 Tennessee's Partner by Bret Hart This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Read by Nick Number I do not think that we ever knew his real name. Our ignorance of it certainly never gave us any social inconvenience. For its sandy bar in 1854, most men were christened anew. Sometimes these appellatives were derived from some distinctiveness of dress, as in the case of Dungary Jack, or from some peculiarity of habit as shown in Salaratus Bill, so-called from an undue proportion of that chemical in his daily bread, or from some unlucky slip as exhibited in The Iron Pirate, a mild, inoffensive man who earned that baleful title by his unfortunate mispronunciation of the term Iron Pirates. Perhaps this may have been the beginning of a rude heraldry, but I am constrained to think that it was because a man's real name in that day rested solely upon his own unsupported statement. Call yourself Clifford, do you? said Boston, addressing a timid newcomer with infinite scorn. Hell is full of such Cliffords! He then introduced the unfortunate man, whose name happened to be really Clifford, as J.Bird Charlie, an unhallowed inspiration of the moment that clung to him ever after. But to return to Tennessee's Partner, whom we never knew by any other than this relative title, that he had ever existed as a separate and distinct individuality we only learned later. It seems that in 1853 he left Poker Flat to go to San Francisco, ostensibly to procure a wife. He never got any farther than Stockton. At that place he was attracted by a young person who waited upon the table at the hotel where he took his meals. One morning he said something to her which caused her to smile, not unkindly, to somewhat coquettishly break a plate of toast over his upturned, serious, simple face and to retreat to the kitchen. He followed her and emerged a few moments later, covered with more toast and victory. That day week they were married by a justice of the peace and returned to Poker Flat. I'm aware that something more might be made of this episode, but I prefer to tell it as it was current at Sandy Bar, in the gulches and bar rooms, where all sentiment was modified by a strong sense of humor. Of their married felicity but little is known, perhaps for the reason that Tennessee, then living with his partner, one day took occasion to say something to the bride on his own account, at which it is said she smiled not unkindly and chastely retreated, this time as far as Marysville, where Tennessee followed her and where they went to housekeeping without the aid of a justice of the peace. Tennessee's partner took the loss of his wife simply and seriously, as was his fashion, but to everybody's surprise, when Tennessee one day returned from Marysville without his partner's wife, she having smiled and retreated with somebody else, Tennessee's partner was the first man to shake his hand and greet him with affection. The boys who had gathered in the canyon to see the shooting were naturally indignant. Their indignation might have found vent in sarcasm, but for a certain look in Tennessee's partner's eye that indicated a lack of humorous appreciation. In fact, he was a grave man with a steady application to practical detail which was unpleasant in a difficulty. Meanwhile, a popular feeling against Tennessee had grown up on the bar. He was known to be a gambler, he was suspected to be a thief. In these suspicions, Tennessee's partner was equally compromised. His continued intimacy with Tennessee after the affair above quoted could only be accounted for on the hypothesis of a co-partnership of crime. At last, Tennessee's guilt became flagrant. One day he overtook a stranger on his way to Red Dog. The stranger afterward related that Tennessee beguiled the time with interesting anecdote and reminiscence, but illogically concluded the interview in the following words. And now, young man, I'll trouble you for your knife, your pistols, and your money. You see, your weapons might get you into trouble at Red Dog and your money's a temptation to the evil he disposed. I think you said your address was San Francisco. I shall endeavor to call. It may be stated here that Tennessee had a fine flow of humor which no business preoccupation could wholly subdue. This exploit was his last. Red Dog and Sandy Bar made common cause against the highwaymen. Tennessee was hunted in very much the same fashion as his prototype, the Grizzly. As the toils closed around him, he made a desperate dash through the bar, emptying his revolver at the crowd before the arcade saloon, and so on up Grizzly Canyon, but at its farther extremity he was stopped by a small man on a gray horse. The men looked at each other a moment in silence. Both were fearless, both self-possessed and independent, and both types of a civilization that in the 17th century would have been called heroic, but in the 19th simply reckless. What have you got there? I call, said Tennessee quietly. Two bowers and an ace said the stranger as quietly, showing two revolvers and a buoy knife. That takes me, returned Tennessee, and with his gambler's epigram he threw away his useless pistol and rode back with his captor. It was a warm night. The cool breeze which usually sprang up with the going down of the sun behind a chaparral-crusted mountain was that evening withheld from Sandy Bar. The little canyon was stifling with heated resinous odors, and the decaying driftwood on the bar sent forth faint, sickening exhalations. The feverishness of day and its fierce passions still filled the camp. Lights moved restlessly along the bank of the river, striking no answering reflection from its tawny current. Against the blackness of the pines, the windows of the old loft above the express-off stood out staringly bright, and through their curtainless pains the loungers below could see the forms of those who were even then deciding the fate of Tennessee. And above all this, etched on the dark firmament, rose the Sierra, remote and passionless, crowned with remote or passionless stars. The trial of Tennessee was conducted as fairly as was consistent with a judge and jury who felt themselves to some extent obliged to justify, in their verdict, the previous irregularities of arrest and indictment. The law of Sandy Bar was implacable, but not vengeful. The excitement and personal feeling of the chase were over. With Tennessee safe in their hands they were ready to listen patiently to any defense, which they were already satisfied was insufficient. There being no doubt in their own minds they were willing to give the prisoner the benefit of any that might exist. Secure in the hypothesis that he ought to be hanged on general principles, they indulged him with more latitude of defense than his reckless hardyhood seemed to ask. The judge appeared to be more anxious than the prisoner, who, otherwise unconcerned, evidently took a grim pleasure in the responsibility he had created. I don't take any hand in this your game, had been as invariable but good-humored reply to all questions. The judge, who was also his captor, for a moment vaguely regretted that he had not shot him on sight that morning, but presently dismissed this human weakness as unworthy of the judicial mind. Nevertheless, when there was a tap at the door, and it was said the Tennessee's partner was there on behalf of the prisoner, he was admitted at once without question. Perhaps the younger members of the jury, to whom the proceedings were becoming irksomely thoughtful, hailed him as a relief. For he was not, certainly, an imposing figure. Short and stout, with a square face, sunburned into a preternatural redness, clad in a loose duck, jumper and trousers, streaked in splash with red soil, his aspect under any circumstances would have been quaint, and was now even ridiculous. As he stooped to deposit at his feet a heavy carpet bag he was carrying, it became obvious from partially developed legends and inscriptions that the material with which his trousers had been patched had been originally intended for a less ambitious covering. Yet he advanced with great gravity, and after shaking the hand of each person in the room with labored cordiality, he wiped his serious, perplexed face on a red bandana handkerchief, a shade lighter than his complexion, laid his powerful hand upon the table to steady himself, and thus addressed the judge. I was passin' by, he began, by way of apology, and I thought I'd just step in and see how things was gettin' on with Tennessee Thar, my partner. It's a hot night, I'd just remember any sitch-weather before on the bar. He paused a moment, but nobody volunteering any other meteorological recollection, he again had recourse to his pocket handkerchief, and for some moments mopped his face diligently. Have you anything to say on behalf of the prisoner? Said the judge, finally. That's it, said Tennessee's partner in a tone of relief. I come, Yar, as Tennessee's partner, knowin' him nigh on four year, off and on, wet and dry, in luck and out of luck. His ways ain't all or my ways, but there aren't any pints in that young man, there ain't any liveliness as he's been up to, as I don't know. And you says to me, says you, confidential like in between man and man, says you, do you know anything in his behalf? And I says to you, says I, confidential like as between man and man, what should a man know of his partner? Is this all you have to say, asked the judge impatiently, feeling perhaps that a dangerous sympathy of humor was beginning to humanize the court? That's so, continued Tennessee's partner. It ain't for me to say anything again him. And now, what's the case? Here's Tennessee wants money, wants it bad, and doesn't like to ask it of his old partner. Well, what does Tennessee do? He lays for a stranger, and he fetches that stranger, and you lays for him, and you fetches him, and the honors is easy. And I put it to you, being a far-minded man, and to you gentlemen all, as far-minded men, if this isn't so. Prisoner, said the judge interrupting, have you any questions to ask this man? No, no, continued Tennessee's partner hastily. I play this your hand alone. To come down to the bedrock, it's just this. Tennessee, though, has played it pretty rough and expensive-like on a stranger, and on this your camp. And now, what's the fair thing? Some would say more, some would say less. Here's $1,700 in coarse gold and a watch. It's about all my pile, and call it square. And before a hand could be raised to prevent him, he had emptied the contents of the carpet bag upon the table. For a moment his life was in jeopardy. One or two men sprang to their feet, several hands groped for hidden weapons, and a suggestion to throw him from the window was only overridden by a gesture from the judge. Tennessee laughed, and apparently oblivious of the excitement, Tennessee's partner improved the opportunity to mop his face again with his handkerchief. When order was restored and the man was made to understand by the use of forcible figures in rhetoric that Tennessee's offense could not be condoned by money, his face took a more serious and sanguinary hue, and those who were nearest to him noticed that his rough hand trembled slightly on the table. He hesitated a moment as he slowly returned the gold to the carpet bag, as if he had not yet entirely caught the elevated sense of justice which swayed the tribunal and was perplexed with the belief that he had not offered enough. Then he turned to the judge and saying, this here is a lone hand, played alone and without my partner. He bowed to the jury and was about to withdraw when the judge called him back. If you have anything to say to Tennessee, you had better say it now. For the first time that evening, the eyes of the prisoner and his strange advocate met. Tennessee smiled, showed his white teeth, and saying, Eukard, old man, held out his hand. Tennessee's partner took it in his own and saying, I just dropped in as I was passing to see how things was getting on, let the hand passively fall, and adding that it was a warm night. Again mopped his face with his handkerchief and without another word withdrew. The two men never again met each other alive. For the unparalleled insult of a bribe offered to Judge Lynch, who, whether bigoted, weak or narrow, was at least incorruptible, firmly fixed in the mind of that mythical personage any wavering determination of Tennessee's fate, and at the break of day he was marched closely guarded to meet it at the top of Marley's Hill. How he met it, how cool he was, how he refused to say anything, how perfect were the arrangements of the committee, were all duly reported with the addition of a warning moral and example to all future evildoers in the Red Dog Clarion by its editor, who was present, and to whose vigorous English I cheerfully refer the reader. But the beauty of that midsummer morning, the blessed amity of earth and air and sky, the awakened life of the free woods and hills, the joyous renewal and promise of nature, and above all the infinite serenity that thrilled through each was not reported as not being a part of the social lesson. And yet, when the weak and foolish deed was done and a life with its possibilities and responsibilities had passed out with a misshapen thing that dangled between earth and sky, the birds sang, the flowers bloomed, the sun shone as cheerily as before, and possibly the Red Dog Clarion was right. Tennessee's partner was not in the group that surrounded the ominous tree, but as they turned to disperse, attention was drawn to the singular appearance of a motionless donkey cart halted at the side of the road. As they approached, they had once recognized the venerable Jenny and the two-wheeled cart as the property of Tennessee's partner, used by him in carrying dirt from his claim, and a few paces distant to the owner of the equipage himself, sitting under a buckeye tree, wiping the perspiration from his glowing face. In answer to an inquiry, he said he had come for the body of the diseased, if it was all the same to the committee. He didn't wish to hurry anything. He could wait. He was not working that day, and when the gentlemen were done with the diseased, he would take him. If there was any present, he added in a simple, serious way, as would care to join in the funnel, they can come. Perhaps it was from a sense of humor, which I have already intimated was a feature of Sandy Bar. Perhaps it was from something even better than that, but two-thirds of the loungers accepted the invitation at once. It was noon when the body of Tennessee was delivered into the hands of his partner. As the cart drew up to the fatal tree, we noticed that it contained a rough oblong box, apparently made from a section of sluicing, and half filled with bark and the tassels of pine. The cart was further decorated with slips of willow and made fragrant with buckeye blossoms. When the body was deposited in the box, Tennessee's partner drew over at a piece of tarred canvas and gravely mounting the narrow seed in front with his feet upon the shafts, urged the little donkey forward. The equipage moved slowly on at that decorous pace which was habitual with Jenny, even under less solemn circumstances. The men, half curiously, half jestingly, but all good-humoredly, strolled along beside the cart, some in advance, some a little in the rear of the homely catafalque. But whether from the narrowing of the road or some present sense of decorum as the cart passed on, the company fell to the rear in couples, keeping step and otherwise assuming the external show of a formal procession. Jack Follensby, who had at the outset played a funeral march in dumb show upon an imaginary trombone, desisted from a lack of sympathy and appreciation, not having perhaps your true humorist's capacity to be content with the enjoyment of his own fun. The way led through grizzly canyon by this time clothed in funereal drapery and shadows. The redwoods, burying their moccasin feet in the red soil, stood in Indian file along the track, trailing an uncouth benediction from their bending boughs upon the passing beer. A hare, surprised into helpless inactivity, sat upright and pulsating in the ferns by the roadside as the cortege went by. Squirrels hastened to gain a secure outlook from higher boughs and the blue jays spreading their wings fluttered before them like outriders until the outskirts of Sandy Bar were reached and the solitary cabin of Tennessee's partner. Viewed under more favorable circumstances, it would not have been a cheerful place. The unpicturesque sight, the rude and unlovely outlines, the unsavory details which distinguished the nest-building of the California Minor were all here with the dreariness of decay super-added. A few paces from the cabin there was a rough enclosure which in the brief days of Tennessee's partner's matrimonial felicity had been used as a garden but was now overgrown with fern. As we approached it we were surprised to find that what we had taken for a recent attempt at cultivation was the broken soil about an open grave. The cart was halted before the enclosure and rejecting the offers of assistance with the same error of simple self-reliance he had displayed throughout, Tennessee's partner lifted the rough coffin on his back and deposited it unaided within the shallow grave. He then nailed down the board which served as a lid and, mounting the little mound of earth beside it, took off his hat and slowly mopped his face with his handkerchief. This, the crowd felt, was a preliminary to speech and disposed themselves variously on stumps and boulders and sad expectant. When a man, began Tennessee's partner slowly, has been running free all day, what's the natural thing for him to do? Why, to come home. And if he ain't in a condition to go home, what can his best friend do? Why, bring him home. And here's Tennessee has been running free and we brings him home from his wandering. He paused and picked up a fragment of quartz, thoughtfully on his sleeve, and went on. It ain't the first time that I've packed him on my back, as you see'd me now. It ain't the first time that I brought him to this your cabin when he couldn't help himself. It ain't the first time that I and Ginny have waited for him on Yon Hill and picked him up and so fetched him home when he couldn't speak and didn't know me. And now that it's the last time, why, he paused and rubbed the quartz gently on his sleeve. You see it's sorta rough on his partner. And now, gentlemen, he added abruptly, picking up his long-handled shovel. The funnel's over, and my thanks, and Tennessee's thanks to you for your trouble. Resisting any proffers of assistance, he began to fill in the grave, turning his back upon the crowd, that after a few moments' hesitation, gradually withdrew. As they crossed the little ridge that hid Sandy Bar from view, some, looking back, thought they could see Tennessee's partner, his work done, his grave, his shovel between his knees, and his face buried in his red bandana handkerchief. But it was argued by others that you couldn't tell his face from his handkerchief at that distance, and this point remained undecided. In the reaction that followed the feverish excitement of that day, Tennessee's partner was not forgotten. A secret investigation had cleared him of any complicity in Tennessee's guilt and left only a suspicion of his general sanity. Sandy Bar made a point of calling on him and proffering various uncouth but well-meant kindnesses. But from that day his rude health and great strength seemed visibly to decline, and when the rainy season fairly set in and the tiny grass blades were beginning to peep from the rocky mound above Tennessee's grave, he took to his bed. One night, when the pines beside the cabin were swaying in the storm and trailing their slender fingers over the roof, and the roar and rush of the swollen river were heard below, Tennessee's partner lifted his head from the pillow, saying, It is time to go for Tennessee. I must put Ginny in the cart and would have risen from his bed but for the restraint of his attendant. Struggling, he still pursued his singular fancy. There now, steady Ginny. Steady, old girl. How dark it is. Look out for the ruts, and look out for him too, old gal. Sometimes, you know, when he's blind drunk, he drops down right in the trail. Keep on straight up to the pine on the top of the hill. Thar, I told you so. Thar he is. Come in this way too. All by himself. Sober. And his face is shining. Tennessee. Partner. And so they met. End of Tennessee's partner by Bret Hart. Read by Nick Number. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Reading by Bologna Times. That hometown feeling by Edna Ferber. We all have our ambitions. Mine is to sit in a rocking chair on the sidewalk at the corner of Clark and Randolph Streets and watch the crowds go by. South Clark Street is one of the most interesting and cosmopolitan thoroughfares in the world. New Yorkers, please sniff. If you are from Paris, France, or Paris, Illinois, and should chance to be in that neighborhood, you will stop at Tony's newsstand to buy your hometown paper. Don't mistake the nature of this story. There is nothing of the shivering newsboy wave about Tony. He has the voice of a foghorn, the purple striped shirt of a sport, the diamond scarf-pen of a racetrack tout, and the savoir-faire of the gutter bread. You'd never pick him for a newsboy if it weren't for his sharp hands and the eternal cold sore on the upper left corner of his mouth. It is a fascinating thing, Tony's stand, a high wooden structure, rising tear on tear, containing papers from every corner of the world. I'll defy you to name a paper that Tony doesn't handle, from Timbuktu to Tarrytown, from South Bend to South Africa. A paper marked Christiania, Norway, nestles next to a sheet from Kalamazoo, Michigan. You can get the war cry, or Le Figaro. With one hand Tony will give you the Berlin Tagblatt, and with the other, the Times, from Nina, Wisconsin. Take your choice between the bulletin from Sydney, Australia, or the bee from Omaha. But perhaps you know South Clark Street. It is honeycombed with good copy, man-sized stuff. South Clark Street reminds one of a slattenly woman, brave in soaks and velvets on the surface, but ragged and rumpled, and none too clean as to nether garments. It begins with a tenement so vile, so filthy, so repulsive, that the municipal authorities deny its very existence. It ends with a brand-new hotel, all red brick and white tiling, and Louise Kane's furniture, and sour cream-colored marble lobby, and oriental rugs, lavishly scattered under the feet of the unappreciative guest from Kansas City. It is a street of signs, is South Clark. They vary all the way from Italianna, done in fat, fly-spec letters of gold, to Sangyun, scrawled in Chinese red and black, spaghetti and chapsui and dairy lunches, nestled side by side. Here, an electric sign blazes forth the attempting announcement of lunch. Just across the way, delicately suggesting a means of availing oneself of the invitation, is another which announces the loans. South Clark Street can transform a winter overcoat into hamburger and onions so quickly that the eye can't follow the hand. Do you gather from this that you are being taken slumming? Not at all. For the passer-by on Clark Street varies as to color, nationality, raiment, fingernails, and haircut, according to the locality in which you find him. At the tenement and the feminine passer-by is apt to be shawl'd, swarthy, down at heel, and dragging a dark-eyed, fretting baby in her wake. At the hotel end you will find her blond of hair, velvet of boot, plumbed of headgear, and prone to have at her heels a white, wooly, pink-eyed dog. The masculine Clark Streeter? I throw up my hands. Pray remember that South Clark Street embraces the dime lodging-house, pawn-shop, hotel, theater, chop-suit, and railway office district, all within a few blocks. From the sidewalk in front of his groggery, Bathhouse John can see the city hall. The trim, khaki-garbed enlistment officer rubs elbows with the lodging-house bum. The masculine Clark Streeter may be of the kind that begs a dime for a bed, or he may lull in manicured luxury at the marble-lined hotel. South Clark Street is so splendidly indifferent. Copy-hunting I approach Tony with hope in my heart, a smile on my lips, and a nickel in my hand. Philadelphia or inquirer I asked, those being the city and paper, which fire my imagination least. Tony whipped it out dexterously. I looked at his keen blue eye, his lean brown face, and his punishing jaw, and I knew that no airy purseflage would deceive him. Boldly I waited in. I write for the magazines, said I. Do they know it? ran Tony. Just beginning to be faintly aware. Your stand looks like a story to me. Tell me, does one ever come your way? For instance, don't they come here asking for their hometown paper? Sobs in their voice. Grasp the sheet with trembling hands. Type swims in a misty haze before their eyes. Turn aside to brush away a tear. All that kind of stuff, you know? Tony's grin threatened his cold sore. You can't stand at the corner of Clark and Randolph all those years without getting wise to everything there is. I'm on, said he, but I'm afraid I can't accommodate, girly. I guess my air ain't attuned to that sob stuff. What's that? Yes sir. No sir. Fifteen cents. Well, I can't help that. Fifteen's the regular price of foreign papers. Thanks. There, did you see that? I bet that gave up fifteen of his last two bits to get that paper. Oh, well, sometimes. They look happy, and then again they say, yes. Mississippi, five cents. Las Vegas, optic, right here. Hey, there. You're forgetting your change. And then again sometimes they look all to the doleful. Say, stick around. Maybe somebody'll start something. You never can tell. And then this happened. A man approached Tony's newsstand from the north, and a woman approached Tony's newsstand from the south. They brought my story with them. The woman reeked of the city. I hope you know what I mean. She bore the stamp and seal and imprint of it. It had ground its heel down on her face. At the front of her coat she wore a huge bunch of violets with a fleshly tuberose rising from its center. Her furs were voluminous. Her hat was hidden beneath the cascades of a green willow plume. The green willow plume would make Edna May look sophisticated. She walked with that humping hip movement which city women acquire. She carried a jangling handful of useless gold trinkets. Her heels were too high and her hair too yellow and her lips too red and her nose too white and her cheeks too pink. Everything about her was too. From the black stitching to the buckle of brilliance in her hat. The city had her, body and soul, and had fashioned her in its metallic cast. You would have sworn that she had never seen flowers growing in a field. Said she to Tony. Got a kiosk and courier? As she said it the man stopped at the stand and put his question. To present this thing properly he described the both at the same time like a juggler keeping two balls in the air at once. Kindly carry the lady in your mind's eye. The man was tall and raw-boned with very white teeth, very blue eyes, and an open-faced collar that allowed full play to an objectionably apparent Adam's apple. His hair and mustache were sandy. His gate loping. His clothes and complexion breathed of Waco, Texas. Or is it Arizona? Said he to Tony. Let me have the London Times. Well, there you are. I turned an accusing eye on Tony. And you said no stories came your way. I murmured reproachfully. Help yourself. Said Tony. The blonde lady grasped the kiosk and courier. Her green plume appeared to be unduly agitated as she searched its columns. The sheet rattled. There was no breeze. The hands and the two black stitched gloves were trembling. I turned from her to the man just in time to see the Adam's apple leaping about unpleasantly and convulsively. Whereupon I jumped to two conclusions. Conclusion one. Any woman whose hands can tremble from courier is homesick. Conclusion two. Any man, any part of whose anatomy can become convulsed over the London Times is homesick. She looked up from her courier. He glanced away from his times. As the noblest have it their eyes met. And there, in each pair of eyes there swam that misty haze about which I had so earnestly consulted Tony. The green plume took an involuntary step forward. The Adam's apple did the same. They spoke simultaneously. They're going to pave Main Street, said the green plume. And Mrs. Wilcox, that was Jerry Meyers, has got another baby girl. And the ladies of the first M.A. made seven dollars and sixty-nine cents on their needlework, bazaar, and missionary tea. I ain't been home in eleven years. Hallam is trying for Parliament in Westchester. And the king is back at Windsor. My mother wears a lace cap down to breakfast. And the place is famous for its tapestries and yutries and family ghost. I haven't been home in twelve years. The great, soft light of fellow feeling and sympathy glowed in the eyes of each. The green plume took still another step forward and laid her hand on his arm. As is the way of green plumes the world over. Why don't you go, kid? She inquired softly. Adam's ample nod at his mustache end. I'm the black sheep. Why don't you? The blonde lady looked down at her glove-dips. Her lower lip was caught between her teeth. What's the feminine for black sheep? I'm that. Anyway, I'd be afraid to go home. For fear it would be too much of a shock for them when they saw my hair. They wasn't in on the intermediate stages when it was chestnut, auburn, Titian, gold, and orange-colored. I want to spare their feelings. The last time they saw me it was just plain brown. Where I come from a woman who dyes her hair when it is beginning to turn gray is considered as good as lost. Funny ain't it? And yet I remember the minister's wife used to wear false teeth, the kind that clicks. But hair is different. Dear lady, said the blue-eyed man, it would make no difference to your own people. I know they would be happy to see you, hair and all, one's own people. My folks, that's just it. If the prodigal's son had been a daughter they'd probably have handed her one of her sister's mother-hubbards and put her to work washing dishes in the kitchen. Finally after Ma died, my brother married, and I went to live with him and Lill. I was an ugly little mug and it looked all to the Cinderella for me, with a coach and four and prints left out. Lill was the village beauty when my brother married her and she kind of got into the habit of leaving the heavy roll to me and confining herself to thinking-ports. One day I took twenty dollars and came to the city. I paid it back long ago, but I've never been home since. But say, do you know every time I get near a newsstand like this I grab the hometown paper? I'll bet I've kept track every time my sister-in-law's sewing circle has met for the last ten years, and the spring in the paper said they built a new porch. I was just dying to write and ask them what they did with the Virginia Creeper they used to cover the whole front in size of the old porch. Look here, said the man very abruptly. If it's money you need, why? Me. Do I look like a touch? Now you. Finest stock, farm and ranch in seven counties. I come to Chicago once a year to sell. I've got just thirteen thousand nestling next to my left-floating rib this minute. The eyes of the woman with the green plum narrowed down to two glittering slits. A new look came into her face. A look that matched her hat and heels and gloves and complexion and hair. Thirteen thousand. Thirteen thousand, say. Isn't it chilly on this corner? I know a kind of restaurant just around the corner where it's no use, said the sandy-haired man gently. And I wouldn't have said that if I were you. I was going back today on the 525, but I'm sick of it all. You. Or you wouldn't have said what you just said. Listen, let's go back home. You and I. The sight of a Navajo blanket nauseates me. The thought of those prairies makes my eyes ache. I know that if I have to eat one more meal cooked by that chink of mine, I'll hang him by his own pigtail. Those rangy western ponies aren't horse flesh. They're fried. Why, back home, our stables were look here. I want to see a silver tea service with a coat of arms on it. I want to dress for dinner and take in a girl with a white gown and smooth white shoulders. My sister clips roses in the morning before breakfast in a pink ruffled dress and garden gloves. Would you believe that here on Clark Street with a whiskey sign overhead the chalkyard smells undernose. Oh, hell, I'm going home. Home, repeated the blonde lady. Home! The sagging lines about her flaccid chin took on a new look of firmness and resolve. The light of determination glowed in her eyes. I'll beat you to it, she said. I'm going home, too. I'll be there tomorrow. I'm dead sick of this. Who cares whether I live or die? I'm round of grease paint and sky blue tights and new boarding houses and humping over to the theatre every night going on and humping back to the room again. I want to wash up some supper dishes with egg on them and set some yeast for bread and pop a dishpan full of corn and put her shawl over my head and run over to Millie Krause's to get her kimono sleeve pattern. I'm sour on this dirt and noise. I want to spend the rest of my life in a place so that when I die they'll put a column in the paper with a verse at the top and all the neighbors will come in and help bake up. Here, why, here I'd just be two lines on the one ad page with fifty cents extra for kawaskan paper, please copy. The man held out his hand. Good-bye, he said, and please excuse me if I say God bless you. I've never really wanted to say it before. So it's quite extraordinary. My name's Guy Peel. The white glove with its two conspicuous black stitching disappeared within his palm. Mine's Mercedes Maron. Late in the morning, Lori Berleskers. But from now on, Sadie Hayes of Kowaskam, Wisconsin. Good-bye, and well, God bless you, too. Say, I hope you don't think I'm in the habit of talking to strange gents like this. I am quite sure you are not, said Guy Peel, very gravely, and bowed slightly before he went south on Clark Street and she went north. Dear reader, will you take my hand while I assist you to make a one-year's leap? Woop-la! There you are. A man and woman approached Tony's newsstand. You were quite right, but her willow plume was purple this time. A purple willow plume would make Mario Doro look sophisticated. The man was sandy-haired, raw-boned with a loping gate, very blue eyes, very white teeth, and an objectively apparent Adam's apple. He came from the north and she from the south. In storybooks, and on the stage, when two people meet unexpectedly after a long separation, they always stop short, bring one hand up to the breast and say you. Sometimes, especially in the case where the heroine chances on the villain, they say simultaneously you, here. I have seen people reunited under surprising circumstances, but they never said you. They said something quite un-melodramatic and commonplace such as well, look who's here or my land, if it ain't Ed, how's Ed? So it was that the purple willow plume and the Adam's apple stopped, shook hands, and viewed one another while the plume said, I kind of thought I'd bobbed into you. Felt in my bones. And the Adam's apple said, then you're not living in Kowaskam or Wisconsin. Not any, responded she briskly. How do you happen to be straying away from the tapestries and the yew trees and the ghost and the pink roses and the garden gloves and the silver tea-service with the coat of arms on it? A slow grim smile overspread the features of the man. You tell yours first, he said. Well, began she. In the first place, my name's Mercedes Marrone of the Morning Glory Berluskers, formerly Sadie Hayes of Kowaskam, Wisconsin. I went home next day, like I said I would. Say, Mr. Peel, you said Peel, didn't you? Guy Peel. Nice neat name. To this day, when I eat lobster late at night and have dreams, it's always about that visit home. How long did you stay? I'm coming to that. Or maybe you can figure it out yourself when I tell you I've been back eleven months. I worried the folks I was coming and then I came before they had a chance to answer. When the train reached Kowaskam with the arms of a dowd and a homemade made over a year before last suit and a hat that would have been funny if it hadn't been so pathetic, I grabbed her by the shoulders and I held her off and looked looked at the wrinkles and the sallow complexion and the coat with the sleeves in wrong and the mashed hat. I told you, Lil used to be the village peach, didn't I? And I says, for God's sakes, Lil, will beat you? Steve, she shrieks, beat me? You must be crazy. Well, if you don't, you ought to. Those clothes are grounds for divorce, I says. Mr. Guy Peel, it took me just four weeks to get wise the fact that the way to cure homesickness is to go home. I spent those four weeks trying to revolutionize my sister-in-law's house, dress, kids, husband, wallpaper, and parlor carpet. I took all the doilies from under the ornaments and spoke my mind on the subject of the hand-painted lamp, and Lil hates me for it yet and will to her dying day. I fitted three dresses for her and made her get some corsets that she'll never wear. They have roast pork for dinner on Sundays and they never go to the theater and they like bread pudding and they're happy. I wasn't. They treated me fine all right, but not my home. It was the same, but I was different. Ilumin' years away from anything makes it shrink, if you know what I mean. I guess maybe you do. I remember that I used to think that the Grand View Hotel was a regular little oriental palace that was almost too luxurious to be respectable, and that the traveling men who stopped there were gods, and just to prance past the hotel after supper had the Atlantic City Boardwalk looking like a back alley on a rainy night. Well, everything had sort of shrull up just like that. The popcorn gave me indigestion and I burned the skin off my nose popping it. Needing bread gave me the back ache and the blamed stuff wouldn't raise right. I got so I was crazy to hear the roar of an el train and the sound of a crossing policeman's whistle. I got to thinking how Michigan Avenue looks down, with the lights shining down on the asphalt, and all those people eating in the swell hotels and the autos and the theater crowds and the windows and, well, I'm back. Glad I went, you said it. Because it made me so damn glad to get back. I found out one thing, and it's a great little lesson when you get it learned. Most of us are where we are because we belong there. And if we didn't, we wouldn't be. Say, that does sound mixed, don't it? But it's straight. Now you tell yours. I think you've said it all. Began Guy Peel. It's queer, isn't it? How twelve years of America will spoil one for afternoon tea and you trees and tapestries and lace caps and roses. The mate who was glad to see me but she said I smelled woolly. They think a Navajo blanket is a thing the Indians wear on the warpath and they don't know whether Texas is a state or a mineral water. It was slow, slow. About the time they were taking afternoon tea I'd be reckoning how the boys would be rounding up the cattle for the night and about the time we'd sit down to dinner something seemed to whisk the dinner table and the flowers and the men and women in evening clothes right out of sight, like magic. And I could see the boys stretched out in front of the bunk house after bacon and beans and biscuit and coffee. They'd be smoking their pipes that smelled to heaven and further and Wing would be wheeling out one of his creepy old chink songs out in the kitchen and the sky would be say, Miss Miran, did you ever see this nice sky out west? Purple, you know, and soft as soap suds and so near that you want to reach up and touch it with your hand. Toward the end my mother used to take me off in a corner and tell me that I hadn't spoken a word to the little girl that I had taken into dinner and that I couldn't forget my uncouth western ways for an hour or two, at least. Perhaps I'd better not try to mingle with civilized people. I discovered that home isn't always the place where you were born and bred. Home is the place where your everyday clothes are and where somebody or something needs you. They didn't need me over there in England. Lord know, I was sick for the sight of a Navajo blanket. My shacks glowing with them and my books needed me and the boys and the critters and Kate. Kate, repeated Miss Miran quickly, Kate's my horse. I'm going back on the five twenty-five tonight. This is my regular trip, you know. I came around her to buy a paper, because it had become a habit. And then two. I sort of felt, well, something told me that you you're a nice boy, said Miss Miran. By the way, did I tell you that I married the manager of the show the week after I got back? We got to Bloomington tonight and then we jumped to St. Paul. I came around here, just as usual, because well, because Tony's gift for remembering faces and facts amounts to genius. With two deft movements, he whisked two papers from among the many in the rack and held them out. He asked him courier, his adjusted. Nix, said Mercedes-Maran, I'll take the Chicago scream. London Times, said Tony. No, replied Guy Peel, give me the San Antonio Express. End of Downtown Failing, by Edna Ferber. Oh. Truth is stranger than fiction. Old saying. Having had occasion lately in the course of some oriental investigations to consult the tell-me-now-is-it-so-or-not, a work which, like the Zohar of Simi and Wahades, is scarcely known at all, even in Europe, and which has never been quoted to my knowledge by any American, if we accept perhaps the author of the curiosities of American literature. Having had occasion, I say, to turn over some pages of the first mentioned very remarkable work. I was not a little astonished to discover that the literary world has hitherto been strangely in error respecting the fate of the vizier's daughter, Scheherazade, as that fate is depicted in the Arabian knights, and that the denouement they're given, if not altogether inaccurate as far as it goes, is at least to blame in not having gone very much farther. For full information on this interesting topic, I must refer the inquisitive reader to the is-it-so-or-not itself, but in the meantime I shall be pardoned for giving a summary of what I there discovered. It will be remembered that in the usual version of the tales a certain monarch having good cause to be jealous of his queen, not only puts her to death, but makes a vow by his beard and the prophet to espouse each night the most beautiful maiden in his dominions, and the next morning to deliver her up to the executioner. Having fulfilled this vow for many years later, and with a religious punctuality and method that conferred great credit upon him as a man of devout feeling and excellent sense, he was interrupted one afternoon, no doubt at his prayers, by a visit from his grand vizier to whose daughter it appeared there had occurred an idea. Her name was Scheherazade, and her idea was that she would either redeem the land from the depopulating tax upon its beauty, or perish after the approved fashion of all heroines in the attempt. Accordingly, and although we do not find it to be leap year, which makes the sacrifice more meritorious, she deputes her father, the grand vizier, to make an offer to the king of her hand. This hand the king eagerly accepts. He had intended to take it at all events and had put off the matter from day to day only through fear of the vizier. But in accepting it now, he gives all parties very distinctly to understand that the grand vizier, or no grand vizier, he has not the direct design of giving up one iota of his vow or of his privileges. When therefore the fair Scheherazade insisted upon marrying the king, and did actually marry him despite her father's excellent advice not to do anything of the kind, when she would and did marry him, I say will I, nil I. It was with her beautiful black eyes as thoroughly open as the nature of the case would allow. It seems, however, that this politic damsel, who had been reading the Aveli beyond doubt, had a very ingenious little plot in her mind. On the night of the wedding she contrived upon, I forget what specious pretence, to have her sister occupy a couch sufficiently near that of the royal pair to admit the easy conversation from bed to bed. And a little before cock-crowing she took care to awaken the good monarch, her husband, who bore her none the worse will because he intended to ring her neck on the morrow. She managed to awaken him. I say, although on account of a capital conscience and an easy digestion, he slept well by the profound interest of a story, about a rat and a black cat, I think, which she was narrating. All in an undertone, of course, to her sister. When the day broke it so happened that this history was not altogether finished and that Scheherazade in the nature of things could not finish it just then since it was high time for her to get up and be bow-strung. A thing very little more pleasant than hanging, only a trifle more genteel. The king's curiosity, however prevailing, I am sorry to say, even over his sound religious principles induced him for this once to postpone the fulfillment of his vow until the next morning for the purpose and with the hope of hearing that night how it fared in the end with the black cat a black cat, I think it was and the rat. The night having arrived, however, the lady Scheherazade not only put the finishing stroke to the black cat and the rat. The rat was blue, but before she well knew what she was about found herself deep in the intricacies of a narration having reference, if I am not altogether mistaken, to a pink horse with green wings that went in a violent manner by clockwork and was wound up with an indigo key. With this history the king was even more profoundly interested than with the other and as the day broke before its conclusion, nonwithstanding all the queen's endeavors to get through with it in time for the bow stringing, there was again no resource but to postpone that ceremony as before for 24 hours. The next night there happened a similar accident with a similar result and then the next and then again the next, so that in the end the good monarch having been unavoidably deprived of all opportunity to keep his vow during a period of no less than 1001 nights, either forgets it all together by the expiration of this time or gets himself absolved of it in the regular way or what is more probable breaks it out right as well as the head of his father confessor. At all events Scheherazade who being linearly descended from Eve fell heir perhaps to the whole seven baskets of talk which the latter lady we all know picked up from under the trees in the garden of Eden. Scheherazade I say finally triumphed and the tariff upon beauty was repealed. Now this conclusion which is that of the story as we have it upon record is no doubt excessively proper and pleasant but alas like a great many pleasant things is more pleasant than true and I am indebted altogether to the is it so or not for the means of correcting the error Lemieux says a French proverb et l'ennemi du bien and in mentioning that Scheherazade had inherited the seven baskets of talk I should have added that she amounted compound interest until they amounted to seventy-seven my dear sister said she on the thousand and second night I quote the language of the is it so or not at this point verbatim my dear sister said she now that all this little difficulty about the bowstring has blown over and that this odious tax is so happily repealed I feel that I have been guilty of great indiscretion and withholding from you and the king who I am snores a thing no gentleman would do the full conclusion of sin bad the sailor this person went through numerous other and more interesting adventures than those which I related but the truth is I felt sleepy on the particular night of their narration and so was seduced into cutting them short a grievous piece of misconduct for which I only trust that Allah will forgive me but even yet it is not too late to remedy my great neglect and as soon as I have given the king a pinch or two in order to wake him up so far that he may stop making that horrible noise I will forthwith entertain you and him if he pleases with the sequel of this very remarkable story hereupon the sister of Shaharizad as I have it from the is it so or not express no very particular intensity of gratification but the king having been sufficiently pinched at length ceased snoring and finally said and then when the queen understanding these words which are no doubt Arabic to signify that he was all attention and would do his best not to snore anymore the queen I say having arranged these matters to her satisfaction reentered thus at once into the history of sin bad the sailor at length in my old age these are the words of sin bad himself as retailed by Shaharizad at length in my old age and after enjoying many years of tranquility at home I became once more possessed of a desire of visiting foreign countries and one day without any of my family with my design I packed up some bundles of such merchandise as was most precious and least bulky and engaged a porter to carry them went with him down to the seashore to await the arrival of any chance vessel that might convey me out of the kingdom into some region which I had not as yet explored having deposited the packages upon the sands we sat down beneath some trees and looked out into the ocean in hope of perceiving a ship but during several hours we saw none whatever at length I fancied that I could hear a singular buzzing or humming sound and the porter after listening a while declared that he also could distinguish it presently it grew louder and then still louder so that we could have no doubt that the object which caused it was approaching us at length on the edge of the horizon we discovered a black speck which rapidly increased in size until we made it out to be a vast monster swimming with a great part of its body above the surface of the sea it came towards us with inconceivable swiftness throwing up huge waves of foam around its breast and illuminating all that part of the sea through which it passed with a long line of fire that extended far off into the distance as the thing drew near we saw it very distinctly its length was equal to that of three of the loftiest trees that grow and it was as wide as the great hall of audience in your palace oh most sublime and munificent of the caliphs its body which was unlike that of ordinary fishes was as solid as a rock and of a jetty blackness throughout all that portion of it which floated above the water with the exception of a narrow blood red streak that completely be girdled it the belly which floated beneath the surface and of which we could get only a glimpse and as the monster rose and fell with the billows was entirely covered with metallic scales of a color like that of the moon in misty weather the back was flat and nearly white and from it there extended upwards of six spines about half the length of the whole body the horrible creature had no mouth that we could perceive but as if to make up for this deficiency it was provided with at least four score of eyes that protruded from their sockets like those of the dragonfly and were arranged all around the body in two rows one above the other and parallel to the blood red streak which seemed to answer the purpose of an eyebrow two or three of these dreadful eyes were much larger than the others and had the appearance of solid gold although this beast approached us as I have before said with the greatest rapidity it must have been moved altogether by necromancy for it had neither fins like a fish nor web feet like a duck nor wings like the seashell which is blown along in the manner of a vessel nor yet did it writhe itself forward as do the eels its head and its tail were shaped precisely alike only not far from the latter were two small holes that served for nostrils and through which the monster puffed out its thick breath with prodigious violence and with a shrieking disagreeable noise our terror at beholding this hideous was very great but it was even surpassed by our astonishment when upon getting a nearer look we perceived upon the creature's back a vast number of animals about the size and shape of men and altogether much resembling them except that they wore no garments as men do being supplied by nature no doubt with an ugly uncomfortable covering a good deal like cloth but fitting so tight to the skin as to render the poor wretches laughably awkward and put them apparently to severe pain on the very tips of their heads were certain square looking boxes which at first sight I thought might have been intended to answer as turbines but I soon discovered that they were excessively heavy and solid and I therefore concluded they were contrivances designed by their great weight to keep the heads of the animals steady and safe upon their shoulders around the necks of the creatures were fastened black collars badges of servitude no doubt such as we keep on our dogs only much wider and infinitely stiffer so that it was quite impossible for these poor victims to move their heads in any direction without moving the body at the same time and thus they were doomed to perpetual contemplation of their noses a view puggish and snubby in a wonderful if not positively in an awful degree when the monster had nearly reached the shore where we stood it suddenly pushed out one of its eyes to a great extent committed from it a terrible flash of fire accompanied by a dense cloud of smoke and a noise that I can compare to nothing but thunder as the smoke cleared away we saw one of the odd man animals standing near the head of the large beast with a trumpet in his hand through which putting it to his mouth he presently addressed us in loud harsh and disagreeable accents that perhaps we should have mistaken for language had they not come altogether through the nose being thus evidently spoken to I was at a loss how to reply as I could in no manner understand what was said and in this difficulty I turned to the porter who was near swooning through a fright and demanded of him his opinion as to what species of monster it was what it wanted and what kind of creatures those were that so swarmed upon its back to this the porter replied as well as he could for trepidation that he had once before heard of this sea beast that it was a cruel demon with bowels of sulfur and blood of fire created by evil jenai as the means of inflicting misery upon mankind that the things upon its back were vermin such as sometimes infest cats and dogs only a little larger and more savage and that these vermin had their uses however evil for through the torture they caused the beast by their nibbling and stingings it was goaded into that degree of wrath which was it to make it roar and commit ill and so fulfill the vengeful and malicious designs of the wicked jenai this account determined me to take to my heels and without once even looking behind me I ran at full speed up into the hills while the porter ran equally fast although nearly in an opposite direction so that by these means he finally made his escape with my bundles of which I have no doubt he took excellent care although this is a point I cannot determine as I do not remember that I ever beheld him again for myself I was so hotly pursued by a swarm of the men vermin who had come to the shore in boats that I was very soon overtaken bound hand and foot and conveyed to the beast which immediately swam out again into the middle of the sea I now bitterly repented my folly in quitting a comfortable home to peril my life in such adventures as this but regret being useless I made the best of my condition and exerted myself to secure the goodwill of the man animal that owned the trumpet and who appeared to exercise authority over his fellows I succeeded so well in this endeavor that in a few days the creature bestowed upon me various tokens of his favor and in the end even went to the trouble of teaching me the rudiments of what it was vain enough to denominate its language so that at length I was enabled to converse with it readily and came to make it comprehend the desire I had of seeing the world washes washes squeak said bad hey diddle diddle grunt and grumble his fist with said he to me one day after dinner but I beg a thousand pardons I had forgotten that your majesty is not conversant with the dialect of the cock nays so the man animals were called I presume because their language formed the connecting link between that of the horse and that of the rooster with your permission I will translate washes squashes and so forth that is to say I am happy to find my dear sin bad that you are really a very excellent fellow and we are now about doing a thing which is called circumnavigating the globe and since you are so desirous of seeing the world I will strain a point and give you a free passage upon the back of the beast when the lady Shaharazad had proceeded thus far relates the is it so or not the king turned over from his left side to his right and said it is in fact very surprising my dear queen that you omitted hitherto these latter adventures of sin bad do you know I think them exceedingly entertaining and strange the king having thus expressed himself we are told the fair Shaharazad resumed her history in the following words sin bad went on in this manner with his narrative to the caliph I thank the man animal for its kindness and soon found myself very much at home on the beast which I am at prodigious rate through the ocean although the surface of the latter is in that part of the world by no means flat but round like a pomegranate so that we went so to say either uphill or downhill all the time that I think was very singular interrupted the king nevertheless it is quite true replied Shaharazad I have my doubts rejoined the king but pray be so good as to go on with the story I will said the queen the beast continued sin bad to the caliph swam as I have related uphill and downhill until at length we arrived at an island many hundreds of miles in circumference but which nevertheless had been built in the middle of the sea by a colony of little things like caterpillars said the king leaving this island said sin bad for Shaharazad it must be understood took no notice of her husband's ill mannered ejaculation leaving this island we came to another where the forests were of solid stone and so hard that they shivered to pieces the finest tempered axes with which we endeavored to cut them down hmm said the king again but Shaharazad paying him no attention continued in the language of sin bad passing beyond this last island we reached a country where there was a cave that ran to the distance of 30 or 40 miles within the bowels of the earth and that contained a greater number of far more spacious and more magnificent palaces than are to be found in all Damascus and Baghdad from the roofs of these palaces there hung myriads of gems like diamonds but larger than men and in among the streets of towers and pyramids and temples there flowed immense rivers as black as ebony and swarming with fish that had no eyes said the king then swam into a region of the sea where we found a lofty mountain down whose sides there streamed torrents of melted metal some of which were 12 miles wide and 60 miles long while from an abyss on the summit issued so vast a quantity of ashes that the sun was entirely blotted out from the heavens and it became darker than the darkest midnight so that when we were even at the distance of 150 miles from the mountain it was impossible to see the mountain called it to our eyes hmm said the king after quitting this coast the beast continued his voyage until we met with a land in which the nature of things seemed reversed for we here saw a great lake at the bottom of which more than a hundred feet beneath the surface of the water there flourished in full leaf a forest of tall and luxuriant trees who said the king some hundred miles farther on brought us to a climate where the water was so dense as to sustain iron or steel just as our own does a feather fiddle-de-dee said the king proceeding still in the same direction we presently arrived at the most magnificent region in the whole world through it there meandered a glorious river for several thousand miles this river was of unspeakable depth and of a transparency richer than that of amber it was from three to six miles in width and its banks which arose on either side to twelve hundred feet in perpendicular height were crowned with ever blossoming trees and perpetual sweet-scented flowers that made the whole territory one gorgeous garden but the name of this luxuriant land was the kingdom of horror and to enter it was inevitable death hump said the king we left this kingdom in great haste and after some days came to another where we were astonished to perceive the presence of monstrous animals with horns resembling scythes upon their heads these hideous beasts dig for themselves vast caverns in the soil of a funnel shape and line the sides of them with rocks so disposed one upon the other that they fall instantly when trodden upon by other animals thus precipitating them into the monsters dens where their blood is immediately sucked and their carcasses afterward hurled contemptuously out to an immense from the caverns of death who said the king continuing our progress we perceived a district with vegetables that grew not upon any soil but in the air there were others that sprang from the substance of other vegetables others that derived their substance from the bodies of living animals and then again there were others that glowed all over with intense fire others that moved from place to place at pleasure and what was still more wonderful we discovered flowers that lived and breathed and moved their limbs at will and had moreover the detestable passion of mankind for enslaving other creatures and confining them in horrid and solitary prisons until the fulfillment of appointed tasks Pasha said the king quitting this land we soon arrived at another in which the bees and the birds are mathematicians of such genius and erudition that they give daily instructions in the science of geometry to the wise men of the empire the king of the place having offered a reward for the solution of two very difficult problems they were solved upon the spot the one by the bees and the other by the birds but the king keeping their solution a secret it was only after the most profound researches and labor and the writing of an infinity of big books during a long series of years that the men mathematicians at length arrived at the identical solutions on the spot by the bees and by the birds oh my said the king we had scarcely lost sight of this empire when we found ourselves close upon another from whose shores there flew over our heads a flock of fowls a mile in breath and two hundred and forty miles long so that although they flew a mile during every minute it required no less than four hours for the whole flock to pass over us in which there were several millions of millions of fowl oh I said the king no sooner had we got rid of these birds which occasioned us great annoyance then we were terrified by the appearance of a fowl of another kind and infinitely larger than even the rocks which I met in my former voyages for it was bigger than the biggest of the domes on your surroglio most munificent of caliphs this terrible foul had no head that we could perceive but was fashioned entirely of belly was of a prodigious fatness and roundness of a soft looking substance smooth shining and striped with various colors in its talons the monster was bearing away to his ivory in the heavens a house from which it had knocked off the roof and in the interior of which we distinctly saw human beings who beyond doubt were in a state of frightful despair at the horrible fate which awaited them we shouted with all our might in the hope of frightening the bird into letting go of its prey but it merely gave a snort or puff as if of rage and then let fall upon our heads a heavy sack which proved to be filled with sand stuff, said the king it was just after this adventure that we encountered a continent of immense extent and prodigious solidity but which nevertheless was supported entirely upon the back of a sky blue cow that had no fewer than four hundred horns that now I believe said the king because I have something of the kind before in a book we passed immediately beneath this continent swimming in between the legs of the cow and after some hours found ourselves in a wonderful country indeed which I was informed by the man animal was his own native land inhabited by things of his own species this elevated the man animal very much in my esteem and in fact I now began to feel ashamed of the contemptuous familiarity with which I had treated him that the man animals in general were a nation of the most powerful magicians who live with worms in their brain which no doubt served to stimulate them by their painful writhings and wrigglings to the most miraculous efforts of imagination nonsense, said the king among the magicians were domesticated several animals of very singular kinds for example there was a huge horse whose bones were iron and whose blood was boiling water in place of corn he had black stones for his usual food and yet in spite of so hard a diet he was so strong and swift that he would drag a load more weighty than the grandest temple in this city at a rate surpassing that of the flight of most birds twaddle, said the king I saw also among these people a hen without feathers but bigger than a camel instead of flesh and bone she had iron and brick her blood like those of the horse to whom in fact she was nearly related was boiling water and like him she ate nothing but wood or black stones this hen brought forth very frequently a hundred chickens in the day and after birth they took up their residence for several weeks within the stomach of their mother Fa la, said the king one of this nation of mighty conjurers created a man out of brass and wood and leather and endowed him with such ingenuity beaten at chess all the race of mankind with the exception of the great Khalif Haroon Aarishad another of these magi constructed of like material a creature that put to shame even the genius of him who made it for so great were its reasoning powers that in a second it performed calculations of so vast an extent that they would have required the united labor of fifty thousand fleshy men for a year but a still more wonderful conjurer fashioned for himself a mighty thing that was neither man nor beast but which had brains of lead intermixed with a black matter like pitch and fingers that it employed with such incredible speed and dexterity that it would have had no trouble in writing out twenty thousand copies of the Quran in an hour and this with so exquisite a precision that in all the copies there should not be found one to vary from another by the breath of the finest hair this thing was of prodigious strength so that it erected or overthrew the mightiest empires at a breath but its powers were exercised equally for evil and for good ridiculous said the king among this nation of necromancers there was also one who had in his veins the blood of the salamanders for he made no scruple of sitting down to smoke his jabok in a red hot oven until his dinner was thoroughly roasted upon its floor another had the faculty of converting the common metals into gold without even looking at them during the process another had such a delicacy of touch that he made a wire so fine as to be invisible another had such quickness of perception that he counted all the separate motions of an elastic body while it was springing backward and forward at a rate of nine hundred millions of times in a second absurd said the king another of these magicians by means of fluid that nobody ever saw could make the corpses of his friends brandish their arms kick out their legs fight or even get up and dance at his will another had cultivated his voice to so great an extent that he could have made himself heard from one end of the world to the other another had so long an arm that he could sit down in Damascus and indict a letter at Baghdad or indeed at any distance whatsoever another commanded the lightning to come down to him out of the heavens and it came at his call and served him for a play thing when it came another took two loud sounds and out of them made a silence another constructed a deep darkness out of two brilliant lights another made ice in a red hot furnace another directed the sun to paint his portrait and the sun did another took this luminary with the moon and the planets and having first weighed them with scrupulous accuracy probed into their depths and found out the solidity of the substance of which they were made but the whole nation is indeed of so surprising a necromantic ability that not even their infants nor their commonest cats and dogs have any difficulty in seeing objects that do not exist at all or that for twenty millions of years before the birth of the nation itself had been blotted out from the face of creation analogous experiments in respect to sound produce analogous results said the king the wives and daughters of these incomparably great and wise magi continued Scheherazade without being in any manner disturbed by these frequent and most ungentlemanly interruptions on the part of her husband the wives and daughters of these eminent conjurers are everything that is accomplished and refined and would be everything that is interesting and beautiful but for an unhappy fatality that besets them and from which not even the miraculous powers of their sons and fathers has hitherto been adequate to save some fatalities come in certain shapes and some in others but this of which I speak has come in the shape of a crotchet a what? said the king a crotchet said Scheherazade one of the evil jinnai who are perpetually upon the watch to inflict ill has put it into the heads of these accomplished ladies that the thing which we describe as personal beauty consists altogether in the tuberance of the region which lies not very far below the small of the back perfection of loveliness they say is in the direct ratio of the extent of this lump having been long possessed of this idea and bolsters being cheap in that country the days have long gone by since it was possible to distinguish a woman from a dromedary stop said the king I can't stand that and I won't you have already given me a dreadful headache with your lies I perceive is beginning to break how long have we been married my conscience is getting to be troublesome again and then that dromedary touch do you take me for a fool upon the whole you might as well get up and be throttled these words as I learn from the is it so or not both grieved and astonished Scheherazade but as she knew the king to be a man of scrupulous integrity and quite unlikely to forfeit his word she submitted to her fate with a good grace she derived however great consolation during the tightening of the bowstring from the reflection that much of the history remained still untold and that the petulance of her brute of a husband had reaped for him a most righteous reward in depriving him of many inconceivable adventures footnotes to the thousand and second tale of Scheherazade quote we arrived at an island many hundreds of miles in circumference but which nevertheless had been built in the middle of the sea by a colony of little things like caterpillars footnote one the corallites quote leaving this island we came to another where the forests were of solid stone and so hard that they shivered to pieces the finest tempered axes with which we endeavored to cut them down footnote two one of the most remarkable natural curiosities in Texas is the petrified forest near the head of the Pacino river it consists of several hundred trees in an erect position all turned to stone some trees now growing are partly petrified this is a startling fact for natural philosophers and must cause them to modify the existing theory of petrification Kennedy this account at first discredited has since been cooperated by the discovery of a completely petrified forest near the headwaters of the Cheyenne river which has its source in the black hills of the rocky chain there is scarcely perhaps a spectacle on the surface of the globe more remarkable either in geological or picturesque point of view than that presented by the petrified forest near Cairo the traveler having passed the tombs of the caliphs just beyond the gates of the city proceeds to the southward nearly at right angles to the road across the desert to Suez and after having traveled some miles up a low barren valley covered with sand gravel and seashells fresh as if the tide had retired but yesterday crosses a low range of sand hills which has for some distance run parallel to his path the scene now presented to him is beyond conception singular and desolate a mass of fragments of trees all converted into stone and when struck by his horses hoof ringing like cast iron is seen to extend itself for miles and miles around him in the form of a decayed and prostrate forest the wood is of a dark brown hue but retains its form in perfection the pieces being from one to fifteen feet in length and from half a foot to three feet in thickness strewed so closely together as far as the eye can reach that an Egyptian donkey can scarcely thread its way through amongst them and so natural that were it in Scotland or Ireland it might pass without remark for some it's a strange bog on which the exhumed trees lay rotting in the sun the roots and rudiments of the branches are in many cases nearly perfect and in some the worm holes eaten under the bark are readily recognizable the most delicate of the sap vessels and all the finer portions of the center of the wood are perfectly entire and bear to be examined with the strongest magnifiers the hole are so thoroughly solicified as to scratch glass and are capable of receiving the highest polish Asiatic magazine quote passing beyond this last island we reached a country where there was a cave that ran to the distance of 30 or 40 miles within the bowels of the earth and that contained a greater number of far more spacious and more magnificent palaces than are to be found in all Damascus and Baghdad from the roofs of these palaces there hung myriads of gems like larger than men and in among the streets of towers and pyramids and temples there flowed immense rivers as black as ebony and swarming with fish that had no eyes footnote 3 the mammoth cave of Kentucky quote we then swam into a region of the sea where we found a lofty mountain down whose sides there streamed torrents of melted metal some of which were 12 miles wide and 60 miles long footnote 4 in Iceland 1783 quote while from an abyss on the summit issued so vast a quantity of ashes that the sun was entirely blotted out from the heavens and it became darker than the darkest midnight so that when we were even at the distance of 150 miles from the mountain it was impossible to see the whitest object however close we held it to our eyes footnote 5 during the eruption of Hekla in 1766 clouds of this kind produced such a degree of darkness that at Columbia which is more than 50 leagues from the mountain people could only find their way by groping during the eruption of Vesuvius in 1794 at Caserta four leagues distant people could only walk by the light of torches on the first of May 1812 a cloud of volcanic ashes and sand coming from a volcano in the island of St. Vincent covered the Betos spreading over it so intense a darkness that at midday in the open air one could not perceive the trees or other objects near him or even a white handkerchief placed at the distance of six inches from the eye Mary page 215 quote after quitting this coast the beast continued his voyage until we met with a land in which the nature of things seemed reversed for we here saw a great lake at the bottom of which 100 feet beneath the surface of the water there flourished in full leaf a forest of tall and luxuriant trees footnote 6 in the year 1790 in the Caracas during an earthquake a portion of the granite soil sank and left a lake 800 yards in diameter and from 80 to 100 feet deep it was a part of the forest of Arapea which sank and the trees remained green for several months under the water Mary page page 221 quote some 100 miles farther on brought us to a climate where the atmosphere was so dense as to sustain iron or steel just as our own does a feather footnote 7 the hardest steel ever manufactured may under the action of a blowpipe be reduced to an impalpable powder which will float readily in the atmospheric air quote preceding still in the same direction recently arrived at the most magnificent region in the whole world through it there meandered a glorious river for several thousand miles this river was of unspeakable depth and of a transparency richer than that of amber it was from 3 to 6 miles in width and its banks which arose on either side to 1200 feet in perpendicular height were crowned with ever blossoming trees and perpetual sweet scented flowers that made the whole territory one gorgeous garden but the name of this luxuriant land was the kingdom of horror and to enter it was inevitable death footnote 8 the region of the Niger see Simone's colonial magazine quote we left this kingdom in great haste and after some days came to another where we were astonished to perceive myriads of monstrous animals with horns resembling scythe upon their heads these hideous beasts dig for themselves vast caverns in the soil of a funnel shape and line the sides of them with rocks so disposed one upon the other that they fall instantly when trodden upon by other animals thus precipitating them into the monster's dens where their blood is immediately sucked and their carcasses afterward hurled contemptuously out to an immense distance from the caverns of death footnote 9 the mermillion lion ant the term monster is equally applicable to small abnormal things and to great while such epithets as vast are merely comparative the cavern of the mermillion is vast in comparison with the whole of the common red ant a grain of silax is also a rock quote continuing our progress we perceived a district with vegetables that grew not upon any soil but in the air 10 the epidendron flas eris of the family of the orchidae grows with merely the surface of its roots attached to a tree or other object from which it derives no nutriment subsisting altogether upon air quote there were others that sprang from the substance of other vegetables footnote 11 the parasites such as the wonderful raflicia arnaldi quote others that derive their substance from the bodies of living animals footnote 12 shahal advocates a class of plants that grow upon living animals the planti epizoa of this class are the foosie and algae mr. jb williams of sale in massachusetts presented the national institute with an insect from new zealand with the following description the hoate the pillar or worm is found gnawing at the root of the rota tree with a plant growing out of its head this most peculiar and extraordinary insect travels up both the rota and ferrari trees and entering into the top eats its way perforating the trunk of the trees until it reaches the root and dies or remains dormant and the plant propagates out of its head the body remains perfect and entire of a harder substance than when alive the insect the natives make a coloring for tattooing quote and then again there were others that glowed all over with intense fire footnote 13 in mines and natural caves we find a species of cryptogamous fungus that emits an intense phosphorescence quote others that moved from place to place had pleasure footnote 14 the orcus, scabius, and vallus narya quote we discovered flowers that lived and breathed and moved their limbs at will and had moreover the detestable passion of mankind for enslaving other creatures and confining them in horrid and solitary prisons until the fulfillment of appointed tasks footnote 15 the corolla of this flower arestulcia clematitis which is tubular but terminating upwards in a ligulate limb is inflated into a globular figure at the base the tubular part is internally beset with stiff hairs pointing downwards the globular part contains the pistol which consists merely of a german and stigma together with the surrounding statements but the statements being shorter than the german cannot discharge the pollen so as to throw it upon the stigma and the flower stands always upright till after impregnation and hence without some additional and peculiar aid the pollen must necessarily fan down to the bottom of the flower now the aid that nature has furnished in this case is that of the tiputa pinacornis a small insect which entering the tube of the corolla in quest of honey descends to the bottom and rummages about till it becomes quite covered with pollen but not being able to force its way out again owing to the downward position of the hairs which converge to a point like the wires of a mousetrap and being somewhat impatient of its confinement it brushes backwards and forwards trying every corner till after repeatedly transversing the stigma it covers it with pollen sufficient for its impregnation in consequence of which the flower soon begins to droop and the hairs to shrink to the sides of the tube affecting an easy passage for the escape of the insect reverend P. Keith system of physiological botany quote quitting this land we soon arrived at another and the birds are mathematicians of such genius and erudition that they give daily instructions in the science of geometry to the wise man of the empire the king of the place having offered a reward for the solution of two very difficult problems they were solved upon the spot the one by the bees and the other by the birds but the king keeping their solution a secret it was only after the most profound researches and labor and the writing of an infinity of big books a series of years that the men mathematicians at length arrived at the identical solutions which had been given upon the spot by the bees and by the birds footnote 16 the bees ever since bees were have been constructing their cells with just such sides in just such number and at just such inclinations as it has been demonstrated in a problem involving the profoundest mathematical principles are the very sides in the very number and at the very angles which will afford the creatures the most room that is compatible with the greatest stability of structure during the latter part of the last century the question arose among mathematicians to determine the best form that can be given to the sales of a windmill according to their varying distances from the revolving veins and likewise from the centers of the revolution this is an excessively complex problem for it is in other words to find the best possible position at an infinity of varied distances and at an infinity of points on the arm there were a thousand futile attempts to answer the query on the part of the most illustrious mathematicians and when at length an undeniable solution was discovered men found that the wings of a bird had given it with absolute precision ever since the first bird had traversed the air quote we had scarcely lost sight of this empire when we found ourselves close upon another from whose shores there flew over our heads a flock of fowls a mile in breath and 240 miles long so that although they flew a mile during every minute it required no less than four hours for the whole flock to pass over us in which there were several millions of millions of foul footnote 17 he observed a flock of pigeons passing betwixt frankfort and the indian territory one mile at least in breath it took up to four hours in passing which at the rate of one mile per minute gives a length of 240 miles and supposing three pigeons to each square yard gives two billion two hundred and thirty million two hundred and seventy two thousand pigeons travels in canada and the united states by lieutenant f hall quote it was just after this adventure that we encountered a continent of immense extent and prodigious solidity but which nevertheless was supported entirely upon the back of the sky blue cow that had no fewer than four hundred horns footnote 18 the earth is upheld by a cow of blue color having horns four hundred in number salise karan quote for I found that the man animals in general were a nation of the most powerful magicians who live with worms in their brain footnote 19 the entezoa or intestinal worms have repeatedly been observed in the muscles and in the cerebral substance of men see why it's physiology page 143 quote among the magicians were domesticated several animals of very singular kinds for example there was a huge horse whose bones were iron and whose blood was boiling water in place of corn he had black stones for his usual food and yet in spite of so hard a diet he was so strong and swift that he would drag a load more weighty than the grandest temple in this city at a rate surpassing that of the flight of most birds footnote 20 on the great western railway between london and exeter a speed of 71 miles per hour has been attained a train weighing 90 tons was world from pattington to decaught 53 miles in 51 minutes quote I saw also among these people a hen without feathers but bigger than a camel instead of flesh and bone she had iron and brick her blood like those of the horse to whom in fact she was nearly related was boiling water and like him she ate nothing but wood or black stones this hen brought forth very frequently a hundred chickens in the day and after birth they took up their residence for several weeks within the stomach of their mother footnote 21 quote one of this nation of mighty conjurers created a man out of brass and wood and leather and endowed him with such ingenuity that he would have beaten that chess all the race of mankind with the exception of the great caliph haroun al-rishad footnote 22 maizelles automaton chess player quote another of these magi constructed of like material a creature that put to shame even the genius of him who made it for so great were its reasoning powers that in a second it performed calculations of so vast an extent that they would have required the united labor of 50,000 fleshy men for a year footnote 23 babbage's calculating machine quote among this nation of necromancers there was also one who had in his veins the blood of the salamanders for he made no scruple of sitting down to smoke his jabok in a red hot oven until his dinner was thoroughly roasted upon its floor footnote 24 shabare and since him a hundred others quote another had the faculty of converting the common metals into gold without even looking at them during the process footnote 25 the electro type quote another had such a delicacy of touch that he made a wire so fine as to be invisible footnote 26 molestan made of platinum for the field of views in a telescope a wire one 18,000th part of an inch in thickness it could be seen only by means of the microscope quote another had such quickness of perception that he counted all the separate motions of an elastic body while it was springing backward and forward at a rate of 900 millions of times in a second footnote 27 Newton demonstrated that the retina beneath the influence of the violet ray of the spectrum vibrated 900 million of times in a second quote another of these magicians by means of fluid that nobody ever yet saw could make the corpses of his friends brandish their arms kick out their legs fight or even get up and dance at his will footnote 28 the voltatic pile quote another had cultivated his voice to so great an extent that he could have made himself heard from one end of the world to the other footnote 29 the electro telegraph printing apparatus quote another had so long an arm that he could sit down in Damascus and indict a letter at Baghdad or indeed at any distance whatsoever footnote 30 the electro telegraph transmits intelligence instantaneously at least that so far as regards any distance upon the earth quote another constructed a deep darkness out of two brilliant lights footnote 31 common experiments in natural philosophy if two red rays from two luminous points be admitted into a dark chamber so as to fall on a white surface and differ in their length by point 000025 8 of an inch their intensity is doubled so also if the difference in length be any whole number multiple of that fraction a multiple by two and a quarter three and a quarter and so on gives an intensity equal to one ray only but a multiple by two and a half three and a half and so on gives the result of total darkness in violet rays similar effects arise when the difference in length is point 0000157 of an inch and with all other rays the results are the same the difference varying with a uniform increase from the violet to the red quote another made ice in a red hot furnace footnote 32 place a platina crucible over a spirit lamp and keep it a red heat pour in some sulfuric acid which though the most volatile bodies at a common temperature will be found to become completely fixed in a hot crucible and not a drop evaporates being surrounded by an atmosphere of its own it does not in fact touch the sides a few drops of water are now introduced when the acid immediately coming in contact with the heated sides of the crucible flies off in sulfurous acid vapor and so rapid is its progress that the caloric of the water passes off with it which falls a lump of ice to the bottom by taking advantage of the moment before it is allowed to remelt it may be turned out a lump from a red hot vessel quote another directed the sun to paint his portrait and the sun did footnote 33 the daguerreotype quote but the whole nation is indeed of so surprising a necromantic ability that not even their infants nor their commonest cats and dogs have any difficulty in seeing objects that do not exist at all or that for 20 millions of years before the birth of the nation itself had been from the face of creation footnote 34 although light travels 167,000 miles in a second the distance of 61 Cygni the only star whose distance is ascertained is so inconceivably great that its rays would require more than 10 years to reach the earth for stars beyond this 20 or even a thousand years would be a moderate estimate thus if they had been annihilated 20 or a thousand years ago we might still see them today by the light which started from their surfaces 20 or a thousand years in the past time that many which we see daily are really extinct is not impossible not even improbable and of the thousand and second tale of Scheherazade by Edgar Allan Poe Typhoon off the coast of Japan by Jack London this is a library of ox recording all library of ox recordings are in the public domain for further information or to volunteer please visit libraryofox.org Typhoon off the coast of Japan by Jack London note Jack London's first story published at the age of 17 it was four bells in the morning watch we had just finished breakfast when the order came forward for the watch on deck to stand by to heave or two and all hands stand by the boats port, hard of port cried our sailing master clue up the top sails let the flying jib run down back the jib over to windward and run down the foresail and so was our schooner Sophie Sutherland Hove too off the Japan coast near Cape Jeramo on April 10, 1893 then came moments of bustle and confusion there were 18 men to man the six boats some were hooking on the falls others casting off the lashings boat steers appeared with the boat compasses and water breakers the boat pullers with the lunchboxes hunters were staggering under two or three shot guns a rifle and heavy ammunition box all of which were soon stowed away with their oil skins and mittens in the boats the sailing master gave his last orders and away we went pulling three pairs of oars to gain our positions we were in the weather boat and so had a longer pull than the others the first, second, and third lee boats soon had all sail set and were running off to the southward and westward with the wind beam while the schooner was running off to a leeward to them so that in case of accidents the boats would have fair wind home it was a glorious morning but our boat steerer shook his head ominously as he glanced at the rising sun and prophetically muttered red sky in the morning sailor take warning the sun had an angry look and a few light fleecy nigger heads in that quarter seemed to bashed and frightened and soon disappeared a way off to the northward Cape Jeramo reared its black, forbidding head like some huge monster rising from the deep the winter's snow not yet entirely dissipated by the sun covered it in patches of glistening white over which the light wind swept on its way out to sea huge goals rose slowly fluttering their wings in the light breeze and striking their web defeat on the surface of the water for over half a mile before they could leave it hardly had the padder padder like oil rose and with whistling wings flew away to windward where members of a large band of oil were disporting themselves their blowing sounding like the exhaust of steam engines the harsh discordant cries of a sea parrot graded unpleasantly on the air and set half a dozen alert in a small band of seals that were ahead of us away they went breaching a seagull with slow deliberate flight and long majestive curves circled round us and as a reminder of home a little English sparrow perched imputantly on the focusle head and cocking his head on one side chirped merrily the boats were soon among the seals and the bang bang of the guns could be heard from down to leeward the wind was slowly rising and by three o'clock as with a dozen seals in our boat we were deliberating whether to go on or turn back the recall flag was run up at the schooner's mizzen a sure sign that with the rising wind the barometer was falling and that our sailing master was getting anxious for the welfare of the boats away we went before the wind with a single reef in our sail with clenched teeth sat the boat steer grasping the steering or firmly with both hands his restless eyes on the alert a glance at the schooner ahead as we rose on a sea another at the mainsheet and then one astern where the dark ripple of the wind on the water told him of a coming puff or a large white cap that threatened to overwhelm us the waves were holding high carnival performing the strangest antics as with wild glee they danced along in fierce pursuit now up, now down here, there, and everywhere until some great sea of liquid green with its milk white crust of foam rose from the ocean throbbing bosom and drove the others from view but only for a moment for again under new forms they reappeared in the sun's path they wandered where every ripple great or small every little spit or spray looked like molten silver where the water lost its dark green color and became a dazzling silver refled only to vanish and become a wild waste of solent turbulence each dark for a boating sea rising and breaking then rolling on again the dash, the sparkle, the silvery light soon vanished with the sun which became obscured by dark clouds that were rolling swiftly in from the west, northwest apt heralds of the coming storm we soon reached the schooner and found ourselves the last aboard and a few minutes the seals were skinned boats and decked wash and we were down below by the roaring focussile fire with a wash, change of clothes and a hot substantial dinner before us sail had been put on the schooner as we had a run of 75 miles to make to the southwest before morning so as to get into the midst of the seals out of which we had strayed during the last two days hunting we had the first watch from 8 to midnight the wind was soon blowing half a gale and our sailing master expected a little sleep that night as he paced up and down the poop the top sails were soon clewed up and made fast then the flying jib run down and furrowed quite a sea was rolling by this time occasionally breaking over the decks flooding them and threatening to smash the boats at six bells we were ordered to come over and put on storm lashings this occupied us till eight bells when we were relieved by the midwatch I was the last to go below doing so just as the watch on deck was furling the spanker below all were asleep except our green hand the bricklayer who was dying of consumption the wildly dancing movements of the sea lamp cast a pale flickering light through the focussile turned the golden honey the drops of water on the yellow oil skins in all the corners dark shadows seemed to come and go while up in the eyes of her beyond the pal beds descending from deck to deck where they seemed to lurk like some dragon at the cavern's mouth it was dark as arabus now and again the light seemed to penetrate for a moment as the schooner rolled heavier than usual only to recede darker and blacker than before the roar of the wind through the rigging came to the ear muffled like the distant rumble of a train crossing a trestle or the surf on the beach while the loud crash of the seas on her weather bow seemed almost to rend the beams and planking asunder as it resounded through the focussile the creaking and groaning of the timbers stanchions and bulkheads as the strain of the vessel served to drown the groans of the dying man as he tossed uneasily in his bunk the working of the foremast against the deck beams caused a shower of flaky powder to fall and sent another sound mingling with a tumultuous storm small cascades of waters dreamed from the pal beds from the focussile head above and joining issue with the streams from the wet oil skins ran along the floor and disappeared in hold at two bells in the middle watch that is in land parlance one o'clock in the morning the order was roared out in the focussile all hands on deck and shortened sail then the sleepy sailors tumbled out of their bunk and into their clothes oil skins and sea boots and up on deck tis when that order comes on a cold blustering night the jack grimly mutters who would not sell a farm you see it was on deck that the force of the wind could be fully appreciated especially after leaving the stifling focussile it seemed to stand up against you like a wall making it almost impossible to move on the heaving deck or to breathe as the ferris gusts came dashing by the schooner was hoved to under jib foresail and mainsail we proceeded to lower the foresail and make it fast it was dark greatly impeding our labor still though not a star or the moon could pierce the black masses of storm clouds that obscured the sky as they swept along before the gale nature aided us in a measure a soft light emanated from the movement of the ocean each mighty sea all phosphorescent and glowing with the tiny lights of mirrored rids of animalcule threatened to overwhelm us with a deluge of fire higher and higher thinner and thinner the crest grew as it began to curve an overtop preparatory to breaking until with a roar it fell over the bulwarks a mass of soft glowing light and tons of water which sent the sailors sprawling in all directions and left in each nook and cranny little specks of light they glowed and trembled till the next sea washed them away depositing new ones in their places sometimes several seas followed each other with great rapidity and thundering down on our decks filled them full to the bulwarks but soon they were discharged through the lee scuffers to reef the mainsail we were forced to run off before the gale under the single reef jib by the time we had finished the wind had forced up such a tremendous sea that it was impossible to heave or two away we flew on the wings of the storm through the muck and flying spray a wind shear to starboard then another to port as the enormous seas struck the schooner astern and nearly broached her too as day broke we took in the jib leaving not a sail unfurled since we had begun scouting she ceased to take the seas over her bow but amid ships they broke fast and furious it was a dry storm and a matter of rain but the force of the wind filled the air with fine spray which flew as high as the cross trees and cut the face like a knife make it impossible to see over a hundred yards ahead the sea was a dark lead color as with long slow majestic roll it was heaped up by the wind and the liquid mountains of foam the wild antics of the schooner were sickening as she forged along she would almost stop as though climbing a mountain then rapidly rolling to right and left as she gained the summit of a huge sea she steadied herself and paused for a moment as though a frightened at the yawning precipice before her like an avalanche she shot forward and down as the sea astern struck her with the force of a thousand battering rams burying her bow to the cat heads in the milky foam at the bottom that came on deck in all directions forward astern to right and left through the haws pipes and over the rail the wind began to drop and by ten o'clock we were talking of heaving her too we passed a ship two schooners and a four masted barken team under the smallest of canvas and at eleven o'clock running up the spanker and ship we hover too and in another hour we were beating back again against the after sea under full sail to regain the ceiling ground away to the westward below a couple of men sawing the bricklayer's body in canvas preparatory to the sea burial and so with the storm passed away the bricklayer's soul and of a typhoon off the coast of Japan recorded in August 2009 by Tom Crawford