 Section 34 of Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Volume 1. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings run the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Michael Wolfe. Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Volume 1, Section 34. Selected works by Alquin. Alquin, circa 735 to 804. By William H. Carpenter. Alquin, usually called Alquin of York, came of a patrician family of Northumberland. Neither the date nor the place of his birth is known with definiteness, but he was born about 735 at or near York. As a child, he entered a cathedral school recently founded by Egbert, Archbishop of York, and ultimately became its most eminent pupil. He was subsequently assistant master to Albert, its head, and when Albert succeeded to the Archbishopric on the death of Egbert in 766, Alquin became scholasticus, or master of the school. On the death of Albert in 780, Alquin was placed in charge of the Cathedral Library, the most famous in Western Europe. In his longest poem, Versus the Eboruchenzi Ecclesia, a poem on the Saints of the Church at York, he has left an important record of his connection with York. This poem, written before he left England, is like most of his verse in Dactylic Examinters. To a certain extent it follows Virgil as a model and is partly based on the writings of Bede, partly on his own personal experience. It is not only valuable for its historical bearings, but for its disclosure of the manner and matter of instruction in the schools at the time and the contents of the Great Library. As master of the Cathedral School, Alquin acquired name and fame at home and abroad and was soon the most celebrated teacher in Britain. Before 766, in company with Albert, he made his first journey to Germany and may have visited Rome. Earlier than 780 he was again abroad and at Parvia came another notice of Charlemagne who was on his way back from Italy. In 781, Ehambald, the new Archbishop of York, sent Alquin to Rome to bring back the Archbishop's pallium. At Palmer he again met Charlemagne who invited him to take up his abode at the Frankish court. With the consent of his king and his Archbishop he resigned his position at York and with a few pupils departed for the court at Aachen in 782. Alquin's arrival in Germany was the beginning of a new intellectual epoch among the Franks. Learning was at this time in the deplorable state. The older monastic and cathedral schools had been broken up and the monasteries themselves often unworthily bestowed upon royal favourites. There had been a palace school for rudimentary instruction but it was wholly inefficient and unimportant. During the years immediately following his arrival Alquin zealously laboured at his projects of educational reform first reorganising the palace school he afterward undertook a reform of the monasteries and their system of instruction and the establishment of new schools throughout the kingdom of Charlemagne. At the court school the great king himself as well as Ludegard the queen became his pupil Gisela, Abbas of Shell, the sister of Charlemagne came also to him for instruction as did the princes Charles, Pepin and Louis and the princesses Rotred and Gisela. Charles himself and the others in accordance with the fashion of the time Alquin bestowed fanciful names. He was flakus or albinus Charlemagne was David the queen was Ava and Pepin was Julius. The subjects of instruction in this school the centre of culture of the kingdom were first of all grammar then arithmetic, astronomy, rhetoric and dialectic. The king himself studied poetry astronomy, arithmetic, the writings of the fathers and theology proper. It was under the influence of Alquin that Charlemagne issued in 787 the capitulary that has been called the first general charter of education for the Middle Ages. It reproves the abbots for their illiteracy and exhorts them to the study of letters and although its effect was less than its purpose it served with subsequent decrees of the king to stimulate learning and literature throughout all Germany. Alquin's system included behind the palace school and the monastic and cathedral schools which in some instances gave both elementary and superior instruction all the parish or village elementary schools whose head was the parish priest. In 790 seeing his plans well established Alquin returned to York bearing letters of reconciliation to offer king of Mercia between whom and Charlemagne dissension had arisen. Having accomplished his errand he went back to the German court in 792. Here his first act was to take a vigorous part in the furious controversy respecting the doctrine of adoptionism. Alquin not only wrote against the heresy but brought about his condemnation by the Council of Frankfurt in 794. Two years later at his own request he was made abbot of the Benedictine monastery of Saint Martin at Tours. Not contented with reforming the lax monastic life he resolved to make Tours a seat of learning. Under his management it presently became the most renowned school in the kingdom especially in the copying of manuscripts did the brethren excel. Alquin kept up a vast correspondence with Britain as well as with different parts of the Frankish kingdom. And of the 230 letters preserved the greater part belonged to this time. In 799 at Aachen he held a public disputation on adoptionism with Felix Bishop of Ergel who was wholly vanquished. When the King in 800 was preparing for that visit to the papal court which was to end with his coronation as emperor of the Holy Roman Empire he invited Alquin to accompany him. But the old man wearied with many burdens could not make the journey. By the beginning of 804 he had become much enfeebled. It was his desire often expressed to die on the day of Pentecost. His wish was fulfilled. Frey died adorned on the 19th of May. He was buried in the cloister church of St. Martin near the monastery. Alquin's literary activity was exerted in various directions two-thirds of all that he wrote was theological and character. These works are exegetical like the commentary in the Gospel of St. John, dogmatic like the writings against Felix of Ergel and Elepandes of Toledo his best work of this class are liturgical and moral like the lives of the saints. The other third is made up of the epistles already mentioned of poems on a great variety of subjects, the principal one being the poem on the saints of the church at York and those didactic works which form his principal claim to attention at the present day. His educational treatises are the following on grammar, on orthography, on rhetoric and the virtues, on dialectics, on disputation between the royal and most noble youth pepin and albinus the scholastic and on the calculation of Easter. The most important of all these writings is his grammar which consists of two parts the first a dialogue between a teacher and his pupils on philosophy and studies in general, the other a dialogue between a teacher, the young Frank and the young Saxon on grammar. These latter in Alquin's language have but lately rushed upon the thorny thickets of grammatical density. Grammar begins with the consideration of the letters, the vowels and consonants, the former of which are as it were the souls and the consonants the bodies of words. Grammar itself is defined to be the science of written sounds, the guardian of correct speaking and writing. It is founded on nature, reason, authority and custom. He enumerates no less than twenty-six parts of grammar which Alquin defines. Many of his definitions and particularly his etymologies are remarkable. He tells us that feet and poetry are so called because the meters walk on them. Litera is derived from Legittara, since the litera served to prepare the way for readers, from Legira Ita. In his orthography, appendant to the grammar, Caleb's a bachelor is one who is on his way at Caillum to heaven. Alquin's grammar is based principally on Donatus. In this, as in all his work, he compiles and adapts, but is only rarely original. On rhetoric, and the virtues, is a dialogue between Charlemagne and Albinus, Alquin. The disputation between Pepin and Albinus, the beginning of which is here given, shows both the manner and the subject matter of his instruction. Alquin, with all the limitations which his environment imposed upon him, stamped himself indelibly upon his day and generation, and left behind him in his scholars and enduring influence. Men like Rabbanus, the famous Bishop of Mayans, gloried in having been his pupils, and down to the wars and devastations of the tenth century, his influence upon education was paramount throughout all western Europe. There is an excellent account of Alquin in Professor West's Alquin, great educator series published in 1893. On the Saints of the Church at York. There the Abaric scholars felt the rule of Master Albert teaching and the school, their thirsty hearts to gladden well he knew with doctrine's stream and learning's heavenly due. To some he made the grammar understood and poured on others' rhetoric's copious flood. The rules of jurisprudence these rehearse while those recite in high Ionian verse, or play Castalia's in Cayden's sweet and mount Parnassus on swift lyric feet. Anon the master turns their gaze on high to view the travelling sun and moon the sky in order turning with its planet seven and starry hosts that keep the law of heaven. The storms at sea, the earthquake's shock, the race of men and beasts and flying fowl they trace, or to the laws of numbers bend their mind and search till Easter's annual day they find. Then last and best he opened up to view the depths of holy scripture old and new. Was any youth in studies well approved? Then him the master cherished, taught and loved, and thus the double-knowledge he conferred of liberal studies and the holy word. Disputation between Pepin, the most noble and royal youth, and Albinus, the scholastic. Pepin, what is writing? Albinus, the treasury of history. Pepin, what is language? Albinus, the herald of the soul. Pepin, what generates language? Albinus, the tongue. Pepin, what is the tongue? Albinus, a whip of the air. Pepin, what is the air? Albinus, a maintainer of life. Pepin, what is life? Albinus, a joy of the happy, the torment of the suffering, a waiting for death. Pepin, what is death? Albinus, an inevitable ending, a journey into uncertainty, a source of tears for the living, the probation of wills, a way layer of men. Pepin, what is man? Albinus, a booty of death, a passing traveller, a stranger on earth. Pepin, what is man like? Albinus, the fruit of a tree. Pepin, what are the heavens? Albinus, a rolling ball, an immeasurable vault. Pepin, what is light? Albinus, the sight of all things. Pepin, what is day? Albinus, the admonisher to labour. Pepin, what is the sun? Albinus, the glory and splendour of the heavens, the attractive in nature, the measure of hours, the adornment of day. Pepin, what is the moon? Albinus, the eye of night, the dispenser of dew, the presager of storms. Pepin, what are the stars? Albinus, a picture on the vault of heaven, the stairsman of ships, the ornament of night. Pepin, what is rain? Albinus, the fertiliser of the earth, the producer of crops. Pepin, what is fog? Albinus, night in day, the annoyance of eyes. Pepin, what is wind? Albinus, the mover of air, the agitation of water, the dry of the earth. Pepin, what is the earth? Albinus, the mother of growth, the nourisher of the living, the storehouse of life, the effacer of all. Pepin, what is the sea? Albinus, the path of adventure, the bounds of the earth, the division of lands, the harbour of rivers, the source of rains, a refuge and danger, a pleasure and enjoyment. Pepin, what are rivers? Albinus, a ceaseless motion, a refreshment to the sun, the waters of the earth. Pepin, what is water? Albinus, the supporter of life, the cleanser of filth. Pepin, what is fire? Albinus, an excessive heat, the nurse of growing things, the ripener of crops. Pepin, what is cold? Albinus, the trembling of our members. Pepin, what is frost? Albinus, an assailant of plants, the destruction of leaves, a fetter to the earth, a bridger of streams. Pepin, what is snow? Albinus, dry water. Pepin, what is winter? Albinus, an exile of summer. Pepin, what is spring? Albinus, a painter of the earth. Pepin, what is summer? Albinus, that which brings to the earth a new garment and ripens the fruit. Pepin, what is autumn? Albinus, the barn of the year, a letter from Alquin to Charlemagne, written in the year 796. I, your flakus, in accordance with your entreaty and your gracious kindness, am busied under the shelter of St. Martens in bestowing upon many pupils the honey of the Holy Scriptures. I am eager that others should drink deep of the old wine of ancient learning. I shall presently begin to nourish still others with the fruits of grammatical ingenuity, and some of them I am eager to enlighten with the knowledge of the order of the stars that seem painted as it were on the dome of some mighty palace. I have become all things to all men 1 Corinthians 1, verse 22, so that I may train up many into the profession of God's Holy Church and to the glory of your Imperial realm lest the grace of Almighty God in me should be fruitless 1 Corinthians 15, verse 10, and your magnificent bounty of no avail. But your servant lacks the rarer books of scholastic learning which in my own country I used to have thanks to the generous and most devoted care of my teacher and to my own humble endeavours, and I mention it to your Majesty France it may please you who are eagerly concerned about the whole body of learning to have me dispatch some of our young men to procure for our certain necessary works, and bring with them to France the flowers of England, so that a graceful garden may not exist in York alone, but so that at tours as well there may be found the blossoming of paradise with its abundant fruits. That the south wind, when it comes may cause the gardens along the river Loire to burst into bloom and the perfumed airs to stream forth and finally that which follows in the Canticle whence I have drawn this simile may be brought to pass Canticle 5, verses 1 and 2 or even this exaltation of the Prophet Isaiah which urges us to acquire wisdom All you who thirst come to the waters and you who have not money hasten, buy and eat come without money and without price buy wine and milk Isaiah 4, verse 1 and this is a thing which your gracious zeal will not overlook how upon every page of the Holy Scriptures we are urged to the acquisition of wisdom how nothing is more honorable for ensuring a happy life, nothing more pleasing and the observance nothing more efficient against sin nothing more praiseworthy in any lofty station than that men live according to the teachings of the philosophers moreover nothing is more essential to the government of the people, nothing better for the guidance of life into the paths of honorable character than the grace which wisdom gives and the glory of training and the power of learning therefore it is that in its praise Solomon, the wisest of all men exclaims better is wisdom that all precious things and more to be desired Proverbs 8, 11 and following to secure this with every possible effort and to get possession of it by daily endeavor do you my lord king exhort the young men who are in your majesty's palace that they strive for this in the flower of their youth so that they may be deemed worthy to live through an old age of honor and that by its means they may be able to attain to everlasting happiness I myself according to my disposition shall not be slothful in sowing the seeds of wisdom among your servants in this land being mindful of the injunction so thy seed in the morning and at eventide let not thy hand cease since thou knowest not what will spring up whether these or those and if both together still better is it Ecclesiastes 11, verse 6 In the morning of my life and in the fruitful period of my studies I sowed seed in Britain and now that my blood has grown cool in the evening of life I still cease not but sow the seed in France resiring that both may spring up by the grace of God and now that my body has grown weak I find consolation in the saying of Saint Jerome who declares in his letter to Nepotianus almost all the powers of the body are altered in old men and wisdom alone will increase while the rest decay and a little further he says the old age of those who have adorned their youth with noble accomplishments on the law of the Lord both day and night becomes more and more deeply accomplished with its years, more polished from experience, more wise by the lapse of time and it reaps the sweetest fruit of ancient learning In this letter in praise of wisdom one who wishes can read many things of the scientific pursuits of the ancients and can understand how eager were these ancients to abound in the grace of wisdom I have noted that your zeal which is pleasing to God and praise worthy is always advancing towards this wisdom and takes pleasure in it and that you are adorning the magnificence of your worldly rule with still greater intellectual splendor In this may our Lord Jesus Christ who is himself the supreme type of divine wisdom guard you and exalt you and cause you to attain the glory of his own blessed and everlasting vision End of section 34 Section 35 of Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern Volume 1 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 J. Martin Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern Volume 1 Section 35 Selections from a Study of Death by J. M. Alden Henry M. Alden 1836-1919 Henry Mills Alden Since 1864 the editor of Harper's Magazine was born in Mount Tabor, Vermont, November 11th 1836 The Eighth in Descent from Captain John Alden the Pilgrim. He graduated at Williams College and studied theology at Andiver Seminary but was never ordained minister having almost immediately paid attention to literature. His first work that attracted attention was an essay on the Illusion Mysteries published in the Atlantic Monthly. The scholarship and subtle method revealed in this and similar works led to his engagement to deliver a course of 12 Louis Institute Lectures at Boston in 1863 and 1864. And he took for his subject the structure of paganism. Before this he had removed historic, had engaged in general editorial work, and formed his lasting connection with the House of Harper and Brothers. As an editor Mr. Alden is the most practical of men but he is in reality a poet and in another age he might have been a mystic. He has the secret of preserving his life to himself while paying the keenest attention to his daily duties. In his office he is immersed in affairs which require the exercise of common sense and knowledge of life and literature. At his home he is a serene and optimistic philosopher contemplating the forces that make for our civilization and musing over the deep problem of man's occupation of this earth. In 1893 appeared anonymously a volume entitled God in His World which attracted instantly wide attention in this country and in England for its subtlety of thought, its boldness and its winning sweetness of temper and its exquisite style. It was by Mr. Alden and in 1895 it was followed by a study of death continuing the great theme of the first. The unity of creation, the certainty that there is in no sense a war between the creator and his creation. In this view the universe is not divided into the natural and the supernatural. All is natural. But we can speak here only of their literary quality. The author is seen to be a poet in his conceptions, but in form his writing is entirely within the limits of prose. Yet it is a prose most harmonious, most melodious, and it exhibits the capacity of our English tongue in the hand of a master. The thought is sometimes so subtle as to elude the careless reader, but the charm of the melody never fails to entrance. The study of life and civilization is profound, but the grace of treatment seems to relieve the problems of half their difficulty. His wife did not live to read the exquisite dedication given below. A dedication to my beloved wife. My earliest written expression of intimate thought or cherished fancy was for your eyes only. It was my first approach to your maidenly heart, the musical wooing which neglected no resource near or remote for the enhancement of its charm and so involved all other mystery in its own. In you, child husband in violet, never losing its power of leading me by an unspoken invocation to a green field ever kept fresh by a living fountain where the shepherd tends his flock. Now, through a body wracked with pain and sadly broken still shines this unbroken childhood teaching me love's deepest mystery, it is fitting, then, that I should dedicate to you this book touching that mystery. It has been written in the shadow but illumined by the brightness of an angel's face seen in the darkness so that it has seemed easy and natural for me to find at the thorn's heart a secret and everlasting sweetness far surpassing that of the rose itself which ceases in its own perfection. Whether that angel we have seen shall for my need in comfort and for your own longing hold back his greatest gift and leave you mine in the earthly ways we know and love, or shall hasten to make the heavenly surprise, the issue in either event will be a homecoming. If here, yet already the deeper secret will have been in part disclosed, and if beyond that secret fully known will not betray the fondest hope of loving hearts, love never denied death and death will not deny love, the dove and the serpent. The dove flies and the serpent creeps. Yet is the dove fond while the serpent is the emblem of wisdom. Both were innate, the cooing, fluttering winged spirit loving to descend companion-like, rooting, following, and the creeping thing which had glided into the sun-china paradise from the cold bosoms of those nurses of an older world, pain and darkness and death, himself forgetting these in the warmth and green life of the garden. And our first parents knew not of these as yet unutterable mysteries any more than they knew that their roses bloomed over a tomb so that when all animate creatures came to Adam to be named the meaning of this living allegory which passed before him was great part hidden and he saw no sharp line dividing the firmament below from the firmament above. Rather he leaned toward the ground as one does in a garden seeing how quickly it was fashioned into the climbing trees, into the clean flowers, and into his own shapely frame. It was upon the ground he lay when that deep sleep fell upon him from which he woke to find his mate life as the serpent, yet with the fluttering heart of the dove. As the dove the winged for flight ever descended so the serpent though unable wholly to leave the ground tried ever to lift himself therefrom as if to escape some ancient bond. The cool nights revived and nourished his memories of an older time wherein lay his subtle wisdom but day by day his aspiring crest grew brighter the life of Eden became for him oblivion, the light of the sun obscuring and confounding his innocence, even as for Adam and Eve this life was illusion, the visible disguising the invisible and pleasure veiling pain. In Adam the culture of the ground maintained humility. He was held moreover in lowly content by the charm of the woman who was to him like the earth-grown human and since she was the daughter of sleep her love seemed to him restful as the night her raven locks were like the mantle of darkness the voice had the laughter of streams that lapsed into unseen depths but Eve had something of the serpents unrest as if she too had come from the underworld which she would feign forget seeking liberation urged by desire as deep as the abyss she had left behind her and nourished from roots unfathomably hidden the roots of the tree of life she thus came to have conversation with the serpent in the lengthening days of Eden's one summer these two were more and more completely enfoldered in the illusion of light it was under this spell that dwelling upon the enticement of fruit good to look at and pleasant to the taste the serpent denied death and thought of good as separate from evil ye shall not surely die but shall be as the gods knowing good and evil so far in his aspiring daydream had the serpent fared from his old familiar haunts so far from his old world wisdom a sureer omen would have come to Eve had she listened to the plaintive notes of the bewildered dove that in his downward flutterings had begun to divine what the serpent had come to forget and to confess what he had come to deny for already he was beginning to be felt the seasons difference and the grave mystery without which itself could not have been was about to be unveiled the background of the picture becoming its foreground the fond hands plucking the rose had found the thorn evil was known as something by itself apart from good and Eden was left behind as one steps out of infancy from that hour had the eyes of the children of men been turned from the accursed earth looking into the blue above straining their vision for a glimpse of the angels yet it was the serpent that was lifted up in the wilderness and when he who became sin for us was bruised in the hill by the old enemy the dove descended upon him at his baptism he united the wisdom of the serpent with the harmlessness of the dove thus in him were bound together and reconciled the elements which in human thought had been put asunder as in him death is swallowed up of life and with his eyes we see that the rose of angels are white because they have been washed in blood death and sleep the angel of death is the invisible angel of life while the organism is alive as a human embodiment death is present having the same human distinction as the life from which it is inseparable being indeed the better half of living its wing at half its rest and inspiration its secret spring of elasticity and quickness life came upon the wings of death and so departs if we think of life apart from death our thought is partial as if we would give flight to the arrow without bending the bow no living movement either begins or is completed save through death if the shuttle returned not and the texture of life is woven through this tropic movement it is commonly accepted scientific truth that the continuance of life in any living thing depends upon death but there are two ways of expressing this truth one regarding merely the outward fact as when we say that animal or vegetable tissue is renewed through decay the other regarding the action and reaction proper to life itself whereby it forever springs freshly from its source the latter form of expression is mystical in the true meaning of that term we close our eyes to the outward appearance in order that we may directly confront a mystery which is already past before there is any visible indication thereof though the imagination engaged in this mystical apprehension borrows its symbols or analogies from observation and experience yet these symbols are spiritually regarded by looking at life on its living side and abstracted as far as possible from outward embodiment we especially affect physiological analogs because being derived from our experience we may the more readily have the inward regard of them and by passing from one physiological analog to another and from all these to those furnished by the process of nature outside of our bodies we come to an apprehension of the action and reaction proper to life itself as an idea independent of all its physical representations thus we trace the rhythmic beating of the pulse to the systole and diastole of the heart and we note a similar alternation in the contraction and relaxation of all our muscles breathing is alternately inspiration and expiration itself is by beats and falls into rhythm there is no uninterrupted strain of either action or sensibility a current or a contact is renewed having been broken in physical operation there is the same alternate lapse and resurgence memory rises from the grave of oblivion no holding can be maintained saved through alternate release pulsation establishes circulation and vital motions proceed through cycles each one of which however minute has its tropic of cancer and of Capricorn then there are the larger physiological cycles like that where in sleep is the alternation of waking passing from the field of our direct experience to that of observation we note similar alterations as of day and night summer and winter and science discloses them every turn especially in its recent consideration of the subtle forces of nature leading us back of all visible motions to the pulsations of the either in considering the action and reaction proper to life itself we hear dismiss from view all measured cycles whose beginning and end are appreciably separate our regard is confined to living movements that their beginning and ending meet as in one point which is seen to be at once the point of departure and return thus we may speak of a man's life as included between his birth and his death and with reference to this physiological term think of him as living and then as dead but we may also consider him while living as yet every moment dying and in this view death is clearly seen as an irreparable companion of life the way of return and so of continuance this pulsation forever of vanishing and resurgence so incalculably swift as to escape observation is proper to life as life does not begin with what we call birth nor end with what we call death considering birth and death as terms applicable to an individual existence the beginning and forever ending thus to all manifest existence we apply the term nature natura which means forever being born and on its vanishing side it is more atura or forever dying resurrection is thus a natural and perpetual miracle the idea of life as transcending any individual embodiment is as germane to science as it is to faith death thus seen as essential is lifted above its temporary invisible accidents it is no longer associated with corruption but rather with the sweet and wholesome freshness of life being the way of its renewal sweeter then than the honey which sampson found in the lion's carcass is this everlasting sweetness of death and it is a mystery deeper than the strong man's riddle so is death pure and clean as is the dew that comes with the cool night when the sun has set clean and white as the snowflakes that betoken the absolution which winter gives striving the earth of all her summer wantonness and excess when only the trees that yield balsam and aromatic fragrance remain green breaking the box of precious ointment for burial in this view also is restored the kinship of death with sleep the state of the infant it seems to be one of chronic mysticism since during the greater part of its days its eyes are closed to the outer world its larger familiarity is still with the invisible and it seems as if the mothers of darkness were still withholding it as their nursing accomplishing for it some mighty work in their proper realm some such fiery baptism of infants as is frequently instanced in grief mythology bringing them for earthly trials the infant must need sleep while this work is being done for it it has been sleeping since the work began from the foundation of the world and the old habit still clings about it and is not easily laid aside that which we have been considering as the death that is in every moment is a reaction proper to life itself waking or sleeping whereby it is renewed sharing at once time and eternity time as outward form and eternity as its essential quality sleep is a special relaxation relieving a special strain as daily we build with effort and design an elaborate superstructure above the living foundation so must this edifice nightly be laid in ruins sleep is thus a disembarrassment the unloading of a burden wherewith we have waited ourselves and we are brought into a kind of repentance and receive absolution sleep is forgiveness the parable of the prodigal one standing at the gate of berth it would seem as if it were the vital destination of all things to fly from their source as if it were the dominant desire of life to enter into limitations we might mentally represent to ourselves an essence simple and indivisible that denies itself a diversified manifold existence to us this side of the veil may enmeshed in innumerable veils that hide us from the father's face this instance appears to have the stress of urgency as if the effort of all being its unceasing travail were like the beating of the infinite ocean upon the shores of time and as if within the continent of time all existence were forever knocking at new gates seeking through some as yet on tried path of progression greater complexity a deeper involvement all the children seem to be beseeching the father to divide unto them his living none willingly abiding in that father's house but in reality their will is his will they fly and they are driven like fledglings from the mother's nest two the story of a solar system more of any synthesis in time repeats the parable of the prodigal sun in its essential features it is a cosmic parable the planet is a wanderer and the individual planetary destiny can be accomplished only through flight from its source after all its projectality it shall sicken and return attributing to the earth thus apparently separated from the sun some macro-cosmic sentience what must have been her wandering dream finding itself at once thrust away and securely held hoist between her flight and her bond and so swinging into a regular orbit about the sun while at the same time in her rotation turning to him and away from him into the light and into the darkness forever denying and confessing her lord her emotion must have been one of delight however mingled with a feeling of timorous awe since her desire could not have been other than one with her destination despite the distance and the growing coolness she could feel the kinship still her pulse though modulated was still in rhythm with that of the solar heart and in her bosom were hidden consubstantial fires but it was the sense of otherness of her own distinct individuation that was mainly being nourished this sense moreover being proper to her destiny therefore the signs of her likeness to the sun were more and more being buried from her view her fires were veiled by a hardening crust and her opaqueness stood out against his light she had no regret for all she was surrendering thinking only of her gain of being clothed upon with a garment showing ever some new fold surprising beauty and wonder if she had remained in the father's house like the elder brother in the parable then would all that he had have been hers in nebulous simplicity but now holding her revels apart she seems to sing her own song and to dream her own beautiful dream wandering with emotion holy her own among the gardens of cosmic order and loveliness she glories in her many veils which, though they hide from her both her source and her very self are the media through which the invisible light is broken into multi-form illusions that enrich her dream she beholds the sun as a far-off in severed being existing for her her ministrant bridegroom and when her face is turned away from him into the night she beholds innumerable suns a myriad of archangels on infinitely remote and central flame the spirit of all life yet in the midst of these visible images she is absorbed in her individual dream wherein she appears to herself to be the mother of all living it is proper to her destiny that she should be thus unwrapped in her own distinct action and passion and refer to herself the appearances of a universe while all that is not she is necessary that is to her full definition she, on the other hand from herself interprets all else this is the inevitable terrestrial idealism peculiar to every individuation in time the individual thus balancing the universe 3 in reality the earth has never left the sun apart from him she has no life any more she has the branch severed from the vine more truly it may be said that the sun has never left the earth no prodigal can really leave the father's house any more than he can leave himself coming to himself he feels the father's arms about him they have always been there he is newly appareled and wears the signet ring of native prestige he hears the sound of familiar music and dancing and it may be that the young ones mingling with him in this festival are the riotous youths and maidens of his far country rebels also come to themselves and home of whom also the father say it these were dead and are alive again they were lost and are found the starvation and sense of exile had been parts of a troubled dream a dream which had also its ecstasy but had come into a consuming fever the delirious imaginings of fresh fountains of shapes drawn from the memory of childhood and of the cool touch of kindred hands upon the brow so near is exile to home misery to divine commiseration so near are pain and death desolation and divestiture to a new creature and to the kinship involved in all creation and recreation distance in the cosmic order standing apart which is only another expression of the expansion and abundance of creative life but at every remove its reflex is nearness a bond of attraction in suffering and curving making orb and orbit while in space this attraction is diminished being inversely as the square of the distance and so there is maintained and emphasized the appearance of suspension and isolation time it gains preponderance contracting sphere and orbit aging planets and suns and accumulating destruction which at the point of annihilation becomes a new creation this grand cycle which is but a pulsation or breath of the eternal life illustrates a truth which is repeated in its least and most minutely divided moment that birth lies next to death as water crystal flows at the freezing point and the plant blossoms at points most remote from the source of nutrition end of section 35 recorded by J. Martin section 36 of library of the world's best literature ancient and modern volume 1 this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org library of the world's best literature ancient and modern volume 1 section 36 selected poems by Thomas Bailey Aldrich Thomas Bailey Aldrich 1836-1907 a poet in verse often becomes a poet in prose also in composing novels although the novelist may not and in general does not possess the faculty of writing poems the poet novelist is apt to put into his prose a good deal of the same charm and the same picturesque choice of phrase and image that characterizes his verse while it does not follow the novelist who at times writes verse like George Elliott for example succeeds in giving a distinctly poetic quality to prose or even wishes to do so among authors who have displayed peculiar power and won fame in the dual capacity of poet and of prose romance or novelist Walter Scott and Victor Hugo no doubt stand preeminent and in American literature Edgar Allen Poe and Oliver Wendell Holmes very strikingly combine these two functions another American author who is gained a distinguished position both as a poet and as a writer of prose fiction and essays is Thomas Bailey Aldrich it is upon his work in the form of verse perhaps that Aldrich's chief pronoun is based but some of his short stories in a special language to his popularity no less than to his repute as a delicate and polished artificer in words a New Englander he has infused into some of his poems the true atmosphere of New England and has given the same light and color of home to his prose while imparting to his productions in both kinds a delightful tinge of the foreign and remote in addition to his capacities as a poet and romancer he is a wit and humorist of sparkling quality but also to inhale the perfumes of Arabia and the farther east blended with the salt sea breeze and the pine scented air of his native state New Hampshire he was born in the old seaside town of Portsmouth New Hampshire November 11th 1836 but moved to New York City in 1854 at the age of 17 there he remained until 1866 beginning his work quite early forming his literary character by reading and observation he practiced an experience of writing prose, sketches and articles for journals and periodicals during this period he entered into associations with the poets Steadman, Stoddard and Bayard Taylor and was more or less in touch with the group that included Walt Whitman Fitz James O'Brien and William Winter removing to Boston in January 1866 he became the editor of Every Saturday and remained in that post until 1874 when he resigned in 1875 he made a long tour in Europe plucking the first fruits of foreign travel which were succeeded by many rich and dainty gatherings from the same source in later years in the intervals of these wanderings he lived in Boston and Cambridge occupying for a time James Russell Lowell's historic house of Elmwood in the semi-rural University City and then established a pretty country house at Poncopog a few miles west of Boston this last suggested the title for a charming book of travel papers from Poncopog to Pest in 1881 he was appointed editor of the Atlantic Monthly and continued to direct that famous magazine for nine years frequently making short trips to Europe extending his tours as far as the heart of Russia and gathering fresh materials for essay or song much of his time since giving up the Atlantic Editorship has been passed in voyaging and in 1894-5 he made a journey round the world from the beginning he struck with quiet certainty the vein that was his by nature in poetry and this has broadened almost continually yielding richer results which have been worked out with an increasing refinement of skill his predilection is for the picturesque for romance combined with simplicity purity and tenderness of feeling touched by fancy and by occasional lights of humor so reserved and dainty that they never disturbed the pictorial harmony the capacity for unaffected utterance of feeling on matters common to humanity reached a climax in the poem of Baby Belle which by its sympathetic and delicate description of a child's advent and death gave the author a claim to the affection of a wide circle and this remained for a long time probably the best known among his poems Friar Jerome's beautiful book is another of the early favorites Spring in New England has since come to hold high rank both for its vivid and graceful description of the season for its tender fervor of patriotism and for its sentiment of reconciliation between north and south the lines on Piscataqua River remain one of the best illustrations of boyhood memories and have something of Whittier's homely truth in his longer narrative pieces Judith and Wyndham Towers cast in the mold of blank verse idols Mr. Aldrich does not seem so much himself as in many of his briefer flights an instinctive dramatic tendency finds outlet in Pauline Palovna and Mercedes the latter of which a two act piece in prose has found representation in the theater yet in these also he is less eminently successful than in his lyrics and society verse no American poet has wrought his stanzas with greater faithfulness to an exacting standard of craftsmanship than Mr. Aldrich or has known better when to leave a line loosely cast and when to reinforce it with correction or with a syllable that might seem to an ear less true redundant this gives to his most carefully chiseled productions an air of spontaneous ease and has made him eminent as a sonneteer his sonnet on sleep is one of the finest in the language the conciseness and concentrated aptness of his expression also together with the faculty of bringing into conjunction subtly contrasted thoughts images or feelings has issued happily in short concentrated pieces like an untimely thought destiny and identity and in a number of pointed and effective quatrains without over mastering purpose outside of art itself his is the poetry of luxury rather than of deep passion or conviction yet with the freshness of bud and tint in springtime it still always relates itself effectively to human experience the author especially American quality also though not dominant comes out clearly in unguarded gates and with a differing tone in the plaintive Indian legend of me and Tawana if we perceive in his verse a kinship with the dainty ideals of Teofil Gautier and Afre de Musée this does not obscure his originality or his individual charm and the same thing may be said with regard to his prose the first of his short fictions that made a decided mark was Marjorie Dahl the fame which it gained in its separate field was as swift and widespread as that of Hawthorne's the gentle boy or Bret Hart's of Roaring Camp it is a bright and half-pathetic little parody on human life and affection or perhaps we should call it a parable symbolizing the power which imagination wields over real life even in supposedly unimaginative people the covert smile which it involves at the importance of human emotions may be traced to a certain extent in some of Mr. Aldrich's longer and more serious works of fiction his three novels Prudence Palfrey, the Queen of Sheba and the Stillwater Tragedy the story of a bad boy frankly but quietly humorous in its record of the pranks and vicissitudes of a healthy average lad with the scene of the story localized at Old Portsmouth under the name of Rivermouth a less ambitious work still holds a secure place in the affections of many mature as well as young readers besides these books Mr. Aldrich has published a collection of short descriptive, reminiscent and half historic papers on Portsmouth an old town by the sea with the second volume of short stories entitled Two Bites at a Cherry the character drawing in his fiction is clear cut and effective often sympathetic and nearly always suffused with an agreeable coloring of humor there are notes of pathos too in some of his tales and it is a blending of these qualities through the medium of a lucid and delightful style that defines his pleasing quality in prose three roses one as moonlight and weighed down each with its loveliness as with a crown drooped in a florist's window in a town the first a loverbott it lay at rest like flower on flower that night on beauty's breast the second rose as virginal and fair shrunk in the tangles of a harlot's hair the third a widow with new grief made wild shut in the icy palm of her dead child identity somewhere in desolate windswept space in twilight land in no man's land two hurrying shapes met face to face and bad each other stand and who are you cried one a gate shuddering in the gloaming light I know not to the second shape I only died last night prescience the new moon hung in the sky the sun was low in the west and my betrothed and I in the churchyard paused to rest happy maiden and lover dreaming the old dream over the light winds wandered by and robins chirped from the nest and low in the meadow sweet was the grave of a little child with a crumbling stone at the feet and the ivy running wild tangled ivy and clover folding it over and over close to my sweet heart's feet was the little mound uppiled stricken with nameless fears she shrank and clung to me and her eyes were filled with tears for a sorrow I did not see lightly the winds were blowing softly her tears were flowing tears for the unknown years and a sorrow that was to be Alec Yeaton's son Gloucester, August 1720 the wind it wailed the wind it moaned and the white caps flecked the sea and I would to God the skipper groaned I had knocked my boy with me snug in the stern sheets little John laughed as the sked swept by but the skipper's sunburned I watched the wicked sky would he were at his mother's side and the skipper's eyes were dim good Lord in heaven if ill-betide what would become of him for me my muscles are as steel for me let hap what may I might make shift upon the keel until the break of day but he he is so weak and small so young scarce learn to stand oh pitying father of us all I trust him in thy hand for thou who marquess from on high a sparrow's fall each one surely oh Lord thou'd have an eye on the Alec Yeaton's son then helm hard port right straight he sailed towards the headland light the wind it moaned the wind it wailed then burst a storm to make one quail though housed from winds and waves they who could tell about almost rise from watery graves sudden it came as sudden went there half the night was sped the winds were hushed the waves were spent and the stars shone overhead now as the morning mist grew thin the folk on Gloucester shore saw a little figure floating in secure on a broken oar up rose the cry a wreck a wreck lights and waste no breath they knew it though it was but a speck upon the edge of death long did they marvel in the town at God his strange decree that let the stalwart skipper drown and the little child go free memory my mind let's go a thousand things like dates of wars and deaths of kings and yet recalls the very hour it was noon by yonder village tower blue noon in May the wind came briskly up this way crisping the brook beside the road then pausing here set down its load of pine scents and shook listlessly two petals from that wild rose tree Tennyson, 1890 one Shakespeare and Milton what third Blazen's name shall lips of after ages link to these his who beside the wild encircling seas was England's voice her voice was one acclaimed for three score years whose word of praise was fame whose scorn gave pause to man's iniquities two what strain was his in that Crimean war a bugle call in battle a low breath plaintive and sweet above the fields of death so year by year the music rolled afar from Uxine to flowery Kandahar bearing the laurel or the cypress wreath three others shall have their little space of time their proper niche and bust then fade away into the darkness poets of a day but thou O builder of enduring rhyme thou shalt not pass by fame in every climb on earth shall live where Saxon's speech has sway four soft me this verse across the winter sea through light and dark through mist and blinding sleet O winter winds and lay it at his feet though the poor gift betray my poverty at his feet lay it it may chance that he will find no gift where reverence is on meat sweetheart sigh no more it was with doubt and trembling I whispered in her ear go take her answer bird on bow the world may hear sweetheart sigh no more sing it sing it's tawny throat upon the wayside tree how fair she is, how true she is how dear she is to me sweetheart sigh no more sing it sing it and through the summer long the winds among the clover tops and brooks for all their silvery stops shall envy you the song sweetheart sigh no more broken music a note all out of tune in this world's instrument Amy Levy I know not in what fashion she was made nor what her voice was when she used to speak nor if the silken lashes threw a shade on one or rosy cheek I pictured her with sorrowful vague eyes illumined with such strange gleams of inner light as linger in the drift of London skies air twilight turns tonight I know not I conjecture it was a girl that with her own most gentle desperate hand from out God's mystic setting flocked life's pearl it's as hard to understand so precious life is even to the old the hours are as miser's coins and she within her hands lay youth's unminted gold and all felicity the winged impetuous spirit the white flame that was her soul once with her has it flown above her brow gray lichens blot her name upon the carbon stone this is her book of verses wren-like notes shy franknesses blind gropings haunting fears at times across the chords abruptly floats a mist of passionate tears a fragile lyre too tensely keyed and strong weirdly incomplete here a proud mind self baffled in self-stung lies coiled in dark defeat Elmwood in memory of James Russell Lohan here in the twilight at the well-known gate I linger with no heart to enter more among the elm tops the autumnal air murmurs and spectral in the fading light a solitary heron wings its way southward save this no sound or touch of life dark is the window where the scholar's lamp was used to catch a pallor from the dawn yet I must need a little linger here each shrub and tree is eloquent of him for tongueless things and silence have their speech this is the path familiar to his foot from infancy to manhood and old age for in a chamber of that ancient house his eyes first opened on the mystery of life and all the splendor of the world here as a child in loving curious way he watched the bluebirds coming learned the date of hyacinth and goldenrod and made friends of those little red men of the elms and slyly added to their winter store of hazelnuts no harmless thing that breathed footed or winged but knew him for a friend the gilded butterfly was not afraid to trust its gold that so gentle hand the bluebird fled not from the pendant spray oh happy childhood ringed with fortunate stars what dreams were his in this enchanted sphere what intuitions of high destiny the honey bees of hybla touched his lips in that old new world garden unawares so in her arms did mother nature fold her poet whispering what of wild and sweet into his ears the state affairs of birds the lore of dawn and sunset what the wind said in the treetops fine unfathomed things henceforth to turn to music in his brain a various music now like notes of flutes and now like blasts of trumpets blown in wars later he paced this leafy academe a student drinking from Greek chalices the ripened vintage of the antique world and here to him came love and loves dear loss here honors came the deep applause of men touched to the heart by some swift-winged word that from his own full heart took eager flight some strain of piercing sweetness or rebuke for underneath his gentle nature flamed a noble scorn for all ignoble deed himself a bondman till all men were free thus passed his manhood then to other lands he strayed a stainless figure among courts beside the men's and ares and the Thames whence after too long exile he returned with fresher laurel but sedater's step and eye more serious feigned to breathe the air where through the Cambridge marshes the blue charles uncoils its length and stretches to the sea stream dear to him at every curve a shrine for pilgrim memory again he watched his loved syringa whitening by the door and knew the cat birds welcome in his walks smiled on his tawny kinsmen of the elms stealing his nuts and in the ruined years sat at his widowed hearth side with bent brows leonine frosty with the breath of time and listened to the crooning of the wind in the wide elmwood chimneys as of old and then the afterglow has faded from the elms and in the denser darkness of the boughs to time the fireflies tiny lamp sparkles how often in still summer dusks he paused to note that transient phantom spark flash on the air a light that outlasts him the night grows chill as if it felt a breath blown from that frozen city where he lies all things turn strange the leaf that rustles here has more than autumn's mournfulness a place as heavy with his absence like fixed eyes once the dear light of sense and thought has fled the vacant windows stare across the lawn the wise sweet spirit that informed it all his other where the house itself is dead a autumn wind among the somber pines breathe you his dirge but be it sweet or low with deep refrains and murmurs of the sea like to his verse the art is yours alone his once you taught him now no voice but yours tender and low a wind among the pines I would remind a liar of richer strings in soft Sicilian accents wrap his name sea longings the first world sound that fell upon my ear was that of the great winds along the coast crushing the deep sea barrel on the rocks the distant breakers sullen cannonade against the spires and gables of the town the white fog drifted catching here and there at over-leaning cornice or peaked roof and hung weird gonfalons the garden walks were choked with leaves and on their ragged beers lay dead the sweets of summer damask rose, clove pink old-fashioned loved New England flowers only keen salt sea odors filled the air sea sounds sea odors these were all my world hence is it that life languishes with me inland the valleys stifle me with gloom and pent up prospect in their narrow bound imagination flutters futile wings vainly I seek the sloping pearl white sand and the mirages phantom citadels miraculous a moment seen then gone among the mountains I am ill at ease missing the stretched horizon's level line and the illimitable restless bloom the crag-torn sky is not the sky I love but one unbroken sapphire spanning all and nobler than the branches of a pine a slant upon a precipice's edge are the strained spars of some great battleship plowing across the sunset no bird's lilt so takes me as the whistling of the gale among the shrouds my cradle song was this strange, inarticulate sorrows of the sea blind rhythms up-gathered from the sirens' caves for chance of earthly voices the last voice that shall in instant my freed spirit stay on this world's verge will be some message blown over the dim saltlands that fringe the coast at dusk or when the transit midnight droops with weight of stars or happily just as dawn illuminating the sullen purple wave turns the gray pools and willows stones to gold a shadow of the night close on the edge of a midsummer's dawn in troubled dreams I went from land to land each seven colors like the rainbow's arc regions were never fancy's foot had trod till then yet all the strangeness seemed not strange at which I wondered reasoning in my dream with two-fold sense while knowing that I slept at last I came to this our cloud-hung earth and somewhere by the sea shore was a grave a woman's grave new-made and heaped with flowers and near it stood an ancient holy man that feign would comfort me who saw out not for this unknown dead woman at my feet but I, because his sacred office held my reverence, listened and to as thus he spake when next thou comest thou shalt find her still in all the rare perfection that she was thou shalt have gentle greeting of thy love her eyelids will have turned to violets her bosom to white lilies and her breath to roses what is lovely never dies but passes into other loveliness stardust or sea foam flower or winged air if this befalls our poor unworthy flesh think thee what destiny awaits the soul what glorious vesture it shall wear at last while yet he spoke seashore and grave and priest vanished and faintly from a neighboring spire fell five slow solemn strokes upon my ear then I woke with a keen pain at my heart a sense of swift unutterable loss and through the darkness reached my hand to touch her cheek soft pillowed on one restful palm to be quite sure outward bound I leave behind me the elm-shadowed square and carven portals of the silent street and wander on with listless vagrant feet through seaward leading alleys till the air smells of the sea and straight away then the care slips from my heart and life once more is sweet at the lanes ending lie the white winged fleet oh restless fancy wither wouldstow fair here are brave pinions that shall take thee far gaunt hulks of Norway ships of red salon slim-masted lovers of the blue azores says but an instant tense to Zanzibar or to the regions of the midnight sun Ionian Isles are thine and all the fairy shores reminiscence though I am native to this frozen zone that half the twelve month torpid lies or dead though the cold azure arching overhead and the Atlantic's never-ending moan are mined by heritage I must have known life other where in epics long since fled for in my veins some orient blood is red and through my thought are lotus blossoms blown I do remember it was just a dusk near a walled garden at the river's turn a thousand summers seemed but yesterday a Nubian girl more sweet than Kordja musk came to the water tank to fill her urn and with the urn she bore my heart away section 36 section 37 of library of the world's best literature ancient and modern volume 1 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 Patty Cunningham library of the world's best literature ancient and modern volume 1 selected short story by Thomas Bailey Aldrich Miss Mahetable's Son part 1 the old tavern at Bailey's Four Corners you will not find Greenton or Bailey's Four Corners as it is more usually designated on any map of New England than I know of it is not a town it is not even a village it is merely an absurd hotel the most indescribable place called Greenton is at the intersection of four roads in the heart of New Hampshire 20 miles from the nearest settlement of note and 10 miles from any railway station a good location for a hotel you will say precisely but there has always been a hotel there and for the last dozen years it has been pretty well patronized by one border not to trifle with an intelligent public I will state at once that in the early part of this century Greenton was a point at which the male coach on the great northern route stopped to change horses and allowed the passengers to dine people in the county wishing to take the early male Portsmouth word put up overnight at the old tavern famous for its irreproachable larder and soft feather beds the tavern at that time was kept by Jonathan Bailey who rivaled his wallet in growing corpulent and in due time passed away at his death the establishment which included a farm fell into the hands of his son-in-law now though Bailey left his son-in-law a hotel which sounds handsome he left him no guests for about that period of the old man's death the old stage coach died also Epiplexi carried off one and steamed the other thus by a sudden swerve in the tide of progress the tavern at the corners found itself high and dry like a wreck on a sand bank shortly after this event or maybe contemporaneously the tavern at Greenton but it apparently failed if eleven sellers choked up with debris and overgrown with verdicts or any indication of failure the farm however was a good farm as things go in New Hampshire and to buy a Sewell, the son-in-law could afford to snap his fingers at the traveling public if they came near enough which they never did the hotel remains today pretty much the same as when Jonathan Bailey handed in his accounts in 1840 as from time to time sold the furniture of some of the upper chambers to bridal couples in the neighborhood the bar is still open and the parlor door says parlor in tall black letters now and then a passing drover looks in at that lonely bar room where a high-shouldered bottle of Santa Cruz rum ogles with a peculiarly knowing air a shriveled lemon on a shelf now and then a farmer rides across the county to talk crops in stock and take a friendly glass with Tobias and a circus caravan with speckled ponies or a menagerie with a soggy elephant halts under the swinging sign on which there is a dim male coach with four phantomish horses driven by a portly gentleman whose head has been washed off by the rain other customers there are none except that one regular border whom I have mentioned if misery makes a man acquainted with strange bedfellows it is equally certain that the profession of surveyor and civil engineer often takes one into undreamed of localities I had never heard of Greenton until my duties sent me there and kept me there two weeks in the dreariest season of the year I do not think I would of my own volition have selected Greenton for a fortnight sojourn at any time but now the business is over I shall never regret the circumstances that made me the guest of Tobias Sewell and brought me into intimate relations with Miss Mahetable's son it was a black October night in the year of Grace 1872 that discovered me standing in front of the old tavern at the corners though the ten miles ride from Cay had been depressing especially the last five miles on account of the cold autumnal rain that had set in I felt a pang of regret on hearing the rickety open wagon turn round in the road and roll off in the darkness there were no lights visible anywhere and only for the big shapeless mass of something in front of me which the driver had said was the hotel a fancy that I had been set down by the roadside I was wet to the skin and in no amiable humor and not being able to find bell, pull or knocker or even a door I belabored the side of the house with my heavy walking stick in a minute or two I saw a light flickering somewhere aloft then I heard the sound of a window opening followed by an exclamation of disgust as a blast of wind extinguished the candle which had given me an instantaneous picture in silhouette of a man leaning out of a casement I say what do you want down there inquired an unprepossessing voice I want to come in I want supper and a bed and numberless things this isn't no time of night to go rousing on as folks out of their sleep who are you anyway the question, superficially considered was a very simple one and I of all people in the world ought to have been able to answer it offhand but it staggered me strangely enough, there came drifting across my memory the lettering on the back of a metaphysical work which I had seen years before on a shelf in the Astor Library owing to an unpremeditatedly funny collocation of dial and author the lettering read as follows who am I Jones evidently it had puzzled Jones to know who he was or he wouldn't have written a book about it and come to so lame and impotent a conclusion it certainly puzzled me at that instant to define my identity thirty years ago I reflected I was nothing fifty years hence I shall be nothing again humanely speaking in the meantime who am I sure enough it had never before occurred to me what an indefinite article I was I wish it had not occurred to me then standing there in the rain in darkness I wrestled vainly with the problem and was constrained to fall back upon a Yankee expedient isn't this a hotel I ask finally well it is a sort of hotel said the voice doubtfully my hesitation and prevarication had apparently not inspired by interlocutor with confidence in me then let me in I have just driven over from K in this infernal reign I am wet through and through but what do you want here at the corners what's your business people don't come here least wise in the middle of the night it isn't the middle of the night I returned incensed I come on business connected with the new road I'm the superintendent of the works oh and if you don't open the door at once I'll raise the whole neighborhood and then go to the other hotel when I said that I suppose Greenton was a village with a population of at least three or four thousand and was wondering vaguely at the absence of lights and other signs of human habitation surely I thought all the people cannot be a bed in a sleep at least ten o'clock perhaps I'm in the business section of town among the shops you just wait said the voice above this request was not devoid of a certain accent of menace and I braced myself for a sorty on the part of the besieged if he had any such hostile intent presently a door opened at the very place where I least expected a door at the farther end of the building in fact and a man in his shirt sleeves shielding a candle with his left hand appeared at the threshold I passed quickly into the house with Mr. Tobias Sewell for this was Mr. Sewell at my heels and found myself in a long low studded bar room there were two chairs drawn up before the hearth on which a huge hemlock backlog was still smoldering and on the unpainted deal counter contiguous stood two cloudy glasses with bits of lemon peel in the bottom hinting at recent libations this colored wall over the bar hung a yellowed handbill in a warped frame announcing that the next annual NH agricultural fair would take place on the 10th of September 1841 there was no other furniture or decoration in this dismal apartment except the cobwebs which festooned the ceiling hanging down here and there like stalactites Mr. Sewell set a candle-stick on the mantel shelf and threw some pine-nuts on the fire which immediately broke into blaze and showed him to be a lank narrow-chested man past sixty with sparse, steel-gray hair and small deep-set eyes perfectly round like a fish's and of no particular color his chief personal characteristics seemed to be too much feet and not enough teeth his sharply cut but rather simple face as he turned toward me wore a look of interrogation I replied to his mute inquiry by taking out my pocket-book and handing him my business-card which he held up to the candle and perused with great deliberation you're a civil engineer, are you? he said, displaying his gums which gave his countenance an expression of almost infantile innocence he made no further audible remark but mumbled between his thin lips something which an imaginative person might have construed into if you're a civil engineer I'll be blessed if I wouldn't like to see an un-civil one Mr. Sewell's growl, however, was worse than his bite owing to his lack of teeth, probably for he very good-naturedly set himself to work preparing supper for me after a slice of cold ham and a warm punch to which my chilled condition gave a grateful flavor I went to bed in a distant chamber in a most amiable mood feeling satisfied that Jones was a donkey to bother himself about his identity when I awoke the sun was several hours high my bed faced a window and by raising myself on one elbow I could look out on what I expected would be the main street to my astonishment, I beheld a lonely country road winding up a sterile hill and disappearing over the ridge in a cornfield at the right of the road was a small private graveyard enclosed by a crumbling stone wall with a red gate the only thing suggestive of life was this little corner lot occupied by death I got out of bed and went to the other window there I had an uninterrupted view of twelve miles of open landscape with Mount Agaminticus in the purple distance not a house or a spire in sight well I exclaimed Greenton doesn't appear to be a very closely packed metropolis that rival hotel with which I had threatened Mr. Sewell overnight was not a deadly weapon looking at it by daylight by Jove I reflected maybe I'm in the wrong place but there, tacked against a panel of the bedroom door was a faded timetable dated Greenton August 1st, 1839 I smiled all the time I was dressing and went smiling downstairs where I found Mr. Sewell assisted by one of the fair sex in the first bloom of her eightieth year serving breakfast for me on a small table in the bar room I overslept myself this morning I remarked apologetically and I see that I am putting you to some trouble in future, if you will have me called I will take my meals at the usual table de hote at the what? said Mr. Sewell I mean with the other borders Mr. Sewell paused in the act of lifting a chop from the fire and resting the point of his fork against the woodwork of the mantelpiece Greent from ear to ear bless you there isn't any other borders there hasn't been anybody put up here since let me see Mr. Sewell then explained how the tavern had lost its custom when the old stage-line was broken up by the railroad the introduction of steam was in Mr. Sewell's estimation a fatal error just killed local business carried it off, I'm darned if I know where the whole country has been sort of retrograding ever since steam was invented Mr. Sewell then explained how the tavern had lost its custom ever since steam was invented you spoke of having one border I said Silas, yes he come here the summer till the died she that was till the Bailey and he's here yet going on 13 year he couldn't live any longer with the old man between you and I old Clem Jaffrey, Silas's father was a hard nut yes, said Mr. Sewell crooked his elbow in inimitable pantomime all together too often found dead in the road hugging a three-gallon demigion habeas corpus in the barn added Mr. Sewell, intending I presume to intimate that a post-mortem examination had been deemed necessary Silas, he resumed in that respectful tome which one should always adopt when speaking of capital is a man of considerable property lives on his interest and keeps a hausse and shea he's a great scholar too, Silas takes all the periodicals and the police gazette regular Mr. Sewell was turning over a third chop when the door opened and a stoutish middle-aged little gentleman clad in deep black stepped into the room Silas Jaffrey, said Mr. Sewell with a comprehensive sweep of his arm picking up me and the newcomer on one fork, so to speak be acquainted Mr. Jaffrey advanced briskly and gave me his hand with unlooked for cordiality he was a dapper little man with a head as round and nearly as bald as an orange and not unlike an orange in complexion either he had twinkling grey eyes and a pronounced Roman nose the numerous freckles upon which were deepened by his funeral dress coat and trousers, he reminded me of Alfred de Mousette's Blackbird which with his yellow beak and somber plumage looked like an undertaker eating an omelet Silas will take care of you, said Mr. Sewell digging down his hat from a peg behind the door I've got the cattle to look after tell him if you want anything while I ate my breakfast, Mr. Jaffrey hopped up and down the narrow bar room and chirped away as blithely as a bird on a cherry-bow occasionally ruffling with his fingers a slight fringe of auburn hair which stood up pertly round his head and seemed to possess a luminous quality of its own don't I find it a little slow at the corners? Not at all, my dear sir I am in the thick of life up here so many interesting things going on all over the world, inventions discoveries, spirits, railroad disasters mysterious homicides poets, murderers, musicians, statesmen distinguished travelers prodigies of all kinds turning up everywhere very few events or persons escape me I take six daily city papers thirteen weekly journals all the monthly magazines and two quarterlies I could not get along with less I couldn't if you asked me I never feel lonely how can I being on intimate terms as it were with thousands and thousands of people there's that young woman out west what an entertaining creature she is now in Missouri, now in Indiana and now in Minnesota always on the go and all the time shedding needles from various parts of her body as if she really enjoyed it then there's that versatile patriarch who walks hundreds of miles and saws thousands of feet of wood before breakfast and shows no signs of giving out then there's that remarkable one may say that historical colored woman who knew Benjamin Franklin and fought at the battle of Bunk... no it is the old Negro man who fought at Bunker Hill a mere infant of course at that period really now it is quite curious to observe how that venerable female slave formerly an African princess is repeatedly dying in her hundred and eleventh year and coming to life again punctually every six months in the small type paragraphs are you aware sir that within the last twelve years no fewer than two hundred and eighty-seven of General Washington's colored coachmen have died for the soul of me I could not tell whether this quaint little gentleman was chaffing me or not I laid down my knife and fork and stared at him then there are the mathematicians he cried vivaciously without waiting for a reply I take great interest in them hear this and Mr. Jaffrey drew a newspaper from a pocket in the tail of his coat and read as follows it has been estimated that if all the candles manufactured by this imminent firm steering and company were placed in to end they would reach two and seven-eighths time around the globe the course continued Mr. Jaffrey holding up the journal reflectively abstruse calculations of this kind are not perhaps of vital importance but they indicate the intellectual activity of the age seriously now he said halting in front of the table what with books and papers and drives about the country I do not find the days too long though I seldom see anyone except when I go over to Kay for my mail existence may be very full to a man who stands a little aside from the tumult and watches it with philosophic eye possibly he may see more of the battle than those who are in the midst of the action once I was struggling with the crowd as eager and undaunted as the best perhaps I should have been struggling still indeed I know my life would have been very different now if I had married mehetebol if I had married mehetebol his vivacity was gone a sudden cloud had come over his bright face his figure seemed to have collapsed the light seemed to have faded out of his hair with a shuffling step the very antithesis of his brisk elastic tread he turned to the door and passed into the road well I said to myself if Greenton had forty thousand inhabitants it couldn't turn out a more astonishing old party than that part two the case of Silas Jaffrey a man with a passion for bric-a-brac is always stumbling over antique bronzes intaglios mosaics and daggers of the time of Benevuto Cellini the bibliophile finds creamy vellum folios and rare aldises and elzavirs waiting for him at unsuspected bookstalls the numismatist has but to stretch forth his palm to have priceless coins dropped into it my own weakness is odd people and I am constantly encountering them it was plain that I had unearthed a couple of very queer specimens at Bailey's Four Corners I saw that a fortnight afforded me to brief an opportunity to develop the richness of both and I resolved to devote my spare time to Mr. Jaffrey alone instinctively recognizing in him an unfamiliar species my professional work in the vicinity of Greenton left my evenings and occasionally an afternoon unoccupied these intervals I proposed to employ in studying and classifying my fellow border it was necessary, as a preliminary step to learn something of his previous history and to this end I addressed myself to Mr. Sewell that same night I do not want to seem inquisitive I said to the landlord as he was fastening up the bar which, by the way, was the salamander and general sitting-room I do not want to seem inquisitive but your friend Mr. Jaffrey dropped a remark this morning at breakfast which which was not altogether clear to me about Mahetabel asked Mr. Sewell uneasily yes well, I wish he wouldn't he was friendly enough in the course of conversation to hint to me that he had not married the young woman and seemed to regret it no, he didn't marry Mahetabel may I acquire why he didn't marry Mahetabel? never asked her might have married the girl forty times old Elkin's daughter over at Kay she'd have had him quick enough seven years off and on he kept company with Mahetabel and then she died and he never asked her he shillyshallied perhaps he didn't think of it when she was dead and gone then Silas was struck all of a heap and that's all about it obviously Mr. Sewell did not intend to tell me anything more and obviously there was more to tell the topic was plainly disagreeable to him for some reason or other and that unknown reason, of course piqued my curiosity as I was absent from dinner and supper that day I did not meet Mr. Jaffrey again until the following morning at breakfast he had recovered his bird-like manner and was full of a mysterious assassination that had just taken place in New York all the thrilling details of which were at his fingers ends it was at once comical and sad to see this harmless old gentleman leave benevolent countenance in his thin hair, flaming up in a semicircle like the footlights at a theater reveling in the intricacies of the unmentionable deed you come up to my room tonight he cried with horrid glee and I'll give you my theory of the murder I'll make it as clear as day to you that it was the detective himself who fired the three pistol shots it was not so much the desire to have this point elucidated as to make a closer study of Mr. Jaffrey that led me to accept his invitation Mr. Jaffrey's bedroom was in an L of the building and was in no way noticeable except for the numerous files of newspapers neatly arranged against the blank spaces of the walls and a huge pile of old magazines which stood in one corner reaching nearly up to the ceiling and threatening to topple over each instant like the Leaning Tower at Pisa there were green paper shades at the windows some faded chintz balances about the bed and two or three easy chairs covered with chintz on a black walnut shelf between the windows lay a choice collection of Mirsham and Briarwood Pipes filling one of the chocolate-colored bowls for me and another for himself Mr. Jaffrey began prattling but not about the murder which appeared to have flown out of his mind in fact I do not remember that the topic was even touched upon either then or afterwards cozy nest this said Mr. Jaffrey recently over the apartment what is more cheerful now in the fall of the year than an open wood fire do you hear those little chirps and twitters coming out of that piece of applewood those are the ghosts of the robins and blue birds that sang upon the bow when it was in Blossom last spring in summer whole flocks of them come fluttering about the fruit trees under the window so I have singing birds all the year round I take it very easy here I can tell you summer and winter not much society Tobias is not perhaps what one would term a great intellectual force but he means well he's a realist, believes in coming down to what he calls the hard pan but his heart is in the right place and he's very kind to me the wisest thing I ever did in my life was to sell out my grain business over at Kay 13 years ago and settle down at the corners when a man has made a competency what does he want more besides at that time an event occurred which destroyed any ambition I may have had Mehettable died the lady you were engaged to no, not precisely engaged I think it was quite understood between us though nothing had been said on the subject Typhoid added Mr. Jaffrey in a low voice for several minutes he smoked in silence a vague, troubled look playing over his countenance presently this passed away then he fixed his grey eyes speculatively upon my face if I had married Mehettable said Mr. Jaffrey slowly and then he hesitated I blew a ring of smoke into the air and resting my pipe on my knee dropped into an attitude of attention if I had married Mehettable, you know we should have had a hum, a family very likely I assented vastly amused at this unexpected turn a boy exclaimed Mr. Jaffrey explosively by all means certainly a son great trouble about naming the boy Mehettable's family want him named Alcana Elkins after her grandfather I want him named Andrew Jackson we compromise by christening him Alcana Elkins Andrew Jackson Jaffrey rather a long name for such a short little fellow said Mr. Jaffrey musingly Andy isn't a bad dick name I suggested not at all we call him Andy in the family somewhat fractious at first colic and things I suppose it is right or it wouldn't be so but the usefulness of measles mumps, croup, hooping cough scarletina and fits is not clear to the parental eye I wish Andy would be a model infant and dodge the whole lot this supposition's child born within the last few minutes was plainly assuming the proportions of a reality to Mr. Jaffrey I began to feel a little uncomfortable I am as I have said a civil engineer and it is not strictly in my line to assist at the births of infants imaginary or otherwise I pulled away vigorously at the pipe and said nothing what large blue eyes he has resumed Mr. Jaffrey after a pause just like headies and the fair hair too like hers how oddly certain distinctive features are handed down in families sometimes a mouth, sometimes a turn of the eyebrow wicked little boys over at K have now and then derisively advised me to follow my nose it would be an interesting thing to do I should find my nose flying about the world turning up unexpectedly here and there dodging this branch of the family and reappearing in that now jumping over one great grandchild to fasten itself upon another and never losing its individuality look at Andy there's Elkanna Elkin's chin to the life Andy's chin is probably older than the pyramids poor little thing he cried with sudden indescribable tenderness to lose his mother so early and Mr. Jaffrey's head sunk upon his breast and his shoulders slanted forward as if he were actually bending over the cradle of the child the whole gesture and attitude was so natural that it startled me the pipe slipped from my fingers to the floor hush! whispered Mr. Jaffrey with a deprecating motion of his hand Andy's asleep he rose softly from the chair and walking across the room on tiptoe drew down the shade at the window through which the moonlight was streaming then he returned to his seat and remained gazing with half-closed eyes into the dropping embers I refilled my pipe and smoked in profound silence wondering what would come next but nothing came next Mr. Jaffrey had fallen into so brown a study that a quarter of an hour afterwards when I wished him good night and withdrew I do not think he noticed my departure I am not what is called a man of imagination it is my habit to exclude most things not capable of mathematical demonstration but I am not without a certain psychological insight and I think I understood Mr. Jaffrey's case I could easily understand how a man with an unhealthy, sensitive nature overwhelmed by sudden calamity might take refuge in some falorn place like this old tavern and dream his life away to such a man brooding forever on what might have been and dwelling wholly on the realm of his fancies the actual world might indeed become as a dream and nothing seemed real but his illusions I dare say that 13 years of Bailey's Four Corners would have its effect upon me though instead of conjuring up golden-haired children of the Madonna I should probably see gnomes and kobolds and goblins engaged in hoisting false signals and misplacing switches for midnight express trains no doubt I said to myself that night as I lay in bed thinking over the matter this once possible but now impossible child is a great comfort to the old gentleman a greater comfort perhaps than a real son would be maybe Andy will vanish with the shades and mists of night he is such an unsubstantial infant but if he doesn't and Mr. Jaffrey finds pleasure in talking to me about his son I shall humor the old fellow it wouldn't be a Christian act to knock over his harmless fancy I was very impatient to see if Mr. Jaffrey's illusion would stand the test of daylight it did Alkenna Elkins Andrew Jackson Jaffrey was so to speak alive and kicking the next morning on taking his seat at the breakfast table Mr. Jaffrey whispered to me that Andy had had a comfortable night Silas said Mr. Sewell sharply what are you whispering about Mr. Sewell was in an ill humor perhaps he was jealous because I had passed the evening in Mr. Jaffrey's room but surely Mr. Sewell could not expect his borders to go to bed at eight o'clock every night as he did from time to time during the meal Mr. Sewell regarded me unkindly out of the corner of his eye and in helping me to the parsnips he started them with quite a suggestive air all this however did not prevent me from repairing to the door of Mr. Jaffrey's snuggery when night came well Mr. Jaffrey how's Andy this evening got a tooth cried Mr. Jaffrey vivaciously no yes he has just through give the nurse a silver dollar standing reward for first tooth it was on the tip of my tongue to express surprise that an infant cut a tooth when I suddenly recollected that Richard the third was born with teeth feeling myself to be on unfamiliar ground I suppressed my criticism it was well I did so for in the next breath I was advised that half a year had elapsed since the previous evening and he's had a hard six months of it said Mr. Jaffrey with the well-known narrative air of fathers we've brought him up by hand his grandfather by the way was brought up by the bottle and brought down by it too I added mentally recalling Mr. Sewell's account of the old gentleman's tragic end Mr. Jaffrey then went on to give me a history of Andy's first six months amending no detail however insignificant or irrelevant this history I would in turn inflict upon the reader if I were only certain that he is one of those dreadful parents who under the ages of friendship bore you at the street corner with that remarkable thing which Freddie said the other day and insist on singing to you at an evening party the Iliad of Tommy's woes but to inflict this infantilage upon the unmarried reader would be an act of wanton cruelty so I pass over that part of Andy's biography and for the same reason make no record of the next four or five interviews I had with Mr. Jaffrey it will be sufficient to state that Andy glided from extreme infancy to early youth with astonishing celerity at the rate of one year per night if I remember correctly and, must I confess it before the week came to an end this invisible hobgoblin of a boy was only a little less of a reality to me than to Mr. Jaffrey at first I had lent myself to the old dreamer's whim with a keen perception of the humor of the thing but by and by I found that I was talking and thinking of Miss Mahetable's son as though he were a veritable personage Mr. Jaffrey spoke of the child with such an air of conviction as if Andy were playing among his toys in the next room or making mud pies down in the yard in these conversations it should be observed the child was never supposed to be present except on that single occasion when Mr. Jaffrey leaned over the cradle after one of our séances I would lie awake until the small hours thinking of the boy and then fall asleep only to have indigestible dreams about him through the day and sometimes in the midst of complicated calculations I would catch myself wondering what Andy was up to now there was no shaking him off he became an inseparable nightmare to me and I felt that if I remained much longer at Bailey's Four Corners I should turn into just such another bald-headed mild-eyed visionary as Silas Jaffrey then the tavern was a gruesome old shell anyway full of unaccountable noises after dark rustlings of garments along unfrequented passages and stealthy footfalls in unoccupied chambers overhead I never knew of an old house without these noises next to my bedroom was a musty dismantled apartment in one corner of which leaning against the wainscote was a crippled mangle with its iron crank tilted in the air like the elbow of the late Mr. Clem Jaffrey sometimes in the dead vast in middle of the night I used to hear sounds as if someone were turning that rusty crank on the sly this occurred only on particularly cold nights and I conceived the uncomfortable idea that it was the thin family ghosts from the neglected graveyard in the cornfield keeping themselves warm by running each other through the mangle there was a haunted air about the whole place that made it easy for me to believe in the existence of a phantasm like Miss Mahetable's son who after all was less unearthly than Mr. Jaffrey himself and seemed more properly an inhabitant of this globe than the toothless ogre who kept the inn not to mention the silent witch of Endor that cooked our meals for us over a far room fire in spite of the scowls and winks bestowed upon me by Mr. Sewell who let slip no opportunity to testify his disapprobation of the intimacy Mr. Jaffrey and I spent all our evenings together those long autumnal evenings through the length of which he talked about the boy laying out his path in life and hedging the path with roses he should be sent to the high school at Portsmouth and then to college he should be educated like a gentleman when the old man dies remark Mr. Jaffrey one night rubbing his hands gleefully as if it were a great joke Andy will find that the old man has left him a pretty plum what do you think of having Andy enter West Point when he's old enough said Mr. Jaffrey on another occasion he needn't necessarily go into the army when he graduates he can become a civil engineer this was a stroke of flattery so delicate and indirect that I could accept it without immodesty there had lately sprung up on the corner of Mr. Jaffrey's bureau a small ten house gothic and architecture and pink in color with a slit in the roof and the word bank painted on one facade several times in the course of an evening Mr. Jaffrey would rise from his chair without interrupting the conversation and gravely drop a nickel into the scuttle of the bank it was pleasant to observe the solemnity of his countenance as he approached the edifice and the air of triumph with which he resumed that night I missed the ten bank it had disappeared deposits and all like a real bank evidently there had been a defalcation on rather a large scale I strongly suspected that Mr. Sewell was at the bottom of it but my suspicion was not shared by Mr. Jaffrey who remarking at my glance at the bureau became suddenly depressed I'm afraid he said that I have failed to instill into Andrew those principles of integrity which which and gentlemen quite broke down Andy was now eight or nine years old and for some time past if the truth must be told had given Mr. Jaffrey no inconsiderable trouble what with his impishness and his illnesses the boy led the pair of us a lively dance I shall not soon forget the anxiety of Mr. Jaffrey the night Andy had the scarlet fever an anxiety which so infected me that I actually returned to the tavern the following afternoon earlier than here that the little specter was dead and greatly relieved on meeting Mr. Jaffrey at the doorstep with his face read thin smiles when I spoke to him of Andy I was made aware that I was inquiring into a case of scarlet fever that had occurred the year before it was at this time towards the end of my second week at Greenton that I noticed what was probably not a new trait Mr. Jaffrey's curious sensitiveness to the atmosphere changes he was a thermometer the approach of a storm sent his mercury down instantly when the weather was fair he was hopeful and sunny and Andy's prospects were brilliant when the weather was overcast and threatening he grew restless and despondent and was afraid that the boy was not going to turn out well on the Saturday previous to my departure which had been fixed for Monday it rained heavily all the afternoon and that night Mr. Jaffrey was in an unusually excitable and unhappy mind his mercury was very low indeed that boy is going to the dogs just as fast as he can go said Mr. Jaffrey with a woeful face I can't do anything with him he'll come out all right Mr. Jaffrey boys will be boys I would not give a snap for a lad without animal spirits but animal spirits said Mr. Jaffrey's intentionally shouldn't saw off the legs of the piano into bias his best parlor I don't know what Tobias would say when he finds it out what has Andy sought off the legs of the old spin it I returned laughing worse than that played upon it then no sir he has lied to me I can't believe that of Andy lied to me sir repeated Mr. Jaffrey severely he pledged me his word of honor that he would give over his climbing the way that boy climbed since it chilled down my spine this morning not withstanding his solemn promise he shinnied up the lightning rod attachment to the extension and satisfied the ridge pole I saw him and he denied it when a boy you have caressed and indulged and lavish pocket money on lies to you and will climb then there's nothing more to be said he's a lost child you take too dark a view of it Mr. Jaffrey training and education are bound to tell in the end and he's been well brought up but I didn't bring him up on the lightning rod did I if he is ever going to know how to behave he ought to know now tomorrow he will be 11 years old the reflection came to me that if Andy had not been brought up by the rod he had certainly been brought up by the lightning he was 11 years old in two weeks I essayed with that perspicacious wisdom which seems to be the peculiar property of bachelors and elderly maiden ladies to tranquilize Mr. Jaffrey's mind and to give him some practical hints on the management spank him I suggested at last I will said the old gentleman and you'd better do it at once I added as it flashed upon me that in six months Andy would be 143 years old an age at which parental discipline would have to be relaxed the next morning Sunday the rain came down as if determined to drive the quick silver entirely out of my poor friend Mr. Jaffrey set bolt upright at the breakfast table looking as woe begone as a bust of Dante and retired to his chamber the moment the meal was finished as the day advanced the wind veered round to the northeast and settled itself down to work it was not pleasant to think and I tried not to think what Mr. Jaffrey's condition would be if the weather did not mend its manners by noon but so far from clearing off at noon the storm increased in violence and as night set in the wind whistled in a spiteful falsetto key and the rain lashed the old tavern as if it were a bulky horse that refused to move on the windows rattled in the worm-eaten frames and the doors of remote rooms where nobody ever went slammed too in the maddest way now and then the tornado sweeping down the side of Mount Agaminticus bold across the open country and struck the ancient hostel repoint blank Mr. Jaffrey did not appear at supper that he was expecting me to come to his room as usual and I turned over in my mind a dozen plans to evade seeing him that night the landlord sat at the opposite side of the chimney-place with his eye upon me I fancy he was aware of the effect of this storm on his other border for at intervals as the wind hurled itself against the exposed gable threatening to burst in the windows Mr. Sewell tipped me an atrocious wink and displayed his gums in a way that he had not the morning after my arrival at Greenton I wondered if he suspected anything about Andy there had been odd times during the past week when I felt convinced that the existence of Miss Mahetable's son was no secret to Mr. Sewell in deference to the gale the landlord set up half an hour later than was his custom at half past eight he went to bed remarking that he thought the old pile would stand till morning he had been absent only a few minutes when I heard a wrestling at the door I looked up and beheld Mr. Jaffrey standing on the threshold with his dress in disorder his scant hair flying and the wildest expression on his face he's gone cried Mr. Jaffrey who Sewell yes he just went to bed no not Tobias the boy what run away no he is dead he has fallen from a step ladder in the red chamber and broken his neck Mr. Jaffrey threw up his hands in a gesture of despair and disappeared I followed him through the hall saw him go into his own apartment and heard the bolt of the door drawn too then I returned to the bar room and sat for an hour or two in the ready glow of the fire brooding over this strange experience of the last fortnight on my way to bed I paused at Mr. Jaffrey's door and in a lull of the storm the measured respiration within told me that I was going peacefully slumber was coy with me that night I lay listening to the sighing of the wind and thinking of Mr. Jaffrey's illusion it had amused me at first with its grotesqueness but now the poor little phantom was dead I was conscious that there had been something pathetic in it all along shortly after midnight the wind sunk down coming and going fainter and fainter floating around the eaves of the tavern with an undulating murmurous sound as if it were turning itself into soft wings to bear away the spirit of a little child perhaps nothing that happened during my stay at Bailey's Four Corners took me so completely by surprise as Mr. Jaffrey's radiant countenance the next morning the morning itself was not fresher or sunnier his round face literally shone with geniality and happiness his eyes twinkled like diamonds and the magnetic light of his hair was turned on full he came into my room while I was packing and chirped and praddled and caroled and was sorry I was going away but never a word about Andy however the boy had probably been dead several years by then the open wagon that was to carry me to the station stood at the door Mr. Sewell was placing my case of instruments under the seat and Mr. Jaffrey had gone up to his room to get me a certain newspaper containing an account of a remarkable shipwreck on the Auckland Islands I took the opportunity to thank Mr. Sewell for his courtesies to me and to express my regret at leaving him and Mr. Jaffrey I have become very much attached to Mr. Jaffrey I said he is a most interesting person but that hypothetical boy of his that son of Miss Mahetibals yes I know interrupted Mr. Sewell testily fell off a stepladder and broke his dreaded neck eleven year old wasn't he always does just at that point next week Silas will begin the whole thing over again so that we can get anybody to listen to him I see our amiable friend is a little queer on that subject Mr. Sewell glanced cautiously over his shoulder and tapping himself significantly on the forehead said in a low voice room to let unfurnished End of section 37 Recording by Patty Cunningham