 How I Edited an Agricultural Paper by Mark Twain. I did not take temporary editorship of an agricultural paper without misgivings. Neither would a landsman take command of a ship without misgivings, but I was in circumstances that made the salary an object. The regular editor of the paper was going off for a holiday and I accepted the terms he offered and took his place. The sensation of being at work again was luxurious and I wrought all the week with unflagging pleasure. We went to press and I waited a day with some solicitude to see whether my effort was going to attract any notice. As I left the office toward sundown a group of men and boys at the foot of the stairs dispersed with one impulse and gave me passageway and I heard one or two of them say, That's him! I was naturally pleased by this incident. The next morning I found a similar group at the foot of the stairs and scattering couples and individuals standing here and there in the street and over the way watching me with interest. The group separated and fell back as I approached and I heard a man say, Look at his eye! I pretended not to observe the notice I was attracting but secretly I was pleased with it and was proposing to write an account of it to my aunt. I went up the short flight of stairs and heard cheery voices and a ringing laugh as I drew near the door which I opened and caught a glimpse of two young, rural looking men whose faces blanched and lengthened when they saw me and then they both plunged through the window with a great crash. I was surprised. In about half an hour an old gentleman with a flowing beard and a fine but rather austere face entered and sat down at my invitation. He seemed to have something on his mind. He took off his hat and set it on the floor and got out of it a red silk handkerchief and a copy of our paper. He put the paper on his lap and while he polished his spectacles with his handkerchief he said, Are you the new editor? I said I was. Have you ever edited an agricultural paper before? No, I said. This is my first attempt. Very likely. Have you had any experience in agricultural practically? No, I believe I have not. Some instinct told me so said the old gentleman putting on his spectacles and looking over them at me with asperity while he folded his paper into a convenient shape. I wish to read you what must have made me have that instinct. It was this editorial. Listen and see if it was you that wrote it. Turnips should never be pulled. It injures them. It is much better to send a boy up and let him shake the tree. Now what do you think of that, for I really suppose you wrote it? Think of it. Why, I think it is good. I think it is sense. I have no doubt that every year millions and millions of bushels of turnips are spoiled in this township alone by being pulled in a half-ripe condition when, if they had sent a boy up to shake the tree, shake your grandmother. Turnips don't grow on trees. Oh, they don't, don't they? Well who said they did? The language was intended to be figurative, wholly figurative. Anybody that knows anything will know that I meant that the boy should shake the vine. Then this old person got up and tore his paper all into small shreds and stamped on them and broke several things with his cane and said I did not know as much as a cow and then went out and banged the door after him, and in short acted in such a way that I fancied he was displeased about something but not knowing what the trouble was I could not be any help to him. Pretty soon after this a long cadaverous creature with lanky locks hanging down to his shoulders and a weak stubble bristling from the hills and valleys of his face darted within the door and halted motionless with finger on lip and head and body bent in listening attitude. No sound was heard. Still he listened, no sound. Then he turned the key in the door and came elaborately tiptoeing toward me till he was within long reaching distance of me when he stopped and, after scanning my face with intense interest for a while, drew a folded copy of our paper from his bosom and said, there you wrote that, read it to me quick, relieve me, I suffer. I read as follows, and as the sentences fell from my lips I could see the relief come, I could see the drawn muscles relax, and the anxiety go out of the face, and rest and peace steal over the features like the merciful moonlight over a desolate landscape. The guano is a fine bird, but great care is necessary in rearing it. It should not be imported earlier than June or later than September. In the winter it should be kept in a warm place, where it can hatch out its young. It is evident that we are to have a backward season for grain, therefore it will be well for the farmer to begin setting out his corn stalks and planting his buckwheat cakes in July instead of August. Concerning the pumpkin, this berry is a favorite with the natives of the interior of New England, who prefer it to the gooseberry for the making of fruitcake, and who likewise give it the preference over the raspberry for feeding cows as being more filling and fully as satisfying. The pumpkin is the only esculent of the orange family that will thrive in the north, except the gourd and one or two varieties of the squash, but the custom of planting it in the front yard with the shrubbery is fast going out of vogue, for it is now generally conceded that the pumpkin as a shade-tree is a failure. Now as the warm weather approaches and the ganders begin to spawn, the excited listener sprang toward me to shake hands and said, there, there, that will do. I know I am all right now, because you have read it just as I did, word for word. But stranger when I first read it this morning I said to myself I never, never believed it before notwithstanding my friends kept me under watch so strict, but now I believe I am crazy, and with that I fetched a howl that you might have heard two miles and started out to kill somebody, because you know, I knew it would come to that sooner or later and so I might as well begin. I read one of them paragraphs over again, supposed to be certain, and then I burned my house down and started. I have crippled several people and have got one fellow up a tree where I can get him if I want him, but I thought I would call in here as I pass along and make the thing perfectly certain, and now it is certain. When I tell you it is lucky for the chap that is in the tree I should have killed him sure as I went back. Good-bye, sir, good-bye, you have taken a great load off my mind. My reason has stood the strain of one of your agricultural articles, and I know that nothing can ever unseat it now. Good-bye, sir. I felt a little uncomfortable about the cripplings in the arsons this person had been entertaining himself with, for I could not help feeling remotely accessory to them. These thoughts were quickly banished for the regular editor walked in. I thought to myself, now, if you had gone to Egypt, as I recommended to you to, I might have had a chance to get my hand in, but you wouldn't do it and here you are. I sort of expected you. The editor was looking sad and perplexed and dejected. He surveyed the wreck which that old rioter and those two young farmers had made, and then said, this is a sad business, a very sad business. There is the mucilage bottle broken in six panes of glass and a spittoon and two candlesticks, but that is not the worst. The reputation of the paper is injured, and permanently I fear. True there never was such a call for the paper before, and it never sold such a large edition or a sword to such celebrity, but does one want to be famous for lunacy and prosper upon the infirmities of his mind? My friend, as I am an honest man, the street out here is full of people, and others are roosting on the fences, waiting to get a glimpse of you, because they think you are crazy, and while they might after reading your editorials, they are a disgrace to journalism. Why what put it into your head you could edit a paper of this nature? You do not seem to know the first rudiments of agriculture, you speak of a furrow and a harrow as being the same thing. You talk of the molting season for cows, and you recommend the domestication of the polecat on account of its playfulness and its excellence as a ratter. Your remark that clams will lie quiet if music be played to them was superfluous, entirely superfluous. Nothing disturbs clams, clams always lie quiet. Clams care nothing whatever about music. Heavens and earth, friend, if you had made the inquiring of ignorance the study of your life, you could not have graduated with higher honor than you could today. I never saw anything like it. Your observation that the horse chestnut as an article of commerce is steadily gaining in favor is simply calculated to destroy this journal. I want you to throw up your situation and go. I want no more holiday. I could not enjoy it if I had it. Certainly not with you in my chair. I would always stand in dread of what you might be going to recommend next. It makes me lose all patience every time I think of your disgusting oyster beds under the head of landscape gardening. I want you to go. Nothing on earth could persuade me to take another holiday. Oh, why didn't you tell me you didn't know anything about agriculture? Tell you, you corn stalk, you cabbage, you son of a cauliflower. It's the first time I ever heard such an unfeeling remark. I tell you I have been in the editorial business going on 14 years, and it is the first time I ever heard of a man's having to know anything in order to edit a newspaper. You turnip. Who write their dramatic critiques for the second rate papers? Why a parcel of promoted shoemakers and apprentice apothecaries who know just as much about good acting as I do about good farming and no more? Who review the books? People who never wrote one? Who do up the heavy leaders on finance? Parties who have had the largest opportunities for knowing nothing about it? Who criticize the Indian campaigns? Gentlemen who do not know a whore-whoop from a wigwam, and who never have had to run a foot-grace with a tomahawk or pluck arrows out of the several members of their families to build the evening campfire with? Who write the temperance appeals and clamor about the flowing bowl? Folks who will never draw another sober breath till they do it in the grave? Who edit the agriculture of papers, you yam? Men as a general thing who fail in the poetry line, yellow colored novel line, sensational drama line, city editor line, and finally fall back on agriculture as a temporary reprieve from the poor house? You try to tell me anything about the newspaper business. Sir, I have been through it from alpha to Omaha, and I tell you that the less a man knows, the bigger the noise he makes and the higher the salary he commands. Heaven knows if I had been but ignorant instead of cultivated and impudent instead of diffident, I could have made a name for myself in this cold, selfish world. I take my leave, sir. Since I have been treated as you have treated me, I am perfectly willing to go, but I have done my duty. I have fulfilled my contract as far as I was permitted to do it. I said I could make your paper of interest to all classes, and I have. I said I could run your circulation up to twenty thousand copies, and if I had had two more weeks I would have done it. Not have given you the best class of readers that ever an agricultural paper had. Not a farmer in it, nor a solitary individual who could tell a watermelon tree from a peach vine to save his life. You are the loser by this rupture, not me, pie plant. Adios. I then left. End of How I edited an Agricultural Paper by Mark Twain. Read by Richard Wallace. Liberty, Missouri. 25 February, 2010. Laura Bissacchi, H.H. Monroe. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. You are not really dying, are you? asked Amanda. I have the doctor's permission to live till Tuesday, said Laura. But today is Saturday. This is serious, gasped Amanda. I don't know about it being serious. It is certainly Saturday, said Laura. Death is always serious, said Amanda. I never said I was going to die. I am presumably going to leave off being Laura. But I shall go on being something. An animal of some kind, I suppose. You see, when one hasn't been very good in the life, one has just lived. One reincarnates in some lower organism. And I haven't been very good when one comes to think of it. I've been petty, and mean, and vindictive, and all that sort of thing, when circumstances have seemed to warrant it. Circumstances never warrant that sort of thing, said Amanda hastily. If you don't mind by saying so, observed Laura, Egbert is a circumstance that would warrant any amount of that sort of thing. You're married to him. That's different. You've sworn to love, honor, and endure him. I haven't. I don't see what's wrong with Egbert, protested Amanda. Oh, I dare say the wrongness has been on my part, admitted Laura, dispassionately. He has merely been the extenuating circumstance. He made a thin, peevish kind of fuss, for instance, when I took the collie puppies from the farm out for a run the other day. They chased his young broods of speckled sessics and drove two sitting hands off their nests, besides running all over the flowerbeds. You know how devoted he is to his poetry and garden. Anyhow, he didn't have gone on about it for the entire evening, and then he said, let's say no more about it, just when I was beginning to enjoy the discussion. That's where one of my petty vindictive revenges came in, added Laura, with an unrepentant chuckle. I turned the entire family of speckled sessics into his seedling shed the day after the puppy episode. How could you, exclaimed Amanda? It came quite easy, said Laura. Two of the hens pretended to be laying at the time, but I was firm, and we thought it was an accident. You see, resumed Laura, I really have some grounds for supposing that my next incarnation will be in a lower organism. I shall be an animal of some kind. On the other hand, I haven't been a bad sort in my way, so I think I may count on being a nice animal, being elegant and lively, with a love of fun. An alter, perhaps. I can't imagine you as an alter, said Amanda. Well, I don't suppose you can imagine me as an angel if it comes to that, said Laura. Amanda was silent. She couldn't. Personally, I think an alter life would be rather enjoyable, continued Laura, salmon to eat all the around, and the satisfaction of being able to fetch the trout in their own homes without having to wait for hours till they condescend to rise to the fly you've been dangling before them. And an elegant, svelte figure. Think of the alter hounds, said to posed Amanda, how dreadful to be hunted and harried, and finally worried to death. A rather fun with half the neighborhood looking on, and anyhow not worse than this Saturday to Tuesday business of dying by inches. And then I should go on into something else. If I had been a marritly good alter, I suppose I should get back into human shape of some sort. Probably something rather primitive, a little brown, unclothed Nubian boy, I should think. I wish you would be serious, said Amanda. You really ought to be if you're only going to leave till Tuesday. As a matter of fact, Laura died on Monday. So dreadfully upsetting Amanda complained to her uncle-in-law, Sir Lulworth Quain, I've asked quite a lot of people down for golf and fishing, and the Redwood Dendrons are just looking their best. A luller always was inconsiderate, said Sir Lulworth. She was born during Goodwood week with an ambassador staying in the house who hated babies. She had the maddest kind of ideas, said Amanda. Do you know if there was any insanity in her family? Insanity, I've never heard of any. Her father lives in West Kensington, but I believe he's seen on all other subjects. She had an idea she was going to be reincarnated as an alter, said Amanda. One meets with those ideas of reincarnation so frequently, even in the West, said Sir Lulworth, that one can hardly set them down as being mad. And Laura was such an unaccountable person in this life that I should not like to lay down definite rules as to what she might be doing in an after state. You think she really might have passed into some animal form, asked Amanda? She was one of those who shaped their opinions rather readily from the standpoint of those around them. Just then Egbert entered the breakfast room, wearing an air of bereavement that Laura's demise would have been insufficient in itself to account for. For a wise speckled Sussex had been killed, he exclaimed, the very four that put a go to the show on Friday. One of them was dragged away and eaten right in the middle of that new carnation bed that I bend to such trouble and expense over. My best flower bed and my best fowl singled out for destruction. It almost seems as if the brute that did the deed had special knowledge how to be as devastating as possible in a short space of time. Oh, was it a fox, do you think, asked Amanda? Sounds more like a pole catch, said Sir Lulworth. No, said Egbert, there were marks of webbed feet all over the place, and we followed the tracks down to the stream at the bottom of the garden, evidently an otter. Amanda looked quickly and furtively across at Sir Lulworth. Egbert was too agitated to eat any breakfast and went out to superintend the strengthening of the poultry yard defenses. I think she might at least have waited till the funeral was over, said Amanda in a scandalized voice. It's her own funeral, you know, said Sir Lulworth. It's a nice pointed etiquette, how far one ought to show respect to one's own mortal remains. This regard for Mortuary Convention was cared to further length next day. During the absence of the family at the funeral ceremony, the remaining survivors of the speckled Sussex were massacred. The Marauder's line of retreat seemed to have embraced most of the flower beds on the lawn, but the strawberry beds in the lower garden had also suffered. I shall get the otter house to come here at the earliest possible moment, said Egbert savagely. On no account, you can't dream of such a thing, exclaimed Amanda. I mean, it wouldn't do so soon after a funeral in the house. It's a case of necessity, said Egbert. Once an otter takes to that sort of thing, it won't stop. Perhaps it will go elsewhere now there are no more fouls left, suggested Amanda. One would think you wanted to shield the beast, said Egbert. There's been so little water in the stream lately, objected Amanda. It seems hardly sporting to hunt an animal when it has so little chance of taking refuge anywhere. Good gracious, screamed Egbert, I'm not thinking about sport. I want to have the animal killed as soon as possible. Even Amanda's opposition weakened when during church time on the following Sunday, the otter made its way into the house, raided half a salmon from the larder, and worried it into stale fragments on the Persian rug in Egbert's studio. We shall have it hiding under our beds and biting pieces out of our feet before long, said Egbert. And from what Amanda knew of this particular otter, she felt that the possibility was not a remote one. On the evening preceding the day fixed for the hunt, Amanda spent a solitary hour walking by the banks of the stream, making what she imagined to be hound noises. It was charitably supposed by those who overheard her performance that she was practicing for farm yard imitations at the forthcoming village entertainment. It was her friend and neighbor, Aurora Biorre, who brought her news of the day's sport. Petty went out, we had quite a good day. We found at once in the pool just below your garden. Did you kill Ask Amanda? Rather, a fine she otter. Your husband got rather badly bitten and trying to tail it. Poor beast, I feel quite sorry for it. It had such a human look in its eyes when it was killed. You'll call me silly, but do you know who the look reminded me of? My dear woman, what is the matter? When Amanda had recovered to a certain extent from her attack of nervous prostration, Egbert took her to the Nile Valley to recuperate. Chains of scenes speedily brought about the desired recovery of health and mental balance. The escapades of an adventurous otter in search of a variation of diet were viewed in their proper light. Amanda's normally placid temperament reasserted itself. Even a hurricane of shouted curses coming from her husband's dressing room in her husband's voice, but hardly in his usual vocabulary, failed to disturb her serenity as she made a leisurely toilet one evening in a Cairo hotel. What is the matter? What has happened? She asked in amused curiosity. The little beast has thrown all my clean shirts into the bath. Wait till I catch you, you little. What little beast, asked Amanda, suppressing a desire to laugh. Egbert's language was so hopelessly inadequate to express his outraged feelings. A little beast of a naked brown Nubian boy, splattered Egbert. And now Amanda is seriously ill. The End of Laura by Sackie, H.H. Monroe. Read by Leonard Wilson. Lucifer by Anatole, France. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Reading by Greg Marguerite. Lucifer by Anatole, France. And so successful was Spinello with his horrible and portentous production that it was commonly reported, so great is always the force of fancy, that the said figure of Lucifer, trodden underfoot by St. Michael in the altar piece of the church of St. Angelo at Ariso, painted by him had appeared to the artist in a dream and asked him in what place he had beheld him under so brutish a form. Lives of the most excellent painters by Giorgio Vasari, Life of Spinello. Andrea Taffi, painter and worker in Mosaic of Florence had a wholesome terror of the devils of hell, particularly in the watches of the night when it is given to the powers of darkness to prevail. And the worthy man's fears were not unreasonable for in those days the demons had good cause to hate the painters who robbed them of more souls with a single picture than a good little preaching friar could do in 30 sermons. No doubt the monk to instill a soul saving horror in the hearts of the faithful would describe to the utmost of his powers that day of wrath, that day of mourning, which is to reduce the universe to ashes, teste de vedette civila, borrowing his deepest voice and bellowing through his hands to imitate the archangel's last trump. But there it was all sound and fury signifying nothing, whereas a painting displayed on a chapel wall or in the cloister showing Jesus Christ sitting on the great white throne to judge the living and the dead spoke unceasingly to the eyes of sinners and through the eyes chastened such as had sinned by the eyes or otherwise. It was in the days when cunning masters were depicting at Santa Croce in Florence and the Campo Santo of Pisa, the mysteries of divine justice. These works were drawn according to the account in verse which Dante Alagari, a man very learned in theology and in canon law, wrote in days gone by of his journey to hell and purgatory and paradise. Wither by the singular great merits of his lady, he was able to make his way alive. So everything in these paintings was instructive and true. And we may say surely less profit is to be had of reading the most full and ample chronicle than from contemplating such representative works of art. Moreover, the Florentine masters took heed to paint under the shade of orange groves on the flower-starred turf fair ladies and gallant knights with death lying in wait for them with his scythe while they were discoursing of love to the sound of lutes and violas. Nothing was better fitted to convert carnal-minded sinners who quaff forgetfulness of God on the lips of women. To rebuke the covetous, the painter would show to the life the devils pouring molten gold down the throat of Bishop or Abbas, who had commissioned some work from him and then scammed his pay. This is why the demons in those days were bitter enemies of the painters and above all of the Florentine painters who surpassed all the rest in subtlety and wit. Chiefly they reproached them with representing them under a piteous guise with the heads of bird and fish, serpent's bodies and bat's wings. This sore resentment which they felt will come out plainly in the history of Spinello Varezzo. Spinello Spinelli was sprung of a noble family of Florentine exiles and his graciousness of mind matched his gentle birth for he was the most skillful painter of his time. He wrought many and great works at Florence and the peasants begged him to complete Giotto's wall paintings in their Campo Santo where the dead rest beneath roses in holy earth shipped from Jerusalem. At last after working long years in diverse cities and getting much gold, he longed to see once more the good city of Arizzo, his mother. The man of Arizzo had not forgotten how Spinello in his younger days being enrolled in the confraternity of Santa Maria della Miseracordia had visited the sick and buried the dead in the plague of 1383. They were grateful to him besides for having by his works spread the fame of their city over all Tuscany. For all these reasons they welcomed him with high honors on his return. Still full of vigor in his old age he undertook important tasks in his native town. His wife would tell him, you are rich Spinello, do you rest and leave younger men to paint instead of you? It is meet a man should end his days in a gentle religious quiet. It is tempting God to be forever raising new and worldly monuments, mere heathen towers of babble. Quit your collars and your varnishes, Spinello, or they will destroy your peace of mind. So the good Dame would preach, but he refused to listen. For his one thought was to increase his fortune and renown. Far from resting on his laurels, he arranged a price with the wardens of St. Agnolo for a history of St. Michael that was to cover all the choir of the church and contain an infinity of figures. Into this enterprise he threw himself with extraordinary ardor, rereading the parts of scripture that were to be his inspiration. He set himself to study deeply every line and every word of these passages. Not content with drawing all day long in his workshop he persisted in working both at bed and board, while at dusk, walking below the hill on whose brow Ariso proudly lifts her walls and towers, he was still lost in thought. And we may say the story of the archangel was already limed in his brain when he started to sketch out the incidents in red chalk on the plaster of the wall. He was soon done tracing these outlines. Then he fell to painting above the high altar the scene that was to outshine all the others in brilliancy. For it was his intent therein to glorify the leader of the hosts of heaven for the victory he won before the beginning of time. Accordingly, Spinello represented St. Michael fighting in the air against the serpent with seven heads and 10 horns. And he figured with delight in the bottom part of the picture, the Prince of Devils, Lucifer, under the semblance of an appalling monster. The figures seemed to grow to life of themselves under his hand. His success was beyond his fondest hopes. So hideous was the countenance of Lucifer. None could escape the nightmare of its foulness. The face haunted the painter in the streets and even went home with him to his lodging. Presently when night was come, Spinello lay down in his bed beside his wife and fell asleep. In his slumbers he saw an angel as comely as St. Michael, but black. And the angel said to him, Spinello, I am Lucifer. Tell me, where had you seen me that you should paint me as you have under so ignominous alightness? The old painter answered, trembling that he had never seen him with his eyes, never having gone down alive into hell like Messer Dante Arigari. But that in depicting him as he had done, he was for expressing invisible lines and colors, the hideousness of sin. Lucifer shrugged his shoulders and the hill of San Gemicano seemed of a sudden to heave and stagger. Spinello, he went on, will you do me the pleasure to reason a while with me? I am no mean logician. He you pray to knows that. Receiving no reply, Lucifer proceeded in these terms. Spinello, you have read the books that tell of me. You know of my enterprise and how I forsook heaven to become the prince of this world. A tremendous adventure and a unique one had not the giants in like fashion assailed the God Jupiter as yourself have seen, Spinello, recorded on an ancient tomb where this titanic war is carved in marble. It is true, said Spinello. I have seen the tomb shaped like a great ton in the church of Santa Riparata at Florence. Tizia fine work of the Romans. Still, returned Lucifer smiling, the giants are not pictured on it in the shape of frogs or chameleons or the like hideous and horrid creatures. True, replied the painter, but then they had not attacked the true God but only a false idol of the pagans. Tizia mighty difference. The fact is clear, Lucifer. You raised the standard of revolt against the true and veritable king of earth and heaven. I will not deny it, said Lucifer, and how many sorts of sins do you charge me with for that? Seven, it is like enough, the painter answered, and deadly sins, one and all. Seven, exclaimed the angel of darkness. Well, the number is canonical. Everything goes by sevens in my history, which is close bound up with God's. Spinalo, you deem me proud, angry, and envious. I enter no protest, provided you allow that glory was my only aim. Do you deem me covetous? Granted again, covetousness is a virtue for princes. For gluttony and lust, if you hold me guilty, I will not complain. Remains indolence. As he pronounced the word, Lucifer crossed his arms across his breast and shaking his gloomy head, tossed his flaming locks. Tell me, Spinalo, do you really think I am indolent? Do you take me for a coward? Do you hold that in my revolt I showed a lack of courage? Nay, you cannot. Then it was but just to paint me in the guise of a hero with a proud countenance. You should wrong no one, not even the devil. Cannot you see that you insult him you make prayer to when you give him for an adversary a vile, monstrous toad? Spinalo, you are very ignorant for a man of your age. I have a great mind to pull your ears as they do to an ill conditioned school boy. At this threat and seeing the arm of Lucifer already stretched out towards him, Spinalo clapped his hand to his head and began to howl with terror. His good wife, waking up with a start, asked him what held him. He told her with chattering teeth how he had just seen Lucifer and had been in terror for his ears. I told you so, retorted the worthy dame. I knew all those figures you will go on painting on the walls would end by driving you mad. I am not mad, protested the painter. I saw him with my own eyes and he is beautiful to look on, albeit proud and sad. First thing tomorrow I will blot out the horrid figure I have drawn and set in its place the shape I beheld in my dream, for we must not wrong even the devil himself. You had best go to sleep again, scolded his wife. You are talking stark nonsense and un-Christian to boot. Spinalo tried to rise, but his strength failed him and he fell back unconscious on his pillow. He lingered on a few days in a high fever and then died. End of Lucifer by Anatole France. The Wella Miller by Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Reading by Beloner Times. Luella Miller by Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman. Close to the village street stood the one-story house in which Luella Miller, who had an evil name in the village, had dwelt. She had been dead for years, yet there were those in the village who, in spite of the clearer light, which comes on a vantage point from a long past danger, half believed in the tale which they had heard from their childhood. In their hearts, although they scarcely would have owned it, was a survival of the wild horror and frenzied fear of their ancestors who had dwelt in the same age with Luella Miller. Young people even would stare with a shutter at the old house as they passed, and children never played around it as was their want, around an untenanted building. Not a window in the old Miller house was broken. The panes reflected the morning sunlight in patches of emerald and blue, and the latch of the sagging front door was never lifted, although no bolt secured it. Since Luella Miller had been carried out of it, the house had had no tenant except one friendless old soul who had no choice between that and the far-off shelter of the open sky. This old woman who had survived her kindred and friends lived in the house one week, then one morning no smoke came out of the chimney, and a body of neighbors, a score strong, entered and found her dead in her bed. There were dark whispers as to the cause of her death, and there were those who testified to an expression of fear so exalted that it showed forth the state of the departing soul upon the dead face. The old woman had been hail and hearty when she entered the house, and in seven days she was dead. It seemed that she had fallen a victim to some uncanny power. The minister talked in the pulpit with covert severity against the sin of superstition. Still the belief prevailed. Not a soul in the village, but would have chosen the alms-house rather than that dwelling. No vagrant, if he heard the tale, would seek shelter beneath that old roof, unhallowed by nearly half a century of superstitious fear. There was only one person in the village who had actually known the Willow-Miller. That person was a woman well over eighty, but a marvel of vitality and unextinct youth. Straight as an arrow, with the spring of one recently let loose from the bow of life, she moved about the streets, and she always went to church, rain or shine. She had never married, and had lived alone for years in a house across the road from the Willow-Millers. This woman had none of the garrulousness of age, but never in all her life had she ever held her tongue. For any will save her own, and she never spared the truth when she assayed to present it. She it was who bore testimony to the life, evil, though possibly wittingly or designedly so, of the Willow-Miller, and to her personal appearance. When this old woman spoke, and she had the gift of description, although her thoughts were clothed in the rude vernacular of her native village, one could seem to see Luella Miller as she had really looked. According to this woman, Lydia Anderson by name, Luella Miller had been a beauty of a type rather unusual in New England. She had been a slight, pliant sort of creature, as ready with a strong yielding to fate, and as unbreakable as a Willow. She had glimmering lengths of straight, fair hair, which she wore softly looped round a long, lovely face. She had blue eyes full of soft, pleading, little slender, clinging hands, and a wonderful grace of motion and attitude. Luella Miller used to sit in a way nobody else could if they sat up and studied a week of Sundays, said Lydia Anderson, and it was a sight to see her walk. If one of them Willows over there on the edge of the brook could start up and get its roots free of the ground and move off, it would go just the way Luella Miller used to. She had a green-shot soap she used to wear, too, and a hat with green ribbon streamers, and a lace veil blowing across her face and outside ways, and a green ribbon flying from her waist. That was what she came out bright in when she married Erastus Miller. Her name before she was married was Hill. There was always a sight of L's in her name, married or single. Erastus Miller was good-looking, too, better-looking than Luella. Sometimes I used to think that Luella wanted so handsome after all. Erastus just about worshipped her. I used to know him pretty well. He lived next door to me, and we went to school together. I used to say he was a-waiting on me, but he won't. I never thought he was except once or twice when he said things that some girls might have suspected meant something. That was before Luella came here to teach the district school. It was funny how she came to get it, for folks said she hadn't any education, and that one of the big girls, Lottie Henderson, used to do all the teaching for her. While she sat back and did embroidery work on a cambrick pocket handkerchief, Lottie Henderson was a real smart girl, a splendid scholar, and she just set her eyes by Luella as all the girls did. Lottie would have made a real smart woman, but she died when Luella had been here about a year, just faded away and died. Nobody knew what ailed her. She dragged herself to that school-house and helped Luella teach till the very last minute. The committee all knew how Luella didn't do much of the work herself, but they winked at it. It won't long after Lottie died that Erastus married her. I always thought he hurried it up because she won't fit to teach. One of the big boys used to help her after Lottie died, but he hadn't much government, and the school didn't do very well, and Luella might have had to give it up, for the committee couldn't have shut their eyes to things much longer. The boy that helped her was real honest, innocent sort of fellow, and he was a good scholar, too. Folks said he overstudied, and that was the reason he was took crazy the year after Luella married, but I don't know. And I don't know what made Erastus Miller go into consumption of the blood the year after he was married. Consumption won't in his family. He just grew weaker and weaker, and went almost bent double when he tried to wait on Luella, and he spoke feeble. Like an old man, he worked terrible hard to the last, trying to save up a little to leave Luella. I have seen him out in the worst storms on a wood sled. He used to cut and sell wood, and he was hunched up on top, looking more dead than alive. Once I couldn't stand it. I went over and helped him pitch some wood on the cart. I was always strong in my arms. I wouldn't stop for all he told me to, and I guess he was glad enough for the help. That was only a week before he died. He fell on the kitchen floor while he was getting breakfast. He always got the breakfast and let Luella lay a bed. He did all the sweeping, and the washing, and the iron, and in most of the cooking. He couldn't bear to have Luella lift her finger, and she'd let him do for her. She'd lived like a queen for all the work she did. She didn't even do her sewing. She said it made her shoulder ache to sew, and poor Erastus's sister, Lily, used to do all her sewing. She won't able to, either. She was never strong in her back, but she did it beautifully. She had to, to suit Luella. She was so dreadful, particular. I never saw anything like the faggoting and hemstitching that Lily Miller did for Luella. She made all Luella's wet-in outfit, and that green silk dress after Maria Babbitt cut it. She did, she cut it for nothing, and she did it a lot more cutting and fitting for nothing for Luella, too. Lily Miller went to live with Luella after Erastus died. She gave up her home, though she was real attached to it, and won't amite afraid to stay alone. She rented it, and she went to live with Luella right away after the funeral. Then this old woman, Lydia Anderson, who remembered Luella Miller, would go on to relate the story of Lily Miller. It seemed that on the removal of Lily Miller to the house of her dead brother to live with his widow, the village people first began to talk. This Lily Miller had been hardly past her first youth, and a more robust and blooming woman, rosy cheeks with curls of strong black hair overshadowing round, candid temples and bright dark eyes. It was not six months after she had taken up her residence with her sister-in-law that her rosy color faded, and her pretty curves became Juan Hallows. White shadows began to show in the black rings of her hair, and the light died out of her eyes, her features sharpened, and there were pathetic lines at her mouth, which yet wore always an expression of utter sweetness and even happiness. She was devoted to her sister. There was no doubt that she loved her with her whole heart, and was perfectly content in her service. It was her sole anxiety lest she should die and leave her alone. The way Lily Miller used to talk about Luella was enough to make you mad and enough to make you cry, said Lydia Anderson. I've been in there sometimes toward the last when she was too feeble to cook and carrot her some blum lounge or custard, something I thought she might relish, and she thanked me. And when I asked her how she was, say she felt better than she did yesterday, and asked me if I didn't think she looked better, dreadful, pitiful, and say poor Luella had an awful time taking care of her and doing the work. She wasn't strong enough to do anything, when all the time Luella won't lift in her finger, and poor Lily didn't get any care except what the neighbors gave her. And Luella ate up everything that was carried in for Lily. I had it real straight that she did. Luella used to just sit and cry and do nothing. She did act real fond of Lily, and she pined away considerable too. There was those that thought she'd go into decline herself. But after Lily died, her Aunt Abby, Mixter, came, and then Luella picked up and grew as fat and rosy as ever. But poor Aunt Abby began to droop just the way Lily had. And I guess somebody wrote to her married daughter, Mrs. Sam Abbott, who lived in Bauer. Before she wrote to her mother that she must leave right away and come and make her a visit. But Aunt Abby wouldn't go. I can see her now. She was a real good-looking woman, tall and large with a big square face and a high forehead, that looked of itself kind of benevolent and good. She just tended out on Luella as if she had been a baby. And when her married daughter sent for her, she wouldn't stir one inch. She'd always thought a lot of her daughter, too. But she said Luella needed her, and her married daughter didn't. Her daughter kept writing and writing, but it didn't do any good. Finally she came, and when she saw how bad her mother looked, she broke down and cried and all, but went on her knees to have her come away. She spoke her mind out to Luella, too. She told her that she'd killed her husband and everybody that had anything to do with her, and she'd thank her to leave her mother alone. Luella went into hysterics, and Aunt Abby was so frightened that she called me after her daughter went. Mrs. Sam Abbott. She went away fairly crying out loud in the buggy. The neighbors heard her, and well she might, for she never saw her mother again alive. I went in that night when Aunt Abby called for me, standing in the door, with her little green-checked shawl over her head. I can see her now. Do come over here, Miss Anderson, she sung out. Kind of gasping for breath. I didn't stop for anything. I put over as fast as I could, and when I got there there was Luella laughing and crying altogether, and Aunt Abby trying to hush her at all the time. She herself was white as a sheet and shaken, so she could hardly stand. For the land sakes, Mrs. Minster, says I, you'd look worse than she does. You ain't fit to be up out of your bed. Oh, there ain't anything to matter with me, says she. Then she went on talking to Luella. There, there, don't, don't. Poor little lamb, says she. Aunt Abby is here. She ain't going away and leave you. Don't, poor little lamb. Do leave her with me, Mrs. Minster, and you get back to bed, says I, for Aunt Abby had been laying down considerable lately, though somehow she continued to do the work. I'm well enough, says she. Don't you think she had better have the doctor, Miss Anderson? The doctor, says I. I think you had better have the doctor. I think you need him much worse than some folks I could mention. And I look right straight at Luella Miller, laughing and crying and going on as if she was the center of all creation, all the time she was acting so seemed as if she was too sick to sense anything. She was keeping a sharp look out as to how we took it out of the corner of one eye. I see her. You could never cheat me about Luella Miller. Finally, I got real mad and I run home and I got a bottle of Valerian I had. And I poured some boiling hot water on a handful of catnip, and I mixed up that catnip tea with most half a wine glass of Valerian, and I went with it over to Luella's. I marched right up to Luella, holding out of that cup, all smoking. And now, says I, Luella Miller, you swallow this. What is it? Oh, what is it? She got sort of screeches out. Then she goes off a laughing enough to kill. Poor lamb, poor little lamb, says Aunt Abby, standing over her, all kind of tottering and trying to bathe her head with camphor. You swallow this right down, says I. And I didn't waste any ceremony. I just took hold of Luella Miller's chin and I tipped her head back, and I caught her mouth open with laughing. And I clapped that cup to her lips. And I fairly hollered at her, swallow, swallow, swallow. And she gulped it right down. She had to. And I guess it did her good. Anyhow, she stopped crying and laughing and let me put her to bed. And she went to sleep like a baby inside of half an hour. That was more than poor Aunt Abby did. She lay awake all that night, and I stayed with her, though she tried not to have me. Said she won't sick enough for watchers. But I stayed. And I made some good co-meal, grilled. And I fed her a teaspoon every little while, all night long. It seemed to me as if she was just dying from being all wore out. In the morning, as soon as it was light, I run over to the Bisbee's and sent Johnny Bisbee for the doctor. And I told him to tell the doctor to hurry. And he'd come pretty quick. Poor Aunt Abby didn't seem to know much of anything when he got there. You couldn't hardly tell she breathed. She was so used up. When the doctor had gone, Luella came into the room, looking like a baby in her ruffled nightgown. I can see her now. Her eyes were as blue in her face, all pink and white, like a blossom. And she looked at Aunt Abby in the bed, sort of innocent and surprised. Why, says she, Aunt Abby ain't got up yet? No, she ain't. Says I, pretty short. I thought I didn't smell the coffee, says Luella. Coffee, says I. I guess if you have coffee this morning, you'll make it yourself. I never made the coffee in all my life, says she, dreadful astonished. Arastus always made the coffee as long as he lived. And then Lily, she made it, and then Aunt Abby made it. I don't believe I can make the coffee, Miss Anderson. You can make it or go without. Just did you please, says I. Ain't Aunt Abby going to get up, says she. I guess she won't get up, says I, sick as she is. I was getting madder and madder. There was something about that little pink and white thing standing there and talking about coffee when she had killed so many better folks than she was and had just killed another. That made me feel most as if I wished somebody would up and kill her before she had a chance to do any more harm. Is Aunt Abby sick, says Luella, as if she was sort of aggrieved and injured? Yes, says I. She's sick, and she's going to die, and then you'll be left alone and you'll have to do for yourself and wait on yourself or do without things. I don't know, but I was sort of hard, but it was the truth, and if I was any harder than Luella Miller had been, I'll give up. I ain't never been sorry that I said it. Well, Luella, she up and had hysterics again at that, and I just let her have them. All I did was to bundle her into the room on the other side of the entry where Aunt Abby couldn't hear her. If she won't, passed it. I don't know, but she was. She set her down hard in a chair and told her not to come back into the other room, and she mined it. She had her hysterics in there till she got tired. When she found out that nobody was coming to coddle her and do for her, she stopped. At least I suppose she did. I had all I could do with poor Aunt Abby trying to keep the breath of life in her. The doctor had told me that she was dreadful low, and give me some very strong medicine to give to her and drops real often, and told me real particular about the nourishment. Well, I did as he told me real faithful till she won't able to swallow any longer. Then I had her daughter sent for. I had begun to realize that she wouldn't last any time at all. I hadn't realized it before, though I spoke to Luella the way I did. The doctor he came and Mrs. Sam Abbott, but when she got there it was too late. Her mother was dead. Aunt Abby's daughter just give one look at her mother laying there, then she turns sort of sharp and sudden and looked at me. Where is she? says she. I knew she met Luella. She's out in the kitchen, says I. She's too nervous to see folks die. She's afraid it will make her sick. The doctor he speaks up then. He was a young man. Old Doctor Park had died the year before, and this was a young fellow just out of college. Mrs. Miller is not strong, says he, kind of severe, and she is quite right in not agitating herself. You are another young man. She's got her pretty claw on you, thinks I, but I didn't say anything to him. I just said over to Mrs. Sam Abbott that Luella was in the kitchen, and Mrs. Sam Abbott she went out there, and I went too, and I never heard anything like the way she talked to Luella Miller. I felt pretty hard to Luella myself, but this was more than I ever would have dared to say. Luella, she was too scared to go into hysterics. She just flopped. She seemed to just shrink away to nothing in that kitchen chair, with Mrs. Sam Abbott standing over her and talking and telling her the truth. I guess the truth was most too much for her, and no mistake, because Luella presently actually did faint away. And there weren't any sham about it. The way I always suspected there was about them hysterics. She fainted dead away, and we had to lay her flat on the floor, and the doctor he came running out, and he said something about a weak dreadful fierce to Mrs. Sam Abbott, but she went a mite scared. She faced him just as white as even Luella was laying there, looking like death, and the doctor feeling of her pulse. Weak heart, says she. Weak heart. Weak fiddle sticks. There ain't nothing weak about that woman. She's got strength enough to hang on to other folks till she kills them. Weak! It was my poor mother that was weak. This woman killed her, as sure as if she had taken a knife to her. But the doctor, he didn't pay much attention. He was bending over Luella, laying there with her yellow hair and all streaming and her pretty pink and white face all pale, and her blue eyes like stars gone out, and he was holding on to her hand and smooth in her forehead and telling me to get the brandy in Aunt Abbey's room, and I was sure as I wanted to be that Luella had got somebody else to hang on to. Now Aunt Abbey was gone, and I thought of poor Erastus Miller, and I sort of pitted the poor young doctor, led away by a pretty face, and I made up my mind I'd see what I could do. I waited till Aunt Abbey had been dead and buried about a month, and the doctor was going to see Luella steady, and folks were beginning to talk. Then one evening, when I knew the doctor had been called out of town and wouldn't be round, I went over to Luella's. I found her all dressed up in a blue muslin with white polka dots on it, and her hair curled just as pretty, and there was a young girl in the place could compare with her. There was something about Luella Miller seemed to draw the heart right out of you, but she didn't draw it out of me. She was sitting, rocking, in the chair by her sitting-bring-window, and Maria Brown had gone home. Maria Brown had been in to help her, or rather to do the work, for Luella won't help when she didn't do anything. Maria Brown was real capable, and she didn't have any lies. She won't marry, and lived alone. So she offered. I couldn't see why she should do the work any more than Luella. She won't any too strong, but she seemed to think she could, and Luella seemed to think so too. So she went over and did all the work, washed and ironed and baked, while Luella sat and rocked. Maria didn't live long afterward. She began to fade away just the same fashion the others had. Well, she was warned, but she acted real mad when folks said anything, said Luella was a poor, abused woman, too delicate to help herself, and they ought to be ashamed, and if she died helping them that couldn't help themselves, she would, and she did. I suppose Maria has gone home, says I to Luella, when I had gone in and sat down opposite her. Yes, Maria went half an hour ago after she had got supper and washed the dishes, said Luella, in her pretty way. I suppose she has got a lot of work to do in her own house tonight, says I, kind of bitter, but that was all thrown away on Luella Miller. It seemed to her right that other folks, that won't any better, able. Then she was, herself, should wait on her, and she couldn't get it through her head that anybody should think it won't right. Yes, says Luella, real sweet and pretty. Yes, she said she had to do her wash-in tonight. She has let it go for a fortnight, along of coming over here. Why don't she stay home, and do her wash-in instead of coming over here and doing your work, when you are just as well able, and enough sight more so, than she is to do it, says I. Luella looked at me, like a baby, who has a rattle shook at it. She sort of laughed, as innocent as you please. Oh, I can't do the work myself, Miss Anderson, says she. I never did. Maria has to do it. Then I spoke out. Has to do it, says I. Has to do it. She don't have to do it, either. Maria Brown has her own home, and enough to live on. She ain't beholden to you to come over here, and slay for you, and kill herself. Luella, she just sat and stared at me, for all the world, like a doll-baby, that was so abused, that it was coming to life. Yes, says I. She's killing herself. She's going to die, just the way Arastus did, and Lily, and your Aunt Abby. You're killing her, just as you did them. I don't know what there is about you, but you seem to bring a curse. Says I. You kill everybody that is fool enough to care anything about you, and do for you. She stared at me, and she was pretty pale. And Maria ain't the only one you're going to kill, says I. You're going to kill Dr. Malcolm before you're done with him. Then a red color came flaming all over her face. I ain't going to kill him, either, says she, and she begun to cry. Yes you be, says I. Then I spoke, as I had never before. You see, I felt it on account of Arastus. I told her that she hadn't any business to think of another man, after she'd been married to one that had died for her. That she was a dreadful woman. And she was. That's true enough. But sometimes I have wondered lately, if she knew it, if she want like a baby with scissors in his hand, cutting everybody without knowing what it was doing. Luella she kept getting paler and paler, and she never took her eyes off of my face. There was something awful about the way she looked at me, and never spoke one word. After a while I quit talking, and I went home. I watched that night, but her lamp went out before nine o'clock, and when Dr. Malcolm came, drove past, and sort of slowed up. He see there was an enlightened, and he drove along. I saw her sort of shy. Out of meeting the next Sunday, too. So he shouldn't go home with her, and I began to think maybe. She did have some conscience, after all. It was only a week after that that Maria Brown died. Sort of sudden, at the last, though everybody had seen it coming. Well, then, there was a good deal of feeling, and pretty dark whispers. Folks said the days of witchcraft had come again, and they were pretty shy of Luella. She acted sort of offish to the doctor, and he didn't go there, and there weren't anybody to do anything for her. I don't know how she did get along. I wouldn't go in there and offer to help her, not because I was afraid of dying like the rest, but I thought she was just as well able to do her own work as I was to do it for her. And I thought it was about time that she did it and stopped killing the other folks. But it wasn't very long before folks began to say that Luella herself was going into the decline just the way her husband and Lily and Aunt Abby and the others had. And I saw myself that she looked pretty bad. I used to see her go and pass from the store with a bundle as if she could hardly crawl, but I remembered how Erastus used to wait and tend when he couldn't hardly put one foot before the other, and I didn't go out to help her. But at last, one afternoon, I saw the doctor come driving up like mad with his medicine chest, and Mrs. Babbitt came in after supper and said that Luella was real sick. I'd offer to go in and nurse her, says she, but I've got my children to consider, and maybe it ain't true what they say, but it's clear how many folks that have done for her have died. I didn't say anything, but I considered how she had been Erastus's wife and how he had set his eyes by her, and I made up my mind to go in the next morning, unless she was better, and see what I could do. But the next morning I see her at the window, and pretty soon she came stepping out as spry as you please, and a little while afterward Mrs. Babbitt came in and told me that the doctor had got a girl from out of town, a Sarah Jones, to come there, and she said she was pretty sure that the doctor was going to marry Luella. I saw him kiss her in the door that night myself, and I knew it was true. The woman came that afternoon, and the way she flew around was a caution. I don't believe Luella had swept since Maria died. She swept and dusted and washed and ironed wet clothes and dusters, and carpets were flying over there all day, and every time Luella set her foot out, when the doctor weren't there, there was that Sarah Jones helping of her up and down the steps, as if she hadn't learned to walk. Well everybody knew that Luella and the doctor were going to be married, but on what long before, they began to talk about his looking so poorly just as they had about the others, and they talked about Sarah Jones, too. Well, the doctor did die, and he wanted to be married first, so as to leave what little he had to Luella, but he died before the minister could get there, and Sarah Jones died a week afterward. Well that wound up everything for Luella Miller. Not another soul in the whole town would lift a finger for her. They got to be a sort of panic. Then she began to droop in good earnest. She used to have to go to the store herself, for Mrs. Babbitt was afraid to let Tommy go for her, and I've seen her go and past and stop in every two or three steps to rest. Well, I stood it as long as I could, but one day I see her coming with her arms full, and stop to lean against the Babbitt fence, and I run out and took her bundles and carried them to her house. Then I went home and never spoke one word to her, though she called after me dreadful kind of pitiful. Well that night I was taken sick with the chill, and I was sick as I wanted to be for two weeks. Mrs. Babbitt had seen me run out to help Luella, and she came in and told me I was going to die on account of it. I didn't know whether I was or not, but I considered I had done right by Arastus's wife. That last two weeks Luella she had a dreadful hard time, I guess. She was pretty sick, and as near as I could make out nobody dared go near her. I don't know as she was really needing anything very much, for there was enough to eat in her house, and it was warm weather, and she made out to cook a little flower gruel every day. I know, but I guess she had a hard time. She that had been so petted and done for all her life. When I got so, I could go out. I went over there one morning. Mrs. Babbitt had just come in to say she hadn't seen any smoke, and she didn't know, but it was somebody's duty to go in. But she couldn't help thinking of her children, and I got right up, though I hadn't been out of the house for two weeks, and I went in there, and Luella she was laying on the bed, and she was dying. She lasted all that day and into the night, but I sat there after the new doctor had gone away. Nobody else dared to go there. It was about midnight that I left her for a minute to run home and get some medicine I had been taking, for I begun to feel rather bad. It was a full moon that night, and just as I started out of my door to cross the street back to Luella's, I stopped short, for I saw something. Lydia Anderson, at this juncture, always said, with a certain defiance, that she did not expect to be believed, and then proceeded in a hushed voice. I saw what I saw, and I know I sawed, and I will swear on my deathbed that I sawed. I saw Luella Miller, and Erastus Miller, and Lily, and Abby, and Maria, and the doctor, and Sarah, all going out of her door, and all but Luella shone white in the moonlight, and they were all helping her along till she seemed to fairly fly in the midst of them. Then it all disappeared. I stood a minute with my heart pounded. Then I went over there. I thought of going for Mrs. Babbitt, but I thought she'd be afraid. So I went alone, though I knew what had happened. Luella was laying real peaceful, dead, on her bed. This was the story that the old woman Lydia Anderson told, but the sequel was told by the people who survived her, and this is the tale which has become folklore in the village. Lydia Anderson died when she was eighty-seven. She had continued wonderfully hail and hearty for one of her years, until about two weeks before her death. One bright moonlit evening she was sitting beside a window in her parlor when she made a sudden exclamation, and was out of the house and across the street before the neighbor who was taking care of her could stop her. She followed as fast as possible, and found Lydia Anderson stretched on the ground before the door of Luella Miller's deserted house, and she was quite dead. The next night there was a red gleam of fire, a thwart, the moonlight, and the old house of Luella Miller was burnt to the ground. Nothing is now left of it except a few old cellar stones and a lallic bush, and in summer a helpless trail of morning glories among the weeds, which might be considered emblematic of Luella herself. End of Luella Miller by Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman