Part Three - DALA Digital American Literature Anthology

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DALA: Digital American Literature Anthology
Edited by Dr. Michael O'Conner, Millikin University
Version 1.1, 2013 Edition, Part Three
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0
Unported License.
digitalamlit.com
Mark Twain (1835-1910) ................................................................................................................ 4
How To Tell A Story .............................................................................................................. 4
The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County ................................................................ 8
from Roughing It, "Jim Blaine and his Grandfather's Ram"................................................. 12
from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Chapter IX, A Solemn Situation ............................. 15
A True Story ......................................................................................................................... 20
The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg................................................................................... 23
The War Prayer ..................................................................................................................... 60
William Dean Howells (1837-1920) ............................................................................................. 63
from The Editor's Study ........................................................................................................ 64
Editha .................................................................................................................................... 65
Constance Fenimore Woolson (1840-1894) ................................................................................. 76
Miss Grief ............................................................................................................................. 76
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1913/14?)................................................................................................. 93
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge .................................................................................... 93
Chickamauga....................................................................................................................... 100
Henry James (1843-1916) ........................................................................................................... 104
Daisy Miller: A Study ......................................................................................................... 104
Sarah Orne Jewett (1849-1909) .................................................................................................. 150
A White Heron .................................................................................................................... 150
Kate Chopin (1851-1904) ........................................................................................................... 157
The Story of An Hour ......................................................................................................... 157
Désirée's Baby..................................................................................................................... 159
Mary E. Wilkins Freeman (1852-1930) ...................................................................................... 164
A New England Nun ........................................................................................................... 164
The Revolt of "Mother" ...................................................................................................... 173
Hamlin Garlin (1860-1940) ........................................................................................................ 186
Under the Lion's Paw .......................................................................................................... 186
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Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935) ....................................................................................... 198
The Yellow Wall-Paper ...................................................................................................... 198
Edith Wharton (1862-1937) ........................................................................................................ 214
The Other Two .................................................................................................................... 214
Frank Norris (1870-1902) ........................................................................................................... 230
A Deal in Wheat.................................................................................................................. 230
Stephen Crane (1871-1900) ........................................................................................................ 239
The Open Boat .................................................................................................................... 239
The Blue Hotel .................................................................................................................... 259
The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky ........................................................................................ 282
God Lay Dead in Heaven .................................................................................................... 291
Do Not Weep, Maiden, for War Is Kind ............................................................................. 291
A Man Said to the Universe ................................................................................................ 292
Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945) ................................................................................................... 292
Old Rogaum and His Theresa ............................................................................................. 293
Jack London (1876-1916) ........................................................................................................... 309
To Build A Fire ................................................................................................................... 309
The Law of Life .................................................................................................................. 319
Sherwood Anderson (1876-1941) ............................................................................................... 324
Hands .................................................................................................................................. 324
Adventure ............................................................................................................................ 328
Upton Sinclair (1878-1968) ........................................................................................................ 332
The Jungle ........................................................................................................................... 333
Henry Adams (1838-1918) ......................................................................................................... 335
The Education of Henry Adams ......................................................................................... 335
Booker T. Washington (1856–1915) .......................................................................................... 342
Up from Slavery.................................................................................................................. 342
W. E. B. Du Bois (1868 –1963) .................................................................................................. 346
The Souls of Black Folk ..................................................................................................... 346
Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872–1906) ........................................................................................... 357
We Wear the Mask.............................................................................................................. 358
Sympathy ............................................................................................................................ 358
Zitkala-Sa (Gertrude Simmons Bonnin) (1876–1938) ............................................................... 359
The School Days of an Indian Girl ..................................................................................... 359
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Resources for The Rise of Realism
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
[image] Mark Twain was born as Samuel Langhorne Clements on November 30, 1835 in the
hamlet of Florida, Missouri, under the sign of Halley’s Comet. He was the son of Jane Lampton
and John Marshall Clemens. He would be one of four surviving siblings, including brothers
Orion and Henry, along with sister Pamela. The family moved to the village of Hannibal,
Missouri, on the Mississippi River when Twain was four. This town would play an important
role in this author’s later popular fiction, reimagined as the St. Petersburg of Tom Sawyer and
Huck Finn. When Twain was 11 his father died, and he soon began working as a printer’s
apprentice, never completing any formal education. He worked as a typesetter for newspapers
around the country and tried his hand at writing from time to time. In his early twenties, Twain
decided to be a riverboat pilot and apprenticed under Horace Bixby. After earning his license, he
piloted on the Mississippi and Ohio until the outbreak of the Civil War. Here he often heard the
linesman’s call, mark twain, indicating river water two fathoms (12 feet) deep. During the war,
Twain accompanied his brother Orion to Nevada territory. While in the West, he tried his hand at
prospecting, but eventually became a full-time writer for various newspapers. Twain’s first
popular story, “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” was widely republished in
papers around the country. After trips to the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) and Europe, and a
successful lecture tour, Twain wrote The Innocents Abroad (1869) and Roughing It (1872),
enhancing his reputation as an author. He married Olivia Langdon, of respectable eastern stock,
in 1870 and would have three daughters. Over the next few decades, Twain continued to write
prolifically and produced many of the books he is best known for, including The Adventures of
Tom Sawyer (1876), The Prince and the Pauper (1881), Life on the Mississippi (1883),
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885) and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
(1889). A number of later works assumed darker tones, accompanying many setbacks in Twain’s
personal life, including poor investments, near bankruptcy, and the deaths of one of his daughters
and his beloved wife. But as he aged, Twain became a worldwide icon and popular personality,
constantly followed by the press, and known for his wit, humor, and his political commentary.
Twain died on April 21, 1910, when Halley’s Comet was in the night skies once again. He is
buried with the other members of his family in Elmira, New York. Twain biographies are
plentiful. Two key examinations include Ron Power’s Mark Twain: A Life (2005) and Justin
Kaplan’s Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain (1966). From the multitude of critical examinations,
students might find especially valuable Gregg Camfield’s The Oxford Companion to Mark Twain
(2003), R. Kent Rasmussen’s Critical Companion to Mark Twain: A Literary Reference to His
Life and Works (2007), and Messent’s and Budd’s A Companion to Mark Twain (2005).
How To Tell A Story
Twain, Mark. "How to Tell A Story." How to Tell A Story and Other Essays. New York: Harper
and Brothers Publishers, 1897.
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source of etext: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3250
I do not claim that I can tell a story as it ought to be told. I only claim to know how a story ought
to be told, for I have been almost daily in the company of the most expert story-tellers for many
years.
There are several kinds of stories, but only one difficult kind—the humorous. I will talk mainly
about that one. The humorous story is American, the comic story is English, the witty story is
French. The humorous story depends for its effect upon the manner of the telling; the comic
story and the witty story upon the matter.
The humorous story may be spun out to great length, and may wander around as much as it
pleases, and arrive nowhere in particular; but the comic and witty stories must be brief and end
with a point. The humorous story bubbles gently along, the others burst.
The humorous story is strictly a work of art—high and delicate art—and only an artist can tell it;
but no art is necessary in telling the comic and the witty story; anybody can do it. The art of
telling a humorous story—understand, I mean by word of mouth, not print—was created in
America, and has remained at home.
The humorous story is told gravely; the teller does his best to conceal the fact that he even dimly
suspects that there is anything funny about it; but the teller of the comic story tells you
beforehand that it is one of the funniest things he has ever heard, then tells it with eager delight,
and is the first person to laugh when he gets through. And sometimes, if he has had good
success, he is so glad and happy that he will repeat the "nub" of it and glance around from face to
face, collecting applause, and then repeat it again. It is a pathetic thing to see.
Very often, of course, the rambling and disjointed humorous story finishes with a nub, point,
snapper, or whatever you like to call it. Then the listener must be alert, for in many cases the
teller will divert attention from that nub by dropping it in a carefully casual and indifferent way,
with the pretence that he does not know it is a nub.
Artemus Ward used that trick a good deal; then when the belated audience presently caught the
joke he would look up with innocent surprise, as if wondering what they had found to laugh at.
Dan Setchell used it before him, Nye and Riley and others use it today.
But the teller of the comic story does not slur the nub; he shouts it at you—every time. And when
he prints it, in England, France, Germany, and Italy, he italicizes it, puts some whooping
exclamation-points after it, and sometimes explains it in a parenthesis. All of which is very
depressing, and makes one want to renounce joking and lead a better life.
Let me set down an instance of the comic method, using an anecdote which has been popular all
over the world for twelve or fifteen hundred years. The teller tells it in this way:
In the course of a certain battle a soldier whose leg had been shot off appealed to another soldier
who was hurrying by to carry him to the rear, informing him at the same time of the loss which
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he had sustained; whereupon the generous son of Mars, shouldering the unfortunate, proceeded
to carry out his desire. The bullets and cannon-balls were flying in all directions, and presently
one of the latter took the wounded man's head off—without, however, his deliverer being aware
of it. In no-long time he was hailed by an officer, who said:
"Where are you going with that carcass?"
"To the rear, sir—he's lost his leg!"
"His leg, forsooth?" responded the astonished officer; "you mean his head, you booby."
Whereupon the soldier dispossessed himself of his burden, and stood looking down upon it in
great perplexity. At length he said:
"It is true, sir, just as you have said." Then after a pause he added, "But he TOLD me IT WAS
HIS LEG—"
Here the narrator bursts into explosion after explosion of thunderous horse-laughter, repeating
that nub from time to time through his gaspings and shriekings and suffocatings.
It takes only a minute and a half to tell that in its comic-story form; and isn't worth the telling,
after all. Put into the humorous-story form it takes ten minutes, and is about the funniest thing I
have ever listened to—as James Whitcomb Riley tells it.
He tells it in the character of a dull-witted old farmer who has just heard it for the first time,
thinks it is unspeakably funny, and is trying to repeat it to a neighbor. But he can't remember it;
so he gets all mixed up and wanders helplessly round and round, putting in tedious details that
don't belong in the tale and only retard it; taking them out conscientiously and putting in others
that are just as useless; making minor mistakes now and then and stopping to correct them and
explain how he came to make them; remembering things which he forgot to put in in their proper
place and going back to put them in there; stopping his narrative a good while in order to try to
recall the name of the soldier that was hurt, and finally remembering that the soldier's name was
not mentioned, and remarking placidly that the name is of no real importance, anyway—better,
of course, if one knew it, but not essential, after all—and so on, and so on, and so on.
The teller is innocent and happy and pleased with himself, and has to stop every little while to
hold himself in and keep from laughing outright; and does hold in, but his body quakes in a jellylike way with interior chuckles; and at the end of the ten minutes the audience have laughed until
they are exhausted, and the tears are running down their faces.
The simplicity and innocence and sincerity and unconsciousness of the old farmer are perfectly
simulated, and the result is a performance which is thoroughly charming and delicious. This is
art and fine and beautiful, and only a master can compass it; but a machine could tell the other
story.
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To string incongruities and absurdities together in a wandering and sometimes purposeless way,
and seem innocently unaware that they are absurdities, is the basis of the American art, if my
position is correct. Another feature is the slurring of the point. A third is the dropping of a
studied remark apparently without knowing it, as if one were thinking aloud. The fourth and last
is the pause.
Artemus Ward dealt in numbers three and four a good deal. He would begin to tell with great
animation something which he seemed to think was wonderful; then lose confidence, and after
an apparently absent-minded pause add an incongruous remark in a soliloquizing way; and that
was the remark intended to explode the mine—and it did.
For instance, he would say eagerly, excitedly, "I once knew a man in New Zealand who hadn't a
tooth in his head"—here his animation would die out; a silent, reflective pause would follow,
then he would say dreamily, and as if to himself, "and yet that man could beat a drum better than
any man I ever saw."
The pause is an exceedingly important feature in any kind of story, and a frequently recurring
feature, too. It is a dainty thing, and delicate, and also uncertain and treacherous; for it must be
exactly the right length—no more and no less—or it fails of its purpose and makes trouble. If the
pause is too short the impressive point is passed, and [and if too long] the audience have had
time to divine that a surprise is intended—and then you can't surprise them, of course.
On the platform I used to tell a negro ghost story that had a pause in front of the snapper on the
end, and that pause was the most important thing in the whole story. If I got it the right length
precisely, I could spring the finishing ejaculation with effect enough to make some impressible
girl deliver a startled little yelp and jump out of her seat—and that was what I was after. This
story was called "The Golden Arm," and was told in this fashion. You can practise with it
yourself—and mind you look out for the pause and get it right.
Once 'pon a time dey wuz a monsus mean man, en he live 'way out in de prairie all 'lone by
hisself, 'cep'n he had a wife. En bimeby she died, en he tuck en toted her way out dah in de
prairie en buried her. Well, she had a golden arm—all solid gold, fum de shoulder down. He wuz
pow'ful mean—pow'ful; en dat night he couldn't sleep, Gaze he want dat golden arm so bad.
When it come midnight he couldn't stan' it no mo'; so he git up, he did, en tuck his lantern en
shoved out thoo de storm en dug her up en got de golden arm; en he bent his head down 'gin de
win', en plowed en plowed en plowed thoo de snow. Den all on a sudden he stop (make a
considerable pause here, and look startled, and take a listening attitude) en say: "My LAN',
what's dat!"
En he listen—en listen—en de win' say (set your teeth together and imitate the wailing and
wheezing singsong of the wind), "Bzzz-z-zzz"—en den, way back yonder whah de grave is, he
hear a voice! he hear a voice all mix' up in de win' can't hardly tell 'em 'part—"Bzzz-zzz—W-ho—g-o-t—m-y—g-o-l-d-e-n arm?—zzz—zzz—W-h-o g-o-t m-y g-o-l-d-e-n arm!" (You must
begin to shiver violently now.)
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En he begin to shiver en shake, en say, "Oh, my! OH, my lan'!" en de win' blow de lantern out,
en de snow en sleet blow in his face en mos' choke him, en he start a-plowin' knee-deep towards
home mos' dead, he so sk'yerd—en pooty soon he hear de voice agin, en (pause) it 'us comin'
after him! "Bzzz—zzz—zzz—W-h-o—g-o-t m-y—g-o-l-d-e-n—arm?"
When he git to de pasture he hear it agin closter now, en a-comin'!—a-comin' back dah in de
dark en de storm—(repeat the wind and the voice). When he git to de house he rush up-stairs en
jump in de bed en kiver up, head and years, en lay dah shiverin' en shakin'—en den way out dah
he hear it agin!—en a-comin'! En bimeby he hear (pause—awed, listening attitude)—pat—pat—
pat—hit's acomin' up-stairs! Den he hear de latch, en he know it's in de room!
Den pooty soon he know it's a-stannin' by de bed! (Pause.) Den—he know it's a-bendin' down
over him—en he cain't skasely git his breath! Den—den—he seem to feel someth' n c-o-l-d, right
down 'most agin his head! (Pause.)
Den de voice say, right at his year—"W-h-o g-o-t—m-y—g-o-l-d-e-n arm?" (You must wail it
out very plaintively and accusingly; then you stare steadily and impressively into the face of the
farthest-gone auditor—a girl, preferably—and let that awe-inspiring pause begin to build itself in
the deep hush. When it has reached exactly the right length, jump suddenly at that girl and yell,
"You've got it!")
If you've got the pause right, she'll fetch a dear little yelp and spring right out of her shoes. But
you must get the pause right; and you will find it the most troublesome and aggravating and
uncertain thing you ever undertook.
The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County
Twain, Mark. "The Notorius Jumping Frog of Calaveras County." Sketches Old and New.
Hartford, Conn. and Chicago, Ill.: The American Publishing Company, 1882.
source of etext: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3189/3189-h/3189-h.htm#frog
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 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 bar-room stove of the dilapidated tavern in
the decayed mining camp of Angel's, and I noticed that he was fat and bald-headed, and had an
expression of winning gentleness and simplicity upon his tranquil countenance. He roused up,
and gave me good day. I told him that a friend of mine 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 resident
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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.
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 maybe 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 come to the camp; but anyway, 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. 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 so 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 dangdest 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'nite 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 resk two-and-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 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 among the fences, and kicking up m-o-r-e dust and raising m-o-r-e
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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.
"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 bullyrag 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
give 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.
"Well, thish-yer Smiley had rat-tarriers, and chicken cocks, and tomcats and all 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 maybe 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
10
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.
"Well, Smiley kep' the beast in a little lattice box, and he used to fetch him down-town
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 it 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 resk forty dollars thet 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."
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 himself 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 fore paws just even with Dan'l's, and
I'll give the word.' Then he says, 'One-two-three—git' and him and the feller touches 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.
11
"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 he says,
'I do wonder what in the nation that frog throw'd 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 by the nap of
the neck, and hefted him, and says, 'Why blame my cats if he don't weigh five pound!' 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 just 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.
from Roughing It, "Jim Blaine and his Grandfather's Ram"
Twain, Mark. "Chapter LIII." Roughing It. Hartford, Conn.: The American Publishing Company,
1872.
source of etext: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3177/3177-h/3177-h.htm#linkch53
Every now and then, in these days, the boys used to tell me I ought to get one Jim Blaine to tell
me the stirring story of his grandfather's old ram—but they always added that I must not mention
the matter unless Jim was drunk at the time—just comfortably and sociably drunk. They kept this
up until my curiosity was on the rack to hear the story. I got to haunting Blaine; but it was of no
use, the boys always found fault with his condition; he was often moderately but never
satisfactorily drunk. I never watched a man's condition with such absorbing interest, such
anxious solicitude; I never so pined to see a man uncompromisingly drunk before. At last, one
evening I hurried to his cabin, for I learned that this time his situation was such that even the
most fastidious could find no fault with it—he was tranquilly, serenely, symmetrically drunk—
not a hiccup to mar his voice, not a cloud upon his brain thick enough to obscure his memory. As
12
I entered, he was sitting upon an empty powder- keg, with a clay pipe in one hand and the other
raised to command silence. His face was round, red, and very serious; his throat was bare and his
hair tumbled; in general appearance and costume he was a stalwart miner of the period. On the
pine table stood a candle, and its dim light revealed "the boys" sitting here and there on bunks,
candle-boxes, powder-kegs, etc. They said:
"Sh—! Don't speak—he's going to commence."
I found a seat at once, and Blaine said:
'I don't reckon them times will ever come again. There never was a more bullier old ram than
what he was. Grandfather fetched him from Illinois—got him of a man by the name of Yates—
Bill Yates—maybe you might have heard of him; his father was a deacon—Baptist—and he was
a rustler, too; a man had to get up ruther early to get the start of old Thankful Yates; it was him
that put the Greens up to jining teams with my grandfather when he moved west.
'Seth Green was prob'ly the pick of the flock; he married a Wilkerson—Sarah Wilkerson—good
cretur, she was—one of the likeliest heifers that was ever raised in old Stoddard, everybody said
that knowed her. She could heft a bar'l of flour as easy as I can flirt a flapjack. And spin? Don't
mention it! Independent? Humph! When Sile Hawkins come a browsing around her, she let him
know that for all his tin he couldn't trot in harness alongside of her. You see, Sile Hawkins
was—no, it warn't Sile Hawkins, after all—it was a galoot by the name of Filkins—I
disremember his first name; but he was a stump—come into pra'r meeting drunk, one night,
hooraying for Nixon, becuz he thought it was a primary; and old deacon Ferguson up and
scooted him through the window and he lit on old Miss Jefferson's head, poor old filly.
She was a good soul—had a glass eye and used to lend it to old Miss Wagner, that hadn't any, to
receive company in; it warn't big enough, and when Miss Wagner warn't noticing, it would get
twisted around in the socket, and look up, maybe, or out to one side, and every which way, while
t' other one was looking as straight ahead as a spy-glass.
'Grown people didn't mind it, but it most always made the children cry, it was so sort of scary.
She tried packing it in raw cotton, but it wouldn't work, somehow—the cotton would get loose
and stick out and look so kind of awful that the children couldn't stand it no way.
She was always dropping it out, and turning up her old dead-light on the company empty, and
making them oncomfortable, becuz she never could tell when it hopped out, being blind on that
side, you see. So somebody would have to hunch her and say, "Your game eye has fetched loose.
Miss Wagner dear"—and then all of them would have to sit and wait till she jammed it in
again—wrong side before, as a general thing, and green as a bird's egg, being a bashful cretur
and easy sot back before company. But being wrong side before warn't much difference, anyway;
becuz her own eye was sky- blue and the glass one was yaller on the front side, so whichever
way she turned it it didn't match nohow.
'Old Miss Wagner was considerable on the borrow, she was. When she had a quilting, or Dorcas
S'iety at her house she gen'ally borrowed Miss Higgins's wooden leg to stump around on; it was
13
considerable shorter than her other pin, but much she minded that. She said she couldn't abide
crutches when she had company, becuz they were so slow; said when she had company and
things had to be done, she wanted to get up and hump herself. She was as bald as a jug, and so
she used to borrow Miss Jacops's wig—Miss Jacops was the coffin-peddler's wife—a ratty old
buzzard, he was, that used to go roosting around where people was sick, waiting for 'em; and
there that old rip would sit all day, in the shade, on a coffin that he judged would fit the can'idate;
and if it was a slow customer and kind of uncertain, he'd fetch his rations and a blanket along and
sleep in the coffin nights. He was anchored out that way, in frosty weather, for about three
weeks, once, before old Robbins's place, waiting for him; and after that, for as much as two
years, Jacops was not on speaking terms with the old man, on account of his disapp'inting him.
He got one of his feet froze, and lost money, too, becuz old Robbins took a favorable turn and
got well.
The next time Robbins got sick, Jacops tried to make up with him, and varnished up the same old
coffin and fetched it along; but old Robbins was too many for him; he had him in, and 'peared to
be powerful weak; he bought the coffin for ten dollars and Jacops was to pay it back and twentyfive more besides if Robbins didn't like the coffin after he'd tried it. And then Robbins died, and
at the funeral he bursted off the lid and riz up in his shroud and told the parson to let up on the
performances, becuz he could not stand such a coffin as that. You see he had been in a trance
once before, when he was young, and he took the chances on another, cal'lating that if he made
the trip it was money in his pocket, and if he missed fire he couldn't lose a cent. And by George
he sued Jacops for the rhino and got jedgment; and he set up the coffin in his back parlor and
said he 'lowed to take his time, now. It was always an aggravation to Jacops, the way that
miserable old thing acted. He moved back to Indiany pretty soon—went to Wellsville—
Wellsville was the place the Hogadorns was from. Mighty fine family. Old Maryland stock. Old
Squire Hogadorn could carry around more mixed licker, and cuss better than most any man I
ever see. His second wife was the widder Billings—she that was Becky Martin; her dam was
deacon Dunlap's first wife. Her oldest child, Maria, married a missionary and died in grace—et
up by the savages. They et him, too, poor feller—biled him. It warn't the custom, so they say, but
they explained to friends of his'n that went down there to bring away his things, that they'd tried
missionaries every other way and never could get any good out of 'em—and so it annoyed all his
relations to find out that that man's life was fooled away just out of a dern'd experiment, so to
speak. But mind you, there ain't anything ever reely lost; everything that people can't understand
and don't see the reason of does good if you only hold on and give it a fair shake; Prov'dence
don't fire no blank ca'tridges, boys. That there missionary's substance, unbeknowns to himself,
actu'ly converted every last one of them heathens that took a chance at the barbacue. Nothing
ever fetched them but that. Don't tell me it was an accident that he was biled. There ain't no such
a thing as an accident.
'When my uncle Lem was leaning up agin a scaffolding once, sick, or drunk, or suthin, an
Irishman with a hod full of bricks fell on him out of the third story and broke the old man's back
in two places. People said it was an accident. Much accident there was about that. He didn't
know what he was there for, but he was there for a good object. If he hadn't been there the
Irishman would have been killed. Nobody can ever make me believe anything different from
that. Uncle Lem's dog was there. Why didn't the Irishman fall on the dog? Becuz the dog would a
seen him a coming and stood from under. That's the reason the dog warn't appinted. A dog can't
14
be depended on to carry out a special providence. Mark my words it was a put-up thing.
Accidents don't happen, boys. Uncle Lem's dog—I wish you could a seen that dog. He was a
reglar shepherd—or ruther he was part bull and part shepherd—splendid animal; belonged to
parson Hagar before Uncle Lem got him. Parson Hagar belonged to the Western Reserve Hagars;
prime family; his mother was a Watson; one of his sisters married a Wheeler; they settled in
Morgan county, and he got nipped by the machinery in a carpet factory and went through in less
than a quarter of a minute; his widder bought the piece of carpet that had his remains wove in,
and people come a hundred mile to 'tend the funeral. There was fourteen yards in the piece.
'She wouldn't let them roll him up, but planted him just so—full length. The church was
middling small where they preached the funeral, and they had to let one end of the coffin stick
out of the window. They didn't bury him—they planted one end, and let him stand up, same as a
monument. And they nailed a sign on it and put—put on—put on it—"sacred to—the m-e-m-o-ry—of fourteen y-a-r-d-s—of three-ply—car—pet—containing all that was—m-o-r-t-a-l—of—
of—W-i-l-l-i-a-m—W-h-e—"'
Jim Blaine had been growing gradually drowsy and drowsier—his head nodded, once, twice,
three times—dropped peacefully upon his breast, and he fell tranquilly asleep. The tears were
running down the boys' cheeks—they were suffocating with suppressed laughter—and had been
from the start, though I had never noticed it. I perceived that I was "sold." I learned then that Jim
Blaine's peculiarity was that whenever he reached a certain stage of intoxication, no human
power could keep him from setting out, with impressive unction, to tell about a wonderful
adventure which he had once had with his grandfather's old ram—and the mention of the ram in
the first sentence was as far as any man had ever heard him get, concerning it. He always
maundered off, interminably, from one thing to another, till his whisky got the best of him and he
fell asleep. What the thing was that happened to him and his grandfather's old ram is a dark
mystery to this day, for nobody has ever yet found out.
from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Chapter IX, A Solemn Situation
Twain, Mark. "Chapter IX." The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Hartford, Conn., Chicago, Ill.,
Cincinnati, Oh.: The American Publishing Company, 1884.
source of etext: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/74/74-h/74-h.htm#c9
AT half-past nine, that night, Tom and Sid were sent to bed, as usual. They said their prayers,
and Sid was soon asleep. Tom lay awake and waited, in restless impatience. When it seemed to
him that it must be nearly daylight, he heard the clock strike ten! This was despair. He would
have tossed and fidgeted, as his nerves demanded, but he was afraid he might wake Sid. So he
lay still, and stared up into the dark. Everything was dismally still. By and by, out of the stillness,
little, scarcely perceptible noises began to emphasize themselves. The ticking of the clock began
to bring itself into notice. Old beams began to crack mysteriously. The stairs creaked faintly.
Evidently spirits were abroad. A measured, muffled snore issued from Aunt Polly's chamber.
And now the tiresome chirping of a cricket that no human ingenuity could locate, began. Next
the ghastly ticking of a death-watch in the wall at the bed's head made Tom shudder—it meant
15
that somebody's days were numbered. Then the howl of a far-off dog rose on the night air, and
was answered by a fainter howl from a remoter distance. Tom was in an agony. At last he was
satisfied that time had ceased and eternity begun; he began to doze, in spite of himself; the clock
chimed eleven, but he did not hear it. And then there came, mingling with his half-formed
dreams, a most melancholy caterwauling. The raising of a neighboring window disturbed him. A
cry of "Scat! you devil!" and the crash of an empty bottle against the back of his aunt's woodshed
brought him wide awake, and a single minute later he was dressed and out of the window and
creeping along the roof of the "ell" on all fours. He "meow'd" with caution once or twice, as he
went; then jumped to the roof of the woodshed and thence to the ground. Huckleberry Finn was
there, with his dead cat. The boys moved off and disappeared in the gloom. At the end of half an
hour they were wading through the tall grass of the graveyard.
It was a graveyard of the old-fashioned Western kind. It was on a hill, about a mile and a half
from the village. It had a crazy board fence around it, which leaned inward in places, and
outward the rest of the time, but stood upright nowhere. Grass and weeds grew rank over the
whole cemetery. All the old graves were sunken in, there was not a tombstone on the place;
round-topped, worm-eaten boards staggered over the graves, leaning for support and finding
none. "Sacred to the memory of" So-and-So had been painted on them once, but it could no
longer have been read, on the most of them, now, even if there had been light.
A faint wind moaned through the trees, and Tom feared it might be the spirits of the dead,
complaining at being disturbed. The boys talked little, and only under their breath, for the time
and the place and the pervading solemnity and silence oppressed their spirits. They found the
sharp new heap they were seeking, and ensconced themselves within the protection of three great
elms that grew in a bunch within a few feet of the grave.
Then they waited in silence for what seemed a long time. The hooting of a distant owl was all the
sound that troubled the dead stillness. Tom's reflections grew oppressive. He must force some
talk. So he said in a whisper:
"Hucky, do you believe the dead people like it for us to be here?"
Huckleberry whispered:
"I wisht I knowed. It's awful solemn like, ain't it?"
"I bet it is."
There was a considerable pause, while the boys canvassed this matter inwardly. Then Tom
whispered:
"Say, Hucky—do you reckon Hoss Williams hears us talking?"
"O' course he does. Least his sperrit does."
Tom, after a pause:
16
"I wish I'd said Mister Williams. But I never meant any harm. Everybody calls him Hoss."
"A body can't be too partic'lar how they talk 'bout these-yer dead people, Tom."
This was a damper, and conversation died again.
Presently Tom seized his comrade's arm and said:
"Sh!"
"What is it, Tom?" And the two clung together with beating hearts.
"Sh! There 'tis again! Didn't you hear it?"
"I—"
"There! Now you hear it."
"Lord, Tom, they're coming! They're coming, sure. What'll we do?"
"I dono. Think they'll see us?"
"Oh, Tom, they can see in the dark, same as cats. I wisht I hadn't come."
"Oh, don't be afeard. I don't believe they'll bother us. We ain't doing any harm. If we keep
perfectly still, maybe they won't notice us at all."
"I'll try to, Tom, but, Lord, I'm all of a shiver."
"Listen!"
The boys bent their heads together and scarcely breathed. A muffled sound of voices floated up
from the far end of the graveyard.
"Look! See there!" whispered Tom. "What is it?"
"It's devil-fire. Oh, Tom, this is awful."
Some vague figures approached through the gloom, swinging an old-fashioned tin lantern that
freckled the ground with innumerable little spangles of light. Presently Huckleberry whispered
with a shudder:
"It's the devils sure enough. Three of 'em! Lordy, Tom, we're goners! Can you pray?"
"I'll try, but don't you be afeard. They ain't going to hurt us. 'Now I lay me down to sleep, I—'"
17
"Sh!"
"What is it, Huck?"
"They're humans! One of 'em is, anyway. One of 'em's old Muff Potter's voice."
"No—'tain't so, is it?"
"I bet I know it. Don't you stir nor budge. He ain't sharp enough to notice us. Drunk, the same as
usual, likely—blamed old rip!"
"All right, I'll keep still. Now they're stuck. Can't find it. Here they come again. Now they're hot.
Cold again. Hot again. Red hot! They're p'inted right, this time. Say, Huck, I know another o'
them voices; it's Injun Joe."
"That's so—that murderin' half-breed! I'd druther they was devils a dern sight. What kin they be
up to?"
The whisper died wholly out, now, for the three men had reached the grave and stood within a
few feet of the boys' hiding-place.
"Here it is," said the third voice; and the owner of it held the lantern up and revealed the face of
young Doctor Robinson.
Potter and Injun Joe were carrying a handbarrow with a rope and a couple of shovels on it. They
cast down their load and began to open the grave. The doctor put the lantern at the head of the
grave and came and sat down with his back against one of the elm trees. He was so close the
boys could have touched him.
"Hurry, men!" he said, in a low voice; "the moon might come out at any moment."
They growled a response and went on digging. For some time there was no noise but the grating
sound of the spades discharging their freight of mould and gravel. It was very monotonous.
Finally a spade struck upon the coffin with a dull woody accent, and within another minute or
two the men had hoisted it out on the ground. They pried off the lid with their shovels, got out
the body and dumped it rudely on the ground. The moon drifted from behind the clouds and
exposed the pallid face. The barrow was got ready and the corpse placed on it, covered with a
blanket, and bound to its place with the rope. Potter took out a large spring-knife and cut off the
dangling end of the rope and then said:
"Now the cussed thing's ready, Sawbones, and you'll just out with another five, or here she
stays."
"That's the talk!" said Injun Joe.
18
"Look here, what does this mean?" said the doctor. "You required your pay in advance, and I've
paid you."
"Yes, and you done more than that," said Injun Joe, approaching the doctor, who was now
standing. "Five years ago you drove me away from your father's kitchen one night, when I come
to ask for something to eat, and you said I warn't there for any good; and when I swore I'd get
even with you if it took a hundred years, your father had me jailed for a vagrant. Did you think
I'd forget? The Injun blood ain't in me for nothing. And now I've got you, and you got to settle,
you know!"
He was threatening the doctor, with his fist in his face, by this time. The doctor struck out
suddenly and stretched the ruffian on the ground. Potter dropped his knife, and exclaimed:
"Here, now, don't you hit my pard!" and the next moment he had grappled with the doctor and
the two were struggling with might and main, trampling the grass and tearing the ground with
their heels. Injun Joe sprang to his feet, his eyes flaming with passion, snatched up Potter's knife,
and went creeping, catlike and stooping, round and round about the combatants, seeking an
opportunity. All at once the doctor flung himself free, seized the heavy headboard of Williams'
grave and felled Potter to the earth with it—and in the same instant the half-breed saw his chance
and drove the knife to the hilt in the young man's breast. He reeled and fell partly upon Potter,
flooding him with his blood, and in the same moment the clouds blotted out the dreadful
spectacle and the two frightened boys went speeding away in the dark.
Presently, when the moon emerged again, Injun Joe was standing over the two forms,
contemplating them. The doctor murmured inarticulately, gave a long gasp or two and was still.
The half-breed muttered:
"That score is settled—damn you."
Then he robbed the body. After which he put the fatal knife in Potter's open right hand, and sat
down on the dismantled coffin. Three—four—five minutes passed, and then Potter began to stir
and moan. His hand closed upon the knife; he raised it, glanced at it, and let it fall, with a
shudder. Then he sat up, pushing the body from him, and gazed at it, and then around him,
confusedly. His eyes met Joe's.
"Lord, how is this, Joe?" he said.
"It's a dirty business," said Joe, without moving.
"What did you do it for?"
"I! I never done it!"
"Look here! That kind of talk won't wash."
Potter trembled and grew white.
19
"I thought I'd got sober. I'd no business to drink to-night. But it's in my head yet—worse'n when
we started here. I'm all in a muddle; can't recollect anything of it, hardly. Tell me, Joe—honest,
now, old feller—did I do it? Joe, I never meant to—'pon my soul and honor, I never meant to,
Joe. Tell me how it was, Joe. Oh, it's awful—and him so young and promising."
"Why, you two was scuffling, and he fetched you one with the headboard and you fell flat; and
then up you come, all reeling and staggering like, and snatched the knife and jammed it into him,
just as he fetched you another awful clip—and here you've laid, as dead as a wedge til now."
"Oh, I didn't know what I was a-doing. I wish I may die this minute if I did. It was all on account
of the whiskey and the excitement, I reckon. I never used a weepon in my life before, Joe. I've
fought, but never with weepons. They'll all say that. Joe, don't tell! Say you won't tell, Joe—
that's a good feller. I always liked you, Joe, and stood up for you, too. Don't you remember? You
won't tell, will you, Joe?" And the poor creature dropped on his knees before the stolid murderer,
and clasped his appealing hands.
"No, you've always been fair and square with me, Muff Potter, and I won't go back on you.
There, now, that's as fair as a man can say."
"Oh, Joe, you're an angel. I'll bless you for this the longest day I live." And Potter began to cry.
"Come, now, that's enough of that. This ain't any time for blubbering. You be off yonder way
and I'll go this. Move, now, and don't leave any tracks behind you."
Potter started on a trot that quickly increased to a run. The half-breed stood looking after him. He
muttered:
"If he's as much stunned with the lick and fuddled with the rum as he had the look of being, he
won't think of the knife till he's gone so far he'll be afraid to come back after it to such a place by
himself—chicken-heart!"
Two or three minutes later the murdered man, the blanketed corpse, the lidless coffin, and the
open grave were under no inspection but the moon's. The stillness was complete again, too.
A True Story
Twain, Mark. "A True Story, Repeated Word for Word As I Heard It." The Atlantic Monthly 34
(November 1874).
source of etext: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpcoop/moahtml/title/lists/atla_V34I205.html
IT was summer time, and twilight. We were sitting on the porch of the farm-house, on the
summit of the hill, and Aunt Rachel was sitting respectfully below our level, on the steps, for she
was our servant, and colored. She was of mighty frame and stature; she was sixty years old, but
her eye was undimmed and her strength unabated. She was a cheerful, hearty soul, and it was no
more trouble for her to laugh than it is for a bird to sing. She was under fire, now, as usual when
20
the day was done. That is to say, she was being chaffed without mercy, and was en-joying it. She
would let off peal after peal of laughter, and then sit with her face in her hands and shake with
throes of enjoyment which she could no longer get breath enough to express. At such a moment
as this a thought occurred to me, and I said:
"Aunt Rachel, how is it that you've lived sixty years and never had any trouble?"
She stopped quaking. She paused, and there was a moment of silence. She turned her face over
her shoulder toward me, and said, without even a smile in her voice:
"Misto C, is you in arnest?"
It surprised me a good deal; and it sobered my manner and my speech, too. I said:
"Why, I thought, that is, I meant why, you can't have had any trouble. I've never heard you sigh,
and never seen your eye when there wasn't a laugh in it."
She faced fairly around, now, and was full of earnestness.
"Has I had any trouble? Misto C, I's gwyne to tell you, den leave it to you. I was bawn down
'mongst de slaves; I knows all 'bout slavery, case I ben one of 'em my own sef. Well, sah, my ole
man, dat's my husban', he was lovin' an' kind to me, jist as kind as you is to yo' own wife. An'
we had chil'en, seven chil'en, an' we loved dem chil'en jist de same as you loves yo chil'en. Dey
was black, but de Lord can't make no chil'en so black but what dey mother loves,'em an' wouldn't
give 'em up, no, not for anything dat's in dis whole world.
"Well, sah, I was raised in ole Fo'ginny, but my mother she was raised in Maryland; an' my
souls! she was turrible when she'd git started! My lan'! but she'd make de fur fly! When she'd git
into dem tantrums, she always had one word dat she said. She'd straighten herse'f up an' put her
fists in her hips an' say, 'I want you to understan' dat I wa' n't bawn in de ma'sh to be fool' by
trash! I's one o' de ole Blue Hen's Chickens, I is!' 'Ca'se, you see, dat's what folks dat's bawn in
Maryland calls dey selves, an' dey's proud of it. Well, dat was her word. I don't ever forgit it,
beca'se she said it so much, an' beca'se she said it one day when my little Henry tore his wris'
awful, an' most busted his head, right up at de top of his forehead, an' de niggers did n't fly aroun'
fas' enough to 'tend to him. An' when dey talk' back at her, she up an' she says, 'Look-a-heah!'
she says, 'I want you niggers to understan' dat I wa' n't bawn in de ma'sh to be fool' by trash! I's
one o' de ole Blue Hen's Chickens, I is!' an' den she clar' dat kitchen an' bandage' up de chile
herse'f. So I says dat word, too, when I's riled.
"Well, bymeby my ole mistis say she's broke, an' she got to sell all de niggers on de place. An'
when I heah dat dey gwyne to sell us all off at oction in Richmon', oh de good gracious! I know
what dat mean!"
Aunt Rachel had gradually risen, while she warmed to her subject, and now she towered above
us, black against the stars.
21
"Dey put chains on us an' put us on a stan' as high as dis po'ch, twenty foot high, an' all de people
stood aroun', crowds an' crowds. An dey'd come up dah an' look at us all roun', an' squeeze our
arm, an' make us git up an' walk, an' den say, Dis one too ole, or Dis one lame, or Dis one don't
'mount to much. An dey sole my ole man, an' took him away, an' dey begin to sell my chil'en an'
take dem away, an' I begin to cry; an' de man say, Shet up yo dam blubberin',an' hit me on de
mouf wid his han'. An when de las one was gone but my little Henry, I grab him clost up to my
breas' so, an' I ris up an' says, 'You shan't take him away,' I says; 'I kill de man dat tetches him!' I
says. But my little Henry whisper an' say, 'I gwyne to run away, an' den I work an' buy yo
freedom.' Oh, bless do chile, he always so good! But dey got him -- dey got him, de men did; but
I took and tear de clo'es mos' off of 'em, an' beat 'em over de head wid my chain; an' dey give it
to me, too, but I didn't mine dat.
"Well, dah was my ole man gone,an' all my chil'en, all my seven chil'en an' six of 'em I hain't set
eyes on ag'in to dis day, an' dat's twenty-two year ago las' Easter. De man dat bought me b'long
in Newbern, an' he took me dah. Well, bymeby do years roll on an' de waw come. My marster,
he was a Confedrit colonel, an' I was his family's cook. So when do Unions took dat town, dey
all run away an' lef me all by mysef wid de other niggers in dat mons'us big house. So de big
Union officers move in dah, an' dey ask me would I cook for dem. 'Lord bless you,' says I, 'dat's
what I's for.'
"Dey wa'nt no small-fry officers mine you, dey was de biggest dey is; an' de way dey made dem
sojers mosey roun! Do Gen'l he tole me to boss dat kitchen; an' he say, 'If anybody come
meddlin' wid you, you jist make 'em walk chalk; don't you be afeard,' he say; 'you's 'mong frens,
now.'
"Well, I thinks to myse'f, if my little Henry ever got a chance to run away, he'd make to do Norf,
o' course. So one day I comes in dah whah do big officers was, in do parlor, an' I drops a kurtchy,
so, an' I up an' tole 'em bout my Henry, dey a-listenin' to my troubles jist de same as if I was
white folks; an' I says, 'What I come for is beca'se if he got away and got up Norf whah you
gemmen comes from, you might a seen him, maybe, an' could tell me so as I could fine him
ag'in; he was very little, an' he had a sk-yar on his lef' wris', an' at de top of his forehead.' Den
dey look mournful, an' de Gen'l say, 'How long sence you los' him?' an' I say, 'Thirteen year.'
Den de Gen'l say, 'He would n't be little no mo, now he's a man!'
"I never thought o' dat befo'! He was only dat little feller to me, yit. I never thought 'bout him
growin' up an' bein' big. But I see it den. None ode gemmen had run acrost him, so dey could n't
do nothin' for me. But all dat time, do' I did n't know it, my Henry was run off to de Norf, years
an' years, an' he was a barber, too, an' worked for hissef. An' bymeby, when de waw come, he
ups an' he says, 'I's done barberin',' he says; 'I s gwyne to fine my ole mammy, less n she's dead.'
So he sole out an' went to whah dey was re-cruitin', an' hired hissef out to de colonel for his
servant; an' den he went all froo de battles everywhah, huntin' for his ole mammy; yes indeedy,
he'd hire to fust one officer an' den another, tell he'd ransacked de whole Souf; but you see I did
n't know nuffin 'bout dis. How was I gwyne to know it? Well, one night we had a big sojer ball;
de sojers dah at Newbern was al-ways havin' balls an' carryin' on. Dey had 'em in my kitchen,
heaps o' times,ca'se it was so big. Mine you, I was down on sich doin's; beca'se my place was
wid de officers, an' it rasp me to have dem common sojers cavortin' roun' my kitchen like dat.
22
But I alway' stood aroun' an' kep' things straight, I did; an' sometimes dey'd git my dander up, an
den I'd make 'em clar dat kitchen, mine I tell you!
"Well, one night - it was a Friday night - dey comes a whole plattoon f'm a nigger ridgment dat
was on guard at de house, - de house was head-quarters, you know, - an' den I was jist abilin'. Mad? I was jist a-boomin! I swelled aroun', an' swelled aroun'; I jist was a-itchin' for 'em
to do somefin for to start me. An dev was a-waltzin' an' a-dancin' ! my! but dey was havin' a
time! an' I jist a swellin an' a-swellin up! Pooty soon, 'long comes sich a spruce young nigger asailin' down de room wid a yaller wench roun' de wais'; an' roun' an' roun' an' roun' dey went,
enough to make a body drunk to look at 'em; an' when dey got abreas' o' me, dey went to kin' o'
balancin' aroun',fust on one leg an' den on t'other, an' smilin' at my big red turban, an' makin' fun,
an' I ups an' says, 'Git along wid you! rubbage!' De young man's face kin' o' changed, all of a
sudden, for 'bout a second, but den he went to smilin' ag'in, same as he was befo'. Well, 'bout dis
time, in comes some niggers dat played music an' b'long to de ban, an' dey never could git along
widout puttin' on airs. An de very fust air dey put on dat night, I lit into 'em! Dey laughed, an' dat
made me wuss. De res' o' de niggers got to laughin', an' den my soul alive but I was hot! My eye
was jist a-blazin! I jist straightened myself up, so, jist as I is now, plum to de ceilin', mos, an' I
digs my fists into my hips, an' I says, 'Look-a-heah!' I says, 'I want you niggers to understan' dat I
wa n't bawn in de mash to be fool by trash! I s one o' de ole Blue Hens Chickens, I is!' an' den I
see dat young man stan' a-starin' an' stiff, lookin' kin o' up at de ceilin' like he fo'got somefin, an'
could n't 'member it no mo. Well, I jist march on dem niggers, -so, lookin' like a gen'l, an' dey jist
cave' away befo' me an' out at de do'. An as dis young man was a-goin' out, I heah him say to
another nigger,' Jim,' he says, 'you go long an' tell de cap'n I be on han' 'bout eight o'clock in de
mawnin; dey's somefin' on my mine,' he says; 'I don't sleep no mo' dis night. You go 'long,' he
says, 'an' leave me by my own se'f.'
"Dis was 'bout one o'clock in de mawnin'. Well, 'bout seven, I was up an' on han', gittin' de
officers' breakfast. I was a-stoopin' down by de stove,-- jist so, same as if yo' foot was de stove, -an' I'd opened de stove do wid my right han', so, pushed it back, jist as I pushes yo' foot, an' I'd
jist got de pan o' hot biscuits in my han' an' was 'bout to raise up, when I see a black face come
aroun' under mine,an' de eyes a-lookin' up into mine, jist,as I's a-lookin' up clost under yo' face
now; an' I jist stopped right dah, an' never budged! jist gazed, an' , gazed, so; an' de pan begin to
tremble, an' all of a sudden I knowed! De pan drop on de flo' an' I grab his lef' han' an' shove
back his sleeve, jist so, as I's doin' to you, an' den I goes for his fore-head an' push de hair back,
so, an' Boy! I says, if you an't my Henry, what is you doin' wid dis welt on yo' wris' an' dat sk-yar
on yo' forehead? De Lord God ob heaven be praise, I got my own ag'in!
"Oh, no, Misto C, I hain't had no trouble. An no joy!" -Mark Twain.
The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg
Twain, Mark. "The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg." The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg and
Other Stories and Essays. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1900.
source of etext: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3251
23
It was many years ago. Hadleyburg was the most honest and upright town in all the region round
about. It had kept that reputation unsmirched during three generations, and was prouder of it than
of any other of its possessions. It was so proud of it, and so anxious to insure its perpetuation,
that it began to teach the principles of honest dealing to its babies in the cradle, and made the like
teachings the staple of their culture thenceforward through all the years devoted to their
education. Also, throughout the formative years temptations were kept out of the way of the
young people, so that their honesty could have every chance to harden and solidify, and become
a part of their very bone. The neighbouring towns were jealous of this honourable supremacy,
and affected to sneer at Hadleyburg's pride in it and call it vanity; but all the same they were
obliged to acknowledge that Hadleyburg was in reality an incorruptible town; and if pressed they
would also acknowledge that the mere fact that a young man hailed from Hadleyburg was all the
recommendation he needed when he went forth from his natal town to seek for responsible
employment.
But at last, in the drift of time, Hadleyburg had the ill luck to offend a passing stranger—possibly
without knowing it, certainly without caring, for Hadleyburg was sufficient unto itself, and cared
not a rap for strangers or their opinions. Still, it would have been well to make an exception in
this one's case, for he was a bitter man, and revengeful. All through his wanderings during a
whole year he kept his injury in mind, and gave all his leisure moments to trying to invent a
compensating satisfaction for it. He contrived many plans, and all of them were good, but none
of them was quite sweeping enough: the poorest of them would hurt a great many individuals,
but what he wanted was a plan which would comprehend the entire town, and not let so much as
one person escape unhurt. At last he had a fortunate idea, and when it fell into his brain it lit up
his whole head with an evil joy. He began to form a plan at once, saying to himself "That is the
thing to do—I will corrupt the town."
Six months later he went to Hadleyburg, and arrived in a buggy at the house of the old cashier of
the bank about ten at night. He got a sack out of the buggy, shouldered it, and staggered with it
through the cottage yard, and knocked at the door. A woman's voice said "Come in," and he
entered, and set his sack behind the stove in the parlour, saying politely to the old lady who sat
reading the "Missionary Herald" by the lamp:
"Pray keep your seat, madam, I will not disturb you. There—now it is pretty well concealed; one
would hardly know it was there. Can I see your husband a moment, madam?"
No, he was gone to Brixton, and might not return before morning.
"Very well, madam, it is no matter. I merely wanted to leave that sack in his care, to be delivered
to the rightful owner when he shall be found. I am a stranger; he does not know me; I am merely
passing through the town to-night to discharge a matter which has been long in my mind. My
errand is now completed, and I go pleased and a little proud, and you will never see me again.
There is a paper attached to the sack which will explain everything. Good-night, madam."
The old lady was afraid of the mysterious big stranger, and was glad to see him go. But her
curiosity was roused, and she went straight to the sack and brought away the paper. It began as
follows:
24
"TO BE PUBLISHED, or, the right man sought out by private inquiry— either will answer. This
sack contains gold coin weighing a hundred and sixty pounds four ounces—"
"Mercy on us, and the door not locked!" Mrs. Richards flew to it all in a tremble and locked it,
then pulled down the window-shades and stood frightened, worried, and wondering if there was
anything else she could do toward making herself and the money more safe. She listened awhile
for burglars, then surrendered to curiosity, and went back to the lamp and finished reading the
paper:
"I am a foreigner, and am presently going back to my own country, to remain there permanently.
I am grateful to America for what I have received at her hands during my long stay under her
flag; and to one of her citizens—a citizen of Hadleyburg—I am especially grateful for a great
kindness done me a year or two ago. Two great kindnesses in fact. I will explain. I was a
gambler. I say I WAS. I was a ruined gambler. I arrived in this village at night, hungry and
without a penny. I asked for help—in the dark; I was ashamed to beg in the light. I begged of the
right man. He gave me twenty dollars—that is to say, he gave me life, as I considered it. He also
gave me fortune; for out of that money I have made myself rich at the gaming-table. And finally,
a remark which he made to me has remained with me to this day, and has at last conquered me;
and in conquering has saved the remnant of my morals: I shall gamble no more. Now I have no
idea who that man was, but I want him found, and I want him to have this money, to give away,
throw away, or keep, as he pleases. It is merely my way of testifying my gratitude to him. If I
could stay, I would find him myself; but no matter, he will be found. This is an honest town, an
incorruptible town, and I know I can trust it without fear. This man can be identified by the
remark which he made to me; I feel persuaded that he will remember it. "And now my plan is
this: If you prefer to conduct the inquiry privately, do so. Tell the contents of this present writing
to any one who is likely to be the right man. If he shall answer, 'I am the man; the remark I made
was so-and-so,' apply the test—to wit: open the sack, and in it you will find a sealed envelope
containing that remark. If the remark mentioned by the candidate tallies with it, give him the
money, and ask no further questions, for he is certainly the right man. "But if you shall prefer a
public inquiry, then publish this present writing in the local paper—with these instructions
added, to wit: Thirty days from now, let the candidate appear at the town-hall at eight in the
evening (Friday), and hand his remark, in a sealed envelope, to the Rev. Mr. Burgess (if he will
be kind enough to act); and let Mr. Burgess there and then destroy the seals of the sack, open it,
and see if the remark is correct: if correct, let the money be delivered, with my sincere gratitude,
to my benefactor thus identified."
Mrs. Richards sat down, gently quivering with excitement, and was soon lost in thinkings—after
this pattern: "What a strange thing it is! ... And what a fortune for that kind man who set his
bread afloat upon the waters!... If it had only been my husband that did it!—for we are so poor,
so old and poor!..." Then, with a sigh—"But it was not my Edward; no, it was not he that gave a
stranger twenty dollars. It is a pity too; I see it now...." Then, with a shudder—"But it is
GAMBLERS' money! the wages of sin; we couldn't take it; we couldn't touch it. I don't like to be
near it; it seems a defilement." She moved to a farther chair... "I wish Edward would come, and
take it to the bank; a burglar might come at any moment; it is dreadful to be here all alone with
it."
25
At eleven Mr. Richards arrived, and while his wife was saying "I am SO glad you've come!" he
was saying, "I am so tired—tired clear out; it is dreadful to be poor, and have to make these
dismal journeys at my time of life. Always at the grind, grind, grind, on a salary—another man's
slave, and he sitting at home in his slippers, rich and comfortable."
"I am so sorry for you, Edward, you know that; but be comforted; we have our livelihood; we
have our good name—"
"Yes, Mary, and that is everything. Don't mind my talk—it's just a moment's irritation and
doesn't mean anything. Kiss me—there, it's all gone now, and I am not complaining any more.
What have you been getting? What's in the sack?"
Then his wife told him the great secret. It dazed him for a moment; then he said:
"It weighs a hundred and sixty pounds? Why, Mary, it's for-ty thousand dollars—think of it—a
whole fortune! Not ten men in this village are worth that much. Give me the paper."
He skimmed through it and said:
"Isn't it an adventure! Why, it's a romance; it's like the impossible things one reads about in
books, and never sees in life." He was well stirred up now; cheerful, even gleeful. He tapped his
old wife on the cheek, and said humorously, "Why, we're rich, Mary, rich; all we've got to do is
to bury the money and burn the papers. If the gambler ever comes to inquire, we'll merely look
coldly upon him and say: 'What is this nonsense you are talking? We have never heard of you
and your sack of gold before;' and then he would look foolish, and—"
"And in the meantime, while you are running on with your jokes, the money is still here, and it is
fast getting along toward burglar-time."
"True. Very well, what shall we do—make the inquiry private? No, not that; it would spoil the
romance. The public method is better. Think what a noise it will make! And it will make all the
other towns jealous; for no stranger would trust such a thing to any town but Hadleyburg, and
they know it. It's a great card for us. I must get to the printing-office now, or I shall be too late."
"But stop—stop—don't leave me here alone with it, Edward!"
But he was gone. For only a little while, however. Not far from his own house he met the
editor—proprietor of the paper, and gave him the document, and said "Here is a good thing for
you, Cox—put it in."
"It may be too late, Mr. Richards, but I'll see."
At home again, he and his wife sat down to talk the charming mystery over; they were in no
condition for sleep. The first question was, Who could the citizen have been who gave the
stranger the twenty dollars? It seemed a simple one; both answered it in the same breath—
26
"Barclay Goodson."
"Yes," said Richards, "he could have done it, and it would have been like him, but there's not
another in the town."
"Everybody will grant that, Edward—grant it privately, anyway. For six months, now, the village
has been its own proper self once more—honest, narrow, self-righteous, and stingy."
"It is what he always called it, to the day of his death—said it right out publicly, too."
"Yes, and he was hated for it."
"Oh, of course; but he didn't care. I reckon he was the best-hated man among us, except the
Reverend Burgess."
"Well, Burgess deserves it—he will never get another congregation here. Mean as the town is, it
knows how to estimate HIM. Edward, doesn't it seem odd that the stranger should appoint
Burgess to deliver the money?"
"Well, yes—it does. That is—that is—"
"Why so much that-IS-ing? Would YOU select him?"
"Mary, maybe the stranger knows him better than this village does."
"Much THAT would help Burgess!"
The husband seemed perplexed for an answer; the wife kept a steady eye upon him, and waited.
Finally Richards said, with the hesitancy of one who is making a statement which is likely to
encounter doubt,
"Mary, Burgess is not a bad man."
His wife was certainly surprised.
"Nonsense!" she exclaimed.
"He is not a bad man. I know. The whole of his unpopularity had its foundation in that one
thing—the thing that made so much noise."
"That 'one thing,' indeed! As if that 'one thing' wasn't enough, all by itself."
"Plenty. Plenty. Only he wasn't guilty of it."
"How you talk! Not guilty of it! Everybody knows he WAS guilty."
27
"Mary, I give you my word—he was innocent."
"I can't believe it and I don't. How do you know?"
"It is a confession. I am ashamed, but I will make it. I was the only man who knew he was
innocent. I could have saved him, and—and—well, you know how the town was wrought up—I
hadn't the pluck to do it. It would have turned everybody against me. I felt mean, ever so mean;
ut I didn't dare; I hadn't the manliness to face that."
Mary looked troubled, and for a while was silent. Then she said stammeringly:
"I—I don't think it would have done for you to—to—One mustn't—er—public opinion—one has
to be so careful—so—" It was a difficult road, and she got mired; but after a little she got started
again. "It was a great pity, but—Why, we couldn't afford it, Edward—we couldn't indeed. Oh, I
wouldn't have had you do it for anything!"
"It would have lost us the good-will of so many people, Mary; and then—and then—"
"What troubles me now is, what HE thinks of us, Edward."
"He? HE doesn't suspect that I could have saved him."
"Oh," exclaimed the wife, in a tone of relief, "I am glad of that. As long as he doesn't know that
you could have saved him, he—he—well that makes it a great deal better. Why, I might have
known he didn't know, because he is always trying to be friendly with us, as little encouragement
as we give him. More than once people have twitted me with it. There's the Wilsons, and the
Wilcoxes, and the Harknesses, they take a mean pleasure in saying 'YOUR FRIEND Burgess,'
because they know it pesters me. I wish he wouldn't persist in liking us so; I can't think why he
keeps it up."
"I can explain it. It's another confession. When the thing was new and hot, and the town made a
plan to ride him on a rail, my conscience hurt me so that I couldn't stand it, and I went privately
and gave him notice, and he got out of the town and stayed out till it was safe to come back."
"Edward! If the town had found it out—"
"DON'T! It scares me yet, to think of it. I repented of it the minute it was done; and I was even
afraid to tell you lest your face might betray it to somebody. I didn't sleep any that night, for
worrying. But after a few days I saw that no one was going to suspect me, and after that I got to
feeling glad I did it. And I feel glad yet, Mary—glad through and through."
"So do I, now, for it would have been a dreadful way to treat him. Yes, I'm glad; for really you
did owe him that, you know. But, Edward, suppose it should come out yet, some day!"
"It won't."
28
"Why?"
"Because everybody thinks it was Goodson."
"Of course they would!"
"Certainly. And of course HE didn't care. They persuaded poor old Sawlsberry to go and charge
it on him, and he went blustering over there and did it. Goodson looked him over, like as if he
was hunting for a place on him that he could despise the most; then he says, 'So you are the
Committee of Inquiry, are you?' Sawlsberry said that was about what he was. 'H'm. Do they
require particulars, or do you reckon a kind of a GENERAL answer will do?' 'If they require
particulars, I will come back, Mr. Goodson; I will take the general answer first.' 'Very well, then,
tell them to go to hell—I reckon that's general enough. And I'll give you some advice,
Sawlsberry; when you come back for the particulars, fetch a basket to carry what is left of
yourself home in.'"
"Just like Goodson; it's got all the marks. He had only one vanity; he thought he could give
advice better than any other person."
"It settled the business, and saved us, Mary. The subject was dropped."
"Bless you, I'm not doubting THAT."
Then they took up the gold-sack mystery again, with strong interest. Soon the conversation
began to suffer breaks—interruptions caused by absorbed thinkings. The breaks grew more and
more frequent. At last Richards lost himself wholly in thought. He sat long, gazing vacantly at
the floor, and by-and-by he began to punctuate his thoughts with little nervous movements of his
hands that seemed to indicate vexation. Meantime his wife too had relapsed into a thoughtful
silence, and her movements were beginning to show a troubled discomfort. Finally Richards got
up and strode aimlessly about the room, ploughing his hands through his hair, much as a
somnambulist might do who was having a bad dream. Then he seemed to arrive at a definite
purpose; and without a word he put on his hat and passed quickly out of the house. His wife sat
brooding, with a drawn face, and did not seem to be aware that she was alone. Now and then she
murmured, "Lead us not into t... but—but—we are so poor, so poor!... Lead us not into... Ah,
who would be hurt by it?—and no one would ever know... Lead us...." The voice died out in
mumblings. After a little she glanced up and muttered in a half-frightened, half-glad way—
"He is gone! But, oh dear, he may be too late—too late... Maybe not—maybe there is still time."
She rose and stood thinking, nervously clasping and unclasping her hands. A slight shudder
shook her frame, and she said, out of a dry throat, "God forgive me—it's awful to think such
things—but... Lord, how we are made—how strangely we are made!"
She turned the light low, and slipped stealthily over and knelt down by the sack and felt of its
ridgy sides with her hands, and fondled them lovingly; and there was a gloating light in her poor
old eyes. She fell into fits of absence; and came half out of them at times to mutter "If we had
only waited!—oh, if we had only waited a little, and not been in such a hurry!"
29
Meantime Cox had gone home from his office and told his wife all about the strange thing that
had happened, and they had talked it over eagerly, and guessed that the late Goodson was the
only man in the town who could have helped a suffering stranger with so noble a sum as twenty
dollars. Then there was a pause, and the two became thoughtful and silent. And by-and-by
nervous and fidgety. At last the wife said, as if to herself,
"Nobody knows this secret but the Richardses... and us... nobody."
The husband came out of his thinkings with a slight start, and gazed wistfully at his wife, whose
face was become very pale; then he hesitatingly rose, and glanced furtively at his hat, then at his
wife—a sort of mute inquiry. Mrs. Cox swallowed once or twice, with her hand at her throat,
then in place of speech she nodded her head. In a moment she was alone, and mumbling to
herself.
And now Richards and Cox were hurrying through the deserted streets, from opposite directions.
They met, panting, at the foot of the printing-office stairs; by the night-light there they read each
other's face. Cox whispered:
"Nobody knows about this but us?"
The whispered answer was:
"Not a soul—on honour, not a soul!"
"If it isn't too late to—"
The men were starting up-stairs; at this moment they were overtaken by a boy, and Cox asked,
"Is that you, Johnny?"
"Yes, sir."
"You needn't ship the early mail—nor ANY mail; wait till I tell you."
"It's already gone, sir."
"GONE?" It had the sound of an unspeakable disappointment in it.
"Yes, sir. Time-table for Brixton and all the towns beyond changed to-day, sir—had to get the
papers in twenty minutes earlier than common. I had to rush; if I had been two minutes later—"
The men turned and walked slowly away, not waiting to hear the rest. Neither of them spoke
during ten minutes; then Cox said, in a vexed tone,
"What possessed you to be in such a hurry, I can't make out."
30
The answer was humble enough:
"I see it now, but somehow I never thought, you know, until it was too late. But the next time—"
"Next time be hanged! It won't come in a thousand years."
Then the friends separated without a good-night, and dragged themselves home with the gait of
mortally stricken men. At their homes their wives sprang up with an eager "Well?"—then saw
the answer with their eyes and sank down sorrowing, without waiting for it to come in words. In
both houses a discussion followed of a heated sort—a new thing; there had been discussions
before, but not heated ones, not ungentle ones. The discussions to-night were a sort of seeming
plagiarisms of each other. Mrs. Richards said:
"If you had only waited, Edward—if you had only stopped to think; but no, you must run straight
to the printing-office and spread it all over the world."
"It SAID publish it."
"That is nothing; it also said do it privately, if you liked. There, now—is that true, or not?"
"Why, yes—yes, it is true; but when I thought what a stir it would make, and what a compliment
it was to Hadleyburg that a stranger should trust it so—"
"Oh, certainly, I know all that; but if you had only stopped to think, you would have seen that
you COULDN'T find the right man, because he is in his grave, and hasn't left chick nor child nor
relation behind him; and as long as the money went to somebody that awfully needed it, and
nobody would be hurt by it, and—and—"
She broke down, crying. Her husband tried to think of some comforting thing to say, and
presently came out with this:
"But after all, Mary, it must be for the best—it must be; we know that. And we must remember
that it was so ordered—"
"Ordered! Oh, everything's ORDERED, when a person has to find some way out when he has
been stupid. Just the same, it was ORDERED that the money should come to us in this special
way, and it was you that must take it on yourself to go meddling with the designs of
Providence—and who gave you the right? It was wicked, that is what it was—just blasphemous
presumption, and no more becoming to a meek and humble professor of—"
"But, Mary, you know how we have been trained all our lives long, like the whole village, till it
is absolutely second nature to us to stop not a single moment to think when there's an honest
thing to be done—"
"Oh, I know it, I know it—it's been one everlasting training and training and training in
honesty—honesty shielded, from the very cradle, against every possible temptation, and so it's
31
ARTIFICIAL honesty, and weak as water when temptation comes, as we have seen this night.
God knows I never had shade nor shadow of a doubt of my petrified and indestructible honesty
until now—and now, under the very first big and real temptation, I—Edward, it is my belief that
this town's honesty is as rotten as mine is; as rotten as yours. It is a mean town, a hard, stingy
town, and hasn't a virtue in the world but this honesty it is so celebrated for and so conceited
about; and so help me, I do believe that if ever the day comes that its honesty falls under great
temptation, its grand reputation will go to ruin like a house of cards. There, now, I've made
confession, and I feel better; I am a humbug, and I've been one all my life, without knowing it.
Let no man call me honest again—I will not have it."
"I—Well, Mary, I feel a good deal as you do: I certainly do. It seems strange, too, so strange. I
never could have believed it—never."
A long silence followed; both were sunk in thought. At last the wife looked up and said:
"I know what you are thinking, Edward."
Richards had the embarrassed look of a person who is caught.
"I am ashamed to confess it, Mary, but—"
"It's no matter, Edward, I was thinking the same question myself."
"I hope so. State it."
"You were thinking, if a body could only guess out WHAT THE REMARK WAS that Goodson
made to the stranger."
"It's perfectly true. I feel guilty and ashamed. And you?"
"I'm past it. Let us make a pallet here; we've got to stand watch till the bank vault opens in the
morning and admits the sack... Oh dear, oh dear—if we hadn't made the mistake!"
The pallet was made, and Mary said:
"The open sesame—what could it have been? I do wonder what that remark could have been.
But come; we will get to bed now."
"And sleep?"
"No; think."
"Yes; think."
By this time the Coxes too had completed their spat and their reconciliation, and were turning
in—to think, to think, and toss, and fret, and worry over what the remark could possibly have
32
been which Goodson made to the stranded derelict; that golden remark; that remark worth forty
thousand dollars, cash.
The reason that the village telegraph-office was open later than usual that night was this: The
foreman of Cox's paper was the local representative of the Associated Press. One might say its
honorary representative, for it wasn't four times a year that he could furnish thirty words that
would be accepted. But this time it was different. His despatch stating what he had caught got an
instant answer:
"Send the whole thing—all the details—twelve hundred words."
A colossal order! The foreman filled the bill; and he was the proudest man in the State. By
breakfast-time the next morning the name of Hadleyburg the Incorruptible was on every lip in
America, from Montreal to the Gulf, from the glaciers of Alaska to the orange-groves of Florida;
and millions and millions of people were discussing the stranger and his money-sack, and
wondering if the right man would be found, and hoping some more news about the matter would
come soon—right away.
II
Hadleyburg village woke up world-celebrated—astonished—happy—vain. Vain beyond
imagination. Its nineteen principal citizens and their wives went about shaking hands with each
other, and beaming, and smiling, and congratulating, and saying THIS thing adds a new word to
the dictionary—HADLEYBURG, synonym for INCORRUPTIBLE—destined to live in
dictionaries for ever! And the minor and unimportant citizens and their wives went around acting
in much the same way. Everybody ran to the bank to see the gold-sack; and before noon grieved
and envious crowds began to flock in from Brixton and all neighbouring towns; and that
afternoon and next day reporters began to arrive from everywhere to verify the sack and its
history and write the whole thing up anew, and make dashing free-hand pictures of the sack, and
of Richards's house, and the bank, and the Presbyterian church, and the Baptist church, and the
public square, and the town-hall where the test would be applied and the money delivered; and
damnable portraits of the Richardses, and Pinkerton the banker, and Cox, and the foreman, and
Reverend Burgess, and the postmaster—and even of Jack Halliday, who was the loafing, goodnatured, no-account, irreverent fisherman, hunter, boys' friend, stray-dogs' friend, typical "Sam
Lawson" of the town. The little mean, smirking, oily Pinkerton showed the sack to all comers,
and rubbed his sleek palms together pleasantly, and enlarged upon the town's fine old reputation
for honesty and upon this wonderful endorsement of it, and hoped and believed that the example
would now spread far and wide over the American world, and be epoch-making in the matter of
moral regeneration. And so on, and so on.
By the end of a week things had quieted down again; the wild intoxication of pride and joy had
sobered to a soft, sweet, silent delight—a sort of deep, nameless, unutterable content. All faces
bore a look of peaceful, holy happiness.
Then a change came. It was a gradual change; so gradual that its beginnings were hardly noticed;
maybe were not noticed at all, except by Jack Halliday, who always noticed everything; and
33
always made fun of it, too, no matter what it was. He began to throw out chaffing remarks about
people not looking quite so happy as they did a day or two ago; and next he claimed that the new
aspect was deepening to positive sadness; next, that it was taking on a sick look; and finally he
said that everybody was become so moody, thoughtful, and absent-minded that he could rob the
meanest man in town of a cent out of the bottom of his breeches pocket and not disturb his
reverie.
At this stage—or at about this stage—a saying like this was dropped at bedtime—with a sigh,
usually—by the head of each of the nineteen principal households:
"Ah, what COULD have been the remark that Goodson made?"
And straightway—with a shudder—came this, from the man's wife:
"Oh, DON'T! What horrible thing are you mulling in your mind? Put it away from you, for God's
sake!"
But that question was wrung from those men again the next night—and got the same retort. But
weaker.
And the third night the men uttered the question yet again—with anguish, and absently. This
time—and the following night—the wives fidgeted feebly, and tried to say something. But didn't.
And the night after that they found their tongues and responded—longingly:
"Oh, if we COULD only guess!"
Halliday's comments grew daily more and more sparklingly disagreeable and disparaging. He
went diligently about, laughing at the town, individually and in mass. But his laugh was the only
one left in the village: it fell upon a hollow and mournful vacancy and emptiness. Not even a
smile was findable anywhere. Halliday carried a cigar-box around on a tripod, playing that it was
a camera, and halted all passers and aimed the thing and said "Ready!—now look pleasant,
please," but not even this capital joke could surprise the dreary faces into any softening.
So three weeks passed—one week was left. It was Saturday evening after supper. Instead of the
aforetime Saturday-evening flutter and bustle and shopping and larking, the streets were empty
and desolate. Richards and his old wife sat apart in their little parlour—miserable and thinking.
This was become their evening habit now: the life-long habit which had preceded it, of reading,
knitting, and contented chat, or receiving or paying neighbourly calls, was dead and gone and
forgotten, ages ago—two or three weeks ago; nobody talked now, nobody read, nobody visited—
the whole village sat at home, sighing, worrying, silent. Trying to guess out that remark.
The postman left a letter. Richards glanced listlessly at the superscription and the post-mark—
unfamiliar, both—and tossed the letter on the table and resumed his might-have-beens and his
hopeless dull miseries where he had left them off. Two or three hours later his wife got wearily
up and was going away to bed without a good-night—custom now—but she stopped near the
34
letter and eyed it awhile with a dead interest, then broke it open, and began to skim it over.
Richards, sitting there with his chair tilted back against the wall and his chin between his knees,
heard something fall. It was his wife. He sprang to her side, but she cried out:
"Leave me alone, I am too happy. Read the letter—read it!"
He did. He devoured it, his brain reeling. The letter was from a distant State, and it said:
"I am a stranger to you, but no matter: I have something to tell. I have just arrived home from
Mexico, and learned about that episode. Of course you do not know who made that remark, but I
know, and I am the only person living who does know. It was GOODSON. I knew him well, many
years ago. I passed through your village that very night, and was his guest till the midnight train
came along. I overheard him make that remark to the stranger in the dark—it was in Hale Alley.
He and I talked of it the rest of the way home, and while smoking in his house. He mentioned
many of your villagers in the course of his talk—most of them in a very uncomplimentary way,
but two or three favourably: among these latter yourself. I say 'favourably'—nothing stronger. I
remember his saying he did not actually LIKE any person in the town—not one; but that you—I
THINK he said you—am almost sure—had done him a very great service once, possibly without
knowing the full value of it, and he wished he had a fortune, he would leave it to you when he
died, and a curse apiece for the rest of the citizens. Now, then, if it was you that did him that
service, you are his legitimate heir, and entitled to the sack of gold. I know that I can trust to
your honour and honesty, for in a citizen of Hadleyburg these virtues are an unfailing
inheritance, and so I am going to reveal to you the remark, well satisfied that if you are not the
right man you will seek and find the right one and see that poor Goodson's debt of gratitude for
the service referred to is paid. This is the remark 'YOU ARE FAR FROM BEING A BAD MAN:
GO, AND REFORM.' "HOWARD L. STEPHENSON."
"Oh, Edward, the money is ours, and I am so grateful, OH, so grateful,—kiss me, dear, it's for
ever since we kissed—and we needed it so—the money—and now you are free of Pinkerton and
his bank, and nobody's slave any more; it seems to me I could fly for joy."
It was a happy half-hour that the couple spent there on the settee caressing each other; it was the
old days come again—days that had begun with their courtship and lasted without a break till the
stranger brought the deadly money. By-and-by the wife said:
"Oh, Edward, how lucky it was you did him that grand service, poor Goodson! I never liked him,
but I love him now. And it was fine and beautiful of you never to mention it or brag about it."
Then, with a touch of reproach, "But you ought to have told ME, Edward, you ought to have told
your wife, you know."
"Well, I—er—well, Mary, you see—"
"Now stop hemming and hawing, and tell me about it, Edward. I always loved you, and now I'm
proud of you. Everybody believes there was only one good generous soul in this village, and now
it turns out that you—Edward, why don't you tell me?"
35
"Well—er—er—Why, Mary, I can't!"
"You CAN'T? WHY can't you?"
"You see, he—well, he—he made me promise I wouldn't."
The wife looked him over, and said, very slowly:
"Made—you—promise? Edward, what do you tell me that for?"
"Mary, do you think I would lie?"
She was troubled and silent for a moment, then she laid her hand within his and said:
"No... no. We have wandered far enough from our bearings—God spare us that! In all your life
you have never uttered a lie. But now—now that the foundations of things seem to be crumbling
from under us, we—we—" She lost her voice for a moment, then said, brokenly, "Lead us not
into temptation... I think you made the promise, Edward. Let it rest so. Let us keep away from
that ground. Now—that is all gone by; let us be happy again; it is no time for clouds."
Edward found it something of an effort to comply, for his mind kept wandering—trying to
remember what the service was that he had done Goodson.
The couple lay awake the most of the night, Mary happy and busy, Edward busy, but not so
happy. Mary was planning what she would do with the money. Edward was trying to recall that
service. At first his conscience was sore on account of the lie he had told Mary—if it was a lie.
After much reflection—suppose it WAS a lie? What then? Was it such a great matter? Aren't we
always ACTING lies? Then why not tell them? Look at Mary—look what she had done. While
he was hurrying off on his honest errand, what was she doing? Lamenting because the papers
hadn't been destroyed and the money kept. Is theft better than lying?
THAT point lost its sting—the lie dropped into the background and left comfort behind it. The
next point came to the front: HAD he rendered that service? Well, here was Goodson's own
evidence as reported in Stephenson's letter; there could be no better evidence than that—it was
even PROOF that he had rendered it. Of course. So that point was settled... No, not quite. He
recalled with a wince that this unknown Mr. Stephenson was just a trifle unsure as to whether the
performer of it was Richards or some other—and, oh dear, he had put Richards on his honour!
He must himself decide whither that money must go—and Mr. Stephenson was not doubting that
if he was the wrong man he would go honourably and find the right one. Oh, it was odious to put
a man in such a situation—ah, why couldn't Stephenson have left out that doubt? What did he
want to intrude that for?
Further reflection. How did it happen that RICHARDS'S name remained in Stephenson's mind as
indicating the right man, and not some other man's name? That looked good. Yes, that looked
very good. In fact it went on looking better and better, straight along—until by-and-by it grew
36
into positive PROOF. And then Richards put the matter at once out of his mind, for he had a
private instinct that a proof once established is better left so.
He was feeling reasonably comfortable now, but there was still one other detail that kept pushing
itself on his notice: of course he had done that service—that was settled; but what WAS that
service? He must recall it—he would not go to sleep till he had recalled it; it would make his
peace of mind perfect. And so he thought and thought. He thought of a dozen things—possible
services, even probable services—but none of them seemed adequate, none of them seemed large
enough, none of them seemed worth the money—worth the fortune Goodson had wished he
could leave in his will. And besides, he couldn't remember having done them, anyway. Now,
then—now, then—what KIND of a service would it be that would make a man so inordinately
grateful? Ah—the saving of his soul! That must be it. Yes, he could remember, now, how he
once set himself the task of converting Goodson, and laboured at it as much as—he was going to
say three months; but upon closer examination it shrunk to a month, then to a week, then to a
day, then to nothing. Yes, he remembered now, and with unwelcome vividness, that Goodson
had told him to go to thunder and mind his own business—HE wasn't hankering to follow
Hadleyburg to heaven!
So that solution was a failure—he hadn't saved Goodson's soul. Richards was discouraged. Then
after a little came another idea: had he saved Goodson's property? No, that wouldn't do—he
hadn't any. His life? That is it! Of course. Why, he might have thought of it before. This time he
was on the right track, sure. His imagination-mill was hard at work in a minute, now.
Thereafter, during a stretch of two exhausting hours, he was busy saving Goodson's life. He
saved it in all kinds of difficult and perilous ways. In every case he got it saved satisfactorily up
to a certain point; then, just as he was beginning to get well persuaded that it had really
happened, a troublesome detail would turn up which made the whole thing impossible. As in the
matter of drowning, for instance. In that case he had swum out and tugged Goodson ashore in an
unconscious state with a great crowd looking on and applauding, but when he had got it all
thought out and was just beginning to remember all about it, a whole swarm of disqualifying
details arrived on the ground: the town would have known of the circumstance, Mary would have
known of it, it would glare like a limelight in his own memory instead of being an inconspicuous
service which he had possibly rendered "without knowing its full value." And at this point he
remembered that he couldn't swim anyway.
Ah—THERE was a point which he had been overlooking from the start: it had to be a service
which he had rendered "possibly without knowing the full value of it." Why, really, that ought to
be an easy hunt—much easier than those others. And sure enough, by-and-by he found it.
Goodson, years and years ago, came near marrying a very sweet and pretty girl, named Nancy
Hewitt, but in some way or other the match had been broken off; the girl died, Goodson
remained a bachelor, and by-and-by became a soured one and a frank despiser of the human
species. Soon after the girl's death the village found out, or thought it had found out, that she
carried a spoonful of negro blood in her veins. Richards worked at these details a good while,
and in the end he thought he remembered things concerning them which must have gotten
mislaid in his memory through long neglect. He seemed to dimly remember that it was HE that
found out about the negro blood; that it was he that told the village; that the village told Goodson
37
where they got it; that he thus saved Goodson from marrying the tainted girl; that he had done
him this great service "without knowing the full value of it," in fact without knowing that he
WAS doing it; but that Goodson knew the value of it, and what a narrow escape he had had, and
so went to his grave grateful to his benefactor and wishing he had a fortune to leave him. It was
all clear and simple, now, and the more he went over it the more luminous and certain it grew;
and at last, when he nestled to sleep, satisfied and happy, he remembered the whole thing just as
if it had been yesterday. In fact, he dimly remembered Goodson's TELLING him his gratitude
once. Meantime Mary had spent six thousand dollars on a new house for herself and a pair of
slippers for her pastor, and then had fallen peacefully to rest.
That same Saturday evening the postman had delivered a letter to each of the other principal
citizens—nineteen letters in all. No two of the envelopes were alike, and no two of the
superscriptions were in the same hand, but the letters inside were just like each other in every
detail but one. They were exact copies of the letter received by Richards—handwriting and all—
and were all signed by Stephenson, but in place of Richards's name each receiver's own name
appeared.
All night long eighteen principal citizens did what their caste-brother Richards was doing at the
same time—they put in their energies trying to remember what notable service it was that they
had unconsciously done Barclay Goodson. In no case was it a holiday job; still they succeeded.
And while they were at this work, which was difficult, their wives put in the night spending the
money, which was easy. During that one night the nineteen wives spent an average of seven
thousand dollars each out of the forty thousand in the sack—a hundred and thirty-three thousand
altogether.
Next day there was a surprise for Jack Halliday. He noticed that the faces of the nineteen chief
citizens and their wives bore that expression of peaceful and holy happiness again. He could not
understand it, neither was he able to invent any remarks about it that could damage it or disturb
it. And so it was his turn to be dissatisfied with life. His private guesses at the reasons for the
happiness failed in all instances, upon examination. When he met Mrs. Wilcox and noticed the
placid ecstasy in her face, he said to himself, "Her cat has had kittens"—and went and asked the
cook; it was not so, the cook had detected the happiness, but did not know the cause. When
Halliday found the duplicate ecstasy in the face of "Shadbelly" Billson (village nickname), he
was sure some neighbour of Billson's had broken his leg, but inquiry showed that this had not
happened. The subdued ecstasy in Gregory Yates's face could mean but one thing—he was a
mother-in-law short; it was another mistake. "And Pinkerton—Pinkerton—he has collected ten
cents that he thought he was going to lose." And so on, and so on. In some cases the guesses had
to remain in doubt, in the others they proved distinct errors. In the end Halliday said to himself,
"Anyway it roots up that there's nineteen Hadleyburg families temporarily in heaven: I don't
know how it happened; I only know Providence is off duty to-day."
An architect and builder from the next State had lately ventured to set up a small business in this
unpromising village, and his sign had now been hanging out a week. Not a customer yet; he was
a discouraged man, and sorry he had come. But his weather changed suddenly now. First one and
then another chief citizen's wife said to him privately:
38
"Come to my house Monday week—but say nothing about it for the present. We think of
building."
He got eleven invitations that day. That night he wrote his daughter and broke off her match with
her student. He said she could marry a mile higher than that.
Pinkerton the banker and two or three other well-to-do men planned country-seats—but waited.
That kind don't count their chickens until they are hatched.
The Wilsons devised a grand new thing—a fancy-dress ball. They made no actual promises, but
told all their acquaintanceship in confidence that they were thinking the matter over and thought
they should give it—"and if we do, you will be invited, of course." People were surprised, and
said, one to another, "Why, they are crazy, those poor Wilsons, they can't afford it." Several
among the nineteen said privately to their husbands, "It is a good idea, we will keep still till their
cheap thing is over, then WE will give one that will make it sick."
The days drifted along, and the bill of future squanderings rose higher and higher, wilder and
wilder, more and more foolish and reckless. It began to look as if every member of the nineteen
would not only spend his whole forty thousand dollars before receiving-day, but be actually in
debt by the time he got the money. In some cases light-headed people did not stop with planning
to spend, they really spent—on credit. They bought land, mortgages, farms, speculative stocks,
fine clothes, horses, and various other things, paid down the bonus, and made themselves liable
for the rest—at ten days. Presently the sober second thought came, and Halliday noticed that a
ghastly anxiety was beginning to show up in a good many faces. Again he was puzzled, and
didn't know what to make of it. "The Wilcox kittens aren't dead, for they weren't born; nobody's
broken a leg; there's no shrinkage in mother-in-laws; NOTHING has happened—it is an
insolvable mystery."
There was another puzzled man, too—the Rev. Mr. Burgess. For days, wherever he went, people
seemed to follow him or to be watching out for him; and if he ever found himself in a retired
spot, a member of the nineteen would be sure to appear, thrust an envelope privately into his
hand, whisper "To be opened at the town-hall Friday evening," then vanish away like a guilty
thing. He was expecting that there might be one claimant for the sack—doubtful, however,
Goodson being dead—but it never occurred to him that all this crowd might be claimants. When
the great Friday came at last, he found that he had nineteen envelopes.
III
The town-hall had never looked finer. The platform at the end of it was backed by a showy
draping of flags; at intervals along the walls were festoons of flags; the gallery fronts were
clothed in flags; the supporting columns were swathed in flags; all this was to impress the
stranger, for he would be there in considerable force, and in a large degree he would be
connected with the press. The house was full. The 412 fixed seats were occupied; also the 68
extra chairs which had been packed into the aisles; the steps of the platform were occupied; some
distinguished strangers were given seats on the platform; at the horseshoe of tables which fenced
the front and sides of the platform sat a strong force of special correspondents who had come
39
from everywhere. It was the best-dressed house the town had ever produced. There were some
tolerably expensive toilets there, and in several cases the ladies who wore them had the look of
being unfamiliar with that kind of clothes. At least the town thought they had that look, but the
notion could have arisen from the town's knowledge of the fact that these ladies had never
inhabited such clothes before.
The gold-sack stood on a little table at the front of the platform where all the house could see it.
The bulk of the house gazed at it with a burning interest, a mouth-watering interest, a wistful and
pathetic interest; a minority of nineteen couples gazed at it tenderly, lovingly, proprietarily, and
the male half of this minority kept saying over to themselves the moving little impromptu
speeches of thankfulness for the audience's applause and congratulations which they were
presently going to get up and deliver. Every now and then one of these got a piece of paper out
of his vest pocket and privately glanced at it to refresh his memory.
Of course there was a buzz of conversation going on—there always is; but at last, when the Rev.
Mr. Burgess rose and laid his hand on the sack, he could hear his microbes gnaw, the place was
so still. He related the curious history of the sack, then went on to speak in warm terms of
Hadleyburg's old and well-earned reputation for spotless honesty, and of the town's just pride in
this reputation. He said that this reputation was a treasure of priceless value; that under
Providence its value had now become inestimably enhanced, for the recent episode had spread
this fame far and wide, and thus had focussed the eyes of the American world upon this village,
and made its name for all time, as he hoped and believed, a synonym for commercial
incorruptibility. (Applause.) "And who is to be the guardian of this noble fame—the community
as a whole? No! The responsibility is individual, not communal. From this day forth each and
every one of you is in his own person its special guardian, and individually responsible that no
harm shall come to it. Do you—does each of you—accept this great trust? (Tumultuous assent.)
Then all is well. Transmit it to your children and to your children's children. To-day your purity
is beyond reproach—see to it that it shall remain so. To-day there is not a person in your
community who could be beguiled to touch a penny not his own—see to it that you abide in this
grace. ("We will! we will!") This is not the place to make comparisons between ourselves and
other communities—some of them ungracious towards us; they have their ways, we have ours;
let us be content. (Applause.) I am done. Under my hand, my friends, rests a stranger's eloquent
recognition of what we are; through him the world will always henceforth know what we are.
We do not know who he is, but in your name I utter your gratitude, and ask you to raise your
voices in indorsement."
The house rose in a body and made the walls quake with the thunders of its thankfulness for the
space of a long minute. Then it sat down, and Mr. Burgess took an envelope out of his pocket.
The house held its breath while he slit the envelope open and took from it a slip of paper. He
read its contents—slowly and impressively—the audience listening with tranced attention to this
magic document, each of whose words stood for an ingot of gold:
"'The remark which I made to the distressed stranger was this: "You are very far from being a
bad man; go, and reform."' Then he continued:—'We shall know in a moment now whether the
remark here quoted corresponds with the one concealed in the sack; and if that shall prove to be
so—and it undoubtedly will—this sack of gold belongs to a fellow-citizen who will henceforth
40
stand before the nation as the symbol of the special virtue which has made our town famous
throughout the land—Mr. Billson!'"
The house had gotten itself all ready to burst into the proper tornado of applause; but instead of
doing it, it seemed stricken with a paralysis; there was a deep hush for a moment or two, then a
wave of whispered murmurs swept the place—of about this tenor: "BILLSON! oh, come, this is
TOO thin! Twenty dollars to a stranger—or ANYBODY—BILLSON! Tell it to the marines!"
And now at this point the house caught its breath all of a sudden in a new access of astonishment,
for it discovered that whereas in one part of the hall Deacon Billson was standing up with his
head weekly bowed, in another part of it Lawyer Wilson was doing the same. There was a
wondering silence now for a while. Everybody was puzzled, and nineteen couples were surprised
and indignant.
Billson and Wilson turned and stared at each other. Billson asked, bitingly:
"Why do YOU rise, Mr. Wilson?"
"Because I have a right to. Perhaps you will be good enough to explain to the house why YOU
rise."
"With great pleasure. Because I wrote that paper."
"It is an impudent falsity! I wrote it myself."
It was Burgess's turn to be paralysed. He stood looking vacantly at first one of the men and then
the other, and did not seem to know what to do. The house was stupefied. Lawyer Wilson spoke
up now, and said:
"I ask the Chair to read the name signed to that paper."
That brought the Chair to itself, and it read out the name:
"John Wharton BILLSON."
"There!" shouted Billson, "what have you got to say for yourself now? And what kind of apology
are you going to make to me and to this insulted house for the imposture which you have
attempted to play here?"
"No apologies are due, sir; and as for the rest of it, I publicly charge you with pilfering my note
from Mr. Burgess and substituting a copy of it signed with your own name. There is no other
way by which you could have gotten hold of the test-remark; I alone, of living men, possessed
the secret of its wording."
There was likely to be a scandalous state of things if this went on; everybody noticed with
distress that the shorthand scribes were scribbling like mad; many people were crying "Chair,
chair! Order! order!" Burgess rapped with his gavel, and said:
41
"Let us not forget the proprieties due. There has evidently been a mistake somewhere, but surely
that is all. If Mr. Wilson gave me an envelope—and I remember now that he did—I still have it."
He took one out of his pocket, opened it, glanced at it, looked surprised and worried, and stood
silent a few moments. Then he waved his hand in a wandering and mechanical way, and made an
effort or two to say something, then gave it up, despondently. Several voices cried out:
"Read it! read it! What is it?"
So he began, in a dazed and sleep-walker fashion:
"'The remark which I made to the unhappy stranger was this: "You are far from being a bad man.
(The house gazed at him marvelling.) Go, and reform."'" (Murmurs: "Amazing! what can this
mean?") "This one," said the Chair, "is signed Thurlow G. Wilson."
"There!" cried Wilson, "I reckon that settles it! I knew perfectly well my note was purloined."
"Purloined!" retorted Billson. "I'll let you know that neither you nor any man of your kidney
must venture to—"
The Chair: "Order, gentlemen, order! Take your seats, both of you, please."
They obeyed, shaking their heads and grumbling angrily. The house was profoundly puzzled; it
did not know what to do with this curious emergency. Presently Thompson got up. Thompson
was the hatter. He would have liked to be a Nineteener; but such was not for him; his stock of
hats was not considerable enough for the position. He said:
"Mr. Chairman, if I may be permitted to make a suggestion, can both of these gentlemen be
right? I put it to you, sir, can both have happened to say the very same words to the stranger? It
seems to me—"
The tanner got up and interrupted him. The tanner was a disgruntled man; he believed himself
entitled to be a Nineteener, but he couldn't get recognition. It made him a little unpleasant in his
ways and speech. Said he:
"Sho, THAT'S not the point! THAT could happen—twice in a hundred years—but not the other
thing. NEITHER of them gave the twenty dollars!" (A ripple of applause.)
Billson. "I did!"
Wilson. "I did!"
Then each accused the other of pilfering.
The Chair. "Order! Sit down, if you please—both of you. Neither of the notes has been out of my
possession at any moment."
42
A Voice. "Good—that settles THAT!"
The Tanner. "Mr. Chairman, one thing is now plain: one of these men has been eavesdropping
under the other one's bed, and filching family secrets. If it is not unparliamentary to suggest it, I
will remark that both are equal to it. (The Chair. "Order! order!") I withdraw the remark, sir, and
will confine myself to suggesting that IF one of them has overheard the other reveal the testremark to his wife, we shall catch him now."
A Voice. "How?"
The Tanner. "Easily. The two have not quoted the remark in exactly the same words. You would
have noticed that, if there hadn't been a considerable stretch of time and an exciting quarrel
inserted between the two readings."
A Voice. "Name the difference."
The Tanner. "The word VERY is in Billson's note, and not in the other."
Many Voices. "That's so—he's right!"
The Tanner. "And so, if the Chair will examine the test-remark in the sack, we shall know which
of these two frauds—(The Chair. "Order!")—which of these two adventurers—(The Chair.
"Order! order!")—which of these two gentlemen—(laughter and applause)—is entitled to wear
the belt as being the first dishonest blatherskite ever bred in this town—which he has
dishonoured, and which will be a sultry place for him from now out!" (Vigorous applause.)
Many Voices. "Open it!—open the sack!"
Mr. Burgess made a slit in the sack, slid his hand in, and brought out an envelope. In it were a
couple of folded notes. He said:
"One of these is marked, 'Not to be examined until all written communications which have been
addressed to the Chair—if any—shall have been read.' The other is marked 'THE TEST.' Allow
me. It is worded—to wit:
"'I do not require that the first half of the remark which was made to me by my benefactor shall
be quoted with exactness, for it was not striking, and could be forgotten; but its closing fifteen
words are quite striking, and I think easily rememberable; unless THESE shall be accurately
reproduced, let the applicant be regarded as an impostor. My benefactor began by saying he
seldom gave advice to anyone, but that it always bore the hallmark of high value when he did
give it. Then he said this—and it has never faded from my memory: 'YOU ARE FAR FROM
BEING A BAD MAN—'"
Fifty Voices. "That settles it—the money's Wilson's! Wilson! Wilson! Speech! Speech!"
43
People jumped up and crowded around Wilson, wringing his hand and congratulating
fervently—meantime the Chair was hammering with the gavel and shouting:
"Order, gentlemen! Order! Order! Let me finish reading, please." When quiet was restored, the
reading was resumed—as follows:
"'GO, AND REFORM—OR, MARK MY WORDS—SOME DAY, FOR YOUR SINS YOU
WILL DIE AND GO TO HELL OR HADLEYBURG—TRY AND MAKE IT THE FORMER.'"
A ghastly silence followed. First an angry cloud began to settle darkly upon the faces of the
citizenship; after a pause the cloud began to rise, and a tickled expression tried to take its place;
tried so hard that it was only kept under with great and painful difficulty; the reporters, the
Brixtonites, and other strangers bent their heads down and shielded their faces with their hands,
and managed to hold in by main strength and heroic courtesy. At this most inopportune time
burst upon the stillness the roar of a solitary voice—Jack Halliday's:
"THAT'S got the hall-mark on it!"
Then the house let go, strangers and all. Even Mr. Burgess's gravity broke down presently, then
the audience considered itself officially absolved from all restraint, and it made the most of its
privilege. It was a good long laugh, and a tempestuously wholehearted one, but it ceased at
last—long enough for Mr. Burgess to try to resume, and for the people to get their eyes partially
wiped; then it broke out again, and afterward yet again; then at last Burgess was able to get out
these serious words:
"It is useless to try to disguise the fact—we find ourselves in the presence of a matter of grave
import. It involves the honour of your town—it strikes at the town's good name. The difference
of a single word between the test-remarks offered by Mr. Wilson and Mr. Billson was itself a
serious thing, since it indicated that one or the other of these gentlemen had committed a theft—"
The two men were sitting limp, nerveless, crushed; but at these words both were electrified into
movement, and started to get up.
"Sit down!" said the Chair, sharply, and they obeyed. "That, as I have said, was a serious thing.
And it was—but for only one of them. But the matter has become graver; for the honour of
BOTH is now in formidable peril. Shall I go even further, and say in inextricable peril? BOTH
left out the crucial fifteen words." He paused. During several moments he allowed the pervading
stillness to gather and deepen its impressive effects, then added: "There would seem to be but
one way whereby this could happen. I ask these gentlemen—Was there COLLUSION?—
AGREEMENT?"
A low murmur sifted through the house; its import was, "He's got them both."
Billson was not used to emergencies; he sat in a helpless collapse. But Wilson was a lawyer. He
struggled to his feet, pale and worried, and said:
44
"I ask the indulgence of the house while I explain this most painful matter. I am sorry to say
what I am about to say, since it must inflict irreparable injury upon Mr. Billson, whom I have
always esteemed and respected until now, and in whose invulnerability to temptation I entirely
believed—as did you all. But for the preservation of my own honour I must speak—and with
frankness. I confess with shame—and I now beseech your pardon for it—that I said to the ruined
stranger all of the words contained in the test-remark, including the disparaging fifteen.
(Sensation.) When the late publication was made I recalled them, and I resolved to claim the sack
of coin, for by every right I was entitled to it. Now I will ask you to consider this point, and
weigh it well; that stranger's gratitude to me that night knew no bounds; he said himself that he
could find no words for it that were adequate, and that if he should ever be able he would repay
me a thousandfold. Now, then, I ask you this; could I expect—could I believe—could I even
remotely imagine—that, feeling as he did, he would do so ungrateful a thing as to add those quite
unnecessary fifteen words to his test?—set a trap for me?—expose me as a slanderer of my own
town before my own people assembled in a public hall? It was preposterous; it was impossible.
His test would contain only the kindly opening clause of my remark. Of that I had no shadow of
doubt. You would have thought as I did. You would not have expected a base betrayal from one
whom you had befriended and against whom you had committed no offence. And so with perfect
confidence, perfect trust, I wrote on a piece of paper the opening words—ending with "Go, and
reform,"—and signed it. When I was about to put it in an envelope I was called into my back
office, and without thinking I left the paper lying open on my desk." He stopped, turned his head
slowly toward Billson, waited a moment, then added: "I ask you to note this; when I returned, a
little latter, Mr. Billson was retiring by my street door." (Sensation.)
In a moment Billson was on his feet and shouting:
"It's a lie! It's an infamous lie!"
The Chair. "Be seated, sir! Mr. Wilson has the floor."
Billson's friends pulled him into his seat and quieted him, and Wilson went on:
"Those are the simple facts. My note was now lying in a different place on the table from where I
had left it. I noticed that, but attached no importance to it, thinking a draught had blown it there.
That Mr. Billson would read a private paper was a thing which could not occur to me; he was an
honourable man, and he would be above that. If you will allow me to say it, I think his extra
word 'VERY' stands explained: it is attributable to a defect of memory. I was the only man in the
world who could furnish here any detail of the test-mark—by HONOURABLE means. I have
finished."
There is nothing in the world like a persuasive speech to fuddle the mental apparatus and upset
the convictions and debauch the emotions of an audience not practised in the tricks and delusions
of oratory. Wilson sat down victorious. The house submerged him in tides of approving
applause; friends swarmed to him and shook him by the hand and congratulated him, and Billson
was shouted down and not allowed to say a word. The Chair hammered and hammered with its
gavel, and kept shouting:
45
"But let us proceed, gentlemen, let us proceed!"
At last there was a measurable degree of quiet, and the hatter said:
"But what is there to proceed with, sir, but to deliver the money?"
Voices. "That's it! That's it! Come forward, Wilson!"
The Hatter. "I move three cheers for Mr. Wilson, Symbol of the special virtue which—"
The cheers burst forth before he could finish; and in the midst of them—and in the midst of the
clamour of the gavel also—some enthusiasts mounted Wilson on a big friend's shoulder and
were going to fetch him in triumph to the platform. The Chair's voice now rose above the noise:
"Order! To your places! You forget that there is still a document to be read." When quiet had
been restored he took up the document, and was going to read it, but laid it down again saying "I
forgot; this is not to be read until all written communications received by me have first been
read." He took an envelope out of his pocket, removed its enclosure, glanced at it—seemed
astonished—held it out and gazed at it—stared at it.
Twenty or thirty voices cried out:
"What is it? Read it! read it!"
And he did—slowly, and wondering:
"'The remark which I made to the stranger—(Voices. "Hello! how's this?")—was this: "You are
far from being a bad man. (Voices. "Great Scott!") Go, and reform."' (Voice. "Oh, saw my leg
off!") Signed by Mr. Pinkerton the banker."
The pandemonium of delight which turned itself loose now was of a sort to make the judicious
weep. Those whose withers were unwrung laughed till the tears ran down; the reporters, in throes
of laughter, set down disordered pot-hooks which would never in the world be decipherable; and
a sleeping dog jumped up scared out of its wits, and barked itself crazy at the turmoil. All
manner of cries were scattered through the din: "We're getting rich—TWO Symbols of
Incorruptibility!—without counting Billson!" "THREE!—count Shadbelly in—we can't have too
many!" "All right—Billson's elected!" "Alas, poor Wilson! victim of TWO thieves!"
A Powerful Voice. "Silence! The Chair's fished up something more out of its pocket."
Voices. "Hurrah! Is it something fresh? Read it! read! read!"
The Chair (reading). "'The remark which I made,' etc. 'You are far from being a bad man. Go,'
etc. Signed, 'Gregory Yates.'"
Tornado of Voices. "Four Symbols!" "'Rah for Yates!" "Fish again!"
46
The house was in a roaring humour now, and ready to get all the fun out of the occasion that
might be in it. Several Nineteeners, looking pale and distressed, got up and began to work their
way towards the aisles, but a score of shouts went up:
"The doors, the doors—close the doors; no Incorruptible shall leave this place! Sit down,
everybody!" The mandate was obeyed.
"Fish again! Read! read!"
The Chair fished again, and once more the familiar words began to fall from its lips—"'You are
far from being a bad man—'"
"Name! name! What's his name?"
"'L. Ingoldsby Sargent.'"
"Five elected! Pile up the Symbols! Go on, go on!"
"'You are far from being a bad—'"
"Name! name!"
"'Nicholas Whitworth.'"
"Hooray! hooray! it's a symbolical day!"
Somebody wailed in, and began to sing this rhyme (leaving out "it's") to the lovely "Mikado"
tune of "When a man's afraid of a beautiful maid;" the audience joined in, with joy; then, just in
time, somebody contributed another line—
"And don't you this forget—"
The house roared it out. A third line was at once furnished—
"Corruptibles far from Hadleyburg are—"
The house roared that one too. As the last note died, Jack Halliday's voice rose high and clear,
freighted with a final line—
"But the Symbols are here, you bet!"
That was sung, with booming enthusiasm. Then the happy house started in at the beginning and
sang the four lines through twice, with immense swing and dash, and finished up with a crashing
three-times-three and a tiger for "Hadleyburg the Incorruptible and all Symbols of it which we
shall find worthy to receive the hall-mark to-night."
47
Then the shoutings at the Chair began again, all over the place:
"Go on! go on! Read! read some more! Read all you've got!"
"That's it—go on! We are winning eternal celebrity!"
A dozen men got up now and began to protest. They said that this farce was the work of some
abandoned joker, and was an insult to the whole community. Without a doubt these signatures
were all forgeries—
"Sit down! sit down! Shut up! You are confessing. We'll find your names in the lot."
"Mr. Chairman, how many of those envelopes have you got?"
The Chair counted.
"Together with those that have been already examined, there are nineteen."
A storm of derisive applause broke out.
"Perhaps they all contain the secret. I move that you open them all and read every signature that
is attached to a note of that sort—and read also the first eight words of the note."
"Second the motion!"
It was put and carried—uproariously. Then poor old Richards got up, and his wife rose and stood
at his side. Her head was bent down, so that none might see that she was crying. Her husband
gave her his arm, and so supporting her, he began to speak in a quavering voice:
"My friends, you have known us two—Mary and me—all our lives, and I think you have liked us
and respected us—"
The Chair interrupted him:
"Allow me. It is quite true—that which you are saying, Mr. Richards; this town DOES know you
two; it DOES like you; it DOES respect you; more—it honours you and LOVES you—"
Halliday's voice rang out:
"That's the hall-marked truth, too! If the Chair is right, let the house speak up and say it. Rise!
Now, then—hip! hip! hip!—all together!"
The house rose in mass, faced toward the old couple eagerly, filled the air with a snow-storm of
waving handkerchiefs, and delivered the cheers with all its affectionate heart.
The Chair then continued:
48
"What I was going to say is this: We know your good heart, Mr. Richards, but this is not a time
for the exercise of charity toward offenders. (Shouts of "Right! right!") I see your generous
purpose in your face, but I cannot allow you to plead for these men—"
"But I was going to—"
"Please take your seat, Mr. Richards. We must examine the rest of these notes—simple fairness
to the men who have already been exposed requires this. As soon as that has been done—I give
you my word for this—you shall be heard."
Many voices. "Right!—the Chair is right—no interruption can be permitted at this stage! Go
on!—the names! the names!—according to the terms of the motion!"
The old couple sat reluctantly down, and the husband whispered to the wife, "It is pitifully hard
to have to wait; the shame will be greater than ever when they find we were only going to plead
for OURSELVES."
Straightway the jollity broke loose again with the reading of the names.
"'You are far from being a bad man—' Signature, 'Robert J. Titmarsh.'"
'"You are far from being a bad man—' Signature, 'Eliphalet Weeks.'"
"'You are far from being a bad man—' Signature, 'Oscar B. Wilder.'"
At this point the house lit upon the idea of taking the eight words out of the Chairman's hands.
He was not unthankful for that. Thenceforward he held up each note in its turn and waited. The
house droned out the eight words in a massed and measured and musical deep volume of sound
(with a daringly close resemblance to a well-known church chant)—"You are f-a-r from being a
b-a-a-a-d man." Then the Chair said, "Signature, 'Archibald Wilcox.'" And so on, and so on,
name after name, and everybody had an increasingly and gloriously good time except the
wretched Nineteen. Now and then, when a particularly shining name was called, the house made
the Chair wait while it chanted the whole of the test-remark from the beginning to the closing
words, "And go to hell or Hadleyburg—try and make it the for-or-m-e-r!" and in these special
cases they added a grand and agonised and imposing "A-a-a-a-MEN!"
The list dwindled, dwindled, dwindled, poor old Richards keeping tally of the count, wincing
when a name resembling his own was pronounced, and waiting in miserable suspense for the
time to come when it would be his humiliating privilege to rise with Mary and finish his plea,
which he was intending to word thus: "... for until now we have never done any wrong thing, but
have gone our humble way unreproached. We are very poor, we are old, and, have no chick nor
child to help us; we were sorely tempted, and we fell. It was my purpose when I got up before to
make confession and beg that my name might not be read out in this public place, for it seemed
to us that we could not bear it; but I was prevented. It was just; it was our place to suffer with the
rest. It has been hard for us. It is the first time we have ever heard our name fall from any one's
lips—sullied. Be merciful—for the sake or the better days; make our shame as light to bear as in
49
your charity you can." At this point in his reverie Mary nudged him, perceiving that his mind
was absent. The house was chanting, "You are f-a-r," etc.
"Be ready," Mary whispered. "Your name comes now; he has read eighteen."
The chant ended.
"Next! next! next!" came volleying from all over the house.
Burgess put his hand into his pocket. The old couple, trembling, began to rise. Burgess fumbled a
moment, then said:
"I find I have read them all."
Faint with joy and surprise, the couple sank into their seats, and Mary whispered:
"Oh, bless God, we are saved!—he has lost ours—I wouldn't give this for a hundred of those
sacks!"
The house burst out with its "Mikado" travesty, and sang it three times with ever-increasing
enthusiasm, rising to its feet when it reached for the third time the closing line—
"But the Symbols are here, you bet!"
and finishing up with cheers and a tiger for "Hadleyburg purity and our eighteen immortal
representatives of it."
Then Wingate, the saddler, got up and proposed cheers "for the cleanest man in town, the one
solitary important citizen in it who didn't try to steal that money—Edward Richards."
They were given with great and moving heartiness; then somebody proposed that "Richards be
elected sole Guardian and Symbol of the now Sacred Hadleyburg Tradition, with power and
right to stand up and look the whole sarcastic world in the face."
Passed, by acclamation; then they sang the "Mikado" again, and ended it with—
"And there's ONE Symbol left, you bet!"
There was a pause; then—
A Voice. "Now, then, who's to get the sack?"
The Tanner (with bitter sarcasm). "That's easy. The money has to be divided among the eighteen
Incorruptibles. They gave the suffering stranger twenty dollars apiece—and that remark—each in
his turn—it took twenty-two minutes for the procession to move past. Staked the stranger—total
50
contribution, $360. All they want is just the loan back—and interest—forty thousand dollars
altogether."
Many Voices (derisively.) "That's it! Divvy! divvy! Be kind to the poor—don't keep them
waiting!"
The Chair. "Order! I now offer the stranger's remaining document. It says: 'If no claimant shall
appear (grand chorus of groans), I desire that you open the sack and count out the money to the
principal citizens of your town, they to take it in trust (Cries of "Oh! Oh! Oh!"), and use it in
such ways as to them shall seem best for the propagation and preservation of your community's
noble reputation for incorruptible honesty (more cries)—a reputation to which their names and
their efforts will add a new and far-reaching lustre." (Enthusiastic outburst of sarcastic applause.)
That seems to be all. No—here is a postscript:
"'P.S.—CITIZENS OF HADLEYBURG: There IS no test-remark—nobody made one. (Great
sensation.) There wasn't any pauper stranger, nor any twenty-dollar contribution, nor any
accompanying benediction and compliment—these are all inventions. (General buzz and hum of
astonishment and delight.) Allow me to tell my story—it will take but a word or two. I passed
through your town at a certain time, and received a deep offence which I had not earned. Any
other man would have been content to kill one or two of you and call it square, but to me that
would have been a trivial revenge, and inadequate; for the dead do not SUFFER. Besides I could
not kill you all—and, anyway, made as I am, even that would not have satisfied me. I wanted to
damage every man in the place, and every woman—and not in their bodies or in their estate, but
in their vanity—the place where feeble and foolish people are most vulnerable. So I disguised
myself and came back and studied you. You were easy game. You had an old and lofty
reputation for honesty, and naturally you were proud of it—it was your treasure of treasures, the
very apple of your eye. As soon as I found out that you carefully and vigilantly kept yourselves
and your children OUT OF TEMPTATION, I knew how to proceed. Why, you simple creatures,
the weakest of all weak things is a virtue which has not been tested in the fire. I laid a plan, and
gathered a list of names. My project was to corrupt Hadleyburg the Incorruptible. My idea was to
make liars and thieves of nearly half a hundred smirchless men and women who had never in
their lives uttered a lie or stolen a penny. I was afraid of Goodson. He was neither born nor
reared in Hadleyburg. I was afraid that if I started to operate my scheme by getting my letter laid
before you, you would say to yourselves, 'Goodson is the only man among us who would give
away twenty dollars to a poor devil'—and then you might not bite at my bait. But heaven took
Goodson; then I knew I was safe, and I set my trap and baited it. It may be that I shall not catch
all the men to whom I mailed the pretended test-secret, but I shall catch the most of them, if I
know Hadleyburg nature. (Voices. "Right—he got every last one of them.") I believe they will
even steal ostensible GAMBLE-money, rather than miss, poor, tempted, and mistrained fellows.
I am hoping to eternally and everlastingly squelch your vanity and give Hadleyburg a new
renown—one that will STICK—and spread far. If I have succeeded, open the sack and summon
the Committee on Propagation and Preservation of the Hadleyburg Reputation.'"
A Cyclone of Voices. "Open it! Open it! The Eighteen to the front! Committee on Propagation of
the Tradition! Forward—the Incorruptibles!"
51
The Chair ripped the sack wide, and gathered up a handful of bright, broad, yellow coins, shook
them together, then examined them.
"Friends, they are only gilded disks of lead!"
There was a crashing outbreak of delight over this news, and when the noise had subsided, the
tanner called out:
"By right of apparent seniority in this business, Mr. Wilson is Chairman of the Committee on
Propagation of the Tradition. I suggest that he step forward on behalf of his pals, and receive in
trust the money."
A Hundred Voices. "Wilson! Wilson! Wilson! Speech! Speech!"
Wilson (in a voice trembling with anger). "You will allow me to say, and without apologies for
my language, DAMN the money!"
A Voice. "Oh, and him a Baptist!"
A Voice. "Seventeen Symbols left! Step up, gentlemen, and assume your trust!"
There was a pause—no response.
The Saddler. "Mr. Chairman, we've got ONE clean man left, anyway, out of the late aristocracy;
and he needs money, and deserves it. I move that you appoint Jack Halliday to get up there and
auction off that sack of gilt twenty-dollar pieces, and give the result to the right man—the man
whom Hadleyburg delights to honour—Edward Richards."
This was received with great enthusiasm, the dog taking a hand again; the saddler started the bids
at a dollar, the Brixton folk and Barnum's representative fought hard for it, the people cheered
every jump that the bids made, the excitement climbed moment by moment higher and higher,
the bidders got on their mettle and grew steadily more and more daring, more and more
determined, the jumps went from a dollar up to five, then to ten, then to twenty, then fifty, then
to a hundred, then—
At the beginning of the auction Richards whispered in distress to his wife: "Oh, Mary, can we
allow it? It—it—you see, it is an honour—reward, a testimonial to purity of character, and—
and—can we allow it? Hadn't I better get up and—Oh, Mary, what ought we to do?—what do
you think we—" (Halliday's voice. "Fifteen I'm bid!—fifteen for the sack!—twenty!—ah,
thanks!—thirty—thanks again! Thirty, thirty, thirty!—do I hear forty?—forty it is! Keep the ball
rolling, gentlemen, keep it rolling!—fifty!—thanks, noble Roman!—going at fifty, fifty, fifty!—
seventy!—ninety!—splendid!—a hundred!—pile it up, pile it up!—hundred and twenty—
forty!—just in time!—hundred and fifty!—Two hundred!—superb! Do I hear two h—thanks!—
two hundred and fifty!—")
52
"It is another temptation, Edward—I'm all in a tremble—but, oh, we've escaped one temptation,
and that ought to warn us, to—("Six did I hear?—thanks!—six fifty, six f—SEVEN hundred!")
And yet, Edward, when you think—nobody susp—("Eight hundred dollars!—hurrah!—make it
nine!—Mr. Parsons, did I hear you say—thanks!—nine!—this noble sack of virgin lead going at
only nine hundred dollars, gilding and all—come! do I hear—a thousand!—gratefully yours!—
did some one say eleven?—a sack which is going to be the most celebrated in the whole Uni—")
Oh, Edward (beginning to sob), we are so poor!—but—but—do as you think best—do as you
think best."
Edward fell—that is, he sat still; sat with a conscience which was not satisfied, but which was
overpowered by circumstances.
Meantime a stranger, who looked like an amateur detective gotten up as an impossible English
earl, had been watching the evening's proceedings with manifest interest, and with a contented
expression in his face; and he had been privately commenting to himself. He was now
soliloquising somewhat like this: 'None of the Eighteen are bidding; that is not satisfactory; I
must change that—the dramatic unities require it; they must buy the sack they tried to steal; they
must pay a heavy price, too—some of them are rich. And another thing, when I make a mistake
in Hadleyburg nature the man that puts that error upon me is entitled to a high honorarium, and
some one must pay. This poor old Richards has brought my judgment to shame; he is an honest
man:—I don't understand it, but I acknowledge it. Yes, he saw my deuces—AND with a straight
flush, and by rights the pot is his. And it shall be a jack-pot, too, if I can manage it. He
disappointed me, but let that pass.'
He was watching the bidding. At a thousand, the market broke: the prices tumbled swiftly. He
waited—and still watched. One competitor dropped out; then another, and another. He put in a
bid or two now. When the bids had sunk to ten dollars, he added a five; some one raised him a
three; he waited a moment, then flung in a fifty-dollar jump, and the sack was his—at $1,282.
The house broke out in cheers—then stopped; for he was on his feet, and had lifted his hand. He
began to speak.
"I desire to say a word, and ask a favour. I am a speculator in rarities, and I have dealings with
persons interested in numismatics all over the world. I can make a profit on this purchase, just as
it stands; but there is a way, if I can get your approval, whereby I can make every one of these
leaden twenty-dollar pieces worth its face in gold, and perhaps more. Grant me that approval,
and I will give part of my gains to your Mr. Richards, whose invulnerable probity you have so
justly and so cordially recognised tonight; his share shall be ten thousand dollars, and I will hand
him the money to-morrow. (Great applause from the house. But the "invulnerable probity" made
the Richardses blush prettily; however, it went for modesty, and did no harm.) If you will pass
my proposition by a good majority—I would like a two-thirds vote—I will regard that as the
town's consent, and that is all I ask. Rarities are always helped by any device which will rouse
curiosity and compel remark. Now if I may have your permission to stamp upon the faces of
each of these ostensible coins the names of the eighteen gentlemen who—"
Nine-tenths of the audience were on their feet in a moment—dog and all—and the proposition
was carried with a whirlwind of approving applause and laughter.
53
They sat down, and all the Symbols except "Dr." Clay Harkness got up, violently protesting
against the proposed outrage, and threatening to—
"I beg you not to threaten me," said the stranger calmly. "I know my legal rights, and am not
accustomed to being frightened at bluster." (Applause.) He sat down. "Dr." Harkness saw an
opportunity here. He was one of the two very rich men of the place, and Pinkerton was the other.
Harkness was proprietor of a mint; that is to say, a popular patent medicine. He was running for
the Legislature on one ticket, and Pinkerton on the other. It was a close race and a hot one, and
getting hotter every day. Both had strong appetites for money; each had bought a great tract of
land, with a purpose; there was going to be a new railway, and each wanted to be in the
Legislature and help locate the route to his own advantage; a single vote might make the
decision, and with it two or three fortunes. The stake was large, and Harkness was a daring
speculator. He was sitting close to the stranger. He leaned over while one or another of the other
Symbols was entertaining the house with protests and appeals, and asked, in a whisper,
"What is your price for the sack?"
"Forty thousand dollars."
"I'll give you twenty."
"No."
"Twenty-five."
"No."
"Say thirty."
"The price is forty thousand dollars; not a penny less."
"All right, I'll give it. I will come to the hotel at ten in the morning. I don't want it known; will
see you privately."
"Very good." Then the stranger got up and said to the house:
"I find it late. The speeches of these gentlemen are not without merit, not without interest, not
without grace; yet if I may be excused I will take my leave. I thank you for the great favour
which you have shown me in granting my petition. I ask the Chair to keep the sack for me until
to-morrow, and to hand these three five-hundred-dollar notes to Mr. Richards." They were
passed up to the Chair.
"At nine I will call for the sack, and at eleven will deliver the rest of the ten thousand to Mr.
Richards in person at his home. Good-night."
54
Then he slipped out, and left the audience making a vast noise, which was composed of a
mixture of cheers, the "Mikado" song, dog-disapproval, and the chant, "You are f-a-r from being
a b-a-a-d man—a-a-a a-men!"
IV
At home the Richardses had to endure congratulations and compliments until midnight. Then
they were left to themselves. They looked a little sad, and they sat silent and thinking. Finally
Mary sighed and said:
"Do you think we are to blame, Edward—MUCH to blame?" and her eyes wandered to the
accusing triplet of big bank-notes lying on the table, where the congratulators had been gloating
over them and reverently fingering them. Edward did not answer at once; then he brought out a
sigh and said, hesitatingly:
"We—we couldn't help it, Mary. It—well it was ordered. ALL things are."
Mary glanced up and looked at him steadily, but he didn't return the look. Presently she said:
"I thought congratulations and praises always tasted good. But—it seems to me, now—Edward?"
"Well?"
"Are you going to stay in the bank?"
"N—no."
"Resign?"
"In the morning—by note."
"It does seem best."
Richards bowed his head in his hands and muttered:
"Before I was not afraid to let oceans of people's money pour through my hands, but—Mary, I
am so tired, so tired—"
"We will go to bed."
At nine in the morning the stranger called for the sack and took it to the hotel in a cab. At ten
Harkness had a talk with him privately. The stranger asked for and got five cheques on a
metropolitan bank—drawn to "Bearer,"—four for $1,500 each, and one for $34,000. He put one
of the former in his pocket-book, and the remainder, representing $38,500, he put in an envelope,
and with these he added a note which he wrote after Harkness was gone. At eleven he called at
the Richards' house and knocked. Mrs. Richards peeped through the shutters, then went and
55
received the envelope, and the stranger disappeared without a word. She came back flushed and
a little unsteady on her legs, and gasped out:
"I am sure I recognised him! Last night it seemed to me that maybe I had seen him somewhere
before."
"He is the man that brought the sack here?"
"I am almost sure of it."
"Then he is the ostensible Stephenson too, and sold every important citizen in this town with his
bogus secret. Now if he has sent cheques instead of money, we are sold too, after we thought we
had escaped. I was beginning to feel fairly comfortable once more, after my night's rest, but the
look of that envelope makes me sick. It isn't fat enough; $8,500 in even the largest bank-notes
makes more bulk than that."
"Edward, why do you object to cheques?"
"Cheques signed by Stephenson! I am resigned to take the $8,500 if it could come in banknotes—for it does seem that it was so ordered, Mary—but I have never had much courage, and I
have not the pluck to try to market a cheque signed with that disastrous name. It would be a trap.
That man tried to catch me; we escaped somehow or other; and now he is trying a new way. If it
is cheques—"
"Oh, Edward, it is TOO bad!" And she held up the cheques and began to cry.
"Put them in the fire! quick! we mustn't be tempted. It is a trick to make the world laugh at US,
along with the rest, and—Give them to ME, since you can't do it!" He snatched them and tried to
hold his grip till he could get to the stove; but he was human, he was a cashier, and he stopped a
moment to make sure of the signature. Then he came near to fainting.
"Fan me, Mary, fan me! They are the same as gold!"
"Oh, how lovely, Edward! Why?"
"Signed by Harkness. What can the mystery of that be, Mary?"
"Edward, do you think—"
"Look here—look at this! Fifteen—fifteen—fifteen—thirty-four. Thirty-eight thousand five
hundred! Mary, the sack isn't worth twelve dollars, and Harkness—apparently—has paid about
par for it."
"And does it all come to us, do you think—instead of the ten thousand?"
"Why, it looks like it. And the cheques are made to 'Bearer,' too."
56
"Is that good, Edward? What is it for?"
"A hint to collect them at some distant bank, I reckon. Perhaps Harkness doesn't want the matter
known. What is that—a note?"
"Yes. It was with the cheques."
It was in the "Stephenson" handwriting, but there was no signature. It said:
"I am a disappointed man. Your honesty is beyond the reach of temptation. I had a different idea
about it, but I wronged you in that, and I beg pardon, and do it sincerely. I honour you—and that
is sincere too. This town is not worthy to kiss the hem of your garment. Dear sir, I made a square
bet with myself that there were nineteen debauchable men in your self-righteous community. I
have lost. Take the whole pot, you are entitled to it." Richards drew a deep sigh, and said:
"It seems written with fire—it burns so. Mary—I am miserable again."
"I, too. Ah, dear, I wish—"
"To think, Mary—he BELIEVES in me."
"Oh, don't, Edward—I can't bear it."
"If those beautiful words were deserved, Mary—and God knows I believed I deserved them
once—I think I could give the forty thousand dollars for them. And I would put that paper away,
as representing more than gold and jewels, and keep it always. But now—We could not live in
the shadow of its accusing presence, Mary."
He put it in the fire.
A messenger arrived and delivered an envelope. Richards took from it a note and read it; it was
from Burgess:
"You saved me, in a difficult time. I saved you last night. It was at cost of a lie, but I made the
sacrifice freely, and out of a grateful heart. None in this village knows so well as I know how
brave and good and noble you are. At bottom you cannot respect me, knowing as you do of that
matter of which I am accused, and by the general voice condemned; but I beg that you will at
least believe that I am a grateful man; it will help me to bear my burden. (Signed) 'BURGESS.'"
"Saved, once more. And on such terms!" He put the note in the lire. "I—I wish I were dead,
Mary, I wish I were out of it all!"
"Oh, these are bitter, bitter days, Edward. The stabs, through their very generosity, are so deep—
and they come so fast!"
57
Three days before the election each of two thousand voters suddenly found himself in possession
of a prized memento—one of the renowned bogus double-eagles. Around one of its faces was
stamped these words: "THE REMARK I MADE TO THE POOR STRANGER WAS—" Around
the other face was stamped these: "GO, AND REFORM. (SIGNED) PINKERTON." Thus the
entire remaining refuse of the renowned joke was emptied upon a single head, and with
calamitous effect. It revived the recent vast laugh and concentrated it upon Pinkerton; and
Harkness's election was a walk-over.
Within twenty-four hours after the Richardses had received their cheques their consciences were
quieting down, discouraged; the old couple were learning to reconcile themselves to the sin
which they had committed. But they were to learn, now, that a sin takes on new and real terrors
when there seems a chance that it is going to be found out. This gives it a fresh and most
substantial and important aspect. At church the morning sermon was of the usual pattern; it was
the same old things said in the same old way; they had heard them a thousand times and found
them innocuous, next to meaningless, and easy to sleep under; but now it was different: the
sermon seemed to bristle with accusations; it seemed aimed straight and specially at people who
were concealing deadly sins. After church they got away from the mob of congratulators as soon
as they could, and hurried homeward, chilled to the bone at they did not know what—vague,
shadowy, indefinite fears. And by chance they caught a glimpse of Mr. Burgess as he turned a
corner. He paid no attention to their nod of recognition! He hadn't seen it; but they did not know
that. What could his conduct mean? It might mean—it might—mean—oh, a dozen dreadful
things. Was it possible that he knew that Richards could have cleared him of guilt in that bygone
time, and had been silently waiting for a chance to even up accounts? At home, in their distress
they got to imagining that their servant might have been in the next room listening when
Richards revealed the secret to his wife that he knew of Burgess's innocence; next Richards
began to imagine that he had heard the swish of a gown in there at that time; next, he was sure he
HAD heard it. They would call Sarah in, on a pretext, and watch her face; if she had been
betraying them to Mr. Burgess, it would show in her manner. They asked her some questions—
questions which were so random and incoherent and seemingly purposeless that the girl felt sure
that the old people's minds had been affected by their sudden good fortune; the sharp and
watchful gaze which they bent upon her frightened her, and that completed the business. She
blushed, she became nervous and confused, and to the old people these were plain signs of
guilt—guilt of some fearful sort or other—without doubt she was a spy and a traitor. When they
were alone again they began to piece many unrelated things together and get horrible results out
of the combination. When things had got about to the worst Richards was delivered of a sudden
gasp and his wife asked:
"Oh, what is it?—what is it?"
"The note—Burgess's note! Its language was sarcastic, I see it now." He quoted: "'At bottom you
cannot respect me, KNOWING, as you do, of THAT MATTER OF which I am accused'—oh, it
is perfectly plain, now, God help me! He knows that I know! You see the ingenuity of the
phrasing. It was a trap—and like a fool, I walked into it. And Mary—!"
"Oh, it is dreadful—I know what you are going to say—he didn't return your transcript of the
pretended test-remark."
58
"No—kept it to destroy us with. Mary, he has exposed us to some already. I know it—I know it
well. I saw it in a dozen faces after church. Ah, he wouldn't answer our nod of recognition—he
knew what he had been doing!"
In the night the doctor was called. The news went around in the morning that the old couple were
rather seriously ill—prostrated by the exhausting excitement growing out of their great windfall,
the congratulations, and the late hours, the doctor said. The town was sincerely distressed; for
these old people were about all it had left to be proud of, now.
Two days later the news was worse. The old couple were delirious, and were doing strange
things. By witness of the nurses, Richards had exhibited cheques—for $8,500? No—for an
amazing sum—$38,500! What could be the explanation of this gigantic piece of luck?
The following day the nurses had more news—and wonderful. They had concluded to hide the
cheques, lest harm come to them; but when they searched they were gone from under the
patient's pillow—vanished away. The patient said:
"Let the pillow alone; what do you want?"
"We thought it best that the cheques—"
"You will never see them again—they are destroyed. They came from Satan. I saw the hell-brand
on them, and I knew they were sent to betray me to sin." Then he fell to gabbling strange and
dreadful things which were not clearly understandable, and which the doctor admonished them to
keep to themselves.
Richards was right; the cheques were never seen again.
A nurse must have talked in her sleep, for within two days the forbidden gabblings were the
property of the town; and they were of a surprising sort. They seemed to indicate that Richards
had been a claimant for the sack himself, and that Burgess had concealed that fact and then
maliciously betrayed it.
Burgess was taxed with this and stoutly denied it. And he said it was not fair to attach weight to
the chatter of a sick old man who was out of his mind. Still, suspicion was in the air, and there
was much talk.
After a day or two it was reported that Mrs. Richards's delirious deliveries were getting to be
duplicates of her husband's. Suspicion flamed up into conviction, now, and the town's pride in
the purity of its one undiscredited important citizen began to dim down and flicker toward
extinction.
Six days passed, then came more news. The old couple were dying. Richards's mind cleared in
his latest hour, and he sent for Burgess. Burgess said:
"Let the room be cleared. I think he wishes to say something in privacy."
59
"No!" said Richards; "I want witnesses. I want you all to hear my confession, so that I may die a
man, and not a dog. I was clean—artificially—like the rest; and like the rest I fell when
temptation came. I signed a lie, and claimed the miserable sack. Mr. Burgess remembered that I
had done him a service, and in gratitude (and ignorance) he suppressed my claim and saved me.
You know the thing that was charged against Burgess years ago. My testimony, and mine alone,
could have cleared him, and I was a coward and left him to suffer disgrace—"
"No—no—Mr. Richards, you—"
"My servant betrayed my secret to him—"
"No one has betrayed anything to me—" "—And then he did a natural and justifiable thing; he
repented of the saving kindness which he had done me, and he EXPOSED me—as I deserved—"
"Never!—I make oath—"
"Out of my heart I forgive him."
Burgess's impassioned protestations fell upon deaf ears; the dying man passed away without
knowing that once more he had done poor Burgess a wrong. The old wife died that night.
The last of the sacred Nineteen had fallen a prey to the fiendish sack; the town was stripped of
the last rag of its ancient glory. Its mourning was not showy, but it was deep.
By act of the Legislature—upon prayer and petition—Hadleyburg was allowed to change its
name to (never mind what—I will not give it away), and leave one word out of the motto that for
many generations had graced the town's official seal.
It is an honest town once more, and the man will have to rise early that catches it napping again.
The War Prayer
Twain, Mark. "The War Prayer." Harper's Monthly. November, 1916.
source of etext: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_War_Prayer
It was a time of great and exalting excitement.
The country was up in arms, the war was on, in every breast burned the holy fire of patriotism;
the drums were beating, the bands playing, the toy pistols popping, the bunched firecrackers
hissing and spluttering; on every hand and far down the receding and fading spread of roofs and
balconies a fluttering wilderness of flags flashed in the sun; daily the young volunteers marched
down the wide avenue gay and fine in their new uniforms, the proud fathers and mothers and
sisters and sweethearts cheering them with voices choked with happy emotion as they swung by;
nightly the packed mass meetings listened, panting, to patriot oratory which stirred the deepest
deeps of their hearts, and which they interrupted at briefest intervals with cyclones of applause,
60
the tears running down their cheeks the while; in the churches the pastors preached devotion to
flag and country, and invoked the God of Battles beseeching His aid in our good cause in
outpourings of fervid eloquence which moved every listener. It was indeed a glad and gracious
time, and the half dozen rash spirits that ventured to disapprove of the war and cast a doubt upon
its righteousness straightway got such a stern and angry warning that for their personal safety's
sake they quickly shrank out of sight and offended no more in that way.
Sunday morning came – next day the battalions would leave for the front; the church was filled;
the volunteers were there, their young faces alight with martial dreams – visions of the stern
advance, the gathering momentum, the rushing charge, the flashing sabers, the flight of the foe,
the tumult, the enveloping smoke, the fierce pursuit, the surrender! Then home from the war,
bronzed heroes, welcomed, adored, submerged in golden seas of glory! With the volunteers sat
their dear ones, proud, happy, and envied by the neighbors and friends who had no sons and
brothers to send forth to the field of honor, there to win for the flag, or, failing, die the noblest of
noble deaths. The service proceeded; a war chapter from the Old Testament was read; the first
prayer was said; it was followed by an organ burst that shook the building, and with one impulse
the house rose, with glowing eyes and beating hearts, and poured out that tremendous invocation
God the all-terrible!
Thou who ordainest!
Thunder thy clarion
and lightning thy sword!
Then came the "long" prayer. None could remember the like of it for passionate pleading and
moving and beautiful language. The burden of its supplication was, that an ever-merciful and
benignant Father of us all would watch over our noble young soldiers, and aid, comfort, and
encourage them in their patriotic work; bless them, shield them in the day of battle and the hour
of peril, bear them in His mighty hand, make them strong and confident, invincible in the bloody
onset; help them to crush the foe, grant to them and to their flag and country imperishable honor
and glory –
An aged stranger entered and moved with slow and noiseless step up the main aisle, his eyes
fixed upon the minister, his long body clothed in a robe that reached to his feet, his head bare, his
white hair descending in a frothy cataract to his shoulders, his seamy face unnaturally pale, pale
even to ghastliness. With all eyes following him and wondering, he made his silent way; without
pausing, he ascended to the preacher's side and stood there waiting. With shut lids the preacher,
unconscious of his presence, continued with his moving prayer, and at last finished it with the
words, uttered in fervent appeal, "Bless our arms, grant us the victory, O Lord our God, Father
and Protector of our land and flag!"
The stranger touched his arm, motioned him to step aside – which the startled minister did – and
took his place. During some moments he surveyed the spellbound audience with solemn eyes, in
which burned an uncanny light; then in a deep voice he said:
61
"I come from the Throne – bearing a message from Almighty God!" The words smote the house
with a shock; if the stranger perceived it he gave no attention. "He has heard the prayer of His
servant your shepherd, and will grant it if such shall be your desire after I, His messenger, shall
have explained to you its import – that is to say, its full import. For it is like unto many of the
prayers of men, in that it asks for more than he who utters it is aware of – except he pause and
think.
"God's servant and yours has prayed his prayer. Has he paused and taken thought? Is it one
prayer? No, it is two – one uttered, the other not. Both have reached the ear of Him Who heareth
all supplications, the spoken and the unspoken. Ponder this – keep it in mind. If you would
beseech a blessing upon yourself, beware! lest without intent you invoke a curse upon a neighbor
at the same time. If you pray for the blessing of rain upon your crop which needs it, by that act
you are possibly praying for a curse upon some neighbor's crop which may not need rain and can
be injured by it.
"You have heard your servant's prayer – the uttered part of it. I am commissioned of God to put
into words the other part of it – that part which the pastor – and also you in your hearts –
fervently prayed silently. And ignorantly and unthinkingly? God grant that it was so! You heard
these words: 'Grant us the victory, O Lord our God!' That is sufficient. the whole of the uttered
prayer is compact into those pregnant words. Elaborations were not necessary. When you have
prayed for victory you have prayed for many unmentioned results which follow victory – must
follow it, cannot help but follow it. Upon the listening spirit of God fell also the unspoken part of
the prayer. He commandeth me to put it into words. Listen!
"O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle – be Thou near
them! With them – in spirit – we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to
smite the foe.
O Lord our God,
help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells;
help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead;
help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain;
help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire;
help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief;
help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their
desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst,
sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter,
broken in spirit,
62
worn with travail,
imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it –
for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord,
blast their hopes,
blight their lives,
protract their bitter pilgrimage,
make heavy their steps,
water their way with their tears,
stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet!
We ask it, in the spirit of love,
of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are
sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts.
Amen.
(After a pause.) "Ye have prayed it; if ye still desire it, speak! The messenger of the Most High
waits!"
It was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic, because there was no sense in what he said.
Resources for The Rise of Realism
William Dean Howells (1837-1920)
[image] William Dean Howells was a key writer, critic, and editor of the ninetieth and early
twentieth century, greatly advancing the careers of writers like Mark Twain and Henry James.
He was a prolific writer himself, perhaps best known for his novels, A Modern Instance (1881),
The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885), and A Hazard of New Fortunes (1890). He was born on March
1, 1837, in what is now Martins Ferry, Ohio. Like Twain, Howells was largely self-educated and
started out as a typesetter and printer’s apprentice. His writing of Abraham Lincoln’s official
biography helped to secure a political appointment abroad. He cultivated friendships with many
key American writers and publishers and eventually became editor of the influential Atlantic
Monthly magazine. From this position, he championed American literary realism and the many
authors who adopted this style of writing. He married artist and architect Elinor Mead, a member
of a prestigious New England family, in 1862 and they had three children. Howells died on May
63
11, 1920 and is buried in Cambridge Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Key biographies
include Edwin Cady's two volumes on William Dean Howells, Syracuse University Press, 1956
and 1958; and John Crowley's The Black Heart's Truth, The Early Career of William Dean
Howells, University of North Carolina Press, 1985. The scope of criticism on this author is
massive. A good starting place for exploration is the William Dean Howells Society site at:
http://public.wsu.edu/~campbelld/howells
from The Editor's Study
Howells, William Dean. "from Chapter II." Criticism and Fiction. New York: Harper and
Brothers, 1892.
source of etext: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3377
originally published in
Howells, William Dean. "Editor's Study." Harper's New Monthly Magazine 76.451: (December
1887). 153-156.
[omitted text]
The young writer who attempts to report the phrase and carriage of every-day life, who tries to
tell just how he has heard men talk and seen them look, is made to feel guilty of something low
and unworthy by people who would like to have him show how Shakespeare's men talked and
looked, or Scott's, or Thackeray's, or Balzac's, or Hawthorne's, or Dickens's; he is instructed to
idealize his personages, that is, to take the life-likeness out of them, and put the book-likeness
into them. He is approached in the spirit of the pedantry into which learning, much or little,
always decays when it withdraws itself and stands apart from experience in an attitude of
imagined superiority, and which would say with the same confidence to the scientist: "I see that
you are looking at a grasshopper there which you have found in the grass, and I suppose you
intend to describe it. Now don't waste your time and sin against culture in that way. I've got a
grasshopper here, which has been evolved at considerable pains and expense out of the
grasshopper in general; in fact, it's a type. It's made up of wire and card-board, very prettily
painted in a conventional tint, and it's perfectly indestructible. It isn't very much like a real
grasshopper, but it's a great deal nicer, and it's served to represent the notion of a grasshopper
ever since man emerged from barbarism. You may say that it's artificial. Well, it is artificial; but
then it's ideal too; and what you want to do is to cultivate the ideal. You'll find the books full of
my kind of grasshopper, and scarcely a trace of yours in any of them. The thing that you are
proposing to do is commonplace; but if you say that it isn't commonplace, for the very reason
that it hasn't been done before, you'll have to admit that it's photographic."
As I said, I hope the time is coming when not only the artist, but the common, average man, who
always "has the standard of the arts in his power," will have also the courage to apply it, and will
reject the ideal grasshopper wherever he finds it, in science, in literature, in art, because it is not
"simple, natural, and honest," because it is not like a real grasshopper. But I will own that I think
the time is yet far off, and that the people who have been brought up on the ideal grasshopper,
the heroic grasshopper, the impassioned grasshopper, the self-devoted, adventureful, good old
64
romantic card-board grasshopper, must die out before the simple, honest, and natural
grasshopper can have a fair field. I am in no haste to compass the end of these good people,
whom I find in the mean time very amusing.
[omitted text]
Editha
Howells, W.D. "Editha." Between the Dark and the Daylight. New York: Harper and Brothers,
1907.
originally published in Harper's Monthly 110: (Jan. 1905).
source of etext: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12100
illustration: "You shall not say that.", Illustrator unknown.
The air was thick with the war feeling, like the electricity of a storm which has not yet burst.
Editha sat looking out into the hot spring afternoon, with her lips parted, and panting with the
intensity of the question whether she could let him go. She had decided that she could not let him
stay, when she saw him at the end of the still leafless avenue, making slowly up towards the
house, with his head down and his figure relaxed. She ran impatiently out on the veranda, to the
edge of the steps, and imperatively demanded greater haste of him with her will before she called
aloud to him: "George!"
He had quickened his pace in mystical response to her mystical urgence, before he could have
heard her; now he looked up and answered, "Well?"
"Oh, how united we are!" she exulted, and then she swooped down the steps to him. "What is it?"
she cried.
"It's war," he said, and he pulled her up to him and kissed her.
She kissed him back intensely, but irrelevantly, as to their passion, and uttered from deep in her
throat. "How glorious!"
"It's war," he repeated, without consenting to her sense of it; and she did not know just what to
think at first. She never knew what to think of him; that made his mystery, his charm. All
through their courtship, which was contemporaneous with the growth of the war feeling, she had
been puzzled by his want of seriousness about it. He seemed to despise it even more than he
abhorred it. She could have understood his abhorring any sort of bloodshed; that would have
been a survival of his old life when he thought he would be a minister, and before he changed
and took up the law. But making light of a cause so high and noble seemed to show a want of
earnestness at the core of his being. Not but that she felt herself able to cope with a congenital
defect of that sort, and make his love for her save him from himself. Now perhaps the miracle
was already wrought in him. In the presence of the tremendous fact that he announced, all
triviality seemed to have gone out of him; she began to feel that. He sank down on the top step,
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and wiped his forehead with his handkerchief, while she poured out upon him her question of the
origin and authenticity of his news.
All the while, in her duplex emotioning, she was aware that now at the very beginning she must
put a guard upon herself against urging him, by any word or act, to take the part that her whole
soul willed him to take, for the completion of her ideal of him. He was very nearly perfect as he
was, and he must be allowed to perfect himself. But he was peculiar, and he might very well be
reasoned out of his peculiarity. Before her reasoning went her emotioning: her nature pulling
upon his nature, her womanhood upon his manhood, without her knowing the means she was
using to the end she was willing. She had always supposed that the man who won her would
have done something to win her; she did not know what, but something. George Gearson had
simply asked her for her love, on the way home from a concert, and she gave her love to him,
without, as it were, thinking. But now, it flashed upon her, if he could do something worthy
to have won her—be a hero, her hero—it would be even better than if he had done it before
asking her; it would be grander. Besides, she had believed in the war from the beginning.
"But don't you see, dearest," she said, "that it wouldn't have come to this if it hadn't been in the
order of Providence? And I call any war glorious that is for the liberation of people who have
been struggling for years against the cruelest oppression. Don't you think so, too?"
"I suppose so," he returned, languidly. "But war! Is it glorious to break the peace of the world?"
"That ignoble peace! It was no peace at all, with that crime and shame at our very gates." She
was conscious of parroting the current phrases of the newspapers, but it was no time to pick and
choose her words. She must sacrifice anything to the high ideal she had for him, and after a good
deal of rapid argument she ended with the climax: "But now it doesn't matter about the how or
why. Since the war has come, all that is gone. There are no two sides any more. There is nothing
now but our country."
He sat with his eyes closed and his head leant back against the veranda, and he remarked, with a
vague smile, as if musing aloud, "Our country—right or wrong."
"Yes, right or wrong!" she returned, fervidly. "I'll go and get you some lemonade." She rose
rustling, and whisked away; when she came back with two tall glasses of clouded liquid on a
tray, and the ice clucking in them, he still sat as she had left him, and she said, as if there had
been no interruption: "But there is no question of wrong in this case. I call it a sacred war. A war
for liberty and humanity, if ever there was one. And I know you will see it just as I do, yet."
He took half the lemonade at a gulp, and he answered as he set the glass down: "I know you
always have the highest ideal. When I differ from you I ought to doubt myself."
A generous sob rose in Editha's throat for the humility of a man, so very nearly perfect, who was
willing to put himself below her.
Besides, she felt, more subliminally, that he was never so near slipping through her fingers as
when he took that meek way.
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"You shall not say that! Only, for once I happen to be right." She seized his hand in her two
hands, and poured her soul from her eyes into his. "Don't you think so?" she entreated him.
He released his hand and drank the rest of his lemonade, and she added, "Have mine, too," but he
shook his head in answering, "I've no business to think so, unless I act so, too."
Her heart stopped a beat before it pulsed on with leaps that she felt in her neck. She had noticed
that strange thing in men: they seemed to feel bound to do what they believed, and not think a
thing was finished when they said it, as girls did. She knew what was in his mind, but she
pretended not, and she said, "Oh, I am not sure," and then faltered.
He went on as if to himself, without apparently heeding her: "There's only one way of proving
one's faith in a thing like this."
She could not say that she understood, but she did understand.
He went on again. "If I believed—if I felt as you do about this war—Do you wish me to feel as
you do?"
Now she was really not sure; so she said: "George, I don't know what you mean."
He seemed to muse away from her as before.
"There is a sort of fascination in it. I suppose that at the bottom of his heart every man would like
at times to have his courage tested, to see how he would act."
"How can you talk in that ghastly way?"
"It is rather morbid. Still, that's what it comes to, unless you're swept away by ambition or driven
by conviction. I haven't the conviction or the ambition, and the other thing is what it comes to
with me. I ought to have been a preacher, after all; then I couldn't have asked it of myself, as I
must, now I'm a lawyer. And you believe it's a holy war, Editha?" he suddenly addressed her.
"Oh, I know you do! But you wish me to believe so, too?"
She hardly knew whether he was mocking or not, in the ironical way he always had with her
plainer mind. But the only thing was to be outspoken with him.
"George, I wish you to believe whatever you think is true, at any and every cost. If I've tried to
talk you into anything, I take it all back."
"Oh, I know that, Editha. I know how sincere you are, and how—I wish I had your undoubting
spirit! I'll think it over; I'd like to believe as you do. But I don't, now; I don't, indeed. It isn't this
war alone; though this seems peculiarly wanton and needless; but it's every war—so stupid; it
makes me sick. Why shouldn't this thing have been settled reasonably?"
"Because," she said, very throatily again, "God meant it to be war."
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"You think it was God? Yes, I suppose that is what people will say."
"Do you suppose it would have been war if God hadn't meant it?"
"I don't know. Sometimes it seems as if God had put this world into men's keeping to work it as
they pleased."
"Now, George, that is blasphemy."
"Well, I won't blaspheme. I'll try to believe in your pocket Providence," he said, and then he rose
to go.
"Why don't you stay to dinner?" Dinner at Balcom's Works was at one o'clock.
"I'll come back to supper, if you'll let me. Perhaps I shall bring you a convert."
"Well, you may come back, on that condition."
"All right. If I don't come, you'll understand."
He went away without kissing her, and she felt it a suspension of their engagement. It all
interested her intensely; she was undergoing a tremendous experience, and she was being equal
to it. While she stood looking after him, her mother came out through one of the long windows
onto the veranda, with a catlike softness and vagueness.
"Why didn't he stay to dinner?"
"Because—because—war has been declared," Editha pronounced, without turning.
Her mother said, "Oh, my!" and then said nothing more until she had sat down in one of the large
Shaker chairs and rocked herself for some time. Then she closed whatever tacit passage of
thought there had been in her mind with the spoken words: "Well, I hope he won't go."
"And I hope he will," the girl said, and confronted her mother with a stormy exaltation that
would have frightened any creature less unimpressionable than a cat.
Her mother rocked herself again for an interval of cogitation. What she arrived at in speech was:
"Well, I guess you've done a wicked thing, Editha Balcom."
The girl said, as she passed indoors through the same window her mother had come out by: "I
haven't done anything—yet."
In her room, she put together all her letters and gifts from Gearson, down to the withered petals
of the first flower he had offered, with that timidity of his veiled in that irony of his. In the heart
of the packet she enshrined her engagement ring which she had restored to the pretty box he had
brought it her in. Then she sat down, if not calmly yet strongly, and wrote:
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"GEORGE:—I understood when you left me. But I think we had better emphasize your meaning
that if we cannot be one in everything we had better be one in nothing. So I am sending these
things for your keeping till you have made up your mind.
"I shall always love you, and therefore I shall never marry any one else. But the man I marry
must love his country first of all, and be able to say to me,
"'I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not honor more.'
"There is no honor above America with me. In this great hour there is no other honor.
"Your heart will make my words clear to you. I had never expected to say so much, but it has
come upon me that I must say the utmost.
EDITHA."
She thought she had worded her letter well, worded it in a way that could not be bettered; all had
been implied and nothing expressed.
She had it ready to send with the packet she had tied with red, white, and blue ribbon, when it
occurred to her that she was not just to him, that she was not giving him a fair chance. He had
said he would go and think it over, and she was not waiting. She was pushing, threatening,
compelling. That was not a woman's part. She must leave him free, free, free. She could not
accept for her country or herself a forced sacrifice.
In writing her letter she had satisfied the impulse from which it sprang; she could well afford to
wait till he had thought it over. She put the packet and the letter by, and rested serene in the
consciousness of having done what was laid upon her by her love itself to do, and yet used
patience, mercy, justice.
She had her reward. Gearson did not come to tea, but she had given him till morning, when, late
at night there came up from the village the sound of a fife and drum, with a tumult of voices, in
shouting, singing, and laughing. The noise drew nearer and nearer; it reached the street end of
the avenue; there it silenced itself, and one voice, the voice she knew best, rose over the silence.
It fell; the air was filled with cheers; the fife and drum struck up, with the shouting, singing, and
laughing again, but now retreating; and a single figure came hurrying up the avenue.
She ran down to meet her lover and clung to him. He was very gay, and he put his arm round her
with a boisterous laugh. "Well, you must call me Captain now; or Cap, if you prefer; that's what
the boys call me. Yes, we've had a meeting at the town-hall, and everybody has volunteered; and
they selected me for captain, and I'm going to the war, the big war, the glorious war, the holy war
ordained by the pocket Providence that blesses butchery. Come along; let's tell the whole family
about it. Call them from their downy beds, father, mother, Aunt Hitty, and all the folks!"
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But when they mounted the veranda steps he did not wait for a larger audience; he poured the
story out upon Editha alone.
"There was a lot of speaking, and then some of the fools set up a shout for me. It was all going
one way, and I thought it would be a good joke to sprinkle a little cold water on them. But you
can't do that with a crowd that adores you. The first thing I knew I was sprinkling hell-fire on
them. 'Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war.' That was the style. Now that it had come to the
fight, there were no two parties; there was one country, and the thing was to fight to a finish as
quick as possible. I suggested volunteering then and there, and I wrote my name first of all on the
roster. Then they elected me—that's all. I wish I had some ice-water."
She left him walking up and down the veranda, while she ran for the ice-pitcher and a goblet, and
when she came back he was still walking up and down, shouting the story he had told her to her
father and mother, who had come out more sketchily dressed than they commonly were by day.
He drank goblet after goblet of the ice-water without noticing who was giving it, and kept on
talking, and laughing through his talk wildly. "It's astonishing," he said, "how well the worse
reason looks when you try to make it appear the better. Why, I believe I was the first convert to
the war in that crowd to-night! I never thought I should like to kill a man; but now I shouldn't
care; and the smokeless powder lets you see the man drop that you kill. It's all for the country!
What a thing it is to have a country that can't be wrong, but if it is, is right, anyway!"
Editha had a great, vital thought, an inspiration. She set down the ice-pitcher on the veranda
floor, and ran up-stairs and got the letter she had written him. When at last he noisily bade her
father and mother, "Well, good-night. I forgot I woke you up; I sha'n't want any sleep myself,"
she followed him down the avenue to the gate. There, after the whirling words that seemed to fly
away from her thoughts and refuse to serve them, she made a last effort to solemnize the moment
that seemed so crazy, and pressed the letter she had written upon him.
"What's this?" he said. "Want me to mail it?"
"No, no. It's for you. I wrote it after you went this morning. Keep it—keep it—and read it
sometime—" She thought, and then her inspiration came: "Read it if ever you doubt what you've
done, or fear that I regret your having done it. Read it after you've started."
They strained each other in embraces that seemed as ineffective as their words, and he kissed her
face with quick, hot breaths that were so unlike him, that made her feel as if she had lost her old
lover and found a stranger in his place. The stranger said: "What a gorgeous flower you are, with
your red hair, and your blue eyes that look black now, and your face with the color painted out
by the white moonshine! Let me hold you under the chin, to see whether I love blood, you tigerlily!" Then he laughed Gearson's laugh, and released her, scared and giddy. Within her
wilfulness she had been frightened by a sense of subtler force in him, and mystically mastered as
she had never been before.
She ran all the way back to the house, and mounted the steps panting. Her mother and father
were talking of the great affair. Her mother said: "Wa'n't Mr. Gearson in rather of an excited
state of mind? Didn't you think he acted curious?"
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"Well, not for a man who'd just been elected captain and had set 'em up for the whole of
Company A," her father chuckled back.
"What in the world do you mean, Mr. Balcom? Oh! There's Editha!" She offered to follow the
girl indoors.
"Don't come, mother!" Editha called, vanishing.
Mrs. Balcom remained to reproach her husband. "I don't see much of anything to laugh at."
"Well, it's catching. Caught it from Gearson. I guess it won't be much of a war, and I guess
Gearson don't think so, either. The other fellows will back down as soon as they see we mean it.
I wouldn't lose any sleep over it. I'm going back to bed, myself."
Gearson came again next afternoon, looking pale and rather sick, but quite himself, even to his
languid irony. "I guess I'd better tell you, Editha, that I consecrated myself to your god of battles
last night by pouring too many libations to him down my own throat. But I'm all right now. One
has to carry off the excitement, somehow."
"Promise me," she commanded, "that you'll never touch it again!"
"What! Not let the cannikin clink? Not let the soldier drink? Well, I promise."
"You don't belong to yourself now; you don't even belong to me. You belong to your country,
and you have a sacred charge to keep yourself strong and well for your country's sake. I have
been thinking, thinking all night and all day long."
"You look as if you had been crying a little, too," he said, with his queer smile.
"That's all past. I've been thinking, and worshipping you. Don't you suppose I know all that
you've been through, to come to this? I've followed you every step from your old theories and
opinions."
"Well, you've had a long row to hoe."
"And I know you've done this from the highest motives—"
"Oh, there won't be much pettifogging to do till this cruel war is—"
"And you haven't simply done it for my sake. I couldn't respect you if you had."
"Well, then we'll say I haven't. A man that hasn't got his own respect intact wants the respect of
all the other people he can corner. But we won't go into that. I'm in for the thing now, and we've
got to face our future. My idea is that this isn't going to be a very protracted struggle; we shall
just scare the enemy to death before it comes to a fight at all. But we must provide for
contingencies, Editha. If anything happens to me—"
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"Oh, George!" She clung to him, sobbing.
"I don't want you to feel foolishly bound to my memory. I should hate that, wherever I happened
to be."
"I am yours, for time and eternity—time and eternity." She liked the words; they satisfied her
famine for phrases.
"Well, say eternity; that's all right; but time's another thing; and I'm talking about time. But there
is something! My mother! If anything happens—"
She winced, and he laughed. "You're not the bold soldier-girl of yesterday!" Then he sobered. "If
anything happens, I want you to help my mother out. She won't like my doing this thing. She
brought me up to think war a fool thing as well as a bad thing. My father was in the Civil War;
all through it; lost his arm in it." She thrilled with the sense of the arm round her; what if that
should be lost? He laughed as if divining her: "Oh, it doesn't run in the family, as far as I know!"
Then he added, gravely: "He came home with misgivings about war, and they grew on him. I
guess he and mother agreed between them that I was to be brought up in his final mind about it;
but that was before my time. I only knew him from my mother's report of him and his opinions; I
don't know whether they were hers first; but they were hers last. This will be a blow to her. I
shall have to write and tell her—"
He stopped, and she asked: "Would you like me to write, too, George?"
"I don't believe that would do. No, I'll do the writing. She'll understand a little if I say that I
thought the way to minimize it was to make war on the largest possible scale at once—that I felt
I must have been helping on the war somehow if I hadn't helped keep it from coming, and I knew
I hadn't; when it came, I had no right to stay out of it."
Whether his sophistries satisfied him or not, they satisfied her. She clung to his breast, and
whispered, with closed eyes and quivering lips: "Yes, yes, yes!"
"But if anything should happen, you might go to her and see what you could do for her. You
know? It's rather far off; she can't leave her chair—"
"Oh, I'll go, if it's the ends of the earth! But nothing will happen! Nothing can! I—"
She felt herself lifted with his rising, and Gearson was saying, with his arm still round her, to her
father: "Well, we're off at once, Mr. Balcom. We're to be formally accepted at the capital, and
then bunched up with the rest somehow, and sent into camp somewhere, and got to the front as
soon as possible. We all want to be in the van, of course; we're the first company to report to the
Governor. I came to tell Editha, but I hadn't got round to it."
She saw him again for a moment at the capital, in the station, just before the train started
southward with his regiment. He looked well, in his uniform, and very soldierly, but somehow
girlish, too, with his clean-shaven face and slim figure. The manly eyes and the strong voice
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satisfied her, and his preoccupation with some unexpected details of duty flattered her. Other
girls were weeping and bemoaning themselves, but she felt a sort of noble distinction in the
abstraction, the almost unconsciousness, with which they parted. Only at the last moment he
said: "Don't forget my mother. It mayn't be such a walk-over as I supposed," and he laughed at
the notion.
He waved his hand to her as the train moved off—she knew it among a score of hands that were
waved to other girls from the platform of the car, for it held a letter which she knew was hers.
Then he went inside the car to read it, doubtless, and she did not see him again. But she felt safe
for him through the strength of what she called her love. What she called her God, always
speaking the name in a deep voice and with the implication of a mutual understanding, would
watch over him and keep him and bring him back to her. If with an empty sleeve, then he should
have three arms instead of two, for both of hers should be his for life. She did not see, though,
why she should always be thinking of the arm his father had lost.
There were not many letters from him, but they were such as she could have wished, and she put
her whole strength into making hers such as she imagined he could have wished, glorifying and
supporting him. She wrote to his mother glorifying him as their hero, but the brief answer she got
was merely to the effect that Mrs. Gearson was not well enough to write herself, and thanking
her for her letter by the hand of some one who called herself "Yrs truly, Mrs. W.J. Andrews."
Editha determined not to be hurt, but to write again quite as if the answer had been all she
expected. Before it seemed as if she could have written, there came news of the first skirmish,
and in the list of the killed, which was telegraphed as a trifling loss on our side, was Gearson's
name. There was a frantic time of trying to make out that it might be, must be, some other
Gearson; but the name and the company and the regiment and the State were too definitely
given.
Then there was a lapse into depths out of which it seemed as if she never could rise again; then a
lift into clouds far above all grief, black clouds, that blotted out the sun, but where she soared
with him, with George—George! She had the fever that she expected of herself, but she did not
die in it; she was not even delirious, and it did not last long. When she was well enough to leave
her bed, her one thought was of George's mother, of his strangely worded wish that she should
go to her and see what she could do for her. In the exaltation of the duty laid upon her—it
buoyed her up instead of burdening her—she rapidly recovered.
Her father went with her on the long railroad journey from northern New York to western Iowa;
he had business out at Davenport, and he said he could just as well go then as any other time; and
he went with her to the little country town where George's mother lived in a little house on the
edge of the illimitable cornfields, under trees pushed to a top of the rolling prairie. George's
father had settled there after the Civil War, as so many other old soldiers had done; but they were
Eastern people, and Editha fancied touches of the East in the June rose overhanging the front
door, and the garden with early summer flowers stretching from the gate of the paling fence.
It was very low inside the house, and so dim, with the closed blinds, that they could scarcely see
one another: Editha tall and black in her crapes which filled the air with the smell of their dyes;
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her father standing decorously apart with his hat on his forearm, as at funerals; a woman rested in
a deep arm-chair, and the woman who had let the strangers in stood behind the chair.
The seated woman turned her head round and up, and asked the woman behind her chair:
"Who did you say?"
Editha, if she had done what she expected of herself, would have gone down on her knees at the
feet of the seated figure and said, "I am George's Editha," for answer.
But instead of her own voice she heard that other woman's voice, saying: "Well, I don't know as
I did get the name just right. I guess I'll have to make a little more light in here," and she went
and pushed two of the shutters ajar.
Then Editha's father said, in his public will-now-address-a-few-remarks tone: "My name is
Balcom, ma'am—Junius H. Balcom, of Balcom's Works, New York; my daughter—"
"Oh!" the seated woman broke in, with a powerful voice, the voice that always surprised Editha
from Gearson's slender frame. "Let me see you. Stand round where the light can strike on your
face," and Editha dumbly obeyed. "So, you're Editha Balcom," she sighed.
"Yes," Editha said, more like a culprit than a comforter.
"What did you come for?" Mrs. Gearson asked.
Editha's face quivered and her knees shook. "I came—because—because George—" She could
go no further.
"Yes," the mother said, "he told me he had asked you to come if he got killed. You didn't expect
that, I suppose, when you sent him."
"I would rather have died myself than done it!" Editha said, with more truth in her deep voice
than she ordinarily found in it. "I tried to leave him free—"
"Yes, that letter of yours, that came back with his other things, left him free."
Editha saw now where George's irony came from.
"It was not to be read before—unless—until—I told him so," she faltered.
"Of course, he wouldn't read a letter of yours, under the circumstances, till he thought you
wanted him to. Been sick?" the woman abruptly demanded.
"Very sick," Editha said, with self-pity.
"Daughter's life," her father interposed, "was almost despaired of, at one time."
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Mrs. Gearson gave him no heed. "I suppose you would have been glad to die, such a brave
person as you! I don't believe he was glad to die. He was always a timid boy, that way; he was
afraid of a good many things; but if he was afraid he did what he made up his mind to. I suppose
he made up his mind to go, but I knew what it cost him by what it cost me when I heard of it. I
had been throughone war before. When you sent him you didn't expect he would get killed."
The voice seemed to compassionate Editha, and it was time. "No," she huskily murmured.
"No, girls don't; women don't, when they give their men up to their country. They think they'll
come marching back, somehow, just as gay as they went, or if it's an empty sleeve, or even an
empty pantaloon, it's all the more glory, and they're so much the prouder of them, poor things!"
The tears began to run down Editha's face; she had not wept till then; but it was now such a relief
to be understood that the tears came.
"No, you didn't expect him to get killed," Mrs. Gearson repeated, in a voice which was startlingly
like George's again. "You just expected him to kill some one else, some of those foreigners, that
weren't there because they had any say about it, but because they had to be there, poor
wretches—conscripts, or whatever they call 'em. You thought it would be all right for my
George, your George, to kill the sons of those miserable mothers and the husbands of those girls
that you would never see the faces of." The woman lifted her powerful voice in a psalmlike note.
"I thank my God he didn't live to do it! I thank my God they killed him first, and that he ain't
livin' with their blood on his hands!" She dropped her eyes, which she had raised with her voice,
and glared at Editha. "What you got that black on for?" She lifted herself by her powerful arms
so high that her helpless body seemed to hang limp its full length. "Take it off, take it off, before
I tear it from your back!"
The lady who was passing the summer near Balcom's Works was sketching Editha's beauty,
which lent itself wonderfully to the effects of a colorist. It had come to that confidence which is
rather apt to grow between artist and sitter, and Editha had told her everything.
"To think of your having such a tragedy in your life!" the lady said. She added: "I suppose there
are people who feel that way about war. But when you consider the good this war has done—
how much it has done for the country! I can't understand such people, for my part. And when
you had come all the way out there to console her—got up out of a sick-bed! Well!"
"I think," Editha said, magnanimously, "she wasn't quite in her right mind; and so did papa."
"Yes," the lady said, looking at Editha's lips in nature and then at her lips in art, and giving an
empirical touch to them in the picture. "But how dreadful of her! How perfectly—excuse me—
how vulgar!"
A light broke upon Editha in the darkness which she felt had been without a gleam of brightness
for weeks and months. The mystery that had bewildered her was solved by the word; and from
that moment she rose from grovelling in shame and self-pity, and began to live again in the ideal.
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illustration: "She glared at Editha. 'What you got that black on for?'", Illustrator unknown.
Resources for The Rise of Realism
Constance Fenimore Woolson (1840-1894)
[image] Constance Fenimore Woolson, the grandniece of James Fenimore Cooper, was born
March 5, 1840, in Claremont, New Hampshire, though she grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. Greatly
influenced by the Civil War, Woolson wrote a number of stories related to the Reconstruction
South. As a local colorist, she also set many of her stories around the Great Lakes region. Her
stories and poetry were published in a wide range of journals, including the Atlantic Monthly,
Scribner’s, and Harper’s Magazine. In 1879 Woolson relocated to Europe, spending much of her
time in Italy. She befriended Henry James, another American expatriate abroad, and like James
penned stories of psychological realism. Woolson died on January 24, 1894, from injuries after
she was found on the ground beneath her second story window. She is buried in the Protestant
Cemetery (or Campo Cestio) in Rome. Biographies include Sharon L. Dean's Constance
Fenimore Woolson: Homeward Bound. Knoxville: U of Tennessee P, 1995 and Cheryl B.
Torsney's Constance Fenimore Woolson: The Grief of Artistry. Athens: U of Georgia P, 1989.
Students can consult Victoria Brehm's Constance Fenimore Woolson's Nineteenth Century:
Essays. Detroit, MI: Wayne State UP, 2001. For a full bibliography, see Campbell’s site:
http://public.wsu.edu/~campbelld/amlit/woolsonbib.htm
Miss Grief
Woolson, Constance Fenimore. "Miss Grief." Stories by American Authors, Volume 4. Ed. H.C.
Bunner. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1884.
Originally published in Lippincott's Magazine. May, 1880.
source of etext: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/22401
"A conceited fool" is a not uncommon expression. Now, I know that I am not a fool, but I also
know that I am conceited. But, candidly, can it be helped if one happens to be young, well and
strong, passably good-looking, with some money that one has inherited and more that one has
earned—in all, enough to make life comfortable—and if upon this foundation rests also the
pleasant superstructure of a literary success? The success is deserved, I think: certainly it was not
lightly-gained. Yet even with this I fully appreciate its rarity. Thus, I find myself very well
entertained in life: I have all I wish in the way of society, and a deep, though of course carefully
concealed, satisfaction in my own little fame; which fame I foster by a gentle system of noninterference. I know that I am spoken of as "that quiet young fellow who writes those delightful
little studies of society, you know;" and I live up to that definition.
A year ago I was in Rome, and enjoying life particularly. I had a large number of my
acquaintances there, both American and English, and no day passed without its invitation. Of
course I understood it: it is seldom that you find a literary man who is good-tempered, welldressed, sufficiently provided with money, and amiably obedient to all the rules and
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requirements of "society." "When found, make a note of it;" and the note was generally an
invitation.
One evening, upon returning to my lodgings, my man Simpson informed me that a person had
called in the afternoon, and upon learning that I was absent had left not a card, but her name—
"Miss Grief." The title lingered—Miss Grief! "Grief has not so far visited me here," I said to
myself, dismissing Simpson and seeking my little balcony for a final smoke, "and she shall not
now. I shall take care to be 'not at home' to her if she continues to call." And then I fell to
thinking of Isabel Abercrombie, in whose society I had spent that and many evenings: they were
golden thoughts.
The next day there was an excursion; it was late when I reached my rooms, and again Simpson
informed me that Miss Grief had called.
"Is she coming continuously?" I said, half to myself.
"Yes, sir: she mentioned that she should call again."
"How does she look?"
"Well, sir, a lady, but not so prosperous as she was, I should say," answered Simpson, discreetly.
"Young?"
"No, sir."
"Alone?"
"A maid with her, sir."
But once outside in my little high-up balcony with my cigar, I again forgot Miss Grief and
whatever she might represent. Who would not forget in that moonlight, with Isabel
Abercrombie's face to remember?
The stranger came a third time, and I was absent; then she let two days pass, and began again. It
grew to be a regular dialogue between Simpson and myself when I came in at night: "Grief today?"
"Yes, sir."
"What time?"
"Four, sir."
"Happy the man," I thought, "who can keep her confined to a particular hour!"
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But I should not have treated my visitor so cavalierly if I had not felt sure that she was eccentric
and unconventional—qualities extremely tiresome in a woman no longer young or attractive. If
she were not eccentric she would not have persisted in coming to my door day after day in this
silent way, without stating her errand, leaving a note, or presenting her credentials in any shape. I
made up my mind that she had something to sell—a bit of carving or some intaglio supposed to
be antique. It was known that I had a fancy for oddities. I said to myself, "She has read or heard
of my 'Old Gold' story, or else 'The Buried God,' and she thinks me an idealizing ignoramus
upon whom she can impose. Her sepulchral name is at least not Italian; probably she is a sharp
countrywoman of mine, turning, by means of the present æsthetic craze, an honest penny when
she can."
She had called seven times during a period of two weeks without seeing me, when one day I
happened to be at home in the afternoon, owing to a pouring rain and a fit of doubt concerning
Miss Abercrombie. For I had constructed a careful theory of that young lady's characteristics in
my own mind, and she had lived up to it delightfully until the previous evening, when with one
word she had blown it to atoms and taken flight, leaving me standing, as it were, on a desolate
shore, with nothing but a handful of mistaken inductions wherewith to console myself. I do not
know a more exasperating frame of mind, at least for a constructor of theories. I could not write,
and so I took up a French novel (I model myself a little on Balzac). I had been turning over its
pages but a few moments when Simpson knocked, and, entering softly, said, with just a shadow
of a smile on his well-trained face, "Miss Grief." I briefly consigned Miss Grief to all the Furies,
and then, as he still lingered—perhaps not knowing where they resided—I asked where the
visitor was.
"Outside, sir—in the hall. I told her I would see if you were at home."
"She must be unpleasantly wet if she had no carriage."
"No carriage, sir: they always come on foot. I think she is a little damp, sir."
"Well, let her in; but I don't want the maid. I may as well see her now, I suppose, and end the
affair."
"Yes, sir."
I did not put down my book. My visitor should have a hearing, but not much more: she had
sacrificed her womanly claims by her persistent attacks upon my door. Presently Simpson
ushered her in. "Miss Grief," he said, and then went out, closing the curtain behind him.
A woman—yes, a lady—but shabby, unattractive, and more than middle-aged.
I rose, bowed slightly, and then dropped into my chair again, still keeping the book in my hand.
"Miss Grief?" I said interrogatively as I indicated a seat with my eyebrows.
"Not Grief," she answered—"Crief: my name is Crief."
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She sat down, and I saw that she held a small flat box.
"Not carving, then," I thought—"probably old lace, something that belonged to Tullia or
Lucrezia Borgia." But as she did not speak I found myself obliged to begin: "You have been
here, I think, once or twice before?"
"Seven times; this is the eighth."
A silence.
"I am often out; indeed, I may say that I am never in," I remarked carelessly.
"Yes; you have many friends."
"—Who will perhaps buy old lace," I mentally added. But this time I too remained silent; why
should I trouble myself to draw her out? She had sought me; let her advance her idea, whatever it
was, now that entrance was gained.
But Miss Grief (I preferred to call her so) did not look as though she could advance anything; her
black gown, damp with rain, seemed to retreat fearfully to her thin self, while her thin self
retreated as far as possible from me, from the chair, from everything. Her eyes were cast down;
an old-fashioned lace veil with a heavy border shaded her face. She looked at the floor, and I
looked at her.
I grew a little impatient, but I made up my mind that I would continue silent and see how long a
time she would consider necessary to give due effect to her little pantomime. Comedy? Or was it
tragedy? I suppose full five minutes passed thus in our double silence; and that is a long time
when two persons are sitting opposite each other alone in a small still room.
At last my visitor, without raising her eyes, said slowly, "You are very happy, are you not, with
youth, health, friends, riches, fame?"
It was a singular beginning. Her voice was clear, low, and very sweet as she thus enumerated my
advantages one by one in a list. I was attracted by it, but repelled by her words, which seemed to
me flattery both dull and bold.
"Thanks," I said, "for your kindness, but I fear it is undeserved. I seldom discuss myself even
when with my friends."
"I am your friend," replied Miss Grief. Then, after a moment, she added slowly, "I have read
every word you have written."
I curled the edges of my book indifferently; I am not a fop, I hope, but—others have said the
same.
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"What is more, I know much of it by heart," continued my visitor. "Wait: I will show you;" and
then, without pause, she began to repeat something of mine word for word, just as I had written
it. On she went, and I—listened. I intended interrupting her after a moment, but I did not,
because she was reciting so well, and also because I felt a desire gaining upon me to see what she
would make of a certain conversation which I knew was coming—a conversation between two of
my characters which was, to say the least, sphinx-like, and somewhat incandescent as well. What
won me a little, too, was the fact that the scene she was reciting (it was hardly more than that,
though called a story) was secretly my favorite among all the sketches from my pen which a
gracious public has received with favor. I never said so, but it was; and I had always felt a
wondering annoyance that the aforesaid public, while kindly praising beyond their worth other
attempts of mine, had never noticed the higher purpose of this little shaft, aimed not at the
balconies and lighted windows of society, but straight up toward the distant stars. So she went
on, and presently reached the conversation: my two people began to talk. She had raised her eyes
now, and was looking at me soberly as she gave the words of the woman, quiet, gentle, cold, and
the replies of the man, bitter, hot, and scathing. Her very voice changed, and took, though always
sweetly, the different tones required, while no point of meaning, however small, no breath of
delicate emphasis which I had meant, but which the dull types could not give, escaped an
appreciative and full, almost overfull, recognition which startled me. For she had understood
me—understood me almost better than I had understood myself. It seemed to me that while I had
labored to interpret, partially, a psychological riddle, she, coming after, had comprehended its
bearings better than I had, though confining herself strictly to my own words and emphasis. The
scene ended (and it ended rather suddenly), she dropped her eyes, and moved her hand nervously
to and fro over the box she held; her gloves were old and shabby, her hands small.
I was secretly much surprised by what I had heard, but my ill-humor was deep-seated that day,
and I still felt sure, besides, that the box contained something which I was expected to buy.
"You recite remarkably well," I said carelessly, "and I am much flattered also by your
appreciation of my attempt. But it is not, I presume, to that alone that I owe the pleasure of this
visit?"
"Yes," she answered, still looking down, "it is, for if you had not written that scene I should not
have sought you. Your other sketches are interiors—exquisitely painted and delicately finished,
but of small scope. This is a sketch in a few bold, masterly lines—work of entirely different spirit
and purpose."
I was nettled by her insight. "You have bestowed so much of your kind attention upon me that I
feel your debtor," I said, conventionally. "It may be that there is something I can do for you—
connected, possibly, with that little box?"
It was impertinent, but it was true; for she answered, "Yes."
I smiled, but her eyes were cast down and she did not see the smile.
"What I have to show you is a manuscript," she said after a pause which I did not break; "it is a
drama. I thought that perhaps you would read it."
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"An authoress! This is worse than old lace," I said to myself in dismay.—Then, aloud, "My
opinion would be worth nothing, Miss Crief."
"Not in a business way, I know. But it might be—an assistance personally." Her voice had sunk
to a whisper; outside, the rain was pouring steadily down. She was a very depressing object to
me as she sat there with her box.
"I hardly think I have the time at present—" I began.
She had raised her eyes and was looking at me; then, when I paused, she rose and came suddenly
toward my chair. "Yes, you will read it," she said with her hand on my arm—"you will read it.
Look at this room; look at yourself; look at all you have. Then look at me, and have pity."
I had risen, for she held my arm, and her damp skirt was brushing my knees.
Her large dark eyes looked intently into mine as she went on; "I have no shame in asking. Why
should I have? It is my last endeavor; but a calm and well-considered one. If you refuse I shall go
away, knowing that Fate has willed it so. And I shall be content."
"She is mad," I thought. But she did not look so, and she had spoken quietly, even gently.—"Sit
down," I said, moving away from her. I felt as if I had been magnetized; but it was only the
nearness of her eyes to mine, and their intensity. I drew forward a chair, but she remained
standing.
"I cannot," she said in the same sweet, gentle tone, "unless you promise."
"Very well, I promise; only sit down."
As I took her arm to lead her to the chair I perceived that she was trembling, but her face
continued unmoved.
"You do not, of course, wish me to look at your manuscript now?" I said, temporizing; "it would
be much better to leave it. Give me your address, and I will return it to you with my written
opinion; though, I repeat, the latter will be of no use to you. It is the opinion of an editor or
publisher that you want."
"It shall be as you please. And I will go in a moment," said Miss Grief, pressing her palms
together, as if trying to control the tremor that had seized her slight frame.
She looked so pallid that I thought of offering her a glass of wine; then I remembered that if I did
it might be a bait to bring her there again, and this I was desirous to prevent. She rose while the
thought was passing through my mind. Her pasteboard box lay on the chair she had first
occupied; she took it, wrote an address on the cover, laid it down, and then, bowing with a little
air of formality, drew her black shawl round her shoulders and turned toward the door.
I followed, after touching the bell. "You will hear from me by letter," I said.
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Simpson opened the door, and I caught a glimpse of the maid, who was waiting in the anteroom.
She was an old woman, shorter than her mistress, equally thin, and dressed like her in rusty
black. As the door opened she turned toward it a pair of small, dim blue eyes with a look of
furtive suspense. Simpson dropped the curtain, shutting me into the inner room; he had no
intention of allowing me to accompany my visitor further. But I had the curiosity to go to a baywindow in an angle from whence I could command the street-door, and presently I saw them
issue forth in the rain and walk away side by side, the mistress, being the taller, holding the
umbrella: probably there was not much difference in rank between persons so poor and forlorn as
these.
It grew dark. I was invited out for the evening, and I knew that if I should go I should meet Miss
Abercrombie. I said to myself that I would not go. I got out my paper for writing, I made my
preparations for a quiet evening at home with myself; but it was of no use. It all ended slavishly
in my going. At the last allowable moment I presented myself, and—as a punishment for my
vacillation, I suppose—I never passed a more disagreeable evening. I drove homeward in a
murky temper; it was foggy without, and very foggy within. What Isabel really was, now that she
had broken through my elaborately-built theories, I was not able to decide. There was, to tell the
truth, a certain young Englishman—But that is apart from this story.
I reached home, went up to my rooms, and had a supper. It was to console myself; I am obliged
to console myself scientifically once in a while. I was walking up and down afterward, smoking
and feeling somewhat better, when my eye fell upon the pasteboard box. I took it up; on the
cover was written an address which showed that my visitor must have walked a long distance in
order to see me: "A. Crief."—"A Grief," I thought; "and so she is. I positively believe she has
brought all this trouble upon me: she has the evil eye." I took out the manuscript and looked at it.
It was in the form of a little volume, and clearly written; on the cover was the word "Armor" in
German text, and, underneath, a pen-and-ink sketch of a helmet, breastplate, and shield.
"Grief certainly needs armor," I said to myself, sitting down by the table and turning over the
pages. "I may as well look over the thing now; I could not be in a worse mood." And then I
began to read.
Early the next morning Simpson took a note from me to the given address, returning with the
following reply: "No; I prefer to come to you; at four; A. Crief." These words, with their three
semicolons, were written in pencil upon a piece of coarse printing-paper, but the handwriting
was as clear and delicate as that of the manuscript in ink.
"What sort of a place was it, Simpson?"
"Very poor, sir, but I did not go all the way up. The elder person came down, sir, took the note,
and requested me to wait where I was."
"You had no chance, then, to make inquiries?" I said, knowing full well that he had emptied the
entire neighborhood of any information it might possess concerning these two lodgers.
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"Well, sir, you know how these foreigners will talk, whether one wants to hear or not. But it
seems that these two persons have been there but a few weeks; they live alone, and are
uncommonly silent and reserved. The people round there call them something that signifies 'the
Madames American, thin and dumb.'"
At four the "Madames American" arrived; it was raining again, and they came on foot under their
old umbrella. The maid waited in the anteroom, and Miss Grief was ushered into my bachelor's
parlor. I had thought that I should meet her with great deference; but she looked so forlorn that
my deference changed to pity. It was the woman that impressed me then, more than the writer—
the fragile, nerveless body more than the inspired mind. For it was inspired: I had sat up half the
night over her drama, and had felt thrilled through and through more than once by its
earnestness, passion, and power.
No one could have been more surprised than I was to find myself thus enthusiastic. I thought I
had outgrown that sort of thing. And one would have supposed, too (I myself should have
supposed so the day before), that the faults of the drama, which were many and prominent,
would have chilled any liking I might have felt, I being a writer myself, and therefore critical; for
writers are as apt to make much of the "how," rather than the "what," as painters, who, it is well
known, prefer an exquisitely rendered representation of a commonplace theme to an imperfectly
executed picture of even the most striking subject. But in this case, on the contrary, the scattered
rays of splendor in Miss Grief's drama had made me forget the dark spots, which were numerous
and disfiguring; or, rather, the splendor had made me anxious to have the spots removed. And
this also was a philanthropic state very unusual with me. Regarding unsuccessful writers, my
motto had been "Væ victis!"
My visitor took a seat and folded her hands; I could see, in spite of her quiet manner, that she
was in breathless suspense. It seemed so pitiful that she should be trembling there before me—a
woman so much older than I was, a woman who possessed the divine spark of genius, which I
was by no means sure (in spite of my success) had been granted to me—that I felt as if I ought to
go down on my knees before her, and entreat her to take her proper place of supremacy at once.
But there! one does not go down on one's knees, combustively, as it were, before a woman over
fifty, plain in feature, thin, dejected, and ill-dressed. I contented myself with taking her hands (in
their miserable old gloves) in mine, while I said cordially, "Miss Crief, your drama seems to me
full of original power. It has roused my enthusiasm: I sat up half the night reading it."
The hands I held shook, but something (perhaps a shame for having evaded the knees business)
made me tighten my hold and bestow upon her also a reassuring smile. She looked at me for a
moment, and then, suddenly and noiselessly, tears rose and rolled down her cheeks. I dropped
her hands and retreated. I had not thought her tearful: on the contrary, her voice and face had
seemed rigidly controlled. But now here she was bending herself over the side of the chair with
her head resting on her arms, not sobbing aloud, but her whole frame shaken by the strength of
her emotion. I rushed for a glass of wine; I pressed her to take it. I did not quite know what to do,
but, putting myself in her place, I decided to praise the drama; and praise it I did. I do not know
when I have used so many adjectives. She raised her head and began to wipe her eyes.
"Do take the wine," I said, interrupting myself in my cataract of language.
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"I dare not," she answered; then added humbly, "that is, unless you have a biscuit here or a bit of
bread."
I found some biscuit; she ate two, and then slowly drank the wine, while I resumed my verbal
Niagara. Under its influence—and that of the wine too, perhaps—she began to show new life. It
was not that she looked radiant—she could not—but simply that she looked warm. I now
perceived what had been the principal discomfort of her appearance heretofore: it was that she
had looked all the time as if suffering from cold.
At last I could think of nothing more to say, and stopped. I really admired the drama, but I
thought I had exerted myself sufficiently as an anti-hysteric, and that adjectives enough, for the
present at least, had been administered. She had put down her empty wine-glass, and was resting
her hands on the broad cushioned arms of her chair with, for a thin person, a sort of expanded
content.
"You must pardon my tears," she said, smiling; "it was the revulsion of feeling. My life was at a
low ebb: if your sentence had been against me it would have been my end."
"Your end?"
"Yes, the end of my life; I should have destroyed myself."
"Then you would have been a weak as well as wicked woman," I said in a tone of disgust. I do
hate sensationalism.
"Oh no, you know nothing about it. I should have destroyed only this poor worn tenement of
clay. But I can well understand how you would look upon it. Regarding the desirableness of life
the prince and the beggar may have different opinions.—We will say no more of it, but talk of
the drama instead." As she spoke the word "drama" a triumphant brightness came into her eyes.
I took the manuscript from a drawer and sat down beside her. "I suppose you know that there are
faults," I said, expecting ready acquiescence.
"I was not aware that there were any," was her gentle reply.
Here was a beginning! After all my interest in her—and, I may say under the circumstances, my
kindness—she received me in this way! However, my belief in her genius was too sincere to be
altered by her whimsies; so I persevered. "Let us go over it together," I said. "Shall I read it to
you, or will you read it to me?"
"I will not read it, but recite it."
"That will never do; you will recite it so well that we shall see only the good points, and what we
have to concern ourselves with now is the bad ones."
"I will recite it," she repeated.
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"Now, Miss Crief," I said bluntly, "for what purpose did you come to me? Certainly not merely
to recite: I am no stage-manager. In plain English, was it not your idea that I might help you in
obtaining a publisher?"
"Yes, yes," she answered, looking at me apprehensively, all her old manner returning.
I followed up my advantage, opened the little paper volume and began. I first took the drama line
by line, and spoke of the faults of expression and structure; then I turned back and touched upon
two or three glaring impossibilities in the plot. "Your absorbed interest in the motive of the
whole no doubt made you forget these blemishes," I said apologetically.
But, to my surprise, I found that she did not see the blemishes—that she appreciated nothing I
had said, comprehended nothing. Such unaccountable obtuseness puzzled me. I began again,
going over the whole with even greater minuteness and care. I worked hard: the perspiration
stood in beads upon my forehead as I struggled with her—what shall I call it—obstinacy? But it
was not exactly obstinacy. She simply could not see the faults of her own work, any more than a
blind man can see the smoke that dims a patch of blue sky. When I had finished my task the
second time she still remained as gently impassive as before. I leaned back in my chair
exhausted, and looked at her.
Even then she did not seem to comprehend (whether she agreed with it or not) what I must be
thinking. "It is such a heaven to me that you like it!" she murmured dreamily, breaking the
silence. Then, with more animation, "And now you will let me recite it?"
I was too weary to oppose her; she threw aside her shawl and bonnet, and, standing in the centre
of the room, began.
And she carried me along with her: all the strong passages were doubly strong when spoken, and
the faults, which seemed nothing to her, were made by her earnestness to seem nothing to me, at
least for that moment. When it was ended she stood looking at me with a triumphant smile.
"Yes," I said, "I like it, and you see that I do. But I like it because my taste is peculiar. To me
originality and force are everything—perhaps because I have them not to any marked degree
myself—but the world at large will not overlook as I do your absolutely barbarous shortcomings
on account of them. Will you trust me to go over the drama and correct it at my pleasure?" This
was a vast deal for me to offer; I was surprised at myself.
"No," she answered softly, still smiling. "There shall not be so much as a comma altered." Then
she sat down and fell into a reverie as though she were alone.
"Have you written anything else?" I said after a while, when I had become tired of the silence.
"Yes."
"Can I see it? Or is it them?"
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"It is them. Yes, you can see all."
"I will call upon you for the purpose."
"No, you must not," she said, coming back to the present nervously. "I prefer to come to you."
At this moment Simpson entered to light the room, and busied himself rather longer than was
necessary over the task. When he finally went out I saw that my visitor's manner had sunk into
its former depression: the presence of the servant seemed to have chilled her.
"When did you say I might come?" I repeated, ignoring her refusal.
"I did not say it. It would be impossible."
"Well, then, when will you come here?" There was, I fear, a trace of fatigue in my tone.
"At your good pleasure, sir," she answered humbly.
My chivalry was touched by this: after all, she was a woman. "Come to-morrow," I said. "By the
way, come and dine with me then; why not?" I was curious to see what she would reply.
"Why not, indeed? Yes, I will come. I am forty-three: I might have been your mother."
This was not quite true, as I am over thirty: but I look young, while she—Well, I had thought her
over fifty. "I can hardly call you 'mother,' but we might compromise upon 'aunt,'" I said,
laughing. "Aunt what?"
"My name is Aaronna," she gravely answered. "My father was much disappointed that I was not
a boy, and gave me as nearly as possible the name he had prepared—Aaron."
"Then come and dine with me to-morrow, and bring with you the other manuscripts, Aaronna," I
said, amused at the quaint sound of the name. On the whole, I did not like "aunt."
"I will come," she answered.
It was twilight and still raining, but she refused all offers of escort or carriage, departing with her
maid, as she had come, under the brown umbrella. The next day we had the dinner. Simpson was
astonished—and more than astonished, grieved—when I told him that he was to dine with the
maid; but he could not complain in words, since my own guest, the mistress, was hardly more
attractive. When our preparations were complete I could not help laughing: the two prim little
tables, one in the parlor and one in the anteroom, and Simpson disapprovingly going back and
forth between them, were irresistible.
I greeted my guest hilariously when she arrived, and, fortunately, her manner was not quite so
depressed as usual: I could never have accorded myself with a tearful mood. I had thought that
perhaps she would make, for the occasion, some change in her attire; I have never known a
86
woman who had not some scrap of finery, however small, in reserve for that unexpected
occasion of which she is ever dreaming. But no: Miss Grief wore the same black gown,
unadorned and unaltered. I was glad that there was no rain that day, so that the skirt did not at
least look so damp and rheumatic.
She ate quietly, almost furtively, yet with a good appetite, and she did not refuse the wine. Then,
when the meal was over and Simpson had removed the dishes, I asked for the new manuscripts.
She gave me an old green copybook filled with short poems, and a prose sketch by itself; I lit a
cigar and sat down at my desk to look them over.
"Perhaps you will try a cigarette?" I suggested, more for amusement than anything else, for there
was not a shade of Bohemianism about her; her whole appearance was puritanical.
"I have not yet succeeded in learning to smoke."
"You have tried?" I said, turning round.
"Yes: Serena and I tried, but we did not succeed."
"Serena is your maid?"
"She lives with me."
I was seized with inward laughter, and began hastily to look over her manuscripts with my back
toward her, so that she might not see it. A vision had risen before me of those two forlorn
women, alone in their room with locked doors, patiently trying to acquire the smoker's art.
But my attention was soon absorbed by the papers before me. Such a fantastic collection of
words, lines, and epithets I had never before seen, or even in dreams imagined. In truth, they
were like the work of dreams: they were Kubla Khan, only more so. Here and there was radiance
like the flash of a diamond, but each poem, almost each verse and line, was marred by some fault
or lack which seemed wilful perversity, like the work of an evil sprite. It was like a case of
jeweller's wares set before you, with each ring unfinished, each bracelet too large or too small for
its purpose, each breastpin without its fastening, each necklace purposely broken. I turned the
pages, marvelling. When about half an hour had passed, and I was leaning back for a moment to
light another cigar, I glanced toward my visitor. She was behind me, in an easy-chair before my
small fire, and she was—fast asleep! In the relaxation of her unconsciousness I was struck anew
by the poverty her appearance expressed; her feet were visible, and I saw the miserable worn old
shoes which hitherto she had kept concealed.
After looking at her for a moment I returned to my task and took up the prose story; in prose she
must be more reasonable. She was less fantastic perhaps, but hardly more reasonable. The story
was that of a profligate and commonplace man forced by two of his friends, in order not to break
the heart of a dying girl who loves him, to live up to a high imaginary ideal of himself which her
pure but mistaken mind has formed. He has a handsome face and sweet voice, and repeats what
they tell him. Her long, slow decline and happy death, and his own inward ennui and profound
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weariness of the rôle he has to play, made the vivid points of the story. So far, well enough, but
here was the trouble: through the whole narrative moved another character, a physician of tender
heart and exquisite mercy, who practised murder as a fine art, and was regarded (by the author)
as a second Messiah! This was monstrous. I read it through twice, and threw it down; then,
fatigued, I turned round and leaned back, waiting for her to wake. I could see her profile against
the dark hue of the easy-chair.
Presently she seemed to feel my gaze, for she stirred, then opened her eyes. "I have been asleep,"
she said, rising hurriedly.
"No harm in that, Aaronna."
But she was deeply embarrassed and troubled, much more so than the occasion required; so
much so, indeed, that I turned the conversation back upon the manuscripts as a diversion. "I
cannot stand that doctor of yours," I said, indicating the prose story; "no one would. You must
cut him out."
Her self-possession returned as if by magic. "Certainly not," she answered haughtily.
"Oh, if you do not care—I had labored under the impression that you were anxious these things
should find a purchaser."
"I am, I am," she said, her manner changing to deep humility with wonderful rapidity. With such
alternations of feeling as this sweeping over her like great waves, no wonder she was old before
her time.
"Then you must take out that doctor."
"I am willing, but do not know how," she answered, pressing her hands together helplessly. "In
my mind he belongs to the story so closely that he cannot be separated from it."
Here Simpson entered, bringing a note for me: it was a line from Mrs. Abercrombie inviting me
for that evening—an unexpected gathering, and therefore likely to be all the more agreeable. My
heart bounded in spite of me; I forgot Miss Grief and her manuscripts for the moment as
completely as though they had never existed. But, bodily, being still in the same room with her,
her speech brought me back to the present.
"You have had good news?" she said.
"Oh no, nothing especial—merely an invitation."
"But good news also," she repeated. "And now, as for me, I must go."
Not supposing that she would stay much later in any case, I had that morning ordered a carriage
to come for her at about that hour. I told her this. She made no reply beyond putting on her
bonnet and shawl.
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"You will hear from me soon," I said; "I shall do all I can for you."
She had reached the door, but before opening it she stopped, turned and extended her hand. "You
are good," she said: "I give you thanks. Do not think me ungrateful or envious. It is only that you
are young, and I am so—so old." Then she opened the door and passed through the anteroom
without pause, her maid accompanying her and Simpson with gladness lighting the way. They
were gone. I dressed hastily and went out—to continue my studies in psychology.
Time passed; I was busy, amused and perhaps a little excited (sometimes psychology is
exciting). But, though much occupied with my own affairs, I did not altogether neglect my selfimposed task regarding Miss Grief. I began by sending her prose story to a friend, the editor of a
monthly magazine, with a letter making a strong plea for its admittance. It should have a chance
first on its own merits. Then I forwarded the drama to a publisher, also an acquaintance, a man
with a taste for phantasms and a soul above mere common popularity, as his own coffers knew to
their cost. This done, I waited with conscience clear.
Four weeks passed. During this waiting period I heard nothing from Miss Grief. At last one
morning came a letter from my editor. "The story has force, but I cannot stand that doctor," he
wrote. "Let her cut him out, and I might print it." Just what I myself had said. The package lay
there on my table, travel-worn and grimed; a returned manuscript is, I think, the most
melancholy object on earth. I decided to wait, before writing to Aaronna, until the second letter
was received. A week later it came. "Armor" was declined. The publisher had been "impressed"
by the power displayed in certain passages, but the "impossibilities of the plot" rendered it
"unavailable for publication"—in fact, would "bury it in ridicule" if brought before the public, a
public "lamentably" fond of amusement, "seeking it, undaunted, even in the cannon's mouth." I
doubt if he knew himself what he meant. But one thing, at any rate, was clear: "Armor" was
declined.
Now, I am, as I have remarked before, a little obstinate. I was determined that Miss Grief's work
should be received. I would alter and improve it myself, without letting her know: the end
justified the means. Surely the sieve of my own good taste, whose mesh had been pronounced so
fine and delicate, would serve for two. I began; and utterly failed.
I set to work first upon "Armor." I amended, altered, left out, put in, pieced, condensed,
lengthened; I did my best, and all to no avail. I could not succeed in completing anything that
satisfied me, or that approached, in truth, Miss Grief's own work just as it stood. I suppose I went
over that manuscript twenty times: I covered sheets of paper with my copies. But the obstinate
drama refused to be corrected; as it was it must stand or fall.
Wearied and annoyed, I threw it aside and took up the prose story: that would be easier. But, to
my surprise, I found that that apparently gentle "doctor" would not out: he was so closely
interwoven with every part of the tale that to take him out was like taking out one especial figure
in a carpet: that is, impossible, unless you unravel the whole. At last I did unravel the whole, and
then the story was no longer good, or Aaronna's: it was weak, and mine. All this took time, for of
course I had much to do in connection with my own life and tasks. But, though slowly and at my
leisure, I really did try my best as regarded Miss Grief, and without success. I was forced at last
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to make up my mind that either my own powers were not equal to the task, or else that her
perversities were as essential a part of her work as her inspirations, and not to be separated from
it. Once during this period I showed two of the short poems to Isabel, withholding of course the
writer's name. "They were written by a woman," I explained.
"Her mind must have been disordered, poor thing!" Isabel said in her gentle way when she
returned them—"at least, judging by these. They are hopelessly mixed and vague."
Now, they were not vague so much as vast. But I knew that I could not make Isabel comprehend
it, and (so complex a creature is man) I do not know that I wanted her to comprehend it. These
were the only ones in the whole collection that I would have shown her, and I was rather glad
that she did not like even these. Not that poor Aaronna's poems were evil: they were simply
unrestrained, large, vast, like the skies or the wind. Isabel was bounded on all sides, like a violet
in a garden-bed. And I liked her so.
One afternoon, about the time when I was beginning to see that I could not "improve" Miss
Grief, I came upon the maid. I was driving, and she had stopped on the crossing to let the
carriage pass. I recognized her at a glance (by her general forlornness), and called to the driver to
stop: "How is Miss Grief?" I said. "I have been intending to write to her for some time."
"And your note, when it comes," answered the old woman on the crosswalk fiercely, "she shall
not see."
"What?"
"I say she shall not see it. Your patronizing face shows that you have no good news, and you
shall not rack and stab her any more on this earth, please God, while I have authority."
"Who has racked or stabbed her, Serena?"
"Serena, indeed! Rubbish! I'm no Serena: I'm her aunt. And as to who has racked and stabbed
her, I say you, you—you literary men!" She had put her old head inside my carriage, and flung
out these words at me in a shrill, menacing tone. "But she shall die in peace in spite of you," she
continued. "Vampires! you take her ideas and fatten on them, and leave her to starve. You know
you do—you who have had her poor manuscripts these months and months!"
"Is she ill?" I asked in real concern, gathering that much at least from the incoherent tirade.
"She is dying," answered the desolate old creature, her voice softening and her dim eyes filling
with tears.
"Oh, I trust not. Perhaps something can be done. Can I help you in any way?"
"In all ways if you would," she said, breaking down and beginning to sob weakly, with her head
resting on the sill of the carriage-window. "Oh, what have we not been through together, we two!
Piece by piece I have sold all."
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I am good-hearted enough, but I do not like to have old women weeping across my carriagedoor. I suggested, therefore, that she should come inside and let me take her home. Her shabby
old skirt was soon beside me, and, following her directions, the driver turned toward one of the
most wretched quarters of the city, the abode of poverty, crowded and unclean. Here, in a large
bare chamber up many flights of stairs, I found Miss Grief.
As I entered I was startled: I thought she was dead. There seemed no life present until she
opened her eyes, and even then they rested upon us vaguely, as though she did not know who we
were. But as I approached a light came into them: she recognized me, and this sudden
revivification, this return of the soul to the almost deserted bod, was the most wonderful thing I
ever saw. "You have good news of the drama?" she whispered as I bent over her: "tell me.
I know you have good news."
What was I to answer? Pray, what would you have answered, puritan?
"Yes, I have good news, Aaronna," I said. "The drama will appear." (And who knows? Perhaps it
will in some other world.)
She smiled, and her now brilliant eyes did not leave my face.
"He knows I'm your aunt: I told him," said the old woman, coming to the bedside.
"Did you?" whispered Miss Grief, still gazing at me with a smile. "Then please, dear Aunt
Martha, give me something to eat."
Aunt Martha hurried across the room, and I followed her. "It's the first time she's asked for food
in weeks," she said in a husky tone.
She opened a cupboard-door vaguely, but I could see nothing within. "What have you for her?" I
asked with some impatience, though in a low voice.
"Please God, nothing!" answered the poor old woman, hiding her reply and her tears behind the
broad cupboard-door. "I was going out to get a little something when I met you."
"Good Heavens! is it money you need? Here, take this and send; or go yourself in the carriage
waiting below."
She hurried out breathless, and I went back to the bedside, much disturbed by what I had seen
and heard. But Miss Grief's eyes were full of life, and as I sat down beside her she whispered
earnestly, "Tell me."
And I did tell her—a romance invented for the occasion. I venture to say that none of my
published sketches could compare with it. As for the lie involved, it will stand among my few
good deeds; I know, at the judgment-bar.
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And she was satisfied. "I have never known what it was," she whispered, "to be fully happy until
now." She closed her eyes, and when the lids fell I again thought that she had passed away. But
no, there was still pulsation in her small, thin wrist. As she perceived my touch she smiled. "Yes,
I am happy," she said again, though without audible sound.
The old aunt returned; food was prepared, and she took some. I myself went out after wine that
should be rich and pure. She rallied a little, but I did not leave her: her eyes dwelt upon me and
compelled me to stay, or rather my conscience compelled me. It was a damp night, and I had a
little fire made. The wine, fruit, flowers, and candles I had ordered made the bare place for the
time being bright and fragrant. Aunt Martha dozed in her chair from sheer fatigue—she had
watched many nights—but Miss Grief was awake, and I sat beside her.
"I make you my executor," she murmured, "as to the drama. But my other manuscripts place,
when I am gone, under my head, and let them be buried with me. They are not many—those you
have and these. See!"
I followed her gesture, and saw under her pillows the edges of two more copybooks like the one
I had. "Do not look at them—my poor dead children!" she said tenderly. "Let them depart with
me—unread, as I have been."
Later she whispered, "Did you wonder why I came to you? It was the contrast. You were
young—strong—rich—praised—loved—successful: all that I was not. I wanted to look at you—
and imagine how it would feel. You had success—but I had the greater power. Tell me, did I not
have it?"
"Yes, Aaronna."
"It is all in the past now. But I am satisfied."
After another pause she said with a faint smile, "Do you remember when I fell asleep in your
parlor? It was the good and rich food. It was so long since I had had food like that!"
I took her hand and held it, conscience-stricken, but now she hardly seemed to perceive my
touch. "And the smoking?" she whispered. "Do you remember how you laughed? I saw it. But I
had heard that smoking soothed—that one was no longer tired and hungry—with a cigar."
In little whispers of this sort, separated by long rests and pauses, the night passed. Once she
asked if her aunt was asleep, and when I answered in the affirmative she said, "Help her to return
home—to America: the drama will pay for it. I ought never to have brought her away."
I promised, and she resumed her bright-eyed silence.
I think she did not speak again. Toward morning the change came, and soon after sunrise, with
her old aunt kneeling by her side, she passed away.
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All was arranged as she had wished. Her manuscripts, covered with violets, formed her pillow.
No one followed her to the grave save her aunt and myself; I thought she would prefer it so. Her
name was not "Crief," after all, but "Moncrief;" I saw it written out by Aunt Martha for the
coffin-plate, as follows: "Aaronna Moncrief, aged forty-three years, two months, and eight days."
I never knew more of her history than is written here. If there was more that I might have
learned, it remained unlearned, for I did not ask.
And the drama? I keep it here in this locked case. I could have had it published at my own
expense; but I think that now she knows its faults herself, perhaps, and would not like it.
I keep it; and, once in a while, I read it over—not as a memento mori exactly, but rather as a
memento of my own good fortune, for which I should continually give thanks. The want of one
grain made all her work void, and that one grain was given to me. She, with the greater power,
failed—I, with the less, succeeded. But no praise is due to me for that. When I die "Armor" is to
be destroyed unread: not even Isabel is to see it. For women will misunderstand each other; and,
dear and precious to me as my sweet wife is, I could not bear that she or any one should cast so
much as a thought of scorn upon the memory of the writer, upon my poor dead, "unavailable,"
unaccepted "Miss Grief."
Resources for The Rise of Realism
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1913/14?)
[image] Ambrose Bierce was born on June 24, 1842 in Meigs County, Ohio and grew up near
Warsaw, Indiana. At 15, he became a printer’s apprentice and later enlisted in the Union Army
for the Civil War, fighting at the Battle of Shiloh. After the war, he went west with the army,
relocating in San Francisco. Here he began writing and reporting for a wide range of newspapers.
After a short stint in England, Bierce returned to San Francisco to become one of the most
prominent writers of his age, mostly for William Randolf Hearst’s Examiner and other sister
newspapers. Today, Bierce is mostly remembered for his war stories such as "An Occurrence at
Owl Creek Bridge," and "Chickamauga." Also of note is his satirical book, The Devil's
Dictionary (1906). Bierce disappeared while covering the Mexican Revolution in late 1913 and
was never seen again.
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
Bierce, Ambrose. "An Occurrance at Owl Creek Bridge." The Collected Works of Ambrose
Bierce, Volume II. New York and Washington: The Neale Publishing Company, 1909.
First published in the San Francisco Examiner, July 13, 1890. Included in Tales of Soldiers and
Civilians, New York: Lovell, Coryell & Company, 1891.
source of etext: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13334
93
I
A man stood upon a railroad bridge in northern Alabama, looking down into the swift water
twenty feet below. The man's hands were behind his back, the wrists bound with a cord. A rope
closely encircled his neck. It was attached to a stout cross-timber above his head and the slack
fell to the level of his knees. Some loose boards laid upon the sleepers supporting the metals of
the railway supplied a footing for him and his executioners—two private soldiers of the Federal
army, directed by a sergeant who in civil life may have been a deputy sheriff. At a short remove
upon the same temporary platform was an officer in the uniform of his rank, armed. He was a
captain. A sentinel at each end of the bridge stood with his rifle in the position known as
"support," that is to say, vertical in front of the left shoulder, the hammer resting on the forearm
thrown straight across the chest—a formal and unnatural position, enforcing an erect carriage of
the body. It did not appear to be the duty of these two men to know what was occurring at the
centre of the bridge; they merely blockaded the two ends of the foot planking that traversed it.
Beyond one of the sentinels nobody was in sight; the railroad ran straight away into a forest for a
hundred yards, then, curving, was lost to view. Doubtless there was an outpost farther along. The
other bank of the stream was open ground—a gentle acclivity topped with a stockade of vertical
tree trunks, loop-holed for rifles, with a single embrasure through which protruded the muzzle of
a brass cannon commanding the bridge. Mid-way of the slope between bridge and fort were the
spectators—a single company of infantry in line, at "parade rest," the butts of the rifles on the
ground, the barrels inclining slightly backward against the right shoulder, the hands crossed upon
the stock. A lieutenant stood at the right of the line, the point of his sword upon the ground, his
left hand resting upon his right. Excepting the group of four at the centre of the bridge, not a man
moved. The company faced the bridge, staring stonily, motionless. The sentinels, facing the
banks of the stream, might have been statues to adorn the bridge. The captain stood with folded
arms, silent, observing the work of his subordinates, but making no sign. Death is a dignitary
who when he comes announced is to be received with formal manifestations of respect, even by
those most familiar with him. In the code of military etiquette silence and fixity are forms of
deference.
The man who was engaged in being hanged was apparently about thirty-five years of age. He
was a civilian, if one might judge from his habit, which was that of a planter. His features were
good—a straight nose, firm mouth, broad forehead, from which his long, dark hair was combed
straight back, falling behind his ears to the collar of his well-fitting frock-coat. He wore a
mustache and pointed beard, but no whiskers; his eyes were large and dark gray, and had a
kindly expression which one would hardly have expected in one whose neck was in the hemp.
Evidently this was no vulgar assassin. The liberal military code makes provision for hanging
many kinds of persons, and gentlemen are not excluded.
The preparations being complete, the two private soldiers stepped aside and each drew away the
plank upon which he had been standing. The sergeant turned to the captain, saluted and placed
himself immediately behind that officer, who in turn moved apart one pace. These movements
left the condemned man and the sergeant standing on the two ends of the same plank, which
spanned three of the cross-ties of the bridge. The end upon which the civilian stood almost, but
not quite, reached a fourth. This plank had been held in place by the weight of the captain; it was
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now held by that of the sergeant. At a signal from the former the latter would step aside, the
plank would tilt and the condemned man go down between two ties. The arrangement
commended itself to his judgment as simple and effective. His face had not been covered nor his
eyes bandaged. He looked a moment at his "unsteadfast footing," then let his gaze wander to the
swirling water of the stream racing madly beneath his feet. A piece of dancing driftwood caught
his attention and his eyes followed it down the current. How slowly it appeared to move! What a
sluggish stream!
He closed his eyes in order to fix his last thoughts upon his wife and children. The water,
touched to gold by the early sun, the brooding mists under the banks at some distance down the
stream, the fort, the soldiers, the piece of drift—all had distracted him. And now he became
conscious of a new disturbance. Striking through the thought of his dear ones was a sound which
he could neither ignore nor understand, a sharp, distinct, metallic percussion like the stroke of a
blacksmith's hammer upon the anvil; it had the same ringing quality. He wondered what it was,
and whether immeasurably distant or near by—it seemed both. Its recurrence was regular, but as
slow as the tolling of a death knell. He awaited each stroke with impatience and—he knew not
why—apprehension. The intervals of silence grew progressively longer; the delays became
maddening. With their greater infrequency the sounds increased in strength and sharpness. They
hurt his ear like the thrust of a knife; he feared he would shriek. What he heard was the ticking of
his watch.
He unclosed his eyes and saw again the water below him. "If I could free my hands," he thought,
"I might throw off the noose and spring into the stream. By diving I could evade the bullets and,
swimming vigorously, reach the bank, take to the woods and get away home. My home, thank
God, is as yet outside their lines; my wife and little ones are still beyond the invader's farthest
advance."
As these thoughts, which have here to be set down in words, were flashed into the doomed man's
brain rather than evolved from it the captain nodded to the sergeant. The sergeant stepped aside.
II
Peyton Farquhar was a well-to-do planter, of an old and highly respected Alabama family. Being
a slave owner and like other slave owners a politician he was naturally an original secessionist
and ardently devoted to the Southern cause. Circumstances of an imperious nature, which it is
unnecessary to relate here, had prevented him from taking service with the gallant army that had
fought the disastrous campaigns ending with the fall of Corinth, and he chafed under the
inglorious restraint, longing for the release of his energies, the larger life of the soldier, the
opportunity for distinction. That opportunity, he felt, would come, as it comes to all in war time.
Meanwhile he did what he could. No service was too humble for him to perform in aid of the
South, no adventure too perilous for him to undertake if consistent with the character of a
civilian who was at heart a soldier, and who in good faith and without too much qualification
assented to at least a part of the frankly villainous dictum that all is fair in love and war.
One evening while Farquhar and his wife were sitting on a rustic bench near the entrance to his
grounds, a gray-clad soldier rode up to the gate and asked for a drink of water. Mrs. Farquhar
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was only too happy to serve him with her own white hands. While she was fetching the water her
husband approached the dusty horseman and inquired eagerly for news from the front.
"The Yanks are repairing the railroads," said the man, "and are getting ready for another
advance. They have reached the Owl Creek bridge, put it in order and built a stockade on the
north bank. The commandant has issued an order, which is posted everywhere, declaring that any
civilian caught interfering with the railroad, its bridges, tunnels or trains will be summarily
hanged. I saw the order."
"How far is it to the Owl Creek bridge?" Farquhar asked.
"About thirty miles."
"Is there no force on this side the creek?"
"Only a picket post half a mile out, on the railroad, and a single sentinel at this end of the
bridge."
"Suppose a man—a civilian and student of hanging—should elude the picket post and perhaps
get the better of the sentinel," said Farquhar, smiling, "what could he accomplish?"
The soldier reflected. "I was there a month ago," he replied. "I observed that the flood of last
winter had lodged a great quantity of driftwood against the wooden pier at this end of the bridge.
It is now dry and would burn like tow."
The lady had now brought the water, which the soldier drank. He thanked her ceremoniously,
bowed to her husband and rode away. An hour later, after nightfall, he repassed the plantation,
going northward in the direction from which he had come. He was a Federal scout.
III
As Peyton Farquhar fell straight downward through the bridge he lost consciousness and was as
one already dead. From this state he was awakened—ages later, it seemed to him—by the pain of
a sharp pressure upon his throat, followed by a sense of suffocation. Keen, poignant agonies
seemed to shoot from his neck downward through every fibre of his body and limbs. These pains
appeared to flash along well-defined lines of ramification and to beat with an inconceivably rapid
periodicity. They seemed like streams of pulsating fire heating him to an intolerable temperature.
As to his head, he was conscious of nothing but a feeling of fulness—of congestion. These
sensations were unaccompanied by thought. The intellectual part of his nature was already
effaced; he had power only to feel, and feeling was torment. He was conscious of motion.
Encompassed in a luminous cloud, of which he was now merely the fiery heart, without material
substance, he swung through unthinkable arcs of oscillation, like a vast pendulum. Then all at
once, with terrible suddenness, the light about him shot upward with the noise of a loud plash; a
frightful roaring was in his ears, and all was cold and dark. The power of thought was restored;
he knew that the rope had broken and he had fallen into the stream. There was no additional
strangulation; the noose about his neck was already suffocating him and kept the water from his
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lungs. To die of hanging at the bottom of a river!—the idea seemed to him ludicrous. He opened
his eyes in the darkness and saw above him a gleam of light, but how distant, how inaccessible!
He was still sinking, for the light became fainter and fainter until it was a mere glimmer. Then it
began to grow and brighten, and he knew that he was rising toward the surface—knew it with
reluctance, for he was now very comfortable. "To be hanged and drowned," he thought, "that is
not so bad; but I do not wish to be shot. No; I will not be shot; that is not fair."
He was not conscious of an effort, but a sharp pain in his wrist apprised him that he was trying to
free his hands. He gave the struggle his attention, as an idler might observe the feat of a juggler,
without interest in the outcome. What splendid effort!—what magnificent, what superhuman
strength! Ah, that was a fine endeavor! Bravo! The cord fell away; his arms parted and floated
upward, the hands dimly seen on each side in the growing light. He watched them with a new
interest as first one and then the other pounced upon the noose at his neck. They tore it away and
thrust it fiercely aside, its undulations resembling those of a water-snake. "Put it back, put it
back!" He thought he shouted these words to his hands, for the undoing of the noose had been
succeeded by the direst pang that he had yet experienced. His neck ached horribly; his brain was
on fire; his heart, which had been fluttering faintly, gave a great leap, trying to force itself out at
his mouth. His whole body was racked and wrenched with an insupportable anguish! But his
disobedient hands gave no heed to the command. They beat the water vigorously with quick,
downward strokes, forcing him to the surface. He felt his head emerge; his eyes were blinded by
the sunlight; his chest expanded convulsively, and with a supreme and crowning agony his lungs
engulfed a great draught of air, which instantly he expelled in a shriek!
He was now in full possession of his physical senses. They were, indeed, preternaturally keen
and alert. Something in the awful disturbance of his organic system had so exalted and refined
them that they made record of things never before perceived. He felt the ripples upon his face
and heard their separate sounds as they struck. He looked at the forest on the bank of the stream,
saw the individual trees, the leaves and the veining of each leaf—saw the very insects upon
them: the locusts, the brilliant-bodied flies, the gray spiders stretching their webs from twig to
twig. He noted the prismatic colors in all the dewdrops upon a million blades of grass. The
humming of the gnats that danced above the eddies of the stream, the beating of the dragon-flies'
wings, the strokes of the water-spiders' legs, like oars which had lifted their boat—all these made
audible music. A fish slid along beneath his eyes and he heard the rush of its body parting the
water.
He had come to the surface facing down the stream; in a moment the visible world seemed to
wheel slowly round, himself the pivotal point, and he saw the bridge, the fort, the soldiers upon
the bridge, the captain, the sergeant, the two privates, his executioners. They were in silhouette
against the blue sky. They shouted and gesticulated, pointing at him. The captain had drawn his
pistol, but did not fire; the others were unarmed. Their movements were grotesque and horrible,
their forms gigantic.
Suddenly he heard a sharp report and something struck the water smartly within a few inches of
his head, spattering his face with spray. He heard a second report, and saw one of the sentinels
with his rifle at his shoulder, a light cloud of blue smoke rising from the muzzle. The man in the
water saw the eye of the man on the bridge gazing into his own through the sights of the rifle. He
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observed that it was a gray eye and remembered having read that gray eyes were keenest, and
that all famous markmen had them. Nevertheless, this one had missed.
A counter-swirl had caught Farquhar and turned him half round; he was again looking into the
forest on the bank opposite the fort. The sound of a clear, high voice in a monotonous singsong
now rang out behind him and came across the water with a distinctness that pierced and subdued
all other sounds, even the beating of the ripples in his ears. Although no soldier, he had
frequented camps enough to know the dread significance of that deliberate, drawling, aspirated
chant; the lieutenant on shore was taking a part in the morning's work. How coldly and
pitilessly—with what an even, calm intonation, presaging, and enforcing tranquillity in the
men—with what accurately measured intervals fell those cruel words:
"Attention, company!... Shoulder arms!... Ready!... Aim!... Fire!"
Farquhar dived—dived as deeply as he could. The water roared in his ears like the voice of
Niagara, yet he heard the dulled thunder of the volley and, rising again toward the surface, met
shining bits of metal, singularly flattened, oscillating slowly downward. Some of them touched
him on the face and hands, then fell away, continuing their descent. One lodged between his
collar and neck; it was uncomfortably warm and he snatched it out.
As he rose to the surface, gasping for breath, he saw that he had been a long time under water; he
was perceptibly farther down stream—nearer to safety. The soldiers had almost finished
reloading; the metal ramrods flashed all at once in the sunshine as they were drawn from the
barrels, turned in the air, and thrust into their sockets. The two sentinels fired again,
independently and ineffectually.
The hunted man saw all this over his shoulder; he was now swimming vigorously with the
current. His brain was as energetic as his arms and legs; he thought with the rapidity of lightning.
"The officer," he reasoned, "will not make that martinet's error a second time. It is as easy to
dodge a volley as a single shot. He has probably already given the command to fire at will. God
help me, I cannot dodge them all!"
An appalling plash within two yards of him was followed by a loud, rushing sound, diminuendo,
which seemed to travel back through the air to the fort and died in an explosion which stirred the
very river to its deeps! A rising sheet of water curved over him, fell down upon him, blinded
him, strangled him! The cannon had taken a hand in the game. As he shook his head free from
the commotion of the smitten water he heard the deflected shot humming through the air ahead,
and in an instant it was cracking and smashing the branches in the forest beyond.
"They will not do that again," he thought; "the next time they will use a charge of grape. I must
keep my eye upon the gun; the smoke will apprise me—the report arrives too late; it lags behind
the missile. That is a good gun."
Suddenly he felt himself whirled round and round—spinning like a top. The water, the banks, the
forests, the now distant bridge, fort and men—all were commingled and blurred. Objects were
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represented by their colors only; circular horizontal streaks of color—that was all he saw. He had
been caught in a vortex and was being whirled on with a velocity of advance and gyration that
made him giddy and sick. In a few moments he was flung upon the gravel at the foot of the left
bank of the stream—the southern bank—and behind a projecting point which concealed him
from his enemies. The sudden arrest of his motion, the abrasion of one of his hands on the
gravel, restored him, and he wept with delight. He dug his fingers into the sand, threw it over
himself in handfuls and audibly blessed it. It looked like diamonds, rubies, emeralds; he could
think of nothing beautiful which it did not resemble. The trees upon the bank were giant garden
plants; he noted a definite order in their arrangement, inhaled the fragrance of their blooms. A
strange, roseate light shone through the spaces among their trunks and the wind made in their
branches the music of æolian harps. He had no wish to perfect his escape—was content to
remain in that enchanting spot until retaken.
A whiz and rattle of grapeshot among the branches high above his head roused him from his
dream. The baffled cannoneer had fired him a random farewell. He sprang to his feet, rushed up
the sloping bank, and plunged into the forest.
All that day he traveled, laying his course by the rounding sun. The forest seemed interminable;
nowhere did he discover a break in it, not even a woodman's road. He had not known that he
lived in so wild a region. There was something uncanny in the revelation.
By nightfall he was fatigued, footsore, famishing. The thought of his wife and children urged
him on. At last he found a road which led him in what he knew to be the right direction. It was as
wide and straight as a city street, yet it seemed untraveled. No fields bordered it, no dwelling
anywhere. Not so much as the barking of a dog suggested human habitation. The black bodies of
the trees formed a straight wall on both sides, terminating on the horizon in a point, like a
diagram in a lesson in perspective. Over-head, as he looked up through this rift in the wood,
shone great golden stars looking unfamiliar and grouped in strange constellations. He was sure
they were arranged in some order which had a secret and malign significance. The wood on
either side was full of singular noises, among which—once, twice, and again—he distinctly
heard whispers in an unknown tongue.
His neck was in pain and lifting his hand to it he found it horribly swollen. He knew that it had a
circle of black where the rope had bruised it. His eyes felt congested; he could no longer close
them. His tongue was swollen with thirst; he relieved its fever by thrusting it forward from
between his teeth into the cold air. How softly the turf had carpeted the untraveled avenue—he
could no longer feel the roadway beneath his feet!
Doubtless, despite his suffering, he had fallen asleep while walking, for now he sees another
scene—perhaps he has merely recovered from a delirium. He stands at the gate of his own home.
All is as he left it, and all bright and beautiful in the morning sunshine. He must have traveled
the entire night. As he pushes open the gate and passes up the wide white walk, he sees a flutter
of female garments; his wife, looking fresh and cool and sweet, steps down from the veranda to
meet him. At the bottom of the steps she stands waiting, with a smile of ineffable joy, an attitude
of matchless grace and dignity. Ah, how beautiful she is! He springs forward with extended
arms. As he is about to clasp her he feels a stunning blow upon the back of the neck; a blinding
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white light blazes all about him with a sound like the shock of a cannon—then all is darkness and
silence!
Peyton Farquhar was dead; his body, with a broken neck, swung gently from side to side beneath
the timbers of the Owl Creek bridge.
Chickamauga
Bierce, Ambrose. "Chickamauga."The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume II. New
York and Washington: The Neale Publishing Company, 1909.
First published in the San Francisco Examiner, January 20, 1889. Included in Tales of Soldiers
and Civilians, 1891.
source of etext: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13334
One sunny autumn afternoon a child strayed away from its rude home in a small field and
entered a forest unobserved. It was happy in a new sense of freedom from control, happy in the
opportunity of exploration and adventure; for this child's spirit, in bodies of its ancestors, had for
thousands of years been trained to memorable feats of discovery and conquest—victories in
battles whose critical moments were centuries, whose victors' camps were cities of hewn stone.
From the cradle of its race it had conquered its way through two continents and passing a great
sea had penetrated a third, there to be born to war and dominion as a heritage.
The child was a boy aged about six years, the son of a poor planter. In his younger manhood the
father had been a soldier, had fought against naked savages and followed the flag of his country
into the capital of a civilized race to the far South. In the peaceful life of a planter the warrior-fire
survived; once kindled, it is never extinguished. The man loved military books and pictures and
the boy had understood enough to make himself a wooden sword, though even the eye of his
father would hardly have known it for what it was. This weapon he now bore bravely, as became
the son of an heroic race, and pausing now and again in the sunny space of the forest assumed,
with some exaggeration, the postures of aggression and defense that he had been taught by the
engraver's art. Made reckless by the ease with which he overcame invisible foes attempting to
stay his advance, he committed the common enough military error of pushing the pursuit to a
dangerous extreme, until he found himself upon the margin of a wide but shallow brook, whose
rapid waters barred his direct advance against the flying foe that had crossed with illogical ease.
But the intrepid victor was not to be baffled; the spirit of the race which had passed the great sea
burned unconquerable in that small breast and would not be denied. Finding a place where some
bowlders in the bed of the stream lay but a step or a leap apart, he made his way across and fell
again upon the rear-guard of his imaginary foe, putting all to the sword.
Now that the battle had been won, prudence required that he withdraw to his base of operations.
Alas; like many a mightier conqueror, and like one, the mightiest, he could not
curb the lust for war, Nor learn that tempted Fate will leave the loftiest star.
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Advancing from the bank of the creek he suddenly found himself confronted with a new and
more formidable enemy: in the path that he was following, sat, bolt upright, with ears erect and
paws suspended before it, a rabbit! With a startled cry the child turned and fled, he knew not in
what direction, calling with inarticulate cries for his mother, weeping, stumbling, his tender skin
cruelly torn by brambles, his little heart beating hard with terror—breathless, blind with tears—
lost in the forest! Then, for more than an hour, he wandered with erring feet through the tangled
undergrowth, till at last, overcome by fatigue, he lay down in a narrow space between two rocks,
within a few yards of the stream and still grasping his toy sword, no longer a weapon but a
companion, sobbed himself to sleep. The wood birds sang merrily above his head; the squirrels,
whisking their bravery of tail, ran barking from tree to tree, unconscious of the pity of it, and
somewhere far away was a strange, muffled thunder, as if the partridges were drumming in
celebration of nature's victory over the son of her immemorial enslavers. And back at the little
plantation, where white men and black were hastily searching the fields and hedges in alarm, a
mother's heart was breaking for her missing child.
Hours passed, and then the little sleeper rose to his feet. The chill of the evening was in his
limbs, the fear of the gloom in his heart. But he had rested, and he no longer wept. With some
blind instinct which impelled to action he struggled through the undergrowth about him and
came to a more open ground— on his right the brook, to the left a gentle acclivity studded with
infrequent trees; over all, the gathering gloom of twilight. A thin, ghostly mist rose along the
water. It frightened and repelled him; instead of recrossing, in the direction whence he had come,
he turned his back upon it, and went forward toward the dark inclosing wood. Suddenly he saw
before him a strange moving object which he took to be some large animal—a dog, a pig—he
could not name it; perhaps it was a bear. He had seen pictures of bears, but knew of nothing to
their discredit and had vaguely wished to meet one. But something in form or movement of this
object—some— thing in the awkwardness of its approach—told him that it was not a bear, and
curiosity was stayed by fear. He stood still and as it came slowly on gained courage every
moment, for he saw that at least it had not the long, menacing ears of the rabbit. Possibly his
impressionable mind was half conscious of something familiar in its shambling, awkward gait.
Before it had approached near enough to resolve his doubts he saw that it was followed by
another and another. To right and to left were many more; the whole open space about him was
alive with them—all moving toward the brook.
They were men. They crept upon their hands and knees. They used their hands only, dragging
their legs. They used their knees only, their arms hanging idle at their sides. They strove to rise
to their feet, but fell prone in the attempt. They did nothing naturally, and nothing alike, save
only to advance foot by foot in the same direction. Singly, in pairs and in little groups, they came
on through the gloom, some halting now and again while others crept slowly past them, then
resuming their movement. They came by dozens and by hundreds; as far on either hand as one
could see in the deepening gloom they extended and the black wood behind them appeared to be
inexhaustible. The very ground seemed in motion toward the creek. Occasionally one who had
paused did not again go on, but lay motionless. He was dead. Some, pausing, made strange
gestures with their hands, erected their arms and lowered them again, clasped their heads; spread
their palms upward, as men are sometimes seen to do in public prayer.
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Not all of this did the child note; it is what would have been noted by an elder observer; he saw
little but that these were men, yet crept like babes. Being men, they were not terrible, though
unfamiliarly clad. He moved among them freely, going from one to another and peering into
their faces with childish curiosity. All their faces were singularly white and many were streaked
and gouted with red. Something in this—something too, perhaps, in their grotesque attitudes and
movements—reminded him of the painted clown whom he had seen last summer in the circus,
and he laughed as he watched them. But on and ever on they crept, these maimed and bleeding
men, as heedless as he of the dramatic contrast between his laughter and their own ghastly
gravity. To him it was a merry spectacle. He had seen his father's negroes creep upon their hands
and knees for his amusement—had ridden them so, "making believe" they were his horses. He
now approached one of these crawling figures from behind and with an agile movement mounted
it astride. The man sank upon his breast, recovered, flung the small boy fiercely to the ground as
an unbroken colt might have done, then turned upon him a face that lacked a lower jaw—from
the upper teeth to the throat was a great red gap fringed with hanging shreds of flesh and
splinters of bone. The unnatural prominence of nose, the absence of chin, the fierce eyes, gave
this man the appearance of a great bird of prey crimsoned in throat and breast by the blood of its
quarry. The man rose to his knees, the child to his feet. The man shook his fist at the child; the
child, terrified at last, ran to a tree near by, got upon the farther side of it and took a more serious
view of the situation. And so the clumsy multitude dragged itself slowly and painfully along in
hideous pantomime—moved forward down the slope like a swarm of great black beetles, with
never a sound of going—in silence profound, absolute.
Instead of darkening, the haunted landscape began to brighten. Through the belt of trees beyond
the brook shone a strange red light, the trunks and branches of the trees making a black lacework
against it. It struck the creeping figures and gave them monstrous shadows, which caricatured
their movements on the lit grass. It fell upon their faces, touching their whiteness with a ruddy
tinge, accentuating the stains with which so many of them were freaked and maculated. It
sparkled on buttons and bits of metal in their clothing. Instinctively the child turned toward the
growing splendor and moved down the slope with his horrible companions; in a few moments
had passed the foremost of the throng—not much of a feat, considering his advantages. He
placed himself in the lead, his wooden sword still in hand, and solemnly directed the march,
conforming his pace to theirs and occasionally turning as if to see that his forces did not straggle.
Surely such a leader never before had such a following.
Scattered about upon the ground now slowly narrowing by the encroachment of this awful march
to water, were certain articles to which, in the leader's mind, were coupled no significant
associations: an occasional blanket, tightly rolled lengthwise, doubled and the ends bound
together with a string; a heavy knapsack here, and there a broken rifle—such things, in short, as
are found in the rear of retreating troops, the "spoor" of men flying from their hunters.
Everywhere near the creek, which here had a margin of lowland, the earth was trodden into mud
by the feet of men and horses. An observer of better experience in the use of his eyes would have
noticed that these footprints pointed in both directions; the ground had been twice passed over—
in advance and in retreat. A few hours before, these desperate, stricken men, with their more
fortunate and now distant comrades, had penetrated the forest in thousands. Their successive
battalions, breaking into swarms and re-forming in lines, had passed the child on every side—
had almost trodden on him as he slept. The rustle and murmur of their march had not awakened
102
him. Almost within a stone's throw of where he lay they had fought a battle; but all unheard by
him were the roar of the musketry, the shock of the cannon, "the thunder of the captains and the
shouting." He had slept through it all, grasping his little wooden sword with perhaps a tighter
clutch in unconscious sympathy with his martial environment, but as heedless of the grandeur of
the struggle as the dead who had died to make the glory.
The fire beyond the belt of woods on the farther side of the creek, reflected to earth from the
canopy of its own smoke, was now suffusing the whole landscape. It transformed the sinuous
line of mist to the vapor of gold. The water gleamed with dashes of red, and red, too, were many
of the stones protruding above the surface. But that was blood; the less desperately wounded had
stained them in crossing. On them, too, the child now crossed with eager steps; he was going to
the fire. As he stood upon the farther bank he turned about to look at the companions of his
march. The advance was arriving at the creek. The stronger had already drawn themselves to the
brink and plunged their faces into the flood. Three or four who lay without motion appeared to
have no heads. At this the child's eyes expanded with wonder; even his hospitable understanding
could not accept a phenomenon implying such vitality as that. After slaking their thirst these men
had not had the strength to back away from the water, nor to keep their heads above it. They
were drowned. In rear of these, the open spaces of the forest showed the leader as many formless
figures of his grim command as at first; but not nearly so many were in motion. He waved his
cap for their encouragement and smilingly pointed with his weapon in the direction of the
guiding light—a pillar of fire to this strange exodus.
Confident of the fidelity of his forces, he now entered the belt of woods, passed through it easily
in the red illumination, climbed a fence, ran across a field, turning now and again to coquet with
his responsive shadow, and so approached the blazing ruin of a dwelling. Desolation
everywhere! In all the wide glare not a living thing was visible. He cared nothing for that; the
spectacle pleased, and he danced with glee in imitation of the wavering flames. He ran about,
collecting fuel, but every object that he found was too heavy for him to cast in from the distance
to which the heat limited his approach. In despair he flung in his sword—a surrender to the
superior forces of nature. His military career was at an end.
Shifting his position, his eyes fell upon some outbuildings which had an oddly familiar
appearance, as if he had dreamed of them. He stood considering them with wonder, when
suddenly the entire plantation, with its inclosing forest, seemed to turn as if upon a pivot. His
little world swung half around; the points of the compass were reversed. He recognized the
blazing building as his own home!
For a moment he stood stupefied by the power of the revelation, then ran with stumbling feet,
making a half-circuit of the ruin. There, conspicuous in the light of the conflagration, lay the
dead body of a woman—the white face turned upward, the hands thrown out and clutched full of
grass, the clothing deranged, the long dark hair in tangles and full of clotted blood. The greater
part of the forehead was torn away, and from the jagged hole the brain protruded, overflowing
the temple, a frothy mass of gray, crowned with clusters of crimson bubbles—the work of a
shell.
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The child moved his little hands, making wild, uncertain gestures. He uttered a series of
inarticulate and indescribable cries—something between the chattering of an ape and the
gobbling of a turkey—a startling, soulless, unholy sound, the language of a devil. The child was
a deaf mute.
Then he stood motionless, with quivering lips, looking down upon the wreck.
Resources for The Rise of Realism
Henry James (1843-1916)
[image] Henry James was born in New York City on April 15, 1843, a member of a wealthy
family that included brother William, an influential philosopher and psychologist, and sister
Alice, an important diarist. In style, he was a polar opposite to fellow writer Mark Twain, and as
a psychological realist he made his reputation with sophisticated novels and stories of Americans
in European settings. James received his education by traveling extensively with his family in
England, Switzerland and France and by being exposed to the high culture of Europe. By age 21
he was published in leading journals and magazines, choosing to dedicate himself to his writing
rather than the law. He was prolific, writing numerous novels, stories, sketches, and critical
essays. The list of his key titles is lengthy. Longer works include Daisy Miller (1879), The
Portrait of a Lady (1881), The Bostonians (1886), What Maisie Knew (1897), The Turn of the
Screw (1898), The Wings of the Dove (1902), The Ambassadors (1903) and The Golden Bowl
(1904). He is also renowned for his shorter fiction, such as “The Real Thing” (1892), “The
Figure in the Carpet” (1896), “The Beast in the Jungle” (1903), and “The Jolly Corner” (1908).
James died in London on February 28, 1916 and was cremated. Students of James’ writing
should be aware that his works often appear in various versions, including original texts and
those revised for his later New York Editions. Biographical and critical studies of this key
American writer are plentiful. Two starting places include Eric L. Haralson and Kendall
Johnson's Critical Companion to Henry James: A Literary Reference to His Life and Work,
Infobase Publishing, 2009 and Daniel Mark Fogel's A Companion to Henry James Studies,
Greenwood Press, 1993.
Daisy Miller: A Study
James, Henry. Daisy Miller: A Study. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1878.
originally serialized in Cornhill Magazine, June & July, 1878.
source of etext: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/208
Part I
At the little town of Vevey, in Switzerland, there is a particularly comfortable hotel. There are,
indeed, many hotels, for the entertainment of tourists is the business of the place, which, as many
travelers will remember, is seated upon the edge of a remarkably blue lake—a lake that it
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behooves every tourist to visit. The shore of the lake presents an unbroken array of
establishments of this order, of every category, from the "grand hotel" of the newest fashion,
with a chalk-white front, a hundred balconies, and a dozen flags flying from its roof, to the little
Swiss pension of an elder day, with its name inscribed in German-looking lettering upon a pink
or yellow wall and an awkward summerhouse in the angle of the garden. One of the hotels at
Vevey, however, is famous, even classical, being distinguished from many of its upstart
neighbors by an air both of luxury and of maturity. In this region, in the month of June,
American travelers are extremely numerous; it may be said, indeed, that Vevey assumes at this
period some of the characteristics of an American watering place. There are sights and sounds
which evoke a vision, an echo, of Newport and Saratoga. There is a flitting hither and thither of
"stylish" young girls, a rustling of muslin flounces, a rattle of dance music in the morning hours,
a sound of high-pitched voices at all times. You receive an impression of these things at the
excellent inn of the "Trois Couronnes" and are transported in fancy to the Ocean House or to
Congress Hall. But at the "Trois Couronnes," it must be added, there are other features that are
much at variance with these suggestions: neat German waiters, who look like secretaries of
legation; Russian princesses sitting in the garden; little Polish boys walking about held by the
hand, with their governors; a view of the sunny crest of the Dent du Midi and the picturesque
towers of the Castle of Chillon.
I hardly know whether it was the analogies or the differences that were uppermost in the mind of
a young American, who, two or three years ago, sat in the garden of the "Trois Couronnes,"
looking about him, rather idly, at some of the graceful objects I have mentioned. It was a
beautiful summer morning, and in whatever fashion the young American looked at things, they
must have seemed to him charming. He had come from Geneva the day before by the little
steamer, to see his aunt, who was staying at the hotel—Geneva having been for a long time his
place of residence. But his aunt had a headache—his aunt had almost always a headache—and
now she was shut up in her room, smelling camphor, so that he was at liberty to wander about.
He was some seven-and-twenty years of age; when his friends spoke of him, they usually said
that he was at Geneva "studying." When his enemies spoke of him, they said—but, after all, he
had no enemies; he was an extremely amiable fellow, and universally liked. What I should say is,
simply, that when certain persons spoke of him they affirmed that the reason of his spending so
much time at Geneva was that he was extremely devoted to a lady who lived there—a foreign
lady—a person older than himself. Very few Americans—indeed, I think none—had ever seen
this lady, about whom there were some singular stories. But Winterbourne had an old attachment
for the little metropolis of Calvinism; he had been put to school there as a boy, and he had
afterward gone to college there—circumstances which had led to his forming a great many
youthful friendships. Many of these he had kept, and they were a source of great satisfaction to
him.
After knocking at his aunt's door and learning that she was indisposed, he had taken a walk about
the town, and then he had come in to his breakfast. He had now finished his breakfast; but he
was drinking a small cup of coffee, which had been served to him on a little table in the garden
by one of the waiters who looked like an attache. At last he finished his coffee and lit a cigarette.
Presently a small boy came walking along the path—an urchin of nine or ten. The child, who
was diminutive for his years, had an aged expression of countenance, a pale complexion, and
sharp little features. He was dressed in knickerbockers, with red stockings, which displayed his
105
poor little spindle-shanks; he also wore a brilliant red cravat. He carried in his hand a long
alpenstock, the sharp point of which he thrust into everything that he approached—the
flowerbeds, the garden benches, the trains of the ladies' dresses. In front of Winterbourne he
paused, looking at him with a pair of bright, penetrating little eyes.
"Will you give me a lump of sugar?" he asked in a sharp, hard little voice—a voice immature and
yet, somehow, not young.
Winterbourne glanced at the small table near him, on which his coffee service rested, and saw
that several morsels of sugar remained. "Yes, you may take one," he answered; "but I don't think
sugar is good for little boys."
This little boy stepped forward and carefully selected three of the coveted fragments, two of
which he buried in the pocket of his knickerbockers, depositing the other as promptly in another
place. He poked his alpenstock, lance-fashion, into Winterbourne's bench and tried to crack the
lump of sugar with his teeth.
"Oh, blazes; it's har-r-d!" he exclaimed, pronouncing the adjective in a peculiar manner.
Winterbourne had immediately perceived that he might have the honor of claiming him as a
fellow countryman. "Take care you don't hurt your teeth," he said, paternally.
"I haven't got any teeth to hurt. They have all come out. I have only got seven teeth. My mother
counted them last night, and one came out right afterward. She said she'd slap me if any more
came out. I can't help it. It's this old Europe. It's the climate that makes them come out. In
America they didn't come out. It's these hotels."
Winterbourne was much amused. "If you eat three lumps of sugar, your mother will certainly
slap you," he said.
"She's got to give me some candy, then," rejoined his young interlocutor. "I can't get any candy
here—any American candy. American candy's the best candy."
"And are American little boys the best little boys?" asked Winterbourne.
"I don't know. I'm an American boy," said the child.
"I see you are one of the best!" laughed Winterbourne.
"Are you an American man?" pursued this vivacious infant. And then, on Winterbourne's
affirmative reply—"American men are the best," he declared.
His companion thanked him for the compliment, and the child, who had now got astride of his
alpenstock, stood looking about him, while he attacked a second lump of sugar. Winterbourne
wondered if he himself had been like this in his infancy, for he had been brought to Europe at
about this age.
106
"Here comes my sister!" cried the child in a moment. "She's an American girl."
Winterbourne looked along the path and saw a beautiful young lady advancing. "American girls
are the best girls," he said cheerfully to his young companion.
"My sister ain't the best!" the child declared. "She's always blowing at me."
"I imagine that is your fault, not hers," said Winterbourne. The young lady meanwhile had drawn
near. She was dressed in white muslin, with a hundred frills and flounces, and knots of palecolored ribbon. She was bareheaded, but she balanced in her hand a large parasol, with a deep
border of embroidery; and she was strikingly, admirably pretty. "How pretty they are!" thought
Winterbourne, straightening himself in his seat, as if he were prepared to rise.
The young lady paused in front of his bench, near the parapet of the garden, which overlooked
the lake. The little boy had now converted his alpenstock into a vaulting pole, by the aid of
which he was springing about in the gravel and kicking it up not a little.
"Randolph," said the young lady, "what ARE you doing?"
"I'm going up the Alps," replied Randolph. "This is the way!" And he gave another little jump,
scattering the pebbles about Winterbourne's ears.
"That's the way they come down," said Winterbourne.
"He's an American man!" cried Randolph, in his little hard voice.
The young lady gave no heed to this announcement, but looked straight at her brother. "Well, I
guess you had better be quiet," she simply observed.
It seemed to Winterbourne that he had been in a manner presented. He got up and stepped slowly
toward the young girl, throwing away his cigarette. "This little boy and I have made
acquaintance," he said, with great civility. In Geneva, as he had been perfectly aware, a young
man was not at liberty to speak to a young unmarried lady except under certain rarely occurring
conditions; but here at Vevey, what conditions could be better than these?—a pretty American
girl coming and standing in front of you in a garden. This pretty American girl, however, on
hearing Winterbourne's observation, simply glanced at him; she then turned her head and looked
over the parapet, at the lake and the opposite mountains. He wondered whether he had gone too
far, but he decided that he must advance farther, rather than retreat. While he was thinking of
something else to say, the young lady turned to the little boy again.
"I should like to know where you got that pole," she said.
"I bought it," responded Randolph.
"You don't mean to say you're going to take it to Italy?"
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"Yes, I am going to take it to Italy," the child declared.
The young girl glanced over the front of her dress and smoothed out a knot or two of ribbon.
Then she rested her eyes upon the prospect again. "Well, I guess you had better leave it
somewhere," she said after a moment.
"Are you going to Italy?" Winterbourne inquired in a tone of great respect.
The young lady glanced at him again. "Yes, sir," she replied. And she said nothing more.
"Are you—a—going over the Simplon?" Winterbourne pursued, a little embarrassed.
"I don't know," she said. "I suppose it's some mountain. Randolph, what mountain are we going
over?"
"Going where?" the child demanded.
"To Italy," Winterbourne explained.
"I don't know," said Randolph. "I don't want to go to Italy. I want to go to America."
"Oh, Italy is a beautiful place!" rejoined the young man.
"Can you get candy there?" Randolph loudly inquired.
"I hope not," said his sister. "I guess you have had enough candy, and mother thinks so too."
"I haven't had any for ever so long—for a hundred weeks!" cried the boy, still jumping about.
The young lady inspected her flounces and smoothed her ribbons again; and Winterbourne
presently risked an observation upon the beauty of the view. He was ceasing to be embarrassed,
for he had begun to perceive that she was not in the least embarrassed herself. There had not
been the slightest alteration in her charming complexion; she was evidently neither offended nor
flattered. If she looked another way when he spoke to her, and seemed not particularly to hear
him, this was simply her habit, her manner. Yet, as he talked a little more and pointed out some
of the objects of interest in the view, with which she appeared quite unacquainted, she gradually
gave him more of the benefit of her glance; and then he saw that this glance was perfectly direct
and unshrinking. It was not, however, what would have been called an immodest glance, for the
young girl's eyes were singularly honest and fresh. They were wonderfully pretty eyes; and,
indeed, Winterbourne had not seen for a long time anything prettier than his fair countrywoman's
various features—her complexion, her nose, her ears, her teeth. He had a great relish for
feminine beauty; he was addicted to observing and analyzing it; and as regards this young lady's
face he made several observations. It was not at all insipid, but it was not exactly expressive; and
though it was eminently delicate, Winterbourne mentally accused it—very forgivingly—of a
want of finish. He thought it very possible that Master Randolph's sister was a coquette; he was
sure she had a spirit of her own; but in her bright, sweet, superficial little visage there was no
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mockery, no irony. Before long it became obvious that she was much disposed toward
conversation. She told him that they were going to Rome for the winter—she and her mother and
Randolph. She asked him if he was a "real American"; she shouldn't have taken him for one; he
seemed more like a German—this was said after a little hesitation—especially when he spoke.
Winterbourne, laughing, answered that he had met Germans who spoke like Americans, but that
he had not, so far as he remembered, met an American who spoke like a German. Then he asked
her if she should not be more comfortable in sitting upon the bench which he had just quitted.
She answered that she liked standing up and walking about; but she presently sat down. She told
him she was from New York State—"if you know where that is." Winterbourne learned more
about her by catching hold of her small, slippery brother and making him stand a few minutes by
his side.
"Tell me your name, my boy," he said.
"Randolph C. Miller," said the boy sharply. "And I'll tell you her name;" and he leveled his
alpenstock at his sister.
"You had better wait till you are asked!" said this young lady calmly.
"I should like very much to know your name," said Winterbourne.
"Her name is Daisy Miller!" cried the child. "But that isn't her real name; that isn't her name on
her cards."
"It's a pity you haven't got one of my cards!" said Miss Miller.
"Her real name is Annie P. Miller," the boy went on.
"Ask him HIS name," said his sister, indicating Winterbourne.
But on this point Randolph seemed perfectly indifferent; he continued to supply information with
regard to his own family. "My father's name is Ezra B. Miller," he announced. "My father ain't in
Europe; my father's in a better place than Europe."
Winterbourne imagined for a moment that this was the manner in which the child had been
taught to intimate that Mr. Miller had been removed to the sphere of celestial reward. But
Randolph immediately added, "My father's in Schenectady. He's got a big business. My father's
rich, you bet!"
"Well!" ejaculated Miss Miller, lowering her parasol and looking at the embroidered border.
Winterbourne presently released the child, who departed, dragging his alpenstock along the path.
"He doesn't like Europe," said the young girl. "He wants to go back."
"To Schenectady, you mean?"
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"Yes; he wants to go right home. He hasn't got any boys here. There is one boy here, but he
always goes round with a teacher; they won't let him play."
"And your brother hasn't any teacher?" Winterbourne inquired.
"Mother thought of getting him one, to travel round with us. There was a lady told her of a very
good teacher; an American lady—perhaps you know her—Mrs. Sanders. I think she came from
Boston. She told her of this teacher, and we thought of getting him to travel round with us. But
Randolph said he didn't want a teacher traveling round with us. He said he wouldn't have lessons
when he was in the cars. And we ARE in the cars about half the time. There was an English lady
we met in the cars—I think her name was Miss Featherstone; perhaps you know her. She wanted
to know why I didn't give Randolph lessons—give him 'instruction,' she called it. I guess he
could give me more instruction than I could give him. He's very smart."
"Yes," said Winterbourne; "he seems very smart."
"Mother's going to get a teacher for him as soon as we get to Italy. Can you get good teachers in
Italy?"
"Very good, I should think," said Winterbourne.
"Or else she's going to find some school. He ought to learn some more. He's only nine. He's
going to college." And in this way Miss Miller continued to converse upon the affairs of her
family and upon other topics. She sat there with her extremely pretty hands, ornamented with
very brilliant rings, folded in her lap, and with her pretty eyes now resting upon those of
Winterbourne, now wandering over the garden, the people who passed by, and the beautiful
view. She talked to Winterbourne as if she had known him a long time. He found it very
pleasant. It was many years since he had heard a young girl talk so much. It might have been said
of this unknown young lady, who had come and sat down beside him upon a bench, that she
chattered. She was very quiet; she sat in a charming, tranquil attitude; but her lips and her eyes
were constantly moving. She had a soft, slender, agreeable voice, and her tone was decidedly
sociable. She gave Winterbourne a history of her movements and intentions and those of her
mother and brother, in Europe, and enumerated, in particular, the various hotels at which they
had stopped. "That English lady in the cars," she said—"Miss Featherstone—asked me if we
didn't all live in hotels in America. I told her I had never been in so many hotels in my life as
since I came to Europe. I have never seen so many—it's nothing but hotels." But Miss Miller did
not make this remark with a querulous accent; she appeared to be in the best humor with
everything. She declared that the hotels were very good, when once you got used to their ways,
and that Europe was perfectly sweet. She was not disappointed—not a bit. Perhaps it was
because she had heard so much about it before. She had ever so many intimate friends that had
been there ever so many times. And then she had had ever so many dresses and things from
Paris. Whenever she put on a Paris dress she felt as if she were in Europe.
"It was a kind of a wishing cap," said Winterbourne.
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"Yes," said Miss Miller without examining this analogy; "it always made me wish I was here.
But I needn't have done that for dresses. I am sure they send all the pretty ones to America; you
see the most frightful things here. The only thing I don't like," she proceeded, "is the society.
There isn't any society; or, if there is, I don't know where it keeps itself. Do you? I suppose there
is some society somewhere, but I haven't seen anything of it. I'm very fond of society, and I have
always had a great deal of it. I don't mean only in Schenectady, but in New York. I used to go to
New York every winter. In New York I had lots of society. Last winter I had seventeen dinners
given me; and three of them were by gentlemen," added Daisy Miller. "I have more friends in
New York than in Schenectady—more gentleman friends; and more young lady friends too," she
resumed in a moment. She paused again for an instant; she was looking at Winterbourne with all
her prettiness in her lively eyes and in her light, slightly monotonous smile. "I have always had,"
she said, "a great deal of gentlemen's society."
Poor Winterbourne was amused, perplexed, and decidedly charmed. He had never yet heard a
young girl express herself in just this fashion; never, at least, save in cases where to say such
things seemed a kind of demonstrative evidence of a certain laxity of deportment. And yet was
he to accuse Miss Daisy Miller of actual or potential inconduite, as they said at Geneva? He felt
that he had lived at Geneva so long that he had lost a good deal; he had become dishabituated to
the American tone. Never, indeed, since he had grown old enough to appreciate things, had he
encountered a young American girl of so pronounced a type as this. Certainly she was very
charming, but how deucedly sociable! Was she simply a pretty girl from New York State? Were
they all like that, the pretty girls who had a good deal of gentlemen's society? Or was she also a
designing, an audacious, an unscrupulous young person? Winterbourne had lost his instinct in
this matter, and his reason could not help him. Miss Daisy Miller looked extremely innocent.
Some people had told him that, after all, American girls were exceedingly innocent; and others
had told him that, after all, they were not. He was inclined to think Miss Daisy Miller was a
flirt—a pretty American flirt. He had never, as yet, had any relations with young ladies of this
category. He had known, here in Europe, two or three women—persons older than Miss Daisy
Miller, and provided, for respectability's sake, with husbands—who were great coquettes—
dangerous, terrible women, with whom one's relations were liable to take a serious turn. But this
young girl was not a coquette in that sense; she was very unsophisticated; she was only a pretty
American flirt. Winterbourne was almost grateful for having found the formula that applied to
Miss Daisy Miller. He leaned back in his seat; he remarked to himself that she had the most
charming nose he had ever seen; he wondered what were the regular conditions and limitations
of one's intercourse with a pretty American flirt. It presently became apparent that he was on the
way to learn.
"Have you been to that old castle?" asked the young girl, pointing with her parasol to the fargleaming walls of the Chateau de Chillon.
"Yes, formerly, more than once," said Winterbourne. "You too, I suppose, have seen it?"
"No; we haven't been there. I want to go there dreadfully. Of course I mean to go there. I
wouldn't go away from here without having seen that old castle."
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"It's a very pretty excursion," said Winterbourne, "and very easy to make. You can drive, you
know, or you can go by the little steamer."
"You can go in the cars," said Miss Miller.
"Yes; you can go in the cars," Winterbourne assented.
"Our courier says they take you right up to the castle," the young girl continued. "We were going
last week, but my mother gave out. She suffers dreadfully from dyspepsia. She said she couldn't
go. Randolph wouldn't go either; he says he doesn't think much of old castles. But I guess we'll
go this week, if we can get Randolph."
"Your brother is not interested in ancient monuments?" Winterbourne inquired, smiling.
"He says he don't care much about old castles. He's only nine. He wants to stay at the hotel.
Mother's afraid to leave him alone, and the courier won't stay with him; so we haven't been to
many places. But it will be too bad if we don't go up there." And Miss Miller pointed again at the
Chateau de Chillon.
"I should think it might be arranged," said Winterbourne. "Couldn't you get some one to stay for
the afternoon with Randolph?"
Miss Miller looked at him a moment, and then, very placidly, "I wish YOU would stay with
him!" she said.
Winterbourne hesitated a moment. "I should much rather go to Chillon with you."
"With me?" asked the young girl with the same placidity.
She didn't rise, blushing, as a young girl at Geneva would have done; and yet Winterbourne,
conscious that he had been very bold, thought it possible she was offended. "With your mother,"
he answered very respectfully.
But it seemed that both his audacity and his respect were lost upon Miss Daisy Miller. "I guess
my mother won't go, after all," she said. "She don't like to ride round in the afternoon. But did
you really mean what you said just now—that you would like to go up there?"
"Most earnestly," Winterbourne declared.
"Then we may arrange it. If mother will stay with Randolph, I guess Eugenio will."
"Eugenio?" the young man inquired.
"Eugenio's our courier. He doesn't like to stay with Randolph; he's the most fastidious man I ever
saw. But he's a splendid courier. I guess he'll stay at home with Randolph if mother does, and
then we can go to the castle."
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Winterbourne reflected for an instant as lucidly as possible—"we" could only mean Miss Daisy
Miller and himself. This program seemed almost too agreeable for credence; he felt as if he
ought to kiss the young lady's hand. Possibly he would have done so and quite spoiled the
project, but at this moment another person, presumably Eugenio, appeared. A tall, handsome
man, with superb whiskers, wearing a velvet morning coat and a brilliant watch chain,
approached Miss Miller, looking sharply at her companion. "Oh, Eugenio!" said Miss Miller
with the friendliest accent.
Eugenio had looked at Winterbourne from head to foot; he now bowed gravely to the young
lady. "I have the honor to inform mademoiselle that luncheon is upon the table."
Miss Miller slowly rose. "See here, Eugenio!" she said; "I'm going to that old castle, anyway."
"To the Chateau de Chillon, mademoiselle?" the courier inquired. "Mademoiselle has made
arrangements?" he added in a tone which struck Winterbourne as very impertinent.
Eugenio's tone apparently threw, even to Miss Miller's own apprehension, a slightly ironical light
upon the young girl's situation. She turned to Winterbourne, blushing a little—a very little. "You
won't back out?" she said.
"I shall not be happy till we go!" he protested.
"And you are staying in this hotel?" she went on. "And you are really an American?"
The courier stood looking at Winterbourne offensively. The young man, at least, thought his
manner of looking an offense to Miss Miller; it conveyed an imputation that she "picked up"
acquaintances. "I shall have the honor of presenting to you a person who will tell you all about
me," he said, smiling and referring to his aunt.
"Oh, well, we'll go some day," said Miss Miller. And she gave him a smile and turned away. She
put up her parasol and walked back to the inn beside Eugenio. Winterbourne stood looking after
her; and as she moved away, drawing her muslin furbelows over the gravel, said to himself that
she had the tournure of a princess.
He had, however, engaged to do more than proved feasible, in promising to present his aunt,
Mrs. Costello, to Miss Daisy Miller. As soon as the former lady had got better of her headache,
he waited upon her in her apartment; and, after the proper inquiries in regard to her health, he
asked her if she had observed in the hotel an American family—a mamma, a daughter, and a
little boy.
"And a courier?" said Mrs. Costello. "Oh yes, I have observed them. Seen them—heard them—
and kept out of their way." Mrs. Costello was a widow with a fortune; a person of much
distinction, who frequently intimated that, if she were not so dreadfully liable to sick headaches,
she would probably have left a deeper impress upon her time. She had a long, pale face, a high
nose, and a great deal of very striking white hair, which she wore in large puffs and rouleaux
over the top of her head. She had two sons married in New York and another who was now in
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Europe. This young man was amusing himself at Hamburg, and, though he was on his travels,
was rarely perceived to visit any particular city at the moment selected by his mother for her own
appearance there. Her nephew, who had come up to Vevey expressly to see her, was therefore
more attentive than those who, as she said, were nearer to her. He had imbibed at Geneva the
idea that one must always be attentive to one's aunt. Mrs. Costello had not seen him for many
years, and she was greatly pleased with him, manifesting her approbation by initiating him into
many of the secrets of that social sway which, as she gave him to understand, she exerted in the
American capital. She admitted that she was very exclusive; but, if he were acquainted with New
York, he would see that one had to be. And her picture of the minutely hierarchical constitution
of the society of that city, which she presented to him in many different lights, was, to
Winterbourne's imagination, almost oppressively striking.
He immediately perceived, from her tone, that Miss Daisy Miller's place in the social scale was
low. "I am afraid you don't approve of them," he said.
"They are very common," Mrs. Costello declared. "They are the sort of Americans that one does
one's duty by not—not accepting."
"Ah, you don't accept them?" said the young man.
"I can't, my dear Frederick. I would if I could, but I can't."
"The young girl is very pretty," said Winterbourne in a moment.
"Of course she's pretty. But she is very common."
"I see what you mean, of course," said Winterbourne after another pause.
"She has that charming look that they all have," his aunt resumed. "I can't think where they pick
it up; and she dresses in perfection—no, you don't know how well she dresses. I can't think
where they get their taste."
"But, my dear aunt, she is not, after all, a Comanche savage."
"She is a young lady," said Mrs. Costello, "who has an intimacy with her mamma's courier."
"An intimacy with the courier?" the young man demanded.
"Oh, the mother is just as bad! They treat the courier like a familiar friend—like a gentleman. I
shouldn't wonder if he dines with them. Very likely they have never seen a man with such good
manners, such fine clothes, so like a gentleman. He probably corresponds to the young lady's
idea of a count. He sits with them in the garden in the evening. I think he smokes."
Winterbourne listened with interest to these disclosures; they helped him to make up his mind
about Miss Daisy. Evidently she was rather wild. "Well," he said, "I am not a courier, and yet she
was very charming to me."
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"You had better have said at first," said Mrs. Costello with dignity, "that you had made her
acquaintance."
"We simply met in the garden, and we talked a bit."
"Tout bonnement! And pray what did you say?"
"I said I should take the liberty of introducing her to my admirable aunt."
"I am much obliged to you."
"It was to guarantee my respectability," said Winterbourne.
"And pray who is to guarantee hers?"
"Ah, you are cruel!" said the young man. "She's a very nice young girl."
"You don't say that as if you believed it," Mrs. Costello observed.
"She is completely uncultivated," Winterbourne went on. "But she is wonderfully pretty, and, in
short, she is very nice. To prove that I believe it, I am going to take her to the Chateau de
Chillon."
"You two are going off there together? I should say it proved just the contrary. How long had
you known her, may I ask, when this interesting project was formed? You haven't been twentyfour hours in the house."
"I have known her half an hour!" said Winterbourne, smiling.
"Dear me!" cried Mrs. Costello. "What a dreadful girl!"
Her nephew was silent for some moments. "You really think, then," he began earnestly, and with
a desire for trustworthy information—"you really think that—" But he paused again.
"Think what, sir?" said his aunt.
"That she is the sort of young lady who expects a man, sooner or later, to carry her off?"
"I haven't the least idea what such young ladies expect a man to do. But I really think that you
had better not meddle with little American girls that are uncultivated, as you call them. You have
lived too long out of the country. You will be sure to make some great mistake. You are too
innocent."
"My dear aunt, I am not so innocent," said Winterbourne, smiling and curling his mustache.
"You are guilty too, then!"
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Winterbourne continued to curl his mustache meditatively. "You won't let the poor girl know you
then?" he asked at last.
"Is it literally true that she is going to the Chateau de Chillon with you?"
"I think that she fully intends it."
"Then, my dear Frederick," said Mrs. Costello, "I must decline the honor of her acquaintance. I
am an old woman, but I am not too old, thank Heaven, to be shocked!"
"But don't they all do these things—the young girls in America?" Winterbourne inquired.
Mrs. Costello stared a moment. "I should like to see my granddaughters do them!" she declared
grimly.
This seemed to throw some light upon the matter, for Winterbourne remembered to have heard
that his pretty cousins in New York were "tremendous flirts." If, therefore, Miss Daisy Miller
exceeded the liberal margin allowed to these young ladies, it was probable that anything might
be expected of her. Winterbourne was impatient to see her again, and he was vexed with himself
that, by instinct, he should not appreciate her justly.
Though he was impatient to see her, he hardly knew what he should say to her about his aunt's
refusal to become acquainted with her; but he discovered, promptly enough, that with Miss Daisy
Miller there was no great need of walking on tiptoe. He found her that evening in the garden,
wandering about in the warm starlight like an indolent sylph, and swinging to and fro the largest
fan he had ever beheld. It was ten o'clock. He had dined with his aunt, had been sitting with her
since dinner, and had just taken leave of her till the morrow. Miss Daisy Miller seemed very glad
to see him; she declared it was the longest evening she had ever passed.
"Have you been all alone?" he asked.
"I have been walking round with mother. But mother gets tired walking round," she answered.
"Has she gone to bed?"
"No; she doesn't like to go to bed," said the young girl. "She doesn't sleep—not three hours. She
says she doesn't know how she lives. She's dreadfully nervous. I guess she sleeps more than she
thinks. She's gone somewhere after Randolph; she wants to try to get him to go to bed. He
doesn't like to go to bed."
"Let us hope she will persuade him," observed Winterbourne.
"She will talk to him all she can; but he doesn't like her to talk to him," said Miss Daisy, opening
her fan. "She's going to try to get Eugenio to talk to him. But he isn't afraid of Eugenio.
Eugenio's a splendid courier, but he can't make much impression on Randolph! I don't believe
he'll go to bed before eleven." It appeared that Randolph's vigil was in fact triumphantly
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prolonged, for Winterbourne strolled about with the young girl for some time without meeting
her mother. "I have been looking round for that lady you want to introduce me to," his
companion resumed. "She's your aunt." Then, on Winterbourne's admitting the fact and
expressing some curiosity as to how she had learned it, she said she had heard all about Mrs.
Costello from the chambermaid. She was very quiet and very comme il faut; she wore white
puffs; she spoke to no one, and she never dined at the table d'hote. Every two days she had a
headache. "I think that's a lovely description, headache and all!" said Miss Daisy, chattering
along in her thin, gay voice. "I want to know her ever so much. I know just what YOUR aunt
would be; I know I should like her. She would be very exclusive. I like a lady to be exclusive;
I'm dying to be exclusive myself. Well, we ARE exclusive, mother and I. We don't speak to
everyone—or they don't speak to us. I suppose it's about the same thing. Anyway, I shall be ever
so glad to know your aunt."
Winterbourne was embarrassed. "She would be most happy," he said; "but I am afraid those
headaches will interfere."
The young girl looked at him through the dusk. "But I suppose she doesn't have a headache every
day," she said sympathetically.
Winterbourne was silent a moment. "She tells me she does," he answered at last, not knowing
what to say.
Miss Daisy Miller stopped and stood looking at him. Her prettiness was still visible in the
darkness; she was opening and closing her enormous fan. "She doesn't want to know me!" she
said suddenly. "Why don't you say so? You needn't be afraid. I'm not afraid!" And she gave a
little laugh.
Winterbourne fancied there was a tremor in her voice; he was touched, shocked, mortified by it.
"My dear young lady," he protested, "she knows no one. It's her wretched health."
The young girl walked on a few steps, laughing still. "You needn't be afraid," she repeated.
"Why should she want to know me?" Then she paused again; she was close to the parapet of the
garden, and in front of her was the starlit lake. There was a vague sheen upon its surface, and in
the distance were dimly seen mountain forms. Daisy Miller looked out upon the mysterious
prospect and then she gave another little laugh. "Gracious! she IS exclusive!" she said.
Winterbourne wondered whether she was seriously wounded, and for a moment almost wished
that her sense of injury might be such as to make it becoming in him to attempt to reassure and
comfort her. He had a pleasant sense that she would be very approachable for consolatory
purposes. He felt then, for the instant, quite ready to sacrifice his aunt, conversationally; to admit
that she was a proud, rude woman, and to declare that they needn't mind her. But before he had
time to commit himself to this perilous mixture of gallantry and impiety, the young lady,
resuming her walk, gave an exclamation in quite another tone. "Well, here's Mother! I guess she
hasn't got Randolph to go to bed." The figure of a lady appeared at a distance, very indistinct in
the darkness, and advancing with a slow and wavering movement. Suddenly it seemed to pause.
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"Are you sure it is your mother? Can you distinguish her in this thick dusk?" Winterbourne
asked.
"Well!" cried Miss Daisy Miller with a laugh; "I guess I know my own mother. And when she
has got on my shawl, too! She is always wearing my things."
The lady in question, ceasing to advance, hovered vaguely about the spot at which she had
checked her steps.
"I am afraid your mother doesn't see you," said Winterbourne. "Or perhaps," he added, thinking,
with Miss Miller, the joke permissible—"perhaps she feels guilty about your shawl."
"Oh, it's a fearful old thing!" the young girl replied serenely. "I told her she could wear it. She
won't come here because she sees you."
"Ah, then," said Winterbourne, "I had better leave you."
"Oh, no; come on!" urged Miss Daisy Miller.
"I'm afraid your mother doesn't approve of my walking with you."
Miss Miller gave him a serious glance. "It isn't for me; it's for you—that is, it's for HER. Well, I
don't know who it's for! But mother doesn't like any of my gentlemen friends. She's right down
timid. She always makes a fuss if I introduce a gentleman. But I DO introduce them—almost
always. If I didn't introduce my gentlemen friends to Mother," the young girl added in her little
soft, flat monotone, "I shouldn't think I was natural."
"To introduce me," said Winterbourne, "you must know my name." And he proceeded to
pronounce it.
"Oh, dear, I can't say all that!" said his companion with a laugh. But by this time they had come
up to Mrs. Miller, who, as they drew near, walked to the parapet of the garden and leaned upon
it, looking intently at the lake and turning her back to them. "Mother!" said the young girl in a
tone of decision. Upon this the elder lady turned round. "Mr. Winterbourne," said Miss Daisy
Miller, introducing the young man very frankly and prettily. "Common," she was, as Mrs.
Costello had pronounced her; yet it was a wonder to Winterbourne that, with her commonness,
she had a singularly delicate grace.
Her mother was a small, spare, light person, with a wandering eye, a very exiguous nose, and a
large forehead, decorated with a certain amount of thin, much frizzled hair. Like her daughter,
Mrs. Miller was dressed with extreme elegance; she had enormous diamonds in her ears. So far
as Winterbourne could observe, she gave him no greeting—she certainly was not looking at him.
Daisy was near her, pulling her shawl straight. "What are you doing, poking round here?" this
young lady inquired, but by no means with that harshness of accent which her choice of words
may imply.
118
"I don't know," said her mother, turning toward the lake again.
"I shouldn't think you'd want that shawl!" Daisy exclaimed.
"Well I do!" her mother answered with a little laugh.
"Did you get Randolph to go to bed?" asked the young girl.
"No; I couldn't induce him," said Mrs. Miller very gently. "He wants to talk to the waiter. He
likes to talk to that waiter."
"I was telling Mr. Winterbourne," the young girl went on; and to the young man's ear her tone
might have indicated that she had been uttering his name all her life.
"Oh, yes!" said Winterbourne; "I have the pleasure of knowing your son."
Randolph's mamma was silent; she turned her attention to the lake. But at last she spoke. "Well, I
don't see how he lives!"
"Anyhow, it isn't so bad as it was at Dover," said Daisy Miller.
"And what occurred at Dover?" Winterbourne asked.
"He wouldn't go to bed at all. I guess he sat up all night in the public parlor. He wasn't in bed at
twelve o'clock: I know that."
"It was half-past twelve," declared Mrs. Miller with mild emphasis.
"Does he sleep much during the day?" Winterbourne demanded.
"I guess he doesn't sleep much," Daisy rejoined.
"I wish he would!" said her mother. "It seems as if he couldn't."
"I think he's real tiresome," Daisy pursued.
Then, for some moments, there was silence. "Well, Daisy Miller," said the elder lady, presently,
"I shouldn't think you'd want to talk against your own brother!"
"Well, he IS tiresome, Mother," said Daisy, quite without the asperity of a retort.
"He's only nine," urged Mrs. Miller.
"Well, he wouldn't go to that castle," said the young girl. "I'm going there with Mr.
Winterbourne."
119
To this announcement, very placidly made, Daisy's mamma offered no response. Winterbourne
took for granted that she deeply disapproved of the projected excursion; but he said to himself
that she was a simple, easily managed person, and that a few deferential protestations would take
the edge from her displeasure. "Yes," he began; "your daughter has kindly allowed me the honor
of being her guide."
Mrs. Miller's wandering eyes attached themselves, with a sort of appealing air, to Daisy, who,
however, strolled a few steps farther, gently humming to herself. "I presume you will go in the
cars," said her mother.
"Yes, or in the boat," said Winterbourne.
"Well, of course, I don't know," Mrs. Miller rejoined. "I have never been to that castle."
"It is a pity you shouldn't go," said Winterbourne, beginning to feel reassured as to her
opposition. And yet he was quite prepared to find that, as a matter of course, she meant to
accompany her daughter.
"We've been thinking ever so much about going," she pursued; "but it seems as if we couldn't. Of
course Daisy—she wants to go round. But there's a lady here—I don't know her name—she says
she shouldn't think we'd want to go to see castles HERE; she should think we'd want to wait till
we got to Italy. It seems as if there would be so many there," continued Mrs. Miller with an air of
increasing confidence. "Of course we only want to see the principal ones. We visited several in
England," she presently added.
"Ah yes! in England there are beautiful castles," said Winterbourne. "But Chillon here, is very
well worth seeing."
"Well, if Daisy feels up to it—" said Mrs. Miller, in a tone impregnated with a sense of the
magnitude of the enterprise. "It seems as if there was nothing she wouldn't undertake."
"Oh, I think she'll enjoy it!" Winterbourne declared. And he desired more and more to make it a
certainty that he was to have the privilege of a tete-a-tete with the young lady, who was still
strolling along in front of them, softly vocalizing. "You are not disposed, madam," he inquired,
"to undertake it yourself?"
Daisy's mother looked at him an instant askance, and then walked forward in silence. Then—"I
guess she had better go alone," she said simply. Winterbourne observed to himself that this was a
very different type of maternity from that of the vigilant matrons who massed themselves in the
forefront of social intercourse in the dark old city at the other end of the lake. But his meditations
were interrupted by hearing his name very distinctly pronounced by Mrs. Miller's unprotected
daughter.
"Mr. Winterbourne!" murmured Daisy.
"Mademoiselle!" said the young man.
120
"Don't you want to take me out in a boat?"
"At present?" he asked.
"Of course!" said Daisy.
"Well, Annie Miller!" exclaimed her mother.
"I beg you, madam, to let her go," said Winterbourne ardently; for he had never yet enjoyed the
sensation of guiding through the summer starlight a skiff freighted with a fresh and beautiful
young girl.
"I shouldn't think she'd want to," said her mother. "I should think she'd rather go indoors."
"I'm sure Mr. Winterbourne wants to take me," Daisy declared. "He's so awfully devoted!"
"I will row you over to Chillon in the starlight."
"I don't believe it!" said Daisy.
"Well!" ejaculated the elder lady again.
"You haven't spoken to me for half an hour," her daughter went on.
"I have been having some very pleasant conversation with your mother," said Winterbourne.
"Well, I want you to take me out in a boat!" Daisy repeated. They had all stopped, and she had
turned round and was looking at Winterbourne. Her face wore a charming smile, her pretty eyes
were gleaming, she was swinging her great fan about. No; it's impossible to be prettier than that,
thought Winterbourne.
"There are half a dozen boats moored at that landing place," he said, pointing to certain steps
which descended from the garden to the lake. "If you will do me the honor to accept my arm, we
will go and select one of them."
Daisy stood there smiling; she threw back her head and gave a little, light laugh. "I like a
gentleman to be formal!" she declared.
"I assure you it's a formal offer."
"I was bound I would make you say something," Daisy went on.
"You see, it's not very difficult," said Winterbourne. "But I am afraid you are chaffing me."
"I think not, sir," remarked Mrs. Miller very gently.
121
"Do, then, let me give you a row," he said to the young girl.
"It's quite lovely, the way you say that!" cried Daisy.
"It will be still more lovely to do it."
"Yes, it would be lovely!" said Daisy. But she made no movement to accompany him; she only
stood there laughing.
"I should think you had better find out what time it is," interposed her mother.
"It is eleven o'clock, madam," said a voice, with a foreign accent, out of the neighboring
darkness; and Winterbourne, turning, perceived the florid personage who was in attendance upon
the two ladies. He had apparently just approached.
"Oh, Eugenio," said Daisy, "I am going out in a boat!"
Eugenio bowed. "At eleven o'clock, mademoiselle?"
"I am going with Mr. Winterbourne—this very minute."
"Do tell her she can't," said Mrs. Miller to the courier.
"I think you had better not go out in a boat, mademoiselle," Eugenio declared.
Winterbourne wished to Heaven this pretty girl were not so familiar with her courier; but he said
nothing.
"I suppose you don't think it's proper!" Daisy exclaimed. "Eugenio doesn't think anything's
proper."
"I am at your service," said Winterbourne.
"Does mademoiselle propose to go alone?" asked Eugenio of Mrs. Miller.
"Oh, no; with this gentleman!" answered Daisy's mamma.
The courier looked for a moment at Winterbourne—the latter thought he was smiling—and then,
solemnly, with a bow, "As mademoiselle pleases!" he said.
"Oh, I hoped you would make a fuss!" said Daisy. "I don't care to go now."
"I myself shall make a fuss if you don't go," said Winterbourne.
"That's all I want—a little fuss!" And the young girl began to laugh again.
122
"Mr. Randolph has gone to bed!" the courier announced frigidly.
"Oh, Daisy; now we can go!" said Mrs. Miller.
Daisy turned away from Winterbourne, looking at him, smiling and fanning herself. "Good
night," she said; "I hope you are disappointed, or disgusted, or something!"
He looked at her, taking the hand she offered him. "I am puzzled," he answered.
"Well, I hope it won't keep you awake!" she said very smartly; and, under the escort of the
privileged Eugenio, the two ladies passed toward the house.
Winterbourne stood looking after them; he was indeed puzzled. He lingered beside the lake for a
quarter of an hour, turning over the mystery of the young girl's sudden familiarities and caprices.
But the only very definite conclusion he came to was that he should enjoy deucedly "going off"
with her somewhere.
Two days afterward he went off with her to the Castle of Chillon. He waited for her in the large
hall of the hotel, where the couriers, the servants, the foreign tourists, were lounging about and
staring. It was not the place he should have chosen, but she had appointed it. She came tripping
downstairs, buttoning her long gloves, squeezing her folded parasol against her pretty figure,
dressed in the perfection of a soberly elegant traveling costume. Winterbourne was a man of
imagination and, as our ancestors used to say, sensibility; as he looked at her dress and, on the
great staircase, her little rapid, confiding step, he felt as if there were something romantic going
forward. He could have believed he was going to elope with her. He passed out with her among
all the idle people that were assembled there; they were all looking at her very hard; she had
begun to chatter as soon as she joined him. Winterbourne's preference had been that they should
be conveyed to Chillon in a carriage; but she expressed a lively wish to go in the little steamer;
she declared that she had a passion for steamboats. There was always such a lovely breeze upon
the water, and you saw such lots of people. The sail was not long, but Winterbourne's companion
found time to say a great many things. To the young man himself their little excursion was so
much of an escapade—an adventure—that, even allowing for her habitual sense of freedom, he
had some expectation of seeing her regard it in the same way. But it must be confessed that, in
this particular, he was disappointed. Daisy Miller was extremely animated, she was in charming
spirits; but she was apparently not at all excited; she was not fluttered; she avoided neither his
eyes nor those of anyone else; she blushed neither when she looked at him nor when she felt that
people were looking at her. People continued to look at her a great deal, and Winterbourne took
much satisfaction in his pretty companion's distinguished air. He had been a little afraid that she
would talk loud, laugh overmuch, and even, perhaps, desire to move about the boat a good deal.
But he quite forgot his fears; he sat smiling, with his eyes upon her face, while, without moving
from her place, she delivered herself of a great number of original reflections. It was the most
charming garrulity he had ever heard. He had assented to the idea that she was "common"; but
was she so, after all, or was he simply getting used to her commonness? Her conversation was
chiefly of what metaphysicians term the objective cast, but every now and then it took a
subjective turn.
123
"What on EARTH are you so grave about?" she suddenly demanded, fixing her agreeable eyes
upon Winterbourne's.
"Am I grave?" he asked. "I had an idea I was grinning from ear to ear."
"You look as if you were taking me to a funeral. If that's a grin, your ears are very near together."
"Should you like me to dance a hornpipe on the deck?"
"Pray do, and I'll carry round your hat. It will pay the expenses of our journey."
"I never was better pleased in my life," murmured Winterbourne.
She looked at him a moment and then burst into a little laugh. "I like to make you say those
things! You're a queer mixture!"
In the castle, after they had landed, the subjective element decidedly prevailed. Daisy tripped
about the vaulted chambers, rustled her skirts in the corkscrew staircases, flirted back with a
pretty little cry and a shudder from the edge of the oubliettes, and turned a singularly wellshaped ear to everything that Winterbourne told her about the place. But he saw that she cared
very little for feudal antiquities and that the dusky traditions of Chillon made but a slight
impression upon her. They had the good fortune to have been able to walk about without other
companionship than that of the custodian; and Winterbourne arranged with this functionary that
they should not be hurried—that they should linger and pause wherever they chose. The
custodian interpreted the bargain generously—Winterbourne, on his side, had been generous—
and ended by leaving them quite to themselves. Miss Miller's observations were not remarkable
for logical consistency; for anything she wanted to say she was sure to find a pretext. She found
a great many pretexts in the rugged embrasures of Chillon for asking Winterbourne sudden
questions about himself—his family, his previous history, his tastes, his habits, his intentions—
and for supplying information upon corresponding points in her own personality. Of her own
tastes, habits, and intentions Miss Miller was prepared to give the most definite, and indeed the
most favorable account.
"Well, I hope you know enough!" she said to her companion, after he had told her the history of
the unhappy Bonivard. "I never saw a man that knew so much!" The history of Bonivard had
evidently, as they say, gone into one ear and out of the other. But Daisy went on to say that she
wished Winterbourne would travel with them and "go round" with them; they might know
something, in that case. "Don't you want to come and teach Randolph?" she asked. Winterbourne
said that nothing could possibly please him so much, but that he had unfortunately other
occupations. "Other occupations? I don't believe it!" said Miss Daisy. "What do you mean? You
are not in business." The young man admitted that he was not in business; but he had
engagements which, even within a day or two, would force him to go back to Geneva. "Oh,
bother!" she said; "I don't believe it!" and she began to talk about something else. But a few
moments later, when he was pointing out to her the pretty design of an antique fireplace, she
broke out irrelevantly, "You don't mean to say you are going back to Geneva?"
124
"It is a melancholy fact that I shall have to return to Geneva tomorrow."
"Well, Mr. Winterbourne," said Daisy, "I think you're horrid!"
"Oh, don't say such dreadful things!" said Winterbourne—"just at the last!"
"The last!" cried the young girl; "I call it the first. I have half a mind to leave you here and go
straight back to the hotel alone." And for the next ten minutes she did nothing but call him
horrid. Poor Winterbourne was fairly bewildered; no young lady had as yet done him the honor
to be so agitated by the announcement of his movements. His companion, after this, ceased to
pay any attention to the curiosities of Chillon or the beauties of the lake; she opened fire upon the
mysterious charmer in Geneva whom she appeared to have instantly taken it for granted that he
was hurrying back to see. How did Miss Daisy Miller know that there was a charmer in Geneva?
Winterbourne, who denied the existence of such a person, was quite unable to discover, and he
was divided between amazement at the rapidity of her induction and amusement at the frankness
of her persiflage. She seemed to him, in all this, an extraordinary mixture of innocence and
crudity. "Does she never allow you more than three days at a time?" asked Daisy ironically.
"Doesn't she give you a vacation in summer? There's no one so hard worked but they can get
leave to go off somewhere at this season. I suppose, if you stay another day, she'll come after you
in the boat. Do wait over till Friday, and I will go down to the landing to see her arrive!"
Winterbourne began to think he had been wrong to feel disappointed in the temper in which the
young lady had embarked. If he had missed the personal accent, the personal accent was now
making its appearance. It sounded very distinctly, at last, in her telling him she would stop
"teasing" him if he would promise her solemnly to come down to Rome in the winter.
"That's not a difficult promise to make," said Winterbourne. "My aunt has taken an apartment in
Rome for the winter and has already asked me to come and see her."
"I don't want you to come for your aunt," said Daisy; "I want you to come for me." And this was
the only allusion that the young man was ever to hear her make to his invidious kinswoman. He
declared that, at any rate, he would certainly come. After this Daisy stopped teasing.
Winterbourne took a carriage, and they drove back to Vevey in the dusk; the young girl was very
quiet.
In the evening Winterbourne mentioned to Mrs. Costello that he had spent the afternoon at
Chillon with Miss Daisy Miller.
"The Americans—of the courier?" asked this lady.
"Ah, happily," said Winterbourne, "the courier stayed at home."
"She went with you all alone?"
"All alone."
125
Mrs. Costello sniffed a little at her smelling bottle. "And that," she exclaimed, "is the young
person whom you wanted me to know!"
Part II
Winterbourne, who had returned to Geneva the day after his excursion to Chillon, went to Rome
toward the end of January. His aunt had been established there for several weeks, and he had
received a couple of letters from her. "Those people you were so devoted to last summer at
Vevey have turned up here, courier and all," she wrote. "They seem to have made several
acquaintances, but the courier continues to be the most intime. The young lady, however, is also
very intimate with some third-rate Italians, with whom she rackets about in a way that makes
much talk. Bring me that pretty novel of Cherbuliez's—Paule Mere—and don't come later than
the 23rd."
In the natural course of events, Winterbourne, on arriving in Rome, would presently have
ascertained Mrs. Miller's address at the American banker's and have gone to pay his compliments
to Miss Daisy. "After what happened at Vevey, I think I may certainly call upon them," he said
to Mrs. Costello.
"If, after what happens—at Vevey and everywhere—you desire to keep up the acquaintance, you
are very welcome. Of course a man may know everyone. Men are welcome to the privilege!"
"Pray what is it that happens—here, for instance?" Winterbourne demanded.
"The girl goes about alone with her foreigners. As to what happens further, you must apply
elsewhere for information. She has picked up half a dozen of the regular Roman fortune hunters,
and she takes them about to people's houses. When she comes to a party she brings with her a
gentleman with a good deal of manner and a wonderful mustache."
"And where is the mother?"
"I haven't the least idea. They are very dreadful people."
Winterbourne meditated a moment. "They are very ignorant—very innocent only. Depend upon
it they are not bad."
"They are hopelessly vulgar," said Mrs. Costello. "Whether or no being hopelessly vulgar is
being 'bad' is a question for the metaphysicians. They are bad enough to dislike, at any rate; and
for this short life that is quite enough."
The news that Daisy Miller was surrounded by half a dozen wonderful mustaches checked
Winterbourne's impulse to go straightway to see her. He had, perhaps, not definitely flattered
himself that he had made an ineffaceable impression upon her heart, but he was annoyed at
hearing of a state of affairs so little in harmony with an image that had lately flitted in and out of
his own meditations; the image of a very pretty girl looking out of an old Roman window and
asking herself urgently when Mr. Winterbourne would arrive. If, however, he determined to wait
126
a little before reminding Miss Miller of his claims to her consideration, he went very soon to call
upon two or three other friends. One of these friends was an American lady who had spent
several winters at Geneva, where she had placed her children at school. She was a very
accomplished woman, and she lived in the Via Gregoriana. Winterbourne found her in a little
crimson drawing room on a third floor; the room was filled with southern sunshine. He had not
been there ten minutes when the servant came in, announcing "Madame Mila!" This
announcement was presently followed by the entrance of little Randolph Miller, who stopped in
the middle of the room and stood staring at Winterbourne. An instant later his pretty sister
crossed the threshold; and then, after a considerable interval, Mrs. Miller slowly advanced.
"I know you!" said Randolph.
"I'm sure you know a great many things," exclaimed Winterbourne, taking him by the hand.
"How is your education coming on?"
Daisy was exchanging greetings very prettily with her hostess, but when she heard
Winterbourne's voice she quickly turned her head. "Well, I declare!" she said.
"I told you I should come, you know," Winterbourne rejoined, smiling.
"Well, I didn't believe it," said Miss Daisy.
"I am much obliged to you," laughed the young man.
"You might have come to see me!" said Daisy.
"I arrived only yesterday."
"I don't believe that!" the young girl declared.
Winterbourne turned with a protesting smile to her mother, but this lady evaded his glance, and,
seating herself, fixed her eyes upon her son. "We've got a bigger place than this," said Randolph.
"It's all gold on the walls."
Mrs. Miller turned uneasily in her chair. "I told you if I were to bring you, you would say
something!" she murmured.
"I told YOU!" Randolph exclaimed. "I tell YOU, sir!" he added jocosely, giving Winterbourne a
thump on the knee. "It IS bigger, too!"
Daisy had entered upon a lively conversation with her hostess; Winterbourne judged it becoming
to address a few words to her mother. "I hope you have been well since we parted at Vevey," he
said.
Mrs. Miller now certainly looked at him—at his chin. "Not very well, sir," she answered.
127
"She's got the dyspepsia," said Randolph. "I've got it too. Father's got it. I've got it most!"
This announcement, instead of embarrassing Mrs. Miller, seemed to relieve her. "I suffer from
the liver," she said. "I think it's this climate; it's less bracing than Schenectady, especially in the
winter season. I don't know whether you know we reside at Schenectady. I was saying to Daisy
that I certainly hadn't found any one like Dr. Davis, and I didn't believe I should. Oh, at
Schenectady he stands first; they think everything of him. He has so much to do, and yet there
was nothing he wouldn't do for me. He said he never saw anything like my dyspepsia, but he was
bound to cure it. I'm sure there was nothing he wouldn't try. He was just going to try something
new when we came off. Mr. Miller wanted Daisy to see Europe for herself. But I wrote to Mr.
Miller that it seems as if I couldn't get on without Dr. Davis. At Schenectady he stands at the
very top; and there's a great deal of sickness there, too. It affects my sleep."
Winterbourne had a good deal of pathological gossip with Dr. Davis's patient, during which
Daisy chattered unremittingly to her own companion. The young man asked Mrs. Miller how she
was pleased with Rome. "Well, I must say I am disappointed," she answered. "We had heard so
much about it; I suppose we had heard too much. But we couldn't help that. We had been led to
expect something different."
"Ah, wait a little, and you will become very fond of it," said Winterbourne.
"I hate it worse and worse every day!" cried Randolph.
"You are like the infant Hannibal," said Winterbourne.
"No, I ain't!" Randolph declared at a venture.
"You are not much like an infant," said his mother. "But we have seen places," she resumed,
"that I should put a long way before Rome." And in reply to Winterbourne's interrogation,
"There's Zurich," she concluded, "I think Zurich is lovely; and we hadn't heard half so much
about it."
"The best place we've seen is the City of Richmond!" said Randolph.
"He means the ship," his mother explained. "We crossed in that ship. Randolph had a good time
on the City of Richmond."
"It's the best place I've seen," the child repeated. "Only it was turned the wrong way."
"Well, we've got to turn the right way some time," said Mrs. Miller with a little laugh.
Winterbourne expressed the hope that her daughter at least found some gratification in Rome,
and she declared that Daisy was quite carried away. "It's on account of the society—the society's
splendid. She goes round everywhere; she has made a great number of acquaintances. Of course
she goes round more than I do. I must say they have been very sociable; they have taken her right
in. And then she knows a great many gentlemen. Oh, she thinks there's nothing like Rome. Of
course, it's a great deal pleasanter for a young lady if she knows plenty of gentlemen."
128
By this time Daisy had turned her attention again to Winterbourne. "I've been telling Mrs.
Walker how mean you were!" the young girl announced.
"And what is the evidence you have offered?" asked Winterbourne, rather annoyed at Miss
Miller's want of appreciation of the zeal of an admirer who on his way down to Rome had
stopped neither at Bologna nor at Florence, simply because of a certain sentimental impatience.
He remembered that a cynical compatriot had once told him that American women—the pretty
ones, and this gave a largeness to the axiom—were at once the most exacting in the world and
the least endowed with a sense of indebtedness.
"Why, you were awfully mean at Vevey," said Daisy. "You wouldn't do anything. You wouldn't
stay there when I asked you."
"My dearest young lady," cried Winterbourne, with eloquence, "have I come all the way to Rome
to encounter your reproaches?"
"Just hear him say that!" said Daisy to her hostess, giving a twist to a bow on this lady's dress.
"Did you ever hear anything so quaint?"
"So quaint, my dear?" murmured Mrs. Walker in the tone of a partisan of Winterbourne.
"Well, I don't know," said Daisy, fingering Mrs. Walker's ribbons. "Mrs. Walker, I want to tell
you something."
"Mother-r," interposed Randolph, with his rough ends to his words, "I tell you you've got to go.
Eugenio'll raise—something!"
"I'm not afraid of Eugenio," said Daisy with a toss of her head. "Look here, Mrs. Walker," she
went on, "you know I'm coming to your party."
"I am delighted to hear it."
"I've got a lovely dress!"
"I am very sure of that."
"But I want to ask a favor—permission to bring a friend."
"I shall be happy to see any of your friends," said Mrs. Walker, turning with a smile to Mrs.
Miller.
"Oh, they are not my friends," answered Daisy's mamma, smiling shyly in her own fashion. "I
never spoke to them."
"It's an intimate friend of mine—Mr. Giovanelli," said Daisy without a tremor in her clear little
voice or a shadow on her brilliant little face.
129
Mrs. Walker was silent a moment; she gave a rapid glance at Winterbourne. "I shall be glad to
see Mr. Giovanelli," she then said.
"He's an Italian," Daisy pursued with the prettiest serenity. "He's a great friend of mine; he's the
handsomest man in the world—except Mr. Winterbourne! He knows plenty of Italians, but he
wants to know some Americans. He thinks ever so much of Americans. He's tremendously
clever. He's perfectly lovely!"
It was settled that this brilliant personage should be brought to Mrs. Walker's party, and then
Mrs. Miller prepared to take her leave. "I guess we'll go back to the hotel," she said.
"You may go back to the hotel, Mother, but I'm going to take a walk," said Daisy.
"She's going to walk with Mr. Giovanelli," Randolph proclaimed.
"I am going to the Pincio," said Daisy, smiling.
"Alone, my dear—at this hour?" Mrs. Walker asked. The afternoon was drawing to a close—it
was the hour for the throng of carriages and of contemplative pedestrians. "I don't think it's safe,
my dear," said Mrs. Walker.
"Neither do I," subjoined Mrs. Miller. "You'll get the fever, as sure as you live. Remember what
Dr. Davis told you!"
"Give her some medicine before she goes," said Randolph.
The company had risen to its feet; Daisy, still showing her pretty teeth, bent over and kissed her
hostess. "Mrs. Walker, you are too perfect," she said. "I'm not going alone; I am going to meet a
friend."
"Your friend won't keep you from getting the fever," Mrs. Miller observed.
"Is it Mr. Giovanelli?" asked the hostess.
Winterbourne was watching the young girl; at this question his attention quickened. She stood
there, smiling and smoothing her bonnet ribbons; she glanced at Winterbourne. Then, while she
glanced and smiled, she answered, without a shade of hesitation, "Mr. Giovanelli—the beautiful
Giovanelli."
"My dear young friend," said Mrs. Walker, taking her hand pleadingly, "don't walk off to the
Pincio at this hour to meet a beautiful Italian."
"Well, he speaks English," said Mrs. Miller.
130
"Gracious me!" Daisy exclaimed, "I don't to do anything improper. There's an easy way to settle
it." She continued to glance at Winterbourne. "The Pincio is only a hundred yards distant; and if
Mr. Winterbourne were as polite as he pretends, he would offer to walk with me!"
Winterbourne's politeness hastened to affirm itself, and the young girl gave him gracious leave to
accompany her. They passed downstairs before her mother, and at the door Winterbourne
perceived Mrs. Miller's carriage drawn up, with the ornamental courier whose acquaintance he
had made at Vevey seated within. "Goodbye, Eugenio!" cried Daisy; "I'm going to take a walk."
The distance from the Via Gregoriana to the beautiful garden at the other end of the Pincian Hill
is, in fact, rapidly traversed. As the day was splendid, however, and the concourse of vehicles,
walkers, and loungers numerous, the young Americans found their progress much delayed. This
fact was highly agreeable to Winterbourne, in spite of his consciousness of his singular situation.
The slow-moving, idly gazing Roman crowd bestowed much attention upon the extremely pretty
young foreign lady who was passing through it upon his arm; and he wondered what on earth
had been in Daisy's mind when she proposed to expose herself, unattended, to its appreciation.
His own mission, to her sense, apparently, was to consign her to the hands of Mr. Giovanelli; but
Winterbourne, at once annoyed and gratified, resolved that he would do no such thing.
"Why haven't you been to see me?" asked Daisy. "You can't get out of that."
"I have had the honor of telling you that I have only just stepped out of the train."
"You must have stayed in the train a good while after it stopped!" cried the young girl with her
little laugh. "I suppose you were asleep. You have had time to go to see Mrs. Walker."
"I knew Mrs. Walker—" Winterbourne began to explain.
"I know where you knew her. You knew her at Geneva. She told me so. Well, you knew me at
Vevey. That's just as good. So you ought to have come." She asked him no other question than
this; she began to prattle about her own affairs. "We've got splendid rooms at the hotel; Eugenio
says they're the best rooms in Rome. We are going to stay all winter, if we don't die of the fever;
and I guess we'll stay then. It's a great deal nicer than I thought; I thought it would be fearfully
quiet; I was sure it would be awfully poky. I was sure we should be going round all the time with
one of those dreadful old men that explain about the pictures and things. But we only had about a
week of that, and now I'm enjoying myself. I know ever so many people, and they are all so
charming. The society's extremely select. There are all kinds—English, and Germans, and
Italians. I think I like the English best. I like their style of conversation. But there are some
lovely Americans. I never saw anything so hospitable. There's something or other every day.
There's not much dancing; but I must say I never thought dancing was everything. I was always
fond of conversation. I guess I shall have plenty at Mrs. Walker's, her rooms are so small." When
they had passed the gate of the Pincian Gardens, Miss Miller began to wonder where Mr.
Giovanelli might be. "We had better go straight to that place in front," she said, "where you look
at the view."
"I certainly shall not help you to find him," Winterbourne declared.
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"Then I shall find him without you," cried Miss Daisy.
"You certainly won't leave me!" cried Winterbourne.
She burst into her little laugh. "Are you afraid you'll get lost—or run over? But there's
Giovanelli, leaning against that tree. He's staring at the women in the carriages: did you ever see
anything so cool?"
Winterbourne perceived at some distance a little man standing with folded arms nursing his cane.
He had a handsome face, an artfully poised hat, a glass in one eye, and a nosegay in his
buttonhole. Winterbourne looked at him a moment and then said, "Do you mean to speak to that
man?"
"Do I mean to speak to him? Why, you don't suppose I mean to communicate by signs?"
"Pray understand, then," said Winterbourne, "that I intend to remain with you."
Daisy stopped and looked at him, without a sign of troubled consciousness in her face, with
nothing but the presence of her charming eyes and her happy dimples. "Well, she's a cool one!"
thought the young man.
"I don't like the way you say that," said Daisy. "It's too imperious."
"I beg your pardon if I say it wrong. The main point is to give you an idea of my meaning."
The young girl looked at him more gravely, but with eyes that were prettier than ever. "I have
never allowed a gentleman to dictate to me, or to interfere with anything I do."
"I think you have made a mistake," said Winterbourne. "You should sometimes listen to a
gentleman—the right one."
Daisy began to laugh again. "I do nothing but listen to gentlemen!" she exclaimed. "Tell me if
Mr. Giovanelli is the right one?"
The gentleman with the nosegay in his bosom had now perceived our two friends, and was
approaching the young girl with obsequious rapidity. He bowed to Winterbourne as well as to the
latter's companion; he had a brilliant smile, an intelligent eye; Winterbourne thought him not a
bad-looking fellow. But he nevertheless said to Daisy, "No, he's not the right one."
Daisy evidently had a natural talent for performing introductions; she mentioned the name of
each of her companions to the other. She strolled alone with one of them on each side of her; Mr.
Giovanelli, who spoke English very cleverly—Winterbourne afterward learned that he had
practiced the idiom upon a great many American heiresses—addressed her a great deal of very
polite nonsense; he was extremely urbane, and the young American, who said nothing, reflected
upon that profundity of Italian cleverness which enables people to appear more gracious in
proportion as they are more acutely disappointed. Giovanelli, of course, had counted upon
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something more intimate; he had not bargained for a party of three. But he kept his temper in a
manner which suggested far-stretching intentions. Winterbourne flattered himself that he had
taken his measure. "He is not a gentleman," said the young American; "he is only a clever
imitation of one. He is a music master, or a penny-a-liner, or a third-rate artist. D__n his good
looks!" Mr. Giovanelli had certainly a very pretty face; but Winterbourne felt a superior
indignation at his own lovely fellow countrywoman's not knowing the difference between a
spurious gentleman and a real one. Giovanelli chattered and jested and made himself
wonderfully agreeable. It was true that, if he was an imitation, the imitation was brilliant.
"Nevertheless," Winterbourne said to himself, "a nice girl ought to know!" And then he came
back to the question whether this was, in fact, a nice girl. Would a nice girl, even allowing for
her being a little American flirt, make a rendezvous with a presumably low-lived foreigner? The
rendezvous in this case, indeed, had been in broad daylight and in the most crowded corner of
Rome, but was it not impossible to regard the choice of these circumstances as a proof of
extreme cynicism? Singular though it may seem, Winterbourne was vexed that the young girl, in
joining her amoroso, should not appear more impatient of his own company, and he was vexed
because of his inclination. It was impossible to regard her as a perfectly well-conducted young
lady; she was wanting in a certain indispensable delicacy. It would therefore simplify matters
greatly to be able to treat her as the object of one of those sentiments which are called by
romancers "lawless passions." That she should seem to wish to get rid of him would help him to
think more lightly of her, and to be able to think more lightly of her would make her much less
perplexing. But Daisy, on this occasion, continued to present herself as an inscrutable
combination of audacity and innocence.
She had been walking some quarter of an hour, attended by her two cavaliers, and responding in
a tone of very childish gaiety, as it seemed to Winterbourne, to the pretty speeches of Mr.
Giovanelli, when a carriage that had detached itself from the revolving train drew up beside the
path. At the same moment Winterbourne perceived that his friend Mrs. Walker—the lady whose
house he had lately left—was seated in the vehicle and was beckoning to him. Leaving Miss
Miller's side, he hastened to obey her summons. Mrs. Walker was flushed; she wore an excited
air. "It is really too dreadful," she said. "That girl must not do this sort of thing. She must not
walk here with you two men. Fifty people have noticed her."
Winterbourne raised his eyebrows. "I think it's a pity to make too much fuss about it."
"It's a pity to let the girl ruin herself!"
"She is very innocent," said Winterbourne.
"She's very crazy!" cried Mrs. Walker. "Did you ever see anything so imbecile as her mother?
After you had all left me just now, I could not sit still for thinking of it. It seemed too pitiful, not
even to attempt to save her. I ordered the carriage and put on my bonnet, and came here as
quickly as possible. Thank Heaven I have found you!"
"What do you propose to do with us?" asked Winterbourne, smiling.
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"To ask her to get in, to drive her about here for half an hour, so that the world may see she is not
running absolutely wild, and then to take her safely home."
"I don't think it's a very happy thought," said Winterbourne; "but you can try."
Mrs. Walker tried. The young man went in pursuit of Miss Miller, who had simply nodded and
smiled at his interlocutor in the carriage and had gone her way with her companion. Daisy, on
learning that Mrs. Walker wished to speak to her, retraced her steps with a perfect good grace
and with Mr. Giovanelli at her side. She declared that she was delighted to have a chance to
present this gentleman to Mrs. Walker. She immediately achieved the introduction, and declared
that she had never in her life seen anything so lovely as Mrs. Walker's carriage rug.
"I am glad you admire it," said this lady, smiling sweetly. "Will you get in and let me put it over
you?"
"Oh, no, thank you," said Daisy. "I shall admire it much more as I see you driving round with it."
"Do get in and drive with me!" said Mrs. Walker.
"That would be charming, but it's so enchanting just as I am!" and Daisy gave a brilliant glance
at the gentlemen on either side of her.
"It may be enchanting, dear child, but it is not the custom here," urged Mrs. Walker, leaning
forward in her victoria, with her hands devoutly clasped.
"Well, it ought to be, then!" said Daisy. "If I didn't walk I should expire."
"You should walk with your mother, dear," cried the lady from Geneva, losing patience.
"With my mother dear!" exclaimed the young girl. Winterbourne saw that she scented
interference. "My mother never walked ten steps in her life. And then, you know," she added
with a laugh, "I am more than five years old."
"You are old enough to be more reasonable. You are old enough, dear Miss Miller, to be talked
about."
Daisy looked at Mrs. Walker, smiling intensely. "Talked about? What do you mean?"
"Come into my carriage, and I will tell you."
Daisy turned her quickened glance again from one of the gentlemen beside her to the other. Mr.
Giovanelli was bowing to and fro, rubbing down his gloves and laughing very agreeably;
Winterbourne thought it a most unpleasant scene. "I don't think I want to know what you mean,"
said Daisy presently. "I don't think I should like it."
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Winterbourne wished that Mrs. Walker would tuck in her carriage rug and drive away, but this
lady did not enjoy being defied, as she afterward told him. "Should you prefer being thought a
very reckless girl?" she demanded.
"Gracious!" exclaimed Daisy. She looked again at Mr. Giovanelli, then she turned to
Winterbourne. There was a little pink flush in her cheek; she was tremendously pretty. "Does
Mr. Winterbourne think," she asked slowly, smiling, throwing back her head, and glancing at
him from head to foot, "that, to save my reputation, I ought to get into the carriage?"
Winterbourne colored; for an instant he hesitated greatly. It seemed so strange to hear her speak
that way of her "reputation." But he himself, in fact, must speak in accordance with gallantry.
The finest gallantry, here, was simply to tell her the truth; and the truth, for Winterbourne, as the
few indications I have been able to give have made him known to the reader, was that Daisy
Miller should take Mrs. Walker's advice. He looked at her exquisite prettiness, and then he said,
very gently, "I think you should get into the carriage."
Daisy gave a violent laugh. "I never heard anything so stiff! If this is improper, Mrs. Walker,"
she pursued, "then I am all improper, and you must give me up. Goodbye; I hope you'll have a
lovely ride!" and, with Mr. Giovanelli, who made a triumphantly obsequious salute, she turned
away.
Mrs. Walker sat looking after her, and there were tears in Mrs. Walker's eyes. "Get in here, sir,"
she said to Winterbourne, indicating the place beside her. The young man answered that he felt
bound to accompany Miss Miller, whereupon Mrs. Walker declared that if he refused her this
favor she would never speak to him again. She was evidently in earnest. Winterbourne overtook
Daisy and her companion, and, offering the young girl his hand, told her that Mrs. Walker had
made an imperious claim upon his society. He expected that in answer she would say something
rather free, something to commit herself still further to that "recklessness" from which Mrs.
Walker had so charitably endeavored to dissuade her. But she only shook his hand, hardly
looking at him, while Mr. Giovanelli bade him farewell with a too emphatic flourish of the hat.
Winterbourne was not in the best possible humor as he took his seat in Mrs. Walker's victoria.
"That was not clever of you," he said candidly, while the vehicle mingled again with the throng
of carriages.
"In such a case," his companion answered, "I don't wish to be clever; I wish to be EARNEST!"
"Well, your earnestness has only offended her and put her off."
"It has happened very well," said Mrs. Walker. "If she is so perfectly determined to compromise
herself, the sooner one knows it the better; one can act accordingly."
"I suspect she meant no harm," Winterbourne rejoined.
"So I thought a month ago. But she has been going too far."
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"What has she been doing?"
"Everything that is not done here. Flirting with any man she could pick up; sitting in corners with
mysterious Italians; dancing all the evening with the same partners; receiving visits at eleven
o'clock at night. Her mother goes away when visitors come."
"But her brother," said Winterbourne, laughing, "sits up till midnight."
"He must be edified by what he sees. I'm told that at their hotel everyone is talking about her, and
that a smile goes round among all the servants when a gentleman comes and asks for Miss
Miller."
"The servants be hanged!" said Winterbourne angrily. "The poor girl's only fault," he presently
added, "is that she is very uncultivated."
"She is naturally indelicate," Mrs. Walker declared.
"Take that example this morning. How long had you known her at Vevey?"
"A couple of days."
"Fancy, then, her making it a personal matter that you should have left the place!"
Winterbourne was silent for some moments; then he said, "I suspect, Mrs. Walker, that you and I
have lived too long at Geneva!" And he added a request that she should inform him with what
particular design she had made him enter her carriage.
"I wished to beg you to cease your relations with Miss Miller—not to flirt with her—to give her
no further opportunity to expose herself—to let her alone, in short."
"I'm afraid I can't do that," said Winterbourne. "I like her extremely."
"All the more reason that you shouldn't help her to make a scandal."
"There shall be nothing scandalous in my attentions to her."
"There certainly will be in the way she takes them. But I have said what I had on my
conscience," Mrs. Walker pursued. "If you wish to rejoin the young lady I will put you down.
Here, by the way, you have a chance."
The carriage was traversing that part of the Pincian Garden that overhangs the wall of Rome and
overlooks the beautiful Villa Borghese. It is bordered by a large parapet, near which there are
several seats. One of the seats at a distance was occupied by a gentleman and a lady, toward
whom Mrs. Walker gave a toss of her head. At the same moment these persons rose and walked
toward the parapet. Winterbourne had asked the coachman to stop; he now descended from the
carriage. His companion looked at him a moment in silence; then, while he raised his hat, she
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drove majestically away. Winterbourne stood there; he had turned his eyes toward Daisy and her
cavalier. They evidently saw no one; they were too deeply occupied with each other. When they
reached the low garden wall, they stood a moment looking off at the great flat-topped pine
clusters of the Villa Borghese; then Giovanelli seated himself, familiarly, upon the broad ledge
of the wall. The western sun in the opposite sky sent out a brilliant shaft through a couple of
cloud bars, whereupon Daisy's companion took her parasol out of her hands and opened it. She
came a little nearer, and he held the parasol over her; then, still holding it, he let it rest upon her
shoulder, so that both of their heads were hidden from Winterbourne. This young man lingered a
moment, then he began to walk. But he walked—not toward the couple with the parasol; toward
the residence of his aunt, Mrs. Costello.
He flattered himself on the following day that there was no smiling among the servants when he,
at least, asked for Mrs. Miller at her hotel. This lady and her daughter, however, were not at
home; and on the next day after, repeating his visit, Winterbourne again had the misfortune not
to find them. Mrs. Walker's party took place on the evening of the third day, and, in spite of the
frigidity of his last interview with the hostess, Winterbourne was among the guests. Mrs. Walker
was one of those American ladies who, while residing abroad, make a point, in their own phrase,
of studying European society, and she had on this occasion collected several specimens of her
diversely born fellow mortals to serve, as it were, as textbooks. When Winterbourne arrived,
Daisy Miller was not there, but in a few moments he saw her mother come in alone, very shyly
and ruefully. Mrs. Miller's hair above her exposed-looking temples was more frizzled than ever.
As she approached Mrs. Walker, Winterbourne also drew near.
"You see, I've come all alone," said poor Mrs. Miller. "I'm so frightened; I don't know what to
do. It's the first time I've ever been to a party alone, especially in this country. I wanted to bring
Randolph or Eugenio, or someone, but Daisy just pushed me off by myself. I ain't used to going
round alone."
"And does not your daughter intend to favor us with her society?" demanded Mrs. Walker
impressively.
"Well, Daisy's all dressed," said Mrs. Miller with that accent of the dispassionate, if not of the
philosophic, historian with which she always recorded the current incidents of her daughter's
career. "She got dressed on purpose before dinner. But she's got a friend of hers there; that
gentleman—the Italian—that she wanted to bring. They've got going at the piano; it seems as if
they couldn't leave off. Mr. Giovanelli sings splendidly. But I guess they'll come before very
long," concluded Mrs. Miller hopefully.
"I'm sorry she should come in that way," said Mrs. Walker.
"Well, I told her that there was no use in her getting dressed before dinner if she was going to
wait three hours," responded Daisy's mamma. "I didn't see the use of her putting on such a dress
as that to sit round with Mr. Giovanelli."
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"This is most horrible!" said Mrs. Walker, turning away and addressing herself to Winterbourne.
"Elle s'affiche. It's her revenge for my having ventured to remonstrate with her. When she comes,
I shall not speak to her."
Daisy came after eleven o'clock; but she was not, on such an occasion, a young lady to wait to be
spoken to. She rustled forward in radiant loveliness, smiling and chattering, carrying a large
bouquet, and attended by Mr. Giovanelli. Everyone stopped talking and turned and looked at her.
She came straight to Mrs. Walker. "I'm afraid you thought I never was coming, so I sent mother
off to tell you. I wanted to make Mr. Giovanelli practice some things before he came; you know
he sings beautifully, and I want you to ask him to sing. This is Mr. Giovanelli; you know I
introduced him to you; he's got the most lovely voice, and he knows the most charming set of
songs. I made him go over them this evening on purpose; we had the greatest time at the hotel."
Of all this Daisy delivered herself with the sweetest, brightest audibleness, looking now at her
hostess and now round the room, while she gave a series of little pats, round her shoulders, to the
edges of her dress. "Is there anyone I know?" she asked.
"I think every one knows you!" said Mrs. Walker pregnantly, and she gave a very cursory
greeting to Mr. Giovanelli. This gentleman bore himself gallantly. He smiled and bowed and
showed his white teeth; he curled his mustaches and rolled his eyes and performed all the proper
functions of a handsome Italian at an evening party. He sang very prettily half a dozen songs,
though Mrs. Walker afterward declared that she had been quite unable to find out who asked
him. It was apparently not Daisy who had given him his orders. Daisy sat at a distance from the
piano, and though she had publicly, as it were, professed a high admiration for his singing,
talked, not inaudibly, while it was going on.
"It's a pity these rooms are so small; we can't dance," she said to Winterbourne, as if she had seen
him five minutes before.
"I am not sorry we can't dance," Winterbourne answered; "I don't dance."
"Of course you don't dance; you're too stiff," said Miss Daisy. "I hope you enjoyed your drive
with Mrs. Walker!"
"No. I didn't enjoy it; I preferred walking with you."
"We paired off: that was much better," said Daisy. "But did you ever hear anything so cool as
Mrs. Walker's wanting me to get into her carriage and drop poor Mr. Giovanelli, and under the
pretext that it was proper? People have different ideas! It would have been most unkind; he had
been talking about that walk for ten days."
"He should not have talked about it at all," said Winterbourne; "he would never have proposed to
a young lady of this country to walk about the streets with him."
"About the streets?" cried Daisy with her pretty stare. "Where, then, would he have proposed to
her to walk? The Pincio is not the streets, either; and I, thank goodness, am not a young lady of
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this country. The young ladies of this country have a dreadfully poky time of it, so far as I can
learn; I don't see why I should change my habits for THEM."
"I am afraid your habits are those of a flirt," said Winterbourne gravely.
"Of course they are," she cried, giving him her little smiling stare again. "I'm a fearful, frightful
flirt! Did you ever hear of a nice girl that was not? But I suppose you will tell me now that I am
not a nice girl."
"You're a very nice girl; but I wish you would flirt with me, and me only," said Winterbourne.
"Ah! thank you—thank you very much; you are the last man I should think of flirting with. As I
have had the pleasure of informing you, you are too stiff."
"You say that too often," said Winterbourne.
Daisy gave a delighted laugh. "If I could have the sweet hope of making you angry, I should say
it again."
"Don't do that; when I am angry I'm stiffer than ever. But if you won't flirt with me, do cease, at
least, to flirt with your friend at the piano; they don't understand that sort of thing here."
"I thought they understood nothing else!" exclaimed Daisy.
"Not in young unmarried women."
"It seems to me much more proper in young unmarried women than in old married ones," Daisy
declared.
"Well," said Winterbourne, "when you deal with natives you must go by the custom of the place.
Flirting is a purely American custom; it doesn't exist here. So when you show yourself in public
with Mr. Giovanelli, and without your mother—"
"Gracious! poor Mother!" interposed Daisy.
"Though you may be flirting, Mr. Giovanelli is not; he means something else."
"He isn't preaching, at any rate," said Daisy with vivacity. "And if you want very much to know,
we are neither of us flirting; we are too good friends for that: we are very intimate friends."
"Ah!" rejoined Winterbourne, "if you are in love with each other, it is another affair."
She had allowed him up to this point to talk so frankly that he had no expectation of shocking her
by this ejaculation; but she immediately got up, blushing visibly, and leaving him to exclaim
mentally that little American flirts were the queerest creatures in the world. "Mr. Giovanelli, at
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least," she said, giving her interlocutor a single glance, "never says such very disagreeable things
to me."
Winterbourne was bewildered; he stood, staring. Mr. Giovanelli had finished singing. He left the
piano and came over to Daisy. "Won't you come into the other room and have some tea?" he
asked, bending before her with his ornamental smile.
Daisy turned to Winterbourne, beginning to smile again. He was still more perplexed, for this
inconsequent smile made nothing clear, though it seemed to prove, indeed, that she had a
sweetness and softness that reverted instinctively to the pardon of offenses. "It has never
occurred to Mr. Winterbourne to offer me any tea," she said with her little tormenting manner.
"I have offered you advice," Winterbourne rejoined.
"I prefer weak tea!" cried Daisy, and she went off with the brilliant Giovanelli. She sat with him
in the adjoining room, in the embrasure of the window, for the rest of the evening. There was an
interesting performance at the piano, but neither of these young people gave heed to it. When
Daisy came to take leave of Mrs. Walker, this lady conscientiously repaired the weakness of
which she had been guilty at the moment of the young girl's arrival. She turned her back straight
upon Miss Miller and left her to depart with what grace she might. Winterbourne was standing
near the door; he saw it all. Daisy turned very pale and looked at her mother, but Mrs. Miller was
humbly unconscious of any violation of the usual social forms. She appeared, indeed, to have felt
an incongruous impulse to draw attention to her own striking observance of them. "Good night,
Mrs. Walker," she said; "we've had a beautiful evening. You see, if I let Daisy come to parties
without me, I don't want her to go away without me." Daisy turned away, looking with a pale,
grave face at the circle near the door; Winterbourne saw that, for the first moment, she was too
much shocked and puzzled even for indignation. He on his side was greatly touched.
"That was very cruel," he said to Mrs. Walker.
"She never enters my drawing room again!" replied his hostess.
Since Winterbourne was not to meet her in Mrs. Walker's drawing room, he went as often as
possible to Mrs. Miller's hotel. The ladies were rarely at home, but when he found them, the
devoted Giovanelli was always present. Very often the brilliant little Roman was in the drawing
room with Daisy alone, Mrs. Miller being apparently constantly of the opinion that discretion is
the better part of surveillance. Winterbourne noted, at first with surprise, that Daisy on these
occasions was never embarrassed or annoyed by his own entrance; but he very presently began
to feel that she had no more surprises for him; the unexpected in her behavior was the only thing
to expect. She showed no displeasure at her tete-a-tete with Giovanelli being interrupted; she
could chatter as freshly and freely with two gentlemen as with one; there was always, in her
conversation, the same odd mixture of audacity and puerility. Winterbourne remarked to himself
that if she was seriously interested in Giovanelli, it was very singular that she should not take
more trouble to preserve the sanctity of their interviews; and he liked her the more for her
innocent-looking indifference and her apparently inexhaustible good humor. He could hardly
have said why, but she seemed to him a girl who would never be jealous. At the risk of exciting a
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somewhat derisive smile on the reader's part, I may affirm that with regard to the women who
had hitherto interested him, it very often seemed to Winterbourne among the possibilities that,
given certain contingencies, he should be afraid—literally afraid—of these ladies; he had a
pleasant sense that he should never be afraid of Daisy Miller. It must be added that this sentiment
was not altogether flattering to Daisy; it was part of his conviction, or rather of his apprehension,
that she would prove a very light young person.
But she was evidently very much interested in Giovanelli. She looked at him whenever he spoke;
she was perpetually telling him to do this and to do that; she was constantly "chaffing" and
abusing him. She appeared completely to have forgotten that Winterbourne had said anything to
displease her at Mrs. Walker's little party. One Sunday afternoon, having gone to St. Peter's with
his aunt, Winterbourne perceived Daisy strolling about the great church in company with the
inevitable Giovanelli. Presently he pointed out the young girl and her cavalier to Mrs. Costello.
This lady looked at them a moment through her eyeglass, and then she said:
"That's what makes you so pensive in these days, eh?"
"I had not the least idea I was pensive," said the young man.
"You are very much preoccupied; you are thinking of something."
"And what is it," he asked, "that you accuse me of thinking of?"
"Of that young lady's—Miss Baker's, Miss Chandler's—what's her name?—Miss Miller's
intrigue with that little barber's block."
"Do you call it an intrigue," Winterbourne asked—"an affair that goes on with such peculiar
publicity?"
"That's their folly," said Mrs. Costello; "it's not their merit."
"No," rejoined Winterbourne, with something of that pensiveness to which his aunt had alluded.
"I don't believe that there is anything to be called an intrigue."
"I have heard a dozen people speak of it; they say she is quite carried away by him."
"They are certainly very intimate," said Winterbourne.
Mrs. Costello inspected the young couple again with her optical instrument. "He is very
handsome. One easily sees how it is. She thinks him the most elegant man in the world, the finest
gentleman. She has never seen anything like him; he is better, even, than the courier. It was the
courier probably who introduced him; and if he succeeds in marrying the young lady, the courier
will come in for a magnificent commission."
"I don't believe she thinks of marrying him," said Winterbourne, "and I don't believe he hopes to
marry her."
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"You may be very sure she thinks of nothing. She goes on from day to day, from hour to hour, as
they did in the Golden Age. I can imagine nothing more vulgar. And at the same time," added
Mrs. Costello, "depend upon it that she may tell you any moment that she is 'engaged.'"
"I think that is more than Giovanelli expects," said Winterbourne.
"Who is Giovanelli?"
"The little Italian. I have asked questions about him and learned something. He is apparently a
perfectly respectable little man. I believe he is, in a small way, a cavaliere avvocato. But he
doesn't move in what are called the first circles. I think it is really not absolutely impossible that
the courier introduced him. He is evidently immensely charmed with Miss Miller. If she thinks
him the finest gentleman in the world, he, on his side, has never found himself in personal
contact with such splendor, such opulence, such expensiveness as this young lady's. And then
she must seem to him wonderfully pretty and interesting. I rather doubt that he dreams of
marrying her. That must appear to him too impossible a piece of luck. He has nothing but his
handsome face to offer, and there is a substantial Mr. Miller in that mysterious land of dollars.
Giovanelli knows that he hasn't a title to offer. If he were only a count or a marchese! He must
wonder at his luck, at the way they have taken him up."
"He accounts for it by his handsome face and thinks Miss Miller a young lady qui se passe ses
fantaisies!" said Mrs. Costello.
"It is very true," Winterbourne pursued, "that Daisy and her mamma have not yet risen to that
stage of—what shall I call it?—of culture at which the idea of catching a count or a marchese
begins. I believe that they are intellectually incapable of that conception."
"Ah! but the avvocato can't believe it," said Mrs. Costello.
Of the observation excited by Daisy's "intrigue," Winterbourne gathered that day at St. Peter's
sufficient evidence. A dozen of the American colonists in Rome came to talk with Mrs. Costello,
who sat on a little portable stool at the base of one of the great pilasters. The vesper service was
going forward in splendid chants and organ tones in the adjacent choir, and meanwhile, between
Mrs. Costello and her friends, there was a great deal said about poor little Miss Miller's going
really "too far." Winterbourne was not pleased with what he heard, but when, coming out upon
the great steps of the church, he saw Daisy, who had emerged before him, get into an open cab
with her accomplice and roll away through the cynical streets of Rome, he could not deny to
himself that she was going very far indeed. He felt very sorry for her—not exactly that he
believed that she had completely lost her head, but because it was painful to hear so much that
was pretty, and undefended, and natural assigned to a vulgar place among the categories of
disorder. He made an attempt after this to give a hint to Mrs. Miller. He met one day in the Corso
a friend, a tourist like himself, who had just come out of the Doria Palace, where he had been
walking through the beautiful gallery. His friend talked for a moment about the superb portrait of
Innocent X by Velasquez which hangs in one of the cabinets of the palace, and then said, "And
in the same cabinet, by the way, I had the pleasure of contemplating a picture of a different
kind—that pretty American girl whom you pointed out to me last week." In answer to
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Winterbourne's inquiries, his friend narrated that the pretty American girl—prettier than ever—
was seated with a companion in the secluded nook in which the great papal portrait was
enshrined.
"Who was her companion?" asked Winterbourne.
"A little Italian with a bouquet in his buttonhole. The girl is delightfully pretty, but I thought I
understood from you the other day that she was a young lady du meilleur monde."
"So she is!" answered Winterbourne; and having assured himself that his informant had seen
Daisy and her companion but five minutes before, he jumped into a cab and went to call on Mrs.
Miller. She was at home; but she apologized to him for receiving him in Daisy's absence.
"She's gone out somewhere with Mr. Giovanelli," said Mrs. Miller. "She's always going round
with Mr. Giovanelli."
"I have noticed that they are very intimate," Winterbourne observed.
"Oh, it seems as if they couldn't live without each other!" said Mrs. Miller. "Well, he's a real
gentleman, anyhow. I keep telling Daisy she's engaged!"
"And what does Daisy say?"
"Oh, she says she isn't engaged. But she might as well be!" this impartial parent resumed; "she
goes on as if she was. But I've made Mr. Giovanelli promise to tell me, if SHE doesn't. I should
want to write to Mr. Miller about it—shouldn't you?"
Winterbourne replied that he certainly should; and the state of mind of Daisy's mamma struck
him as so unprecedented in the annals of parental vigilance that he gave up as utterly irrelevant
the attempt to place her upon her guard.
After this Daisy was never at home, and Winterbourne ceased to meet her at the houses of their
common acquaintances, because, as he perceived, these shrewd people had quite made up their
minds that she was going too far. They ceased to invite her; and they intimated that they desired
to express to observant Europeans the great truth that, though Miss Daisy Miller was a young
American lady, her behavior was not representative—was regarded by her compatriots as
abnormal. Winterbourne wondered how she felt about all the cold shoulders that were turned
toward her, and sometimes it annoyed him to suspect that she did not feel at all. He said to
himself that she was too light and childish, too uncultivated and unreasoning, too provincial, to
have reflected upon her ostracism, or even to have perceived it. Then at other moments he
believed that she carried about in her elegant and irresponsible little organism a defiant,
passionate, perfectly observant consciousness of the impression she produced. He asked himself
whether Daisy's defiance came from the consciousness of innocence, or from her being,
essentially, a young person of the reckless class. It must be admitted that holding one's self to a
belief in Daisy's "innocence" came to seem to Winterbourne more and more a matter of finespun gallantry. As I have already had occasion to relate, he was angry at finding himself reduced
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to chopping logic about this young lady; he was vexed at his want of instinctive certitude as to
how far her eccentricities were generic, national, and how far they were personal. From either
view of them he had somehow missed her, and now it was too late. She was "carried away" by
Mr. Giovanelli.
A few days after his brief interview with her mother, he encountered her in that beautiful abode
of flowering desolation known as the Palace of the Caesars. The early Roman spring had filled
the air with bloom and perfume, and the rugged surface of the Palatine was muffled with tender
verdure. Daisy was strolling along the top of one of those great mounds of ruin that are
embanked with mossy marble and paved with monumental inscriptions. It seemed to him that
Rome had never been so lovely as just then. He stood, looking off at the enchanting harmony of
line and color that remotely encircles the city, inhaling the softly humid odors, and feeling the
freshness of the year and the antiquity of the place reaffirm themselves in mysterious interfusion.
It seemed to him also that Daisy had never looked so pretty, but this had been an observation of
his whenever he met her. Giovanelli was at her side, and Giovanelli, too, wore an aspect of even
unwonted brilliancy.
"Well," said Daisy, "I should think you would be lonesome!"
"Lonesome?" asked Winterbourne.
"You are always going round by yourself. Can't you get anyone to walk with you?"
"I am not so fortunate," said Winterbourne, "as your companion."
Giovanelli, from the first, had treated Winterbourne with distinguished politeness. He listened
with a deferential air to his remarks; he laughed punctiliously at his pleasantries; he seemed
disposed to testify to his belief that Winterbourne was a superior young man. He carried himself
in no degree like a jealous wooer; he had obviously a great deal of tact; he had no objection to
your expecting a little humility of him. It even seemed to Winterbourne at times that Giovanelli
would find a certain mental relief in being able to have a private understanding with him—to say
to him, as an intelligent man, that, bless you, HE knew how extraordinary was this young lady,
and didn't flatter himself with delusive—or at least TOO delusive—hopes of matrimony and
dollars. On this occasion he strolled away from his companion to pluck a sprig of almond
blossom, which he carefully arranged in his buttonhole.
"I know why you say that," said Daisy, watching Giovanelli. "Because you think I go round too
much with HIM." And she nodded at her attendant.
"Every one thinks so—if you care to know," said Winterbourne.
"Of course I care to know!" Daisy exclaimed seriously. "But I don't believe it. They are only
pretending to be shocked. They don't really care a straw what I do. Besides, I don't go round so
much."
"I think you will find they do care. They will show it disagreeably."
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Daisy looked at him a moment. "How disagreeably?"
"Haven't you noticed anything?" Winterbourne asked.
"I have noticed you. But I noticed you were as stiff as an umbrella the first time I saw you."
"You will find I am not so stiff as several others," said Winterbourne, smiling.
"How shall I find it?"
"By going to see the others."
"What will they do to me?"
"They will give you the cold shoulder. Do you know what that means?"
Daisy was looking at him intently; she began to color. "Do you mean as Mrs. Walker did the
other night?"
"Exactly!" said Winterbourne.
She looked away at Giovanelli, who was decorating himself with his almond blossom. Then
looking back at Winterbourne, "I shouldn't think you would let people be so unkind!" she said.
"How can I help it?" he asked.
"I should think you would say something."
"I do say something;" and he paused a moment. "I say that your mother tells me that she believes
you are engaged."
"Well, she does," said Daisy very simply.
Winterbourne began to laugh. "And does Randolph believe it?" he asked.
"I guess Randolph doesn't believe anything," said Daisy. Randolph's skepticism excited
Winterbourne to further hilarity, and he observed that Giovanelli was coming back to them.
Daisy, observing it too, addressed herself again to her countryman. "Since you have mentioned
it," she said, "I AM engaged." * * * Winterbourne looked at her; he had stopped laughing. "You
don't believe!" she added.
He was silent a moment; and then, "Yes, I believe it," he said.
"Oh, no, you don't!" she answered. "Well, then—I am not!"
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The young girl and her cicerone were on their way to the gate of the enclosure, so that
Winterbourne, who had but lately entered, presently took leave of them. A week afterward he
went to dine at a beautiful villa on the Caelian Hill, and, on arriving, dismissed his hired vehicle.
The evening was charming, and he promised himself the satisfaction of walking home beneath
the Arch of Constantine and past the vaguely lighted monuments of the Forum. There was a
waning moon in the sky, and her radiance was not brilliant, but she was veiled in a thin cloud
curtain which seemed to diffuse and equalize it. When, on his return from the villa (it was eleven
o'clock), Winterbourne approached the dusky circle of the Colosseum, it recurred to him, as a
lover of the picturesque, that the interior, in the pale moonshine, would be well worth a glance.
He turned aside and walked to one of the empty arches, near which, as he observed, an open
carriage—one of the little Roman streetcabs—was stationed. Then he passed in, among the
cavernous shadows of the great structure, and emerged upon the clear and silent arena. The place
had never seemed to him more impressive. One-half of the gigantic circus was in deep shade, the
other was sleeping in the luminous dusk. As he stood there he began to murmur Byron's famous
lines, out of "Manfred," but before he had finished his quotation he remembered that if nocturnal
meditations in the Colosseum are recommended by the poets, they are deprecated by the doctors.
The historic atmosphere was there, certainly; but the historic atmosphere, scientifically
considered, was no better than a villainous miasma. Winterbourne walked to the middle of the
arena, to take a more general glance, intending thereafter to make a hasty retreat. The great cross
in the center was covered with shadow; it was only as he drew near it that he made it out
distinctly. Then he saw that two persons were stationed upon the low steps which formed its
base. One of these was a woman, seated; her companion was standing in front of her.
Presently the sound of the woman's voice came to him distinctly in the warm night air. "Well, he
looks at us as one of the old lions or tigers may have looked at the Christian martyrs!" These
were the words he heard, in the familiar accent of Miss Daisy Miller.
"Let us hope he is not very hungry," responded the ingenious Giovanelli. "He will have to take
me first; you will serve for dessert!"
Winterbourne stopped, with a sort of horror, and, it must be added, with a sort of relief. It was as
if a sudden illumination had been flashed upon the ambiguity of Daisy's behavior, and the riddle
had become easy to read. She was a young lady whom a gentleman need no longer be at pains to
respect. He stood there, looking at her—looking at her companion and not reflecting that though
he saw them vaguely, he himself must have been more brightly visible. He felt angry with
himself that he had bothered so much about the right way of regarding Miss Daisy Miller. Then,
as he was going to advance again, he checked himself, not from the fear that he was doing her
injustice, but from a sense of the danger of appearing unbecomingly exhilarated by this sudden
revulsion from cautious criticism. He turned away toward the entrance of the place, but, as he did
so, he heard Daisy speak again.
"Why, it was Mr. Winterbourne! He saw me, and he cuts me!"
What a clever little reprobate she was, and how smartly she played at injured innocence! But he
wouldn't cut her. Winterbourne came forward again and went toward the great cross. Daisy had
got up; Giovanelli lifted his hat. Winterbourne had now begun to think simply of the craziness,
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from a sanitary point of view, of a delicate young girl lounging away the evening in this nest of
malaria. What if she WERE a clever little reprobate? that was no reason for her dying of the
perniciosa. "How long have you been here?" he asked almost brutally.
Daisy, lovely in the flattering moonlight, looked at him a moment. Then—"All the evening," she
answered, gently. * * * "I never saw anything so pretty."
"I am afraid," said Winterbourne, "that you will not think Roman fever very pretty. This is the
way people catch it. I wonder," he added, turning to Giovanelli, "that you, a native Roman,
should countenance such a terrible indiscretion."
"Ah," said the handsome native, "for myself I am not afraid."
"Neither am I—for you! I am speaking for this young lady."
Giovanelli lifted his well-shaped eyebrows and showed his brilliant teeth. But he took
Winterbourne's rebuke with docility. "I told the signorina it was a grave indiscretion, but when
was the signorina ever prudent?"
"I never was sick, and I don't mean to be!" the signorina declared. "I don't look like much, but
I'm healthy! I was bound to see the Colosseum by moonlight; I shouldn't have wanted to go
home without that; and we have had the most beautiful time, haven't we, Mr. Giovanelli? If there
has been any danger, Eugenio can give me some pills. He has got some splendid pills."
"I should advise you," said Winterbourne, "to drive home as fast as possible and take one!"
"What you say is very wise," Giovanelli rejoined. "I will go and make sure the carriage is at
hand." And he went forward rapidly.
Daisy followed with Winterbourne. He kept looking at her; she seemed not in the least
embarrassed. Winterbourne said nothing; Daisy chattered about the beauty of the place. "Well, I
HAVE seen the Colosseum by moonlight!" she exclaimed. "That's one good thing." Then,
noticing Winterbourne's silence, she asked him why he didn't speak. He made no answer; he only
began to laugh. They passed under one of the dark archways; Giovanelli was in front with the
carriage. Here Daisy stopped a moment, looking at the young American. "DID you believe I was
engaged, the other day?" she asked.
"It doesn't matter what I believed the other day," said Winterbourne, still laughing.
"Well, what do you believe now?"
"I believe that it makes very little difference whether you are engaged or not!"
He felt the young girl's pretty eyes fixed upon him through the thick gloom of the archway; she
was apparently going to answer. But Giovanelli hurried her forward. "Quick! quick!" he said; "if
we get in by midnight we are quite safe."
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Daisy took her seat in the carriage, and the fortunate Italian placed himself beside her. "Don't
forget Eugenio's pills!" said Winterbourne as he lifted his hat.
"I don't care," said Daisy in a little strange tone, "whether I have Roman fever or not!" Upon this
the cab driver cracked his whip, and they rolled away over the desultory patches of the antique
pavement.
Winterbourne, to do him justice, as it were, mentioned to no one that he had encountered Miss
Miller, at midnight, in the Colosseum with a gentleman; but nevertheless, a couple of days later,
the fact of her having been there under these circumstances was known to every member of the
little American circle, and commented accordingly. Winterbourne reflected that they had of
course known it at the hotel, and that, after Daisy's return, there had been an exchange of remarks
between the porter and the cab driver. But the young man was conscious, at the same moment,
that it had ceased to be a matter of serious regret to him that the little American flirt should be
"talked about" by low-minded menials. These people, a day or two later, had serious information
to give: the little American flirt was alarmingly ill. Winterbourne, when the rumor came to him,
immediately went to the hotel for more news. He found that two or three charitable friends had
preceded him, and that they were being entertained in Mrs. Miller's salon by Randolph.
"It's going round at night," said Randolph—"that's what made her sick. She's always going round
at night. I shouldn't think she'd want to, it's so plaguy dark. You can't see anything here at night,
except when there's a moon. In America there's always a moon!" Mrs. Miller was invisible; she
was now, at least, giving her daughter the advantage of her society. It was evident that Daisy was
dangerously ill.
Winterbourne went often to ask for news of her, and once he saw Mrs. Miller, who, though
deeply alarmed, was, rather to his surprise, perfectly composed, and, as it appeared, a most
efficient and judicious nurse. She talked a good deal about Dr. Davis, but Winterbourne paid her
the compliment of saying to himself that she was not, after all, such a monstrous goose. "Daisy
spoke of you the other day," she said to him. "Half the time she doesn't know what she's saying,
but that time I think she did. She gave me a message she told me to tell you. She told me to tell
you that she never was engaged to that handsome Italian. I am sure I am very glad; Mr.
Giovanelli hasn't been near us since she was taken ill. I thought he was so much of a gentleman;
but I don't call that very polite! A lady told me that he was afraid I was angry with him for taking
Daisy round at night. Well, so I am, but I suppose he knows I'm a lady. I would scorn to scold
him. Anyway, she says she's not engaged. I don't know why she wanted you to know, but she
said to me three times, 'Mind you tell Mr. Winterbourne.' And then she told me to ask if you
remembered the time you went to that castle in Switzerland. But I said I wouldn't give any such
messages as that. Only, if she is not engaged, I'm sure I'm glad to know it."
But, as Winterbourne had said, it mattered very little. A week after this, the poor girl died; it had
been a terrible case of the fever. Daisy's grave was in the little Protestant cemetery, in an angle of
the wall of imperial Rome, beneath the cypresses and the thick spring flowers. Winterbourne
stood there beside it, with a number of other mourners, a number larger than the scandal excited
by the young lady's career would have led you to expect. Near him stood Giovanelli, who came
nearer still before Winterbourne turned away. Giovanelli was very pale: on this occasion he had
148
no flower in his buttonhole; he seemed to wish to say something. At last he said, "She was the
most beautiful young lady I ever saw, and the most amiable;" and then he added in a moment,
"and she was the most innocent."
Winterbourne looked at him and presently repeated his words, "And the most innocent?"
"The most innocent!"
Winterbourne felt sore and angry. "Why the devil," he asked, "did you take her to that fatal
place?"
Mr. Giovanelli's urbanity was apparently imperturbable. He looked on the ground a moment, and
then he said, "For myself I had no fear; and she wanted to go."
"That was no reason!" Winterbourne declared.
The subtle Roman again dropped his eyes. "If she had lived, I should have got nothing. She
would never have married me, I am sure."
"She would never have married you?"
"For a moment I hoped so. But no. I am sure."
Winterbourne listened to him: he stood staring at the raw protuberance among the April daisies.
When he turned away again, Mr. Giovanelli, with his light, slow step, had retired.
Winterbourne almost immediately left Rome; but the following summer he again met his aunt,
Mrs. Costello at Vevey. Mrs. Costello was fond of Vevey. In the interval Winterbourne had often
thought of Daisy Miller and her mystifying manners. One day he spoke of her to his aunt—said it
was on his conscience that he had done her injustice.
"I am sure I don't know," said Mrs. Costello. "How did your injustice affect her?"
"She sent me a message before her death which I didn't understand at the time; but I have
understood it since. She would have appreciated one's esteem."
"Is that a modest way," asked Mrs. Costello, "of saying that she would have reciprocated one's
affection?"
Winterbourne offered no answer to this question; but he presently said, "You were right in that
remark that you made last summer. I was booked to make a mistake. I have lived too long in
foreign parts."
Nevertheless, he went back to live at Geneva, whence there continue to come the most
contradictory accounts of his motives of sojourn: a report that he is "studying" hard—an
intimation that he is much interested in a very clever foreign lady.
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Resources for The Rise of Realism
Sarah Orne Jewett (1849-1909)
[image] Sarah Orne Jewett is known as a local color writer, setting many of her works in eastern
Maine. She was born on September 3, 1849 in South Berwick, Maine and developed a deep
connection with nature and the landscape around her. She published in the Atlantic Monthly
when she was nineteen and collected many of her best stories in A White Heron and Other
Stories (1886). She greatly enhanced her reputation with her 1896 work, The Country of the
Pointed Firs. Jewett never married but developed a close relationship with Annie Fields, the wife
of publisher James Thomas Fields. Jewett died on June 24, 1909 after a series of strokes. She is
buried in Portland Street Cemetery, South Berwick, Maine. Two key biographies are Paula
Blanchard’s Sarah Orne Jewett: Her World and Her Work, 2002, and Josephine Donovan’s
Sarah Orne Jewett, 1980.
A White Heron
Jewett, Sarah Orne. "A White Heron." A White Heron and Other Stories. Boston and New York:
Houghton Mifflin, 1886.
source of etext: http://www.public.coe.edu/~theller/soj/awh/heron.htm Electronic text under
copyright but available for non-commercial, educational use only. Etext copyright by Terry
Heller. All rights reserved, except that the Jewett texts at this site may be freely downloaded or
copied for scholarly or classroom use.
I.
The woods were already filled with shadows one June evening, just before eight o'clock, though
a bright sunset still glimmered faintly among the trunks of the trees. A little girl was driving
home her cow, a plodding, dilatory, provoking creature in her behavior, but a valued companion
for all that. They were going away from whatever light there was, and striking deep into the
woods, but their feet were familiar with the path, and it was no matter whether their eyes could
see it or not.
There was hardly a night the summer through when the old cow could be found waiting at the
pasture bars; on the contrary, it was her greatest pleasure to hide herself away among the
huckleberry bushes, and though she wore a loud bell she had made the discovery that if one
stood perfectly still it would not ring. So Sylvia had to hunt for her until she found her, and call
Co' ! Co' ! with never an answering Moo, until her childish patience was quite spent. If the
creature had not given good milk and plenty of it, the case would have seemed very different to
her owners. Besides, Sylvia had all the time there was, and very little use to make of it.
Sometimes in pleasant weather it was a consolation to look upon the cow's pranks as an
intelligent attempt to play hide and seek, and as the child had no playmates she lent herself to
this amusement with a good deal of zest. Though this chase had been so long that the wary
150
animal herself had given an unusual signal of her whereabouts, Sylvia had only laughed when
she came upon Mistress Moolly at the swamp-side, and urged her affectionately homeward with
a twig of birch leaves. The old cow was not inclined to wander farther, she even turned in the
right direction for once as they left the pasture, and stepped along the road at a good pace. She
was quite ready to be milked now, and seldom stopped to browse. Sylvia wondered what her
grandmother would say because they were so late. It was a great while since she had left home at
half-past five o'clock, but everybody knew the difficulty of making this errand a short one. Mrs.
Tilley had chased the hornéd torment too many summer evenings herself to blame any one else
for lingering, and was only thankful as she waited that she had Sylvia, nowadays, to give such
valuable assistance. The good woman suspected that Sylvia loitered occasionally on her own
account; there never was such a child for straying about out-of-doors since the world was made!
Everybody said that it was a good change for a little maid who had tried to grow for eight years
in a crowded manufacturing town, but, as for Sylvia herself, it seemed as if she never had been
alive at all before she came to live at the farm. She thought often with wistful compassion of a
wretched geranium that belonged to a town neighbor.
"'Afraid of folks,'" old Mrs. Tilley said to herself, with a smile, after she had made the unlikely
choice of Sylvia from her daughter's houseful of children, and was returning to the farm. "'Afraid
of folks,' they said! I guess she won't be troubled no great with 'em up to the old place!" When
they reached the door of the lonely house and stopped to unlock it, and the cat came to purr
loudly, and rub against them, a deserted pussy, indeed, but fat with young robins, Sylvia
whispered that this was a beautiful place to live in, and she never should wish to go home.
The companions followed the shady wood-road, the cow taking slow steps and the child very fast
ones. The cow stopped long at the brook to drink, as if the pasture were not half a swamp, and
Sylvia stood still and waited, letting her bare feet cool themselves in the shoal water, while the
great twilight moths struck softly against her. She waded on through the brook as the cow moved
away, and listened to the thrushes with a heart that beat fast with pleasure. There was a stirring in
the great boughs overhead. They were full of little birds and beasts that seemed to be wide
awake, and going about their world, or else saying good-night to each other in sleepy twitters.
Sylvia herself felt sleepy as she walked along. However, it was not much farther to the house,
and the air was soft and sweet. She was not often in the woods so late as this, and it made her
feel as if she were a part of the gray shadows and the moving leaves. She was just thinking how
long it seemed since she first came to the farm a year ago, and wondering if everything went on
in the noisy town just the same as when she was there, the thought of the great red-faced boy
who used to chase and frighten her made her hurry along the path to escape from the shadow of
the trees.
Suddenly this little woods-girl is horror-stricken to hear a clear whistle not very far away. Not a
bird's-whistle, which would have a sort of friendliness, but a boy's whistle, determined, and
somewhat aggressive. Sylvia left the cow to whatever sad fate might await her, and stepped
discreetly aside into the bushes, but she was just too late. The enemy had discovered her, and
called out in a very cheerful and persuasive tone, "Halloa, little girl, how far is it to the road?"
and trembling Sylvia answered almost inaudibly, "A good ways."
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She did not dare to look boldly at the tall young man, who carried a gun over his shoulder, but
she came out of her bush and again followed the cow, while he walked alongside.
"I have been hunting for some birds," the stranger said kindly, "and I have lost my way, and need
a friend very much. Don't be afraid," he added gallantly. "Speak up and tell me what your name
is, and whether you think I can spend the night at your house, and go out gunning early in the
morning."
Sylvia was more alarmed than before. Would not her grandmother consider her much to blame?
But who could have foreseen such an accident as this? It did not seem to be her fault, and she
hung her head as if the stem of it were broken, but managed to answer "Sylvy," with much effort
when her companion again asked her name.
Mrs. Tilley was standing in the doorway when the trio came into view. The cow gave a loud moo
by way of explanation.
"Yes, you'd better speak up for yourself, you old trial! Where'd she tucked herself away this
time, Sylvy?" But Sylvia kept an awed silence; she knew by instinct that her grandmother did not
comprehend the gravity of the situation. She must be mistaking the stranger for one of the
farmer-lads of the region.
The young man stood his gun beside the door, and dropped a lumpy game-bag beside it; then he
bade Mrs. Tilley good-evening, and repeated his wayfarer's story, and asked if he could have a
night's lodging.
"Put me anywhere you like," he said. "I must be off early in the morning, before day; but I am
very hungry, indeed. You can give me some milk at any rate, that's plain."
"Dear sakes, yes," responded the hostess, whose long slumbering hospitality seemed to be easily
awakened. "You might fare better if you went out to the main road a mile or so, but you're
welcome to what we've got. I'll milk right off, and you make yourself at home. You can sleep on
husks or feathers," she proffered graciously. "I raised them all myself. There's good pasturing for
geese just below here towards the ma'sh. Now step round and set a plate for the gentleman,
Sylvy!" And Sylvia promptly stepped. She was glad to have something to do, and she was
hungry herself.
It was a surprise to find so clean and comfortable a little dwelling in this New England
wilderness. The young man had known the horrors of its most primitive housekeeping, and the
dreary squalor of that level of society which does not rebel at the companionship of hens. This
was the best thrift of an old-fashioned farmstead, though on such a small scale that it seemed like
a hermitage. He listened eagerly to the old woman's quaint talk, he watched Sylvia's pale face
and shining gray eyes with ever growing enthusiasm, and insisted that this was the best supper he
had eaten for a month, and afterward the new-made friends sat down in the door-way together
while the moon came up.
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Soon it would be berry-time, and Sylvia was a great help at picking. The cow was a good milker,
though a plaguy thing to keep track of, the hostess gossiped frankly, adding presently that she
had buried four children, so Sylvia's mother, and a son (who might be dead) in California were
all the children she had left. "Dan, my boy, was a great hand to go gunning," she explained sadly.
"I never wanted for pa'tridges or gray squer'ls while he was to home. He's been a great wand'rer,
I expect, and he's no hand to write letters. There, I don't blame him, I'd ha' seen the world myself
if it had been so I could.
"Sylvy takes after him," the grandmother continued affectionately, after a minute's pause. "There
ain't a foot o' ground she don't know her way over, and the wild creaturs counts her one o'
themselves. Squer'ls she'll tame to come an' feed right out o' her hands, and all sorts o' birds. Last
winter she got the jay-birds to bangeing here, and I believe she'd 'a' scanted herself of her own
meals to have plenty to throw out amongst 'em, if I hadn't kep' watch. Anything but crows, I tell
her, I'm willin' to help support -- though Dan he had a tamed one o' them that did seem to have
reason same as folks. It was round here a good spell after he went away. Dan an' his father they
didn't hitch, -- but he never held up his head ag'in after Dan had dared him an' gone off."
The guest did not notice this hint of family sorrows in his eager interest in something else.
"So Sylvy knows all about birds, does she?" he exclaimed, as he looked round at the little girl
who sat, very demure but increasingly sleepy, in the moonlight. "I am making a collection of
birds myself. I have been at it ever since I was a boy." (Mrs. Tilley smiled.) "There are two or
three very rare ones I have been hunting for these five years. I mean to get them on my own
ground if they can be found."
"Do you cage 'em up?" asked Mrs. Tilley doubtfully, in response to this enthusiastic
announcement.
"Oh no, they're stuffed and preserved, dozens and dozens of them," said the ornithologist, "and I
have shot or snared every one myself. I caught a glimpse of a white heron a few miles from here
on Saturday, and I have followed it in this direction. They have never been found in this district
at all. The little white heron, it is," and he turned again to look at Sylvia with the hope of
discovering that the rare bird was one of her acquaintances.
But Sylvia was watching a hop-toad in the narrow footpath.
"You would know the heron if you saw it," the stranger continued eagerly. "A queer tall white
bird with soft feathers and long thin legs. And it would have a nest perhaps in the top of a high
tree, made of sticks, something like a hawk's nest."
Sylvia's heart gave a wild beat; she knew that strange white bird, and had once stolen softly near
where it stood in some bright green swamp grass, away over at the other side of the woods.
There was an open place where the sunshine always seemed strangely yellow and hot, where tall,
nodding rushes grew, and her grandmother had warned her that she might sink in the soft black
mud underneath and never be heard of more. Not far beyond were the salt marshes just this side
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the sea itself, which Sylvia wondered and dreamed much about, but never had seen, whose great
voice could sometimes be heard above the noise of the woods on stormy nights.
"I can't think of anything I should like so much as to find that heron's nest," the handsome
stranger was saying. "I would give ten dollars to anybody who could show it to me," he added
desperately, "and I mean to spend my whole vacation hunting for it if need be. Perhaps it was
only migrating, or had been chased out of its own region by some bird of prey."
Mrs. Tilley gave amazed attention to all this, but Sylvia still watched the toad, not divining, as
she might have done at some calmer time, that the creature wished to get to its hole under the
door-step, and was much hindered by the unusual spectators at that hour of the evening. No
amount of thought, that night, could decide how many wished-for treasures the ten dollars, so
lightly spoken of, would buy.
The next day the young sportsman hovered about the woods, and Sylvia kept him company,
having lost her first fear of the friendly lad, who proved to be most kind and sympathetic. He told
her many things about the birds and what they knew and where they lived and what they did with
themselves. And he gave her a jack-knife, which she thought as great a treasure as if she were a
desert-islander. All day long he did not once make her troubled or afraid except when he brought
down some unsuspecting singing creature from its bough. Sylvia would have liked him vastly
better without his gun; she could not understand why he killed the very birds he seemed to like
so much. But as the day waned, Sylvia still watched the young man with loving admiration. She
had never seen anybody so charming and delightful; the woman's heart, asleep in the child, was
vaguely thrilled by a dream of love. Some premonition of that great power stirred and swayed
these young creatures who traversed the solemn woodlands with soft-footed silent care. They
stopped to listen to a bird's song; they pressed forward again eagerly, parting the branches -speaking to each other rarely and in whispers; the young man going first and Sylvia following,
fascinated, a few steps behind, with her gray eyes dark with excitement.
She grieved because the longed-for white heron was elusive, but she did not lead the guest, she
only followed, and there was no such thing as speaking first. The sound of her own unquestioned
voice would have terrified her -- it was hard enough to answer yes or no when there was need of
that. At last evening began to fall, and they drove the cow home together, and Sylvia smiled with
pleasure when they came to the place where she heard the whistle and was afraid only the night
before.
II.
Half a mile from home, at the farther edge of the woods, where the land was highest, a great
pine-tree stood, the last of its generation. Whether it was left for a boundary mark, or for what
reason, no one could say; the woodchoppers who had felled its mates were dead and gone long
ago, and a whole forest of sturdy trees, pines and oaks and maples, had grown again. But the
stately head of this old pine towered above them all and made a landmark for sea and shore miles
and miles away. Sylvia knew it well. She had always believed that whoever climbed to the top of
it could see the ocean; and the little girl had often laid her hand on the great rough trunk and
looked up wistfully at those dark boughs that the wind always stirred, no matter how hot and still
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the air might be below. Now she thought of the tree with a new excitement, for why, if one
climbed it at break of day, could not one see all the world, and easily discover from whence the
white heron flew, and mark the place, and find the hidden nest?
What a spirit of adventure, what wild ambition! What fancied triumph and delight and glory for
the later morning when she could make known the secret! It was almost too real and too great for
the childish heart to bear.
All night the door of the little house stood open and the whippoorwills came and sang upon the
very step. The young sportsman and his old hostess were sound asleep, but Sylvia's great design
kept her broad awake and watching. She forgot to think of sleep. The short summer night seemed
as long as the winter darkness, and at last when the whippoorwills ceased, and she was afraid the
morning would after all come too soon, she stole out of the house and followed the pasture path
through the woods, hastening toward the open ground beyond, listening with a sense of comfort
and companionship to the drowsy twitter of a half-awakened bird, whose perch she had jarred in
passing. Alas, if the great wave of human interest which flooded for the first time this dull little
life should sweep away the satisfactions of an existence heart to heart with nature and the dumb
life of the forest!
There was the huge tree asleep yet in the paling moonlight, and small and silly Sylvia began with
utmost bravery to mount to the top of it, with tingling, eager blood coursing the channels of her
whole frame, with her bare feet and fingers, that pinched and held like bird's claws to the
monstrous ladder reaching up, up, almost to the sky itself. First she must mount the white oak
tree that grew alongside, where she was almost lost among the dark branches and the green
leaves heavy and wet with dew; a bird fluttered off its nest, and a red squirrel ran to and fro and
scolded pettishly at the harmless housebreaker. Sylvia felt her way easily. She had often climbed
there, and knew that higher still one of the oak's upper branches chafed against the pine trunk,
just where its lower boughs were set close together. There, when she made the dangerous pass
from one tree to the other, the great enterprise would really begin.
She crept out along the swaying oak limb at last, and took the daring step across into the old
pine-tree. The way was harder than she thought; she must reach far and hold fast, the sharp dry
twigs caught and held her and scratched her like angry talons, the pitch made her thin little
fingers clumsy and stiff as she went round and round the tree's great stem, higher and higher
upward. The sparrows and robins in the woods below were beginning to wake and twitter to the
dawn, yet it seemed much lighter there aloft in the pine-tree, and the child knew she must hurry
if her project were to be of any use.
The tree seemed to lengthen itself out as she went up, and to reach farther and farther upward. It
was like a great main-mast to the voyaging earth; it must truly have been amazed that morning
through all its ponderous frame as it felt this determined spark of human spirit wending its way
from higher branch to branch. Who knows how steadily the least twigs held themselves to
advantage this light, weak creature on her way! The old pine must have loved his new dependent.
More than all the hawks, and bats, and moths, and even the sweet voiced thrushes, was the brave,
beating heart of the solitary gray-eyed child. And the tree stood still and frowned away the winds
that June morning while the dawn grew bright in the east.
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Sylvia's face was like a pale star, if one had seen it from the ground, when the last thorny bough
was past, and she stood trembling and tired but wholly triumphant, high in the tree-top. Yes,
there was the sea with the dawning sun making a golden dazzle over it, and toward that glorious
east flew two hawks with slow-moving pinions. How low they looked in the air from that height
when one had only seen them before far up, and dark against the blue sky. Their gray feathers
were as soft as moths; they seemed only a little way from the tree, and Sylvia felt as if she too
could go flying away among the clouds. Westward, the woodlands and farms reached miles and
miles into the distance; here and there were church steeples, and white villages, truly it was a
vast and awesome world
The birds sang louder and louder. At last the sun came up bewilderingly bright. Sylvia could see
the white sails of ships out at sea, and the clouds that were purple and rose-colored and yellow at
first began to fade away. Where was the white heron's nest in the sea of green branches, and was
this wonderful sight and pageant of the world the only reward for having climbed to such a giddy
height? Now look down again, Sylvia, where the green marsh is set among the shining birches
and dark hemlocks; there where you saw the white heron once you will see him again; look,
look! a white spot of him like a single floating feather comes up from the dead hemlock and
grows larger, and rises, and comes close at last, and goes by the landmark pine with steady
sweep of wing and outstretched slender neck and crested head. And wait! wait! do not move a
foot or a finger, little girl, do not send an arrow of light and consciousness from your two eager
eyes, for the heron has perched on a pine bough not far beyond yours, and cries back to his mate
on the nest and plumes his feathers for the new day!
The child gives a long sigh a minute later when a company of shouting cat-birds comes also to
the tree, and vexed by their fluttering and lawlessness the solemn heron goes away. She knows
his secret now, the wild, light, slender bird that floats and wavers, and goes back like an arrow
presently to his home in the green world beneath. Then Sylvia, well satisfied, makes her perilous
way down again, not daring to look far below the branch she stands on, ready to cry sometimes
because her fingers ache and her lamed feet slip. Wondering over and over again what the
stranger would say to her, and what he would think when she told him how to find his way
straight to the heron's nest.
"Sylvy, Sylvy!" called the busy old grandmother again and again, but nobody answered, and the
small husk bed was empty and Sylvia had disappeared.
The guest waked from a dream, and remembering his day's pleasure hurried to dress himself that
it might sooner begin. He was sure from the way the shy little girl looked once or twice
yesterday that she had at least seen the white heron, and now she must really be made to tell.
Here she comes now, paler than ever, and her worn old frock is torn and tattered, and smeared
with pine pitch. The grandmother and the sportsman stand in the door together and question her,
and the splendid moment has come to speak of the dead hemlock-tree by the green marsh.
But Sylvia does not speak after all, though the old grandmother fretfully rebukes her, and the
young man's kind, appealing eyes are looking straight in her own. He can make them rich with
money; he has promised it, and they are poor now. He is so well worth making happy, and he
waits to hear the story she can tell.
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No, she must keep silence! What is it that suddenly forbids her and makes her dumb? Has she
been nine years growing and now, when the great world for the first time puts out a hand to her,
must she thrust it aside for a bird's sake? The murmur of the pine's green branches is in her ears,
she remembers how the white heron came flying through the golden air and how they watched
the sea and the morning together, and Sylvia cannot speak; she cannot tell the heron's secret and
give its life away.
Dear loyalty, that suffered a sharp pang as the guest went away disappointed later in the day, that
could have served and followed him and loved him as a dog loves! Many a night Sylvia heard
the echo of his whistle haunting the pasture path as she came home with the loitering cow. She
forgot even her sorrow at the sharp report of his gun and the sight of thrushes and sparrows
dropping silent to the ground, their songs hushed and their pretty feathers stained and wet with
blood. Were the birds better friends than their hunter might have been, -- who can tell? Whatever
treasures were lost to her, woodlands and summer-time, remember! Bring your gifts and graces
and tell your secrets to this lonely country child!
Resources for The Rise of Realism
Kate Chopin (1851-1904)
[image] Kate Chopin was born on February 8, 1850, as Catherine O’Flaherty in St. Louis,
Missouri. She married Oscar Chopin in 1870, and they settled in New Orleans, having six
children. Oscar died from malaria in 1882 and after a few years later the family moved back to
St. Louis. Chopin took up writing short stories and novels, many of them involving the FrenchCreole culture of southern Louisiana. Her stories collections, such as Bayou Folk (1894) and A
Night in Acadie (1897) were popular, but she is most known today for her controversial novel,
The Awakening (1899). She died on August 22, 1904 and is buried in Calvary Cemetery. Two
key biographies are Emily Toth’s Unveiling Kate Chopin, University of Mississippi, 1999, and
Per Seyersted’s Kate Chopin: A Critical Biography, Louisiana State University Press, 1969. An
introduction to criticism can be found in Jane Beer’s Cambridge Companion to Kate Chopin,
Cambridge University Press, 2008.
The Story of An Hour
Chopin, Kate. "The Story of an Hour." Vogue Magazine. December 6, 1894. (originally under
the title, "The Dream of an Hour")
source of etext: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Story_of_an_Hour
Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, great care was taken to break to
her as gently as possible the news of her husband's death.
It was her sister Josephine who told her, in broken sentences; veiled hints that revealed in half
concealing. Her husband's friend Richards was there, too, near her. It was he who had been in the
newspaper office when intelligence of the railroad disaster was received, with Brently Mallard's
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name leading the list of "killed." He had only taken the time to assure himself of its truth by a
second telegram, and had hastened to forestall any less careful, less tender friend in bearing the
sad message.
She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to
accept its significance. She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister's arms.
When the storm of grief had spent itself she went away to her room alone. She would have no
one follow her.
There stood, facing the open window, a comfortable, roomy armchair. Into this she sank, pressed
down by a physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to reach into her soul.
She could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that were all aquiver with the
new spring life. The delicious breath of rain was in the air. In the street below a peddler was
crying his wares. The notes of a distant song which some one was singing reached her faintly,
and countless sparrows were twittering in the eaves.
There were patches of blue sky showing here and there through the clouds that had met and piled
one above the other in the west facing her window.
She sat with her head thrown back upon the cushion of the chair, quite motionless, except when a
sob came up into her throat and shook her, as a child who has cried itself to sleep continues to
sob in its dreams.
She was young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and even a certain
strength. But now there was a dull stare in her eyes, whose gaze was fixed away off yonder on
one of those patches of blue sky. It was not a glance of reflection, but rather indicated a
suspension of intelligent thought.
There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully. What was it? She did
not know; it was too subtle and elusive to name. But she felt it, creeping out of the sky, reaching
toward her through the sounds, the scents, the color that filled the air.
Now her bosom rose and fell tumultuously. She was beginning to recognize this thing that was
approaching to possess her, and she was striving to beat it back with her will--as powerless as her
two white slender hands would have been. When she abandoned herself a little whispered word
escaped her slightly parted lips. She said it over and over under hte breath: "free, free, free!" The
vacant stare and the look of terror that had followed it went from her eyes. They stayed keen and
bright. Her pulses beat fast, and the coursing blood warmed and relaxed every inch of her body.
She did not stop to ask if it were or were not a monstrous joy that held her. A clear and exalted
perception enabled her to dismiss the suggestion as trivial. She knew that she would weep again
when she saw the kind, tender hands folded in death; the face that had never looked save with
love upon her, fixed and gray and dead. But she saw beyond that bitter moment a long
procession of years to come that would belong to her absolutely. And she opened and spread her
arms out to them in welcome.
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There would be no one to live for during those coming years; she would live for herself. There
would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men and women
believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature. A kind intention or a
cruel intention made the act seem no less a crime as she looked upon it in that brief moment of
illumination.
And yet she had loved him--sometimes. Often she had not. What did it matter! What could love,
the unsolved mystery, count for in the face of this possession of self-assertion which she
suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being!
"Free! Body and soul free!" she kept whispering.
Josephine was kneeling before the closed door with her lips to the keyhold, imploring for
admission. "Louise, open the door! I beg; open the door--you will make yourself ill. What are
you doing, Louise? For heaven's sake open the door."
"Go away. I am not making myself ill." No; she was drinking in a very elixir of life through that
open window.
Her fancy was running riot along those days ahead of her. Spring days, and summer days, and all
sorts of days that would be her own. She breathed a quick prayer that life might be long. It was
only yesterday she had thought with a shudder that life might be long.
She arose at length and opened the door to her sister's importunities. There was a feverish
triumph in her eyes, and she carried herself unwittingly like a goddess of Victory. She clasped
her sister's waist, and together they descended the stairs. Richards stood waiting for them at the
bottom.
Some one was opening the front door with a latchkey. It was Brently Mallard who entered, a
little travel-stained, composedly carrying his grip-sack and umbrella. He had been far from the
scene of the accident, and did not even know there had been one. He stood amazed at Josephine's
piercing cry; at Richards' quick motion to screen him from the view of his wife.
When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease--of the joy that kills.
Désirée's Baby
Chopin, Kate. "Desiree's Baby." Vogue Magazine. January 14, 1893. Reprinted in Bayou Folk.
Boston and New York: Houghtin, Mifflin, and Company, 1894.
source of etext: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/160
As the day was pleasant, Madame Valmonde drove over to L'Abri to see Desiree and the baby.
159
It made her laugh to think of Desiree with a baby. Why, it seemed but yesterday that Desiree was
little more than a baby herself; when Monsieur in riding through the gateway of Valmonde had
found her lying asleep in the shadow of the big stone pillar.
The little one awoke in his arms and began to cry for "Dada." That was as much as she could do
or say. Some people thought she might have strayed there of her own accord, for she was of the
toddling age. The prevailing belief was that she had been purposely left by a party of Texans,
whose canvas-covered wagon, late in the day, had crossed the ferry that Coton Mais kept, just
below the plantation. In time Madame Valmonde abandoned every speculation but the one that
Desiree had been sent to her by a beneficent Providence to be the child of her affection, seeing
that she was without child of the flesh. For the girl grew to be beautiful and gentle, affectionate
and sincere,—the idol of Valmonde.
It was no wonder, when she stood one day against the stone pillar in whose shadow she had lain
asleep, eighteen years before, that Armand Aubigny riding by and seeing her there, had fallen in
love with her. That was the way all the Aubignys fell in love, as if struck by a pistol shot. The
wonder was that he had not loved her before; for he had known her since his father brought him
home from Paris, a boy of eight, after his mother died there. The passion that awoke in him that
day, when he saw her at the gate, swept along like an avalanche, or like a prairie fire, or like
anything that drives headlong over all obstacles.
Monsieur Valmonde grew practical and wanted things well considered: that is, the girl's obscure
origin. Armand looked into her eyes and did not care. He was reminded that she was nameless.
What did it matter about a name when he could give her one of the oldest and proudest in
Louisiana? He ordered the corbeille from Paris, and contained himself with what patience he
could until it arrived; then they were married.
Madame Valmonde had not seen Desiree and the baby for four weeks. When she reached L'Abri
she shuddered at the first sight of it, as she always did. It was a sad looking place, which for
many years had not known the gentle presence of a mistress, old Monsieur Aubigny having
married and buried his wife in France, and she having loved her own land too well ever to leave
it. The roof came down steep and black like a cowl, reaching out beyond the wide galleries that
encircled the yellow stuccoed house. Big, solemn oaks grew close to it, and their thick-leaved,
far-reaching branches shadowed it like a pall. Young Aubigny's rule was a strict one, too, and
under it his negroes had forgotten how to be gay, as they had been during the old master's easygoing and indulgent lifetime.
The young mother was recovering slowly, and lay full length, in her soft white muslins and
laces, upon a couch. The baby was beside her, upon her arm, where he had fallen asleep, at her
breast. The yellow nurse woman sat beside a window fanning herself.
Madame Valmonde bent her portly figure over Desiree and kissed her, holding her an instant
tenderly in her arms. Then she turned to the child.
"This is not the baby!" she exclaimed, in startled tones. French was the language spoken at
Valmonde in those days.
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"I knew you would be astonished," laughed Desiree, "at the way he has grown. The little cochon
de lait! Look at his legs, mamma, and his hands and fingernails,—real finger-nails. Zandrine had
to cut them this morning. Isn't it true, Zandrine?"
The woman bowed her turbaned head majestically, "Mais si, Madame."
"And the way he cries," went on Desiree, "is deafening. Armand heard him the other day as far
away as La Blanche's cabin."
Madame Valmonde had never removed her eyes from the child. She lifted it and walked with it
over to the window that was lightest. She scanned the baby narrowly, then looked as searchingly
at Zandrine, whose face was turned to gaze across the fields.
"Yes, the child has grown, has changed," said Madame Valmonde, slowly, as she replaced it
beside its mother. "What does Armand say?"
Desiree's face became suffused with a glow that was happiness itself.
"Oh, Armand is the proudest father in the parish, I believe, chiefly because it is a boy, to bear his
name; though he says not,—that he would have loved a girl as well. But I know it isn't true. I
know he says that to please me. And mamma," she added, drawing Madame Valmonde's head
down to her, and speaking in a whisper, "he hasn't punished one of them—not one of them—
since baby is born. Even Negrillon, who pretended to have burnt his leg that he might rest from
work—he only laughed, and said Negrillon was a great scamp. Oh, mamma, I'm so happy; it
frightens me."
What Desiree said was true. Marriage, and later the birth of his son had softened Armand
Aubigny's imperious and exacting nature greatly. This was what made the gentle Desiree so
happy, for she loved him desperately. When he frowned she trembled, but loved him. When he
smiled, she asked no greater blessing of God. But Armand's dark, handsome face had not often
been disfigured by frowns since the day he fell in love with her.
When the baby was about three months old, Desiree awoke one day to the conviction that there
was something in the air menacing her peace. It was at first too subtle to grasp. It had only been a
disquieting suggestion; an air of mystery among the blacks; unexpected visits from far-off
neighbors who could hardly account for their coming. Then a strange, an awful change in her
husband's manner, which she dared not ask him to explain. When he spoke to her, it was with
averted eyes, from which the old love-light seemed to have gone out. He absented himself from
home; and when there, avoided her presence and that of her child, without excuse. And the very
spirit of Satan seemed suddenly to take hold of him in his dealings with the slaves. Desiree was
miserable enough to die.
She sat in her room, one hot afternoon, in her peignoir, listlessly drawing through her fingers the
strands of her long, silky brown hair that hung about her shoulders. The baby, half naked, lay
asleep upon her own great mahogany bed, that was like a sumptuous throne, with its satin-lined
half-canopy. One of La Blanche's little quadroon boys—half naked too—stood fanning the child
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slowly with a fan of peacock feathers. Desiree's eyes had been fixed absently and sadly upon the
baby, while she was striving to penetrate the threatening mist that she felt closing about her. She
looked from her child to the boy who stood beside him, and back again; over and over. "Ah!" It
was a cry that she could not help; which she was not conscious of having uttered. The blood
turned like ice in her veins, and a clammy moisture gathered upon her face.
She tried to speak to the little quadroon boy; but no sound would come, at first. When he heard
his name uttered, he looked up, and his mistress was pointing to the door. He laid aside the great,
soft fan, and obediently stole away, over the polished floor, on his bare tiptoes.
She stayed motionless, with gaze riveted upon her child, and her face the picture of fright.
Presently her husband entered the room, and without noticing her, went to a table and began to
search among some papers which covered it.
"Armand," she called to him, in a voice which must have stabbed him, if he was human. But he
did not notice. "Armand," she said again. Then she rose and tottered towards him. "Armand," she
panted once more, clutching his arm, "look at our child. What does it mean? tell me."
He coldly but gently loosened her fingers from about his arm and thrust the hand away from him.
"Tell me what it means!" she cried despairingly.
"It means," he answered lightly, "that the child is not white; it means that you are not white."
A quick conception of all that this accusation meant for her nerved her with unwonted courage to
deny it. "It is a lie; it is not true, I am white! Look at my hair, it is brown; and my eyes are gray,
Armand, you know they are gray. And my skin is fair," seizing his wrist. "Look at my hand;
whiter than yours, Armand," she laughed hysterically.
"As white as La Blanche's," he returned cruelly; and went away leaving her alone with their
child.
When she could hold a pen in her hand, she sent a despairing letter to Madame Valmonde.
"My mother, they tell me I am not white. Armand has told me I am not white. For God's sake tell
them it is not true. You must know it is not true. I shall die. I must die. I cannot be so unhappy,
and live."
The answer that came was brief:
"My own Desiree: Come home to Valmonde; back to your mother who loves you. Come with
your child."
When the letter reached Desiree she went with it to her husband's study, and laid it open upon the
desk before which he sat. She was like a stone image: silent, white, motionless after she placed it
there.
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In silence he ran his cold eyes over the written words.
He said nothing. "Shall I go, Armand?" she asked in tones sharp with agonized suspense.
"Yes, go."
"Do you want me to go?"
"Yes, I want you to go."
He thought Almighty God had dealt cruelly and unjustly with him; and felt, somehow, that he
was paying Him back in kind when he stabbed thus into his wife's soul. Moreover he no longer
loved her, because of the unconscious injury she had brought upon his home and his name.
She turned away like one stunned by a blow, and walked slowly towards the door, hoping he
would call her back.
"Good-by, Armand," she moaned.
He did not answer her. That was his last blow at fate.
Desiree went in search of her child. Zandrine was pacing the sombre gallery with it. She took the
little one from the nurse's arms with no word of explanation, and descending the steps, walked
away, under the live-oak branches.
It was an October afternoon; the sun was just sinking. Out in the still fields the negroes were
picking cotton.
Desiree had not changed the thin white garment nor the slippers which she wore. Her hair was
uncovered and the sun's rays brought a golden gleam from its brown meshes. She did not take
the broad, beaten road which led to the far-off plantation of Valmonde. She walked across a
deserted field, where the stubble bruised her tender feet, so delicately shod, and tore her thin
gown to shreds.
She disappeared among the reeds and willows that grew thick along the banks of the deep,
sluggish bayou; and she did not come back again.
Some weeks later there was a curious scene enacted at L'Abri. In the centre of the smoothly
swept back yard was a great bonfire. Armand Aubigny sat in the wide hallway that commanded a
view of the spectacle; and it was he who dealt out to a half dozen negroes the material which
kept this fire ablaze.
A graceful cradle of willow, with all its dainty furbishings, was laid upon the pyre, which had
already been fed with the richness of a priceless layette. Then there were silk gowns, and velvet
and satin ones added to these; laces, too, and embroideries; bonnets and gloves; for the corbeille
had been of rare quality.
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The last thing to go was a tiny bundle of letters; innocent little scribblings that Desiree had sent
to him during the days of their espousal. There was the remnant of one back in the drawer from
which he took them. But it was not Desiree's; it was part of an old letter from his mother to his
father. He read it. She was thanking God for the blessing of her husband's love:—
"But above all," she wrote, "night and day, I thank the good God for having so arranged our lives
that our dear Armand will never know that his mother, who adores him, belongs to the race that
is cursed with the brand of slavery."
Resources for The Rise of Realism
Mary E. Wilkins Freeman (1852-1930)
[image] Mary E. Wilkins Freeman was born in Randolph, Massachusetts on October 31, 1852,
and, like Emily Dickinson, attended Mount Holyoke Female Seminary. She began writing as a
teenager, and worked as a secretary to poet and writer Oliver Wendell Holmes. Her New
England based stories often combined the supernatural and domestic local color. She is most
famous for two collections, A Humble Romance and Other Stories (1887) and A New England
Nun and Other Stories (1891). She moved to Metuchen, New Jersey and married Charles
Freeman in 1902, and died on March 13, 1930. She was awarded the William Dean Howells
Medal for Distinction in Fiction in 1926. For more information, students can start with Leah
Blatt Glasser's In a Closet Hidden: The Life and Work of Mary E. Wilkins Freeman. Amherst:
University of Mass. Press, 1996. Also valuable is Perry D.. Westbrook's Mary Wilkins Freeman,
Boston: Twayne Publishing, 1988.
A New England Nun
Freeman, Mary E. Wilkins. "A New England Nun." A New England Nun and Other Stories. New
York: Harper and Brothers, 1891.
source of etext: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/A_New_England_Nun
It was late in the afternoon, and the light was waning. There was a difference in the look of the
tree shadows out in the yard. Somewhere in the distance cows were lowing and a little bell was
tinkling; now and then a farm-wagon tilted by, and the dust flew; some blue-shirted laborers with
shovels over their shoulders plodded past; little swarms of flies were dancing up and down
before the peoples' faces in the soft air. There seemed to be a gentle stir arising over everything
for the mere sake of subsidence — a very premonition of rest and hush and night.
This soft diurnal commotion was over Louisa Ellis also. She had been peacefully sewing at her
sitting-room window all the afternoon. Now she quilted her needle carefully into her work,
which she folded precisely, and laid in a basket with her thimble and thread and scissors. Louisa
Ellis could not remember that ever in her life she had mislaid one of these little feminine
appurtenances, which had become, from long use and constant association, a very part of her
personality.
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Louisa tied a green apron round her waist, and got out a flat straw hat with a green ribbon. Then
she went into the garden with a little blue crockery bowl, to pick some currants for her tea. After
the currants were picked she sat on the back door-step and stemmed them, collecting the stems
carefully in her apron, and afterwards throwing them into the hen-coop. She looked sharply at
the grass beside the step to see if any had fallen there.
Louisa was slow and still in her movements; it took her a long time to prepare her tea; but when
ready it was set forth with as much grace as if she had been a veritable guest to her own self. The
little square table stood exactly in the centre of the kitchen, and was covered with a starched
linen cloth whose border pattern of flowers glistened. Louisa had a damask napkin on her teatray, where were arranged a cut-glass tumbler full of teaspoons, a silver cream-pitcher, a china
sugar-bowl, and one pink china cup and saucer. Louisa used china every day — something
which none of her neighbors did. They whispered about it among themselves. Their daily tables
were laid with common crockery, their sets of best china stayed in the parlor closet, and Louisa
Ellis was no richer nor better bred than they. Still she would use the china. She had for her
supper a glass dish full of sugared currants, a plate of little cakes, and one of light white biscuits.
Also a leaf or two of lettuce, which she cut up daintily. Louisa was very fond of lettuce, which
she raised to perfection in her little garden. She ate quite heartily, though in a delicate, pecking
way; it seemed almost surprising that any considerable bulk of the food should vanish.
After tea she filled a plate with nicely baked thin corn-cakes, and carried them out into the backyard.
"Cæsar!" she called. "Cæsar! Cæsar!"
There was a little rush, and the clank of a chain, and a large yellow-and-white dog appeared at
the door of his tiny hut, which was half hidden among the tall grasses and flowers. Louisa patted
him and gave him the corn-cakes. Then she returned to the house and washed the tea-things,
polishing the china carefully. The twilight had deepened; the chorus of the frogs floated in at the
open window wonderfully loud and shrill, and once in a while a long sharp drone from a treetoad pierced it. Louisa took off her green gingham apron, disclosing a shorter one of pink and
white print. She lighted her lamp, and sat down again with her sewing.
In about half an hour Joe Dagget came. She heard his heavy step on the walk, and rose and took
off her pink-and-white apron. Under that was still another — white linen with a little cambric
edging on the bottom; that was Louisa's company apron. She never wore it without her calico
sewing apron over it unless she had a guest. She had barely folded the pink and white one with
methodical haste and laid it in a table-drawer when the door opened and Joe Dagget entered.
He seemed to fill up the whole room. A little yellow canary that had been asleep in his green
cage at the south window woke up and fluttered wildly, beating his little yellow wings against
the wires. He always did so when Joe Dagget came into the room.
"Good-evening," said Louisa. She extended her hand with a kind of solemn cordiality.
"Good-evening, Louisa," returned the man, in a loud voice.
165
She placed a chair for him, and they sat facing each other, with the table between them. He sat
bolt-upright, toeing out his heavy feet squarely, glancing with a good-humored uneasiness
around the room. She sat gently erect, folding her slender hands in her white-linen lap.
"Been a pleasant day," remarked Dagget.
"Real pleasant," Louisa assented, softly. "Have you been haying?" she asked, after a little while.
"Yes, I've been haying all day, down in the ten-acre lot. Pretty hot work."
"It must be."
"Yes, it's pretty hot work in the sun."
"Is your mother well to-day?"
"Yes, mother's pretty well."
"I suppose Lily Dyer's with her now?"
Dagget colored. "Yes, she's with her," he answered, slowly.
He was not very young, but there was a boyish look about his large face. Louisa was not quite as
old as he, her face was fairer and smoother, but she gave people the impression of being older.
"I suppose she's a good deal of help to your mother," she said, further.
"I guess she is; I don't know how mother'd get along without her," said Dagget, with a sort of
embarrassed warmth.
"She looks like a real capable girl. She's pretty-looking too," remarked Louisa.
"Yes, she is pretty fair looking."
Presently Dagget began fingering the books on the table. There was a square red autograph
album, and a Young Lady's Gift-Book which had belonged to Louisa's mother. He took them up
one after the other and opened them; then laid them down again, the album on the Gift-Book.
Louisa kept eying them with mild uneasiness. Finally she rose and changed the position of the
books, putting the album underneath. That was the way they had been arranged in the first place.
Dagget gave an awkward little laugh. "Now what difference did it make which book was on
top?" said he.
Louisa looked at him with a deprecating smile. "I always keep them that way," murmured she.
166
"You do beat everything," said Dagget, trying to laugh again. His large face was flushed.
He remained about an hour longer, then rose to take leave. Going out, he stumbled over a rug,
and trying to recover himself, hit Louisa's work-basket on the table, and knocked it on the floor.
He looked at Louisa, then at the rolling spools; he ducked himself awkwardly toward them, but
she stopped him. "Never mind," said she; "I'll pick them up after you're gone."
She spoke with a mild stiffness. Either she was a little disturbed, or his nervousness affected her,
and made her seem constrained in her effort to reassure him.
When Joe Dagget was outside he drew in the sweet evening air with a sigh, and felt much as an
innocent and perfectly well-intentioned bear might after his exit from a china shop.
Louisa, on her part, felt much as the kind-hearted, long-suffering owner of the china shop might
have done after the exit of the bear.
She tied on the pink, then the green apron, picked up all the scattered treasures and replaced
them in her work-basket, and straightened the rug. Then she set the lamp on the floor, and began
sharply examining the carpet. She even rubbed her fingers over it, and looked at them.
"He's tracked in a good deal of dust," she murmured. "I thought he must have."
Louisa got a dust-pan and brush, and swept Joe Dagget's track carefully.
If he could have known it, it would have increased his perplexity and uneasiness, although it
would not have disturbed his loyalty in the least. He came twice a week to see Louisa Ellis, and
every time, sitting there in her delicately sweet room, he felt as if surrounded by a hedge of lace.
He was afraid to stir lest he should put a clumsy foot or hand through the fairy web, and he had
always the consciousness that Louisa was watching fearfully lest he should.
Still the lace and Louisa commanded perforce his perfect respect and patience and loyalty. They
were to be married in a month, after a singular courtship which had lasted for a matter of fifteen
years. For fourteen out of the fifteen years the two had not once seen each other, and they had
seldom exchanged letters. Joe had been all those years in Australia, where he had gone to make
his fortune, and where he had stayed until he made it. He would have stayed fifty years if it had
taken so long, and come home feeble and tottering, or never come home at all, to marry Louisa.
But the fortune had been made in the fourteen years, and he had come home now to marry the
woman who had been patiently and unquestioningly waiting for him all that time.
Shortly after they were engaged he had announced to Louisa his determination to strike out into
new fields, and secure a competency before they should be married. She had listened and
assented with the sweet serenity which never failed her, not even when her lover set forth on that
long and uncertain journey. Joe, buoyed up as he was by his sturdy determination, broke down a
little at the last, but Louisa kissed him with a mild blush, and said good-by.
167
"It won't be for long," poor Joe had said, huskily; but it was for fourteen years.
In that length of time much had happened. Louisa's mother and brother had died, and she was all
alone in the world. But greatest happening of all — a subtle happening which both were too
simple to understand — Louisa's feet had turned into a path, smooth maybe under a calm, serene
sky, but so straight and unswerving that it could only meet a check at her grave, and so narrow
that there was no room for any one at her side.
Louisa's first emotion when Joe Dagget came home (he had not apprised her of his coming) was
consternation, although she would not admit it to herself, and he never dreamed of it. Fifteen
years ago she had been in love with him — at least she considered herself to be. Just at that time,
gently acquiescing with and falling into the natural drift of girlhood, she had seen marriage ahead
as a reasonable feature and a probable desirability of life. She had listened with calm docility to
her mother's views upon the subject. Her mother was remarkable for her cool sense and sweet,
even temperament. She talked wisely to her daughter when Joe Dagget presented himself, and
Louisa accepted him with no hesitation. He was the first lover she had ever had.
She had been faithful to him all these years. She had never dreamed of the possibility of
marrying any one else. Her life, especially for the last seven years, had been full of a pleasant
peace, she had never felt discontented nor impatient over her lover's absence; still she had always
looked forward to his return and their marriage as the inevitable conclusion of things. However,
she had fallen into a way of placing it so far in the future that it was almost equal to placing it
over the boundaries of another life.
When Joe came she had been expecting him, and expecting to be married for fourteen years, but
she was as much surprised and taken aback as if she had never thought of it.
Joe's consternation came later. He eyed Louisa with an instant confirmation of his old
admiration. She had changed but little. She still kept her pretty manner and soft grace, and was,
he considered, every whit as attractive as ever. As for himself, his stent was done; he had turned
his face away from fortune-seeking, and the old winds of romance whistled as loud and sweet as
ever through his ears. All the song which he had been wont to hear in them was Louisa; he had
for a long time a loyal belief that he heard it still, but finally it seemed to him that although the
winds sang always that one song, it had another name. But for Louisa the wind had never more
than murmured; now it had gone down, and everything was still. She listened for a little while
with half-wistful attention; then she turned quietly away and went to work on her wedding
clothes.
Joe had made some extensive and quite magnificent alterations in his house. It was the old
homestead; the newly-married couple would live there, for Joe could not desert his mother, who
refused to leave her old home. So Louisa must leave hers. Every morning, rising and going about
among her neat maidenly possessions, she felt as one looking her last upon the faces of dear
friends. It was true that in a measure she could take them with her, but, robbed of their old
environments, they would appear in such new guises that they would almost cease to be
themselves. Then there were some peculiar features of her happy solitary life which she would
probably be obliged to relinquish altogether. Sterner tasks than these graceful but half-needless
168
ones would probably devolve upon her. There would be a large house to care for; there would be
company to entertain; there would be Joe's rigorous and feeble old mother to wait upon; and it
would be contrary to all thrifty village traditions for her to keep more than one servant. Louisa
had a little still, and she used to occupy herself pleasantly in summer weather with distilling the
sweet and aromatic essences from roses and peppermint and spearmint. By-and-by her still must
be laid away. Her store of essences was already considerable, and there would be no time for her
to distil for the mere pleasure of it. Then Joe's mother would think it foolishness; she had already
hinted her opinion in the matter. Louisa dearly loved to sew a linen seam, not always for use, but
for the simple, mild pleasure which she took in it. She would have been loath to confess how
more than once she had ripped a seam for the mere delight of sewing it together again. Sitting at
her window during long sweet afternoons, drawing her needle gently through the dainty fabric,
she was peace itself. But there was small chance of such foolish comfort in the future. Joe's
mother, domineering, shrewd old matron that she was even in her old age, and very likely even
Joe himself, with his honest masculine rudeness, would laugh and frown down all these pretty
but senseless old maiden ways.
Louisa had almost the enthusiasm of an artist over the mere order and cleanliness of her solitary
home. She had throbs of genuine triumph at the sight of the window-panes which she had
polished until they shone like jewels. She gloated gently over her orderly bureau-drawers, with
their exquisitely folded contents redolent with lavender and sweet clover and very purity. Could
she be sure of the endurance of even this? She had visions, so startling that she half repudiated
them as indelicate, of coarse masculine belongings strewn about in endless litter; of dust and
disorder arising necessarily from a coarse masculine presence in the midst of all this delicate
harmony.
Among her forebodings of disturbance, not the least was with regard to Cæsar. Cæsar was a
veritable hermit of a dog. For the greater part of his life he had dwelt in his secluded hut, shut out
from the society of his kind and all innocent canine joys. Never had Cæsar since his early youth
watched at a woodchuck's hole; never had he known the delights of a stray bone at a neighbor's
kitchen door. And it was all on account of a sin committed when hardly out of his puppyhood.
No one knew the possible depth of remorse of which this mild-visaged, altogether innocentlooking old dog might be capable; but whether or not he had encountered remorse, he had
encountered a full measure of righteous retribution. Old Cæsar seldom lifted up his voice in a
growl or a bark; he was fat and sleepy; there were yellow rings which looked like spectacles
around his dim old eyes; but there was a neighbor who bore on his hand the imprint of several of
Cæsar's sharp white youthful teeth, and for that he had lived at the end of a chain, all alone in a
little hut, for fourteen years. The neighbor, who was choleric and smarting with the pain of his
wound, had demanded either Cæsar's death or complete ostracism. So Louisa's brother, to whom
the dog had belonged, had built him his little kennel and tied him up. It was now fourteen years
since, in a flood of youthful spirits, he had inflicted that memorable bite, and with the exception
of short excursions, always at the end of the chain, under the strict guardianship of his master or
Louisa, the old dog had remained a close prisoner. It is doubtful if, with his limited ambition, he
took much pride in the fact, but it is certain that he was possessed of considerable cheap fame.
He was regarded by all the children in the village and by many adults as a very monster of
ferocity. St. George's dragon could hardly have surpassed in evil repute Louisa Ellis's old yellow
dog. Mothers charged their children with solemn emphasis not to go too near to him, and the
169
children listened and believed greedily, with a fascinated appetite for terror, and ran by Louisa's
house stealthily, with many sidelong and backward glances at the terrible dog. If perchance he
sounded a hoarse bark, there was a panic. Wayfarers chancing into Louisa's yard eyed him with
respect, and inquired if the chain were stout. Cæsar at large might have seemed a very ordinary
dog, and excited no comment whatever; chained, his reputation overshadowed him, so that he
lost his own proper outlines and looked darkly vague and enormous. Joe Dagget, however, with
his good-humored sense and shrewdness, saw him as he was. He strode valiantly up to him and
patted him on the head, in spite of Louisa's soft clamor of warning, and even attempted to set
him loose. Louisa grew so alarmed that he desisted, but kept announcing his opinion in the
matter quite forcibly at intervals. "There ain't a better-natured dog in town," he would say, "and
it's down-right cruel to keep him tied up there. Some day I'm going to take him out."
Louisa had very little hope that he would not, one of these days, when their interests and
possessions should be more completely fused in one. She pictured to herself Cæsar on the
rampage through the quiet and unguarded village. She saw innocent children bleeding in his
path. She was herself very fond of the old dog, because he had belonged to her dead brother, and
he was always very gentle with her; still she had great faith in his ferocity. She always warned
people not to go too near him. She fed him on ascetic fare of corn-mush and cakes, and never
fired his dangerous temper with heating and sanguinary diet of flesh and bones. Louisa looked at
the old dog munching his simple fare, and thought of her approaching marriage and trembled.
Still no anticipation of disorder and confusion in lieu of sweet peace and harmony, no
forebodings of Cæsar on the rampage, no wild fluttering of her little yellow canary, were
sufficient to turn her a hair's-breadth. Joe Dagget had been fond of her and working for her all
these years. It was not for her, whatever came to pass, to prove untrue and break his heart. She
put the exquisite little stitches into her wedding-garments, and the time went on until it was only
a week before her wedding-day. It was a Tuesday evening, and the wedding was to be a week
from Wednesday.
There was a full moon that night. About nine o'clock Louisa strolled down the road a little way.
There were harvest-fields on either hand, bordered by low stone walls. Luxuriant clumps of
bushes grew beside the wall, and trees — wild cherry and old apple-trees — at intervals.
Presently Louisa sat down on the wall and looked about her with mildly sorrowful reflectiveness.
Tall shrubs of blueberry and meadow-sweet, all woven together and tangled with blackberry
vines and horsebriers, shut her in on either side. She had a little clear space between them.
Opposite her, on the other side of the road, was a spreading tree; the moon shone between its
boughs, and the leaves twinkled like silver. The road was bespread with a beautiful shifting
dapple of silver and shadow; the air was full of a mysterious sweetness. "I wonder if it's wild
grapes?" murmured Louisa. She sat there some time. She was just thinking of rising, when she
heard footsteps and low voices, and remained quiet. It was a lonely place, and she felt a little
timid. She thought she would keep still in the shadow and let the persons, whoever they might
be, pass her.
But just before they reached her the voices ceased, and the footsteps. She understood that their
owners had also found seats upon the stone wall. She was wondering if she could not steal away
unobserved, when the voice broke the stillness. It was Joe Dagget's. She sat still and listened.
170
The voice was announced by a loud sigh, which was as familiar as itself. "Well," said Dagget,
"you've made up your mind, then, I suppose?"
"Yes," returned another voice; "I'm going day after to-morrow."
"That's Lily Dyer," thought Louisa to herself. The voice embodied itself in her mind. She saw a
girl tall and full-figured, with a firm, fair face, looking fairer and firmer in the moonlight, her
strong yellow hair braided in a close knot. A girl full of a calm rustic strength and bloom, with a
masterful way which might have beseemed a princess. Lily Dyer was a favorite with the village
folk; she had just the qualities to arouse the admiration. She was good and handsome and smart.
Louisa had often heard her praises sounded.
"Well," said Joe Dagget, "I ain't got a word to say."
"I don't know what you could say," returned Lily Dyer.
"Not a word to say," repeated Joe, drawing out the words heavily. Then there was a silence. "I
ain't sorry," he began at last, "that that happened yesterday — that we kind of let on how we felt
to each other. I guess it's just as well we knew. Of course I can't do anything any different. I'm
going right on an' get married next week. I ain't going back on a woman that's waited for me
fourteen years, an' break her heart."
"If you should jilt her to-morrow, I wouldn't have you," spoke up the girl, with sudden
vehemence.
"Well, I ain't going to give you the chance," said he; "but I don't believe you would, either."
"You'd see I wouldn't. Honor's honor, an' right's right. An' I'd never think anything of any man
that went against 'em for me or any other girl; you'd find that out, Joe Dagget."
"Well, you'll find out fast enough that I ain't going against 'em for you or any other girl,"
returned he. Their voices sounded almost as if they were angry with each other. Louisa was
listening eagerly.
"I'm sorry you feel as if you must go away," said Joe, "but I don't know but it's best."
"Of course it's best. I hope you and I have got common-sense."
"Well, I suppose you're right." Suddenly Joe's voice got an undertone of tenderness. "Say, Lily,"
said he, "I'll get along well enough myself, but I can't bear to think — You don't suppose you're
going to fret much over it?"
"I guess you'll find out I sha'n't fret much over a married man."
"Well, I hope you won't — I hope you won't, Lily. God knows I do. And — I hope — one of
these days — you'll — come across somebody else —"
171
"I don't see any reason why I shouldn't." Suddenly her tone changed. She spoke in a sweet, clear
voice, so loud that she could have been heard across the street. "No, Joe Dagget," said she, "I'll
never marry any other man as long as I live. I've got good sense, an' I ain't going to break my
heart nor make a fool of myself; but I'm never going to be married, you can be sure of that. I ain't
that sort of a girl to feel this way twice."
Louisa heard an exclamation and a soft commotion behind the bushes; then Lily spoke again —
the voice sounded as if she had risen. "This must be put a stop to," said she. "We've stayed here
long enough. I'm going home."
Louisa sat there in a daze, listening to their retreating steps. After a while she got up and slunk
softly home herself. The next day she did her housework methodically; that was as much a
matter of course as breathing; but she did not sew on her wedding-clothes. She sat at her window
and meditated. In the evening Joe came. Louisa Ellis had never known that she had any
diplomacy in her, but when she came to look for it that night she found it, although meek of its
kind, among her little feminine weapons. Even now she could hardly believe that she had heard
aright, and that she would not do Joe a terrible injury should she break her troth-plight. She
wanted to sound him without betraying too soon her own inclinations in the matter. She did it
successfully, and they finally came to an understanding; but it was a difficult thing, for he was as
afraid of betraying himself as she.
She never mentioned Lily Dyer. She simply said that while she had no cause of complaint
against him, she had lived so long in one way that she shrank from making a change.
"Well, I never shrank, Louisa," said Dagget. "I'm going to be honest enough to say that I think
maybe it's better this way; but if you'd wanted to keep on, I'd have stuck to you till my dying day.
I hope you know that."
"Yes, I do," said she.
That night she and Joe parted more tenderly than they had done for a long time. Standing in the
door, holding each other's hands, a last great wave of regretful memory swept over them.
"Well, this ain't the way we've thought it was all going to end, is it, Louisa?" said Joe.
She shook her head. There was a little quiver on her placid face.
"You let me know if there's ever anything I can do for you," said he. "I ain't ever going to forget
you, Louisa." Then he kissed her, and went down the path.
Louisa, all alone by herself that night, wept a little, she hardly knew why; but the next morning,
on waking, she felt like a queen who, after fearing lest her domain be wrested away from her,
sees it firmly insured in her possession.
Now the tall weeds and grasses might cluster around Cæsar's little hermit hut, the snow might
fall on its roof year in and year out, but he never would go on a rampage through the unguarded
172
village. Now the little canary might turn itself into a peaceful yellow ball night after night, and
have no need to wake and flutter with wild terror against its bars. Louisa could sew linen seams,
and distil roses, and dust and polish and fold away in lavender, as long as she listed. That
afternoon she sat with her needle-work at the window, and felt fairly steeped in peace. Lily Dyer,
tall and erect and blooming, went past; but she felt no qualm. If Louisa Ellis had sold her
birthright she did not know it, the taste of the pottage was so delicious, and had been her sole
satisfaction for so long. Serenity and placid narrowness had become to her as the birthright itself.
She gazed ahead through a long reach of future days strung together like pearls in a rosary, every
one like the others, and all smooth and flawless and innocent, and her heart went up in
thankfulness. Outside was the fervid summer afternoon; the air was filled with the sounds of the
busy harvest of men and birds and bees; there were halloos, metallic clatterings, sweet calls, and
long hummings. Louisa sat, prayerfully numbering her days, like an uncloistered nun.
The Revolt of "Mother"
Freeman, Mary E. Wilkins. "The Revolt of 'Mother.'" A New England Nun and Other Stories.
New York: Harper and Brothers, 1891.
source of etext: http://home.comcast.net/~mewf_short_stories/RevoltOfMother.htm
"Father!"
"What is it?"
"What are them men diggin' over there in the field for?"
There was a sudden dropping and enlarging of the lower part of the old man's face, as if some
heavy weight had settled therein; he shut his mouth tight, and went on harnessing the great bay
mare. He hustled the collar on to her neck with a jerk.
"Father!"
The old man slapped the saddle upon the mare's back.
"Look here, father, I want to know what them men are diggin' over in the field for, an' I'm goin'
to know."
"I wish you'd go into the house, mother, an' 'tend to your own affairs," the old man said then. He
ran his words together, and his speech was almost as inarticulate as a growl.
But the woman understood; it was her most native tongue. "I ain't goin' into the house till you tell
me what them men are doin' over there in the field," said she.
Then she stood waiting. She was a small woman, short and straight-waisted like a child in her
brown cotton gown. Her forehead was mild and benevolent between the smooth curves of gray
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hair; there were meek downward lines about her nose and mouth; but her eyes, fixed upon the
old man, looked as if the meekness had been the result of her own will, never of the will of
another.
They were in the barn, standing before the wide open doors. The spring air, full of the smell of
growing grass and unseen blossoms, came in their faces. The deep yard in front was littered with
farm wagons and piles of wood; on the edges, close to the fence and the house, the grass was a
vivid green, and there were some dandelions.
The old man glanced doggedly at his wife as he tightened the last buckles on the harness. She
looked as immovable to him as one of the rocks in his pasture-land, bound to the earth with
generations of blackberry vines. He slapped the reins over the horse, and started forth from the
barn.
"Father!" said she.
The old man pulled up. "What is it?"
"I want to know what them men are diggin' over there in that field for."
"They're diggin' a cellar, I s'pose, if you've got to know."
"A cellar for what?"
"A barn."
"A barn? You ain't goin' to build a barn over there where we was goin' to have a house, father?"
The old man said not another word. He hurried the horse into the farm wagon, and clattered out
of the yard, jouncing as sturdily on his seat as a boy.
The woman stood a moment looking after him, then she went out of the barn across a corner of
the yard to the house. The house, standing at right angles with the great barn and a long reach of
sheds and out-buildings, was infinitesimal compared with them. It was scarcely as commodious
for people as the little boxes under the barn eaves were for doves.
A pretty girl's face, pink and delicate as a flower, was looking out of one of the house windows.
She was watching three men who were digging over in the field which bounded the yard near the
road line. She turned quietly when the woman entered.
"What are they diggin' for, mother?" said she. "Did he tell you?"
"They're diggin' for — a cellar for a new barn."
"Oh, mother, he ain't goin' to build another barn?"
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"That's what he says."
A boy stood before the kitchen glass combing his hair. He combed slowly and painstakingly,
arranging his brown hair in a smooth hillock over his forehead. He did not seem to pay any
attention to the conversation.
"Sammy, did you know father was goin' to build a new barn?" asked the girl.
The boy combed assiduously.
"Sammy!"
He turned, and showed a face like his father's under his smooth crest of hair. "Yes, I s'pose I
did," he said, reluctantly.
"How long have you known it?" asked his mother.
"'Bout three months, I guess."
"Why didn't you tell of it?"
"Didn't think 'twould do no good."
"I don't see what father wants another barn for," said the girl, in her sweet, slow voice. She
turned again to the window, and stared out at the digging men in the field. Her tender, sweet face
was full of a gentle distress. Her forehead was as bald and innocent as a baby's, with the light
hair strained back from it in a row of curl-papers. She was quite large, but her soft curves did not
look as if they covered muscles.
Her mother looked sternly at the boy. "Is he goin' to buy more cows?" said she.
The boy did not reply; he was tying his shoes.
"Sammy, I want you to tell me if he's goin' to buy more cows."
"I s'pose he is."
"How many?"
"Four, I guess."
His mother said nothing more. She went into the pantry, and there was a clatter of dishes. The
boy got his cap from a nail behind the door, took an old arithmetic from the shelf, and started for
school. He was lightly built, but clumsy. He went out of the yard with a curious spring in the
hips, that made his loose home-made jacket tilt up in the rear.
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The girl went to the sink, and began to wash the dishes that were piled up there. Her mother
came promptly out of the pantry, and shoved her aside. "You wipe 'em," said she; "I'll wash.
There's a good many this mornin'."
The mother plunged her hands vigorously into the water, the girl wiped the plates slowly and
dreamily. "Mother," said she, "don't you think it's too bad father's goin' to build that new barn,
much as we need a decent house to live in?"
Her mother scrubbed a dish fiercely. "You ain't found out yet we're women-folks, Nanny Penn,"
said she. "You ain't seen enough of men-folks yet to. One of these days you'll find it out, an' then
you'll know that we know only what men-folks think we do, so far as any use of it goes, an' how
we'd ought to reckon men-folks in with Providence, an' not complain of what they do any more
than we do of the weather."
"I don't care; I don't believe George is anything like that, anyhow," said Nanny. Her delicate face
flushed pink, her lips pouted softly, as if she were going to cry.
"You wait an' see. I guess George Eastman ain't no better than other men. You hadn't ought to
judge father, though. He can't help it, 'cause he don't look at things jest the way we do. An' we've
been pretty comfortable here, after all. The roof don't leak — ain't never but once — that's one
thing. Father's kept it shingled right up."
"I do wish we had a parlor."
"I guess it won't hurt George Eastman any to come to see you in a nice clean kitchen. I guess a
good many girls don't have as good a place as this. Nobody's ever heard me complain."
"I ain't complained either, mother."
"Well, I don't think you'd better, a good father an' a good home as you've got. S'pose your father
made you go out an' work for your livin'? Lots of girls have to that ain't no stronger an' better
able to than you be."
Sarah Penn washed the frying-pan with a conclusive air. She scrubbed the outside of it as
faithfully as the inside. She was a masterly keeper of her box of a house. Her one living-room
never seemed to have in it any of the dust which the friction of life with inanimate matter
produces. She swept, and there seemed to be no dirt to go before the broom; she cleaned, and one
could see no difference. She was like an artist so perfect that he has apparently no art. To-day she
got out a mixing bowl and a board, and rolled some pies, and there was no more flour upon her
than upon her daughter who was doing finer work. Nanny was to be married in the fall, and she
was sewing on some white cambric and embroidery. She sewed industriously while her mother
cooked, her soft milk-white hands and wrists showed whiter than her delicate work.
"We must have the stove moved out in the shed before long," said Mrs. Penn. "Talk about not
havin' things, it's been a real blessin' to be able to put a stove up in that shed in hot weather.
Father did one good thing when he fixed that stove-pipe out there."
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Sarah Penn's face as she rolled her pies had that expression of meek vigor which might have
characterized one of the New Testament saints. She was making mince-pies. Her husband,
Adoniram Penn, liked them better than any other kind. She baked twice a week. Adoniram often
liked a piece of pie between meals. She hurried this morning. It had been later than usual when
she began, and she wanted to have a pie baked for dinner. However deep a resentment she might
be forced to hold against her husband, she would never fail in sedulous attention to his wants.
Nobility of character manifests itself at loop-holes when it is not provided with large doors.
Sarah Penn's showed itself to-day in flaky dishes of pastry. So she made the pies faithfully, while
across the table she could see, when she glanced up from her work, the sight that rankled in her
patient and steadfast soul — the digging of the cellar of the new barn in the place where
Adoniram forty years ago had promised her their new house should stand.
The pies were done for dinner. Adoniram and Sammy were home a few minutes after twelve
o'clock. The dinner was eaten with serious haste. There was never much conversation at the table
in the Penn family. Adoniram asked a blessing, and they ate promptly, then rose up and went
about their work.
Sammy went back to school, taking soft sly lopes out of the yard like a rabbit. He wanted a game
of marbles before school, and feared his father would give him some chores to do. Adoniram
hastened to the door and called after him, but he was out of sight.
"I don't see what you let him go for, mother," said he. "I wanted him to help me unload that
wood."
Adoniram went to work out in the yard unloading wood from the wagon. Sarah put away the
dinner dishes, while Nanny took down her curl-papers and changed her dress. She was going
down to the store to buy some more embroidery and thread.
When Nanny was gone, Mrs. Penn went to the door. "Father!" she called.
"Well, what is it!"
"I want to see you jest a minute, father."
"I can't leave this wood nohow. I've got to git it unloaded an' go for a load of gravel afore two
o'clock. Sammy had ought to helped me. You hadn't ought to let him go to school so early."
"I want to see you jest a minute."
"I tell ye I can't, nohow, mother."
"Father, you come here." Sarah Penn stood in the door like a queen; she held her head as if it
bore a crown; there was that patience which makes authority royal in her voice. Adoniram went.
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Mrs. Penn led the way into the kitchen, and pointed to a chair. "Sit down, father," said she; "I've
got somethin' I want to say to you."
He sat down heavily; his face was quite stolid, but he looked at her with restive eyes. "Well,
what is it, mother?"
"I want to know what you're buildin' that new barn for, father?"
"I ain't got nothin' to say about it."
"It can't be you think you need another barn?"
"I tell ye I ain't got nothin' to say about it, mother; an' I ain't goin' to say nothin'."
"Be you goin' to buy more cows?"
Adoniram did not reply; he shut his mouth tight.
"I know you be, as well as I want to. Now, father, look here" — Sarah Penn had not sat down;
she stood before her husband in the humble fashion of a Scripture woman — "I'm goin' to talk
real plain to you; I never have sence I married you, but I'm goin' to now. I ain't never
complained, an' I ain't goin' to complain now, but I'm goin' to talk plain. You see this room here,
father; you look at it well. You see there ain't no carpet on the floor, an' you see the paper is all
dirty, an' droppin' off the walls. We ain't had no new paper on it for ten year, an' then I put it on
myself, an' it didn't cost but ninepence a roll. You see this room, father; it's all the one I've had to
work in an' eat in an' sit in sence we was married. There ain't another woman in the whole town
whose husband ain't got half the means you have but what's got better. It's all the room Nanny's
got to have her company in; an' there ain't one of her mates but what's got better, an' their fathers
not so able as hers is. It's all the room she'll have to be married in. What would you have thought,
father, if we had had our weddin' in a room no better than this? I was married in my mother's
parlor, with a carpet on the floor, an' stuffed furniture, an' a mahogany card-table. An' this is all
the room my daughter will have to be married in. Look here, father!"
Sarah Penn went across the room as though it were a tragic stage. She flung open a door and
disclosed a tiny bedroom, only large enough for a bed and bureau, with a path between. "There,
father," said she — "there's all the room I've had to sleep in forty year. All my children were
born there — the two that died, an' the two that's livin'. I was sick with a fever there."
She stepped to another door and opened it. It led into the small, ill-lighted pantry. "Here," said
she, "is all the buttery I've got — every place I've got for my dishes, to set away my victuals in,
an' to keep my milk-pans in. Father, I've been takin' care of the milk of six cows in this place, an'
now you're goin' to build a new barn, an' keep more cows, an' give me more to do in it."
She threw open another door. A narrow crooked flight of stairs wound upward from it. "There,
father," said she, "I want you to look at the stairs that go up to them two unfinished chambers
that are all the places our son an' daughter have had to sleep in all their lives. There ain't a
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prettier girl in town nor a more ladylike one than Nanny, an' that's the place she has to sleep in. It
ain't so good as your horse's stall; it ain't so warm an' tight."
Sarah Penn went back and stood before her husband. "Now, father," said she, "I want to know if
you think you're doin' right an' accordin' to what you profess. Here, when we was married, forty
year ago, you promised me faithful that we should have a new house built in that lot over in the
field before the year was out. You said you had money enough, an' you wouldn't ask me to live
in no such place as this. It is forty year now, an' you've been makin' more money, an' I've been
savin' of it for you ever since, an' you ain't built no house yet. You've built sheds an' cow-houses
an' one new barn, an' now you're goin' to build another. Father, I want to know if you think it's
right. You're lodgin' your dumb beasts better than you are your own flesh an' blood. I want to
know if you think it's right."
"I ain't got nothin' to say."
"You can't say nothin' without ownin' it ain't right, father. An' there's another thing — I ain't
complained; I've got along forty year, an' I s'pose I should forty more, if it wa'n't for that — if we
don't have another house. Nanny she can't live with us after she's married. She'll have to go
somewheres else to live away from us, an' it don't seem as if I could have it so, noways, father.
She wa'n't ever strong. She's got considerable color, but there wa'n't never any backbone to her.
I've always took the heft of everything off her, an' she ain't fit to keep house an' do everything
herself. She'll be all worn out inside of a year. Think of her doin' all the washin' an' ironin' an'
bakin' with them soft white hands an' arms, an' sweepin'! I can't have it so, noways, father."
Mrs. Penn's face was burning; her mild eyes gleamed. She had pleaded her little cause like a
Webster; she had ranged from severity to pathos; but her opponent employed that obstinate
silence which makes eloquence futile with mocking echoes. Adoniram arose clumsily.
"Father, ain't you got nothin' to say?" said Mrs. Penn.
"I've got to go off after that load of gravel. I can't stan' here talkin' all day."
"Father, won't you think it over, an' have a house built there instead of a barn?"
"I ain't got nothin' to say."
Adoniram shuffled out. Mrs. Penn went into her bedroom. When she came out, her eyes were
red. She had a roll of unbleached cotton cloth. She spread it out on the kitchen table, and began
cutting out some shirts for her husband. The men over in the field had a team to help them this
afternoon; she could hear their halloos. She had a scanty pattern for the shirts; she had to plan
and piece the sleeves.
Nanny came home with her embroidery, and sat down with her needlework. She had taken down
her curl-papers, and there was a soft roll of fair hair like an aureole over her forehead; her face
was as delicately fine and clear as porcelain. Suddenly she looked up, and the tender red flamed
all over her face and neck. "Mother," said she.
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"What say?"
"I've been thinking — I don't see how we're goin' to have any — wedding in this room. I'd be
ashamed to have his folks come if we didn't have anybody else."
"Mebbe we can have some new paper before then; I can put it on. I guess you won't have no call
to be ashamed of your belongin's."
"We might have the wedding in the new barn," said Nanny, with gentle pettishness. "Why,
mother, what makes you look so?"
Mrs. Penn had started, and was staring at her with a curious expression. She turned again to her
work, and spread out a pattern carefully on the cloth. "Nothin'," said she.
Presently Adoniram clattered out of the yard in his two-wheeled dump cart, standing as proudly
upright as a Roman charioteer. Mrs. Penn opened the door and stood there a minute looking out;
the halloos of the men sounded louder.
It seemed to her all through the spring months that she heard nothing but the halloos and the
noises of saws and hammers. The new barn grew fast. It was a fine edifice for this little village.
Men came on pleasant Sundays, in their meeting suits and clean shirt bosoms, and stood around
it admiringly. Mrs. Penn did not speak of it, and Adoniram did not mention it to her, although
sometimes, upon a return from inspecting it, he bore himself with injured dignity.
"It's a strange thing how your mother feels about the new barn," he said, confidentially, to
Sammy one day.
Sammy only grunted after an odd fashion for a boy; he had learned it from his father.
The barn was all completed ready for use by the third week in July. Adoniram had planned to
move his stock in on Wednesday; on Tuesday he received a letter which changed his plans. He
came in with it early in the morning. "Sammy's been to the post-office," said he, "an' I've got a
letter from Hiram." Hiram was Mrs. Penn's brother, who lived in Vermont.
"Well," said Mrs. Penn, "what does he say about the folks?"
"I guess they're all right. He says he thinks if I come up country right off there's a chance to buy
jest the kind of a horse I want." He stared reflectively out of the window at the new barn.
Mrs. Penn was making pies. She went on clapping the rolling-pin into the crust, although she
was very pale, and her heart beat loudly.
"I dun' know but what I'd better go," said Adoniram. "I hate to go off jest now, right in the midst
of hayin', but the ten-acre lot's cut, an' I guess Rufus an' the others can git along without me three
or four days. I can't get a horse round here to suit me, nohow, an' I've got to have another for all
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that wood-haulin' in the fall. I told Hiram to watch out, an' if he got wind of a good horse to let
me know. I guess I'd better go."
"I'll get out your clean shirt an' collar," said Mrs. Penn calmly.
She laid out Adoniram's Sunday suit and his clean clothes on the bed in the little bedroom. She
got his shaving-water and razor ready. At last she buttoned on his collar and fastened his black
cravat.
Adoniram never wore his collar and cravat except on extra occasions. He held his head high,
with a rasped dignity. When he was all ready, with his coat and hat brushed, and a lunch of pie
and cheese in a paper bag, he hesitated on the threshold of the door. He looked at his wife, and
his manner was defiantly apologetic. "If them cows come to-day, Sammy can drive 'em into the
new barn," said he; "an' when they bring the hay up, they can pitch it in there."
"Well," replied Mrs. Penn.
Adoniram set his shaven face ahead and started. When he had cleared the door-step, he turned
and looked back with a kind of nervous solemnity. "I shall be back by Saturday if nothin'
happens," said he.
"Do be careful, father," returned his wife.
She stood in the door with Nanny at her elbow and watched him out of sight. Her eyes had a
strange, doubtful expression in them; her peaceful forehead was contracted. She went in, and
about her baking again. Nanny sat sewing. Her wedding-day was drawing nearer, and she was
getting pale and thin with her steady sewing. Her mother kept glancing at her.
"Have you got that pain in your side this mornin'?" she asked.
"A little."
Mrs. Penn's face, as she worked, changed, her perplexed forehead smoothed, her eyes were
steady, her lips firmly set. She formed a maxim for herself, although incoherently with her
unlettered thoughts. "Unsolicited opportunities are the guide-posts of the Lord to the new roads
of life," she repeated in effect, and she made up her mind to her course of action.
"S'posin' I had wrote to Hiram," she muttered once, when she was in the pantry — "s'posin' I had
wrote, an' asked him if he knew of any horse? But I didn't, an' father's goin' wa'n't none of my
doin'. It looks like a providence." Her voice rang out quite loud at the last.
"What you talkin' about, mother?" called Nanny.
"Nothin'."
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Mrs. Penn hurried her baking; at eleven o'clock it was all done. The load of hay from the west
field came slowly down the cart track, and drew up at the new barn. Mrs. Penn ran out. "Stop!"
she screamed — "stop!"
The men stopped and looked; Sammy upreared from the top of the load, and stared at his mother.
"Stop!" she cried out again. "Don't you put the hay in that barn; put it in the old one."
"Why, he said to put it in here," returned one of the haymakers, wonderingly. He was a young
man, a neighbor's son, whom Adoniram hired by the year to help on the farm.
"Don't you put the hay in the new barn; there's room enough in the old one, ain't there?" said
Mrs. Penn.
"Room enough," returned the hired man, in his thick, rustic tones. "Didn't need the new barn,
nohow, far as room's concerned. Well, I s'pose he changed his mind." He took hold of the horses'
bridles.
Mrs. Penn went back to the house. Soon the kitchen windows were darkened, and a fragrance
like warm honey came into the room.
Nanny laid down her work. "I thought father wanted them to put the hay into the new barn?" she
said, wonderingly.
"It's all right," replied her mother.
Sammy slid down from the load of hay, and came in to see if dinner was ready.
"I ain't goin' to get a regular dinner to-day, as long as father's gone," said his mother. "I've let the
fire go out. You can have some bread an' milk an' pie. I thought we could get along." She set out
some bowls of milk, some bread, and a pie on the kitchen table. "You'd better eat your dinner
now," said she. "You might jest as well get through with it. I want you to help me afterward."
Nanny and Sammy stared at each other. There was something strange in their mother's manner.
Mrs. Penn did not eat anything herself. She went into the pantry, and they heard her moving
dishes while they ate. Presently she came out with a pile of plates. She got the clothes-basket out
of the shed, and packed them in it. Nanny and Sammy watched. She brought out cups and
saucers, and put them in with the plates.
"What you goin' to do, mother?" inquired Nanny, in a timid voice. A sense of something unusual
made her tremble, as if it were a ghost. Sammy rolled his eyes over his pie.
"You'll see what I'm goin' to do," replied Mrs. Penn. "If you're through, Nanny, I want you to go
up-stairs an' pack up your things; an' I want you, Sammy, to help me take down the bed in the
bedroom."
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"Oh, mother, what for?" gasped Nanny.
"You'll see."
During the next few hours a feat was performed by this simple, pious New England mother
which was equal in its way to Wolfe's storming of the Heights of Abraham. It took no more
genius and audacity of bravery for Wolfe to cheer his wondering soldiers up those steep
precipices, under the sleeping eyes of the enemy, than for Sarah Penn, at the head of her
children, to move all their little household goods into the new barn while her husband was away.
Nanny and Sammy followed their mother's instructions without a murmur; indeed, they were
overawed. There is a certain uncanny and superhuman quality about all such purely original
undertakings as their mother's was to them. Nanny went back and forth with her light loads, and
Sammy tugged with sober energy.
At five o'clock in the afternoon the little house in which the Penns had lived for forty years had
emptied itself into the new barn.
Every builder builds somewhat for unknown purposes, and is in a measure a prophet. The
architect of Adoniram Penn's barn, while he designed it for the comfort of four-footed animals,
had planned better than he knew for the comfort of humans. Sarah Penn saw at a glance its
possibilities. Those great box-stalls, with quilts hung before them, would make better bedrooms
than the one she had occupied for forty years, and there was a tight carriage-room. The harnessroom, with its chimney and shelves, would make a kitchen of her dreams. The great middle
space would make a parlor, by-and-by, fit for a palace. Up stairs there was as much room as
down. With partitions and windows, what a house would there be! Sarah looked at the row of
stanchions before the allotted space for cows, and reflected that she would have her front entry
there.
At six o'clock the stove was up in the harness-room, the kettle was boiling, and the table set for
tea. It looked almost as home-like as the abandoned house across the yard had ever done. The
young hired man milked, and Sarah directed him calmly to bring the milk to the new barn. He
came gaping, dropping little blots of foam from the brimming pails on the grass. Before the next
morning he had spread the story of Adoniram Penn's wife moving into the new barn all over the
little village. Men assembled in the store and talked it over, women with shawls over their heads
scuttled into each other's houses before their work was done. Any deviation from the ordinary
course of life in this quiet town was enough to stop all progress in it. Everybody paused to look
at the staid, independent figure on the side track. There was a difference of opinion with regard
to her. Some held her to be insane; some, of a lawless and rebellious spirit.
Friday the minister went to see her. It was in the forenoon, and she was at the barn door shelling
pease for dinner. She looked up and returned his salutation with dignity, then she went on with
her work. She did not invite him in. The saintly expression of her face remained fixed, but there
was an angry flush over it.
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The minister stood awkwardly before her, and talked. She handled the pease as if they were
bullets. At last she looked up, and her eyes showed the spirit that her meek front had covered for
a lifetime.
"There ain't no use talkin', Mr. Hersey," said she. "I've thought it all over an' over, an' I believe
I'm doin' what's right. I've made it the subject of prayer, an' it's betwixt me an' the Lord an'
Adoniram. There ain't no call for nobody else to worry about it."
"Well, of course, if you have brought it to the Lord in prayer, and feel satisfied that you are
doing right, Mrs. Penn," said the minister, helplessly. His thin gray-bearded face was pathetic.
He was a sickly man; his youthful confidence had cooled; he had to scourge himself up to some
of his pastoral duties as relentlessly as a Catholic ascetic, and then he was prostrated by the
smart.
"I think it's right jest as much as I think it was right for our forefathers to come over from the old
country 'cause they didn't have what belonged to 'em," said Mrs. Penn. She arose. The barn
threshold might have been Plymouth Rock from her bearing. "I don't doubt you mean well, Mr.
Hersey," said she, "but there are things people hadn't ought to interfere with. I've been a member
of the church for over forty year. I've got my own mind an' my own feet, an' I'm goin' to think
my own thoughts an' go my own ways, an' nobody but the Lord is goin' to dictate to me unless
I've a mind to have him. Won't you come in an' set down? How is Mis' Hersey?"
"She is well, I thank you," replied the minister. He added some more perplexed apologetic
remarks; then he retreated.
He could expound the intricacies of every character study in the Scriptures, he was competent to
grasp the Pilgrim Fathers and all historical innovators, but Sarah Penn was beyond him. He could
deal with primal cases, but parallel ones worsted him. But, after all, although it was aside from
his province, he wondered more how Adoniram Penn would deal with his wife than how the
Lord would. Everybody shared the wonder. When Adoniram's four new cows arrived, Sarah
ordered three to be put in the old barn, the other in the house shed where the cooking-stove had
stood. That added to the excitement. It was whispered that all four cows were domiciled in the
house.
Toward sunset on Saturday, when Adoniram was expected home, there was a knot of men in the
road near the new barn. The hired man had milked, but he still hung around the premises. Sarah
Penn had supper all ready. There were brown-bread and baked beans and a custard pie; it was the
supper that Adoniram loved on a Saturday night. She had on a clean calico, and she bore herself
imperturbably. Nanny and Sammy kept close at her heels. Their eyes were large, and Nanny was
full of nervous tremors. Still there was to them more pleasant excitement than anything else. An
inborn confidence in their mother over their father asserted itself.
Sammy looked out of the harness-room window. "There he is," he announced, in an awed
whisper. He and Nanny peeped around the casing. Mrs. Penn kept on about her work. The
children watched Adoniram leave the new horse standing in the drive while he went to the house
door. It was fastened. Then he went around to the shed. That door was seldom locked, even when
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the family was away. The thought how her father would be confronted by the cow flashed upon
Nanny. There was a hysterical sob in her throat. Adoniram emerged from the shed and stood
looking about in a dazed fashion. His lips moved; he was saying something, but they could not
hear what it was. The hired man was peeping around a corner of the old barn, but nobody saw
him.
Adoniram took the new horse by the bridle and led him across the yard to the new barn. Nanny
and Sammy slunk close to their mother. The barn doors rolled back, and there stood Adoniram,
with the long mild face of the great Canadian farm horse looking over his shoulder.
Nanny kept behind her mother, but Sammy stepped suddenly forward, and stood in front of her.
Adoniram stared at the group. "What on airth you all down here for?" said he. "What's the matter
over to the house?"
"We've come here to live, father," said Sammy. His shrill voice quavered out bravely.
"What" — Adoniram sniffed — "what is it smells like cookin'?" said he. He stepped forward and
looked in the open door of the harness-room. Then he turned to his wife. His old bristling face
was pale and frightened. "What on airth does this mean, mother?" he gasped.
"You come in here, father," said Sarah. She led the way into the harness-room and shut the door.
"Now, father," said she, "you needn't be scared. I ain't crazy. There ain't nothin' to be upset over.
But we've come here to live, an' we're goin' to live here. We've got jest as good a right here as
new horses an' cows. The house wa'n't fit for us to live in any longer, an' I made up my mind I
wa'n't goin' to stay there. I've done my duty by you forty year, an' I'm goin' to do it now; but I'm
goin' to live here. You've got to put in some windows and partitions; an' you'll have to buy some
furniture."
"Why, mother!" the old man gasped.
"You'd better take your coat off an' get washed — there's the wash-basin — an' then we'll have
supper."
"Why, mother!"
Sammy went past the window, leading the new horse to the old barn. The old man saw him, and
shook his head speechlessly. He tried to take off his coat, but his arms seemed to lack the power.
His wife helped him. She poured some water into the tin basin, and put in a piece of soap. She
got the comb and brush, and smoothed his thin gray hair after he had washed. Then she put the
beans, hot bread, and tea on the table. Sammy came in, and the family drew up. Adoniram sat
looking dazedly at his plate, and they waited.
"Ain't you goin' to ask a blessin', father?" said Sarah.
185
And the old man bent his head and mumbled.
All through the meal he stopped eating at intervals, and stared furtively at his wife; but he ate
well. The home food tasted good to him, and his old frame was too sturdily healthy to be affected
by his mind. But after supper he went out, and sat down on the step of the smaller door at the
right of the barn, through which he had meant his Jerseys to pass in stately file, but which Sarah
designed for her front house door, and he leaned his head on his hands.
After the supper dishes were cleared away and the milk-pans washed, Sarah went out to him. The
twilight was deepening. There was a clear green glow in the sky. Before them stretched the
smooth level of field; in the distance was a cluster of hay-stacks like the huts of a village; the air
was very cool and calm and sweet. The landscape might have been an ideal one of peace.
Sarah bent over and touched her husband on one of his thin, sinewy shoulders. "Father!"
The old man's shoulders heaved: he was weeping.
"Why, don't do so, father," said Sarah.
"I'll — put up the — partitions, an' — everything you — want, mother."
Sarah put her apron up to her face; she was overcome by her own triumph.
Adoniram was like a fortress whose walls had no active resistance, and went down the instant the
right besieging tools were used. "Why, mother," he said, hoarsely, "I hadn't no idee you was so
set on't as all this comes to."
Resources for The Rise of Realism
Hamlin Garlin (1860-1940)
[image] Hamlin Garland, known as a Midwestern local color writer, was born on September 14,
1860 near West Salem, Wisconsin. He lived on a series of farms in his youth but moved to
Boston in 1884 to take up a writing career. His Main-Travelled Roads (1891) story collection led
to his fame. He won a Pulitzer Prize for biography in 1922 for A Daughter of the Middle Border,
one of a series of popular memoirs he penned. He continued to write extensively throughout his
life, moving to Hollywood, California in 1929. He died on March 4, 1940. Keith Newlin’s
Hamlin Garland: a Life, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2008 is a key biography. A
starting place for criticism is James Nagel’s Critical Essays on Hamlin Garland, Boston: G.K.
Hall, 1982.
Under the Lion's Paw
Garlin, Hamlin. "Under the Lion's Paw." Main-Travelled Roads. Boston: Arena Publishing
Company, 1891.
186
source of etext: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2809
"Along the main-travelled road trailed an endless line of prairie schooners. Coming into sight at
the east, and passing out of sight over the swell to the west. We children used to wonder where
they were going and why they went."
IT was the last of autumn and first day of winter coming together. All day long the ploughmen
on their prairie farms had moved to and fro in their wide level fields through the falling snow,
which melted as it fell, wetting them to the skin all day, notwithstanding the frequent squalls of
snow, the dripping, desolate clouds, and the muck of the furrows, black and tenacious as tar.
Under their dripping harness the horses swung to and fro silently with that marvellous
uncomplaining patience which marks the horse. All day the wild geese, honking wildly, as they
sprawled sidewise down the wind, seemed to be fleeing from an enemy behind, and with neck
outthrust and wings extended, sailed down the wind, soon lost to sight.
Yet the ploughman behind his plough, though the snow lay on his ragged great-coat, and the cold
clinging mud rose on his heavy boots, fettering him like gyves, whistled in the very beard of the
gale. As day passed, the snow, ceasing to melt, lay along the ploughed land, and lodged in the
depth of the stubble, till on each slow round the last furrow stood out black and shining as jet
between the ploughed land and the gray stubble.
When night began to fall, and the geese, flying low, began to alight invisibly in the near cornfield, Stephen Council was still at work "finishing a land." He rode on his sulky plough when
going with the wind, but walked when facing it. Sitting bent and cold but cheery under his slouch
hat, he talked encouragingly to his four-in-hand.
"Come round there, boys! Round agin! We got t' finish this land.
Come in there, Dan! Stiddy, Kate, stiddy! None o' y'r tantrums,
Kittie. It's purty tuff, but got a be did. Tchk! tchk! Step along, Pete!
Don't let Kate git y'r single-tree on the wheel. Once more!"
They seemed to know what he meant, and that this was the last round, for they worked with
greater vigor than before. "Once more, boys, an' then, sez I, oats an' a nice warm stall, an' sleep
f'r all."
By the time the last furrow was turned on the land it was too dark to see the house, and the snow
was changing to rain again. The tired and hungry man could see the light from the kitchen
shining through the leafless hedge, and he lifted a great shout, "Supper f'r a half a dozen!"
It was nearly eight o'clock by the time he had finished his chores and started for supper. He was
picking his way carefully through the mud, when the tall form of a man loomed up before him
with a premonitory cough.
"Waddy ye want?" was the rather startled question of the farmer.
187
"Well, ye see," began the stranger, in a deprecating tone, "we'd like t' git in f'r the night. We've
tried every house f'r the last two miles, but they hadn't any room f'r us. My wife's jest about sick,
'n' the children are cold and hungry— "
"Oh, y' want 'o stay all night, eh,?"
"Yes, sir; it 'ud be a great accom— "
"Waal, I don't make it a practice t' turn anybuddy way hungry, not on sech nights as this. Drive
right in. We ain't got much, but sech as it is—"
But the stranger had disappeared. And soon his steaming, weary team, with drooping heads and
swinging single-trees, moved past the well to the block beside the path. Council stood at the side
of the "schooner" and helped the children out two little half- sleeping children and then a small
woman with a babe in her arms.
"There ye go!" he shouted jovially, to the children. "Now we're all right! Run right along to the
house there, an' tell Mam' Council you wants sumpthin' t' eat. Right this way, Mis' keep right off
t' the right there. I'll go an' git a lantern. Come," he said to the dazed and silent group at his side.
"Mother'" he shouted, as he neared the fragrant and warmly lighted kitchen, "here are some
wayfarers an' folks who need sumpthin' t' eat an' a place t' snoot." He ended by pushing them all
in.
Mrs. Council, a large, jolly, rather coarse-looking woman, too the children in her arms. "Come
right in, you little rabbits. 'Mos asleep, hey? Now here's a drink o' milk f'r each o' ye. I'll have
sam tea in a minute. Take off y'r things and set up t' the fire."
While she set the children to drinking milk, Council got out his lantern and went out to the barn
to help the stranger about his team, where his loud, hearty voice could be heard as it came and
went between the haymow and the stalls.
The woman came to light as a small, timid, and discouraged looking woman, but still pretty, in a
thin and sorrowful way.
"Land sakes! An' you've travelled all the way from Clear Lake' t'-day in this mud! Waal! Waal!
No wonder you're all tired out Don't wait f'r the men, Mis'— " She hesitated, waiting for the
name.
"Haskins."
"Mis' Haskins, set right up to the table an' take a good swig o tea whilst I make y' s'm toast. It's
green tea, an' it's good. I tell Council as I git older I don't seem to enjoy Young Hyson n'r
Gunpowder. I want the reel green tea, jest as it comes off'n the vines. Seems t' have more heart in
it, some way. Don't s'pose it has. Council says it's all in m' eye."
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Going on in this easy way, she soon had the children filled with bread and milk and the woman
thoroughly at home, eating some toast and sweet-melon pickles, and sipping the tea.
"See the little rats!" she laughed at the children. "They're full as they can stick now, and they
want to go to bed. Now, don't git up, Mis' Haskins; set right where you are an' let me look after
'em. I know all about young ones, though I'm all alone now. Jane went an' married last fall. But,
as I tell Council, it's lucky we keep our health. Set right there, Mis' Haskins; I won't have you stir
a finger."
It was an unmeasured pleasure to sit there in the warm, homely kitchen. the jovial chatter of the
housewife driving out and holding at bay the growl of the impotent, cheated wind.
The little woman's eyes filled with tears which fell down upon the sleeping baby in her arms.
The world was not so desolate and cold and hopeless, after all.
"Now I hope. Council won't stop out there and talk politics all night. He's the greatest man to talk
politics an' read the Tribune—How old is it?"
She broke off and peered down at the face of the babe.
"Two months 'n' five days," said the mother, with a mother's exactness.
"Ye don't say! I want 'o know! The dear little pudzy-wudzy!" she went on, stirring it up in the
neighborhood of the ribs with her fat forefinger.
"Pooty tough on 'oo to go gallivant'n' 'cross lots this way—"
"Yes, that's so; a man can't lift a mountain," said Council, entering the door. "Mother, this is Mr.
Haskins, from Kansas. He's been eat up 'n' drove out by grasshoppers."
"Glad t' see yeh! Pa, empty that wash-basin 'n' give him a chance t' wash." Haskins was a tall
man, with a thin, gloomy face. His hair was a reddish brown, like his coat, and seemed equally
faded by the wind and sun, and his sallow face, though hard and set, was pathetic somehow. You
would have felt that he had suffered much by the line of his mouth showing under his thin,
yellow mustache.
"Hadn't Ike got home yet, Sairy?"
"Hadn't seen 'im."
"W-a-a-l, set right up, Mr. Haskins; wade right into what we've got; 'taint much, but we manage
to live on it she gits fat on it," laughed Council, pointing his thumb at his wife.
After supper, while the women put the children to bed, Haskins and Council talked on, seated
near the huge cooking-stove, the steam rising from their wet clothing. In the Western fashion
Council told as much of his own life as he drew from his guest. He asked but few questions, but
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by and by the story of Haskins' struggles and defeat came out. The story was a terrible one, but
he told it quietly, seated with his elbows on his knees, gazing most of the time at the hearth.
"I didn't like the looks of the country, anyhow," Haskins said, partly rising and glancing at his
wife. "I was ust t' northern Ingyannie, where we have lots o' timber 'n' lots o' rain, 'n' I didn't like
the looks o' that dry prairie. What galled me the worst was goin' s' far away acrosst so much fine
land layin' all through here vacant.
"And the 'hoppers eat ye four years, hand runnin', did they?" "Eat! They wiped us out. They
chawed everything that was green. They jest set around waitin' f'r us to die t' eat us, too. My
God! I ust t' dream of 'em sittin' 'round on the bedpost, six feet long, workin' their jaws. They eet
the fork-handles. They got worse 'n' worse till they jest rolled on one another, piled up like snow
in winter Well, it ain't no use. If I was t' talk all winter I couldn't tell nawthin'. But all the while I
couldn't help thinkin' of all that land back here that nobuddy was usin' that I ought 'o had 'stead o'
bein' out there in that cussed country."
"Waal, why didn't ye stop an' settle here?" asked Ike, who had come in and was eating his
supper.
"Fer the simple reason that you fellers wantid ten 'r fifteen dollars an acre fer the bare land, and I
hadn't no money fer that kind o' thing."
"Yes, I do my own work," Mrs. Council was heard to say in the pause which followed. "I'm a
gettin' purty heavy t' be on m'laigs all day, but we can't afford t' hire, so I keep rackin' around
somehow, like a foundered horse. S' lame I tell Council he can t tell how lame I am, f'r I'm jest as
lame in one laig as t' other." And the good soul laughed at the joke on herself as she took a
handful of flour and dusted the biscuit-board to keep the dough from sticking.
"Well, I hadn't never been very strong," said Mrs. Haskins. "Our folks was Canadians an' smallboned, and then since my last child I hadn't got up again fairly. I don't like t' complain. Tim has
about all he can bear now but they was days this week when I jest wanted to lay right down an'
die."
"Waal, now, I'll tell ye," said Council, from his side of the stove silencing everybody with his
good-natured roar, "I'd go down and see Butler, anyway, if I was you. I guess he'd let you have
his place purty cheap; the farm's all run down. He's teen anxious t' let t' somebuddy next year. It
'ud be a good chance fer you. Anyhow, you go to bed and sleep like a babe. I've got some
ploughing t' do, anyhow, an' we'll see if somethin' can't be done about your case. Ike, you go out
an' see if the horses is all right, an' I'll show the folks t' bed."
When the tired husband and wife were lying under the generous quilts of the spare bed, Haskins
listened a moment to the wind in the eaves, and then said, with a slow and solemn tone,
"There are people in this world who are good enough t' be angels, an' only haff t' die to be
angels."
190
Jim Butler was one of those men called in the West "land poor. " Early in the history of Rock
River he had come into the town and started in the grocery business in a small way, occupying a
small building in a mean part of the town. At this period of his life he earned all he got, and was
up early and late sorting beans, working over butter, and carting his goods to and from the
station. But a change came over him at the end of the second year, when he sold a lot of land for
four times what he paid for it. From that time forward he believed in land speculation as the
surest way of getting rich. Every cent he could save or spare from his trade he put into land at
forced sale, or mortgages on land, which were "just as good as the wheat," he was accustomed to
say.
Farm after farm fell into his hands, until he was recognized as one of the leading landowners of
the county. His mortgages were scattered all over Cedar County, and as they slowly but surely
fell in he sought usually to retain the former owner as tenant.
He was not ready to foreclose; indeed, he had the name of being one of the "easiest" men in the
town. He let the debtor off again and again, extending the time whenever possible.
"I don't want y'r land," he said. "All I'm after is the int'rest on my money that's all. Now, if y'
want 'o stay on the farm, why, I'll give y' a good chance. I can't have the land layin' vacant. " And
in many cases the owner remained as tenant.
In the meantime he had sold his store; he couldn't spend time in it—he was mainly occupied now
with sitting around town on rainy days smoking and "gassin' with the boys," or in riding to and
from his farms. In fishing-time he fished a good deal. Doc Grimes, Ben Ashley, and Cal
Cheatham were his cronies on these fishing excursions or hunting trips in the time of chickens or
partridges. In winter they went to Northern Wisconsin to shoot deer.
In spite of all these signs of easy life Butler persisted in saying he "hadn't enough money to pay
taxes on his land," and was careful to convey the impression that he was poor in spite of his
twenty farms. At one time he was said to be worth fifty thousand dollars, but land had been a
little slow of sale of late, so that he was not worth so much.
A fine farm, known as the Higley place, had fallen into his hands in the usual way the previous
year, and he had not been able to find a tenant for it. Poor Higley, after working himself nearly to
death on it in the attempt to lift the mortgage, had gone off to Dakota, leaving the farm and his
curse to Butler.
This was the farm which Council advised Haskins to apply for; and the next day Council hitched
up his team and drove down to see Butler.
"You jest let me do the talkin'," he said. "We'll find him wearin' out his pants on some salt barrel
somew'ers; and if he thought you wanted a place he'd sock it to you hot and heavy. You jest keep
quiet, I'll fix 'im."
Butler was seated in Ben Ashley's store telling fish yarns when
Council sauntered in casually.
191
"Hello, But; lyin' agin, hey?"
"Hello, Steve! How goes it?"
"Oh, so-so. Too clang much rain these days. I thought it was goin' t freeze up f'r good last night.
Tight squeak if I get m' ploughin' done. How's farmin' with you these days?"
"Bad. Ploughin' ain't half done."
"It 'ud be a religious idee f'r you t' go out an' take a hand y'rself."
"I don't haff to," said Butler, with a wink.
"Got anybody on the Higley place?"
"No. Know of anybody?"
"Waal, no; not eggsackly. I've got a relation back t' Michigan who's ben hot an' cold on the idea
o' comin' West f'r some time. Might come if he could get a good lay-out. What do you talk on the
farm?"
"Well, I d' know. I'll rent it on shares or I'll rent it money rent."
"Waal, how much money, say?"
"Well, say ten per cent, on the price two-fifty."
"Wall, that ain't bad. Wait on 'im till 'e thrashes?"
Haskins listened eagerly to this important question, but Council was coolly eating a dried apple
which he had speared out of a barrel with his knife. Butler studied him carefully.
"Well, knocks me out of twenty-five dollars interest."
"My relation'll need all he's got t' git his crops in," said Council, in the same, indifferent way.
"Well, all right; say wait," concluded Butler.
"All right; this is the man. Haskins, this is Mr. Butler no relation to
Ben the hardest-working man in Cedar County."
On the way home Haskins said: "I ain't much better off. I'd like that farm; it's a good farm, but
it's all run down, an' so 'm I. I could make a good farm of it if I had half a show. But I can't stock
it n'r seed it."
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"Waal, now, don't you worry," roared Council in his ear. "We'll pull y' through somehow till next
harvest. He's agreed t' hire it ploughed, an' you can earn a hundred dollars ploughin' an' y' c'n git
the seed o' me, an' pay me back when y' can."
Haskins was silent with emotion, but at last he said, "I ain't got nothin' t' live on."
"Now, don't you worry 'bout that. You jest make your headquarters at ol' Steve Council's.
Mother'll take a pile o' comfort in havin' y'r wife an' children 'round.
Y' see, Jane's married off lately, an' Ike's away a good 'eal, so we'll be darn glad t' have y' stop
with us this winter. Nex' spring we'll see if y' can't git a start agin." And he chirruped to the team,
which sprang forward with the rumbling, clattering wagon.
"Say, looky here, Council, you can't do this. I never saw " shouted
Haskins in his neighbor's ear.
Council moved about uneasily in his seat and stopped his stammering gratitude by saying: "Hold
on, now; don't make such a fuss over a little thing. When I see a man down, an' things all on top
of 'm, I jest like t' kick 'em off an' help 'm up. That's the kind of religion I got, an' it's about the
only kind."
They rode the rest of the way home in silence. And when the red light of the lamp shone out into
the darkness of the cold and windy night, and he thought of this refuge for his children and wife,
Haskins could have put his arm around the neck of his burly companion and squeezed him like a
lover. But he contented himself with saying, "Steve Council, you'll git y'r pay f'r this some day."
"Don't want any pay. My religion ain't run on such business principles."
The wind was growing colder, and the ground was covered with a white frost, as they turned into
the gate of the Council farm, and the children came rushing out, shouting, "Papa's come!" They
hardly looked like the same children who had sat at the table the night before. Their torpidity,
under the influence of sunshine and Mother Council, had given way to a sort of spasmodic
cheerfulness, as insects in winter revive when laid on the hearth.
Haskins worked like a fiend, and his wife, like the heroic woman that she was, bore also
uncomplainingly the most terrible burdens. They rose early and toiled without intermission till
the darkness fell on the plain, then tumbled into bed, every bone and muscle aching with fatigue,
to rise with the sun next morning to the same round of the same ferocity of labor.
The eldest boy drove a team all through the spring, ploughing and seeding, milked the cows, and
did chores innumerable, in most ways taking the place of a man.
An infinitely pathetic but common figure this boy on the American farm, where there is no law
against child labor. To see him in his coarse clothing, his huge boots, and his ragged cap, as he
staggered with a pail of water from the well, or trudged in the cold and cheerless dawn out into
193
the frosty field behind his team, gave the city-bred visitor a sharp pang of sympathetic pain. Yet
Haskins loved his boy, and would have saved him from this if he could, but he could not.
By June the first year the result of such Herculean toil began to show on the farm. The yard was
cleaned up and sown to grass, the garden ploughed and planted, and the house mended.
Council had given them four of his cows.
"Take 'em an' run 'em on shares. I don't want 'o milk s' many. Ike's away s' much now, Sat'd'ys
an' Sund'ys, I can't stand the bother anyhow."
Other men, seeing the confidence of Council in the newcomer, had sold him tools on time; and
as he was really an able farmer, he soon had round him many evidences of his care and thrift. At
the advice of Council he had taken the farm for three years, with the privilege of re-renting or
buying at the end of the term.
"It's a good bargain, an' y' want 'o nail it," said Council. "If you have any kind ov a crop, you c'n
pay y'r debts, an' keep seed an' bread."
The new hope which now sprang up in the heart of Haskins and his wife grew almost as a pain
by the time the wide field of wheat began to wave and rustle and swirl in the winds of July. Day
after day he would snatch a few moments after supper to go and look at it.
"'Have ye seen the wheat t'-day, Nettie?" he asked one night as he rose from supper.
"No, Tim, I ain't had time."
"Well, take time now. Le's go look at it."
She threw an old hat on her head Tommy's hat and looking almost pretty in her thin, sad way,
went out with her husband to the hedge.
"Ain't it grand, Nettie? Just look at it."
It was grand. Level, russet here and there, heavy-headed, wide as a lake, and full of
multitudinous whispers and gleams of wealth, it stretched away before the gazers like the fabled
field of the cloth of gold.
"Oh, I think I hope we'll have a good crop, Tim; and oh, how good the people have been to us!"
"Yes; I don't know where we'd be t'-day if it hadn't teen f'r Council and his wife."
"They're the best people in the world," said the little woman, with a great sob of gratitude.
"We'll be in the field on Monday sure," said Haskins, gripping the rail on the fences as if already
at the work of the harvest.
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The harvest came, bounteous, glorious, but the winds came and blew it into tangles, and the rain
matted it here and there close to the ground, increasing the work of gathering it threefold.
Oh, how they toiled in those glorious days! Clothing dripping with sweat, arms aching, filled
with briers, fingers raw and bleeding, backs broken with the weight of heavy bundles, Haskins
and his man toiled on. Tummy drove the harvester, while his father and a hired man bound on
the machine. In this way they cut ten acres every day, and almost every night after supper, when
the hand went to bed, Haskins returned to the field shocking the bound grain in the light of the
moon. Many a night he worked till his anxious wife came out at ten o'clock to call him in to rest
and lunch. At the same time she cooked for the men, took care of the children, washed and
ironed, milked the cows at night, made the butter, and sometimes fed the horses and watered
them while her husband kept at the shocking.
No slave in the Roman galleys could have toiled so frightfully and lived, for this man thought
himself a free man, and that he was working for his wife and babes.
When he sank into his bed with a deep groan of relief, too tired to change his grimy, dripping
clothing, he felt that he was getting nearer and nearer to a home of his own, and pushing the wolf
of want a little farther from his door.
There is no despair so deep as the despair of a homeless man or woman. To roam the roads of the
country or the streets of the city, to feel there is no rood of ground on which the feet can rest, to
halt weary and hungry outside lighted windows and hear laughter and song within, these are the
hungers and rebellions that drive men to crime and women to shame.
It was the memory of this homelessness, and the fear of its coming again, that spurred Timothy
Haskins and Nettie, his wife, to such ferocious labor during that first year.
"'M, yes; 'm, yes; first-rate," said Butler, as his eye took in the neat garden, the pig-pen, and the
well-filled barnyard. "You're gitt'n' quite a stock around yeh. Done well, eh?" Haskins was
showing Butler around the place. He had not seen it for a year, having spent the year in
Washington and Boston with Ashley, his brother-in-law, who had been elected to Congress.
"Yes, I've laid out a good deal of money durin' the last three years.
I've paid out three hundred dollars f'r fencin'."
"Um h'm! I see, I see," said Butler, while Haskins went on:
"The kitchen there cost two hundred; the barn ain't cost much in money, but I've put a lot o' time
on it. I've dug a new well, and I— "
"Yes, yes, I see. You've done well. Stock worth a thousand dollars, " said Butler, picking his
teeth with a straw.
195
"About that," said Haskins, modestly. "We begin to feel's if we was gitt'n' a home f'r ourselves;
but we've worked hard. I tell you we begin to feel it, Mr. Butler, and we're goin' t' begin to ease
up purty soon. We've been kind o' plannin' a trip back t' her folks after the fall ploughin's done."
"Eggs-actly!" said Butler, who was evidently thinking of something else. "I suppose you've kind
o' calc'lated on stayin' here three years more?"
"Well, yes. Fact is, I think I c'n buy the farm this fall, if you'll give me a reasonable show."
"Um m! What do you call a reasonable show?"
"Well, say a quarter down and three years' time."
Butler looked at the huge stacks of wheat, which filled the yard, over which the chickens were
fluttering and crawling, catching grasshoppers, and out of which the crickets were singing
innumerably. He smiled in a peculiar way as he said, "Oh, I won't be hard on yeh. But what did
you expect to pay f'r the place?"
"Why, about what you offered it for before, two thousand five hundred, or possibly three
thousand dollars," he added quickly, as he saw the owner shake his head.
"This farm is worth five thousand and five hundred dollars," said
Butler, in a careless and decided voice.
"What!" almost shrieked the astounded Haskins. "What's that? Five thousand? Why, that's
double what you offered it for three years ago."
"Of course, and it's worth it. It was all run down then—now it's in good shape. You've laid out
fifteen hundred dollars in improvements, according to your own story."
"But you had nothin' t' do about that. It's my work an' my money. "
"You bet it was; but it's my land."
"But what's to pay me for all my— "
"Ain't you had the use of 'em?" replied Butler, smiling calmly into his face.
Haskins was like a man struck on the head with a sandbag; he couldn't think; he stammered as he
tried to say: "But I never'd git the use You'd rob me! More'n that: you agreed you promised that I
could buy or rent at the end of three years at— "
"That's all right. But I didn't say I'd let you carry off the improvements, nor that I'd go on renting
the farm at two-fifty. The land is doubled in value, it don't matter how; it don't enter into the
question; an' now you can pay me five hundred dollars a year rent, or take it on your own terms
at fifty-five hundred, or git out."
196
He was turning away when Haskins, the sweat pouring from his face, fronted him, saying again:
"But you've done nothing to make it so. You hadn't added a cent. I put it all there myself,
expectin' to buy. I worked an' sweat to improve it. I was workin' for myself an' babes— "
"Well, why didn't you buy when I offered to sell? What y' kickin' about?"
"I'm kickin' about payin' you twice f'r my own things, my own fences, my own kitchen, my own
garden."
Butler laughed. "You're too green t' eat, young feller. Your improvements! The law will sing
another tune."
"But I trusted your word."
"Never trust anybody, my friend. Besides, I didn't promise not to do this thing. Why, man, don't
look at me like that. Don't take me for a thief. It's the law. The reg'lar thing. Everybody does it."
"I don't care if they do. It's stealin' jest the same. You take three thousand dollars of my money
the work o' my hands and my wife's." He broke down at this point. He was not a strong man
mentally. He could face hardship, ceaseless toil, but he could not face the cold and sneering face
of Butler.
"But I don't take it," said Butler, coolly "All you've got to do is to go on jest as you've been acoin', or give me a thousand dollars down, and a mortgage at ten per cent on the rest."
Haskins sat down blindly on a bundle of oats near by, and with staring eyes and drooping head
went over the situation. He was under the lion's paw. He felt a horrible numbness in his heart and
limbs. He was hid in a mist, and there was no path out.
Butler walked about, looking at the huge stacks of grain, and pulling now and again a few
handfuls out, shelling the heads in his hands and blowing the chaff away. He hummed a little
tune as he did so. He had an accommodating air of waiting.
Haskins was in the midst of the terrible toil of the last year. He was walking again in the rain and
the mud behind his plough - he felt the dust and dirt of the threshing. The ferocious huskingtime, with its cutting wind and biting, clinging snows, lay hard upon him. Then he thought of his
wife, how she had cheerfully cooked and baked, without holiday and without rest.
"Well, what do you think of it?" inquired the cool, mocking, insinuating voice of Butler.
"I think you're a thief and a liar!" shouted Haskins, leaping up. "A black-hearted houn'!" Butler's
smile maddened him; with a sudden leap he caught a fork in his hands, and whirled it in the air.
"You'll never rob another man, damn ye!" he grated through his teeth, a look of pitiless ferocity
in his accusing eyes.
197
Butler shrank and quivered, expecting the blow; stood, held hypnotized by the eyes of the man
he had a moment before despised a man transformed into an avenging demon. But in the deadly
hush between the lift of the weapon and its fall there came a gush of faint, childish laughter and
then across the range of his vision, far away and dim, he saw the sun-bright head of his baby girl,
as, with the pretty, tottering run of a two-year-old, she moved across the grass of the dooryard.
His hands relaxed: the fork fell to the ground; his head lowered.
"Make out y'r deed an' mor'gage, an' git off'n my land, an' don't ye never cross my line agin; if y'
do, I'll kill ye."
Butler backed away from the man in wild haste, and climbing into his buggy with trembling
limbs drove off down the road, leaving Haskins seated dumbly on the sunny pile of sheaves, his
head sunk into his hands.
Resources for The Rise of Realism
Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935)
[image] Charlotte Perkins Gilman was born in Hartford, Connecticut on July 3, 1860. Considered
an early feminist, she was often an advocate for social reforms from the constrictions of a
patriarchal and greedy capitalistic society. Her father abandoned her family when she was an
infant, and they sought support from aunts such as Harriet Beecher Stowe and Catherine
Beecher. She married Charles Walter Stetson in 1884, though they separated four years later and
were legally divorced in 1894. Gilman and her daughter moved to Pasadena, California after the
separation, where she became active in reformist organizations. In 1900 Gilman married
Houghton Gilman, her first cousin, and they lived in New York City. She died on August 17,
1935, in Pasadena, California, of suicide after being diagnosed with incurable breast cancer. Two
important biographies include Ann J. Lane’s To Herland and Beyond: The Life and Work of
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, University of Virginia Press, 1990, and Cynthia J. Davis’s Charlotte
Perkins Gilman: A Biography, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010. Critical examinations
should begin with Gary Scharnhorst's Charlotte Perkins Gilman: A Bibliography, Scarecrowe
Press, 2003.
The Yellow Wall-Paper
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. "The Yellow Wall-Paper." The New England Magazine. January,
1892.
source of etext: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1952
It is very seldom that mere ordinary people like John and myself secure ancestral halls for the
summer.
198
A colonial mansion, a hereditary estate, I would say a haunted house, and reach the height of
romantic felicity—but that would be asking too much of fate!
Still I will proudly declare that there is something queer about it.
Else, why should it be let so cheaply? And why have stood so long untenanted?
John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage.
John is practical in the extreme. He has no patience with faith, an intense horror of superstition,
and he scoffs openly at any talk of things not to be felt and seen and put down in figures.
John is a physician, and PERHAPS—(I would not say it to a living soul, of course, but this is
dead paper and a great relief to my mind)—PERHAPS that is one reason I do not get well faster.
You see he does not believe I am sick!
And what can one do?
If a physician of high standing, and one's own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is
really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression—a slight hysterical
tendency—what is one to do?
My brother is also a physician, and also of high standing, and he says the same thing.
So I take phosphates or phosphites—whichever it is, and tonics, and journeys, and air, and
exercise, and am absolutely forbidden to "work" until I am well again.
Personally, I disagree with their ideas.
Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good.
But what is one to do?
I did write for a while in spite of them; but it DOES exhaust me a good deal—having to be so sly
about it, or else meet with heavy opposition.
I sometimes fancy that in my condition if I had less opposition and more society and stimulus—
but John says the very worst thing I can do is to think about my condition, and I confess it
always makes me feel bad.
So I will let it alone and talk about the house.
The most beautiful place! It is quite alone, standing well back from the road, quite three miles
from the village. It makes me think of English places that you read about, for there are hedges
and walls and gates that lock, and lots of separate little houses for the gardeners and people.
199
There is a DELICIOUS garden! I never saw such a garden—large and shady, full of boxbordered paths, and lined with long grape-covered arbors with seats under them.
There were greenhouses, too, but they are all broken now.
There was some legal trouble, I believe, something about the heirs and coheirs; anyhow, the
place has been empty for years.
That spoils my ghostliness, I am afraid, but I don't care—there is something strange about the
house—I can feel it.
I even said so to John one moonlight evening, but he said what I felt was a DRAUGHT, and shut
the window.
I get unreasonably angry with John sometimes. I'm sure I never used to be so sensitive. I think it
is due to this nervous condition.
But John says if I feel so, I shall neglect proper self-control; so I take pains to control myself—
before him, at least, and that makes me very tired.
I don't like our room a bit. I wanted one downstairs that opened on the piazza and had roses all
over the window, and such pretty old-fashioned chintz hangings! but John would not hear of it.
He said there was only one window and not room for two beds, and no near room for him if he
took another.
He is very careful and loving, and hardly lets me stir without special direction.
I have a schedule prescription for each hour in the day; he takes all care from me, and so I feel
basely ungrateful not to value it more.
He said we came here solely on my account, that I was to have perfect rest and all the air I could
get. "Your exercise depends on your strength, my dear," said he, "and your food somewhat on
your appetite; but air you can absorb all the time." So we took the nursery at the top of the house.
It is a big, airy room, the whole floor nearly, with windows that look all ways, and air and
sunshine galore. It was nursery first and then playroom and gymnasium, I should judge; for the
windows are barred for little children, and there are rings and things in the walls.
The paint and paper look as if a boys' school had used it. It is stripped off—the paper—in great
patches all around the head of my bed, about as far as I can reach, and in a great place on the
other side of the room low down. I never saw a worse paper in my life.
One of those sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin.
200
It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and
provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly
commit suicide—plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of
contradictions.
The color is repellent, almost revolting; a smouldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the
slow-turning sunlight.
It is a dull yet lurid orange in some places, a sickly sulphur tint in others.
No wonder the children hated it! I should hate it myself if I had to live in this room long.
There comes John, and I must put this away,—he hates to have me write a word.
We have been here two weeks, and I haven't felt like writing before, since that first day.
I am sitting by the window now, up in this atrocious nursery, and there is nothing to hinder my
writing as much as I please, save lack of strength.
John is away all day, and even some nights when his cases are serious.
I am glad my case is not serious!
But these nervous troubles are dreadfully depressing.
John does not know how much I really suffer. He knows there is no REASON to suffer, and that
satisfies him.
Of course it is only nervousness. It does weigh on me so not to do my duty in any way!
I meant to be such a help to John, such a real rest and comfort, and here I am a comparative
burden already!
Nobody would believe what an effort it is to do what little I am able,—to dress and entertain, and
order things.
It is fortunate Mary is so good with the baby. Such a dear baby!
And yet I CANNOT be with him, it makes me so nervous.
I suppose John never was nervous in his life. He laughs at me so about this wall-paper!
At first he meant to repaper the room, but afterwards he said that I was letting it get the better of
me, and that nothing was worse for a nervous patient than to give way to such fancies.
201
He said that after the wall-paper was changed it would be the heavy bedstead, and then the
barred windows, and then that gate at the head of the stairs, and so on.
"You know the place is doing you good," he said, "and really, dear, I don't care to renovate the
house just for a three months' rental."
"Then do let us go downstairs," I said, "there are such pretty rooms there."
Then he took me in his arms and called me a blessed little goose, and said he would go down to
the cellar, if I wished, and have it whitewashed into the bargain.
But he is right enough about the beds and windows and things.
It is an airy and comfortable room as any one need wish, and, of course, I would not be so silly
as to make him uncomfortable just for a whim.
I'm really getting quite fond of the big room, all but that horrid paper.
Out of one window I can see the garden, those mysterious deepshaded arbors, the riotous oldfashioned flowers, and bushes and gnarly trees.
Out of another I get a lovely view of the bay and a little private wharf belonging to the estate.
There is a beautiful shaded lane that runs down there from the house. I always fancy I see people
walking in these numerous paths and arbors, but John has cautioned me not to give way to fancy
in the least. He says that with my imaginative power and habit of story-making, a nervous
weakness like mine is sure to lead to all manner of excited fancies, and that I ought to use my
will and good sense to check the tendency. So I try.
I think sometimes that if I were only well enough to write a little it would relieve the press of
ideas and rest me.
But I find I get pretty tired when I try.
It is so discouraging not to have any advice and companionship about my work. When I get
really well, John says we will ask Cousin Henry and Julia down for a long visit; but he says he
would as soon put fireworks in my pillow-case as to let me have those stimulating people about
now.
I wish I could get well faster.
But I must not think about that. This paper looks to me as if it KNEW what a vicious influence it
had!
There is a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at
you upside down.
202
I get positively angry with the impertinence of it and the everlastingness. Up and down and
sideways they crawl, and those absurd, unblinking eyes are everywhere. There is one place
where two breadths didn't match, and the eyes go all up and down the line, one a little higher
than the other.
I never saw so much expression in an inanimate thing before, and we all know how much
expression they have! I used to lie awake as a child and get more entertainment and terror out of
blank walls and plain furniture than most children could find in a toy store.
I remember what a kindly wink the knobs of our big, old bureau used to have, and there was one
chair that always seemed like a strong friend.
I used to feel that if any of the other things looked too fierce I could always hop into that chair
and be safe.
The furniture in this room is no worse than inharmonious, however, for we had to bring it all
from downstairs. I suppose when this was used as a playroom they had to take the nursery things
out, and no wonder! I never saw such ravages as the children have made here.
The wall-paper, as I said before, is torn off in spots, and it sticketh closer than a brother—they
must have had perseverance as well as hatred.
Then the floor is scratched and gouged and splintered, the plaster itself is dug out here and there,
and this great heavy bed which is all we found in the room, looks as if it had been through the
wars.
But I don't mind it a bit—only the paper.
There comes John's sister. Such a dear girl as she is, and so careful of me! I must not let her find
me writing.
She is a perfect and enthusiastic housekeeper, and hopes for no better profession. I verily believe
she thinks it is the writing which made me sick!
But I can write when she is out, and see her a long way off from these windows.
There is one that commands the road, a lovely shaded winding road, and one that just looks off
over the country. A lovely country, too, full of great elms and velvet meadows.
This wall-paper has a kind of sub-pattern in a different shade, a particularly irritating one, for
you can only see it in certain lights, and not clearly then.
But in the places where it isn't faded and where the sun is just so—I can see a strange, provoking,
formless sort of figure, that seems to skulk about behind that silly and conspicuous front design.
There's sister on the stairs!
203
Well, the Fourth of July is over! The people are gone and I am tired out. John thought it might do
me good to see a little company, so we just had mother and Nellie and the children down for a
week.
Of course I didn't do a thing. Jennie sees to everything now.
But it tired me all the same.
John says if I don't pick up faster he shall send me to Weir Mitchell in the fall.
But I don't want to go there at all. I had a friend who was in his hands once, and she says he is
just like John and my brother, only more so!
Besides, it is such an undertaking to go so far.
I don't feel as if it was worth while to turn my hand over for anything, and I'm getting dreadfully
fretful and querulous.
I cry at nothing, and cry most of the time.
Of course I don't when John is here, or anybody else, but when I am alone.
And I am alone a good deal just now. John is kept in town very often by serious cases, and
Jennie is good and lets me alone when I want her to.
So I walk a little in the garden or down that lovely lane, sit on the porch under the roses, and lie
down up here a good deal.
I'm getting really fond of the room in spite of the wall-paper. Perhaps BECAUSE of the wallpaper.
It dwells in my mind so!
I lie here on this great immovable bed—it is nailed down, I believe—and follow that pattern
about by the hour. It is as good as gymnastics, I assure you. I start, we'll say, at the bottom, down
in the corner over there where it has not been touched, and I determine for the thousandth time
that I WILL follow that pointless pattern to some sort of a conclusion.
I know a little of the principle of design, and I know this thing was not arranged on any laws of
radiation, or alternation, or repetition, or symmetry, or anything else that I ever heard of.
It is repeated, of course, by the breadths, but not otherwise.
Looked at in one way each breadth stands alone, the bloated curves and flourishes—a kind of
"debased Romanesque" with delirium tremens—go waddling up and down in isolated columns
of fatuity.
204
But, on the other hand, they connect diagonally, and the sprawling outlines run off in great
slanting waves of optic horror, like a lot of wallowing seaweeds in full chase.
The whole thing goes horizontally, too, at least it seems so, and I exhaust myself in trying to
distinguish the order of its going in that direction.
They have used a horizontal breadth for a frieze, and that adds wonderfully to the confusion.
There is one end of the room where it is almost intact, and there, when the crosslights fade and
the low sun shines directly upon it, I can almost fancy radiation after all,—the interminable
grotesques seem to form around a common centre and rush off in headlong plunges of equal
distraction.
It makes me tired to follow it. I will take a nap I guess.
I don't know why I should write this.
I don't want to.
I don't feel able.
And I know John would think it absurd. But I MUST say what I feel and think in some way—it
is such a relief!
But the effort is getting to be greater than the relief.
Half the time now I am awfully lazy, and lie down ever so much.
John says I musn't lose my strength, and has me take cod liver oil and lots of tonics and things, to
say nothing of ale and wine and rare meat.
Dear John! He loves me very dearly, and hates to have me sick. I tried to have a real earnest
reasonable talk with him the other day, and tell him how I wish he would let me go and make a
visit to Cousin Henry and Julia.
But he said I wasn't able to go, nor able to stand it after I got there; and I did not make out a very
good case for myself, for I was crying before I had finished.
It is getting to be a great effort for me to think straight. Just this nervous weakness I suppose.
And dear John gathered me up in his arms, and just carried me upstairs and laid me on the bed,
and sat by me and read to me till it tired my head.
He said I was his darling and his comfort and all he had, and that I must take care of myself for
his sake, and keep well.
205
He says no one but myself can help me out of it, that I must use my will and self-control and not
let any silly fancies run away with me.
There's one comfort, the baby is well and happy, and does not have to occupy this nursery with
the horrid wall-paper.
If we had not used it, that blessed child would have! What a fortunate escape! Why, I wouldn't
have a child of mine, an impressionable little thing, live in such a room for worlds.
I never thought of it before, but it is lucky that John kept me here after all, I can stand it so much
easier than a baby, you see.
Of course I never mention it to them any more—I am too wise,—but I keep watch of it all the
same.
There are things in that paper that nobody knows but me, or ever will.
Behind that outside pattern the dim shapes get clearer every day.
It is always the same shape, only very numerous.
And it is like a woman stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern. I don't like it a bit.
I wonder—I begin to think—I wish John would take me away from here!
It is so hard to talk with John about my case, because he is so wise, and because he loves me so.
But I tried it last night.
It was moonlight. The moon shines in all around just as the sun does.
I hate to see it sometimes, it creeps so slowly, and always comes in by one window or another.
John was asleep and I hated to waken him, so I kept still and watched the moonlight on that
undulating wall-paper till I felt creepy.
The faint figure behind seemed to shake the pattern, just as if she wanted to get out.
I got up softly and went to feel and see if the paper DID move, and when I came back John was
awake.
"What is it, little girl?" he said. "Don't go walking about like that—you'll get cold."
I though it was a good time to talk, so I told him that I really was not gaining here, and that I
wished he would take me away.
"Why darling!" said he, "our lease will be up in three weeks, and I can't see how to leave before.
206
"The repairs are not done at home, and I cannot possibly leave town just now. Of course if you
were in any danger, I could and would, but you really are better, dear, whether you can see it or
not. I am a doctor, dear, and I know. You are gaining flesh and color, your appetite is better, I
feel really much easier about you."
"I don't weigh a bit more," said I, "nor as much; and my appetite may be better in the evening
when you are here, but it is worse in the morning when you are away!"
"Bless her little heart!" said he with a big hug, "she shall be as sick as she pleases! But now let's
improve the shining hours by going to sleep, and talk about it in the morning!"
"And you won't go away?" I asked gloomily.
"Why, how can I, dear? It is only three weeks more and then we will take a nice little trip of a
few days while Jennie is getting the house ready. Really dear you are better!"
"Better in body perhaps—" I began, and stopped short, for he sat up straight and looked at me
with such a stern, reproachful look that I could not say another word.
"My darling," said he, "I beg of you, for my sake and for our child's sake, as well as for your
own, that you will never for one instant let that idea enter your mind! There is nothing so
dangerous, so fascinating, to a temperament like yours. It is a false and foolish fancy. Can you
not trust me as a physician when I tell you so?"
So of course I said no more on that score, and we went to sleep before long. He thought I was
asleep first, but I wasn't, and lay there for hours trying to decide whether that front pattern and
the back pattern really did move together or separately.
On a pattern like this, by daylight, there is a lack of sequence, a defiance of law, that is a constant
irritant to a normal mind.
The color is hideous enough, and unreliable enough, and infuriating enough, but the pattern is
torturing.
You think you have mastered it, but just as you get well underway in following, it turns a backsomersault and there you are. It slaps you in the face, knocks you down, and tramples upon you.
It is like a bad dream.
The outside pattern is a florid arabesque, reminding one of a fungus. If you can imagine a
toadstool in joints, an interminable string of toadstools, budding and sprouting in endless
convolutions—why, that is something like it.
That is, sometimes!
There is one marked peculiarity about this paper, a thing nobody seems to notice but myself, and
that is that it changes as the light changes.
207
When the sun shoots in through the east window—I always watch for that first long, straight
ray—it changes so quickly that I never can quite believe it.
That is why I watch it always.
By moonlight—the moon shines in all night when there is a moon—I wouldn't know it was the
same paper.
At night in any kind of light, in twilight, candle light, lamplight, and worst of all by moonlight, it
becomes bars! The outside pattern I mean, and the woman behind it is as plain as can be.
I didn't realize for a long time what the thing was that showed behind, that dim sub-pattern, but
now I am quite sure it is a woman.
By daylight she is subdued, quiet. I fancy it is the pattern that keeps her so still. It is so puzzling.
It keeps me quiet by the hour.
I lie down ever so much now. John says it is good for me, and to sleep all I can.
Indeed he started the habit by making me lie down for an hour after each meal.
It is a very bad habit I am convinced, for you see I don't sleep.
And that cultivates deceit, for I don't tell them I'm awake—O no!
The fact is I am getting a little afraid of John.
He seems very queer sometimes, and even Jennie has an inexplicable look.
It strikes me occasionally, just as a scientific hypothesis,—that perhaps it is the paper!
I have watched John when he did not know I was looking, and come into the room suddenly on
the most innocent excuses, and I've caught him several times LOOKING AT THE PAPER! And
Jennie too. I caught Jennie with her hand on it once.
She didn't know I was in the room, and when I asked her in a quiet, a very quiet voice, with the
most restrained manner possible, what she was doing with the paper—she turned around as if she
had been caught stealing, and looked quite angry—asked me why I should frighten her so!
Then she said that the paper stained everything it touched, that she had found yellow smooches
on all my clothes and John's, and she wished we would be more careful!
Did not that sound innocent? But I know she was studying that pattern, and I am determined that
nobody shall find it out but myself!
208
Life is very much more exciting now than it used to be. You see I have something more to
expect, to look forward to, to watch. I really do eat better, and am more quiet than I was.
John is so pleased to see me improve! He laughed a little the other day, and said I seemed to be
flourishing in spite of my wall-paper.
I turned it off with a laugh. I had no intention of telling him it was BECAUSE of the wallpaper—he would make fun of me. He might even want to take me away.
I don't want to leave now until I have found it out. There is a week more, and I think that will be
enough.
I'm feeling ever so much better! I don't sleep much at night, for it is so interesting to watch
developments; but I sleep a good deal in the daytime.
In the daytime it is tiresome and perplexing.
There are always new shoots on the fungus, and new shades of yellow all over it. I cannot keep
count of them, though I have tried conscientiously.
It is the strangest yellow, that wall-paper! It makes me think of all the yellow things I ever saw—
not beautiful ones like buttercups, but old foul, bad yellow things.
But there is something else about that paper—the smell! I noticed it the moment we came into
the room, but with so much air and sun it was not bad. Now we have had a week of fog and rain,
and whether the windows are open or not, the smell is here.
It creeps all over the house.
I find it hovering in the dining-room, skulking in the parlor, hiding in the hall, lying in wait for
me on the stairs.
It gets into my hair.
Even when I go to ride, if I turn my head suddenly and surprise it—there is that smell!
Such a peculiar odor, too! I have spent hours in trying to analyze it, to find what it smelled like.
It is not bad—at first, and very gentle, but quite the subtlest, most enduring odor I ever met.
In this damp weather it is awful, I wake up in the night and find it hanging over me.
It used to disturb me at first. I thought seriously of burning the house—to reach the smell.
But now I am used to it. The only thing I can think of that it is like is the COLOR of the paper! A
yellow smell.
209
There is a very funny mark on this wall, low down, near the mopboard. A streak that runs round
the room. It goes behind every piece of furniture, except the bed, a long, straight, even
SMOOCH, as if it had been rubbed over and over.
I wonder how it was done and who did it, and what they did it for. Round and round and round—
round and round and round—it makes me dizzy!
I really have discovered something at last.
Through watching so much at night, when it changes so, I have finally found out.
The front pattern DOES move—and no wonder! The woman behind shakes it!
Sometimes I think there are a great many women behind, and sometimes only one, and she
crawls around fast, and her crawling shakes it all over.
Then in the very bright spots she keeps still, and in the very shady spots she just takes hold of the
bars and shakes them hard.
And she is all the time trying to climb through. But nobody could climb through that pattern—it
strangles so; I think that is why it has so many heads.
They get through, and then the pattern strangles them off and turns them upside down, and
makes their eyes white!
If those heads were covered or taken off it would not be half so bad.
I think that woman gets out in the daytime!
And I'll tell you why—privately—I've seen her!
I can see her out of every one of my windows!
It is the same woman, I know, for she is always creeping, and most women do not creep by
daylight.
I see her on that long road under the trees, creeping along, and when a carriage comes she hides
under the blackberry vines.
I don't blame her a bit. It must be very humiliating to be caught creeping by daylight!
I always lock the door when I creep by daylight. I can't do it at night, for I know John would
suspect something at once.
And John is so queer now, that I don't want to irritate him. I wish he would take another room!
Besides, I don't want anybody to get that woman out at night but myself.
210
I often wonder if I could see her out of all the windows at once.
But, turn as fast as I can, I can only see out of one at one time.
And though I always see her, she MAY be able to creep faster than I can turn!
I have watched her sometimes away off in the open country, creeping as fast as a cloud shadow
in a high wind.
If only that top pattern could be gotten off from the under one! I mean to try it, little by little.
I have found out another funny thing, but I shan't tell it this time! It does not do to trust people
too much.
There are only two more days to get this paper off, and I believe John is beginning to notice. I
don't like the look in his eyes.
And I heard him ask Jennie a lot of professional questions about me. She had a very good report
to give.
She said I slept a good deal in the daytime.
John knows I don't sleep very well at night, for all I'm so quiet!
He asked me all sorts of questions, too, and pretended to be very loving and kind.
As if I couldn't see through him!
Still, I don't wonder he acts so, sleeping under this paper for three months.
It only interests me, but I feel sure John and Jennie are secretly affected by it.
Hurrah! This is the last day, but it is enough. John is to stay in town over night, and won't be out
until this evening.
Jennie wanted to sleep with me—the sly thing! but I told her I should undoubtedly rest better for
a night all alone.
That was clever, for really I wasn't alone a bit! As soon as it was moonlight and that poor thing
began to crawl and shake the pattern, I got up and ran to help her.
I pulled and she shook, I shook and she pulled, and before morning we had peeled off yards of
that paper.
A strip about as high as my head and half around the room.
211
And then when the sun came and that awful pattern began to laugh at me, I declared I would
finish it to-day!
We go away to-morrow, and they are moving all my furniture down again to leave things as they
were before.
Jennie looked at the wall in amazement, but I told her merrily that I did it out of pure spite at the
vicious thing.
She laughed and said she wouldn't mind doing it herself, but I must not get tired.
How she betrayed herself that time!
But I am here, and no person touches this paper but me—not ALIVE!
She tried to get me out of the room—it was too patent! But I said it was so quiet and empty and
clean now that I believed I would lie down again and sleep all I could; and not to wake me even
for dinner—I would call when I woke.
So now she is gone, and the servants are gone, and the things are gone, and there is nothing left
but that great bedstead nailed down, with the canvas mattress we found on it.
We shall sleep downstairs to-night, and take the boat home to-morrow.
I quite enjoy the room, now it is bare again.
How those children did tear about here!
This bedstead is fairly gnawed!
But I must get to work.
I have locked the door and thrown the key down into the front path.
I don't want to go out, and I don't want to have anybody come in, till John comes.
I want to astonish him.
I've got a rope up here that even Jennie did not find. If that woman does get out, and tries to get
away, I can tie her!
But I forgot I could not reach far without anything to stand on!
This bed will NOT move!
212
I tried to lift and push it until I was lame, and then I got so angry I bit off a little piece at one
corner—but it hurt my teeth.
Then I peeled off all the paper I could reach standing on the floor. It sticks horribly and the
pattern just enjoys it! All those strangled heads and bulbous eyes and waddling fungus growths
just shriek with derision!
I am getting angry enough to do something desperate. To jump out of the window would be
admirable exercise, but the bars are too strong even to try.
Besides I wouldn't do it. Of course not. I know well enough that a step like that is improper and
might be misconstrued.
I don't like to LOOK out of the windows even—there are so many of those creeping women, and
they creep so fast.
I wonder if they all come out of that wall-paper as I did?
But I am securely fastened now by my well-hidden rope—you don't get ME out in the road
there!
I suppose I shall have to get back behind the pattern when it comes night, and that is hard!
It is so pleasant to be out in this great room and creep around as I please!
I don't want to go outside. I won't, even if Jennie asks me to.
For outside you have to creep on the ground, and everything is green instead of yellow.
But here I can creep smoothly on the floor, and my shoulder just fits in that long smooch around
the wall, so I cannot lose my way.
Why there's John at the door!
It is no use, young man, you can't open it!
How he does call and pound!
Now he's crying for an axe.
It would be a shame to break down that beautiful door!
"John dear!" said I in the gentlest voice, "the key is down by the front steps, under a plantain
leaf!"
That silenced him for a few moments.
213
Then he said—very quietly indeed, "Open the door, my darling!"
"I can't," said I. "The key is down by the front door under a plantain leaf!"
And then I said it again, several times, very gently and slowly, and said it so often that he had to
go and see, and he got it of course, and came in. He stopped short by the door.
"What is the matter?" he cried. "For God's sake, what are you doing!"
I kept on creeping just the same, but I looked at him over my shoulder.
"I've got out at last," said I, "in spite of you and Jane. And I've pulled off most of the paper, so
you can't put me back!"
Now why should that man have fainted? But he did, and right across my path by the wall, so that
I had to creep over him every time!
Resources for The Rise of Realism
Edith Wharton (1862-1937)
[image] Edith Wharton was born on January 24, 1862 in New York City to a wealthy, prestigious
family. Her insights into lives of old-moneyed, east-coast individuals, through her unique brand
of psychological realism, makes her writing distinctive. She was encouraged as a young writer
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and went on to write extensively in multiple genres throughout
her life. In the early years of the twentieth century, she became friends with Henry James, who
encouraged her writing. Her most famous works include The House of Mirth (1905), Ethan
Frome (1911), The Custom of the Country (1913), and The Age of Innocence (1920). Wharton
won the 1921 Pulitzer Prize in fiction, the first woman to do so. She married well, in 1885, to
Edward Robbins Wharton, who would later suffer from severe bouts of depression. They
divorced in 1913. Afterward, she spent most of her life in France. She died on August 11, 1937
of a stroke and is buried in American Cemetery in Versailles. Important biographies include
R.W.B. Lewis’s Edith Wharton: A Biography, New York: Harper & Row, 1975, and Cynthia
Griffin Wolff’s A Feast of Words: The Triumph of Edith Wharton, Oxford University Press,
1977. More recent biographies are available from Shari Benstock and Hermione Lee. Students
can begin their critical studies with Pamela Knight’s The Cambridge Introduction to Edith
Wharton, Cambridge University Press, 2009.
The Other Two
Wharton, Edith. "The Other Two." The Descent of Man and Other Stories. New York: Charles
Scribner's Sons, 1908.
source of etext: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4519
214
I
WAYTHORN, on the drawing-room hearth, waited for his wife to come down to dinner.
It was their first night under his own roof, and he was surprised at his thrill of boyish agitation.
He was not so old, to be sure—his glass gave him little more than the five-and-thirty years to
which his wife confessed—but he had fancied himself already in the temperate zone; yet here he
was listening for her step with a tender sense of all it symbolized, with some old trail of verse
about the garlanded nuptial door-posts floating through his enjoyment of the pleasant room and
the good dinner just beyond it.
They had been hastily recalled from their honeymoon by the illness of Lily Haskett, the child of
Mrs. Waythorn's first marriage. The little girl, at Waythorn's desire, had been transferred to his
house on the day of her mother's wedding, and the doctor, on their arrival, broke the news that
she was ill with typhoid, but declared that all the symptoms were favorable. Lily could show
twelve years of unblemished health, and the case promised to be a light one. The nurse spoke as
reassuringly, and after a moment of alarm Mrs. Waythorn had adjusted herself to the situation.
She was very fond of Lily—her affection for the child had perhaps been her decisive charm in
Waythorn's eyes—but she had the perfectly balanced nerves which her little girl had inherited,
and no woman ever wasted less tissue in unproductive worry. Waythorn was therefore quite
prepared to see her come in presently, a little late because of a last look at Lily, but as serene and
well-appointed as if her good-night kiss had been laid on the brow of health. Her composure was
restful to him; it acted as ballast to his somewhat unstable sensibilities. As he pictured her
bending over the child's bed he thought how soothing her presence must be in illness: her very
step would prognosticate recovery.
His own life had been a gray one, from temperament rather than circumstance, and he had been
drawn to her by the unperturbed gayety which kept her fresh and elastic at an age when most
women's activities are growing either slack or febrile. He knew what was said about her; for,
popular as she was, there had always been a faint undercurrent of detraction. When she had
appeared in New York, nine or ten years earlier, as the pretty Mrs. Haskett whom Gus Varick
had unearthed somewhere—was it in Pittsburgh or Utica?—society, while promptly accepting
her, had reserved the right to cast a doubt on its own discrimination. Inquiry, however,
established her undoubted connection with a socially reigning family, and explained her recent
divorce as the natural result of a runaway match at seventeen; and as nothing was known of Mr.
Haskett it was easy to believe the worst of him.
Alice Haskett's remarriage with Gus Varick was a passport to the set whose recognition she
coveted, and for a few years the Varicks were the most popular couple in town. Unfortunately
the alliance was brief and stormy, and this time the husband had his champions. Still, even
Varick's stanchest supporters admitted that he was not meant for matrimony, and Mrs. Varick's
grievances were of a nature to bear the inspection of the New York courts. A New York divorce
is in itself a diploma of virtue, and in the semi-widowhood of this second separation Mrs. Varick
took on an air of sanctity, and was allowed to confide her wrongs to some of the most scrupulous
ears in town. But when it was known that she was to marry Waythorn there was a momentary
reaction. Her best friends would have preferred to see her remain in the role of the injured wife,
215
which was as becoming to her as crape to a rosy complexion. True, a decent time had elapsed,
and it was not even suggested that Waythorn had supplanted his predecessor. Still, people shook
their heads over him, and one grudging friend, to whom he affirmed that he took the step with his
eyes open, replied oracularly: "Yes—and with your ears shut."
Waythorn could afford to smile at these innuendoes. In the Wall Street phrase, he had
"discounted" them. He knew that society has not yet adapted itself to the consequences of
divorce, and that till the adaptation takes place every woman who uses the freedom the law
accords her must be her own social justification. Waythorn had an amused confidence in his
wife's ability to justify herself. His expectations were fulfilled, and before the wedding took
place Alice Varick's group had rallied openly to her support. She took it all imperturbably: she
had a way of surmounting obstacles without seeming to be aware of them, and Waythorn looked
back with wonder at the trivialities over which he had worn his nerves thin. He had the sense of
having found refuge in a richer, warmer nature than his own, and his satisfaction, at the moment,
was humorously summed up in the thought that his wife, when she had done all she could for
Lily, would not be ashamed to come down and enjoy a good dinner.
The anticipation of such enjoyment was not, however, the sentiment expressed by Mrs.
Waythorn's charming face when she presently joined him. Though she had put on her most
engaging teagown she had neglected to assume the smile that went with it, and Waythorn
thought he had never seen her look so nearly worried.
"What is it?" he asked. "Is anything wrong with Lily?"
"No; I've just been in and she's still sleeping." Mrs. Waythorn hesitated. "But something tiresome
has happened."
He had taken her two hands, and now perceived that he was crushing a paper between them.
"This letter?"
"Yes—Mr. Haskett has written—I mean his lawyer has written."
Waythorn felt himself flush uncomfortably. He dropped his wife's hands.
"What about?"
"About seeing Lily. You know the courts—"
"Yes, yes," he interrupted nervously.
Nothing was known about Haskett in New York. He was vaguely supposed to have remained in
the outer darkness from which his wife had been rescued, and Waythorn was one of the few who
were aware that he had given up his business in Utica and followed her to New York in order to
be near his little girl. In the days of his wooing, Waythorn had often met Lily on the doorstep,
rosy and smiling, on her way "to see papa."
216
"I am so sorry," Mrs. Waythorn murmured.
He roused himself. "What does he want?"
"He wants to see her. You know she goes to him once a week."
"Well—he doesn't expect her to go to him now, does he?"
"No—he has heard of her illness; but he expects to come here."
"Here?"
Mrs. Waythorn reddened under his gaze. They looked away from each other.
"I'm afraid he has the right....You'll see...." She made a proffer of the letter.
Waythorn moved away with a gesture of refusal. He stood staring about the softly lighted room,
which a moment before had seemed so full of bridal intimacy.
"I'm so sorry," she repeated. "If Lily could have been moved—"
"That's out of the question," he returned impatiently.
"I suppose so."
Her lip was beginning to tremble, and he felt himself a brute.
"He must come, of course," he said. "When is—his day?"
"I'm afraid—to-morrow."
"Very well. Send a note in the morning."
The butler entered to announce dinner.
Waythorn turned to his wife. "Come—you must be tired. It's beastly, but try to forget about it,"
he said, drawing her hand through his arm.
"You're so good, dear. I'll try," she whispered back.
Her face cleared at once, and as she looked at him across the flowers, between the rosy candleshades, he saw her lips waver back into a smile.
"How pretty everything is!" she sighed luxuriously.
He turned to the butler. "The champagne at once, please. Mrs. Waythorn is tired."
217
In a moment or two their eyes met above the sparkling glasses. Her own were quite clear and
untroubled: he saw that she had obeyed his injunction and forgotten.
Waythorn moved away with a gesture of refusal
II
A small effaced-looking man.
WAYTHORN, the next morning, went down town earlier than usual. Haskett was not likely to
come till the afternoon, but the instinct of flight drove him forth. He meant to stay away all
day—he had thoughts of dining at his club. As his door closed behind him he reflected that
before he opened it again it would have admitted another man who had as much right to enter it
as himself, and the thought filled him with a physical repugnance.
He caught the "elevated" at the employees' hour, and found himself crushed between two layers
of pendulous humanity. At Eighth Street the man facing him wriggled out and another took his
place. Waythorn glanced up and saw that it was Gus Varick. The men were so close together that
it was impossible to ignore the smile of recognition on Varick's handsome overblown face. And
after all—why not? They had always been on good terms, and Varick had been divorced before
Waythorn's attentions to his wife began. The two exchanged a word on the perennial grievance
of the congested trains, and when a seat at their side was miraculously left empty the instinct of
self-preservation made Waythorn slip into it after Varick.
The latter drew the stout man's breath of relief.
"Lord—I was beginning to feel like a pressed flower." He leaned back, looking unconcernedly at
Waythorn. "Sorry to hear that Sellers is knocked out again."
"Sellers?" echoed Waythorn, starting at his partner's name.
Varick looked surprised. "You didn't know he was laid up with the gout?"
"No. I've been away—I only got back last night." Waythorn felt himself reddening in
anticipation of the other's smile.
"Ah—yes; to be sure. And Sellers's attack came on two days ago. I'm afraid he's pretty bad. Very
awkward for me, as it happens, because he was just putting through a rather important thing for
me."
"Ah?" Waythorn wondered vaguely since when Varick had been dealing in "important things."
Hitherto he had dabbled only in the shallow pools of speculation, with which Waythorn's office
did not usually concern itself.
218
It occurred to him that Varick might be talking at random, to relieve the strain of their
propinquity. That strain was becoming momentarily more apparent to Waythorn, and when, at
Cortlandt Street, he caught sight of an acquaintance, and had a sudden vision of the picture he
and Varick must present to an initiated eye, he jumped up with a muttered excuse.
"I hope you'll find Sellers better," said Varick civilly, and he stammered back: "If I can be of any
use to you—" and let the departing crowd sweep him to the platform.
At his office he heard that Sellers was in fact ill with the gout, and would probably not be able to
leave the house for some weeks.
"I'm sorry it should have happened so, Mr. Waythorn," the senior clerk said with affable
significance. "Mr. Sellers was very much upset at the idea of giving you such a lot of extra work
just now."
"Oh, that's no matter," said Waythorn hastily. He secretly welcomed the pressure of additional
business, and was glad to think that, when the day's work was over, he would have to call at his
partner's on the way home.
He was late for luncheon, and turned in at the nearest restaurant instead of going to his club. The
place was full, and the waiter hurried him to the back of the room to capture the only vacant
table. In the cloud of cigar-smoke Waythorn did not at once distinguish his neighbors; but
presently, looking about him, he saw Varick seated a few feet off. This time, luckily, they were
too far apart for conversation, and Varick, who faced another way, had probably not even seen
him; but there was an irony in their renewed nearness.
Varick was said to be fond of good living, and as Waythorn sat despatching his hurried luncheon
he looked across half enviously at the other's leisurely degustation of his meal. When Waythorn
first saw him he had been helping himself with critical deliberation to a bit of Camembert at the
ideal point of liquefaction, and now, the cheese removed, he was just pouring his cafe
double from its little two-storied earthen pot. He poured slowly, his ruddy profile bent above the
task, and one beringed white hand steadying the lid of the coffee-pot; then he stretched his other
hand to the decanter of cognac at his elbow, filled a liqueur-glass, took a tentative sip, and
poured the brandy into his coffee-cup.
Waythorn watched him in a kind of fascination. What was he thinking of—only of the flavor of
the coffee and the liqueur? Had the morning's meeting left no more trace in his thoughts than on
his face? Had his wife so completely passed out of his life that even this odd encounter with her
present husband, within a week after her remarriage, was no more than an incident in his day?
And as Waythorn mused, another idea struck him: had Haskett ever met Varick as Varick and he
had just met? The recollection of Haskett perturbed him, and he rose and left the restaurant,
taking a circuitous way out to escape the placid irony of Varick's nod.
It was after seven when Waythorn reached home. He thought the footman who opened the door
looked at him oddly.
219
"How is Miss Lily?" he asked in haste.
"Doing very well, sir. A gentleman—"
"Tell Barlow to put off dinner for half an hour," Waythorn cut him off, hurrying upstairs.
He went straight to his room and dressed without seeing his wife. When he reached the drawingroom she was there, fresh and radiant. Lily's day had been good; the doctor was not coming back
that evening.
At dinner Waythorn told her of Sellers's illness and of the resulting complications. She listened
sympathetically, adjuring him not to let himself be overworked, and asking vague feminine
questions about the routine of the office. Then she gave him the chronicle of Lily's day; quoted
the nurse and doctor, and told him who had called to inquire. He had never seen her more serene
and unruffled. It struck him, with a curious pang, that she was very happy in being with him, so
happy that she found a childish pleasure in rehearsing the trivial incidents of her day.
After dinner they went to the library, and the servant put the coffee and liqueurs on a low table
before her and left the room. She looked singularly soft and girlish in her rosy pale dress, against
the dark leather of one of his bachelor armchairs. A day earlier the contrast would have charmed
him.
He turned away now, choosing a cigar with affected deliberation.
"Did Haskett come?" he asked, with his back to her.
"Oh, yes—he came."
"You didn't see him, of course?"
She hesitated a moment. "I let the nurse see him."
That was all. There was nothing more to ask. He swung round toward her, applying a match to
his cigar. Well, the thing was over for a week, at any rate. He would try not to think of it. She
looked up at him, a trifle rosier than usual, with a smile in her eyes.
"Ready for your coffee, dear?"
He leaned against the mantelpiece, watching her as she lifted the coffee-pot. The lamplight
struck a gleam from her bracelets and tipped her soft hair with brightness. How light and slender
she was, and how each gesture flowed into the next! She seemed a creature all compact of
harmonies. As the thought of Haskett receded, Waythorn felt himself yielding again to the joy of
possessorship. They were his, those white hands with their flitting motions, his the light haze of
hair, the lips and eyes....
220
She set down the coffee-pot, and reaching for the decanter of cognac, measured off a liqueurglass and poured it into his cup.
Waythorn uttered a sudden exclamation.
"What is the matter?" she said, startled.
"Nothing; only—I don't take cognac in my coffee."
"Oh, how stupid of me," she cried.
Their eyes met, and she blushed a sudden agonized red.
III
TEN DAYS later, Mr. Sellers, still house-bound, asked Waythorn to call on his way down town.
The senior partner, with his swaddled foot propped up by the fire, greeted his associate with an
air of embarrassment.
"I'm sorry, my dear fellow; I've got to ask you to do an awkward thing for me."
Waythorn waited, and the other went on, after a pause apparently given to the arrangement of his
phrases: "The fact is, when I was knocked out I had just gone into a rather complicated piece of
business for—Gus Varick."
"Well?" said Waythorn, with an attempt to put him at his ease.
"Well—it's this way: Varick came to me the day before my attack. He had evidently had an
inside tip from somebody, and had made about a hundred thousand. He came to me for advice,
and I suggested his going in with Vanderlyn."
"Oh, the deuce!" Waythorn exclaimed. He saw in a flash what had happened. The investment
was an alluring one, but required negotiation. He listened intently while Sellers put the case
before him, and, the statement ended, he said: "You think I ought to see Varick?"
"I'm afraid I can't as yet. The doctor is obdurate. And this thing can't wait. I hate to ask you, but
no one else in the office knows the ins and outs of it."
Waythorn stood silent. He did not care a farthing for the success of Varick's venture, but the
honor of the office was to be considered, and he could hardly refuse to oblige his partner.
"Very well," he said, "I'll do it."
221
That afternoon, apprised by telephone, Varick called at the office. Waythorn, waiting in his
private room, wondered what the others thought of it. The newspapers, at the time of Mrs.
Waythorn's marriage, had acquainted their readers with every detail of her previous matrimonial
ventures, and Waythorn could fancy the clerks smiling behind Varick's back as he was ushered
in.
Varick bore himself admirably. He was easy without being undignified, and Waythorn was
conscious of cutting a much less impressive figure. Varick had no head for business, and the talk
prolonged itself for nearly an hour while Waythorn set forth with scrupulous precision the details
of the proposed transaction.
"I'm awfully obliged to you," Varick said as he rose. "The fact is I'm not used to having much
money to look after, and I don't want to make an ass of myself—" He smiled, and Waythorn
could not help noticing that there was something pleasant about his smile. "It feels uncommonly
queer to have enough cash to pay one's bills. I'd have sold my soul for it a few years ago!"
Waythorn winced at the allusion. He had heard it rumored that a lack of funds had been one of
the determining causes of the Varick separation, but it did not occur to him that Varick's words
were intentional. It seemed more likely that the desire to keep clear of embarrassing topics had
fatally drawn him into one. Waythorn did not wish to be outdone in civility.
"We'll do the best we can for you," he said. "I think this is a good thing you're in."
"Oh, I'm sure it's immense. It's awfully good of you—" Varick broke off, embarrassed. "I
suppose the thing's settled now—but if—"
"If anything happens before Sellers is about, I'll see you again," said Waythorn quietly. He was
glad, in the end, to appear the more self-possessed of the two.
The course of Lily's illness ran smooth, and as the days passed Waythorn grew used to the idea
of Haskett's weekly visit. The first time the day came round, he stayed out late, and questioned
his wife as to the visit on his return. She replied at once that Haskett had merely seen the nurse
downstairs, as the doctor did not wish any one in the child's sick-room till after the crisis.
The following week Waythorn was again conscious of the recurrence of the day, but had
forgotten it by the time he came home to dinner. The crisis of the disease came a few days later,
with a rapid decline of fever, and the little girl was pronounced out of danger. In the rejoicing
which ensued the thought of Haskett passed out of Waythorn's mind and one afternoon, letting
himself into the house with a latchkey, he went straight to his library without noticing a shabby
hat and umbrella in the hall.
In the library he found a small effaced-looking man with a thinnish gray beard sitting on the edge
of a chair. The stranger might have been a piano-tuner, or one of those mysteriously efficient
persons who are summoned in emergencies to adjust some detail of the domestic machinery. He
blinked at Waythorn through a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles and said mildly: "Mr. Waythorn, I
presume? I am Lily's father."
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Waythorn flushed. "Oh—" he stammered uncomfortably. He broke off, disliking to appear rude.
Inwardly he was trying to adjust the actual Haskett to the image of him projected by his wife's
reminiscences. Waythorn had been allowed to infer that Alice's first husband was a brute.
"I am sorry to intrude," said Haskett, with his over-the-counter politeness.
"Don't mention it," returned Waythorn, collecting himself. "I suppose the nurse has been told?"
"I presume so. I can wait," said Haskett. He had a resigned way of speaking, as though life had
worn down his natural powers of resistance.
Waythorn stood on the threshold, nervously pulling off his gloves.
"I'm sorry you've been detained. I will send for the nurse," he said; and as he opened the door he
added with an effort: "I'm glad we can give you a good report of Lily." He winced as
the we slipped out, but Haskett seemed not to notice it.
"Thank you, Mr. Waythorn. It's been an anxious time for me."
"Ah, well, that's past. Soon she'll be able to go to you." Waythorn nodded and passed out.
In his own room, he flung himself down with a groan. He hated the womanish sensibility which
made him suffer so acutely from the grotesque chances of life. He had known when he married
that his wife's former husbands were both living, and that amid the multiplied contacts of modern
existence there were a thousand chances to one that he would run against one or the other, yet he
found himself as much disturbed by his brief encounter with Haskett as though the law had not
obligingly removed all difficulties in the way of their meeting.
Waythorn sprang up and began to pace the room nervously. He had not suffered half so much
from his two meetings with Varick. It was Haskett's presence in his own house that made the
situation so intolerable. He stood still, hearing steps in the passage.
"This way, please," he heard the nurse say. Haskett was being taken upstairs, then: not a corner
of the house but was open to him. Waythorn dropped into another chair, staring vaguely ahead of
him. On his dressing-table stood a photograph of Alice, taken when he had first known her. She
was Alice Varick then—how fine and exquisite he had thought her! Those were Varick's pearls
about her neck. At Waythorn's instance they had been returned before her marriage. Had Haskett
ever given her any trinkets—and what had become of them, Waythorn wondered? He realized
suddenly that he knew very little of Haskett's past or present situation; but from the man's
appearance and manner of speech he could reconstruct with curious precision the surroundings
of Alice's first marriage. And it startled him to think that she had, in the background of her life, a
phase of existence so different from anything with which he had connected her. Varick, whatever
his faults, was a gentleman, in the conventional, traditional sense of the term: the sense which at
that moment seemed, oddly enough, to have most meaning to Waythorn. He and Varick had the
same social habits, spoke the same language, understood the same allusions. But this other
man...it was grotesquely uppermost in Waythorn's mind that Haskett had worn a made-up tie
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attached with an elastic. Why should that ridiculous detail symbolize the whole man? Waythorn
was exasperated by his own paltriness, but the fact of the tie expanded, forced itself on him,
became as it were the key to Alice's past. He could see her, as Mrs. Haskett, sitting in a "front
parlor" furnished in plush, with a pianola, and a copy of "Ben Hur" on the centre-table. He could
see her going to the theatre with Haskett—or perhaps even to a "Church Sociable"—she in a
"picture hat" and Haskett in a black frock-coat, a little creased, with the made-up tie on an
elastic. On the way home they would stop and look at the illuminated shop-windows, lingering
over the photographs of New York actresses. On Sunday afternoons Haskett would take her for a
walk, pushing Lily ahead of them in a white enameled perambulator, and Waythorn had a vision
of the people they would stop and talk to. He could fancy how pretty Alice must have looked, in
a dress adroitly constructed from the hints of a New York fashion-paper; how she must have
looked down on the other women, chafing at her life, and secretly feeling that she belonged in a
bigger place.
For the moment his foremost thought was one of wonder at the way in which she had shed the
phase of existence which her marriage with Haskett implied. It was as if her whole aspect, every
gesture, every inflection, every allusion, were a studied negation of that period of her life. If she
had denied being married to Haskett she could hardly have stood more convicted of duplicity
than in this obliteration of the self which had been his wife.
Waythorn started up, checking himself in the analysis of her motives. What right had he to create
a fantastic effigy of her and then pass judgment on it? She had spoken vaguely of her first
marriage as unhappy, had hinted, with becoming reticence, that Haskett had wrought havoc
among her young illusions....It was a pity for Waythorn's peace of mind that Haskett's very
inoffensiveness shed a new light on the nature of those illusions. A man would rather think that
his wife has been brutalized by her first husband than that the process has been reversed.
"Why, how do you do?" she said with a distinct note of pleasure
IV
"MR. WAYTHORN, I don't like that French governess of Lily's."
Haskett, subdued and apologetic, stood before Waythorn in the library, revolving his shabby hat
in his hand.
Waythorn, surprised in his armchair over the evening paper, stared back perplexedly at his
visitor.
"You'll excuse my asking to see you," Haskett continued. "But this is my last visit, and I thought
if I could have a word with you it would be a better way than writing to Mrs. Waythorn's
lawyer."
Waythorn rose uneasily. He did not like the French governess either; but that was irrelevant.
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"I am not so sure of that," he returned stiffly; "but since you wish it I will give your message
to—my wife." He always hesitated over the possessive pronoun in addressing Haskett.
The latter sighed. "I don't know as that will help much. She didn't like it when I spoke to her."
Waythorn turned red. "When did you see her?" he asked.
"Not since the first day I came to see Lily—right after she was taken sick. I remarked to her then
that I didn't like the governess."
Waythorn made no answer. He remembered distinctly that, after that first visit, he had asked his
wife if she had seen Haskett. She had lied to him then, but she had respected his wishes since;
and the incident cast a curious light on her character. He was sure she would not have seen
Haskett that first day if she had divined that Waythorn would object, and the fact that she did not
divine it was almost as disagreeable to the latter as the discovery that she had lied to him.
"I don't like the woman," Haskett was repeating with mild persistency. "She ain't straight, Mr.
Waythorn—she'll teach the child to be underhand. I've noticed a change in Lily—she's too
anxious to please—and she don't always tell the truth. She used to be the straightest child, Mr.
Waythorn—" He broke off, his voice a little thick. "Not but what I want her to have a stylish
education," he ended.
Waythorn was touched. "I'm sorry, Mr. Haskett; but frankly, I don't quite see what I can do."
Haskett hesitated. Then he laid his hat on the table, and advanced to the hearth-rug, on which
Waythorn was standing. There was nothing aggressive in his manner; but he had the solemnity of
a timid man resolved on a decisive measure.
"There's just one thing you can do, Mr. Waythorn," he said. "You can remind Mrs. Waythorn
that, by the decree of the courts, I am entitled to have a voice in Lily's bringing up." He paused,
and went on more deprecatingly: "I'm not the kind to talk about enforcing my rights, Mr.
Waythorn. I don't know as I think a man is entitled to rights he hasn't known how to hold on to;
but this business of the child is different. I've never let go there—and I never mean to."
The scene left Waythorn deeply shaken. Shamefacedly, in indirect ways, he had been finding out
about Haskett; and all that he had learned was favorable. The little man, in order to be near his
daughter, had sold out his share in a profitable business in Utica, and accepted a modest
clerkship in a New York manufacturing house. He boarded in a shabby street and had few
acquaintances. His passion for Lily filled his life. Waythorn felt that this exploration of Haskett
was like groping about with a dark-lantern in his wife's past; but he saw now that there were
recesses his lantern had not explored. He had never inquired into the exact circumstances of his
wife's first matrimonial rupture. On the surface all had been fair. It was she who had obtained the
divorce, and the court had given her the child. But Waythorn knew how many ambiguities such a
verdict might cover. The mere fact that Haskett retained a right over his daughter implied an
unsuspected compromise. Waythorn was an idealist. He always refused to recognize unpleasant
contingencies till he found himself confronted with them, and then he saw them followed by a
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special train of consequences. His next days were thus haunted, and he determined to try to lay
the ghosts by conjuring them up in his wife's presence.
When he repeated Haskett's request a flame of anger passed over her face; but she subdued it
instantly and spoke with a slight quiver of outraged motherhood.
"It is very ungentlemanly of him," she said.
The word grated on Waythorn. "That is neither here nor there. It's a bare question of rights."
She murmured: "It's not as if he could ever be a help to Lily—"
Waythorn flushed. This was even less to his taste. "The question is," he repeated, "what authority
has he over her?"
She looked downward, twisting herself a little in her seat. "I am willing to see him—I thought
you objected," she faltered.
In a flash he understood that she knew the extent of Haskett's claims. Perhaps it was not the first
time she had resisted them.
"My objecting has nothing to do with it," he said coldly; "if Haskett has a right to be consulted
you must consult him."
She burst into tears, and he saw that she expected him to regard her as a victim.
Haskett did not abuse his rights. Waythorn had felt miserably sure that he would not. But the
governess was dismissed, and from time to time the little man demanded an interview with
Alice. After the first outburst she accepted the situation with her usual adaptability. Haskett had
once reminded Waythorn of the piano-tuner, and Mrs. Waythorn, after a month or two, appeared
to class him with that domestic familiar. Waythorn could not but respect the father's tenacity. At
first he had tried to cultivate the suspicion that Haskett might be "up to" something, that he had
an object in securing a foothold in the house. But in his heart Waythorn was sure of Haskett's
single-mindedness; he even guessed in the latter a mild contempt for such advantages as his
relation with the Waythorns might offer. Haskett's sincerity of purpose made him invulnerable,
and his successor had to accept him as a lien on the property.
Mr. Sellers was sent to Europe to recover from his gout, and Varick's affairs hung on Waythorn's
hands. The negotiations were prolonged and complicated; they necessitated frequent conferences
between the two men, and the interests of the firm forbade Waythorn's suggesting that his client
should transfer his business to another office.
Varick appeared well in the transaction. In moments of relaxation his coarse streak appeared, and
Waythorn dreaded his geniality; but in the office he was concise and clear-headed, with a
flattering deference to Waythorn's judgment. Their business relations being so affably
established, it would have been absurd for the two men to ignore each other in society. The first
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time they met in a drawing-room, Varick took up their intercourse in the same easy key, and his
hostess's grateful glance obliged Waythorn to respond to it. After that they ran across each other
frequently, and one evening at a ball Waythorn, wandering through the remoter rooms, came
upon Varick seated beside his wife. She colored a little, and faltered in what she was saying; but
Varick nodded to Waythorn without rising, and the latter strolled on.
In the carriage, on the way home, he broke out nervously: "I didn't know you spoke to Varick."
Her voice trembled a little. "It's the first time—he happened to be standing near me; I didn't
know what to do. It's so awkward, meeting everywhere—and he said you had been very kind
about some business."
"That's different," said Waythorn.
She paused a moment. "I'll do just as you wish," she returned pliantly. "I thought it would be less
awkward to speak to him when we meet."
Her pliancy was beginning to sicken him. Had she really no will of her own—no theory about
her relation to these men? She had accepted Haskett—did she mean to accept Varick? It was
"less awkward," as she had said, and her instinct was to evade difficulties or to circumvent them.
With sudden vividness Waythorn saw how the instinct had developed. She was "as easy as an old
shoe"—a shoe that too many feet had worn. Her elasticity was the result of tension in too many
different directions. Alice Haskett—Alice Varick—Alice Waythorn—she had been each in turn,
and had left hanging to each name a little of her privacy, a little of her personality, a little of the
inmost self where the unknown god abides.
"Yes—it's better to speak to Varick," said Waythorn wearily.
"Earth's Martyrs." By Stephen Phillips.
V
THE WINTER wore on, and society took advantage of the Waythorns' acceptance of Varick.
Harassed hostesses were grateful to them for bridging over a social difficulty, and Mrs.
Waythorn was held up as a miracle of good taste. Some experimental spirits could not resist the
diversion of throwing Varick and his former wife together, and there were those who thought he
found a zest in the propinquity. But Mrs. Waythorn's conduct remained irreproachable. She
neither avoided Varick nor sought him out. Even Waythorn could not but admit that she had
discovered the solution of the newest social problem.
He had married her without giving much thought to that problem. He had fancied that a woman
can shed her past like a man. But now he saw that Alice was bound to hers both by the
circumstances which forced her into continued relation with it, and by the traces it had left on her
nature. With grim irony Waythorn compared himself to a member of a syndicate. He held so
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many shares in his wife's personality and his predecessors were his partners in the business. If
there had been any element of passion in the transaction he would have felt less deteriorated by
it. The fact that Alice took her change of husbands like a change of weather reduced the situation
to mediocrity. He could have forgiven her for blunders, for excesses; for resisting Hackett, for
yielding to Varick; for anything but her acquiescence and her tact. She reminded him of a juggler
tossing knives; but the knives were blunt and she knew they would never cut her.
And then, gradually, habit formed a protecting surface for his sensibilities. If he paid for each
day's comfort with the small change of his illusions, he grew daily to value the comfort more and
set less store upon the coin. He had drifted into a dulling propinquity with Haskett and Varick
and he took refuge in the cheap revenge of satirizing the situation. He even began to reckon up
the advantages which accrued from it, to ask himself if it were not better to own a third of a wife
who knew how to make a man happy than a whole one who had lacked opportunity to acquire
the art. For it was an art, and made up, like all others, of concessions, eliminations and
embellishments; of lights judiciously thrown and shadows skillfully softened. His wife knew
exactly how to manage the lights, and he knew exactly to what training she owed her skill. He
even tried to trace the source of his obligations, to discriminate between the influences which had
combined to produce his domestic happiness: he perceived that Haskett's commonness had made
Alice worship good breeding, while Varick's liberal construction of the marriage bond had taught
her to value the conjugal virtues; so that he was directly indebted to his predecessors for the
devotion which made his life easy if not inspiring.
From this phase he passed into that of complete acceptance. He ceased to satirize himself
because time dulled the irony of the situation and the joke lost its humor with its sting. Even the
sight of Haskett's hat on the hall table had ceased to touch the springs of epigram. The hat was
often seen there now, for it had been decided that it was better for Lily's father to visit her than
for the little girl to go to his boarding-house. Waythorn, having acquiesced in this arrangement,
had been surprised to find how little difference it made. Haskett was never obtrusive, and the few
visitors who met him on the stairs were unaware of his identity. Waythorn did not know how
often he saw Alice, but with himself Haskett was seldom in contact.
One afternoon, however, he learned on entering that Lily's father was waiting to see him. In the
library he found Haskett occupying a chair in his usual provisional way. Waythorn always felt
grateful to him for not leaning back.
"I hope you'll excuse me, Mr. Waythorn," he said rising. "I wanted to see Mrs. Waythorn about
Lily, and your man asked me to wait here till she came in."
"Of course," said Waythorn, remembering that a sudden leak had that morning given over the
drawing-room to the plumbers.
He opened his cigar-case and held it out to his visitor, and Haskett's acceptance seemed to mark a
fresh stage in their intercourse. The spring evening was chilly, and Waythorn invited his guest to
draw up his chair to the fire. He meant to find an excuse to leave Haskett in a moment; but he
was tired and cold, and after all the little man no longer jarred on him.
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The two were inclosed in the intimacy of their blended cigar-smoke when the door opened and
Varick walked into the room. Waythorn rose abruptly. It was the first time that Varick had come
to the house, and the surprise of seeing him, combined with the singular inopportuneness of his
arrival, gave a new edge to Waythorn's blunted sensibilities. He stared at his visitor without
speaking.
Varick seemed too preoccupied to notice his host's embarrassment.
"My dear fellow," he exclaimed in his most expansive tone, "I must apologize for tumbling in on
you in this way, but I was too late to catch you down town, and so I thought—" He stopped
short, catching sight of Haskett, and his sanguine color deepened to a flush which spread vividly
under his scant blond hair. But in a moment he recovered himself and nodded slightly. Haskett
returned the bow in silence, and Waythorn was still groping for speech when the footman came
in carrying a tea-table.
The intrusion offered a welcome vent to Waythorn's nerves. "What the deuce are you bringing
this here for?" he said sharply.
"I beg your pardon, sir, but the plumbers are still in the drawing-room, and Mrs. Waythorn said
she would have tea in the library." The footman's perfectly respectful tone implied a reflection on
Waythorn's reasonableness.
"Oh, very well," said the latter resignedly, and the footman proceeded to open the folding teatable and set out its complicated appointments. While this interminable process continued the
three men stood motionless, watching it with a fascinated stare, till Waythorn, to break the
silence, said to Varick: "Won't you have a cigar?"
He held out the case he had just tendered to Haskett, and Varick helped himself with a smile.
Waythorn looked about for a match, and finding none, proffered a light from his own cigar.
Haskett, in the background, held his ground mildly, examining his cigar-tip now and then, and
stepping forward at the right moment to knock its ashes into the fire.
The footman at last withdrew, and Varick immediately began: "If I could just say half a word to
you about this business—"
"Certainly," stammered Waythorn; "in the dining-room—"
But as he placed his hand on the door it opened from without, and his wife appeared on the
threshold.
She came in fresh and smiling, in her street dress and hat, shedding a fragrance from the boa
which she loosened in advancing.
"Shall we have tea in here, dear?" she began; and then she caught sight of Varick. Her smile
deepened, veiling a slight tremor of surprise. "Why, how do you do?" she said with a distinct
note of pleasure.
229
As she shook hands with Varick she saw Haskett standing behind him. Her smile faded for a
moment, but she recalled it quickly, with a scarcely perceptible side-glance at Waythorn.
"How do you do, Mr. Haskett?" she said, and shook hands with him a shade less cordially.
The three men stood awkwardly before her, till Varick, always the most self-possessed, dashed
into an explanatory phrase.
"We—I had to see Waythorn a moment on business," he stammered, brick-red from chin to nape.
Haskett stepped forward with his air of mild obstinacy. "I am sorry to intrude; but you appointed
five o'clock—" he directed his resigned glance to the time-piece on the mantel.
She swept aside their embarrassment with a charming gesture of hospitality.
"I'm so sorry—I'm always late; but the afternoon was so lovely." She stood drawing her gloves
off, propitiatory and graceful, diffusing about her a sense of ease and familiarity in which the
situation lost its grotesqueness. "But before talking business," she added brightly, "I'm sure every
one wants a cup of tea."
She dropped into her low chair by the tea-table, and the two visitors, as if drawn by her smile,
advanced to receive the cups she held out.
She glanced about for Waythorn, and he took the third cup with a laugh.
Resources for The Rise of Realism
Frank Norris (1870-1902)
[image] Benjamin Franklin Norris was born on March 5, 1870 in Chicago, Illinois. While in his
teens, the family moved to San Francisco, California. Norris traveled extensively and worked as
a reporter and war correspondent. He married Jeanette Black in 1900. He died on October 25,
1902 of a burst appendix. Norris often wrote naturalistic fiction related to social issues of class
struggle, depicting the harsh repercussions of the workings of large corporations in the United
States. However, critics note that a number of his works perpetuate negative Jewish stereotypes.
Famous novels include McTeague: A Story of San Francisco (1899), The Octopus: A Story of
California (1901), and The Pit: A Story of Chicago (1903). An important biography is Joseph
McElrath and Jesse Crisler’s Frank Norris: A Life, University of Illinois Press, 2006. Critical
inspections should begin with McElrath’s Frank Norris Revisited, Twayne, 1992.
A Deal in Wheat
Norris, Frank. "A Deal in Wheat." A Deal in Wheat and Other Stories of the New and Old West.
New York: Doubleday, Page, and Company, 1903.
230
source of etext: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/9905
I. The Bear - Wheat at Sixty-two
As Sam Lewiston backed the horse into the shafts of his backboard and began hitching the tugs
to the whiffletree, his wife came out from the kitchen door of the house and drew near, and stood
for some time at the horse's head, her arms folded and her apron rolled around them. For a long
moment neither spoke. They had talked over the situation so long and so comprehensively the
night before that there seemed to be nothing more to say.
The time was late in the summer, the place a ranch in southwestern Kansas, and Lewiston and
his wife were two of a vast population of farmers, wheat growers, who at that moment were
passing through a crisis—a crisis that at any moment might culminate in tragedy. Wheat was
down to sixty-six.
At length Emma Lewiston spoke.
"Well," she hazarded, looking vaguely out across the ranch toward the horizon, leagues distant;
"well, Sam, there's always that offer of brother Joe's. We can quit—and go to Chicago—if the
worst comes."
"And give up!" exclaimed Lewiston, running the lines through the torets.
"Leave the ranch! Give up! After all these years!"
His wife made no reply for the moment. Lewiston climbed into the buckboard and gathered up
the lines. "Well, here goes for the last try, Emmie," he said. "Good-by, girl. Maybe things will
look better in town to-day."
"Maybe," she said gravely. She kissed her husband good-by and stood for some time looking
after the buckboard traveling toward the town in a moving pillar of dust.
"I don't know," she murmured at length; "I don't know just how we're going to make out."
When he reached town, Lewiston tied the horse to the iron railing in front of the Odd Fellows'
Hall, the ground floor of which was occupied by the post-office, and went across the street and
up the stairway of a building of brick and granite—quite the most pretentious structure of the
town—and knocked at a door upon the first landing. The door was furnished with a pane of
frosted glass, on which, in gold letters, was inscribed, "Bridges & Co., Grain Dealers."
Bridges himself, a middle-aged man who wore a velvet skull-cap and who was smoking a
Pittsburg stogie, met the farmer at the counter and the two exchanged perfunctory greetings.
"Well," said Lewiston, tentatively, after awhile.
"Well, Lewiston," said the other, "I can't take that wheat of yours at any better than sixty-two."
231
"Sixty-two."
"It's the Chicago price that does it, Lewiston. Truslow is bearing the stuff for all he's worth. It's
Truslow and the bear clique that stick the knife into us. The price broke again this morning.
We've just got a wire."
"Good heavens," murmured Lewiston, looking vaguely from side to side. "That—that ruins me. I
can't carry my grain any longer—what with storage charges and—and—Bridges, I don't see just
how I'm going to make out. Sixty-two cents a bushel! Why, man, what with this and with that it's
cost me nearly a dollar a bushel to raise that wheat, and now Truslow—"
He turned away abruptly with a quick gesture of infinite discouragement.
He went down the stairs, and making his way to where his buckboard was hitched, got in, and,
with eyes vacant, the reins slipping and sliding in his limp, half-open hands, drove slowly back
to the ranch. His wife had seen him coming, and met him as he drew up before the barn.
"Well?" she demanded.
"Emmie," he said as he got out of the buckboard, laying his arm across her shoulder, "Emmie, I
guess we'll take up with Joe's offer. We'll go to Chicago. We're cleaned out!"
II. The Bull - Wheat at a Dollar-Ten
…——and said Party of the Second Part further covenants and agrees to merchandise such
wheat in foreign ports, it being understood and agreed between the Party of the First Part and
the Party of the Second Part that the wheat hereinbefore mentioned is released and sold to the
Party of the Second Part for export purposes only, and not for consumption or distribution
within the boundaries of the United States of America or of Canada.
"Now, Mr. Gates, if you will sign for Mr. Truslow I guess that'll be all," remarked Hornung
when he had finished reading.
Hornung affixed his signature to the two documents and passed them over to Gates, who signed
for his principal and client, Truslow—or, as he had been called ever since he had gone into the
fight against Hornung's corner—the Great Bear. Hornung's secretary was called in and witnessed
the signatures, and Gates thrust the contract into his Gladstone bag and stood up, smoothing his
hat.
"You will deliver the warehouse receipts for the grain," began Gates.
"I'll send a messenger to Truslow's office before noon," interrupted Hornung. "You can pay by
certified check through the Illinois Trust people."
When the other had taken himself off, Hornung sat for some moments gazing abstractedly
toward his office windows, thinking over the whole matter. He had just agreed to release to
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Truslow, at the rate of one dollar and ten cents per bushel, one hundred thousand out of the two
million and odd bushels of wheat that he, Hornung, controlled, or actually owned. And for the
moment he was wondering if, after all, he had done wisely in not goring the Great Bear to actual
financial death. He had made him pay one hundred thousand dollars. Truslow was good for this
amount. Would it not have been better to have put a prohibitive figure on the grain and forced
the Bear into bankruptcy? True, Hornung would then be without his enemy's money, but
Truslow would have been eliminated from the situation, and that—so Hornung told himself—
was always a consummation most devoutly, strenuously and diligently to be striven for. Truslow
once dead was dead, but the Bear was never more dangerous than when desperate.
"But so long as he can't get wheat," muttered Hornung at the end of his reflections, "he can't hurt
me. And he can't get it. That I know."
For Hornung controlled the situation. So far back as the February of that year an "unknown bull"
had been making his presence felt on the floor of the Board of Trade. By the middle of March the
commercial reports of the daily press had begun to speak of "the powerful bull clique"; a few
weeks later that legendary condition of affairs implied and epitomized in the magic words
"Dollar Wheat" had been attained, and by the first of April, when the price had been boosted to
one dollar and ten cents a bushel, Hornung had disclosed his hand, and in place of mere rumours,
the definite and authoritative news that May wheat had been cornered in the Chicago pit went
flashing around the world from Liverpool to Odessa and from Duluth to Buenos Ayres.
It was—so the veteran operators were persuaded—Truslow himself who had made Hornung's
corner possible. The Great Bear had for once over-reached himself, and, believing himself allpowerful, had hammered the price just the fatal fraction too far down. Wheat had gone to sixtytwo—for the time, and under the circumstances, an abnormal price.
When the reaction came it was tremendous. Hornung saw his chance, seized it, and in a few
months had turned the tables, had cornered the product, and virtually driven the bear clique out
of the pit.
On the same day that the delivery of the hundred thousand bushels was made to Truslow,
Hornung met his broker at his lunch club.
"Well," said the latter, "I see you let go that line of stuff to
Truslow."
Hornung nodded; but the broker added:
"Remember, I was against it from the very beginning. I know we've cleared up over a hundred
thou'. I would have fifty times preferred to have lost twice that and smashed Truslow dead. Bet
you what you like he makes us pay for it somehow."
"Huh!" grunted his principal. "How about insurance, and warehouse charges, and carrying
expenses on that lot? Guess we'd have had to pay those, too, if we'd held on."
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But the other put up his chin, unwilling to be persuaded. "I won't sleep easy," he declared, "till
Truslow is busted."
III. The Pit
Just as Going mounted the steps on the edge of the pit the great gong struck, a roar of a hundred
voices developed with the swiftness of successive explosions, the rush of a hundred men surging
downward to the centre of the pit filled the air with the stamp and grind of feet, a hundred hands
in eager strenuous gestures tossed upward from out the brown of the crowd, the official reporter
in his cage on the margin of the pit leaned far forward with straining ear to catch the opening bid,
and another day of battle was begun.
Since the sale of the hundred thousand bushels of wheat to Truslow the "Hornung crowd" had
steadily shouldered the price higher until on this particular morning it stood at one dollar and a
half. That was Hornung's price. No one else had any grain to sell.
But not ten minutes after the opening, Going was surprised out of all countenance to hear
shouted from the other side of the pit these words:
"Sell May at one-fifty."
Going was for the moment touching elbows with Kimbark on one side and with Merriam on the
other, all three belonging to the "Hornung crowd." Their answering challenge of "Sold" was as
the voice of one man. They did not pause to reflect upon the strangeness of the circumstance.
(That was for afterward.) Their response to the offer was as unconscious, as reflex action and
almost as rapid, and before the pit was well aware of what had happened the transaction of one
thousand bushels was down upon Going's trading-card and fifteen hundred dollars had changed
hands. But here was a marvel—the whole available supply of wheat cornered, Hornung master of
the situation, invincible, unassailable; yet behold a man willing to sell, a Bear bold enough to
raise his head.
"That was Kennedy, wasn't it, who made that offer?" asked Kimbark, as
Going noted down the trade—"Kennedy, that new man?"
"Yes; who do you suppose he's selling for; who's willing to go short at this stage of the game?"
"Maybe he ain't short."
"Short! Great heavens, man; where'd he get the stuff?"
"Blamed if I know. We can account for every handful of May. Steady! Oh, there he goes again."
"Sell a thousand May at one-fifty," vociferated the bear-broker, throwing out his hand, one finger
raised to indicate the number of "contracts" offered. This time it was evident that he was
attacking the Hornung crowd deliberately, for, ignoring the jam of traders that swept toward him,
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he looked across the pit to where Going and Kimbark were shouting "Sold! Sold!" and nodded
his head.
A second time Going made memoranda of the trade, and either the Hornung holdings were
increased by two thousand bushels of May wheat or the Hornung bank account swelled by at
least three thousand dollars of some unknown short's money.
Of late—so sure was the bull crowd of its position—no one had even thought of glancing at the
inspection sheet on the bulletin board. But now one of Going's messengers hurried up to him
with the announcement that this sheet showed receipts at Chicago for that morning of twentyfive thousand bushels, and not credited to Hornung. Some one had got hold of a line of wheat
overlooked by the "clique" and was dumping it upon them.
"Wire the Chief," said Going over his shoulder to Merriam. This one struggled out of the crowd,
and on a telegraph blank scribbled:
"Strong bear movement—New man—Kennedy—Selling in lots of five contracts—Chicago
receipts twenty-five thousand."
The message was despatched, and in a few moments the answer came back, laconic, of military
terseness:
"Support the market."
And Going obeyed, Merriam and Kimbark following, the new broker fairly throwing the wheat
at them in thousand-bushel lots.
"Sell May at 'fifty; sell May; sell May." A moment's indecision, an instant's hesitation, the first
faint suggestion of weakness, and the market would have broken under them. But for the better
part of four hours they stood their ground, taking all that was offered, in constant communication
with the Chief, and from time to time stimulated and steadied by his brief, unvarying command:
"Support the market."
At the close of the session they had bought in the twenty-five thousand bushels of May.
Hornung's position was as stable as a rock, and the price closed even with the opening figure—
one dollar and a half.
But the morning's work was the talk of all La Salle Street. Who was back of the raid?
What was the meaning of this unexpected selling? For weeks the pit trading had been merely
nominal. Truslow, the Great Bear, from whom the most serious attack might have been expected,
had gone to his country seat at Geneva Lake, in Wisconsin, declaring himself to be out of the
market entirely. He went bass-fishing every day.
IV. The Belt Line
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On a certain day toward the middle of the month, at a time when the mysterious Bear had
unloaded some eighty thousand bushels upon Hornung, a conference was held in the library of
Hornung's home. His broker attended it, and also a clean-faced, bright-eyed individual whose
name of Cyrus Ryder might have been found upon the pay-roll of a rather well-known detective
agency. For upward of half an hour after the conference began the detective spoke, the other two
listening attentively, gravely.
"Then, last of all," concluded Ryder, "I made out I was a hobo, and began stealing rides on the
Belt Line Railroad. Know the road? It just circles Chicago. Truslow owns it. Yes? Well, then I
began to catch on. I noticed that cars of certain numbers—thirty-one nought thirty-four, thirtytwo one ninety—well, the numbers don't matter, but anyhow, these cars were always switched
onto the sidings by Mr. Truslow's main elevator D soon as they came in. The wheat was shunted
in, and they were pulled out again. Well, I spotted one car and stole a ride on her. Say, look here,
that car went right around the city on the Belt, and came back to D again, and the same wheat in
her all the time. The grain was reinspected—it was raw, I tell you—and the warehouse receipts
made out just as though the stuff had come in from Kansas or Iowa."
"The same wheat all the time!" interrupted Hornung.
"The same wheat—your wheat, that you sold to Truslow."
"Great snakes!" ejaculated Hornung's broker. "Truslow never took it abroad at all."
"Took it abroad! Say, he's just been running it around Chicago, like the supers in 'Shenandoah,'
round an' round, so you'd think it was a new lot, an' selling it back to you again."
"No wonder we couldn't account for so much wheat."
"Bought it from us at one-ten, and made us buy it back—our own wheat—at one-fifty."
Hornung and his broker looked at each other in silence for a moment. Then all at once Hornung
struck the arm of his chair with his fist and exploded in a roar of laughter. The broker stared for
one bewildered moment, then followed his example.
"Sold! Sold!" shouted Hornung almost gleefully. "Upon my soul it's as good as a Gilbert and
Sullivan show. And we—Oh, Lord! Billy, shake on it, and hats off to my distinguished friend,
Truslow. He'll be President some day. Hey! What? Prosecute him? Not I."
"He's done us out of a neat hatful of dollars for all that," observed the broker, suddenly grave.
"Billy, it's worth the price."
"We've got to make it up somehow."
"Well, tell you what. We were going to boost the price to one seventy-five next week, and make
that our settlement figure."
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"Can't do it now. Can't afford it."
"No. Here; we'll let out a big link; we'll put wheat at two dollars, and let it go at that."
"Two it is, then," said the broker.
V. The Bread Line
The street was very dark and absolutely deserted. It was a district on the "South Side," not far
from the Chicago River, given up largely to wholesale stores, and after nightfall was empty of all
life. The echoes slept but lightly hereabouts, and the slightest footfall, the faintest noise, woke
them upon the instant and sent them clamouring up and down the length of the pavement
between the iron shuttered fronts. The only light visible came from the side door of a certain
"Vienna" bakery, where at one o'clock in the morning loaves of bread were given away to any
who should ask. Every evening about nine o'clock the outcasts began to gather about the side
door. The stragglers came in rapidly, and the line—the "bread line," as it was called—began to
form. By midnight it was usually some hundred yards in length, stretching almost the entire
length of the block.
Toward ten in the evening, his coat collar turned up against the fine drizzle that pervaded the air,
his hands in his pockets, his elbows gripping his sides, Sam Lewiston came up and silently took
his place at the end of the line.
Unable to conduct his farm upon a paying basis at the time when Truslow, the "Great Bear," had
sent the price of grain down to sixty-two cents a bushel, Lewiston had turned over his entire
property to his creditors, and, leaving Kansas for good, had abandoned farming, and had left his
wife at her sister's boarding-house in Topeka with the understanding that she was to join him in
Chicago so soon as he had found a steady job. Then he had come to Chicago and had turned
workman. His brother Joe conducted a small hat factory on Archer Avenue, and for a time he
found there a meager employment. But difficulties had occurred, times were bad, the hat factory
was involved in debts, the repealing of a certain import duty on manufactured felt overcrowded
the home market with cheap Belgian and French products, and in the end his brother had
assigned and gone to Milwaukee.
Thrown out of work, Lewiston drifted aimlessly about Chicago, from pillar to post, working a
little, earning here a dollar, there a dime, but always sinking, sinking, till at last the ooze of the
lowest bottom dragged at his feet and the rush of the great ebb went over him and engulfed him
and shut him out from the light, and a park bench became his home and the "bread line" his chief
makeshift of subsistence.
He stood now in the enfolding drizzle, sodden, stupefied with fatigue. Before and behind
stretched the line. There was no talking. There was no sound. The street was empty. It was so
still that the passing of a cable-car in the adjoining thoroughfare grated like prolonged rolling
explosions, beginning and ending at immeasurable distances. The drizzle descended incessantly.
After a long time midnight struck.
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There was something ominous and gravely impressive in this interminable line of dark figures,
close-pressed, soundless; a crowd, yet absolutely still; a close-packed, silent file, waiting,
waiting in the vast deserted night-ridden street; waiting without a word, without a movement,
there under the night and under the slow-moving mists of rain.
Few in the crowd were professional beggars. Most of them were workmen, long since out of
work, forced into idleness by long-continued "hard times," by ill luck, by sickness. To them the
"bread line" was a godsend. At least they could not starve. Between jobs here in the end was
something to hold them up—a small platform, as it were, above the sweep of black water, where
for a moment they might pause and take breath before the plunge.
The period of waiting on this night of rain seemed endless to those silent, hungry men; but at
length there was a stir. The line moved. The side door opened. Ah, at last! They were going to
hand out the bread.
But instead of the usual white-aproned under-cook with his crowded hampers there now
appeared in the doorway a new man—a young fellow who looked like a bookkeeper's assistant.
He bore in his hand a placard,which he tacked to the outside of the door. Then he disappeared
within the bakery, locking the door after him.
A shudder of poignant despair, an unformed, inarticulate sense of calamity, seemed to run from
end to end of the line. What had happened? Those in the rear, unable to read the placard, surged
forward, a sense of bitter disappointment clutching at their hearts.
The line broke up, disintegrated into a shapeless throng—a throng that crowded forward and
collected in front of the shut door whereon the placard was affixed. Lewiston, with the others,
pushed forward. On the placard he read these words:
"Owing to the fact that the price of grain has been increased to two dollars a bushel, there will be
no distribution of bread from this bakery until further notice."
Lewiston turned away, dumb, bewildered. Till morning he walked the streets, going on without
purpose, without direction. But now at last his luck had turned. Overnight the wheel of his
fortunes had creaked and swung upon its axis, and before noon he had found a job in the streetcleaning brigade. In the course of time he rose to be first shift-boss, then deputy inspector, then
inspector, promoted to the dignity of driving in a red wagon with rubber tires and drawing a
salary instead of mere wages. The wife was sent for and a new start made.
But Lewiston never forgot. Dimly he began to see the significance of things. Caught once in the
cogs and wheels of a great and terrible engine, he had seen—none better—its workings. Of all
the men who had vainly stood in the "bread line" on that rainy night in early summer, he,
perhaps, had been the only one who had struggled up to the surface again. How many others had
gone down in the great ebb? Grim question; he dared not think how many.
He had seen the two ends of a great wheat operation—a battle between Bear and Bull. The
stories (subsequently published in the city's press) of Truslow's countermove in selling Hornung
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his own wheat, supplied the unseen section. The farmer—he who raised the wheat—was ruined
upon one hand; the working-man—he who consumed it—was ruined upon the other. But
between the two, the great operators, who never saw the wheat they traded in, bought and sold
the world's food, gambled in the nourishment of entire nations, practised their tricks, their
chicanery and oblique shifty "deals," were reconciled in their differences, and went on through
their appointed way, jovial, contented, enthroned, and unassailable.
Resources for The Rise of Realism
Stephen Crane (1871-1900)
[image] Stephen Crane, an important writer of literary realism and naturalism, was born on
November 1, 1871 in Newark, New Jersey to a large family. He attended numerous colleges,
more interested in baseball than course work, though he did excel in literature and history. In his
early twenties, Crane decided to become a full time writer and reporter, and had pieced published
in a range of eastern papers. His first novel, Maggie, A Girl of the Streets (1893), was selfpublished and went virtually unnoticed. His first real success came with his important Civil War
book, The Red Badge of Courage (1895). Heading to Cuba to work as a war correspondent,
Crane was on the boat, the Commodore, when it sank and his experience of surviving that
shipwreck is recorded in his story, “The Open Boat.” Crane wrote poetry, sketches, stories,
novels and journalistic pieces until his early death, on June 5, 1900, of tuberculosis. He is buried
in Evergreen Cemetery in Hillside, New Jersey. Students interested in Crane’s life and work
should begin with Edwin Cady’s Stephen Crane, Twayne, 1980, then explore the wide range of
other biographical and critical works on this author.
The Open Boat
Crane, Stephen. "The Open Boat." Scribner's Magazine, 1897.
source of etext: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/7239
A Tale intended to be after the fact. Being the experience of four men from the sunk steamer
"Commodore"
I
None of them knew the color of the sky. Their eyes glanced level, and were fastened upon the
waves that swept toward them. These waves were of the hue of slate, save for the tops, which
were of foaming white, and all of the men knew the colors of the sea. The horizon narrowed and
widened, and dipped and rose, and at all times its edge was jagged with waves that seemed thrust
up in points like rocks. Many a man ought to have a bath-tub larger than the boat which here
rode upon the sea. These waves were most wrongfully and barbarously abrupt and tall, and each
froth-top was a problem in small-boat navigation.
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The cook squatted in the bottom and looked with both eyes at the six inches of gunwale which
separated him from the ocean. His sleeves were rolled over his fat forearms, and the two flaps of
his unbuttoned vest dangled as he bent to bail out the boat. Often he said: "Gawd! That was a
narrow clip." As he remarked it he invariably gazed eastward over the broken sea.
The oiler, steering with one of the two oars in the boat, sometimes raised himself suddenly to
keep clear of water that swirled in over the stern. It was a thin little oar and it seemed often ready
to snap.
The correspondent, pulling at the other oar, watched the waves and wondered why he was there.
The injured captain, lying in the bow, was at this time buried in that profound dejection and
indifference which comes, temporarily at least, to even the bravest and most enduring when,
willy nilly, the firm fails, the army loses, the ship goes down. The mind of the master of a vessel
is rooted deep in the timbers of her, though he commanded for a day or a decade, and this captain
had on him the stern impression of a scene in the greys of dawn of seven turned faces, and later a
stump of a top-mast with a white ball on it that slashed to and fro at the waves, went low and
lower, and down. Thereafter there was something strange in his voice. Although steady, it was,
deep with mourning, and of a quality beyond oration or tears.
"Keep 'er a little more south, Billie," said he.
"'A little more south,' sir," said the oiler in the stern.
A seat in this boat was not unlike a seat upon a bucking broncho, and by the same token, a
broncho is not much smaller. The craft pranced and reared, and plunged like an animal. As each
wave came, and she rose for it, she seemed like a horse making at a fence outrageously high. The
manner of her scramble over these walls of water is a mystic thing, and, moreover, at the top of
them were ordinarily these problems in white water, the foam racing down from the summit of
each wave, requiring a new leap, and a leap from the air. Then, after scornfully bumping a crest,
she would slide, and race, and splash down a long incline, and arrive bobbing and nodding in
front of the next menace.
A singular disadvantage of the sea lies in the fact that after successfully surmounting one wave
you discover that there is another behind it just as important and just as nervously anxious to do
something effective in the way of swamping boats. In a ten-foot dingey one can get an idea of
the resources of the sea in the line of waves that is not probable to the average experience which
is never at sea in a dingey. As each slatey wall of water approached, it shut all else from the view
of the men in the boat, and it was not difficult to imagine that this particular wave was the final
outburst of the ocean, the last effort of the grim water. There was a terrible grace in the move of
the waves, and they came in silence, save for the snarling of the crests.
In the wan light, the faces of the men must have been grey. Their eyes must have glinted in
strange ways as they gazed steadily astern. Viewed from a balcony, the whole thing would
doubtless have been weirdly picturesque. But the men in the boat had no time to see it, and if
they had had leisure there were other things to occupy their minds. The sun swung steadily up
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the sky, and they knew it was broad day because the color of the sea changed from slate to
emerald-green, streaked with amber lights, and the foam was like tumbling snow. The process of
the breaking day was unknown to them. They were aware only of this effect upon the color of
the waves that rolled toward them.
In disjointed sentences the cook and the correspondent argued as to the difference between a lifesaving station and a house of refuge. The cook had said: "There's a house of refuge just north of
the Mosquito Inlet Light, and as soon as they see us, they'll come off in their boat and pick us
up."
"As soon as who see us?" said the correspondent.
"The crew," said the cook.
"Houses of refuge don't have crews," said the correspondent. "As I understand them, they are
only places where clothes and grub are stored for the benefit of shipwrecked people. They don't
carry crews."
"Oh, yes, they do," said the cook.
"No, they don't," said the correspondent.
"Well, we're not there yet, anyhow," said the oiler, in the stern.
"Well," said the cook, "perhaps it's not a house of refuge that I'm thinking of as being near
Mosquito Inlet Light. Perhaps it's a life-saving station."
"We're not there yet," said the oiler, in the stern.
II
As the boat bounced from the top of each wave, the wind tore through the hair of the hatless
men, and as the craft plopped her stern down again the spray splashed past them. The crest of
each of these waves was a hill, from the top of which the men surveyed, for a moment, a broad
tumultuous expanse, shining and wind-riven. It was probably splendid. It was probably glorious,
this play of the free sea, wild with lights of emerald and white and amber.
"Bully good thing it's an on-shore wind," said the cook; "If not, where would we be? Wouldn't
have a show."
"That's right," said the correspondent.
The busy oiler nodded his assent.
Then the captain, in the bow, chuckled in a way that expressed humor, contempt, tragedy, all in
one. "Do you think We've got much of a show now, boys?" said he.
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Whereupon the three were silent, save for a trifle of hemming and hawing. To express any
particular optimism at this time they felt to be childish and stupid, but they all doubtless
possessed this sense of the situation in their mind. A young man thinks doggedly at such times.
On the other hand, the ethics of their condition was decidedly against any open suggestion of
hopelessness. So they were silent.
"Oh, well," said the captain, soothing his children, "We'll get ashore all right."
But there was that in his tone which made them think, so the oiler quoth: "Yes! If this wind
holds!"
The cook was bailing: "Yes! If we don't catch hell in the surf."
Canton flannel gulls flew near and far. Sometimes they sat down on the sea, near patches of
brown seaweed that rolled on the waves with a movement like carpets on a line in a gale. The
birds sat comfortably in groups, and they were envied by some in the dingey, for the wrath of the
sea was no more to them than it was to a covey of prairie chickens a thousand miles inland.
Often they came very close and stared at the men with black bead-like eyes. At these times they
were uncanny and sinister in their unblinking scrutiny, and the men hooted angrily at them,
telling them to be gone. One came, and evidently decided to alight on the top of the captain's
head. The bird flew parallel to the boat and did not circle, but made short sidelong jumps in the
air in chicken-fashion. His black eyes were wistfully fixed upon the captain's head. "Ugly brute,"
said the oiler to the bird. "You look as if you were made with a jack-knife." The cook and the
correspondent swore darkly at the creature. The captain naturally wished to knock it away with
the end of the heavy painter; but he did not dare do it, because anything resembling an emphatic
gesture would have capsized this freighted boat, and so with his open hand, the captain gently
and carefully waved the gull away. After it had been discouraged from the pursuit the captain
breathed easier on account of his hair, and others breathed easier because the bird struck their
minds at this time as being somehow grewsome and ominous.
In the meantime the oiler and the correspondent rowed And also they rowed.
They sat together in the same seat, and each rowed an oar. Then the oiler took both oars; then the
correspondent took both oars; then the oiler; then the correspondent. They rowed and they
rowed. The very ticklish part of the business was when the time came for the reclining one in the
stern to take his turn at the oars. By the very last star of truth, it is easier to steal eggs from under
a hen than it was to change seats in the dingey. First the man in the stern slid his hand along the
thwart and moved with care, as if he were of Sèvres. Then the man in the rowing seat slid his
hand along the other thwart. It was all done with most extraordinary care. As the two sidled past
each other, the whole party kept watchful eyes on the coming wave, and the captain cried: "Look
out now! Steady there!"
The brown mats of seaweed that appeared from time to time were like islands, bits of earth. They
were traveling, apparently, neither one way nor the other. They were, to all intents, stationary.
They informed the men in the boat that it was making progress slowly toward the land.
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The captain, rearing cautiously in the bow, after the dingey soared on a great swell, said that he
had seen the light-house at Mosquito Inlet. Presently the cook remarked that he had seen it. The
correspondent was at the oars then, and for some reason he too wished to look at the lighthouse,
but his back was toward the far shore and the waves were important, and for some time he could
not seize an opportunity to turn his head. But at last there came a wave more gentle than the
others, and when at the crest of it he swiftly scoured the western horizon.
"See it?" said the captain.
"No," said the correspondent slowly, "I didn't see anything."
"Look again," said the captain. He pointed. "It's exactly in that direction."
At the top of another wave, the correspondent did as he was bid, and this time his eyes chanced
on a small still thing on the edge of the swaying horizon. It was precisely like the point of a pin.
It took an anxious eye to find a light house so tiny.
"Think we'll make it, captain?"
"If this wind holds and the boat don't swamp, we can't do much else," said the captain.
The little boat, lifted by each towering sea, and splashed viciously by the crests, made progress
that in the absence of seaweed was not apparent to those in her. She seemed just a wee thing
wallowing, miraculously top-up, at the mercy of five oceans. Occasionally, a great spread of
water, like white flames, swarmed into her.
"Bail her, cook," said the captain serenely.
"All right, captain," said the cheerful cook.
III
It would be difficult to describe the subtle brotherhood of men that was here established on the
seas. No one said that it was so. No one mentioned it. But it dwelt in the boat, and each man felt
it warm him. They were a captain, an oiler, a cook, and a correspondent, and they were friends,
friends in a more curiously iron-bound degree than may be common. The hurt captain, lying
against the water-jar in the bow, spoke always in a low voice and calmly, but he could never
command a more ready and swiftly obedient crew than the motley three of the dingey. It was
more than a mere recognition of what was best for the common safety. There was surely in it a
quality that was personal and heartfelt. And after this devotion to the commander of the boat
there was this comradeship that the correspondent, for instance, who had been taught to be
cynical of men, knew even at the time was the best experience of his life. But no one said that it
was so. No one mentioned it.
"I wish we had a sail," remarked the captain. "We might try my overcoat on the end of an oar and
give you two boys a chance to rest." So the cook and the correspondent held the mast and spread
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wide the overcoat. The oiler steered, and the little boat made good way with her new rig.
Sometimes the oiler had to scull sharply to keep a sea from breaking into the boat, but otherwise
sailing was a success.
Meanwhile the lighthouse had been growing slowly larger. It had now almost assumed color, and
appeared like a little grey shadow on the sky. The man at the oars could not be prevented from
turning his head rather often to try for a glimpse of this little grey shadow.
At last, from the top of each wave the men in the tossing boat could see land. Even as the
lighthouse was an upright shadow on the sky, this land seemed but a long black shadow on the
sea. It certainly was thinner than paper. "We must be about opposite New Smyrna," said the
cook, who had coasted this shore often in schooners. "Captain, by the way, I believe they
abandoned that life-saving station there about a year ago."
"Did they?" said the captain.
The wind slowly died away. The cook and the correspondent were not now obliged to slave in
order to hold high the oar. But the waves continued their old impetuous swooping at the dingey,
and the little craft, no longer under way, struggled woundily over them. The oiler or the
correspondent took the oars again.
Shipwrecks are à propos of nothing. If men could only train for them and have them occur when
the men had reached pink condition, there would be less drowning at sea. Of the four in the
dingey none had slept any time worth mentioning for two days and two nights previous to
embarking in the dingey, and in the excitement of clambering about the deck of a foundering
ship they had also forgotten to eat heartily.
For these reasons, and for others, neither the oiler nor the correspondent was fond of rowing at
this time. The correspondent wondered ingenuously how in the name of all that was sane could
there be people who thought it amusing to row a boat. It was not an amusement; it was a
diabolical punishment, and even a genius of mental aberrations could never conclude that it was
anything but a horror to the muscles and a crime against the back. He mentioned to the boat in
general how the amusement of rowing struck him, and the weary-faced oiler smiled in full
sympathy. Previously to the foundering, by the way, the oiler had worked double-watch in the
engine-room of the ship.
"Take her easy, now, boys," said the captain. "Don't spend yourselves. If we have to run a surf
you'll need all your strength, because we'll sure have to swim for it. Take your time."
Slowly the land arose from the sea. From a black line it became a line of black and a line of
white, trees and sand. Finally, the captain said that he could make out a house on the shore.
"That's the house of refuge, sure," said the cook. "They'll see us before long, and come out after
us."
The distant lighthouse reared high. "The keeper ought to be able to make us out now, if he's
looking through a glass," said the captain. "He'll notify the life-saving people."
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"None of those other boats could have got ashore to give word of the wreck," said the oiler, in a
low voice. "Else the lifeboat would be out hunting us."
Slowly and beautifully the land loomed out of the sea. The wind came again. It had veered from
the north-east to the south-east. Finally, a new sound struck the ears of the men in the boat. It
was the low thunder of the surf on the shore. "We'll never be able to make the lighthouse now,"
said the captain. "Swing her head a little more north, Billie," said he.
"'A little more north,' sir," said the oiler.
Whereupon the little boat turned her nose once more down the wind, and all but the oarsman
watched the shore grow. Under the influence of this expansion doubt and direful apprehension
was leaving the minds of the men. The management of the boat was still most absorbing, but it
could not prevent a quiet cheerfulness. In an hour, perhaps, they would be ashore.
Their backbones had become thoroughly used to balancing in the boat, and they now rode this
wild colt of a dingey like circus men. The correspondent thought that he had been drenched to
the skin, but happening to feel in the top pocket of his coat, he found therein eight cigars. Four of
them were soaked with sea-water; four were perfectly scathless. After a search, somebody
produced three dry matches, and thereupon the four waifs rode impudently in their little boat,
and with an assurance of an impending rescue shining in their eyes, puffed at the big cigars and
judged well and ill of all men. Everybody took a drink of water.
IV
"Cook," remarked the captain, "there don't seem to be any signs of life about your house of
refuge."
"No," replied the cook. "Funny they don't see us!"
A broad stretch of lowly coast lay before the eyes of the men. It was of dunes topped with dark
vegetation. The roar of the surf was plain, and sometimes they could see the white lip of a wave
as it spun up the beach. A tiny house was blocked out black upon the sky. Southward, the slim
lighthouse lifted its little grey length.
Tide, wind, and waves were swinging the dingey northward. "Funny they don't see us," said the
men.
The surf's roar was here dulled, but its tone was, nevertheless, thunderous and mighty. As the
boat swam over the great rollers, the men sat listening to this roar. "We'll swamp sure," said
everybody.
It is fair to say here that there was not a life-saving station within twenty miles in either
direction, but the men did not know this fact, and in consequence they made dark and
opprobrious remarks concerning the eyesight of the nation's life-savers. Four scowling men sat in
the dingey and surpassed records in the invention of epithets.
245
"Funny they don't see us."
The lightheartedness of a former time had completely faded. To their sharpened minds it was
easy to conjure pictures of all kinds of incompetency and blindness and, indeed, cowardice.
There was the shore of the populous land, and it was bitter and bitter to them that from it came
no sign.
"Well," said the captain, ultimately, "I suppose we'll have to make a try for ourselves. If we stay
out here too long, we'll none of us have strength left to swim after the boat swamps."
And so the oiler, who was at the oars, turned the boat straight for the shore. There was a sudden
tightening of muscle. There was some thinking.
"If we don't all get ashore—" said the captain. "If we don't all get ashore, I suppose you fellows
know where to send news of my finish?"
They then briefly exchanged some addresses and admonitions. As for the reflections of the men,
there was a great deal of rage in them. Perchance they might be formulated thus: "If I am going
to be drowned—if I am going to be drowned—if I am going to be drowned, why, in the name of
the seven mad gods who rule the sea, was I allowed to come thus far and contemplate sand and
trees? Was I brought here merely to have my nose dragged away as I was about to nibble the
sacred cheese of life? It is preposterous. If this old ninny-woman, Fate, cannot do better than this,
she should be deprived of the management of men's fortunes. She is an old hen who knows not
her intention. If she has decided to drown me, why did she not do it in the beginning and save me
all this trouble? The whole affair is absurd…. But no, she cannot mean to drown me. She dare
not drown me. She cannot drown me. Not after all this work." Afterward the man might have had
an impulse to shake his fist at the clouds: "Just you drown me, now, and then hear what I call
you!"
The billows that came at this time were more formidable. They seemed always just about to
break and roll over the little boat in a turmoil of foam. There was a preparatory and long growl in
the speech of them. No mind unused to the sea would have concluded that the dingey could
ascend these sheer heights in time. The shore was still afar. The oiler was a wily surfman.
"Boys," he said swiftly, "she won't live three minutes more, and we're too far out to swim. Shall I
take her to sea again, captain?"
"Yes! Go ahead!" said the captain.
This oiler, by a series of quick miracles, and fast and steady oarsmanship, turned the boat in the
middle of the surf and took her safely to sea again.
There was a considerable silence as the boat bumped over the furrowed sea to deeper water.
Then somebody in gloom spoke. "Well, anyhow, they must have seen us from the shore by
now."
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The gulls went in slanting flight up the wind toward the grey desolate east. A squall, marked by
dingy clouds, and clouds brick-red, like smoke from a burning building, appeared from the
south-east.
"What do you think of those life-saving people? Ain't they peaches?'
"Funny they haven't seen us."
"Maybe they think we're out here for sport! Maybe they think we're fishin'. Maybe they think
we're damned fools."
It was a long afternoon. A changed tide tried to force them southward, but the wind and wave
said northward. Far ahead, where coast-line, sea, and sky formed their mighty angle, there were
little dots which seemed to indicate a city on the shore.
"St. Augustine?"
The captain shook his head. "Too near Mosquito Inlet."
And the oiler rowed, and then the correspondent rowed. Then the oiler rowed. It was a weary
business. The human back can become the seat of more aches and pains than are registered in
books for the composite anatomy of a regiment. It is a limited area, but it can become the theatre
of innumerable muscular conflicts, tangles, wrenches, knots, and other comforts.
"Did you ever like to row, Billie?" asked the correspondent.
"No," said the oiler. "Hang it!"
When one exchanged the rowing-seat for a place in the bottom of the boat, he suffered a bodily
depression that caused him to be careless of everything save an obligation to wiggle one finger.
There was cold sea-water swashing to and fro in the boat, and he lay in it. His head, pillowed on
a thwart, was within an inch of the swirl of a wave crest, and sometimes a particularly
obstreperous sea came in-board and drenched him once more. But these matters did not annoy
him. It is almost certain that if the boat had capsized he would have tumbled comfortably out
upon the ocean as if he felt sure that it was a great soft mattress.
"Look! There's a man on the shore!"
"Where?"
"There! See 'im? See 'im?"
"Yes, sure! He's walking along."
"Now he's stopped. Look! He's facing us!"
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"He's waving at us!"
"So he is! By thunder!"
"Ah, now we're all right! Now we're all right! There'll be a boat out here for us in half-an-hour."
"He's going on. He's running. He's going up to that house there."
The remote beach seemed lower than the sea, and it required a searching glance to discern the
little black figure. The captain saw a floating stick and they rowed to it. A bath-towel was by
some weird chance in the boat, and, tying this on the stick, the captain waved it. The oarsman did
not dare turn his head, so he was obliged to ask questions.
"What's he doing now?"
"He's standing still again. He's looking, I think…. There he goes again. Toward the house….
Now he's stopped again."
"Is he waving at us?"
"No, not now! he was, though."
"Look! There comes another man!"
"He's running."
"Look at him go, would you."
"Why, he's on a bicycle. Now he's met the other man. They're both waving at us. Look!"
"There comes something up the beach."
"What the devil is that thing?"
"Why it looks like a boat."
"Why, certainly it's a boat."
"No, it's on wheels."
"Yes, so it is. Well, that must be the life-boat. They drag them along shore on a wagon."
"That's the life-boat, sure."
"No, by ——, it's—it's an omnibus."
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"I tell you it's a life-boat."
"It is not! It's an omnibus. I can see it plain. See? One of these big hotel omnibuses."
"By thunder, you're right. It's an omnibus, sure as fate. What do you suppose they are doing with
an omnibus? Maybe they are going around collecting the life-crew, hey?"
"That's it, likely. Look! There's a fellow waving a little black flag. He's standing on the steps of
the omnibus. There come those other two fellows. Now they're all talking together. Look at the
fellow with the flag. Maybe he ain't waving it."
"That ain't a flag, is it? That's his coat. Why, certainly, that's his coat."
"So it is. It's his coat. He's taken it off and is waving it around his head. But would you look at
him swing it."
"Oh, say, there isn't any life-saving station there. That's just a winter resort hotel omnibus that
has brought over some of the boarders to see us drown."
"What's that idiot with the coat mean? What's he signaling, anyhow?"
"It looks as if he were trying to tell us to go north. There must be a life-saving station up there."
"No! He thinks we're fishing. Just giving us a merry hand. See? Ah, there, Willie!"
"Well, I wish I could make something out of those signals. What do you suppose he means?"
"He don't mean anything. He's just playing."
"Well, if he'd just signal us to try the surf again, or to go to sea and wait, or go north, or go south,
or go to hell—there would be some reason in it. But look at him. He just stands there and keeps
his coat revolving like a wheel. The ass!"
"There come more people."
"Now there's quite a mob. Look! Isn't that a boat?"
"Where? Oh, I see where you mean. No, that's no boat."
"That fellow is still waving his coat."
"He must think we like to see him do that. Why don't he quit it? It don't mean anything."
"I don't know. I think he is trying to make us go north. It must be that there's a life-saving station
there somewhere."
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"Say, he ain't tired yet. Look at 'im wave."
"Wonder how long he can keep that up. He's been revolving his coat ever since he caught sight
of us. He's an idiot. Why aren't they getting men to bring a boat out? A fishing boat—one of
those big yawls—could come out here all right. Why don't he do something?"
"Oh, it's all right, now."
"They'll have a boat out here for us in less than no time, now that they've seen us."
A faint yellow tone came into the sky over the low land. The shadows on the sea slowly
deepened. The wind bore coldness with it, and the men began to shiver.
"Holy smoke!" said one, allowing his voice to express his impious mood, "if we keep on
monkeying out here! If we've got to flounder out here all night!"
"Oh, we'll never have to stay here all night! Don't you worry. They've seen us now, and it won't
be long before they'll come chasing out after us."
The shore grew dusky. The man waving a coat blended gradually into this gloom, and it
swallowed in the same manner the omnibus and the group of people. The spray, when it dashed
uproariously over the side, made the voyagers shrink and swear like men who were being
branded.
"I'd like to catch the chump who waved the coat. I feel like soaking him one, just for luck."
"Why? What did he do?"
"Oh, nothing, but then he seemed so damned cheerful."
In the meantime the oiler rowed, and then the correspondent rowed, and then the oiler rowed.
Grey-faced and bowed forward, they mechanically, turn by turn, plied the leaden oars. The form
of the lighthouse had vanished from the southern horizon, but finally a pale star appeared, just
lifting from the sea. The streaked saffron in the west passed before the all-merging darkness, and
the sea to the east was black. The land had vanished, and was expressed only by the low and
drear thunder of the surf.
"If I am going to be drowned—if I am going to be drowned—if I am going to be drowned, why,
in the name of the seven mad gods who rule the sea, was I allowed to come thus far and
contemplate sand and trees? Was I brought here merely to have my nose dragged away as I was
about to nibble the sacred cheese of life?"
The patient captain, drooped over the water-jar, was sometimes obliged to speak to the oarsman.
"Keep her head up! Keep her head up!"
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"'Keep her head up,' sir." The voices were weary and low.
This was surely a quiet evening. All save the oarsman lay heavily and listlessly in the boat's
bottom. As for him, his eyes were just capable of noting the tall black waves that swept forward
in a most sinister silence, save for an occasional subdued growl of a crest.
The cook's head was on a thwart, and he looked without interest at the water under his nose. He
was deep in other scenes. Finally he spoke. "Billie," he murmured, dreamfully, "what kind of pie
do you like best?"
V
"Pie," said the oiler and the correspondent, agitatedly. "Don't talk about those things, blast you!"
"Well," said the cook, "I was just thinking about ham sandwiches, and—"
A night on the sea in an open boat is a long night. As darkness settled finally, the shine of the
light, lifting from the sea in the south, changed to full gold. On the northern horizon a new light
appeared, a small bluish gleam on the edge of the waters. These two lights were the furniture of
the world. Otherwise there was nothing but waves.
Two men huddled in the stern, and distances were so magnificent in the dingey that the rower
was enabled to keep his feet partly warmed by thrusting them under his companions. Their legs
indeed extended far under the rowing-seat until they touched the feet of the captain forward.
Sometimes, despite the efforts of the tired oarsman, a wave came piling into the boat, an icy
wave of the night, and the chilling water soaked them anew. They would twist their bodies for a
moment and groan, and sleep the dead sleep once more, while the water in the boat gurgled
about them as the craft rocked.
The plan of the oiler and the correspondent was for one to row until he lost the ability, and then
arouse the other from his sea-water couch in the bottom of the boat.
The oiler plied the oars until his head drooped forward, and the overpowering sleep blinded him.
And he rowed yet afterward. Then he touched a man in the bottom of the boat, and called his
name. "Will you spell me for a little while?" he said, meekly.
"Sure, Billie," said the correspondent, awakening and dragging himself to a sitting position. They
exchanged places carefully, and the oiler, cuddling down in the sea-water at the cook's side,
seemed to go to sleep instantly.
The particular violence of the sea had ceased. The waves came without snarling. The obligation
of the man at the oars was to keep the boat headed so that the tilt of the rollers would not capsize
her, and to preserve her from filling when the crests rushed past. The black waves were silent
and hard to be seen in the darkness. Often one was almost upon the boat before the oarsman was
aware.
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In a low voice the correspondent addressed the captain. He was not sure that the captain was
awake, although this iron man seemed to be always awake. "Captain, shall I keep her making for
that light north, sir?"
The same steady voice answered him. "Yes. Keep it about two points off the port bow."
The cook had tied a life-belt around himself in order to get even the warmth which this clumsy
cork contrivance could donate, and he seemed almost stove-like when a rower, whose teeth
invariably chattered wildly as soon as he ceased his labor, dropped down to sleep.
The correspondent, as he rowed, looked down at the two men sleeping under-foot. The cook's
arm was around the oiler's shoulders, and, with their fragmentary clothing and haggard faces,
they were the babes of the sea, a grotesque rendering of the old babes in the wood.
Later he must have grown stupid at his work, for suddenly there was a growling of water, and a
crest came with a roar and a swash into the boat, and it was a wonder that it did not set the cook
afloat in his life-belt. The cook continued to sleep, but the oiler sat up, blinking his eyes and
shaking with the new cold.
"Oh, I'm awful sorry, Billie," said the correspondent contritely.
"That's all right, old boy," said the oiler, and lay down again and was asleep.
Presently it seemed that even the captain dozed, and the correspondent thought that he was the
one man afloat on all the oceans. The wind had a voice as it came over the waves, and it was
sadder than the end.
There was a long, loud swishing astern of the boat, and a gleaming trail of phosphorescence, like
blue flame, was furrowed on the black waters. It might have been made by a monstrous knife.
Then there came a stillness, while the correspondent breathed with the open mouth and looked at
the sea.
Suddenly there was another swish and another long flash of bluish light, and this time it was
alongside the boat, and might almost have been reached with an oar. The correspondent saw an
enormous fin speed like a shadow through the water, hurling the crystalline spray and leaving the
long glowing trail.
The correspondent looked over his shoulder at the captain. His face was hidden, and he seemed
to be asleep. He looked at the babes of the sea. They certainly were asleep. So, being bereft of
sympathy, he leaned a little way to one side and swore softly into the sea.
But the thing did not then leave the vicinity of the boat. Ahead or astern, on one side or the other,
at intervals long or short, fled the long sparkling streak, and there was to be heard the whirroo of
the dark fin. The speed and power of the thing was greatly to be admired. It cut the water like a
gigantic and keen projectile.
252
The presence of this biding thing did not affect the man with the same horror that it would if he
had been a picnicker. He simply looked at the sea dully and swore in an undertone.
Nevertheless, it is true that he did not wish to be alone. He wished one of his companions to
awaken by chance and keep him company with it. But the captain hung motionless over the
water-jar, and the oiler and the cook in the bottom of the boat were plunged in slumber.
VI
"If I am going to be drowned—if I am going to be drowned—if I am going to be drowned, why,
in the name of the seven mad gods who rule the sea, was I allowed to come thus far and
contemplate sand and trees?"
During this dismal night, it may be remarked that a man would conclude that it was really the
intention of the seven mad gods to drown him, despite the abominable injustice of it. For it was
certainly an abominable injustice to drown a man who had worked so hard, so hard. The man felt
it would be a crime most unnatural. Other people had drowned at sea since galleys swarmed with
painted sails, but still—
When it occurs to a man that nature does not regard him as important, and that she feels she
would not maim the universe by disposing of him, he at first wishes to throw bricks at the
temple, and he hates deeply the fact that there are no brick and no temples. Any visible
expression of nature would surely be pelleted with his jeers.
Then, if there be no tangible thing to hoot he feels, perhaps, the desire to confront a
personification and indulge in pleas, bowed to one knee, and with hands supplicant, saying:
"Yes, but I love myself."
A high cold star on a winter's night is the word he feels that she says to him. Thereafter he knows
the pathos of his situation.
The men in the dingey had not discussed these matters, but each had, no doubt, reflected upon
them in silence and according to his mind. There was seldom any expression upon their faces
save the general one of complete weariness. Speech was devoted to the business of the boat.
To chime the notes of his emotion, a verse mysteriously entered the correspondent's head. He
had even forgotten that he had forgotten this verse, but it suddenly was in his mind.
"A soldier of the Legion lay dying in Algiers,
There was a lack of woman's nursing, there was dearth of
woman's tears;
But a comrade stood beside him, and he took that comrade's hand,
And he said: 'I shall never see my own, my native land.'"
In his childhood, the correspondent had been made acquainted with the fact that a soldier of the
Legion lay dying in Algiers, but he had never regarded the fact as important. Myriads of his
school-fellows had informed him of the soldier's plight, but the dinning had naturally ended by
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making him perfectly indifferent. He had never considered it his affair that a soldier of the
Legion lay dying in Algiers, nor had it appeared to him as a matter for sorrow. It was less to him
than the breaking of a pencil's point.
Now, however, it quaintly came to him as a human, living thing. It was no longer merely a
picture of a few throes in the breast of a poet, meanwhile drinking tea and warming his feet at the
grate; it was an actuality—stern, mournful, and fine.
The correspondent plainly saw the soldier. He lay on the sand with his feet out straight and still.
While his pale left hand was upon his chest in an attempt to thwart the going of his life, the blood
came between his fingers. In the far Algerian distance, a city of low square forms was set against
a sky that was faint with the last sunset hues. The correspondent, plying the oars and dreaming of
the slow and slower movements of the lips of the soldier, was moved by a profound and perfectly
impersonal comprehension. He was sorry for the soldier of the Legion who lay dying in Algiers.
The thing which had followed the boat and waited, had evidently grown bored at the delay.
There was no longer to be heard the slash of the cut-water, and there was no longer the flame of
the long trail. The light in the north still glimmered, but it was apparently no nearer to the boat.
Sometimes the boom of the surf rang in the correspondent's ears, and he turned the craft seaward
then and rowed harder. Southward, some one had evidently built a watch-fire on the beach. It
was too low and too far to be seen, but it made a shimmering, roseate reflection upon the bluff
back of it, and this could be discerned from the boat. The wind came stronger, and sometimes a
wave suddenly raged out like a mountain-cat, and there was to be seen the sheen and sparkle of a
broken crest.
The captain, in the bow, moved on his water-jar and sat erect. "Pretty long night," he observed to
the correspondent. He looked at the shore. "Those life-saving people take their time."
"Did you see that shark playing around?"
"Yes, I saw him. He was a big fellow, all right."
"Wish I had known you were awake."
Later the correspondent spoke into the bottom of the boat.
"Billie!" There was a slow and gradual disentanglement. "Billie, will you spell me?"
"Sure," said the oiler.
As soon as the correspondent touched the cold comfortable sea-water in the bottom of the boat,
and had huddled close to the cook's life-belt he was deep in sleep, despite the fact that his teeth
played all the popular airs. This sleep was so good to him that it was but a moment before he
heard a voice call his name in a tone that demonstrated the last stages of exhaustion. "Will you
spell me?"
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"Sure, Billie."
The light in the north had mysteriously vanished, but the correspondent took his course from the
wide-awake captain.
Later in the night they took the boat farther out to sea, and the captain directed the cook to take
one oar at the stern and keep the boat facing the seas. He was to call out if he should hear the
thunder of the surf. This plan enabled the oiler and the correspondent to get respite together.
"We'll give those boys a chance to get into shape again," said the captain. They curled down and,
after a few preliminary chatterings and trembles, slept once more the dead sleep. Neither knew
they had bequeathed to the cook the company of another shark, or perhaps the same shark.
As the boat caroused on the waves, spray occasionally bumped over the side and gave them a
fresh soaking, but this had no power to break their repose. The ominous slash of the wind and the
water affected them as it would have affected mummies.
"Boys," said the cook, with the notes of every reluctance in his voice, "she's drifted in pretty
close. I guess one of you had better take her to sea again." The correspondent, aroused, heard the
crash of the toppled crests.
As he was rowing, the captain gave him some whisky-and-water, and this steadied the chills out
of him. "If I ever get ashore and anybody shows me even a photograph of an oar—"
At last there was a short conversation.
"Billie…. Billie, will you spell me?"
"Sure," said the oiler.
VII
When the correspondent again opened his eyes, the sea and the sky were each of the grey hue of
the dawning. Later, carmine and gold was painted upon the waters. The morning appeared
finally, in its splendor, with a sky of pure blue, and the sunlight flamed on the tips of the waves.
On the distant dunes were set many little black cottages, and a tall white windmill reared above
them. No man, nor dog, nor bicycle appeared on the beach. The cottages might have formed a
deserted village.
The voyagers scanned the shore. A conference was held in the boat. "Well," said the captain, "if
no help is coming we might better try a run through the surf right away. If we stay out here much
longer we will be too weak to do anything for ourselves at all." The others silently acquiesced in
this reasoning. The boat was headed for the beach. The correspondent wondered if none ever
ascended the tall wind-tower, and if then they never looked seaward. This tower was a giant,
standing with its back to the plight of the ants. It represented in a degree, to the correspondent,
the serenity of nature amid the struggles of the individual—nature in the wind, and nature in the
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vision of men. She did not seem cruel to him then, nor beneficent, nor treacherous, nor wise. But
she was indifferent, flatly indifferent. It is, perhaps, plausible that a man in this situation,
impressed with the unconcern of the universe, should see the innumerable flaws of his life, and
have them taste wickedly in his mind and wish for another chance. A distinction between right
and wrong seems absurdly clear to him, then, in this new ignorance of the grave-edge, and he
understands that if he were given another opportunity he would mend his conduct and his words,
and be better and brighter during an introduction or at a tea.
"Now, boys," said the captain, "she is going to swamp, sure. All we can do is to work her in as
far as possible, and then when she swamps, pile out and scramble for the beach. Keep cool now,
and don't jump until she swamps sure."
The oiler took the oars. Over his shoulders he scanned the surf. "Captain," he said, "I think I'd
better bring her about, and keep her head-on to the seas and back her in."
"All right, Billie," said the captain. "Back her in." The oiler swung the boat then and, seated in
the stern, the cook and the correspondent were obliged to look over their shoulders to
contemplate the lonely and indifferent shore.
The monstrous in-shore rollers heaved the boat high until the men were again enabled to see the
white sheets of water scudding up the slanted beach. "We won't get in very close," said the
captain. Each time a man could wrest his attention from the rollers, he turned his glance toward
the shore, and in the expression of the eyes during this contemplation there was a singular
quality. The correspondent, observing the others, knew that they were not afraid, but the full
meaning of their glances was shrouded.
As for himself, he was too tired to grapple fundamentally with the fact. He tried to coerce his
mind into thinking of it, but the mind was dominated at this time by the muscles, and the muscles
said they did not care. It merely occurred to him that if he should drown it would be a shame.
There were no hurried words, no pallor, no plain agitation. The men simply looked at the shore.
"Now, remember to get well clear of the boat when you jump," said the captain.
Seaward the crest of a roller suddenly fell with a thunderous crash, and the long white comber
came roaring down upon the boat.
"Steady now," said the captain. The men were silent. They turned their eyes from the shore to the
comber and waited. The boat slid up the incline, leaped at the furious top, bounced over it, and
swung down the long back of the wave. Some water had been shipped and the cook bailed it out.
But the next crest crashed also. The tumbling, boiling flood of white water caught the boat and
whirled it almost perpendicular. Water swarmed in from all sides. The correspondent had his
hands on the gunwale at this time, and when the water entered at that place he swiftly withdrew
his fingers, as if he objected to wetting them.
The little boat, drunken with this weight of water, reeled and snuggled deeper into the sea.
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"Bail her out, cook! Bail her out," said the captain.
"All right, captain," said the cook.
"Now, boys, the next one will do for us, sure," said the oiler. "Mind to jump clear of the boat."
The third wave moved forward, huge, furious, implacable. It fairly swallowed the dingey, and
almost simultaneously the men tumbled into the sea. A piece of lifebelt had lain in the bottom of
the boat, and as the correspondent went overboard he held this to his chest with his left hand.
The January water was icy, and he reflected immediately that it was colder than he had expected
to find it on the coast of Florida. This appeared to his dazed mind as a fact important enough to
be noted at the time. The coldness of the water was sad; it was tragic. This fact was somehow so
mixed and confused with his opinion of his own situation that it seemed almost a proper reason
for tears. The water was cold.
When he came to the surface he was conscious of little but the noisy water. Afterward he saw his
companions in the sea. The oiler was ahead in the race. He was swimming strongly and rapidly.
Off to the correspondent's left, the cook's great white and corked back bulged out of the water,
and in the rear the captain was hanging with his one good hand to the keel of the overturned
dingey.
There is a certain immovable quality to a shore, and the correspondent wondered at it amid the
confusion of the sea.
It seemed also very attractive, but the correspondent knew that it was a long journey, and he
paddled leisurely. The piece of life-preserver lay under him, and sometimes he whirled down the
incline of a wave as if he were on a handsled.
But finally he arrived at a place in the sea where travel was beset with difficulty. He did not
pause swimming to inquire what manner of current had caught him, but there his progress
ceased. The shore was set before him like a bit of scenery on a stage, and he looked at it and
understood with his eyes each detail of it.
As the cook passed, much farther to the left, the captain was calling to him, "Turn over on your
back, cook! Turn over on your back and use the oar."
"All right, sir." The cook turned on his back, and, paddling with an oar, went ahead as if he were
a canoe.
Presently the boat also passed to the left of the correspondent with the captain clinging with one
hand to the keel. He would have appeared like a man raising himself to look over a board fence,
if it were not for the extraordinary gymnastics of the boat. The correspondent marvelled that the
captain could still hold to it.
257
They passed on, nearer to shore—the oiler, the cook, the captain—and following them went the
water-jar, bouncing gaily over the seas.
The correspondent remained in the grip of this strange new enemy—a current. The shore, with
its white slope of sand and its green bluff, topped with little silent cottages, was spread like a
picture before him. It was very near to him then, but he was impressed as one who in a gallery
looks at a scene from Brittany or Holland.
He thought: "I am going to drown? Can it be possible Can it be possible? Can it be possible?"
Perhaps an individual must consider his own death to be the final phenomenon of nature.
But later a wave perhaps whirled him out of this small, deadly current, for he found suddenly
that he could again make progress toward the shore. Later still, he was aware that the captain,
clinging with one hand to the keel of the dingey, had his face turned away from the shore and
toward him, and was calling his name. "Come to the boat! Come to the boat!"
In his struggle to reach the captain and the boat, he reflected that when one gets properly
wearied, drowning must really be a comfortable arrangement, a cessation of hostilities
accompanied by a large degree of relief, and he was glad of it, for the main thing in his mind for
some months had been horror of the temporary agony. He did not wish to be hurt.
Presently he saw a man running along the shore. He was undressing with most remarkable speed.
Coat, trousers, shirt, everything flew magically off him.
"Come to the boat," called the captain.
"All right, captain." As the correspondent paddled, he saw the captain let himself down to bottom
and leave the boat. Then the correspondent performed his one little marvel of the voyage. A large
wave caught him and flung him with ease and supreme speed completely over the boat and far
beyond it. It struck him even then as an event in gymnastics, and a true miracle of the sea. An
over-turned boat in the surf is not a plaything to a swimming man.
The correspondent arrived in water that reached only to his waist, but his condition did not
enable him to stand for more than a moment. Each wave knocked him into a heap, and the undertow pulled at him.
Then he saw the man who had been running and undressing, and undressing and running, come
bounding into the water. He dragged ashore the cook, and then waded towards the captain, but
the captain waved him away, and sent him to the correspondent. He was naked, naked as a tree in
winter, but a halo was about his head, and he shone like a saint. He gave a strong pull, and a long
drag, and a bully heave at the correspondent's hand. The correspondent, schooled in the minor
formulae, said: "Thanks, old man." But suddenly the man cried: "What's that?" He pointed a
swift finger. The correspondent said: "Go."
In the shallows, face downward, lay the oiler. His forehead touched sand that was periodically,
between each wave, clear of the sea.
258
The correspondent did not know all that transpired afterward. When he achieved safe ground he
fell, striking the sand with each particular part of his body. It was as if he had dropped from a
roof, but the thud was grateful to him.
It seems that instantly the beach was populated with men with blankets, clothes, and flasks, and
women with coffeepots and all the remedies sacred to their minds. The welcome of the land to
the men from the sea was warm and generous, but a still and dripping shape was carried slowly
up the beach, and the land's welcome for it could only be the different and sinister hospitality of
the grave.
When it came night, the white waves paced to and fro in the moonlight, and the wind brought the
sound of the great sea's voice to the men on shore, and they felt that they could then be
interpreters.
The Blue Hotel
Crane,Stephen. "The Blue Hotel." The Monster and Other Stories. New York: Harper &
Brothers, 1899.
source of etext: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/31189
I
The Palace Hotel at Fort Romper was painted a light blue, a shade that is on the legs of a kind of
heron, causing the bird to declare its position against any background. The Palace Hotel, then,
was always screaming and howling in a way that made the dazzling winter landscape of
Nebraska seem only a gray swampish hush. It stood alone on the prairie, and when the snow was
falling the town two hundred yards away was not visible. But when the traveller alighted at the
railway station he was obliged to pass the Palace Hotel before he could come upon the company
of low clapboard houses which composed Fort Romper, and it was not to be thought that any
traveller could pass the Palace Hotel without looking at it. Pat Scully, the proprietor, had proved
himself a master of strategy when he chose his paints. It is true that on clear days, when the great
trans-continental expresses, long lines of swaying Pullmans, swept through Fort Romper,
passengers were overcome at the sight, and the cult that knows the brown-reds and the
subdivisions of the dark greens of the East expressed shame, pity, horror, in a laugh. But to the
citizens of this prairie town and to the people who would naturally stop there, Pat Scully had
performed a feat. With this opulence and splendor, these creeds, classes, egotisms, that streamed
through Romper on the rails day after day, they had no color in common.
As if the displayed delights of such a blue hotel were not sufficiently enticing, it was Scully's
habit to go every morning and evening to meet the leisurely trains that stopped at Romper and
work his seductions upon any man that he might see wavering, gripsack in hand.
One morning, when a snow-crusted engine dragged its long string of freight cars and its one
passenger coach to the station, Scully performed the marvel of catching three men. One was a
shaky and quick-eyed Swede, with a great shining cheap valise; one was a tall bronzed cowboy,
259
who was on his way to a ranch near the Dakota line; one was a little silent man from the East,
who didn't look it, and didn't announce it. Scully practically made them prisoners. He was so
nimble and merry and kindly that each probably felt it would be the height of brutality to try to
escape. They trudged off over the creaking board sidewalks in the wake of the eager little
Irishman. He wore a heavy fur cap squeezed tightly down on his head. It caused his two red ears
to stick out stiffly, as if they were made of tin.
At last, Scully, elaborately, with boisterous hospitality, conducted them through the portals of the
blue hotel. The room which they entered was small. It seemed to be merely a proper temple for
an enormous stove, which, in the centre, was humming with godlike violence. At various points
on its surface the iron had become luminous and glowed yellow from the heat. Beside the stove
Scully's son Johnnie was playing High-Five with an old farmer who had whiskers both gray and
sandy. They were quarrelling. Frequently the old farmer turned his face towards a box of
sawdust—colored brown from tobacco juice—that was behind the stove, and spat with an air of
great impatience and irritation. With a loud flourish of words Scully destroyed the game of cards,
and bustled his son up-stairs with part of the baggage of the new guests. He himself conducted
them to three basins of the coldest water in the world. The cowboy and the Easterner burnished
themselves fiery-red with this water, until it seemed to be some kind of a metal polish. The
Swede, however, merely dipped his fingers gingerly and with trepidation. It was notable that
throughout this series of small ceremonies the three travellers were made to feel that Scully was
very benevolent. He was conferring great favors upon them. He handed the towel from one to the
other with an air of philanthropic impulse.
Afterwards they went to the first room, and, sitting about the stove, listened to Scully's officious
clamor at his daughters, who were preparing the mid-day meal. They reflected in the silence of
experienced men who tread carefully amid new people. Nevertheless, the old farmer, stationary,
invincible in his chair near the warmest part of the stove, turned his face from the sawdust box
frequently and addressed a glowing commonplace to the strangers. Usually he was answered in
short but adequate sentences by either the cowboy or the Easterner. The Swede said nothing. He
seemed to be occupied in making furtive estimates of each man in the room. One might have
thought that he had the sense of silly suspicion which comes to guilt. He resembled a badly
frightened man.
Later, at dinner, he spoke a little, addressing his conversation entirely to Scully. He volunteered
that he had come from New York, where for ten years he had worked as a tailor. These facts
seemed to strike Scully as fascinating, and afterwards he volunteered that he had lived at Romper
for fourteen years. The Swede asked about the crops and the price of labor. He seemed barely to
listen to Scully's extended replies. His eyes continued to rove from man to man.
Finally, with a laugh and a wink, he said that some of these Western communities were very
dangerous; and after his statement he straightened his legs under the table, tilted his head, and
laughed again, loudly. It was plain that the demonstration had no meaning to the others. They
looked at him wondering and in silence.
II
260
As the men trooped heavily back into the front-room, the two little windows presented views of a
turmoiling sea of snow. The huge arms of the wind were making attempts—mighty, circular,
futile—to embrace the flakes as they sped. A gate-post like a still man with a blanched face stood
aghast amid this profligate fury. In a hearty voice Scully announced the presence of a blizzard.
The guests of the blue hotel, lighting their pipes, assented with grunts of lazy masculine
contentment. No island of the sea could be exempt in the degree of this little room with its
humming stove. Johnnie, son of Scully, in a tone which defined his opinion of his ability as a
card-player, challenged the old farmer of both gray and sandy whiskers to a game of High-Five.
The farmer agreed with a contemptuous and bitter scoff. They sat close to the stove, and squared
their knees under a wide board. The cowboy and the Easterner watched the game with interest.
The Swede remained near the window, aloof, but with a countenance that showed signs of an
inexplicable excitement.
The play of Johnnie and the gray-beard was suddenly ended by another quarrel. The old man
arose while casting a look of heated scorn at his adversary. He slowly buttoned his coat, and then
stalked with fabulous dignity from the room. In the discreet silence of all other men the Swede
laughed. His laughter rang somehow childish. Men by this time had begun to look at him
askance, as if they wished to inquire what ailed him.
A new game was formed jocosely. The cowboy volunteered to become the partner of Johnnie,
and they all then turned to ask the Swede to throw in his lot with the little Easterner, He asked
some questions about the game, and, learning that it wore many names, and that he had played it
when it was under an alias, he accepted the invitation. He strode towards the men nervously, as if
he expected to be assaulted. Finally, seated, he gazed from face to face and laughed shrilly. This
laugh was so strange that the Easterner looked up quickly, the cowboy sat intent and with his
mouth open, and Johnnie paused, holding the cards with still fingers.
Afterwards there was a short silence. Then Johnnie said, "Well, let's get at it. Come on now!"
They pulled their chairs forward until their knees were bunched under the board. They began to
play, and their interest in the game caused the others to forget the manner of the Swede.
The cowboy was a board-whacker. Each time that he held superior cards he whanged them, one
by one, with exceeding force, down upon the improvised table, and took the tricks with a
glowing air of prowess and pride that sent thrills of indignation into the hearts of his opponents.
A game with a board-whacker in it is sure to become intense. The countenances of the Easterner
and the Swede were miserable whenever the cowboy thundered down his aces and kings, while
Johnnie, his eyes gleaming with joy, chuckled and chuckled.
Because of the absorbing play none considered the strange ways of the Swede. They paid strict
heed to the game. Finally, during a lull caused by a new deal, the Swede suddenly addressed
Johnnie: "I suppose there have been a good many men killed in this room." The jaws of the
others dropped and they looked at him.
"What in hell are you talking about?" said Johnnie.
261
The Swede laughed again his blatant laugh, full of a kind of false courage and defiance. "Oh, you
know what I mean all right," he answered.
"I'm a liar if I do!" Johnnie protested. The card was halted, and the men stared at the Swede.
Johnnie evidently felt that as the son of the proprietor he should make a direct inquiry. "Now,
what might you be drivin' at, mister?" he asked. The Swede winked at him. It was a wink full of
cunning. His fingers shook on the edge of the board. "Oh, maybe you think I have been to
nowheres. Maybe you think I'm a tenderfoot?"
"I don't know nothin' about you," answered Johnnie, "and I don't give a damn where you've been.
All I got to say is that I don't know what you're driving at. There hain't never been nobody killed
in this room."
The cowboy, who had been steadily gazing at the Swede, then spoke: "What's wrong with you,
mister?"
Apparently it seemed to the Swede that he was formidably menaced. He shivered and turned
white near the corners of his mouth. He sent an appealing glance in the direction of the little
Easterner. During these moments he did not forget to wear his air of advanced pot-valor. "They
say they don't know what I mean," he remarked mockingly to the Easterner.
The latter answered after prolonged and cautious reflection. "I don't understand you," he said,
impassively.
The Swede made a movement then which announced that he thought he had encountered
treachery from the only quarter where he had expected sympathy, if not help. "Oh, I see you are
all against me. I see—"
The cowboy was in a state of deep stupefaction. "Say." he cried, as he tumbled the deck violently
down upon the board "—say, what are you gittin' at, hey?"
The Swede sprang up with the celerity of a man escaping from a snake on the floor. "I don't want
to fight!" he shouted. "I don't want to fight!"
The cowboy stretched his long legs indolently and deliberately. His hands were in his pockets.
He spat into the sawdust box. "Well, who the hell thought you did?" he inquired.
The Swede backed rapidly towards a corner of the room. His hands were out protectingly in front
of his chest, but he was making an obvious struggle to control his fright. "Gentlemen," he
quavered, "I suppose I am going to be killed before I can leave this house! I suppose I am going
to be killed before I can leave this house!" In his eyes was the dying-swan look. Through the
windows could be seen the snow turning blue in the shadow of dusk. The wind tore at the house
and some loose thing beat regularly against the clap-boards like a spirit tapping.
A door opened, and Scully himself entered. He paused in surprise as he noted the tragic attitude
of the Swede. Then he said, "What's the matter here?"
262
The Swede answered him swiftly and eagerly: "These men are going to kill me."
"Kill you!" ejaculated Scully. "Kill you! What are you talkin'?"
The Swede made the gesture of a martyr.
Scully wheeled sternly upon his son. "What is this, Johnnie?"
The lad had grown sullen. "Damned if I know," he answered. "I can't make no sense to it." He
began to shuffle the cards, fluttering them together with an angry snap. "He says a good many
men have been killed in this room, or something like that. And he says he's goin' to be killed here
too. I don't know what ails him. He's crazy, I shouldn't wonder."
Scully then looked for explanation to the cowboy, but the cowboy simply shrugged his
shoulders.
"Kill you?" said Scully again to the Swede. "Kill you? Man, you're off your nut."
"Oh, I know." burst out the Swede. "I know what will happen. Yes, I'm crazy—yes. Yes, of
course, I'm crazy—yes. But I know one thing—" There was a sort of sweat of misery and terror
upon his face. "I know I won't get out of here alive."
The cowboy drew a deep breath, as if his mind was passing into the last stages of dissolution.
"Well, I'm dog-goned," he whispered to himself.
Scully wheeled suddenly and faced his son. "You've been troublin' this man!"
Johnnie's voice was loud with its burden of grievance. "Why, good Gawd, I ain't done nothin' to
'im."
The Swede broke in. "Gentlemen, do not disturb yourselves. I will leave this house. I will go
away because"—he accused them dramatically with his glance—"because I do not want to be
killed."
Scully was furious with his son. "Will you tell me what is the matter, you young divil? What's
the matter, anyhow? Speak out!"
"Blame it!" cried Johnnie in despair, "don't I tell you I don't know. He—he says we want to kill
him, and that's all I know. I can't tell what ails him."
The Swede continued to repeat: "Never mind, Mr. Scully; nevermind. I will leave this house. I
will go away, because I do not wish to be killed. Yes, of course, I am crazy—yes. But I know
one thing! I will go away. I will leave this house. Never mind, Mr. Scully; never mind. I will go
away."
263
"You will not go 'way," said Scully. "You will not go 'way until I hear the reason of this
business. If anybody has troubled you I will take care of him. This is my house. You are under
my roof, and I will not allow any peaceable man to be troubled here." He cast a terrible eye upon
Johnnie, the cowboy, and the Easterner.
"Never mind, Mr. Scully; never mind. I will go away. I do not wish to be killed." The Swede
moved towards the door, which opened upon the stairs. It was evidently his intention to go at
once for his baggage.
"No, no," shouted Scully peremptorily; but the white-faced man slid by him and disappeared.
"Now," said Scully severely, "what does this mane?"
Johnnie and the cowboy cried together: "Why, we didn't do nothin' to 'im!"
Scully's eyes were cold. "No," he said, "you didn't?"
Johnnie swore a deep oath. "Why this is the wildest loon I ever see. We didn't do nothin' at all.
We were jest sittin' here play in' cards, and he—"
The father suddenly spoke to the Easterner. "Mr. Blanc," he asked, "what has these boys been
doin'?"
The Easterner reflected again. "I didn't see anything wrong at all," he said at last, slowly.
Scully began to howl. "But what does it mane?" He stared ferociously at his son. "I have a mind
to lather you for this, me boy."
Johnnie was frantic. "Well, what have I done?" he bawled at his father.
III
"I think you are tongue-tied," said Scully finally to his son, the cowboy, and the Easterner; and at
the end of this scornful sentence he left the room.
Up-stairs the Swede was swiftly fastening the straps of his great valise. Once his back happened
to be half turned towards the door, and, hearing a noise there, he wheeled and sprang up, uttering
a loud cry. Scully's wrinkled visage showed grimly in the light of the small lamp he carried. This
yellow effulgence, streaming upward, colored only his prominent features, and left his eyes, for
instance, in mysterious shadow. He resembled a murderer.
"Man! man!" he exclaimed, "have you gone daffy?"
"Oh, no! Oh, no!" rejoined the other. "There are people in this world who know pretty nearly as
much as you do—understand?"
264
For a moment they stood gazing at each other. Upon the Swede's deathly pale checks were two
spots brightly crimson and sharply edged, as if they had been carefully painted. Scully placed the
light on the table and sat himself on the edge of the bed. He spoke ruminatively. "By cracky, I
never heard of such a thing in my life. It's a complete muddle. I can't, for the soul of me, think
how you ever got this idea into your head." Presently he lifted his eyes and asked: "And did you
sure think they were going to kill you?"
The Swede scanned the old man as if he wished to see into his mind. "I did," he said at last. He
obviously suspected that this answer might precipitate an outbreak. As he pulled on a strap his
whole arm shook, the elbow wavering like a bit of paper.
Scully banged his hand impressively on the foot-board of the bed. "Why, man, we're goin' to
have a line of ilictric street-cars in this town next spring."
"'A line of electric street-cars,'" repeated the Swede, stupidly.
"And," said Scully, "there's a new railroad goin' to be built down from Broken Arm to here. Not
to mintion the four churches and the smashin' big brick school-house. Then there's the big
factory, too. Why, in two years Romper 'll be a metropolis."
Having finished the preparation of his baggage, the Swede straightened himself. "Mr. Scully," he
said, with sudden hardihood, "how much do I owe you?"
"You don't owe me anythin'," said the old man, angrily.
"Yes, I do," retorted the Swede. He took seventy-five cents from his pocket and tendered it to
Scully; but the latter snapped his fingers in disdainful refusal. However, it happened that they
both stood gazing in a strange fashion at three silver pieces on the Swede's open palm.
"I'll not take your money," said Scully at last. "Not after what's been goin' on here." Then a plan
seemed to strike him. "Here," he cried, picking up his lamp and moving towards the door. "Here!
Come with me a minute."
"No," said the Swede, in overwhelming alarm.
"Yes," urged the old man. "Come on! I want you to come and see a picter—just across the hall—
in my room."
The Swede must have concluded that his hour was come. His jaw dropped and his teeth showed
like a dead man's. He ultimately followed Scully across the corridor, but he had the step of one
hung in chains.
Scully flashed the light high on the wall of his own chamber. There was revealed a ridiculous
photograph of a little girl. She was leaning against a balustrade of gorgeous decoration, and the
formidable bang to her hair was prominent. The figure was as graceful as an upright sled-stake,
and, withal, it was of the hue of lead. "There," said Scully, tenderly, "that's the picter of my little
265
girl that died. Her name was Carrie. She had the purtiest hair you ever saw! I was that fond of
her, she—"
Turning then, he saw that the Swede was not contemplating the picture at all, but, instead, was
keeping keen watch on the gloom in the rear.
"Look, man!" cried Scully, heartily. "That's the picter of my little gal that died. Her name was
Carrie. And then here's the picter of my oldest boy, Michael. He's a lawyer in Lincoln, an' doin'
well. I gave that boy a grand eddycation, and I'm glad for it now. He's a fine boy. Look at 'im
now. Ain't he bold as blazes, him there in Lincoln, an honored an' respicted gintleman. An
honored an' respicted gintleman," concluded Scully with a flourish. And, so saying, he smote the
Swede jovially on the back.
The Swede faintly smiled.
"Now," said the old man, "there's only one more thing." He dropped suddenly to the floor and
thrust his head beneath the bed. The Swede could hear his muffled voice. "I'd keep it under me
piller if it wasn't for that boy Johnnie. Then there's the old woman—Where is it now? I never put
it twice in the same place. Ah, now come out with you!"
Presently he backed clumsily from under the bed, dragging with him an old coat rolled into a
bundle. "I've fetched him," he muttered. Kneeling on the floor, he unrolled the coat and extracted
from its heart a large yellow-brown whiskey bottle.
His first maneuver was to hold the bottle up to the light. Reassured, apparently, that nobody had
been tampering with it, he thrust it with a generous movement towards the Swede.
The weak-kneed Swede was about to eagerly clutch this element of strength, but he suddenly
jerked his hand away and cast a look of horror upon Scully.
"Drink," said the old man affectionately. He had risen to his feet, and now stood facing the
Swede.
There was a silence. Then again Scully said: "Drink!"
The Swede laughed wildly. He grabbed the bottle, put it to his mouth, and as his lips curled
absurdly around the opening and his throat worked, he kept his glance, burning with hatred, upon
the old man's face.
IV
After the departure of Scully the three men, with the card-board still upon their knees, preserved
for a long time an astounded silence. Then Johnnie said: "That's the dod-dangest Swede I ever
see."
266
"He ain't no Swede," said the cowboy, scornfully.
"Well, what is he then?" cried Johnnie. "What is he then?"
"It's my opinion," replied the cowboy deliberately, "he's some kind of a Dutchman." It was a
venerable custom of the country to entitle as Swedes all light-haired men who spoke with a
heavy tongue. In consequence the idea of the cowboy was not without its daring. "Yes, sir," he
repeated. "It's my opinion this feller is some kind of a Dutchman."
"Well, he says he's a Swede, anyhow," muttered Johnnie, sulkily. He turned to the Easterner:
"What do you think, Mr. Blanc?"
"Oh, I don't know," replied the Easterner.
"Well, what do you think makes him act that way?" asked the cowboy.
"Why, he's frightened." The Easterner knocked his pipe against a rim of the stove. "He's clear
frightened out of his boots."
"What at?" cried Johnnie and cowboy together.
The Easterner reflected over his answer.
"What at?" cried the others again.
"Oh, I don't know, but it seems to me this man has been reading dime-novels, and he thinks he's
right out in the middle of it—the shootin' and stabbin' and all."
"But," said the cowboy, deeply scandalized, "this ain't Wyoming, ner none of them places. This
is Nebrasker."
"Yes," added Johnnie, "an' why don't he wait till he gits out West?"
The travelled Easterner laughed. "It isn't different there even—not in these days. But he thinks
he's right in the middle of hell."
Johnnie and the cowboy mused long.
"It's awful funny," remarked Johnnie at last.
"Yes," said the cowboy. "This is a queer game. I hope we don't git snowed in, because then we'd
have to stand this here man bein' around with us all the time. That wouldn't be no good."
"I wish pop would throw him out," said Johnnie.
267
Presently they heard a loud stamping on the stairs, accompanied by ringing jokes in the voice of
old Scully, and laughter, evidently from the Swede. The men around the stove stared vacantly at
each other. "Gosh!" said the cowboy. The door flew open, and old Scully, flushed and anecdotal,
came into the room. He was jabbering at the Swede, who followed him, laughing bravely. It was
the entry of two roisterers from a banquet-hall.
"Come now," said Scully sharply to the three seated men, "move up and give us a chance at the
stove." The cowboy and the Easterner obediently sidled their chairs to make room for the newcomers. Johnnie, however, simply arranged himself in a more indolent attitude, and then
remained motionless.
"Come! Git over, there," said Scully.
"Plenty of room on the other side of the stove," said Johnnie.
"Do you think we want to sit in the draught?" roared the father.
But the Swede here interposed with a grandeur of confidence. "No, no. Let the boy sit where he
likes," he cried in a bullying voice to the father.
"All right! All right!" said Scully, deferentially. The cowboy and the Easterner exchanged
glances of wonder.
The five chairs were formed in a crescent about one side of the stove. The Swede began to talk;
he talked arrogantly, profanely, angrily. Johnnie, the cowboy, and the Easterner maintained a
morose silence, while old Scully appeared to be receptive and eager, breaking in constantly with
sympathetic ejaculations.
Finally the Swede announced that he was thirsty. He moved in his chair, and said that he would
go for a drink of water.
"I'll git it for you," cried Scully at once.
"No," said the Swede, contemptuously. "I'll get it for myself." He arose and stalked with the air
of an owner off into the executive parts of the hotel.
As soon as the Swede was out of hearing Scully sprang to his feet and whispered intensely to the
others: "Up-stairs he thought I was tryin' to poison 'im."
"Say," said Johnnie, "this makes me sick. Why don't you throw 'im out in the snow?"
"Why, he's all right now," declared Scully. "It was only that he was from the East, and he
thought this was a tough place. That's all. He's all right now."
The cowboy looked with admiration upon the Easterner. "You were straight," he said. "You were
on to that there Dutchman."
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"Well," said Johnnie to his father, "he may be all right now, but I don't see it. Other time he was
scared, but now he's too fresh."
Scully's speech was always a combination of Irish brogue and idiom, Western twang and idiom,
and scraps of curiously formal diction taken from the story-books and newspapers, He now
hurled a strange mass of language at the head of his son. "What do I keep? What do I keep?
What do I keep?" he demanded, in a voice of thunder. He slapped his knee impressively, to
indicate that he himself was going to make reply, and that all should heed. "I keep a hotel," he
shouted. "A hotel, do you mind? A guest under my roof has sacred privileges. He is to be
intimidated by none. Not one word shall he hear that would prejudice him in favor of goin' away.
I'll not have it. There's no place in this here town where they can say they iver took in a guest of
mine because he was afraid to stay here." He wheeled suddenly upon the cowboy and the
Easterner. "Am I right?"
"Yes, Mr. Scully," said the cowboy, "I think you're right."
"Yes, Mr. Scully," said the Easterner, "I think you're right."
V
At six-o'clock supper, the Swede fizzed like a fire-wheel. He sometimes seemed on the point of
bursting into riotous song, and in all his madness he was encouraged by old Scully. The
Easterner was incased in reserve; the cowboy sat in wide-mouthed amazement, forgetting to eat,
while Johnnie wrathily demolished great plates of food. The daughters of the house, when they
were obliged to replenish the biscuits, approached as warily as Indians, and, having succeeded in
their purpose, fled with ill-concealed trepidation. The Swede domineered the whole feast, and he
gave it the appearance of a cruel bacchanal. He seemed to have grown suddenly taller; he gazed,
brutally disdainful, into every face. His voice rang through the room. Once when he jabbed out
harpoon-fashion with his fork to pinion a biscuit, the weapon nearly impaled the hand of the
Easterner which had been stretched quietly out for the same biscuit.
After supper, as the men filed towards the other room, the Swede smote Scully ruthlessly on the
shoulder. "Well, old boy, that was a good, square meal." Johnnie looked hopefully at his father;
he knew that shoulder was tender from an old fall; and, indeed, it appeared for a moment as if
Scully was going to flame out over the matter, but in the end he smiled a sickly smile and
remained silent. The others understood from his manner that he was admitting his responsibility
for the Swede's new view-point.
Johnnie, however, addressed his parent in an aside. "Why don't you license somebody to kick
you down-stairs?" Scully scowled darkly by way of reply.
When they were gathered about the stove, the Swede insisted on another game of High Five.
Scully gently deprecated the plan at first, but the Swede turned a wolfish glare upon him. The old
man subsided, and the Swede canvassed the others. In his tone there was always a great threat.
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The cowboy and the Easterner both remarked indifferently that they would play. Scully said that
he would presently have to go to meet the 6.58 train, and so the Swede turned menacingly upon
Johnnie. For a moment their glances crossed like blades, and then Johnnie smiled and said, "Yes,
I'll play."
They formed a square, with the little board on their knees. The Easterner and the Swede were
again partners. As the play went on, it was noticeable that the cowboy was not board-whacking
as usual. Meanwhile, Scully, near the lamp, had put on his spectacles and, with an appearance
curiously like an old priest, was reading a newspaper. In time he went out to meet the 6.58 train,
and, despite his precautions, a gust of polar wind whirled into the room as he opened the door.
Besides scattering the cards, it dulled the players to the marrow. The Swede cursed frightfully.
When Scully returned, his entrance disturbed a cosey and friendly scene. The Swede again
cursed. But presently they were once more intent, their heads bent forward and their hands
moving swiftly. The Swede had adopted the fashion of board-whacking.
Scully took up his paper and for a long time remained immersed in matters which were
extraordinarily remote from him. The lamp burned badly, and once he stopped to adjust the wick.
The newspaper, as he turned from page to page, rustled with a slow and comfortable sound. Then
suddenly he heard three terrible words: "You are cheatin'!"
Such scenes often prove that there can be little of dramatic import in environment. Any room can
present a tragic front; any room can be comic. This little den was now hideous as a torturechamber. The new faces of the men themselves had changed it upon the instant. The Swede held
a huge fist in front of Johnnie's face, while the latter looked steadily over it into the blazing orbs
of his accuser. The Easterner had grown pallid; the cowboy's jaw had dropped in that expression
of bovine amazement which was one of his important mannerisms. After the three words, the
first sound in the room was made by Scully's paper as it floated forgotten to his feet. His
spectacles had also fallen from his nose, but by a clutch he had saved them in air. His hand,
grasping the spectacles, now remained poised awkwardly and near his shoulder. He stared at the
card-players.
Probably the silence was while a second elapsed. Then, if the floor had been suddenly twitched
out from under the men they could not have moved quicker. The five had projected themselves
headlong towards a common point. It happened that Johnnie, in rising to hurl himself upon the
Swede, had stumbled slightly because of his curiously instinctive care for the cards and the
board. The loss of the moment allowed time for the arrival of Scully, and also allowed the
cowboy time to give the Swede a great push which sent him staggering back. The men found
tongue together, and hoarse shouts of rage, appeal, or fear burst from every throat. The cowboy
pushed and jostled feverishly at the Swede, and the Easterner and Scully clung wildly to Johnnie;
but, through the smoky air, above the swaying bodies of the peace-compellers, the eyes of the
two warriors ever sought each other in glances of challenge that were at once hot and steely.
Of course the board had been overturned, and now the whole company of cards was scattered
over the floor, where the boots of the men trampled the fat and painted kings and queens as they
gazed with their silly eyes at the war that was waging above them.
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Scully's voice was dominating the yells. "Stop now? Stop, I say! Stop, now—"
Johnnie, as he struggled to burst through the rank formed by Scully and the Easterner, was
crying, "Well, he says I cheated! He says I cheated! I won't allow no man to say I cheated! If he
says I cheated, he's a ——— ———!"
The cowboy was telling the Swede, "Quit, now! Quit, d'ye hear—"
The screams of the Swede never ceased: "He did cheat! I saw him! I saw him—"
As for the Easterner, he was importuning in a voice that was not heeded: "Wait a moment, can't
you? Oh, wait a moment. What's the good of a fight over a game of cards? Wait a moment—"
In this tumult no complete sentences were clear. "Cheat"—"Quit"—"He says"—these fragments
pierced the uproar and rang out sharply. It was remarkable that, whereas Scully undoubtedly
made the most noise, he was the least heard of any of the riotous band.
Then suddenly there was a great cessation. It was as if each man had paused for breath; and
although the room was still lighted with the anger of men, it could be seen that there was no
danger of immediate conflict, and at once Johnnie, shouldering his way forward, almost
succeeded in confronting the Swede. "What did you say I cheated for? What did you say I
cheated for? I don't cheat, and I won't let no man say I do!"
The Swede said, "I saw you! I saw you!"
"Well," cried Johnnie, "I'll fight any man what says I cheat!"
"No, you won't," said the cowboy. "Not here."
"Ah, be still, can't you?" said Scully, coming between them.
The quiet was sufficient to allow the Easterner's voice to be heard. He was repealing, "Oh, wait a
moment, can't you? What's the good of a fight over a game of cards? Wait a moment!"
Johnnie, his red face appearing above his father's shoulder, hailed the Swede again. "Did you say
I cheated?"
The Swede showed his teeth. "Yes."
"Then," said Johnnie, "we must fight."
"Yes, fight," roared the Swede. He was like a demoniac. "Yes, fight! I'll show you what kind of a
man I am! I'll show you who you want to fight! Maybe you think I can't fight! Maybe you think I
can't! I'll show you, you skin, you card-sharp! Yes, you cheated! You cheated! You cheated!"
"Well, let's go at it, then, mister," said Johnnie, coolly.
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The cowboy's brow was beaded with sweat from his efforts in intercepting all sorts of raids. He
turned in despair to Scully. "What are you goin' to do now?"
A change had come over the Celtic visage of the old man. He now seemed all eagerness; his eyes
glowed.
"We'll let them fight," he answered, stalwartly. "I can't put up with it any longer. I've stood this
damned Swede till I'm sick. We'll let them fight."
VI
The men prepared to go out-of-doors. The Easterner was so nervous that he had great difficulty
in getting his arms into the sleeves of his new leather coat. As the cowboy drew his fur cap down
over his cars his hands trembled. In fact, Johnnie and old Scully were the only ones who
displayed no agitation. These preliminaries were conducted without words.
Scully threw open the door. "Well, come on," he said. Instantly a terrific wind caused the flame
of the lamp to struggle at its wick, while a puff of black smoke sprang from the chimney-top.
The stove was in mid-current of the blast, and its voice swelled to equal the roar of the storm.
Some of the scarred and bedabbled cards were caught up from the floor and dashed helplessly
against the farther wall. The men lowered their heads and plunged into the tempest as into a sea.
No snow was falling, but great whirls and clouds of flakes, swept up from the ground by the
frantic winds, were streaming southward with the speed of bullets. The covered land was blue
with the sheen of an unearthly satin, and there was no other hue save where, at the low, black
railway station—which seemed incredibly distant—one light gleamed like a tiny jewel. As the
men floundered into a thigh deep drift, it was known that the Swede was bawling out something.
Scully went to him, put a hand on his shoulder and projected an ear. "What's that you say?" he
shouted.
"I say," bawled the Swede again, "I won't stand much show against this gang. I know you'll all
pitch on me."
Scully smote him reproachfully on the arm. "Tut, man!" he yelled. The wind tore the words from
Scully's lips and scattered them far alee.
"You are all a gang of—" boomed the Swede, but the storm also seized the remainder of this
sentence.
Immediately turning their backs upon the wind, the men had swung around a corner to the
sheltered side of the hotel. It was the function of the little house to preserve here, amid this great
devastation of snow, an irregular V-shape of heavily incrusted grass, which crackled beneath the
feet. One could imagine the great drifts piled against the windward side. When the party reached
the comparative peace of this spot it was found that the Swede was still bellowing.
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"Oh, I know what kind of a thing this is! I know you'll all pitch on me. I can't lick you all!"
Scully turned upon him panther fashion. "You'll not have to whip all of us. You'll have to whip
my son Johnnie. An' the man what troubles you durin' that time will have me to dale with."
The arrangements were swiftly made. The two men faced each other, obedient to the harsh
commands of Scully, whose face, in the subtly luminous gloom, could be seen set in the austere
impersonal lines that are pictured on the countenances of the Roman veterans. The Easterner's
teeth were chattering, and he was hopping up and down like a mechanical toy. The cowboy stood
rock-like.
The contestants had not stripped off any clothing. Each was in his ordinary attire. Their fists
were up, and they eyed each other in a calm that had the elements of leonine cruelty in it.
During this pause, the Easterner's mind, like a film, took lasting impressions of three men—the
iron-nerved master of the ceremony; the Swede, pale, motionless, terrible; and Johnnie, serene
yet ferocious, brutish yet heroic. The entire prelude had in it a tragedy greater than the tragedy of
action, and this aspect was accentuated by the long, mellow cry of the blizzard, as it sped the
tumbling and wailing flakes into the black abyss of the south.
"Now!" said Scully.
The two combatants leaped forward and crashed together like bullocks. There was heard the
cushioned sound of blows, and of a curse squeezing out from between the tight teeth of one.
As for the spectators, the Easterner's pent-up breath exploded from him with a pop of relief,
absolute relief from the tension of the preliminaries. The cowboy bounded into the air with a
yowl. Scully was immovable as from supreme amazement and fear at the fury of the fight which
he himself had permitted and arranged.
For a time the encounter in the darkness was such a perplexity of flying arms that it presented no
more detail than would a swiftly revolving wheel. Occasionally a face, as if illumined by a flash
of light, would shine out, ghastly and marked with pink spots. A moment later, the men might
have been known as shadows, if it were not for the involuntary utterance of oaths that came from
them in whispers.
Suddenly a holocaust of warlike desire caught the cowboy, and he bolted forward with the speed
of a broncho. "Go it, Johnnie! go it! Kill him! Kill him!"
Scully confronted him. "Kape back," he said; and by his glance the cowboy could tell that this
man was Johnnie's father.
To the Easterner there was a monotony of unchangeable fighting that was an abomination. This
confused mingling was eternal to his sense, which was concentrated in a longing for the end, the
priceless end. Once the fighters lurched near him, and as he scrambled hastily backward he heard
them breathe like men on the rack.
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"Kill him, Johnnie! Kill him! Kill him! Kill him!" The cowboy's face was contorted like one of
those agony masks in museums.
"Keep still," said Scully, icily.
Then there was a sudden loud grunt, incomplete, cut short, and Johnnie's body swung away from
the Swede and fell with sickening heaviness to the grass. The cowboy was barely in time to
prevent the mad Swede from flinging himself upon his prone adversary. "No, you don't," said the
cowboy, interposing an arm. "Wait a second."
Scully was at his son's side. "Johnnie! Johnnie, me boy!" His voice had a quality of melancholy
tenderness. "Johnnie! Can you go on with it?" He looked anxiously down into the bloody, pulpy
face of his son.
There was a moment of silence, and then Johnnie answered in his ordinary voice, "Yes, I—it—
yes."
Assisted by his father he struggled to his feet. "Wait a bit now till you git your wind," said the
old man.
A few paces away the cowboy was lecturing the Swede. "No, you don't! Wait a second!"
The Easterner was plucking at Scully's sleeve. "Oh, this is enough," he pleaded. "This is enough!
Let it go as it stands. This is enough!"
"Bill," said Scully, "git out of the road." The cowboy stepped aside. "Now." The combatants
were actuated by a new caution as they advanced towards collision. They glared at each other,
and then the Swede aimed a lightning blow that carried with it his entire weight. Johnnie was
evidently half stupid from weakness, but he miraculously dodged, and his fist sent the overbalanced Swede sprawling.
The cowboy, Scully, and the Easterner burst into a cheer that was like a chorus of triumphant
soldiery, but before its conclusion the Swede had scuffled agilely to his feet and come in berserk
abandon at his foe. There was another perplexity of flying arms, and Johnnie's body again swung
away and fell, even as a bundle might fall from a roof. The Swede instantly staggered to a little
wind-waved tree and leaned upon it, breathing like an engine, while his savage and flame-lit eyes
roamed from face to face as the men bent over Johnnie. There was a splendor of isolation in his
situation at this time which the Easterner felt once when, lifting his eyes from the man on the
ground, he beheld that mysterious and lonely figure, waiting.
"Arc you any good yet, Johnnie?" asked Scully in a broken voice.
The son gasped and opened his eyes languidly. After a moment he answered, "No—I ain't—any
good—any—more." Then, from shame and bodily ill he began to weep, the tears furrowing
down through the blood-stains on his face. "He was too—too—too heavy for me."
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Scully straightened and addressed the waiting figure. "Stranger," he said, evenly, "it's all up with
our side." Then his voice changed into that vibrant huskiness which is commonly the tone of the
most simple and deadly announcements. "Johnnie is whipped."
Without replying, the victor moved off on the route to the front door of the hotel.
The cowboy was formulating new and un-spellable blasphemies. The Easterner was startled to
find that they were out in a wind that seemed to come direct from the shadowed arctic floes. He
heard again the wail of the snow as it was flung to its grave in the south. He knew now that all
this time the cold had been sinking into him deeper and deeper, and he wondered that he had not
perished. He felt indifferent to the condition of the vanquished man.
"Johnnie, can you walk?" asked Scully.
"Did I hurt—hurt him any?" asked the son.
"Can you walk, boy? Can you walk?"
Johnnie's voice was suddenly strong. There was a robust impatience in it. "I asked you whether I
hurt him any!"
"Yes, yes, Johnnie," answered the cowboy, consolingly; "he's hurt a good deal."
They raised him from the ground, and as soon as he was on his feet he went tottering off,
rebuffing all attempts at assistance. When the party rounded the corner they were fairly blinded
by the pelting of the snow. It burned their faces like fire. The cowboy carried Johnnie through
the drift to the door. As they entered some cards again rose from the floor and beat against the
wall.
The Easterner rushed to the stove. He was so profoundly chilled that he almost dared to embrace
the glowing iron. The Swede was not in the room. Johnnie sank into a chair, and, folding his
arms on his knees, buried his face in them. Scully, warming one foot and then the other at a rim
of the stove, muttered to himself with Celtic mournfulness. The cowboy had removed his fur cap,
and with a dazed and rueful air he was running one hand through his tousled locks. From
overhead they could hear the creaking of boards, as the Swede tramped here and there in his
room.
The sad quiet was broken by the sudden flinging open of a door that led towards the kitchen. It
was instantly followed by an inrush of women. They precipitated themselves upon Johnnie amid
a chorus of lamentation. Before they carried their prey off to the kitchen, there to be bathed and
harangued with that mixture of sympathy and abuse which is a feat of their sex, the mother
straightened herself and fixed old Scully with an eye of stern reproach. "Shame be upon you,
Patrick Scully!" she cried. "Your own son, too. Shame be upon you!"
"There, now! Be quiet, now!" said the old man, weakly.
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"Shame be upon you, Patrick Scully!" The girls, rallying to this slogan, sniffed disdainfully in
the direction of those trembling accomplices, the cowboy and the Easterner. Presently they bore
Johnnie away, and left the three men to dismal reflection.
VII
"I'd like to fight this here Dutchman myself," said the cowboy, breaking a long silence.
Scully wagged his head sadly. "No, that wouldn't do. It wouldn't be right. It wouldn't be right."
"Well, why wouldn't it?" argued the cowboy. "I don't see no harm in it."
"No," answered Scully, with mournful heroism. "It wouldn't be right. It was Johnnie's fight, and
now we mustn't whip the man just because he whipped Johnnie."
"Yes, that's true enough," said the cowboy; "but—he better not get fresh with me, because I
couldn't stand no more of it."
"You'll not say a word to him," commanded Scully, and even then they heard the tread of the
Swede on the stairs. His entrance was made theatric. He swept the door back with a bang and
swaggered to the middle of the room. No one looked at him. "Well," he cried, insolently, at
Scully, "I s'pose you'll tell me now how much I owe you?"
The old man remained stolid. "You don't owe me nothin'."
"Huh!" said the Swede, "huh! Don't owe 'im nothin'."
The cowboy addressed the Swede. "Stranger, I don't see how you come to be so gay around
here."
Old Scully was instantly alert. "Stop!" he shouted, holding his hand forth, fingers upward. "Bill,
you shut up!"
The cowboy spat carelessly into the sawdust box. "I didn't say a word, did I?" he asked.
"Mr. Scully," called the Swede, "how much do I owe you?" It was seen that he was attired for
departure, and that he had his valise in his hand.
"You don't owe me nothin'," repeated Scully in his same imperturbable way.
"Huh!" said the Swede. "I guess you're right. I guess if it was any way at all, you'd owe me
somethin'. That's what I guess." He turned to the cowboy. "'Kill him! Kill him! Kill him!'" he
mimicked, and then guffawed victoriously. "'Kill him!'" He was convulsed with ironical humor.
276
But he might have been jeering the dead. The three men were immovable and silent, staring with
glassy eyes at the stove.
The Swede opened the door and passed into the storm, giving one derisive glance backward at
the still group.
As soon as the door was closed, Scully and the cowboy leaped to their feet and began to curse.
They trampled to and fro, waving their arms and smashing into the air with their fists. "Oh, but
that was a hard minute!" wailed Scully. "That was a hard minute! Him there leerin' and scoffin'!
One bang at his nose was worth forty dollars to me that minute! How did you stand it, Bill?"
"How did I stand it?" cried the cowboy in a quivering voice. "How did I stand it? Oh!"
The old man burst into sudden brogue. "I'd loike to take that Swade," he wailed, "and hould 'im
down on a shtone flure and bate 'im to a jelly wid a shtick!"
The cowboy groaned in sympathy. "I'd like to git him by the neck and ha-ammer him "—he
brought his hand down on a chair with a noise like a pistol-shot—"hammer that there Dutchman
until he couldn't tell himself from a dead coyote!"
"I'd bate 'im until he—"
"I'd show him some things—"
And then together they raised a yearning, fanatic cry—"Oh-o-oh! if we only could—"
"Yes!"
"Yes!"
"And then I'd—"
"O-o-oh!"
VIII
The Swede, tightly gripping his valise, tacked across the face of the storm as if he carried sails.
He was following a line of little naked, gasping trees, which he knew must mark the way of the
road. His face, fresh from the pounding of Johnnie's fists, felt more pleasure than pain in the
wind and the driving snow. A number of square shapes loomed upon him finally, and he knew
them as the houses of the main body of the town. He found a street and made travel along it,
leaning heavily upon the wind whenever, at a corner, a terrific blast caught him.
He might have been in a deserted village. We picture the world as thick with conquering and
elate humanity, but here, with the bugles of the tempest pealing, it was hard to imagine a peopled
earth. One viewed the existence of man then as a marvel, and conceded a glamour of wonder to
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these lice which were caused to cling to a whirling, fire-smote, ice-locked, disease-stricken,
space-lost bulb. The conceit of man was explained by this storm to be the very engine of life.
One was a coxcomb not to die in it. However, the Swede found a saloon.
In front of it an indomitable red light was burning, and the snow-flakes were made blood color as
they flew through the circumscribed territory of the lamp's shining. The Swede pushed open the
door of the saloon and entered. A sanded expanse was before him, and at the end of it four men
sat about a table drinking. Down one side of the room extended a radiant bar, and its guardian
was leaning upon his elbows listening to the talk of the men at the table. The Swede dropped his
valise upon the floor, and, smiling fraternally upon the barkeeper, said, "Gimme some whiskey,
will you?" The man placed a bottle, a whiskey-glass, and a glass of ice-thick water upon the bar.
The Swede poured himself an abnormal portion of whiskey and drank it in three gulps. "Pretty
bad night," remarked the bartender, indifferently. He was making the pretension of blindness
which is usually a distinction of his class; but it could have been seen that he was furtively
studying the half-erased blood-stains on the face of the Swede. "Bad night," he said again.
"Oh, it's good enough for me," replied the Swede, hardily, as he poured himself some more
whiskey. The barkeeper took his coin and maneuvered it through its reception by the highly
nickelled cash-machine. A bell rang; a card labelled "20 cts." had appeared.
"No," continued the Swede, "this isn't too bad weather. It's good enough for me."
"So?" murmured the barkeeper, languidly.
The copious drams made the Swede's eyes swim, and he breathed a trifle heavier. "Yes, I like
this weather. I like it. It suits me." It was apparently his design to impart a deep significance to
these words.
"So?" murmured the bartender again. He turned to gaze dreamily at the scroll-like birds and birdlike scrolls which had been drawn with soap upon the mirrors back of the bar.
"Well, I guess I'll take another drink," said the Swede, presently. "Have something?"
"No, thanks; I'm not drinkin'," answered the bartender. Afterwards he asked, "How did you hurt
your face?"
The Swede immediately began to boast loudly. "Why, in a fight. I thumped the soul out of a man
down here at Scully's hotel."
The interest of the four men at the table was at last aroused.
"Who was it?" said one.
"Johnnie Scully," blustered the Swede. "Son of the man what runs it. He will be pretty near dead
for some weeks, I can tell you. I made a nice thing of him, I did. He couldn't get up. They carried
him in the house. Have a drink?"
278
Instantly the men in some subtle way incased themselves in reserve. "No, thanks," said one. The
group was of curious formation. Two were prominent local business men; one was the districtattorney; and one was a professional gambler of the kind known as "square." But a scrutiny of
the group would not have enabled an observer to pick the gambler from the men of more
reputable pursuits. He was, in fact, a man so delicate in manner, when among people of fair
class, and so judicious in his choice of victims, that in the strictly masculine part of the town's
life he had come to be explicitly trusted and admired. People called him a thoroughbred. The fear
and contempt with which his craft was regarded was undoubtedly the reason that his quiet
dignity shone conspicuous above the quiet dignity of men who might be merely hatters, billiard
markers, or grocery-clerks. Beyond an occasional unwary traveller, who came by rail, this
gambler was supposed to prey solely upon reckless and senile farmers, who, when flush with
good crops, drove into town in all the pride and confidence of an absolutely invulnerable
stupidity. Hearing at times in circuitous fashion of the despoilment of such a farmer, the
important men of Romper invariably laughed in contempt of the victim, and, if they thought of
the wolf at all, it was with a kind of pride at the knowledge that he would never dare think of
attacking their wisdom and courage. Besides, it was popular that this gambler had a real wife and
two real children in a neat cottage in a suburb, where he led an exemplary home life; and when
any one even suggested a discrepancy in his character, the crowd immediately vociferated
descriptions of this virtuous family circle. Then men who led exemplary home lives, and men
who did not lead exemplary home lives, all subsided in a bunch, remarking that there was
nothing more to be said.
However, when a restriction was placed upon him—as, for instance, when a strong clique of
members of the new Pollywog Club refused to permit him, even as a spectator, to appear in the
rooms of the organization—the candor and gentleness with which he accepted the judgment
disarmed many of his foes and made his friends more desperately partisan. He invariably
distinguished between himself and a respectable Romper man so quickly and frankly that his
manner actually appeared to be a continual broadcast compliment.
And one must not forget to declare the fundamental fact of his entire position in Romper. It is
irrefutable that in all affairs outside of his business, in all matters that occur eternally and
commonly between man and man, this thieving card-player was so generous, so just, so moral,
that, in a contest, he could have put to flight the consciences of nine-tenths of the citizens of
Romper.
And so it happened that he was seated in this saloon with the two prominent local merchants and
the district-attorney.
The Swede continued to drink raw whiskey, meanwhile babbling at the barkeeper and trying to
induce him to indulge in potations. "Come on. Have a drink. Come on. What—no? Well, have a
little one, then. By gawd, I've whipped a man to-night, and I want to celebrate. I whipped him
good, too. Gentlemen," the Swede cried to the men at the table, "have a drink?"
"Ssh!" said the barkeeper.
279
The group at the table, although furtively attentive, had been pretending to be deep in talk, but
now a man lifted his eyes towards the Swede and said, shortly, "Thanks. We don't want any
more."
At this reply the Swede ruffled out his chest like a rooster. "Well," he exploded, "it seems I can't
get anybody to drink with me in this town. Seems so, don't it? Well!"
"Ssh!" said the barkeeper.
"Say," snarled the Swede, "don't you try to shut me up. I won't have it. I'm a gentleman, and I
want people to drink with me. And I want 'em to drink with me now. Now—do you understand?"
He rapped the bar with his knuckles.
Years of experience had calloused the bartender. He merely grew sulky. "I hear you," he
answered.
"Well," cried the Swede, "listen hard then. See those men over there? Well, they're going to
drink with me, and don't you forget it. Now you watch."
"Hi!" yelled the barkeeper, "this won't do!"
"Why won't it?" demanded the Swede. He stalked over to the table, and by chance laid his hand
upon the shoulder of the gambler. "How about this?" he asked, wrathfully. "I asked you to drink
with me."
The gambler simply twisted his head and spoke over his shoulder. "My friend, I don't know
you."
"Oh, hell!" answered the Swede, "come and have a drink."
"Now, my boy," advised the gambler, kindly, "take your hand off my shoulder and go 'way and
mind your own business." He was a little, slim man, and it seemed strange to hear him use this
tone of heroic patronage to the burly Swede. The other men at the table said nothing.
"What! You won't drink with me, you little dude? I'll make you then! I'll make you!" The Swede
had grasped the gambler frenziedly at the throat, and was dragging him from his chair. The other
men sprang up. The barkeeper dashed around the corner of his bar. There was a great tumult, and
then was seen a long blade in the hand of the gambler. It shot forward, and a human body, this
citadel of virtue, wisdom, power, was pierced as easily as if it had been a melon. The Swede fell
with a cry of supreme astonishment.
The prominent merchants and the district attorney must have at once tumbled out of the place
backward. The bartender found himself hanging limply to the arm of a chair and gazing into the
eyes of a murderer.
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"Henry," said the latter, as he wiped his knife on one of the towels that hung beneath the bar-rail,
"you tell 'em where to find me. I'll be home, waiting for 'em." Then he vanished. A moment
afterwards the barkeeper was in the street dinning through the storm for help, and, moreover,
companionship.
The corpse of the Swede, alone in the saloon, had its eyes fixed upon a dreadful legend that
dwelt atop of the cash-machine: "This registers the amount of your purchase."
IX
Months later, the cowboy was frying pork over the stove of a little ranch near the Dakota line,
when there was a quick thud of hoofs outside, and presently the Easterner entered with the letters
and the papers.
"Well," said the Easterner at once, "the chap that killed the Swede has got three years. Wasn't
much, was it?"
"He has? Three years?" The cowboy poised his pan of pork, while he ruminated upon the news.
"Three years. That ain't much."
"No. It was a light sentence," replied the Easterner as he unbuckled his spurs. "Seems there was a
good deal of sympathy for him in Romper."
"If the bartender had been any good," observed the cowboy, thoughtfully, "he would have gone
in and cracked that there Dutchman on the head with a bottle in the beginnin' of it and stopped all
this here murderin'."
"Yes, a thousand things might have happened," said the Easterner, tartly.
The cowboy returned his pan of pork to the fire, but his philosophy continued. "It's funny, ain't
it? If he hadn't said Johnnie was cheatin' he'd be alive this minute. He was an awful fool. Game
played for fun, too. Not for money. I believe he was crazy."
"I feel sorry for that gambler," said the Easterner.
"Oh, so do I," said the cowboy. "He don't deserve none of it for killin' who he did."
"The Swede might not have been killed if everything had been square."
"Might not have been killed?" exclaimed the cowboy. "Everythin' square? Why, when he said
that Johnnie was cheatin' and acted like such a jackass? And then in the saloon he fairly walked
up to git hurt?" With these arguments the cowboy browbeat the Easterner and reduced him to
rage.
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"You're a fool!" cried the Easterner, viciously. "You're a bigger jackass than the Swede by a
million majority. Now let me tell you one thing. Let me tell you something. Listen!
Johnnie was cheating!"
"'Johnnie,'" said the cowboy, blankly. There was a minute of silence, and then he said, robustly,
"Why, no. The game was only for fun."
"Fun or not," said the Easterner, "Johnnie was cheating. I saw him. I know it. I saw him. And I
refused to stand up and be a man. I let the Swede fight it out alone. And you—you were simply
puffing around the place and wanting to fight. And then old Scully himself! We are all in it! This
poor gambler isn't even a noun. He is kind of an adverb. Every sin is the result of a collaboration.
We, five of us, have collaborated in the murder of this Swede. Usually there are from a dozen to
forty women really involved in every murder, but in this case it seems to be only five men—you,
I, Johnnie, old Scully, and that fool of an unfortunate gambler came merely as a culmination, the
apex of a human movement, and gets all the punishment."
The cowboy, injured and rebellious, cried out blindly into this fog of mysterious theory: "Well, I
didn't do anythin', did I?"
The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky
Crane, Stephen. "The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky." McClure's Magazine, February, 1898. 377384.
source of etext: http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks07/0700031h.html
I
The great Pullman was whirling onward with such dignity of motion that a glance from the
window seemed simply to prove that the plains of Texas were pouring eastward. Vast flats of
green grass, dull-hued spaces of mesquite and cactus, little groups of frame houses, woods of
light and tender trees, all were sweeping into the east, sweeping over the horizon, a precipice.
A newly married pair had boarded this coach at San Antonio. The man's face was reddened from
many days in the wind and sun, and a direct result of his new black clothes was that his brickcolored hands were constantly performing in a most conscious fashion. From time to time he
looked down respectfully at his attire. He sat with a hand on each knee, like a man waiting in a
barber's shop. The glances he devoted to other passengers were furtive and shy.
The bride was not pretty, nor was she very young. She wore a dress of blue cashmere, with small
reservations of velvet here and there and with steel buttons abounding. She continually twisted
her head to regard her puff sleeves, very stiff, straight, and high. They embarrassed her. It was
quite apparent that she had cooked, and that she expected to cook, dutifully. The blushes caused
by the careless scrutiny of some passengers as she had entered the car were strange to see upon
this plain, under-class countenance, which was drawn in placid, almost emotionless lines.
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They were evidently very happy. "Ever been in a parlor-car before?" he asked, smiling with
delight.
"No," she answered, "I never was. It's fine, ain't it?"
"Great! And then after a while we'll go forward to the diner and get a big layout. Finest meal in
the world. Charge a dollar."
"Oh, do they?" cried the bride. "Charge a dollar? Why, that's too much -- for us--ain't it, Jack?"
"Not this trip, anyhow," he answered bravely. "We're going to go the whole thing."
Later, he explained to her about the trains. "You see, it's a thousand miles from one end of Texas
to the other, and this train runs right across it and never stops but four times." He had the pride of
an owner. He pointed out to her the dazzling fittings of the coach, and in truth her eyes opened
wider as she contemplated the sea-green figured velvet, the shining brass, silver, and glass, the
wood that gleamed as darkly brilliant as the surface of a pool of oil. At one end a bronze figure
sturdily held a support for a separated chamber, and at convenient places on the ceiling were
frescoes in olive and silver.
To the minds of the pair, their surroundings reflected the glory of their marriage that morning in
San Antonio. This was the environment of their new estate, and the man's face in particular
beamed with an elation that made him appear ridiculous to the negro porter. This individual at
times surveyed them from afar with an amused and superior grin. On other occasions he bullied
them with skill in ways that did not make it exactly plain to them that they were being bullied.
He subtly used all the manners of the most unconquerable kind of snobbery. He oppressed them,
but of this oppression they had small knowledge, and they speedily forgot that infrequently a
number of travelers covered them with stares of derisive enjoyment. Historically there was
supposed to be something infinitely humorous in their situation.
"We are due in Yellow Sky at 3:42," he said, looking tenderly into her eyes.
"Oh, are we?" she said, as if she had not been aware of it. To evince surprise at her husband's
statement was part of her wifely amiability. She took from a pocket a little silver watch, and as
she held it before her and stared at it with a frown of attention, the new husband's face shone.
"I bought it in San Anton' from a friend of mine," he told her gleefully.
"It's seventeen minutes past twelve," she said, looking up at him with a kind of shy and clumsy
coquetry. A passenger, noting this play, grew excessively sardonic, and winked at himself in one
of the numerous mirrors.
At last they went to the dining-car. Two rows of negro waiters, in glowing white suits, surveyed
their entrance with the interest and also the equanimity of men who had been forewarned. The
pair fell to the lot of a waiter who happened to feel pleasure in steering them through their meal.
He viewed them with the manner of a fatherly pilot, his countenance radiant with benevolence.
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The patronage, entwined with the ordinary deference, was not plain to them. And yet, as they
returned to their coach, they showed in their faces a sense of escape.
To the left, miles down a long purple slope, was a little ribbon of mist where moved the keening
Rio Grande. The train was approaching it at an angle, and the apex was Yellow Sky. Presently it
was apparent that, as the distance from Yellow Sky grew shorter, the husband became
commensurately restless. His brick-red hands were more insistent in their prominence.
Occasionally he was even rather absent-minded and far-away when the bride leaned forward and
addressed him.
As a matter of truth, Jack Potter was beginning to find the shadow of a deed weigh upon him like
a leaden slab. He, the town marshal of Yellow Sky, a man known, liked, and feared in his corner,
a prominent person, had gone to San Antonio to meet a girl he believed he loved, and there, after
the usual prayers, had actually induced her to marry him, without consulting Yellow Sky for any
part of the transaction. He was now bringing his bride before an innocent and unsuspecting
community.
Of course, people in Yellow Sky married as it pleased them, in accordance with a general
custom; but such was Potter's thought of his duty to his friends, or of their idea of his duty, or of
an unspoken form which does not control men in these matters, that he felt he was heinous. He
had committed an extraordinary crime. Face to face with this girl in San Antonio, and spurred by
his sharp impulse, he had gone headlong over all the social hedges. At San Antonio he was like a
man hidden in the dark. A knife to sever any friendly duty, any form, was easy to his hand in that
remote city. But the hour of Yellow Sky, the hour of daylight, was approaching.
He knew full well that his marriage was an important thing to his town. It could only be
exceeded by the burning of the new hotel. His friends could not forgive him. Frequently he had
reflected on the advisability of telling them by telegraph, but a new cowardice had been upon
him.
He feared to do it. And now the train was hurrying him toward a scene of amazement, glee, and
reproach. He glanced out of the window at the line of haze swinging slowly in towards the train.
Yellow Sky had a kind of brass band, which played painfully, to the delight of the populace. He
laughed without heart as he thought of it. If the citizens could dream of his prospective arrival
with his bride, they would parade the band at the station and escort them, amid cheers and
laughing congratulations, to his adobe home.
He resolved that he would use all the devices of speed and plains-craft in making the journey
from the station to his house. Once within that safe citadel he could issue some sort of a vocal
bulletin, and then not go among the citizens until they had time to wear off a little of their
enthusiasm.
The bride looked anxiously at him. "What's worrying you, Jack?"
He laughed again. "I'm not worrying, girl. I'm only thinking of Yellow Sky."
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She flushed in comprehension.
A sense of mutual guilt invaded their minds and developed a finer tenderness. They looked at
each other with eyes softly aglow. But Potter often laughed the same nervous laugh. The flush
upon the bride's face seemed quite permanent.
The traitor to the feelings of Yellow Sky narrowly watched the speeding landscape. "We're
nearly there," he said.
Presently the porter came and announced the proximity of Potter's home. He held a brush in his
hand and, with all his airy superiority gone, he brushed Potter's new clothes as the latter slowly
turned this way and that way. Potter fumbled out a coin and gave it to the porter, as he had seen
others do. It was a heavy and muscle-bound business, as that of a man shoeing his first horse.
The porter took their bag, and as the train began to slow they moved forward to the hooded
platform of the car. Presently the two engines and their long string of coaches rushed into the
station of Yellow Sky.
"They have to take water here," said Potter, from a constricted throat and in mournful cadence, as
one announcing death. Before the train stopped, his eye had swept the length of the platform, and
he was glad and astonished to see there was none upon it but the station-agent, who, with a
slightly hurried and anxious air, was walking toward the water-tanks. When the train had halted,
the porter alighted first and placed in position a little temporary step.
"Come on, girl," said Potter hoarsely. As he helped her down they each laughed on a false note.
He took the bag from the negro, and bade his wife cling to his arm. As they slunk rapidly away,
his hang-dog glance perceived that they were unloading the two trunks, and also that the stationagent far ahead near the baggage-car had turned and was running toward him, making gestures.
He laughed, and groaned as he laughed, when he noted the first effect of his marital bliss upon
Yellow Sky. He gripped his wife's arm firmly to his side, and they fled. Behind them the porter
stood chuckling fatuously.
II
The California Express on the Southern Railway was due at Yellow Sky in twenty-one minutes.
There were six men at the bar of the "Weary Gentleman" saloon. One was a drummer who talked
a great deal and rapidly; three were Texans who did not care to talk at that time; and two were
Mexican sheep-herders who did not talk as a general practice in the "Weary Gentleman" saloon.
The barkeeper's dog lay on the board walk that crossed in front of the door. His head was on his
paws, and he glanced drowsily here and there with the constant vigilance of a dog that is kicked
on occasion. Across the sandy street were some vivid green grass plots, so wonderful in
appearance amid the sands that burned near them in a blazing sun that they caused a doubt in the
mind. They exactly resembled the grass mats used to represent lawns on the stage. At the cooler
end of the railway station a man without a coat sat in a tilted chair and smoked his pipe. The
fresh-cut bank of the Rio Grande circled near the town, and there could be seen beyond it a great,
plum-colored plain of mesquite.
285
Save for the busy drummer and his companions in the saloon, Yellow Sky was dozing. The newcomer leaned gracefully upon the bar, and recited many tales with the confidence of a bard who
has come upon a new field.
"--and at the moment that the old man fell down stairs with the bureau in his arms, the old
woman was coming up with two scuttles of coal, and, of course--"
The drummer's tale was interrupted by a young man who suddenly appeared in the open door. He
cried: "Scratchy Wilson's drunk, and has turned loose with both hands." The two Mexicans at
once set down their glasses and faded out of the rear entrance of the saloon.
The drummer, innocent and jocular, answered: "All right, old man. S'pose he has. Come in and
have a drink, anyhow."
But the information had made such an obvious cleft in every skull in the room that the drummer
was obliged to see its importance. All had become instantly solemn. "Say," said he, mystified,
"what is this?" His three companions made the introductory gesture of eloquent speech, but the
young man at the door forestalled them.
"It means, my friend," he answered, as he came into the saloon, "that for the next two hours this
town won't be a health resort."
The barkeeper went to the door and locked and barred it. Reaching out of the window, he pulled
in heavy wooden shutters and barred them. Immediately a solemn, chapel-like gloom was upon
the place. The drummer was looking from one to another.
"But, say," he cried, "what is this, anyhow? You don't mean there is going to be a gun-fight?"
"Don't know whether there'll be a fight or not," answered one man grimly. "But there'll be some
shootin'--some good shootin'."
The young man who had warned them waved his hand. "Oh, there'll be a fight fast enough if
anyone wants it. Anybody can get a fight out there in the street. There's a fight just waiting."
The drummer seemed to be swayed between the interest of a foreigner and a perception of
personal danger.
"What did you say his name was?" he asked.
"Scratchy Wilson," they answered in chorus.
"And will he kill anybody? What are you going to do? Does this happen often? Does he rampage
around like this once a week or so? Can he break in that door?"
286
"No, he can't break down that door," replied the barkeeper. "He's tried it three times. But when
he comes you'd better lay down on the floor, stranger. He's dead sure to shoot at it, and a bullet
may come through."
Thereafter the drummer kept a strict eye upon the door. The time had not yet been called for him
to hug the floor, but, as a minor precaution, he sidled near to the wall. "Will he kill anybody?" he
said again.
The men laughed low and scornfully at the question.
"He's out to shoot, and he's out for trouble. Don't see any good in experimentin' with him."
"But what do you do in a case like this? What do you do?"
A man responded: "Why, he and Jack Potter--"
"But," in chorus, the other men interrupted, "Jack Potter's in San Anton'."
"Well, who is he? What's he got to do with it?"
"Oh, he's the town marshal. He goes out and fights Scratchy when he gets on one of these tears."
"Wow," said the drummer, mopping his brow. "Nice job he's got."
The voices had toned away to mere whisperings. The drummer wished to ask further questions
which were born of an increasing anxiety and bewilderment; but when he attempted them, the
men merely looked at him in irritation and motioned him to remain silent. A tense waiting hush
was upon them. In the deep shadows of the room their eyes shone as they listened for sounds
from the street. One man made three gestures at the barkeeper, and the latter, moving like a
ghost, handed him a glass and a bottle. The man poured a full glass of whisky, and set down the
bottle noiselessly. He gulped the whisky in a swallow, and turned again toward the door in
immovable silence. The drummer saw that the barkeeper, without a sound, had taken a
Winchester from beneath the bar. Later he saw this individual beckoning to him, so he tiptoed
across the room.
"You better come with me back of the bar."
"No, thanks," said the drummer, perspiring. "I'd rather be where I can make a break for the back
door."
Whereupon the man of bottles made a kindly but peremptory gesture. The drummer obeyed it,
and finding himself seated on a box with his head below the level of the bar, balm was laid upon
his soul at sight of various zinc and copper fittings that bore a resemblance to armor-plate. The
barkeeper took a seat comfortably upon an adjacent box.
287
"You see," he whispered, "this here Scratchy Wilson is a wonder with a gun--a perfect wonder-and when he goes on the war trail, we hunt our holes--naturally. He's about the last one of the old
gang that used to hang out along the river here. He's a terror when he's drunk. When he's sober
he's all right--kind of simple--wouldn't hurt a fly--nicest fellow in town. But when he's drunk-whoo!"
There were periods of stillness. "I wish Jack Potter was back from San Anton'," said the
barkeeper. "He shot Wilson up once--in the leg--and he would sail in and pull out the kinks in
this thing."
Presently they heard from a distance the sound of a shot, followed by three wild yowls. It
instantly removed a bond from the men in the darkened saloon. There was a shuffling of feet.
They looked at each other. "Here he comes," they said.
III
A man in a maroon-colored flannel shirt, which had been purchased for purposes of decoration
and made, principally, by some Jewish women on the east side of New York, rounded a corner
and walked into the middle of the main street of Yellow Sky. In either hand the man held a long,
heavy, blue-black revolver. Often he yelled, and these cries rang through a semblance of a
deserted village, shrilly flying over the roofs in a volume that seemed to have no relation to the
ordinary vocal strength of a man. It was as if the surrounding stillness formed the arch of a tomb
over him. These cries of ferocious challenge rang against walls of silence. And his boots had red
tops with gilded imprints, of the kind beloved in winter by little sledding boys on the hillsides of
New England.
The man's face flamed in a rage begot of whisky. His eyes, rolling and yet keen for ambush,
hunted the still doorways and windows. He walked with the creeping movement of the midnight
cat. As it occurred to him, he roared menacing information. The long revolvers in his hands were
as easy as straws; they were moved with an electric swiftness. The little fingers of each hand
played sometimes in a musician's way. Plain from the low collar of the shirt, the cords of his
neck straightened and sank, straightened and sank, as passion moved him. The only sounds were
his terrible invitations. The calm adobes preserved their demeanor at the passing of this small
thing in the middle of the street.
There was no offer of fight; no offer of fight. The man called to the sky. There were no
attractions. He bellowed and fumed and swayed his revolvers here and everywhere.
The dog of the barkeeper of the "Weary Gentleman" saloon had not appreciated the advance of
events. He yet lay dozing in front of his master's door. At sight of the dog, the man paused and
raised his revolver humorously. At sight of the man, the dog sprang up and walked diagonally
away, with a sullen head, and growling. The man yelled, and the dog broke into a gallop. As it
was about to enter an alley, there was a loud noise, a whistling, and something spat the ground
directly before it. The dog screamed, and, wheeling in terror, galloped headlong in a new
direction. Again there was a noise, a whistling, and sand was kicked viciously before it. Fear-
288
stricken, the dog turned and flurried like an animal in a pen. The man stood laughing, his
weapons at his hips.
Ultimately the man was attracted by the closed door of the "Weary Gentleman" saloon. He went
to it, and hammering with a revolver, demanded drink.
The door remaining imperturbable, he picked a bit of paper from the walk and nailed it to the
framework with a knife. He then turned his back contemptuously upon this popular resort, and
walking to the opposite side of the street, and spinning there on his heel quickly and lithely, fired
at the bit of paper. He missed it by a half inch. He swore at himself, and went away. Later, he
comfortably fusilladed the windows of his most intimate friend. The man was playing with this
town. It was a toy for him.
But still there was no offer of fight. The name of Jack Potter, his ancient antagonist, entered his
mind, and he concluded that it would be a glad thing if he should go to Potter's house and by
bombardment induce him to come out and fight. He moved in the direction of his desire,
chanting Apache scalp-music.
When he arrived at it, Potter's house presented the same still front as had the other adobes.
Taking up a strategic position, the man howled a challenge. But this house regarded him as might
a great stone god. It gave no sign. After a decent wait, the man howled further challenges,
mingling with them wonderful epithets.
Presently there came the spectacle of a man churning himself into deepest rage over the
immobility of a house. He fumed at it as the winter wind attacks a prairie cabin in the North. To
the distance there should have gone the sound of a tumult like the fighting of 200 Mexicans. As
necessity bade him, he paused for breath or to reload his revolvers.
IV
Potter and his bride walked sheepishly and with speed. Sometimes they laughed together
shamefacedly and low.
"Next corner, dear," he said finally.
They put forth the efforts of a pair walking bowed against a strong wind. Potter was about to
raise a finger to point the first appearance of the new home when, as they circled the corner, they
came face to face with a man in a maroon-colored shirt who was feverishly pushing cartridges
into a large revolver. Upon the instant the man dropped his revolver to the ground, and, like
lightning, whipped another from its holster. The second weapon was aimed at the bridegroom's
chest.
There was silence. Potter's mouth seemed to be merely a grave for his tongue. He exhibited an
instinct to at once loosen his arm from the woman's grip, and he dropped the bag to the sand. As
for the bride, her face had gone as yellow as old cloth. She was a slave to hideous rites gazing at
the apparitional snake.
289
The two men faced each other at a distance of three paces. He of the revolver smiled with a new
and quiet ferocity.
"Tried to sneak up on me," he said. "Tried to sneak up on me!" His eyes grew more baleful. As
Potter made a slight movement, the man thrust his revolver venomously forward. "No, don't you
do it, Jack Potter. Don't you move a finger toward a gun just yet. Don't you move an eyelash. The
time has come for me to settle with you, and I'm goin' to do it my own way and loaf along with
no interferin'. So if you don't want a gun bent on you, just mind what I tell you."
Potter looked at his enemy. "I ain't got a gun on me, Scratchy," he said. "Honest, I ain't." He was
stiffening and steadying, but yet somewhere at the back of his mind a vision of the Pullman
floated, the sea-green figured velvet, the shining brass, silver, and glass, the wood that gleamed
as darkly brilliant as the surface of a pool of oil--all the glory of the marriage, the environment of
the new estate. "You know I fight when it comes to fighting, Scratchy Wilson, but I ain't got a
gun on me. You'll have to do all the shootin' yourself."
His enemy's face went livid. He stepped forward and lashed his weapon to and fro before Potter's
chest. "Don't you tell me you ain't got no gun on you, you whelp. Don't tell me no lie like that.
There ain't a man in Texas ever seen you without no gun. Don't take me for no kid." His eyes
blazed with light, and his throat worked like a pump.
"I ain't takin' you for no kid," answered Potter. His heels had not moved an inch backward. "I'm
takin' you for a------fool. I tell you I ain't got a gun, and I ain't. If you're goin' to shoot me up, you
better begin now. You'll never get a chance like this again."
So much enforced reasoning had told on Wilson's rage. He was calmer. "If you ain't got a gun,
why ain't you got a gun?" he sneered. "Been to Sunday-school?"
"I ain't got a gun because I've just come from San Anton' with my wife. I'm married," said Potter.
"And if I'd thought there was going to be any galoots like you prowling around when I brought
my wife home, I'd had a gun, and don't you forget it."
"Married!" said Scratchy, not at all comprehending.
"Yes, married. I'm married," said Potter distinctly.
"Married?" said Scratchy. Seemingly for the first time he saw the drooping, drowning woman at
the other man's side. "No!" he said. He was like a creature allowed a glimpse of another world.
He moved a pace backward, and his arm with the revolver dropped to his side. "Is this the lady?"
he asked.
"Yes, this is the lady," answered Potter.
There was another period of silence.
"Well," said Wilson at last, slowly, "I s'pose it's all off now."
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"It's all off if you say so, Scratchy. You know I didn't make the trouble." Potter lifted his valise.
"Well, I 'low it's off, Jack," said Wilson. He was looking at the ground. "Married!" He was not a
student of chivalry; it was merely that in the presence of this foreign condition he was a simple
child of the earlier plains. He picked up his starboard revolver, and placing both weapons in their
holsters, he went away. His feet made funnel-shaped tracks in the heavy sand.
God Lay Dead in Heaven
Crane, Stephen. The Black Riders and Other Lines. Boston: Copeland and Day, 1896.
source of etext: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/40786
God lay dead in Heaven;
Angels sang the hymn of the end;
Purple winds went moaning,
Their wings drip-dripping
With blood
That fell upon the earth.
It, groaning thing,
Turned black and sank.
Then from the far caverns
Of dead sins
Came monsters, livid with desire.
They fought,
Wrangled over the world,
A morsel.
But of all sadness this was sad,-A woman's arms tried to shield
The head of a sleeping man
From the jaws of the final beast.
Do Not Weep, Maiden, for War Is Kind
Crane, Stephen. War Is Kind. New York: Frederick A Stokes Company, 1899.
source of etext: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/9870
Do not weep, maiden, for war is kind.
Because your lover threw wild hands toward the sky
And the affrighted steed ran on alone,
Do not weep.
War is kind.
Hoarse, booming drums of the regiment,
Little souls who thirst for fight,
291
These men were born to drill and die.
The unexplained glory files above them,
Great is the battle-god, great, and his kingdom—;
A field where a thousand corpses lie.
Do not weep, babe, for war is kind.
Because your father tumbled in the yellow trenches,
Raged at his breast, gulped and died,
Do not weep.
War is kind.
Swift blazing flag of the regiment,
Eagle with crest of red and gold,
These men were born to drill and die.
Point for them the virtue of the slaughter,
Make plain to them the excellence of killing
And a field where a thousand corpses lie.
Mother whose heart hung humble as a button
On the bright splendid shroud of your son,
Do not weep.
War is kind.
A Man Said to the Universe
A man said to the universe:
"Sir, I exist!"
"However," replied the universe,
"The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation."
Resources for The Rise of Realism
Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945)
[image] Theodore Dreiser wrote naturalistic short stories and novels. He was born on August 27,
1871, in Terre Haute, Indiana. He briefly attended Indiana University before taking up
newspaper writing in Chicago and St. Louis. Dreiser’s better novels in the vein of literary
naturalism, include Sister Carrie (1900), Jennie Gerhardt (1911), and An American Tragedy
(1925). His frank subject matter and socialist agenda sometimes made publication and
acceptance more difficult, not to mention a style that critics found problematic. Dreiser died on
December 28, 1945. He is buried in Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California.
Important biographies include Jerome Loving’s The Last Titan: A Life of Theodore Dreiser,
University of California Press, 2005, and Richard Lingeman’s two volumes, Theodore Dreiser:
At the Gates of the City, Putman, 1986 and Theodore Dreieser: An American Journey, Putnam,
292
1990. An introduction to criticism is found in Cassuto and Eby’s The Cambridge Companion to
Theodore Dreiser, Cambridge University Press, 2004.
Old Rogaum and His Theresa
Dreiser, Theodore. "Old Rogaum and His Theresa." Free and Other Stories, New York: Bovi and
Liveright, 1918.
Originally published in Reedy's Mirror, December 12, 1901, under the title of "Butcher
Rogaum's Door."
source of etext: http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks10/1000671h.html
alternative source: http://archive.org/details/freeandothersto02dreigoog
In all Bleecker Street was no more comfortable doorway than that of the butcher Rogaum, even
if the first floor was given over to meat market purposes. It was to one side of the main entrance,
which gave ingress to the butcher shop, and from it led up a flight of steps, at least five feet wide,
to the living rooms above. A little portico stood out in front of it, railed on either side, and within
was a second or final door, forming, with the outer or storm door, a little area, where Mrs.
Rogaum and her children frequently sat of a summer's evening. The outer door was never locked,
owing to the inconvenience it would inflict on Mr. Rogaum, who had no other way of getting
upstairs. In winter, when all had gone to bed, there had been cases in which belated travelers had
taken refuge there from the snow or sleet. One or two newsboys occasionally slept there, until
routed out by Officer Maguire, who, seeing it half open one morning at two o'clock, took
occasion to look in. He jogged the newsboys sharply with his stick, and then, when they were
gone, tried the inner door, which was locked.
"You ought to keep that outer door locked, Rogaum," he observed to the phlegmatic butcher the
next evening, as he was passing, "people might get in. A couple o' kids was sleepin' in there last
night."
"Ach, dot iss no difference," answered Rogaum pleasantly. "I haf der inner door locked, yet. Let
dem sleep. Dot iss no difference."
"Better lock it," said the officer, more to vindicate his authority than anything else. "Something
will happen there yet."
The door was never locked, however, and now of a summer evening Mrs. Rogaum and the
children made pleasant use of its recess, watching the rout of street cars and occasionally belated
trucks go by. The children played on the sidewalk, all except the budding Theresa (eighteen just
turning), who, with one companion of the neighborhood, the pretty Kenrihan girl, walked up and
down the block, laughing, glancing, watching the boys. Old Mrs. Kenrihan lived in the next
block, and there, sometimes, the two stopped. There, also, they most frequently pretended to be
when talking with the boys in the intervening side street. Young "Connie" Almerting and George
Goujon were the bright particular mashers who held the attention of the maidens in this block.
These two made their acquaintance in the customary bold, boyish way, and thereafter the girls
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had an urgent desire to be out in the street together after eight, and to linger where the boys could
see and overtake them.
Old Mrs. Rogaum never knew. She was a particularly fat, old German lady, completely
dominated by her liege and portly lord, and at nine o'clock regularly, as he had long ago deemed
meet and fit, she was wont to betake her way upward and so to bed. Old Rogaum himself, at that
hour, closed the market and went to his chamber.
Before that all the children were called sharply, once from the doorstep below and once from the
window above, only Mrs. Rogaum did it first and Rogaum last. It had come, because of a shade
of lenience, not wholly apparent in the father's nature, that the older of the children needed two
callings and sometimes three. Theresa, now that she had "got in" with the Kenrihan maiden,
needed that many calls and even more.
She was just at that age for which mere thoughtless, sensory life holds its greatest charm. She
loved to walk up and down in the as yet bright street where were voices and laughter, and
occasionally moonlight streaming down. What a nuisance it was to be called at nine, anyhow.
Why should one have to go in then, anyhow. What old fogies her parents were, wishing to go to
bed so early. Mrs. Kenrihan was not so strict with her daughter. It made her pettish when
Rogaum insisted, calling as he often did, in German, "Come you now," in a very hoarse and
belligerent voice.
She came, eventually, frowning and wretched, all the moonlight calling her, all the voices of the
night urging her to come back. Her innate opposition due to her urgent youth made her coming
later and later, however, until now, by August of this, her eighteenth year, it was nearly ten when
she entered, and Rogaum was almost invariably angry.
"I vill lock you oudt," he declared, in strongly accented English, while she tried to slip by him
each time. "I vill show you. Du sollst come ven I say, yet. Hear now."
"I'll not," answered Theresa, but it was always under her breath.
Poor Mrs. Rogaum troubled at hearing the wrath in her husband's voice. It spoke of harder and
fiercer times which had been with her. Still she was not powerful enough in the family councils
to put in a weighty word. So Rogaum fumed unrestricted.
There were other nights, however, many of them, and now that the young sparks of the
neighborhood had enlisted the girls' attention, it was a more trying time than ever. Never did a
street seem more beautiful. Its shabby red walls, dusty pavements and protruding store steps and
iron railings seemed bits of the ornamental paraphernalia of heaven itself. These lights, the cars,
the moon, the street lamps! Theresa had a tender eye for the dashing Almerting, a young idler
and loafer of the district, the son of a stationer farther up the street. What a fine fellow he was,
indeed! What a handsome nose and chin! What eyes! What authority! His cigarette was always
cocked at a high angle, in her presence, and his hat had the least suggestion of being set to one
side. He had a shrewd way of winking one eye, taking her boldly by the arm, hailing her as,
"Hey, Pretty!" and was strong and athletic and worked (when he worked) in a tobacco factory.
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His was a trade, indeed, nearly acquired, as he said, and his jingling pockets attested that he had
money of his own. Altogether he was very captivating.
"Aw, whaddy ya want to go in for?" he used to say to her, tossing his head gayly on one side to
listen and holding her by the arm, as old Rogaum called. "Tell him yuh didn't hear."
"No, I've got to go," said the girl, who was soft and plump and fair--a Rhine maiden type.
"Well, yuh don't have to go just yet. Stay another minute. George, what was that fellow's name
that tried to sass us the other day?"
"Theresa!" roared old Rogaum forcefully. "If you do not now come! Ve vill see!"
"I've got to go," repeated Theresa with a faint effort at starting. "Can't you hear? Don't hold me. I
haf to."
"Aw, whaddy ya want to be such a coward for? Y' don't have to go. He won't do nothin' tuh yuh.
My old man was always hollerin' like that up tuh a coupla years ago. Let him holler! Say, kid,
but yuh got sweet eyes! They're as blue! An' your mouth--"
"Now stop! You hear me!" Theresa would protest softly, as, swiftly, he would slip an arm about
her waist and draw her to him, sometimes in a vain, sometimes in a successful effort to kiss her.
As a rule she managed to interpose an elbow between her face and his, but even then he would
manage to touch an ear or a cheek or her neck--sometimes her mouth, full and warm--before she
would develop sufficient energy to push him away and herself free. Then she would protest
mock earnestly or sometimes run away.
"Now, I'll never speak to you any more, if that's the way you're going to do. My father don't
allow me to kiss boys, anyhow," and then she would run, half ashamed, half smiling to herself as
he would stare after her, or if she lingered, develop a kind of anger and even rage.
"Aw, cut it! Whaddy ya want to be so shy for? Dontcha like me? What's gettin' into yuh,
anyhow? Hey?"
In the meantime George Goujon and Myrtle Kenrihan, their companions, might be sweeting and
going through a similar contest, perhaps a hundred feet up the street or near at hand. The quality
of old Rogaum's voice would by now have become so raucous, however, that Theresa would
have lost all comfort in the scene and, becoming frightened, hurry away. Then it was often that
both Almerting and Goujon as well as Myrtle Kenrihan would follow her to the corner, almost in
sight of the irate old butcher.
"Let him call," young Almerting would insist, laying a final hold on her soft white fingers and
causing her to quiver thereby.
"Oh, no," she would gasp nervously. "I can't."
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"Well, go on, then," he would say, and with a flip of his heel would turn back, leaving Theresa to
wonder whether she had alienated him forever or no. Then she would hurry to her father's door.
"Muss ich all my time spenden calling, mit you on de streeds oudt?" old Rogaum would roar
wrathfully, the while his fat hand would descend on her back. "Take dot now. Vy don'd you
come ven I call? In now. I vill show you. Und come you yussed vunce more at dis time--ve vill
see if I am boss in my own house, aber! Komst du vun minute nach ten to-morrow und you vill
see vot you vill get. I vill der door lock. Du sollst not in kommen. Mark! Oudt sollst du stayen-oudt!" and he would glare wrathfully at her retreating figure.
Sometimes Theresa would whimper, sometimes cry or sulk. She almost hated her father for his
cruelty, "the big, fat, rough thing," and just because she wanted to stay out in the bright streets,
too! Because he was old and stout and wanted to go to bed at ten, he thought every one else did.
And outside was the dark sky with its stars, the street lamps, the cars, the tinkle and laughter of
eternal life!
"Oh!" she would sigh as she undressed and crawled into her small neat bed. To think that she had
to live like this all her days! At the same time old Rogaum was angry and equally determined. It
was not so much that he imagined that his Theresa was in bad company as yet, but he wished to
forefend against possible danger. This was not a good neighborhood by any means. The boys
around here were tough. He wanted Theresa to pick some nice sober youth from among the other
Germans he and his wife knew here and there--at the Lutheran Church, for instance. Otherwise
she shouldn't marry. He knew she only walked from his shop to the door of the Kenrihans and
back again. Had not his wife told him so? If he had thought upon what far pilgrimage her feet
had already ventured, or had even seen the dashing Almerting hanging near, then had there been
wrath indeed. As it was, his mind was more or less at ease.
On many, many evenings it was much the same. Sometimes she got in on time, sometimes not,
but more and more "Connie" Almerting claimed her for his "steady," and bought her ice-cream.
In the range of the short block and its confining corners it was all done, lingering by the
curbstone and strolling a half block either way in the side streets, until she had offended
seriously at home, and the threat was repeated anew. He often tried to persuade her to go on
picnics or outings of various kinds, but this, somehow, was not to be thought of at her age--at
least with him. She knew her father would never endure the thought, and never even had the
courage to mention it, let alone run away. Mere lingering with him at the adjacent street corners
brought stronger and stronger admonishments--even more blows and the threat that she should
not get in at all.
Well enough she meant to obey, but on one radiant night late in June the time fled too fast. The
moon was so bright, the air so soft. The feel of far summer things was in the wind and even in
this dusty street. Theresa, in a newly starched white summer dress, had been loitering up and
down with Myrtle when as usual they encountered Almerting and Goujon. Now it was ten, and
the regular calls were beginning.
"Aw, wait a minute," said "Connie." "Stand still. He won't lock yuh out."
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"But he will, though," said Theresa. "You don't know him."
"Well, if he does, come on back to me. I'll take care of yuh. I'll be here. But he won't though. If
you stayed out a little while he'd letcha in all right. That's the way my old man used to try to do
me but it didn't work with me. I stayed out an' he let me in, just the same. Don'tcha let him
kidja." He jingled some loose change in his pocket
Never in his life had he had a girl on his hands at any unseasonable hour, but it was nice to talk
big, and there was a club to which he belonged, The Varick Street Roosters, and to which he had
a key. It would be closed and empty at this hour, and she could stay there until morning, if need
be or with Myrtle Kenrihan. He would take her there if she insisted. There was a sinister grin on
the youth's face.
By now Theresa's affections had carried her far. This youth with his slim body, his delicate
strong hands, his fine chin, straight mouth and hard dark eyes--how wonderful he seemed! He
was but nineteen to her eighteen but cold, shrewd, daring. Yet how tender he seemed to her, how
well worth having! Always, when he kissed her now, she trembled in the balance. There was
something in the iron grasp of his fingers that went through her like fire. His glance held hers at
times when she could scarcely endure it.
"I'll wait, anyhow," he insisted.
Longer and longer she lingered, but now for once no voice came.
She began to feel that something was wrong--a greater strain than if old Rogaum's voice had
been filling the whole neighborhood.
"I've got to go," she said.
"Gee, but you're a coward, yuh are!" said he derisively. "What 'r yuh always so scared about? He
always says he'll lock yuh out, but he never does."
"Yes, but he will," she insisted nervously. "I think he has this time. You don't know him. He's
something awful when he gets real mad. Oh, Connie, I must go!" For the sixth or seventh time
she moved, and once more he caught her arm and waist and tried to kiss her, but she slipped
away from him.
"Ah, yuh!" he exclaimed. "I wish he would lock yuh out!"
At her own doorstep she paused momentarily, more to soften her progress than anything. The
outer door was open as usual, but not the inner. She tried it, but it would not give. It was locked!
For a moment she paused, cold fear racing over her body, and then knocked.
No answer.
Again she rattled the door, this time nervously, and was about to cry out.
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Still no answer.
At last she heard her father's voice, hoarse and indifferent, not addressed to her at all, but to her
mother.
"Let her go, now," it said savagely, from the front room where he supposed she could not hear. "I
vill her a lesson teach."
"Hadn't you better let her in now, yet?" pleaded Mrs. Rogaum faintly.
"No," insisted Mr. Rogaum. "Nefer! Let her go now. If she vill alvays stay oudt, let her stay now.
Ve vill see how she likes dot."
His voice was rich in wrath, and he was saving up a good beating for her into the bargain, that
she knew. She would have to wait and wait and plead, and when she was thoroughly wretched
and subdued he would let her in and beat her--such a beating as she had never received in all her
born days.
Again the door rattled, and still she got no answer. Not even her call brought a sound.
Now, strangely, a new element, not heretofore apparent in her nature but nevertheless wholly
there, was called into life, springing in action as Diana, full formed. Why should he always be so
harsh? She hadn't done anything but stay out a little later than usual. He was always so anxious
to keep her in and subdue her. For once the cold chill of her girlish fears left her, and she
wavered angrily.
"All right," she said, some old German stubbornness springing up, "I won't knock. You don't
need to let me in, then."
A suggestion of tears was in her eyes, but she backed firmly out onto the stoop and sat down,
hesitating. Old Rogaum saw her, lowering down from the lattice, but said nothing. He would
teach her for once what were proper hours!
At the corner, standing, Almerting also saw her. He recognized the simple white dress, and
paused steadily, a strange thrill racing over him. Really they had locked her out! Gee, this was
new. It was great, in a way. There she was, white, quiet, shut out, waiting at her father's doorstep.
Sitting thus, Theresa pondered a moment, her girlish rashness and anger dominating her. Her
pride was hurt and she felt revengeful. They would shut her out, would they? All right, she
would go out and they should look to it how they would get her back--the old curmudgeons. For
the moment the home of Myrtle Kenrihan came to her as a possible refuge, but she decided that
she need not go there yet. She had better wait about awhile and see--or walk and frighten them.
He would beat her, would he? Well, maybe he would and maybe he wouldn't. She might come
back, but still that was a thing afar off. Just now it didn't matter so much. "Connie" was still there
on the corner. He loved her dearly. She felt it.
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Getting up, she stepped to the now quieting sidewalk and strolled up the street. It was a rather
nervous procedure, however. There were street cars still, and stores lighted and people passing,
but soon these would not be, and she was locked out. The side streets were already little more
than long silent walks and gleaming rows of lamps.
At the corner her youthful lover almost pounced upon her.
"Locked out, are yuh?" he asked, his eyes shining.
For the moment she was delighted to see him, for a nameless dread had already laid hold of her.
Home meant so much. Up to now it had been her whole life.
"Yes," she answered feebly.
"Well, let's stroll on a little," said the boy. He had not as yet quite made up his mind what to do,
but the night was young. It was so fine to have her with him--his.
At the farther corner they passed Officers Maguire and Delahanty, idly swinging their clubs and
discussing politics.
"'Tis a shame," Officer Delahanty was saying, "the way things are run now," but he paused to
add, "Ain't that old Rogaum's girl over there with young Almerting?"
"It is," replied Maguire, looking after.
"Well, I'm thinkin' he'd better be keepin' an eye on her," said the former. "She's too young to be
runnin' around with the likes o' him."
Maguire agreed. "He's a young tough," he observed. "I never liked him. He's too fresh. He works
over here in Myer's tobacco factory, and belongs to The Roosters. He's up to no good, I'll warrant
that."
"Teach 'em a lesson, I would," Almerting was saying to Theresa as they strolled on. "We'll walk
around a while an' make 'em think yuh mean business. They won't lock yuh out any more. If they
don't let yuh in when we come back I'll find yuh a place, all right."
His sharp eyes were gleaming as he looked around into her own. Already he had made up his
mind that she should not go back if he could help it. He knew a better place than home for this
night, anyhow--the club room of the Roosters, if nowhere else. They could stay there for a time,
anyhow.
By now old Rogaum, who had seen her walking up the street alone, was marveling at her
audacity, but thought she would soon come back. It was amazing that she should exhibit such
temerity, but he would teach her! Such a whipping! At half-past ten, however, he stuck his head
out of the open window and saw nothing of her. At eleven, the same. Then he walked the floor.
299
At first wrathful, then nervous, then nervous and wrathful, he finally ended all nervous, without a
scintilla of wrath. His stout wife sat up in bed and began to wring her hands.
"Lie down!" he commanded. "You make me sick. I know vot I am doing!"
"Is she still at der door?" pleaded the mother.
"No," he said. "I don't tink so. She should come ven I call."
His nerves were weakening, however, and now they finally collapsed.
"She vent de stread up," he said anxiously after a time. "I vill go after."
Slipping on his coat, he went down the stairs and out into the night. It was growing late, and the
stillness and gloom of midnight were nearing. Nowhere in sight was his Theresa. First one way
and then another he went, looking here, there, everywhere, finally groaning.
"Ach, Gott!" he said, the sweat bursting out on his brow, "vot in Teufel's name iss dis?"
He thought he would seek a policeman, but there was none. Officer Maguire had long since gone
for a quiet game in one of the neighboring saloons. His partner had temporarily returned to his
own beat. Still old Rogaum hunted on, worrying more and more.
Finally he bethought him to hasten home again, for she must have got back. Mrs. Rogaum, too,
would be frantic if she had not. If she were not there he must go to the police. Such a night! And
his Theresa-- This thing could not go on.
As he turned into his own corner he almost ran, coming up to the little portico wet and panting.
At a puffing step he turned, and almost fell over a white body at his feet, a prone and writhing
woman.
"Ach, Gott!" he cried aloud, almost shouting in his distress and excitement. "Theresa, vot iss dis?
Wilhelmina, a light now. Bring a light now, I say, for himmel's sake! Theresa hat
sich umgebracht. Help!"
He had fallen to his knees and was turning over the writhing, groaning figure. By the pale light
of the street, however, he could make out that it was not his Theresa, fortunately, as he had at
first feared, but another and yet there was something very like her in the figure.
"Um!" said the stranger weakly. "Ah!"
The dress was gray, not white as was his Theresa's, but the body was round and plump. It cut the
fiercest cords of his intensity, this thought of death to a young woman, but there was something
else about the situation which made him forget his own troubles.
300
Mrs. Rogaum, loudly admonished, almost tumbled down the stairs. At the foot she held the light
she had brought--a small glass oil-lamp--and then nearly dropped it. A fairly attractive figure,
more girl than woman, rich in all the physical charms that characterize a certain type, lay near to
dying. Her soft hair had fallen back over a good forehead, now quite white. Her pretty hands,
well decked with rings, were clutched tightly in an agonized grip. At her neck a blue silk
shirtwaist and light lace collar were torn away where she had clutched herself, and on the white
flesh was a yellow stain as of one who had been burned. A strange odor reeked in the area, and in
one corner was a spilled bottle.
"Ach, Gott!" exclaimed Mrs. Rogaum. "It iss a vooman! She haf herself gekilt. Run for der
police! Oh, my! oh, my!"
Rogaum did not kneel for more than a moment. Somehow, this creature's fate seemed in some
psychic way identified with that of his own daughter. He bounded up, and jumping out his front
door, began to call lustily for the police. Officer Maguire, at his social game nearby, heard the
very first cry and came running.
"What's the matter here, now?" he exclaimed, rushing up full and ready for murder, robbery, fire,
or, indeed, anything in the whole roster of human calamities.
"A vooman!" said Rogaum excitedly. "She haf herself umgebracht. She iss dying. Ach, Gott! in
my own doorstep, yet!"
"Vere iss der hospital?" put in Mrs. Rogaum, thinking clearly of an ambulance, but not being
able to express it. "She iss gekilt, sure. Oh! Oh!" and bending over her the poor old motherly
soul stroked the tightened hands, and trickled tears upon the blue shirtwaist. "Ach, vy did you do
dot?" she said. "Ach, for vy?"
Officer Maguire was essentially a man of action. He jumped to the sidewalk, amid the gathering
company, and beat loudly with his club upon the stone flagging. Then he ran to the nearest police
phone, returning to aid in any other way he might. A milk wagon passing on its way from the
Jersey ferry with a few tons of fresh milk aboard, he held it up and demanded a helping.
"Give us a quart there, will you?" he said authoritatively. "A woman's swallowed acid in here."
"Sure," said the driver, anxious to learn the cause of the excitement. "Got a glass, anybody?"
Maguire ran back and returned, bearing a measure. Mrs. Rogaum stood looking nervously on,
while the stocky officer raised the golden head and poured the milk.
"Here, now, drink this," he said. "Come on. Try an' swallow it."
The girl, a blonde of the type the world too well knows, opened her eyes, and looked, groaning a
little.
"Drink it," shouted the officer fiercely. "Do you want to die? Open your mouth!"
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Used to a fear of the law in all her days, she obeyed now, even in death. The lips parted, the fresh
milk was drained to the end, some spilling on neck and cheek.
While they were working old Rogaum came back and stood looking on, by the side of his wife.
Also Officer Delahanty, having heard the peculiar wooden ring of the stick upon the stone in the
night, had come up.
"Ach, ach," exclaimed Rogaum rather distractedly, "und she iss oudt yet. I could not find her.
Oh, oh!"
There was a clang of a gong up the street as the racing ambulance turned rapidly in. A young
hospital surgeon dismounted, and seeing the woman's condition, ordered immediate removal.
Both officers and Rogaum, as well as the surgeon, helped place her in the ambulance. After a
moment the lone bell, ringing wildly in the night, was all the evidence remaining that a tragedy
had been here.
"Do you know how she came here?" asked Officer Delahanty, coming back to get Rogaum's
testimony for the police.
"No, no," answered Rogaum wretchedly. "She vass here alretty. I vass for my daughter loog.
Ach, himmel, I haf my daughter lost. She iss avay."
Mrs. Rogaum also chattered, the significance of Theresa's absence all the more painfully
emphasized by this.
The officer did not at first get the import of this. He was only interested in the facts of the present
case.
"You say she was here when you come? Where was you?"
"I say I vass for my daughter loog. I come here, und der vooman vass here now alretty."
"Yes. What time was this?"
"Only now yet. Yussed a half-hour."
Officer Maguire had strolled up, after chasing away a small crowd that had gathered with fierce
and unholy threats. For the first time now he noticed the peculiar perturbation of the usually
placid German couple.
"What about your daughter?" he asked, catching a word as to that.
Both old people raised their voices at once.
"She haf gone. She haf run avay. Ach, himmel, ve must for her loog. Quick--she could not get in.
Ve had der door shut."
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"Locked her out, eh?" inquired Maguire after a time, hearing much of the rest of the story.
"Yes," explained Rogaum. "It was to schkare her a liddle. She vould not come ven I called."
"Sure, that's the girl we saw walkin' with young Almerting, do ye mind? The one in the white
dress," said Delahanty to Maguire.
"White dress, yah!" echoed Rogaum, and then the fact of her walking with some one came home
like a blow.
"Did you hear dot?" he exclaimed even as Mrs. Rogaum did likewise. "Mein Gott, hast du das
gehoert?"
He fairly jumped as he said it. His hands flew up to his stout and ruddy head.
"Whaddy ya want to let her out for nights?" asked Maguire roughly, catching the drift of the
situation. "That's no time for young girls to be out, anyhow, and with these toughs around here.
Sure, I saw her, nearly two hours ago."
"Ach," groaned Rogaum. "Two hours yet. Ho, ho, ho!" His voice was quite hysteric.
"Well, go on in," said Officer Delahanty. "There's no use yellin' out here. Give us a description
of her an' we'll send out an alarm. You won't be able to find her walkin' around."
Her parents described her exactly. The two men turned to the nearest police box and then
disappeared, leaving the old German couple in the throes of distress. A time-worn old churchclock nearby now chimed out one and then two. The notes cut like knives. Mrs. Rogaum began
fearfully to cry. Rogaum walked and blustered to himself.
"It's a queer case, that," said Officer Delahanty to Maguire after having reported the matter of
Theresa, but referring solely to the outcast of the doorway so recently sent away and in whose
fate they were much more interested. She being a part of the commercialized vice of the city,
they were curious as to the cause of her suicide. "I think I know that woman. I think I know
where she came from. You do, too--Adele's, around the corner, eh? She didn't come into that
doorway by herself, either. She was put there. You know how they do."
"You're right," said Maguire. "She was put there, all right, and that's just where she come from,
too."
The two of them now tipped up their noses and cocked their eyes significantly.
"Let's go around," added Maguire.
They went, the significant red light over the transom at 68 telling its own story. Strolling
leisurely up, they knocked. At the very first sound a painted denizen of the half-world opened the
door.
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"Where's Adele?" asked Maguire as the two, hats on as usual, stepped in.
"She's gone to bed."
"Tell her to come down."
They seated themselves deliberately in the gaudy mirrored parlor and waited, conversing
between themselves in whispers. Presently a sleepy-looking woman of forty in a gaudy robe of
heavy texture, and slippered in red, appeared.
"We're here about that suicide case you had tonight. What about it? Who was she? How'd she
come to be in that doorway around the corner? Come, now," Maguire added, as the madam
assumed an air of mingled injured and ignorant innocence, "you know. Can that stuff! How did
she come to take poison?"
"I don't know what you're talking about," said the woman with the utmost air of innocence. "I
never heard of any suicide."
"Aw, come now ," insisted Delahanty, "the girl around the corner. You know. We know you've
got a pull, but we've got to know about this case, just the same. Come across now. It won't be
published. What made her take the poison?"
Under the steady eyes of the officers the woman hesitated, but finally weakened.
"Why--why--her lover went back on her--that's all. She got so blue we just couldn't do anything
with her. I tried to, but she wouldn't listen."
"Lover, eh?" put in Maguire as though that were the most unheard-of thing in the world. "What
was his name?"
"I don't know. You never can tell that."
"What was her name--Annie?" asked Delahanty wisely, as though he knew but was merely
inquiring for form's sake.
"No--Emily."
"Well, how did she come to get over there, anyhow?" inquired Maguire most pleasantly.
"George took her," she replied, referring to a man-of-all-work about the place.
Then little by little as they sat there the whole miserable story came out, miserable as all the
wilfulness and error and suffering of the world.
"How old was she?"
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"Oh, twenty-one."
"Well, where'd she come from?"
"Oh, here in New York. Her family locked her out one night, I think."
Something in the way the woman said this last brought old Rogaum and his daughter back to the
policemen's minds. They had forgotten all about her by now, although they had turned in an
alarm. Fearing to interfere too much with this well-known and politically controlled institution,
the two men left, but outside they fell to talking of the other case.
"We ought to tell old Rogaum about her some time," said Maguire to Delahanty cynically. "He
locked his kid out to-night."
"Yes, it might be a good thing for him to hear that," replied the other. "We'd better go round
there an' see if his girl's back yet. She may be back by now," and so they returned but little
disturbed by the joint miseries.
At Rogaum's door they once more knocked loudly.
"Is your daughter back again?" asked Maguire when a reply was had.
"Ach, no," replied the hysterical Mrs. Rogaum, who was quite alone now. "My husband he haf
gone oudt again to loog vunce more. Oh, my! Oh, my!"
"Well, that's what you get for lockin' her out," returned Maguire loftily, the other story fresh in
his mind. "That other girl downstairs here tonight was locked out too, once." He chanced to have
a girl-child of his own and somehow he was in the mood for pointing a moral. "You oughtn't to
do anything like that. Where d'yuh expect she's goin' to if you lock her out?"
Mrs. Rogaum groaned. She explained that it was not her fault, but anyhow it was carrying coals
to Newcastle to talk to her so. The advice was better for her husband.
The pair finally returned to the station to see if the call had been attended to.
"Sure," said the sergeant, "certainly. Whaddy ya think?" and he read from the blotter before him:
"'Look out for girl, Theresa Rogaum. Aged 18; height, about 5, 3; light hair, blue eyes, white
cotton dress, trimmed with blue ribbon. Last seen with lad named Almerting, about 19 years of
age, about 5, 9; weight 135 pounds.'"
There were other details even more pointed and conclusive. For over an hour now, supposedly,
policemen from the Battery to Harlem, and far beyond, had been scanning long streets and dim
shadows for a girl in a white dress with a youth of nineteen,--supposedly.
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Officer Halsey, another of this region, which took in a portion of Washington Square, had seen a
good many couples this pleasant summer evening since the description of Theresa and Almerting
had been read to him over the telephone, but none that answered to these. Like Maguire and
Delahanty, he was more or less indifferent to all such cases, but idling on a corner near the park
at about three a.m., a brother officer, one Paisly by name, came up and casually mentioned the
missing pair also.
"I bet I saw that couple, not over an hour ago. She was dressed in white, and looked to me as if
she didn't want to be out. I didn't happen to think at the time, but now I remember. They acted
sort o' funny. She did, anyhow. They went in this park down at the Fourth Street end there."
"Supposing we beat it, then," suggested Halsey, weary for something to do.
"Sure," said the other quickly, and together they began a careful search, kicking around in the
moonlight under the trees. The moon was leaning moderately toward the west, and all the
branches were silvered with light and dew. Among the flowers, past clumps of bushes, near the
fountain, they searched, each one going his way alone. At last, the wandering Halsey paused
beside a thick clump of flaming bushes, ruddy, slightly, even in the light. A murmur of voices
greeted him, and something very much like the sound of a sob.
"What's that?" he said mentally, drawing near and listening.
"Why don't you come on now?" said the first of the voices heard. "They won't let you in any
more. You're with me, ain't you? What's the use cryin'?"
No answer to this, but no sobs. She must have been crying silently.
"Come on. I can take care of yuh. We can live in Hoboken. I know a place where we can go tonight. That's all right."
There was a movement as if the speaker were patting her on the shoulder.
"What's the use cryin'? Don't you believe I love yuh?"
The officer who had stolen quietly around to get a better view now came closer. He wanted to
see for himself. In the moonlight, from a comfortable distance, he could see them seated. The tall
bushes were almost all about the bench. In the arms of the youth was the girl in white, held very
close. Leaning over to get a better view, he saw him kiss her and hold her--hold her in such a
way that she could but yield to him, whatever her slight disinclination.
It was a common affair at earlier hours, but rather interesting now. The officer was interested. He
crept nearer.
"What are you two doin' here?" he suddenly inquired, rising before them, as though he had not
seen.
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The girl tumbled out of her compromising position, speechless and blushing violently. The
young man stood up, nervous, but still defiant.
"Aw, we were just sittin' here," he replied.
"Yes? Well, say, what's your name? I think we're lookin' for you two, anyhow. Almerting?"
"That's me," said the youth.
"And yours?" he added, addressing Theresa.
"Theresa Rogaum," replied the latter brokenly, beginning to cry.
"Well, you two'll have to come along with me," he added laconically. "The Captain wants to see
both of you," and he marched them solemnly away.
"What for?" young Almerting ventured to inquire after a time, blanched with fright.
"Never mind," replied the policeman irritably. "Come along, you'll find out at the station house.
We want you both. That's enough."
At the other end of the park Paisly joined them, and, at the station-house, the girl was given a
chair. She was all tears and melancholy with a modicum possibly of relief at being thus rescued
from the world. Her companion, for all his youth, was defiant if circumspect, a natural animal
defeated of its aim.
"Better go for her father," commented the sergeant, and by four in the morning old Rogaum, who
had still been up and walking the floor, was rushing station-ward. From an earlier rage he had
passed to an almost killing grief, but now at the thought that he might possibly see his daughter
alive and well once more he was overflowing with a mingled emotion which contained rage,
fear, sorrow, and a number of other things. What should he do to her if she were alive? Beat her?
Kiss her? Or what? Arrived at the station, however, and seeing his fair Theresa in the hands of
the police, and this young stranger lingering near, also detained, he was beside himself with fear,
rage, affection.
"You! You!" he exclaimed at once, glaring at the imperturbable Almerting, when told that this
was the young man who was found with his girl. Then, seized with a sudden horror, he added,
turning to Theresa, "Vot haf you done? Oh, oh! You! You!" he repeated again to Almerting
angrily, now that he felt that his daughter was safe. "Come not near my tochter any more! I vill
preak your effery pone, du teufel, du!"
He made a move toward the incarcerated lover, but here the sergeant interfered.
"Stop that, now," he said calmly. "Take your daughter out of here and go home, or I'll lock you
both up. We don't want any fighting in here. D'ye hear? Keep your daughter off the streets
hereafter, then she won't get into trouble. Don't let her run around with such young toughs as
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this." Almerting winced. "Then there won't anything happen to her. We'll do whatever
punishing's to be done."
"Aw, what's eatin' him!" commented Almerting dourly, now that he felt himself reasonably safe
from a personal encounter. "What have I done? He locked her out, didn't he? I was just keepin'
her company till morning."
"Yes, we know all about that," said the sergeant, "and about you, too. You shut up, or you'll go
downtown to Special Sessions. I want no guff out o' you." Still he ordered the butcher angrily to
be gone.
Old Rogaum heard nothing. He had his daughter. He was taking her home. She was not dead-not even morally injured in so far as he could learn. He was a compound of wondrous feelings.
What to do was beyond him.
At the corner near the butcher shop they encountered the wakeful Maguire, still idling, as they
passed. He was pleased to see that Rogaum had his Theresa once more. It raised him to a high,
moralizing height.
"Don't lock her out any more," he called significantly. "That's what brought the other girl to your
door, you know!"
"Vot iss dot?" said Rogaum.
"I say the other girl was locked out. That's why she committed suicide."
"Ach, I know," said the husky German under his breath, but he had no intention of locking her
out. He did not know what he would do until they were in the presence of his crying wife, who
fell upon Theresa, weeping. Then he decided to be reasonably lenient.
"She vass like you," said the old mother to the wandering Theresa, ignorant of the seeming
lesson brought to their very door. "She vass loog like you."
"I vill not vip you now," said the old butcher solemnly, too delighted to think of punishment after
having feared every horror under the sun, "aber, go not oudt any more. Keep off de streads so
late. I von't haf it. Dot loafer, aber--let him yussed come here some more! I fix him!"
"No, no," said the fat mother tearfully, smoothing her daughter's hair. "She vouldn't run avay no
more yet, no, no." Old Mrs. Rogaum was all mother.
"Well, you wouldn't let me in," insisted Theresa, "and I didn't have any place to go. What do you
want me to do? I'm not going to stay in the house all the time."
"I fix him!" roared Rogaum, unloading all his rage now on the recreant lover freely. "Yussed let
him come some more! Der penitentiary he should haf!"
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"Oh, he's not so bad," Theresa told her mother, almost a heroine now that she was home and safe.
"He's Mr. Almerting, the stationer's boy. They live here in the next block."
"Don't you ever bother that girl again," the sergeant was saying to young Almerting as he turned
him loose an hour later. "If you do, we'll get you, and you won't get off under six months. Y' hear
me, do you?"
"Aw, I don't want 'er," replied the boy truculently and cynically. "Let him have his old daughter.
What'd he want to lock 'er out for? They'd better not lock 'er out again though, that's all I say. I
don't want 'er."
"Beat it!" replied the sergeant, and away he went.
Resources for The Rise of Realism
Jack London (1876-1916)
[image] Jack London was a noted naturalistic writer, popular at the turn of the twentieth century.
He was born on January 12, 1876 in San Francisco, to an unmarried mother, Flora Wellman. She
later married John London, a Civil War veteran. London took on many professions growing up,
including harvesting oysters, working on a sealing ship, and hitchhiking around the country. He
read voraciously and was largely self-educated. He traveled to the Klondike, as part of a gold
rush to that region, and mined the experience for later sketches and stories. He also sailed the
Pacific, visiting both Hawaii and Australia. Among his more famous works, are The Call of the
Wild (1903), The Sea-Wolf (1904), White Fang (1906), and Martin Eden (1909). His experiences
in life made him a socialist, politically. He died of renal failure on November 22, 1916. Two
complementary biographies are Russ Kingman’s Jack London: A Definitive Chronology, Rejl
Press, 1992, and Jeanne Campbell Reesman’s Jack London’s Racial Lives, University of Georgia
Press, 2009. Also see Reesman’s Jack London: A Study of the Short Fiction, Twayne Publishers,
1999.
To Build A Fire
London, Jack. "To Build a Fire." Lost Face. New York: Macmillon, 1910.
Editor's note: An earlier version of this story was first printed in The Youth's Companion,
published May 29, 1902, which varied substantially in plot and ending.
source of etext: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2429
Day had broken cold and grey, exceedingly cold and grey, when the man turned aside from the
main Yukon trail and climbed the high earth-bank, where a dim and little-travelled trail led
eastward through the fat spruce timberland. It was a steep bank, and he paused for breath at the
top, excusing the act to himself by looking at his watch. It was nine o'clock. There was no sun
nor hint of sun, though there was not a cloud in the sky. It was a clear day, and yet there seemed
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an intangible pall over the face of things, a subtle gloom that made the day dark, and that was
due to the absence of sun. This fact did not worry the man. He was used to the lack of sun. It
had been days since he had seen the sun, and he knew that a few more days must pass before that
cheerful orb, due south, would just peep above the sky-line and dip immediately from view.
The man flung a look back along the way he had come. The Yukon lay a mile wide and hidden
under three feet of ice. On top of this ice were as many feet of snow. It was all pure white,
rolling in gentle undulations where the ice-jams of the freeze-up had formed. North and south,
as far as his eye could see, it was unbroken white, save for a dark hair-line that curved and
twisted from around the spruce-covered island to the south, and that curved and twisted away
into the north, where it disappeared behind another spruce-covered island. This dark hair-line
was the trail—the main trail—that led south five hundred miles to the Chilcoot Pass, Dyea, and
salt water; and that led north seventy miles to Dawson, and still on to the north a thousand miles
to Nulato, and finally to St. Michael on Bering Sea, a thousand miles and half a thousand more.
But all this—the mysterious, far-reaching hairline trail, the absence of sun from the sky, the
tremendous cold, and the strangeness and weirdness of it all—made no impression on the
man. It was not because he was long used to it. He was a new-comer in the land, a chechaquo,
and this was his first winter. The trouble with him was that he was without imagination. He was
quick and alert in the things of life, but only in the things, and not in the significances. Fifty
degrees below zero meant eighty odd degrees of frost. Such fact impressed him as being cold
and uncomfortable, and that was all. It did not lead him to meditate upon his frailty as a creature
of temperature, and upon man's frailty in general, able only to live within certain narrow limits of
heat and cold; and from there on it did not lead him to the conjectural field of immortality and
man's place in the universe. Fifty degrees below zero stood for a bite of frost that hurt and that
must be guarded against by the use of mittens, ear-flaps, warm moccasins, and thick socks. Fifty
degrees below zero was to him just precisely fifty degrees below zero. That there should be
anything more to it than that was a thought that never entered his head.
As he turned to go on, he spat speculatively. There was a sharp, explosive crackle that startled
him. He spat again. And again, in the air, before it could fall to the snow, the spittle
crackled. He knew that at fifty below spittle crackled on the snow, but this spittle had crackled
in the air. Undoubtedly it was colder than fifty below—how much colder he did not know. But
the temperature did not matter. He was bound for the old claim on the left fork of Henderson
Creek, where the boys were already. They had come over across the divide from the Indian
Creek country, while he had come the roundabout way to take a look at the possibilities of
getting out logs in the spring from the islands in the Yukon. He would be in to camp by six
o'clock; a bit after dark, it was true, but the boys would be there, a fire would be going, and a hot
supper would be ready. As for lunch, he pressed his hand against the protruding bundle under
his jacket. It was also under his shirt, wrapped up in a handkerchief and lying against the naked
skin. It was the only way to keep the biscuits from freezing. He smiled agreeably to himself as
he thought of those biscuits, each cut open and sopped in bacon grease, and each enclosing a
generous slice of fried bacon.
He plunged in among the big spruce trees. The trail was faint. A foot of snow had fallen since
the last sled had passed over, and he was glad he was without a sled, travelling light. In fact, he
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carried nothing but the lunch wrapped in the handkerchief. He was surprised, however, at the
cold. It certainly was cold, he concluded, as he rubbed his numbed nose and cheek-bones with
his mittened hand. He was a warm-whiskered man, but the hair on his face did not protect the
high cheek-bones and the eager nose that thrust itself aggressively into the frosty air.
At the man's heels trotted a dog, a big native husky, the proper wolf-dog, grey-coated and
without any visible or temperamental difference from its brother, the wild wolf. The animal was
depressed by the tremendous cold. It knew that it was no time for travelling. Its instinct told it a
truer tale than was told to the man by the man's judgment. In reality, it was not merely colder
than fifty below zero; it was colder than sixty below, than seventy below. It was seventy-five
below zero. Since the freezing-point is thirty-two above zero, it meant that one hundred and
seven degrees of frost obtained. The dog did not know anything about thermometers. Possibly
in its brain there was no sharp consciousness of a condition of very cold such as was in the man's
brain. But the brute had its instinct. It experienced a vague but menacing apprehension that
subdued it and made it slink along at the man's heels, and that made it question eagerly every
unwonted movement of the man as if expecting him to go into camp or to seek shelter
somewhere and build a fire. The dog had learned fire, and it wanted fire, or else to burrow under
the snow and cuddle its warmth away from the air.
The frozen moisture of its breathing had settled on its fur in a fine powder of frost, and especially
were its jowls, muzzle, and eyelashes whitened by its crystalled breath. The man's red beard and
moustache were likewise frosted, but more solidly, the deposit taking the form of ice and
increasing with every warm, moist breath he exhaled. Also, the man was chewing tobacco, and
the muzzle of ice held his lips so rigidly that he was unable to clear his chin when he expelled the
juice. The result was that a crystal beard of the colour and solidity of amber was increasing its
length on his chin. If he fell down it would shatter itself, like glass, into brittle fragments. But
he did not mind the appendage. It was the penalty all tobacco-chewers paid in that country, and
he had been out before in two cold snaps. They had not been so cold as this, he knew, but by the
spirit thermometer at Sixty Mile he knew they had been registered at fifty below and at fifty-five.
He held on through the level stretch of woods for several miles, crossed a wide flat of niggerheads, and dropped down a bank to the frozen bed of a small stream. This was Henderson
Creek, and he knew he was ten miles from the forks. He looked at his watch. It was ten
o'clock. He was making four miles an hour, and he calculated that he would arrive at the forks at
half-past twelve. He decided to celebrate that event by eating his lunch there.
The dog dropped in again at his heels, with a tail drooping discouragement, as the man swung
along the creek-bed. The furrow of the old sled-trail was plainly visible, but a dozen inches of
snow covered the marks of the last runners. In a month no man had come up or down that silent
creek. The man held steadily on. He was not much given to thinking, and just then particularly
he had nothing to think about save that he would eat lunch at the forks and that at six o'clock he
would be in camp with the boys. There was nobody to talk to and, had there been, speech would
have been impossible because of the ice-muzzle on his mouth. So he continued monotonously to
chew tobacco and to increase the length of his amber beard.
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Once in a while the thought reiterated itself that it was very cold and that he had never
experienced such cold. As he walked along he rubbed his cheek-bones and nose with the back of
his mittened hand. He did this automatically, now and again changing hands. But rub as he
would, the instant he stopped his cheek-bones went numb, and the following instant the end of
his nose went numb. He was sure to frost his cheeks; he knew that, and experienced a pang of
regret that he had not devised a nose-strap of the sort Bud wore in cold snaps. Such a strap
passed across the cheeks, as well, and saved them. But it didn't matter much, after all. What
were frosted cheeks? A bit painful, that was all; they were never serious.
Empty as the man's mind was of thoughts, he was keenly observant, and he noticed the changes
in the creek, the curves and bends and timber-jams, and always he sharply noted where he placed
his feet. Once, coming around a bend, he shied abruptly, like a startled horse, curved away from
the place where he had been walking, and retreated several paces back along the trail. The creek
he knew was frozen clear to the bottom—no creek could contain water in that arctic winter—but
he knew also that there were springs that bubbled out from the hillsides and ran along under the
snow and on top the ice of the creek. He knew that the coldest snaps never froze these springs,
and he knew likewise their danger. They were traps. They hid pools of water under the snow
that might be three inches deep, or three feet. Sometimes a skin of ice half an inch thick covered
them, and in turn was covered by the snow. Sometimes there were alternate layers of water and
ice-skin, so that when one broke through he kept on breaking through for a while, sometimes
wetting himself to the waist.
That was why he had shied in such panic. He had felt the give under his feet and heard the
crackle of a snow-hidden ice-skin. And to get his feet wet in such a temperature meant trouble
and danger. At the very least it meant delay, for he would be forced to stop and build a fire, and
under its protection to bare his feet while he dried his socks and moccasins. He stood and
studied the creek-bed and its banks, and decided that the flow of water came from the right. He
reflected awhile, rubbing his nose and cheeks, then skirted to the left, stepping gingerly and
testing the footing for each step. Once clear of the danger, he took a fresh chew of tobacco and
swung along at his four-mile gait.
In the course of the next two hours he came upon several similar traps. Usually the snow above
the hidden pools had a sunken, candied appearance that advertised the danger. Once again,
however, he had a close call; and once, suspecting danger, he compelled the dog to go on in
front. The dog did not want to go. It hung back until the man shoved it forward, and then it
went quickly across the white, unbroken surface. Suddenly it broke through, floundered to one
side, and got away to firmer footing. It had wet its forefeet and legs, and almost immediately the
water that clung to it turned to ice. It made quick efforts to lick the ice off its legs, then dropped
down in the snow and began to bite out the ice that had formed between the toes. This was a
matter of instinct. To permit the ice to remain would mean sore feet. It did not know this. It
merely obeyed the mysterious prompting that arose from the deep crypts of its being. But the
man knew, having achieved a judgment on the subject, and he removed the mitten from his right
hand and helped tear out the ice-particles. He did not expose his fingers more than a minute, and
was astonished at the swift numbness that smote them. It certainly was cold. He pulled on the
mitten hastily, and beat the hand savagely across his chest.
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At twelve o'clock the day was at its brightest. Yet the sun was too far south on its winter journey
to clear the horizon. The bulge of the earth intervened between it and Henderson Creek, where
the man walked under a clear sky at noon and cast no shadow. At half-past twelve, to the
minute, he arrived at the forks of the creek. He was pleased at the speed he had made. If he kept
it up, he would certainly be with the boys by six. He unbuttoned his jacket and shirt and drew
forth his lunch. The action consumed no more than a quarter of a minute, yet in that brief
moment the numbness laid hold of the exposed fingers. He did not put the mitten on, but,
instead, struck the fingers a dozen sharp smashes against his leg. Then he sat down on a snowcovered log to eat. The sting that followed upon the striking of his fingers against his leg ceased
so quickly that he was startled, he had had no chance to take a bite of biscuit. He struck the
fingers repeatedly and returned them to the mitten, baring the other hand for the purpose of
eating. He tried to take a mouthful, but the ice-muzzle prevented. He had forgotten to build a
fire and thaw out. He chuckled at his foolishness, and as he chuckled he noted the numbness
creeping into the exposed fingers. Also, he noted that the stinging which had first come to his
toes when he sat down was already passing away. He wondered whether the toes were warm or
numbed. He moved them inside the moccasins and decided that they were numbed.
He pulled the mitten on hurriedly and stood up. He was a bit frightened. He stamped up and
down until the stinging returned into the feet. It certainly was cold, was his thought. That man
from Sulphur Creek had spoken the truth when telling how cold it sometimes got in the
country. And he had laughed at him at the time! That showed one must not be too sure of
things. There was no mistake about it, it was cold. He strode up and down, stamping his feet
and threshing his arms, until reassured by the returning warmth. Then he got out matches and
proceeded to make a fire. From the undergrowth, where high water of the previous spring had
lodged a supply of seasoned twigs, he got his firewood. Working carefully from a small
beginning, he soon had a roaring fire, over which he thawed the ice from his face and in the
protection of which he ate his biscuits. For the moment the cold of space was outwitted. The
dog took satisfaction in the fire, stretching out close enough for warmth and far enough away to
escape being singed.
When the man had finished, he filled his pipe and took his comfortable time over a smoke. Then
he pulled on his mittens, settled the ear-flaps of his cap firmly about his ears, and took the creek
trail up the left fork. The dog was disappointed and yearned back toward the fire. This man did
not know cold. Possibly all the generations of his ancestry had been ignorant of cold, of real
cold, of cold one hundred and seven degrees below freezing-point. But the dog knew; all its
ancestry knew, and it had inherited the knowledge. And it knew that it was not good to walk
abroad in such fearful cold. It was the time to lie snug in a hole in the snow and wait for a
curtain of cloud to be drawn across the face of outer space whence this cold came. On the other
hand, there was keen intimacy between the dog and the man. The one was the toil-slave of the
other, and the only caresses it had ever received were the caresses of the whip-lash and of harsh
and menacing throat-sounds that threatened the whip-lash. So the dog made no effort to
communicate its apprehension to the man. It was not concerned in the welfare of the man; it was
for its own sake that it yearned back toward the fire. But the man whistled, and spoke to it with
the sound of whip-lashes, and the dog swung in at the man's heels and followed after.
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The man took a chew of tobacco and proceeded to start a new amber beard. Also, his moist
breath quickly powdered with white his moustache, eyebrows, and lashes. There did not seem to
be so many springs on the left fork of the Henderson, and for half an hour the man saw no signs
of any. And then it happened. At a place where there were no signs, where the soft, unbroken
snow seemed to advertise solidity beneath, the man broke through. It was not deep. He wetted
himself half-way to the knees before he floundered out to the firm crust.
He was angry, and cursed his luck aloud. He had hoped to get into camp with the boys at six
o'clock, and this would delay him an hour, for he would have to build a fire and dry out his footgear. This was imperative at that low temperature—he knew that much; and he turned aside to
the bank, which he climbed. On top, tangled in the underbrush about the trunks of several small
spruce trees, was a high-water deposit of dry firewood—sticks and twigs principally, but also
larger portions of seasoned branches and fine, dry, last-year's grasses. He threw down several
large pieces on top of the snow. This served for a foundation and prevented the young flame
from drowning itself in the snow it otherwise would melt. The flame he got by touching a match
to a small shred of birch-bark that he took from his pocket. This burned even more readily than
paper. Placing it on the foundation, he fed the young flame with wisps of dry grass and with the
tiniest dry twigs.
He worked slowly and carefully, keenly aware of his danger. Gradually, as the flame grew
stronger, he increased the size of the twigs with which he fed it. He squatted in the snow, pulling
the twigs out from their entanglement in the brush and feeding directly to the flame. He knew
there must be no failure. When it is seventy-five below zero, a man must not fail in his first
attempt to build a fire—that is, if his feet are wet. If his feet are dry, and he fails, he can run
along the trail for half a mile and restore his circulation. But the circulation of wet and freezing
feet cannot be restored by running when it is seventy-five below. No matter how fast he runs,
the wet feet will freeze the harder.
All this the man knew. The old-timer on Sulphur Creek had told him about it the previous fall,
and now he was appreciating the advice. Already all sensation had gone out of his feet. To build
the fire he had been forced to remove his mittens, and the fingers had quickly gone numb. His
pace of four miles an hour had kept his heart pumping blood to the surface of his body and to all
the extremities. But the instant he stopped, the action of the pump eased down. The cold of
space smote the unprotected tip of the planet, and he, being on that unprotected tip, received the
full force of the blow. The blood of his body recoiled before it. The blood was alive, like the
dog, and like the dog it wanted to hide away and cover itself up from the fearful cold. So long as
he walked four miles an hour, he pumped that blood, willy-nilly, to the surface; but now it ebbed
away and sank down into the recesses of his body. The extremities were the first to feel its
absence. His wet feet froze the faster, and his exposed fingers numbed the faster, though they
had not yet begun to freeze. Nose and cheeks were already freezing, while the skin of all his
body chilled as it lost its blood.
But he was safe. Toes and nose and cheeks would be only touched by the frost, for the fire was
beginning to burn with strength. He was feeding it with twigs the size of his finger. In another
minute he would be able to feed it with branches the size of his wrist, and then he could remove
his wet foot-gear, and, while it dried, he could keep his naked feet warm by the fire, rubbing
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them at first, of course, with snow. The fire was a success. He was safe. He remembered the
advice of the old-timer on Sulphur Creek, and smiled. The old-timer had been very serious in
laying down the law that no man must travel alone in the Klondike after fifty below. Well, here
he was; he had had the accident; he was alone; and he had saved himself. Those old-timers were
rather womanish, some of them, he thought. All a man had to do was to keep his head, and he
was all right. Any man who was a man could travel alone. But it was surprising, the rapidity
with which his cheeks and nose were freezing. And he had not thought his fingers could go
lifeless in so short a time. Lifeless they were, for he could scarcely make them move together to
grip a twig, and they seemed remote from his body and from him. When he touched a twig, he
had to look and see whether or not he had hold of it. The wires were pretty well down between
him and his finger-ends.
All of which counted for little. There was the fire, snapping and crackling and promising life
with every dancing flame. He started to untie his moccasins. They were coated with ice; the
thick German socks were like sheaths of iron half-way to the knees; and the mocassin strings
were like rods of steel all twisted and knotted as by some conflagration. For a moment he tugged
with his numbed fingers, then, realizing the folly of it, he drew his sheath-knife.
But before he could cut the strings, it happened. It was his own fault or, rather, his mistake. He
should not have built the fire under the spruce tree. He should have built it in the open. But it
had been easier to pull the twigs from the brush and drop them directly on the fire. Now the tree
under which he had done this carried a weight of snow on its boughs. No wind had blown for
weeks, and each bough was fully freighted. Each time he had pulled a twig he had
communicated a slight agitation to the tree—an imperceptible agitation, so far as he was
concerned, but an agitation sufficient to bring about the disaster. High up in the tree one bough
capsized its load of snow. This fell on the boughs beneath, capsizing them. This process
continued, spreading out and involving the whole tree. It grew like an avalanche, and it
descended without warning upon the man and the fire, and the fire was blotted out! Where it had
burned was a mantle of fresh and disordered snow.
The man was shocked. It was as though he had just heard his own sentence of death. For a
moment he sat and stared at the spot where the fire had been. Then he grew very calm. Perhaps
the old-timer on Sulphur Creek was right. If he had only had a trail-mate he would have been in
no danger now. The trail-mate could have built the fire. Well, it was up to him to build the fire
over again, and this second time there must be no failure. Even if he succeeded, he would most
likely lose some toes. His feet must be badly frozen by now, and there would be some time
before the second fire was ready.
Such were his thoughts, but he did not sit and think them. He was busy all the time they were
passing through his mind, he made a new foundation for a fire, this time in the open; where no
treacherous tree could blot it out. Next, he gathered dry grasses and tiny twigs from the highwater flotsam. He could not bring his fingers together to pull them out, but he was able to gather
them by the handful. In this way he got many rotten twigs and bits of green moss that were
undesirable, but it was the best he could do. He worked methodically, even collecting an armful
of the larger branches to be used later when the fire gathered strength. And all the while the dog
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sat and watched him, a certain yearning wistfulness in its eyes, for it looked upon him as the fireprovider, and the fire was slow in coming.
When all was ready, the man reached in his pocket for a second piece of birch-bark. He knew
the bark was there, and, though he could not feel it with his fingers, he could hear its crisp
rustling as he fumbled for it. Try as he would, he could not clutch hold of it. And all the time, in
his consciousness, was the knowledge that each instant his feet were freezing. This thought
tended to put him in a panic, but he fought against it and kept calm. He pulled on his mittens
with his teeth, and threshed his arms back and forth, beating his hands with all his might against
his sides. He did this sitting down, and he stood up to do it; and all the while the dog sat in the
snow, its wolf-brush of a tail curled around warmly over its forefeet, its sharp wolf-ears pricked
forward intently as it watched the man. And the man as he beat and threshed with his arms and
hands, felt a great surge of envy as he regarded the creature that was warm and secure in its
natural covering.
After a time he was aware of the first far-away signals of sensation in his beaten fingers. The
faint tingling grew stronger till it evolved into a stinging ache that was excruciating, but which
the man hailed with satisfaction. He stripped the mitten from his right hand and fetched forth the
birch-bark. The exposed fingers were quickly going numb again. Next he brought out his bunch
of sulphur matches. But the tremendous cold had already driven the life out of his fingers. In his
effort to separate one match from the others, the whole bunch fell in the snow. He tried to pick it
out of the snow, but failed. The dead fingers could neither touch nor clutch. He was very
careful. He drove the thought of his freezing feet; and nose, and cheeks, out of his mind,
devoting his whole soul to the matches. He watched, using the sense of vision in place of that of
touch, and when he saw his fingers on each side the bunch, he closed them—that is, he willed to
close them, for the wires were drawn, and the fingers did not obey. He pulled the mitten on the
right hand, and beat it fiercely against his knee. Then, with both mittened hands, he scooped the
bunch of matches, along with much snow, into his lap. Yet he was no better off.
After some manipulation he managed to get the bunch between the heels of his mittened
hands. In this fashion he carried it to his mouth. The ice crackled and snapped when by a
violent effort he opened his mouth. He drew the lower jaw in, curled the upper lip out of the
way, and scraped the bunch with his upper teeth in order to separate a match. He succeeded in
getting one, which he dropped on his lap. He was no better off. He could not pick it up. Then
he devised a way. He picked it up in his teeth and scratched it on his leg. Twenty times he
scratched before he succeeded in lighting it. As it flamed he held it with his teeth to the birchbark. But the burning brimstone went up his nostrils and into his lungs, causing him to cough
spasmodically. The match fell into the snow and went out.
The old-timer on Sulphur Creek was right, he thought in the moment of controlled despair that
ensued: after fifty below, a man should travel with a partner. He beat his hands, but failed in
exciting any sensation. Suddenly he bared both hands, removing the mittens with his teeth. He
caught the whole bunch between the heels of his hands. His arm-muscles not being frozen
enabled him to press the hand-heels tightly against the matches. Then he scratched the bunch
along his leg. It flared into flame, seventy sulphur matches at once! There was no wind to blow
them out. He kept his head to one side to escape the strangling fumes, and held the blazing
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bunch to the birch-bark. As he so held it, he became aware of sensation in his hand. His flesh
was burning. He could smell it. Deep down below the surface he could feel it. The sensation
developed into pain that grew acute. And still he endured it, holding the flame of the matches
clumsily to the bark that would not light readily because his own burning hands were in the way,
absorbing most of the flame.
At last, when he could endure no more, he jerked his hands apart. The blazing matches fell
sizzling into the snow, but the birch-bark was alight. He began laying dry grasses and the tiniest
twigs on the flame. He could not pick and choose, for he had to lift the fuel between the heels of
his hands. Small pieces of rotten wood and green moss clung to the twigs, and he bit them off as
well as he could with his teeth. He cherished the flame carefully and awkwardly. It meant life,
and it must not perish. The withdrawal of blood from the surface of his body now made him
begin to shiver, and he grew more awkward. A large piece of green moss fell squarely on the
little fire. He tried to poke it out with his fingers, but his shivering frame made him poke too far,
and he disrupted the nucleus of the little fire, the burning grasses and tiny twigs separating and
scattering. He tried to poke them together again, but in spite of the tenseness of the effort, his
shivering got away with him, and the twigs were hopelessly scattered. Each twig gushed a puff
of smoke and went out. The fire-provider had failed. As he looked apathetically about him, his
eyes chanced on the dog, sitting across the ruins of the fire from him, in the snow, making
restless, hunching movements, slightly lifting one forefoot and then the other, shifting its weight
back and forth on them with wistful eagerness.
The sight of the dog put a wild idea into his head. He remembered the tale of the man, caught in
a blizzard, who killed a steer and crawled inside the carcass, and so was saved. He would kill the
dog and bury his hands in the warm body until the numbness went out of them. Then he could
build another fire. He spoke to the dog, calling it to him; but in his voice was a strange note of
fear that frightened the animal, who had never known the man to speak in such way
before. Something was the matter, and its suspicious nature sensed danger,—it knew not what
danger but somewhere, somehow, in its brain arose an apprehension of the man. It flattened its
ears down at the sound of the man's voice, and its restless, hunching movements and the liftings
and shiftings of its forefeet became more pronounced but it would not come to the man. He got
on his hands and knees and crawled toward the dog. This unusual posture again excited
suspicion, and the animal sidled mincingly away.
The man sat up in the snow for a moment and struggled for calmness. Then he pulled on his
mittens, by means of his teeth, and got upon his feet. He glanced down at first in order to assure
himself that he was really standing up, for the absence of sensation in his feet left him unrelated
to the earth. His erect position in itself started to drive the webs of suspicion from the dog's
mind; and when he spoke peremptorily, with the sound of whip-lashes in his voice, the dog
rendered its customary allegiance and came to him. As it came within reaching distance, the
man lost his control. His arms flashed out to the dog, and he experienced genuine surprise when
he discovered that his hands could not clutch, that there was neither bend nor feeling in the
lingers. He had forgotten for the moment that they were frozen and that they were freezing more
and more. All this happened quickly, and before the animal could get away, he encircled its
body with his arms. He sat down in the snow, and in this fashion held the dog, while it snarled
and whined and struggled.
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But it was all he could do, hold its body encircled in his arms and sit there. He realized that he
could not kill the dog. There was no way to do it. With his helpless hands he could neither draw
nor hold his sheath-knife nor throttle the animal. He released it, and it plunged wildly away,
with tail between its legs, and still snarling. It halted forty feet away and surveyed him
curiously, with ears sharply pricked forward. The man looked down at his hands in order to
locate them, and found them hanging on the ends of his arms. It struck him as curious that one
should have to use his eyes in order to find out where his hands were. He began threshing his
arms back and forth, beating the mittened hands against his sides. He did this for five minutes,
violently, and his heart pumped enough blood up to the surface to put a stop to his
shivering. But no sensation was aroused in the hands. He had an impression that they hung like
weights on the ends of his arms, but when he tried to run the impression down, he could not find
it.
A certain fear of death, dull and oppressive, came to him. This fear quickly became poignant as
he realized that it was no longer a mere matter of freezing his fingers and toes, or of losing his
hands and feet, but that it was a matter of life and death with the chances against him. This
threw him into a panic, and he turned and ran up the creek-bed along the old, dim trail. The dog
joined in behind and kept up with him. He ran blindly, without intention, in fear such as he had
never known in his life. Slowly, as he ploughed and floundered through the snow, he began to
see things again—the banks of the creek, the old timber-jams, the leafless aspens, and the
sky. The running made him feel better. He did not shiver. Maybe, if he ran on, his feet would
thaw out; and, anyway, if he ran far enough, he would reach camp and the boys. Without doubt
he would lose some fingers and toes and some of his face; but the boys would take care of him,
and save the rest of him when he got there. And at the same time there was another thought in
his mind that said he would never get to the camp and the boys; that it was too many miles away,
that the freezing had too great a start on him, and that he would soon be stiff and dead. This
thought he kept in the background and refused to consider. Sometimes it pushed itself forward
and demanded to be heard, but he thrust it back and strove to think of other things.
It struck him as curious that he could run at all on feet so frozen that he could not feel them when
they struck the earth and took the weight of his body. He seemed to himself to skim along above
the surface and to have no connection with the earth. Somewhere he had once seen a winged
Mercury, and he wondered if Mercury felt as he felt when skimming over the earth.
His theory of running until he reached camp and the boys had one flaw in it: he lacked the
endurance. Several times he stumbled, and finally he tottered, crumpled up, and fell. When he
tried to rise, he failed. He must sit and rest, he decided, and next time he would merely walk and
keep on going. As he sat and regained his breath, he noted that he was feeling quite warm and
comfortable. He was not shivering, and it even seemed that a warm glow had come to his chest
and trunk. And yet, when he touched his nose or cheeks, there was no sensation. Running
would not thaw them out. Nor would it thaw out his hands and feet. Then the thought came to
him that the frozen portions of his body must be extending. He tried to keep this thought down,
to forget it, to think of something else; he was aware of the panicky feeling that it caused, and he
was afraid of the panic. But the thought asserted itself, and persisted, until it produced a vision
of his body totally frozen. This was too much, and he made another wild run along the
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trail. Once he slowed down to a walk, but the thought of the freezing extending itself made him
run again.
And all the time the dog ran with him, at his heels. When he fell down a second time, it curled
its tail over its forefeet and sat in front of him facing him curiously eager and intent. The warmth
and security of the animal angered him, and he cursed it till it flattened down its ears
appeasingly. This time the shivering came more quickly upon the man. He was losing in his
battle with the frost. It was creeping into his body from all sides. The thought of it drove him
on, but he ran no more than a hundred feet, when he staggered and pitched headlong. It was his
last panic. When he had recovered his breath and control, he sat up and entertained in his mind
the conception of meeting death with dignity. However, the conception did not come to him in
such terms. His idea of it was that he had been making a fool of himself, running around like a
chicken with its head cut off—such was the simile that occurred to him. Well, he was bound to
freeze anyway, and he might as well take it decently. With this new-found peace of mind came
the first glimmerings of drowsiness. A good idea, he thought, to sleep off to death. It was like
taking an anæsthetic. Freezing was not so bad as people thought. There were lots worse ways to
die.
He pictured the boys finding his body next day. Suddenly he found himself with them, coming
along the trail and looking for himself. And, still with them, he came around a turn in the trail
and found himself lying in the snow. He did not belong with himself any more, for even then he
was out of himself, standing with the boys and looking at himself in the snow. It certainly was
cold, was his thought. When he got back to the States he could tell the folks what real cold
was. He drifted on from this to a vision of the old-timer on Sulphur Creek. He could see him
quite clearly, warm and comfortable, and smoking a pipe.
"You were right, old hoss; you were right," the man mumbled to the old-timer of Sulphur Creek.
Then the man drowsed off into what seemed to him the most comfortable and satisfying sleep he
had ever known. The dog sat facing him and waiting. The brief day drew to a close in a long,
slow twilight. There were no signs of a fire to be made, and, besides, never in the dog's
experience had it known a man to sit like that in the snow and make no fire. As the twilight drew
on, its eager yearning for the fire mastered it, and with a great lifting and shifting of forefeet, it
whined softly, then flattened its ears down in anticipation of being chidden by the man. But the
man remained silent. Later, the dog whined loudly. And still later it crept close to the man and
caught the scent of death. This made the animal bristle and back away. A little longer it
delayed, howling under the stars that leaped and danced and shone brightly in the cold sky. Then
it turned and trotted up the trail in the direction of the camp it knew, where were the other foodproviders and fire-providers.
The Law of Life
London, Jack. "The Law of Life." Children of the Frost. New York: The Macmillon Company,
1902.
source of etext: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10736
319
Old Koskoosh listened greedily. Though his sight had long since faded, his hearing was still
acute, and the slightest sound penetrated to the glimmering intelligence which yet abode behind
the withered forehead, but which no longer gazed forth upon the things of the world. Ah! that
was Sit-cum-to-ha, shrilly anathematizing the dogs as she cuffed and beat them into the
harnesses. Sit-cum-to-ha was his daughter's daughter, but she was too busy to waste a thought
upon her broken grandfather, sitting alone there in the snow, forlorn and helpless. Camp must be
broken. The long trail waited while the short day refused to linger. Life called her, and the duties
of life, not death. And he was very close to death now.
The thought made the old man panicky for the moment, and he stretched forth a palsied hand
which wandered tremblingly over the small heap of dry wood beside him. Reassured that it was
indeed there, his hand returned to the shelter of his mangy furs, and he again fell to listening. The
sulky crackling of half-frozen hides told him that the chief's moose-skin lodge had been struck,
and even then was being rammed and jammed into portable compass. The chief was his son,
stalwart and strong, head man of the tribesmen, and a mighty hunter. As the women toiled with
the camp luggage, his voice rose, chiding them for their slowness. Old Koskoosh strained his
ears. It was the last time he would hear that voice. There went Geehow's lodge! And Tusken's!
Seven, eight, nine; only the shaman's could be still standing. There! They were at work upon it
now. He could hear the shaman grunt as he piled it on the sled. A child whimpered, and a woman
soothed it with soft, crooning gutturals. Little Koo-tee, the old man thought, a fretful child, and
not overstrong. It would die soon, perhaps, and they would burn a hole through the frozen tundra
and pile rocks above to keep the wolverines away. Well, what did it matter? A few years at best,
and as many an empty belly as a full one. And in the end, Death waited, ever-hungry and
hungriest of them all.
What was that? Oh, the men lashing the sleds and drawing tight the thongs. He listened, who
would listen no more. The whip-lashes snarled and bit among the dogs. Hear them whine! How
they hated the work and the trail! They were off! Sled after sled churned slowly away into the
silence. They were gone. They had passed out of his life, and he faced the last bitter hour alone.
No. The snow crunched beneath a moccasin; a man stood beside him; upon his head a hand
rested gently. His son was good to do this thing. He remembered other old men whose sons had
not waited after the tribe. But his son had. He wandered away into the past, till the young man's
voice brought him back.
"Is it well with you?" he asked.
And the old man answered, "It is well."
"There be wood beside you," the younger man continued, "and the fire burns bright. The
morning is gray, and the cold has broken. It will snow presently. Even now is it snowing."
"Ay, even now is it snowing."
"The tribesmen hurry. Their bales are heavy, and their bellies flat with lack of feasting. The trail
is long and they travel fast. I go now. It is well?"
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"It is well. I am as a last year's leaf, clinging lightly to the stem. The first breath that blows, and I
fall. My voice is become like an old woman's. My eyes no longer show me the way of my feet,
and my feet are heavy, and I am tired. It is well."
He bowed his head in content till the last noise of the complaining snow had died away, and he
knew his son was beyond recall. Then his hand crept out in haste to the wood. It alone stood
between him and the eternity that yawned in upon him. At last the measure of his life was a
handful of fagots. One by one they would go to feed the fire, and just so, step by step, death
would creep upon him. When the last stick had surrendered up its heat, the frost would begin to
gather strength. First his feet would yield, then his hands; and the numbness would travel,
slowly, from the extremities to the body. His head would fall forward upon his knees, and he
would rest. It was easy. All men must die.
He did not complain. It was the way of life, and it was just. He had been born close to the earth,
close to the earth had he lived, and the law thereof was not new to him. It was the law of all
flesh. Nature was not kindly to the flesh. She had no concern for that concrete thing called the
individual. Her interest lay in the species, the race. This was the deepest abstraction old
Koskoosh's barbaric mind was capable of, but he grasped it firmly. He saw it exemplified in all
life. The rise of the sap, the bursting greenness of the willow bud, the fall of the yellow leaf—in
this alone was told the whole history. But one task did Nature set the individual. Did he not
perform it, he died. Did he perform it, it was all the same, he died. Nature did not care; there
were plenty who were obedient, and it was only the obedience in this matter, not the obedient,
which lived and lived always. The tribe of Koskoosh was very old. The old men he had known
when a boy, had known old men before them. Therefore it was true that the tribe lived, that it
stood for the obedience of all its members, way down into the forgotten past, whose very restingplaces were unremembered. They did not count; they were episodes. They had passed away like
clouds from a summer sky. He also was an episode, and would pass away. Nature did not care.
To life she set one task, gave one law. To perpetuate was the task of life, its law was death. A
maiden was a good creature to look upon, full-breasted and strong, with spring to her step and
light in her eyes. But her task was yet before her. The light in her eyes brightened, her step
quickened, she was now bold with the young men, now timid, and she gave them of her own
unrest. And ever she grew fairer and yet fairer to look upon, till some hunter, able no longer to
withhold himself, took her to his lodge to cook and toil for him and to become the mother of his
children. And with the coming of her offspring her looks left her. Her limbs dragged and
shuffled, her eyes dimmed and bleared, and only the little children found joy against the withered
cheek of the old squaw by the fire. Her task was done. But a little while, on the first pinch of
famine or the first long trail, and she would be left, even as he had been left, in the snow, with a
little pile of wood. Such was the law.
He placed a stick carefully upon the fire and resumed his meditations. It was the same
everywhere, with all things. The mosquitoes vanished with the first frost. The little tree-squirrel
crawled away to die. When age settled upon the rabbit it became slow and heavy, and could no
longer outfoot its enemies. Even the big bald-face grew clumsy and blind and quarrelsome, in the
end to be dragged down by a handful of yelping huskies. He remembered how he had abandoned
his own father on an upper reach of the Klondike one winter, the winter before the missionary
came with his talk-books and his box of medicines. Many a time had Koskoosh smacked his lips
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over the recollection of that box, though now his mouth refused to moisten. The "painkiller" had
been especially good. But the missionary was a bother after all, for he brought no meat into the
camp, and he ate heartily, and the hunters grumbled. But he chilled his lungs on the divide by the
Mayo, and the dogs afterwards nosed the stones away and fought over his bones.
Koskoosh placed another stick on the fire and harked back deeper into the past. There was the
time of the Great Famine, when the old men crouched empty-bellied to the fire, and let fall from
their lips dim traditions of the ancient day when the Yukon ran wide open for three winters, and
then lay frozen for three summers. He had lost his mother in that famine. In the summer the
salmon run had failed, and the tribe looked forward to the winter and the coming of the caribou.
Then the winter came, but with it there were no caribou. Never had the like been known, not
even in the lives of the old men. But the caribou did not come, and it was the seventh year, and
the rabbits had not replenished, and the dogs were naught but bundles of bones. And through the
long darkness the children wailed and died, and the women, and the old men; and not one in ten
of the tribe lived to meet the sun when it came back in the spring. That was a famine!
But he had seen times of plenty, too, when the meat spoiled on their hands, and the dogs were fat
and worthless with overeating—times when they let the game go unkilled, and the women were
fertile, and the lodges were cluttered with sprawling men-children and women-children. Then it
was the men became high-stomached, and revived ancient quarrels, and crossed the divides to
the south to kill the Pellys, and to the west that they might sit by the dead fires of the Tananas.
He remembered, when a boy, during a time of plenty, when he saw a moose pulled down by the
wolves. Zing-ha lay with him in the snow and watched—Zing-ha, who later became the craftiest
of hunters, and who, in the end, fell through an air-hole on the Yukon. They found him, a month
afterward, just as he had crawled halfway out and frozen stiff to the ice.
But the moose. Zing-ha and he had gone out that day to play at hunting after the manner of their
fathers. On the bed of the creek they struck the fresh track of a moose, and with it the tracks of
many wolves. "An old one," Zing-ha, who was quicker at reading the sign, said—"an old one
who cannot keep up with the herd. The wolves have cut him out from his brothers, and they will
never leave him." And it was so. It was their way. By day and by night, never resting, snarling on
his heels, snapping at his nose, they would stay by him to the end. How Zing-ha and he felt the
blood-lust quicken! The finish would be a sight to see!
Eager-footed, they took the trail, and even he, Koskoosh, slow of sight and an unversed tracker,
could have followed it blind, it was so wide. Hot were they on the heels of the chase, reading the
grim tragedy, fresh-written, at every step. Now they came to where the moose had made a stand.
Thrice the length of a grown man's body, in every direction, had the snow been stamped about
and uptossed. In the midst were the deep impressions of the splay-hoofed game, and all about,
everywhere, were the lighter footmarks of the wolves. Some, while their brothers harried the kill,
had lain to one side and rested. The full-stretched impress of their bodies in the snow was as
perfect as though made the moment before. One wolf had been caught in a wild lunge of the
maddened victim and trampled to death. A few bones, well picked, bore witness.
Again, they ceased the uplift of their snowshoes at a second stand. Here the great animal had
fought desperately. Twice had he been dragged down, as the snow attested, and twice had he
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shaken his assailants clear and gained footing once more. He had done his task long since, but
none the less was life dear to him. Zing-ha said it was a strange thing, a moose once down to get
free again; but this one certainly had. The shaman would see signs and wonders in this when they
told him.
And yet again, they come to where the moose had made to mount the bank and gain the timber.
But his foes had laid on from behind, till he reared and fell back upon them, crushing two deep
into the snow. It was plain the kill was at hand, for their brothers had left them untouched. Two
more stands were hurried past, brief in time-length and very close together. The trail was red
now, and the clean stride of the great beast had grown short and slovenly. Then they heard the
first sounds of the battle—not the full-throated chorus of the chase, but the short, snappy bark
which spoke of close quarters and teeth to flesh. Crawling up the wind, Zing-ha bellied it through
the snow, and with him crept he, Koskoosh, who was to be chief of the tribesmen in the years to
come. Together they shoved aside the under branches of a young spruce and peered forth. It was
the end they saw.
The picture, like all of youth's impressions, was still strong with him, and his dim eyes watched
the end played out as vividly as in that far-off time. Koskoosh marvelled at this, for in the days
which followed, when he was a leader of men and a head of councillors, he had done great deeds
and made his name a curse in the mouths of the Pellys, to say naught of the strange white man he
had killed, knife to knife, in open fight.
For long he pondered on the days of his youth, till the fire died down and the frost bit deeper. He
replenished it with two sticks this time, and gauged his grip on life by what remained. If Sit-cumto-ha had only remembered her grandfather, and gathered a larger armful, his hours would have
been longer. It would have been easy. But she was ever a careless child, and honored not her
ancestors from the time the Beaver, son of the son of Zing-ha, first cast eyes upon her. Well,
what mattered it? Had he not done likewise in his own quick youth? For a while he listened to
the silence. Perhaps the heart of his son might soften, and he would come back with the dogs to
take his old father on with the tribe to where the caribou ran thick and the fat hung heavy upon
them.
He strained his ears, his restless brain for the moment stilled. Not a stir, nothing. He alone took
breath in the midst of the great silence. It was very lonely. Hark! What was that? A chill passed
over his body. The familiar, long-drawn howl broke the void, and it was close at hand. Then on
his darkened eyes was projected the vision of the moose—the old bull moose—the torn flanks
and bloody sides, the riddled mane, and the great branching horns, down low and tossing to the
last. He saw the flashing forms of gray, the gleaming eyes, the lolling tongues, the slavered
fangs. And he saw the inexorable circle close in till it became a dark point in the midst of the
stamped snow.
A cold muzzle thrust against his cheek, and at its touch his soul leaped back to the present. His
hand shot into the fire and dragged out a burning faggot. Overcome for the nonce by his
hereditary fear of man, the brute retreated, raising a prolonged call to his brothers; and greedily
they answered, till a ring of crouching, jaw-slobbered gray was stretched round about. The old
man listened to the drawing in of this circle. He waved his brand wildly, and sniffs turned to
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snarls; but the panting brutes refused to scatter. Now one wormed his chest forward, dragging his
haunches after, now a second, now a third; but never a one drew back. Why should he cling to
life? he asked, and dropped the blazing stick into the snow. It sizzled and went out. The circle
grunted uneasily, but held its own. Again he saw the last stand of the old bull moose, and
Koskoosh dropped his head wearily upon his knees. What did it matter after all? Was it not the
law of life?
Resources for The Rise of Realism
Sherwood Anderson (1876-1941)
[image] Sherwood Anderson, a realistic and naturalistic short story writer and novelist, was born
on September 13, 1876, in Camden, Ohio. Receiving little formal education, Anderson went on
to become an ad-man, a businessman, a husband and father of three children, when he abruptly
abandoned that traditional life after a nervous breakdown in order to become a full-time writer.
Though preferring to write novels, Anderson is best known today for his short story collections,
including Winesburg, Ohio (1919), The Triumph of the Egg (1921), Horses and Men (1923), and
Death in the Woods and Other Stories (1933). He had a tempestuous personal life, marrying and
divorcing many times. He influenced and mentored a younger generation of writers, including
William Faulkner. He died on March 8, 1941 and is buried at Round Hill Cemetery in Marion,
Virginia. For an accessible biography, see John Earl Bassett's Sherwood Anderson: An American
Career, Susquehanna University Press, 2005. Students can examine criticism in Judy Jo Small's
A Reader's Guide to the Short Stories of Sherwood Anderson, G.K.Hall, 1994. For a more
complete bibliography, see Donna Campbell's Sherwood Anderson Bibliography page.
Hands
Anderson, Sherwood. "Hands." Winesberg, Ohio. A Group of Tales of Ohio Small Town Life.
New York: B. W. Huebsch, 1919.
source of etext: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/416
Upon the half decayed veranda of a small frame house that stood near the edge of a ravine near
the town of Winesburg, Ohio, a fat little old man walked nervously up and down. Across a long
field that had been seeded for clover but that had produced only a dense crop of yellow mustard
weeds, he could see the public highway along which went a wagon filled with berry pickers
returning from the fields. The berry pickers, youths and maidens, laughed and shouted
boisterously. A boy clad in a blue shirt leaped from the wagon and attempted to drag after him
one of the maidens, who screamed and protested shrilly. The feet of the boy in the road kicked
up a cloud of dust that floated across the face of the departing sun. Over the long field came a
thin girlish voice. "Oh, you Wing Biddlebaum, comb your hair, it's falling into your eyes,"
commanded the voice to the man, who was bald and whose nervous little hands fiddled about the
bare white forehead as though arranging a mass of tangled locks.
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Wing Biddlebaum, forever frightened and beset by a ghostly band of doubts, did not think of
himself as in any way a part of the life of the town where he had lived for twenty years. Among
all the people of Winesburg but one had come close to him. With George Willard, son of Tom
Willard, the proprietor of the New Willard House, he had formed something like a friendship.
George Willard was the reporter on the Winesburg Eagle and sometimes in the evenings he
walked out along the highway to Wing Biddlebaum's house. Now as the old man walked up and
down on the veranda, his hands moving nervously about, he was hoping that George Willard
would come and spend the evening with him. After the wagon containing the berry pickers had
passed, he went across the field through the tall mustard weeds and climbing a rail fence peered
anxiously along the road to the town. For a moment he stood thus, rubbing his hands together
and looking up and down the road, and then, fear overcoming him, ran back to walk again upon
the porch on his own house.
In the presence of George Willard, Wing Biddlebaum, who for twenty years had been the town
mystery, lost something of his timidity, and his shadowy personality, submerged in a sea of
doubts, came forth to look at the world. With the young reporter at his side, he ventured in the
light of day into Main Street or strode up and down on the rickety front porch of his own house,
talking excitedly. The voice that had been low and trembling became shrill and loud. The bent
figure straightened. With a kind of wriggle, like a fish returned to the brook by the fisherman,
Biddlebaum the silent began to talk, striving to put into words the ideas that had been
accumulated by his mind during long years of silence.
Wing Biddlebaum talked much with his hands. The slender expressive fingers, forever active,
forever striving to conceal themselves in his pockets or behind his back, came forth and became
the piston rods of his machinery of expression.
The story of Wing Biddlebaum is a story of hands. Their restless activity, like unto the beating of
the wings of an imprisoned bird, had given him his name. Some obscure poet of the town had
thought of it. The hands alarmed their owner. He wanted to keep them hidden away and looked
with amazement at the quiet inexpressive hands of other men who worked beside him in the
fields, or passed, driving sleepy teams on country roads.
When he talked to George Willard, Wing Biddlebaum closed his fists and beat with them upon a
table or on the walls of his house. The action made him more comfortable. If the desire to talk
came to him when the two were walking in the fields, he sought out a stump or the top board of a
fence and with his hands pounding busily talked with renewed ease.
The story of Wing Biddlebaum's hands is worth a book in itself. Sympathetically set forth it
would tap many strange, beautiful qualities in obscure men. It is a job for a poet. In Winesburg
the hands had attracted attention merely because of their activity. With them Wing Biddlebaum
had picked as high as a hundred and forty quarts of strawberries in a day. They became his
distinguishing feature, the source of his fame. Also they made more grotesque an already
grotesque and elusive individuality. Winesburg was proud of the hands of Wing Biddlebaum in
the same spirit in which it was proud of Banker White's new stone house and Wesley Moyer's
bay stallion, Tony Tip, that had won the two-fifteen trot at the fall races in Cleveland.
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As for George Willard, he had many times wanted to ask about the hands. At times an almost
overwhelming curiosity had taken hold of him. He felt that there must be a reason for their
strange activity and their inclination to keep hidden away and only a growing respect for Wing
Biddlebaum kept him from blurting out the questions that were often in his mind.
Once he had been on the point of asking. The two were walking in the fields on a summer
afternoon and had stopped to sit upon a grassy bank. All afternoon Wing Biddlebaum had talked
as one inspired. By a fence he had stopped and beating like a giant woodpecker upon the top
board had shouted at George Willard, condemning his tendency to be too much influenced by the
people about him, "You are destroying yourself," he cried. "You have the inclination to be alone
and to dream and you are afraid of dreams. You want to be like others in town here. You hear
them talk and you try to imitate them."
On the grassy bank Wing Biddlebaum had tried again to drive his point home. His voice became
soft and reminiscent, and with a sigh of contentment he launched into a long rambling talk,
speaking as one lost in a dream.
Out of the dream Wing Biddlebaum made a picture for George Willard. In the picture men lived
again in a kind of pastoral golden age. Across a green open country came clean-limbed young
men, some afoot, some mounted upon horses. In crowds the young men came to gather about the
feet of an old man who sat beneath a tree in a tiny garden and who talked to them.
Wing Biddlebaum became wholly inspired. For once he forgot the hands. Slowly they stole forth
and lay upon George Willard's shoulders. Something new and bold came into the voice that
talked. "You must try to forget all you have learned," said the old man. "You must begin to
dream. From this time on you must shut your ears to the roaring of the voices."
Pausing in his speech, Wing Biddlebaum looked long and earnestly at George Willard. His eyes
glowed. Again he raised the hands to caress the boy and then a look of horror swept over his
face.
With a convulsive movement of his body, Wing Biddlebaum sprang to his feet and thrust his
hands deep into his trousers pockets. Tears came to his eyes. "I must be getting along home. I
can talk no more with you," he said nervously.
Without looking back, the old man had hurried down the hillside and across a meadow, leaving
George Willard perplexed and frightened upon the grassy slope. With a shiver of dread the boy
arose and went along the road toward town. "I'll not ask him about his hands," he thought,
touched by the memory of the terror he had seen in the man's eyes. "There's something wrong,
but I don't want to know what it is. His hands have something to do with his fear of me and of
everyone."
And George Willard was right. Let us look briefly into the story of the hands. Perhaps our
talking of them will arouse the poet who will tell the hidden wonder story of the influence for
which the hands were but fluttering pennants of promise.
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In his youth Wing Biddlebaum had been a school teacher in a town in Pennsylvania. He was not
then known as Wing Biddlebaum, but went by the less euphonic name of Adolph Myers. As
Adolph Myers he was much loved by the boys of his school.
Adolph Myers was meant by nature to be a teacher of youth. He was one of those rare, littleunderstood men who rule by a power so gentle that it passes as a lovable weakness. In their
feeling for the boys under their charge such men are not unlike the finer sort of women in their
love of men.
And yet that is but crudely stated. It needs the poet there. With the boys of his school, Adolph
Myers had walked in the evening or had sat talking until dusk upon the schoolhouse steps lost in
a kind of dream. Here and there went his hands, caressing the shoulders of the boys, playing
about the tousled heads. As he talked his voice became soft and musical. There was a caress in
that also. In a way the voice and the hands, the stroking of the shoulders and the touching of the
hair were a part of the schoolmaster's effort to carry a dream into the young minds. By the caress
that was in his fingers he expressed himself. He was one of those men in whom the force that
creates life is diffused, not centralized. Under the caress of his hands doubt and disbelief went
out of the minds of the boys and they began also to dream.
And then the tragedy. A half-witted boy of the school became enamored of the young master. In
his bed at night he imagined unspeakable things and in the morning went forth to tell his dreams
as facts. Strange, hideous accusations fell from his loosehung lips. Through the Pennsylvania
town went a shiver. Hidden, shadowy doubts that had been in men's minds concerning Adolph
Myers were galvanized into beliefs.
The tragedy did not linger. Trembling lads were jerked out of bed and questioned. "He put his
arms about me," said one. "His fingers were always playing in my hair," said another.
One afternoon a man of the town, Henry Bradford, who kept a saloon, came to the schoolhouse
door. Calling Adolph Myers into the school yard he began to beat him with his fists. As his hard
knuckles beat down into the frightened face of the school-master, his wrath became more and
more terrible. Screaming with dismay, the children ran here and there like disturbed insects. "I'll
teach you to put your hands on my boy, you beast," roared the saloon keeper, who, tired of
beating the master, had begun to kick him about the yard.
Adolph Myers was driven from the Pennsylvania town in the night. With lanterns in their hands
a dozen men came to the door of the house where he lived alone and commanded that he dress
and come forth. It was raining and one of the men had a rope in his hands. They had intended to
hang the school-master, but something in his figure, so small, white, and pitiful, touched their
hearts and they let him escape. As he ran away into the darkness they repented of their weakness
and ran after him, swearing and throwing sticks and great balls of soft mud at the figure that
screamed and ran faster and faster into the darkness.
For twenty years Adolph Myers had lived alone in Winesburg. He was but forty but looked
sixty-five. The name of Biddlebaum he got from a box of goods seen at a freight station as he
hurried through an eastern Ohio town. He had an aunt in Winesburg, a black-toothed old woman
327
who raised chickens, and with her he lived until she died. He had been ill for a year after the
experience in Pennsylvania, and after his recovery worked as a day laborer in the fields, going
timidly about and striving to conceal his hands. Although he did not understand what had
happened he felt that the hands must be to blame. Again and again the fathers of the boys had
talked of the hands. "Keep your hands to yourself," the saloon keeper had roared, dancing, with
fury in the schoolhouse yard.
Upon the veranda of his house by the ravine, Wing Biddlebaum continued to walk up and down
until the sun had disappeared and the road beyond the field was lost in the grey shadows. Going
into his house he cut slices of bread and spread honey upon them. When the rumble of the
evening train that took away the express cars loaded with the day's harvest of berries had passed
and restored the silence of the summer night, he went again to walk upon the veranda. In the
darkness he could not see the hands and they became quiet. Although he still hungered for the
presence of the boy, who was the medium through which he expressed his love of man, the
hunger became again a part of his loneliness and his waiting. Lighting a lamp, Wing Biddlebaum
washed the few dishes soiled by his simple meal and, setting up a folding cot by the screen door
that led to the porch, prepared to undress for the night. A few stray white bread crumbs lay on
the cleanly washed floor by the table; putting the lamp upon a low stool he began to pick up the
crumbs, carrying them to his mouth one by one with unbelievable rapidity. In the dense blotch of
light beneath the table, the kneeling figure looked like a priest engaged in some service of his
church. The nervous expressive fingers, flashing in and out of the light, might well have been
mistaken for the fingers of the devotee going swiftly through decade after decade of his rosary.
Adventure
Anderson, Sherwood. "Adventure." Winesberg, Ohio. A Group of Tales of Ohio Small Town
Life. New York: B. W. Huebsch, 1919.
source of etext: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/416
Alice Hindman, a woman of twenty-seven when George Willard was a mere boy, had lived in
Winesburg all her life. She clerked in Winney's Dry Goods Store and lived with her mother, who
had married a second husband.
Alice's step-father was a carriage painter, and given to drink. His story is an odd one. It will be
worth telling some day.
At twenty-seven Alice was tall and somewhat slight. Her head was large and overshadowed her
body. Her shoulders were a little stooped and her hair and eyes brown. She was very quiet but
beneath a placid exterior a continual ferment went on.
When she was a girl of sixteen and before she began to work in the store, Alice had an affair
with a young man. The young man, named Ned Currie, was older than Alice. He, like George
Willard, was employed on the Winesburg Eagle and for a long time he went to see Alice almost
every evening. Together the two walked under the trees through the streets of the town and
talked of what they would do with their lives. Alice was then a very pretty girl and Ned Currie
328
took her into his arms and kissed her. He became excited and said things he did not intend to say
and Alice, betrayed by her desire to have something beautiful come into her rather narrow life,
also grew excited. She also talked. The outer crust of her life, all of her natural diffidence and
reserve, was torn away and she gave herself over to the emotions of love. When, late in the fall
of her sixteenth year, Ned Currie went away to Cleveland where he hoped to get a place on a city
newspaper and rise in the world, she wanted to go with him. With a trembling voice she told him
what was in her mind. "I will work and you can work," she said. "I do not want to harness you to
a needless expense that will prevent your making progress. Don't marry me now. We will get
along without that and we can be together. Even though we live in the same house no one will
say anything. In the city we will be unknown and people will pay no attention to us."
Ned Currie was puzzled by the determination and abandon of his sweetheart and was also deeply
touched. He had wanted the girl to become his mistress but changed his mind. He wanted to
protect and care for her. "You don't know what you're talking about," he said sharply; "you may
be sure I'll let you do no such thing. As soon as I get a good job I'll come back. For the present
you'll have to stay here. It's the only thing we can do."
On the evening before he left Winesburg to take up his new life in the city, Ned Currie went to
call on Alice. They walked about through the streets for an hour and then got a rig from Wesley
Moyer's livery and went for a drive in the country. The moon came up and they found
themselves unable to talk. In his sadness the young man forgot the resolutions he had made
regarding his conduct with the girl.
They got out of the buggy at a place where a long meadow ran down to the bank of Wine Creek
and there in the dim light became lovers. When at midnight they returned to town they were both
glad. It did not seem to them that anything that could happen in the future could blot out the
wonder and beauty of the thing that had happened. "Now we will have to stick to each other,
whatever happens we will have to do that," Ned Currie said as he left the girl at her father's door.
The young newspaper man did not succeed in getting a place on a Cleveland paper and went
west to Chicago. For a time he was lonely and wrote to Alice almost every day. Then he was
caught up by the life of the city; he began to make friends and found new interests in life. In
Chicago he boarded at a house where there were several women. One of them attracted his
attention and he forgot Alice in Winesburg. At the end of a year he had stopped writing letters,
and only once in a long time, when he was lonely or when he went into one of the city parks and
saw the moon shining on the grass as it had shone that night on the meadow by Wine Creek, did
he think of her at all.
In Winesburg the girl who had been loved grew to be a woman. When she was twenty-two years
old her father, who owned a harness repair shop, died suddenly. The harness maker was an old
soldier, and after a few months his wife received a widow's pension. She used the first money
she got to buy a loom and became a weaver of carpets, and Alice got a place in Winney's store.
For a number of years nothing could have induced her to believe that Ned Currie would not in
the end return to her.
329
She was glad to be employed because the daily round of toil in the store made the time of
waiting seem less long and uninteresting. She began to save money, thinking that when she had
saved two or three hundred dollars she would follow her lover to the city and try if her presence
would not win back his affections.
Alice did not blame Ned Currie for what had happened in the moonlight in the field, but felt that
she could never marry another man. To her the thought of giving to another what she still felt
could belong only to Ned seemed monstrous. When other young men tried to attract her attention
she would have nothing to do with them. "I am his wife and shall remain his wife whether he
comes back or not," she whispered to herself, and for all of her willingness to support herself
could not have understood the growing modern idea of a woman's owning herself and giving and
taking for her own ends in life.
Alice worked in the dry goods store from eight in the morning until six at night and on three
evenings a week went back to the store to stay from seven until nine. As time passed and she
became more and more lonely she began to practice the devices common to lonely people. When
at night she went upstairs into her own room she knelt on the floor to pray and in her prayers
whispered things she wanted to say to her lover. She became attached to inanimate objects, and
because it was her own, could not bare to have anyone touch the furniture of her room. The trick
of saving money, begun for a purpose, was carried on after the scheme of going to the city to
find Ned Currie had been given up. It became a fixed habit, and when she needed new clothes
she did not get them. Sometimes on rainy afternoons in the store she got out her bank book and,
letting it lie open before her, spent hours dreaming impossible dreams of saving money enough
so that the interest would support both herself and her future husband.
"Ned always liked to travel about," she thought. "I'll give him the chance. Some day when we are
married and I can save both his money and my own, we will be rich. Then we can travel together
all over the world."
In the dry goods store weeks ran into months and months into years as Alice waited and dreamed
of her lover's return. Her employer, a grey old man with false teeth and a thin grey mustache that
drooped down over his mouth, was not given to conversation, and sometimes, on rainy days and
in the winter when a storm raged in Main Street, long hours passed when no customers came in.
Alice arranged and rearranged the stock. She stood near the front window where she could look
down the deserted street and thought of the evenings when she had walked with Ned Currie and
of what he had said. "We will have to stick to each other now." The words echoed and re-echoed
through the mind of the maturing woman. Tears came into her eyes. Sometimes when her
employer had gone out and she was alone in the store she put her head on the counter and wept.
"Oh, Ned, I am waiting," she whispered over and over, and all the time the creeping fear that he
would never come back grew stronger within her.
In the spring when the rains have passed and before the long hot days of summer have come, the
country about Winesburg is delightful. The town lies in the midst of open fields, but beyond the
fields are pleasant patches of woodlands. In the wooded places are many little cloistered nooks,
quiet places where lovers go to sit on Sunday afternoons. Through the trees they look out across
330
the fields and see farmers at work about the barns or people driving up and down on the roads. In
the town bells ring and occasionally a train passes, looking like a toy thing in the distance.
For several years after Ned Currie went away Alice did not go into the wood with the other
young people on Sunday, but one day after he had been gone for two or three years and when her
loneliness seemed unbearable, she put on her best dress and set out. Finding a little sheltered
place from which she could see the town and a long stretch of the fields, she sat down. Fear of
age and ineffectuality took possession of her. She could not sit still, and arose. As she stood
looking out over the land something, perhaps the thought of never ceasing life as it expresses
itself in the flow of the seasons, fixed her mind on the passing years. With a shiver of dread, she
realized that for her the beauty and freshness of youth had passed. For the first time she felt that
she had been cheated. She did not blame Ned Currie and did not know what to blame. Sadness
swept over her. Dropping to her knees, she tried to pray, but instead of prayers words of protest
came to her lips. "It is not going to come to me. I will never find happiness. Why do I tell myself
lies?" she cried, and an odd sense of relief came with this, her first bold attempt to face the fear
that had become a part of her everyday life.
In the year when Alice Hindman became twenty-five two things happened to disturb the dull
uneventfulness of her days. Her mother married Bush Milton, the carriage painter of Winesburg,
and she herself became a member of the Winesburg Methodist Church. Alice joined the church
because she had become frightened by the loneliness of her position in life. Her mother's second
marriage had emphasized her isolation. "I am becoming old and queer. If Ned comes he will not
want me. In the city where he is living men are perpetually young. There is so much going on
that they do not have time to grow old," she told herself with a grim little smile, and went
resolutely about the business of becoming acquainted with people. Every Thursday evening
when the store had closed she went to a prayer meeting in the basement of the church and on
Sunday evening attended a meeting of an organization called The Epworth League.
When Will Hurley, a middle-aged man who clerked in a drug store and who also belonged to the
church, offered to walk home with her she did not protest. "Of course I will not let him make a
practice of being with me, but if he comes to see me once in a long time there can be no harm in
that," she told herself, still determined in her loyalty to Ned Currie.
Without realizing what was happening, Alice was trying feebly at first, but with growing
determination, to get a new hold upon life. Beside the drug clerk she walked in silence, but
sometimes in the darkness as they went stolidly along she put out her hand and touched softly the
folds of his coat. When he left her at the gate before her mother's house she did not go indoors,
but stood for a moment by the door. She wanted to call to the drug clerk, to ask him to sit with
her in the darkness on the porch before the house, but was afraid he would not understand. "It is
not him that I want," she told herself; "I want to avoid being so much alone. If I am not careful I
will grow unaccustomed to being with people."
***
During the early fall of her twenty-seventh year a passionate restlessness took possession of
Alice. She could not bear to be in the company of the drug clerk, and when, in the evening, he
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came to walk with her she sent him away. Her mind became intensely active and when, weary
from the long hours of standing behind the counter in the store, she went home and crawled into
bed, she could not sleep. With staring eyes she looked into the darkness. Her imagination, like a
child awakened from long sleep, played about the room. Deep within her there was something
that would not be cheated by phantasies and that demanded some definite answer from life.
Alice took a pillow into her arms and held it tightly against her breasts. Getting out of bed, she
arranged a blanket so that in the darkness it looked like a form lying between the sheets and,
kneeling beside the bed, she caressed it, whispering words over and over, like a refrain. "Why
doesn't something happen? Why am I left here alone?" she muttered. Although she sometimes
thought of Ned Currie, she no longer depended on him. Her desire had grown vague. She did not
want Ned Currie or any other man. She wanted to be loved, to have something answer the call
that was growing louder and louder within her.
And then one night when it rained Alice had an adventure. It frightened and confused her. She
had come home from the store at nine and found the house empty. Bush Milton had gone off to
town and her mother to the house of a neighbor. Alice went upstairs to her room and undressed
in the darkness. For a moment she stood by the window hearing the rain beat against the glass
and then a strange desire took possession of her. Without stopping to think of what she intended
to do, she ran downstairs through the dark house and out into the rain. As she stood on the little
grass plot before the house and felt the cold rain on her body a mad desire to run naked through
the streets took possession of her.
She thought that the rain would have some creative and wonderful effect on her body. Not for
years had she felt so full of youth and courage. She wanted to leap and run, to cry out, to find
some other lonely human and embrace him. On the brick sidewalk before the house a man
stumbled homeward. Alice started to run. A wild, desperate mood took possession of her. "What
do I care who it is. He is alone, and I will go to him," she thought; and then without stopping to
consider the possible result of her madness, called softly. "Wait!" she cried. "Don't go away.
Whoever you are, you must wait."
The man on the sidewalk stopped and stood listening. He was an old man and somewhat deaf.
Putting his hand to his mouth, he shouted. "What? What say?" he called.
Alice dropped to the ground and lay trembling. She was so frightened at the thought of what she
had done that when the man had gone on his way she did not dare get to her feet, but crawled on
hands and knees through the grass to the house. When she got to her own room she bolted the
door and drew her dressing table across the doorway. Her body shook as with a chill and her
hands trembled so that she had difficulty getting into her nightdress. When she got into bed she
buried her face in the pillow and wept brokenheartedly. "What is the matter with me? I will do
something dreadful if I am not careful," she thought, and turning her face to the wall, began
trying to force herself to face bravely the fact that many people must live and die alone, even in
Winesburg.
Upton Sinclair (1878-1968)
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[image] Upton Sinclair, a prolific writer and novelist, was born on September 20, 1878 in
Baltimore, Maryland to parents who both had a wealthy lineage. He studied at City College of
New York and Columbia University, writing and publishing adolescent adventure stories to help
with his tuition. Though Sinclair had a popular series of books featuring a character called Lanny
Budd, one of which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1943, Dragon’s Teeth (1942), he is most known for
his muckraking novel on the Chicago meatpacking industry, The Jungle (1906). More recently,
Sinclair’s 1927 novel, Oil!, was made into a major motion picture in 2007, There Will Be Blood.
He died on November 25, 1968 in Bound Brook, New Jersey and is buried in Rock Creek
Cemetery in Washington, D.C. Two recent biographies include Kevin Mattson’s Upton Sinclair
and the Other American Century, 2006, and Anthony Arthur’s Radical Innocents: Upton
Sinclair, 2006. Criticism on The Jungle appears in The Norton Critical Edition of that novel,
edited by Clare Virginia Eby.
The Jungle
Sinclair, Upton. "Chapter 9." The Jungle. New York: Doubleday, Page and Company, 1906.
source of etext: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/140
from Chapter IX
[text omitted]
Jurgis heard of these things little by little, in the gossip of those who were obliged to perpetrate
them. It seemed as if every time you met a person from a new department, you heard of new
swindles and new crimes. There was, for instance, a Lithuanian who was a cattle butcher for the
plant where Marija had worked, which killed meat for canning only; and to hear this man
describe the animals which came to his place would have been worthwhile for a Dante or a Zola.
It seemed that they must have agencies all over the country, to hunt out old and crippled and
diseased cattle to be canned. There were cattle which had been fed on "whisky-malt," the refuse
of the breweries, and had become what the men called "steerly"—which means covered with
boils. It was a nasty job killing these, for when you plunged your knife into them they would
burst and splash foul-smelling stuff into your face; and when a man's sleeves were smeared with
blood, and his hands steeped in it, how was he ever to wipe his face, or to clear his eyes so that
he could see? It was stuff such as this that made the "embalmed beef" that had killed several
times as many United States soldiers as all the bullets of the Spaniards; only the army beef,
besides, was not fresh canned, it was old stuff that had been lying for years in the cellars.
Then one Sunday evening, Jurgis sat puffing his pipe by the kitchen stove, and talking with an
old fellow whom Jonas had introduced, and who worked in the canning rooms at Durham's; and
so Jurgis learned a few things about the great and only Durham canned goods, which had
become a national institution. They were regular alchemists at Durham's; they advertised a
mushroom-catsup, and the men who made it did not know what a mushroom looked like. They
advertised "potted chicken,"—and it was like the boardinghouse soup of the comic papers,
through which a chicken had walked with rubbers on. Perhaps they had a secret process for
making chickens chemically—who knows? said Jurgis' friend; the things that went into the
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mixture were tripe, and the fat of pork, and beef suet, and hearts of beef, and finally the waste
ends of veal, when they had any. They put these up in several grades, and sold them at several
prices; but the contents of the cans all came out of the same hopper. And then there was "potted
game" and "potted grouse," "potted ham," and "deviled ham"—de-vyled, as the men called it.
"De-vyled" ham was made out of the waste ends of smoked beef that were too small to be sliced
by the machines; and also tripe, dyed with chemicals so that it would not show white; and
trimmings of hams and corned beef; and potatoes, skins and all; and finally the hard cartilaginous
gullets of beef, after the tongues had been cut out. All this ingenious mixture was ground up and
flavored with spices to make it taste like something. Anybody who could invent a new imitation
had been sure of a fortune from old Durham, said Jurgis' informant; but it was hard to think of
anything new in a place where so many sharp wits had been at work for so long; where men
welcomed tuberculosis in the cattle they were feeding, because it made them fatten more
quickly; and where they bought up all the old rancid butter left over in the grocery stores of a
continent, and "oxidized" it by a forced-air process, to take away the odor, rechurned it with skim
milk, and sold it in bricks in the cities! Up to a year or two ago it had been the custom to kill
horses in the yards—ostensibly for fertilizer; but after long agitation the newspapers had been
able to make the public realize that the horses were being canned. Now it was against the law to
kill horses in Packingtown, and the law was really complied with—for the present, at any rate.
Any day, however, one might see sharp-horned and shaggy-haired creatures running with the
sheep and yet what a job you would have to get the public to believe that a good part of what it
buys for lamb and mutton is really goat's flesh!
There was another interesting set of statistics that a person might have gathered in
Packingtown—those of the various afflictions of the workers. When Jurgis had first inspected the
packing plants with Szedvilas, he had marveled while he listened to the tale of all the things that
were made out of the carcasses of animals, and of all the lesser industries that were maintained
there; now he found that each one of these lesser industries was a separate little inferno, in its
way as horrible as the killing beds, the source and fountain of them all. The workers in each of
them had their own peculiar diseases. And the wandering visitor might be skeptical about all the
swindles, but he could not be skeptical about these, for the worker bore the evidence of them
about on his own person—generally he had only to hold out his hand.
There were the men in the pickle rooms, for instance, where old Antanas had gotten his death;
scarce a one of these that had not some spot of horror on his person. Let a man so much as scrape
his finger pushing a truck in the pickle rooms, and he might have a sore that would put him out
of the world; all the joints in his fingers might be eaten by the acid, one by one. Of the butchers
and floorsmen, the beef-boners and trimmers, and all those who used knives, you could scarcely
find a person who had the use of his thumb; time and time again the base of it had been slashed,
till it was a mere lump of flesh against which the man pressed the knife to hold it. The hands of
these men would be criss-crossed with cuts, until you could no longer pretend to count them or to
trace them. They would have no nails,—they had worn them off pulling hides; their knuckles
were swollen so that their fingers spread out like a fan. There were men who worked in the
cooking rooms, in the midst of steam and sickening odors, by artificial light; in these rooms the
germs of tuberculosis might live for two years, but the supply was renewed every hour. There
were the beef-luggers, who carried two-hundred-pound quarters into the refrigerator-cars; a
fearful kind of work, that began at four o'clock in the morning, and that wore out the most
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powerful men in a few years. There were those who worked in the chilling rooms, and whose
special disease was rheumatism; the time limit that a man could work in the chilling rooms was
said to be five years. There were the wool-pluckers, whose hands went to pieces even sooner
than the hands of the pickle men; for the pelts of the sheep had to be painted with acid to loosen
the wool, and then the pluckers had to pull out this wool with their bare hands, till the acid had
eaten their fingers off. There were those who made the tins for the canned meat; and their hands,
too, were a maze of cuts, and each cut represented a chance for blood poisoning. Some worked at
the stamping machines, and it was very seldom that one could work long there at the pace that
was set, and not give out and forget himself and have a part of his hand chopped off. There were
the "hoisters," as they were called, whose task it was to press the lever which lifted the dead
cattle off the floor. They ran along upon a rafter, peering down through the damp and the steam;
and as old Durham's architects had not built the killing room for the convenience of the hoisters,
at every few feet they would have to stoop under a beam, say four feet above the one they ran on;
which got them into the habit of stooping, so that in a few years they would be walking like
chimpanzees. Worst of any, however, were the fertilizer men, and those who served in the
cooking rooms. These people could not be shown to the visitor,—for the odor of a fertilizer man
would scare any ordinary visitor at a hundred yards, and as for the other men, who worked in
tank rooms full of steam, and in some of which there were open vats near the level of the floor,
their peculiar trouble was that they fell into the vats; and when they were fished out, there was
never enough of them left to be worth exhibiting,—sometimes they would be overlooked for
days, till all but the bones of them had gone out to the world as Durham's Pure Leaf Lard!
Resources for The Rise of Realism
Henry Adams (1838-1918)
[image] Henry Adams was born in Boston on February 16, 1838, and was a journalist, academic
historian, and novelist. He is best known for his autobiography, The Education of Henry Adams
(1918). He was a direct decedent of the second and sixth Presidents of the United States, John
Adams and John Quincy Adams. He graduated from Harvard in 1858 and traveled extensively in
Europe. Adams held the post of professor of Medieval History at Harvard until he retired and
wrote, among many other works, a nine volume history of the United States. He died on March
27, 1918, in Washington, D.C. and is buried in Rock Creek Cemetery there. There is a detailed
three volume biography written by Ernest Samuels (1948, 1958, 1964). Adams is also favored
with many other book-length critical examinations of his life and work.
The Education of Henry Adams
Adams, Henry. "Chapter XXV, The Dynamo and the Virgin." The Education of Henry Adams:
An Autobiography. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1918.
source of etext: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2044
Chapter 25: The Dynamo and the Virgin (1900)
335
UNTIL the Great Exposition of 1900 closed its doors in November, Adams haunted it, aching to
absorb knowledge, and helpless to find it. He would have liked to know how much of it could
have been grasped by the best-informed man in the world. While he was thus meditating chaos,
Langley came by, and showed it to him. At Langley's behest, the Exhibition dropped its
superfluous rags and stripped itself to the skin, for Langley knew what to study, and why, and
how; while Adams might as well have stood outside in the night, staring at the Milky Way. Yet
Langley said nothing new, and taught nothing that one might not have learned from Lord Bacon,
three hundred years before; but though one should have known the "Advancement of Science" as
well as one knew the "Comedy of Errors," the literary knowledge counted for nothing until some
teacher should show how to apply it. Bacon took a vast deal of trouble in teaching King James I
and his subjects, American or other, towards the year 1620, that true science was the
development or economy of forces; yet an elderly American in 1900 knew neither the formula
nor the forces; or even so much as to say to himself that his historical business in the Exposition
concerned only the economies or developments of force since 1893, when he began the study at
Chicago.
Nothing in education is so astonishing as the amount of ignorance it accumulates in the form of
inert facts. Adams had looked at most of the accumulations of art in the storehouses called Art
Museums; yet he did not know how to look at the art exhibits of 1900. He had studied Karl Marx
and his doctrines of history with profound attention, yet he could not apply them at Paris.
Langley, with the ease of a great master of experiment, threw out of the field every exhibit that
did not reveal a new application of force, and naturally threw out, to begin with, almost the
whole art exhibit. Equally, he ignored almost the whole industrial exhibit. He led his pupil
directly to the forces. His chief interest was in new motors to make his airship feasible, and he
taught Adams the astonishing complexities of the new Daimler motor, and of the automobile,
which, since 1893, had become a nightmare at a hundred kilometres an hour, almost as
destructive as the electric tram which was only ten years older; and threatening to become as
terrible as the locomotive steam-engine itself, which was almost exactly Adams's own age.
Then he showed his scholar the great hall of dynamos, and explained how little he knew about
electricity or force of any kind, even of his own special sun, which spouted heat in inconceivable
volume, but which, as far as he knew, might spout less or more, at any time, for all the certainty
he felt in it. To him, the dynamo itself was but an ingenious channel for conveying somewhere
the heat latent in a few tons of poor coal hidden in a dirty engine-house carefully kept out of
sight; but to Adams the dynamo became a symbol of infinity. As he grew accustomed to the
great gallery of machines, he began to feel the forty-foot dynamos as a moral force, much as the
early Christians felt the Cross. The planet itself seemed less impressive, in its old-fashioned,
deliberate, annual or daily revolution, than this huge wheel, revolving within arm's length at
some vertiginous speed, and barely murmuring--scarcely humming an audible warning to stand a
hair's-breadth further for respect of power--while it would not wake the baby lying close against
its frame. Before the end, one began to pray to it; inherited instinct taught the natural expression
of man before silent and infinite force. Among the thousand symbols of ultimate energy the
dynamo was not so human as some, but it was the most expressive.
Yet the dynamo, next to the steam-engine, was the most familiar of exhibits. For Adams's objects
its value lay chiefly in its occult mechanism. Between the dynamo in the gallery of machines and
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the engine-house outside, the break of continuity amounted to abysmal fracture for a historian's
objects. No more relation could he discover between the steam and the electric current than
between the Cross and the cathedral. The forces were interchangeable if not reversible, but he
could see only an absolute fiat in electricity as in faith. Langley could not help him. Indeed,
Langley seemed to be worried by the same trouble, for he constantly repeated that the new forces
were anarchical, and especially that he was not responsible for the new rays, that were little short
of parricidal in their wicked spirit towards science. His own rays, with which he had doubled the
solar spectrum, were altogether harmless and beneficent; but Radium denied its God--or, what
was to Langley the same thing, denied the truths of his Science. The force was wholly new.
A historian who asked only to learn enough to be as futile as Langley or Kelvin, made rapid
progress under this teaching, and mixed himself up in the tangle of ideas until he achieved a sort
of Paradise of ignorance vastly consoling to his fatigued senses. He wrapped himself in
vibrations and rays which were new, and he would have hugged Marconi and Branly had he met
them, as he hugged the dynamo; while he lost his arithmetic in trying to figure out the equation
between the discoveries and the economies of force. The economies, like the discoveries, were
absolute, supersensual, occult; incapable of expression in horse-power. What mathematical
equivalent could he suggest as the value of a Branly coherer? Frozen air, or the electric furnace,
had some scale of measurement, no doubt, if somebody could invent a thermometer adequate to
the purpose; but X-rays had played no part whatever in man's consciousness, and the atom itself
had figured only as a fiction of thought. In these seven years man had translated himself into a
new universe which had no common scale of measurement with the old. He had entered a
supersensual world, in which he could measure nothing except by chance collisions of
movements imperceptible to his senses, perhaps even imperceptible to his instruments, but
perceptible to each other, and so to some known ray at the end of the scale. Langley seemed
prepared for anything, even for an indeterminable number of universes interfused--physics stark
mad in metaphysics.
Historians undertake to arrange sequences,--called stories, or histories--assuming in silence a
relation of cause and effect. These assumptions, hidden in the depths of dusty libraries, have
been astounding, but commonly unconscious and childlike; so much so, that if any captious critic
were to drag them to light, historians would probably reply, with one voice, that they had never
supposed themselves required to know what they were talking about. Adams, for one, had toiled
in vain to find out what he meant. He had even published a dozen volumes of American history
for no other purpose than to satisfy himself whether, by severest process of stating, with the least
possible comment, such facts as seemed sure, in such order as seemed rigorously consequent, he
could fix for a familiar moment a necessary sequence of human movement. The result had
satisfied him as little as at Harvard College. Where he saw sequence, other men saw something
quite different, and no one saw the same unit of measure. He cared little about his experiments
and less about his statesmen, who seemed to him quite as ignorant as himself and, as a rule, no
more honest; but he insisted on a relation of sequence, and if he could not reach it by one
method, he would try as many methods as science knew. Satisfied that the sequence of men led
to nothing and that the sequence of their society could lead no further, while the mere sequence
of time was artificial, and the sequence of thought was chaos, he turned at last to the sequence of
force; and thus it happened that, after ten years' pursuit, he found himself lying in the Gallery of
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Machines at the Great Exposition of 1900, his historical neck broken by the sudden irruption of
forces totally new.
Since no one else showed much concern, an elderly person without other cares had no need to
betray alarm. The year 1900 was not the first to upset schoolmasters. Copernicus and Galileo had
broken many professorial necks about 1600; Columbus had stood the world on its head towards
1500; but the nearest approach to the revolution of 1900 was that of 310, when Constantine set
up the Cross. The rays that Langley disowned, as well as those which he fathered, were occult,
supersensual, irrational; they were a revelation of mysterious energy like that of the Cross; they
were what, in terms of mediæval science, were called immediate modes of the divine substance.
The historian was thus reduced to his last resources. Clearly if he was bound to reduce all these
forces to a common value, this common value could have no measure but that of their attraction
on his own mind. He must treat them as they had been felt; as convertible, reversible,
interchangeable attractions on thought. He made up his mind to venture it; he would risk
translating rays into faith. Such a reversible process would vastly amuse a chemist, but the
chemist could not deny that he, or some of his fellow physicists, could feel the force of both.
When Adams was a boy in Boston, the best chemist in the place had probably never heard of
Venus except by way of scandal, or of the Virgin except as idolatry; neither had he heard of
dynamos or automobiles or radium; yet his mind was ready to feel the force of all, though the
rays were unborn and the women were dead.
Here opened another totally new education, which promised to be by far the most hazardous of
all. The knife-edge along which he must crawl, like Sir Lancelot in the twelfth century, divided
two kingdoms of force which had nothing in common but attraction. They were as different as a
magnet is from gravitation, supposing one knew what a magnet was, or gravitation, or love. The
force of the Virgin was still felt at Lourdes, and seemed to be as potent as X-rays; but in America
neither Venus nor Virgin ever had value as force--at most as sentiment. No American had ever
been truly afraid of either.
This problem in dynamics gravely perplexed an American historian. The Woman had once been
supreme; in France she still seemed potent, not merely as a sentiment, but as a force. Why was
she unknown in America? For evidently America was ashamed of her, and she was ashamed of
herself, otherwise they would not have strewn fig-leaves so profusely all over her. When she was
a true force, she was ignorant of fig-leaves, but the monthly-magazine-made American female
had not a feature that would have been recognized by Adam. The trait was notorious, and often
humorous, but any one brought up among Puritans knew that sex was sin. In any previous age,
sex was strength. Neither art nor beauty was needed. Every one, even among Puritans, knew that
neither Diana of the Ephesians nor any of the Oriental goddesses was worshipped for her beauty.
She was goddess because of her force; she was the animated dynamo; she was reproduction--the
greatest and most mysterious of all energies; all she needed was to be fecund. Singularly enough,
not one of Adams's many schools of education had ever drawn his attention to the opening lines
of Lucretius, though they were perhaps the finest in all Latin literature, where the poet invoked
Venus exactly as Dante invoked the Virgin:-"Quae quondam rerum naturam sola gubernas."
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The Venus of Epicurean philosophy survived in the Virgin of the Schools:-"Donna, sei tanto grande, e tanto vali,
Che qual vuol grazia, e a te non ricorre,
Sua disianza vuol volar senz' ali."
All this was to American thought as though it had never existed. The true American knew
something of the facts, but nothing of the feelings; he read the letter, but he never felt the law.
Before this historical chasm, a mind like that of Adams felt itself helpless; he turned from the
Virgin to the Dynamo as though he were a Branly coherer. On one side, at the Louvre and at
Chartres, as he knew by the record of work actually done and still before his eyes, was the
highest energy ever known to man, the creator four-fifths of his noblest art, exercising vastly
more attraction over the human mind than all the steam-engines and dynamos ever dreamed of;
and yet this energy was unknown to the American mind. An American Virgin would never dare
command; an American Venus would never dare exist.
The question, which to any plain American of the nineteenth century seemed as remote as it did
to Adams, drew him almost violently to study, once it was posed; and on this point Langleys
were as useless as though they were Herbert Spencers or dynamos. The idea survived only as art.
There one turned as naturally as though the artist were himself a woman. Adams began to
ponder, asking himself whether he knew of any American artist who had ever insisted on the
power of sex, as every classic had always done; but he could think only of Walt Whitman; Bret
Harte, as far as the magazines would let him venture; and one or two painters, for the flesh-tones.
All the rest had used sex for sentiment, never for force; to them, Eve was a tender flower, and
Herodias an unfeminine horror. American art, like the American language and American
education, was as far as possible sexless. Society regarded this victory over sex as its greatest
triumph, and the historian readily admitted it, since the moral issue, for the moment, did not
concern one who was studying the relations of unmoral force. He cared nothing for the sex of the
dynamo until he could measure its energy.
Vaguely seeking a clue, he wandered through the art exhibit, and, in his stroll, stopped almost
every day before St. Gaudens's General Sherman, which had been given the central post of
honor. St. Gaudens himself was in Paris, putting on the work his usual interminable last touches,
and listening to the usual contradictory suggestions of brother sculptors. Of all the American
artists who gave to American art whatever life it breathed in the seventies, St. Gaudens was
perhaps the most sympathetic, but certainly the most inarticulate. General Grant or Don Cameron
had scarcely less instinct of rhetoric than he. All the others--the Hunts, Richardson, John La
Farge, Stanford White--were exuberant; only St. Gaudens could never discuss or dilate on an
emotion, or suggest artistic arguments for giving to his work the forms that he felt. He never laid
down the law, or affected the despot, or became brutalized like Whistler by the brutalities of his
world. He required no incense; he was no egoist; his simplicity of thought was excessive; he
could not imitate, or give any form but his own to the creations of his hand. No one felt more
strongly than he the strength of other men, but the idea that they could affect him never stirred an
image in his mind.
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This summer his health was poor and his spirits were low. For such a temper, Adams was not the
best companion, since his own gaiety was not folle; but he risked going now and then to the
studio on Mont Parnasse to draw him out for a stroll in the Bois de Boulogne, or dinner as
pleased his moods, and in return St. Gaudens sometimes let Adams go about in his company.
Once St. Gaudens took him down to Amiens, with a party of Frenchmen, to see the cathedral.
Not until they found themselves actually studying the sculpture of the western portal, did it dawn
on Adams's mind that, for his purposes, St. Gaudens on that spot had more interest to him than
the cathedral itself. Great men before great monuments express great truths, provided they are
not taken too solemnly. Adams never tired of quoting the supreme phrase of his idol Gibbon,
before the Gothic cathedrals: "I darted a contemptuous look on the stately monuments of
superstition." Even in the footnotes of his history, Gibbon had never inserted a bit of humor more
human than this, and one would have paid largely for a photograph of the fat little historian, on
the background of Notre Dame of Amiens, trying to persuade his readers--perhaps himself--that
he was darting a contemptuous look on the stately monument, for which he felt in fact the respect
which every man of his vast study and active mind always feels before objects worthy of it; but
besides the humor, one felt also the relation. Gibbon ignored the Virgin, because in 1789
religious monuments were out of fashion. In 1900 his remark sounded fresh and simple as the
green fields to ears that had heard a hundred years of other remarks, mostly no more fresh and
certainly less simple. Without malice, one might find it more instructive than a whole lecture of
Ruskin. One sees what one brings, and at that moment Gibbon brought the French Revolution.
Ruskin brought reaction against the Revolution. St. Gaudens had passed beyond all. He liked the
stately monuments much more than he liked Gibbon or Ruskin; he loved their dignity; their
unity; their scale; their lines; their lights and shadows; their decorative sculpture; but he was
even less conscious than they of the force that created it all--the Virgin, the Woman--by whose
genius "the stately monuments of superstition" were built, through which she was expressed. He
would have seen more meaning in Isis with the cow's horns, at Edfoo, who expressed the same
thought. The art remained, but the energy was lost even upon the artist.
Yet in mind and person St. Gaudens was a survival of the 1500; he bore the stamp of the
Renaissance, and should have carried an image of the Virgin round his neck, or stuck in his hat,
like Louis XI. In mere time he was a lost soul that had strayed by chance to the twentieth
century, and forgotten where it came from. He writhed and cursed at his ignorance, much as
Adams did at his own, but in the opposite sense. St. Gaudens was a child of Benvenuto Cellini,
smothered in an American cradle. Adams was a quintessence of Boston, devoured by curiosity to
think like Benvenuto. St. Gaudens's art was starved from birth, and Adams's instinct was blighted
from babyhood. Each had but half of a nature, and when they came together before the Virgin of
Amiens they ought both to have felt in her the force that made them one; but it was not so. To
Adams she became more than ever a channel of force; to St. Gaudens she remained as before a
channel of taste.
For a symbol of power, St. Gaudens instinctively preferred the horse, as was plain in his horse
and Victory of the Sherman monument. Doubtless Sherman also felt it so. The attitude was so
American that, for at least forty years, Adams had never realized that any other could be in sound
taste. How many years had he taken to admit a notion of what Michael Angelo and Rubens were
driving at? He could not say; but he knew that only since 1895 had he begun to feel the Virgin or
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Venus as force, and not everywhere even so. At Chartres--perhaps at Lourdes--possibly at
Cnidos if one could still find there the divinely naked Aphrodite of Praxiteles--but otherwise one
must look for force to the goddesses of Indian mythology. The idea died out long ago in the
German and English stock. St. Gaudens at Amiens was hardly less sensitive to the force of the
female energy than Matthew Arnold at the Grande Chartreuse. Neither of them felt goddesses as
power--only as reflected emotion, human expression, beauty, purity, taste, scarcely even as
sympathy. They felt a railway train as power, yet they, and all other artists, constantly
complained that the power embodied in a railway train could never be embodied in art. All the
steam in the world could not, like the Virgin, build Chartres.
Yet in mechanics, whatever the mechanicians might think, both energies acted as
interchangeable force on man, and by action on man all known force may be measured. Indeed,
few men of science measured force in any other way. After once admitting that a straight line
was the shortest distance between two points, no serious mathematician cared to deny anything
that suited his convenience, and rejected no symbol, unproved or unproveable, that helped him to
accomplish work. The symbol was force, as a compass-needle or a triangle was force, as the
mechanist might prove by losing it, and nothing could be gained by ignoring their value. Symbol
or energy, the Virgin had acted as the greatest force the Western world ever felt, and had drawn
man's activities to herself more strongly than any other power, natural or supernatural, had ever
done; the historian's business was to follow the track of the energy; to find where it came from
and where it went to; its complex source and shifting channels; its values, equivalents,
conversions. It could scarcely be more complex than radium; it could hardly be deflected,
diverted, polarized, absorbed more perplexingly than other radiant matter. Adams knew nothing
about any of them, but as a mathematical problem of influence on human progress, though all
were occult, all reacted on his mind, and he rather inclined to think the Virgin easiest to handle.
The pursuit turned out to be long and tortuous, leading at last to the vast forests of scholastic
science. From Zeno to Descartes, hand in hand with Thomas Aquinas, Montaigne, and Pascal,
one stumbled as stupidly as though one were still a German student of 1860. Only with the
instinct of despair could one force one's self into this old thicket of ignorance after having been
repulsed a score of entrances more promising and more popular. Thus far, no path had led
anywhere, unless perhaps to an exceedingly modest living. Forty-five years of study had proved
to be quite futile for the pursuit of power; one controlled no more force in 1900 than in 1850,
although the amount of force controlled by society had enormously increased. The secret of
education still hid itself somewhere behind ignorance, and one fumbled over it as feebly as ever.
In such labyrinths, the staff is a force almost more necessary than the legs; the pen becomes a
sort of blind-man's dog, to keep him from falling into the gutters. The pen works for itself, and
acts like a hand, modelling the plastic material over and over again to the form that suits it best.
The form is never arbitrary, but is a sort of growth like crystallization, as any artist knows too
well; for often the pencil or pen runs into side-paths and shapelessness, loses its relations, stops
or is bogged. Then it has to return on its trail, and recover, if it can, its line of force. The result of
a year's work depends more on what is struck out than on what is left in; on the sequence of the
main lines of thought, than on their play or variety. Compelled once more to lean heavily on this
support, Adams covered more thousands of pages with figures as formal as though they were
algebra, laboriously striking out, altering, burning, experimenting, until the year had expired, the
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Exposition had long been closed, and winter drawing to its end, before he sailed from Cherbourg,
on January 19, 1901, for home.
Resources for The Rise of Realism
Booker T. Washington (1856–1915)
[image] Booker T. Washington was an educator and one of the leading spokesmen for the
African-American community at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the
twentieth. He was born on April 5, 1856, near Hale’s Ford, Virginia, as a slave and was
emancipated during the Civil War. He founded Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute in
1881, based upon a nonconfrontational accommodationist philosophy that the industrial and
agricultural trades were the best stepping stones for the future success of black Americans, rather
than seeking full equality and civil rights immediately . This philosophy is encapsulated in
Washington’s “Atlanta Compromise Address,” and expanded in his popular autobiography, Up
From Slavery (1901). This economic and political positioning came under criticism from groups
like the NAACP who expressed growing disapproval with ongoing “Jim Crow” segregation laws
and political disfranchisement. Washington died on November 14, 1915 in Tuskegee, Alabama
and is buried on the campus of Tuskegee University near the chapel. Key biographies are Louis
R. Harlan’s two volumes, Booker T. Washington: The Making of a Black Leader, 1865-1901,
Oxford University Press, 1972, and Booker T. Washington: The Wizard of Tuskegee, 1901-1915,
Oxford, 1983, along with Michael Rudolph West’s The Education of Booker T. Washington,
Columbia University Press, 2006. Students can begin critical examinations in McDowell and
Rampersad’s Slavery and the Literary Imagination, Johns Hopkins University, Press, 1989. Also
see Rebecca Carroll’s Uncle Tom or New Negro?: African Americans Reflect on Booker T.
Washington and Up From Slavery 100 Years Later, Broadway Books, 2006.
Up from Slavery
Washington, Booker T. "Chapter 14: The Atlanta Exposition Address." Up from Slavery. New
York: Doubleday, Page and Company, 1907.
source of etext: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2376
excerpt from Chapter 14: The Atlanta Exposition Address
The Atlanta Exposition, at which I had been asked to make an address as a representative of the
Negro race, as stated in the last chapter, was opened with a short address from Governor
Bullock. After other interesting exercises, including an invocation from Bishop Nelson, of
Georgia, a dedicatory ode by Albert Howell, Jr., and addresses by the President of the Exposition
and Mrs. Joseph Thompson, the President of the Woman's Board, Governor Bullock introduce
me with the words, "We have with us to-day a representative of Negro enterprise and Negro
civilization."
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When I arose to speak, there was considerable cheering, especially from the coloured people. As
I remember it now, the thing that was uppermost in my mind was the desire to say something
that would cement the friendship of the races and bring about hearty cooperation between them.
So far as my outward surroundings were concerned, the only thing that I recall distinctly now is
that when I got up, I saw thousands of eyes looking intently into my face. The following is the
address which I delivered:—
Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Board of Directors and Citizens.
One-third of the population of the South is of the Negro race. No enterprise seeking the material,
civil, or moral welfare of this section can disregard this element of our population and reach the
highest success. I but convey to you, Mr. President and Directors, the sentiment of the masses of
my race when I say that in no way have the value and manhood of the American Negro been
more fittingly and generously recognized than by the managers of this magnificent Exposition at
every stage of its progress. It is a recognition that will do more to cement the friendship of the
two races than any occurrence since the dawn of our freedom.
Not only this, but the opportunity here afforded will awaken among us a new era of industrial
progress. Ignorant and inexperienced, it is not strange that in the first years of our new life we
began at the top instead of at the bottom; that a seat in Congress or the state legislature was more
sought than real estate or industrial skill; that the political convention or stump speaking had
more attractions than starting a dairy farm or truck garden.
A ship lost at sea for many days suddenly sighted a friendly vessel. From the mast of the
unfortunate vessel was seen a signal, "Water, water; we die of thirst!" The answer from the
friendly vessel at once came back, "Cast down your bucket where you are." A second time the
signal, "Water, water; send us water!" ran up from the distressed vessel, and was answered, "Cast
down your bucket where you are." And a third and fourth signal for water was answered, "Cast
down your bucket where you are." The captain of the distressed vessel, at last heading the
injunction, cast down his bucket, and it came up full of fresh, sparkling water from the mouth of
the Amazon River. To those of my race who depend on bettering their condition in a foreign land
or who underestimate the importance of cultivating friendly relations with the Southern white
man, who is their next-door neighbour, I would say: "Cast down your bucket where you are"—
cast it down in making friends in every manly way of the people of all races by whom we are
surrounded.
Cast it down in agriculture, mechanics, in commerce, in domestic service, and in the professions.
And in this connection it is well to bear in mind that whatever other sins the South may be called
to bear, when it comes to business, pure and simple, it is in the South that the Negro is given a
man's chance in the commercial world, and in nothing is this Exposition more eloquent than in
emphasizing this chance. Our greatest danger is that in the great leap from slavery to freedom we
may overlook the fact that the masses of us are to live by the productions of our hands, and fail
to keep in mind that we shall prosper in proportion as we learn to dignify and glorify common
labour and put brains and skill into the common occupations of life; shall prosper in proportion
as we learn to draw the line between the superficial and the substantial, the ornamental gewgaws
of life and the useful. No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a
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field as in writing a poem. It is at the bottom of life we must begin, and not at the top. Nor should
we permit our grievances to overshadow our opportunities.
To those of the white race who look to the incoming of those of foreign birth and strange tongue
and habits of the prosperity of the South, were I permitted I would repeat what I say to my own
race: "Cast down your bucket where you are." Cast it down among the eight millions of Negroes
whose habits you know, whose fidelity and love you have tested in days when to have proved
treacherous meant the ruin of your firesides. Cast down your bucket among these people who
have, without strikes and labour wars, tilled your fields, cleared your forests, builded your
railroads and cities, and brought forth treasures from the bowels of the earth, and helped make
possible this magnificent representation of the progress of the South. Casting down your bucket
among my people, helping and encouraging them as you are doing on these grounds, and to
education of head, hand, and heart, you will find that they will buy your surplus land, make
blossom the waste places in your fields, and run your factories. While doing this, you can be sure
in the future, as in the past, that you and your families will be surrounded by the most patient,
faithful, law-abiding, and unresentful people that the world has seen. As we have proved our
loyalty to you in the past, nursing your children, watching by the sick-bed of your mothers and
fathers, and often following them with tear-dimmed eyes to their graves, so in the future, in our
humble way, we shall stand by you with a devotion that no foreigner can approach, ready to lay
down our lives, if need be, in defence of yours, interlacing our industrial, commercial, civil, and
religious life with yours in a way that shall make the interests of both races one. In all things that
are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to
mutual progress.
There is no defence or security for any of us except in the highest intelligence and development
of all. If anywhere there are efforts tending to curtail the fullest growth of the Negro, let these
efforts be turned into stimulating, encouraging, and making him the most useful and intelligent
citizen. Effort or means so invested will pay a thousand per cent interest. These efforts will be
twice blessed—"blessing him that gives and him that takes."
There is no escape through law of man or God from the inevitable:—
The laws of changeless justice bind
Oppressor with oppressed;
And close as sin and suffering joined
We march to fate abreast.
Nearly sixteen millions of hands will aid you in pulling the load upward, or they will pull against
you the load downward. We shall constitute one-third and more of the ignorance and crime of
the South, or one-third its intelligence and progress; we shall contribute one-third to the business
and industrial prosperity of the South, or we shall prove a veritable body of death, stagnating,
depressing, retarding every effort to advance the body politic.
Gentlemen of the Exposition, as we present to you our humble effort at an exhibition of our
progress, you must not expect overmuch. Starting thirty years ago with ownership here and there
in a few quilts and pumpkins and chickens (gathered from miscellaneous sources), remember the
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path that has led from these to the inventions and production of agricultural implements, buggies,
steam-engines, newspapers, books, statuary, carving, paintings, the management of drug-stores
and banks, has not been trodden without contact with thorns and thistles. While we take pride in
what we exhibit as a result of our independent efforts, we do not for a moment forget that our
part in this exhibition would fall far short of your expectations but for the constant help that has
come to our education life, not only from the Southern states, but especially from Northern
philanthropists, who have made their gifts a constant stream of blessing and encouragement.
The wisest among my race understand that the agitation of questions of social equality is the
extremest folly, and that progress in the enjoyment of all the privileges that will come to us must
be the result of severe and constant struggle rather than of artificial forcing. No race that has
anything to contribute to the markets of the world is long in any degree ostracized. It is important
and right that all privileges of the law be ours, but it is vastly more important that we be prepared
for the exercises of these privileges. The opportunity to earn a dollar in a factory just now is
worth infinitely more than the opportunity to spend a dollar in an opera-house.
In conclusion, may I repeat that nothing in thirty years has given us more hope and
encouragement, and drawn us so near to you of the white race, as this opportunity offered by the
Exposition; and here bending, as it were, over the altar that represents the results of the struggles
of your race and mine, both starting practically empty-handed three decades ago, I pledge that in
your effort to work out the great and intricate problem which God has laid at the doors of the
South, you shall have at all times the patient, sympathetic help of my race; only let this be
constantly in mind, that, while from representations in these buildings of the product of field, of
forest, of mine, of factory, letters, and art, much good will come, yet far above and beyond
material benefits will be that higher good, that, let us pray God, will come, in a blotting out of
sectional differences and racial animosities and suspicions, in a determination to administer
absolute justice, in a willing obedience among all classes to the mandates of law. This, this,
coupled with our material prosperity, will bring into our beloved South a new heaven and a new
earth.
The first thing that I remember, after I had finished speaking, was that Governor Bullock rushed
across the platform and took me by the hand, and that others did the same. I received so many
and such hearty congratulations that I found it difficult to get out of the building. I did not
appreciate to any degree, however, the impression which my address seemed to have made, until
the next morning, when I went into the business part of the city. As soon as I was recognized, I
was surprised to find myself pointed out and surrounded by a crowd of men who wished to shake
hands with me. This was kept up on every street on to which I went, to an extent which
embarrassed me so much that I went back to my boarding-place. The next morning I returned to
Tuskegee. At the station in Atlanta, and at almost all of the stations at which the train stopped
between that city and Tuskegee, I found a crowd of people anxious to shake hands with me.
[text omitted]
Resources for The Rise of Realism
345
W. E. B. Du Bois (1868 –1963)
[image] W.E.B. Du Bois was born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts on February 23, 1868. He
was a writer, editor, historian, social activist, and one of the cofounders of the NAACP in 1909.
He attended Fisk University, the University of Berlin, and was the first African American to earn
a doctorate from Harvard University. He gained the national spotlight as part the Niagara
Movement, which advocated for equal rights for African Americans. His famous essay
collection, The Souls of Black Folk (1903) is considered a key work in his prolific writing career.
He opposed Booker T. Washington’s slower approach to social equality for blacks, advocating
instead for immediate full civil rights and equality, and the nurturing of the “talented tenth” of
African Americans who would become future leaders and educators. Du Bois died on August 27,
1963 in Accra, Ghana, Africa, while working on the Encyclopedia Africana, and is buried there.
The standard biography includes David Levering Lewis’s two volumes, W.E.B. Du Bois:
Biography of a Race, 1868-1919, Owl Books, 1993, and W.E.B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality
and the American Century, 1919-1963, Owl Books, 2000. A critical starting point is Shamoon
Zamir’s The Cambridge Companion to W.E.B. Du Bois, Cambridge University Press, 2008.
The Souls of Black Folk
Du Bois, W.E.B. The Souls of Black Folk. Chicago: A.C. McClurg & Co., 1903.
source of etext: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/408
Chapter 3. Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others
From birth till death enslaved; in word, in deed, unmanned!
Hereditary bondsmen! Know ye not
Who would be free themselves must strike the blow?
BYRON.
Easily the most striking thing in the history of the American Negro since 1876 is the ascendancy
of Mr. Booker T. Washington. It began at the time when war memories and ideals were rapidly
passing; a day of astonishing commercial development was dawning; a sense of doubt and
hesitation overtook the freedmen's sons,—then it was that his leading began. Mr. Washington
came, with a simple definite programme, at the psychological moment when the nation was a
little ashamed of having bestowed so much sentiment on Negroes, and was concentrating its
energies on Dollars. His programme of industrial education, conciliation of the South, and
submission and silence as to civil and political rights, was not wholly original; the Free Negroes
from 1830 up to war-time had striven to build industrial schools, and the American Missionary
Association had from the first taught various trades; and Price and others had sought a way of
honorable alliance with the best of the Southerners. But Mr. Washington first indissolubly linked
these things; he put enthusiasm, unlimited energy, and perfect faith into his programme, and
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changed it from a by-path into a veritable Way of Life. And the tale of the methods by which he
did this is a fascinating study of human life.
It startled the nation to hear a Negro advocating such a programme after many decades of bitter
complaint; it startled and won the applause of the South, it interested and won the admiration of
the North; and after a confused murmur of protest, it silenced if it did not convert the Negroes
themselves.
To gain the sympathy and cooperation of the various elements comprising the white South was
Mr. Washington's first task; and this, at the time Tuskegee was founded, seemed, for a black
man, well-nigh impossible. And yet ten years later it was done in the word spoken at Atlanta: "In
all things purely social we can be as separate as the five fingers, and yet one as the hand in all
things essential to mutual progress." This "Atlanta Compromise" is by all odds the most notable
thing in Mr. Washington's career. The South interpreted it in different ways: the radicals received
it as a complete surrender of the demand for civil and political equality; the conservatives, as a
generously conceived working basis for mutual understanding. So both approved it, and to-day
its author is certainly the most distinguished Southerner since Jefferson Davis, and the one with
the largest personal following.
Next to this achievement comes Mr. Washington's work in gaining place and consideration in the
North. Others less shrewd and tactful had formerly essayed to sit on these two stools and had
fallen between them; but as Mr. Washington knew the heart of the South from birth and training,
so by singular insight he intuitively grasped the spirit of the age which was dominating the
North. And so thoroughly did he learn the speech and thought of triumphant commercialism, and
the ideals of material prosperity, that the picture of a lone black boy poring over a French
grammar amid the weeds and dirt of a neglected home soon seemed to him the acme of
absurdities. One wonders what Socrates and St. Francis of Assisi would say to this.
And yet this very singleness of vision and thorough oneness with his age is a mark of the
successful man. It is as though Nature must needs make men narrow in order to give them force.
So Mr. Washington's cult has gained unquestioning followers, his work has wonderfully
prospered, his friends are legion, and his enemies are confounded. To-day he stands as the one
recognized spokesman of his ten million fellows, and one of the most notable figures in a nation
of seventy millions. One hesitates, therefore, to criticise a life which, beginning with so little, has
done so much. And yet the time is come when one may speak in all sincerity and utter courtesy
of the mistakes and shortcomings of Mr. Washington's career, as well as of his triumphs, without
being thought captious or envious, and without forgetting that it is easier to do ill than well in the
world.
The criticism that has hitherto met Mr. Washington has not always been of this broad character.
In the South especially has he had to walk warily to avoid the harshest judgments,—and
naturally so, for he is dealing with the one subject of deepest sensitiveness to that section.
Twice—once when at the Chicago celebration of the Spanish-American War he alluded to the
color-prejudice that is "eating away the vitals of the South," and once when he dined with
President Roosevelt—has the resulting Southern criticism been violent enough to threaten
seriously his popularity. In the North the feeling has several times forced itself into words, that
347
Mr. Washington's counsels of submission overlooked certain elements of true manhood, and that
his educational programme was unnecessarily narrow. Usually, however, such criticism has not
found open expression, although, too, the spiritual sons of the Abolitionists have not been
prepared to acknowledge that the schools founded before Tuskegee, by men of broad ideals and
self-sacrificing spirit, were wholly failures or worthy of ridicule. While, then, criticism has not
failed to follow Mr. Washington, yet the prevailing public opinion of the land has been but too
willing to deliver the solution of a wearisome problem into his hands, and say, "If that is all you
and your race ask, take it."
Among his own people, however, Mr. Washington has encountered the strongest and most
lasting opposition, amounting at times to bitterness, and even today continuing strong and
insistent even though largely silenced in outward expression by the public opinion of the nation.
Some of this opposition is, of course, mere envy; the disappointment of displaced demagogues
and the spite of narrow minds. But aside from this, there is among educated and thoughtful
colored men in all parts of the land a feeling of deep regret, sorrow, and apprehension at the wide
currency and ascendancy which some of Mr. Washington's theories have gained. These same
men admire his sincerity of purpose, and are willing to forgive much to honest endeavor which is
doing something worth the doing. They cooperate with Mr. Washington as far as they
conscientiously can; and, indeed, it is no ordinary tribute to this man's tact and power that,
steering as he must between so many diverse interests and opinions, he so largely retains the
respect of all.
But the hushing of the criticism of honest opponents is a dangerous thing. It leads some of the
best of the critics to unfortunate silence and paralysis of effort, and others to burst into speech so
passionately and intemperately as to lose listeners. Honest and earnest criticism from those
whose interests are most nearly touched,—criticism of writers by readers,—this is the soul of
democracy and the safeguard of modern society. If the best of the American Negroes receive by
outer pressure a leader whom they had not recognized before, manifestly there is here a certain
palpable gain. Yet there is also irreparable loss,—a loss of that peculiarly valuable education
which a group receives when by search and criticism it finds and commissions its own leaders.
The way in which this is done is at once the most elementary and the nicest problem of social
growth. History is but the record of such group-leadership; and yet how infinitely changeful is its
type and character! And of all types and kinds, what can be more instructive than the leadership
of a group within a group?—that curious double movement where real progress may be negative
and actual advance be relative retrogression. All this is the social student's inspiration and
despair.
Now in the past the American Negro has had instructive experience in the choosing of group
leaders, founding thus a peculiar dynasty which in the light of present conditions is worth while
studying. When sticks and stones and beasts form the sole environment of a people, their attitude
is largely one of determined opposition to and conquest of natural forces. But when to earth and
brute is added an environment of men and ideas, then the attitude of the imprisoned group may
take three main forms,—a feeling of revolt and revenge; an attempt to adjust all thought and
action to the will of the greater group; or, finally, a determined effort at self-realization and selfdevelopment despite environing opinion. The influence of all of these attitudes at various times
348
can be traced in the history of the American Negro, and in the evolution of his successive
leaders.
Before 1750, while the fire of African freedom still burned in the veins of the slaves, there was in
all leadership or attempted leadership but the one motive of revolt and revenge,—typified in the
terrible Maroons, the Danish blacks, and Cato of Stono, and veiling all the Americas in fear of
insurrection. The liberalizing tendencies of the latter half of the eighteenth century brought,
along with kindlier relations between black and white, thoughts of ultimate adjustment and
assimilation. Such aspiration was especially voiced in the earnest songs of Phyllis, in the
martyrdom of Attucks, the fighting of Salem and Poor, the intellectual accomplishments of
Banneker and Derham, and the political demands of the Cuffes.
Stern financial and social stress after the war cooled much of the previous humanitarian ardor.
The disappointment and impatience of the Negroes at the persistence of slavery and serfdom
voiced itself in two movements. The slaves in the South, aroused undoubtedly by vague rumors
of the Haytian revolt, made three fierce attempts at insurrection,—in 1800 under Gabriel in
Virginia, in 1822 under Vesey in Carolina, and in 1831 again in Virginia under the terrible Nat
Turner. In the Free States, on the other hand, a new and curious attempt at self-development was
made. In Philadelphia and New York color-prescription led to a withdrawal of Negro
communicants from white churches and the formation of a peculiar socio-religious institution
among the Negroes known as the African Church,—an organization still living and controlling in
its various branches over a million of men.
Walker's wild appeal against the trend of the times showed how the world was changing after the
coming of the cotton-gin. By 1830 slavery seemed hopelessly fastened on the South, and the
slaves thoroughly cowed into submission. The free Negroes of the North, inspired by the mulatto
immigrants from the West Indies, began to change the basis of their demands; they recognized
the slavery of slaves, but insisted that they themselves were freemen, and sought assimilation and
amalgamation with the nation on the same terms with other men. Thus, Forten and Purvis of
Philadelphia, Shad of Wilmington, Du Bois of New Haven, Barbadoes of Boston, and others,
strove singly and together as men, they said, not as slaves; as "people of color," not as
"Negroes." The trend of the times, however, refused them recognition save in individual and
exceptional cases, considered them as one with all the despised blacks, and they soon found
themselves striving to keep even the rights they formerly had of voting and working and moving
as freemen. Schemes of migration and colonization arose among them; but these they refused to
entertain, and they eventually turned to the Abolition movement as a final refuge.
Here, led by Remond, Nell, Wells-Brown, and Douglass, a new period of self-assertion and selfdevelopment dawned. To be sure, ultimate freedom and assimilation was the ideal before the
leaders, but the assertion of the manhood rights of the Negro by himself was the main reliance,
and John Brown's raid was the extreme of its logic. After the war and emancipation, the great
form of Frederick Douglass, the greatest of American Negro leaders, still led the host. Selfassertion, especially in political lines, was the main programme, and behind Douglass came
Elliot, Bruce, and Langston, and the Reconstruction politicians, and, less conspicuous but of
greater social significance, Alexander Crummell and Bishop Daniel Payne.
349
Then came the Revolution of 1876, the suppression of the Negro votes, the changing and shifting
of ideals, and the seeking of new lights in the great night. Douglass, in his old age, still bravely
stood for the ideals of his early manhood,—ultimate assimilation through self-assertion, and on
no other terms. For a time Price arose as a new leader, destined, it seemed, not to give up, but to
re-state the old ideals in a form less repugnant to the white South. But he passed away in his
prime. Then came the new leader. Nearly all the former ones had become leaders by the silent
suffrage of their fellows, had sought to lead their own people alone, and were usually, save
Douglass, little known outside their race. But Booker T. Washington arose as essentially the
leader not of one race but of two,—a compromiser between the South, the North, and the Negro.
Naturally the Negroes resented, at first bitterly, signs of compromise which surrendered their
civil and political rights, even though this was to be exchanged for larger chances of economic
development. The rich and dominating North, however, was not only weary of the race problem,
but was investing largely in Southern enterprises, and welcomed any method of peaceful
cooperation. Thus, by national opinion, the Negroes began to recognize Mr. Washington's
leadership; and the voice of criticism was hushed.
Mr. Washington represents in Negro thought the old attitude of adjustment and submission; but
adjustment at such a peculiar time as to make his programme unique. This is an age of unusual
economic development, and Mr. Washington's programme naturally takes an economic cast,
becoming a gospel of Work and Money to such an extent as apparently almost completely to
overshadow the higher aims of life. Moreover, this is an age when the more advanced races are
coming in closer contact with the less developed races, and the race-feeling is therefore
intensified; and Mr. Washington's programme practically accepts the alleged inferiority of the
Negro races. Again, in our own land, the reaction from the sentiment of war time has given
impetus to race-prejudice against Negroes, and Mr. Washington withdraws many of the high
demands of Negroes as men and American citizens. In other periods of intensified prejudice all
the Negro's tendency to self-assertion has been called forth; at this period a policy of submission
is advocated. In the history of nearly all other races and peoples the doctrine preached at such
crises has been that manly self-respect is worth more than lands and houses, and that a people
who voluntarily surrender such respect, or cease striving for it, are not worth civilizing.
In answer to this, it has been claimed that the Negro can survive only through submission. Mr.
Washington distinctly asks that black people give up, at least for the present, three things,—
First, political power,
Second, insistence on civil rights,
Third, higher education of Negro youth,—and concentrate all their energies on industrial
education, and accumulation of wealth, and the conciliation of the South. This policy has been
courageously and insistently advocated for over fifteen years, and has been triumphant for
perhaps ten years. As a result of this tender of the palm-branch, what has been the return? In
these years there have occurred:
1. The disfranchisement of the Negro.
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2. The legal creation of a distinct status of civil inferiority for the Negro.
3. The steady withdrawal of aid from institutions for the higher training of the Negro.
These movements are not, to be sure, direct results of Mr. Washington's teachings; but his
propaganda has, without a shadow of doubt, helped their speedier accomplishment. The question
then comes: Is it possible, and probable, that nine millions of men can make effective progress in
economic lines if they are deprived of political rights, made a servile caste, and allowed only the
most meagre chance for developing their exceptional men? If history and reason give any distinct
answer to these questions, it is an emphatic NO. And Mr. Washington thus faces the triple
paradox of his career:
1. He is striving nobly to make Negro artisans business men and property-owners; but it is utterly
impossible, under modern competitive methods, for workingmen and property-owners to defend
their rights and exist without the right of suffrage.
2. He insists on thrift and self-respect, but at the same time counsels a silent submission to civic
inferiority such as is bound to sap the manhood of any race in the long run.
3. He advocates common-school and industrial training, and depreciates institutions of higher
learning; but neither the Negro common-schools, nor Tuskegee itself, could remain open a day
were it not for teachers trained in Negro colleges, or trained by their graduates.
This triple paradox in Mr. Washington's position is the object of criticism by two classes of
colored Americans. One class is spiritually descended from Toussaint the Savior, through
Gabriel, Vesey, and Turner, and they represent the attitude of revolt and revenge; they hate the
white South blindly and distrust the white race generally, and so far as they agree on definite
action, think that the Negro's only hope lies in emigration beyond the borders of the United
States. And yet, by the irony of fate, nothing has more effectually made this programme seem
hopeless than the recent course of the United States toward weaker and darker peoples in the
West Indies, Hawaii, and the Philippines,—for where in the world may we go and be safe from
lying and brute force?
The other class of Negroes who cannot agree with Mr. Washington has hitherto said little aloud.
They deprecate the sight of scattered counsels, of internal disagreement; and especially they
dislike making their just criticism of a useful and earnest man an excuse for a general discharge
of venom from small-minded opponents. Nevertheless, the questions involved are so
fundamental and serious that it is difficult to see how men like the Grimkes, Kelly Miller, J. W.
E. Bowen, and other representatives of this group, can much longer be silent. Such men feel in
conscience bound to ask of this nation three things:
1. The right to vote.
2. Civic equality.
351
3. The education of youth according to ability. They acknowledge Mr. Washington's invaluable
service in counselling patience and courtesy in such demands; they do not ask that ignorant black
men vote when ignorant whites are debarred, or that any reasonable restrictions in the suffrage
should not be applied; they know that the low social level of the mass of the race is responsible
for much discrimination against it, but they also know, and the nation knows, that relentless
color-prejudice is more often a cause than a result of the Negro's degradation; they seek the
abatement of this relic of barbarism, and not its systematic encouragement and pampering by all
agencies of social power from the Associated Press to the Church of Christ. They advocate, with
Mr. Washington, a broad system of Negro common schools supplemented by thorough industrial
training; but they are surprised that a man of Mr. Washington's insight cannot see that no such
educational system ever has rested or can rest on any other basis than that of the well-equipped
college and university, and they insist that there is a demand for a few such institutions
throughout the South to train the best of the Negro youth as teachers, professional men, and
leaders.
This group of men honor Mr. Washington for his attitude of conciliation toward the white South;
they accept the "Atlanta Compromise" in its broadest interpretation; they recognize, with him,
many signs of promise, many men of high purpose and fair judgment, in this section; they know
that no easy task has been laid upon a region already tottering under heavy burdens. But,
nevertheless, they insist that the way to truth and right lies in straightforward honesty, not in
indiscriminate flattery; in praising those of the South who do well and criticising
uncompromisingly those who do ill; in taking advantage of the opportunities at hand and urging
their fellows to do the same, but at the same time in remembering that only a firm adherence to
their higher ideals and aspirations will ever keep those ideals within the realm of possibility.
They do not expect that the free right to vote, to enjoy civic rights, and to be educated, will come
in a moment; they do not expect to see the bias and prejudices of years disappear at the blast of a
trumpet; but they are absolutely certain that the way for a people to gain their reasonable rights is
not by voluntarily throwing them away and insisting that they do not want them; that the way for
a people to gain respect is not by continually belittling and ridiculing themselves; that, on the
contrary, Negroes must insist continually, in season and out of season, that voting is necessary to
modern manhood, that color discrimination is barbarism, and that black boys need education as
well as white boys.
In failing thus to state plainly and unequivocally the legitimate demands of their people, even at
the cost of opposing an honored leader, the thinking classes of American Negroes would shirk a
heavy responsibility,—a responsibility to themselves, a responsibility to the struggling masses, a
responsibility to the darker races of men whose future depends so largely on this American
experiment, but especially a responsibility to this nation,—this common Fatherland. It is wrong
to encourage a man or a people in evil-doing; it is wrong to aid and abet a national crime simply
because it is unpopular not to do so. The growing spirit of kindliness and reconciliation between
the North and South after the frightful difference of a generation ago ought to be a source of deep
congratulation to all, and especially to those whose mistreatment caused the war; but if that
reconciliation is to be marked by the industrial slavery and civic death of those same black men,
with permanent legislation into a position of inferiority, then those black men, if they are really
men, are called upon by every consideration of patriotism and loyalty to oppose such a course by
all civilized methods, even though such opposition involves disagreement with Mr. Booker T.
352
Washington. We have no right to sit silently by while the inevitable seeds are sown for a harvest
of disaster to our children, black and white.
First, it is the duty of black men to judge the South discriminatingly. The present generation of
Southerners are not responsible for the past, and they should not be blindly hated or blamed for
it. Furthermore, to no class is the indiscriminate endorsement of the recent course of the South
toward Negroes more nauseating than to the best thought of the South. The South is not "solid";
it is a land in the ferment of social change, wherein forces of all kinds are fighting for
supremacy; and to praise the ill the South is today perpetrating is just as wrong as to condemn
the good. Discriminating and broad-minded criticism is what the South needs,—needs it for the
sake of her own white sons and daughters, and for the insurance of robust, healthy mental and
moral development.
Today even the attitude of the Southern whites toward the blacks is not, as so many assume, in
all cases the same; the ignorant Southerner hates the Negro, the workingmen fear his
competition, the money-makers wish to use him as a laborer, some of the educated see a menace
in his upward development, while others—usually the sons of the masters—wish to help him to
rise. National opinion has enabled this last class to maintain the Negro common schools, and to
protect the Negro partially in property, life, and limb. Through the pressure of the moneymakers, the Negro is in danger of being reduced to semi-slavery, especially in the country
districts; the workingmen, and those of the educated who fear the Negro, have united to
disfranchise him, and some have urged his deportation; while the passions of the ignorant are
easily aroused to lynch and abuse any black man. To praise this intricate whirl of thought and
prejudice is nonsense; to inveigh indiscriminately against "the South" is unjust; but to use the
same breath in praising Governor Aycock, exposing Senator Morgan, arguing with Mr. Thomas
Nelson Page, and denouncing Senator Ben Tillman, is not only sane, but the imperative duty of
thinking black men.
It would be unjust to Mr. Washington not to acknowledge that in several instances he has
opposed movements in the South which were unjust to the Negro; he sent memorials to the
Louisiana and Alabama constitutional conventions, he has spoken against lynching, and in other
ways has openly or silently set his influence against sinister schemes and unfortunate
happenings. Notwithstanding this, it is equally true to assert that on the whole the distinct
impression left by Mr. Washington's propaganda is, first, that the South is justified in its present
attitude toward the Negro because of the Negro's degradation; secondly, that the prime cause of
the Negro's failure to rise more quickly is his wrong education in the past; and, thirdly, that his
future rise depends primarily on his own efforts. Each of these propositions is a dangerous halftruth. The supplementary truths must never be lost sight of: first, slavery and race-prejudice are
potent if not sufficient causes of the Negro's position; second, industrial and common-school
training were necessarily slow in planting because they had to await the black teachers trained by
higher institutions,—it being extremely doubtful if any essentially different development was
possible, and certainly a Tuskegee was unthinkable before 1880; and, third, while it is a great
truth to say that the Negro must strive and strive mightily to help himself, it is equally true that
unless his striving be not simply seconded, but rather aroused and encouraged, by the initiative
of the richer and wiser environing group, he cannot hope for great success.
353
In his failure to realize and impress this last point, Mr. Washington is especially to be criticised.
His doctrine has tended to make the whites, North and South, shift the burden of the Negro
problem to the Negro's shoulders and stand aside as critical and rather pessimistic spectators;
when in fact the burden belongs to the nation, and the hands of none of us are clean if we bend
not our energies to righting these great wrongs.
The South ought to be led, by candid and honest criticism, to assert her better self and do her full
duty to the race she has cruelly wronged and is still wronging. The North—her co-partner in
guilt—cannot salve her conscience by plastering it with gold. We cannot settle this problem by
diplomacy and suaveness, by "policy" alone. If worse come to worst, can the moral fibre of this
country survive the slow throttling and murder of nine millions of men?
The black men of America have a duty to perform, a duty stern and delicate,—a forward
movement to oppose a part of the work of their greatest leader. So far as Mr. Washington
preaches Thrift, Patience, and Industrial Training for the masses, we must hold up his hands and
strive with him, rejoicing in his honors and glorying in the strength of this Joshua called of God
and of man to lead the headless host. But so far as Mr. Washington apologizes for injustice,
North or South, does not rightly value the privilege and duty of voting, belittles the emasculating
effects of caste distinctions, and opposes the higher training and ambition of our brighter
minds,—so far as he, the South, or the Nation, does this,—we must unceasingly and firmly
oppose them. By every civilized and peaceful method we must strive for the rights which the
world accords to men, clinging unwaveringly to those great words which the sons of the Fathers
would fain forget: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that
they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
excerpt from Chapter 6: Of the Training of Black Men
[text omitted]
Fifty years ago the ability of Negro students in any appreciable numbers to master a modern
college course would have been difficult to prove. To-day it is proved by the fact that four
hundred Negroes, many of whom have been reported as brilliant students, have received the
bachelor's degree from Harvard, Yale, Oberlin, and seventy other leading colleges. Here we
have, then, nearly twenty-five hundred Negro graduates, of whom the crucial query must be
made, How far did their training fit them for life? It is of course extremely difficult to collect
satisfactory data on such a point,—difficult to reach the men, to get trustworthy testimony, and to
gauge that testimony by any generally acceptable criterion of success. In 1900, the Conference at
Atlanta University undertook to study these graduates, and published the results. First they
sought to know what these graduates were doing, and succeeded in getting answers from nearly
two-thirds of the living. The direct testimony was in almost all cases corroborated by the reports
of the colleges where they graduated, so that in the main the reports were worthy of credence.
Fifty-three per cent of these graduates were teachers,—presidents of institutions, heads of normal
schools, principals of city school-systems, and the like. Seventeen per cent were clergymen;
another seventeen per cent were in the professions, chiefly as physicians. Over six per cent were
merchants, farmers, and artisans, and four per cent were in the government civil-service.
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Granting even that a considerable proportion of the third unheard from are unsuccessful, this is a
record of usefulness. Personally I know many hundreds of these graduates, and have
corresponded with more than a thousand; through others I have followed carefully the life-work
of scores; I have taught some of them and some of the pupils whom they have taught, lived in
homes which they have builded, and looked at life through their eyes. Comparing them as a class
with my fellow students in New England and in Europe, I cannot hesitate in saying that nowhere
have I met men and women with a broader spirit of helpfulness, with deeper devotion to their
life-work, or with more consecrated determination to succeed in the face of bitter difficulties
than among Negro college-bred men. They have, to be sure, their proportion of ne'er-do-wells,
their pedants and lettered fools, but they have a surprisingly small proportion of them; they have
not that culture of manner which we instinctively associate with university men, forgetting that
in reality it is the heritage from cultured homes, and that no people a generation removed from
slavery can escape a certain unpleasant rawness and gaucherie, despite the best of training.
With all their larger vision and deeper sensibility, these men have usually been conservative,
careful leaders. They have seldom been agitators, have withstood the temptation to head the
mob, and have worked steadily and faithfully in a thousand communities in the South. As
teachers, they have given the South a commendable system of city schools and large numbers of
private normal-schools and academies. Colored college-bred men have worked side by side with
white college graduates at Hampton; almost from the beginning the backbone of Tuskegee's
teaching force has been formed of graduates from Fisk and Atlanta. And to-day the institute is
filled with college graduates, from the energetic wife of the principal down to the teacher of
agriculture, including nearly half of the executive council and a majority of the heads of
departments. In the professions, college men are slowly but surely leavening the Negro church,
are healing and preventing the devastations of disease, and beginning to furnish legal protection
for the liberty and property of the toiling masses. All this is needful work. Who would do it if
Negroes did not? How could Negroes do it if they were not trained carefully for it? If white
people need colleges to furnish teachers, ministers, lawyers, and doctors, do black people need
nothing of the sort?
If it is true that there are an appreciable number of Negro youth in the land capable by character
and talent to receive that higher training, the end of which is culture, and if the two and a half
thousand who have had something of this training in the past have in the main proved themselves
useful to their race and generation, the question then comes, What place in the future
development of the South ought the Negro college and college-bred man to occupy? That the
present social separation and acute race-sensitiveness must eventually yield to the influences of
culture, as the South grows civilized, is clear. But such transformation calls for singular wisdom
and patience. If, while the healing of this vast sore is progressing, the races are to live for many
years side by side, united in economic effort, obeying a common government, sensitive to mutual
thought and feeling, yet subtly and silently separate in many matters of deeper human
intimacy,—if this unusual and dangerous development is to progress amid peace and order,
mutual respect and growing intelligence, it will call for social surgery at once the delicatest and
nicest in modern history. It will demand broad-minded, upright men, both white and black, and
in its final accomplishment American civilization will triumph. So far as white men are
concerned, this fact is to-day being recognized in the South, and a happy renaissance of
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university education seems imminent. But the very voices that cry hail to this good work are,
strange to relate, largely silent or antagonistic to the higher education of the Negro.
Strange to relate! for this is certain, no secure civilization can be built in the South with the
Negro as an ignorant, turbulent proletariat. Suppose we seek to remedy this by making them
laborers and nothing more: they are not fools, they have tasted of the Tree of Life, and they will
not cease to think, will not cease attempting to read the riddle of the world. By taking away their
best equipped teachers and leaders, by slamming the door of opportunity in the faces of their
bolder and brighter minds, will you make them satisfied with their lot? or will you not rather
transfer their leading from the hands of men taught to think to the hands of untrained
demagogues? We ought not to forget that despite the pressure of poverty, and despite the active
discouragement and even ridicule of friends, the demand for higher training steadily increases
among Negro youth: there were, in the years from 1875 to 1880, 22 Negro graduates from
Northern colleges; from 1885 to 1890 there were 43, and from 1895 to 1900, nearly 100
graduates. From Southern Negro colleges there were, in the same three periods, 143, 413, and
over 500 graduates. Here, then, is the plain thirst for training; by refusing to give this Talented
Tenth the key to knowledge, can any sane man imagine that they will lightly lay aside their
yearning and contentedly become hewers of wood and drawers of water?
No. The dangerously clear logic of the Negro's position will more and more loudly assert itself in
that day when increasing wealth and more intricate social organization preclude the South from
being, as it so largely is, simply an armed camp for intimidating black folk. Such waste of energy
cannot be spared if the South is to catch up with civilization. And as the black third of the land
grows in thrift and skill, unless skilfully guided in its larger philosophy, it must more and more
brood over the red past and the creeping, crooked present, until it grasps a gospel of revolt and
revenge and throws its new-found energies athwart the current of advance. Even to-day the
masses of the Negroes see all too clearly the anomalies of their position and the moral
crookedness of yours. You may marshal strong indictments against them, but their counter-cries,
lacking though they be in formal logic, have burning truths within them which you may not
wholly ignore, O Southern Gentlemen! If you deplore their presence here, they ask, Who brought
us? When you cry, Deliver us from the vision of intermarriage, they answer that legal marriage is
infinitely better than systematic concubinage and prostitution. And if in just fury you accuse their
vagabonds of violating women, they also in fury quite as just may reply: The rape which your
gentlemen have done against helpless black women in defiance of your own laws is written on
the foreheads of two millions of mulattoes, and written in ineffaceable blood. And finally, when
you fasten crime upon this race as its peculiar trait, they answer that slavery was the arch-crime,
and lynching and lawlessness its twin abortions; that color and race are not crimes, and yet it is
they which in this land receive most unceasing condemnation, North, East, South, and West.
I will not say such arguments are wholly justified,—I will not insist that there is no other side to
the shield; but I do say that of the nine millions of Negroes in this nation, there is scarcely one
out of the cradle to whom these arguments do not daily present themselves in the guise of terrible
truth. I insist that the question of the future is how best to keep these millions from brooding over
the wrongs of the past and the difficulties of the present, so that all their energies may be bent
toward a cheerful striving and cooperation with their white neighbors toward a larger, juster, and
fuller future. That one wise method of doing this lies in the closer knitting of the Negro to the
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great industrial possibilities of the South is a great truth. And this the common schools and the
manual training and trade schools are working to accomplish. But these alone are not enough.
The foundations of knowledge in this race, as in others, must be sunk deep in the college and
university if we would build a solid, permanent structure. Internal problems of social advance
must inevitably come, —problems of work and wages, of families and homes, of morals and the
true valuing of the things of life; and all these and other inevitable problems of civilization the
Negro must meet and solve largely for himself, by reason of his isolation; and can there be any
possible solution other than by study and thought and an appeal to the rich experience of the
past? Is there not, with such a group and in such a crisis, infinitely more danger to be
apprehended from half-trained minds and shallow thinking than from over-education and overrefinement? Surely we have wit enough to found a Negro college so manned and equipped as to
steer successfully between the dilettante and the fool. We shall hardly induce black men to
believe that if their stomachs be full, it matters little about their brains. They already dimly
perceive that the paths of peace winding between honest toil and dignified manhood call for the
guidance of skilled thinkers, the loving, reverent comradeship between the black lowly and the
black men emancipated by training and culture.
The function of the Negro college, then, is clear: it must maintain the standards of popular
education, it must seek the social regeneration of the Negro, and it must help in the solution of
problems of race contact and cooperation. And finally, beyond all this, it must develop men.
Above our modern socialism, and out of the worship of the mass, must persist and evolve that
higher individualism which the centres of culture protect; there must come a loftier respect for
the sovereign human soul that seeks to know itself and the world about it; that seeks a freedom
for expansion and self-development; that will love and hate and labor in its own way,
untrammeled alike by old and new. Such souls aforetime have inspired and guided worlds, and if
we be not wholly bewitched by our Rhinegold, they shall again. Herein the longing of black men
must have respect: the rich and bitter depth of their experience, the unknown treasures of their
inner life, the strange rendings of nature they have seen, may give the world new points of view
and make their loving, living, and doing precious to all human hearts. And to themselves in these
the days that try their souls, the chance to soar in the dim blue air above the smoke is to their
finer spirits boon and guerdon for what they lose on earth by being black.
I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not. Across the color line I move arm in arm with Balzac
and Dumas, where smiling men and welcoming women glide in gilded halls. From out the caves
of evening that swing between the strong-limbed earth and the tracery of the stars, I summon
Aristotle and Aurelius and what soul I will, and they come all graciously with no scorn nor
condescension. So, wed with Truth, I dwell above the Veil. Is this the life you grudge us, O
knightly America? Is this the life you long to change into the dull red hideousness of Georgia?
Are you so afraid lest peering from this high Pisgah, between Philistine and Amalekite, we sight
the Promised Land?
Resources for The Rise of Realism
Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872–1906)
357
[image] Paul Laurence Dunbar was born on June 27, 1872 in Dayton, Ohio. He is remembered
today as a poet and writer in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and one of the first
professional African American literary figures in the United States. While attending the
Columbian Exposition in Chicago, he met Frederick Douglas in 1893 and became his clerk. He
published his best known work, Lyrics of the Lowly Life, in 1895, intent on celebrating the
authentic voices of black speakers. Though recognized and celebrated by many fellow writers,
Dunbar was criticized by Harlem Renaissance writers in the 1920s for his overuse of certain
black stereotypes. After marrying and moving to Washington D.C., Dunbar turned to writing
fiction, but after leaving his wife he returned to the Midwest. He died on February 9, 1906 and is
buried in Woodland Cemetery in Dayton. For a full biography, see Felton O. Best’s Crossing the
Color Line: A Biography of Paul Laurence Dunbar, Kendall Hunt Publishing Company, 1996.
Dunbar, Paul. Laurence. The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar. New York: Dodd,
Mead and Company, 1922.
source of etext: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/18338
We Wear the Mask
We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,—
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.
Why should the world be over-wise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask.
We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
We wear the mask!
Sympathy
I know what the caged bird feels, alas!
When the sun is bright on the upland slopes;
When the wind stirs soft through the springing grass,
And the river flows like a stream of glass;
When the first bird sings and the first bud opes,
358
And the faint perfume from its chalice steals—
I know what the caged bird feels!
I know why the caged bird beats his wing
Till its blood is red on the cruel bars;
For he must fly back to his perch and cling
When he fain would be on the bough a-swing;
And a pain still throbs in the old, old scars
And they pulse again with a keener sting—
I know why he beats his wing!
I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,
When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,—
When he beats his bars and he would be free;
It is not a carol of joy or glee,
But a prayer that he sends from his heart's deep core,
But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings—
I know why the caged bird sings!
Resources for The Rise of Realism
Zitkala-Sa (Gertrude Simmons Bonnin)
(1876–1938)
[image] Zitkala-Sa (Red Bird), also known as Gertrude Simmons Bonnin, was born February 22,
1876 on the Yankton Indian Reservation in South Dakota. In 1884, missionaries took her to
Wabash, Indiana to White’s Manual Labor Institute. In “The School Days of an Indian Girl” in
American Indian Stories (1900), she describes her time at the school and the methods used to
“assimilate” her, and other native children, into white culture. Zitkala-Sa later continued her
education at Earlham College and the New England Conservatory of Music, in Boston, playing
the violin. She began writing articles and stories for periodicals, publishing in the Atlantic
Monthly and Harper’s. In addition to her writing career, she continued to play and write music.
She was also a political advocate for Native Americans throughout her life. She was married and
had one son. She died on January 26, 1938 in Washiington, D.C. and is buried next to her
husband, Raymond Bonnin, in Arlington National Cemetery. Biographical and critical
examinations can begin with Dexter Fisher’s essay, “Zitkala Sa: The Evolution of a Writer,”
American Indian Quarterly 5.3 (1979): 229-238, and Dorothea M. Susag’s “Zitkala-Sa: A
Power(full) Literary Voice,” Studies in American Indian Literatures, Series 2, 5.4 (Winter 1993):
3-24. Also see Patricia Okker’s chapter, “Native American Literatures and the Canon,” in Quirk
and Scharnhorst’s American Realism and the Canon, University of Delaware Press, 1995.
The School Days of an Indian Girl
359
Zitkala-Sa. "The School Days of an Indian Girl." American Indian Stories. Washington:
Hayworth Publishing House, 1921
source of etext: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10376
I. The Land of Red Apples
There were eight in our party of bronzed children who were going East with the missionaries.
Among us were three young braves, two tall girls, and we three little ones, Judéwin, Thowin, and
I.
We had been very impatient to start on our journey to the Red Apple Country, which, we were
told, lay a little beyond the great circular horizon of the Western prairie. Under a sky of rosy
apples we dreamt of roaming as freely and happily as we had chased the cloud shadows on the
Dakota plains. We had anticipated much pleasure from a ride on the iron horse, but the throngs
of staring palefaces disturbed and troubled us.
On the train, fair women, with tottering babies on each arm, stopped their haste and scrutinized
the children of absent mothers. Large men, with heavy bundles in their hands, halted near by, and
riveted their glassy blue eyes upon us.
I sank deep into the corner of my seat, for I resented being watched. Directly in front of me,
children who were no larger than I hung themselves upon the backs of their seats, with their bold
white faces toward me. Sometimes they took their forefingers out of their mouths and pointed at
my moccasined feet. Their mothers, instead of reproving such rude curiosity, looked closely at
me, and attracted their children's further notice to my blanket. This embarrassed me, and kept me
constantly on the verge of tears.
I sat perfectly still, with my eyes downcast, daring only now and then to shoot long glances
around me. Chancing to turn to the window at my side, I was quite breathless upon seeing one
familiar object. It was the telegraph pole which strode by at short paces. Very near my mother's
dwelling, along the edge of a road thickly bordered with wild sunflowers, some poles like these
had been planted by white men. Often I had stopped, on my way down the road, to hold my ear
against the pole, and, hearing its low moaning, I used to wonder what the paleface had done to
hurt it. Now I sat watching for each pole that glided by to be the last one.
In this way I had forgotten my uncomfortable surroundings, when I heard one of my comrades
call out my name. I saw the missionary standing very near, tossing candies and gums into our
midst. This amused us all, and we tried to see who could catch the most of the sweetmeats.
Though we rode several days inside of the iron horse, I do not recall a single thing about our
luncheons.
It was night when we reached the school grounds. The lights from the windows of the large
buildings fell upon some of the icicled trees that stood beneath them. We were led toward an
open door, where the brightness of the lights within flooded out over the heads of the excited
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palefaces who blocked our way. My body trembled more from fear than from the snow I trod
upon.
Entering the house, I stood close against the wall. The strong glaring light in the large
whitewashed room dazzled my eyes. The noisy hurrying of hard shoes upon a bare wooden floor
increased the whirring in my ears. My only safety seemed to be in keeping next to the wall. As I
was wondering in which direction to escape from all this confusion, two warm hands grasped me
firmly, and in the same moment I was tossed high in midair. A rosy-cheeked paleface woman
caught me in her arms. I was both frightened and insulted by such trifling. I stared into her eyes,
wishing her to let me stand on my own feet, but she jumped me up and down with increasing
enthusiasm. My mother had never made a plaything of her wee daughter. Remembering this I
began to cry aloud.
They misunderstood the cause of my tears, and placed me at a white table loaded with food.
There our party were united again. As I did not hush my crying, one of the older ones whispered
to me, "Wait until you are alone in the night."
It was very little I could swallow besides my sobs, that evening.
"Oh, I want my mother and my brother Dawée! I want to go to my aunt!" I pleaded; but the ears
of the palefaces could not hear me.
From the table we were taken along an upward incline of wooden boxes, which I learned
afterward to call a stairway. At the top was a quiet hall, dimly lighted. Many narrow beds were in
one straight line down the entire length of the wall. In them lay sleeping brown faces, which
peeped just out of the coverings. I was tucked into bed with one of the tall girls, because she
talked to me in my mother tongue and seemed to soothe me.
I had arrived in the wonderful land of rosy skies, but I was not happy, as I had thought I should
be. My long travel and the bewildering sights had exhausted me. I fell asleep, heaving deep, tired
sobs. My tears were left to dry themselves in streaks, because neither my aunt nor my mother
was near to wipe them away.
II. The Cutting of My Long Hair
The first day in the land of apples was a bitter-cold one; for the snow still covered the ground,
and the trees were bare. A large bell rang for breakfast, its loud metallic voice crashing through
the belfry overhead and into our sensitive ears. The annoying clatter of shoes on bare floors gave
us no peace. The constant clash of harsh noises, with an undercurrent of many voices murmuring
an unknown tongue, made a bedlam within which I was securely tied. And though my spirit tore
itself in struggling for its lost freedom, all was useless.
A paleface woman, with white hair, came up after us. We were placed in a line of girls who were
marching into the dining room. These were Indian girls, in stiff shoes and closely clinging
dresses. The small girls wore sleeved aprons and shingled hair. As I walked noiselessly in my
soft moccasins, I felt like sinking to the floor, for my blanket had been stripped from my
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shoulders. I looked hard at the Indian girls, who seemed not to care that they were even more
immodestly dressed than I, in their tightly fitting clothes. While we marched in, the boys entered
at an opposite door. I watched for the three young braves who came in our party. I spied them in
the rear ranks, looking as uncomfortable as I felt. A small bell was tapped, and each of the pupils
drew a chair from under the table. Supposing this act meant they were to be seated, I pulled out
mine and at once slipped into it from one side. But when I turned my head, I saw that I was the
only one seated, and all the rest at our table remained standing. Just as I began to rise, looking
shyly around to see how chairs were to be used, a second bell was sounded. All were seated at
last, and I had to crawl back into my chair again. I heard a man's voice at one end of the hall, and
I looked around to see him. But all the others hung their heads over their plates. As I glanced at
the long chain of tables, I caught the eyes of a paleface woman upon me. Immediately I dropped
my eyes, wondering why I was so keenly watched by the strange woman. The man ceased his
mutterings, and then a third bell was tapped. Every one picked up his knife and fork and began
eating. I began crying instead, for by this time I was afraid to venture anything more.
But this eating by formula was not the hardest trial in that first day. Late in the morning, my
friend Judéwin gave me a terrible warning. Judéwin knew a few words of English; and she had
overheard the paleface woman talk about cutting our long, heavy hair. Our mothers had taught us
that only unskilled warriors who were captured had their hair shingled by the enemy. Among our
people, short hair was worn by mourners, and shingled hair by cowards!
We discussed our fate some moments, and when Judéwin said, "We have to submit, because they
are strong," I rebelled.
"No, I will not submit! I will struggle first!" I answered.
I watched my chance, and when no one noticed, I disappeared. I crept up the stairs as quietly as I
could in my squeaking shoes,—my moccasins had been exchanged for shoes. Along the hall I
passed, without knowing whither I was going. Turning aside to an open door, I found a large
room with three white beds in it. The windows were covered with dark green curtains, which
made the room very dim. Thankful that no one was there, I directed my steps toward the corner
farthest from the door. On my hands and knees I crawled under the bed, and cuddled myself in
the dark corner.
From my hiding place I peered out, shuddering with fear whenever I heard footsteps near by.
Though in the hall loud voices were calling my name, and I knew that even Judéwin was
searching for me, I did not open my mouth to answer. Then the steps were quickened and the
voices became excited. The sounds came nearer and nearer. Women and girls entered the room. I
held my breath and watched them open closet doors and peep behind large trunks. Some one
threw up the curtains, and the room was filled with sudden light. What caused them to stoop and
look under the bed I do not know. I remember being dragged out, though I resisted by kicking
and scratching wildly. In spite of myself, I was carried downstairs and tied fast in a chair.
I cried aloud, shaking my head all the while until I felt the cold blades of the scissors against my
neck, and heard them gnaw off one of my thick braids. Then I lost my spirit. Since the day I was
taken from my mother I had suffered extreme indignities. People had stared at me. I had been
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tossed about in the air like a wooden puppet. And now my long hair was shingled like a
coward's! In my anguish I moaned for my mother, but no one came to comfort me. Not a soul
reasoned quietly with me, as my own mother used to do; for now I was only one of many little
animals driven by a herder.
III. The Snow Episode
A short time after our arrival we three Dakotas were playing in the snowdrift. We were all still
deaf to the English language, excepting Judéwin, who always heard such puzzling things. One
morning we learned through her ears that we were forbidden to fall lengthwise in the snow, as
we had been doing, to see our own impressions. However, before many hours we had forgotten
the order, and were having great sport in the snow, when a shrill voice called us. Looking up, we
saw an imperative hand beckoning us into the house. We shook the snow off ourselves, and
started toward the woman as slowly as we dared.
Judéwin said: "Now the paleface is angry with us. She is going to punish us for falling into the
snow. If she looks straight into your eyes and talks loudly, you must wait until she stops. Then,
after a tiny pause, say, 'No.'" The rest of the way we practiced upon the little word "no."
As it happened, Thowin was summoned to judgment first. The door shut behind her with a click.
Judéwin and I stood silently listening at the keyhole. The paleface woman talked in very severe
tones. Her words fell from her lips like crackling embers, and her inflection ran up like the small
end of a switch. I understood her voice better than the things she was saying. I was certain we
had made her very impatient with us. Judéwin heard enough of the words to realize all too late
that she had taught us the wrong reply.
"Oh, poor Thowin!" she gasped, as she put both hands over her ears.
Just then I heard Thowin's tremulous answer, "No."
With an angry exclamation, the woman gave her a hard spanking. Then she stopped to say
something. Judéwin said it was this: "Are you going to obey my word the next time?"
Thowin answered again with the only word at her command, "No."
This time the woman meant her blows to smart, for the poor frightened girl shrieked at the top of
her voice. In the midst of the whipping the blows ceased abruptly, and the woman asked another
question: "Are you going to fall in the snow again?"
Thowin gave her bad passwood another trial. We heard her say feebly,
"No! No!"
With this the woman hid away her half-worn slipper, and led the child out, stroking her black
shorn head. Perhaps it occurred to her that brute force is not the solution for such a problem. She
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did nothing to Judéwin nor to me. She only returned to us our unhappy comrade, and left us
alone in the room.
During the first two or three seasons misunderstandings as ridiculous as this one of the snow
episode frequently took place, bringing unjustifiable frights and punishments into our little lives.
Within a year I was able to express myself somewhat in broken English. As soon as I
comprehended a part of what was said and done, a mischievous spirit of revenge possessed me.
One day I was called in from my play for some misconduct. I had disregarded a rule which
seemed to me very needlessly binding. I was sent into the kitchen to mash the turnips for dinner.
It was noon, and steaming dishes were hastily carried into the dining-room. I hated turnips, and
their odor which came from the brown jar was offensive to me. With fire in my heart, I took the
wooden tool that the paleface woman held out to me. I stood upon a step, and, grasping the
handle with both hands, I bent in hot rage over the turnips. I worked my vengeance upon them.
All were so busily occupied that no one noticed me. I saw that the turnips were in a pulp, and
that further beating could not improve them; but the order was, "Mash these turnips," and mash
them I would! I renewed my energy; and as I sent the masher into the bottom of the jar, I felt a
satisfying sensation that the weight of my body had gone into it.
Just here a paleface woman came up to my table. As she looked into the jar, she shoved my
hands roughly aside. I stood fearless and angry. She placed her red hands upon the rim of the jar.
Then she gave one lift and stride away from the table. But lo! the pulpy contents fell through the
crumbled bottom to the floor I She spared me no scolding phrases that I had earned. I did not
heed them. I felt triumphant in my revenge, though deep within me I was a wee bit sorry to have
broken the jar.
As I sat eating my dinner, and saw that no turnips were served, I whooped in my heart for having
once asserted the rebellion within me.
IV. The Devil
Among the legends the old warriors used to tell me were many stories of evil spirits. But I was
taught to fear them no more than those who stalked about in material guise. I never knew there
was an insolent chieftain among the bad spirits, who dared to array his forces against the Great
Spirit, until I heard this white man's legend from a paleface woman.
Out of a large book she showed me a picture of the white man's devil. I looked in horror upon the
strong claws that grew out of his fur-covered fingers. His feet were like his hands. Trailing at his
heels was a scaly tail tipped with a serpent's open jaws. His face was a patchwork: he had
bearded cheeks, like some I had seen palefaces wear; his nose was an eagle's bill, and his sharppointed ears were pricked up like those of a sly fox. Above them a pair of cow's horns curved
upward. I trembled with awe, and my heart throbbed in my throat, as I looked at the king of evil
spirits. Then I heard the paleface woman say that this terrible creature roamed loose in the world,
and that little girls who disobeyed school regulations were to be tortured by him.
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That night I dreamt about this evil divinity. Once again I seemed to be in my mother's cottage.
An Indian woman had come to visit my mother. On opposite sides of the kitchen stove, which
stood in the center of the small house, my mother and her guest were seated in straight-backed
chairs. I played with a train of empty spools hitched together on a string. It was night, and the
wick burned feebly. Suddenly I heard some one turn our door-knob from without.
My mother and the woman hushed their talk, and both looked toward the door. It opened
gradually. I waited behind the stove. The hinges squeaked as the door was slowly, very slowly
pushed inward.
Then in rushed the devil! He was tall! He looked exactly like the picture I had seen of him in the
white man's papers. He did not speak to my mother, because he did not know the Indian
language, but his glittering yellow eyes were fastened upon me. He took long strides around the
stove, passing behind the woman's chair. I threw down my spools, and ran to my mother. He did
not fear her, but followed closely after me. Then I ran round and round the stove, crying aloud
for help. But my mother and the woman seemed not to know my danger. They sat still, looking
quietly upon the devil's chase after me. At last I grew dizzy. My head revolved as on a hidden
pivot. My knees became numb, and doubled under my weight like a pair of knife blades without
a spring. Beside my mother's chair I fell in a heap. Just as the devil stooped over me with
outstretched claws my mother awoke from her quiet indifference, and lifted me on her lap.
Whereupon the devil vanished, and I was awake.
On the following morning I took my revenge upon the devil. Stealing into the room where a wall
of shelves was filled with books, I drew forth The Stories of the Bible. With a broken slate pencil
I carried in my apron pocket, I began by scratching out his wicked eyes. A few moments later,
when I was ready to leave the room, there was a ragged hole in the page where the picture of the
devil had once been.
[text omitted]
End of Digital Anthology of American Literature, Part Three
Version 1.1
2013
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