 1. Omar Ben Safi was a cat. This unadorned statement would have wounded Omar Ben to the morrow of his pride, for he chanced to be a splendid, tiger-marked feline of purest Persian breed, with glorious yellow eyes and a Solomon in all his glory tale. His pedigree could be traced back to Padasha Zemyuki Yazo Zend, a dignity in itself sufficient to cause an aristocratic langer, but to the layman he was just a cat. He dwelt with an exclusive family of humans in a little $80,000 cottage on the outskirts of Volgarity, which is to say the villa was situated near enough to the town to admit of marketing, but far enough removed therefrom to escape the clatter of plebeian toil and the noxious contact with the unhealthy, unwelthy herd. Here the humans entertained selected friends who came at the ends of weeks to admire the splendor of Omar Ben's tale, to bow down to the humans' money and to hate them fiercely because they had it. The master did not toil. He lived for certain hours of the day in Wall Street, where he sank his patrician fingers into the throats of lesser men, squeezed them dry, then washed his hands in violet water and built a church. True, he did not attend this church himself, but he built it, otherwise his neighbors might have been deprived of the opportunity of praising God. Omar Ben had a French maid all to himself, a perky little human with a quasi-kinship to the feline race, who combed him and brushed him, and slicked him down and gave him endless mortifying baths. Also she tied lavender bows about his neck and fed him from Dresden, China on minute particles of flaked fish and raw sirloin with a dessert of pasteurized cream. In the rear of the $80,000 cottage there was a $30,000 flower garden, an oppressively clean garden where the big jack roses were immaculate as Mama's Lizzy Boy, and the well-bred, timid little violets seemed to long to play in the dirt, but dared not because of the master rule of form. And here the clean cat used to sun himself in the clean garden, thinking his clean thoughts and perishing of boredom cleaned through. Then one day from the vulgar outer world came an unclean incident. Omar Ben became conscious of an uproar beyond the garden wall. It embraced a whimper of canine hope, a spitting taunt, and the patter of flying paws. Then suddenly, on top of the high brick wall, appeared a cat. The newcomer paused for an instant to fling an obscene au revoir at the raging disappointed dog, dropped carelessly down into the geranium bed, and took his bearings. He was not a patrician. Omar Ben eyed him in a sort of wondering awe. The stranger was a long-barreled, rumpled ferd, devil-clawed street-arab, of a caste, or no caste, that battles for existence with the world, and beats it. On his tail were rings of missing fur, suggesting former attachments, not of lady-friends, but of tin cans and strings. For further assets he possessed one eye, and a twisted smile. His present total liability lay in the dog beyond the wall, so the Arab wasn't so badly fixed after all. Besides, he owned property. It consisted of a bullfrog which he carried in his mouth, with its legs and web-feet protruding in wriggling, but unavailing protest. To breathe the better, the street-cat dropped the frog, and set one mangy paw upon it. Then suddenly he spied the Persian. "'Hello, Beau,' he observed cheerfully, "'didn't see her. Did your pipe me chase with the yelper?' That stilt-legged son of a saw-toothed tyke has had his nose on me rudder post for more than a mile. The Persian made no answer, and the Arab continued unabashed. It's a hunch that I could have clawed to stuffen out of him, but I didn't want for it to lose me lunch. Say, what's your name?' Omar Ben regarded the inner-loper with the same glance of refined surprise that the master might have employed when a fleeced pleblian entered his office, demanding to know why the market had slumped in direct contradiction to confidential prophecy. He elevated his patrician brows, but gave the desired information politely. My ribbon name is Omar Ben Safi, first-born of the second litter of Yuki Zutra and Sultana Yagi Giz. Here at home, however, I am known by a variety of others, such as Mom Prince de Manier Charmont, Sugar Pie Precious, and— "'Ah, cut it,' snapped the street-cat disgustedly. Them ain't no decent names. They's positive ridiculous. This ring-tailed peat, but me friends has reasons for forgettin' detail part of it when they names me to me face, see?' He smiled his twisted smile, raised one paw, and regarded its claws with a sort of humorous pride. The Persian cat said nothing. Ring-tailed peat was obviously an undesirable acquaintance, therefore Omar Ben held his tongue and became interested in the bullfrog. Curiosity, however, conquered refined reserve. What is it, he asked presently? "'Frog,' said the street-cat, with laconic candor, as he gracefully mauled the subject of discussion. I get some over to the frog-pond, up back of Lumpkin's tannery. Have a piece?' "'Thank you. No,' returned the Persian, with a faint smile of his own. I've just had luncheon.' Peat shrugged his gaunt shoulders, murdered the frog, and prepared to dispose of it permanently. Omar Ben edged closer. In spite of his polite refusal, the frog fascinated him. Never in all his benighted life had he tasted one morsel which had not been prepared for him on Dainty China, but now it was different. Across the geranium bed came a strange alluring scent, a scent which roused the memory of inheritance, a memory well nigh washed out of him, and his sire before him, by the bottle-pap of luxury. A memory it was of wild things, to be killed, a bloodlust memory, and now at last it woke in a pampered, velvet-hearted cat. Ring-tail Peat was conscious of the other's wistful look and laughed, for his battle with life had taught him generosity. "'Say, Beau, you don't want to do to bashful, see? Cos me and you is gents, what understands the game or chanced? Here, take hold, and chaw off yourself a hunk.' The aristocrat hesitated, then slid down one rung on the ladder of degradation, pushed by bloodlust and the strange compelling camaraderie of the Arab of the streets. It was wrong, he knew, but then there was a certain flavor in this rung. So, gingerly, he crossed the geranium bed, took one webbed foot firmly between his teeth, and wandered at the thrill of life that sparked and snapped along his spine. Then Pete and Omar Ben tugged and tugged till the clean geranium bed was a comfortable, wholesome wreck. "'Hully gee,' grinned Ring-tail Peat, we ought to make a wish.' They made it, and the metaphoric wishbone parted with a jerk, Omar Ben, rolling on his lordly back in the healthy dirt. But he rose and devoured his frog-leg to its smallest bone, wishing with all his heart that the frog had been a bigger frog. Then he licked his chops, and looked in admiration on his worldly friend. "'Thank you so much,' he began, but the Arab waved formality aside. "'Ah, twent-nutten,' he declared, and they taste a darn sight better when your wades for them. Say, look a here. You meet me to-night on the top of this here wall, and I'll learn your how to wade for frogs.' "'Oh, dear,' began the Persian, trembling at the very mention of the outer world. Really, Mr. Peat, I really—' "'Punk,' cut in the Arab, dismissing the protest with a switch of his mutilated tail. I won't take gnaw for an answer, and dishears'd away for to jump your wealthy crib. You watch me.' He backed away, then took a running start, and made the coping of the wall in a splendid, scurrying rush amid a shower of scattered ivy leaves. On the top he turned and called to the wondering aristocrat. Just wait for me and a moon, me son, and don't you forget that frogs is frogs. Once Moray smiled his twisted smile, and was gone into the vulgar outer world. He had not waited for a promise from his friend, for Peat was wise in his little hour of life, and left the keeping of a trist with the honour of a gentleman. II As for Omar Ben, he sat in the healthy grime of the garden soil, his mind a prey to the poison of glittering promises, till suddenly a human fell upon him with an absurd French shriek, and bore him away to the lap of comfort and assented bath. In the bath he yowled, and wept when another lavender bow was tied about his neck, and yet had Mamzelle Frenchie observed him carefully she might have caught him smiling. All day long he dozed and dreamed, dreamed of the vulgar world beyond the wall. For now it seemed to his pampered soul that the pole-star of an earthly cat's desire was frogs. At the human's dinner-time he scorned their expensive fare, and sneaked away into the shadows of the garden to wait for ring-tail Peat and the rising of the moon. It rose, and as it peeped above the wall there also rose a cautious signal wail, and Peat's one eye glowed green among the ivy vines. Hi, spot! grinned the owner of the eye, as Ben Omar clawed his way to a perch beside him. You're clumbed at wall in a way to make me proud. Now then, we're off! They dropped into the outer world. Omar Ben was trembling somewhat, but tried his best to conceal the mortifying fact, and presently he conquered it. After walking for a quarter of a mile along the country road they approached the outskirts of the town, and began to cross it, employing unfrequented paths. They traversed an alley, black and reeking with nightly smells, pausing at last on the verge of a lighted street, whence rose the sound of human mirth, bits of vulgar song, and the barking of vagrant dogs. Shhh! Cushing ring-tail Peat, you wait till I count to tree, then make a rush for to alley across the street. See? But why? asked Ben Omar, wondering. Peat sniffed in scorn of the uninitiated. Well, never mind why. You do like I tells you, or you'll get your aggregation with a brick. Now then, one, two, three, hump it, Beau! They humped it, making the other alley's mouth by a margin slim indeed, followed by human howls and a clattering volley of sticks and stones. Good gracious! the Persian gasp, as they streaked through the alley's filth. What are they? Boys, grinned Peat, the town is getting fair congested with them. But taint nutton, son, it's just a parter to game a life. Come on! The way was easier now, and they journeyed without alarm. Presently ring-tail turned to his friend with his twisted smile. You see that lady sitting there on the gate-post? Well, that's me steady. I'll interjuice her in a minute. The lady in question was a thin, dirty white cat with bold eyes, and a brazen bearing, and Omar Ben was doubtful of her cast. Thank you! he murmured noncommittally, and hurried on, but the meeting was unavoidable, for the lady crossed the street and stood directly in his path. Hi, maim! said Peat in cordial greeting. She cans with me, friend. Mr. Ur, ah, hell! She cans with Bo. Omar Ben had never seen a lady-cat, and his ideal of the sex was something modest and retiring. Miss Maim was not retiring. She greeted her friend's friend without the courtesy of a mister, looked in open admiration at the handsome gentleman, and asked if he were single. The aristocrat murmured a common place, and edged away. At the slight the lady took umbrage, spat warningly, and showed her clothes, till ring-tailed Peat averted the trouble by a generous display of tact. Now, don't get phony, maim! he remarked in a gentle whisper. Dejant's all right. He's just young, that's all, and I'm going to learn him, see? You chase around for Lizzie, and if DeGoia-Link got no other date you can meet us here about Moondown, and we'll bring a brace of frogs. So long, maim! Remember that I loves you! With a partly-mullified sniff the lady returned to her gate-post, and the two adventurers went on. They came to the evil-smelling tannery, and to the frog-pond just beyond it, stretching cold and still in the moonlight, and covered with a noxious, slimy scum. It was horribly different from the Persian's usual baths, but once in he forgot its chill in the lust of the hunt. They waited, and swam, and scrambled along the shore, ring-tail pointing out that frogs were want to crouch close down to the water's edge in the shadow of some bush or vine. Dears one, he whispered, now sneak up, son, and grab them. Quivering with suppressed excitement, Omar Ben sneaked, but mistook the a special frog to which his friend had reference. Instead he pounced upon a big yellow-throated beast, weighing a pound and a half, and known colloquially as a sock-dolliger, or a jugger-room. There followed a scuffling rush, a grunt, a startled yell, and a swirl of water. Then Ben Omar came up coughing, minus his frog, but plus an overcoat of mud and disappointment. "'Great snakes,' yelled Pete. Ain't your got no gumption tall? If I had known you wanted to eat a cow, I'da took you up to the slaughter-house. Go for the little ones, Beau. You don't gain nothing by being a hog. Take it from me. It's straight.' Beau went for the little ones. He had learned his lesson of experience and profited thereby. He made his virgin kill and devoured it, squatting in the muddy pond, while around him rose the voices of the wild things of the night, and never had a morsel tasted sweeter to his pampered tongue. And so the hunt went on, a never-to-be-forgotten hunt, when crawfish nipped their tails, when insects preyed upon their eyes, and they dripped with the sweat of joyful toil. Then, presently, the friends stretched out upon the bank, weary and replete. "'Say, Beau,' said Ring-tail, after a restful pause. What do you say to a nip?' "'A nip?' asked Omar-Ben, in astonishment. What kind of a nip?' "'Why, cat-nip, your bloomin' bladder-skite. What do you think I meant? A corner at a moon? I'm talkin' about just straight cat-nip. Are you on?' "'Yes, certainly,' returned the Persian gravely. I am on.' On the homeward-bound way they turned into a lane, and came to a clump of cat-nip. True, Ben Omar had tasted the herb before, but dry, and in five-cent packages, which was different from the pure article direct from nature still, and exuding its sharp, intoxicating breath. Pete and Omar fell upon it greedily, rolled upon it, wallowed among the scattered leaves, and chewed and chewed until their senses swam in a spirit-dance of ecstasy. Then after a nap the two reeled homeward down the road, Pete, smiling his twisted smile, and Omar-Ben Safi, wrapped in the comforting belief that he was singing tunefully. "'Say, R.T., the Persian chuckled happily. What did you say was the name of your lady friend's other friend?' "'Lizzie,' answered ring-tail Pete, astounded at the tone of familiarity, "'and take it from me. She's white.' "'In color, do you mean?' "'Nah, in disposition. Outside she's kind of striped, but inside the lady's white. And don't forget it. Bo, she's the owner of four good sets of claws. "'Thank you,' said Omar-Ben, eerily, I shall endeavor to remember. Come along, R.T.' Pete objected somewhat to this pointed abbreviation of his name, but forgave his friend on the grounds that he was drunk, so the two went on and sought their rendezvous. But the ladies were waiting, seated expectantly on their gate-posts, but descended at ring-tail's call, and the swell gent was formally introduced. Miss Lizzie seemed to like him immensely, and the two progressed so well that ring-tail Pete stretched his single eye to its utmost capacity, cursing softly at his friend's unprecedented cheek. For Omar-Ben, thanks to his nip of cat-nip, so far forgot his strained reserve that Miss Lizzie herself said afterward to her friend in confidence, I never see such a forward gent since you and me was a couple or half-drowned kits. The flirtation, however, was short-lived, for suddenly, without an instance warning, Miss Lizzie, Miss Mame, and Pete himself went clawing up a water-pipe to a convenient roof above, while down in the street came floating a shrill, defiant yowl. "'Chase yourself, Bo,' called Pete in a voice of fear, "'It's Ashkhan Sam!' Now Ashkhan Sam had a reputation of his own, as every cat in the neighborhood could testify was sorrow and with tears. He weighed eleven pounds. He kept himself in training, and where others lived for love or wealth or art, Ashkhan Sam existed for a finished fight alone. At the present speaking he came swaggering around the corner, and paused in astonishment at the sight of a stranger sitting in the middle of the street. The insolence of it. It was past belief. "'Oh, please, Mr. Bo,' wailed Lizzie, ringing her pause as she perched up on the roof, "'Do hurry whilst you've got the chance. He'll rip you something terrible. For my sake, dearie, won't you slope?' "'No, not upon your life,' called Omar Ben Gravely, "'I do not demean myself by retreating from any cat alive.' This statement was fat with brave audacity, but lean in the matter of discretion. So Pete leaned down with one last friendly whisper of appeal. "'Why, you chowder-headed ass, he'll make your look like a mothette flannel shirt. Beat it!' But the patrician declined to beat it, and Ashkhan Sam edged a little closer, wearing a desolate, wicked leer of joy. He circled slowly around the stranger cat, eyeing Omar Ben's glossy coat and humming a sort of vulgar chant. "'Ain't it a shame to claw up Mama's sugar-pet, and hurt his nose? Not so, but yet. Oh, ain't it a shame?' Omar Ben regarded the bully in calm scorn. "'You disreputable beast,' he said. "'Shut up!' Sam, in no uncertain terms, stated his unwillingness to shut up, and the conversation became personal. "'You're a blink-eyed yard of silk. I'm going to turn you cat out of the skin, and sell your tail for a fancy dustin' brush. Bosh! You'd run from a pet canary. You're a liar. You're another. Sows your paw, and sows your mother. "'Zip!' Yowl!' And the battle was on. "'Oh, dear!' Mewed Lizzie tearfully, and Mr. Bow was such an easy manner gentleman, too. Subconsciously she was already referring to the foolish Persian in the past tense. Yet in view of probable results, and in the stress of such violent circumstance, her anti-mortem sorrow might at least be pardoned. Omar Ben had never had a fight, and yet the memory of inheritance had waked within him, revealing other traits besides his yearning for debauchery and frogs, so now he squared himself and uncurled his velvet toes. Ashkan Sam crouched low, and came in with a headlong rush. Omar Ben sidestepped, and raked him with a stiffly extended paw. It was a good rake, and there was fur upon his claws, and blood. "'Hully gee!' breathed Pete into Mame's convenient ear. Did your pipe-de-way bow uppercut him? Gee!' Ashkan Sam was wounded, not so much in body as in pugilistic pride. He turned to wipe away the stain, and, incidentally, to wipe the earth with the body of a foreign cat. This time he came in, swearing, and the two cats reared upon their haunches with the shock, then fell in a tangled, rending, yowling snarl. Omar Ben, by instinctive craft, sought for a point of vantage underneath his foe. A vantage because, when lying on his back, he could claw straight up with all four feet, and the greater the weight of the chap on top, the greater his woe, abdominally. This point of vantage, however, is difficult to hold, with two most earnest gentlemen desirous of it, and so they changed positions, changed so rapidly, in fact, that their bodies resembled a sort of pyrotechnic pinwheel, whose centrifugal sparks were composed of eyes, and claws, and tufts of fur, and cat profanity. Also it lasted longer than the ordinary pinwheel, and was a trifle more uproarious, but it died at last with a sizzling spit, and a lean black streak shot out toward the haven of an alley's mouth. The streak was Ashkan Sam. Omar Ben Safi sat in the middle of the street, and wondered. He had thrashed something, and he didn't understand it. So he just sat there, quivering, bleeding, battered, but a conqueror. Ring-tail Pete endeavored to express himself, but emotion half choked him. Therefore he spat fervently, and said, Hully gee! Then he and the ladies descended from the roof, to walk in silent circles around the champion, regarding him with a species of cataleptic awe. Presently however, Pete came to earth, extended his paw, and delivered himself to an established truth. Well, dang my hide, but it takes her a risk to cratford a glitter in a scrap. They escorted him all the way to his $80,000 home. The ladies kissed him, both of them, and helped him to clammer weakly over his garden wall. He turned to ring-tail with an easy, aristocratic smile. Au revoir, RT! Those frogs were most delicious. Hully gee! breathed Pete, and disappeared through the dusk of the outer world. 3. Now in the $80,000 cottage, black sorrow reigned throughout the night. There were tears and linguistic prayers. There were tinklings of little bells, while humans called shrilly to vulgar officials along the wires. From a mass of incoherence the officials learned that some evil-hearted ruffian had entered the $30,000 garden and stolen a priceless cat. Thus the outer world went hunting. So great was its zeal, so great was the offer of reward that it captured every cat in town, with the one exception, of course, of Omar bin Safi. This particular hero was found the next morning, asleep in the geranium bed, so they bore him in while weepings burst forth afresh. And well they might. Poor Omar bin was a sight to awaken pity even in the stoniest of hearts. The number of his hairs could be counted almost, by plus and minus tufts. One eye was closed. The splendid tail was bent in several angles, unrecognized by the rules of art, and he smelled of the outer world horribly. His mistress expressed her grief in a noiseless, refined whimper of despair. The French maid shrieked, and called on heaven to witness the devastation of her every hope. But the master, who had lived, in spite of his Wall Street training, laughed. Nonsense, he said, you were squandering your sympathies upon a shameless prodigal. The beast has had the time of his life by George. Oh, Charles, how can you, wailed the mistress of the priceless cat? Can't you see how the precious child is suffering? Again the master laughed, laughed brutally. Of course he's suffering, my dear. But look at the smile on him. End of A Night Out, by Edward Peeple. Read by Rowdy Delaney for LibriVox.org. Solander's Radio Tomb, by Ellis Parker Butler. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Read by Betsy Bush in Marquette, Michigan, October 2008. Solander's Radio Tomb, by Ellis Parker Butler. Pigs Is Pigs Butler quite surpasses himself in this story. The intricacies in radio are so great, and the changes occur so quickly that no one can afford to make a will wear in a radio provision figures. Once we thought of having a radio loudspeaker installed in our coffin to keep us company and make it less lonesome. After reading this story we quickly changed our mind. The possibilities are too various. I first met Mr. Remington Solander shortly after I installed my first radio set. I was going into New York on the 8.15 a.m. train and was sitting with my friend Merchison, and as a matter of course we were talking radio. I had just told Merchison that he had a lunk-headed noodle and that for two cents I would poke him in the jaw and that even a pin-headed idiot ought to know that a tube set was better than a crystal set. To this Merchison had replied that that settled it. He said he had always known I was a moron and now he was sure of it. If you had enough brains to fill a hazelnut shell, he said, you wouldn't talk that way. Anybody but a half-baked lunatic would know that what a man wants at radio is clear, sharp reception, and that's what a crystal gives you. You're one of these half-wits that think they're classy if they can hear some two-cent station five hundred miles away utter a few faint squeaks. Shut up. I don't want to talk to you. I don't want to listen to you. Go and sit somewhere else. Of course that was what was to be expected of Merchison and if I did let out a few laps of anger, I feel I was entirely justified. Radio fans are always disputing over the relative merits of crystal and tube sets but I knew I was right. I was just trying to decide whether to choke Merchison with my bare hands and throw his lifeless body out of the car window or tell him a few things I had been wanting to say ever since he began knocking my tube set. When this Remington Solander who was sitting behind us leaned forward and tapped me on the shoulder. I turned quickly and saw his long sheep-like face close to mine. He was chewing cardamom seeds and breathing the odor into my face. My friend, he said, come back and sit with me. I want to ask you a few questions about radio. Well, I couldn't resist that, could I? No radio fan could. I did not care much for the looks of this Remington Solander man. But for a few weeks my friends had seemed to be steering away from me when I journeyer, although I am sure I never said anything to bore them. All I ever talked about was my radio set and some new hookups I was trying. But I had noticed that men who formerly had seemed to be fond of my company now gave startled looks when I neared them. Some even climbed over the nearest fence and ran madly across the vacant lots, looking over their shoulders with frightened glances as they ran. For a week I had not been able to get any man of my acquaintance to listen to one word from me, except Murchison, and he is an utter idiot, as I think I have made clear. So I left Murchison and sat with Remington Solander. In one way I was proud to be invited to sit with Remington Solander because he was far and away the richest man in our town. When he died his estate proved to amount to three million dollars. I had seen him often and I knew who he was. But he was a standoffish old fellow and did not mix, so I had never met him. He was a tall man and thin, somewhat flabby, and he was pale in an unhealthy sort of way. But after all he was a millionaire and a member of one of the old families of Westcote, so I took the seat alongside of him with considerable satisfaction. I gather, he said, as soon as I was seated, that you are interested in radio. I told him I was. And I'm just building a new set using a new hookup that I heard of a week ago, I said. I think it is going to be a wonder. Now here is the idea, instead of using a grid. Yes, yes, the old aristocrat said hastily, but never mind that now. I know very little of such things. I have an electrician employed by the year to care for my radio set, and I leave all such things to him. You are a lawyer, are you not? I told him I was. And you are chairman of the trustees of the Westcote Cemetery, are you not? He asked. I told him I was that also. And I may say that the Westcote Cemetery Association is one of the rightest and tightest little corporations in existence. It has been in existence since 1808 and has been exceedingly profitable in those fortunate enough to hold its stock. I inherited the small block I owned from my grandfather. Recently, we trustees had bought 60 additional acres adjoining the old cemetery and had added them to it. And we were about ready to put the new lots on the market. At $300 apiece, they're promised to be a tremendous profit in the thing, for our cemetery was a fashionable place to be buried in, and the demand for the lots in the new addition promised to be enormous. You have not known it, said Remington Solander in his slow drawl, which had the effect of letting his words slide out of his mouth and drip down his long chin like a cold molasses. But I have been making inquiries about you, and I have been meaning to speak to you. I am drawing up a new last will and testament, and I want you to draw up one of the clauses for me without delay. Why, certainly, Mr. Solander, I said with increased pride, I'll be glad to be of service to you. I am choosing you for the work, Remington Solander said, because you know and love radio as I do, and because you are a trustee of the Cemetery Association. Are you a religious man? Well, I said a little uneasily. Some, some but not much. No matter, said Mr. Solander, placing a hand in my arm. I am. I have always been. From my earliest youth, my mind has been on serious things. As a matter of fact, sir, I have compiled a manuscript collection of religious quotations, hymns, sermons, and uplifting thoughts, which now fill 14 volumes, all in my own handwriting. Fortunately, I inherited money, and this collection is my gift to the world. And a noble one, I'm sure, I said. Most noble, said Mr. Solander, but, sir, I have not confined my activities to the study chair. I have kept my eye on the progress of the world, and it seems to me that radio, this new and wonderful invention, is the greatest discovery of all ages and imperishable. But, sir, it is being twisted to cheap uses. Jazz, cheap songs, worldly words, and music. That, I mean to remedy. Well, I said, it might be done. Of course, people like what they like. Some noble or souls like better things, said Remington Solander solemnly. Some more worthy men and women will welcome noble or radio broadcasting. In my will, I am putting aside $1 million to establish and maintain a broadcasting station that will broadcast only my 14 volumes of hymns and uplifting material. Every day, this matter will go forth, sermons, lectures on prohibition, noble thoughts, and religious poems. I assured him that some people might be glad to get that, that a lot of people might, in fact, and that I could write that into his will without any trouble at all. Ah, said Remington Solander, but that is already in my will. What I want you to write for my will is another clause. I mean to build in your cemetery a high class and imperishable granite tomb for myself. I want to place it on that knoll, that high knoll, the highest spot in your cemetery. What I want you to write into my will is a clause providing for the perpetual care and maintenance of my tomb. I want to set aside $500,000 for that purpose. Well, I said to the sheep-faced millionaire, I can do that too. Yes, he agreed, and I want to give my family and relations the remaining million and a half dollars provided, he said, accenting the provided. They carry out faithfully the provisions of the clause, providing for the perpetual care and maintenance of my tomb. If they don't care and maintain, he said, giving me a hard look. That million and a half is to go to the home for flea-bitten dogs. They'll care and maintain, all right, I laughed. I think so, said Remington Solander gravely. I do think so indeed. And now, sir, we come to the important part. You, as I know, are a trustee of the cemetery. Yes, I said I am. For drawing this clause of my will, if you can draw it, said Remington Solander, looking me full in the eye with both his own, which were like the eyes of a salt mackerel. I shall pay you $5,000. Well, I almost gasped. It was a big lot of money for drawing one clause of a will, and I began to smell a rat right there. But I may say the proposition Remington Solander made to me was one I was able, after quite a little talk with my fellow trustees of the cemetery, to carry out. What Remington Solander wanted was to be permitted to put a radio-loud speaking outfit in his granite tomb, a radio-loud speaking outfit permanently set at 327 meters wavelength, which was to be the wavelength of his endowed broadcasting station. I don't know how Remington Solander first got his remarkable idea, but just about that time an undertaker in New York had rigged up a hearse with a phonograph so that the hearse with loudspeak suitable hymns on the way to the cemetery. And that may have suggested the loud-speaking tomb to Remington Solander. But it is not important where he got the idea. He had it, and he was set on having it carried out. Think, he said, of the uplifting effect of it on the highest spot in the cemetery will stand my noble tomb, loud speaking in all directions, the solemn and holy words and music I have collected in my 14 volumes. All who enter the cemetery will hear, all will be ennobled and uplifted. That was so too. I saw that at once, I said so. So Remington Solander went on to explain that the income from the $500,000 would be set aside to keep A batteries and B batteries supplied to keep the outfit in repair and so on. So I tackled the job rather enthusiastically. I don't say that the $5,000 fee did not interest me, but I did think Remington Solander had a grand idea. It would make our cemeteries stand out. People would come from everywhere to see and listen. The lots in the new edition would sell like hotcakes. But I did have a little trouble with the trustees. They balked when I explained that Remington Solander wanted the sole radio, loud speaking, rights of our cemetery. But someone finally suggested that if Remington Solander put up a new and artistic iron fence around the whole cemetery, it might be all right. They made him submit his 14 volumes so they could see what sort of matter he meant to broadcast from his high-class station and they agreed it was solemn enough. It was all solemn and sad and gloomy, just the stuff for a cemetery. So when Remington Solander agreed to build the new iron fence, they made a formal contract with him and I drew up the claws for the will and he bought six lots on top of the high knoll and began erecting his marble mausoleum. For eight months or so, Remington Solander was busier than he had ever been in his life. He superintended the building of the tomb and he had on hand the job of getting his endowed radio station going. It was given the letters WZZZ and hiring artists sing and play and speechify his 14 volumes of gloom and uplift at 327 meters and it was too much for the old codger. The very night the test of the WZZZ outfit was made, he passed away and was no more on earth. His funeral was one of the biggest we ever had in Westcote. I should judge that 5,000 people attended his remains to the cemetery for it had become widely known that the first WZZZ program would be received in loud spoken from Remington Solander's tomb that afternoon. The first selection on the program, his favorite him, beginning as the funeral cortege left the church and the program continuing until dark. I'll say it was one of the most affecting occasions I have ever witnessed. As the body was being carried into the tomb, the loudspeaker gave us a sermon by Reverend Peter L. Ruggis, full of sob stuff and every one of the 5,000 present wept. And when the funeral was really finished over 2,000 remained to hear the rest of the program, which consisted of hymns, missionary reports, static and recitations of religious poems. We increased the price of the lots in the new edition, $100 per lot immediately and we sold four lots that afternoon and two the next morning. The Big Metric Palatin newspapers all gave the Westcote cemetery full page illustrated articles the next Sunday and we received during the next week over 300 letters, mostly from ministers, praising what we had done. But that was not the best of it. Requests for lots began to come in by mail. Not only people in Westcote wrote for prices, but people away over in New Jersey and up in Westchester Country and even from as far away as Poughkeepsie and Delaware. We had twice as many requests for lots as there were lots to sell and we decided we would have an auction and let them go to the highest bidders. You see, Remington Solander's talking tomb was becoming nationally famous. We began to negotiate with the owners of six farms adjacent to our cemetery. We figured on buying them and making more new additions to the cemetery and then we found we could not use three of the farms. The reason was that the loudspeaker in Remington Solander's tomb would not carry that far. It was not strong enough. So we went to the executors of his estate and ran up against another snag. Nothing in the radio outfit in the tomb could be altered in any way, whatever. That was in the will. The same loudspeaker had to be maintained. The same wavelength had to be kept. The same makes of batteries had to be used. The same style of tubes had to be used. Remington Solander had thought of all that. So we decided to let well enough alone. It was all we could do anyway. We bought the farms that were reached by the loudspeaker and had them surveyed and laid out in lots. And then the thing happened. Yes, sir, I'll sell my cemetery stock for two cents on the dollar if anybody will bid that much for it. For what do you think happened? Along came the government of the United States regulating this radio thing and assigned new wavelengths to all the broadcasting stations. It gave Remington Solander's endowed broadcasting station WZZZ and 855 meter wavelength. And it gave that station at Doddwood, station PKX, the 327 meter wavelength. And the next day, poor old Remington Solander's tomb poured forth, yes, we ain't got no bananas and the hot dog jazz. And if you don't see mama every night, you can't see mama at all. And Hinktubs in his funny stories, like, well, one day an Irishman and a Swede were walking down Broadway and they see a flapper coming towards them. And she had on one of them short skirts. They was wearing C. So Mike, he says, Gibi jabbers, holy, I see a peach. So the Swede, he says, looking at the silk stockings, maybe you've been seeing a peach, Mike, but I've been seeing one mighty nice pear. Well, the other day I went to see my mother-in-law. You know the sort of program. I don't say that the people who like them are not entitled to like them, but I do say they are not the sort of programs to loudspeak from a tomb in a cemetery. I expect old Remington Solander turned clear over to in his tomb when these programs began to come through. I know our board of trustees went right up in the air, but there was not a thing we could do about it. The newspapers gave us double pages the next Sunday. Remington Solander's jazz tomb and Westcote's two-step cemetery. And within a week, the inmates of our cemetery began to move out. Friends of people who had been buried over a hundred years came and moved them to the other cemeteries and took the headstones and monuments with them. And in a month, our cemetery looked like one of those great war battlefields, like a lot of shell holes. Not a man, woman, or child was left in the place. Except Remington Solander in his granite tomb on top of the high knoll. What we've got on our hands is a deserted cemetery. They all blame me, but I can't do anything about it. All I can do is groan. Every morning I grab the paper and look for the PKX program and then I groan. Remington Solander is the lucky man. He's dead. End of Solander's Radio Tomb by Ellis Parker Butler. The Tell Tale Heart by Edgar Allen Poe. Recording by Margaret Brachon. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Tell Tale Heart. True, nervous, very, very dreadfully nervous, I had been an M. But why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses, not destroyed, not doled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How then am I mad? Harken and observe how healthy, how calmly I can tell you the whole story. It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain, but once conceived it haunted me day and night. Object, there was none. Passion, there was none. I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult. For his gold, I had no desire. I think it was his eye. Yes, it was this. He had the eye of a vulture, a pale blue eye with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold. And so by degrees, very gradually, I made up my mind to take the life of the old man and thus rid myself of the eye forever. Now this is the point, you fancy me mad. Mad men know nothing, but you should have seen me. You should have seen how wisely I proceeded, with what caution, with what foresight, with what dissimulation I went to work. I was never kinder to the old man than during the whole week before I killed him. And every night, about midnight, I turned the latch of his door and opened it. Oh, so gently. And then, when I had made an opening sufficient for my head, I put in a dark lantern, all closed, closed, that no light shone out. And then I thrust in my head. Oh, you would have laughed to see how cunningly I thrust it in. I moved it slowly, very, very slowly, so that I might not disturb the old man's sleep. It took me an hour to place my head within the opening so far that I could see him as he lay upon his bed. Ha, would a mad man have been so wise as this? And then, when my head was well in the room, I undid the lantern cautiously. Oh, so cautiously, cautiously, for the hinges creaked. I undid it just so much that a single thin ray fell upon the vulture eye. And this I did for seven long nights, every night, just at midnight, but I found the eye always closed. And so it was impossible to do the work. For it was not the old man who vexed me, but his evil eye. And every morning when the day broke, I went boldly into the chamber and spoke courageously to him, calling him by name in a hearty tone, and inquiring how he has passed the night. So you see, he would have been a very profound old man indeed to suspect that every night, just at 12, I looked in upon him while he slept. Upon the eighth night, I was more than usually cautious in opening the door. A watch's minute hand moves more quickly than did mine. Never before that night had I felt the extent of my own powers, of my own sagacity. I could scarcely contain my feelings of triumph. To think that there I was opening the door little by little, and he not even to dream of my secret deeds or thoughts, I fairly chuckled at the idea, and perhaps he heard me, for he moved on the bed suddenly as if startled. Now you may think that I drew back, but no, his room was as black as pitch with the thick darkness, for the shutters were closed fastened through fear of robbers. And so I knew that he could not see the opening of the door and I kept pushing it on steadily, steadily. I had my head in and was about to open the lantern when my thumb slipped upon the tin fastening and the old man sprang up in bed crying out, who's there? I kept quite still and said nothing. For a whole hour I did not move a muscle, and in the meantime I did not hear him lie down. He was still sitting up in the bed listening, just as I have done night after night, harkening to the death watches in the wall. Presently I heard a slight groan, and I knew it was the groan of mortal terror. It was not a groan of pain or of grief, oh no. It was the low, stifled sound that arises from the bottom of the soul when overcharged with awe. I knew the sound well. Many a night just at midnight, when all the world slept, it has welled up from my own bosom, deepening with its dreadful echo the terrors that distracted me. I say I knew it well. I knew what the old man felt and pitied him, although I chuckled at heart. I knew that he had been lying awake ever since the first slight noise when he had turned in bed. His fears had been ever since growing upon him. He had been trying to fancy them causeless, but could not. He had been saying to himself, it is only but the wind and the chimney. It is only a mouse crossing the floor, or it is merely a cricket which has made a single chirp. Yes, he had been trying to comfort himself with these suppositions, but he had found all in vain, because death and approaching him had stopped with his black shadow before him and enveloped the victim. And it was the mournful influence of the unperceived shadow that caused him to feel, although he neither saw nor heard, to feel the presence of my head within the room. When I had waited a long time, very patiently, without hearing him lie down, I resolved to open a little, a very, very little crevice in the lantern. So I opened it. You cannot imagine how stealthily, stealthily, until it lengthed a simple dim ray, like the thread of the spider shot from out of the crevice and fell full upon the vulture eye. It was open, wide, wide open, and I grew furious as I gazed upon it. I saw it with perfect distinctness, all a dull blue with the hideous veil over it that chilled the very marrow in my bones. But I could see nothing else of the old man's face or person, for I directed the ray as if by instinct, precisely upon the damned spot. And have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but over-acuteness of the sense? Now, I say, there came to my ears a low, dull, quick sound, such as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton. I knew that sound well, too. It was the beating of the old man's heart. It increased my fury as the beating of a drum stimulates the soldier into courage. But even yet I refrained and kept still. I scarcely breathed. I held the lantern motionless. I tried how steadily I could maintain the ray upon the eve. Meantime, the hellish tattoo of the heart increased. It grew quicker and quicker and louder and louder every instant. The old man's terror must have been extreme. It grew louder. I say, louder every moment. Do you mark me well? I have told you that I am nervous, so I am. And now, at the dead hour of the night, amid the dreadful silence of that old house, so strange a noise as this excited me to uncontrollable terror. Yet for some minutes longer I refrained and stood still. But the beating grew louder, louder. I thought the heart must burst. And now a new anxiety seized me. The sound would be heard by a neighbor. The old man's hour had come. With a loud yell, I threw open the lantern and leaped into the room. He shrieked once, once only. In an instant I dragged him to the floor and pulled the heavy bed over him. I then smiled gaily to find the deed so far done. But for many minutes the heart beat. On with a muffled sound. This, however, did not vex me. It would not be heard through the wall. At length it ceased. The old man was dead. I removed the bed and examined the corpse. Yes, he was stone, stone dead. I placed my hand upon the heart and held it there many minutes. There was no pulsation. He was stone dead. His eye would trouble me no more. If you still think me mad, you will think so no longer when I describe the wise precautions I took for the concealment of the body. The night waned and I worked hastily but in silence. First of all, I dismembered the corpse. I cut off the head and the arms and the legs. I then took up three planks from the flooring of the chamber and deposited all between the scantling. I then replaced the board so cleverly, so cunningly that no human eye, not even his, could have detected anything wrong. There was nothing to wash out, no stain of any kind, no blood-splot, whatever. I had been too wary for that. A tub had caught all, ha, ha. When I had made an end of these labors, it was four o'clock, still dark as midnight. As the bell sounded the hour, there came a knocking at the street door. I went down to open it with a light heart for what had I now to fear. There entered three men who introduced themselves with perfect suavity as officers of the police. A shriek had been heard by a neighbor during the night. Suspicion of foul play had been arised. Information had been lodged at the police office and they, the officers, had been deputed to search the premises. I smiled for what had I to fear. I bade the gentleman welcome. The shriek, I said, was my own in a dream. The old man I mentioned was absent in the country. I took my visitors all over the house. I bade them search, search well. I led them at length to his chamber. I showed them his treasures, secure, undisturbed. In the enthusiasm of my confidence, I brought chairs into the room and desired them here to rest from their fatigues. While I myself, in the wild audacity of my perfect triumph, placed my own seat upon the very spot beneath which proposed the corpse of the victim. The officers were satisfied. My manner had convinced them. I was singularly at ease. They sat, and while I answered cheerly, they chatted of familiar things. But ere long, I felt myself getting pale and wished them gone. My head ached and I fancied a ringing in my ears, but still they sat and still chatted. The ringing became more distinct. It continued and became more distinct. I talked more freely to get rid of the feelings, but it continued and gained definiteness. Until, at length, I found that the noise was not within my ears. No doubt I now grew very pale, but I talked more fluently and with a heightened voice. Yet the sound increased, and what could I do? It was a low, dull, quick sound, much such a sound as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton. I gasped for breath, and yet the officers heard it not. I talked more quickly, more vehemently, but the noise steadily increased. I arose and argued about trifles in a high keen with violent gesticulations, but the noise steadily increased. Why would they not be gone? I paced the floor to unfro with heavy strides as if excited to fury by the observations of the men, but the noise steadily increased. Oh God, what could I do? I foamed, I raved, I swore. I swung the chair upon which I had been sitting and graded it upon the boards, but the noise arose over and over continually increased. It grew louder, louder, louder, and still the men chatted pleasantly and smiled. Was it possible they heard not? Almighty God, no, no, they heard, they suspected, they knew, they were making a mockery of my horror, this I thought and this I think, but anything was better than this agony, anything was more tolerable than this derision. I could bear those hypocritical smiles no longer. I felt that I must scream or die, and now, again, hark, louder, louder, louder. Villains, I shrieked, dissemble no more, I admit the deed, tear up the planks here, here, it is the beating of his hideous heart. The end. End of The Tell-Tale Heart, recording by Margaret Prashant. Thomas Jefferson Brown, by James Oliver Kerwood. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Roger Maline. Thomas Jefferson Brown, by James Oliver Kerwood. There are not many who will remember him as Thomas Jefferson Brown. For 10 years he had been mildly ashamed of himself, and out of respect for people who were dead, and for a dozen or so who were living, he had the good taste to drop his last name. The fact that it was only Brown didn't matter. Tack, Thomas Jefferson to Brown, he said, and you've got a name that sticks. It had an aristocratic sound, and Thomas Jefferson, with the brown cut off, was still aristocratic when you came to count the red corpuscles in him. In some sort of way he was related to two dead presidents, three dead army officers, a living college professor, and a few common people. He was legitimately born to the purple, but fate had sent him off on a curious ricochet in a game all of its own, and changed him from Thomas Jefferson Brown into just plain Thomas Jefferson without the brown. He was one of those specimens who, when you meet them, somehow make you feel there are a few lost kings of the earth, as well as lost lands. He was what we called a first cider, that is, you liked him the instant you looked at him. You knew without further acquaintance that he was a man whom you could trust with your money, your friendship, anything you had. He was big with a wholesome brown face, blonde hair, and gray eyes that seemed always to be laughing and twinkling, even when he was hungry. He carried about with him a load of cheerfulness so big that it was constantly spilling over on other people. There was a time when Thomas Jefferson Brown had little white cards with his name on them. That was when he went to college, and his lungs weren't so good. It was then that some big doctor told him that if he wanted to live to have grandchildren, the best thing for him to do was to tramp it for a while, live out of doors, sleep out of doors, do nothing but breathe fresh air and walk. That doctor was fate playing his game behind a pair of spectacles and a bumpy forehead. He saved Thomas Jefferson Brown all right, but he turned him into a plain Thomas Jefferson. For Thomas Jefferson Brown never got over taking his medicine. He kept on tramping. He got big and broad and happy. Somewhere, perhaps in a barn, he caught a microbe that made him dislike ordinary work. He would set to and help a farmer saw wood all day just for company and grub. But you couldn't hire him to go into an office or settle down to anything steady for $25 a day. He had a scientific name for the thing that was in him, the Wanderlust Bug, I think he called it, and he said it was better than the Chinese ladybugs that the government imports to save California fruit. The nearest Thomas Jefferson ever came to going back to Thomas Jefferson Brown was when he took a job at Breaking on the Southern Pacific. That held him for three days less than two weeks. The Wanderlust Bug wouldn't stand for it, he explained. Right after that, he struck a farmer's house where the farmer was sick, almost dying, with three little kids and a frail little woman trying to keep things up. He worked like 10 men for more than a month on that farm, and when he went away, he wouldn't take a cent. That's the sort of near-do-well Thomas Jefferson was. He wouldn't beg. He'd go three days without grub and laugh all the time. It was mostly in the country and in small villages that he made his living. He could play seven different kinds of instruments without any instruments at all, did it all with his mouth. And the kids, they went wild over him. In return for his entertainment, Thomas Jefferson wasn't ashamed to take whatever came to him in the way of odd nickels and dimes. Once the manager of a vaudeville house heard him on a street corner and offered him a job at fifty a week if he'd sign a contract for a dozen weeks. Good Lord, said Thomas Jefferson, I wouldn't know what to do with six hundred dollars. The next week he was cooking in a lumber camp for his board. That's Thomas Jefferson, or rather, that's what he was. And now we're coming to the girl who killed the bug in Thomas Jefferson, and rescued the king. She was born swell. She has blue eyes, the sort that can light up a dark day and can make your head turn dizzy when they smile at you. And she's got the right sort of hair to go with them. Red and gold and brown all mixed up until you can't tell which is which. The sort that makes you wonder if some big artist hasn't been painting a picture for you when you see it out in the sunshine. She comes of a titled family, but she'd want to die tomorrow if Thomas Jefferson Brown didn't worship her from the tips of her little toes to the top of her pretty head. She thinks he's a king, and he is, one of those great big healthy kings that nature sometimes grows when it has half a chance. It's curious how the whole thing happened. Thomas Jefferson wandered up to Portland at the time we were fitting out a ship for a whaling cruise. We saw him imitating a banjo for a lot of kids down at the wharf, and the minute our eyes lit on him, tuckers in mine, we liked him. It isn't necessary to go into the details of what happened after that. Just a week later, when Thomas Jefferson and I were shaking hands for the last time, a queer sort of look came into his eyes, and he said, Bobby, you're the first man I ever knew that makes me feel like crying when you leave me. He said it just like one of the kids he'd tickled half to death on the wharf. There was little jerking in his throat, and there came into his face a look so gentle that it made me think of a girl. Why don't you come along on this cruise with me? I said. Thomas Jefferson gave a sudden start, and a queer expression came into his eyes as if he saw something out on the sea that had startled him. Then he laughed. You could hear that laugh of Thomas Jefferson's three blocks away, and sunshine in winter couldn't bring more cheer than the sound of it. He looked at me for a moment and then said, Bobby, I'll go. It wasn't 48 hours before Thomas Jefferson had a first mortgage on every soul aboard the sleeping sealer, from the cabin to the oiler down to the engine room. He was able, all right, but you couldn't have made an able seaman out of him in a hundred years. For all that he did the work of three men. The first thing you heard when you woke up in the morning was his whistle, and the last thing you heard at night was his laugh or his song. He did everything, from cooking to telling us why Germany couldn't lick England, and how the United States could clean up the map of the earth, if Congress would spend less money on job making bureaus and a little more on warships. Then we discovered what was in the old alligator skin valise he carried. It was books. Half the time he didn't have to read to us, but just talked of the stuff he'd learned by heart. We got to know a lot before the trip was half begun just by associating with Thomas Jefferson Brown, or Thomas Jefferson, as he was then. We spent three months up about the Spicer Islands, and then came down towards Southampton land. Thomas Jefferson was the happiest man aboard until we caught sight of a coast, and then the change began. After that he'd get restless whenever land hovered in sight. Six weeks later we came down into Rose Welcome Sound, planning to get out through Hudson Strait before winter set in. The fact that we were almost homeward bound didn't seem to affect Thomas Jefferson. I saw the beginning of the end when he came to me one day. Bobby, I've never seen this northern country. It's a big, glorious country, and I'd like to go ashore. There wasn't any use arguing with him. The captain tried it, we all tried it, and at last Thomas Jefferson prepared to take his leave of us at Point Fullerton, just 800 miles north of civilization, where there is an Eskimo village and a police station of the Royal Northwest Mounted. He came to me the day before we were going to take him ashore and said, Bobby, why don't you come along? Let's chum it, old man, and see what happens. When he went ashore the next day, I went with him, and we each took three months supply of grub and our pay. From that hour there began the big change, the change which turned Thomas Jefferson back into Thomas Jefferson Brown, and which it took a girl to finish. It came first in his eyes and then in his laugh. After that he seemed to grow an inch or two taller, and he lost that careless, shiftless way which comes of what he called the wanderlust bug. There wasn't so much laughter in his eyes, but something better had taken its place, a deeper, grayer, more thoughtful look, and he didn't play those queer things with his mouth anymore. The police at Point Fullerton hardly had a glimpse of him as the big, sunny, loose-jointed giant, Thomas Jefferson. He had become a bronze-bearded god with the strength of five men in his splendid shoulders and a port to his head that made you think of a piece of sculpture. You can't be anything but a man up here, Bobby, he said one day, and I knew what he meant. It's not the air, it's not the cold, and it's not the fight you make to keep life in your body, he added, but it's God. That's what it is, Bobby. There's not a sound or a sight up here outside of that little cabin that's human. It's all God, there's nothing else, and it makes you think. It was spring when we came down to Fort Churchill, and it was summer when we struck York Factory. It was the middle of one of those summer days when strawberries ripened even up there that the last prop fell out from under Thomas Jefferson, and he became Thomas Jefferson Brown. He met Lady Isabel. The title did not really belong to her, for she was only the cousin of Lord Meaton, but Thomas Jefferson Brown called her that from the first. It was down close to the boats, where their launch lay, and the wind had frolicked with Lady Isabel's hair until it rippled about her face and shoulders like a net of spun gold. She was bareheaded, and he was bareheaded, and they stared for a moment, her blue eyes flashing into his gray ones, and then there came into her face a color like rose, and he bowed, as one of the old-time presidents might have bowed to a hair-powdered beauty in the days when the sun was shining. And the capital was young. That was the beginning, and to his honor, be it said that Thomas Jefferson Brown never revealed that he was a gentleman born, though his heart was stricken with love at that first sight of Lady Isabel's lovely face. Lord Meaton wanted a man, one who could handle a canoe and shoulder 200 pounds of duff, and Tom became the man, working like a slave for a month, but always with the pride and bearing of a king. It wasn't difficult to see what was happening. Lord Meaton saw and understood, but he knew that the proud blood in Lazy Isabel was an invulnerable armor that would protect her from indiscretion. And as for Thomas Jefferson Brown, Bobby, he said, standing up straight and tall, if she can only love a gentleman and not a man, what's the use of playing cards? One day, when he had to carry Lady Isabel ashore from a big York boat, something inside him got the best of his arms, and he held her tight, so tight that her eyes came down to his with a frightened look, and he heard a breath come from her that was almost a sob. They gazed at each other for a moment, and it was then that Thomas Jefferson Brown told her that he loved her, not in words, but in a way that she understood. When he set her down on shore, she was as white as death. From that day, she treated him a little coolly up to the last moment out on the bay. It was a bright, sunshiney day when the three, Lord Meaton, Lady Isabel, and Thomas Jefferson Brown, set off in a big birchbark canoe bound for Harrison's Island, a dozen miles out from the mainland. But you can't tell much about sunshine and calm on Hudson Bay. They're like a jealous woman's smile, masking something hidden. Four miles out, the wind came up. Midway between the island and the mainland, it was a small gale. Even at that, Thomas Jefferson Brown would have made it all right if the beat of the sea hadn't broken a rotten thread under the bow, letting the birch seem part with the suddenness that sent a little spurt of water up into Lady Isabel's face. What? No, this isn't going to have the Regulation Hero Act end in which Thomas Jefferson Brown saves the life of the lady he loves. It's something different, something that Thomas Jefferson Brown never guessed at when the water spurted in and Lady Isabel turned to him with a little scream, her beautiful blue eyes wide and filled with horror. Don't be afraid, he said. Here, take this jacket and hold it down tight over the seam. We'll reach the island all right. Lady Isabel held the jacket over the hole and Thomas Jefferson Brown put a strength into his paddle that threatened to crack off the handle. After a minute or two he saw a little trickle of water beginning to ooze in about the edges of the jacket. He leaned back for an instant and signaled Lord Meton to bend over toward him. Take off your clothes, he said so low that Lady Isabel couldn't hear. Can you swim? Not a stroke, said Lord Meton and his face went as wide as chalk, but it was no wider than Thomas Jefferson Brown's. When a birch bark seam begins to part, there's no power on earth that will hold it when the canoe is heavily loaded. A few minutes later the water was gushing in by the court about Lady Isabel's feet. She fought hard to hold it back. When at last she saw that it was hopeless, she turned again to see Lord Meton in his underwear and Thomas Jefferson Brown stripped of everything but his shirt and his buckskin trousers, which don't watersog. He laughed straight into her face as if it was all an amusing joke and then suddenly he began playing that banjo thing with his mouth. It was also strange with the beat of the sea, the wail of the wind and Thomas Jefferson Brown sitting there as if nothing were happening that Lady Isabel just stared in astonishment while the water gushed in about her. At last he put down his paddle and stretched out both hands and it seemed the most natural thing in the world that her two hands should come out to meet his. Listen, he said and his eyes were telling her again what they told her on the day when he brought her in from the York boat. You'll do as I tell you, won't you and you won't be afraid? For an instant Lady Isabel looked at Lord Meton shrinking and shivering in the stern of the canoe and then she looked back to the other man's face and blue fires seemed to leap into her eyes. With you? No, I'm not afraid, she said. She leaned toward him nearer and nearer as the water rose about them looking straight into his eyes. They both knew in that moment that it was the man and the woman who had triumphed and that for them the lady and the gentleman were dead. I'm not afraid with you, she said again. Her lips trembled and her golden hair swept over his breast and Thomas Jefferson Brown bent down and kissed her once upon the mouth. Then he said as if he were speaking to a little girl, do not be afraid and hold to the edge of the canoe when it fills. The wind will carry us to Harrison's Island. He turned to Lord Meton and repeated the words and just then the birch bark began to settle under them. With one hand gripping the side, Thomas Jefferson Brown leaped over the sea. Lower and lower settled the canoe with almost a scream. Lord Meton cried out above the wind. Good Lord, it won't hold us up! For a few moments Thomas Jefferson relieved the canoe of his weight and the bark rose again slowly. Then with a gasp, he clutched at the side again and into Lady Isabel's drenched face, half hid the wet veil of her shining hair. The canoe won't hold us all up, he said, trying to smile, but it will hold too. You too and the wind is taking it to the island, four miles to the island and I may be make it. He knew that he never could make it. No man could swim so far in the chill waters of Hudson Bay, but he spoke as if his words were, I'm going to let go and try. Isabel, my love, will you kiss me? She threw one arm about his neck. Meton, clutching with frantic terror to the canoe, saw nothing of what happened, nor did he hear the sobbing cry of Lady Isabel's heart as she kissed Thomas Jefferson Brown once, and then three times before he dropped back into the sea again. Goodbye, sweetheart, he said. In the eyes that looked up at her, in his eyes in the one last look of love that he said, goodbye, Lady Isabel saw the truth and stretched out her arm to him. Stop, come back, take me with you, she cried, I want to go with you. And there, in the wildness of that sea, four miles from shore, Thomas Jefferson Brown seemed to heave himself up out of the water as if the strength of a thousand swimmers had suddenly come to him. He let out a cry of triumph, of love, of joy, and he came back and gripped the canoe again, his gray eyes flashing, his face glowing with a strange flush. You want to go with me? He said, come. He held up his arms and with a cry that wasn't fear, Lady Isabel went into them, while Thomas Jefferson Brown called to Lord Meaton, stick to the canoe, it will take you to the island. The shore was a low dark streak, four miles away, an appalling distance away. But as she clung lightly to his shoulders, as Thomas Jefferson Brown told her to do, the horror and the fear of the big sea went out of Lady Isabel's brave little heart. She put her face down against his neck, pulled back his wet hair and kissed him. God bless all such true hearts, wherever they be. We'll make it, Tom, we'll make it, she told him a hundred times. He felt the warm caresses of her lips, the thrilling love of her voice, and he knew that she was ready to die with him. He swam in a strange way, a wonderfully strange way, did Thomas Jefferson Brown. He stood almost erect in the water, his head and shoulders clear, and now and then he stopped to rest, and it seemed no test for him at all to float with the weight of the woman he loved. His face turned up to her in those moments, her glorious blue eyes devouring him, her sweet lips kissing him, still kissing him. He was doing a thing that she knew no other man in the world could do. She kept telling him so, while the land drew nearer and nearer, until at last she cried out in joy that she could see the little bushes along the shore. Another mile, Tom, she said, only another mile, and then, and then, he said, and then life, she cried, life for you and me. He went on, seeming to grow stronger as the shore grew nearer. It was wonderful, but at last, when they came to the beach, he dropped down like a dead man. Lady Isabel caught his head to her dripping breast and rocked him back and forth, sobbing a peon of love and pride. While far out, she saw the canoe and Lord Meaton drifting shoreward. A few minutes later, Thomas Jefferson Brown went out into the sea again until he was not much more than a speck and brought in the canoe and Lord Meaton. While Lady Isabel stood to her knees in the water, praising her God that from riches and splendor she had come out into a wilderness to find such a man as this. After that, at York Factory, there was nothing left for Thomas Jefferson Brown to do but to reveal himself. And when Lord Meaton discovered that there ran as good blood through his rescuers veins as through his own, he gripped hands with the man who had saved him and gave his congratulations on the spot. But it made no difference to Isabel. If anything, she was a little disappointed. Thomas Jefferson Brown arranged to go back with them on their yacht. The wedding would take place in London, a quiet affair. One day, Isabel and her lover came along hand in hand and Thomas Jefferson Brown said to me, "'Bobby, you're going to be best man.'" "'Not best man,' Lady Isabel added, "'but second best, Bobby, "'there's only one best man in the world.'" But I haven't been able to come to the point of this story yet, the remarkable part of it. Two weeks later, when we were up the river and our canoe struck a snag, I discovered that Thomas Jefferson Brown couldn't swim a stroke. "'Good Lord,' I said, but waited. Back at the post, Thomas Jefferson Brown took me into his little room and said, "'Bobby, you've found that I can't swim "'and I'm going to trust you with a great secret.'" Love can accomplish miracles, and love did, out there. For when I let go of the canoe, Bobby, I knew that I was going straight down to my death. But a wonderful thing happened. He brought a little map from a drawer. "'Look at this map, Bobby. See all those little marks off Harrison's Island? "'Figures, twos, and threes, and fives, "'and nothing above sixes?' "'That's the depth of water for five miles out "'from Harrison's Island at low tide. "'And it was low tide when I jumped from the canoe. "'That's all, Bobby. I waited ashore. "'But what would be the good of saying anything about it "'when it brought me love like hers?' "'Yes, what would be the use?' "'For Thomas Jefferson Brown stepped out deliberately "'to go to his death and found life. "'He's a hero and a man,' is Thomas Jefferson Brown. "'Even a fate did step in to make heroism "'a little easy for him at the time.'" End of Thomas Jefferson Brown Recording by Roger Maline by Edith Wharton This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Rina Tobi The Verdict by Edith Wharton June 1908 I had always thought Jack Gisborne rather a cheap genius, though a good fellow enough, so it was no great surprise to me to hear that in the height of his glory he had dropped his painting, married a rich widow, and established himself in a villa on the Riviera, though I rather thought it would have been Rome or Florence. The height of his glory—that was what the women called it— I can hear Mrs. Gideon Thwing, his last Chicago sitter, deploring his unaccountable abdication. Of course it's going to send the value of my picture way up, but I don't think of that, Mr. Rickham. The lost art is all I think of. The word on Mrs. Thwing's lips multiplied its ours as though they were reflected in an endless vista of mirrors. And it was not only the Mrs. Thwing's who mourned. Had not the exquisite Hermia Croft at the last Grafton Gallery show stopped me before Gisborne's moon dancers to say with tears in her eyes, we shall not look upon its like again. Well, even through the prism of Hermia's tears I felt able to face the fact with equanimity. Poor Jack Gisborne, the women had made him. It was fitting that they should mourn him. Among his own sex fewer regrets were heard, and in his own trade hardly a murmur. Professional jealousy, perhaps? If it were, the honor of the craft was vindicated by little Claude Nutley. Who, in all good faith, brought out in the Burlington a very handsome obituary on Jack, one of those showy articles stocked with random technicalities that I have heard, I won't say by whom, compared to Gisborne's paintings. And so his resolve being apparently irrevocable. The discussion gradually died out. And as Mrs. Thwing had predicted, the price of Gisborne's went up. It was not till three years later that in the course of a few weeks idling on the Riviera it suddenly occurred to me to wonder why Gisborne had given up his painting. On reflection it really was a tempting problem. To accuse his wife would have been too easy. His fair sitters had been denied the solace of saying that Mrs. Gisborne had dragged him down. For Mrs. Gisborne, as such, had not existed till nearly a year after Jack's resolve had been taken. It might be that he had married her, since he liked his ease, because he didn't want to go on painting. But it would have been hard to prove that he had given up his painting because he had married her. Of course, if she had not dragged him down, she had equally, as Miss Croft contended, failed to lift him up. She had not led him back to the easel. To put the brush into his hand again, what a vocation for a wife! But Mrs. Gisborne appeared to have disdained it, and I felt it might be interesting to find out why. The dulcetory life of the Riviera lends itself to such purely academic speculations. And having, on my way, to Monte Carlo caught a glimpse of Jack's balustrated terraces between the pines, I had myself born thither the next day. I found the couple at T. beneath their palm-trees, and Mrs. Gisborne's welcome was so genial that in the ensuing weeks I claimed it frequently. It was not that my hostess was interesting. On that point I could have given Miss Croft the fullest reassurance. It was just because she was not interesting, if I may be pardoned the bull, that I found her so. For Jack all his life hadn't been surrounded by interesting women. They had fostered his art. It had been reared in the hot-house of their adulation. And it was therefore instructive to note what effect the deadening atmosphere of mediocrity, I quote Miss Croft, was having on him. I have mentioned that Mrs. Gisborne was rich. And it was immediately perceptible that her husband was extracting from this circumstance a delicate but substantial satisfaction. It is, as a rule, the people who scorn money who get most out of it. And Jack's elegant disdain of his wife's big balance enabled him, with the inappearance of perfect good-breeding, to transmute it into objects of art and luxury. To the latter, I must add, he remained relatively indifferent. But he was buying renaissance bronzes and 18th-century pictures with a discrimination that bespoke the amplest resources. Money's only excuse is to put beauty into circulation was one of the axioms he laid down across the sevre and silver of an exquisitely appointed luncheon table, when on a later day I had again run over from Monte Carlo, and Mrs. Gisborne, beaming on him, added for my enlightenment, Jack is so morbidly sensitive to every form of beauty. Poor Jack! It had always been his fate to have women say such things of him. The fact should be set down in extenuation. What struck me now was that for the first time he resented the tone. I had seen him so often basking under similar tributes. Was it the conjugal note that robbed them of their savour? No, for oddly enough it became apparent that he was fond of Mrs. Gisborne, fond enough not to see her absurdity. It was his own absurdity he seemed to be wincing under, his own attitude as an object for garlands and incense. My dear, since I chucked painting people don't say that stuff about me. They say it about Victor Grindel, was his only protest, as he rose from the table and strolled out onto the sunlit terrace. I glanced after him, struck by his last word. Victor Grindel was, in fact, becoming the man of the moment, as Jack himself, one might put it, had been the man of the hour. The younger artist was said to have formed himself at my friend's feet, and I wondered if a tinge of jealousy underlay the latter's mysterious abdication. But no, for it was not till after that event that the rose-duberie, drawing-rooms, had begun to display their Grindels. I turned to Mrs. Gisborne who had lingered to give a lump of sugar to her spaniel in the dining-room. Why has he chucked painting, I asked abruptly. She raised her eyebrows with a hint of good-humored surprise. Oh, he doesn't have to now, you know, and I want him to enjoy himself, she said quite simply. I looked about the spacious white-paneled rooms, with its famil-vert vases, repeating the tones of the pale, damask curtains, and its eighteenth-century pastels and delicate, faded frames. Has he chucked his pictures, too? I haven't seen a single one in the house. A slight shade of constraint crossed Mrs. Gisborne's open continents. It's his ridiculous modesty, you know. He says they're not fit to have about. He sent them all away except one, my portrait, and that I have to keep upstairs. He is ridiculous, modesty. Jack's modesty about his pictures? My curiosity was growing like the bean-stalk. I said persuasively to my hostess. I must really see your portrait, you know. She glanced out almost timorously at the terrace where her husband, lounging in a hooded chair, had lit a cigar and drawn the Russian deer-hound's head between his knees. Well, come, while he's not looking, she said, with a laugh that tried to hide her nervousness, and I followed her between the marble emperors of the hall and up the wide stairs with the terracotta nymphs poised among flowers at each landing. In the dimmest corner of Houdreau, amid a perfusion of delicate and distinguished objects, hung one of the familiar oval canvases in the inevitable garlanded frame. The mere outline of the frame called up all Gisburn's past. Mrs. Gisburn drew back the window-curtains, moved aside a jardinaire full of pink azaleas, pushed an armchair away, and said, If you stand here, you can just manage to see it. I headed over the mantelpiece, but he wouldn't let it stay. Yes, I could just manage to see it. The first portrait of Jax I had ever had to strain my eyes over. Usually they had the place of honour, say the central panel, in a pale yellow or rose-duberie drawing-room, or a monumental easel place so that it took the light through the curtains of old Venetian Point. The more modest place became the picture better, yet as my eyes grew accustomed to the half-light, all the characteristic qualities came out, all the hesitations disguised as audacities, the tricks of prestidigitation by which, with such consummate skill, he managed to divert attention from the real business of the picture to some pretty irrelevance of detail. Mrs. Gisburn presenting a neutral surface to work on, forming as it were so inevitably the background of her own picture, had lent herself in an unusual degree to the display of this false virtuosity. The picture was one of Jax's strongest, as his admirers would have put it. It represented on his part a swelling of muscles, a congesting of veins, a balancing, straddling and straining that reminded one of the circus clown's ironic efforts to lift a feather. It met in short, at every point, the demand of lovely women to be painted strongly because she was tired of being painted sweetly, and yet not to lose an atom of the sweetness. It's the last he painted, you know, Mrs. Gisburn said, with pardonable pride. The last but one, she corrected herself. But the other doesn't count because he destroyed it. Destroyed it! I was about to follow up this clue, when I heard a footstep and saw Jack himself on the threshold. As he stood there, his hands in the pockets of his velveteen coat, the thin, brown waves of hair pushed back from his white forehead, his lean, sunburnt cheeks, furrowed by a smile that lifted the tips of a self-confident mustache, I felt to what a degree he had the same quality as his pictures. The quality of looking cleverer than he was. His wife glanced at him deprecatingly, but his eyes traveled past her to the portrait. Mr. Rickum wanted to see it, she began, as if excusing herself. He shrugged his shoulders, still smiling. Oh, Rickum found me out long ago, he said lightly. Then passing his arm through mine, come and see the rest of the house. He showed it to me with a kind of naive suburban pride, the bathrooms, the speaking tubes, the dress-closets, the trouser presses, all the complex simplifications of the millionaire's domestic economy. And whenever my wonder paid the expected tribute, he said, throwing out his chest a little. Yes, I really don't see how people manage to live without that. Well, it was just the end one might have foreseen for him, only he was, through it all, and in spite of it all, as he had been through, and in spite of his pictures, so handsome, so charming, so disarming, that one longed to cry out, Be dissatisfied with your leisure, as one had longed to say, Be dissatisfied with your work. But with the cry on my lips, my diagnosis suffered an unexpected check. This is my own lair, he said, leading me into a dark, plain room at the end of the flurid vista. It was square and brown and leathery, no effects, no bric-a-brac, none of the air of posing for reproduction in a picture weekly. Above all, no release sign of ever having been used as a studio. The fact brought home to me the absolute finality of Jack's break with his old life. Don't ever dabble with paint any more? I asked still looking about for a trace of such activity. Never, he said briefly. Or water-color or etching? His confident eyes drew dim, and his cheeks paled a little under their handsome sunburn. Never think of it, my dear fellow, any more than if I had never touched a brush. And his tone told me in a flash that he never thought of anything else. I moved away instinctively embarrassed by my unexpected discovery. And as I turned, my eye fell on a small picture above the mantle-piece, the only object breaking the plain oak paneling of the room. By Jove, I said, it was a sketch of a donkey, an old, tired donkey standing in the rain under a wall. By Jove, a stroud, I cried. He was silent, but I felt him close behind me, breathing a little quickly. What a wonder made with a dozen lines but on everlasting foundations you lucky chap! Where did you get it? He answered slowly. Mrs. Stroud gave it to me. Oh! I didn't know you even knew the Strouds. He was such an inflexible hermit. I didn't, till after. She sent for me to paint him when he was dead. When he was dead? Hugh? I must have let a little too much amazement escape through my surprise, for he answered with a deprecating laugh. Yes, she's an awful simpleton, you know, Mrs. Stroud. Her only idea was to have him done by a fashionable painter. Poor Stroud. She thought it was the surest way of proclaiming his greatness, of forcing it on a pure, blind public. And at the moment I was THE fashionable painter. Ah! Her Stroud, as you say, was that his history? That was his history. She believed in him, gloried in him, or thought she did. But she couldn't bear not to have all the drawing-rooms with her. She couldn't bear the fact that, on varnishing days, one could always get near enough to see his pictures. Poor woman. She's just a fragment groping for other fragments. Stroud is the only hole I ever knew. You ever knew? But you just said, Gisburn had a curious smile in his eyes. Oh, I knew him, and he knew me. Only it happened after he was dead. I dropped my voice instinctively. When she sent for you? Yes. Quite insensible to the irony. She wanted him vindicated, and by me. He laughed again, and threw his head back to look up at the sketch of the donkey. There were days when I couldn't look at that thing, couldn't face it. But I forced myself to put it here, and now it's cured me. Cured me! That's the reason why I don't dabble anymore, my dear Rickham. Or rather, Stroud himself is the reason. For the first time my idle curiosity about my companion turned into a serious desire to understand him better. I wish you'd tell me how it happened, I said. He stood looking up at the sketch, and twirling between his fingers a cigarette he had forgotten to light. Suddenly he turned toward me. I'd rather like to tell you, because I've always suspected you of loathing my work. I made a deprecating gesture, which he negatived with a good humor shrug. No, I didn't care a straw when I believed in myself, and now it's an added tie between us. He laughed slightly, without bitterness, and pushed one of the deep arm chairs forward. There, make yourself comfortable. And here are the cigars you like. He placed them at my elbow, and continued to wander up and down the room, stopping now and then beneath the picture. How it happened, I can tell you in five minutes, and it didn't take much longer to happen. I can remember now how surprised and pleased I was when I got Mrs. Stroud's note. Of course, deep down, I had always felt there was no one like him. Only had gone with the stream, echoed the usual platitudes about him. Till I have got to think he was a failure, one of the kind that are left behind, by Jove, and he was left behind, because he had come to stay. The rest of us had to let ourselves be swept along or go under, but he was high above the current, on everlasting foundations, as you say. Well, I went off to the house of my most egregious mood. Rather moved, Lord, forgive me, at the pathos of poor Stroud's career of failure, being crowned by the glory of my painting him. Of course I meant to do the picture for nothing. I told Mrs. Stroud so when she began to stammer something about her poverty. I remember getting off a prodigious phrase about the honour being mine. Oh, I was princely, my dear Rickham. I was posing to myself like one of my own sitters. Then I was taken up and left alone with him. I had sent all my traps in advance, and I had only to set up the easel and get to work. He had been dead only twenty-four hours, and he died suddenly of heart disease, so that there had been no preliminary work of destruction. His face was clear and untouched. I had met him once or twice, years before, and thought him insignificant and dingy. Now I saw that he was superb. I was glad at first, with a merely aesthetic satisfaction glad to have my hand on such a subject. Then his strange lifelikeness began to affect me clearly. As I blocked the head in, I felt as if he were watching me do it. The sensation was followed by the thought, if he were watching me, what would he say to my way of working? My strokes began to go a little wild. I felt nervous and uncertain. Once when I looked up, I seemed to see a smile behind his close grayish beard, as if he had the secret, and were amusing himself by holding it back from me. That exasperated me still more, the secret? Why, I had a secret worth twenty of his. I dashed at the canvas furiously, and tried some of my brevura tricks, but they failed me. They crumbled. I saw that he wasn't watching the showy bits. I couldn't distract his attention. He just kept his eyes on the hard passages between. Those were the ones I had always shirked, or covered up with some lying paint, and how he saw through my lies. I looked up again, and caught sight of that sketch of the donkey hanging on the wall near his bed. His wife told me afterward it was the last thing he had done, just a note taken with a shaking hand, when he was down in Devonshire, recovering from a previous heart attack. Just a note, but it tells his whole history. There are years of patient, scornful persistence in every line. A man who had swum with a current could not have learned that mighty upstream stroke. I turned back to my work, and went on groping and muddling. And I looked at the donkey again. I saw that, when Stroud laid in the first stroke, he knew just what the end would be. He had possessed his subject, absorbed it, recreated it. When had I done that with any of my things? They hadn't been born of me. I had just adopted them. Hang it, Rickham. With that face watching me, I couldn't do another stroke. The plain truth was, I didn't know where to put it. I had never known. Only with my sitters and my public, a showy splash of color covered up the fact. I just threw paint into their faces. Well, paint was the one medium those dead eyes could see through, see straight to the tottering foundations underneath. Don't you know how, in talking a foreign language even fluently, one says half the time not what one wants to, but what one can? Well, that was the way I painted. And as he lay there and watched me, the thing they called my technique collapsed like a house of cards. He didn't sneer, you understand. Poor Stroud. He just lay there quietly watching, and on his lips, through the gray beard, I seemed to hear the question, Are you sure you know where you're coming out? If I could have painted that face with that question on it, I should have done a great thing. The next greatest thing was to see that I couldn't, and that grace was given me. But oh, at that minute, Rickham, was there anything on earth I wouldn't have given, to have Stroud alive before me, and to hear him say, It's not too late. I'll show you how. It was too late. It would have been even if he'd been alive. I packed up my traps, and I went down and told Mrs. Stroud, Of course I didn't tell her that. It would have been Greek to her. I simply said I couldn't paint him, that I was too moved. She rather liked the idea. She's so romantic. It was that that made her give me the donkey. But she was terribly upset at not getting the portrait. She did so want him done by someone showy. At first I was afraid she wouldn't let me off. And at my wit's end I suggested Grendel. Yes, it was I who started Grendel. I told Mrs. Stroud he was the coming man, and she told somebody else, and so it got to be true. And he painted Stroud without wincing, and she hung the picture among her husband's things. He flung himself down in the armchair near mine, laid back his head, and clasping his arms beneath it, looked up at the picture above the chimney-piece. I liked a fancy that Stroud himself would have given it to me, if he'd been able to say what he thought that day. And in answer to a question I put half mechanically, begin again, he flashed out, when the one thing that brings me anywhere near him is that I knew enough to leave off. He stood up and laid his hand on my shoulder with a laugh. Only the irony of it is that I am still painting, since Grendel's doing it for me. The Stroud stand alone and happen once, but there's no exterminating our kind of art. THE END OF THE VERDICT by Edith Wharton Recording by Rina Tobi