. "I have been expecting you
+all the evening."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had not risen, but he accompanied his words with a smile and a
+slight but courteous inclination of the head. Partly from the smile,
+partly from the strange musical murmur with which the sire prefaced
+his observation, Denis felt a strong shudder of disgust go through his
+marrow. And what with disgust and honest confusion of mind, he could
+scarcely get words together in reply.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I fear," he said, "that this is a double accident. I am not the
+person you suppose me. It seems you were looking for a visit; but for
+my part, nothing was further from my thoughts&mdash;nothing could be more
+contrary to my wishes&mdash;than this intrusion."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, well," replied the old gentleman indulgently, "here you are,
+which is the main point. Seat yourself, my friend, and put yourself
+entirely at your ease. We shall arrange our little affairs presently."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Denis perceived that the matter was still complicated with some
+misconception, and he hastened to continue his explanation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Your door," he began.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"About my door?" asked the other raising his peaked eyebrows. "A
+little piece of ingenuity." And he shrugged his shoulders. "A
+hospitable fancy! By your own account, you were not desirous of making
+any acquaintance. We old people look for such reluctance now and then;
+when it touches our honor, we cast about until we find some way of
+overcoming it. You arrive uninvited, but believe me, very welcome."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You persist in error, sir," said Denis. "There can be no question
+between you and me. I am a stranger in this countryside. My name is
+Denis, damoiseau de Beaulieu. If you see me in your house it is
+only&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"My young friend," interrupted the other, "you will permit me to have
+my own ideas on that subject. They probably differ from yours at the
+present moment," he added with a leer, "but time will show which of us
+is in the right."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Denis was convinced he had to do with a lunatic. He seated himself
+with a shrug, content to wait the upshot; and a pause ensued, during
+which he thought he could distinguish a hurried gabbling as of a
+prayer from behind the arras immediately opposite him. Sometimes there
+seemed to be but one person engaged, sometimes two; and the vehemence
+of the voice, low as it was, seemed to indicate either great haste or
+an agony of spirit. It occurred to him that this piece of tapestry
+covered the entrance to the chapel he had noticed from without.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The old gentleman meanwhile surveyed Denis from head to foot with a
+smile, and from time to time emitted little noises like a bird or a
+mouse, which seemed to indicate a high degree of satisfaction. This
+state of matters became rapidly insupportable; and Denis, to put an
+end to it, remarked politely that the wind had gone down.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The old gentleman fell into a fit of silent laughter, so prolonged and
+violent that he became quite red in the face. Denis got upon his feet
+at once, and put on his hat with a flourish.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Sir," he said, "if you are in your wits, you have affronted me
+grossly. If you are out of them, I flatter myself I can find better
+employment for my brains than to talk with lunatics. My conscience is
+clear; you have made a fool of me from the first moment; you have
+refused to hear my explanations; and now there is no power under God
+will make me stay here any longer; and if I cannot make my way out in
+a more decent fashion, I will hack your door in pieces with my sword."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Sire de Malétroit raised his right hand and wagged it at Denis
+with the fore and little fingers extended.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"My dear nephew," he said, "sit down."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Nephew!" retorted Denis, "you lie in your throat;" and he snapped his
+fingers in his face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Sit down, you rogue!" cried the old gentleman, in a sudden, harsh
+voice like the barking of a dog. "Do you fancy," he went on, "that
+when I had made my little contrivance for the door I had stopped short
+with that? If you prefer to be bound hand and foot till your bones
+ache, rise and try to go away. If you choose to remain a free young
+buck, agreeably conversing with an old gentleman&mdash;why, sit where you
+are in peace, and God be with you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do you mean, I am a prisoner?" demanded Denis.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I state the facts," replied the other. "I would rather leave the
+conclusion to yourself."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Denis sat down again. Externally he managed to keep pretty calm, but
+within, he was now boiling with anger, now chilled with apprehension.
+He no longer felt convinced that he was dealing with a madman. And if
+the old gentleman was sane, what, in God's name, had he to look for?
+What absurd or tragical adventure had befallen him? What countenance
+was he to assume?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While he was thus unpleasantly reflecting, the arras that overhung the
+chapel door was raised, and a tall priest in his robes came forth,
+and, giving a long, keen stare at Denis, said something in an
+undertone to Sire de Malétroit.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"She is in a better frame of spirit?" asked the latter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"She is more resigned, messire," replied the priest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Now the Lord help her, she is hard to please!" sneered the old
+gentleman. "A likely stripling&mdash;not ill-born&mdash;and of her own choosing,
+too? Why, what more would the jade have?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The situation is not usual for a young damsel," said the other, "and
+somewhat trying to her blushes."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"She should have thought of that before she began the dance! It was
+none of my choosing, God knows that; but since she is in it, by our
+Lady, she shall carry it to the end." And then addressing Denis,
+"Monsieur de Beaulieu," he asked, "may I present you to my niece? She
+has been waiting your arrival, I may say, with even greater impatience
+than myself."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Denis had resigned himself with a good grace&mdash;all he desired was to
+know the worst of it as speedily as possible; so he rose at once, and
+bowed in acquiescence. The Sire de Malétroit followed his example and
+limped, with the assistance of the chaplain's arm, toward the chapel
+door. The priest pulled aside the arras, and all three entered. The
+building had considerable architectural pretensions. A light groining
+sprang from six stout columns, and hung down in two rich pendants from
+the centre of the vault. The place terminated behind the altar in a
+round end, embossed and honeycombed with a superfluity of ornament in
+relief, and pierced by many little windows shaped like stars,
+trefoils, or wheels. These windows were imperfectly is glazed, so that
+the night air circulated freely in the chapel. The tapers, of which
+there must have been half a hundred burning on the altar, were
+unmercifully blown about; and the light went through many different
+phases of brilliancy and semi-eclipse. On the steps in front of the
+altar knelt a young girl richly attired as a bride. A chill settled
+over Denis as he observed her costume; he fought with desperate energy
+against the conclusion that was being thrust upon his mind; it could
+not&mdash;it should not&mdash;be as he feared.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Blanche," said the sire, in his most flute-like tones, "I have
+brought a friend to see you, my little girl; turn round and give him
+your pretty hand. It is good to be devout; but it is necessary to be
+polite, my niece."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The girl rose to her feet and turned toward the newcomers. She moved
+all of a piece; and shame and exhaustion were expressed in every line
+of her fresh young body; and she held her head down and kept her eyes
+upon the pavement, as she came slowly forward. In the course of her
+advance her eyes fell upon Denis de Beaulieu's feet&mdash;feet of which he
+was justly vain, be it remarked, and wore in the most elegant
+accoutrement even while travelling. She paused&mdash;started, as if his
+yellow boots had conveyed some shocking meaning&mdash;and glanced, suddenly
+up into the wearer's countenance. Their eyes met; shame gave place to
+horror and terror in her looks; the blood left her lips, with a
+piercing scream she covered her face with her hands and sank upon, the
+chapel floor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That is not the man!" she cried. "My uncle, that is not the man!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Sire de Malétroit chirped agreeably. "Of course not," he said; "I
+expected as much. It was so unfortunate you could not remember his
+name."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Indeed," she cried, "indeed, I have never seen this person till this
+moment&mdash;I have never so much as set eyes upon him&mdash;I never wish to see
+him again. Sir," she said, turning to Denis, "if you are a gentleman,
+you will hear me out. Have I ever seen you&mdash;have you ever seen
+me&mdash;before this accursed hour?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"To speak for myself, I have never had that pleasure," answered the
+young man. "This is the first time, messire, that I have met with your
+engaging niece."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The old gentleman shrugged his shoulders.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am distressed to hear it," he said. "But it is never too late to
+begin. I had little more acquaintance with my own late lady ere I
+married her; which proves," he added, with a grimace, "that these
+impromptu marriages may often produce an excellent understanding in
+the long run. As the bridegroom is to have a voice in the matter, I
+will give him two hours to make up for lost time before we proceed
+with the ceremony." And he turned toward the door, followed by the
+clergyman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The girl was on her feet in a moment. "My uncle, you cannot be in
+earnest," she said. "I declare before God I will stab myself rather
+than be forced on that young man. The heart rises at it; God forbids
+such marriages; you dishonor your white hair. Oh, my uncle, pity me!
+There is not a woman in all the world but would prefer death to such a
+nuptial. Is it possible," she added, faltering&mdash;"is it possible that
+you do not believe me&mdash;that you still think this"&mdash;and she pointed at
+Denis with a tremor of anger and contempt&mdash;"that you still think
+<i>this</i> to be the man?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Frankly," said the old gentleman, pausing on the threshold, "I do.
+But let me explain to you once for all, Blanche de Malétroit, my way
+of thinking about this affair. When you took it into your head to
+dishonor my family and the name that I have borne, in peace and war,
+for more than threescore years, you forfeited, not only the right to
+question my designs, but that of looking me in the face. If your
+father had been alive, he would have spat on you and turned you out of
+doors. His was the hand of iron. You may bless your God you have only
+to deal with the hand of velvet, mademoiselle. It was my duty to get
+you married without delay. Out of pure goodwill, I have tried to find
+your own gallant for you. And I believe I have succeeded. But before
+God and all the holy angels, Blanche de Malétroit, if I have not, I
+care not one jack-straw. So let me recommend you to be polite to our
+young friend; for, upon my word, your next groom may be less
+appetizing."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And with that he went out, with the chaplain at his heels; and the
+arras fell behind the pair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The girl turned upon Denis with flashing eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And what, sir," she demanded, "may be the meaning of all this?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"God knows," returned Denis, gloomily, "I am a prisoner in this house,
+which seems full of mad people. More I know not; and nothing do I
+understand."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And pray how came you here?" she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He told her as briefly as he could. "For the rest," he added, "perhaps
+you will follow my example, and tell me the answer to all these
+riddles, and what, in God's name, is like to be the end of it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She stood silent for a little, and lie could see her lips tremble and
+her tearless eyes burn with a feverish lustre. Then she pressed her
+forehead in both hands.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Alas, how my head aches!" she said, wearily&mdash;"to say nothing of my
+poor heart! But it is due to you to know my story, unmaidenly as it
+must seem. I am called Blanche de Malétroit; I have been without
+father or mother for&mdash;oh! for as long as I can recollect, and indeed I
+have been most unhappy all my life. Three months ago a young captain
+began to stand near me every day in church. I could see that I pleased
+him; I am much to blame, but I was so glad that any one should love
+me; and when he passed me a letter, I took it home with me and read it
+with great pleasure. Since that time he has written many. He was so
+anxious to speak with me, poor fellow! and kept asking me to leave the
+door open some evening that we might have two words upon the stair.
+For he knew how much my uncle trusted me." She gave something like a
+sob at that, and it was a moment before she could go on. "My uncle is
+a hard man, but he is very shrewd," she said, at last. "He has
+performed many feats in war, and was a great person at court, and much
+trusted by Queen Isabeau in old days. How he came to suspect me I
+cannot tell; but it is hard to keep anything from his knowledge; and
+this morning, as we came from mass, he took my hand into his, forced
+it open, and read my little billet, walking by my side all the while.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"When he finished, he gave it back to me with great politeness. It
+contained another request to have the door left open; and this has
+been the ruin of us all. My uncle kept me strictly in my room until
+evening, and then ordered me to dress myself as you see me&mdash;a hard
+mockery for a young girl, do you not think so? I suppose, when he
+could not prevail with me to tell him the young captain's name, he
+must have laid a trap for him; into which, alas! you have fallen in
+the anger of God. I looked for much confusion; for how could I tell
+whether he was willing to take me for his wife on these sharp terms?
+He might have been trifling with me from the first; or I might have
+made myself too cheap in his eyes. But truly I had not looked for such
+a shameful punishment as this? I could not think that God would let a
+girl be so disgraced before a young man. And now I tell you all; and I
+can scarcely hope that you will not despise me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Denis made her a respectful inclination.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Madam," he said, "you have honored me by your confidence. It remains
+for me to prove that I am not unworthy of the honor. Is Messire de
+Malétroit at hand?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I believe he is writing in the <i>salle[6]</i> without," she answered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"May I lead you thither, madam?" asked Denis, offering his hand with
+his most courtly bearing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She accepted it; and the pair passed out of the chapel, Blanche in a
+very drooping and shamefast condition, but Denis strutting and
+raffling in the consciousness of a mission, and the boyish certainty
+of accomplishing it with honor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Sire Malétroit rose to meet them with an ironical obeisance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Sir," said Denis, with the grandest possible air, "I believe I am to
+have some say in the matter of this marriage; and let me tell you at
+once, I will be no party to forcing the inclination of this young
+lady. Had it been freely offered to me, I should have been proud to
+accept her hand, for I perceive she is as good as she is beautiful;
+but as things are, I have now the honor, messire, of refusing."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Blanche looked at him with gratitude in her eyes; but the old
+gentleman only smiled and smiled, until his smile grew positively
+sickening to Denis.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am afraid," he said, "Monsieur de Beaulieu, that you do not
+perfectly understand the choice I have offered you. Follow me, I
+beseech you, to this window." And he led the way to one of the large
+windows which stood open on the night. "You observe," he went on,
+"there is an iron ring in the upper masonry, and reeved through that,
+a very efficacious rope. Now, mark my words: if you should find your
+disinclination to my niece's person insurmountable, I shall have you
+hanged out of this window before sunrise. I shall only proceed to such
+an extremity with the greatest regret, you may believe me. For it is
+not at all your death that I desire, but my niece's establishment in
+life. At the same time, it must come to that if you prove obstinate.
+Your family, Monsieur de Beaulieu, is very well in its way; but if you
+sprung from Charlemagne[7], you should not refuse the hand of a
+Malétroit with impunity&mdash;not if she had been as common as the Paris
+road&mdash;not if she was as hideous as the gargoyle over my door. Neither
+my niece nor you, nor my own private feelings, move me at all in this
+matter. The honor of my house has been compromised; I believe you to
+be the guilty person, at least you are now in the secret; and you can
+hardly wonder if I request you to wipe out the stain. If you will not,
+your blood be on your own head! It will be no great satisfaction to me
+to have your interesting relics kicking their heels in the breeze
+below my windows, but half a loaf is better than no bread, and if I
+cannot cure the dishonor, I shall at least stop the scandal."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a pause.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I believe there are other ways of settling such imbroglios among
+gentlemen," said Denis. "You wear a sword, and I hear you have used it
+with distinction."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Sire de Malétroit made a signal to the chaplain, who crossed the
+room with long silent strides and raised the arras over the third of
+the three doors. It was only a moment before he let it fall again; but
+Denis had time to see a dusky passage full of armed men.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"When I was a little younger, I should have been delighted to honor
+you, Monsieur de Beaulieu," said Sire Alain: "but I am now too old.
+Faithful retainers are the sinews of age, and I must employ the
+strength I have. This is one of the hardest things to swallow as a man
+grows up in years; but with a little patience, even this becomes
+habitual. You and the lady seem to prefer the <i>salle</i> for what remains
+of your two hours; and as I have no desire to cross your preference, I
+shall resign it to your use with all the pleasure in the world. No
+haste!" he added, holding up his hand, as he saw a dangerous look come
+into Denis de Beaulieu's face. "If your mind revolt against hanging,
+it will be time enough two hours hence to throw yourself out of the
+window or upon the pikes of my retainers. Two hours of life are always
+two hours. A great many things may turn up in even as little a while
+as that. And, besides. If I understand her appearance, my niece has
+something to say to you. You will not disfigure your last hours by a
+want of politeness to a lady?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Denis looked at Blanche, and she made him an imploring gesture.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is likely that the old gentleman was hugely pleased at this symptom
+of an understanding; for he smiled on both, and added sweetly: "If you
+will give me your word of honor, Monsieur de Beaulieu, to await my
+return at the end of the two hours before attempting anything
+desperate, I shall withdraw my retainers, and let you speak in greater
+privacy with mademoiselle."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Denis again glanced at the girl, who seemed to beseech him to agree.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I give you my word of honor," he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Messire de Malétroit bowed, and proceeded to limp about the apartment,
+clearing his throat the while with that odd musical chirp which had
+already grown so irritating in the ears of Denis de Bealieu. He first
+possessed himself of some papers which lay upon the table; then he
+went to the mouth of the passage and appeared to give an order to the
+men behind the arras; and lastly he hobbled out through the door by
+which Denis had come in, turning upon the threshold to address a last
+smiling bow to the young couple, and followed by the chaplain with a
+hand lamp.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No sooner were they alone than Blanche advanced toward Denis with her
+hands extended. Her face was flushed and excited, and her eyes shone
+with tears.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You shall not die!" she cried, "you shall marry me after all."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You seem to think, madam," replied Denis, "that I stand much in fear
+of death."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, no, no," she said, "I see you are no poltroon[8]. It is for my
+own sake&mdash;I could not bear to have you slain for such a scruple."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am afraid," returned Denis, "that you underrate the difficulty,
+madam. What you may be too generous to refuse, I may be too proud to
+accept. In a moment of noble feeling toward me, you forget what you
+perhaps owe to others."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had the decency to keep his eyes on the floor as he said this, and
+after he had finished, so as not to spy upon her confusion. She stood
+silent for a moment, then walked suddenly away, and falling on her
+uncle's chair, fairly burst out sobbing. Denis was in the acme of
+embarrassment. He looked round, as if to seek for inspiration, and,
+seeing a stool, plumped down upon it for something to do. There he
+sat, playing with the guard of his rapier, and wishing himself dead a
+thousand times over, and buried in the nastiest kitchen-heap in
+France. His eyes wandered round the apartment, but found nothing to
+arrest them. There were such wide spaces between the furniture, the
+light fell so badly and cheerlessly over all, the dark outside air
+looked in so coldly through the windows, that he thought he had never
+seen a church so vast, nor a tomb so melancholy. The regular sobs of
+Blanche de Malétroit measured out the time like the ticking of a
+clock. He read the device upon the shield over and over again, until
+his eyes became obscured; he stared into shadowy corners until he
+imagined they were swarming with horrible animals; and every now and
+again he awoke with a start, to remember that his last two hours were
+running, and death was on the march.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Oftener and oftener, as the time went on, did his glance settle on the
+girl herself. Her face was bowed forward and covered with her hands,
+and she was shaken at intervals by the convulsive hiccough of grief.
+Even thus she was not an unpleasant object to dwell upon, so plump and
+yet so fine, with a warm brown skin, and the most beautiful hair,
+Denis thought, in the whole world of womankind. Her hands were like
+her uncle's: but they were more in place at the end of her young arms,
+and looked infinitely soft and caressing. He remembered how her blue
+eyes had shone upon him, full of anger, pity, and innocence. And the
+more he dwelt on her perfections, the uglier death looked, and the
+more deeply was he smitten with penitence at her continued tears. Now
+he felt that no man could have the courage to leave a world which
+contained so beautiful a creature; and now he would have given forty
+minutes of his last hour to have unsaid his cruel speech.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Suddenly a hoarse and ragged peal of cockcrow rose to their ears from
+the dark valley below the windows. And this shattering noise in the
+silence of all around was like a light in a dark place, and shook them
+both out of their reflections.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Alas, can I do nothing to help you?" she said, looking up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Madam," replied Denis, with a fine irrelevancy, "if I have said
+anything to wound you, believe me, it was for your own sake and not
+for mine."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She thanked him with a tearful look.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I feel your position cruelly," he went on. "The world has been
+bitter, hard on you. Your uncle is a disgrace to mankind. Believe me,
+madam, there is no young gentleman in all France but would be glad of
+my opportunity, to die in doing you a momentary service."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I know already that you can be very brave and generous," she
+answered. "What I <i>want</i> to know is whether I can serve you&mdash;now or
+afterward," she added, with a quaver.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Most certainly," he answered, with a smile. "Let me sit beside you as
+if I were a friend, instead of a foolish intruder; try to forget how
+awkwardly we are placed to one another; make my last moments go
+pleasantly; and you will do me the chief service possible."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You are very gallant," she added, with a yet deeper sadness&mdash;"very
+gallant&mdash;and it somehow pains me. But draw nearer, if you please; and
+if you find anything to say to me, you will at least make certain of a
+very friendly listener. Ah! Monsieur de Beaulieu," she broke
+forth&mdash;"ah! Monsieur de Beaulieu, how can I look you in the face?" And
+she fell to weeping again with a renewed effusion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Madam," said Denis, taking her hand in both of his, "reflect on the
+little time I have before me, and the great bitterness into which I am
+cast by the sight of your distress. Spare me, in my last moments, the
+spectacle of what I cannot cure even with the sacrifice of my life."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am very selfish," answered Blanche. "I will be braver, Monsieur de
+Beaulieu, for your sake. But think if I can do you no kindness in the
+future&mdash;if you have no friends to whom I could carry your adieux.
+Charge me as heavily as you can; every burden will lighten, by so
+little, the invaluable gratitude I owe you. Put it in my power to do
+something more for you than weep."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"My mother is married again, and has a young family to care for. My
+brother Guichard will inherit my fiefs; and if I am not in error, that
+will content him amply for my death. Life is a little vapor that
+passeth away, as we are told by those in holy orders. When a man is in
+a fair way and sees all life open in front of him, he seems to himself
+to make a very important figure in the world. His horse whinnies to
+him; the trumpets blow and the girls look out of window as he rides
+into town before his company; he receives many assurances of trust and
+regard&mdash;sometimes by express in a letter&mdash;sometimes face to face, with
+persons of great consequence falling on his neck. It is not wonderful
+if his head is turned for a time. But once he is dead, were he as
+brave as Hercules[9] or as wise as Solomon[10], he is soon forgotten.
+It is not ten years since my father fell, with many other knights
+around him, in a very fierce encounter, and I do not think that any
+one of them, nor so much as the name of the fight, is now remembered.
+No, no, madam, the nearer you come to it, you see that death is a dark
+and dusty corner, where a man gets into his tomb and has the door shut
+after him till the judgment day. I have few friends just now, and once
+I am dead I shall have none."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ah, Monsieur de Beaulieu!" she exclaimed, "you forget Blanche de
+Malétroit."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You have a sweet nature, madam, and you are pleased to estimate a
+little service far beyond its worth."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is not that," she answered. "You mistake me if you think I am
+easily touched by my own concerns. I say so because you are the
+noblest man I have ever met; because I recognize in you a spirit that
+would have made even a common person famous in the land."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And yet here I die in a mousetrap&mdash;with no more noise about it than
+my own squeaking," answered he.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A look of pain crossed her face and she was silent for a little while.
+Then a light came into her eyes, and with a smile she spoke again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I cannot have my champion think meanly of himself. Any one who gives
+his life for another will be met in paradise by all the heralds and
+angels of the Lord God. And you have no such cause to hang your head.
+For&mdash;Pray, do you think me beautiful?" she asked, with a deep flush.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Indeed, madam, I do," he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am glad of that," she answered heartily. "Do you think there are
+many men in France who have been asked in marriage by a beautiful
+maiden&mdash;with her own lips&mdash;and who have refused her to her face? I
+know you men would half despise such a triumph; but believe me, we
+women know more of what is precious in love. There is nothing that
+should set a person higher in his own esteem; and we women would prize
+nothing more dearly."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You are very good," he said; "but you cannot make me forget that I
+was asked in pity and not for love."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am not so sure of that," she replied, holding down her head. "Hear
+me to an end, Monsieur de Beaulieu. I know how you must despise me; I
+feel you are right to do so; I am too poor a creature to occupy one
+thought of your mind, although, alas! you must die for me this
+morning. But when I asked you to marry me, indeed, and indeed, it was
+because I respected and admired you, and loved you with my whole soul,
+from the very moment that you took my part against my uncle. If you
+had seen yourself, and how noble you looked, you would pity rather
+than despise me. And now," she went on, hurriedly checking him with
+her hand, "although I have laid aside all reserve and told you so
+much, remember that I know your sentiments toward me already. I would
+not, believe me, being nobly born, weary you with importunities into
+consent. I too have a pride of my own: and I declare before the holy
+mother of God, if you should now go back from your word already given,
+I would no more marry you than I would marry my uncle's groom."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Denis smiled a little bitterly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is a small love," he said, "that shies at a little pride."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She made no answer, although she probably had her own thoughts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Come hither to the window," he said with a sigh. "Here is the dawn."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And indeed the dawn was already beginning. The hollow of the sky was
+full of essential daylight, colorless and clean; and the valley
+underneath was flooded with a gray reflection. A few thin vapors clung
+in the coves of the forest or lay along the winding course of the
+river. The scene disengaged a surprising effect of stillness, which
+was hardly interrupted when the cocks began once more to crow among
+the steadings[11]. Perhaps the same fellow who had made so horrid a
+clangor in the darkness not half an hour before, now sent up the
+merriest cheer to greet the coming day. A little wind went bustling
+and eddying among the tree-tops underneath the windows. And still the
+daylight kept flooding insensibly out of the east, which was soon to
+grow incandescent and cast up that red-hot cannon-ball, the rising
+sun.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Denis looked out over all this with a bit of a shiver. He had taken
+her hand, and retained it in his almost unconsciously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Has the day begun already?" she said; and then illogically enough:
+"the night has been so long! Alas! what shall we say to my uncle when
+he returns?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What you will," said Denis, and he pressed her fingers in his.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was silent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Blanche," he said, with a swift, uncertain, passionate utterance,
+"you have seen whether I fear death. You must know well enough that I
+would as gladly leap out of that window into the empty air as to lay a
+finger on you without your free and full consent. But if you care for
+me at all do not let me lose my life in a misapprehension; for I love
+you better than the whole world; and though I will die for you
+blithely, it would be like all the joys of Paradise to live on and
+spend my life in your service."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As he stopped speaking, a bell began to ring loudly in the interior of
+the house; and a clatter of armor in the corridor showed that the
+retainers were returning to their post, and the two hours were at an
+end.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"After all that you have heard?" she whispered, leaning toward him
+with her lips and eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I have heard nothing," he replied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The captain's name was Florimond de Champdivers," she said in his
+ear.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I did not hear it," he answered, taking her supple body in his arms,
+and covered her wet face with kisses.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A melodious chirping was audible behind, followed by a beautiful
+chuckle, and the voice of Messire de Malétroit wished his new nephew a
+good morning.
+</p>
+
+<h4>NOTES</h4>
+
+<p>
+[1] Published in 1878. Acknowledgment is due to the Charles Scribner's
+Sons Company, Publishers, for the use of the text of their edition of
+Stevenson's works.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[2] 207:18 bartizan. A small overhanging turret with loop-holes and
+embrasures projecting from the parapet of a medieval building.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[3] 208:1 gargoyles. Mouths of spouts, in antic shapes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[4] 209:30 debouched. Passed out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[5] 212:29 Leonardo. (1452-1519.) A famous Italian painter, architect,
+sculptor, scientist, engineer, mechanician, and musician.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[6] 222:7 salle. French word for hall or room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[7] 223:13 Charlemagne. (742 or 747-814.) A great king of the Franks
+and emperor of the Romans.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[8] 225:25 poltroon. A coward, a dastard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[9] 229:12 Hercules. A mighty hero in Greek and Roman mythology.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[10] 229:13 Solomon. Son of David. King of Israel, 993-953 B.C.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[11] 231: 26 steadings. A farmstead&mdash;barns, stables, cattle-sheds,
+etc.
+</p>
+
+<h4>BIOGRAPHY</h4>
+
+<p>
+Robert Louis Stevenson was born November 13, 1850, in Edinburgh. He
+was an only child. On his mother's side he came from a line of Scotch
+philosophers and ministers; on his father's, from a line of active
+workers and scientists. His grandfather, Robert Stevenson, and his
+father, Thomas Stevenson, gained world-wide reputations in
+engineering.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Robert inherited from his mother throat and lung troubles. His health
+was very poor from his birth and his life was preserved only by the
+careful watchfulness of his mother and his devoted nurse, Alison
+Cunningham. As a child he was very lovable and possessed a very active
+imagination.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He went to school in Edinburgh between the years 1858-1867. He first
+attended a preparatory school, then the Edinburgh academy. He spent
+considerable time at his maternal grandfather's home. It was there
+that he first tasted the delights of romance. In his school work he
+was none too studious, but all his teachers were charmed by his
+pleasing manner and general intelligence. Though an idler in other
+things, he worked constantly on the art of writing. Throughout his
+study in Edinburgh University and his unsuccessful efforts in
+engineering and the practice of law, literature became more and more a
+passion with him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The period between 1875 and 1879 was one of improved health and
+considerable literary activity. During this time he published <i>A
+Lodging for the Night, Will o' the Mill, The New Arabian Nights</i>, and
+an <i>Inland Voyage</i>.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While in southern Europe he met and fell in love with Mrs. Osbourne.
+So after she returned to her home in California, Stevenson received
+the news that she was seriously ill. He immediately sailed for San
+Francisco, travelling as a steerage passenger because of lack of funds
+and a desire for literary material. Out of this experience grew a
+number of stories and essays. Exposure on the voyage affected his
+health and caused a very dangerous illness. After his recovery he
+married Mrs. Osbourne and returned to England with his wife and
+stepson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For a few years his work was more or less spasmodic on account of his
+bitter struggle with poor health, in 1883 he achieved success by the
+publication of <i>Treasure Island</i>. <i>Markheim</i> appeared in 1884.
+<i>Kidnapped</i> and <i>Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde</i> were published in 1886.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After the death of his father in 1887, Stevenson and his family sailed
+to America, where they settled in the Adirondacks for the winter of
+1888. Here his health was good and he wrote a number of essays for
+<i>Scribner's Magazine</i>. In the spring of the same year they started on
+a cruise of the south seas. They visited many of the southern islands
+and settled at Vailima, Samoa. Stevenson was interested in the Samoaas
+and took an active part in their political affairs. The tropical
+climate agreed with him and his creative power was renewed. He wrote a
+number of short stories, a series of letters on the South Seas, and
+the novel <i>David Balfour</i>.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Political reverses and failing strength took away for a time his power
+to write. He was again stimulated, however, by the love and
+appreciation of his Samoan followers, and started on what promised to
+be his period of highest achievement. This promise was soon blighted
+by his untimely death from a stroke of apoplexy, December 13, 1894. He
+was buried in Samoa.
+</p>
+
+<h4>BIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES</h4>
+
+<p>
+<i>Life of Robert Louis Stevenson</i>, 2 vols., Graham Balfour.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Robert Louis Stevenson</i>, Isobel Strong.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Memories and Portraits</i>, Robert Louis Stevenson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Friends on the Shelf</i>, Bradford Torrey.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Personal Recollections," Edmund Gosse, <i>Century Magazine</i>, 50:447.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Character Sketch," <i>Atlantic Monthly</i>, 89:89-99.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The Real Stevenson," <i>Atlantic Monthly</i>, 85:702-5.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>A Bibliography of the Works of Robert Louis Stevenson</i>, W.F.
+Prideaux.
+</p>
+
+<h4>CRITICISMS</h4>
+
+<p>
+Fundamentally Stevenson's style is marked by a conscious aim to
+entertain. His engaging humor, free of all affectation,
+sentimentality, and exaggeration, is spontaneous and natural. His most
+original writing is <i>The Child's Garden of Verses</i>. His touch is light
+and his thought is clear and lucid. <i>Across the Plains</i> is written in
+his most straightforward and natural style.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Stevenson was a careful writer, doing with great skill any established
+piece of art. He practised diligently, and gained, as he himself
+states, his high rank by constantly drilling himself in the art of
+writing. This imitation of form to the point of perfection, rather
+than an expression of a great and moving idea, gives an air of
+insincerity to some of Stevenson's works. Yet, although seemingly
+artificial, he never chose words for the sake of mere sounds, but for
+their accuracy in truth and fitness. He was as an ephemeral shadow
+with an optimistic and real spirit. He infused an intimacy and
+spirituality into his writings that prove delightful to all his
+readers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The subject of Markheim, a man failing through weakness, was a
+favorite topic for Stevenson. Markheim is almost an ideal specimen of
+the impressionistic short-story. It has a plot in which Hawthorne
+might justly have revelled, a treatment as intellectual as that of
+Poe, descriptions not unlike those of Flaubert's, and a moral ending
+true to the Puritanic type. The movement of the story is swift and
+possesses perfect unity. The surprise at the end comes as a shock
+although the author has consistently and logically constructed his
+plot.
+</p>
+
+<h4>GENERAL REFERENCES</h4>
+
+<p>
+<i>Emerson and Other Essays</i>, John Jay Chapman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Robert Louis Stevenson</i>, L. Cope Cornford.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Modern Novelists</i>, William Lyon Phelps.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Makers of English Fiction</i>, W.J. Dawson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Art of Stevenson," <i>North American Review</i>, 171: 348-358.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Criticism," <i>Dial</i>, 30:345. May 18, 1901.
+</p>
+
+<h4>COLLATERAL READINGS</h4>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Suicide Club (New Arabian Nights)</i>, Robert Louis Stevenson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Story of the Physician and the Saratoga Trunk</i>, Robert Louis
+Stevenson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Adventure of the Hansom Cab</i>, Robert Louis Stevenson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Rajah's Diamond</i>, Robert Louis Stevenson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Story of the House with the Green Blinds</i>, Robert Louis
+Stevenson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Adventure of Prince Florizel and the Detective</i>, Robert Louis
+Stevenson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>A Lodging for the Night</i>, Robert Louis Stevenson,
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Providence and the Guitar</i>, Robert Louis Stevenson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>In the Valley</i>, Robert Louis Stevenson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>With the Children of Israel</i>, Robert Louis Stevenson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Lotus and the Cockleburrs</i>, "O. Henry."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Two Bites at a Cherry</i>, Thomas Bailey Aldrich.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Notary of Perigueux</i>, Henry W. Longfellow.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap11"></a>MARKHEIM[1]</h2>
+
+<p class="center">
+<i>By Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes," said the dealer, "our windfalls[2] are of various kinds. Some
+customers are ignorant, and then I touch a dividend[3] on my superior
+knowledge. Some are dishonest," and here he held up the candle, so
+that the light fell strongly on his visitor, "and in that case," he
+continued, "I profit by my virtue."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Markheim had but just entered from the daylight streets, and his eyes
+had not yet grown familiar with the mingled shine and darkness in the
+shop. At these pointed words, and before the near presence of the
+flame, he blinked painfully and looked aside.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The dealer chuckled. "You come to me on Christmas Day," he resumed,
+"when you know that I am alone in my house, put up my shutters, and
+make a point of refusing business. Well, you will have to pay for
+that; you will have to pay for my loss of time, when I should be
+balancing my books; you will have to pay, besides; for a kind of
+manner that I remark in you to-day very strongly. I am the essence of
+discretion, and ask no awkward questions; but when a customer cannot
+look me in the eye, he has to pay for it." The dealer once more
+chuckled; and then, changing to his usual business voice, though still
+with a note of irony, "You can give, as usual, a clear account of how
+you came into the possession of the object?" he continued. "Still your
+uncle's cabinet? A remarkable collector, sir!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And the little pale, round-shouldered dealer stood almost on tiptoe,
+looking over the top of his gold spectacles, and nodding his head with
+every mark of disbelief. Markheim returned his gaze with one of
+infinite pity, and a touch of horror.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"This time," said he, "you are in error. I have not come to sell, but
+to buy. I have no curios to dispose of; my uncle's cabinet is bare to
+the wainscot: even were it still intact, I have done well on the Stock
+Exchange, and should more likely add to it than otherwise, and my
+errand to-day is simplicity itself. I seek, a Christmas present for a
+lady," he continued, waxing more fluent as he struck into the speech
+he had prepared; "and certainly I owe you every excuse for thus
+disturbing you upon so small a matter. But the thing was neglected
+yesterday; I must produce my little compliment at dinner; and, as you
+very well know, a rich marriage is not a thing to be neglected."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There followed a pause, during which the dealer seemed to weigh this
+statement incredulously. The ticking of many clocks among the curious
+lumber of the shop, and the faint rushing of the cabs in a near
+thoroughfare, filled up the interval of silence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, sir," said the dealer, "be it so. You are an old customer after
+all; and if, as you say, you have the chance of a good marriage, far
+be it from me to be an obstacle. Here is a nice thing for a lady,
+now," he went on, "this hand glass&mdash;fifteenth century, warranted;
+comes from a good collection, too; but I reserve the name, in the
+interests of my customer, who was just like yourself, my dear sir,
+the nephew and sole heir of a remarkable collector."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The dealer, while he thus ran on in his dry and biting voice, had
+stooped to take the object from its place; and, as he had done so,
+a shock had passed through Markheim, a start both of hand and foot,
+a sudden leap of many tumultuous passions to the face. It passed as
+swiftly as it came, and left no trace beyond a certain trembling of
+the hand that now received the glass.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A glass," he said hoarsely, and then paused, and repeated it more
+clearly. "A glass? For Christmas? Surely not."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And why not?" cried the dealer. "Why not a glass?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Markheim was looking upon him with an indefinable expression. "You ask
+me why not?" he said. "Why, look here&mdash;look in it&mdash;look at yourself!
+Do you like to see it? No! nor I&mdash;nor any man."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The little man had jumped back when Markheim had so suddenly
+confronted him with the mirror; but now, perceiving there was nothing
+worse on hand, he chuckled. "Your future lady, sir, must be pretty
+hard favored," said he.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I ask you," said Markheim, "for a Christmas present, and you give me
+this&mdash;this damned reminder of years and sins and follies&mdash;this
+hand-conscience! Did you mean it? Had you a thought in your mind? Tell
+me. It will be better for you if you do. Come, tell me about yourself,
+I hazard a guess now, that you are in secret a very charitable man?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The dealer looked closely at his companion. It was very odd, Markheim
+did not appear to be laughing; there was something in his face like an
+eager sparkle of hope, but nothing of mirth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What are you driving at?" the dealer asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not charitable?" returned the other, gloomily. "Not charitable; not
+pious; not scrupulous; unloving; unbeloved; a hand to get money, a
+safe to keep it. Is that all? Dear God, man, is that all?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I will tell you what it is," began the dealer, with some sharpness,
+and then broke off again into a chuckle. "But I see this is a love
+match of yours, and you have been drinking the lady's health."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ah!" cried Markheim, with a strange curiosity, "Ah, have you been in
+love? Tell me about that."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I!" cried the dealer. "I in love! I never had the time, nor have I
+the time to-day for all this nonsense. Will you take the glass?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Where is the hurry?" returned Markheim. "It is very pleasant to stand
+here talking; and life is so short and insecure that I would not hurry
+away from any pleasure&mdash;no, not even from so mild a one as this. We
+should, rather cling, cling to what little we can get, like a man at a
+cliff's edge. Every second is a cliff, if you think upon it&mdash;a cliff a
+mile high&mdash;high enough, if we fall, to dash us out of every feature of
+humanity. Hence it is best to talk pleasantly. Let us talk of each
+other; why should we wear this mask? Let us be confidential. Who
+knows, we might become friends?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I have just one word to say to you," said the dealer. "Either make
+your purchase, or walk out of my shop."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"True, true," said Markheim. "Enough fooling. To business. Show me
+something else."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The dealer stooped once more, this time to replace the glass upon the
+shelf, his thin blond hair falling over his eyes as he did so.
+Markheim moved a little nearer, with one hand in the pocket of his
+greatcoat; he drew himself up and filled his lungs; at the same time
+many different emotions were depicted together on his face&mdash;terror,
+horror, and resolve, fascination, and a physical repulsion; and
+through a haggard lift of his upper lip, his teeth looked out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"This, perhaps, may suit," observed the dealer; and then, as he began
+to re-arise, Markheim bounded from behind upon his victim. The long,
+skewer-like[4] dagger flashed and fell. The dealer straggled like a
+hen, striking his temple on the shelf, and then tumbled on the floor
+in a heap.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Time had some score of small voices in that shop, some stately and
+slow as was becoming to their great age, others garrulous and hurried.
+All these told out the seconds in an intricate chorus of tickings.
+Then the passage of a lad's feet, heavily running on the pavement,
+broke in upon these smaller voices and startled Markheim into the
+consciousness of his surroundings. He looked about him awfully. The
+candle stood on the counter, its flame solemnly wagging in a draught;
+and by that inconsiderable movement, the whole room was filled with
+noiseless bustle and kept heaving like a sea: the tall shadows
+nodding, the gross blots of darkness swelling and dwindling as with
+respiration, the faces of the portraits and the china gods changing
+and wavering like images in water. The inner door stood ajar, and
+peered into that leaguer[5] of shadows with a long slit of daylight
+like a pointing finger.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From these fear-stricken rovings, Markheim's eyes returned to the body
+of his victim, where it lay both humped and sprawling, incredibly
+small and strangely meaner than in life. In these poor, miserly
+clothes, in that ungainly attitude, the dealer lay like so much
+sawdust. Markheim had feared to see it, and, lo! it was nothing. And
+yet, as he gazed, this bundle of old clothes and pool of blood began
+to find eloquent voices. There it must lie; there was none to work the
+cunning hinges or direct the miracle of locomotion&mdash;there it must lie
+till it was found. Found! aye, and then? Then would this dead flesh
+lift up a cry that would ring over England, and fill the world with
+the echoes of pursuit. Ay, dead or not, this was still the enemy.
+"Time was that when the brains were out[6]," he thought; and the
+first word struck into his mind. Time, now that the deed was
+accomplished&mdash;time, which had dosed for the victim, had become
+instant and momentous for the slayer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The thought was yet in his mind, when, first one and then another,
+with every variety of pace and voice&mdash;one deep as the bell from a
+cathedral turret, another ringing on its treble notes the prelude of a
+waltz&mdash;the clocks began to strike the hour of three in the afternoon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sudden outbreak of so many tongues in that dumb chamber staggered
+him. He began to bestir himself, going to and fro with the candle,
+beleaguered by moving shadows, and startled to the soul by chance
+reflections. In many rich mirrors, some of home designs, some from
+Venice or Amsterdam, he saw his face repeated and repeated, as it were
+an army of spies; his own eyes met and detected him; and the sound of
+his own steps, lightly as they fell, vexed the surrounding quiet. And
+still as he continued to fill his pockets, his mind accused him, with
+a sickening iteration[7], of the thousand faults of his design. He
+should have chosen a more quiet hour; he should have prepared an
+alibi; he should not have used a knife; he should have been more
+cautious, and only bound and gagged the dealer, and not killed him; he
+should have been more bold, and killed the servant also; he should
+have done all things otherwise; poignant regrets, weary, incessant
+toiling of the mind to change what was unchangeable, to plan what was
+now useless, to be the architect of the irrevocable past. Meanwhile,
+and behind all this activity, brute terrors, like the scurrying of
+rats in a deserted attic, filled the more remote chambers of his brain
+with riot; the hand of the constable would fall heavy on his shoulder,
+and his nerves would jerk like a hooked fish; or he beheld, in
+galloping defile, the dock, the prison, the gallows, and the black
+coffin. Terror of the people in the street sat down before his mind
+like a besieging army. It was impossible, he thought, but that some
+rumor of the struggle must have reached their ears and set on edge
+their curiosity; and now, in all the neighboring houses, he divined
+them sitting motionless and with uplifted ear&mdash;solitary people,
+condemned to spend Christmas dwelling alone on memories of the past,
+and now startlingly recalled from that tender exercise: happy family
+parties, struck into silence round the table, the mother still with
+raised finger; every degree and age and humor, but all, by their own
+hearths, prying and hearkening and weaving the rope that was to hang
+him. Sometimes it seemed to him he could not move too softly; the
+clink of the tall Bohemian goblets rang out loudly like a bell; and
+alarmed by the bigness of the ticking, he was tempted to stop the
+clocks. And then, again, with a swift transition of his terrors, the
+very silence of the place appeared a source of peril, and a thing to
+strike and freeze the passer-by; and he would step more boldly, and
+bustle aloud among the contents of the shop, and imitate, with
+elaborate bravado, the movements of a busy man at ease in his own
+house.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But he was now so pulled about by different alarms that, while one
+portion of his mind was still alert and cunning, another trembled on
+the brink of lunacy. One hallucination in particular took a strong
+hold on his credulity. The neighbor hearkening with white face beside
+his window, the passer-by arrested by a horrible surmise on the
+pavement&mdash;these could at worst suspect, they could not know; through
+the brick walls and shuttered windows only sounds could penetrate. But
+here, within the house, was he alone? He knew he was; he had watched
+the servant set forth sweethearting, in her poor best, "out for the
+day" written in every ribbon and smile. Yes, he was alone, of course;
+and yet, in the bulk of empty house about him, he could surely hear
+a stir of delicate footing&mdash;he was surely conscious, inexplicably
+conscious, of some presence. Ay, surely; to every room and corner
+of the house his imagination followed it; and now it was a faceless
+thing, and yet had eyes to see with; and again it was a shadow of
+himself; and yet again behold the image of the dead dealer, reinspired
+with cunning and hatred.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At times, with a strong effort, he would glance at the open door which
+still seemed to repel his eyes. The house was tall, the skylight small
+and dirty, the day blind with fog; and the light that filtered down to
+the ground story was exceedingly faint, and showed dimly on the
+threshold of the shop. And yet, in that strip of doubtful brightness,
+did there not hang wavering a shadow?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Suddenly, from the street outside, a very jovial gentleman began to
+beat with a staff on the shop door, accompanying his blows with shouts
+and railleries[8] in which the dealer was continually called upon by
+name. Markheim, smitten into ice, glanced at the dead man. But no! he
+lay quite still; he was fled away far beyond earshot of these blows
+and shoutings; he was sunk beneath seas of silence; and his name,
+which would once have caught his notice above the howling of a storm,
+had become an empty sound. And presently the jovial gentleman desisted
+from his knocking and departed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here was a broad hint to hurry what remained to be done, to get forth
+from, this accusing neighborhood, to plunge into a bath of London
+multitudes, and to reach, on the other side of day, that haven of
+safety and apparent, innocence&mdash;-his bed. One visitor had come: at
+any moment it another might follow and be more obstinate. To have
+done the deed, and yet not to reap the profit, would be too abhorrent
+a failure. The money, that was now Markheim's concern: and as a means
+to that, the keys.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He glanced over his shoulder at the open door, where the shadow was
+still lingering and shivering; and with no conscious repugnance of the
+mind, yet with a tremor of the belly, he drew near the body of his
+victim. The human character had quite departed. Like a suit
+half-stuffed with bran, the limbs lay scattered, the trunk doubled, on
+the floor; and yet the thing repelled him. Although so dingy and
+inconsiderable to the eye, he feared it might have more significance
+to the touch. He took the body by the shoulders, and turned it on its
+back. It was strangely light and supple, and the limbs, as if they had
+been broken, fell into the oddest postures. The face was robbed of all
+expression; but it was as pale as wax, and shockingly smeared with
+blood about one temple. That was, for Markheim, the one displeasing
+circumstance. It carried him back, upon the instant, to a certain fair
+day in a fishers' village: a gray day, a piping wind, a crowd upon the
+street, the blare of brasses, the booming of drums, the nasal voice of
+a ballad singer; and a boy going to and fro, buried over head in the
+crowd and divided between interest and fear, until, coming out upon
+the chief place of concourse, he beheld a booth and a great screen
+with pictures, dismally designed, garishly[9] colored: Brownrigg[10]
+with her apprentice; the Mannings[11] with their murdered guest; Weare
+in the death grip of Thurtell[12]; and a score besides of famous
+crimes. The thing was as clear as an illusion; he was once again that
+little boy; he was looking once again, and with the same sense of
+physical revolt, at these vile pictures; he was still stunned by the
+thumping of the drums. A bar of that day's music returned upon his
+memory; and at that, for the first time, a qualm came over him, a
+breath of nausea, a sudden weakness of the joints, which he must
+instantly resist and conquer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He judged it more prudent to confront than to flee from these
+considerations; looking the more hardily in the dead face, bending his
+mind to realize the nature and greatness of his crime. So little a
+while ago that face had moved with every change of sentiment, that
+pale mouth had spoken, that body had been all on fire with governable
+energies; and now, and by his act, that piece of life had been
+arrested, as the horologist[13], with interjected finger, arrests the
+beating of the clock. So he reasoned in vain; he could rise to no more
+remorseful consciousness; the same heart which had shuddered before
+the painted effigies of crime, looked on its reality unmoved. At best,
+he felt a gleam of pity for one who had been endowed in vain with all
+those faculties that can make the world a garden of enchantment, one
+who had never lived and who was now dead. But of penitence, no, not a
+tremor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With that, shaking himself clear of these considerations, he found the
+keys and advanced toward the open door of the shop. Outside, it had
+begun to rain smartly; and the sound of the shower upon the roof had
+banished silence. Like some dripping cavern, the chambers of the house
+were haunted by an incessant echoing, which filled the ear and mingled
+with the ticking of the clocks. And, as Markheim approached the door,
+he seemed to hear, in answer to his own cautious tread, the steps of
+another foot withdrawing up the stair. The shadow still palpitated
+loosely on the threshold. He threw a ton's weight of resolve upon his
+muscles, and drew back the door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The faint, foggy daylight glimmered dimly on the bare floor and
+stairs; on the bright suit of armor posted, halbert in hand, upon the
+landing; and on the dark wood carvings and framed pictures that hung
+against the yellow panels of the wainscot. So loud was the beating of
+the rain through all the house that, in Markheim's ears, it began to
+be distinguished into many different sounds. Footsteps and sighs, the
+tread of regiments marching in the distance, the chink of money in the
+counting, and the creaking of doors held stealthily ajar, appeared to
+mingle with the patter of the drops upon the cupola and the gushing of
+the water in the pipes. The sense that he was not alone grew upon him
+to the verge of madness. On every side he was haunted and begirt by
+presences. He heard them moving in the upper chambers; from the shop,
+he heard the dead man getting to his legs; and as he began with a
+great effort to mount the stairs, feet fled quietly before him and
+followed stealthily behind. If he were but deaf, he thought, how
+tranquilly he would possess his soul! And then again, and hearkening
+with ever fresh attention, he blessed himself for that unresting sense
+which held the outposts and stood a trusty sentinel upon his life. His
+head turned continually on his neck; his eyes, which seemed starting
+from their orbits, scouted on every side, and on every side were half
+rewarded as with the tail of something nameless vanishing. The
+four-and-twenty steps to the first floor were four-and-twenty agonies.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On that first story the doors stood ajar, three of them like three
+ambushes, shaking his nerves like the throats of cannon. He could
+never again, he felt, be sufficiently immured and fortified from men's
+observing eyes; he longed to be home, girt in by walls, buried among
+bed-clothes, and invisible to all but God. And at that thought he
+wondered a little, recollecting tales of other murderers and the fear
+they were said to entertain of heavenly avengers. It was not so, at
+least, with him. He feared the laws of nature, lest, in their callous
+and immutable procedure, they should preserve some damning evidence of
+his crime. He feared tenfold more, with a slavish, superstitious
+terror, some scission[14] in the continuity of man's experience, some
+wilful illegality of nature. He played a game of skill, depending on
+the rules, calculating consequence from cause; and what if nature, as
+the defeated tyrant overthrew the chessboard, should break the mould
+of their succession? The like had befallen Napoleon (so writers said)
+when the winter changed the time of its appearance. The like might
+befall Markheim: the solid walls might become transparent and reveal
+his doings like those of bees in a glass hive; the stout planks might
+yield under his foot like quicksands and detain him in their clutch;
+aye, and there were soberer accidents that might destroy him: if, for
+instance, the house should fall and imprison him beside the body of
+his victim; or the house next door should fly on fire, and the firemen
+invade him from all sides. These things he feared; and, in a sense,
+these things might be called the hands of God reached forth against
+sin. But about God himself he was at ease; his act was doubtless
+exceptional, but so were his excuses, which God knew; it was there,
+and not among men, that he felt sure of justice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When he got safe into the drawing-room, and shut the door behind him,
+he was aware of a respite from alarms. The room was quite dismantled,
+uncarpeted besides, and strewn with packing cases and incongruous
+furniture; several great pier glasses, in which he beheld himself at
+various angles, like an actor on a stage; many pictures, framed and
+unframed, standing, with their faces to the wall; a fine Sheraton[15]
+sideboard, a cabinet of marquetry[16], and a great old bed, with
+tapestry hangings. The windows opened to the floor; but by great good
+fortune the lower part of the shutters had been closed, and this
+concealed him from the neighbors. Here, then, Markheim drew in a
+packing case before the cabinet, and began to search among the keys.
+It was a long business, for there were many; and it was irksome,
+besides; for, after all, there might be nothing in the cabinet, and
+time was on the wing. But the closeness of the occupation sobered him.
+With the tail of his eye he saw the door&mdash;even glanced at it from time
+to time directly, like a besieged commander pleased to verify the good
+estate of his defences. But in truth he was at peace. The rain falling
+in the street sounded natural and pleasant. Presently, on the other
+side, the notes of a piano were wakened to the music of a hymn, and
+the voices of many children took up the air and words. How stately,
+how comfortable was the melody! How fresh the youthful voices!
+Markheim gave ear to it smilingly, as he sorted out the keys; and his
+mind was thronged with answerable ideas and images; church-going
+children and the pealing of the high organ; children afield, bathers
+by the brookside, ramblers on the brambly common, kite-flyers in the
+windy and cloud-navigated sky; and then, at another cadence of the
+hymn, back again to church, and the somnolence of summer Sundays, and
+the high, genteel voice of the parson (which he smiled a little to
+recall), and the painted Jacobean[17] tombs, and the dim lettering of
+the Ten Commandments in the chancel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And as he sat thus, at once busy and absent, he was startled to his
+feet. A flash of ice, a flash of fire, a bursting gush of blood, went
+over him, and then he stood transfixed and thrilling. A step mounted
+the stair slowly and steadily, and presently a hand was laid upon the
+knob, and the lock clicked, and the door opened.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Fear held Markheim in a vice. What to expect he knew not, whether the
+dead man walking, or the official ministers of human justice, or some
+chance witness blindly stumbling in to consign him to the gallows. But
+when a face was thrust into the aperture, glanced round the room,
+looked at him, nodded and smiled as if in friendly recognition, and
+then withdrew again, and the door closed behind it, his fear broke
+loose from his control in a hoarse cry. At the sound of this the
+visitant returned.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Did you call me?" he asked pleasantly, and with that he entered the
+room, and closed the door behind him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Markheim stood and gazed at him with all his eyes. Perhaps there was a
+film upon his sight, but the outlines of the newcomer seemed to change
+and waver like those of the idols in the wavering candlelight of the
+shop: and at times he thought he knew him; and at times he thought he
+bore a likeness to himself; and always, like a lump of living terror,
+there lay in his bosom the conviction that this thing was not of the
+earth and not of God.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And yet the creature had a strange air of the commonplace, as he stood
+looking on Markheim with a smile; and when he added: "You are looking
+for the money, I believe?" it was in the tones of everyday politeness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Markheim made no answer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I should warn you," resumed the other, "that the maid has left her
+sweetheart earlier than usual and will soon be here. If Mr. Markheim
+be found in this house, I need not describe to him the consequences."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You know me?" cried the murderer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The visitor smiled. "You have long been a favorite of mine," he said;
+"and I have long observed and often sought to help you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What are you?" cried Markheim: "the devil?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What I may be," returned the other, "cannot affect the service I
+propose to render you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It can," cried Markheim; "it does! Be helped by you? No, never; not
+by you! You do not know me yet; thank God, you do not know me!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I know you," replied the visitant, with a sort of kind severity or
+rather firmness. "I know you to the soul."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Know me!" cried Markheim. "Who can do so? My life is but a
+travesty[18] and slander on myself. I have lived to belie my nature.
+All men do; all men are better than this disguise that grows about and
+stifles them. You see each dragged away by life, like one whom bravos
+have seized and muffled in a cloak. If they had their own control&mdash;if
+you could see their faces, they would be altogether different, they
+would shine out for heroes and saints! I am worse than most; myself is
+more overlaid; my excuse is known to me and God. But, had I the time,
+I could disclose myself."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"To me?" inquired the visitant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"To you before all," returned the murderer. "I supposed you were
+intelligent. I thought&mdash;since you exist&mdash;you would prove a reader of
+the heart. And yet you would propose to judge me by my acts! Think of
+it; my acts! I was born and I have lived in a land of giants; giants
+have dragged me by the wrists since I was born out of my mother&mdash;the
+giants of circumstance. And you would judge me by my acts! But can you
+not look within? Can you not understand that evil is hateful to me?
+Can you not see within me the clear writing of conscience, never
+blurred by any wilful sophistry[19] although too often disregarded?
+Can you not read me for a thing that surely must be common as
+humanity&mdash;the unwilling sinner?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"All this is very feelingly expressed," was the reply, "but it regards
+me not. These points of consistency are beyond my province, and I care
+not in the least by what compulsion you may have been dragged away, so
+as you are but carried in the right direction. But time flies; the
+servant delays, looking in the faces of the crowd and at the pictures
+on the hoardings, but still she keeps moving nearer; and remember, it
+is as if the gallows itself were striding toward you through the
+Christmas streets! Shall I help you&mdash;I, who know all? Shall I tell you
+where to find the money?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"For what price?" asked Markheim.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I offer you the service for a Christmas gift," returned the other.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Markheim could not refrain from smiling with a kind of bitter triumph,
+"No," said he, "I will take nothing at your hands; if I were dying of
+thirst, and it was your hand that put the pitcher to my lips, I should
+find the courage to refuse. It may be credulous, but I will do nothing
+to commit myself to evil."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I have no objection to a death-bed repentance," observed the
+visitant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Because you disbelieve their efficacy[20]!" Markheim cried.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I do not say so," returned the other; "but I look on these things
+from a different side, and when the life is done my interest falls.
+The man has lived to serve me, to spread black looks under color of
+religion, or to sow tares[21] in the wheat field, as you do, in a
+course of weak compliance with desire. Now that he draws so near to
+his deliverance, he can add but one act of service&mdash;to repent, to die
+smiling, and thus to build up in confidence and hope the more timorous
+of my surviving followers. I am not so hard a master. Try me. Accept
+my help. Please yourself in life as you have done hitherto; please
+yourself more amply, spread your elbows at the board; and when the
+night begins to fall and the curtains to be drawn, I tell you, for
+your greater comfort, that you will find it even easy to compound your
+quarrel with your conscience, and to make a truckling peace with God.
+I came but now from such a death-bed, and the room was full of sincere
+mourners, listening to the man's last words; and when I looked into
+that face, which had been set as a flint against mercy, I found it
+smiling with hope."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And do you, then, suppose me such a creature?" asked Markheim. "Do
+you think I have no more generous aspirations than to sin, and sin,
+and sin, and, at last, sneak into heaven? My heart rises at the
+thought. Is this, then, your experience of mankind? or is it because
+you find me with red hands that you presume such baseness? and is this
+crime of murder indeed so impious as to dry up the very springs of
+good?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Murder is to me no special category[22]," replied the other. "All
+sins are murder, even all life is war. I behold your race, like
+starving mariners on a raft, plucking crusts out of the hands of
+famine and feeding on each other's lives. I follow sins beyond the
+moment of their acting; I find in all that the last consequence is
+death; and to my eyes, the pretty maid who thwarts her mother with
+such taking graces on a question of a ball, drips no less visibly with
+human gore than such a murderer as yourself. Do I say that I follow
+sins? I follow virtues also; they differ not by the thickness of a
+nail, they are both scythes for the reaping angel of Death. Evil, for
+which I live, consists not in action but in character. The bad man is
+dear to me; not the bad act, whose fruits, if we could follow them far
+enough down the hurtling[23] cataract of the ages, might yet be found
+more blessed than those of the rarest virtues. And it is not because
+you have killed a dealer, but because you are Markheim, that I offered
+to forward your escape."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I will lay my heart open to you," answered Markheim. "This crime on
+which you find me is my last. On my way to it I have learned many
+lessons; itself is a lesson, a momentous lesson. Hitherto I have been
+driven with revolt to what I would not; I was a bondslave to poverty,
+driven and scourged. There are robust virtues that can stand in these
+temptations; mine was not so: I had a thirst of pleasure. But to-day,
+and out of this deed, I pluck both warning and riches&mdash;both the power
+and a fresh resolve to be myself. I become in all things a free actor
+in the world; I begin to see myself all changed, these hands the
+agents of good, this heart at peace. Some thing comes over me out of
+the past; something of what I have dreamed on Sabbath evenings to the
+sound of the church organ, of what I forecast when I shed tears over
+noble books, or talked, an innocent child, with my mother. There lies
+my life; I have wandered a few years, but now I see once more my city
+of destination."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You are to use this money on the Stock Exchange, I think?" remarked
+the visitor; "and there, if I mistake not, you have already lost some
+thousands?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ah," said Markheim, "but this time I have a sure thing."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"This time, again, you will lose," replied the visitor, quietly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ah, but I keep back the half!" cried Markheim.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That also you will lose," said the other.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sweat started upon Markheim's brow. "Well, then, what matter?" he
+exclaimed. "Say it be lost, say I am plunged again in poverty, shall
+one part of me, and that the worse, continue until the end to override
+the better? Evil and good ran strong in me, hailing me both ways. I do
+not love the one thing, I love all. I can conceive great deeds,
+renunciations, martyrdoms; and though I be fallen to such a crime as
+murder, pity is no stranger to my thoughts. I pity the poor; who knows
+their trials better than myself? I pity and help them; I prize love, I
+love honest laughter; there is no good thing nor true thing on earth
+but I love it from my heart. And are my vices only to direct my life,
+and my virtues to lie without effect, like some passive lumber of the
+mind? Not so; good, also, is a spring of acts."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the visitant raised his finger. "For six-and-thirty years that you
+have been in this world," said he, "through many changes of fortune
+and varieties of humor, I have watched you steadily fall. Fifteen
+years ago you would have started at a theft. Three years back you
+would have blenched at the name of murder. Is there any crime, is
+there any cruelty or meanness, from which you still recoil?&mdash;five
+years from now I shall detect you in the fact! Downward, downward lies
+your way; nor can anything but death avail to stop you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is true," Markheim said huskily, "I have in some degree complied
+with evil. But it is so with all: the very saints, in the mere
+exercise of living, grow less dainty, and take on the tone of their
+surroundings."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I will propound to you one simple question," said the other; "and as
+you answer, I shall read to you your moral horoscope. You have grown
+in many things more lax; possibly you do right to be so; and at any
+account, it is the same with all men. But granting that, are you in
+any one particular, however trifling, more difficult to please with
+your own conduct, or do you go in all things with a looser rein?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"In any one?" repeated Markheim, with an anguish of consideration.
+"No," he added, with despair, "in none! I have gone down in all."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then," said the visitor, "content yourself with what you are, for you
+will never change; and the words of your part on this stage are
+irrevocably written down."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Markheim stood for a long while silent, and indeed it was the visitor
+who first broke the silence. "That being so," he said, "shall I show
+you the money?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And grace?" cried Markheim.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Have you not tried it?" returned the other. "Two or three years ago,
+did I not see you on the platform of revival meetings, and was not
+your voice the loudest in the hymn?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is true," said Markheim; "and I see clearly what remains for me by
+way of duty. I thank you for these lessons from my soul; my eyes are
+opened, and I behold myself at last for what I am."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At this moment, the sharp note of the door-bell rang through the
+house; and the visitant, as though this were some concerted signal for
+which he had been waiting, changed at once in his demeanor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The maid!" he cried. "She has returned, as I forewarned you, and
+there is now before you one more difficult passage. Her master, you
+must say, is ill; you must let her in, with an assured but rather
+serious countenance&mdash;no smiles, no overacting, and I promise you
+success! Once the girl within, and the door closed, the same dexterity
+that has already rid you of the dealer will relieve you of this last
+danger in your path. Thenceforward you have the whole evening&mdash;the
+whole night, if needful&mdash;to ransack the treasures of the house and to
+make good your safety. This is help that comes to you with the mask of
+danger. Up!" he cried: "up, friend; your life hangs trembling in the
+scales: up, and act!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Markheim steadily regarded his counsellor. "If I be condemned to evil
+acts," he said, "there is still one door of freedom open&mdash;I can cease
+from action. If my life be an ill thing, I can lay it down. Though I
+be, as you say truly, at the beck of every small temptation, I can
+yet, by one decisive gesture, place myself beyond the reach of all.
+My love of good is damned to barrenness; it may, and let it be!
+But I have still my hatred of evil; and from that, to your galling
+disappointment, you shall see that I can draw both energy and
+courage."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The features of the visitor began to undergo a wonderful and lovely
+change: they brightened and softened with a tender triumph; and, even
+as they brightened, faded and dislimned[24]. But Markheim did not
+pause to watch or understand the transformation. He opened the door
+and went downstairs very slowly, thinking to himself. His past went
+soberly before him; he beheld it as it was, ugly and strenuous like
+a dream, random as chance-medley&mdash;a scene of defeat. Life, as he
+thus reviewed it, tempted him no longer; but on the farther side he
+perceived a quiet haven for his bark. He paused in the passage, and
+looked into the shop, where the candle still burned by the dead body.
+It was strangely silent. Thoughts of the dealer swarmed into his mind,
+as he stood gazing. And then the bell once more broke out into
+impatient clamor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He confronted the maid upon the threshold with something like a smile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You had better go for the police," said he: "I have killed your
+master."
+</p>
+
+<h4>NOTES</h4>
+
+<p>
+[1] Written in 1884. This story is used by permission of and special
+arrangement with the Charles Scribner's Sons Company, Publishers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[2] 237:1 windfalls. Unexpected gains.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[3] 237:3 dividend. His knowledge a business asset that draws
+interest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[4] 241:22 skewer-like. Like a wooden pin now used to fasten meat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[5] 242:11 leaguer. Place besieged with shadows.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[6] 242:27 Time was that when the brains were out. See Macbeth, Act
+III, sc. 4, line 78.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[7] 243:16 iteration. Repetition.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[8] 246:25 railleries. Merry jesting or ridicule.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[9] 247:7 garishly. A blinding, gaudy effect.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[10] 247:7 Brownrigg. A notorious murderess living in England in the
+middle of the eighteenth century. She was hanged and her skeleton is
+still preserved.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[11] 247:8 Mannings. Marie Manning and her husband murdered a former
+suitor. They were given, a death sentence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[12] 247:9 Thurtell. A gambler who quarrelled with Weare and killed
+him after he had professed peace. He designed his own gallows.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[13] 247:25 horologist. One who makes timepieces.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[14] 249:27 scission. A cleaving or a dividing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[15] 250:25 Sheraton. Next to Chippendale the greatest furniture
+designer and cabinet-maker.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[16] 250:25 marquetry. An inlay of some thin material in the surface
+of a piece of furniture or other object.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[17] 251:23 Jacobean. Pertaining to the time of James I of England.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[18] 253:12 travesty. A grotesque imitation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[19] 254:3 sophistry. Methods of the Greek sophists.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[20] 254:29 efficacy. Effective energy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[21] 255:5 sow tares, etc. See Matthew XII, 24-30.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[22] 255:29 category. A class, condition, or predicament.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[23] 256:14 hurtling. Rushing headlong or confusedly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[24] 280:10 dislimned. Erased or effaced.
+</p>
+
+<h4>COLLATERAL READINGS</h4>
+
+<p>
+<i>Treasure Island</i>, R.L. Stevenson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Kidnapped</i>, R.L. Stevenson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde</i>, R.L. Stevenson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Prince Otto</i>, R.L. Stevenson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Across the Plains</i>, R.L. Stevenson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Travels with a Donkey</i>, R.L. Stevenson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>An Inland Voyage</i>, R.L. Stevenson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Essays on Burns and Thoreau</i>, R.L. Stevenson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Virginibus Puerisque</i>, R.L. Stevenson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Child's Garden of Verses</i>, R.L. Stevenson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Masque of the Red Death</i>, Edgar Allan Poe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Pit and the Pendulum</i>, Edgar Allan Poe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>A Coward</i>, Guy de Maupassant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Substitute</i>, François Coppée.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Revolt of Mother</i>, Mary Wilkins Freeman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Flute and Violin</i>, James Lane Alien.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>A Lear of the Steppes</i>, Ivan Turgeneff.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Rappacini's Daughter</i>, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12732 ***</div>
+</body>
+
+</html>
+
+
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #12732 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12732)
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of A Collection of Short-Stories
+
+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: A Collection of Short-Stories
+
+Author: Various
+
+Editor: L.A. Pittenger
+
+Release Date: June 25, 2004 [eBook #12732]
+[Most recently updated: May 20, 2022]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: Charles Aldarondo, Keith M. Eckrich, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A COLLECTION OF SHORT-STORIES ***
+
+
+
+
+A Collection of Short-Stories
+
+EDITED BY
+L.A. PITTENGER, A.M.,
+CRITIC IN ENGLISH, INDIANA UNIVERSITY
+
+New York:
+THE MACMILLAN COMPANY,
+1914
+
+
+Set up and electrotyped. Published November, 1913. Reprinted January,
+1914.
+
+Norwood Press,
+J.S. Cushing Co.—Berwick & Smith Co.,
+Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+ A PREFATORY NOTE
+ INTRODUCTION:
+      History of the Short-story
+      Qualities of the Short-story
+      Composition of the Short-story
+      Books for Reference
+      Collections of Short-stories
+ THE FATHER. 1860. Björnstjerne Björnson.
+ THE GRIFFIN AND THE MINOR CANON. 1887. Frank R. Stockton.
+ THE PIECE OF STRING. 1884. Guy de Maupassant.
+ THE MAN WHO WAS. 1889. Rudyard Kipling.
+ THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER. 1839. Edgar Allan Poe.
+ THE GOLD-BUG. 1843. Edgar Allan Poe.
+ THE BIRTHMARK. 1843. Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+ ETHAN BRAND. 1848. Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+ THE SIRE DE MALÉTROIT'S DOOR. 1878. Robert Louis Stevenson.
+ MARKHEIM. 1884. Robert Louis Stevenson.
+
+
+
+
+A PREFATORY NOTE
+
+
+This collection of short-stories does not illustrate the history of
+short-story writing, nor does it pretend that these are the ten best
+stories ever written, but it does attempt to present selections from a
+list of the greatest short-stories that have proved, in actual use,
+most beneficial to high school students.
+
+The introduction presents a concise statement of the essentials of the
+history, qualities, and composition of the short-story. A brief
+biography of each author and a criticism covering the main
+characteristics of his writings serve as starting points for the
+recitation. The references following both the biography and criticism
+are given in order that the study of the short-story may be amplified,
+and that high school teachers may build a systematic and serviceable
+library about their class work in the teaching of the story. The
+collateral readings, listed after each story, will aid in the creation
+of a suitable atmosphere for the story studied, and explain many
+questions developed in the recitation. Only such definitions as are not
+easily found in school dictionaries are included in the notes.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+HISTORY OF THE SHORT-STORY
+
+Just when, where, and by whom story-telling was begun no one can say.
+From the first use of speech, no doubt, our ancestors have told stories
+of war, love, mysteries, and the miraculous performances of lower
+animals and inanimate objects. The ultimate source of all stories lies
+in a thorough democracy, unhampered by the restrictions of a higher
+civilization. Many tales spring from a loathsome filth that is
+extremely obnoxious to our present day tastes. The remarkable and
+gratifying truth is, however, that the short-story, beginning in the
+crude and brutal stages of man's development, has gradually unfolded to
+greater and more useful possibilities, until in our own time it is a
+most flexible and moral literary form.
+
+The first historical evidence in the development of the story shows no
+conception of a short-story other than that it is not so long as other
+narratives. This judgment of the short-story obtained until the
+beginning of the nineteenth century, when a new version of its meaning
+was given, and an enlarged vision of its possibilities was experienced
+by a number of writers almost simultaneously. In the early centuries of
+story-telling there was only one purpose in mind—that of narrating for
+the joy of the telling and hearing. The story-tellers sacrificed unity
+and totality of effect as well as originality for an entertaining
+method of reciting their incidents.
+
+The story of _Ruth_ and the _Prodigal Son_ are excellent short tales,
+but they do not fulfill the requirements of our modern short-story for
+the reason that they are not constructed for one single impression, but
+are in reality parts of possible longer stories. They are, as it were,
+parts of stories not unlike _Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde_ and _A Lear of
+the Steppes_, and lack those complete and concise artistic effects
+found in the short-stories, _Markheim_ and _Mumu_, by the same authors.
+Both _Ruth_ and the _Prodigal Son_ are exceptionally well told, possess
+a splendid moral tone, and are excellent prophecies of what the
+nineteenth century has developed for us in the art of short-story
+writing.
+
+The Greeks did very little writing in prose until the era of their
+decadence, and showed little instinct to use the concise and unified
+form of the short-story. The conquering Romans followed closely in the
+paths of their predecessors and did little work in the shorter
+narratives. The myths of Greece and Rome were not bound by facts, and
+opened a wonderland where writers were free to roam. The epics were
+slow in movement, and presented a list of loosely organized stories
+arranged about some character like Ulysses or AEneas.
+
+During the mediaeval period story-tellers and stories appeared
+everywhere. The more ignorant of these story-tellers produced the
+fable, and the educated monks produced the simple, crude and disjointed
+tales. The _Gesta Romanorum_ is a wonderful storehouse of these
+mediaeval stories. In the _Decameron_ Boccaccio deals with traditional
+and contemporary materials. He is a born story-teller and presents many
+interesting and well-told narratives, but as Professor Baldwin[1] has
+said, more than half are merely anecdotes, and the remaining stories
+are bare plots, ingeniously done in a kind of scenario form. Three
+approach our modern idea of the short-story, and two, the second story
+of the second day and the sixth story of the ninth day, actually attain
+to our standard. Boccaccio was not conscious of a standard in
+short-story telling, for he had none in the sense that Poe and
+Maupassant defined and practiced it. Chaucer in England told his
+stories in verse and added the charm of humor and well defined
+characters to the development of story-telling.
+
+In the seventeenth century Cervantes gave the world its first great
+novel, _Don Quixote_. Cervantes was careless in his work and did not
+write short-stories, but tales that are fairly brief. Spain added to
+the story a high sense of chivalry and a richness of character that the
+Greek romance and the Italian novella did not possess. France followed
+this loose composition and lack of beauty in form. Scarron and Le Sage,
+the two French fiction writers of this period, contributed little or
+nothing to the advancement of story-telling. Cervantes' _The Liberal
+Lover_ is as near as this period came to producing a real short-story.
+
+The story-telling of the seventeenth century was largely shaped by the
+popularity of the drama. In the eighteenth century the drama gave place
+to the essay, and it is to the sketch and essay that we must go to
+trace the evolution of the story during this period. Voltaire in France
+had a burning message in every essay, and he paid far greater attention
+to the development of the thought of his message than to the story he
+was telling. Addison and Steele in the _Spectator_ developed some real
+characters of the fiction type and told some good stories, but even
+their best, like _Theodosius and Constantia_, fall far short of
+developing all the dramatic possibilities, and lack the focusing of
+interest found in the nineteenth century stories. Some of Lamb's
+_Essays of Elia_, especially the _Dream Children_, introduce a delicate
+fancy and an essayist's clearness of thought and statement into the
+story. At the close of this century German romanticism began to seep
+into English thought and prepare the way for things new in literary
+thought and treatment.
+
+The nineteenth century opened with a decided preference for fiction.
+Washington Irving, reverting to the _Spectator_, produced his sketches,
+and, following the trend of his time, looked forward to a new form and
+wrote _The Spectre Bridegroom_ and _Rip Van Winkle_. It is only by a
+precise definition of short-story that Irving is robbed of the honor of
+being the founder of the modern short-story. He loved to meander and to
+fit his materials to his story scheme in a leisurely manner. He did not
+quite see what Hawthorne instinctively followed and Poe consciously
+defined and practiced, and he did not realize that terseness of
+statement and totality of impression were the chief qualities he needed
+to make him the father of a new literary form. Poe and Maupassant have
+reduced the form of the short-story to an exact science; Hawthorne and
+Harte have done successfully in the field of romanticism what the
+Germans, Tieck and Hoffman, did not do so well; Bjornson and Henry
+James have analyzed character psychologically in their short-stories;
+Kipling has used the short-story as a vehicle for the conveyance of
+specific knowledge; Stevenson has gathered most, if not all, of the
+literary possibilities adaptable to short-story use, and has
+incorporated them in his _Markheim_.
+
+France with her literary newspapers and artistic tendencies, and the
+United States with magazines calling incessantly for good
+short-stories, and with every section of its conglomerate life
+clamoring to express itself, lead in the production and rank of
+short-stories. Maupassant and Stevenson and Hawthorne and Poe are the
+great names in the ranks of short-story writers. The list of present
+day writers is interminable, and high school students can best acquire
+a reasonable appreciation of the great work these writers are doing by
+reading regularly some of the better grade literary magazines.
+
+For a comprehensive view of specimens representing the history and
+development of the short-story, students should have access to Brander
+Matthews' _The Short Story_, Jessup and Canby's _The Book of the
+Short-Story_, and Waite and Taylor's _Modern Masterpieces of Short
+Prose Fiction_.
+
+NOTE: [1] _American Short-Stories_, by Charles Sears Baldwin, New York:
+Longmans, Green, & Company, 1904.
+
+
+
+
+QUALITIES OF THE SHORT-STORY
+
+It was not until well along in the nineteenth century that any one
+attempted to define the short-story. The three quotations given here
+are among the best things that have been spoken on this subject.
+
+"The right novella is never a novel cropped back from the size of a
+tree to a bush, or the branch of a tree stuck into the ground and made
+to serve for a bush. It is another species, destined by the agencies at
+work in the realm of unconsciousness to be brought into being of its
+own kind, and not of another,"—W.D. Howells, _North American Review_,
+173:429.
+
+"A true short-story is something other and something more than a mere
+story which is short. A true short-story differs from the novel chiefly
+in its essential unity of impression. In a far more exact and precise
+use of the word, a short-story has unity as a novel cannot have it…. A
+short-story deals with a single character, a single event, a single
+emotion, or the series of emotions called forth by a single
+situation.—Brander Matthews, _The Philosophy of the Short-Story_.
+
+"The aim of a short-story is to produce a single narrative effect with
+the greatest economy of means that is consistent with the utmost
+emphasis."—Clayton Hamilton, _Materials and Methods of Fiction_.
+
+The short-story must always have a compact unity and a direct
+simplicity. In such stories as Björnson's _The Father_ and Maupassant's
+_The Piece of String_ this simplicity is equal to that of the anecdote,
+but in no case can an anecdote possess the dramatic possibilities of
+these simple short-stories; for a short-story must always have that
+tensity of emotion that comes only in the crucial tests of life.
+
+The short-story does not demand the consistency in treatment of the
+long story, for there are not so many elements to marshal and direct
+properly, but the short-story must be original and varied in its
+themes, cleverly constructed, and lighted through and through with the
+glow of vivid imaginings. A single incident in daily life is caught as
+in a snap-shot exposure and held before the reader in such a manner
+that the impression of the whole is derived largely from suggestion.
+The single incident may be the turning-point in life history, as in
+_The Man Who Was_; it may be a mental surrender of habits fixed
+seemingly in indelible colors in the soul and a sudden, inflexible
+decision to be a man, as in the case of _Markheim;_ or it may be a
+gradual realization of the value of spiritual gifts, as Björnson has
+concisely presented it in his little story _The Father_.
+
+The aim of the short-story is always to present a cross-section of life
+in such a vivid manner that the importance of the incident becomes
+universal. Some short-stories are told with the definite end in view of
+telling a story for the sake of exploiting a plot. _The Cask of
+Amontillado_ is all action in comparison with _The Masque of the Red
+Death. The Gold-Bug_ sets for itself the task of solving a puzzle and
+possesses action from first to last. Other stories teach a moral.
+_Ethan Brand_ deals with the unpardonable sin, and _The Great Stone
+Face_ is our classic story in the field of ideals and their
+development. Hawthorne, above all writers, is most interested in
+ethical laws and moral development. Still other stories aim to portray
+character. Miss Jewett and Mrs. Freeman veraciously picture the
+faded-put womanhood in New England; Henry James and Björnson turn the
+x-rays of psychology and sociology on their characters; Stevenson
+follows with the precision of the tick of a watch the steps in
+Markheim's mental evolution.
+
+The types of the short-story are as varied as life itself. Addison,
+Lamb, Irving, Warner, and many others have used the story in their
+sketches and essays with wonderful effect. _The Legend of Sleepy
+Hollow_ is as impressive as any of Scott's tales. The allegory in _The
+Great Stone Face_ loses little or nothing when compared with Bunyan's
+_Pilgrim's Progress_. No better type of detective story has been
+written than the two short-stories, _The Murders in the Rue Morgue_ and
+_The Purloined Letter_. Every emotion is subject to the call of the
+short-story. Humor with its expansive free air is not so well adapted
+to the short-story as is pathos. There is a sadness in the stories of
+Dickens, Garland, Page, Mrs. Freeman, Miss Jewett, Maupassant, Poe, and
+many others that runs the whole gamut from pleasing tenderness in _A
+Child's Dream of a Star_ to unutterable horror in _The Fall of the
+House of Usher_.
+
+The short-story is stripped of all the incongruities that led Fielding,
+Scott, and Dickens far afield. All its parts harmonize in the simplest
+manner to give unity and "totality" of impression through strict unity
+of form. It is a concentrated piece of life snatched from the ordinary
+and uneventful round of living and steeped in fancy until it becomes
+the acme of literary art.
+
+
+
+
+COMPOSITION OF THE SHORT-STORY
+
+Any student who wishes to express himself correctly and pleasingly, and
+desires a keener sense for the appreciation of literary work must
+write. The way others have done the thing never appears in a forceful
+light until one sets himself at a task of like nature. Just so in the
+study of this text. To find and appreciate the better points of the
+short-story, students must write stories of their own, patterned in a
+small way on the technique of the masterpieces.
+
+The process of short-story writing follows in a general way the
+following program. In the first place the class must have something
+interesting and suggestive to write about. Sometimes the class can
+suggest a subject; newspapers almost every day give incidents worthy of
+story treatment; happenings in the community often give the very best
+material for stories; and phases of the literature work may well be
+used in the development of students' themes. Change the type of
+character and place, reconstruct the plot, or require a different
+ending for the story, leaving the plot virtually as it is, and then
+assign to the class. Boys and girls should invariably be taught to see
+stories in the life about them, in the newspapers and magazines on
+their library tables, and in the masterpieces they study in their class
+work.
+
+After the idea that the class wishes to develop has been definitely
+determined and the material for this development has been gathered and
+grouped about the idea, the class should select a viewpoint and proceed
+to write. Sometimes the author should tell the story, sometimes a third
+person who may be of secondary importance in the story should be given
+the rôle of the story-teller, sometimes the whole may be in dialogue.
+The class should choose a fitting method.
+
+Young writers should be very careful about the beginning of a story. An
+action story should start with a striking incident that catches the
+reader's attention at once and forecasts subsequent happenings. In
+every case this first incident must have in it the essence of the end
+of the story and should be perfectly logical to the reader after he has
+finished the reading. A story in which the setting is emphasized can
+well begin, with a description and contain a number of descriptions and
+expositions, distributed with a sense of propriety throughout the
+theme. A good method to use in the opening of a character story is that
+of conversation. An excellent example of a sharp use of this device is
+Mrs. Freeman's _Revolt of Mother_, where the first paragraph is a
+single spoken word.
+
+Every incident included in the story should be tested for its value in
+the development of the theme. An incident that does not amplify certain
+phases of the story has no right to be included, and great care should
+be used in an effort to incorporate just the material necessary for the
+proper evolution of the thought. The problem is not so much what can be
+secured to be included in the story, but rather, after making a
+thorough collection of the material, what of all these points should be
+cast out.
+
+The ending must be a natural outgrowth of the development found in the
+body of the composition. Even in a story with a surprise ending, of
+which we are tempted to say that we have had no preparation for such a
+turn in the story, there must be hints—the subtler the better—that
+point unerringly and always toward the end. The end is presupposed in
+the beginning and the changing of one means the altering of the other.
+
+Young writers have trouble in stopping at the right place. They should
+learn, as soon as possible, that to drag on after the logical ending
+has been reached spoils the best of stories. It is just as bad to stop
+before arriving at the true end. In other words there is only one place
+for the ending of a story, and in no case can it be shifted without
+ruining the idea that has obtained throughout the theme.
+
+There are certain steps in the development of story-writing that should
+be followed if the best results are to be obtained. The first
+assignment should require only the writing of straight narrative. _The
+Arabian Nights Tales_ and children's stories represent this type of
+writing and will give the teacher valuable aid in the presentation of
+this work. After the students have produced simple stories resembling
+the Sinbad Voyages, they should next add descriptions of persons and
+places and explanations of situations to develop clearness and interest
+in their original productions. Taking these themes in turn students
+should be required to introduce plot incidents that complicate the
+simple happenings and divert the straightforward trend of the
+narrative. Now that the stories are well developed in their
+descriptions, expositions, and plot interests they should be tested for
+their emotional effects. Students should go through their themes, and
+by making the proper changes give in some cases a humorous and in
+others a pathetic or tragic effect. These few suggestions are given to
+emphasize the facts that no one conceives a story in all its details in
+a moment of inspiration, and that there is a way of proceeding that
+passes in logical gradations from the simplest to the most complex
+phases of story writing.
+
+Franklin and Stevenson knew no rules for writing other than to practice
+incessantly on some form they wished to imitate. Hard work is the first
+lesson that boys and girls must learn in the art of writing, and a
+systematic gradation of assignments is what the teacher must provide
+for his students. Walter Besant gave the following rules for novel
+writers. Some of them may be suggestive to writers of the high school
+age, so the list is given in its complete form. "(1) Practice writing
+something original every day. (2) Cultivate the habit of observation.
+(3) Work regularly at certain hours. (4) Read no rubbish. (5) Aim at
+the formation of style. (6) Endeavor to be dramatic. (7) A great
+element of dramatic skill is selection. (8) Avoid the sin of writing
+about a character. (9) Never attempt to describe any kind of life
+except that with which you are familiar. (10) Learn as much as you can
+about men and women. (11) For the sake of forming a good natural style,
+and acquiring command of language, write poetry."
+
+
+
+
+SHORT-STORY LIBRARY
+
+_BOOKS FOR REFERENCE_:
+
+_American Short-Stories_, Charles Baldwin, Longmans, Green, & Co.
+
+_A Study of Prose Fiction_, Chapter XII, Bliss Perry, Houghton, Mifflin
+Co.
+
+_Composition Rhetoric_, T.C. Blaisdell, American Book Co.
+
+_Forms of Prose Literature_, J.H. Gardiner, Charles Scribner's Sons.
+
+_Materials and Methods of Fiction_, Clayton Hamilton, The Baker and
+Taylor Co.
+
+_Principles of Literary Criticism_, C.T. Winchester, The Macmillan Co.
+
+_Short-Story Writing_, C.R. Barrett. The Baker and Taylor Co.
+
+_Specimens of the Short-Story_, G.H. Nettleton, H. Holt & Co.
+
+_Story-Writing and Journalism_, Sherwin Cody, Funk & Wagnalls Co.
+
+_Talks on Writing English_, Arlo Bates, Houghton Mifflin Co.
+
+_The Writing of the Short-Story_, L.W. Smith, D.C. Heath & Co.
+
+_The Philosophy of the Short-Story_, Brander Matthews, Longmans, Green,
+& Co.
+
+_The World's Greatest Short-Stories_, Sherwin Cody, A.C. McClurg & Co.
+
+_The Short-Story_, Henry Canby, Henry Holt & Co.
+
+_The Short-Story_, Evelyn May Albright, The Macmillan Co.
+
+_The Book of the Short-Story_, Jessup and Canby, D. Appleton & Co.
+
+_Modern Masterpieces of Short Prose Fiction_, Waite and Taylor, D.
+Appleton & Co.
+
+_The Short-Story_, Brander Matthews, American Book Co.
+
+_Writing the Short-Story_, Esenwein, Hinds, Noble & Eldredge.
+
+_A Study of the Short-Story in English_, Henry Seidel Canby, Henry Holt
+& Co.
+
+
+
+
+COLLECTIONS OF SHORT-STORIES:
+
+_American Short-Stories_, Charles S. Baldwin, Longmans, Green, & Co.
+
+_Great Short-Stories_, 3 vols., William Patten, P.F. Collier & Son.
+
+_Little French Masterpieces_, 6 vols. Alexander Jessup, G.P. Putnam's
+Sons.
+
+_Short-Story Classics_ (American), 5 vols., William Patten, P.F.
+Collier & Son.
+
+_Short-Story Classics_ (Foreign), 5 vols., William Patten, P.F. Collier
+& Son.
+
+_Stories by American Authors_, 10 vols., Charles Scribner's Sons.
+
+_Stories by English Authors_, 10 vols., Charles Scribner's Sons.
+
+_Stories by Foreign Authors_, 10 vols., Charles Scribner's Sons.
+
+_Stories New and Old_ (American and English), Hamilton W. Mabie, The
+Macmillan Co.
+
+_World's Greatest Short-Stories_, Sherwin Cody, A.C. McClurg & Co.
+
+_The American Short-Story_, Elias Lieberman.
+
+
+
+
+THE FATHER[1]
+
+
+_By Björnstjerne Björnson (1838-1910)_
+
+
+The man whose story is here to be told was the wealthiest and most
+influential person in his parish; his name was Thord Överaas. He
+appeared in the priest's study one day, tall and earnest.
+
+"I have gotten a son," said he, "and I wish to present him for
+baptism."
+
+"What shall his name be?"
+
+"Finn,—after my father."
+
+"And the sponsors?"
+
+They were mentioned, and proved to be the best men and women of Thord's
+relations in the parish.
+
+"Is there anything else?" inquired the priest, and looked up. The
+peasant hesitated a little.
+
+"I should like very much to have him baptized by himself," said he,
+finally.
+
+"That is to say on a week-day?"
+
+"Next Saturday, at twelve o'clock noon."
+
+"Is there anything else?" inquired the priest,
+
+"There is nothing else;" and the peasant twirled his cap, as though he
+were about to go.
+
+Then the priest rose. "There is yet this, however." said he, and
+walking toward Thord, he took him by the hand and looked gravely into
+his eyes: "God grant that the child may become a blessing to you!"
+
+One day sixteen years later, Thord stood once more in the priest's
+study.
+
+"Really, you carry your age astonishingly well, Thord," said the
+priest; for he saw no change whatever in the man.
+
+"That is because I have no troubles," replied Thord. To this the priest
+said nothing, but after a while he asked: "What is your pleasure this
+evening?"
+
+"I have come this evening about that son of mine who is to be confirmed
+to-morrow."
+
+"He is a bright boy."
+
+"I did not wish to pay the priest until I heard what number the boy
+would have when he takes his place in the church to-morrow."
+
+"He will stand number one."
+
+"So I have heard; and here are ten dollars for the priest."
+
+"Is there anything else I can do for you?" inquired the priest, fixing
+his eyes on Thord.
+
+"There is nothing else."
+
+Thord went out.
+
+Eight years more rolled by, and then one day a noise was heard outside
+of the priest's study, for many men were approaching, and at their head
+was Thord, who entered first.
+
+The priest looked up and recognized him.
+
+"You come well attended this evening, Thord," said he.
+
+"I am here to request that the banns may be published for my son: he is
+about to marry Karen Storliden, daughter of Gudmund, who stands here
+beside me."
+
+"Why, that is the richest girl in the parish."
+
+"So they say," replied the peasant, stroking back his hair with one
+hand.
+
+The priest sat a while as if in deep thought, then entered the names in
+his book, without making any comments, and the men wrote their
+signatures underneath. Thord laid three dollars on the table.
+
+"One is all I am to have," said the priest.
+
+"I know that very well; but he is my only child; I want to do it
+handsomely."
+
+The priest took the money.
+
+"This is now the third time, Thord, that you have come here on your
+son's account."
+
+"But now I am through with him," said Thord, and folding up his
+pocket-book he said farewell and walked away.
+
+The men slowly followed him.
+
+A fortnight later, the father and son were rowing across the lake, one
+calm, still day, to Storliden to make arrangements for the wedding.
+
+"This thwart[2] is not secure," said the son, and stood up to
+straighten the seat on which he was sitting.
+
+At the same moment the board he was standing on slipped from under him;
+he threw out his arms, uttered a shriek, and fell overboard.
+
+"Take hold of the oar!" shouted the father, springing to his feet, and
+holding out the oar.
+
+But when the son had made a couple of efforts he grew stiff.
+
+"Wait a moment!" cried the father, and began to row toward his son.
+
+Then the son rolled over on his back, gave his father one long look,
+and sank.
+
+Thord could scarcely believe it; he held the boat still, and stared at
+the spot where his son had gone down, as though he must surely come to
+the surface again. There rose some bubbles, then some more, and finally
+one large one that burst; and the lake lay there as smooth and bright
+as a mirror again.
+
+For three days and three nights people saw the father rowing round and
+round the spot, without taking either food or sleep; he was dragging
+the lake for the body of his son. And toward morning of the third day
+he found it, and carried it in his arms up over the hills to his
+gard[3].
+
+It might have been about a year from that day, when the priest, late
+one autumn evening, heard some one in the passage outside of the door,
+carefully trying to find the latch. The priest opened the door, and in
+walked a tall, thin man, with bowed form and white hair. The priest
+looked long at him before he recognized him. It was Thord.
+
+"Are you out walking so late?" said the priest, and stood still in
+front of him.
+
+"Ah, yes! it is late," said Thord, and took a seat.
+
+The priest sat down also, as though waiting. A long, long silence
+followed. At last Thord said,—
+
+"I have something with me that I should like to give to the poor; I
+want it to be invested as a legacy in my son's name."
+
+He rose, laid some money on the table, and sat down again. The priest
+counted it.
+
+"It is a great deal of money," said he.
+
+"It is half the price of my gard. I sold it to-day."
+
+The priest sat long in silence. At last he asked, but gently,—
+
+"What do you propose to do now, Thord?"
+
+"Something better."
+
+They sat there for a while, Thord with downcast eyes, the priest with
+his eyes fixed on Thord. Presently the priest said, slowly and softly,—
+
+"I think your son has at last brought you a true blessing."
+
+"Yes, I think so myself," said Thord, looking up, while two big tears
+coursed slowly down his cheeks.
+
+NOTES
+
+[1] This story was written in 1860. Translated from the Norwegian by
+Professor Rasmus B. Anderson. It is printed by permission of and
+special arrangement with _Houghton Mifflin Co._, publishers.
+
+[2] 3:28 thwart. A seat, across a boat, on which the oarsman, sits.
+
+[3] 4:21 gard. A Norwegian farm.
+
+BIOGRAPHY
+
+Björnstjerne Björnson, Norse poet, novelist, dramatist, orator, and
+political leader, was born December 8, 1832, and died in Paris, April
+26, 1910. From his strenuous father, a Lutheran priest who preached
+with tongue and fist, he inherited the physique of a Norse god. He
+possessed the mind of a poet and the arm of a warrior. At the age of
+twelve he was sent to the Molde grammar school, where he proved himself
+a very dull student. In 1852 he entered the university in Christiana.
+Here he neglected his studies to write poetry and journalistic
+articles.
+
+In politics Björnson was a tremendous force. Dr. Brandes has said; "To
+speak the name of Björnson is like hoisting the colors of Norway." He
+was honored as a king in his native land. He won this recognition by no
+party affiliation, but by his natural gifts as a poet. His magnetic
+eloquence, great message, and sterling character compelled his
+countrymen to follow and honor him. He says of his success in this
+field: "The secret with me is that in success as in failure, in the
+consciousness of my doing as in my habits, I am myself. There are a
+great many who dare not, or lack the ability, to be themselves." For
+his views on political issues the following references may well be
+used: _Independent_. January 31, 1901, pp. 253-257; _Current
+Literature_, November, 1906, p. 581; and _Independent_, July 13, 1905,
+pp. 92-94.
+
+Björnson and Ibsen, the two foremost men of Norway, were very closely
+associated throughout life. They were schoolmates, and both were
+interested in writing and producing plays. Ibsen's son, Dr. Sigurd
+Ibsen, married Björnson's daughter, Bergilot. These two great writers
+were direct contrasts in nearly everything: Björnson lived among his
+people, Ibsen was reserved; Björnson played the rôle of an optimistic
+prophet, Ibsen, that of a pessimistic judge; the former was always a
+conciliatory spirit, the latter a revolutionist; and Björnson proved
+himself a patriotic Norwegian, Ibsen, a man of the entire world.
+
+Lack of space forbids the inclusion of a list of Björnson's writing's.
+High school teachers will find suitable selections in the list of
+collateral readings that follows. Those who wish a complete
+bibliography of his works will find it in _Bookman_, Volume II, p. 65.
+Translations of his works by Rasmus B. Anderson, Houghton Mifflin Co.,
+and Edmund Gosse, the Macmillan Co., will furnish students extensive
+and standard readings of this master story-teller.
+
+CRITICISMS
+
+Björnson, in his masterly character delineations, seldom produces
+portraits. He gives the reader suggestive glimpses often enough and of
+the right quality and arrangement to produce a full and vigorous
+conception of his characters. His female parts are especially well
+done. His characters present themselves to the reader by unique
+thinking and choice expressions. Students should analyze _The Father_
+for this phase of character building. Note also the simplicity of the
+words, sentences, paragraphs, and complete story arrangement, the
+author's originality of story conception and expression, his short,
+passionate, panting sentences, the poetic atmosphere that sweetens and
+enriches his virile writing, and the correct, religious pictures he
+paints of his beloved northland.
+
+After having read a number of selections from Björnson, students will
+see that he has a wonderful breadth of treatment for every imaginable
+subject. He is so universal in his choice of subjects that Lemaître in
+his _Impressions of the Theatre_ half-humorously and half-ironically
+puts these words in Björnson's mouth, "I am king in the spiritual
+kingdom," and "there are two men in Europe who have genius, I and
+Ibsen, granting that Ibsen has it."
+
+GENERAL REFERENCES
+
+_Adventures in Criticism_, A.T.Q. Couch.
+
+_Essays on Modern Novelists_, William Lyon Phelps.
+
+"Björnsoniana," _Dial_, January 16, 1903, pp. 37-38.
+
+"Prophet-Poet of Norway," _Cosmopolitan_, April, 1903, pp. 621-631.
+
+"Three Score and Ten," _Dial_, December, 1902, pp. 383-385.
+
+COLLATERAL READINGS
+
+_Lectures_, Volume I, John L. Stoddard.
+
+_The Making of an American_, Chapters 1, 7, and Jacob Riis.
+
+_Myths of Northern Lands_. Guerber.
+
+_Synnove Solbakken_, Björnson.
+
+_A Happy Boy_, Björnson.
+
+_The Fisher Maiden_, Björnson.
+
+_The Bridal March_, Björnson.
+
+_Magnhild_, Björnson.
+
+_A Dangerous Wooing_, Björnson.
+
+_The Eagle's Nest_, Björnson.
+
+_The Bear Hunter_, Björnson.
+
+_Master and Man_, Leo Tolstoi.
+
+_The Doll's House_, Henrik Ibsen.
+
+_The Minister's Black Veil_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_The Ambitious Guest_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_The Beeman of Orn_, Frank R. Stockton.
+
+_A Branch Road_, Hamlin Garland.
+
+_Mateo Falcone_, Prosper Mérimée.
+
+_The Death of the Dauphin_, Alphonse Dadoed.
+
+_The Birds' Christmas Carol_, Kate Douglas Wiggin.
+
+_Tennessee's Partner_, Bret Harte.
+
+
+
+
+THE GRIFFIN AND THE MINOR CANAAN[1]
+
+
+_By Frank R. Stockton (1834-1902)_
+
+
+Over the great door of an old, old church which stood in a quiet town
+of a far-away land there was carved in stone the figure of a large
+griffin. The old-time sculptor had done his work with great care, but
+the image he had made was not a pleasant one to look at. It had a large
+head, with enormous open mouth and savage teeth; from its back arose
+great wings, armed with sharp hooks and prongs; it had stout legs in
+front, with projecting claws; but there were no legs behind,—the body
+running out into a long and powerful tail, finished off at the end with
+a barbed point. This tail was coiled up under him, the end sticking up
+just back of his wings.
+
+The sculptor, or the people who had ordered this stone figure, had
+evidently been very much pleased with it, for little copies of it, also
+in stone, had been placed here and there along the sides of the church,
+not very far from the ground, so that people could easily look at them,
+and ponder on their curious forms. There were a great many other
+sculptures on the outside of this church,—saints, martyrs, grotesque
+heads of men, beasts, and birds, as well as those of other creatures
+which cannot be named, because nobody knows exactly what they were; but
+none were so curious and interesting as the great griffin over the
+door, and the little griffins on the sides of the church.
+
+A long, long distance from the town, in the midst of dreadful wilds
+scarcely known to man, there dwelt the Griffin whose image had been put
+up over the churchgoer. In some way or other, the old-time sculptor had
+seen him, and afterward, to the best of his memory, had copied his
+figure in stone. The Griffin had never known this, until, hundreds of
+years afterward, he heard from a bird, from a wild animal, or in some
+manner which it is not now easy to find out, that there was a likeness
+of him on the old church in the distant town. Now this Griffin had no
+idea how he looked. He had never seen a mirror, and the streams where
+he lived were so turbulent and violent that a quiet piece of water,
+which would reflect the image of anything looking into it, could not be
+found. Being, as far as could be ascertained, the very last of his
+race, he had never seen another griffin. Therefore it was, that, when
+he heard of this stone image of himself, he became very anxious to know
+what he looked like, and at last he determined to go to the old church,
+and see for himself what manner of being he was. So he started off from
+the dreadful wilds, and flew on and on until he came to the countries
+inhabited by men, where his appearance in the air created great
+consternation; but he alighted nowhere, keeping up a steady flight
+until he reached the suburbs of the town which had his image on its
+church. Here, late in the afternoon, he alighted in a green meadow by
+the side of a brook, and stretched himself on the grass to rest. His
+great wings were tired, for he had not made such a long flight in a
+century, or more.
+
+The news of his coming spread quickly over the town, and the people,
+frightened nearly out of their wits by the arrival of so extraordinary
+a visitor, fled into their houses, and shut themselves up. The Griffin
+called loudly for some one to come to him, but the more he called, the
+more afraid the people were to show themselves. At length he saw two
+laborers hurrying to their homes through the fields, and in a terrible
+voice he commanded them to stop. Not daring to disobey, the men stood,
+trembling.
+
+"What is the matter with you all?" cried the Griffin. "Is there not a
+man in your town who is brave enough to speak to me?"
+
+"I think," said one of the laborers, his voice shaking so that his
+words could hardly be understood, "that—perhaps—the Minor Canon—would
+come."
+
+"Go, call him, then!" said the Griffin; "I want to see him."
+
+The Minor Canon, who filled a subordinate position in the church, had
+just finished the afternoon services, and was coming out of a side
+door, with three aged women who had formed the week-day congregation.
+He was a young man of a kind disposition, and very anxious to do good
+to the people of the town. Apart from his duties in the church, where
+he conducted services every week-day, he visited the sick and the poor,
+counseled and assisted persons who were in trouble, and taught a school
+composed entirely of the bad children in the town with whom nobody else
+would have anything to do. Whenever the people wanted something
+difficult done for them, they always went to the Minor Canon. Thus it
+was that the laborer thought of the young priest when he found that
+some one must come and speak to the Griffin.
+
+The Minor Canon had not heard of the strange event, which was known to
+the whole town except himself and the three old women, and when he was
+informed of it, and was told that the Griffin had asked to see him, he
+was greatly amazed, and frightened.
+
+"Me!" he exclaimed. "He has never heard of me! What should he want with
+_me?_"
+
+"Oh! you must go instantly!" cried the two men.
+
+"He is very angry now because he has been kept waiting so long; and
+nobody knows what may happen if you don't hurry to him."
+
+The poor Minor Canon would rather have had his hand cut off than go out
+to meet an angry griffin; but he felt that it was his duty to go, or it
+would be a woeful thing if injury should come to the people of the town
+because he was not brave enough to obey the summons of the Griffin.
+
+So, pale and frightened, he started off.
+
+"Well," said the Griffin, as soon as the young man came near, "I am
+glad to see that there is some one who has the courage to come to me."
+
+The Minor Canon did not feel very courageous, but he bowed his head.
+
+"Is this the town," said the Griffin, "where there is a church with a
+likeness of myself over one of the doors?"
+
+The Minor Canon looked at the frightful creature before him and saw
+that it was, without doubt, exactly like the stone image on the church.
+"Yes," he said, "you are right."
+
+"Well, then," said the Griffin, "will you take me to it? I wish very
+much to see it."
+
+The Minor Canon instantly thought that if the Griffin entered the town
+without the people knowing what he came for, some of them would
+probably be frightened to death, and so he sought to gain time to
+prepare their minds.
+
+"It is growing dark, now," he said, very much afraid, as he spoke, that
+his words might enrage the Griffin, "and objects on the front of the
+church cannot be seen clearly. It will be better to wait until morning,
+if you wish to get a good view of the stone image of yourself."
+
+"That will suit me very well," said the Griffin. "I see you are a man
+of good sense. I am tired, and I will take a nap here on this soft
+grass, while I cool my tail in the little stream that runs near me. The
+end of my tail gets red-hot when I am angry or excited, and it is quite
+warm now. So you may go, but be sure and come early to-morrow morning,
+and show me the way to the church."
+
+The Minor Canon was glad enough to take his leave, and hurried into the
+town. In front of the church he found a great many people assembled to
+hear his report of his interview with the Griffin. When they found that
+he had not come to spread ruin and devastation, but simply to see his
+stony likeness on the church, they showed neither relief nor
+gratification, but began to upbraid the Minor Canon for consenting to
+conduct the creature into the town.
+
+"What could I do?" cried the young man, "If I should not bring him he
+would come himself and, perhaps, end by setting fire to the town with
+his red-hot tail."
+
+Still the people were not satisfied, and a great many plans were
+proposed to prevent the Griffin from coming into the town. Some elderly
+persons urged that the young men should go out and kill him; but the
+young men scoffed at such a ridiculous idea. Then some one said that it
+would be a good thing to destroy the stone image so that the Griffin
+would have no excuse for entering the town; and this proposal was
+received with such favor that many of the people ran for hammers,
+chisels, and crowbars, with which to tear down and break up the stone
+griffin. But the Minor Canon resisted this plan with all the strength
+of his mind and body. He assured the people that this action would
+enrage the Griffin beyond measure, for it would be impossible to
+conceal from him that his image had been destroyed during the night.
+But the people were so determined to break up the stone griffin that
+the Minor Canon saw that there was nothing for him to do but to stay
+there and protect it. All night he walked up and down in front of the
+church-door, keeping away the men who brought ladders, by which they
+might mount to the great stone griffin, and knock it to pieces with
+their hammers and crowbars. After many hours the people were obliged to
+give up their attempts, and went home to sleep; but the Minor Canon
+remained at his post till early morning, and then he hurried away to
+the field where he had left the Griffin.
+
+The monster had just awakened, and rising to his fore-legs and shaking
+himself, he said that he was ready to go into the town. The Minor
+Canon, therefore, walked back, the Griffin flying slowly through the
+air, at a short distance above the head of his guide. Not a person was
+to be seen in the streets, and they proceeded directly to the front of
+the church, where the Minor Canon pointed out the stone griffin.
+
+The real Griffin settled down in the little square before the church
+and gazed earnestly at his sculptured likeness. For a long time he
+looked at it. First he put his head on one side, and then he put it on
+the other; then he shut his right eye and gazed with his left, after
+which he shut his left eye and gazed with his right. Then he moved a
+little to one side and looked at the image, then he moved the other
+way. After a while he said to the Minor Canon, who had been standing by
+all this time:
+
+"It is, it must be, an excellent likeness! That breadth between the
+eyes, that expansive forehead, those massive jaws! I feel that it must
+resemble me. If there is any fault to find with it, it is that the neck
+seems a little stiff. But that is nothing. It is an admirable
+likeness,—admirable!"
+
+The Griffin sat looking at his image all the morning and all the
+afternoon. The Minor Canon had been afraid to go away and leave him,
+and had hoped all through the day that he would soon be satisfied with
+his inspection and fly away home. But by evening the poor young man was
+utterly exhausted, and felt that he must eat and sleep. He frankly
+admitted this fact to the Griffin, and asked him if he would not like
+something to eat. He said this because he felt obliged in politeness to
+do so, but as soon as he had spoken the words, he was seized with dread
+lest the monster should demand half a dozen babies, or some tempting
+repast of that kind.
+
+"Oh, no," said the Griffin, "I never eat between the equinoxes. At the
+vernal and at the autumnal equinox I take a good meal, and that lasts
+me for half a year. I am extremely regular in my habits, and do not
+think it healthful to eat at odd times. But if you need food, go and
+get it, and I will return to the soft grass where I slept last night
+and take another nap."
+
+The next day the Griffin came again to the little square before the
+church, and remained there until evening, steadfastly regarding the
+stone griffin over the door. The Minor Canon came once or twice to look
+at him, and the Griffin seemed very glad to see him; but the young
+clergyman could not stay as he had done before, for he had many duties
+to perform. Nobody went to the church, but the people came to the Minor
+Canon's house, and anxiously asked him how long the Griffin was going
+to stay.
+
+"I do not know," he answered, "but I think he will soon be satisfied
+with regarding his stone likeness, and then he will go away."
+
+But the Griffin did not go away. Morning after morning he came to the
+church, but after a time he did not stay there all day. He seemed to
+have taken a great fancy to the Minor Canon, and followed him about as
+he pursued his various avocations. He would wait for him at the side
+door of the church, for the Minor Canon held services every day,
+morning and evening, though nobody came now. "If any one should come,"
+he said to himself, "I must be found at my post." When the young man
+came out, the Griffin would accompany him in his visits to the sick and
+the poor, and would often look into the windows of the schoolhouse
+where the Minor Canon was teaching his unruly scholars. All the other
+schools were closed, but the parents of the Minor Canon's scholars
+forced them to go to school, because they were so bad they could not
+endure them all day at home,—griffin or no griffin. But it must be said
+they generally behaved very well when that great monster sat up on his
+tail and looked in at the schoolroom window.
+
+When it was perceived that the Griffin showed no signs of going away,
+all the people who were able to do so left the town. The canons and the
+higher officers of the church had fled away during the first day of the
+Griffin's visit, leaving behind only the Minor Canon and some of the
+men who opened the doors and swept the church. All the citizens who
+could afford it shut up their houses and travelled to distant parts,
+and only the working people and the poor were left behind. After some
+days these ventured to go about and attend to their business, for if
+they did not work they would starve. They were getting a little used to
+seeing the Griffin, and having been told that he did not eat between
+equinoxes, they did not feel so much afraid of him as before. Day by
+day the Griffin became more and more attached to the Minor Canon. He
+kept near him a great part of the time, and often spent the night in
+front of the little house where the young clergyman lived alone. This
+strange companionship was often burdensome to the Minor Canon; but, on
+the other hand, he could not deny that he derived a great deal of
+benefit and instruction from it. The Griffin had lived for hundreds of
+years, and had seen much; and he told the Minor Canon many wonderful
+things.
+
+"It is like reading an old book," said the young clergyman to himself;
+"but how many books I would have had to read before I would have found
+out what the Griffin has told me about the earth, the air, the water,
+about minerals, and metals, and growing things, and all the wonders of
+the world!"
+
+Thus the summer went on, and drew toward its close. And now the people
+of the town began to be very much troubled again.
+
+"It will not be long," they said, "before the autumnal equinox is here,
+and then that monster will want to eat. He will be dreadfully hungry,
+for he has taken so much exercise since his last meal. He will devour
+our children. Without doubt, he will eat them all. What is to be done?"
+
+To this question no one could give an answer, but all agreed that the
+Griffin must not be allowed to remain until the approaching equinox.
+After talking over the matter a great deal, a crowd of the people went
+to the Minor Canon, at a time when the Griffin was not with him.
+
+"It is all your fault," they said, "that that monster is among us. You
+brought him here, and you ought to see that he goes away. It is only on
+your account that he stays here at all, for, although he visits his
+image every day, he is with you the greater part of the time. If you
+were not here, he would not stay. It is your duty to go away and then
+he will follow you, and we shall be free from the dreadful danger which
+hangs over us."
+
+"Go away!" cried the Minor Canon, greatly grieved at being spoken to in
+such a way. "Where shall I go? If I go to some other town, shall I not
+take this trouble there? Have I a right to do that?"
+
+"No," said the people, "you must not go to any other town. There is no
+town far enough away. You must go to the dreadful wilds where the
+Griffin lives; and then he will follow you and stay there."
+
+They did not say whether or not they expected the Minor Canon to stay
+there also, and he did not ask them any thing about it. He bowed his
+head, and went into his house, to think. The more he thought, the more
+clear it became to his mind that it was his duty to go away, and thus
+free the town from the presence of the Griffin.
+
+That evening he packed a leathern bag full of bread and meat, and early
+the next morning he set out on his journey to the dreadful wilds. It
+was a long, weary, and doleful journey, especially after he had gone
+beyond the habitations of men, but the Minor Canon kept on bravely, and
+never faltered. The way was longer than he had expected, and his
+provisions soon grew so scanty that he was obliged to eat but a little
+every day, but he kept up his courage, and pressed on, and, after many
+days of toilsome travel, he reached the dreadful wilds.
+
+When the Griffin found that the Minor Canon had left the town he seemed
+sorry, but showed no disposition to go and look for him. After a few
+days had passed, he became much annoyed, and asked some of the people
+where the Minor Canon had gone. But, although the citizens had been
+anxious that the young clergyman should go to the dreadful wilds,
+thinking that the Griffin would immediately follow him, they were now
+afraid to mention the Minor Canon's destination, for the monster seemed
+angry already, and, if he should suspect their trick, he would
+doubtless become very much enraged. So every one said he did not know,
+and the Griffin wandered about disconsolate. One morning he looked into
+the Minor Canon's schoolhouse, which was always empty now, and thought
+that it was a shame that every thing should suffer on account of the
+young man's absence.
+
+"It does not matter so much about the church," he said, "for nobody
+went there; but it is a pity about the school. I think I will teach it
+myself until he returns."
+
+It was the hour for opening the school, and the Griffin went inside and
+pulled the rope which rang the schoolbell. Some of the children who
+heard the bell ran in to see what was the matter, supposing it to be a
+joke of one of their companions; but when they saw the Griffin they
+stood astonished, and scared.
+
+"Go tell the other scholars," said the monster, "that school is about
+to open, and that if they are not all here in ten minutes, I shall come
+after them." In seven minutes every scholar was in place.
+
+Never was seen such an orderly school. Not a boy or girl moved, or
+uttered a whisper. The Griffin climbed into the master's seat, his wide
+wings spread on each side of him, because he could not lean back in his
+chair while they stuck out behind, and his great tail coiled around, in
+front of the desk, the barbed end sticking up, ready to tap any boy or
+girl who might misbehave. The Griffin now addressed the scholars,
+telling them that he intended to teach them while their master was
+away. In speaking he endeavored to imitate, as far as possible, the
+mild and gentle tones of the Minor Canon, but it must be admitted that
+in this he was not very successful. He had paid a good deal of
+attention to the studies of the school, and he determined not to
+attempt to teach them anything new, but to review them in what they had
+been studying; so he called up the various classes, and questioned them
+upon their previous lessons. The children racked their brains to
+remember what they had learned. They were so afraid of the Griffin's
+displeasure that they recited as they had never recited before. One of
+the boys far down in his class answered so well that the Griffin was
+astonished.
+
+"I should think you would be at the head," said he. "I am sure you have
+never been in the habit of reciting so well. Why is this?"
+
+"Because I did not choose to take the trouble," said the boy, trembling
+in his boots. He felt obliged to speak the truth, for all the children
+thought that the great eyes of the Griffin could see right through
+them, and that he would know when they told a falsehood.
+
+"You ought to be ashamed of yourself," said the Griffin. "Go down to
+the very tail of the class, and if you are not at the head in two days,
+I shall know the reason why."
+
+The next afternoon the boy was number one.
+
+It was astonishing how much these children now learned of what they had
+been studying. It was as if they had been educated over again. The
+Griffin used no severity toward them, but there was a look about him
+which made them unwilling to go to bed until they were sure they knew
+their lessons for the next day.
+
+The Griffin now thought that he ought to visit the sick and the poor;
+and he began to go about the town for this purpose. The effect upon the
+sick was miraculous. All, except those who were very ill indeed, jumped
+from their beds when they heard he was coming, and declared themselves
+quite well. To those who could not get up, he gave herbs and roots,
+which none of them had ever before thought of as medicines, but which
+the Griffin had seen used in various parts of the world; and most of
+them recovered. But, for all that, they afterward said that no matter
+what happened to them, they hoped that they should never again have
+such a doctor coming to their bedsides, feeling their pulses and
+looking at their tongues.
+
+As for the poor, they seemed to have utterly disappeared. All those who
+had depended upon charity for their daily bread were now at work in
+some way or other; many of them offering to do odd jobs for their
+neighbors just for the sake of their meals,—a thing which before had
+been seldom heard of in the town. The Griffin could find no one who
+needed his assistance.
+
+The summer had now passed, and the autumnal equinox was rapidly
+approaching. The citizens were in a state of great alarm and anxiety.
+The Griffin showed no signs of going away, but seemed to have settled
+himself permanently among them. In a short time, the day for his
+semi-annual meal would arrive, and then what would happen? The monster
+would certainly be very hungry, and would devour all their children.
+
+Now they greatly regretted and lamented that they had sent away the
+Minor Canon; he was the only one on whom they could have depended in
+this trouble, for he could talk freely with the Griffin, and so find
+out what could be done. But it would not do to be inactive. Some step
+must be taken immediately. A meeting of the citizens was called, and
+two old men were appointed to go and talk to the Griffin. They were
+instructed to offer to prepare a splendid dinner for him on equinox
+day,—one which would entirely satisfy his hunger. They would offer him
+the fattest mutton, the most tender beef, fish, and game of various
+sorts, and any thing of the kind that he might fancy. If none of these
+suited, they were to mention that there was an orphan asylum in the
+next town.
+
+"Any thing would be better," said the citizens, "than to have our dear
+children devoured."
+
+The old men went to the Griffin, but their propositions were not
+received with favor.
+
+"From what I have seen of the people of this town," said the monster,
+"I do not think I could relish any thing which was prepared by them.
+They appear to be all cowards, and, therefore, mean and selfish. As for
+eating one of them, old or young, I could not think of it for a moment.
+In fact, there was only one creature in the whole place for whom I
+could have had any appetite, and that is the Minor Canon, who has gone
+away. He was brave, and good, and honest, and I think I should have
+relished him."
+
+"Ah!" said one of the old men very politely, "in that case I wish we
+had not sent him to the dreadful wilds!"
+
+"What!" cried the Griffin. "What do you mean? Explain instantly what
+you are talking about!"
+
+The old man, terribly frightened at what he had said, was obliged to
+tell how the Minor Canon had been sent away by the people, in the hope
+that the Griffin might be induced to follow him.
+
+When the monster heard this, he became furiously angry. He dashed away
+from the old men and, spreading his wings, flew backward and forward
+over the town. He was so much excited that his tail became red-hot, and
+glowed like a meteor against the evening sky. When at last he settled
+down in the little field where he usually rested, and thrust his tail
+into the brook, the steam arose like a cloud, and the water of the
+stream ran hot through the town. The citizens were greatly frightened,
+and bitterly blamed the old man for telling about the Minor Canon.
+
+"It is plain," they said, "that the Griffin intended at last to go and
+look for him, and we should have been saved. Now who can tell what
+misery you have brought upon us."
+
+The Griffin did not remain long in the little field. As soon as his
+tail was cool he flew to the town-hall and rang the bell. The citizens
+knew that they were expected to come there, and although they were
+afraid to go, they were still more afraid to stay away; and they
+crowded into the hall. The Griffin was on the platform at one end,
+flapping his wings and walking up and down, and the end of his tail was
+still so warm that it slightly scorched the boards as he dragged it
+after him.
+
+When everybody who was able to come was there the Griffin stood still
+and addressed the meeting.
+
+"I have had a contemptible opinion of you," he said, "ever since I
+discovered what cowards you are, but I had no idea that you were so
+ungrateful, selfish, and cruel as I now find you to be. Here was your
+Minor Canon, who labored day and night for your good, and thought of
+nothing else but how he might benefit you and make you happy; and as
+soon as you imagine yourselves threatened with a danger,—for well I
+know you are dreadfully afraid of me,—you send him off, caring not
+whether he returns or perishes, hoping thereby to save yourselves. Now,
+I had conceived a great liking for that young man, and had intended, in
+a day or two, to go and look him up. But I have changed my mind about
+him. I shall go and find him, but I shall send him back here to live
+among you, and I intend that he shall enjoy the reward of his labor and
+his sacrifices. Go, some of you, to the officers of the church, who so
+cowardly ran away when I first came here, and tell them never to return
+to this town under penalty of death. And if, when your Minor Canon
+comes back to you, you do not bow yourselves before him, put him in the
+highest place among you, and serve and honor him all his life, beware
+of my terrible vengeance! There were only two good things in this town:
+the Minor Canon and the stone image of myself over your church-door.
+One of these you have sent away, and the other I shall carry away
+myself."
+
+With these words he dismissed the meeting, and it was time, for the end
+of his tail had become so hot that there was danger of its setting fire
+to the building.
+
+The next morning, the Griffin came to the church, and tearing the stone
+image of himself from its fastenings over the great door, he grasped it
+with his powerful fore-legs and flew up into the air. Then, after
+hovering over the town for a moment, he gave his tail an angry shake
+and took up his flight to the dreadful wilds. When he reached this
+desolate region, he set the stone Griffin upon a ledge of a rock which
+rose in front of the dismal cave he called his home. There the image
+occupied a position somewhat similar to that it had had over the
+church-door; and the Griffin, panting with the exertion of carrying
+such an enormous load to so great a distance, lay down upon the ground,
+and regarded it with much satisfaction. When he felt somewhat rested he
+went to look for the Minor Canon. He found the young man, weak and
+half-starved, lying under the shadow of a rock. After picking him up
+and carrying him to his cave, the Griffin flew away to a distant marsh,
+where he procured some roots and herbs which he well knew were
+strengthening and beneficial to man, though he had never tasted them
+himself. After eating these the Minor Canon was greatly revived, and
+sat up and listened while the Griffin told him what had happened in the
+town.
+
+"Do you know," said the monster, when he had finished, "that I have
+had, and still have, a great liking for you?"
+
+"I am very glad to hear it," said the Minor Canon, with his usual
+politeness.
+
+"I am not at all sure that you would be," said the Griffin, "if you
+thoroughly understood the state of the case, but we will not consider
+that now. If some things were different, other things would be
+otherwise. I have been so enraged by discovering the manner in which
+you have been treated that I have determined that you shall at last
+enjoy the rewards and honors to which you are entitled. Lie down and
+have a good sleep, and then I will take you back to the town."
+
+As he heard these words, a look of trouble came over the young man's
+face.
+
+"You need not give yourself any anxiety," said the Griffin, "about my
+return to the town. I shall not remain there. Now that I have that
+admirable likeness of myself in front of my cave, where I can sit at my
+leisure, and gaze upon its noble features and magnificent proportions,
+I have no wish to see that abode of cowardly and selfish people."
+
+The Minor Canon, relieved from his fears, lay back, and dropped into a
+doze; and when he was sound asleep the Griffin took him up, and carried
+him back to the town. He arrived just before daybreak, and putting the
+young man gently on the grass in the little field where he himself used
+to rest, the monster, without having been seen by any of the people,
+flew back to his home.
+
+When the Minor Canon made his appearance in the morning among the
+citizens, the enthusiasm and cordiality with which he was received were
+truly wonderful. He was taken to a house which had been occupied by one
+of the vanished high officers of the place, and every one was anxious
+to do all that could be done for his health and comfort. The people
+crowded into the church when he held services, so that the three old
+women who used to be his week-day congregation could not get to the
+best seats, which they had always been in the habit of taking; and the
+parents of the bad children determined to reform them at home, in order
+that he might be spared the trouble of keeping up his former school.
+The Minor Canon was appointed to the highest office of the old church,
+and before he died, he became a bishop.
+
+During the first years after his return from the dreadful wilds, the
+people of the town looked up to him as a man to whom they were bound to
+do honor and reverence; but they often, also, looked up to the sky to
+see if there were any signs of the Griffin coming back. However, in the
+course of time, they learned to honor and reverence their former Minor
+Canon without the fear of being punished if they did not do so.
+
+But they need never have been afraid of the Griffin. The autumnal
+equinox day came round, and the monster ate nothing. If he could not
+have the Minor Canon, he did not care for any thing. So, lying down,
+with his eyes fixed upon the great stone griffin, he gradually
+declined, and died. It was a good thing for some people of the town
+that they did not know this.
+
+If you should ever visit the old town, you would still see the little
+griffins on the sides of the church; but the great stone griffin that
+was over the door is gone.
+
+NOTE: [1] Written in 1887. This story is used by permission of and
+special arrangement with _Charles Scribner's Sons_, publishers.
+
+BIOGRAPHY
+
+Frank Richard Stockton, one of America's foremost story-tellers and
+humorists, was born in Philadelphia in 1834. His father was a
+Presbyterian minister who devoutly wished that his son might study
+medicine. This wish was shattered early, for the son showed symptoms of
+being a writer while yet in the Central High School of Philadelphia. In
+competition with many of his schoolmates for a prize offered for the
+best story, young Stockton won easily.
+
+After finishing his high school course, he adopted the profession of
+wood-engraver. Although he earned his living for several years by
+carving wood, he never lost his desire to write, and practised, at
+every spare moment, his favorite avocation. It was this careful and
+patient training during his apprenticeship that finally made him the
+expert story-teller that he is. It is very interesting to any one who
+cares for the acquirement of an excellent style to note how all the
+authors contained in this text have had to work with almost a
+superhuman force to reach the heights of successful short-story
+writing.
+
+His first important publication, _Kate_, appeared in the _Southern
+Literary Messenger_ in 1859. He then joined the staff of the
+_Philadelphia Morning Post_, where he did regular newspaper work and
+contributed to the _Riverside Magazine_ and _Hearth and Home_. In 1872
+his _Stephen Skarridge's Christmas_ appeared in _Scribner's Monthly_.
+Dr. J.G. Holland, editor of _Scribner's_, was so impressed with the
+story that he made Mr. Stockton an assistant editor and persuaded him
+to move to New York. In 1873 he joined the staff of the _St. Nicholas
+Magazine_. His publication of the _Rudder Grange_ series in
+_Scribner's_ _Monthly_ in 1878 made him famous. In 1882 he resigned all
+editorial work and spent his entire time in literary composition.
+
+Mr. Stockton possessed a frail body and very little physical endurance.
+In spite of this physical handicap he was very vivacious and gay. He
+was a genial and companionable man, loved by all who knew him. He was
+very modest, even to the point of shyness, exceptionally sincere, and
+quaintly humorous. He established homes in New Jersey and West
+Virginia, where he spent the greater part of his time from 1882 until
+his death in 1902.
+
+BIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES
+
+_Famous Authors_ (107-122), B.F. Harkness.
+
+_American Authors_ (59-73), F.W. Halsey.
+
+"Character Sketch," _Book-Buyer_, 24:355-357.
+
+"Home at Claymont," _Current Literature_, 30:221.
+
+"Sketch," _Outlook_, 70: 1000-1001,
+
+"Stockton and his Work," _Atlantic Monthly_, 87:136-138.
+
+CRITICISMS
+
+The writings of Frank R. Stockton are excellent representatives of the
+man himself. How closely allied writer and writings are is very well
+stated by Hamilton W. Mabie in the _Book-Buyer_ for June, 1902, "His
+talk had much of the quality of his writing; it was full of quaint
+conceits, whimsicalities, impossible suggestions offered with perfect
+gravity. He was always perfectly natural; he never attempted to live up
+to his part; in talk, at least, he never forced the note. His attitude
+toward himself was slightly tinged with humor, and he knew how to foil
+easily and pleasantly too great a pressure of praise."
+
+His tales are extravagantly impossible but extremely realistic in
+effect, filled with humorous situations and singular plots, and peopled
+with eccentric characters that afford amusement on every page. His most
+successful writing is done when he explains contrivances upon which his
+story depends. He is an original and inventive expert juggler who moves
+with careless ease to the most effective ends. His characters are
+little more than pieces of mechanism that act when he pulls the string.
+They have little emotion and even in their love-making they show their
+emotion mostly for the sake of the reader's amusement. His negro
+characters are exceptions to his general treatment and are true to
+life. He inveigles the reader into believing the most extravagant
+incidents by having a reliable witness narrate them.
+
+Stockton never stoops to the burlesque, cynic, or vulgar phases of life
+to secure amusement. He is grotesque and droll in his manner, and above
+all always restrained. His literary life is full of sprites and gnomes
+that frolic before young children and once before mature people. _The
+Griffin and the Minor Canon_ is a beautiful fairy story lifted from
+childhood's thought and diction into a mature realm. His humor is plain
+and simple, cool and keenly calculating. A friendly critic has said of
+one of his stories, "With a gentle, ceaseless murmur of amusement, and
+a flickering twinkle of smiles, the story moves steadily on in the calm
+triumph of its assured and unassailable absurdity, to its logical and
+indisputable impossibility." This observation is very largely true of
+all his stories.
+
+GENERAL REFERENCES
+
+_Frank R. Stockton_, A.T.Q. Couch.
+
+"Stockton's Method of Working," _Current Literature_, 32:495.
+
+"Criticism," _Atheneum_, 1:532.
+
+"Estimate," _Harper's Weekly_, 46:555.
+
+COLLATERAL READINGS
+
+_The Beeman of Orn, and Other Fanciful Tales_, Frank R. Stockton.
+
+_The Lady or the Tiger_, Frank R. Stockton.
+
+_Rudder Grange_, Frank R. Stockton.
+
+_A Tale of Negative Gravity_, Frank R. Stockton.
+
+_The Remarkable Wreck of the Thomas Hyde_, Frank R. Stockton.
+
+_His Wife's Deceased Sister_, Frank R. Stockton.
+
+_Legend of Sleepy Hollow_, Washington Irving.
+
+_Monsieur du Miroir_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_At the End of the Passage_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+_The Vacant Lot_, Mary Wilkins Freeman.
+
+_The Princess Pourquoi_, Margaret Sherwood.
+
+_What Was It? A Mystery_, Fitz-James O'Brien.
+
+_Wandering Willie's Tale_, Walter Scott.
+
+
+
+
+THE PIECE OF STRING[1]
+
+
+_By Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893)_
+
+
+On all the roads about Goderville the peasants and their wives were
+coming toward the town, for it was market day. The men walked at an
+easy gait, the whole body thrown forward with every movement of their
+long, crooked legs, misshapen by hard work, by the bearing down on the
+plough which at the same time causes the left shoulder to rise and the
+figure to slant; by the mowing of the grain, which makes one hold his
+knees apart in order to obtain a firm footing; by all the slow and
+laborious tasks of the fields. Their starched blue blouses, glossy as
+if varnished, adorned at the neck and wrists with a bit of white
+stitchwork, puffed out about their bony chests like balloons on the
+point of taking flight, from which protrude a head, two arms, and two
+feet.
+
+Some of them led a cow or a calf at the end of a rope. And their wives,
+walking behind the beast, lashed it with a branch still covered with
+leaves, to hasten its pace. They carried on their arms great baskets,
+from which heads of chickens or of ducks were thrust forth. And they
+walked with a shorter and quicker step than their men, their stiff,
+lean figures wrapped in scanty shawls pinned over their flat breasts,
+their heads enveloped in a white linen cloth close to the hair, with a
+cap over all.
+
+Then a _char-à-bancs[2]_ passed, drawn by a jerky-paced nag, with two
+men seated side by side shaking like jelly, and a woman behind, who
+clung to the side of the vehicle to lessen the rough jolting.
+
+On the square at Goderville there was a crowd, a medley of men and
+beasts. The horns of the cattle, the high hats, with a long, hairy nap,
+of the wealthy peasants, and the head dresses of the peasant women,
+appeared on the surface of the throng. And the sharp, shrill,
+high-pitched voices formed an incessant, uncivilized uproar, over which
+soared at times a roar of laughter from the powerful chest of a sturdy
+yokel, or the prolonged bellow of a cow fastened to the wall of a
+house.
+
+There was an all-pervading smell of the stable, of milk, of the
+dunghill, of hay, and of perspiration—that acrid, disgusting odor of
+man and beast peculiar to country people.
+
+Master Hauchecorne, of Bréauté, had just arrived at Goderville, and was
+walking toward the square, when he saw a bit of string on the ground.
+Master Hauchecorne, economical like every true Norman, thought that it
+was well to pick up everything that might be of use; and he stooped
+painfully, for he suffered with rheumatism. He took the piece of
+slender cord from the ground, and was about to roll it up carefully,
+when he saw Master Malandain, the harness-maker, standing in his
+doorway and looking at him. They had formerly had trouble on the
+subject of a halter, and had remained at odds, being both inclined to
+bear malice. Master Hauchecorne felt a sort of shame at being seen thus
+by his enemy, fumbling in the mud for a bit of string. He hurriedly
+concealed his treasure in his blouse, then in his breeches pocket; then
+he pretended to look on the ground for something else, which he did not
+find; and finally he went on toward the market, his head thrust
+forward, bent double by his pains.
+
+He lost himself at once in the slow-moving, shouting crowd, kept in a
+state of excitement by the interminable bargaining. The peasants felt
+of the cows, went away, returned, sorely perplexed, always afraid of
+being cheated, never daring to make up their minds, watching the
+vendor's eye, striving incessantly to detect the tricks of the man and
+the defect in the beast.
+
+The women, having placed their great baskets at their feet, took out
+their fowls, which lay on the ground, their legs tied together, with
+frightened eyes and scarlet combs.
+
+They listened to offers, adhered to their prices, short of speech and
+impassive of face; or else, suddenly deciding to accept the lower price
+offered, they would call out to the customer as he walked slowly away:—
+
+"All right, Mast' Anthime. You can have it."
+
+Then, little by little, the square became empty, and when the
+Angelus[3] struck midday those who lived too far away to go home betook
+themselves to the various inns.
+
+At Jourdain's the common room was full of customers, as the great yard
+was full of vehicles of every sort—carts, cabriolets,[4]
+_char-à-bancs_, tilburys,[5] unnamable carriages, shapeless, patched,
+with, their shafts reaching heavenward like arms, or with their noses
+in the ground and their tails in the air.
+
+The vast fireplace, full of clear flame, cast an intense heat against
+the backs of the row on the right of the table. Three spits were
+revolving, laden with chickens, pigeons, and legs of mutton; and a
+delectable odor of roast meat, and of gravy dripping from the browned
+skin, came forth from the hearth, stirred the guests to merriment, and
+made their mouths water.
+
+All the aristocracy of the plough ate there, at Mast' Jourdain's, the
+innkeeper and horse trader—a shrewd rascal who had money.
+
+The dishes passed and were soon emptied, like the jugs of yellow cider.
+Every one told of his affairs, his sales and his purchases. They
+inquired about the crops. The weather was good for green stuffs, but a
+little wet for wheat.
+
+Suddenly a drum rolled in the yard, in front of the house. In an
+instant everybody was on his feet, save a few indifferent ones; and
+they all ran to the door and windows with their mouths still full and
+napkins in hand.
+
+Having finished his long tattoo, the public crier shouted in a jerky
+voice, making his pauses in the wrong places:—
+
+"The people of Goderville, and all those present at the market are
+informed that between—nine and ten o'clock this morning on the
+Beuzeville—road, a black leather wallet was lost, containing five
+hundred—francs, and business papers. The finder is requested to carry
+it to—the mayor's at once, or to Master Fortuné Huelbrèque of
+Manneville. A reward of twenty francs will be paid."
+
+Then he went away. They heard once more in the distance the muffled
+roll of the drum and the indistinct voice of the crier.
+
+Then they began to talk about the incident, reckoning Master
+Houlbrèque's chance of finding or not finding his wallet.
+
+And the meal went on.
+
+They were finishing their coffee when the corporal of gendarmes
+appeared in the doorway.
+
+He inquired:—
+
+"Is Master Hauchecorne of Bréauté here?"
+
+Master Hauchecorne, who was seated at the farther end of the table,
+answered:—
+
+"Here I am."
+
+And the corporal added:—
+
+"Master Hauchecorne, will you be kind enough to go to the mayor's
+office with me? Monsieur the mayor would like to speak to you."
+
+The peasant, surprised and disturbed, drank his _petit verre[6]_ at one
+swallow, rose, and even more bent than in the morning, for the first
+steps after each rest were particularly painful, he started off,
+repeating:—
+
+"Here I am, here I am."
+
+And he followed the brigadier.
+
+The mayor was waiting for him, seated in his arm-chair. He was the
+local notary, a stout, solemn-faced man, given to pompous speeches.
+
+"Master Hauchecorne," he said, "you were seen this morning, on the
+Beuzeville road, to pick up the wallet lost by Master Huelbrèque of
+Manneville."
+
+The rustic, dumfounded, stared at the mayor, already alarmed by this
+suspicion which had fallen upon him, although he failed to understand
+it.
+
+"I, I—I picked up that wallet?"
+
+"Yes, you."
+
+"On my word of honor, I didn't even so much as see it."
+
+"You were seen."
+
+"They saw me, me? Who was it saw me?"
+
+"Monsieur Malandain, the harness-maker."
+
+Thereupon the old man remembered and understood; and flushing with
+anger, he cried:—
+
+"Ah! he saw me, did he, that sneak? He saw me pick up this string,
+look, m'sieu' mayor."
+
+And fumbling in the depths of his pocket, he produced the little piece
+of cord.
+
+But the mayor was incredulous and shook his head.
+
+"You won't make me believe, Master Hauchecorne, that Monsieur
+Malandain, who is a man deserving of credit, mistook this string for a
+wallet."
+
+The peasant, in a rage, raised his hand, spit to one side to pledge his
+honor, and said:—
+
+"It's God's own truth, the sacred truth, all the same, m'sieu' mayor. I
+say it again, by my soul and my salvation."
+
+"After picking it up," rejoined the mayor, "you hunted a long while in
+the mud, to see if some piece of money hadn't fallen out."
+
+The good man was suffocated with wrath and fear.
+
+"If any one can tell—if any one can tell lies like that to ruin an
+honest man! If any one can say—"
+
+To no purpose did he protest; he was not believed.
+
+He was confronted with Monsieur Malandain, who repeated and maintained
+his declaration. They insulted each other for a whole hour. At his own
+request, Master Hauchecorne was searched. They found nothing on him. At
+last the mayor, being sorely perplexed, discharged him, but warned him
+that he proposed to inform the prosecuting attorney's office and to ask
+for orders.
+
+The news had spread. On leaving the mayor's office, the old man was
+surrounded and questioned with serious or bantering curiosity, in
+which, however, there was no trace of indignation. And he began to tell
+the story of the string. They did not believe him. They laughed.
+
+He went his way, stopping his acquaintances, repeating again and again
+his story and his protestations, showing his pockets turned inside out,
+to prove that he had nothing.
+
+They said to him:—
+
+"You old rogue, _va!_"
+
+And he lost his temper, lashing himself into a rage, feverish with
+excitement, desperate because he was not believed, at a loss what to
+do, and still telling his story. Night came. He must needs go home. He
+started with three neighbors, to whom he pointed out the place where he
+had picked up the bit of string: and all the way he talked of his
+misadventure.
+
+During the evening he made a circuit of the village of Bréauté, in
+order to tell everybody about it. He found none but incredulous
+listeners.
+
+He was ill over it all night.
+
+The next afternoon, about one o'clock, Marius Paumelle, a farmhand
+employed by Master Breton, a farmer of Ymauville, restored the wallet
+and its contents to Master Huelbrèque of Manneville.
+
+The man claimed that he had found it on the road; but, being unable to
+read, had carried it home and given it to his employer.
+
+The news soon became known in the neighborhood; Master Hauchecorne was
+informed of it. He started out again at once, and began to tell his
+story, now made complete by the dénouement. He was triumphant.
+
+"What made me feel bad," he said, "wasn't so much the thing itself, you
+understand, but the lying. There's nothing hurts you so much as being
+blamed for lying."
+
+All day long he talked of his adventure; he told it on the roads to
+people who passed; at the wine-shop to people who were drinking; and
+after church on the following Sunday. He even stopped strangers to tell
+them about it. His mind was at rest now, and yet something embarrassed
+him, although he could not say just what it was. People seemed to laugh
+while they listened to him. They did not seem convinced. He felt as if
+remarks were made behind his back.
+
+On Tuesday of the next week, he went to market at Goderville, impelled
+solely by the longing to tell his story.
+
+Malandain, standing in his doorway, began to laugh when he saw him
+coming. Why?
+
+He accosted a farmer from Criquetot, who did not let him finish, but
+poked him in the pit of his stomach, and shouted in his face: "Go on,
+you old fox!" Then he turned on his heel.
+
+Master Hauchecorne was speechless, and more and more disturbed. Why did
+he call him "old fox"?
+
+When he was seated at the table, in Jourdain's Inn, he set about
+explaining the affair once more.
+
+A horse-trader from Montvilliers called out to him:—
+
+"Nonsense, nonsense, you old dodger! I know all about your string!"
+
+"But they've found the wallet!" faltered Hauchecorne.
+
+"None of that, old boy; there's one who finds it, and there's one who
+carries it back. I don't know just how you did it, but I understand
+you."
+
+The peasant was fairly stunned. He understood at last. He was accused
+of having sent the wallet back by a confederate, an accomplice.
+
+He tried to protest. The whole table began to laugh.
+
+He could not finish his dinner, but left the inn amid a chorus of
+jeers.
+
+He returned home, shamefaced and indignant, suffocated by wrath, by
+confusion, and all the more cast down because, with his Norman cunning,
+he was quite capable of doing the thing with which he was charged, and
+even of boasting of it as a shrewd trick. He had a confused idea that
+his innocence was impossible to establish, his craftiness being so well
+known. And he was cut to the heart by the injustice of the suspicion.
+
+Thereupon he began once more to tell of the adventure, making the story
+longer each day, adding each time new arguments, more forcible
+protestations, more solemn oaths, which he devised and prepared in his
+hours of solitude, his mind being wholly engrossed by the story of the
+string. The more complicated his defence and the more subtle his
+reasoning, the less he was believed.
+
+"Those are a liar's reasons," people said behind his back.
+
+He realized it: he gnawed his nails, and exhausted himself in vain
+efforts.
+
+He grew perceptibly thinner.
+
+Now the jokers asked him to tell the story of "The Piece of String" for
+their amusement, as a soldier who has seen service is asked to tell
+about his battles. His mind, attacked at its source, grew feebler.
+
+Late in December he took to his bed.
+
+In the first days of January he died, and in his delirium, of the death
+agony, he protested his innocence, repeating:
+
+"A little piece of string—a little piece of string—see, here it is,
+m'sieu' mayor."
+
+NOTES
+
+[1] _The Piece of String_ was written in 1884. Reprinted from _Little
+French Masterpieces_, by permission of the publishers, _G.P. Putnam's
+Sons_.
+
+[2] 34:5 char-à-bancs. A pleasure car.
+
+[3] 35:26 Angelus. A bell tolled at morning, noon, and night, according
+to the Roman Catholic Church custom, to indicate the time of the
+service of song and recitation in memory of the Virgin Mary. The name
+is taken from the first word of the recitation.
+
+[4] 35:30 cabriolet. A cab. Originally a light, one-horse pleasure
+carriage with two seats.
+
+[5] 35:30 tilbury. An old form of gig, seating two persons.
+
+[6] 37:20 petit verre. Little glass.
+
+BIOGRAPHY
+
+Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant, French novelist, dramatist, and
+short-story writer, was born in 1850. Until he was thirteen years old
+he had no teacher except his mother, who personally superintended the
+training of her two sons. Life for the two boys, during these early
+years, was free and happy, Guy was a strong and robust Norman,
+overflowing with animal spirits and exuberant with the joy of youthful
+life.
+
+When thirteen years of age Maupassant attended the seminary at Yvetot,
+where he found school life irksome and a most distasteful contrast to
+his former free life. Later he became a student in the Lycée in Rouen.
+His experience as a student here was very pleasant, and he easily
+acquired his degree. In 1870 he was appointed to a clerkship in the
+Navy, and a little later to a more lucrative position in the Department
+of Public Instruction. His work in these two positions suffered very
+materially because of his negligence and daily practice in writing
+verses and essays for Flaubert, the most careful literary technicist in
+the history of literature, to criticize. For seven years Maupassant
+served this severe task-master, always writing, receiving criticisms,
+and publishing nothing.
+
+Immediately after the publication of his first story Maupassant was
+hailed as a finished master artist. From 1880 to 1890 he published six
+novels, sixteen volumes of short-stories, three volumes of travels, and
+many newspaper articles. This gigantic task was performed only because
+of his regular habits and splendid physique. He wrote regularly every
+morning from seven o'clock until noon, and at night always wrote out
+notes on the impressions from his experiences of the day.
+
+Maupassant was a natural artist deeply in love with the technique of
+his work. He did not write for money, although he believed that a
+writer should have plenty of this world's possessions, nor did he write
+for art's sake. In fact he avoided talking on the subject of writing
+and to all appearances seemed to despise his profession. He wrote
+because the restless, immitigable force within him compelled him to
+work like a slave. He thought little of morals, or religion, but was
+enamored with physical life and its insolvable problems. He was, above
+everything else, a truthful man. Sometimes his subjects are unclean and
+he treats them as such, but, if his subject is clean, his treatment is
+undefiled.
+
+In 1887 the shadows of insanity began to creep athwart his life. Even
+in 1884 he seemed to feel a premonition of his coming catastrophe when
+he wrote: "I am afraid of the walls, of the furniture, of the familiar
+objects which seem to me to assume a kind of animal life. Above all, I
+fear the horrible confusion of my thought, of my reason escaping,
+entangled and scattered by an invisible and mysterious anguish." The
+dreaded disease developed until, in 1890, he had to suspend his
+writing. In 1892 he became wholly insane and had to be committed to an
+insane asylum where he died in a padded cell one year later.
+
+BIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES
+
+_The New International Encyclopaedia_.
+
+_Encyclopaedia Britannica_.
+
+_Bookman_, 25:290-294_.
+
+CRITICISMS
+
+Maupassant's short-stories are generally conceded to be the best in
+French literature. He handles his materials with great care, and his
+descriptions of scenes and characters are unequalled. In his first
+writings he seems impassive to the point of frigidity. He is a recorder
+who sets down exactly the life before him. This is one of the lessons
+he learned from Flaubert. He was not interested in what a character
+thought or felt, but he noted and fondled every action of his
+characters.
+
+He loved life, despite the lack of solutions. At times his fondness for
+mere physical life leads him to the brutal stage. In his story, _On the
+Water_, he gives a confession of a purely sensual man: "How gladly, at
+times, I would think no more, feel no more, live the life of a brute,
+in a warm, bright country, in a yellow country, without crude and
+brutal verdure, in one of those Eastern countries in which one falls
+asleep without concern, is active and has no cares, loves and has no
+distress, and is scarcely aware that one is going on living!"
+
+Maupassant was a keen observer, possessed an excellent but not lofty
+imagination, and never asserted a philosophy of life. His writings are
+all interesting, terse, precise, and truthful, but lack the glow that
+comes with a sympathetic and spiritual outlook on life. Zola says of
+him: "…. a Latin of good, clear, solid head, a maker of beautiful
+sentences shining like gold…." He chooses a single incident, a few
+characteristics and then moulds them into a compact story. Nine-tenths
+of his stories deal with selfishness and hypocrisy.
+
+Tolstoi wrote: "Maupassant possessed genius, that gift of attention
+revealing in the objects and facts of life properties not perceived by
+others; he possessed a beautiful form of expression, uttering clearly,
+simply, and with charm what he wished to say; and he possessed also the
+merit of sincerity, without which a work of art produces no effect;
+that is he did not merely pretend to love or hate, but did indeed love
+or hate what he described."
+
+GENERAL REFERENCES
+
+_Inquiries and Opinions_, Brander Matthews.
+
+"A Criticism," _Outlook_, 88:973-976.
+
+"Greatest Short Story Writer that Ever Lived," _Current Literature_,
+42:636-638.
+
+COLLATERAL READINGS
+
+_Happiness_ (Odd Number), Guy de Maupassant.
+
+_The Wolf_, Guy de Maupassant.
+
+_La Mère Sauvage_, Guy de Maupassant.
+
+_The Confession_, Guy de Maupassant.
+
+_On the Journey_, Guy de Maupassant.
+
+_The Beggar_, Guy de Maupassant.
+
+_A Ghost_, Guy de Maupassant.
+
+_Little Soldier_, Guy de Maupassant.
+
+_The Wreck_, Guy de Maupassant.
+
+_The Necklace_, Guy de Maupassant.
+
+_A Note of Scarlet_, Ruth Stuart.
+
+_Expiation_, Octave Thanet.
+
+_Fagan_, Rowland Thomas.
+
+_La Grande Bretêche_ ("Jessup and Canby"), Honoré de Balzac.
+
+
+
+
+THE MAN WHO WAS[1]
+
+
+_By Rudyard Kipling (1865-   )_
+
+
+Let it be clearly understood that the Russian is a delightful person
+till he tucks his shirt in. As an Oriental he is charming. It is only
+when he insists upon being treated as the most easterly of Western
+peoples, instead of the most westerly of Easterns, that he becomes a
+racial anomaly[2] extremely difficult to handle. The host never knows
+which side of his nature is going to turn up next.
+
+Dirkovitch was a Russian—a Russian of the Russians, as he said—who
+appeared to get his bread by serving the czar as an officer in a
+Cossack regiment, and corresponding for a Russian newspaper with a name
+that was never twice the same. He was a handsome young Oriental, with a
+taste for wandering through unexplored portions of the earth, and he
+arrived in India from nowhere in particular. At least no living man
+could ascertain whether it was by way of Balkh, Budukhshan, Chitral,
+Beloochistan, Nepaul, or anywhere else. The Indian government, being in
+an unusually affable mood, gave orders that he was to be civilly
+treated, and shown everything that was to be seen; so he drifted,
+talking bad English and worse French, from one city to another till he
+forgathered with her Majesty's White Hussars[3] in the city of
+Peshawur,[4] which stands at the mouth of that narrow sword-cut in the
+hills that men call the Khyber Pass. He was undoubtedly an officer, and
+he was decorated, after the manner of the Russians, with little
+enameled crosses, and he could talk, and (though this has nothing to do
+with his merits) he had been given up as a hopeless task or case by the
+Black Tyrones[5], who, individually and collectively, with hot whisky
+and honey, mulled brandy and mixed spirits of all kinds, had striven in
+all hospitality to make him drunk. And when the Black Tyrones, who are
+exclusively Irish, fail to disturb the peace of head of a foreigner,
+that foreigner is certain to be a superior man. This was the argument
+of the Black Tyrones, but they were ever an unruly and self-opinionated
+regiment, and they allowed junior subalterns of four years' service to
+choose their wines. The spirits were always purchased by the colonel
+and a committee of majors. And a regiment that would so behave may be
+respected but cannot be loved.
+
+The White Hussars were as conscientious in choosing their wine as in
+charging the enemy. There was a brandy that had been purchased by a
+cultured colonel a few years after the battle of Waterloo. It has been
+maturing ever since, and it was a marvelous brandy at the purchasing.
+The memory of that liquor would cause men to weep as they lay dying in
+the teak forests of upper Burmah[6] or the slime of the Irrawaddy[7].
+And there was a port which was notable; and there was a champagne of an
+obscure brand, which always came to mess without any labels, because
+the White Hussars wished none to know where the source of supply might
+be found. The officer on whose head the champagne choosing lay was
+forbidden the use of tobacco for six weeks previous to sampling.
+
+This particularity of detail is necessary to emphasize the fact that
+that champagne, that port, and above all, that brandy—the green and
+yellow and white liqueurs did not count—was placed at the absolute
+disposition of Dirkovitch, and he enjoyed himself hugely—even more than
+among the Black Tyrones.
+
+But he remained distressingly European through it all. The White
+Hussars were—"My dear true friends," "Fellow-soldiers glorious," and
+"Brothers inseparable." He would unburden himself by the hour on the
+glorious future that awaited the combined arms of England and Russia
+when their hearts and their territories should run side by side, and
+the great mission of civilizing Asia should begin. That was
+unsatisfactory, because Asia is not going to be civilized after the
+methods of the West. There is too much Asia, and she is too old. You
+cannot reform a lady of many lovers, and Asia has been insatiable in
+her flirtations aforetime. She will never attend Sunday school, or
+learn to vote save with swords for tickets.
+
+Dirkovitch knew this as well as any one else, but it suited him to talk
+special-correspondently and to make himself as genial as he could. Now
+and then he volunteered a little, a very little, information about his
+own Sotnia[8] of Cossacks, left apparently to look after themselves
+somewhere at the back of beyond. He had done rough work in Central
+Asia, and had seen rather more help-yourself fighting than most men of
+his years. But he was careful never to betray his superiority, and more
+than careful to praise on all occasions the appearance, drill, uniform,
+and organization of her Majesty's White Hussars. And, indeed, they were
+a regiment to be admired. When Mrs. Durgan, widow of the late Sir John
+Durgan, arrived in their station, and after a short time had been
+proposed to by every single man at mess, she put the public sentiment
+very neatly when she explained that they were all so nice that unless
+she could marry them all, including the colonel and some majors who
+were already married, she was not going to content herself with one of
+them. Wherefore she wedded a little man in a rifle regiment—being by
+nature contradictious—and the White Hussars were going to wear crape on
+their arms, but compromised by attending the wedding in full force, and
+lining the aisle with unutterable reproach. She had jilted them
+all—from Basset-Holmer, the senior captain, to Little Mildred, the last
+subaltern, and he could have given her four thousand a year and a
+title. He was a viscount, and on his arrival the mess had said he had
+better go into the Guards, because they were all sons of large grocers
+and small clothiers in the Hussars, but Mildred begged very hard to be
+allowed to stay, and behaved so prettily that he was forgiven, and
+became a man, which is much more important than being any sort of
+viscount.
+
+The only persons who did not share the general regard for the White
+Hussars were a few thousand gentlemen of Jewish extraction who lived
+across the border, and answered to the name of Pathan. They had only
+met the regiment officially, and for something less than twenty
+minutes, but the interview, which was complicated with many casualties,
+had filled them with prejudice. They even called the White Hussars
+"children of the devil," and sons of persons whom it would be perfectly
+impossible to meet in decent society. Yet they were not above making
+their aversion fill their money belts. The regiment possessed carbines,
+beautiful Martini-Henri carbines, that would cob a bullet into an
+enemy's camp at one thousand yards, and were even handier than the long
+rifle. Therefore they were coveted all along the border, and since
+demand inevitably breeds supply, they were supplied at the risk of life
+and limb for exactly their weight in coined silver—seven and one half
+pounds of rupees[9], or sixteen pounds and a few shillings each,
+reckoning the rupee at par. They were stolen at night by snaky-haired
+thieves that crawled on their stomachs under the nose of the sentries;
+they disappeared mysteriously from armracks; and in the hot weather,
+when all the doors and windows were open, they vanished like puffs of
+their own smoke. The border people desired them first for their own
+family vendettas[10] and then for contingencies. But in the long cold
+nights of the Northern Indian winter they were stolen most extensively.
+The traffic of murder was liveliest among the hills at that season, and
+prices ruled high. The regimental guards were first doubled and then
+trebled. A trooper does not much care if he loses a weapon—government
+must make it good—but he deeply resents the loss of his sleep. The
+regiment grew very angry, and one night-thief who managed to limp away
+bears the visible marks of their anger upon him to this hour. That
+incident stopped the burglaries for a time, and the guards were reduced
+accordingly, and the regiment devoted itself to polo with unexpected
+results, for it beat by two goals to one that very terrible polo corps
+the Lushkar Light Horse, though the latter had four ponies apiece for a
+short hour's fight, as well as a native officer who played like a
+lambent flame across the ground.
+
+Then they gave a dinner to celebrate the event. The Lushkar team came,
+and Dirkovitch came, in the fullest full uniform of Cossack officer,
+which is as full as a dressing-gown, and was introduced to the
+Lushkars, and opened his eyes as he regarded them. They were lighter
+men than the Hussars, and they carried themselves with the swing that
+is the peculiar right of the Punjab[11] frontier force and all
+irregular horse. Like everything else in the service, it has to be
+learned; but unlike many things, it is never forgotten, and remains on
+the body till death.
+
+The great beam-roofed mess room of the White Hussars was a sight to be
+remembered. All the mess plate was on the long table—the same table
+that had served up the bodies of five dead officers in a forgotten
+fight long and long ago—the dingy, battered standards faced the door of
+entrance, clumps of winter roses lay between the silver candlesticks,
+the portraits of eminent officers deceased looked down on their
+successors from between the heads of sambhur[12], nilghai[13], maikhor,
+and, pride of all the mess, two grinning snow-leopards that had cost
+Basset-Holmer four months' leave that he might have spent in England
+instead of on the road to Thibet, and the daily risk of his life on
+ledge, snowslide, and glassy grass slope.
+
+The servants, in spotless white muslin and the crest of their regiments
+on the brow of their turbans, waited behind their masters, who were
+clad in the scarlet and gold of the White Hussars and the cream and
+silver of the Lushkar Light Horse. Dirkovitch's dull green uniform was
+the only dark spot at the board, but his big onyx eyes made up for it.
+He was fraternizing effusively with the captain of the Lushkar team,
+who was wondering how many of Dirkovitch's Cossacks his own long, lathy
+down-countrymen could account for in a fair charge. But one does not
+speak of these things openly.
+
+The talk rose higher and higher, and the regimental band played between
+the courses, as is the immemorial custom, till all tongues ceased for a
+moment with the removal of the dinner slips and the First Toast of
+Obligation, when the colonel, rising, said, "Mr. Vice, the Queen," and
+Little Mildred from the bottom of the table answered, "The Queen, God
+bless her!" and the big spurs clanked as the big men heaved themselves
+up and drank the Queen, upon whose pay they were falsely supposed to
+pay their mess bills. That sacrament of the mess never grows old, and
+never ceases to bring a lump into the throat of the listener wherever
+he be, by land or by sea. Dirkovitch rose with his "brothers glorious,"
+but he could not understand. No one but an officer can understand what
+the toast means; and the bulk have more sentiment than comprehension.
+It all comes to the same in the end, as the enemy said when he was
+wriggling on a lance point. Immediately after the little silence that
+follows on the ceremony there entered the native officer who had played
+for the Lushkar team. He could not of course eat with the alien, but he
+came in at dessert, all six feet of him, with the blue-and-silver
+turban atop, and the big black top-boots below. The mess rose joyously
+as he thrust forward the hilt of his saber, in token of fealty, for the
+colonel of the White Hussars to touch, and dropped into a vacant chair
+amid shouts of "_Rung ho_! Hira Singh!" (which being translated means
+"Go in and win!"). "Did I whack you over the knee, old man?" "Ressaidar
+Sahib, what the devil made you play that kicking pig of a pony in the
+last ten minutes?" "Shabash, Ressaidar Sahib!" Then the voice of the
+colonel, "The health of Ressaidar Hira Singh!"
+
+After the shouting had died away, Hira Singh rose to reply, for he was
+the cadet of a royal house, the son of a king's son, and knew what was
+due on these occasions. Thus he spoke in the vernacular:—
+
+"Colonel Sahib and officers of this regiment, much honor have you done
+me. This will I remember. We came down from afar to play you; but we
+were beaten." ("No fault of yours, Ressaidar Sahib. Played on our own
+ground, y' know. Your ponies were cramped from the railway. Don't
+apologize.") "Therefore perhaps we will come again if it be so
+ordained." ("Hear! Hear, hear, indeed! Bravo! Hsh!") "Then we will play
+you afresh" ("Happy to meet you"), "till there are left no feet upon
+our ponies. Thus far for sport." He dropped one hand on his sword hilt
+and his eye wandered to Dirkovitch lolling back in his chair. "But if
+by the will of God there arises any other game which is not the polo
+game, then be assured, Colonel Sahib and officers, that we shall play
+it out side by side, though _they_"—again his eye sought
+Dirkovitch—"though _they_, I say, have fifty ponies to our one horse."
+And with a deep-mouthed _Rung ho_! that rang like a musket butt on
+flagstones, he sat down amid shoutings.
+
+Dirkovitch, who had devoted himself steadily to the brandy—the terrible
+brandy aforementioned—did not understand, nor did the expurgated[14]
+translations offered to him at all convey the point. Decidedly the
+native officer's was the speech of the evening, and the clamor might
+have continued to the dawn had it not been broken by the noise of a
+shot without that sent every man feeling at his defenseless left side.
+It is notable that Dirkovitch "reached back," after the American
+fashion—a gesture that set the captain of the Lushkar team wondering
+how Cossack officers were armed at mess. Then there was a scuffle, and
+a yell of pain.
+
+"Carbine stealing again!" said the adjutant, calmly sinking back in his
+chair. "This comes of reducing the guards. I hope the sentries have
+killed him."
+
+The feet of armed men pounded on the veranda flags, and it sounded as
+though something was being dragged.
+
+"Why don't they put him in the cells till the morning?" said the
+colonel, testily. "See if they've damaged him, sergeant."
+
+The mess-sergeant fled out into the darkness, and returned with two
+troopers and a corporal, all very much perplexed.
+
+"Caught a man stealin' carbines, sir," said the corporal.
+
+"Leastways 'e was crawling toward the barricks, sir, past the main-road
+sentries; an' the sentry 'e says, sir—"
+
+The limp heap of rags upheld by the three men groaned. Never was seen
+so destitute and demoralized an Afghan. He was turbanless, shoeless,
+caked with dirt, and all but dead with rough handling. Hira Singh
+started slightly at the sound of the man's pain. Dirkovitch took
+another liqueur glass of brandy.
+
+"_What_ does the sentry say?" said the colonel.
+
+"Sez he speaks English, sir," said the corporal.
+
+"So you brought him into mess instead of handing him over to the
+sergeant! If he spoke all the tongues of the Pentecost you've no
+business—"
+
+Again the bundle groaned and muttered. Little Mildred had risen from
+his place to inspect. He jumped back as though he had been shot.
+
+"Perhaps it would be better, sir, to send the men away," said he to the
+colonel, for he was a much-privileged subaltern. He put his arms round
+the rag-bound horror as he spoke, and dropped him into a chair. It may
+not have been explained that the littleness of Mildred lay in his being
+six feet four, and big in proportion. The corporal, seeing that an
+officer was disposed to look after the capture, and that the colonel's
+eye was beginning to blaze, promptly removed himself and his men. The
+mess was left alone with the carbine thief, who laid his head on the
+table and wept bitterly, hopelessly, and inconsolably, as little
+children weep.
+
+Hira Singh leaped to his feet with a long-drawn vernacular oath
+"Colonel Sahib," said he, "that man is no Afghan, for they weep '_Ai!
+Ai_!' Nor is he of Hindustan, for they weep,'_Oh! Ho_!' He weeps after
+the fashion of the white men, who say '_Ow! Ow_!'"
+
+"Now where the dickens did you get that knowledge, Hira Singh?" said
+the captain of the Lushkar team.
+
+"Hear him!" said Hira Singh, simply, pointing at the crumpled figure
+that wept as though it would never cease.
+
+"He said, 'My God!'" said Little Mildred, "I heard him say it."
+
+The colonel and the mess room looked at the man in silence. It is a
+horrible thing to hear a man cry. A woman can sob from the top of her
+palate, or her lips, or anywhere else, but a man cries from his
+diaphragm, and it rends him to pieces. Also, the exhibition causes the
+throat of the on-looker to close at the top.
+
+"Poor devil!" said the colonel, coughing tremendously, "We ought to
+send him to hospital. He's been manhandled."
+
+Now the adjutant loved his rifles. They were to him as his
+grandchildren—the men standing in the first place. He grunted
+rebelliously: "I can understand an Afghan stealing, because he's made
+that way. But I can't understand his crying. That makes it worse."
+
+The brandy must have affected Dirkovitch, for he lay back in his chair
+and stared at the ceiling. There was nothing special in the ceiling
+beyond a shadow as of a huge black coffin. Owing to some peculiarity in
+the construction of the mess room this shadow was always thrown when
+the candles were lighted. It never disturbed the digestion of the White
+Hussars. They were, in rather proud of it.
+
+"Is he going to cry all night?" said the colonel, "or are we supposed
+to sit up with Little Mildred's guest until he feels better?"
+
+The man in the chair threw up his head and stared at the mess. Outside,
+the wheels of the first of those bidden to the festivities crunched the
+roadway.
+
+"Oh, my God!" said the man in the chair, and every soul in the mess
+rose to his feet. Then the Lushkar captain did a deed for which he
+ought to have been given the Victoria Cross—distinguished gallantry in
+a fight against overwhelming curiosity. He picked up his team with his
+eyes as the hostess picks up the ladies at the opportune moment, and
+pausing only by the colonel's chair to say, "This isn't _our_ affair,
+you know, sir," led the team into the veranda and the gardens. Hira
+Singh was the last, and he looked at Dirkovitch as he moved. But
+Dirkovitch had departed into a brandy paradise of his own. His lips
+moved without sound, and he was studying the coffin on the ceiling.
+
+"White—white all over," said Basset-Holmer, the adjutant. "What a
+pernicious renegade[15] he must be! I wonder where he came from?"
+
+The colonel shook the man gently by the arm, and "Who are you?" said
+he.
+
+There was no answer. The man stared round the mess room and smiled in
+the colonel's face. Little Mildred, who was always more of a woman than
+a man till "Boot and saddle" was sounded, repeated the question in a
+voice that would have drawn confidences from a geyser. The man only
+smiled. Dirkovitch, at the far end of the table, slid gently from his
+chair to the floor, No son of Adam, in this present imperfect world,
+can mix the Hussars' champagne with the Hussars' brandy by five and
+eight glasses of each without remembering the pit whence he has been
+digged and descending thither. The band began to play the tune with
+which the White Hussars, from the date of their formation, preface all
+their functions. They would sooner be disbanded than abandon that tune.
+It is a part of their system. The man straightened himself in his chair
+and drummed on the table with his fingers.
+
+"I don't see why we should entertain lunatics," said the colonel; "call
+a guard and send him off to the cells. We'll look into the business in
+the morning. Give him a glass of wine first, though."
+
+Little Mildred filled a sherry glass with the brandy and thrust it over
+to the man. He drank, and the tune rose louder, and he straightened
+himself yet more. Then he put out his long-taloned hands to a piece of
+plate opposite and fingered it lovingly. There was a mystery connected
+with that piece of plate in the shape of a spring, which converted what
+was a seven-branched candlestick, three springs each side and one on
+the middle, into a sort of wheel-spoke candelabrum[16]. He found the
+spring, pressed it, and laughed weakly. He rose from his chair and
+inspected a picture on the wall, then moved on to another picture, the
+mess watching him without a word.
+
+When he came to the mantelpiece he shook his head and seemed
+distressed. A piece of plate representing a mounted hussar in full
+uniform caught his eye. He pointed to it, and then to the mantelpiece,
+with inquiry in his eyes.
+
+"What is it—oh, what is it?" said Little Mildred. Then, as a mother
+might speak to a child, "That is a horse—yes, a horse."
+
+Very slowly came the answer, in a thick, passionless guttural: "Yes,
+I—have seen. But—where is _the_ horse?"
+
+You could have heard the hearts of the mess beating as the men drew
+back to give the stranger full room in his wanderings. There was no
+question of calling the guard.
+
+Again he spoke, very slowly, "Where is _our_ horse?"
+
+There is no saying what happened after that. There is but one horse in
+the White Hussars, and his portrait hangs outside the door of the mess
+room. He is the piebald drum-horse the king of the regimental band,
+that served the regiment for seven-and-thirty years, and in the end was
+shot for old age. Half the mess tore the thing down from its place and
+thrust it into the man's hands. He placed it above the mantelpiece; it
+clattered on the ledge, as his poor hands dropped it, and he staggered
+toward the bottom of the table, falling into Mildred's chair. The band
+began to play the "River of Years" waltz, and the laughter from the
+gardens came into the tobacco-scented mess room. But nobody, even the
+youngest, was thinking of waltzes. They all spoke to one another
+something after this fashion: "The drum-horse hasn't hung over the
+mantelpiece since '67." "How does he know?" "Mildred, go and speak to
+him again." "Colonel, what are you going to do?" "Oh, dry up, and give
+the poor devil a chance to pull himself together!" "It isn't possible,
+anyhow. The man's a lunatic."
+
+Little Mildred stood at the colonel's side talking into his ear. "Will
+you be good enough to take your seats, please, gentlemen?" he said, and
+the mess dropped into the chairs.
+
+Only Dirkovitch's seat, next to Little Mildred's, was blank, and Little
+Mildred himself had found Hira Singh's place. The wide-eyed mess
+sergeant filled the glasses in dead silence. Once more the colonel
+rose, but his hand shook, and the port spilled on the table as he
+looked straight at the man in Little Mildred's chair and said,
+hoarsely, "Mr. Vice, the Queen." There was a little pause, but the man
+sprang to his feet and answered, without hesitation, "The Queen, God
+bless her!" and as he emptied the thin glass he snapped the shank
+between his fingers.
+
+Long and long ago, when the Empress of India was a young woman, and
+there were no unclean ideals in the land, it was the custom in a few
+messes to drink the Queen's toast in broken glass, to the huge delight
+of the mess contractors. The custom is now dead, because there is
+nothing to break anything for, except now and again the word of a
+government, and that has been broken already.
+
+"That settles it," said the colonel, with a gasp. "He's not a sergeant.
+What in the world is he?"
+
+The entire mess echoed the word, and the volley of questions would have
+scared any man. Small wonder that the ragged, filthy invader could only
+smile and shake his head.
+
+From under the table, calm and smiling urbanely[17], rose Dirkovitch,
+who had been roused from healthful slumber by feet upon his body. By
+the side of the man he rose, and the man shrieked and groveled at his
+feet. It was a horrible sight, coming so swiftly upon the pride and
+glory of the toast that had brought the strayed wits together.
+
+Dirkovitch made no offer to raise him, but Little Mildred heaved him up
+in an instant. It is not good that a gentleman who can answer to the
+Queen's toast should lie at the feet of a subaltern of Cossacks.
+
+The hasty action tore the wretch's upper clothing nearly to the waist,
+and his body was seamed with dry black scars. There is only one weapon
+in the world that cuts in parallel lines, and it is neither the cane
+nor the cat. Dirkovitch saw the marks, and the pupils of his eyes
+dilated—also, his face changed. He said something that sounded like
+"Shto ve takete"; and the man, fawning, answered, "Chetyre."
+
+"What's that?" said everybody together.
+
+"His number. That is number four, you know." Dirkovitch spoke very
+thickly.
+
+"What has a Queen's officer to do with a qualified number?" said the
+colonel, and there rose an unpleasant growl round the table.
+
+"How can I tell?" said the affable Oriental, with a sweet smile. "He is
+a—how you have it?—escape—runaway, from over there."
+
+He nodded toward the darkness of the night.
+
+"Speak to him, if he'll answer you, and speak to him gently," said
+Little Mildred, settling the man in a chair. It seemed most improper to
+all present that Dirkovitch. should sip brandy as he talked in purring,
+spitting Russian to the creature who answered so feebly and with such
+evident dread. But since Dirkovitch appeared to understand, no man said
+a word. They breathed heavily, leaning forward, in the long gaps of the
+conversation. The next time that they have no engagements on hand the
+White Hussars intend to go to St. Petersburg and learn Russian.
+
+"He does not know how many years ago," said Dirkovitch, facing the
+mess, "but he says it was very long ago, in a war, I think that there
+was an accident. He says he was of this glorious and distinguished
+regiment in the war."
+
+"The rolls! The rolls! Holmer, get the rolls!" said Little Mildred, and
+the adjutant dashed off bareheaded to the orderly room where the rolls
+of the regiment were kept. He returned just in time to hear Dirkovitch
+conclude, "Therefore I am most sorry to say there was an accident,
+which would have been, reparable if he had apologized to our colonel,
+whom he had insulted."
+
+Another growl, which the colonel tried to beat down. The mess was in no
+mood to weigh insults to Russian colonels just then.
+
+"He does not remember, but I think that there was an accident, and so
+he was not exchanged among the prisoners, but he was sent to another
+place—how do you say?—the country. _So_, he says, he came here. He does
+not know how he came. Eh? He _was_ at Chepany[18]"—the man caught the
+word, nodded, and shivered—"at Zhigansk[19] and Irkutsk[20]. I cannot
+understand how he escaped. He says, too, that he was in the forests for
+many years, but how many years he has forgotten—that with many things.
+It was an accident; done because he did not apologise to our colonel.
+Ah!"
+
+Instead of echoing Dirkovitch's sigh of regret, it is sad to record
+that the White Hussars livelily exhibited unchristian delight and other
+emotions, hardly restrained by their sense of hospitality. Holmer flung
+the frayed and yellow regimental rolls on the table, and the men flung
+themselves atop of these.
+
+"Steady! Fifty-six—fifty-five—fifty-four," said Holmer. "Here we are.
+'Lieutenant Austin Limmason—_missing_.' That was before Sebastopol[21].
+What an infernal shame! Insulted one of their colonels, and was quietly
+shipped off. Thirty years of his life wiped out."
+
+"But he never apologized. Said he'd see him——first," chorussed the
+mess.
+
+"Poor devil! I suppose he never had the chance afterward. How did he
+come here?" said the colonel.
+
+The dingy heap in the chair could give no answer.
+
+"Do you know who you are?"
+
+It laughed weakly.
+
+"Do you know that you are Limmason—Lieutenant Limmason, of the White
+Hussars?"
+
+Swift as a shot came the answer, in a slightly surprised tone, "Yes,
+I'm Limmason, of course." The light died out in his eyes, and he
+collapsed afresh, watching every motion of Dirkovitch with terror. A
+flight from Siberia may fix a few elementary facts in the mind, but it
+does not lead to continuity of thought. The man could not explain how,
+like a homing pigeon, he had found his way to his own old mess again.
+Of what he had suffered or seen he knew nothing. He cringed before
+Dirkovitch as instinctively as he had pressed the spring of the
+candlestick, sought the picture of the drum-horse, and answered to the
+Queen's toast. The rest was a blank that the dreaded Russian tongue
+could only in part remove. His head bowed on his breast, and he giggled
+and cowered alternately.
+
+The devil that lived in the brandy prompted Dirkovitch at this
+extremely inopportune moment to make a speech. He rose, swaying
+slightly, gripped the table edge, while his eyes glowed like opals, and
+began:—"Fellow-soldiers glorious—true friends and hospitables. It was
+an accident, and deplorable—most deplorable." Here he smiled sweetly
+all round the mess. "But you will think of this little, little thing.
+So little, is it not? The czar! Posh! I slap my fingers—I snap my
+fingers at him. Do I believe in him? No! But the Slav who has done
+nothing, _him_ I believe. Seventy—how much?—millions that have done
+nothing—not one thing. Napoleon was an episode." He banged a hand on
+the table. "Hear you, old peoples, we have done nothing in the
+world—out here. All our work is to do: and it shall be done, old
+peoples. Get away!" He waved his hand imperiously, and pointed to the
+man. "You see him. He is not good to see. He was just one little—oh, so
+little—accident, that no one remembered. Now he is _That_. So will you
+be, brother-soldiers so brave—so will you be. But you will never come
+back. You will all go where he has gone, or"—he pointed to the great
+coffin shadow on the ceiling, and muttering, "Seventy millions—get
+away, you old people," fell asleep.
+
+"Sweet, and to the point," said Little Mildred. "What's the use of
+getting wroth? Let's make the poor devil comfortable."
+
+But that was a matter suddenly and swiftly taken from the loving hands
+of the White Hussars. The lieutenant had returned only to go away again
+three days later, when the wail of the "Dead March" and the tramp of
+the squadrons told the wondering station, that saw no gap in the table,
+an officer of the regiment had resigned his new-found commission.
+
+And Dirkovitch—bland, supple, and always genial—went away too by a
+night train. Little Mildred and another saw him off, for he was the
+guest of the mess, and even had he smitten the colonel with the open
+hand the law of the mess allowed no relaxation of hospitality.
+
+"Good-by, Dirkovitch, and a pleasant journey," said Little Mildred.
+
+"_Au revoir[22]_ my true friends," said the Russian.
+
+"Indeed! But we thought you were going home?"
+
+"Yes; but I will come again. My friends, is that road shut?" He pointed
+to where the north star burned over the Khyber Pass.
+
+"By Jove! I forgot. Of course. Happy to meet you, old man, any time you
+like. Got everything you want,—cheroots, ice, bedding? That's all
+right. Well, _au revoir_, Dirkovitch."
+
+"Um," said the other man, as the tail-lights of the train grew small.
+"Of—all—the—unmitigated[23]—"
+
+Little Mildred answered nothing, but watched the north star, and hummed
+a selection from a recent burlesque that had much delighted the White
+Hussars. It ran:—
+
+     "I'm sorry for Mister Bluebeard,
+
+     I'm sorry to cause him pain;
+
+     But a terrible spree there's sure to be
+
+     When he comes back again."
+
+NOTES
+
+[1] _The Man Who Was_ was written in 1889.
+
+[2] 46:6 anomaly. Deviation from type.
+
+[3] 47:1 Hussars. Light-horse troopers armed with sabre and carbine.
+
+[4] 47:1 Peshawur. City in British India.
+
+[5] 47:7 Tyrones. From a county in Ireland by this name.
+
+[6] 47:26 Burmah. In southeastern Asia. Part of the British Empire.
+
+[7] 47:27 Irrawaddy. Chief river of Burma.
+
+[8] 48:27 Sotnia. Company of the Cossacks.
+
+[9] 50:14 rupee. Indian coin worth about forty-eight cents.
+
+[10] 50:21 vendettas. Private blood-feuds.
+
+[11] 51:14 Punjab. Country of five rivers, tributaries of the Indus.
+
+[12] 81:26 Sambhur. A rusine deer found in India.
+
+[13] 51:26 nilghai. Antelope with hind legs shorter than its fore-legs.
+
+[14] 54:9 expurgated. Purified.
+
+[15] 57:23 renegade. One who deserts his faith.
+
+[16] 58:26 candelabrum. Stand supporting several lamps.
+
+[17] 61:3 urbanely. Politely.
+
+[18] 63:2 Chepany. Town in Siberia.
+
+[19] 63:4 Zhigansk. Town in Siberia.
+
+[20] 63:4 Irkutsk. Province and city in Siberia.
+
+[21] 63:17 Sebastopol. Seaport in Russia.
+
+[22] 65:26 Au revoir. Till we meet again.
+
+[23] 66:6 unmitigated. As bad as can be.
+
+BIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES
+
+_Essays on Modern Novelists_, William Lyon Phelps.
+
+_A Kipling Primer_, Knowles.
+
+_Rudyard Kipling_, Richard Le Galliene.
+
+"Kipling to French Eyes," _Bookman_, 26: 584.
+
+"Life of Kipling," _Encyclopaedia Britannica.
+
+"Life of Kipling," _The Universal Encyclopedia_.
+
+BIOGRAPHY
+
+Rudyard Kipling, the most vigorous, versatile, and highly endowed of
+the present-day writers of fiction, was born in Bombay, India, December
+30, 1865. His place of birth and extensive travelling make him more
+Anglo-Saxon than British. His father was for many years connected with
+the schools of art at Bombay and Lahore in India. His mother, Alice
+MacDonald, was the daughter of a Methodist clergyman.
+
+Kipling was brought to England when he was five years old to be
+educated. While in college at Westward Ho he edited the _College
+Chronicle_. For this paper he contributed regularly, poetry and
+stories. After his school days and on his return to India, he served on
+the editorial staff of the Lahore _Civil and Military Gazette_ from
+1882 to 1887, and was assistant editor of the _Pioneer_ at Allahabad
+from 1887 to 1889.
+
+Kipling has travelled extensively. He is at home in India, China,
+Japan, Africa, Australia, England, and America. The odd part about his
+realistic observations, however, is that his notes, whether written
+about California or India, are often repudiated by the people whom he
+has visited. After visiting England and the United States in a vain
+effort to find a publisher for his writings, he returned to India and
+published in the _Pioneer_ his _American Notes_, which were immediately
+reproduced in book form in New York in 1891.
+
+He married Miss Balestier of New York in 1892. They settled at
+Brattleboro, Vermont, immediately after their marriage and lived there
+until 1896. Kipling revisited the United States in 1899. While on this
+trip he suffered a severe attack of pneumonia which brought out a
+demonstration of interest from the American people that clearly showed
+their appreciation of him as a man and a writer.
+
+CRITICISMS
+
+Kipling is journalistic in all his writings. Oftentimes his material is
+very thin, flippant, and sensational, but he always is interesting, for
+he possesses the expert reporter's unerring judgment for choosing the
+essentials of his situation, character, or description, that catch and
+hold the reader's attention. In his earlier writings, like _Plain Tales
+from the Hills_ or _The Jungle Books_, the radical racial differences
+between his characters and readers, and the background of primitive,
+mysterious India caught the reading world and instantly established
+Kipling's fame.
+
+His technique is brilliant, his wit keen, and his energy of the bold
+and dashing military type. This audacious energy leads him very often
+into sprawling situations, a worship of imperialism, and reckless
+statements concerning moral and spiritual laws. Unlike Bret Harte, who
+was in many respects one of Kipling's ideals, he leaves his bad and
+coarse characters disreputable to the end. This is due in a large
+measure to the lack of warmth and light in his writings. In
+contradiction to this type of his works his _William the Conqueror_ and
+_An Habitation Enforced_ are filled with a gentle-human sympathy that
+causes us to forget and forgive any vulgarity he may have used in his
+more primitive and coarse characters. Even Kipling partisans must
+sometimes wish that Kipling's vision were not so dimmed by the British
+flag and that he might forget for a time the British soldier he loves
+so ardently.
+
+His writings since 1899 are much more mechanical than his earlier
+works. He seems, at times, to resort to the orator's superficial tricks
+in his attempts to attract readers. The _Athenaeum_, a friendly organ,
+says of his later work: "In his new part—the missionary of Empire—Mr.
+Kipling is living the strenuous life. He has frankly abandoned story
+telling, and is using his complete and powerful armory in the interests
+of patriotic zeal."
+
+Whatever may be the final judgment of the world concerning Kipling's
+claim to literary genius, the young student may rest assured that there
+is no one in England who can compare with this strenuous and versatile
+writer. He is original and powerful, interesting and realistic. He is a
+lover of the men who earn their bread by the sweat of their faces and a
+despiser of "flannelled fools." He lacks the day-dreams of Stevenson
+and preaches from every housetop the gospel of virile, acting morality.
+Many of his readers have criticised adversely his spiritual teachings,
+because of the furious energy with which he denounces an apathetic
+religion and eulogizes the person who works with all his might, day
+after day, for the highest he knows and never fears the day of death
+and judgment.
+
+GENERAL REFERENCES
+
+_The Book of the Short Story_, Alexander Jessup.
+
+_The Short Story in English_, Henry Seidel Canby.
+
+_Bibliography of Kipling's Works_, Eugene P, Saxton.
+
+"Contradictory Elements in Rudyard Kipling," _Current Literature_, 44:
+274.
+
+"Where Kipling Stands," _Bookman_, 29: 120-122.
+
+"Are there two Kiplings?" _Cosmopolitan_, 31: 653-660.
+
+"Literary Style of Kipling," _Lippincott_, 73: 99-103.
+
+COLLATERAL READINGS
+
+_The Man Who Would be King_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+_William the Conqueror_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+_Phantom Rickshaw_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+_The Finest Story in the World_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+_Under the Deodars_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+_An Habitation Enforced_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+_Plain Tales from the Hills_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+_The Light that Failed_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+_Wee Willie Winkie_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+_Baa Baa Black Sheep_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+_Captains Courageous_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+_The Jungle Books_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+_They_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+_The Brushwood Boy_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+_Christ in Flanders_, Honoré de Balzac.
+
+_The Old Gentleman of the Black Stock_, Thomas Nelson Page.
+
+_A New England Nun_, Mary Wilkins Freeman.
+
+_Outcasts of Poker Flat_, Bret Harte.
+
+_The Siege of Berlin_, Alphonse Dadoed.
+
+_The Prisoner of Assiout_, Grant Allen.
+
+_A Terribly Strange Bed_, Wilkie Collins.
+
+_The Prisoners_, Guy de Maupassant.
+
+_Mr. Isaacs_, F. Marion Crawford.
+
+_Where Love Is, There God Is Also_, Leo Tolstoi.
+
+
+
+
+THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER [1]
+
+
+_By Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)_
+
+
+     Son coeur est un luth suspendu;
+
+     Sitôt qu'on le touche il résonne.
+
+                                     —De Béranger.[2]
+
+During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of
+the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had
+been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of
+country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew
+on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. I know not how it
+was; but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of
+insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I say insufferable; for the
+feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurable, because poetic,
+sentiment, with which the mind usually receives even the sternest
+natural images of the desolate or terrible. I looked upon the scene
+before me—upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the
+domain—upon the bleak walls—upon the vacant eye-like windows—a few rank
+sedges—and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees—with an utter
+depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation more
+properly than to the after-dream of the reveller upon opium—the bitter
+lapse into every-day life—the hideous dropping off of the veil. There
+was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart—an unredeemed
+dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture
+into aught of the sublime. What was it—I paused to think—what was it
+that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of Usher? It was
+a mystery all insoluble; nor could I grapple with the shadowy fancies
+that crowded upon me as I pondered. I was forced to fall back upon the
+unsatisfactory conclusion that while, beyond doubt, there _are_
+combinations of very simple natural objects which have the power of
+thus affecting us, still the analysis of this power lies among
+considerations beyond our depth. It was possible, I reflected, that a
+mere different arrangement of the particulars of the scene, of the
+details of the picture, would be sufficient to modify, or perhaps to
+annihilate its capacity for sorrowful impression; and, acting upon this
+idea, I reined my horse to the precipitous brink of a black and lurid
+tarn[3] that lay in unruffled lustre by the dwelling, and gazed
+down—but with a shudder even more thrilling than before—upon the
+remodelled and inverted images of the gray sedge, and the ghastly tree
+stems, and the vacant and eye-like windows.
+
+Nevertheless, in this mansion of gloom I now proposed to myself a
+sojourn of some weeks. Its proprietor, Roderick Usher, had been one of
+my boon companions in boyhood; but many years had elapsed since our
+last meeting. A letter, however, had lately reached me in a distant
+part of the country—a letter from him—which, in its wildly importunate
+nature, had admitted of no other than a personal reply. The Ms. gave
+evidence of nervous agitation. The writer spoke of acute bodily
+illness, of a mental disorder which oppressed him, and of an earnest
+desire to see me, as his best, and indeed his only, personal friend,
+with a view of attempting, by the cheerfulness of my society, some
+alleviation of his malady. It was the manner in which all this, and
+much more, was said—it was the apparent _heart_ that went with his
+request—which allowed me no room for hesitation; and I accordingly
+obeyed forthwith what I still considered a very singular summons.
+
+Although, as boys, we had been even intimate associates, yet I really
+knew little of my friend. His reserve had been always excessive and
+habitual. I was aware, however, that his very ancient family had been
+noted, time out of mind, for a peculiar sensibility of temperament,
+displaying itself, through long ages, in many works of exalted art, and
+manifested, of late, in repeated deeds of munificent, yet unobtrusive,
+charity, as well as in a passionate devotion to the intricacies,
+perhaps even more than to the orthodox and easily recognizable
+beauties, of musical science. I had learned, too, the very remarkable
+fact that the stem of the Usher race, all time-honored as it was, had
+put forth, at no period, any enduring branch; in other words, that the
+entire family lay in the direct line of descent, and had always, with
+very trifling and very temporary variation, so lain. It was this
+deficiency, I considered, while running over in thought the perfect
+keeping of the character of the premises with the accredited character
+of the people, and while speculating upon the possible influence which
+the one, in the long lapse of centuries, might have exercised upon the
+other—it was this deficiency, perhaps, of collateral issue, and the
+consequent undeviating transmission, from sire to son, of the patrimony
+with the name, which had, at length, so identified the two as to merge
+the original title of the estate in the quaint and equivocal
+appellation of the _House of Usher_—an appellation which seemed to
+include, in the minds of the peasantry who used it, both the family and
+the family mansion.
+
+I have said that the sole effect of my somewhat childish experiment of
+looking down within the tarn had been to deepen the first singular
+impression. There can be no doubt that the consciousness of the rapid
+increase of my superstition—for why should I not so term it?—served
+mainly to accelerate the increase itself. Such, I have long known, is
+the paradoxical law of all sentiments having terror as a basis. And it
+might have been for this reason only, that, when I again uplifted my
+eyes to the house itself, from its image in the pool, there grew in my
+mind a strange fancy—a fancy so ridiculous, indeed, that I but mention
+it to show the vivid force of the sensations which oppressed me. I had
+so worked upon my imagination as really to believe that about the whole
+mansion and domain there hung an atmosphere peculiar to themselves and
+their immediate vicinity—an atmosphere which had no affinity with the
+air of heaven, but which had reeked up from the decayed trees, and the
+gray wall, and the silent tarn—a pestilent and mystic vapor, dull,
+sluggish, faintly discernible, and leaden-hued.
+
+Shaking off from my spirit what _must_ have been a dream, I scanned
+more narrowly the real aspect of the building. Its principal feature
+seemed to be that of an excessive antiquity. The discoloration of ages
+had been great. Minute fungi overspread the whole exterior, hanging in
+a fine, tangled web-work from the eaves. Yet all this was apart from
+any extraordinary dilapidation. No portion of the masonry had fallen;
+and there appeared to be a wild inconsistency between its still perfect
+adaptation of parts, and the crumbling condition of the individual
+stones. In this there was much that reminded me of the specious
+totality of old woodwork which has rotted for years in some neglected
+vault, with no disturbance from the breath of the external air. Beyond
+this indication of extensive decay, however, the fabric gave little
+token of instability. Perhaps the eye of a scrutinizing observer might
+have discovered a barely perceptible fissure, which, extending from the
+roof of the building in front, made its way down the wall in a zigzag
+direction, until it became lost in the sullen waters of the tarn.
+
+Noticing these things, I rode over a short causeway to the house. A
+servant in waiting took my horse, and I entered the Gothic archway of
+the hall. A valet, of stealthy step, thence conducted me, in silence,
+through many dark and intricate passages in my progress to the _studio_
+of his master. Much that I encountered on the way contributed, I know
+not how, to heighten the vague sentiments of which I have already
+spoken. While the objects around me—while the carvings of the ceilings,
+the sombre tapestries of the walls, the ebon blackness of the floors,
+and the phantasmagoric armorial trophies which rattled as I strode,
+were but matters to which, or to such as which, I had been accustomed
+from my infancy—while I hesitated not to acknowledge how familiar was
+all this—I still wondered to find how unfamiliar were the fancies which
+ordinary images were stirring up. On one of the staircases I met the
+physician of the family. His countenance, I thought, wore a mingled
+expression of low cunning and perplexity. He accosted me with
+trepidation and passed on. The valet now threw open a door and ushered
+me into the presence of his master.
+
+The room in which I found myself was very large and lofty. The windows
+were long, narrow, and pointed, and at so vast a distance from the
+black oaken floor as to be altogether inaccessible from within. Feeble
+gleams of encrimsoned light made their way through the trellised panes,
+and served to render sufficiently distinct the more prominent objects
+around; the eye, however, struggled in vain to reach the remoter angles
+of the chamber, or the recesses of the vaulted and fretted ceiling.
+Dark draperies hung upon the walls. The general furniture was profuse,
+comfortless, antique, and tattered. Many books and musical instruments
+lay scattered about, but failed to give any vitality to the scene. I
+felt that I breathed an atmosphere of sorrow. An air of stern, deep,
+and irredeemable gloom hung over and pervaded all.
+
+Upon my entrance, Usher arose from a sofa on which he had been lying at
+full length, and greeted me with, a vivacious warmth which had much in
+it, I at first thought, of an overdone cordiality—of the constrained
+effort of the _ennuyé_[4] man of the world. A glance, however, at his
+countenance convinced me of his perfect sincerity. We sat down; and for
+some moments, while he spoke not. I gazed upon him with a feeling half
+of pity, half of awe. Surely, man had never before so terribly altered,
+in so brief a period, as had Roderick Usher! It was with difficulty
+that I could bring myself to admit the identity of the wan being before
+me with the companion of my early boyhood. Yet the character of his
+face had been at all times remarkable. A cadaverousness of complexion;
+an eye large, liquid, and luminous beyond comparison; lips somewhat
+thin and very pallid, but of a surpassingly beautiful curve; a nose of
+a delicate Hebrew model, but with a breadth of nostril unusual in
+similar formations; a finely moulded chin, speaking, in its want of
+prominence, of a want of moral energy; hair of a more than web-like
+softness and tenuity; these features, with an inordinate expansion
+above the regions of the temple, made up altogether a countenance not
+easily to be forgotten. And now in the mere exaggeration of the
+prevailing character of these features, and of the expression they were
+wont to convey, lay so much of change that I doubted to whom I spoke.
+The now ghastly pallor of the skin, and the now miraculous lustre of
+the eye, above all things startled, and even awed me. The silken hair,
+too, had been suffered to grow all unheeded, and as, in its wild
+gossamer texture, it floated rather than fell about the face, I could
+not, even with effort, connect its arabesque expression with any idea
+of simple humanity.
+
+In the manner of my friend I was at once struck with an incoherence—an
+inconsistency; and I soon found this to arise from a series of feeble
+and futile struggles to overcome an habitual trepidancy, an excessive
+nervous agitation. For something of this nature I had indeed been
+prepared, no less by his letter than by reminiscences of certain boyish
+traits, and by conclusions deduced from his peculiar physical
+conformation and temperament. His action was alternately vivacious and
+sullen. His voice varied rapidly from a tremulous indecision (when the
+animal spirits seemed utterly in abeyance) to that species of energetic
+concision—that abrupt, weighty, unhurried, and hollow-sounding
+enunciation—that leaden, self-balanced, and perfectly modulated
+guttural utterance, which may be observed in the lost drunkard, or the
+irreclaimable eater of opium, during the periods of his most intense
+excitement.
+
+It was thus that he spoke of the object of my visit, of his earnest
+desire to see me, and of the solace he expected me to afford him. He
+entered, at some length, into what he conceived to be the nature of his
+malady. It was, he said, a constitutional and a family evil, and one
+for which he despaired to find a remedy—a mere nervous affection, he
+immediately added, which would undoubtedly soon pass off. It displayed
+itself in a host of unnatural sensations. Some of these, as he detailed
+them, interested and bewildered me; although, perhaps, the terms and
+the general manner of the narration had their weight. He suffered much
+from a morbid acuteness of the senses. The most insipid food was alone
+endurable; he could wear only garments of certain texture; the odors of
+all flowers were oppressive; his eyes were tortured by even a faint
+light; and there were but peculiar sounds, and these from stringed
+instruments, which did not inspire him with horror.
+
+To an anomalous species of terror I found him a bounden[5] slave. "I
+shall perish," said he, "I _must_ perish, in this deplorable folly.
+Thus, thus, and not otherwise, shall I be lost. I dread the events of
+the future, not in themselves, but in their results. I shudder at the
+thought of any, even the most trivial, incident, which may operate upon
+this intolerable agitation of soul. I have, indeed, no abhorrence of
+danger, except in its absolute effect—in terror. In this unnerved—in
+this pitiable condition—I feel that the period will sooner or later
+arrive when I must abandon life and reason together, in some struggle
+with the grim phantasm, FEAR."
+
+I learned, moreover, at intervals, and through broken and equivocal
+hints, another singular feature of his mental condition. He was
+enchained by certain superstitious impressions in regard to the
+dwelling which he tenanted, and whence, for many years, he had never
+ventured forth—in regard to an influence whose supposititious force was
+conveyed in terms too shadowy here to be restated—an influence which
+some peculiarities in the mere form and substance of his family
+mansion, had, by dint of long sufferance, he said, obtained over his
+spirit—an effect which the _physique_ of the gray walls and turrets,
+and of the dim tarn into which they all looked down, had, at length,
+brought about upon the _morale_ of his existence.
+
+He admitted, however, although with hesitation, that much of the
+peculiar gloom which thus afflicted him could be traced to a more
+natural and far more palpable origin—to the severe and long-continued
+illness—indeed to the evidently approaching dissolution—of a tenderly
+beloved sister, his sole companion for long years, his last and only
+relative on earth. "Her decease," he said, with a bitterness which I
+can never forget, "would leave him (him the hopeless and the frail) the
+last of the ancient race of the Ushers." While he spoke, the lady
+Madeline (for so was she called) passed slowly through a remote portion
+of the apartment, and, without having noticed my presence, disappeared.
+I regarded her with an utter astonishment not unmingled with dread[6];
+and yet I found it impossible to account for such feelings. A sensation
+of stupor oppressed me, as my eyes followed her retreating steps. When
+a door, at length, closed upon her, my glance sought instinctively and
+eagerly the countenance of the brother; but he had buried his face in
+his hands, and I could only perceive that a far more than ordinary
+wanness had overspread the emaciated fingers through which trickled
+many passionate tears.
+
+The disease of the lady Madeline had long baffled the skill of her
+physicians. A settled apathy, a gradual wasting away of the person, and
+frequent although transient affections of a partially cataleptical
+character, were the unusual diagnosis. Hitherto she had steadily borne
+up against the pressure of her malady, and had not betaken herself
+finally to bed; but on the closing in of the evening of my arrival at
+the house, she succumbed (as her brother told me at night with
+inexpressible agitation) to the prostrating power of the destroyer; and
+I learned that the glimpse I had obtained of her person would thus
+probably be the last I should obtain—that the lady, at least while
+living, would be seen by me no more.
+
+For several days ensuing her name was unmentioned by either Usher or
+myself; and during this period I was busied in earnest endeavors to
+alleviate the melancholy of my friend. We painted and read together; or
+I listened, as if in a dream, to the wild improvisations[7] of his
+speaking guitar. And thus, as a closer and still closer intimacy
+admitted me more unreservedly into the recesses of his spirit, the more
+bitterly did I perceive the futility of all attempt at cheering a mind
+from which darkness, as if an inherent positive quality, poured forth
+upon all objects of the moral and physical universe, in one unceasing
+radiation of gloom.
+
+I shall ever bear about me a memory of the many solemn hours I thus
+spent alone with the master of the House of Usher. Yet I should fail in
+any attempt to convey an idea of the exact character of the studies, or
+of the occupations in which he involved me, or led me the way. An
+excited and highly distempered ideality threw a sulphurous luster over
+all. His long, improvised dirges will ring forever in my ears. Among
+other things, I hold painfully in mind a certain singular perversion
+and amplification of the wild air of the last waltz of von Weber[8].
+From the paintings over which his elaborate fancy brooded, and which
+grew, touch by touch, into vaguenesses at which I shuddered the more
+thrillingly because I shuddered knowing not why,—from these paintings
+(vivid as their images now are before, me) I would in vain endeavor to
+educe more than a small portion which should lie within the compass of
+merely written words. By the utter simplicity, by the nakedness of his
+designs, he arrested and overawed attention. If ever mortal painted an
+idea, that mortal was Roderick Usher. For me, at least, in the
+circumstances then surrounding me, there arose out of the pure
+abstractions which the hypochondriac contrived to throw, upon his
+canvas, an intensity of intolerable awe, no shadow of which felt I ever
+yet in the contemplation of the certainly glowing yet too concrete
+reveries of Fuseli.[9]
+
+One of the phantasmagoric conceptions of my friend, partaking not so
+rigidly of the spirit of abstraction may be shadowed forth, although
+feebly, in words. A small picture presented the interior of an
+immensely long and rectangular vault or tunnel, with low walls, smooth,
+white, and without interruption or device. Certain accessory points of
+the design served well to convey the idea that this excavation lay at
+an exceeding depth below the surface of the earth. No outlet was
+observed in any portion of its vast extent, and no torch or other
+artificial source of light was discernible; yet a flood of intense rays
+rolled throughout, and bathed the whole in a ghastly and inappropriate
+splendor.
+
+I have just spoken of that morbid condition of the auditory nerve which
+rendered all music intolerable to the sufferer, with the exception of
+certain effects of stringed, instruments. It was, perhaps, the narrow
+limits to which he thus confined himself upon the guitar, which gave
+birth, in great measure, to the fantastic character of his
+performances. But the fervid _facility_ of his _impromptus_ could not
+be so accounted for. They must have been, and were, in the notes, as
+well as in the words of his wild fantasias (for he not unfrequently
+accompanied himself with rimed verbal improvisations), the result of
+that intense mental collectedness and concentration to which I have
+previously alluded as observable only in particular moments of the
+highest artificial excitement. The words of one of these rhapsodies I
+have easily remembered. I was, perhaps, the more forcibly impressed
+with it, as he gave it, because, in the under or mystic current of its
+meaning, I fancied that I perceived, and for the first time, a full
+consciousness on the part of Usher, of the tottering of his lofty
+reason upon her throne. The verses, which were entitled "The Haunted
+Palace,"[10] ran very nearly, if not accurately, thus:—
+
+I
+
+
+     In the greenest of our valleys,
+
+       By good angels tenanted,
+
+     Once a fair and stately palace—
+
+       Radiant palace—reared its head.
+
+     In the monarch Thought's dominion—
+
+       It stood there!
+
+     Never seraph spread a pinion
+
+       Over fabric half so fair.
+
+II
+
+
+     Banners yellow, glorious, golden,
+
+       On its roof did float and flow;
+
+     (This—all this—was in the olden
+
+       Time long ago)
+
+     And every gentle air that dallied,
+
+       In that sweet day,
+
+     Along the ramparts plumed and pallid,
+
+       A wingèd odor went away.
+
+III
+
+
+     Wanderers in that happy valley
+
+       Through two luminous windows saw
+
+     Spirits moving musically
+
+       To a lute's well-tunèd law,
+
+     Round about a throne, where sitting
+
+       (Porphyrogene!)[11]
+
+     In state his glory well befitting,
+
+       The ruler of the realm was seen.
+
+IV
+
+
+     And all with pearl and ruby glowing
+
+       Was the fair palace door,
+
+     Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing,
+
+       And sparkling evermore,
+
+     A troop of Echoes whose sweet duty
+
+       Was but to sing,
+
+     In voices of surpassing beauty,
+
+       The wit and wisdom of their king.
+
+V
+
+
+     But evil things, in robes of sorrow,
+
+       Assailed the monarch's high estate
+
+     (Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow
+
+       Shall dawn upon him, desolate!);
+
+     And, round about his home, the glory
+
+       That blushed and bloomed
+
+     Is but a dim-remembered story
+
+        Of the old time entombed.
+
+VI
+
+
+     And travelers now within that valley,
+
+       Through the red-litten windows, see
+
+     Vast forms that move fantastically
+
+       To a discordant melody;
+
+     While, like a rapid ghastly river,
+
+       Through the pale door,
+
+     A hideous throng rush out forever,
+
+       And laugh—but smile no more.
+
+I well remember that suggestions arising from this ballad led us into a
+train of thought wherein there became manifest an opinion of Usher's
+which I mention not so much on account of its novelty (for other
+men[12] have thought thus) as on account of the pertinacity with which
+he maintained it. This opinion, in its general form, was that of the
+sentience of all vegetable things. But, in his disordered fancy, the
+idea had assumed a more daring character, and trespassed, under certain
+conditions, upon the kingdom of inorganization. I lack words to express
+the full extent or the earnest _abandon_ of his persuasion. The belief,
+however, was connected (as I have previously hinted) with the gray
+stones of the home of his forefathers. The conditions of the sentience
+had been here, he imagined, fulfilled in the method of collocation of
+these stones—in the order of their arrangement, as well as in that of
+the many _fungi_ which overspread them, and of the decayed trees which
+stood around—above all, in the long-undisturbed endurance of this
+arrangement, and in its reduplication in the still waters of the tarn.
+Its evidence—the evidence of the sentience—was to be seen, he said (and
+I here started as he spoke), in the gradual yet certain condensation of
+an atmosphere of their own about the waters and the walls. The result
+was discoverable, he added, in that silent, yet importunate and
+terrible influence which for centuries had molded the destinies of his
+family, and which made _him_ what I now saw him—what he was. Such
+opinions need no comment, and I will make none.
+
+Our books—the books which, for years, had formed no small portion of
+the mental existence of the invalid—were, as might be supposed, in
+strict keeping with this character of phantasm. We pored together over
+such works as the _Ververt et Chartreuse_[13] of Gresset; the
+_Belphegor_[14] of Machiavelli; the _Heaven and Hell_[15] of
+Swedenborg; the _Subterranean Voyage of Nicholas Klimm_[16] by Holberg;
+the _Chiromancy_[17] of Robert Flud, of Jean D'lndaginé, and of De la
+Chambre[18]; the _Journey into the Blue Distance_ of Tieck[19]; and the
+_City of the Sun_[20] of Campanella. One favorite volume was a small
+octavo edition of the _Directorium Inquisitorium_[21] by the Dominican
+Eymeric de Cironne; and there were passages in _Pomponius Mela_,[22]
+about the old African Satyrs and Oegipans,[23] over which Usher would
+sit dreaming for hours. His chief delight, however, was found in the
+perusal of an exceedingly rare and curious book in quarto Gothic—the
+manual of a forgotten church—the _Vigiliae Mortuorum secundum Chorum
+Ecclesiae Maguntinae_.[24]
+
+I could not help thinking of the wild ritual of this work, and of its
+probable influence upon the hypochondriac, when, one evening, having
+informed me abruptly that the lady Madeline was no more, he stated his
+intention of preserving her corpse for a fortnight (previously to its
+final interment) in one of the numerous vaults within the main walls of
+the building. The worldly reason, however, assigned for this singular
+proceeding, was one which I did not feel at liberty to dispute. The
+brother had been led to his resolution, so he told me, by consideration
+of the unusual character of the malady of the deceased, of certain
+obtrusive and eager inquiries on the part of her medical men, and of
+the remote and exposed situation of the burial ground of the family, I
+will not deny that when I called to mind the sinister countenance of
+the person whom I met upon the staircase, on the day of my arrival at
+the house, I had no desire to oppose what I regarded as at best but a
+harmless, and by no means an unnatural precaution.
+
+At the request of Usher, I personally aided him in the arrangements for
+the temporary entombment. The body having been encoffined, we two alone
+bore it to its rest. The vault in which we placed it (and which had
+been so long unopened that our torches, half smothered in its
+oppressive atmosphere, gave us little opportunity for investigation)
+was small, damp, and entirely without means of admission for light;
+lying, at great depth, immediately beneath that portion of the building
+in which was my own sleeping apartment. It had been used, apparently,
+in remote feudal times, for the worst purposes of a donjon-keep, and in
+later days, as a place of deposit for powder, or some other highly
+combustible substance, as a portion of its floor, and the whole
+interior of a long archway through which we reached it, were carefully
+sheathed with copper. The door, of massive iron, had been also
+similarly protected. Its immense weight caused an unusually sharp
+grating sound as it moved upon its hinges.
+
+Having deposited our mournful burden upon tressels within this region
+of horror, we partially turned aside the yet unscrewed lid of the
+coffin, and looked upon the face of the tenant. A striking similitude
+between the brother and sister now first arrested my attention; and
+Usher, divining, perhaps, my thoughts, murmured out some few words from
+which I learned that the deceased and himself had been twins, and that
+sympathies of a scarcely intelligible nature had always existed between
+them. Our glances, however, rested not long upon the dead—for we could
+not regard her unawed. The disease which had thus entombed the lady in
+the maturity of youth, had left, as usual in all maladies of a strictly
+cataleptical character, the mockery of a faint blush upon the bosom and
+the face, and that suspiciously lingering smile upon the lip which is
+so terrible in death. We replaced and screwed down the lid, and having
+secured the door of iron, made our way, with toil, into the scarcely
+less gloomy apartments of the upper portion of the house.
+
+And now, some days of bitter grief having elapsed, an observable change
+came over the features of the mental disorder of my friend. His
+ordinary manner had vanished. His ordinary occupations were neglected
+or forgotten. He roamed from chamber to chamber with hurried, unequal,
+and objectless step. The pallor of his countenance had assumed, if
+possible, a more ghastly line—but the luminousness of his eye had
+utterly gone out. The once occasional huskiness of his tone was heard
+no more; and a tremulous quaver, as if of extreme terror, habitually
+characterized his utterance. There were times, indeed, when I thought
+his unceasingly agitated mind was laboring with some oppressive secret,
+to divulge which he struggled for the necessary courage. At times,
+again, I was obliged to resolve all into the mere inexplicable vagaries
+of madness; for I beheld him gazing upon vacancy for long hours, in an
+attitude of the profoundest attention, as if listening to some
+imaginary sound. It was no wonder that his condition terrified—that it
+infected me. I felt creeping upon me, by slow yet certain degrees, the
+wild influence of his own fantastic yet impressive superstitions.
+
+It was, especially, upon retiring to bed late in the night of the
+seventh or eighth day after the placing of the lady Madeline within the
+donjon, that I experienced the full power of such feelings. Sleep came
+not near my couch, while the hours waned and waned away, I struggled to
+reason off the nervousness which had dominion over me. I endeavored to
+believe that much, if not all of what I felt, was due to the
+bewildering influence of the gloomy furniture of the room—of the dark
+and tattered draperies, which, tortured into motion by the breath of a
+rising tempest, swayed fitfully to and fro upon the walls, and rustled
+uneasily about the decorations of the bed. But my efforts were
+fruitless. An irrepressible tremor gradually pervaded my frame; and, at
+length, there sat upon my very heart an incubus of utterly causeless
+alarm. Shaking this off with a gasp and a struggle, I uplifted myself
+upon the pillows, and peering earnestly within the intense darkness of
+the chamber, hearkened—I know not why, except that an instinctive
+spirit prompted me—to certain low and indefinite sounds which came,
+through the pauses of the storm, at long intervals, I knew not whence.
+Overpowered by an intense sentiment of horror, unaccountable yet
+unendurable, I threw on my clothes with haste (for I felt that I should
+sleep no more during the night), and endeavored to arouse myself from
+the pitiable condition into which I had fallen, by pacing rapidly to
+and fro through the apartment.
+
+I had taken but few turns in this manner, when a light step on an
+adjoining staircase arrested my attention. I presently recognized it as
+that of Usher. In an instant afterward he rapped, with a gentle touch,
+at my door, and entered, bearing a lamp. His countenance was, as usual,
+cadaverously wan—but, moreover, there was a species of mad hilarity in
+his eyes—and evidently restrained hysteria in his whole demeanor. His
+air appalled me—but anything was preferable to the solitude which I had
+so long endured, and I even welcomed his presence as a relief.
+
+"And you have not seen it?" he said abruptly, after having stared about
+him for some moments in silence—"you have not then seen it?—but stay!
+you shall." Thus speaking, and having carefully shaded his lamp, he
+hurried to one of the casements, and threw it freely open to the storm.
+
+The impetuous fury of the entering gust nearly lifted us from our feet.
+It was, indeed, a tempestuous yet sternly beautiful night, and one
+wildly singular in its terror and its beauty. A whirlwind had
+apparently collected its force in our vicinity; for there were frequent
+and violent alterations in the direction of the wind; and the exceeding
+density of the clouds (which hung so low as to press upon the turrets
+of the house) did not prevent our perceiving the lifelike velocity with
+which they flew careering from all points against each other, without
+passing away into the distance. I say that even their exceeding density
+did not prevent our perceiving this—yet we had no glimpse of the moon
+or stars—nor was there any flashing forth of the lightning. But the
+under surfaces of the huge masses of agitated vapor, as well as all
+terrestrial objects immediately around us, were glowing in the
+unnatural light of a faintly luminous and distinctly visible gaseous
+exhalation which hung about and enshrouded the mansion.
+
+"You must not—you shall not behold this!" said I, shudderingly, to
+Usher, as I led him, with a gentle violence, from the window to a seat.
+"These appearances, which bewilder you, are merely electrical phenomena
+not uncommon—or it may be that they have their ghastly origin in the
+rank miasma of the tarn. Let us close this casement—the air is chilling
+and dangerous to your frame. Here is one of your favorite romances. I
+will read and you shall listen; and so we will pass away this terrible
+night together."
+
+The antique volume which I had taken up was the _Mad Trist_ of Sir
+Launcelot Canning[25]; but I had called it a favorite of Usher's more
+in sad jest than in earnest; for, in truth, there is little in its
+uncouth and unimaginative prolixity which could have had interest for
+the lofty and spiritual ideality of my friend. It was, however, the
+only book immediately at hand; and I indulged a vague hope that the
+excitement which now agitated the hypochondriac, might find relief (for
+the history of mental disorder is full of similar anomalies) even in
+the extremeness of the folly which I should read. Could I have judged,
+indeed, by the wild, overstrained air of vivacity with which he
+hearkened, or apparently hearkened, to the words of the tale, I might
+well have congratulated myself upon the success of my design.
+
+I had arrived at that well-known portion of the story where Ethelred,
+the hero of the "Trist," having sought in vain for peaceable admission
+into the dwelling of the hermit, proceeds to make good an entrance by
+force. Here, it will be remembered, the words of the narrative run
+thus:—
+
+"And Ethelred, who was by nature of a doughty heart, and who was now
+mighty withal, on account of the powerfulness of the wine which he had
+drunken, waited no longer to hold parley with the hermit, who, in
+sooth, was of an obstinate and maliceful turn; but, feeling the rain
+upon his shoulders, and fearing the rising of the tempest, uplifted his
+mace outright, and, with blows, made quickly room in the plankings of
+the door for his gauntleted hand; and now pulling therewith sturdily,
+he so cracked, and ripped, and tore all asunder, that the noise of the
+dry and hollow-sounding wood alarummed[26] and reverberated throughout
+the forest."
+
+At the termination of this sentence I started, and for a moment paused;
+for it appeared to me (although I at once concluded that my excited
+fancy had deceived me)—it appeared to me that, from some very remote
+portion of the mansion, there came, indistinctly, to my ears what might
+have been, in its exact similarity of character, the echo (but a
+stifled and dull one certainly) of the very cracking and ripping sound
+which Sir Launcelot had so particularly described. It was, beyond
+doubt, the coincidence alone which had arrested my attention; for, amid
+the rattling of the sashes of the casements, and the ordinary
+commingled noises of the still increasing storm, the sound, in itself,
+had nothing, surely, which should have interested or disturbed, me. I
+continued the story:—
+
+"But the good champion Ethelred, now entering within the door, was sore
+enraged and amazed to perceive no signal of the maliceful hermit; but,
+in the stead thereof, a dragon of a scaly and prodigious demeanor, and
+of a fiery tongue, which sate in guard before a palace of gold, with a
+floor of silver; and upon the wall there hung a shield of shining brass
+with this legend enwritten:—
+
+     Who entereth herein, a conqueror hath been;
+
+     Who slayeth the dragon, the shield he shall win.
+
+"And Ethelred uplifted his mace, and struck upon the head of the
+dragon, which fell before him, and gave up his pesty breath, with a
+shriek so horrid and harsh, and withal so piercing, that Ethelred had
+fain[27] to close his ears with his hands against the dreadful noise of
+it, the like whereof was never before heard."
+
+Here again I paused abruptly, and now with a feeling of wild
+amazement—for there could be no doubt whatever that, in this instance,
+I did actually hear (although from what direction it proceeded I found
+it impossible to say) a low and apparently distant, but harsh,
+protracted, and most unusual screaming or grating sound—the exact
+counterpart of what my fancy had already conjured up for the dragon's
+unnatural shriek as described by the romancer.
+
+Oppressed, as I certainly was, upon the occurrence of this second and
+most extraordinary coincidence, by a thousand conflicting sensations,
+in which wonder and extreme terror were predominant, I still retained
+sufficient presence of mind to avoid exciting, by any observation, the
+sensitive nervousness of my companion. I was by no means certain that
+he had noticed the sounds in question; although, assuredly, a strange
+alteration had, during the last few minutes, taken place in his
+demeanor. From a position fronting my own, he had gradually brought
+round his chair, so as to sit with his face to the door of the chamber;
+and thus I could but partially perceive his features, although I saw
+that his lips trembled as if he were murmuring inaudibly. His head had
+dropped upon his breast—yet I knew that he was not asleep, from the
+wide and rigid opening of the eye as I caught a glance of it in
+profile. The motion of his body, too, was at variance with this
+idea—for he rocked from side to side with a gentle yet constant and
+uniform sway. Having rapidly taken notice of all this, I resumed the
+narrative of Sir Launcelot, which thus proceeded:—
+
+"And now the champion, having escaped from the terrible fury of the
+dragon, bethinking himself of the brazen shield, and of the breaking up
+of the enchantment which was upon it, removed the carcass from out of
+the way before him, and approached valorously over the silver pavement
+of the castle to where the shield was upon the wall; which in sooth
+tarried not for his full coming, but fell down at his feet upon the
+silver floor, with a mighty, great and terrible ringing sound."
+
+No sooner had these syllables passed my lips, than—as if a shield of
+brass had indeed, at the moment, fallen heavily upon a floor of
+silver—I became aware of a distinct, hollow, metallic and clangorous,
+yet apparently muffled reverberation. Completely unnerved, I leaped to
+my feet; but the measured rocking movement of Usher was undisturbed. I
+rushed to the chair in which he sat. His eyes were bent fixedly before
+him, and throughout his whole countenance there reigned a stony
+rigidity. But, as I placed my hand upon his shoulder, there came a
+strong shudder over his whole person; a sickly smile quivered about his
+lips; and I saw that he spoke in a low, hurried, and gibbering murmur,
+as if unconscious of my presence. Bending closely over him, I at length
+drank in the hideous import of his words.
+
+"Not hear it?—yes, I hear it, and _have_ heard it. Long—long—long—many
+minutes, many hours, many days, have I heard it—yet I dared not—oh,
+pity me, miserable wretch that I am!—I dared not—I _dared_ not speak!
+_We have put her living in the tomb!_ Said I not that my senses were
+acute? I _now_ tell you that I heard her first feeble movements in the
+hollow coffin. I heard them—many, many days ago—yet I dared not—_I
+dared not speak!_ And now—to-night—Ethelred—ha! ha!—-the breaking of
+the hermit's door, and the death-cry of the dragon, and the clangor of
+the shield!—say, rather, the rending of her coffin, and the grating of
+the iron hinges of her prison, and her struggles within the coppered
+archway of the vault! Oh, whither shall I fly? Will she not be here
+anon? Is she not hurrying to upbraid me for my haste? Have I not heard
+her footstep on the stair? Do I not distinguish that heavy and horrible
+beating of her heart? Madman!"—here he sprang furiously to his feet,
+and shrieked out his syllables, as if in the effort he were giving up
+his soul—"_Madman! I tell you that she now stands without the door!_"
+
+As if in the superhuman energy of his utterance there had been found
+the potency of a spell—the huge antique panels to which the speaker
+pointed threw slowly back, upon the instant, their ponderous and ebony
+jaws. It was the work of the rushing gust—but then without those doors
+there _did_ stand the lofty and enshrouded figure of the lady Madeline
+of Usher. There was blood upon her white robes, and the evidence of
+some bitter struggle upon every portion of her emaciated frame. For a
+moment she remained trembling and reeling to and fro upon the
+threshold—then, with a low, moaning cry, fell heavily inward upon the
+person of her brother, and in her violent and now final death-agonies,
+bore him to the floor a corpse, and a victim to the terrors he had
+anticipated.
+
+From that chamber, and from that mansion, I fled aghast. The storm was
+still abroad in all its wrath as I found myself crossing the old
+causeway. Suddenly there shot along the path a wild light, and I turned
+to see whence a gleam so unusual could have issued; for the vast house
+and its shadows were alone behind me. The radiance was that of the
+full, setting, and blood-red moon, which now shone vividly through that
+once barely discernible fissure, of which I have before spoken as
+extending from the roof of the building, in a zigzag direction, to the
+base. While I gazed, this fissure rapidly widened—there came a fierce
+breath of the whirlwind—the entire orb of the satellite burst at once
+upon my sight—my brain reeled as I saw the mighty walls rushing
+asunder—there was a long tumultuous shouting sound like the voice of a
+thousand waters—and the deep and dank tarn at my feet closed sullenly
+and silently over the fragments of the "_House of Usher_."
+
+NOTES
+
+[1] _The Fall of the House of Usher_ was written in 1839 and published
+at the end of the same year in his Tales of the Grotesque and of the
+Arabesque.
+
+[2] 70: Motto de Béranger. Popular French lyric poet (1780-1857). "His
+heart is a suspended lute; as soon as it is touched it resounds."
+
+[3] 71:23 tarn. A small mountain lake.
+
+[4] 76:7 ennuyé. Mentally wearied or bored.
+
+[5] 78:11 bounden. An archaic word.
+
+[6] 79:19 Dread. Reading of the first edition, "Her figure, her air,
+her features,—all, in their very minutest development, were those—were
+identically (I can use no other sufficient term), were identically
+those of the Roderick Usher who sat beside me. A feeling of stupor,"
+etc.
+
+[7] 80:16 Improvisations. Extemporaneous composition of poetry or
+music.
+
+[8] 81:4 von Weber. The celebrated German composer (1786-1826).
+
+[9] 81:20 Fuseli. An artist and professor of painting at the Royal
+Academy in London (1741-1825).
+
+[10] 82:24 "The Haunted Palace." First published in the _Baltimore
+Museum_ for April, 1839.
+
+[11] 83:18 Porphyrogene. Of royal birth.
+
+[12] 84:16 for other men. Watson, Dr. Percival, and especially the
+Bishop of Llandaff. See "Chemical Essays," Vol. V.
+
+[13] 85:16 Ververt et Chartreuse. Two poems by Jean Baptiste Cresset
+(1709-1777).
+
+[Footenote 14] 85:17 Belphegor. Satire on Marriage by Machiavelli
+(1469-1527).
+
+[15] 85:17 Heaven and Hell. Extracts from "Arcana Coelestia" by
+Swedenborg (1688-1772).
+
+[16] 85:18 Subterranean Voyage of Nicholas Klimm. A celebrated poem by
+Ludwig Holberg (1684-1754).
+
+[17] 85:19 Chiromancy. Palmistry applied to the future. Poe refers
+rather to physiognomy. The book was written by the English mystic,
+Robert Fludd (1574-1637).
+
+[18] 85:19 Jean d'Indaginé and De la Chambre. Two continental writers
+of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries respectively.
+
+[19] 85:21 Tieck. A great German romanticist (1773-1853).
+
+[20] 85:21 City of the Sun. A sketch of an ideal state by Campanella
+(1568-1639).
+
+[21] 85:23 Directorium Inquisitorium. A detailed account of the methods
+of the Inquisition by Cironne, inquisitor-general for Castile, in 1356.
+
+[22] 85:24 Pomponius Mela. Spanish geographer in the first century A.D.
+Author of "De Chorographia," the earliest extant account of the
+geography of the ancient world.
+
+[23] 85:25 Oegipans. An epithet applied to Pan.
+
+[24] 85:30 Vigiliae Mortuorum. No such book is known.
+
+[25] 90:30 Mad Trist. No such book is known.
+
+[26] 91:29 alarummed. Alarmed.
+
+[27] 92:25 had fain. In the sense of was glad.
+
+BIOGRAPHY
+
+Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston, January 19, 1809. His parents, who
+were actors, died before their son was three years old. Mr. Allan, a
+wealthy Richmond merchant, adopted the child and gave him a splendid
+home. How scantily Poe appreciated and improved the advantages of this
+kindness he himself confesses in a letter to Lowell in 1844. "I have
+been too deeply conscious of the mutability and evanescence of temporal
+things to give any continuous effort to anything—to be consistent in
+anything. My life has been _whim_—impulse—passion—a longing for
+solitude—a scorn of all things present in an earnest desire for the
+future." He was a dreamer who had a fair chance to be happy, but he
+flung the opportunity away. He was a spoiled child who remained
+ignorant of life even unto his death.
+
+He entered the University of Virginia in 1826, where his conduct was so
+bad that he was, after a year, removed from the college. This action
+broke the strong friendship Mr. Allan had long held for his adopted
+son. Poe, urged by a hot temper or possibly by a remorse for his
+actions, ran away and enlisted in the regular army. In 1829 Mr. Allan
+became partially reconciled with Poe, and again came to his assistance.
+In 1830 Poe entered West Point, but was there only a short time when he
+was dismissed for wilful neglect of duty.
+
+Following this dismissal Poe went to Baltimore, where he did hack work
+for newspapers. This was the beginning of a process of writing that has
+brought him high rank and an imperishable honor. His narrative is
+clear, compressed, and powerful, and throughout his writings choice
+symbols abound. He was fond of themes of death, insanity, and terror.
+The wonder of it all is that this struggling, poverty-stricken
+craftsman, irregular in his habits of living, using only negative life
+and shadowy abstractions, should, from out his disordered fancies,
+weave stories and poems of such undying beauty and force.
+
+Poe married his thirteen-year-old cousin, Virginia Clemm. Her health
+was always delicate and her death confirmed Poe's tendency toward
+dissipation. His life was filled with dire poverty and a hard struggle
+for a livelihood. His home relations were happy. The last years of his
+life were spent at Fordham, a suburb of New York. He died in a
+Baltimore hospital, October 7, 1849.
+
+BIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES
+
+_Introduction to American Literature_, Brander Matthews.
+
+_Studies in American Literature_, Charles Noble.
+
+_Introduction to American Literature_, F.V.N. Painter.
+
+_Life of Poe_, Richard Henry Stoddard.
+
+_Edgar Allan Poe_, G.E. Woodberry.
+
+_Makers of English Fiction_, W.J. Dawson.
+
+"Art of Poe, _Independent_, 66: 157-8. January 21, 1909.
+
+"Dual Personality," _Current Literature_, 43: 287-8.
+
+CRITICISMS
+
+Some critics have maintained that Poe is our only original genius in
+American Literature. Lowell wrote in his _Fable for Critics_:—
+
+"There comes Poe with his raven, like Barnaby Rudge, Three-fifths of
+him genius, and two-fifths sheer fudge."
+
+Whatever judgments the various critics may give of Poe and his
+writings, they must all agree that he is original. He is a clever
+writer in a limited field. His writings have a glow and burnish that
+have their origin in his fondness for sensations, color, and vividness
+of details. He loves mystery and terror,—not the fancies and fears of a
+child, but overwrought nerves. His material is unreal, and remote from
+ordinary life. His characters are abnormal, and the world they live in
+is exceptional. He is inventive, original in arranging his material,
+and shallow but keen in his thinking.
+
+He believed that art and life have little in common, and in his
+writings seemed to be unmoved by friendship, loyalty, patriotism,
+courage, self-sacrifice or any of the great positive attributes of life
+that make living worth while. His writings lack the human touch,
+tenderness, and the buoyancy of sympathy. He is an artist who does his
+work with a clear-cut, hard finish. His choice of words, vivid
+pictures, and clearly evolved plots make his writings excellent studies
+for any one who wishes to develop literary appreciation and to learn to
+write.
+
+GENERAL REFERENCES
+
+_Studies and Appreciations_, L.E. Gates.
+
+_American Prose Masters_, William Crary Brownwell.
+
+_The Short Story in English_, Henry Seidel Canby.
+
+_Edgar Poe_, R.H. Button.
+
+_Inquiries and Opinions_, Brander Matthews.
+
+"Life of Edgar Allan Poe," _Nation_, 89: 100-110.
+
+"Weird Genius," _Cosmopolitan_, 46:243-252.
+
+COLLATERAL READINGS
+
+_Ligeia_, Edgar Allan Poe.
+
+_The Cask of Amontillado_, Edgar Allan Poe.
+
+_The Assignation_, Edgar Allan Poe.
+
+_Ms. Pound in Bottle_, Edgar Allan Poe.
+
+_The Black Cat_, Edgar Allan Poe.
+
+_Berenice_, Edgar Allan Poe.
+
+_The Tell-Tale Heart_, Edgar Allan Poe.
+
+_The White Old Maid_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_Moonlight_ ("Odd Number"), Guy de Maupassant.
+
+_A Journey_, Edith Wharton.
+
+_The Brushwood Boy_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+_At the Pit's Mouth_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+
+
+
+THE GOLD-BUG[1]
+
+
+_By Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)_
+
+
+     What ho! what ho! this fellow is dancing mad!
+
+     He hath been bitten by the Tarantula.
+
+                                  —_All in the Wrong_.[2]
+
+Many years ago I contracted an intimacy with a Mr. William Legrand. He
+was of an ancient Huguenot[3] family, and had once been wealthy; but a
+series of misfortunes had reduced him to want. To avoid the
+mortification consequent upon his disasters, he left New Orleans, the
+city of his forefathers, and took up his residence at Sullivan's
+Island, near Charleston, South Carolina.
+
+This island is a very singular one. It consists of little else than the
+sea sand, and is about three miles long. Its breadth at no point
+exceeds a quarter of a mile. It is separated from the mainland by a
+scarcely perceptible creek, oozing its way through a wilderness of
+reeds and slime, a favorite resort of the marsh-hen. The vegetation, as
+might be supposed, is scant, or at least dwarfish. No trees of any
+magnitude are to be seen. Near the western extremity, where Fort
+Moultrie[4] stands, and where are some miserable frame buildings,
+tenanted, during summer, by the fugitives from Charleston dust and
+fever, may be found, indeed, the bristly palmetto; but the whole
+island, with the exception of this western point, and a line of hard,
+white beach on the seacoast, is covered with a dense undergrowth of the
+sweet myrtle, so much prized by the horticulturists of England. The
+shrub here often attains the height of fifteen or twenty feet, and
+forms an almost impenetrable coppice, burthening the air with its
+fragrance.
+
+In the utmost recesses of this coppice, not far from the eastern or
+more remote end of the island, Legrand had built himself a small hut,
+which he occupied when I first, by mere accident, made his
+acquaintance. This soon ripened into friendship, for there was much in
+the recluse to excite interest and esteem. I found him well educated,
+with unusual powers of mind, but infected with misanthropy, and subject
+to perverse moods of alternate enthusiasm and melancholy. He had with
+him many books, but rarely employed them. His chief amusements were
+gunning and fishing, or sauntering along the beach and through the
+myrtles, in quest of shells or entomological specimens—his collection
+of the latter might have been envied by a Swammerdam.[5] In these
+excursions he was usually accompanied by an old negro, called Jupiter,
+who had been manumitted[6] before the reverses of the family, but who
+could be induced, neither by threats nor by promises, to abandon what
+he considered his right of attendance upon the footsteps of his young
+"Massa Will." It is not improbable that the relatives of Legrand,
+conceiving him to be somewhat unsettled in intellect, had contrived to
+instil this obstinacy into Jupiter, with a view to the supervision and
+guardianship of the wanderer.
+
+The winters in the latitude of Sullivan's Island are seldom very
+severe, and in the fall of the year it is a rare event indeed when a
+fire is considered necessary. About the middle of October, 18—, there
+occurred, however, a day of remarkable chilliness. Just before sunset I
+scrambled my way through the evergreens to the hut of my friend, whom I
+had not visited for several weeks—my residence being at that time in
+Charleston, a distance of nine miles from the island, while the
+facilities of passage and re-passage were very far behind those of the
+present day. Upon reaching the hut I rapped, as was my custom, and
+getting no reply, sought for the key where I knew it was secreted,
+unlocked the door, and went in. A fine fire was blazing upon the
+hearth. It was a novelty, and by no means an ungrateful one. I threw
+off an over-coat, took an armchair by the crackling logs, and awaited
+patiently the arrival of my hosts.
+
+Soon after dark they arrived, and gave me a most cordial welcome.
+Jupiter, grinning from ear to ear, bustled about to prepare some
+marsh-hens for supper. Legrand was in one of his fits—how else shall I
+term them?—of enthusiasm. He had found an unknown bivalve, forming a
+new genus, and, more than this, he had hunted down and secured, with
+Jupiter's assistance, a _scarabaeus_[7] which he believed to be totally
+new, but in respect to which he wished to have my opinion on the
+morrow.
+
+"And why not to-night?" I asked, rubbing my hands over the blaze, and
+wishing the whole tribe of _scarabaei_ at the devil.
+
+"Ah, if I had only known you were here!" said Legrand, "but it's so
+long since I saw you; and how could I foresee that you would pay me a
+visit this very night of all others? As I was coming home I met
+Lieutenant G——, from the fort, and, very foolishly, I lent him the bug;
+so it will be impossible for you to see it until the morning. Stay here
+to-night, and I will send Jup down for it at sunrise. It is the
+loveliest thing in creation!"
+
+"What!—sunrise?"
+
+"Nonsense! no!—the bug. It is of a brilliant gold color—about the size
+of a large hickory-nut—with two jet-black spots near one extremity of
+the back, and another, somewhat longer, at the other. The _antennae[8]_
+are—"
+
+"Dey ain't _no_ tin in him, Massa Will, I keep a tellin' on you," here
+interrupted Jupiter; "de bug is a goolebug, solid, ebery bit of him,
+inside and all, 'sep him wing—neber feel half so hebby a bug in my
+life."
+
+"Well, suppose it is, Jup," replied Legrand, somewhat more earnestly,
+it seemed to me, than the case demanded; "is that any reason for your
+letting the birds burn? The color"—here he turned to me—"is really
+almost enough to warrant Jupiter's idea. You never saw a more brilliant
+metallic lustre than the scales emit—but of this you cannot judge till
+to-morrow. In the meantime I can give you some idea of the shape."
+Saying this, he seated himself at a small table, on which were a pen
+and ink, but no paper. He looked for some in a drawer, but found none.
+
+"Never mind," said he at length, "this will answer;" and he drew from
+his waistcoat pocket a scrap of what I took to be very dirty foolscap,
+and made upon it a rough drawing with the pen. While he did this I
+retained my seat by the fire, for I was still chilly. When the design
+was complete, he handed it to me without rising. As I received, it, a
+loud growl was heard, succeeded by a scratching at the door. Jupiter
+opened it, and a large Newfoundland, belonging to Legrand, rushed in,
+leaped upon my shoulders, and loaded me with caresses; for I had shown
+him much attention during previous visits. When his gambols were over,
+I looked at the paper, and, to speak the truth, found myself not a
+little puzzled at what my friend had depicted.
+
+"Well!" I said, after contemplating it for some minutes, "this _is_ a
+strange _scarabaeus_, I must confess: new to me: never saw anything
+like it before—unless it was a skull, or a death's-head—which, it more
+nearly resembles than, anything else that has come under _my_
+observation."
+
+"A death's-head!" echoed Legrand. "Oh—yes—well, it has something of
+that appearance upon paper, no doubt. The two upper black spots look
+like eyes, eh? and the longer one at the bottom like a mouth—and then
+the shape of the whole is oval."
+
+"Perhaps so," said I; "but, Legrand, I fear you are no artist. I must
+wait until I see the beetle itself, if I am to form any idea of its
+personal appearance."
+
+"Well, I don't know," said he, a little nettled, "I draw
+tolerably—_should_ do it at least—have had good masters, and flatter
+myself that I am not quite a blockhead."
+
+"But, my dear fellow, you are joking then," said I; "this is a very
+passable _skull_—indeed, I may say that it is a very _excellent_ skull,
+according to the vulgar notions about such specimens of physiology—and
+your _scarabaeus_ must be the queerest _scarabaeus_ in the world if it
+resembles it. Why, we may get up a very thrilling bit of superstition
+upon this hint. I presume, you will call the bug _scarabaeus caput
+hominis_,[9] or something of that kind—there are many similar titles in
+the natural histories. But where are the _antennae_ you spoke of?"
+
+"The _antennae_!" said Legrand, who seemed to be getting unaccountably
+warm upon the subject; "I am sure you must see the _antennae_. I made
+them as distinct as they are in the original insect, and I presume that
+is sufficient."
+
+"Well, well," I said, "perhaps you have—still I don't see them;" and I
+handed him the paper without additional remark, not wishing to ruffle
+his temper; but I was much surprised at the turn affairs had taken; his
+ill-humor puzzled me—and, as for the drawing of the beetle, there were
+positively _no antennae_ visible, and the whole _did_ bear a very close
+resemblance to the ordinary cuts of a death's-head.
+
+He received the paper very peevishly, and was about to crumple it,
+apparently to throw it in the fire, when a casual glance at the design
+seemed suddenly to rivet his attention. In an instant his face grew
+violently red—in another as excessively pale. For some minutes he
+continued to scrutinize the drawing minutely where he sat. At length he
+arose, took a candle from the table, and proceeded to seat himself upon
+a sea-chest in the farthest corner of the room. Here again he made an
+anxious examination of the paper, turning it in all directions. He said
+nothing, however, and his conduct greatly astonished me; yet I thought
+it prudent not to exacerbate the growing moodiness of his temper by any
+comment. Presently he took from, his coat pocket a wallet, placed the
+paper carefully in it, and deposited both in a writing-desk, which he
+locked. He now grew more composed in his demeanor; but his original air
+of enthusiasm had quite disappeared. Yet he seemed not so much sulky as
+abstracted. As the evening wore away he became more and more absorbed
+in reverie, from which no sallies of mine could arouse him. It had been
+my intention to pass the night at the hut, as I had frequently done
+before, but, seeing my host in this mood, I deemed it proper to take
+leave. He did not press me to remain, but, as I departed, he shook my
+hand with even more than his usual cordiality.
+
+It was about a month after this (and during the interval I had seen
+nothing of Legrand) when I received a visit, at Charleston, from his
+man Jupiter. I had never seen the good old negro look so dispirited,
+and I feared that some serious disaster had befallen my friend.
+
+"Well, Jup," said I, "what is the matter now?—how is your master?"
+
+"Why, to speak de troof, massa, him not so berry well as mought be."
+
+"Not well! I am truly sorry to hear it. What does he complain of?"
+
+"Dar! dat's it!—him nebber 'plain of notin'—but him berry sick for all
+dat."
+
+"_Very_ sick, Jupiter!—why didn't you say so at once? Is he confined to
+bed?"
+
+"No, dat he ain't!—he ain't 'find nowhar—dat's just whar de shoe
+pinch—my mind is got to be berry hebby 'bout poor Massa Will."
+
+"Jupiter, I should like to understand what it is you are talking about.
+You say your master is sick. Hasn't he told you what ails him?"
+
+"Why, massa, 'tain't worf while for to git mad 'bout de matter—Massa
+Will say noffin' at all ain't de matter wid him—but den what make him
+go about looking dis here way, wid he head down and he soldiers up, and
+as white as a gose? And den he keep a syphon all de time—"
+
+"Keeps a what, Jupiter?"
+
+"Keeps a syphon wid de figgurs on de slate—de queerest figgurs I ebber
+did see. Ise gittin' to be skeered I tell you. Hab for to keep mighty
+tight eye pon him noovers.[10] Todder day he gib me slip fore de sun
+up, and was gone de whole ob de blessed day. I had a big stick ready
+cut for to gib him d——d good beating when he did come—but Ise sich a
+fool dat I hadn't de heart after all—he look so berry poorly."
+
+"Eh?—what? Ah, yes!—upon the whole, I think you had better not be too
+severe with the poor fellow—don't flog him, Jupiter, he can't very well
+stand it—but can you form an idea of what has occasioned this illness,
+or rather this change of conduct? Has anything unpleasant happened
+since I saw you?"
+
+"No, massa, dey ain't bin noffin' onpleasant _since_ den—'twas _'fore_
+den, I'm feared—'twas de berry day you was dare."'
+
+"How? what do you mean?"
+
+"Why, massa, I mean de bug—dare now."
+
+"The _what?_"
+
+"De bug—I'm berry sartain dat Massa Will bin bit somewhere 'bout de
+head by dat goole-bug."
+
+"And what cause have you, Jupiter, for such a supposition?"
+
+"Claws enuff, massa, and mouff, too. I nebber did see sich a d——d
+bug—he kick and he bite ebery ting what cum near him. Massa Will cotch
+him fuss, but had for to let him go 'gin mighty quick, I tell you—den
+was de time he must ha' got de bite. I didn't like de look ob de bug
+mouff, myself, nohow, so I wouldn't take hold ob him wid my finger, but
+I cotch him wid a piece ob paper dat I found. I wrap him up in de paper
+and stuff piece ob it in he mouff—dat was de way."
+
+"And you think, then, that your master was really bitten by the beetle,
+and that the bite made him sick?" "I don't t'ink noffin' 'bout it—I
+nose it. What make him dream 'bout de goole so much, if 'tain't cause
+he bit by de goole-bug? Ise heerd 'bout dem goole-bugs 'fore dis."
+
+"But how do you know he dreams about gold?"
+
+"How I know? why, 'cause he talk about it in he sleep—dat's how I
+nose."
+
+"Well, Jup, perhaps you are right; but to what fortunate circumstances
+am I to attribute the honor of a visit from you to-day?"
+
+"What de matter, massa?"
+
+"Did you bring any message from Mr. Legrand?"
+
+"No, massa, I bring dis here 'pissel;" and here Jupiter handed me a
+note, which ran thus:
+
+My dear ———:
+
+Why have I not seen you for so long a time? I hope you have not been so
+foolish as to take offence at any little _brusquerie_[11] of mine; but
+no, that is improbable.
+
+Since I saw you I have had great cause for anxiety. I have something to
+tell you, yet scarcely know how to tell it, or whether I should tell it
+at all.
+
+I have not been quite well for some days past, and poor old Jup annoys
+me, almost beyond endurance, by his well-meant attentions. Would you
+believe it?—he had prepared a huge stick, the other day, with which to
+chastise me for giving him the slip, and spending the day, _solus_,
+among the hills on the mainland. I verily believe that my ill looks
+alone saved me a flogging.
+
+I have made no addition to my cabinet since we met.
+
+If you can, in any way, make it convenient, come over with Jupiter.
+_Do_ come. I wish to see you _to-night_, upon business of importance. I
+assure you that it is of the _highest_ importance.
+
+Ever yours,
+
+William Legrand.
+
+There was something in the tone of this note which gave me great
+uneasiness. Its whole style differed materially from that of Legrand.
+What could he be dreaming of? What new crotchet possessed his excitable
+brain? What "business of the highest importance" could _he_ possibly
+have to transact? Jupiter's account of him boded no good. I dreaded
+lest the continued pressure of misfortune had, at length, fairly
+unsettled the reason of my friend. Without a moment's hesitation,
+therefore, I prepared to accompany the negro.
+
+Upon reaching the wharf, I noticed a scythe and three spades, all
+apparently new, lying in the bottom of the boat in which we were to
+embark.
+
+"What is the meaning of all this, Jup?" I inquired.
+
+"Him syfe, massa, and spade."
+
+"Very true; but what are they doing here?"
+
+"Him de syfe and de spade what Massa Will 'sis' 'pon my buying for him
+in de town, and de debbil's own lot of money I had to gib for 'em."
+
+"But what, in the name of all that is mysterious, is your 'Massa Will'
+going to do with scythes and spades?"
+
+"Dat's more dan _I_ know, and debbil take me if I don't b'lieve 'tis
+more dan he know, too. But it's all come ob de bug."
+
+Finding that no satisfaction was to be obtained of Jupiter, whose whole
+intellect seemed to be absorbed by "de bug," I now stepped into the
+boat and made sail. With a fair and strong breeze we soon ran into the
+little cove to the northward of Fort Moultrie, and a walk of some two
+miles brought us to the hut. It was about three in the afternoon when
+we arrived. Legrand had been awaiting us in eager expectation. He
+grasped my hand with a nervous _empressement_[12] which alarmed me and
+strengthened the suspicions already entertained. His countenance was
+pale even to ghastliness, and his deep-set eyes glared with unnatural
+lustre. After some inquiries respecting his health, I asked him, not
+knowing what better to say, if he had yet obtained the _scarabaeus_
+from Lieutenant G——.
+
+"Oh, yes," he replied, coloring violently, "I got it from him the next
+morning. Nothing could tempt me to part with that _scarabaeus_. Do you
+know that Jupiter is quite right about it!"
+
+"In what way?" I asked, with a sad foreboding at heart.
+
+"In supposing it to be a bug of _real gold_." He said this with an air
+of profound seriousness, and I felt inexpressibly shocked.
+
+"This bug is to make my fortune," he continued, with a triumphant
+smile, and reinstate me in my family possessions. Is it any wonder,
+then, that I prize it? Since Fortune has thought fit to bestow it upon
+me, I have only to use it properly and I shall arrive at the gold of
+which it is the index. Jupiter, bring me that _scarabaeus_!"
+
+"What! de bug, massa? I'd rudder not go fer trubble dat bug—you mus'
+git him for your own self." Hereupon Legrand arose, with a grave and
+stately air, and brought me the beetle from a glass case in which it
+was enclosed. It was a beautiful _scarabaeus_, and, at that time,
+unknown to naturalists—of course a great prize in a scientific point of
+view. There were two round black spots near one extremity of the back,
+and a long one near the other. The scales were exceedingly hard and
+glossy, with all the appearance of burnished gold. The weight of the
+insect was very remarkable, and, taking all things into consideration,
+I could hardly blame Jupiter for his opinion respecting it; but what to
+make of Legrand's agreement with that opinion, I could not, for the
+life of me, tell.
+
+"I sent for you," said he, in a grandiloquent tone when I had completed
+my examination of the beetle, "I sent for you, that I might have your
+counsel and assistance in furthering the views of Fate and of the bug"—
+
+"My dear Legrand," I cried, interrupting him, "you are certainly
+unwell, and had better use some little precautions. You shall go to
+bed, and I will remain with you a few days, until you get over this.
+You are feverish and"—
+
+"Feel my pulse," said he.
+
+I felt it, and, to say the truth, found not the slightest indication of
+fever.
+
+"But you may be ill and yet have no fever. Allow me this once to
+prescribe for you. In the first place, go to bed. In the next"—
+
+"You are mistaken," he interposed; "I am as well as I can expect to be
+under the excitement which I suffer. If you really wish me well, you
+will relieve this excitement."
+
+"And how is this to be done?"
+
+"Very easily, Jupiter and myself are going upon an expedition into the
+hills, upon the mainland, and, in this expedition, we shall need the
+aid of some person in whom we can confide. You are the only one we can
+trust. Whether we succeed or fail, the excitement which you now
+perceive in me will be equally allayed."
+
+"I am anxious to oblige you in any way," I replied; "but do you mean to
+say that this infernal beetle has any connection with your expedition
+into the hills?"
+
+"It has."
+
+"Then, Legrand, I can become a party to no such absurd proceeding."
+
+"I am sorry—very sorry—for we shall have to try it by ourselves."
+
+"Try it by yourselves! The man is surely mad!—but stay!—how long do you
+propose to be absent?"
+
+"Probably all night. We shall start immediately, and be back, at all
+events, by sunrise."
+
+"And will you promise me upon your honor, that when this freak of yours
+is over, and the bug business (good God!) settled to your satisfaction,
+you will then return home and follow my advice implicitly, as that of
+your physician?"
+
+"Yes; I promise; and now let us be off, for we have no time to lose."
+
+With a heavy heart I accompanied my friend. We started about four
+o'clock—Legrand, Jupiter, the dog, and myself. Jupiter had with him the
+scythe and spades, the whole of which he insisted upon carrying, more
+through fear, it seemed to me, of trusting either of the implements
+within reach of his master, than from any excess of industry or
+complaisance. His demeanor was dogged in the extreme, and "dat d——d
+bug" were the sole words which escaped his lips during the journey. For
+my own part, I had charge of a couple of dark lanterns, while Legrand
+contented himself with the _scarabaeus_, which he carried attached to
+the end of a bit of whipcord, twirling it to and fro, with the air of a
+conjurer, as he went. When I observed this last plain evidence of my
+friend's aberration of mind, I could scarcely refrain from tears. I
+thought it best, however, to humor his fancy, at least for the present,
+or until I could adopt some more energetic measures with a chance of
+success. In the meantime I endeavored, but all in vain, to sound him in
+regard to the object of the expedition. Having succeeded in inducing me
+to accompany him, he seemed unwilling to hold conversation upon any
+topic of minor importance, and to all my questions vouchsafed no other
+reply than "We shall see!"
+
+We crossed the creek at the head of the island by means of a skiff,
+and, ascending the high grounds on the shore of the mainland, proceeded
+in a northwesterly direction, through a tract of country excessively
+wild and desolate, where no trace of a human footstep was to be seen.
+Legrand led the way with decision, pausing only for an instant, here
+and there, to consult what appeared is to be certain landmarks of his
+own contrivance upon a former occasion.
+
+In this manner we journeyed for about two hours, and the sun was just
+setting when we entered a region infinitely more dreary than any yet
+seen. It was a species of table-land, near the summit of an almost
+inaccessible hill, densely wooded from base to pinnacle, and
+interspersed with huge crags that appeared to lie loosely upon the
+soil, and in many cases were prevented from precipitating themselves
+into the valleys below, merely by the support of the trees against
+which they reclined. Deep ravines, in various directions, gave an air
+of still sterner solemnity to the scene.
+
+The natural platform to which we had clambered was thickly overgrown
+with brambles, through which we soon discovered that it would have been
+impossible to force our way but for the scythe; and Jupiter, by
+direction of his master, proceeded to clear for us a path to the foot
+of an enormously tall tulip-tree, which stood, with some eight or ten
+oaks, upon the level, and far surpassed them all, and all other trees
+which I had ever seen, in the beauty of its foliage and form, in the
+wide spread of its branches, and in the general majesty of its
+appearance. When we reached this tree, Legrand turned to Jupiter, and
+asked him if he thought he could climb it. The old man seemed a little
+staggered by the question, and for some moments made no reply. At
+length he approached the huge trunk, walked slowly around it, and
+examined it with minute attention. When he had completed his scrutiny,
+he merely said:
+
+"Yes, massa, Jup climb any tree he ebber see in he life."
+
+"Then up with you as soon as possible, for it will soon be too dark to
+see what we are about."
+
+"How far mus' go up, massa?" inquired Jupiter.
+
+"Get up the main trunk first, and then I will tell you which way to
+go—and here—stop! take this beetle with you."
+
+"De bug, Massa Will! de goole-bug!" cried the negro, drawing back in
+dismay, "what for mus' tote de bug way up de tree?—d——n if I do!"
+
+"If you are afraid, Jup, a great big negro like you, to take hold of a
+harmless little dead beetle, why, you can carry it up by this string;
+but if you do not take it up with you in some way, I shall be under the
+necessity of breaking your head with this shovel."
+
+"'What de matter, now, massa?" said Jup, evidently shamed into
+compliance; "always want fur to raise fuss wid old nigger. Was only
+funnin' anyhow. _Me_ feered de bug! what I keer for de bug?" Here he
+took cautiously hold of the extreme end of the string, and, maintaining
+the insect as far from his person as circumstances would permit,
+prepared to ascend the tree.
+
+In youth the tulip-tree, or _Liriodendron tulipifera_, the most
+magnificent of American foresters, has a trunk peculiarly smooth, and
+often rises to a great height without lateral branches; but, in its
+riper age, the bark becomes gnarled and uneven, while many short limbs
+make their appearance on the stem. Thus the difficulty of ascension, in
+the present case, lay more in semblance than in reality. Embracing the
+huge cylinder as closely as possible with his arms and knees, seizing
+with his hands some projections, and resting his naked toes upon
+others, Jupiter, after one or two narrow escapes from falling, at
+length wriggled himself into the first great fork, and seemed to
+consider the whole business as virtually accomplished. The _risk_ of
+the achievement was, in fact, now over, although the climber was some
+sixty or seventy feet from the ground.
+
+"Which way mus' go now, Massa Will?" he asked.
+
+"Keep up the largest branch, the one on this side," said Legrand. The
+negro obeyed him promptly, and apparently with but little trouble;
+ascending higher and higher, until no glimpse of his squat figure could
+be obtained through the dense foliage which enveloped it. Presently his
+voice was heard in a sort of halloo.
+
+"How much fudder I's got for go?"
+
+"How high up are you?" asked Legrand.
+
+"Ebber so fur," replied the negro; "can see de sky fru de top ob de
+tree."
+
+"Never mind the sky, but attend to what I say. Look down the trunk and
+count the limbs below you on this side. How many limbs have you
+passed?"
+
+"One, two, three, four, fibe—I done pass fibe big limb, massa, 'pon dis
+side."
+
+"Then go one limb higher."
+
+In a few minutes the voice was heard again, announcing that the seventh
+limb was attained.
+
+"Now, Jup," cried Legrand, evidently much excited, "I want you to work
+your way out upon that limb as far as you can. If you see anything
+strange, let me know."
+
+By this time what little doubt I might have entertained of my poor
+friend's insanity was put finally at rest. I had no alternative but to
+conclude him stricken with lunacy, and I became seriously anxious about
+getting him home. While I was pondering upon what was best to be done,
+Jupiter's voice was again heard.
+
+"Mos' feerd for to ventur' 'pon dis limb berry far—'tis dead limb putty
+much all de way."
+
+"Did you say it was a _dead_ limb, Jupiter?" cried Legrand, in a
+quavering voice.
+
+"Yes, massa, him dead as de door-nail—done up for sartain—done departed
+dis here life."
+
+"What in the name of heaven shall I do?" asked Legrand, seemingly in
+the greatest distress.
+
+"Do!" said I, glad of an opportunity to interpose a word, "why, come
+home and go to bed. Come now!—that's a fine fellow. It's getting late,
+and, besides, you remember your promise."
+
+"Jupiter," cried he, without heeding me in the least, "do you hear me?"
+
+"Yes, Massa Will, hear you ebber so plain,"
+
+"Try the wood well, then, with your knife, and see if you think it
+_very_ rotten."
+
+"Him rotten, massa, sure nuff," replied the negro in a few moments,
+"but not so berry rotten as mought be, Mought ventur' out leetle way
+'pon de limb by myself, dat's true."
+
+"By yourself! What do you mean?"
+
+"Why, I mean de bug. 'Tis _berry_ hebby bug. S'pose I drop him down
+fust, and den de limb won't break wid just de weight of one nigger."
+
+"You infernal scoundrel!" cried Legrand, apparently much relieved,
+"what do you mean by telling me such nonsense as that? As sure as you
+drop that beetle, I'll break your neck. Look here, Jupiter, do you hear
+me?"
+
+"Yes, massa, needn' hollo at poor nigger dat style."
+
+"Well!—now listen! if you will venture out on the limb as far as you
+think safe, and not let go the beetle, I'll make you a present of a
+silver dollar as soon as you get down."
+
+"I'm gwine, Massa Will—deed I is," replied the negro very
+promptly—"mos' out to de eend now."
+
+"_Out to the end_!" here fairly screamed Legrand; "do you say you are
+out to the end of that limb?"
+
+"Soon be to de eend, massa—o-o-o-o-oh! Lor-gol-a-marcy! what _is_ dis
+here 'pon de tree?"
+
+"Well," cried Legrand, highly delighted, "what is it?"
+
+"Why, 'taint noffin' but a skull—somebody bin lef' him head up de tree,
+and de crows done gobble ebery bit ob de meat off."
+
+"A skull, you say! Very well; how is it fastened to the limb? What
+holds it on?"
+
+"Shure 'nuff, massa; mus' look. Why, dis berry curous sarcumstance,
+'pon my word—dare's a great big nail in do skull, what fastens ob it on
+to de tree."
+
+"Well now, Jupiter, do exactly as I tell you—do you hear?"
+
+"Yes, massa."
+
+"Pay attention, then!—find the left eye of the skull."
+
+"Hum! hoo! dat's good! why, dare ain't no eye lef' at all."
+
+"Curse your stupidity! do you know your right hand from your left?"
+
+"Yes, I nose dat—nose all 'bout dat—'tis my lef' hand what I chops de
+wood wid."
+
+"To be sure! you are left-handed; and your left eye is on the same side
+as your left hand. Now, I suppose you can find the left eye of the
+skull, or the place where the left eye has been. Have you found it?"
+
+Here was a long pause. At length the negro asked:
+
+"Is de lef' eye ob de skull 'pon de same side as de lef' hand ob de
+skull, too?—'cause the skull ain't got not a bit ob a hand at
+all—nebber mind! I got de lef' eye now—here de lef' eye! what mus' do
+wid it?"
+
+"Let the beetle drop through it, as far as the string will reach, but
+be careful and not let go your hold of the string."
+
+"All dat done, Massa Will; mighty easy ting for to put de bug fru de
+hole; look out for him dar below!"
+
+During this colloquy no portion of Jupiter's person could be seen; but
+the beetle, which he had suffered to descend, was now visible at the
+end of the string, and glistened, like a globe of burnished gold, in
+the last rays of the setting sun, some of which still faintly illumined
+the eminence upon which we stood. The _scarabaeus_ hung quite clear of
+any branches, and if allowed to fall, would have fallen at our feet.
+Legrand immediately took the scythe, and cleared with it a circular
+space, three or four yards in diameter, just beneath the insect, and,
+having accomplished this, ordered Jupiter to let go the string and come
+down from the tree.
+
+Driving a peg, with great nicety, into the ground, at the precise spot
+where the beetle fell, my friend now produced from his pocket a
+tape-measure. Fastening one end of this at that point of the trunk of
+the tree which was nearest the peg, he unrolled it till it reached the
+peg, and thence farther unrolled it, in the direction already
+established by the two points of the tree and the peg, for the distance
+of fifty feet—Jupiter clearing away the brambles with the scythe. At
+the spot thus attained a second peg was driven, and about this, as a
+centre, a rude circle, about four feet in diameter, described. Taking
+now a spade himself, and giving one to Jupiter and one to me, Legrand
+begged us to set about digging as quickly as possible.
+
+To speak the truth, I had no especial relish for such amusement at any
+time, and, at that particular moment, would most willingly have
+declined it; for the night was coming on, and I felt much fatigued with
+the exercise already taken; but I saw no mode of escape, and was
+fearful of disturbing my poor friend's equanimity by a refusal. Could I
+have depended, indeed, upon Jupiter's aid, I would have had no
+hesitation in attempting to get the lunatic home by force; but I was
+too well assured of the old negro's disposition, to hope that he would
+assist me, under any circumstances, in a personal contest with his
+master. I made no doubt that the latter had been infected with some of
+the innumerable Southern superstitions about money buried, and that his
+fantasy had received confirmation by the finding of the _scarabaeus_,
+or, perhaps, by Jupiter's obstinacy in maintaining it to be "a bug of
+real gold." A mind disposed to lunacy would readily be led away by such
+suggestions—especially if chiming in with favorite preconceived
+ideas—and then I called to mind the poor fellow's speech about the
+beetle's being "the index of his fortune." Upon the whole, I was sadly
+vexed and puzzled, but, at length, I concluded to make a virtue of
+necessity—to dig with a good will, and thus the sooner to convince the
+visionary, by ocular demonstration, of the fallacy of the opinions he
+entertained.
+
+The lanterns having been lit, we all fell to work with a zeal worthy a
+more rational cause; and, as the glare fell upon our persons and
+implements, I could not help thinking how picturesque a group we
+composed, and how strange and suspicious our labors must have appeared
+to any interloper who, by chance, might have stumbled upon our
+whereabouts.
+
+We dug very steadily for two hours. Little was said; and our chief
+embarrassment lay in the yelping of the dog, who took exceeding
+interest in our proceedings. He at length became so obstreperous, that
+we grew fearful of his giving the alarm to some stragglers in the
+vicinity—-or, rather, this was the apprehension of Legrand; for myself,
+I should have rejoiced at any interruption which might have enabled me
+to get the wanderer home. The noise was, at length, very effectually
+silenced by Jupiter, who, getting out of the hole with a dogged air of
+deliberation, tied the brute's mouth up with one of his suspenders, and
+then returned, with a grave chuckle, to his task.
+
+When the time mentioned had expired, we had reached a depth of five
+feet, and yet no signs of any treasure became manifest. A general pause
+ensued, and I began to hope that the farce was at an end. Legrand,
+however, although evidently much disconcerted, wiped his brow
+thoughtfully and recommenced. We had excavated the entire circle of
+four feet diameter, and now we slightly enlarged the limit, and went to
+the farther depth of two feet. Still nothing appeared. The gold seeker,
+whom I sincerely pitied, at length clambered from the pit, with the
+bitterest disappointment imprinted upon every feature, and proceeded,
+slowly and reluctantly, to put on his coat, which he had thrown off at
+the beginning of his labor. In the meantime I made no remark. Jupiter,
+at a signal from his master, began to gather up his tools. This done,
+and the dog having been unmuzzled, we turned in profound silence
+towards home.
+
+We had taken, perhaps, a dozen steps in this direction, when, with a
+loud oath, Legrand strode up to Jupiter and seized him by the collar.
+The astonished negro opened his eyes and mouth to the fullest extent,
+let fall the spades, and fell upon his knees.
+
+"You scoundrel," said Legrand, hissing out the syllables from between
+his clenched teeth, "you infernal black villain! speak, I tell you!
+answer me this instant, without prevarication! which—which is your left
+eye?"
+
+"Oh, my golly, Massa Will! ain't dis here my lef' eye for sartain?"
+roared the terrified Jupiter, placing his hand upon his _right_ organ
+of vision, and holding it there with a desperate pertinacity, as if in
+immediate dread of his master's attempt at a gouge.
+
+"I thought so! I knew it! hurrah!" vociferated Legrand, letting the
+negro go, and executing a series of curvets and caracoles[13], much to
+the astonishment of his valet, who, arising from his knees, looked
+mutely from his master to myself, and then from myself to his master.
+
+"Come! we must go back," said the latter; "the game's not up yet;" and
+he again led the way to the tulip-tree.
+
+"Jupiter," said he, when he reached its foot, "come here! was the skull
+nailed to the limb with the face outwards, or with the face to the
+limb?"
+
+"De face was out, massa, so dat de crows could get at de eyes good,
+widout any trouble."
+
+"Well, then, was it this eye or that through which you dropped the
+beetle?"—here Legrand touched each of Jupiter's eyes.
+
+"'Twas dis eye, massa—de lef' eye—jis as you tell me," and here it was
+his right eye that the negro indicated.
+
+"That will do—we must try it again."
+
+Here my friend, about whose madness I now saw or fancied that I saw,
+certain indications of method, removed the peg which marked the spot
+where the beetle fell, to a spot about three inches to the westward of
+its former position, Taking now the tape-measure from the nearest point
+of the trunk to the peg, as before, and continuing the extension in a
+straight line to the distance of fifty feet, a spot was indicated,
+removed by several yards from the point at which we had been digging.
+
+Around the new position a circle, somewhat larger than in the former
+instance, was now described, and we again set to work with the spades,
+I was dreadfully weary, but scarcely understanding what had occasioned
+the change in my thoughts, I felt no longer any great aversion from the
+labor imposed, I had become most unaccountably interested—nay, even
+excited. Perhaps there was something, amid all the extravagant demeanor
+of Legrand—some air of forethought, or of deliberation, which impressed
+me. I dug eagerly, and now and then caught myself actually looking,
+with something that very much resembled expectation, for the fancied
+treasure, the vision of which had demented my unfortunate companion. At
+a period when such vagaries of thought most fully possessed me, and
+when we had been at work perhaps an hour and a half, we were again
+interrupted by the violent howlings of the dog. His uneasiness in the
+first instance had been, evidently, but the result of playfulness or
+caprice, but he now assumed a bitter and serious tone. Upon Jupiter's
+again attempting to muzzle him, he made furious resistance, and,
+leaping into the hole, tore up the mould frantically with his claws. In
+a few seconds he had uncovered a mass of human bones, forming two
+complete skeletons, intermingled with several buttons of metal, and
+what appeared to be the dust of decayed woolen. One or two strokes of a
+spade upturned the blade of a large Spanish knife, and, as we dug
+farther, three or four pieces of gold and silver coin came to light.
+
+At sight of these the joy of Jupiter could scarcely be restrained, but
+the countenance of his master wore an air of extreme disappointment. He
+urged us, however, to continue our exertions, and the words were hardly
+uttered when I stumbled and fell forward, having caught the toe of my
+boot in a large ring of iron that lay half buried in the loose earth.
+
+We now worked in earnest, and never did I pass ten minutes of more
+intense excitement. During this interval we had fairly unearthed an
+oblong chest of wood which, from its perfect preservation and wonderful
+hardness, had plainly been subjected to some mineralizing
+process—perhaps that of the bichloride of mercury. This box was three
+feet and a half long, three feet broad, and two and a half feet deep.
+It was firmly secured by bands of wrought iron, riveted, and forming a
+kind of trellis-work over the whole. On each side of the chest, near
+the top, were three rings of iron—six in all—by means of which a firm
+hold could be obtained by six persons. Our utmost united endeavors
+served only to disturb the coffer very slightly in its bed. We at once
+saw the impossibility of removing so great a weight. Luckily, the sole
+fastenings of the lid consisted of two sliding bolts. These we drew
+back—trembling and panting with anxiety. In an instant, a treasure of
+incalculable value lay gleaming before us. As the rays of the lanterns
+fell within the pit, there flashed upwards a glow and a glare, from a
+confused heap of gold and of jewels, that absolutely dazzled our eyes.
+
+I shall not pretend to describe the feelings with which I gazed.
+Amazement was, of course, predominant. Legrand appeared exhausted with
+excitement, and spoke very few words. Jupiter's countenance wore, for
+some minutes, as deadly a pallor as it is possible, in the nature of
+things, for any negro's visage to assume. He seemed
+stupefied—-thunder-stricken. Presently he fell upon his knees in the
+pit, and, burying his naked arms up to the elbows in gold, let them
+there remain, as if enjoying the luxury of a bath. At length, with a
+deep sigh, he exclaimed, as if in a soliloquy:
+
+"And dis all cum ob de goole-bug! de putty goole-bug! de poor little
+goole-bug, what I 'boosed in dat sabage kind ob style! Ain't you
+'shamed ofa yourself, nigger?—answer me dat!"
+
+It became necessary, at last, that I should arouse both master and
+valet to the expediency of removing the treasure. It was growing late,
+and it behooved us to make exertion, that we might get everything
+housed before daylight. It was difficult to say what should be done,
+and much time was spent in deliberation—so confused were the ideas of
+all. We, finally, lightened the box by removing two-thirds of its
+contents, when we were enabled, with some trouble, to raise it from the
+hole. The articles taken out were deposited among the brambles, and the
+dog left to guard them, with strict orders from Jupiter neither, upon
+any pretence, to stir from the spot, nor to open his mouth until our
+return. We then hurriedly made for home with the chest, reaching the
+hut in safety, but after excessive toil, at one o'clock in the morning.
+Worn out as we were, it was not in human nature to do more just now. We
+rested until two, and had supper, starting for the hills immediately
+afterwards, armed with three stout sacks, which, by good luck, were
+upon the premises. A little before four we arrived at the pit, divided
+the remainder of the booty as equally as might be among us, and,
+leaving the holes unfilled, again set out for the hut, at which, for
+the second time, we deposited our golden burdens, just as the first
+streaks of dawn gleamed from over the treetops in the east.
+
+We were now thoroughly broken down; but the intense excitement of the
+time denied us repose. After an unquiet slumber of some three or four
+hours' duration, we arose, as if by preconcert, to make examination of
+our treasure.
+
+The chest had been full to the brim, and we spent the whole day, and
+the greater part of the next night, in a scrutiny of its contents.
+There had been nothing like order or arrangement. Everything had been
+heaped in promiscuously.
+
+Having assorted all with care, we found ourselves possessed of even
+vaster wealth than we had at first supposed. In coin there was rather
+more than four hundred and fifty thousand dollars—estimating the value
+of the pieces, as accurately as we could, by the tables of the period.
+There was not a particle of silver. All was gold of antique date and of
+great variety—French, Spanish, and German money, with a few English
+guineas, and some counters[14] of which we had never seen specimens
+before. There were several very large and heavy coins, so worn that we
+could make nothing of their inscriptions. There was no American money.
+The value of the jewels we found more difficulty in estimating. There
+were diamonds—some of them exceedingly large and fine—a hundred and ten
+in all, and not one of them small; eighteen rubies of remarkable
+brilliancy; three hundred and ten emeralds, all very beautiful; and
+twenty-one sapphires, with an opal. These stones had all been broken
+from their settings and thrown loose in the chest. The settings
+themselves, which we picked out from among the other gold, appeared to
+have been beaten up with hammers, as if to prevent indentification.
+Besides all this, there was a vast quantity of solid gold
+ornaments—nearly two hundred massive finger and ear rings; rich
+chains—thirty of these, if I remember; eighty-three very large and
+heavy crucifixes; five gold censers of great value; a prodigious golden
+punch-bowl, ornamented with richly chased vine-leaves and
+Bacchanalian[15] figures; with two sword handles exquisitely embossed,
+and many other smaller articles which I cannot recollect. The weight of
+these valuables exceeded three hundred and fifty pounds avoirdupois;
+and in this estimate I have not included one hundred and ninety-seven
+superb gold watches, three of the number being worth each five hundred
+dollars, if one. Many of them were very old, and as time-keepers
+valueless, the works having suffered, more or less, from corrosion; but
+all were richly jewelled and in cases of great worth. We estimated the
+entire contents of the chest, that night, at a million and a half of
+dollars; and, upon the subsequent disposal of the trinkets and jewels
+(a few being retained for our own use), it was found we had greatly
+undervalued the treasure.
+
+When, at length, we had concluded our examination, and the intense
+excitement of the time had in some measure subsided, Legrand, who saw
+that I was dying with impatience for a solution of this most
+extraordinary riddle, entered into a full detail of all the
+circumstances connected with it.
+
+"You remember," said he, "the night when I handed you the rough sketch
+I had made of the _scarabaeus_. You recollect, also, that I became
+quite vexed at you for insisting that my drawing resembled a
+death's-head. When you first made this assertion I thought you were
+jesting; but afterwards I called to mind the peculiar spots on the back
+of the insect, and admitted to myself that your remark had some, little
+foundation in fact. Still, the sneer at my graphic powers irritated
+me—for I am considered a good artist—and, therefore, when you handed me
+the scrap of parchment, I was about to crumple it up and throw it
+angrily into the fire."
+
+"The scrap of paper, you mean," said I.
+
+"No; it had much of the appearance of paper, and at first I supposed it
+to be such, but when I came to draw upon it, I discovered it at once to
+be a piece of very thin parchment. It was quite dirty, you remember.
+Well, as I was in the very act of crumpling it up, my glance fell upon
+the sketch at which you had been looking, and you may imagine my
+astonishment when I perceived, in fact, the figure of a death's-head
+just where, it seemed to me, I had made the drawing of the beetle. For
+a moment I was too much amazed to think with accuracy. I knew that my
+design was very different in detail from this, although there was a
+certain similarity in general outline. Presently I took a candle, and
+seating myself at the other end of the room, proceeded to scrutinize
+the parchment more closely. Upon turning it over, I saw my own sketch
+upon, the reverse, just as I had made it. My first idea, now, was mere
+surprise at the really remarkable similarity of outline—at the singular
+coincidence involved in the fact that, unknown to me, there should have
+been a skull upon the other side of the parchment, immediately beneath
+my figure of the _scarabaeus_, and that this skull, not only in
+outline, but in size, should so closely resemble my drawing. I say the
+singularity of this coincidence absolutely stupefied me for a time.
+This is the usual effect of such coincidences. The mind struggles to
+establish a connection—a sequence of cause and effect—and being unable
+to do so, suffers a species of temporary paralysis. But when I
+recovered from this stupor, there dawned upon me gradually a conviction
+which startled me even far more than the coincidence. I began
+distinctly, positively, to remember that there had been _no_ drawing
+upon the parchment when I made my sketch of the _scarabaeus_. I became
+perfectly certain of this; for I recollected turning up first one side
+and then the other, in search of the cleanest spot. Had the skull been
+then there, of course, I could not have failed to notice it. Here was
+indeed a mystery which I felt it impossible to explain; but, even at
+that early moment, there seemed to glimmer, faintly, within the most
+remote and secret chambers of my intellect, a glowworm-like conception
+of that truth which last night's adventure brought to so magnificent a
+demonstration. I arose at once, and putting the parchment securely
+away, dismissed all further reflection until I should be alone.
+
+"When you had gone, and when Jupiter was fast asleep, I betook myself
+to a more methodical investigation of the affair. In the first place I
+considered the manner in which the parchment had come into my
+possession. The spot where we discovered the _scarabaeus_ was on the
+coast of the mainland, about a mile eastward of the island, and but a
+short distance above high water mark. Upon my taking hold of it, it
+gave me a sharp bite, which caused me to let it drop. Jupiter, with his
+accustomed caution, before seizing the insect, which had flown towards
+him, looked about him for a leaf, or something of that nature, by which
+to take hold of it. It was at this moment that his eyes, and mine also,
+fell upon the scrap of parchment, which I then supposed to be paper. It
+was lying half buried in the sand, a corner sticking up. Near the spot
+where we found it, I observed the remnants of the hull of what appeared
+to have been a ship's long-boat. The wreck seemed to have been there
+for a very great while; for the resemblance to boat timbers could
+scarcely be traced.
+
+"Well, Jupiter picked up the parchment, wrapped the beetle in it, and
+gave it to me. Soon afterwards we turned to go home, and on the way met
+Lieutenant G——. I showed him the insect, and he begged me to let him
+take it to the fort. Upon my consenting, he thrust it forthwith into
+his waistcoat pocket, without the parchment in which it had been
+wrapped, and which I had continued to hold in my hand during his
+inspection. Perhaps he dreaded my changing my mind, and thought it best
+to make sure of the prize at once—you know how enthusiastic he is on
+all subjects connected with Natural History. At the same time, without
+being conscious of it, I must have deposited the parchment in my own
+pocket.
+
+"You remember that when I went to the table, for the purpose of making
+a sketch of the beetle, I found no paper where it was usually kept, I
+looked in the drawer, and found none there. I searched my pockets,
+hoping to find an old letter, when my hand fell upon the parchment. I
+thus detail the precise mode in which it came into my possession; for
+the circumstances impressed me with peculiar force.
+
+"No doubt you will think me fanciful, but I had already established a
+kind of _connection_. I had put together two links of a great chain.
+There was a boat lying upon a seacoast, and not far from the boat was a
+parchment—_not a paper_—with a skull depicted upon it. You will, of
+course, ask, 'Where is the connection?' I reply that the skull, or
+death's-head, is the well-known emblem of the pirate. The flag of the
+death's-head is hoisted in all engagements.
+
+"I have said that the scrap was parchment, and not paper. Parchment is
+durable—almost imperishable. Matters of little moment are rarely
+consigned to parchment, since, for the mere ordinary purposes of
+drawing or writing, it is not nearly so well adapted as paper. This
+reflection suggested some meaning—some relevancy—in the death's-head. I
+did not fail to observe, also, the _form_ of the parchment. Although
+one of its corners had been, by some accident, destroyed, it could be
+seen that the original form was oblong. It was just such a slip,
+indeed, as might have been chosen for a memorandum—for a record of
+something to be long remembered and carefully preserved."
+
+"But," I interposed, "you say that the skull was _not_ upon the
+parchment when you made the drawing of the beetle. How, then, do you
+trace any connection between the boat and the skull—since this latter,
+according to your own admission, must have been designed (God only
+knows how or by whom) at some period subsequent to your sketching the
+_scarabaeus_?"
+
+"Ah, hereupon turns the whole mystery; although the secret, at this
+point, I had comparatively little difficulty in solving. My steps were
+sure, and could afford but a single result. I reasoned, for example,
+thus: When I drew the _scarabaeus_, there was no skull apparent upon
+the parchment. When I had completed the drawing I gave it to you, and
+observed you narrowly until you returned it, _You_, therefore, did not
+design the skull, and no one else was present to do it. Then it was not
+done by human agency. And nevertheless it was done.
+
+"At this stage of my reflections I endeavored to remember, and _did_
+remember, with entire distinctness, every incident which occurred about
+the period in question. The weather was chilly (oh, rare and happy
+accident!), and a fire was blazing upon the hearth. I was heated with
+exercise, and sat near the table. You, however, had drawn a chair close
+to the chimney. Just as I placed the parchment in your hand, and as you
+were in the act of inspecting it, Wolf, the Newfoundland, entered, and
+leaped upon your shoulders. With, your left hand you caressed him and
+kept him off, while your right, holding the parchment, was permitted to
+fall listlessly between your knees, and in close proximity to the fire.
+At one moment I thought the blaze had caught it, and was about to
+caution you, but before I could speak you had withdrawn it, and were
+engaged in its examination. When I considered all these particulars, I
+doubted not for a moment that _heat_ had been the agent in bringing to
+light, upon the parchment, the skull which I saw designed upon it. You
+are well aware that chemical preparations exist, and have existed time
+out of mind, by means of which it is possible to write upon either
+paper or vellum, so that the characters shall become visible only when
+subjected to the action of fire. Zaffre[16], digested in _aqua
+regia_[17], and diluted with four times its weight of water, is
+sometimes employed; a green tint results. The regulus[18] of cobalt,
+dissolved in spirit of nitre, gives a red. These colors disappear at
+longer or shorter intervals after the material written upon cools, but
+again become apparent upon the re-application of heat.
+
+"I now scrutinized the death's-head with care. Its outer edges—the
+edges of the drawing nearest the edge of the vellum—were far more
+_distinct_ than the others. It was clear that the action of the caloric
+had been imperfect or unequal. I immediately kindled a fire, and
+subjected every portion of the parchment to a glowing heat. At first,
+the only effect was the strengthening of the faint lines in the skull;
+but, upon persevering in the experiment, there became visible, at the
+corner of the slip diagonally opposite to the spot in which the
+death's-head was delineated, the figure of what I at first supposed to
+be a goat. A closer scrutiny, however, satisfied me that it was
+intended for a kid."
+
+"Ha! ha!" said I; "to be sure I have no right to laugh at you—a million
+and a half of money is too serious a matter for mirth—but you are not
+about to establish a third link in your chain: you will not find any
+especial connection between your pirates and a goat; pirates, you know,
+have nothing to do with goats; they appertain to the farming
+interests."
+
+"But I have said that the figure was _not_ that of a goat."
+
+"Well, a kid, then—pretty much the same thing."
+
+"Pretty much, but not altogether," said Legrand.
+
+"You may have heard of one _Captain_ Kidd[19]. I at once looked on the
+figure of the animal as a kind of punning or hieroglyphical signature.
+I say signature because its position upon the vellum suggested this
+idea. The death's-head at the corner diagonally opposite had, in the
+same manner, the air of a stamp, or seal. But I was sorely put out by
+the absence of all else—of the body to my imagined instrument—of the
+text for my context."
+
+"I presume you expected to find a letter between the stamp and the
+signature."
+
+"Something of the kind. The fact is, I felt irresistibly impressed with
+a presentiment of some vast good fortune impending. I can scarcely say
+why. Perhaps, after all, it was rather a desire than an actual belief;
+but do you know that Jupiter's silly words, about the bug being of
+solid gold, had a remarkable effect upon my fancy? And then the series
+of accidents and coincidences—these were so _very_ extraordinary. Do
+you observe how mere an accident it was that these events should have
+occurred upon the _sole_ day of all the year in which it has been, or
+may be, sufficiently cool for fire, and that without the fire, or
+without the intervention of the dog at the precise moment in which he
+appeared, I should, never have become aware of the death's-head, and so
+never the possessor of the treasure?"
+
+"But proceed—I am all impatience."
+
+"Well; you have heard, of course, the many stories current—the thousand
+vague rumors afloat about money buried, somewhere, upon the Atlantic
+coast, by Kidd and his associates. These rumors must have had some
+foundation in fact. And that the rumors have existed so long and so
+continuously could have resulted, it appeared to me, only from the
+circumstance of the buried treasure still _remaining_ entombed. Had
+Kidd concealed his plunder for a time, and afterwards reclaimed it, the
+rumors would scarcely have reached us in their present unvarying form.
+You will observe that the stories told are all about money-seekers, not
+about money-finders. Had the pirate recovered his money, there the
+affair would have dropped. It seemed to me that some accident—say the
+loss of a memorandum indicating its locality—had deprived him of the
+means of recovering it, and that this accident had become known to his
+followers who otherwise might never have heard that treasure had been
+concealed at all, and who, busying themselves in vain, because unguided
+attempts to regain it had given first birth, and then universal
+currency, to the reports which are now so common. Have you ever heard
+of any important treasure being unearthed along the coast?"
+
+"Never."
+
+"But that Kidd's accumulations were immense is well known. I took it
+for granted, therefore, that the earth still held them; and you will
+scarcely be surprised when I tell you that I felt a hope, nearly
+amounting to certainty, that the parchment so strangely found involved
+a lost record of the place of deposit."
+
+"But how did you proceed?"
+
+"I held the vellum again to the fire, after increasing the heat; but
+nothing appeared. I now thought it possible that the coating of dirt
+might have something to do with the failure; so I carefully rinsed the
+parchment by pouring warm water over it, and, having done this, I
+placed it in a tin pan, with the skull downwards, and put the pan upon
+a furnace of lighted charcoal. In a few minutes, the pan having become
+thoroughly heated, I removed the slip, and to my inexpressible joy,
+found it spotted, in several places, with what appeared to be figures
+arranged in lines. Again I placed it in the pan, and suffered it to
+remain another minute. Upon taking it off, the whole was just as you
+see it now."
+
+Here Legrand, having reheated the parchment, submitted it to my
+inspection, The following characters were rudely traced, in a red tint
+between the death's-head and the goat:
+
+     "53‡‡†305))6*;4826)4‡.);806*;48†8
+     ¶60))85;1‡(;:‡*8†83(88)5*†;46(;88*96
+     ?;8)*‡(;485);5*†2:*‡(;4956*2(5*—4)8
+     ¶8*;4069285);)6†8)4‡‡;1(‡9;48081;8:8‡
+     1;48†85;4)485†528806*81(‡9;48;(88;4 (‡?34;48)4‡;161;:188;‡?;"
+
+"But," said I, returning him the slip, "I am as much in the dark as
+ever. Were all the jewels of Golconda[20] awaiting me on my solution of
+this enigma, I am quite sure that I should be unable to earn them."
+
+"And yet," said Legrand, "the solution is by no means so difficult as
+you might be led to imagine from the first hasty inspection of the
+characters. These characters, as any one might readily guess, form a
+cipher, that is to say, they convey a meaning; but then, from what is
+known of Kidd, I could not suppose him capable of constructing any of
+the more abstruse cryptographs[21]. I made up my mind, at once, that
+this was of a simple species—such, however, as would appear, to the
+crude intellect of the sailor, absolutely insoluble without the key."
+
+"And you really solved it?"
+
+"Readily; I have solved others of an abstruseness ten thousand times
+greater. Circumstances, and a certain bias of mind, have led me to take
+interest in such riddles, and it may well be doubted whether human
+ingenuity can construct an enigma of the kind which human ingenuity may
+not, by proper application, resolve. In fact, having once established
+connected and legible characters, I scarcely gave a thought to the mere
+difficulty of developing their import.
+
+"In the present case—indeed, in all cases of secret writing—the first
+question regards the _language_ of the cipher; for the principles of
+solution, so far especially as the more simple ciphers are concerned,
+depend upon, and are varied by, the genius of the particular idiom. In
+general, there is no alternative but experiment (directed by
+probabilities) of every tongue known to him who attempts the solution,
+until the true one be attained. But, with the cipher now before us, all
+difficulty was removed by the signature. The pun upon the word 'Kidd'
+is appreciable in no other language than the English. But for this
+consideration I should have begun my attempts with the Spanish and
+French, as the tongues in which a secret of this kind would most
+naturally have been written by a pirate of the Spanish main[22]. As it
+was, I assume the cryptograph to be English.
+
+"You observe there are no divisions between the words. Had there been
+divisions, the task would have been comparatively easy. In such case I
+would have commenced with a collation and analysis of the shorter
+words; and had a word of a single letter occurred, as is most likely
+(_a_ or _I_, for example), I should have considered the solution as
+assured. But there being no divisions, my first step was to ascertain
+the predominant letters, as well as the least frequent,
+
+"Counting all, I constructed a table thus;—
+
+     Of the character 8 there are 33.
+
+                      ;     "     26.
+
+                      4     "     19.
+
+                     ‡)     "     16.
+
+                      *     "     13.
+
+                      5     "     12.
+
+                      6     "     11.
+
+                     †1     "      8.
+
+                      0     "      6.
+
+                     92     "      5.
+
+                     :3     "      4.
+
+                      ?     "      3.
+
+                      ¶     "      2.
+
+                    —.     "      1.
+
+"Now, in English, the letter which most frequently occurs is _e_.
+Afterwards, the succession runs thus: _a o i d h n r s t u y c f g l m
+w b k p q x z_. E predominates, however, so remarkably that an
+individual sentence of any length is rarely seen in which it is not the
+prevailing character.
+
+"Here, then, we have, in the very beginning, the groundwork for
+something more than a mere guess. The general use which may be made of
+the table is obvious—but in this particular cipher we shall only very
+partially require its aid. As our predominant character is 8, we will
+commence by assuming it as the _e_ of the natural alphabet. To verify
+the supposition, let us observe if the 8 be seen often in couples—for
+_e_ is doubled with great frequency in English—in such words, for
+example, as 'meet,' 'fleet,' 'speed,' 'seen,' 'been,' 'agree,' etc. In
+the present instance we see it doubled no less than five times,
+although the cryptograph is brief.
+
+"Let us assume 8, then, as _e_. Now of all _words_ in the language,
+'the' is most usual; let us see, therefore, whether there are not
+repetitions of any three characters, in the same order of collocation,
+the last of them being 8. If we discover repetitions of such letters,
+so arranged, they will most probably represent the word 'the.' Upon
+inspection, we find no less than seven such arrangements, the
+characters being ;48. We may, therefore, assume that the semicolon
+represents _t_, that 4 represents _h_, and that 8 represents _e_—the
+last being now well confirmed. Thus a great step has been taken.
+
+"But, having established a single word, we are enabled to establish a
+vastly important point; that is to say, several commencements and
+terminations of other words. Let us refer, for example, to the last
+instance but one, in which the combination ;48 occurs—not far from the
+end of the cipher. We know that the semicolon immediately ensuing is
+the commencement of a word, and, of the six characters succeeding this
+'the,' we are cognizant of no less than five. Let us set these
+characters down, thus, by the letters we know them to represent,
+leaving a space for the unknown—
+
+     t eeth.
+
+"Here we are enabled, at once, to discard the '_th_,' as forming no
+portion of the word commencing with the first _t_; since by experiment
+of the entire alphabet for a letter adapted to the vacancy, we perceive
+that no word can be formed of which this _th_ can be a part. We are
+thus narrowed into
+
+     t ee,
+
+and, going through the alphabet, if necessary, as before, we arrive at
+the word 'tree,' as the sole possible reading. We thus gain another
+letter, _r_, represented by (, with the words 'the tree" in
+juxtaposition.
+
+"Looking beyond these words, for a short distance, we again see the
+combination ;48, and employ it by way of _termination_ to what
+immediately precedes. We have thus this arrangement:
+
+     the tree ;4 (‡?34 the,
+
+or, substituting the natural letters, whereknown, it reads thus:
+
+     the tree thr‡?3h the.
+
+"Now, if, in place of the unknown characters, we leave blank spaces, or
+substitute dots, we read thus:
+
+     the tree thr…h the,
+
+when the word '_through_' makes itself evident at once. But the
+discovery gives us three new letters, _o, u_, and _g_, represented by ‡
+? and 3.
+
+"Looking now, narrowly, through the cipher for combinations of known,
+characters, we find, not very far from the beginning, this arrangement.
+
+     83(88, or, egree,
+
+which, plainly, is the conclusion of the word 'degree' and gives us
+another letter, _d_, represented by †.
+
+"Four letters beyond the word 'degree,' we perceive the combination.
+
+     ;46(;88*.
+
+"Translating the known characters, and representing the unknown by
+dots, as before, we read thus:
+
+     th.rtee,
+
+an arrangement immediately suggestive of the word 'thirteen,' and again
+furnishing us with two new characters, _i_, and _n_, represented by 6
+and *.
+
+"Referring, now, to the beginning of the cryptograph, we find the
+combination,
+
+     53 ‡‡†.
+
+"Translating, as before, we obtain
+
+     .good,
+
+which assures us that the first letter is _A_, and that the first two
+words are 'A good.'
+
+"To avoid confusion, it is now time that we arrange our key, as far as
+discovered, in a tabular form. It will stand thus:
+
+     5 represents a †      "     d 8      "     e 3      "     g 4     
+     "     h 6      "     i *      "     n ‡      "     o (      "    
+     r ;      "     t
+
+"We have, therefore, no less than ten of the most important letters
+represented, and it will be unnecessary to proceed with the details of
+the solution. I have said enough to convince you that ciphers of this
+nature are readily soluble, and to give you some insight into the
+rationale[23] of their development. But be assured that the specimen
+before us appertains to the very simplest species of cryptograph. It
+now only remains to give you the full translation of the characters
+upon the parchment, as unriddled. Here it is:
+
+     "'_A good glass in the bishop's hostel in the devil's seat
+     twenty-one degrees and thirteen minutes northeast and by north
+     main branch seventh limb east side shoot from the left eye of the
+     death's-head a bee-line from the tree through the shot fifty feet
+     out_.'"
+
+"But," said I, "the enigma seems still in as bad a condition as ever.
+How is it possible to extort a meaning from all this jargon about
+'devil's seats,' death's-heads,' and 'bishop's hotels'?"
+
+"I confess," replied Legrand, "that the matter still wears a serious
+aspect, when regarded with a casual glance. My first endeavor was to
+divide the sentence into the natural divisions intended by the
+cryptographist."
+
+"You mean to punctuate it?"
+
+"Something of that kind."
+
+"But how was it possible to effect this?"
+
+"I reflected that it had been a _point_ with the writer to run his
+words together without divisions, so as to increase the difficulty of
+solution. Now, a not over acute man, in pursuing such, an object, would
+be nearly certain to overdo the matter. When, in the course of his
+composition, he arrived at a break in his subject which would naturally
+require a pause, or a point, he would be exceedingly apt to run his
+characters, at this place, more than usually close together. If you
+will observe the Ms. in the present instance, you will easily detect
+five such cases of unusual crowding. Acting on this hint, I made the
+division thus:
+
+     "'_A good glass in the bishop's hostel in the devil's
+     seat—twenty-one degrees and thirteen minutes—northeast and by
+     north—main branch seventh limb east side—shoot from the left eye
+     of the death's-head—a bee-line from the tree through the shot
+     fifty feet out_.'"
+
+"Even this division," said I, "leaves me still in the dark."
+
+"It left me also in the dark," replied Legrand, "for a few days, during
+which I made diligent inquiry, in the neighborhood of Sullivan's
+Island, for any building, which went by the name of the 'Bishop's
+Hotel'—for of course I dropped the obsolete word 'hostel.' Gaining no
+information on the subject, I was on the point of extending my sphere
+of search, and proceeding in a more systematic manner, when, one
+morning, it entered into my head, quite suddenly, that this 'Bishop's
+Hostel' might have some reference to an old family, of the name of
+Bessop, which, time out of mind, had held possession of an ancient
+manor-house, about four miles to the northward of the island. I
+accordingly went over to the plantation, and reinstituted my inquiries
+among the older negroes of the place. At length one of the most aged of
+the women said that she had heard of such a place as _Bessop's Castle_
+and thought that she could guide me to it, but that it was not a
+castle, nor tavern, but a high rock.
+
+"I offered to pay her well for her trouble, and, after some demur, she
+consented to accompany me to the spot. We found it without much
+difficulty, when, dismissing her, I proceeded to examine the place. The
+'castle' consisted of an irregular assemblage of cliffs and rocks—one
+of the latter being quite remarkable for its height as well as for its
+insulated and artificial appearance, I clambered to its apex, and then
+felt much at a loss as to what should be next done.
+
+"While I was buried in reflection, my eyes fell upon a narrow ledge in
+the eastern face of the rock, perhaps a yard below the summit upon
+which I stood. This ledge projected about eighteen inches, and was not
+more than a foot wide, while a niche in the cliff just above it gave it
+a rude resemblance to one of the hollow-backed chairs used by our
+ancestors. I made no doubt that here was the 'devil's seat' alluded to
+in the Ms., and now I seemed to grasp the full secret of the riddle.
+
+"The 'good glass,' I knew, could have reference to nothing but a
+telescope; for the word 'glass' is rarely employed in any other sense
+by seamen. Now here, I at once saw, was a telescope to be used, and a
+definite point of view, _admitting no variation_, from which to use it.
+Nor did I hesitate to believe that the phrase 'twenty-one degrees and
+thirteen minutes' and 'northeast and by north,' were intended as
+directions for the levelling of the glass. Greatly excited by these
+discoveries, I hurried home, procured a telescope, and returned to the
+rock.
+
+"I let myself down to the ledge, and found that it was impossible to
+retain a seat upon it except in one particular position. This fact
+confirmed my preconceived idea. I proceeded to use the glass. Of course
+the 'twenty-one degrees and thirteen minutes' could allude to nothing
+but elevation above the visible horizon, since the horizontal direction
+was clearly indicated by the words 'northeast and by north.' This
+latter direction I at once established by means of a pocket-compass;
+then, pointing the glass as nearly at an angle of twenty-one degrees of
+elevation as I could do it by guess, I moved it cautiously up or down,
+until my attention was arrested by a circular rift or opening in the
+foliage of a large tree that over-topped its fellows in the distance.
+In the centre of this rift I perceived a white spot, but could not, at
+first, distinguish what it was. Adjusting the focus of the telescope, I
+again looked, and now made it out to be a human skull.
+
+"On this discovery I was so sanguine as to consider the enigma solved;
+for the phrase 'main branch, seventh limb, east side' could refer only
+to the position of the skull on the tree, while 'shoot from the left
+eye of the death's-head' admitted also of but one interpretation, in
+regard to a search for buried treasure. I perceived that the design was
+to drop a bullet from the left eye of the skull, and that a bee-line,
+or in other words, a straight line, drawn from the nearest point of the
+trunk through 'the shot' (or the spot where the bullet fell) and thence
+extended to a distance of fifty feet, would indicate a definite
+point—and beneath this point I thought it at least _possible_ that a
+deposit of value lay concealed."
+
+"All this." I said, "is exceedingly clear, and, although ingenious,
+still simple and explicit. When you left the Bishop's Hotel, what
+then?"
+
+"Why, having carefully taken the bearings of the tree, I turned
+homewards. The instant that I left the 'devil's seat,' however, the
+circular rift vanished; nor could I get a glimpse of it afterwards,
+turn, as I would. What seems to me the chief ingenuity in this whole
+business is the fact (for repeated experiment has convinced me it _is_
+a fact) that the circular opening in question is visible from no other
+attainable point of view than that afforded by the narrow ledge on the
+face of the rock.
+
+"In this expedition to the 'Bishop's Hotel' I had been attended by
+Jupiter, who had no doubt observed for some weeks past the abstraction
+of my demeanor, and took especial care not to leave me alone. But, on
+the next day, getting up very early, I contrived to give him the slip,
+and went into the hills in search of the tree. After much toil I found
+it. When I came home at night my valet proposed to give me a flogging.
+With the rest of the adventure I believe you are as well acquainted as
+myself."
+
+"I suppose," said I, "you missed the spot, in the first attempt at
+digging, through Jupiter's stupidity in letting the bug fall through
+the right instead of through the left eye of the skull."
+
+"Precisely. This mistake made a difference of about two inches and a
+half in the 'shot'—that is to say, in the position of the peg nearest
+the tree—and had the treasure been _beneath_ the 'shot,' the error
+would have been of little moment; but the 'shot,' together with the
+nearest point of the tree, were merely two points for the establishment
+of a line of direction; of course the error, however trivial in the
+beginning, increased as we proceeded with the line, and by the time we
+had gone fifty feet, threw us quite off the scent. But for my
+deep-seated convictions that treasure was here somewhere actually
+buried, we might have had all our labor in vain."
+
+"I presume the fancy of _the skull_—of letting fall a bullet through
+the skull's eye—was suggested to Kidd by the piratical flag. No doubt
+he felt a kind of poetical consistency in recovering his money through
+this ominous insignium[24]."
+
+"Perhaps so; still, I cannot help thinking that common-sense had quite
+as much to do with the matter as poetical consistency. To be visible
+from the Devil's seat, it was necessary that the object, if small,
+should be _white_: and there is nothing like your human skull for
+retaining and even increasing its whiteness under exposure to all
+vicissitudes of weather."
+
+"But your grandiloquence, and your conduct in swinging the beetle—how
+excessively odd! I was sure you were mad. And why did you insist on
+letting fall the bug, instead of a bullet, from the skull?"
+
+"Why, to be frank, I felt somewhat annoyed by your evident suspicions
+touching my sanity, and so resolved to punish you quietly, in my own
+way, by a little bit of sober mystification. For this reason I swung
+the beetle, and for this reason I let it fall from the tree. An
+observation of yours about its great weight suggested the latter idea."
+
+"Yes, I perceive; and now there is only one point which puzzles me.
+What are we to make of the skeletons found in the hole?"
+
+"That is a question I am no more able to answer than yourself. There
+seems, however, only one plausible way of accounting for them—and yet
+it is dreadful to believe in such atrocity as my suggestion would
+imply. It is clear that Kidd—if Kidd indeed secreted this treasure,
+which I doubt not—it is clear that he must have had assistance in the
+labor. But this labor concluded, he may have thought it expedient to
+remove all participants in his secret. Perhaps a couple of blows with a
+mattock were sufficient, while his coadjutors were busy in the pit;
+perhaps it required a dozen—who shall tell?"
+
+NOTES
+
+[1] _The Gold-Bug_ was first published in _The Dollar Magazine_ in
+1843. The story won a prize of one hundred dollars.
+
+[2] 100:3 All in the Wrong. The title of an amusing comedy by Arthur
+Murphy (1730-1805).
+
+[3] 100:4 Huguenot. French Protestants, many of whom settled in South
+Carolina.
+
+[4] 100: 18 Fort Moultrie. Erected in. 1776. Defended against the
+British by Colonel William Moultrie.
+
+[5] 101:23 Swammerdam. A famous Dutch naturalist (1637-1680).
+
+[6] 101:25 manumitted. Freed from slavery.
+
+[7] 102:27 scarabaeus. The Latin for beetle.
+
+[8] 103:15 antennae. The feelers.
+
+[9] 105:8 scarabaeus caput hominis. Man's-head beetle.
+
+[10] 107:20 noovers. Manoeuvres.
+
+[11] 109:10 brusquerie. Lack of cordiality.
+
+[12] 110:26 empressement. Demonstrativeness.
+
+[13] 123:20 curvets and caracoles. Leaping and prancing of a horse.
+
+[14] 128:9 counters. Various coins.
+
+[15] 128:28 Bacchanalian. Revelling like the worshippers of Bacchus,
+the god of wine.
+
+[16] 134:28 Zaffre. An oxide of cobalt. See dictionary.
+
+[17] 134:28 aqua regia. Royal water—a mixture of nitric and
+hydrochloric acids.
+
+[18] 134:30 regulus. An old chemical term.
+
+[19] 135: 28 Captain Kidd. A Scottish sea captain who lived in New York
+in the seventeenth century.
+
+[20] 138:19 Golconda. A town in India noted for its diamond market.
+
+[21] 138:28 cryptographs. Secret forms of writing.
+
+[22] 139:27 Spanish main. The northeastern portion of South America,
+the Caribbean Sea, and the coast of North America to the Carolinas were
+harassed by the Spaniards.
+
+[23] 144:6 rationale. Reasonable basis.
+
+[24] 149:19 insignium. Sign.
+
+COLLATERAL READINGS
+
+_The Murders in the Rue Morgue_, Edgar Allan Poe.
+
+_The Mystery of Marie Rogêt_, Edgar Allan Poe.
+
+_The Purloined Letter_, Edgar Allan Poe.
+
+_The Sign of the Four_, A. Conan Doyle.
+
+_A Scandal in Bohemia_, A. Conan Doyle.
+
+_The Chronicles of Addington_, B. Fletcher Robinson.
+
+_The Mystery of the Steel Disk_, Broughton Brandenburg.
+
+_The Rajah's Diamond_, R.L. Stevenson.
+
+_The Doctor, his Wife, and the Clock_, Anna Katharine Green.
+
+_The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes_, A. Conan Doyle.
+
+_The Hound of the Baskervilles_, A. Conan Doyle.
+
+_A Double-Barrelled Detective Story_, Mark Twain.
+
+_Gallegher_, Richard Harding Davis.
+
+
+
+
+THE BIRTHMARK[1]
+
+
+_By Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1862)_.
+
+
+In the latter part of the last century there lived a man of science, an
+eminent proficient in every branch of natural philosophy, who not long
+before our story opens had made experience of a spiritual affinity more
+attractive than any chemical one. He had left his laboratory to the
+care of an assistant, cleared his fine countenance from the
+furnace-smoke, washed the stain of acids from his fingers, and
+persuaded a beautiful woman to become his wife. In those days, when the
+comparatively recent discovery of electricity and other kindred
+mysteries of Nature seemed to open paths into the region of miracle, it
+was not unusual for the love of science to rival the love of woman in
+its depth and absorbing energy. The higher intellect, the imagination,
+the spirit, and even the heart might all find their congenial aliment
+in pursuits which, as some of their ardent votaries believed, would
+ascend from one step of powerful intelligence to another, until the
+philosopher should lay his hand on the secret of creative force and
+perhaps make new worlds for himself. We know not whether Aylmer
+possessed this degree of faith in man's ultimate control over nature.
+He had devoted himself, however, too unreservedly to scientific studies
+ever to be weakened from them by any second passion. His love for his
+young wife might prove the stronger of the two; but it could only be by
+intertwining itself with his love of science and uniting the strength
+of the latter to his own.
+
+Such a union accordingly took place, and was attended with truly
+remarkable consequences and a deeply impressive moral. One day, very
+soon after their marriage, Aylmer sat gazing at his wife with a trouble
+in his countenance that grew stronger until he spoke.
+
+"Georgiana," said he, "has it never occurred to you that the mark upon
+your cheek might be removed?"
+
+"No, indeed," said she, smiling; but, perceiving the seriousness of his
+manner, she blushed deeply. "To tell you the truth, it has been so
+often called a charm, that I was simple enough to imagine it might be
+so."
+
+"Ah, upon another face perhaps it might," replied her husband; "but
+never on yours. No, dearest Georgiana, you came so nearly perfect from
+the hand of Nature that this slightest possible defect, which we
+hesitate whether to term a defect or a beauty, shocks me, as being the
+visible mark of earthly imperfection."
+
+"Shocks you, my husband!" cried Georgiana, deeply hurt; at first
+reddening with momentary anger, but then bursting into tears. "Then why
+did you take me from my mother's side? You cannot love what shocks
+you!"
+
+To explain this conversation, it must be mentioned that in the centre
+of Georgiana's left cheek there was a singular mark, deeply interwoven,
+as it were, with the texture and substance of her face. In the usual
+state of her complexion—a healthy though delicate bloom—the mark wore a
+tint of deeper crimson, which imperfectly defined its shape amid the
+surrounding rosiness. When she blushed it gradually became more
+indistinct, and finally vanished amid the triumphant rush of blood that
+bathed the whole cheek with its brilliant glow. But if any shifting
+emotion caused her to turn pale, there was the mark again, a crimson
+stain upon the snow, in what Aylmer sometimes deemed an almost fearful
+distinctness. Its shape bore not a little similarity to the human hand,
+though of the smallest pygmy size. Georgiana's lovers were wont to say
+that some fairy at her birth-hour had laid her tiny hand upon the
+infant's cheek, and left this impress there in token of the magic
+endowments that were to give her such sway over all hearts. Many a
+desperate swain would have risked life for the privilege of pressing
+his lips to the mysterious hand. It must not be concealed, however,
+that the impression wrought by this fairy sign-manual varied
+exceedingly according to the difference of temperament in the
+beholders. Some fastidious persons—but they were exclusively of her own
+sex—affirmed that the bloody hand, as they chose to call it, quite
+destroyed the effect of Georgiana's beauty and rendered her countenance
+even hideous. But it would be as reasonable to say that one of those
+small blue stains which sometimes occur in the purest statuary marble
+would convert the Eve of Powers[2] to a monster. Masculine observers,
+if the birthmark did not heighten their admiration, contented
+themselves with wishing it away, that the world might possess one
+living specimen of ideal loveliness without the semblance of a flaw.
+After his marriage,—for he thought little or nothing of the matter
+before,—Aylmer discovered that this was the case with himself.
+
+Had she been less beautiful,—if Envy's self could have found aught else
+to sneer at,—he might have felt his affection heightened by the
+prettiness of this mimic hand, now vaguely portrayed, now lost, now
+stealing forth again and glimmering to and fro with every pulse of
+emotion that throbbed within her heart; but, seeing her otherwise so
+perfect, he found this one defect grow more and more intolerable with
+every moment of their united lives. It was the fatal flaw of humanity
+which Nature, in one shape or another, stamps ineffaceably on all her
+productions, either to imply that they are temporary and finite, or
+that their perfection must be wrought by toil and pain. The crimson
+hand expressed the ineludible gripe in which mortality clutches the
+highest and purest of earthly mould, degrading them into kindred with
+the lowest, and even with the very brutes, like whom their visible
+frames return to dust. In this manner, selecting it as the symbol of
+his wife's liability to sin, sorrow, decay, and death, Aylmer's sombre
+imagination was not long in rendering the birthmark a frightful object,
+causing him more trouble and horror than ever Georgiana's beauty,
+whether of soul or sense, had given him delight.
+
+At all the seasons which should have been their happiest he invariably,
+and without intending it, nay, in spite of a purpose to the contrary,
+reverted to this one disastrous topic. Trifling as it at first
+appeared, it so connected itself with innumerable trains of thought and
+modes of feeling that it became the central point of all. With the
+morning twilight Aylmer opened his eyes upon his wife's face and
+recognized the symbol of imperfection, and when they sat together at
+the evening hearth his eyes wandered stealthily to her cheek, and
+beheld, flickering with the blaze of the wood-fire, the spectral hand
+that wrote mortality where he would fain have worshipped, Georgiana
+soon learned to shudder at his gaze. It needed but a glance with the
+peculiar expression that his face often wore to change the roses of her
+cheek into a deathlike paleness, amid which the crimson hand was
+brought strongly out, like a bas-relief of ruby on the whitest marble.
+
+Late one night, when the lights were growing dim so as hardly to betray
+the stain on the poor wife's cheek, she herself, for the first time,
+voluntarily took up the subject.
+
+"Do you remember, my dear Aylmer," said she, with a feeble attempt at a
+smile, "have you any recollection of a dream last night about this
+odious hand?"
+
+"None! none whatever!" replied Aylmer, starting: but then he added, in
+a dry, cold tone, affected for the sake of concealing the real depth of
+his emotion, "I might well dream of it; for, before I fell asleep, it
+had taken a pretty firm hold of my fancy."
+
+"And you did dream of it?" continued Georgiana, hastily; for she
+dreaded lest a gush of tears should interrupt what she had to say. "A
+terrible dream! I wonder that you can forget it. Is it possible to
+forget this one expression?—'It is in her heart now; we must have it
+out!' Reflect, my husband; for by all means I would have you recall
+that dream."
+
+The mind is in a sad state when Sleep, the all-involving, cannot
+confine her spectres within the dim region of her sway, but suffers
+them to break forth, affrighting this actual life with secrets that
+perchance belong to a deeper one. Aylmer now remembered his dream. He
+had fancied himself with his servant Aminadab attempting an operation
+for the removal of the birthmark; but the deeper went the knife, the
+deeper sank the hand, until at length its tiny grasp appeared to have
+caught hold of Georgiana's heart; whence, however, her husband was
+inexorably resolved to cut or wrench it away.
+
+When the dream had shaped itself perfectly in his memory, Aylmer sat in
+his wife's presence with a guilty feeling. Truth often finds its way to
+the mind close muffled in robes of sleep, and then speaks with
+uncompromising directness of matters in regard to which we practice an
+unconscious self-deception during our waking moments. Until now he had
+not been aware of the tyrannizing influence acquired by one idea over
+his mind, and of the lengths which he might find in his heart to go for
+the sake of giving himself peace.
+
+"Aylmer," resumed Georgiana, solemnly, "I know not what may be the cost
+to both of us to rid me of this fatal birthmark. Perhaps its removal
+may cause cureless deformity; or it may be the stain goes as deep as
+life itself. Again; do we know that there is a possibility, on any
+terms, of unclasping the firm gripe of this little hand which was laid
+upon me before I came into the world?"
+
+"Dearest Georgiana, I have spent much thought upon the subject,"
+hastily interrupted Aylmer. "I am convinced of the perfect
+practicability of its removal."
+
+"If there be the remotest possibility of it," continued Georgiana, "let
+the attempt be made, at whatever risk. Danger is nothing to rue; for
+life, while this hateful mark makes me the object of your horror and
+disgust,—life is a burden which I would fling down with joy. Either
+remove this dreadful hand, or take my wretched life! You have deep
+science. All the world bears witness of it. You have achieved great
+wonders. Cannot you remove this little, little mark, which I cover with
+the tips of two small fingers? Is this beyond your power, for the sake
+of your own peace, and to save your poor wife from madness?"
+
+"Noblest, dearest, tenderest wife," cried Aylmer, rapturously, "doubt
+not my power. I have already given this matter the deepest
+thought,—thought which might almost have enlightened me to create a
+being less perfect than yourself. Georgiana, you have led me deeper
+than ever into the heart of science. I feel myself fully competent to
+render this dear cheek as faultless as its fellow; and then, most
+beloved, what will be my triumph when I shall have corrected what
+Nature left imperfect in her fairest work! Even Pygmalion[3], when his
+sculptured woman assumed life, felt not greater ecstasy than mine will
+be."
+
+"It is resolved, then," said Georgiana, faintly smiling. "And, Aylmer,
+spare me not, though you should find the birthmark take refuge in my
+heart at last."
+
+Her husband tenderly kissed her cheek,—her right cheek,—not that which
+bore the impress of the crimson hand.
+
+The next day Aylmer apprised his wife of a plan that he had formed
+whereby he might have opportunity for the intense thought and constant
+watchfulness which the proposed operation would require, while
+Georgiana, likewise, would enjoy the perfect repose essential to its
+success. They were to seclude themselves in the extensive apartments
+occupied by Aylmer as a laboratory, and where, during his toilsome
+youth, he had made discoveries in the elemental powers of nature that
+had roused the admiration of all the learned societies in Europe.
+Seated calmly in this laboratory, the pale philosopher had investigated
+the secrets of the highest cloud-region and of the profoundest mines;
+he had satisfied himself of the causes that kindled and kept alive the
+fires of the volcano; and had explained the mystery of fountains, and
+how it is that they gush forth, some so bright and pure, and others
+with such rich medicinal virtues, from the dark bosom of the earth.
+Here, too, at an earlier period, he had studied the wonders of the
+human frame, and attempted to fathom the very process by which Nature
+assimilates all her precious influences from earth and air, and from
+the spiritual world, to create and foster man, her masterpiece. The
+latter pursuit, however, Aylmer had long laid aside in unwilling
+recognition of the truth—against which all seekers sooner or later
+stumble—that our great creative Mother, while she amuses us with
+apparently working in the broadest sunshine, is yet severely careful to
+keep her own secrets, and, in spite of her pretended openness, shows us
+nothing but results. She permits us, indeed, to mar, but seldom to
+mend, and, like a jealous patentee, on no account to make. Now,
+however, Aylmer resumed these half-forgotten investigations; not, of
+course, with such hopes or wishes as first suggested them; but because
+they involved much physiological truth and lay in the path of his
+proposed scheme for the treatment of Georgiana.
+
+As he led her over the threshold of the laboratory Georgiana was cold
+and tremulous. Aylmer looked cheerfully into her face, with intent to
+reassure her, but was so startled with the intense glow of the
+birthmark upon the whiteness of her cheek that he could not restrain a
+strong convulsive shudder. His wife fainted.
+
+"Aminadab! Aminadab!" shouted Aylmer, stamping violently on the floor.
+
+Forthwith there issued from an inner apartment a man of low stature,
+but bulky frame, with shaggy hair hanging about his visage, which was
+grimed with the vapors of the furnace. This personage had been Aylmer's
+under-worker during his whole scientific career, and was admirably
+fitted for that office by his great mechanical readiness, and the skill
+with which, while incapable of comprehending a single principle, he
+executed all the details of his master's experiments. With his vast
+strength, his shaggy hair, his smoky aspect, and the indescribable
+earthiness that incrusted him, he seemed to represent man's physical
+nature; while Aylmer's slender figure, and pale, intellectual face,
+were no less apt a type of the spiritual element.
+
+"Throw open the door of the boudoir, Aminadab," said Aylmer, "and burn
+a pastil."
+
+"Yes, master," answered Aminadab, looking intently at the lifeless form
+of Georgiana; and then he muttered to himself, "If she were my wife,
+I'd never part with that birthmark."
+
+When Georgiana recovered consciousness she found herself breathing an
+atmosphere of penetrating fragrance, the gentle potency of which had
+recalled her from her deathlike faintness. The scene around her looked
+like enchantment. Aylmer had converted those smoky, dingy, sombre
+rooms, where he had spent his brightest years in recondite[4] pursuits,
+into a series of beautiful apartments not unfit to be the secluded
+abode of a lovely woman. The walls were hung with gorgeous curtains,
+which imparted the combination of grandeur and grace that no other
+species of adornment can achieve; and, as they fell from the ceiling to
+the floor, their rich and ponderous folds, concealing all angles and
+straight lines, appeared to shut in the scene from infinite space. For
+aught Georgiana knew, it might be a pavilion among the clouds. And
+Alymer, excluding the sunshine, which would have interfered with his
+chemical processes, had supplied its place with perfumed lamps,
+emitting flames of various hue, but all uniting in a soft, impurpled
+radiance. He now knelt by his wife's side, watching her earnestly, but
+without alarm; for he was confident in his science, and felt that he
+could draw a magic circle round her within which no evil might intrude.
+
+"Where am I? Ah, I remember," said Georgiana, faintly; and she placed
+her hand over her cheek to hide the terrible mark from her husband's
+eyes.
+
+"Fear not, dearest!" exclaimed he. "Do not shrink from me! Believe me,
+Georgiana, I even rejoice in this single imperfection, since it will be
+such a rapture to remove it."
+
+"O, spare me!" sadly replied his wife. "Pray do not look at it again. I
+never can forget that convulsive shudder."
+
+In order to soothe Georgiana, and, as it were, to release her mind from
+the burden of actual things, Aylmer now put in practice some of the
+light and playful secrets which science had taught him among its
+profounder lore. Airy figures, absolutely bodiless ideas, and forms of
+unsubstantial beauty came and danced before her, imprinting their
+momentary footsteps on beams of light. Though she had some indistinct
+idea of the method of these optical phenomena, still the illusion was
+almost perfect enough to warrant the belief that her husband possessed
+sway over the spiritual world. Then again, when she felt a wish to look
+forth from her seclusion, immediately, as if her thoughts were
+answered, the procession of external existence flitted across a screen.
+The scenery and the figures of actual life were perfectly represented,
+but with that bewitching yet indescribable difference which always
+makes a picture, an image, or a shadow so much more attractive than the
+original. When wearied of this, Aylmer bade her cast her eyes upon a
+vessel containing a quantity of earth. She did so with little interest
+at first; but was soon startled to perceive the germ of a plant
+shooting upward from the soil: Then came the slender stalk; the leaves
+gradually unfolded themselves; and amid them was a perfect and lovely
+flower.
+
+"It is magical!" cried Georgiana. "I dare not touch it."
+
+"Nay, pluck it," answered Aylmer,—"pluck it, and inhale its brief
+perfume while you may. The flower will wither in a few moments and
+leave nothing save its brown seed-vessels; but thence may be
+perpetuated a race as ephemeral as itself."
+
+But Georgiana had no sooner touched the flower than the whole plant
+suffered a blight, its leaves turning coal black as if by the agency of
+fire.
+
+"There was too powerful a stimulus," said Aylmer, thoughtfully.
+
+To make up for this abortive experiment, he proposed to take her
+portrait by a scientific process of his own invention. It was to be
+effected by rays of light striking upon a polished plate of metal.
+Georgiana assented; but, on looking at the result, was affrighted to
+find the features of the portrait blurred and indefinable; while the
+minute figure of a hand appeared where the cheek should have been.
+Alymer snatched the metallic plate and threw it into a jar of
+corrosive[5] acid.
+
+Soon, however, he forgot these mortifying failures. In the intervals of
+study and chemical experiment he came to her flushed and exhausted, but
+seemed invigorated by her presence, and spoke in glowing language of
+the resources of his art. He gave a history of the long dynasty of the
+alchemists, who spent so many ages in quest of the universal solvent by
+which the golden principle might be elicited from all things vile and
+base, Aylmer appeared to believe that, by the plainest scientific
+logic, it was altogether within the limits of possibility to discover
+this long-sought medium. "But," he added, "a philosopher who should go
+deep enough to acquire the power would attain too lofty a wisdom to
+stoop to the exercise of it." Not less singular were his opinions in
+regard to the elixir vitae[6]. He more than intimated that it was at
+his option to concoct a liquid that should prolong life for years,
+perhaps interminably; but that it would produce a discord in nature
+which all the world, and chiefly the quaffer of the immortal nostrum,
+would find cause to curse.
+
+"Aylmer, are you in earnest?" asked Georgiana, looking at him with
+amazement and fear. "It is terrible to possess such power, or even to
+dream of possessing it."
+
+"O, do not tremble, my love," said her husband. "I would not wrong
+either you or myself by working such inharmonious effects upon our
+lives; but I would have you consider how trifling, in comparison, is
+the skill requisite to remove this little hand."
+
+At the mention of the birthmark, Georgiana, as usual, shrank as if a
+red-hot iron had touched her cheek.
+
+Again Aylmer applied himself to his labors. She could hear his voice in
+the distant furnace-room giving directions to Aminadab, whose harsh,
+uncouth, misshapen tones were audible in response, more like the grunt
+or growl of a brute than human speech. After hours of absence, Aylmer
+reappeared and proposed that she should now examine his cabinet of
+chemical products and natural treasures of the earth. Among the former
+he showed her a small vial, in which, he remarked, was contained a
+gentle yet most powerful fragrance, capable of impregnating all the
+breezes that blow across a kingdom. They were of inestimable value, the
+contents of that little vial; and, as he said so, he threw some of the
+perfume into the air and filled the room with piercing and invigorating
+delight.
+
+"And what is this?" asked Georgiana, pointing to a small crystal globe
+containing a gold-colored liquid. "It is so beautiful to the eye that I
+could imagine it the elixir of life."
+
+"In one sense it is," replied Aylmer; "or rather, the elixir of
+immortality. It is the most precious poison that ever was concocted in
+this world. By its aid I could apportion the lifetime of any mortal at
+whom you might point your finger. The strength of the dose would
+determine whether he were to linger out years, or drop dead in the
+midst of a breath. No king on his guarded throne could keep his life if
+I, in my private station, should deem that the welfare of millions
+justified me in depriving him of it."
+
+"Why do you keep such a terrific drug?" inquired Georgiana, in horror.
+
+"Do not mistrust me, dearest," said her husband, smiling; "its virtuous
+potency is yet greater than its harmful one. But see! here is a
+powerful cosmetic. With a few drops of this in a vase of water,
+freckles may be washed away as easily as the hands are cleansed. A
+stronger infusion[7] would take the blood out of the cheek, and leave
+the rosiest beauty a pale ghost."
+
+"Is it with this lotion that you intend to bathe my cheek?" asked
+Georgiana, anxiously.
+
+"O no," hastily replied her husband; "this is merely superficial. Your
+case demands a remedy that shall go deeper."
+
+In his interviews with Georgiana, Aylmer generally made minute
+inquiries as to her sensations, and whether the confinement of the
+rooms and the temperature of the atmosphere agreed with her. These
+questions had such a particular drift that Georgiana began to
+conjecture that she was already subjected to certain physical
+influences, either breathed in with the fragrant air or taken with her
+food. She fancied likewise, but it might be altogether fancy, that
+there was a stirring up of her system,—a strange, indefinite sensation
+creeping through her veins, and tingling, half painfully, half
+pleasurably, at her heart. Still, whenever she dared to look into the
+mirror, there she beheld herself pale as a white rose and with the
+crimson birthmark stamped upon her cheek. Not even Aylmer now hated it
+so much as she.
+
+To dispel the tedium of the hours which her husband found it necessary
+to devote to the processes of combination and analysis, Georgiana
+turned over the volumes of his scientific library. In many dark old
+tomes she met with chapters full of romance and poetry. They were the
+works of the philosophers of the Middle Ages, such as Albertus
+Magnus[8], Cornelius Agrippa[9], Paracelsus[10], and the famous friar
+who created the prophetic Brazen Head. All these antique naturalists
+stood in advance of their centuries, yet were imbued with some of their
+credulity, and therefore were believed, and perhaps imagined themselves
+to have acquired from the investigation of nature a power above nature,
+and from physics a sway over the spiritual world. Hardly less curious
+and imaginative were the early volumes of the Transactions of the Royal
+Society[11], in which the members, knowing little of the limits of
+natural possibility, were continually recording wonders or proposing
+methods whereby wonders might be wrought.
+
+But, to Georgiana, the most engrossing volume was a large folio from
+her husband's own hand, in which he had recorded every experiment of
+his scientific career, its original aim, the methods adopted for its
+development, and its final success or failure, with the circumstances
+to which either event was attributable. The book, in truth; was both
+the history and emblem of his ardent, ambitious, imaginative, yet
+practical and laborious life. He handled physical details as if there
+were nothing beyond them; yet spiritualized them all, and redeemed
+himself from materialism by his strong and eager aspiration towards the
+infinite. In his grasp the veriest clod of earth assumed a soul.
+Georgiana, as she read, reverenced Aylmer and loved him more profoundly
+than ever, but with a less entire dependence on his judgment than
+heretofore. Much as he had accomplished, she could not but observe that
+his most splendid successes were almost invariably failures, if
+compared with the ideal at which he aimed. His brightest diamonds were
+the merest pebbles, and felt to be so by himself, in comparison with
+the inestimable gems which lay hidden beyond his reach. The volume,
+rich with achievements that had won renown for its author, was yet as
+melancholy a record as over mortal hand had penned. It was the sad
+confession and continual exemplification of the shortcomings of the
+composite man, the spirit burdened with clay and working in matter, and
+of the despair that assails the higher nature at finding itself so
+miserably thwarted by the earthly part. Perhaps every man of genius, in
+whatever sphere, might recognize the image of his own experience in
+Aylmer's journal.
+
+So deeply did these reflections affect Georgiana that she laid her face
+upon the open volume and burst into tears. In this situation she was
+found by her husband.
+
+"It is dangerous to read in a sorcerer's books," said he with a smile,
+though his countenance was uneasy and displeased. "Georgiana, there are
+pages in that volume which I can scarcely glance over and keep my
+senses. Take heed lest it prove as detrimental to you."
+
+"It has made me worship you more than ever." said she.
+
+"Ah, wait for this one success," rejoined he, "then worship me if you
+will. I shall deem myself hardly unworthy of it. But come. I have
+sought you for the luxury of your voice. Sing to me, dearest."
+
+So she poured out the liquid music of her voice to quench the thirst of
+his spirit. He then took his leave with a boyish exuberance of gayety,
+assuring her that her seclusion would endure but a little longer, and
+that the result was already certain. Scarcely had he departed when
+Georgiana felt irresistibly impelled to follow him. She had forgotten
+to inform Aylmer of a symptom which for two or three hours past had
+begun to excite her attention. It was a sensation in the fatal
+birthmark, not painful, but which induced a restlessness throughout her
+system. Hastening after her husband, she intruded for the first time
+into the laboratory.
+
+The first thing that struck her eye was the furnace, that hot and
+feverish worker, with the intense glow of its fire, which by the
+quantities of soot clustered above it seemed to have been burning for
+ages. There was a distilling-apparatus in full operation. Around the
+room were retorts, tubes, cylinders, crucibles, and other apparatus of
+chemical research. An electrical machine stood ready for immediate use.
+The atmosphere felt oppressively close, and was tainted with gaseous
+odors which had been tormented forth by the processes of science. The
+severe and homely simplicity of the apartment, with its naked walls and
+brick pavement, looked strange, accustomed as Georgiana had become to
+the fantastic elegance of her boudoir. But what chiefly, indeed almost
+solely, drew her attention, was the aspect of Aylmer himself.
+
+He was pale as death, anxious and absorbed, and hung over the furnace
+as if it depended upon his utmost watchfulness whether the liquid which
+it was distilling should be the draught of immortal happiness or
+misery. How different from the sanguine and joyous mien that he had
+assumed for Georgiana's encouragement!
+
+"Carefully now, Aminadab; carefully, thou human machine; carefully,
+thou man of clay," muttered Aylmer, more to himself than his assistant.
+"Now, If there be a thought too much or too little, it is all over."
+
+"Ho! ho!" mumbled Aminadab. "Look, master! look!"
+
+Aylmer raised his eyes hastily, and at first reddened, then grew paler
+than ever, on beholding Georgiana. He rushed towards her and seized her
+arm with a gripe that left the print of his fingers upon it.
+
+"Why do you come thither? Have you no trust in your husband?" cried he,
+impetuously. "Would you throw the blight of that fatal birthmark over
+my labors? It is not well done. Go, prying woman! go!"
+
+"Nay, Aylmer," said Georgiana with the firmness of which she possessed
+no stinted endowment, "it is not you that have a right to complain. You
+mistrust your wife; you have concealed the anxiety with which you watch
+the development of this experiment. Think not so unworthily of me, my
+husband. Tell me all the risk we run, and fear not that I shall shrink:
+for my share in it is far less than your own."
+
+"No, no, Georgiana!" said Aylmer, impatiently; "it must not be."
+
+"I submit," replied she, calmly. "And, Aylmer, I shall quaff whatever
+draught you bring me; but it will be on the same principle that would
+induce me to take a dose of poison if offered by your hand."
+
+"My noble wife," said Aylmer, deeply moved, "I knew not the height and
+depth of your nature until now. Nothing shall be concealed. Know, then,
+that this crimson hand, superficial as it seems, has clutched its grasp
+into your being with a strength of which I had no previous conception.
+I have already administered agents powerful enough to do aught except
+to change your entire physical system. Only one thing remains to be
+tried. If that fail us we are ruined."
+
+"Why did you hesitate to tell me this?" asked she.
+
+"Because, Georgiana," said Aylmer, in a low voice, "there is danger."
+
+"Danger? There is but one danger,—that this horrible stigma shall be
+left upon my cheek!" cried Georgiana. "Remove it, remove it, whatever
+be the cost, or we shall both go mad!"
+
+"Heaven knows your words are too true," said Aylmer, sadly. "And now,
+dearest, return to your boudoir. In a little while all will be tested."
+
+He conducted her back and took leave of her with a solemn tenderness
+which spoke far more than his words how much was now at stake. After
+his departure Georgiana became rapt in musings. She considered the
+character of Aylmer, and did it completer justice than at any previous
+moment. Her heart exulted, while it trembled, at his honorable love,—so
+pure and lofty that it would accept nothing less than perfection, nor
+miserably make itself contented with an earthlier nature than he had
+dreamed of. She felt how much more precious was such a sentiment than
+that meaner kind which would have borne with the imperfection for her
+sake, and have been guilty of treason to holy love by degrading its
+perfect idea to the level of the actual; and with her whole spirit she
+prayed that, for a single moment, she might satisfy his highest and
+deepest conception. Longer than one moment she well knew it could not
+be; for his spirit was ever on the march, ever ascending, and each
+instant required something that was beyond the scope of the instant
+before.
+
+The sound of her husband's footsteps aroused her. He bore a crystal
+goblet containing a liquor colorless as water, but bright enough to be
+the draught of immortality. Aylmer was pale; but it seemed rather the
+consequence of a highly wrought state of mind and tension of spirit
+than of fear or doubt.
+
+"The concoction of the draught has been perfect," said he, in answer to
+Georgiana's look. "Unless all my science have deceived me, it cannot
+fail."
+
+"Save on your account, my dearest Aylmer," observed his wife, "I might
+wish to put off this birthmark of mortality by relinquishing mortality
+itself in preference to any other mode. Life is but a sad possession to
+those who have attained precisely the degree of moral advancement at
+which I stand. Were I weaker and blinder, it might be happiness. Were I
+stronger, it might be endured hopefully. But, being what I find myself,
+methinks I am of all mortals the most fit to die."
+
+"You are fit for heaven without tasting death!" replied her husband.
+"But why do we speak of dying? The draught cannot fail. Behold its
+effect upon this plant."
+
+On the window-seat there stood a geranium diseased with yellow
+blotches, which had overspread all its leaves. Aylmer poured a small
+quantity of the liquid upon the soil in which it grew. In a little
+time, when the roots of the plant had taken up the moisture, the
+unsightly blotches began to be extinguished in a living verdure.
+
+"There needed no proof," said Georgiana, quietly. "Give me the goblet.
+I joyfully stake all upon your word."
+
+"Drink, then, thou lofty creature!" exclaimed Aylmer, with fervid
+admiration. "There is no taint of imperfection on thy spirit. Thy
+sensible frame, too, shall soon be all perfect."
+
+She quaffed the liquid and returned the goblet to his hand.
+
+"It is grateful," said she, with a placid smile. "Methinks it is like
+water from a heavenly fountain; for it contains I know not what of
+unobtrusive fragrance and deliciousness. It allays a feverish thirst
+that had parched me for many days. Now, dearest, let me sleep. My
+earthly senses are closing over my spirit like the leaves around the
+heart of a rose at sunset."
+
+She spoke the last words with a gentle reluctance, as if it required
+almost more energy than she could command to pronounce the faint and
+lingering syllables. Scarcely had they loitered through her lips ere
+she was lost in slumber. Aylmer sat by her side, watching her aspect
+with the emotions proper to a man, the whole value of whose existence
+was involved in the process now to be tested. Mingled with this mood,
+however, was the philosophic investigation characteristic of the man of
+science. Not the minutest symptom escaped him. A heightened flush of
+the cheek, a slight irregularity of breath, a quiver of the eyelid, a
+hardly perceptible tremor through the frame,—such were the details
+which, as the moments passed, he wrote down, in his folio volume.
+Intense thought had set its stamp upon every previous page of that
+volume; but the thoughts of years were all concentrated upon the last.
+
+While thus employed, he failed not to gaze often at the fatal hand, and
+not without a shudder. Yet once, by a strange and unaccountable
+impulse, he pressed it with his lips. His spirit recoiled, however, in
+the very act; and Georgiana, out of the midst of her deep sleep, moved
+uneasily, and murmured, as if in remonstrance. Again Aylmer resumed,
+his watch. Nor was it without avail. The crimson hand, which at first
+had been strongly visible upon the marble paleness of Georgiana's
+cheek, now grew more faintly outlined. She remained not less pale than
+ever; but the birthmark, with every breath that came and went, lost
+somewhat of its former distinctness. Its presence had been awful; its
+departure was more awful still. Watch the stain of the rainbow fading
+out of the sky, and you will know how that mysterious symbol passed
+away.
+
+"By Heaven! it is well-nigh gone!" said Aylmer to himself, in almost
+irrepressible ecstasy. "I can scarcely trace it now. Success! success!
+And now it is like the faintest rose color. The lightest flush of blood
+across her cheek would overcome it. But she is so pale!"
+
+He drew aside the window-curtain and suffered the light of natural day
+to fall into the room and rest upon her cheek. At the same time he
+heard a gross, hoarse chuckle, which he had long known as his servant
+Aminadab's expression of delight.
+
+"Ah, clod! ah, earthly mass!" cried Aylmer, laughing in a sort of
+frenzy, "you have served me well! Matter and spirit—earth and
+heaven—have both done their part in this! Laugh, thing of the senses!
+You have earned the right to laugh."
+
+These exclamations broke Georgiana's sleep. She slowly unclosed her
+eyes and gazed into the mirror which her husband had arranged for that
+purpose. A faint smile flitted over her lips when she recognized how
+barely perceptible was now that crimson hand which had once blazed
+forth with such disastrous brilliancy as to scare away all their
+happiness. But then her eyes sought Aylmer's face with a trouble and
+anxiety that he could by no means account for.
+
+"My poor Aylmer!" murmured she.
+
+"Poor? Nay, richest, happiest, most favored!" exclaimed he. "My
+peerless bride, it is successful! You are perfect!"
+
+"My poor Aylmer," she repeated, with a more than human tenderness, "you
+have aimed loftily; you have done nobly. Do not repent that, with so
+high and pure a feeling, you have rejected the best the earth could
+offer. Aylmer, dearest Aylmer, I am dying!"
+
+Alas! it was too true! The fatal hand had grappled with the mystery of
+life, and was the bond by which an angelic spirit kept itself in union
+with a mortal frame. As the last crimson tint of the birthmark—that
+sole token of human imperfection—faded from her cheek, the parting
+breath of the now perfect woman passed into the atmosphere, and her
+soul, lingering a moment, near her husband, took its heavenward flight.
+Then a hoarse, chuckling laugh was heard again! Thus ever does the
+gross fatality of earth exult in its invariable triumph over the
+immortal essence which, in this dim sphere of half-development, demands
+the completeness of a higher state. Yet, had Aylmer reached a
+profounder wisdom, he need not thus have flung away the happiness which
+would have woven his mortal life of the selfsame texture with the
+celestial. The momentary circumstance was too strong for him; he failed
+to look beyond the shadowy scope of time, and, living once for all in
+eternity, to find the perfect future in the present.
+
+NOTES
+
+[1] Published in the March, 1843, number of _The Pioneer_, edited by J.
+R. Lowell. Republished in _Mosses from an Old Manse_ in 1846.
+
+[2] 154:29 "Eve," of Powers. A noted American sculptor (1805-1873).
+"Eve," "The Fisher Boy," and "America" are some of his chief works.
+
+[3] 168:28 Pygmalion. A sculptor and king of Cyprus.
+
+[4] 181:16 recondite. Abstruse or secret.
+
+[5] 168:27 corrosive. Destructive of tissue.
+
+[6] 184:12 vitae. Of life.
+
+[7] 166:3 infusion. The act of pouring in.
+
+[8] 167:1 Albertus Magnus. A famous scholastic philosopher and member
+of the Dominican order (1193-1280).
+
+[9] 167:1 Cornelius Agrippa. A German philosopher and student of
+alchemy and magic (1486-1535).
+
+[10] 167:1 Paracelsus. A German-Swiss physician, and alchemist
+(1492-1541).
+
+[11] 167:10 Royal Society. An association for the advancement of
+science, founded in London a little before 1660.
+
+BIOGRAPHY
+
+Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in Salem, Massachusetts, July 4, 1804. His
+ancestors were prominent in the affairs of the colony: John Hawthorne
+was one of the judges who tried the witches in 1620; and another John
+Hawthorne was a member of the dignified school committee of Salem in
+1796. Hawthorne's father, a ship captain, died in a foreign land when
+his son was only four years old; his mother lived for forty years after
+the death of her husband the life of a recluse in her own house. The
+family's star was in the decline and the people of Salem looked on
+Nathaniel as a lazy and very queer boy. He grew up in a unique
+solitude. During these years of seclusion Hawthorne acquired the habit
+of keeping silent on all occasions, and reading a few books frequently
+and thoroughly. The _Newgate Calendar_ must have supplied him with many
+subtle suggestions for his later writings on sin and crime, for in
+almost all of his productions his imagination is tinged with, this old
+Puritanic philosophy and theology.
+
+He entered Bowdoin College in 1821 and graduated from this institution
+in 1825. He had as classmates Longfellow, and Franklin Pierce, who
+afterward became president of the United States. After his graduation
+Hawthorne returned to Salem, where he lived with his mother and sisters
+in almost absolute seclusion for fourteen years. During this period he
+wrote daily, and spent his nights in burning what he had written in the
+daytime.
+
+He was clerk of the Boston Custom House from 1839 to 1841, when the
+Whig party removed him for being ultra-partisan in behalf of the
+Democrats. At this time Hawthorne wrote: "As to the Salem people, I
+really thought I had been exceedingly good-natured in my treatment of
+them. They certainly do not deserve good usage at my hands, after
+permitting me to be deliberately lied down, not merely once, but at two
+separate attacks, and on two false indictments, without hardly a voice
+being raised in my behalf." He married Sophia Peabody, July 9, 1842.
+From 1842 until 1846 they lived in Concord in the house formerly
+occupied by Emerson. These were the happiest years of his life. In 1846
+he returned to Salem as surveyor in the Salem Custom House. He retired
+from this office in 1850 and lived in Lenox, Massachusetts, for two
+years. In 1852 he settled in Concord. President Pierce appointed him
+consul at Liverpool in 1853, and he served in this position until 1857.
+
+After leaving Liverpool he travelled three years in England and on the
+continent. He returned to Concord in 1860. He died in the White
+Mountains, May 18, 1864. Although a silent man and a seeker of solitude
+during his life, few writers have ever experienced such wide publicity
+of their inmost lives as has Hawthorne since his death. The publication
+of his _Notes_ has opened his desk and work-shop to every one, and has
+revealed to us a magnanimous, sympathetic, and pure man, who realized
+his responsibilities as a writer and improved all his literary
+opportunities.
+
+BIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES
+
+_History of American Literature_, Moses Coit Tyler.
+
+_Introduction to American Literature_, Henry S. Pancoast.
+
+_Studies in American Literature_, Charles Noble.
+
+_Introduction to American Literature_, Brander Matthews.
+
+"Gloom and Cheer in Hawthorne," _Critic_, 45: 28-36.
+
+"Hawthorne and his Circle," _Nation_, 77: 410-411.
+
+"Hawthorne as seen by his Publisher," _Critic_, 45: 51-55.
+
+"Hawthorne from an English Point of View." _Critic_, 45: 60-66.
+
+"Hawthorne's Last Years," _Critic_, 45: 67-71.
+
+"Life of Hawthorne," _Atlantic Monthly_, 90: 563-567,
+
+CRITICISMS
+
+Many influences in Hawthorne's environment served to condition and mold
+him as a writer. Salem had reached its highest prosperity in all lines
+and was just beginning its retrogression in Hawthorne's time; the
+primeval forests of Maine produced a subtle and lasting influence on
+him during his sojourn in Maine for his health; transcendentalism was
+the ruling thought at the time when Hawthorne was in his most plastic
+and solitary age; his interest in _Brook Farm_ brought him in contact
+with all the good and bad points of that social movement; his life in
+the _Old Manse_ in Concord and in the Berkshire Hills contributed
+largely to the deepening of his convictions and sympathies; and over
+all, like a sombre cloud, hung his ancestral Puritanic training which
+penetrated and suffused all his writings. He is the most native and the
+least imitative of all our fiction writers.
+
+Hawthorne did not write on the common subjects and facts of his day,
+but chose to have his readers go with him, away from prosaic life, out
+into a world of mysteries where we may revel in all kinds of imaginary
+sports. By this process he succeeded in producing poetic effects from
+the most unpromising materials. His writings are fanciful. He enjoyed
+subjects that deal with the occult, such as mesmerism, hypnotism, and
+subtle suggestions. He harked back to the rigid beliefs and laws of the
+Puritans, but he and his subjects are spiritually advanced far above
+the crude, ponderous, and highly theological tenets of his forefathers.
+
+Hawthorne is very provincial. He travelled little until he was fifty
+years old. He naturally loved the antique and poetic countries, but he
+always qualified his admiration of these foreign lands by praising
+something in his own New England. He conceded that there was little or
+nothing in this prosperous and crude country to inspire a writer to
+produce poetry, but his patriotism was so strong that he could never
+free himself wholly from its provincial effects. All his works were
+produced in the stress created by this pull of opposing forces—his high
+poetic ideals and his love of country.
+
+In form he tends toward the polish of a classicist; in quality and
+freedom of thought he is very responsive to the mysteries of
+romanticism. He is introspective in his thinking and symbolical in his
+writing. Naturally he thinks abstractly, but is compelled to construct
+concrete methods of presenting his ideas. He never describes a strong
+emotion in detail, but delights in using suggestions and sidelights.
+His pure and refined manhood, his delicate fancy and deep interest in
+moral and religious questions, his conscience in its most artistic
+form, all are presented to the reader in the choicest garb of well
+chosen words and attuned to a subtle rhythm that adds beauty and
+attractiveness to his style.
+
+GENERAL REFERENCES
+
+_Hours in a Library_, Leslie Stephen.
+
+_A Literary History of America_, Barrett Wendell.
+
+_American Literature_, William P. Trent.
+
+_Makers of English Fiction_, W.J. Dawson.
+
+_Leading American Novelists_, J. Erskine.
+
+_Studies and Appreciations_, L.E. Gates.
+
+"An Estimate," _Scribner's Magazine_, 43: 69-84.
+
+"Unknown Quantity in Hawthorne's Personality," _Current Literature_,
+42: 517-518.
+
+COLLATERAL READINGS
+
+_Biographical Stories for Children_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_Mosses from an Old Manse_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_The Wonder Boot_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_The Blithedale Romance_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_Tanglewood Tales_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_Lady Eleanore's Mantle_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_The Great Stone Face_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_The Prophetic Pictures_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_The Necklace_, Guy de Maupassant.
+
+_A Solitary_, Mary Wilkins Freeman.
+
+_The Lady or the Tiger_, Frank R. Stockton.
+
+_The Strange Ride_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+_Rikki-Tikki-Tavi_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+_They_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+_The Twelfth Guest_, Mary Wilkins Freeman.
+
+_The Shadows on the Wall_, Mary Wilkins Freeman.
+
+
+
+
+ETHAN BRAND[1]
+
+
+A Chapter From An Abortive Romance
+
+
+_By Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)_
+
+
+Bartram the lime-burner, a rough, heavy-looking man, begrimed with
+charcoal, sat watching his kiln, at nightfall, while his little son
+played at building houses with the scattered fragments of marble, when,
+on the hillside below them, they heard a roar of laughter, not
+mirthful, but slow, and even solemn, like a wind shaking the boughs of
+the forest.
+
+"Father, what is that?" asked the little boy, leaving his play, and
+pressing betwixt his father's knees.
+
+"O, some drunken man, I suppose," answered the lime-burner; "some merry
+fellow from the bar-room in the village, who dared not laugh loud
+enough within doors lest he should blow the roof of the house off. So
+here he is, shaking his jolly sides at the foot of Graylock."
+
+"But, father," said the child, more sensitive than the obtuse,
+middle-aged clown, "he does not laugh like a man that is glad. So the
+noise frightens me!"
+
+"Don't be a fool, child!" cried his father, gruffly. "You will never
+make a man, I do believe; there is too much of your mother in you. I
+have known the rustling of a leaf startle you. Hark! Here comes the
+merry fellow now. You shall see that there is no harm in him."
+
+Bartram and his little son, while they were talking thus, sat watching
+the same lime-kiln that had been the scene of Ethan Brand's solitary
+and meditative life, before he began his search for the Unpardonable
+Sin. Many years, as we have seen, had now elapsed, since that
+portentous night when the IDEA was first developed. The kiln, however,
+on the mountain-side stood unimpaired, and was in nothing changed since
+he had thrown his dark thoughts into the intense glow of its furnace,
+and melted them, as it were, into the one thought that took possession
+of his life. It was a rude, round, towerlike structure, about twenty
+feet high, heavily built of rough stones, and with a hillock of earth
+heaped about the larger part of its circumference; so that the blocks
+and fragments of marble might be drawn by cart-loads, and thrown in at
+the top. There was an opening at the bottom of the tower, like an
+oven-mouth, but large enough to admit a man in a stooping posture, and
+provided with a massive iron door. With the smoke and jets of flame
+issuing from the chinks and crevices of this door, which seemed to give
+admittance into the hillside, it resembled nothing so much as the
+private entrance to the infernal regions, which the shepherds of the
+Delectable Mountains[2] were accustomed to show to pilgrims.
+
+There are many such lime-kilns in that tract of country, for the
+purpose of burning the white marble which composes a large part of the
+substance of the hills. Some of them, built years ago, and long
+deserted, with weeds growing in the vacant round of the interior, which
+is open to the sky, and grass and wild flowers rooting themselves into
+the chinks of the stones, look already like relics of antiquity, and
+may yet be overspread with the lichens of centuries to come. Others,
+where the lime-burner still feeds his daily and night-long fire, afford
+points of interest to the wanderer among the hills, who seats himself
+on a log of wood or a fragment of marble, to hold a chat with the
+solitary man. It is a lonesome, and, when the character is inclined to
+thought, may be an intensely thoughtful, occupation; as it proved in
+the case of Ethan Brand, who had mused to such strange purpose, in days
+gone by, while the fire in this very kiln was burning.
+
+The man who now watched the fire was of a different order, and troubled
+himself with no thoughts save the very few that were requisite to his
+business. At frequent intervals he flung back the clashing weight of
+the iron door, and, turning his face from the insufferable glare,
+thrust in huge logs of oak, or stirred the immense brands with a long
+pole. Within the furnace were seen the curling and riotous flames, and
+the burning marble, almost molten with the intensity of heat; while
+without, the reflection of the fire quivered on the dark intricacy of
+the surrounding forest, and showed in the foreground a bright and ruddy
+little picture of the hut, the spring beside its door, the athletic and
+coal-begrimed figure of the lime-burner, and the half-frightened child,
+shrinking into the protection of his father's shadow. And when again
+the iron door was closed, then reappeared the tender light of the
+half-full moon, which vainly strove to trace out the indistinct shapes
+of the neighboring mountains; and, in the upper sky, there was a
+flitting congregation of clouds, still faintly tinged with the rosy
+sunset, though thus far down into the valley the sunshine had vanished
+long and long ago.
+
+The little boy now crept still closer to his father, as footsteps were
+heard ascending the hillside, and a human form thrust aside the bushes
+that clustered beneath the trees.
+
+"Halloo! who is it?" cried the lime-burner, vexed at his son's
+timidity, yet half infected by it, "Come forward, and show yourself,
+like a man, or I'll fling this chunk of marble at your head !"
+
+"You offer me a rough welcome," said a gloomy voice, as the unknown man
+drew nigh. "Yet I neither claim nor desire a kinder one, even at my own
+fireside."
+
+To obtain a distincter view, Bartram threw open the iron door of the
+kiln, whence immediately issued a gush of fierce light, that smote full
+upon the stranger's face and figure. To a careless eye there appeared
+nothing very remarkable in his aspect, which was that of a man in a
+coarse, brown, country-made suit of clothes, tall and thin, with the
+staff and heavy shoes of a wayfarer. As he advanced, he fixed his
+eyes—which were very bright—intently upon the brightness of the
+furnace, as if he beheld, or expected to behold, some object worthy of
+note within it.
+
+"Good evening, stranger," said the lime-burner; "whence come you, so
+late in the day?"
+
+"I come from my search," answered the wayfarer; "for, at last, it is
+finished."
+
+"Drunk!—or crazy!" muttered Bartram to himself. "I shall have trouble
+with the fellow. The sooner I drive him away, the better."
+
+The little boy, all in a tremble, whispered to his father, and begged
+him to shut the door of the kiln, so that there might not be so much
+light; for that there was something in the man's face which he was
+afraid to look at, yet could not look away from. And, indeed, even the
+lime-burner's dull and torpid sense began to be impressed by an
+indescribable something in that thin, rugged, thoughtful visage, with
+the grizzled hair hanging wildly about it, and those deeply sunken
+eyes, which gleamed like fires within the entrance of a mysterious
+cavern. But, as he closed the door, the stranger turned towards him,
+and spoke in a quiet, familiar way, that made Bartram feel as if he
+were a sane and sensible man, after all.
+
+"Your task draws to an end, I see," said he. "This marble has already
+been burning three days. A few hours more will convert the stone to
+lime."
+
+"Why, who are you?" exclaimed the lime-burner. "You seem as well
+acquainted with my business as I am myself."
+
+"And well I may be," said the stranger; "for I followed the same craft
+many a long year, and here, too, on this very spot. But you are a
+newcomer in these parts. Did you never hear of Ethan Brand?"
+
+"The man that went in search of the Unpardonable Sin?" asked Bartram,
+with a laugh.
+
+"The same," answered the stranger. "He has found what he sought, and
+therefore he comes back again,"
+
+"What! then you are Ethan Brand himself?" cried the lime-burner, in
+amazement. "I am a newcomer here, as you say, and they call it eighteen
+years since you left the foot of Graylock, But, I can tell you, the
+good folks still talk about Ethan Brand, in the village yonder, and
+what a strange errand took him away from his lime-kiln. Well and so you
+have found the Unpardonable Sin?"
+
+"Even so!" said the stranger, calmly.
+
+"If the 'question is a fair one." proceeded Bartrarn, "where might it
+be?"
+
+Ethan Brand laid his finger on his own heart.'
+
+"Here!" replied he.
+
+And then, without mirth in his countenance, but as if moved by an
+involuntary recognition of the infinite absurdity of seeking throughout
+the world for what was the closest of all things to himself, and
+looking into every heart, save his own, for what was hidden in no other
+breast, he broke into a laugh of scorn. It was the same slow, heavy
+laugh that had almost appalled the lime-burner when it heralded the
+wayfarer's approach.
+
+The solitary mountain side was made dismal by it. Laughter, when out of
+place, mistimed, or bursting forth from a disordered state of feeling,
+may be the most terrible modulation of the human voice. The laughter of
+one asleep, even if it be a little child,—the madman's laugh,—the wild,
+screaming laugh of a born idiot,—are sounds that we sometimes tremble
+to hear, and would always willingly forget. Poets have imagined no
+utterance of fiends Or hobgoblins so fearfully appropriate as a laugh.
+And even the obtuse lime-burner felt his nerves shaken, as this strange
+man looked inward at his own heart, and burst into laughter that rolled
+away into the night, and was indistinctly reverberated among the hills.
+
+"Joe," said he to his little son, "scamper down to the tavern in the
+village, and tell the jolly fellows there that Ethan Brand has come
+back, and that he has found the Unpardonable Sin!"
+
+The boy darted away on his errand, to which Ethan Brand made no
+objection, nor seemed hardly to notice it. He sat on a log of wood,
+looking steadfastly at the iron door of the kiln. When the child was
+out of sight, and his swift and light footsteps ceased to be heard
+treading first on the fallen leaves and then on the rocky mountain
+path, the lime-burner began to regret his departure. He felt that the
+little fellow's presence had been a barrier between his guest and
+himself, and that he must now deal, heart to heart, with a man who, on
+his own confession, had committed the one only crime for which Heaven
+could afford no mercy. That crime, in its indistinct blackness, seemed
+to overshadow him. The lime-burner's own sins rose up within him, and
+made his memory riotous with a throng of evil shapes that asserted
+their kindred with the Master Sin, whatever it might be, which it was
+within the scope of man's corrupted nature to conceive and cherish.
+They were all of one family; they went to and fro between his breast
+and Ethan Brand's, and carried dark greetings from one to the other.
+
+Then Bartram remembered the stories which had grown traditionary in
+reference to this strange man, who had come upon him like a shadow of
+the night, and was making himself at home in his old place, after so
+long absence that the dead people, dead and buried for years, would
+have had more right to be at home, in any familiar spot, than he. Ethan
+Brand, it was said, had conversed with Satan himself in the lurid blaze
+of this very kiln. The legend had been matter of mirth heretofore, but
+looked grisly now. According to this tale, before Ethan Brand departed
+on his search, he had been accustomed to evoke a fiend from the hot
+furnace of the lime-kiln, night after night, in order to confer with
+him about the Unpardonable Sin; the man and the fiend each laboring to
+frame the image of some mode of guilt which could neither be atoned for
+nor forgiven. And, with the first gleam of light upon the mountain-top,
+the fiend crept in at the iron door, there to abide the intensest
+element of fire, until again summoned forth to share in the dreadful
+task of extending man's possible guilt beyond the scope of Heaven's
+else infinite mercy.
+
+While the lime-burner was struggling with the horror of these thoughts,
+Ethan Brand rose from the log, and flung open the door of the kiln. The
+action was in such accordance with the idea in Bartram's mind, that he
+almost expected to see the Evil One issue forth, red-hot from the
+raging furnace.
+
+"Hold! hold!" cried he, with a tremulous attempt to laugh; for he was
+ashamed of his fears, although they overmastered him. "Don't, for
+mercy's sake, bring out your Devil now!"
+
+"Man!" sternly replied Ethan Brand, "what need have I of the Devil? I
+have left him behind me, on my track. It is with such halfway sinners
+as you that he busies himself. Fear not, because I open the door. I do
+but act by old custom, and am going to trim your fire, like a
+lime-burner, as I was once."
+
+He stirred the vast coals, thrust in more wood, and bent forward to
+gaze into the hollow prison-house of the fire, regardless of the fierce
+glow that reddened upon his face. The lime-burner sat watching him, and
+half suspected his strange guest of a purpose, if not to evoke a fiend,
+at least to plunge bodily into the flames, and thus vanish from the
+sight of man. Ethan Brand, however, drew quietly back, and closed the
+door of the kiln.
+
+"I have looked," said he, "into many a human heart that was seven times
+hotter with sinful passions than yonder furnace is with fire. But I
+found not there what I sought. No, not the Unpardonable Sin!"
+
+"What is the Unpardonable Sin?" asked the lime-burner; and then he
+shrank farther from his companion, trembling lest his question should
+be answered.
+
+"It is a sin that grew within my own breast," replied Ethan Brand,
+standing erect, with a pride that distinguishes all enthusiasts of his
+stamp. "A sin that grew nowhere else! The sin of an intellect that
+triumphed over the sense of brotherhood with man and reverence for God,
+and sacrificed everything to its own mighty claims! the only sin that
+deserves a recompense of immortal agony! Freely, were it to do again,
+would I incur the guilt. Unshrinkingly I accept the retribution!"
+
+"The man's head is turned," muttered the lime-burner to himself. "He
+may be a sinner, like the rest of us,—nothing more likely,—but, I'll be
+sworn, he is a madman too."
+
+Nevertheless, he felt uncomfortable at his situation, alone with Ethan
+Brand on the wild mountain side, and was right glad to hear the rough
+murmur of tongues, and the footsteps of what seemed a pretty numerous
+party, stumbling over the stones and rustling through the under-brush.
+Soon appeared the whole lazy regiment that was wont to infest the
+village tavern, comprehending three or four individuals who had drunk
+flip beside the bar-room fire through all the winters, and smoked their
+pipes beneath the stoop through all the summers, since Ethan Brand's
+departure. Laughing boisterously, and mingling all their voices
+together in unceremonious talk, they now burst into the moonshine and
+narrow streaks of firelight that illuminated the open space before the
+lime-kiln. Bartram set the door ajar again, flooding the spot with
+light, that the whole company might get a fair view of Ethan Brand, and
+he of them.
+
+There, among other old acquaintances, was a once ubiquitous[3] man, now
+almost extinct, but whom we were formerly sure to encounter at the
+hotel of every thriving village throughout the country. It was the
+stage-agent. The present specimen of the genus was a wilted and
+smoke-dried man, wrinkled and red-nosed, in a smartly cut, brown,
+bob-tailed coat, with brass buttons, who, for a length of time unknown,
+had kept his desk and corner in the bar-room, and was still puffing
+what seemed to be the same cigar that he had lighted twenty years
+before. He had great fame as a dry joker, though, perhaps, less on
+account of any intrinsic humor than from a certain flavor of brandy
+toddy and tobacco smoke, which impregnated all his ideas and
+expressions, as well as his person. Another well-remembered though
+strangely altered face was that of Lawyer Giles, as people still called
+him in courtesy; an elderly ragamuffin, in his soiled shirt-sleeves and
+tow-cloth trousers. This poor fellow had been an attorney, in what he
+called his better days, a sharp practitioner, and in great vogue among
+the village litigants; but flip, and sling, and toddy, and cocktails,
+imbibed at all hours, morning, noon, and night, had caused him to slide
+from intellectual to various kinds and degrees of bodily labor, till,
+at last, to adopt his own phrase, he slid into a soap vat. In other
+words, Giles was now a soap boiler, in a small way. He had come to be
+but the fragment of a human being, a part of one foot having been
+chopped off by an axe, and an entire hand torn away by the devilish
+grip of a steam engine. Yet, though the corporeal hand was gone, a
+spiritual member remained; for, stretching forth the stump, Giles
+steadfastly averred that he felt an invisible thumb and fingers with as
+vivid a sensation as before the real ones were amputated. A maimed and
+miserable wretch he was; but one, nevertheless, whom the world could
+not trample on, and had no right to scorn, either in this or any
+previous stage of his misfortunes, since he had still kept up the
+courage and spirit of a man, asked nothing in charity, and with his one
+hand—and that the left one—fought a stern battle against want and
+hostile circumstances.
+
+Among the throng, too, came another personage, who, with certain points
+of similarity to Lawyer Giles, had many more of difference. It was the
+village doctor; a man of some fifty years, whom, at an earlier period
+of his life, we introduced as paying a professional visit to Ethan
+Brand during the latter's supposed insanity. He was now a
+purple-visaged, rude, and brutal, yet half-gentlemanly figure, with
+something wild, ruined, and desperate in his talk, and in all the
+details of his gesture and manners. Brandy possessed this man like an
+evil spirit, and made him as surly and savage as a wild beast, and as
+miserable as a lost soul; but there was supposed to be in him such
+wonderful skill, such native gifts of healing, beyond any which medical
+science could impart, that society caught hold of him, and would not
+let him sink out of its reach. So, swaying to and fro upon his horse,
+and grumbling thick accents at the bedside, he visited all the sick
+chambers for miles about among the mountain towns, and sometimes raised
+a dying man, as it were, by miracle, or quite as often, no doubt, sent
+his patient to a grave that was dug many a year too soon. The doctor
+had an everlasting pipe in his mouth, and, as somebody said, in
+allusion to his habit of swearing, it was always alight with hell-fire.
+
+These three worthies pressed forward, and greeted Ethan Brand each
+after his own fashion, earnestly inviting him to partake of the
+contents of a certain black bottle, in which, as they averred, he would
+find something far better worth seeking for than the Unpardonable Sin.
+No mind, which has wrought itself by intense and solitary meditation
+into a high state of enthusiasm, can endure the kind of contact with
+low and vulgar modes of thought and feeling to which Ethan Brand was
+now subjected. It made him doubt—and, strange to say, it was a painful
+doubt,—whether he had indeed found the Unpardonable Sin and found it
+within himself. The whole question on which he had exhausted life, and
+more than life, looked like a delusion.
+
+"Leave me," he said bitterly, "ye brute beasts, that have made
+yourselves so, shrivelling up your souls with fiery liquors! I have
+done with you. Years and years ago, I groped into your hearts, and
+found nothing there for my purpose. Get ye gone!"
+
+"Why, you uncivil scoundrel," cried the fierce doctor, "is that the way
+you respond to the kindness of your best friends? Then let me tell you
+the truth. You have no more found the Unpardonable Sin than yonder boy
+Joe has. You are but a crazy fellow,—I told you so twenty years
+ago,—neither better nor worse than a crazy fellow, and a fit companion
+of old Humphrey, here!"
+
+He pointed to an old man, shabbily dressed, with long white hair, thin
+visage, and unsteady eyes. For some years past this aged person had
+been wandering about among the hills, inquiring of all travellers whom
+he met for his daughter. The girl, it seemed, had gone off with a
+company of circus performers; and occasionally tidings of her came to
+the village, and fine stories were told of her glittering appearance as
+she rode on horseback in the ring, or performed marvellous feats on the
+tight rope.
+
+The white-haired father now approached Ethan Brand, and gazed
+unsteadily into his face.
+
+"They tell me you have been all over the earth," said he, wringing his
+hands with earnestness. "You must have seen my daughter, for she makes
+a grand figure in the world, and everybody goes to see her. Did she
+send any word to her old father, or say when she was coming back?"
+
+Ethan Brand's eye quailed beneath the old man's. That daughter, from
+whom he so earnestly desired a word of greeting, was the Esther of our
+tale, the very girl whom, with such cold and remorseless purpose, Ethan
+Brand had made the subject of a psychological experiment, and wasted,
+absorbed, and perhaps annihilated her soul, in the process.
+
+"Yes," murmured he, turning away from the hoary wanderer; "it is no
+delusion. There is an Unpardonable Sin!"
+
+While these things were passing, a merry scene was going forward in the
+area of cheerful light, beside the spring and before the door of the
+hut. A number of the youth of the village, young men and girls, had
+hurried up the hillside, impelled by curiosity to see Ethan Brand, the
+hero of so many a legend familiar to their childhood. Finding nothing,
+however, very remarkable in his aspect,—nothing but a sunburnt
+wayfarer, in plain garb and dusty shoes, who sat looking into the fire,
+as if he fancied pictures among the coals,—these young people speedily
+grew tired of observing him. As it happened, there was other amusement
+at hand. An old German Jew, travelling with a diorama[4] on his back,
+was passing down, the mountain road towards the village just as the
+party turned aside from it, and, in hopes of eking out the profits of
+the day, the showman had kept them company to the lime-kiln.
+
+"Come, old Dutchman," cried one of the young men, "let us see your
+pictures, if you can swear they are worth looking at!"
+
+"O yes, Captain," answered the Jew,—whether as a matter of courtesy or
+craft, he styled everybody Captain,—"I shall show you, indeed, some
+very superb pictures!"
+
+So, placing his box in a proper position, he invited the young men and
+girls to look through the glass orifices of the machine, and proceeded
+to exhibit a series of the most outrageous scratchings and daubings, as
+specimens of the fine arts, that ever an itinerant showman had the face
+to impose upon his circle of spectators. The pictures were worn out,
+moreover, tattered, full of cracks and wrinkles, dingy with tobacco
+smoke, and otherwise in a most pitiable condition. Some purported to be
+cities, public edifices, and ruined castles in Europe; others
+represented Napoleon's battles and Nelson's sea fights; and in the
+midst of these would be seen a gigantic, brown, hairy hand,—which might
+have been mistaken for the Hand of Destiny, though, in truth, it was
+only the showman's,—pointing its forefinger to various scenes of the
+conflict, while its owner gave historical illustrations. When, with
+much merriment at its abominable deficiency of merit, the exhibition
+was concluded, the German bade little Joe put his head into the box.
+Viewed through the magnifying glasses, the boy's round, rosy visage
+assumed the strangest imaginable aspect of an immense Titanic[5] child,
+the mouth grinning broadly, and the eyes and every other feature
+overflowing with fun at the joke. Suddenly, however, that merry face
+turned pale, and its expression changed to horror, for this easily
+impressed and excitable child had become sensible that the eye of Ethan
+Brand was fixed upon him through the glass.
+
+"You make the little man to be afraid. Captain." said the German Jew,
+turning up the dark and strong outline of his visage, from his stooping
+posture, "But look again, and, by chance, I shall cause you to see
+somewhat that is very fine, upon my word!"
+
+Ethan Brand gazed into the box for an instant, and then starting back,
+looked fixedly at the German. What had he seen? Nothing, apparently;
+for a curious youth, who had peeped in almost at the same moment,
+beheld only a vacant space of canvas.
+
+"I remember you now," muttered Ethan Brand to the showman.
+
+"Ah, Captain," whispered the Jew of Nuremburg, with a dark smile, "I
+find it to be a heavy matter in my show-box,—this Unpardonable Sin! By
+my faith, Captain, it has wearied my shoulders, this long day, to carry
+it over the mountain."
+
+"Peace," answered Ethan Brand, sternly, "or get thee into the furnace
+yonder!"
+
+The Jew's exhibition had scarcely concluded, when a great, elderly
+dog—who seemed to be his own master, as no person in the company laid
+claim to him—saw fit to render himself the object of public notice.
+Hitherto, he had shown himself a very quiet, well-disposed old dog,
+going round from one to another, and, by way of being sociable,
+offering his rough head to be patted by any kindly hand that would take
+so much trouble. But now, all of a sudden, this grave and venerable
+quadruped, of his own mere motion, and without the slightest suggestion
+from anybody else, began to run round after his tail, which, to
+heighten the absurdity of the proceeding, was a great deal shorter than
+it should have been. Never was seen such headlong eagerness in pursuit
+of an object that could not possibly be attained; never was heard such
+a tremendous outbreak of growling, snarling, barking, and snapping,—as
+if one end of the ridiculous brute's body were at deadly and most
+unforgivable enmity with the other. Faster and faster, round about went
+the cur; and faster and still faster fled the unapproachable brevity of
+his tail; and louder and fiercer grew his yells of rage and animosity;
+until, utterly exhausted, and as far from the goal as ever, the foolish
+old dog ceased his performance as suddenly as he had begun it. The next
+moment he was as mild, quiet, sensible, and respectable in his
+deportment, as when he first scraped acquaintance with the company.
+
+As may be supposed, the exhibition was greeted with universal laughter,
+clapping of hands, and shouts of encore, to which the canine performer
+responded by wagging all that there was to wag of his tail, but
+appeared totally unable to repeat his very successful effort to amuse
+the spectators.
+
+Meanwhile, Ethan Brand had resumed his seat upon the log, and moved, it
+might be, by a perception of some remote analogy between his own case
+and that of this self-pursuing cur, he broke into the awful laugh,
+which, more than any other token, expressed the condition of his inward
+being. From that moment, the merriment of the party was at an end; they
+stood aghast, dreading lest the inauspicious sound should be
+reverberated around the horizon, and that mountain would thunder it to
+mountain, and so the horror be prolonged upon their ears. Then,
+whispering one to another that it was late,—that the moon was almost
+down,—that the August night was growing chill,—they hurried homewards,
+leaving the lime-burner and little Joe to deal as they might with their
+unwelcome guest. Save for these three human beings, the open space on
+the hillside was a solitude, set in a vast gloom of forest. Beyond that
+darksome verge, the firelight glimmered on the stately trunks and
+almost black foliage of pines, intermixed with the lighter verdure of
+sapling oaks, maples, and poplars, while here and there lay the
+gigantic corpses of dead trees, decaying on the leaf-strewn soil. And
+it seemed to little Joe—a timorous and imaginative child—that the
+silent forest was holding, its breath, until some fearful thing should
+happen.
+
+Ethan Brand thrust more wood into the fire, and closed the door of the
+kiln; then looking over his shoulder at the lime-burner and his son, he
+bade, rather than advised, them to retire to rest.
+
+"For myself, I cannot sleep." said he, "I have matters that it concerns
+me to meditate upon. I will watch the fire, as I used to do in the old
+time."
+
+"And call the Devil out of the furnace to keep you company, I suppose,"
+muttered Bartram, who had been making intimate acquaintance with the
+black bottle above mentioned. "But watch, if you like, and call as many
+devils as you like! For my part, I shall be all the better for a
+snooze. Come, Joe!"
+
+As the boy followed his father into the hut, he looked back at the
+wayfarer, and the tears came into his eyes, for his tender spirit had
+an intuition of the bleak and terrible loneliness in which this man had
+enveloped himself.
+
+When they had gone, Ethan Brand sat listening to the crackling of the
+kindled wood, and looking at the little spirits of fire that issued
+through the chinks of the door. These trifles, however, once so
+familiar, had but the slightest hold of his attention, while deep
+within his mind he was reviewing the gradual but marvellous change that
+had been wrought upon him by the search to which he had devoted
+himself. He remembered how the night dew had fallen upon him,—how the
+dark forest had whispered to him,—how the stars had gleamed upon him,—a
+simple and loving man, watching his fire in the years gone by, and ever
+musing as it burned. He remembered with what tenderness, with what love
+and sympathy for mankind, and what pity for human guilt and woe, he had
+first begun to contemplate those ideas which afterwards became the
+inspiration of his life; with what reverence he had then looked into
+the heart of man, viewing it as a temple originally divine, and,
+however desecrated, still to be held sacred by a brother; with what
+awful fear he had deprecated the success of his pursuit, and prayed
+that the Unpardonable Sin might never be revealed to him. Then ensued
+that vast intellectual development, which, in its progress, disturbed
+the counterpoise between his mind and heart. The Idea that possessed
+his life had operated as a means of education; it had gone on
+cultivating his powers to the highest point of which they were
+susceptible; it had raised him from the level of an unlettered laborer
+to stand on a starlit eminence, whither the philosophers of the earth,
+laden with the lore of universities, might vainly strive to clamber
+after him. So much for the intellect! But where was the heart? That,
+indeed, had withered,—had contracted.—had hardened,—had perished! It
+had ceased to partake of the universal throb, He had lost his hold of
+the magnetic chain of humanity. He was no longer a brother-man, opening
+the chambers of the dungeons of our common nature by the key of holy
+sympathy, which gave him a right to share in all its secrets; he was
+now a cold observer, looking on mankind as the subject of his
+experiment, and, at length, converting man and woman to be his puppets,
+and pulling the wires that moved them to such degrees of crime as were
+demanded for his study.
+
+Thus Ethan Brand became a fiend. He began to be so from the moment that
+his moral nature had ceased to keep the pace of improvement with his
+intellect. And now, as his highest effort and inevitable
+development,—as the bright and gorgeous flower, and rich, delicious
+fruit of his life's labor,—he had produced the Unpardonable Sin!
+
+"What more have I to seek? what more to achieve?" said Ethan Brand to
+himself, "My task Is done, and well done!"
+
+Starting from the log with a certain alacrity in his gait and ascending
+the hillock of earth that was raised against the stone circumference of
+the lime-kiln, he thus reached the top of the structure. It was a space
+of perhaps ten feet across, from edge to edge, presenting a view of the
+upper surface of the immense mass of broken marble with which the kiln
+was heaped. All these innumerable blocks and fragments of marble were
+red-hot and vividly on fire, sending up great spouts of blue flame,
+which quivered aloft and danced madly, as within a magic circle, and
+sank and rose again, with continual and multitudinous activity. As the
+lonely man bent forward over this terrible body of fire, the blasting
+heat smote up against his person with a breath that, it might be
+supposed, would have scorched and shrivelled him up in a moment.
+
+Ethan Brand stood erect, and raised his arms on high. The blue flames
+played upon his face, and imparted the wild and ghastly light which
+alone could have suited its expression; it was that of a fiend on the
+verge of plunging into his gulf of intensest torment.
+
+"O Mother Earth," cried he, "who art no more my Mother, and into whose
+bosom this frame shall never be resolved! O mankind, whose brotherhood
+I have cast off, and trampled thy great heart beneath my feet! O stars
+of heaven, that shone on me of old, as if to light me onward and
+upward!—farewell all, and forever. Come, deadly element of
+Fire,—henceforth my familiar frame! Embrace me, as I do thee!"
+
+That night the sound of a fearful peal of laughter rolled heavily
+through the sleep of the lime-burner and his little son; dim shapes of
+horror and anguish haunted their dreams, and seemed still present in
+the rude hovel, when they opened their eyes to the daylight.
+
+"Up, boy, up!" cried the lime-burner, staring about him. "Thank Heaven,
+the night is gone, at last; and rather than pass such another, I would
+watch, my lime-kiln, wide awake, for a twelvemonth. This Ethan Brand,
+with his humbug of an Unpardonable Sin, has done me no such mighty
+favor, in taking my place!"
+
+He issued from the hut, followed by little Joe, who kept fast hold, of
+his father's hand. The early sunshine was already pouring its gold upon
+the mountain tops; and though the valleys were still in shadow, they
+smiled cheerfully in the promise of the bright day that was hastening
+onward. The village, completely shut in by hills, which swelled away
+gently about it, looked as if it had rested peacefully in the hollow of
+the great hand of Providence. Every dwelling was distinctly visible;
+the little spires of the two churches pointed upwards, and caught a
+fore-glimmering of brightness from the sun-gilt skies upon their gilded
+weathercocks. The tavern was astir, and the figure of the old,
+smoke-dried stage-agent, cigar in mouth, was seen beneath the stoop.
+Old Graylock was glorified with a golden cloud upon his head. Scattered
+likewise over the breasts of the surrounding mountains, there were
+heaps of hoary mist, in fantastic shapes, some of them far down into
+the valley, others high up towards the summits, and still others, of
+the same family of mist or cloud, hovering in the gold radiance of the
+upper atmosphere. Stepping from one to another of the clouds that
+rested on the hills, and thence to the loftier brotherhood that sailed
+in air, it seemed almost as if a mortal man might thus ascend into the
+heavenly regions. Earth was so mingled with sky that it was a day-dream
+to look at it.
+
+To supply that charm of the familiar and homely, which Nature so
+readily adopts into a scene like this, the stage-coach was rattling
+down the mountain road, and the driver sounded his horn, while echo
+caught up the notes, and intertwined them into a rich and varied and
+elaborate harmony, of which the original performer could lay claim to
+little share. The great hills played a concert among themselves, each
+contributing a strain of airy sweetness.
+
+Little Joe's face brightened at once.
+
+"Dear father," cried he, skipping cheerily to and fro, "that strange
+man is gone, and the sky and the mountains all seem glad of it!"
+
+"Yes," growled the lime-burner, with an oath, "but he has let the fire
+go down, and no thanks to him if five hundred bushels of lime are not
+spoiled. If I catch the fellow hereabouts again, I shall feel like
+tossing him into the furnace!"
+
+With his long pole in his hand, he ascended to the top of the kiln.
+After a moment's pause, he called to his son.
+
+"Come up here, Joe!" said he.
+
+So little Joe ran up the hillock, and stood by his father's side. The
+marble was all burnt into perfect, snow-white lime. But on its surface,
+in the midst of the circle,—snow-white too, and thoroughly converted
+into lime,—lay a human skeleton, in the attitude of a person who, after
+long toil, lies down to long repose. Within the ribs—strange to say—was
+the shape of a human heart.
+
+"Was the fellow's heart made of marble?" cried Bartram, in some
+perplexity at this phenomenon. "At any rate, it is burnt into what
+looks like special good lime; and, taking all the bones together, my
+kiln is half a bushel the richer for him."
+
+So saying, the rude lime-burner lifted his pole, and, letting it fall
+upon the skeleton, the relics of Ethan Brand were crumbled into
+fragments.
+
+NOTES
+
+[1] Written in 1848; published in Holden's _Dollar Magazine_ in 1851.
+
+[2] 182:26 Delectable Mountains. A range of mountains referred to in
+Bunyan's _Pilgrim's Progress_.
+
+[3] 190:22 ubiquitous. Being present everywhere.
+
+[4] 194:29 diorama. A series of paintings arranged for exhibition. See
+dictionary.
+
+[5] 195:30 Titanic. Characteristic of the Titans; therefore large.
+
+COLLATERAL READINGS
+
+_The Scarlet Letter_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_The House of Seven Gables_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_The Marble Faun_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_The Gray Champion_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_The Wedding Knell_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_The Great Carbuncle_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_Dr. Heidegger's Experiment_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_The Haunted Mind_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_Feathertop_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_Rip Van Winkle_, Washington Irving.
+
+_The Elixir of Life_, Honoré de Balzac.
+
+_The Leather Funnel_, A. Conan Doyle.
+
+_The Return of Imray's Ghost_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+_A Gentle Ghost_, Mary Wilkins Freeman.
+
+
+
+
+THE SIRE DE MALETROIT'S DOOR[1]
+
+
+_By Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)_
+
+
+Denis de Beaulieu was not yet two-and-twenty, but he counted himself a
+grown man, and a very accomplished cavalier into the bargain. Lads were
+early formed in that rough, warfaring epoch; and when one has been in a
+pitched battle and a dozen raids, has killed one's man in an honorable
+fashion, and knows a thing or two of strategy and mankind, a certain
+swagger in the gait is surely to be pardoned. He had put up his horse
+with due care, and supped with due deliberation; and then, in a very
+agreeable frame of mind, went out to pay a visit in the gray of the
+evening. It was not a very wise proceeding on the young man's part. He
+would have done better to remain beside the fire or go decently to bed.
+For the town was full of the troops of Burgundy and England under a
+mixed command; and though Denis was there on safe-conduct, his
+safe-conduct was like to serve him little on a chance encounter.
+
+It was September, 1429; the weather had fallen sharp; a flighty piping
+wind, laden with showers, beat about the township; and the dead leaves
+ran riot along the streets. Here and there a window was already lighted
+up; and the noise of men-at-arms making merry over supper within came
+forth in fits and was swallowed up and carried away by the wind. The
+night fell swiftly: the flag of England, fluttering on the spire top,
+grew ever fainter and fainter against the flying clouds—a black speck
+like a swallow in the tumultuous, leaden chaos of the sky. As the night
+fell the wind rose, and began to hoot under archways and roar amid the
+tree-tops in the valley below the town.
+
+Denis de Beaulieu walked fast and was soon knocking at his friend's
+door; but though he promised himself to stay only a little while and
+make an early return, his welcome was so pleasant, and he found so much
+to delay him, that it was already long past midnight before he said
+good-by upon the threshold. The wind had fallen again in the meanwhile;
+the night was as black as the grave; not a star, nor a glimmer of
+moonshine, slipped through the canopy of cloud. Denis was
+ill-acquainted with the intricate lanes of Chateau Landon; even by
+daylight he had found some trouble in picking his way; and in this
+absolute darkness he soon lost it altogether. He was certain of one
+thing only—to keep mounting the hill; for his friend's house lay at the
+lower end, or tail, of Chateau Landon, while the inn was up at the
+head, under the great church spire. With this clew to go upon he
+stumbled and groped forward, now breathing more freely in the open
+places where there was a good slice of sky overhead, now feeling along
+the wall in stifling closes. It is an eerie and mysterious position to
+be thus submerged in opaque blackness in an almost unknown town. The
+silence is terrifying in its possibilities. The touch of cold window
+bars to the exploring hand startles the man like the touch of a toad;
+the inequalities of the pavement shake his heart into his mouth; a
+piece of denser darkness threatens an ambuscade or a chasm in the
+pathway; and where the air is brighter, the houses put on strange and
+bewildering appearances, as if to lead him further from his way. For
+Denis, who had to regain his inn without attracting notice, there was
+real danger as well as mere discomfort in the walk; and he went warily
+and boldly at once, and at every corner paused to make an observation.
+
+He had been for some time threading a lane so narrow that he could
+touch a wall with either hand, when it began to open out and go sharply
+downward. Plainly this lay no longer in the direction of his inn; but
+the hope of a little more light tempted him forward to reconnoitre. The
+lane ended in a terrace with a bartizan[2] wall, which gave an outlook
+between high houses, as out of an embrasure, into the valley lying dark
+and formless several hundred feet below. Denis looked down, and could
+discern a few tree-tops waving and a single speck of brightness where
+the river ran across a weir. The weather was clearing up, and the sky
+had lightened, so as to show the outline of the heavier clouds and the
+dark margin of the hills. By the uncertain glimmer, the house on his
+left hand should be a place of some pretensions; it was surmounted by
+several pinnacles and turret-tops; the round stern of a chapel, with a
+fringe of flying buttresses, projected boldly from the main block; and
+the door was sheltered under a deep porch carved with figures and
+overhung by two long gargoyles[3]. The windows of the chapel gleamed
+through their intricate tracery with a light as of many tapers, and
+threw out the buttresses and the peaked roof in a more intense
+blackness against the sky. It was plainly the hotel of some great
+family of the neighborhood; and as it reminded Denis of a town house of
+his own at Bourges, he stood for some time gazing up at it and mentally
+gauging the skill of the architects and the consideration of the two
+families.
+
+There seemed to be no issue to the terrace but the lane by which he had
+reached it; he could only retrace his steps, but he had gained some
+notion of his whereabouts, and hoped by this means to hit the main
+thoroughfare and speedily regain the inn. He was reckoning without that
+chapter of accidents which was to make this night memorable above all
+others in his career; for he had not gone back above a hundred yards
+before he saw a light coming to meet him, and heard loud voices
+speaking together in the echoing narrows of the lane. It was a party of
+men-at-arms going the night round with torches. Denis assured himself
+that they had all been making free with the wine bowl, and were in no
+mood to be particular about safe-conducts or the niceties of chivalrous
+war. It, was as like as not that they would kill him like a dog and
+leave him where he fell. The situation was inspiriting but nervous.
+Their own torches would conceal him from sight, he reflected; and he
+hoped that they would drown the noise of his footsteps with their own
+empty voices. If he were but fleet and silent, he might evade their
+notice altogether.
+
+Unfortunately, as he turned to beat a retreat, his foot rolled upon a
+pebble; he fell against the wall with an ejaculation, and his sword
+rang loudly on the stones. Two or three voices demanded who went
+there—some in French, some in English; but Denis made no reply, and ran
+the faster down the lane. Once upon the terrace, he paused to look
+back. They still kept calling after him, and just then began to double
+the pace in pursuit, with a considerable clank of armor, and great
+tossing of the torchlight to and fro in the narrow jaws of the passage.
+
+Denis cast a look around and darted into the porch. There he might
+escape observation, or—if that were too much to expect—was in a capital
+posture whether for parley or defence. So thinking, he drew his sword
+and tried to set his back against the door. To his surprise it yielded
+behind his weight; and though he turned in a moment, continued to swing
+back on oiled and noiseless hinges until it stood wide open on a black
+interior. When things fall out opportunely for the person concerned, he
+is not apt to be critical about the how or why, his own immediate
+personal convenience seeming a sufficient reason for the strangest
+oddities and revolutions in our sublunary things; and so Denis, without
+a moment's hesitation, stepped within and partly closed the door behind
+him to conceal his place of refuge. Nothing was further from his
+thoughts than to close it altogether; but for some inexplicable
+reason—perhaps by a spring or a weight—the ponderous mass of oak
+whipped itself out of his fingers and clanked to, with a formidable
+rumble and a noise like the falling of an automatic bar.
+
+The round, at that very moment, debouched[4] upon the terrace and
+proceeded to summon him with shouts and curses. He heard them ferreting
+in the dark corners; the stock of a lance even rattled along the outer
+surface of the door behind which he stood; but these gentlemen were in
+too high a humor to be long delayed, and soon made off down a corkscrew
+pathway which had escaped Denis' observation, and passed out of sight
+and hearing along the battlements of the town.
+
+Denis breathed again. He gave them a few minutes' grace for fear of
+accidents, and then groped about for some means of opening the door and
+slipping forth again. The inner surface was quite smooth, not a handle,
+not a moulding, not a projection of any sort. He got his finger nails
+round the edges and pulled, but the mass was immovable. He shook it, it
+was as firm as a rock, Denis de Beaulieu frowned, and gave vent to a
+little noiseless whistle. What ailed the door? he wondered. Why was it
+open? How came it to shut so easily and so effectually after him? There
+was something obscure and underhand about all this, that was little to
+the young man's fancy. It looked like a snare, and yet who could
+suppose a snare in such a quiet by-street and in a house of so
+prosperous and even noble an exterior? And yet—snare or no snare,
+intentionally or unintentionally—here he was, prettily trapped; and for
+the life of him he could see no way out of it again. The darkness began
+to weigh upon him. He gave ear; all was silent without, but within and
+close by he seemed to catch a faint sighing, a faint sobbing rustle, a
+little stealthy creak—as though many persons were at his side, holding
+themselves quite still, and governing even their respiration with the
+extreme of slyness. The idea went to his vitals with a shock, and he
+faced about suddenly as if to defend his life. Then, for the first
+time, he became aware of a light about the level of his eyes and at
+some distance in the interior of the house—a vertical thread of light,
+widening toward the bottom, such as might escape between two wings of
+arras over a doorway.
+
+To see anything was a relief to Denis; it was like a piece of solid
+ground to a man laboring in a morass; his mind seized upon it with
+avidity; and he stood staring at it and trying to piece together some
+logical conception of his surroundings. Plainly there was a flight of
+steps ascending from his own level to that of this illuminated doorway,
+and indeed he thought he could make out another thread of light, as
+fine as a needle and as faint as phosphorescence, which might very well
+be reflected along the polished wood of a handrail. Since he had begun
+to suspect that he was not alone, his heart had continued to beat with
+smothering violence, and an intolerable desire for action of any sort
+had possessed itself of his spirit. He was in deadly peril, he
+believed. What could be more natural than to mount the staircase, lift
+the curtain, and confront his difficulty at once? At least he would be
+dealing with something tangible; at least he would be no longer in the
+dark. He stepped slowly forward with outstretched hands, until his foot
+struck the bottom step; then he rapidly scaled the stairs, stood for a
+moment to compose his expression, lifted the arras and went in.
+
+He found himself in a large apartment of polished stone. There were
+three doors, one on each of three sides, all similarly curtained with
+tapestry. The fourth side was occupied by two large windows and a great
+stone chimney-piece, carved with the arms of the Malétroits. Denis
+recognized the bearings, and was gratified to find himself in such good
+hands. The room was strongly illuminated; but it contained little
+furniture except a heavy table and a chair or two; the hearth was
+innocent of fire, and the pavement was but sparsely strewn with rushes
+clearly many days old.
+
+On a high chair beside the chimney, and directly facing Denis as he
+entered, sat a little old gentleman in a fur tippet. He sat with his
+legs crossed and his hands folded, and a cup of spiced wine stood by
+his elbow on a bracket on the wall. His countenance had a strong
+masculine cast; not properly human, but such as we see in the bull, the
+goat, or the domestic boar; something equivocal and wheedling,
+something greedy, brutal and dangerous. The upper lip was inordinately
+full, as though swollen by a blow or a toothache; and the smile, the
+peaked eyebrows, and the small, strong eyes were quaintly and almost
+comically evil in expression. Beautiful white hair hung straight all
+round his head, like a saint's, and fell in a single curl upon the
+tippet. His beard and mustache were the pink of venerable sweetness.
+Age, probably in consequence of inordinate precautions, had left no
+mark upon his hands; and the Malétroit hand was famous. It would be
+difficult to imagine anything at once so fleshy and so delicate in
+design; the taper, sensual fingers were like those of one of
+Leonardo's[5] women; the fork of the thumb made a dimpled protuberance
+when closed; the nails were perfectly shaped, and of a dead, surprising
+whiteness. It rendered his aspect tenfold more redoubtable, that a man
+with hands like these should keep them devoutly folded like a virgin
+martyr—that a man with so intent and startling an expression of face
+should sit patiently on his seat and contemplates people with an
+unwinking stare, like a god, or a god's statue. His quiescence seemed
+ironical and treacherous, it fitted so poorly with his looks.
+
+Such was Alain, Sire de Malétroit.
+
+Denis and he looked silently at each other for a second or two.
+
+"Pray step in," said the Sire de Malétroit. "I have been expecting you
+all the evening."
+
+He had not risen, but he accompanied his words with a smile and a
+slight but courteous inclination of the head. Partly from the smile,
+partly from the strange musical murmur with which the sire prefaced his
+observation, Denis felt a strong shudder of disgust go through his
+marrow. And what with disgust and honest confusion of mind, he could
+scarcely get words together in reply.
+
+"I fear," he said, "that this is a double accident. I am not the person
+you suppose me. It seems you were looking for a visit; but for my part,
+nothing was further from my thoughts—nothing could be more contrary to
+my wishes—than this intrusion."
+
+"Well, well," replied the old gentleman indulgently, "here you are,
+which is the main point. Seat yourself, my friend, and put yourself
+entirely at your ease. We shall arrange our little affairs presently."
+
+Denis perceived that the matter was still complicated with some
+misconception, and he hastened to continue his explanation.
+
+"Your door," he began.
+
+"About my door?" asked the other raising his peaked eyebrows. "A little
+piece of ingenuity." And he shrugged his shoulders. "A hospitable
+fancy! By your own account, you were not desirous of making any
+acquaintance. We old people look for such reluctance now and then; when
+it touches our honor, we cast about until we find some way of
+overcoming it. You arrive uninvited, but believe me, very welcome."
+
+"You persist in error, sir," said Denis. "There can be no question
+between you and me. I am a stranger in this countryside. My name is
+Denis, damoiseau de Beaulieu. If you see me in your house it is only—"
+
+"My young friend," interrupted the other, "you will permit me to have
+my own ideas on that subject. They probably differ from yours at the
+present moment," he added with a leer, "but time will show which of us
+is in the right."
+
+Denis was convinced he had to do with a lunatic. He seated himself with
+a shrug, content to wait the upshot; and a pause ensued, during which
+he thought he could distinguish a hurried gabbling as of a prayer from
+behind the arras immediately opposite him. Sometimes there seemed to be
+but one person engaged, sometimes two; and the vehemence of the voice,
+low as it was, seemed to indicate either great haste or an agony of
+spirit. It occurred to him that this piece of tapestry covered the
+entrance to the chapel he had noticed from without.
+
+The old gentleman meanwhile surveyed Denis from head to foot with a
+smile, and from time to time emitted little noises like a bird or a
+mouse, which seemed to indicate a high degree of satisfaction. This
+state of matters became rapidly insupportable; and Denis, to put an end
+to it, remarked politely that the wind had gone down.
+
+The old gentleman fell into a fit of silent laughter, so prolonged and
+violent that he became quite red in the face. Denis got upon his feet
+at once, and put on his hat with a flourish.
+
+"Sir," he said, "if you are in your wits, you have affronted me
+grossly. If you are out of them, I flatter myself I can find better
+employment for my brains than to talk with lunatics. My conscience is
+clear; you have made a fool of me from the first moment; you have
+refused to hear my explanations; and now there is no power under God
+will make me stay here any longer; and if I cannot make my way out in a
+more decent fashion, I will hack your door in pieces with my sword."
+
+The Sire de Malétroit raised his right hand and wagged it at Denis with
+the fore and little fingers extended.
+
+"My dear nephew," he said, "sit down."
+
+"Nephew!" retorted Denis, "you lie in your throat;" and he snapped his
+fingers in his face.
+
+"Sit down, you rogue!" cried the old gentleman, in a sudden, harsh
+voice like the barking of a dog. "Do you fancy," he went on, "that when
+I had made my little contrivance for the door I had stopped short with
+that? If you prefer to be bound hand and foot till your bones ache,
+rise and try to go away. If you choose to remain a free young buck,
+agreeably conversing with an old gentleman—why, sit where you are in
+peace, and God be with you."
+
+"Do you mean, I am a prisoner?" demanded Denis.
+
+"I state the facts," replied the other. "I would rather leave the
+conclusion to yourself."
+
+Denis sat down again. Externally he managed to keep pretty calm, but
+within, he was now boiling with anger, now chilled with apprehension.
+He no longer felt convinced that he was dealing with a madman. And if
+the old gentleman was sane, what, in God's name, had he to look for?
+What absurd or tragical adventure had befallen him? What countenance
+was he to assume?
+
+While he was thus unpleasantly reflecting, the arras that overhung the
+chapel door was raised, and a tall priest in his robes came forth, and,
+giving a long, keen stare at Denis, said something in an undertone to
+Sire de Malétroit.
+
+"She is in a better frame of spirit?" asked the latter.
+
+"She is more resigned, messire," replied the priest.
+
+"Now the Lord help her, she is hard to please!" sneered the old
+gentleman. "A likely stripling—not ill-born—and of her own choosing,
+too? Why, what more would the jade have?"
+
+"The situation is not usual for a young damsel," said the other, "and
+somewhat trying to her blushes."
+
+"She should have thought of that before she began the dance! It was
+none of my choosing, God knows that; but since she is in it, by our
+Lady, she shall carry it to the end." And then addressing Denis,
+"Monsieur de Beaulieu," he asked, "may I present you to my niece? She
+has been waiting your arrival, I may say, with even greater impatience
+than myself."
+
+Denis had resigned himself with a good grace—all he desired was to know
+the worst of it as speedily as possible; so he rose at once, and bowed
+in acquiescence. The Sire de Malétroit followed his example and limped,
+with the assistance of the chaplain's arm, toward the chapel door. The
+priest pulled aside the arras, and all three entered. The building had
+considerable architectural pretensions. A light groining sprang from
+six stout columns, and hung down in two rich pendants from the centre
+of the vault. The place terminated behind the altar in a round end,
+embossed and honeycombed with a superfluity of ornament in relief, and
+pierced by many little windows shaped like stars, trefoils, or wheels.
+These windows were imperfectly is glazed, so that the night air
+circulated freely in the chapel. The tapers, of which there must have
+been half a hundred burning on the altar, were unmercifully blown
+about; and the light went through many different phases of brilliancy
+and semi-eclipse. On the steps in front of the altar knelt a young girl
+richly attired as a bride. A chill settled over Denis as he observed
+her costume; he fought with desperate energy against the conclusion
+that was being thrust upon his mind; it could not—it should not—be as
+he feared.
+
+"Blanche," said the sire, in his most flute-like tones, "I have brought
+a friend to see you, my little girl; turn round and give him your
+pretty hand. It is good to be devout; but it is necessary to be polite,
+my niece."
+
+The girl rose to her feet and turned toward the newcomers. She moved
+all of a piece; and shame and exhaustion were expressed in every line
+of her fresh young body; and she held her head down and kept her eyes
+upon the pavement, as she came slowly forward. In the course of her
+advance her eyes fell upon Denis de Beaulieu's feet—feet of which he
+was justly vain, be it remarked, and wore in the most elegant
+accoutrement even while travelling. She paused—started, as if his
+yellow boots had conveyed some shocking meaning—and glanced, suddenly
+up into the wearer's countenance. Their eyes met; shame gave place to
+horror and terror in her looks; the blood left her lips, with a
+piercing scream she covered her face with her hands and sank upon, the
+chapel floor.
+
+"That is not the man!" she cried. "My uncle, that is not the man!"
+
+The Sire de Malétroit chirped agreeably. "Of course not," he said; "I
+expected as much. It was so unfortunate you could not remember his
+name."
+
+"Indeed," she cried, "indeed, I have never seen this person till this
+moment—I have never so much as set eyes upon him—I never wish to see
+him again. Sir," she said, turning to Denis, "if you are a gentleman,
+you will hear me out. Have I ever seen you—have you ever seen me—before
+this accursed hour?"
+
+"To speak for myself, I have never had that pleasure," answered the
+young man. "This is the first time, messire, that I have met with your
+engaging niece."
+
+The old gentleman shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"I am distressed to hear it," he said. "But it is never too late to
+begin. I had little more acquaintance with my own late lady ere I
+married her; which proves," he added, with a grimace, "that these
+impromptu marriages may often produce an excellent understanding in the
+long run. As the bridegroom is to have a voice in the matter, I will
+give him two hours to make up for lost time before we proceed with the
+ceremony." And he turned toward the door, followed by the clergyman.
+
+The girl was on her feet in a moment. "My uncle, you cannot be in
+earnest," she said. "I declare before God I will stab myself rather
+than be forced on that young man. The heart rises at it; God forbids
+such marriages; you dishonor your white hair. Oh, my uncle, pity me!
+There is not a woman in all the world but would prefer death to such a
+nuptial. Is it possible," she added, faltering—"is it possible that you
+do not believe me—that you still think this"—and she pointed at Denis
+with a tremor of anger and contempt—"that you still think _this_ to be
+the man?"
+
+"Frankly," said the old gentleman, pausing on the threshold, "I do. But
+let me explain to you once for all, Blanche de Malétroit, my way of
+thinking about this affair. When you took it into your head to dishonor
+my family and the name that I have borne, in peace and war, for more
+than threescore years, you forfeited, not only the right to question my
+designs, but that of looking me in the face. If your father had been
+alive, he would have spat on you and turned you out of doors. His was
+the hand of iron. You may bless your God you have only to deal with the
+hand of velvet, mademoiselle. It was my duty to get you married without
+delay. Out of pure goodwill, I have tried to find your own gallant for
+you. And I believe I have succeeded. But before God and all the holy
+angels, Blanche de Malétroit, if I have not, I care not one jack-straw.
+So let me recommend you to be polite to our young friend; for, upon my
+word, your next groom may be less appetizing."
+
+And with that he went out, with the chaplain at his heels; and the
+arras fell behind the pair.
+
+The girl turned upon Denis with flashing eyes.
+
+"And what, sir," she demanded, "may be the meaning of all this?"
+
+"God knows," returned Denis, gloomily, "I am a prisoner in this house,
+which seems full of mad people. More I know not; and nothing do I
+understand."
+
+"And pray how came you here?" she asked.
+
+He told her as briefly as he could. "For the rest," he added, "perhaps
+you will follow my example, and tell me the answer to all these
+riddles, and what, in God's name, is like to be the end of it."
+
+She stood silent for a little, and lie could see her lips tremble and
+her tearless eyes burn with a feverish lustre. Then she pressed her
+forehead in both hands.
+
+"Alas, how my head aches!" she said, wearily—"to say nothing of my poor
+heart! But it is due to you to know my story, unmaidenly as it must
+seem. I am called Blanche de Malétroit; I have been without father or
+mother for—oh! for as long as I can recollect, and indeed I have been
+most unhappy all my life. Three months ago a young captain began to
+stand near me every day in church. I could see that I pleased him; I am
+much to blame, but I was so glad that any one should love me; and when
+he passed me a letter, I took it home with me and read it with great
+pleasure. Since that time he has written many. He was so anxious to
+speak with me, poor fellow! and kept asking me to leave the door open
+some evening that we might have two words upon the stair. For he knew
+how much my uncle trusted me." She gave something like a sob at that,
+and it was a moment before she could go on. "My uncle is a hard man,
+but he is very shrewd," she said, at last. "He has performed many feats
+in war, and was a great person at court, and much trusted by Queen
+Isabeau in old days. How he came to suspect me I cannot tell; but it is
+hard to keep anything from his knowledge; and this morning, as we came
+from mass, he took my hand into his, forced it open, and read my little
+billet, walking by my side all the while.
+
+"When he finished, he gave it back to me with great politeness. It
+contained another request to have the door left open; and this has been
+the ruin of us all. My uncle kept me strictly in my room until evening,
+and then ordered me to dress myself as you see me—a hard mockery for a
+young girl, do you not think so? I suppose, when he could not prevail
+with me to tell him the young captain's name, he must have laid a trap
+for him; into which, alas! you have fallen in the anger of God. I
+looked for much confusion; for how could I tell whether he was willing
+to take me for his wife on these sharp terms? He might have been
+trifling with me from the first; or I might have made myself too cheap
+in his eyes. But truly I had not looked for such a shameful punishment
+as this? I could not think that God would let a girl be so disgraced
+before a young man. And now I tell you all; and I can scarcely hope
+that you will not despise me."
+
+Denis made her a respectful inclination.
+
+"Madam," he said, "you have honored me by your confidence. It remains
+for me to prove that I am not unworthy of the honor. Is Messire de
+Malétroit at hand?"
+
+"I believe he is writing in the _salle[6]_ without," she answered.
+
+"May I lead you thither, madam?" asked Denis, offering his hand with
+his most courtly bearing.
+
+She accepted it; and the pair passed out of the chapel, Blanche in a
+very drooping and shamefast condition, but Denis strutting and raffling
+in the consciousness of a mission, and the boyish certainty of
+accomplishing it with honor.
+
+The Sire Malétroit rose to meet them with an ironical obeisance.
+
+"Sir," said Denis, with the grandest possible air, "I believe I am to
+have some say in the matter of this marriage; and let me tell you at
+once, I will be no party to forcing the inclination of this young lady.
+Had it been freely offered to me, I should have been proud to accept
+her hand, for I perceive she is as good as she is beautiful; but as
+things are, I have now the honor, messire, of refusing."
+
+Blanche looked at him with gratitude in her eyes; but the old gentleman
+only smiled and smiled, until his smile grew positively sickening to
+Denis.
+
+"I am afraid," he said, "Monsieur de Beaulieu, that you do not
+perfectly understand the choice I have offered you. Follow me, I
+beseech you, to this window." And he led the way to one of the large
+windows which stood open on the night. "You observe," he went on,
+"there is an iron ring in the upper masonry, and reeved through that, a
+very efficacious rope. Now, mark my words: if you should find your
+disinclination to my niece's person insurmountable, I shall have you
+hanged out of this window before sunrise. I shall only proceed to such
+an extremity with the greatest regret, you may believe me. For it is
+not at all your death that I desire, but my niece's establishment in
+life. At the same time, it must come to that if you prove obstinate.
+Your family, Monsieur de Beaulieu, is very well in its way; but if you
+sprung from Charlemagne[7], you should not refuse the hand of a
+Malétroit with impunity—not if she had been as common as the Paris
+road—not if she was as hideous as the gargoyle over my door. Neither my
+niece nor you, nor my own private feelings, move me at all in this
+matter. The honor of my house has been compromised; I believe you to be
+the guilty person, at least you are now in the secret; and you can
+hardly wonder if I request you to wipe out the stain. If you will not,
+your blood be on your own head! It will be no great satisfaction to me
+to have your interesting relics kicking their heels in the breeze below
+my windows, but half a loaf is better than no bread, and if I cannot
+cure the dishonor, I shall at least stop the scandal."
+
+There was a pause.
+
+"I believe there are other ways of settling such imbroglios among
+gentlemen," said Denis. "You wear a sword, and I hear you have used it
+with distinction."
+
+The Sire de Malétroit made a signal to the chaplain, who crossed the
+room with long silent strides and raised the arras over the third of
+the three doors. It was only a moment before he let it fall again; but
+Denis had time to see a dusky passage full of armed men.
+
+"When I was a little younger, I should have been delighted to honor
+you, Monsieur de Beaulieu," said Sire Alain: "but I am now too old.
+Faithful retainers are the sinews of age, and I must employ the
+strength I have. This is one of the hardest things to swallow as a man
+grows up in years; but with a little patience, even this becomes
+habitual. You and the lady seem to prefer the _salle_ for what remains
+of your two hours; and as I have no desire to cross your preference, I
+shall resign it to your use with all the pleasure in the world. No
+haste!" he added, holding up his hand, as he saw a dangerous look come
+into Denis de Beaulieu's face. "If your mind revolt against hanging, it
+will be time enough two hours hence to throw yourself out of the window
+or upon the pikes of my retainers. Two hours of life are always two
+hours. A great many things may turn up in even as little a while as
+that. And, besides. If I understand her appearance, my niece has
+something to say to you. You will not disfigure your last hours by a
+want of politeness to a lady?"
+
+Denis looked at Blanche, and she made him an imploring gesture.
+
+It is likely that the old gentleman was hugely pleased at this symptom
+of an understanding; for he smiled on both, and added sweetly: "If you
+will give me your word of honor, Monsieur de Beaulieu, to await my
+return at the end of the two hours before attempting anything
+desperate, I shall withdraw my retainers, and let you speak in greater
+privacy with mademoiselle."
+
+Denis again glanced at the girl, who seemed to beseech him to agree.
+
+"I give you my word of honor," he said.
+
+Messire de Malétroit bowed, and proceeded to limp about the apartment,
+clearing his throat the while with that odd musical chirp which had
+already grown so irritating in the ears of Denis de Bealieu. He first
+possessed himself of some papers which lay upon the table; then he went
+to the mouth of the passage and appeared to give an order to the men
+behind the arras; and lastly he hobbled out through the door by which
+Denis had come in, turning upon the threshold to address a last smiling
+bow to the young couple, and followed by the chaplain with a hand lamp.
+
+No sooner were they alone than Blanche advanced toward Denis with her
+hands extended. Her face was flushed and excited, and her eyes shone
+with tears.
+
+"You shall not die!" she cried, "you shall marry me after all."
+
+"You seem to think, madam," replied Denis, "that I stand much in fear
+of death."
+
+"Oh, no, no," she said, "I see you are no poltroon[8]. It is for my own
+sake—I could not bear to have you slain for such a scruple."
+
+"I am afraid," returned Denis, "that you underrate the difficulty,
+madam. What you may be too generous to refuse, I may be too proud to
+accept. In a moment of noble feeling toward me, you forget what you
+perhaps owe to others."
+
+He had the decency to keep his eyes on the floor as he said this, and
+after he had finished, so as not to spy upon her confusion. She stood
+silent for a moment, then walked suddenly away, and falling on her
+uncle's chair, fairly burst out sobbing. Denis was in the acme of
+embarrassment. He looked round, as if to seek for inspiration, and,
+seeing a stool, plumped down upon it for something to do. There he sat,
+playing with the guard of his rapier, and wishing himself dead a
+thousand times over, and buried in the nastiest kitchen-heap in France.
+His eyes wandered round the apartment, but found nothing to arrest
+them. There were such wide spaces between the furniture, the light fell
+so badly and cheerlessly over all, the dark outside air looked in so
+coldly through the windows, that he thought he had never seen a church
+so vast, nor a tomb so melancholy. The regular sobs of Blanche de
+Malétroit measured out the time like the ticking of a clock. He read
+the device upon the shield over and over again, until his eyes became
+obscured; he stared into shadowy corners until he imagined they were
+swarming with horrible animals; and every now and again he awoke with a
+start, to remember that his last two hours were running, and death was
+on the march.
+
+Oftener and oftener, as the time went on, did his glance settle on the
+girl herself. Her face was bowed forward and covered with her hands,
+and she was shaken at intervals by the convulsive hiccough of grief.
+Even thus she was not an unpleasant object to dwell upon, so plump and
+yet so fine, with a warm brown skin, and the most beautiful hair, Denis
+thought, in the whole world of womankind. Her hands were like her
+uncle's: but they were more in place at the end of her young arms, and
+looked infinitely soft and caressing. He remembered how her blue eyes
+had shone upon him, full of anger, pity, and innocence. And the more he
+dwelt on her perfections, the uglier death looked, and the more deeply
+was he smitten with penitence at her continued tears. Now he felt that
+no man could have the courage to leave a world which contained so
+beautiful a creature; and now he would have given forty minutes of his
+last hour to have unsaid his cruel speech.
+
+Suddenly a hoarse and ragged peal of cockcrow rose to their ears from
+the dark valley below the windows. And this shattering noise in the
+silence of all around was like a light in a dark place, and shook them
+both out of their reflections.
+
+"Alas, can I do nothing to help you?" she said, looking up.
+
+"Madam," replied Denis, with a fine irrelevancy, "if I have said
+anything to wound you, believe me, it was for your own sake and not for
+mine."
+
+She thanked him with a tearful look.
+
+"I feel your position cruelly," he went on. "The world has been bitter,
+hard on you. Your uncle is a disgrace to mankind. Believe me, madam,
+there is no young gentleman in all France but would be glad of my
+opportunity, to die in doing you a momentary service."
+
+"I know already that you can be very brave and generous," she answered.
+"What I _want_ to know is whether I can serve you—now or afterward,"
+she added, with a quaver.
+
+"Most certainly," he answered, with a smile. "Let me sit beside you as
+if I were a friend, instead of a foolish intruder; try to forget how
+awkwardly we are placed to one another; make my last moments go
+pleasantly; and you will do me the chief service possible."
+
+"You are very gallant," she added, with a yet deeper sadness—"very
+gallant—and it somehow pains me. But draw nearer, if you please; and if
+you find anything to say to me, you will at least make certain of a
+very friendly listener. Ah! Monsieur de Beaulieu," she broke forth—"ah!
+Monsieur de Beaulieu, how can I look you in the face?" And she fell to
+weeping again with a renewed effusion.
+
+"Madam," said Denis, taking her hand in both of his, "reflect on the
+little time I have before me, and the great bitterness into which I am
+cast by the sight of your distress. Spare me, in my last moments, the
+spectacle of what I cannot cure even with the sacrifice of my life."
+
+"I am very selfish," answered Blanche. "I will be braver, Monsieur de
+Beaulieu, for your sake. But think if I can do you no kindness in the
+future—if you have no friends to whom I could carry your adieux. Charge
+me as heavily as you can; every burden will lighten, by so little, the
+invaluable gratitude I owe you. Put it in my power to do something more
+for you than weep."
+
+"My mother is married again, and has a young family to care for. My
+brother Guichard will inherit my fiefs; and if I am not in error, that
+will content him amply for my death. Life is a little vapor that
+passeth away, as we are told by those in holy orders. When a man is in
+a fair way and sees all life open in front of him, he seems to himself
+to make a very important figure in the world. His horse whinnies to
+him; the trumpets blow and the girls look out of window as he rides
+into town before his company; he receives many assurances of trust and
+regard—sometimes by express in a letter—sometimes face to face, with
+persons of great consequence falling on his neck. It is not wonderful
+if his head is turned for a time. But once he is dead, were he as brave
+as Hercules[9] or as wise as Solomon[10], he is soon forgotten. It is
+not ten years since my father fell, with many other knights around him,
+in a very fierce encounter, and I do not think that any one of them,
+nor so much as the name of the fight, is now remembered. No, no, madam,
+the nearer you come to it, you see that death is a dark and dusty
+corner, where a man gets into his tomb and has the door shut after him
+till the judgment day. I have few friends just now, and once I am dead
+I shall have none."
+
+"Ah, Monsieur de Beaulieu!" she exclaimed, "you forget Blanche de
+Malétroit."
+
+"You have a sweet nature, madam, and you are pleased to estimate a
+little service far beyond its worth."
+
+"It is not that," she answered. "You mistake me if you think I am
+easily touched by my own concerns. I say so because you are the noblest
+man I have ever met; because I recognize in you a spirit that would
+have made even a common person famous in the land."
+
+"And yet here I die in a mousetrap—with no more noise about it than my
+own squeaking," answered he.
+
+A look of pain crossed her face and she was silent for a little while.
+Then a light came into her eyes, and with a smile she spoke again.
+
+"I cannot have my champion think meanly of himself. Any one who gives
+his life for another will be met in paradise by all the heralds and
+angels of the Lord God. And you have no such cause to hang your head.
+For—Pray, do you think me beautiful?" she asked, with a deep flush.
+
+"Indeed, madam, I do," he said.
+
+"I am glad of that," she answered heartily. "Do you think there are
+many men in France who have been asked in marriage by a beautiful
+maiden—with her own lips—and who have refused her to her face? I know
+you men would half despise such a triumph; but believe me, we women
+know more of what is precious in love. There is nothing that should set
+a person higher in his own esteem; and we women would prize nothing
+more dearly."
+
+"You are very good," he said; "but you cannot make me forget that I was
+asked in pity and not for love."
+
+"I am not so sure of that," she replied, holding down her head. "Hear
+me to an end, Monsieur de Beaulieu. I know how you must despise me; I
+feel you are right to do so; I am too poor a creature to occupy one
+thought of your mind, although, alas! you must die for me this morning.
+But when I asked you to marry me, indeed, and indeed, it was because I
+respected and admired you, and loved you with my whole soul, from the
+very moment that you took my part against my uncle. If you had seen
+yourself, and how noble you looked, you would pity rather than despise
+me. And now," she went on, hurriedly checking him with her hand,
+"although I have laid aside all reserve and told you so much, remember
+that I know your sentiments toward me already. I would not, believe me,
+being nobly born, weary you with importunities into consent. I too have
+a pride of my own: and I declare before the holy mother of God, if you
+should now go back from your word already given, I would no more marry
+you than I would marry my uncle's groom."
+
+Denis smiled a little bitterly.
+
+"It is a small love," he said, "that shies at a little pride."
+
+She made no answer, although she probably had her own thoughts.
+
+"Come hither to the window," he said with a sigh. "Here is the dawn."
+
+And indeed the dawn was already beginning. The hollow of the sky was
+full of essential daylight, colorless and clean; and the valley
+underneath was flooded with a gray reflection. A few thin vapors clung
+in the coves of the forest or lay along the winding course of the
+river. The scene disengaged a surprising effect of stillness, which was
+hardly interrupted when the cocks began once more to crow among the
+steadings[11]. Perhaps the same fellow who had made so horrid a clangor
+in the darkness not half an hour before, now sent up the merriest cheer
+to greet the coming day. A little wind went bustling and eddying among
+the tree-tops underneath the windows. And still the daylight kept
+flooding insensibly out of the east, which was soon to grow
+incandescent and cast up that red-hot cannon-ball, the rising sun.
+
+Denis looked out over all this with a bit of a shiver. He had taken her
+hand, and retained it in his almost unconsciously.
+
+"Has the day begun already?" she said; and then illogically enough:
+"the night has been so long! Alas! what shall we say to my uncle when
+he returns?"
+
+"What you will," said Denis, and he pressed her fingers in his.
+
+She was silent.
+
+"Blanche," he said, with a swift, uncertain, passionate utterance, "you
+have seen whether I fear death. You must know well enough that I would
+as gladly leap out of that window into the empty air as to lay a finger
+on you without your free and full consent. But if you care for me at
+all do not let me lose my life in a misapprehension; for I love you
+better than the whole world; and though I will die for you blithely, it
+would be like all the joys of Paradise to live on and spend my life in
+your service."
+
+As he stopped speaking, a bell began to ring loudly in the interior of
+the house; and a clatter of armor in the corridor showed that the
+retainers were returning to their post, and the two hours were at an
+end.
+
+"After all that you have heard?" she whispered, leaning toward him with
+her lips and eyes.
+
+"I have heard nothing," he replied.
+
+"The captain's name was Florimond de Champdivers," she said in his ear.
+
+"I did not hear it," he answered, taking her supple body in his arms,
+and covered her wet face with kisses.
+
+A melodious chirping was audible behind, followed by a beautiful
+chuckle, and the voice of Messire de Malétroit wished his new nephew a
+good morning.
+
+NOTES
+
+[1] Published in 1878. Acknowledgment is due to the Charles Scribner's
+Sons Company, Publishers, for the use of the text of their edition of
+Stevenson's works.
+
+[2] 207:18 bartizan. A small overhanging turret with loop-holes and
+embrasures projecting from the parapet of a medieval building.
+
+[3] 208:1 gargoyles. Mouths of spouts, in antic shapes.
+
+[4] 209:30 debouched. Passed out.
+
+[5] 212:29 Leonardo. (1452-1519.) A famous Italian painter, architect,
+sculptor, scientist, engineer, mechanician, and musician.
+
+[6] 222:7 salle. French word for hall or room.
+
+[7] 223:13 Charlemagne. (742 or 747-814.) A great king of the Franks
+and emperor of the Romans.
+
+[8] 225:25 poltroon. A coward, a dastard.
+
+[9] 229:12 Hercules. A mighty hero in Greek and Roman mythology.
+
+[10] 229:13 Solomon. Son of David. King of Israel, 993-953 B.C.
+
+[11] 231: 26 steadings. A farmstead—barns, stables, cattle-sheds, etc.
+
+BIOGRAPHY
+
+Robert Louis Stevenson was born November 13, 1850, in Edinburgh. He was
+an only child. On his mother's side he came from a line of Scotch
+philosophers and ministers; on his father's, from a line of active
+workers and scientists. His grandfather, Robert Stevenson, and his
+father, Thomas Stevenson, gained world-wide reputations in engineering.
+
+Robert inherited from his mother throat and lung troubles. His health
+was very poor from his birth and his life was preserved only by the
+careful watchfulness of his mother and his devoted nurse, Alison
+Cunningham. As a child he was very lovable and possessed a very active
+imagination.
+
+He went to school in Edinburgh between the years 1858-1867. He first
+attended a preparatory school, then the Edinburgh academy. He spent
+considerable time at his maternal grandfather's home. It was there that
+he first tasted the delights of romance. In his school work he was none
+too studious, but all his teachers were charmed by his pleasing manner
+and general intelligence. Though an idler in other things, he worked
+constantly on the art of writing. Throughout his study in Edinburgh
+University and his unsuccessful efforts in engineering and the practice
+of law, literature became more and more a passion with him.
+
+The period between 1875 and 1879 was one of improved health and
+considerable literary activity. During this time he published _A
+Lodging for the Night, Will o' the Mill, The New Arabian Nights_, and
+an _Inland Voyage_.
+
+While in southern Europe he met and fell in love with Mrs. Osbourne. So
+after she returned to her home in California, Stevenson received the
+news that she was seriously ill. He immediately sailed for San
+Francisco, travelling as a steerage passenger because of lack of funds
+and a desire for literary material. Out of this experience grew a
+number of stories and essays. Exposure on the voyage affected his
+health and caused a very dangerous illness. After his recovery he
+married Mrs. Osbourne and returned to England with his wife and
+stepson.
+
+For a few years his work was more or less spasmodic on account of his
+bitter struggle with poor health, in 1883 he achieved success by the
+publication of _Treasure Island_. _Markheim_ appeared in 1884.
+_Kidnapped_ and _Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde_ were published in 1886.
+
+After the death of his father in 1887, Stevenson and his family sailed
+to America, where they settled in the Adirondacks for the winter of
+1888. Here his health was good and he wrote a number of essays for
+_Scribner's Magazine_. In the spring of the same year they started on a
+cruise of the south seas. They visited many of the southern islands and
+settled at Vailima, Samoa. Stevenson was interested in the Samoaas and
+took an active part in their political affairs. The tropical climate
+agreed with him and his creative power was renewed. He wrote a number
+of short stories, a series of letters on the South Seas, and the novel
+_David Balfour_.
+
+Political reverses and failing strength took away for a time his power
+to write. He was again stimulated, however, by the love and
+appreciation of his Samoan followers, and started on what promised to
+be his period of highest achievement. This promise was soon blighted by
+his untimely death from a stroke of apoplexy, December 13, 1894. He was
+buried in Samoa.
+
+BIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES
+
+_Life of Robert Louis Stevenson_, 2 vols., Graham Balfour.
+
+_Robert Louis Stevenson_, Isobel Strong.
+
+_Memories and Portraits_, Robert Louis Stevenson.
+
+_Friends on the Shelf_, Bradford Torrey.
+
+"Personal Recollections," Edmund Gosse, _Century Magazine_, 50:447.
+
+"Character Sketch," _Atlantic Monthly_, 89:89-99.
+
+"The Real Stevenson," _Atlantic Monthly_, 85:702-5.
+
+_A Bibliography of the Works of Robert Louis Stevenson_, W.F. Prideaux.
+
+CRITICISMS
+
+Fundamentally Stevenson's style is marked by a conscious aim to
+entertain. His engaging humor, free of all affectation, sentimentality,
+and exaggeration, is spontaneous and natural. His most original writing
+is _The Child's Garden of Verses_. His touch is light and his thought
+is clear and lucid. _Across the Plains_ is written in his most
+straightforward and natural style.
+
+Stevenson was a careful writer, doing with great skill any established
+piece of art. He practised diligently, and gained, as he himself
+states, his high rank by constantly drilling himself in the art of
+writing. This imitation of form to the point of perfection, rather than
+an expression of a great and moving idea, gives an air of insincerity
+to some of Stevenson's works. Yet, although seemingly artificial, he
+never chose words for the sake of mere sounds, but for their accuracy
+in truth and fitness. He was as an ephemeral shadow with an optimistic
+and real spirit. He infused an intimacy and spirituality into his
+writings that prove delightful to all his readers.
+
+The subject of Markheim, a man failing through weakness, was a favorite
+topic for Stevenson. Markheim is almost an ideal specimen of the
+impressionistic short-story. It has a plot in which Hawthorne might
+justly have revelled, a treatment as intellectual as that of Poe,
+descriptions not unlike those of Flaubert's, and a moral ending true to
+the Puritanic type. The movement of the story is swift and possesses
+perfect unity. The surprise at the end comes as a shock although the
+author has consistently and logically constructed his plot.
+
+GENERAL REFERENCES
+
+_Emerson and Other Essays_, John Jay Chapman.
+
+_Robert Louis Stevenson_, L. Cope Cornford.
+
+_Modern Novelists_, William Lyon Phelps.
+
+_Makers of English Fiction_, W.J. Dawson.
+
+"Art of Stevenson," _North American Review_, 171: 348-358.
+
+"Criticism," _Dial_, 30:345. May 18, 1901.
+
+COLLATERAL READINGS
+
+_The Suicide Club (New Arabian Nights)_, Robert Louis Stevenson.
+
+_Story of the Physician and the Saratoga Trunk_, Robert Louis
+Stevenson.
+
+_The Adventure of the Hansom Cab_, Robert Louis Stevenson.
+
+_The Rajah's Diamond_, Robert Louis Stevenson.
+
+_The Story of the House with the Green Blinds_, Robert Louis Stevenson.
+
+_The Adventure of Prince Florizel and the Detective_, Robert Louis
+Stevenson.
+
+_A Lodging for the Night_, Robert Louis Stevenson,
+
+_Providence and the Guitar_, Robert Louis Stevenson.
+
+_In the Valley_, Robert Louis Stevenson.
+
+_With the Children of Israel_, Robert Louis Stevenson.
+
+_The Lotus and the Cockleburrs_, "O. Henry."
+
+_Two Bites at a Cherry_, Thomas Bailey Aldrich.
+
+_The Notary of Perigueux_, Henry W. Longfellow.
+
+
+
+
+MARKHEIM[1]
+
+
+_By Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)_
+
+
+"Yes," said the dealer, "our windfalls[2] are of various kinds. Some
+customers are ignorant, and then I touch a dividend[3] on my superior
+knowledge. Some are dishonest," and here he held up the candle, so that
+the light fell strongly on his visitor, "and in that case," he
+continued, "I profit by my virtue."
+
+Markheim had but just entered from the daylight streets, and his eyes
+had not yet grown familiar with the mingled shine and darkness in the
+shop. At these pointed words, and before the near presence of the
+flame, he blinked painfully and looked aside.
+
+The dealer chuckled. "You come to me on Christmas Day," he resumed,
+"when you know that I am alone in my house, put up my shutters, and
+make a point of refusing business. Well, you will have to pay for that;
+you will have to pay for my loss of time, when I should be balancing my
+books; you will have to pay, besides; for a kind of manner that I
+remark in you to-day very strongly. I am the essence of discretion, and
+ask no awkward questions; but when a customer cannot look me in the
+eye, he has to pay for it." The dealer once more chuckled; and then,
+changing to his usual business voice, though still with a note of
+irony, "You can give, as usual, a clear account of how you came into
+the possession of the object?" he continued. "Still your uncle's
+cabinet? A remarkable collector, sir!"
+
+And the little pale, round-shouldered dealer stood almost on tiptoe,
+looking over the top of his gold spectacles, and nodding his head with
+every mark of disbelief. Markheim returned his gaze with one of
+infinite pity, and a touch of horror.
+
+"This time," said he, "you are in error. I have not come to sell, but
+to buy. I have no curios to dispose of; my uncle's cabinet is bare to
+the wainscot: even were it still intact, I have done well on the Stock
+Exchange, and should more likely add to it than otherwise, and my
+errand to-day is simplicity itself. I seek, a Christmas present for a
+lady," he continued, waxing more fluent as he struck into the speech he
+had prepared; "and certainly I owe you every excuse for thus disturbing
+you upon so small a matter. But the thing was neglected yesterday; I
+must produce my little compliment at dinner; and, as you very well
+know, a rich marriage is not a thing to be neglected."
+
+There followed a pause, during which the dealer seemed to weigh this
+statement incredulously. The ticking of many clocks among the curious
+lumber of the shop, and the faint rushing of the cabs in a near
+thoroughfare, filled up the interval of silence.
+
+"Well, sir," said the dealer, "be it so. You are an old customer after
+all; and if, as you say, you have the chance of a good marriage, far be
+it from me to be an obstacle. Here is a nice thing for a lady, now," he
+went on, "this hand glass—fifteenth century, warranted; comes from a
+good collection, too; but I reserve the name, in the interests of my
+customer, who was just like yourself, my dear sir, the nephew and sole
+heir of a remarkable collector."
+
+The dealer, while he thus ran on in his dry and biting voice, had
+stooped to take the object from its place; and, as he had done so, a
+shock had passed through Markheim, a start both of hand and foot, a
+sudden leap of many tumultuous passions to the face. It passed as
+swiftly as it came, and left no trace beyond a certain trembling of the
+hand that now received the glass.
+
+"A glass," he said hoarsely, and then paused, and repeated it more
+clearly. "A glass? For Christmas? Surely not."
+
+"And why not?" cried the dealer. "Why not a glass?"
+
+Markheim was looking upon him with an indefinable expression. "You ask
+me why not?" he said. "Why, look here—look in it—look at yourself! Do
+you like to see it? No! nor I—nor any man."
+
+The little man had jumped back when Markheim had so suddenly confronted
+him with the mirror; but now, perceiving there was nothing worse on
+hand, he chuckled. "Your future lady, sir, must be pretty hard
+favored," said he.
+
+"I ask you," said Markheim, "for a Christmas present, and you give me
+this—this damned reminder of years and sins and follies—this
+hand-conscience! Did you mean it? Had you a thought in your mind? Tell
+me. It will be better for you if you do. Come, tell me about yourself,
+I hazard a guess now, that you are in secret a very charitable man?"
+
+The dealer looked closely at his companion. It was very odd, Markheim
+did not appear to be laughing; there was something in his face like an
+eager sparkle of hope, but nothing of mirth.
+
+"What are you driving at?" the dealer asked.
+
+"Not charitable?" returned the other, gloomily. "Not charitable; not
+pious; not scrupulous; unloving; unbeloved; a hand to get money, a safe
+to keep it. Is that all? Dear God, man, is that all?"
+
+"I will tell you what it is," began the dealer, with some sharpness,
+and then broke off again into a chuckle. "But I see this is a love
+match of yours, and you have been drinking the lady's health."
+
+"Ah!" cried Markheim, with a strange curiosity, "Ah, have you been in
+love? Tell me about that."
+
+"I!" cried the dealer. "I in love! I never had the time, nor have I the
+time to-day for all this nonsense. Will you take the glass?"
+
+"Where is the hurry?" returned Markheim. "It is very pleasant to stand
+here talking; and life is so short and insecure that I would not hurry
+away from any pleasure—no, not even from so mild a one as this. We
+should, rather cling, cling to what little we can get, like a man at a
+cliff's edge. Every second is a cliff, if you think upon it—a cliff a
+mile high—high enough, if we fall, to dash us out of every feature of
+humanity. Hence it is best to talk pleasantly. Let us talk of each
+other; why should we wear this mask? Let us be confidential. Who knows,
+we might become friends?"
+
+"I have just one word to say to you," said the dealer. "Either make
+your purchase, or walk out of my shop."
+
+"True, true," said Markheim. "Enough fooling. To business. Show me
+something else."
+
+The dealer stooped once more, this time to replace the glass upon the
+shelf, his thin blond hair falling over his eyes as he did so. Markheim
+moved a little nearer, with one hand in the pocket of his greatcoat; he
+drew himself up and filled his lungs; at the same time many different
+emotions were depicted together on his face—terror, horror, and
+resolve, fascination, and a physical repulsion; and through a haggard
+lift of his upper lip, his teeth looked out.
+
+"This, perhaps, may suit," observed the dealer; and then, as he began
+to re-arise, Markheim bounded from behind upon his victim. The long,
+skewer-like[4] dagger flashed and fell. The dealer straggled like a
+hen, striking his temple on the shelf, and then tumbled on the floor in
+a heap.
+
+Time had some score of small voices in that shop, some stately and slow
+as was becoming to their great age, others garrulous and hurried. All
+these told out the seconds in an intricate chorus of tickings. Then the
+passage of a lad's feet, heavily running on the pavement, broke in upon
+these smaller voices and startled Markheim into the consciousness of
+his surroundings. He looked about him awfully. The candle stood on the
+counter, its flame solemnly wagging in a draught; and by that
+inconsiderable movement, the whole room was filled with noiseless
+bustle and kept heaving like a sea: the tall shadows nodding, the gross
+blots of darkness swelling and dwindling as with respiration, the faces
+of the portraits and the china gods changing and wavering like images
+in water. The inner door stood ajar, and peered into that leaguer[5] of
+shadows with a long slit of daylight like a pointing finger.
+
+From these fear-stricken rovings, Markheim's eyes returned to the body
+of his victim, where it lay both humped and sprawling, incredibly small
+and strangely meaner than in life. In these poor, miserly clothes, in
+that ungainly attitude, the dealer lay like so much sawdust. Markheim
+had feared to see it, and, lo! it was nothing. And yet, as he gazed,
+this bundle of old clothes and pool of blood began to find eloquent
+voices. There it must lie; there was none to work the cunning hinges or
+direct the miracle of locomotion—there it must lie till it was found.
+Found! aye, and then? Then would this dead flesh lift up a cry that
+would ring over England, and fill the world with the echoes of pursuit.
+Ay, dead or not, this was still the enemy. "Time was that when the
+brains were out[6]," he thought; and the first word struck into his
+mind. Time, now that the deed was accomplished—time, which had dosed
+for the victim, had become instant and momentous for the slayer.
+
+The thought was yet in his mind, when, first one and then another, with
+every variety of pace and voice—one deep as the bell from a cathedral
+turret, another ringing on its treble notes the prelude of a waltz—the
+clocks began to strike the hour of three in the afternoon.
+
+The sudden outbreak of so many tongues in that dumb chamber staggered
+him. He began to bestir himself, going to and fro with the candle,
+beleaguered by moving shadows, and startled to the soul by chance
+reflections. In many rich mirrors, some of home designs, some from
+Venice or Amsterdam, he saw his face repeated and repeated, as it were
+an army of spies; his own eyes met and detected him; and the sound of
+his own steps, lightly as they fell, vexed the surrounding quiet. And
+still as he continued to fill his pockets, his mind accused him, with a
+sickening iteration[7], of the thousand faults of his design. He should
+have chosen a more quiet hour; he should have prepared an alibi; he
+should not have used a knife; he should have been more cautious, and
+only bound and gagged the dealer, and not killed him; he should have
+been more bold, and killed the servant also; he should have done all
+things otherwise; poignant regrets, weary, incessant toiling of the
+mind to change what was unchangeable, to plan what was now useless, to
+be the architect of the irrevocable past. Meanwhile, and behind all
+this activity, brute terrors, like the scurrying of rats in a deserted
+attic, filled the more remote chambers of his brain with riot; the hand
+of the constable would fall heavy on his shoulder, and his nerves would
+jerk like a hooked fish; or he beheld, in galloping defile, the dock,
+the prison, the gallows, and the black coffin. Terror of the people in
+the street sat down before his mind like a besieging army. It was
+impossible, he thought, but that some rumor of the struggle must have
+reached their ears and set on edge their curiosity; and now, in all the
+neighboring houses, he divined them sitting motionless and with
+uplifted ear—solitary people, condemned to spend Christmas dwelling
+alone on memories of the past, and now startlingly recalled from that
+tender exercise: happy family parties, struck into silence round the
+table, the mother still with raised finger; every degree and age and
+humor, but all, by their own hearths, prying and hearkening and weaving
+the rope that was to hang him. Sometimes it seemed to him he could not
+move too softly; the clink of the tall Bohemian goblets rang out loudly
+like a bell; and alarmed by the bigness of the ticking, he was tempted
+to stop the clocks. And then, again, with a swift transition of his
+terrors, the very silence of the place appeared a source of peril, and
+a thing to strike and freeze the passer-by; and he would step more
+boldly, and bustle aloud among the contents of the shop, and imitate,
+with elaborate bravado, the movements of a busy man at ease in his own
+house.
+
+But he was now so pulled about by different alarms that, while one
+portion of his mind was still alert and cunning, another trembled on
+the brink of lunacy. One hallucination in particular took a strong hold
+on his credulity. The neighbor hearkening with white face beside his
+window, the passer-by arrested by a horrible surmise on the
+pavement—these could at worst suspect, they could not know; through the
+brick walls and shuttered windows only sounds could penetrate. But
+here, within the house, was he alone? He knew he was; he had watched
+the servant set forth sweethearting, in her poor best, "out for the
+day" written in every ribbon and smile. Yes, he was alone, of course;
+and yet, in the bulk of empty house about him, he could surely hear a
+stir of delicate footing—he was surely conscious, inexplicably
+conscious, of some presence. Ay, surely; to every room and corner of
+the house his imagination followed it; and now it was a faceless thing,
+and yet had eyes to see with; and again it was a shadow of himself; and
+yet again behold the image of the dead dealer, reinspired with cunning
+and hatred.
+
+At times, with a strong effort, he would glance at the open door which
+still seemed to repel his eyes. The house was tall, the skylight small
+and dirty, the day blind with fog; and the light that filtered down to
+the ground story was exceedingly faint, and showed dimly on the
+threshold of the shop. And yet, in that strip of doubtful brightness,
+did there not hang wavering a shadow?
+
+Suddenly, from the street outside, a very jovial gentleman began to
+beat with a staff on the shop door, accompanying his blows with shouts
+and railleries[8] in which the dealer was continually called upon by
+name. Markheim, smitten into ice, glanced at the dead man. But no! he
+lay quite still; he was fled away far beyond earshot of these blows and
+shoutings; he was sunk beneath seas of silence; and his name, which
+would once have caught his notice above the howling of a storm, had
+become an empty sound. And presently the jovial gentleman desisted from
+his knocking and departed.
+
+Here was a broad hint to hurry what remained to be done, to get forth
+from, this accusing neighborhood, to plunge into a bath of London
+multitudes, and to reach, on the other side of day, that haven of
+safety and apparent, innocence—-his bed. One visitor had come: at any
+moment it another might follow and be more obstinate. To have done the
+deed, and yet not to reap the profit, would be too abhorrent a failure.
+The money, that was now Markheim's concern: and as a means to that, the
+keys.
+
+He glanced over his shoulder at the open door, where the shadow was
+still lingering and shivering; and with no conscious repugnance of the
+mind, yet with a tremor of the belly, he drew near the body of his
+victim. The human character had quite departed. Like a suit
+half-stuffed with bran, the limbs lay scattered, the trunk doubled, on
+the floor; and yet the thing repelled him. Although so dingy and
+inconsiderable to the eye, he feared it might have more significance to
+the touch. He took the body by the shoulders, and turned it on its
+back. It was strangely light and supple, and the limbs, as if they had
+been broken, fell into the oddest postures. The face was robbed of all
+expression; but it was as pale as wax, and shockingly smeared with
+blood about one temple. That was, for Markheim, the one displeasing
+circumstance. It carried him back, upon the instant, to a certain fair
+day in a fishers' village: a gray day, a piping wind, a crowd upon the
+street, the blare of brasses, the booming of drums, the nasal voice of
+a ballad singer; and a boy going to and fro, buried over head in the
+crowd and divided between interest and fear, until, coming out upon the
+chief place of concourse, he beheld a booth and a great screen with
+pictures, dismally designed, garishly[9] colored: Brownrigg[10] with
+her apprentice; the Mannings[11] with their murdered guest; Weare in
+the death grip of Thurtell[12]; and a score besides of famous crimes.
+The thing was as clear as an illusion; he was once again that little
+boy; he was looking once again, and with the same sense of physical
+revolt, at these vile pictures; he was still stunned by the thumping of
+the drums. A bar of that day's music returned upon his memory; and at
+that, for the first time, a qualm came over him, a breath of nausea, a
+sudden weakness of the joints, which he must instantly resist and
+conquer.
+
+He judged it more prudent to confront than to flee from these
+considerations; looking the more hardily in the dead face, bending his
+mind to realize the nature and greatness of his crime. So little a
+while ago that face had moved with every change of sentiment, that pale
+mouth had spoken, that body had been all on fire with governable
+energies; and now, and by his act, that piece of life had been
+arrested, as the horologist[13], with interjected finger, arrests the
+beating of the clock. So he reasoned in vain; he could rise to no more
+remorseful consciousness; the same heart which had shuddered before the
+painted effigies of crime, looked on its reality unmoved. At best, he
+felt a gleam of pity for one who had been endowed in vain with all
+those faculties that can make the world a garden of enchantment, one
+who had never lived and who was now dead. But of penitence, no, not a
+tremor.
+
+With that, shaking himself clear of these considerations, he found the
+keys and advanced toward the open door of the shop. Outside, it had
+begun to rain smartly; and the sound of the shower upon the roof had
+banished silence. Like some dripping cavern, the chambers of the house
+were haunted by an incessant echoing, which filled the ear and mingled
+with the ticking of the clocks. And, as Markheim approached the door,
+he seemed to hear, in answer to his own cautious tread, the steps of
+another foot withdrawing up the stair. The shadow still palpitated
+loosely on the threshold. He threw a ton's weight of resolve upon his
+muscles, and drew back the door.
+
+The faint, foggy daylight glimmered dimly on the bare floor and stairs;
+on the bright suit of armor posted, halbert in hand, upon the landing;
+and on the dark wood carvings and framed pictures that hung against the
+yellow panels of the wainscot. So loud was the beating of the rain
+through all the house that, in Markheim's ears, it began to be
+distinguished into many different sounds. Footsteps and sighs, the
+tread of regiments marching in the distance, the chink of money in the
+counting, and the creaking of doors held stealthily ajar, appeared to
+mingle with the patter of the drops upon the cupola and the gushing of
+the water in the pipes. The sense that he was not alone grew upon him
+to the verge of madness. On every side he was haunted and begirt by
+presences. He heard them moving in the upper chambers; from the shop,
+he heard the dead man getting to his legs; and as he began with a great
+effort to mount the stairs, feet fled quietly before him and followed
+stealthily behind. If he were but deaf, he thought, how tranquilly he
+would possess his soul! And then again, and hearkening with ever fresh
+attention, he blessed himself for that unresting sense which held the
+outposts and stood a trusty sentinel upon his life. His head turned
+continually on his neck; his eyes, which seemed starting from their
+orbits, scouted on every side, and on every side were half rewarded as
+with the tail of something nameless vanishing. The four-and-twenty
+steps to the first floor were four-and-twenty agonies.
+
+On that first story the doors stood ajar, three of them like three
+ambushes, shaking his nerves like the throats of cannon. He could never
+again, he felt, be sufficiently immured and fortified from men's
+observing eyes; he longed to be home, girt in by walls, buried among
+bed-clothes, and invisible to all but God. And at that thought he
+wondered a little, recollecting tales of other murderers and the fear
+they were said to entertain of heavenly avengers. It was not so, at
+least, with him. He feared the laws of nature, lest, in their callous
+and immutable procedure, they should preserve some damning evidence of
+his crime. He feared tenfold more, with a slavish, superstitious
+terror, some scission[14] in the continuity of man's experience, some
+wilful illegality of nature. He played a game of skill, depending on
+the rules, calculating consequence from cause; and what if nature, as
+the defeated tyrant overthrew the chessboard, should break the mould of
+their succession? The like had befallen Napoleon (so writers said) when
+the winter changed the time of its appearance. The like might befall
+Markheim: the solid walls might become transparent and reveal his
+doings like those of bees in a glass hive; the stout planks might yield
+under his foot like quicksands and detain him in their clutch; aye, and
+there were soberer accidents that might destroy him: if, for instance,
+the house should fall and imprison him beside the body of his victim;
+or the house next door should fly on fire, and the firemen invade him
+from all sides. These things he feared; and, in a sense, these things
+might be called the hands of God reached forth against sin. But about
+God himself he was at ease; his act was doubtless exceptional, but so
+were his excuses, which God knew; it was there, and not among men, that
+he felt sure of justice.
+
+When he got safe into the drawing-room, and shut the door behind him,
+he was aware of a respite from alarms. The room was quite dismantled,
+uncarpeted besides, and strewn with packing cases and incongruous
+furniture; several great pier glasses, in which he beheld himself at
+various angles, like an actor on a stage; many pictures, framed and
+unframed, standing, with their faces to the wall; a fine Sheraton[15]
+sideboard, a cabinet of marquetry[16], and a great old bed, with
+tapestry hangings. The windows opened to the floor; but by great good
+fortune the lower part of the shutters had been closed, and this
+concealed him from the neighbors. Here, then, Markheim drew in a
+packing case before the cabinet, and began to search among the keys. It
+was a long business, for there were many; and it was irksome, besides;
+for, after all, there might be nothing in the cabinet, and time was on
+the wing. But the closeness of the occupation sobered him. With the
+tail of his eye he saw the door—even glanced at it from time to time
+directly, like a besieged commander pleased to verify the good estate
+of his defences. But in truth he was at peace. The rain falling in the
+street sounded natural and pleasant. Presently, on the other side, the
+notes of a piano were wakened to the music of a hymn, and the voices of
+many children took up the air and words. How stately, how comfortable
+was the melody! How fresh the youthful voices! Markheim gave ear to it
+smilingly, as he sorted out the keys; and his mind was thronged with
+answerable ideas and images; church-going children and the pealing of
+the high organ; children afield, bathers by the brookside, ramblers on
+the brambly common, kite-flyers in the windy and cloud-navigated sky;
+and then, at another cadence of the hymn, back again to church, and the
+somnolence of summer Sundays, and the high, genteel voice of the parson
+(which he smiled a little to recall), and the painted Jacobean[17]
+tombs, and the dim lettering of the Ten Commandments in the chancel.
+
+And as he sat thus, at once busy and absent, he was startled to his
+feet. A flash of ice, a flash of fire, a bursting gush of blood, went
+over him, and then he stood transfixed and thrilling. A step mounted
+the stair slowly and steadily, and presently a hand was laid upon the
+knob, and the lock clicked, and the door opened.
+
+Fear held Markheim in a vice. What to expect he knew not, whether the
+dead man walking, or the official ministers of human justice, or some
+chance witness blindly stumbling in to consign him to the gallows. But
+when a face was thrust into the aperture, glanced round the room,
+looked at him, nodded and smiled as if in friendly recognition, and
+then withdrew again, and the door closed behind it, his fear broke
+loose from his control in a hoarse cry. At the sound of this the
+visitant returned.
+
+"Did you call me?" he asked pleasantly, and with that he entered the
+room, and closed the door behind him.
+
+Markheim stood and gazed at him with all his eyes. Perhaps there was a
+film upon his sight, but the outlines of the newcomer seemed to change
+and waver like those of the idols in the wavering candlelight of the
+shop: and at times he thought he knew him; and at times he thought he
+bore a likeness to himself; and always, like a lump of living terror,
+there lay in his bosom the conviction that this thing was not of the
+earth and not of God.
+
+And yet the creature had a strange air of the commonplace, as he stood
+looking on Markheim with a smile; and when he added: "You are looking
+for the money, I believe?" it was in the tones of everyday politeness.
+
+Markheim made no answer.
+
+"I should warn you," resumed the other, "that the maid has left her
+sweetheart earlier than usual and will soon be here. If Mr. Markheim be
+found in this house, I need not describe to him the consequences."
+
+"You know me?" cried the murderer.
+
+The visitor smiled. "You have long been a favorite of mine," he said;
+"and I have long observed and often sought to help you."
+
+"What are you?" cried Markheim: "the devil?"
+
+"What I may be," returned the other, "cannot affect the service I
+propose to render you."
+
+"It can," cried Markheim; "it does! Be helped by you? No, never; not by
+you! You do not know me yet; thank God, you do not know me!"
+
+"I know you," replied the visitant, with a sort of kind severity or
+rather firmness. "I know you to the soul."
+
+"Know me!" cried Markheim. "Who can do so? My life is but a
+travesty[18] and slander on myself. I have lived to belie my nature.
+All men do; all men are better than this disguise that grows about and
+stifles them. You see each dragged away by life, like one whom bravos
+have seized and muffled in a cloak. If they had their own control—if
+you could see their faces, they would be altogether different, they
+would shine out for heroes and saints! I am worse than most; myself is
+more overlaid; my excuse is known to me and God. But, had I the time, I
+could disclose myself."
+
+"To me?" inquired the visitant.
+
+"To you before all," returned the murderer. "I supposed you were
+intelligent. I thought—since you exist—you would prove a reader of the
+heart. And yet you would propose to judge me by my acts! Think of it;
+my acts! I was born and I have lived in a land of giants; giants have
+dragged me by the wrists since I was born out of my mother—the giants
+of circumstance. And you would judge me by my acts! But can you not
+look within? Can you not understand that evil is hateful to me? Can you
+not see within me the clear writing of conscience, never blurred by any
+wilful sophistry[19] although too often disregarded? Can you not read
+me for a thing that surely must be common as humanity—the unwilling
+sinner?"
+
+"All this is very feelingly expressed," was the reply, "but it regards
+me not. These points of consistency are beyond my province, and I care
+not in the least by what compulsion you may have been dragged away, so
+as you are but carried in the right direction. But time flies; the
+servant delays, looking in the faces of the crowd and at the pictures
+on the hoardings, but still she keeps moving nearer; and remember, it
+is as if the gallows itself were striding toward you through the
+Christmas streets! Shall I help you—I, who know all? Shall I tell you
+where to find the money?"
+
+"For what price?" asked Markheim.
+
+"I offer you the service for a Christmas gift," returned the other.
+
+Markheim could not refrain from smiling with a kind of bitter triumph,
+"No," said he, "I will take nothing at your hands; if I were dying of
+thirst, and it was your hand that put the pitcher to my lips, I should
+find the courage to refuse. It may be credulous, but I will do nothing
+to commit myself to evil."
+
+"I have no objection to a death-bed repentance," observed the visitant.
+
+"Because you disbelieve their efficacy[20]!" Markheim cried.
+
+"I do not say so," returned the other; "but I look on these things from
+a different side, and when the life is done my interest falls. The man
+has lived to serve me, to spread black looks under color of religion,
+or to sow tares[21] in the wheat field, as you do, in a course of weak
+compliance with desire. Now that he draws so near to his deliverance,
+he can add but one act of service—to repent, to die smiling, and thus
+to build up in confidence and hope the more timorous of my surviving
+followers. I am not so hard a master. Try me. Accept my help. Please
+yourself in life as you have done hitherto; please yourself more amply,
+spread your elbows at the board; and when the night begins to fall and
+the curtains to be drawn, I tell you, for your greater comfort, that
+you will find it even easy to compound your quarrel with your
+conscience, and to make a truckling peace with God. I came but now from
+such a death-bed, and the room was full of sincere mourners, listening
+to the man's last words; and when I looked into that face, which had
+been set as a flint against mercy, I found it smiling with hope."
+
+"And do you, then, suppose me such a creature?" asked Markheim. "Do you
+think I have no more generous aspirations than to sin, and sin, and
+sin, and, at last, sneak into heaven? My heart rises at the thought. Is
+this, then, your experience of mankind? or is it because you find me
+with red hands that you presume such baseness? and is this crime of
+murder indeed so impious as to dry up the very springs of good?"
+
+"Murder is to me no special category[22]," replied the other. "All sins
+are murder, even all life is war. I behold your race, like starving
+mariners on a raft, plucking crusts out of the hands of famine and
+feeding on each other's lives. I follow sins beyond the moment of their
+acting; I find in all that the last consequence is death; and to my
+eyes, the pretty maid who thwarts her mother with such taking graces on
+a question of a ball, drips no less visibly with human gore than such a
+murderer as yourself. Do I say that I follow sins? I follow virtues
+also; they differ not by the thickness of a nail, they are both scythes
+for the reaping angel of Death. Evil, for which I live, consists not in
+action but in character. The bad man is dear to me; not the bad act,
+whose fruits, if we could follow them far enough down the hurtling[23]
+cataract of the ages, might yet be found more blessed than those of the
+rarest virtues. And it is not because you have killed a dealer, but
+because you are Markheim, that I offered to forward your escape."
+
+"I will lay my heart open to you," answered Markheim. "This crime on
+which you find me is my last. On my way to it I have learned many
+lessons; itself is a lesson, a momentous lesson. Hitherto I have been
+driven with revolt to what I would not; I was a bondslave to poverty,
+driven and scourged. There are robust virtues that can stand in these
+temptations; mine was not so: I had a thirst of pleasure. But to-day,
+and out of this deed, I pluck both warning and riches—both the power
+and a fresh resolve to be myself. I become in all things a free actor
+in the world; I begin to see myself all changed, these hands the agents
+of good, this heart at peace. Some thing comes over me out of the past;
+something of what I have dreamed on Sabbath evenings to the sound of
+the church organ, of what I forecast when I shed tears over noble
+books, or talked, an innocent child, with my mother. There lies my
+life; I have wandered a few years, but now I see once more my city of
+destination."
+
+"You are to use this money on the Stock Exchange, I think?" remarked
+the visitor; "and there, if I mistake not, you have already lost some
+thousands?"
+
+"Ah," said Markheim, "but this time I have a sure thing."
+
+"This time, again, you will lose," replied the visitor, quietly.
+
+"Ah, but I keep back the half!" cried Markheim.
+
+"That also you will lose," said the other.
+
+The sweat started upon Markheim's brow. "Well, then, what matter?" he
+exclaimed. "Say it be lost, say I am plunged again in poverty, shall
+one part of me, and that the worse, continue until the end to override
+the better? Evil and good ran strong in me, hailing me both ways. I do
+not love the one thing, I love all. I can conceive great deeds,
+renunciations, martyrdoms; and though I be fallen to such a crime as
+murder, pity is no stranger to my thoughts. I pity the poor; who knows
+their trials better than myself? I pity and help them; I prize love, I
+love honest laughter; there is no good thing nor true thing on earth
+but I love it from my heart. And are my vices only to direct my life,
+and my virtues to lie without effect, like some passive lumber of the
+mind? Not so; good, also, is a spring of acts."
+
+But the visitant raised his finger. "For six-and-thirty years that you
+have been in this world," said he, "through many changes of fortune and
+varieties of humor, I have watched you steadily fall. Fifteen years ago
+you would have started at a theft. Three years back you would have
+blenched at the name of murder. Is there any crime, is there any
+cruelty or meanness, from which you still recoil?—five years from now I
+shall detect you in the fact! Downward, downward lies your way; nor can
+anything but death avail to stop you."
+
+"It is true," Markheim said huskily, "I have in some degree complied
+with evil. But it is so with all: the very saints, in the mere exercise
+of living, grow less dainty, and take on the tone of their
+surroundings."
+
+"I will propound to you one simple question," said the other; "and as
+you answer, I shall read to you your moral horoscope. You have grown in
+many things more lax; possibly you do right to be so; and at any
+account, it is the same with all men. But granting that, are you in any
+one particular, however trifling, more difficult to please with your
+own conduct, or do you go in all things with a looser rein?"
+
+"In any one?" repeated Markheim, with an anguish of consideration.
+"No," he added, with despair, "in none! I have gone down in all."
+
+"Then," said the visitor, "content yourself with what you are, for you
+will never change; and the words of your part on this stage are
+irrevocably written down."
+
+Markheim stood for a long while silent, and indeed it was the visitor
+who first broke the silence. "That being so," he said, "shall I show
+you the money?"
+
+"And grace?" cried Markheim.
+
+"Have you not tried it?" returned the other. "Two or three years ago,
+did I not see you on the platform of revival meetings, and was not your
+voice the loudest in the hymn?"
+
+"It is true," said Markheim; "and I see clearly what remains for me by
+way of duty. I thank you for these lessons from my soul; my eyes are
+opened, and I behold myself at last for what I am."
+
+At this moment, the sharp note of the door-bell rang through the house;
+and the visitant, as though this were some concerted signal for which
+he had been waiting, changed at once in his demeanor.
+
+"The maid!" he cried. "She has returned, as I forewarned you, and there
+is now before you one more difficult passage. Her master, you must say,
+is ill; you must let her in, with an assured but rather serious
+countenance—no smiles, no overacting, and I promise you success! Once
+the girl within, and the door closed, the same dexterity that has
+already rid you of the dealer will relieve you of this last danger in
+your path. Thenceforward you have the whole evening—the whole night, if
+needful—to ransack the treasures of the house and to make good your
+safety. This is help that comes to you with the mask of danger. Up!" he
+cried: "up, friend; your life hangs trembling in the scales: up, and
+act!"
+
+Markheim steadily regarded his counsellor. "If I be condemned to evil
+acts," he said, "there is still one door of freedom open—I can cease
+from action. If my life be an ill thing, I can lay it down. Though I
+be, as you say truly, at the beck of every small temptation, I can yet,
+by one decisive gesture, place myself beyond the reach of all. My love
+of good is damned to barrenness; it may, and let it be! But I have
+still my hatred of evil; and from that, to your galling disappointment,
+you shall see that I can draw both energy and courage."
+
+The features of the visitor began to undergo a wonderful and lovely
+change: they brightened and softened with a tender triumph; and, even
+as they brightened, faded and dislimned[24]. But Markheim did not pause
+to watch or understand the transformation. He opened the door and went
+downstairs very slowly, thinking to himself. His past went soberly
+before him; he beheld it as it was, ugly and strenuous like a dream,
+random as chance-medley—a scene of defeat. Life, as he thus reviewed
+it, tempted him no longer; but on the farther side he perceived a quiet
+haven for his bark. He paused in the passage, and looked into the shop,
+where the candle still burned by the dead body. It was strangely
+silent. Thoughts of the dealer swarmed into his mind, as he stood
+gazing. And then the bell once more broke out into impatient clamor.
+
+He confronted the maid upon the threshold with something like a smile.
+
+"You had better go for the police," said he: "I have killed your
+master."
+
+NOTES
+
+[1] Written in 1884. This story is used by permission of and special
+arrangement with the Charles Scribner's Sons Company, Publishers.
+
+[2] 237:1 windfalls. Unexpected gains.
+
+[3] 237:3 dividend. His knowledge a business asset that draws interest.
+
+[4] 241:22 skewer-like. Like a wooden pin now used to fasten meat.
+
+[5] 242:11 leaguer. Place besieged with shadows.
+
+[6] 242:27 Time was that when the brains were out. See Macbeth, Act
+III, sc. 4, line 78.
+
+[7] 243:16 iteration. Repetition.
+
+[8] 246:25 railleries. Merry jesting or ridicule.
+
+[9] 247:7 garishly. A blinding, gaudy effect.
+
+[10] 247:7 Brownrigg. A notorious murderess living in England in the
+middle of the eighteenth century. She was hanged and her skeleton is
+still preserved.
+
+[11] 247:8 Mannings. Marie Manning and her husband murdered a former
+suitor. They were given, a death sentence.
+
+[12] 247:9 Thurtell. A gambler who quarrelled with Weare and killed him
+after he had professed peace. He designed his own gallows.
+
+[13] 247:25 horologist. One who makes timepieces.
+
+[14] 249:27 scission. A cleaving or a dividing.
+
+[15] 250:25 Sheraton. Next to Chippendale the greatest furniture
+designer and cabinet-maker.
+
+[16] 250:25 marquetry. An inlay of some thin material in the surface of
+a piece of furniture or other object.
+
+[17] 251:23 Jacobean. Pertaining to the time of James I of England.
+
+[18] 253:12 travesty. A grotesque imitation.
+
+[19] 254:3 sophistry. Methods of the Greek sophists.
+
+[20] 254:29 efficacy. Effective energy.
+
+[21] 255:5 sow tares, etc. See Matthew XII, 24-30.
+
+[22] 255:29 category. A class, condition, or predicament.
+
+[23] 256:14 hurtling. Rushing headlong or confusedly.
+
+[24] 280:10 dislimned. Erased or effaced.
+
+COLLATERAL READINGS
+
+_Treasure Island_, R.L. Stevenson.
+
+_Kidnapped_, R.L. Stevenson.
+
+_Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde_, R.L. Stevenson.
+
+_Prince Otto_, R.L. Stevenson.
+
+_Across the Plains_, R.L. Stevenson.
+
+_Travels with a Donkey_, R.L. Stevenson.
+
+_An Inland Voyage_, R.L. Stevenson.
+
+_Essays on Burns and Thoreau_, R.L. Stevenson.
+
+_Virginibus Puerisque_, R.L. Stevenson.
+
+_The Child's Garden of Verses_, R.L. Stevenson.
+
+_The Masque of the Red Death_, Edgar Allan Poe.
+
+_The Pit and the Pendulum_, Edgar Allan Poe.
+
+_A Coward_, Guy de Maupassant.
+
+_The Substitute_, François Coppée.
+
+_The Revolt of Mother_, Mary Wilkins Freeman.
+
+_Flute and Violin_, James Lane Alien.
+
+_A Lear of the Steppes_, Ivan Turgeneff.
+
+_Rappacini's Daughter_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A COLLECTION OF SHORT-STORIES ***
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+<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of A Collection of Short-Stories</div>
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+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: A Collection of Short-Stories</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Various</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Editor: L.A. Pittenger</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: June 25, 2004 [eBook #12732]<br />
+[Most recently updated: May 20, 2022]</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div>
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+<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Charles Aldarondo, Keith M. Eckrich, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team</div>
+<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A COLLECTION OF SHORT-STORIES ***</div>
+
+<h1>A Collection of Short-Stories</h1>
+
+<h2 class="no-break">EDITED BY<br/>
+L.A. PITTENGER, A.M.,<br/>
+CRITIC IN ENGLISH, INDIANA UNIVERSITY</h2>
+
+<p class="center">
+New York:<br/>
+THE MACMILLAN COMPANY,<br/>
+1914
+</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+Set up and electrotyped. Published November, 1913. Reprinted January, 1914.
+</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+Norwood Press,<br/>
+J.S. Cushing Co.&mdash;Berwick &amp; Smith Co.,<br/>
+Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
+</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2>Contents</h2>
+
+<table summary="" style="">
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap00">A PREFATORY NOTE</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap01">INTRODUCTION:</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap01.1">     History of the Short-story</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap01.2">     Qualities of the Short-story</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap01.3">     Composition of the Short-story</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap01.4">     Books for Reference</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap01.5">     Collections of Short-stories</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap02">THE FATHER. 1860. Björnstjerne Björnson.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap03">THE GRIFFIN AND THE MINOR CANON. 1887. Frank R. Stockton.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap04">THE PIECE OF STRING. 1884. Guy de Maupassant.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap05">THE MAN WHO WAS. 1889. Rudyard Kipling.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap06">THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER. 1839. Edgar Allan Poe.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap07">THE GOLD-BUG. 1843. Edgar Allan Poe.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap08">THE BIRTHMARK. 1843. Nathaniel Hawthorne.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap09">ETHAN BRAND. 1848. Nathaniel Hawthorne.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap10">THE SIRE DE MALÉTROIT'S DOOR. 1878. Robert Louis Stevenson.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap11">MARKHEIM. 1884. Robert Louis Stevenson.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+</table>
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap00"></a>A PREFATORY NOTE</h2>
+
+<p>
+This collection of short-stories does not illustrate the history of
+short-story writing, nor does it pretend that these are the ten best
+stories ever written, but it does attempt to present selections from a
+list of the greatest short-stories that have proved, in actual use,
+most beneficial to high school students.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The introduction presents a concise statement of the essentials of the
+history, qualities, and composition of the short-story. A brief
+biography of each author and a criticism covering the main
+characteristics of his writings serve as starting points for the
+recitation. The references following both the biography and criticism
+are given in order that the study of the short-story may be amplified,
+and that high school teachers may build a systematic and serviceable
+library about their class work in the teaching of the story. The
+collateral readings, listed after each story, will aid in the creation
+of a suitable atmosphere for the story studied, and explain many
+questions developed in the recitation. Only such definitions as are
+not easily found in school dictionaries are included in the notes.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap01"></a>INTRODUCTION</h2>
+
+<h3><a name="chap01.1"></a>HISTORY OF THE SHORT-STORY</h3>
+
+<p>
+Just when, where, and by whom story-telling was begun no one can say.
+From the first use of speech, no doubt, our ancestors have told
+stories of war, love, mysteries, and the miraculous performances of
+lower animals and inanimate objects. The ultimate source of all
+stories lies in a thorough democracy, unhampered by the restrictions
+of a higher civilization. Many tales spring from a loathsome filth
+that is extremely obnoxious to our present day tastes. The remarkable
+and gratifying truth is, however, that the short-story, beginning in
+the crude and brutal stages of man's development, has gradually
+unfolded to greater and more useful possibilities, until in our own
+time it is a most flexible and moral literary form.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The first historical evidence in the development of the story shows no
+conception of a short-story other than that it is not so long as other
+narratives. This judgment of the short-story obtained until the
+beginning of the nineteenth century, when a new version of its meaning
+was given, and an enlarged vision of its possibilities was experienced
+by a number of writers almost simultaneously. In the early centuries
+of story-telling there was only one purpose in mind&mdash;that of narrating
+for the joy of the telling and hearing. The story-tellers sacrificed
+unity and totality of effect as well as originality for an
+entertaining method of reciting their incidents.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The story of <i>Ruth</i> and the <i>Prodigal Son</i> are excellent short tales,
+but they do not fulfill the requirements of our modern short-story for
+the reason that they are not constructed for one single impression,
+but are in reality parts of possible longer stories. They are, as it
+were, parts of stories not unlike <i>Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde</i> and <i>A
+Lear of the Steppes</i>, and lack those complete and concise artistic
+effects found in the short-stories, <i>Markheim</i> and <i>Mumu</i>, by the same
+authors. Both <i>Ruth</i> and the <i>Prodigal Son</i> are exceptionally well
+told, possess a splendid moral tone, and are excellent prophecies of
+what the nineteenth century has developed for us in the art of
+short-story writing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Greeks did very little writing in prose until the era of their
+decadence, and showed little instinct to use the concise and unified
+form of the short-story. The conquering Romans followed closely in the
+paths of their predecessors and did little work in the shorter
+narratives. The myths of Greece and Rome were not bound by facts, and
+opened a wonderland where writers were free to roam. The epics were
+slow in movement, and presented a list of loosely organized stories
+arranged about some character like Ulysses or AEneas.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+During the mediaeval period story-tellers and stories appeared
+everywhere. The more ignorant of these story-tellers produced the
+fable, and the educated monks produced the simple, crude and
+disjointed tales. The <i>Gesta Romanorum</i> is a wonderful storehouse of
+these mediaeval stories. In the <i>Decameron</i> Boccaccio deals with
+traditional and contemporary materials. He is a born story-teller and
+presents many interesting and well-told narratives, but as Professor
+Baldwin[1] has said, more than half are merely anecdotes, and the
+remaining stories are bare plots, ingeniously done in a kind of
+scenario form. Three approach our modern idea of the short-story, and
+two, the second story of the second day and the sixth story of the
+ninth day, actually attain to our standard. Boccaccio was not
+conscious of a standard in short-story telling, for he had none in the
+sense that Poe and Maupassant defined and practiced it. Chaucer in
+England told his stories in verse and added the charm of humor and
+well defined characters to the development of story-telling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the seventeenth century Cervantes gave the world its first great
+novel, <i>Don Quixote</i>. Cervantes was careless in his work and did not
+write short-stories, but tales that are fairly brief. Spain added to
+the story a high sense of chivalry and a richness of character that
+the Greek romance and the Italian novella did not possess. France
+followed this loose composition and lack of beauty in form. Scarron
+and Le Sage, the two French fiction writers of this period,
+contributed little or nothing to the advancement of story-telling.
+Cervantes' <i>The Liberal Lover</i> is as near as this period came to
+producing a real short-story.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The story-telling of the seventeenth century was largely shaped by the
+popularity of the drama. In the eighteenth century the drama gave
+place to the essay, and it is to the sketch and essay that we must go
+to trace the evolution of the story during this period. Voltaire in
+France had a burning message in every essay, and he paid far greater
+attention to the development of the thought of his message than to the
+story he was telling. Addison and Steele in the <i>Spectator</i> developed
+some real characters of the fiction type and told some good stories,
+but even their best, like <i>Theodosius and Constantia</i>, fall far short
+of developing all the dramatic possibilities, and lack the focusing of
+interest found in the nineteenth century stories. Some of Lamb's
+<i>Essays of Elia</i>, especially the <i>Dream Children</i>, introduce a
+delicate fancy and an essayist's clearness of thought and statement
+into the story. At the close of this century German romanticism began
+to seep into English thought and prepare the way for things new in
+literary thought and treatment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The nineteenth century opened with a decided preference for fiction.
+Washington Irving, reverting to the <i>Spectator</i>, produced his
+sketches, and, following the trend of his time, looked forward to a
+new form and wrote <i>The Spectre Bridegroom</i> and <i>Rip Van Winkle</i>. It
+is only by a precise definition of short-story that Irving is robbed
+of the honor of being the founder of the modern short-story. He loved
+to meander and to fit his materials to his story scheme in a leisurely
+manner. He did not quite see what Hawthorne instinctively followed and
+Poe consciously defined and practiced, and he did not realize that
+terseness of statement and totality of impression were the chief
+qualities he needed to make him the father of a new literary form. Poe
+and Maupassant have reduced the form of the short-story to an exact
+science; Hawthorne and Harte have done successfully in the field of
+romanticism what the Germans, Tieck and Hoffman, did not do so well;
+Bjornson and Henry James have analyzed character psychologically in
+their short-stories; Kipling has used the short-story as a vehicle for
+the conveyance of specific knowledge; Stevenson has gathered most, if
+not all, of the literary possibilities adaptable to short-story use,
+and has incorporated them in his <i>Markheim</i>.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+France with her literary newspapers and artistic tendencies, and the
+United States with magazines calling incessantly for good
+short-stories, and with every section of its conglomerate life
+clamoring to express itself, lead in the production and rank of
+short-stories. Maupassant and Stevenson and Hawthorne and Poe are the
+great names in the ranks of short-story writers. The list of present
+day writers is interminable, and high school students can best acquire
+a reasonable appreciation of the great work these writers are doing by
+reading regularly some of the better grade literary magazines.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For a comprehensive view of specimens representing the history and
+development of the short-story, students should have access to Brander
+Matthews' <i>The Short Story</i>, Jessup and Canby's <i>The Book of the
+Short-Story</i>, and Waite and Taylor's <i>Modern Masterpieces of Short
+Prose Fiction</i>.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+NOTE: [1] <i>American Short-Stories</i>, by Charles Sears Baldwin, New
+York: Longmans, Green, &amp; Company, 1904.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h3><a name="chap01.2"></a>QUALITIES OF THE SHORT-STORY</h3>
+
+<p>
+It was not until well along in the nineteenth century that any one
+attempted to define the short-story. The three quotations given here
+are among the best things that have been spoken on this subject.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The right novella is never a novel cropped back from the size of a
+tree to a bush, or the branch of a tree stuck into the ground and made
+to serve for a bush. It is another species, destined by the agencies
+at work in the realm of unconsciousness to be brought into being of
+its own kind, and not of another,"&mdash;W.D. Howells, <i>North American
+Review</i>, 173:429.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A true short-story is something other and something more than a mere
+story which is short. A true short-story differs from the novel
+chiefly in its essential unity of impression. In a far more exact and
+precise use of the word, a short-story has unity as a novel cannot
+have it…. A short-story deals with a single character, a single
+event, a single emotion, or the series of emotions called forth by a
+single situation.&mdash;Brander Matthews, <i>The Philosophy of the
+Short-Story</i>.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The aim of a short-story is to produce a single narrative effect with
+the greatest economy of means that is consistent with the utmost
+emphasis."&mdash;Clayton Hamilton, <i>Materials and Methods of Fiction</i>.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The short-story must always have a compact unity and a direct
+simplicity. In such stories as Björnson's <i>The Father</i> and
+Maupassant's <i>The Piece of String</i> this simplicity is equal to that of
+the anecdote, but in no case can an anecdote possess the dramatic
+possibilities of these simple short-stories; for a short-story must
+always have that tensity of emotion that comes only in the crucial
+tests of life.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The short-story does not demand the consistency in treatment of the
+long story, for there are not so many elements to marshal and direct
+properly, but the short-story must be original and varied in its
+themes, cleverly constructed, and lighted through and through with the
+glow of vivid imaginings. A single incident in daily life is caught as
+in a snap-shot exposure and held before the reader in such a manner
+that the impression of the whole is derived largely from suggestion.
+The single incident may be the turning-point in life history, as in
+<i>The Man Who Was</i>; it may be a mental surrender of habits fixed
+seemingly in indelible colors in the soul and a sudden, inflexible
+decision to be a man, as in the case of <i>Markheim;</i> or it may be a
+gradual realization of the value of spiritual gifts, as Björnson has
+concisely presented it in his little story <i>The Father</i>.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The aim of the short-story is always to present a cross-section of
+life in such a vivid manner that the importance of the incident
+becomes universal. Some short-stories are told with the definite end
+in view of telling a story for the sake of exploiting a plot. <i>The
+Cask of Amontillado</i> is all action in comparison with <i>The Masque of
+the Red Death. The Gold-Bug</i> sets for itself the task of solving a
+puzzle and possesses action from first to last. Other stories teach a
+moral. <i>Ethan Brand</i> deals with the unpardonable sin, and <i>The Great
+Stone Face</i> is our classic story in the field of ideals and their
+development. Hawthorne, above all writers, is most interested in
+ethical laws and moral development. Still other stories aim to portray
+character. Miss Jewett and Mrs. Freeman veraciously picture the
+faded-put womanhood in New England; Henry James and Björnson turn the
+x-rays of psychology and sociology on their characters; Stevenson
+follows with the precision of the tick of a watch the steps in
+Markheim's mental evolution.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The types of the short-story are as varied as life itself. Addison,
+Lamb, Irving, Warner, and many others have used the story in their
+sketches and essays with wonderful effect. <i>The Legend of Sleepy
+Hollow</i> is as impressive as any of Scott's tales. The allegory in <i>The
+Great Stone Face</i> loses little or nothing when compared with Bunyan's
+<i>Pilgrim's Progress</i>. No better type of detective story has been
+written than the two short-stories, <i>The Murders in the Rue Morgue</i>
+and <i>The Purloined Letter</i>. Every emotion is subject to the call of
+the short-story. Humor with its expansive free air is not so well
+adapted to the short-story as is pathos. There is a sadness in the
+stories of Dickens, Garland, Page, Mrs. Freeman, Miss Jewett,
+Maupassant, Poe, and many others that runs the whole gamut from
+pleasing tenderness in <i>A Child's Dream of a Star</i> to unutterable
+horror in <i>The Fall of the House of Usher</i>.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The short-story is stripped of all the incongruities that led
+Fielding, Scott, and Dickens far afield. All its parts harmonize in
+the simplest manner to give unity and "totality" of impression through
+strict unity of form. It is a concentrated piece of life snatched from
+the ordinary and uneventful round of living and steeped in fancy until
+it becomes the acme of literary art.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h3><a name="chap01.3"></a>COMPOSITION OF THE SHORT-STORY</h3>
+
+<p>
+Any student who wishes to express himself correctly and pleasingly,
+and desires a keener sense for the appreciation of literary work must
+write. The way others have done the thing never appears in a forceful
+light until one sets himself at a task of like nature. Just so in the
+study of this text. To find and appreciate the better points of the
+short-story, students must write stories of their own, patterned in a
+small way on the technique of the masterpieces.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The process of short-story writing follows in a general way the
+following program. In the first place the class must have something
+interesting and suggestive to write about. Sometimes the class can
+suggest a subject; newspapers almost every day give incidents worthy
+of story treatment; happenings in the community often give the very
+best material for stories; and phases of the literature work may well
+be used in the development of students' themes. Change the type of
+character and place, reconstruct the plot, or require a different
+ending for the story, leaving the plot virtually as it is, and then
+assign to the class. Boys and girls should invariably be taught to see
+stories in the life about them, in the newspapers and magazines on
+their library tables, and in the masterpieces they study in their
+class work.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After the idea that the class wishes to develop has been definitely
+determined and the material for this development has been gathered and
+grouped about the idea, the class should select a viewpoint and
+proceed to write. Sometimes the author should tell the story,
+sometimes a third person who may be of secondary importance in the
+story should be given the rôle of the story-teller, sometimes the
+whole may be in dialogue. The class should choose a fitting method.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Young writers should be very careful about the beginning of a story.
+An action story should start with a striking incident that catches the
+reader's attention at once and forecasts subsequent happenings. In
+every case this first incident must have in it the essence of the end
+of the story and should be perfectly logical to the reader after he
+has finished the reading. A story in which the setting is emphasized
+can well begin, with a description and contain a number of
+descriptions and expositions, distributed with a sense of propriety
+throughout the theme. A good method to use in the opening of a
+character story is that of conversation. An excellent example of a
+sharp use of this device is Mrs. Freeman's <i>Revolt of Mother</i>, where
+the first paragraph is a single spoken word.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Every incident included in the story should be tested for its value in
+the development of the theme. An incident that does not amplify
+certain phases of the story has no right to be included, and great
+care should be used in an effort to incorporate just the material
+necessary for the proper evolution of the thought. The problem is not
+so much what can be secured to be included in the story, but rather,
+after making a thorough collection of the material, what of all these
+points should be cast out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The ending must be a natural outgrowth of the development found in the
+body of the composition. Even in a story with a surprise ending, of
+which we are tempted to say that we have had no preparation for such a
+turn in the story, there must be hints&mdash;the subtler the better&mdash;that
+point unerringly and always toward the end. The end is presupposed in
+the beginning and the changing of one means the altering of the other.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Young writers have trouble in stopping at the right place. They should
+learn, as soon as possible, that to drag on after the logical ending
+has been reached spoils the best of stories. It is just as bad to stop
+before arriving at the true end. In other words there is only one
+place for the ending of a story, and in no case can it be shifted
+without ruining the idea that has obtained throughout the theme.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There are certain steps in the development of story-writing that
+should be followed if the best results are to be obtained. The first
+assignment should require only the writing of straight narrative. <i>The
+Arabian Nights Tales</i> and children's stories represent this type of
+writing and will give the teacher valuable aid in the presentation of
+this work. After the students have produced simple stories resembling
+the Sinbad Voyages, they should next add descriptions of persons and
+places and explanations of situations to develop clearness and
+interest in their original productions. Taking these themes in turn
+students should be required to introduce plot incidents that
+complicate the simple happenings and divert the straightforward trend
+of the narrative. Now that the stories are well developed in their
+descriptions, expositions, and plot interests they should be tested
+for their emotional effects. Students should go through their themes,
+and by making the proper changes give in some cases a humorous and in
+others a pathetic or tragic effect. These few suggestions are given to
+emphasize the facts that no one conceives a story in all its details
+in a moment of inspiration, and that there is a way of proceeding that
+passes in logical gradations from the simplest to the most complex
+phases of story writing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Franklin and Stevenson knew no rules for writing other than to
+practice incessantly on some form they wished to imitate. Hard work is
+the first lesson that boys and girls must learn in the art of writing,
+and a systematic gradation of assignments is what the teacher must
+provide for his students. Walter Besant gave the following rules for
+novel writers. Some of them may be suggestive to writers of the high
+school age, so the list is given in its complete form. "(1) Practice
+writing something original every day. (2) Cultivate the habit of
+observation. (3) Work regularly at certain hours. (4) Read no rubbish.
+(5) Aim at the formation of style. (6) Endeavor to be dramatic. (7) A
+great element of dramatic skill is selection. (8) Avoid the sin of
+writing about a character. (9) Never attempt to describe any kind of
+life except that with which you are familiar. (10) Learn as much as
+you can about men and women. (11) For the sake of forming a good
+natural style, and acquiring command of language, write poetry."
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h3>SHORT-STORY LIBRARY</h3>
+
+<h3><a name="chap01.4"></a><i>BOOKS FOR REFERENCE</i>:</h3>
+
+<p>
+<i>American Short-Stories</i>, Charles Baldwin, Longmans, Green, &amp; Co.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>A Study of Prose Fiction</i>, Chapter XII, Bliss Perry, Houghton,
+Mifflin Co.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Composition Rhetoric</i>, T.C. Blaisdell, American Book Co.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Forms of Prose Literature</i>, J.H. Gardiner, Charles Scribner's Sons.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Materials and Methods of Fiction</i>, Clayton Hamilton, The Baker and
+Taylor Co.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Principles of Literary Criticism</i>, C.T. Winchester, The Macmillan Co.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Short-Story Writing</i>, C.R. Barrett. The Baker and Taylor Co.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Specimens of the Short-Story</i>, G.H. Nettleton, H. Holt &amp; Co.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Story-Writing and Journalism</i>, Sherwin Cody, Funk &amp; Wagnalls Co.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Talks on Writing English</i>, Arlo Bates, Houghton Mifflin Co.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Writing of the Short-Story</i>, L.W. Smith, D.C. Heath &amp; Co.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Philosophy of the Short-Story</i>, Brander Matthews, Longmans,
+Green, &amp; Co.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The World's Greatest Short-Stories</i>, Sherwin Cody, A.C. McClurg &amp; Co.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Short-Story</i>, Henry Canby, Henry Holt &amp; Co.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Short-Story</i>, Evelyn May Albright, The Macmillan Co.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Book of the Short-Story</i>, Jessup and Canby, D. Appleton &amp; Co.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Modern Masterpieces of Short Prose Fiction</i>, Waite and Taylor, D.
+Appleton &amp; Co.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Short-Story</i>, Brander Matthews, American Book Co.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Writing the Short-Story</i>, Esenwein, Hinds, Noble &amp; Eldredge.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>A Study of the Short-Story in English</i>, Henry Seidel Canby, Henry
+Holt &amp; Co.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h3><a name="chap01.5"></a>COLLECTIONS OF SHORT-STORIES:</h3>
+
+<p>
+<i>American Short-Stories</i>, Charles S. Baldwin, Longmans, Green, &amp; Co.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Great Short-Stories</i>, 3 vols., William Patten, P.F. Collier &amp; Son.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Little French Masterpieces</i>, 6 vols. Alexander Jessup, G.P. Putnam's
+Sons.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Short-Story Classics</i> (American), 5 vols., William Patten, P.F.
+Collier &amp; Son.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Short-Story Classics</i> (Foreign), 5 vols., William Patten, P.F.
+Collier &amp; Son.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Stories by American Authors</i>, 10 vols., Charles Scribner's Sons.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Stories by English Authors</i>, 10 vols., Charles Scribner's Sons.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Stories by Foreign Authors</i>, 10 vols., Charles Scribner's Sons.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Stories New and Old</i> (American and English), Hamilton W. Mabie, The
+Macmillan Co.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>World's Greatest Short-Stories</i>, Sherwin Cody, A.C. McClurg &amp; Co.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The American Short-Story</i>, Elias Lieberman.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap02"></a>THE FATHER[1]</h2>
+
+<p class="center">
+<i>By Björnstjerne Björnson (1838-1910)</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The man whose story is here to be told was the wealthiest and most
+influential person in his parish; his name was Thord Överaas. He
+appeared in the priest's study one day, tall and earnest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I have gotten a son," said he, "and I wish to present him for
+baptism."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What shall his name be?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Finn,&mdash;after my father."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And the sponsors?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They were mentioned, and proved to be the best men and women of
+Thord's relations in the parish.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Is there anything else?" inquired the priest, and looked up. The
+peasant hesitated a little.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I should like very much to have him baptized by himself," said he,
+finally.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That is to say on a week-day?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Next Saturday, at twelve o'clock noon."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Is there anything else?" inquired the priest,
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"There is nothing else;" and the peasant twirled his cap, as though he
+were about to go.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then the priest rose. "There is yet this, however." said he, and
+walking toward Thord, he took him by the hand and looked gravely into
+his eyes: "God grant that the child may become a blessing to you!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One day sixteen years later, Thord stood once more in the priest's
+study.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Really, you carry your age astonishingly well, Thord," said the
+priest; for he saw no change whatever in the man.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That is because I have no troubles," replied Thord. To this the
+priest said nothing, but after a while he asked: "What is your
+pleasure this evening?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I have come this evening about that son of mine who is to be
+confirmed to-morrow."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He is a bright boy."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I did not wish to pay the priest until I heard what number the boy
+would have when he takes his place in the church to-morrow."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He will stand number one."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"So I have heard; and here are ten dollars for the priest."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Is there anything else I can do for you?" inquired the priest, fixing
+his eyes on Thord.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"There is nothing else."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thord went out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Eight years more rolled by, and then one day a noise was heard outside
+of the priest's study, for many men were approaching, and at their
+head was Thord, who entered first.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The priest looked up and recognized him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You come well attended this evening, Thord," said he.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am here to request that the banns may be published for my son: he
+is about to marry Karen Storliden, daughter of Gudmund, who stands
+here beside me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why, that is the richest girl in the parish."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"So they say," replied the peasant, stroking back his hair with one
+hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The priest sat a while as if in deep thought, then entered the names
+in his book, without making any comments, and the men wrote their
+signatures underneath. Thord laid three dollars on the table.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"One is all I am to have," said the priest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I know that very well; but he is my only child; I want to do it
+handsomely."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The priest took the money.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"This is now the third time, Thord, that you have come here on your
+son's account."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But now I am through with him," said Thord, and folding up his
+pocket-book he said farewell and walked away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The men slowly followed him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A fortnight later, the father and son were rowing across the lake, one
+calm, still day, to Storliden to make arrangements for the wedding.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"This thwart[2] is not secure," said the son, and stood up to
+straighten the seat on which he was sitting.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the same moment the board he was standing on slipped from under
+him; he threw out his arms, uttered a shriek, and fell overboard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Take hold of the oar!" shouted the father, springing to his feet, and
+holding out the oar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But when the son had made a couple of efforts he grew stiff.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Wait a moment!" cried the father, and began to row toward his son.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then the son rolled over on his back, gave his father one long look,
+and sank.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thord could scarcely believe it; he held the boat still, and stared at
+the spot where his son had gone down, as though he must surely come to
+the surface again. There rose some bubbles, then some more, and
+finally one large one that burst; and the lake lay there as smooth and
+bright as a mirror again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For three days and three nights people saw the father rowing round and
+round the spot, without taking either food or sleep; he was dragging
+the lake for the body of his son. And toward morning of the third day
+he found it, and carried it in his arms up over the hills to his
+gard[3].
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It might have been about a year from that day, when the priest, late
+one autumn evening, heard some one in the passage outside of the door,
+carefully trying to find the latch. The priest opened the door, and in
+walked a tall, thin man, with bowed form and white hair. The priest
+looked long at him before he recognized him. It was Thord.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Are you out walking so late?" said the priest, and stood still in
+front of him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ah, yes! it is late," said Thord, and took a seat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The priest sat down also, as though waiting. A long, long silence
+followed. At last Thord said,&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I have something with me that I should like to give to the poor; I
+want it to be invested as a legacy in my son's name."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He rose, laid some money on the table, and sat down again. The priest
+counted it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is a great deal of money," said he.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is half the price of my gard. I sold it to-day."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The priest sat long in silence. At last he asked, but gently,&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What do you propose to do now, Thord?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Something better."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They sat there for a while, Thord with downcast eyes, the priest with
+his eyes fixed on Thord. Presently the priest said, slowly and
+softly,&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I think your son has at last brought you a true blessing."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, I think so myself," said Thord, looking up, while two big tears
+coursed slowly down his cheeks.
+</p>
+
+<h4>NOTES</h4>
+
+<p>
+[1] This story was written in 1860. Translated from the Norwegian by
+Professor Rasmus B. Anderson. It is printed by permission of and
+special arrangement with <i>Houghton Mifflin Co.</i>, publishers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[2] 3:28 thwart. A seat, across a boat, on which the oarsman, sits.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[3] 4:21 gard. A Norwegian farm.
+</p>
+
+<h4>BIOGRAPHY</h4>
+
+<p>
+Björnstjerne Björnson, Norse poet, novelist, dramatist, orator, and
+political leader, was born December 8, 1832, and died in Paris, April
+26, 1910. From his strenuous father, a Lutheran priest who preached
+with tongue and fist, he inherited the physique of a Norse god. He
+possessed the mind of a poet and the arm of a warrior. At the age of
+twelve he was sent to the Molde grammar school, where he proved
+himself a very dull student. In 1852 he entered the university in
+Christiana. Here he neglected his studies to write poetry and
+journalistic articles.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In politics Björnson was a tremendous force. Dr. Brandes has said; "To
+speak the name of Björnson is like hoisting the colors of Norway." He
+was honored as a king in his native land. He won this recognition by
+no party affiliation, but by his natural gifts as a poet. His magnetic
+eloquence, great message, and sterling character compelled his
+countrymen to follow and honor him. He says of his success in this
+field: "The secret with me is that in success as in failure, in the
+consciousness of my doing as in my habits, I am myself. There are a
+great many who dare not, or lack the ability, to be themselves." For
+his views on political issues the following references may well be
+used: <i>Independent</i>. January 31, 1901, pp. 253-257; <i>Current
+Literature</i>, November, 1906, p. 581; and <i>Independent</i>, July 13, 1905,
+pp. 92-94.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Björnson and Ibsen, the two foremost men of Norway, were very closely
+associated throughout life. They were schoolmates, and both were
+interested in writing and producing plays. Ibsen's son, Dr. Sigurd
+Ibsen, married Björnson's daughter, Bergilot. These two great writers
+were direct contrasts in nearly everything: Björnson lived among his
+people, Ibsen was reserved; Björnson played the rôle of an optimistic
+prophet, Ibsen, that of a pessimistic judge; the former was always a
+conciliatory spirit, the latter a revolutionist; and Björnson proved
+himself a patriotic Norwegian, Ibsen, a man of the entire world.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lack of space forbids the inclusion of a list of Björnson's writing's.
+High school teachers will find suitable selections in the list of
+collateral readings that follows. Those who wish a complete
+bibliography of his works will find it in <i>Bookman</i>, Volume II, p. 65.
+Translations of his works by Rasmus B. Anderson, Houghton Mifflin Co.,
+and Edmund Gosse, the Macmillan Co., will furnish students extensive
+and standard readings of this master story-teller.
+</p>
+
+<h4>CRITICISMS</h4>
+
+<p>
+Björnson, in his masterly character delineations, seldom produces
+portraits. He gives the reader suggestive glimpses often enough and of
+the right quality and arrangement to produce a full and vigorous
+conception of his characters. His female parts are especially well
+done. His characters present themselves to the reader by unique
+thinking and choice expressions. Students should analyze <i>The Father</i>
+for this phase of character building. Note also the simplicity of the
+words, sentences, paragraphs, and complete story arrangement, the
+author's originality of story conception and expression, his short,
+passionate, panting sentences, the poetic atmosphere that sweetens and
+enriches his virile writing, and the correct, religious pictures he
+paints of his beloved northland.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After having read a number of selections from Björnson, students will
+see that he has a wonderful breadth of treatment for every imaginable
+subject. He is so universal in his choice of subjects that Lemaître in
+his <i>Impressions of the Theatre</i> half-humorously and half-ironically
+puts these words in Björnson's mouth, "I am king in the spiritual
+kingdom," and "there are two men in Europe who have genius, I and
+Ibsen, granting that Ibsen has it."
+</p>
+
+<h4>GENERAL REFERENCES</h4>
+
+<p>
+<i>Adventures in Criticism</i>, A.T.Q. Couch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Essays on Modern Novelists</i>, William Lyon Phelps.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Björnsoniana," <i>Dial</i>, January 16, 1903, pp. 37-38.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Prophet-Poet of Norway," <i>Cosmopolitan</i>, April, 1903, pp. 621-631.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Three Score and Ten," <i>Dial</i>, December, 1902, pp. 383-385.
+</p>
+
+<h4>COLLATERAL READINGS</h4>
+
+<p>
+<i>Lectures</i>, Volume I, John L. Stoddard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Making of an American</i>, Chapters 1, 7, and Jacob Riis.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Myths of Northern Lands</i>. Guerber.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Synnove Solbakken</i>, Björnson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>A Happy Boy</i>, Björnson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Fisher Maiden</i>, Björnson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Bridal March</i>, Björnson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Magnhild</i>, Björnson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>A Dangerous Wooing</i>, Björnson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Eagle's Nest</i>, Björnson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Bear Hunter</i>, Björnson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Master and Man</i>, Leo Tolstoi.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Doll's House</i>, Henrik Ibsen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Minister's Black Veil</i>, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Ambitious Guest</i>, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Beeman of Orn</i>, Frank R. Stockton.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>A Branch Road</i>, Hamlin Garland.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Mateo Falcone</i>, Prosper Mérimée.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Death of the Dauphin</i>, Alphonse Dadoed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Birds' Christmas Carol</i>, Kate Douglas Wiggin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Tennessee's Partner</i>, Bret Harte.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap03"></a>THE GRIFFIN AND THE MINOR CANAAN[1]</h2>
+
+<p class="center">
+<i>By Frank R. Stockton (1834-1902)</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Over the great door of an old, old church which stood in a quiet town
+of a far-away land there was carved in stone the figure of a large
+griffin. The old-time sculptor had done his work with great care, but
+the image he had made was not a pleasant one to look at. It had a
+large head, with enormous open mouth and savage teeth; from its back
+arose great wings, armed with sharp hooks and prongs; it had stout
+legs in front, with projecting claws; but there were no legs
+behind,&mdash;the body running out into a long and powerful tail, finished
+off at the end with a barbed point. This tail was coiled up under him,
+the end sticking up just back of his wings.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sculptor, or the people who had ordered this stone figure, had
+evidently been very much pleased with it, for little copies of it,
+also in stone, had been placed here and there along the sides of the
+church, not very far from the ground, so that people could easily look
+at them, and ponder on their curious forms. There were a great many
+other sculptures on the outside of this church,&mdash;saints, martyrs,
+grotesque heads of men, beasts, and birds, as well as those of other
+creatures which cannot be named, because nobody knows exactly what
+they were; but none were so curious and interesting as the great
+griffin over the door, and the little griffins on the sides of the
+church.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A long, long distance from the town, in the midst of dreadful wilds
+scarcely known to man, there dwelt the Griffin whose image had been
+put up over the churchgoer. In some way or other, the old-time
+sculptor had seen him, and afterward, to the best of his memory, had
+copied his figure in stone. The Griffin had never known this, until,
+hundreds of years afterward, he heard from a bird, from a wild animal,
+or in some manner which it is not now easy to find out, that there was
+a likeness of him on the old church in the distant town. Now this
+Griffin had no idea how he looked. He had never seen a mirror, and the
+streams where he lived were so turbulent and violent that a quiet
+piece of water, which would reflect the image of anything looking into
+it, could not be found. Being, as far as could be ascertained, the
+very last of his race, he had never seen another griffin. Therefore it
+was, that, when he heard of this stone image of himself, he became
+very anxious to know what he looked like, and at last he determined to
+go to the old church, and see for himself what manner of being he was.
+So he started off from the dreadful wilds, and flew on and on until he
+came to the countries inhabited by men, where his appearance in the
+air created great consternation; but he alighted nowhere, keeping up a
+steady flight until he reached the suburbs of the town which had his
+image on its church. Here, late in the afternoon, he alighted in a
+green meadow by the side of a brook, and stretched himself on the
+grass to rest. His great wings were tired, for he had not made such a
+long flight in a century, or more.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The news of his coming spread quickly over the town, and the people,
+frightened nearly out of their wits by the arrival of so extraordinary
+a visitor, fled into their houses, and shut themselves up. The Griffin
+called loudly for some one to come to him, but the more he called, the
+more afraid the people were to show themselves. At length he saw two
+laborers hurrying to their homes through the fields, and in a terrible
+voice he commanded them to stop. Not daring to disobey, the men stood,
+trembling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What is the matter with you all?" cried the Griffin. "Is there not a
+man in your town who is brave enough to speak to me?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I think," said one of the laborers, his voice shaking so that his
+words could hardly be understood, "that&mdash;perhaps&mdash;the Minor
+Canon&mdash;would come."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Go, call him, then!" said the Griffin; "I want to see him."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Minor Canon, who filled a subordinate position in the church, had
+just finished the afternoon services, and was coming out of a side
+door, with three aged women who had formed the week-day congregation.
+He was a young man of a kind disposition, and very anxious to do good
+to the people of the town. Apart from his duties in the church, where
+he conducted services every week-day, he visited the sick and the
+poor, counseled and assisted persons who were in trouble, and taught a
+school composed entirely of the bad children in the town with whom
+nobody else would have anything to do. Whenever the people wanted
+something difficult done for them, they always went to the Minor
+Canon. Thus it was that the laborer thought of the young priest when
+he found that some one must come and speak to the Griffin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Minor Canon had not heard of the strange event, which was known to
+the whole town except himself and the three old women, and when he was
+informed of it, and was told that the Griffin had asked to see him, he
+was greatly amazed, and frightened.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Me!" he exclaimed. "He has never heard of me! What should he want
+with <i>me?</i>"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh! you must go instantly!" cried the two men.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He is very angry now because he has been kept waiting so long; and
+nobody knows what may happen if you don't hurry to him."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The poor Minor Canon would rather have had his hand cut off than go
+out to meet an angry griffin; but he felt that it was his duty to go,
+or it would be a woeful thing if injury should come to the people of
+the town because he was not brave enough to obey the summons of the
+Griffin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So, pale and frightened, he started off.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well," said the Griffin, as soon as the young man came near, "I am
+glad to see that there is some one who has the courage to come to me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Minor Canon did not feel very courageous, but he bowed his head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Is this the town," said the Griffin, "where there is a church with a
+likeness of myself over one of the doors?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Minor Canon looked at the frightful creature before him and saw
+that it was, without doubt, exactly like the stone image on the
+church. "Yes," he said, "you are right."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, then," said the Griffin, "will you take me to it? I wish very
+much to see it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Minor Canon instantly thought that if the Griffin entered the town
+without the people knowing what he came for, some of them would
+probably be frightened to death, and so he sought to gain time to
+prepare their minds.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is growing dark, now," he said, very much afraid, as he spoke,
+that his words might enrage the Griffin, "and objects on the front of
+the church cannot be seen clearly. It will be better to wait until
+morning, if you wish to get a good view of the stone image of
+yourself."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That will suit me very well," said the Griffin. "I see you are a man
+of good sense. I am tired, and I will take a nap here on this soft
+grass, while I cool my tail in the little stream that runs near me.
+The end of my tail gets red-hot when I am angry or excited, and it is
+quite warm now. So you may go, but be sure and come early to-morrow
+morning, and show me the way to the church."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Minor Canon was glad enough to take his leave, and hurried into
+the town. In front of the church he found a great many people
+assembled to hear his report of his interview with the Griffin. When
+they found that he had not come to spread ruin and devastation, but
+simply to see his stony likeness on the church, they showed neither
+relief nor gratification, but began to upbraid the Minor Canon for
+consenting to conduct the creature into the town.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What could I do?" cried the young man, "If I should not bring him he
+would come himself and, perhaps, end by setting fire to the town with
+his red-hot tail."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Still the people were not satisfied, and a great many plans were
+proposed to prevent the Griffin from coming into the town. Some
+elderly persons urged that the young men should go out and kill him;
+but the young men scoffed at such a ridiculous idea. Then some one
+said that it would be a good thing to destroy the stone image so that
+the Griffin would have no excuse for entering the town; and this
+proposal was received with such favor that many of the people ran for
+hammers, chisels, and crowbars, with which to tear down and break up
+the stone griffin. But the Minor Canon resisted this plan with all the
+strength of his mind and body. He assured the people that this action
+would enrage the Griffin beyond measure, for it would be impossible to
+conceal from him that his image had been destroyed during the night.
+But the people were so determined to break up the stone griffin that
+the Minor Canon saw that there was nothing for him to do but to stay
+there and protect it. All night he walked up and down in front of the
+church-door, keeping away the men who brought ladders, by which they
+might mount to the great stone griffin, and knock it to pieces with
+their hammers and crowbars. After many hours the people were obliged
+to give up their attempts, and went home to sleep; but the Minor Canon
+remained at his post till early morning, and then he hurried away to
+the field where he had left the Griffin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The monster had just awakened, and rising to his fore-legs and shaking
+himself, he said that he was ready to go into the town. The Minor
+Canon, therefore, walked back, the Griffin flying slowly through the
+air, at a short distance above the head of his guide. Not a person was
+to be seen in the streets, and they proceeded directly to the front of
+the church, where the Minor Canon pointed out the stone griffin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The real Griffin settled down in the little square before the church
+and gazed earnestly at his sculptured likeness. For a long time he
+looked at it. First he put his head on one side, and then he put it on
+the other; then he shut his right eye and gazed with his left, after
+which he shut his left eye and gazed with his right. Then he moved a
+little to one side and looked at the image, then he moved the other
+way. After a while he said to the Minor Canon, who had been standing
+by all this time:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is, it must be, an excellent likeness! That breadth between the
+eyes, that expansive forehead, those massive jaws! I feel that it must
+resemble me. If there is any fault to find with it, it is that the
+neck seems a little stiff. But that is nothing. It is an admirable
+likeness,&mdash;admirable!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Griffin sat looking at his image all the morning and all the
+afternoon. The Minor Canon had been afraid to go away and leave him,
+and had hoped all through the day that he would soon be satisfied with
+his inspection and fly away home. But by evening the poor young man
+was utterly exhausted, and felt that he must eat and sleep. He frankly
+admitted this fact to the Griffin, and asked him if he would not like
+something to eat. He said this because he felt obliged in politeness
+to do so, but as soon as he had spoken the words, he was seized with
+dread lest the monster should demand half a dozen babies, or some
+tempting repast of that kind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, no," said the Griffin, "I never eat between the equinoxes. At the
+vernal and at the autumnal equinox I take a good meal, and that lasts
+me for half a year. I am extremely regular in my habits, and do not
+think it healthful to eat at odd times. But if you need food, go and
+get it, and I will return to the soft grass where I slept last night
+and take another nap."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The next day the Griffin came again to the little square before the
+church, and remained there until evening, steadfastly regarding the
+stone griffin over the door. The Minor Canon came once or twice to
+look at him, and the Griffin seemed very glad to see him; but the
+young clergyman could not stay as he had done before, for he had many
+duties to perform. Nobody went to the church, but the people came to
+the Minor Canon's house, and anxiously asked him how long the Griffin
+was going to stay.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I do not know," he answered, "but I think he will soon be satisfied
+with regarding his stone likeness, and then he will go away."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the Griffin did not go away. Morning after morning he came to the
+church, but after a time he did not stay there all day. He seemed to
+have taken a great fancy to the Minor Canon, and followed him about as
+he pursued his various avocations. He would wait for him at the side
+door of the church, for the Minor Canon held services every day,
+morning and evening, though nobody came now. "If any one should come,"
+he said to himself, "I must be found at my post." When the young man
+came out, the Griffin would accompany him in his visits to the sick
+and the poor, and would often look into the windows of the schoolhouse
+where the Minor Canon was teaching his unruly scholars. All the other
+schools were closed, but the parents of the Minor Canon's scholars
+forced them to go to school, because they were so bad they could not
+endure them all day at home,&mdash;griffin or no griffin. But it must be
+said they generally behaved very well when that great monster sat up
+on his tail and looked in at the schoolroom window.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When it was perceived that the Griffin showed no signs of going away,
+all the people who were able to do so left the town. The canons and
+the higher officers of the church had fled away during the first day
+of the Griffin's visit, leaving behind only the Minor Canon and some
+of the men who opened the doors and swept the church. All the citizens
+who could afford it shut up their houses and travelled to distant
+parts, and only the working people and the poor were left behind.
+After some days these ventured to go about and attend to their
+business, for if they did not work they would starve. They were
+getting a little used to seeing the Griffin, and having been told that
+he did not eat between equinoxes, they did not feel so much afraid of
+him as before. Day by day the Griffin became more and more attached to
+the Minor Canon. He kept near him a great part of the time, and often
+spent the night in front of the little house where the young clergyman
+lived alone. This strange companionship was often burdensome to the
+Minor Canon; but, on the other hand, he could not deny that he derived
+a great deal of benefit and instruction from it. The Griffin had lived
+for hundreds of years, and had seen much; and he told the Minor Canon
+many wonderful things.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is like reading an old book," said the young clergyman to himself;
+"but how many books I would have had to read before I would have found
+out what the Griffin has told me about the earth, the air, the water,
+about minerals, and metals, and growing things, and all the wonders of
+the world!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thus the summer went on, and drew toward its close. And now the people
+of the town began to be very much troubled again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It will not be long," they said, "before the autumnal equinox is
+here, and then that monster will want to eat. He will be dreadfully
+hungry, for he has taken so much exercise since his last meal. He will
+devour our children. Without doubt, he will eat them all. What is to
+be done?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To this question no one could give an answer, but all agreed that the
+Griffin must not be allowed to remain until the approaching equinox.
+After talking over the matter a great deal, a crowd of the people went
+to the Minor Canon, at a time when the Griffin was not with him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is all your fault," they said, "that that monster is among us. You
+brought him here, and you ought to see that he goes away. It is only
+on your account that he stays here at all, for, although he visits his
+image every day, he is with you the greater part of the time. If you
+were not here, he would not stay. It is your duty to go away and then
+he will follow you, and we shall be free from the dreadful danger
+which hangs over us."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Go away!" cried the Minor Canon, greatly grieved at being spoken to
+in such a way. "Where shall I go? If I go to some other town, shall I
+not take this trouble there? Have I a right to do that?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No," said the people, "you must not go to any other town. There is no
+town far enough away. You must go to the dreadful wilds where the
+Griffin lives; and then he will follow you and stay there."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They did not say whether or not they expected the Minor Canon to stay
+there also, and he did not ask them any thing about it. He bowed his
+head, and went into his house, to think. The more he thought, the more
+clear it became to his mind that it was his duty to go away, and thus
+free the town from the presence of the Griffin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That evening he packed a leathern bag full of bread and meat, and
+early the next morning he set out on his journey to the dreadful
+wilds. It was a long, weary, and doleful journey, especially after he
+had gone beyond the habitations of men, but the Minor Canon kept on
+bravely, and never faltered. The way was longer than he had expected,
+and his provisions soon grew so scanty that he was obliged to eat but
+a little every day, but he kept up his courage, and pressed on, and,
+after many days of toilsome travel, he reached the dreadful wilds.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When the Griffin found that the Minor Canon had left the town he
+seemed sorry, but showed no disposition to go and look for him. After
+a few days had passed, he became much annoyed, and asked some of the
+people where the Minor Canon had gone. But, although the citizens had
+been anxious that the young clergyman should go to the dreadful wilds,
+thinking that the Griffin would immediately follow him, they were now
+afraid to mention the Minor Canon's destination, for the monster
+seemed angry already, and, if he should suspect their trick, he would
+doubtless become very much enraged. So every one said he did not know,
+and the Griffin wandered about disconsolate. One morning he looked
+into the Minor Canon's schoolhouse, which was always empty now, and
+thought that it was a shame that every thing should suffer on account
+of the young man's absence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It does not matter so much about the church," he said, "for nobody
+went there; but it is a pity about the school. I think I will teach it
+myself until he returns."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was the hour for opening the school, and the Griffin went inside
+and pulled the rope which rang the schoolbell. Some of the children
+who heard the bell ran in to see what was the matter, supposing it to
+be a joke of one of their companions; but when they saw the Griffin
+they stood astonished, and scared.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Go tell the other scholars," said the monster, "that school is about
+to open, and that if they are not all here in ten minutes, I shall
+come after them." In seven minutes every scholar was in place.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Never was seen such an orderly school. Not a boy or girl moved, or
+uttered a whisper. The Griffin climbed into the master's seat, his
+wide wings spread on each side of him, because he could not lean back
+in his chair while they stuck out behind, and his great tail coiled
+around, in front of the desk, the barbed end sticking up, ready to tap
+any boy or girl who might misbehave. The Griffin now addressed the
+scholars, telling them that he intended to teach them while their
+master was away. In speaking he endeavored to imitate, as far as
+possible, the mild and gentle tones of the Minor Canon, but it must be
+admitted that in this he was not very successful. He had paid a good
+deal of attention to the studies of the school, and he determined not
+to attempt to teach them anything new, but to review them in what they
+had been studying; so he called up the various classes, and questioned
+them upon their previous lessons. The children racked their brains to
+remember what they had learned. They were so afraid of the Griffin's
+displeasure that they recited as they had never recited before. One of
+the boys far down in his class answered so well that the Griffin was
+astonished.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I should think you would be at the head," said he. "I am sure you
+have never been in the habit of reciting so well. Why is this?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Because I did not choose to take the trouble," said the boy,
+trembling in his boots. He felt obliged to speak the truth, for all
+the children thought that the great eyes of the Griffin could see
+right through them, and that he would know when they told a falsehood.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You ought to be ashamed of yourself," said the Griffin. "Go down to
+the very tail of the class, and if you are not at the head in two
+days, I shall know the reason why."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The next afternoon the boy was number one.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was astonishing how much these children now learned of what they
+had been studying. It was as if they had been educated over again. The
+Griffin used no severity toward them, but there was a look about him
+which made them unwilling to go to bed until they were sure they knew
+their lessons for the next day.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Griffin now thought that he ought to visit the sick and the poor;
+and he began to go about the town for this purpose. The effect upon
+the sick was miraculous. All, except those who were very ill indeed,
+jumped from their beds when they heard he was coming, and declared
+themselves quite well. To those who could not get up, he gave herbs
+and roots, which none of them had ever before thought of as medicines,
+but which the Griffin had seen used in various parts of the world; and
+most of them recovered. But, for all that, they afterward said that no
+matter what happened to them, they hoped that they should never again
+have such a doctor coming to their bedsides, feeling their pulses and
+looking at their tongues.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As for the poor, they seemed to have utterly disappeared. All those
+who had depended upon charity for their daily bread were now at work
+in some way or other; many of them offering to do odd jobs for their
+neighbors just for the sake of their meals,&mdash;a thing which before had
+been seldom heard of in the town. The Griffin could find no one who
+needed his assistance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The summer had now passed, and the autumnal equinox was rapidly
+approaching. The citizens were in a state of great alarm and anxiety.
+The Griffin showed no signs of going away, but seemed to have settled
+himself permanently among them. In a short time, the day for his
+semi-annual meal would arrive, and then what would happen? The monster
+would certainly be very hungry, and would devour all their children.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now they greatly regretted and lamented that they had sent away the
+Minor Canon; he was the only one on whom they could have depended in
+this trouble, for he could talk freely with the Griffin, and so find
+out what could be done. But it would not do to be inactive. Some step
+must be taken immediately. A meeting of the citizens was called, and
+two old men were appointed to go and talk to the Griffin. They were
+instructed to offer to prepare a splendid dinner for him on equinox
+day,&mdash;one which would entirely satisfy his hunger. They would offer
+him the fattest mutton, the most tender beef, fish, and game of
+various sorts, and any thing of the kind that he might fancy. If none
+of these suited, they were to mention that there was an orphan asylum
+in the next town.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Any thing would be better," said the citizens, "than to have our dear
+children devoured."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The old men went to the Griffin, but their propositions were not
+received with favor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"From what I have seen of the people of this town," said the monster,
+"I do not think I could relish any thing which was prepared by them.
+They appear to be all cowards, and, therefore, mean and selfish. As
+for eating one of them, old or young, I could not think of it for a
+moment. In fact, there was only one creature in the whole place for
+whom I could have had any appetite, and that is the Minor Canon, who
+has gone away. He was brave, and good, and honest, and I think I
+should have relished him."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ah!" said one of the old men very politely, "in that case I wish we
+had not sent him to the dreadful wilds!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What!" cried the Griffin. "What do you mean? Explain instantly what
+you are talking about!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The old man, terribly frightened at what he had said, was obliged to
+tell how the Minor Canon had been sent away by the people, in the hope
+that the Griffin might be induced to follow him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When the monster heard this, he became furiously angry. He dashed away
+from the old men and, spreading his wings, flew backward and forward
+over the town. He was so much excited that his tail became red-hot,
+and glowed like a meteor against the evening sky. When at last he
+settled down in the little field where he usually rested, and thrust
+his tail into the brook, the steam arose like a cloud, and the water
+of the stream ran hot through the town. The citizens were greatly
+frightened, and bitterly blamed the old man for telling about the
+Minor Canon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is plain," they said, "that the Griffin intended at last to go and
+look for him, and we should have been saved. Now who can tell what
+misery you have brought upon us."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Griffin did not remain long in the little field. As soon as his
+tail was cool he flew to the town-hall and rang the bell. The citizens
+knew that they were expected to come there, and although they were
+afraid to go, they were still more afraid to stay away; and they
+crowded into the hall. The Griffin was on the platform at one end,
+flapping his wings and walking up and down, and the end of his tail
+was still so warm that it slightly scorched the boards as he dragged
+it after him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When everybody who was able to come was there the Griffin stood still
+and addressed the meeting.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I have had a contemptible opinion of you," he said, "ever since I
+discovered what cowards you are, but I had no idea that you were so
+ungrateful, selfish, and cruel as I now find you to be. Here was your
+Minor Canon, who labored day and night for your good, and thought of
+nothing else but how he might benefit you and make you happy; and as
+soon as you imagine yourselves threatened with a danger,&mdash;for well I
+know you are dreadfully afraid of me,&mdash;you send him off, caring not
+whether he returns or perishes, hoping thereby to save yourselves.
+Now, I had conceived a great liking for that young man, and had
+intended, in a day or two, to go and look him up. But I have changed
+my mind about him. I shall go and find him, but I shall send him back
+here to live among you, and I intend that he shall enjoy the reward of
+his labor and his sacrifices. Go, some of you, to the officers of the
+church, who so cowardly ran away when I first came here, and tell them
+never to return to this town under penalty of death. And if, when your
+Minor Canon comes back to you, you do not bow yourselves before him,
+put him in the highest place among you, and serve and honor him all
+his life, beware of my terrible vengeance! There were only two good
+things in this town: the Minor Canon and the stone image of myself
+over your church-door. One of these you have sent away, and the other
+I shall carry away myself."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With these words he dismissed the meeting, and it was time, for the
+end of his tail had become so hot that there was danger of its setting
+fire to the building.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The next morning, the Griffin came to the church, and tearing the
+stone image of himself from its fastenings over the great door, he
+grasped it with his powerful fore-legs and flew up into the air. Then,
+after hovering over the town for a moment, he gave his tail an angry
+shake and took up his flight to the dreadful wilds. When he reached
+this desolate region, he set the stone Griffin upon a ledge of a rock
+which rose in front of the dismal cave he called his home. There the
+image occupied a position somewhat similar to that it had had over the
+church-door; and the Griffin, panting with the exertion of carrying
+such an enormous load to so great a distance, lay down upon the
+ground, and regarded it with much satisfaction. When he felt somewhat
+rested he went to look for the Minor Canon. He found the young man,
+weak and half-starved, lying under the shadow of a rock. After picking
+him up and carrying him to his cave, the Griffin flew away to a
+distant marsh, where he procured some roots and herbs which he well
+knew were strengthening and beneficial to man, though he had never
+tasted them himself. After eating these the Minor Canon was greatly
+revived, and sat up and listened while the Griffin told him what had
+happened in the town.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do you know," said the monster, when he had finished, "that I have
+had, and still have, a great liking for you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am very glad to hear it," said the Minor Canon, with his usual
+politeness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am not at all sure that you would be," said the Griffin, "if you
+thoroughly understood the state of the case, but we will not consider
+that now. If some things were different, other things would be
+otherwise. I have been so enraged by discovering the manner in which
+you have been treated that I have determined that you shall at last
+enjoy the rewards and honors to which you are entitled. Lie down and
+have a good sleep, and then I will take you back to the town."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As he heard these words, a look of trouble came over the young man's
+face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You need not give yourself any anxiety," said the Griffin, "about my
+return to the town. I shall not remain there. Now that I have that
+admirable likeness of myself in front of my cave, where I can sit at
+my leisure, and gaze upon its noble features and magnificent
+proportions, I have no wish to see that abode of cowardly and selfish
+people."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Minor Canon, relieved from his fears, lay back, and dropped into a
+doze; and when he was sound asleep the Griffin took him up, and
+carried him back to the town. He arrived just before daybreak, and
+putting the young man gently on the grass in the little field where he
+himself used to rest, the monster, without having been seen by any of
+the people, flew back to his home.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When the Minor Canon made his appearance in the morning among the
+citizens, the enthusiasm and cordiality with which he was received
+were truly wonderful. He was taken to a house which had been occupied
+by one of the vanished high officers of the place, and every one was
+anxious to do all that could be done for his health and comfort. The
+people crowded into the church when he held services, so that the
+three old women who used to be his week-day congregation could not get
+to the best seats, which they had always been in the habit of taking;
+and the parents of the bad children determined to reform them at home,
+in order that he might be spared the trouble of keeping up his former
+school. The Minor Canon was appointed to the highest office of the old
+church, and before he died, he became a bishop.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+During the first years after his return from the dreadful wilds, the
+people of the town looked up to him as a man to whom they were bound
+to do honor and reverence; but they often, also, looked up to the sky
+to see if there were any signs of the Griffin coming back. However, in
+the course of time, they learned to honor and reverence their former
+Minor Canon without the fear of being punished if they did not do so.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But they need never have been afraid of the Griffin. The autumnal
+equinox day came round, and the monster ate nothing. If he could not
+have the Minor Canon, he did not care for any thing. So, lying down,
+with his eyes fixed upon the great stone griffin, he gradually
+declined, and died. It was a good thing for some people of the town
+that they did not know this.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If you should ever visit the old town, you would still see the little
+griffins on the sides of the church; but the great stone griffin that
+was over the door is gone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+NOTE: [1] Written in 1887. This story is used by permission of and
+special arrangement with <i>Charles Scribner's Sons</i>, publishers.
+</p>
+
+<h4>BIOGRAPHY</h4>
+
+<p>
+Frank Richard Stockton, one of America's foremost story-tellers and
+humorists, was born in Philadelphia in 1834. His father was a
+Presbyterian minister who devoutly wished that his son might study
+medicine. This wish was shattered early, for the son showed symptoms
+of being a writer while yet in the Central High School of
+Philadelphia. In competition with many of his schoolmates for a prize
+offered for the best story, young Stockton won easily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After finishing his high school course, he adopted the profession of
+wood-engraver. Although he earned his living for several years by
+carving wood, he never lost his desire to write, and practised, at
+every spare moment, his favorite avocation. It was this careful and
+patient training during his apprenticeship that finally made him the
+expert story-teller that he is. It is very interesting to any one who
+cares for the acquirement of an excellent style to note how all the
+authors contained in this text have had to work with almost a
+superhuman force to reach the heights of successful short-story
+writing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His first important publication, <i>Kate</i>, appeared in the <i>Southern
+Literary Messenger</i> in 1859. He then joined the staff of the
+<i>Philadelphia Morning Post</i>, where he did regular newspaper work and
+contributed to the <i>Riverside Magazine</i> and <i>Hearth and Home</i>. In 1872
+his <i>Stephen Skarridge's Christmas</i> appeared in <i>Scribner's Monthly</i>.
+Dr. J.G. Holland, editor of <i>Scribner's</i>, was so impressed with the
+story that he made Mr. Stockton an assistant editor and persuaded him
+to move to New York. In 1873 he joined the staff of the <i>St. Nicholas
+Magazine</i>. His publication of the <i>Rudder Grange</i> series in
+<i>Scribner's</i> <i>Monthly</i> in 1878 made him famous. In 1882 he resigned
+all editorial work and spent his entire time in literary composition.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Stockton possessed a frail body and very little physical
+endurance. In spite of this physical handicap he was very vivacious
+and gay. He was a genial and companionable man, loved by all who knew
+him. He was very modest, even to the point of shyness, exceptionally
+sincere, and quaintly humorous. He established homes in New Jersey and
+West Virginia, where he spent the greater part of his time from 1882
+until his death in 1902.
+</p>
+
+<h4>BIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES</h4>
+
+<p>
+<i>Famous Authors</i> (107-122), B.F. Harkness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>American Authors</i> (59-73), F.W. Halsey.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Character Sketch," <i>Book-Buyer</i>, 24:355-357.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Home at Claymont," <i>Current Literature</i>, 30:221.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Sketch," <i>Outlook</i>, 70: 1000-1001,
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Stockton and his Work," <i>Atlantic Monthly</i>, 87:136-138.
+</p>
+
+<h4>CRITICISMS</h4>
+
+<p>
+The writings of Frank R. Stockton are excellent representatives of the
+man himself. How closely allied writer and writings are is very well
+stated by Hamilton W. Mabie in the <i>Book-Buyer</i> for June, 1902, "His
+talk had much of the quality of his writing; it was full of quaint
+conceits, whimsicalities, impossible suggestions offered with perfect
+gravity. He was always perfectly natural; he never attempted to live
+up to his part; in talk, at least, he never forced the note. His
+attitude toward himself was slightly tinged with humor, and he knew
+how to foil easily and pleasantly too great a pressure of praise."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His tales are extravagantly impossible but extremely realistic in
+effect, filled with humorous situations and singular plots, and
+peopled with eccentric characters that afford amusement on every page.
+His most successful writing is done when he explains contrivances upon
+which his story depends. He is an original and inventive expert
+juggler who moves with careless ease to the most effective ends. His
+characters are little more than pieces of mechanism that act when he
+pulls the string. They have little emotion and even in their
+love-making they show their emotion mostly for the sake of the
+reader's amusement. His negro characters are exceptions to his general
+treatment and are true to life. He inveigles the reader into believing
+the most extravagant incidents by having a reliable witness narrate
+them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Stockton never stoops to the burlesque, cynic, or vulgar phases of
+life to secure amusement. He is grotesque and droll in his manner, and
+above all always restrained. His literary life is full of sprites and
+gnomes that frolic before young children and once before mature
+people. <i>The Griffin and the Minor Canon</i> is a beautiful fairy story
+lifted from childhood's thought and diction into a mature realm. His
+humor is plain and simple, cool and keenly calculating. A friendly
+critic has said of one of his stories, "With a gentle, ceaseless
+murmur of amusement, and a flickering twinkle of smiles, the story
+moves steadily on in the calm triumph of its assured and unassailable
+absurdity, to its logical and indisputable impossibility." This
+observation is very largely true of all his stories.
+</p>
+
+<h4>GENERAL REFERENCES</h4>
+
+<p>
+<i>Frank R. Stockton</i>, A.T.Q. Couch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Stockton's Method of Working," <i>Current Literature</i>, 32:495.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Criticism," <i>Atheneum</i>, 1:532.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Estimate," <i>Harper's Weekly</i>, 46:555.
+</p>
+
+<h4>COLLATERAL READINGS</h4>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Beeman of Orn, and Other Fanciful Tales</i>, Frank R. Stockton.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Lady or the Tiger</i>, Frank R. Stockton.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Rudder Grange</i>, Frank R. Stockton.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>A Tale of Negative Gravity</i>, Frank R. Stockton.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Remarkable Wreck of the Thomas Hyde</i>, Frank R. Stockton.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>His Wife's Deceased Sister</i>, Frank R. Stockton.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Legend of Sleepy Hollow</i>, Washington Irving.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Monsieur du Miroir</i>, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>At the End of the Passage</i>, Rudyard Kipling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Vacant Lot</i>, Mary Wilkins Freeman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Princess Pourquoi</i>, Margaret Sherwood.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>What Was It? A Mystery</i>, Fitz-James O'Brien.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Wandering Willie's Tale</i>, Walter Scott.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap04"></a>THE PIECE OF STRING[1]</h2>
+
+<p class="center">
+<i>By Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893)</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On all the roads about Goderville the peasants and their wives were
+coming toward the town, for it was market day. The men walked at an
+easy gait, the whole body thrown forward with every movement of their
+long, crooked legs, misshapen by hard work, by the bearing down on the
+plough which at the same time causes the left shoulder to rise and the
+figure to slant; by the mowing of the grain, which makes one hold his
+knees apart in order to obtain a firm footing; by all the slow and
+laborious tasks of the fields. Their starched blue blouses, glossy as
+if varnished, adorned at the neck and wrists with a bit of white
+stitchwork, puffed out about their bony chests like balloons on the
+point of taking flight, from which protrude a head, two arms, and two
+feet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Some of them led a cow or a calf at the end of a rope. And their
+wives, walking behind the beast, lashed it with a branch still covered
+with leaves, to hasten its pace. They carried on their arms great
+baskets, from which heads of chickens or of ducks were thrust forth.
+And they walked with a shorter and quicker step than their men, their
+stiff, lean figures wrapped in scanty shawls pinned over their flat
+breasts, their heads enveloped in a white linen cloth close to the
+hair, with a cap over all.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then a <i>char-à-bancs[2]</i> passed, drawn by a jerky-paced nag, with two
+men seated side by side shaking like jelly, and a woman behind, who
+clung to the side of the vehicle to lessen the rough jolting.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the square at Goderville there was a crowd, a medley of men and
+beasts. The horns of the cattle, the high hats, with a long, hairy
+nap, of the wealthy peasants, and the head dresses of the peasant
+women, appeared on the surface of the throng. And the sharp, shrill,
+high-pitched voices formed an incessant, uncivilized uproar, over
+which soared at times a roar of laughter from the powerful chest of a
+sturdy yokel, or the prolonged bellow of a cow fastened to the wall of
+a house.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was an all-pervading smell of the stable, of milk, of the
+dunghill, of hay, and of perspiration&mdash;that acrid, disgusting odor of
+man and beast peculiar to country people.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Master Hauchecorne, of Bréauté, had just arrived at Goderville, and
+was walking toward the square, when he saw a bit of string on the
+ground. Master Hauchecorne, economical like every true Norman, thought
+that it was well to pick up everything that might be of use; and he
+stooped painfully, for he suffered with rheumatism. He took the piece
+of slender cord from the ground, and was about to roll it up
+carefully, when he saw Master Malandain, the harness-maker, standing
+in his doorway and looking at him. They had formerly had trouble on
+the subject of a halter, and had remained at odds, being both inclined
+to bear malice. Master Hauchecorne felt a sort of shame at being seen
+thus by his enemy, fumbling in the mud for a bit of string. He
+hurriedly concealed his treasure in his blouse, then in his breeches
+pocket; then he pretended to look on the ground for something else,
+which he did not find; and finally he went on toward the market, his
+head thrust forward, bent double by his pains.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He lost himself at once in the slow-moving, shouting crowd, kept in a
+state of excitement by the interminable bargaining. The peasants felt
+of the cows, went away, returned, sorely perplexed, always afraid of
+being cheated, never daring to make up their minds, watching the
+vendor's eye, striving incessantly to detect the tricks of the man and
+the defect in the beast.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The women, having placed their great baskets at their feet, took out
+their fowls, which lay on the ground, their legs tied together, with
+frightened eyes and scarlet combs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They listened to offers, adhered to their prices, short of speech and
+impassive of face; or else, suddenly deciding to accept the lower
+price offered, they would call out to the customer as he walked slowly
+away:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"All right, Mast' Anthime. You can have it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then, little by little, the square became empty, and when the
+Angelus[3] struck midday those who lived too far away to go home
+betook themselves to the various inns.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At Jourdain's the common room was full of customers, as the great yard
+was full of vehicles of every sort&mdash;carts, cabriolets,[4]
+<i>char-à-bancs</i>, tilburys,[5] unnamable carriages, shapeless, patched,
+with, their shafts reaching heavenward like arms, or with their noses
+in the ground and their tails in the air.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The vast fireplace, full of clear flame, cast an intense heat against
+the backs of the row on the right of the table. Three spits were
+revolving, laden with chickens, pigeons, and legs of mutton; and a
+delectable odor of roast meat, and of gravy dripping from the browned
+skin, came forth from the hearth, stirred the guests to merriment, and
+made their mouths water.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All the aristocracy of the plough ate there, at Mast' Jourdain's, the
+innkeeper and horse trader&mdash;a shrewd rascal who had money.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The dishes passed and were soon emptied, like the jugs of yellow
+cider. Every one told of his affairs, his sales and his purchases.
+They inquired about the crops. The weather was good for green stuffs,
+but a little wet for wheat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Suddenly a drum rolled in the yard, in front of the house. In an
+instant everybody was on his feet, save a few indifferent ones; and
+they all ran to the door and windows with their mouths still full and
+napkins in hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Having finished his long tattoo, the public crier shouted in a jerky
+voice, making his pauses in the wrong places:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The people of Goderville, and all those present at the market are
+informed that between&mdash;nine and ten o'clock this morning on the
+Beuzeville&mdash;road, a black leather wallet was lost, containing five
+hundred&mdash;francs, and business papers. The finder is requested to carry
+it to&mdash;the mayor's at once, or to Master Fortuné Huelbrèque of
+Manneville. A reward of twenty francs will be paid."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then he went away. They heard once more in the distance the muffled
+roll of the drum and the indistinct voice of the crier.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then they began to talk about the incident, reckoning Master
+Houlbrèque's chance of finding or not finding his wallet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And the meal went on.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They were finishing their coffee when the corporal of gendarmes
+appeared in the doorway.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He inquired:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Is Master Hauchecorne of Bréauté here?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Master Hauchecorne, who was seated at the farther end of the table,
+answered:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Here I am."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And the corporal added:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Master Hauchecorne, will you be kind enough to go to the mayor's
+office with me? Monsieur the mayor would like to speak to you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The peasant, surprised and disturbed, drank his <i>petit verre[6]</i> at
+one swallow, rose, and even more bent than in the morning, for the
+first steps after each rest were particularly painful, he started off,
+repeating:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Here I am, here I am."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And he followed the brigadier.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The mayor was waiting for him, seated in his arm-chair. He was the
+local notary, a stout, solemn-faced man, given to pompous speeches.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Master Hauchecorne," he said, "you were seen this morning, on the
+Beuzeville road, to pick up the wallet lost by Master Huelbrèque of
+Manneville."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The rustic, dumfounded, stared at the mayor, already alarmed by this
+suspicion which had fallen upon him, although he failed to understand
+it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I, I&mdash;I picked up that wallet?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"On my word of honor, I didn't even so much as see it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You were seen."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"They saw me, me? Who was it saw me?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Monsieur Malandain, the harness-maker."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thereupon the old man remembered and understood; and flushing with
+anger, he cried:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ah! he saw me, did he, that sneak? He saw me pick up this string,
+look, m'sieu' mayor."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And fumbling in the depths of his pocket, he produced the little piece
+of cord.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the mayor was incredulous and shook his head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You won't make me believe, Master Hauchecorne, that Monsieur
+Malandain, who is a man deserving of credit, mistook this string for a
+wallet."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The peasant, in a rage, raised his hand, spit to one side to pledge
+his honor, and said:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It's God's own truth, the sacred truth, all the same, m'sieu' mayor.
+I say it again, by my soul and my salvation."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"After picking it up," rejoined the mayor, "you hunted a long while in
+the mud, to see if some piece of money hadn't fallen out."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The good man was suffocated with wrath and fear.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If any one can tell&mdash;if any one can tell lies like that to ruin an
+honest man! If any one can say&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To no purpose did he protest; he was not believed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was confronted with Monsieur Malandain, who repeated and maintained
+his declaration. They insulted each other for a whole hour. At his own
+request, Master Hauchecorne was searched. They found nothing on him.
+At last the mayor, being sorely perplexed, discharged him, but warned
+him that he proposed to inform the prosecuting attorney's office and
+to ask for orders.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The news had spread. On leaving the mayor's office, the old man was
+surrounded and questioned with serious or bantering curiosity, in
+which, however, there was no trace of indignation. And he began to
+tell the story of the string. They did not believe him. They laughed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He went his way, stopping his acquaintances, repeating again and again
+his story and his protestations, showing his pockets turned inside
+out, to prove that he had nothing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They said to him:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You old rogue, <i>va!</i>"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And he lost his temper, lashing himself into a rage, feverish with
+excitement, desperate because he was not believed, at a loss what to
+do, and still telling his story. Night came. He must needs go home. He
+started with three neighbors, to whom he pointed out the place where
+he had picked up the bit of string: and all the way he talked of his
+misadventure.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+During the evening he made a circuit of the village of Bréauté, in
+order to tell everybody about it. He found none but incredulous
+listeners.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was ill over it all night.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The next afternoon, about one o'clock, Marius Paumelle, a farmhand
+employed by Master Breton, a farmer of Ymauville, restored the wallet
+and its contents to Master Huelbrèque of Manneville.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The man claimed that he had found it on the road; but, being unable to
+read, had carried it home and given it to his employer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The news soon became known in the neighborhood; Master Hauchecorne was
+informed of it. He started out again at once, and began to tell his
+story, now made complete by the dénouement. He was triumphant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What made me feel bad," he said, "wasn't so much the thing itself,
+you understand, but the lying. There's nothing hurts you so much as
+being blamed for lying."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All day long he talked of his adventure; he told it on the roads to
+people who passed; at the wine-shop to people who were drinking; and
+after church on the following Sunday. He even stopped strangers to
+tell them about it. His mind was at rest now, and yet something
+embarrassed him, although he could not say just what it was. People
+seemed to laugh while they listened to him. They did not seem
+convinced. He felt as if remarks were made behind his back.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On Tuesday of the next week, he went to market at Goderville, impelled
+solely by the longing to tell his story.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Malandain, standing in his doorway, began to laugh when he saw him
+coming. Why?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He accosted a farmer from Criquetot, who did not let him finish, but
+poked him in the pit of his stomach, and shouted in his face: "Go on,
+you old fox!" Then he turned on his heel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Master Hauchecorne was speechless, and more and more disturbed. Why
+did he call him "old fox"?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When he was seated at the table, in Jourdain's Inn, he set about
+explaining the affair once more.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A horse-trader from Montvilliers called out to him:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Nonsense, nonsense, you old dodger! I know all about your string!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But they've found the wallet!" faltered Hauchecorne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"None of that, old boy; there's one who finds it, and there's one who
+carries it back. I don't know just how you did it, but I understand
+you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The peasant was fairly stunned. He understood at last. He was accused
+of having sent the wallet back by a confederate, an accomplice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He tried to protest. The whole table began to laugh.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He could not finish his dinner, but left the inn amid a chorus of
+jeers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He returned home, shamefaced and indignant, suffocated by wrath, by
+confusion, and all the more cast down because, with his Norman
+cunning, he was quite capable of doing the thing with which he was
+charged, and even of boasting of it as a shrewd trick. He had a
+confused idea that his innocence was impossible to establish, his
+craftiness being so well known. And he was cut to the heart by the
+injustice of the suspicion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thereupon he began once more to tell of the adventure, making the
+story longer each day, adding each time new arguments, more forcible
+protestations, more solemn oaths, which he devised and prepared in his
+hours of solitude, his mind being wholly engrossed by the story of the
+string. The more complicated his defence and the more subtle his
+reasoning, the less he was believed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Those are a liar's reasons," people said behind his back.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He realized it: he gnawed his nails, and exhausted himself in vain
+efforts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He grew perceptibly thinner.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now the jokers asked him to tell the story of "The Piece of String"
+for their amusement, as a soldier who has seen service is asked to
+tell about his battles. His mind, attacked at its source, grew
+feebler.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Late in December he took to his bed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the first days of January he died, and in his delirium, of the
+death agony, he protested his innocence, repeating:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A little piece of string&mdash;a little piece of string&mdash;see, here it is,
+m'sieu' mayor."
+</p>
+
+<h4>NOTES</h4>
+
+<p>
+[1] <i>The Piece of String</i> was written in 1884. Reprinted from <i>Little
+French Masterpieces</i>, by permission of the publishers, <i>G.P. Putnam's
+Sons</i>.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[2] 34:5 char-à-bancs. A pleasure car.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[3] 35:26 Angelus. A bell tolled at morning, noon, and night,
+according to the Roman Catholic Church custom, to indicate the time of
+the service of song and recitation in memory of the Virgin Mary. The
+name is taken from the first word of the recitation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[4] 35:30 cabriolet. A cab. Originally a light, one-horse pleasure
+carriage with two seats.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[5] 35:30 tilbury. An old form of gig, seating two persons.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[6] 37:20 petit verre. Little glass.
+</p>
+
+<h4>BIOGRAPHY</h4>
+
+<p>
+Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant, French novelist, dramatist, and
+short-story writer, was born in 1850. Until he was thirteen years old
+he had no teacher except his mother, who personally superintended the
+training of her two sons. Life for the two boys, during these early
+years, was free and happy, Guy was a strong and robust Norman,
+overflowing with animal spirits and exuberant with the joy of youthful
+life.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When thirteen years of age Maupassant attended the seminary at Yvetot,
+where he found school life irksome and a most distasteful contrast to
+his former free life. Later he became a student in the Lycée in Rouen.
+His experience as a student here was very pleasant, and he easily
+acquired his degree. In 1870 he was appointed to a clerkship in the
+Navy, and a little later to a more lucrative position in the
+Department of Public Instruction. His work in these two positions
+suffered very materially because of his negligence and daily practice
+in writing verses and essays for Flaubert, the most careful literary
+technicist in the history of literature, to criticize. For seven years
+Maupassant served this severe task-master, always writing, receiving
+criticisms, and publishing nothing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Immediately after the publication of his first story Maupassant was
+hailed as a finished master artist. From 1880 to 1890 he published six
+novels, sixteen volumes of short-stories, three volumes of travels,
+and many newspaper articles. This gigantic task was performed only
+because of his regular habits and splendid physique. He wrote
+regularly every morning from seven o'clock until noon, and at night
+always wrote out notes on the impressions from his experiences of the
+day.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Maupassant was a natural artist deeply in love with the technique of
+his work. He did not write for money, although he believed that a
+writer should have plenty of this world's possessions, nor did he
+write for art's sake. In fact he avoided talking on the subject of
+writing and to all appearances seemed to despise his profession. He
+wrote because the restless, immitigable force within him compelled him
+to work like a slave. He thought little of morals, or religion, but
+was enamored with physical life and its insolvable problems. He was,
+above everything else, a truthful man. Sometimes his subjects are
+unclean and he treats them as such, but, if his subject is clean, his
+treatment is undefiled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In 1887 the shadows of insanity began to creep athwart his life. Even
+in 1884 he seemed to feel a premonition of his coming catastrophe when
+he wrote: "I am afraid of the walls, of the furniture, of the familiar
+objects which seem to me to assume a kind of animal life. Above all, I
+fear the horrible confusion of my thought, of my reason escaping,
+entangled and scattered by an invisible and mysterious anguish." The
+dreaded disease developed until, in 1890, he had to suspend his
+writing. In 1892 he became wholly insane and had to be committed to an
+insane asylum where he died in a padded cell one year later.
+</p>
+
+<h4>BIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES</h4>
+
+<p>
+<i>The New International Encyclopaedia</i>.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Encyclopaedia Britannica</i>.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Bookman</i>, 25:290-294_.
+</p>
+
+<h4>CRITICISMS</h4>
+
+<p>
+Maupassant's short-stories are generally conceded to be the best in
+French literature. He handles his materials with great care, and his
+descriptions of scenes and characters are unequalled. In his first
+writings he seems impassive to the point of frigidity. He is a
+recorder who sets down exactly the life before him. This is one of the
+lessons he learned from Flaubert. He was not interested in what a
+character thought or felt, but he noted and fondled every action of
+his characters.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He loved life, despite the lack of solutions. At times his fondness
+for mere physical life leads him to the brutal stage. In his story,
+<i>On the Water</i>, he gives a confession of a purely sensual man: "How
+gladly, at times, I would think no more, feel no more, live the life
+of a brute, in a warm, bright country, in a yellow country, without
+crude and brutal verdure, in one of those Eastern countries in which
+one falls asleep without concern, is active and has no cares, loves
+and has no distress, and is scarcely aware that one is going on
+living!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Maupassant was a keen observer, possessed an excellent but not lofty
+imagination, and never asserted a philosophy of life. His writings are
+all interesting, terse, precise, and truthful, but lack the glow that
+comes with a sympathetic and spiritual outlook on life. Zola says of
+him: "…. a Latin of good, clear, solid head, a maker of beautiful
+sentences shining like gold…." He chooses a single incident, a few
+characteristics and then moulds them into a compact story. Nine-tenths
+of his stories deal with selfishness and hypocrisy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tolstoi wrote: "Maupassant possessed genius, that gift of attention
+revealing in the objects and facts of life properties not perceived by
+others; he possessed a beautiful form of expression, uttering clearly,
+simply, and with charm what he wished to say; and he possessed also
+the merit of sincerity, without which a work of art produces no
+effect; that is he did not merely pretend to love or hate, but did
+indeed love or hate what he described."
+</p>
+
+<h4>GENERAL REFERENCES</h4>
+
+<p>
+<i>Inquiries and Opinions</i>, Brander Matthews.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A Criticism," <i>Outlook</i>, 88:973-976.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Greatest Short Story Writer that Ever Lived," <i>Current Literature</i>,
+42:636-638.
+</p>
+
+<h4>COLLATERAL READINGS</h4>
+
+<p>
+<i>Happiness</i> (Odd Number), Guy de Maupassant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Wolf</i>, Guy de Maupassant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>La Mère Sauvage</i>, Guy de Maupassant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Confession</i>, Guy de Maupassant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>On the Journey</i>, Guy de Maupassant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Beggar</i>, Guy de Maupassant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>A Ghost</i>, Guy de Maupassant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Little Soldier</i>, Guy de Maupassant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Wreck</i>, Guy de Maupassant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Necklace</i>, Guy de Maupassant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>A Note of Scarlet</i>, Ruth Stuart.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Expiation</i>, Octave Thanet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Fagan</i>, Rowland Thomas.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>La Grande Bretêche</i> ("Jessup and Canby"), Honoré de Balzac.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap05"></a>THE MAN WHO WAS[1]</h2>
+
+<p class="center">
+<i>By Rudyard Kipling (1865-   )</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Let it be clearly understood that the Russian is a delightful person
+till he tucks his shirt in. As an Oriental he is charming. It is only
+when he insists upon being treated as the most easterly of Western
+peoples, instead of the most westerly of Easterns, that he becomes a
+racial anomaly[2] extremely difficult to handle. The host never knows
+which side of his nature is going to turn up next.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dirkovitch was a Russian&mdash;a Russian of the Russians, as he said&mdash;who
+appeared to get his bread by serving the czar as an officer in a
+Cossack regiment, and corresponding for a Russian newspaper with a
+name that was never twice the same. He was a handsome young Oriental,
+with a taste for wandering through unexplored portions of the earth,
+and he arrived in India from nowhere in particular. At least no living
+man could ascertain whether it was by way of Balkh, Budukhshan,
+Chitral, Beloochistan, Nepaul, or anywhere else. The Indian
+government, being in an unusually affable mood, gave orders that he
+was to be civilly treated, and shown everything that was to be seen;
+so he drifted, talking bad English and worse French, from one city to
+another till he forgathered with her Majesty's White Hussars[3] in the
+city of Peshawur,[4] which stands at the mouth of that narrow
+sword-cut in the hills that men call the Khyber Pass. He was
+undoubtedly an officer, and he was decorated, after the manner of the
+Russians, with little enameled crosses, and he could talk, and (though
+this has nothing to do with his merits) he had been given up as a
+hopeless task or case by the Black Tyrones[5], who, individually and
+collectively, with hot whisky and honey, mulled brandy and mixed
+spirits of all kinds, had striven in all hospitality to make him
+drunk. And when the Black Tyrones, who are exclusively Irish, fail to
+disturb the peace of head of a foreigner, that foreigner is certain to
+be a superior man. This was the argument of the Black Tyrones, but
+they were ever an unruly and self-opinionated regiment, and they
+allowed junior subalterns of four years' service to choose their
+wines. The spirits were always purchased by the colonel and a
+committee of majors. And a regiment that would so behave may be
+respected but cannot be loved.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The White Hussars were as conscientious in choosing their wine as in
+charging the enemy. There was a brandy that had been purchased by a
+cultured colonel a few years after the battle of Waterloo. It has been
+maturing ever since, and it was a marvelous brandy at the purchasing.
+The memory of that liquor would cause men to weep as they lay dying in
+the teak forests of upper Burmah[6] or the slime of the Irrawaddy[7].
+And there was a port which was notable; and there was a champagne of
+an obscure brand, which always came to mess without any labels,
+because the White Hussars wished none to know where the source of
+supply might be found. The officer on whose head the champagne
+choosing lay was forbidden the use of tobacco for six weeks previous
+to sampling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This particularity of detail is necessary to emphasize the fact that
+that champagne, that port, and above all, that brandy&mdash;the green and
+yellow and white liqueurs did not count&mdash;was placed at the absolute
+disposition of Dirkovitch, and he enjoyed himself hugely&mdash;even more
+than among the Black Tyrones.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But he remained distressingly European through it all. The White
+Hussars were&mdash;"My dear true friends," "Fellow-soldiers glorious," and
+"Brothers inseparable." He would unburden himself by the hour on the
+glorious future that awaited the combined arms of England and Russia
+when their hearts and their territories should run side by side, and
+the great mission of civilizing Asia should begin. That was
+unsatisfactory, because Asia is not going to be civilized after the
+methods of the West. There is too much Asia, and she is too old. You
+cannot reform a lady of many lovers, and Asia has been insatiable in
+her flirtations aforetime. She will never attend Sunday school, or
+learn to vote save with swords for tickets.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dirkovitch knew this as well as any one else, but it suited him to
+talk special-correspondently and to make himself as genial as he
+could. Now and then he volunteered a little, a very little,
+information about his own Sotnia[8] of Cossacks, left apparently to
+look after themselves somewhere at the back of beyond. He had done
+rough work in Central Asia, and had seen rather more help-yourself
+fighting than most men of his years. But he was careful never to
+betray his superiority, and more than careful to praise on all
+occasions the appearance, drill, uniform, and organization of her
+Majesty's White Hussars. And, indeed, they were a regiment to be
+admired. When Mrs. Durgan, widow of the late Sir John Durgan, arrived
+in their station, and after a short time had been proposed to by every
+single man at mess, she put the public sentiment very neatly when she
+explained that they were all so nice that unless she could marry them
+all, including the colonel and some majors who were already married,
+she was not going to content herself with one of them. Wherefore she
+wedded a little man in a rifle regiment&mdash;being by nature
+contradictious&mdash;and the White Hussars were going to wear crape on
+their arms, but compromised by attending the wedding in full force,
+and lining the aisle with unutterable reproach. She had jilted them
+all&mdash;from Basset-Holmer, the senior captain, to Little Mildred, the
+last subaltern, and he could have given her four thousand a year and a
+title. He was a viscount, and on his arrival the mess had said he had
+better go into the Guards, because they were all sons of large grocers
+and small clothiers in the Hussars, but Mildred begged very hard to be
+allowed to stay, and behaved so prettily that he was forgiven, and
+became a man, which is much more important than being any sort of
+viscount.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The only persons who did not share the general regard for the White
+Hussars were a few thousand gentlemen of Jewish extraction who lived
+across the border, and answered to the name of Pathan. They had only
+met the regiment officially, and for something less than twenty
+minutes, but the interview, which was complicated with many
+casualties, had filled them with prejudice. They even called the White
+Hussars "children of the devil," and sons of persons whom it would be
+perfectly impossible to meet in decent society. Yet they were not
+above making their aversion fill their money belts. The regiment
+possessed carbines, beautiful Martini-Henri carbines, that would cob a
+bullet into an enemy's camp at one thousand yards, and were even
+handier than the long rifle. Therefore they were coveted all along the
+border, and since demand inevitably breeds supply, they were supplied
+at the risk of life and limb for exactly their weight in coined
+silver&mdash;seven and one half pounds of rupees[9], or sixteen pounds and
+a few shillings each, reckoning the rupee at par. They were stolen at
+night by snaky-haired thieves that crawled on their stomachs under the
+nose of the sentries; they disappeared mysteriously from armracks; and
+in the hot weather, when all the doors and windows were open, they
+vanished like puffs of their own smoke. The border people desired them
+first for their own family vendettas[10] and then for contingencies.
+But in the long cold nights of the Northern Indian winter they were
+stolen most extensively. The traffic of murder was liveliest among the
+hills at that season, and prices ruled high. The regimental guards
+were first doubled and then trebled. A trooper does not much care if
+he loses a weapon&mdash;government must make it good&mdash;but he deeply resents
+the loss of his sleep. The regiment grew very angry, and one
+night-thief who managed to limp away bears the visible marks of their
+anger upon him to this hour. That incident stopped the burglaries for
+a time, and the guards were reduced accordingly, and the regiment
+devoted itself to polo with unexpected results, for it beat by two
+goals to one that very terrible polo corps the Lushkar Light Horse,
+though the latter had four ponies apiece for a short hour's fight, as
+well as a native officer who played like a lambent flame across the
+ground.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then they gave a dinner to celebrate the event. The Lushkar team came,
+and Dirkovitch came, in the fullest full uniform of Cossack officer,
+which is as full as a dressing-gown, and was introduced to the
+Lushkars, and opened his eyes as he regarded them. They were lighter
+men than the Hussars, and they carried themselves with the swing that
+is the peculiar right of the Punjab[11] frontier force and all
+irregular horse. Like everything else in the service, it has to be
+learned; but unlike many things, it is never forgotten, and remains on
+the body till death.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The great beam-roofed mess room of the White Hussars was a sight to be
+remembered. All the mess plate was on the long table&mdash;the same table
+that had served up the bodies of five dead officers in a forgotten
+fight long and long ago&mdash;the dingy, battered standards faced the door
+of entrance, clumps of winter roses lay between the silver
+candlesticks, the portraits of eminent officers deceased looked down
+on their successors from between the heads of sambhur[12],
+nilghai[13], maikhor, and, pride of all the mess, two grinning
+snow-leopards that had cost Basset-Holmer four months' leave that he
+might have spent in England instead of on the road to Thibet, and the
+daily risk of his life on ledge, snowslide, and glassy grass slope.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The servants, in spotless white muslin and the crest of their
+regiments on the brow of their turbans, waited behind their masters,
+who were clad in the scarlet and gold of the White Hussars and the
+cream and silver of the Lushkar Light Horse. Dirkovitch's dull green
+uniform was the only dark spot at the board, but his big onyx eyes
+made up for it. He was fraternizing effusively with the captain of the
+Lushkar team, who was wondering how many of Dirkovitch's Cossacks his
+own long, lathy down-countrymen could account for in a fair charge.
+But one does not speak of these things openly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The talk rose higher and higher, and the regimental band played
+between the courses, as is the immemorial custom, till all tongues
+ceased for a moment with the removal of the dinner slips and the First
+Toast of Obligation, when the colonel, rising, said, "Mr. Vice, the
+Queen," and Little Mildred from the bottom of the table answered, "The
+Queen, God bless her!" and the big spurs clanked as the big men heaved
+themselves up and drank the Queen, upon whose pay they were falsely
+supposed to pay their mess bills. That sacrament of the mess never
+grows old, and never ceases to bring a lump into the throat of the
+listener wherever he be, by land or by sea. Dirkovitch rose with his
+"brothers glorious," but he could not understand. No one but an
+officer can understand what the toast means; and the bulk have more
+sentiment than comprehension. It all comes to the same in the end, as
+the enemy said when he was wriggling on a lance point. Immediately
+after the little silence that follows on the ceremony there entered
+the native officer who had played for the Lushkar team. He could not
+of course eat with the alien, but he came in at dessert, all six feet
+of him, with the blue-and-silver turban atop, and the big black
+top-boots below. The mess rose joyously as he thrust forward the hilt
+of his saber, in token of fealty, for the colonel of the White Hussars
+to touch, and dropped into a vacant chair amid shouts of "<i>Rung ho</i>!
+Hira Singh!" (which being translated means "Go in and win!"). "Did I
+whack you over the knee, old man?" "Ressaidar Sahib, what the devil
+made you play that kicking pig of a pony in the last ten minutes?"
+"Shabash, Ressaidar Sahib!" Then the voice of the colonel, "The health
+of Ressaidar Hira Singh!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After the shouting had died away, Hira Singh rose to reply, for he was
+the cadet of a royal house, the son of a king's son, and knew what was
+due on these occasions. Thus he spoke in the vernacular:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Colonel Sahib and officers of this regiment, much honor have you done
+me. This will I remember. We came down from afar to play you; but we
+were beaten." ("No fault of yours, Ressaidar Sahib. Played on our own
+ground, y' know. Your ponies were cramped from the railway. Don't
+apologize.") "Therefore perhaps we will come again if it be so
+ordained." ("Hear! Hear, hear, indeed! Bravo! Hsh!") "Then we will
+play you afresh" ("Happy to meet you"), "till there are left no feet
+upon our ponies. Thus far for sport." He dropped one hand on his sword
+hilt and his eye wandered to Dirkovitch lolling back in his chair.
+"But if by the will of God there arises any other game which is not
+the polo game, then be assured, Colonel Sahib and officers, that we
+shall play it out side by side, though <i>they</i>"&mdash;again his eye sought
+Dirkovitch&mdash;"though <i>they</i>, I say, have fifty ponies to our one
+horse." And with a deep-mouthed <i>Rung ho</i>! that rang like a musket
+butt on flagstones, he sat down amid shoutings.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dirkovitch, who had devoted himself steadily to the brandy&mdash;the
+terrible brandy aforementioned&mdash;did not understand, nor did the
+expurgated[14] translations offered to him at all convey the point.
+Decidedly the native officer's was the speech of the evening, and the
+clamor might have continued to the dawn had it not been broken by the
+noise of a shot without that sent every man feeling at his defenseless
+left side. It is notable that Dirkovitch "reached back," after the
+American fashion&mdash;a gesture that set the captain of the Lushkar team
+wondering how Cossack officers were armed at mess. Then there was a
+scuffle, and a yell of pain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Carbine stealing again!" said the adjutant, calmly sinking back in
+his chair. "This comes of reducing the guards. I hope the sentries
+have killed him."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The feet of armed men pounded on the veranda flags, and it sounded as
+though something was being dragged.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why don't they put him in the cells till the morning?" said the
+colonel, testily. "See if they've damaged him, sergeant."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The mess-sergeant fled out into the darkness, and returned with two
+troopers and a corporal, all very much perplexed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Caught a man stealin' carbines, sir," said the corporal.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Leastways 'e was crawling toward the barricks, sir, past the
+main-road sentries; an' the sentry 'e says, sir&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The limp heap of rags upheld by the three men groaned. Never was seen
+so destitute and demoralized an Afghan. He was turbanless, shoeless,
+caked with dirt, and all but dead with rough handling. Hira Singh
+started slightly at the sound of the man's pain. Dirkovitch took
+another liqueur glass of brandy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>What</i> does the sentry say?" said the colonel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Sez he speaks English, sir," said the corporal.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"So you brought him into mess instead of handing him over to the
+sergeant! If he spoke all the tongues of the Pentecost you've no
+business&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Again the bundle groaned and muttered. Little Mildred had risen from
+his place to inspect. He jumped back as though he had been shot.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Perhaps it would be better, sir, to send the men away," said he to
+the colonel, for he was a much-privileged subaltern. He put his arms
+round the rag-bound horror as he spoke, and dropped him into a chair.
+It may not have been explained that the littleness of Mildred lay in
+his being six feet four, and big in proportion. The corporal, seeing
+that an officer was disposed to look after the capture, and that the
+colonel's eye was beginning to blaze, promptly removed himself and his
+men. The mess was left alone with the carbine thief, who laid his head
+on the table and wept bitterly, hopelessly, and inconsolably, as
+little children weep.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hira Singh leaped to his feet with a long-drawn vernacular oath
+"Colonel Sahib," said he, "that man is no Afghan, for they weep '<i>Ai!
+Ai</i>!' Nor is he of Hindustan, for they weep,'<i>Oh! Ho</i>!' He weeps after
+the fashion of the white men, who say '<i>Ow! Ow</i>!'"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Now where the dickens did you get that knowledge, Hira Singh?" said
+the captain of the Lushkar team.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Hear him!" said Hira Singh, simply, pointing at the crumpled figure
+that wept as though it would never cease.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He said, 'My God!'" said Little Mildred, "I heard him say it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The colonel and the mess room looked at the man in silence. It is a
+horrible thing to hear a man cry. A woman can sob from the top of her
+palate, or her lips, or anywhere else, but a man cries from his
+diaphragm, and it rends him to pieces. Also, the exhibition causes the
+throat of the on-looker to close at the top.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Poor devil!" said the colonel, coughing tremendously, "We ought to
+send him to hospital. He's been manhandled."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now the adjutant loved his rifles. They were to him as his
+grandchildren&mdash;the men standing in the first place. He grunted
+rebelliously: "I can understand an Afghan stealing, because he's made
+that way. But I can't understand his crying. That makes it worse."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The brandy must have affected Dirkovitch, for he lay back in his chair
+and stared at the ceiling. There was nothing special in the ceiling
+beyond a shadow as of a huge black coffin. Owing to some peculiarity
+in the construction of the mess room this shadow was always thrown
+when the candles were lighted. It never disturbed the digestion of the
+White Hussars. They were, in rather proud of it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Is he going to cry all night?" said the colonel, "or are we supposed
+to sit up with Little Mildred's guest until he feels better?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The man in the chair threw up his head and stared at the mess.
+Outside, the wheels of the first of those bidden to the festivities
+crunched the roadway.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, my God!" said the man in the chair, and every soul in the mess
+rose to his feet. Then the Lushkar captain did a deed for which he
+ought to have been given the Victoria Cross&mdash;distinguished gallantry
+in a fight against overwhelming curiosity. He picked up his team with
+his eyes as the hostess picks up the ladies at the opportune moment,
+and pausing only by the colonel's chair to say, "This isn't <i>our</i>
+affair, you know, sir," led the team into the veranda and the gardens.
+Hira Singh was the last, and he looked at Dirkovitch as he moved. But
+Dirkovitch had departed into a brandy paradise of his own. His lips
+moved without sound, and he was studying the coffin on the ceiling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"White&mdash;white all over," said Basset-Holmer, the adjutant. "What a
+pernicious renegade[15] he must be! I wonder where he came from?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The colonel shook the man gently by the arm, and "Who are you?" said
+he.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was no answer. The man stared round the mess room and smiled in
+the colonel's face. Little Mildred, who was always more of a woman
+than a man till "Boot and saddle" was sounded, repeated the question
+in a voice that would have drawn confidences from a geyser. The man
+only smiled. Dirkovitch, at the far end of the table, slid gently from
+his chair to the floor, No son of Adam, in this present imperfect
+world, can mix the Hussars' champagne with the Hussars' brandy by five
+and eight glasses of each without remembering the pit whence he has
+been digged and descending thither. The band began to play the tune
+with which the White Hussars, from the date of their formation,
+preface all their functions. They would sooner be disbanded than
+abandon that tune. It is a part of their system. The man straightened
+himself in his chair and drummed on the table with his fingers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't see why we should entertain lunatics," said the colonel;
+"call a guard and send him off to the cells. We'll look into the
+business in the morning. Give him a glass of wine first, though."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Little Mildred filled a sherry glass with the brandy and thrust it
+over to the man. He drank, and the tune rose louder, and he
+straightened himself yet more. Then he put out his long-taloned hands
+to a piece of plate opposite and fingered it lovingly. There was a
+mystery connected with that piece of plate in the shape of a spring,
+which converted what was a seven-branched candlestick, three springs
+each side and one on the middle, into a sort of wheel-spoke
+candelabrum[16]. He found the spring, pressed it, and laughed weakly.
+He rose from his chair and inspected a picture on the wall, then moved
+on to another picture, the mess watching him without a word.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When he came to the mantelpiece he shook his head and seemed
+distressed. A piece of plate representing a mounted hussar in full
+uniform caught his eye. He pointed to it, and then to the mantelpiece,
+with inquiry in his eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What is it&mdash;oh, what is it?" said Little Mildred. Then, as a mother
+might speak to a child, "That is a horse&mdash;yes, a horse."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Very slowly came the answer, in a thick, passionless guttural: "Yes,
+I&mdash;have seen. But&mdash;where is <i>the</i> horse?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+You could have heard the hearts of the mess beating as the men drew
+back to give the stranger full room in his wanderings. There was no
+question of calling the guard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Again he spoke, very slowly, "Where is <i>our</i> horse?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There is no saying what happened after that. There is but one horse in
+the White Hussars, and his portrait hangs outside the door of the mess
+room. He is the piebald drum-horse the king of the regimental band,
+that served the regiment for seven-and-thirty years, and in the end
+was shot for old age. Half the mess tore the thing down from its place
+and thrust it into the man's hands. He placed it above the
+mantelpiece; it clattered on the ledge, as his poor hands dropped it,
+and he staggered toward the bottom of the table, falling into
+Mildred's chair. The band began to play the "River of Years" waltz,
+and the laughter from the gardens came into the tobacco-scented mess
+room. But nobody, even the youngest, was thinking of waltzes. They all
+spoke to one another something after this fashion: "The drum-horse
+hasn't hung over the mantelpiece since '67." "How does he know?"
+"Mildred, go and speak to him again." "Colonel, what are you going to
+do?" "Oh, dry up, and give the poor devil a chance to pull himself
+together!" "It isn't possible, anyhow. The man's a lunatic."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Little Mildred stood at the colonel's side talking into his ear. "Will
+you be good enough to take your seats, please, gentlemen?" he said,
+and the mess dropped into the chairs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Only Dirkovitch's seat, next to Little Mildred's, was blank, and
+Little Mildred himself had found Hira Singh's place. The wide-eyed
+mess sergeant filled the glasses in dead silence. Once more the
+colonel rose, but his hand shook, and the port spilled on the table as
+he looked straight at the man in Little Mildred's chair and said,
+hoarsely, "Mr. Vice, the Queen." There was a little pause, but the man
+sprang to his feet and answered, without hesitation, "The Queen, God
+bless her!" and as he emptied the thin glass he snapped the shank
+between his fingers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Long and long ago, when the Empress of India was a young woman, and
+there were no unclean ideals in the land, it was the custom in a few
+messes to drink the Queen's toast in broken glass, to the huge delight
+of the mess contractors. The custom is now dead, because there is
+nothing to break anything for, except now and again the word of a
+government, and that has been broken already.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That settles it," said the colonel, with a gasp. "He's not a
+sergeant. What in the world is he?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The entire mess echoed the word, and the volley of questions would
+have scared any man. Small wonder that the ragged, filthy invader
+could only smile and shake his head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From under the table, calm and smiling urbanely[17], rose Dirkovitch,
+who had been roused from healthful slumber by feet upon his body. By
+the side of the man he rose, and the man shrieked and groveled at his
+feet. It was a horrible sight, coming so swiftly upon the pride and
+glory of the toast that had brought the strayed wits together.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dirkovitch made no offer to raise him, but Little Mildred heaved him
+up in an instant. It is not good that a gentleman who can answer to
+the Queen's toast should lie at the feet of a subaltern of Cossacks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The hasty action tore the wretch's upper clothing nearly to the waist,
+and his body was seamed with dry black scars. There is only one weapon
+in the world that cuts in parallel lines, and it is neither the cane
+nor the cat. Dirkovitch saw the marks, and the pupils of his eyes
+dilated&mdash;also, his face changed. He said something that sounded like
+"Shto ve takete"; and the man, fawning, answered, "Chetyre."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What's that?" said everybody together.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"His number. That is number four, you know." Dirkovitch spoke very
+thickly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What has a Queen's officer to do with a qualified number?" said the
+colonel, and there rose an unpleasant growl round the table.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"How can I tell?" said the affable Oriental, with a sweet smile. "He
+is a&mdash;how you have it?&mdash;escape&mdash;runaway, from over there."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He nodded toward the darkness of the night.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Speak to him, if he'll answer you, and speak to him gently," said
+Little Mildred, settling the man in a chair. It seemed most improper
+to all present that Dirkovitch. should sip brandy as he talked in
+purring, spitting Russian to the creature who answered so feebly and
+with such evident dread. But since Dirkovitch appeared to understand,
+no man said a word. They breathed heavily, leaning forward, in the
+long gaps of the conversation. The next time that they have no
+engagements on hand the White Hussars intend to go to St. Petersburg
+and learn Russian.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He does not know how many years ago," said Dirkovitch, facing the
+mess, "but he says it was very long ago, in a war, I think that there
+was an accident. He says he was of this glorious and distinguished
+regiment in the war."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The rolls! The rolls! Holmer, get the rolls!" said Little Mildred,
+and the adjutant dashed off bareheaded to the orderly room where the
+rolls of the regiment were kept. He returned just in time to hear
+Dirkovitch conclude, "Therefore I am most sorry to say there was an
+accident, which would have been, reparable if he had apologized to our
+colonel, whom he had insulted."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Another growl, which the colonel tried to beat down. The mess was in
+no mood to weigh insults to Russian colonels just then.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He does not remember, but I think that there was an accident, and so
+he was not exchanged among the prisoners, but he was sent to another
+place&mdash;how do you say?&mdash;the country. <i>So</i>, he says, he came here. He
+does not know how he came. Eh? He <i>was</i> at Chepany[18]"&mdash;the man
+caught the word, nodded, and shivered&mdash;"at Zhigansk[19] and
+Irkutsk[20]. I cannot understand how he escaped. He says, too, that he
+was in the forests for many years, but how many years he has
+forgotten&mdash;that with many things. It was an accident; done because he
+did not apologise to our colonel. Ah!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Instead of echoing Dirkovitch's sigh of regret, it is sad to record
+that the White Hussars livelily exhibited unchristian delight and
+other emotions, hardly restrained by their sense of hospitality.
+Holmer flung the frayed and yellow regimental rolls on the table, and
+the men flung themselves atop of these.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Steady! Fifty-six&mdash;fifty-five&mdash;fifty-four," said Holmer. "Here we
+are. 'Lieutenant Austin Limmason&mdash;<i>missing</i>.' That was before
+Sebastopol[21]. What an infernal shame! Insulted one of their
+colonels, and was quietly shipped off. Thirty years of his life wiped
+out."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But he never apologized. Said he'd see him&mdash;&mdash;first," chorussed the
+mess.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Poor devil! I suppose he never had the chance afterward. How did he
+come here?" said the colonel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The dingy heap in the chair could give no answer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do you know who you are?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It laughed weakly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do you know that you are Limmason&mdash;Lieutenant Limmason, of the White
+Hussars?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Swift as a shot came the answer, in a slightly surprised tone, "Yes,
+I'm Limmason, of course." The light died out in his eyes, and he
+collapsed afresh, watching every motion of Dirkovitch with terror. A
+flight from Siberia may fix a few elementary facts in the mind, but it
+does not lead to continuity of thought. The man could not explain how,
+like a homing pigeon, he had found his way to his own old mess again.
+Of what he had suffered or seen he knew nothing. He cringed before
+Dirkovitch as instinctively as he had pressed the spring of the
+candlestick, sought the picture of the drum-horse, and answered to the
+Queen's toast. The rest was a blank that the dreaded Russian tongue
+could only in part remove. His head bowed on his breast, and he
+giggled and cowered alternately.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The devil that lived in the brandy prompted Dirkovitch at this
+extremely inopportune moment to make a speech. He rose, swaying
+slightly, gripped the table edge, while his eyes glowed like opals,
+and began:&mdash;"Fellow-soldiers glorious&mdash;true friends and hospitables.
+It was an accident, and deplorable&mdash;most deplorable." Here he smiled
+sweetly all round the mess. "But you will think of this little, little
+thing. So little, is it not? The czar! Posh! I slap my fingers&mdash;I snap
+my fingers at him. Do I believe in him? No! But the Slav who has done
+nothing, <i>him</i> I believe. Seventy&mdash;how much?&mdash;millions that have done
+nothing&mdash;not one thing. Napoleon was an episode." He banged a hand on
+the table. "Hear you, old peoples, we have done nothing in the
+world&mdash;out here. All our work is to do: and it shall be done, old
+peoples. Get away!" He waved his hand imperiously, and pointed to the
+man. "You see him. He is not good to see. He was just one little&mdash;oh,
+so little&mdash;accident, that no one remembered. Now he is <i>That</i>. So will
+you be, brother-soldiers so brave&mdash;so will you be. But you will never
+come back. You will all go where he has gone, or"&mdash;he pointed to the
+great coffin shadow on the ceiling, and muttering, "Seventy
+millions&mdash;get away, you old people," fell asleep.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Sweet, and to the point," said Little Mildred. "What's the use of
+getting wroth? Let's make the poor devil comfortable."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But that was a matter suddenly and swiftly taken from the loving hands
+of the White Hussars. The lieutenant had returned only to go away
+again three days later, when the wail of the "Dead March" and the
+tramp of the squadrons told the wondering station, that saw no gap in
+the table, an officer of the regiment had resigned his new-found
+commission.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And Dirkovitch&mdash;bland, supple, and always genial&mdash;went away too by a
+night train. Little Mildred and another saw him off, for he was the
+guest of the mess, and even had he smitten the colonel with the open
+hand the law of the mess allowed no relaxation of hospitality.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Good-by, Dirkovitch, and a pleasant journey," said Little Mildred.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>Au revoir[22]</i> my true friends," said the Russian.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Indeed! But we thought you were going home?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes; but I will come again. My friends, is that road shut?" He
+pointed to where the north star burned over the Khyber Pass.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"By Jove! I forgot. Of course. Happy to meet you, old man, any time
+you like. Got everything you want,&mdash;cheroots, ice, bedding? That's all
+right. Well, <i>au revoir</i>, Dirkovitch."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Um," said the other man, as the tail-lights of the train grew small.
+"Of&mdash;all&mdash;the&mdash;unmitigated[23]&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Little Mildred answered nothing, but watched the north star, and
+hummed a selection from a recent burlesque that had much delighted the
+White Hussars. It ran:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+     "I'm sorry for Mister Bluebeard,<br/>
+
+     I'm sorry to cause him pain;<br/>
+
+     But a terrible spree there's sure to be<br/>
+
+     When he comes back again."
+</p>
+
+<h4>NOTES</h4>
+
+<p>
+[1] <i>The Man Who Was</i> was written in 1889.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[2] 46:6 anomaly. Deviation from type.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[3] 47:1 Hussars. Light-horse troopers armed with sabre and carbine.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[4] 47:1 Peshawur. City in British India.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[5] 47:7 Tyrones. From a county in Ireland by this name.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[6] 47:26 Burmah. In southeastern Asia. Part of the British Empire.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[7] 47:27 Irrawaddy. Chief river of Burma.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[8] 48:27 Sotnia. Company of the Cossacks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[9] 50:14 rupee. Indian coin worth about forty-eight cents.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[10] 50:21 vendettas. Private blood-feuds.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[11] 51:14 Punjab. Country of five rivers, tributaries of the Indus.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[12] 81:26 Sambhur. A rusine deer found in India.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[13] 51:26 nilghai. Antelope with hind legs shorter than its
+fore-legs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[14] 54:9 expurgated. Purified.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[15] 57:23 renegade. One who deserts his faith.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[16] 58:26 candelabrum. Stand supporting several lamps.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[17] 61:3 urbanely. Politely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[18] 63:2 Chepany. Town in Siberia.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[19] 63:4 Zhigansk. Town in Siberia.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[20] 63:4 Irkutsk. Province and city in Siberia.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[21] 63:17 Sebastopol. Seaport in Russia.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[22] 65:26 Au revoir. Till we meet again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[23] 66:6 unmitigated. As bad as can be.
+</p>
+
+<h4>BIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES</h4>
+
+<p>
+<i>Essays on Modern Novelists</i>, William Lyon Phelps.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>A Kipling Primer</i>, Knowles.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Rudyard Kipling</i>, Richard Le Galliene.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Kipling to French Eyes," <i>Bookman</i>, 26: 584.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Life of Kipling," _Encyclopaedia Britannica.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Life of Kipling," <i>The Universal Encyclopedia</i>.
+</p>
+
+<h4>BIOGRAPHY</h4>
+
+<p>
+Rudyard Kipling, the most vigorous, versatile, and highly endowed of
+the present-day writers of fiction, was born in Bombay, India,
+December 30, 1865. His place of birth and extensive travelling make
+him more Anglo-Saxon than British. His father was for many years
+connected with the schools of art at Bombay and Lahore in India. His
+mother, Alice MacDonald, was the daughter of a Methodist clergyman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Kipling was brought to England when he was five years old to be
+educated. While in college at Westward Ho he edited the <i>College
+Chronicle</i>. For this paper he contributed regularly, poetry and
+stories. After his school days and on his return to India, he served
+on the editorial staff of the Lahore <i>Civil and Military Gazette</i> from
+1882 to 1887, and was assistant editor of the <i>Pioneer</i> at Allahabad
+from 1887 to 1889.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Kipling has travelled extensively. He is at home in India, China,
+Japan, Africa, Australia, England, and America. The odd part about his
+realistic observations, however, is that his notes, whether written
+about California or India, are often repudiated by the people whom he
+has visited. After visiting England and the United States in a vain
+effort to find a publisher for his writings, he returned to India and
+published in the <i>Pioneer</i> his <i>American Notes</i>, which were
+immediately reproduced in book form in New York in 1891.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He married Miss Balestier of New York in 1892. They settled at
+Brattleboro, Vermont, immediately after their marriage and lived there
+until 1896. Kipling revisited the United States in 1899. While on this
+trip he suffered a severe attack of pneumonia which brought out a
+demonstration of interest from the American people that clearly showed
+their appreciation of him as a man and a writer.
+</p>
+
+<h4>CRITICISMS</h4>
+
+<p>
+Kipling is journalistic in all his writings. Oftentimes his material
+is very thin, flippant, and sensational, but he always is interesting,
+for he possesses the expert reporter's unerring judgment for choosing
+the essentials of his situation, character, or description, that catch
+and hold the reader's attention. In his earlier writings, like <i>Plain
+Tales from the Hills</i> or <i>The Jungle Books</i>, the radical racial
+differences between his characters and readers, and the background of
+primitive, mysterious India caught the reading world and instantly
+established Kipling's fame.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His technique is brilliant, his wit keen, and his energy of the bold
+and dashing military type. This audacious energy leads him very often
+into sprawling situations, a worship of imperialism, and reckless
+statements concerning moral and spiritual laws. Unlike Bret Harte, who
+was in many respects one of Kipling's ideals, he leaves his bad and
+coarse characters disreputable to the end. This is due in a large
+measure to the lack of warmth and light in his writings. In
+contradiction to this type of his works his <i>William the Conqueror</i>
+and <i>An Habitation Enforced</i> are filled with a gentle-human sympathy
+that causes us to forget and forgive any vulgarity he may have used in
+his more primitive and coarse characters. Even Kipling partisans must
+sometimes wish that Kipling's vision were not so dimmed by the British
+flag and that he might forget for a time the British soldier he loves
+so ardently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His writings since 1899 are much more mechanical than his earlier
+works. He seems, at times, to resort to the orator's superficial
+tricks in his attempts to attract readers. The <i>Athenaeum</i>, a friendly
+organ, says of his later work: "In his new part&mdash;the missionary of
+Empire&mdash;Mr. Kipling is living the strenuous life. He has frankly
+abandoned story telling, and is using his complete and powerful armory
+in the interests of patriotic zeal."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Whatever may be the final judgment of the world concerning Kipling's
+claim to literary genius, the young student may rest assured that
+there is no one in England who can compare with this strenuous and
+versatile writer. He is original and powerful, interesting and
+realistic. He is a lover of the men who earn their bread by the sweat
+of their faces and a despiser of "flannelled fools." He lacks the
+day-dreams of Stevenson and preaches from every housetop the gospel of
+virile, acting morality. Many of his readers have criticised adversely
+his spiritual teachings, because of the furious energy with which he
+denounces an apathetic religion and eulogizes the person who works
+with all his might, day after day, for the highest he knows and never
+fears the day of death and judgment.
+</p>
+
+<h4>GENERAL REFERENCES</h4>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Book of the Short Story</i>, Alexander Jessup.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Short Story in English</i>, Henry Seidel Canby.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Bibliography of Kipling's Works</i>, Eugene P, Saxton.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Contradictory Elements in Rudyard Kipling," <i>Current Literature</i>, 44:
+274.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Where Kipling Stands," <i>Bookman</i>, 29: 120-122.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Are there two Kiplings?" <i>Cosmopolitan</i>, 31: 653-660.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Literary Style of Kipling," <i>Lippincott</i>, 73: 99-103.
+</p>
+
+<h4>COLLATERAL READINGS</h4>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Man Who Would be King</i>, Rudyard Kipling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>William the Conqueror</i>, Rudyard Kipling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Phantom Rickshaw</i>, Rudyard Kipling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Finest Story in the World</i>, Rudyard Kipling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Under the Deodars</i>, Rudyard Kipling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>An Habitation Enforced</i>, Rudyard Kipling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Plain Tales from the Hills</i>, Rudyard Kipling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Light that Failed</i>, Rudyard Kipling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Wee Willie Winkie</i>, Rudyard Kipling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Baa Baa Black Sheep</i>, Rudyard Kipling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Captains Courageous</i>, Rudyard Kipling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Jungle Books</i>, Rudyard Kipling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>They</i>, Rudyard Kipling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Brushwood Boy</i>, Rudyard Kipling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Christ in Flanders</i>, Honoré de Balzac.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Old Gentleman of the Black Stock</i>, Thomas Nelson Page.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>A New England Nun</i>, Mary Wilkins Freeman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Outcasts of Poker Flat</i>, Bret Harte.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Siege of Berlin</i>, Alphonse Dadoed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Prisoner of Assiout</i>, Grant Allen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>A Terribly Strange Bed</i>, Wilkie Collins.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Prisoners</i>, Guy de Maupassant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Mr. Isaacs</i>, F. Marion Crawford.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Where Love Is, There God Is Also</i>, Leo Tolstoi.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap06"></a>THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER [1]</h2>
+
+<p class="center">
+<i>By Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+     Son coeur est un luth suspendu;<br/>
+
+     Sitôt qu'on le touche il résonne.<br/>
+
+                                     &mdash;De Béranger.[2]
+</p>
+
+<p>
+During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of
+the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had
+been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of
+country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew
+on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. I know not how it
+was; but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of
+insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I say insufferable; for the
+feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurable, because
+poetic, sentiment, with which the mind usually receives even the
+sternest natural images of the desolate or terrible. I looked upon the
+scene before me&mdash;upon the mere house, and the simple landscape
+features of the domain&mdash;upon the bleak walls&mdash;upon the vacant eye-like
+windows&mdash;a few rank sedges&mdash;and upon a few white trunks of decayed
+trees&mdash;with an utter depression of soul which I can compare to no
+earthly sensation more properly than to the after-dream of the
+reveller upon opium&mdash;the bitter lapse into every-day life&mdash;the hideous
+dropping off of the veil. There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening
+of the heart&mdash;an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of
+the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime. What was
+it&mdash;I paused to think&mdash;what was it that so unnerved me in the
+contemplation of the House of Usher? It was a mystery all insoluble;
+nor could I grapple with the shadowy fancies that crowded upon me as I
+pondered. I was forced to fall back upon the unsatisfactory conclusion
+that while, beyond doubt, there <i>are</i> combinations of very simple
+natural objects which have the power of thus affecting us, still the
+analysis of this power lies among considerations beyond our depth. It
+was possible, I reflected, that a mere different arrangement of the
+particulars of the scene, of the details of the picture, would be
+sufficient to modify, or perhaps to annihilate its capacity for
+sorrowful impression; and, acting upon this idea, I reined my horse to
+the precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn[3] that lay in
+unruffled lustre by the dwelling, and gazed down&mdash;but with a shudder
+even more thrilling than before&mdash;upon the remodelled and inverted
+images of the gray sedge, and the ghastly tree stems, and the vacant
+and eye-like windows.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nevertheless, in this mansion of gloom I now proposed to myself a
+sojourn of some weeks. Its proprietor, Roderick Usher, had been one of
+my boon companions in boyhood; but many years had elapsed since our
+last meeting. A letter, however, had lately reached me in a distant
+part of the country&mdash;a letter from him&mdash;which, in its wildly
+importunate nature, had admitted of no other than a personal reply.
+The Ms. gave evidence of nervous agitation. The writer spoke of acute
+bodily illness, of a mental disorder which oppressed him, and of an
+earnest desire to see me, as his best, and indeed his only, personal
+friend, with a view of attempting, by the cheerfulness of my society,
+some alleviation of his malady. It was the manner in which all this,
+and much more, was said&mdash;it was the apparent <i>heart</i> that went with
+his request&mdash;which allowed me no room for hesitation; and I
+accordingly obeyed forthwith what I still considered a very singular
+summons.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Although, as boys, we had been even intimate associates, yet I really
+knew little of my friend. His reserve had been always excessive and
+habitual. I was aware, however, that his very ancient family had been
+noted, time out of mind, for a peculiar sensibility of temperament,
+displaying itself, through long ages, in many works of exalted art,
+and manifested, of late, in repeated deeds of munificent, yet
+unobtrusive, charity, as well as in a passionate devotion to the
+intricacies, perhaps even more than to the orthodox and easily
+recognizable beauties, of musical science. I had learned, too, the
+very remarkable fact that the stem of the Usher race, all time-honored
+as it was, had put forth, at no period, any enduring branch; in other
+words, that the entire family lay in the direct line of descent, and
+had always, with very trifling and very temporary variation, so lain.
+It was this deficiency, I considered, while running over in thought
+the perfect keeping of the character of the premises with the
+accredited character of the people, and while speculating upon the
+possible influence which the one, in the long lapse of centuries,
+might have exercised upon the other&mdash;it was this deficiency, perhaps,
+of collateral issue, and the consequent undeviating transmission, from
+sire to son, of the patrimony with the name, which had, at length, so
+identified the two as to merge the original title of the estate in the
+quaint and equivocal appellation of the <i>House of Usher</i>&mdash;an
+appellation which seemed to include, in the minds of the peasantry who
+used it, both the family and the family mansion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I have said that the sole effect of my somewhat childish experiment of
+looking down within the tarn had been to deepen the first singular
+impression. There can be no doubt that the consciousness of the rapid
+increase of my superstition&mdash;for why should I not so term it?&mdash;served
+mainly to accelerate the increase itself. Such, I have long known, is
+the paradoxical law of all sentiments having terror as a basis. And it
+might have been for this reason only, that, when I again uplifted my
+eyes to the house itself, from its image in the pool, there grew in my
+mind a strange fancy&mdash;a fancy so ridiculous, indeed, that I but
+mention it to show the vivid force of the sensations which oppressed
+me. I had so worked upon my imagination as really to believe that
+about the whole mansion and domain there hung an atmosphere peculiar
+to themselves and their immediate vicinity&mdash;an atmosphere which had no
+affinity with the air of heaven, but which had reeked up from the
+decayed trees, and the gray wall, and the silent tarn&mdash;a pestilent and
+mystic vapor, dull, sluggish, faintly discernible, and leaden-hued.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Shaking off from my spirit what <i>must</i> have been a dream, I scanned
+more narrowly the real aspect of the building. Its principal feature
+seemed to be that of an excessive antiquity. The discoloration of ages
+had been great. Minute fungi overspread the whole exterior, hanging in
+a fine, tangled web-work from the eaves. Yet all this was apart from
+any extraordinary dilapidation. No portion of the masonry had fallen;
+and there appeared to be a wild inconsistency between its still
+perfect adaptation of parts, and the crumbling condition of the
+individual stones. In this there was much that reminded me of the
+specious totality of old woodwork which has rotted for years in some
+neglected vault, with no disturbance from the breath of the external
+air. Beyond this indication of extensive decay, however, the fabric
+gave little token of instability. Perhaps the eye of a scrutinizing
+observer might have discovered a barely perceptible fissure, which,
+extending from the roof of the building in front, made its way down
+the wall in a zigzag direction, until it became lost in the sullen
+waters of the tarn.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Noticing these things, I rode over a short causeway to the house. A
+servant in waiting took my horse, and I entered the Gothic archway of
+the hall. A valet, of stealthy step, thence conducted me, in silence,
+through many dark and intricate passages in my progress to the
+<i>studio</i> of his master. Much that I encountered on the way
+contributed, I know not how, to heighten the vague sentiments of which
+I have already spoken. While the objects around me&mdash;while the carvings
+of the ceilings, the sombre tapestries of the walls, the ebon
+blackness of the floors, and the phantasmagoric armorial trophies
+which rattled as I strode, were but matters to which, or to such as
+which, I had been accustomed from my infancy&mdash;while I hesitated not to
+acknowledge how familiar was all this&mdash;I still wondered to find how
+unfamiliar were the fancies which ordinary images were stirring up. On
+one of the staircases I met the physician of the family. His
+countenance, I thought, wore a mingled expression of low cunning and
+perplexity. He accosted me with trepidation and passed on. The valet
+now threw open a door and ushered me into the presence of his master.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The room in which I found myself was very large and lofty. The windows
+were long, narrow, and pointed, and at so vast a distance from the
+black oaken floor as to be altogether inaccessible from within. Feeble
+gleams of encrimsoned light made their way through the trellised
+panes, and served to render sufficiently distinct the more prominent
+objects around; the eye, however, struggled in vain to reach the
+remoter angles of the chamber, or the recesses of the vaulted and
+fretted ceiling. Dark draperies hung upon the walls. The general
+furniture was profuse, comfortless, antique, and tattered. Many books
+and musical instruments lay scattered about, but failed to give any
+vitality to the scene. I felt that I breathed an atmosphere of sorrow.
+An air of stern, deep, and irredeemable gloom hung over and pervaded
+all.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Upon my entrance, Usher arose from a sofa on which he had been lying
+at full length, and greeted me with, a vivacious warmth which had much
+in it, I at first thought, of an overdone cordiality&mdash;of the
+constrained effort of the <i>ennuyé</i>[4] man of the world. A glance,
+however, at his countenance convinced me of his perfect sincerity. We
+sat down; and for some moments, while he spoke not. I gazed upon him
+with a feeling half of pity, half of awe. Surely, man had never before
+so terribly altered, in so brief a period, as had Roderick Usher! It
+was with difficulty that I could bring myself to admit the identity of
+the wan being before me with the companion of my early boyhood. Yet
+the character of his face had been at all times remarkable. A
+cadaverousness of complexion; an eye large, liquid, and luminous
+beyond comparison; lips somewhat thin and very pallid, but of a
+surpassingly beautiful curve; a nose of a delicate Hebrew model, but
+with a breadth of nostril unusual in similar formations; a finely
+moulded chin, speaking, in its want of prominence, of a want of moral
+energy; hair of a more than web-like softness and tenuity; these
+features, with an inordinate expansion above the regions of the
+temple, made up altogether a countenance not easily to be forgotten.
+And now in the mere exaggeration of the prevailing character of these
+features, and of the expression they were wont to convey, lay so much
+of change that I doubted to whom I spoke. The now ghastly pallor of
+the skin, and the now miraculous lustre of the eye, above all things
+startled, and even awed me. The silken hair, too, had been suffered to
+grow all unheeded, and as, in its wild gossamer texture, it floated
+rather than fell about the face, I could not, even with effort,
+connect its arabesque expression with any idea of simple humanity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the manner of my friend I was at once struck with an
+incoherence&mdash;an inconsistency; and I soon found this to arise from a
+series of feeble and futile struggles to overcome an habitual
+trepidancy, an excessive nervous agitation. For something of this
+nature I had indeed been prepared, no less by his letter than by
+reminiscences of certain boyish traits, and by conclusions deduced
+from his peculiar physical conformation and temperament. His action
+was alternately vivacious and sullen. His voice varied rapidly from a
+tremulous indecision (when the animal spirits seemed utterly in
+abeyance) to that species of energetic concision&mdash;that abrupt,
+weighty, unhurried, and hollow-sounding enunciation&mdash;that leaden,
+self-balanced, and perfectly modulated guttural utterance, which may
+be observed in the lost drunkard, or the irreclaimable eater of opium,
+during the periods of his most intense excitement.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was thus that he spoke of the object of my visit, of his earnest
+desire to see me, and of the solace he expected me to afford him. He
+entered, at some length, into what he conceived to be the nature of
+his malady. It was, he said, a constitutional and a family evil, and
+one for which he despaired to find a remedy&mdash;a mere nervous affection,
+he immediately added, which would undoubtedly soon pass off. It
+displayed itself in a host of unnatural sensations. Some of these, as
+he detailed them, interested and bewildered me; although, perhaps, the
+terms and the general manner of the narration had their weight. He
+suffered much from a morbid acuteness of the senses. The most insipid
+food was alone endurable; he could wear only garments of certain
+texture; the odors of all flowers were oppressive; his eyes were
+tortured by even a faint light; and there were but peculiar sounds,
+and these from stringed instruments, which did not inspire him with
+horror.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To an anomalous species of terror I found him a bounden[5] slave. "I
+shall perish," said he, "I <i>must</i> perish, in this deplorable folly.
+Thus, thus, and not otherwise, shall I be lost. I dread the events of
+the future, not in themselves, but in their results. I shudder at the
+thought of any, even the most trivial, incident, which may operate
+upon this intolerable agitation of soul. I have, indeed, no abhorrence
+of danger, except in its absolute effect&mdash;in terror. In this
+unnerved&mdash;in this pitiable condition&mdash;I feel that the period will
+sooner or later arrive when I must abandon life and reason together,
+in some struggle with the grim phantasm, FEAR."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I learned, moreover, at intervals, and through broken and equivocal
+hints, another singular feature of his mental condition. He was
+enchained by certain superstitious impressions in regard to the
+dwelling which he tenanted, and whence, for many years, he had never
+ventured forth&mdash;in regard to an influence whose supposititious force
+was conveyed in terms too shadowy here to be restated&mdash;an influence
+which some peculiarities in the mere form and substance of his family
+mansion, had, by dint of long sufferance, he said, obtained over his
+spirit&mdash;an effect which the <i>physique</i> of the gray walls and turrets,
+and of the dim tarn into which they all looked down, had, at length,
+brought about upon the <i>morale</i> of his existence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He admitted, however, although with hesitation, that much of the
+peculiar gloom which thus afflicted him could be traced to a more
+natural and far more palpable origin&mdash;to the severe and long-continued
+illness&mdash;indeed to the evidently approaching dissolution&mdash;of a
+tenderly beloved sister, his sole companion for long years, his last
+and only relative on earth. "Her decease," he said, with a bitterness
+which I can never forget, "would leave him (him the hopeless and the
+frail) the last of the ancient race of the Ushers." While he spoke,
+the lady Madeline (for so was she called) passed slowly through a
+remote portion of the apartment, and, without having noticed my
+presence, disappeared. I regarded her with an utter astonishment not
+unmingled with dread[6]; and yet I found it impossible to account for
+such feelings. A sensation of stupor oppressed me, as my eyes followed
+her retreating steps. When a door, at length, closed upon her, my
+glance sought instinctively and eagerly the countenance of the
+brother; but he had buried his face in his hands, and I could only
+perceive that a far more than ordinary wanness had overspread the
+emaciated fingers through which trickled many passionate tears.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The disease of the lady Madeline had long baffled the skill of her
+physicians. A settled apathy, a gradual wasting away of the person,
+and frequent although transient affections of a partially cataleptical
+character, were the unusual diagnosis. Hitherto she had steadily borne
+up against the pressure of her malady, and had not betaken herself
+finally to bed; but on the closing in of the evening of my arrival at
+the house, she succumbed (as her brother told me at night with
+inexpressible agitation) to the prostrating power of the destroyer;
+and I learned that the glimpse I had obtained of her person would thus
+probably be the last I should obtain&mdash;that the lady, at least while
+living, would be seen by me no more.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For several days ensuing her name was unmentioned by either Usher or
+myself; and during this period I was busied in earnest endeavors to
+alleviate the melancholy of my friend. We painted and read together;
+or I listened, as if in a dream, to the wild improvisations[7] of his
+speaking guitar. And thus, as a closer and still closer intimacy
+admitted me more unreservedly into the recesses of his spirit, the
+more bitterly did I perceive the futility of all attempt at cheering a
+mind from which darkness, as if an inherent positive quality, poured
+forth upon all objects of the moral and physical universe, in one
+unceasing radiation of gloom.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I shall ever bear about me a memory of the many solemn hours I thus
+spent alone with the master of the House of Usher. Yet I should fail
+in any attempt to convey an idea of the exact character of the
+studies, or of the occupations in which he involved me, or led me the
+way. An excited and highly distempered ideality threw a sulphurous
+luster over all. His long, improvised dirges will ring forever in my
+ears. Among other things, I hold painfully in mind a certain singular
+perversion and amplification of the wild air of the last waltz of von
+Weber[8]. From the paintings over which his elaborate fancy brooded,
+and which grew, touch by touch, into vaguenesses at which I shuddered
+the more thrillingly because I shuddered knowing not why,&mdash;from these
+paintings (vivid as their images now are before, me) I would in vain
+endeavor to educe more than a small portion which should lie within
+the compass of merely written words. By the utter simplicity, by the
+nakedness of his designs, he arrested and overawed attention. If ever
+mortal painted an idea, that mortal was Roderick Usher. For me, at
+least, in the circumstances then surrounding me, there arose out of
+the pure abstractions which the hypochondriac contrived to throw, upon
+his canvas, an intensity of intolerable awe, no shadow of which felt I
+ever yet in the contemplation of the certainly glowing yet too
+concrete reveries of Fuseli.[9]
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One of the phantasmagoric conceptions of my friend, partaking not so
+rigidly of the spirit of abstraction may be shadowed forth, although
+feebly, in words. A small picture presented the interior of an
+immensely long and rectangular vault or tunnel, with low walls,
+smooth, white, and without interruption or device. Certain accessory
+points of the design served well to convey the idea that this
+excavation lay at an exceeding depth below the surface of the earth.
+No outlet was observed in any portion of its vast extent, and no torch
+or other artificial source of light was discernible; yet a flood of
+intense rays rolled throughout, and bathed the whole in a ghastly and
+inappropriate splendor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I have just spoken of that morbid condition of the auditory nerve
+which rendered all music intolerable to the sufferer, with the
+exception of certain effects of stringed, instruments. It was,
+perhaps, the narrow limits to which he thus confined himself upon the
+guitar, which gave birth, in great measure, to the fantastic character
+of his performances. But the fervid <i>facility</i> of his <i>impromptus</i>
+could not be so accounted for. They must have been, and were, in the
+notes, as well as in the words of his wild fantasias (for he not
+unfrequently accompanied himself with rimed verbal improvisations),
+the result of that intense mental collectedness and concentration to
+which I have previously alluded as observable only in particular
+moments of the highest artificial excitement. The words of one of
+these rhapsodies I have easily remembered. I was, perhaps, the more
+forcibly impressed with it, as he gave it, because, in the under or
+mystic current of its meaning, I fancied that I perceived, and for the
+first time, a full consciousness on the part of Usher, of the
+tottering of his lofty reason upon her throne. The verses, which were
+entitled "The Haunted Palace,"[10] ran very nearly, if not accurately,
+thus:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<h5>I</h5>
+
+<p>
+     In the greenest of our valleys,<br/>
+
+       By good angels tenanted,<br/>
+
+     Once a fair and stately palace&mdash;<br/>
+
+       Radiant palace&mdash;reared its head.<br/>
+
+     In the monarch Thought's dominion&mdash;<br/>
+
+       It stood there!<br/>
+
+     Never seraph spread a pinion<br/>
+
+       Over fabric half so fair.
+</p>
+
+<h5>II</h5>
+
+<p>
+     Banners yellow, glorious, golden,<br/>
+
+       On its roof did float and flow;<br/>
+
+     (This&mdash;all this&mdash;was in the olden<br/>
+
+       Time long ago)<br/>
+
+     And every gentle air that dallied,<br/>
+
+       In that sweet day,<br/>
+
+     Along the ramparts plumed and pallid,<br/>
+
+       A wingèd odor went away.
+</p>
+
+<h5>III</h5>
+
+<p>
+     Wanderers in that happy valley<br/>
+
+       Through two luminous windows saw<br/>
+
+     Spirits moving musically<br/>
+
+       To a lute's well-tunèd law,<br/>
+
+     Round about a throne, where sitting<br/>
+
+       (Porphyrogene!)[11]<br/>
+
+     In state his glory well befitting,<br/>
+
+       The ruler of the realm was seen.
+</p>
+
+<h5>IV</h5>
+
+<p>
+     And all with pearl and ruby glowing<br/>
+
+       Was the fair palace door,<br/>
+
+     Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing,<br/>
+
+       And sparkling evermore,<br/>
+
+     A troop of Echoes whose sweet duty<br/>
+
+       Was but to sing,<br/>
+
+     In voices of surpassing beauty,<br/>
+
+       The wit and wisdom of their king.
+</p>
+
+<h5>V</h5>
+
+<p>
+     But evil things, in robes of sorrow,<br/>
+
+       Assailed the monarch's high estate<br/>
+
+     (Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow<br/>
+
+       Shall dawn upon him, desolate!);<br/>
+
+     And, round about his home, the glory<br/>
+
+       That blushed and bloomed<br/>
+
+     Is but a dim-remembered story<br/>
+
+        Of the old time entombed.
+</p>
+
+<h5>VI</h5>
+
+<p>
+     And travelers now within that valley,<br/>
+
+       Through the red-litten windows, see<br/>
+
+     Vast forms that move fantastically<br/>
+
+       To a discordant melody;<br/>
+
+     While, like a rapid ghastly river,<br/>
+
+       Through the pale door,<br/>
+
+     A hideous throng rush out forever,<br/>
+
+       And laugh&mdash;but smile no more.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I well remember that suggestions arising from this ballad led us into
+a train of thought wherein there became manifest an opinion of Usher's
+which I mention not so much on account of its novelty (for other
+men[12] have thought thus) as on account of the pertinacity with which
+he maintained it. This opinion, in its general form, was that of the
+sentience of all vegetable things. But, in his disordered fancy, the
+idea had assumed a more daring character, and trespassed, under
+certain conditions, upon the kingdom of inorganization. I lack words
+to express the full extent or the earnest <i>abandon</i> of his persuasion.
+The belief, however, was connected (as I have previously hinted) with
+the gray stones of the home of his forefathers. The conditions of the
+sentience had been here, he imagined, fulfilled in the method of
+collocation of these stones&mdash;in the order of their arrangement, as
+well as in that of the many <i>fungi</i> which overspread them, and of the
+decayed trees which stood around&mdash;above all, in the long-undisturbed
+endurance of this arrangement, and in its reduplication in the still
+waters of the tarn. Its evidence&mdash;the evidence of the sentience&mdash;was
+to be seen, he said (and I here started as he spoke), in the gradual
+yet certain condensation of an atmosphere of their own about the
+waters and the walls. The result was discoverable, he added, in that
+silent, yet importunate and terrible influence which for centuries had
+molded the destinies of his family, and which made <i>him</i> what I now
+saw him&mdash;what he was. Such opinions need no comment, and I will make
+none.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Our books&mdash;the books which, for years, had formed no small portion of
+the mental existence of the invalid&mdash;were, as might be supposed, in
+strict keeping with this character of phantasm. We pored together over
+such works as the <i>Ververt et Chartreuse</i>[13] of Gresset; the
+<i>Belphegor</i>[14] of Machiavelli; the <i>Heaven and Hell</i>[15] of
+Swedenborg; the <i>Subterranean Voyage of Nicholas Klimm</i>[16] by
+Holberg; the <i>Chiromancy</i>[17] of Robert Flud, of Jean D'lndaginé, and
+of De la Chambre[18]; the <i>Journey into the Blue Distance</i> of
+Tieck[19]; and the <i>City of the Sun</i>[20] of Campanella. One favorite
+volume was a small octavo edition of the <i>Directorium
+Inquisitorium</i>[21] by the Dominican Eymeric de Cironne; and there were
+passages in <i>Pomponius Mela</i>,[22] about the old African Satyrs and
+Oegipans,[23] over which Usher would sit dreaming for hours. His chief
+delight, however, was found in the perusal of an exceedingly rare and
+curious book in quarto Gothic&mdash;the manual of a forgotten church&mdash;the
+<i>Vigiliae Mortuorum secundum Chorum Ecclesiae Maguntinae</i>.[24]
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I could not help thinking of the wild ritual of this work, and of its
+probable influence upon the hypochondriac, when, one evening, having
+informed me abruptly that the lady Madeline was no more, he stated his
+intention of preserving her corpse for a fortnight (previously to its
+final interment) in one of the numerous vaults within the main walls
+of the building. The worldly reason, however, assigned for this
+singular proceeding, was one which I did not feel at liberty to
+dispute. The brother had been led to his resolution, so he told me, by
+consideration of the unusual character of the malady of the deceased,
+of certain obtrusive and eager inquiries on the part of her medical
+men, and of the remote and exposed situation of the burial ground of
+the family, I will not deny that when I called to mind the sinister
+countenance of the person whom I met upon the staircase, on the day of
+my arrival at the house, I had no desire to oppose what I regarded as
+at best but a harmless, and by no means an unnatural precaution.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the request of Usher, I personally aided him in the arrangements
+for the temporary entombment. The body having been encoffined, we two
+alone bore it to its rest. The vault in which we placed it (and which
+had been so long unopened that our torches, half smothered in its
+oppressive atmosphere, gave us little opportunity for investigation)
+was small, damp, and entirely without means of admission for light;
+lying, at great depth, immediately beneath that portion of the
+building in which was my own sleeping apartment. It had been used,
+apparently, in remote feudal times, for the worst purposes of a
+donjon-keep, and in later days, as a place of deposit for powder, or
+some other highly combustible substance, as a portion of its floor,
+and the whole interior of a long archway through which we reached it,
+were carefully sheathed with copper. The door, of massive iron, had
+been also similarly protected. Its immense weight caused an unusually
+sharp grating sound as it moved upon its hinges.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Having deposited our mournful burden upon tressels within this region
+of horror, we partially turned aside the yet unscrewed lid of the
+coffin, and looked upon the face of the tenant. A striking similitude
+between the brother and sister now first arrested my attention; and
+Usher, divining, perhaps, my thoughts, murmured out some few words
+from which I learned that the deceased and himself had been twins, and
+that sympathies of a scarcely intelligible nature had always existed
+between them. Our glances, however, rested not long upon the dead&mdash;for
+we could not regard her unawed. The disease which had thus entombed
+the lady in the maturity of youth, had left, as usual in all maladies
+of a strictly cataleptical character, the mockery of a faint blush
+upon the bosom and the face, and that suspiciously lingering smile
+upon the lip which is so terrible in death. We replaced and screwed
+down the lid, and having secured the door of iron, made our way, with
+toil, into the scarcely less gloomy apartments of the upper portion of
+the house.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And now, some days of bitter grief having elapsed, an observable
+change came over the features of the mental disorder of my friend. His
+ordinary manner had vanished. His ordinary occupations were neglected
+or forgotten. He roamed from chamber to chamber with hurried, unequal,
+and objectless step. The pallor of his countenance had assumed, if
+possible, a more ghastly line&mdash;but the luminousness of his eye had
+utterly gone out. The once occasional huskiness of his tone was heard
+no more; and a tremulous quaver, as if of extreme terror, habitually
+characterized his utterance. There were times, indeed, when I thought
+his unceasingly agitated mind was laboring with some oppressive
+secret, to divulge which he struggled for the necessary courage. At
+times, again, I was obliged to resolve all into the mere inexplicable
+vagaries of madness; for I beheld him gazing upon vacancy for long
+hours, in an attitude of the profoundest attention, as if listening to
+some imaginary sound. It was no wonder that his condition
+terrified&mdash;that it infected me. I felt creeping upon me, by slow yet
+certain degrees, the wild influence of his own fantastic yet
+impressive superstitions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was, especially, upon retiring to bed late in the night of the
+seventh or eighth day after the placing of the lady Madeline within
+the donjon, that I experienced the full power of such feelings. Sleep
+came not near my couch, while the hours waned and waned away, I
+struggled to reason off the nervousness which had dominion over me. I
+endeavored to believe that much, if not all of what I felt, was due to
+the bewildering influence of the gloomy furniture of the room&mdash;of the
+dark and tattered draperies, which, tortured into motion by the breath
+of a rising tempest, swayed fitfully to and fro upon the walls, and
+rustled uneasily about the decorations of the bed. But my efforts were
+fruitless. An irrepressible tremor gradually pervaded my frame; and,
+at length, there sat upon my very heart an incubus of utterly
+causeless alarm. Shaking this off with a gasp and a struggle, I
+uplifted myself upon the pillows, and peering earnestly within the
+intense darkness of the chamber, hearkened&mdash;I know not why, except
+that an instinctive spirit prompted me&mdash;to certain low and indefinite
+sounds which came, through the pauses of the storm, at long intervals,
+I knew not whence. Overpowered by an intense sentiment of horror,
+unaccountable yet unendurable, I threw on my clothes with haste (for I
+felt that I should sleep no more during the night), and endeavored to
+arouse myself from the pitiable condition into which I had fallen, by
+pacing rapidly to and fro through the apartment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had taken but few turns in this manner, when a light step on an
+adjoining staircase arrested my attention. I presently recognized it
+as that of Usher. In an instant afterward he rapped, with a gentle
+touch, at my door, and entered, bearing a lamp. His countenance was,
+as usual, cadaverously wan&mdash;but, moreover, there was a species of mad
+hilarity in his eyes&mdash;and evidently restrained hysteria in his whole
+demeanor. His air appalled me&mdash;but anything was preferable to the
+solitude which I had so long endured, and I even welcomed his presence
+as a relief.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And you have not seen it?" he said abruptly, after having stared
+about him for some moments in silence&mdash;"you have not then seen
+it?&mdash;but stay! you shall." Thus speaking, and having carefully shaded
+his lamp, he hurried to one of the casements, and threw it freely open
+to the storm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The impetuous fury of the entering gust nearly lifted us from our
+feet. It was, indeed, a tempestuous yet sternly beautiful night, and
+one wildly singular in its terror and its beauty. A whirlwind had
+apparently collected its force in our vicinity; for there were
+frequent and violent alterations in the direction of the wind; and the
+exceeding density of the clouds (which hung so low as to press upon
+the turrets of the house) did not prevent our perceiving the lifelike
+velocity with which they flew careering from all points against each
+other, without passing away into the distance. I say that even their
+exceeding density did not prevent our perceiving this&mdash;yet we had no
+glimpse of the moon or stars&mdash;nor was there any flashing forth of the
+lightning. But the under surfaces of the huge masses of agitated
+vapor, as well as all terrestrial objects immediately around us, were
+glowing in the unnatural light of a faintly luminous and distinctly
+visible gaseous exhalation which hung about and enshrouded the
+mansion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You must not&mdash;you shall not behold this!" said I, shudderingly, to
+Usher, as I led him, with a gentle violence, from the window to a
+seat. "These appearances, which bewilder you, are merely electrical
+phenomena not uncommon&mdash;or it may be that they have their ghastly
+origin in the rank miasma of the tarn. Let us close this casement&mdash;the
+air is chilling and dangerous to your frame. Here is one of your
+favorite romances. I will read and you shall listen; and so we will
+pass away this terrible night together."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The antique volume which I had taken up was the <i>Mad Trist</i> of Sir
+Launcelot Canning[25]; but I had called it a favorite of Usher's more
+in sad jest than in earnest; for, in truth, there is little in its
+uncouth and unimaginative prolixity which could have had interest for
+the lofty and spiritual ideality of my friend. It was, however, the
+only book immediately at hand; and I indulged a vague hope that the
+excitement which now agitated the hypochondriac, might find relief
+(for the history of mental disorder is full of similar anomalies) even
+in the extremeness of the folly which I should read. Could I have
+judged, indeed, by the wild, overstrained air of vivacity with which
+he hearkened, or apparently hearkened, to the words of the tale, I
+might well have congratulated myself upon the success of my design.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had arrived at that well-known portion of the story where Ethelred,
+the hero of the "Trist," having sought in vain for peaceable admission
+into the dwelling of the hermit, proceeds to make good an entrance by
+force. Here, it will be remembered, the words of the narrative run
+thus:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And Ethelred, who was by nature of a doughty heart, and who was now
+mighty withal, on account of the powerfulness of the wine which he had
+drunken, waited no longer to hold parley with the hermit, who, in
+sooth, was of an obstinate and maliceful turn; but, feeling the rain
+upon his shoulders, and fearing the rising of the tempest, uplifted
+his mace outright, and, with blows, made quickly room in the plankings
+of the door for his gauntleted hand; and now pulling therewith
+sturdily, he so cracked, and ripped, and tore all asunder, that the
+noise of the dry and hollow-sounding wood alarummed[26] and
+reverberated throughout the forest."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the termination of this sentence I started, and for a moment
+paused; for it appeared to me (although I at once concluded that my
+excited fancy had deceived me)&mdash;it appeared to me that, from some very
+remote portion of the mansion, there came, indistinctly, to my ears
+what might have been, in its exact similarity of character, the echo
+(but a stifled and dull one certainly) of the very cracking and
+ripping sound which Sir Launcelot had so particularly described. It
+was, beyond doubt, the coincidence alone which had arrested my
+attention; for, amid the rattling of the sashes of the casements, and
+the ordinary commingled noises of the still increasing storm, the
+sound, in itself, had nothing, surely, which should have interested or
+disturbed, me. I continued the story:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But the good champion Ethelred, now entering within the door, was
+sore enraged and amazed to perceive no signal of the maliceful hermit;
+but, in the stead thereof, a dragon of a scaly and prodigious
+demeanor, and of a fiery tongue, which sate in guard before a palace
+of gold, with a floor of silver; and upon the wall there hung a shield
+of shining brass with this legend enwritten:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+     Who entereth herein, a conqueror hath been;<br/>
+
+     Who slayeth the dragon, the shield he shall win.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And Ethelred uplifted his mace, and struck upon the head of the
+dragon, which fell before him, and gave up his pesty breath, with a
+shriek so horrid and harsh, and withal so piercing, that Ethelred had
+fain[27] to close his ears with his hands against the dreadful noise
+of it, the like whereof was never before heard."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here again I paused abruptly, and now with a feeling of wild
+amazement&mdash;for there could be no doubt whatever that, in this
+instance, I did actually hear (although from what direction it
+proceeded I found it impossible to say) a low and apparently distant,
+but harsh, protracted, and most unusual screaming or grating
+sound&mdash;the exact counterpart of what my fancy had already conjured up
+for the dragon's unnatural shriek as described by the romancer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Oppressed, as I certainly was, upon the occurrence of this second and
+most extraordinary coincidence, by a thousand conflicting sensations,
+in which wonder and extreme terror were predominant, I still retained
+sufficient presence of mind to avoid exciting, by any observation, the
+sensitive nervousness of my companion. I was by no means certain that
+he had noticed the sounds in question; although, assuredly, a strange
+alteration had, during the last few minutes, taken place in his
+demeanor. From a position fronting my own, he had gradually brought
+round his chair, so as to sit with his face to the door of the
+chamber; and thus I could but partially perceive his features,
+although I saw that his lips trembled as if he were murmuring
+inaudibly. His head had dropped upon his breast&mdash;yet I knew that he
+was not asleep, from the wide and rigid opening of the eye as I caught
+a glance of it in profile. The motion of his body, too, was at
+variance with this idea&mdash;for he rocked from side to side with a gentle
+yet constant and uniform sway. Having rapidly taken notice of all
+this, I resumed the narrative of Sir Launcelot, which thus
+proceeded:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And now the champion, having escaped from the terrible fury of the
+dragon, bethinking himself of the brazen shield, and of the breaking
+up of the enchantment which was upon it, removed the carcass from out
+of the way before him, and approached valorously over the silver
+pavement of the castle to where the shield was upon the wall; which in
+sooth tarried not for his full coming, but fell down at his feet upon
+the silver floor, with a mighty, great and terrible ringing sound."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No sooner had these syllables passed my lips, than&mdash;as if a shield of
+brass had indeed, at the moment, fallen heavily upon a floor of
+silver&mdash;I became aware of a distinct, hollow, metallic and clangorous,
+yet apparently muffled reverberation. Completely unnerved, I leaped to
+my feet; but the measured rocking movement of Usher was undisturbed. I
+rushed to the chair in which he sat. His eyes were bent fixedly before
+him, and throughout his whole countenance there reigned a stony
+rigidity. But, as I placed my hand upon his shoulder, there came a
+strong shudder over his whole person; a sickly smile quivered about
+his lips; and I saw that he spoke in a low, hurried, and gibbering
+murmur, as if unconscious of my presence. Bending closely over him, I
+at length drank in the hideous import of his words.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not hear it?&mdash;yes, I hear it, and <i>have</i> heard it.
+Long&mdash;long&mdash;long&mdash;many minutes, many hours, many days, have I heard
+it&mdash;yet I dared not&mdash;oh, pity me, miserable wretch that I am!&mdash;I dared
+not&mdash;I <i>dared</i> not speak! <i>We have put her living in the tomb!</i> Said I
+not that my senses were acute? I <i>now</i> tell you that I heard her first
+feeble movements in the hollow coffin. I heard them&mdash;many, many days
+ago&mdash;yet I dared not&mdash;<i>I dared not speak!</i> And
+now&mdash;to-night&mdash;Ethelred&mdash;ha! ha!&mdash;-the breaking of the hermit's door,
+and the death-cry of the dragon, and the clangor of the shield!&mdash;say,
+rather, the rending of her coffin, and the grating of the iron hinges
+of her prison, and her struggles within the coppered archway of the
+vault! Oh, whither shall I fly? Will she not be here anon? Is she not
+hurrying to upbraid me for my haste? Have I not heard her footstep on
+the stair? Do I not distinguish that heavy and horrible beating of her
+heart? Madman!"&mdash;here he sprang furiously to his feet, and shrieked
+out his syllables, as if in the effort he were giving up his
+soul&mdash;"<i>Madman! I tell you that she now stands without the door!</i>"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As if in the superhuman energy of his utterance there had been found
+the potency of a spell&mdash;the huge antique panels to which the speaker
+pointed threw slowly back, upon the instant, their ponderous and ebony
+jaws. It was the work of the rushing gust&mdash;but then without those
+doors there <i>did</i> stand the lofty and enshrouded figure of the lady
+Madeline of Usher. There was blood upon her white robes, and the
+evidence of some bitter struggle upon every portion of her emaciated
+frame. For a moment she remained trembling and reeling to and fro upon
+the threshold&mdash;then, with a low, moaning cry, fell heavily inward upon
+the person of her brother, and in her violent and now final
+death-agonies, bore him to the floor a corpse, and a victim to the
+terrors he had anticipated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From that chamber, and from that mansion, I fled aghast. The storm was
+still abroad in all its wrath as I found myself crossing the old
+causeway. Suddenly there shot along the path a wild light, and I
+turned to see whence a gleam so unusual could have issued; for the
+vast house and its shadows were alone behind me. The radiance was that
+of the full, setting, and blood-red moon, which now shone vividly
+through that once barely discernible fissure, of which I have before
+spoken as extending from the roof of the building, in a zigzag
+direction, to the base. While I gazed, this fissure rapidly
+widened&mdash;there came a fierce breath of the whirlwind&mdash;the entire orb
+of the satellite burst at once upon my sight&mdash;my brain reeled as I saw
+the mighty walls rushing asunder&mdash;there was a long tumultuous shouting
+sound like the voice of a thousand waters&mdash;and the deep and dank tarn
+at my feet closed sullenly and silently over the fragments of the
+"<i>House of Usher</i>."
+</p>
+
+<h4>NOTES</h4>
+
+<p>
+[1] <i>The Fall of the House of Usher</i> was written in 1839 and published
+at the end of the same year in his Tales of the Grotesque and of the
+Arabesque.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[2] 70: Motto de Béranger. Popular French lyric poet (1780-1857). "His
+heart is a suspended lute; as soon as it is touched it resounds."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[3] 71:23 tarn. A small mountain lake.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[4] 76:7 ennuyé. Mentally wearied or bored.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[5] 78:11 bounden. An archaic word.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[6] 79:19 Dread. Reading of the first edition, "Her figure, her air,
+her features,&mdash;all, in their very minutest development, were
+those&mdash;were identically (I can use no other sufficient term), were
+identically those of the Roderick Usher who sat beside me. A feeling
+of stupor," etc.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[7] 80:16 Improvisations. Extemporaneous composition of poetry or
+music.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[8] 81:4 von Weber. The celebrated German composer (1786-1826).
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[9] 81:20 Fuseli. An artist and professor of painting at the Royal
+Academy in London (1741-1825).
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[10] 82:24 "The Haunted Palace." First published in the <i>Baltimore
+Museum</i> for April, 1839.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[11] 83:18 Porphyrogene. Of royal birth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[12] 84:16 for other men. Watson, Dr. Percival, and especially the
+Bishop of Llandaff. See "Chemical Essays," Vol. V.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[13] 85:16 Ververt et Chartreuse. Two poems by Jean Baptiste Cresset
+(1709-1777).
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[Footenote 14] 85:17 Belphegor. Satire on Marriage by Machiavelli
+(1469-1527).
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[15] 85:17 Heaven and Hell. Extracts from "Arcana Coelestia" by
+Swedenborg (1688-1772).
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[16] 85:18 Subterranean Voyage of Nicholas Klimm. A celebrated poem by
+Ludwig Holberg (1684-1754).
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[17] 85:19 Chiromancy. Palmistry applied to the future. Poe refers
+rather to physiognomy. The book was written by the English mystic,
+Robert Fludd (1574-1637).
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[18] 85:19 Jean d'Indaginé and De la Chambre. Two continental writers
+of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries respectively.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[19] 85:21 Tieck. A great German romanticist (1773-1853).
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[20] 85:21 City of the Sun. A sketch of an ideal state by Campanella
+(1568-1639).
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[21] 85:23 Directorium Inquisitorium. A detailed account of the
+methods of the Inquisition by Cironne, inquisitor-general for Castile,
+in 1356.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[22] 85:24 Pomponius Mela. Spanish geographer in the first century
+A.D. Author of "De Chorographia," the earliest extant account of the
+geography of the ancient world.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[23] 85:25 Oegipans. An epithet applied to Pan.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[24] 85:30 Vigiliae Mortuorum. No such book is known.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[25] 90:30 Mad Trist. No such book is known.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[26] 91:29 alarummed. Alarmed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[27] 92:25 had fain. In the sense of was glad.
+</p>
+
+<h4>BIOGRAPHY</h4>
+
+<p>
+Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston, January 19, 1809. His parents, who
+were actors, died before their son was three years old. Mr. Allan, a
+wealthy Richmond merchant, adopted the child and gave him a splendid
+home. How scantily Poe appreciated and improved the advantages of this
+kindness he himself confesses in a letter to Lowell in 1844. "I have
+been too deeply conscious of the mutability and evanescence of
+temporal things to give any continuous effort to anything&mdash;to be
+consistent in anything. My life has been <i>whim</i>&mdash;impulse&mdash;passion&mdash;a
+longing for solitude&mdash;a scorn of all things present in an earnest
+desire for the future." He was a dreamer who had a fair chance to be
+happy, but he flung the opportunity away. He was a spoiled child who
+remained ignorant of life even unto his death.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He entered the University of Virginia in 1826, where his conduct was
+so bad that he was, after a year, removed from the college. This
+action broke the strong friendship Mr. Allan had long held for his
+adopted son. Poe, urged by a hot temper or possibly by a remorse for
+his actions, ran away and enlisted in the regular army. In 1829 Mr.
+Allan became partially reconciled with Poe, and again came to his
+assistance. In 1830 Poe entered West Point, but was there only a short
+time when he was dismissed for wilful neglect of duty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Following this dismissal Poe went to Baltimore, where he did hack work
+for newspapers. This was the beginning of a process of writing that
+has brought him high rank and an imperishable honor. His narrative is
+clear, compressed, and powerful, and throughout his writings choice
+symbols abound. He was fond of themes of death, insanity, and terror.
+The wonder of it all is that this struggling, poverty-stricken
+craftsman, irregular in his habits of living, using only negative life
+and shadowy abstractions, should, from out his disordered fancies,
+weave stories and poems of such undying beauty and force.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Poe married his thirteen-year-old cousin, Virginia Clemm. Her health
+was always delicate and her death confirmed Poe's tendency toward
+dissipation. His life was filled with dire poverty and a hard struggle
+for a livelihood. His home relations were happy. The last years of his
+life were spent at Fordham, a suburb of New York. He died in a
+Baltimore hospital, October 7, 1849.
+</p>
+
+<h4>BIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES</h4>
+
+<p>
+<i>Introduction to American Literature</i>, Brander Matthews.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Studies in American Literature</i>, Charles Noble.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Introduction to American Literature</i>, F.V.N. Painter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Life of Poe</i>, Richard Henry Stoddard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Edgar Allan Poe</i>, G.E. Woodberry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Makers of English Fiction</i>, W.J. Dawson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Art of Poe, <i>Independent</i>, 66: 157-8. January 21, 1909.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Dual Personality," <i>Current Literature</i>, 43: 287-8.
+</p>
+
+<h4>CRITICISMS</h4>
+
+<p>
+Some critics have maintained that Poe is our only original genius in
+American Literature. Lowell wrote in his <i>Fable for Critics</i>:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"There comes Poe with his raven, like Barnaby Rudge, Three-fifths of
+him genius, and two-fifths sheer fudge."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Whatever judgments the various critics may give of Poe and his
+writings, they must all agree that he is original. He is a clever
+writer in a limited field. His writings have a glow and burnish that
+have their origin in his fondness for sensations, color, and vividness
+of details. He loves mystery and terror,&mdash;not the fancies and fears of
+a child, but overwrought nerves. His material is unreal, and remote
+from ordinary life. His characters are abnormal, and the world they
+live in is exceptional. He is inventive, original in arranging his
+material, and shallow but keen in his thinking.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He believed that art and life have little in common, and in his
+writings seemed to be unmoved by friendship, loyalty, patriotism,
+courage, self-sacrifice or any of the great positive attributes of
+life that make living worth while. His writings lack the human touch,
+tenderness, and the buoyancy of sympathy. He is an artist who does his
+work with a clear-cut, hard finish. His choice of words, vivid
+pictures, and clearly evolved plots make his writings excellent
+studies for any one who wishes to develop literary appreciation and to
+learn to write.
+</p>
+
+<h4>GENERAL REFERENCES</h4>
+
+<p>
+<i>Studies and Appreciations</i>, L.E. Gates.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>American Prose Masters</i>, William Crary Brownwell.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Short Story in English</i>, Henry Seidel Canby.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Edgar Poe</i>, R.H. Button.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Inquiries and Opinions</i>, Brander Matthews.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Life of Edgar Allan Poe," <i>Nation</i>, 89: 100-110.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Weird Genius," <i>Cosmopolitan</i>, 46:243-252.
+</p>
+
+<h4>COLLATERAL READINGS</h4>
+
+<p>
+<i>Ligeia</i>, Edgar Allan Poe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Cask of Amontillado</i>, Edgar Allan Poe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Assignation</i>, Edgar Allan Poe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Ms. Pound in Bottle</i>, Edgar Allan Poe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Black Cat</i>, Edgar Allan Poe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Berenice</i>, Edgar Allan Poe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Tell-Tale Heart</i>, Edgar Allan Poe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The White Old Maid</i>, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Moonlight</i> ("Odd Number"), Guy de Maupassant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>A Journey</i>, Edith Wharton.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Brushwood Boy</i>, Rudyard Kipling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>At the Pit's Mouth</i>, Rudyard Kipling.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap07"></a>THE GOLD-BUG[1]</h2>
+
+<p class="center">
+<i>By Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+     What ho! what ho! this fellow is dancing mad!<br/>
+
+     He hath been bitten by the Tarantula.<br/>
+
+                                  &mdash;<i>All in the Wrong</i>.[2]
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Many years ago I contracted an intimacy with a Mr. William Legrand. He
+was of an ancient Huguenot[3] family, and had once been wealthy; but a
+series of misfortunes had reduced him to want. To avoid the
+mortification consequent upon his disasters, he left New Orleans, the
+city of his forefathers, and took up his residence at Sullivan's
+Island, near Charleston, South Carolina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This island is a very singular one. It consists of little else than
+the sea sand, and is about three miles long. Its breadth at no point
+exceeds a quarter of a mile. It is separated from the mainland by a
+scarcely perceptible creek, oozing its way through a wilderness of
+reeds and slime, a favorite resort of the marsh-hen. The vegetation,
+as might be supposed, is scant, or at least dwarfish. No trees of any
+magnitude are to be seen. Near the western extremity, where Fort
+Moultrie[4] stands, and where are some miserable frame buildings,
+tenanted, during summer, by the fugitives from Charleston dust and
+fever, may be found, indeed, the bristly palmetto; but the whole
+island, with the exception of this western point, and a line of hard,
+white beach on the seacoast, is covered with a dense undergrowth of
+the sweet myrtle, so much prized by the horticulturists of England.
+The shrub here often attains the height of fifteen or twenty feet, and
+forms an almost impenetrable coppice, burthening the air with its
+fragrance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the utmost recesses of this coppice, not far from the eastern or
+more remote end of the island, Legrand had built himself a small hut,
+which he occupied when I first, by mere accident, made his
+acquaintance. This soon ripened into friendship, for there was much in
+the recluse to excite interest and esteem. I found him well educated,
+with unusual powers of mind, but infected with misanthropy, and
+subject to perverse moods of alternate enthusiasm and melancholy. He
+had with him many books, but rarely employed them. His chief
+amusements were gunning and fishing, or sauntering along the beach and
+through the myrtles, in quest of shells or entomological
+specimens&mdash;his collection of the latter might have been envied by a
+Swammerdam.[5] In these excursions he was usually accompanied by an
+old negro, called Jupiter, who had been manumitted[6] before the
+reverses of the family, but who could be induced, neither by threats
+nor by promises, to abandon what he considered his right of attendance
+upon the footsteps of his young "Massa Will." It is not improbable
+that the relatives of Legrand, conceiving him to be somewhat unsettled
+in intellect, had contrived to instil this obstinacy into Jupiter,
+with a view to the supervision and guardianship of the wanderer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The winters in the latitude of Sullivan's Island are seldom very
+severe, and in the fall of the year it is a rare event indeed when a
+fire is considered necessary. About the middle of October, 18&mdash;, there
+occurred, however, a day of remarkable chilliness. Just before sunset
+I scrambled my way through the evergreens to the hut of my friend,
+whom I had not visited for several weeks&mdash;my residence being at that
+time in Charleston, a distance of nine miles from the island, while
+the facilities of passage and re-passage were very far behind those of
+the present day. Upon reaching the hut I rapped, as was my custom, and
+getting no reply, sought for the key where I knew it was secreted,
+unlocked the door, and went in. A fine fire was blazing upon the
+hearth. It was a novelty, and by no means an ungrateful one. I threw
+off an over-coat, took an armchair by the crackling logs, and awaited
+patiently the arrival of my hosts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Soon after dark they arrived, and gave me a most cordial welcome.
+Jupiter, grinning from ear to ear, bustled about to prepare some
+marsh-hens for supper. Legrand was in one of his fits&mdash;how else shall
+I term them?&mdash;of enthusiasm. He had found an unknown bivalve, forming
+a new genus, and, more than this, he had hunted down and secured, with
+Jupiter's assistance, a <i>scarabaeus</i>[7] which he believed to be
+totally new, but in respect to which he wished to have my opinion on
+the morrow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And why not to-night?" I asked, rubbing my hands over the blaze, and
+wishing the whole tribe of <i>scarabaei</i> at the devil.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ah, if I had only known you were here!" said Legrand, "but it's so
+long since I saw you; and how could I foresee that you would pay me a
+visit this very night of all others? As I was coming home I met
+Lieutenant G&mdash;&mdash;, from the fort, and, very foolishly, I lent him the
+bug; so it will be impossible for you to see it until the morning.
+Stay here to-night, and I will send Jup down for it at sunrise. It is
+the loveliest thing in creation!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What!&mdash;sunrise?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Nonsense! no!&mdash;the bug. It is of a brilliant gold color&mdash;about the
+size of a large hickory-nut&mdash;with two jet-black spots near one
+extremity of the back, and another, somewhat longer, at the other. The
+<i>antennae[8]</i> are&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Dey ain't <i>no</i> tin in him, Massa Will, I keep a tellin' on you," here
+interrupted Jupiter; "de bug is a goolebug, solid, ebery bit of him,
+inside and all, 'sep him wing&mdash;neber feel half so hebby a bug in my
+life."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, suppose it is, Jup," replied Legrand, somewhat more earnestly,
+it seemed to me, than the case demanded; "is that any reason for your
+letting the birds burn? The color"&mdash;here he turned to me&mdash;"is really
+almost enough to warrant Jupiter's idea. You never saw a more
+brilliant metallic lustre than the scales emit&mdash;but of this you cannot
+judge till to-morrow. In the meantime I can give you some idea of the
+shape." Saying this, he seated himself at a small table, on which were
+a pen and ink, but no paper. He looked for some in a drawer, but found
+none.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Never mind," said he at length, "this will answer;" and he drew from
+his waistcoat pocket a scrap of what I took to be very dirty foolscap,
+and made upon it a rough drawing with the pen. While he did this I
+retained my seat by the fire, for I was still chilly. When the design
+was complete, he handed it to me without rising. As I received, it, a
+loud growl was heard, succeeded by a scratching at the door. Jupiter
+opened it, and a large Newfoundland, belonging to Legrand, rushed in,
+leaped upon my shoulders, and loaded me with caresses; for I had shown
+him much attention during previous visits. When his gambols were over,
+I looked at the paper, and, to speak the truth, found myself not a
+little puzzled at what my friend had depicted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well!" I said, after contemplating it for some minutes, "this <i>is</i> a
+strange <i>scarabaeus</i>, I must confess: new to me: never saw anything
+like it before&mdash;unless it was a skull, or a death's-head&mdash;which, it
+more nearly resembles than, anything else that has come under <i>my</i>
+observation."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A death's-head!" echoed Legrand. "Oh&mdash;yes&mdash;well, it has something of
+that appearance upon paper, no doubt. The two upper black spots look
+like eyes, eh? and the longer one at the bottom like a mouth&mdash;and then
+the shape of the whole is oval."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Perhaps so," said I; "but, Legrand, I fear you are no artist. I must
+wait until I see the beetle itself, if I am to form any idea of its
+personal appearance."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, I don't know," said he, a little nettled, "I draw
+tolerably&mdash;<i>should</i> do it at least&mdash;have had good masters, and flatter
+myself that I am not quite a blockhead."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But, my dear fellow, you are joking then," said I; "this is a very
+passable <i>skull</i>&mdash;indeed, I may say that it is a very <i>excellent</i>
+skull, according to the vulgar notions about such specimens of
+physiology&mdash;and your <i>scarabaeus</i> must be the queerest <i>scarabaeus</i> in
+the world if it resembles it. Why, we may get up a very thrilling bit
+of superstition upon this hint. I presume, you will call the bug
+<i>scarabaeus caput hominis</i>,[9] or something of that kind&mdash;there are
+many similar titles in the natural histories. But where are the
+<i>antennae</i> you spoke of?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The <i>antennae</i>!" said Legrand, who seemed to be getting unaccountably
+warm upon the subject; "I am sure you must see the <i>antennae</i>. I made
+them as distinct as they are in the original insect, and I presume
+that is sufficient."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, well," I said, "perhaps you have&mdash;still I don't see them;" and
+I handed him the paper without additional remark, not wishing to
+ruffle his temper; but I was much surprised at the turn affairs had
+taken; his ill-humor puzzled me&mdash;and, as for the drawing of the
+beetle, there were positively <i>no antennae</i> visible, and the whole
+<i>did</i> bear a very close resemblance to the ordinary cuts of a
+death's-head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He received the paper very peevishly, and was about to crumple it,
+apparently to throw it in the fire, when a casual glance at the design
+seemed suddenly to rivet his attention. In an instant his face grew
+violently red&mdash;in another as excessively pale. For some minutes he
+continued to scrutinize the drawing minutely where he sat. At length
+he arose, took a candle from the table, and proceeded to seat himself
+upon a sea-chest in the farthest corner of the room. Here again he
+made an anxious examination of the paper, turning it in all
+directions. He said nothing, however, and his conduct greatly
+astonished me; yet I thought it prudent not to exacerbate the growing
+moodiness of his temper by any comment. Presently he took from, his
+coat pocket a wallet, placed the paper carefully in it, and deposited
+both in a writing-desk, which he locked. He now grew more composed in
+his demeanor; but his original air of enthusiasm had quite
+disappeared. Yet he seemed not so much sulky as abstracted. As the
+evening wore away he became more and more absorbed in reverie, from
+which no sallies of mine could arouse him. It had been my intention to
+pass the night at the hut, as I had frequently done before, but,
+seeing my host in this mood, I deemed it proper to take leave. He did
+not press me to remain, but, as I departed, he shook my hand with even
+more than his usual cordiality.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was about a month after this (and during the interval I had seen
+nothing of Legrand) when I received a visit, at Charleston, from his
+man Jupiter. I had never seen the good old negro look so dispirited,
+and I feared that some serious disaster had befallen my friend.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, Jup," said I, "what is the matter now?&mdash;how is your master?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why, to speak de troof, massa, him not so berry well as mought be."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not well! I am truly sorry to hear it. What does he complain of?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Dar! dat's it!&mdash;him nebber 'plain of notin'&mdash;but him berry sick for
+all dat."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>Very</i> sick, Jupiter!&mdash;why didn't you say so at once? Is he confined
+to bed?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, dat he ain't!&mdash;he ain't 'find nowhar&mdash;dat's just whar de shoe
+pinch&mdash;my mind is got to be berry hebby 'bout poor Massa Will."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Jupiter, I should like to understand what it is you are talking
+about. You say your master is sick. Hasn't he told you what ails him?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why, massa, 'tain't worf while for to git mad 'bout de matter&mdash;Massa
+Will say noffin' at all ain't de matter wid him&mdash;but den what make him
+go about looking dis here way, wid he head down and he soldiers up,
+and as white as a gose? And den he keep a syphon all de time&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Keeps a what, Jupiter?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Keeps a syphon wid de figgurs on de slate&mdash;de queerest figgurs I
+ebber did see. Ise gittin' to be skeered I tell you. Hab for to keep
+mighty tight eye pon him noovers.[10] Todder day he gib me slip fore
+de sun up, and was gone de whole ob de blessed day. I had a big stick
+ready cut for to gib him d&mdash;&mdash;d good beating when he did come&mdash;but Ise
+sich a fool dat I hadn't de heart after all&mdash;he look so berry poorly."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Eh?&mdash;what? Ah, yes!&mdash;upon the whole, I think you had better not be
+too severe with the poor fellow&mdash;don't flog him, Jupiter, he can't
+very well stand it&mdash;but can you form an idea of what has occasioned
+this illness, or rather this change of conduct? Has anything
+unpleasant happened since I saw you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, massa, dey ain't bin noffin' onpleasant <i>since</i> den&mdash;'twas
+<i>'fore</i> den, I'm feared&mdash;'twas de berry day you was dare."'
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"How? what do you mean?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why, massa, I mean de bug&mdash;dare now."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The <i>what?</i>"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"De bug&mdash;I'm berry sartain dat Massa Will bin bit somewhere 'bout de
+head by dat goole-bug."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And what cause have you, Jupiter, for such a supposition?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Claws enuff, massa, and mouff, too. I nebber did see sich a d&mdash;&mdash;d
+bug&mdash;he kick and he bite ebery ting what cum near him. Massa Will
+cotch him fuss, but had for to let him go 'gin mighty quick, I tell
+you&mdash;den was de time he must ha' got de bite. I didn't like de look ob
+de bug mouff, myself, nohow, so I wouldn't take hold ob him wid my
+finger, but I cotch him wid a piece ob paper dat I found. I wrap him
+up in de paper and stuff piece ob it in he mouff&mdash;dat was de way."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And you think, then, that your master was really bitten by the
+beetle, and that the bite made him sick?" "I don't t'ink noffin' 'bout
+it&mdash;I nose it. What make him dream 'bout de goole so much, if 'tain't
+cause he bit by de goole-bug? Ise heerd 'bout dem goole-bugs 'fore
+dis."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But how do you know he dreams about gold?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"How I know? why, 'cause he talk about it in he sleep&mdash;dat's how I
+nose."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, Jup, perhaps you are right; but to what fortunate circumstances
+am I to attribute the honor of a visit from you to-day?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What de matter, massa?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Did you bring any message from Mr. Legrand?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, massa, I bring dis here 'pissel;" and here Jupiter handed me a
+note, which ran thus:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+My dear &mdash;&mdash;&mdash;:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Why have I not seen you for so long a time? I hope you have not been
+so foolish as to take offence at any little <i>brusquerie</i>[11] of mine;
+but no, that is improbable.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Since I saw you I have had great cause for anxiety. I have something
+to tell you, yet scarcely know how to tell it, or whether I should
+tell it at all.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I have not been quite well for some days past, and poor old Jup annoys
+me, almost beyond endurance, by his well-meant attentions. Would you
+believe it?&mdash;he had prepared a huge stick, the other day, with which
+to chastise me for giving him the slip, and spending the day, <i>solus</i>,
+among the hills on the mainland. I verily believe that my ill looks
+alone saved me a flogging.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I have made no addition to my cabinet since we met.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If you can, in any way, make it convenient, come over with Jupiter.
+<i>Do</i> come. I wish to see you <i>to-night</i>, upon business of importance.
+I assure you that it is of the <i>highest</i> importance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ever yours,
+</p>
+
+<p>
+William Legrand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was something in the tone of this note which gave me great
+uneasiness. Its whole style differed materially from that of Legrand.
+What could he be dreaming of? What new crotchet possessed his
+excitable brain? What "business of the highest importance" could <i>he</i>
+possibly have to transact? Jupiter's account of him boded no good. I
+dreaded lest the continued pressure of misfortune had, at length,
+fairly unsettled the reason of my friend. Without a moment's
+hesitation, therefore, I prepared to accompany the negro.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Upon reaching the wharf, I noticed a scythe and three spades, all
+apparently new, lying in the bottom of the boat in which we were to
+embark.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What is the meaning of all this, Jup?" I inquired.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Him syfe, massa, and spade."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Very true; but what are they doing here?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Him de syfe and de spade what Massa Will 'sis' 'pon my buying for him
+in de town, and de debbil's own lot of money I had to gib for 'em."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But what, in the name of all that is mysterious, is your 'Massa Will'
+going to do with scythes and spades?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Dat's more dan <i>I</i> know, and debbil take me if I don't b'lieve 'tis
+more dan he know, too. But it's all come ob de bug."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Finding that no satisfaction was to be obtained of Jupiter, whose
+whole intellect seemed to be absorbed by "de bug," I now stepped into
+the boat and made sail. With a fair and strong breeze we soon ran into
+the little cove to the northward of Fort Moultrie, and a walk of some
+two miles brought us to the hut. It was about three in the afternoon
+when we arrived. Legrand had been awaiting us in eager expectation. He
+grasped my hand with a nervous <i>empressement</i>[12] which alarmed me and
+strengthened the suspicions already entertained. His countenance was
+pale even to ghastliness, and his deep-set eyes glared with unnatural
+lustre. After some inquiries respecting his health, I asked him, not
+knowing what better to say, if he had yet obtained the <i>scarabaeus</i>
+from Lieutenant G&mdash;&mdash;.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, yes," he replied, coloring violently, "I got it from him the next
+morning. Nothing could tempt me to part with that <i>scarabaeus</i>. Do you
+know that Jupiter is quite right about it!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"In what way?" I asked, with a sad foreboding at heart.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"In supposing it to be a bug of <i>real gold</i>." He said this with an air
+of profound seriousness, and I felt inexpressibly shocked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"This bug is to make my fortune," he continued, with a triumphant
+smile, and reinstate me in my family possessions. Is it any wonder,
+then, that I prize it? Since Fortune has thought fit to bestow it upon
+me, I have only to use it properly and I shall arrive at the gold of
+which it is the index. Jupiter, bring me that <i>scarabaeus</i>!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What! de bug, massa? I'd rudder not go fer trubble dat bug&mdash;you mus'
+git him for your own self." Hereupon Legrand arose, with a grave and
+stately air, and brought me the beetle from a glass case in which it
+was enclosed. It was a beautiful <i>scarabaeus</i>, and, at that time,
+unknown to naturalists&mdash;of course a great prize in a scientific point
+of view. There were two round black spots near one extremity of the
+back, and a long one near the other. The scales were exceedingly hard
+and glossy, with all the appearance of burnished gold. The weight of
+the insect was very remarkable, and, taking all things into
+consideration, I could hardly blame Jupiter for his opinion respecting
+it; but what to make of Legrand's agreement with that opinion, I could
+not, for the life of me, tell.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I sent for you," said he, in a grandiloquent tone when I had
+completed my examination of the beetle, "I sent for you, that I might
+have your counsel and assistance in furthering the views of Fate and
+of the bug"&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"My dear Legrand," I cried, interrupting him, "you are certainly
+unwell, and had better use some little precautions. You shall go to
+bed, and I will remain with you a few days, until you get over this.
+You are feverish and"&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Feel my pulse," said he.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I felt it, and, to say the truth, found not the slightest indication
+of fever.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But you may be ill and yet have no fever. Allow me this once to
+prescribe for you. In the first place, go to bed. In the next"&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You are mistaken," he interposed; "I am as well as I can expect to be
+under the excitement which I suffer. If you really wish me well, you
+will relieve this excitement."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And how is this to be done?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Very easily, Jupiter and myself are going upon an expedition into the
+hills, upon the mainland, and, in this expedition, we shall need the
+aid of some person in whom we can confide. You are the only one we can
+trust. Whether we succeed or fail, the excitement which you now
+perceive in me will be equally allayed."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am anxious to oblige you in any way," I replied; "but do you mean
+to say that this infernal beetle has any connection with your
+expedition into the hills?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It has."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then, Legrand, I can become a party to no such absurd proceeding."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am sorry&mdash;very sorry&mdash;for we shall have to try it by ourselves."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Try it by yourselves! The man is surely mad!&mdash;but stay!&mdash;how long do
+you propose to be absent?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Probably all night. We shall start immediately, and be back, at all
+events, by sunrise."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And will you promise me upon your honor, that when this freak of
+yours is over, and the bug business (good God!) settled to your
+satisfaction, you will then return home and follow my advice
+implicitly, as that of your physician?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes; I promise; and now let us be off, for we have no time to lose."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With a heavy heart I accompanied my friend. We started about four
+o'clock&mdash;Legrand, Jupiter, the dog, and myself. Jupiter had with him
+the scythe and spades, the whole of which he insisted upon carrying,
+more through fear, it seemed to me, of trusting either of the
+implements within reach of his master, than from any excess of
+industry or complaisance. His demeanor was dogged in the extreme, and
+"dat d&mdash;&mdash;d bug" were the sole words which escaped his lips during the
+journey. For my own part, I had charge of a couple of dark lanterns,
+while Legrand contented himself with the <i>scarabaeus</i>, which he
+carried attached to the end of a bit of whipcord, twirling it to and
+fro, with the air of a conjurer, as he went. When I observed this last
+plain evidence of my friend's aberration of mind, I could scarcely
+refrain from tears. I thought it best, however, to humor his fancy, at
+least for the present, or until I could adopt some more energetic
+measures with a chance of success. In the meantime I endeavored, but
+all in vain, to sound him in regard to the object of the expedition.
+Having succeeded in inducing me to accompany him, he seemed unwilling
+to hold conversation upon any topic of minor importance, and to all my
+questions vouchsafed no other reply than "We shall see!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We crossed the creek at the head of the island by means of a skiff,
+and, ascending the high grounds on the shore of the mainland,
+proceeded in a northwesterly direction, through a tract of country
+excessively wild and desolate, where no trace of a human footstep was
+to be seen. Legrand led the way with decision, pausing only for an
+instant, here and there, to consult what appeared is to be certain
+landmarks of his own contrivance upon a former occasion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In this manner we journeyed for about two hours, and the sun was just
+setting when we entered a region infinitely more dreary than any yet
+seen. It was a species of table-land, near the summit of an almost
+inaccessible hill, densely wooded from base to pinnacle, and
+interspersed with huge crags that appeared to lie loosely upon the
+soil, and in many cases were prevented from precipitating themselves
+into the valleys below, merely by the support of the trees against
+which they reclined. Deep ravines, in various directions, gave an air
+of still sterner solemnity to the scene.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The natural platform to which we had clambered was thickly overgrown
+with brambles, through which we soon discovered that it would have
+been impossible to force our way but for the scythe; and Jupiter, by
+direction of his master, proceeded to clear for us a path to the foot
+of an enormously tall tulip-tree, which stood, with some eight or ten
+oaks, upon the level, and far surpassed them all, and all other trees
+which I had ever seen, in the beauty of its foliage and form, in the
+wide spread of its branches, and in the general majesty of its
+appearance. When we reached this tree, Legrand turned to Jupiter, and
+asked him if he thought he could climb it. The old man seemed a little
+staggered by the question, and for some moments made no reply. At
+length he approached the huge trunk, walked slowly around it, and
+examined it with minute attention. When he had completed his scrutiny,
+he merely said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, massa, Jup climb any tree he ebber see in he life."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then up with you as soon as possible, for it will soon be too dark to
+see what we are about."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"How far mus' go up, massa?" inquired Jupiter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Get up the main trunk first, and then I will tell you which way to
+go&mdash;and here&mdash;stop! take this beetle with you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"De bug, Massa Will! de goole-bug!" cried the negro, drawing back in
+dismay, "what for mus' tote de bug way up de tree?&mdash;d&mdash;&mdash;n if I do!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If you are afraid, Jup, a great big negro like you, to take hold of a
+harmless little dead beetle, why, you can carry it up by this string;
+but if you do not take it up with you in some way, I shall be under
+the necessity of breaking your head with this shovel."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"'What de matter, now, massa?" said Jup, evidently shamed into
+compliance; "always want fur to raise fuss wid old nigger. Was only
+funnin' anyhow. <i>Me</i> feered de bug! what I keer for de bug?" Here he
+took cautiously hold of the extreme end of the string, and,
+maintaining the insect as far from his person as circumstances would
+permit, prepared to ascend the tree.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In youth the tulip-tree, or <i>Liriodendron tulipifera</i>, the most
+magnificent of American foresters, has a trunk peculiarly smooth, and
+often rises to a great height without lateral branches; but, in its
+riper age, the bark becomes gnarled and uneven, while many short limbs
+make their appearance on the stem. Thus the difficulty of ascension,
+in the present case, lay more in semblance than in reality. Embracing
+the huge cylinder as closely as possible with his arms and knees,
+seizing with his hands some projections, and resting his naked toes
+upon others, Jupiter, after one or two narrow escapes from falling, at
+length wriggled himself into the first great fork, and seemed to
+consider the whole business as virtually accomplished. The <i>risk</i> of
+the achievement was, in fact, now over, although the climber was some
+sixty or seventy feet from the ground.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Which way mus' go now, Massa Will?" he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Keep up the largest branch, the one on this side," said Legrand. The
+negro obeyed him promptly, and apparently with but little trouble;
+ascending higher and higher, until no glimpse of his squat figure
+could be obtained through the dense foliage which enveloped it.
+Presently his voice was heard in a sort of halloo.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"How much fudder I's got for go?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"How high up are you?" asked Legrand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ebber so fur," replied the negro; "can see de sky fru de top ob de
+tree."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Never mind the sky, but attend to what I say. Look down the trunk and
+count the limbs below you on this side. How many limbs have you
+passed?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"One, two, three, four, fibe&mdash;I done pass fibe big limb, massa, 'pon
+dis side."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then go one limb higher."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In a few minutes the voice was heard again, announcing that the
+seventh limb was attained.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Now, Jup," cried Legrand, evidently much excited, "I want you to work
+your way out upon that limb as far as you can. If you see anything
+strange, let me know."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+By this time what little doubt I might have entertained of my poor
+friend's insanity was put finally at rest. I had no alternative but to
+conclude him stricken with lunacy, and I became seriously anxious
+about getting him home. While I was pondering upon what was best to be
+done, Jupiter's voice was again heard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mos' feerd for to ventur' 'pon dis limb berry far&mdash;'tis dead limb
+putty much all de way."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Did you say it was a <i>dead</i> limb, Jupiter?" cried Legrand, in a
+quavering voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, massa, him dead as de door-nail&mdash;done up for sartain&mdash;done
+departed dis here life."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What in the name of heaven shall I do?" asked Legrand, seemingly in
+the greatest distress.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do!" said I, glad of an opportunity to interpose a word, "why, come
+home and go to bed. Come now!&mdash;that's a fine fellow. It's getting
+late, and, besides, you remember your promise."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Jupiter," cried he, without heeding me in the least, "do you hear
+me?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, Massa Will, hear you ebber so plain,"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Try the wood well, then, with your knife, and see if you think it
+<i>very</i> rotten."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Him rotten, massa, sure nuff," replied the negro in a few moments,
+"but not so berry rotten as mought be, Mought ventur' out leetle way
+'pon de limb by myself, dat's true."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"By yourself! What do you mean?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why, I mean de bug. 'Tis <i>berry</i> hebby bug. S'pose I drop him down
+fust, and den de limb won't break wid just de weight of one nigger."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You infernal scoundrel!" cried Legrand, apparently much relieved,
+"what do you mean by telling me such nonsense as that? As sure as you
+drop that beetle, I'll break your neck. Look here, Jupiter, do you
+hear me?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, massa, needn' hollo at poor nigger dat style."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well!&mdash;now listen! if you will venture out on the limb as far as you
+think safe, and not let go the beetle, I'll make you a present of a
+silver dollar as soon as you get down."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'm gwine, Massa Will&mdash;deed I is," replied the negro very
+promptly&mdash;"mos' out to de eend now."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>Out to the end</i>!" here fairly screamed Legrand; "do you say you are
+out to the end of that limb?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Soon be to de eend, massa&mdash;o-o-o-o-oh! Lor-gol-a-marcy! what <i>is</i> dis
+here 'pon de tree?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well," cried Legrand, highly delighted, "what is it?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why, 'taint noffin' but a skull&mdash;somebody bin lef' him head up de
+tree, and de crows done gobble ebery bit ob de meat off."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A skull, you say! Very well; how is it fastened to the limb? What
+holds it on?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Shure 'nuff, massa; mus' look. Why, dis berry curous sarcumstance,
+'pon my word&mdash;dare's a great big nail in do skull, what fastens ob it
+on to de tree."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well now, Jupiter, do exactly as I tell you&mdash;do you hear?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, massa."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Pay attention, then!&mdash;find the left eye of the skull."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Hum! hoo! dat's good! why, dare ain't no eye lef' at all."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Curse your stupidity! do you know your right hand from your left?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, I nose dat&mdash;nose all 'bout dat&mdash;'tis my lef' hand what I chops
+de wood wid."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"To be sure! you are left-handed; and your left eye is on the same
+side as your left hand. Now, I suppose you can find the left eye of
+the skull, or the place where the left eye has been. Have you found
+it?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here was a long pause. At length the negro asked:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Is de lef' eye ob de skull 'pon de same side as de lef' hand ob de
+skull, too?&mdash;'cause the skull ain't got not a bit ob a hand at
+all&mdash;nebber mind! I got de lef' eye now&mdash;here de lef' eye! what mus'
+do wid it?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Let the beetle drop through it, as far as the string will reach, but
+be careful and not let go your hold of the string."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"All dat done, Massa Will; mighty easy ting for to put de bug fru de
+hole; look out for him dar below!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+During this colloquy no portion of Jupiter's person could be seen; but
+the beetle, which he had suffered to descend, was now visible at the
+end of the string, and glistened, like a globe of burnished gold, in
+the last rays of the setting sun, some of which still faintly
+illumined the eminence upon which we stood. The <i>scarabaeus</i> hung
+quite clear of any branches, and if allowed to fall, would have fallen
+at our feet. Legrand immediately took the scythe, and cleared with it
+a circular space, three or four yards in diameter, just beneath the
+insect, and, having accomplished this, ordered Jupiter to let go the
+string and come down from the tree.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Driving a peg, with great nicety, into the ground, at the precise spot
+where the beetle fell, my friend now produced from his pocket a
+tape-measure. Fastening one end of this at that point of the trunk of
+the tree which was nearest the peg, he unrolled it till it reached the
+peg, and thence farther unrolled it, in the direction already
+established by the two points of the tree and the peg, for the
+distance of fifty feet&mdash;Jupiter clearing away the brambles with the
+scythe. At the spot thus attained a second peg was driven, and about
+this, as a centre, a rude circle, about four feet in diameter,
+described. Taking now a spade himself, and giving one to Jupiter and
+one to me, Legrand begged us to set about digging as quickly as
+possible.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To speak the truth, I had no especial relish for such amusement at any
+time, and, at that particular moment, would most willingly have
+declined it; for the night was coming on, and I felt much fatigued
+with the exercise already taken; but I saw no mode of escape, and was
+fearful of disturbing my poor friend's equanimity by a refusal. Could
+I have depended, indeed, upon Jupiter's aid, I would have had no
+hesitation in attempting to get the lunatic home by force; but I was
+too well assured of the old negro's disposition, to hope that he would
+assist me, under any circumstances, in a personal contest with his
+master. I made no doubt that the latter had been infected with some of
+the innumerable Southern superstitions about money buried, and that
+his fantasy had received confirmation by the finding of the
+<i>scarabaeus</i>, or, perhaps, by Jupiter's obstinacy in maintaining it to
+be "a bug of real gold." A mind disposed to lunacy would readily be
+led away by such suggestions&mdash;especially if chiming in with favorite
+preconceived ideas&mdash;and then I called to mind the poor fellow's speech
+about the beetle's being "the index of his fortune." Upon the whole, I
+was sadly vexed and puzzled, but, at length, I concluded to make a
+virtue of necessity&mdash;to dig with a good will, and thus the sooner to
+convince the visionary, by ocular demonstration, of the fallacy of the
+opinions he entertained.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The lanterns having been lit, we all fell to work with a zeal worthy a
+more rational cause; and, as the glare fell upon our persons and
+implements, I could not help thinking how picturesque a group we
+composed, and how strange and suspicious our labors must have appeared
+to any interloper who, by chance, might have stumbled upon our
+whereabouts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We dug very steadily for two hours. Little was said; and our chief
+embarrassment lay in the yelping of the dog, who took exceeding
+interest in our proceedings. He at length became so obstreperous, that
+we grew fearful of his giving the alarm to some stragglers in the
+vicinity&mdash;-or, rather, this was the apprehension of Legrand; for
+myself, I should have rejoiced at any interruption which might have
+enabled me to get the wanderer home. The noise was, at length, very
+effectually silenced by Jupiter, who, getting out of the hole with a
+dogged air of deliberation, tied the brute's mouth up with one of his
+suspenders, and then returned, with a grave chuckle, to his task.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When the time mentioned had expired, we had reached a depth of five
+feet, and yet no signs of any treasure became manifest. A general
+pause ensued, and I began to hope that the farce was at an end.
+Legrand, however, although evidently much disconcerted, wiped his brow
+thoughtfully and recommenced. We had excavated the entire circle of
+four feet diameter, and now we slightly enlarged the limit, and went
+to the farther depth of two feet. Still nothing appeared. The gold
+seeker, whom I sincerely pitied, at length clambered from the pit,
+with the bitterest disappointment imprinted upon every feature, and
+proceeded, slowly and reluctantly, to put on his coat, which he had
+thrown off at the beginning of his labor. In the meantime I made no
+remark. Jupiter, at a signal from his master, began to gather up his
+tools. This done, and the dog having been unmuzzled, we turned in
+profound silence towards home.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We had taken, perhaps, a dozen steps in this direction, when, with a
+loud oath, Legrand strode up to Jupiter and seized him by the collar.
+The astonished negro opened his eyes and mouth to the fullest extent,
+let fall the spades, and fell upon his knees.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You scoundrel," said Legrand, hissing out the syllables from between
+his clenched teeth, "you infernal black villain! speak, I tell you!
+answer me this instant, without prevarication! which&mdash;which is your
+left eye?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, my golly, Massa Will! ain't dis here my lef' eye for sartain?"
+roared the terrified Jupiter, placing his hand upon his <i>right</i> organ
+of vision, and holding it there with a desperate pertinacity, as if in
+immediate dread of his master's attempt at a gouge.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I thought so! I knew it! hurrah!" vociferated Legrand, letting the
+negro go, and executing a series of curvets and caracoles[13], much to
+the astonishment of his valet, who, arising from his knees, looked
+mutely from his master to myself, and then from myself to his master.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Come! we must go back," said the latter; "the game's not up yet;" and
+he again led the way to the tulip-tree.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Jupiter," said he, when he reached its foot, "come here! was the
+skull nailed to the limb with the face outwards, or with the face to
+the limb?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"De face was out, massa, so dat de crows could get at de eyes good,
+widout any trouble."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, then, was it this eye or that through which you dropped the
+beetle?"&mdash;here Legrand touched each of Jupiter's eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"'Twas dis eye, massa&mdash;de lef' eye&mdash;jis as you tell me," and here it
+was his right eye that the negro indicated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That will do&mdash;we must try it again."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here my friend, about whose madness I now saw or fancied that I saw,
+certain indications of method, removed the peg which marked the spot
+where the beetle fell, to a spot about three inches to the westward of
+its former position, Taking now the tape-measure from the nearest
+point of the trunk to the peg, as before, and continuing the extension
+in a straight line to the distance of fifty feet, a spot was
+indicated, removed by several yards from the point at which we had
+been digging.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Around the new position a circle, somewhat larger than in the former
+instance, was now described, and we again set to work with the spades,
+I was dreadfully weary, but scarcely understanding what had occasioned
+the change in my thoughts, I felt no longer any great aversion from
+the labor imposed, I had become most unaccountably interested&mdash;nay,
+even excited. Perhaps there was something, amid all the extravagant
+demeanor of Legrand&mdash;some air of forethought, or of deliberation,
+which impressed me. I dug eagerly, and now and then caught myself
+actually looking, with something that very much resembled expectation,
+for the fancied treasure, the vision of which had demented my
+unfortunate companion. At a period when such vagaries of thought most
+fully possessed me, and when we had been at work perhaps an hour and a
+half, we were again interrupted by the violent howlings of the dog.
+His uneasiness in the first instance had been, evidently, but the
+result of playfulness or caprice, but he now assumed a bitter and
+serious tone. Upon Jupiter's again attempting to muzzle him, he made
+furious resistance, and, leaping into the hole, tore up the mould
+frantically with his claws. In a few seconds he had uncovered a mass
+of human bones, forming two complete skeletons, intermingled with
+several buttons of metal, and what appeared to be the dust of decayed
+woolen. One or two strokes of a spade upturned the blade of a large
+Spanish knife, and, as we dug farther, three or four pieces of gold
+and silver coin came to light.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At sight of these the joy of Jupiter could scarcely be restrained, but
+the countenance of his master wore an air of extreme disappointment.
+He urged us, however, to continue our exertions, and the words were
+hardly uttered when I stumbled and fell forward, having caught the toe
+of my boot in a large ring of iron that lay half buried in the loose
+earth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We now worked in earnest, and never did I pass ten minutes of more
+intense excitement. During this interval we had fairly unearthed an
+oblong chest of wood which, from its perfect preservation and
+wonderful hardness, had plainly been subjected to some mineralizing
+process&mdash;perhaps that of the bichloride of mercury. This box was three
+feet and a half long, three feet broad, and two and a half feet deep.
+It was firmly secured by bands of wrought iron, riveted, and forming a
+kind of trellis-work over the whole. On each side of the chest, near
+the top, were three rings of iron&mdash;six in all&mdash;by means of which a
+firm hold could be obtained by six persons. Our utmost united
+endeavors served only to disturb the coffer very slightly in its bed.
+We at once saw the impossibility of removing so great a weight.
+Luckily, the sole fastenings of the lid consisted of two sliding
+bolts. These we drew back&mdash;trembling and panting with anxiety. In an
+instant, a treasure of incalculable value lay gleaming before us. As
+the rays of the lanterns fell within the pit, there flashed upwards a
+glow and a glare, from a confused heap of gold and of jewels, that
+absolutely dazzled our eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I shall not pretend to describe the feelings with which I gazed.
+Amazement was, of course, predominant. Legrand appeared exhausted with
+excitement, and spoke very few words. Jupiter's countenance wore, for
+some minutes, as deadly a pallor as it is possible, in the nature of
+things, for any negro's visage to assume. He seemed
+stupefied&mdash;-thunder-stricken. Presently he fell upon his knees in the
+pit, and, burying his naked arms up to the elbows in gold, let them
+there remain, as if enjoying the luxury of a bath. At length, with a
+deep sigh, he exclaimed, as if in a soliloquy:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And dis all cum ob de goole-bug! de putty goole-bug! de poor little
+goole-bug, what I 'boosed in dat sabage kind ob style! Ain't you
+'shamed ofa yourself, nigger?&mdash;answer me dat!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It became necessary, at last, that I should arouse both master and
+valet to the expediency of removing the treasure. It was growing late,
+and it behooved us to make exertion, that we might get everything
+housed before daylight. It was difficult to say what should be done,
+and much time was spent in deliberation&mdash;so confused were the ideas of
+all. We, finally, lightened the box by removing two-thirds of its
+contents, when we were enabled, with some trouble, to raise it from
+the hole. The articles taken out were deposited among the brambles,
+and the dog left to guard them, with strict orders from Jupiter
+neither, upon any pretence, to stir from the spot, nor to open his
+mouth until our return. We then hurriedly made for home with the
+chest, reaching the hut in safety, but after excessive toil, at one
+o'clock in the morning. Worn out as we were, it was not in human
+nature to do more just now. We rested until two, and had supper,
+starting for the hills immediately afterwards, armed with three stout
+sacks, which, by good luck, were upon the premises. A little before
+four we arrived at the pit, divided the remainder of the booty as
+equally as might be among us, and, leaving the holes unfilled, again
+set out for the hut, at which, for the second time, we deposited our
+golden burdens, just as the first streaks of dawn gleamed from over
+the treetops in the east.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We were now thoroughly broken down; but the intense excitement of the
+time denied us repose. After an unquiet slumber of some three or four
+hours' duration, we arose, as if by preconcert, to make examination of
+our treasure.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The chest had been full to the brim, and we spent the whole day, and
+the greater part of the next night, in a scrutiny of its contents.
+There had been nothing like order or arrangement. Everything had been
+heaped in promiscuously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Having assorted all with care, we found ourselves possessed of even
+vaster wealth than we had at first supposed. In coin there was rather
+more than four hundred and fifty thousand dollars&mdash;estimating the
+value of the pieces, as accurately as we could, by the tables of the
+period. There was not a particle of silver. All was gold of antique
+date and of great variety&mdash;French, Spanish, and German money, with a
+few English guineas, and some counters[14] of which we had never seen
+specimens before. There were several very large and heavy coins, so
+worn that we could make nothing of their inscriptions. There was no
+American money. The value of the jewels we found more difficulty in
+estimating. There were diamonds&mdash;some of them exceedingly large and
+fine&mdash;a hundred and ten in all, and not one of them small; eighteen
+rubies of remarkable brilliancy; three hundred and ten emeralds, all
+very beautiful; and twenty-one sapphires, with an opal. These stones
+had all been broken from their settings and thrown loose in the chest.
+The settings themselves, which we picked out from among the other
+gold, appeared to have been beaten up with hammers, as if to prevent
+indentification. Besides all this, there was a vast quantity of solid
+gold ornaments&mdash;nearly two hundred massive finger and ear rings; rich
+chains&mdash;thirty of these, if I remember; eighty-three very large and
+heavy crucifixes; five gold censers of great value; a prodigious
+golden punch-bowl, ornamented with richly chased vine-leaves and
+Bacchanalian[15] figures; with two sword handles exquisitely embossed,
+and many other smaller articles which I cannot recollect. The weight
+of these valuables exceeded three hundred and fifty pounds
+avoirdupois; and in this estimate I have not included one hundred and
+ninety-seven superb gold watches, three of the number being worth each
+five hundred dollars, if one. Many of them were very old, and as
+time-keepers valueless, the works having suffered, more or less, from
+corrosion; but all were richly jewelled and in cases of great worth.
+We estimated the entire contents of the chest, that night, at a
+million and a half of dollars; and, upon the subsequent disposal of
+the trinkets and jewels (a few being retained for our own use), it was
+found we had greatly undervalued the treasure.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When, at length, we had concluded our examination, and the intense
+excitement of the time had in some measure subsided, Legrand, who saw
+that I was dying with impatience for a solution of this most
+extraordinary riddle, entered into a full detail of all the
+circumstances connected with it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You remember," said he, "the night when I handed you the rough sketch
+I had made of the <i>scarabaeus</i>. You recollect, also, that I became
+quite vexed at you for insisting that my drawing resembled a
+death's-head. When you first made this assertion I thought you were
+jesting; but afterwards I called to mind the peculiar spots on the
+back of the insect, and admitted to myself that your remark had some,
+little foundation in fact. Still, the sneer at my graphic powers
+irritated me&mdash;for I am considered a good artist&mdash;and, therefore, when
+you handed me the scrap of parchment, I was about to crumple it up and
+throw it angrily into the fire."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The scrap of paper, you mean," said I.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No; it had much of the appearance of paper, and at first I supposed
+it to be such, but when I came to draw upon it, I discovered it at
+once to be a piece of very thin parchment. It was quite dirty, you
+remember. Well, as I was in the very act of crumpling it up, my glance
+fell upon the sketch at which you had been looking, and you may
+imagine my astonishment when I perceived, in fact, the figure of a
+death's-head just where, it seemed to me, I had made the drawing of
+the beetle. For a moment I was too much amazed to think with accuracy.
+I knew that my design was very different in detail from this, although
+there was a certain similarity in general outline. Presently I took a
+candle, and seating myself at the other end of the room, proceeded to
+scrutinize the parchment more closely. Upon turning it over, I saw my
+own sketch upon, the reverse, just as I had made it. My first idea,
+now, was mere surprise at the really remarkable similarity of
+outline&mdash;at the singular coincidence involved in the fact that,
+unknown to me, there should have been a skull upon the other side of
+the parchment, immediately beneath my figure of the <i>scarabaeus</i>, and
+that this skull, not only in outline, but in size, should so closely
+resemble my drawing. I say the singularity of this coincidence
+absolutely stupefied me for a time. This is the usual effect of such
+coincidences. The mind struggles to establish a connection&mdash;a sequence
+of cause and effect&mdash;and being unable to do so, suffers a species of
+temporary paralysis. But when I recovered from this stupor, there
+dawned upon me gradually a conviction which startled me even far more
+than the coincidence. I began distinctly, positively, to remember that
+there had been <i>no</i> drawing upon the parchment when I made my sketch
+of the <i>scarabaeus</i>. I became perfectly certain of this; for I
+recollected turning up first one side and then the other, in search of
+the cleanest spot. Had the skull been then there, of course, I could
+not have failed to notice it. Here was indeed a mystery which I felt
+it impossible to explain; but, even at that early moment, there seemed
+to glimmer, faintly, within the most remote and secret chambers of my
+intellect, a glowworm-like conception of that truth which last night's
+adventure brought to so magnificent a demonstration. I arose at once,
+and putting the parchment securely away, dismissed all further
+reflection until I should be alone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"When you had gone, and when Jupiter was fast asleep, I betook myself
+to a more methodical investigation of the affair. In the first place I
+considered the manner in which the parchment had come into my
+possession. The spot where we discovered the <i>scarabaeus</i> was on the
+coast of the mainland, about a mile eastward of the island, and but a
+short distance above high water mark. Upon my taking hold of it, it
+gave me a sharp bite, which caused me to let it drop. Jupiter, with
+his accustomed caution, before seizing the insect, which had flown
+towards him, looked about him for a leaf, or something of that nature,
+by which to take hold of it. It was at this moment that his eyes, and
+mine also, fell upon the scrap of parchment, which I then supposed to
+be paper. It was lying half buried in the sand, a corner sticking up.
+Near the spot where we found it, I observed the remnants of the hull
+of what appeared to have been a ship's long-boat. The wreck seemed to
+have been there for a very great while; for the resemblance to boat
+timbers could scarcely be traced.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, Jupiter picked up the parchment, wrapped the beetle in it, and
+gave it to me. Soon afterwards we turned to go home, and on the way
+met Lieutenant G&mdash;&mdash;. I showed him the insect, and he begged me to let
+him take it to the fort. Upon my consenting, he thrust it forthwith
+into his waistcoat pocket, without the parchment in which it had been
+wrapped, and which I had continued to hold in my hand during his
+inspection. Perhaps he dreaded my changing my mind, and thought it
+best to make sure of the prize at once&mdash;you know how enthusiastic he
+is on all subjects connected with Natural History. At the same time,
+without being conscious of it, I must have deposited the parchment in
+my own pocket.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You remember that when I went to the table, for the purpose of making
+a sketch of the beetle, I found no paper where it was usually kept, I
+looked in the drawer, and found none there. I searched my pockets,
+hoping to find an old letter, when my hand fell upon the parchment. I
+thus detail the precise mode in which it came into my possession; for
+the circumstances impressed me with peculiar force.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No doubt you will think me fanciful, but I had already established a
+kind of <i>connection</i>. I had put together two links of a great chain.
+There was a boat lying upon a seacoast, and not far from the boat was
+a parchment&mdash;<i>not a paper</i>&mdash;with a skull depicted upon it. You will,
+of course, ask, 'Where is the connection?' I reply that the skull, or
+death's-head, is the well-known emblem of the pirate. The flag of the
+death's-head is hoisted in all engagements.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I have said that the scrap was parchment, and not paper. Parchment is
+durable&mdash;almost imperishable. Matters of little moment are rarely
+consigned to parchment, since, for the mere ordinary purposes of
+drawing or writing, it is not nearly so well adapted as paper. This
+reflection suggested some meaning&mdash;some relevancy&mdash;in the
+death's-head. I did not fail to observe, also, the <i>form</i> of the
+parchment. Although one of its corners had been, by some accident,
+destroyed, it could be seen that the original form was oblong. It was
+just such a slip, indeed, as might have been chosen for a
+memorandum&mdash;for a record of something to be long remembered and
+carefully preserved."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But," I interposed, "you say that the skull was <i>not</i> upon the
+parchment when you made the drawing of the beetle. How, then, do you
+trace any connection between the boat and the skull&mdash;since this
+latter, according to your own admission, must have been designed (God
+only knows how or by whom) at some period subsequent to your sketching
+the <i>scarabaeus</i>?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ah, hereupon turns the whole mystery; although the secret, at this
+point, I had comparatively little difficulty in solving. My steps were
+sure, and could afford but a single result. I reasoned, for example,
+thus: When I drew the <i>scarabaeus</i>, there was no skull apparent upon
+the parchment. When I had completed the drawing I gave it to you, and
+observed you narrowly until you returned it, <i>You</i>, therefore, did not
+design the skull, and no one else was present to do it. Then it was
+not done by human agency. And nevertheless it was done.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"At this stage of my reflections I endeavored to remember, and <i>did</i>
+remember, with entire distinctness, every incident which occurred
+about the period in question. The weather was chilly (oh, rare and
+happy accident!), and a fire was blazing upon the hearth. I was heated
+with exercise, and sat near the table. You, however, had drawn a chair
+close to the chimney. Just as I placed the parchment in your hand, and
+as you were in the act of inspecting it, Wolf, the Newfoundland,
+entered, and leaped upon your shoulders. With, your left hand you
+caressed him and kept him off, while your right, holding the
+parchment, was permitted to fall listlessly between your knees, and in
+close proximity to the fire. At one moment I thought the blaze had
+caught it, and was about to caution you, but before I could speak you
+had withdrawn it, and were engaged in its examination. When I
+considered all these particulars, I doubted not for a moment that
+<i>heat</i> had been the agent in bringing to light, upon the parchment,
+the skull which I saw designed upon it. You are well aware that
+chemical preparations exist, and have existed time out of mind, by
+means of which it is possible to write upon either paper or vellum, so
+that the characters shall become visible only when subjected to the
+action of fire. Zaffre[16], digested in <i>aqua regia</i>[17], and diluted
+with four times its weight of water, is sometimes employed; a green
+tint results. The regulus[18] of cobalt, dissolved in spirit of nitre,
+gives a red. These colors disappear at longer or shorter intervals
+after the material written upon cools, but again become apparent upon
+the re-application of heat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I now scrutinized the death's-head with care. Its outer edges&mdash;the
+edges of the drawing nearest the edge of the vellum&mdash;were far more
+<i>distinct</i> than the others. It was clear that the action of the
+caloric had been imperfect or unequal. I immediately kindled a fire,
+and subjected every portion of the parchment to a glowing heat. At
+first, the only effect was the strengthening of the faint lines in the
+skull; but, upon persevering in the experiment, there became visible,
+at the corner of the slip diagonally opposite to the spot in which the
+death's-head was delineated, the figure of what I at first supposed to
+be a goat. A closer scrutiny, however, satisfied me that it was
+intended for a kid."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ha! ha!" said I; "to be sure I have no right to laugh at you&mdash;a
+million and a half of money is too serious a matter for mirth&mdash;but you
+are not about to establish a third link in your chain: you will not
+find any especial connection between your pirates and a goat; pirates,
+you know, have nothing to do with goats; they appertain to the farming
+interests."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But I have said that the figure was <i>not</i> that of a goat."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, a kid, then&mdash;pretty much the same thing."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Pretty much, but not altogether," said Legrand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You may have heard of one <i>Captain</i> Kidd[19]. I at once looked on the
+figure of the animal as a kind of punning or hieroglyphical signature.
+I say signature because its position upon the vellum suggested this
+idea. The death's-head at the corner diagonally opposite had, in the
+same manner, the air of a stamp, or seal. But I was sorely put out by
+the absence of all else&mdash;of the body to my imagined instrument&mdash;of the
+text for my context."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I presume you expected to find a letter between the stamp and the
+signature."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Something of the kind. The fact is, I felt irresistibly impressed
+with a presentiment of some vast good fortune impending. I can
+scarcely say why. Perhaps, after all, it was rather a desire than an
+actual belief; but do you know that Jupiter's silly words, about the
+bug being of solid gold, had a remarkable effect upon my fancy? And
+then the series of accidents and coincidences&mdash;these were so <i>very</i>
+extraordinary. Do you observe how mere an accident it was that these
+events should have occurred upon the <i>sole</i> day of all the year in
+which it has been, or may be, sufficiently cool for fire, and that
+without the fire, or without the intervention of the dog at the
+precise moment in which he appeared, I should, never have become aware
+of the death's-head, and so never the possessor of the treasure?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But proceed&mdash;I am all impatience."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well; you have heard, of course, the many stories current&mdash;the
+thousand vague rumors afloat about money buried, somewhere, upon the
+Atlantic coast, by Kidd and his associates. These rumors must have had
+some foundation in fact. And that the rumors have existed so long and
+so continuously could have resulted, it appeared to me, only from the
+circumstance of the buried treasure still <i>remaining</i> entombed. Had
+Kidd concealed his plunder for a time, and afterwards reclaimed it,
+the rumors would scarcely have reached us in their present unvarying
+form. You will observe that the stories told are all about
+money-seekers, not about money-finders. Had the pirate recovered his
+money, there the affair would have dropped. It seemed to me that some
+accident&mdash;say the loss of a memorandum indicating its locality&mdash;had
+deprived him of the means of recovering it, and that this accident had
+become known to his followers who otherwise might never have heard
+that treasure had been concealed at all, and who, busying themselves
+in vain, because unguided attempts to regain it had given first birth,
+and then universal currency, to the reports which are now so common.
+Have you ever heard of any important treasure being unearthed along
+the coast?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Never."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But that Kidd's accumulations were immense is well known. I took it
+for granted, therefore, that the earth still held them; and you will
+scarcely be surprised when I tell you that I felt a hope, nearly
+amounting to certainty, that the parchment so strangely found involved
+a lost record of the place of deposit."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But how did you proceed?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I held the vellum again to the fire, after increasing the heat; but
+nothing appeared. I now thought it possible that the coating of dirt
+might have something to do with the failure; so I carefully rinsed the
+parchment by pouring warm water over it, and, having done this, I
+placed it in a tin pan, with the skull downwards, and put the pan upon
+a furnace of lighted charcoal. In a few minutes, the pan having become
+thoroughly heated, I removed the slip, and to my inexpressible joy,
+found it spotted, in several places, with what appeared to be figures
+arranged in lines. Again I placed it in the pan, and suffered it to
+remain another minute. Upon taking it off, the whole was just as you
+see it now."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here Legrand, having reheated the parchment, submitted it to my
+inspection, The following characters were rudely traced, in a red tint
+between the death's-head and the goat:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+     "53‡‡†305))6*;4826)4‡.);806*;48†8
+     ¶60))85;1‡(;:‡*8†83(88)5*†;46(;88*96
+     ?;8)*‡(;485);5*†2:*‡(;4956*2(5*&mdash;4)8
+     ¶8*;4069285);)6†8)4‡‡;1(‡9;48081;8:8‡
+     1;48†85;4)485†528806*81(‡9;48;(88;4
+     (‡?34;48)4‡;161;:188;‡?;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But," said I, returning him the slip, "I am as much in the dark as
+ever. Were all the jewels of Golconda[20] awaiting me on my solution
+of this enigma, I am quite sure that I should be unable to earn them."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And yet," said Legrand, "the solution is by no means so difficult as
+you might be led to imagine from the first hasty inspection of the
+characters. These characters, as any one might readily guess, form a
+cipher, that is to say, they convey a meaning; but then, from what is
+known of Kidd, I could not suppose him capable of constructing any of
+the more abstruse cryptographs[21]. I made up my mind, at once, that
+this was of a simple species&mdash;such, however, as would appear, to the
+crude intellect of the sailor, absolutely insoluble without the key."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And you really solved it?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Readily; I have solved others of an abstruseness ten thousand times
+greater. Circumstances, and a certain bias of mind, have led me to
+take interest in such riddles, and it may well be doubted whether
+human ingenuity can construct an enigma of the kind which human
+ingenuity may not, by proper application, resolve. In fact, having
+once established connected and legible characters, I scarcely gave a
+thought to the mere difficulty of developing their import.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"In the present case&mdash;indeed, in all cases of secret writing&mdash;the
+first question regards the <i>language</i> of the cipher; for the
+principles of solution, so far especially as the more simple ciphers
+are concerned, depend upon, and are varied by, the genius of the
+particular idiom. In general, there is no alternative but experiment
+(directed by probabilities) of every tongue known to him who attempts
+the solution, until the true one be attained. But, with the cipher now
+before us, all difficulty was removed by the signature. The pun upon
+the word 'Kidd' is appreciable in no other language than the English.
+But for this consideration I should have begun my attempts with the
+Spanish and French, as the tongues in which a secret of this kind
+would most naturally have been written by a pirate of the Spanish
+main[22]. As it was, I assume the cryptograph to be English.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You observe there are no divisions between the words. Had there been
+divisions, the task would have been comparatively easy. In such case I
+would have commenced with a collation and analysis of the shorter
+words; and had a word of a single letter occurred, as is most likely
+(<i>a</i> or <i>I</i>, for example), I should have considered the solution as
+assured. But there being no divisions, my first step was to ascertain
+the predominant letters, as well as the least frequent,
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Counting all, I constructed a table thus;&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+     Of the character 8 there are 33.<br/>
+
+                      ;     "     26.<br/>
+
+                      4     "     19.<br/>
+
+                     ‡)     "     16.<br/>
+
+                      *     "     13.<br/>
+
+                      5     "     12.<br/>
+
+                      6     "     11.<br/>
+
+                     †1     "      8.<br/>
+
+                      0     "      6.<br/>
+
+                     92     "      5.<br/>
+
+                     :3     "      4.<br/>
+
+                      ?     "      3.<br/>
+
+                      ¶     "      2.<br/>
+
+                    &mdash;.     "      1.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Now, in English, the letter which most frequently occurs is <i>e</i>.
+Afterwards, the succession runs thus: <i>a o i d h n r s t u y c f g l m
+w b k p q x z</i>. E predominates, however, so remarkably that an
+individual sentence of any length is rarely seen in which it is not
+the prevailing character.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Here, then, we have, in the very beginning, the groundwork for
+something more than a mere guess. The general use which may be made of
+the table is obvious&mdash;but in this particular cipher we shall only very
+partially require its aid. As our predominant character is 8, we will
+commence by assuming it as the <i>e</i> of the natural alphabet. To verify
+the supposition, let us observe if the 8 be seen often in couples&mdash;for
+<i>e</i> is doubled with great frequency in English&mdash;in such words, for
+example, as 'meet,' 'fleet,' 'speed,' 'seen,' 'been,' 'agree,' etc. In
+the present instance we see it doubled no less than five times,
+although the cryptograph is brief.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Let us assume 8, then, as <i>e</i>. Now of all <i>words</i> in the language,
+'the' is most usual; let us see, therefore, whether there are not
+repetitions of any three characters, in the same order of collocation,
+the last of them being 8. If we discover repetitions of such letters,
+so arranged, they will most probably represent the word 'the.' Upon
+inspection, we find no less than seven such arrangements, the
+characters being ;48. We may, therefore, assume that the semicolon
+represents <i>t</i>, that 4 represents <i>h</i>, and that 8 represents <i>e</i>&mdash;the
+last being now well confirmed. Thus a great step has been taken.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But, having established a single word, we are enabled to establish a
+vastly important point; that is to say, several commencements and
+terminations of other words. Let us refer, for example, to the last
+instance but one, in which the combination ;48 occurs&mdash;not far from
+the end of the cipher. We know that the semicolon immediately ensuing
+is the commencement of a word, and, of the six characters succeeding
+this 'the,' we are cognizant of no less than five. Let us set these
+characters down, thus, by the letters we know them to represent,
+leaving a space for the unknown&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+     t eeth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Here we are enabled, at once, to discard the '<i>th</i>,' as forming no
+portion of the word commencing with the first <i>t</i>; since by experiment
+of the entire alphabet for a letter adapted to the vacancy, we
+perceive that no word can be formed of which this <i>th</i> can be a part.
+We are thus narrowed into
+</p>
+
+<p>
+     t ee,
+</p>
+
+<p>
+and, going through the alphabet, if necessary, as before, we arrive at
+the word 'tree,' as the sole possible reading. We thus gain another
+letter, <i>r</i>, represented by (, with the words 'the tree" in
+juxtaposition.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Looking beyond these words, for a short distance, we again see the
+combination ;48, and employ it by way of <i>termination</i> to what
+immediately precedes. We have thus this arrangement:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+     the tree ;4 (‡?34 the,
+</p>
+
+<p>
+or, substituting the natural letters, whereknown, it reads thus:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+     the tree thr‡?3h the.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Now, if, in place of the unknown characters, we leave blank spaces,
+or substitute dots, we read thus:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+     the tree thr…h the,
+</p>
+
+<p>
+when the word '<i>through</i>' makes itself evident at once. But the
+discovery gives us three new letters, <i>o, u</i>, and <i>g</i>, represented by
+‡ ? and 3.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Looking now, narrowly, through the cipher for combinations of known,
+characters, we find, not very far from the beginning, this
+arrangement.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+     83(88, or, egree,
+</p>
+
+<p>
+which, plainly, is the conclusion of the word 'degree' and gives us
+another letter, <i>d</i>, represented by †.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Four letters beyond the word 'degree,' we perceive the combination.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+     ;46(;88*.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Translating the known characters, and representing the unknown by
+dots, as before, we read thus:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+     th.rtee,
+</p>
+
+<p>
+an arrangement immediately suggestive of the word 'thirteen,' and
+again furnishing us with two new characters, <i>i</i>, and <i>n</i>, represented
+by 6 and *.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Referring, now, to the beginning of the cryptograph, we find the
+combination,
+</p>
+
+<p>
+     53 ‡‡†.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Translating, as before, we obtain
+</p>
+
+<p>
+     .good,
+</p>
+
+<p>
+which assures us that the first letter is <i>A</i>, and that the first two
+words are 'A good.'
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"To avoid confusion, it is now time that we arrange our key, as far as
+discovered, in a tabular form. It will stand thus:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+     5 represents a
+     †      "     d
+     8      "     e
+     3      "     g
+     4      "     h
+     6      "     i
+     *      "     n
+     ‡      "     o
+     (      "     r
+     ;      "     t
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We have, therefore, no less than ten of the most important letters
+represented, and it will be unnecessary to proceed with the details of
+the solution. I have said enough to convince you that ciphers of this
+nature are readily soluble, and to give you some insight into the
+rationale[23] of their development. But be assured that the specimen
+before us appertains to the very simplest species of cryptograph. It
+now only remains to give you the full translation of the characters
+upon the parchment, as unriddled. Here it is:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+     "'<i>A good glass in the bishop's hostel in the devil's seat
+     twenty-one degrees and thirteen minutes northeast and by
+     north main branch seventh limb east side shoot from the left
+     eye of the death's-head a bee-line from the tree through the
+     shot fifty feet out</i>.'"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But," said I, "the enigma seems still in as bad a condition as ever.
+How is it possible to extort a meaning from all this jargon about
+'devil's seats,' death's-heads,' and 'bishop's hotels'?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I confess," replied Legrand, "that the matter still wears a serious
+aspect, when regarded with a casual glance. My first endeavor was to
+divide the sentence into the natural divisions intended by the
+cryptographist."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You mean to punctuate it?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Something of that kind."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But how was it possible to effect this?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I reflected that it had been a <i>point</i> with the writer to run his
+words together without divisions, so as to increase the difficulty of
+solution. Now, a not over acute man, in pursuing such, an object,
+would be nearly certain to overdo the matter. When, in the course of
+his composition, he arrived at a break in his subject which would
+naturally require a pause, or a point, he would be exceedingly apt to
+run his characters, at this place, more than usually close together.
+If you will observe the Ms. in the present instance, you will easily
+detect five such cases of unusual crowding. Acting on this hint, I
+made the division thus:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+     "'<i>A good glass in the bishop's hostel in the devil's
+     seat&mdash;twenty-one degrees and thirteen minutes&mdash;northeast and
+     by north&mdash;main branch seventh limb east side&mdash;shoot from the
+     left eye of the death's-head&mdash;a bee-line from the tree
+     through the shot fifty feet out</i>.'"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Even this division," said I, "leaves me still in the dark."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It left me also in the dark," replied Legrand, "for a few days,
+during which I made diligent inquiry, in the neighborhood of
+Sullivan's Island, for any building, which went by the name of the
+'Bishop's Hotel'&mdash;for of course I dropped the obsolete word 'hostel.'
+Gaining no information on the subject, I was on the point of extending
+my sphere of search, and proceeding in a more systematic manner, when,
+one morning, it entered into my head, quite suddenly, that this
+'Bishop's Hostel' might have some reference to an old family, of the
+name of Bessop, which, time out of mind, had held possession of an
+ancient manor-house, about four miles to the northward of the island.
+I accordingly went over to the plantation, and reinstituted my
+inquiries among the older negroes of the place. At length one of the
+most aged of the women said that she had heard of such a place as
+<i>Bessop's Castle</i> and thought that she could guide me to it, but that
+it was not a castle, nor tavern, but a high rock.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I offered to pay her well for her trouble, and, after some demur, she
+consented to accompany me to the spot. We found it without much
+difficulty, when, dismissing her, I proceeded to examine the place.
+The 'castle' consisted of an irregular assemblage of cliffs and
+rocks&mdash;one of the latter being quite remarkable for its height as well
+as for its insulated and artificial appearance, I clambered to its
+apex, and then felt much at a loss as to what should be next done.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"While I was buried in reflection, my eyes fell upon a narrow ledge in
+the eastern face of the rock, perhaps a yard below the summit upon
+which I stood. This ledge projected about eighteen inches, and was not
+more than a foot wide, while a niche in the cliff just above it gave
+it a rude resemblance to one of the hollow-backed chairs used by our
+ancestors. I made no doubt that here was the 'devil's seat' alluded to
+in the Ms., and now I seemed to grasp the full secret of the riddle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The 'good glass,' I knew, could have reference to nothing but a
+telescope; for the word 'glass' is rarely employed in any other sense
+by seamen. Now here, I at once saw, was a telescope to be used, and a
+definite point of view, <i>admitting no variation</i>, from which to use
+it. Nor did I hesitate to believe that the phrase 'twenty-one degrees
+and thirteen minutes' and 'northeast and by north,' were intended as
+directions for the levelling of the glass. Greatly excited by these
+discoveries, I hurried home, procured a telescope, and returned to the
+rock.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I let myself down to the ledge, and found that it was impossible to
+retain a seat upon it except in one particular position. This fact
+confirmed my preconceived idea. I proceeded to use the glass. Of
+course the 'twenty-one degrees and thirteen minutes' could allude to
+nothing but elevation above the visible horizon, since the horizontal
+direction was clearly indicated by the words 'northeast and by north.'
+This latter direction I at once established by means of a
+pocket-compass; then, pointing the glass as nearly at an angle of
+twenty-one degrees of elevation as I could do it by guess, I moved it
+cautiously up or down, until my attention was arrested by a circular
+rift or opening in the foliage of a large tree that over-topped its
+fellows in the distance. In the centre of this rift I perceived a
+white spot, but could not, at first, distinguish what it was.
+Adjusting the focus of the telescope, I again looked, and now made it
+out to be a human skull.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"On this discovery I was so sanguine as to consider the enigma solved;
+for the phrase 'main branch, seventh limb, east side' could refer only
+to the position of the skull on the tree, while 'shoot from the left
+eye of the death's-head' admitted also of but one interpretation, in
+regard to a search for buried treasure. I perceived that the design
+was to drop a bullet from the left eye of the skull, and that a
+bee-line, or in other words, a straight line, drawn from the nearest
+point of the trunk through 'the shot' (or the spot where the bullet
+fell) and thence extended to a distance of fifty feet, would indicate
+a definite point&mdash;and beneath this point I thought it at least
+<i>possible</i> that a deposit of value lay concealed."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"All this." I said, "is exceedingly clear, and, although ingenious,
+still simple and explicit. When you left the Bishop's Hotel, what
+then?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why, having carefully taken the bearings of the tree, I turned
+homewards. The instant that I left the 'devil's seat,' however, the
+circular rift vanished; nor could I get a glimpse of it afterwards,
+turn, as I would. What seems to me the chief ingenuity in this whole
+business is the fact (for repeated experiment has convinced me it <i>is</i>
+a fact) that the circular opening in question is visible from no other
+attainable point of view than that afforded by the narrow ledge on the
+face of the rock.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"In this expedition to the 'Bishop's Hotel' I had been attended by
+Jupiter, who had no doubt observed for some weeks past the abstraction
+of my demeanor, and took especial care not to leave me alone. But, on
+the next day, getting up very early, I contrived to give him the slip,
+and went into the hills in search of the tree. After much toil I found
+it. When I came home at night my valet proposed to give me a flogging.
+With the rest of the adventure I believe you are as well acquainted as
+myself."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I suppose," said I, "you missed the spot, in the first attempt at
+digging, through Jupiter's stupidity in letting the bug fall through
+the right instead of through the left eye of the skull."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Precisely. This mistake made a difference of about two inches and a
+half in the 'shot'&mdash;that is to say, in the position of the peg nearest
+the tree&mdash;and had the treasure been <i>beneath</i> the 'shot,' the error
+would have been of little moment; but the 'shot,' together with the
+nearest point of the tree, were merely two points for the
+establishment of a line of direction; of course the error, however
+trivial in the beginning, increased as we proceeded with the line, and
+by the time we had gone fifty feet, threw us quite off the scent. But
+for my deep-seated convictions that treasure was here somewhere
+actually buried, we might have had all our labor in vain."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I presume the fancy of <i>the skull</i>&mdash;of letting fall a bullet through
+the skull's eye&mdash;was suggested to Kidd by the piratical flag. No doubt
+he felt a kind of poetical consistency in recovering his money through
+this ominous insignium[24]."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Perhaps so; still, I cannot help thinking that common-sense had quite
+as much to do with the matter as poetical consistency. To be visible
+from the Devil's seat, it was necessary that the object, if small,
+should be <i>white</i>: and there is nothing like your human skull for
+retaining and even increasing its whiteness under exposure to all
+vicissitudes of weather."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But your grandiloquence, and your conduct in swinging the beetle&mdash;how
+excessively odd! I was sure you were mad. And why did you insist on
+letting fall the bug, instead of a bullet, from the skull?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why, to be frank, I felt somewhat annoyed by your evident suspicions
+touching my sanity, and so resolved to punish you quietly, in my own
+way, by a little bit of sober mystification. For this reason I swung
+the beetle, and for this reason I let it fall from the tree. An
+observation of yours about its great weight suggested the latter
+idea."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, I perceive; and now there is only one point which puzzles me.
+What are we to make of the skeletons found in the hole?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That is a question I am no more able to answer than yourself. There
+seems, however, only one plausible way of accounting for them&mdash;and yet
+it is dreadful to believe in such atrocity as my suggestion would
+imply. It is clear that Kidd&mdash;if Kidd indeed secreted this treasure,
+which I doubt not&mdash;it is clear that he must have had assistance in the
+labor. But this labor concluded, he may have thought it expedient to
+remove all participants in his secret. Perhaps a couple of blows with
+a mattock were sufficient, while his coadjutors were busy in the pit;
+perhaps it required a dozen&mdash;who shall tell?"
+</p>
+
+<h4>NOTES</h4>
+
+<p>
+[1] <i>The Gold-Bug</i> was first published in <i>The Dollar Magazine</i> in
+1843. The story won a prize of one hundred dollars.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[2] 100:3 All in the Wrong. The title of an amusing comedy by Arthur
+Murphy (1730-1805).
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[3] 100:4 Huguenot. French Protestants, many of whom settled in South
+Carolina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[4] 100: 18 Fort Moultrie. Erected in. 1776. Defended against the
+British by Colonel William Moultrie.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[5] 101:23 Swammerdam. A famous Dutch naturalist (1637-1680).
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[6] 101:25 manumitted. Freed from slavery.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[7] 102:27 scarabaeus. The Latin for beetle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[8] 103:15 antennae. The feelers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[9] 105:8 scarabaeus caput hominis. Man's-head beetle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[10] 107:20 noovers. Manoeuvres.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[11] 109:10 brusquerie. Lack of cordiality.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[12] 110:26 empressement. Demonstrativeness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[13] 123:20 curvets and caracoles. Leaping and prancing of a horse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[14] 128:9 counters. Various coins.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[15] 128:28 Bacchanalian. Revelling like the worshippers of Bacchus,
+the god of wine.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[16] 134:28 Zaffre. An oxide of cobalt. See dictionary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[17] 134:28 aqua regia. Royal water&mdash;a mixture of nitric and
+hydrochloric acids.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[18] 134:30 regulus. An old chemical term.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[19] 135: 28 Captain Kidd. A Scottish sea captain who lived in New
+York in the seventeenth century.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[20] 138:19 Golconda. A town in India noted for its diamond market.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[21] 138:28 cryptographs. Secret forms of writing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[22] 139:27 Spanish main. The northeastern portion of South America,
+the Caribbean Sea, and the coast of North America to the Carolinas
+were harassed by the Spaniards.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[23] 144:6 rationale. Reasonable basis.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[24] 149:19 insignium. Sign.
+</p>
+
+<h4>COLLATERAL READINGS</h4>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Murders in the Rue Morgue</i>, Edgar Allan Poe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Mystery of Marie Rogêt</i>, Edgar Allan Poe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Purloined Letter</i>, Edgar Allan Poe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Sign of the Four</i>, A. Conan Doyle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>A Scandal in Bohemia</i>, A. Conan Doyle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Chronicles of Addington</i>, B. Fletcher Robinson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Mystery of the Steel Disk</i>, Broughton Brandenburg.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Rajah's Diamond</i>, R.L. Stevenson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Doctor, his Wife, and the Clock</i>, Anna Katharine Green.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes</i>, A. Conan Doyle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Hound of the Baskervilles</i>, A. Conan Doyle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>A Double-Barrelled Detective Story</i>, Mark Twain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Gallegher</i>, Richard Harding Davis.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap08"></a>THE BIRTHMARK[1]</h2>
+
+<p class="center">
+<i>By Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1862)</i>.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the latter part of the last century there lived a man of science,
+an eminent proficient in every branch of natural philosophy, who not
+long before our story opens had made experience of a spiritual
+affinity more attractive than any chemical one. He had left his
+laboratory to the care of an assistant, cleared his fine countenance
+from the furnace-smoke, washed the stain of acids from his fingers,
+and persuaded a beautiful woman to become his wife. In those days,
+when the comparatively recent discovery of electricity and other
+kindred mysteries of Nature seemed to open paths into the region of
+miracle, it was not unusual for the love of science to rival the love
+of woman in its depth and absorbing energy. The higher intellect, the
+imagination, the spirit, and even the heart might all find their
+congenial aliment in pursuits which, as some of their ardent votaries
+believed, would ascend from one step of powerful intelligence to
+another, until the philosopher should lay his hand on the secret of
+creative force and perhaps make new worlds for himself. We know not
+whether Aylmer possessed this degree of faith in man's ultimate
+control over nature. He had devoted himself, however, too unreservedly
+to scientific studies ever to be weakened from them by any second
+passion. His love for his young wife might prove the stronger of the
+two; but it could only be by intertwining itself with his love of
+science and uniting the strength of the latter to his own.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Such a union accordingly took place, and was attended with truly
+remarkable consequences and a deeply impressive moral. One day, very
+soon after their marriage, Aylmer sat gazing at his wife with a
+trouble in his countenance that grew stronger until he spoke.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Georgiana," said he, "has it never occurred to you that the mark upon
+your cheek might be removed?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, indeed," said she, smiling; but, perceiving the seriousness of
+his manner, she blushed deeply. "To tell you the truth, it has been so
+often called a charm, that I was simple enough to imagine it might be
+so."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ah, upon another face perhaps it might," replied her husband; "but
+never on yours. No, dearest Georgiana, you came so nearly perfect from
+the hand of Nature that this slightest possible defect, which we
+hesitate whether to term a defect or a beauty, shocks me, as being the
+visible mark of earthly imperfection."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Shocks you, my husband!" cried Georgiana, deeply hurt; at first
+reddening with momentary anger, but then bursting into tears. "Then
+why did you take me from my mother's side? You cannot love what shocks
+you!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To explain this conversation, it must be mentioned that in the centre
+of Georgiana's left cheek there was a singular mark, deeply
+interwoven, as it were, with the texture and substance of her face. In
+the usual state of her complexion&mdash;a healthy though delicate
+bloom&mdash;the mark wore a tint of deeper crimson, which imperfectly
+defined its shape amid the surrounding rosiness. When she blushed it
+gradually became more indistinct, and finally vanished amid the
+triumphant rush of blood that bathed the whole cheek with its
+brilliant glow. But if any shifting emotion caused her to turn pale,
+there was the mark again, a crimson stain upon the snow, in what
+Aylmer sometimes deemed an almost fearful distinctness. Its shape bore
+not a little similarity to the human hand, though of the smallest
+pygmy size. Georgiana's lovers were wont to say that some fairy at her
+birth-hour had laid her tiny hand upon the infant's cheek, and left
+this impress there in token of the magic endowments that were to give
+her such sway over all hearts. Many a desperate swain would have
+risked life for the privilege of pressing his lips to the mysterious
+hand. It must not be concealed, however, that the impression wrought
+by this fairy sign-manual varied exceedingly according to the
+difference of temperament in the beholders. Some fastidious
+persons&mdash;but they were exclusively of her own sex&mdash;affirmed that the
+bloody hand, as they chose to call it, quite destroyed the effect of
+Georgiana's beauty and rendered her countenance even hideous. But it
+would be as reasonable to say that one of those small blue stains
+which sometimes occur in the purest statuary marble would convert the
+Eve of Powers[2] to a monster. Masculine observers, if the birthmark
+did not heighten their admiration, contented themselves with wishing
+it away, that the world might possess one living specimen of ideal
+loveliness without the semblance of a flaw. After his marriage,&mdash;for
+he thought little or nothing of the matter before,&mdash;Aylmer discovered
+that this was the case with himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Had she been less beautiful,&mdash;if Envy's self could have found aught
+else to sneer at,&mdash;he might have felt his affection heightened by the
+prettiness of this mimic hand, now vaguely portrayed, now lost, now
+stealing forth again and glimmering to and fro with every pulse of
+emotion that throbbed within her heart; but, seeing her otherwise so
+perfect, he found this one defect grow more and more intolerable with
+every moment of their united lives. It was the fatal flaw of humanity
+which Nature, in one shape or another, stamps ineffaceably on all her
+productions, either to imply that they are temporary and finite, or
+that their perfection must be wrought by toil and pain. The crimson
+hand expressed the ineludible gripe in which mortality clutches the
+highest and purest of earthly mould, degrading them into kindred with
+the lowest, and even with the very brutes, like whom their visible
+frames return to dust. In this manner, selecting it as the symbol of
+his wife's liability to sin, sorrow, decay, and death, Aylmer's sombre
+imagination was not long in rendering the birthmark a frightful
+object, causing him more trouble and horror than ever Georgiana's
+beauty, whether of soul or sense, had given him delight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At all the seasons which should have been their happiest he
+invariably, and without intending it, nay, in spite of a purpose to
+the contrary, reverted to this one disastrous topic. Trifling as it at
+first appeared, it so connected itself with innumerable trains of
+thought and modes of feeling that it became the central point of all.
+With the morning twilight Aylmer opened his eyes upon his wife's face
+and recognized the symbol of imperfection, and when they sat together
+at the evening hearth his eyes wandered stealthily to her cheek, and
+beheld, flickering with the blaze of the wood-fire, the spectral hand
+that wrote mortality where he would fain have worshipped, Georgiana
+soon learned to shudder at his gaze. It needed but a glance with the
+peculiar expression that his face often wore to change the roses of
+her cheek into a deathlike paleness, amid which the crimson hand was
+brought strongly out, like a bas-relief of ruby on the whitest marble.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Late one night, when the lights were growing dim so as hardly to
+betray the stain on the poor wife's cheek, she herself, for the first
+time, voluntarily took up the subject.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do you remember, my dear Aylmer," said she, with a feeble attempt at
+a smile, "have you any recollection of a dream last night about this
+odious hand?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"None! none whatever!" replied Aylmer, starting: but then he added, in
+a dry, cold tone, affected for the sake of concealing the real depth
+of his emotion, "I might well dream of it; for, before I fell asleep,
+it had taken a pretty firm hold of my fancy."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And you did dream of it?" continued Georgiana, hastily; for she
+dreaded lest a gush of tears should interrupt what she had to say. "A
+terrible dream! I wonder that you can forget it. Is it possible to
+forget this one expression?&mdash;'It is in her heart now; we must have it
+out!' Reflect, my husband; for by all means I would have you recall
+that dream."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The mind is in a sad state when Sleep, the all-involving, cannot
+confine her spectres within the dim region of her sway, but suffers
+them to break forth, affrighting this actual life with secrets that
+perchance belong to a deeper one. Aylmer now remembered his dream. He
+had fancied himself with his servant Aminadab attempting an operation
+for the removal of the birthmark; but the deeper went the knife, the
+deeper sank the hand, until at length its tiny grasp appeared to have
+caught hold of Georgiana's heart; whence, however, her husband was
+inexorably resolved to cut or wrench it away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When the dream had shaped itself perfectly in his memory, Aylmer sat
+in his wife's presence with a guilty feeling. Truth often finds its
+way to the mind close muffled in robes of sleep, and then speaks with
+uncompromising directness of matters in regard to which we practice an
+unconscious self-deception during our waking moments. Until now he had
+not been aware of the tyrannizing influence acquired by one idea over
+his mind, and of the lengths which he might find in his heart to go
+for the sake of giving himself peace.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Aylmer," resumed Georgiana, solemnly, "I know not what may be the
+cost to both of us to rid me of this fatal birthmark. Perhaps its
+removal may cause cureless deformity; or it may be the stain goes as
+deep as life itself. Again; do we know that there is a possibility, on
+any terms, of unclasping the firm gripe of this little hand which was
+laid upon me before I came into the world?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Dearest Georgiana, I have spent much thought upon the subject,"
+hastily interrupted Aylmer. "I am convinced of the perfect
+practicability of its removal."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If there be the remotest possibility of it," continued Georgiana,
+"let the attempt be made, at whatever risk. Danger is nothing to rue;
+for life, while this hateful mark makes me the object of your horror
+and disgust,&mdash;life is a burden which I would fling down with joy.
+Either remove this dreadful hand, or take my wretched life! You have
+deep science. All the world bears witness of it. You have achieved
+great wonders. Cannot you remove this little, little mark, which I
+cover with the tips of two small fingers? Is this beyond your power,
+for the sake of your own peace, and to save your poor wife from
+madness?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Noblest, dearest, tenderest wife," cried Aylmer, rapturously, "doubt
+not my power. I have already given this matter the deepest
+thought,&mdash;thought which might almost have enlightened me to create a
+being less perfect than yourself. Georgiana, you have led me deeper
+than ever into the heart of science. I feel myself fully competent to
+render this dear cheek as faultless as its fellow; and then, most
+beloved, what will be my triumph when I shall have corrected what
+Nature left imperfect in her fairest work! Even Pygmalion[3], when his
+sculptured woman assumed life, felt not greater ecstasy than mine will
+be."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is resolved, then," said Georgiana, faintly smiling. "And, Aylmer,
+spare me not, though you should find the birthmark take refuge in my
+heart at last."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her husband tenderly kissed her cheek,&mdash;her right cheek,&mdash;not that
+which bore the impress of the crimson hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The next day Aylmer apprised his wife of a plan that he had formed
+whereby he might have opportunity for the intense thought and constant
+watchfulness which the proposed operation would require, while
+Georgiana, likewise, would enjoy the perfect repose essential to its
+success. They were to seclude themselves in the extensive apartments
+occupied by Aylmer as a laboratory, and where, during his toilsome
+youth, he had made discoveries in the elemental powers of nature that
+had roused the admiration of all the learned societies in Europe.
+Seated calmly in this laboratory, the pale philosopher had
+investigated the secrets of the highest cloud-region and of the
+profoundest mines; he had satisfied himself of the causes that kindled
+and kept alive the fires of the volcano; and had explained the mystery
+of fountains, and how it is that they gush forth, some so bright and
+pure, and others with such rich medicinal virtues, from the dark bosom
+of the earth. Here, too, at an earlier period, he had studied the
+wonders of the human frame, and attempted to fathom the very process
+by which Nature assimilates all her precious influences from earth and
+air, and from the spiritual world, to create and foster man, her
+masterpiece. The latter pursuit, however, Aylmer had long laid aside
+in unwilling recognition of the truth&mdash;against which all seekers
+sooner or later stumble&mdash;that our great creative Mother, while she
+amuses us with apparently working in the broadest sunshine, is yet
+severely careful to keep her own secrets, and, in spite of her
+pretended openness, shows us nothing but results. She permits us,
+indeed, to mar, but seldom to mend, and, like a jealous patentee, on
+no account to make. Now, however, Aylmer resumed these half-forgotten
+investigations; not, of course, with such hopes or wishes as first
+suggested them; but because they involved much physiological truth and
+lay in the path of his proposed scheme for the treatment of Georgiana.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As he led her over the threshold of the laboratory Georgiana was cold
+and tremulous. Aylmer looked cheerfully into her face, with intent to
+reassure her, but was so startled with the intense glow of the
+birthmark upon the whiteness of her cheek that he could not restrain a
+strong convulsive shudder. His wife fainted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Aminadab! Aminadab!" shouted Aylmer, stamping violently on the floor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Forthwith there issued from an inner apartment a man of low stature,
+but bulky frame, with shaggy hair hanging about his visage, which was
+grimed with the vapors of the furnace. This personage had been
+Aylmer's under-worker during his whole scientific career, and was
+admirably fitted for that office by his great mechanical readiness,
+and the skill with which, while incapable of comprehending a single
+principle, he executed all the details of his master's experiments.
+With his vast strength, his shaggy hair, his smoky aspect, and the
+indescribable earthiness that incrusted him, he seemed to represent
+man's physical nature; while Aylmer's slender figure, and pale,
+intellectual face, were no less apt a type of the spiritual element.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Throw open the door of the boudoir, Aminadab," said Aylmer, "and burn
+a pastil."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, master," answered Aminadab, looking intently at the lifeless
+form of Georgiana; and then he muttered to himself, "If she were my
+wife, I'd never part with that birthmark."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When Georgiana recovered consciousness she found herself breathing an
+atmosphere of penetrating fragrance, the gentle potency of which had
+recalled her from her deathlike faintness. The scene around her looked
+like enchantment. Aylmer had converted those smoky, dingy, sombre
+rooms, where he had spent his brightest years in recondite[4]
+pursuits, into a series of beautiful apartments not unfit to be the
+secluded abode of a lovely woman. The walls were hung with gorgeous
+curtains, which imparted the combination of grandeur and grace that no
+other species of adornment can achieve; and, as they fell from the
+ceiling to the floor, their rich and ponderous folds, concealing all
+angles and straight lines, appeared to shut in the scene from infinite
+space. For aught Georgiana knew, it might be a pavilion among the
+clouds. And Alymer, excluding the sunshine, which would have
+interfered with his chemical processes, had supplied its place with
+perfumed lamps, emitting flames of various hue, but all uniting in a
+soft, impurpled radiance. He now knelt by his wife's side, watching
+her earnestly, but without alarm; for he was confident in his science,
+and felt that he could draw a magic circle round her within which no
+evil might intrude.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Where am I? Ah, I remember," said Georgiana, faintly; and she placed
+her hand over her cheek to hide the terrible mark from her husband's
+eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Fear not, dearest!" exclaimed he. "Do not shrink from me! Believe me,
+Georgiana, I even rejoice in this single imperfection, since it will
+be such a rapture to remove it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"O, spare me!" sadly replied his wife. "Pray do not look at it again.
+I never can forget that convulsive shudder."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In order to soothe Georgiana, and, as it were, to release her mind
+from the burden of actual things, Aylmer now put in practice some of
+the light and playful secrets which science had taught him among its
+profounder lore. Airy figures, absolutely bodiless ideas, and forms of
+unsubstantial beauty came and danced before her, imprinting their
+momentary footsteps on beams of light. Though she had some indistinct
+idea of the method of these optical phenomena, still the illusion was
+almost perfect enough to warrant the belief that her husband possessed
+sway over the spiritual world. Then again, when she felt a wish to
+look forth from her seclusion, immediately, as if her thoughts were
+answered, the procession of external existence flitted across a
+screen. The scenery and the figures of actual life were perfectly
+represented, but with that bewitching yet indescribable difference
+which always makes a picture, an image, or a shadow so much more
+attractive than the original. When wearied of this, Aylmer bade her
+cast her eyes upon a vessel containing a quantity of earth. She did so
+with little interest at first; but was soon startled to perceive the
+germ of a plant shooting upward from the soil: Then came the slender
+stalk; the leaves gradually unfolded themselves; and amid them was a
+perfect and lovely flower.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is magical!" cried Georgiana. "I dare not touch it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Nay, pluck it," answered Aylmer,&mdash;"pluck it, and inhale its brief
+perfume while you may. The flower will wither in a few moments and
+leave nothing save its brown seed-vessels; but thence may be
+perpetuated a race as ephemeral as itself."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Georgiana had no sooner touched the flower than the whole plant
+suffered a blight, its leaves turning coal black as if by the agency
+of fire.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"There was too powerful a stimulus," said Aylmer, thoughtfully.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To make up for this abortive experiment, he proposed to take her
+portrait by a scientific process of his own invention. It was to be
+effected by rays of light striking upon a polished plate of metal.
+Georgiana assented; but, on looking at the result, was affrighted to
+find the features of the portrait blurred and indefinable; while the
+minute figure of a hand appeared where the cheek should have been.
+Alymer snatched the metallic plate and threw it into a jar of
+corrosive[5] acid.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Soon, however, he forgot these mortifying failures. In the intervals
+of study and chemical experiment he came to her flushed and exhausted,
+but seemed invigorated by her presence, and spoke in glowing language
+of the resources of his art. He gave a history of the long dynasty of
+the alchemists, who spent so many ages in quest of the universal
+solvent by which the golden principle might be elicited from all
+things vile and base, Aylmer appeared to believe that, by the plainest
+scientific logic, it was altogether within the limits of possibility
+to discover this long-sought medium. "But," he added, "a philosopher
+who should go deep enough to acquire the power would attain too lofty
+a wisdom to stoop to the exercise of it." Not less singular were his
+opinions in regard to the elixir vitae[6]. He more than intimated that
+it was at his option to concoct a liquid that should prolong life for
+years, perhaps interminably; but that it would produce a discord in
+nature which all the world, and chiefly the quaffer of the immortal
+nostrum, would find cause to curse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Aylmer, are you in earnest?" asked Georgiana, looking at him with
+amazement and fear. "It is terrible to possess such power, or even to
+dream of possessing it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"O, do not tremble, my love," said her husband. "I would not wrong
+either you or myself by working such inharmonious effects upon our
+lives; but I would have you consider how trifling, in comparison, is
+the skill requisite to remove this little hand."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the mention of the birthmark, Georgiana, as usual, shrank as if a
+red-hot iron had touched her cheek.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Again Aylmer applied himself to his labors. She could hear his voice
+in the distant furnace-room giving directions to Aminadab, whose
+harsh, uncouth, misshapen tones were audible in response, more like
+the grunt or growl of a brute than human speech. After hours of
+absence, Aylmer reappeared and proposed that she should now examine
+his cabinet of chemical products and natural treasures of the earth.
+Among the former he showed her a small vial, in which, he remarked,
+was contained a gentle yet most powerful fragrance, capable of
+impregnating all the breezes that blow across a kingdom. They were of
+inestimable value, the contents of that little vial; and, as he said
+so, he threw some of the perfume into the air and filled the room with
+piercing and invigorating delight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And what is this?" asked Georgiana, pointing to a small crystal globe
+containing a gold-colored liquid. "It is so beautiful to the eye that
+I could imagine it the elixir of life."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"In one sense it is," replied Aylmer; "or rather, the elixir of
+immortality. It is the most precious poison that ever was concocted in
+this world. By its aid I could apportion the lifetime of any mortal at
+whom you might point your finger. The strength of the dose would
+determine whether he were to linger out years, or drop dead in the
+midst of a breath. No king on his guarded throne could keep his life
+if I, in my private station, should deem that the welfare of millions
+justified me in depriving him of it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why do you keep such a terrific drug?" inquired Georgiana, in horror.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do not mistrust me, dearest," said her husband, smiling; "its
+virtuous potency is yet greater than its harmful one. But see! here is
+a powerful cosmetic. With a few drops of this in a vase of water,
+freckles may be washed away as easily as the hands are cleansed. A
+stronger infusion[7] would take the blood out of the cheek, and leave
+the rosiest beauty a pale ghost."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Is it with this lotion that you intend to bathe my cheek?" asked
+Georgiana, anxiously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"O no," hastily replied her husband; "this is merely superficial. Your
+case demands a remedy that shall go deeper."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In his interviews with Georgiana, Aylmer generally made minute
+inquiries as to her sensations, and whether the confinement of the
+rooms and the temperature of the atmosphere agreed with her. These
+questions had such a particular drift that Georgiana began to
+conjecture that she was already subjected to certain physical
+influences, either breathed in with the fragrant air or taken with her
+food. She fancied likewise, but it might be altogether fancy, that
+there was a stirring up of her system,&mdash;a strange, indefinite
+sensation creeping through her veins, and tingling, half painfully,
+half pleasurably, at her heart. Still, whenever she dared to look into
+the mirror, there she beheld herself pale as a white rose and with the
+crimson birthmark stamped upon her cheek. Not even Aylmer now hated it
+so much as she.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To dispel the tedium of the hours which her husband found it necessary
+to devote to the processes of combination and analysis, Georgiana
+turned over the volumes of his scientific library. In many dark old
+tomes she met with chapters full of romance and poetry. They were the
+works of the philosophers of the Middle Ages, such as Albertus
+Magnus[8], Cornelius Agrippa[9], Paracelsus[10], and the famous friar
+who created the prophetic Brazen Head. All these antique naturalists
+stood in advance of their centuries, yet were imbued with some of
+their credulity, and therefore were believed, and perhaps imagined
+themselves to have acquired from the investigation of nature a power
+above nature, and from physics a sway over the spiritual world. Hardly
+less curious and imaginative were the early volumes of the
+Transactions of the Royal Society[11], in which the members, knowing
+little of the limits of natural possibility, were continually
+recording wonders or proposing methods whereby wonders might be
+wrought.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But, to Georgiana, the most engrossing volume was a large folio from
+her husband's own hand, in which he had recorded every experiment of
+his scientific career, its original aim, the methods adopted for its
+development, and its final success or failure, with the circumstances
+to which either event was attributable. The book, in truth; was both
+the history and emblem of his ardent, ambitious, imaginative, yet
+practical and laborious life. He handled physical details as if there
+were nothing beyond them; yet spiritualized them all, and redeemed
+himself from materialism by his strong and eager aspiration towards
+the infinite. In his grasp the veriest clod of earth assumed a soul.
+Georgiana, as she read, reverenced Aylmer and loved him more
+profoundly than ever, but with a less entire dependence on his
+judgment than heretofore. Much as he had accomplished, she could not
+but observe that his most splendid successes were almost invariably
+failures, if compared with the ideal at which he aimed. His brightest
+diamonds were the merest pebbles, and felt to be so by himself, in
+comparison with the inestimable gems which lay hidden beyond his
+reach. The volume, rich with achievements that had won renown for its
+author, was yet as melancholy a record as over mortal hand had penned.
+It was the sad confession and continual exemplification of the
+shortcomings of the composite man, the spirit burdened with clay and
+working in matter, and of the despair that assails the higher nature
+at finding itself so miserably thwarted by the earthly part. Perhaps
+every man of genius, in whatever sphere, might recognize the image of
+his own experience in Aylmer's journal.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So deeply did these reflections affect Georgiana that she laid her
+face upon the open volume and burst into tears. In this situation she
+was found by her husband.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is dangerous to read in a sorcerer's books," said he with a smile,
+though his countenance was uneasy and displeased. "Georgiana, there
+are pages in that volume which I can scarcely glance over and keep my
+senses. Take heed lest it prove as detrimental to you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It has made me worship you more than ever." said she.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ah, wait for this one success," rejoined he, "then worship me if you
+will. I shall deem myself hardly unworthy of it. But come. I have
+sought you for the luxury of your voice. Sing to me, dearest."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So she poured out the liquid music of her voice to quench the thirst
+of his spirit. He then took his leave with a boyish exuberance of
+gayety, assuring her that her seclusion would endure but a little
+longer, and that the result was already certain. Scarcely had he
+departed when Georgiana felt irresistibly impelled to follow him. She
+had forgotten to inform Aylmer of a symptom which for two or three
+hours past had begun to excite her attention. It was a sensation in
+the fatal birthmark, not painful, but which induced a restlessness
+throughout her system. Hastening after her husband, she intruded for
+the first time into the laboratory.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The first thing that struck her eye was the furnace, that hot and
+feverish worker, with the intense glow of its fire, which by the
+quantities of soot clustered above it seemed to have been burning for
+ages. There was a distilling-apparatus in full operation. Around the
+room were retorts, tubes, cylinders, crucibles, and other apparatus of
+chemical research. An electrical machine stood ready for immediate
+use. The atmosphere felt oppressively close, and was tainted with
+gaseous odors which had been tormented forth by the processes of
+science. The severe and homely simplicity of the apartment, with its
+naked walls and brick pavement, looked strange, accustomed as
+Georgiana had become to the fantastic elegance of her boudoir. But
+what chiefly, indeed almost solely, drew her attention, was the aspect
+of Aylmer himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was pale as death, anxious and absorbed, and hung over the furnace
+as if it depended upon his utmost watchfulness whether the liquid
+which it was distilling should be the draught of immortal happiness or
+misery. How different from the sanguine and joyous mien that he had
+assumed for Georgiana's encouragement!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Carefully now, Aminadab; carefully, thou human machine; carefully,
+thou man of clay," muttered Aylmer, more to himself than his
+assistant. "Now, If there be a thought too much or too little, it is
+all over."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ho! ho!" mumbled Aminadab. "Look, master! look!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Aylmer raised his eyes hastily, and at first reddened, then grew paler
+than ever, on beholding Georgiana. He rushed towards her and seized
+her arm with a gripe that left the print of his fingers upon it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why do you come thither? Have you no trust in your husband?" cried
+he, impetuously. "Would you throw the blight of that fatal birthmark
+over my labors? It is not well done. Go, prying woman! go!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Nay, Aylmer," said Georgiana with the firmness of which she possessed
+no stinted endowment, "it is not you that have a right to complain.
+You mistrust your wife; you have concealed the anxiety with which you
+watch the development of this experiment. Think not so unworthily of
+me, my husband. Tell me all the risk we run, and fear not that I shall
+shrink: for my share in it is far less than your own."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, no, Georgiana!" said Aylmer, impatiently; "it must not be."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I submit," replied she, calmly. "And, Aylmer, I shall quaff whatever
+draught you bring me; but it will be on the same principle that would
+induce me to take a dose of poison if offered by your hand."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"My noble wife," said Aylmer, deeply moved, "I knew not the height and
+depth of your nature until now. Nothing shall be concealed. Know,
+then, that this crimson hand, superficial as it seems, has clutched
+its grasp into your being with a strength of which I had no previous
+conception. I have already administered agents powerful enough to do
+aught except to change your entire physical system. Only one thing
+remains to be tried. If that fail us we are ruined."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why did you hesitate to tell me this?" asked she.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Because, Georgiana," said Aylmer, in a low voice, "there is danger."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Danger? There is but one danger,&mdash;that this horrible stigma shall be
+left upon my cheek!" cried Georgiana. "Remove it, remove it, whatever
+be the cost, or we shall both go mad!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Heaven knows your words are too true," said Aylmer, sadly. "And now,
+dearest, return to your boudoir. In a little while all will be
+tested."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He conducted her back and took leave of her with a solemn tenderness
+which spoke far more than his words how much was now at stake. After
+his departure Georgiana became rapt in musings. She considered the
+character of Aylmer, and did it completer justice than at any previous
+moment. Her heart exulted, while it trembled, at his honorable
+love,&mdash;so pure and lofty that it would accept nothing less than
+perfection, nor miserably make itself contented with an earthlier
+nature than he had dreamed of. She felt how much more precious was
+such a sentiment than that meaner kind which would have borne with the
+imperfection for her sake, and have been guilty of treason to holy
+love by degrading its perfect idea to the level of the actual; and
+with her whole spirit she prayed that, for a single moment, she might
+satisfy his highest and deepest conception. Longer than one moment she
+well knew it could not be; for his spirit was ever on the march, ever
+ascending, and each instant required something that was beyond the
+scope of the instant before.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sound of her husband's footsteps aroused her. He bore a crystal
+goblet containing a liquor colorless as water, but bright enough to be
+the draught of immortality. Aylmer was pale; but it seemed rather the
+consequence of a highly wrought state of mind and tension of spirit
+than of fear or doubt.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The concoction of the draught has been perfect," said he, in answer
+to Georgiana's look. "Unless all my science have deceived me, it
+cannot fail."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Save on your account, my dearest Aylmer," observed his wife, "I might
+wish to put off this birthmark of mortality by relinquishing mortality
+itself in preference to any other mode. Life is but a sad possession
+to those who have attained precisely the degree of moral advancement
+at which I stand. Were I weaker and blinder, it might be happiness.
+Were I stronger, it might be endured hopefully. But, being what I find
+myself, methinks I am of all mortals the most fit to die."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You are fit for heaven without tasting death!" replied her husband.
+"But why do we speak of dying? The draught cannot fail. Behold its
+effect upon this plant."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the window-seat there stood a geranium diseased with yellow
+blotches, which had overspread all its leaves. Aylmer poured a small
+quantity of the liquid upon the soil in which it grew. In a little
+time, when the roots of the plant had taken up the moisture, the
+unsightly blotches began to be extinguished in a living verdure.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"There needed no proof," said Georgiana, quietly. "Give me the goblet.
+I joyfully stake all upon your word."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Drink, then, thou lofty creature!" exclaimed Aylmer, with fervid
+admiration. "There is no taint of imperfection on thy spirit. Thy
+sensible frame, too, shall soon be all perfect."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She quaffed the liquid and returned the goblet to his hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is grateful," said she, with a placid smile. "Methinks it is like
+water from a heavenly fountain; for it contains I know not what of
+unobtrusive fragrance and deliciousness. It allays a feverish thirst
+that had parched me for many days. Now, dearest, let me sleep. My
+earthly senses are closing over my spirit like the leaves around the
+heart of a rose at sunset."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She spoke the last words with a gentle reluctance, as if it required
+almost more energy than she could command to pronounce the faint and
+lingering syllables. Scarcely had they loitered through her lips ere
+she was lost in slumber. Aylmer sat by her side, watching her aspect
+with the emotions proper to a man, the whole value of whose existence
+was involved in the process now to be tested. Mingled with this mood,
+however, was the philosophic investigation characteristic of the man
+of science. Not the minutest symptom escaped him. A heightened flush
+of the cheek, a slight irregularity of breath, a quiver of the eyelid,
+a hardly perceptible tremor through the frame,&mdash;such were the details
+which, as the moments passed, he wrote down, in his folio volume.
+Intense thought had set its stamp upon every previous page of that
+volume; but the thoughts of years were all concentrated upon the last.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While thus employed, he failed not to gaze often at the fatal hand,
+and not without a shudder. Yet once, by a strange and unaccountable
+impulse, he pressed it with his lips. His spirit recoiled, however, in
+the very act; and Georgiana, out of the midst of her deep sleep, moved
+uneasily, and murmured, as if in remonstrance. Again Aylmer resumed,
+his watch. Nor was it without avail. The crimson hand, which at first
+had been strongly visible upon the marble paleness of Georgiana's
+cheek, now grew more faintly outlined. She remained not less pale than
+ever; but the birthmark, with every breath that came and went, lost
+somewhat of its former distinctness. Its presence had been awful; its
+departure was more awful still. Watch the stain of the rainbow fading
+out of the sky, and you will know how that mysterious symbol passed
+away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"By Heaven! it is well-nigh gone!" said Aylmer to himself, in almost
+irrepressible ecstasy. "I can scarcely trace it now. Success! success!
+And now it is like the faintest rose color. The lightest flush of
+blood across her cheek would overcome it. But she is so pale!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He drew aside the window-curtain and suffered the light of natural day
+to fall into the room and rest upon her cheek. At the same time he
+heard a gross, hoarse chuckle, which he had long known as his servant
+Aminadab's expression of delight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ah, clod! ah, earthly mass!" cried Aylmer, laughing in a sort of
+frenzy, "you have served me well! Matter and spirit&mdash;earth and
+heaven&mdash;have both done their part in this! Laugh, thing of the senses!
+You have earned the right to laugh."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+These exclamations broke Georgiana's sleep. She slowly unclosed her
+eyes and gazed into the mirror which her husband had arranged for that
+purpose. A faint smile flitted over her lips when she recognized how
+barely perceptible was now that crimson hand which had once blazed
+forth with such disastrous brilliancy as to scare away all their
+happiness. But then her eyes sought Aylmer's face with a trouble and
+anxiety that he could by no means account for.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"My poor Aylmer!" murmured she.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Poor? Nay, richest, happiest, most favored!" exclaimed he. "My
+peerless bride, it is successful! You are perfect!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"My poor Aylmer," she repeated, with a more than human tenderness,
+"you have aimed loftily; you have done nobly. Do not repent that, with
+so high and pure a feeling, you have rejected the best the earth could
+offer. Aylmer, dearest Aylmer, I am dying!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alas! it was too true! The fatal hand had grappled with the mystery of
+life, and was the bond by which an angelic spirit kept itself in union
+with a mortal frame. As the last crimson tint of the birthmark&mdash;that
+sole token of human imperfection&mdash;faded from her cheek, the parting
+breath of the now perfect woman passed into the atmosphere, and her
+soul, lingering a moment, near her husband, took its heavenward
+flight. Then a hoarse, chuckling laugh was heard again! Thus ever does
+the gross fatality of earth exult in its invariable triumph over the
+immortal essence which, in this dim sphere of half-development,
+demands the completeness of a higher state. Yet, had Aylmer reached a
+profounder wisdom, he need not thus have flung away the happiness
+which would have woven his mortal life of the selfsame texture with
+the celestial. The momentary circumstance was too strong for him; he
+failed to look beyond the shadowy scope of time, and, living once for
+all in eternity, to find the perfect future in the present.
+</p>
+
+<h4>NOTES</h4>
+
+<p>
+[1] Published in the March, 1843, number of <i>The Pioneer</i>, edited by
+J. R. Lowell. Republished in <i>Mosses from an Old Manse</i> in 1846.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[2] 154:29 "Eve," of Powers. A noted American sculptor (1805-1873).
+"Eve," "The Fisher Boy," and "America" are some of his chief works.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[3] 168:28 Pygmalion. A sculptor and king of Cyprus.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[4] 181:16 recondite. Abstruse or secret.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[5] 168:27 corrosive. Destructive of tissue.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[6] 184:12 vitae. Of life.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[7] 166:3 infusion. The act of pouring in.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[8] 167:1 Albertus Magnus. A famous scholastic philosopher and member
+of the Dominican order (1193-1280).
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[9] 167:1 Cornelius Agrippa. A German philosopher and student of
+alchemy and magic (1486-1535).
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[10] 167:1 Paracelsus. A German-Swiss physician, and alchemist
+(1492-1541).
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[11] 167:10 Royal Society. An association for the advancement of
+science, founded in London a little before 1660.
+</p>
+
+<h4>BIOGRAPHY</h4>
+
+<p>
+Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in Salem, Massachusetts, July 4, 1804.
+His ancestors were prominent in the affairs of the colony: John
+Hawthorne was one of the judges who tried the witches in 1620; and
+another John Hawthorne was a member of the dignified school committee
+of Salem in 1796. Hawthorne's father, a ship captain, died in a
+foreign land when his son was only four years old; his mother lived
+for forty years after the death of her husband the life of a recluse
+in her own house. The family's star was in the decline and the people
+of Salem looked on Nathaniel as a lazy and very queer boy. He grew up
+in a unique solitude. During these years of seclusion Hawthorne
+acquired the habit of keeping silent on all occasions, and reading a
+few books frequently and thoroughly. The <i>Newgate Calendar</i> must have
+supplied him with many subtle suggestions for his later writings on
+sin and crime, for in almost all of his productions his imagination is
+tinged with, this old Puritanic philosophy and theology.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He entered Bowdoin College in 1821 and graduated from this institution
+in 1825. He had as classmates Longfellow, and Franklin Pierce, who
+afterward became president of the United States. After his graduation
+Hawthorne returned to Salem, where he lived with his mother and
+sisters in almost absolute seclusion for fourteen years. During this
+period he wrote daily, and spent his nights in burning what he had
+written in the daytime.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was clerk of the Boston Custom House from 1839 to 1841, when the
+Whig party removed him for being ultra-partisan in behalf of the
+Democrats. At this time Hawthorne wrote: "As to the Salem people, I
+really thought I had been exceedingly good-natured in my treatment of
+them. They certainly do not deserve good usage at my hands, after
+permitting me to be deliberately lied down, not merely once, but at
+two separate attacks, and on two false indictments, without hardly a
+voice being raised in my behalf." He married Sophia Peabody, July 9,
+1842. From 1842 until 1846 they lived in Concord in the house formerly
+occupied by Emerson. These were the happiest years of his life. In
+1846 he returned to Salem as surveyor in the Salem Custom House. He
+retired from this office in 1850 and lived in Lenox, Massachusetts,
+for two years. In 1852 he settled in Concord. President Pierce
+appointed him consul at Liverpool in 1853, and he served in this
+position until 1857.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After leaving Liverpool he travelled three years in England and on the
+continent. He returned to Concord in 1860. He died in the White
+Mountains, May 18, 1864. Although a silent man and a seeker of
+solitude during his life, few writers have ever experienced such wide
+publicity of their inmost lives as has Hawthorne since his death. The
+publication of his <i>Notes</i> has opened his desk and work-shop to every
+one, and has revealed to us a magnanimous, sympathetic, and pure man,
+who realized his responsibilities as a writer and improved all his
+literary opportunities.
+</p>
+
+<h4>BIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES</h4>
+
+<p>
+<i>History of American Literature</i>, Moses Coit Tyler.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Introduction to American Literature</i>, Henry S. Pancoast.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Studies in American Literature</i>, Charles Noble.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Introduction to American Literature</i>, Brander Matthews.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Gloom and Cheer in Hawthorne," <i>Critic</i>, 45: 28-36.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Hawthorne and his Circle," <i>Nation</i>, 77: 410-411.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Hawthorne as seen by his Publisher," <i>Critic</i>, 45: 51-55.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Hawthorne from an English Point of View." <i>Critic</i>, 45: 60-66.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Hawthorne's Last Years," <i>Critic</i>, 45: 67-71.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Life of Hawthorne," <i>Atlantic Monthly</i>, 90: 563-567,
+</p>
+
+<h4>CRITICISMS</h4>
+
+<p>
+Many influences in Hawthorne's environment served to condition and
+mold him as a writer. Salem had reached its highest prosperity in all
+lines and was just beginning its retrogression in Hawthorne's time;
+the primeval forests of Maine produced a subtle and lasting influence
+on him during his sojourn in Maine for his health; transcendentalism
+was the ruling thought at the time when Hawthorne was in his most
+plastic and solitary age; his interest in <i>Brook Farm</i> brought him in
+contact with all the good and bad points of that social movement; his
+life in the <i>Old Manse</i> in Concord and in the Berkshire Hills
+contributed largely to the deepening of his convictions and
+sympathies; and over all, like a sombre cloud, hung his ancestral
+Puritanic training which penetrated and suffused all his writings. He
+is the most native and the least imitative of all our fiction writers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hawthorne did not write on the common subjects and facts of his day,
+but chose to have his readers go with him, away from prosaic life, out
+into a world of mysteries where we may revel in all kinds of imaginary
+sports. By this process he succeeded in producing poetic effects from
+the most unpromising materials. His writings are fanciful. He enjoyed
+subjects that deal with the occult, such as mesmerism, hypnotism, and
+subtle suggestions. He harked back to the rigid beliefs and laws of
+the Puritans, but he and his subjects are spiritually advanced far
+above the crude, ponderous, and highly theological tenets of his
+forefathers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hawthorne is very provincial. He travelled little until he was fifty
+years old. He naturally loved the antique and poetic countries, but he
+always qualified his admiration of these foreign lands by praising
+something in his own New England. He conceded that there was little or
+nothing in this prosperous and crude country to inspire a writer to
+produce poetry, but his patriotism was so strong that he could never
+free himself wholly from its provincial effects. All his works were
+produced in the stress created by this pull of opposing forces&mdash;his
+high poetic ideals and his love of country.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In form he tends toward the polish of a classicist; in quality and
+freedom of thought he is very responsive to the mysteries of
+romanticism. He is introspective in his thinking and symbolical in his
+writing. Naturally he thinks abstractly, but is compelled to construct
+concrete methods of presenting his ideas. He never describes a strong
+emotion in detail, but delights in using suggestions and sidelights.
+His pure and refined manhood, his delicate fancy and deep interest in
+moral and religious questions, his conscience in its most artistic
+form, all are presented to the reader in the choicest garb of well
+chosen words and attuned to a subtle rhythm that adds beauty and
+attractiveness to his style.
+</p>
+
+<h4>GENERAL REFERENCES</h4>
+
+<p>
+<i>Hours in a Library</i>, Leslie Stephen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>A Literary History of America</i>, Barrett Wendell.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>American Literature</i>, William P. Trent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Makers of English Fiction</i>, W.J. Dawson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Leading American Novelists</i>, J. Erskine.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Studies and Appreciations</i>, L.E. Gates.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"An Estimate," <i>Scribner's Magazine</i>, 43: 69-84.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Unknown Quantity in Hawthorne's Personality," <i>Current Literature</i>,
+42: 517-518.
+</p>
+
+<h4>COLLATERAL READINGS</h4>
+
+<p>
+<i>Biographical Stories for Children</i>, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Mosses from an Old Manse</i>, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Wonder Boot</i>, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Blithedale Romance</i>, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Tanglewood Tales</i>, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Lady Eleanore's Mantle</i>, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Great Stone Face</i>, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Prophetic Pictures</i>, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Necklace</i>, Guy de Maupassant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>A Solitary</i>, Mary Wilkins Freeman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Lady or the Tiger</i>, Frank R. Stockton.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Strange Ride</i>, Rudyard Kipling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Rikki-Tikki-Tavi</i>, Rudyard Kipling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>They</i>, Rudyard Kipling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Twelfth Guest</i>, Mary Wilkins Freeman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Shadows on the Wall</i>, Mary Wilkins Freeman.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap09"></a>ETHAN BRAND[1]</h2>
+
+<p class="center">
+A Chapter From An Abortive Romance
+</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+<i>By Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bartram the lime-burner, a rough, heavy-looking man, begrimed with
+charcoal, sat watching his kiln, at nightfall, while his little son
+played at building houses with the scattered fragments of marble,
+when, on the hillside below them, they heard a roar of laughter, not
+mirthful, but slow, and even solemn, like a wind shaking the boughs of
+the forest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Father, what is that?" asked the little boy, leaving his play, and
+pressing betwixt his father's knees.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"O, some drunken man, I suppose," answered the lime-burner; "some
+merry fellow from the bar-room in the village, who dared not laugh
+loud enough within doors lest he should blow the roof of the house
+off. So here he is, shaking his jolly sides at the foot of Graylock."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But, father," said the child, more sensitive than the obtuse,
+middle-aged clown, "he does not laugh like a man that is glad. So the
+noise frightens me!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Don't be a fool, child!" cried his father, gruffly. "You will never
+make a man, I do believe; there is too much of your mother in you. I
+have known the rustling of a leaf startle you. Hark! Here comes the
+merry fellow now. You shall see that there is no harm in him."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bartram and his little son, while they were talking thus, sat watching
+the same lime-kiln that had been the scene of Ethan Brand's solitary
+and meditative life, before he began his search for the Unpardonable
+Sin. Many years, as we have seen, had now elapsed, since that
+portentous night when the IDEA was first developed. The kiln, however,
+on the mountain-side stood unimpaired, and was in nothing changed
+since he had thrown his dark thoughts into the intense glow of its
+furnace, and melted them, as it were, into the one thought that took
+possession of his life. It was a rude, round, towerlike structure,
+about twenty feet high, heavily built of rough stones, and with a
+hillock of earth heaped about the larger part of its circumference; so
+that the blocks and fragments of marble might be drawn by cart-loads,
+and thrown in at the top. There was an opening at the bottom of the
+tower, like an oven-mouth, but large enough to admit a man in a
+stooping posture, and provided with a massive iron door. With the
+smoke and jets of flame issuing from the chinks and crevices of this
+door, which seemed to give admittance into the hillside, it resembled
+nothing so much as the private entrance to the infernal regions, which
+the shepherds of the Delectable Mountains[2] were accustomed to show
+to pilgrims.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There are many such lime-kilns in that tract of country, for the
+purpose of burning the white marble which composes a large part of the
+substance of the hills. Some of them, built years ago, and long
+deserted, with weeds growing in the vacant round of the interior,
+which is open to the sky, and grass and wild flowers rooting
+themselves into the chinks of the stones, look already like relics of
+antiquity, and may yet be overspread with the lichens of centuries to
+come. Others, where the lime-burner still feeds his daily and
+night-long fire, afford points of interest to the wanderer among the
+hills, who seats himself on a log of wood or a fragment of marble, to
+hold a chat with the solitary man. It is a lonesome, and, when the
+character is inclined to thought, may be an intensely thoughtful,
+occupation; as it proved in the case of Ethan Brand, who had mused to
+such strange purpose, in days gone by, while the fire in this very
+kiln was burning.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The man who now watched the fire was of a different order, and
+troubled himself with no thoughts save the very few that were
+requisite to his business. At frequent intervals he flung back the
+clashing weight of the iron door, and, turning his face from the
+insufferable glare, thrust in huge logs of oak, or stirred the immense
+brands with a long pole. Within the furnace were seen the curling and
+riotous flames, and the burning marble, almost molten with the
+intensity of heat; while without, the reflection of the fire quivered
+on the dark intricacy of the surrounding forest, and showed in the
+foreground a bright and ruddy little picture of the hut, the spring
+beside its door, the athletic and coal-begrimed figure of the
+lime-burner, and the half-frightened child, shrinking into the
+protection of his father's shadow. And when again the iron door was
+closed, then reappeared the tender light of the half-full moon, which
+vainly strove to trace out the indistinct shapes of the neighboring
+mountains; and, in the upper sky, there was a flitting congregation of
+clouds, still faintly tinged with the rosy sunset, though thus far
+down into the valley the sunshine had vanished long and long ago.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The little boy now crept still closer to his father, as footsteps were
+heard ascending the hillside, and a human form thrust aside the bushes
+that clustered beneath the trees.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Halloo! who is it?" cried the lime-burner, vexed at his son's
+timidity, yet half infected by it, "Come forward, and show yourself,
+like a man, or I'll fling this chunk of marble at your head !"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You offer me a rough welcome," said a gloomy voice, as the unknown
+man drew nigh. "Yet I neither claim nor desire a kinder one, even at
+my own fireside."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To obtain a distincter view, Bartram threw open the iron door of the
+kiln, whence immediately issued a gush of fierce light, that smote
+full upon the stranger's face and figure. To a careless eye there
+appeared nothing very remarkable in his aspect, which was that of a
+man in a coarse, brown, country-made suit of clothes, tall and thin,
+with the staff and heavy shoes of a wayfarer. As he advanced, he fixed
+his eyes&mdash;which were very bright&mdash;intently upon the brightness of the
+furnace, as if he beheld, or expected to behold, some object worthy of
+note within it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Good evening, stranger," said the lime-burner; "whence come you, so
+late in the day?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I come from my search," answered the wayfarer; "for, at last, it is
+finished."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Drunk!&mdash;or crazy!" muttered Bartram to himself. "I shall have trouble
+with the fellow. The sooner I drive him away, the better."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The little boy, all in a tremble, whispered to his father, and begged
+him to shut the door of the kiln, so that there might not be so much
+light; for that there was something in the man's face which he was
+afraid to look at, yet could not look away from. And, indeed, even the
+lime-burner's dull and torpid sense began to be impressed by an
+indescribable something in that thin, rugged, thoughtful visage, with
+the grizzled hair hanging wildly about it, and those deeply sunken
+eyes, which gleamed like fires within the entrance of a mysterious
+cavern. But, as he closed the door, the stranger turned towards him,
+and spoke in a quiet, familiar way, that made Bartram feel as if he
+were a sane and sensible man, after all.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Your task draws to an end, I see," said he. "This marble has already
+been burning three days. A few hours more will convert the stone to
+lime."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why, who are you?" exclaimed the lime-burner. "You seem as well
+acquainted with my business as I am myself."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And well I may be," said the stranger; "for I followed the same craft
+many a long year, and here, too, on this very spot. But you are a
+newcomer in these parts. Did you never hear of Ethan Brand?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The man that went in search of the Unpardonable Sin?" asked Bartram,
+with a laugh.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The same," answered the stranger. "He has found what he sought, and
+therefore he comes back again,"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What! then you are Ethan Brand himself?" cried the lime-burner, in
+amazement. "I am a newcomer here, as you say, and they call it
+eighteen years since you left the foot of Graylock, But, I can tell
+you, the good folks still talk about Ethan Brand, in the village
+yonder, and what a strange errand took him away from his lime-kiln.
+Well and so you have found the Unpardonable Sin?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Even so!" said the stranger, calmly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If the 'question is a fair one." proceeded Bartrarn, "where might it
+be?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ethan Brand laid his finger on his own heart.'
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Here!" replied he.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And then, without mirth in his countenance, but as if moved by an
+involuntary recognition of the infinite absurdity of seeking
+throughout the world for what was the closest of all things to
+himself, and looking into every heart, save his own, for what was
+hidden in no other breast, he broke into a laugh of scorn. It was the
+same slow, heavy laugh that had almost appalled the lime-burner when
+it heralded the wayfarer's approach.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The solitary mountain side was made dismal by it. Laughter, when out
+of place, mistimed, or bursting forth from a disordered state of
+feeling, may be the most terrible modulation of the human voice. The
+laughter of one asleep, even if it be a little child,&mdash;the madman's
+laugh,&mdash;the wild, screaming laugh of a born idiot,&mdash;are sounds that we
+sometimes tremble to hear, and would always willingly forget. Poets
+have imagined no utterance of fiends Or hobgoblins so fearfully
+appropriate as a laugh. And even the obtuse lime-burner felt his
+nerves shaken, as this strange man looked inward at his own heart, and
+burst into laughter that rolled away into the night, and was
+indistinctly reverberated among the hills.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Joe," said he to his little son, "scamper down to the tavern in the
+village, and tell the jolly fellows there that Ethan Brand has come
+back, and that he has found the Unpardonable Sin!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The boy darted away on his errand, to which Ethan Brand made no
+objection, nor seemed hardly to notice it. He sat on a log of wood,
+looking steadfastly at the iron door of the kiln. When the child was
+out of sight, and his swift and light footsteps ceased to be heard
+treading first on the fallen leaves and then on the rocky mountain
+path, the lime-burner began to regret his departure. He felt that the
+little fellow's presence had been a barrier between his guest and
+himself, and that he must now deal, heart to heart, with a man who, on
+his own confession, had committed the one only crime for which Heaven
+could afford no mercy. That crime, in its indistinct blackness, seemed
+to overshadow him. The lime-burner's own sins rose up within him, and
+made his memory riotous with a throng of evil shapes that asserted
+their kindred with the Master Sin, whatever it might be, which it was
+within the scope of man's corrupted nature to conceive and cherish.
+They were all of one family; they went to and fro between his breast
+and Ethan Brand's, and carried dark greetings from one to the other.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then Bartram remembered the stories which had grown traditionary in
+reference to this strange man, who had come upon him like a shadow of
+the night, and was making himself at home in his old place, after so
+long absence that the dead people, dead and buried for years, would
+have had more right to be at home, in any familiar spot, than he.
+Ethan Brand, it was said, had conversed with Satan himself in the
+lurid blaze of this very kiln. The legend had been matter of mirth
+heretofore, but looked grisly now. According to this tale, before
+Ethan Brand departed on his search, he had been accustomed to evoke a
+fiend from the hot furnace of the lime-kiln, night after night, in
+order to confer with him about the Unpardonable Sin; the man and the
+fiend each laboring to frame the image of some mode of guilt which
+could neither be atoned for nor forgiven. And, with the first gleam of
+light upon the mountain-top, the fiend crept in at the iron door,
+there to abide the intensest element of fire, until again summoned
+forth to share in the dreadful task of extending man's possible guilt
+beyond the scope of Heaven's else infinite mercy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While the lime-burner was struggling with the horror of these
+thoughts, Ethan Brand rose from the log, and flung open the door of
+the kiln. The action was in such accordance with the idea in Bartram's
+mind, that he almost expected to see the Evil One issue forth, red-hot
+from the raging furnace.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Hold! hold!" cried he, with a tremulous attempt to laugh; for he was
+ashamed of his fears, although they overmastered him. "Don't, for
+mercy's sake, bring out your Devil now!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Man!" sternly replied Ethan Brand, "what need have I of the Devil? I
+have left him behind me, on my track. It is with such halfway sinners
+as you that he busies himself. Fear not, because I open the door. I do
+but act by old custom, and am going to trim your fire, like a
+lime-burner, as I was once."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He stirred the vast coals, thrust in more wood, and bent forward to
+gaze into the hollow prison-house of the fire, regardless of the
+fierce glow that reddened upon his face. The lime-burner sat watching
+him, and half suspected his strange guest of a purpose, if not to
+evoke a fiend, at least to plunge bodily into the flames, and thus
+vanish from the sight of man. Ethan Brand, however, drew quietly back,
+and closed the door of the kiln.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I have looked," said he, "into many a human heart that was seven
+times hotter with sinful passions than yonder furnace is with fire.
+But I found not there what I sought. No, not the Unpardonable Sin!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What is the Unpardonable Sin?" asked the lime-burner; and then he
+shrank farther from his companion, trembling lest his question should
+be answered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is a sin that grew within my own breast," replied Ethan Brand,
+standing erect, with a pride that distinguishes all enthusiasts of his
+stamp. "A sin that grew nowhere else! The sin of an intellect that
+triumphed over the sense of brotherhood with man and reverence for
+God, and sacrificed everything to its own mighty claims! the only sin
+that deserves a recompense of immortal agony! Freely, were it to do
+again, would I incur the guilt. Unshrinkingly I accept the
+retribution!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The man's head is turned," muttered the lime-burner to himself. "He
+may be a sinner, like the rest of us,&mdash;nothing more likely,&mdash;but, I'll
+be sworn, he is a madman too."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nevertheless, he felt uncomfortable at his situation, alone with Ethan
+Brand on the wild mountain side, and was right glad to hear the rough
+murmur of tongues, and the footsteps of what seemed a pretty numerous
+party, stumbling over the stones and rustling through the under-brush.
+Soon appeared the whole lazy regiment that was wont to infest the
+village tavern, comprehending three or four individuals who had drunk
+flip beside the bar-room fire through all the winters, and smoked
+their pipes beneath the stoop through all the summers, since Ethan
+Brand's departure. Laughing boisterously, and mingling all their
+voices together in unceremonious talk, they now burst into the
+moonshine and narrow streaks of firelight that illuminated the open
+space before the lime-kiln. Bartram set the door ajar again, flooding
+the spot with light, that the whole company might get a fair view of
+Ethan Brand, and he of them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There, among other old acquaintances, was a once ubiquitous[3] man,
+now almost extinct, but whom we were formerly sure to encounter at the
+hotel of every thriving village throughout the country. It was the
+stage-agent. The present specimen of the genus was a wilted and
+smoke-dried man, wrinkled and red-nosed, in a smartly cut, brown,
+bob-tailed coat, with brass buttons, who, for a length of time
+unknown, had kept his desk and corner in the bar-room, and was still
+puffing what seemed to be the same cigar that he had lighted twenty
+years before. He had great fame as a dry joker, though, perhaps, less
+on account of any intrinsic humor than from a certain flavor of brandy
+toddy and tobacco smoke, which impregnated all his ideas and
+expressions, as well as his person. Another well-remembered though
+strangely altered face was that of Lawyer Giles, as people still
+called him in courtesy; an elderly ragamuffin, in his soiled
+shirt-sleeves and tow-cloth trousers. This poor fellow had been an
+attorney, in what he called his better days, a sharp practitioner, and
+in great vogue among the village litigants; but flip, and sling, and
+toddy, and cocktails, imbibed at all hours, morning, noon, and night,
+had caused him to slide from intellectual to various kinds and degrees
+of bodily labor, till, at last, to adopt his own phrase, he slid into
+a soap vat. In other words, Giles was now a soap boiler, in a small
+way. He had come to be but the fragment of a human being, a part of
+one foot having been chopped off by an axe, and an entire hand torn
+away by the devilish grip of a steam engine. Yet, though the corporeal
+hand was gone, a spiritual member remained; for, stretching forth the
+stump, Giles steadfastly averred that he felt an invisible thumb and
+fingers with as vivid a sensation as before the real ones were
+amputated. A maimed and miserable wretch he was; but one,
+nevertheless, whom the world could not trample on, and had no right to
+scorn, either in this or any previous stage of his misfortunes, since
+he had still kept up the courage and spirit of a man, asked nothing in
+charity, and with his one hand&mdash;and that the left one&mdash;fought a stern
+battle against want and hostile circumstances.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Among the throng, too, came another personage, who, with certain
+points of similarity to Lawyer Giles, had many more of difference. It
+was the village doctor; a man of some fifty years, whom, at an earlier
+period of his life, we introduced as paying a professional visit to
+Ethan Brand during the latter's supposed insanity. He was now a
+purple-visaged, rude, and brutal, yet half-gentlemanly figure, with
+something wild, ruined, and desperate in his talk, and in all the
+details of his gesture and manners. Brandy possessed this man like an
+evil spirit, and made him as surly and savage as a wild beast, and as
+miserable as a lost soul; but there was supposed to be in him such
+wonderful skill, such native gifts of healing, beyond any which
+medical science could impart, that society caught hold of him, and
+would not let him sink out of its reach. So, swaying to and fro upon
+his horse, and grumbling thick accents at the bedside, he visited all
+the sick chambers for miles about among the mountain towns, and
+sometimes raised a dying man, as it were, by miracle, or quite as
+often, no doubt, sent his patient to a grave that was dug many a year
+too soon. The doctor had an everlasting pipe in his mouth, and, as
+somebody said, in allusion to his habit of swearing, it was always
+alight with hell-fire.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+These three worthies pressed forward, and greeted Ethan Brand each
+after his own fashion, earnestly inviting him to partake of the
+contents of a certain black bottle, in which, as they averred, he
+would find something far better worth seeking for than the
+Unpardonable Sin. No mind, which has wrought itself by intense and
+solitary meditation into a high state of enthusiasm, can endure the
+kind of contact with low and vulgar modes of thought and feeling to
+which Ethan Brand was now subjected. It made him doubt&mdash;and, strange
+to say, it was a painful doubt,&mdash;whether he had indeed found the
+Unpardonable Sin and found it within himself. The whole question on
+which he had exhausted life, and more than life, looked like a
+delusion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Leave me," he said bitterly, "ye brute beasts, that have made
+yourselves so, shrivelling up your souls with fiery liquors! I have
+done with you. Years and years ago, I groped into your hearts, and
+found nothing there for my purpose. Get ye gone!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why, you uncivil scoundrel," cried the fierce doctor, "is that the
+way you respond to the kindness of your best friends? Then let me tell
+you the truth. You have no more found the Unpardonable Sin than yonder
+boy Joe has. You are but a crazy fellow,&mdash;I told you so twenty years
+ago,&mdash;neither better nor worse than a crazy fellow, and a fit
+companion of old Humphrey, here!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He pointed to an old man, shabbily dressed, with long white hair, thin
+visage, and unsteady eyes. For some years past this aged person had
+been wandering about among the hills, inquiring of all travellers whom
+he met for his daughter. The girl, it seemed, had gone off with a
+company of circus performers; and occasionally tidings of her came to
+the village, and fine stories were told of her glittering appearance
+as she rode on horseback in the ring, or performed marvellous feats on
+the tight rope.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The white-haired father now approached Ethan Brand, and gazed
+unsteadily into his face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"They tell me you have been all over the earth," said he, wringing his
+hands with earnestness. "You must have seen my daughter, for she makes
+a grand figure in the world, and everybody goes to see her. Did she
+send any word to her old father, or say when she was coming back?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ethan Brand's eye quailed beneath the old man's. That daughter, from
+whom he so earnestly desired a word of greeting, was the Esther of our
+tale, the very girl whom, with such cold and remorseless purpose,
+Ethan Brand had made the subject of a psychological experiment, and
+wasted, absorbed, and perhaps annihilated her soul, in the process.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes," murmured he, turning away from the hoary wanderer; "it is no
+delusion. There is an Unpardonable Sin!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While these things were passing, a merry scene was going forward in
+the area of cheerful light, beside the spring and before the door of
+the hut. A number of the youth of the village, young men and girls,
+had hurried up the hillside, impelled by curiosity to see Ethan Brand,
+the hero of so many a legend familiar to their childhood. Finding
+nothing, however, very remarkable in his aspect,&mdash;nothing but a
+sunburnt wayfarer, in plain garb and dusty shoes, who sat looking into
+the fire, as if he fancied pictures among the coals,&mdash;these young
+people speedily grew tired of observing him. As it happened, there was
+other amusement at hand. An old German Jew, travelling with a
+diorama[4] on his back, was passing down, the mountain road towards
+the village just as the party turned aside from it, and, in hopes of
+eking out the profits of the day, the showman had kept them company to
+the lime-kiln.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Come, old Dutchman," cried one of the young men, "let us see your
+pictures, if you can swear they are worth looking at!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"O yes, Captain," answered the Jew,&mdash;whether as a matter of courtesy
+or craft, he styled everybody Captain,&mdash;"I shall show you, indeed,
+some very superb pictures!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So, placing his box in a proper position, he invited the young men and
+girls to look through the glass orifices of the machine, and proceeded
+to exhibit a series of the most outrageous scratchings and daubings,
+as specimens of the fine arts, that ever an itinerant showman had the
+face to impose upon his circle of spectators. The pictures were worn
+out, moreover, tattered, full of cracks and wrinkles, dingy with
+tobacco smoke, and otherwise in a most pitiable condition. Some
+purported to be cities, public edifices, and ruined castles in Europe;
+others represented Napoleon's battles and Nelson's sea fights; and in
+the midst of these would be seen a gigantic, brown, hairy hand,&mdash;which
+might have been mistaken for the Hand of Destiny, though, in truth, it
+was only the showman's,&mdash;pointing its forefinger to various scenes of
+the conflict, while its owner gave historical illustrations. When,
+with much merriment at its abominable deficiency of merit, the
+exhibition was concluded, the German bade little Joe put his head into
+the box. Viewed through the magnifying glasses, the boy's round, rosy
+visage assumed the strangest imaginable aspect of an immense
+Titanic[5] child, the mouth grinning broadly, and the eyes and every
+other feature overflowing with fun at the joke. Suddenly, however,
+that merry face turned pale, and its expression changed to horror, for
+this easily impressed and excitable child had become sensible that the
+eye of Ethan Brand was fixed upon him through the glass.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You make the little man to be afraid. Captain." said the German Jew,
+turning up the dark and strong outline of his visage, from his
+stooping posture, "But look again, and, by chance, I shall cause you
+to see somewhat that is very fine, upon my word!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ethan Brand gazed into the box for an instant, and then starting back,
+looked fixedly at the German. What had he seen? Nothing, apparently;
+for a curious youth, who had peeped in almost at the same moment,
+beheld only a vacant space of canvas.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I remember you now," muttered Ethan Brand to the showman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ah, Captain," whispered the Jew of Nuremburg, with a dark smile, "I
+find it to be a heavy matter in my show-box,&mdash;this Unpardonable Sin!
+By my faith, Captain, it has wearied my shoulders, this long day, to
+carry it over the mountain."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Peace," answered Ethan Brand, sternly, "or get thee into the furnace
+yonder!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Jew's exhibition had scarcely concluded, when a great, elderly
+dog&mdash;who seemed to be his own master, as no person in the company laid
+claim to him&mdash;saw fit to render himself the object of public notice.
+Hitherto, he had shown himself a very quiet, well-disposed old dog,
+going round from one to another, and, by way of being sociable,
+offering his rough head to be patted by any kindly hand that would
+take so much trouble. But now, all of a sudden, this grave and
+venerable quadruped, of his own mere motion, and without the slightest
+suggestion from anybody else, began to run round after his tail,
+which, to heighten the absurdity of the proceeding, was a great deal
+shorter than it should have been. Never was seen such headlong
+eagerness in pursuit of an object that could not possibly be attained;
+never was heard such a tremendous outbreak of growling, snarling,
+barking, and snapping,&mdash;as if one end of the ridiculous brute's body
+were at deadly and most unforgivable enmity with the other. Faster and
+faster, round about went the cur; and faster and still faster fled the
+unapproachable brevity of his tail; and louder and fiercer grew his
+yells of rage and animosity; until, utterly exhausted, and as far from
+the goal as ever, the foolish old dog ceased his performance as
+suddenly as he had begun it. The next moment he was as mild, quiet,
+sensible, and respectable in his deportment, as when he first scraped
+acquaintance with the company.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As may be supposed, the exhibition was greeted with universal
+laughter, clapping of hands, and shouts of encore, to which the canine
+performer responded by wagging all that there was to wag of his tail,
+but appeared totally unable to repeat his very successful effort to
+amuse the spectators.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meanwhile, Ethan Brand had resumed his seat upon the log, and moved,
+it might be, by a perception of some remote analogy between his own
+case and that of this self-pursuing cur, he broke into the awful
+laugh, which, more than any other token, expressed the condition of
+his inward being. From that moment, the merriment of the party was at
+an end; they stood aghast, dreading lest the inauspicious sound should
+be reverberated around the horizon, and that mountain would thunder it
+to mountain, and so the horror be prolonged upon their ears. Then,
+whispering one to another that it was late,&mdash;that the moon was almost
+down,&mdash;that the August night was growing chill,&mdash;they hurried
+homewards, leaving the lime-burner and little Joe to deal as they
+might with their unwelcome guest. Save for these three human beings,
+the open space on the hillside was a solitude, set in a vast gloom of
+forest. Beyond that darksome verge, the firelight glimmered on the
+stately trunks and almost black foliage of pines, intermixed with the
+lighter verdure of sapling oaks, maples, and poplars, while here and
+there lay the gigantic corpses of dead trees, decaying on the
+leaf-strewn soil. And it seemed to little Joe&mdash;a timorous and
+imaginative child&mdash;that the silent forest was holding, its breath,
+until some fearful thing should happen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ethan Brand thrust more wood into the fire, and closed the door of the
+kiln; then looking over his shoulder at the lime-burner and his son,
+he bade, rather than advised, them to retire to rest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"For myself, I cannot sleep." said he, "I have matters that it
+concerns me to meditate upon. I will watch the fire, as I used to do
+in the old time."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And call the Devil out of the furnace to keep you company, I
+suppose," muttered Bartram, who had been making intimate acquaintance
+with the black bottle above mentioned. "But watch, if you like, and
+call as many devils as you like! For my part, I shall be all the
+better for a snooze. Come, Joe!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As the boy followed his father into the hut, he looked back at the
+wayfarer, and the tears came into his eyes, for his tender spirit had
+an intuition of the bleak and terrible loneliness in which this man
+had enveloped himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When they had gone, Ethan Brand sat listening to the crackling of the
+kindled wood, and looking at the little spirits of fire that issued
+through the chinks of the door. These trifles, however, once so
+familiar, had but the slightest hold of his attention, while deep
+within his mind he was reviewing the gradual but marvellous change
+that had been wrought upon him by the search to which he had devoted
+himself. He remembered how the night dew had fallen upon him,&mdash;how the
+dark forest had whispered to him,&mdash;how the stars had gleamed upon
+him,&mdash;a simple and loving man, watching his fire in the years gone by,
+and ever musing as it burned. He remembered with what tenderness, with
+what love and sympathy for mankind, and what pity for human guilt and
+woe, he had first begun to contemplate those ideas which afterwards
+became the inspiration of his life; with what reverence he had then
+looked into the heart of man, viewing it as a temple originally
+divine, and, however desecrated, still to be held sacred by a brother;
+with what awful fear he had deprecated the success of his pursuit, and
+prayed that the Unpardonable Sin might never be revealed to him. Then
+ensued that vast intellectual development, which, in its progress,
+disturbed the counterpoise between his mind and heart. The Idea that
+possessed his life had operated as a means of education; it had gone
+on cultivating his powers to the highest point of which they were
+susceptible; it had raised him from the level of an unlettered laborer
+to stand on a starlit eminence, whither the philosophers of the earth,
+laden with the lore of universities, might vainly strive to clamber
+after him. So much for the intellect! But where was the heart? That,
+indeed, had withered,&mdash;had contracted.&mdash;had hardened,&mdash;had perished!
+It had ceased to partake of the universal throb, He had lost his hold
+of the magnetic chain of humanity. He was no longer a brother-man,
+opening the chambers of the dungeons of our common nature by the key
+of holy sympathy, which gave him a right to share in all its secrets;
+he was now a cold observer, looking on mankind as the subject of his
+experiment, and, at length, converting man and woman to be his
+puppets, and pulling the wires that moved them to such degrees of
+crime as were demanded for his study.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thus Ethan Brand became a fiend. He began to be so from the moment
+that his moral nature had ceased to keep the pace of improvement with
+his intellect. And now, as his highest effort and inevitable
+development,&mdash;as the bright and gorgeous flower, and rich, delicious
+fruit of his life's labor,&mdash;he had produced the Unpardonable Sin!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What more have I to seek? what more to achieve?" said Ethan Brand to
+himself, "My task Is done, and well done!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Starting from the log with a certain alacrity in his gait and
+ascending the hillock of earth that was raised against the stone
+circumference of the lime-kiln, he thus reached the top of the
+structure. It was a space of perhaps ten feet across, from edge to
+edge, presenting a view of the upper surface of the immense mass of
+broken marble with which the kiln was heaped. All these innumerable
+blocks and fragments of marble were red-hot and vividly on fire,
+sending up great spouts of blue flame, which quivered aloft and danced
+madly, as within a magic circle, and sank and rose again, with
+continual and multitudinous activity. As the lonely man bent forward
+over this terrible body of fire, the blasting heat smote up against
+his person with a breath that, it might be supposed, would have
+scorched and shrivelled him up in a moment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ethan Brand stood erect, and raised his arms on high. The blue flames
+played upon his face, and imparted the wild and ghastly light which
+alone could have suited its expression; it was that of a fiend on the
+verge of plunging into his gulf of intensest torment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"O Mother Earth," cried he, "who art no more my Mother, and into whose
+bosom this frame shall never be resolved! O mankind, whose brotherhood
+I have cast off, and trampled thy great heart beneath my feet! O stars
+of heaven, that shone on me of old, as if to light me onward and
+upward!&mdash;farewell all, and forever. Come, deadly element of
+Fire,&mdash;henceforth my familiar frame! Embrace me, as I do thee!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That night the sound of a fearful peal of laughter rolled heavily
+through the sleep of the lime-burner and his little son; dim shapes of
+horror and anguish haunted their dreams, and seemed still present in
+the rude hovel, when they opened their eyes to the daylight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Up, boy, up!" cried the lime-burner, staring about him. "Thank
+Heaven, the night is gone, at last; and rather than pass such another,
+I would watch, my lime-kiln, wide awake, for a twelvemonth. This Ethan
+Brand, with his humbug of an Unpardonable Sin, has done me no such
+mighty favor, in taking my place!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He issued from the hut, followed by little Joe, who kept fast hold, of
+his father's hand. The early sunshine was already pouring its gold
+upon the mountain tops; and though the valleys were still in shadow,
+they smiled cheerfully in the promise of the bright day that was
+hastening onward. The village, completely shut in by hills, which
+swelled away gently about it, looked as if it had rested peacefully in
+the hollow of the great hand of Providence. Every dwelling was
+distinctly visible; the little spires of the two churches pointed
+upwards, and caught a fore-glimmering of brightness from the sun-gilt
+skies upon their gilded weathercocks. The tavern was astir, and the
+figure of the old, smoke-dried stage-agent, cigar in mouth, was seen
+beneath the stoop. Old Graylock was glorified with a golden cloud upon
+his head. Scattered likewise over the breasts of the surrounding
+mountains, there were heaps of hoary mist, in fantastic shapes, some
+of them far down into the valley, others high up towards the summits,
+and still others, of the same family of mist or cloud, hovering in the
+gold radiance of the upper atmosphere. Stepping from one to another of
+the clouds that rested on the hills, and thence to the loftier
+brotherhood that sailed in air, it seemed almost as if a mortal man
+might thus ascend into the heavenly regions. Earth was so mingled with
+sky that it was a day-dream to look at it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To supply that charm of the familiar and homely, which Nature so
+readily adopts into a scene like this, the stage-coach was rattling
+down the mountain road, and the driver sounded his horn, while echo
+caught up the notes, and intertwined them into a rich and varied and
+elaborate harmony, of which the original performer could lay claim to
+little share. The great hills played a concert among themselves, each
+contributing a strain of airy sweetness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Little Joe's face brightened at once.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Dear father," cried he, skipping cheerily to and fro, "that strange
+man is gone, and the sky and the mountains all seem glad of it!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes," growled the lime-burner, with an oath, "but he has let the fire
+go down, and no thanks to him if five hundred bushels of lime are not
+spoiled. If I catch the fellow hereabouts again, I shall feel like
+tossing him into the furnace!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With his long pole in his hand, he ascended to the top of the kiln.
+After a moment's pause, he called to his son.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Come up here, Joe!" said he.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So little Joe ran up the hillock, and stood by his father's side. The
+marble was all burnt into perfect, snow-white lime. But on its
+surface, in the midst of the circle,&mdash;snow-white too, and thoroughly
+converted into lime,&mdash;lay a human skeleton, in the attitude of a
+person who, after long toil, lies down to long repose. Within the
+ribs&mdash;strange to say&mdash;was the shape of a human heart.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Was the fellow's heart made of marble?" cried Bartram, in some
+perplexity at this phenomenon. "At any rate, it is burnt into what
+looks like special good lime; and, taking all the bones together, my
+kiln is half a bushel the richer for him."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So saying, the rude lime-burner lifted his pole, and, letting it fall
+upon the skeleton, the relics of Ethan Brand were crumbled into
+fragments.
+</p>
+
+<h4>NOTES</h4>
+
+<p>
+[1] Written in 1848; published in Holden's <i>Dollar Magazine</i> in 1851.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[2] 182:26 Delectable Mountains. A range of mountains referred to in
+Bunyan's <i>Pilgrim's Progress</i>.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[3] 190:22 ubiquitous. Being present everywhere.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[4] 194:29 diorama. A series of paintings arranged for exhibition. See
+dictionary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[5] 195:30 Titanic. Characteristic of the Titans; therefore large.
+</p>
+
+<h4>COLLATERAL READINGS</h4>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Scarlet Letter</i>, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The House of Seven Gables</i>, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Marble Faun</i>, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Gray Champion</i>, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Wedding Knell</i>, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Great Carbuncle</i>, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Dr. Heidegger's Experiment</i>, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Haunted Mind</i>, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Feathertop</i>, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Rip Van Winkle</i>, Washington Irving.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Elixir of Life</i>, Honoré de Balzac.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Leather Funnel</i>, A. Conan Doyle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Return of Imray's Ghost</i>, Rudyard Kipling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>A Gentle Ghost</i>, Mary Wilkins Freeman.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap10"></a>THE SIRE DE MALETROIT'S DOOR[1]</h2>
+
+<p class="center">
+<i>By Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Denis de Beaulieu was not yet two-and-twenty, but he counted himself a
+grown man, and a very accomplished cavalier into the bargain. Lads
+were early formed in that rough, warfaring epoch; and when one has
+been in a pitched battle and a dozen raids, has killed one's man in an
+honorable fashion, and knows a thing or two of strategy and mankind, a
+certain swagger in the gait is surely to be pardoned. He had put up
+his horse with due care, and supped with due deliberation; and then,
+in a very agreeable frame of mind, went out to pay a visit in the gray
+of the evening. It was not a very wise proceeding on the young man's
+part. He would have done better to remain beside the fire or go
+decently to bed. For the town was full of the troops of Burgundy and
+England under a mixed command; and though Denis was there on
+safe-conduct, his safe-conduct was like to serve him little on a
+chance encounter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was September, 1429; the weather had fallen sharp; a flighty piping
+wind, laden with showers, beat about the township; and the dead leaves
+ran riot along the streets. Here and there a window was already
+lighted up; and the noise of men-at-arms making merry over supper
+within came forth in fits and was swallowed up and carried away by the
+wind. The night fell swiftly: the flag of England, fluttering on the
+spire top, grew ever fainter and fainter against the flying clouds&mdash;a
+black speck like a swallow in the tumultuous, leaden chaos of the sky.
+As the night fell the wind rose, and began to hoot under archways and
+roar amid the tree-tops in the valley below the town.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Denis de Beaulieu walked fast and was soon knocking at his friend's
+door; but though he promised himself to stay only a little while and
+make an early return, his welcome was so pleasant, and he found so
+much to delay him, that it was already long past midnight before he
+said good-by upon the threshold. The wind had fallen again in the
+meanwhile; the night was as black as the grave; not a star, nor a
+glimmer of moonshine, slipped through the canopy of cloud. Denis was
+ill-acquainted with the intricate lanes of Chateau Landon; even by
+daylight he had found some trouble in picking his way; and in this
+absolute darkness he soon lost it altogether. He was certain of one
+thing only&mdash;to keep mounting the hill; for his friend's house lay at
+the lower end, or tail, of Chateau Landon, while the inn was up at the
+head, under the great church spire. With this clew to go upon he
+stumbled and groped forward, now breathing more freely in the open
+places where there was a good slice of sky overhead, now feeling along
+the wall in stifling closes. It is an eerie and mysterious position to
+be thus submerged in opaque blackness in an almost unknown town. The
+silence is terrifying in its possibilities. The touch of cold window
+bars to the exploring hand startles the man like the touch of a toad;
+the inequalities of the pavement shake his heart into his mouth; a
+piece of denser darkness threatens an ambuscade or a chasm in the
+pathway; and where the air is brighter, the houses put on strange and
+bewildering appearances, as if to lead him further from his way. For
+Denis, who had to regain his inn without attracting notice, there was
+real danger as well as mere discomfort in the walk; and he went warily
+and boldly at once, and at every corner paused to make an observation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had been for some time threading a lane so narrow that he could
+touch a wall with either hand, when it began to open out and go
+sharply downward. Plainly this lay no longer in the direction of his
+inn; but the hope of a little more light tempted him forward to
+reconnoitre. The lane ended in a terrace with a bartizan[2] wall,
+which gave an outlook between high houses, as out of an embrasure,
+into the valley lying dark and formless several hundred feet below.
+Denis looked down, and could discern a few tree-tops waving and a
+single speck of brightness where the river ran across a weir. The
+weather was clearing up, and the sky had lightened, so as to show the
+outline of the heavier clouds and the dark margin of the hills. By the
+uncertain glimmer, the house on his left hand should be a place of
+some pretensions; it was surmounted by several pinnacles and
+turret-tops; the round stern of a chapel, with a fringe of flying
+buttresses, projected boldly from the main block; and the door was
+sheltered under a deep porch carved with figures and overhung by two
+long gargoyles[3]. The windows of the chapel gleamed through their
+intricate tracery with a light as of many tapers, and threw out the
+buttresses and the peaked roof in a more intense blackness against the
+sky. It was plainly the hotel of some great family of the
+neighborhood; and as it reminded Denis of a town house of his own at
+Bourges, he stood for some time gazing up at it and mentally gauging
+the skill of the architects and the consideration of the two families.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There seemed to be no issue to the terrace but the lane by which he
+had reached it; he could only retrace his steps, but he had gained
+some notion of his whereabouts, and hoped by this means to hit the
+main thoroughfare and speedily regain the inn. He was reckoning
+without that chapter of accidents which was to make this night
+memorable above all others in his career; for he had not gone back
+above a hundred yards before he saw a light coming to meet him, and
+heard loud voices speaking together in the echoing narrows of the
+lane. It was a party of men-at-arms going the night round with
+torches. Denis assured himself that they had all been making free with
+the wine bowl, and were in no mood to be particular about
+safe-conducts or the niceties of chivalrous war. It, was as like as
+not that they would kill him like a dog and leave him where he fell.
+The situation was inspiriting but nervous. Their own torches would
+conceal him from sight, he reflected; and he hoped that they would
+drown the noise of his footsteps with their own empty voices. If he
+were but fleet and silent, he might evade their notice altogether.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Unfortunately, as he turned to beat a retreat, his foot rolled upon a
+pebble; he fell against the wall with an ejaculation, and his sword
+rang loudly on the stones. Two or three voices demanded who went
+there&mdash;some in French, some in English; but Denis made no reply, and
+ran the faster down the lane. Once upon the terrace, he paused to look
+back. They still kept calling after him, and just then began to double
+the pace in pursuit, with a considerable clank of armor, and great
+tossing of the torchlight to and fro in the narrow jaws of the
+passage.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Denis cast a look around and darted into the porch. There he might
+escape observation, or&mdash;if that were too much to expect&mdash;was in a
+capital posture whether for parley or defence. So thinking, he drew
+his sword and tried to set his back against the door. To his surprise
+it yielded behind his weight; and though he turned in a moment,
+continued to swing back on oiled and noiseless hinges until it stood
+wide open on a black interior. When things fall out opportunely for
+the person concerned, he is not apt to be critical about the how or
+why, his own immediate personal convenience seeming a sufficient
+reason for the strangest oddities and revolutions in our sublunary
+things; and so Denis, without a moment's hesitation, stepped within
+and partly closed the door behind him to conceal his place of refuge.
+Nothing was further from his thoughts than to close it altogether; but
+for some inexplicable reason&mdash;perhaps by a spring or a weight&mdash;the
+ponderous mass of oak whipped itself out of his fingers and clanked
+to, with a formidable rumble and a noise like the falling of an
+automatic bar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The round, at that very moment, debouched[4] upon the terrace and
+proceeded to summon him with shouts and curses. He heard them
+ferreting in the dark corners; the stock of a lance even rattled along
+the outer surface of the door behind which he stood; but these
+gentlemen were in too high a humor to be long delayed, and soon made
+off down a corkscrew pathway which had escaped Denis' observation, and
+passed out of sight and hearing along the battlements of the town.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Denis breathed again. He gave them a few minutes' grace for fear of
+accidents, and then groped about for some means of opening the door
+and slipping forth again. The inner surface was quite smooth, not a
+handle, not a moulding, not a projection of any sort. He got his
+finger nails round the edges and pulled, but the mass was immovable.
+He shook it, it was as firm as a rock, Denis de Beaulieu frowned, and
+gave vent to a little noiseless whistle. What ailed the door? he
+wondered. Why was it open? How came it to shut so easily and so
+effectually after him? There was something obscure and underhand about
+all this, that was little to the young man's fancy. It looked like a
+snare, and yet who could suppose a snare in such a quiet by-street and
+in a house of so prosperous and even noble an exterior? And yet&mdash;snare
+or no snare, intentionally or unintentionally&mdash;here he was, prettily
+trapped; and for the life of him he could see no way out of it again.
+The darkness began to weigh upon him. He gave ear; all was silent
+without, but within and close by he seemed to catch a faint sighing, a
+faint sobbing rustle, a little stealthy creak&mdash;as though many persons
+were at his side, holding themselves quite still, and governing even
+their respiration with the extreme of slyness. The idea went to his
+vitals with a shock, and he faced about suddenly as if to defend his
+life. Then, for the first time, he became aware of a light about the
+level of his eyes and at some distance in the interior of the house&mdash;a
+vertical thread of light, widening toward the bottom, such as might
+escape between two wings of arras over a doorway.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To see anything was a relief to Denis; it was like a piece of solid
+ground to a man laboring in a morass; his mind seized upon it with
+avidity; and he stood staring at it and trying to piece together some
+logical conception of his surroundings. Plainly there was a flight of
+steps ascending from his own level to that of this illuminated
+doorway, and indeed he thought he could make out another thread of
+light, as fine as a needle and as faint as phosphorescence, which
+might very well be reflected along the polished wood of a handrail.
+Since he had begun to suspect that he was not alone, his heart had
+continued to beat with smothering violence, and an intolerable desire
+for action of any sort had possessed itself of his spirit. He was in
+deadly peril, he believed. What could be more natural than to mount
+the staircase, lift the curtain, and confront his difficulty at once?
+At least he would be dealing with something tangible; at least he
+would be no longer in the dark. He stepped slowly forward with
+outstretched hands, until his foot struck the bottom step; then he
+rapidly scaled the stairs, stood for a moment to compose his
+expression, lifted the arras and went in.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He found himself in a large apartment of polished stone. There were
+three doors, one on each of three sides, all similarly curtained with
+tapestry. The fourth side was occupied by two large windows and a
+great stone chimney-piece, carved with the arms of the Malétroits.
+Denis recognized the bearings, and was gratified to find himself in
+such good hands. The room was strongly illuminated; but it contained
+little furniture except a heavy table and a chair or two; the hearth
+was innocent of fire, and the pavement was but sparsely strewn with
+rushes clearly many days old.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On a high chair beside the chimney, and directly facing Denis as he
+entered, sat a little old gentleman in a fur tippet. He sat with his
+legs crossed and his hands folded, and a cup of spiced wine stood by
+his elbow on a bracket on the wall. His countenance had a strong
+masculine cast; not properly human, but such as we see in the bull,
+the goat, or the domestic boar; something equivocal and wheedling,
+something greedy, brutal and dangerous. The upper lip was inordinately
+full, as though swollen by a blow or a toothache; and the smile, the
+peaked eyebrows, and the small, strong eyes were quaintly and almost
+comically evil in expression. Beautiful white hair hung straight all
+round his head, like a saint's, and fell in a single curl upon the
+tippet. His beard and mustache were the pink of venerable sweetness.
+Age, probably in consequence of inordinate precautions, had left no
+mark upon his hands; and the Malétroit hand was famous. It would be
+difficult to imagine anything at once so fleshy and so delicate in
+design; the taper, sensual fingers were like those of one of
+Leonardo's[5] women; the fork of the thumb made a dimpled protuberance
+when closed; the nails were perfectly shaped, and of a dead,
+surprising whiteness. It rendered his aspect tenfold more redoubtable,
+that a man with hands like these should keep them devoutly folded like
+a virgin martyr&mdash;that a man with so intent and startling an expression
+of face should sit patiently on his seat and contemplates people with
+an unwinking stare, like a god, or a god's statue. His quiescence
+seemed ironical and treacherous, it fitted so poorly with his looks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Such was Alain, Sire de Malétroit.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Denis and he looked silently at each other for a second or two.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Pray step in," said the Sire de Malétroit. "I have been expecting you
+all the evening."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had not risen, but he accompanied his words with a smile and a
+slight but courteous inclination of the head. Partly from the smile,
+partly from the strange musical murmur with which the sire prefaced
+his observation, Denis felt a strong shudder of disgust go through his
+marrow. And what with disgust and honest confusion of mind, he could
+scarcely get words together in reply.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I fear," he said, "that this is a double accident. I am not the
+person you suppose me. It seems you were looking for a visit; but for
+my part, nothing was further from my thoughts&mdash;nothing could be more
+contrary to my wishes&mdash;than this intrusion."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, well," replied the old gentleman indulgently, "here you are,
+which is the main point. Seat yourself, my friend, and put yourself
+entirely at your ease. We shall arrange our little affairs presently."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Denis perceived that the matter was still complicated with some
+misconception, and he hastened to continue his explanation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Your door," he began.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"About my door?" asked the other raising his peaked eyebrows. "A
+little piece of ingenuity." And he shrugged his shoulders. "A
+hospitable fancy! By your own account, you were not desirous of making
+any acquaintance. We old people look for such reluctance now and then;
+when it touches our honor, we cast about until we find some way of
+overcoming it. You arrive uninvited, but believe me, very welcome."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You persist in error, sir," said Denis. "There can be no question
+between you and me. I am a stranger in this countryside. My name is
+Denis, damoiseau de Beaulieu. If you see me in your house it is
+only&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"My young friend," interrupted the other, "you will permit me to have
+my own ideas on that subject. They probably differ from yours at the
+present moment," he added with a leer, "but time will show which of us
+is in the right."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Denis was convinced he had to do with a lunatic. He seated himself
+with a shrug, content to wait the upshot; and a pause ensued, during
+which he thought he could distinguish a hurried gabbling as of a
+prayer from behind the arras immediately opposite him. Sometimes there
+seemed to be but one person engaged, sometimes two; and the vehemence
+of the voice, low as it was, seemed to indicate either great haste or
+an agony of spirit. It occurred to him that this piece of tapestry
+covered the entrance to the chapel he had noticed from without.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The old gentleman meanwhile surveyed Denis from head to foot with a
+smile, and from time to time emitted little noises like a bird or a
+mouse, which seemed to indicate a high degree of satisfaction. This
+state of matters became rapidly insupportable; and Denis, to put an
+end to it, remarked politely that the wind had gone down.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The old gentleman fell into a fit of silent laughter, so prolonged and
+violent that he became quite red in the face. Denis got upon his feet
+at once, and put on his hat with a flourish.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Sir," he said, "if you are in your wits, you have affronted me
+grossly. If you are out of them, I flatter myself I can find better
+employment for my brains than to talk with lunatics. My conscience is
+clear; you have made a fool of me from the first moment; you have
+refused to hear my explanations; and now there is no power under God
+will make me stay here any longer; and if I cannot make my way out in
+a more decent fashion, I will hack your door in pieces with my sword."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Sire de Malétroit raised his right hand and wagged it at Denis
+with the fore and little fingers extended.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"My dear nephew," he said, "sit down."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Nephew!" retorted Denis, "you lie in your throat;" and he snapped his
+fingers in his face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Sit down, you rogue!" cried the old gentleman, in a sudden, harsh
+voice like the barking of a dog. "Do you fancy," he went on, "that
+when I had made my little contrivance for the door I had stopped short
+with that? If you prefer to be bound hand and foot till your bones
+ache, rise and try to go away. If you choose to remain a free young
+buck, agreeably conversing with an old gentleman&mdash;why, sit where you
+are in peace, and God be with you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do you mean, I am a prisoner?" demanded Denis.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I state the facts," replied the other. "I would rather leave the
+conclusion to yourself."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Denis sat down again. Externally he managed to keep pretty calm, but
+within, he was now boiling with anger, now chilled with apprehension.
+He no longer felt convinced that he was dealing with a madman. And if
+the old gentleman was sane, what, in God's name, had he to look for?
+What absurd or tragical adventure had befallen him? What countenance
+was he to assume?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While he was thus unpleasantly reflecting, the arras that overhung the
+chapel door was raised, and a tall priest in his robes came forth,
+and, giving a long, keen stare at Denis, said something in an
+undertone to Sire de Malétroit.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"She is in a better frame of spirit?" asked the latter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"She is more resigned, messire," replied the priest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Now the Lord help her, she is hard to please!" sneered the old
+gentleman. "A likely stripling&mdash;not ill-born&mdash;and of her own choosing,
+too? Why, what more would the jade have?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The situation is not usual for a young damsel," said the other, "and
+somewhat trying to her blushes."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"She should have thought of that before she began the dance! It was
+none of my choosing, God knows that; but since she is in it, by our
+Lady, she shall carry it to the end." And then addressing Denis,
+"Monsieur de Beaulieu," he asked, "may I present you to my niece? She
+has been waiting your arrival, I may say, with even greater impatience
+than myself."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Denis had resigned himself with a good grace&mdash;all he desired was to
+know the worst of it as speedily as possible; so he rose at once, and
+bowed in acquiescence. The Sire de Malétroit followed his example and
+limped, with the assistance of the chaplain's arm, toward the chapel
+door. The priest pulled aside the arras, and all three entered. The
+building had considerable architectural pretensions. A light groining
+sprang from six stout columns, and hung down in two rich pendants from
+the centre of the vault. The place terminated behind the altar in a
+round end, embossed and honeycombed with a superfluity of ornament in
+relief, and pierced by many little windows shaped like stars,
+trefoils, or wheels. These windows were imperfectly is glazed, so that
+the night air circulated freely in the chapel. The tapers, of which
+there must have been half a hundred burning on the altar, were
+unmercifully blown about; and the light went through many different
+phases of brilliancy and semi-eclipse. On the steps in front of the
+altar knelt a young girl richly attired as a bride. A chill settled
+over Denis as he observed her costume; he fought with desperate energy
+against the conclusion that was being thrust upon his mind; it could
+not&mdash;it should not&mdash;be as he feared.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Blanche," said the sire, in his most flute-like tones, "I have
+brought a friend to see you, my little girl; turn round and give him
+your pretty hand. It is good to be devout; but it is necessary to be
+polite, my niece."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The girl rose to her feet and turned toward the newcomers. She moved
+all of a piece; and shame and exhaustion were expressed in every line
+of her fresh young body; and she held her head down and kept her eyes
+upon the pavement, as she came slowly forward. In the course of her
+advance her eyes fell upon Denis de Beaulieu's feet&mdash;feet of which he
+was justly vain, be it remarked, and wore in the most elegant
+accoutrement even while travelling. She paused&mdash;started, as if his
+yellow boots had conveyed some shocking meaning&mdash;and glanced, suddenly
+up into the wearer's countenance. Their eyes met; shame gave place to
+horror and terror in her looks; the blood left her lips, with a
+piercing scream she covered her face with her hands and sank upon, the
+chapel floor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That is not the man!" she cried. "My uncle, that is not the man!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Sire de Malétroit chirped agreeably. "Of course not," he said; "I
+expected as much. It was so unfortunate you could not remember his
+name."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Indeed," she cried, "indeed, I have never seen this person till this
+moment&mdash;I have never so much as set eyes upon him&mdash;I never wish to see
+him again. Sir," she said, turning to Denis, "if you are a gentleman,
+you will hear me out. Have I ever seen you&mdash;have you ever seen
+me&mdash;before this accursed hour?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"To speak for myself, I have never had that pleasure," answered the
+young man. "This is the first time, messire, that I have met with your
+engaging niece."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The old gentleman shrugged his shoulders.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am distressed to hear it," he said. "But it is never too late to
+begin. I had little more acquaintance with my own late lady ere I
+married her; which proves," he added, with a grimace, "that these
+impromptu marriages may often produce an excellent understanding in
+the long run. As the bridegroom is to have a voice in the matter, I
+will give him two hours to make up for lost time before we proceed
+with the ceremony." And he turned toward the door, followed by the
+clergyman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The girl was on her feet in a moment. "My uncle, you cannot be in
+earnest," she said. "I declare before God I will stab myself rather
+than be forced on that young man. The heart rises at it; God forbids
+such marriages; you dishonor your white hair. Oh, my uncle, pity me!
+There is not a woman in all the world but would prefer death to such a
+nuptial. Is it possible," she added, faltering&mdash;"is it possible that
+you do not believe me&mdash;that you still think this"&mdash;and she pointed at
+Denis with a tremor of anger and contempt&mdash;"that you still think
+<i>this</i> to be the man?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Frankly," said the old gentleman, pausing on the threshold, "I do.
+But let me explain to you once for all, Blanche de Malétroit, my way
+of thinking about this affair. When you took it into your head to
+dishonor my family and the name that I have borne, in peace and war,
+for more than threescore years, you forfeited, not only the right to
+question my designs, but that of looking me in the face. If your
+father had been alive, he would have spat on you and turned you out of
+doors. His was the hand of iron. You may bless your God you have only
+to deal with the hand of velvet, mademoiselle. It was my duty to get
+you married without delay. Out of pure goodwill, I have tried to find
+your own gallant for you. And I believe I have succeeded. But before
+God and all the holy angels, Blanche de Malétroit, if I have not, I
+care not one jack-straw. So let me recommend you to be polite to our
+young friend; for, upon my word, your next groom may be less
+appetizing."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And with that he went out, with the chaplain at his heels; and the
+arras fell behind the pair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The girl turned upon Denis with flashing eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And what, sir," she demanded, "may be the meaning of all this?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"God knows," returned Denis, gloomily, "I am a prisoner in this house,
+which seems full of mad people. More I know not; and nothing do I
+understand."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And pray how came you here?" she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He told her as briefly as he could. "For the rest," he added, "perhaps
+you will follow my example, and tell me the answer to all these
+riddles, and what, in God's name, is like to be the end of it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She stood silent for a little, and lie could see her lips tremble and
+her tearless eyes burn with a feverish lustre. Then she pressed her
+forehead in both hands.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Alas, how my head aches!" she said, wearily&mdash;"to say nothing of my
+poor heart! But it is due to you to know my story, unmaidenly as it
+must seem. I am called Blanche de Malétroit; I have been without
+father or mother for&mdash;oh! for as long as I can recollect, and indeed I
+have been most unhappy all my life. Three months ago a young captain
+began to stand near me every day in church. I could see that I pleased
+him; I am much to blame, but I was so glad that any one should love
+me; and when he passed me a letter, I took it home with me and read it
+with great pleasure. Since that time he has written many. He was so
+anxious to speak with me, poor fellow! and kept asking me to leave the
+door open some evening that we might have two words upon the stair.
+For he knew how much my uncle trusted me." She gave something like a
+sob at that, and it was a moment before she could go on. "My uncle is
+a hard man, but he is very shrewd," she said, at last. "He has
+performed many feats in war, and was a great person at court, and much
+trusted by Queen Isabeau in old days. How he came to suspect me I
+cannot tell; but it is hard to keep anything from his knowledge; and
+this morning, as we came from mass, he took my hand into his, forced
+it open, and read my little billet, walking by my side all the while.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"When he finished, he gave it back to me with great politeness. It
+contained another request to have the door left open; and this has
+been the ruin of us all. My uncle kept me strictly in my room until
+evening, and then ordered me to dress myself as you see me&mdash;a hard
+mockery for a young girl, do you not think so? I suppose, when he
+could not prevail with me to tell him the young captain's name, he
+must have laid a trap for him; into which, alas! you have fallen in
+the anger of God. I looked for much confusion; for how could I tell
+whether he was willing to take me for his wife on these sharp terms?
+He might have been trifling with me from the first; or I might have
+made myself too cheap in his eyes. But truly I had not looked for such
+a shameful punishment as this? I could not think that God would let a
+girl be so disgraced before a young man. And now I tell you all; and I
+can scarcely hope that you will not despise me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Denis made her a respectful inclination.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Madam," he said, "you have honored me by your confidence. It remains
+for me to prove that I am not unworthy of the honor. Is Messire de
+Malétroit at hand?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I believe he is writing in the <i>salle[6]</i> without," she answered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"May I lead you thither, madam?" asked Denis, offering his hand with
+his most courtly bearing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She accepted it; and the pair passed out of the chapel, Blanche in a
+very drooping and shamefast condition, but Denis strutting and
+raffling in the consciousness of a mission, and the boyish certainty
+of accomplishing it with honor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Sire Malétroit rose to meet them with an ironical obeisance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Sir," said Denis, with the grandest possible air, "I believe I am to
+have some say in the matter of this marriage; and let me tell you at
+once, I will be no party to forcing the inclination of this young
+lady. Had it been freely offered to me, I should have been proud to
+accept her hand, for I perceive she is as good as she is beautiful;
+but as things are, I have now the honor, messire, of refusing."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Blanche looked at him with gratitude in her eyes; but the old
+gentleman only smiled and smiled, until his smile grew positively
+sickening to Denis.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am afraid," he said, "Monsieur de Beaulieu, that you do not
+perfectly understand the choice I have offered you. Follow me, I
+beseech you, to this window." And he led the way to one of the large
+windows which stood open on the night. "You observe," he went on,
+"there is an iron ring in the upper masonry, and reeved through that,
+a very efficacious rope. Now, mark my words: if you should find your
+disinclination to my niece's person insurmountable, I shall have you
+hanged out of this window before sunrise. I shall only proceed to such
+an extremity with the greatest regret, you may believe me. For it is
+not at all your death that I desire, but my niece's establishment in
+life. At the same time, it must come to that if you prove obstinate.
+Your family, Monsieur de Beaulieu, is very well in its way; but if you
+sprung from Charlemagne[7], you should not refuse the hand of a
+Malétroit with impunity&mdash;not if she had been as common as the Paris
+road&mdash;not if she was as hideous as the gargoyle over my door. Neither
+my niece nor you, nor my own private feelings, move me at all in this
+matter. The honor of my house has been compromised; I believe you to
+be the guilty person, at least you are now in the secret; and you can
+hardly wonder if I request you to wipe out the stain. If you will not,
+your blood be on your own head! It will be no great satisfaction to me
+to have your interesting relics kicking their heels in the breeze
+below my windows, but half a loaf is better than no bread, and if I
+cannot cure the dishonor, I shall at least stop the scandal."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a pause.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I believe there are other ways of settling such imbroglios among
+gentlemen," said Denis. "You wear a sword, and I hear you have used it
+with distinction."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Sire de Malétroit made a signal to the chaplain, who crossed the
+room with long silent strides and raised the arras over the third of
+the three doors. It was only a moment before he let it fall again; but
+Denis had time to see a dusky passage full of armed men.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"When I was a little younger, I should have been delighted to honor
+you, Monsieur de Beaulieu," said Sire Alain: "but I am now too old.
+Faithful retainers are the sinews of age, and I must employ the
+strength I have. This is one of the hardest things to swallow as a man
+grows up in years; but with a little patience, even this becomes
+habitual. You and the lady seem to prefer the <i>salle</i> for what remains
+of your two hours; and as I have no desire to cross your preference, I
+shall resign it to your use with all the pleasure in the world. No
+haste!" he added, holding up his hand, as he saw a dangerous look come
+into Denis de Beaulieu's face. "If your mind revolt against hanging,
+it will be time enough two hours hence to throw yourself out of the
+window or upon the pikes of my retainers. Two hours of life are always
+two hours. A great many things may turn up in even as little a while
+as that. And, besides. If I understand her appearance, my niece has
+something to say to you. You will not disfigure your last hours by a
+want of politeness to a lady?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Denis looked at Blanche, and she made him an imploring gesture.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is likely that the old gentleman was hugely pleased at this symptom
+of an understanding; for he smiled on both, and added sweetly: "If you
+will give me your word of honor, Monsieur de Beaulieu, to await my
+return at the end of the two hours before attempting anything
+desperate, I shall withdraw my retainers, and let you speak in greater
+privacy with mademoiselle."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Denis again glanced at the girl, who seemed to beseech him to agree.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I give you my word of honor," he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Messire de Malétroit bowed, and proceeded to limp about the apartment,
+clearing his throat the while with that odd musical chirp which had
+already grown so irritating in the ears of Denis de Bealieu. He first
+possessed himself of some papers which lay upon the table; then he
+went to the mouth of the passage and appeared to give an order to the
+men behind the arras; and lastly he hobbled out through the door by
+which Denis had come in, turning upon the threshold to address a last
+smiling bow to the young couple, and followed by the chaplain with a
+hand lamp.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No sooner were they alone than Blanche advanced toward Denis with her
+hands extended. Her face was flushed and excited, and her eyes shone
+with tears.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You shall not die!" she cried, "you shall marry me after all."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You seem to think, madam," replied Denis, "that I stand much in fear
+of death."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, no, no," she said, "I see you are no poltroon[8]. It is for my
+own sake&mdash;I could not bear to have you slain for such a scruple."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am afraid," returned Denis, "that you underrate the difficulty,
+madam. What you may be too generous to refuse, I may be too proud to
+accept. In a moment of noble feeling toward me, you forget what you
+perhaps owe to others."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had the decency to keep his eyes on the floor as he said this, and
+after he had finished, so as not to spy upon her confusion. She stood
+silent for a moment, then walked suddenly away, and falling on her
+uncle's chair, fairly burst out sobbing. Denis was in the acme of
+embarrassment. He looked round, as if to seek for inspiration, and,
+seeing a stool, plumped down upon it for something to do. There he
+sat, playing with the guard of his rapier, and wishing himself dead a
+thousand times over, and buried in the nastiest kitchen-heap in
+France. His eyes wandered round the apartment, but found nothing to
+arrest them. There were such wide spaces between the furniture, the
+light fell so badly and cheerlessly over all, the dark outside air
+looked in so coldly through the windows, that he thought he had never
+seen a church so vast, nor a tomb so melancholy. The regular sobs of
+Blanche de Malétroit measured out the time like the ticking of a
+clock. He read the device upon the shield over and over again, until
+his eyes became obscured; he stared into shadowy corners until he
+imagined they were swarming with horrible animals; and every now and
+again he awoke with a start, to remember that his last two hours were
+running, and death was on the march.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Oftener and oftener, as the time went on, did his glance settle on the
+girl herself. Her face was bowed forward and covered with her hands,
+and she was shaken at intervals by the convulsive hiccough of grief.
+Even thus she was not an unpleasant object to dwell upon, so plump and
+yet so fine, with a warm brown skin, and the most beautiful hair,
+Denis thought, in the whole world of womankind. Her hands were like
+her uncle's: but they were more in place at the end of her young arms,
+and looked infinitely soft and caressing. He remembered how her blue
+eyes had shone upon him, full of anger, pity, and innocence. And the
+more he dwelt on her perfections, the uglier death looked, and the
+more deeply was he smitten with penitence at her continued tears. Now
+he felt that no man could have the courage to leave a world which
+contained so beautiful a creature; and now he would have given forty
+minutes of his last hour to have unsaid his cruel speech.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Suddenly a hoarse and ragged peal of cockcrow rose to their ears from
+the dark valley below the windows. And this shattering noise in the
+silence of all around was like a light in a dark place, and shook them
+both out of their reflections.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Alas, can I do nothing to help you?" she said, looking up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Madam," replied Denis, with a fine irrelevancy, "if I have said
+anything to wound you, believe me, it was for your own sake and not
+for mine."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She thanked him with a tearful look.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I feel your position cruelly," he went on. "The world has been
+bitter, hard on you. Your uncle is a disgrace to mankind. Believe me,
+madam, there is no young gentleman in all France but would be glad of
+my opportunity, to die in doing you a momentary service."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I know already that you can be very brave and generous," she
+answered. "What I <i>want</i> to know is whether I can serve you&mdash;now or
+afterward," she added, with a quaver.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Most certainly," he answered, with a smile. "Let me sit beside you as
+if I were a friend, instead of a foolish intruder; try to forget how
+awkwardly we are placed to one another; make my last moments go
+pleasantly; and you will do me the chief service possible."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You are very gallant," she added, with a yet deeper sadness&mdash;"very
+gallant&mdash;and it somehow pains me. But draw nearer, if you please; and
+if you find anything to say to me, you will at least make certain of a
+very friendly listener. Ah! Monsieur de Beaulieu," she broke
+forth&mdash;"ah! Monsieur de Beaulieu, how can I look you in the face?" And
+she fell to weeping again with a renewed effusion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Madam," said Denis, taking her hand in both of his, "reflect on the
+little time I have before me, and the great bitterness into which I am
+cast by the sight of your distress. Spare me, in my last moments, the
+spectacle of what I cannot cure even with the sacrifice of my life."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am very selfish," answered Blanche. "I will be braver, Monsieur de
+Beaulieu, for your sake. But think if I can do you no kindness in the
+future&mdash;if you have no friends to whom I could carry your adieux.
+Charge me as heavily as you can; every burden will lighten, by so
+little, the invaluable gratitude I owe you. Put it in my power to do
+something more for you than weep."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"My mother is married again, and has a young family to care for. My
+brother Guichard will inherit my fiefs; and if I am not in error, that
+will content him amply for my death. Life is a little vapor that
+passeth away, as we are told by those in holy orders. When a man is in
+a fair way and sees all life open in front of him, he seems to himself
+to make a very important figure in the world. His horse whinnies to
+him; the trumpets blow and the girls look out of window as he rides
+into town before his company; he receives many assurances of trust and
+regard&mdash;sometimes by express in a letter&mdash;sometimes face to face, with
+persons of great consequence falling on his neck. It is not wonderful
+if his head is turned for a time. But once he is dead, were he as
+brave as Hercules[9] or as wise as Solomon[10], he is soon forgotten.
+It is not ten years since my father fell, with many other knights
+around him, in a very fierce encounter, and I do not think that any
+one of them, nor so much as the name of the fight, is now remembered.
+No, no, madam, the nearer you come to it, you see that death is a dark
+and dusty corner, where a man gets into his tomb and has the door shut
+after him till the judgment day. I have few friends just now, and once
+I am dead I shall have none."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ah, Monsieur de Beaulieu!" she exclaimed, "you forget Blanche de
+Malétroit."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You have a sweet nature, madam, and you are pleased to estimate a
+little service far beyond its worth."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is not that," she answered. "You mistake me if you think I am
+easily touched by my own concerns. I say so because you are the
+noblest man I have ever met; because I recognize in you a spirit that
+would have made even a common person famous in the land."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And yet here I die in a mousetrap&mdash;with no more noise about it than
+my own squeaking," answered he.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A look of pain crossed her face and she was silent for a little while.
+Then a light came into her eyes, and with a smile she spoke again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I cannot have my champion think meanly of himself. Any one who gives
+his life for another will be met in paradise by all the heralds and
+angels of the Lord God. And you have no such cause to hang your head.
+For&mdash;Pray, do you think me beautiful?" she asked, with a deep flush.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Indeed, madam, I do," he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am glad of that," she answered heartily. "Do you think there are
+many men in France who have been asked in marriage by a beautiful
+maiden&mdash;with her own lips&mdash;and who have refused her to her face? I
+know you men would half despise such a triumph; but believe me, we
+women know more of what is precious in love. There is nothing that
+should set a person higher in his own esteem; and we women would prize
+nothing more dearly."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You are very good," he said; "but you cannot make me forget that I
+was asked in pity and not for love."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am not so sure of that," she replied, holding down her head. "Hear
+me to an end, Monsieur de Beaulieu. I know how you must despise me; I
+feel you are right to do so; I am too poor a creature to occupy one
+thought of your mind, although, alas! you must die for me this
+morning. But when I asked you to marry me, indeed, and indeed, it was
+because I respected and admired you, and loved you with my whole soul,
+from the very moment that you took my part against my uncle. If you
+had seen yourself, and how noble you looked, you would pity rather
+than despise me. And now," she went on, hurriedly checking him with
+her hand, "although I have laid aside all reserve and told you so
+much, remember that I know your sentiments toward me already. I would
+not, believe me, being nobly born, weary you with importunities into
+consent. I too have a pride of my own: and I declare before the holy
+mother of God, if you should now go back from your word already given,
+I would no more marry you than I would marry my uncle's groom."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Denis smiled a little bitterly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is a small love," he said, "that shies at a little pride."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She made no answer, although she probably had her own thoughts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Come hither to the window," he said with a sigh. "Here is the dawn."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And indeed the dawn was already beginning. The hollow of the sky was
+full of essential daylight, colorless and clean; and the valley
+underneath was flooded with a gray reflection. A few thin vapors clung
+in the coves of the forest or lay along the winding course of the
+river. The scene disengaged a surprising effect of stillness, which
+was hardly interrupted when the cocks began once more to crow among
+the steadings[11]. Perhaps the same fellow who had made so horrid a
+clangor in the darkness not half an hour before, now sent up the
+merriest cheer to greet the coming day. A little wind went bustling
+and eddying among the tree-tops underneath the windows. And still the
+daylight kept flooding insensibly out of the east, which was soon to
+grow incandescent and cast up that red-hot cannon-ball, the rising
+sun.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Denis looked out over all this with a bit of a shiver. He had taken
+her hand, and retained it in his almost unconsciously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Has the day begun already?" she said; and then illogically enough:
+"the night has been so long! Alas! what shall we say to my uncle when
+he returns?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What you will," said Denis, and he pressed her fingers in his.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was silent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Blanche," he said, with a swift, uncertain, passionate utterance,
+"you have seen whether I fear death. You must know well enough that I
+would as gladly leap out of that window into the empty air as to lay a
+finger on you without your free and full consent. But if you care for
+me at all do not let me lose my life in a misapprehension; for I love
+you better than the whole world; and though I will die for you
+blithely, it would be like all the joys of Paradise to live on and
+spend my life in your service."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As he stopped speaking, a bell began to ring loudly in the interior of
+the house; and a clatter of armor in the corridor showed that the
+retainers were returning to their post, and the two hours were at an
+end.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"After all that you have heard?" she whispered, leaning toward him
+with her lips and eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I have heard nothing," he replied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The captain's name was Florimond de Champdivers," she said in his
+ear.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I did not hear it," he answered, taking her supple body in his arms,
+and covered her wet face with kisses.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A melodious chirping was audible behind, followed by a beautiful
+chuckle, and the voice of Messire de Malétroit wished his new nephew a
+good morning.
+</p>
+
+<h4>NOTES</h4>
+
+<p>
+[1] Published in 1878. Acknowledgment is due to the Charles Scribner's
+Sons Company, Publishers, for the use of the text of their edition of
+Stevenson's works.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[2] 207:18 bartizan. A small overhanging turret with loop-holes and
+embrasures projecting from the parapet of a medieval building.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[3] 208:1 gargoyles. Mouths of spouts, in antic shapes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[4] 209:30 debouched. Passed out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[5] 212:29 Leonardo. (1452-1519.) A famous Italian painter, architect,
+sculptor, scientist, engineer, mechanician, and musician.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[6] 222:7 salle. French word for hall or room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[7] 223:13 Charlemagne. (742 or 747-814.) A great king of the Franks
+and emperor of the Romans.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[8] 225:25 poltroon. A coward, a dastard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[9] 229:12 Hercules. A mighty hero in Greek and Roman mythology.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[10] 229:13 Solomon. Son of David. King of Israel, 993-953 B.C.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[11] 231: 26 steadings. A farmstead&mdash;barns, stables, cattle-sheds,
+etc.
+</p>
+
+<h4>BIOGRAPHY</h4>
+
+<p>
+Robert Louis Stevenson was born November 13, 1850, in Edinburgh. He
+was an only child. On his mother's side he came from a line of Scotch
+philosophers and ministers; on his father's, from a line of active
+workers and scientists. His grandfather, Robert Stevenson, and his
+father, Thomas Stevenson, gained world-wide reputations in
+engineering.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Robert inherited from his mother throat and lung troubles. His health
+was very poor from his birth and his life was preserved only by the
+careful watchfulness of his mother and his devoted nurse, Alison
+Cunningham. As a child he was very lovable and possessed a very active
+imagination.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He went to school in Edinburgh between the years 1858-1867. He first
+attended a preparatory school, then the Edinburgh academy. He spent
+considerable time at his maternal grandfather's home. It was there
+that he first tasted the delights of romance. In his school work he
+was none too studious, but all his teachers were charmed by his
+pleasing manner and general intelligence. Though an idler in other
+things, he worked constantly on the art of writing. Throughout his
+study in Edinburgh University and his unsuccessful efforts in
+engineering and the practice of law, literature became more and more a
+passion with him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The period between 1875 and 1879 was one of improved health and
+considerable literary activity. During this time he published <i>A
+Lodging for the Night, Will o' the Mill, The New Arabian Nights</i>, and
+an <i>Inland Voyage</i>.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While in southern Europe he met and fell in love with Mrs. Osbourne.
+So after she returned to her home in California, Stevenson received
+the news that she was seriously ill. He immediately sailed for San
+Francisco, travelling as a steerage passenger because of lack of funds
+and a desire for literary material. Out of this experience grew a
+number of stories and essays. Exposure on the voyage affected his
+health and caused a very dangerous illness. After his recovery he
+married Mrs. Osbourne and returned to England with his wife and
+stepson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For a few years his work was more or less spasmodic on account of his
+bitter struggle with poor health, in 1883 he achieved success by the
+publication of <i>Treasure Island</i>. <i>Markheim</i> appeared in 1884.
+<i>Kidnapped</i> and <i>Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde</i> were published in 1886.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After the death of his father in 1887, Stevenson and his family sailed
+to America, where they settled in the Adirondacks for the winter of
+1888. Here his health was good and he wrote a number of essays for
+<i>Scribner's Magazine</i>. In the spring of the same year they started on
+a cruise of the south seas. They visited many of the southern islands
+and settled at Vailima, Samoa. Stevenson was interested in the Samoaas
+and took an active part in their political affairs. The tropical
+climate agreed with him and his creative power was renewed. He wrote a
+number of short stories, a series of letters on the South Seas, and
+the novel <i>David Balfour</i>.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Political reverses and failing strength took away for a time his power
+to write. He was again stimulated, however, by the love and
+appreciation of his Samoan followers, and started on what promised to
+be his period of highest achievement. This promise was soon blighted
+by his untimely death from a stroke of apoplexy, December 13, 1894. He
+was buried in Samoa.
+</p>
+
+<h4>BIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES</h4>
+
+<p>
+<i>Life of Robert Louis Stevenson</i>, 2 vols., Graham Balfour.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Robert Louis Stevenson</i>, Isobel Strong.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Memories and Portraits</i>, Robert Louis Stevenson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Friends on the Shelf</i>, Bradford Torrey.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Personal Recollections," Edmund Gosse, <i>Century Magazine</i>, 50:447.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Character Sketch," <i>Atlantic Monthly</i>, 89:89-99.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The Real Stevenson," <i>Atlantic Monthly</i>, 85:702-5.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>A Bibliography of the Works of Robert Louis Stevenson</i>, W.F.
+Prideaux.
+</p>
+
+<h4>CRITICISMS</h4>
+
+<p>
+Fundamentally Stevenson's style is marked by a conscious aim to
+entertain. His engaging humor, free of all affectation,
+sentimentality, and exaggeration, is spontaneous and natural. His most
+original writing is <i>The Child's Garden of Verses</i>. His touch is light
+and his thought is clear and lucid. <i>Across the Plains</i> is written in
+his most straightforward and natural style.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Stevenson was a careful writer, doing with great skill any established
+piece of art. He practised diligently, and gained, as he himself
+states, his high rank by constantly drilling himself in the art of
+writing. This imitation of form to the point of perfection, rather
+than an expression of a great and moving idea, gives an air of
+insincerity to some of Stevenson's works. Yet, although seemingly
+artificial, he never chose words for the sake of mere sounds, but for
+their accuracy in truth and fitness. He was as an ephemeral shadow
+with an optimistic and real spirit. He infused an intimacy and
+spirituality into his writings that prove delightful to all his
+readers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The subject of Markheim, a man failing through weakness, was a
+favorite topic for Stevenson. Markheim is almost an ideal specimen of
+the impressionistic short-story. It has a plot in which Hawthorne
+might justly have revelled, a treatment as intellectual as that of
+Poe, descriptions not unlike those of Flaubert's, and a moral ending
+true to the Puritanic type. The movement of the story is swift and
+possesses perfect unity. The surprise at the end comes as a shock
+although the author has consistently and logically constructed his
+plot.
+</p>
+
+<h4>GENERAL REFERENCES</h4>
+
+<p>
+<i>Emerson and Other Essays</i>, John Jay Chapman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Robert Louis Stevenson</i>, L. Cope Cornford.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Modern Novelists</i>, William Lyon Phelps.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Makers of English Fiction</i>, W.J. Dawson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Art of Stevenson," <i>North American Review</i>, 171: 348-358.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Criticism," <i>Dial</i>, 30:345. May 18, 1901.
+</p>
+
+<h4>COLLATERAL READINGS</h4>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Suicide Club (New Arabian Nights)</i>, Robert Louis Stevenson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Story of the Physician and the Saratoga Trunk</i>, Robert Louis
+Stevenson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Adventure of the Hansom Cab</i>, Robert Louis Stevenson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Rajah's Diamond</i>, Robert Louis Stevenson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Story of the House with the Green Blinds</i>, Robert Louis
+Stevenson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Adventure of Prince Florizel and the Detective</i>, Robert Louis
+Stevenson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>A Lodging for the Night</i>, Robert Louis Stevenson,
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Providence and the Guitar</i>, Robert Louis Stevenson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>In the Valley</i>, Robert Louis Stevenson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>With the Children of Israel</i>, Robert Louis Stevenson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Lotus and the Cockleburrs</i>, "O. Henry."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Two Bites at a Cherry</i>, Thomas Bailey Aldrich.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Notary of Perigueux</i>, Henry W. Longfellow.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap11"></a>MARKHEIM[1]</h2>
+
+<p class="center">
+<i>By Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes," said the dealer, "our windfalls[2] are of various kinds. Some
+customers are ignorant, and then I touch a dividend[3] on my superior
+knowledge. Some are dishonest," and here he held up the candle, so
+that the light fell strongly on his visitor, "and in that case," he
+continued, "I profit by my virtue."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Markheim had but just entered from the daylight streets, and his eyes
+had not yet grown familiar with the mingled shine and darkness in the
+shop. At these pointed words, and before the near presence of the
+flame, he blinked painfully and looked aside.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The dealer chuckled. "You come to me on Christmas Day," he resumed,
+"when you know that I am alone in my house, put up my shutters, and
+make a point of refusing business. Well, you will have to pay for
+that; you will have to pay for my loss of time, when I should be
+balancing my books; you will have to pay, besides; for a kind of
+manner that I remark in you to-day very strongly. I am the essence of
+discretion, and ask no awkward questions; but when a customer cannot
+look me in the eye, he has to pay for it." The dealer once more
+chuckled; and then, changing to his usual business voice, though still
+with a note of irony, "You can give, as usual, a clear account of how
+you came into the possession of the object?" he continued. "Still your
+uncle's cabinet? A remarkable collector, sir!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And the little pale, round-shouldered dealer stood almost on tiptoe,
+looking over the top of his gold spectacles, and nodding his head with
+every mark of disbelief. Markheim returned his gaze with one of
+infinite pity, and a touch of horror.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"This time," said he, "you are in error. I have not come to sell, but
+to buy. I have no curios to dispose of; my uncle's cabinet is bare to
+the wainscot: even were it still intact, I have done well on the Stock
+Exchange, and should more likely add to it than otherwise, and my
+errand to-day is simplicity itself. I seek, a Christmas present for a
+lady," he continued, waxing more fluent as he struck into the speech
+he had prepared; "and certainly I owe you every excuse for thus
+disturbing you upon so small a matter. But the thing was neglected
+yesterday; I must produce my little compliment at dinner; and, as you
+very well know, a rich marriage is not a thing to be neglected."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There followed a pause, during which the dealer seemed to weigh this
+statement incredulously. The ticking of many clocks among the curious
+lumber of the shop, and the faint rushing of the cabs in a near
+thoroughfare, filled up the interval of silence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, sir," said the dealer, "be it so. You are an old customer after
+all; and if, as you say, you have the chance of a good marriage, far
+be it from me to be an obstacle. Here is a nice thing for a lady,
+now," he went on, "this hand glass&mdash;fifteenth century, warranted;
+comes from a good collection, too; but I reserve the name, in the
+interests of my customer, who was just like yourself, my dear sir,
+the nephew and sole heir of a remarkable collector."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The dealer, while he thus ran on in his dry and biting voice, had
+stooped to take the object from its place; and, as he had done so,
+a shock had passed through Markheim, a start both of hand and foot,
+a sudden leap of many tumultuous passions to the face. It passed as
+swiftly as it came, and left no trace beyond a certain trembling of
+the hand that now received the glass.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A glass," he said hoarsely, and then paused, and repeated it more
+clearly. "A glass? For Christmas? Surely not."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And why not?" cried the dealer. "Why not a glass?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Markheim was looking upon him with an indefinable expression. "You ask
+me why not?" he said. "Why, look here&mdash;look in it&mdash;look at yourself!
+Do you like to see it? No! nor I&mdash;nor any man."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The little man had jumped back when Markheim had so suddenly
+confronted him with the mirror; but now, perceiving there was nothing
+worse on hand, he chuckled. "Your future lady, sir, must be pretty
+hard favored," said he.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I ask you," said Markheim, "for a Christmas present, and you give me
+this&mdash;this damned reminder of years and sins and follies&mdash;this
+hand-conscience! Did you mean it? Had you a thought in your mind? Tell
+me. It will be better for you if you do. Come, tell me about yourself,
+I hazard a guess now, that you are in secret a very charitable man?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The dealer looked closely at his companion. It was very odd, Markheim
+did not appear to be laughing; there was something in his face like an
+eager sparkle of hope, but nothing of mirth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What are you driving at?" the dealer asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not charitable?" returned the other, gloomily. "Not charitable; not
+pious; not scrupulous; unloving; unbeloved; a hand to get money, a
+safe to keep it. Is that all? Dear God, man, is that all?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I will tell you what it is," began the dealer, with some sharpness,
+and then broke off again into a chuckle. "But I see this is a love
+match of yours, and you have been drinking the lady's health."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ah!" cried Markheim, with a strange curiosity, "Ah, have you been in
+love? Tell me about that."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I!" cried the dealer. "I in love! I never had the time, nor have I
+the time to-day for all this nonsense. Will you take the glass?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Where is the hurry?" returned Markheim. "It is very pleasant to stand
+here talking; and life is so short and insecure that I would not hurry
+away from any pleasure&mdash;no, not even from so mild a one as this. We
+should, rather cling, cling to what little we can get, like a man at a
+cliff's edge. Every second is a cliff, if you think upon it&mdash;a cliff a
+mile high&mdash;high enough, if we fall, to dash us out of every feature of
+humanity. Hence it is best to talk pleasantly. Let us talk of each
+other; why should we wear this mask? Let us be confidential. Who
+knows, we might become friends?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I have just one word to say to you," said the dealer. "Either make
+your purchase, or walk out of my shop."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"True, true," said Markheim. "Enough fooling. To business. Show me
+something else."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The dealer stooped once more, this time to replace the glass upon the
+shelf, his thin blond hair falling over his eyes as he did so.
+Markheim moved a little nearer, with one hand in the pocket of his
+greatcoat; he drew himself up and filled his lungs; at the same time
+many different emotions were depicted together on his face&mdash;terror,
+horror, and resolve, fascination, and a physical repulsion; and
+through a haggard lift of his upper lip, his teeth looked out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"This, perhaps, may suit," observed the dealer; and then, as he began
+to re-arise, Markheim bounded from behind upon his victim. The long,
+skewer-like[4] dagger flashed and fell. The dealer straggled like a
+hen, striking his temple on the shelf, and then tumbled on the floor
+in a heap.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Time had some score of small voices in that shop, some stately and
+slow as was becoming to their great age, others garrulous and hurried.
+All these told out the seconds in an intricate chorus of tickings.
+Then the passage of a lad's feet, heavily running on the pavement,
+broke in upon these smaller voices and startled Markheim into the
+consciousness of his surroundings. He looked about him awfully. The
+candle stood on the counter, its flame solemnly wagging in a draught;
+and by that inconsiderable movement, the whole room was filled with
+noiseless bustle and kept heaving like a sea: the tall shadows
+nodding, the gross blots of darkness swelling and dwindling as with
+respiration, the faces of the portraits and the china gods changing
+and wavering like images in water. The inner door stood ajar, and
+peered into that leaguer[5] of shadows with a long slit of daylight
+like a pointing finger.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From these fear-stricken rovings, Markheim's eyes returned to the body
+of his victim, where it lay both humped and sprawling, incredibly
+small and strangely meaner than in life. In these poor, miserly
+clothes, in that ungainly attitude, the dealer lay like so much
+sawdust. Markheim had feared to see it, and, lo! it was nothing. And
+yet, as he gazed, this bundle of old clothes and pool of blood began
+to find eloquent voices. There it must lie; there was none to work the
+cunning hinges or direct the miracle of locomotion&mdash;there it must lie
+till it was found. Found! aye, and then? Then would this dead flesh
+lift up a cry that would ring over England, and fill the world with
+the echoes of pursuit. Ay, dead or not, this was still the enemy.
+"Time was that when the brains were out[6]," he thought; and the
+first word struck into his mind. Time, now that the deed was
+accomplished&mdash;time, which had dosed for the victim, had become
+instant and momentous for the slayer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The thought was yet in his mind, when, first one and then another,
+with every variety of pace and voice&mdash;one deep as the bell from a
+cathedral turret, another ringing on its treble notes the prelude of a
+waltz&mdash;the clocks began to strike the hour of three in the afternoon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sudden outbreak of so many tongues in that dumb chamber staggered
+him. He began to bestir himself, going to and fro with the candle,
+beleaguered by moving shadows, and startled to the soul by chance
+reflections. In many rich mirrors, some of home designs, some from
+Venice or Amsterdam, he saw his face repeated and repeated, as it were
+an army of spies; his own eyes met and detected him; and the sound of
+his own steps, lightly as they fell, vexed the surrounding quiet. And
+still as he continued to fill his pockets, his mind accused him, with
+a sickening iteration[7], of the thousand faults of his design. He
+should have chosen a more quiet hour; he should have prepared an
+alibi; he should not have used a knife; he should have been more
+cautious, and only bound and gagged the dealer, and not killed him; he
+should have been more bold, and killed the servant also; he should
+have done all things otherwise; poignant regrets, weary, incessant
+toiling of the mind to change what was unchangeable, to plan what was
+now useless, to be the architect of the irrevocable past. Meanwhile,
+and behind all this activity, brute terrors, like the scurrying of
+rats in a deserted attic, filled the more remote chambers of his brain
+with riot; the hand of the constable would fall heavy on his shoulder,
+and his nerves would jerk like a hooked fish; or he beheld, in
+galloping defile, the dock, the prison, the gallows, and the black
+coffin. Terror of the people in the street sat down before his mind
+like a besieging army. It was impossible, he thought, but that some
+rumor of the struggle must have reached their ears and set on edge
+their curiosity; and now, in all the neighboring houses, he divined
+them sitting motionless and with uplifted ear&mdash;solitary people,
+condemned to spend Christmas dwelling alone on memories of the past,
+and now startlingly recalled from that tender exercise: happy family
+parties, struck into silence round the table, the mother still with
+raised finger; every degree and age and humor, but all, by their own
+hearths, prying and hearkening and weaving the rope that was to hang
+him. Sometimes it seemed to him he could not move too softly; the
+clink of the tall Bohemian goblets rang out loudly like a bell; and
+alarmed by the bigness of the ticking, he was tempted to stop the
+clocks. And then, again, with a swift transition of his terrors, the
+very silence of the place appeared a source of peril, and a thing to
+strike and freeze the passer-by; and he would step more boldly, and
+bustle aloud among the contents of the shop, and imitate, with
+elaborate bravado, the movements of a busy man at ease in his own
+house.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But he was now so pulled about by different alarms that, while one
+portion of his mind was still alert and cunning, another trembled on
+the brink of lunacy. One hallucination in particular took a strong
+hold on his credulity. The neighbor hearkening with white face beside
+his window, the passer-by arrested by a horrible surmise on the
+pavement&mdash;these could at worst suspect, they could not know; through
+the brick walls and shuttered windows only sounds could penetrate. But
+here, within the house, was he alone? He knew he was; he had watched
+the servant set forth sweethearting, in her poor best, "out for the
+day" written in every ribbon and smile. Yes, he was alone, of course;
+and yet, in the bulk of empty house about him, he could surely hear
+a stir of delicate footing&mdash;he was surely conscious, inexplicably
+conscious, of some presence. Ay, surely; to every room and corner
+of the house his imagination followed it; and now it was a faceless
+thing, and yet had eyes to see with; and again it was a shadow of
+himself; and yet again behold the image of the dead dealer, reinspired
+with cunning and hatred.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At times, with a strong effort, he would glance at the open door which
+still seemed to repel his eyes. The house was tall, the skylight small
+and dirty, the day blind with fog; and the light that filtered down to
+the ground story was exceedingly faint, and showed dimly on the
+threshold of the shop. And yet, in that strip of doubtful brightness,
+did there not hang wavering a shadow?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Suddenly, from the street outside, a very jovial gentleman began to
+beat with a staff on the shop door, accompanying his blows with shouts
+and railleries[8] in which the dealer was continually called upon by
+name. Markheim, smitten into ice, glanced at the dead man. But no! he
+lay quite still; he was fled away far beyond earshot of these blows
+and shoutings; he was sunk beneath seas of silence; and his name,
+which would once have caught his notice above the howling of a storm,
+had become an empty sound. And presently the jovial gentleman desisted
+from his knocking and departed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here was a broad hint to hurry what remained to be done, to get forth
+from, this accusing neighborhood, to plunge into a bath of London
+multitudes, and to reach, on the other side of day, that haven of
+safety and apparent, innocence&mdash;-his bed. One visitor had come: at
+any moment it another might follow and be more obstinate. To have
+done the deed, and yet not to reap the profit, would be too abhorrent
+a failure. The money, that was now Markheim's concern: and as a means
+to that, the keys.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He glanced over his shoulder at the open door, where the shadow was
+still lingering and shivering; and with no conscious repugnance of the
+mind, yet with a tremor of the belly, he drew near the body of his
+victim. The human character had quite departed. Like a suit
+half-stuffed with bran, the limbs lay scattered, the trunk doubled, on
+the floor; and yet the thing repelled him. Although so dingy and
+inconsiderable to the eye, he feared it might have more significance
+to the touch. He took the body by the shoulders, and turned it on its
+back. It was strangely light and supple, and the limbs, as if they had
+been broken, fell into the oddest postures. The face was robbed of all
+expression; but it was as pale as wax, and shockingly smeared with
+blood about one temple. That was, for Markheim, the one displeasing
+circumstance. It carried him back, upon the instant, to a certain fair
+day in a fishers' village: a gray day, a piping wind, a crowd upon the
+street, the blare of brasses, the booming of drums, the nasal voice of
+a ballad singer; and a boy going to and fro, buried over head in the
+crowd and divided between interest and fear, until, coming out upon
+the chief place of concourse, he beheld a booth and a great screen
+with pictures, dismally designed, garishly[9] colored: Brownrigg[10]
+with her apprentice; the Mannings[11] with their murdered guest; Weare
+in the death grip of Thurtell[12]; and a score besides of famous
+crimes. The thing was as clear as an illusion; he was once again that
+little boy; he was looking once again, and with the same sense of
+physical revolt, at these vile pictures; he was still stunned by the
+thumping of the drums. A bar of that day's music returned upon his
+memory; and at that, for the first time, a qualm came over him, a
+breath of nausea, a sudden weakness of the joints, which he must
+instantly resist and conquer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He judged it more prudent to confront than to flee from these
+considerations; looking the more hardily in the dead face, bending his
+mind to realize the nature and greatness of his crime. So little a
+while ago that face had moved with every change of sentiment, that
+pale mouth had spoken, that body had been all on fire with governable
+energies; and now, and by his act, that piece of life had been
+arrested, as the horologist[13], with interjected finger, arrests the
+beating of the clock. So he reasoned in vain; he could rise to no more
+remorseful consciousness; the same heart which had shuddered before
+the painted effigies of crime, looked on its reality unmoved. At best,
+he felt a gleam of pity for one who had been endowed in vain with all
+those faculties that can make the world a garden of enchantment, one
+who had never lived and who was now dead. But of penitence, no, not a
+tremor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With that, shaking himself clear of these considerations, he found the
+keys and advanced toward the open door of the shop. Outside, it had
+begun to rain smartly; and the sound of the shower upon the roof had
+banished silence. Like some dripping cavern, the chambers of the house
+were haunted by an incessant echoing, which filled the ear and mingled
+with the ticking of the clocks. And, as Markheim approached the door,
+he seemed to hear, in answer to his own cautious tread, the steps of
+another foot withdrawing up the stair. The shadow still palpitated
+loosely on the threshold. He threw a ton's weight of resolve upon his
+muscles, and drew back the door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The faint, foggy daylight glimmered dimly on the bare floor and
+stairs; on the bright suit of armor posted, halbert in hand, upon the
+landing; and on the dark wood carvings and framed pictures that hung
+against the yellow panels of the wainscot. So loud was the beating of
+the rain through all the house that, in Markheim's ears, it began to
+be distinguished into many different sounds. Footsteps and sighs, the
+tread of regiments marching in the distance, the chink of money in the
+counting, and the creaking of doors held stealthily ajar, appeared to
+mingle with the patter of the drops upon the cupola and the gushing of
+the water in the pipes. The sense that he was not alone grew upon him
+to the verge of madness. On every side he was haunted and begirt by
+presences. He heard them moving in the upper chambers; from the shop,
+he heard the dead man getting to his legs; and as he began with a
+great effort to mount the stairs, feet fled quietly before him and
+followed stealthily behind. If he were but deaf, he thought, how
+tranquilly he would possess his soul! And then again, and hearkening
+with ever fresh attention, he blessed himself for that unresting sense
+which held the outposts and stood a trusty sentinel upon his life. His
+head turned continually on his neck; his eyes, which seemed starting
+from their orbits, scouted on every side, and on every side were half
+rewarded as with the tail of something nameless vanishing. The
+four-and-twenty steps to the first floor were four-and-twenty agonies.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On that first story the doors stood ajar, three of them like three
+ambushes, shaking his nerves like the throats of cannon. He could
+never again, he felt, be sufficiently immured and fortified from men's
+observing eyes; he longed to be home, girt in by walls, buried among
+bed-clothes, and invisible to all but God. And at that thought he
+wondered a little, recollecting tales of other murderers and the fear
+they were said to entertain of heavenly avengers. It was not so, at
+least, with him. He feared the laws of nature, lest, in their callous
+and immutable procedure, they should preserve some damning evidence of
+his crime. He feared tenfold more, with a slavish, superstitious
+terror, some scission[14] in the continuity of man's experience, some
+wilful illegality of nature. He played a game of skill, depending on
+the rules, calculating consequence from cause; and what if nature, as
+the defeated tyrant overthrew the chessboard, should break the mould
+of their succession? The like had befallen Napoleon (so writers said)
+when the winter changed the time of its appearance. The like might
+befall Markheim: the solid walls might become transparent and reveal
+his doings like those of bees in a glass hive; the stout planks might
+yield under his foot like quicksands and detain him in their clutch;
+aye, and there were soberer accidents that might destroy him: if, for
+instance, the house should fall and imprison him beside the body of
+his victim; or the house next door should fly on fire, and the firemen
+invade him from all sides. These things he feared; and, in a sense,
+these things might be called the hands of God reached forth against
+sin. But about God himself he was at ease; his act was doubtless
+exceptional, but so were his excuses, which God knew; it was there,
+and not among men, that he felt sure of justice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When he got safe into the drawing-room, and shut the door behind him,
+he was aware of a respite from alarms. The room was quite dismantled,
+uncarpeted besides, and strewn with packing cases and incongruous
+furniture; several great pier glasses, in which he beheld himself at
+various angles, like an actor on a stage; many pictures, framed and
+unframed, standing, with their faces to the wall; a fine Sheraton[15]
+sideboard, a cabinet of marquetry[16], and a great old bed, with
+tapestry hangings. The windows opened to the floor; but by great good
+fortune the lower part of the shutters had been closed, and this
+concealed him from the neighbors. Here, then, Markheim drew in a
+packing case before the cabinet, and began to search among the keys.
+It was a long business, for there were many; and it was irksome,
+besides; for, after all, there might be nothing in the cabinet, and
+time was on the wing. But the closeness of the occupation sobered him.
+With the tail of his eye he saw the door&mdash;even glanced at it from time
+to time directly, like a besieged commander pleased to verify the good
+estate of his defences. But in truth he was at peace. The rain falling
+in the street sounded natural and pleasant. Presently, on the other
+side, the notes of a piano were wakened to the music of a hymn, and
+the voices of many children took up the air and words. How stately,
+how comfortable was the melody! How fresh the youthful voices!
+Markheim gave ear to it smilingly, as he sorted out the keys; and his
+mind was thronged with answerable ideas and images; church-going
+children and the pealing of the high organ; children afield, bathers
+by the brookside, ramblers on the brambly common, kite-flyers in the
+windy and cloud-navigated sky; and then, at another cadence of the
+hymn, back again to church, and the somnolence of summer Sundays, and
+the high, genteel voice of the parson (which he smiled a little to
+recall), and the painted Jacobean[17] tombs, and the dim lettering of
+the Ten Commandments in the chancel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And as he sat thus, at once busy and absent, he was startled to his
+feet. A flash of ice, a flash of fire, a bursting gush of blood, went
+over him, and then he stood transfixed and thrilling. A step mounted
+the stair slowly and steadily, and presently a hand was laid upon the
+knob, and the lock clicked, and the door opened.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Fear held Markheim in a vice. What to expect he knew not, whether the
+dead man walking, or the official ministers of human justice, or some
+chance witness blindly stumbling in to consign him to the gallows. But
+when a face was thrust into the aperture, glanced round the room,
+looked at him, nodded and smiled as if in friendly recognition, and
+then withdrew again, and the door closed behind it, his fear broke
+loose from his control in a hoarse cry. At the sound of this the
+visitant returned.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Did you call me?" he asked pleasantly, and with that he entered the
+room, and closed the door behind him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Markheim stood and gazed at him with all his eyes. Perhaps there was a
+film upon his sight, but the outlines of the newcomer seemed to change
+and waver like those of the idols in the wavering candlelight of the
+shop: and at times he thought he knew him; and at times he thought he
+bore a likeness to himself; and always, like a lump of living terror,
+there lay in his bosom the conviction that this thing was not of the
+earth and not of God.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And yet the creature had a strange air of the commonplace, as he stood
+looking on Markheim with a smile; and when he added: "You are looking
+for the money, I believe?" it was in the tones of everyday politeness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Markheim made no answer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I should warn you," resumed the other, "that the maid has left her
+sweetheart earlier than usual and will soon be here. If Mr. Markheim
+be found in this house, I need not describe to him the consequences."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You know me?" cried the murderer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The visitor smiled. "You have long been a favorite of mine," he said;
+"and I have long observed and often sought to help you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What are you?" cried Markheim: "the devil?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What I may be," returned the other, "cannot affect the service I
+propose to render you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It can," cried Markheim; "it does! Be helped by you? No, never; not
+by you! You do not know me yet; thank God, you do not know me!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I know you," replied the visitant, with a sort of kind severity or
+rather firmness. "I know you to the soul."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Know me!" cried Markheim. "Who can do so? My life is but a
+travesty[18] and slander on myself. I have lived to belie my nature.
+All men do; all men are better than this disguise that grows about and
+stifles them. You see each dragged away by life, like one whom bravos
+have seized and muffled in a cloak. If they had their own control&mdash;if
+you could see their faces, they would be altogether different, they
+would shine out for heroes and saints! I am worse than most; myself is
+more overlaid; my excuse is known to me and God. But, had I the time,
+I could disclose myself."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"To me?" inquired the visitant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"To you before all," returned the murderer. "I supposed you were
+intelligent. I thought&mdash;since you exist&mdash;you would prove a reader of
+the heart. And yet you would propose to judge me by my acts! Think of
+it; my acts! I was born and I have lived in a land of giants; giants
+have dragged me by the wrists since I was born out of my mother&mdash;the
+giants of circumstance. And you would judge me by my acts! But can you
+not look within? Can you not understand that evil is hateful to me?
+Can you not see within me the clear writing of conscience, never
+blurred by any wilful sophistry[19] although too often disregarded?
+Can you not read me for a thing that surely must be common as
+humanity&mdash;the unwilling sinner?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"All this is very feelingly expressed," was the reply, "but it regards
+me not. These points of consistency are beyond my province, and I care
+not in the least by what compulsion you may have been dragged away, so
+as you are but carried in the right direction. But time flies; the
+servant delays, looking in the faces of the crowd and at the pictures
+on the hoardings, but still she keeps moving nearer; and remember, it
+is as if the gallows itself were striding toward you through the
+Christmas streets! Shall I help you&mdash;I, who know all? Shall I tell you
+where to find the money?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"For what price?" asked Markheim.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I offer you the service for a Christmas gift," returned the other.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Markheim could not refrain from smiling with a kind of bitter triumph,
+"No," said he, "I will take nothing at your hands; if I were dying of
+thirst, and it was your hand that put the pitcher to my lips, I should
+find the courage to refuse. It may be credulous, but I will do nothing
+to commit myself to evil."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I have no objection to a death-bed repentance," observed the
+visitant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Because you disbelieve their efficacy[20]!" Markheim cried.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I do not say so," returned the other; "but I look on these things
+from a different side, and when the life is done my interest falls.
+The man has lived to serve me, to spread black looks under color of
+religion, or to sow tares[21] in the wheat field, as you do, in a
+course of weak compliance with desire. Now that he draws so near to
+his deliverance, he can add but one act of service&mdash;to repent, to die
+smiling, and thus to build up in confidence and hope the more timorous
+of my surviving followers. I am not so hard a master. Try me. Accept
+my help. Please yourself in life as you have done hitherto; please
+yourself more amply, spread your elbows at the board; and when the
+night begins to fall and the curtains to be drawn, I tell you, for
+your greater comfort, that you will find it even easy to compound your
+quarrel with your conscience, and to make a truckling peace with God.
+I came but now from such a death-bed, and the room was full of sincere
+mourners, listening to the man's last words; and when I looked into
+that face, which had been set as a flint against mercy, I found it
+smiling with hope."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And do you, then, suppose me such a creature?" asked Markheim. "Do
+you think I have no more generous aspirations than to sin, and sin,
+and sin, and, at last, sneak into heaven? My heart rises at the
+thought. Is this, then, your experience of mankind? or is it because
+you find me with red hands that you presume such baseness? and is this
+crime of murder indeed so impious as to dry up the very springs of
+good?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Murder is to me no special category[22]," replied the other. "All
+sins are murder, even all life is war. I behold your race, like
+starving mariners on a raft, plucking crusts out of the hands of
+famine and feeding on each other's lives. I follow sins beyond the
+moment of their acting; I find in all that the last consequence is
+death; and to my eyes, the pretty maid who thwarts her mother with
+such taking graces on a question of a ball, drips no less visibly with
+human gore than such a murderer as yourself. Do I say that I follow
+sins? I follow virtues also; they differ not by the thickness of a
+nail, they are both scythes for the reaping angel of Death. Evil, for
+which I live, consists not in action but in character. The bad man is
+dear to me; not the bad act, whose fruits, if we could follow them far
+enough down the hurtling[23] cataract of the ages, might yet be found
+more blessed than those of the rarest virtues. And it is not because
+you have killed a dealer, but because you are Markheim, that I offered
+to forward your escape."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I will lay my heart open to you," answered Markheim. "This crime on
+which you find me is my last. On my way to it I have learned many
+lessons; itself is a lesson, a momentous lesson. Hitherto I have been
+driven with revolt to what I would not; I was a bondslave to poverty,
+driven and scourged. There are robust virtues that can stand in these
+temptations; mine was not so: I had a thirst of pleasure. But to-day,
+and out of this deed, I pluck both warning and riches&mdash;both the power
+and a fresh resolve to be myself. I become in all things a free actor
+in the world; I begin to see myself all changed, these hands the
+agents of good, this heart at peace. Some thing comes over me out of
+the past; something of what I have dreamed on Sabbath evenings to the
+sound of the church organ, of what I forecast when I shed tears over
+noble books, or talked, an innocent child, with my mother. There lies
+my life; I have wandered a few years, but now I see once more my city
+of destination."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You are to use this money on the Stock Exchange, I think?" remarked
+the visitor; "and there, if I mistake not, you have already lost some
+thousands?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ah," said Markheim, "but this time I have a sure thing."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"This time, again, you will lose," replied the visitor, quietly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ah, but I keep back the half!" cried Markheim.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That also you will lose," said the other.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sweat started upon Markheim's brow. "Well, then, what matter?" he
+exclaimed. "Say it be lost, say I am plunged again in poverty, shall
+one part of me, and that the worse, continue until the end to override
+the better? Evil and good ran strong in me, hailing me both ways. I do
+not love the one thing, I love all. I can conceive great deeds,
+renunciations, martyrdoms; and though I be fallen to such a crime as
+murder, pity is no stranger to my thoughts. I pity the poor; who knows
+their trials better than myself? I pity and help them; I prize love, I
+love honest laughter; there is no good thing nor true thing on earth
+but I love it from my heart. And are my vices only to direct my life,
+and my virtues to lie without effect, like some passive lumber of the
+mind? Not so; good, also, is a spring of acts."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the visitant raised his finger. "For six-and-thirty years that you
+have been in this world," said he, "through many changes of fortune
+and varieties of humor, I have watched you steadily fall. Fifteen
+years ago you would have started at a theft. Three years back you
+would have blenched at the name of murder. Is there any crime, is
+there any cruelty or meanness, from which you still recoil?&mdash;five
+years from now I shall detect you in the fact! Downward, downward lies
+your way; nor can anything but death avail to stop you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is true," Markheim said huskily, "I have in some degree complied
+with evil. But it is so with all: the very saints, in the mere
+exercise of living, grow less dainty, and take on the tone of their
+surroundings."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I will propound to you one simple question," said the other; "and as
+you answer, I shall read to you your moral horoscope. You have grown
+in many things more lax; possibly you do right to be so; and at any
+account, it is the same with all men. But granting that, are you in
+any one particular, however trifling, more difficult to please with
+your own conduct, or do you go in all things with a looser rein?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"In any one?" repeated Markheim, with an anguish of consideration.
+"No," he added, with despair, "in none! I have gone down in all."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then," said the visitor, "content yourself with what you are, for you
+will never change; and the words of your part on this stage are
+irrevocably written down."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Markheim stood for a long while silent, and indeed it was the visitor
+who first broke the silence. "That being so," he said, "shall I show
+you the money?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And grace?" cried Markheim.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Have you not tried it?" returned the other. "Two or three years ago,
+did I not see you on the platform of revival meetings, and was not
+your voice the loudest in the hymn?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is true," said Markheim; "and I see clearly what remains for me by
+way of duty. I thank you for these lessons from my soul; my eyes are
+opened, and I behold myself at last for what I am."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At this moment, the sharp note of the door-bell rang through the
+house; and the visitant, as though this were some concerted signal for
+which he had been waiting, changed at once in his demeanor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The maid!" he cried. "She has returned, as I forewarned you, and
+there is now before you one more difficult passage. Her master, you
+must say, is ill; you must let her in, with an assured but rather
+serious countenance&mdash;no smiles, no overacting, and I promise you
+success! Once the girl within, and the door closed, the same dexterity
+that has already rid you of the dealer will relieve you of this last
+danger in your path. Thenceforward you have the whole evening&mdash;the
+whole night, if needful&mdash;to ransack the treasures of the house and to
+make good your safety. This is help that comes to you with the mask of
+danger. Up!" he cried: "up, friend; your life hangs trembling in the
+scales: up, and act!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Markheim steadily regarded his counsellor. "If I be condemned to evil
+acts," he said, "there is still one door of freedom open&mdash;I can cease
+from action. If my life be an ill thing, I can lay it down. Though I
+be, as you say truly, at the beck of every small temptation, I can
+yet, by one decisive gesture, place myself beyond the reach of all.
+My love of good is damned to barrenness; it may, and let it be!
+But I have still my hatred of evil; and from that, to your galling
+disappointment, you shall see that I can draw both energy and
+courage."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The features of the visitor began to undergo a wonderful and lovely
+change: they brightened and softened with a tender triumph; and, even
+as they brightened, faded and dislimned[24]. But Markheim did not
+pause to watch or understand the transformation. He opened the door
+and went downstairs very slowly, thinking to himself. His past went
+soberly before him; he beheld it as it was, ugly and strenuous like
+a dream, random as chance-medley&mdash;a scene of defeat. Life, as he
+thus reviewed it, tempted him no longer; but on the farther side he
+perceived a quiet haven for his bark. He paused in the passage, and
+looked into the shop, where the candle still burned by the dead body.
+It was strangely silent. Thoughts of the dealer swarmed into his mind,
+as he stood gazing. And then the bell once more broke out into
+impatient clamor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He confronted the maid upon the threshold with something like a smile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You had better go for the police," said he: "I have killed your
+master."
+</p>
+
+<h4>NOTES</h4>
+
+<p>
+[1] Written in 1884. This story is used by permission of and special
+arrangement with the Charles Scribner's Sons Company, Publishers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[2] 237:1 windfalls. Unexpected gains.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[3] 237:3 dividend. His knowledge a business asset that draws
+interest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[4] 241:22 skewer-like. Like a wooden pin now used to fasten meat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[5] 242:11 leaguer. Place besieged with shadows.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[6] 242:27 Time was that when the brains were out. See Macbeth, Act
+III, sc. 4, line 78.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[7] 243:16 iteration. Repetition.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[8] 246:25 railleries. Merry jesting or ridicule.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[9] 247:7 garishly. A blinding, gaudy effect.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[10] 247:7 Brownrigg. A notorious murderess living in England in the
+middle of the eighteenth century. She was hanged and her skeleton is
+still preserved.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[11] 247:8 Mannings. Marie Manning and her husband murdered a former
+suitor. They were given, a death sentence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[12] 247:9 Thurtell. A gambler who quarrelled with Weare and killed
+him after he had professed peace. He designed his own gallows.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[13] 247:25 horologist. One who makes timepieces.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[14] 249:27 scission. A cleaving or a dividing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[15] 250:25 Sheraton. Next to Chippendale the greatest furniture
+designer and cabinet-maker.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[16] 250:25 marquetry. An inlay of some thin material in the surface
+of a piece of furniture or other object.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[17] 251:23 Jacobean. Pertaining to the time of James I of England.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[18] 253:12 travesty. A grotesque imitation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[19] 254:3 sophistry. Methods of the Greek sophists.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[20] 254:29 efficacy. Effective energy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[21] 255:5 sow tares, etc. See Matthew XII, 24-30.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[22] 255:29 category. A class, condition, or predicament.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[23] 256:14 hurtling. Rushing headlong or confusedly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[24] 280:10 dislimned. Erased or effaced.
+</p>
+
+<h4>COLLATERAL READINGS</h4>
+
+<p>
+<i>Treasure Island</i>, R.L. Stevenson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Kidnapped</i>, R.L. Stevenson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde</i>, R.L. Stevenson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Prince Otto</i>, R.L. Stevenson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Across the Plains</i>, R.L. Stevenson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Travels with a Donkey</i>, R.L. Stevenson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>An Inland Voyage</i>, R.L. Stevenson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Essays on Burns and Thoreau</i>, R.L. Stevenson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Virginibus Puerisque</i>, R.L. Stevenson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Child's Garden of Verses</i>, R.L. Stevenson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Masque of the Red Death</i>, Edgar Allan Poe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Pit and the Pendulum</i>, Edgar Allan Poe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>A Coward</i>, Guy de Maupassant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Substitute</i>, François Coppée.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Revolt of Mother</i>, Mary Wilkins Freeman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Flute and Violin</i>, James Lane Alien.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>A Lear of the Steppes</i>, Ivan Turgeneff.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Rappacini's Daughter</i>, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Short-Stories, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere 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
+
+
+Title: Short-Stories
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: June 25, 2004 [EBook #12732]
+[Last updated: September 12, 2012]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: CP-1252
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SHORT-STORIES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Keith M. Eckrich, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+SHORT-STORIES
+
+
+EDITED BY L.A. PITTENGER, A.M., CRITIC IN ENGLISH, INDIANA UNIVERSITY
+
+
+New York: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY, 1914
+
+
+Set up and electrotyped. Published November, 1913. Reprinted January,
+1914.
+
+Norwood Press, J.S. Cushing Co.--Berwick & Smith Co., Norwood, Mass.,
+U.S.A.
+
+
+
+A PREFATORY NOTE
+
+This collection of short-stories does not illustrate the history of
+short-story writing, nor does it pretend that these are the ten best
+stories ever written, but it does attempt to present selections from a
+list of the greatest short-stories that have proved, in actual use,
+most beneficial to high school students.
+
+The introduction presents a concise statement of the essentials of the
+history, qualities, and composition of the short-story. A brief
+biography of each author and a criticism covering the main
+characteristics of his writings serve as starting points for the
+recitation. The references following both the biography and criticism
+are given in order that the study of the short-story may be amplified,
+and that high school teachers may build a systematic and serviceable
+library about their class work in the teaching of the story. The
+collateral readings, listed after each story, will aid in the creation
+of a suitable atmosphere for the story studied, and explain many
+questions developed in the recitation. Only such definitions as are
+not easily found in school dictionaries are included in the notes.
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+PREFATORY NOTE
+
+INTRODUCTION:
+     History of the Short-story
+     Qualities of the Short-story
+     Composition of the Short-story
+     Books for Reference
+     Collections of Short-stories
+
+THE FATHER. 1860. Björnstjerne Björnson.
+
+THE GRIFFIN AND THE MINOR CANON. 1887. Frank R. Stockton.
+
+THE PIECE OF STRING. 1884. Guy de Maupassant.
+
+THE MAN WHO WAS. 1889. Rudyard Kipling.
+
+THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER. 1839. Edgar Allan Poe.
+
+THE GOLD-BUG. 1843. Edgar Allan Poe.
+
+THE BIRTHMARK. 1843. Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+ETHAN BRAND. 1848. Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+THE SIRE DE MALÉTROIT'S DOOR. 1878. Robert Louis Stevenson.
+
+MARKHEIM. 1884. Robert Louis Stevenson.
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+HISTORY OF THE SHORT-STORY
+
+Just when, where, and by whom story-telling was begun no one can say.
+From the first use of speech, no doubt, our ancestors have told
+stories of war, love, mysteries, and the miraculous performances of
+lower animals and inanimate objects. The ultimate source of all
+stories lies in a thorough democracy, unhampered by the restrictions
+of a higher civilization. Many tales spring from a loathsome filth
+that is extremely obnoxious to our present day tastes. The remarkable
+and gratifying truth is, however, that the short-story, beginning in
+the crude and brutal stages of man's development, has gradually
+unfolded to greater and more useful possibilities, until in our own
+time it is a most flexible and moral literary form.
+
+The first historical evidence in the development of the story shows no
+conception of a short-story other than that it is not so long as other
+narratives. This judgment of the short-story obtained until the
+beginning of the nineteenth century, when a new version of its meaning
+was given, and an enlarged vision of its possibilities was experienced
+by a number of writers almost simultaneously. In the early centuries
+of story-telling there was only one purpose in mind--that of narrating
+for the joy of the telling and hearing. The story-tellers sacrificed
+unity and totality of effect as well as originality for an
+entertaining method of reciting their incidents.
+
+The story of _Ruth_ and the _Prodigal Son_ are excellent short tales,
+but they do not fulfill the requirements of our modern short-story for
+the reason that they are not constructed for one single impression,
+but are in reality parts of possible longer stories. They are, as it
+were, parts of stories not unlike _Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde_ and _A
+Lear of the Steppes_, and lack those complete and concise artistic
+effects found in the short-stories, _Markheim_ and _Mumu_, by the same
+authors. Both _Ruth_ and the _Prodigal Son_ are exceptionally well
+told, possess a splendid moral tone, and are excellent prophecies of
+what the nineteenth century has developed for us in the art of
+short-story writing.
+
+The Greeks did very little writing in prose until the era of their
+decadence, and showed little instinct to use the concise and unified
+form of the short-story. The conquering Romans followed closely in the
+paths of their predecessors and did little work in the shorter
+narratives. The myths of Greece and Rome were not bound by facts, and
+opened a wonderland where writers were free to roam. The epics were
+slow in movement, and presented a list of loosely organized stories
+arranged about some character like Ulysses or AEneas.
+
+During the mediaeval period story-tellers and stories appeared
+everywhere. The more ignorant of these story-tellers produced the
+fable, and the educated monks produced the simple, crude and
+disjointed tales. The _Gesta Romanorum_ is a wonderful storehouse of
+these mediaeval stories. In the _Decameron_ Boccaccio deals with
+traditional and contemporary materials. He is a born story-teller and
+presents many interesting and well-told narratives, but as Professor
+Baldwin[1] has said, more than half are merely anecdotes, and the
+remaining stories are bare plots, ingeniously done in a kind of
+scenario form. Three approach our modern idea of the short-story, and
+two, the second story of the second day and the sixth story of the
+ninth day, actually attain to our standard. Boccaccio was not
+conscious of a standard in short-story telling, for he had none in the
+sense that Poe and Maupassant defined and practiced it. Chaucer in
+England told his stories in verse and added the charm of humor and
+well defined characters to the development of story-telling.
+
+In the seventeenth century Cervantes gave the world its first great
+novel, _Don Quixote_. Cervantes was careless in his work and did not
+write short-stories, but tales that are fairly brief. Spain added to
+the story a high sense of chivalry and a richness of character that
+the Greek romance and the Italian novella did not possess. France
+followed this loose composition and lack of beauty in form. Scarron
+and Le Sage, the two French fiction writers of this period,
+contributed little or nothing to the advancement of story-telling.
+Cervantes' _The Liberal Lover_ is as near as this period came to
+producing a real short-story.
+
+The story-telling of the seventeenth century was largely shaped by the
+popularity of the drama. In the eighteenth century the drama gave
+place to the essay, and it is to the sketch and essay that we must go
+to trace the evolution of the story during this period. Voltaire in
+France had a burning message in every essay, and he paid far greater
+attention to the development of the thought of his message than to the
+story he was telling. Addison and Steele in the _Spectator_ developed
+some real characters of the fiction type and told some good stories,
+but even their best, like _Theodosius and Constantia_, fall far short
+of developing all the dramatic possibilities, and lack the focusing of
+interest found in the nineteenth century stories. Some of Lamb's
+_Essays of Elia_, especially the _Dream Children_, introduce a
+delicate fancy and an essayist's clearness of thought and statement
+into the story. At the close of this century German romanticism began
+to seep into English thought and prepare the way for things new in
+literary thought and treatment.
+
+The nineteenth century opened with a decided preference for fiction.
+Washington Irving, reverting to the _Spectator_, produced his
+sketches, and, following the trend of his time, looked forward to a
+new form and wrote _The Spectre Bridegroom_ and _Rip Van Winkle_. It
+is only by a precise definition of short-story that Irving is robbed
+of the honor of being the founder of the modern short-story. He loved
+to meander and to fit his materials to his story scheme in a leisurely
+manner. He did not quite see what Hawthorne instinctively followed and
+Poe consciously defined and practiced, and he did not realize that
+terseness of statement and totality of impression were the chief
+qualities he needed to make him the father of a new literary form. Poe
+and Maupassant have reduced the form of the short-story to an exact
+science; Hawthorne and Harte have done successfully in the field of
+romanticism what the Germans, Tieck and Hoffman, did not do so well;
+Bjornson and Henry James have analyzed character psychologically in
+their short-stories; Kipling has used the short-story as a vehicle for
+the conveyance of specific knowledge; Stevenson has gathered most, if
+not all, of the literary possibilities adaptable to short-story use,
+and has incorporated them in his _Markheim_.
+
+France with her literary newspapers and artistic tendencies, and the
+United States with magazines calling incessantly for good
+short-stories, and with every section of its conglomerate life
+clamoring to express itself, lead in the production and rank of
+short-stories. Maupassant and Stevenson and Hawthorne and Poe are the
+great names in the ranks of short-story writers. The list of present
+day writers is interminable, and high school students can best acquire
+a reasonable appreciation of the great work these writers are doing by
+reading regularly some of the better grade literary magazines.
+
+For a comprehensive view of specimens representing the history and
+development of the short-story, students should have access to Brander
+Matthews' _The Short Story_, Jessup and Canby's _The Book of the
+Short-Story_, and Waite and Taylor's _Modern Masterpieces of Short
+Prose Fiction_.
+
+NOTE: [1] _American Short-Stories_, by Charles Sears Baldwin, New
+York: Longmans, Green, & Company, 1904.
+
+
+
+QUALITIES OF THE SHORT-STORY
+
+It was not until well along in the nineteenth century that any one
+attempted to define the short-story. The three quotations given here
+are among the best things that have been spoken on this subject.
+
+"The right novella is never a novel cropped back from the size of a
+tree to a bush, or the branch of a tree stuck into the ground and made
+to serve for a bush. It is another species, destined by the agencies
+at work in the realm of unconsciousness to be brought into being of
+its own kind, and not of another,"--W.D. Howells, _North American
+Review_, 173:429.
+
+"A true short-story is something other and something more than a mere
+story which is short. A true short-story differs from the novel
+chiefly in its essential unity of impression. In a far more exact and
+precise use of the word, a short-story has unity as a novel cannot
+have it.... A short-story deals with a single character, a single
+event, a single emotion, or the series of emotions called forth by a
+single situation.--Brander Matthews, _The Philosophy of the
+Short-Story_.
+
+"The aim of a short-story is to produce a single narrative effect with
+the greatest economy of means that is consistent with the utmost
+emphasis."--Clayton Hamilton, _Materials and Methods of Fiction_.
+
+The short-story must always have a compact unity and a direct
+simplicity. In such stories as Björnson's _The Father_ and
+Maupassant's _The Piece of String_ this simplicity is equal to that of
+the anecdote, but in no case can an anecdote possess the dramatic
+possibilities of these simple short-stories; for a short-story must
+always have that tensity of emotion that comes only in the crucial
+tests of life.
+
+The short-story does not demand the consistency in treatment of the
+long story, for there are not so many elements to marshal and direct
+properly, but the short-story must be original and varied in its
+themes, cleverly constructed, and lighted through and through with the
+glow of vivid imaginings. A single incident in daily life is caught as
+in a snap-shot exposure and held before the reader in such a manner
+that the impression of the whole is derived largely from suggestion.
+The single incident may be the turning-point in life history, as in
+_The Man Who Was_; it may be a mental surrender of habits fixed
+seemingly in indelible colors in the soul and a sudden, inflexible
+decision to be a man, as in the case of _Markheim;_ or it may be a
+gradual realization of the value of spiritual gifts, as Björnson has
+concisely presented it in his little story _The Father_.
+
+The aim of the short-story is always to present a cross-section of
+life in such a vivid manner that the importance of the incident
+becomes universal. Some short-stories are told with the definite end
+in view of telling a story for the sake of exploiting a plot. _The
+Cask of Amontillado_ is all action in comparison with _The Masque of
+the Red Death. The Gold-Bug_ sets for itself the task of solving a
+puzzle and possesses action from first to last. Other stories teach a
+moral. _Ethan Brand_ deals with the unpardonable sin, and _The Great
+Stone Face_ is our classic story in the field of ideals and their
+development. Hawthorne, above all writers, is most interested in
+ethical laws and moral development. Still other stories aim to portray
+character. Miss Jewett and Mrs. Freeman veraciously picture the
+faded-put womanhood in New England; Henry James and Björnson turn the
+x-rays of psychology and sociology on their characters; Stevenson
+follows with the precision of the tick of a watch the steps in
+Markheim's mental evolution.
+
+The types of the short-story are as varied as life itself. Addison,
+Lamb, Irving, Warner, and many others have used the story in their
+sketches and essays with wonderful effect. _The Legend of Sleepy
+Hollow_ is as impressive as any of Scott's tales. The allegory in _The
+Great Stone Face_ loses little or nothing when compared with Bunyan's
+_Pilgrim's Progress_. No better type of detective story has been
+written than the two short-stories, _The Murders in the Rue Morgue_
+and _The Purloined Letter_. Every emotion is subject to the call of
+the short-story. Humor with its expansive free air is not so well
+adapted to the short-story as is pathos. There is a sadness in the
+stories of Dickens, Garland, Page, Mrs. Freeman, Miss Jewett,
+Maupassant, Poe, and many others that runs the whole gamut from
+pleasing tenderness in _A Child's Dream of a Star_ to unutterable
+horror in _The Fall of the House of Usher_.
+
+The short-story is stripped of all the incongruities that led
+Fielding, Scott, and Dickens far afield. All its parts harmonize in
+the simplest manner to give unity and "totality" of impression through
+strict unity of form. It is a concentrated piece of life snatched from
+the ordinary and uneventful round of living and steeped in fancy until
+it becomes the acme of literary art.
+
+
+
+COMPOSITION OF THE SHORT-STORY
+
+Any student who wishes to express himself correctly and pleasingly,
+and desires a keener sense for the appreciation of literary work must
+write. The way others have done the thing never appears in a forceful
+light until one sets himself at a task of like nature. Just so in the
+study of this text. To find and appreciate the better points of the
+short-story, students must write stories of their own, patterned in a
+small way on the technique of the masterpieces.
+
+The process of short-story writing follows in a general way the
+following program. In the first place the class must have something
+interesting and suggestive to write about. Sometimes the class can
+suggest a subject; newspapers almost every day give incidents worthy
+of story treatment; happenings in the community often give the very
+best material for stories; and phases of the literature work may well
+be used in the development of students' themes. Change the type of
+character and place, reconstruct the plot, or require a different
+ending for the story, leaving the plot virtually as it is, and then
+assign to the class. Boys and girls should invariably be taught to see
+stories in the life about them, in the newspapers and magazines on
+their library tables, and in the masterpieces they study in their
+class work.
+
+After the idea that the class wishes to develop has been definitely
+determined and the material for this development has been gathered and
+grouped about the idea, the class should select a viewpoint and
+proceed to write. Sometimes the author should tell the story,
+sometimes a third person who may be of secondary importance in the
+story should be given the rôle of the story-teller, sometimes the
+whole may be in dialogue. The class should choose a fitting method.
+
+Young writers should be very careful about the beginning of a story.
+An action story should start with a striking incident that catches the
+reader's attention at once and forecasts subsequent happenings. In
+every case this first incident must have in it the essence of the end
+of the story and should be perfectly logical to the reader after he
+has finished the reading. A story in which the setting is emphasized
+can well begin, with a description and contain a number of
+descriptions and expositions, distributed with a sense of propriety
+throughout the theme. A good method to use in the opening of a
+character story is that of conversation. An excellent example of a
+sharp use of this device is Mrs. Freeman's _Revolt of Mother_, where
+the first paragraph is a single spoken word.
+
+Every incident included in the story should be tested for its value in
+the development of the theme. An incident that does not amplify
+certain phases of the story has no right to be included, and great
+care should be used in an effort to incorporate just the material
+necessary for the proper evolution of the thought. The problem is not
+so much what can be secured to be included in the story, but rather,
+after making a thorough collection of the material, what of all these
+points should be cast out.
+
+The ending must be a natural outgrowth of the development found in the
+body of the composition. Even in a story with a surprise ending, of
+which we are tempted to say that we have had no preparation for such a
+turn in the story, there must be hints--the subtler the better--that
+point unerringly and always toward the end. The end is presupposed in
+the beginning and the changing of one means the altering of the other.
+
+Young writers have trouble in stopping at the right place. They should
+learn, as soon as possible, that to drag on after the logical ending
+has been reached spoils the best of stories. It is just as bad to stop
+before arriving at the true end. In other words there is only one
+place for the ending of a story, and in no case can it be shifted
+without ruining the idea that has obtained throughout the theme.
+
+There are certain steps in the development of story-writing that
+should be followed if the best results are to be obtained. The first
+assignment should require only the writing of straight narrative. _The
+Arabian Nights Tales_ and children's stories represent this type of
+writing and will give the teacher valuable aid in the presentation of
+this work. After the students have produced simple stories resembling
+the Sinbad Voyages, they should next add descriptions of persons and
+places and explanations of situations to develop clearness and
+interest in their original productions. Taking these themes in turn
+students should be required to introduce plot incidents that
+complicate the simple happenings and divert the straightforward trend
+of the narrative. Now that the stories are well developed in their
+descriptions, expositions, and plot interests they should be tested
+for their emotional effects. Students should go through their themes,
+and by making the proper changes give in some cases a humorous and in
+others a pathetic or tragic effect. These few suggestions are given to
+emphasize the facts that no one conceives a story in all its details
+in a moment of inspiration, and that there is a way of proceeding that
+passes in logical gradations from the simplest to the most complex
+phases of story writing.
+
+Franklin and Stevenson knew no rules for writing other than to
+practice incessantly on some form they wished to imitate. Hard work is
+the first lesson that boys and girls must learn in the art of writing,
+and a systematic gradation of assignments is what the teacher must
+provide for his students. Walter Besant gave the following rules for
+novel writers. Some of them may be suggestive to writers of the high
+school age, so the list is given in its complete form. "(1) Practice
+writing something original every day. (2) Cultivate the habit of
+observation. (3) Work regularly at certain hours. (4) Read no rubbish.
+(5) Aim at the formation of style. (6) Endeavor to be dramatic. (7) A
+great element of dramatic skill is selection. (8) Avoid the sin of
+writing about a character. (9) Never attempt to describe any kind of
+life except that with which you are familiar. (10) Learn as much as
+you can about men and women. (11) For the sake of forming a good
+natural style, and acquiring command of language, write poetry."
+
+
+
+SHORT-STORY LIBRARY
+
+_BOOKS FOR REFERENCE_:
+
+_American Short-Stories_, Charles Baldwin, Longmans, Green, & Co.
+
+_A Study of Prose Fiction_, Chapter XII, Bliss Perry, Houghton,
+Mifflin Co.
+
+_Composition Rhetoric_, T.C. Blaisdell, American Book Co.
+
+_Forms of Prose Literature_, J.H. Gardiner, Charles Scribner's Sons.
+
+_Materials and Methods of Fiction_, Clayton Hamilton, The Baker and
+Taylor Co.
+
+_Principles of Literary Criticism_, C.T. Winchester, The Macmillan Co.
+
+_Short-Story Writing_, C.R. Barrett. The Baker and Taylor Co.
+
+_Specimens of the Short-Story_, G.H. Nettleton, H. Holt & Co.
+
+_Story-Writing and Journalism_, Sherwin Cody, Funk & Wagnalls Co.
+
+_Talks on Writing English_, Arlo Bates, Houghton Mifflin Co.
+
+_The Writing of the Short-Story_, L.W. Smith, D.C. Heath & Co.
+
+_The Philosophy of the Short-Story_, Brander Matthews, Longmans,
+Green, & Co.
+
+_The World's Greatest Short-Stories_, Sherwin Cody, A.C. McClurg & Co.
+
+_The Short-Story_, Henry Canby, Henry Holt & Co.
+
+_The Short-Story_, Evelyn May Albright, The Macmillan Co.
+
+_The Book of the Short-Story_, Jessup and Canby, D. Appleton & Co.
+
+_Modern Masterpieces of Short Prose Fiction_, Waite and Taylor, D.
+Appleton & Co.
+
+_The Short-Story_, Brander Matthews, American Book Co.
+
+_Writing the Short-Story_, Esenwein, Hinds, Noble & Eldredge.
+
+_A Study of the Short-Story in English_, Henry Seidel Canby, Henry
+Holt & Co.
+
+
+
+
+COLLECTIONS OF SHORT-STORIES:_
+
+_American Short-Stories_, Charles S. Baldwin, Longmans, Green, & Co.
+
+_Great Short-Stories_, 3 vols., William Patten, P.F. Collier & Son.
+
+_Little French Masterpieces_, 6 vols. Alexander Jessup, G.P. Putnam's
+Sons.
+
+_Short-Story Classics_ (American), 5 vols., William Patten, P.F.
+Collier & Son.
+
+_Short-Story Classics_ (Foreign), 5 vols., William Patten, P.F.
+Collier & Son.
+
+_Stories by American Authors_, 10 vols., Charles Scribner's Sons.
+
+_Stories by English Authors_, 10 vols., Charles Scribner's Sons.
+
+_Stories by Foreign Authors_, 10 vols., Charles Scribner's Sons.
+
+_Stories New and Old_ (American and English), Hamilton W. Mabie, The
+Macmillan Co.
+
+_World's Greatest Short-Stories_, Sherwin Cody, A.C. McClurg & Co.
+
+_The American Short-Story_, Elias Lieberman.
+
+
+
+THE FATHER[1]
+
+_By Björnstjerne Björnson (1838-1910)_
+
+
+The man whose story is here to be told was the wealthiest and most
+influential person in his parish; his name was Thord Överaas. He
+appeared in the priest's study one day, tall and earnest.
+
+"I have gotten a son," said he, "and I wish to present him for
+baptism."
+
+"What shall his name be?"
+
+"Finn,--after my father."
+
+"And the sponsors?"
+
+They were mentioned, and proved to be the best men and women of
+Thord's relations in the parish.
+
+"Is there anything else?" inquired the priest, and looked up. The
+peasant hesitated a little.
+
+"I should like very much to have him baptized by himself," said he,
+finally.
+
+"That is to say on a week-day?"
+
+"Next Saturday, at twelve o'clock noon."
+
+"Is there anything else?" inquired the priest,
+
+"There is nothing else;" and the peasant twirled his cap, as though he
+were about to go.
+
+Then the priest rose. "There is yet this, however." said he, and
+walking toward Thord, he took him by the hand and looked gravely into
+his eyes: "God grant that the child may become a blessing to you!"
+
+One day sixteen years later, Thord stood once more in the priest's
+study.
+
+"Really, you carry your age astonishingly well, Thord," said the
+priest; for he saw no change whatever in the man.
+
+"That is because I have no troubles," replied Thord. To this the
+priest said nothing, but after a while he asked: "What is your
+pleasure this evening?"
+
+"I have come this evening about that son of mine who is to be
+confirmed to-morrow."
+
+"He is a bright boy."
+
+"I did not wish to pay the priest until I heard what number the boy
+would have when he takes his place in the church to-morrow."
+
+"He will stand number one."
+
+"So I have heard; and here are ten dollars for the priest."
+
+"Is there anything else I can do for you?" inquired the priest, fixing
+his eyes on Thord.
+
+"There is nothing else."
+
+Thord went out.
+
+Eight years more rolled by, and then one day a noise was heard outside
+of the priest's study, for many men were approaching, and at their
+head was Thord, who entered first.
+
+The priest looked up and recognized him.
+
+"You come well attended this evening, Thord," said he.
+
+"I am here to request that the banns may be published for my son: he
+is about to marry Karen Storliden, daughter of Gudmund, who stands
+here beside me."
+
+"Why, that is the richest girl in the parish."
+
+"So they say," replied the peasant, stroking back his hair with one
+hand.
+
+The priest sat a while as if in deep thought, then entered the names
+in his book, without making any comments, and the men wrote their
+signatures underneath. Thord laid three dollars on the table.
+
+"One is all I am to have," said the priest.
+
+"I know that very well; but he is my only child; I want to do it
+handsomely."
+
+The priest took the money.
+
+"This is now the third time, Thord, that you have come here on your
+son's account."
+
+"But now I am through with him," said Thord, and folding up his
+pocket-book he said farewell and walked away.
+
+The men slowly followed him.
+
+A fortnight later, the father and son were rowing across the lake, one
+calm, still day, to Storliden to make arrangements for the wedding.
+
+"This thwart[2] is not secure," said the son, and stood up to
+straighten the seat on which he was sitting.
+
+At the same moment the board he was standing on slipped from under
+him; he threw out his arms, uttered a shriek, and fell overboard.
+
+"Take hold of the oar!" shouted the father, springing to his feet, and
+holding out the oar.
+
+But when the son had made a couple of efforts he grew stiff.
+
+"Wait a moment!" cried the father, and began to row toward his son.
+
+Then the son rolled over on his back, gave his father one long look,
+and sank.
+
+Thord could scarcely believe it; he held the boat still, and stared at
+the spot where his son had gone down, as though he must surely come to
+the surface again. There rose some bubbles, then some more, and
+finally one large one that burst; and the lake lay there as smooth and
+bright as a mirror again.
+
+For three days and three nights people saw the father rowing round and
+round the spot, without taking either food or sleep; he was dragging
+the lake for the body of his son. And toward morning of the third day
+he found it, and carried it in his arms up over the hills to his
+gard[3].
+
+It might have been about a year from that day, when the priest, late
+one autumn evening, heard some one in the passage outside of the door,
+carefully trying to find the latch. The priest opened the door, and in
+walked a tall, thin man, with bowed form and white hair. The priest
+looked long at him before he recognized him. It was Thord.
+
+"Are you out walking so late?" said the priest, and stood still in
+front of him.
+
+"Ah, yes! it is late," said Thord, and took a seat.
+
+The priest sat down also, as though waiting. A long, long silence
+followed. At last Thord said,--
+
+"I have something with me that I should like to give to the poor; I
+want it to be invested as a legacy in my son's name."
+
+He rose, laid some money on the table, and sat down again. The priest
+counted it.
+
+"It is a great deal of money," said he.
+
+"It is half the price of my gard. I sold it to-day."
+
+The priest sat long in silence. At last he asked, but gently,--
+
+"What do you propose to do now, Thord?"
+
+"Something better."
+
+They sat there for a while, Thord with downcast eyes, the priest with
+his eyes fixed on Thord. Presently the priest said, slowly and
+softly,--
+
+"I think your son has at last brought you a true blessing."
+
+"Yes, I think so myself," said Thord, looking up, while two big tears
+coursed slowly down his cheeks.
+
+
+NOTES
+
+[1] This story was written in 1860. Translated from the Norwegian by
+Professor Rasmus B. Anderson. It is printed by permission of and
+special arrangement with _Houghton Mifflin Co._, publishers.
+
+[2] 3:28 thwart. A seat, across a boat, on which the oarsman, sits.
+
+[3] 4:21 gard. A Norwegian farm.
+
+
+BIOGRAPHY
+
+Björnstjerne Björnson, Norse poet, novelist, dramatist, orator, and
+political leader, was born December 8, 1832, and died in Paris, April
+26, 1910. From his strenuous father, a Lutheran priest who preached
+with tongue and fist, he inherited the physique of a Norse god. He
+possessed the mind of a poet and the arm of a warrior. At the age of
+twelve he was sent to the Molde grammar school, where he proved
+himself a very dull student. In 1852 he entered the university in
+Christiana. Here he neglected his studies to write poetry and
+journalistic articles.
+
+In politics Björnson was a tremendous force. Dr. Brandes has said; "To
+speak the name of Björnson is like hoisting the colors of Norway." He
+was honored as a king in his native land. He won this recognition by
+no party affiliation, but by his natural gifts as a poet. His magnetic
+eloquence, great message, and sterling character compelled his
+countrymen to follow and honor him. He says of his success in this
+field: "The secret with me is that in success as in failure, in the
+consciousness of my doing as in my habits, I am myself. There are a
+great many who dare not, or lack the ability, to be themselves." For
+his views on political issues the following references may well be
+used: _Independent_. January 31, 1901, pp. 253-257; _Current
+Literature_, November, 1906, p. 581; and _Independent_, July 13, 1905,
+pp. 92-94.
+
+Björnson and Ibsen, the two foremost men of Norway, were very closely
+associated throughout life. They were schoolmates, and both were
+interested in writing and producing plays. Ibsen's son, Dr. Sigurd
+Ibsen, married Björnson's daughter, Bergilot. These two great writers
+were direct contrasts in nearly everything: Björnson lived among his
+people, Ibsen was reserved; Björnson played the rôle of an optimistic
+prophet, Ibsen, that of a pessimistic judge; the former was always a
+conciliatory spirit, the latter a revolutionist; and Björnson proved
+himself a patriotic Norwegian, Ibsen, a man of the entire world.
+
+Lack of space forbids the inclusion of a list of Björnson's writing's.
+High school teachers will find suitable selections in the list of
+collateral readings that follows. Those who wish a complete
+bibliography of his works will find it in _Bookman_, Volume II, p. 65.
+Translations of his works by Rasmus B. Anderson, Houghton Mifflin Co.,
+and Edmund Gosse, the Macmillan Co., will furnish students extensive
+and standard readings of this master story-teller.
+
+
+CRITICISMS
+
+Björnson, in his masterly character delineations, seldom produces
+portraits. He gives the reader suggestive glimpses often enough and of
+the right quality and arrangement to produce a full and vigorous
+conception of his characters. His female parts are especially well
+done. His characters present themselves to the reader by unique
+thinking and choice expressions. Students should analyze _The Father_
+for this phase of character building. Note also the simplicity of the
+words, sentences, paragraphs, and complete story arrangement, the
+author's originality of story conception and expression, his short,
+passionate, panting sentences, the poetic atmosphere that sweetens and
+enriches his virile writing, and the correct, religious pictures he
+paints of his beloved northland.
+
+After having read a number of selections from Björnson, students will
+see that he has a wonderful breadth of treatment for every imaginable
+subject. He is so universal in his choice of subjects that Lemaître in
+his _Impressions of the Theatre_ half-humorously and half-ironically
+puts these words in Björnson's mouth, "I am king in the spiritual
+kingdom," and "there are two men in Europe who have genius, I and
+Ibsen, granting that Ibsen has it."
+
+
+GENERAL REFERENCES
+
+_Adventures in Criticism_, A.T.Q. Couch.
+
+_Essays on Modern Novelists_, William Lyon Phelps.
+
+"Björnsoniana," _Dial_, January 16, 1903, pp. 37-38.
+
+"Prophet-Poet of Norway," _Cosmopolitan_, April, 1903, pp. 621-631.
+
+"Three Score and Ten," _Dial_, December, 1902, pp. 383-385.
+
+
+COLLATERAL READINGS
+
+_Lectures_, Volume I, John L. Stoddard.
+
+_The Making of an American_, Chapters 1, 7, and Jacob Riis.
+
+_Myths of Northern Lands_. Guerber.
+
+_Synnove Solbakken_, Björnson.
+
+_A Happy Boy_, Björnson.
+
+_The Fisher Maiden_, Björnson.
+
+_The Bridal March_, Björnson.
+
+_Magnhild_, Björnson.
+
+_A Dangerous Wooing_, Björnson.
+
+_The Eagle's Nest_, Björnson.
+
+_The Bear Hunter_, Björnson.
+
+_Master and Man_, Leo Tolstoi.
+
+_The Doll's House_, Henrik Ibsen.
+
+_The Minister's Black Veil_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_The Ambitious Guest_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_The Beeman of Orn_, Frank R. Stockton.
+
+_A Branch Road_, Hamlin Garland.
+
+_Mateo Falcone_, Prosper Mérimée.
+
+_The Death of the Dauphin_, Alphonse Dadoed.
+
+_The Birds' Christmas Carol_, Kate Douglas Wiggin.
+
+_Tennessee's Partner_, Bret Harte.
+
+
+
+THE GRIFFIN AND THE MINOR CANAAN[1]
+
+_By Frank R. Stockton (1834-1902)_
+
+
+Over the great door of an old, old church which stood in a quiet town
+of a far-away land there was carved in stone the figure of a large
+griffin. The old-time sculptor had done his work with great care, but
+the image he had made was not a pleasant one to look at. It had a
+large head, with enormous open mouth and savage teeth; from its back
+arose great wings, armed with sharp hooks and prongs; it had stout
+legs in front, with projecting claws; but there were no legs
+behind,--the body running out into a long and powerful tail, finished
+off at the end with a barbed point. This tail was coiled up under him,
+the end sticking up just back of his wings.
+
+The sculptor, or the people who had ordered this stone figure, had
+evidently been very much pleased with it, for little copies of it,
+also in stone, had been placed here and there along the sides of the
+church, not very far from the ground, so that people could easily look
+at them, and ponder on their curious forms. There were a great many
+other sculptures on the outside of this church,--saints, martyrs,
+grotesque heads of men, beasts, and birds, as well as those of other
+creatures which cannot be named, because nobody knows exactly what
+they were; but none were so curious and interesting as the great
+griffin over the door, and the little griffins on the sides of the
+church.
+
+A long, long distance from the town, in the midst of dreadful wilds
+scarcely known to man, there dwelt the Griffin whose image had been
+put up over the churchgoer. In some way or other, the old-time
+sculptor had seen him, and afterward, to the best of his memory, had
+copied his figure in stone. The Griffin had never known this, until,
+hundreds of years afterward, he heard from a bird, from a wild animal,
+or in some manner which it is not now easy to find out, that there was
+a likeness of him on the old church in the distant town. Now this
+Griffin had no idea how he looked. He had never seen a mirror, and the
+streams where he lived were so turbulent and violent that a quiet
+piece of water, which would reflect the image of anything looking into
+it, could not be found. Being, as far as could be ascertained, the
+very last of his race, he had never seen another griffin. Therefore it
+was, that, when he heard of this stone image of himself, he became
+very anxious to know what he looked like, and at last he determined to
+go to the old church, and see for himself what manner of being he was.
+So he started off from the dreadful wilds, and flew on and on until he
+came to the countries inhabited by men, where his appearance in the
+air created great consternation; but he alighted nowhere, keeping up a
+steady flight until he reached the suburbs of the town which had his
+image on its church. Here, late in the afternoon, he alighted in a
+green meadow by the side of a brook, and stretched himself on the
+grass to rest. His great wings were tired, for he had not made such a
+long flight in a century, or more.
+
+The news of his coming spread quickly over the town, and the people,
+frightened nearly out of their wits by the arrival of so extraordinary
+a visitor, fled into their houses, and shut themselves up. The Griffin
+called loudly for some one to come to him, but the more he called, the
+more afraid the people were to show themselves. At length he saw two
+laborers hurrying to their homes through the fields, and in a terrible
+voice he commanded them to stop. Not daring to disobey, the men stood,
+trembling.
+
+"What is the matter with you all?" cried the Griffin. "Is there not a
+man in your town who is brave enough to speak to me?"
+
+"I think," said one of the laborers, his voice shaking so that his
+words could hardly be understood, "that--perhaps--the Minor
+Canon--would come."
+
+"Go, call him, then!" said the Griffin; "I want to see him."
+
+The Minor Canon, who filled a subordinate position in the church, had
+just finished the afternoon services, and was coming out of a side
+door, with three aged women who had formed the week-day congregation.
+He was a young man of a kind disposition, and very anxious to do good
+to the people of the town. Apart from his duties in the church, where
+he conducted services every week-day, he visited the sick and the
+poor, counseled and assisted persons who were in trouble, and taught a
+school composed entirely of the bad children in the town with whom
+nobody else would have anything to do. Whenever the people wanted
+something difficult done for them, they always went to the Minor
+Canon. Thus it was that the laborer thought of the young priest when
+he found that some one must come and speak to the Griffin.
+
+The Minor Canon had not heard of the strange event, which was known to
+the whole town except himself and the three old women, and when he was
+informed of it, and was told that the Griffin had asked to see him, he
+was greatly amazed, and frightened.
+
+"Me!" he exclaimed. "He has never heard of me! What should he want
+with _me?_"
+
+"Oh! you must go instantly!" cried the two men.
+
+"He is very angry now because he has been kept waiting so long; and
+nobody knows what may happen if you don't hurry to him."
+
+The poor Minor Canon would rather have had his hand cut off than go
+out to meet an angry griffin; but he felt that it was his duty to go,
+or it would be a woeful thing if injury should come to the people of
+the town because he was not brave enough to obey the summons of the
+Griffin.
+
+So, pale and frightened, he started off.
+
+"Well," said the Griffin, as soon as the young man came near, "I am
+glad to see that there is some one who has the courage to come to me."
+
+The Minor Canon did not feel very courageous, but he bowed his head.
+
+"Is this the town," said the Griffin, "where there is a church with a
+likeness of myself over one of the doors?"
+
+The Minor Canon looked at the frightful creature before him and saw
+that it was, without doubt, exactly like the stone image on the
+church. "Yes," he said, "you are right."
+
+"Well, then," said the Griffin, "will you take me to it? I wish very
+much to see it."
+
+The Minor Canon instantly thought that if the Griffin entered the town
+without the people knowing what he came for, some of them would
+probably be frightened to death, and so he sought to gain time to
+prepare their minds.
+
+"It is growing dark, now," he said, very much afraid, as he spoke,
+that his words might enrage the Griffin, "and objects on the front of
+the church cannot be seen clearly. It will be better to wait until
+morning, if you wish to get a good view of the stone image of
+yourself."
+
+"That will suit me very well," said the Griffin. "I see you are a man
+of good sense. I am tired, and I will take a nap here on this soft
+grass, while I cool my tail in the little stream that runs near me.
+The end of my tail gets red-hot when I am angry or excited, and it is
+quite warm now. So you may go, but be sure and come early to-morrow
+morning, and show me the way to the church."
+
+The Minor Canon was glad enough to take his leave, and hurried into
+the town. In front of the church he found a great many people
+assembled to hear his report of his interview with the Griffin. When
+they found that he had not come to spread ruin and devastation, but
+simply to see his stony likeness on the church, they showed neither
+relief nor gratification, but began to upbraid the Minor Canon for
+consenting to conduct the creature into the town.
+
+"What could I do?" cried the young man, "If I should not bring him he
+would come himself and, perhaps, end by setting fire to the town with
+his red-hot tail."
+
+Still the people were not satisfied, and a great many plans were
+proposed to prevent the Griffin from coming into the town. Some
+elderly persons urged that the young men should go out and kill him;
+but the young men scoffed at such a ridiculous idea. Then some one
+said that it would be a good thing to destroy the stone image so that
+the Griffin would have no excuse for entering the town; and this
+proposal was received with such favor that many of the people ran for
+hammers, chisels, and crowbars, with which to tear down and break up
+the stone griffin. But the Minor Canon resisted this plan with all the
+strength of his mind and body. He assured the people that this action
+would enrage the Griffin beyond measure, for it would be impossible to
+conceal from him that his image had been destroyed during the night.
+But the people were so determined to break up the stone griffin that
+the Minor Canon saw that there was nothing for him to do but to stay
+there and protect it. All night he walked up and down in front of the
+church-door, keeping away the men who brought ladders, by which they
+might mount to the great stone griffin, and knock it to pieces with
+their hammers and crowbars. After many hours the people were obliged
+to give up their attempts, and went home to sleep; but the Minor Canon
+remained at his post till early morning, and then he hurried away to
+the field where he had left the Griffin.
+
+The monster had just awakened, and rising to his fore-legs and shaking
+himself, he said that he was ready to go into the town. The Minor
+Canon, therefore, walked back, the Griffin flying slowly through the
+air, at a short distance above the head of his guide. Not a person was
+to be seen in the streets, and they proceeded directly to the front of
+the church, where the Minor Canon pointed out the stone griffin.
+
+The real Griffin settled down in the little square before the church
+and gazed earnestly at his sculptured likeness. For a long time he
+looked at it. First he put his head on one side, and then he put it on
+the other; then he shut his right eye and gazed with his left, after
+which he shut his left eye and gazed with his right. Then he moved a
+little to one side and looked at the image, then he moved the other
+way. After a while he said to the Minor Canon, who had been standing
+by all this time:
+
+"It is, it must be, an excellent likeness! That breadth between the
+eyes, that expansive forehead, those massive jaws! I feel that it must
+resemble me. If there is any fault to find with it, it is that the
+neck seems a little stiff. But that is nothing. It is an admirable
+likeness,--admirable!"
+
+The Griffin sat looking at his image all the morning and all the
+afternoon. The Minor Canon had been afraid to go away and leave him,
+and had hoped all through the day that he would soon be satisfied with
+his inspection and fly away home. But by evening the poor young man
+was utterly exhausted, and felt that he must eat and sleep. He frankly
+admitted this fact to the Griffin, and asked him if he would not like
+something to eat. He said this because he felt obliged in politeness
+to do so, but as soon as he had spoken the words, he was seized with
+dread lest the monster should demand half a dozen babies, or some
+tempting repast of that kind.
+
+"Oh, no," said the Griffin, "I never eat between the equinoxes. At the
+vernal and at the autumnal equinox I take a good meal, and that lasts
+me for half a year. I am extremely regular in my habits, and do not
+think it healthful to eat at odd times. But if you need food, go and
+get it, and I will return to the soft grass where I slept last night
+and take another nap."
+
+The next day the Griffin came again to the little square before the
+church, and remained there until evening, steadfastly regarding the
+stone griffin over the door. The Minor Canon came once or twice to
+look at him, and the Griffin seemed very glad to see him; but the
+young clergyman could not stay as he had done before, for he had many
+duties to perform. Nobody went to the church, but the people came to
+the Minor Canon's house, and anxiously asked him how long the Griffin
+was going to stay.
+
+"I do not know," he answered, "but I think he will soon be satisfied
+with regarding his stone likeness, and then he will go away."
+
+But the Griffin did not go away. Morning after morning he came to the
+church, but after a time he did not stay there all day. He seemed to
+have taken a great fancy to the Minor Canon, and followed him about as
+he pursued his various avocations. He would wait for him at the side
+door of the church, for the Minor Canon held services every day,
+morning and evening, though nobody came now. "If any one should come,"
+he said to himself, "I must be found at my post." When the young man
+came out, the Griffin would accompany him in his visits to the sick
+and the poor, and would often look into the windows of the schoolhouse
+where the Minor Canon was teaching his unruly scholars. All the other
+schools were closed, but the parents of the Minor Canon's scholars
+forced them to go to school, because they were so bad they could not
+endure them all day at home,--griffin or no griffin. But it must be
+said they generally behaved very well when that great monster sat up
+on his tail and looked in at the schoolroom window.
+
+When it was perceived that the Griffin showed no signs of going away,
+all the people who were able to do so left the town. The canons and
+the higher officers of the church had fled away during the first day
+of the Griffin's visit, leaving behind only the Minor Canon and some
+of the men who opened the doors and swept the church. All the citizens
+who could afford it shut up their houses and travelled to distant
+parts, and only the working people and the poor were left behind.
+After some days these ventured to go about and attend to their
+business, for if they did not work they would starve. They were
+getting a little used to seeing the Griffin, and having been told that
+he did not eat between equinoxes, they did not feel so much afraid of
+him as before. Day by day the Griffin became more and more attached to
+the Minor Canon. He kept near him a great part of the time, and often
+spent the night in front of the little house where the young clergyman
+lived alone. This strange companionship was often burdensome to the
+Minor Canon; but, on the other hand, he could not deny that he derived
+a great deal of benefit and instruction from it. The Griffin had lived
+for hundreds of years, and had seen much; and he told the Minor Canon
+many wonderful things.
+
+"It is like reading an old book," said the young clergyman to himself;
+"but how many books I would have had to read before I would have found
+out what the Griffin has told me about the earth, the air, the water,
+about minerals, and metals, and growing things, and all the wonders of
+the world!"
+
+Thus the summer went on, and drew toward its close. And now the people
+of the town began to be very much troubled again.
+
+"It will not be long," they said, "before the autumnal equinox is
+here, and then that monster will want to eat. He will be dreadfully
+hungry, for he has taken so much exercise since his last meal. He will
+devour our children. Without doubt, he will eat them all. What is to
+be done?"
+
+To this question no one could give an answer, but all agreed that the
+Griffin must not be allowed to remain until the approaching equinox.
+After talking over the matter a great deal, a crowd of the people went
+to the Minor Canon, at a time when the Griffin was not with him.
+
+"It is all your fault," they said, "that that monster is among us. You
+brought him here, and you ought to see that he goes away. It is only
+on your account that he stays here at all, for, although he visits his
+image every day, he is with you the greater part of the time. If you
+were not here, he would not stay. It is your duty to go away and then
+he will follow you, and we shall be free from the dreadful danger
+which hangs over us."
+
+"Go away!" cried the Minor Canon, greatly grieved at being spoken to
+in such a way. "Where shall I go? If I go to some other town, shall I
+not take this trouble there? Have I a right to do that?"
+
+"No," said the people, "you must not go to any other town. There is no
+town far enough away. You must go to the dreadful wilds where the
+Griffin lives; and then he will follow you and stay there."
+
+They did not say whether or not they expected the Minor Canon to stay
+there also, and he did not ask them any thing about it. He bowed his
+head, and went into his house, to think. The more he thought, the more
+clear it became to his mind that it was his duty to go away, and thus
+free the town from the presence of the Griffin.
+
+That evening he packed a leathern bag full of bread and meat, and
+early the next morning he set out on his journey to the dreadful
+wilds. It was a long, weary, and doleful journey, especially after he
+had gone beyond the habitations of men, but the Minor Canon kept on
+bravely, and never faltered. The way was longer than he had expected,
+and his provisions soon grew so scanty that he was obliged to eat but
+a little every day, but he kept up his courage, and pressed on, and,
+after many days of toilsome travel, he reached the dreadful wilds.
+
+When the Griffin found that the Minor Canon had left the town he
+seemed sorry, but showed no disposition to go and look for him. After
+a few days had passed, he became much annoyed, and asked some of the
+people where the Minor Canon had gone. But, although the citizens had
+been anxious that the young clergyman should go to the dreadful wilds,
+thinking that the Griffin would immediately follow him, they were now
+afraid to mention the Minor Canon's destination, for the monster
+seemed angry already, and, if he should suspect their trick, he would
+doubtless become very much enraged. So every one said he did not know,
+and the Griffin wandered about disconsolate. One morning he looked
+into the Minor Canon's schoolhouse, which was always empty now, and
+thought that it was a shame that every thing should suffer on account
+of the young man's absence.
+
+"It does not matter so much about the church," he said, "for nobody
+went there; but it is a pity about the school. I think I will teach it
+myself until he returns."
+
+It was the hour for opening the school, and the Griffin went inside
+and pulled the rope which rang the schoolbell. Some of the children
+who heard the bell ran in to see what was the matter, supposing it to
+be a joke of one of their companions; but when they saw the Griffin
+they stood astonished, and scared.
+
+"Go tell the other scholars," said the monster, "that school is about
+to open, and that if they are not all here in ten minutes, I shall
+come after them." In seven minutes every scholar was in place.
+
+Never was seen such an orderly school. Not a boy or girl moved, or
+uttered a whisper. The Griffin climbed into the master's seat, his
+wide wings spread on each side of him, because he could not lean back
+in his chair while they stuck out behind, and his great tail coiled
+around, in front of the desk, the barbed end sticking up, ready to tap
+any boy or girl who might misbehave. The Griffin now addressed the
+scholars, telling them that he intended to teach them while their
+master was away. In speaking he endeavored to imitate, as far as
+possible, the mild and gentle tones of the Minor Canon, but it must be
+admitted that in this he was not very successful. He had paid a good
+deal of attention to the studies of the school, and he determined not
+to attempt to teach them anything new, but to review them in what they
+had been studying; so he called up the various classes, and questioned
+them upon their previous lessons. The children racked their brains to
+remember what they had learned. They were so afraid of the Griffin's
+displeasure that they recited as they had never recited before. One of
+the boys far down in his class answered so well that the Griffin was
+astonished.
+
+"I should think you would be at the head," said he. "I am sure you
+have never been in the habit of reciting so well. Why is this?"
+
+"Because I did not choose to take the trouble," said the boy,
+trembling in his boots. He felt obliged to speak the truth, for all
+the children thought that the great eyes of the Griffin could see
+right through them, and that he would know when they told a falsehood.
+
+"You ought to be ashamed of yourself," said the Griffin. "Go down to
+the very tail of the class, and if you are not at the head in two
+days, I shall know the reason why."
+
+The next afternoon the boy was number one.
+
+It was astonishing how much these children now learned of what they
+had been studying. It was as if they had been educated over again. The
+Griffin used no severity toward them, but there was a look about him
+which made them unwilling to go to bed until they were sure they knew
+their lessons for the next day.
+
+The Griffin now thought that he ought to visit the sick and the poor;
+and he began to go about the town for this purpose. The effect upon
+the sick was miraculous. All, except those who were very ill indeed,
+jumped from their beds when they heard he was coming, and declared
+themselves quite well. To those who could not get up, he gave herbs
+and roots, which none of them had ever before thought of as medicines,
+but which the Griffin had seen used in various parts of the world; and
+most of them recovered. But, for all that, they afterward said that no
+matter what happened to them, they hoped that they should never again
+have such a doctor coming to their bedsides, feeling their pulses and
+looking at their tongues.
+
+As for the poor, they seemed to have utterly disappeared. All those
+who had depended upon charity for their daily bread were now at work
+in some way or other; many of them offering to do odd jobs for their
+neighbors just for the sake of their meals,--a thing which before had
+been seldom heard of in the town. The Griffin could find no one who
+needed his assistance.
+
+The summer had now passed, and the autumnal equinox was rapidly
+approaching. The citizens were in a state of great alarm and anxiety.
+The Griffin showed no signs of going away, but seemed to have settled
+himself permanently among them. In a short time, the day for his
+semi-annual meal would arrive, and then what would happen? The monster
+would certainly be very hungry, and would devour all their children.
+
+Now they greatly regretted and lamented that they had sent away the
+Minor Canon; he was the only one on whom they could have depended in
+this trouble, for he could talk freely with the Griffin, and so find
+out what could be done. But it would not do to be inactive. Some step
+must be taken immediately. A meeting of the citizens was called, and
+two old men were appointed to go and talk to the Griffin. They were
+instructed to offer to prepare a splendid dinner for him on equinox
+day,--one which would entirely satisfy his hunger. They would offer
+him the fattest mutton, the most tender beef, fish, and game of
+various sorts, and any thing of the kind that he might fancy. If none
+of these suited, they were to mention that there was an orphan asylum
+in the next town.
+
+"Any thing would be better," said the citizens, "than to have our dear
+children devoured."
+
+The old men went to the Griffin, but their propositions were not
+received with favor.
+
+"From what I have seen of the people of this town," said the monster,
+"I do not think I could relish any thing which was prepared by them.
+They appear to be all cowards, and, therefore, mean and selfish. As
+for eating one of them, old or young, I could not think of it for a
+moment. In fact, there was only one creature in the whole place for
+whom I could have had any appetite, and that is the Minor Canon, who
+has gone away. He was brave, and good, and honest, and I think I
+should have relished him."
+
+"Ah!" said one of the old men very politely, "in that case I wish we
+had not sent him to the dreadful wilds!"
+
+"What!" cried the Griffin. "What do you mean? Explain instantly what
+you are talking about!"
+
+The old man, terribly frightened at what he had said, was obliged to
+tell how the Minor Canon had been sent away by the people, in the hope
+that the Griffin might be induced to follow him.
+
+When the monster heard this, he became furiously angry. He dashed away
+from the old men and, spreading his wings, flew backward and forward
+over the town. He was so much excited that his tail became red-hot,
+and glowed like a meteor against the evening sky. When at last he
+settled down in the little field where he usually rested, and thrust
+his tail into the brook, the steam arose like a cloud, and the water
+of the stream ran hot through the town. The citizens were greatly
+frightened, and bitterly blamed the old man for telling about the
+Minor Canon.
+
+"It is plain," they said, "that the Griffin intended at last to go and
+look for him, and we should have been saved. Now who can tell what
+misery you have brought upon us."
+
+The Griffin did not remain long in the little field. As soon as his
+tail was cool he flew to the town-hall and rang the bell. The citizens
+knew that they were expected to come there, and although they were
+afraid to go, they were still more afraid to stay away; and they
+crowded into the hall. The Griffin was on the platform at one end,
+flapping his wings and walking up and down, and the end of his tail
+was still so warm that it slightly scorched the boards as he dragged
+it after him.
+
+When everybody who was able to come was there the Griffin stood still
+and addressed the meeting.
+
+"I have had a contemptible opinion of you," he said, "ever since I
+discovered what cowards you are, but I had no idea that you were so
+ungrateful, selfish, and cruel as I now find you to be. Here was your
+Minor Canon, who labored day and night for your good, and thought of
+nothing else but how he might benefit you and make you happy; and as
+soon as you imagine yourselves threatened with a danger,--for well I
+know you are dreadfully afraid of me,--you send him off, caring not
+whether he returns or perishes, hoping thereby to save yourselves.
+Now, I had conceived a great liking for that young man, and had
+intended, in a day or two, to go and look him up. But I have changed
+my mind about him. I shall go and find him, but I shall send him back
+here to live among you, and I intend that he shall enjoy the reward of
+his labor and his sacrifices. Go, some of you, to the officers of the
+church, who so cowardly ran away when I first came here, and tell them
+never to return to this town under penalty of death. And if, when your
+Minor Canon comes back to you, you do not bow yourselves before him,
+put him in the highest place among you, and serve and honor him all
+his life, beware of my terrible vengeance! There were only two good
+things in this town: the Minor Canon and the stone image of myself
+over your church-door. One of these you have sent away, and the other
+I shall carry away myself."
+
+With these words he dismissed the meeting, and it was time, for the
+end of his tail had become so hot that there was danger of its setting
+fire to the building.
+
+The next morning, the Griffin came to the church, and tearing the
+stone image of himself from its fastenings over the great door, he
+grasped it with his powerful fore-legs and flew up into the air. Then,
+after hovering over the town for a moment, he gave his tail an angry
+shake and took up his flight to the dreadful wilds. When he reached
+this desolate region, he set the stone Griffin upon a ledge of a rock
+which rose in front of the dismal cave he called his home. There the
+image occupied a position somewhat similar to that it had had over the
+church-door; and the Griffin, panting with the exertion of carrying
+such an enormous load to so great a distance, lay down upon the
+ground, and regarded it with much satisfaction. When he felt somewhat
+rested he went to look for the Minor Canon. He found the young man,
+weak and half-starved, lying under the shadow of a rock. After picking
+him up and carrying him to his cave, the Griffin flew away to a
+distant marsh, where he procured some roots and herbs which he well
+knew were strengthening and beneficial to man, though he had never
+tasted them himself. After eating these the Minor Canon was greatly
+revived, and sat up and listened while the Griffin told him what had
+happened in the town.
+
+"Do you know," said the monster, when he had finished, "that I have
+had, and still have, a great liking for you?"
+
+"I am very glad to hear it," said the Minor Canon, with his usual
+politeness.
+
+"I am not at all sure that you would be," said the Griffin, "if you
+thoroughly understood the state of the case, but we will not consider
+that now. If some things were different, other things would be
+otherwise. I have been so enraged by discovering the manner in which
+you have been treated that I have determined that you shall at last
+enjoy the rewards and honors to which you are entitled. Lie down and
+have a good sleep, and then I will take you back to the town."
+
+As he heard these words, a look of trouble came over the young man's
+face.
+
+"You need not give yourself any anxiety," said the Griffin, "about my
+return to the town. I shall not remain there. Now that I have that
+admirable likeness of myself in front of my cave, where I can sit at
+my leisure, and gaze upon its noble features and magnificent
+proportions, I have no wish to see that abode of cowardly and selfish
+people."
+
+The Minor Canon, relieved from his fears, lay back, and dropped into a
+doze; and when he was sound asleep the Griffin took him up, and
+carried him back to the town. He arrived just before daybreak, and
+putting the young man gently on the grass in the little field where he
+himself used to rest, the monster, without having been seen by any of
+the people, flew back to his home.
+
+When the Minor Canon made his appearance in the morning among the
+citizens, the enthusiasm and cordiality with which he was received
+were truly wonderful. He was taken to a house which had been occupied
+by one of the vanished high officers of the place, and every one was
+anxious to do all that could be done for his health and comfort. The
+people crowded into the church when he held services, so that the
+three old women who used to be his week-day congregation could not get
+to the best seats, which they had always been in the habit of taking;
+and the parents of the bad children determined to reform them at home,
+in order that he might be spared the trouble of keeping up his former
+school. The Minor Canon was appointed to the highest office of the old
+church, and before he died, he became a bishop.
+
+During the first years after his return from the dreadful wilds, the
+people of the town looked up to him as a man to whom they were bound
+to do honor and reverence; but they often, also, looked up to the sky
+to see if there were any signs of the Griffin coming back. However, in
+the course of time, they learned to honor and reverence their former
+Minor Canon without the fear of being punished if they did not do so.
+
+But they need never have been afraid of the Griffin. The autumnal
+equinox day came round, and the monster ate nothing. If he could not
+have the Minor Canon, he did not care for any thing. So, lying down,
+with his eyes fixed upon the great stone griffin, he gradually
+declined, and died. It was a good thing for some people of the town
+that they did not know this.
+
+If you should ever visit the old town, you would still see the little
+griffins on the sides of the church; but the great stone griffin that
+was over the door is gone.
+
+
+NOTE: [1] Written in 1887. This story is used by permission of and
+special arrangement with _Charles Scribner's Sons_, publishers.
+
+
+BIOGRAPHY
+
+Frank Richard Stockton, one of America's foremost story-tellers and
+humorists, was born in Philadelphia in 1834. His father was a
+Presbyterian minister who devoutly wished that his son might study
+medicine. This wish was shattered early, for the son showed symptoms
+of being a writer while yet in the Central High School of
+Philadelphia. In competition with many of his schoolmates for a prize
+offered for the best story, young Stockton won easily.
+
+After finishing his high school course, he adopted the profession of
+wood-engraver. Although he earned his living for several years by
+carving wood, he never lost his desire to write, and practised, at
+every spare moment, his favorite avocation. It was this careful and
+patient training during his apprenticeship that finally made him the
+expert story-teller that he is. It is very interesting to any one who
+cares for the acquirement of an excellent style to note how all the
+authors contained in this text have had to work with almost a
+superhuman force to reach the heights of successful short-story
+writing.
+
+His first important publication, _Kate_, appeared in the _Southern
+Literary Messenger_ in 1859. He then joined the staff of the
+_Philadelphia Morning Post_, where he did regular newspaper work and
+contributed to the _Riverside Magazine_ and _Hearth and Home_. In 1872
+his _Stephen Skarridge's Christmas_ appeared in _Scribner's Monthly_.
+Dr. J.G. Holland, editor of _Scribner's_, was so impressed with the
+story that he made Mr. Stockton an assistant editor and persuaded him
+to move to New York. In 1873 he joined the staff of the _St. Nicholas
+Magazine_. His publication of the _Rudder Grange_ series in
+_Scribner's_ _Monthly_ in 1878 made him famous. In 1882 he resigned
+all editorial work and spent his entire time in literary composition.
+
+Mr. Stockton possessed a frail body and very little physical
+endurance. In spite of this physical handicap he was very vivacious
+and gay. He was a genial and companionable man, loved by all who knew
+him. He was very modest, even to the point of shyness, exceptionally
+sincere, and quaintly humorous. He established homes in New Jersey and
+West Virginia, where he spent the greater part of his time from 1882
+until his death in 1902.
+
+
+BIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES
+
+_Famous Authors_ (107-122), B.F. Harkness.
+
+_American Authors_ (59-73), F.W. Halsey.
+
+"Character Sketch," _Book-Buyer_, 24:355-357.
+
+"Home at Claymont," _Current Literature_, 30:221.
+
+"Sketch," _Outlook_, 70: 1000-1001,
+
+"Stockton and his Work," _Atlantic Monthly_, 87:136-138.
+
+
+CRITICISMS
+
+The writings of Frank R. Stockton are excellent representatives of the
+man himself. How closely allied writer and writings are is very well
+stated by Hamilton W. Mabie in the _Book-Buyer_ for June, 1902, "His
+talk had much of the quality of his writing; it was full of quaint
+conceits, whimsicalities, impossible suggestions offered with perfect
+gravity. He was always perfectly natural; he never attempted to live
+up to his part; in talk, at least, he never forced the note. His
+attitude toward himself was slightly tinged with humor, and he knew
+how to foil easily and pleasantly too great a pressure of praise."
+
+His tales are extravagantly impossible but extremely realistic in
+effect, filled with humorous situations and singular plots, and
+peopled with eccentric characters that afford amusement on every page.
+His most successful writing is done when he explains contrivances upon
+which his story depends. He is an original and inventive expert
+juggler who moves with careless ease to the most effective ends. His
+characters are little more than pieces of mechanism that act when he
+pulls the string. They have little emotion and even in their
+love-making they show their emotion mostly for the sake of the
+reader's amusement. His negro characters are exceptions to his general
+treatment and are true to life. He inveigles the reader into believing
+the most extravagant incidents by having a reliable witness narrate
+them.
+
+Stockton never stoops to the burlesque, cynic, or vulgar phases of
+life to secure amusement. He is grotesque and droll in his manner, and
+above all always restrained. His literary life is full of sprites and
+gnomes that frolic before young children and once before mature
+people. _The Griffin and the Minor Canon_ is a beautiful fairy story
+lifted from childhood's thought and diction into a mature realm. His
+humor is plain and simple, cool and keenly calculating. A friendly
+critic has said of one of his stories, "With a gentle, ceaseless
+murmur of amusement, and a flickering twinkle of smiles, the story
+moves steadily on in the calm triumph of its assured and unassailable
+absurdity, to its logical and indisputable impossibility." This
+observation is very largely true of all his stories.
+
+
+GENERAL REFERENCES
+
+_Frank R. Stockton_, A.T.Q. Couch.
+
+"Stockton's Method of Working," _Current Literature_, 32:495.
+
+"Criticism," _Atheneum_, 1:532.
+
+"Estimate," _Harper's Weekly_, 46:555.
+
+COLLATERAL READINGS
+
+_The Beeman of Orn, and Other Fanciful Tales_, Frank R. Stockton.
+
+_The Lady or the Tiger_, Frank R. Stockton.
+
+_Rudder Grange_, Frank R. Stockton.
+
+_A Tale of Negative Gravity_, Frank R. Stockton.
+
+_The Remarkable Wreck of the Thomas Hyde_, Frank R. Stockton.
+
+_His Wife's Deceased Sister_, Frank R. Stockton.
+
+_Legend of Sleepy Hollow_, Washington Irving.
+
+_Monsieur du Miroir_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_At the End of the Passage_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+_The Vacant Lot_, Mary Wilkins Freeman.
+
+_The Princess Pourquoi_, Margaret Sherwood.
+
+_What Was It? A Mystery_, Fitz-James O'Brien.
+
+_Wandering Willie's Tale_, Walter Scott.
+
+
+
+THE PIECE OF STRING[1]
+
+_By Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893)_
+
+
+On all the roads about Goderville the peasants and their wives were
+coming toward the town, for it was market day. The men walked at an
+easy gait, the whole body thrown forward with every movement of their
+long, crooked legs, misshapen by hard work, by the bearing down on the
+plough which at the same time causes the left shoulder to rise and the
+figure to slant; by the mowing of the grain, which makes one hold his
+knees apart in order to obtain a firm footing; by all the slow and
+laborious tasks of the fields. Their starched blue blouses, glossy as
+if varnished, adorned at the neck and wrists with a bit of white
+stitchwork, puffed out about their bony chests like balloons on the
+point of taking flight, from which protrude a head, two arms, and two
+feet.
+
+Some of them led a cow or a calf at the end of a rope. And their
+wives, walking behind the beast, lashed it with a branch still covered
+with leaves, to hasten its pace. They carried on their arms great
+baskets, from which heads of chickens or of ducks were thrust forth.
+And they walked with a shorter and quicker step than their men, their
+stiff, lean figures wrapped in scanty shawls pinned over their flat
+breasts, their heads enveloped in a white linen cloth close to the
+hair, with a cap over all.
+
+Then a _char-à-bancs[2]_ passed, drawn by a jerky-paced nag, with two
+men seated side by side shaking like jelly, and a woman behind, who
+clung to the side of the vehicle to lessen the rough jolting.
+
+On the square at Goderville there was a crowd, a medley of men and
+beasts. The horns of the cattle, the high hats, with a long, hairy
+nap, of the wealthy peasants, and the head dresses of the peasant
+women, appeared on the surface of the throng. And the sharp, shrill,
+high-pitched voices formed an incessant, uncivilized uproar, over
+which soared at times a roar of laughter from the powerful chest of a
+sturdy yokel, or the prolonged bellow of a cow fastened to the wall of
+a house.
+
+There was an all-pervading smell of the stable, of milk, of the
+dunghill, of hay, and of perspiration--that acrid, disgusting odor of
+man and beast peculiar to country people.
+
+Master Hauchecorne, of Bréauté, had just arrived at Goderville, and
+was walking toward the square, when he saw a bit of string on the
+ground. Master Hauchecorne, economical like every true Norman, thought
+that it was well to pick up everything that might be of use; and he
+stooped painfully, for he suffered with rheumatism. He took the piece
+of slender cord from the ground, and was about to roll it up
+carefully, when he saw Master Malandain, the harness-maker, standing
+in his doorway and looking at him. They had formerly had trouble on
+the subject of a halter, and had remained at odds, being both inclined
+to bear malice. Master Hauchecorne felt a sort of shame at being seen
+thus by his enemy, fumbling in the mud for a bit of string. He
+hurriedly concealed his treasure in his blouse, then in his breeches
+pocket; then he pretended to look on the ground for something else,
+which he did not find; and finally he went on toward the market, his
+head thrust forward, bent double by his pains.
+
+He lost himself at once in the slow-moving, shouting crowd, kept in a
+state of excitement by the interminable bargaining. The peasants felt
+of the cows, went away, returned, sorely perplexed, always afraid of
+being cheated, never daring to make up their minds, watching the
+vendor's eye, striving incessantly to detect the tricks of the man and
+the defect in the beast.
+
+The women, having placed their great baskets at their feet, took out
+their fowls, which lay on the ground, their legs tied together, with
+frightened eyes and scarlet combs.
+
+They listened to offers, adhered to their prices, short of speech and
+impassive of face; or else, suddenly deciding to accept the lower
+price offered, they would call out to the customer as he walked slowly
+away:--
+
+"All right, Mast' Anthime. You can have it."
+
+Then, little by little, the square became empty, and when the
+Angelus[3] struck midday those who lived too far away to go home
+betook themselves to the various inns.
+
+At Jourdain's the common room was full of customers, as the great yard
+was full of vehicles of every sort--carts, cabriolets,[4]
+_char-à-bancs_, tilburys,[5] unnamable carriages, shapeless, patched,
+with, their shafts reaching heavenward like arms, or with their noses
+in the ground and their tails in the air.
+
+The vast fireplace, full of clear flame, cast an intense heat against
+the backs of the row on the right of the table. Three spits were
+revolving, laden with chickens, pigeons, and legs of mutton; and a
+delectable odor of roast meat, and of gravy dripping from the browned
+skin, came forth from the hearth, stirred the guests to merriment, and
+made their mouths water.
+
+All the aristocracy of the plough ate there, at Mast' Jourdain's, the
+innkeeper and horse trader--a shrewd rascal who had money.
+
+The dishes passed and were soon emptied, like the jugs of yellow
+cider. Every one told of his affairs, his sales and his purchases.
+They inquired about the crops. The weather was good for green stuffs,
+but a little wet for wheat.
+
+Suddenly a drum rolled in the yard, in front of the house. In an
+instant everybody was on his feet, save a few indifferent ones; and
+they all ran to the door and windows with their mouths still full and
+napkins in hand.
+
+Having finished his long tattoo, the public crier shouted in a jerky
+voice, making his pauses in the wrong places:--
+
+"The people of Goderville, and all those present at the market are
+informed that between--nine and ten o'clock this morning on the
+Beuzeville--road, a black leather wallet was lost, containing five
+hundred--francs, and business papers. The finder is requested to carry
+it to--the mayor's at once, or to Master Fortuné Huelbrèque of
+Manneville. A reward of twenty francs will be paid."
+
+Then he went away. They heard once more in the distance the muffled
+roll of the drum and the indistinct voice of the crier.
+
+Then they began to talk about the incident, reckoning Master
+Houlbrèque's chance of finding or not finding his wallet.
+
+And the meal went on.
+
+They were finishing their coffee when the corporal of gendarmes
+appeared in the doorway.
+
+He inquired:--
+
+"Is Master Hauchecorne of Bréauté here?"
+
+Master Hauchecorne, who was seated at the farther end of the table,
+answered:--
+
+"Here I am."
+
+And the corporal added:--
+
+"Master Hauchecorne, will you be kind enough to go to the mayor's
+office with me? Monsieur the mayor would like to speak to you."
+
+The peasant, surprised and disturbed, drank his _petit verre[6]_ at
+one swallow, rose, and even more bent than in the morning, for the
+first steps after each rest were particularly painful, he started off,
+repeating:--
+
+"Here I am, here I am."
+
+And he followed the brigadier.
+
+The mayor was waiting for him, seated in his arm-chair. He was the
+local notary, a stout, solemn-faced man, given to pompous speeches.
+
+"Master Hauchecorne," he said, "you were seen this morning, on the
+Beuzeville road, to pick up the wallet lost by Master Huelbrèque of
+Manneville."
+
+The rustic, dumfounded, stared at the mayor, already alarmed by this
+suspicion which had fallen upon him, although he failed to understand
+it.
+
+"I, I--I picked up that wallet?"
+
+"Yes, you."
+
+"On my word of honor, I didn't even so much as see it."
+
+"You were seen."
+
+"They saw me, me? Who was it saw me?"
+
+"Monsieur Malandain, the harness-maker."
+
+Thereupon the old man remembered and understood; and flushing with
+anger, he cried:--
+
+"Ah! he saw me, did he, that sneak? He saw me pick up this string,
+look, m'sieu' mayor."
+
+And fumbling in the depths of his pocket, he produced the little piece
+of cord.
+
+But the mayor was incredulous and shook his head.
+
+"You won't make me believe, Master Hauchecorne, that Monsieur
+Malandain, who is a man deserving of credit, mistook this string for a
+wallet."
+
+The peasant, in a rage, raised his hand, spit to one side to pledge
+his honor, and said:--
+
+"It's God's own truth, the sacred truth, all the same, m'sieu' mayor.
+I say it again, by my soul and my salvation."
+
+"After picking it up," rejoined the mayor, "you hunted a long while in
+the mud, to see if some piece of money hadn't fallen out."
+
+The good man was suffocated with wrath and fear.
+
+"If any one can tell--if any one can tell lies like that to ruin an
+honest man! If any one can say--"
+
+To no purpose did he protest; he was not believed.
+
+He was confronted with Monsieur Malandain, who repeated and maintained
+his declaration. They insulted each other for a whole hour. At his own
+request, Master Hauchecorne was searched. They found nothing on him.
+At last the mayor, being sorely perplexed, discharged him, but warned
+him that he proposed to inform the prosecuting attorney's office and
+to ask for orders.
+
+The news had spread. On leaving the mayor's office, the old man was
+surrounded and questioned with serious or bantering curiosity, in
+which, however, there was no trace of indignation. And he began to
+tell the story of the string. They did not believe him. They laughed.
+
+He went his way, stopping his acquaintances, repeating again and again
+his story and his protestations, showing his pockets turned inside
+out, to prove that he had nothing.
+
+They said to him:--
+
+"You old rogue, _va!_"
+
+And he lost his temper, lashing himself into a rage, feverish with
+excitement, desperate because he was not believed, at a loss what to
+do, and still telling his story. Night came. He must needs go home. He
+started with three neighbors, to whom he pointed out the place where
+he had picked up the bit of string: and all the way he talked of his
+misadventure.
+
+During the evening he made a circuit of the village of Bréauté, in
+order to tell everybody about it. He found none but incredulous
+listeners.
+
+He was ill over it all night.
+
+The next afternoon, about one o'clock, Marius Paumelle, a farmhand
+employed by Master Breton, a farmer of Ymauville, restored the wallet
+and its contents to Master Huelbrèque of Manneville.
+
+The man claimed that he had found it on the road; but, being unable to
+read, had carried it home and given it to his employer.
+
+The news soon became known in the neighborhood; Master Hauchecorne was
+informed of it. He started out again at once, and began to tell his
+story, now made complete by the dénouement. He was triumphant.
+
+"What made me feel bad," he said, "wasn't so much the thing itself,
+you understand, but the lying. There's nothing hurts you so much as
+being blamed for lying."
+
+All day long he talked of his adventure; he told it on the roads to
+people who passed; at the wine-shop to people who were drinking; and
+after church on the following Sunday. He even stopped strangers to
+tell them about it. His mind was at rest now, and yet something
+embarrassed him, although he could not say just what it was. People
+seemed to laugh while they listened to him. They did not seem
+convinced. He felt as if remarks were made behind his back.
+
+On Tuesday of the next week, he went to market at Goderville, impelled
+solely by the longing to tell his story.
+
+Malandain, standing in his doorway, began to laugh when he saw him
+coming. Why?
+
+He accosted a farmer from Criquetot, who did not let him finish, but
+poked him in the pit of his stomach, and shouted in his face: "Go on,
+you old fox!" Then he turned on his heel.
+
+Master Hauchecorne was speechless, and more and more disturbed. Why
+did he call him "old fox"?
+
+When he was seated at the table, in Jourdain's Inn, he set about
+explaining the affair once more.
+
+A horse-trader from Montvilliers called out to him:--
+
+"Nonsense, nonsense, you old dodger! I know all about your string!"
+
+"But they've found the wallet!" faltered Hauchecorne.
+
+"None of that, old boy; there's one who finds it, and there's one who
+carries it back. I don't know just how you did it, but I understand
+you."
+
+The peasant was fairly stunned. He understood at last. He was accused
+of having sent the wallet back by a confederate, an accomplice.
+
+He tried to protest. The whole table began to laugh.
+
+He could not finish his dinner, but left the inn amid a chorus of
+jeers.
+
+He returned home, shamefaced and indignant, suffocated by wrath, by
+confusion, and all the more cast down because, with his Norman
+cunning, he was quite capable of doing the thing with which he was
+charged, and even of boasting of it as a shrewd trick. He had a
+confused idea that his innocence was impossible to establish, his
+craftiness being so well known. And he was cut to the heart by the
+injustice of the suspicion.
+
+Thereupon he began once more to tell of the adventure, making the
+story longer each day, adding each time new arguments, more forcible
+protestations, more solemn oaths, which he devised and prepared in his
+hours of solitude, his mind being wholly engrossed by the story of the
+string. The more complicated his defence and the more subtle his
+reasoning, the less he was believed.
+
+"Those are a liar's reasons," people said behind his back.
+
+He realized it: he gnawed his nails, and exhausted himself in vain
+efforts.
+
+He grew perceptibly thinner.
+
+Now the jokers asked him to tell the story of "The Piece of String"
+for their amusement, as a soldier who has seen service is asked to
+tell about his battles. His mind, attacked at its source, grew
+feebler.
+
+Late in December he took to his bed.
+
+In the first days of January he died, and in his delirium, of the
+death agony, he protested his innocence, repeating:
+
+"A little piece of string--a little piece of string--see, here it is,
+m'sieu' mayor."
+
+
+NOTES
+
+[1] _The Piece of String_ was written in 1884. Reprinted from _Little
+French Masterpieces_, by permission of the publishers, _G.P. Putnam's
+Sons_.
+
+[2] 34:5 char-à-bancs. A pleasure car.
+
+[3] 35:26 Angelus. A bell tolled at morning, noon, and night,
+according to the Roman Catholic Church custom, to indicate the time of
+the service of song and recitation in memory of the Virgin Mary. The
+name is taken from the first word of the recitation.
+
+[4] 35:30 cabriolet. A cab. Originally a light, one-horse pleasure
+carriage with two seats.
+
+[5] 35:30 tilbury. An old form of gig, seating two persons.
+
+[6] 37:20 petit verre. Little glass.
+
+
+BIOGRAPHY
+
+Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant, French novelist, dramatist, and
+short-story writer, was born in 1850. Until he was thirteen years old
+he had no teacher except his mother, who personally superintended the
+training of her two sons. Life for the two boys, during these early
+years, was free and happy, Guy was a strong and robust Norman,
+overflowing with animal spirits and exuberant with the joy of youthful
+life.
+
+When thirteen years of age Maupassant attended the seminary at Yvetot,
+where he found school life irksome and a most distasteful contrast to
+his former free life. Later he became a student in the Lycée in Rouen.
+His experience as a student here was very pleasant, and he easily
+acquired his degree. In 1870 he was appointed to a clerkship in the
+Navy, and a little later to a more lucrative position in the
+Department of Public Instruction. His work in these two positions
+suffered very materially because of his negligence and daily practice
+in writing verses and essays for Flaubert, the most careful literary
+technicist in the history of literature, to criticize. For seven years
+Maupassant served this severe task-master, always writing, receiving
+criticisms, and publishing nothing.
+
+Immediately after the publication of his first story Maupassant was
+hailed as a finished master artist. From 1880 to 1890 he published six
+novels, sixteen volumes of short-stories, three volumes of travels,
+and many newspaper articles. This gigantic task was performed only
+because of his regular habits and splendid physique. He wrote
+regularly every morning from seven o'clock until noon, and at night
+always wrote out notes on the impressions from his experiences of the
+day.
+
+Maupassant was a natural artist deeply in love with the technique of
+his work. He did not write for money, although he believed that a
+writer should have plenty of this world's possessions, nor did he
+write for art's sake. In fact he avoided talking on the subject of
+writing and to all appearances seemed to despise his profession. He
+wrote because the restless, immitigable force within him compelled him
+to work like a slave. He thought little of morals, or religion, but
+was enamored with physical life and its insolvable problems. He was,
+above everything else, a truthful man. Sometimes his subjects are
+unclean and he treats them as such, but, if his subject is clean, his
+treatment is undefiled.
+
+In 1887 the shadows of insanity began to creep athwart his life. Even
+in 1884 he seemed to feel a premonition of his coming catastrophe when
+he wrote: "I am afraid of the walls, of the furniture, of the familiar
+objects which seem to me to assume a kind of animal life. Above all, I
+fear the horrible confusion of my thought, of my reason escaping,
+entangled and scattered by an invisible and mysterious anguish." The
+dreaded disease developed until, in 1890, he had to suspend his
+writing. In 1892 he became wholly insane and had to be committed to an
+insane asylum where he died in a padded cell one year later.
+
+
+BIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES
+
+_The New International Encyclopaedia_.
+
+_Encyclopaedia Britannica_.
+
+_Bookman_, 25:290-294_.
+
+
+CRITICISMS
+
+Maupassant's short-stories are generally conceded to be the best in
+French literature. He handles his materials with great care, and his
+descriptions of scenes and characters are unequalled. In his first
+writings he seems impassive to the point of frigidity. He is a
+recorder who sets down exactly the life before him. This is one of the
+lessons he learned from Flaubert. He was not interested in what a
+character thought or felt, but he noted and fondled every action of
+his characters.
+
+He loved life, despite the lack of solutions. At times his fondness
+for mere physical life leads him to the brutal stage. In his story,
+_On the Water_, he gives a confession of a purely sensual man: "How
+gladly, at times, I would think no more, feel no more, live the life
+of a brute, in a warm, bright country, in a yellow country, without
+crude and brutal verdure, in one of those Eastern countries in which
+one falls asleep without concern, is active and has no cares, loves
+and has no distress, and is scarcely aware that one is going on
+living!"
+
+Maupassant was a keen observer, possessed an excellent but not lofty
+imagination, and never asserted a philosophy of life. His writings are
+all interesting, terse, precise, and truthful, but lack the glow that
+comes with a sympathetic and spiritual outlook on life. Zola says of
+him: ".... a Latin of good, clear, solid head, a maker of beautiful
+sentences shining like gold...." He chooses a single incident, a few
+characteristics and then moulds them into a compact story. Nine-tenths
+of his stories deal with selfishness and hypocrisy.
+
+Tolstoi wrote: "Maupassant possessed genius, that gift of attention
+revealing in the objects and facts of life properties not perceived by
+others; he possessed a beautiful form of expression, uttering clearly,
+simply, and with charm what he wished to say; and he possessed also
+the merit of sincerity, without which a work of art produces no
+effect; that is he did not merely pretend to love or hate, but did
+indeed love or hate what he described."
+
+
+GENERAL REFERENCES
+
+_Inquiries and Opinions_, Brander Matthews.
+
+"A Criticism," _Outlook_, 88:973-976.
+
+"Greatest Short Story Writer that Ever Lived," _Current Literature_,
+42:636-638.
+
+
+COLLATERAL READINGS
+
+_Happiness_ (Odd Number), Guy de Maupassant.
+
+_The Wolf_, Guy de Maupassant.
+
+_La Mère Sauvage_, Guy de Maupassant.
+
+_The Confession_, Guy de Maupassant.
+
+_On the Journey_, Guy de Maupassant.
+
+_The Beggar_, Guy de Maupassant.
+
+_A Ghost_, Guy de Maupassant.
+
+_Little Soldier_, Guy de Maupassant.
+
+_The Wreck_, Guy de Maupassant.
+
+_The Necklace_, Guy de Maupassant.
+
+_A Note of Scarlet_, Ruth Stuart.
+
+_Expiation_, Octave Thanet.
+
+_Fagan_, Rowland Thomas.
+
+_La Grande Bretêche_ ("Jessup and Canby"), Honoré de Balzac.
+
+
+
+THE MAN WHO WAS[1]
+
+_By Rudyard Kipling (1865-   )_
+
+
+Let it be clearly understood that the Russian is a delightful person
+till he tucks his shirt in. As an Oriental he is charming. It is only
+when he insists upon being treated as the most easterly of Western
+peoples, instead of the most westerly of Easterns, that he becomes a
+racial anomaly[2] extremely difficult to handle. The host never knows
+which side of his nature is going to turn up next.
+
+Dirkovitch was a Russian--a Russian of the Russians, as he said--who
+appeared to get his bread by serving the czar as an officer in a
+Cossack regiment, and corresponding for a Russian newspaper with a
+name that was never twice the same. He was a handsome young Oriental,
+with a taste for wandering through unexplored portions of the earth,
+and he arrived in India from nowhere in particular. At least no living
+man could ascertain whether it was by way of Balkh, Budukhshan,
+Chitral, Beloochistan, Nepaul, or anywhere else. The Indian
+government, being in an unusually affable mood, gave orders that he
+was to be civilly treated, and shown everything that was to be seen;
+so he drifted, talking bad English and worse French, from one city to
+another till he forgathered with her Majesty's White Hussars[3] in the
+city of Peshawur,[4] which stands at the mouth of that narrow
+sword-cut in the hills that men call the Khyber Pass. He was
+undoubtedly an officer, and he was decorated, after the manner of the
+Russians, with little enameled crosses, and he could talk, and (though
+this has nothing to do with his merits) he had been given up as a
+hopeless task or case by the Black Tyrones[5], who, individually and
+collectively, with hot whisky and honey, mulled brandy and mixed
+spirits of all kinds, had striven in all hospitality to make him
+drunk. And when the Black Tyrones, who are exclusively Irish, fail to
+disturb the peace of head of a foreigner, that foreigner is certain to
+be a superior man. This was the argument of the Black Tyrones, but
+they were ever an unruly and self-opinionated regiment, and they
+allowed junior subalterns of four years' service to choose their
+wines. The spirits were always purchased by the colonel and a
+committee of majors. And a regiment that would so behave may be
+respected but cannot be loved.
+
+The White Hussars were as conscientious in choosing their wine as in
+charging the enemy. There was a brandy that had been purchased by a
+cultured colonel a few years after the battle of Waterloo. It has been
+maturing ever since, and it was a marvelous brandy at the purchasing.
+The memory of that liquor would cause men to weep as they lay dying in
+the teak forests of upper Burmah[6] or the slime of the Irrawaddy[7].
+And there was a port which was notable; and there was a champagne of
+an obscure brand, which always came to mess without any labels,
+because the White Hussars wished none to know where the source of
+supply might be found. The officer on whose head the champagne
+choosing lay was forbidden the use of tobacco for six weeks previous
+to sampling.
+
+This particularity of detail is necessary to emphasize the fact that
+that champagne, that port, and above all, that brandy--the green and
+yellow and white liqueurs did not count--was placed at the absolute
+disposition of Dirkovitch, and he enjoyed himself hugely--even more
+than among the Black Tyrones.
+
+But he remained distressingly European through it all. The White
+Hussars were--"My dear true friends," "Fellow-soldiers glorious," and
+"Brothers inseparable." He would unburden himself by the hour on the
+glorious future that awaited the combined arms of England and Russia
+when their hearts and their territories should run side by side, and
+the great mission of civilizing Asia should begin. That was
+unsatisfactory, because Asia is not going to be civilized after the
+methods of the West. There is too much Asia, and she is too old. You
+cannot reform a lady of many lovers, and Asia has been insatiable in
+her flirtations aforetime. She will never attend Sunday school, or
+learn to vote save with swords for tickets.
+
+Dirkovitch knew this as well as any one else, but it suited him to
+talk special-correspondently and to make himself as genial as he
+could. Now and then he volunteered a little, a very little,
+information about his own Sotnia[8] of Cossacks, left apparently to
+look after themselves somewhere at the back of beyond. He had done
+rough work in Central Asia, and had seen rather more help-yourself
+fighting than most men of his years. But he was careful never to
+betray his superiority, and more than careful to praise on all
+occasions the appearance, drill, uniform, and organization of her
+Majesty's White Hussars. And, indeed, they were a regiment to be
+admired. When Mrs. Durgan, widow of the late Sir John Durgan, arrived
+in their station, and after a short time had been proposed to by every
+single man at mess, she put the public sentiment very neatly when she
+explained that they were all so nice that unless she could marry them
+all, including the colonel and some majors who were already married,
+she was not going to content herself with one of them. Wherefore she
+wedded a little man in a rifle regiment--being by nature
+contradictious--and the White Hussars were going to wear crape on
+their arms, but compromised by attending the wedding in full force,
+and lining the aisle with unutterable reproach. She had jilted them
+all--from Basset-Holmer, the senior captain, to Little Mildred, the
+last subaltern, and he could have given her four thousand a year and a
+title. He was a viscount, and on his arrival the mess had said he had
+better go into the Guards, because they were all sons of large grocers
+and small clothiers in the Hussars, but Mildred begged very hard to be
+allowed to stay, and behaved so prettily that he was forgiven, and
+became a man, which is much more important than being any sort of
+viscount.
+
+The only persons who did not share the general regard for the White
+Hussars were a few thousand gentlemen of Jewish extraction who lived
+across the border, and answered to the name of Pathan. They had only
+met the regiment officially, and for something less than twenty
+minutes, but the interview, which was complicated with many
+casualties, had filled them with prejudice. They even called the White
+Hussars "children of the devil," and sons of persons whom it would be
+perfectly impossible to meet in decent society. Yet they were not
+above making their aversion fill their money belts. The regiment
+possessed carbines, beautiful Martini-Henri carbines, that would cob a
+bullet into an enemy's camp at one thousand yards, and were even
+handier than the long rifle. Therefore they were coveted all along the
+border, and since demand inevitably breeds supply, they were supplied
+at the risk of life and limb for exactly their weight in coined
+silver--seven and one half pounds of rupees[9], or sixteen pounds and
+a few shillings each, reckoning the rupee at par. They were stolen at
+night by snaky-haired thieves that crawled on their stomachs under the
+nose of the sentries; they disappeared mysteriously from armracks; and
+in the hot weather, when all the doors and windows were open, they
+vanished like puffs of their own smoke. The border people desired them
+first for their own family vendettas[10] and then for contingencies.
+But in the long cold nights of the Northern Indian winter they were
+stolen most extensively. The traffic of murder was liveliest among the
+hills at that season, and prices ruled high. The regimental guards
+were first doubled and then trebled. A trooper does not much care if
+he loses a weapon--government must make it good--but he deeply resents
+the loss of his sleep. The regiment grew very angry, and one
+night-thief who managed to limp away bears the visible marks of their
+anger upon him to this hour. That incident stopped the burglaries for
+a time, and the guards were reduced accordingly, and the regiment
+devoted itself to polo with unexpected results, for it beat by two
+goals to one that very terrible polo corps the Lushkar Light Horse,
+though the latter had four ponies apiece for a short hour's fight, as
+well as a native officer who played like a lambent flame across the
+ground.
+
+Then they gave a dinner to celebrate the event. The Lushkar team came,
+and Dirkovitch came, in the fullest full uniform of Cossack officer,
+which is as full as a dressing-gown, and was introduced to the
+Lushkars, and opened his eyes as he regarded them. They were lighter
+men than the Hussars, and they carried themselves with the swing that
+is the peculiar right of the Punjab[11] frontier force and all
+irregular horse. Like everything else in the service, it has to be
+learned; but unlike many things, it is never forgotten, and remains on
+the body till death.
+
+The great beam-roofed mess room of the White Hussars was a sight to be
+remembered. All the mess plate was on the long table--the same table
+that had served up the bodies of five dead officers in a forgotten
+fight long and long ago--the dingy, battered standards faced the door
+of entrance, clumps of winter roses lay between the silver
+candlesticks, the portraits of eminent officers deceased looked down
+on their successors from between the heads of sambhur[12],
+nilghai[13], maikhor, and, pride of all the mess, two grinning
+snow-leopards that had cost Basset-Holmer four months' leave that he
+might have spent in England instead of on the road to Thibet, and the
+daily risk of his life on ledge, snowslide, and glassy grass slope.
+
+The servants, in spotless white muslin and the crest of their
+regiments on the brow of their turbans, waited behind their masters,
+who were clad in the scarlet and gold of the White Hussars and the
+cream and silver of the Lushkar Light Horse. Dirkovitch's dull green
+uniform was the only dark spot at the board, but his big onyx eyes
+made up for it. He was fraternizing effusively with the captain of the
+Lushkar team, who was wondering how many of Dirkovitch's Cossacks his
+own long, lathy down-countrymen could account for in a fair charge.
+But one does not speak of these things openly.
+
+The talk rose higher and higher, and the regimental band played
+between the courses, as is the immemorial custom, till all tongues
+ceased for a moment with the removal of the dinner slips and the First
+Toast of Obligation, when the colonel, rising, said, "Mr. Vice, the
+Queen," and Little Mildred from the bottom of the table answered, "The
+Queen, God bless her!" and the big spurs clanked as the big men heaved
+themselves up and drank the Queen, upon whose pay they were falsely
+supposed to pay their mess bills. That sacrament of the mess never
+grows old, and never ceases to bring a lump into the throat of the
+listener wherever he be, by land or by sea. Dirkovitch rose with his
+"brothers glorious," but he could not understand. No one but an
+officer can understand what the toast means; and the bulk have more
+sentiment than comprehension. It all comes to the same in the end, as
+the enemy said when he was wriggling on a lance point. Immediately
+after the little silence that follows on the ceremony there entered
+the native officer who had played for the Lushkar team. He could not
+of course eat with the alien, but he came in at dessert, all six feet
+of him, with the blue-and-silver turban atop, and the big black
+top-boots below. The mess rose joyously as he thrust forward the hilt
+of his saber, in token of fealty, for the colonel of the White Hussars
+to touch, and dropped into a vacant chair amid shouts of "_Rung ho_!
+Hira Singh!" (which being translated means "Go in and win!"). "Did I
+whack you over the knee, old man?" "Ressaidar Sahib, what the devil
+made you play that kicking pig of a pony in the last ten minutes?"
+"Shabash, Ressaidar Sahib!" Then the voice of the colonel, "The health
+of Ressaidar Hira Singh!"
+
+After the shouting had died away, Hira Singh rose to reply, for he was
+the cadet of a royal house, the son of a king's son, and knew what was
+due on these occasions. Thus he spoke in the vernacular:--
+
+"Colonel Sahib and officers of this regiment, much honor have you done
+me. This will I remember. We came down from afar to play you; but we
+were beaten." ("No fault of yours, Ressaidar Sahib. Played on our own
+ground, y' know. Your ponies were cramped from the railway. Don't
+apologize.") "Therefore perhaps we will come again if it be so
+ordained." ("Hear! Hear, hear, indeed! Bravo! Hsh!") "Then we will
+play you afresh" ("Happy to meet you"), "till there are left no feet
+upon our ponies. Thus far for sport." He dropped one hand on his sword
+hilt and his eye wandered to Dirkovitch lolling back in his chair.
+"But if by the will of God there arises any other game which is not
+the polo game, then be assured, Colonel Sahib and officers, that we
+shall play it out side by side, though _they_"--again his eye sought
+Dirkovitch--"though _they_, I say, have fifty ponies to our one
+horse." And with a deep-mouthed _Rung ho_! that rang like a musket
+butt on flagstones, he sat down amid shoutings.
+
+Dirkovitch, who had devoted himself steadily to the brandy--the
+terrible brandy aforementioned--did not understand, nor did the
+expurgated[14] translations offered to him at all convey the point.
+Decidedly the native officer's was the speech of the evening, and the
+clamor might have continued to the dawn had it not been broken by the
+noise of a shot without that sent every man feeling at his defenseless
+left side. It is notable that Dirkovitch "reached back," after the
+American fashion--a gesture that set the captain of the Lushkar team
+wondering how Cossack officers were armed at mess. Then there was a
+scuffle, and a yell of pain.
+
+"Carbine stealing again!" said the adjutant, calmly sinking back in
+his chair. "This comes of reducing the guards. I hope the sentries
+have killed him."
+
+The feet of armed men pounded on the veranda flags, and it sounded as
+though something was being dragged.
+
+"Why don't they put him in the cells till the morning?" said the
+colonel, testily. "See if they've damaged him, sergeant."
+
+The mess-sergeant fled out into the darkness, and returned with two
+troopers and a corporal, all very much perplexed.
+
+"Caught a man stealin' carbines, sir," said the corporal.
+
+"Leastways 'e was crawling toward the barricks, sir, past the
+main-road sentries; an' the sentry 'e says, sir--"
+
+The limp heap of rags upheld by the three men groaned. Never was seen
+so destitute and demoralized an Afghan. He was turbanless, shoeless,
+caked with dirt, and all but dead with rough handling. Hira Singh
+started slightly at the sound of the man's pain. Dirkovitch took
+another liqueur glass of brandy.
+
+"_What_ does the sentry say?" said the colonel.
+
+"Sez he speaks English, sir," said the corporal.
+
+"So you brought him into mess instead of handing him over to the
+sergeant! If he spoke all the tongues of the Pentecost you've no
+business--"
+
+Again the bundle groaned and muttered. Little Mildred had risen from
+his place to inspect. He jumped back as though he had been shot.
+
+"Perhaps it would be better, sir, to send the men away," said he to
+the colonel, for he was a much-privileged subaltern. He put his arms
+round the rag-bound horror as he spoke, and dropped him into a chair.
+It may not have been explained that the littleness of Mildred lay in
+his being six feet four, and big in proportion. The corporal, seeing
+that an officer was disposed to look after the capture, and that the
+colonel's eye was beginning to blaze, promptly removed himself and his
+men. The mess was left alone with the carbine thief, who laid his head
+on the table and wept bitterly, hopelessly, and inconsolably, as
+little children weep.
+
+Hira Singh leaped to his feet with a long-drawn vernacular oath
+"Colonel Sahib," said he, "that man is no Afghan, for they weep '_Ai!
+Ai_!' Nor is he of Hindustan, for they weep,'_Oh! Ho_!' He weeps after
+the fashion of the white men, who say '_Ow! Ow_!'"
+
+"Now where the dickens did you get that knowledge, Hira Singh?" said
+the captain of the Lushkar team.
+
+"Hear him!" said Hira Singh, simply, pointing at the crumpled figure
+that wept as though it would never cease.
+
+"He said, 'My God!'" said Little Mildred, "I heard him say it."
+
+The colonel and the mess room looked at the man in silence. It is a
+horrible thing to hear a man cry. A woman can sob from the top of her
+palate, or her lips, or anywhere else, but a man cries from his
+diaphragm, and it rends him to pieces. Also, the exhibition causes the
+throat of the on-looker to close at the top.
+
+"Poor devil!" said the colonel, coughing tremendously, "We ought to
+send him to hospital. He's been manhandled."
+
+Now the adjutant loved his rifles. They were to him as his
+grandchildren--the men standing in the first place. He grunted
+rebelliously: "I can understand an Afghan stealing, because he's made
+that way. But I can't understand his crying. That makes it worse."
+
+The brandy must have affected Dirkovitch, for he lay back in his chair
+and stared at the ceiling. There was nothing special in the ceiling
+beyond a shadow as of a huge black coffin. Owing to some peculiarity
+in the construction of the mess room this shadow was always thrown
+when the candles were lighted. It never disturbed the digestion of the
+White Hussars. They were, in rather proud of it.
+
+"Is he going to cry all night?" said the colonel, "or are we supposed
+to sit up with Little Mildred's guest until he feels better?"
+
+The man in the chair threw up his head and stared at the mess.
+Outside, the wheels of the first of those bidden to the festivities
+crunched the roadway.
+
+"Oh, my God!" said the man in the chair, and every soul in the mess
+rose to his feet. Then the Lushkar captain did a deed for which he
+ought to have been given the Victoria Cross--distinguished gallantry
+in a fight against overwhelming curiosity. He picked up his team with
+his eyes as the hostess picks up the ladies at the opportune moment,
+and pausing only by the colonel's chair to say, "This isn't _our_
+affair, you know, sir," led the team into the veranda and the gardens.
+Hira Singh was the last, and he looked at Dirkovitch as he moved. But
+Dirkovitch had departed into a brandy paradise of his own. His lips
+moved without sound, and he was studying the coffin on the ceiling.
+
+"White--white all over," said Basset-Holmer, the adjutant. "What a
+pernicious renegade[15] he must be! I wonder where he came from?"
+
+The colonel shook the man gently by the arm, and "Who are you?" said
+he.
+
+There was no answer. The man stared round the mess room and smiled in
+the colonel's face. Little Mildred, who was always more of a woman
+than a man till "Boot and saddle" was sounded, repeated the question
+in a voice that would have drawn confidences from a geyser. The man
+only smiled. Dirkovitch, at the far end of the table, slid gently from
+his chair to the floor, No son of Adam, in this present imperfect
+world, can mix the Hussars' champagne with the Hussars' brandy by five
+and eight glasses of each without remembering the pit whence he has
+been digged and descending thither. The band began to play the tune
+with which the White Hussars, from the date of their formation,
+preface all their functions. They would sooner be disbanded than
+abandon that tune. It is a part of their system. The man straightened
+himself in his chair and drummed on the table with his fingers.
+
+"I don't see why we should entertain lunatics," said the colonel;
+"call a guard and send him off to the cells. We'll look into the
+business in the morning. Give him a glass of wine first, though."
+
+Little Mildred filled a sherry glass with the brandy and thrust it
+over to the man. He drank, and the tune rose louder, and he
+straightened himself yet more. Then he put out his long-taloned hands
+to a piece of plate opposite and fingered it lovingly. There was a
+mystery connected with that piece of plate in the shape of a spring,
+which converted what was a seven-branched candlestick, three springs
+each side and one on the middle, into a sort of wheel-spoke
+candelabrum[16]. He found the spring, pressed it, and laughed weakly.
+He rose from his chair and inspected a picture on the wall, then moved
+on to another picture, the mess watching him without a word.
+
+When he came to the mantelpiece he shook his head and seemed
+distressed. A piece of plate representing a mounted hussar in full
+uniform caught his eye. He pointed to it, and then to the mantelpiece,
+with inquiry in his eyes.
+
+"What is it--oh, what is it?" said Little Mildred. Then, as a mother
+might speak to a child, "That is a horse--yes, a horse."
+
+Very slowly came the answer, in a thick, passionless guttural: "Yes,
+I--have seen. But--where is _the_ horse?"
+
+You could have heard the hearts of the mess beating as the men drew
+back to give the stranger full room in his wanderings. There was no
+question of calling the guard.
+
+Again he spoke, very slowly, "Where is _our_ horse?"
+
+There is no saying what happened after that. There is but one horse in
+the White Hussars, and his portrait hangs outside the door of the mess
+room. He is the piebald drum-horse the king of the regimental band,
+that served the regiment for seven-and-thirty years, and in the end
+was shot for old age. Half the mess tore the thing down from its place
+and thrust it into the man's hands. He placed it above the
+mantelpiece; it clattered on the ledge, as his poor hands dropped it,
+and he staggered toward the bottom of the table, falling into
+Mildred's chair. The band began to play the "River of Years" waltz,
+and the laughter from the gardens came into the tobacco-scented mess
+room. But nobody, even the youngest, was thinking of waltzes. They all
+spoke to one another something after this fashion: "The drum-horse
+hasn't hung over the mantelpiece since '67." "How does he know?"
+"Mildred, go and speak to him again." "Colonel, what are you going to
+do?" "Oh, dry up, and give the poor devil a chance to pull himself
+together!" "It isn't possible, anyhow. The man's a lunatic."
+
+Little Mildred stood at the colonel's side talking into his ear. "Will
+you be good enough to take your seats, please, gentlemen?" he said,
+and the mess dropped into the chairs.
+
+Only Dirkovitch's seat, next to Little Mildred's, was blank, and
+Little Mildred himself had found Hira Singh's place. The wide-eyed
+mess sergeant filled the glasses in dead silence. Once more the
+colonel rose, but his hand shook, and the port spilled on the table as
+he looked straight at the man in Little Mildred's chair and said,
+hoarsely, "Mr. Vice, the Queen." There was a little pause, but the man
+sprang to his feet and answered, without hesitation, "The Queen, God
+bless her!" and as he emptied the thin glass he snapped the shank
+between his fingers.
+
+Long and long ago, when the Empress of India was a young woman, and
+there were no unclean ideals in the land, it was the custom in a few
+messes to drink the Queen's toast in broken glass, to the huge delight
+of the mess contractors. The custom is now dead, because there is
+nothing to break anything for, except now and again the word of a
+government, and that has been broken already.
+
+"That settles it," said the colonel, with a gasp. "He's not a
+sergeant. What in the world is he?"
+
+The entire mess echoed the word, and the volley of questions would
+have scared any man. Small wonder that the ragged, filthy invader
+could only smile and shake his head.
+
+From under the table, calm and smiling urbanely[17], rose Dirkovitch,
+who had been roused from healthful slumber by feet upon his body. By
+the side of the man he rose, and the man shrieked and groveled at his
+feet. It was a horrible sight, coming so swiftly upon the pride and
+glory of the toast that had brought the strayed wits together.
+
+Dirkovitch made no offer to raise him, but Little Mildred heaved him
+up in an instant. It is not good that a gentleman who can answer to
+the Queen's toast should lie at the feet of a subaltern of Cossacks.
+
+The hasty action tore the wretch's upper clothing nearly to the waist,
+and his body was seamed with dry black scars. There is only one weapon
+in the world that cuts in parallel lines, and it is neither the cane
+nor the cat. Dirkovitch saw the marks, and the pupils of his eyes
+dilated--also, his face changed. He said something that sounded like
+"Shto ve takete"; and the man, fawning, answered, "Chetyre."
+
+"What's that?" said everybody together.
+
+"His number. That is number four, you know." Dirkovitch spoke very
+thickly.
+
+"What has a Queen's officer to do with a qualified number?" said the
+colonel, and there rose an unpleasant growl round the table.
+
+"How can I tell?" said the affable Oriental, with a sweet smile. "He
+is a--how you have it?--escape--runaway, from over there."
+
+He nodded toward the darkness of the night.
+
+"Speak to him, if he'll answer you, and speak to him gently," said
+Little Mildred, settling the man in a chair. It seemed most improper
+to all present that Dirkovitch. should sip brandy as he talked in
+purring, spitting Russian to the creature who answered so feebly and
+with such evident dread. But since Dirkovitch appeared to understand,
+no man said a word. They breathed heavily, leaning forward, in the
+long gaps of the conversation. The next time that they have no
+engagements on hand the White Hussars intend to go to St. Petersburg
+and learn Russian.
+
+"He does not know how many years ago," said Dirkovitch, facing the
+mess, "but he says it was very long ago, in a war, I think that there
+was an accident. He says he was of this glorious and distinguished
+regiment in the war."
+
+"The rolls! The rolls! Holmer, get the rolls!" said Little Mildred,
+and the adjutant dashed off bareheaded to the orderly room where the
+rolls of the regiment were kept. He returned just in time to hear
+Dirkovitch conclude, "Therefore I am most sorry to say there was an
+accident, which would have been, reparable if he had apologized to our
+colonel, whom he had insulted."
+
+Another growl, which the colonel tried to beat down. The mess was in
+no mood to weigh insults to Russian colonels just then.
+
+"He does not remember, but I think that there was an accident, and so
+he was not exchanged among the prisoners, but he was sent to another
+place--how do you say?--the country. _So_, he says, he came here. He
+does not know how he came. Eh? He _was_ at Chepany[18]"--the man
+caught the word, nodded, and shivered--"at Zhigansk[19] and
+Irkutsk[20]. I cannot understand how he escaped. He says, too, that he
+was in the forests for many years, but how many years he has
+forgotten--that with many things. It was an accident; done because he
+did not apologise to our colonel. Ah!"
+
+Instead of echoing Dirkovitch's sigh of regret, it is sad to record
+that the White Hussars livelily exhibited unchristian delight and
+other emotions, hardly restrained by their sense of hospitality.
+Holmer flung the frayed and yellow regimental rolls on the table, and
+the men flung themselves atop of these.
+
+"Steady! Fifty-six--fifty-five--fifty-four," said Holmer. "Here we
+are. 'Lieutenant Austin Limmason--_missing_.' That was before
+Sebastopol[21]. What an infernal shame! Insulted one of their
+colonels, and was quietly shipped off. Thirty years of his life wiped
+out."
+
+"But he never apologized. Said he'd see him----first," chorussed the
+mess.
+
+"Poor devil! I suppose he never had the chance afterward. How did he
+come here?" said the colonel.
+
+The dingy heap in the chair could give no answer.
+
+"Do you know who you are?"
+
+It laughed weakly.
+
+"Do you know that you are Limmason--Lieutenant Limmason, of the White
+Hussars?"
+
+Swift as a shot came the answer, in a slightly surprised tone, "Yes,
+I'm Limmason, of course." The light died out in his eyes, and he
+collapsed afresh, watching every motion of Dirkovitch with terror. A
+flight from Siberia may fix a few elementary facts in the mind, but it
+does not lead to continuity of thought. The man could not explain how,
+like a homing pigeon, he had found his way to his own old mess again.
+Of what he had suffered or seen he knew nothing. He cringed before
+Dirkovitch as instinctively as he had pressed the spring of the
+candlestick, sought the picture of the drum-horse, and answered to the
+Queen's toast. The rest was a blank that the dreaded Russian tongue
+could only in part remove. His head bowed on his breast, and he
+giggled and cowered alternately.
+
+The devil that lived in the brandy prompted Dirkovitch at this
+extremely inopportune moment to make a speech. He rose, swaying
+slightly, gripped the table edge, while his eyes glowed like opals,
+and began:--"Fellow-soldiers glorious--true friends and hospitables.
+It was an accident, and deplorable--most deplorable." Here he smiled
+sweetly all round the mess. "But you will think of this little, little
+thing. So little, is it not? The czar! Posh! I slap my fingers--I snap
+my fingers at him. Do I believe in him? No! But the Slav who has done
+nothing, _him_ I believe. Seventy--how much?--millions that have done
+nothing--not one thing. Napoleon was an episode." He banged a hand on
+the table. "Hear you, old peoples, we have done nothing in the
+world--out here. All our work is to do: and it shall be done, old
+peoples. Get away!" He waved his hand imperiously, and pointed to the
+man. "You see him. He is not good to see. He was just one little--oh,
+so little--accident, that no one remembered. Now he is _That_. So will
+you be, brother-soldiers so brave--so will you be. But you will never
+come back. You will all go where he has gone, or"--he pointed to the
+great coffin shadow on the ceiling, and muttering, "Seventy
+millions--get away, you old people," fell asleep.
+
+"Sweet, and to the point," said Little Mildred. "What's the use of
+getting wroth? Let's make the poor devil comfortable."
+
+But that was a matter suddenly and swiftly taken from the loving hands
+of the White Hussars. The lieutenant had returned only to go away
+again three days later, when the wail of the "Dead March" and the
+tramp of the squadrons told the wondering station, that saw no gap in
+the table, an officer of the regiment had resigned his new-found
+commission.
+
+And Dirkovitch--bland, supple, and always genial--went away too by a
+night train. Little Mildred and another saw him off, for he was the
+guest of the mess, and even had he smitten the colonel with the open
+hand the law of the mess allowed no relaxation of hospitality.
+
+"Good-by, Dirkovitch, and a pleasant journey," said Little Mildred.
+
+"_Au revoir[22]_ my true friends," said the Russian.
+
+"Indeed! But we thought you were going home?"
+
+"Yes; but I will come again. My friends, is that road shut?" He
+pointed to where the north star burned over the Khyber Pass.
+
+"By Jove! I forgot. Of course. Happy to meet you, old man, any time
+you like. Got everything you want,--cheroots, ice, bedding? That's all
+right. Well, _au revoir_, Dirkovitch."
+
+"Um," said the other man, as the tail-lights of the train grew small.
+"Of--all--the--unmitigated[23]--"
+
+Little Mildred answered nothing, but watched the north star, and
+hummed a selection from a recent burlesque that had much delighted the
+White Hussars. It ran:--
+
+     "I'm sorry for Mister Bluebeard,
+     I'm sorry to cause him pain;
+     But a terrible spree there's sure to be
+     When he comes back again."
+
+
+NOTES
+
+[1] _The Man Who Was_ was written in 1889.
+
+[2] 46:6 anomaly. Deviation from type.
+
+[3] 47:1 Hussars. Light-horse troopers armed with sabre and carbine.
+
+[4] 47:1 Peshawur. City in British India.
+
+[5] 47:7 Tyrones. From a county in Ireland by this name.
+
+[6] 47:26 Burmah. In southeastern Asia. Part of the British Empire.
+
+[7] 47:27 Irrawaddy. Chief river of Burma.
+
+[8] 48:27 Sotnia. Company of the Cossacks.
+
+[9] 50:14 rupee. Indian coin worth about forty-eight cents.
+
+[10] 50:21 vendettas. Private blood-feuds.
+
+[11] 51:14 Punjab. Country of five rivers, tributaries of the Indus.
+
+[12] 81:26 Sambhur. A rusine deer found in India.
+
+[13] 51:26 nilghai. Antelope with hind legs shorter than its
+fore-legs.
+
+[14] 54:9 expurgated. Purified.
+
+[15] 57:23 renegade. One who deserts his faith.
+
+[16] 58:26 candelabrum. Stand supporting several lamps.
+
+[17] 61:3 urbanely. Politely.
+
+[18] 63:2 Chepany. Town in Siberia.
+
+[19] 63:4 Zhigansk. Town in Siberia.
+
+[20] 63:4 Irkutsk. Province and city in Siberia.
+
+[21] 63:17 Sebastopol. Seaport in Russia.
+
+[22] 65:26 Au revoir. Till we meet again.
+
+[23] 66:6 unmitigated. As bad as can be.
+
+
+BIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES
+
+_Essays on Modern Novelists_, William Lyon Phelps.
+
+_A Kipling Primer_, Knowles.
+
+_Rudyard Kipling_, Richard Le Galliene.
+
+"Kipling to French Eyes," _Bookman_, 26: 584.
+
+"Life of Kipling," _Encyclopaedia Britannica.
+
+"Life of Kipling," _The Universal Encyclopedia_.
+
+
+BIOGRAPHY
+
+Rudyard Kipling, the most vigorous, versatile, and highly endowed of
+the present-day writers of fiction, was born in Bombay, India,
+December 30, 1865. His place of birth and extensive travelling make
+him more Anglo-Saxon than British. His father was for many years
+connected with the schools of art at Bombay and Lahore in India. His
+mother, Alice MacDonald, was the daughter of a Methodist clergyman.
+
+Kipling was brought to England when he was five years old to be
+educated. While in college at Westward Ho he edited the _College
+Chronicle_. For this paper he contributed regularly, poetry and
+stories. After his school days and on his return to India, he served
+on the editorial staff of the Lahore _Civil and Military Gazette_ from
+1882 to 1887, and was assistant editor of the _Pioneer_ at Allahabad
+from 1887 to 1889.
+
+Kipling has travelled extensively. He is at home in India, China,
+Japan, Africa, Australia, England, and America. The odd part about his
+realistic observations, however, is that his notes, whether written
+about California or India, are often repudiated by the people whom he
+has visited. After visiting England and the United States in a vain
+effort to find a publisher for his writings, he returned to India and
+published in the _Pioneer_ his _American Notes_, which were
+immediately reproduced in book form in New York in 1891.
+
+He married Miss Balestier of New York in 1892. They settled at
+Brattleboro, Vermont, immediately after their marriage and lived there
+until 1896. Kipling revisited the United States in 1899. While on this
+trip he suffered a severe attack of pneumonia which brought out a
+demonstration of interest from the American people that clearly showed
+their appreciation of him as a man and a writer.
+
+
+CRITICISMS
+
+Kipling is journalistic in all his writings. Oftentimes his material
+is very thin, flippant, and sensational, but he always is interesting,
+for he possesses the expert reporter's unerring judgment for choosing
+the essentials of his situation, character, or description, that catch
+and hold the reader's attention. In his earlier writings, like _Plain
+Tales from the Hills_ or _The Jungle Books_, the radical racial
+differences between his characters and readers, and the background of
+primitive, mysterious India caught the reading world and instantly
+established Kipling's fame.
+
+His technique is brilliant, his wit keen, and his energy of the bold
+and dashing military type. This audacious energy leads him very often
+into sprawling situations, a worship of imperialism, and reckless
+statements concerning moral and spiritual laws. Unlike Bret Harte, who
+was in many respects one of Kipling's ideals, he leaves his bad and
+coarse characters disreputable to the end. This is due in a large
+measure to the lack of warmth and light in his writings. In
+contradiction to this type of his works his _William the Conqueror_
+and _An Habitation Enforced_ are filled with a gentle-human sympathy
+that causes us to forget and forgive any vulgarity he may have used in
+his more primitive and coarse characters. Even Kipling partisans must
+sometimes wish that Kipling's vision were not so dimmed by the British
+flag and that he might forget for a time the British soldier he loves
+so ardently.
+
+His writings since 1899 are much more mechanical than his earlier
+works. He seems, at times, to resort to the orator's superficial
+tricks in his attempts to attract readers. The _Athenaeum_, a friendly
+organ, says of his later work: "In his new part--the missionary of
+Empire--Mr. Kipling is living the strenuous life. He has frankly
+abandoned story telling, and is using his complete and powerful armory
+in the interests of patriotic zeal."
+
+Whatever may be the final judgment of the world concerning Kipling's
+claim to literary genius, the young student may rest assured that
+there is no one in England who can compare with this strenuous and
+versatile writer. He is original and powerful, interesting and
+realistic. He is a lover of the men who earn their bread by the sweat
+of their faces and a despiser of "flannelled fools." He lacks the
+day-dreams of Stevenson and preaches from every housetop the gospel of
+virile, acting morality. Many of his readers have criticised adversely
+his spiritual teachings, because of the furious energy with which he
+denounces an apathetic religion and eulogizes the person who works
+with all his might, day after day, for the highest he knows and never
+fears the day of death and judgment.
+
+
+GENERAL REFERENCES
+
+_The Book of the Short Story_, Alexander Jessup.
+
+_The Short Story in English_, Henry Seidel Canby.
+
+_Bibliography of Kipling's Works_, Eugene P, Saxton.
+
+"Contradictory Elements in Rudyard Kipling," _Current Literature_, 44:
+274.
+
+"Where Kipling Stands," _Bookman_, 29: 120-122.
+
+"Are there two Kiplings?" _Cosmopolitan_, 31: 653-660.
+
+"Literary Style of Kipling," _Lippincott_, 73: 99-103.
+
+
+COLLATERAL READINGS
+
+_The Man Who Would be King_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+_William the Conqueror_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+_Phantom Rickshaw_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+_The Finest Story in the World_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+_Under the Deodars_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+_An Habitation Enforced_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+_Plain Tales from the Hills_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+_The Light that Failed_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+_Wee Willie Winkie_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+_Baa Baa Black Sheep_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+_Captains Courageous_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+_The Jungle Books_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+_They_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+_The Brushwood Boy_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+_Christ in Flanders_, Honoré de Balzac.
+
+_The Old Gentleman of the Black Stock_, Thomas Nelson Page.
+
+_A New England Nun_, Mary Wilkins Freeman.
+
+_Outcasts of Poker Flat_, Bret Harte.
+
+_The Siege of Berlin_, Alphonse Dadoed.
+
+_The Prisoner of Assiout_, Grant Allen.
+
+_A Terribly Strange Bed_, Wilkie Collins.
+
+_The Prisoners_, Guy de Maupassant.
+
+_Mr. Isaacs_, F. Marion Crawford.
+
+_Where Love Is, There God Is Also_, Leo Tolstoi.
+
+
+
+THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER [1]
+
+_By Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)_
+
+     Son coeur est un luth suspendu;
+     Sitôt qu'on le touche il résonne.
+                                     --De Béranger.[2]
+
+During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of
+the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had
+been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of
+country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew
+on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. I know not how it
+was; but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of
+insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I say insufferable; for the
+feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurable, because
+poetic, sentiment, with which the mind usually receives even the
+sternest natural images of the desolate or terrible. I looked upon the
+scene before me--upon the mere house, and the simple landscape
+features of the domain--upon the bleak walls--upon the vacant eye-like
+windows--a few rank sedges--and upon a few white trunks of decayed
+trees--with an utter depression of soul which I can compare to no
+earthly sensation more properly than to the after-dream of the
+reveller upon opium--the bitter lapse into every-day life--the hideous
+dropping off of the veil. There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening
+of the heart--an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of
+the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime. What was
+it--I paused to think--what was it that so unnerved me in the
+contemplation of the House of Usher? It was a mystery all insoluble;
+nor could I grapple with the shadowy fancies that crowded upon me as I
+pondered. I was forced to fall back upon the unsatisfactory conclusion
+that while, beyond doubt, there _are_ combinations of very simple
+natural objects which have the power of thus affecting us, still the
+analysis of this power lies among considerations beyond our depth. It
+was possible, I reflected, that a mere different arrangement of the
+particulars of the scene, of the details of the picture, would be
+sufficient to modify, or perhaps to annihilate its capacity for
+sorrowful impression; and, acting upon this idea, I reined my horse to
+the precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn[3] that lay in
+unruffled lustre by the dwelling, and gazed down--but with a shudder
+even more thrilling than before--upon the remodelled and inverted
+images of the gray sedge, and the ghastly tree stems, and the vacant
+and eye-like windows.
+
+Nevertheless, in this mansion of gloom I now proposed to myself a
+sojourn of some weeks. Its proprietor, Roderick Usher, had been one of
+my boon companions in boyhood; but many years had elapsed since our
+last meeting. A letter, however, had lately reached me in a distant
+part of the country--a letter from him--which, in its wildly
+importunate nature, had admitted of no other than a personal reply.
+The Ms. gave evidence of nervous agitation. The writer spoke of acute
+bodily illness, of a mental disorder which oppressed him, and of an
+earnest desire to see me, as his best, and indeed his only, personal
+friend, with a view of attempting, by the cheerfulness of my society,
+some alleviation of his malady. It was the manner in which all this,
+and much more, was said--it was the apparent _heart_ that went with
+his request--which allowed me no room for hesitation; and I
+accordingly obeyed forthwith what I still considered a very singular
+summons.
+
+Although, as boys, we had been even intimate associates, yet I really
+knew little of my friend. His reserve had been always excessive and
+habitual. I was aware, however, that his very ancient family had been
+noted, time out of mind, for a peculiar sensibility of temperament,
+displaying itself, through long ages, in many works of exalted art,
+and manifested, of late, in repeated deeds of munificent, yet
+unobtrusive, charity, as well as in a passionate devotion to the
+intricacies, perhaps even more than to the orthodox and easily
+recognizable beauties, of musical science. I had learned, too, the
+very remarkable fact that the stem of the Usher race, all time-honored
+as it was, had put forth, at no period, any enduring branch; in other
+words, that the entire family lay in the direct line of descent, and
+had always, with very trifling and very temporary variation, so lain.
+It was this deficiency, I considered, while running over in thought
+the perfect keeping of the character of the premises with the
+accredited character of the people, and while speculating upon the
+possible influence which the one, in the long lapse of centuries,
+might have exercised upon the other--it was this deficiency, perhaps,
+of collateral issue, and the consequent undeviating transmission, from
+sire to son, of the patrimony with the name, which had, at length, so
+identified the two as to merge the original title of the estate in the
+quaint and equivocal appellation of the _House of Usher_--an
+appellation which seemed to include, in the minds of the peasantry who
+used it, both the family and the family mansion.
+
+I have said that the sole effect of my somewhat childish experiment of
+looking down within the tarn had been to deepen the first singular
+impression. There can be no doubt that the consciousness of the rapid
+increase of my superstition--for why should I not so term it?--served
+mainly to accelerate the increase itself. Such, I have long known, is
+the paradoxical law of all sentiments having terror as a basis. And it
+might have been for this reason only, that, when I again uplifted my
+eyes to the house itself, from its image in the pool, there grew in my
+mind a strange fancy--a fancy so ridiculous, indeed, that I but
+mention it to show the vivid force of the sensations which oppressed
+me. I had so worked upon my imagination as really to believe that
+about the whole mansion and domain there hung an atmosphere peculiar
+to themselves and their immediate vicinity--an atmosphere which had no
+affinity with the air of heaven, but which had reeked up from the
+decayed trees, and the gray wall, and the silent tarn--a pestilent and
+mystic vapor, dull, sluggish, faintly discernible, and leaden-hued.
+
+Shaking off from my spirit what _must_ have been a dream, I scanned
+more narrowly the real aspect of the building. Its principal feature
+seemed to be that of an excessive antiquity. The discoloration of ages
+had been great. Minute fungi overspread the whole exterior, hanging in
+a fine, tangled web-work from the eaves. Yet all this was apart from
+any extraordinary dilapidation. No portion of the masonry had fallen;
+and there appeared to be a wild inconsistency between its still
+perfect adaptation of parts, and the crumbling condition of the
+individual stones. In this there was much that reminded me of the
+specious totality of old woodwork which has rotted for years in some
+neglected vault, with no disturbance from the breath of the external
+air. Beyond this indication of extensive decay, however, the fabric
+gave little token of instability. Perhaps the eye of a scrutinizing
+observer might have discovered a barely perceptible fissure, which,
+extending from the roof of the building in front, made its way down
+the wall in a zigzag direction, until it became lost in the sullen
+waters of the tarn.
+
+Noticing these things, I rode over a short causeway to the house. A
+servant in waiting took my horse, and I entered the Gothic archway of
+the hall. A valet, of stealthy step, thence conducted me, in silence,
+through many dark and intricate passages in my progress to the
+_studio_ of his master. Much that I encountered on the way
+contributed, I know not how, to heighten the vague sentiments of which
+I have already spoken. While the objects around me--while the carvings
+of the ceilings, the sombre tapestries of the walls, the ebon
+blackness of the floors, and the phantasmagoric armorial trophies
+which rattled as I strode, were but matters to which, or to such as
+which, I had been accustomed from my infancy--while I hesitated not to
+acknowledge how familiar was all this--I still wondered to find how
+unfamiliar were the fancies which ordinary images were stirring up. On
+one of the staircases I met the physician of the family. His
+countenance, I thought, wore a mingled expression of low cunning and
+perplexity. He accosted me with trepidation and passed on. The valet
+now threw open a door and ushered me into the presence of his master.
+
+The room in which I found myself was very large and lofty. The windows
+were long, narrow, and pointed, and at so vast a distance from the
+black oaken floor as to be altogether inaccessible from within. Feeble
+gleams of encrimsoned light made their way through the trellised
+panes, and served to render sufficiently distinct the more prominent
+objects around; the eye, however, struggled in vain to reach the
+remoter angles of the chamber, or the recesses of the vaulted and
+fretted ceiling. Dark draperies hung upon the walls. The general
+furniture was profuse, comfortless, antique, and tattered. Many books
+and musical instruments lay scattered about, but failed to give any
+vitality to the scene. I felt that I breathed an atmosphere of sorrow.
+An air of stern, deep, and irredeemable gloom hung over and pervaded
+all.
+
+Upon my entrance, Usher arose from a sofa on which he had been lying
+at full length, and greeted me with, a vivacious warmth which had much
+in it, I at first thought, of an overdone cordiality--of the
+constrained effort of the _ennuyé_[4] man of the world. A glance,
+however, at his countenance convinced me of his perfect sincerity. We
+sat down; and for some moments, while he spoke not. I gazed upon him
+with a feeling half of pity, half of awe. Surely, man had never before
+so terribly altered, in so brief a period, as had Roderick Usher! It
+was with difficulty that I could bring myself to admit the identity of
+the wan being before me with the companion of my early boyhood. Yet
+the character of his face had been at all times remarkable. A
+cadaverousness of complexion; an eye large, liquid, and luminous
+beyond comparison; lips somewhat thin and very pallid, but of a
+surpassingly beautiful curve; a nose of a delicate Hebrew model, but
+with a breadth of nostril unusual in similar formations; a finely
+moulded chin, speaking, in its want of prominence, of a want of moral
+energy; hair of a more than web-like softness and tenuity; these
+features, with an inordinate expansion above the regions of the
+temple, made up altogether a countenance not easily to be forgotten.
+And now in the mere exaggeration of the prevailing character of these
+features, and of the expression they were wont to convey, lay so much
+of change that I doubted to whom I spoke. The now ghastly pallor of
+the skin, and the now miraculous lustre of the eye, above all things
+startled, and even awed me. The silken hair, too, had been suffered to
+grow all unheeded, and as, in its wild gossamer texture, it floated
+rather than fell about the face, I could not, even with effort,
+connect its arabesque expression with any idea of simple humanity.
+
+In the manner of my friend I was at once struck with an
+incoherence--an inconsistency; and I soon found this to arise from a
+series of feeble and futile struggles to overcome an habitual
+trepidancy, an excessive nervous agitation. For something of this
+nature I had indeed been prepared, no less by his letter than by
+reminiscences of certain boyish traits, and by conclusions deduced
+from his peculiar physical conformation and temperament. His action
+was alternately vivacious and sullen. His voice varied rapidly from a
+tremulous indecision (when the animal spirits seemed utterly in
+abeyance) to that species of energetic concision--that abrupt,
+weighty, unhurried, and hollow-sounding enunciation--that leaden,
+self-balanced, and perfectly modulated guttural utterance, which may
+be observed in the lost drunkard, or the irreclaimable eater of opium,
+during the periods of his most intense excitement.
+
+It was thus that he spoke of the object of my visit, of his earnest
+desire to see me, and of the solace he expected me to afford him. He
+entered, at some length, into what he conceived to be the nature of
+his malady. It was, he said, a constitutional and a family evil, and
+one for which he despaired to find a remedy--a mere nervous affection,
+he immediately added, which would undoubtedly soon pass off. It
+displayed itself in a host of unnatural sensations. Some of these, as
+he detailed them, interested and bewildered me; although, perhaps, the
+terms and the general manner of the narration had their weight. He
+suffered much from a morbid acuteness of the senses. The most insipid
+food was alone endurable; he could wear only garments of certain
+texture; the odors of all flowers were oppressive; his eyes were
+tortured by even a faint light; and there were but peculiar sounds,
+and these from stringed instruments, which did not inspire him with
+horror.
+
+To an anomalous species of terror I found him a bounden[5] slave. "I
+shall perish," said he, "I _must_ perish, in this deplorable folly.
+Thus, thus, and not otherwise, shall I be lost. I dread the events of
+the future, not in themselves, but in their results. I shudder at the
+thought of any, even the most trivial, incident, which may operate
+upon this intolerable agitation of soul. I have, indeed, no abhorrence
+of danger, except in its absolute effect--in terror. In this
+unnerved--in this pitiable condition--I feel that the period will
+sooner or later arrive when I must abandon life and reason together,
+in some struggle with the grim phantasm, FEAR."
+
+I learned, moreover, at intervals, and through broken and equivocal
+hints, another singular feature of his mental condition. He was
+enchained by certain superstitious impressions in regard to the
+dwelling which he tenanted, and whence, for many years, he had never
+ventured forth--in regard to an influence whose supposititious force
+was conveyed in terms too shadowy here to be restated--an influence
+which some peculiarities in the mere form and substance of his family
+mansion, had, by dint of long sufferance, he said, obtained over his
+spirit--an effect which the _physique_ of the gray walls and turrets,
+and of the dim tarn into which they all looked down, had, at length,
+brought about upon the _morale_ of his existence.
+
+He admitted, however, although with hesitation, that much of the
+peculiar gloom which thus afflicted him could be traced to a more
+natural and far more palpable origin--to the severe and long-continued
+illness--indeed to the evidently approaching dissolution--of a
+tenderly beloved sister, his sole companion for long years, his last
+and only relative on earth. "Her decease," he said, with a bitterness
+which I can never forget, "would leave him (him the hopeless and the
+frail) the last of the ancient race of the Ushers." While he spoke,
+the lady Madeline (for so was she called) passed slowly through a
+remote portion of the apartment, and, without having noticed my
+presence, disappeared. I regarded her with an utter astonishment not
+unmingled with dread[6]; and yet I found it impossible to account for
+such feelings. A sensation of stupor oppressed me, as my eyes followed
+her retreating steps. When a door, at length, closed upon her, my
+glance sought instinctively and eagerly the countenance of the
+brother; but he had buried his face in his hands, and I could only
+perceive that a far more than ordinary wanness had overspread the
+emaciated fingers through which trickled many passionate tears.
+
+The disease of the lady Madeline had long baffled the skill of her
+physicians. A settled apathy, a gradual wasting away of the person,
+and frequent although transient affections of a partially cataleptical
+character, were the unusual diagnosis. Hitherto she had steadily borne
+up against the pressure of her malady, and had not betaken herself
+finally to bed; but on the closing in of the evening of my arrival at
+the house, she succumbed (as her brother told me at night with
+inexpressible agitation) to the prostrating power of the destroyer;
+and I learned that the glimpse I had obtained of her person would thus
+probably be the last I should obtain--that the lady, at least while
+living, would be seen by me no more.
+
+For several days ensuing her name was unmentioned by either Usher or
+myself; and during this period I was busied in earnest endeavors to
+alleviate the melancholy of my friend. We painted and read together;
+or I listened, as if in a dream, to the wild improvisations[7] of his
+speaking guitar. And thus, as a closer and still closer intimacy
+admitted me more unreservedly into the recesses of his spirit, the
+more bitterly did I perceive the futility of all attempt at cheering a
+mind from which darkness, as if an inherent positive quality, poured
+forth upon all objects of the moral and physical universe, in one
+unceasing radiation of gloom.
+
+I shall ever bear about me a memory of the many solemn hours I thus
+spent alone with the master of the House of Usher. Yet I should fail
+in any attempt to convey an idea of the exact character of the
+studies, or of the occupations in which he involved me, or led me the
+way. An excited and highly distempered ideality threw a sulphurous
+luster over all. His long, improvised dirges will ring forever in my
+ears. Among other things, I hold painfully in mind a certain singular
+perversion and amplification of the wild air of the last waltz of von
+Weber[8]. From the paintings over which his elaborate fancy brooded,
+and which grew, touch by touch, into vaguenesses at which I shuddered
+the more thrillingly because I shuddered knowing not why,--from these
+paintings (vivid as their images now are before, me) I would in vain
+endeavor to educe more than a small portion which should lie within
+the compass of merely written words. By the utter simplicity, by the
+nakedness of his designs, he arrested and overawed attention. If ever
+mortal painted an idea, that mortal was Roderick Usher. For me, at
+least, in the circumstances then surrounding me, there arose out of
+the pure abstractions which the hypochondriac contrived to throw, upon
+his canvas, an intensity of intolerable awe, no shadow of which felt I
+ever yet in the contemplation of the certainly glowing yet too
+concrete reveries of Fuseli.[9]
+
+One of the phantasmagoric conceptions of my friend, partaking not so
+rigidly of the spirit of abstraction may be shadowed forth, although
+feebly, in words. A small picture presented the interior of an
+immensely long and rectangular vault or tunnel, with low walls,
+smooth, white, and without interruption or device. Certain accessory
+points of the design served well to convey the idea that this
+excavation lay at an exceeding depth below the surface of the earth.
+No outlet was observed in any portion of its vast extent, and no torch
+or other artificial source of light was discernible; yet a flood of
+intense rays rolled throughout, and bathed the whole in a ghastly and
+inappropriate splendor.
+
+I have just spoken of that morbid condition of the auditory nerve
+which rendered all music intolerable to the sufferer, with the
+exception of certain effects of stringed, instruments. It was,
+perhaps, the narrow limits to which he thus confined himself upon the
+guitar, which gave birth, in great measure, to the fantastic character
+of his performances. But the fervid _facility_ of his _impromptus_
+could not be so accounted for. They must have been, and were, in the
+notes, as well as in the words of his wild fantasias (for he not
+unfrequently accompanied himself with rimed verbal improvisations),
+the result of that intense mental collectedness and concentration to
+which I have previously alluded as observable only in particular
+moments of the highest artificial excitement. The words of one of
+these rhapsodies I have easily remembered. I was, perhaps, the more
+forcibly impressed with it, as he gave it, because, in the under or
+mystic current of its meaning, I fancied that I perceived, and for the
+first time, a full consciousness on the part of Usher, of the
+tottering of his lofty reason upon her throne. The verses, which were
+entitled "The Haunted Palace,"[10] ran very nearly, if not accurately,
+thus:--
+
+I
+
+     In the greenest of our valleys,
+       By good angels tenanted,
+     Once a fair and stately palace--
+       Radiant palace--reared its head.
+     In the monarch Thought's dominion--
+       It stood there!
+     Never seraph spread a pinion
+       Over fabric half so fair.
+
+II
+
+     Banners yellow, glorious, golden,
+       On its roof did float and flow;
+     (This--all this--was in the olden
+       Time long ago)
+     And every gentle air that dallied,
+       In that sweet day,
+     Along the ramparts plumed and pallid,
+       A wingèd odor went away.
+
+III
+
+     Wanderers in that happy valley
+       Through two luminous windows saw
+     Spirits moving musically
+       To a lute's well-tunèd law,
+     Round about a throne, where sitting
+       (Porphyrogene!)[11]
+     In state his glory well befitting,
+       The ruler of the realm was seen.
+
+IV
+
+     And all with pearl and ruby glowing
+       Was the fair palace door,
+     Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing,
+       And sparkling evermore,
+     A troop of Echoes whose sweet duty
+       Was but to sing,
+     In voices of surpassing beauty,
+       The wit and wisdom of their king.
+
+V
+
+     But evil things, in robes of sorrow,
+       Assailed the monarch's high estate
+     (Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow
+       Shall dawn upon him, desolate!);
+     And, round about his home, the glory
+       That blushed and bloomed
+     Is but a dim-remembered story
+        Of the old time entombed.
+
+VI
+
+     And travelers now within that valley,
+       Through the red-litten windows, see
+     Vast forms that move fantastically
+       To a discordant melody;
+     While, like a rapid ghastly river,
+       Through the pale door,
+     A hideous throng rush out forever,
+       And laugh--but smile no more.
+
+I well remember that suggestions arising from this ballad led us into
+a train of thought wherein there became manifest an opinion of Usher's
+which I mention not so much on account of its novelty (for other
+men[12] have thought thus) as on account of the pertinacity with which
+he maintained it. This opinion, in its general form, was that of the
+sentience of all vegetable things. But, in his disordered fancy, the
+idea had assumed a more daring character, and trespassed, under
+certain conditions, upon the kingdom of inorganization. I lack words
+to express the full extent or the earnest _abandon_ of his persuasion.
+The belief, however, was connected (as I have previously hinted) with
+the gray stones of the home of his forefathers. The conditions of the
+sentience had been here, he imagined, fulfilled in the method of
+collocation of these stones--in the order of their arrangement, as
+well as in that of the many _fungi_ which overspread them, and of the
+decayed trees which stood around--above all, in the long-undisturbed
+endurance of this arrangement, and in its reduplication in the still
+waters of the tarn. Its evidence--the evidence of the sentience--was
+to be seen, he said (and I here started as he spoke), in the gradual
+yet certain condensation of an atmosphere of their own about the
+waters and the walls. The result was discoverable, he added, in that
+silent, yet importunate and terrible influence which for centuries had
+molded the destinies of his family, and which made _him_ what I now
+saw him--what he was. Such opinions need no comment, and I will make
+none.
+
+Our books--the books which, for years, had formed no small portion of
+the mental existence of the invalid--were, as might be supposed, in
+strict keeping with this character of phantasm. We pored together over
+such works as the _Ververt et Chartreuse_[13] of Gresset; the
+_Belphegor_[14] of Machiavelli; the _Heaven and Hell_[15] of
+Swedenborg; the _Subterranean Voyage of Nicholas Klimm_[16] by
+Holberg; the _Chiromancy_[17] of Robert Flud, of Jean D'lndaginé, and
+of De la Chambre[18]; the _Journey into the Blue Distance_ of
+Tieck[19]; and the _City of the Sun_[20] of Campanella. One favorite
+volume was a small octavo edition of the _Directorium
+Inquisitorium_[21] by the Dominican Eymeric de Cironne; and there were
+passages in _Pomponius Mela_,[22] about the old African Satyrs and
+Oegipans,[23] over which Usher would sit dreaming for hours. His chief
+delight, however, was found in the perusal of an exceedingly rare and
+curious book in quarto Gothic--the manual of a forgotten church--the
+_Vigiliae Mortuorum secundum Chorum Ecclesiae Maguntinae_.[24]
+
+I could not help thinking of the wild ritual of this work, and of its
+probable influence upon the hypochondriac, when, one evening, having
+informed me abruptly that the lady Madeline was no more, he stated his
+intention of preserving her corpse for a fortnight (previously to its
+final interment) in one of the numerous vaults within the main walls
+of the building. The worldly reason, however, assigned for this
+singular proceeding, was one which I did not feel at liberty to
+dispute. The brother had been led to his resolution, so he told me, by
+consideration of the unusual character of the malady of the deceased,
+of certain obtrusive and eager inquiries on the part of her medical
+men, and of the remote and exposed situation of the burial ground of
+the family, I will not deny that when I called to mind the sinister
+countenance of the person whom I met upon the staircase, on the day of
+my arrival at the house, I had no desire to oppose what I regarded as
+at best but a harmless, and by no means an unnatural precaution.
+
+At the request of Usher, I personally aided him in the arrangements
+for the temporary entombment. The body having been encoffined, we two
+alone bore it to its rest. The vault in which we placed it (and which
+had been so long unopened that our torches, half smothered in its
+oppressive atmosphere, gave us little opportunity for investigation)
+was small, damp, and entirely without means of admission for light;
+lying, at great depth, immediately beneath that portion of the
+building in which was my own sleeping apartment. It had been used,
+apparently, in remote feudal times, for the worst purposes of a
+donjon-keep, and in later days, as a place of deposit for powder, or
+some other highly combustible substance, as a portion of its floor,
+and the whole interior of a long archway through which we reached it,
+were carefully sheathed with copper. The door, of massive iron, had
+been also similarly protected. Its immense weight caused an unusually
+sharp grating sound as it moved upon its hinges.
+
+Having deposited our mournful burden upon tressels within this region
+of horror, we partially turned aside the yet unscrewed lid of the
+coffin, and looked upon the face of the tenant. A striking similitude
+between the brother and sister now first arrested my attention; and
+Usher, divining, perhaps, my thoughts, murmured out some few words
+from which I learned that the deceased and himself had been twins, and
+that sympathies of a scarcely intelligible nature had always existed
+between them. Our glances, however, rested not long upon the dead--for
+we could not regard her unawed. The disease which had thus entombed
+the lady in the maturity of youth, had left, as usual in all maladies
+of a strictly cataleptical character, the mockery of a faint blush
+upon the bosom and the face, and that suspiciously lingering smile
+upon the lip which is so terrible in death. We replaced and screwed
+down the lid, and having secured the door of iron, made our way, with
+toil, into the scarcely less gloomy apartments of the upper portion of
+the house.
+
+And now, some days of bitter grief having elapsed, an observable
+change came over the features of the mental disorder of my friend. His
+ordinary manner had vanished. His ordinary occupations were neglected
+or forgotten. He roamed from chamber to chamber with hurried, unequal,
+and objectless step. The pallor of his countenance had assumed, if
+possible, a more ghastly line--but the luminousness of his eye had
+utterly gone out. The once occasional huskiness of his tone was heard
+no more; and a tremulous quaver, as if of extreme terror, habitually
+characterized his utterance. There were times, indeed, when I thought
+his unceasingly agitated mind was laboring with some oppressive
+secret, to divulge which he struggled for the necessary courage. At
+times, again, I was obliged to resolve all into the mere inexplicable
+vagaries of madness; for I beheld him gazing upon vacancy for long
+hours, in an attitude of the profoundest attention, as if listening to
+some imaginary sound. It was no wonder that his condition
+terrified--that it infected me. I felt creeping upon me, by slow yet
+certain degrees, the wild influence of his own fantastic yet
+impressive superstitions.
+
+It was, especially, upon retiring to bed late in the night of the
+seventh or eighth day after the placing of the lady Madeline within
+the donjon, that I experienced the full power of such feelings. Sleep
+came not near my couch, while the hours waned and waned away, I
+struggled to reason off the nervousness which had dominion over me. I
+endeavored to believe that much, if not all of what I felt, was due to
+the bewildering influence of the gloomy furniture of the room--of the
+dark and tattered draperies, which, tortured into motion by the breath
+of a rising tempest, swayed fitfully to and fro upon the walls, and
+rustled uneasily about the decorations of the bed. But my efforts were
+fruitless. An irrepressible tremor gradually pervaded my frame; and,
+at length, there sat upon my very heart an incubus of utterly
+causeless alarm. Shaking this off with a gasp and a struggle, I
+uplifted myself upon the pillows, and peering earnestly within the
+intense darkness of the chamber, hearkened--I know not why, except
+that an instinctive spirit prompted me--to certain low and indefinite
+sounds which came, through the pauses of the storm, at long intervals,
+I knew not whence. Overpowered by an intense sentiment of horror,
+unaccountable yet unendurable, I threw on my clothes with haste (for I
+felt that I should sleep no more during the night), and endeavored to
+arouse myself from the pitiable condition into which I had fallen, by
+pacing rapidly to and fro through the apartment.
+
+I had taken but few turns in this manner, when a light step on an
+adjoining staircase arrested my attention. I presently recognized it
+as that of Usher. In an instant afterward he rapped, with a gentle
+touch, at my door, and entered, bearing a lamp. His countenance was,
+as usual, cadaverously wan--but, moreover, there was a species of mad
+hilarity in his eyes--and evidently restrained hysteria in his whole
+demeanor. His air appalled me--but anything was preferable to the
+solitude which I had so long endured, and I even welcomed his presence
+as a relief.
+
+"And you have not seen it?" he said abruptly, after having stared
+about him for some moments in silence--"you have not then seen
+it?--but stay! you shall." Thus speaking, and having carefully shaded
+his lamp, he hurried to one of the casements, and threw it freely open
+to the storm.
+
+The impetuous fury of the entering gust nearly lifted us from our
+feet. It was, indeed, a tempestuous yet sternly beautiful night, and
+one wildly singular in its terror and its beauty. A whirlwind had
+apparently collected its force in our vicinity; for there were
+frequent and violent alterations in the direction of the wind; and the
+exceeding density of the clouds (which hung so low as to press upon
+the turrets of the house) did not prevent our perceiving the lifelike
+velocity with which they flew careering from all points against each
+other, without passing away into the distance. I say that even their
+exceeding density did not prevent our perceiving this--yet we had no
+glimpse of the moon or stars--nor was there any flashing forth of the
+lightning. But the under surfaces of the huge masses of agitated
+vapor, as well as all terrestrial objects immediately around us, were
+glowing in the unnatural light of a faintly luminous and distinctly
+visible gaseous exhalation which hung about and enshrouded the
+mansion.
+
+"You must not--you shall not behold this!" said I, shudderingly, to
+Usher, as I led him, with a gentle violence, from the window to a
+seat. "These appearances, which bewilder you, are merely electrical
+phenomena not uncommon--or it may be that they have their ghastly
+origin in the rank miasma of the tarn. Let us close this casement--the
+air is chilling and dangerous to your frame. Here is one of your
+favorite romances. I will read and you shall listen; and so we will
+pass away this terrible night together."
+
+The antique volume which I had taken up was the _Mad Trist_ of Sir
+Launcelot Canning[25]; but I had called it a favorite of Usher's more
+in sad jest than in earnest; for, in truth, there is little in its
+uncouth and unimaginative prolixity which could have had interest for
+the lofty and spiritual ideality of my friend. It was, however, the
+only book immediately at hand; and I indulged a vague hope that the
+excitement which now agitated the hypochondriac, might find relief
+(for the history of mental disorder is full of similar anomalies) even
+in the extremeness of the folly which I should read. Could I have
+judged, indeed, by the wild, overstrained air of vivacity with which
+he hearkened, or apparently hearkened, to the words of the tale, I
+might well have congratulated myself upon the success of my design.
+
+I had arrived at that well-known portion of the story where Ethelred,
+the hero of the "Trist," having sought in vain for peaceable admission
+into the dwelling of the hermit, proceeds to make good an entrance by
+force. Here, it will be remembered, the words of the narrative run
+thus:--
+
+"And Ethelred, who was by nature of a doughty heart, and who was now
+mighty withal, on account of the powerfulness of the wine which he had
+drunken, waited no longer to hold parley with the hermit, who, in
+sooth, was of an obstinate and maliceful turn; but, feeling the rain
+upon his shoulders, and fearing the rising of the tempest, uplifted
+his mace outright, and, with blows, made quickly room in the plankings
+of the door for his gauntleted hand; and now pulling therewith
+sturdily, he so cracked, and ripped, and tore all asunder, that the
+noise of the dry and hollow-sounding wood alarummed[26] and
+reverberated throughout the forest."
+
+At the termination of this sentence I started, and for a moment
+paused; for it appeared to me (although I at once concluded that my
+excited fancy had deceived me)--it appeared to me that, from some very
+remote portion of the mansion, there came, indistinctly, to my ears
+what might have been, in its exact similarity of character, the echo
+(but a stifled and dull one certainly) of the very cracking and
+ripping sound which Sir Launcelot had so particularly described. It
+was, beyond doubt, the coincidence alone which had arrested my
+attention; for, amid the rattling of the sashes of the casements, and
+the ordinary commingled noises of the still increasing storm, the
+sound, in itself, had nothing, surely, which should have interested or
+disturbed, me. I continued the story:--
+
+"But the good champion Ethelred, now entering within the door, was
+sore enraged and amazed to perceive no signal of the maliceful hermit;
+but, in the stead thereof, a dragon of a scaly and prodigious
+demeanor, and of a fiery tongue, which sate in guard before a palace
+of gold, with a floor of silver; and upon the wall there hung a shield
+of shining brass with this legend enwritten:--
+
+     Who entereth herein, a conqueror hath been;
+     Who slayeth the dragon, the shield he shall win.
+
+"And Ethelred uplifted his mace, and struck upon the head of the
+dragon, which fell before him, and gave up his pesty breath, with a
+shriek so horrid and harsh, and withal so piercing, that Ethelred had
+fain[27] to close his ears with his hands against the dreadful noise
+of it, the like whereof was never before heard."
+
+Here again I paused abruptly, and now with a feeling of wild
+amazement--for there could be no doubt whatever that, in this
+instance, I did actually hear (although from what direction it
+proceeded I found it impossible to say) a low and apparently distant,
+but harsh, protracted, and most unusual screaming or grating
+sound--the exact counterpart of what my fancy had already conjured up
+for the dragon's unnatural shriek as described by the romancer.
+
+Oppressed, as I certainly was, upon the occurrence of this second and
+most extraordinary coincidence, by a thousand conflicting sensations,
+in which wonder and extreme terror were predominant, I still retained
+sufficient presence of mind to avoid exciting, by any observation, the
+sensitive nervousness of my companion. I was by no means certain that
+he had noticed the sounds in question; although, assuredly, a strange
+alteration had, during the last few minutes, taken place in his
+demeanor. From a position fronting my own, he had gradually brought
+round his chair, so as to sit with his face to the door of the
+chamber; and thus I could but partially perceive his features,
+although I saw that his lips trembled as if he were murmuring
+inaudibly. His head had dropped upon his breast--yet I knew that he
+was not asleep, from the wide and rigid opening of the eye as I caught
+a glance of it in profile. The motion of his body, too, was at
+variance with this idea--for he rocked from side to side with a gentle
+yet constant and uniform sway. Having rapidly taken notice of all
+this, I resumed the narrative of Sir Launcelot, which thus
+proceeded:--
+
+"And now the champion, having escaped from the terrible fury of the
+dragon, bethinking himself of the brazen shield, and of the breaking
+up of the enchantment which was upon it, removed the carcass from out
+of the way before him, and approached valorously over the silver
+pavement of the castle to where the shield was upon the wall; which in
+sooth tarried not for his full coming, but fell down at his feet upon
+the silver floor, with a mighty, great and terrible ringing sound."
+
+No sooner had these syllables passed my lips, than--as if a shield of
+brass had indeed, at the moment, fallen heavily upon a floor of
+silver--I became aware of a distinct, hollow, metallic and clangorous,
+yet apparently muffled reverberation. Completely unnerved, I leaped to
+my feet; but the measured rocking movement of Usher was undisturbed. I
+rushed to the chair in which he sat. His eyes were bent fixedly before
+him, and throughout his whole countenance there reigned a stony
+rigidity. But, as I placed my hand upon his shoulder, there came a
+strong shudder over his whole person; a sickly smile quivered about
+his lips; and I saw that he spoke in a low, hurried, and gibbering
+murmur, as if unconscious of my presence. Bending closely over him, I
+at length drank in the hideous import of his words.
+
+"Not hear it?--yes, I hear it, and _have_ heard it.
+Long--long--long--many minutes, many hours, many days, have I heard
+it--yet I dared not--oh, pity me, miserable wretch that I am!--I dared
+not--I _dared_ not speak! _We have put her living in the tomb!_ Said I
+not that my senses were acute? I _now_ tell you that I heard her first
+feeble movements in the hollow coffin. I heard them--many, many days
+ago--yet I dared not--_I dared not speak!_ And
+now--to-night--Ethelred--ha! ha!---the breaking of the hermit's door,
+and the death-cry of the dragon, and the clangor of the shield!--say,
+rather, the rending of her coffin, and the grating of the iron hinges
+of her prison, and her struggles within the coppered archway of the
+vault! Oh, whither shall I fly? Will she not be here anon? Is she not
+hurrying to upbraid me for my haste? Have I not heard her footstep on
+the stair? Do I not distinguish that heavy and horrible beating of her
+heart? Madman!"--here he sprang furiously to his feet, and shrieked
+out his syllables, as if in the effort he were giving up his
+soul--"_Madman! I tell you that she now stands without the door!_"
+
+As if in the superhuman energy of his utterance there had been found
+the potency of a spell--the huge antique panels to which the speaker
+pointed threw slowly back, upon the instant, their ponderous and ebony
+jaws. It was the work of the rushing gust--but then without those
+doors there _did_ stand the lofty and enshrouded figure of the lady
+Madeline of Usher. There was blood upon her white robes, and the
+evidence of some bitter struggle upon every portion of her emaciated
+frame. For a moment she remained trembling and reeling to and fro upon
+the threshold--then, with a low, moaning cry, fell heavily inward upon
+the person of her brother, and in her violent and now final
+death-agonies, bore him to the floor a corpse, and a victim to the
+terrors he had anticipated.
+
+From that chamber, and from that mansion, I fled aghast. The storm was
+still abroad in all its wrath as I found myself crossing the old
+causeway. Suddenly there shot along the path a wild light, and I
+turned to see whence a gleam so unusual could have issued; for the
+vast house and its shadows were alone behind me. The radiance was that
+of the full, setting, and blood-red moon, which now shone vividly
+through that once barely discernible fissure, of which I have before
+spoken as extending from the roof of the building, in a zigzag
+direction, to the base. While I gazed, this fissure rapidly
+widened--there came a fierce breath of the whirlwind--the entire orb
+of the satellite burst at once upon my sight--my brain reeled as I saw
+the mighty walls rushing asunder--there was a long tumultuous shouting
+sound like the voice of a thousand waters--and the deep and dank tarn
+at my feet closed sullenly and silently over the fragments of the
+"_House of Usher_."
+
+
+NOTES
+
+[1] _The Fall of the House of Usher_ was written in 1839 and published
+at the end of the same year in his Tales of the Grotesque and of the
+Arabesque.
+
+[2] 70: Motto de Béranger. Popular French lyric poet (1780-1857). "His
+heart is a suspended lute; as soon as it is touched it resounds."
+
+[3] 71:23 tarn. A small mountain lake.
+
+[4] 76:7 ennuyé. Mentally wearied or bored.
+
+[5] 78:11 bounden. An archaic word.
+
+[6] 79:19 Dread. Reading of the first edition, "Her figure, her air,
+her features,--all, in their very minutest development, were
+those--were identically (I can use no other sufficient term), were
+identically those of the Roderick Usher who sat beside me. A feeling
+of stupor," etc.
+
+[7] 80:16 Improvisations. Extemporaneous composition of poetry or
+music.
+
+[8] 81:4 von Weber. The celebrated German composer (1786-1826).
+
+[9] 81:20 Fuseli. An artist and professor of painting at the Royal
+Academy in London (1741-1825).
+
+[10] 82:24 "The Haunted Palace." First published in the _Baltimore
+Museum_ for April, 1839.
+
+[11] 83:18 Porphyrogene. Of royal birth.
+
+[12] 84:16 for other men. Watson, Dr. Percival, and especially the
+Bishop of Llandaff. See "Chemical Essays," Vol. V.
+
+[13] 85:16 Ververt et Chartreuse. Two poems by Jean Baptiste Cresset
+(1709-1777).
+
+[Footenote 14] 85:17 Belphegor. Satire on Marriage by Machiavelli
+(1469-1527).
+
+[15] 85:17 Heaven and Hell. Extracts from "Arcana Coelestia" by
+Swedenborg (1688-1772).
+
+[16] 85:18 Subterranean Voyage of Nicholas Klimm. A celebrated poem by
+Ludwig Holberg (1684-1754).
+
+[17] 85:19 Chiromancy. Palmistry applied to the future. Poe refers
+rather to physiognomy. The book was written by the English mystic,
+Robert Fludd (1574-1637).
+
+[18] 85:19 Jean d'Indaginé and De la Chambre. Two continental writers
+of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries respectively.
+
+[19] 85:21 Tieck. A great German romanticist (1773-1853).
+
+[20] 85:21 City of the Sun. A sketch of an ideal state by Campanella
+(1568-1639).
+
+[21] 85:23 Directorium Inquisitorium. A detailed account of the
+methods of the Inquisition by Cironne, inquisitor-general for Castile,
+in 1356.
+
+[22] 85:24 Pomponius Mela. Spanish geographer in the first century
+A.D. Author of "De Chorographia," the earliest extant account of the
+geography of the ancient world.
+
+[23] 85:25 Oegipans. An epithet applied to Pan.
+
+[24] 85:30 Vigiliae Mortuorum. No such book is known.
+
+[25] 90:30 Mad Trist. No such book is known.
+
+[26] 91:29 alarummed. Alarmed.
+
+[27] 92:25 had fain. In the sense of was glad.
+
+
+BIOGRAPHY
+
+Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston, January 19, 1809. His parents, who
+were actors, died before their son was three years old. Mr. Allan, a
+wealthy Richmond merchant, adopted the child and gave him a splendid
+home. How scantily Poe appreciated and improved the advantages of this
+kindness he himself confesses in a letter to Lowell in 1844. "I have
+been too deeply conscious of the mutability and evanescence of
+temporal things to give any continuous effort to anything--to be
+consistent in anything. My life has been _whim_--impulse--passion--a
+longing for solitude--a scorn of all things present in an earnest
+desire for the future." He was a dreamer who had a fair chance to be
+happy, but he flung the opportunity away. He was a spoiled child who
+remained ignorant of life even unto his death.
+
+He entered the University of Virginia in 1826, where his conduct was
+so bad that he was, after a year, removed from the college. This
+action broke the strong friendship Mr. Allan had long held for his
+adopted son. Poe, urged by a hot temper or possibly by a remorse for
+his actions, ran away and enlisted in the regular army. In 1829 Mr.
+Allan became partially reconciled with Poe, and again came to his
+assistance. In 1830 Poe entered West Point, but was there only a short
+time when he was dismissed for wilful neglect of duty.
+
+Following this dismissal Poe went to Baltimore, where he did hack work
+for newspapers. This was the beginning of a process of writing that
+has brought him high rank and an imperishable honor. His narrative is
+clear, compressed, and powerful, and throughout his writings choice
+symbols abound. He was fond of themes of death, insanity, and terror.
+The wonder of it all is that this struggling, poverty-stricken
+craftsman, irregular in his habits of living, using only negative life
+and shadowy abstractions, should, from out his disordered fancies,
+weave stories and poems of such undying beauty and force.
+
+Poe married his thirteen-year-old cousin, Virginia Clemm. Her health
+was always delicate and her death confirmed Poe's tendency toward
+dissipation. His life was filled with dire poverty and a hard struggle
+for a livelihood. His home relations were happy. The last years of his
+life were spent at Fordham, a suburb of New York. He died in a
+Baltimore hospital, October 7, 1849.
+
+
+BIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES
+
+_Introduction to American Literature_, Brander Matthews.
+
+_Studies in American Literature_, Charles Noble.
+
+_Introduction to American Literature_, F.V.N. Painter.
+
+_Life of Poe_, Richard Henry Stoddard.
+
+_Edgar Allan Poe_, G.E. Woodberry.
+
+_Makers of English Fiction_, W.J. Dawson.
+
+"Art of Poe, _Independent_, 66: 157-8. January 21, 1909.
+
+"Dual Personality," _Current Literature_, 43: 287-8.
+
+
+CRITICISMS
+
+Some critics have maintained that Poe is our only original genius in
+American Literature. Lowell wrote in his _Fable for Critics_:--
+
+"There comes Poe with his raven, like Barnaby Rudge, Three-fifths of
+him genius, and two-fifths sheer fudge."
+
+Whatever judgments the various critics may give of Poe and his
+writings, they must all agree that he is original. He is a clever
+writer in a limited field. His writings have a glow and burnish that
+have their origin in his fondness for sensations, color, and vividness
+of details. He loves mystery and terror,--not the fancies and fears of
+a child, but overwrought nerves. His material is unreal, and remote
+from ordinary life. His characters are abnormal, and the world they
+live in is exceptional. He is inventive, original in arranging his
+material, and shallow but keen in his thinking.
+
+He believed that art and life have little in common, and in his
+writings seemed to be unmoved by friendship, loyalty, patriotism,
+courage, self-sacrifice or any of the great positive attributes of
+life that make living worth while. His writings lack the human touch,
+tenderness, and the buoyancy of sympathy. He is an artist who does his
+work with a clear-cut, hard finish. His choice of words, vivid
+pictures, and clearly evolved plots make his writings excellent
+studies for any one who wishes to develop literary appreciation and to
+learn to write.
+
+
+GENERAL REFERENCES
+
+_Studies and Appreciations_, L.E. Gates.
+
+_American Prose Masters_, William Crary Brownwell.
+
+_The Short Story in English_, Henry Seidel Canby.
+
+_Edgar Poe_, R.H. Button.
+
+_Inquiries and Opinions_, Brander Matthews.
+
+"Life of Edgar Allan Poe," _Nation_, 89: 100-110.
+
+"Weird Genius," _Cosmopolitan_, 46:243-252.
+
+
+COLLATERAL READINGS
+
+_Ligeia_, Edgar Allan Poe.
+
+_The Cask of Amontillado_, Edgar Allan Poe.
+
+_The Assignation_, Edgar Allan Poe.
+
+_Ms. Pound in Bottle_, Edgar Allan Poe.
+
+_The Black Cat_, Edgar Allan Poe.
+
+_Berenice_, Edgar Allan Poe.
+
+_The Tell-Tale Heart_, Edgar Allan Poe.
+
+_The White Old Maid_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_Moonlight_ ("Odd Number"), Guy de Maupassant.
+
+_A Journey_, Edith Wharton.
+
+_The Brushwood Boy_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+_At the Pit's Mouth_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+
+
+The Gold Bug[1]
+
+_By Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)_
+
+     What ho! what ho! this fellow is dancing mad!
+     He hath been bitten by the Tarantula.
+                                  --_All in the Wrong_.[2]
+
+Many years ago I contracted an intimacy with a Mr. William Legrand. He
+was of an ancient Huguenot[3] family, and had once been wealthy; but a
+series of misfortunes had reduced him to want. To avoid the
+mortification consequent upon his disasters, he left New Orleans, the
+city of his forefathers, and took up his residence at Sullivan's
+Island, near Charleston, South Carolina.
+
+This island is a very singular one. It consists of little else than
+the sea sand, and is about three miles long. Its breadth at no point
+exceeds a quarter of a mile. It is separated from the mainland by a
+scarcely perceptible creek, oozing its way through a wilderness of
+reeds and slime, a favorite resort of the marsh-hen. The vegetation,
+as might be supposed, is scant, or at least dwarfish. No trees of any
+magnitude are to be seen. Near the western extremity, where Fort
+Moultrie[4] stands, and where are some miserable frame buildings,
+tenanted, during summer, by the fugitives from Charleston dust and
+fever, may be found, indeed, the bristly palmetto; but the whole
+island, with the exception of this western point, and a line of hard,
+white beach on the seacoast, is covered with a dense undergrowth of
+the sweet myrtle, so much prized by the horticulturists of England.
+The shrub here often attains the height of fifteen or twenty feet, and
+forms an almost impenetrable coppice, burthening the air with its
+fragrance.
+
+In the utmost recesses of this coppice, not far from the eastern or
+more remote end of the island, Legrand had built himself a small hut,
+which he occupied when I first, by mere accident, made his
+acquaintance. This soon ripened into friendship, for there was much in
+the recluse to excite interest and esteem. I found him well educated,
+with unusual powers of mind, but infected with misanthropy, and
+subject to perverse moods of alternate enthusiasm and melancholy. He
+had with him many books, but rarely employed them. His chief
+amusements were gunning and fishing, or sauntering along the beach and
+through the myrtles, in quest of shells or entomological
+specimens--his collection of the latter might have been envied by a
+Swammerdam.[5] In these excursions he was usually accompanied by an
+old negro, called Jupiter, who had been manumitted[6] before the
+reverses of the family, but who could be induced, neither by threats
+nor by promises, to abandon what he considered his right of attendance
+upon the footsteps of his young "Massa Will." It is not improbable
+that the relatives of Legrand, conceiving him to be somewhat unsettled
+in intellect, had contrived to instil this obstinacy into Jupiter,
+with a view to the supervision and guardianship of the wanderer.
+
+The winters in the latitude of Sullivan's Island are seldom very
+severe, and in the fall of the year it is a rare event indeed when a
+fire is considered necessary. About the middle of October, 18--, there
+occurred, however, a day of remarkable chilliness. Just before sunset
+I scrambled my way through the evergreens to the hut of my friend,
+whom I had not visited for several weeks--my residence being at that
+time in Charleston, a distance of nine miles from the island, while
+the facilities of passage and re-passage were very far behind those of
+the present day. Upon reaching the hut I rapped, as was my custom, and
+getting no reply, sought for the key where I knew it was secreted,
+unlocked the door, and went in. A fine fire was blazing upon the
+hearth. It was a novelty, and by no means an ungrateful one. I threw
+off an over-coat, took an armchair by the crackling logs, and awaited
+patiently the arrival of my hosts.
+
+Soon after dark they arrived, and gave me a most cordial welcome.
+Jupiter, grinning from ear to ear, bustled about to prepare some
+marsh-hens for supper. Legrand was in one of his fits--how else shall
+I term them?--of enthusiasm. He had found an unknown bivalve, forming
+a new genus, and, more than this, he had hunted down and secured, with
+Jupiter's assistance, a _scarabaeus_[7] which he believed to be
+totally new, but in respect to which he wished to have my opinion on
+the morrow.
+
+"And why not to-night?" I asked, rubbing my hands over the blaze, and
+wishing the whole tribe of _scarabaei_ at the devil.
+
+"Ah, if I had only known you were here!" said Legrand, "but it's so
+long since I saw you; and how could I foresee that you would pay me a
+visit this very night of all others? As I was coming home I met
+Lieutenant G----, from the fort, and, very foolishly, I lent him the
+bug; so it will be impossible for you to see it until the morning.
+Stay here to-night, and I will send Jup down for it at sunrise. It is
+the loveliest thing in creation!"
+
+"What!--sunrise?"
+
+"Nonsense! no!--the bug. It is of a brilliant gold color--about the
+size of a large hickory-nut--with two jet-black spots near one
+extremity of the back, and another, somewhat longer, at the other. The
+_antennae[8]_ are--"
+
+"Dey ain't _no_ tin in him, Massa Will, I keep a tellin' on you," here
+interrupted Jupiter; "de bug is a goolebug, solid, ebery bit of him,
+inside and all, 'sep him wing--neber feel half so hebby a bug in my
+life."
+
+"Well, suppose it is, Jup," replied Legrand, somewhat more earnestly,
+it seemed to me, than the case demanded; "is that any reason for your
+letting the birds burn? The color"--here he turned to me--"is really
+almost enough to warrant Jupiter's idea. You never saw a more
+brilliant metallic lustre than the scales emit--but of this you cannot
+judge till to-morrow. In the meantime I can give you some idea of the
+shape." Saying this, he seated himself at a small table, on which were
+a pen and ink, but no paper. He looked for some in a drawer, but found
+none.
+
+"Never mind," said he at length, "this will answer;" and he drew from
+his waistcoat pocket a scrap of what I took to be very dirty foolscap,
+and made upon it a rough drawing with the pen. While he did this I
+retained my seat by the fire, for I was still chilly. When the design
+was complete, he handed it to me without rising. As I received, it, a
+loud growl was heard, succeeded by a scratching at the door. Jupiter
+opened it, and a large Newfoundland, belonging to Legrand, rushed in,
+leaped upon my shoulders, and loaded me with caresses; for I had shown
+him much attention during previous visits. When his gambols were over,
+I looked at the paper, and, to speak the truth, found myself not a
+little puzzled at what my friend had depicted.
+
+"Well!" I said, after contemplating it for some minutes, "this _is_ a
+strange _scarabaeus_, I must confess: new to me: never saw anything
+like it before--unless it was a skull, or a death's-head--which, it
+more nearly resembles than, anything else that has come under _my_
+observation."
+
+"A death's-head!" echoed Legrand. "Oh--yes--well, it has something of
+that appearance upon paper, no doubt. The two upper black spots look
+like eyes, eh? and the longer one at the bottom like a mouth--and then
+the shape of the whole is oval."
+
+"Perhaps so," said I; "but, Legrand, I fear you are no artist. I must
+wait until I see the beetle itself, if I am to form any idea of its
+personal appearance."
+
+"Well, I don't know," said he, a little nettled, "I draw
+tolerably--_should_ do it at least--have had good masters, and flatter
+myself that I am not quite a blockhead."
+
+"But, my dear fellow, you are joking then," said I; "this is a very
+passable _skull_--indeed, I may say that it is a very _excellent_
+skull, according to the vulgar notions about such specimens of
+physiology--and your _scarabaeus_ must be the queerest _scarabaeus_ in
+the world if it resembles it. Why, we may get up a very thrilling bit
+of superstition upon this hint. I presume, you will call the bug
+_scarabaeus caput hominis_,[9] or something of that kind--there are
+many similar titles in the natural histories. But where are the
+_antennae_ you spoke of?"
+
+"The _antennae_!" said Legrand, who seemed to be getting unaccountably
+warm upon the subject; "I am sure you must see the _antennae_. I made
+them as distinct as they are in the original insect, and I presume
+that is sufficient."
+
+"Well, well," I said, "perhaps you have--still I don't see them;" and
+I handed him the paper without additional remark, not wishing to
+ruffle his temper; but I was much surprised at the turn affairs had
+taken; his ill-humor puzzled me--and, as for the drawing of the
+beetle, there were positively _no antennae_ visible, and the whole
+_did_ bear a very close resemblance to the ordinary cuts of a
+death's-head.
+
+He received the paper very peevishly, and was about to crumple it,
+apparently to throw it in the fire, when a casual glance at the design
+seemed suddenly to rivet his attention. In an instant his face grew
+violently red--in another as excessively pale. For some minutes he
+continued to scrutinize the drawing minutely where he sat. At length
+he arose, took a candle from the table, and proceeded to seat himself
+upon a sea-chest in the farthest corner of the room. Here again he
+made an anxious examination of the paper, turning it in all
+directions. He said nothing, however, and his conduct greatly
+astonished me; yet I thought it prudent not to exacerbate the growing
+moodiness of his temper by any comment. Presently he took from, his
+coat pocket a wallet, placed the paper carefully in it, and deposited
+both in a writing-desk, which he locked. He now grew more composed in
+his demeanor; but his original air of enthusiasm had quite
+disappeared. Yet he seemed not so much sulky as abstracted. As the
+evening wore away he became more and more absorbed in reverie, from
+which no sallies of mine could arouse him. It had been my intention to
+pass the night at the hut, as I had frequently done before, but,
+seeing my host in this mood, I deemed it proper to take leave. He did
+not press me to remain, but, as I departed, he shook my hand with even
+more than his usual cordiality.
+
+It was about a month after this (and during the interval I had seen
+nothing of Legrand) when I received a visit, at Charleston, from his
+man Jupiter. I had never seen the good old negro look so dispirited,
+and I feared that some serious disaster had befallen my friend.
+
+"Well, Jup," said I, "what is the matter now?--how is your master?"
+
+"Why, to speak de troof, massa, him not so berry well as mought be."
+
+"Not well! I am truly sorry to hear it. What does he complain of?"
+
+"Dar! dat's it!--him nebber 'plain of notin'--but him berry sick for
+all dat."
+
+"_Very_ sick, Jupiter!--why didn't you say so at once? Is he confined
+to bed?"
+
+"No, dat he ain't!--he ain't 'find nowhar--dat's just whar de shoe
+pinch--my mind is got to be berry hebby 'bout poor Massa Will."
+
+"Jupiter, I should like to understand what it is you are talking
+about. You say your master is sick. Hasn't he told you what ails him?"
+
+"Why, massa, 'tain't worf while for to git mad 'bout de matter--Massa
+Will say noffin' at all ain't de matter wid him--but den what make him
+go about looking dis here way, wid he head down and he soldiers up,
+and as white as a gose? And den he keep a syphon all de time--"
+
+"Keeps a what, Jupiter?"
+
+"Keeps a syphon wid de figgurs on de slate--de queerest figgurs I
+ebber did see. Ise gittin' to be skeered I tell you. Hab for to keep
+mighty tight eye pon him noovers.[10] Todder day he gib me slip fore
+de sun up, and was gone de whole ob de blessed day. I had a big stick
+ready cut for to gib him d----d good beating when he did come--but Ise
+sich a fool dat I hadn't de heart after all--he look so berry poorly."
+
+"Eh?--what? Ah, yes!--upon the whole, I think you had better not be
+too severe with the poor fellow--don't flog him, Jupiter, he can't
+very well stand it--but can you form an idea of what has occasioned
+this illness, or rather this change of conduct? Has anything
+unpleasant happened since I saw you?"
+
+"No, massa, dey ain't bin noffin' onpleasant _since_ den--'twas
+_'fore_ den, I'm feared--'twas de berry day you was dare."'
+
+"How? what do you mean?"
+
+"Why, massa, I mean de bug--dare now."
+
+"The _what?_"
+
+"De bug--I'm berry sartain dat Massa Will bin bit somewhere 'bout de
+head by dat goole-bug."
+
+"And what cause have you, Jupiter, for such a supposition?"
+
+"Claws enuff, massa, and mouff, too. I nebber did see sich a d----d
+bug--he kick and he bite ebery ting what cum near him. Massa Will
+cotch him fuss, but had for to let him go 'gin mighty quick, I tell
+you--den was de time he must ha' got de bite. I didn't like de look ob
+de bug mouff, myself, nohow, so I wouldn't take hold ob him wid my
+finger, but I cotch him wid a piece ob paper dat I found. I wrap him
+up in de paper and stuff piece ob it in he mouff--dat was de way."
+
+"And you think, then, that your master was really bitten by the
+beetle, and that the bite made him sick?" "I don't t'ink noffin' 'bout
+it--I nose it. What make him dream 'bout de goole so much, if 'tain't
+cause he bit by de goole-bug? Ise heerd 'bout dem goole-bugs 'fore
+dis."
+
+"But how do you know he dreams about gold?"
+
+"How I know? why, 'cause he talk about it in he sleep--dat's how I
+nose."
+
+"Well, Jup, perhaps you are right; but to what fortunate circumstances
+am I to attribute the honor of a visit from you to-day?"
+
+"What de matter, massa?"
+
+"Did you bring any message from Mr. Legrand?"
+
+"No, massa, I bring dis here 'pissel;" and here Jupiter handed me a
+note, which ran thus:
+
+My dear ------:
+
+Why have I not seen you for so long a time? I hope you have not been
+so foolish as to take offence at any little _brusquerie_[11] of mine;
+but no, that is improbable.
+
+Since I saw you I have had great cause for anxiety. I have something
+to tell you, yet scarcely know how to tell it, or whether I should
+tell it at all.
+
+I have not been quite well for some days past, and poor old Jup annoys
+me, almost beyond endurance, by his well-meant attentions. Would you
+believe it?--he had prepared a huge stick, the other day, with which
+to chastise me for giving him the slip, and spending the day, _solus_,
+among the hills on the mainland. I verily believe that my ill looks
+alone saved me a flogging.
+
+I have made no addition to my cabinet since we met.
+
+If you can, in any way, make it convenient, come over with Jupiter.
+_Do_ come. I wish to see you _to-night_, upon business of importance.
+I assure you that it is of the _highest_ importance.
+
+Ever yours,
+
+William Legrand.
+
+There was something in the tone of this note which gave me great
+uneasiness. Its whole style differed materially from that of Legrand.
+What could he be dreaming of? What new crotchet possessed his
+excitable brain? What "business of the highest importance" could _he_
+possibly have to transact? Jupiter's account of him boded no good. I
+dreaded lest the continued pressure of misfortune had, at length,
+fairly unsettled the reason of my friend. Without a moment's
+hesitation, therefore, I prepared to accompany the negro.
+
+Upon reaching the wharf, I noticed a scythe and three spades, all
+apparently new, lying in the bottom of the boat in which we were to
+embark.
+
+"What is the meaning of all this, Jup?" I inquired.
+
+"Him syfe, massa, and spade."
+
+"Very true; but what are they doing here?"
+
+"Him de syfe and de spade what Massa Will 'sis' 'pon my buying for him
+in de town, and de debbil's own lot of money I had to gib for 'em."
+
+"But what, in the name of all that is mysterious, is your 'Massa Will'
+going to do with scythes and spades?"
+
+"Dat's more dan _I_ know, and debbil take me if I don't b'lieve 'tis
+more dan he know, too. But it's all come ob de bug."
+
+Finding that no satisfaction was to be obtained of Jupiter, whose
+whole intellect seemed to be absorbed by "de bug," I now stepped into
+the boat and made sail. With a fair and strong breeze we soon ran into
+the little cove to the northward of Fort Moultrie, and a walk of some
+two miles brought us to the hut. It was about three in the afternoon
+when we arrived. Legrand had been awaiting us in eager expectation. He
+grasped my hand with a nervous _empressement_[12] which alarmed me and
+strengthened the suspicions already entertained. His countenance was
+pale even to ghastliness, and his deep-set eyes glared with unnatural
+lustre. After some inquiries respecting his health, I asked him, not
+knowing what better to say, if he had yet obtained the _scarabaeus_
+from Lieutenant G----.
+
+"Oh, yes," he replied, coloring violently, "I got it from him the next
+morning. Nothing could tempt me to part with that _scarabaeus_. Do you
+know that Jupiter is quite right about it!"
+
+"In what way?" I asked, with a sad foreboding at heart.
+
+"In supposing it to be a bug of _real gold_." He said this with an air
+of profound seriousness, and I felt inexpressibly shocked.
+
+"This bug is to make my fortune," he continued, with a triumphant
+smile, and reinstate me in my family possessions. Is it any wonder,
+then, that I prize it? Since Fortune has thought fit to bestow it upon
+me, I have only to use it properly and I shall arrive at the gold of
+which it is the index. Jupiter, bring me that _scarabaeus_!"
+
+"What! de bug, massa? I'd rudder not go fer trubble dat bug--you mus'
+git him for your own self." Hereupon Legrand arose, with a grave and
+stately air, and brought me the beetle from a glass case in which it
+was enclosed. It was a beautiful _scarabaeus_, and, at that time,
+unknown to naturalists--of course a great prize in a scientific point
+of view. There were two round black spots near one extremity of the
+back, and a long one near the other. The scales were exceedingly hard
+and glossy, with all the appearance of burnished gold. The weight of
+the insect was very remarkable, and, taking all things into
+consideration, I could hardly blame Jupiter for his opinion respecting
+it; but what to make of Legrand's agreement with that opinion, I could
+not, for the life of me, tell.
+
+"I sent for you," said he, in a grandiloquent tone when I had
+completed my examination of the beetle, "I sent for you, that I might
+have your counsel and assistance in furthering the views of Fate and
+of the bug"--
+
+"My dear Legrand," I cried, interrupting him, "you are certainly
+unwell, and had better use some little precautions. You shall go to
+bed, and I will remain with you a few days, until you get over this.
+You are feverish and"--
+
+"Feel my pulse," said he.
+
+I felt it, and, to say the truth, found not the slightest indication
+of fever.
+
+"But you may be ill and yet have no fever. Allow me this once to
+prescribe for you. In the first place, go to bed. In the next"--
+
+"You are mistaken," he interposed; "I am as well as I can expect to be
+under the excitement which I suffer. If you really wish me well, you
+will relieve this excitement."
+
+"And how is this to be done?"
+
+"Very easily, Jupiter and myself are going upon an expedition into the
+hills, upon the mainland, and, in this expedition, we shall need the
+aid of some person in whom we can confide. You are the only one we can
+trust. Whether we succeed or fail, the excitement which you now
+perceive in me will be equally allayed."
+
+"I am anxious to oblige you in any way," I replied; "but do you mean
+to say that this infernal beetle has any connection with your
+expedition into the hills?"
+
+"It has."
+
+"Then, Legrand, I can become a party to no such absurd proceeding."
+
+"I am sorry--very sorry--for we shall have to try it by ourselves."
+
+"Try it by yourselves! The man is surely mad!--but stay!--how long do
+you propose to be absent?"
+
+"Probably all night. We shall start immediately, and be back, at all
+events, by sunrise."
+
+"And will you promise me upon your honor, that when this freak of
+yours is over, and the bug business (good God!) settled to your
+satisfaction, you will then return home and follow my advice
+implicitly, as that of your physician?"
+
+"Yes; I promise; and now let us be off, for we have no time to lose."
+
+With a heavy heart I accompanied my friend. We started about four
+o'clock--Legrand, Jupiter, the dog, and myself. Jupiter had with him
+the scythe and spades, the whole of which he insisted upon carrying,
+more through fear, it seemed to me, of trusting either of the
+implements within reach of his master, than from any excess of
+industry or complaisance. His demeanor was dogged in the extreme, and
+"dat d----d bug" were the sole words which escaped his lips during the
+journey. For my own part, I had charge of a couple of dark lanterns,
+while Legrand contented himself with the _scarabaeus_, which he
+carried attached to the end of a bit of whipcord, twirling it to and
+fro, with the air of a conjurer, as he went. When I observed this last
+plain evidence of my friend's aberration of mind, I could scarcely
+refrain from tears. I thought it best, however, to humor his fancy, at
+least for the present, or until I could adopt some more energetic
+measures with a chance of success. In the meantime I endeavored, but
+all in vain, to sound him in regard to the object of the expedition.
+Having succeeded in inducing me to accompany him, he seemed unwilling
+to hold conversation upon any topic of minor importance, and to all my
+questions vouchsafed no other reply than "We shall see!"
+
+We crossed the creek at the head of the island by means of a skiff,
+and, ascending the high grounds on the shore of the mainland,
+proceeded in a northwesterly direction, through a tract of country
+excessively wild and desolate, where no trace of a human footstep was
+to be seen. Legrand led the way with decision, pausing only for an
+instant, here and there, to consult what appeared is to be certain
+landmarks of his own contrivance upon a former occasion.
+
+In this manner we journeyed for about two hours, and the sun was just
+setting when we entered a region infinitely more dreary than any yet
+seen. It was a species of table-land, near the summit of an almost
+inaccessible hill, densely wooded from base to pinnacle, and
+interspersed with huge crags that appeared to lie loosely upon the
+soil, and in many cases were prevented from precipitating themselves
+into the valleys below, merely by the support of the trees against
+which they reclined. Deep ravines, in various directions, gave an air
+of still sterner solemnity to the scene.
+
+The natural platform to which we had clambered was thickly overgrown
+with brambles, through which we soon discovered that it would have
+been impossible to force our way but for the scythe; and Jupiter, by
+direction of his master, proceeded to clear for us a path to the foot
+of an enormously tall tulip-tree, which stood, with some eight or ten
+oaks, upon the level, and far surpassed them all, and all other trees
+which I had ever seen, in the beauty of its foliage and form, in the
+wide spread of its branches, and in the general majesty of its
+appearance. When we reached this tree, Legrand turned to Jupiter, and
+asked him if he thought he could climb it. The old man seemed a little
+staggered by the question, and for some moments made no reply. At
+length he approached the huge trunk, walked slowly around it, and
+examined it with minute attention. When he had completed his scrutiny,
+he merely said:
+
+"Yes, massa, Jup climb any tree he ebber see in he life."
+
+"Then up with you as soon as possible, for it will soon be too dark to
+see what we are about."
+
+"How far mus' go up, massa?" inquired Jupiter.
+
+"Get up the main trunk first, and then I will tell you which way to
+go--and here--stop! take this beetle with you."
+
+"De bug, Massa Will! de goole-bug!" cried the negro, drawing back in
+dismay, "what for mus' tote de bug way up de tree?--d----n if I do!"
+
+"If you are afraid, Jup, a great big negro like you, to take hold of a
+harmless little dead beetle, why, you can carry it up by this string;
+but if you do not take it up with you in some way, I shall be under
+the necessity of breaking your head with this shovel."
+
+"'What de matter, now, massa?" said Jup, evidently shamed into
+compliance; "always want fur to raise fuss wid old nigger. Was only
+funnin' anyhow. _Me_ feered de bug! what I keer for de bug?" Here he
+took cautiously hold of the extreme end of the string, and,
+maintaining the insect as far from his person as circumstances would
+permit, prepared to ascend the tree.
+
+In youth the tulip-tree, or _Liriodendron tulipifera_, the most
+magnificent of American foresters, has a trunk peculiarly smooth, and
+often rises to a great height without lateral branches; but, in its
+riper age, the bark becomes gnarled and uneven, while many short limbs
+make their appearance on the stem. Thus the difficulty of ascension,
+in the present case, lay more in semblance than in reality. Embracing
+the huge cylinder as closely as possible with his arms and knees,
+seizing with his hands some projections, and resting his naked toes
+upon others, Jupiter, after one or two narrow escapes from falling, at
+length wriggled himself into the first great fork, and seemed to
+consider the whole business as virtually accomplished. The _risk_ of
+the achievement was, in fact, now over, although the climber was some
+sixty or seventy feet from the ground.
+
+"Which way mus' go now, Massa Will?" he asked.
+
+"Keep up the largest branch, the one on this side," said Legrand. The
+negro obeyed him promptly, and apparently with but little trouble;
+ascending higher and higher, until no glimpse of his squat figure
+could be obtained through the dense foliage which enveloped it.
+Presently his voice was heard in a sort of halloo.
+
+"How much fudder I's got for go?"
+
+"How high up are you?" asked Legrand.
+
+"Ebber so fur," replied the negro; "can see de sky fru de top ob de
+tree."
+
+"Never mind the sky, but attend to what I say. Look down the trunk and
+count the limbs below you on this side. How many limbs have you
+passed?"
+
+"One, two, three, four, fibe--I done pass fibe big limb, massa, 'pon
+dis side."
+
+"Then go one limb higher."
+
+In a few minutes the voice was heard again, announcing that the
+seventh limb was attained.
+
+"Now, Jup," cried Legrand, evidently much excited, "I want you to work
+your way out upon that limb as far as you can. If you see anything
+strange, let me know."
+
+By this time what little doubt I might have entertained of my poor
+friend's insanity was put finally at rest. I had no alternative but to
+conclude him stricken with lunacy, and I became seriously anxious
+about getting him home. While I was pondering upon what was best to be
+done, Jupiter's voice was again heard.
+
+"Mos' feerd for to ventur' 'pon dis limb berry far--'tis dead limb
+putty much all de way."
+
+"Did you say it was a _dead_ limb, Jupiter?" cried Legrand, in a
+quavering voice.
+
+"Yes, massa, him dead as de door-nail--done up for sartain--done
+departed dis here life."
+
+"What in the name of heaven shall I do?" asked Legrand, seemingly in
+the greatest distress.
+
+"Do!" said I, glad of an opportunity to interpose a word, "why, come
+home and go to bed. Come now!--that's a fine fellow. It's getting
+late, and, besides, you remember your promise."
+
+"Jupiter," cried he, without heeding me in the least, "do you hear
+me?"
+
+"Yes, Massa Will, hear you ebber so plain,"
+
+"Try the wood well, then, with your knife, and see if you think it
+_very_ rotten."
+
+"Him rotten, massa, sure nuff," replied the negro in a few moments,
+"but not so berry rotten as mought be, Mought ventur' out leetle way
+'pon de limb by myself, dat's true."
+
+"By yourself! What do you mean?"
+
+"Why, I mean de bug. 'Tis _berry_ hebby bug. S'pose I drop him down
+fust, and den de limb won't break wid just de weight of one nigger."
+
+"You infernal scoundrel!" cried Legrand, apparently much relieved,
+"what do you mean by telling me such nonsense as that? As sure as you
+drop that beetle, I'll break your neck. Look here, Jupiter, do you
+hear me?"
+
+"Yes, massa, needn' hollo at poor nigger dat style."
+
+"Well!--now listen! if you will venture out on the limb as far as you
+think safe, and not let go the beetle, I'll make you a present of a
+silver dollar as soon as you get down."
+
+"I'm gwine, Massa Will--deed I is," replied the negro very
+promptly--"mos' out to de eend now."
+
+"_Out to the end_!" here fairly screamed Legrand; "do you say you are
+out to the end of that limb?"
+
+"Soon be to de eend, massa--o-o-o-o-oh! Lor-gol-a-marcy! what _is_ dis
+here 'pon de tree?"
+
+"Well," cried Legrand, highly delighted, "what is it?"
+
+"Why, 'taint noffin' but a skull--somebody bin lef' him head up de
+tree, and de crows done gobble ebery bit ob de meat off."
+
+"A skull, you say! Very well; how is it fastened to the limb? What
+holds it on?"
+
+"Shure 'nuff, massa; mus' look. Why, dis berry curous sarcumstance,
+'pon my word--dare's a great big nail in do skull, what fastens ob it
+on to de tree."
+
+"Well now, Jupiter, do exactly as I tell you--do you hear?"
+
+"Yes, massa."
+
+"Pay attention, then!--find the left eye of the skull."
+
+"Hum! hoo! dat's good! why, dare ain't no eye lef' at all."
+
+"Curse your stupidity! do you know your right hand from your left?"
+
+"Yes, I nose dat--nose all 'bout dat--'tis my lef' hand what I chops
+de wood wid."
+
+"To be sure! you are left-handed; and your left eye is on the same
+side as your left hand. Now, I suppose you can find the left eye of
+the skull, or the place where the left eye has been. Have you found
+it?"
+
+Here was a long pause. At length the negro asked:
+
+"Is de lef' eye ob de skull 'pon de same side as de lef' hand ob de
+skull, too?--'cause the skull ain't got not a bit ob a hand at
+all--nebber mind! I got de lef' eye now--here de lef' eye! what mus'
+do wid it?"
+
+"Let the beetle drop through it, as far as the string will reach, but
+be careful and not let go your hold of the string."
+
+"All dat done, Massa Will; mighty easy ting for to put de bug fru de
+hole; look out for him dar below!"
+
+During this colloquy no portion of Jupiter's person could be seen; but
+the beetle, which he had suffered to descend, was now visible at the
+end of the string, and glistened, like a globe of burnished gold, in
+the last rays of the setting sun, some of which still faintly
+illumined the eminence upon which we stood. The _scarabaeus_ hung
+quite clear of any branches, and if allowed to fall, would have fallen
+at our feet. Legrand immediately took the scythe, and cleared with it
+a circular space, three or four yards in diameter, just beneath the
+insect, and, having accomplished this, ordered Jupiter to let go the
+string and come down from the tree.
+
+Driving a peg, with great nicety, into the ground, at the precise spot
+where the beetle fell, my friend now produced from his pocket a
+tape-measure. Fastening one end of this at that point of the trunk of
+the tree which was nearest the peg, he unrolled it till it reached the
+peg, and thence farther unrolled it, in the direction already
+established by the two points of the tree and the peg, for the
+distance of fifty feet--Jupiter clearing away the brambles with the
+scythe. At the spot thus attained a second peg was driven, and about
+this, as a centre, a rude circle, about four feet in diameter,
+described. Taking now a spade himself, and giving one to Jupiter and
+one to me, Legrand begged us to set about digging as quickly as
+possible.
+
+To speak the truth, I had no especial relish for such amusement at any
+time, and, at that particular moment, would most willingly have
+declined it; for the night was coming on, and I felt much fatigued
+with the exercise already taken; but I saw no mode of escape, and was
+fearful of disturbing my poor friend's equanimity by a refusal. Could
+I have depended, indeed, upon Jupiter's aid, I would have had no
+hesitation in attempting to get the lunatic home by force; but I was
+too well assured of the old negro's disposition, to hope that he would
+assist me, under any circumstances, in a personal contest with his
+master. I made no doubt that the latter had been infected with some of
+the innumerable Southern superstitions about money buried, and that
+his fantasy had received confirmation by the finding of the
+_scarabaeus_, or, perhaps, by Jupiter's obstinacy in maintaining it to
+be "a bug of real gold." A mind disposed to lunacy would readily be
+led away by such suggestions--especially if chiming in with favorite
+preconceived ideas--and then I called to mind the poor fellow's speech
+about the beetle's being "the index of his fortune." Upon the whole, I
+was sadly vexed and puzzled, but, at length, I concluded to make a
+virtue of necessity--to dig with a good will, and thus the sooner to
+convince the visionary, by ocular demonstration, of the fallacy of the
+opinions he entertained.
+
+The lanterns having been lit, we all fell to work with a zeal worthy a
+more rational cause; and, as the glare fell upon our persons and
+implements, I could not help thinking how picturesque a group we
+composed, and how strange and suspicious our labors must have appeared
+to any interloper who, by chance, might have stumbled upon our
+whereabouts.
+
+We dug very steadily for two hours. Little was said; and our chief
+embarrassment lay in the yelping of the dog, who took exceeding
+interest in our proceedings. He at length became so obstreperous, that
+we grew fearful of his giving the alarm to some stragglers in the
+vicinity---or, rather, this was the apprehension of Legrand; for
+myself, I should have rejoiced at any interruption which might have
+enabled me to get the wanderer home. The noise was, at length, very
+effectually silenced by Jupiter, who, getting out of the hole with a
+dogged air of deliberation, tied the brute's mouth up with one of his
+suspenders, and then returned, with a grave chuckle, to his task.
+
+When the time mentioned had expired, we had reached a depth of five
+feet, and yet no signs of any treasure became manifest. A general
+pause ensued, and I began to hope that the farce was at an end.
+Legrand, however, although evidently much disconcerted, wiped his brow
+thoughtfully and recommenced. We had excavated the entire circle of
+four feet diameter, and now we slightly enlarged the limit, and went
+to the farther depth of two feet. Still nothing appeared. The gold
+seeker, whom I sincerely pitied, at length clambered from the pit,
+with the bitterest disappointment imprinted upon every feature, and
+proceeded, slowly and reluctantly, to put on his coat, which he had
+thrown off at the beginning of his labor. In the meantime I made no
+remark. Jupiter, at a signal from his master, began to gather up his
+tools. This done, and the dog having been unmuzzled, we turned in
+profound silence towards home.
+
+We had taken, perhaps, a dozen steps in this direction, when, with a
+loud oath, Legrand strode up to Jupiter and seized him by the collar.
+The astonished negro opened his eyes and mouth to the fullest extent,
+let fall the spades, and fell upon his knees.
+
+"You scoundrel," said Legrand, hissing out the syllables from between
+his clenched teeth, "you infernal black villain! speak, I tell you!
+answer me this instant, without prevarication! which--which is your
+left eye?"
+
+"Oh, my golly, Massa Will! ain't dis here my lef' eye for sartain?"
+roared the terrified Jupiter, placing his hand upon his _right_ organ
+of vision, and holding it there with a desperate pertinacity, as if in
+immediate dread of his master's attempt at a gouge.
+
+"I thought so! I knew it! hurrah!" vociferated Legrand, letting the
+negro go, and executing a series of curvets and caracoles[13], much to
+the astonishment of his valet, who, arising from his knees, looked
+mutely from his master to myself, and then from myself to his master.
+
+"Come! we must go back," said the latter; "the game's not up yet;" and
+he again led the way to the tulip-tree.
+
+"Jupiter," said he, when he reached its foot, "come here! was the
+skull nailed to the limb with the face outwards, or with the face to
+the limb?"
+
+"De face was out, massa, so dat de crows could get at de eyes good,
+widout any trouble."
+
+"Well, then, was it this eye or that through which you dropped the
+beetle?"--here Legrand touched each of Jupiter's eyes.
+
+"'Twas dis eye, massa--de lef' eye--jis as you tell me," and here it
+was his right eye that the negro indicated.
+
+"That will do--we must try it again."
+
+Here my friend, about whose madness I now saw or fancied that I saw,
+certain indications of method, removed the peg which marked the spot
+where the beetle fell, to a spot about three inches to the westward of
+its former position, Taking now the tape-measure from the nearest
+point of the trunk to the peg, as before, and continuing the extension
+in a straight line to the distance of fifty feet, a spot was
+indicated, removed by several yards from the point at which we had
+been digging.
+
+Around the new position a circle, somewhat larger than in the former
+instance, was now described, and we again set to work with the spades,
+I was dreadfully weary, but scarcely understanding what had occasioned
+the change in my thoughts, I felt no longer any great aversion from
+the labor imposed, I had become most unaccountably interested--nay,
+even excited. Perhaps there was something, amid all the extravagant
+demeanor of Legrand--some air of forethought, or of deliberation,
+which impressed me. I dug eagerly, and now and then caught myself
+actually looking, with something that very much resembled expectation,
+for the fancied treasure, the vision of which had demented my
+unfortunate companion. At a period when such vagaries of thought most
+fully possessed me, and when we had been at work perhaps an hour and a
+half, we were again interrupted by the violent howlings of the dog.
+His uneasiness in the first instance had been, evidently, but the
+result of playfulness or caprice, but he now assumed a bitter and
+serious tone. Upon Jupiter's again attempting to muzzle him, he made
+furious resistance, and, leaping into the hole, tore up the mould
+frantically with his claws. In a few seconds he had uncovered a mass
+of human bones, forming two complete skeletons, intermingled with
+several buttons of metal, and what appeared to be the dust of decayed
+woolen. One or two strokes of a spade upturned the blade of a large
+Spanish knife, and, as we dug farther, three or four pieces of gold
+and silver coin came to light.
+
+At sight of these the joy of Jupiter could scarcely be restrained, but
+the countenance of his master wore an air of extreme disappointment.
+He urged us, however, to continue our exertions, and the words were
+hardly uttered when I stumbled and fell forward, having caught the toe
+of my boot in a large ring of iron that lay half buried in the loose
+earth.
+
+We now worked in earnest, and never did I pass ten minutes of more
+intense excitement. During this interval we had fairly unearthed an
+oblong chest of wood which, from its perfect preservation and
+wonderful hardness, had plainly been subjected to some mineralizing
+process--perhaps that of the bichloride of mercury. This box was three
+feet and a half long, three feet broad, and two and a half feet deep.
+It was firmly secured by bands of wrought iron, riveted, and forming a
+kind of trellis-work over the whole. On each side of the chest, near
+the top, were three rings of iron--six in all--by means of which a
+firm hold could be obtained by six persons. Our utmost united
+endeavors served only to disturb the coffer very slightly in its bed.
+We at once saw the impossibility of removing so great a weight.
+Luckily, the sole fastenings of the lid consisted of two sliding
+bolts. These we drew back--trembling and panting with anxiety. In an
+instant, a treasure of incalculable value lay gleaming before us. As
+the rays of the lanterns fell within the pit, there flashed upwards a
+glow and a glare, from a confused heap of gold and of jewels, that
+absolutely dazzled our eyes.
+
+I shall not pretend to describe the feelings with which I gazed.
+Amazement was, of course, predominant. Legrand appeared exhausted with
+excitement, and spoke very few words. Jupiter's countenance wore, for
+some minutes, as deadly a pallor as it is possible, in the nature of
+things, for any negro's visage to assume. He seemed
+stupefied---thunder-stricken. Presently he fell upon his knees in the
+pit, and, burying his naked arms up to the elbows in gold, let them
+there remain, as if enjoying the luxury of a bath. At length, with a
+deep sigh, he exclaimed, as if in a soliloquy:
+
+"And dis all cum ob de goole-bug! de putty goole-bug! de poor little
+goole-bug, what I 'boosed in dat sabage kind ob style! Ain't you
+'shamed ofa yourself, nigger?--answer me dat!"
+
+It became necessary, at last, that I should arouse both master and
+valet to the expediency of removing the treasure. It was growing late,
+and it behooved us to make exertion, that we might get everything
+housed before daylight. It was difficult to say what should be done,
+and much time was spent in deliberation--so confused were the ideas of
+all. We, finally, lightened the box by removing two-thirds of its
+contents, when we were enabled, with some trouble, to raise it from
+the hole. The articles taken out were deposited among the brambles,
+and the dog left to guard them, with strict orders from Jupiter
+neither, upon any pretence, to stir from the spot, nor to open his
+mouth until our return. We then hurriedly made for home with the
+chest, reaching the hut in safety, but after excessive toil, at one
+o'clock in the morning. Worn out as we were, it was not in human
+nature to do more just now. We rested until two, and had supper,
+starting for the hills immediately afterwards, armed with three stout
+sacks, which, by good luck, were upon the premises. A little before
+four we arrived at the pit, divided the remainder of the booty as
+equally as might be among us, and, leaving the holes unfilled, again
+set out for the hut, at which, for the second time, we deposited our
+golden burdens, just as the first streaks of dawn gleamed from over
+the treetops in the east.
+
+We were now thoroughly broken down; but the intense excitement of the
+time denied us repose. After an unquiet slumber of some three or four
+hours' duration, we arose, as if by preconcert, to make examination of
+our treasure.
+
+The chest had been full to the brim, and we spent the whole day, and
+the greater part of the next night, in a scrutiny of its contents.
+There had been nothing like order or arrangement. Everything had been
+heaped in promiscuously.
+
+Having assorted all with care, we found ourselves possessed of even
+vaster wealth than we had at first supposed. In coin there was rather
+more than four hundred and fifty thousand dollars--estimating the
+value of the pieces, as accurately as we could, by the tables of the
+period. There was not a particle of silver. All was gold of antique
+date and of great variety--French, Spanish, and German money, with a
+few English guineas, and some counters[14] of which we had never seen
+specimens before. There were several very large and heavy coins, so
+worn that we could make nothing of their inscriptions. There was no
+American money. The value of the jewels we found more difficulty in
+estimating. There were diamonds--some of them exceedingly large and
+fine--a hundred and ten in all, and not one of them small; eighteen
+rubies of remarkable brilliancy; three hundred and ten emeralds, all
+very beautiful; and twenty-one sapphires, with an opal. These stones
+had all been broken from their settings and thrown loose in the chest.
+The settings themselves, which we picked out from among the other
+gold, appeared to have been beaten up with hammers, as if to prevent
+indentification. Besides all this, there was a vast quantity of solid
+gold ornaments--nearly two hundred massive finger and ear rings; rich
+chains--thirty of these, if I remember; eighty-three very large and
+heavy crucifixes; five gold censers of great value; a prodigious
+golden punch-bowl, ornamented with richly chased vine-leaves and
+Bacchanalian[15] figures; with two sword handles exquisitely embossed,
+and many other smaller articles which I cannot recollect. The weight
+of these valuables exceeded three hundred and fifty pounds
+avoirdupois; and in this estimate I have not included one hundred and
+ninety-seven superb gold watches, three of the number being worth each
+five hundred dollars, if one. Many of them were very old, and as
+time-keepers valueless, the works having suffered, more or less, from
+corrosion; but all were richly jewelled and in cases of great worth.
+We estimated the entire contents of the chest, that night, at a
+million and a half of dollars; and, upon the subsequent disposal of
+the trinkets and jewels (a few being retained for our own use), it was
+found we had greatly undervalued the treasure.
+
+When, at length, we had concluded our examination, and the intense
+excitement of the time had in some measure subsided, Legrand, who saw
+that I was dying with impatience for a solution of this most
+extraordinary riddle, entered into a full detail of all the
+circumstances connected with it.
+
+"You remember," said he, "the night when I handed you the rough sketch
+I had made of the _scarabaeus_. You recollect, also, that I became
+quite vexed at you for insisting that my drawing resembled a
+death's-head. When you first made this assertion I thought you were
+jesting; but afterwards I called to mind the peculiar spots on the
+back of the insect, and admitted to myself that your remark had some,
+little foundation in fact. Still, the sneer at my graphic powers
+irritated me--for I am considered a good artist--and, therefore, when
+you handed me the scrap of parchment, I was about to crumple it up and
+throw it angrily into the fire."
+
+"The scrap of paper, you mean," said I.
+
+"No; it had much of the appearance of paper, and at first I supposed
+it to be such, but when I came to draw upon it, I discovered it at
+once to be a piece of very thin parchment. It was quite dirty, you
+remember. Well, as I was in the very act of crumpling it up, my glance
+fell upon the sketch at which you had been looking, and you may
+imagine my astonishment when I perceived, in fact, the figure of a
+death's-head just where, it seemed to me, I had made the drawing of
+the beetle. For a moment I was too much amazed to think with accuracy.
+I knew that my design was very different in detail from this, although
+there was a certain similarity in general outline. Presently I took a
+candle, and seating myself at the other end of the room, proceeded to
+scrutinize the parchment more closely. Upon turning it over, I saw my
+own sketch upon, the reverse, just as I had made it. My first idea,
+now, was mere surprise at the really remarkable similarity of
+outline--at the singular coincidence involved in the fact that,
+unknown to me, there should have been a skull upon the other side of
+the parchment, immediately beneath my figure of the _scarabaeus_, and
+that this skull, not only in outline, but in size, should so closely
+resemble my drawing. I say the singularity of this coincidence
+absolutely stupefied me for a time. This is the usual effect of such
+coincidences. The mind struggles to establish a connection--a sequence
+of cause and effect--and being unable to do so, suffers a species of
+temporary paralysis. But when I recovered from this stupor, there
+dawned upon me gradually a conviction which startled me even far more
+than the coincidence. I began distinctly, positively, to remember that
+there had been _no_ drawing upon the parchment when I made my sketch
+of the _scarabaeus_. I became perfectly certain of this; for I
+recollected turning up first one side and then the other, in search of
+the cleanest spot. Had the skull been then there, of course, I could
+not have failed to notice it. Here was indeed a mystery which I felt
+it impossible to explain; but, even at that early moment, there seemed
+to glimmer, faintly, within the most remote and secret chambers of my
+intellect, a glowworm-like conception of that truth which last night's
+adventure brought to so magnificent a demonstration. I arose at once,
+and putting the parchment securely away, dismissed all further
+reflection until I should be alone.
+
+"When you had gone, and when Jupiter was fast asleep, I betook myself
+to a more methodical investigation of the affair. In the first place I
+considered the manner in which the parchment had come into my
+possession. The spot where we discovered the _scarabaeus_ was on the
+coast of the mainland, about a mile eastward of the island, and but a
+short distance above high water mark. Upon my taking hold of it, it
+gave me a sharp bite, which caused me to let it drop. Jupiter, with
+his accustomed caution, before seizing the insect, which had flown
+towards him, looked about him for a leaf, or something of that nature,
+by which to take hold of it. It was at this moment that his eyes, and
+mine also, fell upon the scrap of parchment, which I then supposed to
+be paper. It was lying half buried in the sand, a corner sticking up.
+Near the spot where we found it, I observed the remnants of the hull
+of what appeared to have been a ship's long-boat. The wreck seemed to
+have been there for a very great while; for the resemblance to boat
+timbers could scarcely be traced.
+
+"Well, Jupiter picked up the parchment, wrapped the beetle in it, and
+gave it to me. Soon afterwards we turned to go home, and on the way
+met Lieutenant G----. I showed him the insect, and he begged me to let
+him take it to the fort. Upon my consenting, he thrust it forthwith
+into his waistcoat pocket, without the parchment in which it had been
+wrapped, and which I had continued to hold in my hand during his
+inspection. Perhaps he dreaded my changing my mind, and thought it
+best to make sure of the prize at once--you know how enthusiastic he
+is on all subjects connected with Natural History. At the same time,
+without being conscious of it, I must have deposited the parchment in
+my own pocket.
+
+"You remember that when I went to the table, for the purpose of making
+a sketch of the beetle, I found no paper where it was usually kept, I
+looked in the drawer, and found none there. I searched my pockets,
+hoping to find an old letter, when my hand fell upon the parchment. I
+thus detail the precise mode in which it came into my possession; for
+the circumstances impressed me with peculiar force.
+
+"No doubt you will think me fanciful, but I had already established a
+kind of _connection_. I had put together two links of a great chain.
+There was a boat lying upon a seacoast, and not far from the boat was
+a parchment--_not a paper_--with a skull depicted upon it. You will,
+of course, ask, 'Where is the connection?' I reply that the skull, or
+death's-head, is the well-known emblem of the pirate. The flag of the
+death's-head is hoisted in all engagements.
+
+"I have said that the scrap was parchment, and not paper. Parchment is
+durable--almost imperishable. Matters of little moment are rarely
+consigned to parchment, since, for the mere ordinary purposes of
+drawing or writing, it is not nearly so well adapted as paper. This
+reflection suggested some meaning--some relevancy--in the
+death's-head. I did not fail to observe, also, the _form_ of the
+parchment. Although one of its corners had been, by some accident,
+destroyed, it could be seen that the original form was oblong. It was
+just such a slip, indeed, as might have been chosen for a
+memorandum--for a record of something to be long remembered and
+carefully preserved."
+
+"But," I interposed, "you say that the skull was _not_ upon the
+parchment when you made the drawing of the beetle. How, then, do you
+trace any connection between the boat and the skull--since this
+latter, according to your own admission, must have been designed (God
+only knows how or by whom) at some period subsequent to your sketching
+the _scarabaeus_?"
+
+"Ah, hereupon turns the whole mystery; although the secret, at this
+point, I had comparatively little difficulty in solving. My steps were
+sure, and could afford but a single result. I reasoned, for example,
+thus: When I drew the _scarabaeus_, there was no skull apparent upon
+the parchment. When I had completed the drawing I gave it to you, and
+observed you narrowly until you returned it, _You_, therefore, did not
+design the skull, and no one else was present to do it. Then it was
+not done by human agency. And nevertheless it was done.
+
+"At this stage of my reflections I endeavored to remember, and _did_
+remember, with entire distinctness, every incident which occurred
+about the period in question. The weather was chilly (oh, rare and
+happy accident!), and a fire was blazing upon the hearth. I was heated
+with exercise, and sat near the table. You, however, had drawn a chair
+close to the chimney. Just as I placed the parchment in your hand, and
+as you were in the act of inspecting it, Wolf, the Newfoundland,
+entered, and leaped upon your shoulders. With, your left hand you
+caressed him and kept him off, while your right, holding the
+parchment, was permitted to fall listlessly between your knees, and in
+close proximity to the fire. At one moment I thought the blaze had
+caught it, and was about to caution you, but before I could speak you
+had withdrawn it, and were engaged in its examination. When I
+considered all these particulars, I doubted not for a moment that
+_heat_ had been the agent in bringing to light, upon the parchment,
+the skull which I saw designed upon it. You are well aware that
+chemical preparations exist, and have existed time out of mind, by
+means of which it is possible to write upon either paper or vellum, so
+that the characters shall become visible only when subjected to the
+action of fire. Zaffre[16], digested in _aqua regia_[17], and diluted
+with four times its weight of water, is sometimes employed; a green
+tint results. The regulus[18] of cobalt, dissolved in spirit of nitre,
+gives a red. These colors disappear at longer or shorter intervals
+after the material written upon cools, but again become apparent upon
+the re-application of heat.
+
+"I now scrutinized the death's-head with care. Its outer edges--the
+edges of the drawing nearest the edge of the vellum--were far more
+_distinct_ than the others. It was clear that the action of the
+caloric had been imperfect or unequal. I immediately kindled a fire,
+and subjected every portion of the parchment to a glowing heat. At
+first, the only effect was the strengthening of the faint lines in the
+skull; but, upon persevering in the experiment, there became visible,
+at the corner of the slip diagonally opposite to the spot in which the
+death's-head was delineated, the figure of what I at first supposed to
+be a goat. A closer scrutiny, however, satisfied me that it was
+intended for a kid."
+
+"Ha! ha!" said I; "to be sure I have no right to laugh at you--a
+million and a half of money is too serious a matter for mirth--but you
+are not about to establish a third link in your chain: you will not
+find any especial connection between your pirates and a goat; pirates,
+you know, have nothing to do with goats; they appertain to the farming
+interests."
+
+"But I have said that the figure was _not_ that of a goat."
+
+"Well, a kid, then--pretty much the same thing."
+
+"Pretty much, but not altogether," said Legrand.
+
+"You may have heard of one _Captain_ Kidd[19]. I at once looked on the
+figure of the animal as a kind of punning or hieroglyphical signature.
+I say signature because its position upon the vellum suggested this
+idea. The death's-head at the corner diagonally opposite had, in the
+same manner, the air of a stamp, or seal. But I was sorely put out by
+the absence of all else--of the body to my imagined instrument--of the
+text for my context."
+
+"I presume you expected to find a letter between the stamp and the
+signature."
+
+"Something of the kind. The fact is, I felt irresistibly impressed
+with a presentiment of some vast good fortune impending. I can
+scarcely say why. Perhaps, after all, it was rather a desire than an
+actual belief; but do you know that Jupiter's silly words, about the
+bug being of solid gold, had a remarkable effect upon my fancy? And
+then the series of accidents and coincidences--these were so _very_
+extraordinary. Do you observe how mere an accident it was that these
+events should have occurred upon the _sole_ day of all the year in
+which it has been, or may be, sufficiently cool for fire, and that
+without the fire, or without the intervention of the dog at the
+precise moment in which he appeared, I should, never have become aware
+of the death's-head, and so never the possessor of the treasure?"
+
+"But proceed--I am all impatience."
+
+"Well; you have heard, of course, the many stories current--the
+thousand vague rumors afloat about money buried, somewhere, upon the
+Atlantic coast, by Kidd and his associates. These rumors must have had
+some foundation in fact. And that the rumors have existed so long and
+so continuously could have resulted, it appeared to me, only from the
+circumstance of the buried treasure still _remaining_ entombed. Had
+Kidd concealed his plunder for a time, and afterwards reclaimed it,
+the rumors would scarcely have reached us in their present unvarying
+form. You will observe that the stories told are all about
+money-seekers, not about money-finders. Had the pirate recovered his
+money, there the affair would have dropped. It seemed to me that some
+accident--say the loss of a memorandum indicating its locality--had
+deprived him of the means of recovering it, and that this accident had
+become known to his followers who otherwise might never have heard
+that treasure had been concealed at all, and who, busying themselves
+in vain, because unguided attempts to regain it had given first birth,
+and then universal currency, to the reports which are now so common.
+Have you ever heard of any important treasure being unearthed along
+the coast?"
+
+"Never."
+
+"But that Kidd's accumulations were immense is well known. I took it
+for granted, therefore, that the earth still held them; and you will
+scarcely be surprised when I tell you that I felt a hope, nearly
+amounting to certainty, that the parchment so strangely found involved
+a lost record of the place of deposit."
+
+"But how did you proceed?"
+
+"I held the vellum again to the fire, after increasing the heat; but
+nothing appeared. I now thought it possible that the coating of dirt
+might have something to do with the failure; so I carefully rinsed the
+parchment by pouring warm water over it, and, having done this, I
+placed it in a tin pan, with the skull downwards, and put the pan upon
+a furnace of lighted charcoal. In a few minutes, the pan having become
+thoroughly heated, I removed the slip, and to my inexpressible joy,
+found it spotted, in several places, with what appeared to be figures
+arranged in lines. Again I placed it in the pan, and suffered it to
+remain another minute. Upon taking it off, the whole was just as you
+see it now."
+
+Here Legrand, having reheated the parchment, submitted it to my
+inspection, The following characters were rudely traced, in a red tint
+between the death's-head and the goat:
+
+     "53‡‡†305))6*;4826)4‡.);806*;48†8
+     ¶60))85;1‡(;:‡*8†83(88)5*†;46(;88*96
+     ?;8)*‡(;485);5*†2:*‡(;4956*2(5*--4)8
+     ¶8*;4069285);)6†8)4‡‡;1(‡9;48081;8:8‡
+     1;48†85;4)485†528806*81(‡9;48;(88;4
+     (‡?34;48)4‡;161;:188;‡?;"
+
+"But," said I, returning him the slip, "I am as much in the dark as
+ever. Were all the jewels of Golconda[20] awaiting me on my solution
+of this enigma, I am quite sure that I should be unable to earn them."
+
+"And yet," said Legrand, "the solution is by no means so difficult as
+you might be led to imagine from the first hasty inspection of the
+characters. These characters, as any one might readily guess, form a
+cipher, that is to say, they convey a meaning; but then, from what is
+known of Kidd, I could not suppose him capable of constructing any of
+the more abstruse cryptographs[21]. I made up my mind, at once, that
+this was of a simple species--such, however, as would appear, to the
+crude intellect of the sailor, absolutely insoluble without the key."
+
+"And you really solved it?"
+
+"Readily; I have solved others of an abstruseness ten thousand times
+greater. Circumstances, and a certain bias of mind, have led me to
+take interest in such riddles, and it may well be doubted whether
+human ingenuity can construct an enigma of the kind which human
+ingenuity may not, by proper application, resolve. In fact, having
+once established connected and legible characters, I scarcely gave a
+thought to the mere difficulty of developing their import.
+
+"In the present case--indeed, in all cases of secret writing--the
+first question regards the _language_ of the cipher; for the
+principles of solution, so far especially as the more simple ciphers
+are concerned, depend upon, and are varied by, the genius of the
+particular idiom. In general, there is no alternative but experiment
+(directed by probabilities) of every tongue known to him who attempts
+the solution, until the true one be attained. But, with the cipher now
+before us, all difficulty was removed by the signature. The pun upon
+the word 'Kidd' is appreciable in no other language than the English.
+But for this consideration I should have begun my attempts with the
+Spanish and French, as the tongues in which a secret of this kind
+would most naturally have been written by a pirate of the Spanish
+main[22]. As it was, I assume the cryptograph to be English.
+
+"You observe there are no divisions between the words. Had there been
+divisions, the task would have been comparatively easy. In such case I
+would have commenced with a collation and analysis of the shorter
+words; and had a word of a single letter occurred, as is most likely
+(_a_ or _I_, for example), I should have considered the solution as
+assured. But there being no divisions, my first step was to ascertain
+the predominant letters, as well as the least frequent,
+
+"Counting all, I constructed a table thus;--
+
+     Of the character 8 there are 33.
+                      ;     "     26.
+                      4     "     19.
+                     ‡)     "     16.
+                      *     "     13.
+                      5     "     12.
+                      6     "     11.
+                     †1     "      8.
+                      0     "      6.
+                     92     "      5.
+                     :3     "      4.
+                      ?     "      3.
+                      ¶     "      2.
+                    --.     "      1.
+
+"Now, in English, the letter which most frequently occurs is _e_.
+Afterwards, the succession runs thus: _a o i d h n r s t u y c f g l m
+w b k p q x z_. E predominates, however, so remarkably that an
+individual sentence of any length is rarely seen in which it is not
+the prevailing character.
+
+"Here, then, we have, in the very beginning, the groundwork for
+something more than a mere guess. The general use which may be made of
+the table is obvious--but in this particular cipher we shall only very
+partially require its aid. As our predominant character is 8, we will
+commence by assuming it as the _e_ of the natural alphabet. To verify
+the supposition, let us observe if the 8 be seen often in couples--for
+_e_ is doubled with great frequency in English--in such words, for
+example, as 'meet,' 'fleet,' 'speed,' 'seen,' 'been,' 'agree,' etc. In
+the present instance we see it doubled no less than five times,
+although the cryptograph is brief.
+
+"Let us assume 8, then, as _e_. Now of all _words_ in the language,
+'the' is most usual; let us see, therefore, whether there are not
+repetitions of any three characters, in the same order of collocation,
+the last of them being 8. If we discover repetitions of such letters,
+so arranged, they will most probably represent the word 'the.' Upon
+inspection, we find no less than seven such arrangements, the
+characters being ;48. We may, therefore, assume that the semicolon
+represents _t_, that 4 represents _h_, and that 8 represents _e_--the
+last being now well confirmed. Thus a great step has been taken.
+
+"But, having established a single word, we are enabled to establish a
+vastly important point; that is to say, several commencements and
+terminations of other words. Let us refer, for example, to the last
+instance but one, in which the combination ;48 occurs--not far from
+the end of the cipher. We know that the semicolon immediately ensuing
+is the commencement of a word, and, of the six characters succeeding
+this 'the,' we are cognizant of no less than five. Let us set these
+characters down, thus, by the letters we know them to represent,
+leaving a space for the unknown--
+
+     t eeth.
+
+"Here we are enabled, at once, to discard the '_th_,' as forming no
+portion of the word commencing with the first _t_; since by experiment
+of the entire alphabet for a letter adapted to the vacancy, we
+perceive that no word can be formed of which this _th_ can be a part.
+We are thus narrowed into
+
+     t ee,
+
+and, going through the alphabet, if necessary, as before, we arrive at
+the word 'tree,' as the sole possible reading. We thus gain another
+letter, _r_, represented by (, with the words 'the tree" in
+juxtaposition.
+
+"Looking beyond these words, for a short distance, we again see the
+combination ;48, and employ it by way of _termination_ to what
+immediately precedes. We have thus this arrangement:
+
+     the tree ;4 (‡?34 the,
+
+or, substituting the natural letters, whereknown, it reads thus:
+
+     the tree thr‡?3h the.
+
+"Now, if, in place of the unknown characters, we leave blank spaces,
+or substitute dots, we read thus:
+
+     the tree thr...h the,
+
+when the word '_through_' makes itself evident at once. But the
+discovery gives us three new letters, _o, u_, and _g_, represented by
+‡ ? and 3.
+
+"Looking now, narrowly, through the cipher for combinations of known,
+characters, we find, not very far from the beginning, this
+arrangement.
+
+     83(88, or, egree,
+
+which, plainly, is the conclusion of the word 'degree' and gives us
+another letter, _d_, represented by †.
+
+"Four letters beyond the word 'degree,' we perceive the combination.
+
+     ;46(;88*.
+
+"Translating the known characters, and representing the unknown by
+dots, as before, we read thus:
+
+     th.rtee,
+
+an arrangement immediately suggestive of the word 'thirteen,' and
+again furnishing us with two new characters, _i_, and _n_, represented
+by 6 and *.
+
+"Referring, now, to the beginning of the cryptograph, we find the
+combination,
+
+     53 ‡‡†.
+
+"Translating, as before, we obtain
+
+     .good,
+
+which assures us that the first letter is _A_, and that the first two
+words are 'A good.'
+
+"To avoid confusion, it is now time that we arrange our key, as far as
+discovered, in a tabular form. It will stand thus:
+
+     5 represents a
+     †      "     d
+     8      "     e
+     3      "     g
+     4      "     h
+     6      "     i
+     *      "     n
+     ‡      "     o
+     (      "     r
+     ;      "     t
+
+"We have, therefore, no less than ten of the most important letters
+represented, and it will be unnecessary to proceed with the details of
+the solution. I have said enough to convince you that ciphers of this
+nature are readily soluble, and to give you some insight into the
+rationale[23] of their development. But be assured that the specimen
+before us appertains to the very simplest species of cryptograph. It
+now only remains to give you the full translation of the characters
+upon the parchment, as unriddled. Here it is:
+
+     "'_A good glass in the bishop's hostel in the devil's seat
+     twenty-one degrees and thirteen minutes northeast and by
+     north main branch seventh limb east side shoot from the left
+     eye of the death's-head a bee-line from the tree through the
+     shot fifty feet out_.'"
+
+"But," said I, "the enigma seems still in as bad a condition as ever.
+How is it possible to extort a meaning from all this jargon about
+'devil's seats,' death's-heads,' and 'bishop's hotels'?"
+
+"I confess," replied Legrand, "that the matter still wears a serious
+aspect, when regarded with a casual glance. My first endeavor was to
+divide the sentence into the natural divisions intended by the
+cryptographist."
+
+"You mean to punctuate it?"
+
+"Something of that kind."
+
+"But how was it possible to effect this?"
+
+"I reflected that it had been a _point_ with the writer to run his
+words together without divisions, so as to increase the difficulty of
+solution. Now, a not over acute man, in pursuing such, an object,
+would be nearly certain to overdo the matter. When, in the course of
+his composition, he arrived at a break in his subject which would
+naturally require a pause, or a point, he would be exceedingly apt to
+run his characters, at this place, more than usually close together.
+If you will observe the Ms. in the present instance, you will easily
+detect five such cases of unusual crowding. Acting on this hint, I
+made the division thus:
+
+     "'_A good glass in the bishop's hostel in the devil's
+     seat--twenty-one degrees and thirteen minutes--northeast and
+     by north--main branch seventh limb east side--shoot from the
+     left eye of the death's-head--a bee-line from the tree
+     through the shot fifty feet out_.'"
+
+"Even this division," said I, "leaves me still in the dark."
+
+"It left me also in the dark," replied Legrand, "for a few days,
+during which I made diligent inquiry, in the neighborhood of
+Sullivan's Island, for any building, which went by the name of the
+'Bishop's Hotel'--for of course I dropped the obsolete word 'hostel.'
+Gaining no information on the subject, I was on the point of extending
+my sphere of search, and proceeding in a more systematic manner, when,
+one morning, it entered into my head, quite suddenly, that this
+'Bishop's Hostel' might have some reference to an old family, of the
+name of Bessop, which, time out of mind, had held possession of an
+ancient manor-house, about four miles to the northward of the island.
+I accordingly went over to the plantation, and reinstituted my
+inquiries among the older negroes of the place. At length one of the
+most aged of the women said that she had heard of such a place as
+_Bessop's Castle_ and thought that she could guide me to it, but that
+it was not a castle, nor tavern, but a high rock.
+
+"I offered to pay her well for her trouble, and, after some demur, she
+consented to accompany me to the spot. We found it without much
+difficulty, when, dismissing her, I proceeded to examine the place.
+The 'castle' consisted of an irregular assemblage of cliffs and
+rocks--one of the latter being quite remarkable for its height as well
+as for its insulated and artificial appearance, I clambered to its
+apex, and then felt much at a loss as to what should be next done.
+
+"While I was buried in reflection, my eyes fell upon a narrow ledge in
+the eastern face of the rock, perhaps a yard below the summit upon
+which I stood. This ledge projected about eighteen inches, and was not
+more than a foot wide, while a niche in the cliff just above it gave
+it a rude resemblance to one of the hollow-backed chairs used by our
+ancestors. I made no doubt that here was the 'devil's seat' alluded to
+in the Ms., and now I seemed to grasp the full secret of the riddle.
+
+"The 'good glass,' I knew, could have reference to nothing but a
+telescope; for the word 'glass' is rarely employed in any other sense
+by seamen. Now here, I at once saw, was a telescope to be used, and a
+definite point of view, _admitting no variation_, from which to use
+it. Nor did I hesitate to believe that the phrase 'twenty-one degrees
+and thirteen minutes' and 'northeast and by north,' were intended as
+directions for the levelling of the glass. Greatly excited by these
+discoveries, I hurried home, procured a telescope, and returned to the
+rock.
+
+"I let myself down to the ledge, and found that it was impossible to
+retain a seat upon it except in one particular position. This fact
+confirmed my preconceived idea. I proceeded to use the glass. Of
+course the 'twenty-one degrees and thirteen minutes' could allude to
+nothing but elevation above the visible horizon, since the horizontal
+direction was clearly indicated by the words 'northeast and by north.'
+This latter direction I at once established by means of a
+pocket-compass; then, pointing the glass as nearly at an angle of
+twenty-one degrees of elevation as I could do it by guess, I moved it
+cautiously up or down, until my attention was arrested by a circular
+rift or opening in the foliage of a large tree that over-topped its
+fellows in the distance. In the centre of this rift I perceived a
+white spot, but could not, at first, distinguish what it was.
+Adjusting the focus of the telescope, I again looked, and now made it
+out to be a human skull.
+
+"On this discovery I was so sanguine as to consider the enigma solved;
+for the phrase 'main branch, seventh limb, east side' could refer only
+to the position of the skull on the tree, while 'shoot from the left
+eye of the death's-head' admitted also of but one interpretation, in
+regard to a search for buried treasure. I perceived that the design
+was to drop a bullet from the left eye of the skull, and that a
+bee-line, or in other words, a straight line, drawn from the nearest
+point of the trunk through 'the shot' (or the spot where the bullet
+fell) and thence extended to a distance of fifty feet, would indicate
+a definite point--and beneath this point I thought it at least
+_possible_ that a deposit of value lay concealed."
+
+"All this." I said, "is exceedingly clear, and, although ingenious,
+still simple and explicit. When you left the Bishop's Hotel, what
+then?"
+
+"Why, having carefully taken the bearings of the tree, I turned
+homewards. The instant that I left the 'devil's seat,' however, the
+circular rift vanished; nor could I get a glimpse of it afterwards,
+turn, as I would. What seems to me the chief ingenuity in this whole
+business is the fact (for repeated experiment has convinced me it _is_
+a fact) that the circular opening in question is visible from no other
+attainable point of view than that afforded by the narrow ledge on the
+face of the rock.
+
+"In this expedition to the 'Bishop's Hotel' I had been attended by
+Jupiter, who had no doubt observed for some weeks past the abstraction
+of my demeanor, and took especial care not to leave me alone. But, on
+the next day, getting up very early, I contrived to give him the slip,
+and went into the hills in search of the tree. After much toil I found
+it. When I came home at night my valet proposed to give me a flogging.
+With the rest of the adventure I believe you are as well acquainted as
+myself."
+
+"I suppose," said I, "you missed the spot, in the first attempt at
+digging, through Jupiter's stupidity in letting the bug fall through
+the right instead of through the left eye of the skull."
+
+"Precisely. This mistake made a difference of about two inches and a
+half in the 'shot'--that is to say, in the position of the peg nearest
+the tree--and had the treasure been _beneath_ the 'shot,' the error
+would have been of little moment; but the 'shot,' together with the
+nearest point of the tree, were merely two points for the
+establishment of a line of direction; of course the error, however
+trivial in the beginning, increased as we proceeded with the line, and
+by the time we had gone fifty feet, threw us quite off the scent. But
+for my deep-seated convictions that treasure was here somewhere
+actually buried, we might have had all our labor in vain."
+
+"I presume the fancy of _the skull_--of letting fall a bullet through
+the skull's eye--was suggested to Kidd by the piratical flag. No doubt
+he felt a kind of poetical consistency in recovering his money through
+this ominous insignium[24]."
+
+"Perhaps so; still, I cannot help thinking that common-sense had quite
+as much to do with the matter as poetical consistency. To be visible
+from the Devil's seat, it was necessary that the object, if small,
+should be _white_: and there is nothing like your human skull for
+retaining and even increasing its whiteness under exposure to all
+vicissitudes of weather."
+
+"But your grandiloquence, and your conduct in swinging the beetle--how
+excessively odd! I was sure you were mad. And why did you insist on
+letting fall the bug, instead of a bullet, from the skull?"
+
+"Why, to be frank, I felt somewhat annoyed by your evident suspicions
+touching my sanity, and so resolved to punish you quietly, in my own
+way, by a little bit of sober mystification. For this reason I swung
+the beetle, and for this reason I let it fall from the tree. An
+observation of yours about its great weight suggested the latter
+idea."
+
+"Yes, I perceive; and now there is only one point which puzzles me.
+What are we to make of the skeletons found in the hole?"
+
+"That is a question I am no more able to answer than yourself. There
+seems, however, only one plausible way of accounting for them--and yet
+it is dreadful to believe in such atrocity as my suggestion would
+imply. It is clear that Kidd--if Kidd indeed secreted this treasure,
+which I doubt not--it is clear that he must have had assistance in the
+labor. But this labor concluded, he may have thought it expedient to
+remove all participants in his secret. Perhaps a couple of blows with
+a mattock were sufficient, while his coadjutors were busy in the pit;
+perhaps it required a dozen--who shall tell?"
+
+
+NOTES
+
+[1] _The Gold-Bug_ was first published in _The Dollar Magazine_ in
+1843. The story won a prize of one hundred dollars.
+
+[2] 100:3 All in the Wrong. The title of an amusing comedy by Arthur
+Murphy (1730-1805).
+
+[3] 100:4 Huguenot. French Protestants, many of whom settled in South
+Carolina.
+
+[4] 100: 18 Fort Moultrie. Erected in. 1776. Defended against the
+British by Colonel William Moultrie.
+
+[5] 101:23 Swammerdam. A famous Dutch naturalist (1637-1680).
+
+[6] 101:25 manumitted. Freed from slavery.
+
+[7] 102:27 scarabaeus. The Latin for beetle.
+
+[8] 103:15 antennae. The feelers.
+
+[9] 105:8 scarabaeus caput hominis. Man's-head beetle.
+
+[10] 107:20 noovers. Manoeuvres.
+
+[11] 109:10 brusquerie. Lack of cordiality.
+
+[12] 110:26 empressement. Demonstrativeness.
+
+[13] 123:20 curvets and caracoles. Leaping and prancing of a horse.
+
+[14] 128:9 counters. Various coins.
+
+[15] 128:28 Bacchanalian. Revelling like the worshippers of Bacchus,
+the god of wine.
+
+[16] 134:28 Zaffre. An oxide of cobalt. See dictionary.
+
+[17] 134:28 aqua regia. Royal water--a mixture of nitric and
+hydrochloric acids.
+
+[18] 134:30 regulus. An old chemical term.
+
+[19] 135: 28 Captain Kidd. A Scottish sea captain who lived in New
+York in the seventeenth century.
+
+[20] 138:19 Golconda. A town in India noted for its diamond market.
+
+[21] 138:28 cryptographs. Secret forms of writing.
+
+[22] 139:27 Spanish main. The northeastern portion of South America,
+the Caribbean Sea, and the coast of North America to the Carolinas
+were harassed by the Spaniards.
+
+[23] 144:6 rationale. Reasonable basis.
+
+[24] 149:19 insignium. Sign.
+
+
+COLLATERAL READINGS
+
+_The Murders in the Rue Morgue_, Edgar Allan Poe.
+
+_The Mystery of Marie Rogêt_, Edgar Allan Poe.
+
+_The Purloined Letter_, Edgar Allan Poe.
+
+_The Sign of the Four_, A. Conan Doyle.
+
+_A Scandal in Bohemia_, A. Conan Doyle.
+
+_The Chronicles of Addington_, B. Fletcher Robinson.
+
+_The Mystery of the Steel Disk_, Broughton Brandenburg.
+
+_The Rajah's Diamond_, R.L. Stevenson.
+
+_The Doctor, his Wife, and the Clock_, Anna Katharine Green.
+
+_The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes_, A. Conan Doyle.
+
+_The Hound of the Baskervilles_, A. Conan Doyle.
+
+_A Double-Barrelled Detective Story_, Mark Twain.
+
+_Gallegher_, Richard Harding Davis.
+
+
+
+THE BIRTHMARK[1]
+
+_By Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1862)_.
+
+
+In the latter part of the last century there lived a man of science,
+an eminent proficient in every branch of natural philosophy, who not
+long before our story opens had made experience of a spiritual
+affinity more attractive than any chemical one. He had left his
+laboratory to the care of an assistant, cleared his fine countenance
+from the furnace-smoke, washed the stain of acids from his fingers,
+and persuaded a beautiful woman to become his wife. In those days,
+when the comparatively recent discovery of electricity and other
+kindred mysteries of Nature seemed to open paths into the region of
+miracle, it was not unusual for the love of science to rival the love
+of woman in its depth and absorbing energy. The higher intellect, the
+imagination, the spirit, and even the heart might all find their
+congenial aliment in pursuits which, as some of their ardent votaries
+believed, would ascend from one step of powerful intelligence to
+another, until the philosopher should lay his hand on the secret of
+creative force and perhaps make new worlds for himself. We know not
+whether Aylmer possessed this degree of faith in man's ultimate
+control over nature. He had devoted himself, however, too unreservedly
+to scientific studies ever to be weakened from them by any second
+passion. His love for his young wife might prove the stronger of the
+two; but it could only be by intertwining itself with his love of
+science and uniting the strength of the latter to his own.
+
+Such a union accordingly took place, and was attended with truly
+remarkable consequences and a deeply impressive moral. One day, very
+soon after their marriage, Aylmer sat gazing at his wife with a
+trouble in his countenance that grew stronger until he spoke.
+
+"Georgiana," said he, "has it never occurred to you that the mark upon
+your cheek might be removed?"
+
+"No, indeed," said she, smiling; but, perceiving the seriousness of
+his manner, she blushed deeply. "To tell you the truth, it has been so
+often called a charm, that I was simple enough to imagine it might be
+so."
+
+"Ah, upon another face perhaps it might," replied her husband; "but
+never on yours. No, dearest Georgiana, you came so nearly perfect from
+the hand of Nature that this slightest possible defect, which we
+hesitate whether to term a defect or a beauty, shocks me, as being the
+visible mark of earthly imperfection."
+
+"Shocks you, my husband!" cried Georgiana, deeply hurt; at first
+reddening with momentary anger, but then bursting into tears. "Then
+why did you take me from my mother's side? You cannot love what shocks
+you!"
+
+To explain this conversation, it must be mentioned that in the centre
+of Georgiana's left cheek there was a singular mark, deeply
+interwoven, as it were, with the texture and substance of her face. In
+the usual state of her complexion--a healthy though delicate
+bloom--the mark wore a tint of deeper crimson, which imperfectly
+defined its shape amid the surrounding rosiness. When she blushed it
+gradually became more indistinct, and finally vanished amid the
+triumphant rush of blood that bathed the whole cheek with its
+brilliant glow. But if any shifting emotion caused her to turn pale,
+there was the mark again, a crimson stain upon the snow, in what
+Aylmer sometimes deemed an almost fearful distinctness. Its shape bore
+not a little similarity to the human hand, though of the smallest
+pygmy size. Georgiana's lovers were wont to say that some fairy at her
+birth-hour had laid her tiny hand upon the infant's cheek, and left
+this impress there in token of the magic endowments that were to give
+her such sway over all hearts. Many a desperate swain would have
+risked life for the privilege of pressing his lips to the mysterious
+hand. It must not be concealed, however, that the impression wrought
+by this fairy sign-manual varied exceedingly according to the
+difference of temperament in the beholders. Some fastidious
+persons--but they were exclusively of her own sex--affirmed that the
+bloody hand, as they chose to call it, quite destroyed the effect of
+Georgiana's beauty and rendered her countenance even hideous. But it
+would be as reasonable to say that one of those small blue stains
+which sometimes occur in the purest statuary marble would convert the
+Eve of Powers[2] to a monster. Masculine observers, if the birthmark
+did not heighten their admiration, contented themselves with wishing
+it away, that the world might possess one living specimen of ideal
+loveliness without the semblance of a flaw. After his marriage,--for
+he thought little or nothing of the matter before,--Aylmer discovered
+that this was the case with himself.
+
+Had she been less beautiful,--if Envy's self could have found aught
+else to sneer at,--he might have felt his affection heightened by the
+prettiness of this mimic hand, now vaguely portrayed, now lost, now
+stealing forth again and glimmering to and fro with every pulse of
+emotion that throbbed within her heart; but, seeing her otherwise so
+perfect, he found this one defect grow more and more intolerable with
+every moment of their united lives. It was the fatal flaw of humanity
+which Nature, in one shape or another, stamps ineffaceably on all her
+productions, either to imply that they are temporary and finite, or
+that their perfection must be wrought by toil and pain. The crimson
+hand expressed the ineludible gripe in which mortality clutches the
+highest and purest of earthly mould, degrading them into kindred with
+the lowest, and even with the very brutes, like whom their visible
+frames return to dust. In this manner, selecting it as the symbol of
+his wife's liability to sin, sorrow, decay, and death, Aylmer's sombre
+imagination was not long in rendering the birthmark a frightful
+object, causing him more trouble and horror than ever Georgiana's
+beauty, whether of soul or sense, had given him delight.
+
+At all the seasons which should have been their happiest he
+invariably, and without intending it, nay, in spite of a purpose to
+the contrary, reverted to this one disastrous topic. Trifling as it at
+first appeared, it so connected itself with innumerable trains of
+thought and modes of feeling that it became the central point of all.
+With the morning twilight Aylmer opened his eyes upon his wife's face
+and recognized the symbol of imperfection, and when they sat together
+at the evening hearth his eyes wandered stealthily to her cheek, and
+beheld, flickering with the blaze of the wood-fire, the spectral hand
+that wrote mortality where he would fain have worshipped, Georgiana
+soon learned to shudder at his gaze. It needed but a glance with the
+peculiar expression that his face often wore to change the roses of
+her cheek into a deathlike paleness, amid which the crimson hand was
+brought strongly out, like a bas-relief of ruby on the whitest marble.
+
+Late one night, when the lights were growing dim so as hardly to
+betray the stain on the poor wife's cheek, she herself, for the first
+time, voluntarily took up the subject.
+
+"Do you remember, my dear Aylmer," said she, with a feeble attempt at
+a smile, "have you any recollection of a dream last night about this
+odious hand?"
+
+"None! none whatever!" replied Aylmer, starting: but then he added, in
+a dry, cold tone, affected for the sake of concealing the real depth
+of his emotion, "I might well dream of it; for, before I fell asleep,
+it had taken a pretty firm hold of my fancy."
+
+"And you did dream of it?" continued Georgiana, hastily; for she
+dreaded lest a gush of tears should interrupt what she had to say. "A
+terrible dream! I wonder that you can forget it. Is it possible to
+forget this one expression?--'It is in her heart now; we must have it
+out!' Reflect, my husband; for by all means I would have you recall
+that dream."
+
+The mind is in a sad state when Sleep, the all-involving, cannot
+confine her spectres within the dim region of her sway, but suffers
+them to break forth, affrighting this actual life with secrets that
+perchance belong to a deeper one. Aylmer now remembered his dream. He
+had fancied himself with his servant Aminadab attempting an operation
+for the removal of the birthmark; but the deeper went the knife, the
+deeper sank the hand, until at length its tiny grasp appeared to have
+caught hold of Georgiana's heart; whence, however, her husband was
+inexorably resolved to cut or wrench it away.
+
+When the dream had shaped itself perfectly in his memory, Aylmer sat
+in his wife's presence with a guilty feeling. Truth often finds its
+way to the mind close muffled in robes of sleep, and then speaks with
+uncompromising directness of matters in regard to which we practice an
+unconscious self-deception during our waking moments. Until now he had
+not been aware of the tyrannizing influence acquired by one idea over
+his mind, and of the lengths which he might find in his heart to go
+for the sake of giving himself peace.
+
+"Aylmer," resumed Georgiana, solemnly, "I know not what may be the
+cost to both of us to rid me of this fatal birthmark. Perhaps its
+removal may cause cureless deformity; or it may be the stain goes as
+deep as life itself. Again; do we know that there is a possibility, on
+any terms, of unclasping the firm gripe of this little hand which was
+laid upon me before I came into the world?"
+
+"Dearest Georgiana, I have spent much thought upon the subject,"
+hastily interrupted Aylmer. "I am convinced of the perfect
+practicability of its removal."
+
+"If there be the remotest possibility of it," continued Georgiana,
+"let the attempt be made, at whatever risk. Danger is nothing to rue;
+for life, while this hateful mark makes me the object of your horror
+and disgust,--life is a burden which I would fling down with joy.
+Either remove this dreadful hand, or take my wretched life! You have
+deep science. All the world bears witness of it. You have achieved
+great wonders. Cannot you remove this little, little mark, which I
+cover with the tips of two small fingers? Is this beyond your power,
+for the sake of your own peace, and to save your poor wife from
+madness?"
+
+"Noblest, dearest, tenderest wife," cried Aylmer, rapturously, "doubt
+not my power. I have already given this matter the deepest
+thought,--thought which might almost have enlightened me to create a
+being less perfect than yourself. Georgiana, you have led me deeper
+than ever into the heart of science. I feel myself fully competent to
+render this dear cheek as faultless as its fellow; and then, most
+beloved, what will be my triumph when I shall have corrected what
+Nature left imperfect in her fairest work! Even Pygmalion[3], when his
+sculptured woman assumed life, felt not greater ecstasy than mine will
+be."
+
+"It is resolved, then," said Georgiana, faintly smiling. "And, Aylmer,
+spare me not, though you should find the birthmark take refuge in my
+heart at last."
+
+Her husband tenderly kissed her cheek,--her right cheek,--not that
+which bore the impress of the crimson hand.
+
+The next day Aylmer apprised his wife of a plan that he had formed
+whereby he might have opportunity for the intense thought and constant
+watchfulness which the proposed operation would require, while
+Georgiana, likewise, would enjoy the perfect repose essential to its
+success. They were to seclude themselves in the extensive apartments
+occupied by Aylmer as a laboratory, and where, during his toilsome
+youth, he had made discoveries in the elemental powers of nature that
+had roused the admiration of all the learned societies in Europe.
+Seated calmly in this laboratory, the pale philosopher had
+investigated the secrets of the highest cloud-region and of the
+profoundest mines; he had satisfied himself of the causes that kindled
+and kept alive the fires of the volcano; and had explained the mystery
+of fountains, and how it is that they gush forth, some so bright and
+pure, and others with such rich medicinal virtues, from the dark bosom
+of the earth. Here, too, at an earlier period, he had studied the
+wonders of the human frame, and attempted to fathom the very process
+by which Nature assimilates all her precious influences from earth and
+air, and from the spiritual world, to create and foster man, her
+masterpiece. The latter pursuit, however, Aylmer had long laid aside
+in unwilling recognition of the truth--against which all seekers
+sooner or later stumble--that our great creative Mother, while she
+amuses us with apparently working in the broadest sunshine, is yet
+severely careful to keep her own secrets, and, in spite of her
+pretended openness, shows us nothing but results. She permits us,
+indeed, to mar, but seldom to mend, and, like a jealous patentee, on
+no account to make. Now, however, Aylmer resumed these half-forgotten
+investigations; not, of course, with such hopes or wishes as first
+suggested them; but because they involved much physiological truth and
+lay in the path of his proposed scheme for the treatment of Georgiana.
+
+As he led her over the threshold of the laboratory Georgiana was cold
+and tremulous. Aylmer looked cheerfully into her face, with intent to
+reassure her, but was so startled with the intense glow of the
+birthmark upon the whiteness of her cheek that he could not restrain a
+strong convulsive shudder. His wife fainted.
+
+"Aminadab! Aminadab!" shouted Aylmer, stamping violently on the floor.
+
+Forthwith there issued from an inner apartment a man of low stature,
+but bulky frame, with shaggy hair hanging about his visage, which was
+grimed with the vapors of the furnace. This personage had been
+Aylmer's under-worker during his whole scientific career, and was
+admirably fitted for that office by his great mechanical readiness,
+and the skill with which, while incapable of comprehending a single
+principle, he executed all the details of his master's experiments.
+With his vast strength, his shaggy hair, his smoky aspect, and the
+indescribable earthiness that incrusted him, he seemed to represent
+man's physical nature; while Aylmer's slender figure, and pale,
+intellectual face, were no less apt a type of the spiritual element.
+
+"Throw open the door of the boudoir, Aminadab," said Aylmer, "and burn
+a pastil."
+
+"Yes, master," answered Aminadab, looking intently at the lifeless
+form of Georgiana; and then he muttered to himself, "If she were my
+wife, I'd never part with that birthmark."
+
+When Georgiana recovered consciousness she found herself breathing an
+atmosphere of penetrating fragrance, the gentle potency of which had
+recalled her from her deathlike faintness. The scene around her looked
+like enchantment. Aylmer had converted those smoky, dingy, sombre
+rooms, where he had spent his brightest years in recondite[4]
+pursuits, into a series of beautiful apartments not unfit to be the
+secluded abode of a lovely woman. The walls were hung with gorgeous
+curtains, which imparted the combination of grandeur and grace that no
+other species of adornment can achieve; and, as they fell from the
+ceiling to the floor, their rich and ponderous folds, concealing all
+angles and straight lines, appeared to shut in the scene from infinite
+space. For aught Georgiana knew, it might be a pavilion among the
+clouds. And Alymer, excluding the sunshine, which would have
+interfered with his chemical processes, had supplied its place with
+perfumed lamps, emitting flames of various hue, but all uniting in a
+soft, impurpled radiance. He now knelt by his wife's side, watching
+her earnestly, but without alarm; for he was confident in his science,
+and felt that he could draw a magic circle round her within which no
+evil might intrude.
+
+"Where am I? Ah, I remember," said Georgiana, faintly; and she placed
+her hand over her cheek to hide the terrible mark from her husband's
+eyes.
+
+"Fear not, dearest!" exclaimed he. "Do not shrink from me! Believe me,
+Georgiana, I even rejoice in this single imperfection, since it will
+be such a rapture to remove it."
+
+"O, spare me!" sadly replied his wife. "Pray do not look at it again.
+I never can forget that convulsive shudder."
+
+In order to soothe Georgiana, and, as it were, to release her mind
+from the burden of actual things, Aylmer now put in practice some of
+the light and playful secrets which science had taught him among its
+profounder lore. Airy figures, absolutely bodiless ideas, and forms of
+unsubstantial beauty came and danced before her, imprinting their
+momentary footsteps on beams of light. Though she had some indistinct
+idea of the method of these optical phenomena, still the illusion was
+almost perfect enough to warrant the belief that her husband possessed
+sway over the spiritual world. Then again, when she felt a wish to
+look forth from her seclusion, immediately, as if her thoughts were
+answered, the procession of external existence flitted across a
+screen. The scenery and the figures of actual life were perfectly
+represented, but with that bewitching yet indescribable difference
+which always makes a picture, an image, or a shadow so much more
+attractive than the original. When wearied of this, Aylmer bade her
+cast her eyes upon a vessel containing a quantity of earth. She did so
+with little interest at first; but was soon startled to perceive the
+germ of a plant shooting upward from the soil: Then came the slender
+stalk; the leaves gradually unfolded themselves; and amid them was a
+perfect and lovely flower.
+
+"It is magical!" cried Georgiana. "I dare not touch it."
+
+"Nay, pluck it," answered Aylmer,--"pluck it, and inhale its brief
+perfume while you may. The flower will wither in a few moments and
+leave nothing save its brown seed-vessels; but thence may be
+perpetuated a race as ephemeral as itself."
+
+But Georgiana had no sooner touched the flower than the whole plant
+suffered a blight, its leaves turning coal black as if by the agency
+of fire.
+
+"There was too powerful a stimulus," said Aylmer, thoughtfully.
+
+To make up for this abortive experiment, he proposed to take her
+portrait by a scientific process of his own invention. It was to be
+effected by rays of light striking upon a polished plate of metal.
+Georgiana assented; but, on looking at the result, was affrighted to
+find the features of the portrait blurred and indefinable; while the
+minute figure of a hand appeared where the cheek should have been.
+Alymer snatched the metallic plate and threw it into a jar of
+corrosive[5] acid.
+
+Soon, however, he forgot these mortifying failures. In the intervals
+of study and chemical experiment he came to her flushed and exhausted,
+but seemed invigorated by her presence, and spoke in glowing language
+of the resources of his art. He gave a history of the long dynasty of
+the alchemists, who spent so many ages in quest of the universal
+solvent by which the golden principle might be elicited from all
+things vile and base, Aylmer appeared to believe that, by the plainest
+scientific logic, it was altogether within the limits of possibility
+to discover this long-sought medium. "But," he added, "a philosopher
+who should go deep enough to acquire the power would attain too lofty
+a wisdom to stoop to the exercise of it." Not less singular were his
+opinions in regard to the elixir vitae[6]. He more than intimated that
+it was at his option to concoct a liquid that should prolong life for
+years, perhaps interminably; but that it would produce a discord in
+nature which all the world, and chiefly the quaffer of the immortal
+nostrum, would find cause to curse.
+
+"Aylmer, are you in earnest?" asked Georgiana, looking at him with
+amazement and fear. "It is terrible to possess such power, or even to
+dream of possessing it."
+
+"O, do not tremble, my love," said her husband. "I would not wrong
+either you or myself by working such inharmonious effects upon our
+lives; but I would have you consider how trifling, in comparison, is
+the skill requisite to remove this little hand."
+
+At the mention of the birthmark, Georgiana, as usual, shrank as if a
+red-hot iron had touched her cheek.
+
+Again Aylmer applied himself to his labors. She could hear his voice
+in the distant furnace-room giving directions to Aminadab, whose
+harsh, uncouth, misshapen tones were audible in response, more like
+the grunt or growl of a brute than human speech. After hours of
+absence, Aylmer reappeared and proposed that she should now examine
+his cabinet of chemical products and natural treasures of the earth.
+Among the former he showed her a small vial, in which, he remarked,
+was contained a gentle yet most powerful fragrance, capable of
+impregnating all the breezes that blow across a kingdom. They were of
+inestimable value, the contents of that little vial; and, as he said
+so, he threw some of the perfume into the air and filled the room with
+piercing and invigorating delight.
+
+"And what is this?" asked Georgiana, pointing to a small crystal globe
+containing a gold-colored liquid. "It is so beautiful to the eye that
+I could imagine it the elixir of life."
+
+"In one sense it is," replied Aylmer; "or rather, the elixir of
+immortality. It is the most precious poison that ever was concocted in
+this world. By its aid I could apportion the lifetime of any mortal at
+whom you might point your finger. The strength of the dose would
+determine whether he were to linger out years, or drop dead in the
+midst of a breath. No king on his guarded throne could keep his life
+if I, in my private station, should deem that the welfare of millions
+justified me in depriving him of it."
+
+"Why do you keep such a terrific drug?" inquired Georgiana, in horror.
+
+"Do not mistrust me, dearest," said her husband, smiling; "its
+virtuous potency is yet greater than its harmful one. But see! here is
+a powerful cosmetic. With a few drops of this in a vase of water,
+freckles may be washed away as easily as the hands are cleansed. A
+stronger infusion[7] would take the blood out of the cheek, and leave
+the rosiest beauty a pale ghost."
+
+"Is it with this lotion that you intend to bathe my cheek?" asked
+Georgiana, anxiously.
+
+"O no," hastily replied her husband; "this is merely superficial. Your
+case demands a remedy that shall go deeper."
+
+In his interviews with Georgiana, Aylmer generally made minute
+inquiries as to her sensations, and whether the confinement of the
+rooms and the temperature of the atmosphere agreed with her. These
+questions had such a particular drift that Georgiana began to
+conjecture that she was already subjected to certain physical
+influences, either breathed in with the fragrant air or taken with her
+food. She fancied likewise, but it might be altogether fancy, that
+there was a stirring up of her system,--a strange, indefinite
+sensation creeping through her veins, and tingling, half painfully,
+half pleasurably, at her heart. Still, whenever she dared to look into
+the mirror, there she beheld herself pale as a white rose and with the
+crimson birthmark stamped upon her cheek. Not even Aylmer now hated it
+so much as she.
+
+To dispel the tedium of the hours which her husband found it necessary
+to devote to the processes of combination and analysis, Georgiana
+turned over the volumes of his scientific library. In many dark old
+tomes she met with chapters full of romance and poetry. They were the
+works of the philosophers of the Middle Ages, such as Albertus
+Magnus[8], Cornelius Agrippa[9], Paracelsus[10], and the famous friar
+who created the prophetic Brazen Head. All these antique naturalists
+stood in advance of their centuries, yet were imbued with some of
+their credulity, and therefore were believed, and perhaps imagined
+themselves to have acquired from the investigation of nature a power
+above nature, and from physics a sway over the spiritual world. Hardly
+less curious and imaginative were the early volumes of the
+Transactions of the Royal Society[11], in which the members, knowing
+little of the limits of natural possibility, were continually
+recording wonders or proposing methods whereby wonders might be
+wrought.
+
+But, to Georgiana, the most engrossing volume was a large folio from
+her husband's own hand, in which he had recorded every experiment of
+his scientific career, its original aim, the methods adopted for its
+development, and its final success or failure, with the circumstances
+to which either event was attributable. The book, in truth; was both
+the history and emblem of his ardent, ambitious, imaginative, yet
+practical and laborious life. He handled physical details as if there
+were nothing beyond them; yet spiritualized them all, and redeemed
+himself from materialism by his strong and eager aspiration towards
+the infinite. In his grasp the veriest clod of earth assumed a soul.
+Georgiana, as she read, reverenced Aylmer and loved him more
+profoundly than ever, but with a less entire dependence on his
+judgment than heretofore. Much as he had accomplished, she could not
+but observe that his most splendid successes were almost invariably
+failures, if compared with the ideal at which he aimed. His brightest
+diamonds were the merest pebbles, and felt to be so by himself, in
+comparison with the inestimable gems which lay hidden beyond his
+reach. The volume, rich with achievements that had won renown for its
+author, was yet as melancholy a record as over mortal hand had penned.
+It was the sad confession and continual exemplification of the
+shortcomings of the composite man, the spirit burdened with clay and
+working in matter, and of the despair that assails the higher nature
+at finding itself so miserably thwarted by the earthly part. Perhaps
+every man of genius, in whatever sphere, might recognize the image of
+his own experience in Aylmer's journal.
+
+So deeply did these reflections affect Georgiana that she laid her
+face upon the open volume and burst into tears. In this situation she
+was found by her husband.
+
+"It is dangerous to read in a sorcerer's books," said he with a smile,
+though his countenance was uneasy and displeased. "Georgiana, there
+are pages in that volume which I can scarcely glance over and keep my
+senses. Take heed lest it prove as detrimental to you."
+
+"It has made me worship you more than ever." said she.
+
+"Ah, wait for this one success," rejoined he, "then worship me if you
+will. I shall deem myself hardly unworthy of it. But come. I have
+sought you for the luxury of your voice. Sing to me, dearest."
+
+So she poured out the liquid music of her voice to quench the thirst
+of his spirit. He then took his leave with a boyish exuberance of
+gayety, assuring her that her seclusion would endure but a little
+longer, and that the result was already certain. Scarcely had he
+departed when Georgiana felt irresistibly impelled to follow him. She
+had forgotten to inform Aylmer of a symptom which for two or three
+hours past had begun to excite her attention. It was a sensation in
+the fatal birthmark, not painful, but which induced a restlessness
+throughout her system. Hastening after her husband, she intruded for
+the first time into the laboratory.
+
+The first thing that struck her eye was the furnace, that hot and
+feverish worker, with the intense glow of its fire, which by the
+quantities of soot clustered above it seemed to have been burning for
+ages. There was a distilling-apparatus in full operation. Around the
+room were retorts, tubes, cylinders, crucibles, and other apparatus of
+chemical research. An electrical machine stood ready for immediate
+use. The atmosphere felt oppressively close, and was tainted with
+gaseous odors which had been tormented forth by the processes of
+science. The severe and homely simplicity of the apartment, with its
+naked walls and brick pavement, looked strange, accustomed as
+Georgiana had become to the fantastic elegance of her boudoir. But
+what chiefly, indeed almost solely, drew her attention, was the aspect
+of Aylmer himself.
+
+He was pale as death, anxious and absorbed, and hung over the furnace
+as if it depended upon his utmost watchfulness whether the liquid
+which it was distilling should be the draught of immortal happiness or
+misery. How different from the sanguine and joyous mien that he had
+assumed for Georgiana's encouragement!
+
+"Carefully now, Aminadab; carefully, thou human machine; carefully,
+thou man of clay," muttered Aylmer, more to himself than his
+assistant. "Now, If there be a thought too much or too little, it is
+all over."
+
+"Ho! ho!" mumbled Aminadab. "Look, master! look!"
+
+Aylmer raised his eyes hastily, and at first reddened, then grew paler
+than ever, on beholding Georgiana. He rushed towards her and seized
+her arm with a gripe that left the print of his fingers upon it.
+
+"Why do you come thither? Have you no trust in your husband?" cried
+he, impetuously. "Would you throw the blight of that fatal birthmark
+over my labors? It is not well done. Go, prying woman! go!"
+
+"Nay, Aylmer," said Georgiana with the firmness of which she possessed
+no stinted endowment, "it is not you that have a right to complain.
+You mistrust your wife; you have concealed the anxiety with which you
+watch the development of this experiment. Think not so unworthily of
+me, my husband. Tell me all the risk we run, and fear not that I shall
+shrink: for my share in it is far less than your own."
+
+"No, no, Georgiana!" said Aylmer, impatiently; "it must not be."
+
+"I submit," replied she, calmly. "And, Aylmer, I shall quaff whatever
+draught you bring me; but it will be on the same principle that would
+induce me to take a dose of poison if offered by your hand."
+
+"My noble wife," said Aylmer, deeply moved, "I knew not the height and
+depth of your nature until now. Nothing shall be concealed. Know,
+then, that this crimson hand, superficial as it seems, has clutched
+its grasp into your being with a strength of which I had no previous
+conception. I have already administered agents powerful enough to do
+aught except to change your entire physical system. Only one thing
+remains to be tried. If that fail us we are ruined."
+
+"Why did you hesitate to tell me this?" asked she.
+
+"Because, Georgiana," said Aylmer, in a low voice, "there is danger."
+
+"Danger? There is but one danger,--that this horrible stigma shall be
+left upon my cheek!" cried Georgiana. "Remove it, remove it, whatever
+be the cost, or we shall both go mad!"
+
+"Heaven knows your words are too true," said Aylmer, sadly. "And now,
+dearest, return to your boudoir. In a little while all will be
+tested."
+
+He conducted her back and took leave of her with a solemn tenderness
+which spoke far more than his words how much was now at stake. After
+his departure Georgiana became rapt in musings. She considered the
+character of Aylmer, and did it completer justice than at any previous
+moment. Her heart exulted, while it trembled, at his honorable
+love,--so pure and lofty that it would accept nothing less than
+perfection, nor miserably make itself contented with an earthlier
+nature than he had dreamed of. She felt how much more precious was
+such a sentiment than that meaner kind which would have borne with the
+imperfection for her sake, and have been guilty of treason to holy
+love by degrading its perfect idea to the level of the actual; and
+with her whole spirit she prayed that, for a single moment, she might
+satisfy his highest and deepest conception. Longer than one moment she
+well knew it could not be; for his spirit was ever on the march, ever
+ascending, and each instant required something that was beyond the
+scope of the instant before.
+
+The sound of her husband's footsteps aroused her. He bore a crystal
+goblet containing a liquor colorless as water, but bright enough to be
+the draught of immortality. Aylmer was pale; but it seemed rather the
+consequence of a highly wrought state of mind and tension of spirit
+than of fear or doubt.
+
+"The concoction of the draught has been perfect," said he, in answer
+to Georgiana's look. "Unless all my science have deceived me, it
+cannot fail."
+
+"Save on your account, my dearest Aylmer," observed his wife, "I might
+wish to put off this birthmark of mortality by relinquishing mortality
+itself in preference to any other mode. Life is but a sad possession
+to those who have attained precisely the degree of moral advancement
+at which I stand. Were I weaker and blinder, it might be happiness.
+Were I stronger, it might be endured hopefully. But, being what I find
+myself, methinks I am of all mortals the most fit to die."
+
+"You are fit for heaven without tasting death!" replied her husband.
+"But why do we speak of dying? The draught cannot fail. Behold its
+effect upon this plant."
+
+On the window-seat there stood a geranium diseased with yellow
+blotches, which had overspread all its leaves. Aylmer poured a small
+quantity of the liquid upon the soil in which it grew. In a little
+time, when the roots of the plant had taken up the moisture, the
+unsightly blotches began to be extinguished in a living verdure.
+
+"There needed no proof," said Georgiana, quietly. "Give me the goblet.
+I joyfully stake all upon your word."
+
+"Drink, then, thou lofty creature!" exclaimed Aylmer, with fervid
+admiration. "There is no taint of imperfection on thy spirit. Thy
+sensible frame, too, shall soon be all perfect."
+
+She quaffed the liquid and returned the goblet to his hand.
+
+"It is grateful," said she, with a placid smile. "Methinks it is like
+water from a heavenly fountain; for it contains I know not what of
+unobtrusive fragrance and deliciousness. It allays a feverish thirst
+that had parched me for many days. Now, dearest, let me sleep. My
+earthly senses are closing over my spirit like the leaves around the
+heart of a rose at sunset."
+
+She spoke the last words with a gentle reluctance, as if it required
+almost more energy than she could command to pronounce the faint and
+lingering syllables. Scarcely had they loitered through her lips ere
+she was lost in slumber. Aylmer sat by her side, watching her aspect
+with the emotions proper to a man, the whole value of whose existence
+was involved in the process now to be tested. Mingled with this mood,
+however, was the philosophic investigation characteristic of the man
+of science. Not the minutest symptom escaped him. A heightened flush
+of the cheek, a slight irregularity of breath, a quiver of the eyelid,
+a hardly perceptible tremor through the frame,--such were the details
+which, as the moments passed, he wrote down, in his folio volume.
+Intense thought had set its stamp upon every previous page of that
+volume; but the thoughts of years were all concentrated upon the last.
+
+While thus employed, he failed not to gaze often at the fatal hand,
+and not without a shudder. Yet once, by a strange and unaccountable
+impulse, he pressed it with his lips. His spirit recoiled, however, in
+the very act; and Georgiana, out of the midst of her deep sleep, moved
+uneasily, and murmured, as if in remonstrance. Again Aylmer resumed,
+his watch. Nor was it without avail. The crimson hand, which at first
+had been strongly visible upon the marble paleness of Georgiana's
+cheek, now grew more faintly outlined. She remained not less pale than
+ever; but the birthmark, with every breath that came and went, lost
+somewhat of its former distinctness. Its presence had been awful; its
+departure was more awful still. Watch the stain of the rainbow fading
+out of the sky, and you will know how that mysterious symbol passed
+away.
+
+"By Heaven! it is well-nigh gone!" said Aylmer to himself, in almost
+irrepressible ecstasy. "I can scarcely trace it now. Success! success!
+And now it is like the faintest rose color. The lightest flush of
+blood across her cheek would overcome it. But she is so pale!"
+
+He drew aside the window-curtain and suffered the light of natural day
+to fall into the room and rest upon her cheek. At the same time he
+heard a gross, hoarse chuckle, which he had long known as his servant
+Aminadab's expression of delight.
+
+"Ah, clod! ah, earthly mass!" cried Aylmer, laughing in a sort of
+frenzy, "you have served me well! Matter and spirit--earth and
+heaven--have both done their part in this! Laugh, thing of the senses!
+You have earned the right to laugh."
+
+These exclamations broke Georgiana's sleep. She slowly unclosed her
+eyes and gazed into the mirror which her husband had arranged for that
+purpose. A faint smile flitted over her lips when she recognized how
+barely perceptible was now that crimson hand which had once blazed
+forth with such disastrous brilliancy as to scare away all their
+happiness. But then her eyes sought Aylmer's face with a trouble and
+anxiety that he could by no means account for.
+
+"My poor Aylmer!" murmured she.
+
+"Poor? Nay, richest, happiest, most favored!" exclaimed he. "My
+peerless bride, it is successful! You are perfect!"
+
+"My poor Aylmer," she repeated, with a more than human tenderness,
+"you have aimed loftily; you have done nobly. Do not repent that, with
+so high and pure a feeling, you have rejected the best the earth could
+offer. Aylmer, dearest Aylmer, I am dying!"
+
+Alas! it was too true! The fatal hand had grappled with the mystery of
+life, and was the bond by which an angelic spirit kept itself in union
+with a mortal frame. As the last crimson tint of the birthmark--that
+sole token of human imperfection--faded from her cheek, the parting
+breath of the now perfect woman passed into the atmosphere, and her
+soul, lingering a moment, near her husband, took its heavenward
+flight. Then a hoarse, chuckling laugh was heard again! Thus ever does
+the gross fatality of earth exult in its invariable triumph over the
+immortal essence which, in this dim sphere of half-development,
+demands the completeness of a higher state. Yet, had Aylmer reached a
+profounder wisdom, he need not thus have flung away the happiness
+which would have woven his mortal life of the selfsame texture with
+the celestial. The momentary circumstance was too strong for him; he
+failed to look beyond the shadowy scope of time, and, living once for
+all in eternity, to find the perfect future in the present.
+
+
+NOTES
+
+[1] Published in the March, 1843, number of _The Pioneer_, edited by
+J. R. Lowell. Republished in _Mosses from an Old Manse_ in 1846.
+
+[2] 154:29 "Eve," of Powers. A noted American sculptor (1805-1873).
+"Eve," "The Fisher Boy," and "America" are some of his chief works.
+
+[3] 168:28 Pygmalion. A sculptor and king of Cyprus.
+
+[4] 181:16 recondite. Abstruse or secret.
+
+[5] 168:27 corrosive. Destructive of tissue.
+
+[6] 184:12 vitae. Of life.
+
+[7] 166:3 infusion. The act of pouring in.
+
+[8] 167:1 Albertus Magnus. A famous scholastic philosopher and member
+of the Dominican order (1193-1280).
+
+[9] 167:1 Cornelius Agrippa. A German philosopher and student of
+alchemy and magic (1486-1535).
+
+[10] 167:1 Paracelsus. A German-Swiss physician, and alchemist
+(1492-1541).
+
+[11] 167:10 Royal Society. An association for the advancement of
+science, founded in London a little before 1660.
+
+
+BIOGRAPHY
+
+Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in Salem, Massachusetts, July 4, 1804.
+His ancestors were prominent in the affairs of the colony: John
+Hawthorne was one of the judges who tried the witches in 1620; and
+another John Hawthorne was a member of the dignified school committee
+of Salem in 1796. Hawthorne's father, a ship captain, died in a
+foreign land when his son was only four years old; his mother lived
+for forty years after the death of her husband the life of a recluse
+in her own house. The family's star was in the decline and the people
+of Salem looked on Nathaniel as a lazy and very queer boy. He grew up
+in a unique solitude. During these years of seclusion Hawthorne
+acquired the habit of keeping silent on all occasions, and reading a
+few books frequently and thoroughly. The _Newgate Calendar_ must have
+supplied him with many subtle suggestions for his later writings on
+sin and crime, for in almost all of his productions his imagination is
+tinged with, this old Puritanic philosophy and theology.
+
+He entered Bowdoin College in 1821 and graduated from this institution
+in 1825. He had as classmates Longfellow, and Franklin Pierce, who
+afterward became president of the United States. After his graduation
+Hawthorne returned to Salem, where he lived with his mother and
+sisters in almost absolute seclusion for fourteen years. During this
+period he wrote daily, and spent his nights in burning what he had
+written in the daytime.
+
+He was clerk of the Boston Custom House from 1839 to 1841, when the
+Whig party removed him for being ultra-partisan in behalf of the
+Democrats. At this time Hawthorne wrote: "As to the Salem people, I
+really thought I had been exceedingly good-natured in my treatment of
+them. They certainly do not deserve good usage at my hands, after
+permitting me to be deliberately lied down, not merely once, but at
+two separate attacks, and on two false indictments, without hardly a
+voice being raised in my behalf." He married Sophia Peabody, July 9,
+1842. From 1842 until 1846 they lived in Concord in the house formerly
+occupied by Emerson. These were the happiest years of his life. In
+1846 he returned to Salem as surveyor in the Salem Custom House. He
+retired from this office in 1850 and lived in Lenox, Massachusetts,
+for two years. In 1852 he settled in Concord. President Pierce
+appointed him consul at Liverpool in 1853, and he served in this
+position until 1857.
+
+After leaving Liverpool he travelled three years in England and on the
+continent. He returned to Concord in 1860. He died in the White
+Mountains, May 18, 1864. Although a silent man and a seeker of
+solitude during his life, few writers have ever experienced such wide
+publicity of their inmost lives as has Hawthorne since his death. The
+publication of his _Notes_ has opened his desk and work-shop to every
+one, and has revealed to us a magnanimous, sympathetic, and pure man,
+who realized his responsibilities as a writer and improved all his
+literary opportunities.
+
+
+BIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES
+
+_History of American Literature_, Moses Coit Tyler.
+
+_Introduction to American Literature_, Henry S. Pancoast.
+
+_Studies in American Literature_, Charles Noble.
+
+_Introduction to American Literature_, Brander Matthews.
+
+"Gloom and Cheer in Hawthorne," _Critic_, 45: 28-36.
+
+"Hawthorne and his Circle," _Nation_, 77: 410-411.
+
+"Hawthorne as seen by his Publisher," _Critic_, 45: 51-55.
+
+"Hawthorne from an English Point of View." _Critic_, 45: 60-66.
+
+"Hawthorne's Last Years," _Critic_, 45: 67-71.
+
+"Life of Hawthorne," _Atlantic Monthly_, 90: 563-567,
+
+
+CRITICISMS
+
+Many influences in Hawthorne's environment served to condition and
+mold him as a writer. Salem had reached its highest prosperity in all
+lines and was just beginning its retrogression in Hawthorne's time;
+the primeval forests of Maine produced a subtle and lasting influence
+on him during his sojourn in Maine for his health; transcendentalism
+was the ruling thought at the time when Hawthorne was in his most
+plastic and solitary age; his interest in _Brook Farm_ brought him in
+contact with all the good and bad points of that social movement; his
+life in the _Old Manse_ in Concord and in the Berkshire Hills
+contributed largely to the deepening of his convictions and
+sympathies; and over all, like a sombre cloud, hung his ancestral
+Puritanic training which penetrated and suffused all his writings. He
+is the most native and the least imitative of all our fiction writers.
+
+Hawthorne did not write on the common subjects and facts of his day,
+but chose to have his readers go with him, away from prosaic life, out
+into a world of mysteries where we may revel in all kinds of imaginary
+sports. By this process he succeeded in producing poetic effects from
+the most unpromising materials. His writings are fanciful. He enjoyed
+subjects that deal with the occult, such as mesmerism, hypnotism, and
+subtle suggestions. He harked back to the rigid beliefs and laws of
+the Puritans, but he and his subjects are spiritually advanced far
+above the crude, ponderous, and highly theological tenets of his
+forefathers.
+
+Hawthorne is very provincial. He travelled little until he was fifty
+years old. He naturally loved the antique and poetic countries, but he
+always qualified his admiration of these foreign lands by praising
+something in his own New England. He conceded that there was little or
+nothing in this prosperous and crude country to inspire a writer to
+produce poetry, but his patriotism was so strong that he could never
+free himself wholly from its provincial effects. All his works were
+produced in the stress created by this pull of opposing forces--his
+high poetic ideals and his love of country.
+
+In form he tends toward the polish of a classicist; in quality and
+freedom of thought he is very responsive to the mysteries of
+romanticism. He is introspective in his thinking and symbolical in his
+writing. Naturally he thinks abstractly, but is compelled to construct
+concrete methods of presenting his ideas. He never describes a strong
+emotion in detail, but delights in using suggestions and sidelights.
+His pure and refined manhood, his delicate fancy and deep interest in
+moral and religious questions, his conscience in its most artistic
+form, all are presented to the reader in the choicest garb of well
+chosen words and attuned to a subtle rhythm that adds beauty and
+attractiveness to his style.
+
+
+GENERAL REFERENCES
+
+_Hours in a Library_, Leslie Stephen.
+
+_A Literary History of America_, Barrett Wendell.
+
+_American Literature_, William P. Trent.
+
+_Makers of English Fiction_, W.J. Dawson.
+
+_Leading American Novelists_, J. Erskine.
+
+_Studies and Appreciations_, L.E. Gates.
+
+"An Estimate," _Scribner's Magazine_, 43: 69-84.
+
+"Unknown Quantity in Hawthorne's Personality," _Current Literature_,
+42: 517-518.
+
+COLLATERAL READINGS
+
+_Biographical Stories for Children_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_Mosses from an Old Manse_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_The Wonder Boot_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_The Blithedale Romance_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_Tanglewood Tales_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_Lady Eleanore's Mantle_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_The Great Stone Face_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_The Prophetic Pictures_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_The Necklace_, Guy de Maupassant.
+
+_A Solitary_, Mary Wilkins Freeman.
+
+_The Lady or the Tiger_, Frank R. Stockton.
+
+_The Strange Ride_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+_Rikki-Tikki-Tavi_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+_They_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+_The Twelfth Guest_, Mary Wilkins Freeman.
+
+_The Shadows on the Wall_, Mary Wilkins Freeman.
+
+
+
+ETHAN BRAND[1]
+
+A Chapter From An Abortive Romance
+
+_By Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)_
+
+
+Bartram the lime-burner, a rough, heavy-looking man, begrimed with
+charcoal, sat watching his kiln, at nightfall, while his little son
+played at building houses with the scattered fragments of marble,
+when, on the hillside below them, they heard a roar of laughter, not
+mirthful, but slow, and even solemn, like a wind shaking the boughs of
+the forest.
+
+"Father, what is that?" asked the little boy, leaving his play, and
+pressing betwixt his father's knees.
+
+"O, some drunken man, I suppose," answered the lime-burner; "some
+merry fellow from the bar-room in the village, who dared not laugh
+loud enough within doors lest he should blow the roof of the house
+off. So here he is, shaking his jolly sides at the foot of Graylock."
+
+"But, father," said the child, more sensitive than the obtuse,
+middle-aged clown, "he does not laugh like a man that is glad. So the
+noise frightens me!"
+
+"Don't be a fool, child!" cried his father, gruffly. "You will never
+make a man, I do believe; there is too much of your mother in you. I
+have known the rustling of a leaf startle you. Hark! Here comes the
+merry fellow now. You shall see that there is no harm in him."
+
+Bartram and his little son, while they were talking thus, sat watching
+the same lime-kiln that had been the scene of Ethan Brand's solitary
+and meditative life, before he began his search for the Unpardonable
+Sin. Many years, as we have seen, had now elapsed, since that
+portentous night when the IDEA was first developed. The kiln, however,
+on the mountain-side stood unimpaired, and was in nothing changed
+since he had thrown his dark thoughts into the intense glow of its
+furnace, and melted them, as it were, into the one thought that took
+possession of his life. It was a rude, round, towerlike structure,
+about twenty feet high, heavily built of rough stones, and with a
+hillock of earth heaped about the larger part of its circumference; so
+that the blocks and fragments of marble might be drawn by cart-loads,
+and thrown in at the top. There was an opening at the bottom of the
+tower, like an oven-mouth, but large enough to admit a man in a
+stooping posture, and provided with a massive iron door. With the
+smoke and jets of flame issuing from the chinks and crevices of this
+door, which seemed to give admittance into the hillside, it resembled
+nothing so much as the private entrance to the infernal regions, which
+the shepherds of the Delectable Mountains[2] were accustomed to show
+to pilgrims.
+
+There are many such lime-kilns in that tract of country, for the
+purpose of burning the white marble which composes a large part of the
+substance of the hills. Some of them, built years ago, and long
+deserted, with weeds growing in the vacant round of the interior,
+which is open to the sky, and grass and wild flowers rooting
+themselves into the chinks of the stones, look already like relics of
+antiquity, and may yet be overspread with the lichens of centuries to
+come. Others, where the lime-burner still feeds his daily and
+night-long fire, afford points of interest to the wanderer among the
+hills, who seats himself on a log of wood or a fragment of marble, to
+hold a chat with the solitary man. It is a lonesome, and, when the
+character is inclined to thought, may be an intensely thoughtful,
+occupation; as it proved in the case of Ethan Brand, who had mused to
+such strange purpose, in days gone by, while the fire in this very
+kiln was burning.
+
+The man who now watched the fire was of a different order, and
+troubled himself with no thoughts save the very few that were
+requisite to his business. At frequent intervals he flung back the
+clashing weight of the iron door, and, turning his face from the
+insufferable glare, thrust in huge logs of oak, or stirred the immense
+brands with a long pole. Within the furnace were seen the curling and
+riotous flames, and the burning marble, almost molten with the
+intensity of heat; while without, the reflection of the fire quivered
+on the dark intricacy of the surrounding forest, and showed in the
+foreground a bright and ruddy little picture of the hut, the spring
+beside its door, the athletic and coal-begrimed figure of the
+lime-burner, and the half-frightened child, shrinking into the
+protection of his father's shadow. And when again the iron door was
+closed, then reappeared the tender light of the half-full moon, which
+vainly strove to trace out the indistinct shapes of the neighboring
+mountains; and, in the upper sky, there was a flitting congregation of
+clouds, still faintly tinged with the rosy sunset, though thus far
+down into the valley the sunshine had vanished long and long ago.
+
+The little boy now crept still closer to his father, as footsteps were
+heard ascending the hillside, and a human form thrust aside the bushes
+that clustered beneath the trees.
+
+"Halloo! who is it?" cried the lime-burner, vexed at his son's
+timidity, yet half infected by it, "Come forward, and show yourself,
+like a man, or I'll fling this chunk of marble at your head !"
+
+"You offer me a rough welcome," said a gloomy voice, as the unknown
+man drew nigh. "Yet I neither claim nor desire a kinder one, even at
+my own fireside."
+
+To obtain a distincter view, Bartram threw open the iron door of the
+kiln, whence immediately issued a gush of fierce light, that smote
+full upon the stranger's face and figure. To a careless eye there
+appeared nothing very remarkable in his aspect, which was that of a
+man in a coarse, brown, country-made suit of clothes, tall and thin,
+with the staff and heavy shoes of a wayfarer. As he advanced, he fixed
+his eyes--which were very bright--intently upon the brightness of the
+furnace, as if he beheld, or expected to behold, some object worthy of
+note within it.
+
+"Good evening, stranger," said the lime-burner; "whence come you, so
+late in the day?"
+
+"I come from my search," answered the wayfarer; "for, at last, it is
+finished."
+
+"Drunk!--or crazy!" muttered Bartram to himself. "I shall have trouble
+with the fellow. The sooner I drive him away, the better."
+
+The little boy, all in a tremble, whispered to his father, and begged
+him to shut the door of the kiln, so that there might not be so much
+light; for that there was something in the man's face which he was
+afraid to look at, yet could not look away from. And, indeed, even the
+lime-burner's dull and torpid sense began to be impressed by an
+indescribable something in that thin, rugged, thoughtful visage, with
+the grizzled hair hanging wildly about it, and those deeply sunken
+eyes, which gleamed like fires within the entrance of a mysterious
+cavern. But, as he closed the door, the stranger turned towards him,
+and spoke in a quiet, familiar way, that made Bartram feel as if he
+were a sane and sensible man, after all.
+
+"Your task draws to an end, I see," said he. "This marble has already
+been burning three days. A few hours more will convert the stone to
+lime."
+
+"Why, who are you?" exclaimed the lime-burner. "You seem as well
+acquainted with my business as I am myself."
+
+"And well I may be," said the stranger; "for I followed the same craft
+many a long year, and here, too, on this very spot. But you are a
+newcomer in these parts. Did you never hear of Ethan Brand?"
+
+"The man that went in search of the Unpardonable Sin?" asked Bartram,
+with a laugh.
+
+"The same," answered the stranger. "He has found what he sought, and
+therefore he comes back again,"
+
+"What! then you are Ethan Brand himself?" cried the lime-burner, in
+amazement. "I am a newcomer here, as you say, and they call it
+eighteen years since you left the foot of Graylock, But, I can tell
+you, the good folks still talk about Ethan Brand, in the village
+yonder, and what a strange errand took him away from his lime-kiln.
+Well and so you have found the Unpardonable Sin?"
+
+"Even so!" said the stranger, calmly.
+
+"If the 'question is a fair one." proceeded Bartrarn, "where might it
+be?"
+
+Ethan Brand laid his finger on his own heart.'
+
+"Here!" replied he.
+
+And then, without mirth in his countenance, but as if moved by an
+involuntary recognition of the infinite absurdity of seeking
+throughout the world for what was the closest of all things to
+himself, and looking into every heart, save his own, for what was
+hidden in no other breast, he broke into a laugh of scorn. It was the
+same slow, heavy laugh that had almost appalled the lime-burner when
+it heralded the wayfarer's approach.
+
+The solitary mountain side was made dismal by it. Laughter, when out
+of place, mistimed, or bursting forth from a disordered state of
+feeling, may be the most terrible modulation of the human voice. The
+laughter of one asleep, even if it be a little child,--the madman's
+laugh,--the wild, screaming laugh of a born idiot,--are sounds that we
+sometimes tremble to hear, and would always willingly forget. Poets
+have imagined no utterance of fiends Or hobgoblins so fearfully
+appropriate as a laugh. And even the obtuse lime-burner felt his
+nerves shaken, as this strange man looked inward at his own heart, and
+burst into laughter that rolled away into the night, and was
+indistinctly reverberated among the hills.
+
+"Joe," said he to his little son, "scamper down to the tavern in the
+village, and tell the jolly fellows there that Ethan Brand has come
+back, and that he has found the Unpardonable Sin!"
+
+The boy darted away on his errand, to which Ethan Brand made no
+objection, nor seemed hardly to notice it. He sat on a log of wood,
+looking steadfastly at the iron door of the kiln. When the child was
+out of sight, and his swift and light footsteps ceased to be heard
+treading first on the fallen leaves and then on the rocky mountain
+path, the lime-burner began to regret his departure. He felt that the
+little fellow's presence had been a barrier between his guest and
+himself, and that he must now deal, heart to heart, with a man who, on
+his own confession, had committed the one only crime for which Heaven
+could afford no mercy. That crime, in its indistinct blackness, seemed
+to overshadow him. The lime-burner's own sins rose up within him, and
+made his memory riotous with a throng of evil shapes that asserted
+their kindred with the Master Sin, whatever it might be, which it was
+within the scope of man's corrupted nature to conceive and cherish.
+They were all of one family; they went to and fro between his breast
+and Ethan Brand's, and carried dark greetings from one to the other.
+
+Then Bartram remembered the stories which had grown traditionary in
+reference to this strange man, who had come upon him like a shadow of
+the night, and was making himself at home in his old place, after so
+long absence that the dead people, dead and buried for years, would
+have had more right to be at home, in any familiar spot, than he.
+Ethan Brand, it was said, had conversed with Satan himself in the
+lurid blaze of this very kiln. The legend had been matter of mirth
+heretofore, but looked grisly now. According to this tale, before
+Ethan Brand departed on his search, he had been accustomed to evoke a
+fiend from the hot furnace of the lime-kiln, night after night, in
+order to confer with him about the Unpardonable Sin; the man and the
+fiend each laboring to frame the image of some mode of guilt which
+could neither be atoned for nor forgiven. And, with the first gleam of
+light upon the mountain-top, the fiend crept in at the iron door,
+there to abide the intensest element of fire, until again summoned
+forth to share in the dreadful task of extending man's possible guilt
+beyond the scope of Heaven's else infinite mercy.
+
+While the lime-burner was struggling with the horror of these
+thoughts, Ethan Brand rose from the log, and flung open the door of
+the kiln. The action was in such accordance with the idea in Bartram's
+mind, that he almost expected to see the Evil One issue forth, red-hot
+from the raging furnace.
+
+"Hold! hold!" cried he, with a tremulous attempt to laugh; for he was
+ashamed of his fears, although they overmastered him. "Don't, for
+mercy's sake, bring out your Devil now!"
+
+"Man!" sternly replied Ethan Brand, "what need have I of the Devil? I
+have left him behind me, on my track. It is with such halfway sinners
+as you that he busies himself. Fear not, because I open the door. I do
+but act by old custom, and am going to trim your fire, like a
+lime-burner, as I was once."
+
+He stirred the vast coals, thrust in more wood, and bent forward to
+gaze into the hollow prison-house of the fire, regardless of the
+fierce glow that reddened upon his face. The lime-burner sat watching
+him, and half suspected his strange guest of a purpose, if not to
+evoke a fiend, at least to plunge bodily into the flames, and thus
+vanish from the sight of man. Ethan Brand, however, drew quietly back,
+and closed the door of the kiln.
+
+"I have looked," said he, "into many a human heart that was seven
+times hotter with sinful passions than yonder furnace is with fire.
+But I found not there what I sought. No, not the Unpardonable Sin!"
+
+"What is the Unpardonable Sin?" asked the lime-burner; and then he
+shrank farther from his companion, trembling lest his question should
+be answered.
+
+"It is a sin that grew within my own breast," replied Ethan Brand,
+standing erect, with a pride that distinguishes all enthusiasts of his
+stamp. "A sin that grew nowhere else! The sin of an intellect that
+triumphed over the sense of brotherhood with man and reverence for
+God, and sacrificed everything to its own mighty claims! the only sin
+that deserves a recompense of immortal agony! Freely, were it to do
+again, would I incur the guilt. Unshrinkingly I accept the
+retribution!"
+
+"The man's head is turned," muttered the lime-burner to himself. "He
+may be a sinner, like the rest of us,--nothing more likely,--but, I'll
+be sworn, he is a madman too."
+
+Nevertheless, he felt uncomfortable at his situation, alone with Ethan
+Brand on the wild mountain side, and was right glad to hear the rough
+murmur of tongues, and the footsteps of what seemed a pretty numerous
+party, stumbling over the stones and rustling through the under-brush.
+Soon appeared the whole lazy regiment that was wont to infest the
+village tavern, comprehending three or four individuals who had drunk
+flip beside the bar-room fire through all the winters, and smoked
+their pipes beneath the stoop through all the summers, since Ethan
+Brand's departure. Laughing boisterously, and mingling all their
+voices together in unceremonious talk, they now burst into the
+moonshine and narrow streaks of firelight that illuminated the open
+space before the lime-kiln. Bartram set the door ajar again, flooding
+the spot with light, that the whole company might get a fair view of
+Ethan Brand, and he of them.
+
+There, among other old acquaintances, was a once ubiquitous[3] man,
+now almost extinct, but whom we were formerly sure to encounter at the
+hotel of every thriving village throughout the country. It was the
+stage-agent. The present specimen of the genus was a wilted and
+smoke-dried man, wrinkled and red-nosed, in a smartly cut, brown,
+bob-tailed coat, with brass buttons, who, for a length of time
+unknown, had kept his desk and corner in the bar-room, and was still
+puffing what seemed to be the same cigar that he had lighted twenty
+years before. He had great fame as a dry joker, though, perhaps, less
+on account of any intrinsic humor than from a certain flavor of brandy
+toddy and tobacco smoke, which impregnated all his ideas and
+expressions, as well as his person. Another well-remembered though
+strangely altered face was that of Lawyer Giles, as people still
+called him in courtesy; an elderly ragamuffin, in his soiled
+shirt-sleeves and tow-cloth trousers. This poor fellow had been an
+attorney, in what he called his better days, a sharp practitioner, and
+in great vogue among the village litigants; but flip, and sling, and
+toddy, and cocktails, imbibed at all hours, morning, noon, and night,
+had caused him to slide from intellectual to various kinds and degrees
+of bodily labor, till, at last, to adopt his own phrase, he slid into
+a soap vat. In other words, Giles was now a soap boiler, in a small
+way. He had come to be but the fragment of a human being, a part of
+one foot having been chopped off by an axe, and an entire hand torn
+away by the devilish grip of a steam engine. Yet, though the corporeal
+hand was gone, a spiritual member remained; for, stretching forth the
+stump, Giles steadfastly averred that he felt an invisible thumb and
+fingers with as vivid a sensation as before the real ones were
+amputated. A maimed and miserable wretch he was; but one,
+nevertheless, whom the world could not trample on, and had no right to
+scorn, either in this or any previous stage of his misfortunes, since
+he had still kept up the courage and spirit of a man, asked nothing in
+charity, and with his one hand--and that the left one--fought a stern
+battle against want and hostile circumstances.
+
+Among the throng, too, came another personage, who, with certain
+points of similarity to Lawyer Giles, had many more of difference. It
+was the village doctor; a man of some fifty years, whom, at an earlier
+period of his life, we introduced as paying a professional visit to
+Ethan Brand during the latter's supposed insanity. He was now a
+purple-visaged, rude, and brutal, yet half-gentlemanly figure, with
+something wild, ruined, and desperate in his talk, and in all the
+details of his gesture and manners. Brandy possessed this man like an
+evil spirit, and made him as surly and savage as a wild beast, and as
+miserable as a lost soul; but there was supposed to be in him such
+wonderful skill, such native gifts of healing, beyond any which
+medical science could impart, that society caught hold of him, and
+would not let him sink out of its reach. So, swaying to and fro upon
+his horse, and grumbling thick accents at the bedside, he visited all
+the sick chambers for miles about among the mountain towns, and
+sometimes raised a dying man, as it were, by miracle, or quite as
+often, no doubt, sent his patient to a grave that was dug many a year
+too soon. The doctor had an everlasting pipe in his mouth, and, as
+somebody said, in allusion to his habit of swearing, it was always
+alight with hell-fire.
+
+These three worthies pressed forward, and greeted Ethan Brand each
+after his own fashion, earnestly inviting him to partake of the
+contents of a certain black bottle, in which, as they averred, he
+would find something far better worth seeking for than the
+Unpardonable Sin. No mind, which has wrought itself by intense and
+solitary meditation into a high state of enthusiasm, can endure the
+kind of contact with low and vulgar modes of thought and feeling to
+which Ethan Brand was now subjected. It made him doubt--and, strange
+to say, it was a painful doubt,--whether he had indeed found the
+Unpardonable Sin and found it within himself. The whole question on
+which he had exhausted life, and more than life, looked like a
+delusion.
+
+"Leave me," he said bitterly, "ye brute beasts, that have made
+yourselves so, shrivelling up your souls with fiery liquors! I have
+done with you. Years and years ago, I groped into your hearts, and
+found nothing there for my purpose. Get ye gone!"
+
+"Why, you uncivil scoundrel," cried the fierce doctor, "is that the
+way you respond to the kindness of your best friends? Then let me tell
+you the truth. You have no more found the Unpardonable Sin than yonder
+boy Joe has. You are but a crazy fellow,--I told you so twenty years
+ago,--neither better nor worse than a crazy fellow, and a fit
+companion of old Humphrey, here!"
+
+He pointed to an old man, shabbily dressed, with long white hair, thin
+visage, and unsteady eyes. For some years past this aged person had
+been wandering about among the hills, inquiring of all travellers whom
+he met for his daughter. The girl, it seemed, had gone off with a
+company of circus performers; and occasionally tidings of her came to
+the village, and fine stories were told of her glittering appearance
+as she rode on horseback in the ring, or performed marvellous feats on
+the tight rope.
+
+The white-haired father now approached Ethan Brand, and gazed
+unsteadily into his face.
+
+"They tell me you have been all over the earth," said he, wringing his
+hands with earnestness. "You must have seen my daughter, for she makes
+a grand figure in the world, and everybody goes to see her. Did she
+send any word to her old father, or say when she was coming back?"
+
+Ethan Brand's eye quailed beneath the old man's. That daughter, from
+whom he so earnestly desired a word of greeting, was the Esther of our
+tale, the very girl whom, with such cold and remorseless purpose,
+Ethan Brand had made the subject of a psychological experiment, and
+wasted, absorbed, and perhaps annihilated her soul, in the process.
+
+"Yes," murmured he, turning away from the hoary wanderer; "it is no
+delusion. There is an Unpardonable Sin!"
+
+While these things were passing, a merry scene was going forward in
+the area of cheerful light, beside the spring and before the door of
+the hut. A number of the youth of the village, young men and girls,
+had hurried up the hillside, impelled by curiosity to see Ethan Brand,
+the hero of so many a legend familiar to their childhood. Finding
+nothing, however, very remarkable in his aspect,--nothing but a
+sunburnt wayfarer, in plain garb and dusty shoes, who sat looking into
+the fire, as if he fancied pictures among the coals,--these young
+people speedily grew tired of observing him. As it happened, there was
+other amusement at hand. An old German Jew, travelling with a
+diorama[4] on his back, was passing down, the mountain road towards
+the village just as the party turned aside from it, and, in hopes of
+eking out the profits of the day, the showman had kept them company to
+the lime-kiln.
+
+"Come, old Dutchman," cried one of the young men, "let us see your
+pictures, if you can swear they are worth looking at!"
+
+"O yes, Captain," answered the Jew,--whether as a matter of courtesy
+or craft, he styled everybody Captain,--"I shall show you, indeed,
+some very superb pictures!"
+
+So, placing his box in a proper position, he invited the young men and
+girls to look through the glass orifices of the machine, and proceeded
+to exhibit a series of the most outrageous scratchings and daubings,
+as specimens of the fine arts, that ever an itinerant showman had the
+face to impose upon his circle of spectators. The pictures were worn
+out, moreover, tattered, full of cracks and wrinkles, dingy with
+tobacco smoke, and otherwise in a most pitiable condition. Some
+purported to be cities, public edifices, and ruined castles in Europe;
+others represented Napoleon's battles and Nelson's sea fights; and in
+the midst of these would be seen a gigantic, brown, hairy hand,--which
+might have been mistaken for the Hand of Destiny, though, in truth, it
+was only the showman's,--pointing its forefinger to various scenes of
+the conflict, while its owner gave historical illustrations. When,
+with much merriment at its abominable deficiency of merit, the
+exhibition was concluded, the German bade little Joe put his head into
+the box. Viewed through the magnifying glasses, the boy's round, rosy
+visage assumed the strangest imaginable aspect of an immense
+Titanic[5] child, the mouth grinning broadly, and the eyes and every
+other feature overflowing with fun at the joke. Suddenly, however,
+that merry face turned pale, and its expression changed to horror, for
+this easily impressed and excitable child had become sensible that the
+eye of Ethan Brand was fixed upon him through the glass.
+
+"You make the little man to be afraid. Captain." said the German Jew,
+turning up the dark and strong outline of his visage, from his
+stooping posture, "But look again, and, by chance, I shall cause you
+to see somewhat that is very fine, upon my word!"
+
+Ethan Brand gazed into the box for an instant, and then starting back,
+looked fixedly at the German. What had he seen? Nothing, apparently;
+for a curious youth, who had peeped in almost at the same moment,
+beheld only a vacant space of canvas.
+
+"I remember you now," muttered Ethan Brand to the showman.
+
+"Ah, Captain," whispered the Jew of Nuremburg, with a dark smile, "I
+find it to be a heavy matter in my show-box,--this Unpardonable Sin!
+By my faith, Captain, it has wearied my shoulders, this long day, to
+carry it over the mountain."
+
+"Peace," answered Ethan Brand, sternly, "or get thee into the furnace
+yonder!"
+
+The Jew's exhibition had scarcely concluded, when a great, elderly
+dog--who seemed to be his own master, as no person in the company laid
+claim to him--saw fit to render himself the object of public notice.
+Hitherto, he had shown himself a very quiet, well-disposed old dog,
+going round from one to another, and, by way of being sociable,
+offering his rough head to be patted by any kindly hand that would
+take so much trouble. But now, all of a sudden, this grave and
+venerable quadruped, of his own mere motion, and without the slightest
+suggestion from anybody else, began to run round after his tail,
+which, to heighten the absurdity of the proceeding, was a great deal
+shorter than it should have been. Never was seen such headlong
+eagerness in pursuit of an object that could not possibly be attained;
+never was heard such a tremendous outbreak of growling, snarling,
+barking, and snapping,--as if one end of the ridiculous brute's body
+were at deadly and most unforgivable enmity with the other. Faster and
+faster, round about went the cur; and faster and still faster fled the
+unapproachable brevity of his tail; and louder and fiercer grew his
+yells of rage and animosity; until, utterly exhausted, and as far from
+the goal as ever, the foolish old dog ceased his performance as
+suddenly as he had begun it. The next moment he was as mild, quiet,
+sensible, and respectable in his deportment, as when he first scraped
+acquaintance with the company.
+
+As may be supposed, the exhibition was greeted with universal
+laughter, clapping of hands, and shouts of encore, to which the canine
+performer responded by wagging all that there was to wag of his tail,
+but appeared totally unable to repeat his very successful effort to
+amuse the spectators.
+
+Meanwhile, Ethan Brand had resumed his seat upon the log, and moved,
+it might be, by a perception of some remote analogy between his own
+case and that of this self-pursuing cur, he broke into the awful
+laugh, which, more than any other token, expressed the condition of
+his inward being. From that moment, the merriment of the party was at
+an end; they stood aghast, dreading lest the inauspicious sound should
+be reverberated around the horizon, and that mountain would thunder it
+to mountain, and so the horror be prolonged upon their ears. Then,
+whispering one to another that it was late,--that the moon was almost
+down,--that the August night was growing chill,--they hurried
+homewards, leaving the lime-burner and little Joe to deal as they
+might with their unwelcome guest. Save for these three human beings,
+the open space on the hillside was a solitude, set in a vast gloom of
+forest. Beyond that darksome verge, the firelight glimmered on the
+stately trunks and almost black foliage of pines, intermixed with the
+lighter verdure of sapling oaks, maples, and poplars, while here and
+there lay the gigantic corpses of dead trees, decaying on the
+leaf-strewn soil. And it seemed to little Joe--a timorous and
+imaginative child--that the silent forest was holding, its breath,
+until some fearful thing should happen.
+
+Ethan Brand thrust more wood into the fire, and closed the door of the
+kiln; then looking over his shoulder at the lime-burner and his son,
+he bade, rather than advised, them to retire to rest.
+
+"For myself, I cannot sleep." said he, "I have matters that it
+concerns me to meditate upon. I will watch the fire, as I used to do
+in the old time."
+
+"And call the Devil out of the furnace to keep you company, I
+suppose," muttered Bartram, who had been making intimate acquaintance
+with the black bottle above mentioned. "But watch, if you like, and
+call as many devils as you like! For my part, I shall be all the
+better for a snooze. Come, Joe!"
+
+As the boy followed his father into the hut, he looked back at the
+wayfarer, and the tears came into his eyes, for his tender spirit had
+an intuition of the bleak and terrible loneliness in which this man
+had enveloped himself.
+
+When they had gone, Ethan Brand sat listening to the crackling of the
+kindled wood, and looking at the little spirits of fire that issued
+through the chinks of the door. These trifles, however, once so
+familiar, had but the slightest hold of his attention, while deep
+within his mind he was reviewing the gradual but marvellous change
+that had been wrought upon him by the search to which he had devoted
+himself. He remembered how the night dew had fallen upon him,--how the
+dark forest had whispered to him,--how the stars had gleamed upon
+him,--a simple and loving man, watching his fire in the years gone by,
+and ever musing as it burned. He remembered with what tenderness, with
+what love and sympathy for mankind, and what pity for human guilt and
+woe, he had first begun to contemplate those ideas which afterwards
+became the inspiration of his life; with what reverence he had then
+looked into the heart of man, viewing it as a temple originally
+divine, and, however desecrated, still to be held sacred by a brother;
+with what awful fear he had deprecated the success of his pursuit, and
+prayed that the Unpardonable Sin might never be revealed to him. Then
+ensued that vast intellectual development, which, in its progress,
+disturbed the counterpoise between his mind and heart. The Idea that
+possessed his life had operated as a means of education; it had gone
+on cultivating his powers to the highest point of which they were
+susceptible; it had raised him from the level of an unlettered laborer
+to stand on a starlit eminence, whither the philosophers of the earth,
+laden with the lore of universities, might vainly strive to clamber
+after him. So much for the intellect! But where was the heart? That,
+indeed, had withered,--had contracted.--had hardened,--had perished!
+It had ceased to partake of the universal throb, He had lost his hold
+of the magnetic chain of humanity. He was no longer a brother-man,
+opening the chambers of the dungeons of our common nature by the key
+of holy sympathy, which gave him a right to share in all its secrets;
+he was now a cold observer, looking on mankind as the subject of his
+experiment, and, at length, converting man and woman to be his
+puppets, and pulling the wires that moved them to such degrees of
+crime as were demanded for his study.
+
+Thus Ethan Brand became a fiend. He began to be so from the moment
+that his moral nature had ceased to keep the pace of improvement with
+his intellect. And now, as his highest effort and inevitable
+development,--as the bright and gorgeous flower, and rich, delicious
+fruit of his life's labor,--he had produced the Unpardonable Sin!
+
+"What more have I to seek? what more to achieve?" said Ethan Brand to
+himself, "My task Is done, and well done!"
+
+Starting from the log with a certain alacrity in his gait and
+ascending the hillock of earth that was raised against the stone
+circumference of the lime-kiln, he thus reached the top of the
+structure. It was a space of perhaps ten feet across, from edge to
+edge, presenting a view of the upper surface of the immense mass of
+broken marble with which the kiln was heaped. All these innumerable
+blocks and fragments of marble were red-hot and vividly on fire,
+sending up great spouts of blue flame, which quivered aloft and danced
+madly, as within a magic circle, and sank and rose again, with
+continual and multitudinous activity. As the lonely man bent forward
+over this terrible body of fire, the blasting heat smote up against
+his person with a breath that, it might be supposed, would have
+scorched and shrivelled him up in a moment.
+
+Ethan Brand stood erect, and raised his arms on high. The blue flames
+played upon his face, and imparted the wild and ghastly light which
+alone could have suited its expression; it was that of a fiend on the
+verge of plunging into his gulf of intensest torment.
+
+"O Mother Earth," cried he, "who art no more my Mother, and into whose
+bosom this frame shall never be resolved! O mankind, whose brotherhood
+I have cast off, and trampled thy great heart beneath my feet! O stars
+of heaven, that shone on me of old, as if to light me onward and
+upward!--farewell all, and forever. Come, deadly element of
+Fire,--henceforth my familiar frame! Embrace me, as I do thee!"
+
+That night the sound of a fearful peal of laughter rolled heavily
+through the sleep of the lime-burner and his little son; dim shapes of
+horror and anguish haunted their dreams, and seemed still present in
+the rude hovel, when they opened their eyes to the daylight.
+
+"Up, boy, up!" cried the lime-burner, staring about him. "Thank
+Heaven, the night is gone, at last; and rather than pass such another,
+I would watch, my lime-kiln, wide awake, for a twelvemonth. This Ethan
+Brand, with his humbug of an Unpardonable Sin, has done me no such
+mighty favor, in taking my place!"
+
+He issued from the hut, followed by little Joe, who kept fast hold, of
+his father's hand. The early sunshine was already pouring its gold
+upon the mountain tops; and though the valleys were still in shadow,
+they smiled cheerfully in the promise of the bright day that was
+hastening onward. The village, completely shut in by hills, which
+swelled away gently about it, looked as if it had rested peacefully in
+the hollow of the great hand of Providence. Every dwelling was
+distinctly visible; the little spires of the two churches pointed
+upwards, and caught a fore-glimmering of brightness from the sun-gilt
+skies upon their gilded weathercocks. The tavern was astir, and the
+figure of the old, smoke-dried stage-agent, cigar in mouth, was seen
+beneath the stoop. Old Graylock was glorified with a golden cloud upon
+his head. Scattered likewise over the breasts of the surrounding
+mountains, there were heaps of hoary mist, in fantastic shapes, some
+of them far down into the valley, others high up towards the summits,
+and still others, of the same family of mist or cloud, hovering in the
+gold radiance of the upper atmosphere. Stepping from one to another of
+the clouds that rested on the hills, and thence to the loftier
+brotherhood that sailed in air, it seemed almost as if a mortal man
+might thus ascend into the heavenly regions. Earth was so mingled with
+sky that it was a day-dream to look at it.
+
+To supply that charm of the familiar and homely, which Nature so
+readily adopts into a scene like this, the stage-coach was rattling
+down the mountain road, and the driver sounded his horn, while echo
+caught up the notes, and intertwined them into a rich and varied and
+elaborate harmony, of which the original performer could lay claim to
+little share. The great hills played a concert among themselves, each
+contributing a strain of airy sweetness.
+
+Little Joe's face brightened at once.
+
+"Dear father," cried he, skipping cheerily to and fro, "that strange
+man is gone, and the sky and the mountains all seem glad of it!"
+
+"Yes," growled the lime-burner, with an oath, "but he has let the fire
+go down, and no thanks to him if five hundred bushels of lime are not
+spoiled. If I catch the fellow hereabouts again, I shall feel like
+tossing him into the furnace!"
+
+With his long pole in his hand, he ascended to the top of the kiln.
+After a moment's pause, he called to his son.
+
+"Come up here, Joe!" said he.
+
+So little Joe ran up the hillock, and stood by his father's side. The
+marble was all burnt into perfect, snow-white lime. But on its
+surface, in the midst of the circle,--snow-white too, and thoroughly
+converted into lime,--lay a human skeleton, in the attitude of a
+person who, after long toil, lies down to long repose. Within the
+ribs--strange to say--was the shape of a human heart.
+
+"Was the fellow's heart made of marble?" cried Bartram, in some
+perplexity at this phenomenon. "At any rate, it is burnt into what
+looks like special good lime; and, taking all the bones together, my
+kiln is half a bushel the richer for him."
+
+So saying, the rude lime-burner lifted his pole, and, letting it fall
+upon the skeleton, the relics of Ethan Brand were crumbled into
+fragments.
+
+
+NOTES
+
+[1] Written in 1848; published in Holden's _Dollar Magazine_ in 1851.
+
+[2] 182:26 Delectable Mountains. A range of mountains referred to in
+Bunyan's _Pilgrim's Progress_.
+
+[3] 190:22 ubiquitous. Being present everywhere.
+
+[4] 194:29 diorama. A series of paintings arranged for exhibition. See
+dictionary.
+
+[5] 195:30 Titanic. Characteristic of the Titans; therefore large.
+
+COLLATERAL READINGS
+
+_The Scarlet Letter_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_The House of Seven Gables_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_The Marble Faun_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_The Gray Champion_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_The Wedding Knell_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_The Great Carbuncle_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_Dr. Heidegger's Experiment_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_The Haunted Mind_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_Feathertop_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_Rip Van Winkle_, Washington Irving.
+
+_The Elixir of Life_, Honoré de Balzac.
+
+_The Leather Funnel_, A. Conan Doyle.
+
+_The Return of Imray's Ghost_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+_A Gentle Ghost_, Mary Wilkins Freeman.
+
+
+
+THE SIRE DE MALETROIT'S DOOR[1]
+
+_By Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)_
+
+
+Denis de Beaulieu was not yet two-and-twenty, but he counted himself a
+grown man, and a very accomplished cavalier into the bargain. Lads
+were early formed in that rough, warfaring epoch; and when one has
+been in a pitched battle and a dozen raids, has killed one's man in an
+honorable fashion, and knows a thing or two of strategy and mankind, a
+certain swagger in the gait is surely to be pardoned. He had put up
+his horse with due care, and supped with due deliberation; and then,
+in a very agreeable frame of mind, went out to pay a visit in the gray
+of the evening. It was not a very wise proceeding on the young man's
+part. He would have done better to remain beside the fire or go
+decently to bed. For the town was full of the troops of Burgundy and
+England under a mixed command; and though Denis was there on
+safe-conduct, his safe-conduct was like to serve him little on a
+chance encounter.
+
+It was September, 1429; the weather had fallen sharp; a flighty piping
+wind, laden with showers, beat about the township; and the dead leaves
+ran riot along the streets. Here and there a window was already
+lighted up; and the noise of men-at-arms making merry over supper
+within came forth in fits and was swallowed up and carried away by the
+wind. The night fell swiftly: the flag of England, fluttering on the
+spire top, grew ever fainter and fainter against the flying clouds--a
+black speck like a swallow in the tumultuous, leaden chaos of the sky.
+As the night fell the wind rose, and began to hoot under archways and
+roar amid the tree-tops in the valley below the town.
+
+Denis de Beaulieu walked fast and was soon knocking at his friend's
+door; but though he promised himself to stay only a little while and
+make an early return, his welcome was so pleasant, and he found so
+much to delay him, that it was already long past midnight before he
+said good-by upon the threshold. The wind had fallen again in the
+meanwhile; the night was as black as the grave; not a star, nor a
+glimmer of moonshine, slipped through the canopy of cloud. Denis was
+ill-acquainted with the intricate lanes of Chateau Landon; even by
+daylight he had found some trouble in picking his way; and in this
+absolute darkness he soon lost it altogether. He was certain of one
+thing only--to keep mounting the hill; for his friend's house lay at
+the lower end, or tail, of Chateau Landon, while the inn was up at the
+head, under the great church spire. With this clew to go upon he
+stumbled and groped forward, now breathing more freely in the open
+places where there was a good slice of sky overhead, now feeling along
+the wall in stifling closes. It is an eerie and mysterious position to
+be thus submerged in opaque blackness in an almost unknown town. The
+silence is terrifying in its possibilities. The touch of cold window
+bars to the exploring hand startles the man like the touch of a toad;
+the inequalities of the pavement shake his heart into his mouth; a
+piece of denser darkness threatens an ambuscade or a chasm in the
+pathway; and where the air is brighter, the houses put on strange and
+bewildering appearances, as if to lead him further from his way. For
+Denis, who had to regain his inn without attracting notice, there was
+real danger as well as mere discomfort in the walk; and he went warily
+and boldly at once, and at every corner paused to make an observation.
+
+He had been for some time threading a lane so narrow that he could
+touch a wall with either hand, when it began to open out and go
+sharply downward. Plainly this lay no longer in the direction of his
+inn; but the hope of a little more light tempted him forward to
+reconnoitre. The lane ended in a terrace with a bartizan[2] wall,
+which gave an outlook between high houses, as out of an embrasure,
+into the valley lying dark and formless several hundred feet below.
+Denis looked down, and could discern a few tree-tops waving and a
+single speck of brightness where the river ran across a weir. The
+weather was clearing up, and the sky had lightened, so as to show the
+outline of the heavier clouds and the dark margin of the hills. By the
+uncertain glimmer, the house on his left hand should be a place of
+some pretensions; it was surmounted by several pinnacles and
+turret-tops; the round stern of a chapel, with a fringe of flying
+buttresses, projected boldly from the main block; and the door was
+sheltered under a deep porch carved with figures and overhung by two
+long gargoyles[3]. The windows of the chapel gleamed through their
+intricate tracery with a light as of many tapers, and threw out the
+buttresses and the peaked roof in a more intense blackness against the
+sky. It was plainly the hotel of some great family of the
+neighborhood; and as it reminded Denis of a town house of his own at
+Bourges, he stood for some time gazing up at it and mentally gauging
+the skill of the architects and the consideration of the two families.
+
+There seemed to be no issue to the terrace but the lane by which he
+had reached it; he could only retrace his steps, but he had gained
+some notion of his whereabouts, and hoped by this means to hit the
+main thoroughfare and speedily regain the inn. He was reckoning
+without that chapter of accidents which was to make this night
+memorable above all others in his career; for he had not gone back
+above a hundred yards before he saw a light coming to meet him, and
+heard loud voices speaking together in the echoing narrows of the
+lane. It was a party of men-at-arms going the night round with
+torches. Denis assured himself that they had all been making free with
+the wine bowl, and were in no mood to be particular about
+safe-conducts or the niceties of chivalrous war. It, was as like as
+not that they would kill him like a dog and leave him where he fell.
+The situation was inspiriting but nervous. Their own torches would
+conceal him from sight, he reflected; and he hoped that they would
+drown the noise of his footsteps with their own empty voices. If he
+were but fleet and silent, he might evade their notice altogether.
+
+Unfortunately, as he turned to beat a retreat, his foot rolled upon a
+pebble; he fell against the wall with an ejaculation, and his sword
+rang loudly on the stones. Two or three voices demanded who went
+there--some in French, some in English; but Denis made no reply, and
+ran the faster down the lane. Once upon the terrace, he paused to look
+back. They still kept calling after him, and just then began to double
+the pace in pursuit, with a considerable clank of armor, and great
+tossing of the torchlight to and fro in the narrow jaws of the
+passage.
+
+Denis cast a look around and darted into the porch. There he might
+escape observation, or--if that were too much to expect--was in a
+capital posture whether for parley or defence. So thinking, he drew
+his sword and tried to set his back against the door. To his surprise
+it yielded behind his weight; and though he turned in a moment,
+continued to swing back on oiled and noiseless hinges until it stood
+wide open on a black interior. When things fall out opportunely for
+the person concerned, he is not apt to be critical about the how or
+why, his own immediate personal convenience seeming a sufficient
+reason for the strangest oddities and revolutions in our sublunary
+things; and so Denis, without a moment's hesitation, stepped within
+and partly closed the door behind him to conceal his place of refuge.
+Nothing was further from his thoughts than to close it altogether; but
+for some inexplicable reason--perhaps by a spring or a weight--the
+ponderous mass of oak whipped itself out of his fingers and clanked
+to, with a formidable rumble and a noise like the falling of an
+automatic bar.
+
+The round, at that very moment, debouched[4] upon the terrace and
+proceeded to summon him with shouts and curses. He heard them
+ferreting in the dark corners; the stock of a lance even rattled along
+the outer surface of the door behind which he stood; but these
+gentlemen were in too high a humor to be long delayed, and soon made
+off down a corkscrew pathway which had escaped Denis' observation, and
+passed out of sight and hearing along the battlements of the town.
+
+Denis breathed again. He gave them a few minutes' grace for fear of
+accidents, and then groped about for some means of opening the door
+and slipping forth again. The inner surface was quite smooth, not a
+handle, not a moulding, not a projection of any sort. He got his
+finger nails round the edges and pulled, but the mass was immovable.
+He shook it, it was as firm as a rock, Denis de Beaulieu frowned, and
+gave vent to a little noiseless whistle. What ailed the door? he
+wondered. Why was it open? How came it to shut so easily and so
+effectually after him? There was something obscure and underhand about
+all this, that was little to the young man's fancy. It looked like a
+snare, and yet who could suppose a snare in such a quiet by-street and
+in a house of so prosperous and even noble an exterior? And yet--snare
+or no snare, intentionally or unintentionally--here he was, prettily
+trapped; and for the life of him he could see no way out of it again.
+The darkness began to weigh upon him. He gave ear; all was silent
+without, but within and close by he seemed to catch a faint sighing, a
+faint sobbing rustle, a little stealthy creak--as though many persons
+were at his side, holding themselves quite still, and governing even
+their respiration with the extreme of slyness. The idea went to his
+vitals with a shock, and he faced about suddenly as if to defend his
+life. Then, for the first time, he became aware of a light about the
+level of his eyes and at some distance in the interior of the house--a
+vertical thread of light, widening toward the bottom, such as might
+escape between two wings of arras over a doorway.
+
+To see anything was a relief to Denis; it was like a piece of solid
+ground to a man laboring in a morass; his mind seized upon it with
+avidity; and he stood staring at it and trying to piece together some
+logical conception of his surroundings. Plainly there was a flight of
+steps ascending from his own level to that of this illuminated
+doorway, and indeed he thought he could make out another thread of
+light, as fine as a needle and as faint as phosphorescence, which
+might very well be reflected along the polished wood of a handrail.
+Since he had begun to suspect that he was not alone, his heart had
+continued to beat with smothering violence, and an intolerable desire
+for action of any sort had possessed itself of his spirit. He was in
+deadly peril, he believed. What could be more natural than to mount
+the staircase, lift the curtain, and confront his difficulty at once?
+At least he would be dealing with something tangible; at least he
+would be no longer in the dark. He stepped slowly forward with
+outstretched hands, until his foot struck the bottom step; then he
+rapidly scaled the stairs, stood for a moment to compose his
+expression, lifted the arras and went in.
+
+He found himself in a large apartment of polished stone. There were
+three doors, one on each of three sides, all similarly curtained with
+tapestry. The fourth side was occupied by two large windows and a
+great stone chimney-piece, carved with the arms of the Malétroits.
+Denis recognized the bearings, and was gratified to find himself in
+such good hands. The room was strongly illuminated; but it contained
+little furniture except a heavy table and a chair or two; the hearth
+was innocent of fire, and the pavement was but sparsely strewn with
+rushes clearly many days old.
+
+On a high chair beside the chimney, and directly facing Denis as he
+entered, sat a little old gentleman in a fur tippet. He sat with his
+legs crossed and his hands folded, and a cup of spiced wine stood by
+his elbow on a bracket on the wall. His countenance had a strong
+masculine cast; not properly human, but such as we see in the bull,
+the goat, or the domestic boar; something equivocal and wheedling,
+something greedy, brutal and dangerous. The upper lip was inordinately
+full, as though swollen by a blow or a toothache; and the smile, the
+peaked eyebrows, and the small, strong eyes were quaintly and almost
+comically evil in expression. Beautiful white hair hung straight all
+round his head, like a saint's, and fell in a single curl upon the
+tippet. His beard and mustache were the pink of venerable sweetness.
+Age, probably in consequence of inordinate precautions, had left no
+mark upon his hands; and the Malétroit hand was famous. It would be
+difficult to imagine anything at once so fleshy and so delicate in
+design; the taper, sensual fingers were like those of one of
+Leonardo's[5] women; the fork of the thumb made a dimpled protuberance
+when closed; the nails were perfectly shaped, and of a dead,
+surprising whiteness. It rendered his aspect tenfold more redoubtable,
+that a man with hands like these should keep them devoutly folded like
+a virgin martyr--that a man with so intent and startling an expression
+of face should sit patiently on his seat and contemplates people with
+an unwinking stare, like a god, or a god's statue. His quiescence
+seemed ironical and treacherous, it fitted so poorly with his looks.
+
+Such was Alain, Sire de Malétroit.
+
+Denis and he looked silently at each other for a second or two.
+
+"Pray step in," said the Sire de Malétroit. "I have been expecting you
+all the evening."
+
+He had not risen, but he accompanied his words with a smile and a
+slight but courteous inclination of the head. Partly from the smile,
+partly from the strange musical murmur with which the sire prefaced
+his observation, Denis felt a strong shudder of disgust go through his
+marrow. And what with disgust and honest confusion of mind, he could
+scarcely get words together in reply.
+
+"I fear," he said, "that this is a double accident. I am not the
+person you suppose me. It seems you were looking for a visit; but for
+my part, nothing was further from my thoughts--nothing could be more
+contrary to my wishes--than this intrusion."
+
+"Well, well," replied the old gentleman indulgently, "here you are,
+which is the main point. Seat yourself, my friend, and put yourself
+entirely at your ease. We shall arrange our little affairs presently."
+
+Denis perceived that the matter was still complicated with some
+misconception, and he hastened to continue his explanation.
+
+"Your door," he began.
+
+"About my door?" asked the other raising his peaked eyebrows. "A
+little piece of ingenuity." And he shrugged his shoulders. "A
+hospitable fancy! By your own account, you were not desirous of making
+any acquaintance. We old people look for such reluctance now and then;
+when it touches our honor, we cast about until we find some way of
+overcoming it. You arrive uninvited, but believe me, very welcome."
+
+"You persist in error, sir," said Denis. "There can be no question
+between you and me. I am a stranger in this countryside. My name is
+Denis, damoiseau de Beaulieu. If you see me in your house it is
+only--"
+
+"My young friend," interrupted the other, "you will permit me to have
+my own ideas on that subject. They probably differ from yours at the
+present moment," he added with a leer, "but time will show which of us
+is in the right."
+
+Denis was convinced he had to do with a lunatic. He seated himself
+with a shrug, content to wait the upshot; and a pause ensued, during
+which he thought he could distinguish a hurried gabbling as of a
+prayer from behind the arras immediately opposite him. Sometimes there
+seemed to be but one person engaged, sometimes two; and the vehemence
+of the voice, low as it was, seemed to indicate either great haste or
+an agony of spirit. It occurred to him that this piece of tapestry
+covered the entrance to the chapel he had noticed from without.
+
+The old gentleman meanwhile surveyed Denis from head to foot with a
+smile, and from time to time emitted little noises like a bird or a
+mouse, which seemed to indicate a high degree of satisfaction. This
+state of matters became rapidly insupportable; and Denis, to put an
+end to it, remarked politely that the wind had gone down.
+
+The old gentleman fell into a fit of silent laughter, so prolonged and
+violent that he became quite red in the face. Denis got upon his feet
+at once, and put on his hat with a flourish.
+
+"Sir," he said, "if you are in your wits, you have affronted me
+grossly. If you are out of them, I flatter myself I can find better
+employment for my brains than to talk with lunatics. My conscience is
+clear; you have made a fool of me from the first moment; you have
+refused to hear my explanations; and now there is no power under God
+will make me stay here any longer; and if I cannot make my way out in
+a more decent fashion, I will hack your door in pieces with my sword."
+
+The Sire de Malétroit raised his right hand and wagged it at Denis
+with the fore and little fingers extended.
+
+"My dear nephew," he said, "sit down."
+
+"Nephew!" retorted Denis, "you lie in your throat;" and he snapped his
+fingers in his face.
+
+"Sit down, you rogue!" cried the old gentleman, in a sudden, harsh
+voice like the barking of a dog. "Do you fancy," he went on, "that
+when I had made my little contrivance for the door I had stopped short
+with that? If you prefer to be bound hand and foot till your bones
+ache, rise and try to go away. If you choose to remain a free young
+buck, agreeably conversing with an old gentleman--why, sit where you
+are in peace, and God be with you."
+
+"Do you mean, I am a prisoner?" demanded Denis.
+
+"I state the facts," replied the other. "I would rather leave the
+conclusion to yourself."
+
+Denis sat down again. Externally he managed to keep pretty calm, but
+within, he was now boiling with anger, now chilled with apprehension.
+He no longer felt convinced that he was dealing with a madman. And if
+the old gentleman was sane, what, in God's name, had he to look for?
+What absurd or tragical adventure had befallen him? What countenance
+was he to assume?
+
+While he was thus unpleasantly reflecting, the arras that overhung the
+chapel door was raised, and a tall priest in his robes came forth,
+and, giving a long, keen stare at Denis, said something in an
+undertone to Sire de Malétroit.
+
+"She is in a better frame of spirit?" asked the latter.
+
+"She is more resigned, messire," replied the priest.
+
+"Now the Lord help her, she is hard to please!" sneered the old
+gentleman. "A likely stripling--not ill-born--and of her own choosing,
+too? Why, what more would the jade have?"
+
+"The situation is not usual for a young damsel," said the other, "and
+somewhat trying to her blushes."
+
+"She should have thought of that before she began the dance! It was
+none of my choosing, God knows that; but since she is in it, by our
+Lady, she shall carry it to the end." And then addressing Denis,
+"Monsieur de Beaulieu," he asked, "may I present you to my niece? She
+has been waiting your arrival, I may say, with even greater impatience
+than myself."
+
+Denis had resigned himself with a good grace--all he desired was to
+know the worst of it as speedily as possible; so he rose at once, and
+bowed in acquiescence. The Sire de Malétroit followed his example and
+limped, with the assistance of the chaplain's arm, toward the chapel
+door. The priest pulled aside the arras, and all three entered. The
+building had considerable architectural pretensions. A light groining
+sprang from six stout columns, and hung down in two rich pendants from
+the centre of the vault. The place terminated behind the altar in a
+round end, embossed and honeycombed with a superfluity of ornament in
+relief, and pierced by many little windows shaped like stars,
+trefoils, or wheels. These windows were imperfectly is glazed, so that
+the night air circulated freely in the chapel. The tapers, of which
+there must have been half a hundred burning on the altar, were
+unmercifully blown about; and the light went through many different
+phases of brilliancy and semi-eclipse. On the steps in front of the
+altar knelt a young girl richly attired as a bride. A chill settled
+over Denis as he observed her costume; he fought with desperate energy
+against the conclusion that was being thrust upon his mind; it could
+not--it should not--be as he feared.
+
+"Blanche," said the sire, in his most flute-like tones, "I have
+brought a friend to see you, my little girl; turn round and give him
+your pretty hand. It is good to be devout; but it is necessary to be
+polite, my niece."
+
+The girl rose to her feet and turned toward the newcomers. She moved
+all of a piece; and shame and exhaustion were expressed in every line
+of her fresh young body; and she held her head down and kept her eyes
+upon the pavement, as she came slowly forward. In the course of her
+advance her eyes fell upon Denis de Beaulieu's feet--feet of which he
+was justly vain, be it remarked, and wore in the most elegant
+accoutrement even while travelling. She paused--started, as if his
+yellow boots had conveyed some shocking meaning--and glanced, suddenly
+up into the wearer's countenance. Their eyes met; shame gave place to
+horror and terror in her looks; the blood left her lips, with a
+piercing scream she covered her face with her hands and sank upon, the
+chapel floor.
+
+"That is not the man!" she cried. "My uncle, that is not the man!"
+
+The Sire de Malétroit chirped agreeably. "Of course not," he said; "I
+expected as much. It was so unfortunate you could not remember his
+name."
+
+"Indeed," she cried, "indeed, I have never seen this person till this
+moment--I have never so much as set eyes upon him--I never wish to see
+him again. Sir," she said, turning to Denis, "if you are a gentleman,
+you will hear me out. Have I ever seen you--have you ever seen
+me--before this accursed hour?"
+
+"To speak for myself, I have never had that pleasure," answered the
+young man. "This is the first time, messire, that I have met with your
+engaging niece."
+
+The old gentleman shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"I am distressed to hear it," he said. "But it is never too late to
+begin. I had little more acquaintance with my own late lady ere I
+married her; which proves," he added, with a grimace, "that these
+impromptu marriages may often produce an excellent understanding in
+the long run. As the bridegroom is to have a voice in the matter, I
+will give him two hours to make up for lost time before we proceed
+with the ceremony." And he turned toward the door, followed by the
+clergyman.
+
+The girl was on her feet in a moment. "My uncle, you cannot be in
+earnest," she said. "I declare before God I will stab myself rather
+than be forced on that young man. The heart rises at it; God forbids
+such marriages; you dishonor your white hair. Oh, my uncle, pity me!
+There is not a woman in all the world but would prefer death to such a
+nuptial. Is it possible," she added, faltering--"is it possible that
+you do not believe me--that you still think this"--and she pointed at
+Denis with a tremor of anger and contempt--"that you still think
+_this_ to be the man?"
+
+"Frankly," said the old gentleman, pausing on the threshold, "I do.
+But let me explain to you once for all, Blanche de Malétroit, my way
+of thinking about this affair. When you took it into your head to
+dishonor my family and the name that I have borne, in peace and war,
+for more than threescore years, you forfeited, not only the right to
+question my designs, but that of looking me in the face. If your
+father had been alive, he would have spat on you and turned you out of
+doors. His was the hand of iron. You may bless your God you have only
+to deal with the hand of velvet, mademoiselle. It was my duty to get
+you married without delay. Out of pure goodwill, I have tried to find
+your own gallant for you. And I believe I have succeeded. But before
+God and all the holy angels, Blanche de Malétroit, if I have not, I
+care not one jack-straw. So let me recommend you to be polite to our
+young friend; for, upon my word, your next groom may be less
+appetizing."
+
+And with that he went out, with the chaplain at his heels; and the
+arras fell behind the pair.
+
+The girl turned upon Denis with flashing eyes.
+
+"And what, sir," she demanded, "may be the meaning of all this?"
+
+"God knows," returned Denis, gloomily, "I am a prisoner in this house,
+which seems full of mad people. More I know not; and nothing do I
+understand."
+
+"And pray how came you here?" she asked.
+
+He told her as briefly as he could. "For the rest," he added, "perhaps
+you will follow my example, and tell me the answer to all these
+riddles, and what, in God's name, is like to be the end of it."
+
+She stood silent for a little, and lie could see her lips tremble and
+her tearless eyes burn with a feverish lustre. Then she pressed her
+forehead in both hands.
+
+"Alas, how my head aches!" she said, wearily--"to say nothing of my
+poor heart! But it is due to you to know my story, unmaidenly as it
+must seem. I am called Blanche de Malétroit; I have been without
+father or mother for--oh! for as long as I can recollect, and indeed I
+have been most unhappy all my life. Three months ago a young captain
+began to stand near me every day in church. I could see that I pleased
+him; I am much to blame, but I was so glad that any one should love
+me; and when he passed me a letter, I took it home with me and read it
+with great pleasure. Since that time he has written many. He was so
+anxious to speak with me, poor fellow! and kept asking me to leave the
+door open some evening that we might have two words upon the stair.
+For he knew how much my uncle trusted me." She gave something like a
+sob at that, and it was a moment before she could go on. "My uncle is
+a hard man, but he is very shrewd," she said, at last. "He has
+performed many feats in war, and was a great person at court, and much
+trusted by Queen Isabeau in old days. How he came to suspect me I
+cannot tell; but it is hard to keep anything from his knowledge; and
+this morning, as we came from mass, he took my hand into his, forced
+it open, and read my little billet, walking by my side all the while.
+
+"When he finished, he gave it back to me with great politeness. It
+contained another request to have the door left open; and this has
+been the ruin of us all. My uncle kept me strictly in my room until
+evening, and then ordered me to dress myself as you see me--a hard
+mockery for a young girl, do you not think so? I suppose, when he
+could not prevail with me to tell him the young captain's name, he
+must have laid a trap for him; into which, alas! you have fallen in
+the anger of God. I looked for much confusion; for how could I tell
+whether he was willing to take me for his wife on these sharp terms?
+He might have been trifling with me from the first; or I might have
+made myself too cheap in his eyes. But truly I had not looked for such
+a shameful punishment as this? I could not think that God would let a
+girl be so disgraced before a young man. And now I tell you all; and I
+can scarcely hope that you will not despise me."
+
+Denis made her a respectful inclination.
+
+"Madam," he said, "you have honored me by your confidence. It remains
+for me to prove that I am not unworthy of the honor. Is Messire de
+Malétroit at hand?"
+
+"I believe he is writing in the _salle[6]_ without," she answered.
+
+"May I lead you thither, madam?" asked Denis, offering his hand with
+his most courtly bearing.
+
+She accepted it; and the pair passed out of the chapel, Blanche in a
+very drooping and shamefast condition, but Denis strutting and
+raffling in the consciousness of a mission, and the boyish certainty
+of accomplishing it with honor.
+
+The Sire Malétroit rose to meet them with an ironical obeisance.
+
+"Sir," said Denis, with the grandest possible air, "I believe I am to
+have some say in the matter of this marriage; and let me tell you at
+once, I will be no party to forcing the inclination of this young
+lady. Had it been freely offered to me, I should have been proud to
+accept her hand, for I perceive she is as good as she is beautiful;
+but as things are, I have now the honor, messire, of refusing."
+
+Blanche looked at him with gratitude in her eyes; but the old
+gentleman only smiled and smiled, until his smile grew positively
+sickening to Denis.
+
+"I am afraid," he said, "Monsieur de Beaulieu, that you do not
+perfectly understand the choice I have offered you. Follow me, I
+beseech you, to this window." And he led the way to one of the large
+windows which stood open on the night. "You observe," he went on,
+"there is an iron ring in the upper masonry, and reeved through that,
+a very efficacious rope. Now, mark my words: if you should find your
+disinclination to my niece's person insurmountable, I shall have you
+hanged out of this window before sunrise. I shall only proceed to such
+an extremity with the greatest regret, you may believe me. For it is
+not at all your death that I desire, but my niece's establishment in
+life. At the same time, it must come to that if you prove obstinate.
+Your family, Monsieur de Beaulieu, is very well in its way; but if you
+sprung from Charlemagne[7], you should not refuse the hand of a
+Malétroit with impunity--not if she had been as common as the Paris
+road--not if she was as hideous as the gargoyle over my door. Neither
+my niece nor you, nor my own private feelings, move me at all in this
+matter. The honor of my house has been compromised; I believe you to
+be the guilty person, at least you are now in the secret; and you can
+hardly wonder if I request you to wipe out the stain. If you will not,
+your blood be on your own head! It will be no great satisfaction to me
+to have your interesting relics kicking their heels in the breeze
+below my windows, but half a loaf is better than no bread, and if I
+cannot cure the dishonor, I shall at least stop the scandal."
+
+There was a pause.
+
+"I believe there are other ways of settling such imbroglios among
+gentlemen," said Denis. "You wear a sword, and I hear you have used it
+with distinction."
+
+The Sire de Malétroit made a signal to the chaplain, who crossed the
+room with long silent strides and raised the arras over the third of
+the three doors. It was only a moment before he let it fall again; but
+Denis had time to see a dusky passage full of armed men.
+
+"When I was a little younger, I should have been delighted to honor
+you, Monsieur de Beaulieu," said Sire Alain: "but I am now too old.
+Faithful retainers are the sinews of age, and I must employ the
+strength I have. This is one of the hardest things to swallow as a man
+grows up in years; but with a little patience, even this becomes
+habitual. You and the lady seem to prefer the _salle_ for what remains
+of your two hours; and as I have no desire to cross your preference, I
+shall resign it to your use with all the pleasure in the world. No
+haste!" he added, holding up his hand, as he saw a dangerous look come
+into Denis de Beaulieu's face. "If your mind revolt against hanging,
+it will be time enough two hours hence to throw yourself out of the
+window or upon the pikes of my retainers. Two hours of life are always
+two hours. A great many things may turn up in even as little a while
+as that. And, besides. If I understand her appearance, my niece has
+something to say to you. You will not disfigure your last hours by a
+want of politeness to a lady?"
+
+Denis looked at Blanche, and she made him an imploring gesture.
+
+It is likely that the old gentleman was hugely pleased at this symptom
+of an understanding; for he smiled on both, and added sweetly: "If you
+will give me your word of honor, Monsieur de Beaulieu, to await my
+return at the end of the two hours before attempting anything
+desperate, I shall withdraw my retainers, and let you speak in greater
+privacy with mademoiselle."
+
+Denis again glanced at the girl, who seemed to beseech him to agree.
+
+"I give you my word of honor," he said.
+
+Messire de Malétroit bowed, and proceeded to limp about the apartment,
+clearing his throat the while with that odd musical chirp which had
+already grown so irritating in the ears of Denis de Bealieu. He first
+possessed himself of some papers which lay upon the table; then he
+went to the mouth of the passage and appeared to give an order to the
+men behind the arras; and lastly he hobbled out through the door by
+which Denis had come in, turning upon the threshold to address a last
+smiling bow to the young couple, and followed by the chaplain with a
+hand lamp.
+
+No sooner were they alone than Blanche advanced toward Denis with her
+hands extended. Her face was flushed and excited, and her eyes shone
+with tears.
+
+"You shall not die!" she cried, "you shall marry me after all."
+
+"You seem to think, madam," replied Denis, "that I stand much in fear
+of death."
+
+"Oh, no, no," she said, "I see you are no poltroon[8]. It is for my
+own sake--I could not bear to have you slain for such a scruple."
+
+"I am afraid," returned Denis, "that you underrate the difficulty,
+madam. What you may be too generous to refuse, I may be too proud to
+accept. In a moment of noble feeling toward me, you forget what you
+perhaps owe to others."
+
+He had the decency to keep his eyes on the floor as he said this, and
+after he had finished, so as not to spy upon her confusion. She stood
+silent for a moment, then walked suddenly away, and falling on her
+uncle's chair, fairly burst out sobbing. Denis was in the acme of
+embarrassment. He looked round, as if to seek for inspiration, and,
+seeing a stool, plumped down upon it for something to do. There he
+sat, playing with the guard of his rapier, and wishing himself dead a
+thousand times over, and buried in the nastiest kitchen-heap in
+France. His eyes wandered round the apartment, but found nothing to
+arrest them. There were such wide spaces between the furniture, the
+light fell so badly and cheerlessly over all, the dark outside air
+looked in so coldly through the windows, that he thought he had never
+seen a church so vast, nor a tomb so melancholy. The regular sobs of
+Blanche de Malétroit measured out the time like the ticking of a
+clock. He read the device upon the shield over and over again, until
+his eyes became obscured; he stared into shadowy corners until he
+imagined they were swarming with horrible animals; and every now and
+again he awoke with a start, to remember that his last two hours were
+running, and death was on the march.
+
+Oftener and oftener, as the time went on, did his glance settle on the
+girl herself. Her face was bowed forward and covered with her hands,
+and she was shaken at intervals by the convulsive hiccough of grief.
+Even thus she was not an unpleasant object to dwell upon, so plump and
+yet so fine, with a warm brown skin, and the most beautiful hair,
+Denis thought, in the whole world of womankind. Her hands were like
+her uncle's: but they were more in place at the end of her young arms,
+and looked infinitely soft and caressing. He remembered how her blue
+eyes had shone upon him, full of anger, pity, and innocence. And the
+more he dwelt on her perfections, the uglier death looked, and the
+more deeply was he smitten with penitence at her continued tears. Now
+he felt that no man could have the courage to leave a world which
+contained so beautiful a creature; and now he would have given forty
+minutes of his last hour to have unsaid his cruel speech.
+
+Suddenly a hoarse and ragged peal of cockcrow rose to their ears from
+the dark valley below the windows. And this shattering noise in the
+silence of all around was like a light in a dark place, and shook them
+both out of their reflections.
+
+"Alas, can I do nothing to help you?" she said, looking up.
+
+"Madam," replied Denis, with a fine irrelevancy, "if I have said
+anything to wound you, believe me, it was for your own sake and not
+for mine."
+
+She thanked him with a tearful look.
+
+"I feel your position cruelly," he went on. "The world has been
+bitter, hard on you. Your uncle is a disgrace to mankind. Believe me,
+madam, there is no young gentleman in all France but would be glad of
+my opportunity, to die in doing you a momentary service."
+
+"I know already that you can be very brave and generous," she
+answered. "What I _want_ to know is whether I can serve you--now or
+afterward," she added, with a quaver.
+
+"Most certainly," he answered, with a smile. "Let me sit beside you as
+if I were a friend, instead of a foolish intruder; try to forget how
+awkwardly we are placed to one another; make my last moments go
+pleasantly; and you will do me the chief service possible."
+
+"You are very gallant," she added, with a yet deeper sadness--"very
+gallant--and it somehow pains me. But draw nearer, if you please; and
+if you find anything to say to me, you will at least make certain of a
+very friendly listener. Ah! Monsieur de Beaulieu," she broke
+forth--"ah! Monsieur de Beaulieu, how can I look you in the face?" And
+she fell to weeping again with a renewed effusion.
+
+"Madam," said Denis, taking her hand in both of his, "reflect on the
+little time I have before me, and the great bitterness into which I am
+cast by the sight of your distress. Spare me, in my last moments, the
+spectacle of what I cannot cure even with the sacrifice of my life."
+
+"I am very selfish," answered Blanche. "I will be braver, Monsieur de
+Beaulieu, for your sake. But think if I can do you no kindness in the
+future--if you have no friends to whom I could carry your adieux.
+Charge me as heavily as you can; every burden will lighten, by so
+little, the invaluable gratitude I owe you. Put it in my power to do
+something more for you than weep."
+
+"My mother is married again, and has a young family to care for. My
+brother Guichard will inherit my fiefs; and if I am not in error, that
+will content him amply for my death. Life is a little vapor that
+passeth away, as we are told by those in holy orders. When a man is in
+a fair way and sees all life open in front of him, he seems to himself
+to make a very important figure in the world. His horse whinnies to
+him; the trumpets blow and the girls look out of window as he rides
+into town before his company; he receives many assurances of trust and
+regard--sometimes by express in a letter--sometimes face to face, with
+persons of great consequence falling on his neck. It is not wonderful
+if his head is turned for a time. But once he is dead, were he as
+brave as Hercules[9] or as wise as Solomon[10], he is soon forgotten.
+It is not ten years since my father fell, with many other knights
+around him, in a very fierce encounter, and I do not think that any
+one of them, nor so much as the name of the fight, is now remembered.
+No, no, madam, the nearer you come to it, you see that death is a dark
+and dusty corner, where a man gets into his tomb and has the door shut
+after him till the judgment day. I have few friends just now, and once
+I am dead I shall have none."
+
+"Ah, Monsieur de Beaulieu!" she exclaimed, "you forget Blanche de
+Malétroit."
+
+"You have a sweet nature, madam, and you are pleased to estimate a
+little service far beyond its worth."
+
+"It is not that," she answered. "You mistake me if you think I am
+easily touched by my own concerns. I say so because you are the
+noblest man I have ever met; because I recognize in you a spirit that
+would have made even a common person famous in the land."
+
+"And yet here I die in a mousetrap--with no more noise about it than
+my own squeaking," answered he.
+
+A look of pain crossed her face and she was silent for a little while.
+Then a light came into her eyes, and with a smile she spoke again.
+
+"I cannot have my champion think meanly of himself. Any one who gives
+his life for another will be met in paradise by all the heralds and
+angels of the Lord God. And you have no such cause to hang your head.
+For--Pray, do you think me beautiful?" she asked, with a deep flush.
+
+"Indeed, madam, I do," he said.
+
+"I am glad of that," she answered heartily. "Do you think there are
+many men in France who have been asked in marriage by a beautiful
+maiden--with her own lips--and who have refused her to her face? I
+know you men would half despise such a triumph; but believe me, we
+women know more of what is precious in love. There is nothing that
+should set a person higher in his own esteem; and we women would prize
+nothing more dearly."
+
+"You are very good," he said; "but you cannot make me forget that I
+was asked in pity and not for love."
+
+"I am not so sure of that," she replied, holding down her head. "Hear
+me to an end, Monsieur de Beaulieu. I know how you must despise me; I
+feel you are right to do so; I am too poor a creature to occupy one
+thought of your mind, although, alas! you must die for me this
+morning. But when I asked you to marry me, indeed, and indeed, it was
+because I respected and admired you, and loved you with my whole soul,
+from the very moment that you took my part against my uncle. If you
+had seen yourself, and how noble you looked, you would pity rather
+than despise me. And now," she went on, hurriedly checking him with
+her hand, "although I have laid aside all reserve and told you so
+much, remember that I know your sentiments toward me already. I would
+not, believe me, being nobly born, weary you with importunities into
+consent. I too have a pride of my own: and I declare before the holy
+mother of God, if you should now go back from your word already given,
+I would no more marry you than I would marry my uncle's groom."
+
+Denis smiled a little bitterly.
+
+"It is a small love," he said, "that shies at a little pride."
+
+She made no answer, although she probably had her own thoughts.
+
+"Come hither to the window," he said with a sigh. "Here is the dawn."
+
+And indeed the dawn was already beginning. The hollow of the sky was
+full of essential daylight, colorless and clean; and the valley
+underneath was flooded with a gray reflection. A few thin vapors clung
+in the coves of the forest or lay along the winding course of the
+river. The scene disengaged a surprising effect of stillness, which
+was hardly interrupted when the cocks began once more to crow among
+the steadings[11]. Perhaps the same fellow who had made so horrid a
+clangor in the darkness not half an hour before, now sent up the
+merriest cheer to greet the coming day. A little wind went bustling
+and eddying among the tree-tops underneath the windows. And still the
+daylight kept flooding insensibly out of the east, which was soon to
+grow incandescent and cast up that red-hot cannon-ball, the rising
+sun.
+
+Denis looked out over all this with a bit of a shiver. He had taken
+her hand, and retained it in his almost unconsciously.
+
+"Has the day begun already?" she said; and then illogically enough:
+"the night has been so long! Alas! what shall we say to my uncle when
+he returns?"
+
+"What you will," said Denis, and he pressed her fingers in his.
+
+She was silent.
+
+"Blanche," he said, with a swift, uncertain, passionate utterance,
+"you have seen whether I fear death. You must know well enough that I
+would as gladly leap out of that window into the empty air as to lay a
+finger on you without your free and full consent. But if you care for
+me at all do not let me lose my life in a misapprehension; for I love
+you better than the whole world; and though I will die for you
+blithely, it would be like all the joys of Paradise to live on and
+spend my life in your service."
+
+As he stopped speaking, a bell began to ring loudly in the interior of
+the house; and a clatter of armor in the corridor showed that the
+retainers were returning to their post, and the two hours were at an
+end.
+
+"After all that you have heard?" she whispered, leaning toward him
+with her lips and eyes.
+
+"I have heard nothing," he replied.
+
+"The captain's name was Florimond de Champdivers," she said in his
+ear.
+
+"I did not hear it," he answered, taking her supple body in his arms,
+and covered her wet face with kisses.
+
+A melodious chirping was audible behind, followed by a beautiful
+chuckle, and the voice of Messire de Malétroit wished his new nephew a
+good morning.
+
+
+NOTES
+
+[1] Published in 1878. Acknowledgment is due to the Charles Scribner's
+Sons Company, Publishers, for the use of the text of their edition of
+Stevenson's works.
+
+[2] 207:18 bartizan. A small overhanging turret with loop-holes and
+embrasures projecting from the parapet of a medieval building.
+
+[3] 208:1 gargoyles. Mouths of spouts, in antic shapes.
+
+[4] 209:30 debouched. Passed out.
+
+[5] 212:29 Leonardo. (1452-1519.) A famous Italian painter, architect,
+sculptor, scientist, engineer, mechanician, and musician.
+
+[6] 222:7 salle. French word for hall or room.
+
+[7] 223:13 Charlemagne. (742 or 747-814.) A great king of the Franks
+and emperor of the Romans.
+
+[8] 225:25 poltroon. A coward, a dastard.
+
+[9] 229:12 Hercules. A mighty hero in Greek and Roman mythology.
+
+[10] 229:13 Solomon. Son of David. King of Israel, 993-953 B.C.
+
+[11] 231: 26 steadings. A farmstead--barns, stables, cattle-sheds,
+etc.
+
+
+BIOGRAPHY
+
+Robert Louis Stevenson was born November 13, 1850, in Edinburgh. He
+was an only child. On his mother's side he came from a line of Scotch
+philosophers and ministers; on his father's, from a line of active
+workers and scientists. His grandfather, Robert Stevenson, and his
+father, Thomas Stevenson, gained world-wide reputations in
+engineering.
+
+Robert inherited from his mother throat and lung troubles. His health
+was very poor from his birth and his life was preserved only by the
+careful watchfulness of his mother and his devoted nurse, Alison
+Cunningham. As a child he was very lovable and possessed a very active
+imagination.
+
+He went to school in Edinburgh between the years 1858-1867. He first
+attended a preparatory school, then the Edinburgh academy. He spent
+considerable time at his maternal grandfather's home. It was there
+that he first tasted the delights of romance. In his school work he
+was none too studious, but all his teachers were charmed by his
+pleasing manner and general intelligence. Though an idler in other
+things, he worked constantly on the art of writing. Throughout his
+study in Edinburgh University and his unsuccessful efforts in
+engineering and the practice of law, literature became more and more a
+passion with him.
+
+The period between 1875 and 1879 was one of improved health and
+considerable literary activity. During this time he published _A
+Lodging for the Night, Will o' the Mill, The New Arabian Nights_, and
+an _Inland Voyage_.
+
+While in southern Europe he met and fell in love with Mrs. Osbourne.
+So after she returned to her home in California, Stevenson received
+the news that she was seriously ill. He immediately sailed for San
+Francisco, travelling as a steerage passenger because of lack of funds
+and a desire for literary material. Out of this experience grew a
+number of stories and essays. Exposure on the voyage affected his
+health and caused a very dangerous illness. After his recovery he
+married Mrs. Osbourne and returned to England with his wife and
+stepson.
+
+For a few years his work was more or less spasmodic on account of his
+bitter struggle with poor health, in 1883 he achieved success by the
+publication of _Treasure Island_. _Markheim_ appeared in 1884.
+_Kidnapped_ and _Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde_ were published in 1886.
+
+After the death of his father in 1887, Stevenson and his family sailed
+to America, where they settled in the Adirondacks for the winter of
+1888. Here his health was good and he wrote a number of essays for
+_Scribner's Magazine_. In the spring of the same year they started on
+a cruise of the south seas. They visited many of the southern islands
+and settled at Vailima, Samoa. Stevenson was interested in the Samoaas
+and took an active part in their political affairs. The tropical
+climate agreed with him and his creative power was renewed. He wrote a
+number of short stories, a series of letters on the South Seas, and
+the novel _David Balfour_.
+
+Political reverses and failing strength took away for a time his power
+to write. He was again stimulated, however, by the love and
+appreciation of his Samoan followers, and started on what promised to
+be his period of highest achievement. This promise was soon blighted
+by his untimely death from a stroke of apoplexy, December 13, 1894. He
+was buried in Samoa.
+
+
+BIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES
+
+_Life of Robert Louis Stevenson_, 2 vols., Graham Balfour.
+
+_Robert Louis Stevenson_, Isobel Strong.
+
+_Memories and Portraits_, Robert Louis Stevenson.
+
+_Friends on the Shelf_, Bradford Torrey.
+
+"Personal Recollections," Edmund Gosse, _Century Magazine_, 50:447.
+
+"Character Sketch," _Atlantic Monthly_, 89:89-99.
+
+"The Real Stevenson," _Atlantic Monthly_, 85:702-5.
+
+_A Bibliography of the Works of Robert Louis Stevenson_, W.F.
+Prideaux.
+
+
+CRITICISMS
+
+Fundamentally Stevenson's style is marked by a conscious aim to
+entertain. His engaging humor, free of all affectation,
+sentimentality, and exaggeration, is spontaneous and natural. His most
+original writing is _The Child's Garden of Verses_. His touch is light
+and his thought is clear and lucid. _Across the Plains_ is written in
+his most straightforward and natural style.
+
+Stevenson was a careful writer, doing with great skill any established
+piece of art. He practised diligently, and gained, as he himself
+states, his high rank by constantly drilling himself in the art of
+writing. This imitation of form to the point of perfection, rather
+than an expression of a great and moving idea, gives an air of
+insincerity to some of Stevenson's works. Yet, although seemingly
+artificial, he never chose words for the sake of mere sounds, but for
+their accuracy in truth and fitness. He was as an ephemeral shadow
+with an optimistic and real spirit. He infused an intimacy and
+spirituality into his writings that prove delightful to all his
+readers.
+
+The subject of Markheim, a man failing through weakness, was a
+favorite topic for Stevenson. Markheim is almost an ideal specimen of
+the impressionistic short-story. It has a plot in which Hawthorne
+might justly have revelled, a treatment as intellectual as that of
+Poe, descriptions not unlike those of Flaubert's, and a moral ending
+true to the Puritanic type. The movement of the story is swift and
+possesses perfect unity. The surprise at the end comes as a shock
+although the author has consistently and logically constructed his
+plot.
+
+
+GENERAL REFERENCES
+
+_Emerson and Other Essays_, John Jay Chapman.
+
+_Robert Louis Stevenson_, L. Cope Cornford.
+
+_Modern Novelists_, William Lyon Phelps.
+
+_Makers of English Fiction_, W.J. Dawson.
+
+"Art of Stevenson," _North American Review_, 171: 348-358.
+
+"Criticism," _Dial_, 30:345. May 18, 1901.
+
+
+COLLATERAL READINGS
+
+_The Suicide Club (New Arabian Nights)_, Robert Louis Stevenson.
+
+_Story of the Physician and the Saratoga Trunk_, Robert Louis
+Stevenson.
+
+_The Adventure of the Hansom Cab_, Robert Louis Stevenson.
+
+_The Rajah's Diamond_, Robert Louis Stevenson.
+
+_The Story of the House with the Green Blinds_, Robert Louis
+Stevenson.
+
+_The Adventure of Prince Florizel and the Detective_, Robert Louis
+Stevenson.
+
+_A Lodging for the Night_, Robert Louis Stevenson,
+
+_Providence and the Guitar_, Robert Louis Stevenson.
+
+_In the Valley_, Robert Louis Stevenson.
+
+_With the Children of Israel_, Robert Louis Stevenson.
+
+_The Lotus and the Cockleburrs_, "O. Henry."
+
+_Two Bites at a Cherry_, Thomas Bailey Aldrich.
+
+_The Notary of Perigueux_, Henry W. Longfellow.
+
+
+
+MARKHEIM[1]
+
+_By Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)_
+
+
+"Yes," said the dealer, "our windfalls[2] are of various kinds. Some
+customers are ignorant, and then I touch a dividend[3] on my superior
+knowledge. Some are dishonest," and here he held up the candle, so
+that the light fell strongly on his visitor, "and in that case," he
+continued, "I profit by my virtue."
+
+Markheim had but just entered from the daylight streets, and his eyes
+had not yet grown familiar with the mingled shine and darkness in the
+shop. At these pointed words, and before the near presence of the
+flame, he blinked painfully and looked aside.
+
+The dealer chuckled. "You come to me on Christmas Day," he resumed,
+"when you know that I am alone in my house, put up my shutters, and
+make a point of refusing business. Well, you will have to pay for
+that; you will have to pay for my loss of time, when I should be
+balancing my books; you will have to pay, besides; for a kind of
+manner that I remark in you to-day very strongly. I am the essence of
+discretion, and ask no awkward questions; but when a customer cannot
+look me in the eye, he has to pay for it." The dealer once more
+chuckled; and then, changing to his usual business voice, though still
+with a note of irony, "You can give, as usual, a clear account of how
+you came into the possession of the object?" he continued. "Still your
+uncle's cabinet? A remarkable collector, sir!"
+
+And the little pale, round-shouldered dealer stood almost on tiptoe,
+looking over the top of his gold spectacles, and nodding his head with
+every mark of disbelief. Markheim returned his gaze with one of
+infinite pity, and a touch of horror.
+
+"This time," said he, "you are in error. I have not come to sell, but
+to buy. I have no curios to dispose of; my uncle's cabinet is bare to
+the wainscot: even were it still intact, I have done well on the Stock
+Exchange, and should more likely add to it than otherwise, and my
+errand to-day is simplicity itself. I seek, a Christmas present for a
+lady," he continued, waxing more fluent as he struck into the speech
+he had prepared; "and certainly I owe you every excuse for thus
+disturbing you upon so small a matter. But the thing was neglected
+yesterday; I must produce my little compliment at dinner; and, as you
+very well know, a rich marriage is not a thing to be neglected."
+
+There followed a pause, during which the dealer seemed to weigh this
+statement incredulously. The ticking of many clocks among the curious
+lumber of the shop, and the faint rushing of the cabs in a near
+thoroughfare, filled up the interval of silence.
+
+"Well, sir," said the dealer, "be it so. You are an old customer after
+all; and if, as you say, you have the chance of a good marriage, far
+be it from me to be an obstacle. Here is a nice thing for a lady,
+now," he went on, "this hand glass--fifteenth century, warranted;
+comes from a good collection, too; but I reserve the name, in the
+interests of my customer, who was just like yourself, my dear sir,
+the nephew and sole heir of a remarkable collector."
+
+The dealer, while he thus ran on in his dry and biting voice, had
+stooped to take the object from its place; and, as he had done so,
+a shock had passed through Markheim, a start both of hand and foot,
+a sudden leap of many tumultuous passions to the face. It passed as
+swiftly as it came, and left no trace beyond a certain trembling of
+the hand that now received the glass.
+
+"A glass," he said hoarsely, and then paused, and repeated it more
+clearly. "A glass? For Christmas? Surely not."
+
+"And why not?" cried the dealer. "Why not a glass?"
+
+Markheim was looking upon him with an indefinable expression. "You ask
+me why not?" he said. "Why, look here--look in it--look at yourself!
+Do you like to see it? No! nor I--nor any man."
+
+The little man had jumped back when Markheim had so suddenly
+confronted him with the mirror; but now, perceiving there was nothing
+worse on hand, he chuckled. "Your future lady, sir, must be pretty
+hard favored," said he.
+
+"I ask you," said Markheim, "for a Christmas present, and you give me
+this--this damned reminder of years and sins and follies--this
+hand-conscience! Did you mean it? Had you a thought in your mind? Tell
+me. It will be better for you if you do. Come, tell me about yourself,
+I hazard a guess now, that you are in secret a very charitable man?"
+
+The dealer looked closely at his companion. It was very odd, Markheim
+did not appear to be laughing; there was something in his face like an
+eager sparkle of hope, but nothing of mirth.
+
+"What are you driving at?" the dealer asked.
+
+"Not charitable?" returned the other, gloomily. "Not charitable; not
+pious; not scrupulous; unloving; unbeloved; a hand to get money, a
+safe to keep it. Is that all? Dear God, man, is that all?"
+
+"I will tell you what it is," began the dealer, with some sharpness,
+and then broke off again into a chuckle. "But I see this is a love
+match of yours, and you have been drinking the lady's health."
+
+"Ah!" cried Markheim, with a strange curiosity, "Ah, have you been in
+love? Tell me about that."
+
+"I!" cried the dealer. "I in love! I never had the time, nor have I
+the time to-day for all this nonsense. Will you take the glass?"
+
+"Where is the hurry?" returned Markheim. "It is very pleasant to stand
+here talking; and life is so short and insecure that I would not hurry
+away from any pleasure--no, not even from so mild a one as this. We
+should, rather cling, cling to what little we can get, like a man at a
+cliff's edge. Every second is a cliff, if you think upon it--a cliff a
+mile high--high enough, if we fall, to dash us out of every feature of
+humanity. Hence it is best to talk pleasantly. Let us talk of each
+other; why should we wear this mask? Let us be confidential. Who
+knows, we might become friends?"
+
+"I have just one word to say to you," said the dealer. "Either make
+your purchase, or walk out of my shop."
+
+"True, true," said Markheim. "Enough fooling. To business. Show me
+something else."
+
+The dealer stooped once more, this time to replace the glass upon the
+shelf, his thin blond hair falling over his eyes as he did so.
+Markheim moved a little nearer, with one hand in the pocket of his
+greatcoat; he drew himself up and filled his lungs; at the same time
+many different emotions were depicted together on his face--terror,
+horror, and resolve, fascination, and a physical repulsion; and
+through a haggard lift of his upper lip, his teeth looked out.
+
+"This, perhaps, may suit," observed the dealer; and then, as he began
+to re-arise, Markheim bounded from behind upon his victim. The long,
+skewer-like[4] dagger flashed and fell. The dealer straggled like a
+hen, striking his temple on the shelf, and then tumbled on the floor
+in a heap.
+
+Time had some score of small voices in that shop, some stately and
+slow as was becoming to their great age, others garrulous and hurried.
+All these told out the seconds in an intricate chorus of tickings.
+Then the passage of a lad's feet, heavily running on the pavement,
+broke in upon these smaller voices and startled Markheim into the
+consciousness of his surroundings. He looked about him awfully. The
+candle stood on the counter, its flame solemnly wagging in a draught;
+and by that inconsiderable movement, the whole room was filled with
+noiseless bustle and kept heaving like a sea: the tall shadows
+nodding, the gross blots of darkness swelling and dwindling as with
+respiration, the faces of the portraits and the china gods changing
+and wavering like images in water. The inner door stood ajar, and
+peered into that leaguer[5] of shadows with a long slit of daylight
+like a pointing finger.
+
+From these fear-stricken rovings, Markheim's eyes returned to the body
+of his victim, where it lay both humped and sprawling, incredibly
+small and strangely meaner than in life. In these poor, miserly
+clothes, in that ungainly attitude, the dealer lay like so much
+sawdust. Markheim had feared to see it, and, lo! it was nothing. And
+yet, as he gazed, this bundle of old clothes and pool of blood began
+to find eloquent voices. There it must lie; there was none to work the
+cunning hinges or direct the miracle of locomotion--there it must lie
+till it was found. Found! aye, and then? Then would this dead flesh
+lift up a cry that would ring over England, and fill the world with
+the echoes of pursuit. Ay, dead or not, this was still the enemy.
+"Time was that when the brains were out[6]," he thought; and the
+first word struck into his mind. Time, now that the deed was
+accomplished--time, which had dosed for the victim, had become
+instant and momentous for the slayer.
+
+The thought was yet in his mind, when, first one and then another,
+with every variety of pace and voice--one deep as the bell from a
+cathedral turret, another ringing on its treble notes the prelude of a
+waltz--the clocks began to strike the hour of three in the afternoon.
+
+The sudden outbreak of so many tongues in that dumb chamber staggered
+him. He began to bestir himself, going to and fro with the candle,
+beleaguered by moving shadows, and startled to the soul by chance
+reflections. In many rich mirrors, some of home designs, some from
+Venice or Amsterdam, he saw his face repeated and repeated, as it were
+an army of spies; his own eyes met and detected him; and the sound of
+his own steps, lightly as they fell, vexed the surrounding quiet. And
+still as he continued to fill his pockets, his mind accused him, with
+a sickening iteration[7], of the thousand faults of his design. He
+should have chosen a more quiet hour; he should have prepared an
+alibi; he should not have used a knife; he should have been more
+cautious, and only bound and gagged the dealer, and not killed him; he
+should have been more bold, and killed the servant also; he should
+have done all things otherwise; poignant regrets, weary, incessant
+toiling of the mind to change what was unchangeable, to plan what was
+now useless, to be the architect of the irrevocable past. Meanwhile,
+and behind all this activity, brute terrors, like the scurrying of
+rats in a deserted attic, filled the more remote chambers of his brain
+with riot; the hand of the constable would fall heavy on his shoulder,
+and his nerves would jerk like a hooked fish; or he beheld, in
+galloping defile, the dock, the prison, the gallows, and the black
+coffin. Terror of the people in the street sat down before his mind
+like a besieging army. It was impossible, he thought, but that some
+rumor of the struggle must have reached their ears and set on edge
+their curiosity; and now, in all the neighboring houses, he divined
+them sitting motionless and with uplifted ear--solitary people,
+condemned to spend Christmas dwelling alone on memories of the past,
+and now startlingly recalled from that tender exercise: happy family
+parties, struck into silence round the table, the mother still with
+raised finger; every degree and age and humor, but all, by their own
+hearths, prying and hearkening and weaving the rope that was to hang
+him. Sometimes it seemed to him he could not move too softly; the
+clink of the tall Bohemian goblets rang out loudly like a bell; and
+alarmed by the bigness of the ticking, he was tempted to stop the
+clocks. And then, again, with a swift transition of his terrors, the
+very silence of the place appeared a source of peril, and a thing to
+strike and freeze the passer-by; and he would step more boldly, and
+bustle aloud among the contents of the shop, and imitate, with
+elaborate bravado, the movements of a busy man at ease in his own
+house.
+
+But he was now so pulled about by different alarms that, while one
+portion of his mind was still alert and cunning, another trembled on
+the brink of lunacy. One hallucination in particular took a strong
+hold on his credulity. The neighbor hearkening with white face beside
+his window, the passer-by arrested by a horrible surmise on the
+pavement--these could at worst suspect, they could not know; through
+the brick walls and shuttered windows only sounds could penetrate. But
+here, within the house, was he alone? He knew he was; he had watched
+the servant set forth sweethearting, in her poor best, "out for the
+day" written in every ribbon and smile. Yes, he was alone, of course;
+and yet, in the bulk of empty house about him, he could surely hear
+a stir of delicate footing--he was surely conscious, inexplicably
+conscious, of some presence. Ay, surely; to every room and corner
+of the house his imagination followed it; and now it was a faceless
+thing, and yet had eyes to see with; and again it was a shadow of
+himself; and yet again behold the image of the dead dealer, reinspired
+with cunning and hatred.
+
+At times, with a strong effort, he would glance at the open door which
+still seemed to repel his eyes. The house was tall, the skylight small
+and dirty, the day blind with fog; and the light that filtered down to
+the ground story was exceedingly faint, and showed dimly on the
+threshold of the shop. And yet, in that strip of doubtful brightness,
+did there not hang wavering a shadow?
+
+Suddenly, from the street outside, a very jovial gentleman began to
+beat with a staff on the shop door, accompanying his blows with shouts
+and railleries[8] in which the dealer was continually called upon by
+name. Markheim, smitten into ice, glanced at the dead man. But no! he
+lay quite still; he was fled away far beyond earshot of these blows
+and shoutings; he was sunk beneath seas of silence; and his name,
+which would once have caught his notice above the howling of a storm,
+had become an empty sound. And presently the jovial gentleman desisted
+from his knocking and departed.
+
+Here was a broad hint to hurry what remained to be done, to get forth
+from, this accusing neighborhood, to plunge into a bath of London
+multitudes, and to reach, on the other side of day, that haven of
+safety and apparent, innocence---his bed. One visitor had come: at
+any moment it another might follow and be more obstinate. To have
+done the deed, and yet not to reap the profit, would be too abhorrent
+a failure. The money, that was now Markheim's concern: and as a means
+to that, the keys.
+
+He glanced over his shoulder at the open door, where the shadow was
+still lingering and shivering; and with no conscious repugnance of the
+mind, yet with a tremor of the belly, he drew near the body of his
+victim. The human character had quite departed. Like a suit
+half-stuffed with bran, the limbs lay scattered, the trunk doubled, on
+the floor; and yet the thing repelled him. Although so dingy and
+inconsiderable to the eye, he feared it might have more significance
+to the touch. He took the body by the shoulders, and turned it on its
+back. It was strangely light and supple, and the limbs, as if they had
+been broken, fell into the oddest postures. The face was robbed of all
+expression; but it was as pale as wax, and shockingly smeared with
+blood about one temple. That was, for Markheim, the one displeasing
+circumstance. It carried him back, upon the instant, to a certain fair
+day in a fishers' village: a gray day, a piping wind, a crowd upon the
+street, the blare of brasses, the booming of drums, the nasal voice of
+a ballad singer; and a boy going to and fro, buried over head in the
+crowd and divided between interest and fear, until, coming out upon
+the chief place of concourse, he beheld a booth and a great screen
+with pictures, dismally designed, garishly[9] colored: Brownrigg[10]
+with her apprentice; the Mannings[11] with their murdered guest; Weare
+in the death grip of Thurtell[12]; and a score besides of famous
+crimes. The thing was as clear as an illusion; he was once again that
+little boy; he was looking once again, and with the same sense of
+physical revolt, at these vile pictures; he was still stunned by the
+thumping of the drums. A bar of that day's music returned upon his
+memory; and at that, for the first time, a qualm came over him, a
+breath of nausea, a sudden weakness of the joints, which he must
+instantly resist and conquer.
+
+He judged it more prudent to confront than to flee from these
+considerations; looking the more hardily in the dead face, bending his
+mind to realize the nature and greatness of his crime. So little a
+while ago that face had moved with every change of sentiment, that
+pale mouth had spoken, that body had been all on fire with governable
+energies; and now, and by his act, that piece of life had been
+arrested, as the horologist[13], with interjected finger, arrests the
+beating of the clock. So he reasoned in vain; he could rise to no more
+remorseful consciousness; the same heart which had shuddered before
+the painted effigies of crime, looked on its reality unmoved. At best,
+he felt a gleam of pity for one who had been endowed in vain with all
+those faculties that can make the world a garden of enchantment, one
+who had never lived and who was now dead. But of penitence, no, not a
+tremor.
+
+With that, shaking himself clear of these considerations, he found the
+keys and advanced toward the open door of the shop. Outside, it had
+begun to rain smartly; and the sound of the shower upon the roof had
+banished silence. Like some dripping cavern, the chambers of the house
+were haunted by an incessant echoing, which filled the ear and mingled
+with the ticking of the clocks. And, as Markheim approached the door,
+he seemed to hear, in answer to his own cautious tread, the steps of
+another foot withdrawing up the stair. The shadow still palpitated
+loosely on the threshold. He threw a ton's weight of resolve upon his
+muscles, and drew back the door.
+
+The faint, foggy daylight glimmered dimly on the bare floor and
+stairs; on the bright suit of armor posted, halbert in hand, upon the
+landing; and on the dark wood carvings and framed pictures that hung
+against the yellow panels of the wainscot. So loud was the beating of
+the rain through all the house that, in Markheim's ears, it began to
+be distinguished into many different sounds. Footsteps and sighs, the
+tread of regiments marching in the distance, the chink of money in the
+counting, and the creaking of doors held stealthily ajar, appeared to
+mingle with the patter of the drops upon the cupola and the gushing of
+the water in the pipes. The sense that he was not alone grew upon him
+to the verge of madness. On every side he was haunted and begirt by
+presences. He heard them moving in the upper chambers; from the shop,
+he heard the dead man getting to his legs; and as he began with a
+great effort to mount the stairs, feet fled quietly before him and
+followed stealthily behind. If he were but deaf, he thought, how
+tranquilly he would possess his soul! And then again, and hearkening
+with ever fresh attention, he blessed himself for that unresting sense
+which held the outposts and stood a trusty sentinel upon his life. His
+head turned continually on his neck; his eyes, which seemed starting
+from their orbits, scouted on every side, and on every side were half
+rewarded as with the tail of something nameless vanishing. The
+four-and-twenty steps to the first floor were four-and-twenty agonies.
+
+On that first story the doors stood ajar, three of them like three
+ambushes, shaking his nerves like the throats of cannon. He could
+never again, he felt, be sufficiently immured and fortified from men's
+observing eyes; he longed to be home, girt in by walls, buried among
+bed-clothes, and invisible to all but God. And at that thought he
+wondered a little, recollecting tales of other murderers and the fear
+they were said to entertain of heavenly avengers. It was not so, at
+least, with him. He feared the laws of nature, lest, in their callous
+and immutable procedure, they should preserve some damning evidence of
+his crime. He feared tenfold more, with a slavish, superstitious
+terror, some scission[14] in the continuity of man's experience, some
+wilful illegality of nature. He played a game of skill, depending on
+the rules, calculating consequence from cause; and what if nature, as
+the defeated tyrant overthrew the chessboard, should break the mould
+of their succession? The like had befallen Napoleon (so writers said)
+when the winter changed the time of its appearance. The like might
+befall Markheim: the solid walls might become transparent and reveal
+his doings like those of bees in a glass hive; the stout planks might
+yield under his foot like quicksands and detain him in their clutch;
+aye, and there were soberer accidents that might destroy him: if, for
+instance, the house should fall and imprison him beside the body of
+his victim; or the house next door should fly on fire, and the firemen
+invade him from all sides. These things he feared; and, in a sense,
+these things might be called the hands of God reached forth against
+sin. But about God himself he was at ease; his act was doubtless
+exceptional, but so were his excuses, which God knew; it was there,
+and not among men, that he felt sure of justice.
+
+When he got safe into the drawing-room, and shut the door behind him,
+he was aware of a respite from alarms. The room was quite dismantled,
+uncarpeted besides, and strewn with packing cases and incongruous
+furniture; several great pier glasses, in which he beheld himself at
+various angles, like an actor on a stage; many pictures, framed and
+unframed, standing, with their faces to the wall; a fine Sheraton[15]
+sideboard, a cabinet of marquetry[16], and a great old bed, with
+tapestry hangings. The windows opened to the floor; but by great good
+fortune the lower part of the shutters had been closed, and this
+concealed him from the neighbors. Here, then, Markheim drew in a
+packing case before the cabinet, and began to search among the keys.
+It was a long business, for there were many; and it was irksome,
+besides; for, after all, there might be nothing in the cabinet, and
+time was on the wing. But the closeness of the occupation sobered him.
+With the tail of his eye he saw the door--even glanced at it from time
+to time directly, like a besieged commander pleased to verify the good
+estate of his defences. But in truth he was at peace. The rain falling
+in the street sounded natural and pleasant. Presently, on the other
+side, the notes of a piano were wakened to the music of a hymn, and
+the voices of many children took up the air and words. How stately,
+how comfortable was the melody! How fresh the youthful voices!
+Markheim gave ear to it smilingly, as he sorted out the keys; and his
+mind was thronged with answerable ideas and images; church-going
+children and the pealing of the high organ; children afield, bathers
+by the brookside, ramblers on the brambly common, kite-flyers in the
+windy and cloud-navigated sky; and then, at another cadence of the
+hymn, back again to church, and the somnolence of summer Sundays, and
+the high, genteel voice of the parson (which he smiled a little to
+recall), and the painted Jacobean[17] tombs, and the dim lettering of
+the Ten Commandments in the chancel.
+
+And as he sat thus, at once busy and absent, he was startled to his
+feet. A flash of ice, a flash of fire, a bursting gush of blood, went
+over him, and then he stood transfixed and thrilling. A step mounted
+the stair slowly and steadily, and presently a hand was laid upon the
+knob, and the lock clicked, and the door opened.
+
+Fear held Markheim in a vice. What to expect he knew not, whether the
+dead man walking, or the official ministers of human justice, or some
+chance witness blindly stumbling in to consign him to the gallows. But
+when a face was thrust into the aperture, glanced round the room,
+looked at him, nodded and smiled as if in friendly recognition, and
+then withdrew again, and the door closed behind it, his fear broke
+loose from his control in a hoarse cry. At the sound of this the
+visitant returned.
+
+"Did you call me?" he asked pleasantly, and with that he entered the
+room, and closed the door behind him.
+
+Markheim stood and gazed at him with all his eyes. Perhaps there was a
+film upon his sight, but the outlines of the newcomer seemed to change
+and waver like those of the idols in the wavering candlelight of the
+shop: and at times he thought he knew him; and at times he thought he
+bore a likeness to himself; and always, like a lump of living terror,
+there lay in his bosom the conviction that this thing was not of the
+earth and not of God.
+
+And yet the creature had a strange air of the commonplace, as he stood
+looking on Markheim with a smile; and when he added: "You are looking
+for the money, I believe?" it was in the tones of everyday politeness.
+
+Markheim made no answer.
+
+"I should warn you," resumed the other, "that the maid has left her
+sweetheart earlier than usual and will soon be here. If Mr. Markheim
+be found in this house, I need not describe to him the consequences."
+
+"You know me?" cried the murderer.
+
+The visitor smiled. "You have long been a favorite of mine," he said;
+"and I have long observed and often sought to help you."
+
+"What are you?" cried Markheim: "the devil?"
+
+"What I may be," returned the other, "cannot affect the service I
+propose to render you."
+
+"It can," cried Markheim; "it does! Be helped by you? No, never; not
+by you! You do not know me yet; thank God, you do not know me!"
+
+"I know you," replied the visitant, with a sort of kind severity or
+rather firmness. "I know you to the soul."
+
+"Know me!" cried Markheim. "Who can do so? My life is but a
+travesty[18] and slander on myself. I have lived to belie my nature.
+All men do; all men are better than this disguise that grows about and
+stifles them. You see each dragged away by life, like one whom bravos
+have seized and muffled in a cloak. If they had their own control--if
+you could see their faces, they would be altogether different, they
+would shine out for heroes and saints! I am worse than most; myself is
+more overlaid; my excuse is known to me and God. But, had I the time,
+I could disclose myself."
+
+"To me?" inquired the visitant.
+
+"To you before all," returned the murderer. "I supposed you were
+intelligent. I thought--since you exist--you would prove a reader of
+the heart. And yet you would propose to judge me by my acts! Think of
+it; my acts! I was born and I have lived in a land of giants; giants
+have dragged me by the wrists since I was born out of my mother--the
+giants of circumstance. And you would judge me by my acts! But can you
+not look within? Can you not understand that evil is hateful to me?
+Can you not see within me the clear writing of conscience, never
+blurred by any wilful sophistry[19] although too often disregarded?
+Can you not read me for a thing that surely must be common as
+humanity--the unwilling sinner?"
+
+"All this is very feelingly expressed," was the reply, "but it regards
+me not. These points of consistency are beyond my province, and I care
+not in the least by what compulsion you may have been dragged away, so
+as you are but carried in the right direction. But time flies; the
+servant delays, looking in the faces of the crowd and at the pictures
+on the hoardings, but still she keeps moving nearer; and remember, it
+is as if the gallows itself were striding toward you through the
+Christmas streets! Shall I help you--I, who know all? Shall I tell you
+where to find the money?"
+
+"For what price?" asked Markheim.
+
+"I offer you the service for a Christmas gift," returned the other.
+
+Markheim could not refrain from smiling with a kind of bitter triumph,
+"No," said he, "I will take nothing at your hands; if I were dying of
+thirst, and it was your hand that put the pitcher to my lips, I should
+find the courage to refuse. It may be credulous, but I will do nothing
+to commit myself to evil."
+
+"I have no objection to a death-bed repentance," observed the
+visitant.
+
+"Because you disbelieve their efficacy[20]!" Markheim cried.
+
+"I do not say so," returned the other; "but I look on these things
+from a different side, and when the life is done my interest falls.
+The man has lived to serve me, to spread black looks under color of
+religion, or to sow tares[21] in the wheat field, as you do, in a
+course of weak compliance with desire. Now that he draws so near to
+his deliverance, he can add but one act of service--to repent, to die
+smiling, and thus to build up in confidence and hope the more timorous
+of my surviving followers. I am not so hard a master. Try me. Accept
+my help. Please yourself in life as you have done hitherto; please
+yourself more amply, spread your elbows at the board; and when the
+night begins to fall and the curtains to be drawn, I tell you, for
+your greater comfort, that you will find it even easy to compound your
+quarrel with your conscience, and to make a truckling peace with God.
+I came but now from such a death-bed, and the room was full of sincere
+mourners, listening to the man's last words; and when I looked into
+that face, which had been set as a flint against mercy, I found it
+smiling with hope."
+
+"And do you, then, suppose me such a creature?" asked Markheim. "Do
+you think I have no more generous aspirations than to sin, and sin,
+and sin, and, at last, sneak into heaven? My heart rises at the
+thought. Is this, then, your experience of mankind? or is it because
+you find me with red hands that you presume such baseness? and is this
+crime of murder indeed so impious as to dry up the very springs of
+good?"
+
+"Murder is to me no special category[22]," replied the other. "All
+sins are murder, even all life is war. I behold your race, like
+starving mariners on a raft, plucking crusts out of the hands of
+famine and feeding on each other's lives. I follow sins beyond the
+moment of their acting; I find in all that the last consequence is
+death; and to my eyes, the pretty maid who thwarts her mother with
+such taking graces on a question of a ball, drips no less visibly with
+human gore than such a murderer as yourself. Do I say that I follow
+sins? I follow virtues also; they differ not by the thickness of a
+nail, they are both scythes for the reaping angel of Death. Evil, for
+which I live, consists not in action but in character. The bad man is
+dear to me; not the bad act, whose fruits, if we could follow them far
+enough down the hurtling[23] cataract of the ages, might yet be found
+more blessed than those of the rarest virtues. And it is not because
+you have killed a dealer, but because you are Markheim, that I offered
+to forward your escape."
+
+"I will lay my heart open to you," answered Markheim. "This crime on
+which you find me is my last. On my way to it I have learned many
+lessons; itself is a lesson, a momentous lesson. Hitherto I have been
+driven with revolt to what I would not; I was a bondslave to poverty,
+driven and scourged. There are robust virtues that can stand in these
+temptations; mine was not so: I had a thirst of pleasure. But to-day,
+and out of this deed, I pluck both warning and riches--both the power
+and a fresh resolve to be myself. I become in all things a free actor
+in the world; I begin to see myself all changed, these hands the
+agents of good, this heart at peace. Some thing comes over me out of
+the past; something of what I have dreamed on Sabbath evenings to the
+sound of the church organ, of what I forecast when I shed tears over
+noble books, or talked, an innocent child, with my mother. There lies
+my life; I have wandered a few years, but now I see once more my city
+of destination."
+
+"You are to use this money on the Stock Exchange, I think?" remarked
+the visitor; "and there, if I mistake not, you have already lost some
+thousands?"
+
+"Ah," said Markheim, "but this time I have a sure thing."
+
+"This time, again, you will lose," replied the visitor, quietly.
+
+"Ah, but I keep back the half!" cried Markheim.
+
+"That also you will lose," said the other.
+
+The sweat started upon Markheim's brow. "Well, then, what matter?" he
+exclaimed. "Say it be lost, say I am plunged again in poverty, shall
+one part of me, and that the worse, continue until the end to override
+the better? Evil and good ran strong in me, hailing me both ways. I do
+not love the one thing, I love all. I can conceive great deeds,
+renunciations, martyrdoms; and though I be fallen to such a crime as
+murder, pity is no stranger to my thoughts. I pity the poor; who knows
+their trials better than myself? I pity and help them; I prize love, I
+love honest laughter; there is no good thing nor true thing on earth
+but I love it from my heart. And are my vices only to direct my life,
+and my virtues to lie without effect, like some passive lumber of the
+mind? Not so; good, also, is a spring of acts."
+
+But the visitant raised his finger. "For six-and-thirty years that you
+have been in this world," said he, "through many changes of fortune
+and varieties of humor, I have watched you steadily fall. Fifteen
+years ago you would have started at a theft. Three years back you
+would have blenched at the name of murder. Is there any crime, is
+there any cruelty or meanness, from which you still recoil?--five
+years from now I shall detect you in the fact! Downward, downward lies
+your way; nor can anything but death avail to stop you."
+
+"It is true," Markheim said huskily, "I have in some degree complied
+with evil. But it is so with all: the very saints, in the mere
+exercise of living, grow less dainty, and take on the tone of their
+surroundings."
+
+"I will propound to you one simple question," said the other; "and as
+you answer, I shall read to you your moral horoscope. You have grown
+in many things more lax; possibly you do right to be so; and at any
+account, it is the same with all men. But granting that, are you in
+any one particular, however trifling, more difficult to please with
+your own conduct, or do you go in all things with a looser rein?"
+
+"In any one?" repeated Markheim, with an anguish of consideration.
+"No," he added, with despair, "in none! I have gone down in all."
+
+"Then," said the visitor, "content yourself with what you are, for you
+will never change; and the words of your part on this stage are
+irrevocably written down."
+
+Markheim stood for a long while silent, and indeed it was the visitor
+who first broke the silence. "That being so," he said, "shall I show
+you the money?"
+
+"And grace?" cried Markheim.
+
+"Have you not tried it?" returned the other. "Two or three years ago,
+did I not see you on the platform of revival meetings, and was not
+your voice the loudest in the hymn?"
+
+"It is true," said Markheim; "and I see clearly what remains for me by
+way of duty. I thank you for these lessons from my soul; my eyes are
+opened, and I behold myself at last for what I am."
+
+At this moment, the sharp note of the door-bell rang through the
+house; and the visitant, as though this were some concerted signal for
+which he had been waiting, changed at once in his demeanor.
+
+"The maid!" he cried. "She has returned, as I forewarned you, and
+there is now before you one more difficult passage. Her master, you
+must say, is ill; you must let her in, with an assured but rather
+serious countenance--no smiles, no overacting, and I promise you
+success! Once the girl within, and the door closed, the same dexterity
+that has already rid you of the dealer will relieve you of this last
+danger in your path. Thenceforward you have the whole evening--the
+whole night, if needful--to ransack the treasures of the house and to
+make good your safety. This is help that comes to you with the mask of
+danger. Up!" he cried: "up, friend; your life hangs trembling in the
+scales: up, and act!"
+
+Markheim steadily regarded his counsellor. "If I be condemned to evil
+acts," he said, "there is still one door of freedom open--I can cease
+from action. If my life be an ill thing, I can lay it down. Though I
+be, as you say truly, at the beck of every small temptation, I can
+yet, by one decisive gesture, place myself beyond the reach of all.
+My love of good is damned to barrenness; it may, and let it be!
+But I have still my hatred of evil; and from that, to your galling
+disappointment, you shall see that I can draw both energy and
+courage."
+
+The features of the visitor began to undergo a wonderful and lovely
+change: they brightened and softened with a tender triumph; and, even
+as they brightened, faded and dislimned[24]. But Markheim did not
+pause to watch or understand the transformation. He opened the door
+and went downstairs very slowly, thinking to himself. His past went
+soberly before him; he beheld it as it was, ugly and strenuous like
+a dream, random as chance-medley--a scene of defeat. Life, as he
+thus reviewed it, tempted him no longer; but on the farther side he
+perceived a quiet haven for his bark. He paused in the passage, and
+looked into the shop, where the candle still burned by the dead body.
+It was strangely silent. Thoughts of the dealer swarmed into his mind,
+as he stood gazing. And then the bell once more broke out into
+impatient clamor.
+
+He confronted the maid upon the threshold with something like a smile.
+
+"You had better go for the police," said he: "I have killed your
+master."
+
+
+
+
+
+NOTES
+
+[1] Written in 1884. This story is used by permission of and special
+arrangement with the Charles Scribner's Sons Company, Publishers.
+
+[2] 237:1 windfalls. Unexpected gains.
+
+[3] 237:3 dividend. His knowledge a business asset that draws
+interest.
+
+[4] 241:22 skewer-like. Like a wooden pin now used to fasten meat.
+
+[5] 242:11 leaguer. Place besieged with shadows.
+
+[6] 242:27 Time was that when the brains were out. See Macbeth, Act
+III, sc. 4, line 78.
+
+[7] 243:16 iteration. Repetition.
+
+[8] 246:25 railleries. Merry jesting or ridicule.
+
+[9] 247:7 garishly. A blinding, gaudy effect.
+
+[10] 247:7 Brownrigg. A notorious murderess living in England in the
+middle of the eighteenth century. She was hanged and her skeleton is
+still preserved.
+
+[11] 247:8 Mannings. Marie Manning and her husband murdered a former
+suitor. They were given, a death sentence.
+
+[12] 247:9 Thurtell. A gambler who quarrelled with Weare and killed
+him after he had professed peace. He designed his own gallows.
+
+[13] 247:25 horologist. One who makes timepieces.
+
+[14] 249:27 scission. A cleaving or a dividing.
+
+[15] 250:25 Sheraton. Next to Chippendale the greatest furniture
+designer and cabinet-maker.
+
+[16] 250:25 marquetry. An inlay of some thin material in the surface
+of a piece of furniture or other object.
+
+[17] 251:23 Jacobean. Pertaining to the time of James I of England.
+
+[18] 253:12 travesty. A grotesque imitation.
+
+[19] 254:3 sophistry. Methods of the Greek sophists.
+
+[20] 254:29 efficacy. Effective energy.
+
+[21] 255:5 sow tares, etc. See Matthew XII, 24-30.
+
+[22] 255:29 category. A class, condition, or predicament.
+
+[23] 256:14 hurtling. Rushing headlong or confusedly.
+
+[24] 280:10 dislimned. Erased or effaced.
+
+
+COLLATERAL READINGS
+
+_Treasure Island_, R.L. Stevenson.
+
+_Kidnapped_, R.L. Stevenson.
+
+_Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde_, R.L. Stevenson.
+
+_Prince Otto_, R.L. Stevenson.
+
+_Across the Plains_, R.L. Stevenson.
+
+_Travels with a Donkey_, R.L. Stevenson.
+
+_An Inland Voyage_, R.L. Stevenson.
+
+_Essays on Burns and Thoreau_, R.L. Stevenson.
+
+_Virginibus Puerisque_, R.L. Stevenson.
+
+_The Child's Garden of Verses_, R.L. Stevenson.
+
+_The Masque of the Red Death_, Edgar Allan Poe.
+
+_The Pit and the Pendulum_, Edgar Allan Poe.
+
+_A Coward_, Guy de Maupassant.
+
+_The Substitute_, François Coppée.
+
+_The Revolt of Mother_, Mary Wilkins Freeman.
+
+_Flute and Violin_, James Lane Alien.
+
+_A Lear of the Steppes_, Ivan Turgeneff.
+
+_Rappacini's Daughter_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Short-Stories, by Various
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Short-Stories, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere 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
+
+
+Title: Short-Stories
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: June 25, 2004 [EBook #12732]
+[Last updated: September 12, 2012]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: CP-1252
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SHORT-STORIES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Keith M. Eckrich, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+SHORT-STORIES
+
+
+EDITED BY L.A. PITTENGER, A.M., CRITIC IN ENGLISH, INDIANA UNIVERSITY
+
+
+New York: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY, 1914
+
+
+Set up and electrotyped. Published November, 1913. Reprinted January,
+1914.
+
+Norwood Press, J.S. Cushing Co.--Berwick & Smith Co., Norwood, Mass.,
+U.S.A.
+
+
+
+A PREFATORY NOTE
+
+This collection of short-stories does not illustrate the history of
+short-story writing, nor does it pretend that these are the ten best
+stories ever written, but it does attempt to present selections from a
+list of the greatest short-stories that have proved, in actual use,
+most beneficial to high school students.
+
+The introduction presents a concise statement of the essentials of the
+history, qualities, and composition of the short-story. A brief
+biography of each author and a criticism covering the main
+characteristics of his writings serve as starting points for the
+recitation. The references following both the biography and criticism
+are given in order that the study of the short-story may be amplified,
+and that high school teachers may build a systematic and serviceable
+library about their class work in the teaching of the story. The
+collateral readings, listed after each story, will aid in the creation
+of a suitable atmosphere for the story studied, and explain many
+questions developed in the recitation. Only such definitions as are
+not easily found in school dictionaries are included in the notes.
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+PREFATORY NOTE
+
+INTRODUCTION:
+     History of the Short-story
+     Qualities of the Short-story
+     Composition of the Short-story
+     Books for Reference
+     Collections of Short-stories
+
+THE FATHER. 1860. Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson.
+
+THE GRIFFIN AND THE MINOR CANON. 1887. Frank R. Stockton.
+
+THE PIECE OF STRING. 1884. Guy de Maupassant.
+
+THE MAN WHO WAS. 1889. Rudyard Kipling.
+
+THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER. 1839. Edgar Allan Poe.
+
+THE GOLD-BUG. 1843. Edgar Allan Poe.
+
+THE BIRTHMARK. 1843. Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+ETHAN BRAND. 1848. Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+THE SIRE DE MALETROIT'S DOOR. 1878. Robert Louis Stevenson.
+
+MARKHEIM. 1884. Robert Louis Stevenson.
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+HISTORY OF THE SHORT-STORY
+
+Just when, where, and by whom story-telling was begun no one can say.
+From the first use of speech, no doubt, our ancestors have told
+stories of war, love, mysteries, and the miraculous performances of
+lower animals and inanimate objects. The ultimate source of all
+stories lies in a thorough democracy, unhampered by the restrictions
+of a higher civilization. Many tales spring from a loathsome filth
+that is extremely obnoxious to our present day tastes. The remarkable
+and gratifying truth is, however, that the short-story, beginning in
+the crude and brutal stages of man's development, has gradually
+unfolded to greater and more useful possibilities, until in our own
+time it is a most flexible and moral literary form.
+
+The first historical evidence in the development of the story shows no
+conception of a short-story other than that it is not so long as other
+narratives. This judgment of the short-story obtained until the
+beginning of the nineteenth century, when a new version of its meaning
+was given, and an enlarged vision of its possibilities was experienced
+by a number of writers almost simultaneously. In the early centuries
+of story-telling there was only one purpose in mind--that of narrating
+for the joy of the telling and hearing. The story-tellers sacrificed
+unity and totality of effect as well as originality for an
+entertaining method of reciting their incidents.
+
+The story of _Ruth_ and the _Prodigal Son_ are excellent short tales,
+but they do not fulfill the requirements of our modern short-story for
+the reason that they are not constructed for one single impression,
+but are in reality parts of possible longer stories. They are, as it
+were, parts of stories not unlike _Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde_ and _A
+Lear of the Steppes_, and lack those complete and concise artistic
+effects found in the short-stories, _Markheim_ and _Mumu_, by the same
+authors. Both _Ruth_ and the _Prodigal Son_ are exceptionally well
+told, possess a splendid moral tone, and are excellent prophecies of
+what the nineteenth century has developed for us in the art of
+short-story writing.
+
+The Greeks did very little writing in prose until the era of their
+decadence, and showed little instinct to use the concise and unified
+form of the short-story. The conquering Romans followed closely in the
+paths of their predecessors and did little work in the shorter
+narratives. The myths of Greece and Rome were not bound by facts, and
+opened a wonderland where writers were free to roam. The epics were
+slow in movement, and presented a list of loosely organized stories
+arranged about some character like Ulysses or AEneas.
+
+During the mediaeval period story-tellers and stories appeared
+everywhere. The more ignorant of these story-tellers produced the
+fable, and the educated monks produced the simple, crude and
+disjointed tales. The _Gesta Romanorum_ is a wonderful storehouse of
+these mediaeval stories. In the _Decameron_ Boccaccio deals with
+traditional and contemporary materials. He is a born story-teller and
+presents many interesting and well-told narratives, but as Professor
+Baldwin[1] has said, more than half are merely anecdotes, and the
+remaining stories are bare plots, ingeniously done in a kind of
+scenario form. Three approach our modern idea of the short-story, and
+two, the second story of the second day and the sixth story of the
+ninth day, actually attain to our standard. Boccaccio was not
+conscious of a standard in short-story telling, for he had none in the
+sense that Poe and Maupassant defined and practiced it. Chaucer in
+England told his stories in verse and added the charm of humor and
+well defined characters to the development of story-telling.
+
+In the seventeenth century Cervantes gave the world its first great
+novel, _Don Quixote_. Cervantes was careless in his work and did not
+write short-stories, but tales that are fairly brief. Spain added to
+the story a high sense of chivalry and a richness of character that
+the Greek romance and the Italian novella did not possess. France
+followed this loose composition and lack of beauty in form. Scarron
+and Le Sage, the two French fiction writers of this period,
+contributed little or nothing to the advancement of story-telling.
+Cervantes' _The Liberal Lover_ is as near as this period came to
+producing a real short-story.
+
+The story-telling of the seventeenth century was largely shaped by the
+popularity of the drama. In the eighteenth century the drama gave
+place to the essay, and it is to the sketch and essay that we must go
+to trace the evolution of the story during this period. Voltaire in
+France had a burning message in every essay, and he paid far greater
+attention to the development of the thought of his message than to the
+story he was telling. Addison and Steele in the _Spectator_ developed
+some real characters of the fiction type and told some good stories,
+but even their best, like _Theodosius and Constantia_, fall far short
+of developing all the dramatic possibilities, and lack the focusing of
+interest found in the nineteenth century stories. Some of Lamb's
+_Essays of Elia_, especially the _Dream Children_, introduce a
+delicate fancy and an essayist's clearness of thought and statement
+into the story. At the close of this century German romanticism began
+to seep into English thought and prepare the way for things new in
+literary thought and treatment.
+
+The nineteenth century opened with a decided preference for fiction.
+Washington Irving, reverting to the _Spectator_, produced his
+sketches, and, following the trend of his time, looked forward to a
+new form and wrote _The Spectre Bridegroom_ and _Rip Van Winkle_. It
+is only by a precise definition of short-story that Irving is robbed
+of the honor of being the founder of the modern short-story. He loved
+to meander and to fit his materials to his story scheme in a leisurely
+manner. He did not quite see what Hawthorne instinctively followed and
+Poe consciously defined and practiced, and he did not realize that
+terseness of statement and totality of impression were the chief
+qualities he needed to make him the father of a new literary form. Poe
+and Maupassant have reduced the form of the short-story to an exact
+science; Hawthorne and Harte have done successfully in the field of
+romanticism what the Germans, Tieck and Hoffman, did not do so well;
+Bjornson and Henry James have analyzed character psychologically in
+their short-stories; Kipling has used the short-story as a vehicle for
+the conveyance of specific knowledge; Stevenson has gathered most, if
+not all, of the literary possibilities adaptable to short-story use,
+and has incorporated them in his _Markheim_.
+
+France with her literary newspapers and artistic tendencies, and the
+United States with magazines calling incessantly for good
+short-stories, and with every section of its conglomerate life
+clamoring to express itself, lead in the production and rank of
+short-stories. Maupassant and Stevenson and Hawthorne and Poe are the
+great names in the ranks of short-story writers. The list of present
+day writers is interminable, and high school students can best acquire
+a reasonable appreciation of the great work these writers are doing by
+reading regularly some of the better grade literary magazines.
+
+For a comprehensive view of specimens representing the history and
+development of the short-story, students should have access to Brander
+Matthews' _The Short Story_, Jessup and Canby's _The Book of the
+Short-Story_, and Waite and Taylor's _Modern Masterpieces of Short
+Prose Fiction_.
+
+NOTE: [1] _American Short-Stories_, by Charles Sears Baldwin, New
+York: Longmans, Green, & Company, 1904.
+
+
+
+QUALITIES OF THE SHORT-STORY
+
+It was not until well along in the nineteenth century that any one
+attempted to define the short-story. The three quotations given here
+are among the best things that have been spoken on this subject.
+
+"The right novella is never a novel cropped back from the size of a
+tree to a bush, or the branch of a tree stuck into the ground and made
+to serve for a bush. It is another species, destined by the agencies
+at work in the realm of unconsciousness to be brought into being of
+its own kind, and not of another,"--W.D. Howells, _North American
+Review_, 173:429.
+
+"A true short-story is something other and something more than a mere
+story which is short. A true short-story differs from the novel
+chiefly in its essential unity of impression. In a far more exact and
+precise use of the word, a short-story has unity as a novel cannot
+have it.... A short-story deals with a single character, a single
+event, a single emotion, or the series of emotions called forth by a
+single situation.--Brander Matthews, _The Philosophy of the
+Short-Story_.
+
+"The aim of a short-story is to produce a single narrative effect with
+the greatest economy of means that is consistent with the utmost
+emphasis."--Clayton Hamilton, _Materials and Methods of Fiction_.
+
+The short-story must always have a compact unity and a direct
+simplicity. In such stories as Bjoernson's _The Father_ and
+Maupassant's _The Piece of String_ this simplicity is equal to that of
+the anecdote, but in no case can an anecdote possess the dramatic
+possibilities of these simple short-stories; for a short-story must
+always have that tensity of emotion that comes only in the crucial
+tests of life.
+
+The short-story does not demand the consistency in treatment of the
+long story, for there are not so many elements to marshal and direct
+properly, but the short-story must be original and varied in its
+themes, cleverly constructed, and lighted through and through with the
+glow of vivid imaginings. A single incident in daily life is caught as
+in a snap-shot exposure and held before the reader in such a manner
+that the impression of the whole is derived largely from suggestion.
+The single incident may be the turning-point in life history, as in
+_The Man Who Was_; it may be a mental surrender of habits fixed
+seemingly in indelible colors in the soul and a sudden, inflexible
+decision to be a man, as in the case of _Markheim;_ or it may be a
+gradual realization of the value of spiritual gifts, as Bjoernson has
+concisely presented it in his little story _The Father_.
+
+The aim of the short-story is always to present a cross-section of
+life in such a vivid manner that the importance of the incident
+becomes universal. Some short-stories are told with the definite end
+in view of telling a story for the sake of exploiting a plot. _The
+Cask of Amontillado_ is all action in comparison with _The Masque of
+the Red Death. The Gold-Bug_ sets for itself the task of solving a
+puzzle and possesses action from first to last. Other stories teach a
+moral. _Ethan Brand_ deals with the unpardonable sin, and _The Great
+Stone Face_ is our classic story in the field of ideals and their
+development. Hawthorne, above all writers, is most interested in
+ethical laws and moral development. Still other stories aim to portray
+character. Miss Jewett and Mrs. Freeman veraciously picture the
+faded-put womanhood in New England; Henry James and Bjoernson turn the
+x-rays of psychology and sociology on their characters; Stevenson
+follows with the precision of the tick of a watch the steps in
+Markheim's mental evolution.
+
+The types of the short-story are as varied as life itself. Addison,
+Lamb, Irving, Warner, and many others have used the story in their
+sketches and essays with wonderful effect. _The Legend of Sleepy
+Hollow_ is as impressive as any of Scott's tales. The allegory in _The
+Great Stone Face_ loses little or nothing when compared with Bunyan's
+_Pilgrim's Progress_. No better type of detective story has been
+written than the two short-stories, _The Murders in the Rue Morgue_
+and _The Purloined Letter_. Every emotion is subject to the call of
+the short-story. Humor with its expansive free air is not so well
+adapted to the short-story as is pathos. There is a sadness in the
+stories of Dickens, Garland, Page, Mrs. Freeman, Miss Jewett,
+Maupassant, Poe, and many others that runs the whole gamut from
+pleasing tenderness in _A Child's Dream of a Star_ to unutterable
+horror in _The Fall of the House of Usher_.
+
+The short-story is stripped of all the incongruities that led
+Fielding, Scott, and Dickens far afield. All its parts harmonize in
+the simplest manner to give unity and "totality" of impression through
+strict unity of form. It is a concentrated piece of life snatched from
+the ordinary and uneventful round of living and steeped in fancy until
+it becomes the acme of literary art.
+
+
+
+COMPOSITION OF THE SHORT-STORY
+
+Any student who wishes to express himself correctly and pleasingly,
+and desires a keener sense for the appreciation of literary work must
+write. The way others have done the thing never appears in a forceful
+light until one sets himself at a task of like nature. Just so in the
+study of this text. To find and appreciate the better points of the
+short-story, students must write stories of their own, patterned in a
+small way on the technique of the masterpieces.
+
+The process of short-story writing follows in a general way the
+following program. In the first place the class must have something
+interesting and suggestive to write about. Sometimes the class can
+suggest a subject; newspapers almost every day give incidents worthy
+of story treatment; happenings in the community often give the very
+best material for stories; and phases of the literature work may well
+be used in the development of students' themes. Change the type of
+character and place, reconstruct the plot, or require a different
+ending for the story, leaving the plot virtually as it is, and then
+assign to the class. Boys and girls should invariably be taught to see
+stories in the life about them, in the newspapers and magazines on
+their library tables, and in the masterpieces they study in their
+class work.
+
+After the idea that the class wishes to develop has been definitely
+determined and the material for this development has been gathered and
+grouped about the idea, the class should select a viewpoint and
+proceed to write. Sometimes the author should tell the story,
+sometimes a third person who may be of secondary importance in the
+story should be given the role of the story-teller, sometimes the
+whole may be in dialogue. The class should choose a fitting method.
+
+Young writers should be very careful about the beginning of a story.
+An action story should start with a striking incident that catches the
+reader's attention at once and forecasts subsequent happenings. In
+every case this first incident must have in it the essence of the end
+of the story and should be perfectly logical to the reader after he
+has finished the reading. A story in which the setting is emphasized
+can well begin, with a description and contain a number of
+descriptions and expositions, distributed with a sense of propriety
+throughout the theme. A good method to use in the opening of a
+character story is that of conversation. An excellent example of a
+sharp use of this device is Mrs. Freeman's _Revolt of Mother_, where
+the first paragraph is a single spoken word.
+
+Every incident included in the story should be tested for its value in
+the development of the theme. An incident that does not amplify
+certain phases of the story has no right to be included, and great
+care should be used in an effort to incorporate just the material
+necessary for the proper evolution of the thought. The problem is not
+so much what can be secured to be included in the story, but rather,
+after making a thorough collection of the material, what of all these
+points should be cast out.
+
+The ending must be a natural outgrowth of the development found in the
+body of the composition. Even in a story with a surprise ending, of
+which we are tempted to say that we have had no preparation for such a
+turn in the story, there must be hints--the subtler the better--that
+point unerringly and always toward the end. The end is presupposed in
+the beginning and the changing of one means the altering of the other.
+
+Young writers have trouble in stopping at the right place. They should
+learn, as soon as possible, that to drag on after the logical ending
+has been reached spoils the best of stories. It is just as bad to stop
+before arriving at the true end. In other words there is only one
+place for the ending of a story, and in no case can it be shifted
+without ruining the idea that has obtained throughout the theme.
+
+There are certain steps in the development of story-writing that
+should be followed if the best results are to be obtained. The first
+assignment should require only the writing of straight narrative. _The
+Arabian Nights Tales_ and children's stories represent this type of
+writing and will give the teacher valuable aid in the presentation of
+this work. After the students have produced simple stories resembling
+the Sinbad Voyages, they should next add descriptions of persons and
+places and explanations of situations to develop clearness and
+interest in their original productions. Taking these themes in turn
+students should be required to introduce plot incidents that
+complicate the simple happenings and divert the straightforward trend
+of the narrative. Now that the stories are well developed in their
+descriptions, expositions, and plot interests they should be tested
+for their emotional effects. Students should go through their themes,
+and by making the proper changes give in some cases a humorous and in
+others a pathetic or tragic effect. These few suggestions are given to
+emphasize the facts that no one conceives a story in all its details
+in a moment of inspiration, and that there is a way of proceeding that
+passes in logical gradations from the simplest to the most complex
+phases of story writing.
+
+Franklin and Stevenson knew no rules for writing other than to
+practice incessantly on some form they wished to imitate. Hard work is
+the first lesson that boys and girls must learn in the art of writing,
+and a systematic gradation of assignments is what the teacher must
+provide for his students. Walter Besant gave the following rules for
+novel writers. Some of them may be suggestive to writers of the high
+school age, so the list is given in its complete form. "(1) Practice
+writing something original every day. (2) Cultivate the habit of
+observation. (3) Work regularly at certain hours. (4) Read no rubbish.
+(5) Aim at the formation of style. (6) Endeavor to be dramatic. (7) A
+great element of dramatic skill is selection. (8) Avoid the sin of
+writing about a character. (9) Never attempt to describe any kind of
+life except that with which you are familiar. (10) Learn as much as
+you can about men and women. (11) For the sake of forming a good
+natural style, and acquiring command of language, write poetry."
+
+
+
+SHORT-STORY LIBRARY
+
+_BOOKS FOR REFERENCE_:
+
+_American Short-Stories_, Charles Baldwin, Longmans, Green, & Co.
+
+_A Study of Prose Fiction_, Chapter XII, Bliss Perry, Houghton,
+Mifflin Co.
+
+_Composition Rhetoric_, T.C. Blaisdell, American Book Co.
+
+_Forms of Prose Literature_, J.H. Gardiner, Charles Scribner's Sons.
+
+_Materials and Methods of Fiction_, Clayton Hamilton, The Baker and
+Taylor Co.
+
+_Principles of Literary Criticism_, C.T. Winchester, The Macmillan Co.
+
+_Short-Story Writing_, C.R. Barrett. The Baker and Taylor Co.
+
+_Specimens of the Short-Story_, G.H. Nettleton, H. Holt & Co.
+
+_Story-Writing and Journalism_, Sherwin Cody, Funk & Wagnalls Co.
+
+_Talks on Writing English_, Arlo Bates, Houghton Mifflin Co.
+
+_The Writing of the Short-Story_, L.W. Smith, D.C. Heath & Co.
+
+_The Philosophy of the Short-Story_, Brander Matthews, Longmans,
+Green, & Co.
+
+_The World's Greatest Short-Stories_, Sherwin Cody, A.C. McClurg & Co.
+
+_The Short-Story_, Henry Canby, Henry Holt & Co.
+
+_The Short-Story_, Evelyn May Albright, The Macmillan Co.
+
+_The Book of the Short-Story_, Jessup and Canby, D. Appleton & Co.
+
+_Modern Masterpieces of Short Prose Fiction_, Waite and Taylor, D.
+Appleton & Co.
+
+_The Short-Story_, Brander Matthews, American Book Co.
+
+_Writing the Short-Story_, Esenwein, Hinds, Noble & Eldredge.
+
+_A Study of the Short-Story in English_, Henry Seidel Canby, Henry
+Holt & Co.
+
+
+
+
+COLLECTIONS OF SHORT-STORIES:_
+
+_American Short-Stories_, Charles S. Baldwin, Longmans, Green, & Co.
+
+_Great Short-Stories_, 3 vols., William Patten, P.F. Collier & Son.
+
+_Little French Masterpieces_, 6 vols. Alexander Jessup, G.P. Putnam's
+Sons.
+
+_Short-Story Classics_ (American), 5 vols., William Patten, P.F.
+Collier & Son.
+
+_Short-Story Classics_ (Foreign), 5 vols., William Patten, P.F.
+Collier & Son.
+
+_Stories by American Authors_, 10 vols., Charles Scribner's Sons.
+
+_Stories by English Authors_, 10 vols., Charles Scribner's Sons.
+
+_Stories by Foreign Authors_, 10 vols., Charles Scribner's Sons.
+
+_Stories New and Old_ (American and English), Hamilton W. Mabie, The
+Macmillan Co.
+
+_World's Greatest Short-Stories_, Sherwin Cody, A.C. McClurg & Co.
+
+_The American Short-Story_, Elias Lieberman.
+
+
+
+THE FATHER[1]
+
+_By Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson (1838-1910)_
+
+
+The man whose story is here to be told was the wealthiest and most
+influential person in his parish; his name was Thord Oeveraas. He
+appeared in the priest's study one day, tall and earnest.
+
+"I have gotten a son," said he, "and I wish to present him for
+baptism."
+
+"What shall his name be?"
+
+"Finn,--after my father."
+
+"And the sponsors?"
+
+They were mentioned, and proved to be the best men and women of
+Thord's relations in the parish.
+
+"Is there anything else?" inquired the priest, and looked up. The
+peasant hesitated a little.
+
+"I should like very much to have him baptized by himself," said he,
+finally.
+
+"That is to say on a week-day?"
+
+"Next Saturday, at twelve o'clock noon."
+
+"Is there anything else?" inquired the priest,
+
+"There is nothing else;" and the peasant twirled his cap, as though he
+were about to go.
+
+Then the priest rose. "There is yet this, however." said he, and
+walking toward Thord, he took him by the hand and looked gravely into
+his eyes: "God grant that the child may become a blessing to you!"
+
+One day sixteen years later, Thord stood once more in the priest's
+study.
+
+"Really, you carry your age astonishingly well, Thord," said the
+priest; for he saw no change whatever in the man.
+
+"That is because I have no troubles," replied Thord. To this the
+priest said nothing, but after a while he asked: "What is your
+pleasure this evening?"
+
+"I have come this evening about that son of mine who is to be
+confirmed to-morrow."
+
+"He is a bright boy."
+
+"I did not wish to pay the priest until I heard what number the boy
+would have when he takes his place in the church to-morrow."
+
+"He will stand number one."
+
+"So I have heard; and here are ten dollars for the priest."
+
+"Is there anything else I can do for you?" inquired the priest, fixing
+his eyes on Thord.
+
+"There is nothing else."
+
+Thord went out.
+
+Eight years more rolled by, and then one day a noise was heard outside
+of the priest's study, for many men were approaching, and at their
+head was Thord, who entered first.
+
+The priest looked up and recognized him.
+
+"You come well attended this evening, Thord," said he.
+
+"I am here to request that the banns may be published for my son: he
+is about to marry Karen Storliden, daughter of Gudmund, who stands
+here beside me."
+
+"Why, that is the richest girl in the parish."
+
+"So they say," replied the peasant, stroking back his hair with one
+hand.
+
+The priest sat a while as if in deep thought, then entered the names
+in his book, without making any comments, and the men wrote their
+signatures underneath. Thord laid three dollars on the table.
+
+"One is all I am to have," said the priest.
+
+"I know that very well; but he is my only child; I want to do it
+handsomely."
+
+The priest took the money.
+
+"This is now the third time, Thord, that you have come here on your
+son's account."
+
+"But now I am through with him," said Thord, and folding up his
+pocket-book he said farewell and walked away.
+
+The men slowly followed him.
+
+A fortnight later, the father and son were rowing across the lake, one
+calm, still day, to Storliden to make arrangements for the wedding.
+
+"This thwart[2] is not secure," said the son, and stood up to
+straighten the seat on which he was sitting.
+
+At the same moment the board he was standing on slipped from under
+him; he threw out his arms, uttered a shriek, and fell overboard.
+
+"Take hold of the oar!" shouted the father, springing to his feet, and
+holding out the oar.
+
+But when the son had made a couple of efforts he grew stiff.
+
+"Wait a moment!" cried the father, and began to row toward his son.
+
+Then the son rolled over on his back, gave his father one long look,
+and sank.
+
+Thord could scarcely believe it; he held the boat still, and stared at
+the spot where his son had gone down, as though he must surely come to
+the surface again. There rose some bubbles, then some more, and
+finally one large one that burst; and the lake lay there as smooth and
+bright as a mirror again.
+
+For three days and three nights people saw the father rowing round and
+round the spot, without taking either food or sleep; he was dragging
+the lake for the body of his son. And toward morning of the third day
+he found it, and carried it in his arms up over the hills to his
+gard[3].
+
+It might have been about a year from that day, when the priest, late
+one autumn evening, heard some one in the passage outside of the door,
+carefully trying to find the latch. The priest opened the door, and in
+walked a tall, thin man, with bowed form and white hair. The priest
+looked long at him before he recognized him. It was Thord.
+
+"Are you out walking so late?" said the priest, and stood still in
+front of him.
+
+"Ah, yes! it is late," said Thord, and took a seat.
+
+The priest sat down also, as though waiting. A long, long silence
+followed. At last Thord said,--
+
+"I have something with me that I should like to give to the poor; I
+want it to be invested as a legacy in my son's name."
+
+He rose, laid some money on the table, and sat down again. The priest
+counted it.
+
+"It is a great deal of money," said he.
+
+"It is half the price of my gard. I sold it to-day."
+
+The priest sat long in silence. At last he asked, but gently,--
+
+"What do you propose to do now, Thord?"
+
+"Something better."
+
+They sat there for a while, Thord with downcast eyes, the priest with
+his eyes fixed on Thord. Presently the priest said, slowly and
+softly,--
+
+"I think your son has at last brought you a true blessing."
+
+"Yes, I think so myself," said Thord, looking up, while two big tears
+coursed slowly down his cheeks.
+
+
+NOTES
+
+[1] This story was written in 1860. Translated from the Norwegian by
+Professor Rasmus B. Anderson. It is printed by permission of and
+special arrangement with _Houghton Mifflin Co._, publishers.
+
+[2] 3:28 thwart. A seat, across a boat, on which the oarsman, sits.
+
+[3] 4:21 gard. A Norwegian farm.
+
+
+BIOGRAPHY
+
+Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson, Norse poet, novelist, dramatist, orator, and
+political leader, was born December 8, 1832, and died in Paris, April
+26, 1910. From his strenuous father, a Lutheran priest who preached
+with tongue and fist, he inherited the physique of a Norse god. He
+possessed the mind of a poet and the arm of a warrior. At the age of
+twelve he was sent to the Molde grammar school, where he proved
+himself a very dull student. In 1852 he entered the university in
+Christiana. Here he neglected his studies to write poetry and
+journalistic articles.
+
+In politics Bjoernson was a tremendous force. Dr. Brandes has said; "To
+speak the name of Bjoernson is like hoisting the colors of Norway." He
+was honored as a king in his native land. He won this recognition by
+no party affiliation, but by his natural gifts as a poet. His magnetic
+eloquence, great message, and sterling character compelled his
+countrymen to follow and honor him. He says of his success in this
+field: "The secret with me is that in success as in failure, in the
+consciousness of my doing as in my habits, I am myself. There are a
+great many who dare not, or lack the ability, to be themselves." For
+his views on political issues the following references may well be
+used: _Independent_. January 31, 1901, pp. 253-257; _Current
+Literature_, November, 1906, p. 581; and _Independent_, July 13, 1905,
+pp. 92-94.
+
+Bjoernson and Ibsen, the two foremost men of Norway, were very closely
+associated throughout life. They were schoolmates, and both were
+interested in writing and producing plays. Ibsen's son, Dr. Sigurd
+Ibsen, married Bjoernson's daughter, Bergilot. These two great writers
+were direct contrasts in nearly everything: Bjoernson lived among his
+people, Ibsen was reserved; Bjoernson played the role of an optimistic
+prophet, Ibsen, that of a pessimistic judge; the former was always a
+conciliatory spirit, the latter a revolutionist; and Bjoernson proved
+himself a patriotic Norwegian, Ibsen, a man of the entire world.
+
+Lack of space forbids the inclusion of a list of Bjoernson's writing's.
+High school teachers will find suitable selections in the list of
+collateral readings that follows. Those who wish a complete
+bibliography of his works will find it in _Bookman_, Volume II, p. 65.
+Translations of his works by Rasmus B. Anderson, Houghton Mifflin Co.,
+and Edmund Gosse, the Macmillan Co., will furnish students extensive
+and standard readings of this master story-teller.
+
+
+CRITICISMS
+
+Bjoernson, in his masterly character delineations, seldom produces
+portraits. He gives the reader suggestive glimpses often enough and of
+the right quality and arrangement to produce a full and vigorous
+conception of his characters. His female parts are especially well
+done. His characters present themselves to the reader by unique
+thinking and choice expressions. Students should analyze _The Father_
+for this phase of character building. Note also the simplicity of the
+words, sentences, paragraphs, and complete story arrangement, the
+author's originality of story conception and expression, his short,
+passionate, panting sentences, the poetic atmosphere that sweetens and
+enriches his virile writing, and the correct, religious pictures he
+paints of his beloved northland.
+
+After having read a number of selections from Bjoernson, students will
+see that he has a wonderful breadth of treatment for every imaginable
+subject. He is so universal in his choice of subjects that Lemaitre in
+his _Impressions of the Theatre_ half-humorously and half-ironically
+puts these words in Bjoernson's mouth, "I am king in the spiritual
+kingdom," and "there are two men in Europe who have genius, I and
+Ibsen, granting that Ibsen has it."
+
+
+GENERAL REFERENCES
+
+_Adventures in Criticism_, A.T.Q. Couch.
+
+_Essays on Modern Novelists_, William Lyon Phelps.
+
+"Bjoernsoniana," _Dial_, January 16, 1903, pp. 37-38.
+
+"Prophet-Poet of Norway," _Cosmopolitan_, April, 1903, pp. 621-631.
+
+"Three Score and Ten," _Dial_, December, 1902, pp. 383-385.
+
+
+COLLATERAL READINGS
+
+_Lectures_, Volume I, John L. Stoddard.
+
+_The Making of an American_, Chapters 1, 7, and Jacob Riis.
+
+_Myths of Northern Lands_. Guerber.
+
+_Synnove Solbakken_, Bjoernson.
+
+_A Happy Boy_, Bjoernson.
+
+_The Fisher Maiden_, Bjoernson.
+
+_The Bridal March_, Bjoernson.
+
+_Magnhild_, Bjoernson.
+
+_A Dangerous Wooing_, Bjoernson.
+
+_The Eagle's Nest_, Bjoernson.
+
+_The Bear Hunter_, Bjoernson.
+
+_Master and Man_, Leo Tolstoi.
+
+_The Doll's House_, Henrik Ibsen.
+
+_The Minister's Black Veil_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_The Ambitious Guest_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_The Beeman of Orn_, Frank R. Stockton.
+
+_A Branch Road_, Hamlin Garland.
+
+_Mateo Falcone_, Prosper Merimee.
+
+_The Death of the Dauphin_, Alphonse Dadoed.
+
+_The Birds' Christmas Carol_, Kate Douglas Wiggin.
+
+_Tennessee's Partner_, Bret Harte.
+
+
+
+THE GRIFFIN AND THE MINOR CANAAN[1]
+
+_By Frank R. Stockton (1834-1902)_
+
+
+Over the great door of an old, old church which stood in a quiet town
+of a far-away land there was carved in stone the figure of a large
+griffin. The old-time sculptor had done his work with great care, but
+the image he had made was not a pleasant one to look at. It had a
+large head, with enormous open mouth and savage teeth; from its back
+arose great wings, armed with sharp hooks and prongs; it had stout
+legs in front, with projecting claws; but there were no legs
+behind,--the body running out into a long and powerful tail, finished
+off at the end with a barbed point. This tail was coiled up under him,
+the end sticking up just back of his wings.
+
+The sculptor, or the people who had ordered this stone figure, had
+evidently been very much pleased with it, for little copies of it,
+also in stone, had been placed here and there along the sides of the
+church, not very far from the ground, so that people could easily look
+at them, and ponder on their curious forms. There were a great many
+other sculptures on the outside of this church,--saints, martyrs,
+grotesque heads of men, beasts, and birds, as well as those of other
+creatures which cannot be named, because nobody knows exactly what
+they were; but none were so curious and interesting as the great
+griffin over the door, and the little griffins on the sides of the
+church.
+
+A long, long distance from the town, in the midst of dreadful wilds
+scarcely known to man, there dwelt the Griffin whose image had been
+put up over the churchgoer. In some way or other, the old-time
+sculptor had seen him, and afterward, to the best of his memory, had
+copied his figure in stone. The Griffin had never known this, until,
+hundreds of years afterward, he heard from a bird, from a wild animal,
+or in some manner which it is not now easy to find out, that there was
+a likeness of him on the old church in the distant town. Now this
+Griffin had no idea how he looked. He had never seen a mirror, and the
+streams where he lived were so turbulent and violent that a quiet
+piece of water, which would reflect the image of anything looking into
+it, could not be found. Being, as far as could be ascertained, the
+very last of his race, he had never seen another griffin. Therefore it
+was, that, when he heard of this stone image of himself, he became
+very anxious to know what he looked like, and at last he determined to
+go to the old church, and see for himself what manner of being he was.
+So he started off from the dreadful wilds, and flew on and on until he
+came to the countries inhabited by men, where his appearance in the
+air created great consternation; but he alighted nowhere, keeping up a
+steady flight until he reached the suburbs of the town which had his
+image on its church. Here, late in the afternoon, he alighted in a
+green meadow by the side of a brook, and stretched himself on the
+grass to rest. His great wings were tired, for he had not made such a
+long flight in a century, or more.
+
+The news of his coming spread quickly over the town, and the people,
+frightened nearly out of their wits by the arrival of so extraordinary
+a visitor, fled into their houses, and shut themselves up. The Griffin
+called loudly for some one to come to him, but the more he called, the
+more afraid the people were to show themselves. At length he saw two
+laborers hurrying to their homes through the fields, and in a terrible
+voice he commanded them to stop. Not daring to disobey, the men stood,
+trembling.
+
+"What is the matter with you all?" cried the Griffin. "Is there not a
+man in your town who is brave enough to speak to me?"
+
+"I think," said one of the laborers, his voice shaking so that his
+words could hardly be understood, "that--perhaps--the Minor
+Canon--would come."
+
+"Go, call him, then!" said the Griffin; "I want to see him."
+
+The Minor Canon, who filled a subordinate position in the church, had
+just finished the afternoon services, and was coming out of a side
+door, with three aged women who had formed the week-day congregation.
+He was a young man of a kind disposition, and very anxious to do good
+to the people of the town. Apart from his duties in the church, where
+he conducted services every week-day, he visited the sick and the
+poor, counseled and assisted persons who were in trouble, and taught a
+school composed entirely of the bad children in the town with whom
+nobody else would have anything to do. Whenever the people wanted
+something difficult done for them, they always went to the Minor
+Canon. Thus it was that the laborer thought of the young priest when
+he found that some one must come and speak to the Griffin.
+
+The Minor Canon had not heard of the strange event, which was known to
+the whole town except himself and the three old women, and when he was
+informed of it, and was told that the Griffin had asked to see him, he
+was greatly amazed, and frightened.
+
+"Me!" he exclaimed. "He has never heard of me! What should he want
+with _me?_"
+
+"Oh! you must go instantly!" cried the two men.
+
+"He is very angry now because he has been kept waiting so long; and
+nobody knows what may happen if you don't hurry to him."
+
+The poor Minor Canon would rather have had his hand cut off than go
+out to meet an angry griffin; but he felt that it was his duty to go,
+or it would be a woeful thing if injury should come to the people of
+the town because he was not brave enough to obey the summons of the
+Griffin.
+
+So, pale and frightened, he started off.
+
+"Well," said the Griffin, as soon as the young man came near, "I am
+glad to see that there is some one who has the courage to come to me."
+
+The Minor Canon did not feel very courageous, but he bowed his head.
+
+"Is this the town," said the Griffin, "where there is a church with a
+likeness of myself over one of the doors?"
+
+The Minor Canon looked at the frightful creature before him and saw
+that it was, without doubt, exactly like the stone image on the
+church. "Yes," he said, "you are right."
+
+"Well, then," said the Griffin, "will you take me to it? I wish very
+much to see it."
+
+The Minor Canon instantly thought that if the Griffin entered the town
+without the people knowing what he came for, some of them would
+probably be frightened to death, and so he sought to gain time to
+prepare their minds.
+
+"It is growing dark, now," he said, very much afraid, as he spoke,
+that his words might enrage the Griffin, "and objects on the front of
+the church cannot be seen clearly. It will be better to wait until
+morning, if you wish to get a good view of the stone image of
+yourself."
+
+"That will suit me very well," said the Griffin. "I see you are a man
+of good sense. I am tired, and I will take a nap here on this soft
+grass, while I cool my tail in the little stream that runs near me.
+The end of my tail gets red-hot when I am angry or excited, and it is
+quite warm now. So you may go, but be sure and come early to-morrow
+morning, and show me the way to the church."
+
+The Minor Canon was glad enough to take his leave, and hurried into
+the town. In front of the church he found a great many people
+assembled to hear his report of his interview with the Griffin. When
+they found that he had not come to spread ruin and devastation, but
+simply to see his stony likeness on the church, they showed neither
+relief nor gratification, but began to upbraid the Minor Canon for
+consenting to conduct the creature into the town.
+
+"What could I do?" cried the young man, "If I should not bring him he
+would come himself and, perhaps, end by setting fire to the town with
+his red-hot tail."
+
+Still the people were not satisfied, and a great many plans were
+proposed to prevent the Griffin from coming into the town. Some
+elderly persons urged that the young men should go out and kill him;
+but the young men scoffed at such a ridiculous idea. Then some one
+said that it would be a good thing to destroy the stone image so that
+the Griffin would have no excuse for entering the town; and this
+proposal was received with such favor that many of the people ran for
+hammers, chisels, and crowbars, with which to tear down and break up
+the stone griffin. But the Minor Canon resisted this plan with all the
+strength of his mind and body. He assured the people that this action
+would enrage the Griffin beyond measure, for it would be impossible to
+conceal from him that his image had been destroyed during the night.
+But the people were so determined to break up the stone griffin that
+the Minor Canon saw that there was nothing for him to do but to stay
+there and protect it. All night he walked up and down in front of the
+church-door, keeping away the men who brought ladders, by which they
+might mount to the great stone griffin, and knock it to pieces with
+their hammers and crowbars. After many hours the people were obliged
+to give up their attempts, and went home to sleep; but the Minor Canon
+remained at his post till early morning, and then he hurried away to
+the field where he had left the Griffin.
+
+The monster had just awakened, and rising to his fore-legs and shaking
+himself, he said that he was ready to go into the town. The Minor
+Canon, therefore, walked back, the Griffin flying slowly through the
+air, at a short distance above the head of his guide. Not a person was
+to be seen in the streets, and they proceeded directly to the front of
+the church, where the Minor Canon pointed out the stone griffin.
+
+The real Griffin settled down in the little square before the church
+and gazed earnestly at his sculptured likeness. For a long time he
+looked at it. First he put his head on one side, and then he put it on
+the other; then he shut his right eye and gazed with his left, after
+which he shut his left eye and gazed with his right. Then he moved a
+little to one side and looked at the image, then he moved the other
+way. After a while he said to the Minor Canon, who had been standing
+by all this time:
+
+"It is, it must be, an excellent likeness! That breadth between the
+eyes, that expansive forehead, those massive jaws! I feel that it must
+resemble me. If there is any fault to find with it, it is that the
+neck seems a little stiff. But that is nothing. It is an admirable
+likeness,--admirable!"
+
+The Griffin sat looking at his image all the morning and all the
+afternoon. The Minor Canon had been afraid to go away and leave him,
+and had hoped all through the day that he would soon be satisfied with
+his inspection and fly away home. But by evening the poor young man
+was utterly exhausted, and felt that he must eat and sleep. He frankly
+admitted this fact to the Griffin, and asked him if he would not like
+something to eat. He said this because he felt obliged in politeness
+to do so, but as soon as he had spoken the words, he was seized with
+dread lest the monster should demand half a dozen babies, or some
+tempting repast of that kind.
+
+"Oh, no," said the Griffin, "I never eat between the equinoxes. At the
+vernal and at the autumnal equinox I take a good meal, and that lasts
+me for half a year. I am extremely regular in my habits, and do not
+think it healthful to eat at odd times. But if you need food, go and
+get it, and I will return to the soft grass where I slept last night
+and take another nap."
+
+The next day the Griffin came again to the little square before the
+church, and remained there until evening, steadfastly regarding the
+stone griffin over the door. The Minor Canon came once or twice to
+look at him, and the Griffin seemed very glad to see him; but the
+young clergyman could not stay as he had done before, for he had many
+duties to perform. Nobody went to the church, but the people came to
+the Minor Canon's house, and anxiously asked him how long the Griffin
+was going to stay.
+
+"I do not know," he answered, "but I think he will soon be satisfied
+with regarding his stone likeness, and then he will go away."
+
+But the Griffin did not go away. Morning after morning he came to the
+church, but after a time he did not stay there all day. He seemed to
+have taken a great fancy to the Minor Canon, and followed him about as
+he pursued his various avocations. He would wait for him at the side
+door of the church, for the Minor Canon held services every day,
+morning and evening, though nobody came now. "If any one should come,"
+he said to himself, "I must be found at my post." When the young man
+came out, the Griffin would accompany him in his visits to the sick
+and the poor, and would often look into the windows of the schoolhouse
+where the Minor Canon was teaching his unruly scholars. All the other
+schools were closed, but the parents of the Minor Canon's scholars
+forced them to go to school, because they were so bad they could not
+endure them all day at home,--griffin or no griffin. But it must be
+said they generally behaved very well when that great monster sat up
+on his tail and looked in at the schoolroom window.
+
+When it was perceived that the Griffin showed no signs of going away,
+all the people who were able to do so left the town. The canons and
+the higher officers of the church had fled away during the first day
+of the Griffin's visit, leaving behind only the Minor Canon and some
+of the men who opened the doors and swept the church. All the citizens
+who could afford it shut up their houses and travelled to distant
+parts, and only the working people and the poor were left behind.
+After some days these ventured to go about and attend to their
+business, for if they did not work they would starve. They were
+getting a little used to seeing the Griffin, and having been told that
+he did not eat between equinoxes, they did not feel so much afraid of
+him as before. Day by day the Griffin became more and more attached to
+the Minor Canon. He kept near him a great part of the time, and often
+spent the night in front of the little house where the young clergyman
+lived alone. This strange companionship was often burdensome to the
+Minor Canon; but, on the other hand, he could not deny that he derived
+a great deal of benefit and instruction from it. The Griffin had lived
+for hundreds of years, and had seen much; and he told the Minor Canon
+many wonderful things.
+
+"It is like reading an old book," said the young clergyman to himself;
+"but how many books I would have had to read before I would have found
+out what the Griffin has told me about the earth, the air, the water,
+about minerals, and metals, and growing things, and all the wonders of
+the world!"
+
+Thus the summer went on, and drew toward its close. And now the people
+of the town began to be very much troubled again.
+
+"It will not be long," they said, "before the autumnal equinox is
+here, and then that monster will want to eat. He will be dreadfully
+hungry, for he has taken so much exercise since his last meal. He will
+devour our children. Without doubt, he will eat them all. What is to
+be done?"
+
+To this question no one could give an answer, but all agreed that the
+Griffin must not be allowed to remain until the approaching equinox.
+After talking over the matter a great deal, a crowd of the people went
+to the Minor Canon, at a time when the Griffin was not with him.
+
+"It is all your fault," they said, "that that monster is among us. You
+brought him here, and you ought to see that he goes away. It is only
+on your account that he stays here at all, for, although he visits his
+image every day, he is with you the greater part of the time. If you
+were not here, he would not stay. It is your duty to go away and then
+he will follow you, and we shall be free from the dreadful danger
+which hangs over us."
+
+"Go away!" cried the Minor Canon, greatly grieved at being spoken to
+in such a way. "Where shall I go? If I go to some other town, shall I
+not take this trouble there? Have I a right to do that?"
+
+"No," said the people, "you must not go to any other town. There is no
+town far enough away. You must go to the dreadful wilds where the
+Griffin lives; and then he will follow you and stay there."
+
+They did not say whether or not they expected the Minor Canon to stay
+there also, and he did not ask them any thing about it. He bowed his
+head, and went into his house, to think. The more he thought, the more
+clear it became to his mind that it was his duty to go away, and thus
+free the town from the presence of the Griffin.
+
+That evening he packed a leathern bag full of bread and meat, and
+early the next morning he set out on his journey to the dreadful
+wilds. It was a long, weary, and doleful journey, especially after he
+had gone beyond the habitations of men, but the Minor Canon kept on
+bravely, and never faltered. The way was longer than he had expected,
+and his provisions soon grew so scanty that he was obliged to eat but
+a little every day, but he kept up his courage, and pressed on, and,
+after many days of toilsome travel, he reached the dreadful wilds.
+
+When the Griffin found that the Minor Canon had left the town he
+seemed sorry, but showed no disposition to go and look for him. After
+a few days had passed, he became much annoyed, and asked some of the
+people where the Minor Canon had gone. But, although the citizens had
+been anxious that the young clergyman should go to the dreadful wilds,
+thinking that the Griffin would immediately follow him, they were now
+afraid to mention the Minor Canon's destination, for the monster
+seemed angry already, and, if he should suspect their trick, he would
+doubtless become very much enraged. So every one said he did not know,
+and the Griffin wandered about disconsolate. One morning he looked
+into the Minor Canon's schoolhouse, which was always empty now, and
+thought that it was a shame that every thing should suffer on account
+of the young man's absence.
+
+"It does not matter so much about the church," he said, "for nobody
+went there; but it is a pity about the school. I think I will teach it
+myself until he returns."
+
+It was the hour for opening the school, and the Griffin went inside
+and pulled the rope which rang the schoolbell. Some of the children
+who heard the bell ran in to see what was the matter, supposing it to
+be a joke of one of their companions; but when they saw the Griffin
+they stood astonished, and scared.
+
+"Go tell the other scholars," said the monster, "that school is about
+to open, and that if they are not all here in ten minutes, I shall
+come after them." In seven minutes every scholar was in place.
+
+Never was seen such an orderly school. Not a boy or girl moved, or
+uttered a whisper. The Griffin climbed into the master's seat, his
+wide wings spread on each side of him, because he could not lean back
+in his chair while they stuck out behind, and his great tail coiled
+around, in front of the desk, the barbed end sticking up, ready to tap
+any boy or girl who might misbehave. The Griffin now addressed the
+scholars, telling them that he intended to teach them while their
+master was away. In speaking he endeavored to imitate, as far as
+possible, the mild and gentle tones of the Minor Canon, but it must be
+admitted that in this he was not very successful. He had paid a good
+deal of attention to the studies of the school, and he determined not
+to attempt to teach them anything new, but to review them in what they
+had been studying; so he called up the various classes, and questioned
+them upon their previous lessons. The children racked their brains to
+remember what they had learned. They were so afraid of the Griffin's
+displeasure that they recited as they had never recited before. One of
+the boys far down in his class answered so well that the Griffin was
+astonished.
+
+"I should think you would be at the head," said he. "I am sure you
+have never been in the habit of reciting so well. Why is this?"
+
+"Because I did not choose to take the trouble," said the boy,
+trembling in his boots. He felt obliged to speak the truth, for all
+the children thought that the great eyes of the Griffin could see
+right through them, and that he would know when they told a falsehood.
+
+"You ought to be ashamed of yourself," said the Griffin. "Go down to
+the very tail of the class, and if you are not at the head in two
+days, I shall know the reason why."
+
+The next afternoon the boy was number one.
+
+It was astonishing how much these children now learned of what they
+had been studying. It was as if they had been educated over again. The
+Griffin used no severity toward them, but there was a look about him
+which made them unwilling to go to bed until they were sure they knew
+their lessons for the next day.
+
+The Griffin now thought that he ought to visit the sick and the poor;
+and he began to go about the town for this purpose. The effect upon
+the sick was miraculous. All, except those who were very ill indeed,
+jumped from their beds when they heard he was coming, and declared
+themselves quite well. To those who could not get up, he gave herbs
+and roots, which none of them had ever before thought of as medicines,
+but which the Griffin had seen used in various parts of the world; and
+most of them recovered. But, for all that, they afterward said that no
+matter what happened to them, they hoped that they should never again
+have such a doctor coming to their bedsides, feeling their pulses and
+looking at their tongues.
+
+As for the poor, they seemed to have utterly disappeared. All those
+who had depended upon charity for their daily bread were now at work
+in some way or other; many of them offering to do odd jobs for their
+neighbors just for the sake of their meals,--a thing which before had
+been seldom heard of in the town. The Griffin could find no one who
+needed his assistance.
+
+The summer had now passed, and the autumnal equinox was rapidly
+approaching. The citizens were in a state of great alarm and anxiety.
+The Griffin showed no signs of going away, but seemed to have settled
+himself permanently among them. In a short time, the day for his
+semi-annual meal would arrive, and then what would happen? The monster
+would certainly be very hungry, and would devour all their children.
+
+Now they greatly regretted and lamented that they had sent away the
+Minor Canon; he was the only one on whom they could have depended in
+this trouble, for he could talk freely with the Griffin, and so find
+out what could be done. But it would not do to be inactive. Some step
+must be taken immediately. A meeting of the citizens was called, and
+two old men were appointed to go and talk to the Griffin. They were
+instructed to offer to prepare a splendid dinner for him on equinox
+day,--one which would entirely satisfy his hunger. They would offer
+him the fattest mutton, the most tender beef, fish, and game of
+various sorts, and any thing of the kind that he might fancy. If none
+of these suited, they were to mention that there was an orphan asylum
+in the next town.
+
+"Any thing would be better," said the citizens, "than to have our dear
+children devoured."
+
+The old men went to the Griffin, but their propositions were not
+received with favor.
+
+"From what I have seen of the people of this town," said the monster,
+"I do not think I could relish any thing which was prepared by them.
+They appear to be all cowards, and, therefore, mean and selfish. As
+for eating one of them, old or young, I could not think of it for a
+moment. In fact, there was only one creature in the whole place for
+whom I could have had any appetite, and that is the Minor Canon, who
+has gone away. He was brave, and good, and honest, and I think I
+should have relished him."
+
+"Ah!" said one of the old men very politely, "in that case I wish we
+had not sent him to the dreadful wilds!"
+
+"What!" cried the Griffin. "What do you mean? Explain instantly what
+you are talking about!"
+
+The old man, terribly frightened at what he had said, was obliged to
+tell how the Minor Canon had been sent away by the people, in the hope
+that the Griffin might be induced to follow him.
+
+When the monster heard this, he became furiously angry. He dashed away
+from the old men and, spreading his wings, flew backward and forward
+over the town. He was so much excited that his tail became red-hot,
+and glowed like a meteor against the evening sky. When at last he
+settled down in the little field where he usually rested, and thrust
+his tail into the brook, the steam arose like a cloud, and the water
+of the stream ran hot through the town. The citizens were greatly
+frightened, and bitterly blamed the old man for telling about the
+Minor Canon.
+
+"It is plain," they said, "that the Griffin intended at last to go and
+look for him, and we should have been saved. Now who can tell what
+misery you have brought upon us."
+
+The Griffin did not remain long in the little field. As soon as his
+tail was cool he flew to the town-hall and rang the bell. The citizens
+knew that they were expected to come there, and although they were
+afraid to go, they were still more afraid to stay away; and they
+crowded into the hall. The Griffin was on the platform at one end,
+flapping his wings and walking up and down, and the end of his tail
+was still so warm that it slightly scorched the boards as he dragged
+it after him.
+
+When everybody who was able to come was there the Griffin stood still
+and addressed the meeting.
+
+"I have had a contemptible opinion of you," he said, "ever since I
+discovered what cowards you are, but I had no idea that you were so
+ungrateful, selfish, and cruel as I now find you to be. Here was your
+Minor Canon, who labored day and night for your good, and thought of
+nothing else but how he might benefit you and make you happy; and as
+soon as you imagine yourselves threatened with a danger,--for well I
+know you are dreadfully afraid of me,--you send him off, caring not
+whether he returns or perishes, hoping thereby to save yourselves.
+Now, I had conceived a great liking for that young man, and had
+intended, in a day or two, to go and look him up. But I have changed
+my mind about him. I shall go and find him, but I shall send him back
+here to live among you, and I intend that he shall enjoy the reward of
+his labor and his sacrifices. Go, some of you, to the officers of the
+church, who so cowardly ran away when I first came here, and tell them
+never to return to this town under penalty of death. And if, when your
+Minor Canon comes back to you, you do not bow yourselves before him,
+put him in the highest place among you, and serve and honor him all
+his life, beware of my terrible vengeance! There were only two good
+things in this town: the Minor Canon and the stone image of myself
+over your church-door. One of these you have sent away, and the other
+I shall carry away myself."
+
+With these words he dismissed the meeting, and it was time, for the
+end of his tail had become so hot that there was danger of its setting
+fire to the building.
+
+The next morning, the Griffin came to the church, and tearing the
+stone image of himself from its fastenings over the great door, he
+grasped it with his powerful fore-legs and flew up into the air. Then,
+after hovering over the town for a moment, he gave his tail an angry
+shake and took up his flight to the dreadful wilds. When he reached
+this desolate region, he set the stone Griffin upon a ledge of a rock
+which rose in front of the dismal cave he called his home. There the
+image occupied a position somewhat similar to that it had had over the
+church-door; and the Griffin, panting with the exertion of carrying
+such an enormous load to so great a distance, lay down upon the
+ground, and regarded it with much satisfaction. When he felt somewhat
+rested he went to look for the Minor Canon. He found the young man,
+weak and half-starved, lying under the shadow of a rock. After picking
+him up and carrying him to his cave, the Griffin flew away to a
+distant marsh, where he procured some roots and herbs which he well
+knew were strengthening and beneficial to man, though he had never
+tasted them himself. After eating these the Minor Canon was greatly
+revived, and sat up and listened while the Griffin told him what had
+happened in the town.
+
+"Do you know," said the monster, when he had finished, "that I have
+had, and still have, a great liking for you?"
+
+"I am very glad to hear it," said the Minor Canon, with his usual
+politeness.
+
+"I am not at all sure that you would be," said the Griffin, "if you
+thoroughly understood the state of the case, but we will not consider
+that now. If some things were different, other things would be
+otherwise. I have been so enraged by discovering the manner in which
+you have been treated that I have determined that you shall at last
+enjoy the rewards and honors to which you are entitled. Lie down and
+have a good sleep, and then I will take you back to the town."
+
+As he heard these words, a look of trouble came over the young man's
+face.
+
+"You need not give yourself any anxiety," said the Griffin, "about my
+return to the town. I shall not remain there. Now that I have that
+admirable likeness of myself in front of my cave, where I can sit at
+my leisure, and gaze upon its noble features and magnificent
+proportions, I have no wish to see that abode of cowardly and selfish
+people."
+
+The Minor Canon, relieved from his fears, lay back, and dropped into a
+doze; and when he was sound asleep the Griffin took him up, and
+carried him back to the town. He arrived just before daybreak, and
+putting the young man gently on the grass in the little field where he
+himself used to rest, the monster, without having been seen by any of
+the people, flew back to his home.
+
+When the Minor Canon made his appearance in the morning among the
+citizens, the enthusiasm and cordiality with which he was received
+were truly wonderful. He was taken to a house which had been occupied
+by one of the vanished high officers of the place, and every one was
+anxious to do all that could be done for his health and comfort. The
+people crowded into the church when he held services, so that the
+three old women who used to be his week-day congregation could not get
+to the best seats, which they had always been in the habit of taking;
+and the parents of the bad children determined to reform them at home,
+in order that he might be spared the trouble of keeping up his former
+school. The Minor Canon was appointed to the highest office of the old
+church, and before he died, he became a bishop.
+
+During the first years after his return from the dreadful wilds, the
+people of the town looked up to him as a man to whom they were bound
+to do honor and reverence; but they often, also, looked up to the sky
+to see if there were any signs of the Griffin coming back. However, in
+the course of time, they learned to honor and reverence their former
+Minor Canon without the fear of being punished if they did not do so.
+
+But they need never have been afraid of the Griffin. The autumnal
+equinox day came round, and the monster ate nothing. If he could not
+have the Minor Canon, he did not care for any thing. So, lying down,
+with his eyes fixed upon the great stone griffin, he gradually
+declined, and died. It was a good thing for some people of the town
+that they did not know this.
+
+If you should ever visit the old town, you would still see the little
+griffins on the sides of the church; but the great stone griffin that
+was over the door is gone.
+
+
+NOTE: [1] Written in 1887. This story is used by permission of and
+special arrangement with _Charles Scribner's Sons_, publishers.
+
+
+BIOGRAPHY
+
+Frank Richard Stockton, one of America's foremost story-tellers and
+humorists, was born in Philadelphia in 1834. His father was a
+Presbyterian minister who devoutly wished that his son might study
+medicine. This wish was shattered early, for the son showed symptoms
+of being a writer while yet in the Central High School of
+Philadelphia. In competition with many of his schoolmates for a prize
+offered for the best story, young Stockton won easily.
+
+After finishing his high school course, he adopted the profession of
+wood-engraver. Although he earned his living for several years by
+carving wood, he never lost his desire to write, and practised, at
+every spare moment, his favorite avocation. It was this careful and
+patient training during his apprenticeship that finally made him the
+expert story-teller that he is. It is very interesting to any one who
+cares for the acquirement of an excellent style to note how all the
+authors contained in this text have had to work with almost a
+superhuman force to reach the heights of successful short-story
+writing.
+
+His first important publication, _Kate_, appeared in the _Southern
+Literary Messenger_ in 1859. He then joined the staff of the
+_Philadelphia Morning Post_, where he did regular newspaper work and
+contributed to the _Riverside Magazine_ and _Hearth and Home_. In 1872
+his _Stephen Skarridge's Christmas_ appeared in _Scribner's Monthly_.
+Dr. J.G. Holland, editor of _Scribner's_, was so impressed with the
+story that he made Mr. Stockton an assistant editor and persuaded him
+to move to New York. In 1873 he joined the staff of the _St. Nicholas
+Magazine_. His publication of the _Rudder Grange_ series in
+_Scribner's_ _Monthly_ in 1878 made him famous. In 1882 he resigned
+all editorial work and spent his entire time in literary composition.
+
+Mr. Stockton possessed a frail body and very little physical
+endurance. In spite of this physical handicap he was very vivacious
+and gay. He was a genial and companionable man, loved by all who knew
+him. He was very modest, even to the point of shyness, exceptionally
+sincere, and quaintly humorous. He established homes in New Jersey and
+West Virginia, where he spent the greater part of his time from 1882
+until his death in 1902.
+
+
+BIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES
+
+_Famous Authors_ (107-122), B.F. Harkness.
+
+_American Authors_ (59-73), F.W. Halsey.
+
+"Character Sketch," _Book-Buyer_, 24:355-357.
+
+"Home at Claymont," _Current Literature_, 30:221.
+
+"Sketch," _Outlook_, 70: 1000-1001,
+
+"Stockton and his Work," _Atlantic Monthly_, 87:136-138.
+
+
+CRITICISMS
+
+The writings of Frank R. Stockton are excellent representatives of the
+man himself. How closely allied writer and writings are is very well
+stated by Hamilton W. Mabie in the _Book-Buyer_ for June, 1902, "His
+talk had much of the quality of his writing; it was full of quaint
+conceits, whimsicalities, impossible suggestions offered with perfect
+gravity. He was always perfectly natural; he never attempted to live
+up to his part; in talk, at least, he never forced the note. His
+attitude toward himself was slightly tinged with humor, and he knew
+how to foil easily and pleasantly too great a pressure of praise."
+
+His tales are extravagantly impossible but extremely realistic in
+effect, filled with humorous situations and singular plots, and
+peopled with eccentric characters that afford amusement on every page.
+His most successful writing is done when he explains contrivances upon
+which his story depends. He is an original and inventive expert
+juggler who moves with careless ease to the most effective ends. His
+characters are little more than pieces of mechanism that act when he
+pulls the string. They have little emotion and even in their
+love-making they show their emotion mostly for the sake of the
+reader's amusement. His negro characters are exceptions to his general
+treatment and are true to life. He inveigles the reader into believing
+the most extravagant incidents by having a reliable witness narrate
+them.
+
+Stockton never stoops to the burlesque, cynic, or vulgar phases of
+life to secure amusement. He is grotesque and droll in his manner, and
+above all always restrained. His literary life is full of sprites and
+gnomes that frolic before young children and once before mature
+people. _The Griffin and the Minor Canon_ is a beautiful fairy story
+lifted from childhood's thought and diction into a mature realm. His
+humor is plain and simple, cool and keenly calculating. A friendly
+critic has said of one of his stories, "With a gentle, ceaseless
+murmur of amusement, and a flickering twinkle of smiles, the story
+moves steadily on in the calm triumph of its assured and unassailable
+absurdity, to its logical and indisputable impossibility." This
+observation is very largely true of all his stories.
+
+
+GENERAL REFERENCES
+
+_Frank R. Stockton_, A.T.Q. Couch.
+
+"Stockton's Method of Working," _Current Literature_, 32:495.
+
+"Criticism," _Atheneum_, 1:532.
+
+"Estimate," _Harper's Weekly_, 46:555.
+
+COLLATERAL READINGS
+
+_The Beeman of Orn, and Other Fanciful Tales_, Frank R. Stockton.
+
+_The Lady or the Tiger_, Frank R. Stockton.
+
+_Rudder Grange_, Frank R. Stockton.
+
+_A Tale of Negative Gravity_, Frank R. Stockton.
+
+_The Remarkable Wreck of the Thomas Hyde_, Frank R. Stockton.
+
+_His Wife's Deceased Sister_, Frank R. Stockton.
+
+_Legend of Sleepy Hollow_, Washington Irving.
+
+_Monsieur du Miroir_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_At the End of the Passage_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+_The Vacant Lot_, Mary Wilkins Freeman.
+
+_The Princess Pourquoi_, Margaret Sherwood.
+
+_What Was It? A Mystery_, Fitz-James O'Brien.
+
+_Wandering Willie's Tale_, Walter Scott.
+
+
+
+THE PIECE OF STRING[1]
+
+_By Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893)_
+
+
+On all the roads about Goderville the peasants and their wives were
+coming toward the town, for it was market day. The men walked at an
+easy gait, the whole body thrown forward with every movement of their
+long, crooked legs, misshapen by hard work, by the bearing down on the
+plough which at the same time causes the left shoulder to rise and the
+figure to slant; by the mowing of the grain, which makes one hold his
+knees apart in order to obtain a firm footing; by all the slow and
+laborious tasks of the fields. Their starched blue blouses, glossy as
+if varnished, adorned at the neck and wrists with a bit of white
+stitchwork, puffed out about their bony chests like balloons on the
+point of taking flight, from which protrude a head, two arms, and two
+feet.
+
+Some of them led a cow or a calf at the end of a rope. And their
+wives, walking behind the beast, lashed it with a branch still covered
+with leaves, to hasten its pace. They carried on their arms great
+baskets, from which heads of chickens or of ducks were thrust forth.
+And they walked with a shorter and quicker step than their men, their
+stiff, lean figures wrapped in scanty shawls pinned over their flat
+breasts, their heads enveloped in a white linen cloth close to the
+hair, with a cap over all.
+
+Then a _char-a-bancs[2]_ passed, drawn by a jerky-paced nag, with two
+men seated side by side shaking like jelly, and a woman behind, who
+clung to the side of the vehicle to lessen the rough jolting.
+
+On the square at Goderville there was a crowd, a medley of men and
+beasts. The horns of the cattle, the high hats, with a long, hairy
+nap, of the wealthy peasants, and the head dresses of the peasant
+women, appeared on the surface of the throng. And the sharp, shrill,
+high-pitched voices formed an incessant, uncivilized uproar, over
+which soared at times a roar of laughter from the powerful chest of a
+sturdy yokel, or the prolonged bellow of a cow fastened to the wall of
+a house.
+
+There was an all-pervading smell of the stable, of milk, of the
+dunghill, of hay, and of perspiration--that acrid, disgusting odor of
+man and beast peculiar to country people.
+
+Master Hauchecorne, of Breaute, had just arrived at Goderville, and
+was walking toward the square, when he saw a bit of string on the
+ground. Master Hauchecorne, economical like every true Norman, thought
+that it was well to pick up everything that might be of use; and he
+stooped painfully, for he suffered with rheumatism. He took the piece
+of slender cord from the ground, and was about to roll it up
+carefully, when he saw Master Malandain, the harness-maker, standing
+in his doorway and looking at him. They had formerly had trouble on
+the subject of a halter, and had remained at odds, being both inclined
+to bear malice. Master Hauchecorne felt a sort of shame at being seen
+thus by his enemy, fumbling in the mud for a bit of string. He
+hurriedly concealed his treasure in his blouse, then in his breeches
+pocket; then he pretended to look on the ground for something else,
+which he did not find; and finally he went on toward the market, his
+head thrust forward, bent double by his pains.
+
+He lost himself at once in the slow-moving, shouting crowd, kept in a
+state of excitement by the interminable bargaining. The peasants felt
+of the cows, went away, returned, sorely perplexed, always afraid of
+being cheated, never daring to make up their minds, watching the
+vendor's eye, striving incessantly to detect the tricks of the man and
+the defect in the beast.
+
+The women, having placed their great baskets at their feet, took out
+their fowls, which lay on the ground, their legs tied together, with
+frightened eyes and scarlet combs.
+
+They listened to offers, adhered to their prices, short of speech and
+impassive of face; or else, suddenly deciding to accept the lower
+price offered, they would call out to the customer as he walked slowly
+away:--
+
+"All right, Mast' Anthime. You can have it."
+
+Then, little by little, the square became empty, and when the
+Angelus[3] struck midday those who lived too far away to go home
+betook themselves to the various inns.
+
+At Jourdain's the common room was full of customers, as the great yard
+was full of vehicles of every sort--carts, cabriolets,[4]
+_char-a-bancs_, tilburys,[5] unnamable carriages, shapeless, patched,
+with, their shafts reaching heavenward like arms, or with their noses
+in the ground and their tails in the air.
+
+The vast fireplace, full of clear flame, cast an intense heat against
+the backs of the row on the right of the table. Three spits were
+revolving, laden with chickens, pigeons, and legs of mutton; and a
+delectable odor of roast meat, and of gravy dripping from the browned
+skin, came forth from the hearth, stirred the guests to merriment, and
+made their mouths water.
+
+All the aristocracy of the plough ate there, at Mast' Jourdain's, the
+innkeeper and horse trader--a shrewd rascal who had money.
+
+The dishes passed and were soon emptied, like the jugs of yellow
+cider. Every one told of his affairs, his sales and his purchases.
+They inquired about the crops. The weather was good for green stuffs,
+but a little wet for wheat.
+
+Suddenly a drum rolled in the yard, in front of the house. In an
+instant everybody was on his feet, save a few indifferent ones; and
+they all ran to the door and windows with their mouths still full and
+napkins in hand.
+
+Having finished his long tattoo, the public crier shouted in a jerky
+voice, making his pauses in the wrong places:--
+
+"The people of Goderville, and all those present at the market are
+informed that between--nine and ten o'clock this morning on the
+Beuzeville--road, a black leather wallet was lost, containing five
+hundred--francs, and business papers. The finder is requested to carry
+it to--the mayor's at once, or to Master Fortune Huelbreque of
+Manneville. A reward of twenty francs will be paid."
+
+Then he went away. They heard once more in the distance the muffled
+roll of the drum and the indistinct voice of the crier.
+
+Then they began to talk about the incident, reckoning Master
+Houlbreque's chance of finding or not finding his wallet.
+
+And the meal went on.
+
+They were finishing their coffee when the corporal of gendarmes
+appeared in the doorway.
+
+He inquired:--
+
+"Is Master Hauchecorne of Breaute here?"
+
+Master Hauchecorne, who was seated at the farther end of the table,
+answered:--
+
+"Here I am."
+
+And the corporal added:--
+
+"Master Hauchecorne, will you be kind enough to go to the mayor's
+office with me? Monsieur the mayor would like to speak to you."
+
+The peasant, surprised and disturbed, drank his _petit verre[6]_ at
+one swallow, rose, and even more bent than in the morning, for the
+first steps after each rest were particularly painful, he started off,
+repeating:--
+
+"Here I am, here I am."
+
+And he followed the brigadier.
+
+The mayor was waiting for him, seated in his arm-chair. He was the
+local notary, a stout, solemn-faced man, given to pompous speeches.
+
+"Master Hauchecorne," he said, "you were seen this morning, on the
+Beuzeville road, to pick up the wallet lost by Master Huelbreque of
+Manneville."
+
+The rustic, dumfounded, stared at the mayor, already alarmed by this
+suspicion which had fallen upon him, although he failed to understand
+it.
+
+"I, I--I picked up that wallet?"
+
+"Yes, you."
+
+"On my word of honor, I didn't even so much as see it."
+
+"You were seen."
+
+"They saw me, me? Who was it saw me?"
+
+"Monsieur Malandain, the harness-maker."
+
+Thereupon the old man remembered and understood; and flushing with
+anger, he cried:--
+
+"Ah! he saw me, did he, that sneak? He saw me pick up this string,
+look, m'sieu' mayor."
+
+And fumbling in the depths of his pocket, he produced the little piece
+of cord.
+
+But the mayor was incredulous and shook his head.
+
+"You won't make me believe, Master Hauchecorne, that Monsieur
+Malandain, who is a man deserving of credit, mistook this string for a
+wallet."
+
+The peasant, in a rage, raised his hand, spit to one side to pledge
+his honor, and said:--
+
+"It's God's own truth, the sacred truth, all the same, m'sieu' mayor.
+I say it again, by my soul and my salvation."
+
+"After picking it up," rejoined the mayor, "you hunted a long while in
+the mud, to see if some piece of money hadn't fallen out."
+
+The good man was suffocated with wrath and fear.
+
+"If any one can tell--if any one can tell lies like that to ruin an
+honest man! If any one can say--"
+
+To no purpose did he protest; he was not believed.
+
+He was confronted with Monsieur Malandain, who repeated and maintained
+his declaration. They insulted each other for a whole hour. At his own
+request, Master Hauchecorne was searched. They found nothing on him.
+At last the mayor, being sorely perplexed, discharged him, but warned
+him that he proposed to inform the prosecuting attorney's office and
+to ask for orders.
+
+The news had spread. On leaving the mayor's office, the old man was
+surrounded and questioned with serious or bantering curiosity, in
+which, however, there was no trace of indignation. And he began to
+tell the story of the string. They did not believe him. They laughed.
+
+He went his way, stopping his acquaintances, repeating again and again
+his story and his protestations, showing his pockets turned inside
+out, to prove that he had nothing.
+
+They said to him:--
+
+"You old rogue, _va!_"
+
+And he lost his temper, lashing himself into a rage, feverish with
+excitement, desperate because he was not believed, at a loss what to
+do, and still telling his story. Night came. He must needs go home. He
+started with three neighbors, to whom he pointed out the place where
+he had picked up the bit of string: and all the way he talked of his
+misadventure.
+
+During the evening he made a circuit of the village of Breaute, in
+order to tell everybody about it. He found none but incredulous
+listeners.
+
+He was ill over it all night.
+
+The next afternoon, about one o'clock, Marius Paumelle, a farmhand
+employed by Master Breton, a farmer of Ymauville, restored the wallet
+and its contents to Master Huelbreque of Manneville.
+
+The man claimed that he had found it on the road; but, being unable to
+read, had carried it home and given it to his employer.
+
+The news soon became known in the neighborhood; Master Hauchecorne was
+informed of it. He started out again at once, and began to tell his
+story, now made complete by the denouement. He was triumphant.
+
+"What made me feel bad," he said, "wasn't so much the thing itself,
+you understand, but the lying. There's nothing hurts you so much as
+being blamed for lying."
+
+All day long he talked of his adventure; he told it on the roads to
+people who passed; at the wine-shop to people who were drinking; and
+after church on the following Sunday. He even stopped strangers to
+tell them about it. His mind was at rest now, and yet something
+embarrassed him, although he could not say just what it was. People
+seemed to laugh while they listened to him. They did not seem
+convinced. He felt as if remarks were made behind his back.
+
+On Tuesday of the next week, he went to market at Goderville, impelled
+solely by the longing to tell his story.
+
+Malandain, standing in his doorway, began to laugh when he saw him
+coming. Why?
+
+He accosted a farmer from Criquetot, who did not let him finish, but
+poked him in the pit of his stomach, and shouted in his face: "Go on,
+you old fox!" Then he turned on his heel.
+
+Master Hauchecorne was speechless, and more and more disturbed. Why
+did he call him "old fox"?
+
+When he was seated at the table, in Jourdain's Inn, he set about
+explaining the affair once more.
+
+A horse-trader from Montvilliers called out to him:--
+
+"Nonsense, nonsense, you old dodger! I know all about your string!"
+
+"But they've found the wallet!" faltered Hauchecorne.
+
+"None of that, old boy; there's one who finds it, and there's one who
+carries it back. I don't know just how you did it, but I understand
+you."
+
+The peasant was fairly stunned. He understood at last. He was accused
+of having sent the wallet back by a confederate, an accomplice.
+
+He tried to protest. The whole table began to laugh.
+
+He could not finish his dinner, but left the inn amid a chorus of
+jeers.
+
+He returned home, shamefaced and indignant, suffocated by wrath, by
+confusion, and all the more cast down because, with his Norman
+cunning, he was quite capable of doing the thing with which he was
+charged, and even of boasting of it as a shrewd trick. He had a
+confused idea that his innocence was impossible to establish, his
+craftiness being so well known. And he was cut to the heart by the
+injustice of the suspicion.
+
+Thereupon he began once more to tell of the adventure, making the
+story longer each day, adding each time new arguments, more forcible
+protestations, more solemn oaths, which he devised and prepared in his
+hours of solitude, his mind being wholly engrossed by the story of the
+string. The more complicated his defence and the more subtle his
+reasoning, the less he was believed.
+
+"Those are a liar's reasons," people said behind his back.
+
+He realized it: he gnawed his nails, and exhausted himself in vain
+efforts.
+
+He grew perceptibly thinner.
+
+Now the jokers asked him to tell the story of "The Piece of String"
+for their amusement, as a soldier who has seen service is asked to
+tell about his battles. His mind, attacked at its source, grew
+feebler.
+
+Late in December he took to his bed.
+
+In the first days of January he died, and in his delirium, of the
+death agony, he protested his innocence, repeating:
+
+"A little piece of string--a little piece of string--see, here it is,
+m'sieu' mayor."
+
+
+NOTES
+
+[1] _The Piece of String_ was written in 1884. Reprinted from _Little
+French Masterpieces_, by permission of the publishers, _G.P. Putnam's
+Sons_.
+
+[2] 34:5 char-a-bancs. A pleasure car.
+
+[3] 35:26 Angelus. A bell tolled at morning, noon, and night,
+according to the Roman Catholic Church custom, to indicate the time of
+the service of song and recitation in memory of the Virgin Mary. The
+name is taken from the first word of the recitation.
+
+[4] 35:30 cabriolet. A cab. Originally a light, one-horse pleasure
+carriage with two seats.
+
+[5] 35:30 tilbury. An old form of gig, seating two persons.
+
+[6] 37:20 petit verre. Little glass.
+
+
+BIOGRAPHY
+
+Henri Rene Albert Guy de Maupassant, French novelist, dramatist, and
+short-story writer, was born in 1850. Until he was thirteen years old
+he had no teacher except his mother, who personally superintended the
+training of her two sons. Life for the two boys, during these early
+years, was free and happy, Guy was a strong and robust Norman,
+overflowing with animal spirits and exuberant with the joy of youthful
+life.
+
+When thirteen years of age Maupassant attended the seminary at Yvetot,
+where he found school life irksome and a most distasteful contrast to
+his former free life. Later he became a student in the Lycee in Rouen.
+His experience as a student here was very pleasant, and he easily
+acquired his degree. In 1870 he was appointed to a clerkship in the
+Navy, and a little later to a more lucrative position in the
+Department of Public Instruction. His work in these two positions
+suffered very materially because of his negligence and daily practice
+in writing verses and essays for Flaubert, the most careful literary
+technicist in the history of literature, to criticize. For seven years
+Maupassant served this severe task-master, always writing, receiving
+criticisms, and publishing nothing.
+
+Immediately after the publication of his first story Maupassant was
+hailed as a finished master artist. From 1880 to 1890 he published six
+novels, sixteen volumes of short-stories, three volumes of travels,
+and many newspaper articles. This gigantic task was performed only
+because of his regular habits and splendid physique. He wrote
+regularly every morning from seven o'clock until noon, and at night
+always wrote out notes on the impressions from his experiences of the
+day.
+
+Maupassant was a natural artist deeply in love with the technique of
+his work. He did not write for money, although he believed that a
+writer should have plenty of this world's possessions, nor did he
+write for art's sake. In fact he avoided talking on the subject of
+writing and to all appearances seemed to despise his profession. He
+wrote because the restless, immitigable force within him compelled him
+to work like a slave. He thought little of morals, or religion, but
+was enamored with physical life and its insolvable problems. He was,
+above everything else, a truthful man. Sometimes his subjects are
+unclean and he treats them as such, but, if his subject is clean, his
+treatment is undefiled.
+
+In 1887 the shadows of insanity began to creep athwart his life. Even
+in 1884 he seemed to feel a premonition of his coming catastrophe when
+he wrote: "I am afraid of the walls, of the furniture, of the familiar
+objects which seem to me to assume a kind of animal life. Above all, I
+fear the horrible confusion of my thought, of my reason escaping,
+entangled and scattered by an invisible and mysterious anguish." The
+dreaded disease developed until, in 1890, he had to suspend his
+writing. In 1892 he became wholly insane and had to be committed to an
+insane asylum where he died in a padded cell one year later.
+
+
+BIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES
+
+_The New International Encyclopaedia_.
+
+_Encyclopaedia Britannica_.
+
+_Bookman_, 25:290-294_.
+
+
+CRITICISMS
+
+Maupassant's short-stories are generally conceded to be the best in
+French literature. He handles his materials with great care, and his
+descriptions of scenes and characters are unequalled. In his first
+writings he seems impassive to the point of frigidity. He is a
+recorder who sets down exactly the life before him. This is one of the
+lessons he learned from Flaubert. He was not interested in what a
+character thought or felt, but he noted and fondled every action of
+his characters.
+
+He loved life, despite the lack of solutions. At times his fondness
+for mere physical life leads him to the brutal stage. In his story,
+_On the Water_, he gives a confession of a purely sensual man: "How
+gladly, at times, I would think no more, feel no more, live the life
+of a brute, in a warm, bright country, in a yellow country, without
+crude and brutal verdure, in one of those Eastern countries in which
+one falls asleep without concern, is active and has no cares, loves
+and has no distress, and is scarcely aware that one is going on
+living!"
+
+Maupassant was a keen observer, possessed an excellent but not lofty
+imagination, and never asserted a philosophy of life. His writings are
+all interesting, terse, precise, and truthful, but lack the glow that
+comes with a sympathetic and spiritual outlook on life. Zola says of
+him: ".... a Latin of good, clear, solid head, a maker of beautiful
+sentences shining like gold...." He chooses a single incident, a few
+characteristics and then moulds them into a compact story. Nine-tenths
+of his stories deal with selfishness and hypocrisy.
+
+Tolstoi wrote: "Maupassant possessed genius, that gift of attention
+revealing in the objects and facts of life properties not perceived by
+others; he possessed a beautiful form of expression, uttering clearly,
+simply, and with charm what he wished to say; and he possessed also
+the merit of sincerity, without which a work of art produces no
+effect; that is he did not merely pretend to love or hate, but did
+indeed love or hate what he described."
+
+
+GENERAL REFERENCES
+
+_Inquiries and Opinions_, Brander Matthews.
+
+"A Criticism," _Outlook_, 88:973-976.
+
+"Greatest Short Story Writer that Ever Lived," _Current Literature_,
+42:636-638.
+
+
+COLLATERAL READINGS
+
+_Happiness_ (Odd Number), Guy de Maupassant.
+
+_The Wolf_, Guy de Maupassant.
+
+_La Mere Sauvage_, Guy de Maupassant.
+
+_The Confession_, Guy de Maupassant.
+
+_On the Journey_, Guy de Maupassant.
+
+_The Beggar_, Guy de Maupassant.
+
+_A Ghost_, Guy de Maupassant.
+
+_Little Soldier_, Guy de Maupassant.
+
+_The Wreck_, Guy de Maupassant.
+
+_The Necklace_, Guy de Maupassant.
+
+_A Note of Scarlet_, Ruth Stuart.
+
+_Expiation_, Octave Thanet.
+
+_Fagan_, Rowland Thomas.
+
+_La Grande Breteche_ ("Jessup and Canby"), Honore de Balzac.
+
+
+
+THE MAN WHO WAS[1]
+
+_By Rudyard Kipling (1865-   )_
+
+
+Let it be clearly understood that the Russian is a delightful person
+till he tucks his shirt in. As an Oriental he is charming. It is only
+when he insists upon being treated as the most easterly of Western
+peoples, instead of the most westerly of Easterns, that he becomes a
+racial anomaly[2] extremely difficult to handle. The host never knows
+which side of his nature is going to turn up next.
+
+Dirkovitch was a Russian--a Russian of the Russians, as he said--who
+appeared to get his bread by serving the czar as an officer in a
+Cossack regiment, and corresponding for a Russian newspaper with a
+name that was never twice the same. He was a handsome young Oriental,
+with a taste for wandering through unexplored portions of the earth,
+and he arrived in India from nowhere in particular. At least no living
+man could ascertain whether it was by way of Balkh, Budukhshan,
+Chitral, Beloochistan, Nepaul, or anywhere else. The Indian
+government, being in an unusually affable mood, gave orders that he
+was to be civilly treated, and shown everything that was to be seen;
+so he drifted, talking bad English and worse French, from one city to
+another till he forgathered with her Majesty's White Hussars[3] in the
+city of Peshawur,[4] which stands at the mouth of that narrow
+sword-cut in the hills that men call the Khyber Pass. He was
+undoubtedly an officer, and he was decorated, after the manner of the
+Russians, with little enameled crosses, and he could talk, and (though
+this has nothing to do with his merits) he had been given up as a
+hopeless task or case by the Black Tyrones[5], who, individually and
+collectively, with hot whisky and honey, mulled brandy and mixed
+spirits of all kinds, had striven in all hospitality to make him
+drunk. And when the Black Tyrones, who are exclusively Irish, fail to
+disturb the peace of head of a foreigner, that foreigner is certain to
+be a superior man. This was the argument of the Black Tyrones, but
+they were ever an unruly and self-opinionated regiment, and they
+allowed junior subalterns of four years' service to choose their
+wines. The spirits were always purchased by the colonel and a
+committee of majors. And a regiment that would so behave may be
+respected but cannot be loved.
+
+The White Hussars were as conscientious in choosing their wine as in
+charging the enemy. There was a brandy that had been purchased by a
+cultured colonel a few years after the battle of Waterloo. It has been
+maturing ever since, and it was a marvelous brandy at the purchasing.
+The memory of that liquor would cause men to weep as they lay dying in
+the teak forests of upper Burmah[6] or the slime of the Irrawaddy[7].
+And there was a port which was notable; and there was a champagne of
+an obscure brand, which always came to mess without any labels,
+because the White Hussars wished none to know where the source of
+supply might be found. The officer on whose head the champagne
+choosing lay was forbidden the use of tobacco for six weeks previous
+to sampling.
+
+This particularity of detail is necessary to emphasize the fact that
+that champagne, that port, and above all, that brandy--the green and
+yellow and white liqueurs did not count--was placed at the absolute
+disposition of Dirkovitch, and he enjoyed himself hugely--even more
+than among the Black Tyrones.
+
+But he remained distressingly European through it all. The White
+Hussars were--"My dear true friends," "Fellow-soldiers glorious," and
+"Brothers inseparable." He would unburden himself by the hour on the
+glorious future that awaited the combined arms of England and Russia
+when their hearts and their territories should run side by side, and
+the great mission of civilizing Asia should begin. That was
+unsatisfactory, because Asia is not going to be civilized after the
+methods of the West. There is too much Asia, and she is too old. You
+cannot reform a lady of many lovers, and Asia has been insatiable in
+her flirtations aforetime. She will never attend Sunday school, or
+learn to vote save with swords for tickets.
+
+Dirkovitch knew this as well as any one else, but it suited him to
+talk special-correspondently and to make himself as genial as he
+could. Now and then he volunteered a little, a very little,
+information about his own Sotnia[8] of Cossacks, left apparently to
+look after themselves somewhere at the back of beyond. He had done
+rough work in Central Asia, and had seen rather more help-yourself
+fighting than most men of his years. But he was careful never to
+betray his superiority, and more than careful to praise on all
+occasions the appearance, drill, uniform, and organization of her
+Majesty's White Hussars. And, indeed, they were a regiment to be
+admired. When Mrs. Durgan, widow of the late Sir John Durgan, arrived
+in their station, and after a short time had been proposed to by every
+single man at mess, she put the public sentiment very neatly when she
+explained that they were all so nice that unless she could marry them
+all, including the colonel and some majors who were already married,
+she was not going to content herself with one of them. Wherefore she
+wedded a little man in a rifle regiment--being by nature
+contradictious--and the White Hussars were going to wear crape on
+their arms, but compromised by attending the wedding in full force,
+and lining the aisle with unutterable reproach. She had jilted them
+all--from Basset-Holmer, the senior captain, to Little Mildred, the
+last subaltern, and he could have given her four thousand a year and a
+title. He was a viscount, and on his arrival the mess had said he had
+better go into the Guards, because they were all sons of large grocers
+and small clothiers in the Hussars, but Mildred begged very hard to be
+allowed to stay, and behaved so prettily that he was forgiven, and
+became a man, which is much more important than being any sort of
+viscount.
+
+The only persons who did not share the general regard for the White
+Hussars were a few thousand gentlemen of Jewish extraction who lived
+across the border, and answered to the name of Pathan. They had only
+met the regiment officially, and for something less than twenty
+minutes, but the interview, which was complicated with many
+casualties, had filled them with prejudice. They even called the White
+Hussars "children of the devil," and sons of persons whom it would be
+perfectly impossible to meet in decent society. Yet they were not
+above making their aversion fill their money belts. The regiment
+possessed carbines, beautiful Martini-Henri carbines, that would cob a
+bullet into an enemy's camp at one thousand yards, and were even
+handier than the long rifle. Therefore they were coveted all along the
+border, and since demand inevitably breeds supply, they were supplied
+at the risk of life and limb for exactly their weight in coined
+silver--seven and one half pounds of rupees[9], or sixteen pounds and
+a few shillings each, reckoning the rupee at par. They were stolen at
+night by snaky-haired thieves that crawled on their stomachs under the
+nose of the sentries; they disappeared mysteriously from armracks; and
+in the hot weather, when all the doors and windows were open, they
+vanished like puffs of their own smoke. The border people desired them
+first for their own family vendettas[10] and then for contingencies.
+But in the long cold nights of the Northern Indian winter they were
+stolen most extensively. The traffic of murder was liveliest among the
+hills at that season, and prices ruled high. The regimental guards
+were first doubled and then trebled. A trooper does not much care if
+he loses a weapon--government must make it good--but he deeply resents
+the loss of his sleep. The regiment grew very angry, and one
+night-thief who managed to limp away bears the visible marks of their
+anger upon him to this hour. That incident stopped the burglaries for
+a time, and the guards were reduced accordingly, and the regiment
+devoted itself to polo with unexpected results, for it beat by two
+goals to one that very terrible polo corps the Lushkar Light Horse,
+though the latter had four ponies apiece for a short hour's fight, as
+well as a native officer who played like a lambent flame across the
+ground.
+
+Then they gave a dinner to celebrate the event. The Lushkar team came,
+and Dirkovitch came, in the fullest full uniform of Cossack officer,
+which is as full as a dressing-gown, and was introduced to the
+Lushkars, and opened his eyes as he regarded them. They were lighter
+men than the Hussars, and they carried themselves with the swing that
+is the peculiar right of the Punjab[11] frontier force and all
+irregular horse. Like everything else in the service, it has to be
+learned; but unlike many things, it is never forgotten, and remains on
+the body till death.
+
+The great beam-roofed mess room of the White Hussars was a sight to be
+remembered. All the mess plate was on the long table--the same table
+that had served up the bodies of five dead officers in a forgotten
+fight long and long ago--the dingy, battered standards faced the door
+of entrance, clumps of winter roses lay between the silver
+candlesticks, the portraits of eminent officers deceased looked down
+on their successors from between the heads of sambhur[12],
+nilghai[13], maikhor, and, pride of all the mess, two grinning
+snow-leopards that had cost Basset-Holmer four months' leave that he
+might have spent in England instead of on the road to Thibet, and the
+daily risk of his life on ledge, snowslide, and glassy grass slope.
+
+The servants, in spotless white muslin and the crest of their
+regiments on the brow of their turbans, waited behind their masters,
+who were clad in the scarlet and gold of the White Hussars and the
+cream and silver of the Lushkar Light Horse. Dirkovitch's dull green
+uniform was the only dark spot at the board, but his big onyx eyes
+made up for it. He was fraternizing effusively with the captain of the
+Lushkar team, who was wondering how many of Dirkovitch's Cossacks his
+own long, lathy down-countrymen could account for in a fair charge.
+But one does not speak of these things openly.
+
+The talk rose higher and higher, and the regimental band played
+between the courses, as is the immemorial custom, till all tongues
+ceased for a moment with the removal of the dinner slips and the First
+Toast of Obligation, when the colonel, rising, said, "Mr. Vice, the
+Queen," and Little Mildred from the bottom of the table answered, "The
+Queen, God bless her!" and the big spurs clanked as the big men heaved
+themselves up and drank the Queen, upon whose pay they were falsely
+supposed to pay their mess bills. That sacrament of the mess never
+grows old, and never ceases to bring a lump into the throat of the
+listener wherever he be, by land or by sea. Dirkovitch rose with his
+"brothers glorious," but he could not understand. No one but an
+officer can understand what the toast means; and the bulk have more
+sentiment than comprehension. It all comes to the same in the end, as
+the enemy said when he was wriggling on a lance point. Immediately
+after the little silence that follows on the ceremony there entered
+the native officer who had played for the Lushkar team. He could not
+of course eat with the alien, but he came in at dessert, all six feet
+of him, with the blue-and-silver turban atop, and the big black
+top-boots below. The mess rose joyously as he thrust forward the hilt
+of his saber, in token of fealty, for the colonel of the White Hussars
+to touch, and dropped into a vacant chair amid shouts of "_Rung ho_!
+Hira Singh!" (which being translated means "Go in and win!"). "Did I
+whack you over the knee, old man?" "Ressaidar Sahib, what the devil
+made you play that kicking pig of a pony in the last ten minutes?"
+"Shabash, Ressaidar Sahib!" Then the voice of the colonel, "The health
+of Ressaidar Hira Singh!"
+
+After the shouting had died away, Hira Singh rose to reply, for he was
+the cadet of a royal house, the son of a king's son, and knew what was
+due on these occasions. Thus he spoke in the vernacular:--
+
+"Colonel Sahib and officers of this regiment, much honor have you done
+me. This will I remember. We came down from afar to play you; but we
+were beaten." ("No fault of yours, Ressaidar Sahib. Played on our own
+ground, y' know. Your ponies were cramped from the railway. Don't
+apologize.") "Therefore perhaps we will come again if it be so
+ordained." ("Hear! Hear, hear, indeed! Bravo! Hsh!") "Then we will
+play you afresh" ("Happy to meet you"), "till there are left no feet
+upon our ponies. Thus far for sport." He dropped one hand on his sword
+hilt and his eye wandered to Dirkovitch lolling back in his chair.
+"But if by the will of God there arises any other game which is not
+the polo game, then be assured, Colonel Sahib and officers, that we
+shall play it out side by side, though _they_"--again his eye sought
+Dirkovitch--"though _they_, I say, have fifty ponies to our one
+horse." And with a deep-mouthed _Rung ho_! that rang like a musket
+butt on flagstones, he sat down amid shoutings.
+
+Dirkovitch, who had devoted himself steadily to the brandy--the
+terrible brandy aforementioned--did not understand, nor did the
+expurgated[14] translations offered to him at all convey the point.
+Decidedly the native officer's was the speech of the evening, and the
+clamor might have continued to the dawn had it not been broken by the
+noise of a shot without that sent every man feeling at his defenseless
+left side. It is notable that Dirkovitch "reached back," after the
+American fashion--a gesture that set the captain of the Lushkar team
+wondering how Cossack officers were armed at mess. Then there was a
+scuffle, and a yell of pain.
+
+"Carbine stealing again!" said the adjutant, calmly sinking back in
+his chair. "This comes of reducing the guards. I hope the sentries
+have killed him."
+
+The feet of armed men pounded on the veranda flags, and it sounded as
+though something was being dragged.
+
+"Why don't they put him in the cells till the morning?" said the
+colonel, testily. "See if they've damaged him, sergeant."
+
+The mess-sergeant fled out into the darkness, and returned with two
+troopers and a corporal, all very much perplexed.
+
+"Caught a man stealin' carbines, sir," said the corporal.
+
+"Leastways 'e was crawling toward the barricks, sir, past the
+main-road sentries; an' the sentry 'e says, sir--"
+
+The limp heap of rags upheld by the three men groaned. Never was seen
+so destitute and demoralized an Afghan. He was turbanless, shoeless,
+caked with dirt, and all but dead with rough handling. Hira Singh
+started slightly at the sound of the man's pain. Dirkovitch took
+another liqueur glass of brandy.
+
+"_What_ does the sentry say?" said the colonel.
+
+"Sez he speaks English, sir," said the corporal.
+
+"So you brought him into mess instead of handing him over to the
+sergeant! If he spoke all the tongues of the Pentecost you've no
+business--"
+
+Again the bundle groaned and muttered. Little Mildred had risen from
+his place to inspect. He jumped back as though he had been shot.
+
+"Perhaps it would be better, sir, to send the men away," said he to
+the colonel, for he was a much-privileged subaltern. He put his arms
+round the rag-bound horror as he spoke, and dropped him into a chair.
+It may not have been explained that the littleness of Mildred lay in
+his being six feet four, and big in proportion. The corporal, seeing
+that an officer was disposed to look after the capture, and that the
+colonel's eye was beginning to blaze, promptly removed himself and his
+men. The mess was left alone with the carbine thief, who laid his head
+on the table and wept bitterly, hopelessly, and inconsolably, as
+little children weep.
+
+Hira Singh leaped to his feet with a long-drawn vernacular oath
+"Colonel Sahib," said he, "that man is no Afghan, for they weep '_Ai!
+Ai_!' Nor is he of Hindustan, for they weep,'_Oh! Ho_!' He weeps after
+the fashion of the white men, who say '_Ow! Ow_!'"
+
+"Now where the dickens did you get that knowledge, Hira Singh?" said
+the captain of the Lushkar team.
+
+"Hear him!" said Hira Singh, simply, pointing at the crumpled figure
+that wept as though it would never cease.
+
+"He said, 'My God!'" said Little Mildred, "I heard him say it."
+
+The colonel and the mess room looked at the man in silence. It is a
+horrible thing to hear a man cry. A woman can sob from the top of her
+palate, or her lips, or anywhere else, but a man cries from his
+diaphragm, and it rends him to pieces. Also, the exhibition causes the
+throat of the on-looker to close at the top.
+
+"Poor devil!" said the colonel, coughing tremendously, "We ought to
+send him to hospital. He's been manhandled."
+
+Now the adjutant loved his rifles. They were to him as his
+grandchildren--the men standing in the first place. He grunted
+rebelliously: "I can understand an Afghan stealing, because he's made
+that way. But I can't understand his crying. That makes it worse."
+
+The brandy must have affected Dirkovitch, for he lay back in his chair
+and stared at the ceiling. There was nothing special in the ceiling
+beyond a shadow as of a huge black coffin. Owing to some peculiarity
+in the construction of the mess room this shadow was always thrown
+when the candles were lighted. It never disturbed the digestion of the
+White Hussars. They were, in rather proud of it.
+
+"Is he going to cry all night?" said the colonel, "or are we supposed
+to sit up with Little Mildred's guest until he feels better?"
+
+The man in the chair threw up his head and stared at the mess.
+Outside, the wheels of the first of those bidden to the festivities
+crunched the roadway.
+
+"Oh, my God!" said the man in the chair, and every soul in the mess
+rose to his feet. Then the Lushkar captain did a deed for which he
+ought to have been given the Victoria Cross--distinguished gallantry
+in a fight against overwhelming curiosity. He picked up his team with
+his eyes as the hostess picks up the ladies at the opportune moment,
+and pausing only by the colonel's chair to say, "This isn't _our_
+affair, you know, sir," led the team into the veranda and the gardens.
+Hira Singh was the last, and he looked at Dirkovitch as he moved. But
+Dirkovitch had departed into a brandy paradise of his own. His lips
+moved without sound, and he was studying the coffin on the ceiling.
+
+"White--white all over," said Basset-Holmer, the adjutant. "What a
+pernicious renegade[15] he must be! I wonder where he came from?"
+
+The colonel shook the man gently by the arm, and "Who are you?" said
+he.
+
+There was no answer. The man stared round the mess room and smiled in
+the colonel's face. Little Mildred, who was always more of a woman
+than a man till "Boot and saddle" was sounded, repeated the question
+in a voice that would have drawn confidences from a geyser. The man
+only smiled. Dirkovitch, at the far end of the table, slid gently from
+his chair to the floor, No son of Adam, in this present imperfect
+world, can mix the Hussars' champagne with the Hussars' brandy by five
+and eight glasses of each without remembering the pit whence he has
+been digged and descending thither. The band began to play the tune
+with which the White Hussars, from the date of their formation,
+preface all their functions. They would sooner be disbanded than
+abandon that tune. It is a part of their system. The man straightened
+himself in his chair and drummed on the table with his fingers.
+
+"I don't see why we should entertain lunatics," said the colonel;
+"call a guard and send him off to the cells. We'll look into the
+business in the morning. Give him a glass of wine first, though."
+
+Little Mildred filled a sherry glass with the brandy and thrust it
+over to the man. He drank, and the tune rose louder, and he
+straightened himself yet more. Then he put out his long-taloned hands
+to a piece of plate opposite and fingered it lovingly. There was a
+mystery connected with that piece of plate in the shape of a spring,
+which converted what was a seven-branched candlestick, three springs
+each side and one on the middle, into a sort of wheel-spoke
+candelabrum[16]. He found the spring, pressed it, and laughed weakly.
+He rose from his chair and inspected a picture on the wall, then moved
+on to another picture, the mess watching him without a word.
+
+When he came to the mantelpiece he shook his head and seemed
+distressed. A piece of plate representing a mounted hussar in full
+uniform caught his eye. He pointed to it, and then to the mantelpiece,
+with inquiry in his eyes.
+
+"What is it--oh, what is it?" said Little Mildred. Then, as a mother
+might speak to a child, "That is a horse--yes, a horse."
+
+Very slowly came the answer, in a thick, passionless guttural: "Yes,
+I--have seen. But--where is _the_ horse?"
+
+You could have heard the hearts of the mess beating as the men drew
+back to give the stranger full room in his wanderings. There was no
+question of calling the guard.
+
+Again he spoke, very slowly, "Where is _our_ horse?"
+
+There is no saying what happened after that. There is but one horse in
+the White Hussars, and his portrait hangs outside the door of the mess
+room. He is the piebald drum-horse the king of the regimental band,
+that served the regiment for seven-and-thirty years, and in the end
+was shot for old age. Half the mess tore the thing down from its place
+and thrust it into the man's hands. He placed it above the
+mantelpiece; it clattered on the ledge, as his poor hands dropped it,
+and he staggered toward the bottom of the table, falling into
+Mildred's chair. The band began to play the "River of Years" waltz,
+and the laughter from the gardens came into the tobacco-scented mess
+room. But nobody, even the youngest, was thinking of waltzes. They all
+spoke to one another something after this fashion: "The drum-horse
+hasn't hung over the mantelpiece since '67." "How does he know?"
+"Mildred, go and speak to him again." "Colonel, what are you going to
+do?" "Oh, dry up, and give the poor devil a chance to pull himself
+together!" "It isn't possible, anyhow. The man's a lunatic."
+
+Little Mildred stood at the colonel's side talking into his ear. "Will
+you be good enough to take your seats, please, gentlemen?" he said,
+and the mess dropped into the chairs.
+
+Only Dirkovitch's seat, next to Little Mildred's, was blank, and
+Little Mildred himself had found Hira Singh's place. The wide-eyed
+mess sergeant filled the glasses in dead silence. Once more the
+colonel rose, but his hand shook, and the port spilled on the table as
+he looked straight at the man in Little Mildred's chair and said,
+hoarsely, "Mr. Vice, the Queen." There was a little pause, but the man
+sprang to his feet and answered, without hesitation, "The Queen, God
+bless her!" and as he emptied the thin glass he snapped the shank
+between his fingers.
+
+Long and long ago, when the Empress of India was a young woman, and
+there were no unclean ideals in the land, it was the custom in a few
+messes to drink the Queen's toast in broken glass, to the huge delight
+of the mess contractors. The custom is now dead, because there is
+nothing to break anything for, except now and again the word of a
+government, and that has been broken already.
+
+"That settles it," said the colonel, with a gasp. "He's not a
+sergeant. What in the world is he?"
+
+The entire mess echoed the word, and the volley of questions would
+have scared any man. Small wonder that the ragged, filthy invader
+could only smile and shake his head.
+
+From under the table, calm and smiling urbanely[17], rose Dirkovitch,
+who had been roused from healthful slumber by feet upon his body. By
+the side of the man he rose, and the man shrieked and groveled at his
+feet. It was a horrible sight, coming so swiftly upon the pride and
+glory of the toast that had brought the strayed wits together.
+
+Dirkovitch made no offer to raise him, but Little Mildred heaved him
+up in an instant. It is not good that a gentleman who can answer to
+the Queen's toast should lie at the feet of a subaltern of Cossacks.
+
+The hasty action tore the wretch's upper clothing nearly to the waist,
+and his body was seamed with dry black scars. There is only one weapon
+in the world that cuts in parallel lines, and it is neither the cane
+nor the cat. Dirkovitch saw the marks, and the pupils of his eyes
+dilated--also, his face changed. He said something that sounded like
+"Shto ve takete"; and the man, fawning, answered, "Chetyre."
+
+"What's that?" said everybody together.
+
+"His number. That is number four, you know." Dirkovitch spoke very
+thickly.
+
+"What has a Queen's officer to do with a qualified number?" said the
+colonel, and there rose an unpleasant growl round the table.
+
+"How can I tell?" said the affable Oriental, with a sweet smile. "He
+is a--how you have it?--escape--runaway, from over there."
+
+He nodded toward the darkness of the night.
+
+"Speak to him, if he'll answer you, and speak to him gently," said
+Little Mildred, settling the man in a chair. It seemed most improper
+to all present that Dirkovitch. should sip brandy as he talked in
+purring, spitting Russian to the creature who answered so feebly and
+with such evident dread. But since Dirkovitch appeared to understand,
+no man said a word. They breathed heavily, leaning forward, in the
+long gaps of the conversation. The next time that they have no
+engagements on hand the White Hussars intend to go to St. Petersburg
+and learn Russian.
+
+"He does not know how many years ago," said Dirkovitch, facing the
+mess, "but he says it was very long ago, in a war, I think that there
+was an accident. He says he was of this glorious and distinguished
+regiment in the war."
+
+"The rolls! The rolls! Holmer, get the rolls!" said Little Mildred,
+and the adjutant dashed off bareheaded to the orderly room where the
+rolls of the regiment were kept. He returned just in time to hear
+Dirkovitch conclude, "Therefore I am most sorry to say there was an
+accident, which would have been, reparable if he had apologized to our
+colonel, whom he had insulted."
+
+Another growl, which the colonel tried to beat down. The mess was in
+no mood to weigh insults to Russian colonels just then.
+
+"He does not remember, but I think that there was an accident, and so
+he was not exchanged among the prisoners, but he was sent to another
+place--how do you say?--the country. _So_, he says, he came here. He
+does not know how he came. Eh? He _was_ at Chepany[18]"--the man
+caught the word, nodded, and shivered--"at Zhigansk[19] and
+Irkutsk[20]. I cannot understand how he escaped. He says, too, that he
+was in the forests for many years, but how many years he has
+forgotten--that with many things. It was an accident; done because he
+did not apologise to our colonel. Ah!"
+
+Instead of echoing Dirkovitch's sigh of regret, it is sad to record
+that the White Hussars livelily exhibited unchristian delight and
+other emotions, hardly restrained by their sense of hospitality.
+Holmer flung the frayed and yellow regimental rolls on the table, and
+the men flung themselves atop of these.
+
+"Steady! Fifty-six--fifty-five--fifty-four," said Holmer. "Here we
+are. 'Lieutenant Austin Limmason--_missing_.' That was before
+Sebastopol[21]. What an infernal shame! Insulted one of their
+colonels, and was quietly shipped off. Thirty years of his life wiped
+out."
+
+"But he never apologized. Said he'd see him----first," chorussed the
+mess.
+
+"Poor devil! I suppose he never had the chance afterward. How did he
+come here?" said the colonel.
+
+The dingy heap in the chair could give no answer.
+
+"Do you know who you are?"
+
+It laughed weakly.
+
+"Do you know that you are Limmason--Lieutenant Limmason, of the White
+Hussars?"
+
+Swift as a shot came the answer, in a slightly surprised tone, "Yes,
+I'm Limmason, of course." The light died out in his eyes, and he
+collapsed afresh, watching every motion of Dirkovitch with terror. A
+flight from Siberia may fix a few elementary facts in the mind, but it
+does not lead to continuity of thought. The man could not explain how,
+like a homing pigeon, he had found his way to his own old mess again.
+Of what he had suffered or seen he knew nothing. He cringed before
+Dirkovitch as instinctively as he had pressed the spring of the
+candlestick, sought the picture of the drum-horse, and answered to the
+Queen's toast. The rest was a blank that the dreaded Russian tongue
+could only in part remove. His head bowed on his breast, and he
+giggled and cowered alternately.
+
+The devil that lived in the brandy prompted Dirkovitch at this
+extremely inopportune moment to make a speech. He rose, swaying
+slightly, gripped the table edge, while his eyes glowed like opals,
+and began:--"Fellow-soldiers glorious--true friends and hospitables.
+It was an accident, and deplorable--most deplorable." Here he smiled
+sweetly all round the mess. "But you will think of this little, little
+thing. So little, is it not? The czar! Posh! I slap my fingers--I snap
+my fingers at him. Do I believe in him? No! But the Slav who has done
+nothing, _him_ I believe. Seventy--how much?--millions that have done
+nothing--not one thing. Napoleon was an episode." He banged a hand on
+the table. "Hear you, old peoples, we have done nothing in the
+world--out here. All our work is to do: and it shall be done, old
+peoples. Get away!" He waved his hand imperiously, and pointed to the
+man. "You see him. He is not good to see. He was just one little--oh,
+so little--accident, that no one remembered. Now he is _That_. So will
+you be, brother-soldiers so brave--so will you be. But you will never
+come back. You will all go where he has gone, or"--he pointed to the
+great coffin shadow on the ceiling, and muttering, "Seventy
+millions--get away, you old people," fell asleep.
+
+"Sweet, and to the point," said Little Mildred. "What's the use of
+getting wroth? Let's make the poor devil comfortable."
+
+But that was a matter suddenly and swiftly taken from the loving hands
+of the White Hussars. The lieutenant had returned only to go away
+again three days later, when the wail of the "Dead March" and the
+tramp of the squadrons told the wondering station, that saw no gap in
+the table, an officer of the regiment had resigned his new-found
+commission.
+
+And Dirkovitch--bland, supple, and always genial--went away too by a
+night train. Little Mildred and another saw him off, for he was the
+guest of the mess, and even had he smitten the colonel with the open
+hand the law of the mess allowed no relaxation of hospitality.
+
+"Good-by, Dirkovitch, and a pleasant journey," said Little Mildred.
+
+"_Au revoir[22]_ my true friends," said the Russian.
+
+"Indeed! But we thought you were going home?"
+
+"Yes; but I will come again. My friends, is that road shut?" He
+pointed to where the north star burned over the Khyber Pass.
+
+"By Jove! I forgot. Of course. Happy to meet you, old man, any time
+you like. Got everything you want,--cheroots, ice, bedding? That's all
+right. Well, _au revoir_, Dirkovitch."
+
+"Um," said the other man, as the tail-lights of the train grew small.
+"Of--all--the--unmitigated[23]--"
+
+Little Mildred answered nothing, but watched the north star, and
+hummed a selection from a recent burlesque that had much delighted the
+White Hussars. It ran:--
+
+     "I'm sorry for Mister Bluebeard,
+     I'm sorry to cause him pain;
+     But a terrible spree there's sure to be
+     When he comes back again."
+
+
+NOTES
+
+[1] _The Man Who Was_ was written in 1889.
+
+[2] 46:6 anomaly. Deviation from type.
+
+[3] 47:1 Hussars. Light-horse troopers armed with sabre and carbine.
+
+[4] 47:1 Peshawur. City in British India.
+
+[5] 47:7 Tyrones. From a county in Ireland by this name.
+
+[6] 47:26 Burmah. In southeastern Asia. Part of the British Empire.
+
+[7] 47:27 Irrawaddy. Chief river of Burma.
+
+[8] 48:27 Sotnia. Company of the Cossacks.
+
+[9] 50:14 rupee. Indian coin worth about forty-eight cents.
+
+[10] 50:21 vendettas. Private blood-feuds.
+
+[11] 51:14 Punjab. Country of five rivers, tributaries of the Indus.
+
+[12] 81:26 Sambhur. A rusine deer found in India.
+
+[13] 51:26 nilghai. Antelope with hind legs shorter than its
+fore-legs.
+
+[14] 54:9 expurgated. Purified.
+
+[15] 57:23 renegade. One who deserts his faith.
+
+[16] 58:26 candelabrum. Stand supporting several lamps.
+
+[17] 61:3 urbanely. Politely.
+
+[18] 63:2 Chepany. Town in Siberia.
+
+[19] 63:4 Zhigansk. Town in Siberia.
+
+[20] 63:4 Irkutsk. Province and city in Siberia.
+
+[21] 63:17 Sebastopol. Seaport in Russia.
+
+[22] 65:26 Au revoir. Till we meet again.
+
+[23] 66:6 unmitigated. As bad as can be.
+
+
+BIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES
+
+_Essays on Modern Novelists_, William Lyon Phelps.
+
+_A Kipling Primer_, Knowles.
+
+_Rudyard Kipling_, Richard Le Galliene.
+
+"Kipling to French Eyes," _Bookman_, 26: 584.
+
+"Life of Kipling," _Encyclopaedia Britannica.
+
+"Life of Kipling," _The Universal Encyclopedia_.
+
+
+BIOGRAPHY
+
+Rudyard Kipling, the most vigorous, versatile, and highly endowed of
+the present-day writers of fiction, was born in Bombay, India,
+December 30, 1865. His place of birth and extensive travelling make
+him more Anglo-Saxon than British. His father was for many years
+connected with the schools of art at Bombay and Lahore in India. His
+mother, Alice MacDonald, was the daughter of a Methodist clergyman.
+
+Kipling was brought to England when he was five years old to be
+educated. While in college at Westward Ho he edited the _College
+Chronicle_. For this paper he contributed regularly, poetry and
+stories. After his school days and on his return to India, he served
+on the editorial staff of the Lahore _Civil and Military Gazette_ from
+1882 to 1887, and was assistant editor of the _Pioneer_ at Allahabad
+from 1887 to 1889.
+
+Kipling has travelled extensively. He is at home in India, China,
+Japan, Africa, Australia, England, and America. The odd part about his
+realistic observations, however, is that his notes, whether written
+about California or India, are often repudiated by the people whom he
+has visited. After visiting England and the United States in a vain
+effort to find a publisher for his writings, he returned to India and
+published in the _Pioneer_ his _American Notes_, which were
+immediately reproduced in book form in New York in 1891.
+
+He married Miss Balestier of New York in 1892. They settled at
+Brattleboro, Vermont, immediately after their marriage and lived there
+until 1896. Kipling revisited the United States in 1899. While on this
+trip he suffered a severe attack of pneumonia which brought out a
+demonstration of interest from the American people that clearly showed
+their appreciation of him as a man and a writer.
+
+
+CRITICISMS
+
+Kipling is journalistic in all his writings. Oftentimes his material
+is very thin, flippant, and sensational, but he always is interesting,
+for he possesses the expert reporter's unerring judgment for choosing
+the essentials of his situation, character, or description, that catch
+and hold the reader's attention. In his earlier writings, like _Plain
+Tales from the Hills_ or _The Jungle Books_, the radical racial
+differences between his characters and readers, and the background of
+primitive, mysterious India caught the reading world and instantly
+established Kipling's fame.
+
+His technique is brilliant, his wit keen, and his energy of the bold
+and dashing military type. This audacious energy leads him very often
+into sprawling situations, a worship of imperialism, and reckless
+statements concerning moral and spiritual laws. Unlike Bret Harte, who
+was in many respects one of Kipling's ideals, he leaves his bad and
+coarse characters disreputable to the end. This is due in a large
+measure to the lack of warmth and light in his writings. In
+contradiction to this type of his works his _William the Conqueror_
+and _An Habitation Enforced_ are filled with a gentle-human sympathy
+that causes us to forget and forgive any vulgarity he may have used in
+his more primitive and coarse characters. Even Kipling partisans must
+sometimes wish that Kipling's vision were not so dimmed by the British
+flag and that he might forget for a time the British soldier he loves
+so ardently.
+
+His writings since 1899 are much more mechanical than his earlier
+works. He seems, at times, to resort to the orator's superficial
+tricks in his attempts to attract readers. The _Athenaeum_, a friendly
+organ, says of his later work: "In his new part--the missionary of
+Empire--Mr. Kipling is living the strenuous life. He has frankly
+abandoned story telling, and is using his complete and powerful armory
+in the interests of patriotic zeal."
+
+Whatever may be the final judgment of the world concerning Kipling's
+claim to literary genius, the young student may rest assured that
+there is no one in England who can compare with this strenuous and
+versatile writer. He is original and powerful, interesting and
+realistic. He is a lover of the men who earn their bread by the sweat
+of their faces and a despiser of "flannelled fools." He lacks the
+day-dreams of Stevenson and preaches from every housetop the gospel of
+virile, acting morality. Many of his readers have criticised adversely
+his spiritual teachings, because of the furious energy with which he
+denounces an apathetic religion and eulogizes the person who works
+with all his might, day after day, for the highest he knows and never
+fears the day of death and judgment.
+
+
+GENERAL REFERENCES
+
+_The Book of the Short Story_, Alexander Jessup.
+
+_The Short Story in English_, Henry Seidel Canby.
+
+_Bibliography of Kipling's Works_, Eugene P, Saxton.
+
+"Contradictory Elements in Rudyard Kipling," _Current Literature_, 44:
+274.
+
+"Where Kipling Stands," _Bookman_, 29: 120-122.
+
+"Are there two Kiplings?" _Cosmopolitan_, 31: 653-660.
+
+"Literary Style of Kipling," _Lippincott_, 73: 99-103.
+
+
+COLLATERAL READINGS
+
+_The Man Who Would be King_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+_William the Conqueror_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+_Phantom Rickshaw_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+_The Finest Story in the World_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+_Under the Deodars_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+_An Habitation Enforced_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+_Plain Tales from the Hills_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+_The Light that Failed_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+_Wee Willie Winkie_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+_Baa Baa Black Sheep_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+_Captains Courageous_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+_The Jungle Books_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+_They_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+_The Brushwood Boy_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+_Christ in Flanders_, Honore de Balzac.
+
+_The Old Gentleman of the Black Stock_, Thomas Nelson Page.
+
+_A New England Nun_, Mary Wilkins Freeman.
+
+_Outcasts of Poker Flat_, Bret Harte.
+
+_The Siege of Berlin_, Alphonse Dadoed.
+
+_The Prisoner of Assiout_, Grant Allen.
+
+_A Terribly Strange Bed_, Wilkie Collins.
+
+_The Prisoners_, Guy de Maupassant.
+
+_Mr. Isaacs_, F. Marion Crawford.
+
+_Where Love Is, There God Is Also_, Leo Tolstoi.
+
+
+
+THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER [1]
+
+_By Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)_
+
+     Son coeur est un luth suspendu;
+     Sitot qu'on le touche il resonne.
+                                     --De Beranger.[2]
+
+During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of
+the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had
+been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of
+country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew
+on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. I know not how it
+was; but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of
+insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I say insufferable; for the
+feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurable, because
+poetic, sentiment, with which the mind usually receives even the
+sternest natural images of the desolate or terrible. I looked upon the
+scene before me--upon the mere house, and the simple landscape
+features of the domain--upon the bleak walls--upon the vacant eye-like
+windows--a few rank sedges--and upon a few white trunks of decayed
+trees--with an utter depression of soul which I can compare to no
+earthly sensation more properly than to the after-dream of the
+reveller upon opium--the bitter lapse into every-day life--the hideous
+dropping off of the veil. There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening
+of the heart--an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of
+the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime. What was
+it--I paused to think--what was it that so unnerved me in the
+contemplation of the House of Usher? It was a mystery all insoluble;
+nor could I grapple with the shadowy fancies that crowded upon me as I
+pondered. I was forced to fall back upon the unsatisfactory conclusion
+that while, beyond doubt, there _are_ combinations of very simple
+natural objects which have the power of thus affecting us, still the
+analysis of this power lies among considerations beyond our depth. It
+was possible, I reflected, that a mere different arrangement of the
+particulars of the scene, of the details of the picture, would be
+sufficient to modify, or perhaps to annihilate its capacity for
+sorrowful impression; and, acting upon this idea, I reined my horse to
+the precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn[3] that lay in
+unruffled lustre by the dwelling, and gazed down--but with a shudder
+even more thrilling than before--upon the remodelled and inverted
+images of the gray sedge, and the ghastly tree stems, and the vacant
+and eye-like windows.
+
+Nevertheless, in this mansion of gloom I now proposed to myself a
+sojourn of some weeks. Its proprietor, Roderick Usher, had been one of
+my boon companions in boyhood; but many years had elapsed since our
+last meeting. A letter, however, had lately reached me in a distant
+part of the country--a letter from him--which, in its wildly
+importunate nature, had admitted of no other than a personal reply.
+The Ms. gave evidence of nervous agitation. The writer spoke of acute
+bodily illness, of a mental disorder which oppressed him, and of an
+earnest desire to see me, as his best, and indeed his only, personal
+friend, with a view of attempting, by the cheerfulness of my society,
+some alleviation of his malady. It was the manner in which all this,
+and much more, was said--it was the apparent _heart_ that went with
+his request--which allowed me no room for hesitation; and I
+accordingly obeyed forthwith what I still considered a very singular
+summons.
+
+Although, as boys, we had been even intimate associates, yet I really
+knew little of my friend. His reserve had been always excessive and
+habitual. I was aware, however, that his very ancient family had been
+noted, time out of mind, for a peculiar sensibility of temperament,
+displaying itself, through long ages, in many works of exalted art,
+and manifested, of late, in repeated deeds of munificent, yet
+unobtrusive, charity, as well as in a passionate devotion to the
+intricacies, perhaps even more than to the orthodox and easily
+recognizable beauties, of musical science. I had learned, too, the
+very remarkable fact that the stem of the Usher race, all time-honored
+as it was, had put forth, at no period, any enduring branch; in other
+words, that the entire family lay in the direct line of descent, and
+had always, with very trifling and very temporary variation, so lain.
+It was this deficiency, I considered, while running over in thought
+the perfect keeping of the character of the premises with the
+accredited character of the people, and while speculating upon the
+possible influence which the one, in the long lapse of centuries,
+might have exercised upon the other--it was this deficiency, perhaps,
+of collateral issue, and the consequent undeviating transmission, from
+sire to son, of the patrimony with the name, which had, at length, so
+identified the two as to merge the original title of the estate in the
+quaint and equivocal appellation of the _House of Usher_--an
+appellation which seemed to include, in the minds of the peasantry who
+used it, both the family and the family mansion.
+
+I have said that the sole effect of my somewhat childish experiment of
+looking down within the tarn had been to deepen the first singular
+impression. There can be no doubt that the consciousness of the rapid
+increase of my superstition--for why should I not so term it?--served
+mainly to accelerate the increase itself. Such, I have long known, is
+the paradoxical law of all sentiments having terror as a basis. And it
+might have been for this reason only, that, when I again uplifted my
+eyes to the house itself, from its image in the pool, there grew in my
+mind a strange fancy--a fancy so ridiculous, indeed, that I but
+mention it to show the vivid force of the sensations which oppressed
+me. I had so worked upon my imagination as really to believe that
+about the whole mansion and domain there hung an atmosphere peculiar
+to themselves and their immediate vicinity--an atmosphere which had no
+affinity with the air of heaven, but which had reeked up from the
+decayed trees, and the gray wall, and the silent tarn--a pestilent and
+mystic vapor, dull, sluggish, faintly discernible, and leaden-hued.
+
+Shaking off from my spirit what _must_ have been a dream, I scanned
+more narrowly the real aspect of the building. Its principal feature
+seemed to be that of an excessive antiquity. The discoloration of ages
+had been great. Minute fungi overspread the whole exterior, hanging in
+a fine, tangled web-work from the eaves. Yet all this was apart from
+any extraordinary dilapidation. No portion of the masonry had fallen;
+and there appeared to be a wild inconsistency between its still
+perfect adaptation of parts, and the crumbling condition of the
+individual stones. In this there was much that reminded me of the
+specious totality of old woodwork which has rotted for years in some
+neglected vault, with no disturbance from the breath of the external
+air. Beyond this indication of extensive decay, however, the fabric
+gave little token of instability. Perhaps the eye of a scrutinizing
+observer might have discovered a barely perceptible fissure, which,
+extending from the roof of the building in front, made its way down
+the wall in a zigzag direction, until it became lost in the sullen
+waters of the tarn.
+
+Noticing these things, I rode over a short causeway to the house. A
+servant in waiting took my horse, and I entered the Gothic archway of
+the hall. A valet, of stealthy step, thence conducted me, in silence,
+through many dark and intricate passages in my progress to the
+_studio_ of his master. Much that I encountered on the way
+contributed, I know not how, to heighten the vague sentiments of which
+I have already spoken. While the objects around me--while the carvings
+of the ceilings, the sombre tapestries of the walls, the ebon
+blackness of the floors, and the phantasmagoric armorial trophies
+which rattled as I strode, were but matters to which, or to such as
+which, I had been accustomed from my infancy--while I hesitated not to
+acknowledge how familiar was all this--I still wondered to find how
+unfamiliar were the fancies which ordinary images were stirring up. On
+one of the staircases I met the physician of the family. His
+countenance, I thought, wore a mingled expression of low cunning and
+perplexity. He accosted me with trepidation and passed on. The valet
+now threw open a door and ushered me into the presence of his master.
+
+The room in which I found myself was very large and lofty. The windows
+were long, narrow, and pointed, and at so vast a distance from the
+black oaken floor as to be altogether inaccessible from within. Feeble
+gleams of encrimsoned light made their way through the trellised
+panes, and served to render sufficiently distinct the more prominent
+objects around; the eye, however, struggled in vain to reach the
+remoter angles of the chamber, or the recesses of the vaulted and
+fretted ceiling. Dark draperies hung upon the walls. The general
+furniture was profuse, comfortless, antique, and tattered. Many books
+and musical instruments lay scattered about, but failed to give any
+vitality to the scene. I felt that I breathed an atmosphere of sorrow.
+An air of stern, deep, and irredeemable gloom hung over and pervaded
+all.
+
+Upon my entrance, Usher arose from a sofa on which he had been lying
+at full length, and greeted me with, a vivacious warmth which had much
+in it, I at first thought, of an overdone cordiality--of the
+constrained effort of the _ennuye_[4] man of the world. A glance,
+however, at his countenance convinced me of his perfect sincerity. We
+sat down; and for some moments, while he spoke not. I gazed upon him
+with a feeling half of pity, half of awe. Surely, man had never before
+so terribly altered, in so brief a period, as had Roderick Usher! It
+was with difficulty that I could bring myself to admit the identity of
+the wan being before me with the companion of my early boyhood. Yet
+the character of his face had been at all times remarkable. A
+cadaverousness of complexion; an eye large, liquid, and luminous
+beyond comparison; lips somewhat thin and very pallid, but of a
+surpassingly beautiful curve; a nose of a delicate Hebrew model, but
+with a breadth of nostril unusual in similar formations; a finely
+moulded chin, speaking, in its want of prominence, of a want of moral
+energy; hair of a more than web-like softness and tenuity; these
+features, with an inordinate expansion above the regions of the
+temple, made up altogether a countenance not easily to be forgotten.
+And now in the mere exaggeration of the prevailing character of these
+features, and of the expression they were wont to convey, lay so much
+of change that I doubted to whom I spoke. The now ghastly pallor of
+the skin, and the now miraculous lustre of the eye, above all things
+startled, and even awed me. The silken hair, too, had been suffered to
+grow all unheeded, and as, in its wild gossamer texture, it floated
+rather than fell about the face, I could not, even with effort,
+connect its arabesque expression with any idea of simple humanity.
+
+In the manner of my friend I was at once struck with an
+incoherence--an inconsistency; and I soon found this to arise from a
+series of feeble and futile struggles to overcome an habitual
+trepidancy, an excessive nervous agitation. For something of this
+nature I had indeed been prepared, no less by his letter than by
+reminiscences of certain boyish traits, and by conclusions deduced
+from his peculiar physical conformation and temperament. His action
+was alternately vivacious and sullen. His voice varied rapidly from a
+tremulous indecision (when the animal spirits seemed utterly in
+abeyance) to that species of energetic concision--that abrupt,
+weighty, unhurried, and hollow-sounding enunciation--that leaden,
+self-balanced, and perfectly modulated guttural utterance, which may
+be observed in the lost drunkard, or the irreclaimable eater of opium,
+during the periods of his most intense excitement.
+
+It was thus that he spoke of the object of my visit, of his earnest
+desire to see me, and of the solace he expected me to afford him. He
+entered, at some length, into what he conceived to be the nature of
+his malady. It was, he said, a constitutional and a family evil, and
+one for which he despaired to find a remedy--a mere nervous affection,
+he immediately added, which would undoubtedly soon pass off. It
+displayed itself in a host of unnatural sensations. Some of these, as
+he detailed them, interested and bewildered me; although, perhaps, the
+terms and the general manner of the narration had their weight. He
+suffered much from a morbid acuteness of the senses. The most insipid
+food was alone endurable; he could wear only garments of certain
+texture; the odors of all flowers were oppressive; his eyes were
+tortured by even a faint light; and there were but peculiar sounds,
+and these from stringed instruments, which did not inspire him with
+horror.
+
+To an anomalous species of terror I found him a bounden[5] slave. "I
+shall perish," said he, "I _must_ perish, in this deplorable folly.
+Thus, thus, and not otherwise, shall I be lost. I dread the events of
+the future, not in themselves, but in their results. I shudder at the
+thought of any, even the most trivial, incident, which may operate
+upon this intolerable agitation of soul. I have, indeed, no abhorrence
+of danger, except in its absolute effect--in terror. In this
+unnerved--in this pitiable condition--I feel that the period will
+sooner or later arrive when I must abandon life and reason together,
+in some struggle with the grim phantasm, FEAR."
+
+I learned, moreover, at intervals, and through broken and equivocal
+hints, another singular feature of his mental condition. He was
+enchained by certain superstitious impressions in regard to the
+dwelling which he tenanted, and whence, for many years, he had never
+ventured forth--in regard to an influence whose supposititious force
+was conveyed in terms too shadowy here to be restated--an influence
+which some peculiarities in the mere form and substance of his family
+mansion, had, by dint of long sufferance, he said, obtained over his
+spirit--an effect which the _physique_ of the gray walls and turrets,
+and of the dim tarn into which they all looked down, had, at length,
+brought about upon the _morale_ of his existence.
+
+He admitted, however, although with hesitation, that much of the
+peculiar gloom which thus afflicted him could be traced to a more
+natural and far more palpable origin--to the severe and long-continued
+illness--indeed to the evidently approaching dissolution--of a
+tenderly beloved sister, his sole companion for long years, his last
+and only relative on earth. "Her decease," he said, with a bitterness
+which I can never forget, "would leave him (him the hopeless and the
+frail) the last of the ancient race of the Ushers." While he spoke,
+the lady Madeline (for so was she called) passed slowly through a
+remote portion of the apartment, and, without having noticed my
+presence, disappeared. I regarded her with an utter astonishment not
+unmingled with dread[6]; and yet I found it impossible to account for
+such feelings. A sensation of stupor oppressed me, as my eyes followed
+her retreating steps. When a door, at length, closed upon her, my
+glance sought instinctively and eagerly the countenance of the
+brother; but he had buried his face in his hands, and I could only
+perceive that a far more than ordinary wanness had overspread the
+emaciated fingers through which trickled many passionate tears.
+
+The disease of the lady Madeline had long baffled the skill of her
+physicians. A settled apathy, a gradual wasting away of the person,
+and frequent although transient affections of a partially cataleptical
+character, were the unusual diagnosis. Hitherto she had steadily borne
+up against the pressure of her malady, and had not betaken herself
+finally to bed; but on the closing in of the evening of my arrival at
+the house, she succumbed (as her brother told me at night with
+inexpressible agitation) to the prostrating power of the destroyer;
+and I learned that the glimpse I had obtained of her person would thus
+probably be the last I should obtain--that the lady, at least while
+living, would be seen by me no more.
+
+For several days ensuing her name was unmentioned by either Usher or
+myself; and during this period I was busied in earnest endeavors to
+alleviate the melancholy of my friend. We painted and read together;
+or I listened, as if in a dream, to the wild improvisations[7] of his
+speaking guitar. And thus, as a closer and still closer intimacy
+admitted me more unreservedly into the recesses of his spirit, the
+more bitterly did I perceive the futility of all attempt at cheering a
+mind from which darkness, as if an inherent positive quality, poured
+forth upon all objects of the moral and physical universe, in one
+unceasing radiation of gloom.
+
+I shall ever bear about me a memory of the many solemn hours I thus
+spent alone with the master of the House of Usher. Yet I should fail
+in any attempt to convey an idea of the exact character of the
+studies, or of the occupations in which he involved me, or led me the
+way. An excited and highly distempered ideality threw a sulphurous
+luster over all. His long, improvised dirges will ring forever in my
+ears. Among other things, I hold painfully in mind a certain singular
+perversion and amplification of the wild air of the last waltz of von
+Weber[8]. From the paintings over which his elaborate fancy brooded,
+and which grew, touch by touch, into vaguenesses at which I shuddered
+the more thrillingly because I shuddered knowing not why,--from these
+paintings (vivid as their images now are before, me) I would in vain
+endeavor to educe more than a small portion which should lie within
+the compass of merely written words. By the utter simplicity, by the
+nakedness of his designs, he arrested and overawed attention. If ever
+mortal painted an idea, that mortal was Roderick Usher. For me, at
+least, in the circumstances then surrounding me, there arose out of
+the pure abstractions which the hypochondriac contrived to throw, upon
+his canvas, an intensity of intolerable awe, no shadow of which felt I
+ever yet in the contemplation of the certainly glowing yet too
+concrete reveries of Fuseli.[9]
+
+One of the phantasmagoric conceptions of my friend, partaking not so
+rigidly of the spirit of abstraction may be shadowed forth, although
+feebly, in words. A small picture presented the interior of an
+immensely long and rectangular vault or tunnel, with low walls,
+smooth, white, and without interruption or device. Certain accessory
+points of the design served well to convey the idea that this
+excavation lay at an exceeding depth below the surface of the earth.
+No outlet was observed in any portion of its vast extent, and no torch
+or other artificial source of light was discernible; yet a flood of
+intense rays rolled throughout, and bathed the whole in a ghastly and
+inappropriate splendor.
+
+I have just spoken of that morbid condition of the auditory nerve
+which rendered all music intolerable to the sufferer, with the
+exception of certain effects of stringed, instruments. It was,
+perhaps, the narrow limits to which he thus confined himself upon the
+guitar, which gave birth, in great measure, to the fantastic character
+of his performances. But the fervid _facility_ of his _impromptus_
+could not be so accounted for. They must have been, and were, in the
+notes, as well as in the words of his wild fantasias (for he not
+unfrequently accompanied himself with rimed verbal improvisations),
+the result of that intense mental collectedness and concentration to
+which I have previously alluded as observable only in particular
+moments of the highest artificial excitement. The words of one of
+these rhapsodies I have easily remembered. I was, perhaps, the more
+forcibly impressed with it, as he gave it, because, in the under or
+mystic current of its meaning, I fancied that I perceived, and for the
+first time, a full consciousness on the part of Usher, of the
+tottering of his lofty reason upon her throne. The verses, which were
+entitled "The Haunted Palace,"[10] ran very nearly, if not accurately,
+thus:--
+
+I
+
+     In the greenest of our valleys,
+       By good angels tenanted,
+     Once a fair and stately palace--
+       Radiant palace--reared its head.
+     In the monarch Thought's dominion--
+       It stood there!
+     Never seraph spread a pinion
+       Over fabric half so fair.
+
+II
+
+     Banners yellow, glorious, golden,
+       On its roof did float and flow;
+     (This--all this--was in the olden
+       Time long ago)
+     And every gentle air that dallied,
+       In that sweet day,
+     Along the ramparts plumed and pallid,
+       A winged odor went away.
+
+III
+
+     Wanderers in that happy valley
+       Through two luminous windows saw
+     Spirits moving musically
+       To a lute's well-tuned law,
+     Round about a throne, where sitting
+       (Porphyrogene!)[11]
+     In state his glory well befitting,
+       The ruler of the realm was seen.
+
+IV
+
+     And all with pearl and ruby glowing
+       Was the fair palace door,
+     Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing,
+       And sparkling evermore,
+     A troop of Echoes whose sweet duty
+       Was but to sing,
+     In voices of surpassing beauty,
+       The wit and wisdom of their king.
+
+V
+
+     But evil things, in robes of sorrow,
+       Assailed the monarch's high estate
+     (Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow
+       Shall dawn upon him, desolate!);
+     And, round about his home, the glory
+       That blushed and bloomed
+     Is but a dim-remembered story
+        Of the old time entombed.
+
+VI
+
+     And travelers now within that valley,
+       Through the red-litten windows, see
+     Vast forms that move fantastically
+       To a discordant melody;
+     While, like a rapid ghastly river,
+       Through the pale door,
+     A hideous throng rush out forever,
+       And laugh--but smile no more.
+
+I well remember that suggestions arising from this ballad led us into
+a train of thought wherein there became manifest an opinion of Usher's
+which I mention not so much on account of its novelty (for other
+men[12] have thought thus) as on account of the pertinacity with which
+he maintained it. This opinion, in its general form, was that of the
+sentience of all vegetable things. But, in his disordered fancy, the
+idea had assumed a more daring character, and trespassed, under
+certain conditions, upon the kingdom of inorganization. I lack words
+to express the full extent or the earnest _abandon_ of his persuasion.
+The belief, however, was connected (as I have previously hinted) with
+the gray stones of the home of his forefathers. The conditions of the
+sentience had been here, he imagined, fulfilled in the method of
+collocation of these stones--in the order of their arrangement, as
+well as in that of the many _fungi_ which overspread them, and of the
+decayed trees which stood around--above all, in the long-undisturbed
+endurance of this arrangement, and in its reduplication in the still
+waters of the tarn. Its evidence--the evidence of the sentience--was
+to be seen, he said (and I here started as he spoke), in the gradual
+yet certain condensation of an atmosphere of their own about the
+waters and the walls. The result was discoverable, he added, in that
+silent, yet importunate and terrible influence which for centuries had
+molded the destinies of his family, and which made _him_ what I now
+saw him--what he was. Such opinions need no comment, and I will make
+none.
+
+Our books--the books which, for years, had formed no small portion of
+the mental existence of the invalid--were, as might be supposed, in
+strict keeping with this character of phantasm. We pored together over
+such works as the _Ververt et Chartreuse_[13] of Gresset; the
+_Belphegor_[14] of Machiavelli; the _Heaven and Hell_[15] of
+Swedenborg; the _Subterranean Voyage of Nicholas Klimm_[16] by
+Holberg; the _Chiromancy_[17] of Robert Flud, of Jean D'lndagine, and
+of De la Chambre[18]; the _Journey into the Blue Distance_ of
+Tieck[19]; and the _City of the Sun_[20] of Campanella. One favorite
+volume was a small octavo edition of the _Directorium
+Inquisitorium_[21] by the Dominican Eymeric de Cironne; and there were
+passages in _Pomponius Mela_,[22] about the old African Satyrs and
+Oegipans,[23] over which Usher would sit dreaming for hours. His chief
+delight, however, was found in the perusal of an exceedingly rare and
+curious book in quarto Gothic--the manual of a forgotten church--the
+_Vigiliae Mortuorum secundum Chorum Ecclesiae Maguntinae_.[24]
+
+I could not help thinking of the wild ritual of this work, and of its
+probable influence upon the hypochondriac, when, one evening, having
+informed me abruptly that the lady Madeline was no more, he stated his
+intention of preserving her corpse for a fortnight (previously to its
+final interment) in one of the numerous vaults within the main walls
+of the building. The worldly reason, however, assigned for this
+singular proceeding, was one which I did not feel at liberty to
+dispute. The brother had been led to his resolution, so he told me, by
+consideration of the unusual character of the malady of the deceased,
+of certain obtrusive and eager inquiries on the part of her medical
+men, and of the remote and exposed situation of the burial ground of
+the family, I will not deny that when I called to mind the sinister
+countenance of the person whom I met upon the staircase, on the day of
+my arrival at the house, I had no desire to oppose what I regarded as
+at best but a harmless, and by no means an unnatural precaution.
+
+At the request of Usher, I personally aided him in the arrangements
+for the temporary entombment. The body having been encoffined, we two
+alone bore it to its rest. The vault in which we placed it (and which
+had been so long unopened that our torches, half smothered in its
+oppressive atmosphere, gave us little opportunity for investigation)
+was small, damp, and entirely without means of admission for light;
+lying, at great depth, immediately beneath that portion of the
+building in which was my own sleeping apartment. It had been used,
+apparently, in remote feudal times, for the worst purposes of a
+donjon-keep, and in later days, as a place of deposit for powder, or
+some other highly combustible substance, as a portion of its floor,
+and the whole interior of a long archway through which we reached it,
+were carefully sheathed with copper. The door, of massive iron, had
+been also similarly protected. Its immense weight caused an unusually
+sharp grating sound as it moved upon its hinges.
+
+Having deposited our mournful burden upon tressels within this region
+of horror, we partially turned aside the yet unscrewed lid of the
+coffin, and looked upon the face of the tenant. A striking similitude
+between the brother and sister now first arrested my attention; and
+Usher, divining, perhaps, my thoughts, murmured out some few words
+from which I learned that the deceased and himself had been twins, and
+that sympathies of a scarcely intelligible nature had always existed
+between them. Our glances, however, rested not long upon the dead--for
+we could not regard her unawed. The disease which had thus entombed
+the lady in the maturity of youth, had left, as usual in all maladies
+of a strictly cataleptical character, the mockery of a faint blush
+upon the bosom and the face, and that suspiciously lingering smile
+upon the lip which is so terrible in death. We replaced and screwed
+down the lid, and having secured the door of iron, made our way, with
+toil, into the scarcely less gloomy apartments of the upper portion of
+the house.
+
+And now, some days of bitter grief having elapsed, an observable
+change came over the features of the mental disorder of my friend. His
+ordinary manner had vanished. His ordinary occupations were neglected
+or forgotten. He roamed from chamber to chamber with hurried, unequal,
+and objectless step. The pallor of his countenance had assumed, if
+possible, a more ghastly line--but the luminousness of his eye had
+utterly gone out. The once occasional huskiness of his tone was heard
+no more; and a tremulous quaver, as if of extreme terror, habitually
+characterized his utterance. There were times, indeed, when I thought
+his unceasingly agitated mind was laboring with some oppressive
+secret, to divulge which he struggled for the necessary courage. At
+times, again, I was obliged to resolve all into the mere inexplicable
+vagaries of madness; for I beheld him gazing upon vacancy for long
+hours, in an attitude of the profoundest attention, as if listening to
+some imaginary sound. It was no wonder that his condition
+terrified--that it infected me. I felt creeping upon me, by slow yet
+certain degrees, the wild influence of his own fantastic yet
+impressive superstitions.
+
+It was, especially, upon retiring to bed late in the night of the
+seventh or eighth day after the placing of the lady Madeline within
+the donjon, that I experienced the full power of such feelings. Sleep
+came not near my couch, while the hours waned and waned away, I
+struggled to reason off the nervousness which had dominion over me. I
+endeavored to believe that much, if not all of what I felt, was due to
+the bewildering influence of the gloomy furniture of the room--of the
+dark and tattered draperies, which, tortured into motion by the breath
+of a rising tempest, swayed fitfully to and fro upon the walls, and
+rustled uneasily about the decorations of the bed. But my efforts were
+fruitless. An irrepressible tremor gradually pervaded my frame; and,
+at length, there sat upon my very heart an incubus of utterly
+causeless alarm. Shaking this off with a gasp and a struggle, I
+uplifted myself upon the pillows, and peering earnestly within the
+intense darkness of the chamber, hearkened--I know not why, except
+that an instinctive spirit prompted me--to certain low and indefinite
+sounds which came, through the pauses of the storm, at long intervals,
+I knew not whence. Overpowered by an intense sentiment of horror,
+unaccountable yet unendurable, I threw on my clothes with haste (for I
+felt that I should sleep no more during the night), and endeavored to
+arouse myself from the pitiable condition into which I had fallen, by
+pacing rapidly to and fro through the apartment.
+
+I had taken but few turns in this manner, when a light step on an
+adjoining staircase arrested my attention. I presently recognized it
+as that of Usher. In an instant afterward he rapped, with a gentle
+touch, at my door, and entered, bearing a lamp. His countenance was,
+as usual, cadaverously wan--but, moreover, there was a species of mad
+hilarity in his eyes--and evidently restrained hysteria in his whole
+demeanor. His air appalled me--but anything was preferable to the
+solitude which I had so long endured, and I even welcomed his presence
+as a relief.
+
+"And you have not seen it?" he said abruptly, after having stared
+about him for some moments in silence--"you have not then seen
+it?--but stay! you shall." Thus speaking, and having carefully shaded
+his lamp, he hurried to one of the casements, and threw it freely open
+to the storm.
+
+The impetuous fury of the entering gust nearly lifted us from our
+feet. It was, indeed, a tempestuous yet sternly beautiful night, and
+one wildly singular in its terror and its beauty. A whirlwind had
+apparently collected its force in our vicinity; for there were
+frequent and violent alterations in the direction of the wind; and the
+exceeding density of the clouds (which hung so low as to press upon
+the turrets of the house) did not prevent our perceiving the lifelike
+velocity with which they flew careering from all points against each
+other, without passing away into the distance. I say that even their
+exceeding density did not prevent our perceiving this--yet we had no
+glimpse of the moon or stars--nor was there any flashing forth of the
+lightning. But the under surfaces of the huge masses of agitated
+vapor, as well as all terrestrial objects immediately around us, were
+glowing in the unnatural light of a faintly luminous and distinctly
+visible gaseous exhalation which hung about and enshrouded the
+mansion.
+
+"You must not--you shall not behold this!" said I, shudderingly, to
+Usher, as I led him, with a gentle violence, from the window to a
+seat. "These appearances, which bewilder you, are merely electrical
+phenomena not uncommon--or it may be that they have their ghastly
+origin in the rank miasma of the tarn. Let us close this casement--the
+air is chilling and dangerous to your frame. Here is one of your
+favorite romances. I will read and you shall listen; and so we will
+pass away this terrible night together."
+
+The antique volume which I had taken up was the _Mad Trist_ of Sir
+Launcelot Canning[25]; but I had called it a favorite of Usher's more
+in sad jest than in earnest; for, in truth, there is little in its
+uncouth and unimaginative prolixity which could have had interest for
+the lofty and spiritual ideality of my friend. It was, however, the
+only book immediately at hand; and I indulged a vague hope that the
+excitement which now agitated the hypochondriac, might find relief
+(for the history of mental disorder is full of similar anomalies) even
+in the extremeness of the folly which I should read. Could I have
+judged, indeed, by the wild, overstrained air of vivacity with which
+he hearkened, or apparently hearkened, to the words of the tale, I
+might well have congratulated myself upon the success of my design.
+
+I had arrived at that well-known portion of the story where Ethelred,
+the hero of the "Trist," having sought in vain for peaceable admission
+into the dwelling of the hermit, proceeds to make good an entrance by
+force. Here, it will be remembered, the words of the narrative run
+thus:--
+
+"And Ethelred, who was by nature of a doughty heart, and who was now
+mighty withal, on account of the powerfulness of the wine which he had
+drunken, waited no longer to hold parley with the hermit, who, in
+sooth, was of an obstinate and maliceful turn; but, feeling the rain
+upon his shoulders, and fearing the rising of the tempest, uplifted
+his mace outright, and, with blows, made quickly room in the plankings
+of the door for his gauntleted hand; and now pulling therewith
+sturdily, he so cracked, and ripped, and tore all asunder, that the
+noise of the dry and hollow-sounding wood alarummed[26] and
+reverberated throughout the forest."
+
+At the termination of this sentence I started, and for a moment
+paused; for it appeared to me (although I at once concluded that my
+excited fancy had deceived me)--it appeared to me that, from some very
+remote portion of the mansion, there came, indistinctly, to my ears
+what might have been, in its exact similarity of character, the echo
+(but a stifled and dull one certainly) of the very cracking and
+ripping sound which Sir Launcelot had so particularly described. It
+was, beyond doubt, the coincidence alone which had arrested my
+attention; for, amid the rattling of the sashes of the casements, and
+the ordinary commingled noises of the still increasing storm, the
+sound, in itself, had nothing, surely, which should have interested or
+disturbed, me. I continued the story:--
+
+"But the good champion Ethelred, now entering within the door, was
+sore enraged and amazed to perceive no signal of the maliceful hermit;
+but, in the stead thereof, a dragon of a scaly and prodigious
+demeanor, and of a fiery tongue, which sate in guard before a palace
+of gold, with a floor of silver; and upon the wall there hung a shield
+of shining brass with this legend enwritten:--
+
+     Who entereth herein, a conqueror hath been;
+     Who slayeth the dragon, the shield he shall win.
+
+"And Ethelred uplifted his mace, and struck upon the head of the
+dragon, which fell before him, and gave up his pesty breath, with a
+shriek so horrid and harsh, and withal so piercing, that Ethelred had
+fain[27] to close his ears with his hands against the dreadful noise
+of it, the like whereof was never before heard."
+
+Here again I paused abruptly, and now with a feeling of wild
+amazement--for there could be no doubt whatever that, in this
+instance, I did actually hear (although from what direction it
+proceeded I found it impossible to say) a low and apparently distant,
+but harsh, protracted, and most unusual screaming or grating
+sound--the exact counterpart of what my fancy had already conjured up
+for the dragon's unnatural shriek as described by the romancer.
+
+Oppressed, as I certainly was, upon the occurrence of this second and
+most extraordinary coincidence, by a thousand conflicting sensations,
+in which wonder and extreme terror were predominant, I still retained
+sufficient presence of mind to avoid exciting, by any observation, the
+sensitive nervousness of my companion. I was by no means certain that
+he had noticed the sounds in question; although, assuredly, a strange
+alteration had, during the last few minutes, taken place in his
+demeanor. From a position fronting my own, he had gradually brought
+round his chair, so as to sit with his face to the door of the
+chamber; and thus I could but partially perceive his features,
+although I saw that his lips trembled as if he were murmuring
+inaudibly. His head had dropped upon his breast--yet I knew that he
+was not asleep, from the wide and rigid opening of the eye as I caught
+a glance of it in profile. The motion of his body, too, was at
+variance with this idea--for he rocked from side to side with a gentle
+yet constant and uniform sway. Having rapidly taken notice of all
+this, I resumed the narrative of Sir Launcelot, which thus
+proceeded:--
+
+"And now the champion, having escaped from the terrible fury of the
+dragon, bethinking himself of the brazen shield, and of the breaking
+up of the enchantment which was upon it, removed the carcass from out
+of the way before him, and approached valorously over the silver
+pavement of the castle to where the shield was upon the wall; which in
+sooth tarried not for his full coming, but fell down at his feet upon
+the silver floor, with a mighty, great and terrible ringing sound."
+
+No sooner had these syllables passed my lips, than--as if a shield of
+brass had indeed, at the moment, fallen heavily upon a floor of
+silver--I became aware of a distinct, hollow, metallic and clangorous,
+yet apparently muffled reverberation. Completely unnerved, I leaped to
+my feet; but the measured rocking movement of Usher was undisturbed. I
+rushed to the chair in which he sat. His eyes were bent fixedly before
+him, and throughout his whole countenance there reigned a stony
+rigidity. But, as I placed my hand upon his shoulder, there came a
+strong shudder over his whole person; a sickly smile quivered about
+his lips; and I saw that he spoke in a low, hurried, and gibbering
+murmur, as if unconscious of my presence. Bending closely over him, I
+at length drank in the hideous import of his words.
+
+"Not hear it?--yes, I hear it, and _have_ heard it.
+Long--long--long--many minutes, many hours, many days, have I heard
+it--yet I dared not--oh, pity me, miserable wretch that I am!--I dared
+not--I _dared_ not speak! _We have put her living in the tomb!_ Said I
+not that my senses were acute? I _now_ tell you that I heard her first
+feeble movements in the hollow coffin. I heard them--many, many days
+ago--yet I dared not--_I dared not speak!_ And
+now--to-night--Ethelred--ha! ha!---the breaking of the hermit's door,
+and the death-cry of the dragon, and the clangor of the shield!--say,
+rather, the rending of her coffin, and the grating of the iron hinges
+of her prison, and her struggles within the coppered archway of the
+vault! Oh, whither shall I fly? Will she not be here anon? Is she not
+hurrying to upbraid me for my haste? Have I not heard her footstep on
+the stair? Do I not distinguish that heavy and horrible beating of her
+heart? Madman!"--here he sprang furiously to his feet, and shrieked
+out his syllables, as if in the effort he were giving up his
+soul--"_Madman! I tell you that she now stands without the door!_"
+
+As if in the superhuman energy of his utterance there had been found
+the potency of a spell--the huge antique panels to which the speaker
+pointed threw slowly back, upon the instant, their ponderous and ebony
+jaws. It was the work of the rushing gust--but then without those
+doors there _did_ stand the lofty and enshrouded figure of the lady
+Madeline of Usher. There was blood upon her white robes, and the
+evidence of some bitter struggle upon every portion of her emaciated
+frame. For a moment she remained trembling and reeling to and fro upon
+the threshold--then, with a low, moaning cry, fell heavily inward upon
+the person of her brother, and in her violent and now final
+death-agonies, bore him to the floor a corpse, and a victim to the
+terrors he had anticipated.
+
+From that chamber, and from that mansion, I fled aghast. The storm was
+still abroad in all its wrath as I found myself crossing the old
+causeway. Suddenly there shot along the path a wild light, and I
+turned to see whence a gleam so unusual could have issued; for the
+vast house and its shadows were alone behind me. The radiance was that
+of the full, setting, and blood-red moon, which now shone vividly
+through that once barely discernible fissure, of which I have before
+spoken as extending from the roof of the building, in a zigzag
+direction, to the base. While I gazed, this fissure rapidly
+widened--there came a fierce breath of the whirlwind--the entire orb
+of the satellite burst at once upon my sight--my brain reeled as I saw
+the mighty walls rushing asunder--there was a long tumultuous shouting
+sound like the voice of a thousand waters--and the deep and dank tarn
+at my feet closed sullenly and silently over the fragments of the
+"_House of Usher_."
+
+
+NOTES
+
+[1] _The Fall of the House of Usher_ was written in 1839 and published
+at the end of the same year in his Tales of the Grotesque and of the
+Arabesque.
+
+[2] 70: Motto de Beranger. Popular French lyric poet (1780-1857). "His
+heart is a suspended lute; as soon as it is touched it resounds."
+
+[3] 71:23 tarn. A small mountain lake.
+
+[4] 76:7 ennuye. Mentally wearied or bored.
+
+[5] 78:11 bounden. An archaic word.
+
+[6] 79:19 Dread. Reading of the first edition, "Her figure, her air,
+her features,--all, in their very minutest development, were
+those--were identically (I can use no other sufficient term), were
+identically those of the Roderick Usher who sat beside me. A feeling
+of stupor," etc.
+
+[7] 80:16 Improvisations. Extemporaneous composition of poetry or
+music.
+
+[8] 81:4 von Weber. The celebrated German composer (1786-1826).
+
+[9] 81:20 Fuseli. An artist and professor of painting at the Royal
+Academy in London (1741-1825).
+
+[10] 82:24 "The Haunted Palace." First published in the _Baltimore
+Museum_ for April, 1839.
+
+[11] 83:18 Porphyrogene. Of royal birth.
+
+[12] 84:16 for other men. Watson, Dr. Percival, and especially the
+Bishop of Llandaff. See "Chemical Essays," Vol. V.
+
+[13] 85:16 Ververt et Chartreuse. Two poems by Jean Baptiste Cresset
+(1709-1777).
+
+[Footenote 14] 85:17 Belphegor. Satire on Marriage by Machiavelli
+(1469-1527).
+
+[15] 85:17 Heaven and Hell. Extracts from "Arcana Coelestia" by
+Swedenborg (1688-1772).
+
+[16] 85:18 Subterranean Voyage of Nicholas Klimm. A celebrated poem by
+Ludwig Holberg (1684-1754).
+
+[17] 85:19 Chiromancy. Palmistry applied to the future. Poe refers
+rather to physiognomy. The book was written by the English mystic,
+Robert Fludd (1574-1637).
+
+[18] 85:19 Jean d'Indagine and De la Chambre. Two continental writers
+of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries respectively.
+
+[19] 85:21 Tieck. A great German romanticist (1773-1853).
+
+[20] 85:21 City of the Sun. A sketch of an ideal state by Campanella
+(1568-1639).
+
+[21] 85:23 Directorium Inquisitorium. A detailed account of the
+methods of the Inquisition by Cironne, inquisitor-general for Castile,
+in 1356.
+
+[22] 85:24 Pomponius Mela. Spanish geographer in the first century
+A.D. Author of "De Chorographia," the earliest extant account of the
+geography of the ancient world.
+
+[23] 85:25 Oegipans. An epithet applied to Pan.
+
+[24] 85:30 Vigiliae Mortuorum. No such book is known.
+
+[25] 90:30 Mad Trist. No such book is known.
+
+[26] 91:29 alarummed. Alarmed.
+
+[27] 92:25 had fain. In the sense of was glad.
+
+
+BIOGRAPHY
+
+Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston, January 19, 1809. His parents, who
+were actors, died before their son was three years old. Mr. Allan, a
+wealthy Richmond merchant, adopted the child and gave him a splendid
+home. How scantily Poe appreciated and improved the advantages of this
+kindness he himself confesses in a letter to Lowell in 1844. "I have
+been too deeply conscious of the mutability and evanescence of
+temporal things to give any continuous effort to anything--to be
+consistent in anything. My life has been _whim_--impulse--passion--a
+longing for solitude--a scorn of all things present in an earnest
+desire for the future." He was a dreamer who had a fair chance to be
+happy, but he flung the opportunity away. He was a spoiled child who
+remained ignorant of life even unto his death.
+
+He entered the University of Virginia in 1826, where his conduct was
+so bad that he was, after a year, removed from the college. This
+action broke the strong friendship Mr. Allan had long held for his
+adopted son. Poe, urged by a hot temper or possibly by a remorse for
+his actions, ran away and enlisted in the regular army. In 1829 Mr.
+Allan became partially reconciled with Poe, and again came to his
+assistance. In 1830 Poe entered West Point, but was there only a short
+time when he was dismissed for wilful neglect of duty.
+
+Following this dismissal Poe went to Baltimore, where he did hack work
+for newspapers. This was the beginning of a process of writing that
+has brought him high rank and an imperishable honor. His narrative is
+clear, compressed, and powerful, and throughout his writings choice
+symbols abound. He was fond of themes of death, insanity, and terror.
+The wonder of it all is that this struggling, poverty-stricken
+craftsman, irregular in his habits of living, using only negative life
+and shadowy abstractions, should, from out his disordered fancies,
+weave stories and poems of such undying beauty and force.
+
+Poe married his thirteen-year-old cousin, Virginia Clemm. Her health
+was always delicate and her death confirmed Poe's tendency toward
+dissipation. His life was filled with dire poverty and a hard struggle
+for a livelihood. His home relations were happy. The last years of his
+life were spent at Fordham, a suburb of New York. He died in a
+Baltimore hospital, October 7, 1849.
+
+
+BIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES
+
+_Introduction to American Literature_, Brander Matthews.
+
+_Studies in American Literature_, Charles Noble.
+
+_Introduction to American Literature_, F.V.N. Painter.
+
+_Life of Poe_, Richard Henry Stoddard.
+
+_Edgar Allan Poe_, G.E. Woodberry.
+
+_Makers of English Fiction_, W.J. Dawson.
+
+"Art of Poe, _Independent_, 66: 157-8. January 21, 1909.
+
+"Dual Personality," _Current Literature_, 43: 287-8.
+
+
+CRITICISMS
+
+Some critics have maintained that Poe is our only original genius in
+American Literature. Lowell wrote in his _Fable for Critics_:--
+
+"There comes Poe with his raven, like Barnaby Rudge, Three-fifths of
+him genius, and two-fifths sheer fudge."
+
+Whatever judgments the various critics may give of Poe and his
+writings, they must all agree that he is original. He is a clever
+writer in a limited field. His writings have a glow and burnish that
+have their origin in his fondness for sensations, color, and vividness
+of details. He loves mystery and terror,--not the fancies and fears of
+a child, but overwrought nerves. His material is unreal, and remote
+from ordinary life. His characters are abnormal, and the world they
+live in is exceptional. He is inventive, original in arranging his
+material, and shallow but keen in his thinking.
+
+He believed that art and life have little in common, and in his
+writings seemed to be unmoved by friendship, loyalty, patriotism,
+courage, self-sacrifice or any of the great positive attributes of
+life that make living worth while. His writings lack the human touch,
+tenderness, and the buoyancy of sympathy. He is an artist who does his
+work with a clear-cut, hard finish. His choice of words, vivid
+pictures, and clearly evolved plots make his writings excellent
+studies for any one who wishes to develop literary appreciation and to
+learn to write.
+
+
+GENERAL REFERENCES
+
+_Studies and Appreciations_, L.E. Gates.
+
+_American Prose Masters_, William Crary Brownwell.
+
+_The Short Story in English_, Henry Seidel Canby.
+
+_Edgar Poe_, R.H. Button.
+
+_Inquiries and Opinions_, Brander Matthews.
+
+"Life of Edgar Allan Poe," _Nation_, 89: 100-110.
+
+"Weird Genius," _Cosmopolitan_, 46:243-252.
+
+
+COLLATERAL READINGS
+
+_Ligeia_, Edgar Allan Poe.
+
+_The Cask of Amontillado_, Edgar Allan Poe.
+
+_The Assignation_, Edgar Allan Poe.
+
+_Ms. Pound in Bottle_, Edgar Allan Poe.
+
+_The Black Cat_, Edgar Allan Poe.
+
+_Berenice_, Edgar Allan Poe.
+
+_The Tell-Tale Heart_, Edgar Allan Poe.
+
+_The White Old Maid_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_Moonlight_ ("Odd Number"), Guy de Maupassant.
+
+_A Journey_, Edith Wharton.
+
+_The Brushwood Boy_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+_At the Pit's Mouth_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+
+
+The Gold Bug[1]
+
+_By Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)_
+
+     What ho! what ho! this fellow is dancing mad!
+     He hath been bitten by the Tarantula.
+                                  --_All in the Wrong_.[2]
+
+Many years ago I contracted an intimacy with a Mr. William Legrand. He
+was of an ancient Huguenot[3] family, and had once been wealthy; but a
+series of misfortunes had reduced him to want. To avoid the
+mortification consequent upon his disasters, he left New Orleans, the
+city of his forefathers, and took up his residence at Sullivan's
+Island, near Charleston, South Carolina.
+
+This island is a very singular one. It consists of little else than
+the sea sand, and is about three miles long. Its breadth at no point
+exceeds a quarter of a mile. It is separated from the mainland by a
+scarcely perceptible creek, oozing its way through a wilderness of
+reeds and slime, a favorite resort of the marsh-hen. The vegetation,
+as might be supposed, is scant, or at least dwarfish. No trees of any
+magnitude are to be seen. Near the western extremity, where Fort
+Moultrie[4] stands, and where are some miserable frame buildings,
+tenanted, during summer, by the fugitives from Charleston dust and
+fever, may be found, indeed, the bristly palmetto; but the whole
+island, with the exception of this western point, and a line of hard,
+white beach on the seacoast, is covered with a dense undergrowth of
+the sweet myrtle, so much prized by the horticulturists of England.
+The shrub here often attains the height of fifteen or twenty feet, and
+forms an almost impenetrable coppice, burthening the air with its
+fragrance.
+
+In the utmost recesses of this coppice, not far from the eastern or
+more remote end of the island, Legrand had built himself a small hut,
+which he occupied when I first, by mere accident, made his
+acquaintance. This soon ripened into friendship, for there was much in
+the recluse to excite interest and esteem. I found him well educated,
+with unusual powers of mind, but infected with misanthropy, and
+subject to perverse moods of alternate enthusiasm and melancholy. He
+had with him many books, but rarely employed them. His chief
+amusements were gunning and fishing, or sauntering along the beach and
+through the myrtles, in quest of shells or entomological
+specimens--his collection of the latter might have been envied by a
+Swammerdam.[5] In these excursions he was usually accompanied by an
+old negro, called Jupiter, who had been manumitted[6] before the
+reverses of the family, but who could be induced, neither by threats
+nor by promises, to abandon what he considered his right of attendance
+upon the footsteps of his young "Massa Will." It is not improbable
+that the relatives of Legrand, conceiving him to be somewhat unsettled
+in intellect, had contrived to instil this obstinacy into Jupiter,
+with a view to the supervision and guardianship of the wanderer.
+
+The winters in the latitude of Sullivan's Island are seldom very
+severe, and in the fall of the year it is a rare event indeed when a
+fire is considered necessary. About the middle of October, 18--, there
+occurred, however, a day of remarkable chilliness. Just before sunset
+I scrambled my way through the evergreens to the hut of my friend,
+whom I had not visited for several weeks--my residence being at that
+time in Charleston, a distance of nine miles from the island, while
+the facilities of passage and re-passage were very far behind those of
+the present day. Upon reaching the hut I rapped, as was my custom, and
+getting no reply, sought for the key where I knew it was secreted,
+unlocked the door, and went in. A fine fire was blazing upon the
+hearth. It was a novelty, and by no means an ungrateful one. I threw
+off an over-coat, took an armchair by the crackling logs, and awaited
+patiently the arrival of my hosts.
+
+Soon after dark they arrived, and gave me a most cordial welcome.
+Jupiter, grinning from ear to ear, bustled about to prepare some
+marsh-hens for supper. Legrand was in one of his fits--how else shall
+I term them?--of enthusiasm. He had found an unknown bivalve, forming
+a new genus, and, more than this, he had hunted down and secured, with
+Jupiter's assistance, a _scarabaeus_[7] which he believed to be
+totally new, but in respect to which he wished to have my opinion on
+the morrow.
+
+"And why not to-night?" I asked, rubbing my hands over the blaze, and
+wishing the whole tribe of _scarabaei_ at the devil.
+
+"Ah, if I had only known you were here!" said Legrand, "but it's so
+long since I saw you; and how could I foresee that you would pay me a
+visit this very night of all others? As I was coming home I met
+Lieutenant G----, from the fort, and, very foolishly, I lent him the
+bug; so it will be impossible for you to see it until the morning.
+Stay here to-night, and I will send Jup down for it at sunrise. It is
+the loveliest thing in creation!"
+
+"What!--sunrise?"
+
+"Nonsense! no!--the bug. It is of a brilliant gold color--about the
+size of a large hickory-nut--with two jet-black spots near one
+extremity of the back, and another, somewhat longer, at the other. The
+_antennae[8]_ are--"
+
+"Dey ain't _no_ tin in him, Massa Will, I keep a tellin' on you," here
+interrupted Jupiter; "de bug is a goolebug, solid, ebery bit of him,
+inside and all, 'sep him wing--neber feel half so hebby a bug in my
+life."
+
+"Well, suppose it is, Jup," replied Legrand, somewhat more earnestly,
+it seemed to me, than the case demanded; "is that any reason for your
+letting the birds burn? The color"--here he turned to me--"is really
+almost enough to warrant Jupiter's idea. You never saw a more
+brilliant metallic lustre than the scales emit--but of this you cannot
+judge till to-morrow. In the meantime I can give you some idea of the
+shape." Saying this, he seated himself at a small table, on which were
+a pen and ink, but no paper. He looked for some in a drawer, but found
+none.
+
+"Never mind," said he at length, "this will answer;" and he drew from
+his waistcoat pocket a scrap of what I took to be very dirty foolscap,
+and made upon it a rough drawing with the pen. While he did this I
+retained my seat by the fire, for I was still chilly. When the design
+was complete, he handed it to me without rising. As I received, it, a
+loud growl was heard, succeeded by a scratching at the door. Jupiter
+opened it, and a large Newfoundland, belonging to Legrand, rushed in,
+leaped upon my shoulders, and loaded me with caresses; for I had shown
+him much attention during previous visits. When his gambols were over,
+I looked at the paper, and, to speak the truth, found myself not a
+little puzzled at what my friend had depicted.
+
+"Well!" I said, after contemplating it for some minutes, "this _is_ a
+strange _scarabaeus_, I must confess: new to me: never saw anything
+like it before--unless it was a skull, or a death's-head--which, it
+more nearly resembles than, anything else that has come under _my_
+observation."
+
+"A death's-head!" echoed Legrand. "Oh--yes--well, it has something of
+that appearance upon paper, no doubt. The two upper black spots look
+like eyes, eh? and the longer one at the bottom like a mouth--and then
+the shape of the whole is oval."
+
+"Perhaps so," said I; "but, Legrand, I fear you are no artist. I must
+wait until I see the beetle itself, if I am to form any idea of its
+personal appearance."
+
+"Well, I don't know," said he, a little nettled, "I draw
+tolerably--_should_ do it at least--have had good masters, and flatter
+myself that I am not quite a blockhead."
+
+"But, my dear fellow, you are joking then," said I; "this is a very
+passable _skull_--indeed, I may say that it is a very _excellent_
+skull, according to the vulgar notions about such specimens of
+physiology--and your _scarabaeus_ must be the queerest _scarabaeus_ in
+the world if it resembles it. Why, we may get up a very thrilling bit
+of superstition upon this hint. I presume, you will call the bug
+_scarabaeus caput hominis_,[9] or something of that kind--there are
+many similar titles in the natural histories. But where are the
+_antennae_ you spoke of?"
+
+"The _antennae_!" said Legrand, who seemed to be getting unaccountably
+warm upon the subject; "I am sure you must see the _antennae_. I made
+them as distinct as they are in the original insect, and I presume
+that is sufficient."
+
+"Well, well," I said, "perhaps you have--still I don't see them;" and
+I handed him the paper without additional remark, not wishing to
+ruffle his temper; but I was much surprised at the turn affairs had
+taken; his ill-humor puzzled me--and, as for the drawing of the
+beetle, there were positively _no antennae_ visible, and the whole
+_did_ bear a very close resemblance to the ordinary cuts of a
+death's-head.
+
+He received the paper very peevishly, and was about to crumple it,
+apparently to throw it in the fire, when a casual glance at the design
+seemed suddenly to rivet his attention. In an instant his face grew
+violently red--in another as excessively pale. For some minutes he
+continued to scrutinize the drawing minutely where he sat. At length
+he arose, took a candle from the table, and proceeded to seat himself
+upon a sea-chest in the farthest corner of the room. Here again he
+made an anxious examination of the paper, turning it in all
+directions. He said nothing, however, and his conduct greatly
+astonished me; yet I thought it prudent not to exacerbate the growing
+moodiness of his temper by any comment. Presently he took from, his
+coat pocket a wallet, placed the paper carefully in it, and deposited
+both in a writing-desk, which he locked. He now grew more composed in
+his demeanor; but his original air of enthusiasm had quite
+disappeared. Yet he seemed not so much sulky as abstracted. As the
+evening wore away he became more and more absorbed in reverie, from
+which no sallies of mine could arouse him. It had been my intention to
+pass the night at the hut, as I had frequently done before, but,
+seeing my host in this mood, I deemed it proper to take leave. He did
+not press me to remain, but, as I departed, he shook my hand with even
+more than his usual cordiality.
+
+It was about a month after this (and during the interval I had seen
+nothing of Legrand) when I received a visit, at Charleston, from his
+man Jupiter. I had never seen the good old negro look so dispirited,
+and I feared that some serious disaster had befallen my friend.
+
+"Well, Jup," said I, "what is the matter now?--how is your master?"
+
+"Why, to speak de troof, massa, him not so berry well as mought be."
+
+"Not well! I am truly sorry to hear it. What does he complain of?"
+
+"Dar! dat's it!--him nebber 'plain of notin'--but him berry sick for
+all dat."
+
+"_Very_ sick, Jupiter!--why didn't you say so at once? Is he confined
+to bed?"
+
+"No, dat he ain't!--he ain't 'find nowhar--dat's just whar de shoe
+pinch--my mind is got to be berry hebby 'bout poor Massa Will."
+
+"Jupiter, I should like to understand what it is you are talking
+about. You say your master is sick. Hasn't he told you what ails him?"
+
+"Why, massa, 'tain't worf while for to git mad 'bout de matter--Massa
+Will say noffin' at all ain't de matter wid him--but den what make him
+go about looking dis here way, wid he head down and he soldiers up,
+and as white as a gose? And den he keep a syphon all de time--"
+
+"Keeps a what, Jupiter?"
+
+"Keeps a syphon wid de figgurs on de slate--de queerest figgurs I
+ebber did see. Ise gittin' to be skeered I tell you. Hab for to keep
+mighty tight eye pon him noovers.[10] Todder day he gib me slip fore
+de sun up, and was gone de whole ob de blessed day. I had a big stick
+ready cut for to gib him d----d good beating when he did come--but Ise
+sich a fool dat I hadn't de heart after all--he look so berry poorly."
+
+"Eh?--what? Ah, yes!--upon the whole, I think you had better not be
+too severe with the poor fellow--don't flog him, Jupiter, he can't
+very well stand it--but can you form an idea of what has occasioned
+this illness, or rather this change of conduct? Has anything
+unpleasant happened since I saw you?"
+
+"No, massa, dey ain't bin noffin' onpleasant _since_ den--'twas
+_'fore_ den, I'm feared--'twas de berry day you was dare."'
+
+"How? what do you mean?"
+
+"Why, massa, I mean de bug--dare now."
+
+"The _what?_"
+
+"De bug--I'm berry sartain dat Massa Will bin bit somewhere 'bout de
+head by dat goole-bug."
+
+"And what cause have you, Jupiter, for such a supposition?"
+
+"Claws enuff, massa, and mouff, too. I nebber did see sich a d----d
+bug--he kick and he bite ebery ting what cum near him. Massa Will
+cotch him fuss, but had for to let him go 'gin mighty quick, I tell
+you--den was de time he must ha' got de bite. I didn't like de look ob
+de bug mouff, myself, nohow, so I wouldn't take hold ob him wid my
+finger, but I cotch him wid a piece ob paper dat I found. I wrap him
+up in de paper and stuff piece ob it in he mouff--dat was de way."
+
+"And you think, then, that your master was really bitten by the
+beetle, and that the bite made him sick?" "I don't t'ink noffin' 'bout
+it--I nose it. What make him dream 'bout de goole so much, if 'tain't
+cause he bit by de goole-bug? Ise heerd 'bout dem goole-bugs 'fore
+dis."
+
+"But how do you know he dreams about gold?"
+
+"How I know? why, 'cause he talk about it in he sleep--dat's how I
+nose."
+
+"Well, Jup, perhaps you are right; but to what fortunate circumstances
+am I to attribute the honor of a visit from you to-day?"
+
+"What de matter, massa?"
+
+"Did you bring any message from Mr. Legrand?"
+
+"No, massa, I bring dis here 'pissel;" and here Jupiter handed me a
+note, which ran thus:
+
+My dear ------:
+
+Why have I not seen you for so long a time? I hope you have not been
+so foolish as to take offence at any little _brusquerie_[11] of mine;
+but no, that is improbable.
+
+Since I saw you I have had great cause for anxiety. I have something
+to tell you, yet scarcely know how to tell it, or whether I should
+tell it at all.
+
+I have not been quite well for some days past, and poor old Jup annoys
+me, almost beyond endurance, by his well-meant attentions. Would you
+believe it?--he had prepared a huge stick, the other day, with which
+to chastise me for giving him the slip, and spending the day, _solus_,
+among the hills on the mainland. I verily believe that my ill looks
+alone saved me a flogging.
+
+I have made no addition to my cabinet since we met.
+
+If you can, in any way, make it convenient, come over with Jupiter.
+_Do_ come. I wish to see you _to-night_, upon business of importance.
+I assure you that it is of the _highest_ importance.
+
+Ever yours,
+
+William Legrand.
+
+There was something in the tone of this note which gave me great
+uneasiness. Its whole style differed materially from that of Legrand.
+What could he be dreaming of? What new crotchet possessed his
+excitable brain? What "business of the highest importance" could _he_
+possibly have to transact? Jupiter's account of him boded no good. I
+dreaded lest the continued pressure of misfortune had, at length,
+fairly unsettled the reason of my friend. Without a moment's
+hesitation, therefore, I prepared to accompany the negro.
+
+Upon reaching the wharf, I noticed a scythe and three spades, all
+apparently new, lying in the bottom of the boat in which we were to
+embark.
+
+"What is the meaning of all this, Jup?" I inquired.
+
+"Him syfe, massa, and spade."
+
+"Very true; but what are they doing here?"
+
+"Him de syfe and de spade what Massa Will 'sis' 'pon my buying for him
+in de town, and de debbil's own lot of money I had to gib for 'em."
+
+"But what, in the name of all that is mysterious, is your 'Massa Will'
+going to do with scythes and spades?"
+
+"Dat's more dan _I_ know, and debbil take me if I don't b'lieve 'tis
+more dan he know, too. But it's all come ob de bug."
+
+Finding that no satisfaction was to be obtained of Jupiter, whose
+whole intellect seemed to be absorbed by "de bug," I now stepped into
+the boat and made sail. With a fair and strong breeze we soon ran into
+the little cove to the northward of Fort Moultrie, and a walk of some
+two miles brought us to the hut. It was about three in the afternoon
+when we arrived. Legrand had been awaiting us in eager expectation. He
+grasped my hand with a nervous _empressement_[12] which alarmed me and
+strengthened the suspicions already entertained. His countenance was
+pale even to ghastliness, and his deep-set eyes glared with unnatural
+lustre. After some inquiries respecting his health, I asked him, not
+knowing what better to say, if he had yet obtained the _scarabaeus_
+from Lieutenant G----.
+
+"Oh, yes," he replied, coloring violently, "I got it from him the next
+morning. Nothing could tempt me to part with that _scarabaeus_. Do you
+know that Jupiter is quite right about it!"
+
+"In what way?" I asked, with a sad foreboding at heart.
+
+"In supposing it to be a bug of _real gold_." He said this with an air
+of profound seriousness, and I felt inexpressibly shocked.
+
+"This bug is to make my fortune," he continued, with a triumphant
+smile, and reinstate me in my family possessions. Is it any wonder,
+then, that I prize it? Since Fortune has thought fit to bestow it upon
+me, I have only to use it properly and I shall arrive at the gold of
+which it is the index. Jupiter, bring me that _scarabaeus_!"
+
+"What! de bug, massa? I'd rudder not go fer trubble dat bug--you mus'
+git him for your own self." Hereupon Legrand arose, with a grave and
+stately air, and brought me the beetle from a glass case in which it
+was enclosed. It was a beautiful _scarabaeus_, and, at that time,
+unknown to naturalists--of course a great prize in a scientific point
+of view. There were two round black spots near one extremity of the
+back, and a long one near the other. The scales were exceedingly hard
+and glossy, with all the appearance of burnished gold. The weight of
+the insect was very remarkable, and, taking all things into
+consideration, I could hardly blame Jupiter for his opinion respecting
+it; but what to make of Legrand's agreement with that opinion, I could
+not, for the life of me, tell.
+
+"I sent for you," said he, in a grandiloquent tone when I had
+completed my examination of the beetle, "I sent for you, that I might
+have your counsel and assistance in furthering the views of Fate and
+of the bug"--
+
+"My dear Legrand," I cried, interrupting him, "you are certainly
+unwell, and had better use some little precautions. You shall go to
+bed, and I will remain with you a few days, until you get over this.
+You are feverish and"--
+
+"Feel my pulse," said he.
+
+I felt it, and, to say the truth, found not the slightest indication
+of fever.
+
+"But you may be ill and yet have no fever. Allow me this once to
+prescribe for you. In the first place, go to bed. In the next"--
+
+"You are mistaken," he interposed; "I am as well as I can expect to be
+under the excitement which I suffer. If you really wish me well, you
+will relieve this excitement."
+
+"And how is this to be done?"
+
+"Very easily, Jupiter and myself are going upon an expedition into the
+hills, upon the mainland, and, in this expedition, we shall need the
+aid of some person in whom we can confide. You are the only one we can
+trust. Whether we succeed or fail, the excitement which you now
+perceive in me will be equally allayed."
+
+"I am anxious to oblige you in any way," I replied; "but do you mean
+to say that this infernal beetle has any connection with your
+expedition into the hills?"
+
+"It has."
+
+"Then, Legrand, I can become a party to no such absurd proceeding."
+
+"I am sorry--very sorry--for we shall have to try it by ourselves."
+
+"Try it by yourselves! The man is surely mad!--but stay!--how long do
+you propose to be absent?"
+
+"Probably all night. We shall start immediately, and be back, at all
+events, by sunrise."
+
+"And will you promise me upon your honor, that when this freak of
+yours is over, and the bug business (good God!) settled to your
+satisfaction, you will then return home and follow my advice
+implicitly, as that of your physician?"
+
+"Yes; I promise; and now let us be off, for we have no time to lose."
+
+With a heavy heart I accompanied my friend. We started about four
+o'clock--Legrand, Jupiter, the dog, and myself. Jupiter had with him
+the scythe and spades, the whole of which he insisted upon carrying,
+more through fear, it seemed to me, of trusting either of the
+implements within reach of his master, than from any excess of
+industry or complaisance. His demeanor was dogged in the extreme, and
+"dat d----d bug" were the sole words which escaped his lips during the
+journey. For my own part, I had charge of a couple of dark lanterns,
+while Legrand contented himself with the _scarabaeus_, which he
+carried attached to the end of a bit of whipcord, twirling it to and
+fro, with the air of a conjurer, as he went. When I observed this last
+plain evidence of my friend's aberration of mind, I could scarcely
+refrain from tears. I thought it best, however, to humor his fancy, at
+least for the present, or until I could adopt some more energetic
+measures with a chance of success. In the meantime I endeavored, but
+all in vain, to sound him in regard to the object of the expedition.
+Having succeeded in inducing me to accompany him, he seemed unwilling
+to hold conversation upon any topic of minor importance, and to all my
+questions vouchsafed no other reply than "We shall see!"
+
+We crossed the creek at the head of the island by means of a skiff,
+and, ascending the high grounds on the shore of the mainland,
+proceeded in a northwesterly direction, through a tract of country
+excessively wild and desolate, where no trace of a human footstep was
+to be seen. Legrand led the way with decision, pausing only for an
+instant, here and there, to consult what appeared is to be certain
+landmarks of his own contrivance upon a former occasion.
+
+In this manner we journeyed for about two hours, and the sun was just
+setting when we entered a region infinitely more dreary than any yet
+seen. It was a species of table-land, near the summit of an almost
+inaccessible hill, densely wooded from base to pinnacle, and
+interspersed with huge crags that appeared to lie loosely upon the
+soil, and in many cases were prevented from precipitating themselves
+into the valleys below, merely by the support of the trees against
+which they reclined. Deep ravines, in various directions, gave an air
+of still sterner solemnity to the scene.
+
+The natural platform to which we had clambered was thickly overgrown
+with brambles, through which we soon discovered that it would have
+been impossible to force our way but for the scythe; and Jupiter, by
+direction of his master, proceeded to clear for us a path to the foot
+of an enormously tall tulip-tree, which stood, with some eight or ten
+oaks, upon the level, and far surpassed them all, and all other trees
+which I had ever seen, in the beauty of its foliage and form, in the
+wide spread of its branches, and in the general majesty of its
+appearance. When we reached this tree, Legrand turned to Jupiter, and
+asked him if he thought he could climb it. The old man seemed a little
+staggered by the question, and for some moments made no reply. At
+length he approached the huge trunk, walked slowly around it, and
+examined it with minute attention. When he had completed his scrutiny,
+he merely said:
+
+"Yes, massa, Jup climb any tree he ebber see in he life."
+
+"Then up with you as soon as possible, for it will soon be too dark to
+see what we are about."
+
+"How far mus' go up, massa?" inquired Jupiter.
+
+"Get up the main trunk first, and then I will tell you which way to
+go--and here--stop! take this beetle with you."
+
+"De bug, Massa Will! de goole-bug!" cried the negro, drawing back in
+dismay, "what for mus' tote de bug way up de tree?--d----n if I do!"
+
+"If you are afraid, Jup, a great big negro like you, to take hold of a
+harmless little dead beetle, why, you can carry it up by this string;
+but if you do not take it up with you in some way, I shall be under
+the necessity of breaking your head with this shovel."
+
+"'What de matter, now, massa?" said Jup, evidently shamed into
+compliance; "always want fur to raise fuss wid old nigger. Was only
+funnin' anyhow. _Me_ feered de bug! what I keer for de bug?" Here he
+took cautiously hold of the extreme end of the string, and,
+maintaining the insect as far from his person as circumstances would
+permit, prepared to ascend the tree.
+
+In youth the tulip-tree, or _Liriodendron tulipifera_, the most
+magnificent of American foresters, has a trunk peculiarly smooth, and
+often rises to a great height without lateral branches; but, in its
+riper age, the bark becomes gnarled and uneven, while many short limbs
+make their appearance on the stem. Thus the difficulty of ascension,
+in the present case, lay more in semblance than in reality. Embracing
+the huge cylinder as closely as possible with his arms and knees,
+seizing with his hands some projections, and resting his naked toes
+upon others, Jupiter, after one or two narrow escapes from falling, at
+length wriggled himself into the first great fork, and seemed to
+consider the whole business as virtually accomplished. The _risk_ of
+the achievement was, in fact, now over, although the climber was some
+sixty or seventy feet from the ground.
+
+"Which way mus' go now, Massa Will?" he asked.
+
+"Keep up the largest branch, the one on this side," said Legrand. The
+negro obeyed him promptly, and apparently with but little trouble;
+ascending higher and higher, until no glimpse of his squat figure
+could be obtained through the dense foliage which enveloped it.
+Presently his voice was heard in a sort of halloo.
+
+"How much fudder I's got for go?"
+
+"How high up are you?" asked Legrand.
+
+"Ebber so fur," replied the negro; "can see de sky fru de top ob de
+tree."
+
+"Never mind the sky, but attend to what I say. Look down the trunk and
+count the limbs below you on this side. How many limbs have you
+passed?"
+
+"One, two, three, four, fibe--I done pass fibe big limb, massa, 'pon
+dis side."
+
+"Then go one limb higher."
+
+In a few minutes the voice was heard again, announcing that the
+seventh limb was attained.
+
+"Now, Jup," cried Legrand, evidently much excited, "I want you to work
+your way out upon that limb as far as you can. If you see anything
+strange, let me know."
+
+By this time what little doubt I might have entertained of my poor
+friend's insanity was put finally at rest. I had no alternative but to
+conclude him stricken with lunacy, and I became seriously anxious
+about getting him home. While I was pondering upon what was best to be
+done, Jupiter's voice was again heard.
+
+"Mos' feerd for to ventur' 'pon dis limb berry far--'tis dead limb
+putty much all de way."
+
+"Did you say it was a _dead_ limb, Jupiter?" cried Legrand, in a
+quavering voice.
+
+"Yes, massa, him dead as de door-nail--done up for sartain--done
+departed dis here life."
+
+"What in the name of heaven shall I do?" asked Legrand, seemingly in
+the greatest distress.
+
+"Do!" said I, glad of an opportunity to interpose a word, "why, come
+home and go to bed. Come now!--that's a fine fellow. It's getting
+late, and, besides, you remember your promise."
+
+"Jupiter," cried he, without heeding me in the least, "do you hear
+me?"
+
+"Yes, Massa Will, hear you ebber so plain,"
+
+"Try the wood well, then, with your knife, and see if you think it
+_very_ rotten."
+
+"Him rotten, massa, sure nuff," replied the negro in a few moments,
+"but not so berry rotten as mought be, Mought ventur' out leetle way
+'pon de limb by myself, dat's true."
+
+"By yourself! What do you mean?"
+
+"Why, I mean de bug. 'Tis _berry_ hebby bug. S'pose I drop him down
+fust, and den de limb won't break wid just de weight of one nigger."
+
+"You infernal scoundrel!" cried Legrand, apparently much relieved,
+"what do you mean by telling me such nonsense as that? As sure as you
+drop that beetle, I'll break your neck. Look here, Jupiter, do you
+hear me?"
+
+"Yes, massa, needn' hollo at poor nigger dat style."
+
+"Well!--now listen! if you will venture out on the limb as far as you
+think safe, and not let go the beetle, I'll make you a present of a
+silver dollar as soon as you get down."
+
+"I'm gwine, Massa Will--deed I is," replied the negro very
+promptly--"mos' out to de eend now."
+
+"_Out to the end_!" here fairly screamed Legrand; "do you say you are
+out to the end of that limb?"
+
+"Soon be to de eend, massa--o-o-o-o-oh! Lor-gol-a-marcy! what _is_ dis
+here 'pon de tree?"
+
+"Well," cried Legrand, highly delighted, "what is it?"
+
+"Why, 'taint noffin' but a skull--somebody bin lef' him head up de
+tree, and de crows done gobble ebery bit ob de meat off."
+
+"A skull, you say! Very well; how is it fastened to the limb? What
+holds it on?"
+
+"Shure 'nuff, massa; mus' look. Why, dis berry curous sarcumstance,
+'pon my word--dare's a great big nail in do skull, what fastens ob it
+on to de tree."
+
+"Well now, Jupiter, do exactly as I tell you--do you hear?"
+
+"Yes, massa."
+
+"Pay attention, then!--find the left eye of the skull."
+
+"Hum! hoo! dat's good! why, dare ain't no eye lef' at all."
+
+"Curse your stupidity! do you know your right hand from your left?"
+
+"Yes, I nose dat--nose all 'bout dat--'tis my lef' hand what I chops
+de wood wid."
+
+"To be sure! you are left-handed; and your left eye is on the same
+side as your left hand. Now, I suppose you can find the left eye of
+the skull, or the place where the left eye has been. Have you found
+it?"
+
+Here was a long pause. At length the negro asked:
+
+"Is de lef' eye ob de skull 'pon de same side as de lef' hand ob de
+skull, too?--'cause the skull ain't got not a bit ob a hand at
+all--nebber mind! I got de lef' eye now--here de lef' eye! what mus'
+do wid it?"
+
+"Let the beetle drop through it, as far as the string will reach, but
+be careful and not let go your hold of the string."
+
+"All dat done, Massa Will; mighty easy ting for to put de bug fru de
+hole; look out for him dar below!"
+
+During this colloquy no portion of Jupiter's person could be seen; but
+the beetle, which he had suffered to descend, was now visible at the
+end of the string, and glistened, like a globe of burnished gold, in
+the last rays of the setting sun, some of which still faintly
+illumined the eminence upon which we stood. The _scarabaeus_ hung
+quite clear of any branches, and if allowed to fall, would have fallen
+at our feet. Legrand immediately took the scythe, and cleared with it
+a circular space, three or four yards in diameter, just beneath the
+insect, and, having accomplished this, ordered Jupiter to let go the
+string and come down from the tree.
+
+Driving a peg, with great nicety, into the ground, at the precise spot
+where the beetle fell, my friend now produced from his pocket a
+tape-measure. Fastening one end of this at that point of the trunk of
+the tree which was nearest the peg, he unrolled it till it reached the
+peg, and thence farther unrolled it, in the direction already
+established by the two points of the tree and the peg, for the
+distance of fifty feet--Jupiter clearing away the brambles with the
+scythe. At the spot thus attained a second peg was driven, and about
+this, as a centre, a rude circle, about four feet in diameter,
+described. Taking now a spade himself, and giving one to Jupiter and
+one to me, Legrand begged us to set about digging as quickly as
+possible.
+
+To speak the truth, I had no especial relish for such amusement at any
+time, and, at that particular moment, would most willingly have
+declined it; for the night was coming on, and I felt much fatigued
+with the exercise already taken; but I saw no mode of escape, and was
+fearful of disturbing my poor friend's equanimity by a refusal. Could
+I have depended, indeed, upon Jupiter's aid, I would have had no
+hesitation in attempting to get the lunatic home by force; but I was
+too well assured of the old negro's disposition, to hope that he would
+assist me, under any circumstances, in a personal contest with his
+master. I made no doubt that the latter had been infected with some of
+the innumerable Southern superstitions about money buried, and that
+his fantasy had received confirmation by the finding of the
+_scarabaeus_, or, perhaps, by Jupiter's obstinacy in maintaining it to
+be "a bug of real gold." A mind disposed to lunacy would readily be
+led away by such suggestions--especially if chiming in with favorite
+preconceived ideas--and then I called to mind the poor fellow's speech
+about the beetle's being "the index of his fortune." Upon the whole, I
+was sadly vexed and puzzled, but, at length, I concluded to make a
+virtue of necessity--to dig with a good will, and thus the sooner to
+convince the visionary, by ocular demonstration, of the fallacy of the
+opinions he entertained.
+
+The lanterns having been lit, we all fell to work with a zeal worthy a
+more rational cause; and, as the glare fell upon our persons and
+implements, I could not help thinking how picturesque a group we
+composed, and how strange and suspicious our labors must have appeared
+to any interloper who, by chance, might have stumbled upon our
+whereabouts.
+
+We dug very steadily for two hours. Little was said; and our chief
+embarrassment lay in the yelping of the dog, who took exceeding
+interest in our proceedings. He at length became so obstreperous, that
+we grew fearful of his giving the alarm to some stragglers in the
+vicinity---or, rather, this was the apprehension of Legrand; for
+myself, I should have rejoiced at any interruption which might have
+enabled me to get the wanderer home. The noise was, at length, very
+effectually silenced by Jupiter, who, getting out of the hole with a
+dogged air of deliberation, tied the brute's mouth up with one of his
+suspenders, and then returned, with a grave chuckle, to his task.
+
+When the time mentioned had expired, we had reached a depth of five
+feet, and yet no signs of any treasure became manifest. A general
+pause ensued, and I began to hope that the farce was at an end.
+Legrand, however, although evidently much disconcerted, wiped his brow
+thoughtfully and recommenced. We had excavated the entire circle of
+four feet diameter, and now we slightly enlarged the limit, and went
+to the farther depth of two feet. Still nothing appeared. The gold
+seeker, whom I sincerely pitied, at length clambered from the pit,
+with the bitterest disappointment imprinted upon every feature, and
+proceeded, slowly and reluctantly, to put on his coat, which he had
+thrown off at the beginning of his labor. In the meantime I made no
+remark. Jupiter, at a signal from his master, began to gather up his
+tools. This done, and the dog having been unmuzzled, we turned in
+profound silence towards home.
+
+We had taken, perhaps, a dozen steps in this direction, when, with a
+loud oath, Legrand strode up to Jupiter and seized him by the collar.
+The astonished negro opened his eyes and mouth to the fullest extent,
+let fall the spades, and fell upon his knees.
+
+"You scoundrel," said Legrand, hissing out the syllables from between
+his clenched teeth, "you infernal black villain! speak, I tell you!
+answer me this instant, without prevarication! which--which is your
+left eye?"
+
+"Oh, my golly, Massa Will! ain't dis here my lef' eye for sartain?"
+roared the terrified Jupiter, placing his hand upon his _right_ organ
+of vision, and holding it there with a desperate pertinacity, as if in
+immediate dread of his master's attempt at a gouge.
+
+"I thought so! I knew it! hurrah!" vociferated Legrand, letting the
+negro go, and executing a series of curvets and caracoles[13], much to
+the astonishment of his valet, who, arising from his knees, looked
+mutely from his master to myself, and then from myself to his master.
+
+"Come! we must go back," said the latter; "the game's not up yet;" and
+he again led the way to the tulip-tree.
+
+"Jupiter," said he, when he reached its foot, "come here! was the
+skull nailed to the limb with the face outwards, or with the face to
+the limb?"
+
+"De face was out, massa, so dat de crows could get at de eyes good,
+widout any trouble."
+
+"Well, then, was it this eye or that through which you dropped the
+beetle?"--here Legrand touched each of Jupiter's eyes.
+
+"'Twas dis eye, massa--de lef' eye--jis as you tell me," and here it
+was his right eye that the negro indicated.
+
+"That will do--we must try it again."
+
+Here my friend, about whose madness I now saw or fancied that I saw,
+certain indications of method, removed the peg which marked the spot
+where the beetle fell, to a spot about three inches to the westward of
+its former position, Taking now the tape-measure from the nearest
+point of the trunk to the peg, as before, and continuing the extension
+in a straight line to the distance of fifty feet, a spot was
+indicated, removed by several yards from the point at which we had
+been digging.
+
+Around the new position a circle, somewhat larger than in the former
+instance, was now described, and we again set to work with the spades,
+I was dreadfully weary, but scarcely understanding what had occasioned
+the change in my thoughts, I felt no longer any great aversion from
+the labor imposed, I had become most unaccountably interested--nay,
+even excited. Perhaps there was something, amid all the extravagant
+demeanor of Legrand--some air of forethought, or of deliberation,
+which impressed me. I dug eagerly, and now and then caught myself
+actually looking, with something that very much resembled expectation,
+for the fancied treasure, the vision of which had demented my
+unfortunate companion. At a period when such vagaries of thought most
+fully possessed me, and when we had been at work perhaps an hour and a
+half, we were again interrupted by the violent howlings of the dog.
+His uneasiness in the first instance had been, evidently, but the
+result of playfulness or caprice, but he now assumed a bitter and
+serious tone. Upon Jupiter's again attempting to muzzle him, he made
+furious resistance, and, leaping into the hole, tore up the mould
+frantically with his claws. In a few seconds he had uncovered a mass
+of human bones, forming two complete skeletons, intermingled with
+several buttons of metal, and what appeared to be the dust of decayed
+woolen. One or two strokes of a spade upturned the blade of a large
+Spanish knife, and, as we dug farther, three or four pieces of gold
+and silver coin came to light.
+
+At sight of these the joy of Jupiter could scarcely be restrained, but
+the countenance of his master wore an air of extreme disappointment.
+He urged us, however, to continue our exertions, and the words were
+hardly uttered when I stumbled and fell forward, having caught the toe
+of my boot in a large ring of iron that lay half buried in the loose
+earth.
+
+We now worked in earnest, and never did I pass ten minutes of more
+intense excitement. During this interval we had fairly unearthed an
+oblong chest of wood which, from its perfect preservation and
+wonderful hardness, had plainly been subjected to some mineralizing
+process--perhaps that of the bichloride of mercury. This box was three
+feet and a half long, three feet broad, and two and a half feet deep.
+It was firmly secured by bands of wrought iron, riveted, and forming a
+kind of trellis-work over the whole. On each side of the chest, near
+the top, were three rings of iron--six in all--by means of which a
+firm hold could be obtained by six persons. Our utmost united
+endeavors served only to disturb the coffer very slightly in its bed.
+We at once saw the impossibility of removing so great a weight.
+Luckily, the sole fastenings of the lid consisted of two sliding
+bolts. These we drew back--trembling and panting with anxiety. In an
+instant, a treasure of incalculable value lay gleaming before us. As
+the rays of the lanterns fell within the pit, there flashed upwards a
+glow and a glare, from a confused heap of gold and of jewels, that
+absolutely dazzled our eyes.
+
+I shall not pretend to describe the feelings with which I gazed.
+Amazement was, of course, predominant. Legrand appeared exhausted with
+excitement, and spoke very few words. Jupiter's countenance wore, for
+some minutes, as deadly a pallor as it is possible, in the nature of
+things, for any negro's visage to assume. He seemed
+stupefied---thunder-stricken. Presently he fell upon his knees in the
+pit, and, burying his naked arms up to the elbows in gold, let them
+there remain, as if enjoying the luxury of a bath. At length, with a
+deep sigh, he exclaimed, as if in a soliloquy:
+
+"And dis all cum ob de goole-bug! de putty goole-bug! de poor little
+goole-bug, what I 'boosed in dat sabage kind ob style! Ain't you
+'shamed ofa yourself, nigger?--answer me dat!"
+
+It became necessary, at last, that I should arouse both master and
+valet to the expediency of removing the treasure. It was growing late,
+and it behooved us to make exertion, that we might get everything
+housed before daylight. It was difficult to say what should be done,
+and much time was spent in deliberation--so confused were the ideas of
+all. We, finally, lightened the box by removing two-thirds of its
+contents, when we were enabled, with some trouble, to raise it from
+the hole. The articles taken out were deposited among the brambles,
+and the dog left to guard them, with strict orders from Jupiter
+neither, upon any pretence, to stir from the spot, nor to open his
+mouth until our return. We then hurriedly made for home with the
+chest, reaching the hut in safety, but after excessive toil, at one
+o'clock in the morning. Worn out as we were, it was not in human
+nature to do more just now. We rested until two, and had supper,
+starting for the hills immediately afterwards, armed with three stout
+sacks, which, by good luck, were upon the premises. A little before
+four we arrived at the pit, divided the remainder of the booty as
+equally as might be among us, and, leaving the holes unfilled, again
+set out for the hut, at which, for the second time, we deposited our
+golden burdens, just as the first streaks of dawn gleamed from over
+the treetops in the east.
+
+We were now thoroughly broken down; but the intense excitement of the
+time denied us repose. After an unquiet slumber of some three or four
+hours' duration, we arose, as if by preconcert, to make examination of
+our treasure.
+
+The chest had been full to the brim, and we spent the whole day, and
+the greater part of the next night, in a scrutiny of its contents.
+There had been nothing like order or arrangement. Everything had been
+heaped in promiscuously.
+
+Having assorted all with care, we found ourselves possessed of even
+vaster wealth than we had at first supposed. In coin there was rather
+more than four hundred and fifty thousand dollars--estimating the
+value of the pieces, as accurately as we could, by the tables of the
+period. There was not a particle of silver. All was gold of antique
+date and of great variety--French, Spanish, and German money, with a
+few English guineas, and some counters[14] of which we had never seen
+specimens before. There were several very large and heavy coins, so
+worn that we could make nothing of their inscriptions. There was no
+American money. The value of the jewels we found more difficulty in
+estimating. There were diamonds--some of them exceedingly large and
+fine--a hundred and ten in all, and not one of them small; eighteen
+rubies of remarkable brilliancy; three hundred and ten emeralds, all
+very beautiful; and twenty-one sapphires, with an opal. These stones
+had all been broken from their settings and thrown loose in the chest.
+The settings themselves, which we picked out from among the other
+gold, appeared to have been beaten up with hammers, as if to prevent
+indentification. Besides all this, there was a vast quantity of solid
+gold ornaments--nearly two hundred massive finger and ear rings; rich
+chains--thirty of these, if I remember; eighty-three very large and
+heavy crucifixes; five gold censers of great value; a prodigious
+golden punch-bowl, ornamented with richly chased vine-leaves and
+Bacchanalian[15] figures; with two sword handles exquisitely embossed,
+and many other smaller articles which I cannot recollect. The weight
+of these valuables exceeded three hundred and fifty pounds
+avoirdupois; and in this estimate I have not included one hundred and
+ninety-seven superb gold watches, three of the number being worth each
+five hundred dollars, if one. Many of them were very old, and as
+time-keepers valueless, the works having suffered, more or less, from
+corrosion; but all were richly jewelled and in cases of great worth.
+We estimated the entire contents of the chest, that night, at a
+million and a half of dollars; and, upon the subsequent disposal of
+the trinkets and jewels (a few being retained for our own use), it was
+found we had greatly undervalued the treasure.
+
+When, at length, we had concluded our examination, and the intense
+excitement of the time had in some measure subsided, Legrand, who saw
+that I was dying with impatience for a solution of this most
+extraordinary riddle, entered into a full detail of all the
+circumstances connected with it.
+
+"You remember," said he, "the night when I handed you the rough sketch
+I had made of the _scarabaeus_. You recollect, also, that I became
+quite vexed at you for insisting that my drawing resembled a
+death's-head. When you first made this assertion I thought you were
+jesting; but afterwards I called to mind the peculiar spots on the
+back of the insect, and admitted to myself that your remark had some,
+little foundation in fact. Still, the sneer at my graphic powers
+irritated me--for I am considered a good artist--and, therefore, when
+you handed me the scrap of parchment, I was about to crumple it up and
+throw it angrily into the fire."
+
+"The scrap of paper, you mean," said I.
+
+"No; it had much of the appearance of paper, and at first I supposed
+it to be such, but when I came to draw upon it, I discovered it at
+once to be a piece of very thin parchment. It was quite dirty, you
+remember. Well, as I was in the very act of crumpling it up, my glance
+fell upon the sketch at which you had been looking, and you may
+imagine my astonishment when I perceived, in fact, the figure of a
+death's-head just where, it seemed to me, I had made the drawing of
+the beetle. For a moment I was too much amazed to think with accuracy.
+I knew that my design was very different in detail from this, although
+there was a certain similarity in general outline. Presently I took a
+candle, and seating myself at the other end of the room, proceeded to
+scrutinize the parchment more closely. Upon turning it over, I saw my
+own sketch upon, the reverse, just as I had made it. My first idea,
+now, was mere surprise at the really remarkable similarity of
+outline--at the singular coincidence involved in the fact that,
+unknown to me, there should have been a skull upon the other side of
+the parchment, immediately beneath my figure of the _scarabaeus_, and
+that this skull, not only in outline, but in size, should so closely
+resemble my drawing. I say the singularity of this coincidence
+absolutely stupefied me for a time. This is the usual effect of such
+coincidences. The mind struggles to establish a connection--a sequence
+of cause and effect--and being unable to do so, suffers a species of
+temporary paralysis. But when I recovered from this stupor, there
+dawned upon me gradually a conviction which startled me even far more
+than the coincidence. I began distinctly, positively, to remember that
+there had been _no_ drawing upon the parchment when I made my sketch
+of the _scarabaeus_. I became perfectly certain of this; for I
+recollected turning up first one side and then the other, in search of
+the cleanest spot. Had the skull been then there, of course, I could
+not have failed to notice it. Here was indeed a mystery which I felt
+it impossible to explain; but, even at that early moment, there seemed
+to glimmer, faintly, within the most remote and secret chambers of my
+intellect, a glowworm-like conception of that truth which last night's
+adventure brought to so magnificent a demonstration. I arose at once,
+and putting the parchment securely away, dismissed all further
+reflection until I should be alone.
+
+"When you had gone, and when Jupiter was fast asleep, I betook myself
+to a more methodical investigation of the affair. In the first place I
+considered the manner in which the parchment had come into my
+possession. The spot where we discovered the _scarabaeus_ was on the
+coast of the mainland, about a mile eastward of the island, and but a
+short distance above high water mark. Upon my taking hold of it, it
+gave me a sharp bite, which caused me to let it drop. Jupiter, with
+his accustomed caution, before seizing the insect, which had flown
+towards him, looked about him for a leaf, or something of that nature,
+by which to take hold of it. It was at this moment that his eyes, and
+mine also, fell upon the scrap of parchment, which I then supposed to
+be paper. It was lying half buried in the sand, a corner sticking up.
+Near the spot where we found it, I observed the remnants of the hull
+of what appeared to have been a ship's long-boat. The wreck seemed to
+have been there for a very great while; for the resemblance to boat
+timbers could scarcely be traced.
+
+"Well, Jupiter picked up the parchment, wrapped the beetle in it, and
+gave it to me. Soon afterwards we turned to go home, and on the way
+met Lieutenant G----. I showed him the insect, and he begged me to let
+him take it to the fort. Upon my consenting, he thrust it forthwith
+into his waistcoat pocket, without the parchment in which it had been
+wrapped, and which I had continued to hold in my hand during his
+inspection. Perhaps he dreaded my changing my mind, and thought it
+best to make sure of the prize at once--you know how enthusiastic he
+is on all subjects connected with Natural History. At the same time,
+without being conscious of it, I must have deposited the parchment in
+my own pocket.
+
+"You remember that when I went to the table, for the purpose of making
+a sketch of the beetle, I found no paper where it was usually kept, I
+looked in the drawer, and found none there. I searched my pockets,
+hoping to find an old letter, when my hand fell upon the parchment. I
+thus detail the precise mode in which it came into my possession; for
+the circumstances impressed me with peculiar force.
+
+"No doubt you will think me fanciful, but I had already established a
+kind of _connection_. I had put together two links of a great chain.
+There was a boat lying upon a seacoast, and not far from the boat was
+a parchment--_not a paper_--with a skull depicted upon it. You will,
+of course, ask, 'Where is the connection?' I reply that the skull, or
+death's-head, is the well-known emblem of the pirate. The flag of the
+death's-head is hoisted in all engagements.
+
+"I have said that the scrap was parchment, and not paper. Parchment is
+durable--almost imperishable. Matters of little moment are rarely
+consigned to parchment, since, for the mere ordinary purposes of
+drawing or writing, it is not nearly so well adapted as paper. This
+reflection suggested some meaning--some relevancy--in the
+death's-head. I did not fail to observe, also, the _form_ of the
+parchment. Although one of its corners had been, by some accident,
+destroyed, it could be seen that the original form was oblong. It was
+just such a slip, indeed, as might have been chosen for a
+memorandum--for a record of something to be long remembered and
+carefully preserved."
+
+"But," I interposed, "you say that the skull was _not_ upon the
+parchment when you made the drawing of the beetle. How, then, do you
+trace any connection between the boat and the skull--since this
+latter, according to your own admission, must have been designed (God
+only knows how or by whom) at some period subsequent to your sketching
+the _scarabaeus_?"
+
+"Ah, hereupon turns the whole mystery; although the secret, at this
+point, I had comparatively little difficulty in solving. My steps were
+sure, and could afford but a single result. I reasoned, for example,
+thus: When I drew the _scarabaeus_, there was no skull apparent upon
+the parchment. When I had completed the drawing I gave it to you, and
+observed you narrowly until you returned it, _You_, therefore, did not
+design the skull, and no one else was present to do it. Then it was
+not done by human agency. And nevertheless it was done.
+
+"At this stage of my reflections I endeavored to remember, and _did_
+remember, with entire distinctness, every incident which occurred
+about the period in question. The weather was chilly (oh, rare and
+happy accident!), and a fire was blazing upon the hearth. I was heated
+with exercise, and sat near the table. You, however, had drawn a chair
+close to the chimney. Just as I placed the parchment in your hand, and
+as you were in the act of inspecting it, Wolf, the Newfoundland,
+entered, and leaped upon your shoulders. With, your left hand you
+caressed him and kept him off, while your right, holding the
+parchment, was permitted to fall listlessly between your knees, and in
+close proximity to the fire. At one moment I thought the blaze had
+caught it, and was about to caution you, but before I could speak you
+had withdrawn it, and were engaged in its examination. When I
+considered all these particulars, I doubted not for a moment that
+_heat_ had been the agent in bringing to light, upon the parchment,
+the skull which I saw designed upon it. You are well aware that
+chemical preparations exist, and have existed time out of mind, by
+means of which it is possible to write upon either paper or vellum, so
+that the characters shall become visible only when subjected to the
+action of fire. Zaffre[16], digested in _aqua regia_[17], and diluted
+with four times its weight of water, is sometimes employed; a green
+tint results. The regulus[18] of cobalt, dissolved in spirit of nitre,
+gives a red. These colors disappear at longer or shorter intervals
+after the material written upon cools, but again become apparent upon
+the re-application of heat.
+
+"I now scrutinized the death's-head with care. Its outer edges--the
+edges of the drawing nearest the edge of the vellum--were far more
+_distinct_ than the others. It was clear that the action of the
+caloric had been imperfect or unequal. I immediately kindled a fire,
+and subjected every portion of the parchment to a glowing heat. At
+first, the only effect was the strengthening of the faint lines in the
+skull; but, upon persevering in the experiment, there became visible,
+at the corner of the slip diagonally opposite to the spot in which the
+death's-head was delineated, the figure of what I at first supposed to
+be a goat. A closer scrutiny, however, satisfied me that it was
+intended for a kid."
+
+"Ha! ha!" said I; "to be sure I have no right to laugh at you--a
+million and a half of money is too serious a matter for mirth--but you
+are not about to establish a third link in your chain: you will not
+find any especial connection between your pirates and a goat; pirates,
+you know, have nothing to do with goats; they appertain to the farming
+interests."
+
+"But I have said that the figure was _not_ that of a goat."
+
+"Well, a kid, then--pretty much the same thing."
+
+"Pretty much, but not altogether," said Legrand.
+
+"You may have heard of one _Captain_ Kidd[19]. I at once looked on the
+figure of the animal as a kind of punning or hieroglyphical signature.
+I say signature because its position upon the vellum suggested this
+idea. The death's-head at the corner diagonally opposite had, in the
+same manner, the air of a stamp, or seal. But I was sorely put out by
+the absence of all else--of the body to my imagined instrument--of the
+text for my context."
+
+"I presume you expected to find a letter between the stamp and the
+signature."
+
+"Something of the kind. The fact is, I felt irresistibly impressed
+with a presentiment of some vast good fortune impending. I can
+scarcely say why. Perhaps, after all, it was rather a desire than an
+actual belief; but do you know that Jupiter's silly words, about the
+bug being of solid gold, had a remarkable effect upon my fancy? And
+then the series of accidents and coincidences--these were so _very_
+extraordinary. Do you observe how mere an accident it was that these
+events should have occurred upon the _sole_ day of all the year in
+which it has been, or may be, sufficiently cool for fire, and that
+without the fire, or without the intervention of the dog at the
+precise moment in which he appeared, I should, never have become aware
+of the death's-head, and so never the possessor of the treasure?"
+
+"But proceed--I am all impatience."
+
+"Well; you have heard, of course, the many stories current--the
+thousand vague rumors afloat about money buried, somewhere, upon the
+Atlantic coast, by Kidd and his associates. These rumors must have had
+some foundation in fact. And that the rumors have existed so long and
+so continuously could have resulted, it appeared to me, only from the
+circumstance of the buried treasure still _remaining_ entombed. Had
+Kidd concealed his plunder for a time, and afterwards reclaimed it,
+the rumors would scarcely have reached us in their present unvarying
+form. You will observe that the stories told are all about
+money-seekers, not about money-finders. Had the pirate recovered his
+money, there the affair would have dropped. It seemed to me that some
+accident--say the loss of a memorandum indicating its locality--had
+deprived him of the means of recovering it, and that this accident had
+become known to his followers who otherwise might never have heard
+that treasure had been concealed at all, and who, busying themselves
+in vain, because unguided attempts to regain it had given first birth,
+and then universal currency, to the reports which are now so common.
+Have you ever heard of any important treasure being unearthed along
+the coast?"
+
+"Never."
+
+"But that Kidd's accumulations were immense is well known. I took it
+for granted, therefore, that the earth still held them; and you will
+scarcely be surprised when I tell you that I felt a hope, nearly
+amounting to certainty, that the parchment so strangely found involved
+a lost record of the place of deposit."
+
+"But how did you proceed?"
+
+"I held the vellum again to the fire, after increasing the heat; but
+nothing appeared. I now thought it possible that the coating of dirt
+might have something to do with the failure; so I carefully rinsed the
+parchment by pouring warm water over it, and, having done this, I
+placed it in a tin pan, with the skull downwards, and put the pan upon
+a furnace of lighted charcoal. In a few minutes, the pan having become
+thoroughly heated, I removed the slip, and to my inexpressible joy,
+found it spotted, in several places, with what appeared to be figures
+arranged in lines. Again I placed it in the pan, and suffered it to
+remain another minute. Upon taking it off, the whole was just as you
+see it now."
+
+Here Legrand, having reheated the parchment, submitted it to my
+inspection, The following characters were rudely traced, in a red tint
+between the death's-head and the goat:
+
+     "53‡‡†305))6*;4826)4‡.);806*;48†8
+     ¶60))85;1‡(;:‡*8†83(88)5*†;46(;88*96
+     ?;8)*‡(;485);5*†2:*‡(;4956*2(5*--4)8
+     ¶8*;4069285);)6†8)4‡‡;1(‡9;48081;8:8‡
+     1;48†85;4)485†528806*81(‡9;48;(88;4
+     (‡?34;48)4‡;161;:188;‡?;"
+
+"But," said I, returning him the slip, "I am as much in the dark as
+ever. Were all the jewels of Golconda[20] awaiting me on my solution
+of this enigma, I am quite sure that I should be unable to earn them."
+
+"And yet," said Legrand, "the solution is by no means so difficult as
+you might be led to imagine from the first hasty inspection of the
+characters. These characters, as any one might readily guess, form a
+cipher, that is to say, they convey a meaning; but then, from what is
+known of Kidd, I could not suppose him capable of constructing any of
+the more abstruse cryptographs[21]. I made up my mind, at once, that
+this was of a simple species--such, however, as would appear, to the
+crude intellect of the sailor, absolutely insoluble without the key."
+
+"And you really solved it?"
+
+"Readily; I have solved others of an abstruseness ten thousand times
+greater. Circumstances, and a certain bias of mind, have led me to
+take interest in such riddles, and it may well be doubted whether
+human ingenuity can construct an enigma of the kind which human
+ingenuity may not, by proper application, resolve. In fact, having
+once established connected and legible characters, I scarcely gave a
+thought to the mere difficulty of developing their import.
+
+"In the present case--indeed, in all cases of secret writing--the
+first question regards the _language_ of the cipher; for the
+principles of solution, so far especially as the more simple ciphers
+are concerned, depend upon, and are varied by, the genius of the
+particular idiom. In general, there is no alternative but experiment
+(directed by probabilities) of every tongue known to him who attempts
+the solution, until the true one be attained. But, with the cipher now
+before us, all difficulty was removed by the signature. The pun upon
+the word 'Kidd' is appreciable in no other language than the English.
+But for this consideration I should have begun my attempts with the
+Spanish and French, as the tongues in which a secret of this kind
+would most naturally have been written by a pirate of the Spanish
+main[22]. As it was, I assume the cryptograph to be English.
+
+"You observe there are no divisions between the words. Had there been
+divisions, the task would have been comparatively easy. In such case I
+would have commenced with a collation and analysis of the shorter
+words; and had a word of a single letter occurred, as is most likely
+(_a_ or _I_, for example), I should have considered the solution as
+assured. But there being no divisions, my first step was to ascertain
+the predominant letters, as well as the least frequent,
+
+"Counting all, I constructed a table thus;--
+
+     Of the character 8 there are 33.
+                      ;     "     26.
+                      4     "     19.
+                     ‡)     "     16.
+                      *     "     13.
+                      5     "     12.
+                      6     "     11.
+                     †1     "      8.
+                      0     "      6.
+                     92     "      5.
+                     :3     "      4.
+                      ?     "      3.
+                      ¶     "      2.
+                    --.     "      1.
+
+"Now, in English, the letter which most frequently occurs is _e_.
+Afterwards, the succession runs thus: _a o i d h n r s t u y c f g l m
+w b k p q x z_. E predominates, however, so remarkably that an
+individual sentence of any length is rarely seen in which it is not
+the prevailing character.
+
+"Here, then, we have, in the very beginning, the groundwork for
+something more than a mere guess. The general use which may be made of
+the table is obvious--but in this particular cipher we shall only very
+partially require its aid. As our predominant character is 8, we will
+commence by assuming it as the _e_ of the natural alphabet. To verify
+the supposition, let us observe if the 8 be seen often in couples--for
+_e_ is doubled with great frequency in English--in such words, for
+example, as 'meet,' 'fleet,' 'speed,' 'seen,' 'been,' 'agree,' etc. In
+the present instance we see it doubled no less than five times,
+although the cryptograph is brief.
+
+"Let us assume 8, then, as _e_. Now of all _words_ in the language,
+'the' is most usual; let us see, therefore, whether there are not
+repetitions of any three characters, in the same order of collocation,
+the last of them being 8. If we discover repetitions of such letters,
+so arranged, they will most probably represent the word 'the.' Upon
+inspection, we find no less than seven such arrangements, the
+characters being ;48. We may, therefore, assume that the semicolon
+represents _t_, that 4 represents _h_, and that 8 represents _e_--the
+last being now well confirmed. Thus a great step has been taken.
+
+"But, having established a single word, we are enabled to establish a
+vastly important point; that is to say, several commencements and
+terminations of other words. Let us refer, for example, to the last
+instance but one, in which the combination ;48 occurs--not far from
+the end of the cipher. We know that the semicolon immediately ensuing
+is the commencement of a word, and, of the six characters succeeding
+this 'the,' we are cognizant of no less than five. Let us set these
+characters down, thus, by the letters we know them to represent,
+leaving a space for the unknown--
+
+     t eeth.
+
+"Here we are enabled, at once, to discard the '_th_,' as forming no
+portion of the word commencing with the first _t_; since by experiment
+of the entire alphabet for a letter adapted to the vacancy, we
+perceive that no word can be formed of which this _th_ can be a part.
+We are thus narrowed into
+
+     t ee,
+
+and, going through the alphabet, if necessary, as before, we arrive at
+the word 'tree,' as the sole possible reading. We thus gain another
+letter, _r_, represented by (, with the words 'the tree" in
+juxtaposition.
+
+"Looking beyond these words, for a short distance, we again see the
+combination ;48, and employ it by way of _termination_ to what
+immediately precedes. We have thus this arrangement:
+
+     the tree ;4 (‡?34 the,
+
+or, substituting the natural letters, whereknown, it reads thus:
+
+     the tree thr‡?3h the.
+
+"Now, if, in place of the unknown characters, we leave blank spaces,
+or substitute dots, we read thus:
+
+     the tree thr...h the,
+
+when the word '_through_' makes itself evident at once. But the
+discovery gives us three new letters, _o, u_, and _g_, represented by
+‡ ? and 3.
+
+"Looking now, narrowly, through the cipher for combinations of known,
+characters, we find, not very far from the beginning, this
+arrangement.
+
+     83(88, or, egree,
+
+which, plainly, is the conclusion of the word 'degree' and gives us
+another letter, _d_, represented by †.
+
+"Four letters beyond the word 'degree,' we perceive the combination.
+
+     ;46(;88*.
+
+"Translating the known characters, and representing the unknown by
+dots, as before, we read thus:
+
+     th.rtee,
+
+an arrangement immediately suggestive of the word 'thirteen,' and
+again furnishing us with two new characters, _i_, and _n_, represented
+by 6 and *.
+
+"Referring, now, to the beginning of the cryptograph, we find the
+combination,
+
+     53 ‡‡†.
+
+"Translating, as before, we obtain
+
+     .good,
+
+which assures us that the first letter is _A_, and that the first two
+words are 'A good.'
+
+"To avoid confusion, it is now time that we arrange our key, as far as
+discovered, in a tabular form. It will stand thus:
+
+     5 represents a
+     †      "     d
+     8      "     e
+     3      "     g
+     4      "     h
+     6      "     i
+     *      "     n
+     ‡      "     o
+     (      "     r
+     ;      "     t
+
+"We have, therefore, no less than ten of the most important letters
+represented, and it will be unnecessary to proceed with the details of
+the solution. I have said enough to convince you that ciphers of this
+nature are readily soluble, and to give you some insight into the
+rationale[23] of their development. But be assured that the specimen
+before us appertains to the very simplest species of cryptograph. It
+now only remains to give you the full translation of the characters
+upon the parchment, as unriddled. Here it is:
+
+     "'_A good glass in the bishop's hostel in the devil's seat
+     twenty-one degrees and thirteen minutes northeast and by
+     north main branch seventh limb east side shoot from the left
+     eye of the death's-head a bee-line from the tree through the
+     shot fifty feet out_.'"
+
+"But," said I, "the enigma seems still in as bad a condition as ever.
+How is it possible to extort a meaning from all this jargon about
+'devil's seats,' death's-heads,' and 'bishop's hotels'?"
+
+"I confess," replied Legrand, "that the matter still wears a serious
+aspect, when regarded with a casual glance. My first endeavor was to
+divide the sentence into the natural divisions intended by the
+cryptographist."
+
+"You mean to punctuate it?"
+
+"Something of that kind."
+
+"But how was it possible to effect this?"
+
+"I reflected that it had been a _point_ with the writer to run his
+words together without divisions, so as to increase the difficulty of
+solution. Now, a not over acute man, in pursuing such, an object,
+would be nearly certain to overdo the matter. When, in the course of
+his composition, he arrived at a break in his subject which would
+naturally require a pause, or a point, he would be exceedingly apt to
+run his characters, at this place, more than usually close together.
+If you will observe the Ms. in the present instance, you will easily
+detect five such cases of unusual crowding. Acting on this hint, I
+made the division thus:
+
+     "'_A good glass in the bishop's hostel in the devil's
+     seat--twenty-one degrees and thirteen minutes--northeast and
+     by north--main branch seventh limb east side--shoot from the
+     left eye of the death's-head--a bee-line from the tree
+     through the shot fifty feet out_.'"
+
+"Even this division," said I, "leaves me still in the dark."
+
+"It left me also in the dark," replied Legrand, "for a few days,
+during which I made diligent inquiry, in the neighborhood of
+Sullivan's Island, for any building, which went by the name of the
+'Bishop's Hotel'--for of course I dropped the obsolete word 'hostel.'
+Gaining no information on the subject, I was on the point of extending
+my sphere of search, and proceeding in a more systematic manner, when,
+one morning, it entered into my head, quite suddenly, that this
+'Bishop's Hostel' might have some reference to an old family, of the
+name of Bessop, which, time out of mind, had held possession of an
+ancient manor-house, about four miles to the northward of the island.
+I accordingly went over to the plantation, and reinstituted my
+inquiries among the older negroes of the place. At length one of the
+most aged of the women said that she had heard of such a place as
+_Bessop's Castle_ and thought that she could guide me to it, but that
+it was not a castle, nor tavern, but a high rock.
+
+"I offered to pay her well for her trouble, and, after some demur, she
+consented to accompany me to the spot. We found it without much
+difficulty, when, dismissing her, I proceeded to examine the place.
+The 'castle' consisted of an irregular assemblage of cliffs and
+rocks--one of the latter being quite remarkable for its height as well
+as for its insulated and artificial appearance, I clambered to its
+apex, and then felt much at a loss as to what should be next done.
+
+"While I was buried in reflection, my eyes fell upon a narrow ledge in
+the eastern face of the rock, perhaps a yard below the summit upon
+which I stood. This ledge projected about eighteen inches, and was not
+more than a foot wide, while a niche in the cliff just above it gave
+it a rude resemblance to one of the hollow-backed chairs used by our
+ancestors. I made no doubt that here was the 'devil's seat' alluded to
+in the Ms., and now I seemed to grasp the full secret of the riddle.
+
+"The 'good glass,' I knew, could have reference to nothing but a
+telescope; for the word 'glass' is rarely employed in any other sense
+by seamen. Now here, I at once saw, was a telescope to be used, and a
+definite point of view, _admitting no variation_, from which to use
+it. Nor did I hesitate to believe that the phrase 'twenty-one degrees
+and thirteen minutes' and 'northeast and by north,' were intended as
+directions for the levelling of the glass. Greatly excited by these
+discoveries, I hurried home, procured a telescope, and returned to the
+rock.
+
+"I let myself down to the ledge, and found that it was impossible to
+retain a seat upon it except in one particular position. This fact
+confirmed my preconceived idea. I proceeded to use the glass. Of
+course the 'twenty-one degrees and thirteen minutes' could allude to
+nothing but elevation above the visible horizon, since the horizontal
+direction was clearly indicated by the words 'northeast and by north.'
+This latter direction I at once established by means of a
+pocket-compass; then, pointing the glass as nearly at an angle of
+twenty-one degrees of elevation as I could do it by guess, I moved it
+cautiously up or down, until my attention was arrested by a circular
+rift or opening in the foliage of a large tree that over-topped its
+fellows in the distance. In the centre of this rift I perceived a
+white spot, but could not, at first, distinguish what it was.
+Adjusting the focus of the telescope, I again looked, and now made it
+out to be a human skull.
+
+"On this discovery I was so sanguine as to consider the enigma solved;
+for the phrase 'main branch, seventh limb, east side' could refer only
+to the position of the skull on the tree, while 'shoot from the left
+eye of the death's-head' admitted also of but one interpretation, in
+regard to a search for buried treasure. I perceived that the design
+was to drop a bullet from the left eye of the skull, and that a
+bee-line, or in other words, a straight line, drawn from the nearest
+point of the trunk through 'the shot' (or the spot where the bullet
+fell) and thence extended to a distance of fifty feet, would indicate
+a definite point--and beneath this point I thought it at least
+_possible_ that a deposit of value lay concealed."
+
+"All this." I said, "is exceedingly clear, and, although ingenious,
+still simple and explicit. When you left the Bishop's Hotel, what
+then?"
+
+"Why, having carefully taken the bearings of the tree, I turned
+homewards. The instant that I left the 'devil's seat,' however, the
+circular rift vanished; nor could I get a glimpse of it afterwards,
+turn, as I would. What seems to me the chief ingenuity in this whole
+business is the fact (for repeated experiment has convinced me it _is_
+a fact) that the circular opening in question is visible from no other
+attainable point of view than that afforded by the narrow ledge on the
+face of the rock.
+
+"In this expedition to the 'Bishop's Hotel' I had been attended by
+Jupiter, who had no doubt observed for some weeks past the abstraction
+of my demeanor, and took especial care not to leave me alone. But, on
+the next day, getting up very early, I contrived to give him the slip,
+and went into the hills in search of the tree. After much toil I found
+it. When I came home at night my valet proposed to give me a flogging.
+With the rest of the adventure I believe you are as well acquainted as
+myself."
+
+"I suppose," said I, "you missed the spot, in the first attempt at
+digging, through Jupiter's stupidity in letting the bug fall through
+the right instead of through the left eye of the skull."
+
+"Precisely. This mistake made a difference of about two inches and a
+half in the 'shot'--that is to say, in the position of the peg nearest
+the tree--and had the treasure been _beneath_ the 'shot,' the error
+would have been of little moment; but the 'shot,' together with the
+nearest point of the tree, were merely two points for the
+establishment of a line of direction; of course the error, however
+trivial in the beginning, increased as we proceeded with the line, and
+by the time we had gone fifty feet, threw us quite off the scent. But
+for my deep-seated convictions that treasure was here somewhere
+actually buried, we might have had all our labor in vain."
+
+"I presume the fancy of _the skull_--of letting fall a bullet through
+the skull's eye--was suggested to Kidd by the piratical flag. No doubt
+he felt a kind of poetical consistency in recovering his money through
+this ominous insignium[24]."
+
+"Perhaps so; still, I cannot help thinking that common-sense had quite
+as much to do with the matter as poetical consistency. To be visible
+from the Devil's seat, it was necessary that the object, if small,
+should be _white_: and there is nothing like your human skull for
+retaining and even increasing its whiteness under exposure to all
+vicissitudes of weather."
+
+"But your grandiloquence, and your conduct in swinging the beetle--how
+excessively odd! I was sure you were mad. And why did you insist on
+letting fall the bug, instead of a bullet, from the skull?"
+
+"Why, to be frank, I felt somewhat annoyed by your evident suspicions
+touching my sanity, and so resolved to punish you quietly, in my own
+way, by a little bit of sober mystification. For this reason I swung
+the beetle, and for this reason I let it fall from the tree. An
+observation of yours about its great weight suggested the latter
+idea."
+
+"Yes, I perceive; and now there is only one point which puzzles me.
+What are we to make of the skeletons found in the hole?"
+
+"That is a question I am no more able to answer than yourself. There
+seems, however, only one plausible way of accounting for them--and yet
+it is dreadful to believe in such atrocity as my suggestion would
+imply. It is clear that Kidd--if Kidd indeed secreted this treasure,
+which I doubt not--it is clear that he must have had assistance in the
+labor. But this labor concluded, he may have thought it expedient to
+remove all participants in his secret. Perhaps a couple of blows with
+a mattock were sufficient, while his coadjutors were busy in the pit;
+perhaps it required a dozen--who shall tell?"
+
+
+NOTES
+
+[1] _The Gold-Bug_ was first published in _The Dollar Magazine_ in
+1843. The story won a prize of one hundred dollars.
+
+[2] 100:3 All in the Wrong. The title of an amusing comedy by Arthur
+Murphy (1730-1805).
+
+[3] 100:4 Huguenot. French Protestants, many of whom settled in South
+Carolina.
+
+[4] 100: 18 Fort Moultrie. Erected in. 1776. Defended against the
+British by Colonel William Moultrie.
+
+[5] 101:23 Swammerdam. A famous Dutch naturalist (1637-1680).
+
+[6] 101:25 manumitted. Freed from slavery.
+
+[7] 102:27 scarabaeus. The Latin for beetle.
+
+[8] 103:15 antennae. The feelers.
+
+[9] 105:8 scarabaeus caput hominis. Man's-head beetle.
+
+[10] 107:20 noovers. Manoeuvres.
+
+[11] 109:10 brusquerie. Lack of cordiality.
+
+[12] 110:26 empressement. Demonstrativeness.
+
+[13] 123:20 curvets and caracoles. Leaping and prancing of a horse.
+
+[14] 128:9 counters. Various coins.
+
+[15] 128:28 Bacchanalian. Revelling like the worshippers of Bacchus,
+the god of wine.
+
+[16] 134:28 Zaffre. An oxide of cobalt. See dictionary.
+
+[17] 134:28 aqua regia. Royal water--a mixture of nitric and
+hydrochloric acids.
+
+[18] 134:30 regulus. An old chemical term.
+
+[19] 135: 28 Captain Kidd. A Scottish sea captain who lived in New
+York in the seventeenth century.
+
+[20] 138:19 Golconda. A town in India noted for its diamond market.
+
+[21] 138:28 cryptographs. Secret forms of writing.
+
+[22] 139:27 Spanish main. The northeastern portion of South America,
+the Caribbean Sea, and the coast of North America to the Carolinas
+were harassed by the Spaniards.
+
+[23] 144:6 rationale. Reasonable basis.
+
+[24] 149:19 insignium. Sign.
+
+
+COLLATERAL READINGS
+
+_The Murders in the Rue Morgue_, Edgar Allan Poe.
+
+_The Mystery of Marie Roget_, Edgar Allan Poe.
+
+_The Purloined Letter_, Edgar Allan Poe.
+
+_The Sign of the Four_, A. Conan Doyle.
+
+_A Scandal in Bohemia_, A. Conan Doyle.
+
+_The Chronicles of Addington_, B. Fletcher Robinson.
+
+_The Mystery of the Steel Disk_, Broughton Brandenburg.
+
+_The Rajah's Diamond_, R.L. Stevenson.
+
+_The Doctor, his Wife, and the Clock_, Anna Katharine Green.
+
+_The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes_, A. Conan Doyle.
+
+_The Hound of the Baskervilles_, A. Conan Doyle.
+
+_A Double-Barrelled Detective Story_, Mark Twain.
+
+_Gallegher_, Richard Harding Davis.
+
+
+
+THE BIRTHMARK[1]
+
+_By Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1862)_.
+
+
+In the latter part of the last century there lived a man of science,
+an eminent proficient in every branch of natural philosophy, who not
+long before our story opens had made experience of a spiritual
+affinity more attractive than any chemical one. He had left his
+laboratory to the care of an assistant, cleared his fine countenance
+from the furnace-smoke, washed the stain of acids from his fingers,
+and persuaded a beautiful woman to become his wife. In those days,
+when the comparatively recent discovery of electricity and other
+kindred mysteries of Nature seemed to open paths into the region of
+miracle, it was not unusual for the love of science to rival the love
+of woman in its depth and absorbing energy. The higher intellect, the
+imagination, the spirit, and even the heart might all find their
+congenial aliment in pursuits which, as some of their ardent votaries
+believed, would ascend from one step of powerful intelligence to
+another, until the philosopher should lay his hand on the secret of
+creative force and perhaps make new worlds for himself. We know not
+whether Aylmer possessed this degree of faith in man's ultimate
+control over nature. He had devoted himself, however, too unreservedly
+to scientific studies ever to be weakened from them by any second
+passion. His love for his young wife might prove the stronger of the
+two; but it could only be by intertwining itself with his love of
+science and uniting the strength of the latter to his own.
+
+Such a union accordingly took place, and was attended with truly
+remarkable consequences and a deeply impressive moral. One day, very
+soon after their marriage, Aylmer sat gazing at his wife with a
+trouble in his countenance that grew stronger until he spoke.
+
+"Georgiana," said he, "has it never occurred to you that the mark upon
+your cheek might be removed?"
+
+"No, indeed," said she, smiling; but, perceiving the seriousness of
+his manner, she blushed deeply. "To tell you the truth, it has been so
+often called a charm, that I was simple enough to imagine it might be
+so."
+
+"Ah, upon another face perhaps it might," replied her husband; "but
+never on yours. No, dearest Georgiana, you came so nearly perfect from
+the hand of Nature that this slightest possible defect, which we
+hesitate whether to term a defect or a beauty, shocks me, as being the
+visible mark of earthly imperfection."
+
+"Shocks you, my husband!" cried Georgiana, deeply hurt; at first
+reddening with momentary anger, but then bursting into tears. "Then
+why did you take me from my mother's side? You cannot love what shocks
+you!"
+
+To explain this conversation, it must be mentioned that in the centre
+of Georgiana's left cheek there was a singular mark, deeply
+interwoven, as it were, with the texture and substance of her face. In
+the usual state of her complexion--a healthy though delicate
+bloom--the mark wore a tint of deeper crimson, which imperfectly
+defined its shape amid the surrounding rosiness. When she blushed it
+gradually became more indistinct, and finally vanished amid the
+triumphant rush of blood that bathed the whole cheek with its
+brilliant glow. But if any shifting emotion caused her to turn pale,
+there was the mark again, a crimson stain upon the snow, in what
+Aylmer sometimes deemed an almost fearful distinctness. Its shape bore
+not a little similarity to the human hand, though of the smallest
+pygmy size. Georgiana's lovers were wont to say that some fairy at her
+birth-hour had laid her tiny hand upon the infant's cheek, and left
+this impress there in token of the magic endowments that were to give
+her such sway over all hearts. Many a desperate swain would have
+risked life for the privilege of pressing his lips to the mysterious
+hand. It must not be concealed, however, that the impression wrought
+by this fairy sign-manual varied exceedingly according to the
+difference of temperament in the beholders. Some fastidious
+persons--but they were exclusively of her own sex--affirmed that the
+bloody hand, as they chose to call it, quite destroyed the effect of
+Georgiana's beauty and rendered her countenance even hideous. But it
+would be as reasonable to say that one of those small blue stains
+which sometimes occur in the purest statuary marble would convert the
+Eve of Powers[2] to a monster. Masculine observers, if the birthmark
+did not heighten their admiration, contented themselves with wishing
+it away, that the world might possess one living specimen of ideal
+loveliness without the semblance of a flaw. After his marriage,--for
+he thought little or nothing of the matter before,--Aylmer discovered
+that this was the case with himself.
+
+Had she been less beautiful,--if Envy's self could have found aught
+else to sneer at,--he might have felt his affection heightened by the
+prettiness of this mimic hand, now vaguely portrayed, now lost, now
+stealing forth again and glimmering to and fro with every pulse of
+emotion that throbbed within her heart; but, seeing her otherwise so
+perfect, he found this one defect grow more and more intolerable with
+every moment of their united lives. It was the fatal flaw of humanity
+which Nature, in one shape or another, stamps ineffaceably on all her
+productions, either to imply that they are temporary and finite, or
+that their perfection must be wrought by toil and pain. The crimson
+hand expressed the ineludible gripe in which mortality clutches the
+highest and purest of earthly mould, degrading them into kindred with
+the lowest, and even with the very brutes, like whom their visible
+frames return to dust. In this manner, selecting it as the symbol of
+his wife's liability to sin, sorrow, decay, and death, Aylmer's sombre
+imagination was not long in rendering the birthmark a frightful
+object, causing him more trouble and horror than ever Georgiana's
+beauty, whether of soul or sense, had given him delight.
+
+At all the seasons which should have been their happiest he
+invariably, and without intending it, nay, in spite of a purpose to
+the contrary, reverted to this one disastrous topic. Trifling as it at
+first appeared, it so connected itself with innumerable trains of
+thought and modes of feeling that it became the central point of all.
+With the morning twilight Aylmer opened his eyes upon his wife's face
+and recognized the symbol of imperfection, and when they sat together
+at the evening hearth his eyes wandered stealthily to her cheek, and
+beheld, flickering with the blaze of the wood-fire, the spectral hand
+that wrote mortality where he would fain have worshipped, Georgiana
+soon learned to shudder at his gaze. It needed but a glance with the
+peculiar expression that his face often wore to change the roses of
+her cheek into a deathlike paleness, amid which the crimson hand was
+brought strongly out, like a bas-relief of ruby on the whitest marble.
+
+Late one night, when the lights were growing dim so as hardly to
+betray the stain on the poor wife's cheek, she herself, for the first
+time, voluntarily took up the subject.
+
+"Do you remember, my dear Aylmer," said she, with a feeble attempt at
+a smile, "have you any recollection of a dream last night about this
+odious hand?"
+
+"None! none whatever!" replied Aylmer, starting: but then he added, in
+a dry, cold tone, affected for the sake of concealing the real depth
+of his emotion, "I might well dream of it; for, before I fell asleep,
+it had taken a pretty firm hold of my fancy."
+
+"And you did dream of it?" continued Georgiana, hastily; for she
+dreaded lest a gush of tears should interrupt what she had to say. "A
+terrible dream! I wonder that you can forget it. Is it possible to
+forget this one expression?--'It is in her heart now; we must have it
+out!' Reflect, my husband; for by all means I would have you recall
+that dream."
+
+The mind is in a sad state when Sleep, the all-involving, cannot
+confine her spectres within the dim region of her sway, but suffers
+them to break forth, affrighting this actual life with secrets that
+perchance belong to a deeper one. Aylmer now remembered his dream. He
+had fancied himself with his servant Aminadab attempting an operation
+for the removal of the birthmark; but the deeper went the knife, the
+deeper sank the hand, until at length its tiny grasp appeared to have
+caught hold of Georgiana's heart; whence, however, her husband was
+inexorably resolved to cut or wrench it away.
+
+When the dream had shaped itself perfectly in his memory, Aylmer sat
+in his wife's presence with a guilty feeling. Truth often finds its
+way to the mind close muffled in robes of sleep, and then speaks with
+uncompromising directness of matters in regard to which we practice an
+unconscious self-deception during our waking moments. Until now he had
+not been aware of the tyrannizing influence acquired by one idea over
+his mind, and of the lengths which he might find in his heart to go
+for the sake of giving himself peace.
+
+"Aylmer," resumed Georgiana, solemnly, "I know not what may be the
+cost to both of us to rid me of this fatal birthmark. Perhaps its
+removal may cause cureless deformity; or it may be the stain goes as
+deep as life itself. Again; do we know that there is a possibility, on
+any terms, of unclasping the firm gripe of this little hand which was
+laid upon me before I came into the world?"
+
+"Dearest Georgiana, I have spent much thought upon the subject,"
+hastily interrupted Aylmer. "I am convinced of the perfect
+practicability of its removal."
+
+"If there be the remotest possibility of it," continued Georgiana,
+"let the attempt be made, at whatever risk. Danger is nothing to rue;
+for life, while this hateful mark makes me the object of your horror
+and disgust,--life is a burden which I would fling down with joy.
+Either remove this dreadful hand, or take my wretched life! You have
+deep science. All the world bears witness of it. You have achieved
+great wonders. Cannot you remove this little, little mark, which I
+cover with the tips of two small fingers? Is this beyond your power,
+for the sake of your own peace, and to save your poor wife from
+madness?"
+
+"Noblest, dearest, tenderest wife," cried Aylmer, rapturously, "doubt
+not my power. I have already given this matter the deepest
+thought,--thought which might almost have enlightened me to create a
+being less perfect than yourself. Georgiana, you have led me deeper
+than ever into the heart of science. I feel myself fully competent to
+render this dear cheek as faultless as its fellow; and then, most
+beloved, what will be my triumph when I shall have corrected what
+Nature left imperfect in her fairest work! Even Pygmalion[3], when his
+sculptured woman assumed life, felt not greater ecstasy than mine will
+be."
+
+"It is resolved, then," said Georgiana, faintly smiling. "And, Aylmer,
+spare me not, though you should find the birthmark take refuge in my
+heart at last."
+
+Her husband tenderly kissed her cheek,--her right cheek,--not that
+which bore the impress of the crimson hand.
+
+The next day Aylmer apprised his wife of a plan that he had formed
+whereby he might have opportunity for the intense thought and constant
+watchfulness which the proposed operation would require, while
+Georgiana, likewise, would enjoy the perfect repose essential to its
+success. They were to seclude themselves in the extensive apartments
+occupied by Aylmer as a laboratory, and where, during his toilsome
+youth, he had made discoveries in the elemental powers of nature that
+had roused the admiration of all the learned societies in Europe.
+Seated calmly in this laboratory, the pale philosopher had
+investigated the secrets of the highest cloud-region and of the
+profoundest mines; he had satisfied himself of the causes that kindled
+and kept alive the fires of the volcano; and had explained the mystery
+of fountains, and how it is that they gush forth, some so bright and
+pure, and others with such rich medicinal virtues, from the dark bosom
+of the earth. Here, too, at an earlier period, he had studied the
+wonders of the human frame, and attempted to fathom the very process
+by which Nature assimilates all her precious influences from earth and
+air, and from the spiritual world, to create and foster man, her
+masterpiece. The latter pursuit, however, Aylmer had long laid aside
+in unwilling recognition of the truth--against which all seekers
+sooner or later stumble--that our great creative Mother, while she
+amuses us with apparently working in the broadest sunshine, is yet
+severely careful to keep her own secrets, and, in spite of her
+pretended openness, shows us nothing but results. She permits us,
+indeed, to mar, but seldom to mend, and, like a jealous patentee, on
+no account to make. Now, however, Aylmer resumed these half-forgotten
+investigations; not, of course, with such hopes or wishes as first
+suggested them; but because they involved much physiological truth and
+lay in the path of his proposed scheme for the treatment of Georgiana.
+
+As he led her over the threshold of the laboratory Georgiana was cold
+and tremulous. Aylmer looked cheerfully into her face, with intent to
+reassure her, but was so startled with the intense glow of the
+birthmark upon the whiteness of her cheek that he could not restrain a
+strong convulsive shudder. His wife fainted.
+
+"Aminadab! Aminadab!" shouted Aylmer, stamping violently on the floor.
+
+Forthwith there issued from an inner apartment a man of low stature,
+but bulky frame, with shaggy hair hanging about his visage, which was
+grimed with the vapors of the furnace. This personage had been
+Aylmer's under-worker during his whole scientific career, and was
+admirably fitted for that office by his great mechanical readiness,
+and the skill with which, while incapable of comprehending a single
+principle, he executed all the details of his master's experiments.
+With his vast strength, his shaggy hair, his smoky aspect, and the
+indescribable earthiness that incrusted him, he seemed to represent
+man's physical nature; while Aylmer's slender figure, and pale,
+intellectual face, were no less apt a type of the spiritual element.
+
+"Throw open the door of the boudoir, Aminadab," said Aylmer, "and burn
+a pastil."
+
+"Yes, master," answered Aminadab, looking intently at the lifeless
+form of Georgiana; and then he muttered to himself, "If she were my
+wife, I'd never part with that birthmark."
+
+When Georgiana recovered consciousness she found herself breathing an
+atmosphere of penetrating fragrance, the gentle potency of which had
+recalled her from her deathlike faintness. The scene around her looked
+like enchantment. Aylmer had converted those smoky, dingy, sombre
+rooms, where he had spent his brightest years in recondite[4]
+pursuits, into a series of beautiful apartments not unfit to be the
+secluded abode of a lovely woman. The walls were hung with gorgeous
+curtains, which imparted the combination of grandeur and grace that no
+other species of adornment can achieve; and, as they fell from the
+ceiling to the floor, their rich and ponderous folds, concealing all
+angles and straight lines, appeared to shut in the scene from infinite
+space. For aught Georgiana knew, it might be a pavilion among the
+clouds. And Alymer, excluding the sunshine, which would have
+interfered with his chemical processes, had supplied its place with
+perfumed lamps, emitting flames of various hue, but all uniting in a
+soft, impurpled radiance. He now knelt by his wife's side, watching
+her earnestly, but without alarm; for he was confident in his science,
+and felt that he could draw a magic circle round her within which no
+evil might intrude.
+
+"Where am I? Ah, I remember," said Georgiana, faintly; and she placed
+her hand over her cheek to hide the terrible mark from her husband's
+eyes.
+
+"Fear not, dearest!" exclaimed he. "Do not shrink from me! Believe me,
+Georgiana, I even rejoice in this single imperfection, since it will
+be such a rapture to remove it."
+
+"O, spare me!" sadly replied his wife. "Pray do not look at it again.
+I never can forget that convulsive shudder."
+
+In order to soothe Georgiana, and, as it were, to release her mind
+from the burden of actual things, Aylmer now put in practice some of
+the light and playful secrets which science had taught him among its
+profounder lore. Airy figures, absolutely bodiless ideas, and forms of
+unsubstantial beauty came and danced before her, imprinting their
+momentary footsteps on beams of light. Though she had some indistinct
+idea of the method of these optical phenomena, still the illusion was
+almost perfect enough to warrant the belief that her husband possessed
+sway over the spiritual world. Then again, when she felt a wish to
+look forth from her seclusion, immediately, as if her thoughts were
+answered, the procession of external existence flitted across a
+screen. The scenery and the figures of actual life were perfectly
+represented, but with that bewitching yet indescribable difference
+which always makes a picture, an image, or a shadow so much more
+attractive than the original. When wearied of this, Aylmer bade her
+cast her eyes upon a vessel containing a quantity of earth. She did so
+with little interest at first; but was soon startled to perceive the
+germ of a plant shooting upward from the soil: Then came the slender
+stalk; the leaves gradually unfolded themselves; and amid them was a
+perfect and lovely flower.
+
+"It is magical!" cried Georgiana. "I dare not touch it."
+
+"Nay, pluck it," answered Aylmer,--"pluck it, and inhale its brief
+perfume while you may. The flower will wither in a few moments and
+leave nothing save its brown seed-vessels; but thence may be
+perpetuated a race as ephemeral as itself."
+
+But Georgiana had no sooner touched the flower than the whole plant
+suffered a blight, its leaves turning coal black as if by the agency
+of fire.
+
+"There was too powerful a stimulus," said Aylmer, thoughtfully.
+
+To make up for this abortive experiment, he proposed to take her
+portrait by a scientific process of his own invention. It was to be
+effected by rays of light striking upon a polished plate of metal.
+Georgiana assented; but, on looking at the result, was affrighted to
+find the features of the portrait blurred and indefinable; while the
+minute figure of a hand appeared where the cheek should have been.
+Alymer snatched the metallic plate and threw it into a jar of
+corrosive[5] acid.
+
+Soon, however, he forgot these mortifying failures. In the intervals
+of study and chemical experiment he came to her flushed and exhausted,
+but seemed invigorated by her presence, and spoke in glowing language
+of the resources of his art. He gave a history of the long dynasty of
+the alchemists, who spent so many ages in quest of the universal
+solvent by which the golden principle might be elicited from all
+things vile and base, Aylmer appeared to believe that, by the plainest
+scientific logic, it was altogether within the limits of possibility
+to discover this long-sought medium. "But," he added, "a philosopher
+who should go deep enough to acquire the power would attain too lofty
+a wisdom to stoop to the exercise of it." Not less singular were his
+opinions in regard to the elixir vitae[6]. He more than intimated that
+it was at his option to concoct a liquid that should prolong life for
+years, perhaps interminably; but that it would produce a discord in
+nature which all the world, and chiefly the quaffer of the immortal
+nostrum, would find cause to curse.
+
+"Aylmer, are you in earnest?" asked Georgiana, looking at him with
+amazement and fear. "It is terrible to possess such power, or even to
+dream of possessing it."
+
+"O, do not tremble, my love," said her husband. "I would not wrong
+either you or myself by working such inharmonious effects upon our
+lives; but I would have you consider how trifling, in comparison, is
+the skill requisite to remove this little hand."
+
+At the mention of the birthmark, Georgiana, as usual, shrank as if a
+red-hot iron had touched her cheek.
+
+Again Aylmer applied himself to his labors. She could hear his voice
+in the distant furnace-room giving directions to Aminadab, whose
+harsh, uncouth, misshapen tones were audible in response, more like
+the grunt or growl of a brute than human speech. After hours of
+absence, Aylmer reappeared and proposed that she should now examine
+his cabinet of chemical products and natural treasures of the earth.
+Among the former he showed her a small vial, in which, he remarked,
+was contained a gentle yet most powerful fragrance, capable of
+impregnating all the breezes that blow across a kingdom. They were of
+inestimable value, the contents of that little vial; and, as he said
+so, he threw some of the perfume into the air and filled the room with
+piercing and invigorating delight.
+
+"And what is this?" asked Georgiana, pointing to a small crystal globe
+containing a gold-colored liquid. "It is so beautiful to the eye that
+I could imagine it the elixir of life."
+
+"In one sense it is," replied Aylmer; "or rather, the elixir of
+immortality. It is the most precious poison that ever was concocted in
+this world. By its aid I could apportion the lifetime of any mortal at
+whom you might point your finger. The strength of the dose would
+determine whether he were to linger out years, or drop dead in the
+midst of a breath. No king on his guarded throne could keep his life
+if I, in my private station, should deem that the welfare of millions
+justified me in depriving him of it."
+
+"Why do you keep such a terrific drug?" inquired Georgiana, in horror.
+
+"Do not mistrust me, dearest," said her husband, smiling; "its
+virtuous potency is yet greater than its harmful one. But see! here is
+a powerful cosmetic. With a few drops of this in a vase of water,
+freckles may be washed away as easily as the hands are cleansed. A
+stronger infusion[7] would take the blood out of the cheek, and leave
+the rosiest beauty a pale ghost."
+
+"Is it with this lotion that you intend to bathe my cheek?" asked
+Georgiana, anxiously.
+
+"O no," hastily replied her husband; "this is merely superficial. Your
+case demands a remedy that shall go deeper."
+
+In his interviews with Georgiana, Aylmer generally made minute
+inquiries as to her sensations, and whether the confinement of the
+rooms and the temperature of the atmosphere agreed with her. These
+questions had such a particular drift that Georgiana began to
+conjecture that she was already subjected to certain physical
+influences, either breathed in with the fragrant air or taken with her
+food. She fancied likewise, but it might be altogether fancy, that
+there was a stirring up of her system,--a strange, indefinite
+sensation creeping through her veins, and tingling, half painfully,
+half pleasurably, at her heart. Still, whenever she dared to look into
+the mirror, there she beheld herself pale as a white rose and with the
+crimson birthmark stamped upon her cheek. Not even Aylmer now hated it
+so much as she.
+
+To dispel the tedium of the hours which her husband found it necessary
+to devote to the processes of combination and analysis, Georgiana
+turned over the volumes of his scientific library. In many dark old
+tomes she met with chapters full of romance and poetry. They were the
+works of the philosophers of the Middle Ages, such as Albertus
+Magnus[8], Cornelius Agrippa[9], Paracelsus[10], and the famous friar
+who created the prophetic Brazen Head. All these antique naturalists
+stood in advance of their centuries, yet were imbued with some of
+their credulity, and therefore were believed, and perhaps imagined
+themselves to have acquired from the investigation of nature a power
+above nature, and from physics a sway over the spiritual world. Hardly
+less curious and imaginative were the early volumes of the
+Transactions of the Royal Society[11], in which the members, knowing
+little of the limits of natural possibility, were continually
+recording wonders or proposing methods whereby wonders might be
+wrought.
+
+But, to Georgiana, the most engrossing volume was a large folio from
+her husband's own hand, in which he had recorded every experiment of
+his scientific career, its original aim, the methods adopted for its
+development, and its final success or failure, with the circumstances
+to which either event was attributable. The book, in truth; was both
+the history and emblem of his ardent, ambitious, imaginative, yet
+practical and laborious life. He handled physical details as if there
+were nothing beyond them; yet spiritualized them all, and redeemed
+himself from materialism by his strong and eager aspiration towards
+the infinite. In his grasp the veriest clod of earth assumed a soul.
+Georgiana, as she read, reverenced Aylmer and loved him more
+profoundly than ever, but with a less entire dependence on his
+judgment than heretofore. Much as he had accomplished, she could not
+but observe that his most splendid successes were almost invariably
+failures, if compared with the ideal at which he aimed. His brightest
+diamonds were the merest pebbles, and felt to be so by himself, in
+comparison with the inestimable gems which lay hidden beyond his
+reach. The volume, rich with achievements that had won renown for its
+author, was yet as melancholy a record as over mortal hand had penned.
+It was the sad confession and continual exemplification of the
+shortcomings of the composite man, the spirit burdened with clay and
+working in matter, and of the despair that assails the higher nature
+at finding itself so miserably thwarted by the earthly part. Perhaps
+every man of genius, in whatever sphere, might recognize the image of
+his own experience in Aylmer's journal.
+
+So deeply did these reflections affect Georgiana that she laid her
+face upon the open volume and burst into tears. In this situation she
+was found by her husband.
+
+"It is dangerous to read in a sorcerer's books," said he with a smile,
+though his countenance was uneasy and displeased. "Georgiana, there
+are pages in that volume which I can scarcely glance over and keep my
+senses. Take heed lest it prove as detrimental to you."
+
+"It has made me worship you more than ever." said she.
+
+"Ah, wait for this one success," rejoined he, "then worship me if you
+will. I shall deem myself hardly unworthy of it. But come. I have
+sought you for the luxury of your voice. Sing to me, dearest."
+
+So she poured out the liquid music of her voice to quench the thirst
+of his spirit. He then took his leave with a boyish exuberance of
+gayety, assuring her that her seclusion would endure but a little
+longer, and that the result was already certain. Scarcely had he
+departed when Georgiana felt irresistibly impelled to follow him. She
+had forgotten to inform Aylmer of a symptom which for two or three
+hours past had begun to excite her attention. It was a sensation in
+the fatal birthmark, not painful, but which induced a restlessness
+throughout her system. Hastening after her husband, she intruded for
+the first time into the laboratory.
+
+The first thing that struck her eye was the furnace, that hot and
+feverish worker, with the intense glow of its fire, which by the
+quantities of soot clustered above it seemed to have been burning for
+ages. There was a distilling-apparatus in full operation. Around the
+room were retorts, tubes, cylinders, crucibles, and other apparatus of
+chemical research. An electrical machine stood ready for immediate
+use. The atmosphere felt oppressively close, and was tainted with
+gaseous odors which had been tormented forth by the processes of
+science. The severe and homely simplicity of the apartment, with its
+naked walls and brick pavement, looked strange, accustomed as
+Georgiana had become to the fantastic elegance of her boudoir. But
+what chiefly, indeed almost solely, drew her attention, was the aspect
+of Aylmer himself.
+
+He was pale as death, anxious and absorbed, and hung over the furnace
+as if it depended upon his utmost watchfulness whether the liquid
+which it was distilling should be the draught of immortal happiness or
+misery. How different from the sanguine and joyous mien that he had
+assumed for Georgiana's encouragement!
+
+"Carefully now, Aminadab; carefully, thou human machine; carefully,
+thou man of clay," muttered Aylmer, more to himself than his
+assistant. "Now, If there be a thought too much or too little, it is
+all over."
+
+"Ho! ho!" mumbled Aminadab. "Look, master! look!"
+
+Aylmer raised his eyes hastily, and at first reddened, then grew paler
+than ever, on beholding Georgiana. He rushed towards her and seized
+her arm with a gripe that left the print of his fingers upon it.
+
+"Why do you come thither? Have you no trust in your husband?" cried
+he, impetuously. "Would you throw the blight of that fatal birthmark
+over my labors? It is not well done. Go, prying woman! go!"
+
+"Nay, Aylmer," said Georgiana with the firmness of which she possessed
+no stinted endowment, "it is not you that have a right to complain.
+You mistrust your wife; you have concealed the anxiety with which you
+watch the development of this experiment. Think not so unworthily of
+me, my husband. Tell me all the risk we run, and fear not that I shall
+shrink: for my share in it is far less than your own."
+
+"No, no, Georgiana!" said Aylmer, impatiently; "it must not be."
+
+"I submit," replied she, calmly. "And, Aylmer, I shall quaff whatever
+draught you bring me; but it will be on the same principle that would
+induce me to take a dose of poison if offered by your hand."
+
+"My noble wife," said Aylmer, deeply moved, "I knew not the height and
+depth of your nature until now. Nothing shall be concealed. Know,
+then, that this crimson hand, superficial as it seems, has clutched
+its grasp into your being with a strength of which I had no previous
+conception. I have already administered agents powerful enough to do
+aught except to change your entire physical system. Only one thing
+remains to be tried. If that fail us we are ruined."
+
+"Why did you hesitate to tell me this?" asked she.
+
+"Because, Georgiana," said Aylmer, in a low voice, "there is danger."
+
+"Danger? There is but one danger,--that this horrible stigma shall be
+left upon my cheek!" cried Georgiana. "Remove it, remove it, whatever
+be the cost, or we shall both go mad!"
+
+"Heaven knows your words are too true," said Aylmer, sadly. "And now,
+dearest, return to your boudoir. In a little while all will be
+tested."
+
+He conducted her back and took leave of her with a solemn tenderness
+which spoke far more than his words how much was now at stake. After
+his departure Georgiana became rapt in musings. She considered the
+character of Aylmer, and did it completer justice than at any previous
+moment. Her heart exulted, while it trembled, at his honorable
+love,--so pure and lofty that it would accept nothing less than
+perfection, nor miserably make itself contented with an earthlier
+nature than he had dreamed of. She felt how much more precious was
+such a sentiment than that meaner kind which would have borne with the
+imperfection for her sake, and have been guilty of treason to holy
+love by degrading its perfect idea to the level of the actual; and
+with her whole spirit she prayed that, for a single moment, she might
+satisfy his highest and deepest conception. Longer than one moment she
+well knew it could not be; for his spirit was ever on the march, ever
+ascending, and each instant required something that was beyond the
+scope of the instant before.
+
+The sound of her husband's footsteps aroused her. He bore a crystal
+goblet containing a liquor colorless as water, but bright enough to be
+the draught of immortality. Aylmer was pale; but it seemed rather the
+consequence of a highly wrought state of mind and tension of spirit
+than of fear or doubt.
+
+"The concoction of the draught has been perfect," said he, in answer
+to Georgiana's look. "Unless all my science have deceived me, it
+cannot fail."
+
+"Save on your account, my dearest Aylmer," observed his wife, "I might
+wish to put off this birthmark of mortality by relinquishing mortality
+itself in preference to any other mode. Life is but a sad possession
+to those who have attained precisely the degree of moral advancement
+at which I stand. Were I weaker and blinder, it might be happiness.
+Were I stronger, it might be endured hopefully. But, being what I find
+myself, methinks I am of all mortals the most fit to die."
+
+"You are fit for heaven without tasting death!" replied her husband.
+"But why do we speak of dying? The draught cannot fail. Behold its
+effect upon this plant."
+
+On the window-seat there stood a geranium diseased with yellow
+blotches, which had overspread all its leaves. Aylmer poured a small
+quantity of the liquid upon the soil in which it grew. In a little
+time, when the roots of the plant had taken up the moisture, the
+unsightly blotches began to be extinguished in a living verdure.
+
+"There needed no proof," said Georgiana, quietly. "Give me the goblet.
+I joyfully stake all upon your word."
+
+"Drink, then, thou lofty creature!" exclaimed Aylmer, with fervid
+admiration. "There is no taint of imperfection on thy spirit. Thy
+sensible frame, too, shall soon be all perfect."
+
+She quaffed the liquid and returned the goblet to his hand.
+
+"It is grateful," said she, with a placid smile. "Methinks it is like
+water from a heavenly fountain; for it contains I know not what of
+unobtrusive fragrance and deliciousness. It allays a feverish thirst
+that had parched me for many days. Now, dearest, let me sleep. My
+earthly senses are closing over my spirit like the leaves around the
+heart of a rose at sunset."
+
+She spoke the last words with a gentle reluctance, as if it required
+almost more energy than she could command to pronounce the faint and
+lingering syllables. Scarcely had they loitered through her lips ere
+she was lost in slumber. Aylmer sat by her side, watching her aspect
+with the emotions proper to a man, the whole value of whose existence
+was involved in the process now to be tested. Mingled with this mood,
+however, was the philosophic investigation characteristic of the man
+of science. Not the minutest symptom escaped him. A heightened flush
+of the cheek, a slight irregularity of breath, a quiver of the eyelid,
+a hardly perceptible tremor through the frame,--such were the details
+which, as the moments passed, he wrote down, in his folio volume.
+Intense thought had set its stamp upon every previous page of that
+volume; but the thoughts of years were all concentrated upon the last.
+
+While thus employed, he failed not to gaze often at the fatal hand,
+and not without a shudder. Yet once, by a strange and unaccountable
+impulse, he pressed it with his lips. His spirit recoiled, however, in
+the very act; and Georgiana, out of the midst of her deep sleep, moved
+uneasily, and murmured, as if in remonstrance. Again Aylmer resumed,
+his watch. Nor was it without avail. The crimson hand, which at first
+had been strongly visible upon the marble paleness of Georgiana's
+cheek, now grew more faintly outlined. She remained not less pale than
+ever; but the birthmark, with every breath that came and went, lost
+somewhat of its former distinctness. Its presence had been awful; its
+departure was more awful still. Watch the stain of the rainbow fading
+out of the sky, and you will know how that mysterious symbol passed
+away.
+
+"By Heaven! it is well-nigh gone!" said Aylmer to himself, in almost
+irrepressible ecstasy. "I can scarcely trace it now. Success! success!
+And now it is like the faintest rose color. The lightest flush of
+blood across her cheek would overcome it. But she is so pale!"
+
+He drew aside the window-curtain and suffered the light of natural day
+to fall into the room and rest upon her cheek. At the same time he
+heard a gross, hoarse chuckle, which he had long known as his servant
+Aminadab's expression of delight.
+
+"Ah, clod! ah, earthly mass!" cried Aylmer, laughing in a sort of
+frenzy, "you have served me well! Matter and spirit--earth and
+heaven--have both done their part in this! Laugh, thing of the senses!
+You have earned the right to laugh."
+
+These exclamations broke Georgiana's sleep. She slowly unclosed her
+eyes and gazed into the mirror which her husband had arranged for that
+purpose. A faint smile flitted over her lips when she recognized how
+barely perceptible was now that crimson hand which had once blazed
+forth with such disastrous brilliancy as to scare away all their
+happiness. But then her eyes sought Aylmer's face with a trouble and
+anxiety that he could by no means account for.
+
+"My poor Aylmer!" murmured she.
+
+"Poor? Nay, richest, happiest, most favored!" exclaimed he. "My
+peerless bride, it is successful! You are perfect!"
+
+"My poor Aylmer," she repeated, with a more than human tenderness,
+"you have aimed loftily; you have done nobly. Do not repent that, with
+so high and pure a feeling, you have rejected the best the earth could
+offer. Aylmer, dearest Aylmer, I am dying!"
+
+Alas! it was too true! The fatal hand had grappled with the mystery of
+life, and was the bond by which an angelic spirit kept itself in union
+with a mortal frame. As the last crimson tint of the birthmark--that
+sole token of human imperfection--faded from her cheek, the parting
+breath of the now perfect woman passed into the atmosphere, and her
+soul, lingering a moment, near her husband, took its heavenward
+flight. Then a hoarse, chuckling laugh was heard again! Thus ever does
+the gross fatality of earth exult in its invariable triumph over the
+immortal essence which, in this dim sphere of half-development,
+demands the completeness of a higher state. Yet, had Aylmer reached a
+profounder wisdom, he need not thus have flung away the happiness
+which would have woven his mortal life of the selfsame texture with
+the celestial. The momentary circumstance was too strong for him; he
+failed to look beyond the shadowy scope of time, and, living once for
+all in eternity, to find the perfect future in the present.
+
+
+NOTES
+
+[1] Published in the March, 1843, number of _The Pioneer_, edited by
+J. R. Lowell. Republished in _Mosses from an Old Manse_ in 1846.
+
+[2] 154:29 "Eve," of Powers. A noted American sculptor (1805-1873).
+"Eve," "The Fisher Boy," and "America" are some of his chief works.
+
+[3] 168:28 Pygmalion. A sculptor and king of Cyprus.
+
+[4] 181:16 recondite. Abstruse or secret.
+
+[5] 168:27 corrosive. Destructive of tissue.
+
+[6] 184:12 vitae. Of life.
+
+[7] 166:3 infusion. The act of pouring in.
+
+[8] 167:1 Albertus Magnus. A famous scholastic philosopher and member
+of the Dominican order (1193-1280).
+
+[9] 167:1 Cornelius Agrippa. A German philosopher and student of
+alchemy and magic (1486-1535).
+
+[10] 167:1 Paracelsus. A German-Swiss physician, and alchemist
+(1492-1541).
+
+[11] 167:10 Royal Society. An association for the advancement of
+science, founded in London a little before 1660.
+
+
+BIOGRAPHY
+
+Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in Salem, Massachusetts, July 4, 1804.
+His ancestors were prominent in the affairs of the colony: John
+Hawthorne was one of the judges who tried the witches in 1620; and
+another John Hawthorne was a member of the dignified school committee
+of Salem in 1796. Hawthorne's father, a ship captain, died in a
+foreign land when his son was only four years old; his mother lived
+for forty years after the death of her husband the life of a recluse
+in her own house. The family's star was in the decline and the people
+of Salem looked on Nathaniel as a lazy and very queer boy. He grew up
+in a unique solitude. During these years of seclusion Hawthorne
+acquired the habit of keeping silent on all occasions, and reading a
+few books frequently and thoroughly. The _Newgate Calendar_ must have
+supplied him with many subtle suggestions for his later writings on
+sin and crime, for in almost all of his productions his imagination is
+tinged with, this old Puritanic philosophy and theology.
+
+He entered Bowdoin College in 1821 and graduated from this institution
+in 1825. He had as classmates Longfellow, and Franklin Pierce, who
+afterward became president of the United States. After his graduation
+Hawthorne returned to Salem, where he lived with his mother and
+sisters in almost absolute seclusion for fourteen years. During this
+period he wrote daily, and spent his nights in burning what he had
+written in the daytime.
+
+He was clerk of the Boston Custom House from 1839 to 1841, when the
+Whig party removed him for being ultra-partisan in behalf of the
+Democrats. At this time Hawthorne wrote: "As to the Salem people, I
+really thought I had been exceedingly good-natured in my treatment of
+them. They certainly do not deserve good usage at my hands, after
+permitting me to be deliberately lied down, not merely once, but at
+two separate attacks, and on two false indictments, without hardly a
+voice being raised in my behalf." He married Sophia Peabody, July 9,
+1842. From 1842 until 1846 they lived in Concord in the house formerly
+occupied by Emerson. These were the happiest years of his life. In
+1846 he returned to Salem as surveyor in the Salem Custom House. He
+retired from this office in 1850 and lived in Lenox, Massachusetts,
+for two years. In 1852 he settled in Concord. President Pierce
+appointed him consul at Liverpool in 1853, and he served in this
+position until 1857.
+
+After leaving Liverpool he travelled three years in England and on the
+continent. He returned to Concord in 1860. He died in the White
+Mountains, May 18, 1864. Although a silent man and a seeker of
+solitude during his life, few writers have ever experienced such wide
+publicity of their inmost lives as has Hawthorne since his death. The
+publication of his _Notes_ has opened his desk and work-shop to every
+one, and has revealed to us a magnanimous, sympathetic, and pure man,
+who realized his responsibilities as a writer and improved all his
+literary opportunities.
+
+
+BIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES
+
+_History of American Literature_, Moses Coit Tyler.
+
+_Introduction to American Literature_, Henry S. Pancoast.
+
+_Studies in American Literature_, Charles Noble.
+
+_Introduction to American Literature_, Brander Matthews.
+
+"Gloom and Cheer in Hawthorne," _Critic_, 45: 28-36.
+
+"Hawthorne and his Circle," _Nation_, 77: 410-411.
+
+"Hawthorne as seen by his Publisher," _Critic_, 45: 51-55.
+
+"Hawthorne from an English Point of View." _Critic_, 45: 60-66.
+
+"Hawthorne's Last Years," _Critic_, 45: 67-71.
+
+"Life of Hawthorne," _Atlantic Monthly_, 90: 563-567,
+
+
+CRITICISMS
+
+Many influences in Hawthorne's environment served to condition and
+mold him as a writer. Salem had reached its highest prosperity in all
+lines and was just beginning its retrogression in Hawthorne's time;
+the primeval forests of Maine produced a subtle and lasting influence
+on him during his sojourn in Maine for his health; transcendentalism
+was the ruling thought at the time when Hawthorne was in his most
+plastic and solitary age; his interest in _Brook Farm_ brought him in
+contact with all the good and bad points of that social movement; his
+life in the _Old Manse_ in Concord and in the Berkshire Hills
+contributed largely to the deepening of his convictions and
+sympathies; and over all, like a sombre cloud, hung his ancestral
+Puritanic training which penetrated and suffused all his writings. He
+is the most native and the least imitative of all our fiction writers.
+
+Hawthorne did not write on the common subjects and facts of his day,
+but chose to have his readers go with him, away from prosaic life, out
+into a world of mysteries where we may revel in all kinds of imaginary
+sports. By this process he succeeded in producing poetic effects from
+the most unpromising materials. His writings are fanciful. He enjoyed
+subjects that deal with the occult, such as mesmerism, hypnotism, and
+subtle suggestions. He harked back to the rigid beliefs and laws of
+the Puritans, but he and his subjects are spiritually advanced far
+above the crude, ponderous, and highly theological tenets of his
+forefathers.
+
+Hawthorne is very provincial. He travelled little until he was fifty
+years old. He naturally loved the antique and poetic countries, but he
+always qualified his admiration of these foreign lands by praising
+something in his own New England. He conceded that there was little or
+nothing in this prosperous and crude country to inspire a writer to
+produce poetry, but his patriotism was so strong that he could never
+free himself wholly from its provincial effects. All his works were
+produced in the stress created by this pull of opposing forces--his
+high poetic ideals and his love of country.
+
+In form he tends toward the polish of a classicist; in quality and
+freedom of thought he is very responsive to the mysteries of
+romanticism. He is introspective in his thinking and symbolical in his
+writing. Naturally he thinks abstractly, but is compelled to construct
+concrete methods of presenting his ideas. He never describes a strong
+emotion in detail, but delights in using suggestions and sidelights.
+His pure and refined manhood, his delicate fancy and deep interest in
+moral and religious questions, his conscience in its most artistic
+form, all are presented to the reader in the choicest garb of well
+chosen words and attuned to a subtle rhythm that adds beauty and
+attractiveness to his style.
+
+
+GENERAL REFERENCES
+
+_Hours in a Library_, Leslie Stephen.
+
+_A Literary History of America_, Barrett Wendell.
+
+_American Literature_, William P. Trent.
+
+_Makers of English Fiction_, W.J. Dawson.
+
+_Leading American Novelists_, J. Erskine.
+
+_Studies and Appreciations_, L.E. Gates.
+
+"An Estimate," _Scribner's Magazine_, 43: 69-84.
+
+"Unknown Quantity in Hawthorne's Personality," _Current Literature_,
+42: 517-518.
+
+COLLATERAL READINGS
+
+_Biographical Stories for Children_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_Mosses from an Old Manse_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_The Wonder Boot_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_The Blithedale Romance_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_Tanglewood Tales_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_Lady Eleanore's Mantle_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_The Great Stone Face_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_The Prophetic Pictures_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_The Necklace_, Guy de Maupassant.
+
+_A Solitary_, Mary Wilkins Freeman.
+
+_The Lady or the Tiger_, Frank R. Stockton.
+
+_The Strange Ride_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+_Rikki-Tikki-Tavi_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+_They_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+_The Twelfth Guest_, Mary Wilkins Freeman.
+
+_The Shadows on the Wall_, Mary Wilkins Freeman.
+
+
+
+ETHAN BRAND[1]
+
+A Chapter From An Abortive Romance
+
+_By Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)_
+
+
+Bartram the lime-burner, a rough, heavy-looking man, begrimed with
+charcoal, sat watching his kiln, at nightfall, while his little son
+played at building houses with the scattered fragments of marble,
+when, on the hillside below them, they heard a roar of laughter, not
+mirthful, but slow, and even solemn, like a wind shaking the boughs of
+the forest.
+
+"Father, what is that?" asked the little boy, leaving his play, and
+pressing betwixt his father's knees.
+
+"O, some drunken man, I suppose," answered the lime-burner; "some
+merry fellow from the bar-room in the village, who dared not laugh
+loud enough within doors lest he should blow the roof of the house
+off. So here he is, shaking his jolly sides at the foot of Graylock."
+
+"But, father," said the child, more sensitive than the obtuse,
+middle-aged clown, "he does not laugh like a man that is glad. So the
+noise frightens me!"
+
+"Don't be a fool, child!" cried his father, gruffly. "You will never
+make a man, I do believe; there is too much of your mother in you. I
+have known the rustling of a leaf startle you. Hark! Here comes the
+merry fellow now. You shall see that there is no harm in him."
+
+Bartram and his little son, while they were talking thus, sat watching
+the same lime-kiln that had been the scene of Ethan Brand's solitary
+and meditative life, before he began his search for the Unpardonable
+Sin. Many years, as we have seen, had now elapsed, since that
+portentous night when the IDEA was first developed. The kiln, however,
+on the mountain-side stood unimpaired, and was in nothing changed
+since he had thrown his dark thoughts into the intense glow of its
+furnace, and melted them, as it were, into the one thought that took
+possession of his life. It was a rude, round, towerlike structure,
+about twenty feet high, heavily built of rough stones, and with a
+hillock of earth heaped about the larger part of its circumference; so
+that the blocks and fragments of marble might be drawn by cart-loads,
+and thrown in at the top. There was an opening at the bottom of the
+tower, like an oven-mouth, but large enough to admit a man in a
+stooping posture, and provided with a massive iron door. With the
+smoke and jets of flame issuing from the chinks and crevices of this
+door, which seemed to give admittance into the hillside, it resembled
+nothing so much as the private entrance to the infernal regions, which
+the shepherds of the Delectable Mountains[2] were accustomed to show
+to pilgrims.
+
+There are many such lime-kilns in that tract of country, for the
+purpose of burning the white marble which composes a large part of the
+substance of the hills. Some of them, built years ago, and long
+deserted, with weeds growing in the vacant round of the interior,
+which is open to the sky, and grass and wild flowers rooting
+themselves into the chinks of the stones, look already like relics of
+antiquity, and may yet be overspread with the lichens of centuries to
+come. Others, where the lime-burner still feeds his daily and
+night-long fire, afford points of interest to the wanderer among the
+hills, who seats himself on a log of wood or a fragment of marble, to
+hold a chat with the solitary man. It is a lonesome, and, when the
+character is inclined to thought, may be an intensely thoughtful,
+occupation; as it proved in the case of Ethan Brand, who had mused to
+such strange purpose, in days gone by, while the fire in this very
+kiln was burning.
+
+The man who now watched the fire was of a different order, and
+troubled himself with no thoughts save the very few that were
+requisite to his business. At frequent intervals he flung back the
+clashing weight of the iron door, and, turning his face from the
+insufferable glare, thrust in huge logs of oak, or stirred the immense
+brands with a long pole. Within the furnace were seen the curling and
+riotous flames, and the burning marble, almost molten with the
+intensity of heat; while without, the reflection of the fire quivered
+on the dark intricacy of the surrounding forest, and showed in the
+foreground a bright and ruddy little picture of the hut, the spring
+beside its door, the athletic and coal-begrimed figure of the
+lime-burner, and the half-frightened child, shrinking into the
+protection of his father's shadow. And when again the iron door was
+closed, then reappeared the tender light of the half-full moon, which
+vainly strove to trace out the indistinct shapes of the neighboring
+mountains; and, in the upper sky, there was a flitting congregation of
+clouds, still faintly tinged with the rosy sunset, though thus far
+down into the valley the sunshine had vanished long and long ago.
+
+The little boy now crept still closer to his father, as footsteps were
+heard ascending the hillside, and a human form thrust aside the bushes
+that clustered beneath the trees.
+
+"Halloo! who is it?" cried the lime-burner, vexed at his son's
+timidity, yet half infected by it, "Come forward, and show yourself,
+like a man, or I'll fling this chunk of marble at your head !"
+
+"You offer me a rough welcome," said a gloomy voice, as the unknown
+man drew nigh. "Yet I neither claim nor desire a kinder one, even at
+my own fireside."
+
+To obtain a distincter view, Bartram threw open the iron door of the
+kiln, whence immediately issued a gush of fierce light, that smote
+full upon the stranger's face and figure. To a careless eye there
+appeared nothing very remarkable in his aspect, which was that of a
+man in a coarse, brown, country-made suit of clothes, tall and thin,
+with the staff and heavy shoes of a wayfarer. As he advanced, he fixed
+his eyes--which were very bright--intently upon the brightness of the
+furnace, as if he beheld, or expected to behold, some object worthy of
+note within it.
+
+"Good evening, stranger," said the lime-burner; "whence come you, so
+late in the day?"
+
+"I come from my search," answered the wayfarer; "for, at last, it is
+finished."
+
+"Drunk!--or crazy!" muttered Bartram to himself. "I shall have trouble
+with the fellow. The sooner I drive him away, the better."
+
+The little boy, all in a tremble, whispered to his father, and begged
+him to shut the door of the kiln, so that there might not be so much
+light; for that there was something in the man's face which he was
+afraid to look at, yet could not look away from. And, indeed, even the
+lime-burner's dull and torpid sense began to be impressed by an
+indescribable something in that thin, rugged, thoughtful visage, with
+the grizzled hair hanging wildly about it, and those deeply sunken
+eyes, which gleamed like fires within the entrance of a mysterious
+cavern. But, as he closed the door, the stranger turned towards him,
+and spoke in a quiet, familiar way, that made Bartram feel as if he
+were a sane and sensible man, after all.
+
+"Your task draws to an end, I see," said he. "This marble has already
+been burning three days. A few hours more will convert the stone to
+lime."
+
+"Why, who are you?" exclaimed the lime-burner. "You seem as well
+acquainted with my business as I am myself."
+
+"And well I may be," said the stranger; "for I followed the same craft
+many a long year, and here, too, on this very spot. But you are a
+newcomer in these parts. Did you never hear of Ethan Brand?"
+
+"The man that went in search of the Unpardonable Sin?" asked Bartram,
+with a laugh.
+
+"The same," answered the stranger. "He has found what he sought, and
+therefore he comes back again,"
+
+"What! then you are Ethan Brand himself?" cried the lime-burner, in
+amazement. "I am a newcomer here, as you say, and they call it
+eighteen years since you left the foot of Graylock, But, I can tell
+you, the good folks still talk about Ethan Brand, in the village
+yonder, and what a strange errand took him away from his lime-kiln.
+Well and so you have found the Unpardonable Sin?"
+
+"Even so!" said the stranger, calmly.
+
+"If the 'question is a fair one." proceeded Bartrarn, "where might it
+be?"
+
+Ethan Brand laid his finger on his own heart.'
+
+"Here!" replied he.
+
+And then, without mirth in his countenance, but as if moved by an
+involuntary recognition of the infinite absurdity of seeking
+throughout the world for what was the closest of all things to
+himself, and looking into every heart, save his own, for what was
+hidden in no other breast, he broke into a laugh of scorn. It was the
+same slow, heavy laugh that had almost appalled the lime-burner when
+it heralded the wayfarer's approach.
+
+The solitary mountain side was made dismal by it. Laughter, when out
+of place, mistimed, or bursting forth from a disordered state of
+feeling, may be the most terrible modulation of the human voice. The
+laughter of one asleep, even if it be a little child,--the madman's
+laugh,--the wild, screaming laugh of a born idiot,--are sounds that we
+sometimes tremble to hear, and would always willingly forget. Poets
+have imagined no utterance of fiends Or hobgoblins so fearfully
+appropriate as a laugh. And even the obtuse lime-burner felt his
+nerves shaken, as this strange man looked inward at his own heart, and
+burst into laughter that rolled away into the night, and was
+indistinctly reverberated among the hills.
+
+"Joe," said he to his little son, "scamper down to the tavern in the
+village, and tell the jolly fellows there that Ethan Brand has come
+back, and that he has found the Unpardonable Sin!"
+
+The boy darted away on his errand, to which Ethan Brand made no
+objection, nor seemed hardly to notice it. He sat on a log of wood,
+looking steadfastly at the iron door of the kiln. When the child was
+out of sight, and his swift and light footsteps ceased to be heard
+treading first on the fallen leaves and then on the rocky mountain
+path, the lime-burner began to regret his departure. He felt that the
+little fellow's presence had been a barrier between his guest and
+himself, and that he must now deal, heart to heart, with a man who, on
+his own confession, had committed the one only crime for which Heaven
+could afford no mercy. That crime, in its indistinct blackness, seemed
+to overshadow him. The lime-burner's own sins rose up within him, and
+made his memory riotous with a throng of evil shapes that asserted
+their kindred with the Master Sin, whatever it might be, which it was
+within the scope of man's corrupted nature to conceive and cherish.
+They were all of one family; they went to and fro between his breast
+and Ethan Brand's, and carried dark greetings from one to the other.
+
+Then Bartram remembered the stories which had grown traditionary in
+reference to this strange man, who had come upon him like a shadow of
+the night, and was making himself at home in his old place, after so
+long absence that the dead people, dead and buried for years, would
+have had more right to be at home, in any familiar spot, than he.
+Ethan Brand, it was said, had conversed with Satan himself in the
+lurid blaze of this very kiln. The legend had been matter of mirth
+heretofore, but looked grisly now. According to this tale, before
+Ethan Brand departed on his search, he had been accustomed to evoke a
+fiend from the hot furnace of the lime-kiln, night after night, in
+order to confer with him about the Unpardonable Sin; the man and the
+fiend each laboring to frame the image of some mode of guilt which
+could neither be atoned for nor forgiven. And, with the first gleam of
+light upon the mountain-top, the fiend crept in at the iron door,
+there to abide the intensest element of fire, until again summoned
+forth to share in the dreadful task of extending man's possible guilt
+beyond the scope of Heaven's else infinite mercy.
+
+While the lime-burner was struggling with the horror of these
+thoughts, Ethan Brand rose from the log, and flung open the door of
+the kiln. The action was in such accordance with the idea in Bartram's
+mind, that he almost expected to see the Evil One issue forth, red-hot
+from the raging furnace.
+
+"Hold! hold!" cried he, with a tremulous attempt to laugh; for he was
+ashamed of his fears, although they overmastered him. "Don't, for
+mercy's sake, bring out your Devil now!"
+
+"Man!" sternly replied Ethan Brand, "what need have I of the Devil? I
+have left him behind me, on my track. It is with such halfway sinners
+as you that he busies himself. Fear not, because I open the door. I do
+but act by old custom, and am going to trim your fire, like a
+lime-burner, as I was once."
+
+He stirred the vast coals, thrust in more wood, and bent forward to
+gaze into the hollow prison-house of the fire, regardless of the
+fierce glow that reddened upon his face. The lime-burner sat watching
+him, and half suspected his strange guest of a purpose, if not to
+evoke a fiend, at least to plunge bodily into the flames, and thus
+vanish from the sight of man. Ethan Brand, however, drew quietly back,
+and closed the door of the kiln.
+
+"I have looked," said he, "into many a human heart that was seven
+times hotter with sinful passions than yonder furnace is with fire.
+But I found not there what I sought. No, not the Unpardonable Sin!"
+
+"What is the Unpardonable Sin?" asked the lime-burner; and then he
+shrank farther from his companion, trembling lest his question should
+be answered.
+
+"It is a sin that grew within my own breast," replied Ethan Brand,
+standing erect, with a pride that distinguishes all enthusiasts of his
+stamp. "A sin that grew nowhere else! The sin of an intellect that
+triumphed over the sense of brotherhood with man and reverence for
+God, and sacrificed everything to its own mighty claims! the only sin
+that deserves a recompense of immortal agony! Freely, were it to do
+again, would I incur the guilt. Unshrinkingly I accept the
+retribution!"
+
+"The man's head is turned," muttered the lime-burner to himself. "He
+may be a sinner, like the rest of us,--nothing more likely,--but, I'll
+be sworn, he is a madman too."
+
+Nevertheless, he felt uncomfortable at his situation, alone with Ethan
+Brand on the wild mountain side, and was right glad to hear the rough
+murmur of tongues, and the footsteps of what seemed a pretty numerous
+party, stumbling over the stones and rustling through the under-brush.
+Soon appeared the whole lazy regiment that was wont to infest the
+village tavern, comprehending three or four individuals who had drunk
+flip beside the bar-room fire through all the winters, and smoked
+their pipes beneath the stoop through all the summers, since Ethan
+Brand's departure. Laughing boisterously, and mingling all their
+voices together in unceremonious talk, they now burst into the
+moonshine and narrow streaks of firelight that illuminated the open
+space before the lime-kiln. Bartram set the door ajar again, flooding
+the spot with light, that the whole company might get a fair view of
+Ethan Brand, and he of them.
+
+There, among other old acquaintances, was a once ubiquitous[3] man,
+now almost extinct, but whom we were formerly sure to encounter at the
+hotel of every thriving village throughout the country. It was the
+stage-agent. The present specimen of the genus was a wilted and
+smoke-dried man, wrinkled and red-nosed, in a smartly cut, brown,
+bob-tailed coat, with brass buttons, who, for a length of time
+unknown, had kept his desk and corner in the bar-room, and was still
+puffing what seemed to be the same cigar that he had lighted twenty
+years before. He had great fame as a dry joker, though, perhaps, less
+on account of any intrinsic humor than from a certain flavor of brandy
+toddy and tobacco smoke, which impregnated all his ideas and
+expressions, as well as his person. Another well-remembered though
+strangely altered face was that of Lawyer Giles, as people still
+called him in courtesy; an elderly ragamuffin, in his soiled
+shirt-sleeves and tow-cloth trousers. This poor fellow had been an
+attorney, in what he called his better days, a sharp practitioner, and
+in great vogue among the village litigants; but flip, and sling, and
+toddy, and cocktails, imbibed at all hours, morning, noon, and night,
+had caused him to slide from intellectual to various kinds and degrees
+of bodily labor, till, at last, to adopt his own phrase, he slid into
+a soap vat. In other words, Giles was now a soap boiler, in a small
+way. He had come to be but the fragment of a human being, a part of
+one foot having been chopped off by an axe, and an entire hand torn
+away by the devilish grip of a steam engine. Yet, though the corporeal
+hand was gone, a spiritual member remained; for, stretching forth the
+stump, Giles steadfastly averred that he felt an invisible thumb and
+fingers with as vivid a sensation as before the real ones were
+amputated. A maimed and miserable wretch he was; but one,
+nevertheless, whom the world could not trample on, and had no right to
+scorn, either in this or any previous stage of his misfortunes, since
+he had still kept up the courage and spirit of a man, asked nothing in
+charity, and with his one hand--and that the left one--fought a stern
+battle against want and hostile circumstances.
+
+Among the throng, too, came another personage, who, with certain
+points of similarity to Lawyer Giles, had many more of difference. It
+was the village doctor; a man of some fifty years, whom, at an earlier
+period of his life, we introduced as paying a professional visit to
+Ethan Brand during the latter's supposed insanity. He was now a
+purple-visaged, rude, and brutal, yet half-gentlemanly figure, with
+something wild, ruined, and desperate in his talk, and in all the
+details of his gesture and manners. Brandy possessed this man like an
+evil spirit, and made him as surly and savage as a wild beast, and as
+miserable as a lost soul; but there was supposed to be in him such
+wonderful skill, such native gifts of healing, beyond any which
+medical science could impart, that society caught hold of him, and
+would not let him sink out of its reach. So, swaying to and fro upon
+his horse, and grumbling thick accents at the bedside, he visited all
+the sick chambers for miles about among the mountain towns, and
+sometimes raised a dying man, as it were, by miracle, or quite as
+often, no doubt, sent his patient to a grave that was dug many a year
+too soon. The doctor had an everlasting pipe in his mouth, and, as
+somebody said, in allusion to his habit of swearing, it was always
+alight with hell-fire.
+
+These three worthies pressed forward, and greeted Ethan Brand each
+after his own fashion, earnestly inviting him to partake of the
+contents of a certain black bottle, in which, as they averred, he
+would find something far better worth seeking for than the
+Unpardonable Sin. No mind, which has wrought itself by intense and
+solitary meditation into a high state of enthusiasm, can endure the
+kind of contact with low and vulgar modes of thought and feeling to
+which Ethan Brand was now subjected. It made him doubt--and, strange
+to say, it was a painful doubt,--whether he had indeed found the
+Unpardonable Sin and found it within himself. The whole question on
+which he had exhausted life, and more than life, looked like a
+delusion.
+
+"Leave me," he said bitterly, "ye brute beasts, that have made
+yourselves so, shrivelling up your souls with fiery liquors! I have
+done with you. Years and years ago, I groped into your hearts, and
+found nothing there for my purpose. Get ye gone!"
+
+"Why, you uncivil scoundrel," cried the fierce doctor, "is that the
+way you respond to the kindness of your best friends? Then let me tell
+you the truth. You have no more found the Unpardonable Sin than yonder
+boy Joe has. You are but a crazy fellow,--I told you so twenty years
+ago,--neither better nor worse than a crazy fellow, and a fit
+companion of old Humphrey, here!"
+
+He pointed to an old man, shabbily dressed, with long white hair, thin
+visage, and unsteady eyes. For some years past this aged person had
+been wandering about among the hills, inquiring of all travellers whom
+he met for his daughter. The girl, it seemed, had gone off with a
+company of circus performers; and occasionally tidings of her came to
+the village, and fine stories were told of her glittering appearance
+as she rode on horseback in the ring, or performed marvellous feats on
+the tight rope.
+
+The white-haired father now approached Ethan Brand, and gazed
+unsteadily into his face.
+
+"They tell me you have been all over the earth," said he, wringing his
+hands with earnestness. "You must have seen my daughter, for she makes
+a grand figure in the world, and everybody goes to see her. Did she
+send any word to her old father, or say when she was coming back?"
+
+Ethan Brand's eye quailed beneath the old man's. That daughter, from
+whom he so earnestly desired a word of greeting, was the Esther of our
+tale, the very girl whom, with such cold and remorseless purpose,
+Ethan Brand had made the subject of a psychological experiment, and
+wasted, absorbed, and perhaps annihilated her soul, in the process.
+
+"Yes," murmured he, turning away from the hoary wanderer; "it is no
+delusion. There is an Unpardonable Sin!"
+
+While these things were passing, a merry scene was going forward in
+the area of cheerful light, beside the spring and before the door of
+the hut. A number of the youth of the village, young men and girls,
+had hurried up the hillside, impelled by curiosity to see Ethan Brand,
+the hero of so many a legend familiar to their childhood. Finding
+nothing, however, very remarkable in his aspect,--nothing but a
+sunburnt wayfarer, in plain garb and dusty shoes, who sat looking into
+the fire, as if he fancied pictures among the coals,--these young
+people speedily grew tired of observing him. As it happened, there was
+other amusement at hand. An old German Jew, travelling with a
+diorama[4] on his back, was passing down, the mountain road towards
+the village just as the party turned aside from it, and, in hopes of
+eking out the profits of the day, the showman had kept them company to
+the lime-kiln.
+
+"Come, old Dutchman," cried one of the young men, "let us see your
+pictures, if you can swear they are worth looking at!"
+
+"O yes, Captain," answered the Jew,--whether as a matter of courtesy
+or craft, he styled everybody Captain,--"I shall show you, indeed,
+some very superb pictures!"
+
+So, placing his box in a proper position, he invited the young men and
+girls to look through the glass orifices of the machine, and proceeded
+to exhibit a series of the most outrageous scratchings and daubings,
+as specimens of the fine arts, that ever an itinerant showman had the
+face to impose upon his circle of spectators. The pictures were worn
+out, moreover, tattered, full of cracks and wrinkles, dingy with
+tobacco smoke, and otherwise in a most pitiable condition. Some
+purported to be cities, public edifices, and ruined castles in Europe;
+others represented Napoleon's battles and Nelson's sea fights; and in
+the midst of these would be seen a gigantic, brown, hairy hand,--which
+might have been mistaken for the Hand of Destiny, though, in truth, it
+was only the showman's,--pointing its forefinger to various scenes of
+the conflict, while its owner gave historical illustrations. When,
+with much merriment at its abominable deficiency of merit, the
+exhibition was concluded, the German bade little Joe put his head into
+the box. Viewed through the magnifying glasses, the boy's round, rosy
+visage assumed the strangest imaginable aspect of an immense
+Titanic[5] child, the mouth grinning broadly, and the eyes and every
+other feature overflowing with fun at the joke. Suddenly, however,
+that merry face turned pale, and its expression changed to horror, for
+this easily impressed and excitable child had become sensible that the
+eye of Ethan Brand was fixed upon him through the glass.
+
+"You make the little man to be afraid. Captain." said the German Jew,
+turning up the dark and strong outline of his visage, from his
+stooping posture, "But look again, and, by chance, I shall cause you
+to see somewhat that is very fine, upon my word!"
+
+Ethan Brand gazed into the box for an instant, and then starting back,
+looked fixedly at the German. What had he seen? Nothing, apparently;
+for a curious youth, who had peeped in almost at the same moment,
+beheld only a vacant space of canvas.
+
+"I remember you now," muttered Ethan Brand to the showman.
+
+"Ah, Captain," whispered the Jew of Nuremburg, with a dark smile, "I
+find it to be a heavy matter in my show-box,--this Unpardonable Sin!
+By my faith, Captain, it has wearied my shoulders, this long day, to
+carry it over the mountain."
+
+"Peace," answered Ethan Brand, sternly, "or get thee into the furnace
+yonder!"
+
+The Jew's exhibition had scarcely concluded, when a great, elderly
+dog--who seemed to be his own master, as no person in the company laid
+claim to him--saw fit to render himself the object of public notice.
+Hitherto, he had shown himself a very quiet, well-disposed old dog,
+going round from one to another, and, by way of being sociable,
+offering his rough head to be patted by any kindly hand that would
+take so much trouble. But now, all of a sudden, this grave and
+venerable quadruped, of his own mere motion, and without the slightest
+suggestion from anybody else, began to run round after his tail,
+which, to heighten the absurdity of the proceeding, was a great deal
+shorter than it should have been. Never was seen such headlong
+eagerness in pursuit of an object that could not possibly be attained;
+never was heard such a tremendous outbreak of growling, snarling,
+barking, and snapping,--as if one end of the ridiculous brute's body
+were at deadly and most unforgivable enmity with the other. Faster and
+faster, round about went the cur; and faster and still faster fled the
+unapproachable brevity of his tail; and louder and fiercer grew his
+yells of rage and animosity; until, utterly exhausted, and as far from
+the goal as ever, the foolish old dog ceased his performance as
+suddenly as he had begun it. The next moment he was as mild, quiet,
+sensible, and respectable in his deportment, as when he first scraped
+acquaintance with the company.
+
+As may be supposed, the exhibition was greeted with universal
+laughter, clapping of hands, and shouts of encore, to which the canine
+performer responded by wagging all that there was to wag of his tail,
+but appeared totally unable to repeat his very successful effort to
+amuse the spectators.
+
+Meanwhile, Ethan Brand had resumed his seat upon the log, and moved,
+it might be, by a perception of some remote analogy between his own
+case and that of this self-pursuing cur, he broke into the awful
+laugh, which, more than any other token, expressed the condition of
+his inward being. From that moment, the merriment of the party was at
+an end; they stood aghast, dreading lest the inauspicious sound should
+be reverberated around the horizon, and that mountain would thunder it
+to mountain, and so the horror be prolonged upon their ears. Then,
+whispering one to another that it was late,--that the moon was almost
+down,--that the August night was growing chill,--they hurried
+homewards, leaving the lime-burner and little Joe to deal as they
+might with their unwelcome guest. Save for these three human beings,
+the open space on the hillside was a solitude, set in a vast gloom of
+forest. Beyond that darksome verge, the firelight glimmered on the
+stately trunks and almost black foliage of pines, intermixed with the
+lighter verdure of sapling oaks, maples, and poplars, while here and
+there lay the gigantic corpses of dead trees, decaying on the
+leaf-strewn soil. And it seemed to little Joe--a timorous and
+imaginative child--that the silent forest was holding, its breath,
+until some fearful thing should happen.
+
+Ethan Brand thrust more wood into the fire, and closed the door of the
+kiln; then looking over his shoulder at the lime-burner and his son,
+he bade, rather than advised, them to retire to rest.
+
+"For myself, I cannot sleep." said he, "I have matters that it
+concerns me to meditate upon. I will watch the fire, as I used to do
+in the old time."
+
+"And call the Devil out of the furnace to keep you company, I
+suppose," muttered Bartram, who had been making intimate acquaintance
+with the black bottle above mentioned. "But watch, if you like, and
+call as many devils as you like! For my part, I shall be all the
+better for a snooze. Come, Joe!"
+
+As the boy followed his father into the hut, he looked back at the
+wayfarer, and the tears came into his eyes, for his tender spirit had
+an intuition of the bleak and terrible loneliness in which this man
+had enveloped himself.
+
+When they had gone, Ethan Brand sat listening to the crackling of the
+kindled wood, and looking at the little spirits of fire that issued
+through the chinks of the door. These trifles, however, once so
+familiar, had but the slightest hold of his attention, while deep
+within his mind he was reviewing the gradual but marvellous change
+that had been wrought upon him by the search to which he had devoted
+himself. He remembered how the night dew had fallen upon him,--how the
+dark forest had whispered to him,--how the stars had gleamed upon
+him,--a simple and loving man, watching his fire in the years gone by,
+and ever musing as it burned. He remembered with what tenderness, with
+what love and sympathy for mankind, and what pity for human guilt and
+woe, he had first begun to contemplate those ideas which afterwards
+became the inspiration of his life; with what reverence he had then
+looked into the heart of man, viewing it as a temple originally
+divine, and, however desecrated, still to be held sacred by a brother;
+with what awful fear he had deprecated the success of his pursuit, and
+prayed that the Unpardonable Sin might never be revealed to him. Then
+ensued that vast intellectual development, which, in its progress,
+disturbed the counterpoise between his mind and heart. The Idea that
+possessed his life had operated as a means of education; it had gone
+on cultivating his powers to the highest point of which they were
+susceptible; it had raised him from the level of an unlettered laborer
+to stand on a starlit eminence, whither the philosophers of the earth,
+laden with the lore of universities, might vainly strive to clamber
+after him. So much for the intellect! But where was the heart? That,
+indeed, had withered,--had contracted.--had hardened,--had perished!
+It had ceased to partake of the universal throb, He had lost his hold
+of the magnetic chain of humanity. He was no longer a brother-man,
+opening the chambers of the dungeons of our common nature by the key
+of holy sympathy, which gave him a right to share in all its secrets;
+he was now a cold observer, looking on mankind as the subject of his
+experiment, and, at length, converting man and woman to be his
+puppets, and pulling the wires that moved them to such degrees of
+crime as were demanded for his study.
+
+Thus Ethan Brand became a fiend. He began to be so from the moment
+that his moral nature had ceased to keep the pace of improvement with
+his intellect. And now, as his highest effort and inevitable
+development,--as the bright and gorgeous flower, and rich, delicious
+fruit of his life's labor,--he had produced the Unpardonable Sin!
+
+"What more have I to seek? what more to achieve?" said Ethan Brand to
+himself, "My task Is done, and well done!"
+
+Starting from the log with a certain alacrity in his gait and
+ascending the hillock of earth that was raised against the stone
+circumference of the lime-kiln, he thus reached the top of the
+structure. It was a space of perhaps ten feet across, from edge to
+edge, presenting a view of the upper surface of the immense mass of
+broken marble with which the kiln was heaped. All these innumerable
+blocks and fragments of marble were red-hot and vividly on fire,
+sending up great spouts of blue flame, which quivered aloft and danced
+madly, as within a magic circle, and sank and rose again, with
+continual and multitudinous activity. As the lonely man bent forward
+over this terrible body of fire, the blasting heat smote up against
+his person with a breath that, it might be supposed, would have
+scorched and shrivelled him up in a moment.
+
+Ethan Brand stood erect, and raised his arms on high. The blue flames
+played upon his face, and imparted the wild and ghastly light which
+alone could have suited its expression; it was that of a fiend on the
+verge of plunging into his gulf of intensest torment.
+
+"O Mother Earth," cried he, "who art no more my Mother, and into whose
+bosom this frame shall never be resolved! O mankind, whose brotherhood
+I have cast off, and trampled thy great heart beneath my feet! O stars
+of heaven, that shone on me of old, as if to light me onward and
+upward!--farewell all, and forever. Come, deadly element of
+Fire,--henceforth my familiar frame! Embrace me, as I do thee!"
+
+That night the sound of a fearful peal of laughter rolled heavily
+through the sleep of the lime-burner and his little son; dim shapes of
+horror and anguish haunted their dreams, and seemed still present in
+the rude hovel, when they opened their eyes to the daylight.
+
+"Up, boy, up!" cried the lime-burner, staring about him. "Thank
+Heaven, the night is gone, at last; and rather than pass such another,
+I would watch, my lime-kiln, wide awake, for a twelvemonth. This Ethan
+Brand, with his humbug of an Unpardonable Sin, has done me no such
+mighty favor, in taking my place!"
+
+He issued from the hut, followed by little Joe, who kept fast hold, of
+his father's hand. The early sunshine was already pouring its gold
+upon the mountain tops; and though the valleys were still in shadow,
+they smiled cheerfully in the promise of the bright day that was
+hastening onward. The village, completely shut in by hills, which
+swelled away gently about it, looked as if it had rested peacefully in
+the hollow of the great hand of Providence. Every dwelling was
+distinctly visible; the little spires of the two churches pointed
+upwards, and caught a fore-glimmering of brightness from the sun-gilt
+skies upon their gilded weathercocks. The tavern was astir, and the
+figure of the old, smoke-dried stage-agent, cigar in mouth, was seen
+beneath the stoop. Old Graylock was glorified with a golden cloud upon
+his head. Scattered likewise over the breasts of the surrounding
+mountains, there were heaps of hoary mist, in fantastic shapes, some
+of them far down into the valley, others high up towards the summits,
+and still others, of the same family of mist or cloud, hovering in the
+gold radiance of the upper atmosphere. Stepping from one to another of
+the clouds that rested on the hills, and thence to the loftier
+brotherhood that sailed in air, it seemed almost as if a mortal man
+might thus ascend into the heavenly regions. Earth was so mingled with
+sky that it was a day-dream to look at it.
+
+To supply that charm of the familiar and homely, which Nature so
+readily adopts into a scene like this, the stage-coach was rattling
+down the mountain road, and the driver sounded his horn, while echo
+caught up the notes, and intertwined them into a rich and varied and
+elaborate harmony, of which the original performer could lay claim to
+little share. The great hills played a concert among themselves, each
+contributing a strain of airy sweetness.
+
+Little Joe's face brightened at once.
+
+"Dear father," cried he, skipping cheerily to and fro, "that strange
+man is gone, and the sky and the mountains all seem glad of it!"
+
+"Yes," growled the lime-burner, with an oath, "but he has let the fire
+go down, and no thanks to him if five hundred bushels of lime are not
+spoiled. If I catch the fellow hereabouts again, I shall feel like
+tossing him into the furnace!"
+
+With his long pole in his hand, he ascended to the top of the kiln.
+After a moment's pause, he called to his son.
+
+"Come up here, Joe!" said he.
+
+So little Joe ran up the hillock, and stood by his father's side. The
+marble was all burnt into perfect, snow-white lime. But on its
+surface, in the midst of the circle,--snow-white too, and thoroughly
+converted into lime,--lay a human skeleton, in the attitude of a
+person who, after long toil, lies down to long repose. Within the
+ribs--strange to say--was the shape of a human heart.
+
+"Was the fellow's heart made of marble?" cried Bartram, in some
+perplexity at this phenomenon. "At any rate, it is burnt into what
+looks like special good lime; and, taking all the bones together, my
+kiln is half a bushel the richer for him."
+
+So saying, the rude lime-burner lifted his pole, and, letting it fall
+upon the skeleton, the relics of Ethan Brand were crumbled into
+fragments.
+
+
+NOTES
+
+[1] Written in 1848; published in Holden's _Dollar Magazine_ in 1851.
+
+[2] 182:26 Delectable Mountains. A range of mountains referred to in
+Bunyan's _Pilgrim's Progress_.
+
+[3] 190:22 ubiquitous. Being present everywhere.
+
+[4] 194:29 diorama. A series of paintings arranged for exhibition. See
+dictionary.
+
+[5] 195:30 Titanic. Characteristic of the Titans; therefore large.
+
+COLLATERAL READINGS
+
+_The Scarlet Letter_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_The House of Seven Gables_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_The Marble Faun_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_The Gray Champion_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_The Wedding Knell_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_The Great Carbuncle_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_Dr. Heidegger's Experiment_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_The Haunted Mind_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_Feathertop_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+_Rip Van Winkle_, Washington Irving.
+
+_The Elixir of Life_, Honore de Balzac.
+
+_The Leather Funnel_, A. Conan Doyle.
+
+_The Return of Imray's Ghost_, Rudyard Kipling.
+
+_A Gentle Ghost_, Mary Wilkins Freeman.
+
+
+
+THE SIRE DE MALETROIT'S DOOR[1]
+
+_By Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)_
+
+
+Denis de Beaulieu was not yet two-and-twenty, but he counted himself a
+grown man, and a very accomplished cavalier into the bargain. Lads
+were early formed in that rough, warfaring epoch; and when one has
+been in a pitched battle and a dozen raids, has killed one's man in an
+honorable fashion, and knows a thing or two of strategy and mankind, a
+certain swagger in the gait is surely to be pardoned. He had put up
+his horse with due care, and supped with due deliberation; and then,
+in a very agreeable frame of mind, went out to pay a visit in the gray
+of the evening. It was not a very wise proceeding on the young man's
+part. He would have done better to remain beside the fire or go
+decently to bed. For the town was full of the troops of Burgundy and
+England under a mixed command; and though Denis was there on
+safe-conduct, his safe-conduct was like to serve him little on a
+chance encounter.
+
+It was September, 1429; the weather had fallen sharp; a flighty piping
+wind, laden with showers, beat about the township; and the dead leaves
+ran riot along the streets. Here and there a window was already
+lighted up; and the noise of men-at-arms making merry over supper
+within came forth in fits and was swallowed up and carried away by the
+wind. The night fell swiftly: the flag of England, fluttering on the
+spire top, grew ever fainter and fainter against the flying clouds--a
+black speck like a swallow in the tumultuous, leaden chaos of the sky.
+As the night fell the wind rose, and began to hoot under archways and
+roar amid the tree-tops in the valley below the town.
+
+Denis de Beaulieu walked fast and was soon knocking at his friend's
+door; but though he promised himself to stay only a little while and
+make an early return, his welcome was so pleasant, and he found so
+much to delay him, that it was already long past midnight before he
+said good-by upon the threshold. The wind had fallen again in the
+meanwhile; the night was as black as the grave; not a star, nor a
+glimmer of moonshine, slipped through the canopy of cloud. Denis was
+ill-acquainted with the intricate lanes of Chateau Landon; even by
+daylight he had found some trouble in picking his way; and in this
+absolute darkness he soon lost it altogether. He was certain of one
+thing only--to keep mounting the hill; for his friend's house lay at
+the lower end, or tail, of Chateau Landon, while the inn was up at the
+head, under the great church spire. With this clew to go upon he
+stumbled and groped forward, now breathing more freely in the open
+places where there was a good slice of sky overhead, now feeling along
+the wall in stifling closes. It is an eerie and mysterious position to
+be thus submerged in opaque blackness in an almost unknown town. The
+silence is terrifying in its possibilities. The touch of cold window
+bars to the exploring hand startles the man like the touch of a toad;
+the inequalities of the pavement shake his heart into his mouth; a
+piece of denser darkness threatens an ambuscade or a chasm in the
+pathway; and where the air is brighter, the houses put on strange and
+bewildering appearances, as if to lead him further from his way. For
+Denis, who had to regain his inn without attracting notice, there was
+real danger as well as mere discomfort in the walk; and he went warily
+and boldly at once, and at every corner paused to make an observation.
+
+He had been for some time threading a lane so narrow that he could
+touch a wall with either hand, when it began to open out and go
+sharply downward. Plainly this lay no longer in the direction of his
+inn; but the hope of a little more light tempted him forward to
+reconnoitre. The lane ended in a terrace with a bartizan[2] wall,
+which gave an outlook between high houses, as out of an embrasure,
+into the valley lying dark and formless several hundred feet below.
+Denis looked down, and could discern a few tree-tops waving and a
+single speck of brightness where the river ran across a weir. The
+weather was clearing up, and the sky had lightened, so as to show the
+outline of the heavier clouds and the dark margin of the hills. By the
+uncertain glimmer, the house on his left hand should be a place of
+some pretensions; it was surmounted by several pinnacles and
+turret-tops; the round stern of a chapel, with a fringe of flying
+buttresses, projected boldly from the main block; and the door was
+sheltered under a deep porch carved with figures and overhung by two
+long gargoyles[3]. The windows of the chapel gleamed through their
+intricate tracery with a light as of many tapers, and threw out the
+buttresses and the peaked roof in a more intense blackness against the
+sky. It was plainly the hotel of some great family of the
+neighborhood; and as it reminded Denis of a town house of his own at
+Bourges, he stood for some time gazing up at it and mentally gauging
+the skill of the architects and the consideration of the two families.
+
+There seemed to be no issue to the terrace but the lane by which he
+had reached it; he could only retrace his steps, but he had gained
+some notion of his whereabouts, and hoped by this means to hit the
+main thoroughfare and speedily regain the inn. He was reckoning
+without that chapter of accidents which was to make this night
+memorable above all others in his career; for he had not gone back
+above a hundred yards before he saw a light coming to meet him, and
+heard loud voices speaking together in the echoing narrows of the
+lane. It was a party of men-at-arms going the night round with
+torches. Denis assured himself that they had all been making free with
+the wine bowl, and were in no mood to be particular about
+safe-conducts or the niceties of chivalrous war. It, was as like as
+not that they would kill him like a dog and leave him where he fell.
+The situation was inspiriting but nervous. Their own torches would
+conceal him from sight, he reflected; and he hoped that they would
+drown the noise of his footsteps with their own empty voices. If he
+were but fleet and silent, he might evade their notice altogether.
+
+Unfortunately, as he turned to beat a retreat, his foot rolled upon a
+pebble; he fell against the wall with an ejaculation, and his sword
+rang loudly on the stones. Two or three voices demanded who went
+there--some in French, some in English; but Denis made no reply, and
+ran the faster down the lane. Once upon the terrace, he paused to look
+back. They still kept calling after him, and just then began to double
+the pace in pursuit, with a considerable clank of armor, and great
+tossing of the torchlight to and fro in the narrow jaws of the
+passage.
+
+Denis cast a look around and darted into the porch. There he might
+escape observation, or--if that were too much to expect--was in a
+capital posture whether for parley or defence. So thinking, he drew
+his sword and tried to set his back against the door. To his surprise
+it yielded behind his weight; and though he turned in a moment,
+continued to swing back on oiled and noiseless hinges until it stood
+wide open on a black interior. When things fall out opportunely for
+the person concerned, he is not apt to be critical about the how or
+why, his own immediate personal convenience seeming a sufficient
+reason for the strangest oddities and revolutions in our sublunary
+things; and so Denis, without a moment's hesitation, stepped within
+and partly closed the door behind him to conceal his place of refuge.
+Nothing was further from his thoughts than to close it altogether; but
+for some inexplicable reason--perhaps by a spring or a weight--the
+ponderous mass of oak whipped itself out of his fingers and clanked
+to, with a formidable rumble and a noise like the falling of an
+automatic bar.
+
+The round, at that very moment, debouched[4] upon the terrace and
+proceeded to summon him with shouts and curses. He heard them
+ferreting in the dark corners; the stock of a lance even rattled along
+the outer surface of the door behind which he stood; but these
+gentlemen were in too high a humor to be long delayed, and soon made
+off down a corkscrew pathway which had escaped Denis' observation, and
+passed out of sight and hearing along the battlements of the town.
+
+Denis breathed again. He gave them a few minutes' grace for fear of
+accidents, and then groped about for some means of opening the door
+and slipping forth again. The inner surface was quite smooth, not a
+handle, not a moulding, not a projection of any sort. He got his
+finger nails round the edges and pulled, but the mass was immovable.
+He shook it, it was as firm as a rock, Denis de Beaulieu frowned, and
+gave vent to a little noiseless whistle. What ailed the door? he
+wondered. Why was it open? How came it to shut so easily and so
+effectually after him? There was something obscure and underhand about
+all this, that was little to the young man's fancy. It looked like a
+snare, and yet who could suppose a snare in such a quiet by-street and
+in a house of so prosperous and even noble an exterior? And yet--snare
+or no snare, intentionally or unintentionally--here he was, prettily
+trapped; and for the life of him he could see no way out of it again.
+The darkness began to weigh upon him. He gave ear; all was silent
+without, but within and close by he seemed to catch a faint sighing, a
+faint sobbing rustle, a little stealthy creak--as though many persons
+were at his side, holding themselves quite still, and governing even
+their respiration with the extreme of slyness. The idea went to his
+vitals with a shock, and he faced about suddenly as if to defend his
+life. Then, for the first time, he became aware of a light about the
+level of his eyes and at some distance in the interior of the house--a
+vertical thread of light, widening toward the bottom, such as might
+escape between two wings of arras over a doorway.
+
+To see anything was a relief to Denis; it was like a piece of solid
+ground to a man laboring in a morass; his mind seized upon it with
+avidity; and he stood staring at it and trying to piece together some
+logical conception of his surroundings. Plainly there was a flight of
+steps ascending from his own level to that of this illuminated
+doorway, and indeed he thought he could make out another thread of
+light, as fine as a needle and as faint as phosphorescence, which
+might very well be reflected along the polished wood of a handrail.
+Since he had begun to suspect that he was not alone, his heart had
+continued to beat with smothering violence, and an intolerable desire
+for action of any sort had possessed itself of his spirit. He was in
+deadly peril, he believed. What could be more natural than to mount
+the staircase, lift the curtain, and confront his difficulty at once?
+At least he would be dealing with something tangible; at least he
+would be no longer in the dark. He stepped slowly forward with
+outstretched hands, until his foot struck the bottom step; then he
+rapidly scaled the stairs, stood for a moment to compose his
+expression, lifted the arras and went in.
+
+He found himself in a large apartment of polished stone. There were
+three doors, one on each of three sides, all similarly curtained with
+tapestry. The fourth side was occupied by two large windows and a
+great stone chimney-piece, carved with the arms of the Maletroits.
+Denis recognized the bearings, and was gratified to find himself in
+such good hands. The room was strongly illuminated; but it contained
+little furniture except a heavy table and a chair or two; the hearth
+was innocent of fire, and the pavement was but sparsely strewn with
+rushes clearly many days old.
+
+On a high chair beside the chimney, and directly facing Denis as he
+entered, sat a little old gentleman in a fur tippet. He sat with his
+legs crossed and his hands folded, and a cup of spiced wine stood by
+his elbow on a bracket on the wall. His countenance had a strong
+masculine cast; not properly human, but such as we see in the bull,
+the goat, or the domestic boar; something equivocal and wheedling,
+something greedy, brutal and dangerous. The upper lip was inordinately
+full, as though swollen by a blow or a toothache; and the smile, the
+peaked eyebrows, and the small, strong eyes were quaintly and almost
+comically evil in expression. Beautiful white hair hung straight all
+round his head, like a saint's, and fell in a single curl upon the
+tippet. His beard and mustache were the pink of venerable sweetness.
+Age, probably in consequence of inordinate precautions, had left no
+mark upon his hands; and the Maletroit hand was famous. It would be
+difficult to imagine anything at once so fleshy and so delicate in
+design; the taper, sensual fingers were like those of one of
+Leonardo's[5] women; the fork of the thumb made a dimpled protuberance
+when closed; the nails were perfectly shaped, and of a dead,
+surprising whiteness. It rendered his aspect tenfold more redoubtable,
+that a man with hands like these should keep them devoutly folded like
+a virgin martyr--that a man with so intent and startling an expression
+of face should sit patiently on his seat and contemplates people with
+an unwinking stare, like a god, or a god's statue. His quiescence
+seemed ironical and treacherous, it fitted so poorly with his looks.
+
+Such was Alain, Sire de Maletroit.
+
+Denis and he looked silently at each other for a second or two.
+
+"Pray step in," said the Sire de Maletroit. "I have been expecting you
+all the evening."
+
+He had not risen, but he accompanied his words with a smile and a
+slight but courteous inclination of the head. Partly from the smile,
+partly from the strange musical murmur with which the sire prefaced
+his observation, Denis felt a strong shudder of disgust go through his
+marrow. And what with disgust and honest confusion of mind, he could
+scarcely get words together in reply.
+
+"I fear," he said, "that this is a double accident. I am not the
+person you suppose me. It seems you were looking for a visit; but for
+my part, nothing was further from my thoughts--nothing could be more
+contrary to my wishes--than this intrusion."
+
+"Well, well," replied the old gentleman indulgently, "here you are,
+which is the main point. Seat yourself, my friend, and put yourself
+entirely at your ease. We shall arrange our little affairs presently."
+
+Denis perceived that the matter was still complicated with some
+misconception, and he hastened to continue his explanation.
+
+"Your door," he began.
+
+"About my door?" asked the other raising his peaked eyebrows. "A
+little piece of ingenuity." And he shrugged his shoulders. "A
+hospitable fancy! By your own account, you were not desirous of making
+any acquaintance. We old people look for such reluctance now and then;
+when it touches our honor, we cast about until we find some way of
+overcoming it. You arrive uninvited, but believe me, very welcome."
+
+"You persist in error, sir," said Denis. "There can be no question
+between you and me. I am a stranger in this countryside. My name is
+Denis, damoiseau de Beaulieu. If you see me in your house it is
+only--"
+
+"My young friend," interrupted the other, "you will permit me to have
+my own ideas on that subject. They probably differ from yours at the
+present moment," he added with a leer, "but time will show which of us
+is in the right."
+
+Denis was convinced he had to do with a lunatic. He seated himself
+with a shrug, content to wait the upshot; and a pause ensued, during
+which he thought he could distinguish a hurried gabbling as of a
+prayer from behind the arras immediately opposite him. Sometimes there
+seemed to be but one person engaged, sometimes two; and the vehemence
+of the voice, low as it was, seemed to indicate either great haste or
+an agony of spirit. It occurred to him that this piece of tapestry
+covered the entrance to the chapel he had noticed from without.
+
+The old gentleman meanwhile surveyed Denis from head to foot with a
+smile, and from time to time emitted little noises like a bird or a
+mouse, which seemed to indicate a high degree of satisfaction. This
+state of matters became rapidly insupportable; and Denis, to put an
+end to it, remarked politely that the wind had gone down.
+
+The old gentleman fell into a fit of silent laughter, so prolonged and
+violent that he became quite red in the face. Denis got upon his feet
+at once, and put on his hat with a flourish.
+
+"Sir," he said, "if you are in your wits, you have affronted me
+grossly. If you are out of them, I flatter myself I can find better
+employment for my brains than to talk with lunatics. My conscience is
+clear; you have made a fool of me from the first moment; you have
+refused to hear my explanations; and now there is no power under God
+will make me stay here any longer; and if I cannot make my way out in
+a more decent fashion, I will hack your door in pieces with my sword."
+
+The Sire de Maletroit raised his right hand and wagged it at Denis
+with the fore and little fingers extended.
+
+"My dear nephew," he said, "sit down."
+
+"Nephew!" retorted Denis, "you lie in your throat;" and he snapped his
+fingers in his face.
+
+"Sit down, you rogue!" cried the old gentleman, in a sudden, harsh
+voice like the barking of a dog. "Do you fancy," he went on, "that
+when I had made my little contrivance for the door I had stopped short
+with that? If you prefer to be bound hand and foot till your bones
+ache, rise and try to go away. If you choose to remain a free young
+buck, agreeably conversing with an old gentleman--why, sit where you
+are in peace, and God be with you."
+
+"Do you mean, I am a prisoner?" demanded Denis.
+
+"I state the facts," replied the other. "I would rather leave the
+conclusion to yourself."
+
+Denis sat down again. Externally he managed to keep pretty calm, but
+within, he was now boiling with anger, now chilled with apprehension.
+He no longer felt convinced that he was dealing with a madman. And if
+the old gentleman was sane, what, in God's name, had he to look for?
+What absurd or tragical adventure had befallen him? What countenance
+was he to assume?
+
+While he was thus unpleasantly reflecting, the arras that overhung the
+chapel door was raised, and a tall priest in his robes came forth,
+and, giving a long, keen stare at Denis, said something in an
+undertone to Sire de Maletroit.
+
+"She is in a better frame of spirit?" asked the latter.
+
+"She is more resigned, messire," replied the priest.
+
+"Now the Lord help her, she is hard to please!" sneered the old
+gentleman. "A likely stripling--not ill-born--and of her own choosing,
+too? Why, what more would the jade have?"
+
+"The situation is not usual for a young damsel," said the other, "and
+somewhat trying to her blushes."
+
+"She should have thought of that before she began the dance! It was
+none of my choosing, God knows that; but since she is in it, by our
+Lady, she shall carry it to the end." And then addressing Denis,
+"Monsieur de Beaulieu," he asked, "may I present you to my niece? She
+has been waiting your arrival, I may say, with even greater impatience
+than myself."
+
+Denis had resigned himself with a good grace--all he desired was to
+know the worst of it as speedily as possible; so he rose at once, and
+bowed in acquiescence. The Sire de Maletroit followed his example and
+limped, with the assistance of the chaplain's arm, toward the chapel
+door. The priest pulled aside the arras, and all three entered. The
+building had considerable architectural pretensions. A light groining
+sprang from six stout columns, and hung down in two rich pendants from
+the centre of the vault. The place terminated behind the altar in a
+round end, embossed and honeycombed with a superfluity of ornament in
+relief, and pierced by many little windows shaped like stars,
+trefoils, or wheels. These windows were imperfectly is glazed, so that
+the night air circulated freely in the chapel. The tapers, of which
+there must have been half a hundred burning on the altar, were
+unmercifully blown about; and the light went through many different
+phases of brilliancy and semi-eclipse. On the steps in front of the
+altar knelt a young girl richly attired as a bride. A chill settled
+over Denis as he observed her costume; he fought with desperate energy
+against the conclusion that was being thrust upon his mind; it could
+not--it should not--be as he feared.
+
+"Blanche," said the sire, in his most flute-like tones, "I have
+brought a friend to see you, my little girl; turn round and give him
+your pretty hand. It is good to be devout; but it is necessary to be
+polite, my niece."
+
+The girl rose to her feet and turned toward the newcomers. She moved
+all of a piece; and shame and exhaustion were expressed in every line
+of her fresh young body; and she held her head down and kept her eyes
+upon the pavement, as she came slowly forward. In the course of her
+advance her eyes fell upon Denis de Beaulieu's feet--feet of which he
+was justly vain, be it remarked, and wore in the most elegant
+accoutrement even while travelling. She paused--started, as if his
+yellow boots had conveyed some shocking meaning--and glanced, suddenly
+up into the wearer's countenance. Their eyes met; shame gave place to
+horror and terror in her looks; the blood left her lips, with a
+piercing scream she covered her face with her hands and sank upon, the
+chapel floor.
+
+"That is not the man!" she cried. "My uncle, that is not the man!"
+
+The Sire de Maletroit chirped agreeably. "Of course not," he said; "I
+expected as much. It was so unfortunate you could not remember his
+name."
+
+"Indeed," she cried, "indeed, I have never seen this person till this
+moment--I have never so much as set eyes upon him--I never wish to see
+him again. Sir," she said, turning to Denis, "if you are a gentleman,
+you will hear me out. Have I ever seen you--have you ever seen
+me--before this accursed hour?"
+
+"To speak for myself, I have never had that pleasure," answered the
+young man. "This is the first time, messire, that I have met with your
+engaging niece."
+
+The old gentleman shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"I am distressed to hear it," he said. "But it is never too late to
+begin. I had little more acquaintance with my own late lady ere I
+married her; which proves," he added, with a grimace, "that these
+impromptu marriages may often produce an excellent understanding in
+the long run. As the bridegroom is to have a voice in the matter, I
+will give him two hours to make up for lost time before we proceed
+with the ceremony." And he turned toward the door, followed by the
+clergyman.
+
+The girl was on her feet in a moment. "My uncle, you cannot be in
+earnest," she said. "I declare before God I will stab myself rather
+than be forced on that young man. The heart rises at it; God forbids
+such marriages; you dishonor your white hair. Oh, my uncle, pity me!
+There is not a woman in all the world but would prefer death to such a
+nuptial. Is it possible," she added, faltering--"is it possible that
+you do not believe me--that you still think this"--and she pointed at
+Denis with a tremor of anger and contempt--"that you still think
+_this_ to be the man?"
+
+"Frankly," said the old gentleman, pausing on the threshold, "I do.
+But let me explain to you once for all, Blanche de Maletroit, my way
+of thinking about this affair. When you took it into your head to
+dishonor my family and the name that I have borne, in peace and war,
+for more than threescore years, you forfeited, not only the right to
+question my designs, but that of looking me in the face. If your
+father had been alive, he would have spat on you and turned you out of
+doors. His was the hand of iron. You may bless your God you have only
+to deal with the hand of velvet, mademoiselle. It was my duty to get
+you married without delay. Out of pure goodwill, I have tried to find
+your own gallant for you. And I believe I have succeeded. But before
+God and all the holy angels, Blanche de Maletroit, if I have not, I
+care not one jack-straw. So let me recommend you to be polite to our
+young friend; for, upon my word, your next groom may be less
+appetizing."
+
+And with that he went out, with the chaplain at his heels; and the
+arras fell behind the pair.
+
+The girl turned upon Denis with flashing eyes.
+
+"And what, sir," she demanded, "may be the meaning of all this?"
+
+"God knows," returned Denis, gloomily, "I am a prisoner in this house,
+which seems full of mad people. More I know not; and nothing do I
+understand."
+
+"And pray how came you here?" she asked.
+
+He told her as briefly as he could. "For the rest," he added, "perhaps
+you will follow my example, and tell me the answer to all these
+riddles, and what, in God's name, is like to be the end of it."
+
+She stood silent for a little, and lie could see her lips tremble and
+her tearless eyes burn with a feverish lustre. Then she pressed her
+forehead in both hands.
+
+"Alas, how my head aches!" she said, wearily--"to say nothing of my
+poor heart! But it is due to you to know my story, unmaidenly as it
+must seem. I am called Blanche de Maletroit; I have been without
+father or mother for--oh! for as long as I can recollect, and indeed I
+have been most unhappy all my life. Three months ago a young captain
+began to stand near me every day in church. I could see that I pleased
+him; I am much to blame, but I was so glad that any one should love
+me; and when he passed me a letter, I took it home with me and read it
+with great pleasure. Since that time he has written many. He was so
+anxious to speak with me, poor fellow! and kept asking me to leave the
+door open some evening that we might have two words upon the stair.
+For he knew how much my uncle trusted me." She gave something like a
+sob at that, and it was a moment before she could go on. "My uncle is
+a hard man, but he is very shrewd," she said, at last. "He has
+performed many feats in war, and was a great person at court, and much
+trusted by Queen Isabeau in old days. How he came to suspect me I
+cannot tell; but it is hard to keep anything from his knowledge; and
+this morning, as we came from mass, he took my hand into his, forced
+it open, and read my little billet, walking by my side all the while.
+
+"When he finished, he gave it back to me with great politeness. It
+contained another request to have the door left open; and this has
+been the ruin of us all. My uncle kept me strictly in my room until
+evening, and then ordered me to dress myself as you see me--a hard
+mockery for a young girl, do you not think so? I suppose, when he
+could not prevail with me to tell him the young captain's name, he
+must have laid a trap for him; into which, alas! you have fallen in
+the anger of God. I looked for much confusion; for how could I tell
+whether he was willing to take me for his wife on these sharp terms?
+He might have been trifling with me from the first; or I might have
+made myself too cheap in his eyes. But truly I had not looked for such
+a shameful punishment as this? I could not think that God would let a
+girl be so disgraced before a young man. And now I tell you all; and I
+can scarcely hope that you will not despise me."
+
+Denis made her a respectful inclination.
+
+"Madam," he said, "you have honored me by your confidence. It remains
+for me to prove that I am not unworthy of the honor. Is Messire de
+Maletroit at hand?"
+
+"I believe he is writing in the _salle[6]_ without," she answered.
+
+"May I lead you thither, madam?" asked Denis, offering his hand with
+his most courtly bearing.
+
+She accepted it; and the pair passed out of the chapel, Blanche in a
+very drooping and shamefast condition, but Denis strutting and
+raffling in the consciousness of a mission, and the boyish certainty
+of accomplishing it with honor.
+
+The Sire Maletroit rose to meet them with an ironical obeisance.
+
+"Sir," said Denis, with the grandest possible air, "I believe I am to
+have some say in the matter of this marriage; and let me tell you at
+once, I will be no party to forcing the inclination of this young
+lady. Had it been freely offered to me, I should have been proud to
+accept her hand, for I perceive she is as good as she is beautiful;
+but as things are, I have now the honor, messire, of refusing."
+
+Blanche looked at him with gratitude in her eyes; but the old
+gentleman only smiled and smiled, until his smile grew positively
+sickening to Denis.
+
+"I am afraid," he said, "Monsieur de Beaulieu, that you do not
+perfectly understand the choice I have offered you. Follow me, I
+beseech you, to this window." And he led the way to one of the large
+windows which stood open on the night. "You observe," he went on,
+"there is an iron ring in the upper masonry, and reeved through that,
+a very efficacious rope. Now, mark my words: if you should find your
+disinclination to my niece's person insurmountable, I shall have you
+hanged out of this window before sunrise. I shall only proceed to such
+an extremity with the greatest regret, you may believe me. For it is
+not at all your death that I desire, but my niece's establishment in
+life. At the same time, it must come to that if you prove obstinate.
+Your family, Monsieur de Beaulieu, is very well in its way; but if you
+sprung from Charlemagne[7], you should not refuse the hand of a
+Maletroit with impunity--not if she had been as common as the Paris
+road--not if she was as hideous as the gargoyle over my door. Neither
+my niece nor you, nor my own private feelings, move me at all in this
+matter. The honor of my house has been compromised; I believe you to
+be the guilty person, at least you are now in the secret; and you can
+hardly wonder if I request you to wipe out the stain. If you will not,
+your blood be on your own head! It will be no great satisfaction to me
+to have your interesting relics kicking their heels in the breeze
+below my windows, but half a loaf is better than no bread, and if I
+cannot cure the dishonor, I shall at least stop the scandal."
+
+There was a pause.
+
+"I believe there are other ways of settling such imbroglios among
+gentlemen," said Denis. "You wear a sword, and I hear you have used it
+with distinction."
+
+The Sire de Maletroit made a signal to the chaplain, who crossed the
+room with long silent strides and raised the arras over the third of
+the three doors. It was only a moment before he let it fall again; but
+Denis had time to see a dusky passage full of armed men.
+
+"When I was a little younger, I should have been delighted to honor
+you, Monsieur de Beaulieu," said Sire Alain: "but I am now too old.
+Faithful retainers are the sinews of age, and I must employ the
+strength I have. This is one of the hardest things to swallow as a man
+grows up in years; but with a little patience, even this becomes
+habitual. You and the lady seem to prefer the _salle_ for what remains
+of your two hours; and as I have no desire to cross your preference, I
+shall resign it to your use with all the pleasure in the world. No
+haste!" he added, holding up his hand, as he saw a dangerous look come
+into Denis de Beaulieu's face. "If your mind revolt against hanging,
+it will be time enough two hours hence to throw yourself out of the
+window or upon the pikes of my retainers. Two hours of life are always
+two hours. A great many things may turn up in even as little a while
+as that. And, besides. If I understand her appearance, my niece has
+something to say to you. You will not disfigure your last hours by a
+want of politeness to a lady?"
+
+Denis looked at Blanche, and she made him an imploring gesture.
+
+It is likely that the old gentleman was hugely pleased at this symptom
+of an understanding; for he smiled on both, and added sweetly: "If you
+will give me your word of honor, Monsieur de Beaulieu, to await my
+return at the end of the two hours before attempting anything
+desperate, I shall withdraw my retainers, and let you speak in greater
+privacy with mademoiselle."
+
+Denis again glanced at the girl, who seemed to beseech him to agree.
+
+"I give you my word of honor," he said.
+
+Messire de Maletroit bowed, and proceeded to limp about the apartment,
+clearing his throat the while with that odd musical chirp which had
+already grown so irritating in the ears of Denis de Bealieu. He first
+possessed himself of some papers which lay upon the table; then he
+went to the mouth of the passage and appeared to give an order to the
+men behind the arras; and lastly he hobbled out through the door by
+which Denis had come in, turning upon the threshold to address a last
+smiling bow to the young couple, and followed by the chaplain with a
+hand lamp.
+
+No sooner were they alone than Blanche advanced toward Denis with her
+hands extended. Her face was flushed and excited, and her eyes shone
+with tears.
+
+"You shall not die!" she cried, "you shall marry me after all."
+
+"You seem to think, madam," replied Denis, "that I stand much in fear
+of death."
+
+"Oh, no, no," she said, "I see you are no poltroon[8]. It is for my
+own sake--I could not bear to have you slain for such a scruple."
+
+"I am afraid," returned Denis, "that you underrate the difficulty,
+madam. What you may be too generous to refuse, I may be too proud to
+accept. In a moment of noble feeling toward me, you forget what you
+perhaps owe to others."
+
+He had the decency to keep his eyes on the floor as he said this, and
+after he had finished, so as not to spy upon her confusion. She stood
+silent for a moment, then walked suddenly away, and falling on her
+uncle's chair, fairly burst out sobbing. Denis was in the acme of
+embarrassment. He looked round, as if to seek for inspiration, and,
+seeing a stool, plumped down upon it for something to do. There he
+sat, playing with the guard of his rapier, and wishing himself dead a
+thousand times over, and buried in the nastiest kitchen-heap in
+France. His eyes wandered round the apartment, but found nothing to
+arrest them. There were such wide spaces between the furniture, the
+light fell so badly and cheerlessly over all, the dark outside air
+looked in so coldly through the windows, that he thought he had never
+seen a church so vast, nor a tomb so melancholy. The regular sobs of
+Blanche de Maletroit measured out the time like the ticking of a
+clock. He read the device upon the shield over and over again, until
+his eyes became obscured; he stared into shadowy corners until he
+imagined they were swarming with horrible animals; and every now and
+again he awoke with a start, to remember that his last two hours were
+running, and death was on the march.
+
+Oftener and oftener, as the time went on, did his glance settle on the
+girl herself. Her face was bowed forward and covered with her hands,
+and she was shaken at intervals by the convulsive hiccough of grief.
+Even thus she was not an unpleasant object to dwell upon, so plump and
+yet so fine, with a warm brown skin, and the most beautiful hair,
+Denis thought, in the whole world of womankind. Her hands were like
+her uncle's: but they were more in place at the end of her young arms,
+and looked infinitely soft and caressing. He remembered how her blue
+eyes had shone upon him, full of anger, pity, and innocence. And the
+more he dwelt on her perfections, the uglier death looked, and the
+more deeply was he smitten with penitence at her continued tears. Now
+he felt that no man could have the courage to leave a world which
+contained so beautiful a creature; and now he would have given forty
+minutes of his last hour to have unsaid his cruel speech.
+
+Suddenly a hoarse and ragged peal of cockcrow rose to their ears from
+the dark valley below the windows. And this shattering noise in the
+silence of all around was like a light in a dark place, and shook them
+both out of their reflections.
+
+"Alas, can I do nothing to help you?" she said, looking up.
+
+"Madam," replied Denis, with a fine irrelevancy, "if I have said
+anything to wound you, believe me, it was for your own sake and not
+for mine."
+
+She thanked him with a tearful look.
+
+"I feel your position cruelly," he went on. "The world has been
+bitter, hard on you. Your uncle is a disgrace to mankind. Believe me,
+madam, there is no young gentleman in all France but would be glad of
+my opportunity, to die in doing you a momentary service."
+
+"I know already that you can be very brave and generous," she
+answered. "What I _want_ to know is whether I can serve you--now or
+afterward," she added, with a quaver.
+
+"Most certainly," he answered, with a smile. "Let me sit beside you as
+if I were a friend, instead of a foolish intruder; try to forget how
+awkwardly we are placed to one another; make my last moments go
+pleasantly; and you will do me the chief service possible."
+
+"You are very gallant," she added, with a yet deeper sadness--"very
+gallant--and it somehow pains me. But draw nearer, if you please; and
+if you find anything to say to me, you will at least make certain of a
+very friendly listener. Ah! Monsieur de Beaulieu," she broke
+forth--"ah! Monsieur de Beaulieu, how can I look you in the face?" And
+she fell to weeping again with a renewed effusion.
+
+"Madam," said Denis, taking her hand in both of his, "reflect on the
+little time I have before me, and the great bitterness into which I am
+cast by the sight of your distress. Spare me, in my last moments, the
+spectacle of what I cannot cure even with the sacrifice of my life."
+
+"I am very selfish," answered Blanche. "I will be braver, Monsieur de
+Beaulieu, for your sake. But think if I can do you no kindness in the
+future--if you have no friends to whom I could carry your adieux.
+Charge me as heavily as you can; every burden will lighten, by so
+little, the invaluable gratitude I owe you. Put it in my power to do
+something more for you than weep."
+
+"My mother is married again, and has a young family to care for. My
+brother Guichard will inherit my fiefs; and if I am not in error, that
+will content him amply for my death. Life is a little vapor that
+passeth away, as we are told by those in holy orders. When a man is in
+a fair way and sees all life open in front of him, he seems to himself
+to make a very important figure in the world. His horse whinnies to
+him; the trumpets blow and the girls look out of window as he rides
+into town before his company; he receives many assurances of trust and
+regard--sometimes by express in a letter--sometimes face to face, with
+persons of great consequence falling on his neck. It is not wonderful
+if his head is turned for a time. But once he is dead, were he as
+brave as Hercules[9] or as wise as Solomon[10], he is soon forgotten.
+It is not ten years since my father fell, with many other knights
+around him, in a very fierce encounter, and I do not think that any
+one of them, nor so much as the name of the fight, is now remembered.
+No, no, madam, the nearer you come to it, you see that death is a dark
+and dusty corner, where a man gets into his tomb and has the door shut
+after him till the judgment day. I have few friends just now, and once
+I am dead I shall have none."
+
+"Ah, Monsieur de Beaulieu!" she exclaimed, "you forget Blanche de
+Maletroit."
+
+"You have a sweet nature, madam, and you are pleased to estimate a
+little service far beyond its worth."
+
+"It is not that," she answered. "You mistake me if you think I am
+easily touched by my own concerns. I say so because you are the
+noblest man I have ever met; because I recognize in you a spirit that
+would have made even a common person famous in the land."
+
+"And yet here I die in a mousetrap--with no more noise about it than
+my own squeaking," answered he.
+
+A look of pain crossed her face and she was silent for a little while.
+Then a light came into her eyes, and with a smile she spoke again.
+
+"I cannot have my champion think meanly of himself. Any one who gives
+his life for another will be met in paradise by all the heralds and
+angels of the Lord God. And you have no such cause to hang your head.
+For--Pray, do you think me beautiful?" she asked, with a deep flush.
+
+"Indeed, madam, I do," he said.
+
+"I am glad of that," she answered heartily. "Do you think there are
+many men in France who have been asked in marriage by a beautiful
+maiden--with her own lips--and who have refused her to her face? I
+know you men would half despise such a triumph; but believe me, we
+women know more of what is precious in love. There is nothing that
+should set a person higher in his own esteem; and we women would prize
+nothing more dearly."
+
+"You are very good," he said; "but you cannot make me forget that I
+was asked in pity and not for love."
+
+"I am not so sure of that," she replied, holding down her head. "Hear
+me to an end, Monsieur de Beaulieu. I know how you must despise me; I
+feel you are right to do so; I am too poor a creature to occupy one
+thought of your mind, although, alas! you must die for me this
+morning. But when I asked you to marry me, indeed, and indeed, it was
+because I respected and admired you, and loved you with my whole soul,
+from the very moment that you took my part against my uncle. If you
+had seen yourself, and how noble you looked, you would pity rather
+than despise me. And now," she went on, hurriedly checking him with
+her hand, "although I have laid aside all reserve and told you so
+much, remember that I know your sentiments toward me already. I would
+not, believe me, being nobly born, weary you with importunities into
+consent. I too have a pride of my own: and I declare before the holy
+mother of God, if you should now go back from your word already given,
+I would no more marry you than I would marry my uncle's groom."
+
+Denis smiled a little bitterly.
+
+"It is a small love," he said, "that shies at a little pride."
+
+She made no answer, although she probably had her own thoughts.
+
+"Come hither to the window," he said with a sigh. "Here is the dawn."
+
+And indeed the dawn was already beginning. The hollow of the sky was
+full of essential daylight, colorless and clean; and the valley
+underneath was flooded with a gray reflection. A few thin vapors clung
+in the coves of the forest or lay along the winding course of the
+river. The scene disengaged a surprising effect of stillness, which
+was hardly interrupted when the cocks began once more to crow among
+the steadings[11]. Perhaps the same fellow who had made so horrid a
+clangor in the darkness not half an hour before, now sent up the
+merriest cheer to greet the coming day. A little wind went bustling
+and eddying among the tree-tops underneath the windows. And still the
+daylight kept flooding insensibly out of the east, which was soon to
+grow incandescent and cast up that red-hot cannon-ball, the rising
+sun.
+
+Denis looked out over all this with a bit of a shiver. He had taken
+her hand, and retained it in his almost unconsciously.
+
+"Has the day begun already?" she said; and then illogically enough:
+"the night has been so long! Alas! what shall we say to my uncle when
+he returns?"
+
+"What you will," said Denis, and he pressed her fingers in his.
+
+She was silent.
+
+"Blanche," he said, with a swift, uncertain, passionate utterance,
+"you have seen whether I fear death. You must know well enough that I
+would as gladly leap out of that window into the empty air as to lay a
+finger on you without your free and full consent. But if you care for
+me at all do not let me lose my life in a misapprehension; for I love
+you better than the whole world; and though I will die for you
+blithely, it would be like all the joys of Paradise to live on and
+spend my life in your service."
+
+As he stopped speaking, a bell began to ring loudly in the interior of
+the house; and a clatter of armor in the corridor showed that the
+retainers were returning to their post, and the two hours were at an
+end.
+
+"After all that you have heard?" she whispered, leaning toward him
+with her lips and eyes.
+
+"I have heard nothing," he replied.
+
+"The captain's name was Florimond de Champdivers," she said in his
+ear.
+
+"I did not hear it," he answered, taking her supple body in his arms,
+and covered her wet face with kisses.
+
+A melodious chirping was audible behind, followed by a beautiful
+chuckle, and the voice of Messire de Maletroit wished his new nephew a
+good morning.
+
+
+NOTES
+
+[1] Published in 1878. Acknowledgment is due to the Charles Scribner's
+Sons Company, Publishers, for the use of the text of their edition of
+Stevenson's works.
+
+[2] 207:18 bartizan. A small overhanging turret with loop-holes and
+embrasures projecting from the parapet of a medieval building.
+
+[3] 208:1 gargoyles. Mouths of spouts, in antic shapes.
+
+[4] 209:30 debouched. Passed out.
+
+[5] 212:29 Leonardo. (1452-1519.) A famous Italian painter, architect,
+sculptor, scientist, engineer, mechanician, and musician.
+
+[6] 222:7 salle. French word for hall or room.
+
+[7] 223:13 Charlemagne. (742 or 747-814.) A great king of the Franks
+and emperor of the Romans.
+
+[8] 225:25 poltroon. A coward, a dastard.
+
+[9] 229:12 Hercules. A mighty hero in Greek and Roman mythology.
+
+[10] 229:13 Solomon. Son of David. King of Israel, 993-953 B.C.
+
+[11] 231: 26 steadings. A farmstead--barns, stables, cattle-sheds,
+etc.
+
+
+BIOGRAPHY
+
+Robert Louis Stevenson was born November 13, 1850, in Edinburgh. He
+was an only child. On his mother's side he came from a line of Scotch
+philosophers and ministers; on his father's, from a line of active
+workers and scientists. His grandfather, Robert Stevenson, and his
+father, Thomas Stevenson, gained world-wide reputations in
+engineering.
+
+Robert inherited from his mother throat and lung troubles. His health
+was very poor from his birth and his life was preserved only by the
+careful watchfulness of his mother and his devoted nurse, Alison
+Cunningham. As a child he was very lovable and possessed a very active
+imagination.
+
+He went to school in Edinburgh between the years 1858-1867. He first
+attended a preparatory school, then the Edinburgh academy. He spent
+considerable time at his maternal grandfather's home. It was there
+that he first tasted the delights of romance. In his school work he
+was none too studious, but all his teachers were charmed by his
+pleasing manner and general intelligence. Though an idler in other
+things, he worked constantly on the art of writing. Throughout his
+study in Edinburgh University and his unsuccessful efforts in
+engineering and the practice of law, literature became more and more a
+passion with him.
+
+The period between 1875 and 1879 was one of improved health and
+considerable literary activity. During this time he published _A
+Lodging for the Night, Will o' the Mill, The New Arabian Nights_, and
+an _Inland Voyage_.
+
+While in southern Europe he met and fell in love with Mrs. Osbourne.
+So after she returned to her home in California, Stevenson received
+the news that she was seriously ill. He immediately sailed for San
+Francisco, travelling as a steerage passenger because of lack of funds
+and a desire for literary material. Out of this experience grew a
+number of stories and essays. Exposure on the voyage affected his
+health and caused a very dangerous illness. After his recovery he
+married Mrs. Osbourne and returned to England with his wife and
+stepson.
+
+For a few years his work was more or less spasmodic on account of his
+bitter struggle with poor health, in 1883 he achieved success by the
+publication of _Treasure Island_. _Markheim_ appeared in 1884.
+_Kidnapped_ and _Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde_ were published in 1886.
+
+After the death of his father in 1887, Stevenson and his family sailed
+to America, where they settled in the Adirondacks for the winter of
+1888. Here his health was good and he wrote a number of essays for
+_Scribner's Magazine_. In the spring of the same year they started on
+a cruise of the south seas. They visited many of the southern islands
+and settled at Vailima, Samoa. Stevenson was interested in the Samoaas
+and took an active part in their political affairs. The tropical
+climate agreed with him and his creative power was renewed. He wrote a
+number of short stories, a series of letters on the South Seas, and
+the novel _David Balfour_.
+
+Political reverses and failing strength took away for a time his power
+to write. He was again stimulated, however, by the love and
+appreciation of his Samoan followers, and started on what promised to
+be his period of highest achievement. This promise was soon blighted
+by his untimely death from a stroke of apoplexy, December 13, 1894. He
+was buried in Samoa.
+
+
+BIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES
+
+_Life of Robert Louis Stevenson_, 2 vols., Graham Balfour.
+
+_Robert Louis Stevenson_, Isobel Strong.
+
+_Memories and Portraits_, Robert Louis Stevenson.
+
+_Friends on the Shelf_, Bradford Torrey.
+
+"Personal Recollections," Edmund Gosse, _Century Magazine_, 50:447.
+
+"Character Sketch," _Atlantic Monthly_, 89:89-99.
+
+"The Real Stevenson," _Atlantic Monthly_, 85:702-5.
+
+_A Bibliography of the Works of Robert Louis Stevenson_, W.F.
+Prideaux.
+
+
+CRITICISMS
+
+Fundamentally Stevenson's style is marked by a conscious aim to
+entertain. His engaging humor, free of all affectation,
+sentimentality, and exaggeration, is spontaneous and natural. His most
+original writing is _The Child's Garden of Verses_. His touch is light
+and his thought is clear and lucid. _Across the Plains_ is written in
+his most straightforward and natural style.
+
+Stevenson was a careful writer, doing with great skill any established
+piece of art. He practised diligently, and gained, as he himself
+states, his high rank by constantly drilling himself in the art of
+writing. This imitation of form to the point of perfection, rather
+than an expression of a great and moving idea, gives an air of
+insincerity to some of Stevenson's works. Yet, although seemingly
+artificial, he never chose words for the sake of mere sounds, but for
+their accuracy in truth and fitness. He was as an ephemeral shadow
+with an optimistic and real spirit. He infused an intimacy and
+spirituality into his writings that prove delightful to all his
+readers.
+
+The subject of Markheim, a man failing through weakness, was a
+favorite topic for Stevenson. Markheim is almost an ideal specimen of
+the impressionistic short-story. It has a plot in which Hawthorne
+might justly have revelled, a treatment as intellectual as that of
+Poe, descriptions not unlike those of Flaubert's, and a moral ending
+true to the Puritanic type. The movement of the story is swift and
+possesses perfect unity. The surprise at the end comes as a shock
+although the author has consistently and logically constructed his
+plot.
+
+
+GENERAL REFERENCES
+
+_Emerson and Other Essays_, John Jay Chapman.
+
+_Robert Louis Stevenson_, L. Cope Cornford.
+
+_Modern Novelists_, William Lyon Phelps.
+
+_Makers of English Fiction_, W.J. Dawson.
+
+"Art of Stevenson," _North American Review_, 171: 348-358.
+
+"Criticism," _Dial_, 30:345. May 18, 1901.
+
+
+COLLATERAL READINGS
+
+_The Suicide Club (New Arabian Nights)_, Robert Louis Stevenson.
+
+_Story of the Physician and the Saratoga Trunk_, Robert Louis
+Stevenson.
+
+_The Adventure of the Hansom Cab_, Robert Louis Stevenson.
+
+_The Rajah's Diamond_, Robert Louis Stevenson.
+
+_The Story of the House with the Green Blinds_, Robert Louis
+Stevenson.
+
+_The Adventure of Prince Florizel and the Detective_, Robert Louis
+Stevenson.
+
+_A Lodging for the Night_, Robert Louis Stevenson,
+
+_Providence and the Guitar_, Robert Louis Stevenson.
+
+_In the Valley_, Robert Louis Stevenson.
+
+_With the Children of Israel_, Robert Louis Stevenson.
+
+_The Lotus and the Cockleburrs_, "O. Henry."
+
+_Two Bites at a Cherry_, Thomas Bailey Aldrich.
+
+_The Notary of Perigueux_, Henry W. Longfellow.
+
+
+
+MARKHEIM[1]
+
+_By Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)_
+
+
+"Yes," said the dealer, "our windfalls[2] are of various kinds. Some
+customers are ignorant, and then I touch a dividend[3] on my superior
+knowledge. Some are dishonest," and here he held up the candle, so
+that the light fell strongly on his visitor, "and in that case," he
+continued, "I profit by my virtue."
+
+Markheim had but just entered from the daylight streets, and his eyes
+had not yet grown familiar with the mingled shine and darkness in the
+shop. At these pointed words, and before the near presence of the
+flame, he blinked painfully and looked aside.
+
+The dealer chuckled. "You come to me on Christmas Day," he resumed,
+"when you know that I am alone in my house, put up my shutters, and
+make a point of refusing business. Well, you will have to pay for
+that; you will have to pay for my loss of time, when I should be
+balancing my books; you will have to pay, besides; for a kind of
+manner that I remark in you to-day very strongly. I am the essence of
+discretion, and ask no awkward questions; but when a customer cannot
+look me in the eye, he has to pay for it." The dealer once more
+chuckled; and then, changing to his usual business voice, though still
+with a note of irony, "You can give, as usual, a clear account of how
+you came into the possession of the object?" he continued. "Still your
+uncle's cabinet? A remarkable collector, sir!"
+
+And the little pale, round-shouldered dealer stood almost on tiptoe,
+looking over the top of his gold spectacles, and nodding his head with
+every mark of disbelief. Markheim returned his gaze with one of
+infinite pity, and a touch of horror.
+
+"This time," said he, "you are in error. I have not come to sell, but
+to buy. I have no curios to dispose of; my uncle's cabinet is bare to
+the wainscot: even were it still intact, I have done well on the Stock
+Exchange, and should more likely add to it than otherwise, and my
+errand to-day is simplicity itself. I seek, a Christmas present for a
+lady," he continued, waxing more fluent as he struck into the speech
+he had prepared; "and certainly I owe you every excuse for thus
+disturbing you upon so small a matter. But the thing was neglected
+yesterday; I must produce my little compliment at dinner; and, as you
+very well know, a rich marriage is not a thing to be neglected."
+
+There followed a pause, during which the dealer seemed to weigh this
+statement incredulously. The ticking of many clocks among the curious
+lumber of the shop, and the faint rushing of the cabs in a near
+thoroughfare, filled up the interval of silence.
+
+"Well, sir," said the dealer, "be it so. You are an old customer after
+all; and if, as you say, you have the chance of a good marriage, far
+be it from me to be an obstacle. Here is a nice thing for a lady,
+now," he went on, "this hand glass--fifteenth century, warranted;
+comes from a good collection, too; but I reserve the name, in the
+interests of my customer, who was just like yourself, my dear sir,
+the nephew and sole heir of a remarkable collector."
+
+The dealer, while he thus ran on in his dry and biting voice, had
+stooped to take the object from its place; and, as he had done so,
+a shock had passed through Markheim, a start both of hand and foot,
+a sudden leap of many tumultuous passions to the face. It passed as
+swiftly as it came, and left no trace beyond a certain trembling of
+the hand that now received the glass.
+
+"A glass," he said hoarsely, and then paused, and repeated it more
+clearly. "A glass? For Christmas? Surely not."
+
+"And why not?" cried the dealer. "Why not a glass?"
+
+Markheim was looking upon him with an indefinable expression. "You ask
+me why not?" he said. "Why, look here--look in it--look at yourself!
+Do you like to see it? No! nor I--nor any man."
+
+The little man had jumped back when Markheim had so suddenly
+confronted him with the mirror; but now, perceiving there was nothing
+worse on hand, he chuckled. "Your future lady, sir, must be pretty
+hard favored," said he.
+
+"I ask you," said Markheim, "for a Christmas present, and you give me
+this--this damned reminder of years and sins and follies--this
+hand-conscience! Did you mean it? Had you a thought in your mind? Tell
+me. It will be better for you if you do. Come, tell me about yourself,
+I hazard a guess now, that you are in secret a very charitable man?"
+
+The dealer looked closely at his companion. It was very odd, Markheim
+did not appear to be laughing; there was something in his face like an
+eager sparkle of hope, but nothing of mirth.
+
+"What are you driving at?" the dealer asked.
+
+"Not charitable?" returned the other, gloomily. "Not charitable; not
+pious; not scrupulous; unloving; unbeloved; a hand to get money, a
+safe to keep it. Is that all? Dear God, man, is that all?"
+
+"I will tell you what it is," began the dealer, with some sharpness,
+and then broke off again into a chuckle. "But I see this is a love
+match of yours, and you have been drinking the lady's health."
+
+"Ah!" cried Markheim, with a strange curiosity, "Ah, have you been in
+love? Tell me about that."
+
+"I!" cried the dealer. "I in love! I never had the time, nor have I
+the time to-day for all this nonsense. Will you take the glass?"
+
+"Where is the hurry?" returned Markheim. "It is very pleasant to stand
+here talking; and life is so short and insecure that I would not hurry
+away from any pleasure--no, not even from so mild a one as this. We
+should, rather cling, cling to what little we can get, like a man at a
+cliff's edge. Every second is a cliff, if you think upon it--a cliff a
+mile high--high enough, if we fall, to dash us out of every feature of
+humanity. Hence it is best to talk pleasantly. Let us talk of each
+other; why should we wear this mask? Let us be confidential. Who
+knows, we might become friends?"
+
+"I have just one word to say to you," said the dealer. "Either make
+your purchase, or walk out of my shop."
+
+"True, true," said Markheim. "Enough fooling. To business. Show me
+something else."
+
+The dealer stooped once more, this time to replace the glass upon the
+shelf, his thin blond hair falling over his eyes as he did so.
+Markheim moved a little nearer, with one hand in the pocket of his
+greatcoat; he drew himself up and filled his lungs; at the same time
+many different emotions were depicted together on his face--terror,
+horror, and resolve, fascination, and a physical repulsion; and
+through a haggard lift of his upper lip, his teeth looked out.
+
+"This, perhaps, may suit," observed the dealer; and then, as he began
+to re-arise, Markheim bounded from behind upon his victim. The long,
+skewer-like[4] dagger flashed and fell. The dealer straggled like a
+hen, striking his temple on the shelf, and then tumbled on the floor
+in a heap.
+
+Time had some score of small voices in that shop, some stately and
+slow as was becoming to their great age, others garrulous and hurried.
+All these told out the seconds in an intricate chorus of tickings.
+Then the passage of a lad's feet, heavily running on the pavement,
+broke in upon these smaller voices and startled Markheim into the
+consciousness of his surroundings. He looked about him awfully. The
+candle stood on the counter, its flame solemnly wagging in a draught;
+and by that inconsiderable movement, the whole room was filled with
+noiseless bustle and kept heaving like a sea: the tall shadows
+nodding, the gross blots of darkness swelling and dwindling as with
+respiration, the faces of the portraits and the china gods changing
+and wavering like images in water. The inner door stood ajar, and
+peered into that leaguer[5] of shadows with a long slit of daylight
+like a pointing finger.
+
+From these fear-stricken rovings, Markheim's eyes returned to the body
+of his victim, where it lay both humped and sprawling, incredibly
+small and strangely meaner than in life. In these poor, miserly
+clothes, in that ungainly attitude, the dealer lay like so much
+sawdust. Markheim had feared to see it, and, lo! it was nothing. And
+yet, as he gazed, this bundle of old clothes and pool of blood began
+to find eloquent voices. There it must lie; there was none to work the
+cunning hinges or direct the miracle of locomotion--there it must lie
+till it was found. Found! aye, and then? Then would this dead flesh
+lift up a cry that would ring over England, and fill the world with
+the echoes of pursuit. Ay, dead or not, this was still the enemy.
+"Time was that when the brains were out[6]," he thought; and the
+first word struck into his mind. Time, now that the deed was
+accomplished--time, which had dosed for the victim, had become
+instant and momentous for the slayer.
+
+The thought was yet in his mind, when, first one and then another,
+with every variety of pace and voice--one deep as the bell from a
+cathedral turret, another ringing on its treble notes the prelude of a
+waltz--the clocks began to strike the hour of three in the afternoon.
+
+The sudden outbreak of so many tongues in that dumb chamber staggered
+him. He began to bestir himself, going to and fro with the candle,
+beleaguered by moving shadows, and startled to the soul by chance
+reflections. In many rich mirrors, some of home designs, some from
+Venice or Amsterdam, he saw his face repeated and repeated, as it were
+an army of spies; his own eyes met and detected him; and the sound of
+his own steps, lightly as they fell, vexed the surrounding quiet. And
+still as he continued to fill his pockets, his mind accused him, with
+a sickening iteration[7], of the thousand faults of his design. He
+should have chosen a more quiet hour; he should have prepared an
+alibi; he should not have used a knife; he should have been more
+cautious, and only bound and gagged the dealer, and not killed him; he
+should have been more bold, and killed the servant also; he should
+have done all things otherwise; poignant regrets, weary, incessant
+toiling of the mind to change what was unchangeable, to plan what was
+now useless, to be the architect of the irrevocable past. Meanwhile,
+and behind all this activity, brute terrors, like the scurrying of
+rats in a deserted attic, filled the more remote chambers of his brain
+with riot; the hand of the constable would fall heavy on his shoulder,
+and his nerves would jerk like a hooked fish; or he beheld, in
+galloping defile, the dock, the prison, the gallows, and the black
+coffin. Terror of the people in the street sat down before his mind
+like a besieging army. It was impossible, he thought, but that some
+rumor of the struggle must have reached their ears and set on edge
+their curiosity; and now, in all the neighboring houses, he divined
+them sitting motionless and with uplifted ear--solitary people,
+condemned to spend Christmas dwelling alone on memories of the past,
+and now startlingly recalled from that tender exercise: happy family
+parties, struck into silence round the table, the mother still with
+raised finger; every degree and age and humor, but all, by their own
+hearths, prying and hearkening and weaving the rope that was to hang
+him. Sometimes it seemed to him he could not move too softly; the
+clink of the tall Bohemian goblets rang out loudly like a bell; and
+alarmed by the bigness of the ticking, he was tempted to stop the
+clocks. And then, again, with a swift transition of his terrors, the
+very silence of the place appeared a source of peril, and a thing to
+strike and freeze the passer-by; and he would step more boldly, and
+bustle aloud among the contents of the shop, and imitate, with
+elaborate bravado, the movements of a busy man at ease in his own
+house.
+
+But he was now so pulled about by different alarms that, while one
+portion of his mind was still alert and cunning, another trembled on
+the brink of lunacy. One hallucination in particular took a strong
+hold on his credulity. The neighbor hearkening with white face beside
+his window, the passer-by arrested by a horrible surmise on the
+pavement--these could at worst suspect, they could not know; through
+the brick walls and shuttered windows only sounds could penetrate. But
+here, within the house, was he alone? He knew he was; he had watched
+the servant set forth sweethearting, in her poor best, "out for the
+day" written in every ribbon and smile. Yes, he was alone, of course;
+and yet, in the bulk of empty house about him, he could surely hear
+a stir of delicate footing--he was surely conscious, inexplicably
+conscious, of some presence. Ay, surely; to every room and corner
+of the house his imagination followed it; and now it was a faceless
+thing, and yet had eyes to see with; and again it was a shadow of
+himself; and yet again behold the image of the dead dealer, reinspired
+with cunning and hatred.
+
+At times, with a strong effort, he would glance at the open door which
+still seemed to repel his eyes. The house was tall, the skylight small
+and dirty, the day blind with fog; and the light that filtered down to
+the ground story was exceedingly faint, and showed dimly on the
+threshold of the shop. And yet, in that strip of doubtful brightness,
+did there not hang wavering a shadow?
+
+Suddenly, from the street outside, a very jovial gentleman began to
+beat with a staff on the shop door, accompanying his blows with shouts
+and railleries[8] in which the dealer was continually called upon by
+name. Markheim, smitten into ice, glanced at the dead man. But no! he
+lay quite still; he was fled away far beyond earshot of these blows
+and shoutings; he was sunk beneath seas of silence; and his name,
+which would once have caught his notice above the howling of a storm,
+had become an empty sound. And presently the jovial gentleman desisted
+from his knocking and departed.
+
+Here was a broad hint to hurry what remained to be done, to get forth
+from, this accusing neighborhood, to plunge into a bath of London
+multitudes, and to reach, on the other side of day, that haven of
+safety and apparent, innocence---his bed. One visitor had come: at
+any moment it another might follow and be more obstinate. To have
+done the deed, and yet not to reap the profit, would be too abhorrent
+a failure. The money, that was now Markheim's concern: and as a means
+to that, the keys.
+
+He glanced over his shoulder at the open door, where the shadow was
+still lingering and shivering; and with no conscious repugnance of the
+mind, yet with a tremor of the belly, he drew near the body of his
+victim. The human character had quite departed. Like a suit
+half-stuffed with bran, the limbs lay scattered, the trunk doubled, on
+the floor; and yet the thing repelled him. Although so dingy and
+inconsiderable to the eye, he feared it might have more significance
+to the touch. He took the body by the shoulders, and turned it on its
+back. It was strangely light and supple, and the limbs, as if they had
+been broken, fell into the oddest postures. The face was robbed of all
+expression; but it was as pale as wax, and shockingly smeared with
+blood about one temple. That was, for Markheim, the one displeasing
+circumstance. It carried him back, upon the instant, to a certain fair
+day in a fishers' village: a gray day, a piping wind, a crowd upon the
+street, the blare of brasses, the booming of drums, the nasal voice of
+a ballad singer; and a boy going to and fro, buried over head in the
+crowd and divided between interest and fear, until, coming out upon
+the chief place of concourse, he beheld a booth and a great screen
+with pictures, dismally designed, garishly[9] colored: Brownrigg[10]
+with her apprentice; the Mannings[11] with their murdered guest; Weare
+in the death grip of Thurtell[12]; and a score besides of famous
+crimes. The thing was as clear as an illusion; he was once again that
+little boy; he was looking once again, and with the same sense of
+physical revolt, at these vile pictures; he was still stunned by the
+thumping of the drums. A bar of that day's music returned upon his
+memory; and at that, for the first time, a qualm came over him, a
+breath of nausea, a sudden weakness of the joints, which he must
+instantly resist and conquer.
+
+He judged it more prudent to confront than to flee from these
+considerations; looking the more hardily in the dead face, bending his
+mind to realize the nature and greatness of his crime. So little a
+while ago that face had moved with every change of sentiment, that
+pale mouth had spoken, that body had been all on fire with governable
+energies; and now, and by his act, that piece of life had been
+arrested, as the horologist[13], with interjected finger, arrests the
+beating of the clock. So he reasoned in vain; he could rise to no more
+remorseful consciousness; the same heart which had shuddered before
+the painted effigies of crime, looked on its reality unmoved. At best,
+he felt a gleam of pity for one who had been endowed in vain with all
+those faculties that can make the world a garden of enchantment, one
+who had never lived and who was now dead. But of penitence, no, not a
+tremor.
+
+With that, shaking himself clear of these considerations, he found the
+keys and advanced toward the open door of the shop. Outside, it had
+begun to rain smartly; and the sound of the shower upon the roof had
+banished silence. Like some dripping cavern, the chambers of the house
+were haunted by an incessant echoing, which filled the ear and mingled
+with the ticking of the clocks. And, as Markheim approached the door,
+he seemed to hear, in answer to his own cautious tread, the steps of
+another foot withdrawing up the stair. The shadow still palpitated
+loosely on the threshold. He threw a ton's weight of resolve upon his
+muscles, and drew back the door.
+
+The faint, foggy daylight glimmered dimly on the bare floor and
+stairs; on the bright suit of armor posted, halbert in hand, upon the
+landing; and on the dark wood carvings and framed pictures that hung
+against the yellow panels of the wainscot. So loud was the beating of
+the rain through all the house that, in Markheim's ears, it began to
+be distinguished into many different sounds. Footsteps and sighs, the
+tread of regiments marching in the distance, the chink of money in the
+counting, and the creaking of doors held stealthily ajar, appeared to
+mingle with the patter of the drops upon the cupola and the gushing of
+the water in the pipes. The sense that he was not alone grew upon him
+to the verge of madness. On every side he was haunted and begirt by
+presences. He heard them moving in the upper chambers; from the shop,
+he heard the dead man getting to his legs; and as he began with a
+great effort to mount the stairs, feet fled quietly before him and
+followed stealthily behind. If he were but deaf, he thought, how
+tranquilly he would possess his soul! And then again, and hearkening
+with ever fresh attention, he blessed himself for that unresting sense
+which held the outposts and stood a trusty sentinel upon his life. His
+head turned continually on his neck; his eyes, which seemed starting
+from their orbits, scouted on every side, and on every side were half
+rewarded as with the tail of something nameless vanishing. The
+four-and-twenty steps to the first floor were four-and-twenty agonies.
+
+On that first story the doors stood ajar, three of them like three
+ambushes, shaking his nerves like the throats of cannon. He could
+never again, he felt, be sufficiently immured and fortified from men's
+observing eyes; he longed to be home, girt in by walls, buried among
+bed-clothes, and invisible to all but God. And at that thought he
+wondered a little, recollecting tales of other murderers and the fear
+they were said to entertain of heavenly avengers. It was not so, at
+least, with him. He feared the laws of nature, lest, in their callous
+and immutable procedure, they should preserve some damning evidence of
+his crime. He feared tenfold more, with a slavish, superstitious
+terror, some scission[14] in the continuity of man's experience, some
+wilful illegality of nature. He played a game of skill, depending on
+the rules, calculating consequence from cause; and what if nature, as
+the defeated tyrant overthrew the chessboard, should break the mould
+of their succession? The like had befallen Napoleon (so writers said)
+when the winter changed the time of its appearance. The like might
+befall Markheim: the solid walls might become transparent and reveal
+his doings like those of bees in a glass hive; the stout planks might
+yield under his foot like quicksands and detain him in their clutch;
+aye, and there were soberer accidents that might destroy him: if, for
+instance, the house should fall and imprison him beside the body of
+his victim; or the house next door should fly on fire, and the firemen
+invade him from all sides. These things he feared; and, in a sense,
+these things might be called the hands of God reached forth against
+sin. But about God himself he was at ease; his act was doubtless
+exceptional, but so were his excuses, which God knew; it was there,
+and not among men, that he felt sure of justice.
+
+When he got safe into the drawing-room, and shut the door behind him,
+he was aware of a respite from alarms. The room was quite dismantled,
+uncarpeted besides, and strewn with packing cases and incongruous
+furniture; several great pier glasses, in which he beheld himself at
+various angles, like an actor on a stage; many pictures, framed and
+unframed, standing, with their faces to the wall; a fine Sheraton[15]
+sideboard, a cabinet of marquetry[16], and a great old bed, with
+tapestry hangings. The windows opened to the floor; but by great good
+fortune the lower part of the shutters had been closed, and this
+concealed him from the neighbors. Here, then, Markheim drew in a
+packing case before the cabinet, and began to search among the keys.
+It was a long business, for there were many; and it was irksome,
+besides; for, after all, there might be nothing in the cabinet, and
+time was on the wing. But the closeness of the occupation sobered him.
+With the tail of his eye he saw the door--even glanced at it from time
+to time directly, like a besieged commander pleased to verify the good
+estate of his defences. But in truth he was at peace. The rain falling
+in the street sounded natural and pleasant. Presently, on the other
+side, the notes of a piano were wakened to the music of a hymn, and
+the voices of many children took up the air and words. How stately,
+how comfortable was the melody! How fresh the youthful voices!
+Markheim gave ear to it smilingly, as he sorted out the keys; and his
+mind was thronged with answerable ideas and images; church-going
+children and the pealing of the high organ; children afield, bathers
+by the brookside, ramblers on the brambly common, kite-flyers in the
+windy and cloud-navigated sky; and then, at another cadence of the
+hymn, back again to church, and the somnolence of summer Sundays, and
+the high, genteel voice of the parson (which he smiled a little to
+recall), and the painted Jacobean[17] tombs, and the dim lettering of
+the Ten Commandments in the chancel.
+
+And as he sat thus, at once busy and absent, he was startled to his
+feet. A flash of ice, a flash of fire, a bursting gush of blood, went
+over him, and then he stood transfixed and thrilling. A step mounted
+the stair slowly and steadily, and presently a hand was laid upon the
+knob, and the lock clicked, and the door opened.
+
+Fear held Markheim in a vice. What to expect he knew not, whether the
+dead man walking, or the official ministers of human justice, or some
+chance witness blindly stumbling in to consign him to the gallows. But
+when a face was thrust into the aperture, glanced round the room,
+looked at him, nodded and smiled as if in friendly recognition, and
+then withdrew again, and the door closed behind it, his fear broke
+loose from his control in a hoarse cry. At the sound of this the
+visitant returned.
+
+"Did you call me?" he asked pleasantly, and with that he entered the
+room, and closed the door behind him.
+
+Markheim stood and gazed at him with all his eyes. Perhaps there was a
+film upon his sight, but the outlines of the newcomer seemed to change
+and waver like those of the idols in the wavering candlelight of the
+shop: and at times he thought he knew him; and at times he thought he
+bore a likeness to himself; and always, like a lump of living terror,
+there lay in his bosom the conviction that this thing was not of the
+earth and not of God.
+
+And yet the creature had a strange air of the commonplace, as he stood
+looking on Markheim with a smile; and when he added: "You are looking
+for the money, I believe?" it was in the tones of everyday politeness.
+
+Markheim made no answer.
+
+"I should warn you," resumed the other, "that the maid has left her
+sweetheart earlier than usual and will soon be here. If Mr. Markheim
+be found in this house, I need not describe to him the consequences."
+
+"You know me?" cried the murderer.
+
+The visitor smiled. "You have long been a favorite of mine," he said;
+"and I have long observed and often sought to help you."
+
+"What are you?" cried Markheim: "the devil?"
+
+"What I may be," returned the other, "cannot affect the service I
+propose to render you."
+
+"It can," cried Markheim; "it does! Be helped by you? No, never; not
+by you! You do not know me yet; thank God, you do not know me!"
+
+"I know you," replied the visitant, with a sort of kind severity or
+rather firmness. "I know you to the soul."
+
+"Know me!" cried Markheim. "Who can do so? My life is but a
+travesty[18] and slander on myself. I have lived to belie my nature.
+All men do; all men are better than this disguise that grows about and
+stifles them. You see each dragged away by life, like one whom bravos
+have seized and muffled in a cloak. If they had their own control--if
+you could see their faces, they would be altogether different, they
+would shine out for heroes and saints! I am worse than most; myself is
+more overlaid; my excuse is known to me and God. But, had I the time,
+I could disclose myself."
+
+"To me?" inquired the visitant.
+
+"To you before all," returned the murderer. "I supposed you were
+intelligent. I thought--since you exist--you would prove a reader of
+the heart. And yet you would propose to judge me by my acts! Think of
+it; my acts! I was born and I have lived in a land of giants; giants
+have dragged me by the wrists since I was born out of my mother--the
+giants of circumstance. And you would judge me by my acts! But can you
+not look within? Can you not understand that evil is hateful to me?
+Can you not see within me the clear writing of conscience, never
+blurred by any wilful sophistry[19] although too often disregarded?
+Can you not read me for a thing that surely must be common as
+humanity--the unwilling sinner?"
+
+"All this is very feelingly expressed," was the reply, "but it regards
+me not. These points of consistency are beyond my province, and I care
+not in the least by what compulsion you may have been dragged away, so
+as you are but carried in the right direction. But time flies; the
+servant delays, looking in the faces of the crowd and at the pictures
+on the hoardings, but still she keeps moving nearer; and remember, it
+is as if the gallows itself were striding toward you through the
+Christmas streets! Shall I help you--I, who know all? Shall I tell you
+where to find the money?"
+
+"For what price?" asked Markheim.
+
+"I offer you the service for a Christmas gift," returned the other.
+
+Markheim could not refrain from smiling with a kind of bitter triumph,
+"No," said he, "I will take nothing at your hands; if I were dying of
+thirst, and it was your hand that put the pitcher to my lips, I should
+find the courage to refuse. It may be credulous, but I will do nothing
+to commit myself to evil."
+
+"I have no objection to a death-bed repentance," observed the
+visitant.
+
+"Because you disbelieve their efficacy[20]!" Markheim cried.
+
+"I do not say so," returned the other; "but I look on these things
+from a different side, and when the life is done my interest falls.
+The man has lived to serve me, to spread black looks under color of
+religion, or to sow tares[21] in the wheat field, as you do, in a
+course of weak compliance with desire. Now that he draws so near to
+his deliverance, he can add but one act of service--to repent, to die
+smiling, and thus to build up in confidence and hope the more timorous
+of my surviving followers. I am not so hard a master. Try me. Accept
+my help. Please yourself in life as you have done hitherto; please
+yourself more amply, spread your elbows at the board; and when the
+night begins to fall and the curtains to be drawn, I tell you, for
+your greater comfort, that you will find it even easy to compound your
+quarrel with your conscience, and to make a truckling peace with God.
+I came but now from such a death-bed, and the room was full of sincere
+mourners, listening to the man's last words; and when I looked into
+that face, which had been set as a flint against mercy, I found it
+smiling with hope."
+
+"And do you, then, suppose me such a creature?" asked Markheim. "Do
+you think I have no more generous aspirations than to sin, and sin,
+and sin, and, at last, sneak into heaven? My heart rises at the
+thought. Is this, then, your experience of mankind? or is it because
+you find me with red hands that you presume such baseness? and is this
+crime of murder indeed so impious as to dry up the very springs of
+good?"
+
+"Murder is to me no special category[22]," replied the other. "All
+sins are murder, even all life is war. I behold your race, like
+starving mariners on a raft, plucking crusts out of the hands of
+famine and feeding on each other's lives. I follow sins beyond the
+moment of their acting; I find in all that the last consequence is
+death; and to my eyes, the pretty maid who thwarts her mother with
+such taking graces on a question of a ball, drips no less visibly with
+human gore than such a murderer as yourself. Do I say that I follow
+sins? I follow virtues also; they differ not by the thickness of a
+nail, they are both scythes for the reaping angel of Death. Evil, for
+which I live, consists not in action but in character. The bad man is
+dear to me; not the bad act, whose fruits, if we could follow them far
+enough down the hurtling[23] cataract of the ages, might yet be found
+more blessed than those of the rarest virtues. And it is not because
+you have killed a dealer, but because you are Markheim, that I offered
+to forward your escape."
+
+"I will lay my heart open to you," answered Markheim. "This crime on
+which you find me is my last. On my way to it I have learned many
+lessons; itself is a lesson, a momentous lesson. Hitherto I have been
+driven with revolt to what I would not; I was a bondslave to poverty,
+driven and scourged. There are robust virtues that can stand in these
+temptations; mine was not so: I had a thirst of pleasure. But to-day,
+and out of this deed, I pluck both warning and riches--both the power
+and a fresh resolve to be myself. I become in all things a free actor
+in the world; I begin to see myself all changed, these hands the
+agents of good, this heart at peace. Some thing comes over me out of
+the past; something of what I have dreamed on Sabbath evenings to the
+sound of the church organ, of what I forecast when I shed tears over
+noble books, or talked, an innocent child, with my mother. There lies
+my life; I have wandered a few years, but now I see once more my city
+of destination."
+
+"You are to use this money on the Stock Exchange, I think?" remarked
+the visitor; "and there, if I mistake not, you have already lost some
+thousands?"
+
+"Ah," said Markheim, "but this time I have a sure thing."
+
+"This time, again, you will lose," replied the visitor, quietly.
+
+"Ah, but I keep back the half!" cried Markheim.
+
+"That also you will lose," said the other.
+
+The sweat started upon Markheim's brow. "Well, then, what matter?" he
+exclaimed. "Say it be lost, say I am plunged again in poverty, shall
+one part of me, and that the worse, continue until the end to override
+the better? Evil and good ran strong in me, hailing me both ways. I do
+not love the one thing, I love all. I can conceive great deeds,
+renunciations, martyrdoms; and though I be fallen to such a crime as
+murder, pity is no stranger to my thoughts. I pity the poor; who knows
+their trials better than myself? I pity and help them; I prize love, I
+love honest laughter; there is no good thing nor true thing on earth
+but I love it from my heart. And are my vices only to direct my life,
+and my virtues to lie without effect, like some passive lumber of the
+mind? Not so; good, also, is a spring of acts."
+
+But the visitant raised his finger. "For six-and-thirty years that you
+have been in this world," said he, "through many changes of fortune
+and varieties of humor, I have watched you steadily fall. Fifteen
+years ago you would have started at a theft. Three years back you
+would have blenched at the name of murder. Is there any crime, is
+there any cruelty or meanness, from which you still recoil?--five
+years from now I shall detect you in the fact! Downward, downward lies
+your way; nor can anything but death avail to stop you."
+
+"It is true," Markheim said huskily, "I have in some degree complied
+with evil. But it is so with all: the very saints, in the mere
+exercise of living, grow less dainty, and take on the tone of their
+surroundings."
+
+"I will propound to you one simple question," said the other; "and as
+you answer, I shall read to you your moral horoscope. You have grown
+in many things more lax; possibly you do right to be so; and at any
+account, it is the same with all men. But granting that, are you in
+any one particular, however trifling, more difficult to please with
+your own conduct, or do you go in all things with a looser rein?"
+
+"In any one?" repeated Markheim, with an anguish of consideration.
+"No," he added, with despair, "in none! I have gone down in all."
+
+"Then," said the visitor, "content yourself with what you are, for you
+will never change; and the words of your part on this stage are
+irrevocably written down."
+
+Markheim stood for a long while silent, and indeed it was the visitor
+who first broke the silence. "That being so," he said, "shall I show
+you the money?"
+
+"And grace?" cried Markheim.
+
+"Have you not tried it?" returned the other. "Two or three years ago,
+did I not see you on the platform of revival meetings, and was not
+your voice the loudest in the hymn?"
+
+"It is true," said Markheim; "and I see clearly what remains for me by
+way of duty. I thank you for these lessons from my soul; my eyes are
+opened, and I behold myself at last for what I am."
+
+At this moment, the sharp note of the door-bell rang through the
+house; and the visitant, as though this were some concerted signal for
+which he had been waiting, changed at once in his demeanor.
+
+"The maid!" he cried. "She has returned, as I forewarned you, and
+there is now before you one more difficult passage. Her master, you
+must say, is ill; you must let her in, with an assured but rather
+serious countenance--no smiles, no overacting, and I promise you
+success! Once the girl within, and the door closed, the same dexterity
+that has already rid you of the dealer will relieve you of this last
+danger in your path. Thenceforward you have the whole evening--the
+whole night, if needful--to ransack the treasures of the house and to
+make good your safety. This is help that comes to you with the mask of
+danger. Up!" he cried: "up, friend; your life hangs trembling in the
+scales: up, and act!"
+
+Markheim steadily regarded his counsellor. "If I be condemned to evil
+acts," he said, "there is still one door of freedom open--I can cease
+from action. If my life be an ill thing, I can lay it down. Though I
+be, as you say truly, at the beck of every small temptation, I can
+yet, by one decisive gesture, place myself beyond the reach of all.
+My love of good is damned to barrenness; it may, and let it be!
+But I have still my hatred of evil; and from that, to your galling
+disappointment, you shall see that I can draw both energy and
+courage."
+
+The features of the visitor began to undergo a wonderful and lovely
+change: they brightened and softened with a tender triumph; and, even
+as they brightened, faded and dislimned[24]. But Markheim did not
+pause to watch or understand the transformation. He opened the door
+and went downstairs very slowly, thinking to himself. His past went
+soberly before him; he beheld it as it was, ugly and strenuous like
+a dream, random as chance-medley--a scene of defeat. Life, as he
+thus reviewed it, tempted him no longer; but on the farther side he
+perceived a quiet haven for his bark. He paused in the passage, and
+looked into the shop, where the candle still burned by the dead body.
+It was strangely silent. Thoughts of the dealer swarmed into his mind,
+as he stood gazing. And then the bell once more broke out into
+impatient clamor.
+
+He confronted the maid upon the threshold with something like a smile.
+
+"You had better go for the police," said he: "I have killed your
+master."
+
+
+
+
+
+NOTES
+
+[1] Written in 1884. This story is used by permission of and special
+arrangement with the Charles Scribner's Sons Company, Publishers.
+
+[2] 237:1 windfalls. Unexpected gains.
+
+[3] 237:3 dividend. His knowledge a business asset that draws
+interest.
+
+[4] 241:22 skewer-like. Like a wooden pin now used to fasten meat.
+
+[5] 242:11 leaguer. Place besieged with shadows.
+
+[6] 242:27 Time was that when the brains were out. See Macbeth, Act
+III, sc. 4, line 78.
+
+[7] 243:16 iteration. Repetition.
+
+[8] 246:25 railleries. Merry jesting or ridicule.
+
+[9] 247:7 garishly. A blinding, gaudy effect.
+
+[10] 247:7 Brownrigg. A notorious murderess living in England in the
+middle of the eighteenth century. She was hanged and her skeleton is
+still preserved.
+
+[11] 247:8 Mannings. Marie Manning and her husband murdered a former
+suitor. They were given, a death sentence.
+
+[12] 247:9 Thurtell. A gambler who quarrelled with Weare and killed
+him after he had professed peace. He designed his own gallows.
+
+[13] 247:25 horologist. One who makes timepieces.
+
+[14] 249:27 scission. A cleaving or a dividing.
+
+[15] 250:25 Sheraton. Next to Chippendale the greatest furniture
+designer and cabinet-maker.
+
+[16] 250:25 marquetry. An inlay of some thin material in the surface
+of a piece of furniture or other object.
+
+[17] 251:23 Jacobean. Pertaining to the time of James I of England.
+
+[18] 253:12 travesty. A grotesque imitation.
+
+[19] 254:3 sophistry. Methods of the Greek sophists.
+
+[20] 254:29 efficacy. Effective energy.
+
+[21] 255:5 sow tares, etc. See Matthew XII, 24-30.
+
+[22] 255:29 category. A class, condition, or predicament.
+
+[23] 256:14 hurtling. Rushing headlong or confusedly.
+
+[24] 280:10 dislimned. Erased or effaced.
+
+
+COLLATERAL READINGS
+
+_Treasure Island_, R.L. Stevenson.
+
+_Kidnapped_, R.L. Stevenson.
+
+_Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde_, R.L. Stevenson.
+
+_Prince Otto_, R.L. Stevenson.
+
+_Across the Plains_, R.L. Stevenson.
+
+_Travels with a Donkey_, R.L. Stevenson.
+
+_An Inland Voyage_, R.L. Stevenson.
+
+_Essays on Burns and Thoreau_, R.L. Stevenson.
+
+_Virginibus Puerisque_, R.L. Stevenson.
+
+_The Child's Garden of Verses_, R.L. Stevenson.
+
+_The Masque of the Red Death_, Edgar Allan Poe.
+
+_The Pit and the Pendulum_, Edgar Allan Poe.
+
+_A Coward_, Guy de Maupassant.
+
+_The Substitute_, Francois Coppee.
+
+_The Revolt of Mother_, Mary Wilkins Freeman.
+
+_Flute and Violin_, James Lane Alien.
+
+_A Lear of the Steppes_, Ivan Turgeneff.
+
+_Rappacini's Daughter_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Short-Stories, by Various
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