 Section 1 of Lovecraft's Influences and Favorites. 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 Josh Kibbey. The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe. S'encore d'un luce suspendu, c'est toi qu'on la touche au raison de Béranger. During the whole of a dull, dark and soundless day in the autumn of the year when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country, and at length found myself as the shades of the evening drew on within view of the melancholy house of usher. I know not how it was, but with the first glimpse of the building a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I say insufferable, for the feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurable because poetic sentiment with which the mind usually receives even the sternest natural images of the desolate or terrible. I looked upon the scene before me, upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain, upon the bleak walls, upon the vacant eye-like windows, upon a few rank sedges, and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees, with an utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the after-dream of the reveler upon opium, the bitter lapse into everyday life, the hideous dropping off of the veil. There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart, and an unredeemed juriness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into ought of the sublime. What was it? I paused to think. What was it that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the house of usher? It was a mystery all insoluble, nor could I grapple with the shadowy fancies that crowded upon me as I pondered. I was forced to fall back upon the unsatisfactory conclusion that while, beyond doubt, there are combinations of very simple natural objects which have the power of thus affecting us, still the analysis of this power lies among considerations beyond our depth. It was possible, I reflected, that a mere different arrangement of the particulars of the scene, of the details of the picture, would be sufficient to modify or perhaps to annihilate its capacity for sorrowful impression. And, acting upon this idea, I reigned my horse to the precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn that lay in unruffled luster by the dwelling and gaze down, but with a shudder even more thrilling than before, upon the remodeled and inverted images of the grey sedge, and the ghastly tree stems, and the vacant and eye-like windows. Nevertheless, in this mansion of gloom I now proposed to myself a sojourn of some weeks. Its proprietor, Roderick Usher, had been one of my boon companions in boyhood, but many years had elapsed since our last meeting. A letter, however, had lately reached me in a distant part of the country, a letter from him, which, in its wildly important nature, had admitted of no other than a personal reply. The manuscript gave evidence of nervous agitation. The writer spoke of acute bodily illness, of a mental disorder which oppressed him, and of an earnest desire to see me, as his best and indeed his only personal friend, with the view of attempting by the cheerfulness of my society some alleviation of his malady. It was the manner in which all this, and much more, was said. It was the apparent heart that went with his request, which allowed me no room for hesitation, and I accordingly obeyed forthwith what I still considered a very singular summons. Although as boys we had been even intimate associates, yet I really knew little of my friend. His reserve had been always excessive and habitual. I was aware, however, that his very ancient family had been noted time out of mind for a peculiar sensibility of temperament, displaying itself through long ages and many works of exalted art, and manifested of late in repeated deeds of munificent yet unobtrusive charity, as well as in a passionate devotion to the intricacies perhaps even more to the orthodox and easily recognizable beauties of musical science. I had learned, too, the very remarkable fact that the stem of the usher race, all time honored as it was, had put forth at no period any enduring branch. In other words, that the entire family lay in the direct line of dissent, and had always with very trifling and very temporary variation, so lain. It was this deficiency I considered while running over and thought the perfect keeping of the character of the premises with the accredited character of the people, and while speculating upon the possible influence which the one in the long lapse of centuries might have exercised upon the other, it was this deficiency perhaps of collateral issue, and the consequent undeviating transmission from sire to son of the patrimony with the name, which had at length so identified the two as to merge the original title of the estate in the quaint and equivocal appellation of the House of Usher, an appellation which seemed to include in the minds of the peasantry who used it, both the family and the family mansion. I have said that the sole effect of my somewhat childish experiment, that of looking down within the tarn, had been to deepen the first singular impression. There can be no doubt that the consciousness of the rapid increase of my superstition, for why should I not so term it, served mainly to accelerate the increase itself. Such I have long known as the paradoxical law of all sentiments having terror as a basis. And it might have been for this reason only, that when I again uplifted my eyes to the house itself, from its image in the pool, there grew in my mind a strange fancy, a fancy so ridiculous indeed, that I but mentioned it to show the vivid force of the sensations which oppressed me. I had so worked upon my imagination as really to believe that about the whole mansion and domain there hung an atmosphere peculiar to themselves under their immediate vicinity, an atmosphere which had no affinity with the air of heaven, but which had reeked up from the decayed trees and the grey wall and the silent tarn, a pestilent and mystic vapor, dull, sluggish, faintly discernible, and ledden-hued. Shaking off from my spirit what must have been a dream, I scanned more narrowly the real aspect of the building. Its principal features seemed to be that of an excessive antiquity. The discoloration of ages had been great. My newt fungi overspread the whole exterior, hanging in a fine, tangled web-work from the eaves. Yet all this was apart from any extraordinary dilapidation. No portion of the masonry had fallen, and there appeared to be a wild inconsistency between its still perfect adaptation of parts and the crumbling condition of the individual stones. In this there was much that reminded me of the specious totality of old woodwork which has rotted for long years in some neglected vault, with no disturbance from the breath of the external air. Beyond this indication of extensive decay, however, the fabric gave little token of instability. Perhaps the eye of a scrutinizing observer might have discovered a barely perceptible fissure, which, extending from the roof of the building in front, made its way down the wall in a zigzag direction until it became lost in the swollen waters of the tarn. Noticing these things, I rode over a short causeway to the house. A servant in waiting took my horse, and I entered the gothic archway of the hall. A valet of stealthy step thence conducted me, in silence, through many dark and intricate passages in my progress to the studio of his master. Much that I encountered on the way contributed, I know not how, to heighten the vague sentiments of which I have already spoken. While the objects around me, while the carvings of the ceilings, the somber tapestries of the walls, the ebony blackness of the floors, and the fantasmagoric armorial trophies which rattled as I strode were but matters to which or to such as which I had been accustomed from my infancy, while I hesitated not to acknowledge how familiar was all this, I still wondered to find how familiar were the fancies which ordinary images were stirring up. On one of the staircases, I met the physician of the family. His countenance I thought wore a mingled expression of low cunning and perplexity. He accosted me with trepidation and passed on. The valet now threw open a door and ushered me into the presence of his master. The room in which I found myself was very large and lofty. The windows were long, narrow, and pointed, and had so vast a distance from the black oaken floor as to be altogether inaccessible from within. Feeble gleams of incrimson'd light made their way through the trellis'd panes, and served to render sufficiently distinct the more prominent objects around. The eye, however, struggled in vain to reach the remoter angles of the chamber, or the recesses of the vaulted and fretted ceiling. Dark draperies hung upon the walls. The general furniture was profuse, comfortless, antique, and tattered. Many books and musical instruments lay scattered about, but failed to give any vitality to the scene. I felt that I breathed an atmosphere of sorrow, an air of stern, deep and irredeemable gloom hung over and pervaded all. Upon my entrance Usher rose from a sofa on which he had been lying at full length, and greeted me with a vivacious warmth which had much in it, I at first thought, of an overdone cordiality, of the constrained effort of the onyui man of the world. A glance, however, at his countenance convinced me of his perfect sincerity. We sat down, and for some moments while he spoke not, I gazed upon him with a feeling half of pity, half of all. Surely man had never before so terribly altered and so brief a period as had Roderick Usher. It was the difficulty that I could bring myself to admit the identity of the man being before me with the companion of my early boyhood, yet the character of his face had been at all times remarkable. A cadaverseness of complexion, an eye-large liquid and luminous beyond comparison, lips somewhat thin and very pallid, but of a surpassingly beautiful curve. A nose of a delicate Hebrew model, but with a breadth of nostril unusual in similar formations. A finely molded chin, speaking in its want of prominence, of a want of moral energy. Hair of a more than web-like softness and tenuity. These features, with an inordinate expansion above the regions of the temple, made up altogether a countenance not easily to be forgotten. And now, in the mere exaggeration of the prevailing character of these features, and of the expression they were want to convey, lay so much of change that I doubted to whom I spoke. The now ghastly pallor of the skin, and of the now miraculous luster of the eye, above all things startled and even awed me. The silken hair, too, had been suffered to grow all unheated, and as, in its wild gossamer texture, it floated rather than fell about the face. I could not even with effort connect its arabesque expression with any idea of simple humanity. In the manner of my friend I was at once struck with an incoherence, an inconsistency, and I soon found this to arise from a series of feeble and feudal struggles to overcome an habitual trepidancy, an excessive nervous agitation. For something of this nature I had indeed been prepared, no less by his letter, than by reminiscences of certain boys' traits, and by conclusions deduced from his peculiar physical confirmation and temperament. His action was alternately vivacious and sullen, his voice varied rapidly from a tremulous indecision, when the animal spirit seemed utterly in abeyance, to that species of energetic concision, that abrupt, weighty, unhurried and hollow-sounding enunciation, that leaden, self-balanced and perfectly modulated guttural utterance, which may be observed in the lost drunkard, or the irreclaimable eater of opium during the periods of his most intense excitement. It was thus that he spoke of the object of my visit, of his earnest desire to see me, and of the solace he expected me to afford him. He entered at some length into what he conceived to be the nature of his malady. It was, he said, a constitutional and a family evil, and one for which he disbared to find a remedy. A mere nervous affection he immediately added, which would undoubtedly soon pass off. It displayed itself in a host of unnatural sensations. Some of these, as he detailed them, interested and bewildered me, although perhaps the terms and the general manner of the narration had their weight. He suffered much from a morbid acuteness of the senses. The most insipid food was alone and durable. He could wear only garments of certain texture. The odours of all flowers were oppressive. His eyes were tortured by even a faint light. And there were but peculiar sounds, and these from stringed instruments, which did not inspire him with horror. To an anomalous species of terror I found him abound in slave. I shall perish, said he. I must perish in this deplorable folly. Thus, thus and not otherwise shall I be lost. I dread the events of the future, not in themselves but in their results. I shudder at the thought of any even the most trivial incident which may operate upon this intolerable agitation of soul. I have indeed no abhorrence of danger except in its absolute effect, in terror. And this is unnerved in this pitiable condition. I feel that the period will sooner or later arrive when I must abandon life and reason together, and some struggle with the grim phantasm, fear. I learned moreover at intervals and through broken and equivocal hints. Another singular feature of his mental condition. He was enchained by certain superstitious impressions in regard to the dwelling which he tenanted, and whence for many years he had never ventured forth. In regard to an influence whose supposititious force was conveyed in terms too shadowy here to be restated, an influence in which some peculiarities in the mere form and substance of his family mansion had, by dint of long sufferance, he said, obtained over his spirit an effect which the physique of the grey walls and turrets and of the dim tarn into which they all looked down had at length brought about upon the morale of his existence. He admitted, however, although with hesitation, that much of the peculiar gloom which thus afflicted him could be traced to a more natural and far more palpable origin, to the severe and long-continued illness, indeed to the evidently approaching dissolution of a tenderly beloved sister, his sole companion for long years, his last and only relative on earth. Her decease, he said, with a bitterness which I can never forget, would leave him, him and the hopeless in the frail, the last of the ancient race of the ushers. While he spoke the Lady Madeline, for so is she called, passed slowly through a remote portion of the apartment and without having noticed my presence disappeared. I regarded her with an utter astonishment, not in mingled with dread, and yet I found it impossible to account for such feelings. A sensation of stupor oppressed me as my eyes followed her retreating steps. When a door at length closed upon her, my glance sought instinctively and eagerly the countenance of the brother, but he had buried his face in his hands, and I could only perceive that a far more than ordinary oneness had overspread the emaciated fingers through which trickled many passionate tears. The disease of the Lady Madeline had long baffled the skill of her physicians. A settled apathy, a gradual wasting away of the person, and frequent although transient affections of a partially cataleptical character were the unusual diagnosis. Hitherto she had steadily borne up against the pressure of her malady, and had not betaken herself finally to bed. But on the closing in of the evening of my arrival at the house, she succumbed, as her brother told me at night, with inexpressible agitation, to the prostrating power of the destroyer. And I learned that the glimpse I had obtained of her person would thus probably be the last I should obtain, that the lady at least while living would be seen by me no more. For several days ensuing her name was unmentioned by either Usher or myself, and during this period I was busy in earnest endeavors to alleviate the melancholy of my friend. We painted and read together, or I listened as if in a dream to the wild improvisations of a speaking guitar, and thus as a closer and still closer intimacy admitted me more unreservably into the recesses of a spirit, the morbidly did I perceive the futility of all attempt at cheering a mind from which darkness, as if an inherent positive quality, poured forth upon all objects of the moral and physical universe in one unceasing radiation of gloom. I shall ever bear about me a memory of the many solemn hours I thus spent alone with the master of the house of Usher, yet I should fail in any attempt to convey an idea of the exact character of the studies, or of the occupations in which he involved me or led me the way, an excited and highly distempered ideality through a sulfurous luster overall. His long improvised dirges will ring forever in my ears. Among other things I held painfully in mind a certain singular perversion and amplification of the wild air of the last watts of von Weber. From the paintings over which his elaborate fancy brooded, and which grew, touch by touch, into vagueness at which I shuttered the more thrillingly, because I shuttered knowing not why, from these paintings vivid as their images now are before me, I would in vain endeavour to induce more than a small portion which should lie within the compass of merely written words. By the utter simplicity, by the nakedness of his designs, he arrested an over-awed attention. If ever mortal painted an idea, that mortal was rather a cusher. For me at least, in the circumstances then surrounding me, there arose out of the pure abstractions which the hypochondriac contrived to throw upon his canvas, an intensity of intolerable awe, no shadow of which felt I ever yet in the contemplation of the certainly glowing yet two concrete reveries of fusilli. One of the fantasmagore conceptions of my friend, partaking not so rigidly of the spirit of abstraction, may be shadowed forth, although feebly in words. A small picture presented the interior of an immensely long and rectangular vault or tunnel, with low walls, smooth, white, and without interruption or device. Certain accessory points of the design served well to convey the idea that this excavation lay at an exceeding depth below the surface of the earth. No outlet was observed in any portion of its vast extent, and no torch or other artificial source of light was discernable. Yet a flood of intense rays rolled throughout, and bathed the whole in a ghastly and inappropriate splendor. I have just spoken of that morbid condition of the auditory nerve, which rendered all music intolerable to the sufferer, with the exception of certain effects of stringed instruments. It was perhaps the narrow limits to which he thus confined himself upon the guitar which gave birth, in great measure, to the fantastic character of the performances. But the fervid facility of his impromptu's could not be so accounted for. They must have been and were in the notes as well as in the words of his wild fantasias, for he not infrequently accompanied himself with rhymed verbal improvisations. The result of that intense mental collectedness and concentration to which I have previously alluded is observable only in particular moments of the highest artificial excitement. The words of one of these rhapsodies I have easily remembered, I was perhaps the more forcibly impressed with it as he gave it because, in the under-ormistic current of its meaning, I fancy that I perceived, and for the first time, a full consciousness on the part of Usher of the tottering of his lofty reason upon her throne. The verses, which were entitled The Haunted Palace, ran very nearly, if not accurately, thus. 1. In the greenest of our valleys, by good angels tenanted, once a fair and stately palace, radiant palace, reared its head, in the monarch thoughts dominion, it stood there, never serve spread opinion over fabric half so fair. 2. Banners yellow glorious golden, on its roof did float and flow, this, all this, was in the olden time long ago, and every gentle air that dallied in that sweet day, along the ramparts plummed and pallied, a winged odor went away. 3. Wanderers in that happy valley through two luminous windows saw, spirits moving musically, two alludes well-tuned law, round about a throne where sitting, pole for regime, in state his glory well befitting the ruler of the realm was seen. 4. And all with pearl and ruby-glowing was the fair palace door, through which came flowing, flowing, flowing, and sparkling evermore, a troop of echoes whose sweet duty was but to sing, in voices of surpassing beauty the wit and wisdom of their king. 5. But evil things and robes of sorrow assailed the monarch's high estate, all let us mourn for never-morrow shall dawn upon him desolate, and round about his home the glory that blushed and bloomed is but a dim remembered story of the old time entombed. 6. And travelers now within that valley through the red-lit and windows see, vast forms that move fantastically to a discordant melody, while like a rapid ghastly river through the pale door, a hideous throng will shout forever and laugh, but smile no more. 7. I well remember that suggestions arising from this ballad led us into a train of thought wherein there became manifest an opinion of ushers, which I mentioned not so much on account of its novelty, for other men have thought thus, as on account of the pertinacity with which he maintained it. 8. This opinion, in its general form, was that of the sentience of all vegetable things. But in his disordered fancy, the idea had assumed a more daring character, and to trespass under certain conditions upon the kingdom of inorganization, I lack words to express the folk's dint, or the earnest abandon of his persuasion. 9. The belief, however, was connected, as I have previously hinted, with the gray stones of the home of his forefathers. The conditions of the sentience had been here, he imagined, fulfilled in the method of collocation of these stones, in the order of their arrangement, as well as in that of the many fungi which overspread them into the decayed trees which stood around, above all in the long undisturbed endurance of this arrangement and in its reduplication in the still waters of the tarn. 10. Its evidence, the evidence of the sentience, was to be seen, he said, and I here started, as he spoke, in the gradual yet certain condensation of an atmosphere of their own about the waters and the walls. 11. The result was discoverable, he added, in that silent yet important and terrible influence which for centuries had molded the destinies of his family, and which had made him what I now saw him, what he was. Such opinions need no comment, and I will make none. 12. The books which for years had formed no small portion of the mental existence of the invalid were, as might be supposed, in strict keeping with this character of phantasm. 13. We poured together over such works as the Veveret Chartreuse of Grise, the Belfogor of Machiavelli, the Heaven and Hell of Swedenborg, the Subterranean Voyage of Nicholas Clem by Holberg, the Chyramency of Robert Flood, of Jean D'Andre Genet and of De La Chambre, the Journey into the Blue Distance of Tiek, and the City of the Sun of Campanella. 14. One favorite volume was a small octavo edition of the Durectorium Inquisitorium by the Dominican-imeric Dijeron, and there were passages in Pomponius Mela about the old African satyrs and Egyptians over which Usher would sit dreaming for hours. 15. His chief delight, however, was found in the perusal of an exceedingly rare and curious book in Cortogothic, the Manual of a Forgotten Church, the Vigilie Mortuorum Secundum Corum Ecclesiia Magentine. 16. I could not help thinking of the wild ritual of this work, and of its probable influence upon the hypochondriac, when one evening, having informed me abruptly that the Lady Madeline was no more, he stated his intention of preserving her corpse for a fortnight, previously to its final interment, in one of the numerous vaults within the main walls of the building. 17. The worldly reason, however, assigned for this singular proceeding, was one which I did not feel at liberty to dispute. Their brother had been led to his resolution, so he told me, by consideration of the unusual character of the malady of the deceased, of certain unobtrusive and eager inquiries on the part of her medical men, and of the remote and exposed situation of the burial ground of the family. 18. I will not deny that when I called to mind of the sinister countenance of the person whom I met upon the staircase, on the day of my arrival at the house, I had no desire to oppose what I regarded as at best but a harmless and by no means an unnatural precaution. 19. At the request of Usher, I personally aided him in the arrangements for the temporary entombment. The body having been in coffind, we too alone bore it to its rest. The vault in which we placed it, and which had been so long and opened that our torches, half smothered in its oppressive atmosphere, gave us little opportunity for investigation, was small, damp, and entirely without means of admission for light, lying at great depth immediately beneath that portion of the building in which was my own sleeping apartment. It had been used apparently in remote feudal times for the worst purposes of a dungeon keep, and in later days as a place of deposit for powder, or some other highly combustible substance, as a portion of its floor and the whole interior of a long archway through which we reached it were carefully sheathed with copper. The door of massive iron had been also similarly protected. Its immense weight caused an unusually sharp grating sound as it moved upon its hinges. Having deposited our mournful burden upon trestles within this region of horror, we partially turned aside the yet unscrewed lid of the coffin, and looked upon the face of the tenant. A striking similarity between the brother and sister now first arrested my attention, and Usher, divining perhaps my thoughts, murmured out some few words from which I learned that the deceased in himself had been twins, and that sympathies of a scarcely intelligible nature had always existed between them. Our glances, however, rested not long upon the dead, for we could not regard her unawed. The disease which had thus entombed the lady in the maturity of youth had left as usual, in all maladies of astrictly, cataleptical character, the mockery of a faint blush upon the bosom in the face, and that suspiciously lingering smile upon the lip which is so terrible in death. We replaced and screwed down the lid, and having secured the door of iron made our way with toil into the scarcely less gloomy apartments of the upper portion of the house. And to now some days of bitter grief having elapsed, an observable change came over the features of the mental disorder of my friend. His ordinary manner had vanished. His ordinary occupations were neglected or forgotten. He roamed from chamber to chamber with hurried, unequal, and objectless step. The pallor of his countenance had assumed, if possible, a more ghastly hue, but the luminousness of his eye had utterly gone out. The once occasional huskiness of his tone was heard no more, and a tremulous quaver, as if of extreme terror habitually characterized his utterance. There were times indeed when I thought his unceasingly agitated mind was laboring with some oppressive secret to divulge which he struggled for the necessary courage. At times again I was obliged to resolve all into the mere inexplicable vagaries of madness, for I beheld him gazing upon vacancy for long hours in an attitude of the profoundest attention as if listening to some imaginary sound. It was no wonder that his condition terrified, that it infected me. I felt creeping upon me by slowly at certain degrees the wild influences of his own fantastic yet impressive superstitions. It was especially upon retiring to bed late in the night of the seventh or eighth day after the placing of the Lady Madeline within the dungeon that I experienced the full power of such feelings. Sleep came not near my couch, while the hours waned and waned away. I struggled to reason off the nervousness which had dominion over me. I endeavored to believe that much, if not all of what I felt, was due to the bewildering influence of the gloomy furniture of the room, of the dark and tattered draperies, which tortured into motion by the breath of a rising tempest, swayed fiftily to and fro upon the walls, and wrestled uneasily about the decorations of the bed. But my efforts were fruitless. An irrepressible tremor gradually pervaded my frame, and at length there sat upon my very heart an incubus of utterly causeless alarm. Shaking this off with a gasp and a struggle, I uplifted myself upon the pillows, and, peering earnestly within the intense darkness of the chamber, hearkened, I know not why except that an instinctive spirit prompted me, to certain low and indefinite sounds which came through the pauses of the storm at long intervals I knew not whence. I was overpowered by an intense sentiment of horror, unaccountable yet unendurable. I threw on my clothes with haste, for I felt that I should sleep no more during the night, and endeavored to arouse myself from the pitiable condition into which I had fallen, by pacing rapidly to and fro through the apartment. I had taken but few steps in this manner, when a light step on an enjoining staircase arrested my attention. I presently recognized it as that of Usher. In an instant afterward he rapped, with a gentle touch at my door, and he entered bearing a lamp. His countenance was, as usual, cadaversly one. But, moreover, there was a species of mad hilarity in his eyes, and evidently restrained hysteria in his whole demeanor. His air appalled me, but anything was preferable to the solitude which I had so long endured, and I even welcomed his presence as a relief. And you have not seen it, he said abruptly after having stared about him for some moments in silence. You have not then seen it, but stay, you shall. Thus speaking, and having carefully shaded his lamp, he hurried to one of the casements, and threw it freely open to the storm. The impetuous fury of the entering gust nearly lifted us from our feet. It was indeed a tempestuous yet sternly beautiful night, and one wildly singular in its terror and its beauty. A whirlwind had apparently collected its force in our vicinity, for there were frequent and violent alterations in the direction of the wind, and the exceeding density of the clouds, which hung so low as to press upon the turrets of the house, did not prevent our perceiving the lifelike velocity with which they flew careering from all points against each other without passing away into the distance. I say that even their exceeding density did not prevent our perceiving this. Yet we had no glimpse of the mooner stars, nor was there any flashing forth of the lightning. But the under surfaces of the huge masses of agitated vapor, as well as all terrestrial objects immediately around us, were glowing in the unnatural light of a faintly luminous and distinctly visible gaseous exhalation which hung about and enshrouded the mansion. You must not. You shall not behold this, said I, shuddering to Usher as I led him with the gentle violence from the window to a seat. These appearances, which bewilder you, are merely electrical phenomena not uncommon, or it may be that they have their ghastly origin in the rank miasma of the tarn. Let us close this casement. The air is chilling and dangerous to your frame. Here is one of your favorite romances. I will read and you shall listen, and so we will pass away this terrible night together. The antique volume which I had taken up was the mad trist of Sir Lancelot Canning, but I called it a favorite of Usher's more in sad jest than in earnest. For in truth, there is little in its uncouth and unimaginative prolixity which could have had interest for the lofty and spiritual ideality of my friend. It was, however, the only book immediately at hand, and I indulged a vague hope that the excitement which now agitated the hypochondriac might find relief for the history of mental disorder as full of similar anomalies, even in the extremeness of the folly which I should read. Could I have judged, indeed, by the wild overstrained air of avacity with which he hearkened, or apparently hearkened, to the words of the tale, I might well have congratulated myself upon the success of my design. I had arrived at that well-known portion of the story where Elthel read, the hero of the trist, having sought in vain for peaceable admission into the dwelling of the hermit, proceeds to make good an entrance by force. Here it will be remembered the words of the narrative run thus. And Elthel read, who was by nature of a dowdy heart, and who was now mighty with all on account of the powerfulness of the wine which he had drunken, waited no longer to hold parley with the hermit, who in sooth was of an obstinate and demalusful turn. But, feeling the rain upon his shoulders and fearing the rising of the tempest, uplifted his mace outright and with blows made quickly room in the plankings of the door for his gauntleted hand. And now, pulling therewith sturdily, he so cracked and ripped and tore all asunder that the noise of the dry and hollow-sounding wood alarmed and reverberated throughout the forest. At the termination of this sentence I started and for a moment paused, for it appeared to me, although I had once concluded that my excited fancy had deceived me, it appeared to me that from some very remote portion of the mansion there came, indistinctly to my ears, what might have been, in its exact similarity of character, the echo but estifled in Dolan certainly, of the very cracking and ripping sound which Sir Lancelot had so particularly described. It was beyond doubt the coincidence alone which had arrested my attention, for amid the rattling of the sashes of the casements and the ordinary commingled noises of the still-increasing storm, the sound in itself had nothing, surely, which should have interested or disturbed me. I continued the story. But the good champion Ethelred, now entering within the door, was sore and raged and amazed to perceive no signal of the maliceful hermit, but in the stead thereof a dragon of the scaly and prodigious demeanor and of a fiery tongue which sat in guard before a palace of gold with a floor of silver, and upon the wall there hung a shield of shining brass with this legend in written, who entereth herein a conquerer hath been, who slayeth the dragon the shield he shall win. And Ethelred uplifted his mace and struck upon the head of the dragon which fell before him and gave up his pesty breath with the shriek so horrid and harsh, and with all so piercing that Ethelred had feigned to close his ears with his hands against the dreadful noise of it, like where I was never before heard. Here again I paused abruptly, and now with a feeling of wild amazement, for there could be no doubt whatever that in this instance I did actually hear, although from what direction it proceeded I found it impossible to say, a low and apparently distant, but harsh, protracted and most unusual screaming or grating sound, the exact counterpart of what my fancy had already conjured up for the dragon's unnatural shriek as described by the romancer. Oppressed as I certainly was, upon the occurrence of this second and most extraordinary coincidence, by a thousand conflicting sensations in which wonder and extreme terror were predominant, I still retained sufficient presence of mind to avoid exciting, by any observation, the sensitive nervousness of my companion. I was by no means certain that he had noticed the sounds in question, although assuredly a strange alteration had, during the last few minutes, taken place in his demeanor. From a position fronting my own, he had gradually brought round his chair so as to sit with his face to the door of the chamber, and thus I could but partially perceive his features, although I saw that his lips trembled as if he were murmuring inaudibly. His head had dropped upon his breast, yet I knew that he was not asleep, from the wide and rigid opening of the eye as I caught a glance of it in profile. The motion of his body too was at variance with this idea, for he rocked from side to side with a gentle yet constant and uniform sway. Having rapidly taken notice of all this, I resumed the narrative of Sir Lancelot, which thus proceeded. And now the champion, having escaped from the terrible fury of the dragon, be thinking himself of the brazen shield, and of the breaking up of the enchantment which was upon it, removed the carcass from out of the way before him, and approached valorously over the silver pavement of the castle to where the shield was upon the wall, which insooth tarried not for his full coming, but fell down at his feet upon the silver floor with the mighty grates and terrible ringing sound. No sooner had these syllables passed my lips than, as if a shield of brasset indeed at the moment fallen heavily upon the floor of silver, I became aware of a distinct, hollow, metallic and clingurous yet to apparently muffled reverberation. Completely inerved I leaped to my feet, but the measured rocking movement of usher was undisturbed. I rushed to the chair in which he sat, his eyes were bent fixedly before him, and throughout his whole countenance there reigned a stony rigidity. But as I placed my hand upon his shoulder, there came a strong shudder over his whole person, a sickly smile quivered about his lips, and I saw that he spoke in a low, hurried and gibbering murmur, as if unconscious of my presence. Bending closely over him, I at length drank in the hideous import of his words. Not hear it? Yes, I hear it, and have heard it. Long, many minutes, many hours, many days have I heard it, yet I dared not. How pity me, miserable wretch that I am, I dared not, I dared not speak! We have put our living in the tomb! Said I not that my senses were acute. I now tell you that I heard her first feeble movements in the hollow coffin. I heard them, many, many days ago, yet I dared not, I dared not speak. And now, to-night? Ethel read. The breaking of the hermit's door, into the death cry of the dragon, into the clanger of the shield. Say, rather, the rending of her coffin, into the grating of the iron hinges of her prison, and her struggles within the coppered archway of the vault. Oh, whither shall I fly? Will she not be hearing on? Is she not hurrying to up-braid me from my haste? Have I not heard her footsteps on the stair? Do I not distinguish that heavy and horrible beating of her heart? Mad men! Here he spring furiously to his feet, and shrieked out his syllables as if in the effort he were giving up his soul. Mad men! I tell you that she now stands without the door! As if in the superhuman energy of his utterance there had been found with the potency of a spell, the huge antique panels to which the speaker pointed through slowly back upon the instant, their ponderous and ebony jaws. It is the work of the rushing gust, but then without those doors there did stand the lofty and entrusted figure of the Lady Madeline of Usher. There was blood upon her white robes, and the evidence of some bitter struggle upon every portion of her emaciated frame, for a moment she remained trembling and reeling to and fro upon the threshold. Then with a lone moaning cry, fell heavily inward upon the person of her brother, and in her violent and now final death agonies, bore him to the floor of corpse, and a victim to the terrors he had anticipated. From that chamber and from that mansion I fled aghast. The storm was still abroad in all its wrath as I found myself crossed in the old causeway. Suddenly there shot along the path a wild light, and I turned to see whence a gleam so unusual could have issued, for the vast house and its shadows were alone behind me. The radiance was that of the full, setting and blood-red moon, which now shone vividly through that once barely discernable fissure of which I have before spoken as extending from the roof of the building in his exact direction to the base. While I gazed, this fissure rapidly widened. There came a fierce breath of the whirlwind. The entire orb of the satellite burst once upon my sight. My brain reeled as I saw the mighty walls rushing asunder. There was a long, tumultuous shouting sound like the voice of a thousand waters, and the deep and dank tarn in my feet closed silently and silently over the fragments of the House of Usher. End of THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER What was it? By Fitz James O'Brien It is, I confess, with considerable diffidence that I approach the strange narrative which I am about to relate. The events which I purpose detailing are of so extraordinary a character that I am quite prepared to meet with an unusual amount of incredulity and scorn. I accept all such beforehand. I have, I trust, the literary courage to face unbelief. I have, after mature consideration, resolved to narrate, in a simple and straightforward manner as I can compass, some facts that passed under my observation in the month of July last, and which, in the annals of the mysteries of physical science, are wholly unparalleled. I live at number 26th Street in New York. The House is in some respects a curious one. It has enjoyed for the last two years the reputation of being haunted. It is a large and stately residence, surrounded by what was once a garden, but which is now only a green enclosure used for bleaching clothes. The dry basin of what has been a fountain, and a few fruit trees ragged and unpruned, indicate that this spot in past days was a pleasant, shady retreat, filled with fruits and flowers, and the sweet murmur of waters. The House is very spacious. A hall of noble size leads to a large spiral staircase winding through its centre, while the various apartments are of imposing dimensions. It was built some fifteen or twenty years since by Mr. A., the well-known New York merchant, who five years ago threw the commercial world into convulsions by a stupendous bank fraud. Mr. A., as everyone knows, escaped to Europe, and died not long after of a broken heart. Almost immediately after the news of his disease reached this country, and was verified, the report spread in 26th Street that number was haunted. Legal measures had dispossessed the widow of its former owner, and it was inhabited merely by a caretaker and his wife, placed there by the house agent into whose hands it had passed for the purposes of renting or sale. These people declared that they were troubled with unnatural noises. Doors were opened without any visible agency. The remnants of furniture scattered through the various rooms were, during the night, piled one upon the other by unknown hands. Invisible feet passed up and down the stairs in broad daylight, accompanied by the rustle of unseen silk dresses, and the gliding of viewless hands along the massive balusters. The caretaker and his wife declared they would live there no longer. The house agent laughed, dismissed them, and put others in their place. The noises and supernatural manifestations continued. The neighbourhood caught up the story, and the house remained untenanted for three years. Several persons negotiated for it, but somehow, always before the bargain was closed, they heard the unpleasant rumours, and declined to treat any further. It was in this state of things that my landlady, who at the time kept a boarding-house in Bleaker Street, and who wished to move further uptown, conceived the bold idea of renting number 26th Street. Happening to have in her house a rather plucky and philosophical set of borders, she laid her scheme before us, stating candidly everything she had heard, respecting the ghostly qualities of the establishment to which she wished to remove us. With the exception of two timid persons, a sea-captain and a returned Californian, who immediately gave notice that they would leave, all of Mrs Moffat's guests declared that they would accompany her in her chivalric incursion into the abode of spirits. Our removal was effected in the month of May, and we were charmed with our new residence. The portion of 26th Street where our house is situated, between 7th and 8th Avenues, is one of the pleasantest localities in New York. The garden's back of the houses, running down nearly to the Hudson, form, in the summertime, a perfect avenue of radure. The air is pure, and invigorating, sweeping, as it does, straight across the river from the Weehawken Heights, and even the ragged garden which surrounded the house, although displaying on washing-days rather too much clothesline, still gave us a piece of greenswore to look at, and a cool retreat in the summer evenings, where we smoked our cigars in the dusk, and watched the fireflies flashing their dark lanterns in the long grass. Of course we had no sooner established ourselves at number than we began to expect ghosts. We absolutely awaited their advent with eagerness. Our dinner conversation was supernatural. One of the boarders, who had purchased Mrs. Crowe's Nightside of Nature for his own private delectation, was regarded as a public enemy by the entire household for not having bought twenty copies. The man led a life of supreme wretchedness while he was reading this volume. A system of espionage was established, of which he was the victim. If he unconsciously laid the book down for an instant and left the room, it was immediately seized and read aloud in secret places to a select few. I found myself a person of immense importance, it having leaked out that I was tolerably well versed in the history of supernaturalism, and had once written a story, the foundation of which was a ghost. If a table or wainscot panel happened to warp when we were assembled in the large drawing-room, there was an instant silence, and everyone was prepared for an immediate clanking of chains and a spectral form. After a month of psychological excitement, it was with the utmost dissatisfaction that we were forced to acknowledge that nothing in the remotest degree approaching the supernatural had manifested itself. Once the black butler asseverated that his candle had been blown out by some invisible agency while he was undressing himself for the night. But as I had more than once discovered this coloured gentleman in a condition where one candle must have appeared to him like two, thought it possible that, by going a step further in his potations, he might have reversed this phenomenon and seen no candle at all where he ought to have beheld one. Things were in this state when an accident took place so awful and inexplicable in its character that my reason fairly reels at the bare memory of the occurrence. It was the 10th of July. After dinner was over I repaired with my friend Dr. Hammond to the garden to smoke my evening pipe. Independent of certain mental sympathies which existed between the doctor and myself, we were linked together by a vice. We both smoked opium. We knew each other's secret and respected it. We enjoyed together that wonderful expansion of thought, that marvellous intensifying of the perceptive faculties, that boundless feeling of existence when we seemed to have points of contact with the whole universe. In short, that unimaginable spiritual bliss which I would not surrender for a throne and which I hope you, the reader, will never, never taste. Those hours of opium happiness which the doctor and I spent together in secret were regulated with a scientific accuracy. We did not blindly smoke the drug of paradise and leave our dreams to chance. While smoking we carefully steered our conversation through the brightest and calmest channels of thought. We talked of the East and endeavoured to recall the magical panorama of its glowing scenery. We criticised the most sensuous poets, those who painted life ruddy with health, brimming with passion, happy in the possession of youth and strength and beauty. If we talked of Shakespeare's Tempest, we lingered over aerial and avoided Caliban. Like the Grubbers we turned our faces to the East and saw only the sunny side of the world. This skillful colouring of our train of thought produced in our subsequent visions a corresponding tone. The splendours of Arabian fairyland died our dreams. We paced the narrow strip of grass with the tread and port of Kings. The song of the Rana Arboria, while he clung to the bark of the ragged plum tree, sounded like the strains of divine musicians. Houses, walls and streets melted like rain clouds and vistas of unimaginable glory stretched away before us. It was a rapturous companionship. We enjoyed the vast delight more perfectly because even in our most ecstatic moments we were conscious of each other's presence. Our pleasures, while individual, were still twin, vibrating and moving in musical accord. On the evening in question, the 10th of July, the Doctor and myself drifted into an unusually metaphysical mood. We lit our large mere-shelms filled with the fine Turkish tobacco in the core of which burned a little black nut of opium, that, like the nut and the fairy tale, held within its narrow limits wonders beyond the reach of Kings. We paced to and fro conversing. A strange perversity dominated the currents of our thought. They would not flow through the sunlit channels into which we strove to divert them. For some unaccountable reason they constantly diverged into dark and lonesome beds where a continual gloom brooded. It was in vain that, after our old fashion, we flung ourselves on the shores of the east and talked of its gay bazaars, of the splendours of the time of Haroun, of Harim's and Golden Palace's. Blacker freets continually arose from the depths of our talk and expanded like the one the fishermen released from the copper vessel until they blotted everything bright from our vision. Insensibly we yielded to the occult force that swayed us and indulged in gloomy speculation. We had talked some time upon the proneness of the human mind to mysticism and the almost universal love of the terrible when Hammond suddenly said to me what do you consider to be the greatest element of terror? The question puzzled me that many things were terrible I knew. Stumbling over a corpse in the dark. Beholding, as I once did, a woman floating down a deep and rapid river with wildly lifted arms and awful, upturned face, uttering as she drifted shrieks that rent one's heart while we, spectators, stood frozen at a window which overhung the river at a height of sixty feet, unable to make the slightest effort to save her but dumbly watching her last supreme agony and her disappearance. A shattered wreck with no life visible, encountered floating listlessly on the ocean is a terrible object for it suggests a huge terror the proportions of which are veiled. But it now struck me for the first time that there must be one great ruling embodiment of fear, a king of terrors to which all others must succumb. What might it be? To what train of circumstances would it owe its existence? I confess Hammond, I replied to my friend, I never considered the subject before. That there must be one something more terrible than any other thing I feel. I cannot attempt, however, even the most vague definition. I am somewhat like you, Harry, he answered. I feel my capacity to experience a terror greater than anything yet conceived by the human mind, something combining in fearful and unnatural amalgamation hitherto supposed incompatible elements. The calling of voices in Brockton Brown's novel of Violand is awful. So is the picture of the dweller on the threshold in Bulwer's Zanoni. But, he added, shaking his head gloomily, there is something more horrible still than those. Look here, Hammond, I rejoin, let us drop this kind of talk for heaven's sake. We shall suffer for it, depend on it. I don't know what's the matter with me tonight, he replied, but my brain is running upon all sorts of weird and awful thoughts. I feel as if I could write a story like Hoffman, tonight, if I were only master of a literary style. Well, if we are going to be Hoffman-esque in our talk, I am off to bed. Opium and nightmares should never be brought together. How sultry it is! Good night, Hammond. Good night, Harry. Pleasant dreams to you. Groomy wretch, affreets, ghouls and enchanters. We parted, and each sought his respective chamber. I undressed quickly and got into bed, taking with me, according to my usual custom, a book, over which I generally read myself to sleep. I opened the volume as soon as I had laid my head upon the pillow and instantly flung it to the other side of the room. It was Goudon's history of monsters, a curious French work which I had lately imported from Paris, but which, in the state of mind I had then reached, was anything but an agreeable companion. I resolved to go to sleep at once, so, turning down my gas until nothing but a little blue point of light glimmered on the top of the tube, I composed myself to rest. The room was in total darkness. The atom of gas that still remained alight did not illuminate a distance of three inches round the burner. I desperately drew my arm across my eyes as if to shut out even the darkness and tried to think of nothing. It was in vain. The confounded themes touched on by Hammond in the garden kept obtruding themselves onto my brain. I battled against them. I erected ramparts of would-be-blackness of intellect to keep them out. They still crowded upon me. While I was lying still as a corpse, hoping that by a perfect physical inaction I should hasten mental repose, an awful incident occurred. A something dropped, as it seemed, from the ceiling, plum upon my chest, and the next instant I felt two bony hands encircling my throat, endeavouring to choke me. I am no coward, and am possessed of considerable physical strength. The suddenness of the attack, instead of stunning me, strung every nerve to its highest tension. My body acted from instinct before my brain had time to realise the terrors of my position. In an instant I wound two muscular arms around the creature and squeezed it with all the strength of despair against my chest. In a few seconds the bony hands that had fastened on my throat loosened their hold, and I was free to breathe once more. Then commenced a struggle of awful intensity, immersed in the most profound darkness, totally ignorant of the nature of the thing by which I was so suddenly attacked, finding my grasp slipping every moment by reason it seemed to me of the entire nakedness of my assailant, bitten with sharp teeth in the shoulder, neck and chest, having every moment to protect my throat against a pair of sinewy, agile hands which my utmost efforts could not confine. These were a combination of circumstances to combat which required all the strength, skill and courage that I possessed. At last, after a silent, deadly, exhausting struggle, I got my assailant under by a series of incredible efforts of strength. Once pinned with my knee on what I made out to be its chest, I knew that I was victor. I rested for a moment to breathe. I heard the creature beneath me panting in the darkness and felt the violent throbbing of a heart. It was apparently as exhausted as I was. That was one comfort. At this moment I remembered that I usually placed under my pillow before going to bed a large yellow silk pocket hand-chief. I felt for it instantly. It was there. In a few seconds more I had, after a fashion, pinioned the creature's arms. I now felt tolerably secure. There was nothing more to be done but to turn on the gas and, having first seen what my midnight assailant was like, arouse the household. I will confess to being actuated by a certain pride in not giving the alarm before. I wished to make the capture alone and unaided. Never losing my hold for an instant I slipped from the bed to the floor, dragging my captive with me. I had but a few steps to make to reach the gas burner. These I made with the greatest caution, holding the creature in a grip like a vice. At last I got within arm's length with a tiny speck of blue light which told me where the gas burner lay. Quick as lightning I released my grasp with one hand and let on the full flood of light. Then I turned to look at my captive. I cannot even attempt to give any definition of my sensations the instant after I turned on the gas. I suppose I must have shrieked with terror for in less than a minute afterward my room was crowded with the inmates of the house. I shudder now as I think of that awful moment. I saw nothing. Yes, I had one arm firmly clasped round a breathing, panting, corporeal shape. My other hand gripped with all its strength a throat as warm, as apparently fleshy as my own. And yet, with this living substance in my grasp, with its body pressed against my own, and all in the bright glare of a large jet of gas, I absolutely beheld nothing, not even an outline, a vapour. I do not, even at this hour, realise the situation in which I found myself. I cannot recall the astounding incident thoroughly. Imagination in vain tries to compass the awful paradox. It breathed. I felt its warm breath upon my cheek. It struggled fiercely. It had hands. They clutched at me. Its skin was smooth like my own. There it lay, pressed close up against me, solid as stone, and yet utterly invisible. I wonder that I did not faint or go mad on the instant. Some wonderful instinct must have sustained me. For absolutely, in place of loosening my hold on the terrible enigma, I seemed to gain an additional strength in my moment of horror, and tightened my grasp with such wonderful force that I felt the creature shivering with agony. Just then Hammond entered my room at the head of the household. As soon as he beheld my face, which, I suppose, must have been an awful sight to look at. He hastened forward, crying, Great Heaven, Harry! What has happened? Hammond! Hammond! I cried. Come here! Oh, this is awful! I have been attacked in bed by something or other, which I have hold of. But I can't see it! I can't see it! Hammond, doubtless struck by the unfaigned horror expressed in my countenance, made one or two steps forward with an anxious yet puzzled expression. A very audible titter burst from the remainder of my visitors. This suppressed laughter made me furious, to laugh at a human being in my position. It was the worst species of cruelty. Now I can understand why the appearance of a man struggling violently, as it would seem, with an airy nothing, and calling for assistance against a vision, should have appeared ludicrous. Then, so great was my rage against the mocking crowd that had I the power I would have stricken them dead where they stood. Hammond! Hammond! I cried again despairingly. For God's sake, come to me! I can hold the thing but a short while longer. It is overpowering me. Help me! Help me! Harry! whispered Hammond, approaching me. You have been smoking too much opium. I swear to you, Hammond, that this is no vision! I answered in the same low tone. Don't you see how it shakes my whole frame with its strolls? If you don't believe me, convince yourself. Feel it! Touch it! Hammond advanced and laid his hand in the spot I indicated. A wild cry of horror burst from him. He had felt it. In a moment he had discovered somewhere in my room a long piece of cord, and was the next instant winding it and knotting it about the body of the unseen being that I clasped in my arms. Harry! he said in a hoarse, agitated voice, for though he preserved his presence of mind he was deeply moved. Harry! It's all safe now. You may let go, old fellow, if you're tired. The thing can't move. I was utterly exhausted, and I gladly loosened my hold. Hammond stood holding the ends of the cord that bound the invisible, twisted round his hand, while before him, self-supporting as it were, he beheld a rope laced and interlaced and stretching tightly around a vacant space. I never saw a man look so thoroughly stricken with awe. Nevertheless his face expressed all the courage and determination which I knew him to possess. His lips, although white, were set firmly, and one could perceive at a glance that, although stricken with fear, he was not daunted. The confusion that ensued among the guests of the house who were witnesses of this extraordinary scene between Hammond and myself, who beheld the pantomime of binding this struggling something, who beheld me almost sinking from physical exhaustion when my task of jailer was over, the confusion and terror that took possession of the bystanders when they saw all this was beyond description. The weaker ones fled from the apartment. The few who remained clustered near the door and could not be induced to approach Hammond and his charge. Still incredulity broke out through their terror. They had not the courage to satisfy themselves, and yet they doubted. It was in vain that I begged of some of the men to come near and convince themselves by touch of the existence in that room of a living being which was invisible. They were incredulous, but did not dare to un-deceive themselves. How could a solid, living, breathing body be invisible? they asked. My reply was this. I gave a sign to Hammond, and both of us, conquering our fearful repugnance to touch the invisible creature, lifted it from the ground, manacled as it was, and took it to my bed. Its weight was about that of a boy of fourteen. Now, my friends, I said, as Hammond and myself held the creature suspended over the bed, I can give you self-evident proof that here is a solid, ponderable body which nevertheless you cannot see. Be good enough to watch the surface of the bed attentively. I was astonished at my own courage in treating this strange event so calmly, but I had recovered from my first terror and felt a sort of scientific pride in the affair which dominated every other feeling. The eyes of the bystanders were immediately fixed on my bed. At a given signal Hammond and I let the creature fall. There was a dull sound of a heavy body alighting on a soft mass. The timbers of the bed creaked. A deep impression marked itself distinctly on the pillow and on the bed itself. The crowd who witnessed this gave a low cry and rushed from the room. Hammond and I were left alone with our mystery. We remained silent for some time, listening to the low, irregular breathing of the creature on the bed and watching the rustle of the bed clothes as it impotently struggled to free itself from confinement. Then Hammond spoke. Harry, this is awful. I, awful. But not unaccountable. Not unaccountable? What do you mean? Such a thing has never occurred since the birth of the world. I know not what to think, Hammond. God grant that I am not mad and that this is not an insane fantasy. Let us reason a little, Harry. Here is a solid body which we touch but which we cannot see. The fact is so unusual that it strikes us with terror. Is there no parallel, though, for such a phenomenon? Take a piece of pure glass. It is tangible and transparent. A certain chemical coarseness is all that prevents it being so entirely transparent as to be totally invisible. It is not theoretically impossible, mind you, to make a glass which shall not reflect a single ray of light. A glass so pure and homogenous in its atoms that the rays from the sun will pass through it as they do through the air. Refracted but not reflected. We do not see air and yet we feel it. That's all very well, Hammond, but those are inanimate substances. Glass does not breathe. Air does not breathe. This thing has a heart that palpitates. A will that moves it. Lungs that play and inspire and respire. You forget the phenomena of which we have so often heard of late. Answer the doctor gravely. At the meetings called spirit circles, invisible hands have been thrust into the hands of those persons round the table. Warm, fleshy hands that seem to pulsate with mortal life. What do you think then that this thing is? I don't know what it is, was the solemn reply. But please, the gods, I will, with your assistance thoroughly investigate it. We watched together, smoking many pipes all night long by the bedside of the unearthly being that tossed and planted until it was apparently wearied out. Then we learned by the low, regular breathing that it slept. The next morning the house was all a stir. The boarders congregated on the landing outside my room and Hammond and myself were lions. We had to answer a thousand questions as to the state of our extraordinary prisoner, for as yet not one person in the house except ourselves could be induced to set foot in the apartment. The creature was awake. This was evidenced by the convulsive manner in which the bed clothes were moved in its efforts to escape. There was something truly terrible in beholding as it were those second hand indications of the terrible writhings and agonized struggles for liberty which themselves were invisible. Hammond and myself had racked our brains during the long night to discover some means by which we might realise the shape and general appearance of the enigma. As well as we could make out by passing our hands over the creature's form its outlines and lineaments were human. There was a mouth, a round smooth head without hair, a nose which, however, was little elevated above the cheeks and its hands and feet felt like those of a boy. At first we thought of placing the being on a smooth surface and tracing its outlines with chalk as shoemakers trace the outlines of the foot. This plan was given up as being of no value. Such an outline would give not the slightest idea of its confirmation. A happy thought struck me. We would take a cast of it in plaster of Paris. This would give us the solid figure and satisfy all our wishes. But how to do it? The movements of the creature would disturb the setting of the plastic covering and distort the mould. Another thought. Why not give it chloroform? It had respiratory organs. That was evident by its breathing. Once reduced to a state of insensibility we could do with it what we would. Dr. X was sent for, and after the worthy physician had recovered from the first shock of amazement he proceeded to administer the chloroform. In three minutes afterward we were enabled to remove the fetus from the creature's body and a modeler was busily engaged in covering the invisible form with the moist clay. In five minutes more we had a mould and before evening a rough facsimile of the mystery. It was shaped like a man. Distorted, uncouth and horrible, but still a man. It was small, not over four feet and some inches in height, and its limbs revealed a muscular development that was unparalleled. Its face surpassed in hideousness anything I had ever seen. Gustave Dorey, Orcalo or Tony Gioano never conceived anything so horrible. There is a face in one of the latter's illustrations to Un Voyage Will Vous Plaire, which somewhat approaches the countenance of this creature, but does not equal it. It was the physiognomy of what I should fancy a ghoul might be. It looked as if it was capable of feeding on human flesh, having satisfied our curiosity and bound everyone in the house to secrecy. It became a question, what was to be done with our enigma? It was impossible that we should keep such a horror in our house. It was equally impossible that such an awful being should be let loose upon the world. I confess that I would have gladly voted for the creature's destruction. But who would shoulder the responsibility? Who would undertake the execution of this horrible semblance of a human being? Day after day this question was deliberated gravely. The boarders all left the house. Mrs Moffat was in despair and threatened Hammond and myself with all sorts of legal penalties if we did not remove the horror. Our answer was, we will go if you like, but we declined taking this creature with us. Remove it yourself if you please. It appeared in your house, or knew the responsibility rests. To this there was, of course, no answer. Mrs Moffat could not obtain, for love or money, a person who would even approach the mystery. The most singular part of the affair was that we were entirely ignorant of what the creature habitually fed on. Everything in the way of nutriment that we could think of was placed before it, but was never touched. It was awful to stand by, day after day, and see the clothes toss and hear the hard breathing and know that it was starving. Ten, twelve days, a fortnight passed and it still lived. The pulsations of the heart, however, were daily growing fainter and had now nearly ceased. It was evident that the creature was dying for want of sustenance. While this terrible life-struggle was going on I felt miserable. I could not sleep. Horrible as the creature was, it was pitiful to think of the pangs it was suffering. At last it died. Hammond and I found it cold and stiff one morning in the bed. The heart had ceased to beat, the lungs to inspire. We hastened to bury it in the garden. It was a strange funeral, the dropping of that few-less corpse into the damp hole. The cast of its form I gave to Dr. X, who keeps it in his museum in 10th Street. As I am on the eve of a long journey from which I may not return, I have drawn up this narrative of an event, the most singular that has ever come to my knowledge. End of What Was It? Reading by Rafe Ball Section 3 of Lovecraft's Influences and Favourites 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 Avae in February 2019 The Little Red Kitten by Lafcadio Hearn The kitten would have looked like a small red lion, but that its ears were positively enormous, making the head like one of those little demons sculptured in medieval stonework which have wings instead of ears. It ate beef steak and cockroaches, cater-pillars and fish, chicken and butterflies, mosquito-hawks and roast mutton, hash and tumble-bugs, beetles and pig's feet, crabs and spiders, moths and poached eggs, oysters and earthworms, ham and mice, rats and rice pudding, until its belly became a realisation of Noah's Ark. On this diet it soon acquired strength to whip all the ancient cats in the neighbourhood and also to take under its protection a pretty little salmon-coloured cat of the same sex, which was too weak to defend itself and had been unmercifully mauled every night before the tawny sister enforced reform in the shady yard of the old Creole house. The red kitten was not very big, but was very solid and more agile than a monkey. Its flaming emerald eyes were always watching and its enormous ears always on the alert and woe to the cat who dared approach the weak little sister with hostile intentions. The two always slept together, the little speckled one resting its head upon the body of its protector and the red kitten licked its companion every day like a mother washing her baby. Wherever the red kitten went the speckled kitten followed, they hunted all kinds of creeping things together and even formed a criminal partnership in kitten stealing. One day they were forcibly separated, the red kitten being locked up in the closet under the stairs to keep it out of mischief during dinner hours as it had evinced an insolent determination to steal a stuffed crab from the plate of Madame R. Thus temporarily deprived of its guide, philosopher and friend, the speckled kitten unfortunately wandered under a rocking chair violently agitated by a heavy gentleman who was reading The Bee and with a sharp little cry of agony it gave up its gentle ghost. Everybody stopped eating and there was a general outburst of indignation and sorrow. The heavy gentleman got very red in the face and said that he had not intended to do it. Tonner d'une pipe, nom d'un petit bonhomme, he might have been a little more careful. An hour later the red kitten was vainly seeking its speckled companion all ears and eyes. It uttered strange little cries and vainly waited for the customary reply. Then it commenced to look everywhere, upstairs, downstairs, on the galleries, in the corners, among the shrubbery, never supposing in its innocent mind that a little speckled buddy was lying far away upon a heap of garbage and ashes. Then it became very silent, purring when offered food but eating nothing. At last the sudden thought seemed to strike it. It had never seen the great world which rumbled beyond the archway of the old courtyard. Perhaps its little sister had wandered out there. So it would go and seek her. For the first time it wandered beyond the archway and saw the big world it had never seen before, miles of houses and myriads of people and great cotton floats thundering by and great wicked dogs with murder kittens. But the little red one crept along beside the houses in the narrow strip of shadow, sometimes trembling when the big wagons rolled past and sometimes hiding in doorways when it saw a dog, but still bravely seeking the lost sister. It came to a great wide street, five times wider than the narrow street before the old Creole house and the sun was so hot, so hot. The little creature was so tired and hungry too. Perhaps somebody would help it to find the way. But nobody seemed to notice the red kitten with its funny ears and great bright eyes. It opened its little pink mouth and cried, but nobody stopped. It could not understand that. Whenever it had cried that way at home somebody had come to pet it. Suddenly a fire engine came roaring up the street and the great crowd of people were running after it. Then the kitten got very, very frightened and tried to run out of the way, but its poor little brain was so confused and there was so much noise and shouting. Next morning two little buddies lay side by side on the ashes, miles away from the old Creole house. The little tawny kitten had found its speckled sister. End of section 3