 A Pair of Silk Stockings by Kate Chopin. Red by Alan Davis-Strake. Little Miss Summers one day found herself the unexpected possessor of fifteen dollars. It seemed to her a very large amount of money, and the way in which it stuffed and bulged her worn old Portmanet, gave her a feeling of importance such as she had not enjoyed for years. The question of investment was one that occupied her greatly. For a day or two she walked about apparently in a dreamy state, but really absorbed in speculation and calculation. She did not wish to act hastily, to do anything she might afterward regret. But it was during the still hours of the night when she lay awake revolving plans in her mind that she seemed to see her way clearly towards a proper and judicious use of the money. A dollar or two should be added to the price usually paid for Janey's shoes, which would ensure they're lasting an appreciable time longer than they usually did. She would buy so and so many yards of per cow for new shirt-waists for the boys and Janey and Mag. She had intended to make the old ones due by skillful patching. Mag should have another gown. She had seen some beautiful patterns, veritable bargains in the shop windows. And still there would be left enough for new stockings, two pairs apiece, and what darning that would save for a while. She would get caps for the boys and sailor hats for the girls. The vision of her little brood looking fresh and dainty and new for once in their lives excited her and made her restless and wakeful with anticipation. The neighbors sometimes talked of certain, better days that little Mrs. Summers had known before she had ever thought of being Mrs. Summers. She herself indulged in no such morbid retrospection. She had no time, no second of time to devote to the past. The needs of the present absorbed her every facility. A vision of the future like some dim gaunt monster sometimes appalled her, but luckily tomorrow never comes. Mrs. Summers was one who knew the value of bargains, who could stand for hours, making her way inch by inch towards the desire object that was selling below cost. She could elbow her way if need be. She had learned to clutch a piece of goods and hold it and stick to it with persistence and determination till her turn came to be served, no matter when it came. But that day she was a little faint and tired. She had swallowed a light luncheon, no. When she came to think of it, between getting the children fed and the place righted and preparing herself for the shopping bout, she had actually forgotten to eat any luncheon at all. She sat herself upon a revolving stool before a counter that was comparatively deserted, trying to gather strength and courage to charge through an eager multitude that was besieging breast-works of shirting and figured lawn. An all-gone limp feeling had come over her, and she rested her head aimlessly upon the counter. She wore no gloves. By degrees she grew aware that her hand had encountered something very soothing, very pleasant to the touch. She looked down to see her hand lay upon a pile of silk stockings. A placard nearby announced that they had been reduced in price, from two dollars and fifty cents, to one dollar and ninety-eight cents. And a young girl who stood behind the counter asked her if she wished to examine their line of silk hosiery. She smiled, just as if she had been asked to inspect the tiara of diamonds with the ultimate view of purchasing them. But she went on feeling the soft, sheeny, luxurious things, with both hands now, holding them up to see them glisten, and to feel them glide serpent-like through her fingers. Two hectic blotches suddenly came into her pale cheeks. She looked up at the girl. Do you think there are any eights and a half among these? There were any number of eights and a half. In fact, there were more of that size than any other. Here was a light blue pair. There were some lavender, some all-black, and various shades of tan and gray. Mrs. Summers selected a black pair, and looked at them very long and closely. She pretended to be examining their texture, which the clerk assured her was excellent. A dollar and ninety-eight cents. She amused aloud. Well, I'll take this pair. She handed the girl a five-dollar bill and waited for her change and for her parcel. What a very small parcel it was. It seemed lost in the depths of her shabby old shopping bag. Mrs. Summers, after that, did not move in the direction of the bargain counter. She took the elevator, which carried her to an upper floor, into the region of the lady's waiting-rooms. Here in the retired corner she exchanged her cotton stockings for the new silk ones which she had just bought. She was not going through any acute mental process or reasoning with herself, nor was she striving to explain to her satisfaction the motive of her action. She was not thinking at all. She seemed for a time to be taking a rest from that laborious and fatiguing function, and to abandon herself to some mechanical impulse that directed her actions and freed her of responsibility. How good was the touch of the raw silk to her flesh. She felt like lying back in the cushioned chair and reveling for a while in the luxury of it. She did for a little while. Then she replaced her shoes, rolled the cotton stockings together, and thrust them into her bag. After doing this she crossed straight over to the shoe department and took her seat to be fitted. She was fastidious. The clerk could not make her out. He could not reconcile her shoes with her stockings, and she was not too easily pleased. She held back her skirts and turned her feet one way and her head another way as she glanced down to the polished pointed tipped boots. Her foot and ankle looked very pretty. She could not realize that they belonged to her and were a part of her. She wanted an excellent and stylish fit, she told the young fellow who served her, and she did not mind the difference of a dollar or two more in the price, so long as she got what she desired. It was a long time since Mrs. Summers had been fitted with gloves. On rare occasions when she had bought a pair, they were always bargains, so cheap that it would have been preposterous and unreasonable to have expected them to be fitted to the hand. Now she rested her elbow on the cushion of the glove counter, and a pretty pleasant young creature, delicate and deft of touch, drew a long-risted kid over Mrs. Summers' hand. She smoothed it down over the wrist and buttoned it neatly, and both lost themselves for a second or two, in admiring contemplation of the little symmetrically gloved hand. But there were other places where money might be spent. There were books and magazines piled up in the window of a stall a few paces down the street. Mrs. Summers bought two high-priced magazines, such as she had been accustomed to read in the days when she had been accustomed to other pleasant things. She carried them without wrapping. As well as she could, she lifted her skirts at the crossings. Her stockings and boots and well-fitted gloves had worked marvels in her bearing. Had given her a feeling of assurance, a sense of belonging to the well-dressed multitude. She was very hungry. At other times she would have still the cravings for food until she reached her own home, where she would have brewed herself a cup of tea and taken a snack of anything that was available. But the impulse that was guiding her would not suffer her to entertain any such thought. There was a restaurant on the corner. She had never entered its doors. From the outside she had sometimes caught glimpses of spotless damask and shining crystal, and soft-stepping waders serving people of fashion. When she entered her appearance created no surprise, no consternation, as she had half feared it might. She seated herself at a small table alone, and an attentive waiter at once approached to take her order. She did not want a profusion. She craved a nice and tasty bite, a half-dozen blue-points, a plump chop with cress, and something sweet, a creme frappé, for instance, a glass of rind wine, and, after all, a small cup of black coffee. While waiting to be served she removed her gloves very leisurely and laid them beside her. Then she picked up a magazine and glanced through it, cutting the pages with the blunt edge of her knife. It was all very agreeable. The damask was even more spotless than it had seen through the window, and the crystal more sparkling. There were quiet ladies and gentlemen who did not notice her, lunching at the small tables like her own. A soft, pleasing strain of music could be heard. A gentle breeze was blowing through the window. She tasted a bite, and she read a word or two, and she sipped the amber wine and wiggled her toes in the silk stockings. The price of it made no difference. She counted the money out to the waiter and left an extra coin on his tray, whereupon he bowed before her, as before a princess of royal blood. There was still money in her purse, and her next temptation presented itself in the shape of a matinee poster. It was a little later when she entered the theatre. The play had begun, and the house seemed to her to be packed, but there were vacant seats here and there, and into one of them she was ushered, between brilliantly dressed women who had gone there to kill time and eat candy and display their gaudy attire. There were many others who were there solely for the play in acting. It is safe to say that there is no one present who bore quite the attitude which Mrs. Summers did to her surroundings. She gathered in the hall, stage and players and people in one wide impression, and absorbed it and enjoyed it. She laughed at the comedy and wept. And she and the gaudy woman next to her wept over the tragedy. And they talked a little together over it, and the gaudy woman wiped her eyes and sniffed on a tiny square of flimsy-perfumed lace, and passed Mrs. Summers her box of candy. The play was over. The music ceased. The crowd filed out. It was like a dream ended. People scattered in all directions. Mrs. Summers went to the corner and waited for the cable car. A man with keen eyes who sat opposite her seemed to like the study of her small pale face. It puzzled him to decipher what he saw there. In truth he saw nothing, unless he were wizard enough to detect a poignant wish, a powerful longing that the cable car would never stop anywhere, but would go on and on with her, forever. End of A Pair of Silk Stockings by Kate Chopin This recording is in the public domain, read by Alan Davis Drake. A Tent in Agony by Stephen Crane This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information and to learn how to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Four men once came to a wet place in the roadless forest to fish. They pitched their tent fair upon the brow of a pine clothed rim of driven rocks, whence a boulder could be made to crash through the brush and whirl past the trees to the lake below. On fragrant hemlock boughs they slept the sleep of unsuccessful fishermen. For upon the lake, alternately, the sun made them lazy and the rain made them wet. Finally they ate the last bit of bacon and smoked and burned the last fearful and wonderful hoe cake. Immediately a little man volunteered to stay and hold the camp, while the remaining three should go to the Sullivan County, miles to a farmhouse for supplies. They gazed at him dismally. There's only one of you, the devil make a twin. They said in parting malediction and disappeared down the hill in the known direction of a distant cabin. When it came night and the hemlocks began to sob, they had not returned. The little man sat close to his companion, the campfire, and encouraged it with logs. He puffed fiercely at a heavy-built briar, and regarded a thousand shadows which were about to assault him. Suddenly he heard the approach of the unknown, crackling the twigs and rustling the dead leaves. The little man arose slowly to his feet. His clothes refused to fit his back. His pipe dropped from his mouth. His knees smote each other. Ah! he bellowed hoarsely in menace. A growl replied, and a bear paced into the light of the fire. The little man supported himself upon a sapling and regarded his visitor. The bear was evidently a veteran and a fighter, for the back of his coat had become tawny with age. There was confidence in his gait and arrogance in his small twinkling eye. He rolled back his lips and disclosed his white teeth. The fire magnified the red of his mouth. The little man had never before confronted the terrible, and he could not rest it from his breast. Ah! he roared. The bear interpreted this as the challenge of a gladiator. He approached warily. As he came nearer, the boots of fear were suddenly upon the little man's feet. He cried out and then departed around the campfire. Ho! said the bear to himself. This thing won't fight. It runs. Well, suppose I catch it. So upon his features there fixed the animal look of going. Somewhere. He started intensely around the campfire. The little man shrieked and ran furiously, twice around they went. The hand of heaven sometimes falls heavily upon the righteous. The bear gained. In desperation the little man flew into the tent. The bear stopped and sniffed at the entrance. He scented the scent of many men. Finally he ventured in. The little man crouched in a distant corner. The bear advanced, creeping. His blood burning, his hair erect, his jowls dripping. The little man yelled and rustled clumsily under the flap at the end of the tent. The bear snarled awfully and made a jump and a grab at its disappearing game. The little man now without the tent felt a tremendous paw grab his coattails. He squirmed and wriggled out of his coat like a schoolboy in the hands of an Avenger. The bear howled triumphantly and jerked the coat into the tent and took two bites, a punch, and a hug before he discovered his man was not in it. Then he grew not very angry, for a bear on a spree is not a black-haired pirate. He is merely a hoodlum. He lay down upon his back, took the coat on his fore paws, and began to play uproariously with it. The most appalling, blood-curdling whoops and yells came to where the little man was crying in a treetop and froze his blood. He moaned a little speech meant for a prayer and clung convulsively to the bending branches. He gazed with tearful wistfulness at where his comrade, the campfire, was giving dying flickers and crackles. Finally there was a roar from the tent which eclipsed all roars, a snarl which it seemed would shake the solid silence of the mountains and cause it to shrug its granite shoulders. The little man quaked and shriveled to a grip in a pair of eyes. In the glow of the embers he saw the white tent quiver and fall with a crash. The bear's merry play had disturbed the center pole and brought a chaos of canvas about his head. Now the little man became the witness of a mighty scene. The tent began to flounder. It took flopping strides in the direction of the lake. Marvelous sounds came from within, rips and tears and great groans and pants. The little man went into giggling hysterics. The entangled monster failed to extricate himself before he had friendsily walloped the tent to the edge of the mountain. So it came to pass that three men clambering up the hill with bundles and baskets, saw their tent approaching. It seemed to them like a white-robed phantom, pursued by hornets. Its moans riffled the hemlock twigs. The three men dropped their bundles and scurried to one side, their eyes gleaming with fear. The canvas avalanche swept past them. They leaned, faint and dumb against the trees and listened, their blood stagnant. Below them it struck the base of a great pine tree where it writhed and struggled. The three watched its convolutions a moment and then started terrifically for the top of the hill. As they disappeared, the bear cut loose with a mighty effort. He cast one disheveled and agonized look at the white thing and then started wildly for the inner recesses of the forest. The three fear-stricken individuals ran to the rebuilt fire. The little man reposed by it, calmly smoking. They sprang at him and overwhelmed him with interrogations. He contemplated darkness and took a long pompous puff. There's only one of me and the devil made a twin. He said, end of A Tent in Agony by Stephen Crane. Read for LibriVox.org by Alan Davis Drake. This recording is in the public domain. The White Snake by Brothers Grimm, from Grimm's Fairy Tales, translated by Edgar Taylor. Read for LibriVox.org by Alan Davis Drake. A long time ago, there lived a king who was famed for his wisdom through all the land. Nothing was hidden from him, and it seemed as if news of the most secret things were brought to him through the air. But he had a strange custom. Every day after dinner when the table was cleared and no one else was present, a trusty servant had to bring him one more dish. It was covered, however, and even the servant did not know what was in it. Neither did anyone know. For the king never took off the cover to eat of it until he was quite alone. This had gone on for a long time, when one day the servant, who took away the dish, was overcome with such curiosity that he could not help carrying the dish into his room. When he had carefully locked the door, he lifted up the cover and saw a white snake lying on the dish. But when he saw it, he could not deny himself the pleasure of tasting it. So we cut out a little bit and put it into his mouth. No sooner had it touched his tongue than he heard a strange whispering of little voices outside his window. He went and listened, and then noticed that it was the sparrows who were chattering together and telling one another of all kinds of things which they had seen in the fields and woods. Eating the snake had given him power of understanding the language of animals. Now it so happened that on this very day the queen lost her most beautiful ring, and suspicion of having stolen it fell upon this trusty servant, who was allowed to go anywhere. The king ordered the man to be brought before him and threatened with angry words that unless he could before the morrow point out the thief, he himself would be looked upon as guilty and executed. In vain he declared his innocence, he was dismissed with no better answer. In his trouble and fear, he went down to the courtyard and took thought out to help himself out of his trouble. Now some ducks were sitting together quietly by a brook and taking their rest, and whilst they were making their feathers smooth with their bills, they were having a confidential conversation together. The servants stood by and listened. They were telling one another of all the places where they had been waddling about all the morning and what good food they had found. And one said in a pitiful tone, something lies heavy on my stomach. As I was eating in haste, I swallowed a ring which lay under the queen's window. The servant that once seized her by the neck carried her to the kitchen and said to the cook, here is a fine duck, pray, kill her. Yes, said the cook, and weighed her in his hand. She has spared no trouble to fatten herself and has been waiting to be roasted long enough. So he cut off her head and as she was being dressed for the spit, the queen's ring was found inside her. The servant could now easily prove his innocence and the king, to make his amends for the wrong, allowed him to ask a favor and promised him the best place in the court that he could wish for. The servant refused everything and only asked for a horse and some money for traveling as he had a mind to see the world and go about a little. When his request was granted, he set out on his way and one day came to a pond where he saw three fishes caught in the reeds and gasping for water. Now, though it is said that fishes are dumb, he heard them lamenting that they must perish so miserably and as he had a kind heart he got off his horse and put the three prisoners back into the water. They leapt with delight, put out their heads and cried to him, we will remember you and repay you for saving us. He rode on and after a while it seemed to him that he heard a voice in the sand at his feet. He listened and heard an aunt king complain, why cannot folks with their clumsy beasts keep off our bodies? That stupid horse with his heavy hooves has been treading down my people without mercy. So he turned on to a side path and the aunt king cried out to him, we will remember you, one good turn deserves another. The path led him into a wood and there he saw two old ravens standing by their nest and throwing out their young ones. Out with you, you idle good for nothing creatures, they cried, we cannot find food for you any longer, you are big enough and can provide for yourselves. But the poor young ravens lay upon the ground, flapping their wings and crying, oh, what helpless chicks we are, we must shift for ourselves and yet we cannot fly, what can we do but lie here and starve? So the good young fellow alighted and killed his horse with his sword and gave it to them for food. Then they came hopping up to it, satisfied their hunger and cried, we will remember you, one good turn deserves another. And now he had to use his own legs and when he had walked a long way, he came to a large city. There was a great noise and crowd in the streets and a man rode up on horseback crying. The king's daughter wants a husband, but whoever seeks her hand must perform a hard task and if he does not succeed, he will forfeit his life. Many had already made the attempt but in vain. Nevertheless, when the youth saw the king's daughter, he was so overcome by her great beauty that he forgot all danger, went before the king and declared himself a suitor. So he was let out to the sea and a gold ring was thrown into it before his eyes. Then the king ordered him to fetch this ring from the bottom of the sea and added, if you come up again without it, you will be thrown in again and again until you perish amid the waves. All the people grieved for the handsome youth. Then they went away, leaving him alone by the sea. He stood on the shore and considered what he should do, when suddenly he saw three fishes coming swimming towards him and they were the very fishes whose lives he had saved. The one in the middle held a muscle in his mouth, which had laid on the shore at the youth's feet and when he had taken it up and opened it, there lay the gold ring in the shell. Full of joy, he took it to the king and expected that he would grant him the promised reward. But when the proud princess perceived that he was not her equal in birth, she scorned him and required him first to perform another task. She went down into the garden and strewed with her hands 10 sackfuls of millet seed in the grass. Then she said, tomorrow morning before sunrise these must be picked up and not a single grain be wanting. The youth sat down in the garden and considered how it might be possible to perform this task, but he could think of nothing. And there he sat, sorrowfully awaiting the break of day when he should be led to death. But as soon as the first rays of the sun shone into the garden, he saw all the 10 sacks standing side by side, quite full and not a single grain was missing. The aunt king had come in the night with thousands and thousands of ants and the grateful creatures had by great industry picked up all the millet seed and gathered them into the sacks. Presently the king's daughter herself came down into the garden and was amazed to see that the young man had done the task she had given him. But she could not yet conquer her proud heart and said, although he has performed both the tasks, he shall not be my husband until he has brought me an apple from the tree of life. The youth did not know where the tree of life stood, but he set out and would have gone on forever as long as his legs would carry him, though he had no hope of finding it. After he had wandered through three kingdoms, he came one evening to a wood and lay down under a tree to sleep. But he heard a rustling in the branches and a golden apple fell into his hand. At the same time, three ravens flew down to him, perched themselves upon his knee and said, we are the three young ravens whom you saved from starving. When we had grown up, we heard that you were seeking the golden apple. We flew over the sea to the end of the world where the tree of life stands and have brought you the apple. The youth, full of joy, set out homeward and took the golden apple to the king's beautiful daughter who had now no more excuses left to make. They cut the apple of life in two and ate it together and then her heart became full of love for him and they lived in undisturbed happiness to a great age. End of The White Snake by Brothers Grimm. Read for LibriVox.org by Alan Davis-Strake. This recording is in the public domain.