 Polly Hawks, by Florence Finch Kelly. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Red by Larry Kaplan. Green and peaceful, the long low undulations of the prairie sea of southern Kansas spread away to the horizon in lines as graceful and pleasing as those of a reclining Venus. Here and there against the hillside the emerald waves broke in a bright foam of many-colored flowers. In all that vast extent over which I could look, there was visible no living creature save the tiny furred and feathered things whose home it was. The soft prairie wind blew caressingly against my cheek and seemed to whisper in my ear, why do men cling to the boisterous, cruel lying sea as the emblem of freedom? Is not here beauty that allures with freedom's own charms? Is not here freedom herself, serene, smiling, constant, and blessed with a blessedness the sea knows not? The prairie wind blew the freedom it sang of into my heart, and it dwelt there with joy and exultation as I drove on and on over the waves of that smiling emerald sea. I said my eyes, wearied in scorch by brick walls and city pavements, with those long swinging reaches of green and their silent benediction filled and soothed my very soul. At last when the low-lying hills began to cast cool shadows down their eastern slopes there appeared against the velvet green of the distance the sprawling blotch of a little town, ugly naked and unashamed in its bustling newness, and nearer by a mile more on a green slope which caught the golden red rays of the sinking sun was a little enclosure naked and ugly as the town itself, but silent and awe-inspiring with a silence and awe of death. A barbed wire fence enclosed it, and the prairie turf still covered much of its space. There were here no sunken mounds, no reeling headstones, no discolored marbles. The grave heaps were trimly rounded, the wooden crosses which marked most of them grinned their newness, and the few headstones and monuments shown upstortishly white in the sun. In turn of that curtain of verdure with which love strives to conceal the footprints of death, the little cemetery lay there against the green hillside like some fresh, gaping, ghastly wound in the face of a loved one. One grave stood out startlingly from the rest. On the others only an infrequent trailing vine or a faded bunch of flowers told of loving effort to cover death's nakedness, but this one, which lay in the center of the enclosure, was covered from headstone to foot cross with a dense growth of hollyhocks. Their tall shafts were clothed with the luxuriance of vivid red bloom as if they had sucked into their petals the lifeblood of the sleeper below. In the level red sun rays they glowed with lusty contempt of the silent impotence beneath them. A woman in a white dress with her hands full of the red hollyhock blooms walked between the graves down to the barred gate and came out upon the road as I drove up. I recognized her as the woman whose acquaintance I had made in the train a few days previously in whose company I had traveled from Chicago hither. She had been a pleasant chance of acquaintance, intelligent, gentle, and refined. "'Will you ride back to town with me?' I said. She accepted the offer of the seat beside me, carefully holding her flowers. How odd that grave looks with its marshaled array of hollyhocks, I said, by way of opening conversation, for she sat there silent. What a peculiar taste to adorn a loved one's last resting place in that way. She looked up at me silently, and I noticed that her eyes were hollow and her face sad. Then she turned toward the graveyard in the tall red hollyhocks, standing out so vividly in the sunset glow and said quietly, "'It is my mother's grave. I planted the hollyhocks upon it.' She was silent again, looking sadly and tenderly at the flowers in her lap, but presently she went on. I do not mind telling you why I did it. Perhaps talking about it will lessen the heaviness of my heart. No one but my sister knows why I planted them there, and she has never seen the grave, nor have I seen her since our mother died. When we were young girls at home, our mother loved hollyhocks. She had the yard filled with great clumps of them. We were away at school for a few years, and when we went home again, they quite horrified our advanced young ladyish tastes. We thought them vulgar. And between ourselves we fretted and scolded about them, and declared to each other that they were horrid and that we were ashamed to have anyone visit us while those great ugly coarse things fill the yard. We apologized for them to visitors, and said they were mother's flowers, but we hated them. And after a while we complained about them to mother, and said, before her how common and coarse and old-fashioned they were. And she, dear gentle soul, said not a word, but looked sadly out at the flower she loved so well, and had cared for so long and so tenderly. And one day, after we had fretted and worried her a long time about them, she said to us, I can see yet how she tried to smile and disguise the sadness in her heart that we might dig up all the hollyhocks and plant other flowers in their places. And we did. It stabs me to the heart now to think of it, but we did it joyfully. After we were married and went away from home, my sister to London and I to Chicago, a mother came here to this town and soon died. In the sorrow of that time, when first I knew how much and how tenderly I loved her, I remembered about the hollyhocks and at last realized how brutally thoughtless and unfeeling we had been. So in shame and remorse I did the one little thing that was all I could do and covered the grave of our dear, patient, gentle, saint-like mother with the flowers she loved the best of all, but which we had not let her gladden her life with. I do not pretend to know whether or not there is a hereafter or whether there is anything more of her than what lies under those red flowers back there. But often I wish, oh, how I wish, that it may be so, and that from somewhere her spirit may look down and see and be pleased by the atonement I have tried to make. I wrote to my sister what I had done and I found that she also felt as I did about it. Every summer I come here and see that the hollyhocks grow and flourish as we wish them to, and at her request I gather and send her some of the blooms. These in my lap are for that purpose, and two weeks from now she will be weeping over them in her London home. If we could only have known then how we should feel about it now. End of Hollyhocks by Florence Finch Kelly. A Day at Niagara by Mark Twain. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org recording by Robert Thurk. A Day at Niagara by Mark Twain. Niagara Falls is a most enjoyable place of resort. The hotels are excellent and the prices are not at all exorbitant. The opportunities for fishing are not surpassed in the country. In fact, they are not even equaled elsewhere. Because in other localities, certain places in the streams are much better than others. But at Niagara, one place is just as good as another. For the reason that the fish do not bite anywhere. And so there is no use in you walking five miles to fish when you can depend on being just as unsuccessful, nearer to home. The advantages of this state of things have never here to fore been properly placed before the public. The weather is cool in summer and the walks and drives are all pleasant to none of them fatiguing. When you start out to do the falls, you first drive down about a mile and pay a small sum for the privilege of looking down from a precipice into the narrowest part of the Niagara River. A railway cut through a hill would be just as comely if it had the angry river tumbling and foaming through its bottom. You can descend the staircase here 150 feet down and stand at the edge of the water. After you have done it, you will wonder why you did it. But you will then be too late. The guide will explain to you in his blood curdling way how he saw the little steamer made of the mist descend at the fearful rapids. How first one pedal box was out of sight behind the raging billows and then the other. And at what point it was that her smokestack toppled overboard and where her planking began to break in part asunder and how she did finally live through the trip after accomplishing this incredible feat of traveling 17 miles in six minutes or six miles in 17 minutes. I've really forgotten which, but it was very extraordinary anyhow. It was worth the price of admission to hear the guide tell the story nine times in succession to different parties and never miss a word or alter a sentence or gesture. Then you drive over to suspension bridge and divide your misery between the chances of smashing down 200 feet into the river below and the chances of having the railway train overhead smashing down onto you. Either possibility is discomforting taken by itself but mixed together they amount in the aggregate to positive unhappiness. On the Canada side you drive along the chasm between the long ranks of photographers standing guard behind their cameras ready to make the ostentatious frontispiece of you and your decaying ambulance and your solemn crate with a hide on it which you are expected to regard in light of a horse and a diminished and unimportant background of sublime Niagara. And a great many people have the incredible effrontery or native depravity to aid and abet this sort of crime. Any day in the hands of these photographers you may see stately pictures of Papa and Mama, Johnny, Bub, and Sis or a couple of country cousins all smiling vacantly and all disposed and studied uncomfortable attitudes in their carriage and all looming up in their awe inspiring imbecility before the snubbed and diminished presentment of that majestic presence whose ministering spirits are the rainbows, whose voice is the thunder, whose awful front is the veiled clouds, who was monarch here dead and forgotten ages before this hackful small reptiles was deemed temporarily necessary to fill a crack in the world's unnoted myriads and will still be monarch here ages and decades of ages after they shall have gathered themselves to their blood relations, the other worms and have been mingled with unremembering dust. There is no actual harm in making the Niagara background wear on to display one's marvelous insignificance in good strong light, but it requires a sort of super human self complacency to enable one to do it. When you have examined the stupendous horseshoe fall until you are satisfied you cannot improve on it. You return to America by the new suspension bridge and follow up the bank to where they exhibit the cave of the winds. Here I followed instructions and divested myself of all my clothing and put on a waterproof jacket and overalls. This costume is picturesque, but not beautiful. A guide similarly dressed led the way down a flight of winding stairs, which wound and wound and still kept on winding long after the thing ceased to be a novelty and then terminated long before it had begun to be a pleasure. We were then well down under the precipice, but still considerably above the level of the river. We now began to creep along flimsy bridges of a single plank. Our persons shielded from destruction by a crazy wooden railing, to which I clung with both hands. Not because I was afraid, but because I wanted to. Presently the descent became steeper and the bridge flimsier and the sprays from the American fall began to rain down on us in fast increasing sheets that soon became blinding and after that our progress was mostly from the nature of groping. Now a furious wind began to rush from behind the waterfall which seemed determined to sweep us from the bridge and scatter us on the rocks and among the torrents below. I remarked that I wanted to go home, but it was too late. We were almost under the monstrous wall of water thundering down from above and the speech was in vain in the midst of such a pitiless crash of sound. In another moment the guide disappeared behind the deluge and bewildered by thunder, driven helplessly by the wind and smitten by the airy tempest of rain. I followed. All was darkness. Such a mad storming, roaring and bellowing of roaring wind and water never crazed my ears before. I bent my head and seemed to receive the Atlantic on my back. The world seemed to be going to destruction. I could not see anything. The flood poured down so savagely. I raised my head with open mouth and most of the American cataract went down my throat. If I had sprung a leak now, I had been lost. And at this moment, I discovered that the bridge had ceased and we must trust for a foothold in the slippery and precipitous rocks. I never was so scared before and survived it. But we got through at last and emerged into the open day where we could stand in front of the laced and the frothy and the seething world of descending water and look at it. When I saw how much of it there was and how fearfully in earnest it was, I was sorry I had gone behind it. The noble red man has always been a friend and darling of mine. I love to read about him in tales and legends and romances. I love to read of his inspired sagacity and his love of the wild, free life of mountain and forest and his general nobility of character and his stately metaphorical manner of speech and his chivalrous love for the dusky maiden and the picturesque pomp of his dress and accoutrements. Especially the picturesque pomp of his dress and accoutrements. When I found the shops at Niagara Falls full of dainty Indian beadwork and stunning moccasins and equally stunning toy figures representing human beings who carried their weapons in holes bored through their arms and bodies and had feet shaped like a pie, I was filled with emotion. I knew that now, at last, I was going to come face to face with the noble red man. A lady clerk in the shop told me indeed that all her grand array of curiosities were made by the Indians and that they were plenty about the falls and that they were friendly and that it would not be dangerous to speak with them. And sure enough, as I approached the bridge leading over to Luna Island, I came upon a noble son of the forest sitting under a tree, diligently at work on a bead ridicule. He wore a slouch hat and brogons and had a short black pipe in his mouth. Thus, does the baneful contact with our effeminate civilization dilute the picturesque pomp which is so natural to the Indian when far removed from us in his native haunts. I addressed the relic as follows. Is the wabu wang wang of the whack-a-wack happy? Does the great speckled thunder sigh for the warpath or is his heart contented with dreaming of the dusky maiden, the pride of the forest? Does this mighty sachum yearn to drink the blood of his enemies or is he satisfied in making bead ridicules for the papuces of the pale face? Speaks a blind relic of bygone grandeur. Venerable Ruin, speak, the relic said. And is it myself, Dennis Hooligan, that ye be takin' for a dirty engine, ye drawlin' lantern-jawed sputter-legged devil? By the pipe of that blade before Moses I'll eat ya. I went away from there. By and by, in the neighborhood of the Terrapin Tower, I came upon a gentle daughter of the Aborigines, infringed in beaded buckskin macacins and leggings, seated on a bench with her pretty wares about her. She had just carved out a wooden chief that had a strong family resemblance to a clothespin and was now boring a hole through his abdomen to put his bow through. I hesitated a moment and then addressed her. Is the heart of the forest maiden heavy? Is the laughing tadpole lonely? Does she mourn over the extinguished council fires of her race in the vanished glory of her ancestors or does her sad spirit wander afar toward the hunting grounds whether her brave gobbler of the lightnings is gone? Why is my daughter silent? Has she ought against the pale-faced stranger? The maiden said, Fee, and it's bitty malone, you be dare callin' names! Leave this, or I'll shy your lean caucus over the cataract, ya snivelin' blagged! I adjorned from this also. Confound these Indians, I said. They told me they were tame, but if appearances go for anything, I should say they were all on the warpath. I made one more attempt to fraternize with them and only one. I came upon a camp of them gathered in the shade of a great tree, making wampum and moccasins and addressed them in the language of friendship. Noble red men, braves, grand sachums, war chiefs, squaws, and high muckamucks, the pale-faced from the land of the setting sun greets you. You, beneficent polecat, you devourer of mountains, you roaring thunder-gust, you bully boy with a glass eye, the pale-faced from beyond the great waters greets you all. War and pestilence have thinned your ranks and destroyed your once-proud nation. Poker and seven-up and a vain modern expense for soap, unknown to your glorious ancestors, have depleted your purses. Appropriating in your simplicity, the property of others has gotten you into trouble. Misrepresenting facts in your simple innocence has damaged your reputation with the soulless usurper. Trading for 40-rod whiskey to enable you to get drunk and happy and tomahawk your families has played the everlasting mischief with the picturesque pomp of your dress. And here you are, in the broad light of the 19th century, gotten up like the ragtag in bobtail of the Perlius of New York. For shame, remember your ancestors, recall their mighty deeds, remember unkas and red jacket and hole in the day and whoop-dee-doop-dee-doodle-doo, emulate their achievements, unfurl yourselves under my banner, noble savages, illustrious gutter snipes. Down with him, scoop the blag and burn him, hang him, drown him. It was the quickest operation that ever was. I simply saw a sudden flash in the air of clubs, brickbats, fists, bead baskets and moccasins, a single flash and they all appeared to hit me at once and no two of them in the same place. In the next instant, the entire tribe was upon me. They tore half the clothes off me. They broke my arms and legs. They gave me a thump that dented the top of my head till it would hold coffee like a saucer and to crown their disgraceful proceedings and add insult to injury, they threw me over the Niagara Falls and I got wet. About 90 or 100 feet from the top, the remains of my vest got caught on a projecting rock and I was almost drowned before I could get loose. I finally fell and brought up in a world of white foam at the foot of the fall who's celled in bubbly masses towered up several inches above my head. Of course, I got into the eddy. I sailed round and round in it 44 times, chasing a chip and gaining on it, each round trip a half a mile, reaching for the same bush on the bank 44 times and just exactly missing it by a hair's breadth every time. At last, the man walked down and sat close to that bush and put a pipe in his mouth and lit a match and followed me with one eye and kept the other on the match while he sheltered it in his hands from the wind. Presently, a puff of wind blew it out. The next time I swept around, he said, got a match? Yes, in my other vest. Help me out, please. Not for Joe. When I came round again, I said, excuse the seemingly impertinent curiosity of a drowning man, but will you explain this singular conduct of yours? With pleasure, I'm the coroner. Don't hurry on my account. I can wait for you, but I wish I had a match. I said, take my place and I'll go and get you one. He declined. This lack of confidence on his part created a coldness between us and from that time forward, I avoided him. It was my idea, in case anything happened to me, to so time the occurrence as to throw my custom into the hands of the opposition coroner on the American side. At last, a policeman came along and arrested me for disturbing the peace by yelling at people on shore for help. The judge fined me, but I had the advantage on him. My money was with my pantaloons and my pantaloons were with the Indians. Thus I escaped. I am now lying in very critical condition at least I'm not lying critical or not critical. I am hurt all over, but I cannot tell the full extent yet because the doctor is not done taking inventory. He will make out my manifest this evening. However, thus far he thinks only 16 of my wounds are fatal. I don't mind the others. Upon regaining my right mind, I said, it is an awful savage tribe of Indians that do the beadwork in moccasins for Niagara Falls doctor. Where are they from? Limerick, my son. End of A Day at Niagara by Mark Twain. The Caballeros Way by O. Henry. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, visit LibriVox.org. The Caballeros Way by O. Henry. Read by Bill Mosley, Frolsburg, Texas. The Cisco kid had killed six men in more or less fair scrimmages. Had murdered twice as many, mostly Mexicans, and had winged a larger number whom he modestly forebored to count. Therefore, a woman loved him. The kid was 25, looked 20, and a careful insurance company would have estimated the probable time of his demise at, say, 26. His habitat was anywhere between the Frio and the Rio Grande. He killed for the love of it because he was quick-tempered to avoid arrest, horizontal amusements, any reason that came to his mind would suffocate. He'd escaped capture because he could shoot five-sixths of a second sooner than any sheriff or ranger in the service, and because he rode a speckled roan horse that knew every cow path in the mesquite and pair of thickets from San Antonio to Matamoros. Tonya Perez, the girl who loved the Cisco kid, was half Carmen, half Madonna, and the rest. Oh, yes, a woman who is half Carmen and half Madonna can always be something more. The rest, let us say, was hummingbird. She lived in a grass-roofed haka near a little Mexican settlement at the lone wolf crossing of the Frio. With her lived a father or grandfather, a lineal Aztec, somewhat less than a thousand years old, who herded a hundred goats and lived in a continuous drunken dream from drinking mescal. Back of the haka, a tremendous forest of bristling pear, 20 feet high at its worst, crowded almost to its door. It was along the bewildering maze of this spinous thicket that the speckled roan would bring the kid to see his girl. And once, clinging like a lizard to the ridge pole high up under the peaked grass-roof, he had heard Tonya with her Madonna face and Carmen beauty and hummingbird soul, parley with the sheriff's posse, denying knowledge of her man in her soft melange of Spanish and English. One day, the adjutant general of the state, who is ex officio, commander of the Ranger forces, wrote some sarcastic lines to Captain Duvall of Company X, stationed at Laredo, relative to the serene and undisturbed existence led by murderers and desperados in the said captain's territory. The captain turned the color of brick dust under his tan and forwarded the letter, after adding a few comments, per ranger, private bill, Adamson, to ranger, Lieutenant Sandridge, camped at a waterhole on the noasis with a squad of five men in preservation of law and order. Lieutenant Sandridge turned a beautiful color de rosé through his ordinary strawberry complexion, tucked a letter in his hip pocket, and chewed off the yins of his gumboge mustache. The next morning, he saddled his horse and rode alone to the Mexican settlement of the lone wolf crossing of the Frio, 20 miles away. Six feet two, blond as a Viking, quiet as a deacon, dangerous as a machine gun, Sandridge moved among the jacales, patiently seeking news of the Cisco kid. Far more than the law, the Mexicans dreaded the cold and certain vengeance of the lone rider that the ranger sought. It had been one of the kid's pastimes to shoot Mexicans to see them kick. If he demanded from them moribund Terpsichorian feats, simply that he might be entertained, what terrible and extreme penalties would be certain to follow should they anger him? One and all, they lounged with upturned palms and shrugging shoulders, filling the air with quinceibus and denials of the kid's acquaintance. There was a man named Fink who kept a store at the crossing, a man of many nationalities, tongues, interests, and ways of thinking. No use to ask them Mexicans, he said to Sandridge. They're afraid to tell. This hombre they call the kid. Good always his name, ain't it? He's been to my store once twice. I have an idea you might run across him at, but I guess I don't care to say myself. I'm two seconds later and pulling a gun than I used to be, and the difference is worth thinking about. But this kid's got to have Mexican girl at the crossing that he comes to seek. She lives in that jacal a hundred yards down the arroyo at the edge of the pair. Maybe she, no I don't suppose she would, but that jacal would be a good place to watch anyway. Sandridge rode down to the jacal of Perez. The sun was low and the broad shade of the great pair thicket already covered the grass thatched hut. The goats were enclosed for the night in a brush corral nearby. A few kids walked the top of it, nibbling the chaparral leaves. The old Mexican lay upon a blanket on the grass, already in a stupor from his mescal, and dreaming perhaps of the nights when he and Pizarro touched glasses to their new world fortunes. So old his wrinkled face seemed to proclaim him to be. And in the door of the jacal stood Tonya, and Lieutenant Sandridge sat in his saddle, staring at her like a gannet, a gait at a sailor man. The Cisco kid was a vain person as all imminent and successful assassins are. And his bosom would have ruffled had he known that at a simple exchange of glances, two persons in whose mind he had been looming large, suddenly abandoned, at least for the time, all thought of him. Never before had Tonya seen such a man as this. He seemed to be made of sunshine and blood red tissue and clear weather. He seemed to illuminate the shadow of the pair when he smiled as though the sun were rising again. The men she had known had been small and dark, even the kid in spite of his achievements was a stripling no larger than herself, with black straight hair and a cold marble face that chilled the noon day. As for Tonya, those she sends description to the poor house, let her make a millionaire of your fancy. Her blue black hair, smoothly divided in the middle and bound close to her head, and her large eyes full of the Latin melancholy, gave her the Madonna touch. Her motions and air spoke of the concealed fire and the desire to charm that she had inherited from the gitanas of the Basque province. As for the hummingbird part of her, that dwelt in her heart. You could not perceive it unless her bright red skirt and dark blue blouse gave you a symbolic hint of the vagarious bird. The newly lighted sun god asked for a drink of water. Tonya brought it from the red jar hanging into the brush shelter. Sandridge considered it necessary to dismount so as to lessen the trouble of her ministrations. I play no spy, nor do I assume to master the thoughts of any human heart. But I assert, by the chronicler's right, that before a quarter of an hour had sped, Sandridge was teaching her how to plait a six-strand raw-hide steak rope. And Tonya had explained to him that were it not for her little English book that the parapetatic cadre had given her and the little crippled chivo that she fed from a bottle, she would be very, very lonely indeed. Which leads to a suspicion that the kid's fences needed repairing and that the agitant general's sarcasm had fallen on unproductive soil. In his camp by the waterhole, Lieutenant Sandridge announced and reiterated his intention of either causing the Cisco kid to nibble the black loam of the Frio country prairies, or of hailing him before a judge and jury. That sounded business-like. Twice a week, he rode over to the lone wolf crossing of the Frio and directed Tonya's slim, slightly lemon-tended fingers among the intricacies of the slowly-growing La Riata. A six-strand plait is hard to learn and easy to teach. The ranger knew that he might find the kid there at any visit. He kept his armament ready and had a frequent eye for the pair ticket at the rear of the Hakaal. Thus, he might bring down the kite and the hummingbird with one stone, while the sunny-haired ornithologist was pursuing his studies. The Cisco kid was also attending to his professional duties. He mootily shot up a saloon in a small cow village on Quintana Creek, killed the town marshal, plugging him neatly in the center of his tin badge, and then rode away, morose and unsatisfied. No true artist is uplifted by shooting an aged man carrying an old-style 38 bull doll. On his way, the kid suddenly experienced the yearning that all men feel when wrongdoing loses its keen edge of delight. He yearned for the woman he loved to reassure him that she was his in spite of it. He wanted her to call his bloodthirstiness bravery and his cruelty devotion. He wanted Tanya to bring him water from the red jar into the brush shelter and tell him how the chivo was thriving on the bottle. The kid turned his speckled rones head up the 10-mile pair flat that stretches along the Arroyo Hondo until it ends at the lone wolf crossing of the Frio. The rone wickered, for he had a sense of locality and direction equal to that of a belt-lined streetcar horse. And he knew he would soon be nibbling the rich, misty grass at the end of a 40-foot stake rope while Ulysses rested his head in Cersei's straw-roofed hut. More weird and lonesome than the journey of an Amazonian explorer, he is the ride of one through a Texas pair flat. With dismal monotony and startling variety, the uncanny and multi-form shapes of the cacti lifted their twisted trunks and fat bristly hands to encumber the way. The demon plant appearing to live without soil or rain seems to taunt the parched traveler with its lush gray greenness. It warps itself a thousand times upon what looked to be open and inviting paths, only to lure the rider into blind and impassable spine-defended bottoms of the bag, leaving him to retreat, if he can, with the points of the compass whirling in his head. To be lost in the pair is to die almost the death of the thief on the cross, pierced by nails and with protest shapes of all the themes hovering about. But it was not so with the kid in his mouth, winding, twisting, circling, tracing the most fantastic and bewildering trail ever picked out. The good roan lessened the distance to the lone wolf crossing with every coil and turn that he made. While they fared, the kid sang. He knew but one tune and sang it as he knew but one code and lived it. And but one girl and loved her. He was a single-minded man of conventional ideas. He had a voice like a coyote with bronchitis. But whenever he chose to sing his song, he sang it. It was a conventional song of the camps and trail, running at its beginning as near as may be to these words. Don't you monkey with my Lulu girl, or I'll tell you what I'll do, and so on. The roan was inured to it and did not mind. But even the poorest singer will after a certain time gain his own consent to refrain from contributing to the world's noises. So the kid by the time he was within a mile or two of Tonya's hakal had reluctantly allowed his song to die away, not because his vocal performance had become less charming to his own ears, that because his laryngeal muscles were a weary. As though he were a circus ring, the speckled roan wheeled and danced through the labyrinth of the pair, until at length his rider knew by certain landmarks that the lone wolf crossing was close to him. Then, where the pair was thinner, he caught sight of the grass roof of the hakal and the hackberry tree on the edge of the arroyo. A few yards further, the kid stopped the roan and gazed intently through the prickly hope issues. Then he dismounted, dropped the roan's reins and proceeded on foot, stooped and silent like an Indian. The roan, knowing his part, stood still, making no sound. The kid crept noiselessly to the very edge of the pair thicket and reconordered between the leaves of a clump of cactus. Ten yards from his hiding place, in the shade of the hakal, sat his tonia, calmly plaiting a rawhide larrier. So far, she might surely escape condemnation. Women have been known from time to time to engage in more mischievous occupations. But if all must be told, there is to be added that her head reposed against the broad and cuckoo chest of a tall red and yellow man, and that his arm was about her, guiding her nimble fingers that required so many lessons at the intricate six-strand plait. Sandridge glanced quickly at the dark mass of a pair when he heard a slight squeaking sound that was not altogether unfamiliar. A gun's gabbard will make that sound when one grasped the handle of a six-shooter suddenly. But the sound was not repeated. Antonio's fingers needed close attention. And then, in the shadow of death, they began to talk of their love. And in the still July afternoon, every word they uttered reached the ears of the kid. Remember then, Sipanya, you must not come again until I sin for you. Soon he will be here, a vaquero at the tienda said to day. He saw him on the Guadalupe three days ago. When he is that near, he always comes. If he comes and finds you here, he will kill you. So for my sake, you must come no more until I send you the word. All right, said the stranger. And then what? And then, said the girl. You must bring your men here and kill him. If not, he will kill you. He ain't a man to surrender that, sure, said Sandridge. It's kill or be killed for the officer that goes up against Mr. Sisko Kid. He must die, said the girl. Otherwise there will not be any peace in the world for thee and me. He has killed many. Let him so die. Bring your men and give him no chance to escape. You used to think right much of him, said Sandridge. Tanya dropped the lariat, twisted herself around and curved a lemon to the palm over the ranger's shoulder. But then, she murmured in liquid Spanish, I had not beheld thee, thou great red mountain of a man, and thou art kind and good as well as strong. Could one choose him, knowing thee? Let him die, for then I will not be filled with fear by day and night, lest he hurt thee or me. How can I know when he comes, asked Sandridge? When he comes, said Tanya, he remains two days, sometimes three. Gregorio, the small son of old Luisa, the lavender, has a swift pony. I'll write a letter to thee and send it by him, saying how it be best to come upon him. By Gregorio will the letter come and bring many men with thee, and have much care, oh dear red one, for the rattlesnake is not quicker to strike than his el chibato, as they call him, to send a ball from his pistola. The kid's handy with his gun, sure enough, admitted Sandridge. But when I come for him, I shall come alone. I'll get him by myself, or not at all. The cap wrote one or two things to me that make me want to do the trick without any help. You let me know when Mr. Kid arrives, I'll do the rest. I will send you the message by the boy Gregorio, said the boy. I knew you were braver than that small slayer of men who never smiled. How could I ever have thought I cared for him? It was time for the ranger to ride back to his camp on the waterhole. Before he mounted his horse, he raised the slight form of Tonya with one arm, high from the earth, for a parting salute. The drowsy stillness of the torped summer air still lay thick upon the dreaming afternoon. The smoke from the fire and the hot call, where the free holly is blubbered in the iron pot, rose straight as a plumb line about the play-dob chimney. No sound or movement disturbed the serenity of the dense, perthic tin yards away. When the form of Sandridge had disappeared, loping his big gun down the steep banks of the Frio crossing, the kid crept back to his own horse and mounted him and rode back along the tortuous trail he had come. But not far. He stopped and waited in the silent depths of the pair, and until half an hour had passed. And then Tonya heard the high untrue notes of his unmusical singing coming nearer and nearer, and she ran to the edge of the pair to meet him. The kid seldom smiled, but he smiled and waved his hat when he saw her. He dismounted, and his girl sprang into his arms. The kid looked at her fondly. His thick black hair clung to his head like a wrinkled mat. The meeting brought a slight ripple of some undercurrent of feeling to his smooth, dark face that was usually as motionless as a clay mask. "'How's my girl?' he asked, holding her close. "'Sick of waiting so long for you, dear one,' she answered. "'My eyes are dim with always gazing into that devil's pen-cushion through which you come. "'And I can see into it such a little way, too. "'But you are here, beloved one, and I will not scold. "'Came mal muchacho. "'Not to come to see your out-and-on more often. "'Go in and rest, and let me water your horse, "'and stake him with the long rope. "'There is cool water in the jar for you.' The kid kissed her affectionately. "'Not if the court knows itself, do I let a lady "'stake my horse for me,' said he. "'But if you'll run in, chica, and throw a pot of coffee "'together while I attend to the caballo, "'I'll be a good deal obliged.' "'Besides his marksmanship, the kid had another "'attribute for which he admired himself greatly. "'He was muy caballero,' as the Mexicans express it, "'where the ladies were concerned. "'For then he had always gentle words in consideration. "'He could not have spoken a harsh word to a woman. "'He might ruthlessly slay their husbands and brothers, "'but he could not have laid the weight of a finger "'in anger upon a woman.' "'Wherefore, many of that interesting division "'of humanity who had come under the spell "'of his politeness declared their disbelief "'in the stories circulated about Mr. Kid. "'One shouldn't believe everything one heard,' they said. "'When confronted by their indignant menfault "'with proof of the caballero's deeds of infamy, "'they said, maybe he had been driven to it, "'and that he knew how to treat a lady in hell.' "'Considering this extremely courteous idiosyncrasy "'of the Kid, and the pride he took in it, "'one can perceive that the solution of the problem "'that was presented to him by what he saw and heard "'from his hiding place in the pair that afternoon, "'at least as to one of the actors, "'must have been obscured by difficulties.' "'And yet one could not think of the Kid "'overlooking little matters of that kind.' "'At the end of the short twilight, "'they gathered around a supper of free hollies, "'goat steaks, canned peaches, and coffee, "'by the light of a lantern in the haka. "'Afterward the ancestor, his flock corral, "'smoked a cigarette, and became a mummy in a gray blanket. "'Tonia washed the few dishes, "'while the Kid dried them with the flour sacking towel. "'Her eyes shone, she chatted voluably "'of the inconsequent happenings of her small world "'since the Kid's last visit. "'It was as all his other homecomings had been. "'Then outside, Tonia swung in a grass hammock "'with her guitar, and sang sad, Conciiones de amor. "'Do you love me just the same, old girl?' asked the Kid, "'hunting for his cigarette papers.' "'Always the same, little one,' said Tonia. "'Her dark eyes lingering upon him.' "'I must go over to Fink's,' said the Kid, rising for some tobacco. "'I thought I had another sack in my coat. "'I'll be back in a quarter of an hour.' "'Hey, son,' said Tonia. "'And tell me, how long shall I call you my own this time? "'Will you be gone again tomorrow, leaving me to grieve? "'Or will you be longer with your Tonia?' "'Oh, I might stay two or three days this trip,' said the Kid, yawning. "'I've been on the dodge for a month, and I'd like to rest up. "'He was gone half an hour for his tobacco. "'When he returned, Tonia was still lying in the hammock. "'It's funny,' said the Kid, how I feel. "'I feel like there was somebody lying behind every bush "'and tree waiting to shoot me. "'I never had mulligrobes like them before. "'Maybe it's one of them presumptions.' "'I've got half a notion to light out in the morning before day. "'The Guadalupe country is burning up "'about that old Dutchman I plugged down there. "'You are not afraid? "'No one could make my brave little one fear. "'Well, I have it being usually regarded as a jackrabbit "'when it comes to scrapping. "'But I don't want a posse smoking me out "'when I'm in your hakaal. "'Somebody might get hurt that ought not to.' "'Remain with your Tonia.' "'No one will find you here.' "'The Kid looked keenly into the shadows "'up and down the arroyo "'and toward the dim lights of the Mexican village. "'I'll see how it looks.' "'Later on,' was his decision. "'At midnight, a horseman rode into the ranger's camp, blazing his way by noisy. "'Hello's to indicate his Pacific mission.' "'Sandridge and one or two others turned out "'to investigate the row. "'The rider announced himself to be Domingo Sales "'from the lone wolf process. "'He bore a letter for Sr. Sandridge.' "'O Luisa the Lavendera had persuaded him "'to bring it,' he said, "'for son Gregorio being too ill of a fever to ride.' "'Sandridge lighted the camp planner "'and read the letter. "'These were its words.' "'Dear one,' he has come. "'Hardly had you ridden away when he had come out of the pair. "'When he first talked, he said he would stay three days or more. "'Then as it grew later, he was like a wolf or a fox, "'and walked about without rest, looking and listening. "'Soon he said he must leave before daylight "'when it is dark and stillest. "'And then he seemed to suspect "'that I be not true to him. "'He looked at me so strange that I am frightened. "'I swear to him that I love him, his own Tonya. "'Last of all,' he said, "'I must prove to him I am true. "'He thinks that even now men are waiting to kill him "'as he rides from my house. "'To escape,' he says, "'he will dress in my clothes, my red skirt, "'and the blue waist I wear, and the brown mantilla over the head, "'and thus right away. "'But before that, he says that I must put on his clothes, "'his pantalones and camisa and hat, "'and right away on his horse from the Hakal, "'as far as the big road beyond the crossing and back again. "'This before he goes, so he can tell if I am true, "'and if men are hidden to shoot him. "'It is a terrible thing. "'An hour before daybreak this is to be. "'Come, my dear one, and kill this man, "'and take me for your Tonya. "'Do not try to take hold of him alive, but kill him quickly. "'Knowing all, you should do that. "'You must come long before the time "'and hide yourself in a little shed near the Hakal, "'where the wagon and saddles are kept. "'It is dark in there. "'You will wear my red skirt, and blue waist, "'and brown mantilla. "'I send you a hundred kisses. "'Come surely, and shoot quickly and straight. "'Thine own, Tonya.' Sandridge quickly explained to his men the official part of the missive. The rangers protested against his going alone. "'I'll get him easy enough,' said the lieutenant. "'The girls got him trapped. "'And don't even think he'll get the drop on me.' Sandridge saddled his horse and rode to the lone wolf "'crossing. "'He tied his big dung in a clump of brush on the arroyo, "'took his winchester from its scabbard "'and carefully approached the Perez-Hakal. "'There was only the half of a high moon "'drifted over by ragged, milk-white, gulf clouds. "'The wagon shed was an excellent place for ambush, "'and the ranger got inside it safely. "'In the black shadow of the brush shelter "'in front of the Hakal, you could see a horse tied "'and hear him impatiently pawing the hard trodden earth. "'He waited almost an hour before two figures "'came out of the Hakal. "'One in man's clothes quickly mounted the horse "'and galloped past the wagon shed "'toward the crossing and village. "'And then the other figure, in skirt, "'waste, and montilla over its head, "'stepped out into the faint moonlight, "'gazing after the rider.' "'Sandridge thought he would take his chance then "'before Tanya rode back. "'He fancied, and she might not care to see it.' "'Grow up your hands,' he ordered loudly, "'stepping out of the wagon shed "'with his winchester at his shoulder. "'There was a quick turn of the figure, "'but no movement to obey, "'so the ranger pumped in the bullets. "'One, two, three, and then twice more.' "'For you never could be too sure "'of bringing down the Cisco kid.' "'There was no danger of missing at ten paces, "'even in that half moonlight. "'The old ancestor asleep on his blanket "'was awakened by the shots. "'Listening further, he heard a great cry "'from some man in mortal distress or anguish, "'and rose up, grumbling at the disturbing ways of moderns. "'The tall red ghost of a man burst into their call, "'reaching one hand, shaking like a tool reed "'for the lantern hanging on its nail. "'The other spread a letter on the table. "'Look at this letter, Perez,' cried the man, "'who wrote it?' "'Adiós,' said a senior Sandridge, "'mumbled the old man approaching. "'Pues, senor, that letter was written "'by El Chivato, as he is called. "'By the man of Tanya,' they say, "'he is a bad man, I do not know.' "'Baltonia slept,' he wrote the letter, "'and sent it by this old hand of mine "'to Domingo Siles, to be brought to you. "'Is there anything wrong in the letter? "'I am very old, and I did not know.' "'Válgame Dios, it is a very foolish world, "'and there is nothing in the house to drink, "'nothing to drink.' "'Just then, all that Sandridge could think out to do. "'Was to go outside and throw himself face "'downward in the dust, by the side of his hummingbird, "'of whom not a feather fluttered. "'He was not a caballero by instinct, "'and he could not understand the niceties of revenge. "'A mile away, the rider who had ridden "'passed the wagon shed, "'shuck up a harsh, undeniable song, "'the words of which began. "'Don't you monkey with my Lulu girl, "'or I'll tell you what I'll do. "'End of the Caballeros Way by O. Henry.'" A Curious Dream by Mark Twain This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Robert Thurk A Curious Dream by Mark Twain Containing a Moral Night before last, I had a singular dream. I seemed to be sitting on a doorstep in no particular city, perhaps ruminating. And the time of night appeared to be about 12 or one o'clock. The weather was balmy and delicious. There was no human sound in the air, not a footstep. There was no sound of any kind to emphasize the dead stillness, except the occasional hollow barking of a dog in the distance, and even a fainter answer of the further dog. Presently, up the street, I heard a bony clack clacking, and guessed it was the castanets of a serenading party. In a minute more, a tall skeleton, hooded and half-clad and a tattered and moldy shroud, whose shreds were flapping about the ribby latticework of its person, swung by me with the stately stride, and disappeared into the gray gloom of the starlight. It had broken and worm-eaten coffin on its shoulder and a bundle of something in its hand. I knew what the clack-clacking was then. It was this party's joints working together, and his elbows knocking against his sides as he walked. I may say I was surprised. Before I could collect my thoughts and enter upon any speculations as to what this apparition might pretend, I heard another one coming, for I recognized his click-clack. He had two-thirds of a coffin on his shoulder and some foot and headboards under his arm. I mightily wanted to peer under his hood and speak to him, but when he turned and smiled upon me with his cavernous sockets and his projecting grin as he went by, I thought I would not detain him. He was hardly gone when I heard the clacking again, and another one issued from the shadowy half-light. This one was bending under a heavy gravestone, and dragging a shabby coffin after him by a string. When he got to me, he gave me a steady look for a moment or two, and then rounded two and back up to me, saying, Ease this down for a fellow, will you? I eased the gravestone down till it rested on the ground, and in doing so, noticed that it bore the name of John Baxter Cottman Hearst, with May 1839 as the date of his death. Deceased sat down wearily by me, and wiped his osfrontest with his major maxillary, chiefly from former habit I judged, for I could not see that he brought away any perspiration. It is too bad, too bad, said he, drawing the remnant of the shroud about him and leaning his jaw pensively on his hand. Then he put his left foot up on his knee and fell to scratching his ankle bone absently with a rusty nail which he got out of the coffin. What is too bad, friend? Oh, everything, everything! I almost wish I never had died. You surprise me, why do you save us? Has anything gone wrong? What is the matter? Matter! Look at this shroud! Rags! Look at this gravestone all battered up! Look at that disgraceful old coffin! All a man's property going to ruin in destruction before his eyes, and ask him, if anything is wrong, fire in brimstone! Calm yourself, calm yourself, I said. It is too bad, it certainly is too bad, but then I had not supposed that you would mind such matters situated as you are. Well, my dear sir, I do mind them. My pride is hurt, and my comfort is impaired. Destroyed, I might say. I will state my case, I will put it to you in such a way that you can comprehend it, if you will let me, said the poor skeleton, tilting the hood of his shroud back, as if he were clearing for action, and thus unconsciously giving himself a jaunty and festive air, very much at variance with the grave character of his position in life, so to speak, and in prominent contrast to his distressful mood. Proceed, said I. I reside in the shameful old graveyard, a block or two above you, here in this street. There now, I just expected that cartilage would let go. Third rib from the bottom, friend, hitch the end of it to my spine with a string, if you've got such a thing about you, though a bit of silver wire is a deal pleasanter, and more durable in becoming, if one keeps it polished. To think of shredding out and going to pieces in this way, just on the account of the indifference and neglect of one's posterity. And the poor ghost grated his teeth in a way that gave me a wrench and a shiver, for the effect is mightily increased by the absence of muffling flesh and cuticle. I reside in that old graveyard, and have for these thirty years. And I tell you, things are changed since I first laid this old, tired frame there, and turned over and stretched out for a long sleep, with a delicious sense upon me of being done with bother, and grief, and anxiety, and doubt, and fear, forever and ever. And listening with my comfortable and increasing satisfaction to the sexton's work, from the startling clatter of his first spadeful on my coffin, till it dulled away to the faint padding that shaped the roof of my new home. Delicious! My I wish you could try it tonight! And out of my reverie, deceased fetched me a rattling slap with a bony hand. Yes, sir, thirty years ago I laid me down there and was happy, for it was out in the country, then, out in the breezy, flowery, grand old woods, and the lazy winds gossiped with the leaves, and the squirrels capped over us and around us, and the creeping things visited us, and the birds filled the tranquil solitude with music. Ah, it was worth ten years of a man's life to be dead then. Everything was pleasant. I was in a good neighborhood, for all the dead people that lived near me belonged to the best families in the city. Our posterity appeared to think the world of us. They kept our graves in the very best condition. The fences were always in faultless repair. Headboards were kept painted or whitewashed, and were replaced with new ones as soon as they began to look rustier decayed. Monuments were kept upright, railings intact and bright, the rose bushes and shrubbery trimmed, trained and free from blemish, the walks clean and smooth and graveled. But that day is gone by. Our descendants have forgotten us. My grandson lives in this stately house built with money made by these old hands of mine, and I sleep in a neglected grave with invading vermin that gnawn my shroud and build them nest with all. I and friends that lie with me founded and secured the prosperity of this fine city, and the stately bantling of our loves leaves us to rot in the dilapidated cemetery which neighbors curse in strangest scoff at. See the difference between the old time and this? For instance, our graves are all caved in now. Our headboards have rotted away and tumbled down. Our railings reel this way and that, with one foot in the air after a fashion of unseemly levity. Our monuments lean wearily, and our gravestones bow their heads discouraged. There be no adornments any more, no roses, nor shrubs, nor graveled walks, nor anything that is a comfort to the eye, and even the painless old bored fence that did make a show of holding us sacred from companionship with the beasts, and the defilement of heedless feet has tottered till it overhangs the street and only advertises the presence of our dismal resting place and invites yet more derision to it. And now we cannot hide our poverty and tatters in the friendly woods, for the city has stretched its withering arms abroad and taken us in. And all that remains of the cheer of our old home is the cluster of lugubrious forest trees that stand bored and wary of city life, with their feet in our coffins looking into the hazy distance and wishing they were there. I tell you it is disgraceful. You begin to comprehend. You begin to see how it is, while our descendants are living sumptuously on our money, right around us in the city. We have to fight hard to keep sculling bones together. Bless you, there isn't a grave in our cemetery that doesn't leak, not one. Every time it rains in the night we have to climb out and roost in the trees, and sometimes we are awakened suddenly by the chilly water trickling down the backs of our necks. Then I tell you there is a general heaving up of old graves and kicking over old monuments and scampering of old skeletons for the trees. Bless me if you had gone along there some such nights after twelve you might have seen as many as fifteen of us roosting up on one limb, with our joints rattling drearily and the wind wheezing through our ribs. Many a time we have perched there for three or four dreary hours, and then come down, stiff and chilled, through and drowsy, and borrowed each other's skulls to bail out our graves with. If you will glance up in my mouth now as I tilt my head back, you can see that my headpiece is half full of all dry sediment. How top-heavy and stupid it makes me sometimes. Yes sir, a many time if you have happened to come along just before dawn you'd have caught us bailing out our graves and hanging our shrouds on the fence to dry. Why, I had an elegant shroud stolen from there one morning. Think a party by the name of Smith took it that resides in a plebeian graveyard over Yonder. I think so because the first time I ever saw him he hadn't anything on but a check shirt, and the last time I saw him which was at a social gathering in the New Cemetery he was the best dressed corpse in the company. And it is a significant fact that he left when he saw me. And presently an old woman from here missed her coffin. She generally took it with her when she went anywhere because she was liable to take cold and bring on spasmatic rheumatism that originally killed her if she exposed herself to the night airmuch. She was named Hotchkiss, Anna Matilda Hotchkiss, you might know her. She has two upper front teeth, is tall, but a good deal inclined to stoop. One rib on the left side gone, has one shred of rusty hair hanging from the left side of her head, and one little tough just above and a little forward of her right ear. Has her under jaw wired on one side where it has worked loose. Small bone of left forearm gone, lost in a fight. Has a kind of swagger in her gait and a gallous way of going out with her arms akimbo and her nostrils in the air. Has been pretty free and easy and is all damaged and battered up till she looks like a queen's wear crate in ruins. Maybe you have met her. God forbid, I involuntarily ejaculated, for somehow I was not looking for that form of question. And it caught me a little off my guard. But I hastened to make amends for my rudeness and say, I simply meant I had not had the honor, for I would not deliberately speak discourteously of a friend of yours. You were saying that you were robbed, and it was a shame too. But it appears by what is left of the shroud you have on that it was a costly one in its day. How did? A most ghastly expression began to develop among the decayed features and shriveled entanglements of my guest's face. And I was beginning to grow uneasy and distressed when he told me he was only working up a deep sly smile with a wink in it, to suggest that about the time he acquired his present garment, a ghost in a neighboring cemetery missed one. This reassured me. But I begged him to confine himself to speech thenceforth, because his facial expression was uncertain, even with the most elaborate care it was liable to misfire. Smiling should especially be avoided. What he might honestly consider a shining success was likely to strike me in a very different light. I said I had liked to see a skeleton cheerful, even decoriously playful, but I did not think smiling was a skeleton's best hold. Yes, friend, said the poor skeleton, the facts are just as I have given them to you. Two of these old graveyards, the one that I resided in and the one further along, have been deliberately neglected by our descendants of today until there is no occupying them any longer. Aside from the osteological discomfort of it, and that is no light matter in this rainy weather, the present state of things is ruinous to property. We have got to move or be content to see our effects wasted away and utterly destroyed. Now you will hardly believe it, but it is true, nevertheless, that there isn't a single coffin in good repair among all my acquaintance. Now that is an absolute fact. I do not refer to low people who come in a pine box mounted on an express wagon, but I am talking about your high-tone silver-mounted burial case, your monumental sort, that travel under black plumes at the head of a procession and have choice of cemetery lots. I mean folks like the Jarvis and the Bledsoes and the Burlings and such. They are all about ruined, the most substantial people in our set they were, and now look at them, utterly used up and poverty stricken. One of the Bledsoes actually traded his monument to a late barkeeper for some fresh shavings to put under his head. I tell you it speaks volumes, for there is nothing a corpse takes so much pride in as his monument. He loves to read the inscription, he comes after a while to believe what it says himself, and then you may see him sitting on the fence night after night enjoying it. Epitaphs are cheap and they do a poor chap a world of good after he is dead, especially if he has had hard luck while he was alive. I wish they were used more. Now I don't complain, but confidentially I do think it was a little shabby of my descendants to give me nothing but this old slab of a gravestone, and all the more that there isn't a compliment on it. It used to have gone to his just reward on it, and I was proud when I first saw it, but by and by noticed that whenever an old friend of mine came along he would hook his chin on the railing and pull a long face and read along down till he came to that, and then he would chuckle to himself and walk off looking satisfied and comfortable. So I scratched it off and got rid of those fools. But a dead man always takes a deal of pride in his monument. Yonder goes half a dozen of the Jarvis now with the family monument along, and Smithers and some hired specters went by with his a while ago. Hello Higgins, goodbye old friend. That's Meredith Higgins, died in 44, belongs to our senate in the cemetery, fine old family, great grandmother was an engine. I'm on the most familiar terms with him. He didn't hear me, and that was the reason why he didn't answer me, and I'm sorry too, because I would have liked to introduce you. You would admire him. He was the most disjointed, swayed back, and generally distorted old skeleton you ever saw. But he's full of fun. When he laughs it sounds like grasping two stones together, and he always starts it off with a cheery screech like raking a nail across a window pane. Hey Jones, that's old Columbus Jones. Shroud cost four hundred dollars, and Tide Trusso, including monument 2700. This was in the spring of 26. It was enormous style for those days. Dead people came all the way from the elegainies to see his things. The party that occupies the grave next to mine remembers it well. Now do you see that individual going along with a piece of headboard under his arm, one leg bone below his knee gone, and not a thing in the world on? That is barstole Dalhousie, and next to Columbus Jones he was the most sumptuously outfitted person that ever entered our cemetery. We are all leaving. We cannot tolerate the treatment we are receiving at the hands of our descendants. They open new cemeteries, but they leave us to our ignimony. They mend the streets, but they never mend anything that is about us, or belongs to us. Look at that coffin of mine. Yet I tell you in its day it was a piece of furniture that would have attracted attention in any drawing room in this city. You may have it if you want it. I can't afford to repair it. Put a new bottom in her and part of a new top, and a bit of fresh lining along the left side, and you'll find her about as comfortable as any receptacle of her species you ever tried. No thanks. No, don't mention it. You have been civil to me, and I would give you all the property I've got before I would seem ungrateful. Now this winding sheet is kind of a sweet thing in its way if you would like to. No? Well, just as you say, but I wish to be fair and liberal. There's nothing mean about me. Goodbye, friend. I must be going. I may have a good way to go tonight, don't know. I only know one thing for certain, and that is that I am on the immigrant trail now, and I'll never sleep in that crazy old cemetery again. I will travel till I find respectable quarters if I have to hoof it to New Jersey. All the boys are going. It was decided at a public conclave last night to emigrate, and by the time the sun rises there won't be a bone left in our old habitations. Such cemeteries may suit my surviving friends, but they do not suit the remains that have the honor to make these remarks. My opinion is the general opinion. If you doubt it, go see how the departing ghosts upset before they started. They were almost riotous in their demonstrations of distaste. Hello, here come some of the blood sows, and if you'll give me a lift with this tombstone, I guess I will join company and jog along with them. Mighty respectable family, the blood sows, and used to always come out in six horse herses and all that sort of thing fifty years ago when I walked these streets in daylight. Goodbye, friend. And with his gravestone on his shoulder he joined the grisly procession, dragging his damaged coffin after him. For notwithstanding he pressed it upon me so earnestly I utterly refused his hospitality. I suppose that for as much as two hours the sad outcast went clacking by, laden with their dismal effects, and all the time I sat pitying them. One or two of the youngest and least dilapidated among them inquired about midnight trains on the railways, but the rest seemed unacquainted with that mode of travel, and merely asked about common public roads to various towns and cities, some of which are not on the map now, and vanished from it and from the earth as much as thirty years ago. And some few of them never had existed anywhere but on maps, and private ones in real estate agencies at that. And they asked about the condition of the cemeteries in these towns and cities, and about the reputation the citizens bore as to reverence for the dead. This whole matter interested me deeply, and likewise compelled my sympathy for these homeless ones. And at all seeming real, and I not knowing it was a dream, I mentioned to one shrouded wanderer an idea that had entered my head to publish an account of this curious and very sourful exodus, but said also that I could not describe it truthfully, and just as it occurred, without seeming to trifle with a grave subject and exhibit an irreverence for the dead that would shock and distress their surviving friends. But this bland and stately remnant of a former citizen leaned him far over my gate and whispered in my ear and said, Do not let that disturb you. The community that can stand such graveyards as those we are emigrating from can stand anything a body can say about the neglected and forsaken dead that lie in them. At that very moment, a cock crowed, and the weird procession vanished and left not a shred or a bone behind. I awoke and found myself lying with my head out of the bed and sagging downward considerably, a position favorable to dreaming dreams with morals in them maybe, but not poetry. Note, the reader is assured that if the cemeteries in his town are kept in good order, this dream is not leveled at his town at all, but is leveled particularly and venomously at the next town. End of A Curious Dream by Mark Twain Ixion in Heaven by Benjamin Disraeli Read by Amy Grimoire This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org, part one in Erring King. The thunder groaned, the wind howled, and the rain fell in and hissing torrents, impenetrable darkness covered the earth. A blue and forky flash darted a momentary light over the landscape. A Doric temple rose in the center of a small and verdant plain, surrounded on all sides by green and hanging woods. Joe was my only friend, exclaimed a wanderer, as he muffled himself up in his mantle, and wore it not for the porch of his temple. This night, me thinks, would complete the work of my loving wife and my dutiful subjects. The thunder died away, the wind sank into silence, the rain ceased, and the parting clouds exhibited the glittering crescent of the young moon. A sonorous and majestic voice sounded from the skies, Who art thou that hast no other friend than Joe? One whom all mankind unite in calling a wretch, art thou a philosopher, if philosophy be endurance? But for the rest, I was sometime a king, and am now a scattering. How do they call thee? Ixion of Thessaly Ixion of Thessaly? I thought he was a happy man. I heard that he was just married. Father of gods and men, for I deem thee such. Thessaly is not Olympus. Conjugal felicity is only the portion of the immortals. Hem, what? Was Dia jealous, which is common? Or false, which is commoner? Or both, which is commonest? It may be neither. We quarreled about nothing. Where there is little sympathy or too much, the splitting of a straw is plod enough for a domestic charity. I was careless. Her friends stigmatized me as callous. She cold, her friends styled her, magnanimous. Public opinion was all on her side, merely because I did not choose that the world should interfere between me and my wife. Dia took the world's advice upon every point, and the world decided that she always acted rightly. However life is life, either in a palace or a cave. I am glad you ordered it to leave off thundering. A cool dog is this, and Dia loved thee? No, I loved her. What, graven? Well, not exactly. The truth is, tis a long story. I was overhead in ears in debt. Ah, that accounts for everything. Nothing so harassing is a want of money. But what lucky fellows you mortals are with your post-abits. We immortals are deprived of this resource. I was obliged to get up a rebellion against my father, because he kept me so short and couldn't die. You could have married for money I did. I had no opportunity. There was so little female society in those days. When I came out, there were no heiresses except a parquet. Confirmed old maids, in no very rich dowager except my grandmother, Ulterra. Just the thing, the older the better. However, I married Dia, the daughter of Dia Nicis, with a prodigious portion. But after the ceremony, the old gentleman would not fulfill his part of the contract without my giving up my stud. Can you conceive anything more unreasonable? I smothered my resentment at the time. For the truth is, my tradesmen all renewed my credit on the strength of the match. And so we went on for very well a year. But at last they began to smell a rat, and grew importunate. I entreated Dia to interfere, but she was a paragon of daughters and always took the side of her father. If she had only been dutiful to her husband, she would have been a perfect wife. At last I invited Dia Nicis to the Larissa races, with the intention of conciliating him. The unprincipled old man bought the horse that I had backed, and by which I intended to have redeemed my fortunes, and he withdrew it. My book was ruined. I dissembled my rage. I dug a pit in our garden and filled it with burning coals. As my father-in-law and myself were taking a stroll after dinner, the worthy, Dia Nicis, fell in merely by accident. Dia proclaimed me the murderer of her father, and as a satisfaction to her wounded feelings, earnestly requested to subjects to decapitate her husband. She certainly was the best of daughters. There was nowithstanding public opinion, and infuriated gravel, and a magnanimous wife at the same time. They surrounded my palace. I cut my way through the greasy capped multitude, sword in hand, and gained a neighbouring court, where I solicited my brother-princes to purify me from the supposed murder. If I had only murdered a subject, they would have supported me against the people. But Dia Nicis, being a crowned head like themselves, they declared they would not countenance so immoral a being as his son-in-law, and so at length, after much wandering and shunned by all my species, I am here, Jove, in much higher society than I ever expected to mingle. Well, thou art a frank dog, and in a sufficiently severe scrape, the gods must have pity on those for whom men have none. It is evident that earth is too hot for thee at present, so I think thou hattest better come and stay a few weeks with us in heaven. Take my thanks, peccatooms, great Jove. Thou art indeed a god. I hardly know whether our life will suit you. We dine at sunset, for Apollo is so much engaged that he cannot join us sooner, and no dinner goes off well without him. In the morning you are as your own master, and must find amusement where you can. Diana will show you some tolerable sport. Do you shoot? No arrow, sure. Fear not for me. A jeek, Ocus. I am always at home. But how am I to get to you? I will send Mercury. He is the best traveling companion in the world. What ho, my eagle? The clouds joined, and darkness fell again over the earth. So, tread softly. Don't be nervous. Are you sick? A little nausea. Tis nothing. The novelty of the motion. The best thing is a beef steak. We will stop at Taurus and take one. You have been a great traveler, Mercury. I have seen the world. Ah, a wondrous spectacle. I long to travel. The same thing over and over again. Little novelty and much change. I am wearied with exertion, and if I could get a pension would retire. And yet travel brings wisdom. It cures us of cares, seeing much we feel little, and learn how very petty are all those great affairs which cost us such anxiety. I feel that already myself, floating in this blue ether, what the devil is my wife to me in her dirty earth. My persecuting enemies seem so many pismires, and as for my debts, which have occasioned me so many brooding moments, honor and infamy, credit and beggary seem to me alike ridiculous. Your mind is opening, Exion. You will soon be a man of the world to the left, and keep clear of that star, who lives there. The fates know, not I. Some low people who are trying to shine into notice, tis a part of a new planet, and only sprung into space within this century. We do not visit them. Poor devils. I feel hungry. All right, we'll get into heaven by the first dinner bolt. You cannot arrive at a strange house at a better moment. We shall have just time to dress. I wouldn't spoil my appetite by luncheon. Jupiter keeps a capital cook. I've heard of nectar and ambrosia. Oh, nobody touches them. They are regular old-fashioned celestial food, and merely put upon the side table. Nothing goes down in heaven now but infernal cookery. We took our chef from proserpony. Were you ever in hell? Several times. Tis the fashion now among the Olympians to pass the winter there. Is this the season in heaven? Yes, you are lucky. Olympus is quite full. It was kind of Jupiter to invite me. Aye, he has his good points, and no doubt he has taken a liking to you, which is all very well. But be upon your guard. He has no heart, and is as capricious as he is tyrannical. Gods cannot be more unkind to me than men have been. All those who have suffered think they have seen the worst. A great mistake. However, you are now on the high road to preferment, so we will not be dull. There are some good fellows enough amongst us. You will like old Neptune. Is he there now? Yes, he generally passes his summer with us. There is little stirring in the ocean at that season. I am anxious to see Mars. Oh, a brute. More a bully than a hero. Not at all in the best set. These mustachioed gentry are by no means the rage at present in Olympus. The women are all literary now. And Minerva has quite eclipsed Venus. Paolo is our hero. You must read his last work. I hate reading. So do I. I have no time and seldom do anything in that way but glance at a newspaper. Study and action will not combine. I suppose I shall find the goddesses very proud. You will find them as you find women below, of different dispositions with the same object. Venus is a flirt. Minerva is a prude. Who fancies she has a correct taste in a strong mind. And you know a politician. As for the rest, faint heart, never one fair lady. Take a friendly hint and do not be alarmed. I fear nothing. My mind mounts with my fortunes. We are above the clouds. They form beneath us a vast and snowy region, dim and irregular, as I have sometimes seen them clustering upon the horizon's rigid sunset, like a raging sea stilled by some sudden supernatural frost and frozen into form. How bright the air above us, and how delicate its fragrant breath. I scarcely breathe, and yet my pulses beat like my first youth. I hardly feel my being. A splendor falls upon your presence. You seem indeed a god. Am I so glorious? This—this is heaven. The travels landed on a vast flight of sparkling steps of lapis lazuli. Ascending they entered beautiful gardens, winding walks that yielded to the feet, and accelerated your passage by their rebounding pressure. Fragrant shrubs, covered with dazzling flowers, the fleeting tints of which changed every moment, groups of tall trees with strange birds of brilliant and variegated plumage, singing and reposing in their sheenie foliage and fountains of perfumes. Before them rose an illimitable and golden palace, with huge spreading domes of pearl and long windows of crystals. Around the huge portal of Ruby was ranged a company of winged Jani, who smiled on Mercury as he passed them with his charge. The father of gods and men his dressing said the son of Maya. I shall attend his toilette and inform him of your arrival. These are your rooms. Dinner will be ready in half an hour. I will call if you as I go down. You can be formally presented in the evening. At that time, inspired by liquors in his matchless band of winged instruments, you will agree with the world that Egeicus is the most finished god in existence. Now, Ixian, are you ready? Even so, what says Jove? He smiled but said nothing. He was trying on a new robe. By this time he is seated. Hark, the thunder, come on! They entered a cupolet hall. Seats of ivory and gold were ranged around the circular table of cedar, inlaid with the campaigns against the titans and silver, exquisitely worked an uptual present of Vulcan. The service of gold played through all the ideas of the king of Thessaly, as to royal magnificence into the darkest shade. The enormous plateau represented the constellations. Ixian viewed the father of gods and men with great interest, who, however, did not notice him. He acknowledged the majesty of that countenance, whose non-Truc Olympus, majestically robust and luxuriously lusty, his tapering waist was evidently immortal, for it defied time and his splendid auburn curls prodded on his forehead with celestial precision, scented over cheeks glowing with purple radiancy of perpetual manhood. The haughty Juno was seated on his left hand and series on his right. For the rest of the company there was Neptune, Latona, Minerva, and Apollo. And when Mercury and Ixian had taken their places, one seat was still vacant. Where is Diana, inquired Jupiter, with a frown? My sister is hunting, said Apollo. She is always too late for dinner, said Jupiter. No habit is less goddess-like. Godlike pursuits cannot be expected to induce goddess-like manners, said Juno, with a sneer. I have no doubt Diana will be here directly, said Latona mildly. Jupiter seemed pacified, and at that instant the absent guest returned. Good sport die, inquired Neptune. Very fair, uncle. Mama continued the sister of Apollo, addressing herself to Juno, whom she ever thus styled when she wished to conciliate her. I've brought you a new peacock. Juno was fond of pets and was conciliated by the present. Bacchus made a great noise about his wine, Mercury, said Jupiter. But I think with little cause. What do you think? It pleases me, but I'm fatigued, and then all wine is agreeable. You have had a long journey, replied the thunderer. Aixian, I'm glad to see you in heaven. Your majesty arrived today, inquired Minerva, to whom the king of Thessaly sat next. Within this hour. You must leave off talking of time now, said Minerva, with a severe smile. Pray, is there anything new in Greece? I have not been at all in society lately. No new addition of Homer. I admire him exceedingly. All about Greece interests me, said Apollo, who, although handsome, was a somewhat melancholy, lackadaisical-looking personage, with his shirt collar thrown open and his long curls theatrically arranged. All about Greece interests me. I always consider Greece my peculiar property. My best poems were written at Delphi. I traveled in Greece when I was young. I envy mankind. Indeed, said Aixian. Yes, they at least can look forward to a termination of the ennui of existence. But for us celestials there is no prospect. Say what they like, immortality is a bore. You eat nothing, Apollo, said Ceres. No drink, said Neptune. To eat, to drink, what is it but to live? It would as life but death. If death be that which all men deem it, a thing insufferable, and to be shunned, I refresh myself now only with soda water and biscuits. Ganymede brings them. Now, although the cuisine of Olympus was considered perfect, the Forlorn poet had unfortunately fixed upon the only two articles which were not comprised in its cellar or larder. In heaven there was neither soda water nor biscuits. A great confusion, consequently ensued, but at length the bard, whose love of fame was only equaled by his horror of getting fat, consoled himself with a swan stuffed with truffles and a bottle of strong Tenedos wine. What do you think of Homer, inquired Minerva of Apollo? Is he not delightful? If you think so. Nay, I am desirous of your opinion. Then you should not have given me yours, for your taste is too fine for me to dare to differ with. I have suspected for some time that you are rather a heretic. Why, the truth is, replied Apollo, playing with his rings. I do not think much of Homer. Homer was not esteemed in his own age. In our contemporaries are generally our best judges. The fact is, there are very few people who are qualified to decide upon matters of taste. A certain sat, for certain reasons, resolved to cry up a certain writer, and the great mass soon joined in, all his can't, and the present admiration of Homer is not less so. They say I have borrowed a great deal from him. The truth is, I have never read Homer since I was a child, and I thought of him then, what I think of him now, a writer of some wild, irregular power, totally deficient in taste. Depend upon it, our contemporaries are our best judges, and his contemporaries decided that Homer was nothing. A great poet cannot be kept down. Look at my case. Marcius said of my first volume, that it was pretty good poetry for a god. In an answer, I wrote a satire, and flayed Marcius alive. But what is poetry, and what is criticism, and what is life? Air? And what is air? Do you know? I don't. All is mystery, and all is gloom, and ever and anon, for multi-clouds of starbricks, forth, and glitters, and that star is poetry. Splendid exclaimed Minerva, I do not exactly understand you, said Neptune. Have you heard from Presurpeny lately, inquired Jupiter of Ceres? Yesterday, said the domestic mother, a talk of soon joining us, but Pluto is at present so busy, owing to the amazing quantity of wars going on right now, that I am almost afraid he will scarcely be able to accompany her. Juno exchanged a telegraphic nod with Ceres. The goddesses rose and retired. Come, old boy, said Jupiter to Ixion, instantly throwing off all his chivalric magistry. I drink your welcome in a magnum of maraschino. Damn your poetry, Apollo and Mercury, give us one of your good stories. Well, what do you think of him, asked Juno? He appears to have a fine mind, said Minerva. He has very fine eyes, said Juno. He seems a very nice, quiet young gentleman, said Ceres. I have no doubt he's very amiable, said Latona. He must have felt very strange, said Diana. Hercules arrived with his bride Hebe. Soon after the graces dropped in, the most delightful personages in the world for a soiree, so useful and ready for anything. Afterwards came a few of the muses, Thalia, Melpopenie, and Terpsichore, famous for a charade or a proverb. Jupiter liked to be amused in the evening. Bacchus also came, but finding that the gods had not yet left their wine, retired to pay them a visit. Ganymede announced coffee in the saloon of Juno. Jupiter was in superb good humor. He was amused by his mortal guest. He had condescended to tell one of his best stories and his best style, about Lita, not too scandalous but gay. Those were bright days, said Neptune. We can remember, said the Thunderer, with a twinkling eye. These youths have fallen upon dollar times. There are no fine women now. Ixion, I drink to the health of your wife, with all my heart, and may we never be nearer than we are at present. Good I faith, Apollo, your arm. Now for the ladies. La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la. The Thunderer entered the saloon of Juno, with that bow which no god could rival. All rows in the King of Heaven seated himself between Ceres and Latona. The melancholy Apollo stood apart and was soon carried off by Minerva to an assembly at the house of Ney Mawz and Ney. Mercury chatted with the Graces and Bacchus with Diana. The three Muses favored the company with singing, and the Queen of Heaven approached Ixion. Does your majesty dance? she hotly inquired. On earth I have a few accomplishments even there, and none in heaven. You have led a strange life. I have heard of your adventures. A king who was lost as crowned may generally gain at least experience. Your courage is firm. I have felt too much to care for much. Yesterday I was a vagabond, exposed to every pitiless storm, and now I am the guest of Jove. While there is life there is hope, and he who laughs at destiny will gain fortune. I would go through the past again to enjoy the present, and feel that after all I am my wife's debtor, since through her conduct I gangaze upon you. No great spectacle if that be all. I wish you better fortune. I desire no greater. You are moderate. I am perhaps more unreasonable than you imagine. Indeed. Their eyes met the dark orbs of the Thessalian, did not quail before the flashing vision of the goddess. Juno grew pale. Juno turned away. Ixion in heaven, part two. Others say it was only a cloud, a mortal among the gods. Mercury and Ganymede were each lolling on opposite coach in the interchamber of Olympus. It is wonderful said the son of Mya Yawning. It is incredible rejoin the cupbearer of Jove, stretching his legs. A miserable mortal exclaimed the god, elevating his eyebrows. A vile Thessalian was the beautiful Phrygian, shrugging his shoulders. Not three days back an outcast among his own wretched species, and now commanding everybody in heaven. He shall not command me, though, said Mercury. Will he not? replied Ganymede. Why, what do you think? Only last night Hark, here he comes. The companions jumped up from their couches. A light laugh was heard. The cedar portal was flung open and Ixion lounged in, habited in a loose mourning robe and kicking before him one of his slippers. Ah, exclaimed the king of Thessaly. The very fellows I wanted to see. Ganymede, bring me some nectar, and Mercury, run and tell Jove that I shall not dine at home today. The messenger in the page exchanged looks of indignant consternation. Well, what are you waiting for? continued Ixion, looking round from the merit in which she was arranging his locks. The messenger in the page disappeared. So this is heaven. exclaimed the husband of Dia, flinging himself upon one of the couches. In a very pleasant place, too. These worthy immortals required their minds to be opened, and I trust I have effectually performed the necessary operation. They wanted to keep me down with their dull, old-fashioned celestial heirs. But I fancy I have given them change for their talent. To make your way in heaven, you must command. These exclusives sink under the audacious invention of an aspiring mind. Jove himself is really a fine old fellow. With some notions, too, I am a prime favorite, and no one is greater authority with the geacus on all subjects. From the character of the fair sex or the pedigree of a coarser, down to the cut of a robe or the flavor of a dish. Thanks, Ganymede, to continue with the salient, as he took the goblet from his returning attendant. I drink to your bon pocheon. Splendid, this nectar makes me feel quite immortal. By the by, I hear sweet sounds who was in the hall of music. The goddesses, royal sir, practice a new air of uterpe. The words of Apollo, it is pretty, and will doubtless be very popular, for it is all about moonlight and the misery of existence. I warn it. You have a taste for poetry yourself, inquired Ganymede? Not the least replied Ixian. Apollo continued the heavenly page as a great genius, though Marcia said he would never be a poet because he was God and had no heart. But do you think, sir, that a poet does indeed need a heart? I cannot really say. You know my wife always said I had a bad heart, and worse head, but what she meant upon my honor I never could understand. Minerva will ask you to write in her album. Will she indeed? I am sorry to hear it, for I can scarcely scrawl my signature. I should think that Jove himself cared little for all this nonsense. Jove loves an epigram. He does not esteem Apollo's works at all. Joves of the classical school and admire satire provided there be no illusions to gods and kings. Of course I quite agree with him. I remember we had a confounded poet at Larissa, who proved my family lived before the deluge, and asked me for a pension. I refused him, and then he wrote an epigram asserting that I spring from the veritable stones thrown by Ducalian and Pira at the repealing of the earth and retained all the properties of my ancestors. There's a thunderbolt, I must run to Jove. And I will look in on the musicians this way, I think. Up the ruby staircase turned to your right down the amethyst gallery. Farewell. Goodbye, a lively lad that. The king of Thessaly entered the hall of music with its golden walls and crystal dome. The Queen of Heaven was reclining in an easy chair, cutting out peacocks and small sheets of note paper. Minerva was making a pencil observation on a manuscript copy of the song. Apollo listened with deference to her laudatory criticisms. Another divine dame, standing by the side of Utterpi, who was seated by the harp, looked up as Ixion entered. The wild liquid glance of her soft but radiant countenance denoted the famed goddess of beauty. Juno just acknowledged the entrance of Ixion by a slight and haughty inclination of the head, and then resumed her employment. Minerva asked his opinion of her amendment, of which he greatly approved. Apollo greeted him with a melancholy smile and congratulated him on being mortal. Venus complimented him on his visit to Olympus and expressed the pleasure that she experienced in making his acquaintance. What do you think of heaven, inquired Venus in a soft, still voice, and with a smile like summer's lightning? I never found it so enchanting, as at this moment replied Ixion. A little dull? For myself I passed my time chiefly at Nidus. You must come and visit me there. This is the most charming place in the world. To the said, you know, that our opinions are like other people's roses. We will take care of you if your wife come. No fear of that, she always remains at home and peaks herself on her domestic virtues, which means pickling and quarreling with her husband. Ah, I see you're a droll. Very good indeed. Well, for my part, I like a watering-place existence. Nidus and Paphis, Sithera. You will usually find me at one of these places. I like the easy distraction of a career without any visible result. At these fascinating spots, your gloomy race, to whom by the by I am exceedingly partial, peer-demaciated from the wearing fetters of their regular dull, orderly, methodical, moral, political, toiling existence. I pride myself upon being the goddess of watering places. You really must pay me a visit at Nidus. Such an invitation requires no repetition. And Nidus is your favorite spot? Why, it was so. But, of late, it has become so inundated with invalid asiatics and valitudinarian persians that the simultaneous influx of the handsome heroes who swarm in from the islands to look after their daughters scarcely compensates for the annoying presence of their yellow faces and shaking limbs. No, I think on the whole, Paphis is my favorite. I have heard of its magnificent luxury, which is lovely, quite my idea of country life, not a single tree. When Cyprus is very hot, you run to Paphos for a sea breeze, and are sure to meet everyone whose presence is in the least desirable. All the boars remain behind, as if by instinct. I remember when we married, we talked of passing the honeymoon at Scythera. But Dia would have her waiting made in a band box, stuffed between us in the chariot, so I got sulky after the first stage and returned by myself. You were quite right. I hate band boxes. They are always in the way. You would have liked Scythera if you had been in the least in love. High rocks and green knolls, bowery woods, winding walks, and delicious sunsets. I haven't been there much of late, continued the goddess, looking somewhat sad and serious. Since, but I will not talk sentiment to Ixian. Do you think, then, I'm insensible? Yes. Perhaps you are right. We mortals grow callous. So I have heard. How very odd. So, saying, the goddess glided away and saluted Mars, who at that moment entered the hall. Ixian was presented to the military hero who looked fierce and bowed stiffly. The king of Thessaly turned upon his heel. Minerva opened her album and invited him to inscribe a stanza. Goddess of wisdom, replied the king, unless you inspire me, the virgin page must remain pure as thyself. I can scarcely sign a decree. It is Ixian of Thessaly who says this, one who has seen so much, and if I am not mistaken, has felt and thought so much, I can easily conceive why such a mind may desire to veil its movements from the common herd. But pray concede to Minerva the gratifying compliment of assuring her that she is the exception for whom the rule has been established. I seem to listen to the inspired music of an oracle. Give me a pen. Here is one plucked from a sacred owl. So I write there. Will it do? Minerva read the inscription. I have seen the world, and more than the world, I have studied the heart of man. And now I can sort with the mortals. The fruit of my tree of knowledge is plucked, and it is this. Adventures are to the adventurous. Written in the album of Minerva by Ixian in heaven. To his brief said the goddess with amusing air, but full of meaning, you have a daring soul and pregnant mind. I have dared much. What I may produce, we haven't yet to see. I must, to Jo, said Minerva to counsel. We shall meet again. Farewell, Ixian. Farewell, Glacopis. The king of Thessaly stood away from the remaining guests, and lent with folded arms and pensive brow against a wreathed column. Mars listened to Venus with an air of deep devotion. Utterpe played an inspiring accompaniment of their conversation. Queen of Heaven seemed engrossed in the creation of her paper peacocks. Ixian advanced and seated himself on a couch near Juno. His mariner was divested of that reckless bearing and careless coolness by which it was in general distinguished. He was perhaps even a little embarrassed. His ready tongue deserved him at length, he spoke. Has your majesty ever heard of the peacock of the Queen of Mesopotamia? No, replied Juno, with stately reserve, and then she added with an air of indifferent curiosity. Is it in any way remarkable? Its breast is of silver, its wings of gold, its eyes of carbuncle, its claws of amethyst, and its tail, eagerly inquired Juno. That is a secret, replied Ixian. The tail is the most wonderful part of all. Oh, tell me, pray tell me, I forget. No, no, no, it is impossible, exclaimed the animated Juno. Provoking mortal, continued the goddess. Let me entreat you, tell me immediately. There is a reason which prevents me. What can it be? How very odd. What reason can it possibly be? Now tell me, as a particular, a personal favor, I request you do tell me. What? The tail or the reason? The tail is wonderful, but the reason is much more so. I can only tell one. Now choose. What provoking things these human beings are? The tail is wonderful, but the reason is much more so? Well then, the reason. No, the tail. Stop. Now, as a particular favor, pray tell me both. What can the tail be made of, and what can the reason be? I'm literally dying of curiosity. Your majesty has cut out that peacock wrong, replied Ixian. It is more like one of Minerva's owls. Who cares about paper peacocks when the queen of Mesopotamia has got such a miracle? exclaimed Juno. And she tore the labors of the morning to pieces and threw away the fragments with Vexation. Now tell me instantly, if you have the slightest regard for me, tell me instantly, what was the tail made of? And do you not wish to hear the reason? That afterwards, now I am all ears, at this moment Ganymede entered and whispered the goddess who rose in evident Vexation and retired to the presence of Jove. The king of Thessaly quitted the hall of music. Moody, yet not uninfluenced by a degree of wild excitement, he wandered forth into the gardens of Olympus. He came to a beautiful green retreat surrounded by enormous cedars, so vast that it seemed they must have been co-evil with the creation. So fresh and brilliant, you would have deemed them wet with dew of their first spring. The turf, softer than down, in exhaling, as you pressed it in exquisite perfume, invited him to decline himself upon this natural couch. He threw himself upon the aromatic herbage and, leaning on his arm, fell into a deep reverie. Hours flew away, the sun-shiny glades that opened in the distance had softened into shade. Ixion, how do you do, inquired a voice, wild, sweet, thrilling as a bird? The king of Thessaly started and looked up, with the distracted air of a man roused from a dream, off from complacent meditation over some strange sweet secret. His cheek was flushed, his dark eyes flashed fire, his brow trembled, his disheveled hair played in a fitful breeze. The king of Thessaly looked up and beheld the most beautiful youth. Apparently he had attained about the age of puberty. His stature, however, was rather tall for his age, but exquisitely molded and proportioned. Very fair, his somewhat round cheeks were tinted with a rich but delicate glow, like the stars of twilight, and lighted by dimples that twinkled like stars. His large and deep blue eyes sparkled with exaltation, and an air of ill-suppressed mockery quivered round his pouting lips. His light, auburn hair braided off his