 Section 1 of Selected Works, Letters, Sketches and Stories by Volterine DeClaire. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. A rocket of iron of Selected Works, Letters, Sketches and Stories by Volterine DeClaire. It was one of those misty October nightfalls of the North when the white fog creeps up from the river and winds itself like a corpse sheet around the black ant-like mass of a human in significance, a cold miness from nature to man, till the foreboding of that irresistible fatality which will one day lay us all beneath the earth's death sits upon your breast and stifles you till you start up desperately crying, let me out, let me out. For an hour, I had been staring through the window at that chill steam thickening and blurring out the lines that zigzag through it infinitely. Bill drunk on images of facts staggering against the invulnerable vapor that rolled me in, in a sublimated grave marble. Were they all ghosts? Those figures wandering across the white night hardly distinguishable from the posts and pickets that were in and out like half dismembered bodies writhing in pain. My own fingers were curiously numb and inert. Had I, too, become a shadow? It grew unbearable at last. The pressure of the foreboding at my heart, the sense of that uncripping of universal death, I ran out of doors, impelled by the vague impulse to assert my own being, to seek relief in struggle, even the four-doomed futile to seek warmth fellowship somewhere, though but with those ineffective palers in the mist that dissolved even while I looked at them. Once in the street, I ran on indifferently, glad to be just as glad of the snarling of dogs and the curses of the laborers, calling to one another. The penumbra of the mist, that menacing dimful shadow, had not chilled these then. On, on, through the alleys where human flesh was closed, and when one listened, one could hear breathings and many feet, drifting at loss into a current that swept through the main channel of the city and presently were round in an eddy. I found myself staring through the open door of a great ironworks. Perhaps it was the sensation of warmth that held me there first, some feeling of exhilaration and weakening defiance in the flashing swell of the yellow flames. This mixed with an indistinct desire to clutch as something, anything that seemed stationary in the midst of all this, that slipped and wavered and fell away. No, I remember now. There was something before that, there was a sound, a sound that had stopped my feet in there going, and smoothed me with a long shudder, a sound of hammers beating, beating, beating, a terrific hail, momentarily forced and louder. And in between a panting, as of some great monster, catching breath beneath the driving of that iron rain, faster, faster, clang, a long reverberant shriek, the giant had grown and shivered in his pain. Involuntarily, I was drawn down into the valley of a sound, words muttering themselves through my lips as I paused, forging, forging, what are we forging there? Frankenstein makes his monster, however, iron screams, but I heard it no more now. I only saw, saw the curling yellow flames and the red, red iron that panted, and the monsters of the hammers, how they move there, like demons in the abyss, their bodies swinging, their eyes dancing aglitter, their faces covered with the gloom of the torture chamber. Only one face I saw, young and fair, young and very fair, whereon the gloom seemed not to settle, the skin of it was white and shining there in the midst of that black hairs, though the white forehead felt tumbling waves of thick brown hair, and two great dark eyes looked steadily into the red iron. As if they saw there in something I did not see, only now and then they were lifted and looked away upward, as if beyond the smoke pole there beheld a vision. Once he turned so that the rose light caused forth his profile as a silhouette, and I shivered, it was so fine and hard, hard with the hardness of beaten iron, and fine with the finest of the keen chisel, had the hammers been beating on that fair young face, a comrade called, a sudden terrified cry, there was a wire rush, a mad stampede of heat, a horrible screech of hissing metal, and a rocket of iron shot upward toward the black roof, bursting and falling in a burning shower, three figures writhing along the floor, among the leaping demoniac sparks, the first to leave them was a man with a white face. He had stood still in the storm, and ran forward when the others shrieked back, now he passed by me, bearing his dying burden, and I saw no quiver upon brown ocean, only when he laid it in the ambulance, I fancied I saw upon the delicate curved lips, a line of purple steepen, and the reflection of the iron fire glow in the strange eyes, as if for an instant, the door of a hidden furnace had been opened and smoldering, coals had breathed the air, and even then he looked up, it was all over in half an hour, there would be weeping in three little homes, and one was dead, and one would die, and one would crawl, a seared human stump to the end of his weary days, the crowd that had covered was gone, they would not know the stump when it begged from them with its main hands, six months after on some street corner, fucky ever would say, and laugh, there would be an entry on the company's books, and a brief line in the newspapers next day, but the welding of the iron would go on, and the man who gave his easy money for it, would fancy he had paid for it, not seeing the stiff figures in their graves, nor the crippled beggar, nor the broken homes, the rocket of iron is already cold, dull, inert, fireless, the black fragments lie upon the floor, whereon the lately reigned their red revenge, do with them what you will, you cannot undo their work, the men are clearing way, only he with a white face does not go back to his place, still set and silent he takes his coat, presses his soft hat down upon his thick templates, and goes out into the fog at night, so close he pours me, I might have touched him, but he never saw me, perhaps he was still carrying the burden of the dying men upon his heart, some mightier burden, for one instant the shapely boyish figure was in full light, then it vanished away in the engulfing mist, the mist which the vision of him had made me forget, for I knew I had seen a man of iron, into whose soul the iron had driven, whose nerves were tempered as cold steel, but behind whose still impassive figures slumbered a white hot heart, and others should see a rocket in his ruin and feel the vengeance of beaten iron, before the mist comes and swells all, I had forgotten, upon that face, that young fair face, so smooth and fine, that even the black smoke would not rest upon it, there bloom the roses of early death, hot house flowers, and of a rocket of iron. Please visit LibriVox.org The chain gang of selected works let us catch us in stories by Volterine Duclair. It is far, far down in the south land, and I am back again, thanks be in the land of wind and snow, where life lives, but that was in the days when I was a wretch thing, that crept and crawled, and shrunk when the wind blew, and feared the snow, way down there to the world of the sun, where the wind and the snow are afraid, and the sun was kind to me, and the soft air that does not move lay around me, like folds of down, and the poor creeping life in me, winked in the light, and stared out at the white carousel air, stared away to the north, to the land of wind and rain, where my heart was, my heart that would be at home, yes, there in the tender south, for the love of the singing wind and the fruit whose edge was death, bitter and barred for the strength to bear that was gone, and the strength to love that abode, day after day I climbed the hills with my face to the north and home, and there, on those southern heights, where the air was resin and warm, there smoothened my ears the sound that all the wind of the north can never sing down again, the sun are short here till I stand at the door of the lost silence, clink clunk clink, from the Georgian hills it sounds, and the snow and the storm cannot drown it, the fall of terrible music of the chained gang, I met it there on the road, face to face with all the light of the sun upon it, do you know what it is, do you know that every day men run in long procession, upon the road they build for others safe and easygoing, bound to a chain, and that other men with guns upon their shoulders, right beside them, with orders to kill if the living links break, they are stretched before me, a serpent of human bodies, bound to the iron and wrapped in the merciless folds of justified cruelty, clunk clink clunk, there was an order given, the living chain divided, groups fell to work upon the road, and then I saw and heard a miracle, have you ever out of a drowsy, lazy conviction that all knowledges, all arts, all dreams are only patient, sums of many toils of many millions dead and living, suddenly started into an uncanny consciousness, that knowledges and arts and dreams are things more real than any living being ever was, which suddenly reveal themselves, unasked and unawaited in the most obscure corners of soul life, flashing out in prismatic glory to dazzle and shock all your security of thought, toppling it with vague questions of what is reality, that you cannot silence, when you hear that an untold child is able, he knows not how, to do the works of the magicians of mathematics, has it never seemed to you that suddenly all books were swept away, and there before used to this superb, things like creation, mathematics itself, posing problems to men whose eyes are course down, and all at once, out of whim, incorporating itself in that wide-eyed, mysterious child, have you ever felt that all the works of the monsters were swept aside in the burst of a singing voice, unconscious that it sings, and that music itself, in most the presence, has entered the throat and sang? No, you have never felt it, but you have never heard the chain-gang sing. Their faces were black and brutal and hopeless, their brows were blue, their jaws were heavy, their eyes were hard, 300 years of scorn that brands had burned its car open the face in form of ignorance, ignorance that had so duly, stupidly, blindly, and been answered with that pitiless brand, wide beyond the limits of high men and his little scorn, the great, sweet, old music soul, the chords of the world, smooth through the black man's fiber in the days of the making of men, and it sings, it sings with its ever-throaming strings through all the voices of the chain-gang, and never once alone that it does not fill with the humming vibrancy that quivers and bursts out singing things always new and new and new. I heard it that day. The leader struck his pick into the earth, and for a moment we still, like some wild, free, living flute in the forest. Then his voice floated out, like a low-booming wind, crying an instant and fell. There was the measure of a grave in the fall of it, another voice rose up and lifted the dead note aloft, like a moaner raising his beloved with a kiss. It drifted away to the hills and the sun, then many voices rolled forward, like a great plunging wave, in a chorus never heard before, perhaps never again. For each man sang his own song as it came, yet all blunt, the words were few simple filled with a great plant, the whale of the sea was in it, and the man knew what his brother would sing, yet added his own without thought, as the rhythm swept on, and others knew what note its fellow voice would sing, yet they fell in one another as the billow force in the trough, or rose to the crest, one upon the other, one within the other, over under, all in the great wave, and now one led and others followed, then he dropped back an another swell upward, and every voice was soloist and chorister, and never one seemed conscious of itself, but only to sing out the great song, and always as the voices rose and sank, the axels flung and fell, and the lean white face of a man with a gun look on with a stolid paralyzed smile, o that wild somber melody, that long appealing plant with its hope laid beyond death, that melody that was made only there just now before me, and passing away before me, if I could only seize it, hold it, stop it from passing, that all the world might hear the song of a chain gang, might know that here, in these red Georgian hills, convicts, black brutal convicts, are making the music that is of no man's compelling, that floods like the tide and ebbs away like the tide, and will not be held, and is gone, far away and forever, out into the abyss where the voices of the centuries have drifted and are lost, something about Jesus and a lamp in the darkness, a gulfing darkness, ooh, in the massive sunshine must they still cry for light, all around the sweep and the glory of shimmering ether, sun, sun, a world of sun, and these still calling for light, sun for the road, sun for the stones, sun for the red clay, and no light for this dark living clay, only heat that burns and blaze that blinds, but does not leave the darkness and lead me to that lamp, the pathetic prayer for light went trembling away, out into the luminous gulf of day, and the axels swung and fell, and the grim dry face of a man with a gun looked on with its frozen smile, as long as they sing, they work, see the smile, still and ironical, a friend to them that's got no friend, men of sorrows lifted up unto Golgotha, in the day when the forces of the law and the might of social order set you there, in the moment of your pain and desperate accusation against heaven, when that piercing Eloi Eloi, Lamar Sabak Tani, went up to a deaf sky, did you please age this disolate appeal coming to you out of this unlived death of 1900 years, hopeless hope that cries to the dead, futile pleading that the cup may pours, while still the lips drink, for as of all order and the law in shining helmets and gleaming spears ring around the felon of Golgotha, so stands they still in that lean, merciless fugue with its shouldered gun and passive smile, and the moon that died within the place of skulls is born again in this great dark cry rising up against the sun, if but the living might hear it, but the dead, for these are dead who walk about with vengeance and despite within their hearts, and scorn for things dark and lowly, in the order of self-righteousness with self-wanting wisdom in their souls and pride of race and iron-shed order and the preservation of things that are walking stones of these that cannot hear, but the living of those who seek to know, who what not of things lowly or things high, but only of things wonderful and who turn sorrowfully from things that are hoping for things that may be, if these should hear the chain-gank chorus, sees it, make all the living hear it, see it, if from among themselves one man might find the land, lift it up, paint for all the world with Georgian hills, these red sunburned roads, these darling figures with their rhythmic axes, these brutal anilumine faces, dull grouping, death covered and then unlose that song upon their ears till they feel the smitten quivering hearts of the sons of music beating against their own and under and over and around it the chain that the dead have forged clinking between the heartbeat clang, clink, clang it is sundown they are running over the red road now, the voices of silent only the chain clinks and of the chain-gank section 3 of selected works letters, sketches and stories by Volterine DeClaire this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org the heart of Angelilo of selected works, letters, sketches and stories by Volterine DeClaire some women are born to love stories as the sparks fly upward you see it every time they glance at you and you feel it every time they lay a finger on your sleeve there was a party the other night and a 4 year old baby who couldn't sleep through the noise crept down into the polar half frightened to death and transfigured with wonder met at the crude performances of an obstuous visitor who was shouting out the words of Othello one kindly little woman took the baby in her arms and said what would they do to you if you made with me whispered the child her round black eyes half admiration and half terror and altogether cockatish and she hid and peered round the woman's neck and every man in the room forthwith fell in love with her and wanted to smother his face in the bewitching rings of dark hair that crowned the dainty head and carry her about on his shoulders or get down on his hands and knees to play horse for her or let her walk on his neck or obliterate his dignity in any other way she might prefer the boys tolerated their fathers with a superior heart 14 or 15 years from now they will be playing the humble cousin of the horse before the same little ring-haired lady and having sported nickbottoms ears to no purpose half a dozen or so will go off and hang themselves or turn monk or become bald bad men and revenge themselves on the sex but her conquest will go on and when those gracious rings are whiter smooth the children of those boys will follow in their grandfather's and father's steps and dangle after her and make drawings on their fly leaves of the sweet kiss cup of the mouth of hers and call her their elder sister and other devotional names and the other girls of her generation who were not born with that marvelous entangling grace in every line and look will dread her and spite her her pain satisfaction when some poor old fool does swallow Ludanum on her account smiles of glacial virtue will creep over their faces like slippery sunshine when one by one her devotees come trailing off to them to say that such a woman could never feel immense heart nor become the ornament of his heart stone the quiet virtues that wear are all their desire of course they have just been studying her character and that of a foolish man but even those are not doing it with any serious motives and the neglected girls will serve him with homemade cake and wine which he will presently convert into agony in that pure shell ear of hers and all the while the baby will have done nothing but be what she was born to be through none of her own choosing which is her lot and potion and that is another thing that gods will have to explain when the day comes that they go on trial before men which is the real day of judgment but this isn't the baby's story which has yet to be made but the story of one who somehow received the wrong potion some inadvertent little angel in the destiny shop took down her name when the heroine of the romance was called for and put her where she shouldn't have been and then ran off to play no doubt not stopping to look twice for even the most insatiant angel that looked twice would have seen that if he was no woman to play the game of hearts and there's only one thing more undiscerning than an angel and that is a social reformer if he ran up against both they say she had blood in her girlhood that it shone red and steady through that thin pure skin of hers but when I saw her with her nursing baby in her arms down in the smudging crime of London there was only a fluctuating blush a sort of pink ghost of blood hovering back and forth on her face and that was for shame of the poverty of her need be a room not that she had ever known riches she was the daughter of scotch peasants and had gone out to serve this when she was still a child her chest was hollowed in and her back bowed with that unnatural labor there was no gloss on the pale sandy hair no wilding tendrils clinging around the straight smooth forehead no light of coquetry or grace in the glimmering blue eyes no beauty in her at all unless it lay in the fine hard sculptured line of her nose and mouth and sheen when she turned her head sideways you could read in that line that having spoken a word to her heart she would not forget it nor unsay it and if it took her down into Getsman she would never cry out though by all four seconds and that was where it had taken her then some ready condemn of all that has been tried for less than a thousand years we'll say it was because she had the just reward of those who holding that love is its own sanction and that it cannot be anything but degraded by seeking permissions from social authorities leave their love lives without the consent of church and state but you and I know that the same dog Gordon has awaited the woman whose love has been blessed by both and that many such a life lamp has flickered out in a night as profound as poverty and utter loneliness could make it so if it was justice to a fee what is it other woman in truth just had nothing to do with it she loved the wrong man that was all and married or unmarried it would have been the same for if formula doesn't make a man know the lack of it and make him the fellow was superior in intellect it is honesty only which can ring so much from those who knew them both for as to any other thing she sat as high over him as the stars or that that he was an actively bad man just one of those weak thing about characters having sense enough to know it is a fine thing to stand alone and vanity enough to want the name without the game and cowardice enough to creep around anything stronger than itself and hang there and spread itself about and say low how straight am I and if the stronger thing happens to be a father or a brother or some such torrent piece of friendly self sufficient energy he amuses himself a while and finally gives the creeper a shake and says here now go hang on somebody else if you can stand alone and the world says he should have done it before but if it happens to be a mother or a sister or a wife or a sweetheart she encourages him to think he is a wonderful person but all she does is really his own merit and she is proud and glad to serve him if after a while she doesn't exactly believe it anymore she says and does the same and the world says she's a fool which she is but if in some sudden spurt of masculine self assertiveness she decides to fling him off the world says she is an unmanly woman which again she is so much the better if he's creeper double in the territory he wanted to be a translator and several other things his appearance was mild and gentlemanly even super modest he always spoke respectfully of Effie and as if momentarily impressed with the sense of duty towards her we had started out to realize a free life together and the glory of a new ideal had become then forward so no doubt he believed for a prerender always deceives himself was than anybody else but still at that particular period he used to droop his head where really and admit that he had made a great mistake it was nobody's fault but his own but of course Effie and he were hardly fitted for each other she could not well enter into his hopes and ambitions never having had the opportunity to develop when she was younger he had hope to stimulate her in that direction but he feared it was too late so he said in a delicate and gentlemanly way as he went from one house to the other and was invited to dinner and supper and made himself believe he was looking for work Effie meanwhile was taking home boys caps to make and roaring along incredibly on bread and tea and walking the streets with a baby in her arms when she had no caps to make of course when a man drinks over people's teas a great many times and sits in their houses and burles odd shillings now and then and assumes the gentleman he is ultimately brought to the necessity of asking someone to deal with him so one spring night the creeper approached Effie rather dubiously with a statement that he had asked 203 acquaintances to come in the next evening and suppose she would need to prepare tea the girl was just fainting from starvation then and she asked him where really where he thought she was to get it he cost about a while in his special animus way for things that she might do and finally proposed that she pawn the baby's dress the white dress she had made from one of her own girl who dresses and the only thing it had to wear when she took it out for air that was the limit even for Effie she said she would take anything of her own if she had it but not the baby's and she turned her face to the wall and clung to the child when the tea time came next day she went out with the baby and woke up and down the surging London streets looking in the windows and crushing back tears what the creeper did with his guests she never knew for she did not return till long after dusk when she was too weary to wander anymore and she found no one there but himself and a dark stranger who spoke little and with an Italian accent but who measured her with serious intense eyes he listened to the creeper but he looked after her she was quite thugged out and more blood less than ever as she sat motionless on the edge of the bed when he went away he lifted his hat to her with the grace of an old time coach and begged her pardon if he had intruded some days after that he came in again and brought a toy for the baby and asked her if he might carry the child out a little for her it looks sickly shut up there but he knew it must be heavy for her to carry the creeper suddenly discovered that he could carry the baby all this happened in the days when a pious queen sat on the throat of Spain with eyes turned upward in much holiness she failed to see the things done in her prisons or hear the grunts that rose up from the zero chamber in the fortress of Montjuït the old Europe heard and even in America the echo rang why she told her beads her minister gave her order to torture the anarchist and scared with red hot ions maim and deform and madden with nameless horrors that the good devised to correct the bad even unto this day the evidences of that infamous order live but two men do not live the one who gave her order and the one who revenge it it happened one night in April and their sometime visitor met all three in one of those long loose mothering London horse where many movements have originated which in their developed proportions have taken possession of the house of commons and even staggered the dust in the house of lords there was a crowd of excited people talking all degrees of sense and nonsense in every language of the continent let us muggle from the prison had been received new tears of torture were passing from mouth to mouth rash propositions to arouse a general protest from civilization were bubbling up with the anger of every indignant man and woman drifting to the buzzing nuts if he heard someone translating it was the letter of a tortured nogus who a month later was shot beneath the fortress wall the words smoothed her ears like something hot and stinging you know I am one of the three accusers the other two are Aseri and Molas who figure in the trial I could not bear the atrocious tortures of so many days on my arrest I spent 8 days without food or drink obliged to walk continually to and through or be flogged and as if that did not suffice I was made to trot as though I were a whole strain at the riding school until worn with fatigue I felt the ground then the hangman burnt my lips with red hot ions and when I declared myself the author of the attempt replied you do not tell the truth we know that the author is another one but we want to know your accomplices besides you still retain 6 bombs and along with little Ola you deposited 2 bombs in the roof Vivalier who are your accomplices in spite of my desire to make an end of it I could not answer anything whom should I accuse since all are innocent finally 6 comrades were placed before me whom I had to accuse beg pardon thus the declarations and the accusations that I made I cannot finish the hangman or coming no guess sick with horror a few would have gone away but her feet were like lead she heard the next letter the pathetic prayer of Sebastian Sonier indistinctly the tortures had already seared her ears but the crying for help seemed to go up over her head like great sobs she felt herself wash run sinking in the desperate pain of it the pictures through the erosion listen you with your honest heart you with your pure souls good and right minded people good and right feeling people wail through her like the wild pleading of a child who shrieking under the whip via papa good sweet papa please don't whip me please please seek terror wrong flat three to escape the lash the lost cry aid us in our helplessness think of our misery made her quiver like a reed she walk away and sat down in a corner alone what could she do what could anyone do miserable creature that she was herself her own misery seemed so worthless beside that prison cry and she thought and why does he want to live at all why does anyone want to live why do I want to live myself after a while the creeper and his friend came to her and the latter sat down beside her and demonstrative as usual at the next burst in the room they too well left alone she looked at him once as she said what do you think the people will do about it he glanced at the crowd with a thin smile do talk in a little time he said quietly it does you no good here I will take you home and come back for David afterward she had no idea of contradicting him so they went out together in the middle of her room he said firmly I will come in for a few minutes I have to speak to you she struck a light put the baby on the bed and look at him questioningly he sat down with his back against the wall and with rigidly folded arms stared straight ahead of him seeing that he did not speak she said softly falling into her native day like as all scotch women do when they feel most I cannot get that poor creature's hand is no human no he said shortly and then with a sudden look at her if he what do you think love is she answered him with surprised eyes and said nothing he went on you love a child don't you you do for it you serve it that shows you love it but do you think it's love that makes David act as he does to you if he love you would he let you work as you work would he leave you wouldn't he wear the flesh of his fingers instead of yours he doesn't love you he isn't worth you he isn't a bad man but he isn't worth you and you make him less worth you ruin him you ruin yourself you kill the child I can't see it anymore I come here and I see you weaker every time whiter thinner and I know if you keep on you will die I can't see it I want you to leave him let me work for you I don't make much but enough to let you rest at least till you are well I would wait till you left him of yourself but I can't wait when I see you dying like this I don't want anything of you except to serve you to serve a child because it's yours come away tonight you can have my room I'll go somewhere else tomorrow I will find you a better place you needn't see him anymore I'll tell him myself he won't do anything don't be afraid come and he stood up if he had sat astonished now she looked up at the dog tense eyes above her and said quietly I did not understand a sharp contraction went across the strong bad face no you don't understand what you are doing with yourself you don't understand that I love you and I can't see it I don't ask you to love me I ask you to let me serve you only a little, only so much as to give you health again is that too much? I don't know what you are to me others love beauty but I see in you the eternal sacrifice your thin fingers that always work your face when I look at it it's just a wild child you are the child of a people that dies without crying oh let me give yourself for you and leave this man who doesn't care for you doesn't know you thinks you beneath him uses you I don't want you to be his slave anymore he clasps her hands and look at them then she look at the sleeping baby smooth the quilt and said quietly I didn't take him the day to leave him the morning it's not my fault if you are deaf about me the dog face open as once is the agony in a dying man but his voice was very gentle speaking always in his blood English no there is no fault in you at all did I accuse you the girl walked the window and looked out some way it was a relief from the burning eyes which seemed to fill the room no matter that she did not look at them and staring off into the twinking London night she heard again the terrible subs of Sebastian's son years later rising up and drowning her with its misery without turning around she said lo and hard I wonder you can think about those things an undilts burning man alive the man drew his hand across his forehead would you like to hear that the one the worst of them was dead I think the word would not be muckled the word she answered still looking away from him he came up and laid his hand on her shoulder will you kiss me once I'll never ask him she shook him off I didn't feel thought goodbye then I'll go back for David and he returned to the hall and got the creeper and told him very honestly what had taken place and the creeper to his credit be it said respected him for it he spoke a great deal about being better if you checked the girl the two men parted at the foot of the stairs and the lost words that echoed through the hall we were no I am going away but you will hear of me someday now what went on in his heart that night no one knows no what indecision still kept him lingering fitfully about if he is straight a few days more no when the indecision finally ceased for no one spoke to him after that except as casual akin tensors meet and in a week he was gone but what he did the whole world knows for even the queen of Spain came out of her prayers to hear how her torturing prime minister had been shot at Santa Aguilar by stunned face men who when the widow griff mad spit in his face quietly whip his cheek saying madame I have no quarrel with women a few weeks later they garreted him and he said one word before he died one only germinal over there in the long low london hall the gabbling was hush and someone murmured how he had sat silent in the corner that night when all were talking the creeper purse round a book containing the history of the tortures watching it jealously all the while foresaid he angrily lurk gave it to me himself he had it in his own hands a feeling beside the baby in her room and hid her face in the pillow to keep out the stare of the burning eyes that were dead and over and over again she repeated was it my fault was it my fault the hot summer air lay still and smothering and the immense murmur of the city came muffled like thunder below the horizon her heart seemed beating against the walls of a padded room and gradually without closing consciousness she slipped into a bowl of illusion around her grover stifling atmosphere of the torture chamber of mongerith and the choked cries of men in agony she was sure that if she looked up she should see the demoniac face of potas the torturer she tried to cry mercy mercy but a dry lips clave she had a whirling sensation and the illusion changed now there was the clank of soldiers arms a moment of insufferable stillness as the garot ship itself out of the shadows in her eyes then loud and clear breaking the solan quiet like the sharp ringing of a storm bringing wind germina she sprang up the long vibration of the bell of saint pacras was waving through the room but to her it was a prolongation of the word germina germina then suddenly she threw out her arms in the darkness and whispered forcefully an hour later she was back at the old question was it my fault poor girl it is all over now and all the same to the grass that roots in her bone whether it was her fault or not for the end that the men who had loved her foresaw came through it was slow in the coming let the creeper get credit for all that he did he stiffened up in a yosu and went to paris and got some work and there the worn little creature went to him and wrote to her old friends that she was better off at loss but it was too late for that thin shell of a body that had starved so much at the first trial she broke and died and so she sleeps and is forgotten and the careless boy angel who mixed all these destinies up so unobservantly has never yet whispered her name in the ear of the widowed lady canovas del castillo nor will the birds that flying either carry it now for it was not a thief and of the heart of angel lilo section 4 of selected works letters, sketches and stories by valderine de claire this is a libragox recording all libragox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit libragox.org the reward of an apostate of selected works letters, sketches and stories by valderine de claire I have sinned and I am rewarded according to my sin which was great there is no forgiveness for me and let no man think there is forgiveness for sin the gods cannot forgive this was my sin and this is my punishment that I forsook my god to follow a stranger only a while a very brief brief while and I would have returned there was no more returning I cannot worship anymore that is my punishment I cannot worship anymore oh that my god will none of me that is an all sorrow my god was beauty and I am all unbeautiful and ever was there is no grace in these harsh limbs of mine nor was at any time I to whom the glory of elite I was as the shining of stars in a deep well have only dull and faded eyes and always had the shizzle lip and chin whereover runs the radiance of life in bumbling glimpse the cup of living wine was never mine to taste or kiss I am earth colored and for my own ugliness sit in the shadow that the sunlight may not see me nor the beloved of my god but once in my hidden corner behind the curtain of shadows I blink at the glory of the world and had the joy of it as only the ugly no sitting silent and worshipping forgetting themselves and forgotten here in my brain it glowed the shimmering of the dying sun upon the shore the long raw line between the sand and sea where the sliding firm caught fire and burned to death here in my brain it shone the white moon and the wrinkling river running away a dancing ghost lying in the illimitable night here in my brain rose the mountain curves the great still world of stone summit upon summit sweeping skyward lonely and conquering here in my brain my little brain behind this tiny ugly wall of bone stretched over with its dirty yellow skin glittered the four high blue desert with its sand of stars as I have washed it nights and nights alone the shadows of the prairie grass here rolled and swelled the seas of corn and blossoming fields of nudding bloom and flower flies on their hovering wings went flickering up and down and the quick spring of live limb things went scattering dew across the sun and singing streams while shining down the rocks spreading bright veils upon the crags here in my brain my silent and revealing brain with the eyes I loved the lips I dared not kiss the sculptured heads and tendril hair they were here always in my wonderhouse my house of beauty, the temple of my god I shed the door uncommon life and worship here and no bright living flying thing in whose body beauty dwells as guests can guess the ecstatic joy of the brown silent creature it did things squatting on the shadowed ground self-blooded motionless thrilling with the presence of poor beauty though it has no port therein but the gods are many and once a strange god came to me sharp upon the shadowy ground he stood and beckoned me with knotted fingers there was no beauty in his lean figure and sunken cheeks but up and down the missiles ran like snakes beneath his skin and his dark eyes had somber fires in them and as I looked at him I felt the leap of prison forces in myself, in the earth, in the air in the sun all throb with the pulse of a wild god's heart beauty vanished from my wonderhouse and where his images had been I heard the clang and roar of machinery the forging of lengths that stretched to the sun chains for the tides, chains for the winds and curious lights one shining through thick walls as through air and down through the shell of the world itself to the great furnaces within into those seething depths I speared, smiling and triumphing then with an up glance at the sky and a waist glance at me he strode off this is my great sin, for which there is no pardon I followed him, the rude god energy followed him and in that abandoned moment saw to be quit of beauty which had given me nothing and to be worshipper of him to whom I was akin ugly but sinuous with a dearing, defiant maker and breaker of things from all the other world I followed him, I would have run abreast with him, I loved him not with a still ecstasy of flooding joy, wherewith my own god filled me of all but with impetuous eager fires that burned and beat through all the blood threads of me I loved you, loved me back, I cried and would have flung myself upon his neck then he turned on me with a rough less blue and fled away of the world, leaving me crippled stricken, powerless, a fire's pain driving through my veins gusts of pain and I grabbed back into my old cavern stumbling, blind and deaf unleaf of a haunting vision of my shame and the rushing sound of fevered blood the pain is gone, I see again I care no more for the taunt and blow of a fire's god who was never mine but in my wonderhouse it is all still and bare no image lingers on the black mirrors anymore no singing bell flutes in the aqueous dome forms rise and pass but neither mountain curve, nor sand, nor sea nor shivering river nor the faces of the flowers no flowering faces of my gods beloved touch out within me now not one poor thrill of vague delight for me who felt the glory of the stars within my fingertips it slips past me like water brown without and clear within no wonder now behind the ugly wall an empty temple I cannot worship, I cannot love I cannot care all my life service is unwaired against that faithless hour of my force-wearing it is just, it is the law I am force-worn and the gods have given me the reward of an apostate and of the reward of an apostate Section 5 of Selected Works Letters, Sketches and Stories by Walterine DeClaire This is a Library Works recording All Library Works recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit libraryworks.org At the end of the alley first of Selected Works Letters, Sketches and Stories by Walterine DeClaire It is a long narrow pocket opening on a little street which runs like a tortuous seam up and down the city over there It was at the end of the summer and in summer in the evening the mouth of the pocket is hard to find there are people in it and about who sit across the passage gasping at the dirty winds that come loathing down the street like crafty beggars seeking a hole to sleep in like mean beggars bereft of the spirit of free wind-hood Down in the pocket itself the air is quite dead one feels oneself enveloped in a scum-covered pool of it and at every breath long filaments of invisible roots swamp roots, tear and tangle I had to go to the very end to the bottom of the pocket there in the deepest of these alley-holes lives the woman to whom I am indebted for the whiteness of this waist I wear how she does it I don't know poverty works miracles like that just as the black marshmallow gives out lilies at the very last door I knock and presently a menstrual voice weak and suffocated called from a window above I explain there's a chair there and the voice was caught in a cuff this then was the consumptive husband she had told me of I looked up at the square-hole dimly outlined in the darkness once the cuff issued and suddenly felt a horrible pressure at my heart and a curious sense of entanglement as if all the invisible webs of disease had momentarily acquired a conscious sense of prey within their clutch and tighten on it like an octopus the haunting terror of the unknown the dim horror of an enemic presence recoiled before the merciless creeping and floating of an enemy one cannot grasp or fight repulsive turning from a thing that has reached behind while you have been seeking to face it that is there awaiting you with the frightful, ironic water of a silence all this swept round and through me as I stared up through the night up there on the bed he was lying he who had been meshed in the fatal web for three long years and was struggling still in the darkness I felt his breath draw the sharp barking of a dog came as a relief I turned to the broken chair and sat down to wait the alley was hemmed in by a high wall and from the farthest side of it they towered up four magnificent old trees whose great crown sent down a whispering legend of vanished forests and the limitless sweep of clean air that had washed through them long ago and that would never come again how long how long sees those four days of purity before the plague spot of men had crept upon them how strong those proud old giants were that had not yet been strangled how beautiful they were how mean and ugly were the misshapen things that sat in the doorways of the fall dense that they had made chattering chattering as ages ago the apes had chattered in the forest what curious beasts they were with their paws and head sticking out of the coverings they had twisted round their bodies chattering chattering always and always moving about unable to understand the still strong growths of silence so a half hour passed at last I saw a potting in the group of bodies across the entrance of the pocket and a familiar wary figure carrying a basket coming down the brick way she stopped halfway where a widening of the alley furnished the common drying place and a number of gloves crossed and recross each other casting a net of shadows on the pavement after a glance at the sky which had clouded over she sighed heavily and again advanced in the sickly light of the alley lamp the rounded shoulders seemed to droop like an old crowns yet the woman was still young that she might not be startled I called good evening the answer was spoken in that turn of force cheerfulness which the rest always give to their employers I sank upon the step with the habitual my but I'm glad to sit down of one who seldom sits tired out I suppose the day has been so hot yes I have got to go to work and Ion again till 11 o'clock and it's awful hot in that kitchen I don't mind the washing so much in summer I wash out here but it's hot Ioning or you need hurry I said no and sat on how much rent do you pay Ios 7 dollars 3 rooms over yes it's an awful rent and he won't fix anything the door is half of his fingers and the people is aside have you lived here along over 3 years we moved here before he got sick I don't keep nothing right now but it used to be nice it's so quiet back here away from the street you don't hear no noise that fence ought to be whitewashed I used to keep it white and everything clean and it was so nice to sit out here in summer under them trees I just wonder went through me somewhere back in me a voice was saying to him that hat shall be given and from him that hat not it shall be taken away even that which he had this horrible pool had been nice to her again I felt the abysses in me with its tentacles and high overhead in the tree crowns I seem to hear a spectral mockery of water yes I force myself to say they are splendid trees I wonder they have lived so long it is funny ain't it that's a great big yard in there the man that used to own it was a gardener and there's a lot of the curiousest flowers there yet but he's dead now and the folks that got it don't keep up nothing they are waiting to sell it I suppose above over our heads the rocking cuffs sounded again ain't it terrible she murmured day and night day and night he don't get no rest and neither do I it's no wonder some people commit suicide does he ever speak of it I ask her voice dropped to a semi whisper not now so much since the church people got hold of him he used to I think he'd had done it if he hadn't been for them but they have been kinda talking to him lately and telling him it wouldn't be right on account of the insurance you know my heart gave a wild bound of reward and I shut my teeth first oh man man what have you made of yourself most stupid than all the beasts of the earth for a dull of the things you make to be rubbed of living to be rubbed of and poisoned with you consent to the death that eats with a million mouths eats inexorably you submit to unamable torture in the holy name of insurance and in the name of insurance this miserable woman keeps alive the bones of a man I took my bundle and went and all the way I felt myself tearing through the tendrils of death that hung and sweet from the noisome wall and caught at things as they passed and all the way they are pressed they turn me pictures of the skeleton and the woman cloth in firm flesh young and joyous and thrilling with the love of a well and strong ah if someone had said to heaven someday you will slave to keep him alive through footless agonies that for your lost reward you may take the price of his pain end of at the end of the alley first I was wrong I thought she wanted the insurance money but I misunderstood her I found it out one while October day more than a year later when for the second time I saw the end of the alley the sufferer had suffered out the going of the woman and the woman and the woman and the woman and the woman the sufferer had suffered out the gaunt and wasted shell of a man lay no more by the window in the upper story the woman was free rest at loss I fought for both of them but it was not as I thought I expected ease to come into the woman's drawn face and relaxation to her stooping figure but something else came up on both something quite unwanted and inexplicable a wandering look in the eyes a stupid drop to the mouth a man in her walk as of one who is half-minded to go back and look for something there was too an irritating irregularity in the performance of her work which began to be annoying at loss on that October day this new and reliability reached the limit of provocation I was leaving the city I needed my laundry needed it at once and here it was 4 o'clock in the afternoon the train drew at night the wind was howling furiously the rain driving in the sheets but there was no alternative I must get to the end of the alley and back somehow the grey, rain-drenched atmosphere was still grayer in the alley still still grayer at the end and what with the gray of it and the rain of it I could scarcely see the thing that sat facing me when I opened the door a sort of human blur hunch in a rocking chair its head sunken on its breast in response to my total exclamation the face was lifted vacantly for a second and then dropped again but I had seen drunk and dead drunk and this woman had never drunk I looked around the restroom by the window where the grey light trailed in stood a table covered with unwashed dishes some laid flags were crawling in the gutters of slop visited the relics of insects stupidly staggering up and down the crack china understood this number but there was no fire a mass of unironed clothes leon and old couch and over the backs of two unoccupied chairs and the wall above the couch hang the portrait of a dead man I walked a slumping figure in the rocker and with ill-contained brutality demanded so this is why you didn't bring my clothes where were they I heard my own voice cutting like the edge of a knife and felt half ashamed when that weak shaking thing lifted up its foolish face stared at me with watery and combre-handing eyes my clothes I reiterated are they here or upstairs guess su stammered the uncertain voice guess su nothing for it but to find them myself I muttered beginning the search through the pile on the couch nothing of mine there so I needs must climb to the gulgutter on the second floor from which the cross had disappeared but which still bore traces of its victims long crucifixion a pair of old bed sleepers still by the window a sleeping cap on the wall some cannot but live to the things that have touched their dead one by one I found the rough dry garments here they are in the hallway in the garret hanging or crumpled up among dozens of others and all the while I hunted the rain beat and the wind blew and a luthard sound kept mingling with them rising from the lower floor my heart smoothed me when I heard it for I knew it was the woman sewing the self-righteous Pharisee within me gave an impatient sneer alcohol tears but something else clutched at my throat and I found myself glancing at the dead man's shoes when I went downstairs I averaged the rocking chair tied up my bundle counted out the money, laid it on the table and then turning round said deliberately and harshly there is your money, don't buy whiskey with it Mrs. Bossert crying had a little so bad her she looked up still with less light in her face her valiant intelligent dogs but with some dim self-consciousness it was as a face that had appeared behind deforming bubbles of water she half lifted her hand let it fall and stammered no I won't, I won't it don't do nobody no good the senseless desire to preach says all of me Mrs. Bossert I cried out aren't you ashamed of yourself and so long and so bravely and now when you could get along alright to act like this the soggy mouth drop open the glazy eyes tear at me fixedly and foolishly then shifted to the portrait on the wall and with a more kiss simpler as of some old drag playing 16 she slobbered out nodding to the portrait all for the love of him it was utterly ludicrous but I loved then a courage took me look here and again I heard my own voice grim and quiet cutting the air like a whip if you believe as I have heard you say that your husband can look down on you from anywhere remember you couldn't do a thing to hurt him worse than you are doing now love indeed the lash went home the stricken figure hurdled closer the voice came out like a dumb things moon oh I'm all alone then suddenly I understood I had taken it for mockery and profanation that leering look at the window on the wall that driveling stammer all for the love of him and it had been a solemn thing none of those words spoken in the morning of youth with the untried day before it under the seductive wichry of answering breath and kisses rushing blood and throbbing bodies but the word of a woman bent with service seem with labor haggard with watching the word of a woman who at the wash tub had kept her sufferer by the work of her hands and watching between the snatches of her sleep the immemorial passion of a common heart that is not much that had not much and has lost all years were in it for years she had had her burden to carry and she had carried it to the edge of a grave there it had fallen from her and her arms were empty nothing to do anymore alone she sat up suddenly with a momentary flare of light in her face as long as I had him she said I could do I thought I'd be glad when he was gone a many and many time but I'd rather he was up there yet I did everything I didn't put him away mean there was a hundred and twenty five dollars insurance I spent it all on him he was covered with flowers the flare died down and she fell together like a collapsing bag I saw the grave vacancy moving inward towered the lost pork of intelligence in her eyes as an ashing coal whitens inward towered the lost red part of fire this heap of rugs shattered with an inhuman wine alone in the crowding shadows I felt the dissolution pressing me like a vise behind that sunken heap in the chair gathered a midnight specter for a moment I caught a flash from its royal malignant eyes the monarch of human rinse the murderous bridegroom of widowed souls king alcohol after all as well that way as another I metered and allowed but the whip cord had gone out of my voice the money's on the table she did not hear me the bridegroom had given his bill of sleep I went out softly into the wild rain and overheard among the lashing orms of the leafless trees and around the alley pocket the wind was whining alone and of alone second section seven of selected works letters, sketches and stories by Voltaire and Declare this is a library of works recording all library works recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit libraryvox.org to strive and fail of selected works letters, sketches and stories by Voltaire and Declare there was a lonely wind crying around the house and wailing away through the twilight like a child that has been refused and gone of crying every now and then the trees shivered with it and dropped a few leaves that splashed against the windows like big soft tears it fell down on the dark dying grass and lay there till the next wind rose and whirled them away rain was gathering close by the gray patch of light within the room a white face bent over a small table and dust dim fingers swept across the strings of the season the low pathetic opening chords of Albert's hub's click wailed for a moment like the wind then a false note sounded and the player threw her arms across the table and rested her face upon them that was the use she knew how it ought to be but you could never do it never make the strings strike through to the song that was sounding within sounding as the wind and the rain and the falling leaves sounded it as long ago the wizard Albert had heard and conjured it out of the sound sea before the little black notes that carried the message of the world were written the wary brain wandered away over the mystery of her notes and she whispered daily any sound to the ear and that is his gift to the world his will and his dead, dead, dead he was so great and they are so silly those little black foolish dots and yet they are there and by them his soul sings the numb pain at her heart forced some sharp tears from the closed eyes she bet and unbent her fingers hopelessly two or three times and then let them lie out flat and still it was not their fault and the fingers fault they could learn to do it if they only had the chance but they could never, never have the chance they must always do something else always a hundred other things first always save and spare and patch and contrive there was never time to do the things she longed for most and never had moments unexpected freedoms the stolen half hours in which to live one's highest dream and never costly with time for once they have a fleeting glory when withered, sank away more and more sorrowfully into the gray soulless shadows of an unlived life once she had heard it so clearly long ago and the four of sun's space wings singing fields of home the wise sweet choruses the songs no man had ever sung still she heard them sometimes in the twilight in the night when she sat alone and work was over high and thin and fading only sound goes the incomparable glory of the first revelation a song no one else has ever heard a marvel to be seized and bodied only they faded away into the nodding sleep that would conquer and in the light and rush of day were mournfully silent and she never captured them never would life was half over now with a thought she started struck the cults again a world of plain throbbing through their strings surely the wizard himself would have been satisfied but ah once more the fatal uncertainty of the fingers she bit the left hand savagely then touched it softly and remorsefully with the other murmuring poor fingers not your fault at last she rose and stood at the window looking out into the night and thinking of a ring gift the noblest gift that had been hers and would die dumb thinking of the messages that had come to her out of the silent dark and sank back into it and sounded of the verses she would have given to the messages of the monsters and never would give now and with a bitter compression of the lips she said well I was born to strive and fail and suddenly a rush of feeling swept her own life out of sight and every out in the deepening night she saw the face of an old sharp chin white haired dead man he had been her father once strong and young with just not hair and gleaming eyes and with his own dream of what he had to do in life perhaps he too had heard sounds singing the air a new message waiting for deliverance it was all over now he had grown old and thin faced and white and had never done anything in the world at least nothing for himself he's very own he had shown clovers thousands millions of stitches in his work weary life no doubt there was still in existence crops and fragments of his work in some old rag bag perhaps beautiful fine stitches into which the keen eyesight and the death henna post still showing the artist's craftsmen but that was not his work that was the service society had asked of him and he had rendered himself his own soul but wherein he was different from other men the unbought thing that the soul does for its own art boring that was nowhere and over there among the low mountains of the soldiers graves his bed was made and he was lying in it straight and still with the rain lying softly above him he had been so full of the loss of life so alert so active and nothing of it all poor for you fell too she muttered softly and then behind the wrath of the dead man there was an older picture a face she had never seen dead 50 years before but it shown through the other face and outshone it luminous with great suffering much overcoming and complete and final failure it was the face of a woman not yet middle age smitten with death with the horror of utter strangeness in the dying eyes the face of the woman lost in a strange city of a strange land and with her little crying helpless children about her facing the inexorable agony there on the pavement where she was sinking down and only foreign worlds falling in the dying airs she too had striven how she had striven against the abyss of poverty there in the old world against the load laden her by such a low society the tryon god of terror against the inertia of another will she had both coupled with blood and spared and safe and enjoyed and waited she had bent the gods to her will she had sent her husband to America the land of freedom and promise she had followed him at last over the great blue beater water with its sleeping mouse that had devoured one of her to once upon the way she had been driven like a cow in the shambles at the next stage she had been robbed of all but her ticket and with her little children had hungered for three days on the overland journey she had lived it through and set foot in the promised land but somehow the waiting face was not there had missed her or she him and lost and alone with death and the starving babes she sank at the foot of a soldier's monument and the black mist came down on the courageous eyes and the light was flickering out forever she cried the living figure in the room stretched its hands toward the vision in the night there was nothing there she knew it nothing in the heavens above nor the earth beneath to hear the cry not so much as a crumbling burn anymore but she called brokenly oh why must she die so with nothing nothing not one little reward after all that struggle to fall on the pavement and die in the hospital at last and shadowing with covered eyes unwaveringly no wonder that I fail I come of those who failed my father his mother and before her behind the fading picture stretched him along shadows of silent generations with rounded shoulders and bent backs and sullen conquered faces and they had all most likely dream of some wonderful thing they had to do in the world and all had died and left it undone and their work had been washed away as if written in water and no one knew their dreams and of the foot of their toil over men had eaten for that was the will of a try and good but of themselves was left no trace, no sound no word in the world's glory no carving upon stone no indomitable ghost shining from a written sign no song singing out of black foolish spots on paper nothing there was though they had not been and as they all had died she too would die slave of the triple terror sacrificing the highest to the meanest that somewhere in some lighted ballroom or gas-bride theater some piece of vacant flesh might wear one more jewel in her beaded hair my soul she said bitterly my soul for their diamonds it was time to sleep for tomorrow work and of to strive and fail section 8 of selected works letters, sketches and stories by Walterine DeClaire and Libraryvox Recording all Libraryvox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer, please visit libraryvox.org the sorrows of a body of selected works letters, sketches and stories by Walterine DeClaire I have never wanted anything more than the wild creatures have a broad waft of clean air it did rely on the gross at times with nothing to do but slip the blades through my fingers as I pleased at the whole blue orc, and the screens of greed and wild between, leave for a month to float and float along the salt crest and among the foam, or roll with my naked skin over a clean long stretch of sunshiney sand. Food that I liked, straight from a cool ground, and time to taste its sweetness, and time to rest off the tasting. Sleep when it came, and stillness that the sleep might leave me when it would, but sooner, air, room, light, rest, nakedness when I would not be clothed, and when I would be clothed, a gourmet that did not fatter, freedom to touch my mother earth, to be with her in storm and shine, as the wild things are, this is what I wanted, this and three contact with my fellows, not to love and lie and be ashamed, but to love and say I love, and be glad of it, to feel the currents of ten thousand years of passion flooding me. Everybody, as the wild things meet, I have asked no more, but I have not received. Over me there sits that pitiless tyrant, the soul, and I am nothing. It has driven me to the city, where the air is fever and fire, and said, Breathe this, I would learn, I cannot learn in the empty fields, temples or here, stay. And when my poor, stifled lungs have panted, till it see my chasmous burst, the soul has said, I will allure you, then an hour or two, we will ride, and I will take my book and read meanwhile. And when my eyes have cried out with tears of pain for the brief vision of freedom drifting by, a niffle leaves to look at the great green and blue an hour. After the long, dull, red horror of wars, the soul has said, I cannot waste the time altogether, I must know, read. And when my ears have pled for the singing of the crickets and the music of the night, the soul has answered, no, gongs and whistle and shrieks are unpleasant if you listen, but cool yourself to harken to the spiritual voice, and it will not matter. When I have beat against my narrow confines of brick and mortar, brick and mortar, the soul has said, miserable slave, why are you not as I, who in one moment fly to the utterrest universe, it matters not where you are, I am free, when I would have slept, so that the leads fell heavily, and I could not leave them. The soul has struck me with a lash crying, awake, drink some stimulant for those shrinking nerves of yours, there is no time to sleep till the work is done, and the cursed poison worked upon me, till its will was done. When I would have dallyed over my food, the soul has ordered, hurry, hurry, do I have time to waste on this disgusting scene, fill yourself and be gone. When I have envied the very dog, rubbing its bear back along the ground in the sunlight, the soul has exclaimed, would you degrade me so far as to put yourself on a level with beasts, and my bands were drawn tighter, when I had looked upon my can, and longed to embrace them, hungered wildly for the press of arms, and lips the soul has commanded sternly, cease thine creature fleshly lust, eternal reproach, will you forever shame me with your beastliness, and I have always yielded, mute, joyless, fettered, I have tread the world of the soul's choosing, and served and been unrewarded, now I am broken before my time, bloodless, sleepless, breathless, half blind, wracked at every join, trembling with every leaf, perhaps I have been too hard on said the soul, you shall have a rest, the boon has come too late, the roses are beneath my feet now, but the perfume does not reach me, the willows trail across my cheek, and the great orc is overheard, but my eyes are too weary to lift to it, the wind is upon my face, but I cannot bear my throat to its caress, vaguely I hear the singing of the night through the long watchers when sleep does not come, but the answering vibration thrills no more, hence touch mine, I long for them so once, but I am as a corpse, I remember that I wanted all these things, but now the power to want is crushed from me, and only the memory of my denier throbs on, with its never-dying pain, and still I think if I were left alone long enough, but already I hear the tyrant up there plotting to slay me, yes it keeps saying it is about time, I will not be chained to a rotting cork us, if my days ought to pass in perpetual idleness, I may as well be annihilated, I will make the rest do me one more service, you have claimed to be naked in the water, go now and lie in it forever, yes, that is what it is saying, and I, the sea stretches down there, and of the sorrows of a body. Section 9 of Selected Works, Letters, Sketches and Stories by Vulder in the Clare This is the Library Works Recording. All Library Works Recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit libraryworks.org. The Triumph of Youth of Selected Works, Letters, Sketches and Stories by Vulder in the Clare The afternoon blazed and glittered along the motionless treetops and down into the yellow dust of a road. Under the shadows of the trees, among the powdered, gross and bushels, sat a woman and a man. The man was young and handsome in a way. With a lean, eager face and burning eyes, a forehead in the old poetic maul, crowned by loose, dark waves of hair, his chin was long, his lips spotted devouringly, and his glencers seemed to eat his companion's face. It was not a pretty face, not even ordinarily good-looking. Salu, not young, only youngish, but there was a peculiar mobility about it that made one notice it. She waved her hand slowly from east to west, indicating the horizon, and said dreamingly, how wide it is, how far it is, one can get one's breath. In the city, I always feel that the walls are squeezing my chest. After a little silence, she hoarse without looking at him. What are you thinking of, Bernard? You, him a mud. She glanced at him under her lids musingly. Stretch out her hand and touch his eyelids with her fingertips, and turn aside with a curious, fleeting smile. He caught out her hand, but failing to touch it as she drew it away, bit his lip and forcibly looked off at the sky and the landscape. Yes, he said in a strange voice, it is beautiful after the city. I wish we could stay in it. The woman sighed, that's what I've been wishing for the last fifteen years. He bent towards her eagerly. Do you think he stopped and stammered? You know we have been planning a few of us to club together and get a little form somewhere near. Would you, do you think, would you be one of us? She laughed a little low, sad love. I wouldn't be any good, you know. I couldn't do the work that ought to be done. I would come force enough and I would try, but I am a little too old, Bernard. The rest are young enough to make mistakes and leave to make them good, but when I would have my lesson learned, my strength would be gone. It's half gone now. No, it isn't. Bear, start the youth. You're worth half a dozen of those young ones. Old, old. One would think you were seventy and you're not old. You will never be old. She looked up where a crowd was wheeling in the air. If she said soly, following its motions with her eyes, you once plant your feet on my face and you will, you impish bird. My Bernard will sing a different song. No, Bernard won't retort the youth. Bernard knows his own mind, even if he's only a boy. I don't love you for your face, you. She interrupted him with a shrug and a bitter sneer. Evidently, who would? A look of mingle pain and annoyance overspread his features. How you twist my words. You're beautiful to me, and you know what I mean. Well, she said, throwing herself backwards against a trench-crank and stretching out her feet on the grass, ripples of amusement withering through the cloudy expression. Tell me, what do you love in me? He was silent, beating his lower lip. I'll tell you then, she said, it's my energy, the life in me. That is youth, and my youth has over-lived its time. I've had had a long lease, but it's going to expire soon, so long as you don't see it, so long as my life seems fuller than yours, well. But when the failure of life becomes visible, while your own is still in its growth, you will turn away. When my feet won't spring anymore, yours will still be dancing, and you will want dancing feet with you. I will not hear answered shortly. I've seen plenty of other women. I saw all the crowd coming up this morning, and there wasn't a woman there to compare with you. I don't say I will never love others, but now I don't. If I see another woman like you, but I never could love one of those young girls. She said, glancing down the road, where a world of dust was making towards them. In the center of which moved a band of bright young figures, there they come now. Don't they look beautiful? There were four young girls in front, their faces radiant with sun and air, and dizzy breaths in their gleaming hair. They had their arms around each other's waist, and sighing as they walked, with neither more accord nor discord than the birds about them. The voices were delicious in their youth and joy. One heard that they were singing, not to produce a musical effect, but from the mere wish to sing. Behind them came a troupe of young fellows, cause of heads bare, racing all over the roadside, jostling each other and purposely provoking scrambles. The two less one had a number of brad girls crowning a glowing face, dimpled and sparking as its child. The girls glanced sharply at him under their lashes, as he danced about now in front and now behind them, occasionally tossing them a flower, but mostly hustling his comrades about. Behind these came older people, with three or four very little children, riding on their backs. As a group came abreast of our couple, they stopped to exchange a few words, then went on. When they had paused out of hearing, the woman sat with his things like stare in her eyes, looking steadily at the spot where the bright head had nodded to her as it paused. Like a wild flower on a stalk, she murmured softly, gnarling her eyes as if to fix the vision, like a tall tiger lily. Her companions faced dark and perceptibly. What do you mean? What do you see here? The vision of youth and beauty, she answered in the turn of a sleepwalker. And the glory and triumph of it, the immortality of it, it splendid indifference to its ruin temples, and all its humble worshippers. Do you know turning suddenly to him with a sharp change in face and voice? What I would be weak enough to do if I could, he smiled, tolerantly. You weak, dear one, you couldn't be weak. Oh, but I could. If there were any way to fix Tevi's head forever, just as he passed us now, forever so that all the world might keep it and see it for all time, I would cut it off with his hand. Yes, I would. Her eyes glittered mercilessly. He shook his head, smiling, you wouldn't kill a bug. Let alone Tevi. I tell you, I would. Do you remember when Nathaniel died? I felt bad enough, but do you know the week before when he was so very sick? I went out one day to a beautiful glen we used to visit together. They had been improving it. They had improved it so much that the water is all dying out of a creek. The little birds that used to float like bonlilies, like all helpless in the mud, and hardly a ribbon of water goes over the fall, and the old giant trees are withering. Oh, it hurt me so to think the glory of a thousand years was vanishing before my eyes, and I couldn't hold it. And suddenly the question came into my head. If you had the power, would you save Nathaniel's life or bring back the water to the glen? And I didn't hesitate a minute. I said, let Nathaniel die, and all my best love once, and I myself, but bring back the glory of a glen. When I think she went on turning away and becoming dreamy again of all the beauty that is gone, that I can never see that is lost forever, the beauty that had to alter and die, it stifles me with the pain of it. Why must it all die? He looked at her wonderingly. It seems to me, he said slowly, that beauty worship is almost a disease with you. I wouldn't like to care so much for mere outsides. We never long for the thing we are reaching, she answered in a dry, changed voice. Nevertheless, his face lighted. It was pleasant to be reaching the thing she worshiped. He had gradually drawn near her feet, and now suddenly, bent forward and kissed them passionately, don't scratch sharply. It's too much like self-abasement and besides. His face was white and quivering, his voice choked. Well, what besides? The time will come when you will wish you had reserved that kiss for some other food, someone to whom it will all be new, who will shudder with the joy of it, who will meet you halfway, who will believe all that you say and say like things in fullness of heart, and I perhaps will see you, and know that in your heart, you are sorry you gave something to me, that you would have un-given if you could. He buried his face in his hands. You do not love me at all, he said. You do not believe me. A curious softness came into the answer. Oh yes dear, I believe you. Years ago I believed myself when I said the same sort of thing, but I told you I am getting old. I cannot un-make what the years have made, nor bring back what they have stolen. I love you for your face, the words are distinct in them, and for your soul too, and I am glad to be loved by you, but do you know what I am thinking? He did not answer. I am thinking that as I sit here, beloved by you and others who are young and beautiful, it is no lie, in a well, in a triumph, I have not sought, but which I am human enough to be glad of, and be no doubt by those young girls, I am thinking how the remorseless feet of youth will trample on me soon and carry you away, and very slowly, in my day of pain, you will not be near nor the others. I shall be alone, aged in pain or unlovely. You won't let me come near you, he said wildly. I would do anything for you. I always want to do things for you to spare you, and you never let me. When you are in pain, you will push me away. A fairly exultant glitter flashed in her face. Yes, she said, I know my secret. That is how I have stayed young so long. See, she said, stretching out her arms, over women at my age, or post the love of men. Their affections have gone to children, and I have broken the law of nature, and prolonged the love of youth because I have been strong and stood alone, but there's an end. Things change, seasons change, you, I, all change. What's the use of saying, never, forever, forever, never? Like the old clock on the stairs, it's a big lie. I won't talk anymore, he said. But when the time comes, you will see, she nodded. Yes, I will see. Do you think all people are like, as like as aunts? People of vessels which life fills and breaks, as it does trees and bees and other sorts of vessels. They play when they are little, and then they love, and then they have children, and then they die. Aunts do the same, to be sure, but I don't deceive myself as to the scope of it. The crowd were returning now, and by taxi consent, they arose and joined the group. Down the road, they jumped the fence into a field, and had to cross a little stream. Where's our bridge? Call the boys. We made a bridge. Someone has told on our bridge. Oh come on, right David. Let's jump it. Three ran and sprang. They landed, loafing and taunting the rest. They are not sought out, his beloved. Shall I help you? Over he asked. No, she said, shortly. Help the girls. And brushing past him, she jumped, falling a little short and muddying a foot, but scrambling up and aided. The rest debated, seeking an advantageous point. At last, they found a big stone in the middle, and pulling off his shoes, Bernard whitered in the creek, helping the girls across the smallest one, large-eyed and timid, clung to his arm, and let him almost carry her over. He does it real natural, observed David, who was whisking about in the daisy field, like some flashing butterfly. They gathered daisies and laughed and sang and shattered, till the sun went low. Then they gathered under a big tree and spread their lunch on the ground. And after they had eaten, the conversation lay between the sallow-faced woman and one of the older men, a clever conversation, filled with great observations and courier sidelights. The boys sat all around the woman, questioning her eagerly, but behind, in the shadow of the drooping branches, sat the girls, silent, and obtrusive, holding each other's hand. Now and then the talker cast a 30th glance from Bernard's rather withdrawn face to the faces in the shadow, and the enigmatic smile hovered and fitted over her lips. Three years later, on the anniversary of that summer day, the woman sat at an upstairs window in the house in the little form that was in reality now. The little cooperative form where ten free men and women labored in love. She had come with the others and done her best, but the cost of it, hard labor and merciless pain, was stepped on the face that looked from the window. She was watching Bernard's figure as it came swinging through the orchard. Presently he came in and up the stairs. His feet went past her door, then turned back irresolutely, and a low knock followed. Her eyebrows bent together almost only as she answered, come in. He entered with a smile. Can I do anything for you this morning? No, she said correctly. You know I like my own cranky ways. I'd rather do things myself. You know that I know. I always get the same answer. Shall you go to the picnic? You surely will keep our foundation day picnic. Perhaps later, and perhaps not. There was a curious turn of repression in the words. Well, he answered good naturally. If you won't let me do anything for you, I'll have to find someone who will. Is Bella ready to go this half hour? Bella? Here is Bernard, and Bella came in. Bella, the timid girl, with a brilliant complexion and gazelles of eyes. Bella radiant in her youth and feminine date-iness. More lovely than she had been three years before. She gave Bernard a lunchbox, ketchup, curry, any shawl, any work bag, and a sun umbrella. And when they went out, she clung to his arm besides. She stopped near one of their own roses, bushes, and told him to choose a bed for her, and she put it coquettishly in her dark hair. The woman watched them till they disappeared down the lane. He had never once looked back, then her mouth settled in a quiet sneer, and she murmured, How long is forever? Three years. After a while, she rose and crossed to an old mirror that hung on the opposite wall. Staring at the reflection he gave back, she whispered drearily, You are ugly. You are eaten with pain. You still expect the due of youth and beauty. Did you not know it all long ago? Then something flashed in the image. Something as if the features had caught fire and burned. I will not, she said hoarsely, her fingers clenching. I will not surrender. Was it he I love? It was his youth, his beauty, his life. And younger youth shall love me still, stronger life. I will not, I will not die alive. She turned away and ran down into the yard, and out into the fields. She would not go on the common highway where all went. She would find a hard way through woods and over hills, and she would come there before them, and sit and wait for them, where the waves met. Bear headed, ill-dressed and careless. She ran along, finding a fire's pleasure in trampling and breaking the bush that impeded her. There was the road at last, and right ahead of her an old, old man hollering along. We met back and eyes opened the ground. Just before him was a bad hole in the road. He stopped, irresolute, and looked around like a crippled insect, stretching its antenna to find a way for its mangled feet. She called cheerfully, let me help you. He looked up with dim blue eyes, helplessly seeking. She led him slowly around the dangerous place, and then they sat down together, and the little covered wooden bridge beyond. I am a mad old man, shaking his head. It is good to be young, and there was the ghost of admiration in his watery eyes. I see look at her tall, straight figure. Yes, she answered sadly, looking a way down the road, where she saw Bella's wide-dressed fluttering. It is good to be young. The lover's paws, without noticing them, are absorbed in each other. Presently, the old man hobbled away. It will come to that too. She muttered, looking after him. The husks of life, and of the triumph of youth. Section 10 of Selected Works, Letters, Catchers, and Stories by Volterine DeClaire. This is a library box recording. All library box recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit librarybox.org. The old shoemaker of Selected Works, Letters, Catchers, and Stories by Volterine DeClaire. He had lived a long time there, in the house at the end of the alley, and no one had ever known that he was a great man. He was lean and puzzled, and had a crook back. His beard was grey and ragged, and his eyebrows came too far forward. There were seams and flaps in the empty yellow old skin, and he gaps horribly when he breathed, taking hold of the lintel of the door to steady himself, when he stepped out on the broken bricks of the alley. He lived with frightful old woman who scrubbed the floors of the rug shop, and drank beer and growled at the children, who poked fun at her. He had lived with her 18 years. She said, stroking the furry little kitten that curled up in her neck, as if she had been beautiful. 18 years we had been drinking and quarrelling together, and suffering. She had seen the flesh sucking away from the bones, and the skin falling in upon them, and the long lean fingers, growing more lean and trembling, as they crook around his shoemaking tools. It was very strange she had not grown thin. The beer had blotted her, and rows of weak shaking flesh lapped over the ridges of her uncuff figure. Her pale, lackluster blue eyes wandered aimlessly about as she talked. No, he had never told her, not even in the quarrels, not even when they were drinking together, of a great visitor who had come of the little alley, yesterday walking so stately over the sun-beaten bricks, taking no note of the others and coming in at the door without asking. She had not expected such a one. How could she, but the old shoemaker had shown no surprise at the mighty one. He smiled and sat down the tick up he was holding, and entered into coming on with a stranger. He noticed no others, but continued to smile, and the infinite dignity of the unknown fell upon him, and covered the wasted old limbs and the hard wisened face, so that all we who entered bowed and went out and did not speak, but we understood through the mighty one gave understanding without words. We had been in the presence of freedom, we had stood at the foot of table, and seen this worn old world so its whole, lose all its dross and commonplace, and post upward smiling to the transfiguration. In the hands of the mighty one, the crust had crumbled, and dropped away in impalpable powder. Souls should be mixed of it no more, only that which post upward, the fine white playing flame, the heart of the long, life-long watches of patience, should ricken delveia in the perennial ascension of a great soul of man, and of the old shoemaker. Section 11 of Selected Works, Letters, Sketches and Stories by Voltaireen DeClaire 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 Lucy Perry. Where the White Rose Died from Selected Works, Letters, Sketches and Stories by Voltaireen DeClaire It was late at night, a raw, rough-shouldering night, that shoved men in corners as having no business in the street, and the few people in the northbound car drew themselves into themselves, radiating hedgehog quills of feeling at their neighbours. Presently there came in a curious figure, clothed in the drapery of its country's honour, the blue flannel flapping very much about its legs. I looked at its feet first, because they were so very small and girlish, and because the owner of them adjusted the flapping pants with the coquetry of a maid in switching her skirts. Then I glanced at the hands. They also were small and womanish, and constantly in motion. At last the face, expecting of fresh young boys, not long away from some country village. It was the sunk, seamed face of a man of forty-five, seared with iron-gray eyebrows, but lit by twinkling young eyes, that gleamed at everything good-humidly. The sailor's pancake, with its official lettering, was pushed rakeishly down and forward, and looking at the hat and wearer, one instinctively turned milliner and decorated the shape with agret and bows. They would nod so accordant with the flirting head. Presently the restless hands went up and gave the hat another tilt, went down and straightened the divided skirt, folded themselves an instant while the little feet began tattooing the car-floor, and the skin-tillant eyes looked general invitation all round the car. No perceptible shrinkage of quills, however, so the eyes wandered over to their image in the plate-glass, and directly the hat got another coquettish dip, and the skirts another flirt and settle. The conductor came in. Someone to talk to at last. Will you let me off at the ninth and race? The dim chill of a smile shivered over the other faces in the car. Ninth and race. Whoever heard a defender of his country's glory asked a conductor on a street-car in Philadelphia for any other point than ninth and race. The conductor nodded appreciatively. Just come to the city, I suppose, he said, interlocutably. The sailor plucked off his hat, exhibiting his labour with childlike vanity. S.S. Alabama. Here for three days, just. Been over in New York. Like it, remarked the conductor, prolonging his stay inside the car. The hat went on again proudly. Sixteen years in the service. Yes, sir. Sixteen years. The service is all right. The service is good enough for me. Live there. Expect to die there. Sixteen years. You won't forget to let me off at ninth and race? No. Going to see Chinatown? Sure. Chinatown's all right. Seeing it in Hong Kong. Want to see it in Philadelphia. O cradle of my country's freedom. These are your defenders. These to whom your chief delight is your stews and your brothels, your phantans and your opium dens, your sinks of filth and your cesspools of slime. Let them only be as they were, at Hong Kong, or worse. And the service asks no more. He will live in it and die in it, and it's good enough for him. Oh, not your old-time patriotic legends, nor the halls of the great rebel berth, nor the solemn silent bell that once proclaimed liberty throughout the land, nor the pittiest relics of your dead wise men, nor any dream of your bright pure young days, when yet you were a fair green country townie. Swims up in the vision of the service, when he sets his foot within your borders, filling him with devotion to old Lady Liberty, and drawing him to new world pilgrim shrines. Not these. Oh, no, not these. But your leper spot, your old world plaguehouse, your breeding ground of pest-begotten human vermin. So there is Chinatown, and electric glare enough upon it, and rat-holes enough within it. The service is good enough for him. He will shoot to order in your defence till he dies. Wrap-tap-tapt, when the little feet upon the floor, and the pancake got another rake-ish pull. Presently the active figure squared sharply about and faced the door. The car had stopped, and a drunken man was staggering in. The sailor caught him good-humidly in his arms, swung him about, and seated him beside himself with a comforting, Now you're all right, sir, sit right here, my friend. The drunkard had a sodden, stupid face, and bleary eyes from which the alcohol was oozing. In his shaking hand he held a bunch of delicate, half-opened roses. Hot-house roses, cream and pink, the odour of them drifted faintly through the car like a whiff of summer. Something like a sigh of relaxation exhaled from the hedgehogs, and a dozen commiserating eyes were fastened on the ill-fated flowers, so fragile, so sweet, so inoffensive, so wantonly-sacrificed. The hot, unsteady clutching hand had already burned the stems, and the pale, helpless faces of the roses drooped heavily. The drunkard, full of berry effervescence, cast a bubbling look over the car, and spying a young lady opposite, suddenly stood up and offered the bokeh to her. She stared resolutely through him, seeing and hearing nothing, not even the piteous child blossoms, with their pleading, down-bent heads, and with the confused muttering of— —Nor offense, nor offense, you know—the man sank back again. As he did so, the uncertain fingers released one stem, and a cream-white bloom went fluttering down like a butterfly with broken wings. There it lay, jolting back and forth on the dirty floor, and no one dared to pick it up. Presently the drunkard sopped over comfortably on the sailor's shoulder, who, with a generally directed wink of bonhomie, settled him easily, bestowing a sympathetic pat up on the bloated cheek. The conductor disturbed the situation by asking for his fare. The drunkard stupidly rubbed his eyes and offered his flowers in place of the nickel. Again they were refused, and after a fluctuent search in his pockets between intervals of nodding, the dirty, over-fingered bit of metal was produced, accepted, and the still-dying blossoms shivered in the torturer's hands. He was drowsing off again, when, by some sudden turn of obstructed machinery in his skull, his lids opened, and he struggled up. The image of myself must have swum suddenly across the momentarily acting eye-nerve, and with gurgling deferrence at the imminent risk of losing his equilibrium once more, he profoured the bokeh to me, grabbing the heads and presenting them stem-end towards. A smothered snuffle went round the car. I wanted them. Oh, how I wanted them! My heart beat suffocatingly with the sense of baffled pity and rage and cowardice. Who was he, that drunken sot with his smirching, wobbling hand, that I should fear to take the roses from him? Why must I grind my teeth and sit there helpless, while these beautiful things were crushed and blasted and torn in living fragments? I could take them home. I could give them drink. They would lift up their heads. They would open wide. For days they would make the room sweet, and the pale, soft glory of their inimitable petals would shine like a luminous promise across the winter. Nobody wanted them. Nobody cared. This sodden beast in the flare-up of his consciousness wished to be quit of them. Why might I not take them? Something sharp bit and burned my eyelids as I glanced at the one on the floor. The conductor had stepped on it, and crushed it open. And there lay the marvellous creamy leaves, curled at their edges, like kiss-seeking lips, each with its glory greater than Solomon's, all fouled and ruined in the human reek. And I dared not save the others. Miserable coward! I forced my hands tighter in my pockets, and turned my head away towards the outside night and the backward-slipping street. Between me and it, a dim reflection wavered, the image of the thing that stood there before me. And somewhere, like a far-off dulled bell, I heard the words, and God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him. The sailor, no doubt with the kindly intention of relieving me from annoyance, and not a verse to play with anything, made pretence of seizing the roses. Then the drunkard, in an abandon of generosity, began tearing off the blossoms by the heads, scrutinizing and casting each away as unfit for the exalted service of his friend, till the latter, reaching out, managed to get hold of a white one with a stem. He trimmed its shelter in green carefully, brought out a long black pin, stuck it through the stalk, and fastened the pale shining head against his dark blue blouse. All the hedgehoggery smiled. We had thrust the roses through with our forbidden quills. What matter that a barbarian nail crucified this last one? The drunkard slept again, limply holding his scattering bunch of headless stems and torn foliage. Pink and cream the petal strewed the floor. Where was the loving hand that had nursed them to bloom in this hard unwanted weather? Loved and nursed and sold them. Ninth and race, sang out the conductor. The sailor sprang up with a merry grin, bowed gaily to everyone, twinkled his fingers in the air with a blithe, to tar I'm off for Chinatown, as he slid through the door, and was away in a trice, tripping down to the pestiferous sink that was awaiting him somewhere. And on his breast he wore the pallid flower that had offered its stainless beauty to me, that I had loved, but had not loved enough to save. The rest were dead, but that one, somewhere down there in a den, where even the gas-choked lights were leering like prostitute's eyes, down there in that trough of swill and swine, that pure still thing had yet to die. End of Where the White Rose Died Recording by Lucy Perry in Bath on February 27th 2009 Of Selected Works Letters, Sketches and Stories by Volterine DeClaire The perusal of Dr. Carras's article Free Thought, Its Truth and Its Error, in The Open Court of August VI, has impelled me to a parallel line of thought, concerning a doctrine, a principle, less understood, more misinterpreted, both by enemies and followers, than even that much abused, much misunderstood, much misinterpreted principle of free thought. And, as is the case with the latter, the greatest damage proceeds not so much from the opposition of prejudice, as from the profession of ignorance. Free Thought, says Dr. Carras, has arisen in revolution to blind obedience. It was indeed the great revolt against human authority over the action of the mind. It was not merely a negation, no revolt ever is. It was the assertion that the individual mind must think according to necessity, according to its own law. And this assertion rooted the negation of that authority which sought to interfere with the law, in the confusion-working effort to build all minds after one fixed pattern. Mark, it was the very fact that thought is not, cannot be free in the absolute sense, is not a thing of caprice willing to think this or that, but a thing of order constantly adapting itself to the relations of all other things, constantly progressing in the knowledge of truth as it fulfills the law of its growth. It was this which justified, name made at all conceivable, the revolt against dressed authority, that is God, that is priests. Here was a contradiction, or, as he would prefer to call it, an antonomy, to delight the heart of Proudhon. Thought struggled for liberty because of its fatalism. Conceiving the implacable authority of truth, it denied authority. It would be free from men, because it could not be free from self. With the light of a widening infinite in its eyes, it denied the supremacy of the sun. Karmit said, You are great, but you are not all. Do not think by your near shining to shut out the stars. Now this, precisely this, lies at the root of that doubly abused, misunderstood, misinterpreted word, anarchism. Anarchism is negation, you say. True. Of what? The authority of rulers, precisely as free-thought negatives the authority of priests. But why this negation? Because of the affirmation that every individual is himself, ruled by the fatalism of existence, within himself contains the law of right being, from which he can no more escape, than sunlight can exist independent of the sun, and a strict obedience to which is necessary to that morality, which Dr. Karras has called living the truth. Disobedience in its stead, creating ever-increasing confusion, only to be wrought out and purified after many lives, the weary karma of the race, and never wholly purged till the wronged law receives its recompense, understanding, and fulfilling. Hence this negation of archism, which would maintain a puny, false authority, denying the real one, hindering true order and progress. And the real anarchist, can truthfully say to the Republican, it is you, not I, who deny self-government. I say a real one, because as there are free thinkers and free thinkers, so there are anarchists and anarchists, and as I have intimated the greatest damage to either cause, proceeds from the ignorant profession of them by people of whose lives they form no part. No real free thinker, comprehending the laws of racial growth, will for a moment deny the value of the creeds, so long as they were the highest possible conception of life, that is, while humanity yet remained below the creed. Nor will he deny that until a thinker has risen above the creed, comprehending himself, realizing that the laws of his mind's guidance exist with it, cannot be conceived apart, the one from the other, until this conception of right guidance from within has taken the place of the old idea of a law descended from heaven, the free thinker will admit that such a mind is better left among the orthodox than to become so poor an apology for a reformer, as he must become by throwing away his old beliefs, not replacing them with the faith of truth. So the real anarchist, instead of maintaining as prejudice would have it appear the utter abolition of social restraint, the bursting of every bond which man by slow experience has found necessary to order, the inauguration of chaos maintains on the contrary the higher principle that every man must be a law unto himself, embodying in himself all the truth of the codes, and denying their authority beyond this because he realizes this, knowing the glory of the truth he holds would maintain his freedom to reach out after that which is higher still, unknown but not unknowable. Anarchism is in fact the assertion of the highest morality, a conception of society without officials, police, military bayonets, prisons, and the thousand and one other symbols of force which mark our present development, a dream of the day when each having mended one all will be mended. To him who has arrived at such a conclusion, there is no morality in obedience to outward authority, neither in the observance of formulas, neither in doing what is written statute books, one is moral only so far as he, by long struggle it may probably will be, makes right his nature, him. What then? Does he therefore deny the value and the present necessity of codes, not at all? He would not if he could sweep them at once from existence, well knowing that as long as men are incapable of receiving the authority of the inward must, they are incapable of living without statutes, yet prejudice and ignorance cry anarchy as the destruction of the law. It is not the destruction of the law, it is the fulfilling of the law. It is the only logical outcome of free thought, the ripe and fruit of which free thinking is the potent seed. A small seed, as Dr. Carras says, but it is a seed which was planted in hard soil, watered by red rains, and nurtured among jealous thorns. And yet the tree is scarcely blossoming, and still we dare to dream of that russet warm day of autumn future, when the promise of the seed shall be fulfilled, when every mind shall think according to its own law, and every life express itself freely, bounded only by the equal freedom of others, so finding the more quickly, the more surely, the truth which alone shall live. End of Alance for Anarchy. I will not resist. I will stand straight before you at any distance you wish me to, and you may shoot in the presence of witnesses. Does not your American commercial instinct seize upon this as a bargain? But if they met over one thousand dollars, it is a necessary part of your proposition. Then when I have given you a shot, I will give the money to the propaganda of the idea of a free society in which there shall be neither assassins, nor presidents, beggars, nor senators.