 Eveline by James Joyce. She sat at the window, watching the evening invade the avenue. Her head was leaned against the window curtains, and in her nostrils was the odor of dusty critton. She was tired. Few people passed. The man out of the last house passed on his way home. She heard his footsteps, clacking along the concrete pavement, and afterwards crunching on the cinder path before the new red houses. One time there used to be a field there in which they used to play every evening with other people's children. Then a man from Belfast bought the field and built houses in it, not like their little brown houses, but bright brick houses, with shining roofs. The children of the avenue used to play together in that field, the divines, the waters, the dunes, little kill, the cripple. She and her brothers and sisters. Ernest, however, never played. He was too grown up. Her father used often to hunt them in out of the field with his black-thorn stick, but usually little kill used to keep nicks and call out when he saw her father coming. Still, they seem to have been rather happy then. Her father was not so bad then, and besides, her mother was alive. That was a long time ago. She and her brothers and sisters were all grown up, her mother was dead, Tizzy Dunn was dead too, and the waters had gone back to England. Everything changes. Now she was going to go away like the others, to leave her home. She looked around the room, reviewing all its familiar objects, which she had dusted once a week for so many years, wondering where on earth all the dust came from. Perhaps she would never see again those familiar objects, from which she had never dreamed of being divided. And yet, during all those years, she had never found out the name of the priest, whose yellowing photograph hung on the wall above the broken harmonium, beside the colored print of the promises made to Blessed Margaret Mary Alacocque. He had been a school friend of her father. Whenever he showed the photograph to a visitor, her father used to pass it with a casual word. He is in Melbourne now. She had consented to go away, to leave her home. Was that wise? She tried to weigh each side of the question. In her home, anyway, she had shelter and food. She had those whom she had known all her life about her. Of course, she had to work hard, both in the house and at business. What would they say of her in the stores, when they found out that she had run away with a fellow? Say she was a fool, perhaps, and her place would be filled up by advertisement? Miss Gavin would be glad. She had always had an edge on her, especially whenever there were people listening. Miss Hill, don't you see these ladies are waiting? Look lively, Miss Hill, please. She would not cry many tears at leaving the stores. But in her new home, in a distant unknown country, it would not be like that. Then she would be married, she, Evelyn. People would treat her with respect, then. She would not be treated as her mother had been. Even now, though she was over nineteen, she sometimes felt herself in danger of her father's violence. She knew it was that that had given her the palpitations. When they were growing up, he had never gone for her like he used to go for Harry and Ernest, because she was a girl. But laterally he had begun to threaten her, and say what he would do to her only for her dead mother's sake. And so she had nobody to protect her. Ernest was dead, and Harry, who was in the church decorating business, was nearly always down somewhere in the country. Besides, the invariable squabble for money on Saturday nights had begun to weary her unspeakably. She always gave her entire wages, seven shillings, and Harry always sent up what he could, but the trouble was to get any money from her father. He said she used to squander the money, that she had no head, that he wasn't going to give her his hard-earned money to throw about the streets, and much more, for he was usually fairly bad on Saturday night. In the end he would give her the money, and ask her had she any intention of buying Sunday's dinner. Then she had to rush out as quickly as she could, and do her marketing, holding her black leather purse tightly in her hand, as she elbowed her way through the crowds, and returning home late under her load of provisions. She had hard work to keep the house together, and to see that the two young children who had been left to her charge went to school regularly, and got their meals regularly. It was hard work, a hard life, but now that she was about to leave it, she did not find it a wholly undesirable life. She was about to explore another life with Frank. Frank was very kind, manly, open-hearted. She was to go away with him, by the nightboat, to be his wife, and to live with him in Buenos Aires, where he had a home waiting for her. How well she remembered the first time she had seen him. He was lodging in a house on the main road where she used to visit. It seemed a few weeks ago. He was standing at the gate. His peaked cap pushed back on his head, and his hair tumbled forward over a face of bronze. Then they had come to know each other. He used to meet her outside the stores every evening and see her home. He took her to see the Bohemian girl, and she felt elated as she sat in an unaccustomed part of the theatre with him. He was awfully fond of music, and sang a little. People knew that they were courting, and when he sang about the lass that loves a sailor, she always felt pleasantly confused. He used to call her Poppins out of fun. First of all, it had been an excitement for her to have a fellow, and then she had begun to like him. He had tales of distant countries. He had started as a deck-boy at a pound a month on a ship of the Allen Line, going out to Canada. He told her the names of the ships he had been on, and the names of the different services. He had sailed through the Straits of Magellan, and he told her stories of the terrible Patagonians. He had fallen on his feet in Buenos Aires, he said, and had come over to the Old Country just for a holiday. Of course, her father had found out the affair, and had forbidden her to have anything to say to him. I know these sailor chaps, he said. One day he had quarreled with Frank, and after that she had to meet her lover secretly. The evening deepened in the avenue. The white of two letters in her lap grew indistinct. One was to Harry, the other was to her father. Ernest had been her favorite, but she liked Harry, too. Her father was becoming old lately, she noticed. He would miss her. Sometimes he could be very nice. Not long before, when she had been laid up for a day, he had read her out a ghost story and made toast for her at the fire. Another day, when their mother was alive, they had all gone for a picnic to the hill of Houth. She remembered her father putting on her mother's bonnet to make the children laugh. Her time was running out, but she continued to sit by the window, leaning her head against the window curtain, inhaling the odor of dusty creton. Down, far in the avenue, she could hear a street organ playing. She knew the air, strange that it should come that very night, to remind her of the promise to her mother, her promise to keep the home together as long as she could. She remembered the last night of her mother's illness. She was again in the close dark room at the other side of the hall, and outside she heard a melancholy air of Italy. The organ player had been ordered to go away and given sixpence. She remembered her father strutting back into the sick room, saying, Damn, Italians, coming over here. As she mused, the pitiful vision of her mother's life laid its spell on the very quick of her being. That life of commonplace sacrifices, closing and final craziness. She trembled as she heard again her mother's voice saying constantly, with foolish insistence, She stood up in a sudden impulse of terror. Escape. She must escape. Frank would save her. He would give her life, perhaps love, too. But she wanted to live. Why should she be unhappy? She had a right to happiness. Frank would take her in his arms, fold her in his arms. He would save her. She stood among the swaying crowd in the station at the north wall. He held her hand, and she knew that he was speaking to her, saying something about the passage over and over again. The station was full of soldiers with brown baggages. Through the wide doors of the sheds she caught a glimpse of the black mass of the boat, lying in beside the quay wall, with illumined portholes. She answered nothing. She felt her cheek pale and cold and out of a maze of distress. She prayed to God to direct her, to show her what was her duty. The boat blew a long, mournful whistle into the mist. If she went, to-morrow she would be on the sea with Frank, steaming towards Buenos Aires. Their passage had been booked. Could she still draw back after all he had done for her? Her distress awoke a nausea in her body, and she kept moving her lips in silent fervent prayer. A bell clanged upon her heart. She felt him seize her hand. Come! All the seas of the world tumbled about her heart. He was drawing her into them. He would drown her. She gripped, with both hands, at the iron railing. Come! No! No! No! It was impossible. Her hands clutched the iron in frenzy. Amid the seas she sent a cry of anguish. Eveline! Evvy! He rushed beyond the barrier, and called to her to follow. He was shouted at to go on, but he still called to her. She set her white face to him. Passive, like a helpless animal, her eyes gave him no sign of love, or farewell, or recognition. End of Eveline by James Joyce Unbuilding a Building by Winthrop Packard This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, visit LibriVox.org. I tore down an old house recently, rent it part from part with my own hands in a crowbar, piling it in its constituents, bricks with bricks, timber on timber, boards with boards. Any of us who dare love the iconoclast would be one if we dared sufficiently. And in this work, I surely was an image breaker, for the old house was more than it seemed. This passer, it was a gray, bald, doddering old structure that seemed trying to shrink into the ground, untenanted, unsightly, and forlorn. I know, having analyzed it, that it was an image of New England village life of the two centuries just gone, a life even the images of which are passing, never to return. As I knock the old place down, it seemed to grow up more vivid as it passed from the roadside of the visible to the realm of the remembered. You may think you know a house by living in it, but you do not. You need to unbuild it to get more than a passing acquaintance. And to unbuild a building, you need to be strong of limb, heavy of hand, and sure of eye, lest the structure upon which you have fallen fall upon you. Do business models count, for you begin not at the bottom, but at the top or near it. Up in the attic among the cobwebs, stooping beneath the ancient rafters, dodging crumbly bunches of pennyroyal and hyssop, hung there by hands that have been dust these 50 years, you poison swing a 40 pound crowbar with a strong uplift against the roofboard. Near where one of the old time handmade, hammer pointed, wrought iron nails enters the oak timber. The board lifts an inch and snaps back into place. You hear a handful of time and weather-worn shingles jump and go sputtering down the roof. You hear a stealthy rustling and scurrying all about you. Numerous tenants who pay no rent have heard eviction notice, for the house in which no men live is the abode of many races. Another blow near another nail, and more shingles jump and flee. And this time a clammy hand slaps your face. It is only the wing of a bat, fluttering in dismay from his crevice. Blow after blow you drive upon this board from beneath, till all the nails are loose. Its shingle fetters outside snap and with a surge it rises to fog raiding down the roof and land with a crash on the grass by the old doorstone. The morning sun shines in at the opening, setting golden moats dancing and caressing rafters that have not felt its touch for 150 years. And you feel a little sob of sorrow swell in your heart, for the old house is dead beyond hope of resurrection. With your crowbar you have knocked it in the head. Other boards follow more easily, for now you may use a rafter for the fulcrum of your iron lever and pry where the long nails grip the oak too tenaciously. And it is not long before you have the roof unborded. And here you may have a surprise and be taught a lesson in wariness, which you will need if you would survive your unbuilding. The bare rafters solid oak, six inches square, uned from the tree as ads marks prove, are halved together at the top and pinned with an oak pin. At the lower end where they stand upon the plates they are not fastened, but rest simply on a v-shaped cut. And when the last board is off they tumble over like a row of nine pins. And you may be bowled out with them if you are not clever enough to foresee this. As with the roof boards sew with the floors and walls. Blows with the great bar or its patient use as a lever separate part from part, board from joist and joist from timber and do the work. And you learn much of the wisdom and foolishness of the old time builder as you go. Here he dovetailed and pinned the framework so firmly and cleverly that nothing but human patience and ingenuity could ever get it apart. There he cut under the ends of splendid strong floor joists and dropped them into shallow mortises so that but an inch or two of the wood really took the strain and the joist seemed likely to split and drop out of its own weight. You see the work of the man who knew his business and used only necessary nails and those in the right places. The work of that other who was five times as good a carpenter because he used five times as many nails. You learn too how the old house grew from a very humble beginning to an eleven room structure that covered a surprising amount of ground as one generation after another passed and one owner succeeded another. In this the council of the local historian helps you much for he comes daily and sits by you as you work and daily tells you the story of the old place usually beginning in the middle and working both ways for the unbuilding of a building as a great promoter of sociability. Townsmen whom you feel that you hardly know beyond a rather stiff bowing acquaintance hold up their horses and hail you jovially even getting out to chat a while or lend a hand each having opinions according to his lights. Strickland whose prosperity lies in swine sees but one use for the old timbers. My he says what a hogpen this would make. Downs is divided in his mind between hen houses and green houses and thinks there will be enough lumber and sashes for both. Lind suspects that you are going to establish gypsy camps wholesale while Estie carpenter and builder and wise in the working of wood knows that you are lucky if the remains are good enough for firewood. Both of these material aspects cares the historian however as he skips gaily from one past generation to another waving his phantoms off the stage of memory with a sweep of his cane and poking others on to make their bow to the man with the crossbar who thus piecing the narrative out with his own detective work in wood rebuilds the story. It was but a little house which began with two rooms on the ground floor in two attic chambers built for Stoddard who married the daughter of the pioneer landowner of the vicinity and it nestled up within a stone's throw of the big house sharing its prosperity and its history. No doubt the Stoddards were present at the funeral in the big house. Stern old parson Dunbar stood above the deceased in the presence of the assembled relatives and said with puritanical severity, my friends there lies the body but the soul is in hell. The dead man had failed to attend the parson sermons at the old first congregational church nearby. A church that with successive pastors has slipped from the orthodoxy of parson Dunbar to the most modern type of present-day unitarianism. A late-dweller in the old house lives in local tradition as publishing on the bulletin board in the church vestibule his attention of marriage with a fair lady of the parish as was the custom of the day. Another fair lady entering the church on Sunday morning pointed dramatically at the notice saying to the sexton, take that notice down and don't you dare put it up again till I give the word. The sexton seeming to know who was in charge of things took it down and it was not again posted for two years. The marriage then took place. A few years later the wife died and after a brief period of mourning another notice was posted announcing the marriage of the widower who had forbidden the bands of his first marriage. The second marriage took place without interference and they lived happily ever after leaving posterity in doubt whether the incident in the church vestibule was the climax and a battle royal between the two ladies for the hand of the man who dwelt in the old house whether the man himself had loved not wisely but too many. Another dweller in the old house was a locally celebrated singer who for years led the choir and the music in the old church having one son whom a wealthy bostonian educated abroad becoming said the historian sageley a great tenor singer but very little of a man. These were days of growing importance for the old house. Rooms were added to the ground floor back by the simple expedient of tacking long spruce rafters to the roof making a second roof over the old one leaving the old roof with boards and shingles still on it. Thus there grew a roof above a roof a shapeless void of a dark attic and below the two rooms. The use of the spruce rafters and hemlock boarding marks a period in building little more than a half century gone. About this time the house acquired a joint owner for a local lawyer of considerable importance joined his fortunes and his house to it bringing both with him. This section two more rooms and an attic was moved in from another part of the town and attached very gingerly by one corner to one corner. It was as if the lawyer had had his doubts as to how the two houses might like each other and had arranged things so that the new bond might be broken with as small a fracture as possible. This new part may well have been a hundred years old at the time for whereas the original house was bordered with oak on oak this was bordered with splendid clear pine on oak marking the transition from the pioneer days when all the timber for a house was obtained from the neighboring wood. Time when the splendid pumpkin pines of the main forests were the commonest and cheapest sources of lumber to our own when even poor sprues and shaky hemlock are scarce and costly. In the same way you note in these three stages of building three types of nails first is the crude nail hammered out by the local blacksmith varying in size and shape but always with a head formed by splitting the nail at the top and tending the parts to the right and left. These parts are sometimes quite long and clinch back into the board like the top of a capital T. Then came a better nail of wrought iron clumsy but effective then sole use a generation ago that modern abomination the wire nail appears only in repairs. Thus the old house rose from four rooms to eight with several attics and the singer and lawyers pass off the scene to be followed by a baptist deacon who later seceded and became a millerite holding meetings of great fervor in the front room where one wall used to be covered with figures which proved beyond the end of the world was at hand and where later he and his fellow believers appeared in their ascension robes. He too added a wing to the old house three rooms and another attic and when I laid bare the timbers of this the historian rose holding both hands in his cane toward heaven and oriented fluently. There he said that's Wheeler I knew it was for the old deeds couldn't be read in any other way they told me it was built on by the millerite but I knew better this was moved up from the Wheeler farm and it was a hundred years old and more when it came up 60 years ago I knew it look at those old cap posts I dodged the cane as it waved and took another look for it was worthwhile. Here were the corner posts only seven feet high but 10 inches square at the bottom solid oak swelling to 14 inches at the top with double tenants on which sat the great square oak plates dovetailed and pinned together and pinned again to the cap 150 years old and more was this addition which the millerite had moved up from the Wheeler farm and built on for his boot shop yet these great oak cap posts marked a period far more remote. There were second hand when they went into the Wheeler building for there were in them the marks of mortising that had no reference to the present structure. Some building old a century and a half ago had been torn down and its timbers used for that part that had been wheelers. Thus the old house grew again as it fell and the old-time owners and inhabitants stepped forth into life once more yet I found traces of other tenants that paid neither rent nor taxes yet occupied apartments that to them were comodious and comfortable in the attic where the bats but not they alone snuggled up against the chimney in the southern angle right under the ridge pole was a whole colony of squash bugs which had wintered safely there and were only waiting for the farmer's squash vines to become properly succulent. A blue bottle fly slipped out of a crevice and buzzed in the sun by the attic window under every ridge board and corner board almost under every shingle where the cocoons and chrysalids of insects thousands of silent lives waiting but the touch of the summer sun to make them vocal. On the ground floor within walls were the apartments of the rats their empty larders choked with corn cobs showing where once had been feasting their bed chambers curiously upholstered with rags laboriously dragged in to senseless confusion. The field mice had the floor above here and there on the plates between joists and over every window and door were their nests carefully made of wool chewed from old garments and made fine soft and cozy their larders were full of cherry stones literally bushels on bushels of them each with a little round hole not in it and the kernel extracted as the toil of the human inhabitants year after year had left its mark on the floors of the house worn thin everywhere in places worn through with the passing and repassing of busy feet so had the generations of field mice left behind them mute witnesses of patient enormous labor from the two cherry trees and the neighboring yard how many miles had the shy little people traveled unseen of men with one cherry at a time to lay in this enormous supply. Within the chimneys were the wooden nests of chimney swifts glued firmly to the bricks under the cornice was the paper home of a community of yellow hornets and under the floor where was no cellar right next to the base of the warm chimney were apartments that had been occupied by generations of skunks each space between floor joists and timber was a room and one was a huge nest of dried grass much like that which red squirrels build of cedar bark another space had been the larder for it was full of dry bones and feathers others were for other uses all showing plainly the careful housekeeping of the family in the basement long and carefully as the work of destruction went on for the pot of gold beneath the floor or the secret horde which fancy assigns to all old houses but not even a stray penny turned up yet i got several souvenirs one of these is a nail in my foot whereby i shall remember my iconoclassom for some time another is a curiously wrought wooden scoop a sort of butterworker the historian tells me carved seemingly with a jackknife from a pine plank a third is a quaint lumbering heavy hand wrought fire shovel which appeared somewhat curiously reentering a room which i had cleaned of everything movable i found it standing against the door jam fire shovels have no legs and i suppose it was brought in however none of the neighbors has confessed and i'm content to think it belonged in the old house and was brought back perhaps by the baptist deacon who backslided and became a millerite it has been rusted by water and burned by fire and i don't believe even Sherlock Holmes could make a wiser deduction as i write a section of one of the old wheeler cap posts is crumbling to ashes in my fireplace it was of solid oak of a texture as firm and grainless almost as soapstone no water had touched this wood i know for 150 years perhaps almost a hundred added to that for hours it retained its shape glowing like a huge block of anthracite and sending forth a heat as great but infinitely more kindly and comforting toward the last the flames which came from it lost their yellow opaqueness and slipped fluttering upward in a transparent opalescence which i never before saw in fire it was as if the soul of the old house made out of all that was beautiful and kindly in the hopes and longings of those who built it and lived in it stood revealed a monument and its shining beauty before it passed on end of unbuilding a building by Winthrop Packard read by steve madden the making of a new yorker by ohenry 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 bill borst the making of a new yorker by ohenry besides many other things raggles was a poet he was called a tramp but that was only an elliptical way of saying that he was a philosopher an artist a traveler a naturalist and a discoverer but most of all he was a poet in all his life he never wrote a line of verse he lived his poetry his odyssey would have been a limerick had it been written but to linger with the primary proposition raggles was a poet raggles's specialty had he been driven to ink and paper would have been sonnets to the cities he studied cities as women study their reflections in mirrors as children study the glue and sawdust of a dislocated dowel as the men who write about wild animals study the cages in the zoo a city to raggles was not merely a pile of bricks and mortar peopled by a certain number of inhabitants it was a thing with a soul characteristic and distinct an individual conglomeration of life with its own peculiar essence flavor and feeling 2000 miles to the north and south east and west raggles wandered in poetic fervor taking the cities to his breast he footered it on dusty roads or sped magnificently in freight cars counting time is of no account and when he had found the heart of a city and listened to its secret confession he strayed on restless to another fickle raggles but perhaps he had not met the civic corporation that could engage and hold his critical fancy through the ancient poets we have learned that the cities are feminine so they were to poet raggles and his mind carried a concrete and clear conception of the figure that symbolized and typified each one that he had wooed chicago seemed to swoop down upon him with a breezy suggestion of mrs. parkington plumes and patchily and to disturb his rest with a soaring and beautiful song of future promise but raggles would awake to a sense of shivering cold and a haunting impression of ideals lost in a depressing aura of potato salad and fish thus chicago effected him perhaps there is a vagueness and inaccuracy in the description but that is raggles' fault he should have recorded his sensations in magazine poems pittsburgh impressed him as the play of othello performed in the russian language in a railroad station by dockstotters minstrels a royal and generous lady this pittsburgh though homely hearty with flushed face washing the dishes in a silk dress and white kid slippers and bidding raggles sit before the roaring fireplace and drink champagne with his pig's feet and fried potatoes new orleans had simply gazed down upon him from a balcony he could see her pensive starry eyes and catch the flutter of her fan and that was all only once he came face to face with her it was at dawn when she was flushing the red bricks of the banquet with a pail of water she laughed and hummed a chansonette and filled raggles' shoes with ice cold water alone boston construed herself to the poetic raggles in an erratic and singular way it seemed to him that he had drunk cold tea and that the city was a white cold cloth that had been bound tightly around his brow to spur him to some unknown but tremendous mental effort and after all he came to shovel snow for a livelihood and the cloth becoming wet tightened its knots and could not be removed indefinite and unintelligible ideas you will say but your disapprobation should be tempered with gratitude for these are poets fancies and suppose you had come upon them in verse one day raggles came and laid siege to the heart of the great city of manhattan she was the greatest of all and he wanted to learn her note in the scale to taste and appraise and classify and solve and label her and arrange her with the other cities that had given him up the secret of their individuality and here we cease to be raggles' translator and become his chronicler raggles landed from a ferry boat one morning and walked into the core of the town with the blaze air of a cosmopolite he was dressed with care to play the role of an unidentified man no country race class click union party clan or bowling association could have claimed him his clothing which had been donated to him piecemeal by citizens of different height but same number of inches around the heart was not yet as uncomfortable to his figure as those specimens of raiment self-measured that are railroaded to you by transcontinental tailors with a suitcase suspenders silk handkerchief and pearl studs as a bonus without money as a poet should be but with the ardour of an astronomer discovering a new star in the chorus of the milky way or a man who has seen ink suddenly flow from his fountain pen raggles wandered into the great city late in the afternoon he drew out of the roar and commotion with a look of dumb terror on his countenance he was defeated puzzled discomforted frightened other cities had been to him as long primer to read as country maidens quickly to fathom as send price of subscription with answer rebuses to solve as oyster cocktails to swallow but here was one as cold glittering serene impossible as a four carat diamond in a window to a lover outside fingering damply in his pocket his ribbon counter salary the greetings of the other cities he had known their homespun kindliness their human gamut of rough charity friendly curses garrulous curiosity and easily estimated credulity or indifference this city of Manhattan gave him no clue it was walled against him like a river of adamant it flowed past him in the streets never an eye was turned upon him no voice spoke to him his heart yearned for the clap of pittsburgh's sooty hand on his shoulder for chicago's menacing but social yop in his ear for the pale and elemosinary stare through the bostonian eyeglass even for the precipitate but unmalicious boot toe of louisville or st louis on broadway raggles successful suitor of many cities stood bashful like any country swain for the first time he experienced the poignant humiliation of being ignored and when he tried to reduce this brilliant swiftly changing ice cold city to a formula he failed utterly poet though he was it offered him no color similes no points of comparison no flaw in its polished facets no handle by which he could hold it up and view its shape and structure as he familiarly and often contemptuously had done with other towns the houses were interminable ramparts loophold for defense the people were bright but bloodless specters passing in sinister and selfish array the thing that weighed heaviest on raggles's soul and clogged his poet's fancy was the spirit of absolute egotism that seemed to saturate the people as toys are saturated with paint each one that he considered appeared a monster of abominable and insolent conceit humanity was gone from them they were toddling idols of stone and varnish worshiping themselves and greedy for though oblivious of worship from their fellow graven images frozen cruel implacable impervious cut to an identical pattern they hurried on their ways like statues brought by some miracles to motion while soul and feeling lay unaroused in the reluctant marble gradually raggles became conscious of certain types one was an elderly gentleman with a snow white short beard pink unwrinkled face and stony sharp blue eyes a tired in the fashion of a gilded youth who seemed to personify the city's wealth ripeness and frigid unconcern another type was a woman tall beautiful clear as a steel engraving goddess like calm clothed like the princesses of old with eyes as coldly blue as the reflection of sunlight on a glacier and another was a byproduct of this town of marionettes a broad swaggering grim threateningly sedate fellow with a jowl as large as a harvested wheat field the complexion of a baptized infant and the knuckles of a prize fighter this type leaned against cigar signs and viewed the world with frapped contumely a poet is a sensitive creature and raggles soon shriveled in the bleak embrace of the undecipherable the chill sphinx like ironical illegible unnatural ruthless expression of the city left him downcast and bewildered had it no heart better the wood pile the scolding of vinegar faced housewives at back doors the kindly spleen of bartenders behind provincial free lunch counters the amiable truculence of rural constables the kicks arrests and happy go lucky chances of the other vulgar loud crude cities than this freezing heartlessness raggles summoned his courage and sought alms from the populace unheeding regardless they passed on without the wink of an eyelash to testify that they were conscious of his existence and then he said to himself that this fair but pitiless city of Manhattan was without a soul that its inhabitants were mannequins moved by wires and springs and that he was alone in a great wilderness raggle started to cross the street there was a blast a roar a hissing and a crash as something struck him and hurled him over and over six yards from where he had been as he was coming down like the stick of a rocket the earth and all the cities thereof turned to a fractured dream raggles opened his eyes first and odor made itself known to him an odor of the earliest spring flowers of paradise and then a hand soft as a falling petal touched his brow bending over him was the woman clothed like the princess of old with blue eyes now soft and humid with human sympathy under his head on the pavement were silks and furs with raggles his hat in his hand and with his face pinker than ever from a vehement burst of oratory against reckless driving stood the elderly gentleman who personified the city's wealth and ripeness from a nearby cafe hurried the by product with the vast jowl and baby complexion bearing a glass full of a crimson fluid that suggested delightful possibilities drink this sport said the by product holding the glass to raggles his lips hundreds of people huddled around in a moment their faces wearing the deepest concern two flattering and gorgeous policemen got into the circle and pressed back the overplus of samaritans an old lady in a black shawl spoke loudly of camphor a news boy slipped one of his papers beneath raggles his elbow where it lay on the muddy pavement a brisk young man with a notebook was asking for names a bell clanged importantly and the ambulance cleaned a lane through the crowd a cool surgeon slipped into the midst of affairs how do you feel old man asked the surgeon stooping easily to his task the princess of silks and satins wiped a red dropper to from raggles's brow with a fragrant cobweb me said raggles with a surrphic smile i feel fine he had found the heart of his new city in three days they let him leave his cot for the convalescent ward in the hospital he had been in there an hour when the attendance heard sounds of conflict upon investigation they found that raggles had assaulted and damaged a brother convalescent a glowering transient whom a freight train collision had sent in to be patched up what's this all about inquire the head nurse he was running down me town said raggles what town asked the nurse new york said raggles end of the making of a new yorker recording by bill borst experience of the nip williams's with membranous group by mark twain this is a liver vox recording all liver vox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit liver vox dot org the experience of the mc williams's with membranous group by mark twain well to go back to where i was before i digressed to explain to you how that frightful and incurable disease membranous group was ravaging the town and driving all mothers mad with terror i called mrs mc williams attention to little panellope and said darling i wouldn't let that child be chewing the that pine stick if i were you precious where is the harm in it said she but at the same time preparing to take away the stick for women cannot receive even the most palpably judicious suggestion without arguing it that is married women i replied love it is notorious that pine is the least nutritious wood that a child can eat my wife's hand paused in the act of taking the stick and returned itself to she bridled perceptibly and said hubby you know better than that you know you do doctors all say that the turpentine and pine wood is good for week back in the kidneys ah i was under a misapprehension i did not know that the child's kidneys and spine were affected and that the family physician had recommended who said the child's spine and kidneys were affected my love you intimated it the idea i never intimated anything of the kind why my dear it hasn't been two minutes since you said bother what i said i don't care what i did say there isn't any harm in the child chewing a bit of pine stick if she wants to and you know it perfectly well and she shall chew it too so there now say no more my dear i now see the force of your reasoning and i will go and order two or three cords of the best pine wood today no child of mine shall want while i oh please go along to your office and let me have some peace a body can never make the simplest remark but you must take it up and go to arguing and arguing and arguing till you don't know what you're talking about and you never do very well it shall be as you say but there is a want of logic in your last remark which however she was gone with a flourish before i could finish and had taken the child with her that night at dinner she confronted me with a face white as a sheet oh mortimer there's another little georgey gordon is taken memberless croup memberless croup is there any hope for him none in the wide world oh what is to come of us by and by a nurse brought in our penalty to say good night and offer the customary prayer at the mother's knee in the midst of now i lay me down to sleep she give a slight cough my wife fell back like one stricken with death but the next moment she was up and brimming with the activities which terror inspires she commanded that the child's crib be removed from the nursery to our bedroom and then she went along to see the order executed she took me with her of course we got matters arranged with speed a cot bed was put up in my wife's dressing room for the nurse but now mrs mcbilliam said we were too far away from the other baby and what if he were to have symptoms in the night and she blanched again poor thing we then restored the crib in the nurse to the nursery and put up a bed for ourselves in a room adjoining presently however mrs mcbilliam said suppose the baby should catch it from panellope this thought struck a new panic to her heart and the tribe of us could not get the crib out of the nursery again fast enough to satisfy my wife though she assisted in her own person and while i pulled the crib to pieces in her frantic hurry we moved downstairs but there was no place there to stow the nurse and mrs mcbilliam said the nurse's experience would be an inestimable help so we returned bag and baggage to our own bedroom once more and felt a great gladness like storm buffeted birds that have found their nest again mrs mcbilliam sped to the nursery to see how things were going on there she was back in a moment with a new dread she said what can make baby sleep so i said why am i darling baby always sleeps like a graven image i know i know but there's something peculiar about his sleep now he seems to to he seems to breathe so regularly oh this is dreadful but my dear he always breathes regularly oh i know it but there is something frightful about it now his nurse is too young and inexperienced maria shall stay there with her and be on hand if anything happens that is a good idea but who will help you you can help me all i want i wouldn't allow anybody to do it but myself anyhow at such a time as this i said i would feel mean to lie a bed and sleep and leave her to watch and toil over our little patient all the weary night but she reconciled me to it so old maria departed and took up her ancient quarters in the nursery panellope coughed twice in her sleep oh why don't that doctor come mortimer this room is too warm this room is certainly too warm turn off the register quick i shut it off glancing at the thermometer at the same time and wondering to myself if 70 was too warm for a sick child the coachman arrived from downtown now with the news that our physician was ill and confined to his bed mrs mcwilliams turned a dead eye upon me and said in a dead voice there is a providence in it it is foreordained he never was sick before never we have not been living as we ought to live mortimer time and time again i have told you so now you see the result our child will never get well be thankful if you can forgive yourself i never can forgive myself i said without intent to hurt but with heedless choice of words that i could not see that we had been living such an abandoned life mortimer do you want to bring the judgment upon baby two then she began to cry but suddenly exclaimed the doctor must have sent medicines i said certainly they are here i was only waiting for you to give me a chance well do give them to me don't you know that every moment is precious now but what was the use in sending medicines when he knows that the disease is incurable i said that while there was life there was hope hope mortimer you know no more what you're talking about than the child unborn if you would as i live the directions say give one teaspoon full once an hour once an hour as if we had a whole year before us to save the child in mortimer please hurry give the poor perishing thing a tablespoon full and try to be quick why my dear a tablespoon full might don't drive me frantic there there there my precious my own it's nasty bitter stuff but it's good for nally good for mother's precious darling and it will make her well there there there put the little head on mama's breast and go to sleep and pretty soon oh i know she can't live till morning mortimer a tablespoon full every half hour will oh the child needs bella donna too i know she does and akonite get the mortimer now do let me have my way you know nothing about these things we now went to bed placing the crib close to my wife's pillow all this turmoil had worn upon me and within two minutes i was something more than half asleep mrs. mcwilliams roused me darling is that register turned on no i thought as much please turn it on at once this room is cold i turned it on and presently fell asleep again i was aroused once dairy would you mind moving the crib to your side of the bed is nearer the register i moved it but had a collision with the rug and woke up the child i dozed off once more while my wife quieted the sufferer but in a little while these words came murmuring remotely through the fog of my drowsiness mortimer if we only had some goose grease will you ring i climbed dreamily out and stepped on a cat which responded with a protest and would have gotten a convincing kick for it if a chair had not got it instead now mortimer why do you want to turn up the gas and wake up the child again because i want to see how much i am hurt caroline well look at the chair too i have no doubt it is ruined poor cat suppose you had now i am not going to suppose anything about the cat it never would have occurred if maria had been allowed to remain here and attend to these duties which are in her line and not in mine now mortimer i should think you would be ashamed to make a remark like that it is a pity if you cannot do the few little things i ask of you at such an awful time as this when our child there there i will do anything you want but i can't raise anybody with this bell they're all gone to bed where is the goose grease on the mantelpiece in the nursery if you'll step there and speak to maria i fetched the goose grease and went to sleep again once more i was called mortimer i so hate to disturb you but the room is still too cold for me to try to apply this stuff would you mind lighting the fire it is all ready to touch a match too i dragged myself out and lit the fire and then sat down disconsolate mortimer don't sit there and catch your death of cold come to bed as i was stepping in she said but wait a moment please give the child some more of the medicine which i did it was a medicine which made a child more or less lively so my wife made use of its waking interval to strip it and grease it all over with the goose oil i was soon asleep once more but once more i had to get up mortimer i feel a draft i feel it distinctly there is nothing so bad for this disease as a draft please move the crib in front of the fire i did and collided with the rug again which i threw in the fire mrs mcwilliam sprang out of bed and rescued it and we had some words i had another trifling interval of sleep and then got up by request and constructed a flax seed poultice this was placed upon the child's breast and left there to do its healing work a wood fire is not a permanent thing i got up every 20 minutes and renewed hours and this gave mrs mcwilliams the opportunity to shorten the times of giving the medicines by 10 minutes which was a great satisfaction to her now and then between times i reorganized the flax seed poultices and applied synapsisms and other sorts of blisters where unoccupied places could be found upon the child well toward morning the wood gave out and my wife wanted me to go down cellar and get some more i said my dear it is a laborious job and the child must be nearly warm enough with her extra clothing now might we put on another layer of poultices and i did not finish because i was interrupted i lugged wood up from below for some little time and then turned in and felt a snoring as only a man can whose strength is all gone and whose soul is worn out just that broad daylight i felt a grip on my shoulder that brought me to my senses suddenly my wife was glaring down upon me and gasping as soon as she could command her tongue she said it is all over all over the child's perspiring what shall we do mercy how you terrify me i don't know what we ought to do maybe if we scraped her and put her in the draft again oh idiot there is not a moment to lose go for the doctor go yourself tell him he must come dead or alive i dragged that poor sick man from his bed and brought him he looked at the child and said she was not dying this was joy unspeakable to me but it made my wife as mad as if he had offered her a personal affront then he said the child's cough was only caused by some trifling irritation or other in the throat at this i thought my wife had a mind to show him the door now the doctor said he would make the child cough harder and dislodge the trouble so he gave her something that sent her into a spasm of coughing and presently up came a little wood splinter or so this child has no membranous group said he she's been chewing a bit of pine shingle or something of the kind and got some slivers in her throat that won't do her any hurt no said i i can well believe that indeed the turpentine that is in them is very good for certain sorts of diseases that are peculiar to children my wife will tell you so but she did not she turned away and disdained and left the room and since that time there is one episode in our life which we never refer to hence the tide of our days flows by in deep and untroubled serenity very few married men have such an experience as mcwilliams and so the author of this book thought that maybe the novelty of it would give a passing interest to the reader end of experience of the mcwilliams's with membranous group by mark twain read by richard wallace liberty missouri february 10th 2010 are really is unfortunate young men by mark twain this is a libra vox recording all libra vox recordings are in the public domain for further information or to volunteer please visit libra vox dot org this reading by charles culbertson of stanton virginia aurelia's unfortunate young man by mark twain the facts in the following case came to me by letter from a young lady who lives in the beautiful city of san jose she is perfectly unknown to me and simply signs herself for really a maria which may possibly be a fictitious name but no matter the poor girl is almost heartbroken by the misfortune she is undergone and so confused by the conflicting councils of misguided friends and insidious enemies that she does not know what course to pursue in order to extricate herself from the web of difficulties in which she seems almost hopelessly involved in this dilemma she turns to me for help and supplicates for my guidance and instruction with a moving eloquence that would touch the heart of a statue here her sad story she says that when she was 16 years old she met and loved with all the devotion of a passionate nature a young man from new jersey named williamson breckenridge carothers who was some six years her senior they were engaged with the free consent of their friends and relatives and for a time it seemed as if their career was destined to be characterized by an immunity from sorrow beyond the usual lot of humanity but at last the tide of fortune turned young carothers became infected with smallpox of the most virulent type and when he recovered from his illness his face was pitted like a waffle mold and his comeliness gone forever aurelia thought to break off the engagement at first but pity for her unfortunate lover caused her to postpone the marriage day for a season and give him another trial the very day before the wedding was to have taken place breckenridge while absorbed in watching the flight of a balloon walked into a well and fractured one of his legs and it had to be taken off above the knee again aurelia was moved to break the engagement but again love triumphed and she set the day forward and gave him another chance to reform and again misfortune overtook the unhappy youth he lost one arm by the premature discharge of a fourth of july canon and within three months he got the other pulled out by a carding machine aurelia's heart was almost crushed by these latter acclamities she could not but be deeply grieved to see her lover passing from her by piecemeal feeling as she did that he could not last forever under this disastrous process of reduction yet knowing of no way to stop his dreadful career and in her tearful despair she almost regretted like brokers who hold on and lose that she had not taken him at first before he had suffered such an alarming depreciation still her brave soul bore her up and she resolved to bear with her friends a natural disposition yet a little longer again the wedding day approached and again disappointment overshadowed it carothers fell ill with the ericipolis and lost the use of one of his eyes entirely the friends and relatives of the bride considering that she had already put up with more than could reasonably be expected of her now came forward and insisted that the match should be broken off but after wavering a while aurelia with a generous spirit which did her credit said she had reflected calmly upon the matter and could not discover that bracken ridge was to blame so she extended the time once more and he broke his other leg it was a sad day for the poor girl when she saw the surgeons reverently bearing away the sack whose uses she had learned by previous experience and our heart told her the bitter truth that some more of her lover was gone she felt that the field of her affections was growing more and more circumscribed every day but once more she frowned down her relatives and renewed her betrothal shortly before the time set for the nuptials another disaster occurred there was but one man scalped by the owens river indians last year that man was williamson brecken ridge carothers of new jersey he was hurrying home with happiness in his heart when he lost his hair forever and in that hour of bitterness he almost cursed the mistaken mercy that had spared his head at last aurelia is in serious perplexity as to what she ought to do she still loves her brecken ridge she writes with truly womanly feeling she still loves what is left of him but her parents are bitterly opposed to the match because he has no property and is disabled from working and she has not sufficient means to support both comfortably now what should she do she asked with painful and anxious solicitude it is a delicate question it is one which involves the lifelong happiness of a woman and that of nearly two-thirds of a man and i feel that it would be assuming too greater responsibility to do more than make a mere suggestion in the case how would it do to build to him if a really i can afford the expense let her furnish her mutilated lover with wooden arms and wooden legs and a glass eye and a wig and give him another show give him 90 days without grace and if he does not break his neck in the meantime marry him and take the chances it does not seem to me that there is much risk anyway aurelia because if he sticks to his singular propensity for damaging himself every time he sees a good opportunity his next experiment is bound to finish him and then you are safe married or single if married the wooden legs and such other valuables as he may possess revert to the widow and you see you sustained no actual loss save the cherished fragment of a noble but most unfortunate husband who honestly strove to do right but whose extraordinary instincts were against him try it maria i have thought the matter over carefully and well and it is the only chance i see for you it would have been a happy conceit on the part of carothers if he had started with his neck and broken that first but since he has seen fit to choose a different policy and string himself out as long as possible i do not think we ought to upgrade him for it if he has enjoyed it we must do the best we can under the circumstances and try not to feel exasperated at him end of iralia's unfortunate young man by mark twain the other side of the hedge by em forster this is a liver vox recording all liver vox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit liver vox.org read by amy wild my pedometer told me that i was 25 and though it is a shocking thing to stop walking i was so tired that i sat down on a milestone to rest people outstripped me jeering as they did so but i was too apathetic to feel resentful and even when miss Eliza dimbleby the great educationist swept past exhorting me to persevere i only smiled and raised my hand at first i thought i was going to be like my brother whom i had had to leave by the roadside a year or two around the corner he had wasted his breath on singing and his strength on helping others but i had traveled more wisely and now it was only the monotony of the highway that oppressed me dust underfoot and brown crackling hedges on either side ever since i could remember and i had already dropped several things indeed the road behind was strewn with things we had all dropped and the white dust was settling down on them so that already they looked no better than stones my muscles were so weary that i could not even bear the weight of those things i still carried i slid off the milestone into the road and lay there prostrate with my face to the great parched hedge praying that i might give up a little puff of air revived me it seemed to come from the hedge and when i opened my eyes there was a glint of light through the tangle of bows and dead leaves the hedge could not be as thick as usual in my weak morbid state i longed to force my way in and see what was on the other side no one was inside or i should not have dared to try for we of the road do not admit in conversation that there is another side at all i yielded to the temptation saying to myself that i would come back in a minute the thorns scratched my face and i had to use my arms as a shield depending on my feet alone to push me forward halfway through i would have gone back for in the passage all the things i was carrying were scraped off me and my clothes were torn but i was so wedged that return was impossible and i had to wriggle blindly forward expecting every moment that my strength would fail me and that i should perish in the undergrowth suddenly cold water closed around my head and i seemed sinking down forever i had fallen out of the hedge into a deep pool i rose to the surface at last crying for help and i heard someone on the opposite bank laugh and say another and then i was twitched out and laid panting on the dry ground even when the water was out of my eyes i was still dazed for i had never been in so large a space nor seen such grass and sunshine the blue sky was no longer a strip and beneath it the earth had risen grandly into hills clean bare buttresses with beach trees in their folds and meadows and clear pools of their feet but the hills were not high and there was in the landscape a sense of human occupation so that one might have called it a park or a garden if the words did not imply a certain triviality and constraint as soon as i had got my breath i turned to my rescuer and said where does this place lead to nowhere thank the lord said he and laughed he was a man of fifty or sixty just the kind of age we mistrust on the road but there was no anxiety in his manner and his voice was that of a boy of eighteen but it must lead somewhere i cried too much surprised by his answer to thank him for saving my life he wants to know where it leads he shouted to some men on the hillside and they laughed back and waved their caps i noticed then that the pool into which i had fallen was really a moat which bent round to the left and to the right and that the hedge followed it continually the hedge was green on this side its roots showed through the clear water and fish swam about in them and it was read over with dog roads as in travellers joy but it was a barrier and at a moment i lost all pleasure in the grass the sky the trees the happy men and women and realized that the place was but a prison for all its beauty and extent we moved away from the boundary and then followed a path almost parallel to it across the meadows i found it difficult walking for i was always trying to out distance my companion and there was no advantage in doing this if the place led nowhere i had never kept step with anyone since i left my brother i am used in by stopping suddenly and saying disconsolately this is perfectly terrible one cannot advance one cannot progress now we have the road yes i know i was going to say we advance continually i know we are always learning expanding developing why even in my short life i've seen a great deal of advance the transvaal war the fiscal question christian science radium here for example i took out my pedometer but it still marked 25 not a degree more oh it stopped i meant to show you it should have registered all the time i was walking with you but it makes me only 25 many things don't work in here he said one day a man brought in a lee metford and that wouldn't work the laws of science are universal in their application it must be the water in the moat that is injured machinery normal conditions everything works science and the spirit of emulation those are the forces that have made us what we are i had to break off and acknowledge the pleasant greetings of people whom we passed some of them were singing some talking some engaged in gardening hay making or other rudimentary industries they all seemed happy and i might have been happy too if i could have forgotten that the place led nowhere i was startled by a young man who came sprinting across our path took a little fence in fine style and went tearing over a plowed field till he plunged into a lake across which he began to swim here was true energy and i exclaimed across country race where are the others there are no others my companion replied and later on when we passed some long grass from which came the voice of a girl singing exquisitely to herself he said again there are no others i was bewildered at the waste in production and murmured to myself what does it all mean he said it means nothing but itself and he repeated the words slowly as if i were a child i understand i said quietly but i do not agree every achievement is worthless unless it is a link in the chain of development and i must not trespass on your kindness any longer i must get back somehow to the road and have my pedometer mended first you must see the gates he replied for we have gates that we never use them i yielded politely and before long we reached the mode again at a point where it was spanned by a bridge over the bridge was a big gate as wide as ivory which was fitted into a gap in the boundary hedge the gate opened outwards and i exclaimed an amazement for from it ran a road just such a road as i had left dusty underfoot with brown crackling hedges on either side as far as the eye could reach that's my road i cried he shut the gate and said but not your part of the road it is through this gate that humanity went out countless ages ago when it was first seized with the desire to walk i denied this observing that the part of the road i myself had left was not more than two miles off but with the obstinacy of his years he repeated it is the same road this is the beginning and though it seems to run straight away from us it doubles so often that it is never far from our boundary and sometimes touches it he stooped down by the moat and traced on its moist margin an absurd figure like a maze as we walk back through the meadows i tried to convince him of his mistake the road sometimes doubles to be sure but that is part of our discipline who can doubt that its general tendency is onward to what goal we know not it may be to some mountain where we shall touch the sky it may be over precipices into the sea but that it goes forward who can doubt that it is the thought of that that makes us strive to excel each in his own way and gives us an impetus which is lacking with you now that man who passed us it's true that he ran well and jumped well and swam well but we have men who can run better and men who can jump better and who could swim better specialization has produced results which would surprise you similarly that girl here i interrupted myself to exclaim good gracious me i could have sworn that it was miss Eliza dimbleby over there with her feet in the fountain he believed that it was impossible i left her on the road and she is due to lecture this evening at hundbridge wells why her train leaves cannon street and of course my watch has stopped like everything else she is the last person to be here people are always astonished at meeting each other all kinds come through the hedge and come at all times may are drawing ahead in the race when they are lagging behind when they are left for dead i often stand near the boundary listening to the sounds of the road you know what they are and wonder if anyone will turn aside it is my great happiness to help someone out of the moat as i helped you for our country fills up slowly though it was meant for all mankind mankind have other aims i said gently for i thought him well-meaning and i must join them i bade him good evening for the sun was declining and i wish to be on the road by nightfall to my alarm he caught hold of me crying you are not to go yet i tried to shake him off for we had no interest in common and a civility was becoming irksome to me but for all my struggles a tiresome old man would not let go and as wrestling is not my specialty i was obliged to follow him it was true that i could have never found alone the place where i came in and i hoped that when i had seen the other sites about what she was worrying he would take me back to it but i was determined not to sleep in the country for i mistrusted it and the people too for all their friendliness hungry though i was i would not join them in their evening mills of milk and fruit and when they gave me flowers i flung them away as soon as i could do so unobserved already they were lying down for the nightlight cattle some out on the bear hillside others in groups under the beaches in the light of an orange sunset i hurried on with my unwelcome guide dead tired faint for one of food but murmuring indomitably give me life with its struggles and victories with its failures and hatreds with its deep moral meaning and its unknown goal at last we came to a place where the encircling moat was spanned by another bridge and where another gate interrupted the line of the boundary hedge it was different from the first gate for it was half transparent like horn and opened inwards but through it in the waning light i saw again just such a road as i had left monotonous dusty with brown crackling hedges on either side as far as the eye could reach i was strangely disquieted at the sight which seemed to deprive me of all self-control a man was passing us returning for the night to the hills with a sigh over his shoulder and a can of some liquid in his hand i forgot the destiny of our race i forgot the road that lay before my eyes and i sprang at him wrenched the can out of his hand and began to drink it was nothing stronger than beer but in my exhausted state it overcame me in a moment as in a dream i saw the old man shut the gate and i heard him say this is where your road ends and through this gate humanity all that is left of it will come into us though my senses were sinking into oblivion they seemed to expand ere they reached it they perceived the magic song of night and gales the odor of invisible hay and stars piercing the fading sky the man whose beer i had stolen lowered me down gently to sleep off its effects and as he did so i saw that he was my brother end of the other side of the hedge by em forester the mystery of sasa valley by arthur conan dole this is a libra vox recording all libra vox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit libra vox.org reading by greg margaret the mystery of sasa valley by arthur conan dole do i know why tom donahue was called lucky tom yes i do and that is more than one in ten of those who call him so can say i have knocked about a deal in my time and seen some strange sites but none stranger than the way in which tom gained that sober k and his fortune with it for i was with him at the time tell it oh certainly but it is a longest story and a very strange one so fill up your glass again and light another cigar while i try to reel it off yes a very strange one beats some fairy stories i have heard but it's true sir every word of it there are men alive at cape colony now who will remember it and confirm what i say many a time has the tail been told around the fire in boar's cabins from orange state to greekland yes and out in the bush and at the diamond fields too i'm roughish now sir but i was entered at the middle temple once and studied for the bar tom worst luck was one of my fellow students and a wildish time we had of it until at last our finances ran short and we were compelled to give up our so-called studies and look about for some part of the world where two young fellows with strong arms and sound constitutions might make their mark in those days the tide of immigration had scarcely begun to set in toward africa and so we thought our best chance would be down at cape colony well to make a long story short we set sail and were deposited in cape town with less than five pounds in our pockets and there we parted we each tried our hands at many things and had ups and downs but when at the end of three years chance led each of us up country and we met again we were i regret to say in almost as bad a plight as when we started well this was not much of a commencement and very disheartened we were so disheartened that tom spoke of going back to england and getting a clerkship before you see we didn't know that we had played out all our small cards and that the trumps were going to turn up no we thought our hands were bad all through it was a very lonely part of the country that we were in inhabited by a few scattered farms whose houses were stockaded and fenced in to defend them against the calf fears tom donahue and i had a little hut right out in the bush but we were known to possess nothing and to be handy with our revolvers so we had little to fear there we waited doing odd jobs and hoping that something would turn up well after we had been there about a month something did turn up upon a certain night something which was the making of both of us and it's about that night sir that i'm going to tell you i remember it well the wind was howling past our cabin and the rain threatened to burst in our rude window we had a great wood fire crackling and sputtering on the hearth by which i was sitting mending a whip while tom was lying in his bunk groaning disconsolidly at the chance which had led him to such a place cheer up tom cheer up said i no man ever knows what may be awaiting him ill luck ill luck jack he answered i always was an unlucky dog here have i been three years in this abominable country and i see lads fresh from england jingling the money in their pockets while i am as poor as when i landed uh jack if you want to keep your head above water old friend you must try your fortune away from me nonsense tom you're down in your luck tonight but hark here's someone coming outside dick warton by the tread he'll rouse you if any man can even as i spoke the door was flung open an honest dick warton with the water pouring from him stepped in his hearty red face looming through the haze like a harvest moon he shook himself and after greeting us sat down by the fire to warm himself where away dick on such a night as this said i you'll find the rheumatism a worse foe than the calf ears unless you keep more regular hours dick was looking unusually serious almost frightened one would say if one did not know the man had to go he replied had to go one of madison's cattle was seen straying down sasa valley and of course none of our blacks would go down that valley at night and if we had waited till morning the brute would have been in kafir land why wouldn't they go down sasa valley at night asked tom kafir's i suppose said i ghosts said dick we both laughed i suppose they didn't give such a matter of fact fellow as you a sight of their charms said tom from the bunk yes dick said seriously yes i saw what the niggers talk about and i promise you lads i don't want to ever see it again tom sat up in his bed nonsense dick you're joking man come tell us all about it the legend first and your own experience afterward pass him over the bottle jack well as to the legend began dick it seems that the niggers have had it handed down to them that sasa valley is haunted by a frightful fiend hunters and wanderers passing down the defile have seen its glowing eyes under the shadows of the cliff and the story goes that whoever has chance to encounter that baleful glare has had his afterlife blighted by the malignant power of this creature whether that be true or not continued dick ruefully i may have an opportunity of judging for myself go on dick go on cried tom let's hear about what you saw well i was groping down the valley looking for that cow of madison's and i had i suppose got halfway down where the black craggy cliff juts into the ravine on the right when i halted to have a pull at my flask i had my eye fixed at the time upon the projecting cliff i have mentioned and noticed nothing unusual about it i then put up my flask and took a step or two forward when in a moment they're burst apparently from the base of the rock about eight feet from the ground and a hundred yards from me a strange lurid glare flickering and oscillating gradually dying away and then reappearing again no no i've seen many a glow worm and firefly nothing of that sort there it was burning away and i suppose i gazed at it trembling in every limb for fully ten minutes then i took a step forward when instantly it vanished vanished like a candle blown out i stepped back again but it was some time before i could find the exact spot and position from which it was visible at last there it was the weird reddish light flickering away as before then i screwed up my carriage and made for the rock but the ground was so uneven that it was impossible to steer straight and though i walked along the whole base of the cliff i could see nothing then i made tracks for home and i can tell you boys that until you remarked it i never knew it was raining the whole way along but hello what's a matter with tom what indeed tom was now sitting with his legs over the side of the bunk and his whole face betraying excitement so intense as to be almost painful the fiend would have two eyes how many lights did you see dick speak out only one hurrah cried tom that's better whereupon he kicked the blankets into the middle of the room and began pacing up and down with long feverish strides suddenly he stopped opposite dick and laid his hand upon his shoulder i say dick could we get to sasa valley before sunrise scarcely said dick well look here we are old friends dick warton you and i now don't you tell any other man what you have told us for a week you'll promise that won't you i could see by the look on dick's face as he acquiesced that he considered poor tom to be mad and indeed i was myself completely mystified by this conduct i had however seen so many proofs of my friend's good sense and quickness of apprehension that i thought it quite possible that warton's story had a meaning in his eyes which i was too obtuse to take in all night tom donahue was greatly excited and when warton left he begged him to remember his promise and also elicited from him a description of the exact spot at which he had seen the apparition as well as the hour at which it appeared after his departure which must have been about four in the morning i turned into my bunk and watched tom sitting by the fire splicing two sticks together until i fell asleep i suppose i must have slept about two hours but when i awoke tom was still sitting working away in almost the same position he had fixed the one stick across the top of the other so as to form a rough tea and was now busy in fitting a smaller stick into the angle between them by manipulating which the cross one could be either cocked up or depressed to any extent he had cut notches too in the perpendicular stick so that by the aid of the small prop the cross one could be kept in any position for an indefinite time look here jack he cried when he saw that i was awake come and give me your opinion suppose i put this cross stick pointing straight at a thing and arranged this small one so as to keep it so and left it i could find that thing again if i wanted it don't you think i could jack don't don't you think so he continued nervously clutching me by the arm well i answered it would depend on how far off the thing was and how accurately it was pointed if it were any distance i'd cut sights on your cross stick then a string tied to the end of it and held in a plumb line forward would lend you pretty near what you wanted but surely tom you don't intend to localize the ghost in that way you'll see tonight old friend you'll see tonight i'll carry this to the sissasa valley you get the loan of madison's crowbar and come with me but mind you tell no man where you are going or what you want it for all day tom was walking up and down the room or working hard at the apparatus his eyes were glistening his cheeks hectic and he had all the symptoms of high fever heaven grant that dicks diagnosis be not correct i thought as i returned with the crowbar and yet as evening drew near i found myself imperceptibly sharing the excitement about six o'clock tom sprang to his feet and seized his sticks i can stand it no longer jack he cried up with your crowbar and hey for sissasa valley tonight's work my lad will either make us or mar us take your six shooter in case we meet the calf ears i dare and take mine jack he continued putting his hands upon my shoulders i dare and take mine for if my ill luck sticks to me tonight i don't know what i might not do with it well having filled our pockets with provisions we set out and as we took our weaver some way toward the sissasa valley i frequently attempted to elicit from my companion some clue as to his intentions but his only answer was let us hurry on jack who knows how many have heard of wortons adventure by this time let us hurry on or we may not be first in the field well sir we struggled on through the hills for a matter of ten miles till it last after descending a craig we saw opening out in front of us a ravine so somber and dark that it might have been the gate of hades itself cliffs many hundreds of feet shut in on every side of the gloomy boulder-studded passage which led through the haunted defile into kafirland the moon rising above the crags threw into strong relief the rough irregular pinnacles of rock by which they were topped while all below was dark as arabus the sissasa valley said i yes said tom i looked at him he was calm now the flush and feverishness had passed away his actions were deliberate and slow yet there was a certain rigidity in his face and glitter in his eye which showed that a crisis had come we entered the pass stumbling along amid the great boulders suddenly i heard a short quick exclamation from tom that's the craig he cried pointing to a great mass looming before us in the darkness now jack for any favor use your eyes we're about a hundred yards from that cliff i take it so you move slowly toward one side and i'll do the same toward the other when you see anything stop and call out don't take more than 12 inches in a step and keep your eyes fixed on the cliff about eight feet from the ground are you ready yes i was even more excited than tom by this time what his intention or object was i could not conjecture beyond that he wanted to examine by daylight the part of the cliff from which the light came yet the influence of the romantic situation and my companion's suppressed excitement was so great that i could feel the blood coursing through my veins and count the pulses throbbing at my temples start cried tom and we moved off he to the right eye to the left each with our eyes fixed intently on the base of the craig i had moved perhaps 20 feet when in a moment it burst upon me through the growing darkness there shown a small ruddy glowing point the light from which waned and increased flickered and oscillated each change producing a more weird effect than the last the old kafir superstition came into my mind and i felt a cold shutter pass over me in my excitement i stepped a pace backward when instantly the light went out leaving utter darkness in its place but when i advanced again there was the ruddy glare glowing from the base of the cliff tom tom i cried ii i heard him exclaim as he hurried over toward me there it is there up against the cliff tom was at my elbow i see nothing said he why there there man in front of you i stepped to the right as i spoke when the light instantly vanished from my eyes but from tom's ejaculations of delight it was clear that from my former position it was visible to him also jack he cried as he turned and rung my hand jack you and i can never complain of our luck again now keep up a few stones where we are standing that's right now we must fix my signpost firmly in at the top there it would take a strong wind to blow that down and we only needed to hold out till morning uh jack my boy to think that only yesterday we were talking of becoming clerks and you saying that no man knew what was awaiting him too by jove jack it would make a good story by this time we had firmly fixed the perpendicular stick in between the two large stones and tom bent down and peered along the horizontal one for fully a quarter of an hour he was alternately raising and depressing it until it last with a sigh of satisfaction he fixed the prop into the angle and stood up look along jack he said you have as straight an eye to take a sight as any man i know of i looked along there beyond the farther site was the ruddy scintillating speck apparently at the end of the stick itself so accurately had it been adjusted and now my boy said tom let's have some supper in a sleep there's nothing more to be done tonight but we'll need all our wits and strength tomorrow get some sticks and kindle a fire here and then we'll be able to keep an eye on our signal post and see that nothing happens to it during the night well sir we kindled a fire and had supper with the sasset demon's eye rolling and glowing in front of us the whole night through not always in the same place though for after supper when i glanced along the sites to have another look at it was nowhere to be seen the information did not however seem to disturb tom in any way he merely remarked it's the moon not the thing that has shifted and coiling himself up went to sleep by early dawn we were both up and gazing along our pointer at the cliff but we could make out nothing save the one dead monotonous slaty surface rougher perhaps at the part we were examining than elsewhere but otherwise presenting nothing remarkable now for your idea jack said tom donahue unwinding a long thin cord from round his waist you fasten it and guide me while i take the other end so saying he walked off to the base of the cliff holding one end of the cord while i drew the other taut and wound it around the middle of the horizontal stick passing it through the site at the end by this means i could direct tom to the right or left until we had our string stretching from the point of attachment through the site and on to the rock which it struck about eight feet above the ground tom drew a chalk circle of about three feet diameter around the spot and then called to me to come and join him we've managed this business together jack he said and we'll find what we are to find together the circle he had drawn embraced a part of the rock smoother than the rest saved that about the center there were a few rough protuberances or knobs one of these tom pointed to with a cry of delight it was a roughish brownish mass about the size of a man's closed fist and looking like a bit of dirty glass led into the wall of the cliff that's it he cried that's it that's what why man a diamond and such a one as there isn't a monarch in europe but would envy tom donahue the possession of up with your crowbar and we'll soon exercise the demon of sassah valley i was so astounded that for a moment i stood speechless with surprise gazing at the treasure which had so unexpectedly fallen into our hands here hand me the crowbar said tom now by using this little round knob which projects from the cliff here as a fulcrum we may be able to lever it off yes there it goes i never thought it could have come so easily now jack the sooner we get back to our hut and then down to capetown the better we wrapped up our treasure and made our way across the hills toward home on the way tom told me how while a law student in the middle temple he had come upon a dusty pamphlet in the library by one yon's van hoynem which told of an experience very similar to ours which had befallen that worthy dutchman in the latter part of the 17th century and which resulted in the discovery of a luminous diamond this tale it was which had come into tom's head as he listened to honest dick warton's ghost story while the means which he had adopted to verify his supposition sprang from his own fertile irish brain we'll take it down to capetown continued tom and if we can't dispose of it with advantage there it will be worth our while to ship for london with it let us go along to madison's first though he knows something of these things and can perhaps give us some idea of what we may consider a fair price for our treasure we turned off from the track accordingly before reaching our hut and kept along the narrow path leading to madison's farm he was at lunch when we entered and in a minute we were seated at each side of him enjoying south african hospitality well he said after the servants were gone what's in the wind now i see you have something to say to me what is it tom produced his packet and solemnly untied the anchor shifts which enveloped it there he said putting the crystal on the table what would you say was a fair price for that madison took it up and examined it critically well he said laying it down again in its crude state about 12 shillings per ton 12 shillings cried tom starting to his feet don't you see what it is rock salt rock salt be a diamond taste it said madison tom put it to his lips dashed it down with a dreadful exclamation and rushed out of the room i felt sad and disappointed enough myself but presently remembering what tom had said about the pistol i too left the house and made for the hut leaving madison open mouthed with astonishment when i got in i found tom lying in his bunk with his face to the wall too dispirited apparently to answer my consolations anathematizing dick and madison the sasa demon and everything else i strolled out of the hut and refreshed myself with a pipe after our weary some adventure i was about 50 yards from the hut when i heard issuing from it the sound which of all others i least expected to hear had it been a groan or an oath i should have taken it as a matter of course but the sound which caused me to stop and take the pipe out of my mouth was a hearty roar of laughter next moment tom himself emerged from the door his whole face radiant with delight came for another 10 mile walk old fellow what for another lump of rock salt at 12 shillings a ton no more of that howl and you love me grinned tom now look here jack what blessed fools we are to be so floored by a trifle just sit on this stump for five minutes and i'll make it as clear as daylight you've seen many a lump of rock salt stuck in a crag and so have i though we did make such a mall of this one now jack did any of the pieces you have ever seen shine in the darkness brighter than any firefly well i can't say they ever did i'd venture to prophecy that if we waited until night which we won't do we would see that light still glimmering among the rocks therefore jack when we took away this worthless salt we took the wrong crystal it is no very strange thing in these hills that a piece of rock salt should be lying within a foot of a diamond it caught our eyes and we were excited and so we made fools of ourselves and left the real stone behind depend upon it jack this assassin gem is lying within that magic circle of chalk upon the face of yonder cliff come old fellow light your pipe and stow your revolver and we'll be off before that fellow madison has time to put two and two together i don't know that i was very sanguine this time i had begun in fact to look upon the diamond as a most unmitigated nuisance however rather than throw a damper on tom's expectations i announced myself eager to start what a walk it was tom was always a good mountaineer but his excitement seemed to lend him wings that day while i scrambled along after him as best i could when we got within half a mile he'd broken to the double and never pulled up until he reached the round white circle upon the cliff poor old tom when i came up his mood had changed and he was standing with his hands in his pockets gazing vacantly before him with a rueful countenance look he said look and he pointed at the cliff not a sign of anything in the least resembling a diamond there the circle included nothing but a flat slate colored stone with one large hole where we had extracted the rock salt and one or two smaller depressions no sign of the gem i've been over every inch of it said poor tom it's not there someone has been out here and noticed the chalk and taken it come home jack i feel sick and tired uh had any man ever luck like mine i turned to go but took one last look at the cliff first tom was already ten paces off hello i cried don't you see any change in that circle since yesterday what do you mean said tom don't you miss a thing that was there before the rock salt said tom no but the little round knob that we used for a fulcrum i suppose we must have wrenched it off in using the lever let's have a look at what it's made of accordingly at the foot of the cliff we searched about among the loose stones here you are jack we've done it at last we're made men i turned round and there was tom radiant with the light and with the little corner of the black rock in his hand at first sight it seemed to be merely a chip from the cliff but near the base there was projecting from it an object which tom was now exultingly pointing out it looked at first something like a glass eye but there was a depth and brilliancy about it such as glass never exhibited there was no mistake this time we had certainly got possession of a jewel of great value and with light hearts we turned from the valley bearing away with us the fiend which had so long rained there there sir i spun my story out too long and tired you perhaps you see when i get to talking of those rough old days i kind of see the little cabin again and the brook beside it and the bush around and seem to hear tom's honest voice once more there's little for me to say now we prospered on the gem tom donahue as you know has set up here and is well known about town i have done well farming and ostrich raising in africa we settled dick warden up in business and he is one of our nearest neighbors if you should ever be coming up our way sir you'll not forget to ask for jack turnbull jack turnbull of sasasa farm and of the mystery of sasasa valley by arthur conan doil