 A Fight with a Canon by Victor Hugo This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Read by Aeroet. A Fight with a Canon by Victor Hugo Lavville was suddenly cut short by a cry of despair and at the same time a noise was heard wholly unlike any other sound. The cries and sounds came from within the vessel. The captain and lieutenant rushed toward the gun deck but could not get down. All the gunners were pouring up in dismay. Something terrible had just happened. One of the caranads of the battery, a 24 pounder, had broken loose. This is the most dangerous accident that can possibly take place on shipboard. Nothing more terrible can happen to a sloop of was an open sea and under full sail. A cannon that breaks its moorings suddenly becomes some strange supernatural beast. It is a machine transformed into a monster. That short massive wheels, moves like a billiard ball, rolls with the rolling of the ship, plunges with the pitching, goes, comes, stops, seems to meditate, starts on its course again, shoots like an arrow from one end of the vessel to the other, whirls around, slips away, dodges, rears, bangs, crashes, kills, exterminates. It is a battering ram capriciously assaulting a wall. Add to this the fact that the ram is a metal, the wall of wood. It is matter set free. One might say this eternal slave was avenging itself. It seems as if the total depravity concealed in what we call inanimate things has escaped and birthed forth all of a sudden. It appears to lose patience and to take a strange mysterious revenge. Nothing more relentless than this wrath of the inanimate. This enraged lump leaps like a panther. It has the clumsiness of an elephant, the nimbleness of a mouse, the obstinacy of an ox, the uncertainty of the billows, the zigzag of the lightning, the deafness of the grave. It weighs 10,000 pounds, and it rebounds like a child's ball. It spins and then abruptly darts off again at right angles. And what is to be done? How to put an end to it? A tempest ceases, a cyclone passes over, a wind dies down, a broken mass can be replaced, a leak can be stopped, a fire extinguished. But what will become of this enormous brood of bronze? How can it be captured? You can reason with a bulldog, astonishable, fascinatable, a frightened tiger tame a lion, but you have no resource against this monster or loose cannon. You cannot kill it. It is dead. And at the same time it lives. It lives with a sinister life, which comes to it from the infinite. The deck beneath it gives it full swing. It is moved by the ship, which is moved by the sea, which is moved by the wind. This destroyer is a toy. The ship, the waves, the winds all play with it, hence its frightful animation. What is to be done with its apparatus? How to feather this dependent engine of destruction? How to anticipate its comings and goings, its returns, its stops, its shocks? Any one of the blows on the side of the ship may stave it in. How foretell its frightful meanderings? It is dealing with a projectile which alters its mind, which seems to have ideas, and changes its direction every instant. How to check the course of what must be avoided? The horrible cannon struggles, advances, backs, strikes right, strikes left, retreats, passes by, disconcerts expectation, grinds up obstacles, crushes men like flies. All the terror of the situation is in the fluctuations of the flooring. How fight an inclined plane subject to caprices? The ship has, so to speak, in its belly, an imprisoned thunderstorm, striving to escape. Something like a thunderbolt rumbling above an earthquake. In an instant, the whole crew was on foot. It was the fault of the gun captain, who had neglected to fasten the screw nut of the mooring chain, and had insecurely clogged the four wheels of the gun carriage. This gave play to the sole and the framework, separated the two platforms and the breaching. The tackle had given way, so that the cannon was no longer firm on its carriage. The stationary breaching, which prevents recoil, was not in use at this time. A heavy sea struck the port. The caronade, insecurely fastened, had recoiled and broken its chain, and begun its terrible course over the deck. To form an idea of this strange sliding, let one imagine a drop of water running over a glass. At the moment when the fastening gave way, the gunners were in the battery, summon groups, others scattered about, busyed with the customary work among sailors, getting ready for a signal for action. The caronade, hurled forward by the pitching of the vessel, made a gap in this crowd of men, and crushed four at the first blow. Then sliding back and shout out again as the ship rolled, it cut into a fifth unfortunate, and knocked a piece of the battery against the larbored side, which such force is to unship it. This caused the cry of distress just hurt. All the men rushed to the companion way. The gun deck was vacated in a twinkling. The enormous gun was left alone. It was given up to itself. It was its own master and master of the ship. It could do it at pleased. This whole crew, accustomed to laugh in the time of battle, now trembled. To describe the terror is impossible. Captain Bois Berthelot and Lieutenant La Viville, although both dauntless men stopped at the head of the companion way and, dumb, pale and hesitating, looked down on the deck below. Someone elbowed past and went down. It was their passenger, the peasant, the man of whom they had just been speaking a moment before. Reaching the foot of the companion way, he stopped. The cannon was rushing back and forth on the deck. One might have supposed it to be the living chariot of the apocalypse. The marine lantern swinging overhead added a dizzy shifting of light and shade to the picture. The form of the cannon disappeared in the violence of its course and looked now black in the light, now mysteriously white in the darkness. It went on in its destructive work. It had already shattered four other guns. It made two gaps in the side of the ship, fortunately above the waterline, where the water would come in in case of heavy weather. It rushed frantically against the framework. The strong timbers withstood the shock. The curved shape of the wood gave them great power of resistance, but they creaked beneath the blows of this huge club, beating on all sides at once, with a strange sort of ubiquity. The percussions of a grain of shock shaken in a bottle are not swifter or more senseless. The four wheels passed back and forth over the dead men, cutting them, carving them, slashing them, till the five corpses were a score of stumps rolling around the deck. The heads of the dead men seemed to cry out. Streams of blood curled over the deck with the rolling of the vessel. The planks damaged in several places began to gape open. The whole ship was filled with the horrid noise and confusion. The captain promptly recovered his presence of mind and ordered everything that could check and impede the cannon's madcourse to be thrown through the hatchway down on the gun deck. Mattresses, hammocks, spare sails, rolls of cordage, bags belonging to the crew, and bales of counterfeit asignments, of which the corvette carried a large quantity, a characteristic piece of English villainy regarded as legitimate warfare. But what could these rags do? As nobody dared to go below to dispose of them properly, they were reduced to lint in a few minutes. There was just sea enough to make the accident as bad as possible. A tempest would have been desirable, for it might have upset the cannon, and with its four wheels once in the air there would be some hope of getting it under control. Meanwhile the havoc increased. There were splits and fractures in the mats, which are set into the framework of the keel and rise above the decks of ships like great round pillars. The convulsive blows of the cannon had cracked the mizzen mast and had cut into the main mast. The battery was being ruined. Ten pieces out of 30 were disabled. The breaches in the side of the vessel were increasing, and the corvette was beginning to leak. The old passenger, having gone down to the gun deck, stood like a man of stone at the foot of the steps. He cast a stern glance over this scene of devastation. He did not move. It seemed impossible to take a step forward. Every movement of the loose caronade threatened the ship's destruction. A few moments more and shipwreck would be inevitable. They must perish or put a speedy end to the disaster. Some course must be decided on, but what? What an opponent was this caronade. Something must be done to stop this terrible madness, to capture this lightning, to overthrow this thunderbolt. Boyce Berthelot said to Laveville, Do you believe in God, chevalier? Laveville replied, Yes. No, sometimes. During a tempest, yes, and in moments like this, God alone can save us from this, said Boyce Berthelot. Everybody was silent, letting the caronade continue its horrible din. Outside, the waves beating against the ship responded with their blows to the shocks of the cannon. It was like two hammers alternating. Suddenly, in the midst of this inaccessible ring where the escaped cannon was leaping, a man was seemed to appear with an iron bar in his hand. He was the author of the catastrophe, the captain of the gun, guilty of criminal carelessness, and the cause of the accident, the master of the caronade. Having done the mischief, he was anxious to repair it. He had seized the iron bar in one hand, a tiller rope was a slip-noose in the other, and jumped down the hatchway to the gun deck. Then began an awful sight, a titanic singing, the contest between gun and gunner, the battle of matter and intelligence, the duel between man and the inanimate. The man stationed himself in a corner, and, with barren rope in his two hands, braced himself on his legs, which seemed two steel posts, and livid, calm, tragic, as if rooted to the deck, he waited. He waited for the cannon to pass by him. The gunner knew his gun, and it seemed to him as if the gun ought to know him. He had lived long with it. How many times had he thrust his hand into its mouth? It was his own familiar monster. He began to speak to it, as if it were his dog. Come, he said. Perhaps he loved it. He seemed to wish it to come to him. But to come to him was to come upon him, and then he would be lost. How could he avoid being crushed? That was the question, all looked on in terror. Not a breast breathed freely, unless perhaps that of the old man, who was alone in the battery with the two contestants, a stern witness. He might be crushed himself by the cannon. He did not stir. Beneath them, the sea blindly directed the contest. At the moment when the gunner, accepting this frightful hand-to-hand conflict, channeled into the cannon, some chance rocking of the sea, caused the Karanad to remain for an instant motionless, and as if stupefied. Come, now, said the man. It seemed to listen. Suddenly a leap toward him. The man dodged the blow. The battle began. Battle unprecedented. Frailty, struggling against the invulnerable. The gladiator of flesh, attacking the beast of brass. On one side brute force, on the other a human soul. All this was taking place in semi-darkness. It was like the shadowy vision of a miracle. A soul. Strange to say, one would have thought the cannon also had a soul, but a soul full of hatred and rage. This sightless thing seemed to have eyes. The monster appeared to lie and wait for the man. One would have at least believed that there was craft in this mass. It also chose its time. It was a strange, gigantic insect of metal, having or seeming to have the will of a demon. For a moment this colossal locust would beat against the low ceiling overhead. Then it would come down on its four wheels like a tiger on its four paws and begin to run at the man. He, supple, nimble, expert, rise the way like an adder from all these lightning movements. He avoided a collision with the blows which he parried fell against the vessel and continued their work of destruction. An end of broken chain was left hanging to the caronade. This chain had in some strange way become twisted around the screw of the cascabel. One end of the chain was fastened to the gun carriage. The other, left loose, whirled desperately around the cannon, making all its blows more dangerous. The screw held it in a firm grip, adding a thong to the battering ram, making a terrible whirlwind around the cannon, an iron lash in a brazen hand. This chain complicated the contest. However, the man went on fighting. Occasionally it was the man who attacked the cannon. He would creep along the side of the vessel, barren rope in hand, and the cannon as if it understood it as though suspecting some snare would flee away. The man, bent on victory, pursued it. Such things cannot long continue. The cannon seemed to say to itself all of a sudden, come now, make an end of it, and it stopped. When felt that the crisis was at hand. The cannon, as if in suspense, seemed to have, or really had, for to all that was a living being, a ferocious malice prepence. It made a sudden quick dash of the gunner. The gunner sprang out of the way, let it pass by, and cried out to it with a laugh. Try it again. The cannon, as if enraged, smashed a cannon on the port side. Then, again seized by the invisible sling which controlled it, it was hurled to the starboard side of the man, who made his escape. Three cannon odds gave way under the blows of the cannon. Then, as if blind and not knowing what more to do, it turned its back on the man, rolled from stern to bow, injured the stern, and made a breach in the planking of the prowl. The man took refuge at the foot of the steps, not far from the old man who was looking on. The gunner held his iron bar and rest. The cannon seemed to notice it, and without taking the trouble to turn around, slid back on the man, swift as the blow of an axe. The man, driven against the side of the ship, was lost. The whole crew cried out in terror. But the old passenger, till this moment motionless, darted forth more quickly than any of this wildly swift rapidity. He seized a package of counterfeit assignance, and, at the risk of being crushed, succeeded in throwing it between the wheels of the Karanad. This decisive and perilous movement could not have been made with more exactness and precision by a man trained in all the exercises described in Duracell's manual of gun practice at sea. The package had the effect of a clog. A pebble may stop a log, the branch of a tree turned aside an avalanche. The Karanad stumbled. The gunner, taking advantage of this critical opportunity, plunged his iron bar between the spokes of one of the hind wheels. The cannon stopped. It leaned forward. The man, using the bar as a lever, held it in equilibrium. The heavy mass was overthrown, with a crash of a falling bell, and the man, running with all his might, dripping with perspiration, passed the flipnoose around the bronze neck of the subdued monster. It was ended. The man had conquered. The ant had control over the mastodon. The pygmy had taken the thunderbolt prisoner. The marines and sailors clapped their hands. The whole crew rushed forward with cables and chains, and in an instant the cannon was secured. The gunner saluted the passenger. Sir, he said, you have saved my life. The old man had resumed his impassive attitude and made no reply. The man had conquered, but the cannon might be said to have conquered as well. Immediate shipwreck had been avoided, but the corvette was not saved. The damage to the vessel seemed beyond repair. There were five breaches in their sides, one very large in the bow. Twenty of the thirty caranades lay useless in their frames. The one which had just been captured and chained again was disabled. The screw of the cascabel was sprung, and consequently leveling the gun made impossible. The battery was reduced to nine pieces. The ship was leaking. It was necessary to repair the damages at once, and to work the pumps. The gun deck, now that one could look over it, was frightful to behold. The inside of an infuriated elephant's cage would not be more completely demolished. However great might be the necessity of escaping observation, the necessity of immediate safety was still more imperative to the corvette. They had been obliged to light up the deck with lanterns hung here and there on the sides. However, all the while this project play was going on, the crew were absorbed by a question of life and death, and they were wholly ignorant of what was taking place outside the vessel. The fog had grown thicker. The weather had changed. The wind had worked its pleasure with the ship. They were out of their course with Jersey and Guernsey closed at hand, further to the south than they ought to have been, and in the midst of a heavy sea, great billows kissed the gaping winds of the vessel, kisses full of danger. The rocking of the sea threatened destruction. The breeze had become a gale. A squall, a tempest perhaps, was brewing. It was impossible to see four waves ahead. While the crew were hastily repairing the damages to the gun deck, stopping the leaks, and putting in place the guns which had been uninjured into the disaster, the old passenger had gone on deck again. He stood with his back against the main mast. He had not noticed a proceeding which had taken place on the vessel. The chivalier de la Verville had drawn up the marines in line on both sides of the main mast, and at the sound of the butt swings whistle, the sailors formed in line, standing on the yards. The count de bus berthelot approached the passenger. Behind the captain walked a man, haggard, out of breath, his dress disordered, but still with a look of satisfaction on his face. It was the gunner who had just shown himself so skillful in subduing monsters, and who had gained the mastery over the cannon. The count gave the military salute to the old man in peasant stress, and said to him, General, there is the man. The gunner remained standing, with downcast eyes, a military attitude. The count de bus berthelot continued. General, in consideration of what this man has done, do you not think there is something do him from its commander? I think so, says the old man. Please give your orders, replied bus berthelot. It is for you to give them, you are the captain. But you are the general, replied bus berthelot. The old man looked at the gunner. Come forward, he said. The gunner approached. The old man turned toward the count of bus berthelot, took off the cross of St. Louis on the captain's coat, and fastened it on the gunner's jacket. Hurrah! cried the sailors. The marines presented arms, and the old passenger, pointing to the dazzled gunner, added, Now have this man shot. Dismay succeeded the cheering. Then in the midst of the death-like stillness, the old man raised his voice and said, Carelessness has compromised this vessel. At this very hour, it is perhaps lost. To be at sea is to be in front of the enemy. A ship making a voyage is an army waging war. The tempest is concealed, but it is at hand. The whole sea is an ambuscade. Death is the penalty of any misdemeanor committed in the face of the enemy. No fault is reputable. Courage should be rewarded and negligent punished. These words fell one after another, solely, solemnly, in a sort of inexorable meter, like the blows of an axe upon an oak. And the man, looking at the soldiers, added, Let it be done. The man on whose jacket hung the shining cross of St. Louis bowed his head. At a signal from Count de bus berthelot, two sailors went below and came back bringing the hammock shroud. The chaplain, who since they sailed had been at prayer in the officer's quarters, accompanied the two sailors. A sergeant detached 12 Marines from the line and arranged them in two files six by six. The gunner, without uttering a word, placed himself between the two files. The chaplain, crucifix in hand, advanced and stood beside him. March, said the sergeant. The platoon marched with slow steps toward the bow of the vessel. The two sailors, carrying the shroud, followed. A gloomy silence fell over the vessel. A hurricane howled in the distance. A few moments later, a light flashed, or a port sounded through darkness. Then all was still, and the sound of a body falling into the sea was heard. The old passenger, still leaning against the main mast, had crossed his arms and was buried in thought. Boyst Berthelot pointed to him with the forefinger of his left hand, and said to Leveville in a low voice, La Vendée has a head. End of a fight with a cannon by Victor Hugo. The hurrying of Ludovic from Chronicles of Avonlea. 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 Clarica. Chronicles of Avonlea by L. M. Montgomery. The hurrying of Ludovic. Anne Shirley was curled up on the window seat of Theodora Dix's sitting-room, one Saturday evening, looking dreamily afar at some fair starland beyond the hills of sunset. Anne was visiting for a fortnight of her vacation at Echo Lodge, where Mr. and Mrs. Stephen Irving were spending the summer, and she often ran over to the old Dix homestead to chat for a while with Theodora. They had had their chat out on this particular evening, and Anne was giving herself over to the delight of building an air castle. She leaned her shapely head with its braided coronet of dark red hair against the window casing, and her gray eyes were like the moonlit gleam of shadowy pools. Then she saw Ludovic's speed coming down the lane. He was yet far from the house, for the Dix lane was a long one, but Ludovic could be recognized as far as he could be seen. No one else in Middle Grafton had such a tall, gently stooping, placidly moving figure. In every kink in turn of it, there was an individuality all Ludovic's own. Anne roused herself from her dreams, thinking it would only be tactful to take her to departure. Ludovic was courting Theodora. Everyone in Grafton knew that, or if anyone were in ignorance of the fact, it was not because he had not had time to find out. Ludovic had been coming down that lane to see Theodora in the same ruminating, unhacening fashion for fifteen years. When Anne, who was slim and girly and romantic, rose to go, Theodora, who was plump and middle-aged and practical, said, with a twinkle in her eye, there isn't any hurry, child. Sit down and have your call out. You've seen Ludovic coming down the lane, and, I suppose, you think that you'll be a crowd, but you won't. Ludovic rather likes a third person around, and so do I. It spurs up the conversation, as it were. When a man has been coming to see you straight along, twice a week for fifteen years, you get rather talked out by spells. Theodora never pretended to bashfulness where Ludovic was concerned. She was not at all shy of referring to him in his dilatory courtship. Indeed, it seemed to amuse her. Anne sat down again, and together they watched Ludovic coming down the lane, gazing calmly about him at the lush clover fields and the blue loops of the river, winding in and out of the misty valley below. Anne looked at Theodora's placid, finely molded face, and tried to imagine what she herself would feel like if she were sitting there, waiting for an elderly lover who had, seemingly, taken so long to make up his mind. But even Anne's imagined nation failed her for this. Anyway, she thought impatiently, if I wanted him I think I'd find some way of hurrying him up. Ludovic's speed was there ever such a misfit of a name. Such name for such a man is a delusion and a snare. Presently Ludovic got to the house, but stood so long on the doorstep in a brown study, gazing into the tangled green boss-skage of the cherry orchard, that Theodora finally went and opened the door before he knocked. As she brought him into the sitting-room, she made a comical grimace at Anne over his shoulder. Ludovic smiled pleasantly at Anne. He liked her. She was the only girl he knew, for he generally avoided young girls. They made him feel awkward and out of place. But Anne did not affect him in this fashion. She had a way of getting on with all sorts of people, and although they had not known her very long, both Ludovic and Theodora looked upon her as an old friend. Ludovic was tall and somewhat ungainly, but his unhesitating placidity gave him the appearance of a dignity that did not otherwise pertain to him. He had a drooping, silky, brown moustache, and a little curly tuft of imperial—a fashion which was regarded as eccentric in Grafton, where men had clean-shaven chins or went full bearded. His eyes were dreamy and pleasant, with a touch of melancholy in their blue depths. He sat down in the big, bull-geel, arm-chair that had belonged to Theodora's father. Ludovic always sat there, and Anne declared that the chair had come to look like him. The conversation soon grew animated enough. Ludovic was a good talker when he had somebody to draw him out. He was well-read and frequently surprised Anne by his shrewd comments on men and matters out in the world, of which only the faint echoes reached the land river. He had also a fair liking for religious arguments with Theodora, who did not care much for politics or the making of history, but was avid of doctrines and read everything pertaining thereto. When the conversation drifted into an eddy of friendly wrangling between Ludovic and Theodora over Christian science, Anne understood that her usefulness was ended for the time being, and that she would not be missed. It's star-time and good-night-time, she said, and went away quietly. But she had to stop to laugh when she was well out of sight of the house, in a green meadow bestarred with the white and gold of daisies. A wind, odor-frated, blew daintily across it. Anne leaned against a white birch tree in the corner and laughed heartily, as she was apt to do whenever she thought of Ludovic and Theodora. To her eager youth, this courtship of theirs seemed a very amusing thing. She liked Ludovic, but allowed herself to be provoked with him. The dear, big, irritating goose, she said aloud, there never was such a lovable idiot before. He's just like the alligator in the old rhyme, who wouldn't go along, and wouldn't keep still, but just kept bobbing up and down. Two evenings later, when Anne went over to the dick's place, she and Theodora drifted into a conversation about Ludovic. Theodora, who was the most industrious soul alive, and had a mania for fancy work into the bargain, was busying her smooth, plump fingers with a very elaborate Battenburg lace centerpiece. Anne was lying back in a little rocker with her slim hands folded in her lap, watching Theodora. She realized that Theodora was very handsome in a stately, Juno-like fashion of firm, white flesh, large, clearly chiseled outlines, and great, cow-y brown eyes. When Theodora was not smiling, she looked very imposing, Anne thought it likely that Ludovic held her in awe. Did you and Ludovic talk about Christian science all Saturday evening, she asked? Theodora overflowed into a smile. Yes, and we even quarreled over it, at least I did. Ludovic wouldn't quarrel with anyone. You have to fight fair when you spar with him. I hate to square up to a person who won't hit back. Theodora said Anne coaxingly, I'm going to be curious and impertinent. You can snub me if you like. Why don't you and Ludovic get married? Theodora laughed comfortably. That's the question Grafton folks have been asking for quite a while, I reckon, Anne. Well, I'd have no objection to marrying Ludovic, that's frank enough for you, isn't it? But it's not easy to marry a man unless he asks you, and Ludovic has never asked me. Is he too shy, persisted Anne? Since Theodora was in the mood, she meant to sift this puzzling affair to the bottom. Theodora dropped her work and looked meditatively out over the green slopes of the summer world. No, I don't think it is that. Ludovic isn't shy, it's just his way, the speedway. The speeds are all dreadfully deliberate. They spend years thinking over a thing before they make up their minds to do it. Sometimes they get so much in the habit of thinking about it that they never get over it. Like old Alder speed, who was always talking of going to England to see his brother, but never went, though there was no earthly reason why he shouldn't. They're not lazy, you know, but they love to take their time. And Ludovic is just an aggravated case of speedism, suggested Anne. Exactly. He never hurried in his life, why he has been thinking for the last six years of getting his house painted. He talks it over with me every little while, and picks out the color, and there the matter stays. He's fond of me, and he means to ask me to have him some time. The only question is, will the time ever come? Why don't you hurry him up, asked Anne impatiently? Theodora went back to her stitches with another laugh. If Ludovic could be hurried up, I'm not the one to do it. I'm too shy. It sounds ridiculous to hear a woman of my age and interest to say that, but it is true. Of course I know it's the only way any speed ever did make out to get married. For instance, there's a cousin of mine married to Ludovic's brother. I don't say she proposed to him out and out, but mind you, Anne, it wasn't far from it. I couldn't do anything like that. I did try once. When I realized I was getting seer and mellow, and all the girls of my generation were going off on either hand, I tried to give Ludovic a hint, but it stuck in my throat, and now I don't mind. If I don't change Dix to speed until I take the initiative, it will be Dix to the end of life. Ludovic doesn't realize that we are growing old, you know. He thinks we are giddy young folks yet, with plenty of time before us. That's the speed failing. They never find out they're alive until they're dead. Your fond of Ludovic, aren't you? asked Anne, detecting a note of real bitterness among Theodora's paradoxes. Laws, yes, Theodora said candidly. She did not think it worthwhile to blush over so settled a fact. I think the world and all of Ludovic, and he certainly does need somebody to look after him. He's neglected. He looks frayed. You can see that for yourself. That old aunt of his looks after his house in some fashion, but she doesn't look after him. And he's coming now to the age when a man needs to be looked after and cuddled a bit. I'm lonesome here, and Ludovic is lonesome up there, and it does seem ridiculous, doesn't it? I don't wonder that we're the standing joke of Grafton. Goodness knows I laugh at it enough myself. I sometimes thought that if Ludovic could be made jealous, it might spur him along. But I never could flirt, and there's nobody to flirt with if I could. Everybody here abouts looks on me as Ludovic's property, and nobody would dream of interfering with him. Theodora cried, Anne, I have a plan. Now what are you going to do? exclaimed Theodora. Anne told her. At first Theodora laughed and protested. In the end she yielded somewhat doubtfully, overborn by Anne's enthusiasm. We'll try it then, she said resignedly. If Ludovic gets mad and leaves me, I'll be worse off than ever. But nothing venture, nothing win. And there is a fighting chance, I suppose. Besides, I must admit I'm tired of his dilly-dallying. Anne went back to Echo Lodge, tingling with delight in her plot. She hunted up Arnold Sherman and told him what was required of him. Arnold Sherman listened and laughed. He was an elderly widower, an intimate friend of Stephen Irving, and had come down to spend part of the summer with him, and his wife in Prince Edward Island. He was a handsome, in a mature style, and he had a dash of mischief in him still, so that he entered readily enough into Anne's plan. It amused him to think of hurrying Ludovic's speed, and he knew that Theodora Dix could be depended upon to do her part. The comedy would not be dull, whatever its outcome. The curtain rose on the first act after prayer meeting on the next Thursday night. It was bright moonlight when the people came out of church, and everybody saw it plainly. Arnold Sherman stood upon the steps, close to the door, and Ludovic's speed leaned up against a corner of the graveyard fence, as he had done for years. The boys said he had worn the pain off that particular place. Ludovic knew of no reason why he should paste himself up against the church door. Theodora would come out as usual, and he would join her as she went past the corner. This was what happened. Theodora came down the steps. Her stately figure outlined in darkness against the gush of lamplight from the porch. Arnold Sherman asked her if he might see her home. Theodora took his arm calmly, and together they swept past the stupefied Ludovic, who stood helplessly gazing after them, as if unable to believe his eyes. For a few moments he stood there limply. Then he started down the road after his fickle lady and her new admirer. The boys, an irresponsible young man, crowded after, expecting some excitement, but they were disappointed. Ludovic strode on until he overtook Theodora and Arnold Sherman, and then fell meekly in behind them. When she and Arnold turned in at her gate, Ludovic had to stop. Theodora looked over her shoulder and saw him standing still on the road. His forlorn figure haunted her thoughts all night. If Anne had not run over the next day and bolstered up her convictions, she might have spoiled everything by prematurely relenting. Ludovic, meanwhile, stood still on the road, quite oblivious to the hoots and comments of the vastly amused small boy contingent, until Theodora and his rival disappeared from his view under the furs in the hollow of her lane. Then he turned about and went home, not with his usual leisurely amble, but with a perturbed stride which proclaimed his inward disquiet. He felt bewildered. If the world had come suddenly to an end, or if the lazy, meandering graft and river had turned about and float up the hill, Ludovic could not have been more astonished. For fifteen years he had walked home from meetings with Theodora, and now, this elderly stranger, with all the glamour of the states hanging about him, had coolly walked off with her under Ludovic's very nose. Worst, most unkindest cut of all, Theodora had gone with him willingly. Nay, she had evidently enjoyed his company. Ludovic felt a stirring of righteous anger in his easygoing soul. When he reached the end of his lane, he paused at his gate and looked at his house, set back from the lane in a crescent of birches. Even in the moonlight its weather-worn aspect was plainly visible. He thought of the palatial residence-rumour ascribed to Arnold Sherman in Boston, and stroked his chin nervously with his sun-burnt fingers. Then he doubled up his fist and struck it smartly on the gate post. Theodora didn't think she is going to jilt me in this fashion after keeping company with me for fifteen years. He said, I'll have something to say to it. Arnold Sherman or no Arnold Sherman, the impudence of the puppy. The next morning Ludovic drove to Carmody and engaged Joshua Pie to come and paint his house, and that evening, although he was not due till Saturday night, he went down to see Theodora. Arnold Sherman was there before him and was actually sitting in Ludovic's own prescriptive chair. Ludovic had to deposit himself in Theodora's new wicker rocker, where he looked and felt lamentably out of place. If Theodora felt the situation to be awkward, she carried it off superbly. She had never looked handsomer, and Ludovic perceived that she wore her second best silk dress. He wondered miserably if she had daunted in the expectation of his rival's call. She had never put on silk dresses for him. Ludovic had always been the meekest and mildest of mortals, but he felt quite murderous as he sat mutely there and listened to Arnold Sherman's polished conversation. You should just have been there to see him glowering. Theodora told the delighted Ann the next day. It may be wicked of me, but I felt real glad. I was afraid he might stay away in silk. So long as he comes here in silk, I don't worry, but he is feeling badly enough poor soul, and I'm really eaten up by remorse. He tried to outstay Mr. Sherman last night, but he didn't manage it. You never saw a more depressed looking creature than he was, as he hurried down the lane. Yes, he actually hurried. The following Sunday evening Arnold Sherman walked a church with Theodora and sat with her. When they came in, Ludovic's speed suddenly stood up in his pew under the gallery. He sat down again at once, but everybody in view had seen him, and that night folks in all the length and breadth of Grafton River discussed the dramatic occurrence with keen enjoyment. Yes, he jumped right up as if he was pulled on his feet, while the minister was reading the chapter, said his cousin, Lorella's speed, who had been in church to her sister, who had not. His face was as white as a sheet, and his eyes were just glaring out of his head. I never felt so thrilled, I declare. I almost expected him to fly at them then and there, but he just gave a sort of gasp and sat down again. I don't know whether Theodora Dick saw him or not. She looked as cool and unconcerned as you please. Theodora had not seen Ludovic, but if she looked cool and unconcerned, her appearance belied her, for she felt miserably flustered. She could not prevent Arnold Sherman coming to church with her, but it seemed to her like going too far. People did not go to church and sit together in Grafton, unless they were the next thing to being engaged. What if this filled Ludovic with the narcotic of despair instead of waking him up? She sat through the service in misery and heard not one word of the sermon. But Ludovic's spectacular performances were not yet over. The speeds might be hard to get started, but once they were started their momentum was irresistible. When Theodora and Mr. Sherman came out, Ludovic was waiting on the steps. He stood up, straight and stern, with his head thrown back and his shoulder squared. There was open defiance in the look he cast on his rival and masterfulness in the mere touch of the hand he laid on Theodora's arm. May I see you home, mystics, his word said, his tone said, I am going to see you home, whether or no. Theodora, with a depreciating look at Arnold Sherman, took his arm and Ludovic marched her across the green amid a silence which the very horses tied to the storm fence seemed to share, for Ludovic was a crowded hour of glorious life. Anne walked all the way over from Avonlea the next day to hear the news. Theodora smiled consciously. Yes, it is really settled at last, Anne. Coming home last night, Ludovic asked me plump and plain to marry him, Sunday and all as it was. It's to be right away, for Ludovic won't be put off a week longer than necessary. So Ludovic's speed has been hurried up to some purpose at last, said Mr. Sherman, when Anne called in at Echo Lodge, brimful with her news. And you were delighted, of course, and my poor pride must be the scapegoat. I shall always be remembered in Grafton as the man from Boston who wanted Theodora Dix and couldn't get her. But that won't be true, you know, said Anne comfortably. Arnold Sherman thought of Theodora's right beauty and the mellow companionableness that she had reeled in their brief intercourse. I'm not perfectly sure of that, he said, with a half sigh. End of The Hurrying of Ludovic. Melinda's Humorous Story by Mae McHenry This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Read and recorded by Betsy Bush. Marquette Michigan, June 2007 Melinda's Humorous Story by Mae McHenry Melinda was dejected. She told herself that she was groping in the veil of despair, that life was a vast gray, echoing void. She decided that ambition was dead. A case of starvation, that friendship had slipped through two eagerly grasping fingers, that love, ah, love. You'd better take a dose of blue mess, her aunt suggested, when she had sighed seven times dolefully at the tea-table. Not blue mess. Any other kind of mass, you please. But not blue. Melinda shuddered absently. No, she was not physically ill. The trouble was deeper. Soul-sickness, acute, threatening to become chronic, that defied alopathic doses of favorite and other philosophers, that would not yield even to hourly repetition of the formula handed down from her grandmother. If you cannot have what you want, try to want what you have. Yet she could lay her finger on no bleeding heart wound, on no definite cause. It was true that the deeply analytical, painstakingly interesting historical novel on which she had worked all winter had been sent back from the publishers with a briefly polite note of thanks and regrets. But as she had never expected anything else, that could not depress her. Also, the slump in GC Copperstock had forced her to give up her long-planned southern trip, and even to forgo the consolatory purchase of a spring gown. But she had a mind that could soar above flesh-pot disappointments. Then the reverend John Graham. But what John Graham did or said was nothing, absolutely nothing to her. So Melinda clenched her hands and moaned in the same key with the east wind, and told the four walls of her room that she could not endure it. She must do something. Then it was, that in a flash of inspiration it came to her. She would write a humorous story. The artistic fitness of the idea pleased her. She had always understood that humorists were marked by a deep-dyed melancholy, that the height of unhappiness was a vantage ground from which to view the joke of existence. She would test the dictum. Now, if ever, she would write humorously. The material was at hand, seething and crowding in her mind, in fact, the monumental dullness and complacent narrowness of the villagers, the egoism, the conceit, the bland shepherd of his flock, pomposity of John Graham. What more could a humorist desire? Yes, she would write. Thoughts came quick and fast. Words flowed in a fiery stream like lava that glows and rushes and curls, and leaps down the mountain, sweeping all obstacles aside. The figure did not wholly please Melinda, for everybody knows how dull and gray and uninteresting lava is when it cools, but she had no time to bother with another. She felt the exaltation, the joy and uplifting of spirit that is the reward. Usually, alas, the sole reward of the writer in the work of creation. Then, before the lava had time to cool, she sent the story to the first magazine on her list with a name beginning with A. It was her custom to send them that way, though sometimes with a desire to be impartial, she commenced at Z and went up the list. At the end of two weeks the wind had ceased blowing from the east. Melinda decided that though life for her must be gray, echoing void, yet would she make an effort for the joy of others. She would lift herself above the depression that enfolded her, even as the buoyant hyacins were cleaving their dark husks and lifting up the buting and fragrance of their hearts to solace passersby. Therefore she ceased parting her hair in the middle and ordered a simple little frog from Dees, hyacinth blue voile, with a lining that should whisper and rustle like the glad winds whisking away last year's leaves. Then the day came when she strolled carelessly and unexpectedly down the village street to the post office, and there received a letter that bore on the upper left-hand corner of the envelope the name of the magazine first on her list beginning with A. A chill passed along Melinda's spine, that humorous story. Could this mean? It was too horrible to contemplate. She took a shortcut through the orchard and as she walked she tore off a corner and peeped into the envelope. Yes, there was a pale blue slip of paper with serrated edges. She leaned against a Baldwin apple-tree to think. How true it is that one should be prepared for the unexpected. Melinda had sent out many manuscripts freighted with tingling hopes and eager aspirations and with the postage stamps that ensured their prompt return. How was she to know? By what process of reasoning could she infer that this, that had been offered to simply from force of habit, would be retained in exchange for an aesthetically tinted check? She anathematized the magazine editor, that seems the proper thing to do with editors. She wanted to know what business he had to keep that story after having led her to believe that it was his unbearable custom to send them back. It was deception, she told the swelling Baldwin buds. Bass, deep, dyed, subtle deception. After baiting her on with his little pink printed rejection slips, he suddenly sprung a wicked trap. It was some time before Melinda grew calm enough to read the editorial letter. It ran, Dear Madam, we are glad to have your tender and delicately sympathetic picture of village life. There is a note of true sentiment and a generous appreciation of homely virtue marking this story for which we desire to add in a special word of praise. Check enclosed. Very truly yours, the editor of A. Melinda sank limply on the bleached last year's grass at the foot of the tree. Tender and delicately sympathetic picture. Generous appreciation. She laughed feebly. The editor was pleased to be facetious. Having a fine sense of humor himself he showed his realization of the story by acknowledging it in the same vein of subtle satire. She re-read the letter and unfolded the slip of paper with serrated edges, with changing emotions. After all, it was not such a very bad story. She permitted herself to recall how humorous it was, how cleverly and keenly it laid bare the ridiculous, the unexpected, how it scintillated with wit and abounded in droll and subtle distinctions and descriptions. All, all at the expense of her nearest relatives and her dearest friends. Melinda thought she would return the check and demand that her story be sent back to her or destroyed. But, reflecting that Punch's advice is applicable to other things than matrimony and suicide, she didn't. She resolutely put her literary Frankenstein behind her. She reasoned that in all probability the story would not be published during the lifetime of any of the originals of the characters, that even if the worst came to the worst, Mossdale would likely to remain in ignorance that would be blissful. The villagers were not want to waste time on the printed word. In fact, such was the profundity of their unenlightenment. Few of them had heard of the magazine with a name beginning with A. Even John Graham paid little attention to the secular periodicals. Besides, if absolutely necessary, John's attention might be diverted. So Melinda went away on a visit. Her health demanded it. The doctor was unable to name her Malady. But she herself diagnosed it as magazineitis. Toward fall, Melinda, entirely recovered, returned to Mossdale. Entirely recovered, yet she turned cold, unseeing eyes on the newsboy when he passed through the car with his towering load of very colored periodicals. And rather than be forced to the final resort of the unaccompanied traveler, she welcomed the advent of an acquaintance, possessed of volubility, of an ejaculatory eruptive variety. After many gentle jets and spurts of gossip, which remain to be told, as the lady hastily gathered up her impediment of preparatory to a lighting at her home station. How like me in the joy of seeing you to forget! What a sweet, clever story! And to think of you having something published in A. I never was more surprised than when Mr. Ferguson brought home the magazine—those delicious Mossdale people. I could not endure that the dear things should not see and know at once. The lovely Hamlet is so—so remote. And I know you were travelling. What a pleasure to send them half a dozen copies that very evening. Yes, Porter, that too. Do run down to see me soon, dear. Now do. Good-bye. Melinda summoned the newsboy and bought the latest number of the magazine with a name beginning with A. She turned to the list of contents with feverish anxiety. Then the book slid from her nerveless fingers. Her humorous story had been given to an eager public. She leaned back and gazed at the flying telegraph poles and fields. Even the worthiest, the gravest, the finest, she reflected, has a face that, if seen in a certain light, will flash out the igneous fatus of the ridiculous, but it is not usually considered the office of friendship to turn on the betraying light. Oh, well, her relatives would forgive in time. Relatives have to forgive. It was unfortunate that John Graham was not a relative. One thing. I know now how much Mrs. Ferguson cares because I got those six votes ahead of her for the Thursday Club presidency. Half a dozen copies, Melinda said aloud as she caught sight of the spire of the Mossdale Church. Her uncle Joe met her at the station and kissed her for the first time since she had put on long dresses. Notwithstanding a foolish prejudice against tobacco juice, Melinda received the salute in a meek and contrite spirit. Notice how many citizens were hanging around underfoot on the depot platform, so as you kinder had to stop and shake hands to get him out of the way, Uncle Joe queried as he turned the cult heads toward home. Melinda had noticed. I suppose they came out to see the train come in, she suggested. Nope, not exactly, Uncle Joe explained. Looking out for automobiles and flying airships have made trains of cars seem mighty common up this way. Nope, the folks was out on account of you a common. Me? Having a guilty conscience, Melinda glanced backward apprehensively and made a motion as though to dodge a missile. Yep, and you'll find a lot of the relations at the house awaiting for you. Why, what, now look here, Uncle Joe, there is no occasion to be foolish about a little... Foolish? Now maybe some would call it foolish, but us folks up the creek here, we can't help feeling set up some over finding out we have a second Milton or a Mrs. Stowe in the family. Melinda looked at her relatives' concave profile in sixth suspicion. Was the trail of the serpent over them all? But no, Uncle Joe was beaming mildly with the satisfaction of having shown that although the literary hemisphere was the unknown land, he had heard of a mountain and a minor elevation or two. He was, as she had always believed incapable of satire. For once Melinda was speechless, but Uncle Joe was likely to be fluent when he got started and turned mild, siffused, half shamed blue eyes on his shrinking niece. Yes, your peace has come out in the paper, Melinda, and your folks are all fired pleased with you. I told Lucy this morning I wished your poor pap would come back to earth for just this one day. Ah, Melinda took a firm grip on the side of the buggy. But I guess you'll have to write another right off. There is some jealousy amongst them that aren't in it. Uncle Joe went on. I told them you couldn't put the whole connection in, or it would read like a list of them present at a surprise party. Your Aunt Lucy, she's just as tickled as a hen with three chickens, the old man chuckled. There it is all down in black and white just like it happened, only different. About her spasm of economy when she was cleaning away Mary Emmeline's medicine bottles and couldn't bear to throw away what was left over. But up and took it all herself in one powerful mixed dose to save it, and had to have the doctor with a stomach pump to cure her of spasms. What wasn't so economical after all? It's her picture tickles her most. Oh, said Melinda. Yes, you know the picture is as slim as a girl in her first pair of cossets, a standing on a chair, a reaching bottles off a top shelf. And your Aunt Lucy is that hefty she ain't stood on a chair for ten years or feared it would break down. And she's had to trust the top shelf to the hired girl. I guess when she goes to heaven she'll want to stop on the way up and fix that top shelf to suit her. So she just sits and looks at that picture and smiles and smiles. She likes my whiskers too. Yes, she's always wanting me to wear whiskers ever since we were married. But we never was a whiskery family, and they wouldn't seem to grow thicker than your Uncle Josh's corn when he planted it, one grain to the hill. But there I am in the picture in the paper with real biblical whiskers reaching to the bottom of my vest. Uncle Joe cleared his throat and glanced sideways at his niece again. I want to tell you, Melinda, that I am real oblige to you for making me one of the main ones in the piece with a lot to say. Your Aunt Lucy, says, was only right and proper. Me being your nice kin and you livin' with us. But I told her there was so many others that was smarter and more of the story paper kind that I thought it showed real good feeling on your part. Yes, I did. Get up there, Ginger. Then I kinda thought I'd warn you too, Melinda, that they all are just a dyin' to hear you say who the preacher is. He's the only one we couldn't quite place. Melinda took the little bottle of smelling salts from her bag and held it to her nose. Yes, Uncle Joe went on. The others was easy identified because you had named the names. But him you just called the preacher all the way through. Some says it's the Reverend Graham, kind of toned down and trimmed up like things you see in the moonlight on a summer night. But I told them the Reverend Graham is a nice enough chap, but that extra fine way up preacher fellow in the story must be some stranger you knew from off, and didn't give his name because you didn't rightly know what it was. I thought, even if you was so soft on Reverend Graham as to see him in that illusory moony light, that about the stranger from off was the right and proper thing for me, being your uncle, to say anyway. So if you want to keep it dark about the preacher, you can. Just talk about a stranger from off. I will, Uncle Joe. Dear Uncle Joe. Melinda exclaimed gratefully as they stopped in front of the gate. Melinda greeted her relatives with a warmth and enthusiasm that embarrassed and made them suspicious. She was not usually so complacent, so solicitous for the health in progress of offspring. Above all, she was not usually so loath to talk about herself. She acted as though she had never written a story. Yet three copies of it were spread open under her nose. One on the piano, one on the parlor table, one on the sideboard, all open at the passage about the preacher. The relatives retired in disgust. With the departure of the last one, Melinda seized a magazine and fled to the orchard. She would read that story herself. As she turned to the leaves, she caught sight of a manly form carefully climbing the fence. She dropped the periodical and stood on it, gazing up pensively into the well-laden boughs of the Baldwin. The reverend Graham took her hands in a strong ministerial squeeze. It is very good of you to come to see me so soon after my return, she faltered. Good Melinda, do you think I could help coming? He ejaculated. I cannot tell you. Words are inadequate to express what I feel. He went on. The deep gratitude, the humility, the wonder, the triumph, the determination with God's aid to live up to the high ideal you have set forth in your wonderful story. You have seen the latent qualities, the nobler potentialities you have shown me to myself. Melinda, do not think that I do not appreciate the difficulties of this hour for you. I know how your heart is shrinking, how your delicate maidenly modesty is up in arms. But Melinda, you know, you know, dear Melinda. I am glad you understand me, John. Understand you. The reverend Graham could restrain himself no longer. He swept her into his arms, appropriating his own. Melinda remained there, quiescently leaning against his shoulder, because there seemed nothing else to do. Also, because it was a broad and comfortable shoulder against which to lean. I am done for, she reflected. Now I will never dare to confess that I was trying to write humorous. Then she reached up a hand and touched the preacher's face timidly. His cheek was wet. Why, John, John, she whispered. End of Melinda's Humorous Story by May McHenry The Red Ettin of the Blue Fairy Book 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 Marianne Alexander The Blue Fairy Book by Andrew Lang The Red Ettin The Red Ettin. The brain's 12 widows that lived in a small bit of ground, which they rented from a farmer. In and in the mid-twosunds, another hadane. And by and by it was time for the wife that had twosunds to send them away to seek their fortune. So she told her eldest son one day to take a can and bring her water from the well, that she might make a cake for him. And however much or however little water he might bring, the cake would be great or small accordingly. And that cake was to be all that she could give him when he went on his travels. The lad gave away with the can to the well and filled it with water, and then came away him again. But the can being broken, the most part of the water had run out before he got back. So his cake was very small. Yet small as it was, his mother asked if he was willing to take the half of it were a blessing, telling him that if he chose rather to have the hail, he would only get it were curse. The young man thinking he might need to travel a far way and not know when, or how he might get other provisions said, he'd like to eat a hail cake. Come his mother's malice on what me. So she gave him the hail cake and her malice on a lying weight. Then he took his brother aside and gave him a knife to keep they should come back, desiring him to look at it every morning. As long as it continued to be clear, then he might be sure that the owner of it was well. But if it grew dim and rusty, then for certain some ill had befallen him. So the young man set out to seek his fortune. And he did all that day and all the next day. And on the third day in the afternoon, he came up to where a shepherd was sitting, whiff like a sheep. And he got up the shepherd and asked him what the sheep belonged to. And the man answered, the red Eddon of Ireland, and slipped in bellygam, and stole King Malcolm's daughter, the king of fair Scotland. He beats her, he binds her. He lays her on a band. And every night he dings her way a bright silver wand, like Julie in the Roman. He's one that fears no man. That said, there's ain't predestinate to be his mortal foe, but that man is yet unborn. Lying may it be so. Young man then went on his journey. And he had not gone far when he aspired an old man with white locks herding a flock of swine. And he get up to him and he asked, whose swine were these? When the man answered, the red Eddon of Ireland. Then slipped in bellygam, and stole King Malcolm's daughter, the king of fair Scotland. He beats her, he binds her. He lays her on a band. And every day he dings her way a bright silver wand, like Julie in the Roman. He's one that fears no man. It said there's ain't predestinate to be his mortal foe, but that man is yet unborn. And lying may it be so. Then the young man gave on a bit further and came to another very old man, Herdon Goats. And when he asked whose goats there were, the answer was, the red Eddon of Ireland. And slipped in bellygam, and stole King Malcolm's daughter, the king of fair Scotland. He beats her, he binds her. He lays her on a band. And every night he dings her way a bright silver wand, like Julie in the Roman. He's one that fears no man. And it said there's ain't predestinate to be his mortal foe, but that man is yet unborn. And lying may it be so. This old man also told him to beware of the next beasts that he should meet, for they were of a very different kind from any he had yet seen. So the young man went on, and by and by he saw a multitude of very dreadful beasts. Elk, any of them, were twaheads. And on every heed, four horns. And he was so frightened, and ran away from them as fast as he could. And glad was he when he came to a castle that stood in a hillock with the door standing wide to the wall. And he got into the castle for shelter, and there he saw an old wife sitting beside the kitchen fire. He asked the wife if he might stay there for the night as he was tired. Well, a long journey, and the wife said he might. But it was not a good place for him to be in, as it belonged to the Red Ettin, who was a very terrible beast with three heeds that spared no living man he could get hold of. The young man would have gone away, but he was afraid of the beasts on the outside of the castle. So he beseeched the old woman to conceal him as well she could, and not to tell the Ettin he was there. He thought if he could put over the night, he might get away in the morning without meeting with the beasts and so escape. But he had not been long in his hidey-hole before the awful Ettin came in. And knee sooner was he in. And he was heard crying, snook, but, and snook, then, I find the smell of an earthly man. Be he living or be he dead, his heart this night shall catch in my bread. The monster soon found a poor young man, pulled him from his hole, and when he'd got him out, he told him that if he could answer him three questions, his life would be spared. The first was whether Ireland or Scotland was first inhabited. The second was whether man was made for woman, or woman for man. And the third was whether men or brutes were made first. The lad, not being able to answer one of these questions, the red Ettin took a mace and knocked him in the head, and turned him into a pillar of stone. On the morning after this happened, the younger brother took out the knife to look at, and he was grieved to find it all brown with rust. He told his mother that the time now had come for him to go away in his travels also. So she requested him to take the can to the well for water, that she might bake a cake for him. The can being broken, he brought him as little water as the other had done, and the cake was as little. She asked whether he would have the hail cake where malice, or the half where blessing. And like his brother, he thought it best to have the hail cake, come with the malice and put might. So he gave away, and everything happened to him. That had happened to his brother. The other widow and her son heard of all that had happened for a ferry, and the young man determined that he would also go upon his travels and see if he could do anything to relieve his two friends. So his mother gave him a can to go to the well and bring home water that she might make him a cake for his journey. Then he gave, and as he was bringing him the water, a raven, an hour when he said, cried to him to look, and he would see that the water was running out. And he was a young man of sense. And seeing the water running out, he took some clay and patched up the holes. So he brought home enough water to make a large cake. When his mother put it to him to take the half cake where blessing, he took it in preference to have in the hail where malice, and yet the half was bigger than what the other lads had got, or the other. So he gave away in his journey. And after he travelled a fair way, he met an old woman that asked him if he would give her a bit of his bannock. And he said he'd gladly do that. So he gave her a piece of the bannock, and for that she gave him a magical wand that she said might yet be of service to him if he took care to use it rightly. Then the old woman who was a fairy told him a great deal that would happen to him, and what he ought to do in all circumstances. And after that she vanished in an instant at his sight. He gave on a great way further. Then he came to the old man-herdon sheep. And when he asked whose sheep these were, the answer was. The red-eaten of Ireland, and slothed in Baligam, and stoking Malcolm's daughter, the king of fair Scotland. He beats her, he binds her, he lays her on a band, and every day he dings her with a bright silver wand. And like Julian the Romani's one that fears no man, but now I fear his end is near, and destiny at hand. And here to be I plainly see the air of all his land. The young man then went on his journey, and he had not gone far when he has spied an old man with white locks herd in a flock of swine. And he got up to him and he asked whose swine these were. When the man answered, the red-eaten of Ireland, and slothed in Baligam, and stoking Malcolm's daughter, the king of fair Scotland. He beats her, he binds her, he lays her on a band, and every day he dings her with a bright silver wand. Like Julian the Romani's one that fears no man, but now I hear his end is near, and destiny at hand. And here to be I plainly see the air of all his land. Then the young man got on a bit further, and came to another very old man, herding goats. When he asked whose goats they were, the answer was. The red-eaten of Ireland, then slothed in Baligam, and stoking Malcolm's daughter, the king of fair Scotland. He beats her, he binds her, he lays her on a band, and every day he dings her with a bright silver wand. Like Julian the Romani's one that fears no man, but now I hear his end is near, and destiny at hand. And here to be I plainly see the air of all his land. This old man also told him to beware of the next beasts that he should meet, for they were of a very different kind from any he had yet seen. When he came to the place where the monstrous beasts were standing, he did not stop nor run away, but went boldly through among them. One came up roaring with an open mouth to devour him. When he struck it with his wand, and laid it in an instant dead at his feet, he soon came to the Eton's castle, where he knelt and was admitted. The old woman that sat by the fire warned him of the terrible Eton, and what had been the fate of the two other brothers, but he was not to be daunted. The monster soon came in saying, Snook, but and snook, Ben, I find the smell of an earthly man, be he living or be he dead, his heart shall be kitchen to my bread. He quickly aspired the young man and made him come forth on the floor, and then he put the three questions to him. But the young man had been told everything by the good fairy, so he was able to answer all the questions. When the Eton found this, he knew his power was gone. The young man then took up the axe and hewed off the monster's three heads. He next asked the old woman to show him where the king's daughter lay, and the old woman took him upstairs and opened a great many doors, and out of every door came a beautiful lady who had been imprisoned there by the Eton, and any of these ladies was the king's daughter. She also took him down into a low room, and there stood two stone pillars that he'd only to touch where he's wanded when his two friends and neighbours started into life, and the hail of the prisoners were overjoyed at their deliverance, which they all acknowledged to be owing to the prudent young man. Next day they all set out for the king's court and a gallant company they made, and the king married his daughter to the young man that had delivered her and gave a noble's daughter to Elkin or the other men, so they all lived happily for the rest of their days. Chambers, popular traditions of Scotland. End of the Red Eton, recording by Marianne Alexander, Citrus Heights, barefacebears.net. The Stick in the Muds, by Rupert Hughes. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Read by Deborah Lynn in Northern Lower Michigan, July 2007. The Stick in the Muds, by Rupert Hughes. From Collier's Weekly. A skiff went prowling along the Avon River in the unhurried English twilight that releases the sunset with reluctance and defers luxuriously the roll call of the stars. The skiff floated low, for the man alone in it was heavy and he was in no greater haste than the northern light. Which was against the traditions, for he was an American, an American businessman. He was making his way through the sky-hued water stealthily, lest he disturb the leisure of the swans, drowsy above their own images, lest he discourage the nightingale, trying a few low flute notes in the cathedral tower of shadow that was a tree above the tomb of Shakespeare. The American had never heard a nightingale and it was his first pilgrimage to the shrine of the actor-manager whose productions Americans curiously couple with the Bible as sacred lore. During the day Joel Wixen had seen the sights of Stratford with the others from his country and from England and the continent, but now he wanted to get close to Shakespeare so he hired the skiff and declined the services of the old boat lender. And now he was stealing up into the rich gloom the church spread across the river. He was pushing the stern of the boat foremost so that he could feast his eyes. He was making so little speed that the only sounds were the choked sob of the water where the boat cleaved it gently and the tinkle of the drops that fell from the lazy oars was something of the delicate music of the uncertain nightingale. Being a successful businessman, Wixen was a suffocated poet. The imagination and the passion and the orderliness that brought him money were the same energies that would have made him a success inverse but lines were not his line and he was inarticulate and incoherent when beauty overwhelmed him as it did in nearly every form. He shivered now before the immediate majesty of the scene and the historic meanings that enriched it as with an embroidered heiress. Yet he gave out no more words than an Etolian harp shuddering with ecstasy and a wind too gentle to make it audible. In such moods he hunted solitude for he was ashamed to be seen, afraid to be observed in the raptures that did not belong in the vocabulary of a businessman. He had talked at noon about the fact that he and Shakespeare's father were in wool and he had annoyed a few modest Americans by comparing the petty amount of the elder Shakespeare's trade with the vast total pouring from his own innumerable looms driven with the electricity that the Shakespeare's had never dreamed of. He had redeemed himself for his pretended brag by amic admission but I'm afraid my boy will never write another hamlet. Yet what could he know of his own son? How little will Shakespeare's father or his scandalized neighbors could have fancied that the scapegrace good for naught who left the town for the town's good would make it immortal and coming back to die and lie down forever beside the Avon would bring a world of pilgrims to a new Mecca, the shrine of the supreme unique poet of all human time. A young boy even now was sauntering the path along the other shore so lazily tossing pebbles into the stream that the swans hardly protested. It came upon Wixen with a kind of silent lightning that Shakespeare had once been such another boy skipping pebbles across the narrow river and peering up into the trees to find out where the nightingale lurked. Perhaps 300 years from now some other shrine would claim the pilgrims, the home perhaps of some American boy now groping through the amber mists of adolescence or some man as little revered by his own neighbors and rivals as the man Shakespeare was when he went back to Avon to send back to London his two plays a year to the theaters. Being a practical man, which is a man who strives to make his visions palpable, Wixen thought of his own hometown and the colony of boys that prospered there in the Middle West. He knew that no one would seek the town because of his birth there, for he was but a buyer of fleeces, a carter of wools, a spinner of threads, and a weaver of fabrics to keep folk's bodies warm. His weaves wore well but they wore out. The weavers of words were the ones whose fabrics lasted beyond the power of time and mocked the moths. Was there any such spinner and carthage to give the town eternal blazing to ears of flesh and blood? There was one who might have been the man if... Suddenly he felt himself again in carthage. There was a river there, too, not a little bolt of chatoyant silk like the Avon which they would have called a crick back there. Before carthage ran the incomprehensible floods of old Mississippi himself, father of waters, deep and vast and swift, they had lately swung a weir across it to make it work, a concrete wall a mile wide and more, and its tumbling cascades spun no little mill wheels but swirled thundering turbines that lighted cities and ran streetcars a hundred miles away. And yet it had no Shakespeare. And yet again it might have had if... The twilight was so deep now that he shipped his oars in the gloom and gave himself back to the past. He was in another twilight, only it was the counter twilight between star quench and sun blaze. Two small boys, himself one of them, his sworn chum Luke mellows the other, meeting in the silent street just as the day tide seeped in from the east and submerged the stars. Joel had tied a string to his big toe and hung it from his window. Luke had done the same. They were not permitted to explode alarm clocks and ruin the last sweets of sleep in either home. So they had agreed that the first to wake should rise and dress with stealth, slip down the dark stairs of his house, into the starlit street, and over to the other's home and pull the toe cord. On this morning Luke had been the earlier out and his triumphant yanks had dragged Joel feet first from sleep and from the bed and almost through the window. Joel had howled protests and shrill whispers down into the gloom and then untying his outraged toe had limped into his clothes and so to the yard. The two children in the huge world disputed still by the night had felt in awe of the sky and the mysteries going on there. The envied man who ran up the streets of evenings lighting the gas street lamps was abroad again already with his little ladder and his quick insect-like motions. Only now he was turning out the lights, just as a similar but invisible being was apparently running around heaven and putting out the stars. Joel remembered saying, I wonder if they're turning off the stars up there to save gas too. Luke did not like the joke. He said, using the word funny solemnly, it's funny to see light putting out light. The stars will be there all day but we won't be able to see them for the sun. Wixom thought of this now and of how Shakespeare's fame had drowned out so many stars. A man had told him that there were hundreds of great writers in Shakespeare's time that most people never heard of. As the boys paused the air quivered with a hoarse moo as of a gigantic cow bellowing for her lost calf. It was really a steamboat whistling for the bridge to open the draw and let her through to the south with her raft of logs. Both of the boys called the boat by name knowing her voice. It's the Bessie Mae Brown. They started on a run to the bluff overlooking the river, their short legs making a full mile of the scant furlong. Often as Joel had come out upon the edge of that bluff on his innumerable journeys to the river for fishing, swimming, skating, or just staring, it always smote him with a thrill Balboa must have felt coming suddenly upon the Pacific. On this morning there was an unwanted grandeur. The whole vault of the sky was curdled with the dawn, a reef of solid black in the west turning to purple and to amber and finally in the east to scarlet with a few late planets caught in the meshes of the sunlight and trembling like dew on a spider's web. And the battle in the sky was repeated in the sea-like river with all of the added magic of the current and the eddies and the wimpling rushes of the dawn winds. On the great slopes were houses and farmsteads throwing off the night and in the river the Bessie Mae Brown, her red light and her green light trailing scarfs of color on the river as she chuffed and clanged her bell and smote the water with her stern wheel. In the little steeple of the pilot house a priest guided her and her unwieldy acre of logs between the piers of the bridge whose lanterns were still belatedly aglow on the girders and again an echo in the flood. Joel filled his little chest with a gulp of morning air and found no better words for his rhapsody than, gee, but ain't it great? To his amazement Luke who had always been more sensitive than he shook his head and turned away. Gosh, what do you want for 10 cents? Joel demanded feeling called upon to defend the worthiness of the dawn. Luke began to cry. He dropped down on his own bare legs in the weeds and twisted his face and his fists in a vain struggle to fight off unmanly grief. Joel squatted at his side and insisted on sharing the secret and finally Luke forgot the sense of family honor long enough to yield to the yearning for company in his misery. I was up here at midnight last night and I don't like this place anymore. You didn't come all by yourself, gee! No, Mama was here too. What's she bring you out here at a time like that for? She didn't know I was here. Didn't know. What's she doing out here then? She and Papa had a turbo quarrel. I couldn't hear what started it but finally it woke me up and I listened and Mama was crying and Papa was swearing and at last Mama said oh I might as well go and throw myself in the river and Papa said good riddance of bad rubbish and Mama stopped crying and she says all right in an awful kind of a voice and I heard the front door open and shut. Gee! While I jumped into my shirt and pants and slid down the rain pipe and ran along the street and there sure enough was Mama walking as fast as she could. I was afraid to go near her. I don't know why but I was so I just sneaked along after her. The street was black as pitch except for the street lamps and as she passed everyone I could see she was still crying and stumbling along like she was blind. It was so late we didn't meet anybody at all and there wasn't a light in a single house except Jones's where somebody was sick I guess but they didn't pay any attention and at last she came to the bluff here and I followed. When she got where she could see the river she stopped and stood there and held her arms out like she was going to jump off or fly or something. The moon was up and the river was so bright you could hardly look at it and Mama stood there with her arms way out like she was on the cross or something. I was so scared and so cold I shook like I had a chill. I was afraid she could hear my teeth chatter and so I dropped down in the weeds and thistles to keep her from seeing me. It was just along about here too. By and by Mama kind of broke like somebody had hit her. Then she began to cry again and to walk up and down wringing her hands. Once or twice she started to run down the bluff and I started to follow her but she stopped like somebody held her back and I sunk down again. Then after a long time she shook her head like she couldn't and turned back. She walked right by me and didn't see me. I heard her whispering I can't. I can't. My poor children. Then she went back down the street and me after her wishing I could go up and help her but I was afraid she wouldn't want me to know and I just couldn't go near her. Luke wept helplessly at the memory of his poultry and Joel tried roughly to comfort him with questions. Gee, I don't blame you. I don't guess I could have either but what was it all about you suppose? I don't know. Mama went to the front door and it was locked and she stood a long, long while before she could bring herself to knock then she tapped on it soft like and by and by Papa opened the door and said oh you're back, are you? Then he turned and walked away and she went in. I could have killed him with a rock if she hadn't shut the door but all I could do was to climb back up the rain pipe. I was so tired and discouraged I nearly fell and broke my neck and I wished I had of but there wasn't any more quarrel only Mama kind of whimpered once or twice and Papa said oh for God's sake shut up and leave me sleep I got to open the store in the morning, ain't I? I didn't do much sleeping and I guess that's why I woke up first. That was all of the story that Joel could learn. The two boys were shut out by the wall of grown-up life. Luke crouched in bitter moodiness throwing clouds of dirt at early grasshoppers and reconquering his lost dignity. At last he said if you ever let on to anybody what I told you ah say was Joel's protest his knighthood as a sworn chum was put in question and he was cruelly hurt. Luke took assurance from his dismay and said in a burst of fury ah I just said that I know you won't tell but just you wait till I can earn a pile of money I'll take Mama away from that old scoundrel so fast it'll make his head swim. Then he slumped again but it takes so dog on long to grow up and I don't know how to earn anything. Then the morning of the world caught into its irresistible vivacity the two boys in the morning of their youth and before long they had forgotten the irremediable woes of their elders as their elders also forgot the problems of national woes and cosmic despair. The boys descended the side long path at a jog brushing the dew and grasshoppers and the birds from the hazel bushes and the pay-paw shrubs and scaring many a dewy rabbit from cover. At the bottom of the bluff the railroad track was the only road along the river and they began the tormenting passage over the uneven ties with cinders everywhere for their bare feet. They postponed as long as they could the delight of breakfast and then sitting on a pile of ties made a feast of such hard-boiled eggs cookies, cheese and crackers as they had been able to weadle from their kitchens the night before. Their talk that morning was earnest as boys' talk is apt to be. They debated their futures as boys are apt to do. Being American boys two things characterized their plans one that the sky itself was the only limit to their ambitions the other that they must not follow their fathers' businesses. Joel's father was an editor Luke's kept a hardware store so Joel wanted to go into trade and Luke wanted to be a writer. The boys wrangled with the shrill intensity of youth a stranger passing might have thought them about to come to blows but they were simply noisy with earnestness their argument was as unlike one of the debates in Virgil's ecologs as possible it was an antistrophe of twang and draw gee you darn fool what you want to go into business for darn fool your own self what you want to be a writer for. Then they laughed wildly struck at each other in mock hostility and went on with their all day walk returning at night too weary for books or even a game of authors or checkers both liked to read and they were just emerging from the stratum of old cap collier Nick Carter the kid glove miner and the steam man into Ivanhoe Scottish chiefs and Kujo's cave they had passed out of the Oliver optic Harry Castleman James Otis era Joel Wixen read for excitement Luke mellows for information as to the machinery of authorship young as they were they went to the theater to the opera house which never housed opera Joel went often and without price since his father being an editor had the glorious prerogative of comps perhaps that was why Luke wanted to be a writer Mr. mellows as hard as his own wear did not believe in the theater and could not be bullied or wept into paying for tickets but Luke became a program boy and got in free a precious privilege he kept secret as long as possible and lost as soon as his father noticed his absences from home on play nights then he was whipped for wickedness in order to give up the theater forever perhaps Luke would never suffer again so fiercely as he suffered from that denial it meant a free education and a free revel in the frequent performances of Shakespeare and of repertory companies that gave such triumphs as East Lynn and Camille not to mention the road companies that played the uproarious Peck's bad boy over the garden wall skipped by the light of the moon and the Charles Hoyt screamers the theater had been a cloud veiled a limpus of mystic exultations of divine terrors and of ambrosial laughter but it was a bad influence Mr. Mello's theories of right and wrong were as simple and sharp as his own knives whatever was delightful and beautiful and laughterful was manifestly wicked God having plainly devised the pretty things as baits for the devil's fish hooks Joel used to tell Luke about the plays he saw and the exiles heart ached with envy they took long walks up the river or across the bridge into the wonderlands that were overflowed in high water times and they talked always of their futures boyhood was a torment a slavery heaven was just over the 21st birthday Joel got his future all but the girl he planned to take with him up the grand stairway of the palace he foresaw Luke missed his future and his girl and all of his dreams between the boys and their manhood stood as usual the fathers strange monsters ogres who seemed to have forgotten at the top of the beanstalk that they had once been boys themselves down below after the early and unceasing misunderstandings as to motives and standards of honor and dignity came the civil war over education wouldn't you just know that each boy would get the wrong dad Joel's father was proud of Luke and not of Joel he had printed some of Luke's poems in the paper and called him a precocious native genius Joel's father wished that his boy could have had his neighbor's boy's gift it was his sorrow that Joel had none of the artistic leanings that are called gifts he regretfully gave him up as one who would not carry on the torch his father had set out with he could not force his child to be a genius but he insisted that Joel should have an education the editor had found himself handicapped by a lack of the mysterious enrichment that a tour through college gives the least absorbent mind he was determined to provide it for his boy though Joel felt that every moment's delay in leaping into the commercial arena was so much delay in arriving at gladiatorial eminence Luke's father had had even less education than editor Wixen but he was proud of it he had never gone far in the world but he was one of those men who are automatically proud of everything they do and derive even from failure or humiliation a savage conceit he made Luke work in his store or out of it as a delivery boy during vacations from such school terms as the law required he saw the value of education enough to make out bills and write stunning letters books to him meant the doleful books that bookkeepers keep as for any further learning he thought it a waste of time a kind of wantonness he felt that Providence had intentionally selected a cross for him and the son who was wicked and foolish enough to want to read stories and see plays and go to school for years instead of going right into business the thought of sending his boy through a preparatory academy and college and wasting his youth on nonsense was outrageous it maddened him to have the boy plead for such folly he tried in vain to whip it out of him Joel's ideas of education were exactly those of Mr. Mellows but he did not like Mr. Mellows because of the anguish inflicted on Luke Joel used to beg Luke to run away from home but that was impracticable for two reasons Luke was not of the runaway sort but meek and shy and obedient to a fault besides while a boy can run away from school he cannot easily run away to school if he did he would be sent back and if he were not sent back how was he to pay for his tuition and his board and books and clothes it was Luke's influence that sent Joel away to board in school he is so long to go himself that Joel felt it foolish to deny himself the god-like opportunity so Luke went to school vicariously in Joel as he got his other experiences vicariously in books at school Joel found so much to do outside of his classes that he grew content to go all the way there was a glee club to manage also an athletic club a paper to solicit ads and subscriptions for class officers to be elected with all the delights of political maneuvering a world in little to run with all the solemnity and competition of the adult cosmos so Joel was happy and lucky and successful in spite of himself the day after Joel took train up the river to his academy Luke took the position his father secured for him and entered the little back room where the butterfly bottling works kept its bookkeepers on high stools the butterfly soda pop ginger ales and other soft drinks were triumphs of incipidity and their birch beer sickened the thirstiest child but the making and the marketing and even the drinking of the more matters of high end price compared to the keeping of the books one of the saddest sweetest greatest stories ever written is alice pigs is pigs butlers fable of the content of little donkey that went round and round in the mill and thought he was traveling far but that donkey was blind and had no dreams denied Luke mellows was a boy a boy that still felt his life in every limb a boy devoured with fantastic ambitions he had a genius within that smothered and struggled till it all but perished unexpressed it lived only enough to be in anguish it heard him like a hidden unmentioned ingrowing toenail that cuts and bleeds and excruciates the fleet member it is meant to protect when Joel came home for his first vacation with the rush of a young colt that has had a good time in the corral but rejoices in the old pastures his first cry was for Luke when he learned where he was he hurried to the bottling works he was turned away with the current remark that employees could not be seen in business hours in those days there were no machines to simplify and verify the bookkeeper's treadmill task and business hours were never over Joel left word at Luke's home for Luke to call for him the minute he was free he did not come that evening nor the next Joel was hurt more than he dared admit it was Sunday afternoon before Luke came round a different Luke a lean, wan, worn-out shred of a youth his welcome was sickly Jim and Natalie Joel roared I thought you was mad at me about something you never came near I wanted to come Luke croaked but nights I'm too tired to walk anywhere and besides I usually have to go back to the office gee that's damn tough said Joel who had grown from darn to damn thinking to light Luke up with a congenial theme Joel heroically forebored to describe the marvels of academy life and asked what you've been reading lately a little bit of everything I guess hey a whole lot of nothing Luke's side I got no strength for reading by the time I shut my ledgers I got to save my eyes you know the light's bad in that back room what you've been writing then miles of figures and entries about one gross bottles lemon two gross sassaprilla one gross empties returned no more poetry no more nothing Joel was obstinately cheerful well you've been making money anyways that's something yeah I buy my own shoes and clothes now and pay my board and lodging at home and Paul puts the two dollars that's left into the savings bank I got nearly 30 dollars there now I'll soon have enough for a winter suit and overcoat gee can't you go buggy riding even with Kit I could if I had the time and the price and if her mall wasn't so poorly that kitty can't get away I go over there Sunday afternoon sometimes but her mall always hollers for her to come in she's afraid to be alone Kit's had to give up the high school account of her mall how about her going away to be a great singer Luke grinned at the insanity of such childish plans oh that's all off Kit can't even practice anymore it makes her mother nervous and Kit had to give up the church choir too you'd hardly know her she cries a lot about looking so scrawny of course I tell her she's prettier than ever but that only makes her mad she can't go to sociables or dances or picnics and if she could she's got no clothes we don't have much fun together just sit and mope and then I say well guess I'd better mosey on home and she says all right see you again next Sunday I suppose goodbye the nightingale annoyed the owl and was hushed and the poet rhymed sums in a daybook the world waited for them and needed them without knowing it it would have rewarded them with thrilled attention and wealth and fame but silence was their portion silence and the dark and an ache that had no voice Joel listened to Luke's elegy and groaned gee but he had an optimism like a powerful spring and it struck back now with a whir I'll tell you what Luke just you wait till I'm rich then I'll give you a job as vice president and you can marry kitty and live on Broadway in New York I've got over believing in sandy claws said Luke Joel saw little of him during this vacation and last during the next being by nature a hater of despair he avoided Luke he had fits of remorse for this and once he dared to make a personal appeal to old Mr. Melos to send Luke away to school he was received with scant courtesy and only tolerated because he gave the father a chance to void some of his bile at the worthlessness of Luke he's no good that's what's the matter of him and willful too he just mopes around because he wants to show me I'm wrong but he's only cutting off his own nose despite his face I'll learn him who's got the most willpower Joel was bold enough to suggest maybe Luke would be different if you'd let him go to college you know Mr. Melos if you'll excuse my saying it there's some natures that are different from others you hit a race horse up to a plow and you spoil a good horse and you're fueled both seems to me as if if Luke got a chance to be a writer or a professor or something he might turn out to be a wonder you can't teach a canary bird to be a hen you know and Mr. Melos locked himself in that ridiculous citadel of ancient folly when you're as old as I am Joel you'll know more the first thing anybody's got to learn in this world is to respect their parents Joel wanted to say I should think that depended on the parents but of course he kept silent as the young usually do when they hear the old maundering and he gave up as he heard the stupid adult returning to his old refrain I left school when I was 12 years old and it had a day's sense and I can't say as I've been exactly a failure best hardware store in Carthage and holding my own in spite of bad business Joel slunk away unconvinced but baffled one summer he brought all his pressure to bear on Luke to persuade him to run away from his job and strike out for the big city where the big opportunities grew but Luke shook his head he lacked initiative perhaps that was where his talent was not genius it blistered him but it made no steam Shakespeare had known enough to leave Stratford he had had to hold horses outside the theater and even then he had organized a little business group of horse holders called Shakespeare's boys he had the business sense and he forced his way into the theater and became a stockholder Shakespeare was always an adventurer he had to work in a butcher's shop but before he was 19 he was already married to a woman of 26 and none too soon for the first child's sake Luke mellows had not the courage or the recklessness to marry Kitty though he had as good a job as Shakespeare's Shakespeare would not let a premature family keep him from his ambition he was 21 when he went to London but he went London was a boom town then about the size of Trenton or Grand Rapids or Spokane and growing fast boys were running away from the farms and villages as they always have done other boys went to London from Stratford John Sadler became a big wholesale grocer and Richard Field a publisher they had as various reasons then as now but the main thing was that they left home that might mean a noble or a selfish ambition but it took action Luke mellows would not go he dreaded to abandon his mother to the father who bullied them both he could not bear to leave Kitty alone with the wretched mother who ruled her with tears other boys ran or walked away from Carthage some of them to become failures and some half successes and some of them to acquire riches and power and other boys stayed at home girls too had won obscurity by inertia or had swung into fame some of the girls had stayed at home and gone wrong there some had gone away in disgrace and redeemed or damned themselves in larger parishes there were Aspias and Jones of Ark in miniature Minor Florence Nightingales and Melba's and Rosa Bonhurst but they had all had to leap from the nest and try their wings of those that did not take the plunge none made the flight cowardice held some back but the purest self-sacrifice others Joel felt that there ought to be a heaven for these latter yet he hoped that there was no hell for the former for who can save himself from his own timidity and who can protect himself from his own courage given that little spur of initiative that little armor of selfish indifference to the clinging hands at home and how many a soul might not have reached the stars look at the women who were crowding the roles of fame of late just because all womankind had broken free of the apron strings of alleged respectability Joel had no proof that Luke Mellows would have amounted to much perhaps if he had ventured over the nest's edge he would have perished on the ground trampled into dust by the famoured mob or devoured by the critics that pounced upon every fledgling and sucked the heart out of all that cannot fling them off but Joel could not surrender his childhood faith that Luke Mellows had been meant for another Shakespeare yet Mellows had never written a play or an act of a play but for that matter neither had Shakespeare before he went to London he was only a poet at first and some of his poems were pretty poor stuff if you took Shakespeare's name off it and his first poems had to be published by his fellow townsmen field there were the childish poems by Luke Mellows that Joel's father had published in the Carthage Clarion Joel had forgotten them utterly and they were probably meritorious of oblivion but there was one poem Luke had written that Joel memorized it appeared in the Clarion years after Joel was a success in wool his father still sent him the paper and in one number Joel was rejoiced to read these lines The Anonymous by Luke Mellows sometimes at night within a wooded park like an ocean cavern fathoms deep in bloom sweet scents like hymns from hidden flowers fume and make the wanderer happy though the dark obscures their tint their name their shapely bloom so in the thick set chronicles of fame their hover deathless feats of souls unknown they linger like the fragrant smoke wreaths blown from liberal sacrifice gone face and name the deeds like homeless ghosts live on alone Wixon seated in the boat on Avon and lost in such dust that he could hardly see his hand upon the idle oar recited the poem softly to himself in toning it in the deep voice one saves for poetry it sounded wonderful to him in the luxury of hearing his own voice upon the water and indulging his own memory the somber mood was perfect in accord with the realm of shadow and silence where everything beautiful and living was cloaked in the general blur after he had heard his voice chanting the last long oars of the final verse he was ashamed of his solemnity and terrified lest someone might have heard him and accounted him insane he laughed at himself for a sentimental fool he laughed too as he remembered what a letter of praise he had dictated to his astonished stenographer and fired off at luke mellows and at the flippant letter he had in return lay readers who send incandescent epistles to poets are apt to receive answers in sardonic prose the poet lies a little perhaps in a very sane suspicion of his own transcendencies luke mellows had written dear old joe I sure am much obliged for your mighty handsome letter coming to one of the least successful wool gatherers in the world from one of the most successful wool distributors it deserves to be highly prized and is I will have it framed and handed down to my heirs of which there are more than there will ever be looms you ask me to tell you all about myself it won't take long when the butterfly bodily went bust I had no job at all for six months so I got married despite my father and to please kit whose poor mother ceased to suffer about the same time the poor girl was so used to taking care of a poor old woman who couldn't be left alone that I became her patient just to keep all her talents from going to waste the steady flow of children seems to upset the law of supply and demand for there is certainly no demand for more of my progeny and there is no supply for them but somehow they thrive I am now running my father's store as the old gentleman had a stroke and then another the business is going to pot as rapidly as you would expect but I haven't been able to kill it off quite yet thanks for advising me to go on writing immortal poetry if I were immortal I might but that full thing was the result of about 10 years hard labor I tried to make a sonnet of it but I gave up at the end of the decade and called it whatever it is your father's paper published it free of charge and so my income from my poetry has been one-tenth of nothing per annum please don't urge me to do anymore I really can't afford it the poem was suggested to me by an ancient fit of blues over the fact that kits once so beautiful voice would never be heard in song and by the fact that her infinite goodnesses will never meet any recompense or even acknowledgement I was bitter the first five years but the last five years I began to feel how rich this dark old world is in good brave sweet lovable heartbreakingly beautiful deeds that simply cast a little fragrance on the dark and are gone they perfume the night and the busy daylight dispels them like the morning mist that we used to watch steaming and vanishing above the old river the mississippi is still here still rolling along its eternal multitudes of snows and flowers and fruits and fish and snakes and dead men and boats and trees they go where they came from I guess in and out of nothing and back again it is a matter of glory to all of us that you are doing so nobly keep it up and give us something to brag about in our obscurity don't worry we are happy enough in the dark we have our bat-like sports and our owl-like prides and the full sun would blind us and lose us our way kit sends you her love and blushes as she says it that is a very daring word for such shy moles as we are but I will echo it yours for old sake's sake loop vaguely remembering this letter now Joel inhaled a bit of the merciful chloroform that deadens the pain of thwarted ambition the world was full of men and women like Luke and Kit some had given up great hopes because they were too good to tread others down in their quest some had quenched great talents because they were too fearsome or too weak or too lazy to feed their lamps with oil and keep them trimmed in a light some had stumbled through life darkly with no gifts of talent without even appreciation of the talents of others or of the flower-like beauties that star the meadows those were the people he had known and then there were the people he had not known the innumerable caravan that had passed across the earth while he lived the inconceivable hosts that had gone before tribe after tribe generation upon generation nation at the heels of nation cycle on era on age and the backward perpetuity from everlasting unto everlasting people people peoples poor souls until the throng stars that make a dust of the milky way were a lesser mob here in this graveyard at stratford laymen who might have overtopped shakespeare's glory if they had but had a mind to some of them had been held in higher esteem in their town but they were forgotten their names leveled with the surface of their fallen tombstones had he not cried out in his own hamlet oh god i could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space were it not that i have bad dreams which dreams indeed are ambition for the very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream and i hold ambition of so airy and light equality that it is but a shadows shadow after all the greatest of men were granted but a lesser oblivion than the least and in that overpowering thought there was a strange comfort the comfort of misery finding itself in an infinite company the night was thick upon avon the swans had gone somewhere the lights in the houses had a sleepy look it was time to go to bed joel yawned with the luxury of having wearied his heart with emotion he had thought himself out for once it was good to be tired he put his oars into the stream and dipping up reflected stars sent them swirling in a doomsday chaos after him with a defiant revenge of a proud soul who scorns the universe that grinds him to dust the old boatman was surly with waiting he did not thank the foreigner for his liberal largeness and did not answer his good night as wixen left the river and took the road for his hotel the nightingale that forever anonymous nightingale only one among the millions of forgotten or throttled songsters revolted for a moment or two against the stifling doom and shattered it with a wordless sonnet of fierce and beautiful protest the tawny throated what triumph hark what pain it was as if luke mellows had suddenly found expression in something better than words something that any ear could understand an ache that rang wixen stopped transfixed as by flaming arrows he could not understand what the bird meant or what he meant nor could the bird but as there is no laughter that eases the heart like unpacking it of its woes and something beyond wording so there is nothing that brightens the eyes like tears gushing without shame or restraint joel wixen felt that it was a good sad mad world and that he had been very close to shakespeare so close that he heard things nobody had ever found the phrases for things that cannot be said but only felt and transmitted rather by experience than by expression from one proud worm in the mud to another and of the stick in the muds by rupert hughes