 The Secret of Labra by T. W. Rolston Read for Love Stories Volume 2 by Chad Horner from Ballyclair in County Antrim, Northern Ireland, situated in the north-east of the Ireland of Ireland. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Secret of Labra by T. W. Rolston In very ancient days there was a king in Ireland named Labra who was called Labra the Sailor for a certain voyage that he made. Now Labra was never seen saved by one man once a year without a hood that covered his head and ears. But once a year it was his habit to let his hair be cropped and the person to do this was chosen by lot. But the king was accustomed to put to death instantly the man who had cropped him and so it happened that on a certain year the lot fell on a young man who was the only son of a poor widow who dwelt near by the palace of the king. When she heard that her son had been chosen she fell on her knees before the king and besought him with tears that her son who was her only support and all she had in the world might not suffer death as was customary. The king was moved by her grief and her entreaties and at last he consented that the young man should not be slain provided that he vowed to keep secret to the day of his death what he should see. The youth agreed to this and he vowed by the sun and the wind that he would never so long as he lived reveal to man what he should learn when he cropped the king's hair. So he did what was appointed for him and went home but when he did so he had no peace for the wonder of the secret that he had learned, prayed upon his mind so that he could not rest for thinking of it and longing to reveal it and at last he fell into a wasting sickness from it and was near to die. Then there was brought to see him a wise druid who was skilled in all maladies of the mind and body and after he had talked with the youth he said to his mother this son is dying of the burden of a secret which he may not reveal to any man but until he reveals it he will have no ease let him therefore walk along the highway till he comes to a place where four roads meet, let him then turn to the right and the first tree that he shall meet on the roadside let him tell the secret to it and so it may be he shall be relieved and his vow will not be broken. The mother told her son of the druid's advice and next day he went upon his way till he came to four crossroads and he took the road upon the right and the first tree he found was a great willow tree so the young man laid his cheek against a bark and he whispered the secret to the tree and as he turned back homeward he felt lightened of his burden and he leaped in sang and ere many days were passed he was as well and lighthearted as ever he had been in his life and after that it happened that the king's harper named Krafteney broke the straining post of his harp and went out to seek for a piece of wood wherewith to mend it and the first temper he found that would fit the purpose was the willow tree by the crossroads he cut it down therefore and took as much as would give him a new straining post and he bore it home with him and mended his harp with it that night he played after meat before the king and his lords as he was wont but whatever he played and sang the folk that listened to him seemed to hear only one thing two horses ears hath labra the sailor then the king plucked off his hood and after that he made no secret of his ears and none suffered on account of them thence forward End of The Secret of Libra by T. W. Rolston The writer by Maxime Gorky recorded for Love Stories Vol. 2 by William Jones This is a Libra Box recording All Libra Box recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibraVox.org The Writer by Maxime Gorky There once lived a very ambitious writer When he was abused it seemed to him that he was abused too much and unjustly When he was praised he thought that they neither praised him enough nor wisely He lived in a state of perpetual discontent until the time came for him to die The writer lay down on his bed and began grumbling That's just how it is What do you think of it? Two novels are not yet finished and altogether I have enough material for ten years The devil take this law of nature and every other law, what nonsense The novels might have turned out well Why have they invented this idiotic compulsory service as if things could not have been arranged differently and it always comes at the wrong time The novels are not finished yet He was angry but disease was eating into his bones and whispering into his ears You trembled, eh? Why did you tremble? You don't sleep at night, eh? Why don't you sleep? You have drunk of sorrow, eh? And of joy too He kept knitting his brows but realized at last that nothing could be done With the wave of the arm he dismissed the thought of his novels and died He was so very disagreeable but he died So far so good They washed him, dressed him according to custom combed his hair and placed him on the table straight and stiff like a soldier Heals together, toes apart He lay very still His nose drooped and the only feeling he had was surprise How strange it is that I feel nothing at all It's the first time in my life Ah, my wife is crying Well, now you cry but before when anything went wrong you flew into a rage My little son is crying too No doubt he will grow up a good for nothing fellow The sons of writers I have noticed always do No doubt that also is in accordance with some law of nature What an infernal number of such laws there are So he lay and thought and thought and wondered at his composure He was not accustomed to it They started for the cemetery but as he was being born along he suddenly felt there were not enough mourners No matter, he said to himself though I may not be a very great writer Literature must be respected He looked out of the coffin and saw that as a matter of fact without counting his relations only nine people accompanied him Among whom are two beggars and a lamp-lighter with a ladder over his shoulder At this discovery he became quite indignant What swine! The slight so incensed him that he immediately became resurrected and, being a small man jumped unperceived out of his coffin He ran into a barber's had his moustache and beard shaved off and burrowed a black coat with a patch under the armpit leaving his own coat in its stead Then he made his face look solemn and aggrieved and became like a living man It was impossible to recognize him With the curiosity natural to his profession he asked the barber Are you not astonished at this strange incident? The latter stroked his moustache condescendingly and replied Well, we live in Russia and we are used to all kinds of things But then I am a deceased person and suddenly I change my attire It is the fashion of the times and in what way are you a deceased person? Only externally As far as the general run of people goes it would be better if God made them all like you At the present time living people don't look half so natural Don't I look rather yellowish? Quite in the spirit of the ethic as you should be It is Russia Everyone here suffers from one ill or another It is well known that barbers are flatterers of the first order and the most obliging people on earth He bade him good-bye and ran to overtake the coffin moved by a keen desire to show for the last time his reverence for literature He caught up with the procession and the number of those who accompanied the coffin became ten The respect for the writer increased correspondingly Passersby exclaimed astonished Just look, a writer's funeral Oh, oh And people who knew what was taking place thought with a sort of pride as they went about their business It is plain that the importance of literature is being understood better and better by the country The writer was now following his own coffin as if he were an admirer of literature and a friend of the deceased He addressed the lamp-lighter Did you know the deceased person? Certainly, I made use of him in a small way I'm very pleased to hear it Yes, our work is like that of the sparrow where something drops we pick it up How am I to understand that? Take it in a very simple manner, sir In a simple manner? Yes, certainly, of course It is a sin if one looks at it from a certain point of view One cannot, however, get on in this world without using one's wets Hmm, are you sure of that? Quite sure, sir There was a lamp right against his window and every night he set up till sunrise Well, I did not like that lamp because enough light streamed from his window So this one lamp was a net profit to me He was a very useful man So talking quietly to this one and that the writer reached the cemetery and it came to pass that he had to make a speech about himself because all those who had accompanied him on that day had two thakes This happens in Russia and there people always have an ache of one sort or another He made a rather good speech One paper went so far as to praise it in the following terms One of the followers who from his appearance who he judged to be an actor made a warm and touching oration over the grave Albeit from our point of view he no doubt overestimated and exaggerated the rather modest merits of the deceased He was a writer of the old school who made no effort to rid himself of its defects The naive didactism, namely and the over insistence on the so called civic duties which to us nowadays have become so tiresome Nevertheless, the speech was delivered with a feeling of unquestionable love for the written word When the speech had been duly made the writer lay down in the coffin and thought quite satisfied with himself There, we are ready now Everything has gone well and with dignity At this point he became quite dead Thus should one's calling be respected Even though it be literature End of The Writer by Maxim Gorky The Wedding Gift by Grace Sardwell Mason Recorded for Love Stories Vol. 2 by Anita Sloma Martinez This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org The Wedding Gift by Grace Sardwell Mason One of Barbara's reasons for accepting me was the fact that I was not prosperous If you were, she said, we should have to live on the west side with a velvet carpet in the parlor, two maids and a mission dining-room The parlor and the mission dining-room would bore me to tears and I'd about as soon keep a rubber-plant as two maids I assured her there was no immediate prospect of having any of these commonly prized adjuncts Art, as she knew, was long Its votaries must find their happiness not in gross material wealth but in the finer coinage of ideas of the creative fancy exactly interrupted Barbara warmly We are not like other people the conventional things of life such as houses and furniture and and regular meals, you know, would hamper us We must live for our art Nothing else matters And on this basis we set up our goods in Greenwich Village at the top of a rambling old house The good north light attracted me and the irregularity of the rooms pleased Barbara We covered the walls with burlap in a sad artistic tint made a kitchen out of a screen and two biscuit boxes thinly disguised our steamer trunks under a bit of Flemish tapestry and hung our Hokusai to the best advantage Our housekeeping was of the lightest It was positively airy on those days when Barbara wooed her muse but as she said who would be the slave to a breakfast or luncheon hour As long as one was at peace with one's artistic conscience what battered meals At night we rubbed from our brows the wrinkles of work and dined out with other demi-celebrities and demi-semi-celebrities in a soothing atmosphere of pink-shaded candles and artistic shop talk Our impromptu suppers when Benson the artist or the clever Fenways or Jimmy Dick dropped in were hilariously successful Of course the next morning was apt to be rather disagreeably untidy with sticky dishes all about the place and empty olive bottles in the bathtub And there was usually the janitor to pacify on account of Jimmy Dick's noise but Barbara liked it She said it appealed to her imagination like living one of Marge's stories, you know I think she knew how pretty she was in my painting smock She made a joke of the inconvenience of keeping one's best clothes in boxes under the bed and declared, even as she groveled in search of her hat with the pink plumes that the light exactly suited her We worked hard and happily If we were sometimes a little crowded we were at least not dull and then there came Uncle Peter's wedding present I had never quite believed in Barbara's Uncle Peter He lived in a reg limbo known as the Northwest and there was a tradition in Barbara's family that he was vastly wealthy but in as much as none of them had seen or heard from him in years it seemed to me highly probable that he was one of those pleasant myths no household should be without Barbara was specially fond of the Uncle Peter tradition She had sent him an announcement of our marriage addressed in simple faith to Nome and when a lean week was upon the Greenwich Flat she cheered herself by considering what she would do if Uncle Peter should send us a gold nugget or some mining stock for a wedding gift I had lifted the voice of Scorn so often against this relative of Barbara's that when she telephoned me one day that there was a letter from Uncle Peter I told her I had no time for fairy tales but it's true she cried over the telephone he's written and he's sending a wedding gift and he says take good care of the present I'm sending and it will reward you now doesn't that mean nuggets or mining stock? sounds like a Bible to me I said and Barbara rang off sharply but in spite of myself I was curious about this revival of Uncle Peter so I put away my drawing board I was at work in the zoo making sketches for Headley's wild animals in their native haunts and went home early I found Barbara sitting on the floor and about her there billowed a seat of steamship literature I should state here that Barbara cherished a dream of a year in Europe and whenever she sold a tale or I drew a successful beast our flat was flooded with booklets setting forth the allurements every place on earth but home when I saw her thus surrounded I concluded that she must have landed a cereal but on inquiry I found it was Uncle Peter's letter that had so uplifted her I feel it in my bones she cried that he's sending nuggets or a cunning bag of gold dust such is the infection of Barbara's optimism that I scoffed but weakly and that night we celebrated on our expectations after a dinner that we could not afford we came home and spread out all the steamship epics on the table we decided on Florence and Fiesole for the winter with a few weeks in Paris we got out Italian backgrounds and somebody on medieval towns and we had all together a joyous evening Part 2 Next morning the present came it took two strong men to drag it in it was in a box about the size of our bathroom with slats across the front through these there peered the bloodshot eyes of a huge animal you've made a mistake I said sternly to the men but Barbara who had been reading the card on the box cried out that it was the wedding present from Uncle Peter and fell into a chair I cannot classify the sort of seizure Barbara had when the men were gone it seemed like hysterics mixed with the fit of temper Barbara calm yourself I besought her I can't it's so funny and I'm so mad well then I'm going to let the beast out I said the threat had instant effect Bab stopped gurgling and jumped up he made us alive she cried but I had been peering through the slats at the wedding gift and I felt much braver I'll not let him harm you Barbara I said and began to pry the slats from the box Barbara armed herself with a tenagra figurine and climbed into the Morris chair when the last slat was off I stepped aside hastily for the beast with a roar precipitated itself into the room I may as well get over this painful portion of my narrative as rapidly as possible it is sufficient to state that to us in a New York flat our dear uncle Peter had sent a Siberian bloodhound the beast gambled about with the airy grace of a rhinoceros knocking over chairs and Barbara's tea table with the wagging of his tail I shall offer him for sale I said disgustedly but what shall we do with him in the meantime he's too big to be imprisoned in the bathroom and the police won't allow him on the fire escape oh oh look at him now cried Barbara over his pendulous chops and his fierce red eyes a smile seemed to pass he began a mincing shuffle toward Barbara the droop of his tail seeming to say don't be afraid little girl and laid his great head softly on her foot why he's taken to me cried my wife and I knew from her tone we were going to keep the beast there is no use urging expediency where Barbara's affections are concerned she had fallen in love with her wedding present the dog had attacked to adore her and keep him we must we sadly put away the steamship literature and the guides to Italy and did some extra pot boilers to keep little sunshine and food what it cost me to silence the janitor I was ashamed to record and as for the nice old lady in the next flat she has never been the same since it was a darkish day when she met sunshine in the hall I heard her shrieks and rushed out in the corner she was dancing a wild fling of terror while sunshine looking as pleasant as a hungry hippopotamus frolicked about her trying to be friends this will illustrate his general reception the poor dog had a perpetual craving for friends but his appearance was against him when Bab walked down the street with him people whose hands he tried to lick fell away from him with shrieks and mothers snatched their babies out of his path as Barbara kept explaining he had the gentlest nature but no one believed her and we were in a fair way to be sacrificed on the altar of our loyalty to Uncle Peter's gift coming home from the zoo one day I was met in the hall by Barbara thank heaven she said as she seized me that we kept sunshine why I asked has he bitten a book agent no but Uncle Peter has come all the way from the west to see if we are good to the dog I hope he realizes now I said somewhat bitterly the inappropriateness of his gift I can't make him out said Barbara but I could he was evidently a man with a subterranean sense of humor he saw the joke of what he had done also I suspected he saw a joke in us and our menage he was an apple cheeked old fellow with keen blue eyes and a dry smile always hovering about the corners of his mouth he was as much interested in us and our manner of living as if we were Aztec cliff dwellers we gathered that he had supposed to manage to be a rural community and that he had sent us the dog to protect Barbara from tramps while I was in the city I suppose he said with a quaint twist to his smile after we had shown him all our clever space saving schemes there's lots of people living like this with their best hats under the bed and the cheese on the windowsill plenty of them and geniuses too we assured him but he persisted mildly if they'd moved out into the country they'd have room to stretch in in a door yard and posy beds and shade trees and we don't care for the conventional way of living interrupted Barbara art absorbs us the true artist would not be hapered by houses or furniture of course it would be nice to have a little more room to have a little more room but as for ourselves we are quite happy and the flat is quite big enough mebe mebe Uncle Peter chuckled as he rose to go but, and he turned to look slighly at her you'd be hard put to it to find room for a youngster to now wouldn't you vulgar old man said Barbara when he had gone and then she dimpled he's lovely too so naive and primitive I was not so rationed my classification of Uncle Peter for it occurred to me as he dined or lunched with us during his stay in town that he listened to our theories with the humour which was not entirely unsophisticated we were sincerely sorry when the old gentleman came finally to announce his departure for Nome he had had a mighty good time he said and had learned a number of things this he chuckled and laid upon the table an oblong slip of paper that's my wedding present he explained it's a kind of bet with myself too you see I've always said that if you go deep enough we're all pretty much alike and right down at the bottom we're all after the same thing but metagenesis are different I don't know and he grinned slighly anyway you can hit the trail for Italy now if you want to goodbye and let me know how you get along after he had gone it was several minutes before Barbara or I had courage to look at the oblong piece of paper then Barbara made a little rush and held it up Italy she cried I should say so and Japan and Norway if we like Uncle Peter had certainly done handsomely by us for the rest of the day we were in a state of dizzy excitement we knocked off work and went for a walk with sunshine between us we blessed the day that Uncle Peter had sent us a dog and Barbara had fallen in love with him but we were in far too exalted a state to puzzle over what our generous relative had meant by his parting speech to us the next morning after I had deposited the check I should have gone to the zoo to work but instead I strolled around town thinking incoherent and affluent thoughts I meant to go to the steamship offices but I met an acquaintance who was in real estate and he persuaded me to go out and look at an old country place he was offering for sale he said the trip would do me good and I might find some bits worth sketching I knew I was wasting my time but the country appealed to me it's a little stuffy tucked up in a Greenwich flat and I went as I turned in at the gate and moved up the gravel walk between rows of fine old maples I was aware of something like a pang of desire how roomy and cool and peaceful the old place looked I went around to the back and sat down on the doorstep after a long time I remembered poor Barbara I gave a farewell look at the lovely tangled old garden I should be late for luncheon but I'd appease Barbara by bringing her a fresh crop of steamship literature I turned the corner of the house briskly and there on the front doorstep sat Barbara and Sunshine Sunshine drooped his great head close to Barbara's for Barbara was crying deep down in my heart something unaccountably hurt me I stole up softly and put my arm around her she looked scared at first and then ashamed and then all her most defiant brightness came back to her she began to tell how she had taken Sunshine out for a fresh air excursion and they had just dropped in there for a rest at this point I shook her gently be honest Barbara I said sternly what are you doing here are you interested in real estate well she said I heard the old standish place was for sale and I got to thinking what a nice home it would make for Sunshine he seemed rather droopy lately and what about Fieselie I hinted the words seemed to rouse in her a sudden tempest she jumped to her feet and stretched out her arms to the quiet old trees and the lovely tangled garden I want a house she cried I want a really truly home I'm tired of keeping my clothes behind the piano and eating chafing dish food I'm tired of a janitor and people above and below me I'm tired of the Fenways and all pursues I know I'm common in bourgeois but I want a place where there's room for something besides art flowers in a kitchen range and dogs and plenty of clothes presses and and children ah dear little Barbara the old trees looking down on us must have thought we were lovers long as strange and reconciled at last the leaves seemed to rub their hands softly as if something pleased them I know my nose is red said Barbara after a while and where is Sunshine Sunshine was discovered cooling his nose in the garden mold having been stung by a bee we were making a soothing poultice of mud for him when Bab looked up at me soberly I don't believe we're so different from other people after all she said and then suddenly sat down in the onion bed why she cried that's what Uncle Peter bet the ten thousand dollars on and he's won I shouted we sat side by side in the onion bed and felt the burden of being different from other people roll from our shoulders we were just common-placely happy to finally the whiz of a distant trolley roused us if you're bent on buying this place Barbara I said we'd better hurry back to town before someone gets in ahead of us and clapping the mud poultice on Sunshine's nose we joined hands and ran for the car End of The Wedding Gift by Grace Sartwell Mason