 A cosmopolite in a café, originally printed in the four million. This is a LibriVox recording, all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Narration by Ezwa. A cosmopolite in a café, by O. Henry. At midnight, the café was crowded. By some chance, the little table at which I sat had escaped the eye of incomers, and two vacant chairs at it extended their arms with venal hospitality to the influx of patrons. And then a cosmopolite sat in one of them, and I was glad, for I held a theory that since Adam no true citizen of the world has existed. We hear of them, and we see foreign labels on much luggage, but we find travellers instead of cosmopolites. I invoke your consideration of the scene. The marble-topped tables, the range of leather-upholstered wall seats, the gay company, the ladies dressed in demistate toilets, speaking in an exquisite visible chorus of taste, economy, opulence or art, the sedolace and largest loving garçon, the music wisely catering to all with its raids upon the composers, the melange of talk and laughter, and, if you will, the Vusburger in the tall glass cones that bend to your lips as a ripe cherries sways on its branch to the beak of a rubber jay. I was told by a sculptor from Mouchchunk that the scene was truly Parisian. My cosmopolite was named E. Rushmore Coglain, and he will be heard from next summer at Coney Island. He is to establish a new attraction there, he informed me, offering kingly diversion, and then his conversation rang along parallels of latitude and longitude. He took the great round world in his hands, so to speak, familially, contemptuously, and it seemed no larger than the seed of a maraschino cherry in a tabledoed grapefruit. He spoke de-respectfully of the equator. He skipped from continent to continent. He derided the zones. He mopped up the high seas with his napkin. With a wave of his hand, he would speak of a certain bazaar in Hyderabad, whiff, he would have you on skis in Lapland. Sip! Now you rode the breakers with the kanakas at Kelaikahiki. Presto! He dragged you through a dark and supposed oak swamp, let you dry for a moment on the alkali plains of his Aidao ranch, then whirled you into the society of Viennese archdukes. Anon, he would be telling you of a cold hair quiet in the Chicago lake breeze, and how old Escamilla cured it in Buenos Aires with a hot infusion of the chuchela weed. You would have addressed the letter to E. Rushmore Coglan, Esquire, the earth, solar system, the universe, and have mailed it, feeling confident that it would be delivered to him. I was sure that I had at last found the one true cosmopolite since Adam, and I listened to his worldwide discourse, fearful lest I should discover in its local note of the mere globe trotter. But his opinions never fluttered or drooped. He was as impartial to cities, countries, and continents as the winds of gravitation. And as E. Rushmore Coglan prattled of this little planet, I thought with glee of a great oldmos cosmopolite who wrote for the whole world and dedicated himself to Bombay. In a poem, he has to say that there is pride and rivalry between the cities of the earth, and that the man that breathed from them, they traffic up and down, but cling to their citizens as a child to the mother's gown. And whenever they walk, by roaring streets unknown, they remember their native city, most faithful, foolish, fond, making her mere breathed name their bond upon their bond. And my glee was roused because I had caught Mr. Kipling napping. Here, I had found a man not made from dust, one who had no narrow boost of birthplace or country, one who, if he bragged at all, would brag of his whole round globe against the Martians and the inhabitants of the moon. Expression on these subjects was precipitated from E. Rushmore Coglan by the third corner to our table. While Coglan was describing to me the topography along the Siberian railway, the orchestra glided into a medley. The concluding air was Dixie, and as the exhilarating notes tumbled forth, they were almost overpowered by a great clapping of hands from almost every table. It is worth a paragraph to say that this remarkable scene can be witnessed every evening in numerous cafes in the city of New York. Tons of brew have been consumed over theories to account for it. Some have conjectured hastily that all southerners in town hide themselves to cafes at nightfall. This applause of the rebel air in a northern city does puzzle a little, but it is not insolvable. The war with Spain, many years generous mint and watermelon crops, a few long shot winners at the New Orleans race track, and the brilliant banquets given by the Indiana and Kansas citizens who composed the North Carolina Society, have made the South rather a fad in Manhattan. Your manicure will least softly that your left forefinger reminds her so much of a gentleman's enrichment Virginia. Oh, certainly. But many a lady has to work now. The war, you know. When Dixie was being played, a dark-haired young man sprang up from somewhere with a must-be guerrilla yell, and waved frantically his soft brimmed hat. Then he strayed through the smoke, dropped into the vacant chair at our table, and pulled out cigarettes. The evening was at the period when reserve is thawed. One of us mentioned three Vusburgers to the waiter. The dark-haired young man acknowledged his inclusion in the order by a smile and a nod. I hastened to ask him a question because I wanted to try out a theory I had. Would you mind telling me? I began. Where are you from? The feast of E. Rush Mokoglian banged at the table as I was jarred into silence. Excuse me, said he. But that's a question I never like to hear asked. What does it matter where a man is from? Is it fair to judge a man by his post-office address? Why, I've seen Kentuckians who hated whiskey, Virginians who weren't descended from Pocahontas, Indians who hadn't written a novel, Mexicans who didn't wear velvet trousers with silver dollars sewed along the seams, funny Englishmen, spendthrift Yankees, cold-blooded Southerners, narrow-minded Westerners, and New Yorkers who were too busy to stop for an hour on the street to watch a one-armed grocers' clerk do up cranberries and paper bags. Let a man be a man, and don't handicap him with the label of any section. Pardon me. I said. But my curiosity was not altogether an idle one. I know the South, and when the band plays Dixie I like to observe. I have formed the belief that the man who applause that air with special violence and ostensible sectional loyalty is invariably a native of either Sikakis, New Jersey, or the district between Murray Hill Lyceum and the Harlem River, this city. I was about to put my opinion to the test by inquiring of this gentleman. When you interrupted with your own larger theory, I must confess. And now the dark-haired young man spoke to me, and it became evident that his mind also moved along its own set of grooves. I should like to be a periwinkle. Said he mysteriously. On the top of a valley and sing, Tu-ra-lu-ra-lu. This was clearly too obscure, so I turned again to Coglan. I have been around the world twelve times. Said he. I know an Eskimo and a Pernovic who sends to Cincinnati for his neck ties. And I saw a goat herder in Uruguay who won a prize in a Battle Creek Breakfast Food Puzzle competition. I pay rent on a room in Cairo, Egypt, and another in Yokohama all year round. I've got slippers waiting for me in a tea-house in Shanghai, and I don't have to tell them how to cook my eggs in Rio de Janeiro or Seattle. It's a mighty little old world. What's the use of bragging about being from the north or the south, or the old manor house in the dale, or Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, or Pike's Peak, or Fairfax County, Virginia, or Hooligan's Flats, or any place? It'll be a better world when we quit being fools about some mildewed town or ten acres of Swampland, just because we happened to be born there. You seem to be a genuine cosmopolite. I said admiringly. But it also seems that you would decry patriotism. A relic of the Stone Age. Declared coagulant warmly. We are all brothers, Chinamen, Englishmen, Zulus, Patagonians, and the people in the bend of the Caer River. Someday all this petty pride in one's city or state or section or country will be wiped out, and we'll all be citizens of the world as we ought to be. But while you are wandering in foreign lands, I persisted. Do not your thoughts revert to some spot, some deer, and Narya spot, interrupted E.R. coagulant flippantly? The terrestrial globular planetary hunk of matter slightly flattened at the poles and known as the Earth is my abode. I've met a good many object-bound citizens of this country abroad, and I've seen men from Chicago sit in a gondola in Venice on a moonlit night and brag about their drainage canal. I've seen a Southerner on being introduced to the King of England, hand that monarch without batting his eyes the information that his grand-aunt on his mother's side was related by marriage to the Perkinses of Charleston. I knew a New Yorker who was kidnapped for ransom by some Afghanistan bandits. His people sent over the money, and he came back to Kabul with the agent. Afghanistan, the natives said to him through an interpreter, well, not so slow, do you think? Oh, I don't know, says he, and he begins to tell them about a cab driver at Sixth Avenue and Broadway. Those ideas don't suit me. I'm not tied down to anything that isn't eight thousand miles in diameter. Just put me down as E. Rushmore Coglan, citizen of the terrestrial sphere. My cosmopolite made a large adieu and left me, for he thought that he saw someone through the chatter and smoke whom he knew. So I was left with the would-be periwinkle, who was reduced to Wussburger without further ability to voice his aspirations to purge melodious upon the summit of Valle. I set reflecting upon my evident cosmopolite and wondering how the poet had managed to miss him. He was my discovery, and I believed in him. How was it? The man that breathed from them, they'd traffic up and down, but cling to their citizen as a child to the mother's gown. Not so E. Rushmore Coglan, with the whole world for his. My meditations were interrupted by a tremendous noise and conflict in another part of the café. I saw above the heads of the seated patrons, E. Rushmore Coglan, and a stranger to me, engaged in terrific battle. They fought between the tables like titans, and glasses crashed, and men caught their hats up and were knocked down, and a brunette screamed, and a blond began to sing teasing. My cosmopolite was sustaining the pride and reputation of the earth, when the waiters closed in on both combatants with their famous flying wedge formation, and bore them outside, still resisting. I called Macarfe, one of the French garçons, and asked him because of the conflict. The man with the red tie. That was my cosmopolite, C. D. Got hot on account of things said about the bum sidewalks and water supplies, the place he come from by the other guy. Why? Said I, bewildered. That man is a citizen of the world, a cosmopolite. He... Originally from Atamkiag, Maine, he said, continued Macarfe. And he wouldn't stand for no knocking the place. End of A Cosmopolite in a Café by O. Henry, narration by Ezwa, narrators voiced by Julian Jamison, E. Rushmore Coglan, the cosmopolite Michael Yard, Tucson, Arizona Mysterious Dark-Heads, Young Man by Justin Barrett, Forney, Texas French Waiter by Shurtical The Dead Mother, author unknown. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to find out how to volunteer, please contact LibriVox.org. Recording by Peter Yersley In a certain village there lived a husband and wife, lived happily, lovingly, peaceably. All their neighbours envied them. The sight of them gave pleasure to honest folks. Well, the mistress bore a son, but directly after it was born she died. The poor, moujik, moaned and wept. Above all, he was in despair about the babe. How was he to nourish it now? Hard to bring it up without its mother. He did what was best, and hired an old woman to look after it. Only here was a wonder. All day long the babe would take no food, and did nothing but cry, and there was no soothing it anyhow. But during a great part of the night, one could fancy it wasn't there at all. So silently and so peacefully did it sleep. What's the meaning of this, thinks the old woman? Suppose I keep awake to-night. Maybe I shall find out. Well, just at midnight she heard someone quietly open the door and go up to the cradle. The babe became still, just as if it was being suckled. The next night the same thing took place, and the third night too. Then she told the moujik about this. He called his kinsfolk together and held council with them. They determined on this to keep awake on a certain night and to spy out who it was that came to suckle the babe. So at even tide they all lay down on the floor, and beside them they set a lighted taper hidden in an earthen pot. At midnight the cottage door opened. Someone stepped up to the cradle. The babe became still. At that moment one of the kinsfolk suddenly brought out the light. They looked, and saw the dead mother in the very same clothes in which she had been buried, on her knees beside the cradle, over which she bent as she suckled the babe at her dead breast. The moment the light shone in the cottage she stood up, gazed sadly on her little one, and then went out of the room without a sound, not saying a word to anyone. All those who saw her stood for a time terror struck, and then they found the babe was dead. End of THE DEAD MOTHER THE HALF BROTHERS My mother was twice married. She never spoke of her first husband, and it is only from other people that I have learnt what little I know about him. I believe she was scarcely seventeen when she was married to him, and he was barely one and twenty. He rented a small farm up in Cumberland, somewhere towards the sea coast, but he was perhaps too young and inexperienced to have the charge of land and cattle. Anyhow, his affairs did not prosper, and he fell into ill health, and died of consumption before they had been three years man and wife. Leaving my mother a young widow of twenty, with a little child only just able to walk, and the farm on her hands for four years more by the lease, with half the stock on it dead, or sold off one by one to pay the more pressing debts, and with no money to purchase more, or even to buy the provisions needed for the small consumption of every day. There was another child coming too, and sad and sorry, I believe, she was to think of it. A dreary winter she must have had in her lonesome dwelling, with never another near it for miles around. Her sister came to bear her company, and they too planed and plotted how to make every penny they could raise go as far as possible. I can't tell you how it happened that my little sister, whom I never saw, came to sicken and die, but as if my poor mother's cup was not full enough. Only a fortnight before Gregory was born the little girl took ill of scarlet fever, and in a week she lay dead. My mother was, I believe, just stunned with this last blow. My aunt has told me that she did not cry, Aunt Fanny would have been thankful if she had, but she sat holding the poor wee Lassie's hand and looking in her pretty pale dead face, without so much as shedding a tear. And it was all the same when they had to take her away to be buried. She just kissed the child and sat her down in the window seat to watch the little black train of people, neighbors, my aunt, and one far-off cousin, who were all the friends they could muster, go winding away amongst the snow, which had fallen thinly over the country the night before. When my aunt came back from the funeral, she found my mother in the same place and as dry-eyed as ever. So she continued until after Gregory was born, and somehow his coming seemed to loosen the tears. And she cried day and night, till my aunt and the other watcher looked at each other in dismay, and would feign have stopped her if they had but known how. But she made them let her alone, and not be over-anxious, for every drop she shed eased her brain, which had been in a terrible state before for want of the power to cry. She seemed after that to think of nothing but her new little baby. She had hardly appeared to remember either her husband or her little daughter that lay dead in Brigham Churchyard. At least so aunt Fanny said, but she was a great talker, and my mother was very silent by nature, and I think aunt Fanny may have been mistaken in believing that my mother never thought of her husband and child just because she never spoke about them. Aunt Fanny was older than my mother, and had a way of treating her like a child, but for all that she was a kind, warm-hearted creature who thought more of her sister's welfare than she did of her own, and it was on her bit of money that they principally lived, and I want the two could earn by working for the great Glasgow Sewing Merchants. But by and by my mother's eyesight began to fail. It was not that she was exactly blind, for she could see well enough to guide herself about the house, and to do a good deal of domestic work, but she could no longer do fine sewing and earn money. It must have been very heavy crying she had had in her day, for she was but a young creature at this time, and as pretty a young woman I have heard people say as any on the countryside. She took it sadly to heart that she could no longer gain anything towards the keep of herself and her child. My aunt Fanny would fame have persuaded her that she had enough to do in managing their cottage and minding Gregory, but my mother knew that they were pinched, and that Aunt Fanny herself had not as much to eat, even on the commonest kind of food, as she could have done with, and as to Gregory he was not a strong lad, and needed not more food, for he always had enough to ever went short but better nourishment and more flesh meat. One day it was Aunt Fanny who told me all this about my poor mother, long after her death, as the sisters were sitting together, Aunt Fanny working, and my mother hushing Gregory to sleep. We impressed him, who was afterwards my father came in. He was reckoned an old bachelor, I suppose he was long past 40, and he was one of the wealthiest farmers thereabouts, and had known my grandfather well, and my mother and my aunt in their more prosperous days. He sat down and began to twirl his hat by way of being agreeable. My Aunt Fanny talked, and he listened and looked at my mother, but he said very little, either on that visit, or on many another that he paid before he spoke out, what had been the real purpose of his calling, so often all along, and from the very first time he came to their house. One Sunday, however, my Aunt Fanny stayed away from church, and took care of the child, and my mother went alone. When she came back, she ran straight upstairs, without going into the kitchen to look at Gregory, or speak word to her sister. Then Aunt Fanny heard her cry as if her heart was breaking, so she went up and scolded her right well through the bolted door, till at last she got her to open it. And then she threw herself on my aunt's neck, and told her that William Preston had asked her to marry him, and had promised to take good charge of her boy, and to let him want for nothing, neither in the way of keep nor of education, and that she had consented. Aunt Fanny was a good deal shocked at this, for as I have said, she had often thought that my mother had forgotten her first husband very quickly, and now here was proof positive of it, if she could so soon think of marrying again. Besides, as Aunt Fanny used to say, she herself would have been a far more suitable match for a man of William Preston's age than Helen, who, though she was a widow, had not seen her fore and twentieth summer. However, as Aunt Fanny said, they had not asked her advice, and there was much to be said on the other side of the question. William Preston's eyesight would never be good for much again, and as William Preston's wife, she would never need to do anything. If she chose to sit with her hands before her, and a boy was a great charge to a widowed mother, and now there would be a decent steady man to see after him. So, by and by, Aunt Fanny seemed to take a brighter view of the marriage, than did my mother herself, who hardly ever looked up, and never smiled after the day when she promised William Preston to be his wife. But much as she had loved Gregory before, she seemed to love him more now. She was continually talking to him when they were alone, though he was far too young to understand her moaning words, or give her any comfort, except by his caresses. At last William Preston and she were wed, and she went to be mistress of a well-stocked house, not above half an hour's walk from where Aunt Fanny lived. I believe she did all that she could to please my father, and a more dutiful wife I have heard him himself say, could never have been. But she did not love him, and he soon found it out. She loved Gregory, and she did not love him. Perhaps love would have come in time if had been patient enough to wait, but it just turned him sour to see how her eye brightened, and her colour came at the sight of that little child. While for him, who had given her so much, she had only gentle words as cold as ice. He got to taunt her with the difference in her manner, as if that would bring love, and he took a positive dislike to Gregory. He was so jealous of the ready love that always gushed out like a spring of fresh water when he came near. He wanted her to love him more, and perhaps that was all well and good, but he wanted her to love her child less. And that was an evil wish. One day he gave way to his temper, and cursed and swore at Gregory. He had got into some mischief, as children will. My mother made some excuse for him. My father said it was hard enough to have to keep another man's child without having it perpetually held up in its naughtiness by his wife, who ought to be always in the same mind that he was, and so from little they got to more, and the end of it was that my mother took to her bed before her time, and I was born that very day. My father was glad and proud and sorry, all in a breath glad and proud that a son was born to him, and sorry through his poor wife's state, and to think how his angry words had brought that on. But he was a man who liked better to be angry than sorry, so he soon found out that it was all Gregory's fault and owed him an additional grudge for having hastened my birth. He had another grudge against him before long. My mother began to sink the day after I was born. My father sent to Carlisle for doctors and would have coined his heart's blood into gold to save her, if that could have been. But it could not. My aunt Fanny used to say sometimes that she thought that Helen did not wish to live, and so just let herself die away without trying to take hold of life. But when I questioned her, she owned that my mother did all the doctors fade her due, with the same sort of un-complaining patience with which she had acted through life. One of her last requests was to have Gregory laid in her bed by my side, and then she made him take hold of my little hand. Her husband came in while she was looking at us so, and when he bent tenderly over her to ask her how she felt now, and seemed to gaze on us two little half-brothers, with a grave sort of kindness, she looked up in his face and smiled, almost her first smile at him, and such a sweet smile, as more besides aunt Fanny have said, in an hour she was dead. Aunt Fanny came to live with us. It was the best thing that could be done. My father would have been glad to return to his old mode of bachelor life. But what could he do with two little children? He needed a woman to take care of him, and who was so fitting as his wife's elder sister. So she had the charge of me from birth, and for a time I was weakly, but natural, and she was always beside me, night and day watching over me, and my father nearly as anxious as she. That his land had come down from father to son for more than 300 years, and he would have cared for me merely as his flesh and blood that was to inherit the land after him. But he needed something to love, for all that, to most people, he was a stern, hard man, and he took to me as, I fancy, he had taken to no human being before, as he might have taken to my mother, if she had no former life for him to be jealous of. I loved him back again right heartily. I loved all around me. I believe that everybody was kind to me. After a time I overcame my original weakness of constitution, and was just a bonny, strong-looking lad, whom every passerby noticed when my father took me with him to the nearest town. At home I was the darling of my aunt, the tenderly beloved of my father, and pet and plaything of the old domestics, the young master of the farm labourers, before whom I played many a lordly antique, assuming a sword of authority which sat oddly enough. I doubt not on such a baby as I was. Gregory was three years older than I. Aunt Fanny was always kind to him, indeed, and in action, but she did not often think about him. She had fallen so completely into the habit of being engrossed by me, from the fact of my having come into her charge as a delicate baby. My father never got over his grudging dislike to his stepson, who had so innocently wrestled with him for the possession of my mother's heart. I mistrust me, too, that my father always considered him as the cause of my mother's death, and my early delicacy, and utterly unreasonable, as this may seem, I believe my father rather cherished his feeling of alienation to my brother as a duty, than strove to repress it. Yet not for the world would my father have grudged him anything that money could purchase. That was, as it were, in the bond when he had wedded my mother. Gregory was lumpish and loudish, awkward and ungainly, and many a hard word and sharp scolding did he get from the people about the farm, who hardly waited till my father's back was turned before they rated the stepson. I am ashamed my heart is sore to think how I fell into the fashion of the family and slighted my poor orphan stepbrother. I don't think I ever scouted him, always willfully ill-natured to him, but the habit of being considered in all things and being treated as something uncommon and superior made me insolent in my prosperity, and I exacted more than Gregory was always willing to grant. And then, irritated, I sometimes repeated the disparaging words I had heard others use with regard to him without fully understanding their meaning. Whether he did or not, I cannot tell. I am afraid he did. He used to turn silent and quiet, silent and sulky. My father thought it. Stupid. Aunt Fanny used to call it. But everyone said he was stupid and dull, and he and dullness grew upon him. He would sit without speaking a word, sometimes for hours. Then my father would bid him rise and do some peace of work, maybe about the farm. And he would take three or four tellings before he would go. When we were sent to school, it was all the same. He could never be made to remember his lessons. The schoolmaster grew weary of scolding and fogging, and at last advised my father just to take him away and set him to some farm work that might not be above his comprehension. I think he was more gloomy and stupid than ever after this. Yet he was not across land. He was patient and good-natured and would try to do a kind turn for anyone, but they had been scolding or cupping him not a minute before. But very often his attempts at kindness ended in submission to the very people he was trying to serve, owing to his awkward, ungainly ways. I suppose I was a clever lad at any rate. I always got plenty of praise and was, as we called it, the cock of the school. The skillmaster said I could learn anything I chose, but my father, who had no great learning himself, saw little use in much for me and took me away the times and kept me with him about the farm. Gregory was made into a kind of shepherd, receiving his training under old Adam, who was nearly past his work. Adam was almost the first person who had a good opinion of Gregory. He stood to it that my brother had good parts, though he did not rightly know how to bring them out. And for knowing the bearings of the fowls, he said he had never seen a lad like him. My father would try to bring Adam round to speak of Gregory's faults and shortcomings, instead of that, he would praise him twice as much as soon as he found out what was my father's object. One winter time when I was about sixteen and Gregory nineteen, I was sent by my father on an errand to a place about seven miles distant by the road, but only about four by the fowls. He gave me return by the road, but I took in going for the evenings closed in early and were often thick and misty, besides which old Adam, now paralytic and bedridden, foretold a downfall of snow before long. I soon got to my journey's end and soon had done my business earlier by an hour I thought than my father had expected, I had a vision of the way by which I would return into my own hands and set off back again over the fowls just as the first shades of evening began to fall. It looked dark and gloomy enough, but everything was so still that I thought I should have plenty of time to get home before the snow came down. The night came on quicker. The right path was clear enough in the daytime, although at several points two or three exactly similar diverged from the same place, but when there was a good light the traveller was guided by the sight of distant objects. A piece of rock a fall in the ground which were quite invisible to me now. I was a brave heart, however, and took what seemed to me the right road. It was wrong, nevertheless, and led me wither I knew not, but to some while boggy moor, where the solitude seemed painful, intense as if never footfall of man had come dither to break the silence. I tried to shout with the dimmest possible hope of being heard, rather to reassure myself by the sound of my own voice, but my voice came husky and short, and yet it dismayed me. It seemed so weird and strange in that noiseless expanse of black darkness. Suddenly the air was filled thick with dusky flakes. My face and hands were wet with snow. It cut me off from the slightest knowledge of where I was, for I lost every idea of the direction from which I had come, so that I could not even retrace my steps. It hemmed me in, thicker, thicker, with a darkness that might be felt. The boggy soil on which I stood quaved under me if I remained long in one place, and yet I did not move far. All my youthful hardiness seemed to leave me at once. I was on the point of crying and only very shame seemed to keep it down. To save myself from shedding tears, I shouted terrible, while shouts for bare life they were. I turned sick as I paused to listen. No answering sound came but the unfeeling echoes. Only the noiseless, pitiless snow kept falling thicker, thicker faster, faster. I was growing numb and sleepy. I tried to move about, but I did not go far, for fear of the precipices which I knew abounded in certain places on the fells. Now and then I stood still and shouted again, but my voice was getting choked with tears. As I thought the desolate helpless death I was to die. And how little they at home sitting round the warm, red bright fire, what had what become of me and how my poor father would grieve for me. It would surely kill him. It would break his heart. Poor old man. Aunt Fanny too was this to be the end of all her cares for me. I began to review my life in a strange kind of vivid dream in which the various scenes of my few boyish years passed before me, like visions. In a pang of agony caused by such remembrance of my short life I gathered up my strength and called out once more a long despairing wailing cry to which I had no hope of obtaining any answer. So from the echoes around dulled as the sound might be by the thickened air to my surprise I heard a cry almost as long as wild as mine so wild that it seemed unearthly and I almost thought it must be the voice of some of the mocking spirits of the fells about whom I had heard so many tales that suddenly began to beat fast and loud. I could not reply for a minute or two I nearly fancied I had lost the power of utterance just at this moment a dog barked was at Lassie's bark my brother's collie an ugly enough brute with a white ill looking face that my father always kicked whenever he saw it alone demerits partly because it belonged to my brother on such occasions Gregory would whistle Lassie away and go off and sit with her in some outhouse my father had once or twice been ashamed of himself when the poor collie had yelled out with the suddenness of the pain and had relieved himself of his self-reproach my brother who, he said had no notion of training a dog and was enough to ruin any collie in Christendom with his stupid way of allowing them to lie by the kitchen fire to all which Gregory would answer nothing nor ever seem to hear but go on looking absent and moody yes there again it was Lassie's bark or never I lifted up my voice and shouted Lassie, Lassie for God's sake Lassie another moment and the great white face Lassie was curving with delight around my feet and legs looking however up in my face with her intelligent apprehensive eyes as if fearing less I might greet her with a blow as I had done often times before but I cried with gladness as I stooped down and patted her my mind was shearing in my body's weakness and I could not reason but I knew that help was at hand a grey figure came more and more distinctly out of the thick, close pressing darkness it was Gregory wrapped in his moored Oh Gregory said I and I fell upon his neck unable to speak another word he never spoke much and made me no answer for some little time then he told me we must move we must walk for the dear life we must find our road home if possible but we must move or we should be frozen to death don't you know the way home asked I feared when I set out but I am doubtful now the snow binds me and I am feared that in moving about just now I have lost the right gate home woods he had his shepherd staff with him and by dint of plunging it before us at every step we took clinging close to each other we went on safely enough as far as not falling down any of the steep rocks so dreary work my brother I saw was more guided by Lassie and the way she took than anything else trusting to her instinct it was too dark to see far before us but he called her back continually and noted from what corner she returned and shaped our slow steps accordingly but the tedious motion scarcely stood from freezing every bone every fibre in my body seen first to ache and then to swell and then to turn numb with the intense cold my brother bore it better than I from having been more out upon the hills he did not speak except to call Lassie I strove to be brave and not complain but now I felt the deadly fatal sleep stealing over me I can go no further I said in a drowsy tone I remember I suddenly became dogged and resolved sleep I would were it for only 5 minutes if death were to be the consequence sleep I would Gregory stood still I suppose he recognised the peculiar phase of suffering to which I had been brought by the cold it is of no use said he as if to himself we are no nearer home than we were when we started as far as I can tell our only chance is in Lassie here roll thee in my mould lad and lay thee down on the sheltered side of this bitter rock creep close under it lad and I'll lie by thee and strive to keep the warmth in us stay has got nought about thee they'll know at home I felt him unkind thus to keep me from slumber but on his repeating the question I pulled out my pocket handkerchief of some showy pattern which Aunt Fanny had him for me Gregory took it and tied it round Lassie's neck hi there Lassie at home and the white-faced ill-favoured brute was off like a shot in the darkness now I might lie down now I might sleep in my drowsy stupor I felt that I was being tenderly covered up by my brother but what with I neither knew nor cared I was too dull too selfish too dumb to think in their place there was nought to wrap me in save what was taken off another I was glad enough when he ceased his cares and lay down by me I took his hand thou canst not remember lad how we lay together thus by our dying mother she put those small we hand in mine I reckon she sees us now and the like we shall soon anyhow gods will be done dear Gregory I muttered and I craved nearer to him for warmth he was talking still and again about our mother when I fell asleep in an instant or so it seemed there were many voices about me many faces hovering round me the sweet luxury of warmth was stealing into every part of me I was in my own little bed at home and I am thankful to say my first word was Gregory I looked past from one to another my father sterned old face strove in vain to keep its sternness his mouth quivered his eyes filled slowly with unwanted tears I would have given him half my land I would have blessed him as my son oh God I would have knelt at his feet and asked him to forgive my hardness of heart I heard no more a whirl came through my brain catching me back to death I came slowly to my consciousness weeks afterwards my father's hair was white when I recovered and his hands shook as he looked into my face we spoke no more of Gregory we could not speak of him but he was strangely in our thoughts as he came and went we've never a word of blame nay my father would try to stroke her but she shrunk away and he as if reproved by the poor dumb beast would sigh and be silent and abstracted for a time Aunt Fanny always a talker told me all how on that fatal night my father irritated by my prolonged absence and probably more anxious than he cared to show had been fierce and imperious even beyond his want to Gregory had up braided him with his father's poverty his own stupidity which made his services good for nothing for so my father always chose to consider them at last Gregory had risen up and whistled Lassie out with him Paul Lassie crouching underneath his chair for fear of a kick or blow some time before there had been some talk between my father and my aunt respecting my return and when Aunt Fanny told me all this and hence if the Gregory might have noticed the coming storm and gone out silently to meet me three hours afterwards when all were running about in wild alarm not knowing wither to go in search of me not even missing Gregory or heeding his absence poor fellow poor fellow Lassie came home with a thick neck they knew and understood and the whole strength at the farm was turned out to follow her with wraps and blankets and brandy and everything that could be thought of I lay in chilly sleep but still alive beneath the rock that Lassie guided them to I was covered over with my brother's plaid and his thick shepherd's coat and my feet he was in his shirt's sleeves his arm thrown over me a quiet smile he had hardly ever smiled in life upon his still cold face my father's last words were God forgive me my hardness apart towards the fatherless child and what mark the death of his feeling of repentance no more considering the passionate love he bore my mother was this we found a paper of directions after his death in which he desired that he might lie at the foot of the grave in which by his desire poor Gregory had been laid with our mother End of Story Head and Shoulders This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain To find out more or to become a contributor please visit LibriVox.org Head and Shoulders read by Daniel Carlton in Seattle, Washington on August 20, 2007 In 1915 Horace Tarbox was 13 years old In that year he took the examinations for entrance to Princeton University and received the grade A Excellent in Caesar, Cicero, Virgil Xenophem, Homer Algebra, Plain Geometry, Solid Geometry and Chemistry Two years later while George M. Cohen was composing over there Horace was leading the sophomore class by several lengths and digging out theses on the syllogism as an obsolete scholastic form In the battle of Chateau Thierry he was sitting at his desk deciding whether or not to wait until his 17th birthday before beginning his series of essays on the pragmatic bias of the new realists After a while some news boy told him that the war was over and he was glad because it meant that the Pete brothers, publishers would get out their new addition of Spinoza's improvement of the understanding Wars were all very well in their way made young men self-reliant but Horace felt that he could never forgive the president for allowing a brass band to play under his window the night of the false armistice causing him to leave three important sentences out of his thesis on German idealism The next year he went up to Yale to take his degree as master of arts He was 17 then tall and slender with nearsighted gray eyes and an air of keeping himself utterly detached from the words he let drop I never feel as though I'm talking to him expostulated Professor Dillinger to a sympathetic colleague He makes me feel as though I were talking to his representative I always expect him to say well, I'll ask myself and find out and then, just as nonchalantly as though Horace Tarbox had been Mr. Beef, the butcher or Mr. Hat, the haberdasher life reached in, seized him handled him, stretched him and unrolled him like a piece of Irish lace on a Saturday afternoon bargain counter To move in the literary fashion I should say that this was all because when way back in colonial days the hardy pioneers had come to a bald place in Connecticut and asked of each other now, what shall we build here? The hardiest among them had answered let's build a town where theatrical managers can try out musical comedies Afterward they found a Yale college there to try the musical comedies on is a story everyone knows At any rate, one December home James opened to the Schubert and all the students encored Marcia Meadow who sang a song about the blundering blimp in the first and did a shaky, shivery celebrated dance in the last Marcia was 19 she didn't have wings but audiences agreed generally that she didn't need them she was a blonde by natural pigment and she wore no paint on the streets at high noon outside of that, she was no better than most women it was Charlie Moon who promised her 5,000 Paul malls if she would pay a call on Horace Tarbox Prodigy extraordinary Charlie was a senior in Sheffield and he and Horace were first cousins they liked and pitied each other Horace had been particularly busy that night the failure of the Frenchman Laurier to appreciate the significance of the new realist was preying on his mind in fact, his only reaction to a low clear cut rap at his study was to make him speculate as to whether any rap would have actual existence without an ear there to hear it he fancied he was verging more and more on pragmatism but at that moment, though he did not know it he was verging with astounding rapidity towards something quite different the rap sounded 3 seconds leaked by the rap sounded come in muttered Horace automatically he heard the door open and then close but bent over his book in the big armchair before the fire he did not look up leave it on the bed in the other room he said absently leave what on the bed in the other room Marcia Meadow had to talk her songs but her speaking voice was like bi-play on a harp the laundry I can't Horace stirred impatiently in his chair why can't you? why because I haven't got it hmm you replied testily suppose you go back and get it across the fire from Horace was another easy chair he was accustomed to change to it in the course of an evening by way of exercise and variety one chair he called Berkeley the other he called Hume he suddenly heard a sound as of a rustling diaphanous form sinking into hue he glanced up well, said Marcia with a sweet smile she used an act too well Omar Kayam here I am beside you singing in the wilderness Horace stared at her daisily the momentary suspicion came to him that she existed here only as a phantom of his imagination women didn't come into men's rooms and sink into men's humes women brought laundry and took your seat in the streetcar and married you later on when you were old enough to know fetters this woman had clearly materialized out of Hume the very froth of her brown, gauzy dress was art emanation from Hume's leather arm if he looked long enough he would see Hume right through her and then he would be alone again in the room he passed his fist across his eyes he really must take up those trapeze exercises again repeat's sake don't look so critical objected the emanation pleasantly I feel as if you were going to wish me away with that patent dome of yours and then there wouldn't be anything left of me in the shadow in your eyes Horace coughed coughing was one of his two gestures when he talked he forgot he had a body at all it was like hearing a phonograph record by a singer who had been dead a long time what do you want he asked I want them letters wind Marcia Mella dramatically them letters of mine you bought from my grand sire in 1881 Horace considered I haven't got your letters he said evenly I am only 17 years old my father was not born until March 3rd 1879 you evidently have me confused with someone else you're only 17 repeated March suspiciously only 17 I knew a girl said Marcia reminiscently of 30 when she was 16 she was so stuck on herself that she could never say 16 without putting the only before it we got to calling her only Jesse she's just where she was when she started only worse only is a bad habit Omar it sounds like an alibi my name is not Omar I know agreed Marcia nodding your name's Horace you're not going to leave me of a smoked cigarette and I haven't your letters I doubt if I've ever met your grandfather in fact it's very improbable that you yourself were alive in 1881 Marcia stared at him in wonder me 1881 why sure I was second line stuff when the Fluridora sextet was still in the convent I was the original nurse to Miss Saul Smith Juliet why Omar I was a canteen singer during the war of 1812 Horace's mind made a sudden successful leap and he grinned did Charlie Moon put you up to this Marcia regarded him inscrutably who's Charlie Moon small wide nostrils big ears she grew several inches and sniffed I'm not in the habit of noticing my friend's nostrils then it was Charlie Marcia bit her lip and then yawned oh let's change the subject Omar I'll pull a snore in this chair in a minute yes replied Horace gravely Hume has often been considered soporific who's your friend and will he die then of a sudden Horace Tarbox rose slenderly and began to paste the room with his hands in his pockets this was his other gesture I don't care for this he said as if he were talking to himself not at all not that I mind your being here I don't you're quite a pretty little thing but I don't like Charlie Moon sending you here am I a laboratory experiment on which the janitors as well as the chemists can make experiments is my intellectual development humorous in any way do I look like the pictures as that callow ass Moon with his eternal tales about his week in Paris any right to no interrupted Marcia and you're a sweet boy come here and kiss me Horace stopped quickly in front of her why do you want me to kiss you he asked intently do you just go around kissing people why yes admitted Marcia unruffled that's all life is just going around kissing people well replied Horace emphatically I must say your ideas are horribly garbled in the first place life isn't just that and in the second place I won't kiss you it might get to be a habit and I can't get rid of habits this year I've got in the habit of lolling in bed until 7.30 Marcia nodded understandingly do you ever have fun she asked what do you mean fun see here said Marcia sternly I like you Omar but I wish you talk as if you had a line on what you were saying you sound as if you were gargling a lot of words in your mouth and lost a bet every time a few spilled I asked if you ever had any fun Horace shook his head later perhaps he answered you see I'm a plan I'm an experiment I don't say that I don't get tired of it sometimes I do yes oh I can't explain but what you and Charlie Moon call fun wouldn't be fun to me please explain Horace stared at her started to speak and then changing his mind resumed his walk after an unsuccessful attempt to determine whether or not he was looking at her Marcia smiled at him please explain Horace turned if I do will you promise to tell Charlie Moon that I wasn't in uh-huh very well then here's my history I was a why child I wanted to see the wheels go round my father was a young economics professor at Princeton he brought me up on the system every question I asked him to the best of his ability my response to that gave him the idea of making an experiment in precocity to aid in the massacre I had an ear trouble seven operations between the age of nine and twelve of course this kept me apart from other boys and made me ripe for forcing anyway while my generation was laboring through Uncle Remus I was honestly enjoying Catelus in the original I passed off my college examination when I was thirteen because I couldn't help it my chief associates were professors and I took tremendous pride in knowing that I had a fine intelligence for though I wasn't usually gifted I was not abnormal in other ways when I was sixteen I got tired of being a freak I decided that someone had made a bad mistake so as I'd gone that far I concluded to finish up by taking my degree as master of arts my chief interest in life is the study of modern philosophy I'm a realist in the school of Anton Laurier with Berksonian trimmings and I'll be eighteen years old in two months that's all whoo exclaimed Marcia that's enough you do a neat job with the parts of speech satisfied no you haven't kissed me it's not in my program Demirred Horace understand that I don't pretend to be above physical things they have their place but oh don't be so darn reasonable I can't help it I hate these slot machine people I assure you I began Horace oh shut up my own rationality I didn't say anything about your rationality you're American aren't you yes well that's okay with me I gotta notice I want to see you do something that isn't in your highbrow program I want to see if uh what you call them with Brazilian trimmings that thing you said you were can be a little human Horace shook his head again I won't kiss you my life is blighted muttered Marcia tragically I'm a beaten woman I'll go through life without ever having a kiss with Brazilian trimmings she sighed anyways Omar will you come see my show what show I'm a wicked actress from home james light opera yes at a stretch one of the characters is a Brazilian rice planner that might interest you I saw the bohemian girl once reflected Horace aloud I enjoyed it to some extent then you'll come well I'm oh I know I run down to Brazil for the weekend not at all I'd be delighted to come Marcia clapped her hands goodie for you I'll mail you a ticket Thursday night why I good Thursday night it is she stood up walking close to him and laid both hands on his shoulders I like you Omar I'm sorry I tried to kid you I thought you'd be sort of frozen but you're a nice boy he eyed her she said I'm several thousand generations older than you are you carry your age well they shook hands gravely my name is Marcia Meadow she said emphatically remember it Marcia Meadow and I won't tell Charlie Moon you are in an instant later as she was skimming down the last flight of stairs three at a time she heard a voice call over the upper banister oh say she stopped and looked up made out of vague form leaning over oh say called the prodigy again can you hear me here's your connection Omar I hope I haven't given you the impression that I consider kissing intrinsically irrational impression why you didn't even give me a kiss never fret so long two doors near her opened curiously at the sound of a feminine voice a tentative cough sanded from above gathering her skirts Marcia died wildly down the last flight and was swallowed up in the murky Connecticut air outside upstairs horse based the floor of his study from time to time he glanced down at Berkeley waiting there in suave dark red reputability an open book lying suggestively on his cushions and then he found that his circuit of the floor was bringing him each time nearer to Hume there was something about Hume that was strangely and inexpressively different the diaphanous form still seemed hovering near and at Horace sat there he would have felt as if he were sitting on a lady's lap and though Horace couldn't have named the quality of difference there was such a quality quite intangible to the speculative mind but real nevertheless Hume is radiating something that in all the two hundred years of his influence he had never radiated before Hume is radiating radiating a tar of roses part two on Thursday night Horace Tarbox sat in an aisle seat in the fifth row and witnessed home James oddly enough he found that he was enjoying himself the cynical students near him were annoyed at his audible appreciation of time-odder jokes in the Hammerstein tradition when Horace was waiting with anxiety for Marcia Meadow to sing her song about a jazz-bound blundering blimp when she did appear radiant under a floppy flower face hat a warm glow settled over him and when the song was over he did not join in the storm of applause he felt somewhat numb in the intermission after the second act an usher materialized beside him demanded to know if he were Mr. Tarbox and then handed him a note in a round adolescent band Horace read it in some confusion while the usher lingered with withering patience in the aisle Dear Omar after the show I always grow an awful hunger if you want to satisfy it with me in the Taft Grill just communicate your answer to the Big Timber Guide that brought you this and oblige your friend Marcia Meadow tell her he coughed tell her it will be quite all right a Big Timber Guide smiled arrogantly I guess she meant for you to come round at the staged door where is it outside to and you left down the alley what outside turned to you left down the alley the arrogant person looked true a freshman behind Horace snickered then half an hour later sitting in the Taft Grill opposite the hair followed by natural pigment the prodigy was saying an odd thing do you have to do that dance in the last act he was asking earnestly I mean would they dismiss you if you refused to do it Marcia grinned it's fun to do it I like to do it and then Horace came out with a faux pas I shouldn't think you detested your remarks succinctly the people behind me were making remarks about your bosom Marcia blushed fiery red I can't help that she said quickly the dance to me is only a sort of acrobatic stunt Lord it's hard enough to do I rub liniment into my shoulders for an hour every night do you have fun while you're on the stage uh huh sure I got in the habit of having people look at me Omar and I like it hmm Horace sank into a brownish study how's the Brazilian trimmings hmm repeated Horace and then after a pause where does the plague go from here New York for how long all depends winter maybe oh coming up to lay eyes on me Omar or aren't you interested not as nice here is it as it was up in your room I wish we was there now I feel idiotic in this place confessed Horace looking around him nervously too bad we got along pretty well at this he looked suddenly so melancholy that she changed her tone and reaching over pat at his hand ever taken actress out to supper before no said Horace miserably and I never will again I don't know why I came tonight here under all these lights and with all these people laughing and chattering I feel completely out of my sphere to talk to you about we'll talk about me we talked about you last time very well well my name is Meadow but my first name isn't Marcia it's Veronica I'm nineteen question how did the girl make her leap to the footlights answer she was born in Passiac, New Jersey and up to a year ago she got the right to breathe she was in Marcel's tea room in Trenton she started going with a guy named Robbins a singer in the Trent House cabaret and he got her to try a song and dance with him one evening in a month we were filling this up a room every night then we went to New York with meet my friend Letters thick as a pile of napkins in two days we landed a job in divineries and I learned to shimmy from a kid we stayed at divineries six months until one night Peter Boyce Wendell the columnist ate his milk toast there next morning a poem about Marcia came out in the newspaper and within two days I had three vaudeville offers and a chance at the midnight frolic I wrote Wendell a thank you letter and he printed it in his column so that the style way like Carliles only more rugged and that I ought to quit dancing and do North American literature maybe a couple more vaudeville offers and a chance is in in genu in a regular show I took it and here I am Omar when she finished they sat for a moment in silence she draping the last skeins of a well-frabbit on her fork and waiting for him to speak let's get out of here he said suddenly Marcia's eyes hardened what's the idea am I making you sick no but I don't like it here I don't like to be sitting here with you without another word Marcia signaled for the waiter what's the check she demanded briskly my part the rabbit in the ginger ale Horace watched blankly as the waiter figured it see here he began I intended to pay for yours too you're my guest with the half sigh Marcia rose from the table and walked from tile room Horace his face a document laid a bill down and followed her out up the stairs and into the lobby he overtook her in front of the elevator and they faced each other see he repeated you're my guest have I said something to offend you after an instant of wonder Marcia's eyes softened you're a rude fella don't you know you're rude I can't help it said Horace the directness she found quite disarming you know I like you he said you didn't like being with me I didn't like it why not fire blazed suddenly from the gray forest of his eyes because I didn't I've formed this habit of liking you I've been thinking of nothing much else for two days well if you wait a minute he interrupted I've got something to say it's this in six weeks I'll be 18 years old when I'm 18 years old I'm coming up to New York to see you is there some place in New York where we can go and not have a lot of people in the room sure Marcia smiled you can come up to my apartment sleep on the couch if you want to I can't sleep on couches he said shortly but I want to talk to you why I sure repeated Marcia in my part in his excitement Horace put his hands in his pockets alright just so I can see you alone I want to talk to you as we talked up in my room honey boy cried Marcia laughing is it that you want to kiss me yes Horace almost shouted I'll kiss you if you want me to the elevator man was looking at them reproachfully Marcia edged towards the graded door I'll drop you a postcard Horace's eyes were quite wild send me a postcard I'll come up any time after January 1st I'll be 18 then and as she stepped into the elevator he coughed endigmatically yet with a vague challenge at the calling and walked quickly away part 3 he was there again she saw him when she took her first glance at the restless Manhattan audience down in the front row with his head bent a bit forward and his gray eyes fixed on her and she knew that to him they were alone together in a world where the high row rouged row of ballet faces and the masked wines of the violins were as imperceivable as a powder on a marble Venus an indistinct defiance rose in her silly boy she said to herself hurriedly and she didn't take her on-core what do they expect for a hundred a week perpetual motion she grumbled to herself in the wings what's the trouble, Marcia? guy I don't like down in front during the last act as she waited for her specialty she had an odd attack of stage fright she had never sent Horace the promised postcard last night she had pretended not to see him had hurried from the theater immediately after her dance to pass a sleepless night in her apartment thinking as she had so often in the last month of his pale rather intent to face his slim, boyish four his merciless, unworldly abstraction that made him charming to her and now that he had come she felt vaguely sorry as though an unwanted responsibility was being forced on her infant prodigy she said aloud what demanded the negro comedian standing beside her? nothing just talking about myself on the stage she felt better this was her dance and she always felt that the way she did it wasn't suggestive anymore than to some men every pretty girl is suggestive she made it a stunt uptown downtown jelly on a spoon after sundown shiver by the moon he was not watching her now she saw that clearly he was looking very deliberately at a castle in the backdrop wearing that expression he had worn in the tapped grill a wave of exasperation swept over her he was criticizing her that's the vibration that thrills me funny how affection fills me uptown downtown unconquerable revulsion seized her she was suddenly and horribly conscious of her audience as she had never been since her first appearance was that a leer on a pallid face in the front row a drip of disgust on one young girl's mouth these shoulders of hers these shoulders shaking were they hers, were they real surely shoulders weren't made for this then you'll see at a glance I'll need some funeral ushers with st. vitus dance at the end of the world the bassoon and two cellos crashed into a final chord she paused and poised a moment on her toes with every muscle tense her young face looking out dully at the audience and what one young girl afterward called such a curious puzzled look and then without bowing rushed from the stage into the dressing room she sped kicked out of one dress and into another and caught a taxi outside her apartment was very warm small it was with a row of professional pictures and sets of Kipling and O'Henry which she had bought once from a blue-eyed agent and read occasionally and there were several chairs which matched but were none of them comfortable and a pink shaded lamp with blackbirds painted on it and an atmosphere of other stifled pink throughout there were nice things in it nice things unrelentingly hostile to each other offspring of a vicarious impatient taste in stray moments the worst was typified by a great picture fumed in oak bark of a paseic as seen from the eerie railroad altogether a frantic oddly extravagant oddly penurious attempt to make a cheerful room Marcia knew it was a failure in this room came the prodigy and took her two hands awkwardly followed you this time he said oh I want you to marry me her arms went out to him she kissed his mouth with the sort of passionate wholesomeness there I love you too she kissed him again and then with a little sigh flung herself into an armchair and lay there shaken with absurd laughter why you infant prodigy she cried very well call me that if you want to I once told you that I was 10,000 years older than you I am she laughed again I don't like to be disapproved of no one's ever going to disapprove of you again Omar she asked why do you want to marry me the prodigy rose and put his hands in his pockets because I love you Marcia Meadow and then she stopped calling him Omar dear boy she said you know I sort of love you there's something about you I can't tell what that just puts my heart through the ringer every time I'm around you but honey she paused but what but lots of things you're only 18 and I'm nearly 20 once he interrupted put it this way I'm in my 19th year and you're 19 that makes us pretty close without counting that other 10,000 years I mentioned Marcia laughed but there's some more buts your people my people explained the prodigy ferociously my people tried to make him monstrosity out of me his face grew quite crimson at the enormity of what he was going to say my people can go way back and sit down my heavens cried Marcia in alarm all that on tax I suppose tax yes he agreed wildly on anything the more I think of how they allowed me to become a little dried up mummy what makes you think you're that asked Marcia quietly me yes every person I've met on the street since I met you has made me jealous because they knew what love was before I did I call it the sex symbols heavens there's more buts said Marcia what are they how could we live I'll make a living you're in college do you think I care anything about taking a master of arts degree he want to be a master of me hey yes what I mean no Marcia laughed and crossing swiftly over sat in his lap he put his arm around her wildly and planted the vestige of a kiss somewhere near her neck there's something white about you mused Marcia but it doesn't sound very logical oh don't be so darn reasonable I can't help it said Marcia I hate these slot machine people but we oh shut up and as Marcia couldn't talk through her ears she had to part four Horace and Marcia were married early in February the sensation in academic circles both at Yale and Princeton was tremendous Horace Tarbox at 14 been played up in the Sunday magazine sections of Metropolitan newspapers was throwing over his career his chance of being a world authority in American philosophy by marrying a chorus girl they made Marcia a chorus girl but like all modern stories it was a four and a half day wonder they took a flat in Harlem after two weeks search during which his idea of the value of academic knowledge faded unmercifully Horace took a position as a clerk with the South American Export Company someone had told him that exporting was the coming thing Marcia was to stay in her show for a few months anyway until he got on his feet he was getting 125 to start with and though of course they told him it was only a question of months until he would be earning double that Marcia refused even to consider 150 a week that she was getting at the time we'll call ourselves head and shoulders dear she said softly and the shoulders will have to keep shaking a little longer till the old head gets started I hate it he objected gloomily well she replied emphatically your salary wouldn't keep us in a tenement don't think I want to be public I don't I want to be yours but I'd be a half-wit to sit in one room and count the sunflowers on the wallpaper while I waited for you when you pull down 300 a month I'll quit and much as it hurt his pride Horace had to admit that Horace was the wiser course March mellowed into April May read a gorgeous riot act to the parks and waters of Manhattan and they were very happy Horace who had no habits whatsoever he had never had any time to form any proved the most adaptable of husbands and as Marcia entirely lacked opinions on the subjects that engrossed him there were very few jottings and bumping their minds moved in different spheres Marcia acted as a practical factotum and Horace lived either in this old world of abstract ideas or in a sort of triumphantly earthly worship and adoration of his wife she was a continual source of astonishment to him the freshness and originality of her mind her dynamic, clear-headed energy and her unfailing good humor and Marcia's co-workers in the nine o'clock show whether she had transferred her talents were impressed with her tremendous pride in her husband's mental powers Horace they knew only as a very slim tight-lipped and immature looking young man who waited every night to take her home Horace said Marcia one evening when she met him as usual at eleven he looked like a ghost standing there against the streetlights he was losing weight he shook his head vaguely I don't know they raised me to a hundred and thirty-five dollars today and I don't care said Marcia severely you're killing yourself working at night you read those big books on economy economics, correct Horace well you read them every night long after I'm asleep and you're getting all stooped over like you were before we married but Marcia I've got to no you haven't dear I guess I'm running this shop for the present and I won't let my fellow ruinous health and eyes you've got to get some exercise I do every morning I oh I know those dumbbells of yours wouldn't give a consumptive two degrees of fever I mean real exercise you've got to join a gymnasium remember you told me you were such a trick gymnast that they tried to get you out for the team in college because you had a standing date with Herb Spencer I used to enjoy it Muse Horace but it would take up too much time now alright said Marcia I'll make a bargain with you you join a gym and I'll read one of those books from the brown row of them Pepis Diary why that ought to be enjoyable he's very light not for me he isn't it'll be like digesting plate glass telling me how much it had brought my look out well you go to the gym three nights a week and I'll take one big dose of Sammy Horace hesitated well come on now you do some giant swings for me and I'll chase some culture for you so Horace finally consented and all through a baking summer he spent three and sometimes four evenings a week experimenting on the trapeze and skippers gymnasium and in August he admitted to Marcia that it made him capable of more mental work during the day men's sana incorpore sano he said don't believe in it replied Marcia I tried one of those patent medicines once and they're all bunk you stick to gymnastics one night in early September while he was going through one of his contortions on the rings in the nearly deserted room he was addressed by a meditated fat man who he had noticed watching him for several nights say lad do that stunt you were doing last night Horace grinned at him from his perch I invented it he said I got the idea from the fourth proposition of Euclid what circus is he with he's dead well he must have broke his neck doing that stunt I sit here last night thinking sure he was going to break yours like this said Horace and swinging onto the trapeze he did his stunt don't it kill your neck and shoulder muscles it did at first but inside of a week I wrote the quote errat demonstratum on it hmm Horace swung idly on the trapeze I would think of taking it up professionally that's the fat man not I good money in it if you're willing to do stunts like that I agree with it here's another chirped Horace eagerly and the fat man's mouth dropped suddenly a gape as he watched his pink jersey Prometheus again defy the gauze and Isaac Newton the night following his encounter Horace got home from work to find a rather pale Marcia stretched out on the sofa waiting for him I fainted twice today she began without preliminaries what yep you see babies do in four months now doctor says I ought to quit dancing two weeks ago Horace sat down and thought it over I'm glad of course he said pensively I mean that we're going to have a baby but this means a lot of expense I've got 250 in the bank said Marcia hopefully and two weeks pay coming Horace computed quickly including my salary that'll give us nearly 1400 for the next six months Marcia looked blue that all of course I can get a job singing somewhere this month and I can go to work again in March of course nothing said Horace gruffly you'll stay right here let's see now there'll be doctors bills and a nurse besides the maid we've got to have some more money well said Marcia warily I don't know where it's going to come from it's up to the old head now shoulders is out of business Horace rose and pulled on his coat where are you going I've got an idea he answered I'll be right back 10 minutes later as he headed down the street towards Skipper's gymnasium he felt a plaid wonder quite unmixed with humor and what he was going to do how he would have gaped at himself a year before how everyone would have gaped but when you open your door at the wrap of life you let many things in the gymnasium was brightly lit and when his eyes became accustomed to the glare he found the meditative fat man seated on a pile of canvas mats and smoking a big cigar say began Horace directly were you an earnest last night when you said I could make more money when I could make money on my trapeze stunts why yes said the fat man in surprise well I've been thinking it over and I believe I'd like to try it I could work at night and on Saturday afternoons and regularly if the pay is high enough the fat man looked at his watch well he said Charlie Paulson is the man to see he'll book you inside of four days once he sees you work out he won't be in now but I'll get a hold of him for tomorrow night the fat man was as good as his word Charlie Paulson arrived next night and a wondrous hour watching the prodigy swap through the air an amazing parabolas and on the night following he brought two aged men with him who looked as though they had been born smoking black cigars and talking about money and low passionate voices then on the succeeding Saturday Horace Tarbok's torso made its first professional appearance in a gymnastic exhibition at the Coleman Street Gardens but though the audience numbered the people Horace felt no nervousness from his childhood he had read papers to audiences learned that trick of detaching himself Marcia he said cheerfully later that night I think we're out of the woods Paulson thinks he can get me an opening at the hippodrome and that means an all-winner engagement the hippodrome you know it's a big yes I believe I've heard of it interrupted Marcia and I want to know about the stunt you're doing the spectacular suicide is it it's nothing said Horace quietly but if you can think of a nicer way of a man killing himself and taking a risk for you why that's the way I want to die Marcia reached up and wound both arms tightly around his neck kiss me she whispered and call me dear heart I love to hear you say dear heart and bring me a book to read tomorrow no more Sam Pepas but something trick and trashy I've been wild for something to do all day I felt like writing letters but I didn't have anybody to write to write to me said Horace I'll read them I wish I could breathe Marcia by new words enough I could write you the longest love letter in the world and never get tired but after two more months Marcia grew very tired indeed and for a row of nights it was a very anxious, weary looking young athlete who walked out before the hippodrome crowd then there were two days when his place was taken by a young man who wore pale blue instead of white and got very little applause but after the two days Horace appeared again and those who sat close to the stage remarked an expression of beautific happiness on the young acrobat's face even when he was twisting breathlessly in the air in the middle of his amazing and original shoulder swing after that performance he laughed at the elevator man and dashed up the stairs to the flat five steps at a time and then tiptoed very carefully into a quiet room Marcia he whispered hello she smiled up at him wanley, Horace there's something I want you to do look at my top your row drawer and you'll find a big stack of paper it's a book, sort of, Horace I wrote it down in these last three months while I've been laid up I wish you'd take it to that Peter Boyce Wendell who put my letter in his paper he could tell you whether it'd be a good book I wrote it just the way I talk just the way I wrote that letter to him it's just a story about a lot of things that happen to me will you take it to him, Horace? yes, darling he leaned over the bed until his head was beside her on the pillow and began stroking back her yellow hair dearest Marcia he said softly no, she murmured call me what I told you to call me dear heart he whispered passionately dearest heart what do we call her? they rested a minute and happy drowsy content while Horace considered we'll call her Marcia Hume Tarbox he said at length why the Hume? because he's the fellow who first introduced us that's so, she murmured sleepily surprised I thought his name was Moon her eyes dozed and after a moment the slow lengthening surge of the bedclothes over her breast showed that she was asleep Horace tiptoed over to the bureau and opening the top drawer found a heap of closely scrawled lead smeared pages he looked at the first sheet Sandra Peppus syncopated by Marcia Tarbox he smiled so Samuel Peppus had made an impression on her after all he turned a page and began to read his smile deepened he read on half an hour passed and he became aware that Marcia had waked and was watching him from the bed honey came in a whisper what Marcia? do you like it? Horace coughed I seem to be reading on it's bright take it to Peter Boy Swendle tell him you got the highest marks in Princeton once that you ought to know when a book's good tell him this one's a world beater alright Marcia Horace said gently her eyes closed again and Horace crossing over kissed her forehead stood there for a moment with the look of tender pity then he left the room all that night the sprawly writing on the pages the consistent mistakes in spelling and grammar and the weird punctuation dance before his eyes he worked several times in the night each time full of a welling chaotic sympathy for this desire of Marcia's soul to express itself in words to him there was something infinitely pathetic about it and for the first time in months he began to turn over in his mind his own half forgotten dreams he had meant to write a series of books to popularize the new realism as Schopenhauer had popularized pessimism and William James' pragmatism but life hadn't come that way life took hold of people and forced them into flying rings he laughed to think of that rap at his door that I often as shadow and hewn Marcia's threatened kiss and it's still me he said aloud in wonder as he lay awake in the darkness I'm the man who sat in Berkeley with temerity to wonder if that rap would have had actual existence had my ear not been there to hear it I'm still that man I could be electrocuted for the crimes he committed poor Ghazi souls trying to express ourselves in something tangible Marcia with her written book I with my unwritten ones trying to choose our mediums and then taking what we get and being glad Part 5 Sandra Pepis syncopated with an introduction by Peter Boyce Wendell the columnist appeared serially in Jordan's magazine and came out in book form in March from its first published installment it attracted attention far and wide a tried enough subject a girl from a small New Jersey town coming to New York to go on the stage treated simply with a peculiar vividness of phrasing and a haunting undertone of sadness and the very inadequacy of its vocabulary it made an irresistible appeal Peter Boyce Wendell who happened at that time to be advocating the enrichment of the American language by the immediate adoption of expressive vernacular words stood as its sponsor and thundered his endorsement over the placid bromides of the conventional reviewers Marcia received $300 in installment for the serial publication which came at an opportune time for though Horace's monthly salary at the hippodrome was now more than Marcia's had ever been young Marcia was emitting shrill cries which they integrated as a demand for country air so early April found them installed in a bungalow in Westchester County with a place for a lawn and a place for a garage and everything including a sound proof impregnable study in which Marcia faithfully promised Mr. Jordan she would shut herself up when her daughter's demands began to be abated and compose immortally illiterate literature it's not half bad thought Horace one night as he was on his way from the station to his house he was considering several prospects that had opened up a four months vaudeville offer and five figures a chance to go back to Princeton odd he'd once intended to go back there in charge of all philosophic work and now he had not even been stirred by the arrival in New York of Anton Mariet his old idol the gravel crunched rockously under his heel he saw the lights of his sitting room gleaming and noticed a big car standing in the drive probably Mr. Jordan again come to persuade Marcia to settle down to work she had heard the sound of his approach and her form was silhouetted against the lighted door as she came out to meet him there's some Frenchman here she whispered nervously I can't pronounce his name but he sounds awful deep you'll leave to jaw with him what Frenchman you can't prove it by me he drove up an hour ago with Mr. Jordan and said he wanted to meet Sandra Pepis and all that sort of thing two men rose from chairs as they went inside hello Tarbox, is that Jordan I've just been bringing together two celebrities I brought Monsieur Laurier with me Monsieur Laurier let me present Mr. Tarbox, Mrs. Tarbox's husband not Anton Laurier exclaimed Horace but yes I must come, I have to come I have read the book of Madame and I have been charmed he fumbled in his pocket I have read of you too in this newspaper which I read today it has your name he finally produced a clipping from a magazine read it he said eagerly, it is about you Horace's eyes skipped down the page a distinct contribution to American dialect literature it said no attempted literary tone this book derives its very quality from this fact as did Huckleberry Finn Horace's eyes caught a passage lower down he became suddenly aghast read on hurriedly Marcia Tarbox's connection with the stage is not only as a spectator but as the wife of a performer she was married last year to Horace Tarbox who every evening delights the children at the hippodrome with his wondrous flying performance it is said that the young couple have dubbed themselves head and shoulders referring doubtless to the fact that Miss Tarbox supplies the literary and mental qualities while the supple and agile shoulder of her husband contribute their share to the family fortunes Miss Tarbox seems to merit that much abused title, Prodigy only twenty Horace stopped reading and with a very odd expression in his eyes gazed intently at Anton Laurier I want to advise you he began hoarsely what? about raps don't answer them let them alone have a padded door this concludes head and shoulders by F. Scott Fitzgerald