 THE GINGERBREAD MAN by Sarah Kohn Bryant. Once upon a time there was a little old woman in a little old man, and they lived all alone in a little old house. They hadn't any little girls or any little boys at all. So one day the little old woman made a boy out of gingerbread. She made him a chocolate jacket and put cinnamon seeds in it for buttons. His eyes were made of fine fat currants. His mouth was made of rose-colored sugar. And he had a gay little cap of orange sugar candy. When the little old woman had rolled him out and dressed him up and pinched his gingerbread shoes into shape, she put him in a pan. Then she put the pan in the oven and shut the door, and she thought, Now I shall have a little boy of my own. When it was time for the gingerbread boy to be done, she opened the oven door and pulled out the pan. Then out jumped the little gingerbread boy onto the floor and away he ran out of the door and down the street. The little old woman and the little old man ran after him as fast as they could. But he just laughed and shouted, Run, run, as fast as you can, you can't catch me on the gingerbread man. And they couldn't catch him. The little gingerbread boy ran on and on until he came to a cow by the roadside. Stop, little gingerbread boy, said the cow, I want to eat you. The little gingerbread boy laughed and said, I have run away from a little old woman and a little old man and I can run away from you, I can. And as the cow chased him, he looked over his shoulder and cried, Run, run, as fast as you can, you can't catch me on the gingerbread man. And the cow couldn't catch him. The little gingerbread boy ran on and on and on until he came to a horse in the pasture. Please stop, little gingerbread boy, said the horse, you look very good to eat. But the little gingerbread boy laughed out loud. Oh ho, oh ho, he said, I have run away from a little old woman, a little old man, a cow, and I can run away from you, I can. And as the horse chased him, he looked over his shoulder and cried, Run, run, as fast as you can, you can't catch me, I'm the gingerbread man. And the horse couldn't catch him. By and by, the little gingerbread boy came to a barn full of threshers. When the threshers smelled the gingerbread boy, they tried to pick him up and said, Don't run so fast, little gingerbread boy, you look very good to eat. But the little gingerbread boy ran harder than ever, and as he ran he cried out, I have run away from a little old woman, a little old man, a cow, a horse, and I can run away from you, I can. And when he found that he was ahead of the threshers, he turned and shouted back at them, Run, run, as fast as you can, you can't catch me, I'm the gingerbread man. And the threshers couldn't catch him. Then the little gingerbread boy ran faster than ever. He ran and ran until he came to a field full of mowers. When the mowers saw how fine he looked, they ran after him calling out, Wait a bit, wait a bit, little gingerbread boy, we wish to eat you. But the little gingerbread boy laughed harder than ever and ran like the wind. Oh ho, oh ho, he said. I have run away from a little old woman, a little old man, a cow, a horse, a barn full of threshers, and I can run away from you, I can. And when he found that he was ahead of the mowers, he turned and shouted back at them, Run, run, as fast as you can, you can't catch me, I'm the gingerbread man. And the mowers couldn't catch him. By this time, the little gingerbread boy was so proud that he didn't think anybody could catch him. Pretty soon he saw a fox coming across the field. The fox looked at him and began to run, but the little gingerbread boy shouted across to him, You can't catch me. The fox began to run faster, and the little gingerbread boy ran faster, and as he ran he chuckled. I have run away from a little old woman, a little old man, a cow, a horse, a barn full of threshers, a field of mowers, and I can run away from you, I can. Run, run, as fast as you can, you can't catch me, I'm the gingerbread man. Why, said the fox, I would not catch you if I could. I would not think of disturbing you. Just then, the little gingerbread boy came to a river. He could not swim across, and he wanted to keep running away from the cow and the horse and the people. Jump on my tail, and I will take you across, said the fox. So the little gingerbread boy jumped on the fox's tail, and the fox swam into the river. When he was a little away from shore he turned his head and said, You are too heavy on my tail, little gingerbread boy. I fear I shall let you get wet. Jump on my back. The little gingerbread boy jumped on his back. A little further out, the fox said, I am afraid the water will cover you there. Jump on my shoulder. The little gingerbread boy jumped on his shoulder. In the middle of the stream the fox said, Oh dear, little gingerbread boy, my shoulder is sinking. Jump on my nose, and I can hold you out of water. So the little gingerbread boy jumped on his nose. The minute the fox got on shore he threw back his head and gave a snap. Dear me, said the little gingerbread boy, I am a quarter gone. The next minute he said, Why, I am half gone. The next minute he said, My goodness gracious, I am three quarters gone. And after that the little gingerbread boy never said anything more at all. Chapter 11 We are getting foreignized rapidly and with facility. We are getting reconciled to halls and bed chambers with unhome-like stone floors and no carpets. We are getting foreignized rapidly and with facility. We are getting reconciled to halls and bed chambers with unhome-like stone floors and no carpets. Floors that ring to the tread of one's heels with a sharpness that is death to sentimental musing. We are getting used to tidy, noiseless waders who glide hither and thither and hover about your back and your elbows like butterflies. Quick to comprehend orders, quick to fill them. Thankful for a gratuity without regard to the amount, it always polite. Never otherwise than polite. That is the strangest curiosity yet. A really polite hotel waiter who isn't an idiot. We are getting used to driving right into the central court of the hotel in the midst of a fragrant circle of vines and flowers and in the midst also of parties of gentlemen. Sitting quietly reading the paper and smoking. We are getting used to ice frozen by our artificial process in ordinary bottles. The only kind of ice they have here. We are getting used to all these things but we are not getting used to carrying our own soap. We are sufficiently civilized to carry our own combs and toothbrushes but this thing of having to wring for soap every time we wash is new to us and not pleasant at all. We think of it just after we get our heads and faces thoroughly wet or just when we think we have been in the bathtub long enough and then of course an annoying delay follows. The Marseilles make Marseilles' Hymns and Marseilles' Vest. Marseilles' soap for all the world but they never sing their hymns or wear their vests or wash with their soap themselves. We have learned to go through the lingering routine of the table dote with patience, with serenity, with satisfaction. We take soup then wait a few minutes for the fish a few minutes more and the plates are changed and the roast beef comes. Another change and we take peas. Change again and take lentils. Change and take snail patties. I prefer grasshoppers. Change and take roast chicken and salad then strawberry pie and ice cream then green figs, pears, oranges, green almonds, etc. Finally, coffee. Wine with every course. Of course, being in France. With such a cargo onboard digestion is a slow process and we must sit long in the cool chambers and smoke and read French newspapers which have a strange fashion of telling a perfectly straight story till you get to the nub of it and then a word drops in that no man can translate and that story is ruined. And a bagment fell on some Frenchman yesterday and the papers are full of it today but whether those sufferers were killed or crippled or bruised or only scared is more than I can possibly make out and yet I would just give anything to know. We were troubled a little at dinner today by the conduct of an American who talked very loudly and coarsely and laughed boisterously where all others were so quiet and well-behaved. He ordered wine with a royal flourish and said, I never dine without wine, sir. Which was a pitiful falsed and looked around upon the company to bask in the admiration he expected to find in their faces. All these heirs in a land where they would as soon expect to leave the soup out and a lamb or wine as nearly as common among all ranks as water. This fellow said, I am a free-born sovereign, sir, an American, sir and I want everybody to know it. He did not mention that he was a lineal descendant of Bollum's ass but everybody knew that without his telling it. We have driven in the Prado that superb avenue bordered with patrician mansions and noble shade-trees and have visited the Chateau, Borely and its curious museum. They showed us a miniature cemetery there, a copy of the first graveyard that ever was in Marseille, no doubt. The delicate little skeletons relying in broken vaults and had their household gods and kitchen utensils with them. The origin of this cemetery was Dacob in the principal street of the city a few years ago. It had remained there only 12 feet underground for a matter of 2,500 years or thereabouts. Romulus was here before he built Rome thought something of founding a city on the spot but gave up the idea. He may have been personally acquainted with some of these Phoenicians whose skeletons we have been examining. In the great zoological gardens we found specimens of all the animals the world produces, I think, including a dromedary a monkey ornamented with tufts of brilliant blue and carmine hair a very gorgeous monkey he was a hippopotamus from the Nile and a sort of tall, long-legged bird with a beak like a powderhorn and close-fitting wings like the tails of a dress coat. This fellow stood up with his eyes shut and his shoulders stooped forward a little and looked as if he had his hands under his coat tails. Such tranquil stupidity such supernatural gravity such self-preciousness and such ineffable and such ineffable self-complacency as were in the countenance an attitude of that grey-bodied dark-winged bald-headed and a preposterously uncomely bird. He was so ungainly so pimply about the head so scaly about the legs yet so serene so unspeakably satisfying he was the most comical-looking creature that can be imagined. It was good to hear Dan and the doctor laugh such natural and such enjoyable laughter had not been heard among our excursionists since our ship sailed away from America. This bird was a godsend to us and I should be an ingrate if I forgot to make honorable mention of him in these pages. Ours was a pleasure excursion therefore we stayed with that bird an hour and made the most of him. We stern him up occasionally but he only unclosed an eye and slowly closed it again abetting no jot of his stately piety of demeanor or his tremendous seriousness he only seemed to say defile not heavens anointed with unsanctified hands we did not know his name and so we called him the pilgrim. Dan said all he wants now was him. The boon companion of the colossal elephant was a common cat. This cat had a fashion of climbing up the elephant's hind legs and roosting on his back. She would sit up there with her paws curved under her breast and sleep in the sun half the afternoon. They used to annoy the elephant at first and he would reach up and take her down would go aft and climb up again. She persisted until she finally conquered the elephant's prejudices and now they are inseparable friends. The elephant has four feet or his trunk often until dogs approach and then she goes aloft out of danger. The elephant has annihilated several dogs lately that pressed his companion too closely. We hired a sailboat and a guide and made an excursion to one of the small islands in the harbor to visit the castle-deaf. This ancient fortress has a melancholy history. It has been used as a prison for political offenders for two or three hundred years and its dungeon walls are scarred with the rudely carved names of many and many a captive who fred to his life away here and left no record of himself but these sad epitaphs wrought with his own hands. How thick the names were and their long departed owners seemed to throng the gloomy cells and corridors with their phantom shapes. We loitered through dungeon after dungeon a way down into the living rock below the level of the sea it seemed names everywhere some plebeian some noble some even princely plebeian prince and noble had one solicitude in common they would not be forgotten they could suffer solitude inactivity and the horrors of a silence that no son ever disturbed but they could not bear the thought of being utterly forgotten by the world hence the carved names in one cell where a little light penetrated a man had lived twenty seven years without seeing the face of a human being lived in filth and wretchedness with no companionship but his own thoughts and they were sorrowful enough no doubt whatever his jailers considered that he needed was conveyed to his cell by night through a wicket. This man carved the walls of his prison house from floor to roof with all manner of figures of men and animals grouped in intricate designs he toiled there year after year in his self-appointed task while infants grew to boyhood to vigorous youth idle through school and college acquired a profession claimed man's mature estate from vague ancient time almost but who shall tell how many ages it seemed to this prisoner with the one time flew sometimes with the other never it crawled always to the one night spent dancing and seemed made of minutes instead of hours to the other those self-same nights had been like all other nights of dungeon life and seemed made of slow dragging weeks instead of hours and minutes one prisoner of fifteen years had scratched verses upon his walls and brief prose sentences brief but full of pathos these spoke not of himself in his heart estate but only of the shrine where his spirit fled the prison to worship of home and the idols that were retempled there he never lived to see them the walls of these dungeons are as thick as some bed chambers at home are wide fifteen feet we saw the damp dismal cells in which two of Dumas' heroes passed the confinement heroes of Monte Cristo it was here that the brave Abbey wrote a book with his own blood with a pen made of a piece of iron hoop by the light of a lamp made out of shreds of cloth soaked in grease obtained from his food and then dug through the thick wall with some trifling instrument which he brought himself out of a stray piece of iron or table cutlery and freed Dante's from his chains it was a pity that so many weeks of jury labor should have come to not at last they showed us the noisome cell the iron mask that ill-starred brother of a hard-hearted king of France was confined for a season before he was sent to hide the strange mystery of his life from the curious in the dungeons of Saint Marguerite the place had a far greater interest for us than it could have if we had known beyond all question who the iron mask was and what his history had been and why this most unusual punishment had been meted out to him mystery, that was the charm that speechless tongue, those prison features so afraid with unspoken troubles and that breasts so oppressed with its piteous secret had been here these dank walls had known the man whose Dolores story is a seal book forever that was fascination in this spot that was Chapter 11 of the Innocence Abroad Getting used to it by Mark Twain read for you by Anna Blackwell Santa Anna, California November 2007 This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org The Model Millionaire by Oscar Wilde Unless one is wealthy there is no use in being a charming fellow Romance is the privilege of the rich not the profession of the unemployed The poor should be practical and prosaic It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating These are the great truths of modern life which Huey Erskine never realized poor Huey Intellectually we must admit he was not of much importance He never said a brilliant or even an ill-matured thing in his life But then he was wonderfully good-looking with his crisp brown hair his clear-cut profile and his grey eyes He was popular with men as he was with women except that of making money His father had bequeathed him his cavalry sword and history of the peninsular war and 15 volumes Huey hung the first over his looking-glass put the second on a shelf between Ruff's Guide and Bailey's Magazine and lived on 200 a year that an old aunt allowed him He had tried everything He had gone on the stock exchange for six months but what was a butterfly to do among bulls he had been a tea merchant for a little longer but had soon tired of pico and sushiang Then he had tried selling dry sherry that did not answer the sherry was a little too dry Ultimately he became nothing a delightful, ineffectual young man with a perfect profile and no profession To make matters worse he was in love The girl he loved was Laura Merton the daughter of a retired colonel who had lost his temper and his digestion in India and had never found either of them again Laura adored him and he was ready to kiss her shoestrings They were the handsomest couple in London and had not a penny-piece between them The colonel was very fond of Huey but would not hear of any engagement Come to me my boy when you have got ten thousand pounds of your own and we will see about it he used to say and Huey looked very glum in those days and had to go to Laura for consolation One morning as he was on his way to Holland Park where the Mertens lived he dropped in to see a great friend of his Alan Trevor Trevor was a painter, indeed few people escape that nowadays but he was also an artist and artists are rather rare Personally he was a strange, rough fellow with a freckled face and a red ragged beard However, when he took up the brush he was a real master and his pictures were eagerly sought after He had been very much attracted by Huey at first it must be acknowledged entirely on account of his personal charm The only people a painter should know he used to say are people who are bait and beautiful people who are an artistic pleasure to look at and an intellectual repose to talk to men who are dandies and women who are darlings rule the world at least they should do so However, after he got to know Huey better he liked him quite as much for his bright, buoyant spirits and his generous, reckless nature and had given him the permanent entree to his studio When Huey came in he found Trevor putting the finishing touches to a wonderful life-sized picture of a beggar man The beggar himself was standing on a raised platform in a corner of the studio He was a wisened old man with a face like wrinkled parchment and a most piteous expression Over his shoulders was flung a coarse brown cloak all tears and tatters his boots were patched and cobbled and with one hand he lent on a rough stick while with the other he held out his battered hat for alms What an amazing model whispered Huey as he shook hands with his friend An amazing model shouted Trevor at the top of his voice I should think so Such beggars as he are not to be met with every day A trouvail mon cher a living Velazquez My star is what an etching rim-brant would have made of him The old chap said Huey how miserable he looks But I suppose to you painters his face is his fortune Certainly replied Trevor you don't want a beggar to look happy do you? How much does a model get for sitting? asked Huey as he found himself a comfortable seat on a divan a shilling an hour And how much do you get for your picture Alan? Oh for this I get two thousand pounds guineas, painters, poets and physicians guineas Well I think the model should have a percentage cried Huey, laughing, they work quite as hard as you do Nonsense, nonsense, why look at the trouble of laying on all the paint alone and standing all day long at one's easel It's all very well Huey for you to talk but I assure you that there are moments when art almost attains to the dignity of manual labour But you mustn't chatter, I'm very busy smoke a cigarette and keep quiet After some time the servant came in and the frame maker wanted to speak to him Don't run away Huey he said as he went out I'll be back in a moment The old beggar man took advantage of Trevor's absence to rest for a moment on a wooden bench that was behind him He looked so forlorn and wretched that Huey could not help pitying him and felt in his pockets to see what money he had All he could find was a sovereign and some coppers Poor old fellow he thought to himself more than I do but it means no handsoms for a fortnight and he walked across the studio and slipped the sovereign into the beggar's hand The old man started and a faint smile flitted across his withered lips Thank you sir he said Thank you Then Trevor arrived and Huey took his leave blushing a little at what he had done He spent the day with Laura got a charming scolding for his extravagance and had to walk home That night he strolled into the pallet club about eleven o'clock and found Trevor sitting by himself in the smoking room drinking hawk and seltzer Well Alan did you get the picture finished alright he said as he lit his cigarette Finished and framed my boy answered Trevor and by the by you have made a conquest That old model you saw was quite devoted to you I had to tell him all about you who you are, where you live and what your income was what prospects you have My dear Alan cried Huey I shall probably find him waiting for me when I go home But of course you are only joking poor old wretch I wish I could do something for him I think it is dreadful that anyone should be so miserable I have got heaps of old clothes at home Do you think he would care for any of them Why his rags were falling to bits But he looks splendid in them said Trevor I wouldn't paint him in a frock coat for anything What you call rags I call romance It seems poverty to you is picturesqueness to me However I will tell him of your offer Alan said Huey seriously you painters are a heartless lot An artist's heart is his head applied Trevor and besides our business is to realise the world as we see it not to reform it as we know it A chacune son métier And now tell me how Laura is the old model was quite interested in her You don't mean to say that you talked to him about her said Huey Certainly I did he knows all about the relentless Colonel the lovely Laura and the ten thousand pounds You told that old beggar all my private affairs cried Huey looking very red and angry My dear boy said Trevor smiling that old beggar as you call him is one of the richest men in Europe he could buy all London tomorrow without over drawing his account he has a house in every capital dimes off gold plate and can prevent Russia from going to war when he chooses What on earth do you mean? What I say said Trevor the old man you saw today in the studio was Baron Hausberg he's a great friend of mine buys all my pictures and that sort of thing and gave me a commission a month ago to paint him as a beggar and I must say he made a magnificent figure in his rags I should say in my rags they are an old suit I got in Spain Baron Hausberg cried Huey good heavens I gave him a sovereign and he sank into an armchair the picture of disney gave him a sovereign shouted Trevor and he burst into a roar of laughter my dear boy you'll never see it again son affaire c'est l'argent des autres I think you might have told me Alan said Huey so clearly and not have let me make such a fool of myself well to begin with Huey said Trevor it never entered my mind that you went about distributing alms in that reckless way I can understand you're kissing a pretty model but you're giving a sovereign to an ugly one by Joe no besides the fact is that I really was not at home today to anyone and when you came in I didn't know whether Hausberg would like his name mentioned you know he wasn't in full dress what a duffer he must think me said Huey not at all he was in the highest spirits after you left kept chuckling to himself and rubbing his old wrinkled hands together I couldn't make out why he was so interested to know all about you but I see it all now he'll invest your sovereign for you Huey pay you the interest every six months and have a capital story to tell after dinner I am an unlucky devil growled Huey the best thing I can do is go to bed and my dear Alan you mustn't tell anyone I shouldn't dare show my face in the row nonsense it reflects the highest credit on your philanthropic spirit Huey and don't run away have another cigarette and you can talk about Laura as much as you like however Huey wouldn't stop but walked home feeling very unhappy and leaving Alan Trevor in fits of laughter the next morning as he was at breakfast the servant brought him up a card on which was written Monsieur Gustave Nautin de la part de Monsieur le Baron Hausberg I suppose he has come for an apology said Huey to himself and he told the servant to show the visitor up an old gentleman with gold spectacles and grey hair came into the room and said in a slight French accent have I the honour of addressing Monsieur Erskine Huey bowed I have come from Baron Hausberg he continued the Baron I beg sir that you will offer him my sincerest apology stammered Huey the Baron said the old gentleman with a smile has commissioned me to bring you this letter and he extended a sealed envelope on the outside was written a wedding present to Huey Erskine and Laura Merton from an old beggar and inside was a check for ten thousand pounds when they were married Alan Trevor was the best man and the Baron made a speech at the wedding breakfast millionaire models remarked Alan are rare enough but by Jove model millionaires are rarer still end of the model millionaire by Oscar Wilde read by Nicodemus The Strange Looking Man by Fanny Kimball Johnson this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information all to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org this reading by Lucy Burgoyne The Strange Looking Man by Fanny Kimball Johnson from the pagan a tiny village lay among the mountains of a country from which for four years the men had gone forth to fight first the best men had gone then the old men then the youths and lastly the school boys it will be seen that no men could have been left in the village except the very aged and the bodily incapacitated who soon died owing to the war policy at the government which was to let the useless perish that there might be more food for the useful now a chance that while all the men went away save those left to die of slow starvation only a few returned and these few were crippled and disfigured in various ways one young man had only part of the face and had to wear a painted tin mask like a holiday maker another had two legs but no arms and another two arms but no legs one man could scarcely be looked at by his own mother having had his eyes turned out of his head until he steered like death one had neither arms nor legs and was mad of his misery besides and lay all day in a cradle like a baby and there was a quiet old man who strangled night and day from having sucked in poison gas and another a mere boy who shook like a leaf and from shell shock and screamed at a sound and he too had lost a hand and part of his face though not enough to warrant the expense of a mask for him all these men except he who had been crazed by horror of himself had been furnished with ingenious appliances to enable them to be partly self supporting and to earn enough to pay their share of the taxes which burdened their defeated notion to go through that village after the war was something like going through a life-sized toy village with all the mechanical figures wound up and clicking only instead of the figures being new and gay and pretty they were battered and grotesque women there would be the windmill and the smithy and the public house there would be the row of cottages the village church the sparkling waterfall the party coloured fields spread out like bright kerchiefs on the hillsides the parading fowl the goats and cows though not many of these last some children very few however for the women had been getting reasonable and were now refusing to have sons who might one day be sent back to them limeless and mad to be rocked in cradles for many years perhaps still the younger women softer creatures of impulse had born a child or two one of these born the second year of the war was a very blonde and bullet headed rascal of three with a ballooning air and a roving disposition but such traits appear engaging in children of sufficiently tender years and he was a sort of village plating here, there and everywhere on the most familiar terms with the wrecks of the war which the government of that country had made he tried on the tin mask and played with the baker's mechanical leave so indulgent were they at his caprisis and it amused him excessively to rock the cradle of the man who had no limbs and who was his father in and out he ran and was humid to his bent to one he seemed the son he had lost to another the son he might have had had the world gone differently to others he served as a bright escape from the shadow of a future without hope to others yet the diversion of an hour his last was especially true of the blind man who sat at the door of his old mother's cottage binding brooms the presence of the child seemed to him like a warm ray of sunshine falling across his hand and he would lure him to linger by letting him try on the great blue goggles which he found at best to wear in public but no disfigurement or deformity appeared to frighten the little fellow these had been his play things from earliest infancy one morning his mother being busy washing clothes had left him alone confident that he would soon seek out some friendly fragment of soldier and entertain himself till noon and hung the time but occasionally children have odd notions and do the exact opposite of what one supposes on this brilliant summer morning the child fancied a solitary ramble along the bank of the mountain stream vaguely he meant to seek a pool higher up and to cast stones in it he wandered slowly straying now and then into small valleys all chasing wise side ducks it was past 10 before he came the green gleaming and foam white and pool like in the shadow of a tall grey rock over whose flat top three pine trees swayed in the fresh breeze under them looking to the child like a white cloud in a green sky still a beautiful young man poised on the sheer brink for a dive a single instant he stood there clad only in shadow he did dive so expertly that he scarcely splashed up the water around him then his dark dripping head rose inside his glittering arm thrust up and he swum vigorously to shore he climbed the rock for another dive these actions he repeated in pure sport and joy in life so often that his little spectator became dizzy with watching at length he had enough of it and stopped for his discarded garments these he carried to a more sheltered spot and rapidly put on the child still wide eyed and wondering for indeed he had much to occupy his attention he had two arms two legs a whole face with eyes mouth chin and ears complete he could see for he had glanced about him as he dressed he could speak for he sung loudly he could hear for he had turned quickly at the were at pigeon wings behind him his skin was smooth all over and nowhere on it were the dark scarlet mates which the child found so interesting his arms, face and breast of the burned man he did not strangle every little while or shiver madly and scream at a sound it was truly inexplicable and therefore terrifying the child was beginning to whimper to tremble to look wildly about for his mother when the young man observed him hello he cried eagerly if it isn't a child he came forward across the footbridge with a most ingratiating smile but this was the first time that day he had seen a child and he had been thinking it remarkable that there should be so few children in a valley where, when he had travelled that way five years before there had been so many that scarcely been able to find pennies for them he cried hello quite joyously and searched in his pockets but to his amazement the bullet headed little blonde boy screamed out in terror and fled for protection into the arms of a hurriedly approaching young woman she embraced him with evident relief and was lavishing on him terms of scolding and endearment in the same breath when the traveller came up looking as if his feelings were hurt I assure you madam said he but I only meant to give your little boy these pennies he examined himself with an air of wonder what on earth is there about me to frighten a child he queried plaintively the young peasant woman smiled indulgently on them both on the child now sobbing his face buried in her skirt and on the boyish perplexed and beautiful young man it is because he finds the hair traveller so strange looking she said curtsy he is quite small she showed his smallness with the gesture and it is the first time he has ever seen a whole man end of story June when the sun was shining warm and bright into the large courtyard a very elegant victoria with two beautiful black horses drew up in front of the mansion the comtesse de masquerette came down the steps just as her husband who was coming home appeared in the carriage entrance he stopped for a few moments to look at his wife and turned rather pale the countess was very beautiful graceful and distinguished looking with her long oval face her complexion like yellow ivory her large gray eyes and her black hair when she got into her carriage without looking at him without even seeming to have noticed him with such a particularly hybrid hair that the furious jealousy by which he had been devoured for so long again gnawed at his heart he went up to her and said you are going for a drive she merely replied disdainfully you see I am in the boy de boulogne most probably may I come with you the carriage belongs to you without being surprised at the tone in which she answered him he got in and sat down by his wife's side and said boy de boulogne jumped up beside the coachman and the horses as usual pranced and tossed their heads until they were in the street husband and wife sat side by side without speaking he was thinking how to begin a conversation but she maintained such an obstinately hard look that he did not venture to make the attempt at last however he cunningly accidentally as it were touched the countess glove hand with his own but she drew her arm away with a movement which was so expressive of disgust that he remained thoughtful in spite of his usual authoritative and despotic character and he said Gabrielle what do you want I think you are looking adorable she did not reply but remained lying back in the carriage looking like an irritated queen by that time they were driving up the Champollis toward the Arc de Triomphe that immense monument at the end of the Long Avenue raised its colossal arch against the red sky and the sun seemed to be descending on it showering fiery dust on it from the sky the stream of carriages with dashes of sunlight reflected in the silver trappings of the harness and the glass of the lamps flowed on in a double current toward the town and toward the bois and the Comte de Miscart continued my dear Gabrielle unable to control herself any longer she replied in an exasperated voice do leave me in peace pray I am not even allowed to have my carriage to myself now he pretended not to hear her and continued you never have looked so pretty as you do today her patience had come to an end with irrepressible anger you are wrong to notice it for I swear to you that I will never have anything to do with you in that way again the Count was decidedly stupefied and upset and his violent nature gaining the upper hand he exclaimed what do you mean by that in a tone that betrayed rather the brutal master than the lover she replied in a low voice so that the servants might not hear the deafening noise of the wheels ah what do I mean by that what do I mean by that now I recognize you again do you want me to tell everything yes everything that has weighed on my heart since I have been the victim of your terrible selfishness he had grown red with surprise and anger and he growled between his closed teeth yes tell me everything he was a tall broad-shouldered man with a big red beard a handsome man a nobleman a man of the world who passed as a perfect husband and an excellent father and now for the first time since they had started she turned toward him and looked him full in the face ah you will hear some disagreeable things but you must know that I am prepared that I fear nothing and you less than anyone today he also was looking into her eyes and was already shaking with rage as he said in a low voice you are mad no but I will no longer be the victim of the hateful penalty of maternity which you have inflicted on me for eleven years I wish to take my place in society as I have the right to do he suddenly grew pale again and stammered I do not understand you oh yes you understand me well enough it is now three months since I had my last child and as I am still very beautiful and as in spite of all your efforts you cannot spoil my figure as you just now perceived when you saw me on stage you think it is time that I should think of having another child but you are talking nonsense no I am not I am thirty and I have had seven children and we have been married eleven years and you hope that this will go on for ten years longer after which you will leave off being jealous he seized her arm and squeezed it saying I will not allow you to talk to me like that much longer and I shall talk to you till the end until I have finished all I have to say to you and if you try to prevent me I shall raise my voice so that the two servants who are on the box may hear I only allow you to come with me for that object for I have these witnesses who will oblige you to listen to me and to contain yourself I have always felt an antipathy to you and I have always let you see it for I have never lied you married me in spite of myself you forced my parents who were in embarrassed circumstances to give me to you because you were rich and they obliged me to marry you in spite of my tears so you bought me and as soon as I was in your power as soon as I had become your companion ready to attach myself to you to forget your coercive and threatening proceedings in order that I might only remember that I ought to be a devoted wife and to love you as much as it might be possible for me to love you you became jealous you as no man has ever before with the base and noble jealousy of a spy which was as degrading to you I had not been married eight months when you suspected me of every perfidiousness and you even told me so what a disgrace and as you could not prevent me from being beautiful and from pleasing people from being called in drawing rooms and also in the newspapers one of the most beautiful women in Paris you tried everything you could think of to keep admirers from me and you hit upon the idea of making me spend my life in a constant state of motherhood until the time should come when I should discuss every man do not deny it I did not understand it for some time but then I guessed it you even boasted about it to your sister who told me of it for she has fond of me and was disgusted at your boorish coarseness ah remember how you had behaved in the past how for eleven years you had compelled me to give up all society and simply be a mother to your children and then you would grow disgusted with me and I was sent into the country the family chateau among fields and meadows and when I reappeared fresh, pretty and unspoiled still seductive and constantly surrounded by admirers hoping that at last I should live more like a rich young society woman you were seized with jealousy again and you began once more to persecute me with that infamous and hateful desire from which you are suffering at this moment by my side and it is not the desire of possessing me for I should never refuse myself to you but it is the wish to make me unsightly and then that abominable and mysterious thing occurred I was a long time in understanding but I grew sharp by dint of watching your thoughts and actions you attached yourself to your children with all the security which they gave you while I bore them you felt affection for them with all your aversion to me and in spite of your ignoble fears which were momentarily elade by your pleasure in seeing me lose my symmetry how often have I noticed that joy in you I have seen it in your eyes and guessed it you loved your children as victories and not because they were of your own blood they were victories over me over my youth over my beauty over my charms over the compliments which were paid me and over those that were whispered around me without being paid to me personally and you are proud of them you make a parade of them you take them out for drives and you're breaking the boy to balloon and you give them donkey rides at Montmorency you take them to theatrical matinees so that you may be seen in the midst of them so that people may say what a kind father and that it may be repeated he had seized her wrist with savage brutality and he squeezed it so violently that she was quiet and nearly cried out with the pain and he said to her in the whisper I love my children do you hear it? what you have just told me is disgraceful in a mother but you belong to me I am master your master I can exact from you what I like and when I like and I have the law on my side he was trying to crush her fingers in the strong grip of his large muscular hand and she lived it with pain in vain to free them from that vice which was crushing them the agony made her breathe hard and the tears came into her eyes you see that I am the master and the stronger he said when he somewhat loosened his grip she asked him do you think that I am a religious woman? he was surprised and stammered yes do you think that I could lie the truth of anything to you before an altar on which Christ's body is? no will you go with me to some church? what for? you shall see will you? if you absolutely wish it yes she raised her voice and said Philippe and the coachman bending down a little without taking his eyes from his horses seemed to turn his ear alone toward his mistress who continued drive to St. Philippe du Rue and the Victoria which had reached the entrance of the Voida Bologne returned to Paris husband and wife did not exchange a word further during the drive and when the carriage stopped before the church Madame de Moscarette jumped out and entered it followed by the count a few yards distant she went without stopping as far as the choir screen and falling on her knees at a chair she buried her face in her hands she prayed for a long time and he standing behind her could see that she was crying she wept noiselessly as women weep when they are in great poignant grief there was a kind of undulation in her body which ended in a little sob which was hidden and stifled by her fingers but the comte de Moscarette thought that the situation was lasting too long and he touched her on the shoulder that contact recalled her to herself as if she had been burned and getting up she looked straight into his eyes this is what I have to say to you I'm afraid of nothing whatever you may do to me you may kill me if you like one of your children is not yours and one only that I swear to you before God who hears me here that was the only revenge that was possible for me in return for all your abominable masculine tyrannies in return for the penal servitude of childbearing to which you had condemned me who was my lover that you never will know you may suspect everyone but you never will find out I gave myself to him without love and without pleasure only for the sake of betraying you and he also made me a mother which is the child that also you never will know I have seven to try to find out I intended to tell you this later for one had not avenged oneself on a man by deceiving him unless he knows it you had driven me to confess to today I have now finished she hurried through the church toward the open door expecting to hear behind her the quick step of her husband whom she had defied and to be knocked to the ground by a blow of his fist but she heard nothing and reached her carriage she jumped into it at a bound overwhelmed with anguish and breathless with fear so she called out to the coachman home the contestee masquerade was waiting in her room for dinner time as a criminal sentenced to death awaits the hour of his execution what was her husband going to do had he come home despotic passionate ready for any violence as he was what was he meditating what had he made up his mind to do there was no sound in the house in every moment she looked at the clock her ladies maid had come and dressed her for the evening and had then left the room again eight o'clock struck and almost at the same moment there were two knocks at the door and the butler came in and announced dinner has the count come in yes madame la comtesse he is in the dining room for a little moment she felt inclined to arm herself with a small revolver which she had bought some time before forcing the tragedy which was being rehearsed in her heart but she remembered that all the children would be there and she took nothing except a bottle of smelling salts he rose somewhat ceremoniously from his chair they exchanged a slight bow and sat down the three boys with their tutor ave martin were on her right and the three girls with miss smith their English governess were on her left the youngest child who was only three months old remained upstairs with his nurse the ave said grace as usual when there was no company for the children did not come down to dinner when guests were present then they began dinner the countess suffering from emotion which she had not calculated upon remained with her eyes cast down while the count scrutinized now the three boys and now the three girls with an uncertain unhappy expression which traveled from one to the other suddenly pushing his wine glass from him it broke and the wine was spilled on the tablecloth with a slight noise caused by this little accident the countess started up from her chair and for the first time they looked at each other then in spite of themselves in spite of the irritation of their nerves caused by every glance they continued to exchange looks rapid as pistol shots the ave who felt that there was some cause for embarrassment which he could not divine attempted to begin a conversation and tried various subjects but his useless efforts gave rise to no ideas and did not bring out a word the countess with feminine tact and obeying her instincts of a woman of the world attempted to answer him two or three times but in vain she could not find words in the perplexity of her mind and her own voice almost frightened her in the silence of the large room where nothing was heard except the slight sound of plates and knives and forks suddenly her husband said to her bending forward here amid your children will you swear to me that what you told me just now is true the hatred which was fermenting in her veins suddenly roused her and replying to that question with the same firmness and reply to his looks she raised both her hands the right pointing toward the boys and the left toward the girls and said in a firm, resolute voice and without any hesitation on the head of my children I swear that I have told you the truth he got up and throwing his table napkin on the table with the movement of exasperation he turned around and flung his chair against the wall and then went out without another word while she uttering a deep sigh as if after her first victory went on in a calm voice you must not pay any attention to what your father has just said my darlings he was very much upset a short time ago but he will be all right again in a few days then she talked with the Abbey Smith and had tender pretty words for all her children those sweet, tender mother's ways which unfold little hearts when dinner was over she went into the drawing room all her children following her she made the elder ones chatter and when their bedtime came she kissed them for a long time and then went alone into her room she waited for she had no doubt that the count would come and she made up her mind then as her children were not with her to protect herself as a woman of the world as she would protect her life and in the pocket of her dress she put the little loaded revolver which she had bought a few days previously the hours went by the hours struck and every sound was hushed in the house only the cabs continued through the streets but their noise was only heard vaguely through the shuttered and curtained windows she waited full of nervous energy without any fear of him now ready for anything and almost triumphant for she had found means of torturing him continually during every moment of his life but the first gleam of dawn came in through the fringe at the bottom of her curtain she came into her room and then she awoke to the fact with much amazement that he was not coming having locked and bolted her door for greater security she went to bed at last and remained there with her eyes open thinking and barely understanding at all without being able to guess what he was going to do when her maid brought her tea she at the same time handed her a letter he told her that he was going to undertake a longish journey and in a post script added that his lawyer would provide her with any sums of money she might require for all her expenses three it was at the opera between two acts of Robert the Devil in the stalls the men were standing up with their hats on their waist coats cut very low so as to show a large amount of white shirt front in which gold and jeweled studs glistened and were looking at the boxes full of ladies in low dresses covered with diamonds and pearls who were expanding like flowers in that illuminated hot house where the beauty of their faces and the whiteness of their shoulders seemed to bloom in order to be gazed at amid the sound of the music and of human voices two friends with their backs to the orchestra were scanning those rows of elegance that exhibition of real or false charms of jewels, of luxuriant of pretension which displayed itself in all parts of the grand theater and one of them Roger de Saunes said to his companion Bernard Grandin just look how beautiful the comtesse masquerade still is the older man in turn looked through his opera glasses at a tall lady in a box opposite she appeared to be still very young and her striking beauty seemed to attract all eyes in every corner of the house her pale complexion of an ivory tint gave her the appearance of a statue while a small diamond coronet glistened on her black hair with a drink of light when he had looked at her for some time Bernard Grandin replied with a jocular accent of sincere conviction you may well call her beautiful how old do you think she is wait a moment I can tell you exactly for I have known her since she was a child and I saw her make her debut into society when she was quite a girl she is 30 36 impossible I am sure of it she looks 25 she has had 7 children it is incredible and what is more they are all 7 alive as she is a very good mother I occasionally go to the house which is a very quiet and pleasant one where one may see the phenomenon of the family in the midst of society how very strange and have there never been any reports about her never but what about her husband he is peculiar is he not yes and no very likely there has been a little drama between them one of those little domestic dramas which one suspects never finds out exactly who this is at pretty closely what is it I do not know anything about it masquerade leads a very fast life now after being a model husband as long as he remained a good spouse he had a shocking temper was craved and easily took offense but since he has been leading his present wild life he has become quite different but one might surmise that he has some trouble annoying somewhere for he has aged very much thereupon the two friends talked philosophically for some minutes about the secret unknowable troubles which differences of character or perhaps physical antipathies which were not perceived at first give rise to in families and then Roger de Selness who is still looking at Madame D. Masquerade through his opera glasses said it is almost incredible that that woman can have had seven children yes in eleven years after which when she was thirty she refused to have anymore in order to take her place in society which she seems likely to do for many years poor women why do you pity them why ah my dear fellow just consider eleven years in a condition of motherhood for such a woman what a hell all her youth all her beauty every hope of success every poetical ideal of a brilliant life sacrificed to that abominable law of reproduction which turns the normal woman into a mere machine for bringing her children into the world what would you have it is only nature yes but I say that nature is our enemy that we must always fight against nature or she is continually bringing us back to an animal state you may be sure that God has not put anything on this earth that is clean pretty, elegant or accessory to our ideal the human brain has done it it is man who has introduced a little grace beauty unknown charm and mystery into creation by seeing about it interpreting it by admiring it as a poet idealizing it as an artist and by explaining it through science doubtless making mistakes but finding ingenious reasons hidden grace and beauty unknown charm and mystery in the various phenomena of nature God created only coarse beings full of germs of disease after a few years of bestial enjoyment grow old and infirm with all the ugliness and all the want of power of human decrepitude he seems to have made them only in order that they may reproduce their species in an ignoble manner and then die like ephemeral insects I said I reproduced their species in an ignoble manner and I adhere to that expression what is there as a matter of fact more ignoble and more repugnant than that act of reproduction of living beings against which all delicate minds always have revolted and always will revolt since all the organs which have been invented by this economical and malicious creator served two purposes why do you not choose another method of performing that sacred mission which is the noblest and the most exalted of all human functions the mouth which nourishes the body by means of material food also diffuses a broad speech and thought our flesh renews itself of its own accord while we are thinking about it the olfactory organs through which the vital air reaches the lungs of the world to the brain the smell of flowers of woods of trees of the sea the ear which enables us to communicate with our fellow men has also allowed us to invent music to create dreams happiness, infinite and even physical pleasure by means of sound but one might say that the cynical and cunning creator wished to prohibit man nobling and idealizing his intercourse with women nevertheless man has found love which is not a bad reply to that slide deity and he has adorned it with so much poetry that woman often forgets the sensual part of it those among us who are unable to deceive themselves have invented vice and refined debauchery which is another way of laughing at God and paying homage in modest homage to beauty but the normal man begets children just like an animal coupled with another by law look at that woman is it not abominable to think that such a jewel such a pearl born to be beautiful admired, fated and adored has spent eleven years of her life in providing airs for the comte de masquerette Bernard Grandin replied with a laugh there is a great deal of truth in all that but very few people would understand you soleness became more and more animated do you know how I picture God myself he said as an enormous creative organ beyond our kin who scatters billions of worlds into space just as one single fish would deposit its spawn in the sea he creates because it is his function is God to do so but he does not know what he is doing and is stupidly prolific in his work and is ignorant of the combinations of all kinds which are produced by his scattered germs the human mind is a lucky little local passing accident which was totally unforeseen and condemned to disappear with this earth and to recommence perhaps here or elsewhere the same different with fresh combinations of eternally new beginnings we owe it to this little lapse of intelligence on his part that we are very uncomfortable in this world which was not made for us which had not been prepared to receive us to lodge and feed us or to satisfy reflecting beings and we owe it to him also that we have to struggle without ceasing we still call the designs of providence when we are really refined and civilized beings Grandin who was listening to him attentively as he had long known the surprising outbursts of his imagination asked him then you believe that human thought is the spontaneous product of blind divine generation naturally a fortuitous function of the nerve centers of our brain like the unforeseen chemical action due to new mixtures and similar also to a charge of electricity caused by friction or the unexpected proximity of some substance similar to all phenomena caused by the infinite and fruitful fermentation of living matter but my dear fellow the truth of this must be evident to anyone who looks about him if the human mind ordained by an omniscient creator had been intended to be what it has become exacting, inquiring agitated, tormented so different from their animal thought and resignation would the world which was created to receive the beings which we now are have been this unpleasant little part for small game this salad patch this wooded, rocky and spherical kitchen garden where your improvident providence has destined us to live naked in caves or under trees nourished on the flesh of slaughtered animals are brethren or on raw vegetables nourished by the sun and the rain but it is sufficient to reflect for a moment in order to understand that this world was not made as we are thought which is developed by a miracle in the nerves of the cells in our brain powerless, ignorant and confused as it is and as it will always remain makes all of us who are intellectual beings eternal and wretched exiles on earth look at this earth as God has given it to those who inhabit it is it not visibly covered with forests for the sake of animals what is there for us nothing and for them everything and they have nothing to do but to eat or go hunting and eat each other according to their instincts for God never foresaw gentleness and peaceable manners he only foresaw the death of creatures which were bent on destroying and devouring each other are not the quail, the pigeon and the partridge, the natural prey of the hawk the sheep, the stag and the ox that of the great flesh-eating animals rather than meat to be fattened and served up to us with truffles which have been unearthed by pigs for our special benefit as to ourselves the more civilized, intellectual and refined we are the more we ought to conquer and subdue that animal instinct which represents the will of God in us and so, in order to mitigate our lot as brutes we have discovered and made everything beginning with houses then exquisite food sauces, sweet meats pastry, drinks, stuffs clothes, ornaments, beds, mattresses carriages, railways and innumerable machines besides arts and sciences writing and poetry every ideal comes from us as do all the amenities of life in order to make our existence as simple reproducers for which divine providence solely intended us less monotonous and less hard look at this theater is there not here a human world created by us unforeseen and unknown to eternal fate intelligible to our minds alone a sensual and intellectual distraction which has been invented solely by and for that discontented and restless little animal man look at that woman madame de mescaret God intended her to live in a cave naked or wrapped up in the skins of wild animals but is she not better than he is but speaking of her does anyone know why and how her brood of a husband having such a companion by his side and especially after having been boorish enough to make her a mother seven times has suddenly left her to run after bad women granden replied ah my dear fellow this is probably the only reason that raising a family was becoming too expensive and from reasons of domestic economy he has arrived at the same principles which he lay down as a philosopher just then the curtain rose for the third act and they turned round took off their hats and sat down four the comte and comtes muscaret were sitting side by side in the carriage which was taking them home from the opera without speaking but suddenly the husband said to his wife govriel what do you want don't you think that this has lasted long enough what the horrible punishment to which you have condemned me for the last six years what do you want then tell me which of them it is never think that I can no longer see my children or feel them around me without having my heart burdened with this doubt tell me which of them it is and I swear that I will forgive you and treat it like the others I have not the right to do so do you not see that I can no longer endure this life this thought which is wearing me out this question which I am constantly asking myself this question which tortures me each time I look at them it is driving me mad then you have suffered a great deal she said terribly should I without that have accepted the horror of living by your side and the still greater horror of feeling and knowing that there is one among them who denies and who prevents me from loving the others then you have really suffered very much she repeated and he replied in a constrained and sorrowful voice yes Ford do I not tell you every day that it is intolerable torture to me should I have remained in that house near you and them if I did not love them ah you have behaved abominably toward me all the affection of my heart I have bestowed upon my children and that you know I am for them a father of the olden time as I was for you a husband of one of the families of old for by instinct I have remained a natural man a man of former days yes I will confess it you have made me terribly jealous because you are a woman of another race of another soul with other requirements oh I shall never forget the things you said to me but from that day I troubled myself no more about you I did not kill you because then I should have had no means on earth of ever discovering which of our of your children is not mine I have waited but I have suffered more than you believe for I can no longer venture to love them except perhaps the two eldest I no longer venture to look at them to call them to me to kiss them I cannot take them on my knee without asking myself can it be this one I have been correct in my behavior toward you for six years and even kind and complacent tell me the truth and I swear that I will do nothing he thought in spite of the darkness of the carriage that he could perceive that she was moved and feeling certain that she was going to speak at last he said I beg you I beseech you to tell me he said I have been more guilty than you think perhaps she replied but I could no longer endure that life of continual motherhood and I had only one means of driving you from me I lied before God and I lied with my hand raised to my children's head for I never have wronged you he seized her arm in the darkness and squeezing it as he had done on that terrible day of their drive in the void of alone he stammered is that true it is true but wild with grief he said with a groan I shall have fresh doubts that it will never end when did you lie the last time or now how am I to believe you at present how can one believe a woman after that I shall never again know what I am to think I would rather you had said to me it is Jacques or it is Jean the carriage drove into the courtyard of the house and what it had drawn up in front of the steps the count alighted first as usual he looked him out the stairs as soon as they reached the first floor he said may I speak to you for a few moments longer and she replied I am quite willing they went into a small drawing room and a footman in some surprise lighted the waxed candles as soon as he had left the room and they were alone the count continued how am I to know the truth I have begged you a thousand times to speak but you have remained dumb impenetrable inflexible inexorable and now today you tell me that you have been lying for six years you have actually allowed me to believe such a thing no you are lying now I do not know why but out of pity for me perhaps she replied in a sincere and convincing manner if I had not done so I should have had four more children in the last six years can a mother speak like that oh she replied I do not feel that I am the mother of children who never have been born it is enough for me to be the mother of those that I have and love them with all my heart I am a woman of the civilized world we all are and we are no longer and we refuse to be mere females to restock the earth she got up but he seized her hands only one word Gabrielle tell me the truth I have just told you I never have dishonored you he looked her full in the face and how beautiful she was with her gray eyes like the cold sky in her dark hair sparkled the diamond coronet like a radiance he suddenly felt felt by a kind of intuition that this grand creature was not merely a being destined to perpetuate the race but the strange and mysterious product of all our complicated desires which have been accumulating in us for centuries but which have been turned aside from their primitive and divine object and have wandered after a mystic imperfectly perceived and intangible beauty there are some women like that who blossom only for our dreams adorned with every poetical attribute of civilization with that ideal luxury cockatry and aesthetic charm which surround women with a statue that brightens our life her husband remains standing before her stupefied at his tardy and obscure discovery confusedly hitting on the cause of his former jealousy and understanding it all very imperfectly and at last lie said I believe you for I feel at this moment that you are not lying and before I really thought she put out her hand to him we are friends then he took her hand and kissed it and replied we are friends thank you Gabrielle then he went out still looking at her and surprised that she was still so beautiful and feeling a strange emotion arising in him end of useless beauty this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org The Village Uncle An Imaginary Retrospect by Nathaniel Hawthorne from his collection of twice told tales read by Nicodemus come another log upon the hearth true our little parlor is comfortable especially here where the old man sits in his old armchair but on Thanksgiving night the blaze should dance high up the chimney and send a shower of sparks into the outer darkness toss on an armful of those dry oak chips the last relics of the mermaid's knee timbers the bones of your namesake Susan higher yet and clearer be the blaze till our cottage windows glow the ruddiest in the village and the light of our household mirth flash far across the bay to may hand and now come Susan children draw your chairs round me all of you there is a dimness over your figures you sit quivering indistinctly with each motion of the blaze which eddies about you like a flood so that you all have the look of visions or people that dwell only in the firelight and will vanish from existence as completely as your own shadows when the flame shall sink among the embers hark let me listen for the swell of the surf it should be audible a mile inland like this yes there I catch the sound but only an uncertain murmur as if a good way down over the beach though by the almanac it is high tide at eight o'clock and the billows must now be dashing within 30 yards of our door ah the old man's ears are failing him and so is his eyesight and perhaps his mind else you would not all be so shadowy in the blaze of this thanksgiving fire how strangely the past is peeping over the shoulders of the present to judge by my recollections it is but a few moments since I sat in another room yonder model of a vessel was not there nor the old chest of drawers nor Susan's profile in mine in that guilt frame nothing in short except this same fire which glimmered on books papers and a picture and half discovered my solitary figure in a looking glass but it was paler than my rugged old self and younger too by almost half a century speak to me Susan speak my beloved ones for the scene is glimmering on my side again and as it brightens you fade away I should be loathed to lose my treasure of past happiness and become once more what I was then a hermit in the depths of my own mind sometimes yawning over drowsy volumes and an on a scribbler of weirier trash than what I read a man who had wandered out of the real world and got into its shadow where his troubles joys and vicissitudes were of such slight stuff that he hardly knew whether he lived or only dreamed of living thank heaven I am an old man now and have done with all such vanities still this dimness of my eyes come nearer Susan and stand before the fullest blaze of the hearth now I behold you illuminated from head to foot and your clean cap and decent gown with the dear lock of gray hair across your forehead and a quiet smile about your mouth while the eyes alone are concealed by the red gleam of the fire upon your spectacles there you made me tremble again when the flame quivered my sweet Susan you quivered with it and grew indistinct as if melting into the warm light that my last glimpse of you might be as visionary as the first was full many a year since do you remember it? you stood on the little bridge over the brook that runs across kings beach into the sea it was twilight the waves rolling in the wind sweeping by the crimson clouds fading in the west and the silver moon brightening above the hill and on the bridge were you fluttering in the breeze like a sea bird that might skim away at your pleasure you seemed the daughter of the viewless wind a creature of the ocean foam and the crimson light whose merry life was spent in dancing on the crests of the billows that threw up their spray to support your footsteps as I drew nearer I fancied you akin to the race of mermaids and thought how pleasant it would be to dwell with you among the quiet coves in the shadow of the cliffs and to roam along secluded beaches of the purest sand and when our northern shores grew bleak to haunt the islands green and lonely far amid summer seas and yet it gladdened me after all this nonsense to find you nothing but a pretty young girl sadly perplexed with the rude behavior of the wind about your petticoats thus I did with Susan as with most of the things in my earlier days dipping her image into my mind and coloring it of a thousand fantastic hues before I could see her as she really was now Susan for a sober picture of our village it was a small collection of dwellings that seemed to have been cast up by the sea with the rockweed and marine plants that it vomits after a storm or to have come ashore among the pipe-staves of the other lumber which had been washed from the deck of an eastern schooner there was just space for the narrow and sandy street between the beach in front and a precipitous hill that lifted its rocky forehead in the rear among a waste of juniper bushes and the wild growth of a broken pasture the village was picturesque in the variety of its edifices though all were rude here stood a little old hovel built perhaps of driftwood there a row of boat houses from a two-story dwelling of dark and weather-beaten aspect the whole intermixed with one or two snug cottages painted white a sufficiency of pigsties and a shoemaker shop two grocery stores stand opposite each other in the center of the village these were the places of resort at their idle hours of a hearty throng of fishermen in red-bays shirts oil cloth trousers and boots of brown leather covering the whole leg but fitted to wade the ocean then walk the earth the wearer seemed amphibious as if they did but creep out of saltwater to sun themselves nor would it have been wonderful to see their lower limbs covered with clusters of little shellfish such as cling to rocks and old ship timber over which the tide ebbs and flows when their fleet of boats was weatherbound the butchers raised their price and the spit was busier than the frying pan for this was a place of fish and known as such to all the country round about the very air was fishy being perfumed with dead sculptons hard heads and dogfish strewn plentiful on the beach you see children the villages but little changed since your mother and I were young how like a dream it was when I bent over a pool of water one pleasant morning and saw that the ocean had dashed its spray over me and made me a fisherman there were the tarpauling the beige shirt the oil cloth trousers and seven league boots and they're my own features but so reddened with sunburn and sea breezes that me thought I had another face and on other shoulders too the seagulls and the looms and I had now all one trade we skimmed the crested waves and sought our prey beneath them the man with his keen enjoyment as the birds always when the east grew purple I launched my dory, my little flat bottomed skiff and rode cross-handed to point ledge the middle ledge or perhaps beyond egg rock often too did I anchor off dread ledge a spot of peril to ships unpiloted and sometimes spread an adventurous sail and tracked across the bay to south shore casting my lines in the sight of situate air nightfall I hauled my skiff high and dry on the beach laden with red rock cod or the white-bellied ones of deep water haddock bearing the black marks of St. Peter's fingers near the gills the long-bearded hake the water holds enough oil for a midnight lamp and now and then a mighty halibut with the back brought as my boat in the autumn I trolled and caught those lovely fish the mackerel when the wind was high when the whale boats anchored off the point knotted their slender masts at each other and the dories pitched and tossed in the surf when Nahant beach was thundering three miles off and the spray broke a hundred feet in air around the distant base of egg rock when the brimful and boisterous sea threatened to tumble over the street of our village then I made a holiday on shore many such a day that I sit snugly at Mr Bartlett's store attentive to the yarns of Uncle Parker Uncle to the whole village by rite of seniority but of southern blood with no kindred in New England his figure is before me now and thrown upon a mackerel barrel a lean old man of great height but bent with ears and twisted into an uncouth shape by seven broken limbs furrowed also in weather-worn as if every gale for the better part of a century had caught him somewhere on the sea he looked like a harbinger of tempest a shipmate of the flying Dutchman after innumerable voyages aboard men of war and merchant men fishing schooners and Chebacco boats the old salt had become master of a hand cart which he daily trundled about the vicinity and sometimes blew his fish horn through the streets of Salem one of Uncle Parker's eyes had been blown out with gunpowder and the other did but glimmer in its socket turning it upward as he spoke it was his delight to tell of cruises against the French and battles with his own shipmates when he and an antagonist used to be seated astride of a sailor's chest each fastened down by a spike nail through his trousers and there to fight it out sometimes he expaciated on the delicious flavor of the liagdan a greasy and goose-like fowl which the sailors catch with hook and line on the grand banks he dwelt with rapture on an interminable winter at the Isle of Sables where he had gladdened himself amid polar snows with the rum and sugar saved from the wreck of a West India schooner and wrathfully did he shake his fist as he related how a party of caped cod men had robbed him and his companions of their lawful spoil and sailed away with every keg of old Jamaica leaving him not a drop to drown his sorrow villains they were and of that wicked brotherhood who are said to tie lanterns to horse's tails to mislead the mariner along the dangerous shores of the Cape even now I seem to see the group of fishermen with that old salt in the midst one fellow sits on the counter a second bestrides an oil barrel a third lulls at his length on a parcel of new cod lines and another has planted the tarry seed of his trousers on a heap of salt which will shortly be sprinkled over a lot of fish they are a likely set of men some have voyaged to the east endies of the Pacific and most of them have sailed in marble head schooners to Newfoundland a few have been no farther than the middle banks and one or two have always fished along the shore but as Uncle Parker used to say they have all been christened in salt water and no more than men ever learn in the bushes a curious figure by way of contrast is a fish dealer from Farrop Country listening with eyes wide open to narratives that might startle Sinbad the sailor be it well with you my brethren ye are all gone some to your graves ashore and others to the depths of ocean but my faith is strong that ye are happy for whenever I behold your forms whether in dream or vision each departed friend is puffing his long nine and the mug of the right black strap goes round from lip to lip but where was the mermaid in those delightful times at a certain window near the center of the village appeared a pretty display of gingerbread men and horses picture books and ballads small fish hooks pens, needles, sugar plums and brass thimbles articles on which the young fisherman used to expend their money from pure gallantry what a picture Susan was behind the counter a slender maiden though the child of rugged parents she had the slimmest of all wastes brown hair curling on her neck and the complexion rather pale except when the sea breeze flushed it a few freckles she was in beauty spots beneath her eyelids how was it Susan that you talked and acted so carelessly yet always for the best doing whatever was right in your own eyes and never once doing wrong in mine nor shocked a taste that had been morbidly sensitive till now and whence had you that happiest gift of brightening every topic with an unsought gaiety quiet but irresistible so that even gloomy spirits felt your sunshine and did not shrink from it nature rocked the charm she made you a frank, simple, kind-hearted sensible and mirthful girl obeying nature you did free things without indelicacy displayed a maiden's thoughts to every eye and proved yourself as innocent as naked Eve it was beautiful to observe how her simple and happy nature mingled itself with mine she kindled a domestic fire within my heart and took up her dwelling there even in that chill and lonesome cavern hung round with the glittering icicles of fancy she gave me warmth of feeling while the influence of my mind made her contemplative I taught her to love the moonlight hour when the expanse of the encircled bay was smooth as a great mirror and slept in a transparent shadow while beyond my hand the wind rippled the dim ocean into a dreamy brightness which grew faint afar off without becoming gloomier I held her hand and pointed to the long surf wave as it rolled calmly on the beach in an unbroken line of silver we were silent together till its deep and peaceful murmur had swept by us when the Sabbath sun shone down into the recesses of the cliffs I led the mermaid dither and told her that those huge gray shattered rocks and her native sea that raged forever like a storm against them and her own slender beauty in so stern a scene were all combined into a strain of poetry but on the Sabbath Eve when her mother had gone early to bed and her gentle sister had smiled and left us as we sat alone by the quiet hearth with household things around it was her turn to make me feel that there was a deeper poetry and that this was the dearest hour of all thus went on our wooing till I had shot wildfowl enough to feather our bridal bed and the daughter of the sea was mine I built a cottage for Susan and myself and made a gateway in the form of a Gothic arch we bought a heifer with her first calf and had a little garden on the hillside to supply us with potatoes and green sauce for our fish our parlor, small and neat, was ornamented with our two profiles in one gilt frame and with shells and pretty pebbles on the mantelpiece selected from the sea's treasury of such things on Nahant Beach on the desk beneath the looking glass lay the Bible which I had begun to read aloud at the Book of Genesis and the singing book that Susan used for evening psalm except the almanac we had no other literature all that I heard of books was when in Indian history or tale of shipwreck was sold by a peddler or wandering subscription man to someone in the village and read through its owner's nose to a slumberous auditory like my brother Fisherman I grew into the belief that all human erudition was collected in our pedagogue whose green spectacles and solemn fizz as he passed to his little schoolhouse amid a waste of sand might have gained him a diploma from any college in New England in truth I dreaded him when our children were old enough to claim his care you remember Susan how I frowned, though you were pleased at this learned bands and comiums on their proficiency I feared to trust them even with the alphabet it was the key to a fatal treasure but I loved to lead them by the little hands along the beach and point to nature in the vast and the minute the sky, the sea, the green earth, the pebbles and the shells then did I discourse of the mighty works and co-extensive goodness of the deity with the simple wisdom of a man whose mind had profited by lonely days upon the deep and his heart by the strong and pure affections of his evening home sometimes my voice lost itself in a tremulous depth for I felt his eye upon me as I spoke once while my wife and all of us were gazing at ourselves in the mirror left behind the tide in a hollow of the sand I pointed to the pictured heaven below and bade her observe how religion was strewn everywhere in our path since even a casual pool of water recalled the idea of that home whither we were traveling to rest forever with our children suddenly your image Susan and all the little faces made up of yours and mine seemed to fade away and vanish around me leaving a pale visage like my own of former days within the frame of a large looking glass strange illusion my life glided on the past appearing to mingle with the present and absorb the future till the whole lies before me at a glance my manhood has long been waning with a stanched decay my earlier contemporaries after lives of unbroken health are all at rest without having known the weariness of later age and now with a wrinkled forehead and thin white hair as badges of my dignity I have become the patriarch, the uncle of the village I love that name it widens the circle of my sympathies it joins all the youthful to my household in the kindred of affection like Uncle Parker whose rheumatic bones were dashed against egg rock full 40 years ago I am a spinner of long yarns seated on the gunwale of a dory or on the sunny side of a boathouse where the warmth is grateful to my limbs or by my own hearth when a friend or two are there I overflow with talk and yet am never tedious with a broken voice I give utterance to such wisdom such, heaven be praised, is the vigor of my faculties that many a forgotten usage and traditions ancient in my youth and early adventures of myself or others hitherto effaced by things more recent acquire new distinctness in my memory I remember the happy days when the haddock were more numerous on all the fishing grounds than sculpins in the surf when the deep water cod swam close and shore on the dogfish with his poisonous horn had not learned to take the hook I can number every equinoctial storm in which to see his overwhelmed the street flooded the cellars of the village and hissed upon our kitchen hearth I give the history of the great whale that was landed on whale beach and whose jaws, being now my gateway will last for ages after my coffin shall have passed beneath them hence it is an easy digression to the halibut scarcely smaller than the whale which ran out six cod lines and hauled my dory to the mouth of Boston harbour before I could touch him with the gaff if melancholy accidents be the theme of conversations I tell how a friend of mine was taken out of his boat by an enormous shark and the sad true tale of a young man on the eve of marriage who had been nine days missing when his drowned body floated into the very pathway on marble head neck that had often led him to the dwelling of his bride as if the dripping corpse would have come where the mourner was with such awful fidelity did that lover return to fulfill his vows another favourite story is of a crazy maiden who conversed with angels and had the gift of prophecy and whom all the village loved and pitied though she went from door to door accusing us of sin exhorting to repentance and foretelling our destruction by flood or earthquake if the young men boast their knowledge of the ledges in sunken rocks I speak of pilots who knew the wind by its scent and the wave by its taste and could have steered blindfold to any port between Boston and Mount Desert guided only by the road to the shore the peculiar sound of the surf on each island beach and line of rocks along the coast thus do I talk and all my auditors grow wise while they deem it pastime I recollect no happier portion of my life than this my calm old age it is like the sunny and sheltered slope of a valley where late in the autumn the grass is greener than in August and intermixed with golden dandelions that have not been seen till now since the first warmth of the year but with me the verger and the flowers are not frostbitten in the midst of winter a playfulness has revisited my mind a sympathy with the young and gay an unpainful interest in the business of others a light and wandering curiosity arising perhaps from the sense that my toil on earth is ended and the brief hour till bedtime may be spent in play still I have fancy that there is a depth of feeling and reflection under this superficial levity peculiar to one who has lived long and is soon to die show me anything that would make an infant smile and you shall behold a gleam of mirth over the hoary ruin of my visage I can spend a pleasant hour in the sun watching the sports of the village children on the edge of the surf now they chase the retreating wave far down over the wet sand now it steals softly up to kiss their naked feet now it comes onward with threatening front and roars after the laughing crew as they scamper beyond its reach why should not an old man be married too when the great sea is at play with those little children I delight also to follow in the wake of a pleasure party of young men and girls strolling along the beach after an early supper at the point here with handkerchiefs at nose they bend over a heap of eelgrass entangled in which is a dead skate so oddly accoutred with two legs in a long tail that they mistake him for a drowned animal a few steps farther the ladies scream and the gentlemen make ready to protect them against the young shark of the dogfish kind rolling with a lifelike motion in the tide that has thrown him up next they are smitten with wonder at the black shells of a wagon load of live lobsters packed in rockweed for the country market and when they reach the fleet of doories just hauled ashore after the days fishing how do I laugh in my sleeve and sometimes roar outright at the simplicity of these young folks and the sly humor of the fishermen in winter when our village is thrown into a bustle by the arrival of perhaps a score of country dealers bargaining for frozen fish to be transported hundreds of miles and eaten fresh in Vermont or Canada I am a pleased but idle spectator in the throng for I launch my boat no more when the shore was solitary I have found a pleasure that seemed even to exalt my mind and observing the sports or contentions of two gulls as they wheeled and hovered about each other with horse screams one moment flapping on the foam of the wave and then soaring aloft till their white bosoms melted into the upper sunshine and the calm of the summer sunset I drag my aged limbs with a little ostentation of activity up to the rocky brow of the hill there I see the white sails of many a vessel outward bound or homeward from afar and the black trail of a vapor behind the eastern steamboat there too is the sun going down but not in gloom and there the illimitable ocean mingling with the sky to remind me of eternity but sweetest of all is the hour of cheerful musing and pleasant talk that comes between the dusk and the lighted candle by my glowing fireside and never even on the first Thanksgiving night when Susan and I sat alone with our hopes nor the second when a stranger had been sent to gladden us and be the visible image of our affection did I feel such joy as now all that belong to me are here death has taken none nor disease kept them away nor strife divided them from their parents or each other with neither poverty nor riches to disturb them nor the misery of desires beyond their lot they have kept New England's festival round the patriarch's board for I am a patriarch here I sit among my descendants in my old armchair and a memorial corner while the firelight throws an appropriate glory round my venerable frame Susan, my children something whispers me that this happiest hour must be the final one and that nothing remains but to bless you all and depart with a treasure of recollected joys to heaven will you meet me there alas your figures grow indistinct fading into pictures on the air and now to fainter outlines while the fire is glimmering on the walls of a familiar room and shows the book that I flung down and the sheet that I had left half written some 50 years ago I lift my eyes to the looking glass and perceive myself alone unless those be the mermaid's features retiring into the depths of the mirror with a tender and melancholy smile one feels a chillness not bodily but about the heart and moreover a foolish dread of looking behind him after these pastimes I can imagine precisely how a magician would sit down in gloom and terror after dismissing the shadows that had personated dead or distant people and stripping his cavern of the unreal splendor which had changed it to a palace and now for a moral to my reverie shall it be that since fancy can create so bright a dream of happiness it were better to dream on from youth to age than to awake and strive doubtfully for something real oh the slight tissue of a dream can no more preserve us from the stern reality of misfortune than a robe of cobweb could repel the wintry blast be this the moral then and chaste and warm affections humble wishes and honest toil for some useful end there is health for the mind and quiet for the heart the prospect of a happy life and the fairest hope of heaven end of The Village Uncle by Nathaniel Hawthorne read by Nicodemus