 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Three Hermits by Leo Tolstoy. An old legend current in the Volga district. And in praying, use not vain repetitions as the Gentiles do, for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. Be not therefore like unto them, for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of before ye ask Him. Matthew 6, verses 7 and 8. A bishop was sailing from Ark Angel to the Solovetsk Monastery. And on the same vessel were a number of pilgrims on their way to visit the shrines at that place. The voyage was a smooth one, the wind favourable and the weather fair. The pilgrims lay on deck, eating, or sat in groups talking to one another. The bishop too came on deck, and as he was pacing up and down, he noticed a group of men standing near the prowl and listening to a fisherman who was pointing to the sea and telling them something. The bishop stopped and looked in the direction in which the man was pointing. He could see nothing, however, but the sea glistening in the sunshine. He drew nearer to listen, but when the man saw him he took off his cap and was silent. The rest of the people also took off their caps and bowed. Do not let me disturb you, friends, said the bishop. I came to hear what this good man was saying. The fisherman who was telling us about the hermits, replied one, a tradesman, rather bolder than the rest. What hermits? asked the bishop, going to the side of the vessel and seating himself on a box. Tell me about them. I should like to hear. What were you pointing at? Why, that little island you can just see over there, answered the man, pointing to a spot ahead and a little to the right. That is the island where the hermits live for the salvation of their souls. Where is the island? asked the bishop. I see nothing. There, in the distance, if you will please look along my hand, do you see that little cloud? Below it, and a bit to the left, there was just a faint streak. That is the island. The bishop looked carefully but his unaccustomed eyes could make out nothing but the water shimmering in the sun. I cannot see it, he said, but who are the hermits that live there? There, holy men, answered the fisherman, I had long heard tell of them, but never chance to see them myself till the year before last. And their fisherman related how once when he was out fishing he had been stranded at night upon that island, not knowing where he was. In the morning, as he wandered about the island, he came across an earth hut and met an old man standing near it. Presently two others came out, and after having fed him and dried his things, they helped him mend his boat. And what are they like, asked the bishop. One is a small man and his back is bent. He wears a priest's cassock and is very old. He must be more than a hundred, I should say. He is so old that the white of his beard is taking a greenish tinge, but he is always smiling, and his face is as bright as an angel's from heaven. Second is taller, but he also is very old. He wears a tattered peasant coat. His beard is broad and of a yellowish gray color. He is a strong man. Before I had time to help him he turned my boat over as if it were only a pail. He too is kindly and cheerful. The third is tall and has a beard as white as snow and reaching to his knees. He is stern with overhanging eyebrows. And he wears nothing but a mat tied around his waist. And did they speak to you, asked the bishop. For the most part they did everything in silence and spoke but little, even to one another. One of them would just give a glance and the others would understand him. I asked the tallest whether they had lived there long. He frowned and muttered something as if you were angry, but the oldest one took his hand and smiled and then the tall one was quiet. The oldest one only said, Have mercy upon us, and smiled. While the fisherman was talking the ship had drawn nearer to the island. There, now you can see it plainly. If your grace will please to look, said the tradesman, pointing with his hand. The bishop looked and now he really saw a dark streak which was the island. Having looked at it a while he left the prow of the vessel and going to the stern he asked the helmsman, What island is that? That one, replied the man, has no name. There are many such in this sea. Is it true that there are hermits who live there for the salvation of their souls? So it is said, your grace, but I don't know if it's true. Fishermen say they've seen them but of course they may only be spinning yarns. I should like to land on the island and see these men, said the bishop. How could I manage it? The ship cannot get close to the island, replied the helmsman, but you might be rowed there in a boat. You'd better speak to the captain. The captain was sent for and came. I should like to see these hermits, said the bishop. Could I not be rowed ashore? The captain tried to dissuade him. Of course it could be done, said he, but we should lose much time and if I might venture to say so to your grace the old men are not worth your pains. I have heard say that they are foolish old fellows who understand nothing and never speak a word, any more than the fish in the sea. I wish to see them, said the bishop, and I will pay you for your trouble and loss of time. Please, let me have a boat. There was no help for it, so the order was given. The sailors trimmed the sails, the steersmen put up the helm, and the ship's course was set for the island. A chair was placed at the prow for the bishop and he sat there looking ahead. The passengers all collected at the prow and gazed at the island. Those who had the sharpest eyes could presently make out the rocks on it and then a mud hut was seen. At last one man saw the hermits themselves. The captain brought a telescope and after looking through it handed it to the bishop. It's right enough, there are three men standing on the shore, there, a little to the right of that big rock. The bishop took the telescope, got it into position, and he saw the three men, a tall one, a shorter one, and one very small and bent, standing on the shore and holding each other by the hand. The captain turned to the bishop. The vessel can get no nearer in than this, your grace. If you wish to go ashore, we must ask you to go in the boat while we anchor here. The cable was quickly let out, the anchor cast, and the sails furrowed. There was a jerk and the vessel shook. Then a boat having been lowered, the oarsmen jumped in and the bishop descended the ladder and took his seat. The men pulled out their oars and the boat moved rapidly towards the island. When they came within a stone's throw, they saw three old men, a tall one with only a mat tied around his waist, a shorter one in a tattered peasant coat, and a very old one bent with age and wearing an old cassock. All three standing hand in hand. The oarsmen pulled into the shore and held on with the boat-hook while the bishop got out. The old men bowed to him and he gave them his benediction, at which they bowed still lower. Then the bishop began to speak to them. I have heard, he said, that you, godly men, live here saving your own souls and praying to our Lord Christ for your fellow men. I, an unworthy servant of Christ, am called by God's mercy to keep and teach his flock. I wished to see you, servants of God, and to do what I can to teach you also. The old men looked at each other smiling, but remained silent. Tell me, said the bishop, what are you doing to save your souls and how you serve God on this island? The second hermit sighed and looked at the oldest, the very ancient one. The latter smiled and said, We do not know how to serve God. We only serve and support ourselves, servant of God. But how do you pray to God? asked the bishop. Pray in this way, replied the hermit. Three are ye, three are we, have mercy upon us. And when the old man said this, all three raised their eyes to heaven and repeated. Three are ye, three are we, have mercy upon us. The bishop smiled. You have evidently heard something about the holy trinity, said he, but you do not pray a right. You have won my affection, godly men. I see you wish to please the Lord, but you do not know how to serve him. That is not the way to pray, but listen to me and I will teach you. I will teach you not a way of my own, but the way in which God in the holy scriptures has commanded all men to pray to him. And the bishop began explaining to the hermits how God had revealed himself to men, telling them of God the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. God the Son came down on earth, said he, to save men. And this is how he taught us all to pray. Listen and repeat after me. Our Father. And the first old man repeated after him. Our Father. And the second said, Our Father. And the third said, Our Father. Which art in heaven? continued the bishop. The first hermit repeated, Which art in heaven? But the second blundered over the words, and the tall hermit could not say them properly. His hair had grown over his mouth so that he could not speak plainly. The very old hermit, having no teeth, also mumbled indistinctly. The bishop repeated the words again, and the old men repeated them after him. The bishop sat down on a stone, and the old men stood before him, watching his mouth, and repeating the words as he uttered them. All day long the bishop labored, saying a word twenty, thirty, a hundred times over, and the old men repeated it after him. They blundered, and he corrected them, and made them begin again. The bishop did not leave off till he had taught them the whole of the Lord's prayer so that they could not only repeat it after him, but could say it by themselves. The middle one was the first to know it, and to repeat the whole of it alone. The bishop made him say it again and again, and at last the others could say it too. It was getting dark, and the moon was appearing over the water before the bishop rose to return to the vessel. When he took leave of the old men, they all bowed down to the ground before him. He raised them and kissed each of them, telling them to pray as he had taught them. Then he got into the boat, and returned to the ship. As he sat in the boat, and was rode to the ship, he could hear the three voices of the hermits loudly repeating the Lord's prayer. As the boat drew near the vessel, their voices could no longer be heard, but they could still be seen in the moonlight, standing as he had left them on the shore. The shortest in the middle, the tallest on the right, the middle one on the left. As soon as the bishop had reached the vessel, and got on board, the anchor was weighed, and the sails unfurled. The ship sailed away, and the bishop took a seat in the stern, and watched the island they had left. For a time he could still see the hermits, but presently they disappeared from sight, though the island was still visible. At last it too vanished, and only the sea was to be seen, rippling in the moonlight. The pilgrims lay down to sleep, and all was quiet on deck. The bishop did not wish to sleep, but sat alone at the stern, gazing at the sea, where the island was no longer visible, and thinking of the good old men. He thought how pleased they had been to learn the Lord's prayer, and he thanked God for having sent him to teach and help such godly men. So the bishop sat, thinking, and gazing at the sea, where the island had disappeared, and the moonlight flickered before his eyes, sparkling, now here, now there, upon the waves. Suddenly he saw something white and shining on the bright path which the moon cast across the sea. Was it a seagull, or the little gleaming sail of some small boat? The bishop fixed his eyes on it, wondering, It must be a boat sailing after us, thought he, but it is overtaking us very rapidly. It was far, far away a minute ago, but now it is much nearer. It cannot be a boat, for I can see no sail. But whatever it may be, it is following us and catching us up. And he could not make out what it was. Not a boat, nor a bird, nor a fish. It was too large for a man, and besides a man could not be out there in the midst of the sea. The bishop rose and said to the helmsman, Look there, what is that my friend, what is it? The bishop repeated, though he could now see plainly what it was. The three hermits, running upon the water, all gleaming white, their grey beards shining and approaching the ship as quickly as though it were not morning. The steersmen looked and let go the helm in terror. Oh Lord, the hermits are running after us on the water as though it were dry land. The passengers, hearing him, jumped up and crowded to the stern. They saw the hermits coming along hand in hand, and the two outer ones beckoning the ship to stop. All three were gliding along upon the water without moving their feet. Before the ship could be stopped, the hermits had reached it and raising their heads, all three, as with one voice, began to say, We have forgotten your teaching, servant of God. As long as we kept repeating it, we remembered. But when we stopped saying it for a time, a word dropped out, and now it is all gone to pieces. We can remember nothing of it. Teach us again. The bishop crossed himself, and leaning over the ship's side said, Your own prayer will reach the Lord, men of God. It is not for me to teach you. Pray for us sinners. And the bishop bowed low before the old men, and they turned and went back across the sea, and a light shone until daybreak on the spot where they were lost to sight. End of The Three Hermits by Leo Tolstoy. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information and to find out how you can volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Read and recorded by William Kuhn, January 2007. A Wagner Matinee by Willa Cather. I received one morning a letter written in pale ink on glassy blue-lined note paper and bearing the postmark of a little Nebraska village. This communication, worn and rubbed, looking as though it had been carried for some days in a coat pocket that was none too clean, was from my uncle Howard, and informed me that his wife had been left a small legacy by a bachelor relative who had recently died, and that it would be necessary for her to go to Boston to attend to the settling of the estate. He requested me to meet her at the station and render her whatever services might be necessary. On examining the date indicated as that of her arrival, I found it no later than to-morrow. He had characteristically delayed riding until, had I been away from home for a day, I must have missed the good woman altogether. The name of my Aunt Georgiana called up not alone her own figure, at once pathetic and grotesque, but opened before my feet a gulf of recollection so wide and deep that as the letter dropped from my hand I felt suddenly a stranger to all the present conditions of my existence, wholly ill at ease and out of place amid the familiar surroundings of my study. I became, in short, the gangling farm-boy my Aunt had known, scourged with chill-blanes and bashfulness, my hands cracked and sore from the corn-husking. I felt the knuckles of my thumb tentatively as though they were raw again. I sat again before her parlor organ, fumbling the scales with my stiff red hands, while she, beside me, made canvas mittens for the huskers. The next morning, after preparing my landlady somewhat, I set out for the station. When the train arrived I had some difficulty in finding my Aunt. She was the last of the passengers to alight, and it was not until I got her into the carriage that she seemed really to recognize me. She had come all the way in a day-coach. Her linen duster had become black with soot, and her black bonnet gray with dust during the journey. When we arrived at my boarding-house the landlady put her to bed at once, and I did not see her again until the next morning. Whatever shock Mrs. Springer experienced at my Aunt's appearance she considerably concealed. As for myself, I saw my Aunt's misshapen figure with that feeling of awe and respect with which we behold explorers who have left their ears and fingers north of France, Josephland, or their health somewhere along the upper Congo. My Aunt Georgiana had been a music teacher at the Boston Conservatory, somewhere back in the latter sixties. One summer, while visiting in the little village among the green mountains where her ancestors had dwelt for generations, she had kindled the callow fancy of the most idle and shiftless of all the village lads, and had conceived for this Howard Carpenter one of those extravagant passions which a handsome country boy of twenty-one sometimes inspires in an angular, spectacled woman of thirty. When she returned to her duties in Boston, Howard followed her, and the upshot of this inexplicable infatuation was that she eloped with him, including the reproaches of her family and the criticisms of her friends by going with him to the Nebraska frontier. Carpenter, who of course had no money, had taken a homestead in Red Willow County, fifty miles from the railroad. There they had measured off their quarter section themselves by driving across the prairie in a wagon to the wheel of which they had tied a red cotton handkerchief and counting off its revolutions. They built a dugout in the Red Hillside, one of those cave dwellings whose inmates so often reverted to primitive conditions. Their water they got from the lagoons where the buffalo drank, and their slender stock of provisions was always at the mercy of bands of roving Indians. For thirty years my aunt had not been further than fifty miles from the homestead. But Mrs. Springer knew nothing of all this and must have been considerably shocked at what was left of my kin's woman. Beneath the soiled linen duster which on her arrival was the most conspicuous feature of her costume she wore a black stuffed dress whose ornamentation showed that she had surrendered herself unquestioningly into the hands of a country dressmaker. My poor aunt's figure, however, would have presented astonishing difficulties to any dressmaker. Originally stooped, her shoulders were now almost bent together over her sunken chest. She wore no stays and her gown, which trailed unevenly behind, rose in a sort of peak over her abdomen. She wore ill-fitting false teeth and her skin was as yellow as a Mongolian's from constant exposure to a pitiless wind and to the alkaline water which hardens the most transparent cuticle into a sort of flexible leather. I owed to this woman most of the good that ever came my way in my boyhood and had a reverential affection for her. During the years when I was riding herd for my uncle, my aunt, after cooking the three meals, the first of which was ready at six o'clock in the morning and putting the six children to bed, would often stand until midnight at her ironing board with me at the kitchen table beside her hearing me recite Latin declensions and conjugations, gently shaking me when my drowsy head sank down over a page of her regular verbs. It was to her, at her ironing or mending, that I read my first Shakespeare and her old textbook on mythology was the first that ever came into my empty hands. She taught me my scales and exercises too on the little parlor organ which her husband had bought her after fifteen years, during which she had not so much as seen any instrument but an accordion that belonged to one of the Norwegian farmhands. She would sit beside me by the hour, ironing and counting while I struggled with the joyous farmer. But she seldom talked to me about music, and I understood why. She was a pious woman. She had the consolations of religion and, to her at least, her martyrdom was not wholly sorted. Once when I had been doggedly beating out some easy passages from an old score of ureanthi I had found among her music books, she came up to me and putting her hands over my eyes, gently drew my head back upon her shoulder, saying tremulously, Don't love it so well, Clark, or it may be taken from you. Oh, dear boy, pray that whatever your sacrifice may be, it be not that. When my aunt appeared in the morning after her arrival she was still in a semi-senambulant state. She seemed not to realize that she was in the city where she had spent her youth, the place longed for hungrily half a lifetime. She had been so wretchedly trained sick throughout the journey that she had no recollection of anything but her discomfort. Until all intents and purposes there were but a few hours of nightmare between the farm in Red Willow County and my study on Newberry Street. I had planned a little pleasure for her that afternoon to repay her for some of the glorious moments she had given me when we used to milk together in the straw-thatched cow shed, and she, because I was more than usually tired or because her husband had spoken sharply to me, would tell me of the splendid performances of the Huguenot she had seen in Paris in her youth. At two o'clock the symphony orchestra was to give a Wagner program and I intended to take my aunt, though as I conversed with her I grew doubtful about her enjoyment of it. Indeed, for her own sake I could only wish her taste for such things quite dead, and the long struggle mercifully ended at last. I suggested our visiting the conservatory in the common before lunch, but she seemed altogether too timid to wish to venture out. She questioned me absently about various changes in the city, but she was chiefly concerned that she had forgotten to leave instructions about feeding half-skimmed milk to a certain weakling calf, old Maggie's calf, you know, Clark, she explained, evidently having forgotten how long I had been away. She was further troubled because she had neglected to tell her daughter about the freshly opened kit of mackerel in the cellar which would spoil if it were not used directly. I asked her whether she had ever heard any of the Wagnerian operas and found that she had not, though she was perfectly familiar with her respective situations and had once possessed the piano score of the Flying Dutchman. I began to think it would have been best to get her back to Red Willow County without waking her, and regretted having suggested the concert. From the time we entered the concert hall, however, she was a trifle less passive and inert, and for the first time seemed to perceive her surroundings. I had felt some trepidation lest she might become aware of the absurdities of her attire, or might experience some painful embarrassment at stepping suddenly into the world to which she had been dead for a quarter of a century. But again I found how superficially I had judged her. She sat looking about her with eyes as impersonal, almost as stony, as those with which the granite Ramazes in a museum watches the froth and fret that ebbs and flows about his pedestal, separated from it by the lonely stretch of centuries. I have seen this same aloofness in old miners who drift into the brown hotel at Denver, their pockets full of bullion, their linen soiled, their haggard faces unshaven, standing in the thronged corridors as solitary as though they were still in a frozen camp in the Yukon, conscious that certain experiences have isolated them from their fellows by a gulf no haberdasher could bridge. We sat at the extreme left of the first balcony, facing the arc of our own and the balcony above us, veritable hanging gardens, brilliant as tulip beds. The matinee audience was made up chiefly of women, one lost the contour of faces and figures indeed, any effective line whatever, and there was only the color of bodices past counting, the shimmer of fabric soft and firm, silky and sheer, red, mauve, pink, blue, lilac, purple, ecru, rose, yellow, cream, and white, all the colors that an impressionist finds in a sunlit landscape, with here and there the dead shadow of a frock coat. My Aunt Georgiana regarded them as though they had been so many dobs of tube paint on a pallet. When the musicians came out and took their places, she gave a little stir of anticipation and looked with quickening interest down over the rail at that invariable grouping, perhaps the first wholly familiar thing that had greeted her eyes since she had left old Maggie and her weakling calf. I could feel how all those details sank into her soul, for I had not forgotten how they had sunk into mine when I came fresh from plowing forever and forever between green aisles of corn, whereas in a treadmill one might walk from daybreak to dusk without perceiving a shadow of change. The clean profiles of the musicians, the gloss of their linen, the dull black of their coats, the beloved shapes of the instruments, the patches of yellow light thrown by the green shaded lamps on the smooth, varnished bellies of the cellos and the base veals in the rear, the restless wind-tossed forests of fickle necks and bows. I recalled how, in the first orchestra I had ever heard, those long bow-strokes seemed to draw the heart out of me as a conjurer stick reels out yards of paper ribbon from a hat. The first number was the tan-houser overture. When the horns drew out the first strain of the pilgrim's chorus my Aunt Georgiana clutched my coat-sleeve. Then it was I first realized that for her this broke a silence of thirty years, the inconceivable silence of the plains. With the battle between the two motives with the frenzy of the Venusburg theme and its ripping of strings there came to be an overwhelming sense of the waist and wear we are so powerless to combat. And I saw again the tall naked house on the prairie, black and grim as a wooden fortress, the black pond where I had learned to swim, its margin pitted with sun-dried cattle-tracks, the rain-gullied clay banks about the naked house, the four dwarf ash seedlings where the dishcloths were always hung to dry before the kitchen door. The world there was the flat world of the ancients, to the east a cornfield that stretched to daybreak, to the west a corral that reached to sunset. Between the conquests of peace, dearer bought than those of war. The overture closed. My Aunt released my coat-sleeve, but she said nothing. She sat staring at the orchestra through a dullness of thirty years through the films made little by little by each of the three hundred and sixty-five days in every one of them. What I wondered did she get from it? She had been a good pianist in her day I knew, and her musical education had been broader than that of most music teachers of a quarter of a century ago. She had often told me of Mozart's operas and Meyerbeers, and I could remember hearing her sing years ago certain melodies of verities. When I had fallen ill with a fever in her house, she used to sit by my cot in the evening, when the cool night wind blew in through the faded mosquito netting tacked over the window, and I like watching a certain bright star that burned red above the cornfield. And sing home to our mountains, oh, let us return in a way fit to break the heart of a Vermont boy near dead of homesickness already. I watched her closely through the prelude to Tristan and Azolda, trying vainly to conjecture what that seething turmoil of strings and winds might mean to her. But she sat mutely staring at the violin bows that drove obliquely downward like the pelting streaks of rain in a summer shower. Had this music any message for her? Had she enough left to at all comprehend this power which had kindled the world since she had left it? I was in a fever of curiosity, but Aunt Georgiana sat silent upon her peak in Darien. She preserved this utter immobility throughout the number from the flying Dutchman, though her fingers worked mechanically upon her black dress, as though of themselves they were recalling the piano score they had once played. Poor old hands, they had been stretched and twisted into mere tentacles to hold and lift a need with. The palms unduly swollen, the fingers bent and knotted, on one of them a thin worn band that had once been a wedding-ring. As I pressed and gently quieted one of those groping hands, I remembered with quivering eyelids their services for me in other days. Soon after the tenor began the prize song, I heard a quick drawn breath and turned to my aunt. Her eyes were closed, but the tears were glistening on her cheeks, and I think in a moment more they were in my eyes as well. It never really died, then, the soul that can suffer so excruciatingly and so interminably. It withers to the outward eye only, like that strange moss which can lie on a dusty shelf half a century, and yet, if placed in water, grows green again. She wept so throughout the development and elaboration of the melody. During the intermission before the second half of the concert I questioned my aunt and found that the prize song was not new to her. Some years before they had drifted to the farm in Red Willow County, a young German, a tramp cow puncher who had sung the chorus at Beirut when he was a boy, along with the other present boys and girls. Of a Sunday morning he used to sit on his gingham-sheeted bed in the hands bedroom, which opened off the kitchen, cleaning the leather of his boots and saddle, singing the prize song, while my aunt went about her work in the kitchen. She had hovered about him until she had prevailed upon him to join the country church, though his sole fitness for this step, insofar as I could gather, lay in his boyish face and his possession of this divine melody. Shortly afterward he had gone to town on the Fourth of July, been drunk for several days, lost his money at a pharaoh table, ridden a saddled Texas steer on a bet, and disappeared with a fractured collarbone. All this my aunt told me huskily, wanderingly, though she were talking in the weak lapses of illness. Well, we have come to better things than the old Trovatori at any rate, Aunt Georgie. I queried with a well-meant effort at jocularity. Her lip quivered, and she hastily put her handkerchief up to her mouth. From behind it she murmured, And you have been hearing this ever since you left me, Clark. Her question was the gentlest and saddest of reproaches. The second half of the program consisted of four numbers from the ring, enclosed with Siegfried's funeral march. My aunt wept quietly, but almost continuously, as a shallow vessel overflows in a rainstorm. From time to time her dim eyes looked up at the lights which studded the ceiling, burning softly under their dull glass globes, doubtless they were stars in truth to her. I was still perplexed as to what measure of musical comprehension was left to her, she who had heard nothing but the singing of gospel hymns at Methodist Services, in a square-frame schoolhouse on Section 13, for so many years. I was wholly unable to gauge how much of it had been dissolved in soap suds, or worked into bread, or milked into the bottom of a pail. The deluge of sound poured on and on. I never knew what she found in the shining current of it. I never knew how far it bore her, or past what happy islands. From the trembling of her face I could well believe that before the last numbers she had been carried out where the myriad graves are, into the gray nameless burying grounds of the sea, or into some world of death vaster yet, where from the beginning of the world hope has lain down with hope and dream with dream, and renouncing, slept. The concert was over. The people filed out of the hall chattering and laughing, glad to relax and find the living level again. But my kin's woman made no effort to rise. The harpist slipped its green felt cover over his instrument. The flute players shook the water from their mouthpieces. The men of the orchestra went out one by one, leaving the stage to the chairs and music stands, empty as a winter cornfield. I spoke to my aunt. She burst into tears and sobbed pleadingly, I don't want to go, Clark! I don't want to go! I understood. For her, just outside the door of the concert hall, lay the black pond with the cattle-tracked bluffs, the tall unpainted house with weather-curled boards, naked as a tower, the crook-backed ash seedlings where the dishcloths hung to dry, the gaunt, molting turkeys picking up refuse about the kitchen door. End of A Wagner Matinee by Willa Cather. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilmour. It is very seldom that mere ordinary people like John and myself secure ancestral halls for the summer. A colonial mansion, a hereditary estate, I would say a haunted house and reach the height of romantic felicity, but that would be asking too much of fate. Still, I will proudly declare that there is something queer about it, else why should it be let so cheaply and why have stood so long untenanted? John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage. John is practical in the extreme. He has no patience with faith, an intense horror of superstition, and he scoffs openly at any talk of things not to be felt and seen and put down in figures. John is a physician, and perhaps, I would not say it to a living soul, of course, but this is dead paper and a great relief to my mind, perhaps that is one reason I do not get well faster. You see, he does not believe I am sick. And what can one do? If a physician of high standing and one's own husband assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing to matter with one, but temporary nervous depression, a slight hysterical tendency, what is one to do? My brother is also a physician and also of high standing, and he says the same thing. So I take phosphates or phosphites, whichever it is, and tonics and journeys and air and exercise, and I'm absolutely forbidden to work until I'm well again. Personally, I disagree with their ideas. Personally, I believe that congenial work with excitement and change would do me good. But what is one to do? I did write for a while in spite of them, but it does exhaust me a good deal having to be so sly about it or else meet with heavy opposition. I sometimes fancy that my condition, if I had less opposition and more society and stimulus, but John says the very worst thing I can do is to think about my condition, and I confess it always makes me feel bad. So I will let it alone and talk about the house. The most beautiful place. It is quite alone standing well back from the road, quite three miles from the village. It makes me think of English places that you read about, for there are hedges and walls and gates that lock and lots of separate little houses for the gardeners and people. There's a delicious garden. I never saw such a garden, large and shady, full of box bordered paths covered arbors with seats under them. There were greenhouses too, but they're all broken now. There was some legal trouble, I believe. Something about the heirs and co-heirs. Anyhow, the place has been empty for years. That spoils my ghostliness, I'm afraid, but I don't care. There is something strange about the house. I can feel it. I even said so to John one moonlight evening, but he said what I felt was a draft and shut the window. I'm unreasonably angry with John sometimes. I'm sure I never used to be so sensitive. I think it is due to this nervous condition. But John says if I feel so, I shall neglect proper self-control. So I take pains to control myself, before him at least, and that makes me very tired. I don't like our room a bit. I wanted one downstairs that opened on the piazza and had roses all over the window and such pretty old-fashioned chintz hangings, but John would not hear of it. He said there was only one window and not room for two beds and no near room for him if he took another. He's very careful and loving and hardly lets me stir without special direction. I have a schedule prescription for each hour in the day. He takes all care from me, so I feel basically ungrateful not to value it more. He said we came here solely on my account, that I was to have perfect rest and all the air I could get. Your exercise depends on your strength, my dear, said he, and your food somewhat on your appetite, but air you can absorb all the time. So we took the nursery at the top of the house. It is a big, airy room, the whole floor nearly, with windows that look always and air and sunshine galore. It was nursery first and then playroom and gymnasium, I should judge, for the windows are barred for little children and there are rings and things in the walls. The paint and paper, look as if a boy's school had used it. It is stripped off the paper in great patches all around the head of the bed, about as far as I can reach and in a great place on the other side of the room, low down. I never saw a worse paper in my life. One of those sprawling, flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin. It's dull enough to confuse the eye and following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study. When you follow the lame, uncertain curves for a little distance, they suddenly commit suicide, plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions. The color is repellent, arms revolting, a smoldering, unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow turning sunlight. It is a dull yet lurid orange in some places, a sickly self-retent in others. I wonder the children hated it. I should hate it myself if I had to live in this room long. There comes John. I must put this away. He hates to have me write a word. We have been here two weeks and I haven't felt like writing before since that first day. I am sitting by the window now, up in this atrocious nursery, and there's nothing to hinder my writing as much as I please, save lack of strength. John is away all day and even some nights when his cases are serious. I am glad my case is not serious. But these nervous troubles are dreadfully depressing. John does not know how much I really suffer. He knows there is no reason to suffer and that satisfies him. Of course it is only nervousness. It does weigh on me so not to do my duty in any way. I'm meant to be such a help to John, such a real rest and comfort and here I am a comparative burden already. Nobody would believe what an effort it is to do what little I am able to dress and entertain and other things. It is fortunate Mary is so good with the baby, such a dear baby, and yet I cannot be with him. It makes me so nervous. I suppose John never was nervous in his life. He laughs at me so about this wallpaper. At first he meant to repaper the room, but afterwards he said that I was letting it get the better of me and that nothing was worse for a nervous patient compared to such fancies. He said that after the wallpaper was changed it would be the heavy bedstead and then the barred windows and then that gate at the head of the stairs and so on. You know the place is doing you good, he said, and really dear I don't care to renovate the house just for a three months rental. Then do let us go downstairs, I said. There are such pretty rooms there. Then he took me in his arms and called me a blessed little goose and said he would go down to the cellar if I wished and have it whitewashed into the bargain. But he is right enough about the beds and windows and things. It is an airy and comfortable room as anyone need wish and of course I would not be so silly as to make him uncomfortable just for a whim. I'm really getting quite fond of the big room. I'll get that horrid wallpaper. Out of one window I can see the garden, those mysterious deep shaded arbors, the riotous old fashioned flowers and bushes and gnarly trees. Out of another I get a lovely view of the bay and a little private wharf belonging to the estate. There is a beautiful shaded lane that runs down there from the house. I always fancy I see people walking in these numerous paths and arbors but John has cautioned me not to give way to fancy in the least. He says that with my imaginative power and habit of story making a nervous weakness like mine is sure to lead to all manner of excited fancies and that I ought to use my will and good sense to check the tendency. So I try. I think sometimes that if I were only well enough to write a little it would relieve the press of ideas and rest me. But I find I get pretty tired when I try. It is so discouraging not to have any advice or friendship about my work. When I get really well John says we will ask cousin Henry and Julia down for a long visit. But he says he would as soon put fireworks in my pillowcase as to let me have those stimulating people about now. I wish I could get well faster but I must not think about that. This paper looks to me as if it knew what a vicious influence it had. There is a recurrent spot where the pattern lulls in the neck and two bulbous eyes stare you upside down. I get positively angry with the impertinence of it and the everlastingness. Up and down and sideways they crawl and those absurd unblinking eyes are everywhere. There is one place where two breaths didn't match and the eyes go all up and down the line one a little higher than the other. I never saw so much expression in an inanimate thing before and we all know how much expression they have. I used to lie awake as a child and get more entertainment and terror out of blank walls and plain furniture than most children could find in a toy store. I remember what a kindly wink the knobs of our big old bureau used to have and there was one chair that always seemed like a strong friend. I used to feel that if any of the other things looked too fierce I could always hop into that chair and be safe. The furniture in this room was so monious, however, for we had to bring it all from downstairs. I suppose when this was used as a playroom we had to take the nursery things out and no wonder I never saw such ravages as the children have made here. The wallpaper, as I said before, is torn off in spots and it's sticketh closer than a brother they must have had perseverance as well as hatred. Then the floor is scratched and gouged and splintered the plaster itself is dug out here and there and this great heavy bed which is all we found in the room looks as if it had been through the wars but I don't mind it a bit only the paper. There comes John's sister such a dear girl as she is and so careful of me I must not let her find me writing. She is a perfect and enthusiastic housekeeper and hopes for no better profession. I verily believe she thinks it is the writing that made me sick but I can write when she's out and see her a long way off from these windows. There is one that commands the road a lovely shaded winding road and one that just looks off over the country a lovely country too full of great alms and velvet meadows. This wallpaper has a kind of sub-pattern in a different shade a particularly irritating one where you can only see it in certain lights and not clearly then but in the places where it isn't faded and where the sun is just so I can see a strange, provoking, formless sort of figure that seems to skulk about behind that silly and conspicuous front design there's sister on the stairs well the 4th of July is over the people are gone and I am tired out John thought it might do me good to see a little company for we just had mother and Nellie and the children down for a week to do a thing Jeannie sees to everything now but it tired me all the same John says if I don't pick up faster he shall send me to Weir Mitchell in the fall but I don't want to go there at all I had a friend who was in his hands once and she says he is just like John and my brother only more so besides it is such an undertaking to go so far I don't feel as if it was worthwhile to turn my hand over for anything and I'm getting dreadfully fretful and inquireless I cry nothing I cry most of the time of course I don't when John is here or anybody else but when I am alone and I am alone a good deal just now John is kept in town very often by serious cases and Jeannie is good and lets me alone when I want her to so I walk a little in the garden we're down that lovely lane sit on the porch under the roses lie down up here a good deal I'm getting really fond of the room in spite of the wallpaper perhaps because of the wallpaper it dwells in my mind so I lie here on this great immovable bed it is nailed down I believe and follow that pattern about by the hour it is as good as gymnastics I assure you I start we'll say at the bottom down in the corner over there where it has not been touched for the thousandth time that I will follow that pointless pattern to some sort of a conclusion I know a little of the principle of design and I know this thing was not arranged on any laws of radiation or alternation or repetition or symmetry or anything else that I ever heard of it is repeated of course by Brett's but not otherwise looked at in one way each Brett stands alone with loaded curves and flourishes a kind of debased Romanesque with delirium trimmings go waddling up and down in isolated columns of fatuity but on the other hand they connect diagonally and the sprawling outlines run off in great slanting waves of optic horror like a lot of wallowing seaweeds in full chase the whole thing goes horizontally too at least it seems so and I exhaust myself in trying to distinguish the order of its going in that direction they amused a horizontal breadth for a freeze and that adds wonderfully to the confusion there is one end of the room where it is almost intact and there when the crosslights fade and the lowest sun shines directly upon it I can almost fancy radiation after all the interminable grotesques seem to form around a common center and rush off in headlong plunges of equal distraction it makes me tired to follow it and take a nap I guess I don't know why I should write this I don't want to I don't feel able and I know John would think it absurd but I must say what I feel and think in some way it is such a relief but the effort is getting to be greater than the relief half the time now I am awfully lazy and lie down ever so much John says I mustn't lose my strength and has me take cod liver oil tonics and things to say nothing of ale and wine and rare meat dear John he loves me very dearly and hates to have me sick I tried to have a real earnest reasonable talk with him the other day and tell him how I wish he would let me go and make a visit to Cousin Henry and Julia but he said I wasn't able to go nor able to stand it after I got there and did not make out a very good case for myself or I was crying before I had finished it is getting to be a great effort for me to think straight just this nervous weakness I suppose and dear John gathered me up in his arms and just carried me upstairs and laid me on the bed and sat by me and read to me till it tired my head he said I was his darling in his comfort and all he had and that I must take care of myself for his sake and keep well he says no one but myself can help me out of it and let me feel and self control and not let any silly fancies run away with me there's one comfort the baby is well and happy and does not have to occupy this nursery with the horrid wallpaper if we had not used it that blessed child would have but a fortune it escaped why I wouldn't have a child of mine and impression of a little thing live in such a room for worlds I never thought of it before but it is lucky that John kept me here after all I can stand it so much easier than a baby you see of course I never mention it to them anymore too wise but I keep watch of it all the same there are things in the paper that nobody knows but me or ever will behind that outside pattern the dim shapes get clearer every day it is always the same shape only very numerous and it is like a woman stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern I don't like it a bit I wonder I begin to think I wish John would take me away from here it is so hard to talk with John about my case because he is so wise because he loves me so but I tried it last night it was moonlight the moon shines in all around and does I hate to see it sometimes it creeps so slowly and always comes in by one window or another John was asleep and I hated to awaken him so I kept still and watched the moonlight on that undulating wallpaper till I felt creepy the faint figure behind seemed to shake the pattern just as if she wanted to get out I got up softly and went to feel and see if the paper did move and when I came back John was awake what is it little girl he said don't go walking about like that you'll get cold I thought it was a good time to talk so I told him that I really was not gaining here that I wished he would take me away my darling he said at least we'll be up in three weeks and I can't see how to leave before the repairs are not done at home and I cannot possibly leave town just now of course if you were in any danger I could and would but you really are better dear whether you can see it or not I am a doctor dear and I know you are gaining flesh and color your appetite is better I feel really much easier about you don't weigh a bit more I said nor as much and my appetite may be better in the evening but my appetite is worse in the morning when you are away plus her little heart said he with a big hug she shall be as sick as she pleases but now let's improve the shining hours by going to sleep we'll talk about it in the morning and you won't go away I asked gloomily why how can I dear it is only three weeks more and then we will take a nice little trip of a few days while Jenny is getting the house ready for dinner better in body perhaps I began and stopped short we sat up straight and looked at me with such a stern reproachful look but I could not say another word my darling said he I beg of you for my sake and for our child's sake as well as for your own that you will never for one instant let that idea enter your mind there is nothing so dangerous relating to a temperament like yours it is a false and foolish fancy can you not trust me as a physician when I tell you so so of course I said no more on that score and we went to sleep before long he thought I was asleep first but I wasn't and lay there for hours trying to decide whether that front pattern and the back pattern really did move together or separately on a pattern like this by daylight there is a lack of sequence a defiance of law that is a constant irritant to a normal mind the color is hideous enough and unreliable enough and infuriating enough but the pattern is torturing you think you've mastered it but just as you get well underway and following it turns a back somersault and there you are it slaps you in the face knocks you down and tramples upon you it's a bad dream the outside pattern is a florid arabesque reminding one of a fungus if you can imagine a toadstool in joints an interminable string of toadstools budding and sprouting in endless conglutions why that is something like it that is sometimes there is one marked peculiarity about this paper I think nobody seems to notice but myself and that is that it changes as the light changes when the sun shoots in through the east window I always watch for that first long straight ray it changes so quickly that I can never quite believe it that is why I watch it always by moonlight the moon shines in all night when there is a moon I wouldn't know what was the same paper at night in any kind of light in twilight, candlelight, lamplight and worst of all by moonlight it becomes the stars the outside pattern I mean and the woman behind it is as plain as can be I didn't realize for a long time what the thing was that showed behind that dim sub-pattern but now I'm quite sure it is a woman by daylight she is subdued, quiet I fancy it is the pattern that keeps her so still it is so puzzling it keeps me quiet by the hour I lie down ever so much now John says it is good for me and to sleep all I can indeed he started the habit of making me lie down for an hour after each meal it is a very bad habit I am convinced for you see I don't sleep and that cultivates deceit for I don't tell them I'm awake, oh no the fact is I'm getting a little afraid of John he seems very queer sometimes and even Jenny has an inexplicable look it strikes me occasionally just as a scientific hypothesis that perhaps it is the paper I watched John when he did not know I was looking and come into the room suddenly on the most innocent excuses and I caught him several times looking at the paper and Jenny too I caught Jenny with her hand on it once she didn't know I was in the room and when I asked her in a quiet very quiet voice with the most restrained manner possible what she was doing with the paper she turned around as if she had been caught stealing and looked quite angry asked me why I should frighten her so and she said that the paper stained everything attached that she had found yellow smooches on all my clothes and John's and she wished we would be more careful did not that sound innocent but I know she was studying that pattern and I am determined that nobody shall find it out but myself life is very much more exciting now than it used to be you see I have something more to expect to look forward to to watch I really do eat better and I am more quiet than I was John is so pleased to see me improve he laughed a little the other day and said I seem to be flourishing in spite of my wallpaper I turned it off with a laugh I had no intention of telling him it was because of the wallpaper he would make fun of me he might even want to take me away I do not want to leave now until I have found it out there is a week more and I think that will be enough I am feeling ever so much better I don't sleep much at night for it is so interesting to watch developments but I sleep a good deal in the daytime in the daytime I miss hiresome and perplexing there are always new shoots on the fungus and new shades of yellow all over it I cannot keep count of them though I have tried conscientiously it is strange just yellow that wallpaper makes me think of all the yellow things I ever saw not beautiful ones like buttercups but only foul bad yellow things there is something else about that paper the smell I noticed at the moment we came into the room but with so much air and sun it was not bad now we have had a week of fog and rain and whether the windows are open or not the smell is here it creeps all over the house I find it hovering in the dining room sculking in the parlor hiding in the hall lying in wait for me on the stairs it gets into my hair even when I go to ride if I turn my head suddenly and surprise it there is that smell such a peculiar odor too I have spent hours in trying to analyze it to find what it smelled like it is not bad at first and very gentle but quite the subtlest most enduring odor I ever met in this damp weather it is awful I wake up in the night and find it hanging over me it used to disturb me at first I thought seriously of burning the house to reach the smell but now I am used to it the only thing I can think of that it is like is the color of the paper a yellow smell I can only mark on this wall a low down near the mop board a streak that runs around the room it goes behind every piece of furniture except the bed a long straight even smooch as if it had been rubbed over and over I wonder how it was done and who did it and what they did it for round and round and round and round and round it makes me dizzy I really have discovered something at last watching so much at night when it changes so I have finally found out that front pattern does move and no wonder the woman behind shakes it sometimes I think there are great many women behind sometimes only one and she crawls around fast and her crawling shakes it all over then in the very bright spots she keeps still and in the very shady spots she just takes hold of the bars and shakes them hard all the time trying to climb through but nobody could climb through that pattern it strangles so I think that is why it has so many heads they get through and then the pattern strangles them off turns them upside down and makes their eyes white if those heads were covered or taken off it would not be half so bad I think that woman gets out in the daytime and I'll tell you why privately I've seen her I can see her out of every one of my windows it is the same woman I know for she is always creeping and most women do not creep by daylight I see her on that long road under the trees creeping along and when a carriage comes she hides into the blackberry lines I don't blame her a bit it must be very humiliating to be caught creeping by daylight I always lock the door when I creep by daylight I can't do it at night for I know John would suspect something at once and John is so queer now that I don't want to irritate him I wish he would take another room besides I don't want anybody to get that woman out at night but myself I often wonder if I could see her out of all the windows at once but turn as fast as I can I can only see you out of one at a time and though I always see her she may be able to creep faster than I can turn I have watched her sometimes away off in the open country creeping as fast as a cloud shadow in a high wind fully that top pattern could be gotten off from the under one I mean to try it little by little I have found out another thing but I shan't tell it this time it does not do to trust people too much there are only two more days to get this paper off and I believe John is beginning to notice I don't like to look in his eyes and I heard him ask Jenny a lot of questions about me she had a very good report to give she said I slept a good deal in the daytime John knows I don't sleep very well at night for all I'm so quiet he asked me all sorts of questions too I pretended to be very loving and kind because if I couldn't see through him still I don't wonder he acts so sleeping out of this paper for three months it only interests me but I feel sure John and Jenny are secretly affected by it hurrah! this is the last day but it is enough John is to stay in town overnight and won't be out until this evening Jenny wanted to sleep with me this life but I told her I should undoubtedly rest better for a night all alone that was clever really I wasn't alone a bit as soon as it was moonlight and that poor thing began to crawl and shake the pattern I got up and ran to help her I pulled and she shook and she pulled and before morning we had peeled off yards of that paper a strip about as high as my head and half around the room and then when the sun came and that awful pattern began to laugh at me I declared I would finish it today we go away tomorrow and they're moving all my furniture down again to leave things as they were before Jenny looked at the wall in amazement but I told her merrily that I did it out of pure spite at the vicious thing she laughed and said I didn't mind doing it herself but I must not get tired how she betrayed herself that time but I am here and no person touches this paper but me not alive she died to get me out of the room it was too patent but I said it was so quiet and empty and clean now that I believed I would lie down again and sleep all I could and not to wake me even for dinner I would call and I woke so now she is gone and the things are gone and there is nothing left but that great bedstead nailed down with the canvas mattress we found on it we shall sleep downstairs tonight and take the boat home tomorrow I quite enjoy the room now it is bare again how those children did tear about here this bedstead is fairly gnawed but I must get to work I have locked the door and thrown the key down into the front path I don't want to go out anybody come in till John comes I want to astonish him I've got a rope up here that even Jenny did not find if that woman does get out and tries to get away I can tie her but I forgot I could not reach far without anything to stand on this bed will not move I tried to lift and push it until I was lame and then I got so angry I bit off a little piece at one quarter but it hurt my teeth then I peeled off all the paper and reached standing on the floor it sticks horribly and the pattern just enjoys it all the strangled heads and bulbous eyes and waddling fungus growths just shriek with derision I am getting angry enough to do something desperate to jump out of the window would be admirable exercise but the bars are too strong even to try besides I wouldn't do it of course not I know well enough that a step like that is improper I might be misconstrued I would like to look out of the windows even there are so many of those creeping women and they creep so fast I wonder if they all come out of that wall paper as I did but I am securely fastened now by my well-hidden rope you don't get me out in the road there I suppose I shall have to get back behind the pattern when it comes night and that is hard it is so pleasant to be out in this great room and creep around as I please I don't want to go outside I won't even if Ginny asks me to for outside you have to creep on the ground and everything is green instead of yellow but here I can creep smoothly on the floor and my shoulder just fits in that long smooch around the wall so I cannot lose my way but there's John at the door it is no use young man you can't open it how he does call and pound now he's crying for an axe it would be a shame to break down that beautiful door John Deere said I in the gentlest voice the keys down by the front steps under a plantain leaf that silenced him for a few moments then he said very quietly indeed open the door my darling I can't said I the keys down by the front door under a plantain leaf and then I said it again several times very gently and slowly and said it so often that he had to go and see and he got it of course and came in he stopped short by the door what is the matter he cried for God's sake what are you doing I kept on creeping just the same but I looked at him over my shoulder I got out at last said I in spite of you and Jane and I pulled off most of the paper so you can't put me back now why should that man have fainted but he did and right across my path by the wall so that I had to creep over him every time at the end of the yellow wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman