 Nevada Sketches by Mark Twain This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Reading by Greg Marguerite Nevada Sketches by Mark Twain I feel very much as if I had just awakened out of a long sleep. I attribute it to the fact that I have slept the greater part of the time for the last two days and nights. On Wednesday I sat up all night in Virginia in order to be up early enough to take the five o'clock stage on Thursday morning. I was on time. It was a great success. I had a cheerful trip down to Carson, in company with that incessant talker Joseph T. Goodman. I never saw him fluttered with such a flow of spirits before. He restrained his conversation, though, until we had traveled three or four miles and were just crossing the divide between Silver City and Spring Valley. When he thrust his head out of the dark stage and allowed a pallid light from the coach lamps to illuminate his features for a moment, after which he returned to darkness again and sighed and said, damn it, with some asperity. I asked him who he meant it for, and he said, the weather out there. As we approached Carson at about half past seven o'clock he thrust his head out again and gazed earnestly in the direction of that city, after which he took it in again with his nose very much frosted. He propped the end of that organ upon the end of his finger and looked pensively upon it, which had the effect of making him cross-eyed and remarked, damn it, with great bitterness. I asked him what was up this time, and he said, the cold, damp fog is worse than the weather. This was his last. He never spoke again in my hearing. He went on over the mountains with a lady fellow passenger from here. That will stop his chatter, you know, for he seldom speaks in the presence of ladies. In the evening I felt a mighty inclination to go to a party somewhere. There was to be one at Governor J. Nealey Johnson's, and I went there and asked permission to stand around awhile. This was granted in the most hospitable manner, and the vision of plain quadrils soothed my weary soul. I felt particularly comfortable, for if there is one thing more grateful to my feelings than another, it is a new house, a large house, with its ceilings embellished with snowy moldings, its floors glowing with warm-tinted carpets, with cushioned chairs and sofas to sit on, and a piano to listen to. With fires so arranged you can see them, and no, there is no humbug about it. With walls garnished with pictures, and above all, mirrors wherein you may gaze and always find something to admire, you know. I have a great regard for a good house, and a girlish passion for mirrors. Horace Smith, Esquire, is also very fond of mirrors. He came and looked in the glass for an hour with me. Finally it cracked. The night was pretty cold, and Horace Smith's reflection was split right down the center. But where his face had been the damage was greatest. A hundred cracks converged to his reflected nose, like spokes from the hub of a wagon-wheel. It was the strangest freak the weather has done this winter, and yet the parlor seemed warm and comfortable too. About nine o'clock the unreliable came and asked Governor Johnson to let him stand on the porch. The creature has got more impudence than any person I ever saw in my life. Well, he stood and flattened his nose against the parlor window and looked hungry and vicious. He always looks that way. Until Colonel Musser arrived with some ladies, when he actually fell in their wake and came swaggering in looking as if he thought he had been anxiously expected. He had on my fine kid boots, my plug hat, my white kid gloves, with slices of his prodigious hands grinning through the bursted seams, and my heavy gold repeater, which I had been offered thousands and thousands of dollars for many and many a time. He took those articles out of my trunk at Washoe City about a month ago when we were there to report the proceedings of the convention. The unreliable intruded himself upon me in his cordial way and said, How are you, Mark, old boy? When you come down—it's brilliant, ain't it?—appear to enjoy themselves, don't they? Linda fell o' two bits, can't you? He always winds up his remarks that way. He appears to have an insatiable craving for two bits. The music struck up just then and saved me. The next moment I was far, far at sea in the plain quadril. We carried it through with distinguished success—that is, we got as far as balance around, and half a man left—when I smelled hot whiskey punch or something of that nature. I tracked the scent through several rooms and finally discovered a large bowl from which it emanated. I found the omnipresent unreliable there also. He sat down an empty goblet and remarked that he was diligently seeking the gentleman's dressing room. I would have shown him where it was, but it occurred to him that the supper table and the punch-ball ought not to be left unprotected. Wherefore we stayed there and watched them until the punch entirely evaporated. A servant came in then to replenish the bowl and we left the refreshments in his charge. We probably did wrong, but we were anxious to join the hazy dance. The dance was hazier than usual after that. Sixteen couples on the floor at once, with a few dozen spectators scattered around, is calculated to have its effect in a brilliantly lighted parlor, I believe. Everything seemed to buzz at any rate. After all the modern dances had been danced several times, the people adjourned to the supper room. I found my ward about there, as usual, with the unreliable in it. His old distemper was upon him. He was desperately hungry. I never saw a man eat as much as he did in my life. I have various items of his supper here in my notebook. First he ate a plate of sandwiches, then he ate a handsomely iced pound cake, then he gobbled a dish of chicken salad, after which he ate a roast pig. After that a quantity of blanc manger, then he threw in several dozen glasses of punch to fortify his appetite, and finishes his monstrous repast with a roast turkey. Dishes of brandy grapes and jellies and such things and pyramids of fruits melted away before him as shadows fly at the sun's approach. I am of the opinion that none of his ancestors were present when the five thousand were miraculously fed in the old scriptural times. I base my opinion on the twelve bushels of scraps and the little fishes that remained over after that feast. If the unreliable himself had been there, the provisions would just about have held out, I think. At about two o'clock in the morning the pleasant party broke up and the crowd of guests distributed themselves around town to their respective homes. And after thinking the fun all over again, I went to bed at four o'clock. So having been awake forty-eight hours I slept forty-eight in order to get even again. City Marshal Perry John Van Buren Perry recently elected City Marshal of Virginia City was born a long time ago in County Kerry, Ireland of poor but honest parents who were descendants beyond question of a house of high antiquity. The founder of it was distinguished for his eloquence. He was the property of one Balaam and received honorable mention in the Bible. John Van Buren Perry removed to the United States in 1792 after having achieved a high gastronomical reputation by creating the first famine in his native land and established himself at Kinder Hook, New Jersey, as a teacher of vocal and instrumental music. His eldest son, Martin Van Buren, was educated there and was afterwards elected president of the United States. His grandson of the same name is now a prominent New York politician and is known in the East as Prince John. He keeps up a constant and affectionate correspondence with his worthy grandfather who sells him feet in some of his richest wildcat claims from time to time. While residing at Kinder Hook, Jack Perry was appointed Commodore of the United States Navy and he forthwith proceeded to Lake Erie and fought the mighty Marine conflict which blazes upon the pages of history as Perry's victory. In consequence of this exploit, he narrowly escaped the presidency. Several years ago Commodore Perry was appointed commissioner extraordinary to the Imperial Court of Japan with unlimited power to treat. It is hardly worthwhile to mention that he never exercised that power. He never treated anybody in that country although he patiently submitted to a vast amount of that sort of thing when the opportunity was afforded him at the expense of the Japanese officials. He returned from his mission full of honors and foreign whiskey and was welcomed home again by the plaudits of a grateful nation. After the war was ended, Mr. Perry removed to Providence, Rhode Island, where he produced a complete revolution in medical science by inventing the celebrated Pain Killer, which bears his name. He manufactured this liniment by the ship-load and spread it far and wide over the suffering world. But a bottle left his establishment without his beneficent portrait upon the label. Whereby in time his features became as well known unto burned and mutilated children as Jack the Giant Killers. When pain had ceased throughout the universe, Mr. Perry fell to writing for a livelihood and for years and years he poured out his soul in pleasing and effeminate poetry. His very first effort commencing, How doth the little busy be improve each shining hour, etc., gained him a splendid literary reputation and from that time forward no Sunday school library was complete without a full edition of his plaintive and sentimental Perry Goricks. After great research and profound study of his subject he produced that wonderful gem which is known in every land as the young mother's apostrophe to her infant, beginning Five-fie-oo itty-bitty-pooty-sing, to poke-oo footsie-tootsies into mama's eye. This inspired poem had a tremendous run and carried Perry's fame into every nursery in the civilized world, but he was not destined to wear his laurels undisturbed. And with monstrous perfidity at once claimed the apostrophe for her favorite son, Martin Farquhar Tupper, and sent up a howl of vindictive abuse from her polluted press against our beloved Perry. With one accord the American people rose up in his defense and a devastating war was only averted by a public denial of the paternity of the poem by the great proverbial over his own signature. This noble act of Mr. Tupper gained him a high place in the affection of this people, and his sweet platitudes have been read here with an ever-augmented spirit of tolerance since that day. The conduct of England toward Mr. Perry tolled upon his constitution to such an extent that at one time it was feared the gentle bard would fade and flicker out altogether. Wherefore the solicitude of influential officials was aroused in his behalf and through their generosity he was provided with an asylum in Sing Sing Prison, a quiet retreat in the state of New York. Here he wrote his last great poem, beginning, Let dogs delight to bark and bite, for God hath made them so. Your little hands were never made to tear out each other's eyes with. And then proceeded to learn the shoemaker's trade in his new home, under the distinguished masters employed by the Commonwealth. Ever since Mr. Perry arrived at man's estate his prodigious feet have been a subject of complaint and annoyance to those communities which have known the honor of his presence. In 1835, during a great leather famine, many people were obliged to wear wooden shoes, and Mr. Perry, for the sake of economy, transferred his boot-making patronage from the tanyard, which had before enjoyed his custom, to an undertaker's establishment. That is to say, he wore coffins. At that time he was a member of Congress from New Jersey and occupied a seat in front of the speaker's throne. He had the uncouth habit of propping his feet upon his desk during prayer by the chaplain, and thus completely hiding that officer from every eye saved that of omnipotence alone. So long as the honorable Mr. Perry wore orthodox leather boots, the clergymen submitted to this inflection and prayed behind them in singular solitude under mild protest. But when he arose one morning to offer up his regular petition and beheld the cheerful apparition of Jack Perry's coffins confronting him, the jolly old bum went under the table like a sick porpoise, as Mr. P. feelingly remarks, and never shot off his mouth in that shanty again. Mr. Perry's first appearance on the Pacific Coast was upon the boards of the San Francisco theaters and the character of Old Pete in Dion Bocicolt's Octoroon. So excellent was his delineation of that celebrated character that Perry's Pete was for a long time regarded as the climax of histrionic perfection. Once John Van Buren Perry has resided in Nevada Territory, he has employed his talents in acting as city marshal of Virginia, and in abusing me, because I am an orphan and a long way from home and can therefore be persecuted with impunity. He was re-elected day before yesterday, and his first official act was an attempt to get me drunk on champagne furnished to the board of alderman by other successful candidates, so that he might achieve the honor and glory of getting me in the station house for once in his life. Although he failed in his object, he followed me down C. Street and handcuffed me in front of Tom Peasley's. But officers Birdsall and Larkin and Brokaw rebelled against this unwarranted assumption of authority and released me, whereupon I was about to punish Jack Perry severely, when he offered me six bits to hand him down to posterity through the medium of this biography, and I closed the contract. But after all, I never expect to get the money. A Sunday in Carson I arrived in this noisy and bustling town of Carson at noon today, per Layton's Express. We made pretty good time from Virginia, and I might have made much better, but for Horace Smith, Esquire, who rode on the box seat and kept the stage so much by the head she wouldn't steer. I went to church, of course. I always go to church when I go to church, as it were. I got there just in time to hear the closing hymn and also hear the reverend Mr. White give out a long meter doxology, which the choir tried to sing to a short meter tune. But there wasn't music enough to go around. Consequently, the effect was rather singular than otherwise. They sang the most interesting parts of each line, though, and charged the balance to profit and loss. This rendered the general intent and meaning of the doxology considerably mixed, as far as the congregation were concerned. But in as much as it was not addressed to them anyhow, I thought it made no particular difference. By an easy and pleasant transition I went from church to jail. It was only just downstairs, for they saved men eternally in the second story of the new courthouse and damned them for life in the first. A sheriff gasharic has a handsome double off its fronting on the street, and its walls are gorgeously decorated with iron convict jewelry. In the rear are two rows of cells, built of bomb-proof masonry and furnished with strong iron doors and resistless locks and bolts. There was but one prisoner, Swayzee, the murderer of Derrickson, and he was writing. I do not know what his subject was, but he appeared to be handling it in a way which gave him great satisfaction—advice to the unreliable on church going. In the first place, I must impress upon you that when you are dressing for church as a general thing, you mix your perfumes too much. Your fragrance is sometimes oppressive. You saturate yourself with cologne and bergamot until you make a sort of hamlet's ghost of yourself, and no man can decide with the first whiff whether you bring with you air from heaven or from hell. Now rectify this matter as soon as possible. Last Sunday you smelled like a secretary to a consolidated drugstore in Barbershop, and you came and sat in the same pew with me. Now don't do that again. In the next place, when you design coming to church, don't lie in bed until half-past ten o'clock, and then come in looking all swelled and torpid like a doughnut. Do reflect upon it, and show some respect for your personal appearance hereafter. There is another matter, also, which I wish to remonstrate with you about. Only when the contribution box of the missionary department is passing around you begin to look anxious and fumble in your vest pockets, as if you felt a mighty desire to put all your worldly wealth into it. Yet when it reaches your pew you are sure to be absorbed in your prayer-book or gazing pensively out of the window at far-off mountains, or buried in meditation with your sinful head supported by the back of the pew before you. And after the box is gone again you usually start suddenly and gaze after it with a yearning look, mingled with an expression of bitter disappointment, fumbling your cash again meantime, as if you felt you had missed the one grand opportunity for which you had been longing all your life. Now to do this when you have money in your pockets is mean, but I have seen you do a meaner thing. I refer to your conduct last Sunday, when the contribution box arrived at our pew. And the angry blood rises to my cheek when I remember with what gravity and sweet serenity of countenance you put in fifty cents, and took out two dollars and a half. The Unreliable. Editors, Enterprise, I received the following atrocious document the morning I arrived here. From that abandoned profligate the Unreliable, and I think it speaks for itself. Carson City, Thursday morning. To the Unreliable. Sir, observing the driver of the Virginia stage hunting after you this morning in order to collect his fare, I infer you are in town. In the paper which you represent I noticed an article which I took to be an effusion from your muddled brain, stating that I had cabbaged a number of valuable articles from you the night I took you out of the streets of Washoe City and permitted you to occupy my bed. I take this opportunity to inform you that I will compensate you at the rate of twenty dollars per head for every one of these valuable articles that I received from you, providing you will relieve me of their presence. This offer can be either accepted or rejected on your part, but providing you don't see proper to accept it, you had better procure enough lumber to make a box four by eight. And have it made as early as possible. Judge Dixon will arrange the preliminaries if you do not exceed. An early reply is expected, by reliable. Not satisfied with wounding my feelings and making the most extraordinary reference to illusions in the above text, he even sent a challenge to fight in the same envelope with it, hoping to work upon my fears and drive me from the country by intimidation. But I was not to be frightened. I shall remain in the territory. I guessed his object at once had determined to accept his challenge, choose weapons and things and scare him instead of being scared myself. I wrote a stern reply to him and offered him mortal combat with bootjacks at a hundred yards. The effect was more agreeable than I could have hoped for. His hair turned black in a single night from excess of fear. Then he went into a fit of melancholy, and while it lasted he did nothing but sigh and sob and snuffle and slobber and say he wished he was in the quiet tomb. Finally he said he would commit suicide. He would say farewell to the cold, cold world with its cares and troubles and go to sleep with his father's in perdition. Then rose up this young man and threw his demi-john out of the window and took up a glass of pure water and drained it to the dregs. And then he fell to the floor in a swoon. Dr. Jader was called in and as soon as he found that the cuss was poisoned he rushed down to the Magnolia Saloon and got the antidote and poured it down him. As he was drawing his last breath he scented the brandy and lingered yet a while on earth to take a drink with the boys. But for this he would have been no more, or possible a great deal less in a moment. So he survived, but he has been in a mighty precarious condition ever since. I have been up to see how he was getting along two or three times a day. He is a very sick man. I was up there a while ago and I could see that his friends had begun to entertain hopes that he would not get over it. As soon as I saw that all my enmity vanished. I even felt like doing the poor unreliable a kindness and showing him too how my feelings toward him had changed. So I went and bought him a beautiful coffin and carried it up and set it down on his bed and told him to climb in when his time was up. Well, sir, you never saw a man so affected by a little act of kindness as he was by that. He let off a sort of war whoop and went to kicking things around like a crazy man. And he foamed at the mouth and went out of one fit into another faster than I could take them down in my notebook. I did not return to Virginia yesterday on account of the wedding. The parties were Honorable James H. Sturdevant, one of the first Paiutes of Nevada, and Miss Emma Currie, daughter of the Honorable A. Currie, who also claims that he is a Paiute family of high antiquity. I had heard it reported that a marriage was threatened, so felt at my duty to go down there and find out the facts of the case. They said I might stay as it was me. I promised not to say anything about the wedding and I regard that promise as sacred. My word is as good as my bond. Father Bennett advanced and touched off the high contracting parties with the hymnial torch. Married them. You know. At the word of command from Currie the fiddle-bows were set in motion, and the plain quadrils turned loose. Thereupon some of the most responsible dancing ensued that I ever saw in my life. The dance that Tam O'Shanter witnessed was slow in comparison to it. They kept it up for six hours and then carried out the exhausted musicians on a shutter and went down to supper. I know they had a fine supper and plenty of it, but I do not know much else. They drank so much champagne around me that I got confused and lost the hang of things as it were. It was mighty pleasant, jolly, and sociable, and I wished a thunder I was married myself. I took a large slice of bridal cake home with me to dream on and dreamt that I was still a single man and likely to remain so if I live and nothing happens, which has given me a greater confidence in dreams than I ever felt before. I cordially wish my newly married couple all kinds of happiness and prosperity, though. Ye sentimental law student. Editors. Enterprise. I found the following letter or valentine or whatever it is lying on the summit where it had been dropped unintentionally, I think. It was written on a sheet of legal cap, and each line was duly commenced with the red mark which traversed the sheet from top to bottom. Solon appeared to have had some trouble in getting his effusion started to suit him. He had begun it. No all men by these presence. And scratched it out again. He had substituted. Now, at this day comes the plaintiff by his attorney. And scratched that out also. He had tried other sentences of like character and gone on obliterating them until through much sorrow and tribulation he achieved the dedication which stands at the head of his letter. And to his entire satisfaction I do cheerfully hope. But what a villain a man must be to blend together the beautiful language of love and the infernal phraseology of the law in one and the same sentence. I know, but one of God's creatures who would be guilty of such depravity as this. I refer to the unreliable. I believe the unreliable to be the very lawyer's cub who sat upon the solitary peak all soaked in beer and sentiment and concocted the insipid literary hash I am talking about. The handwriting closely resembles his semi-Chinese tarantula tracks. Verlof Peak, February 14, 1863. To the loveliness to whom these presents shall come, greeting, this is a lovely day, my own Mary. Its unencumbered sunshine reminds me of your happy face, and in the imagination the same doth now appear before me. Such sights and scenes as this ever remind me the party of the second part of you, my Mary, the peerless party of the first part. The view from the lonely and segregated mountain peak of this portion of what is called and known as creation, with all and singular the hereditments and appartenances thereunto appertaining and belonging is inexpressively grand and inspiring. And I gaze and gaze while my soul is filled with holy delight, and my heart expands to receive thy spirit presence as aforesaid. Above me is the glory of the sun. Above him float the messenger clouds, ready alike to bless the earth with gentle rain or visit it with lightning and thunder and destruction. Far below the said sun and the messenger clouds aforesaid, lying prone upon the earth in the verge of the distant horizon, like the burnished shield of a giant, mine eyes behold a lake, which is described and set forth in maps as the sink of Carson. Over at the great plain I see the desert spread abroad like the mantle of a colossus, glowing by turns with the warm light of the sun, herein before mentioned, or darkly shaded by the messenger clouds aforesaid, flowing at right angles with said desert and adjacent thereto. I see the silver and sinuous thread of the river, commonly called Carson, which winds its torturous course through the softly tinted valley, and disappears amid the gorges of the bleak and snowy mountains a simile of man, leaving the pleasant valley of peace and virtue to wander among the dark defiles of sin, beyond the jurisdiction of the kindly beaming sun aforesaid. And about said sun and the said clouds and around the said mountains and over the plain and the river aforesaid, there floats a purple glory, a yellow mist, as airy and beautiful as the bridal veil of a princess about to be wedded, according to the rites and ceremonies pertaining to and established by the laws or edicts of the kingdom or principality wherein she doth reside, and whereof she hath been and doth continue to be a lawful sovereign or subject. Ah, my Mary, it is sublime, it is lovely. I have declared and made known, and by these presence do declare and make known unto you that the view from Sugarloaf Peak, as herein before described and set forth, is the loveliest picture with which the hand of the Creator has adorned the earth according to the best of my knowledge and belief. So help me, God. Given under my hand and in the spirit presence of the bright being whose love has restored the light of hope to a soul once groping in the darkness of despair, on the day and year first above written, signed Solon Lyserges, law student and notary public in and for the said county of story and territory of Nevada, to miss Mary Lynx, Virginia, and may the laws have her in their holy keeping. End of Nevada Sketches by Mark Twain. Reginald Blake, financier and cab by Jerome K. Jerome. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The advantage of literature over life is that its characters are more clearly defined and act consistently. Nature, always inartistic, takes pleasure in creating the impossible. Reginald Blake was as typical a specimen of the well-bred cad as one could hope to find between Piccadilly Circus and Hyde Park Corner. Vicious without passion and possessing brain without mind, existence presented to him no difficulties, while his pleasures brought him no pains. His morality was bounded by the doctor on the one side and the magistrate on the other. Careful never to outrage the decrees of either, he was at forty-five still healthy, though stout, and had achieved the not too easy task of amassing a fortune while avoiding all risk of Holloway. He and his wife, Edith, Nay Eppington, were as ill-matched a couple as could be conceived by any dramatist seeking material for a problem-play. As they stood before the altar on their wedding-worn, they might have been taken as symbolizing Seder and Saint. More than twenty years as junior, beautiful with the beauty of a Raphael's Madonna, his every touch of her seemed a sacrilege. Yet, once in his life, Mr. Blake played the part of a great gentleman. Mrs. Blake, on the same occasion, contending herself with a singularly mean role, mean even for a woman in love. The affair, of course, had been a marriage of convenience. Blake, to do him justice, had made no pretense to anything beyond admiration and regard. Few things grow monotonous sooner than irregularity. He would tickle his jaded palate with respectability and try for a change the companionship of a good woman. The girl's face drew him as the moonlight holds a man who, bored by the noise, turns from a heated room to press his forehead to the window pane. A custom bid for what he wanted, he offered his price. The Eppington family was poor and numerous. The girl bred up to the false notions of duty inculcated by a narrow conventionality, and feminine-like, half in love with martyrdom for its own sake, let her father bargain for a higher price, and then sold herself. To a drama of this description a lover is necessary. If the complications are to be of interest to the outside world. Harry's Senate, a pleasant-looking enough young fellow in spite of his receding chin, was possessed, perhaps, of more good intention than sense. Under the influence of Edith's stronger character, he was soon persuaded to acquiesce meekly in the proposed arrangement. Both succeeded in convincing themselves that they were acting nobly. The tone of the farewell interview, arranged for the eve of the wedding, would have been fit and proper to the occasion had Edith been a modern Joan of Arc about to sacrifice her own happiness on the altar of a great cause. As the girl was merely selling herself into ease and luxury, for no higher motive than the desire to enable a certain number of more or less worthy relatives to continue living beyond their legitimate means, the sentiment was perhaps exaggerated. Many tears were shed, and many everlasting goodbyes spoken, though seeing that Edith's new home would be only a few streets off, and that of necessity their social set would continue to be the same, more experienced persons might have counseled hope. Three months after the marriage, they found themselves side by side at the same dinner table. And after a little melodramatic fencing with what they were pleased regardless fate, they accommodated themselves to the customary positions. Blake was quite aware that Senate had been Edith's lover, so at half a dozen other men, some younger, some older than himself. He felt no more embarrassment at meeting them than standing on the pavement outside the stock exchange he would have experienced greeting his brother-jobbers after a settling day that had transferred a fortune from their hands into his. Senate in particular he liked and encouraged. Our whole social system, always a mystery to the philosopher, owes its existence to the fact that few men and women possess sufficient intelligence to be interesting to themselves. Blake liked company, but not much company liked Blake. Young Senate, however, could always be relied upon to break the tediousness of the domestic dialogue. A common love of sport drew the two men together. Most of us improve upon closer knowledge, and so they came to define good in one another. That is the man you ought to have married, said Blake one night to his wife, half laughingly, half seriously as they sat alone listening to Senate's departing footsteps echoing upon the deserted pavement. He's a good fellow, not a mere money-grubbing machine like me. And a week later, Senate, sitting along with Edith, suddenly broke out with, he's a better man than I am with all my highfalutin talk, and upon my soul he loves you. Shall I go abroad? If you like, was the answer. What would you do? Kill myself, replied the other, with a laugh, or run away with the first man that asked me. So Senate stayed on. Blake himself had made the path easy to them. There was little need for either fear or caution. Indeed, their safest course lay in recklessness, and they took it. To Senate the house was always open. It was Blake himself who, when unable to accompany his wife, would suggest Senate as a substitute. Club friends shrugged their shoulders. Was the man completely under his wife's thumb, or tired of her, was he playing some devil's game of his own? To most of his acquaintances, the latter explanation seemed the more plausible. The gossip in due course reached the parental home. Mrs. Eppington shook the vials of her wrath over the head of her son-in-law. The father, always a cautious man, felt inclined to blame his child for want of prudence. She'll ruin everything, he said. Why the devil can't she be careful? I believe the man is deliberately plotting to get rid of her, said Mrs. Eppington. I shall tell him plainly what I think. You're a fool, O'Hana, replied her husband, allowing himself the license of the domestic hearth. If you are right, you will only precipitate matters. If you are wrong, you will tell him what there is no need for him to know. I can sound him without giving anything away. And meanwhile, you talk to Edith. So matters were arranged. But the interview between mother and daughter hardly improved the position. Mrs. Eppington was conventionally moral. Edith had been thinking for herself and thinking in a bad atmosphere. Mrs. Eppington grew angry at the girl's callousness. Have you no sense of shame, she cried? I had once was Edith's reply before I came to live here. Do you know what this house is for me with its gilded mirrors, its couches, its soft carpets? Do you know what I am and have been for two years? The elder woman rose with a frightened, pleading look upon her face. And the other stopped and turned away towards the window. We all thought it for the best, continued Mrs. Eppington meekly. The girl spoke wearily without looking round. Oh, every silly thing that was ever done was done for the best. I thought it would be for the best myself. Everything would be so simple if only we were not alive. Don't let's talk anymore. All you can say is quite right. The silence continued for a while. The Dresden China clock on the mantelpiece ticking louder and louder as if to say, I time am here. Do not make your plans forgetting me, little mortals. I change your thoughts and wills. You are but my puppets. Then what do you intend to do, demanded Mrs. Eppington at length? Intend? Oh, the right thing, of course. We all intend that. I shall send Harry away with a few well-chosen words of farewell. Learn to love my husband and settle down to a life of quiet domestic bliss. Oh, it's easy enough to intend. The girl's face wrinkled with a laugh that aged her. In that moment it was a hard, evil face. And with a pang, the elder woman thought of that other face, so unlike. The sweet, pure face of a girl that had given to a sordid home its one touch of nobility. As under the lightning's flash, we see the whole arc of the horizon. So Mrs. Eppington looked and saw her child's life. The gilded, over-furnished room vanished. She and a big-eyed, fair-haired child, the only one of her children she had ever understood were playing wonderful games in the twilight among the shadows of a tiny attic. Now she was the wolf, devouring Edith, who was red-riding hood, with kisses. Now Cinderella's prince, now both her wicked sisters. But in the favorite game of all, Mrs. Eppington was a beautiful princess bewitched by a wicked dragon, so that she seemed to be an old, worn woman. But curly-headed Edith fought the dragon, represented by the three-legged rocking horse, and slew him with much shouting in the toasting fork. Then Mrs. Eppington became again a beautiful princess and went away with Edith back to her own people. In this twilight hour, the misbehavior of the general, the importunity of the family butcher, and the heirs assumed by cousin Jane, who kept two servants, were forgotten. The games ended. The little curly head would be laid against her breast for five minutes' love, while the restless little brain framed the endless question that children are forever asking in all its thousand forms. What is life, mother? I am very little, and I think and think until I grow frightened. Oh, mother, tell me, what is life? Had she dealt with these questions wisely? Might it not have been better to have treated them more seriously? Could life, after all, be ruled by maxims learned from copy books? She had answered as she had been answered in her own far-back days of questioning. Might it not have been better had she thought for herself? Suddenly Edith was kneeling on the floor beside her. I will try to be good, mother. It was the old baby cry, the cry of us all, children that we are, till mother nature kisses us and bids us go to sleep. Their arms were round each other now, and so they sat, mother and child, once more. And the twilight of the old attic, creeping westward from the east, found them again. The masculine duet had more result, but was not conducted with the finesse that Mr. Eppington, who prided himself on his diplomacy, had intended. Indeed, so evidently ill at ease was that gentleman when the moment came for talk and so palpably were his pointless remarks and mere efforts to delay an unpleasant subject that Blake always direct, bluntly though not ill-naturedly, asked him, how much? Mr. Eppington was disconcerted. It's not that, at least that's not what I've come about, he answered confusedly. What have you come about? Inwardly Mr. Eppington cursed himself for a fool for the which he was perhaps not altogether without excuse. He had meant to act a part of a clever council, acquiring information while giving none. By a blunder he found himself in the witness box. Oh, nothing, nothing, was the feeble response. Merely looked in to see how Edith was. Much the same as at dinner last night when you were here, answered Blake. Come, out with it. It seemed the best course now, and Mr. Eppington took the plunge. Don't you think, he said, unconsciously glancing around the room to be sure they were alone? That young Senate is a little too much about the house? Blake stared at her. Of course we know it is all right. As nice a young fellow as ever lived. And Edith and all that. Of course it's absurd, but what? Well, people will talk. What do they say? The other shrugged his shoulders. Blake rose, he had an ugly look when angry and his language was apt to be coarse. Tell them to mind their own business and leave me and my wife alone. That was the sense of what he said. He expressed himself at greater length and in stronger language. But my dear Blake urged Eppington, for your own sake, is it wise? There was a sort of boy and girl attachment between them, nothing of any moment, but all that gives color to gossip. Forgive me, but I am her father. I do not like to hear my child talked about. And don't open your ears to the chatter of a pack of fools, replied his son-in-law, roughly. But the next instant, a softer expression passed over his face, and he laid his hand on the older man's arm. Perhaps there are many more, but there's one good woman in the world, he said, and that's your daughter. Come and tell me that the Bank of England is getting shaky on its legs, and I'll listen to you. But the stronger the faith, the deeper strike the roots of suspicion. Blake said no further word on the subject, and Senate was as welcome as before. But Edith, looking up suddenly, would sometimes find her husband's eyes fixed on her with a troubled look, as of some dumb creature trying to understand. And often he would slip out of the house of an evening by himself, returning home hours afterwards, tired and mud-stained. He made attempts to show his affection. That was the most fatal thing he could have done. Ill temper, ill treatment even, she might have borne. His clumsy caresses, his foolish halting words of tenderness became a horror to her. She wanted whether to laugh or to strike at his upturned face. His tactless devotion filled her life as with some sickly perfume stifling her. If only she could be by herself for a little while to think. But he was with her night and day. There were times when, as he would cross the room towards her, he grew monstrous until he towered above her, a formless thing such as children dream of, and she would sit with her lips tight pressed, clutching the chair lest she should start up screaming. Her only thought was to escape from him. One day she hastily packed a few necessaries in a small handbag and crept unperceived from the house. She drove to Charing Cross, but the continental express did not leave for an hour and she had time to think. Of what use was it? Her slender stock of money would soon be gone. How could she live? He would find her and follow her. It was also hopeless. Suddenly a fierce desire of life, she was told of her, the angry answer of her young blood to despair. Why should she die never having known what it was to live? Why should she prostrate herself before this juggernaut of other people's respectability? Joy called to her, only her own cowardice stayed her from stretching forth her hand and gathering it. She returned home a different woman for hope had come to her. A week later the butler entered the dining room and handed Blake a letter addressed to him and his wife's handwriting. He took it without a word as though he had been expecting it. It simply told him that she had left him forever. The world is small and money commands many services. Senate had gone out for a stroll. Edith was left in the tiny cellar of their apoutement at Fécot. It was the third day of their arrival in the town. The door was opened and closed and Blake stood before her. She rose frightened but by emotion he reassured her. There was a quiet dignity about the man that was strange to her. Why have you followed me? She asked. I want you to return home. Home she cried. You must be mad. Do you not know? He interrupted her vehemently. I know nothing. I wish to know nothing. Go back to London at once. I have made everything right. No one suspects. I shall not be there. You will never see me again and you will have an opportunity of undoing your mistake. Our mistake. She listened. Hers was not a great nature and the desire to obtain happiness without paying the price was strong upon her. As for his good name, what could that matter he urged? People would only say that he had gone back to the evil from which he had emerged and few would be surprised. His life would go on much as it had done and she would only be pitied. She quite understood his plan. It seemed mean of her to accept his proposal and she argued feebly against it. But he overcame all her objections. For his own sake, he told her he would prefer the scandal to be connected with his name rather than with that of his wife. As he unfolded his scheme, she began to feel that in acquiescing she was conferring a favor. It was not the first deception he had arranged for the public and he appeared to be half in love with his own cleverness. She even found herself laughing at his mimicry of what this acquaintance and that would say. Her spirits rose. The play that might have been a painful drama seemed turning out an amusing farce. The thing settled, he rose to go and held out his hand. As she looked up into his face, something about the line of his lips smote upon her. You will be well rid of me, she said. I have brought you nothing but trouble. Oh, trouble, he answered. If that were all, a man can bear trouble. What else, she asked. His eyes troubled aimlessly about the room. They taught me a lot of things when I was a boy, he said. My mother and others, they meant well. Which as I grew older, I discovered to be lies and so I came to think that nothing good was true and that everything and everybody was evil. And then, his wandering eyes came round to her and he broke off abruptly. Goodbye, he said. In the next moment he was gone. She sat wondering for a while what he had meant. Then the Senate returned and the words went out of her head. A good deal of sympathy was felt for Mrs. Blake. The man had a charming wife. He might have kept straight. But as his friends added, Blake always was a cad. End of Reginald Blake, Financier and Cad, by Jerome K. Jerome, read by John DeForest. Springtime a la carte, by O. Henry. 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 Suzanne Houghton. Springtime a la carte, by O. Henry. It was a day in March. Never, never begin a story this way when you write one. No opening could possibly be worse. It is unimaginative, flat, dry and likely to consist of mere wind. But in this instance, it is allowable. For the following paragraph, which should have inaugurated the narrative, is too wildly extravagant and preposterous to be flaunted in the face of the reader without preparation. Sarah was crying over her bill of fare. Think of a New York girl shedding tears on the menu card. To account for this, you will be allowed to guess that the lobsters were all out or that she had sworn ice cream off during Lent or that she had ordered onions or that she had just come from a hacket matinee. And then all these theories being wrong, you will please let the story proceed. The gentleman who announced that the world was an oyster which he with his sword would open made a larger hit than he deserved. It is not difficult to open an oyster with a sword. But did you ever notice anyone tried to open the terrestrial bivalve with a typewriter? Like to wait for a dozen raw open that way? Sarah had managed to pry apart the shells with her unhandy weapon far enough to nibble a wee bit at the cold and clammy world within. She knew no more shorthand than if she had been a graduate in stenography just let slip upon the world by a business college. So, not being able to stenog, she could not enter that bright galaxy of office talent. She was a freelance typewriter and canvassed for odd jobs of copying. The most brilliant and crowning feat of Sarah's battle with the world was the deal she made with Shulenberg's home restaurant. The restaurant was next door to the old red brick in which she hall roomed. One evening after dining at Shulenberg's 40 cent five-course tabled oat, served as fast as you throw the five baseballs at the colour gentleman's head, Sarah took away with her the bill of fare. It was written in an almost unreadable script neither English nor German and so arranged that if you were not careful you began with the toothpick and rice pudding and ended with soup in the day of the week. The next day Sarah showed Shulenberg a neat card on which the menu was beautifully typewritten with the vines temptingly marshaled under their right and proper heads from hors d'oeuvre to not responsible for overcoats and umbrellas. Shulenberg became a naturalised citizen on the spot. Before Sarah left him, she had him willingly committed to an agreement. She was to furnish typewritten bills of fare for the 21 tables in the restaurant, a new bill for each day's dinner and new ones for breakfast and lunch as often as changes occurred in the food were as neatness required. In return for this, Shulenberg was to send three meals per diem to Sarah's hall room by a waiter, an obsequious one if possible, and furnish her each afternoon with a pencil draft of what fate had in store for Shulenberg's customers on the morrow. Mutual satisfaction resulted from the agreement. Shulenberg's patrons now knew what the food they ate was called even if its nature sometimes puzzled them and Sarah had food during a cold dull winter which was the main thing with her. And then the almanac lied and said that spring had come. Spring comes when it comes. The frozen snows of January still lay like adamant in the crosstown streets. The hand organs still played in the good old summertime with their December vivacity and expression. Men began to make 30 day notes to buy Easter dresses. Janitors shut off steam and when these things happened one may know that the city is still in the clutches of winter. One afternoon Sarah shivered in her elegant hall bedroom. House heated, scrupulously clean, conveniences seemed to be appreciated. She had no work to do except Shulenberg's menu cards. Sarah sat in her squeaky willow rocker and looked out the window. The calendar on the wall kept crying to her. Springtime is here, Sarah. Springtime is here, I tell you. Look at me, Sarah, my figures show it. You've got a neat figure yourself, Sarah, a nice springtime figure. Why do you look out the window so sadly? Sarah's room was at the back of the house. Looking out the window, she could see the windowless rear brick wall of the box factory on the next street. But the wall was clearest crystal and Sarah was looking down a grassy lane shaded with cherry trees and elms and bordered with raspberry bushes and Cherokee roses. Spring's real harbingers are too subtle for the eye and ear. Some must have the flowering crocus, the wood-starring dogwood, the voice of Bluebird. Even so gross a reminder is the farewell handshake of the retiring buckwheat and oyster before they can welcome the lady in green to their dull bosoms. But to old earth's choicest kin there come straight sweet messages from his newest bride, telling them they shall be no stepchildren unless they choose to be. On the previous summer, Sarah had gone into the country and loved a farmer. In writing your story, never hark back thus. It is bad art and cripple's interest. Let it march, march. Sarah stayed two weeks at Sunnybrook Farm. There she learned to love old farmer Franklin's son, Walter. Farmers have been loved and wedded and turned out to grass in less time. But young Walter Franklin was a modern agriculturist. He had a telephone in his cowhouse and he could figure up exactly what effect next year's Canada wheat crop would have on potatoes planted in the dark of the moon. It was in this shaded and raspberry lane that Walter had wooed and won her. And together they had sat and woven a crown of dandelions for her hair. He had immoderately praised the effect of yellow blossoms against her brown tresses. And she had left the chaplet there and walked back to the house, swinging her straw sailor in her hands. They were to marry in the spring. At the very first signs of spring, Walter said. And Sarah came back to the city to pound her typewriter. A knock at the door dispelled Sarah's visions of that happy day. A waiter had brought the rough pencil draft of the home restaurant's next day fair in Old Shulenburg's angular hand. Sarah sat down to her typewriter and slipped a card between the rollers. She was a nimble worker. Generally, in an hour and a half, the 21 menu cards were written and ready. Today there were more changes on the bill of fare than usual. The soups were lighter. Pork was eliminated from the entrees, figuring only with Russian turnips among the roasts. The gracious spirit of spring pervaded the entire menu. Lamb, that lately capered on the greening hillsides, was becoming exploited with the sauce that commemorated its gambles. The song of the oyster, though not silenced, was diminuendo con amore. The frying pan seemed to be held inactive behind the beneficent bars of the broiler. The pilest swelled. The richer puddings had vanished. The sausage, with his drapery wrapped about him, barely lingered in a pleasant thenatopsis with the buckwheats and the sweet-but-doomed maple. Sarah's fingers danced like midgets above a summer stream. Down through the courses she worked, giving each item its position according to its length with an accurate eye. Just above the desserts came the list of vegetables, carrots and peas, asparagus on toast, the perennial tomatoes and corn and succotash, lima beans, cabbage, and then... Sarah was crying over her bill of fare. Tears from the depths of some divine despair rose in her heart and gathered to her eyes. Down went her head on the little typewriter stand, and the keyboard rattled a dry accompaniment to her moist sobs, for she had received no letter from Walter in two weeks. And the next item on the bill of fare was dandelions. Dandelions with some kind of egg, but bother the egg, dandelions, with whose golden blooms Walter had crowned her his queen of love and future bride. Dandelions, the harbingers of spring, her sorrow's crown of sorrow, reminder of her happiest days. Madam, I dare you to smile until you suffer this test. Let the maraichal niel roses that Percy brought you on the night you gave him your heart, be served as a salad with French dressing before your eyes at a Schulenberg tabledote. Had Juliet so seen her loved tokens dishonored, the sooner would she have sought the lethian herbs of the good apothecary. But what a witch's spring! Into the great cold city of stone and iron, a message had to be sent. There was none to convey it, but the little hearty courier of the fields with his rough green coat and modest air. He is a true soldier of fortune, this dentillion, this lion's tooth, as the French chefs call him. Flowered, he will assist at love-making, wreathed in my lady's nut-brown hair. Young and callow and unblossomed, he goes into the boiling pot and delivers the word of his sovereign mistress. By and by, Sarah forced back her tears. The cards must be written. But still, in a faint golden glow from her a dandelion-ine dream, she fingered the typewriter keys absently for a little while with her mind and heart in the meadow-lane with her young farmer. But soon she came swiftly back to the rock-bound lanes of Manhattan. And the typewriter began to rattle and jump like a strike-breaker's motor-car. At six o'clock the waiter brought her dinner and carried away the typewritten bill of fare. When Sarah ate, she set aside with a sigh the dish of dandelions with its crowning ovarious accompaniment. As this dark mass had been transformed from a bright and love-endorsed flower to be an ignominious vegetable, so had her summer hopes wilted and perished. Love, may, as Shakespeare said, feed on itself. But Sarah could not bring herself to eat the dandelions that had graced as ornaments the first spiritual banquet of her heart's true affection. At seven-thirty the couple in the next room began to quarrel. The man in the room above sought for A on his flute. The gas went a little lower. Three coal wagons started to unload, the only sound of which the phonograph is jealous. Cats on the back fences slowly retreated toward Mukden. By these signs Sarah knew that it was time for her to read. She got out the cloister in the hearth, the best non-selling book of the month, settled her feet on her trunk and began to wander with Gerard. The front doorbell rang. The landlady answered it. Sarah left Gerard and Dennis treed by a bear and listened. Oh, yes, she would, just as she did. And then a strong voice was heard in the hall below. And Sarah jumped for her door, leaving the book on the floor and the first round easily the bears. You have guessed it. She reached the top of the stairs just as her farmer came up three at a jump and reaped and garnered her with nothing left for the gleaners. Why haven't you written? Oh, why? cried Sarah. New York is a pretty large town, said Walter Franklin. I came in a week ago to your old address. I found that you went away on a Thursday. That consoled some, it eliminated the possible Friday bad luck. But it didn't prevent my hunting for you with police and otherwise ever since. I wrote, said Sarah vehemently. Never got it. Then how did you find me? The young farmer's smile, the springtime smile. I dropped into that home restaurant next door this evening, said he. I don't care who knows it. I like a dish of some kind of greens at this time of the year. I ran my eye down that nice type written bill of fare looking for something in that line. When I got below cabbage, I turned my chair over and haulered for the proprietor. He told me where you lived. I remember, cites Sarah happily. That was dandelions below cabbage. I'd know that cranky capital W way above the line that your typewriter makes anywhere in the world, said Franklin. Well, there's no W in dandelions, said Sarah, in surprise. The young man drew the bill of fare from his pocket and pointed to a line. Sarah recognized the first card she had typewritten that afternoon. There was still the raid splotch in the upper right-hand corner where a tear had fallen. But over the spot where one should have read the name of the meadow-plant, the clinging memory of their golden blossoms had allowed her fingers to strike strange keys. Between the red cabbage and the stuffed green peppers was the item. Dearest Walter, with hard-boiled egg. End of Springtime on the Cart by O. Henry. Sun Dried by Edna Furber. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Reading by Bologna Times. Sun Dried by Edna Furber. There come those times in the life of every woman when she feels that she must wash her hair at once, and then she does it. The feeling may come upon her suddenly, without warning, at any hour of the day or night, or its approach may be slow and insidious so that the victim does not at first realize what it is that fills her with that sensation of unrest. But once in the clutches of the idea she knows no happiness, no peace, until she has donned a kimono, gathered up two bath towels, a spray, and the green soap, and she breathes again only when, head-dripping, she makes for the backyard, the sitting-room radiator, or the side porch, depending on her place of residence and the time of year. Mary Louise was seized with the feeling at ten o'clock on a joyous June morning. She tried to fight it off because she had got to that stage in the construction of her story where her hero was beginning to talk and act a little more like a real, live man, and a little less like a clothing store dummy. By the way, they don't seem to be using those pink and white, black, mustachioed figures anymore. Another could seem only gone. Mary Louise had been battling with that hero for a week. He wouldn't make love to the heroine. In vain had Mary Louise striven to instill red blood into his watery veins. He and the beauteous heroine were as far apart as they had been on page one of the typewritten manuscript. Mary Louise was developing nerves over him. She had bitten her fingernails and twisted her hair into corkscrews over him. She had risen every morning at the chaste hour of seven, breakfasted hurriedly, tidied the tiny two-room apartment, and sat down in the unromantic morning light to wrestle with her stick of a hero. She had made her heroine a creature of grace, wit, and loveliness, but thus far the hero had not once clasped her to him fiercely or pressed his lips to her hair, her eyes, her cheeks. Nay, as the story writers would put it, he hadn't even devoured her with his gaze. This morning, however, he had begun to show some signs of life. He was developing possibilities, whereupon at this critical stage in the story-writing game, the hair-washing mania seized Mary Louise. She tried to dismiss the idea. She pushed it out of her mind and slammed the door. It only popped in again. Her fingers wandered to her hair. Her eyes wandered to the June sunshine outside. The hero was left poised, arms outstretched, and unquenchable love-light burning in his eyes, while Mary Louise mused thus. It certainly feels sticky. It's been six weeks at least, and I could sit here, by the window, in the sun, and dry it. With a jerk she brought her straying fingers away from her hair, and her wandering eyes away from the sunshine, her runaway thoughts back to the typewritten page. For three minutes the snap of the little discs crackled through the stillness of the tiny apartment. Then suddenly, as though succumbing to an irresistible force, Mary Louise rose, walked across the room a matter of six steps, removing hairpins as she went, and shoved aside the screen, which hid the stationary washbowl by day. Mary Louise turned on a faucet and held her finger under it, while an agonized expression of doubt and suspense overspread her features. Slowly the look of suspense gave way to a smile of beatific content. A sigh, deep, soul-filling, satisfied, welled up from Mary Louise's breast. The water was hot. Half an hour later, head swathed, turban-fashioned, in a towel, Mary Louise strolled over to the window. Then she stopped aghast. In that half-hour the sun had slipped just around the corner, and was now beating brightly and uselessly against the brick wall a few inches away. Slowly Mary Louise unwound the towel, bent double in the contortionistic attitude that women assume on such occasions, and watched with melancholy eyes, while the drops trickled down to the ends of her hair, and fell unsunned to the floor. If only, thought Mary Louise bitterly, there was such a thing as a backyard in the city, a backyard where I could squat on the grass in the sunshine and the breeze. Maybe there is. I'll ask the janitor. She bound her hair in the turban again, and opened the door. At the far end of the long-dim hallway, Charlie, the janitor, was doing something to the floor with a mop and a great deal of sloppy water, whistling the while with a shrill abandon that had announced his presence to Mary Louise. Oh, Charlie, called Mary Louise, Charlie! Can you come here just a minute? You bet, answered Charlie, with the accent on the U, and came. Charlie, is there a backyard or something where the sun is? You know, some nice grassy place where I can sit and dry my hair and let the breezes blow it. Packyard! Grinned Charlie, I guess you're new to New York, all right. With ground cost in a million or so a foot. Not much, there ain't no backyard, unless you'd give that name to an ash-barrel and a dump heap or so, and a crop of ten cans. I wouldn't invite a goat to sit in it. Disappointment curved Mary Louise's mouth. It was a lovely enough mouth at any time, but when it curved in disappointment, L, janitors are but human after all. Tell you what, though, said Charlie, I'll let you up on the roof. It ain't long on grassy spots up there, but, say, breeze, like a summer resort. On a clear day you can see way over as far as Eight Avenue. Only for the love of Mike, don't blab it to the other women folks in the building, or I'll have the whole works of them using the roof for a general sun, massage, and beauty parlor. Come on. I'll never breathe it to a soul, promised Mary Louise solemnly. Oh, wait a minute. She turned back into her room, appearing again in a moment with something green in her hand. What's that? Asked Charlie suspiciously. Mary Louise, speeding down the narrow hallway after Charlie, blushed a little. It's—it's parsley, she faltered. Parsley! Exploded Charlie. Well, what the— Well, you see, I'm from the country, explained Mary Louise, and in the country at this time of year, when you dry your hair in the backyard, you get the most wonderful scent of green and growing things, not only of flowers, you know, but of the new things just coming up in the vegetable garden. And—and, well, this parsley happens to be the only really garden-y thing I have, so I thought I'd bring it along and sniff it once in a while, and make believe it's the country, up there, on the roof. Halfway up the perilous little flight of stairs that led to the roof, Charlie, the janitor, turned a gaze down at Mary Louise, who was just behind, and keeping fearfully out of the way of Charlie's heels. Women, observed Charlie, the janitor, is nothing but little girls on long skirts, and their hair down up. I know it, giggled Mary Louise, and sprang up on the roof, looking with her towel-swaffed head like a lady Aladdin leaping from her underground grotto. The two stood there for a moment, looking up at the blue sky, and all about at the June sunshine. If you go up high enough, observed Mary Louise, the sunshine is almost the same as it is in the country, isn't it? I shouldn't wonder, said Charlie, though Cavalry Cemetery is about as near as I'll ever get to the country. Say, you can sit here on this soap-box and let your feet hang down. The last janitor's wife used to hang her washing up here, I guess. I'll leave this door open, see? You're so kind, smiled Mary Louise. Can you blame me? Retorted the gallant Charles, and vanished. Mary Louise, perched on the soap-box, unwound her turban, draped the damp towel over her shoulders, and shook out the wet masses of her hair. Now the average girl shaking out the wet masses of her hair looks like a drowned rat. But nature had been kind to Mary Louise. She had given her hair that curled in little ringlets when wet, and that waved in all the right places when dry. Just now it hung in damp, shining strands on either side of her face, so that she looked almost remarkably like one of those oval-faced, great-eyed, red-lepped women that the old Italian artists were so fond of painting. Below her, blazing in the sun, lay the great stone and iron city. Mary Louise shook out her hair idly. With one hand sniffed her parsley, shut her eyes, threw back her head, and began to sing, beating time with her heel against the soap-box and forgetting all about the letter that had come that morning, stating that it was not from any lack of merit, et cetera. She sang and sniffed her parsley, and waggled her hair in the breeze, and beat time idly with the heel of her little boot when. … »Holy cats!« exclaimed the man's voice. »What is this, anyway? A Coney Island concessioned on wrong?« Mary Louise's eyes, unclosed, and a flash, and Mary Louise gazed upon an irate-looking youngish man who wore shabby slippers and no collar with a full-dress air. "'I presume that you are the janitor's beautiful daughter,' growled the colorless man. "'Well, not precisely,' answered Mary Louise, sweetly. "'Are you the scrublady's stalwart son?' "'Aha!' exploded the man, but then all women look alike with their hair down. "'I ask your pardon, though.' "'Not at all,' replied Mary Louise, for that matter all men look like pig-chickens with their collars off. At that the colorless man, who until now had been standing on the top-step that led up to the roof, came slowly forward, stepped languidly over a skylight or two, draped his handkerchief over a convenient chimney, and sat down, hugging his long, lean legs to him. "'Nice up here, isn't it?' he remarked. "'It was,' said Mary Louise. "'Ha!' exploded he again. "'Then where's your mirror?' he demanded. "'Mirror!' echoed Mary Louise. "'Certainly you have the hair, the comb, the attitude, and the general laurel-eye effect. "'Also, you're singing, lured me to your shores.' "'You don't look lured,' retorted Mary Louise. "'You looked lurid.' "'What's that stuff in your hand?' Next demanded he. He really was a most astonishingly rude young man. "'Parsley!' "'Parsley!' shouted he, much as Charlie had done. "'Well, what the—' "'Back home!' elicited Mary Louise, once more patiently. "'After you've washed your hair, you dry it in the backyard, sitting on the grass, in the sunshine, and the breeze, and the garden smells come to you, the nasturtiums, and the pansies, and the geraniums, you know, and even that clean grass smell, and the pungent, vegetable odor, and there are ants, and bees, and butterflies—go on,' urged the young man, eagerly. And Mrs. Nextdoor comes out to hang up a few stockings and a jabot, or two, or so, and a couple of baby-dresses that she has just rubbed through, and she calls out to you. "'Washed your hair?' "'Yes,' you say. It was something awful, and I wanted it nice for Tuesday night, but I would suppose I won't be able to do a thing with it.' And then Mrs. Nextdoor stands there a minute on the clothes-reel platform, with the wind whipping her skirts about her, and the fresh smell of the growing things coming to her, and suddenly she says, I guess I'll wash mine, too, while the baby's asleep. The colorless young man rose from his chimney, picked up his handkerchief, and moved to the chimney just next to Mary Louise's soap-box. "'Live here?' he asked, in his impolite way. "'If I did not, do you think that I would choose this as the one spot in all New York in which to dry my hair?' Then I said, live here. I didn't mean just that. I meant, who are you, and why are you here, and where do you come from, and do you sign your real name to your stuff, or use a nom de plume?' "'Why, how did you know?' gasped Mary Louise. "'Give me five minutes more,' rend the keen-eyed young man, and I'll tell you what make your typewriter is, and where the last rejection slip came from.' "'Oh!' said Mary Louise again, then you are the scrub-lady's stalwart son, and you've been ransacking my waste-basket.' Quite unheeding the colorless man went on. And so you thought you could write, and you came on to New York. You know one doesn't just travel to New York, or ride to it, or come to it. One comes on to New York. And now you're not so sure about the writing. And back home, what did you do? Back home I taught school, and hated it. But I kept on teaching until I'd saved five hundred dollars. Every other school-ma'am in the world teaches until she has saved five hundred dollars, and then she packs two suitcases and goes to Europe from June until September. But I saved my five hundred for New York. I've been here six months now, and the five hundred has shrunk to almost nothing. And if I don't break into the magazines pretty soon, then, then, said Mary Louise, with a quaver in her voice, I'll have to go back and teach thirty-seven young devils that six times five is thirty. Put down the knot and carry six, and that the French are gay people fond of dancing and light wines. But I'll scrimp on everything from hairpins to shoes, and back again, including pretty collars, and gloves, and hats, until I've saved up another five hundred, and then I'll try it all over again, because I can't write. From the depths of one capacious pocket the inquiring man took a small black pipe from another a bag of tobacco, from another a match. The long deft fingers made a brief task of it. I didn't ask you, he said, after the first puff, because I could see that you weren't the fool kind that objects. Even with amazing suddenness, know any of the editors? Know them, cried Mary Louise, know them, if camping on their doorsteps and haunting the office buildings, and controlling, and fighting with secretaries, and office boys, and assistants, and things, constitutes knowing them, then were chums. What makes you think you can write, sneered the thin man. Mary Louise gathered up her brush and comb and towel and parsley, and jumped off the soap-box. She pointed belligerently at her tormentor, with the hand that held the brush. Being the scrub-lady's stalwart son you wouldn't understand, but I can write. I shan't go under. I'm going to make this town count me in as the four million and one. Sometimes I get so tired of being nobody at all, with not even enough cleverness in me to rest a living from this big city, that I long to stand out at the edge of the curbing, and take off my hat, and wave it, and shout, Say, you four million uncaring people, I'm Mary Louise Moss from Eskenaba, Michigan, and I like your town, and I want to stay here. Won't you please pay some slight attention to me? No one knows I'm here except myself, and the rent-collector. And I put in the root young man. Oh, you, sneered Mary Louise, equally rude, you don't count. The colorless young man and the shabby slippers smiled a curious little, twisted smile. You never can tell, he grinned, I might. Then quite suddenly he stood up, knocked the ash out of his pipe, and came over to Mary Louise, who was preparing to descend the steep little flight of stairs. Look here, Mary Louise Moss from Eskenaba, Michigan, you stop trying to write the slop you're writing now. Stop it. Drop the love-tales that are like the stuff that everybody else writes. Stop trying to write about New York. You don't know anything about it. Listen. You get back to work, and write about Mrs. Neck's door, and the hair-washing, and the vegetable garden, and bees, and the backyard. Understand? You write the way you talk to me, and then you send your stuff in to Cecil Reeves. Reeves! mocked Mary Louise, Cecil Reeves of the earth. He wouldn't dream of looking at my stuff. And anyway, it really isn't your affair, and began to descend the stairs. Well, you know you brought me up here, keking with your heels, and singing at the top of your voice. I couldn't work, so it's really your fault. Then, just as Mary Louise had almost disappeared down the stairway, he put his last astonishing question. How often do you wash your hair? He demanded. Well, back home, confessed Mary Louise, every six weeks or so was enough, but not here, put in the rude young man briskly, never, that's all very well for the country, but it won't do in the city, once a week, at least, and on the roof, cleanliness demands it. But if I'm going back to the country, replied Mary Louise, it won't be necessary. But you're not, calmly said the callous young man, just as Mary Louise vanished from sight. Down at the other end of the hallway, on Mary Louise's floor, Charlie, the janitor, was doing something to the windows now with a rag and a pail of water. Get it dry? He called out sociably. Yes, thank you, answered Mary Louise, and turned to enter her own little apartment. Then, hesitatingly, she came back to Charlie's window. There was a man up there, a very tall, very thin, very rude, very, that is, rather nice, youngish, oldish man, and slippers, and no collar. I wonder. Oh, him! snorted Charlie. He don't show himself once in a blue moon. None of the other tenants knows he's up there, has the whole top floor to himself, and shuts himself up there for weeks at a time, right in books or some such truck. That guy, he owns the building. Owns the building? Said Mary Louise, faintly. Why, he looked—he looked—sure, grinned Charlie, that's him. Names Reeves, Cecil Reeves. Say, ain't that a devil of a name? End of SUNDRIED by Edna Furber. Tobremory by Saki. H. H. Monroe. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Tobremory. It was a chill, rainwashed afternoon of a late August day, that indefinite season when partridges are still in security or cold storage, and there is nothing to hunt, unless one is bounded on the north by the Bristol Channel, in which case one may lawfully gallop after fat red stags. T. Blemley's house party was not bounded on the north by the Bristol Channel, hence there was a full gathering of her guests round the tea-table on this particular afternoon. And in spite of the blankness of the season and the triteness of the occasion there was no trace in the company of that fatigued restlessness which means a dread of the pianola and a subdued hankering for auction bridge. The undisguised open-mouthed attention of the entire party was fixed on the homely negative personality of Mr. Cornelius Appen. Of all her guests he was the one who had come to Lady Blemley with the vaguest reputation. Someone had said he was clever, and he had got his invitation in the moderate expectation on the part of his hostess. That some portion at least of his cleverness would be contributed to the general entertainment. Until tea-time that day she had been unable to discover in what direction, if any, his cleverness lay. He was neither a wit nor a croquet-champion, a hypnotic force nor a begetter of amateur theatricals. Neither did his exterior suggest the sort of man in whom women are willing to pardon a generous measure of mental deficiency. He had subsided into mere Mr. Appen, and the Cornelius seemed a piece of transparent baptismal bluff. And now he was claiming to have launched on the world a discovery beside which the invention of gunpowder, the printing press, and of steam locomotion were inconsiderable trifles. Science had made bewildering strides in many directions during recent decades, but this thing seemed to belong to the domain of miracle, rather than to scientific achievement. And do you really ask us to believe, Sir Wilfred was saying, that you have discovered a means for instructing animals in the art of human speech, and that dear old Tobremory has proved your first successful pupil? It is a problem at which I have worked for the last seventeen years, said Mr. Appen, but only during the last eight or nine months have I been rewarded with glimmerings of success. Of course I have experimented with thousands of animals, but laterally only with cats, those wonderful creatures which have assimilated themselves so marvelously with our civilization, while retaining all their highly developed feral instincts. Here and there among cats one comes across an outstanding superior intellect, just as one does among the rock of human beings, and when I made the acquaintance of Tobremory a week ago I saw at once that I was in contact with a, beyond cat, of extraordinary intelligence. I had gone far along the road to success in recent experiments, with Tobremory, as you call him, I have reached the goal. Mr. Appen concluded his remarkable statement in a voice which he strove to divest of a triumphant inflection. No one said, rats, though Clovis's lips moved in a monosyllabic contortion which probably invoked those rodents of disbelief. And do you mean to say, asked Miss Resker after a slight pause, that you have taught Tobremory to say and understand easy sentences of one syllable? My dear Miss Resker, said the wonder-worker patiently, one teaches little children and savages and backward adults in that piecemeal fashion. When one has once solved the problem of making a beginning with an animal of highly developed intelligence one has no need for those halting methods. Tobremory can speak our language with perfect correctness. This time Clovis very distinctly said, beyond rats. Sir Wilfred was more polite but equally sceptical. Hadn't we better have the cat in and judge for ourselves, suggested Lady Blemley. Sir Wilfred went in search of the animal, and the company settled themselves down to the languid expectation of witnessing some more or less a drawing-room ventriloquism. In a minute Sir Wilfred was back in the room, his face white beneath its tan, and his eyes dilated with excitement. By Gad it's true! His agitation was unmistakably genuine, and his hearers started forward in a thrill of awakened interest. Collapsing into an arm-chair he continued breathlessly. I found him dozing in the smoking-room, and called out to him to come for his tea. He blinked at me in his usual way, and I said, Come on, Toby, don't keep us waiting. And by Gad he'd drawled out in a most horribly natural voice that he'd come when he dashed well pleased. I nearly jumped out of my skin. Appen had preached to absolutely incredulous hearers. Sir Wilfred's statement carried instant conviction. A babel-like chorus of startled exclamation arose amid which the scientist sat mutely enjoying the first fruit of his stupendous discovery. In the midst of the clamour, Tobremory entered the room and made his way with velvet tread and studied unconcern across to the group seated round the tea-table. A sudden hush of awkwardness and constraint fell on the company. Somehow there seemed an element of embarrassment in addressing on equal terms a domestic cat of acknowledged dental ability. Will you have some milk, Tobremory? Asked Lady Blemley in a rather strained voice. I don't mind if I do, was the response, couched in a tone of even indifference. A shiver of suppressed excitement went through the listeners, and Lady Blemley might be excused for pouring out the saucer full of milk rather unsteadily. I'm afraid I've spilt a good deal of it, she said apologetically. After all, it's not my ax-minster, was Tobremory's rejoinder. Another silence fell on the group, and then Miss Rasker, in her best district visitor manner, asked if the human language had been difficult to learn. Tobremory looked squarely at her for a moment, and then fixed his gaze serenely on the middle distance. It was obvious that boring questions lay outside his scheme of life. What do you think of human intelligence? asked Mavis Pellington of whose intelligence in particular, asked Tobremory coldly. Oh, well, mine, for instance, said Mavis, with a feeble laugh. You put me in an embarrassing position, said Tobremory, whose tone and attitude certainly did not suggest a shred of embarrassment. When your inclusion in this house-party was suggested, Sir Wilfred protested that you were the most brainless woman of his acquaintance, and that there was a wide distinction between hospitality and the care of the feeble-minded. Lady Blemley replied that your lack of brain-power was the precise quality which had earned you your invitation, as you were the only person she could think of who might be idiotic enough to buy their old car—you know, the one they call the Envy of Sisyphus, because it goes quite nicely uphill, if you push it. Lady Blemley's protestations would have had greater effect if she had not casually suggested to Mavis, only that morning, that the car in question would be just the thing for her, down at her Devonshire home. Major Barfield plunged in heavily, to affect a diversion. How about your carrying's on with the tortoiseshell puss up at the stables, eh? The moment he had said it, everyone realized the blunder. One does not usually discuss these matters in public, said Tobermory frigidly. From a slight observation of your ways, since you've been in this house, I should imagine you'd find it inconvenient if I were to shift the conversation on to your own little affairs. The panic which ensued was not confined to the Major. Would you like to go and see if Cook has got your dinner ready? Suggested Lady Blemley hurriedly, affecting to ignore the fact that it wanted at least two hours to Tobermory's dinner time. Thanks, said Tobermory, not quite so soon after my tea, I don't want to die of indigestion. Cats have nine lives, you know, said Sir Wilfred Hartley. Possibly answered Tobermory, but only one liver. Adelaide, said Mrs. Cornet, do you mean to encourage that cat to go out and gossip about us in the Servants' Hall? The panic had indeed become general. A narrow ornamental balustrade ran in front of most of the bedroom windows at the towers, and it was recalled with dismay that this had formed a favourite promenade for Tobermory at all hours whence he could watch the pigeons, and heaven knew what else besides. If he intended to become reminiscent in his present outspoken strain, the effect would be something more than disconcerting. Mrs. Cornet, who spent much time at her toilet-table, and whose complexion was reputed to be of a nomadic, though punctual, disposition, looked as ill at ease as the major. Miss Scrawlain, who wrote fiercely sensuous poetry, and led a blameless life, merely displayed irritation. If you are methodical and virtuous in private, you don't necessarily want everyone to know it. Bertie Vantan, who was so depraved at seventeen that he had long ago given up trying to be any worse, turned a dull shade of gardenia white, but he did not commit the error of dashing out of the room like Odo Finsbury, a young gentleman who was understood to be reading for the church, and who was possibly disturbed at the thought of scandals he might hear concerning other people. Clovis had the presence of mind to maintain a composed exterior. Finally he was calculating how long it would take to procure a box of fancy mice, through the agency of the exchange and mart, as a species of hush-money. Even in a delicate situation like the present, Agnes Resker could not endure to remain too long in the background. "'Why did I ever come down here?' she asked dramatically. Tobermore immediately accepted the opening. Judging by what you said to Mrs. Cornet on the croquet-lon yesterday, you were out for food. You described the Blemleys as the dullest people to stay with that you knew, but said they were clever enough to employ a first-rate cook. Otherwise they'd find it difficult to get anyone to come down a second time. "'There's not a word of truth in it! I appeal to Mrs. Cornet!' exclaimed the discomforted Agnes. Mrs. Cornet repeated your remark afterwards to Bertie Vantan, continued Tobermoy, and said, "'That woman is a regular hunger-marcher. She'd go anywhere for four square meals a day,' and Bertie Vantan said—' At this point the chronicle mercifully ceased. Tobermoy had caught a glimpse of the big yellow tome from the rectory, working his way through the shrubbery towards the stable wing. In a flash he had vanished through the open French window. With the disappearance of his two brilliant pupil Cornelius Appen found himself beset by a hurricane of bitter up-braiding, anxious inquiry, and frightened entreaty. The responsibility for the situation lay with him, and he must prevent matters from becoming worse. Could Tobermoy impart his dangerous gift to other cats? Was the first question he had to answer. It was possible, he replied, that he might have initiated his intimate friend the stable-puss into his new accomplishment, but it was unlikely that his teaching could have taken a wider range as yet. "'Then,' said Mrs. Cornet, "'Tobermoy may be a valuable cat and a great pet, but I'm sure you'll agree, Adelaide, that both he and the stable cat must be done away with without delay. "'You don't suppose I've enjoyed the last quarter of an hour, do you?' said Lady Blemley bitterly. "'My husband and I are very fond of Tobermoy. At least we were before this horrible accomplishment was infused into him. But now, of course, the only thing is to have him destroyed as soon as possible.' "'We can put some strychnine in the scraps he always gets at dinner time,' said Sir Wilfred, and I will go and drown the stable cat myself. The coachman will be very sore at losing his pet, but I'll say a very catching form of mange has broken out in both cats, and we are afraid of it spreading to the kennels.' "'But my great discovery!' expostulated Mr. Appen. "'After all my years of research and experiment.' "'You can go and experiment on the short horns at the farm, who are under proper control,' said Mrs. Cornet. "'Or the elephants at the zoological gardens. They're said to be highly intelligent, and they have this recommendation that they don't come creeping about our bedrooms and under chairs and so forth.' An archangel ecstatically proclaiming the millennium, and then finding that it clashed unpardonably with Henley and would have to be indefinitely postponed, could hardly have felt more crestfallen than Cornelius Appen at the reception of his wonderful achievement. Public opinion, however, was against him. In fact, had the general voice been consulted on the subject, it is probable that a strong minority vote would have been in favour of including him in the Strychnine diet. Defective train arrangements and a nervous desire to see matters brought to a finish prevented an immediate dispersal of the party, but dinner that evening was not a social success. Sir Wilfred had had rather a trying time with the stable-cat and subsequently with the coachman. Agnes Resker ostentatiously limited her repast to a morsel of dry toast, which she bit as though it were a personal enemy, while Mavis Pellington maintained a vindictive silence throughout the meal. Lady Blemley kept up a flow of what she hoped was conversation, but her attention was fixed on the doorway. A plateful of carefully dosed fish-scraps was in readiness on the sideboard, but sweets and savoury and dessert went their way, and no tobermory appeared, either in the dining-room or kitchen. The sepulchral dinner was cheerful compared with the subsequent vigil in the smoking-room. Eating and drinking had at least supplied a distraction and cloak to the prevailing embarrassment. Bridge was out of the question in the general tension of nerves and tempers, and after Odo Finsbury had given a lugubrious rendering of melissande in the wood to a frigid audience, music was tacitly avoided. At eleven the servants went to bed, announcing that the small window in the pantry had been left open, as usual, for tobermory's private use. The guests read steadily through the current batch of magazines and fell back gradually on the Badminton Library and bound volumes of punch. Lady Blemley made periodic visits to the pantry, returning each time with an expression of listless depression which forestalled questioning. At two o'clock Clovis broke the dominating silence. He won't turn up to-night, he's probably in the local newspaper office at the present moment, dictating the first installment of his reminiscences. Lady Whatser's name's book won't be in it. It will be the event of the day. Having made this contribution to the general cheerfulness, Clovis went to bed. At long intervals the various members of the house-party followed his example. The servants taking round the early tea made a uniform announcement in reply to a uniform question. Tobermory had not returned. Breakfast was, if anything, a more unpleasant function than dinner had been, but before its conclusion the situation was relieved. Tobermory's corpse was brought in from the shrubbery where a gardener had just discovered it. From the bites on his throat and the yellow fur which coated his claws it was evident that he had fallen in unequal combat with the big tom from the rectory. By midday most of the guests had quitted the towers and after lunch Lady Blemley had sufficiently recovered her spirits to write an extremely nasty letter to the rectory about the loss of her valuable pet. Tobermory had been Appen's one successful pupil and he was destined to have no successor. A few weeks later an elephant in the Dresden Zoological Garden which had shown no previous signs of irritability broke loose and killed an Englishman who had apparently been teasing it. The victim's name was variously reported in the papers as Appen and Eppelen, but his front name was faithfully rendered Cornelius. If he was trying German irregular verbs on the poor beast, said Clovis, he deserved all he got. End of Tobermory by Saki. Read by Kara Schallenberg www.kray.org March 23, 2010 in San Diego, California.