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Dark Saint Alaick
28-04-2012, 05:03 AM
No book is duller than a book of jokes, for what is refreshing in small doses becomes nauseating when perused in large assignments. Humor in literature is at its best not when served merely by itself but when presented along with other ingredients of literary force in order to give a wide representation of life. Therefore 'professional literary humorists', as they may be called, have not been much considered in making up this collection. This thread does not aim to contain all 'the best American humorous short stories'; there are many other stories equally as good, I suppose, in much the same vein, scattered through the range of American literature. I have tried to keep a certain unity of aim and impression in selecting these stories. In the first place I determined that the pieces of brief fiction which I included must first of all be not merely good stories, but good short stories. I put myself in the position of one who was about to select the best short stories in the whole range of American literature, but who, just before he started to do this, was notified that he must refrain from selecting any of the best American short stories that did not contain the element of humor to a marked degree. But I have kept in mind the wide boundaries of the term humor, and also the fact that the humorous standard should be kept second--although a close second--to the short story standard. In view of the necessary limitations, I could not hope to represent all periods of American literature adequately, nor was this necessary in order to give examples of the best that has been done in the short story in a humorous vein in American literature. Probably all types of the short story of humor are included here, at any rate.

Dark Saint Alaick
28-04-2012, 05:07 AM
The Little Frenchman And His Water Lots

By George Pope Morris (1802-1864)

[From The Little Frenchman and His Water Lots, with Other Sketches of the Times (1839), by George Pope Morris.]

Look into those they call unfortunate,
And, closer view'd, you'll find they are unwise.--Young.
Let wealth come in by comely thrift,
And not by any foolish shift: ‘Tis haste Makes waste: Who gripes too hard
the dry and slippery sand
Holds none at all, or little, in his hand.--Herrick.
Let well alone.--Proverb.

Dark Saint Alaick
28-04-2012, 05:09 AM
How much real comfort every one might enjoy if he would be contented with the lot in
which heaven has cast him, and how much trouble would be avoided if people would
only "let well alone." A moderate independence, quietly and honestly procured, is
certainly every way preferable even to immense possessions achieved by the wear and
tear of mind and body so necessary to procure them. Yet there are very few individuals,
let them be doing ever so well in the world, who are not always straining every nerve to
do better; and this is one of the many causes why failures in business so frequently occur
among us. The present generation seem unwilling to "realize" by slow and sure degrees;
but choose rather to set their whole hopes upon a single cast, which either makes or mars
them forever!
Gentle reader, do you remember Monsieur Poopoo? He used to keep a small toy-store in
Chatham, near the corner of Pearl Street. You must recollect him, of course. He lived
there for many years, and was one of the most polite and accommodating of shopkeepers.
When a juvenile, you have bought tops and marbles of him a thousand times. To be sure
you have; and seen his vinegar-visage lighted up with a smile as you flung him the
coppers; and you have laughed at his little straight queue and his dimity breeches, and all
the other oddities that made up the every-day apparel of my little Frenchman. Ah, I
perceive you recollect him now.

Dark Saint Alaick
28-04-2012, 05:09 AM
Well, then, there lived Monsieur Poopoo ever since he came from "dear, delightful Paris,"
as he was wont to call the city of his nativity--there he took in the pennies for his
kickshaws--there he laid aside five thousand dollars against a rainy day--there he was as
happy as a lark--and there, in all human probability, he would have been to this very day,
a respected and substantial citizen, had he been willing to "let well alone." But Monsieur
Poopoo had heard strange stories about the prodigious rise in real estate; and, having
understood that most of his neighbors had become suddenly rich by speculating in lots,
he instantly grew dissatisfied with his own lot, forthwith determined to shut up shop, turn
everything into cash, and set about making money in right-down earnest. No sooner said
than done; and our quondam storekeeper a few days afterward attended an extensive sale
of real estate, at the Merchants' Exchange.
There was the auctioneer, with his beautiful and inviting lithographic maps--all the lots as
smooth and square and enticingly laid out as possible--and there were the speculators--
and there, in the midst of them, stood Monsieur Poopoo.
"Here they are, gentlemen," said he of the hammer, "the most valuable lots ever offered
for sale. Give me a bid for them!"
"One hundred each," said a bystander.
"One hundred!" said the auctioneer, "scarcely enough to pay for the maps. One hundred--
going--and fifty--gone! Mr. H., they are yours. A noble purchase. You'll sell those same
lots in less than a fortnight for fifty thousand dollars profit!"

Dark Saint Alaick
28-04-2012, 05:09 AM
Monsieur Poopoo pricked up his ears at this, and was lost in astonishment. This was a
much easier way certainly of accumulating riches than selling toys in Chatham Street,
and he determined to buy and mend his fortune without delay.
The auctioneer proceeded in his sale. Other parcels were offered and disposed of, and all
the purchasers were promised immense advantages for their enterprise. At last came a
more valuable parcel than all the rest. The company pressed around the stand, and
Monsieur Poopoo did the same.
"I now offer you, gentlemen, these magnificent lots, delightfully situated on Long Island,
with valuable water privileges. Property in fee--title indisputable--terms of sale, cash--
deeds ready for delivery immediately after the sale. How much for them? Give them a
start at something. How much?" The auctioneer looked around; there were no bidders. At
last he caught the eye of Monsieur Poopoo. "Did you say one hundred, sir? Beautiful lots-
-valuable water privileges--shall I say one hundred for you?"
"Oui, monsieur; I will give you von hundred dollar apiece, for de lot vid de valuarble
vatare privalege; c'est ça."
"Only one hundred apiece for these sixty valuable lots--only one hundred--going--going--
going--gone!"
Monsieur Poopoo was the fortunate possessor. The auctioneer congratulated him--the
sale closed--and the company dispersed.

Dark Saint Alaick
28-04-2012, 05:11 AM
"Pardonnez-moi, monsieur," said Poopoo, as the auctioneer descended his pedestal, "you
shall excusez-moi, if I shall go to votre bureau, your counting-house, ver quick to make
every ting sure wid respec to de lot vid de valuarble vatare privalege. Von leetle bird in
de hand he vorth two in de tree, c'est vrai--eh?"
"Certainly, sir."
"Vell den, allons."
And the gentlemen repaired to the counting-house, where the six thousand dollars were
paid, and the deeds of the property delivered. Monsieur Poopoo put these carefully in his
pocket, and as he was about taking his leave, the auctioneer made him a present of the
lithographic outline of the lots, which was a very liberal thing on his part, considering the
map was a beautiful specimen of that glorious art. Poopoo could not admire it
sufficiently. There were his sixty lots, as uniform as possible, and his little gray eyes
sparkled like diamonds as they wandered from one end of the spacious sheet to the other.
Poopoo's heart was as light as a feather, and he snapped his fingers in the very
wantonness of joy as he repaired to Delmonico's, and ordered the first good French
dinner that had gladdened his palate since his arrival in America.

Dark Saint Alaick
28-04-2012, 05:11 AM
After having discussed his repast, and washed it down with a bottle of choice old claret,
he resolved upon a visit to Long Island to view his purchase. He consequently
immediately hired a horse and gig, crossed the Brooklyn ferry, and drove along the
margin of the river to the Wallabout, the location in question.
Our friend, however, was not a little perplexed to find his property. Everything on the
map was as fair and even as possible, while all the grounds about him were as undulated
as they could well be imagined, and there was an elbow of the East River thrusting itself
quite into the ribs of the land, which seemed to have no business there. This puzzled the
Frenchman exceedingly; and, being a stranger in those parts, he called to a farmer in an
adjacent field.
"Mon ami, are you acquaint vid dis part of de country--eh?"
"Yes, I was born here, and know every inch of it."
"Ah, c'est bien, dat vill do," and the Frenchman got out of the gig, tied the horse, and
produced his lithographic map.
"Den maybe you vill have de kindness to show me de sixty lot vich I have bought, vid de
valuarble vatare privalege?"
The farmer glanced his eye over the paper.
"Yes, sir, with pleasure; if you will be good enough to get into my boat, I will row you
out to them!"
"Vat dat you say, sure?"

Dark Saint Alaick
28-04-2012, 05:11 AM
"My friend," said the farmer, "this section of Long Island has recently been bought up by
the speculators of New York, and laid out for a great city; but the principal street is only
visible at low tide. When this part of the East River is filled up, it will be just there. Your
lots, as you will perceive, are beyond it; and are now all under water."
At first the Frenchman was incredulous. He could not believe his senses. As the facts,
however, gradually broke upon him, he shut one eye, squinted obliquely at the heavens---
the river--the farmer--and then he turned away and squinted at them all over again! There
was his purchase sure enough; but then it could not be perceived for there was a river
flowing over it! He drew a box from his waistcoat pocket, opened it, with an emphatic
knock upon the lid, took a pinch of snuff and restored it to his waistcoat pocket as before.
Poopoo was evidently in trouble, having "thoughts which often lie too deep for tears";
and, as his grief was also too big for words, he untied his horse, jumped into his gig, and
returned to the auctioneer in hot haste.
It was near night when he arrived at the auction-room--his horse in a foam and himself in
a fury. The auctioneer was leaning back in his chair, with his legs stuck out of a low
window, quietly smoking a cigar after the labors of the day, and humming the music from
the last new opera.

Dark Saint Alaick
28-04-2012, 05:12 AM
"Monsieur, I have much plaisir to fin' you, chez vous, at home."
"Ah, Poopoo! glad to see you. Take a seat, old boy."
"But I shall not take de seat, sare."
"No--why, what's the matter?"
"Oh, beaucoup de matter. I have been to see de gran lot vot you sell me to-day."
"Well, sir, I hope you like your purchase?"
"No, monsieur, I no like him."
"I'm sorry for it; but there is no ground for your complaint."
"No, sare; dare is no ground at all--de ground is all vatare!"
"You joke!"
"I no joke. I nevare joke; je n'entends pas la raillerie, Sare, voulez-vous have de kindness
to give me back de money vot I pay!"
"Certainly not."
"Den vill you be so good as to take de East River off de top of my lot?"
"That's your business, sir, not mine."
"Den I make von mauvaise affaire--von gran mistake!"
"I hope not. I don't think you have thrown your money away in the land."
"No, sare; but I tro it avay in de vatare!"

Dark Saint Alaick
28-04-2012, 05:12 AM
"That's not my fault."
"Yes, sare, but it is your fault. You're von ver gran rascal to swindle me out of de
l'argent."
"Hello, old Poopoo, you grow personal; and if you can't keep a civil tongue in your head,
you must go out of my counting-room."
"Vare shall I go to, eh?"
"To the devil, for aught I care, you foolish old Frenchman!" said the auctioneer, waxing
warm.
"But, sare, I vill not go to de devil to oblige you!" replied the Frenchman, waxing
warmer. "You sheat me out of all de dollar vot I make in Shatham Street; but I vill not go
to de devil for all dat. I vish you may go to de devil yourself you dem yankee-doo-dell,
and I vill go and drown myself, tout de suite, right avay."
"You couldn't make a better use of your water privileges, old boy!"
"Ah, miséricorde! Ah, mon dieu, je suis abîmé. I am ruin! I am done up! I am break all
into ten sousan leetle pieces! I am von lame duck, and I shall vaddle across de gran ocean
for Paris, vish is de only valuarble vatare privalege dat is left me Ã* present!"
Poor Poopoo was as good as his word. He sailed in the next packet, and arrived in Paris
almost as penniless as the day he left it.
Should any one feel disposed to doubt the veritable circumstances here recorded, let him
cross the East River to the Wallabout, and farmer J---- will row him out to the very place
where the poor Frenchman's lots still remain under water.

Dark Saint Alaick
30-04-2012, 01:17 AM
The Angel Of The Odd

By Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)

[From The Columbian Magazine, October, 1844]


It was a chilly November afternoon. I had just consummated an unusually hearty dinner, of which the dyspeptic truffe formed not the least important item, and was sitting alone in the dining-room with my feet upon the fender and at my elbow a small table which I had rolled up to the fire, and upon which were some apologies for dessert, with some miscellaneous bottles of wine, spirit, and liqueur. In the morning I had been reading Glover's Leonidas, Wilkie's Epigoniad, Lamartine's Pilgrimage, Barlow's Columbiad, Tuckerman's Sicily, and Griswold's Curiosities, I am willing to confess, therefore, that I now felt a little stupid.

Dark Saint Alaick
30-04-2012, 01:18 AM
I made effort to arouse myself by frequent aid of Lafitte, and all failing, I betook myself to a stray newspaper in despair. Having carefully perused the column of "Houses to let," and the column of "Dogs lost," and then the columns of "Wives and apprentices runaway," I attacked with great resolution the editorial matter, and reading it from beginning to end without understanding a syllable, conceived the possibility of its being Chinese, and so re-read it from the end to the beginning, but with no more satisfactory result. I was about throwing away in disgust This folio of four pages, happy work Which not even critics criticise, when I felt my attention somewhat aroused by the paragraph which follows: "The avenues to death are numerous and strange. A London paper mentions the decease of a person from a singular cause. He was playing at 'puff the dart,' which is played with a long needle inserted in some worsted, and blown at a target through a tin tube. He placed the needle at the wrong end of the tube, and drawing his breath strongly to puff the dart forward with force, drew the needle into his throat. It entered the lungs, and in a few days killed him."

Dark Saint Alaick
30-04-2012, 01:19 AM
Upon seeing this I fell into a great rage, without exactly knowing why. "This thing," I
exclaimed, "is a contemptible falsehood--a poor hoax--the lees of the invention of some
pitiable penny-a-liner, of some wretched concocter of accidents in Cocaigne. These
fellows knowing the extravagant gullibility of the age set their wits to work in the
imagination of improbable possibilities, of odd accidents as they term them, but to a
reflecting intellect (like mine, I added, in parenthesis, putting my forefinger
unconsciously to the side of my nose), to a contemplative understanding such as I myself
possess, it seems evident at once that the marvelous increase of late in these 'odd
accidents' is by far the oddest accident of all. For my own part, I intend to believe nothing
henceforward that has anything of the 'singular' about it."

Dark Saint Alaick
30-04-2012, 01:19 AM
"Mein Gott, den, vat a vool you bees for dat!" replied one of the most remarkable voices I
ever heard. At first I took it for a rumbling in my ears--such as a man sometimes
experiences when getting very drunk--but upon second thought, I considered the sound as
more nearly resembling that which proceeds from an empty barrel beaten with a big stick;
and, in fact, this I should have concluded it to be, but for the articulation of the syllables
and words. I am by no means naturally nervous, and the very few glasses of Lafitte which
I had sipped served to embolden me a little, so that I felt nothing of trepidation, but
merely uplifted my eyes with a leisurely movement and looked carefully around the room
for the intruder. I could not, however, perceive any one at all.

Dark Saint Alaick
30-04-2012, 01:19 AM
"Humph!" resumed the voice as I continued my survey, "you mus pe so dronk as de pig
den for not zee me as I zit here at your zide."
Hereupon I bethought me of looking immediately before my nose, and there, sure
enough, confronting me at the table sat a personage nondescript, although not altogether
indescribable. His body was a wine-pipe or a rum puncheon, or something of that
character, and had a truly Falstaffian air. In its nether extremity were inserted two kegs,
which seemed to answer all the purposes of legs. For arms there dangled from the upper
portion of the carcass two tolerably long bottles with the necks outward for hands. All the
head that I saw the monster possessed of was one of those Hessian canteens which
resemble a large snuff-box with a hole in the middle of the lid. This canteen (with a
funnel on its top like a cavalier cap slouched over the eyes) was set on edge upon the
puncheon, with the hole toward myself; and through this hole, which seemed puckered up
like the mouth of a very precise old maid, the creature was emitting certain rumbling and
grumbling noises which he evidently intended for intelligible talk.

Dark Saint Alaick
30-04-2012, 01:19 AM
"I zay," said he, "you mos pe dronk as de pig, vor zit dare and not zee me zit ere; and I
zay, doo, you mos pe pigger vool as de goose, vor to dispelief vat iz print in de print. 'Tiz
de troof--dat it iz--ebery vord ob it."
"Who are you, pray?" said I with much dignity, although somewhat puzzled; "how did
you get here? and what is it you are talking about?"
"As vor ow I com'd ere," replied the figure, "dat iz none of your pizziness; and as vor vat
I be talking apout, I be talk apout vat I tink proper; and as vor who I be, vy dat is de very
ting I com'd here for to let you zee for yourself."
"You are a drunken vagabond," said I, "and I shall ring the bell and order my footman to
kick you into the street."
"He! he! he!" said the fellow, "hu! hu! hu! dat you can't do."
"Can't do!" said I, "what do you mean? I can't do what?"

Dark Saint Alaick
30-04-2012, 01:20 AM
"Ring de pell," he replied, attempting a grin with his little villainous mouth.
Upon this I made an effort to get up in order to put my threat into execution, but the
ruffian just reached across the table very deliberately, and hitting me a tap on the
forehead with the neck of one of the long bottles, knocked me back into the armchair
from which I had half arisen. I was utterly astounded, and for a moment was quite at a
loss what to do. In the meantime he continued his talk.
"You zee," said he, "it iz te bess vor zit still; and now you shall know who I pe. Look at
me! zee! I am te Angel ov te Odd."
"And odd enough, too," I ventured to reply; "but I was always under the impression that
an angel had wings."
"Te wing!" he cried, highly incensed, "vat I pe do mit te wing? Mein Gott! do you take
me for a shicken?"

Dark Saint Alaick
30-04-2012, 01:20 AM
"No--oh, no!" I replied, much alarmed; "you are no chicken--certainly not."
"Well, den, zit still and pehabe yourself, or I'll rap you again mid me vist. It iz te shicken
ab te wing, und te owl ab te wing, und te imp ab te wing, und te head-teuffel ab te wing.
Te angel ab not te wing, and I am te Angel ov te Odd."
"And your business with me at present is--is----"
"My pizziness!" ejaculated the thing, "vy vat a low-bred puppy you mos pe vor to ask a
gentleman und an angel apout his pizziness!"
This language was rather more than I could bear, even from an angel; so, plucking up
courage, I seized a salt-cellar which lay within reach, and hurled it at the head of the
intruder. Either he dodged, however, or my aim was inaccurate; for all I accomplished
was the demolition of the crystal which protected the dial of the clock upon the
mantelpiece. As for the Angel, he evinced his sense of my assault by giving me two or
three hard, consecutive raps upon the forehead as before. These reduced me at once to
submission, and I am almost ashamed to confess that, either through pain or vexation,
there came a few tears into my eyes.

Dark Saint Alaick
30-04-2012, 01:20 AM
"Mein Gott!" said the Angel of the Odd, apparently much softened at my distress; "mein
Gott, te man is eder ferry dronk or ferry zorry. You mos not trink it so strong--you mos
put te water in te wine. Here, trink dis, like a good veller, and don't gry now--don't!"
Hereupon the Angel of the Odd replenished my goblet (which was about a third full of
port) with a colorless fluid that he poured from one of his hand-bottles. I observed that
these bottles had labels about their necks, and that these labels were inscribed
"Kirschenwässer."
The considerate kindness of the Angel mollified me in no little measure; and, aided by
the water with which he diluted my port more than once, I at length regained sufficient
temper to listen to his very extraordinary discourse. I cannot pretend to recount all that he
told me, but I gleaned from what he said that he was a genius who presided over the
contretemps of mankind, and whose business it was to bring about the odd accidents
which are continually astonishing the skeptic.

Dark Saint Alaick
30-04-2012, 01:21 AM
Once or twice, upon my venturing to express my total incredulity in respect to his pretensions, he grew very angry indeed, so that at length I considered it the wiser policy to say nothing at all, and let him have his own way. He talked on, therefore, at great length, while I merely leaned back in my chair with my eyes shut, and amused myself with munching raisins and filiping the stems about the room. But, by and by, the Angel suddenly construed this behavior of mine into contempt. He arose in a terrible passion, slouched his funnel down over his eyes, swore a vast oath, uttered a threat of some character, which I did not precisely comprehend, and finally made me a low bow and departed, wishing me, in the language of the archbishop in "Gil Bias," beaucoup de bonheur et un peu plus de bon sens.
His departure afforded me relief. The very few glasses of Lafitte that I had sipped had the
effect of rendering me drowsy, and I felt inclined to take a nap of some fifteen or twenty
minutes, as is my custom after dinner. At six I had an appointment of consequence, which
it was quite indispensable that I should keep. The policy of insurance for my dwellinghouse
had expired the day before; and some dispute having arisen it was agreed that, at
six, I should meet the board of directors of the company and settle the terms of a renewal.

Dark Saint Alaick
30-04-2012, 01:22 AM
Glancing upward at the clock on the mantelpiece (for I felt too drowsy to take out my
watch), I had the pleasure to find that I had still twenty-five minutes to spare. It was halfpast five; I could easily walk to the insurance office in five minutes; and my usual siestas had never been known to exceed five-and-twenty. I felt sufficiently safe, therefore, and composed myself to my slumbers forthwith.
Having completed them to my satisfaction, I again looked toward the timepiece, and was
half inclined to believe in the possibility of odd accidents when I found that, instead of
my ordinary fifteen or twenty minutes, I had been dozing only three; for it still wanted
seven-and-twenty of the appointed hour. I betook myself again to my nap, and at length a
second time awoke, when, to my utter amazement, it still wanted twenty-seven minutes
of six. I jumped up to examine the clock, and found that it had ceased running. My watch
informed me that it was half-past seven; and, of course, having slept two hours, I was too
late for my appointment. "It will make no difference," I said: "I can call at the office in
the morning and apologize; in the meantime what can be the matter with the clock?"
Upon examining it I discovered that one of the raisin stems which I had been filiping
about the room during the discourse of the Angel of the Odd had flown through the
fractured crystal, and lodging, singularly enough, in the keyhole, with an end projecting
outward, had thus arrested the revolution of the minute hand.

Dark Saint Alaick
30-04-2012, 01:22 AM
"Ah!" said I, "I see how it is. This thing speaks for itself. A natural accident, such as will
happen now and then!"
I gave the matter no further consideration, and at my usual hour retired to bed. Here,
having placed a candle upon a reading stand at the bed head, and having made an attempt
to peruse some pages of the Omnipresence of the Deity, I unfortunately fell asleep in less than twenty seconds, leaving the light burning as it was.
My dreams were terrifically disturbed by visions of the Angel of the Odd. Methought he
stood at the foot of the couch, drew aside the curtains, and in the hollow, detestable tones
of a rum puncheon, menaced me with the bitterest vengeance for the contempt with
which I had treated him. He concluded a long harangue by taking off his funnel-cap,
inserting the tube into my gullet, and thus deluging me with an ocean of Kirschenwässer,
which he poured in a continuous flood, from one of the long-necked bottles that stood
him instead of an arm.

Dark Saint Alaick
30-04-2012, 01:23 AM
My agony was at length insufferable, and I awoke just in time to
perceive that a rat had run off with the lighted candle from the stand, but not in season to
prevent his making his escape with it through the hole, Very soon a strong, suffocating
odor assailed my nostrils; the house, I clearly perceived, was on fire. In a few minutes the
blaze broke forth with violence, and in an incredibly brief period the entire building was
wrapped in flames. All egress from my chamber, except through a window, was cut off.
The crowd, however, quickly procured and raised a long ladder. By means of this I was
descending rapidly, and in apparent safety, when a huge hog, about whose rotund
stomach, and indeed about whose whole air and physiognomy, there was something
which reminded me of the Angel of the Odd--when this hog, I say, which hitherto had
been quietly slumbering in the mud, took it suddenly into his head that his left shoulder
needed scratching, and could find no more convenient rubbing-post than that afforded by
the foot of the ladder. In an instant I was precipitated, and had the misfortune to fracture
my arm.

Dark Saint Alaick
30-04-2012, 01:23 AM
This accident, with the loss of my insurance, and with the more serious loss of my hair,
the whole of which had been singed off by the fire, predisposed me to serious
impressions, so that finally I made up my mind to take a wife. There was a rich widow
disconsolate for the loss of her seventh husband, and to her wounded spirit I offered the
balm of my vows. She yielded a reluctant consent to my prayers. I knelt at her feet in
gratitude and adoration. She blushed and bowed her luxuriant tresses into close contact
with those supplied me temporarily by Grandjean. I know not how the entanglement took
place but so it was. I arose with a shining pate, wigless; she in disdain and wrath, halfburied
in alien hair. Thus ended my hopes of the widow by an accident which could not
have been anticipated, to be sure, but which the natural sequence of events had brought
about.

Dark Saint Alaick
30-04-2012, 01:24 AM
Without despairing, however, I undertook the siege of a less implacable heart. The fates
were again propitious for a brief period, but again a trivial incident interfered. Meeting
my betrothed in an avenue thronged with the elite of the city, I was hastening to greet her
with one of my best considered bows, when a small particle of some foreign matter
lodging in the corner of my eye rendered me for the moment completely blind. Before I
could recover my sight, the lady of my love had disappeared--irreparably affronted at
what she chose to consider my premeditated rudeness in passing her by ungreeted. While
I stood bewildered at the suddenness of this accident (which might have happened,
nevertheless, to any one under the sun), and while I still continued incapable of sight, I
was accosted by the Angel of the Odd, who proffered me his aid with a civility which I
had no reason to expect. He examined my disordered eye with much gentleness and skill,
informed me that I had a drop in it, and (whatever a "drop" was) took it out, and afforded
me relief.

Dark Saint Alaick
30-04-2012, 01:24 AM
I now considered it high time to die (since fortune had so determined to persecute me),
and accordingly made my way to the nearest river. Here, divesting myself of my clothes
(for there is no reason why we cannot die as we were born), I threw myself headlong into
the current; the sole witness of my fate being a solitary crow that had been seduced into
the eating of brandy-saturated corn, and so had staggered away from his fellows. No
sooner had I entered the water than this bird took it into his head to fly away with the
most indispensable portion of my apparel. Postponing, therefore, for the present, my
suicidal design, I just slipped my nether extremities into the sleeves of my coat, and
betook myself to a pursuit of the felon with all the nimbleness which the case required
and its circumstances would admit. But my evil destiny attended me still. As I ran at full
speed, with my nose up in the atmosphere, and intent only upon the purloiner of my
property, I suddenly perceived that my feet rested no longer upon terra firma; the fact is, I
had thrown myself over a precipice, and should inevitably have been dashed to pieces but
for my good fortune in grasping the end of a long guide-rope, which depended from a
passing balloon.

Dark Saint Alaick
30-04-2012, 01:24 AM
As soon as I sufficiently recovered my senses to comprehend the terrific predicament in
which I stood, or rather hung, I exerted all the power of my lungs to make that
predicament known to the aeronaut overhead. But for a long time I exerted myself in
vain. Either the fool could not, or the villain would not perceive me. Meanwhile the
machine rapidly soared, while my strength even more rapidly failed. I was soon upon the
point of resigning myself to my fate, and dropping quietly into the sea, when my spirits
were suddenly revived by hearing a hollow voice from above, which seemed to be lazily
humming an opera air. Looking up, I perceived the Angel of the Odd. He was leaning,
with his arms folded, over the rim of the car; and with a pipe in his mouth, at which he
puffed leisurely, seemed to be upon excellent terms with himself and the universe. I was
too much exhausted to speak, so I merely regarded him with an imploring air.
For several minutes, although he looked me full in the face, he said nothing. At length,
removing carefully his meerschaum from the right to the left corner of his mouth, he
condescended to speak.

Dark Saint Alaick
30-04-2012, 01:24 AM
"Who pe you," he asked, "und what der teuffel you pe do dare?"
To this piece of impudence, cruelty, and affectation, I could reply only by ejaculating the
monosyllable "Help!"
"Elp!" echoed the ruffian, "not I. Dare iz te pottle--elp yourself, und pe tam'd!"
With these words he let fall a heavy bottle of Kirschenwässer, which, dropping precisely
upon the crown of my head, caused me to imagine that my brains were entirely knocked
out. Impressed with this idea I was about to relinquish my hold and give up the ghost
with a good grace, when I was arrested by the cry of the Angel, who bade me hold on.
"'Old on!" he said: "don't pe in te 'urry--don't. Will you pe take de odder pottle, or 'ave
you pe got zober yet, and come to your zenzes?"
I made haste, hereupon, to nod my head twice--once in the negative, meaning thereby
that I would prefer not taking the other bottle at present; and once in the affirmative,
intending thus to imply that I was sober and had positively come to my senses. By these
means I somewhat softened the Angel.
"Und you pelief, ten," he inquired, "at te last? You pelief, ten, in te possibility of te odd?"
I again nodded my head in assent.

Dark Saint Alaick
30-04-2012, 01:24 AM
"Und you ave pelief in me, te Angel of te Odd?"
I nodded again.
"Und you acknowledge tat you pe te blind dronk und te vool?"
I nodded once more.
"Put your right hand into your left preeches pocket, ten, in token ov your vull zubmizzion
unto te Angel ov te Odd."
This thing, for very obvious reasons, I found it quite impossible to do. In the first place,
my left arm had been broken in my fall from the ladder, and therefore, had I let go my
hold with the right hand I must have let go altogether. In the second place, I could have
no breeches until I came across the crow. I was therefore obliged, much to my regret, to
shake my head in the negative, intending thus to give the Angel to understand that I
found it inconvenient, just at that moment, to comply with his very reasonable demand!
No sooner, however, had I ceased shaking my head than--
"Go to der teuffel, ten!" roared the Angel of the Odd.

Dark Saint Alaick
30-04-2012, 01:25 AM
In pronouncing these words he drew a sharp knife across the guide-rope by which I was
suspended, and as we then happened to be precisely over my own house (which, during
my peregrinations, had been handsomely rebuilt), it so occurred that I tumbled headlong
down the ample chimney and alit upon the dining-room hearth.
Upon coming to my senses (for the fall had very thoroughly stunned me) I found it about
four o'clock in the morning. I lay outstretched where I had fallen from the balloon. My
head groveled in the ashes of an extinguished fire, while my feet reposed upon the wreck
of a small table, overthrown, and amid the fragments of a miscellaneous dessert,
intermingled with a newspaper, some broken glasses and shattered bottles, and an empty
jug of the Schiedam Kirschenwässer. Thus revenged himself the Angel of the Odd.

Dark Saint Alaick
05-05-2012, 01:48 AM
The Schoolmaster's Progress


By Caroline M.S. Kirkland (1801-1864)


[From The Gift for 1845, published late in 1844. Republished in the volume, Western Clearings (1845), by Caroline M.S. Kirkland]

Dark Saint Alaick
05-05-2012, 01:49 AM
Master William Horner came to our village to school when he was about eighteen years
old: tall, lank, straight-sided, and straight-haired, with a mouth of the most puckered and
solemn kind. His figure and movements were those of a puppet cut out of shingle and
jerked by a string; and his address corresponded very well with his appearance. Never did
that prim mouth give way before a laugh. A faint and misty smile was the widest
departure from its propriety, and this unaccustomed disturbance made wrinkles in the flat, skinny cheeks like those in the surface of a lake, after the intrusion of a stone. Master Horner knew well what belonged to the pedagogical character, and that facial solemnity stood high on the list of indispensable qualifications. He had made up his mind before he left his father's house how he would look during the term. He had not planned any smiles (knowing that he must "board round"), and it was not for ordinary occurrences to alter his arrangements; so that when he was betrayed into a relaxation of the muscles, it was "in such a sort" as if he was putting his bread and butter in jeopardy.
Truly he had a grave time that first winter. The rod of power was new to him, and he felt
it his "duty" to use it more frequently than might have been thought necessary by those
upon whose sense the privilege had palled. Tears and sulky faces, and impotent fists
doubled fiercely when his back was turned, were the rewards of his conscientiousness;
and the boys--and girls too--were glad when working time came round again, and the
master went home to help his father on the farm.

Dark Saint Alaick
05-05-2012, 01:49 AM
But with the autumn came Master Horner again, dropping among us as quietly as the faded leaves, and awakening at least as much serious reflection. Would he be as selfsacrificing as before, postponing his own ease and comfort to the public good, or would he have become more sedentary, and less fond of circumambulating the school-room with a switch over his shoulder? Many were fain to hope he might have learned to smoke during the summer, an accomplishment which would probably have moderated his energy not a little, and disposed him rather to reverie than to action. But here he was, and all the broader-chested and stouter-armed for his labors in the harvest-field.
Let it not be supposed that Master Horner was of a cruel and ogrish nature--a babe-eater-- a Herod--one who delighted in torturing the helpless. Such souls there may be, among those endowed with the awful control of the ferule, but they are rare in the fresh and natural regions we describe. It is, we believe, where young gentlemen are to be crammed for college, that the process of hardening heart and skin together goes on most
vigorously. Yet among the uneducated there is so high a respect for bodily strength, that it is necessary for the schoolmaster to show, first of all, that he possesses this inadmissible requisite for his place. The rest is more readily taken for granted. Brains he may have--a strong arm he must have: so he proves the more important claim first. We must therefore make all due allowance for Master Horner, who could not be expected to overtop his position so far as to discern at once the philosophy of teaching.

Dark Saint Alaick
05-05-2012, 01:50 AM
He was sadly brow-beaten during his first term of service by a great broad-shouldered
lout of some eighteen years or so, who thought he needed a little more "schooling," but at
the same time felt quite competent to direct the manner and measure of his attempts.
"You'd ought to begin with large-hand, Joshuay," said Master Horner to this youth.
"What should I want coarse-hand for?" said the disciple, with great contempt; "coarsehand
won't never do me no good. I want a fine-hand copy."
The master looked at the infant giant, and did as he wished, but we say not with what
secret resolutions.
At another time, Master Horner, having had a hint from some one more knowing than
himself, proposed to his elder scholars to write after dictation, expatiating at the same
time quite floridly (the ideas having been supplied by the knowing friend), upon the
advantages likely to arise from this practice, and saying, among other things,
"It will help you, when you write letters, to spell the words good."
"Pooh!" said Joshua, "spellin' ain't nothin'; let them that finds the mistakes correct 'em.
I'm for every one's havin' a way of their own."
"How dared you be so saucy to the master?" asked one of the little boys, after school.
"Because I could lick him, easy," said the hopeful Joshua, who knew very well why the
master did not undertake him on the spot.

Dark Saint Alaick
05-05-2012, 01:52 AM
Can we wonder that Master Horner determined to make his empire good as far as it went?
A new examination was required on the entrance into a second term, and, with whatever secret trepidation, the master was obliged to submit. Our law prescribes examinations, but forgets to provide for the competency of the examiners; so that few better farces offer than the course of question and answer on these occasions. We know not precisely what were Master Horner's trials; but we have heard of a sharp dispute between the inspectors whether a-n-g-e-l spelt angle or angel. Angle had it, and the school maintained that pronunciation ever after. Master Horner passed, and he was requested to draw up the certificate for the inspectors to sign, as one had left his spectacles at home, and the other had a bad cold, so that it was not convenient for either to write more than his name. Master Homer's exhibition of learning on this occasion did not reach us, but we know that it must have been considerable, since he stood the ordeal.
"What is orthography?" said an inspector once, in our presence.
The candidate writhed a good deal, studied the beams overhead and the chickens out of the window, and then replied, "It is so long since I learnt the first part of the spelling-book, that I can't justly answer that question. But if I could just look it over, I guess I could."

Dark Saint Alaick
05-05-2012, 01:54 AM
Our schoolmaster entered upon his second term with new courage and invigorated
authority. Twice certified, who should dare doubt his competency? Even Joshua was
civil, and lesser louts of course obsequious; though the girls took more liberties, for they
feel even at that early age, that influence is stronger than strength.
Could a young schoolmaster think of feruling a girl with her hair in ringlets and a gold
ring on her finger? Impossible--and the immunity extended to all the little sisters and
cousins; and there were enough large girls to protect all the feminine part of the school.
With the boys Master Horner still had many a battle, and whether with a view to this, or
as an economical ruse, he never wore his coat in school, saying it was too warm. Perhaps
it was an astute attention to the prejudices of his employers, who love no man that does
not earn his living by the sweat of his brow. The shirt-sleeves gave the idea of a manuallabor school in one sense at least. It was evident that the master worked, and that afforded a probability that the scholars worked too.
Master Horner's success was most triumphant that winter. A year's growth had improved
his outward man exceedingly, filling out the limbs so that they did not remind you so
forcibly of a young colt's, and supplying the cheeks with the flesh and blood so necessary
where mustaches were not worn. Experience had given him a degree of confidence, and
confidence gave him power. In short, people said the master had waked up; and so he
had. He actually set about reading for improvement; and although at the end of the term
he could not quite make out from his historical studies which side Hannibal was on, yet
this is readily explained by the fact that he boarded round, and was obliged to read
generally by firelight, surrounded by ungoverned children.

Dark Saint Alaick
05-05-2012, 01:54 AM
After this, Master Horner made his own bargain. When schooltime came round with the
following autumn, and the teacher presented himself for a third examination, such a test
was pronounced no longer necessary; and the district consented to engage him at the
astounding rate of sixteen dollars a month, with the understanding that he was to have a
fixed home, provided he was willing to allow a dollar a week for it. Master Horner
bethought him of the successive "killing-times," and consequent doughnuts of the twenty
families in which he had sojourned the years before, and consented to the exaction.
Behold our friend now as high as district teacher can ever hope to be--his scholarship
established, his home stationary and not revolving, and the good behavior of the
community insured by the fact that he, being of age, had now a farm to retire upon in case
of any disgust.
Master Horner was at once the preëminent beau of the neighborhood, spite of the
prejudice against learning. He brushed his hair straight up in front, and wore a sky-blue
ribbon for a guard to his silver watch, and walked as if the tall heels of his blunt boots
were egg-shells and not leather. Yet he was far from neglecting the duties of his place. He was beau only on Sundays and holidays; very schoolmaster the rest of the time.
It was at a "spelling-school" that Master Horner first met the educated eyes of Miss
Harriet Bangle, a young lady visiting the Engleharts in our neighborhood. She was from
one of the towns in Western New York, and had brought with her a variety of city airs
and graces somewhat caricatured, set off with year-old French fashions much travestied.
Whether she had been sent out to the new country to try, somewhat late, a rustic chance
for an establishment, or whether her company had been found rather trying at home, we
cannot say. The view which she was at some pains to make understood was, that her
friends had contrived this method of keeping her out of the way of a desperate lover
whose addresses were not acceptable to them.

Dark Saint Alaick
05-05-2012, 01:55 AM
If it should seem surprising that so high-bred a visitor should be sojourning in the wild
woods, it must be remembered that more than one celebrated Englishman and not a few
distinguished Americans have farmer brothers in the western country, no whit less rustic
in their exterior and manner of life than the plainest of their neighbors. When these are
visited by their refined kinsfolk, we of the woods catch glimpses of the gay world, or
think we do.
That great medicine hath
With its tinct gilded--
many a vulgarism to the satisfaction of wiser heads than ours.
Miss Bangle's manner bespoke for her that high consideration which she felt to be her
due. Yet she condescended to be amused by the rustics and their awkward attempts at
gaiety and elegance; and, to say truth, few of the village merry-makings escaped her,
though she wore always the air of great superiority.
The spelling-school is one of the ordinary winter amusements in the country. It occurs
once in a fortnight, or so, and has power to draw out all the young people for miles round,
arrayed in their best clothes and their holiday behavior. When all is ready, umpires are
elected, and after these have taken the distinguished place usually occupied by the
teacher, the young people of the school choose the two best scholars to head the opposing classes. These leaders choose their followers from the mass, each calling a name in turn, until all the spellers are ranked on one side or the other, lining the sides of the room, and all standing. The schoolmaster, standing too, takes his spelling-book, and gives a placid yet awe-inspiring look along the ranks, remarking that he intends to be very impartial, and that he shall give out nothing that is not in the spelling-book. For the first half hour or so he chooses common and easy words, that the spirit of the evening may not be damped by the too early thinning of the classes. When a word is missed, the blunderer has to sit down, and be a spectator only for the rest of the evening. At certain intervals, some of the best speakers mount the platform, and "speak a piece," which is generally as declamatory as possible.

Dark Saint Alaick
05-05-2012, 01:55 AM
The excitement of this scene is equal to that afforded by any city spectacle whatever; and
towards the close of the evening, when difficult and unusual words are chosen to
confound the small number who still keep the floor, it becomes scarcely less than painful.
When perhaps only one or two remain to be puzzled, the master, weary at last of his task,
though a favorite one, tries by tricks to put down those whom he cannot overcome in fair
fight. If among all the curious, useless, unheard-of words which may be picked out of the
spelling-book, he cannot find one which the scholars have not noticed, he gets the last
head down by some quip or catch. "Bay" will perhaps be the sound; one scholar spells it
"bey," another, "bay," while the master all the time means "ba," which comes within the
rule, being in the spelling-book.
It was on one of these occasions, as we have said, that Miss Bangle, having come to the
spelling-school to get materials for a letter to a female friend, first shone upon Mr.
Horner. She was excessively amused by his solemn air and puckered mouth, and set him
down at once as fair game. Yet she could not help becoming somewhat interested in the
spelling-school, and after it was over found she had not stored up half as many of the
schoolmaster's points as she intended, for the benefit of her correspondent.
In the evening's contest a young girl from some few miles' distance, Ellen Kingsbury, the
only child of a substantial farmer, had been the very last to sit down, after a prolonged
effort on the part of Mr. Horner to puzzle her, for the credit of his own school. She
blushed, and smiled, and blushed again, but spelt on, until Mr. Horner's cheeks were
crimson with excitement and some touch of shame that he should be baffled at his own
weapons. At length, either by accident or design, Ellen missed a word, and sinking into
her seat was numbered with the slain.

Dark Saint Alaick
05-05-2012, 01:55 AM
In the laugh and talk which followed (for with the conclusion of the spelling, all form of a
public assembly vanishes), our schoolmaster said so many gallant things to his fair
enemy, and appeared so much animated by the excitement of the contest, that Miss
Bangle began to look upon him with rather more respect, and to feel somewhat indignant
that a little rustic like Ellen should absorb the entire attention of the only beau. She put
on, therefore, her most gracious aspect, and mingled in the circle; caused the
schoolmaster to be presented to her, and did her best to fascinate him by certain airs and
graces which she had found successful elsewhere. What game is too small for the closewoven net of a coquette?
Mr. Horner quitted not the fair Ellen until he had handed her into her father's sleigh; and
he then wended his way homewards, never thinking that he ought to have escorted Miss
Bangle to her uncle's, though she certainly waited a little while for his return.
We must not follow into particulars the subsequent intercourse of our schoolmaster with
the civilized young lady. All that concerns us is the result of Miss Bangle's benevolent
designs upon his heart. She tried most sincerely to find its vulnerable spot, meaning no
doubt to put Mr. Homer on his guard for the future; and she was unfeignedly surprised to
discover that her best efforts were of no avail. She concluded he must have taken a
counter-poison, and she was not slow in guessing its source. She had observed the
peculiar fire which lighted up his eyes in the presence of Ellen Kingsbury, and she
bethought her of a plan which would ensure her some amusement at the expense of these
impertinent rustics, though in a manner different somewhat from her original more
natural idea of simple coquetry.

Dark Saint Alaick
05-05-2012, 01:56 AM
A letter was written to Master Horner, purporting to come from Ellen Kingsbury, worded
so artfully that the schoolmaster understood at once that it was intended to be a secret
communication, though its ostensible object was an inquiry about some ordinary affair.
This was laid in Mr. Horner's desk before he came to school, with an intimation that he
might leave an answer in a certain spot on the following morning. The bait took at once,
for Mr. Horner, honest and true himself, and much smitten with the fair Ellen, was too
happy to be circumspect. The answer was duly placed, and as duly carried to Miss Bangle
by her accomplice, Joe Englehart, an unlucky pickle who "was always for ill, never for
good," and who found no difficulty in obtaining the letter unwatched, since the master
was obliged to be in school at nine, and Joe could always linger a few minutes later. This
answer being opened and laughed at, Miss Bangle had only to contrive a rejoinder, which
being rather more particular in its tone than the original communication, led on yet again
the happy schoolmaster, who branched out into sentiment, "taffeta phrases, silken terms
precise," talked of hills and dales and rivulets, and the pleasures of friendship, and
concluded by entreating a continuance of the correspondence.
Another letter and another, every one more flattering and encouraging than the last,
almost turned the sober head of our poor master, and warmed up his heart so effectually
that he could scarcely attend to his business. The spelling-schools were remembered,
however, and Ellen Kingsbury made one of the merry company; but the latest letter had
not forgotten to caution Mr. Horner not to betray the intimacy; so that he was in honor
bound to restrict himself to the language of the eyes hard as it was to forbear the single
whisper for which he would have given his very dictionary. So, their meeting passed off
without the explanation which Miss Bangle began to fear would cut short her benevolent
amusement.

Dark Saint Alaick
05-05-2012, 01:56 AM
The correspondence was resumed with renewed spirit, and carried on until Miss Bangle,
though not overburdened with sensitiveness, began to be a little alarmed for the
consequences of her malicious pleasantry. She perceived that she herself had turned
schoolmistress, and that Master Horner, instead of being merely her dupe, had become
her pupil too; for the style of his replies had been constantly improving and the earnest
and manly tone which he assumed promised any thing but the quiet, sheepish pocketing
of injury and insult, upon which she had counted. In truth, there was something deeper
than vanity in the feelings with which he regarded Ellen Kingsbury. The encouragement
which he supposed himself to have received, threw down the barrier which his extreme
bashfulness would have interposed between himself and any one who possessed charms
enough to attract him; and we must excuse him if, in such a case, he did not criticise the
mode of encouragement, but rather grasped eagerly the proffered good without a scruple,
or one which he would own to himself, as to the propriety with which it was tendered. He
was as much in love as a man can be, and the seriousness of real attachment gave both
grace and dignity to his once awkward diction.
The evident determination of Mr. Horner to come to the point of asking papa brought
Miss Bangle to a very awkward pass. She had expected to return home before matters had
proceeded so far, but being obliged to remain some time longer, she was equally afraid to
go on and to leave off, a dénouement being almost certain to ensue in either case. Things
stood thus when it was time to prepare for the grand exhibition which was to close the
winter's term.

Dark Saint Alaick
05-05-2012, 01:57 AM
This is an affair of too much magnitude to be fully described in the small space yet
remaining in which to bring out our veracious history. It must be "slubber'd o'er in haste"-
-its important preliminaries left to the cold imagination of the reader--its fine spirit
perhaps evaporating for want of being embodied in words. We can only say that our
master, whose school-life was to close with the term, labored as man never before
labored in such a cause, resolute to trail a cloud of glory after him when he left us. Not a
candlestick nor a curtain that was attainable, either by coaxing or bribery, was left in the
village; even the only piano, that frail treasure, was wiled away and placed in one corner
of the rickety stage. The most splendid of all the pieces in the Columbian Orator, the
American Speaker, the----but we must not enumerate--in a word, the most astounding and
pathetic specimens of eloquence within ken of either teacher or scholars, had been
selected for the occasion; and several young ladies and gentlemen, whose academical
course had been happily concluded at an earlier period, either at our own institution or at
some other, had consented to lend themselves to the parts, and their choicest decorations
for the properties, of the dramatic portion of the entertainment.
Among these last was pretty Ellen Kingsbury, who had agreed to personate the Queen of
Scots, in the garden scene from Schiller's tragedy of Mary Stuart; and this circumstance
accidentally afforded Master Horner the opportunity he had so long desired, of seeing his fascinating correspondent without the presence of peering eyes. A dress-rehearsal
occupied the afternoon before the day of days, and the pathetic expostulations of the
lovely Mary--
Mine all doth hang--my life--my destiny--
Upon my words--upon the force of tears!--
aided by the long veil, and the emotion which sympathy brought into Ellen's
countenance, proved too much for the enforced prudence of Master Horner.

Dark Saint Alaick
05-05-2012, 01:58 AM
When the rehearsal was over, and the heroes and heroines were to return
home, it was found that, by a stroke of witty invention not new in the country,
the harness of Mr. Kingsbury's horses had been cut in several places, his whip hidden,
his buffalo-skins spread on the ground, and the sleigh turned bottom upwards on them. This afforded an excuse for the master's borrowing a horse and sleigh of somebody,
and claiming the privilege of taking Miss Ellen home, while her father returned with
only Aunt Sally and a great bag of bran from the mill--companions about equally
interesting. Here, then, was the golden opportunity so long wished for!
Here was the power of ascertaining at once what is never quite certain until we
have heard it from warm, living lips, whose testimony is strengthened by glances in
which the whole soul speaks or--
seems to speak. The time was short, for the sleighing was but too fine; and Father
Kingsbury, having tied up his harness, and collected his scattered equipment, was driving
so close behind that there was no possibility of lingering for a moment. Yet many
moments were lost before Mr. Horner, very much in earnest, and all unhackneyed in
matters of this sort, could find a word in which to clothe his new-found feelings. The
horse seemed to fly--the distance was half past--and at length, in absolute despair of
anything better, he blurted out at once what he had determined to avoid--a direct
reference to the correspondence.
A game at cross-purposes ensued; exclamations and explanations, and denials and
apologies filled up the time which was to have made Master Horner so blest. The light
from Mr. Kingsbury's windows shone upon the path, and the whole result of this
conference so longed for, was a burst of tears from the perplexed and mortified Ellen,
who sprang from Mr. Horner's attempts to detain her, rushed into the house without
vouchsafing him a word of adieu, and left him standing, no bad personification of
Orpheus, after the last hopeless flitting of his Eurydice.

Dark Saint Alaick
05-05-2012, 01:58 AM
"Won't you 'light, Master?" said Mr. Kingsbury.
"Yes--no--thank you--good evening," stammered poor Master Horner, so stupefied that
even Aunt Sally called him "a dummy."
The horse took the sleigh against the fence, going home, and threw out the master, who
scarcely recollected the accident; while to Ellen the issue of this unfortunate drive was a
sleepless night and so high a fever in the morning that our village doctor was called to
Mr. Kingsbury's before breakfast.
Poor Master Horner's distress may hardly be imagined. Disappointed, bewildered, cut to
the quick, yet as much in love as ever, he could only in bitter silence turn over in his
thoughts the issue of his cherished dream; now persuading himself that Ellen's denial was
the effect of a sudden bashfulness, now inveighing against the fickleness of the sex, as all
men do when they are angry with any one woman in particular. But his exhibition must
go on in spite of wretchedness; and he went about mechanically, talking of curtains and
candles, and music, and attitudes, and pauses, and emphasis, looking like a somnambulist
whose "eyes are open but their sense is shut," and often surprising those concerned by the
utter unfitness of his answers.
It was almost evening when Mr. Kingsbury, having discovered, through the intervention
of the Doctor and Aunt Sally the cause of Ellen's distress, made his appearance before the unhappy eyes of Master Horner, angry, solemn and determined; taking the schoolmaster apart, and requiring, an explanation of his treatment of his daughter. In vain did the perplexed lover ask for time to clear himself, declare his respect for Miss Ellen and his willingness to give every explanation which she might require; the father was not to be put off; and though excessively reluctant, Mr. Horner had no resource but to show the letters which alone could account for his strange discourse to Ellen. He unlocked his
desk, slowly and unwillingly, while the old man's impatience was such that he could
scarcely forbear thrusting in his own hand to snatch at the papers which were to explain
this vexatious mystery. What could equal the utter confusion of Master Horner and the
contemptuous anger of the father, when no letters were to be found! Mr. Kingsbury was
too passionate to listen to reason, or to reflect for one moment upon the irreproachable
good name of the schoolmaster. He went away in inexorable wrath; threatening every
practicable visitation of public and private justice upon the head of the offender, whom
he accused of having attempted to trick his daughter into an entanglement which should
result in his favor.

Dark Saint Alaick
05-05-2012, 02:00 AM
A doleful exhibition was this last one of our thrice approved and most worthy teacher!
Stern necessity and the power of habit enabled him to go through with most of his part,
but where was the proud fire which had lighted up his eye on similar occasions before?
He sat as one of three judges before whom the unfortunate Robert Emmet was dragged in
his shirt-sleeves, by two fierce-looking officials; but the chief judge looked far more like a criminal than did the proper representative. He ought to have personated Othello, but was obliged to excuse himself from raving for "the handkerchief! the handkerchief!" on the rather anomalous plea of a bad cold. Mary Stuart being "i' the bond," was anxiously
expected by the impatient crowd, and it was with distress amounting to agony that the
master was obliged to announce, in person, the necessity of omitting that part of the
representation, on account of the illness of one of the young ladies.
Scarcely had the words been uttered, and the speaker hidden his burning face behind the
curtain, when Mr. Kingsbury started up in his place amid the throng, to give a public
recital of his grievance--no uncommon resort in the new country. He dashed at once to
the point; and before some friends who saw the utter impropriety of his proceeding could
persuade him to defer his vengeance, he had laid before the assembly--some three
hundred people, perhaps--his own statement of the case. He was got out at last, half
coaxed, half hustled; and the gentle public only half understanding what had been set
forth thus unexpectedly, made quite a pretty row of it. Some clamored loudly for the
conclusion of the exercises; others gave utterances in no particularly choice terms to a
variety of opinions as to the schoolmaster's proceedings, varying the note occasionally by shouting, "The letters! the letters! why don't you bring out the letters?"

Dark Saint Alaick
05-05-2012, 02:00 AM
At length, by means of much rapping on the desk by the president of the evening, who
was fortunately a "popular" character, order was partially restored; and the favorite scene
from Miss More's dialogue of David and Goliath was announced as the closing piece.
The sight of little David in a white tunic edged with red tape, with a calico scrip and a
very primitive-looking sling; and a huge Goliath decorated with a militia belt and sword,
and a spear like a weaver's beam indeed, enchained everybody's attention. Even the
peccant schoolmaster and his pretended letters were forgotten, while the sapient Goliath,
every time that he raised the spear, in the energy of his declamation, to thump upon the
stage, picked away fragments of the low ceiling, which fell conspicuously on his great
shock of black hair. At last, with the crowning threat, up went the spear for an astounding
thump, and down came a large piece of the ceiling, and with it--a shower of letters.
The confusion that ensued beggars all description. A general scramble took place, and in
another moment twenty pairs of eyes, at least, were feasting on the choice phrases
lavished upon Mr. Horner. Miss Bangle had sat through the whole previous scene,
trembling for herself, although she had, as she supposed, guarded cunningly against
exposure. She had needed no prophet to tell her what must be the result of a tête-Ã*-tête
between Mr. Horner and Ellen; and the moment she saw them drive off together, she
induced her imp to seize the opportunity of abstracting the whole parcel of letters from
Mr. Horner's desk; which he did by means of a sort of skill which comes by nature to
such goblins; picking the lock by the aid of a crooked nail, as neatly as if he had been
born within the shadow of the Tombs.

Dark Saint Alaick
05-05-2012, 02:00 AM
But magicians sometimes suffer severely from the malice with which they have
themselves inspired their familiars. Joe Englehart having been a convenient tool thus far
thought it quite time to torment Miss Bangle a little; so, having stolen the letters at her
bidding, he hid them on his own account, and no persuasions of hers could induce him to
reveal this important secret, which he chose to reserve as a rod in case she refused him
some intercession with his father, or some other accommodation, rendered necessary by
his mischievous habits.
He had concealed the precious parcels in the unfloored loft above the school-room, a
place accessible only by means of a small trap-door without staircase or ladder; and here
he meant to have kept them while it suited his purposes, but for the untimely intrusion of
the weaver's beam.
Miss Bangle had sat through all, as we have said, thinking the letters safe, yet vowing
vengeance against her confederate for not allowing her to secure them by a satisfactory
conflagration; and it was not until she heard her own name whispered through the crowd,
that she was awakened to her true situation. The sagacity of the low creatures whom she
had despised showed them at once that the letters must be hers, since her character had
been pretty shrewdly guessed, and the handwriting wore a more practised air than is usual
among females in the country. This was first taken for granted, and then spoken of as an
acknowledged fact.

Dark Saint Alaick
05-05-2012, 02:01 AM
The assembly moved like the heavings of a troubled sea. Everybody felt that this was
everybody's business. "Put her out!" was heard from more than one rough voice near the
door, and this was responded to by loud and angry murmurs from within.
Mr. Englehart, not waiting to inquire into the merits of the case in this scene of
confusion, hastened to get his family out as quietly and as quickly as possible, but groans
and hisses followed his niece as she hung half-fainting on his arm, quailing completely
beneath the instinctive indignation of the rustic public. As she passed out, a yell
resounded among the rude boys about the door, and she was lifted into a sleigh,
insensible from terror. She disappeared from that evening, and no one knew the time of
her final departure for "the east."
Mr. Kingsbury, who is a just man when he is not in a passion, made all the reparation in
his power for his harsh and ill-considered attack upon the master; and we believe that
functionary did not show any traits of implacability of character. At least he was seen, not
many days after, sitting peaceably at tea with Mr. Kingsbury, Aunt Sally, and Miss Ellen;
and he has since gone home to build a house upon his farm. And people do say, that after
a few months more, Ellen will not need Miss Bangle's intervention if she should see fit to correspond with the schoolmaster.

Dark Saint Alaick
01-06-2012, 05:36 AM
The Watkinson Evening

By Eliza Leslie (1787-1858)

[From Godey's Lady's Book, December, 1846]



Mrs. Morland, a polished and accomplished woman, was the widow of a distinguished
senator from one of the western states, of which, also, her husband had twice filled the
office of governor. Her daughter having completed her education at the best boardingschool
in Philadelphia, and her son being about to graduate at Princeton, the mother had
planned with her children a tour to Niagara and the lakes, returning by way of Boston. On
leaving Philadelphia, Mrs. Morland and the delighted Caroline stopped at Princeton to be
present at the annual commencement, and had the happiness of seeing their beloved
Edward receive his diploma as bachelor of arts; after hearing him deliver, with great
applause, an oration on the beauties of the American character. College youths are very
prone to treat on subjects that imply great experience of the world. But Edward Morland
was full of kind feeling for everything and everybody; and his views of life had hitherto
been tinted with a perpetual rose-color.

Dark Saint Alaick
01-06-2012, 05:36 AM
Mrs. Morland, not depending altogether upon the celebrity of her late husband, and
wishing that her children should see specimens of the best society in the northern cities,
had left home with numerous letters of introduction. But when they arrived at New York,
she found to her great regret, that having unpacked and taken out her small traveling
desk, during her short stay in Philadelphia, she had strangely left it behind in the closet of
her room at the hotel. In this desk were deposited all her letters, except two which had
been offered to her by friends in Philadelphia. The young people, impatient to see the
wonders of Niagara, had entreated her to stay but a day or two in the city of New York,
and thought these two letters would be quite sufficient for the present. In the meantime
she wrote back to the hotel, requesting that the missing desk should be forwarded to New
York as soon as possible.
On the morning after their arrival at the great commercial metropolis of America, the
Morland family took a carriage to ride round through the principal parts of the city, and
to deliver their two letters at the houses to which they were addressed, and which were
both situated in the region that lies between the upper part of Broadway and the North
River. In one of the most fashionable streets they found the elegant mansion of Mrs. St.
Leonard; but on stopping at the door, were informed that its mistress was not at home.
They then left the introductory letter (which they had prepared for this mischance, by
enclosing it in an envelope with a card), and proceeding to another street considerably
farther up, they arrived at the dwelling of the Watkinson family, to the mistress of which
the other Philadelphia letter was directed. It was one of a large block of houses all exactly
alike, and all shut up from top to bottom, according to a custom more prevalent in New
York than in any other city.

Dark Saint Alaick
01-06-2012, 05:36 AM
Here they were also unsuccessful; the servant who came to the door telling them that the
ladies were particularly engaged and could see no company. So they left their second
letter and card and drove off, continuing their ride till they reached the Croton water
works, which they quitted the carriage to see and admire. On returning to the hotel, with
the intention after an hour or two of rest to go out again, and walk till near dinner-time,
they found waiting them a note from Mrs. Watkinson, expressing her regret that she had
not been able to see them when they called; and explaining that her family duties always
obliged her to deny herself the pleasure of receiving morning visitors, and that her
servants had general orders to that effect. But she requested their company for that
evening (naming nine o'clock as the hour), and particularly desired an immediate answer.
"I suppose," said Mrs. Morland, "she intends asking some of her friends to meet us, in
case we accept the invitation; and therefore is naturally desirous of a reply as soon as
possible. Of course we will not keep her in suspense. Mrs. Denham, who volunteered the
letter, assured me that Mrs. Watkinson was one of the most estimable women in New
York, and a pattern to the circle in which she moved. It seems that Mr. Denham and Mr.
Watkinson are connected in business. Shall we go?"
The young people assented, saying they had no doubt of passing a pleasant evening.
The billet of acceptance having been written, it was sent off immediately, entrusted to
one of the errand-goers belonging to the hotel, that it might be received in advance of the
next hour for the dispatch-post--and Edward Morland desired the man to get into an
omnibus with the note that no time might be lost in delivering it. "It is but right"--said he
to his mother--"that we should give Mrs. Watkinson an ample opportunity of making her
preparations, and sending round to invite her friends."
"How considerate you are, dear Edward"--said Caroline--"always so thoughtful of every
one's convenience. Your college friends must have idolized you."

Dark Saint Alaick
01-06-2012, 05:37 AM
"No"--said Edward--"they called me a prig." Just then a remarkably handsome carriage
drove up to the private door of the hotel. From it alighted a very elegant woman, who in a
few moments was ushered into the drawing-room by the head waiter, and on his
designating Mrs. Morland's family, she advanced and gracefully announced herself as
Mrs. St. Leonard. This was the lady at whose house they had left the first letter of
introduction. She expressed regret at not having been at home when they called; but said
that on finding their letter, she had immediately come down to see them, and to engage
them for the evening. "Tonight"--said Mrs. St. Leonard--"I expect as many friends as I
can collect for a summer party. The occasion is the recent marriage of my niece, who
with her husband has just returned from their bridal excursion, and they will be soon on
their way to their residence in Baltimore. I think I can promise you an agreeable evening,
as I expect some very delightful people, with whom I shall be most happy to make you
acquainted."
Edward and Caroline exchanged glances, and could not refrain from looking wistfully at
their mother, on whose countenance a shade of regret was very apparent. After a short
pause she replied to Mrs. St. Leonard--"I am truly sorry to say that we have just answered
in the affirmative a previous invitation for this very evening."
"I am indeed disappointed"--said Mrs. St. Leonard, who had been looking approvingly at
the prepossessing appearance of the two young people. "Is there no way in which you can
revoke your compliance with this unfortunate first invitation--at least, I am sure, it is
unfortunate for me. What a vexatious contretemps that I should have chanced to be out
when you called; thus missing the pleasure of seeing you at once, and securing that of
your society for this evening? The truth is, I was disappointed in some of the preparations
that had been sent home this morning, and I had to go myself and have the things
rectified, and was detained away longer than I expected. May I ask to whom you are
engaged this evening? Perhaps I know the lady--if so, I should be very much tempted to
go and beg you from her."

Dark Saint Alaick
01-06-2012, 05:37 AM
"The lady is Mrs. John Watkinson"--replied Mrs. Morland--"most probably she will
invite some of her friends to meet us."
"That of course"--answered Mrs. St. Leonard--"I am really very sorry--and I regret to say
that I do not know her at all."
"We shall have to abide by our first decision," said Mrs. Morland. "By Mrs. Watkinson,
mentioning in her note the hour of nine, it is to be presumed she intends asking some
other company. I cannot possibly disappoint her. I can speak feelingly as to the
annoyance (for I have known it by my own experience) when after inviting a number of
my friends to meet some strangers, the strangers have sent an excuse almost at the
eleventh hour. I think no inducements, however strong, could tempt me to do so myself."
"I confess that you are perfectly right," said Mrs. St. Leonard. "I see you must go to Mrs.
Watkinson. But can you not divide the evening, by passing a part of it with her and then
finishing with me?"
At this suggestion the eyes of the young people sparkled, for they had become delighted
with Mrs. St. Leonard, and imagined that a party at her house must be every way
charming. Also, parties were novelties to both of them.
"If possible we will do so," answered Mrs. Morland, "and with what pleasure I need not
assure you. We leave New York to-morrow, but we shall return this way in September,
and will then be exceedingly happy to see more of Mrs. St. Leonard."
After a little more conversation Mrs. St. Leonard took her leave, repeating her hope of
still seeing her new friends at her house that night; and enjoining them to let her know as
soon as they returned to New York on their way home.
Edward Morland handed her to her carriage, and then joined his mother and sister in their
commendations of Mrs. St. Leonard, with whose exceeding beauty were united a
countenance beaming with intelligence, and a manner that put every one at their ease
immediately.

Dark Saint Alaick
01-06-2012, 05:38 AM
"She is an evidence," said Edward, "how superior our women of fashion are to those of
Europe."
"Wait, my dear son," said Mrs. Morland, "till you have been in Europe, and had an
opportunity of forming an opinion on that point (as on many others) from actual
observation. For my part, I believe that in all civilized countries the upper classes of
people are very much alike, at least in their leading characteristics."
"Ah! here comes the man that was sent to Mrs. Watkinson," said Caroline Morland. "I
hope he could not find the house and has brought the note back with him. We shall then
be able to go at first to Mrs. St. Leonard's, and pass the whole evening there."
The man reported that he had found the house, and had delivered the note into Mrs.
Watkinson's own hands, as she chanced to be crossing the entry when the door was
opened; and that she read it immediately, and said "Very well."
"Are you certain that you made no mistake in the house," said Edward, "and that you
really did give it to Mrs. Watkinson?"
"And it's quite sure I am, sir," replied the man, "when I first came over from the ould
country I lived with them awhile, and though when she saw me to-day, she did not let on
that she remembered my doing that same, she could not help calling me James. Yes, the
rale words she said when I handed her the billy-dux was, 'Very well, James.'"
"Come, come," said Edward, when they found themselves alone, "let us look on the
bright side. If we do not find a large party at Mrs. Watkinson's, we may in all probability
meet some very agreeable people there, and enjoy the feast of reason and the flow of
soul. We may find the Watkinson house so pleasant as to leave it with regret even for
Mrs. St. Leonard's."
"I do not believe Mrs. Watkinson is in fashionable society," said Caroline, "or Mrs. St.
Leonard would have known her. I heard some of the ladies here talking last evening of
Mrs. St. Leonard, and I found from what they said that she is among the élite of the lite."
"Even if she is," observed Mrs. Morland, "are polish of manners and cultivation of mind
confined exclusively to persons of that class?"

Dark Saint Alaick
01-06-2012, 05:38 AM
"Certainly not," said Edward, "the most talented and refined youth at our college, and he
in whose society I found the greatest pleasure, was the son of a bricklayer."
In the ladies' drawing-room, after dinner, the Morlands heard a conversation between
several of the female guests, who all seemed to know Mrs. St. Leonard very well by
reputation, and they talked of her party that was to "come off" on this evening.
"I hear," said one lady, "that Mrs. St. Leonard is to have an unusual number of lions."
She then proceeded to name a gallant general, with his elegant wife and accomplished
daughter; a celebrated commander in the navy; two highly distinguished members of
Congress, and even an ex-president. Also several of the most eminent among the
American literati, and two first-rate artists.
Edward Morland felt as if he could say, "Had I three ears I'd hear thee."
"Such a woman as Mrs. St. Leonard can always command the best lions that are to be
found," observed another lady.
"And then," said a third, "I have been told that she has such exquisite taste in lighting and
embellishing her always elegant rooms. And her supper table, whether for summer or
winter parties, is so beautifully arranged; all the viands are so delicious, and the
attendance of the servants so perfect--and Mrs. St. Leonard does the honors with so much
ease and tact."
"Some friends of mine that visit her," said a fourth lady, "describe her parties as absolute
perfection. She always manages to bring together those persons that are best fitted to
enjoy each other's conversation. Still no one is overlooked or neglected. Then everything
at her reunions is so well proportioned--she has just enough of music, and just enough of
whatever amusement may add to the pleasure of her guests; and still there is no
appearance of design or management on her part."
"And better than all," said the lady who had spoken firsts "Mrs. St. Leonard is one of the
kindest, most generous, and most benevolent of women--she does good in every possible
way."

Dark Saint Alaick
01-06-2012, 05:39 AM
"I can listen no longer," said Caroline to Edward, rising to change her seat. "If I hear any
more I shall absolutely hate the Watkinsons. How provoking that they should have sent
us the first invitation. If we had only thought of waiting till we could hear from Mrs. St.
Leonard!"
"For shame, Caroline," said her brother, "how can you talk so of persons you have never
seen, and to whom you ought to feel grateful for the kindness of their invitation; even if it
has interfered with another party, that I must confess seems to offer unusual attractions.
Now I have a presentiment that we shall find the Watkinson part of the evening very
enjoyable."
As soon as tea was over, Mrs. Morland and her daughter repaired to their toilettes.
Fortunately, fashion as well as good taste, has decided that, at a summer party, the
costume of the ladies should never go beyond an elegant simplicity. Therefore our two
ladies in preparing for their intended appearance at Mrs. St. Leonard's, were enabled to
attire themselves in a manner that would not seem out of place in the smaller company
they expected to meet at the Watkinsons. Over an under-dress of lawn, Caroline Morland
put on a white organdy trimmed with lace, and decorated with bows of pink ribbon. At
the back of her head was a wreath of fresh and beautiful pink flowers, tied with a similar
ribbon. Mrs. Morland wore a black grenadine over a satin, and a lace cap trimmed with
white.
It was but a quarter past nine o'clock when their carriage stopped at the Watkinson door.
The front of the house looked very dark. Not a ray gleamed through the Venetian
shutters, and the glimmer beyond the fan-light over the door was almost imperceptible.
After the coachman had rung several times, an Irish girl opened the door, cautiously (as
Irish girls always do), and admitted them into the entry, where one light only was burning
in a branch lamp. "Shall we go upstairs?" said Mrs. Morland. "And what for would ye go
upstairs?" said the girl in a pert tone. "It's all dark there, and there's no preparations. Ye
can lave your things here a-hanging on the rack. It is a party ye're expecting? Blessed are
them what expects nothing."

Dark Saint Alaick
01-06-2012, 05:39 AM
The sanguine Edward Morland looked rather blank at this intelligence, and his sister
whispered to him, "We'll get off to Mrs. St. Leonard's as soon as we possibly can. When
did you tell the coachman to come for us?"
"At half past ten," was the brother's reply.
"Oh! Edward, Edward!" she exclaimed, "And I dare say he will not be punctual. He may
keep us here till eleven."
"Courage, mes enfants," said their mother, "et parlez plus doucement."
The girl then ushered them into the back parlor, saying, "Here's the company."
The room was large and gloomy. A checquered mat covered the floor, and all the
furniture was encased in striped calico covers, and the lamps, mirrors, etc. concealed
under green gauze. The front parlor was entirely dark, and in the back apartment was no
other light than a shaded lamp on a large centre table, round which was assembled a
circle of children of all sizes and ages. On a backless, cushionless sofa sat Mrs.
Watkinson, and a young lady, whom she introduced as her daughter Jane. And Mrs.
Morland in return presented Edward and Caroline.
"Will you take the rocking-chair, ma'am?" inquired Mrs. Watkinson.
Mrs. Morland declining the offer, the hostess took it herself, and see-sawed on it nearly
the whole time. It was a very awkward, high-legged, crouch-backed rocking-chair, and
shamefully unprovided with anything in the form of a footstool.
"My husband is away, at Boston, on business," said Mrs. Watkinson. "I thought at first,
ma'am, I should not be able to ask you here this evening, for it is not our way to have
company in his absence; but my daughter Jane over-persuaded me to send for you."
"What a pity," thought Caroline.

Dark Saint Alaick
01-06-2012, 05:40 AM
"You must take us as you find us, ma'am," continued Mrs. Watkinson. "We use no
ceremony with anybody; and our rule is never to put ourselves out of the way. We do not
give parties [looking at the dresses of the ladies]. Our first duty is to our children, and we
cannot waste our substance on fashion and folly. They'll have cause to thank us for it
when we die."
Something like a sob was heard from the centre table, at which the children were sitting,
and a boy was seen to hold his handkerchief to his face.
"Joseph, my child," said his mother, "do not cry. You have no idea, ma'am, what an
extraordinary boy that is. You see how the bare mention of such a thing as our deaths has
overcome him."
There was another sob behind the handkerchief, and the Morlands thought it now
sounded very much like a smothered laugh.
"As I was saying, ma'am," continued Mrs. Watkinson, "we never give parties. We leave
all sinful things to the vain and foolish. My daughter Jane has been telling me, that she
heard this morning of a party that is going on tonight at the widow St. Leonard's. It is
only fifteen years since her husband died. He was carried off with a three days' illness,
but two months after they were married. I have had a domestic that lived with them at the
time, so I know all about it. And there she is now, living in an elegant house, and riding
in her carriage, and dressing and dashing, and giving parties, and enjoying life, as she
calls it. Poor creature, how I pity her! Thank heaven, nobody that I know goes to her
parties. If they did I would never wish to see them again in my house. It is an
encouragement to folly and nonsense--and folly and nonsense are sinful. Do not you
think so, ma'am?"

Dark Saint Alaick
01-06-2012, 05:40 AM
"If carried too far they may certainly become so," replied Mrs. Morland.
"We have heard," said Edward, "that Mrs. St. Leonard, though one of the ornaments of
the gay world, has a kind heart, a beneficent spirit and a liberal hand."
"I know very little about her," replied Mrs. Watkinson, drawing up her head, "and I have
not the least desire to know any more. It is well she has no children; they'd be lost sheep
if brought up in her fold. For my part, ma'am," she continued, turning to Mrs. Morland, "I
am quite satisfied with the quiet joys of a happy home. And no mother has the least
business with any other pleasures. My innocent babes know nothing about plays, and
balls, and parties; and they never shall. Do they look as if they had been accustomed to a
life of pleasure?"
They certainly did not! for when the Morlands took a glance at them, they thought they
had never seen youthful faces that were less gay, and indeed less prepossessing.
There was not a good feature or a pleasant expression among them all. Edward Morland
recollected his having often read "that childhood is always lovely." But he saw that the
juvenile Watkinsons were an exception to the rule.
"The first duty of a mother is to her children," repeated Mrs. Watkinson. "Till nine
o'clock, my daughter Jane and myself are occupied every evening in hearing the lessons
that they have learned for to-morrow's school. Before that hour we can receive no
visitors, and we never have company to tea, as that would interfere too much with our
duties. We had just finished hearing these lessons when you arrived. Afterwards the
children are permitted to indulge themselves in rational play, for I permit no amusement
that is not also instructive. My children are so well trained, that even when alone their
sports are always serious."

Dark Saint Alaick
01-06-2012, 05:41 AM
Two of the boys glanced slyly at each other, with what Edward Morland comprehended
as an expression of pitch-penny and marbles.
"They are now engaged at their game of astronomy," continued Mrs. Watkinson. "They
have also a sort of geography cards, and a set of mathematical cards. It is a blessed
discovery, the invention of these educationary games; so that even the play-time of
children can be turned to account. And you have no idea, ma'am, how they enjoy them."
Just then the boy Joseph rose from the table, and stalking up to Mrs. Watkinson, said to
her, "Mamma, please to whip me."
At this unusual request the visitors looked much amazed, and Mrs. Watkinson replied to
him, "Whip you, my best Joseph--for what cause? I have not seen you do anything wrong
this evening, and you know my anxiety induces me to watch my children all the time."
"You could not see me," answered Joseph, "for I have not done anything very wrong. But
I have had a bad thought, and you know Mr. Ironrule says that a fault imagined is just as
wicked as a fault committed."
"You see, ma'am, what a good memory he has," said Mrs. Watkinson aside to Mrs.
Morland. "But my best Joseph, you make your mother tremble. What fault have you
imagined? What was your bad thought?"
"Ay," said another boy, "what's your thought like?"
"My thought," said Joseph, "was 'Confound all astronomy, and I could see the man
hanged that made this game.'"
"Oh! my child," exclaimed the mother, stopping her ears, "I am indeed shocked. I am
glad you repented so immediately."

Dark Saint Alaick
01-06-2012, 05:41 AM
"Yes," returned Joseph, "but I am afraid my repentance won't last. If I am not whipped, I
may have these bad thoughts whenever I play at astronomy, and worse still at the
geography game. Whip me, ma, and punish me as I deserve. There's the rattan in the
corner: I'll bring it to you myself."
"Excellent boy!" said his mother. "You know I always pardon my children when they are
so candid as to confess their faults."
"So you do," said Joseph, "but a whipping will cure me better."
"I cannot resolve to punish so conscientious a child," said Mrs. Watkinson.
"Shall I take the trouble off your hands?" inquired Edward, losing all patience in his
disgust at the sanctimonious hypocrisy of this young Blifil. "It is such a rarity for a boy to
request a whipping, that so remarkable a desire ought by all means to be gratified."
Joseph turned round and made a face at him.
"Give me the rattan," said Edward, half laughing, and offering to take it out of his hand.
"I'll use it to your full satisfaction."
The boy thought it most prudent to stride off and return to the table, and ensconce himself
among his brothers and sisters; some of whom were staring with stupid surprise; others
were whispering and giggling in the hope of seeing Joseph get a real flogging.
Mrs. Watkinson having bestowed a bitter look on Edward, hastened to turn the attention
of his mother to something else. "Mrs. Morland," said she, "allow me to introduce you to
my youngest hope." She pointed to a sleepy boy about five years old, who with head
thrown back and mouth wide open, was slumbering in his chair.

Dark Saint Alaick
01-06-2012, 05:41 AM
Mrs. Watkinson's children were of that uncomfortable species who never go to bed; at
least never without all manner of resistance. All her boasted authority was inadequate to
compel them; they never would confess themselves sleepy; always wanted to "sit up,"
and there was a nightly scene of scolding, coaxing, threatening and manoeuvring to get
them off.
"I declare," said Mrs. Watkinson, "dear Benny is almost asleep. Shake him up,
Christopher. I want him to speak a speech. His school-mistress takes great pains in
teaching her little pupils to speak, and stands up herself and shows them how."
The child having been shaken up hard (two or three others helping Christopher), rubbed
his eyes and began to whine. His mother went to him, took him on her lap, hushed him
up, and began to coax him. This done, she stood him on his feet before Mrs. Morland,
and desired him to speak a speech for the company. The child put his thumb into his
mouth, and remained silent.
"Ma," said Jane Watkinson, "you had better tell him what speech to speak."
"Speak Cato or Plato," said his mother. "Which do you call it? Come now, Benny--how
does it begin? 'You are quite right and reasonable, Plato.' That's it."
"Speak Lucius," said his sister Jane. "Come now, Benny--say 'your thoughts are turned
on peace.'"
The little boy looked very much as if they were not, and as if meditating an outbreak.
"No, no!" exclaimed Christopher, "let him say Hamlet. Come now, Benny--'To be or not
to be.'"
"It ain't to be at all," cried Benny, "and I won't speak the least bit of it for any of you. I
hate that speech!"

Dark Saint Alaick
01-06-2012, 05:42 AM
"Only see his obstinacy," said the solemn Joseph. "And is he to be given up to?"
"Speak anything, Benny," said Mrs. Watkinson, "anything so that it is only a speech."
All the Watkinson voices now began to clamor violently at the obstinate child--"Speak a
speech! speak a speech! speak a speech!" But they had no more effect than the reiterated
exhortations with which nurses confuse the poor heads of babies, when they require them
to "shake a day-day--shake a day-day!"
Mrs. Morland now interfered, and begged that the sleepy little boy might be excused; on
which he screamed out that "he wasn't sleepy at all, and would not go to bed ever."
"I never knew any of my children behave so before," said Mrs. Watkinson. "They are
always models of obedience, ma'am. A look is sufficient for them. And I must say that
they have in every way profited by the education we are giving them. It is not our way,
ma'am, to waste our money in parties and fooleries, and fine furniture and fine clothes,
and rich food, and all such abominations. Our first duty is to our children, and to make
them learn everything that is taught in the schools. If they go wrong, it will not be for
want of education. Hester, my dear, come and talk to Miss Morland in French."
Hester (unlike her little brother that would not speak a speech) stepped boldly forward,
and addressed Caroline Morland with: "Parlez-vous Français, mademoiselle? Comment
se va madame votre mère? Aimez-vous la musique? Aimez-vous la danse? Bon jour--bon
soir--bon repos. Comprenez-vous?"
To this tirade, uttered with great volubility, Miss Morland made no other reply than,
"Oui--je comprens."

Dark Saint Alaick
01-06-2012, 05:44 AM
"Very well, Hester--very well indeed," said Mrs. Watkinson. "You see, ma'am," turning
to Mrs. Morland, "how very fluent she is in French; and she has only been learning
eleven quarters."
After considerable whispering between Jane and her mother, the former withdrew, and
sent in by the Irish girl a waiter with a basket of soda biscuit, a pitcher of water, and some
glasses. Mrs. Watkinson invited her guests to consider themselves at home and help
themselves freely, saying: "We never let cakes, sweetmeats, confectionery, or any such
things enter the house, as they would be very unwholesome for the children, and it would
be sinful to put temptation in their way. I am sure, ma'am, you will agree with me that the
plainest food is the best for everybody. People that want nice things may go to parties for
them; but they will never get any with me."
When the collation was over, and every child provided with a biscuit, Mrs. Watkinson
said to Mrs. Morland: "Now, ma'am, you shall have some music from my daughter Jane,
who is one of Mr. Bangwhanger's best scholars."
Jane Watkinson sat down to the piano and commenced a powerful piece of six mortal
pages, which she played out of time and out of tune; but with tremendous force of hands;
notwithstanding which, it had, however, the good effect of putting most of the children to
sleep.
To the Morlands the evening had seemed already five hours long. Still it was only half
past ten when Jane was in the midst of her piece. The guests had all tacitly determined
that it would be best not to let Mrs. Watkinson know their intention to go directly from
her house to Mrs. St. Leonard's party; and the arrival of their carriage would have been
the signal of departure, even if Jane's piece had not reached its termination. They stole
glances at the clock on the mantel. It wanted but a quarter of eleven, when Jane rose from
the piano, and was congratulated by her mother on the excellence of her music. Still no
carriage was heard to stop; no doorbell was heard to ring. Mrs. Morland expressed her
fears that the coachman had forgotten to come for them.

Dark Saint Alaick
01-06-2012, 05:46 AM
"Has he been paid for bringing you here?" asked Mrs. Watkinson.
"I paid him when we came to the door," said Edward. "I thought perhaps he might want
the money for some purpose before he came for us."
"That was very kind in you, sir," said Mrs. Watkinson, "but not very wise. There's no
dependence on any coachman; and perhaps as he may be sure of business enough this
rainy night he may never come at all--being already paid for bringing you here."
Now, the truth was that the coachman had come at the appointed time, but the noise of
Jane's piano had prevented his arrival being heard in the back parlor. The Irish girl had
gone to the door when he rang the bell, and recognized in him what she called "an ould
friend." Just then a lady and gentleman who had been caught in the rain came running
along, and seeing a carriage drawing up at a door, the gentleman inquired of the driver if
he could not take them to Rutgers Place. The driver replied that he had just come for two
ladies and a gentleman whom he had brought from the Astor House.
"Indeed and Patrick," said the girl who stood at the door, "if I was you I'd be after making
another penny to-night. Miss Jane is pounding away at one of her long music pieces, and
it won't be over before you have time to get to Rutgers and back again. And if you do
make them wait awhile, where's the harm? They've a dry roof over their heads, and I
warrant it's not the first waiting they've ever had in their lives; and it won't be the last
neither."

Dark Saint Alaick
01-06-2012, 05:47 AM
"Exactly so," said the gentleman; and regardless of the propriety of first sending to
consult the persons who had engaged the carriage, he told his wife to step in, and
following her instantly himself, they drove away to Rutgers Place.
Reader, if you were ever detained in a strange house by the non-arrival of your carriage,
you will easily understand the excessive annoyance of finding that you are keeping a
family out of their beds beyond their usual hour. And in this case, there was a double
grievance; the guests being all impatience to get off to a better place. The children, all
crying when wakened from their sleep, were finally taken to bed by two servant maids,
and Jane Watkinson, who never came back again. None were left but Hester, the great
French scholar, who, being one of those young imps that seem to have the faculty of
living without sleep, sat bolt upright with her eyes wide open, watching the
uncomfortable visitors.
The Morlands felt as if they could bear it no longer, and Edward proposed sending for
another carriage to the nearest livery stable.
"We don't keep a man now," said Mrs. Watkinson, who sat nodding in the rocking-chair,
attempting now and then a snatch of conversation, and saying "ma'am" still more
frequently than usual. "Men servants are dreadful trials, ma'am, and we gave them up
three years ago. And I don't know how Mary or Katy are to go out this stormy night in
search of a livery stable."
"On no consideration could I allow the women to do so," replied Edward. "If you will
oblige me by the loan of an umbrella, I will go myself."

Dark Saint Alaick
01-06-2012, 05:48 AM
Accordingly he set out on this business, but was unsuccessful at two livery stables, the
carriages being all out. At last he found one, and was driven in it to Mr. Watkinson's
house, where his mother and sister were awaiting him, all quite ready, with their calashes
and shawls on. They gladly took their leave; Mrs. Watkinson rousing herself to hope they
had spent a pleasant evening, and that they would come and pass another with her on
their return to New York. In such cases how difficult it is to reply even with what are
called "words of course."
A kitchen lamp was brought to light them to the door, the entry lamp having long since
been extinguished. Fortunately the rain had ceased; the stars began to reappear, and the
Morlands, when they found themselves in the carriage and on their way to Mrs. St.
Leonard's, felt as if they could breathe again. As may be supposed, they freely discussed
the annoyances of the evening; but now those troubles were over they felt rather inclined
to be merry about them.
"Dear mother," said Edward, "how I pitied you for having to endure Mrs. Watkinson's
perpetual 'ma'aming' and 'ma'aming'; for I know you dislike the word."
"I wish," said Caroline, "I was not so prone to be taken with ridiculous recollections. But
really to-night I could not get that old foolish child's play out of my head--
Here come three knights out of Spain
A-courting of your daughter Jane."
"I shall certainly never be one of those Spanish knights," said Edward. "Her daughter
Jane is in no danger of being ruled by any 'flattering tongue' of mine. But what a shame
for us to be talking of them in this manner."

Dark Saint Alaick
01-06-2012, 05:48 AM
They drove to Mrs. St. Leonard's, hoping to be yet in time to pass half an hour there;
though it was now near twelve o'clock and summer parties never continue to a very late
hour. But as they came into the street in which she lived they were met by a number of
coaches on their way home, and on reaching the door of her brilliantly lighted mansion,
they saw the last of the guests driving off in the last of the carriages, and several
musicians coming down the steps with their instruments in their hands.
"So there has been a dance, then!" sighed Caroline. "Oh, what we have missed! It is
really too provoking."
"So it is," said Edward; "but remember that to-morrow morning we set off for Niagara."
"I will leave a note for Mrs. St. Leonard," said his mother, "explaining that we were
detained at Mrs. Watkinson's by our coachman disappointing us. Let us console ourselves
with the hope of seeing more of this lady on our return. And now, dear Caroline, you
must draw a moral from the untoward events of to-day. When you are mistress of a
house, and wish to show civility to strangers, let the invitation be always accompanied
with a frank disclosure of what they are to expect. And if you cannot conveniently invite
company to meet them, tell them at once that you will not insist on their keeping their
engagement with you if anything offers afterwards that they think they would prefer;
provided only that they apprize you in time of the change in their plan."
"Oh, mamma," replied Caroline, "you may be sure I shall always take care not to betray
my visitors into an engagement which they may have cause to regret, particularly if they
are strangers whose time is limited. I shall certainly, as you say, tell them not to consider
themselves bound to me if they afterwards receive an invitation which promises them
more enjoyment. It will be a long while before I forget, the Watkinson evening."

Dark Saint Alaick
13-06-2012, 06:19 AM
Titbottom's Spectacles


By George William Curtis (1824-1892)


From Putnam's Monthly, December, 1854
Republished in the volume, Prue and I (1856)
(Harper & Brothers)

Dark Saint Alaick
13-06-2012, 06:20 AM
In my mind's eye, Horatio.
Prue and I do not entertain much; our means forbid it. In truth, other people entertain for
us. We enjoy that hospitality of which no account is made. We see the show, and hear the
music, and smell the flowers of great festivities, tasting as it were the drippings from rich
dishes. Our own dinner service is remarkably plain, our dinners, even on state occasions,
are strictly in keeping, and almost our only guest is Titbottom. I buy a handful of roses as
I come up from the office, perhaps, and Prue arranges them so prettily in a glass dish for
the centre of the table that even when I have hurried out to see Aurelia step into her
carriage to go out to dine, I have thought that the bouquet she carried was not more
beautiful because it was more costly. I grant that it was more harmonious with her superb
beauty and her rich attire. And I have no doubt that if Aurelia knew the old man, whom
she must have seen so often watching her, and his wife, who ornaments her sex with as
much sweetness, although with less splendor, than Aurelia herself, she would also
acknowledge that the nosegay of roses was as fine and fit upon their table as her own
sumptuous bouquet is for herself. I have that faith in the perception of that lovely lady. It
is at least my habit--I hope I may say, my nature, to believe the best of people, rather than
the worst. If I thought that all this sparkling setting of beauty--this fine fashion--these
blazing jewels and lustrous silks and airy gauzes, embellished with gold-threaded
embroidery and wrought in a thousand exquisite elaborations, so that I cannot see one of
those lovely girls pass me by without thanking God for the vision--if I thought that this
was all, and that underneath her lace flounces and diamond bracelets Aurelia was a
sullen, selfish woman, then I should turn sadly homewards, for I should see that her
jewels were flashing scorn upon the object they adorned, and that her laces were of a
more exquisite loveliness than the woman whom they merely touched with a superficial
grace. It would be like a gaily decorated mausoleum--bright to see, but silent and dark
within.

Dark Saint Alaick
13-06-2012, 06:21 AM
"Great excellences, my dear Prue," I sometimes allow myself to say, "lie concealed in the
depths of character, like pearls at the bottom of the sea. Under the laughing, glancing
surface, how little they are suspected! Perhaps love is nothing else than the sight of them
by one person. Hence every man's mistress is apt to be an enigma to everybody else. I
have no doubt that when Aurelia is engaged, people will say that she is a most admirable
girl, certainly; but they cannot understand why any man should be in love with her. As if
it were at all necessary that they should! And her lover, like a boy who finds a pearl in the
public street, and wonders as much that others did not see it as that he did, will tremble
until he knows his passion is returned; feeling, of course, that the whole world must be in
love with this paragon who cannot possibly smile upon anything so unworthy as he."

"I hope, therefore, my dear Mrs. Prue," I continue to say to my wife, who looks up from
her work regarding me with pleased pride, as if I were such an irresistible humorist, "you
will allow me to believe that the depth may be calm although the surface is dancing. If
you tell me that Aurelia is but a giddy girl, I shall believe that you think so. But I shall
know, all the while, what profound dignity, and sweetness, and peace lie at the
foundation of her character."

I say such things to Titbottom during the dull season at the office. And I have known him
sometimes to reply with a kind of dry, sad humor, not as if he enjoyed the joke, but as if
the joke must be made, that he saw no reason why I should be dull because the season
was so.

"And what do I know of Aurelia or any other girl?" he says to me with that abstracted air.

"I, whose Aurelias were of another century and another zone."

Dark Saint Alaick
13-06-2012, 06:21 AM
Then he falls into a silence which it seems quite profane to interrupt. But as we sit upon
our high stools at the desk opposite each other, I leaning upon my elbows and looking at
him; he, with sidelong face, glancing out of the window, as if it commanded a boundless
landscape, instead of a dim, dingy office court, I cannot refrain from saying:
"Well!"
He turns slowly, and I go chatting on--a little too loquacious, perhaps, about those young
girls. But I know that Titbottom regards such an excess as venial, for his sadness is so
sweet that you could believe it the reflection of a smile from long, long years ago.
One day, after I had been talking for a long time, and we had put up our books, and were
preparing to leave, he stood for some time by the window, gazing with a drooping
intentness, as if he really saw something more than the dark court, and said slowly:
"Perhaps you would have different impressions of things if you saw them through my
spectacles."
There was no change in his expression. He still looked from the window, and I said:
"Titbottom, I did not know that you used glasses. I have never seen you wearing
spectacles."
"No, I don't often wear them. I am not very fond of looking through them. But sometimes
an irresistible necessity compels me to put them on, and I cannot help seeing." Titbottom
sighed.
"Is it so grievous a fate, to see?" inquired I.
"Yes; through my spectacles," he said, turning slowly and looking at me with wan
solemnity.

Dark Saint Alaick
13-06-2012, 06:21 AM
It grew dark as we stood in the office talking, and taking our hats we went out together.
The narrow street of business was deserted. The heavy iron shutters were gloomily closed
over the windows. From one or two offices struggled the dim gleam of an early candle,
by whose light some perplexed accountant sat belated, and hunting for his error. A
careless clerk passed, whistling. But the great tide of life had ebbed. We heard its roar far
away, and the sound stole into that silent street like the murmur of the ocean into an
inland dell.
"You will come and dine with us, Titbottom?"
He assented by continuing to walk with me, and I think we were both glad when we
reached the house, and Prue came to meet us, saying:
"Do you know I hoped you would bring Mr. Titbottom to dine?"
Titbottom smiled gently, and answered:
"He might have brought his spectacles with him, and I have been a happier man for it."
Prue looked a little puzzled.
"My dear," I said, "you must know that our friend, Mr. Titbottom, is the happy possessor
of a pair of wonderful spectacles. I have never seen them, indeed; and, from what he says,
I should be rather afraid of being seen by them. Most short-sighted persons are very glad
to have the help of glasses; but Mr. Titbottom seems to find very little pleasure in his."
"It is because they make him too far-sighted, perhaps," interrupted Prue quietly, as she
took the silver soup-ladle from the sideboard.

Dark Saint Alaick
13-06-2012, 06:22 AM
We sipped our wine after dinner, and Prue took her work. Can a man be too far-sighted? I
did not ask the question aloud. The very tone in which Prue had spoken convinced me
that he might.
"At least," I said, "Mr. Titbottom will not refuse to tell us the history of his mysterious
spectacles. I have known plenty of magic in eyes"--and I glanced at the tender blue eyes
of Prue--"but I have not heard of any enchanted glasses."
"Yet you must have seen the glass in which your wife looks every morning, and I take it
that glass must be daily enchanted." said Titbottom, with a bow of quaint respect to my
wife.
I do not think I have seen such a blush upon Prue's cheek since--well, since a great many
years ago.
"I will gladly tell you the history of my spectacles," began Titbottom. "It is very simple;
and I am not at all sure that a great many other people have not a pair of the same kind. I
have never, indeed, heard of them by the gross, like those of our young friend, Moses, the
son of the Vicar of Wakefield. In fact, I think a gross would be quite enough to supply the
world. It is a kind of article for which the demand does not increase with use. If we
should all wear spectacles like mine, we should never smile any more. Oh--I am not quite
sure--we should all be very happy."
"A very important difference," said Prue, counting her stitches.

Dark Saint Alaick
13-06-2012, 06:22 AM
"You know my grandfather Titbottom was a West Indian. A large proprietor, and an easy
man, he basked in the tropical sun, leading his quiet, luxurious life. He lived much alone,
and was what people call eccentric, by which I understand that he was very much
himself, and, refusing the influence of other people, they had their little revenges, and
called him names. It is a habit not exclusively tropical. I think I have seen the same thing
even in this city. But he was greatly beloved--my bland and bountiful grandfather. He
was so large-hearted and open-handed. He was so friendly, and thoughtful, and genial,
that even his jokes had the air of graceful benedictions. He did not seem to grow old, and
he was one of those who never appear to have been very young. He flourished in a
perennial maturity, an immortal middle-age.
"My grandfather lived upon one of the small islands, St. Kit's, perhaps, and his domain
extended to the sea. His house, a rambling West Indian mansion, was surrounded with
deep, spacious piazzas, covered with luxurious lounges, among which one capacious
chair was his peculiar seat. They tell me he used sometimes to sit there for the whole day,
his great, soft, brown eyes fastened upon the sea, watching the specks of sails that flashed
upon the horizon, while the evanescent expressions chased each other over his placid
face, as if it reflected the calm and changing sea before him. His morning costume was an
ample dressing-gown of gorgeously flowered silk, and his morning was very apt to last
all day.

Dark Saint Alaick
13-06-2012, 06:22 AM
"He rarely read, but he would pace the great piazza for hours, with his hands sunken in
the pockets of his dressing-gown, and an air of sweet reverie, which any author might be
very happy to produce.
"Society, of course, he saw little. There was some slight apprehension that if he were
bidden to social entertainments he might forget his coat, or arrive without some other
essential part of his dress; and there is a sly tradition in the Titbottom family that, having
been invited to a ball in honor of the new governor of the island, my grandfather
Titbottom sauntered into the hall towards midnight, wrapped in the gorgeous flowers of
his dressing-gown, and with his hands buried in the pockets, as usual. There was great
excitement, and immense deprecation of gubernatorial ire. But it happened that the
governor and my grandfather were old friends, and there was no offense. But as they
were conversing together, one of the distressed managers cast indignant glances at the
brilliant costume of my grandfather, who summoned him, and asked courteously:
"'Did you invite me or my coat?'
"'You, in a proper coat,' replied the manager.
"The governor smiled approvingly, and looked at my grandfather.
"'My friend," said he to the manager, 'I beg your pardon, I forgot.'
"The next day my grandfather was seen promenading in full ball dress along the streets of
the little town.

Dark Saint Alaick
13-06-2012, 06:22 AM
"'They ought to know,' said he, 'that I have a proper coat, and that not contempt nor
poverty, but forgetfulness, sent me to a ball in my dressing-gown.'
"He did not much frequent social festivals after this failure, but he always told the story
with satisfaction and a quiet smile.
"To a stranger, life upon those little islands is uniform even to weariness. But the old
native dons like my grandfather ripen in the prolonged sunshine, like the turtle upon the
Bahama banks, nor know of existence more desirable. Life in the tropics I take to be a
placid torpidity. During the long, warm mornings of nearly half a century, my grandfather
Titbottom had sat in his dressing-gown and gazed at the sea. But one calm June day, as
he slowly paced the piazza after breakfast, his dreamy glance was arrested by a little
vessel, evidently nearing the shore. He called for his spyglass, and surveying the craft,
saw that she came from the neighboring island. She glided smoothly, slowly, over the
summer sea. The warm morning air was sweet with perfumes, and silent with heat. The
sea sparkled languidly, and the brilliant blue hung cloudlessly over. Scores of little island
vessels had my grandfather seen come over the horizon, and cast anchor in the port.
Hundreds of summer mornings had the white sails flashed and faded, like vague faces
through forgotten dreams. But this time he laid down the spyglass, and leaned against a
column of the piazza, and watched the vessel with an intentness that he could not explain.
She came nearer and nearer, a graceful spectre in the dazzling morning.

Dark Saint Alaick
13-06-2012, 06:23 AM
"'Decidedly I must step down and see about that vessel,' said my grandfather Titbottom.
"He gathered his ample dressing-gown about him, and stepped from the piazza with no
other protection from the sun than the little smoking cap upon his head. His face wore a
calm, beaming smile, as if he approved of all the world. He was not an old man, but there
was almost a patriarchal pathos in his expression as he sauntered along in the sunshine
towards the shore. A group of idle gazers was collected to watch the arrival. The little
vessel furled her sails and drifted slowly landward, and as she was of very light draft, she
came close to the shelving shore. A long plank was put out from her side, and the
debarkation commenced. My grandfather Titbottom stood looking on to see the
passengers descend. There were but a few of them, and mostly traders from the
neighboring island. But suddenly the face of a young girl appeared over the side of the
vessel, and she stepped upon the plank to descend. My grandfather Titbottom instantly
advanced, and moving briskly reached the top of the plank at the same moment, and with
the old tassel of his cap flashing in the sun, and one hand in the pocket of his dressing
gown, with the other he handed the young lady carefully down the plank. That young
lady was afterwards my grandmother Titbottom.
"And so, over the gleaming sea which he had watched so long, and which seemed thus to
reward his patient gaze, came his bride that sunny morning.
"'Of course we are happy,' he used to say: 'For you are the gift of the sun I have loved so
long and so well.' And my grandfather Titbottom would lay his hand so tenderly upon the
golden hair of his young bride, that you could fancy him a devout Parsee caressing
sunbeams.

Dark Saint Alaick
13-06-2012, 06:23 AM
"There were endless festivities upon occasion of the marriage; and my grandfather did
not go to one of them in his dressing-gown. The gentle sweetness of his wife melted
every heart into love and sympathy. He was much older than she, without doubt. But age,
as he used to say with a smile of immortal youth, is a matter of feeling, not of years. And
if, sometimes, as she sat by his side upon the piazza, her fancy looked through her eyes
upon that summer sea and saw a younger lover, perhaps some one of those graceful and
glowing heroes who occupy the foreground of all young maidens' visions by the sea, yet
she could not find one more generous and gracious, nor fancy one more worthy and
loving than my grandfather Titbottom. And if in the moonlit midnight, while he lay
calmly sleeping, she leaned out of the window and sank into vague reveries of sweet
possibility, and watched the gleaming path of the moonlight upon the water, until the
dawn glided over it--it was only that mood of nameless regret and longing, which
underlies all human happiness,--or it was the vision of that life of society, which she had
never seen, but of which she had often read, and which looked very fair and alluring
across the sea to a girlish imagination which knew that it should never know that reality.
"These West Indian years were the great days of the family," said Titbottom, with an air
of majestic and regal regret, pausing and musing in our little parlor, like a late Stuart in
exile, remembering England. Prue raised her eyes from her work, and looked at him with
a subdued admiration; for I have observed that, like the rest of her sex, she has a singular
sympathy with the representative of a reduced family. Perhaps it is their finer perception
which leads these tender-hearted women to recognize the divine right of social
superiority so much more readily than we; and yet, much as Titbottom was enhanced in
my wife's admiration by the discovery that his dusky sadness of nature and expression
was, as it were, the expiring gleam and late twilight of ancestral splendors, I doubt if Mr.
Bourne would have preferred him for bookkeeper a moment sooner upon that account. In
truth, I have observed, down town, that the fact of your ancestors doing nothing is not
considered good proof that you can do anything. But Prue and her sex regard sentiment
more than action, and I understand easily enough why she is never tired of hearing me
read of Prince Charlie. If Titbottom had been only a little younger, a little handsomer, a
little more gallantly dressed--in fact, a little more of the Prince Charlie, I am sure her eyes
would not have fallen again upon her work so tranquilly, as he resumed his story.

Dark Saint Alaick
13-06-2012, 06:24 AM
"I can remember my grandfather Titbottom, although I was a very young child, and he
was a very old man. My young mother and my young grandmother are very distinct
figures in my memory, ministering to the old gentleman, wrapped in his dressing-gown,
and seated upon the piazza. I remember his white hair and his calm smile, and how, not
long before he died, he called me to him, and laying his hand upon my head, said to me:
"My child, the world is not this great sunny piazza, nor life the fairy stories which the
women tell you here as you sit in their laps. I shall soon be gone, but I want to leave with
you some memento of my love for you, and I know nothing more valuable than these
spectacles, which your grandmother brought from her native island, when she arrived
here one fine summer morning, long ago. I cannot quite tell whether, when you grow
older, you will regard it as a gift of the greatest value or as something that you had been
happier never to have possessed.'
"'But grandpapa, I am not short-sighted.'
"'My son, are you not human?' said the old gentleman; and how shall I ever forget the
thoughtful sadness with which, at the same time he handed me the spectacles.
"Instinctively I put them on, and looked at my grandfather. But I saw no grandfather, no
piazza, no flowered dressing-gown: I saw only a luxuriant palm-tree, waving broadly
over a tranquil landscape. Pleasant homes clustered around it. Gardens teeming with fruit
and flowers; flocks quietly feeding; birds wheeling and chirping. I heard children's
voices, and the low lullaby of happy mothers. The sound of cheerful singing came wafted
from distant fields upon the light breeze. Golden harvests glistened out of sight, and I
caught their rustling whisper of prosperity. A warm, mellow atmosphere bathed the
whole. I have seen copies of the landscapes of the Italian painter Claude which seemed to
me faint reminiscences of that calm and happy vision. But all this peace and prosperity
seemed to flow from the spreading palm as from a fountain.

Dark Saint Alaick
13-06-2012, 06:24 AM
"I do not know how long I looked, but I had, apparently, no power, as I had no will, to
remove the spectacles. What a wonderful island must Nevis be, thought I, if people carry
such pictures in their pockets, only by buying a pair of spectacles! What wonder that my
dear grandmother Titbottom has lived such a placid life, and has blessed us all with her
sunny temper, when she has lived surrounded by such images of peace.
"My grandfather died. But still, in the warm morning sunshine upon the piazza, I felt his
placid presence, and as I crawled into his great chair, and drifted on in reverie through the
still, tropical day, it was as if his soft, dreamy eye had passed into my soul. My
grandmother cherished his memory with tender regret. A violent passion of grief for his
loss was no more possible than for the pensive decay of the year. We have no portrait of
him, but I see always, when I remember him, that peaceful and luxuriant palm. And I
think that to have known one good old man--one man who, through the chances and rubs
of a long life, has carried his heart in his hand, like a palm branch, waving all discords
into peace, helps our faith in God, in ourselves, and in each other, more than many
sermons. I hardly know whether to be grateful to my grandfather for the spectacles; and
yet when I remember that it is to them I owe the pleasant image of him which I cherish, I
seem to myself sadly ungrateful.
"Madam," said Titbottom to Prue, solemnly, "my memory is a long and gloomy gallery,
and only remotely, at its further end, do I see the glimmer of soft sunshine, and only there
are the pleasant pictures hung. They seem to me very happy along whose gallery the
sunlight streams to their very feet, striking all the pictured walls into unfading splendor."
Prue had laid her work in her lap, and as Titbottom paused a moment, and I turned
towards her, I found her mild eyes fastened upon my face, and glistening with happy
tears.

Dark Saint Alaick
13-06-2012, 06:25 AM
"Misfortunes of many kinds came heavily upon the family after the head was gone. The
great house was relinquished. My parents were both dead, and my grandmother had
entire charge of me. But from the moment that I received the gift of the spectacles, I
could not resist their fascination, and I withdrew into myself, and became a solitary boy.
There were not many companions for me of my own age, and they gradually left me, or,
at least, had not a hearty sympathy with me; for if they teased me I pulled out my
spectacles and surveyed them so seriously that they acquired a kind of awe of me, and
evidently regarded my grandfather's gift as a concealed magical weapon which might be
dangerously drawn upon them at any moment. Whenever, in our games, there were
quarrels and high words, and I began to feel about my dress and to wear a grave look,
they all took the alarm, and shouted, 'Look out for Titbottom's spectacles,' and scattered
like a flock of scared sheep.
"Nor could I wonder at it. For, at first, before they took the alarm, I saw strange sights
when I looked at them through the glasses. If two were quarrelling about a marble or a
ball, I had only to go behind a tree where I was concealed and look at them leisurely.
Then the scene changed, and no longer a green meadow with boys playing, but a spot
which I did not recognize, and forms that made me shudder or smile. It was not a big boy
bullying a little one, but a young wolf with glistening teeth and a lamb cowering before
him; or, it was a dog faithful and famishing--or a star going slowly into eclipse--or a
rainbow fading--or a flower blooming--or a sun rising--or a waning moon. The
revelations of the spectacles determined my feeling for the boys, and for all whom I saw
through them. No shyness, nor awkwardness, nor silence, could separate me from those
who looked lovely as lilies to my illuminated eyes. If I felt myself warmly drawn to any
one I struggled with the fierce desire of seeing him through the spectacles. I longed to
enjoy the luxury of ignorant feeling, to love without knowing, to float like a leaf upon the
eddies of life, drifted now to a sunny point, now to a solemn shade--now over glittering
ripples, now over gleaming calms,--and not to determined ports, a trim vessel with an
inexorable rudder.

Dark Saint Alaick
13-06-2012, 06:25 AM
"But, sometimes, mastered after long struggles, I seized my spectacles and sauntered into
the little town. Putting them to my eyes I peered into the houses and at the people who
passed me. Here sat a family at breakfast, and I stood at the window looking in. O motley
meal! fantastic vision! The good mother saw her lord sitting opposite, a grave,
respectable being, eating muffins. But I saw only a bank-bill, more or less crumpled and
tattered, marked with a larger or lesser figure. If a sharp wind blew suddenly, I saw it
tremble and flutter; it was thin, flat, impalpable. I removed my glasses, and looked with
my eyes at the wife. I could have smiled to see the humid tenderness with which she
regarded her strange vis-Ã*-vis. Is life only a game of blind-man's-buff? of droll crosspurposes?
"Or I put them on again, and looked at the wife. How many stout trees I saw,--how many
tender flowers,--how many placid pools; yes, and how many little streams winding out of
sight, shrinking before the large, hard, round eyes opposite, and slipping off into solitude
and shade, with a low, inner song for their own solace. And in many houses I thought to
see angels, nymphs, or at least, women, and could only find broomsticks, mops, or
kettles, hurrying about, rattling, tinkling, in a state of shrill activity. I made calls upon
elegant ladies, and after I had enjoyed the gloss of silk and the delicacy of lace, and the
flash of jewels, I slipped on my spectacles, and saw a peacock's feather, flounced and
furbelowed and fluttering; or an iron rod, thin, sharp, and hard; nor could I possibly
mistake the movement of the drapery for any flexibility of the thing draped,--or,
mysteriously chilled, I saw a statue of perfect form, or flowing movement, it might be
alabaster, or bronze, or marble,--but sadly often it was ice; and I knew that after it had
shone a little, and frozen a few eyes with its despairing perfection, it could not be put
away in the niches of palaces for ornament and proud family tradition, like the alabaster,
or bronze, or marble statues, but would melt, and shrink, and fall coldly away in colorless
and useless water, be absorbed in the earth and utterly forgotten.

Dark Saint Alaick
13-06-2012, 06:26 AM
"But the true sadness was rather in seeing those who, not having the spectacles, thought
that the iron rod was flexible, and the ice statue warm. I saw many a gallant heart, which
seemed to me brave and loyal as the crusaders sent by genuine and noble faith to Syria
and the sepulchre, pursuing, through days and nights, and a long life of devotion, the
hope of lighting at least a smile in the cold eyes, if not a fire in the icy heart. I watched
the earnest, enthusiastic sacrifice. I saw the pure resolve, the generous faith, the fine
scorn of doubt, the impatience of suspicion. I watched the grace, the ardor, the glory of
devotion. Through those strange spectacles how often I saw the noblest heart renouncing
all other hope, all other ambition, all other life, than the possible love of some one of
those statues. Ah! me, it was terrible, but they had not the love to give. The Parian face
was so polished and smooth, because there was no sorrow upon the heart,--and, drearily
often, no heart to be touched. I could not wonder that the noble heart of devotion was
broken, for it had dashed itself against a stone. I wept, until my spectacles were dimmed
for that hopeless sorrow; but there was a pang beyond tears for those icy statues.
"Still a boy, I was thus too much a man in knowledge,--I did not comprehend the sights I
was compelled to see. I used to tear my glasses away from my eyes, and, frightened at
myself, run to escape my own consciousness. Reaching the small house where we then
lived, I plunged into my grandmother's room and, throwing myself upon the floor, buried
my face in her lap; and sobbed myself to sleep with premature grief. But when I
awakened, and felt her cool hand upon my hot forehead, and heard the low, sweet song,
or the gentle story, or the tenderly told parable from the Bible, with which she tried to
soothe me, I could not resist the mystic fascination that lured me, as I lay in her lap, to
steal a glance at her through the spectacles.

Dark Saint Alaick
13-06-2012, 06:26 AM
"Pictures of the Madonna have not her rare and pensive beauty. Upon the tranquil little
islands her life had been eventless, and all the fine possibilities of her nature were like
flowers that never bloomed. Placid were all her years; yet I have read of no heroine, of no
woman great in sudden crises, that it did not seem to me she might have been. The wife
and widow of a man who loved his own home better than the homes of others, I have yet
heard of no queen, no belle, no imperial beauty, whom in grace, and brilliancy, and
persuasive courtesy, she might not have surpassed.
"Madam," said Titbottom to my wife, whose heart hung upon his story; "your husband's
young friend, Aurelia, wears sometimes a camelia in her hair, and no diamond in the ballroom
seems so costly as that perfect flower, which women envy, and for whose least and
withered petal men sigh; yet, in the tropical solitudes of Brazil, how many a camelia bud
drops from a bush that no eye has ever seen, which, had it flowered and been noticed,
would have gilded all hearts with its memory.
"When I stole these furtive glances at my grandmother, half fearing that they were wrong,
I saw only a calm lake, whose shores were low, and over which the sky hung unbroken,
so that the least star was clearly reflected. It had an atmosphere of solemn twilight
tranquillity, and so completely did its unruffled surface blend with the cloudless, starstudded
sky, that, when I looked through my spectacles at my grandmother, the vision
seemed to me all heaven and stars. Yet, as I gazed and gazed, I felt what stately cities
might well have been built upon those shores, and have flashed prosperity over the calm,
like coruscations of pearls.

Dark Saint Alaick
13-06-2012, 06:26 AM
"I dreamed of gorgeous fleets, silken sailed and blown by perfumed winds, drifting over
those depthless waters and through those spacious skies. I gazed upon the twilight, the
inscrutable silence, like a God-fearing discoverer upon a new, and vast, and dim sea,
bursting upon him through forest glooms, and in the fervor of whose impassioned gaze, a
millennial and poetic world arises, and man need no longer die to be happy.
"My companions naturally deserted me, for I had grown wearily grave and abstracted:
and, unable to resist the allurement of my spectacles, I was constantly lost in a world, of
which those companions were part, yet of which they knew nothing. I grew cold and
hard, almost morose; people seemed to me blind and unreasonable. They did the wrong
thing. They called green, yellow; and black, white. Young men said of a girl, 'What a
lovely, simple creature!' I looked, and there was only a glistening wisp of straw, dry and
hollow. Or they said, 'What a cold, proud beauty!' I looked, and lo! a Madonna, whose
heart held the world. Or they said, 'What a wild, giddy girl!' and I saw a glancing,
dancing mountain stream, pure as the virgin snows whence it flowed, singing through sun
and shade, over pearls and gold dust, slipping along unstained by weed, or rain, or heavy
foot of cattle, touching the flowers with a dewy kiss,--a beam of grace, a happy song, a
line of light, in the dim and troubled landscape.
"My grandmother sent me to school, but I looked at the master, and saw that he was a
smooth, round ferule--or an improper noun--or a vulgar fraction, and refused to obey him.

Dark Saint Alaick
13-06-2012, 06:27 AM
Or he was a piece of string, a rag, a willow-wand, and I had a contemptuous pity. But one
was a well of cool, deep water, and looking suddenly in, one day, I saw the stars. He gave
me all my schooling. With him I used to walk by the sea, and, as we strolled and the
waves plunged in long legions before us, I looked at him through the spectacles, and as
his eye dilated with the boundless view, and his chest heaved with an impossible desire, I
saw Xerxes and his army tossing and glittering, rank upon rank, multitude upon
multitude, out of sight, but ever regularly advancing and with the confused roar of
ceaseless music, prostrating themselves in abject homage. Or, as with arms outstretched
and hair streaming on the wind, he chanted full lines of the resounding Iliad, I saw Homer
pacing the AEgean sands in the Greek sunsets of forgotten times.
"My grandmother died, and I was thrown into the world without resources, and with no
capital but my spectacles. I tried to find employment, but men were shy of me. There was
a vague suspicion that I was either a little crazed, or a good deal in league with the Prince
of Darkness. My companions who would persist in calling a piece of painted muslin a fair
and fragrant flower had no difficulty; success waited for them around every corner, and
arrived in every ship. I tried to teach, for I loved children. But if anything excited my
suspicion, and, putting on my spectacles, I saw that I was fondling a snake, or smelling at
a bud with a worm in it, I sprang up in horror and ran away; or, if it seemed to me
through the glasses that a cherub smiled upon me, or a rose was blooming in my
buttonhole, then I felt myself imperfect and impure, not fit to be leading and training
what was so essentially superior in quality to myself, and I kissed the children and left
them weeping and wondering.

Dark Saint Alaick
13-06-2012, 06:27 AM
"In despair I went to a great merchant on the island, and asked him to employ me.
"'My young friend,' said he, 'I understand that you have some singular secret, some
charm, or spell, or gift, or something, I don't know what, of which people are afraid.
Now, you know, my dear,' said the merchant, swelling up, and apparently prouder of his
great stomach than of his large fortune, 'I am not of that kind. I am not easily frightened.
You may spare yourself the pain of trying to impose upon me. People who propose to
come to time before I arrive, are accustomed to arise very early in the morning,' said he,
thrusting his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat, and spreading the fingers, like two
fans, upon his bosom. 'I think I have heard something of your secret. You have a pair of
spectacles, I believe, that you value very much, because your grandmother brought them
as a marriage portion to your grandfather. Now, if you think fit to sell me those
spectacles, I will pay you the largest market price for glasses. What do you say?'
"I told him that I had not the slightest idea of selling my spectacles.
"'My young friend means to eat them, I suppose,' said he with a contemptuous smile.
"I made no reply, but was turning to leave the office, when the merchant called after me--
"'My young friend, poor people should never suffer themselves to get into pets. Anger is
an expensive luxury, in which only men of a certain income can indulge. A pair of
spectacles and a hot temper are not the most promising capital for success in life, Master
Titbottom.'
"I said nothing, but put my hand upon the door to go out, when the merchant said more
respectfully,--
"'Well, you foolish boy, if you will not sell your spectacles, perhaps you will agree to sell
the use of them to me. That is, you shall only put them on when I direct you, and for my
purposes. Hallo! you little fool!' cried he impatiently, as he saw that I intended to make
no reply.

Dark Saint Alaick
13-06-2012, 06:27 AM
"But I had pulled out my spectacles, and put them on for my own purpose, and against his
direction and desire. I looked at him, and saw a huge bald-headed wild boar, with gross
chops and a leering eye--only the more ridiculous for the high-arched, gold-bowed
spectacles, that straddled his nose. One of his fore hoofs was thrust into the safe, where
his bills payable were hived, and the other into his pocket, among the loose change and
bills there. His ears were pricked forward with a brisk, sensitive smartness. In a world
where prize pork was the best excellence, he would have carried off all the premiums.
"I stepped into the next office in the street, and a mild-faced, genial man, also a large and
opulent merchant, asked me my business in such a tone, that I instantly looked through
my spectacles, and saw a land flowing with milk and honey. There I pitched my tent, and
stayed till the good man died, and his business was discontinued.
"But while there," said Titbottom, and his voice trembled away into a sigh, "I first saw
Preciosa. Spite of the spectacles, I saw Preciosa. For days, for weeks, for months, I did
not take my spectacles with me. I ran away from them, I threw them up on high shelves, I
tried to make up my mind to throw them into the sea, or down the well. I could not, I
would not, I dared not look at Preciosa through the spectacles. It was not possible for me
deliberately to destroy them; but I awoke in the night, and could almost have cursed my
dear old grandfather for his gift. I escaped from the office, and sat for whole days with
Preciosa. I told her the strange things I had seen with my mystic glasses. The hours were
not enough for the wild romances which I raved in her ear. She listened, astonished and
appalled. Her blue eyes turned upon me with a sweet deprecation. She clung to me, and
then withdrew, and fled fearfully from the room. But she could not stay away. She could
not resist my voice, in whose tones burned all the love that filled my heart and brain. The
very effort to resist the desire of seeing her as I saw everybody else, gave a frenzy and an
unnatural tension to my feeling and my manner. I sat by her side, looking into her eyes,
smoothing her hair, folding her to my heart, which was sunken and deep--why not
forever?--in that dream of peace. I ran from her presence, and shouted, and leaped with
joy, and sat the whole night through, thrilled into happiness by the thought of her love
and loveliness, like a wind-harp, tightly strung, and answering the airiest sigh of the
breeze with music. Then came calmer days--the conviction of deep love settled upon our
lives--as after the hurrying, heaving days of spring, comes the bland and benignant
summer.

Dark Saint Alaick
13-06-2012, 06:27 AM
"'It is no dream, then, after all, and we are happy,' I said to her, one day; and there came
no answer, for happiness is speechless.
"We are happy then," I said to myself, "there is no excitement now. How glad I am that I
can now look at her through my spectacles."
"I feared lest some instinct should warn me to beware. I escaped from her arms, and ran
home and seized the glasses and bounded back again to Preciosa. As I entered the room I
was heated, my head was swimming with confused apprehension, my eyes must have
glared. Preciosa was frightened, and rising from her seat, stood with an inquiring glance
of surprise in her eyes. But I was bent with frenzy upon my purpose. I was merely aware
that she was in the room. I saw nothing else. I heard nothing. I cared for nothing, but to
see her through that magic glass, and feel at once, all the fulness of blissful perfection
which that would reveal. Preciosa stood before the mirror, but alarmed at my wild and
eager movements, unable to distinguish what I had in my hands, and seeing me raise
them suddenly to my face, she shrieked with terror, and fell fainting upon the floor, at the
very moment that I placed the glasses before my eyes, and beheld--myself, reflected in
the mirror, before which she had been standing.
"Dear madam," cried Titbottom, to my wife, springing up and falling back again in his
chair, pale and trembling, while Prue ran to him and took his hand, and I poured out a
glass of water--"I saw myself."
There was silence for many minutes. Prue laid her hand gently upon the head of our
guest, whose eyes were closed, and who breathed softly, like an infant in sleeping.
Perhaps, in all the long years of anguish since that hour, no tender hand had touched his
brow, nor wiped away the damps of a bitter sorrow. Perhaps the tender, maternal fingers
of my wife soothed his weary head with the conviction that he felt the hand of his mother
playing with the long hair of her boy in the soft West Indian morning. Perhaps it was only
the natural relief of expressing a pent-up sorrow. When he spoke again, it was with the
old, subdued tone, and the air of quaint solemnity.

Dark Saint Alaick
13-06-2012, 06:28 AM
"These things were matters of long, long ago, and I came to this country soon after. I
brought with me, premature age, a past of melancholy memories, and the magic
spectacles. I had become their slave. I had nothing more to fear. Having seen myself, I
was compelled to see others, properly to understand my relations to them. The lights that
cheer the future of other men had gone out for me. My eyes were those of an exile turned
backwards upon the receding shore, and not forwards with hope upon the ocean. I
mingled with men, but with little pleasure. There are but many varieties of a few types. I
did not find those I came to clearer sighted than those I had left behind. I heard men
called shrewd and wise, and report said they were highly intelligent and successful. But
when I looked at them through my glasses, I found no halo of real manliness. My finest
sense detected no aroma of purity and principle; but I saw only a fungus that had fattened
and spread in a night. They all went to the theater to see actors upon the stage. I went to
see actors in the boxes, so consummately cunning, that the others did not know they were
acting, and they did not suspect it themselves.
"Perhaps you wonder it did not make me misanthropical. My dear friends, do not forget
that I had seen myself. It made me compassionate, not cynical. Of course I could not
value highly the ordinary standards of success and excellence. When I went to church and
saw a thin, blue, artificial flower, or a great sleepy cushion expounding the beauty of
holiness to pews full of eagles, half-eagles, and threepences, however adroitly concealed
in broadcloth and boots: or saw an onion in an Easter bonnet weeping over the sins of
Magdalen, I did not feel as they felt who saw in all this, not only propriety, but piety. Or
when at public meetings an eel stood up on end, and wriggled and squirmed lithely in
every direction, and declared that, for his part, he went in for rainbows and hot water--
how could I help seeing that he was still black and loved a slimy pool?

Dark Saint Alaick
13-06-2012, 06:28 AM
"I could not grow misanthropical when I saw in the eyes of so many who were called old,
the gushing fountains of eternal youth, and the light of an immortal dawn, or when I saw
those who were esteemed unsuccessful and aimless, ruling a fair realm of peace and
plenty, either in themselves, or more perfectly in another--a realm and princely
possession for which they had well renounced a hopeless search and a belated triumph. I
knew one man who had been for years a by-word for having sought the philosopher's
stone. But I looked at him through the spectacles and saw a satisfaction in concentrated
energies, and a tenacity arising from devotion to a noble dream, which was not apparent
in the youths who pitied him in the aimless effeminacy of clubs, nor in the clever
gentlemen who cracked their thin jokes upon him over a gossiping dinner.
"And there was your neighbor over the way, who passes for a woman who has failed in
her career, because she is an old maid. People wag solemn heads of pity, and say that she
made so great a mistake in not marrying the brilliant and famous man who was for long
years her suitor. It is clear that no orange flower will ever bloom for her. The young
people make tender romances about her as they watch her, and think of her solitary hours
of bitter regret, and wasting longing, never to be satisfied. When I first came to town I
shared this sympathy, and pleased my imagination with fancying her hard struggle with
the conviction that she had lost all that made life beautiful. I supposed that if I looked at
her through my spectacles, I should see that it was only her radiant temper which so
illuminated her dress, that we did not see it to be heavy sables. But when, one day, I did
raise my glasses and glanced at her, I did not see the old maid whom we all pitied for a
secret sorrow, but a woman whose nature was a tropic, in which the sun shone, and birds
sang, and flowers bloomed forever. There were no regrets, no doubts and half wishes, but
a calm sweetness, a transparent peace. I saw her blush when that old lover passed by, or
paused to speak to her, but it was only the sign of delicate feminine consciousness. She
knew his love, and honored it, although she could not understand it nor return it. I looked
closely at her, and I saw that although all the world had exclaimed at her indifference to
such homage, and had declared it was astonishing she should lose so fine a match, she
would only say simply and quietly--

Dark Saint Alaick
13-06-2012, 06:28 AM
"'If Shakespeare loved me and I did not love him, how could I marry him?'
"Could I be misanthropical when I saw such fidelity, and dignity, and simplicity?
"You may believe that I was especially curious to look at that old lover of hers, through
my glasses. He was no longer young, you know, when I came, and his fame and fortune
were secure. Certainly I have heard of few men more beloved, and of none more worthy
to be loved. He had the easy manner of a man of the world, the sensitive grace of a poet,
and the charitable judgment of a wide traveller. He was accounted the most successful
and most unspoiled of men. Handsome, brilliant, wise, tender, graceful, accomplished,
rich, and famous, I looked at him, without the spectacles, in surprise, and admiration, and
wondered how your neighbor over the way had been so entirely untouched by his
homage. I watched their intercourse in society, I saw her gay smile, her cordial greeting; I
marked his frank address, his lofty courtesy. Their manner told no tales. The eager world
was balked, and I pulled out my spectacles.
"I had seen her, already, and now I saw him. He lived only in memory, and his memory
was a spacious and stately palace. But he did not oftenest frequent the banqueting hall,
where were endless hospitality and feasting--nor did he loiter much in reception rooms,
where a throng of new visitors was forever swarming--nor did he feed his vanity by
haunting the apartment in which were stored the trophies of his varied triumphs--nor
dream much in the great gallery hung with pictures of his travels. But from all these lofty
halls of memory he constantly escaped to a remote and solitary chamber, into which no
one had ever penetrated. But my fatal eyes, behind the glasses, followed and entered with
him, and saw that the chamber was a chapel. It was dim, and silent, and sweet with
perpetual incense that burned upon an altar before a picture forever veiled. There,
whenever I chanced to look, I saw him kneel and pray; and there, by day and by night, a
funeral hymn was chanted.

Dark Saint Alaick
13-06-2012, 06:29 AM
"I do not believe you will be surprised that I have been content to remain deputy
bookkeeper. My spectacles regulated my ambition, and I early learned that there were
better gods than Plutus. The glasses have lost much of their fascination now, and I do not
often use them. Sometimes the desire is irresistible. Whenever I am greatly interested, I
am compelled to take them out and see what it is that I admire.

"And yet--and yet," said Titbottom, after a pause, "I am not sure that I thank my
grandfather."

Prue had long since laid away her work, and had heard every word of the story. I saw that
the dear woman had yet one question to ask, and had been earnestly hoping to hear
something that would spare her the necessity of asking. But Titbottom had resumed his
usual tone, after the momentary excitement, and made no further allusion to himself. We
all sat silently; Titbottom's eyes fastened musingly upon the carpet: Prue looking
wistfully at him, and I regarding both.

It was past midnight, and our guest arose to go. He shook hands quietly, made his grave
Spanish bow to Prue, and taking his hat, went towards the front door. Prue and I
accompanied him. I saw in her eyes that she would ask her question. And as Titbottom
opened the door, I heard the low words:

Dark Saint Alaick
13-06-2012, 06:30 AM
"And Preciosa?"

Titbottom paused. He had just opened the door and the moonlight streamed over him as
he stood, turning back to us.

"I have seen her but once since. It was in church, and she was kneeling with her eyes
closed, so that she did not see me. But I rubbed the glasses well, and looked at her, and
saw a white lily, whose stem was broken, but which was fresh; and luminous, and
fragrant, still."

"That was a miracle," interrupted Prue.

"Madam, it was a miracle," replied Titbottom, "and for that one sight I am devoutly
grateful for my grandfather's gift. I saw, that although a flower may have lost its hold
upon earthly moisture, it may still bloom as sweetly, fed by the dews of heaven."

The door closed, and he was gone. But as Prue put her arm in mine and we went upstairs
together, she whispered in my ear:

"How glad I am that you don't wear spectacles."

Dark Saint Alaick
27-08-2012, 07:58 AM
My Double; And How He Undid Me


By Edward Everett Hale (1822-1909)


http://myhindiforum.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=17565&stc=1&d=1346036268


[From The Atlantic Monthly, September, 1859. Republished in the volume, The Man Without a Country and Other Tales (1868), by Edward Everett Hale (Little, Brown & Co.)]

Dark Saint Alaick
27-08-2012, 07:58 AM
It is not often that I trouble the readers of The Atlantic Monthly. I should not trouble
them now, but for the importunities of my wife, who "feels to insist" that a duty to
society is unfulfilled, till I have told why I had to have a double, and how he undid me.
She is sure, she says, that intelligent persons cannot understand that pressure upon public
servants which alone drives any man into the employment of a double. And while I fear
she thinks, at the bottom of her heart, that my fortunes will never be re-made, she has a
faint hope, that, as another Rasselas, I may teach a lesson to future publics, from which
they may profit, though we die. Owing to the behavior of my double, or, if you please, to
that public pressure which compelled me to employ him, I have plenty of leisure to write
this communication.
I am, or rather was, a minister, of the Sandemanian connection. I was settled in the active,
wide-awake town of Naguadavick, on one of the finest water-powers in Maine. We used
to call it a Western town in the heart of the civilization of New England. A charming
place it was and is. A spirited, brave young parish had I; and it seemed as if we might
have all "the joy of eventful living" to our hearts' content.
Alas! how little we knew on the day of my ordination, and in those halcyon moments of
our first housekeeping! To be the confidential friend in a hundred families in the town--
cutting the social trifle, as my friend Haliburton says, "from the top of the whippedsyllabub
to the bottom of the sponge-cake, which is the foundation"--to keep abreast of
the thought of the age in one's study, and to do one's best on Sunday to interweave that
thought with the active life of an active town, and to inspirit both and make both infinite
by glimpses of the Eternal Glory, seemed such an exquisite forelook into one's life!
Enough to do, and all so real and so grand! If this vision could only have lasted.

Dark Saint Alaick
27-08-2012, 07:59 AM
The truth is, that this vision was not in itself a delusion, nor, indeed, half bright enough. If
one could only have been left to do his own business, the vision would have
accomplished itself and brought out new paraheliacal visions, each as bright as the
original. The misery was and is, as we found out, I and Polly, before long, that, besides
the vision, and besides the usual human and finite failures in life (such as breaking the
old pitcher that came over in the Mayflower, and putting into the fire the alpenstock with
which her father climbed Mont Blanc)--besides, these, I say (imitating the style of
Robinson Crusoe), there were pitchforked in on us a great rowen-heap of humbugs,
handed down from some unknown seed-time, in which we were expected, and I chiefly,
to fulfil certain public functions before the community, of the character of those fulfilled
by the third row of supernumeraries who stand behind the Sepoys in the spectacle of the
Cataract of the Ganges. They were the duties, in a word, which one performs as member
of one or another social class or subdivision, wholly distinct from what one does as A. by
himself A. What invisible power put these functions on me, it would be very hard to tell.
But such power there was and is. And I had not been at work a year before I found I was
living two lives, one real and one merely functional--for two sets of people, one my
parish, whom I loved, and the other a vague public, for whom I did not care two straws.
All this was in a vague notion, which everybody had and has, that this second life would
eventually bring out some great results, unknown at present, to somebody somewhere.
Crazed by this duality of life, I first read Dr. Wigan on the Duality of the Brain, hoping
that I could train one side of my head to do these outside jobs, and the other to do my
intimate and real duties. For Richard Greenough once told me that, in studying for the
statue of Franklin, he found that the left side of the great man's face was philosophic and
reflective, and the right side funny and smiling. If you will go and look at the bronze
statue, you will find he has repeated this observation there for posterity. The eastern
profile is the portrait of the statesman Franklin, the western of Poor Richard. But Dr.
Wigan does not go into these niceties of this subject, and I failed. It was then that, on my
wife's suggestion, I resolved to look out for a Double.

Dark Saint Alaick
27-08-2012, 07:59 AM
I was, at first, singularly successful. We happened to be recreating at Stafford Springs
that summer. We rode out one day, for one of the relaxations of that watering-place, to
the great Monsonpon House. We were passing through one of the large halls, when my
destiny was fulfilled! I saw my man!
He was not shaven. He had on no spectacles. He was dressed in a green baize roundabout
and faded blue overalls, worn sadly at the knee. But I saw at once that he was of my
height, five feet four and a half. He had black hair, worn off by his hat. So have and have
not I. He stooped in walking. So do I. His hands were large, and mine. And--choicest gift
of Fate in all--he had, not "a strawberry-mark on his left arm," but a cut from a juvenile
brickbat over his right eye, slightly affecting the play of that eyebrow. Reader, so have I!-
-My fate was sealed!
A word with Mr. Holley, one of the inspectors, settled the whole thing. It proved that this
Dennis Shea was a harmless, amiable fellow, of the class known as shiftless, who had
sealed his fate by marrying a dumb wife, who was at that moment ironing in the laundry.
Before I left Stafford, I had hired both for five years. We had applied to Judge Pynchon,
then the probate judge at Springfield, to change the name of Dennis Shea to Frederic
Ingham. We had explained to the Judge, what was the precise truth, that an eccentric
gentleman wished to adopt Dennis under this new name into his family. It never occurred
to him that Dennis might be more than fourteen years old. And thus, to shorten this
preface, when we returned at night to my parsonage at Naguadavick, there entered Mrs.
Ingham, her new dumb laundress, myself, who am Mr. Frederic Ingham, and my double,
who was Mr. Frederic Ingham by as good right as I.
Oh, the fun we had the next morning in shaving his beard to my pattern, cutting his hair
to match mine, and teaching him how to wear and how to take off gold-bowed spectacles!
Really, they were electroplate, and the glass was plain (for the poor fellow's eyes were
excellent). Then in four successive afternoons I taught him four speeches. I had found
these would be quite enough for the supernumerary-Sepoy line of life, and it was well for
me they were. For though he was good-natured, he was very shiftless, and it was, as our
national proverb says, "like pulling teeth" to teach him. But at the end of the next week
he could say, with quite my easy and frisky air:

Dark Saint Alaick
27-08-2012, 08:00 AM
1. "Very well, thank you. And you?" This for an answer to casual salutations.
2. "I am very glad you liked it."
3. "There has been so much said, and, on the whole, so well said, that I will not occupy
the time."
4. "I agree, in general, with my friend on the other side of the room."
At first I had a feeling that I was going to be at great cost for clothing him. But it proved,
of course, at once, that, whenever he was out, I should be at home. And I went, during the
bright period of his success, to so few of those awful pageants which require a black
dress-coat and what the ungodly call, after Mr. Dickens, a white choker, that in the happy
retreat of my own dressing-gowns and jackets my days went by as happily and cheaply as
those of another Thalaba. And Polly declares there was never a year when the tailoring
cost so little. He lived (Dennis, not Thalaba) in his wife's room over the kitchen. He had
orders never to show himself at that window. When he appeared in the front of the house,
I retired to my sanctissimum and my dressing-gown. In short, the Dutchman and, his
wife, in the old weather-box, had not less to do with, each other than he and I. He made
the furnace-fire and split the wood before daylight; then he went to sleep again, and slept
late; then came for orders, with a red silk bandanna tied round his head, with his overalls
on, and his dress-coat and spectacles off. If we happened to be interrupted, no one
guessed that he was Frederic Ingham as well as I; and, in the neighborhood, there grew
up an impression that the minister's Irishman worked day-times in the factory village at
New Coventry. After I had given him his orders, I never saw him till the next day.
I launched him by sending him to a meeting of the Enlightenment Board. The
Enlightenment Board consists of seventy-four members, of whom sixty-seven are
necessary to form a quorum. One becomes a member under the regulations laid down in
old Judge Dudley's will. I became one by being ordained pastor of a church in
Naguadavick. You see you cannot help yourself, if you would. At this particular time we
had had four successive meetings, averaging four hours each--wholly occupied in
whipping in a quorum. At the first only eleven men were present; at the next, by force of
three circulars, twenty-seven; at the third, thanks to two days' canvassing by Auchmuty
and myself, begging men to come, we had sixty. Half the others were in Europe. But
without a quorum we could do nothing. All the rest of us waited grimly for our four
hours, and adjourned without any action.

Dark Saint Alaick
27-08-2012, 08:00 AM
At the fourth meeting we had flagged, and only
got fifty-nine together. But on the first appearance of my double--whom I sent on this
fatal Monday to the fifth meeting--he was the sixty-seventh man who entered the room.
He was greeted with a storm of applause! The poor fellow had missed his way--read the
street signs ill through his spectacles (very ill, in fact, without them)--and had not dared
to inquire. He entered the room--finding the president and secretary holding to their
chairs two judges of the Supreme Court, who were also members ex officio, and were
begging leave to go away. On his entrance all was changed. Presto, the by-laws were
amended, and the Western property was given away. Nobody stopped to converse with
him. He voted, as I had charged him to do, in every instance, with the minority. I won
new laurels as a man of sense, though a little unpunctual--and Dennis, alias Ingham,
returned to the parsonage, astonished to see with how little wisdom the world is
governed. He cut a few of my parishioners in the street; but he had his glasses off, and I
am known to be nearsighted. Eventually he recognized them more readily than I.
I "set him again" at the exhibition of the New Coventry Academy; and here he undertook
a "speaking part"--as, in my boyish, worldly days, I remember the bills used to say of
Mlle. Celeste. We are all trustees of the New Coventry Academy; and there has lately
been "a good deal of feeling" because the Sandemanian trustees did not regularly attend
the exhibitions. It has been intimated, indeed, that the Sandemanians are leaning towards
Free-Will, and that we have, therefore, neglected these semi-annual exhibitions, while
there is no doubt that Auchmuty last year went to Commencement at Waterville. Now the
head master at New Coventry is a real good fellow, who knows a Sanskrit root when he
sees it, and often cracks etymologies with me--so that, in strictness, I ought to go to their
exhibitions. But think, reader, of sitting through three long July days in that Academy
chapel, following the program from
Tuesday Morning. English Composition. Sunshine. Miss Jones,
round to
Trio on Three Pianos. Duel from opera of Midshipman Easy. Marryatt.

Dark Saint Alaick
27-08-2012, 08:01 AM
coming in at nine, Thursday evening! Think of this, reader, for men who know the world
is trying to go backward, and who would give their lives if they could help it on! Well!
The double had succeeded so well at the Board, that I sent him to the Academy. (Shade
of Plato, pardon!) He arrived early on Tuesday, when, indeed, few but mothers and
clergymen are generally expected, and returned in the evening to us, covered with honors.
He had dined at the right hand of the chairman, and he spoke in high terms of the repast.
The chairman had expressed his interest in the French conversation. "I am very glad you
liked it," said Dennis; and the poor chairman, abashed, supposed the accent had been
wrong. At the end of the day, the gentlemen present had been called upon for speeches--
the Rev. Frederic Ingham first, as it happened; upon which Dennis had risen, and had
said, "There has been so much said, and, on the whole, so well said, that I will not occupy
the time." The girls were delighted, because Dr. Dabney, the year before, had given them
at this occasion a scolding on impropriety of behavior at lyceum lectures. They all
declared Mr. Ingham was a love--and so handsome! (Dennis is good-looking.) Three of
them, with arms behind the others' waists, followed him up to the wagon he rode home
in; and a little girl with a blue sash had been sent to give him a rosebud. After this debut
in speaking, he went to the exhibition for two days more, to the mutual satisfaction of all
concerned. Indeed, Polly reported that he had pronounced the trustees' dinners of a higher
grade than those of the parsonage. When the next term began, I found six of the Academy
girls had obtained permission to come across the river and attend our church. But this
arrangement did not long continue.
After this he went to several Commencements for me, and ate the dinners provided; he
sat through three of our Quarterly Conventions for me--always voting judiciously, by the
simple rule mentioned above, of siding with the minority. And I, meanwhile, who had
before been losing caste among my friends, as holding myself aloof from the associations
of the body, began to rise in everybody's favor. "Ingham's a good fellow--always on
hand"; "never talks much--but does the right thing at the right time"; "is not as unpunctual
as he used to be--he comes early, and sits through to the end." "He has got over his old
talkative habit, too. I spoke to a friend of his about it once; and I think Ingham took it
kindly," etc., etc.

Dark Saint Alaick
27-08-2012, 08:02 AM
This voting power of Dennis was particularly valuable at the quarterly meetings of the
Proprietors of the Naguadavick Ferry. My wife inherited from her father some shares in
that enterprise, which is not yet fully developed, though it doubtless will become a very
valuable property. The law of Maine then forbade stockholders to appear by proxy at
such meetings. Polly disliked to go, not being, in fact, a "hens'-rights hen," and
transferred her stock to me. I, after going once, disliked it more than she. But Dennis
went to the next meeting, and liked it very much. He said the armchairs were good, the
collation good, and the free rides to stockholders pleasant. He was a little frightened
when they first took him upon one of the ferry-boats, but after two or three quarterly
meetings he became quite brave.
Thus far I never had any difficulty with him. Indeed, being of that type which is called
shiftless, he was only too happy to be told daily what to do, and to be charged not to be
forthputting or in any way original in his discharge of that duty. He learned, however, to
discriminate between the lines of his life, and very much preferred these stockholders'
meetings and trustees' dinners and commencement collations to another set of occasions,
from which he used to beg off most piteously. Our excellent brother, Dr. Fillmore, had
taken a notion at this time that our Sandemanian churches needed more expression of
mutual sympathy. He insisted upon it that we were remiss. He said, that, if the Bishop
came to preach at Naguadavick, all the Episcopal clergy of the neighborhood were
present; if Dr. Pond came, all the Congregational clergymen turned out to hear him; if Dr. Nichols, all the Unitarians; and he thought we owed it to each other that, whenever there was an occasional service at a Sandemanian church, the other brethren should all, if
possible, attend. "It looked well," if nothing more. Now this really meant that I had not
been to hear one of Dr. Fillmore's lectures on the Ethnology of Religion. He forgot that
he did not hear one of my course on the Sandemanianism of Anselm. But I felt badly
when he said it; and afterwards I always made Dennis go to hear all the brethren preach,
when I was not preaching myself. This was what he took exceptions to--the only thing, as
I said, which he ever did except to. Now came the advantage of his long morning-nap,
and of the green tea with which Polly supplied the kitchen. But he would plead, so
humbly, to be let off, only from one or two! I never excepted him, however.

Dark Saint Alaick
27-08-2012, 08:03 AM
I knew the lectures were of value, and I thought it best he should be able to keep the connection.
Polly is more rash than I am, as the reader has observed in the outset of this memoir. She
risked Dennis one night under the eyes of her own sex. Governor Gorges had always
been very kind to us; and when he gave his great annual party to the town, asked us. I
confess I hated to go. I was deep in the new volume of Pfeiffer's Mystics, which
Haliburton had just sent me from Boston. "But how rude," said Polly, "not to return the
Governor's civility and Mrs. Gorges's, when they will be sure to ask why you are away!"
Still I demurred, and at last she, with the wit of Eve and of Semiramis conjoined, let me
off by saying that, if I would go in with her, and sustain the initial conversations with the
Governor and the ladies staying there, she would risk Dennis for the rest of the evening.
And that was just what we did. She took Dennis in training all that afternoon, instructed
him in fashionable conversation, cautioned him against the temptations of the suppertable--
and at nine in the evening he drove us all down in the carryall. I made the grand
star-entrée with Polly and the pretty Walton girls, who were staying with us. We had put
Dennis into a great rough top-coat, without his glasses--and the girls never dreamed, in
the darkness, of looking at him. He sat in the carriage, at the door, while we entered. I did
the agreeable to Mrs. Gorges, was introduced to her niece. Miss Fernanda--I
complimented Judge Jeffries on his decision in the great case of D'Aulnay vs. Laconia
Mining Co.--I stepped into the dressing-room for a moment--stepped out for another--
walked home, after a nod with Dennis, and tying the horse to a pump--and while I walked
home, Mr. Frederic Ingham, my double, stepped in through the library into the Gorges's
grand saloon.
Oh! Polly died of laughing as she told me of it at midnight! And even here, where I have
to teach my hands to hew the beech for stakes to fence our cave, she dies of laughing as
she recalls it--and says that single occasion was worth all we have paid for it. Gallant Eve
that she is! She joined Dennis at the library door, and in an instant presented him to Dr.
Ochterlong, from Baltimore, who was on a visit in town, and was talking with her, as
Dennis came in. "Mr. Ingham would like to hear what you were telling us about your
success among the German population." And Dennis bowed and said, in spite of a scowl
from Polly, "I'm very glad you liked it." But Dr. Ochterlong did not observe, and plunged
into the tide of explanation, Dennis listening like a prime-minister, and bowing like a
mandarin--which is, I suppose, the same thing. Polly declared it was just like Haliburton's
Latin conversation with the Hungarian minister, of which he is very fond of telling.

Dark Saint Alaick
27-08-2012, 08:03 AM
"Quoene sit historia Reformationis in Ungariâ?" quoth Haliburton, after some thought.
And his confrère replied gallantly, "In seculo decimo tertio," etc., etc., etc.; and from
decimo tertio [Which means, "In the thirteenth century," my dear little bell-and-coral
reader. You have rightly guessed that the question means, "What is the history of the
Reformation in Hungary?"] to the nineteenth century and a half lasted till the oysters
came. So was it that before Dr. Ochterlong came to the "success," or near it, Governor
Gorges came to Dennis and asked him to hand Mrs. Jeffries down to supper, a request
which he heard with great joy.
Polly was skipping round the room, I guess, gay as a lark. Auchmuty came to her "in pity
for poor Ingham," who was so bored by the stupid pundit--and Auchmuty could not
understand why I stood it so long. But when Dennis took Mrs. Jeffries down, Polly could
not resist standing near them. He was a little flustered, till the sight of the eatables and
drinkables gave him the same Mercian courage which it gave Diggory. A little excited
then, he attempted one or two of his speeches to the Judge's lady. But little he knew how
hard it was to get in even a promptu there edgewise. "Very well, I thank you," said he,
after the eating elements were adjusted; "and you?" And then did not he have to hear
about the mumps, and the measles, and arnica, and belladonna, and chamomile-flower,
and dodecathem, till she changed oysters for salad--and then about the old practice and
the new, and what her sister said, and what her sister's friend said, and what the physician
to her sister's friend said, and then what was said by the brother of the sister of the
physician of the friend of her sister, exactly as if it had been in Ollendorff? There was a
moment's pause, as she declined champagne. "I am very glad you liked it," said Dennis
again, which he never should have said, but to one who complimented a sermon. "Oh!
you are so sharp, Mr. Ingham! No! I never drink any wine at all--except sometimes in
summer a little currant spirits--from our own currants, you know. My own mother--that
is, I call her my own mother, because, you know, I do not remember," etc., etc., etc.; till
they came to the candied orange at the end of the feast--when Dennis, rather confused,
thought he must say something, and tried No. 4--"I agree, in general, with my friend the
other side of the room"--which he never should have said but at a public meeting. But
Mrs. Jeffries, who never listens expecting to understand, caught him up instantly with,
"Well, I'm sure my husband returns the compliment; he always agrees with you--though
we do worship with the Methodists--but you know, Mr. Ingham," etc., etc., etc., till the
move was made upstairs; and as Dennis led her through the hall, he was scarcely
understood by any but Polly, as he said, "There has been so much said, and, on the whole,
so well said, that I will not occupy the time."

Dark Saint Alaick
27-08-2012, 08:05 AM
His great resource the rest of the evening was standing in the library, carrying on
animated conversations with one and another in much the same way. Polly had initiated
him in the mysteries of a discovery of mine, that it is not necessary to finish your
sentence in a crowd, but by a sort of mumble, omitting sibilants and dentals. This, indeed,
if your words fail you, answers even in public extempore speech--but better where other
talking is going on. Thus: "We missed you at the Natural History Society, Ingham."
Ingham replies: "I am very gligloglum, that is, that you were m-m-m-m-m." By gradually
dropping the voice, the interlocutor is compelled to supply the answer. "Mrs. Ingham, I
hope your friend Augusta is better." Augusta has not been ill. Polly cannot think of
explaining, however, and answers: "Thank you, ma'am; she is very rearason
wewahwewob," in lower and lower tones. And Mrs. Throckmorton, who forgot the
subject of which she spoke, as soon as she asked the question, is quite satisfied. Dennis
could see into the card-room, and came to Polly to ask if he might not go and play allfours.
But, of course, she sternly refused. At midnight they came home delightedly: Polly,
as I said, wild to tell me the story of victory; only both the pretty Walton girls said:
"Cousin Frederic, you did not come near me all the evening."
We always called him Dennis at home, for convenience, though his real name was
Frederic Ingham, as I have explained. When the election day came round, however, I
found that by some accident there was only one Frederic Ingham's name on the votinglist;
and, as I was quite busy that day in writing some foreign letters to Halle, I thought I
would forego my privilege of suffrage, and stay quietly at home, telling Dennis that he
might use the record on the voting-list and vote. I gave him a ticket, which I told him he
might use, if he liked to. That was that very sharp election in Maine which the readers of
The Atlantic so well remember, and it had been intimated in public that the ministers
would do well not to appear at the polls. Of course, after that, we had to appear by self or
proxy.

Dark Saint Alaick
27-08-2012, 08:05 AM
Still, Naguadavick was not then a city, and this standing in a double queue at
townmeeting several hours to vote was a bore of the first water; and so, when I found that
there was but one Frederic Ingham on the list, and that one of us must give up, I stayed at
home and finished the letters (which, indeed, procured for Fothergill his coveted
appointment of Professor of Astronomy at Leavenworth), and I gave Dennis, as we called
him, the chance. Something in the matter gave a good deal of popularity to the Frederic
Ingham name; and at the adjourned election, next week, Frederic Ingham was chosen to
the legislature. Whether this was I or Dennis, I never really knew. My friends seemed to
think it was I; but I felt, that, as Dennis had done the popular thing, he was entitled to the
honor; so I sent him to Augusta when the time came, and he took the oaths. And a very
valuable member he made. They appointed him on the Committee on Parishes; but I
wrote a letter for him, resigning, on the ground that he took an interest in our claim to the
stumpage in the minister's sixteenths of Gore A, next No. 7, in the 10th Range. He never
made any speeches, and always voted with the minority, which was what he was sent to
do. He made me and himself a great many good friends, some of whom I did not
afterwards recognize as quickly as Dennis did my parishioners. On one or two occasions,
when there was wood to saw at home, I kept him at home; but I took those occasions to
go to Augusta myself. Finding myself often in his vacant seat at these times, I watched
the proceedings with a good deal of care; and once was so much excited that I delivered
my somewhat celebrated speech on the Central School District question, a speech of
which the State of Maine printed some extra copies. I believe there is no formal rule
permitting strangers to speak; but no one objected.
Dennis himself, as I said, never spoke at all. But our experience this session led me to
think, that if, by some such "general understanding" as the reports speak of in legislation
daily, every member of Congress might leave a double to sit through those deadly
sessions and answer to roll-calls and do the legitimate party-voting, which appears
stereotyped in the regular list of Ashe, Bocock, Black, etc., we should gain decidedly in
working power. As things stand, the saddest state prison I ever visit is that
Representatives' Chamber in Washington. If a man leaves for an hour, twenty
"correspondents" may be howling, "Where was Mr. Prendergast when the Oregon bill
passed?" And if poor Prendergast stays there! Certainly, the worst use you can make of a
man is to put him in prison!

Dark Saint Alaick
27-08-2012, 08:06 AM
I know, indeed, that public men of the highest rank have resorted to this expedient long
ago. Dumas's novel of The Iron Mask turns on the brutal imprisonment of Louis the
Fourteenth's double. There seems little doubt, in our own history, that it was the real
General Pierce who shed tears when the delegate from Lawrence explained to him the
sufferings of the people there--and only General Pierce's double who had given the orders
for the assault on that town, which was invaded the next day. My charming friend,
George Withers, has, I am almost sure, a double, who preaches his afternoon sermons for
him. This is the reason that the theology often varies so from that of the forenoon. But
that double is almost as charming as the original. Some of the most well-defined men,
who stand out most prominently on the background of history, are in this way
stereoscopic men; who owe their distinct relief to the slight differences between the
doubles. All this I know. My present suggestion is simply the great extension of the
system, so that all public machine-work may be done by it.
But I see I loiter on my story, which is rushing to the plunge. Let me stop an instant more,
however, to recall, were it only to myself, that charming year while all was yet well.
After the double had become a matter of course, for nearly twelve months before he
undid me, what a year it was! Full of active life, full of happy love, of the hardest work,
of the sweetest sleep, and the fulfilment of so many of the fresh aspirations and dreams of
boyhood! Dennis went to every school-committee meeting, and sat through all those late
wranglings which used to keep me up till midnight and awake till morning. He attended
all the lectures to which foreign exiles sent me tickets begging me to come for the love of
Heaven and of Bohemia. He accepted and used all the tickets for charity concerts which
were sent to me. He appeared everywhere where it was specially desirable that "our
denomination," or "our party," or "our class," or "our family," or "our street," or "our
town," or "our country," or "our state," should be fully represented.

Dark Saint Alaick
27-08-2012, 08:06 AM
And I fell back to that
charming life which in boyhood one dreams of, when he supposes he shall do his own
duty and make his own sacrifices, without being tied up with those of other people. My
rusty Sanskrit, Arabic, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, French, Italian, Spanish, German and
English began to take polish. Heavens! how little I had done with them while I attended
to my public duties! My calls on my parishioners became the friendly, frequent, homelike
sociabilities they were meant to be, instead of the hard work of a man goaded to
desperation by the sight of his lists of arrears. And preaching! what a luxury preaching
was when I had on Sunday the whole result of an individual, personal week, from which
to speak to a people whom all that week I had been meeting as hand-to-hand friend! I
never tired on Sunday, and was in condition to leave the sermon at home, if I chose, and
preach it extempore, as all men should do always. Indeed, I wonder, when I think that a
sensible people like ours--really more attached to their clergy than they were in the lost
days, when the Mathers and Nortons were noblemen--should choose to neutralize so
much of their ministers' lives, and destroy so much of their early training, by this
undefined passion for seeing them in public. It springs from our balancing of sects. If a
spirited Episcopalian takes an interest in the almshouse, and is put on the Poor Board,
every other denomination must have a minister there, lest the poorhouse be changed into
St. Paul's Cathedral. If a Sandemanian is chosen president of the Young Men's Library,
there must be a Methodist vice-president and a Baptist secretary. And if a Universalist
Sunday-School Convention collects five hundred delegates, the next Congregationalist
Sabbath-School Conference must be as large, "lest 'they'--whoever they may be--should
think 'we'--whoever we may be--are going down."
Freed from these necessities, that happy year, I began to know my wife by sight. We saw
each other sometimes. In those long mornings, when Dennis was in the study explaining
to map-peddlers that I had eleven maps of Jerusalem already, and to school-book agents
that I would see them hanged before I would be bribed to introduce their textbooks into
the schools--she and I were at work together, as in those old dreamy days--and in these of
our log-cabin again. But all this could not last--and at length poor Dennis, my double,
overtasked in turn, undid me.

Dark Saint Alaick
27-08-2012, 08:07 AM
It was thus it happened. There is an excellent fellow--once a minister--I will call him
Isaacs--who deserves well of the world till he dies, and after--because he once, in a real
exigency, did the right thing, in the right way, at the right time, as no other man could do
it. In the world's great football match, the ball by chance found him loitering on the
outside of the field; he closed with it, "camped" it, charged, it home--yes, right through
the other side--not disturbed, not frightened by his own success--and breathless found
himself a great man--as the Great Delta rang applause. But he did not find himself a rich
man; and the football has never come in his way again. From that moment to this moment
he has been of no use, that one can see, at all. Still, for that great act we speak of Isaacs
gratefully and remember him kindly; and he forges on, hoping to meet the football
somewhere again. In that vague hope, he had arranged a "movement" for a general
organization of the human family into Debating Clubs, County Societies, State Unions,
etc., etc., with a view of inducing all children to take hold of the handles of their knives
and forks, instead of the metal. Children have bad habits in that way. The movement, of
course, was absurd; but we all did our best to forward, not it, but him. It came time for
the annual county-meeting on this subject to be held at Naguadavick. Isaacs came round,
good fellow! to arrange for it--got the townhall, got the Governor to preside (the saint!--
he ought to have triplet doubles provided him by law), and then came to get me to speak.
"No," I said, "I would not speak, if ten Governors presided. I do not believe in the
enterprise. If I spoke, it should be to say children should take hold of the prongs of the
forks and the blades of the knives. I would subscribe ten dollars, but I would not speak a
mill." So poor Isaacs went his way, sadly, to coax Auchmuty to speak, and Delafield. I
went out. Not long after, he came back, and told Polly that they had promised to speak--
the Governor would speak--and he himself would close with the quarterly report, and
some interesting anecdotes regarding. Miss Biffin's way of handling her knife and Mr.
Nellis's way of footing his fork. "Now if Mr. Ingham will only come and sit on the
platform, he need not say one word; but it will show well in the paper--it will show that
the Sandemanians take as much interest in the movement as the Armenians or the
Mesopotamians, and will be a great favor to me." Polly, good soul! was tempted, and she
promised. She knew Mrs. Isaacs was starving, and the babies--she knew Dennis was at
home--and she promised! Night came, and I returned. I heard her story. I was sorry. I
doubted. But Polly had promised to beg me, and I dared all! I told Dennis to hold his
peace, under all circumstances, and sent him down.

Dark Saint Alaick
27-08-2012, 08:07 AM
It was not half an hour more before he returned, wild with excitement--in a perfect Irish
fury--which it was long before I understood. But I knew at once that he had undone me!
What happened was this: The audience got together, attracted by Governor Gorges's
name. There were a thousand people. Poor Gorges was late from Augusta. They became
impatient. He came in direct from the train at last, really ignorant of the object of the
meeting. He opened it in the fewest possible words, and said other gentlemen were
present who would entertain them better than he. The audience were disappointed, but
waited. The Governor, prompted by Isaacs, said, "The Honorable Mr. Delafield will
address you." Delafield had forgotten the knives and forks, and was playing the Ruy
Lopez opening at the chess club. "The Rev. Mr. Auchmuty will address you." Auchmuty
had promised to speak late, and was at the school committee. "I see Dr. Stearns in the
hall; perhaps he will say a word." Dr. Stearns said he had come to listen and not to speak.
The Governor and Isaacs whispered. The Governor looked at Dennis, who was
resplendent on the platform; but Isaacs, to give him his due, shook his head. But the look
was enough. A miserable lad, ill-bred, who had once been in Boston, thought it would
sound well to call for me, and peeped out, "Ingham!" A few more wretches cried,
"Ingham! Ingham!" Still Isaacs was firm; but the Governor, anxious, indeed, to prevent a
row, knew I would say something, and said, "Our friend Mr. Ingham is always prepared--
and though we had not relied upon him, he will say a word, perhaps." Applause followed,
which turned Dennis's head. He rose, flattered, and tried No. 3: "There has been so much
said, and, on the whole, so well said, that I will not longer occupy the time!" and sat
down, looking for his hat; for things seemed squally. But the people cried, "Go on! go
on!" and some applauded. Dennis, still confused, but flattered by the applause, to which
neither he nor I are used, rose again, and this time tried No. 2: "I am very glad you liked
it!" in a sonorous, clear delivery. My best friends stared. All the people who did not know
me personally yelled with delight at the aspect of the evening; the Governor was beside
himself, and poor Isaacs thought he was undone! Alas, it was I! A boy in the gallery cried
in a loud tone, "It's all an infernal humbug," just as Dennis, waving his hand, commanded
silence, and tried No. 4: "I agree, in general, with my friend the other side of the room."
The poor Governor doubted his senses, and crossed to stop him--not in time, however.

Dark Saint Alaick
27-08-2012, 08:07 AM
The same gallery-boy shouted, "How's your mother?"--and Dennis, now completely lost,
tried, as his last shot, No. 1, vainly: "Very well, thank you; and you?"
I think I must have been undone already. But Dennis, like another Lockhard chose "to
make sicker." The audience rose in a whirl of amazement, rage, and sorrow. Some other
impertinence, aimed at Dennis, broke all restraint, and, in pure Irish, he delivered himself
of an address to the gallery, inviting any person who wished to fight to come down and
do so--stating, that they were all dogs and cowards--that he would take any five of them
single-handed, "Shure, I have said all his Riverence and the Misthress bade me say,"
cried he, in defiance; and, seizing the Governor's cane from his hand, brandished it,
quarter-staff fashion, above his head. He was, indeed, got from the hall only with the
greatest difficulty by the Governor, the City Marshal, who had been called in, and the
Superintendent of my Sunday School.
The universal impression, of course, was, that the Rev. Frederic Ingham had lost all
command of himself in some of those haunts of intoxication which for fifteen years I
have been laboring to destroy. Till this moment, indeed, that is the impression in
Naguadavick. This number of The Atlantic will relieve from it a hundred friends of mine
who have been sadly wounded by that notion now for years--but I shall not be likely ever
to show my head there again.
No! My double has undone me.
We left town at seven the next morning. I came to No. 9, in the Third Range, and settled
on the Minister's Lot, In the new towns in Maine, the first settled minister has a gift of a
hundred acres of land. I am the first settled minister in No. 9. My wife and little Paulina
are my parish. We raise corn enough to live on in summer. We kill bear's meat enough to
carbonize it in winter. I work on steadily on my Traces of Sandemanianism in the Sixth
and Seventh Centuries, which I hope to persuade Phillips, Sampson & Co. to publish next
year. We are very happy, but the world thinks we are undone.

Dark Saint Alaick
28-10-2012, 02:24 AM
A Visit To The Asylum For Aged
And Decayed Punsters


By Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894)


[From The Atlantic Monthly, January, 1861. Republished in Soundings from the Atlantic (1864), by Oliver Wendell Holmes, whose authorized publishers are the Houghton Mifflin Company]

Dark Saint Alaick
28-10-2012, 02:25 AM
Having just returned from a visit to this admirable Institution in company with a friend
who is one of the Directors, we propose giving a short account of what we saw and heard.
The great success of the Asylum for Idiots and Feeble-minded Youth, several of the
scholars from which have reached considerable distinction, one of them being connected
with a leading Daily Paper in this city, and others having served in the State and National
Legislatures, was the motive which led to the foundation of this excellent charity. Our
late distinguished townsman, Noah Dow, Esquire, as is well known, bequeathed a large
portion of his fortune to this establishment-- "being thereto moved," as his will expressed
it, "by the desire of N. Dowing some public Institution for the benefit of Mankind." Being
consulted as to the Rules of the Institution and the selection of a Superintendent, he
replied, that "all Boards must construct their own Platforms of operation. Let them select
anyhow and he should be pleased." N.E. Howe, Esq., was chosen in compliance with this
delicate suggestion.
The Charter provides for the support of "One hundred aged and decayed Gentlemen-
Punsters." On inquiry if there way no provision for females, my friend called my
attention to this remarkable psychological fact, namely:
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A FEMALE PUNSTER.
This remark struck me forcibly, and on reflection I found that I never knew nor heard of
one, though I have once or twice heard a woman make a single detached pun, as I have
known a hen to crow.
On arriving at the south gate of the Asylum grounds, I was about to ring, but my friend
held my arm and begged me to rap with my stick, which I did. An old man with a very
comical face presently opened the gate and put out his head.
"So you prefer Cane to A bell, do you?" he said--and began chuckling and coughing at a
great rate.

Dark Saint Alaick
28-10-2012, 02:26 AM
My friend winked at me.
"You're here still, Old Joe, I see," he said to the old man.
"Yes, yes--and it's very odd, considering how often I've bolted, nights."
He then threw open the double gates for us to ride through.
"Now," said the old man, as he pulled the gates after us, "you've had a long journey."
"Why, how is that, Old Joe?" said my friend.
"Don't you see?" he answered; "there's the East hinges on the one side of the gate, and
there's the West hinges on t'other side--haw! haw! haw!"
We had no sooner got into the yard than a feeble little gentleman, with a remarkably
bright eye, came up to us, looking very serious, as if something had happened.
"The town has entered a complaint against the Asylum as a gambling establishment," he
said to my friend, the Director.
"What do you mean?" said my friend.
"Why, they complain that there's a lot o' rye on the premises," he answered, pointing to a
field of that grain--and hobbled away, his shoulders shaking with laughter, as he went.
On entering the main building, we saw the Rules and Regulations for the Asylum
conspicuously posted up. I made a few extracts which may be interesting:

SECT. I. OF VERBAL EXERCISES.

5. Each Inmate shall be permitted to make Puns freely from eight in the morning until ten
at night, except during Service in the Chapel and Grace before Meals.
6. At ten o'clock the gas will be turned off, and no further Puns, Conundrums, or other
play on words will be allowed to be uttered, or to be uttered aloud.
9. Inmates who have lost their faculties and cannot any longer make Puns shall be
permitted to repeat such as may be selected for them by the Chaplain out of the work of
Mr. Joseph Miller.

Dark Saint Alaick
28-10-2012, 02:27 AM
10. Violent and unmanageable Punsters, who interrupt others when engaged in
conversation, with Puns or attempts at the same, shall be deprived of their Joseph Millers,
and, if necessary, placed in solitary confinement.

SECT. III. OF DEPORTMENT AT MEALS.

4. No Inmate shall make any Pun, or attempt at the same, until the Blessing has been
asked and the company are decently seated.
7. Certain Puns having been placed on the Index Expurgatorius of the Institution, no
Inmate shall be allowed to utter them, on pain of being debarred the perusal of Punch and
Vanity Fair, and, if repeated, deprived of his Joseph Miller.
Among these are the following:
Allusions to Attic salt, when asked to pass the salt-cellar.
Remarks on the Inmates being mustered, etc., etc.
Associating baked beans with the bene-factors of the Institution.
Saying that beef-eating is befitting, etc., etc.
The following are also prohibited, excepting to such Inmates as may have lost their
faculties and cannot any longer make Puns of their own:
"----your own hair or a wig"; "it will be long enough," etc., etc.; "little of its age," etc.,
etc.; also, playing upon the following words: hospital; mayor; pun; pitied; bread; sauce,
etc., etc., etc. See INDEX EXPURGATORIUS, printed for use of Inmates.
The subjoined Conundrum is not allowed: Why is Hasty Pudding like the Prince?
Because it comes attended by its sweet; nor this variation to it, to wit: Because the 'lasses
runs after it.

Dark Saint Alaick
28-10-2012, 02:29 AM
The Superintendent, who went round with us, had been a noted punster in his time, and
well known in the business world, but lost his customers by making too free with their
names--as in the famous story he set afloat in '29 of four Jerries attaching to the names of
a noted Judge, an eminent Lawyer, the Secretary of the Board of Foreign Missions, and
the well-known Landlord at Springfield. One of the four Jerries, he added, was of
gigantic magnitude. The play on words was brought out by an accidental remark of
Solomons, the well-known Banker. "Capital punishment!" the Jew was overheard saying,
with reference to the guilty parties. He was understood, as saying, A capital pun is meant,
which led to an investigation and the relief of the greatly excited public mind.
The Superintendent showed some of his old tendencies, as he went round with us.
"Do you know"--he broke out all at once--"why they don't take steppes in Tartary for
establishing Insane Hospitals?"
We both confessed ignorance.
"Because there are nomad people to be found there," he said, with a dignified smile.
He proceeded to introduce us to different Inmates. The first was a middle-aged, scholarly
man, who was seated at a table with a Webster's Dictionary and a sheet of paper before
him.
"Well, what luck to-day, Mr. Mowzer?" said the Superintendent.
"Three or four only," said Mr. Mowzer. "Will you hear 'em now--now I'm here?"
We all nodded.
"Don't you see Webster ers in the words center and theater?
"If he spells leather lether, and feather fether, isn't there danger that he'll give us a bad
spell of weather?

Dark Saint Alaick
28-10-2012, 02:29 AM
"Besides, Webster is a resurrectionist; he does not allow u to rest quietly in the mould.
"And again, because Mr. Worcester inserts an illustration in his text, is that any reason
why Mr. Webster's publishers should hitch one on in their appendix? It's what I call a
Connect-a-cut trick.
"Why is his way of spelling like the floor of an oven? Because it is under bread."
"Mowzer!" said the Superintendent, "that word is on the Index!"
"I forgot," said Mr. Mowzer; "please don't deprive me of Vanity Fair this one time, sir."
"These are all, this morning. Good day, gentlemen." Then to the Superintendent: "Add
you, sir!"
The next Inmate was a semi-idiotic-looking old man. He had a heap of block-letters
before him, and, as we came up, he pointed, without saying a word, to the arrangements
he had made with them on the table. They were evidently anagrams, and had the merit of
transposing the letters of the words employed without addition or subtraction. Here are a
few of them:
TIMES. SMITE!
POST. STOP!
TRIBUNE. TRUE NIB.
WORLD. DR. OWL.
ADVERTISER. { RES VERI DAT.
{ IS TRUE. READ!
ALLOPATHY. ALL O' TH' PAY.
HOMOEOPATHY. O, THE ----! O! O, MY! PAH!
The mention of several New York papers led to two or three questions. Thus: Whether
the Editor of The Tribune was H.G. really? If the complexion of his politics were not
accounted for by his being an eager person himself? Whether Wendell Fillips were not a
reduced copy of John Knocks? Whether a New York Feuilletoniste is not the same thing
as a Fellow down East?

Dark Saint Alaick
28-10-2012, 02:30 AM
At this time a plausible-looking, bald-headed man joined us, evidently waiting to take a
part in the conversation.
"Good morning, Mr. Riggles," said the Superintendent, "Anything fresh this morning?
Any Conundrum?"
"I haven't looked at the cattle," he answered, dryly.
"Cattle? Why cattle?"
"Why, to see if there's any corn under 'em!" he said; and immediately asked, "Why is
Douglas like the earth?"
We tried, but couldn't guess.
"Because he was flattened out at the polls!" said Mr. Riggles.
"A famous politician, formerly," said the Superintendent. "His grandfather was a seize-
Hessian-ist in the Revolutionary War. By the way, I hear the freeze-oil doctrines don't go
down at New Bedford."
The next Inmate looked as if he might have been a sailor formerly.
"Ask him what his calling was," said the Superintendent.
"Followed the sea," he replied to the question put by one of us. "Went as mate in a
fishing-schooner."
"Why did you give it up?"
"Because I didn't like working for two mast-ers," he replied.
Presently we came upon a group of elderly persons, gathered about a venerable
gentleman with flowing locks, who was propounding questions to a row of Inmates.
"Can any Inmate give me a motto for M. Berger?" he said.
Nobody responded for two or three minutes. At last one old man, whom I at once
recognized as a Graduate of our University (Anno 1800) held up his hand.
"Rem a cue tetigit."
"Go to the head of the class, Josselyn," said the venerable patriarch.

Dark Saint Alaick
28-10-2012, 02:30 AM
The successful Inmate did as he was told, but in a very rough way, pushing against two or
three of the Class.
"How is this?" said the Patriarch.
"You told me to go up jostlin'," he replied.
The old gentlemen who had been shoved about enjoyed the pun too much to be angry.
Presently the Patriarch asked again:
"Why was M. Berger authorized to go to the dances given to the Prince?"
The Class had to give up this, and he answered it himself:
"Because every one of his carroms was a tick-it to the ball."
"Who collects the money to defray the expenses of the last campaign in Italy?" asked the
Patriarch.
Here again the Class failed.
"The war-cloud's rolling Dun," he answered.
"And what is mulled wine made with?"
Three or four voices exclaimed at once:
"Sizzle-y Madeira!"
Here a servant entered, and said, "Luncheon-time." The old gentlemen, who have
excellent appetites, dispersed at once, one of them politely asking us if we would not stop
and have a bit of bread and a little mite of cheese.
"There is one thing I have forgotten to show you," said the Superintendent, "the cell for
the confinement of violent and unmanageable Punsters."
We were very curious to see it, particularly with reference to the alleged absence of every
object upon which a play of words could possibly be made.
The Superintendent led us up some dark stairs to a corridor, then along a narrow passage,
then down a broad flight of steps into another passageway, and opened a large door
which looked out on the main entrance.

Dark Saint Alaick
28-10-2012, 02:31 AM
"We have not seen the cell for the confinement of 'violent and unmanageable' Punsters,"
we both exclaimed.
"This is the sell!" he exclaimed, pointing to the outside prospect.
My friend, the Director, looked me in the face so good-naturedly that I had to laugh.
"We like to humor the Inmates," he said. "It has a bad effect, we find, on their health and
spirits to disappoint them of their little pleasantries. Some of the jests to which we have
listened are not new to me, though I dare say you may not have heard them often before.
The same thing happens in general society, with this additional disadvantage, that there is
no punishment provided for 'violent and unmanageable' Punsters, as in our Institution."
We made our bow to the Superintendent and walked to the place where our carriage was
waiting for us. On our way, an exceedingly decrepit old man moved slowly toward us,
with a perfectly blank look on his face, but still appearing as if he wished to speak.
"Look!" said the Director--"that is our Centenarian."
The ancient man crawled toward us, cocked one eye, with which he seemed to see a little,
up at us, and said:
"Sarvant, young Gentlemen. Why is a--a--a--like a--a--a--? Give it up? Because it's a--a--
a--a--."
He smiled a pleasant smile, as if it were all plain enough.
"One hundred and seven last Christmas," said the Director. "Of late years he puts his
whole Conundrums in blank--but they please him just as well."
We took our departure, much gratified and instructed by our visit, hoping to have some
future opportunity of inspecting the Records of this excellent Charity and making extracts
for the benefit of our Readers.

Dark Saint Alaick
28-10-2012, 02:32 AM
The Celebrated Jumping Frog
Of Calaveras County


By Mark Twain (1835-1910)


[From The Saturday Press, Nov. 18, 1865. Republished in The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, and Other Sketches (1867), by Mark Twain, all of whose works are published by Harper & Brothers]

Dark Saint Alaick
28-10-2012, 02:33 AM
In compliance with the request of a friend of mine, who wrote me from the East, I called
on good-natured, garrulous old Simon Wheeler, and inquired after my friend's friend,
Leonidas W. Smiley, as requested to do, and I hereunto append the result. I have a
lurking suspicion that Leonidas W. Smiley is a myth; and that my friend never knew such
a personage; and that he only conjectured that if I asked old Wheeler about him, it would
remind him of his infamous Jim Smiley, and he would go to work and bore me to death
with some exasperating reminiscence of him as long and as tedious as it should be useless
to me. If that was the design, it succeeded.


I found Simon Wheeler dozing comfortably by the barroom stove of the dilapidated
tavern in the decayed mining camp of Angel's, and I noticed that he was fat and baldheaded,
and had an expression of winning gentleness and simplicity upon his tranquil
countenance. He roused up, and gave me good-day. I told him a friend had commissioned
me to make some inquiries about a cherished companion of his boyhood named Leonidas
W. Smiley--Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley, a young minister of the Gospel, who he had heard
was at one time a resident of Angel's Camp. I added that if Mr. Wheeler could tell me
anything about this Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley, I would feel under many obligations to
him.

Dark Saint Alaick
28-10-2012, 02:34 AM
Simon Wheeler backed me into a corner and blockaded me there with his chair, and then
sat down and reeled off the monotonous narrative which follows this paragraph. He never
smiled, he never frowned, he never changed his voice from the gentle-flowing key to
which he tuned his initial sentence, he never betrayed the slightest suspicion of
enthusiasm; but all through the interminable narrative there ran a vein of impressive
earnestness and sincerity, which showed me plainly that, so far from his imagining that
there was anything ridiculous or funny about his story, he regarded it as a really
important matter, and admired its two heroes as men of transcendent genius in finesse. I
let him go on in his own way, and never interrupted him once.


"Rev. Leonidas W. H'm, Reverend Le--well, there was a feller here once by the name of
Jim Smiley, in the winter of '49--or may be it was the spring of '50--I don't recollect
exactly, somehow, though what makes me think it was one or the other is because I
remember the big flume warn't finished when he first came to the camp; but any way, he
was the curiousest man about always betting on anything that turned up you ever see, if
he could get anybody to bet on the other side; and if he couldn't he'd change sides. Any
way that suited the other man would suit him--any way just so's he got a bet, he was
satisfied. But still he was lucky, uncommon lucky; he most always come out winner.

Dark Saint Alaick
28-10-2012, 02:35 AM
He was always ready and laying for a chance; there couldn't be no solit'ry thing mentioned
but that feller'd offer to bet on it, and take any side you please, as I was just telling you. If
there was a horse-race, you'd find him flush or you'd find him busted at the end of it; if
there was a dog-fight, he'd bet on it; if there was a cat-fight, he'd bet on it; if there was a
chicken-fight, he'd bet on it; why, if there was two birds setting on a fence, he would bet
you which one would fly first; or if there was a camp-meeting, he would be there reg'lar
to bet on Parson Walker, which he judged to be the best exhorter about here, and he was,
too, and a good man. If he even see a straddle-bug start to go anywheres, he would bet
you how long it would take him to get to--to wherever he was going to, and if you took
him up, he would foller that straddle-bug to Mexico but what he would find out where he
was bound for and how long he was on the road. Lots of the boys here has seen that
Smiley and can tell you about him. Why, it never made no difference to him--he'd bet on
any thing--the dangest feller. Parson Walker's wife laid very sick once, for a good while,
and it seemed as if they warn't going to save her; but one morning he come in, and
Smiley up and asked him how she was, and he said she was considerable better--thank
the Lord for his inf'nit' mercy--and coming on so smart that with the blessing of
Prov'dence she'd get well yet; and Smiley, before he thought, says, ‘Well, I'll risk twoand-
a-half she don't anyway.'"

Thish-yer Smiley had a mare--the boys called her the fifteen-minute nag, but that was
only in fun, you know, because, of course, she was faster than that--and he used to win
money on that horse, for all she was so slow and always had the asthma, or the distemper,
or the consumption, or something of that kind. They used to give her two or three
hundred yards start, and then pass her under way; but always at the fag-end of the race
she'd get excited and desperate-like, and come cavorting and straddling up, and scattering
her legs around limber, sometimes in the air, and sometimes out to one side amongst the
fences, and kicking up m-o-r-e dust and raising m-o-r-e racket with her coughing and
sneezing and blowing her nose--and always fetch up at the stand just about a neck ahead,
as near as you could cipher it down.

Dark Saint Alaick
28-10-2012, 02:36 AM
And he had a little small bull-pup, that to look at him you'd think he warn't worth a cent
but to set around and look ornery and lay for a chance to steal something. But as soon as
money was up on him he was a different dog; his under-jaw'd begin to stick out like the
fo'-castle of a steamboat, and his teeth would uncover and shine like the furnaces. And a
dog might tackle him and bully-rag him, and bite him, and throw him over his shoulder
two or three times, and Andrew Jackson--which was the name of the pup--Andrew
Jackson would never let on but what he was satisfied, and hadn't expected nothing else--
and the bets being doubled and doubled on the other side all the time, till the money was
all up; and then all of a sudden he would grab that other dog jest by the j'int of his hind
leg and freeze to it--not chaw, you understand, but only just grip and hang on till they
throwed up the sponge, if it was a year. Smiley always come out winner on that pup, till
he harnessed a dog once that didn't have no hind legs, because they'd been sawed off in a
circular saw, and when the thing had gone along far enough, and the money was all up,
and he come to make a snatch for his pet holt, he see in a minute how he'd been imposed
on, and how the other dog had him in the door, so to speak, and he 'peared surprised, and
then he looked sorter discouraged-like, and didn't try no more to win the fight, and so he
got shucked out bad. He gave Smiley a look, as much as to say his heart was broke, and it
was his fault, for putting up a dog that hadn't no hind legs for him to take holt of, which
was his main dependence in a fight, and then he limped off a piece and laid down and
died. It was a good pup, was that Andrew Jackson, and would have made a name for
hisself if he'd lived, for the stuff was in him and he had genius--I know it, because he
hadn't no opportunities to speak of, and it don't stand to reason that a dog could make
such a fight as he could under them circumstances if he hadn't no talent. It always makes
me feel sorry when I think of that last fight of his'n, and the way it turned out.

Dark Saint Alaick
28-10-2012, 02:36 AM
Well, thish-yer Smiley had rat-tarriers, and chicken cocks, and tom-cats and all of them
kind of things, till you couldn't rest, and you couldn't fetch nothing for him to bet on but
he'd match you. He ketched a frog one day, and took him home, and said he cal'lated to
educate him; and so he never done nothing for three months but set in his back yard and
learn that frog to jump. And you bet you he did learn him, too. He'd give him a little
punch behind, and the next minute you'd see that frog whirling in the air like a doughnut-
-see him turn one summerset, or may be a couple, if he got a good start, and come down
flat-footed and all right, like a cat. He got him up so in the matter of ketching flies, and
kep' him in practice so constant, that he'd nail a fly every time as fur as he could see him.
Smiley said all a frog wanted was education, and he could do 'most anything--and I
believe him. Why, I've seen him set Dan'l Webster down here on this floor--Dan'l
Webster was the name of the frog--and sing out, "Flies, Dan'l, flies!" and quicker'n you
could wink he'd spring straight up and snake a fly off'n the counter there, and flop down
on the floor ag'in as solid as a gob of mud, and fall to scratching the side of his head with
his hind foot as indifferent as if he hadn't no idea he'd been doin' any more'n any frog
might do. You never see a frog so modest and straightfor'ard as he was, for all he was so
gifted. And when it come to fair and square jumping on a dead level, he could get over
more ground at one straddle than any animal of his breed you ever see. Jumping on a
dead level was his strong suit, you understand; and when it come to that, Smiley would
ante up money on him as long as he had a red. Smiley was monstrous proud of his frog,
and well he might be, for fellers that had traveled and been everywheres, all said he laid
over any frog that ever they see.

Dark Saint Alaick
28-10-2012, 02:37 AM
Well, Smiley kep' the beast in a little lattice box, and he used to fetch him downtown
sometimes and lay for a bet. One day a feller--a stranger in the camp, he was--come
acrost him with his box, and says:
"What might be that you've got in the box?"

And Smiley says, sorter indifferent-like, "It might be a parrot, or it might be a canary,
maybe, but it ain't--it's only just a frog."

And the feller took it, and looked at it careful, and turned it round this way and that, and
says, "H'm--so 'tis. Well, what's he good for?"

"Well," Smiley says, easy and careless, "he's good enough for one thing, I should judge--
he can outjump any frog in Calaveras county."

The feller took the box again, and took another long, particular look, and give it back to
Smiley, and says, very deliberate, "Well," he says, "I don't see no p'ints about that frog
that's any better'n any other frog."

"Maybe you don't," Smiley says. "Maybe you understand frogs and maybe you don't
understand 'em; maybe you've had experience, and maybe you ain't only a amature, as it
were. Anyways, I've got my opinion and I'll risk forty dollars that he can outjump any
frog in Calaveras County."

And the feller studied a minute, and then says, kinder sad like, "Well, I'm only a stranger
here, and I ain't got no frog; but if I had a frog, I'd bet you."

Dark Saint Alaick
28-10-2012, 02:38 AM
And then Smiley says, "That's all right--that's all right--if you'll hold my box a minute, I'll
go and get you a frog." And so the feller took the box, and put up his forty dollars along
with Smiley's, and set down to wait.


So he set there a good while thinking and thinking to his-self, and then he got the frog out
and prized his mouth open and took a teaspoon and filled him full of quail shot--filled!
him pretty near up to his chin--and set him on the floor. Smiley he went to the swamp and
slopped around in the mud for a long time, and finally he ketched a frog, and fetched him
in, and give him to this feller, and says:


"Now, if you're ready, set him alongside of Dan'l, with his forepaws just even with
Dan'l's, and I'll give the word." Then he says, "One--two--three--git!" and him and the
feller touched up the frogs from behind, and the new frog hopped off lively, but Dan'l
give a heave, and hysted up his shoulders--so--like a Frenchman, but it warn't no use--he
couldn't budge; he was planted as solid as a church, and he couldn't no more stir than if
he was anchored out. Smiley was a good deal surprised, and he was disgusted too, but he
didn't have no idea what the matter was, of course.

Dark Saint Alaick
28-10-2012, 02:39 AM
The feller took the money and started away; and when he was going out at the door, he
sorter jerked his thumb over his shoulder--so--at Dan'l, and says again, very deliberate,
"Well," he says, "I don't see no p'ints about that frog that's any better'n any other frog."
Smiley he stood scratching his head and looking down at Dan'l a long time, and at last
says, "I do wonder what in the nation that frog throwed off for--I wonder if there ain't
something the matter with him--he 'pears to look mighty baggy, somehow." And he
ketched Dan'l up by the nap of the neck, and hefted him, and says, "Why blame my cats if
he don't weigh five pounds!" and turned him upside down and he belched out a double
handful of shot. And then he see how it was, and he was the maddest man--he set the frog
down and took out after that feller, but he never ketched him. And----

(Here Simon Wheeler heard his name called from the front yard, and got up to see what
was wanted.) And turning to me as he moved away, he said: "Just set where you are,
stranger, and rest easy--I ain't going to be gone a second."

But, by your leave, I did not think that a continuation of the history of the enterprising
vagabond Jim Smiley would be likely to afford me much information concerning the
Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley, and so I started away.

At the door I met the sociable Wheeler returning, and he buttonholed me and
recommenced:
"Well, thish-yer Smiley had a yaller, one-eyed cow that didn't have no tail, only jest a
short stump like a bannanner, and----"
However, lacking both time and inclination, I did not wait to hear about the afflicted cow,
but took my leave.

Dark Saint Alaick
19-02-2013, 01:03 AM
Elder Brown's Backslide

By Harry Stillwell Edwards


[From Harper's Magazine, August, 1885; republished in the volume, Two Runaways, and Other Stories (1889), by Harry Stillwell Edwards (The Century Co.)]

Dark Saint Alaick
19-02-2013, 01:03 AM
Elder Brown told his wife good-by at the farmhouse door as mechanically as though his
proposed trip to Macon, ten miles away, was an everyday affair, while, as a matter of
fact, many years had elapsed since unaccompanied he set foot in the city. He did not kiss
her. Many very good men never kiss their wives. But small blame attaches to the elder for
his omission on this occasion, since his wife had long ago discouraged all amorous
demonstrations on the part of her liege lord, and at this particular moment was filling the
parting moments with a rattling list of directions concerning thread, buttons, hooks,
needles, and all the many etceteras of an industrious housewife's basket. The elder was
laboriously assorting these postscript commissions in his memory, well knowing that to
return with any one of them neglected would cause trouble in the family circle.
Elder Brown mounted his patient steed that stood sleepily motionless in the warm
sunlight, with his great pointed ears displayed to the right and left, as though their owner
had grown tired of the life burden their weight inflicted upon him, and was, old soldier
fashion, ready to forego the once rigid alertness of early training for the pleasures of
frequent rest on arms.
"And, elder, don't you forgit them caliker scraps, or you'll be wantin' kiver soon an' no
kiver will be a-comin'."
Elder Brown did not turn his head, but merely let the whip hand, which had been checked
in its backward motion, fall as he answered mechanically. The beast he bestrode
responded with a rapid whisking of its tail and a great show of effort, as it ambled off
down the sandy road, the rider's long legs seeming now and then to touch the ground.
But as the zigzag panels of the rail fence crept behind him, and he felt the freedom of the
morning beginning to act upon his well-trained blood, the mechanical manner of the old
man's mind gave place to a mild exuberance. A weight seemed to be lifting from it ounce
by ounce as the fence panels, the weedy corners, the persimmon sprouts and sassafras
bushes crept away behind him, so that by the time a mile lay between him and the life
partner of his joys and sorrows he was in a reasonably contented frame of mind, and still
improving.

Dark Saint Alaick
19-02-2013, 01:04 AM
It was a queer figure that crept along the road that cheery May morning. It was tall and
gaunt, and had been for thirty years or more. The long head, bald on top, covered behind
with iron-gray hair, and in front with a short tangled growth that curled and kinked in
every direction, was surmounted by an old-fashioned stove-pipe hat, worn and stained,
but eminently impressive. An old-fashioned Henry Clay cloth coat, stained and
threadbare, divided itself impartially over the donkey's back and dangled on his sides.
This was all that remained of the elder's wedding suit of forty years ago. Only constant
care, and use of late years limited to extra occasions, had preserved it so long. The
trousers had soon parted company with their friends. The substitutes were red jeans,
which, while they did not well match his court costume, were better able to withstand the
old man's abuse, for if, in addition to his frequent religious excursions astride his beast,
there ever was a man who was fond of sitting down with his feet higher than his head, it
was this selfsame Elder Brown.
The morning expanded, and the old man expanded with it; for while a vigorous leader in
his church, the elder at home was, it must be admitted, an uncomplaining slave. To the
intense astonishment of the beast he rode, there came new vigor into the whacks which
fell upon his flanks; and the beast allowed astonishment to surprise him into real life and
decided motion. Somewhere in the elder's expanding soul a tune had begun to ring.
Possibly he took up the far, faint tune that came from the straggling gang of negroes
away off in the field, as they slowly chopped amid the threadlike rows of cotton plants
which lined the level ground, for the melody he hummed softly and then sang strongly, in
the quavering, catchy tones of a good old country churchman, was "I'm glad salvation's
free."
It was during the singing of this hymn that Elder Brown's regular motion-inspiring
strokes were for the first time varied. He began to hold his hickory up at certain pauses in
the melody, and beat the changes upon the sides of his astonished steed. The chorus
under this arrangement was:

Dark Saint Alaick
19-02-2013, 01:06 AM
I'm glad salvation's free,
I'm glad salvation's free,
I'm glad salvation's free for all,
I'm glad salvation's free.
Wherever there is an italic, the hickory descended. It fell about as regularly and after the
fashion of the stick beating upon the bass drum during a funeral march. But the beast,
although convinced that something serious was impending, did not consider a funeral
march appropriate for the occasion. He protested, at first, with vigorous whiskings of his
tail and a rapid shifting of his ears. Finding these demonstrations unavailing, and
convinced that some urgent cause for hurry had suddenly invaded the elder's serenity, as
it had his own, he began to cover the ground with frantic leaps that would have surprised
his owner could he have realized what was going on. But Elder Brown's eyes were half
closed, and he was singing at the top of his voice. Lost in a trance of divine exaltation, for
he felt the effects of the invigorating motion, bent only on making the air ring with the
lines which he dimly imagined were drawing upon him the eyes of the whole female
congregation, he was supremely unconscious that his beast was hurrying.
And thus the excursion proceeded, until suddenly a shote, surprised in his calm search for
roots in a fence corner, darted into the road, and stood for an instant gazing upon the
newcomers with that idiotic stare which only a pig can imitate. The sudden appearance of
this unlooked-for apparition acted strongly upon the donkey. With one supreme effort he
collected himself into a motionless mass of matter, bracing his front legs wide apart; that
is to say, he stopped short. There he stood, returning the pig's idiotic stare with an interest
which must have led to the presumption that never before in all his varied life had he seen
such a singular little creature. End over end went the man of prayer, finally bringing up
full length in the sand, striking just as he should have shouted "free" for the fourth time in
his glorious chorus.

Dark Saint Alaick
19-02-2013, 01:06 AM
Fully convinced that his alarm had been well founded, the shote sped out from under the
gigantic missile hurled at him by the donkey, and scampered down the road, turning first
one ear and then the other to detect any sounds of pursuit. The donkey, also convinced
that the object before which he had halted was supernatural, started back violently upon
seeing it apparently turn to a man. But seeing that it had turned to nothing but a man, he
wandered up into the deserted fence corner, and began to nibble refreshment from a scrub
oak.
For a moment the elder gazed up into the sky, half impressed with the idea that the campmeeting
platform had given way. But the truth forced its way to the front in his
disordered understanding at last, and with painful dignity he staggered into an upright
position, and regained his beaver. He was shocked again. Never before in all the long
years it had served him had he seen it in such shape. The truth is, Elder Brown had never
before tried to stand on his head in it. As calmly as possible he began to straighten it out,
caring but little for the dust upon his garments. The beaver was his special crown of
dignity. To lose it was to be reduced to a level with the common woolhat herd. He did his
best, pulling, pressing, and pushing, but the hat did not look natural when he had finished.
It seemed to have been laid off into counties, sections, and town lots. Like a well-cut
jewel, it had a face for him, view it from whatever point he chose, a quality which so
impressed him that a lump gathered in his throat, and his eyes winked vigorously.
Elder Brown was not, however, a man for tears. He was a man of action. The sudden
vision which met his wandering gaze, the donkey calmly chewing scrub buds, with the
green juice already oozing from the corners of his frothy mouth, acted upon him like
magic. He was, after all, only human, and when he got hands upon a piece of brush he
thrashed the poor beast until it seemed as though even its already half-tanned hide would
be eternally ruined. Thoroughly exhausted at last, he wearily straddled his saddle, and
with his chin upon his breast resumed the early morning tenor of his way.

Dark Saint Alaick
19-02-2013, 01:06 AM
II

"Good-mornin', sir."
Elder Brown leaned over the little pine picket which divided the bookkeepers' department
of a Macon warehouse from the room in general, and surveyed the well-dressed back of a
gentleman who was busily figuring at a desk within. The apartment was carpetless, and
the dust of a decade lay deep on the old books, shelves, and the familiar advertisements
of guano and fertilizers which decorated the room. An old stove, rusty with the nicotine
contributed by farmers during the previous season while waiting by its glowing sides for
their cotton to be sold, stood straight up in a bed of sand, and festoons of cobwebs clung
to the upper sashes of the murky windows. The lower sash of one window had been
raised, and in the yard without, nearly an acre in extent, lay a few bales of cotton, with
jagged holes in their ends, just as the sampler had left them. Elder Brown had time to
notice all these familiar points, for the figure at the desk kept serenely at its task, and
deigned no reply.
"Good-mornin', sir," said Elder Brown again, in his most dignified tones. "Is Mr. Thomas
in?"
"Good-morning, sir," said the figure. "I'll wait on you in a minute." The minute passed,
and four more joined it. Then the desk man turned.
"Well, sir, what can I do for you?"
The elder was not in the best of humor when he arrived, and his state of mind had not
improved. He waited full a minute as he surveyed the man of business.
"I thought I mout be able to make some arrangements with you to git some money, but I
reckon I was mistaken." The warehouse man came nearer.
"This is Mr. Brown, I believe. I did not recognize you at once. You are not in often to see
us."
"No; my wife usually 'tends to the town bizness, while I run the church and farm. Got a
fall from my donkey this morning," he said, noticing a quizzical, interrogating look upon
the face before him, "and fell squar' on the hat." He made a pretense of smoothing it. The
man of business had already lost interest.
"How much money will you want, Mr. Brown?"

Dark Saint Alaick
19-02-2013, 01:07 AM
"Well, about seven hundred dollars," said the elder, replacing his hat, and turning a
furtive look upon the warehouse man. The other was tapping with his pencil upon the
little shelf lying across the rail.
"I can get you five hundred."
"But I oughter have seven."
"Can't arrange for that amount. Wait till later in the season, and come again. Money is
very tight now. How much cotton will you raise?"
"Well, I count on a hundr'd bales. An' you can't git the sev'n hundr'd dollars?"
"Like to oblige you, but can't right now; will fix it for you later on."
"Well," said the elder, slowly, "fix up the papers for five, an' I'll make it go as far as
possible."
The papers were drawn. A note was made out for $552.50, for the interest was at one and
a half per cent. for seven months, and a mortgage on ten mules belonging to the elder was
drawn and signed. The elder then promised to send his cotton to the warehouse to be sold
in the fall, and with a curt "Anything else?" and a "Thankee, that's all," the two parted.
Elder Brown now made an effort to recall the supplemental commissions shouted to him
upon his departure, intending to execute them first, and then take his written list item by
item. His mental resolves had just reached this point when a new thought made itself
known. Passersby were puzzled to see the old man suddenly snatch his headpiece off and
peer with an intent and awestruck air into its irregular caverns. Some of them were
shocked when he suddenly and vigorously ejaculated:
"Hannah-Maria-Jemimy! goldarn an' blue blazes!"
He had suddenly remembered having placed his memoranda in that hat, and as he studied
its empty depths his mind pictured the important scrap fluttering along the sandy scene of
his early-morning tumble. It was this that caused him to graze an oath with less margin
that he had allowed himself in twenty years. What would the old lady say?
Alas! Elder Brown knew too well. What she would not say was what puzzled him. But as
he stood bareheaded in the sunlight a sense of utter desolation came and dwelt with him.
His eye rested upon sleeping Balaam anchored to a post in the street, and so as he
recalled the treachery that lay at the base of all his affliction, gloom was added to the
desolation.

Dark Saint Alaick
19-02-2013, 01:07 AM
To turn back and search for the lost paper would have been worse than useless. Only one
course was open to him, and at it went the leader of his people. He called at the grocery;
he invaded the recesses of the dry-goods establishments; he ransacked the hardware
stores; and wherever he went he made life a burden for the clerks, overhauling showcases
and pulling down whole shelves of stock. Occasionally an item of his memoranda
would come to light, and thrusting his hand into his capacious pocket, where lay the
proceeds of his check, he would pay for it upon the spot, and insist upon having it rolled
up. To the suggestion of the slave whom he had in charge for the time being that the
articles be laid aside until he had finished, he would not listen.
"Now you look here, sonny," he said, in the dry-goods store, "I'm conducting this revival,
an' I don't need no help in my line. Just you tie them stockin's up an' lemme have 'em.
Then I know I've got 'em." As each purchase was promptly paid for, and change had to be
secured, the clerk earned his salary for that day at least.
So it was when, near the heat of the day, the good man arrived at the drugstore, the last
and only unvisited division of trade, he made his appearance equipped with half a
hundred packages, which nestled in his arms and bulged out about the sections of his
clothing that boasted of pockets. As he deposited his deck-load upon the counter, great
drops of perspiration rolled down his face and over his waterlogged collar to the floor.
There was something exquisitely refreshing in the great glasses of foaming soda that a
spruce young man was drawing from a marble fountain, above which half a dozen polar
bears in an ambitious print were disporting themselves. There came a break in the run of
customers, and the spruce young man, having swept the foam from the marble,
dexterously lifted a glass from the revolving rack which had rinsed it with a fierce little
stream of water, and asked mechanically, as he caught the intense look of the perspiring
elder, "What syrup, sir?"

Dark Saint Alaick
19-02-2013, 01:07 AM
Now it had not occurred to the elder to drink soda, but the suggestion, coming as it did in
his exhausted state, was overpowering. He drew near awkwardly, put on his glasses, and
examined the list of syrups with great care. The young man, being for the moment at
leisure, surveyed critically the gaunt figure, the faded bandanna, the antique clawhammer
coat, and the battered stove-pipe hat, with a gradually relaxing countenance. He even
called the prescription clerk's attention by a cough and a quick jerk of the thumb. The
prescription clerk smiled freely, and continued his assaults upon a piece of blue mass.
"I reckon," said the elder, resting his hands upon his knees and bending down to the list,
"you may gimme sassprilla an' a little strawberry. Sassprilla's good for the blood this time
er year, an' strawberry's good any time."
The spruce young man let the syrup stream into the glass as he smiled affably. Thinking,
perhaps, to draw out the odd character, he ventured upon a jest himself, repeating a pun
invented by the man who made the first soda fountain. With a sweep of his arm he
cleared away the swarm of insects as he remarked, "People who like a fly in theirs are
easily accommodated."
It was from sheer good-nature only that Elder Brown replied, with his usual broad, social
smile, "Well, a fly now an' then don't hurt nobody."
Now if there is anybody in the world who prides himself on knowing a thing or two, it is
the spruce young man who presides over a soda fountain. This particular young
gentleman did not even deem a reply necessary. He vanished an instant, and when he
returned a close observer might have seen that the mixture in the glass he bore had
slightly changed color and increased in quantity. But the elder saw only the whizzing
stream of water dart into its center, and the rosy foam rise and tremble on the glass's rim.
The next instant he was holding his breath and sipping the cooling drink.
As Elder Brown paid his small score he was at peace with the world. I firmly believe that
when he had finished his trading, and the little blue-stringed packages had been stored
away, could the poor donkey have made his appearance at the door, and gazed with his
meek, fawnlike eyes into his master's, he would have obtained full and free forgiveness.
Elder Brown paused at the door as he was about to leave. A rosy-cheeked school-girl was
just lifting a creamy mixture to her lips before the fountain. It was a pretty picture, and he
turned back, resolved to indulge in one more glass of the delightful beverage before
beginning his long ride homeward.

Dark Saint Alaick
19-02-2013, 01:07 AM
"Fix it up again, sonny," he said, renewing his broad, confiding smile, as the spruce
young man poised a glass inquiringly. The living automaton went through the same
motions as before, and again Elder Brown quaffed the fatal mixture.
What a singular power is habit! Up to this time Elder Brown had been entirely innocent
of transgression, but with the old alcoholic fire in his veins, twenty years dropped from
his shoulders, and a feeling came over him familiar to every man who has been "in his
cups." As a matter of fact, the elder would have been a confirmed drunkard twenty years
before had his wife been less strong-minded. She took the reins into her own hands when
she found that his business and strong drink did not mix well, worked him into the
church, sustained his resolutions by making it difficult and dangerous for him to get to his
toddy. She became the business head of the family, and he the spiritual. Only at rare
intervals did he ever "backslide" during the twenty years of the new era, and Mrs. Brown
herself used to say that the "sugar in his'n turned to gall before the backslide ended."
People who knew her never doubted it.
But Elder Brown's sin during the remainder of the day contained an element of
responsibility. As he moved majestically down toward where Balaam slept in the
sunlight, he felt no fatigue. There was a glow upon his cheek-bones, and a faint tinge
upon his prominent nose. He nodded familiarly to people as he met them, and saw not the
look of amusement which succeeded astonishment upon the various faces. When he
reached the neighborhood of Balaam it suddenly occurred to him that he might have
forgotten some one of his numerous commissions, and he paused to think. Then a
brilliant idea rose in his mind. He would forestall blame and disarm anger with kindness--
he would purchase Hannah a bonnet.
What woman's heart ever failed to soften at sight of a new bonnet?
As I have stated, the elder was a man of action. He entered a store near at hand.
"Good-morning," said an affable gentleman with a Hebrew countenance, approaching.
"Good-mornin', good-mornin'," said the elder, piling his bundles on the counter. "I hope
you are well?" Elder Brown extended his hand fervidly.

Dark Saint Alaick
19-02-2013, 01:08 AM
"Quite well, I thank you. What--"
"And the little wife?" said Elder Brown, affectionately retaining the Jew's hand.
"Quite well, sir."
"And the little ones--quite well, I hope, too?"
"Yes, sir; all well, thank you. Something I can do for you?"
The affable merchant was trying to recall his customer's name.
"Not now, not now, thankee. If you please to let my bundles stay untell I come back--"
"Can't I show you something? Hat, coat--"
"Not now. Be back bimeby."
Was it chance or fate that brought Elder Brown in front of a bar? The glasses shone
bright upon the shelves as the swinging door flapped back to let out a coatless clerk, who
passed him with a rush, chewing upon a farewell mouthful of brown bread and bologna.
Elder Brown beheld for an instant the familiar scene within. The screws of his resolution
had been loosened. At sight of the glistening bar the whole moral structure of twenty
years came tumbling down. Mechanically he entered the saloon, and laid a silver quarter
upon the bar as he said:
"A little whiskey an' sugar." The arms of the bartender worked like a faker's in a side
show as he set out the glass with its little quota of "short sweetening" and a cut-glass
decanter, and sent a half-tumbler of water spinning along from the upper end of the bar
with a dime in change.
"Whiskey is higher'n used to be," said Elder Brown; but the bartender was taking another
order, and did not hear him. Elder Brown stirred away the sugar, and let a steady stream
of red liquid flow into the glass. He swallowed the drink as unconcernedly as though his
morning tod had never been suspended, and pocketed the change. "But it ain't any better
than it was," he concluded, as he passed out. He did not even seem to realize that he had
done anything extraordinary.
There was a millinery store up the street, and thither with uncertain step he wended his
way, feeling a little more elate, and altogether sociable. A pretty, black-eyed girl,
struggling to keep down her mirth, came forward and faced him behind the counter. Elder
Brown lifted his faded hat with the politeness, if not the grace, of a Castilian, and made a
sweeping bow. Again he was in his element. But he did not speak. A shower of odds and
ends, small packages, thread, needles, and buttons, released from their prison, rattled
down about him.

Dark Saint Alaick
19-02-2013, 01:08 AM
The girl laughed. She could not help it. And the elder, leaning his hand on the counter,
laughed, too, until several other girls came half-way to the front. Then they, hiding
behind counters and suspended cloaks, laughed and snickered until they reconvulsed the
elder's vis-Ã*-vis, who had been making desperate efforts to resume her demure
appearance.
"Let me help you, sir," she said, coming from behind the counter, upon seeing Elder
Brown beginning to adjust his spectacles for a search. He waved her back majestically.
"No, my dear, no; can't allow it. You mout sile them purty fingers. No, ma'am. No
gen'l'man'll 'low er lady to do such a thing." The elder was gently forcing the girl back to
her place. "Leave it to me. I've picked up bigger things 'n them. Picked myself up this
mornin'. Balaam--you don't know Balaam; he's my donkey--he tumbled me over his head
in the sand this mornin'." And Elder Brown had to resume an upright position until his
paroxysm of laughter had passed. "You see this old hat?" extending it, half full of
packages; "I fell clear inter it; jes' as clean inter it as them things thar fell out'n it." He
laughed again, and so did the girls. "But, my dear, I whaled half the hide off'n him for it."
"Oh, sir! how could you? Indeed, sir. I think you did wrong. The poor brute did not know
what he was doing, I dare say, and probably he has been a faithful friend." The girl cast
her mischievous eyes towards her companions, who snickered again. The old man was
not conscious of the sarcasm. He only saw reproach. His face straightened, and he
regarded the girl soberly.
"Mebbe you're right, my dear; mebbe I oughtn't."
"I am sure of it," said the girl. "But now don't you want to buy a bonnet or a cloak to
carry home to your wife?"
"Well, you're whistlin' now, birdie; that's my intention; set 'em all out." Again the elder's
face shone with delight. "An' I don't want no one-hoss bonnet neither."
"Of course not. Now here is one; pink silk, with delicate pale blue feathers. Just the thing
for the season. We have nothing more elegant in stock." Elder Brown held it out, upside
down, at arm's-length.

Dark Saint Alaick
19-02-2013, 01:09 AM
"Well, now, that's suthin' like. Will it soot a sorter redheaded 'ooman?"

A perfectly sober man would have said the girl's corsets must have undergone a terrible
strain, but the elder did not notice her dumb convulsion. She answered, heroically:

"Perfectly, sir. It is an exquisite match."

"I think you're whistlin' again. Nancy's head's red, red as a woodpeck's. Sorrel's only halfway
to the color of her top-knot, an' it do seem like red oughter to soot red.

Nancy's red
an' the hat's red; like goes with like, an' birds of a feather flock together." The old man
laughed until his cheeks were wet.

The girl, beginning to feel a little uneasy, and seeing a customer entering, rapidly fixed
up the bonnet, took fifteen dollars out of a twenty-dollar bill, and calmly asked the elder
if he wanted anything else. He thrust his change somewhere into his clothes, and beat a
retreat. It had occurred to him that he was nearly drunk.

Elder Brown's step began to lose its buoyancy. He found himself utterly unable to walk
straight. There was an uncertain straddle in his gait that carried him from one side of the
walk to the other, and caused people whom he met to cheerfully yield him plenty of
room.

Dark Saint Alaick
19-02-2013, 01:10 AM
Balaam saw him coming. Poor Balaam. He had made an early start that day, and for
hours he stood in the sun awaiting relief. When he opened his sleepy eyes and raised his
expressive ears to a position of attention, the old familiar coat and battered hat of the
elder were before him. He lifted up his honest voice and cried aloud for joy.

The effect was electrical for one instant. Elder Brown surveyed the beast with horror, but
again in his understanding there rang out the trumpet words.

"Drunk, drunk, drunk, drer-unc, -er-unc, -unc, -unc."

He stooped instinctively for a missile with which to smite his accuser, but brought up
suddenly with a jerk and a handful of sand. Straightening himself up with a majestic
dignity, he extended his right hand impressively.

"You're a goldarn liar, Balaam, and, blast your old buttons, you kin walk home by
yourself, for I'm danged if you sh'll ride me er step."

Surely Coriolanus never turned his back upon Rome with a grander dignity than sat upon
the old man's form as he faced about and left the brute to survey with anxious eyes the
new departure of his master.

He saw the elder zigzag along the street, and beheld him about to turn a friendly corner.
Once more he lifted up his mighty voice:

"Drunk, drunk, drunk, drer-unc, drer-unc, -erunc, -unc, -unc."

Once more the elder turned with lifted hand and shouted back:

"You're a liar, Balaam, goldarn you! You're er iffamous liar." Then he passed from view.

Dark Saint Alaick
19-02-2013, 01:11 AM
III


Mrs. Brown stood upon the steps anxiously awaiting the return of her liege lord. She
knew he had with him a large sum of money, or should have, and she knew also that he
was a man without business methods. She had long since repented of the decision which
sent him to town. When the old battered hat and flour-covered coat loomed up in the
gloaming and confronted her, she stared with terror. The next instant she had seized him.
"For the Lord sakes, Elder Brown, what ails you? As I live, if the man ain't drunk! Elder
Brown! Elder Brown! for the life of me can't I make you hear? You crazy old hypocrite!
you desavin' old sinner! you black-hearted wretch! where have you ben?"
The elder made an effort to wave her off.
"Woman," he said, with grand dignity, "you forgit yus-sef; shu know ware I've ben
'swell's I do. Ben to town, wife, an' see yer wat I've brought--the fines' hat, ole woman, I
could git. Look't the color. Like goes 'ith like; it's red an' you're red, an' it's a dead match.
What yer mean? Hey! hole on! ole woman!--you! Hannah!--you." She literally shook him
into silence.
"You miserable wretch! you low-down drunken sot! what do you mean by coming home
and insulting your wife?" Hannah ceased shaking him from pure exhaustion.
"Where is it, I say? where is it?"
By this time she was turning his pockets wrong side out. From one she got pills, from
another change, from another packages.
"The Lord be praised, and this is better luck than I hoped! Oh, elder! elder! elder! what
did you do it for? Why, man, where is Balaam?"
Thought of the beast choked off the threatened hysterics.
"Balaam? Balaam?" said the elder, groggily. "He's in town. The infernal ole fool 'sulted
me, an' I lef' him to walk home."
His wife surveyed him. Really at that moment she did think his mind was gone; but the
leer upon the old man's face enraged her beyond endurance.

Dark Saint Alaick
19-02-2013, 01:12 AM
"You did, did you? Well, now, I reckon you'll laugh for some cause, you will. Back you
go, sir--straight back; an' don't you come home 'thout that donkey, or you'll rue it, sure as
my name is Hannah Brown. Aleck!--you Aleck-k-k!"
A black boy darted round the corner, from behind which, with several others, he had
beheld the brief but stirring scene.
"Put a saddle on er mule. The elder's gwine back to town. And don't you be long about it
neither."
"Yessum." Aleck's ivories gleamed in the darkness as he disappeared.
Elder Brown was soberer at that moment than he had been for hours.
"Hannah, you don't mean it?"
"Yes, sir, I do. Back you go to town as sure as my name is Hannah Brown."
The elder was silent. He had never known his wife to relent on any occasion after she had
affirmed her intention, supplemented with "as sure as my name is Hannah Brown." It was
her way of swearing. No affidavit would have had half the claim upon her as that simple
enunciation.
So back to town went Elder Brown, not in the order of the early morn, but silently,
moodily, despairingly, surrounded by mental and actual gloom.
The old man had turned a last appealing glance upon the angry woman, as he mounted
with Aleck's assistance, and sat in the light that streamed from out the kitchen window.
She met the glance without a waver.
"She means it, as sure as my name is Elder Brown," he said, thickly. Then he rode on.

IV


To say that Elder Brown suffered on this long journey back to Macon would only mildly
outline his experience. His early morning's fall had begun to make itself felt. He was sore
and uncomfortable. Besides, his stomach was empty, and called for two meals it had
missed for the first time in years.

Dark Saint Alaick
19-02-2013, 01:13 AM
When, sore and weary, the elder entered the city, the electric lights shone above it like
jewels in a crown. The city slept; that is, the better portion of it did. Here and there,
however, the lower lights flashed out into the night. Moodily the elder pursued his
journey, and as he rode, far off in the night there rose and quivered a plaintive cry. Elder
Brown smiled wearily: it was Balaam's appeal, and he recognized it. The animal he rode
also recognized it, and replied, until the silence of the city was destroyed. The odd clamor
and confusion drew from a saloon near by a group of noisy youngsters, who had been
making a night of it. They surrounded Elder Brown as he began to transfer himself to the
hungry beast to whose motion he was more accustomed, and in the "hail fellow well met"
style of the day began to bandy jests upon his appearance. Now Elder Brown was not in a
jesting humor. Positively he was in the worst humor possible. The result was that before
many minutes passed the old man was swinging several of the crowd by their collars, and
breaking the peace of the city. A policeman approached, and but for the good-humored
party, upon whom the elder's pluck had made a favorable impression, would have run the
old man into the barracks. The crowd, however, drew him laughingly into the saloon and
to the bar. The reaction was too much for his half-rallied senses. He yielded again. The
reviving liquor passed his lips. Gloom vanished. He became one of the boys.
The company into which Elder Brown had fallen was what is known as "first-class." To
such nothing is so captivating as an adventure out of the common run of accidents. The
gaunt countryman, with his battered hat and claw-hammer coat, was a prize of an
extraordinary nature. They drew him into a rear room, whose gilded frames and polished
tables betrayed the character and purpose of the place, and plied him with wine until ten
thousand lights danced about him. The fun increased. One youngster made a political
speech from the top of the table; another impersonated Hamlet; and finally Elder Brown
was lifted into a chair, and sang a camp-meeting song. This was rendered by him with
startling effect. He stood upright, with his hat jauntily knocked to one side, and his coat
tails ornamented with a couple of show-bills, kindly pinned on by his admirers. In his left
hand he waved the stub of a cigar, and on his back was an admirable representation of
Balaam's head, executed by some artist with billiard chalk.

Dark Saint Alaick
19-02-2013, 01:14 AM
As the elder sang his favorite hymn, "I'm glad salvation's free," his stentorian voice
awoke the echoes. Most of the company rolled upon the floor in convulsions of laughter.

The exhibition came to a close by the chair overturning. Again Elder Brown fell into his
beloved hat. He arose and shouted: "Whoa, Balaam!" Again he seized the nearest
weapon, and sought satisfaction. The young gentleman with political sentiments was
knocked under the table, and Hamlet only escaped injury by beating the infuriated elder
into the street.

What next? Well, I hardly know. How the elder found Balaam is a mystery yet: not that
Balaam was hard to find, but that the old man was in no condition to find anything. Still
he did, and climbing laboriously into the saddle, he held on stupidly while the hungry
beast struck out for home.

V

Hannah Brown did not sleep that night. Sleep would not come. Hour after hour passed,
and her wrath refused to be quelled. She tried every conceivable method, but time hung
heavily. It was not quite peep of day, however, when she laid her well-worn family Bible
aside. It had been her mother's, and amid all the anxieties and tribulations incident to the
life of a woman who had free negroes and a miserable husband to manage, it had been
her mainstay and comfort. She had frequently read it in anger, page after page, without
knowing what was contained in the lines. But eventually the words became intelligible
and took meaning. She wrested consolation from it by mere force of will.
And so on this occasion when she closed the book the fierce anger was gone.

She was not a hard woman naturally. Fate had brought her conditions which covered up
the woman heart within her, but though it lay deep, it was there still. As she sat with
folded hands her eyes fell upon--what?

Dark Saint Alaick
19-02-2013, 01:16 AM
The pink bonnet with the blue plume!

It may appear strange to those who do not understand such natures, but to me her next
action was perfectly natural. She burst into a convulsive laugh; then, seizing the queer
object, bent her face upon it and sobbed hysterically. When the storm was over, very
tenderly she laid the gift aside, and bare-headed passed out into the night.

For a half-hour she stood at the end of the lane, and then hungry Balaam and his master
hove in sight. Reaching out her hand, she checked the beast.

"William," said she, very gently, "where is the mule?"

The elder had been asleep. He woke and gazed upon her blankly.
"What mule, Hannah?"

"The mule you rode to town."

For one full minute the elder studied her face. Then it burst from his lips:
"Well, bless me! if I didn't bring Balaam and forgit the mule!"

The woman laughed till her eyes ran water.

"William," said she, "you're drunk."

"Hannah," said he, meekly, "I know it. The truth is, Hannah, I--"

"Never mind, now, William," she said, gently. "You are tired and hungry. Come into the
house, husband."

Leading Balaam, she disappeared down the lane; and when, a few minutes later, Hannah
Brown and her husband entered through the light that streamed out of the open door her
arms were around him, and her face upturned to his.

Dark Saint Alaick
31-10-2013, 04:05 PM
The Hotel Experience Of Mr. Pink Fluker


By Richard Malcom Johanston (1822-1898)


[From The Century Magazine, June, 1886; copyright, 1886, by The Century Co.; republished in the volume, Mr. Absalom Billingslea, and Other Georgia Folk (1888), by Richard Malcolm Johnston (Harper & Brothers)]

Dark Saint Alaick
31-10-2013, 04:07 PM
I

Mr. Peterson Fluker, generally called Pink, for his fondness for as stylish dressing as he
could afford, was one of that sort of men who habitually seem busy and efficient when
they are not. He had the bustling activity often noticeable in men of his size, and in one
way and another had made up, as he believed, for being so much smaller than most of his
adult acquaintance of the male sex. Prominent among his achievements on that line was
getting married to a woman who, among other excellent gifts, had that of being twice as
big as her husband.

"Fool who?" on the day after his marriage he had asked, with a look at those who had
often said that he was too little to have a wife.

They had a little property to begin with, a couple of hundreds of acres, and two or three
negroes apiece. Yet, except in the natural increase of the latter, the accretions of worldly
estate had been inconsiderable till now, when their oldest child, Marann, was some
fifteen years old. These accretions had been saved and taken care of by Mrs. Fluker, who
was as staid and silent as he was mobile and voluble.

Mr. Fluker often said that it puzzled him how it was that he made smaller crops than most
of his neighbors, when, if not always convincing, he could generally put every one of
them to silence in discussions upon agricultural topics. This puzzle had led him to not
unfrequent ruminations in his mind as to whether or not his vocation might lie in
something higher than the mere tilling of the ground. These ruminations had lately taken
a definite direction, and it was after several conversations which he had held with his
friend Matt Pike.

Dark Saint Alaick
31-10-2013, 04:08 PM
Mr. Matt Pike was a bachelor of some thirty summers, a foretime clerk consecutively in
each of the two stores of the village, but latterly a trader on a limited scale in horses,
wagons, cows, and similar objects of commerce, and at all times a politician. His hopes
of holding office had been continually disappointed until Mr. John Sanks became sheriff,
and rewarded with a deputyship some important special service rendered by him in the
late very close canvass. Now was a chance to rise, Mr. Pike thought. All he wanted, he
had often said, was a start. Politics, I would remark, however, had been regarded by Mr.
Pike as a means rather than an end. It is doubtful if he hoped to become governor of the
state, at least before an advanced period in his career. His main object now was to get
money, and he believed that official position would promote him in the line of his
ambition faster than was possible to any private station, by leading him into more
extensive acquaintance with mankind, their needs, their desires, and their caprices. A
deputy sheriff, provided that lawyers were not too indulgent in allowing acknowledgment
of service of court processes, in postponing levies and sales, and in settlement of litigated
cases, might pick up three hundred dollars, a good sum for those times, a fact which Mr.
Pike had known and pondered long.

It happened just about then that the arrears of rent for the village hotel had so
accumulated on Mr. Spouter, the last occupant, that the owner, an indulgent man, finally
had said, what he had been expected for years and years to say, that he could not wait on
Mr. Spouter forever and eternally. It was at this very nick, so to speak, that Mr. Pike
made to Mr. Fluker the suggestion to quit a business so far beneath his powers, sell out,
or rent out, or tenant out, or do something else with his farm, march into town, plant
himself upon the ruins of Jacob Spouter, and begin his upward soar.
Now Mr. Fluker had many and many a time acknowledged that he had ambition; so one
night he said to his wife:

Dark Saint Alaick
31-10-2013, 04:08 PM
"You see how it is here, Nervy. Farmin' somehow don't suit my talons. I need to be flung
more 'mong people to fetch out what's in me. Then thar's Marann, which is gittin' to be
nigh on to a growd-up woman; an' the child need the s'iety which you 'bleeged to
acknowledge is sca'ce about here, six mile from town. Your brer Sam can stay here an'
raise butter, chickens, eggs, pigs, an'--an'--an' so forth. Matt Pike say he jes' know they's
money in it, an' special with a housekeeper keerful an' equinomical like you."

It is always curious the extent of influence that some men have upon wives who are their
superiors. Mrs. Fluker, in spite of accidents, had ever set upon her husband a value that
was not recognized outside of his family. In this respect there seems a surprising
compensation in human life. But this remark I make only in passing. Mrs. Fluker,
admitting in her heart that farming was not her husband's forte, hoped, like a true wife,
that it might be found in the new field to which he aspired. Besides, she did not forget
that her brother Sam had said to her several times privately that if his brer Pink wouldn't
have so many notions and would let him alone in his management, they would all do
better. She reflected for a day or two, and then said:

"Maybe it's best, Mr. Fluker. I'm willin' to try it for a year, anyhow. We can't lose much
by that. As for Matt Pike, I hain't the confidence in him you has. Still, he bein' a boarder
and deputy sheriff, he might accidentally do us some good. I'll try it for a year providin'
you'll fetch me the money as it's paid in, for you know I know how to manage that
better'n you do, and you know I'll try to manage it and all the rest of the business for the
best."

Dark Saint Alaick
31-10-2013, 04:09 PM
To this provision Mr. Fluker gave consent, qualified by the claim that he was to retain a
small margin for indispensable personal exigencies. For he contended, perhaps with
justice, that no man in the responsible position he was about to take ought to be expected
to go about, or sit about, or even lounge about, without even a continental red in his
pocket.

The new house--I say new because tongue could not tell the amount of scouring,
scalding, and whitewashing that that excellent housekeeper had done before a single stick
of her furniture went into it--the new house, I repeat, opened with six eating boarders at
ten dollars a month apiece, and two eating and sleeping at eleven, besides Mr. Pike, who
made a special contract. Transient custom was hoped to hold its own, and that of the
county people under the deputy's patronage and influence to be considerably enlarged.
In words and other encouragement Mr. Pike was pronounced. He could commend
honestly, and he did so cordially.

"The thing to do, Pink, is to have your prices reg'lar, and make people pay up reg'lar. Ten
dollars for eatin', jes' so; eleb'n for eatin' an' sleepin'; half a dollar for dinner, jes' so;
quarter apiece for breakfast, supper, and bed, is what I call reason'ble bo'd. As for me, I
sca'cely know how to rig'late, because, you know, I'm a' officer now, an' in course I
natchel has to be away sometimes an' on expenses at 'tother places, an' it seem like some
'lowance ought by good rights to be made for that; don't you think so?"

Dark Saint Alaick
31-10-2013, 04:10 PM
"Why, matter o' course, Matt; what you think? I ain't so powerful good at figgers. Nervy
is. S'posen you speak to her 'bout it."

"Oh, that's perfec' unuseless, Pink. I'm a' officer o' the law, Pink, an' the law consider
women--well, I may say the law, she deal 'ith men, not women, an' she expect her officers
to understan' figgers, an' if I hadn't o' understood figgers Mr. Sanks wouldn't or darsnt' to
'p'int me his dep'ty. Me 'n' you can fix them terms. Now see here, reg'lar bo'd--eatin' bo'd,
I mean--is ten dollars, an' sleepin' and singuil meals is 'cordin' to the figgers you've sot for
'em. Ain't that so? Jes' so. Now, Pink, you an' me'll keep a runnin' account, you a-chargin'
for reg'lar bo'd, an' I a'lowin' to myself credics for my absentees, accordin' to transion
customers an' singuil mealers an' sleepers. Is that fa'r, er is it not fa'r?"

Mr. Fluker turned his head, and after making or thinking he had made a calculation,
answered:
"That's--that seem fa'r, Matt."

"Cert'nly 'tis, Pink; I knowed you'd say so, an' you know I'd never wish to be nothin' but
fa'r 'ith people I like, like I do you an' your wife. Let that be the understandin', then,
betwix' us. An' Pink, let the understandin' be jes' betwix' us, for I've saw enough o' this
world to find out that a man never makes nothin' by makin' a blowin' horn o' his business.
You make the t'others pay up spuntial, monthly. You 'n' me can settle whensomever it's
convenant, say three months from to-day. In course I shall talk up for the house
whensomever and wharsomever I go or stay. You know that. An' as for my bed," said Mr.
Pike finally, "whensomever I ain't here by bed-time, you welcome to put any transion
person in it, an' also an' likewise, when transion custom is pressin', and you cramped for
beddin', I'm willin' to give it up for the time bein'; an' rather'n you should be cramped too
bad, I'll take my chances somewhars else, even if I has to take a pallet at the head o' the
sta'r-steps."

Dark Saint Alaick
31-10-2013, 04:11 PM
"Nervy," said Mr. Fluker to his wife afterwards, "Matt Pike's a sensibler an' a friendlier
an' a 'commodatiner feller'n I thought."

Then, without giving details of the contract, he mentioned merely the willingness of their
boarder to resign his bed on occasions of pressing emergency.

"He's talked mighty fine to me and Marann," answered Mrs. Fluker. "We'll see how he
holds out. One thing I do not like of his doin', an' that's the talkin' 'bout Sim Marchman to
Marann, an' makin' game o' his country ways, as he call 'em. Sech as that ain't right."

It may be as well to explain just here that Simeon Marchman, the person just named by
Mrs. Fluker, a stout, industrious young farmer, residing with his parents in the country
near by where the Flukers had dwelt before removing to town, had been eying Marann
for a year or two, and waiting upon her fast-ripening womanhood with intentions that, he
believed to be hidden in his own breast, though he had taken less pains to conceal them
from Marann than from the rest of his acquaintance. Not that he had ever told her of them
in so many words, but--Oh, I need not stop here in the midst of this narration to explain
how such intentions become known, or at least strongly suspected by girls, even those
less bright than Marann Fluker. Simeon had not cordially indorsed the movement into
town, though, of course, knowing it was none of his business, he had never so much as
hinted opposition. I would not be surprised, also, if he reflected that there might be some
selfishness in his hostility, or at least that it was heightened by apprehensions personal to
himself.

Considering the want of experience in the new tenants, matters went on remarkably well.
Mrs. Fluker, accustomed to rise from her couch long before the lark, managed to the
satisfaction of all,--regular boarders, single-meal takers, and transient people. Marann
went to the village school, her mother dressing her, though with prudent economy, as
neatly and almost as tastefully as any of her schoolmates; while, as to study, deportment,
and general progress, there was not a girl in the whole school to beat her, I don't care who
she was.

Dark Saint Alaick
31-10-2013, 04:11 PM
II


During a not inconsiderable period Mr. Fluker indulged the honorable conviction that at
last he had found the vein in which his best talents lay, and he was happy in foresight of
the prosperity and felicity which that discovery promised to himself and his family. His
native activity found many more objects for its exertion than before. He rode out to the
farm, not often, but sometimes, as a matter of duty, and was forced to acknowledge that
Sam was managing better than could have been expected in the absence of his own
continuous guidance. In town he walked about the hotel, entertained the guests, carved at
the meals, hovered about the stores, the doctors' offices, the wagon and blacksmith shops,
discussed mercantile, medical, mechanical questions with specialists in all these
departments, throwing into them all more and more of politics as the intimacy between
him and his patron and chief boarder increased.

Now as to that patron and chief boarder. The need of extending his acquaintance seemed
to press upon Mr. Pike with ever-increasing weight. He was here and there, all over the
county; at the county-seat, at the county villages, at justices' courts, at executors' and
administrators' sales, at quarterly and protracted religious meetings, at barbecues of every
dimension, on hunting excursions and fishing frolics, at social parties in all
neighborhoods. It got to be said of Mr. Pike that a freer acceptor of hospitable invitations,
or a better appreciator of hospitable intentions, was not and needed not to be found
possibly in the whole state. Nor was this admirable deportment confined to the county in
which he held so high official position. He attended, among other occasions less public,
the spring sessions of the supreme and county courts in the four adjoining counties: the
guest of acquaintance old and new over there. When starting upon such travels, he would
sometimes breakfast with his traveling companion in the village, and, if somewhat
belated in the return, sup with him also.

Dark Saint Alaick
31-10-2013, 04:13 PM
Yet, when at Flukers', no man could have been a more cheerful and otherwise satisfactory
boarder than Mr. Matt Pike. He praised every dish set before him, bragged to their very
faces of his host and hostess, and in spite of his absences was the oftenest to sit and chat
with Marann when her mother would let her go into the parlor. Here and everywhere
about the house, in the dining-room, in the passage, at the foot of the stairs, he would
joke with Marann about her country beau, as he styled poor Sim Marchman, and he
would talk as though he was rather ashamed of Sim, and wanted Marann to string her
bow for higher game.

Brer Sam did manage well, not only the fields, but the yard. Every Saturday of the world
he sent in something or other to his sister. I don't know whether I ought to tell it or not,
but for the sake of what is due to pure veracity I will. On as many as three different
occasions Sim Marchman, as if he had lost all self-respect, or had not a particle of tact,
brought in himself, instead of sending by a negro, a bucket of butter and a coop of spring
chickens as a free gift to Mrs. Fluker. I do think, on my soul, that Mr. Matt Pike was
much amused by such degradation--however, he must say that they were all first-rate. As
for Marann, she was very sorry for Sim, and wished he had not brought these good things
at all.

Nobody knew how it came about; but when the Flukers had been in town somewhere
between two and three months, Sim Marchman, who (to use his own words) had never
bothered her a great deal with his visits, began to suspect that what few he made were
received by Marann lately with less cordiality than before; and so one day, knowing no
better, in his awkward, straightforward country manners, he wanted to know the reason
why. Then Marann grew distant, and asked Sim the following question:
"You know where Mr. Pike's gone, Mr. Marchman?"

Dark Saint Alaick
31-10-2013, 04:14 PM
Now the fact was, and she knew it, that Marann Fluker had never before, not since she
was born, addressed that boy as Mister.

The visitor's face reddened and reddened.

"No," he faltered in answer; "no--no--ma'am, I should say. I--I don't know where Mr.
Pike's gone."

Then he looked around for his hat, discovered it in time, took it into his hands, turned it
around two or three times, then, bidding good-bye without shaking hands, took himself
off.

Mrs. Fluker liked all the Marchmans, and she was troubled somewhat when she heard of
the quickness and manner of Sim's departure; for he had been fully expected by her to
stay to dinner.

"Say he didn't even shake hands, Marann? What for? What you do to him?"

"Not one blessed thing, ma; only he wanted to know why I wasn't gladder to see him."
Then Marann looked indignant.

"Say them words, Marann?"

"No, but he hinted 'em."

"What did you say then?"

"I just asked, a-meaning nothing in the wide world, ma--I asked him if he knew where
Mr. Pike had gone."

Dark Saint Alaick
31-10-2013, 04:15 PM
"And that were answer enough to hurt his feelin's. What you want to know where Matt
Pike's gone for, Marann?"

"I didn't care about knowing, ma, but I didn't like the way Sim talked."

"Look here, Marann. Look straight at me. You'll be mighty fur off your feet if you let
Matt Pike put things in your head that hain't no business a-bein' there, and special if you
find yourself a-wantin' to know where he's a-perambulatin' in his everlastin' meanderin's.
Not a cent has he paid for his board, and which your pa say he have a' understandin' with
him about allowin' for his absentees, which is all right enough, but which it's now goin'
on to three mont's, and what is comin' to us I need and I want. He ought, your pa ought to
let me bargain with Matt Pike, because he know he don't understan' figgers like Matt
Pike. He don't know exactly what the bargain were; for I've asked him, and he always
begins with a multiplyin' of words and never answers me."

On his next return from his travels Mr. Pike noticed a coldness in Mrs. Fluker's manner,
and this enhanced his praise of the house. The last week of the third month came. Mr.
Pike was often noticed, before and after meals, standing at the desk in the hotel office
(called in those times the bar-room) engaged in making calculations. The day before the
contract expired Mrs. Fluker, who had not indulged herself with a single holiday since
they had been in town, left Marann in charge of the house, and rode forth, spending part
of the day with Mrs. Marchman, Sim's mother. All were glad to see her, of course, and
she returned smartly, freshened by the visit. That night she had a talk with Marann, and
oh, how Marann did cry!

The very last day came. Like insurance policies, the contract was to expire at a certain
hour. Sim Marchman came just before dinner, to which he was sent for by Mrs. Fluker,
who had seen him as he rode into town.

Dark Saint Alaick
31-10-2013, 04:16 PM
"Hello, Sim," said Mr. Pike as he took his seat opposite him. "You here? What's the news
in the country? How's your health? How's crops?"

"Jest mod'rate, Mr. Pike. Got little business with you after dinner, ef you can spare time."

"All right. Got a little matter with Pink here first. 'Twon't take long. See you arfter
amejiant, Sim."

Never had the deputy been more gracious and witty. He talked and talked, outtalking
even Mr. Fluker; he was the only man in town who could do that. He winked at Marann
as he put questions to Sim, some of the words employed in which Sim had never heard
before. Yet Sim held up as well as he could, and after dinner followed Marann with some
little dignity into the parlor. They had not been there more than ten minutes when Mrs.
Fluker was heard to walk rapidly along the passage leading from the dining-room, to
enter her own chamber for only a moment, then to come out and rush to the parlor door
with the gig-whip in her hand. Such uncommon conduct in a woman like Mrs. Pink
Fluker of course needs explanation.

When all the other boarders had left the house, the deputy and Mr. Fluker having
repaired to the bar-room, the former said:

"Now, Pink, for our settlement, as you say your wife think we better have one. I'd 'a' been
willin' to let accounts keep on a-runnin', knowin' what a straightforrards sort o' man you
was. Your count, ef I ain't mistakened, is jes' thirty-three dollars, even money. Is that so,
or is it not?"

"That's it, to a dollar, Matt. Three times eleben make thirty-three, don't it?"

Dark Saint Alaick
31-10-2013, 04:17 PM
"It do, Pink, or eleben times three, jes' which you please. Now here's my count, on which
you'll see, Pink, that not nary cent have I charged for infloonce. I has infloonced a
consider'ble custom to this house, as you know, bo'din' and transion. But I done that out
o' my respects of you an' Missis Fluker, an' your keepin' of a fa'r--I'll say, as I've said
freckwent, a very fa'r house. I let them infloonces go to friendship, ef you'll take it so.
Will you, Pink Fluker?"

"Cert'nly, Matt, an' I'm a thousand times obleeged to you, an'--"

"Say no more, Pink, on that p'int o' view. Ef I like a man, I know how to treat him. Now
as to the p'ints o' absentees, my business as dep'ty sheriff has took me away from this
inconsider'ble town freckwent, hain't it?"

"It have, Matt, er somethin' else, more'n I were a expectin', an'--"

"Jes' so. But a public officer, Pink, when jooty call on him to go, he got to go; in fack he
got to goth, as the Scripture say, ain't that so?"

"I s'pose so, Matt, by good rights, a--a official speakin'."

Mr. Fluker felt that he was becoming a little confused.

"Jes' so. Now, Pink, I were to have credics for my absentees 'cordin' to transion an'
single-meal bo'ders an' sleepers; ain't that so?"

"I--I--somethin' o' that sort, Matt," he answered vaguely.

Dark Saint Alaick
31-10-2013, 04:18 PM
"Jes' so. Now look here," drawing from his pocket a paper. "Itom one. Twenty-eight
dinners at half a dollar makes fourteen dollars, don't it? Jes' so. Twenty-five breakfasts at
a quarter makes six an' a quarter, which make dinners an' breakfasts twenty an' a quarter.
Foller me up, as I go up, Pink. Twenty-five suppers at a quarter makes six an' a quarter,
an' which them added to the twenty an' a quarter makes them twenty-six an' a half. Foller,
Pink, an' if you ketch me in any mistakes in the kyarin' an' addin', p'int it out. Twenty-two
an' a half beds--an' I say half, Pink, because you 'member one night when them A'gusty
lawyers got here 'bout midnight on their way to co't, rather'n have you too bad cramped, I
ris to make way for two of 'em; yit as I had one good nap, I didn't think I ought to put that
down but for half. Them makes five dollars half an' seb'n pence, an' which kyar'd on to
the t'other twenty-six an' a half, fetches the whole cabool to jes' thirty-two dollars an'
seb'n pence. But I made up my mind I'd fling out that seb'n pence, an' jes' call it a dollar
even money, an' which here's the solid silver."

In spite of the rapidity with which this enumeration of counter-charges was made, Mr.
Fluker commenced perspiring at the first item, and when the balance was announced his
face was covered with huge drops.

It was at this juncture that Mrs. Fluker, who, well knowing her husband's unfamiliarity
with complicated accounts, had felt her duty to be listening near the bar-room door, left,
and quickly afterwards appeared before Marann and Sim as I have represented.
"You think Matt Pike ain't tryin' to settle with your pa with a dollar? I'm goin' to make
him keep his dollar, an' I'm goin' to give him somethin' to go 'long with it."

"The good Lord have mercy upon us!" exclaimed Marann, springing up and catching
hold of her mother's skirts, as she began her advance towards the bar-room.

"Oh, ma! for the Lord's sake!--Sim, Sim, Sim, if you care anything
for me in this wide world, don't let ma go into that room!"

Dark Saint Alaick
31-10-2013, 04:21 PM
"Missis Fluker," said Sim, rising instantly, "wait jest two minutes till I see Mr. Pike on
some pressin' business; I won't keep you over two minutes a-waitin'."

He took her, set her down in a chair trembling, looked at her a moment as she began to
weep, then, going out and closing the door, strode rapidly to the bar-room.

"Let me help you settle your board-bill, Mr. Pike, by payin' you a little one I owe you."

Doubling his fist, he struck out with a blow that felled the deputy to the floor. Then
catching him by his heels, he dragged him out of the house into the street. Lifting his foot
above his face, he said:

"You stir till I tell you, an' I'll stomp your nose down even with the balance of your mean
face. 'Tain't exactly my business how you cheated Mr. Fluker, though, 'pon my soul, I
never knowed a trifliner, lowdowner trick. But I owed you myself for your talkin' 'bout
and your lyin' 'bout me, and now I've paid you; an' ef you only knowed it, I've saved you
from a gig-whippin'. Now you may git up."

Dark Saint Alaick
31-10-2013, 04:21 PM
"Here's his dollar, Sim," said Mr. Fluker, throwing it out of the window. "Nervy say
make him take it."

The vanquished, not daring to refuse, pocketed the coin, and slunk away amid the jeers of
a score of villagers who had been drawn to the scene.

In all human probability the late omission of the shaking of Sim's and Marann's hands
was compensated at their parting that afternoon. I am more confident on this point
because at the end of the year those hands were joined inseparably by the preacher. But
this was when they had all gone back to their old home; for if Mr. Fluker did not become
fully convinced that his mathematical education was not advanced quite enough for all
the exigencies of hotel-keeping, his wife declared that she had had enough of it, and that
she and Marann were going home. Mr. Fluker may be said, therefore, to have followed,
rather than led, his family on the return.

As for the deputy, finding that if he did not leave it voluntarily he would be drummed out
of the village, he departed, whither I do not remember if anybody ever knew.

internetpremi
26-11-2013, 08:33 AM
I noticed this thread today only, while digging back into the forum's previous posts.
Thanks to Dark St Alaick for the trouble he has taken.
I am copying this to my Kindle reader to read offline later.
Regards
GV