XISONG SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL
Introduction to
Literature
Instructor: Monica Wang
2012 Fall
Name ______________
Class ______________
No
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Contents
Fiction
Frank R. Stockton
The Lady or The Tiger
O. Henry
The Gift of Magi
The Last Leaf
Oscar Wilde
The Nightingale and The Rose
The Selfish Giant
Guy de Maupassant
The Necklace
William Somerset Maugham
The Luncheon
James Thurber
The Owl Who Was God
The Unicorn in The Garden
The Lottery
Suzanne Collins
Hunger Games
Edgar Allan Poe
The Black Cat
The Tale-Tell Heart
Mary Shelly
Frankenstein
Bram Stocker
Dracula
Drama
Shakespeare
Romeo and Juliet
Poetry
Shall I Compare Thee
How Do I Love Thee
She Walks in Beauty
A Red, Red Rose
Annabelle Lee
Hope Is The Thing With Feathers
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
The Road Not Taken
Daffodils
O Captain My Captain
4
5
9
10
15
21
22
27
32
33
42
43
48
49
51
53
64
65
73
83
84
88
90
95
96
109
110
124
125
126
127
128
130
131
132
133
134
Non Fiction
Chief Seatle’s Letter
The Gettysburg Address
A Fable For Tomorrow
The Diary of Anne Frank
136
138
139
141
FICTION
3
Frank R. Stockton
Francis (Frank) Richard Stockton was born in Blockley, Pennsylvania,
on April 5, 1834.
At Central High School he achieved his first success as a writer by having
one his short stories selected as the top entry of a contest by the Boys’ and
Girls’ Journal. In 1852, Stockton ignored his father’s advice to study
medicine and instead became a wood engraver. However,he continued to
pursue his writing interests. It wasn’t long before he began to pursue
writing on a regular basis, writing for Philadelphia newspapers and
submitting stories to humor magazines and children’s magazines. In 1867,
Stockton’s story “Ting-a-Ling,” a fantastical tale about a fairy, became a
success. From then on, he became editor and the chief contributor for
magazines. In 1878, Stockton was forced to leave his position at the
magazine because of his failing eyesight. However, it did not stop him from
pursuing an expansive literary career.
Stockton’s first major success arrived with the 1879 publication of Rudder
Grange, a collection of stories based on a married couple and their servant.
His most famous work, however, was the short story, “The Lady, or the
Tiger?” which was published in 1882 by Century magazine and brought
Stockton much acclaim. This story, with its ambiguous ending, has been
adapted into a play version, a film version, and addressed by Robert
Browning in a poem and by scholars in the Hindu community.
Stockton has had two of his works honored with the Lewis Carroll Shelf
Award. During his lifetime, his works also gained him admittance into the
Century Club and the Authors Club.
Stockton died of cerebral hemorrhage on April 20, 1902, in Washington
D.C.
Adapted from http://pabook.libraries.psu.edu/palitmap/bios/Stockton__Francis_Richard.html
4
The Lady or The Tiger?
By Frank R. Stockton
Long ago, in the very olden time, there lived a semi-barbaric king,
Some of his ideas were progressive. But others caused people to suffer.
One of the king's ideas was a public arena as an agent of poetic justice.
Crime was punished, or innocence was decided, by the result of chance.
When a person was accused of a crime, his future would be judged in the
public arena.
All the people would gather in this building. The king sat high up on
his ceremonial chair. He gave a sign. A door under him opened. The
accused person stepped out into the arena. Directly opposite the king were
two doors. They were side by side, exactly alike. The person on trial had to
walk directly to these doors and open one of them. He could open
whichever door he pleased.
If the accused man opened one door, out came a hungry tiger, the
fiercest in the land. The tiger immediately jumped on him and tore him to
pieces as punishment for his guilt. The case of the suspect was thus decided.
Iron bells rang sadly. Great cries went up from the paid mourners. And
the people, with heads hanging low and sad hearts, slowly made their way
home. They mourned greatly that one so young and fair, or so old and
respected, should have died this way.
But, if the accused opened the other door, there came forth from it a
woman, chosen especially for the person. To this lady he was immediately
married, in honor of his innocence. It was not a problem that he might
5
already have a wife and family, or that he might have chosen to marry
another woman. The king permitted nothing to interfere with his great
method of punishment and reward.
Another door opened under the king, and a clergyman, singers, dancers
and musicians joined the man and the lady. The marriage ceremony was
quickly completed. Then the bells made cheerful noises. The people
shouted happily. And the innocent man led the new wife to his home,
following children who threw flowers on their path.
This was the king's method of carrying out justice. Its fairness
appeared perfect. The accused person could not know which door was
hiding the lady. He opened either as he pleased without knowing whether,
in the next minute, he was to be killed or married.
Sometimes the fierce animal came out of one door. Sometimes it came
out of the other.
This method was a popular one. When the people gathered together on
one of the great trial days, they never knew whether they would see a
bloody killing or a happy ending. So everyone was always interested. And
the thinking part of the community would bring no charge of unfairness
against this plan. Did not the accused person have the whole matter in his
own hands?
The king had a beautiful daughter who was like him in many ways. He
loved her above all humanity. The princess secretly loved a young man who
was the best-looking and bravest in the land. But he was a commoner, not
part of an important family.
One day, the king discovered the relationship between his daughter
and the young man. The man was immediately put in prison. A day was set
for his trial in the king's public arena. This, of course, was an especially
important event. Never before had a common subject been brave enough to
love the daughter of the king.
The king knew that the young man would be punished, even if he
opened the right door. And the king would take pleasure in watching the
series of events, which would judge whether or not the man had done
wrong in loving the princess.
The day of the trial arrived. From far and near the people gathered in
the arena and outside its walls. The king and his advisers were in their
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places, opposite the two doors. All was ready. The sign was given. The door
under the king opened and the lover of the princess entered the arena.
Tall, beautiful and fair, his appearance was met with a sound of
approval and tension. Half the people had not known so perfect a young
man lived among them. No wonder the princess loved him! What a terrible
thing for him to be there!
As the young man entered the public arena, he turned to bend to the
king. But he did not at all think of the great ruler. The young man's eyes
instead were fixed on the princess, who sat to the right of her father.
From the day it was decided that the sentence of her lover should be
decided in the arena, she had thought of nothing but this event.
The princess had more power, influence and force of character than
anyone who had ever before been interested in such a case. She had done
what no other person had done. She had possessed herself of the secret of
the doors. She knew behind which door stood the tiger, and behind which
waited the lady. Gold, and the power of a woman's will, had brought the
secret to the princess.
She also knew who the lady was. The lady was one of the loveliest in
the kingdom. Now and then the princess had seen her looking at and talking
to the young man.
The princess hated the woman behind that silent door. She hated her
with all the intensity of the blood passed to her through long lines of cruel
ancestors.
Her lover turned to look at the princess. His eye met hers as she sat
there, paler and whiter than anyone in the large ocean of tense faces around
her. He saw that she knew behind which door waited the tiger, and behind
which stood the lady. He had expected her to know it.
The only hope for the young man was based on the success of the
princess in discovering this mystery. When he looked at her, he saw that she
had been successful, as he knew she would succeed.
Then his quick and tense look asked the question: "Which?" It was as
clear to her as if he shouted it from where he stood. There was not time to
be lost.
7
The princess raised her hand, and made a short, quick movement
toward the right. No one but her lover saw it. Every eye but his was fixed
on the man in the arena.
He turned, and with a firm and quick step he walked across the empty
space. Every heart stopped beating. Every breath was held. Every eye was
fixed upon that man. He went to the door on the right and opened it.
Now, the point of the story is this: Did the tiger come out of that door,
or did the lady?
The more we think about this question, the harder it is to answer. It
involves a study of the human heart. Think of it not as if the decision of the
question depended upon yourself. But as if it depended upon that
hot-blooded princess, her soul at a white heat under the fires of sadness and
jealousy. She had lost him, but who should have him?
How often, in her waking hours and in her dreams, had she started in
wild terror, and covered her face with her hands? She thought of her lover
opening the door on the other side of which waited the sharp teeth of the
tiger!
But how much oftener had she seen him open the other door? How had
she ground her teeth, and torn her hair, when she had seen his happy face as
he opened the door of the lady! How her soul had burned in pain when she
had seen him run to meet that woman, with her look of victory. When she
had seen the two of them get married. And when she had seen them walk
away together upon their path of flowers, followed by the happy shouts of
the crowd, in which her one sad cry was lost!
Would it not be better for him to die quickly, and go to wait for her in
that blessed place of the future? And yet, that tiger, those cries, that blood!
Her decision had been shown quickly. But it had been made after days
and nights of thought. She had known she would be asked. And she had
decided what she would answer. And she had moved her hand to the right.
The question of her decision is one not to be lightly considered. And it
is not for me to set myself up as the one person able to answer it. And so I
leave it with all of you:
Which came out of the open door – the lady, or the tiger?
(From VOA Special English)
8
O Henry
William Sidney Porter is much better known under his pen name "O.
Henry." He was born September 11, 1862 in North Carolina, where he spent
his childhood. His only formal education was received at the school of his
Aunt Lina, where he developed a lifelong love of books. In his uncle's
pharmacy, he became a licensed pharmacist and was also known for his
sketches and cartoons of the townspeople of Greensboro.
In 1884, Porter moved to Austin. It was during this time that Porter
first used his pen name, O. Henry.
In 1891, Porter became a teller with the First National Bank in Austin.
After a few years, however, he left the bank and founded the Rolling Stone,
an unsuccessful humor weekly. Starting in 1895 he wrote a column for the
Houston Daily Post.
Meanwhile, Porter was accused of embezzling funds dating back to
his employment at the First National Bank. Leaving his wife and young
daughter in Austin, Porter fled to New Orleans, then to Honduras, but soon
returned due to his wife's deteriorating health. She died soon afterward, and
in early 1898 Porter was found guilty of the banking charges and sentenced
to five years in an Ohio prison.
From this low point in Porter's life, he began a remarkable comeback.
Three years and about a dozen short stories later, he emerged from prison as
"O. Henry" to help shield his true identity. He moved to New York City,
where over the next ten years before his death in 1910, he published over
300 stories and gained worldwide acclaim as America's favorite short story
writer.
Porter died on June 5, 1910 in New York City at the age of forty
seven. An alcoholic, he died virtually penniless.
9
The Gift of the Magi
by O. Henry
One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it
was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the
grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one's cheeks burned
with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied.
Three times Della counted it. One dollar and eighty-seven cents. And the
next day would be Christmas.
There was clearly nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little
couch and howl. So Della did it. Which instigates the moral reflection that
life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.
While the mistress of the home is gradually subsiding from the first
stage to the second, take a look at the home. A furnished flat at $8 per week.
It did not exactly beggar description, but it certainly had that word on the
lookout for the mendicancy squad.
In the vestibule below was a letter-box into which no letter would go, and
an electric button from which no mortal finger could coax a ring. Also
appertaining thereunto was a card bearing the name "Mr. James Dillingham
Young."
The "Dillingham" had been flung to the breeze during a former period
of prosperity when its possessor was being paid $30 per week. Now, when
the income was shrunk to $20, though, they were thinking seriously of
contracting to a modest and unassuming D. But whenever Mr. James
Dillingham Young came home and reached his flat above he was called
"Jim" and greatly hugged by Mrs. James Dillingham Young, already
introduced to you as Della. Which is all very good.
Della finished her cry and attended to her cheeks with the powder rag.
She stood by the window and looked out dully at a gray cat walking a gray
fence in a gray backyard. Tomorrow would be Christmas Day, and she had
only $1.87 with which to buy Jim a present. She had been saving every
penny she could for months, with this result. Twenty dollars a week doesn't
go far. Expenses had been greater than she had calculated. They always are.
Only $1.87 to buy a present for Jim. Her Jim. Many a happy hour she had
spent planning for something nice for him. Something fine and rare and
sterling—something just a little bit near to being worthy of the honor of
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being owned by Jim.
There was a pier-glass between the windows of the room. Perhaps you
have seen a pier-glass in an $8 flat. A very thin and very agile person may,
by observing his reflection in a rapid sequence of longitudinal strips, obtain
a fairly accurate conception of his looks. Della, being slender, had mastered
the art.
Suddenly she whirled from the window and stood before the glass. Her eyes
were shining brilliantly, but her face had lost its color within twenty
seconds. Rapidly she pulled down her hair and let it fall to its full length.
Now, there were two possessions of the James Dillingham Youngs in
which they both took a mighty pride. One was Jim's gold watch that had
been his father's and his grandfather's. The other was Della's hair. Had the
queen of Sheba lived in the flat across the airshaft, Della would have let her
hair hang out the window some day to dry just to depreciate Her Majesty's
jewels and gifts. Had King Solomon been the janitor, with all his treasures
piled up in the basement, Jim would have pulled out his watch every time
he passed, just to see him pluck at his beard from envy.
So now Della's beautiful hair fell about her rippling and shining like a
cascade of brown waters. It reached below her knee and made itself almost
a garment for her. And then she did it up again nervously and quickly. Once
she faltered for a minute and stood still while a tear or two splashed on the
worn red carpet.
On went her old brown jacket; on went her old brown hat. With a whirl
of skirts and with the brilliant sparkle still in her eyes, she fluttered out the
door and down the stairs to the street.
Where she stopped the sign read: "Mne. Sofronie. Hair Goods of All
Kinds." One flight up Della ran, and collected herself, panting. Madame,
large, too white, chilly, hardly looked the "Sofronie."
"Will you buy my hair?" asked Della.
"I buy hair," said Madame. "Take yer hat off and let's have a sight at
the looks of it."
Down rippled the brown cascade.
"Twenty dollars," said Madame, lifting the mass with a practiced hand.
"Give it to me quick," said Della.
Oh, and the next two hours tripped by on rosy wings. Forget the
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hashed metaphor. She was ransacking the stores for Jim's present.
She found it at last. It surely had been made for Jim and no one else.
There was no other like it in any of the stores, and she had turned all of
them inside out. It was a platinum fob chain simple and chaste in design,
properly proclaiming its value by substance alone and not by meretricious
ornamentation—as all good things should do. It was even worthy of The
Watch. As soon as she saw it she knew that it must be Jim's. It was like him.
Quietness and value—the description applied to both. Twenty-one dollars
they took from her for it, and she hurried home with the 87 cents. With that
chain on his watch Jim might be properly anxious about the time in any
company. Grand as the watch was, he sometimes looked at it on the sly on
account of the old leather strap that he used in place of a chain.
When Della reached home her intoxication gave way a little to
prudence and reason. She got out her curling irons and lighted the gas and
went to work repairing the ravages made by generosity added to love.
Which is always a tremendous task, dear friends--a mammoth task.
Within forty minutes her head was covered with tiny, close-lying curls that
made her look wonderfully like a truant schoolboy. She looked at her
reflection in the mirror long, carefully, and critically.
"If Jim doesn't kill me," she said to herself, "before he takes a second
look at me, he'll say I look like a Coney Island chorus girl. But what could I
do—oh! what could I do with a dollar and eighty seven cents?"
At 7 o'clock the coffee was made and the frying-pan was on the back
of the stove hot and ready to cook the chops.
Jim was never late. Della doubled the fob chain in her hand and sat on
the corner of the table near the door that he always entered. Then she heard
his step on the stair away down on the first flight, and she turned white for
just a moment. She had a habit for saying little silent prayer about the
simplest everyday things, and now she whispered: "Please God, make him
think I am still pretty."
The door opened and Jim stepped in and closed it. He looked thin and
very serious. Poor fellow, he was only twenty-two—and to be burdened
with a family! He needed a new overcoat and he was without gloves.
Jim stopped inside the door, as immovable as a setter at the scent of
quail. His eyes were fixed upon Della, and there was an expression in them
12
that she could not read, and it terrified her. It was not anger, nor surprise,
nor disapproval, nor horror, nor any of the sentiments that she had been
prepared for. He simply stared at her fixedly with that peculiar expression
on his face.
Della wriggled off the table and went for him.
"Jim, darling," she cried, "don't look at me that way. I had my hair cut
off and sold because I couldn't have lived through Christmas without giving
you a present. It'll grow out again—you won't mind, will you? I just had to
do it. My hair grows awfully fast. Say `Merry Christmas!' Jim, and let's be
happy. You don't know what a nice—what a beautiful, nice gift I've got for
you."
"You've cut off your hair?" asked Jim, laboriously, as if he had not
arrived at that patent fact yet even after the hardest mental labor.
"Cut it off and sold it," said Della. "Don't you like me just as well,
anyhow? I'm me without my hair, ain't I?"
Jim looked about the room curiously.
"You say your hair is gone?" he said, with an air almost of idiocy.
"You needn't look for it," said Della. "It's sold, I tell you—sold and
gone, too. It's Christmas Eve, boy. Be good to me, for it went for you.
Maybe the hairs of my head were numbered," she went on with sudden
serious sweetness, "but nobody could ever count my love for you. Shall I
put the chops on, Jim?"
Out of his trance Jim seemed quickly to wake. He enfolded his Della.
For ten seconds let us regard with discreet scrutiny some inconsequential
object in the other direction. Eight dollars a week or a million a year—what
is the difference? A mathematician or a wit would give you the wrong
answer. The magi brought valuable gifts, but that was not among them. This
dark assertion will be illuminated later on.
Jim drew a package from his overcoat pocket and threw it upon the
table.
"Don't make any mistake, Dell," he said, "about me. I don't think
there's anything in the way of a haircut or a shave or a shampoo that could
make me like my girl any less. But if you'll unwrap that package you may
see why you had me going a while at first."
White fingers and nimble tore at the string and paper. And then an
13
ecstatic scream of joy; and then, alas! a quick feminine change to hysterical
tears and wails, necessitating the immediate employment of all the
comforting powers of the lord of the flat.
For there lay The Combs—the set of combs, side and back, that Della
had worshipped long in a Broadway window. Beautiful combs, pure tortoise
shell, with jeweled rims—just the shade to wear in the beautiful vanished
hair. They were expensive combs, she knew, and her heart had simply
craved and yearned over them without the least hope of possession. And
now, they were hers, but the tresses that should have adorned the coveted
adornments were gone.
But she hugged them to her bosom, and at length she was able to look
up with dim eyes and a smile and say: "My hair grows so fast, Jim!"
And then Della leaped up like a little singed cat and cried, "Oh, oh!"
Jim had not yet seen his beautiful present. She held it out to him
eagerly upon her open palm. The dull precious metal seemed to flash with a
reflection of her bright and ardent spirit.
"Isn't it a dandy, Jim? I hunted all over town to find it. You'll have to
look at the time a hundred times a day now. Give me your watch. I want to
see how it looks on it."
Instead of obeying, Jim tumbled down on the couch and put his hands
under the back of his head and smiled.
"Dell," said he, "let's put our Christmas presents away and keep 'em a
while. They're too nice to use just at present. I sold the watch to get the
money to buy your combs. And now suppose you put the chops on."
The magi, as you know, were wise men—wonderfully wise men—who
brought gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving
Christmas presents. Being wise, their gifts were no doubt wise ones,
possibly bearing the privilege of exchange in case of duplication. And here I
have lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children
in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures
of their house. But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that
of all who give gifts these two were the wisest. O all who give and receive
gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the
magi.
14
The Last Leaf
In a little district west of Washington Square the streets have run crazy
and broken themselves into small strips called "places." These "places"
make strange angles and curves. One Street crosses itself a time or two. An
artist once discovered a valuable possibility in this street. Suppose a
collector with a bill for paints, paper and canvas should, in traversing this
route, suddenly meet himself coming back, without a cent having been paid
on account!
So, to quaint old Greenwich Village the art people soon came prowling,
hunting for north windows and eighteenth-century gables and Dutch attics
and low rents. Then they imported some pewter mugs and a chafing dish or
two from Sixth Avenue, and became a "colony."
At the top of a squatty, three-story brick Sue and Johnsy had their studio.
"Johnsy" was familiar for Joanna. One was from Maine; the other from
California. They had met at the table d'hôte of an Eighth Street
"Delmonico's," and found their tastes in art, chicory salad and bishop
sleeves so congenial that the joint studio resulted.
That was in May. In November a cold, unseen stranger, whom the
doctors called Pneumonia, stalked about the colony, touching one here and
there with his icy fingers. Over on the east side this ravager strode boldly,
smiting his victims by scores, but his feet trod slowly through the maze of
the narrow and moss-grown "places."
Mr. Pneumonia was not what you would call a chivalric old gentleman.
A mite of a little woman with blood thinned by California zephyrs was
hardly fair game for the red-fisted, short-breathed old duffer. But Johnsy he
smote; and she lay, scarcely moving, on her painted iron bedstead, looking
through the small Dutch window-panes at the blank side of the next brick
house.
One morning the busy doctor invited Sue into the hallway with a
shaggy, gray eyebrow.
"She has one chance in - let us say, ten," he said, as he shook down the
mercury in his clinical thermometer. " And that chance is for her to want to
live. This way people have of lining-u on the side of the undertaker makes
the entire pharmacopoeia look silly. Your little lady has made up her mind
that she's not going to get well. Has she anything on her mind?"
15
"She - she wanted to paint the Bay of Naples some day." said Sue.
"Paint? - bosh! Has she anything on her mind worth thinking twice - a
man for instance?"
"A man?" said Sue, with a jew's-harp twang in her voice. "Is a man
worth - but, no, doctor; there is nothing of the kind."
"Well, it is the weakness, then," said the doctor. "I will do all that
science, so far as it may filter through my efforts, can accomplish. But
whenever my patient begins to count the carriages in her funeral procession
I subtract 50 per cent from the curative power of medicines. If you will get
her to ask one question about the new winter styles in cloak sleeves I will
promise you a one-in-five chance for her, instead of one in ten."
After the doctor had gone Sue went into the workroom and cried a
Japanese napkin to a pulp. Then she swaggered into Johnsy's room with her
drawing board, whistling ragtime.
Johnsy lay, scarcely making a ripple under the bedclothes, with her face
toward the window. Sue stopped whistling, thinking she was asleep.
She arranged her board and began a pen-and-ink drawing to illustrate a
magazine story. Young artists must pave their way to Art by drawing
pictures for magazine stories that young authors write to pave their way to
Literature.
As Sue was sketching a pair of elegant horseshow riding trousers and a
monocle of the figure of the hero, an Idaho cowboy, she heard a low sound,
several times repeated. She went quickly to the bedside.
Johnsy's eyes were open wide. She was looking out the window and
counting - counting backward.
"Twelve," she said, and little later "eleven"; and then "ten," and "nine";
and then "eight" and "seven", almost together.
Sue look solicitously out of the window. What was there to count?
There was only a bare, dreary yard to be seen, and the blank side of the
brick house twenty feet away. An old, old ivy vine, gnarled and decayed at
the roots, climbed half way up the brick wall. The cold breath of autumn
had stricken its leaves from the vine until its skeleton branches clung,
almost bare, to the crumbling bricks.
"What is it, dear?" asked Sue.
"Six," said Johnsy, in almost a whisper. "They're falling faster now.
16
Three days ago there were almost a hundred. It made my head ache to count
them. But now it's easy. There goes another one. There are only five left
now."
"Five what, dear? Tell your Sudie."
"Leaves. On the ivy vine. When the last one falls I must go, too. I've
known that for three days. Didn't the doctor tell you?"
"Oh, I never heard of such nonsense," complained Sue, with
magnificent scorn. "What have old ivy leaves to do with your getting well?
And you used to love that vine so, you naughty girl. Don't be a goosey. Why,
the doctor told me this morning that your chances for getting well real soon
were - let's see exactly what he said - he said the chances were ten to one!
Why, that's almost as good a chance as we have in New York when we ride
on the street cars or walk past a new building. Try to take some broth now,
and let Sudie go back to her drawing, so she can sell the editor man with it,
and buy port wine for her sick child, and pork chops for her greedy self."
"You needn't get any more wine," said Johnsy, keeping her eyes fixed
out the window. "There goes another. No, I don't want any broth. That
leaves just four. I want to see the last one fall before it gets dark. Then I'll
go, too."
"Johnsy, dear," said Sue, bending over her, "will you promise me to
keep your eyes closed, and not look out the window until I am done
working? I must hand those drawings in by to-morrow. I need the light, or I
would draw the shade down."
"Couldn't you draw in the other room?" asked Johnsy, coldly.
"I'd rather be here by you," said Sue. "Beside, I don't want you to keep
looking at those silly ivy leaves."
"Tell me as soon as you have finished," said Johnsy, closing her eyes,
and lying white and still as fallen statue, "because I want to see the last one
fall. I'm tired of waiting. I'm tired of thinking. I want to turn loose my hold
on everything, and go sailing down, down, just like one of those poor, tired
leaves."
"Try to sleep," said Sue. "I must call Behrman up to be my model for
the old hermit miner. I'll not be gone a minute. Don't try to move 'til I come
back."
Old Behrman was a painter who lived on the ground floor beneath
17
them. He was past sixty and had a Michael Angelo's Moses beard curling
down from the head of a satyr along with the body of an imp. Behrman was
a failure in art. Forty years he had wielded the brush without getting near
enough to touch the hem of his Mistress's robe. He had been always about
to paint a masterpiece, but had never yet begun it. For several years he had
painted nothing except now and then a daub in the line of commerce or
advertising. He earned a little by serving as a model to those young artists
in the colony who could not pay the price of a professional. He drank gin to
excess, and still talked of his coming masterpiece. For the rest he was a
fierce little old man, who scoffed terribly at softness in any one, and who
regarded himself as especial mastiff-in-waiting to protect the two young
artists in the studio above.
Sue found Behrman smelling strongly of juniper berries in his dimly
lighted den below. In one corner was a blank canvas on an easel that had
been waiting there for twenty-five years to receive the first line of the
masterpiece. She told him of Johnsy's fancy, and how she feared she would,
indeed, light and fragile as a leaf herself, float away, when her slight hold
upon the world grew weaker.
Old Behrman, with his red eyes plainly streaming, shouted his
contempt and derision for such idiotic imaginings.
"Vass!" he cried. "Is dere people in de world mit der foolishness to die
because leafs dey drop off from a confounded vine? I haf not heard of such
a thing. No, I will not bose as a model for your fool hermit-dunderhead. Vy
do you allow dot silly pusiness to come in der brain of her? Ach, dot poor
leetle Miss Yohnsy."
"She is very ill and weak," said Sue, "and the fever has left her mind
morbid and full of strange fancies. Very well, Mr. Behrman, if you do not
care to pose for me, you needn't. But I think you are a horrid old - old
flibbertigibbet."
"You are just like a woman!" yelled Behrman. "Who said I will not
bose? Go on. I come mit you. For half an hour I haf peen trying to say dot I
am ready to bose. Gott! dis is not any blace in which one so goot as Miss
Yohnsy shall lie sick. Some day I vill baint a masterpiece, and ve shall all
go away. Gott! yes."
Johnsy was sleeping when they went upstairs. Sue pulled the shade
18
down to the window-sill, and motioned Behrman into the other room. In
there they peered out the window fearfully at the ivy vine. Then they looked
at each other for a moment without speaking. A persistent, cold rain was
falling, mingled with snow. Behrman, in his old blue shirt, took his seat as
the hermit miner on an upturned kettle for a rock.
When Sue awoke from an hour's sleep the next morning she found
Johnsy with dull, wide-open eyes staring at the drawn green shade.
"Pull it up; I want to see," she ordered, in a whisper.
Wearily Sue obeyed.
But, lo! after the beating rain and fierce gusts of wind that had endured
through the livelong night, there yet stood out against the brick wall one ivy
leaf. It was the last one on the vine. Still dark green near its stem, with its
serrated edges tinted with the yellow of dissolution and decay, it hung
bravely from the branch some twenty feet above the ground.
"It is the last one," said Johnsy. "I thought it would surely fall during
the night. I heard the wind. It will fall to-day, and I shall die at the same
time."
"Dear, dear!" said Sue, leaning her worn face down to the pillow,
"think of me, if you won't think of yourself. What would I do?"
But Johnsy did not answer. The lonesomest thing in all the world is a
soul when it is making ready to go on its mysterious, far journey. The fancy
seemed to possess her more strongly as one by one the ties that bound her to
friendship and to earth were loosed.
The day wore away, and even through the twilight they could see the
lone ivy leaf clinging to its stem against the wall. And then, with the
coming of the night the north wind was again loosed, while the rain still
beat against the windows and pattered down from the low Dutch eaves.
When it was light enough Johnsy, the merciless, commanded that the
shade be raised.
The ivy leaf was still there.
Johnsy lay for a long time looking at it. And then she called to Sue,
who was stirring her chicken broth over the gas stove.
"I've been a bad girl, Sudie," said Johnsy. "Something has made that
last leaf stay there to show me how wicked I was. It is a sin to want to die.
You may bring a me a little broth now, and some milk with a little port in it,
19
and - no; bring me a hand-mirror first, and then pack some pillows about
me, and I will sit up and watch you cook."
And hour later she said:
"Sudie, some day I hope to paint the Bay of Naples."
The doctor came in the afternoon, and Sue had an excuse to go into the
hallway as he left.
"Even chances," said the doctor, taking Sue's thin, shaking hand in his.
"With good nursing you'll win." And now I must see another case I have
downstairs. Behrman, his name is - some kind of an artist, I believe.
Pneumonia, too. He is an old, weak man, and the attack is acute. There is no
hope for him; but he goes to the hospital to-day to be made more
comfortable."
The next day the doctor said to Sue: "She's out of danger. You won.
Nutrition and care now - that's all."
And that afternoon Sue came to the bed where Johnsy lay, contentedly
knitting a very blue and very useless woollen shoulder scarf, and put one
arm around her, pillows and all.
"I have something to tell you, white mouse," she said. "Mr. Behrman died
of pneumonia to-day in the hospital. He was ill only two days. The janitor
found him the morning of the first day in his room downstairs helpless with
pain. His shoes and clothing were wet through and icy cold. They couldn't
imagine where he had been on such a dreadful night. And then they found a
lantern, still lighted, and a ladder that had been dragged from its place, and
some scattered brushes, and a palette with green and yellow colors mixed
on it, and - look out the window, dear, at the last ivy leaf on the wall. Didn't
you wonder why it never fluttered or moved when the wind blew? Ah,
darling, it's Behrman's masterpiece - he painted it there the night that the
last leaf fell."
20
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde was born on 16th October 1854 in Dublin, Ireland. His
parents were well known and attracted a degree of gossip for their
extravagant lifestyles. In 1964, his father Wille Wilde was knighted for his
services to medicine. However his pride in receiving this honour was
overshadowed by an allegation of rape by one of his patients. Although
never proved, it cast a shadow over William Wilde.
Oscar Wilde proved to be a student of great talent. He was awarded a
scholarship to Trinity College Dublin. Here he studied the classics, in
particular developing an interest in the Greek philosophers and the
Hellenistic view of life. From Trinity College he won a scholarship to
Magdalen College, Oxford University. He enjoyed his time in Oxford and
was able to develop his poetic sensibilities and love of literature. He also
became more conscious of his bisexual nature.
He was a brilliant scholar, but also increasingly rebellious. Thus, after
a while he lost interest in pursuing an academic career in Oxford and moved
to London. It was in London that he was able to skillfully enter into high
society, soon becoming well known as a playwright and noted wit. Oscar
Wilde became famous throughout London society.
For his “crime” of homosexual acts, Wilde was subject to two years
hard labour in Wandsworth and then Reading Gaol. This experience deeply
shocked and affected the previously ebullient Wilde. In some respects he
never really recovered. However he retained his wit and continued to write,
heavily influenced by his chastening experiences.
Wilde was not an overtly political commentator, but through his plays
there is an underlying critique of social norms that are illumined for their
absurdities.
Wilde remains a fascinating character; someone who lived life to the
full, experiencing both the joy and tragedy of society’s vacillating
judgments. With the distance of over a century, it is easier to judge Wilde
for his unique contributions to literature rather than through the eyes of
Victorian moral standards. His quotes have become immortal a fitting
tribute to a genius of the witticism
“I am so clever that sometimes I don’t understand a single word of what I
am saying.”
-Oscar Wilde
Adapted from http://www.biographyonline.net/poets/oscar_wilde.html
21
The Nightingale and The Rose
by Oscar Wilde
'She said that she would dance with me if I brought her red roses,'
cried the young Student; 'but in all my garden there is no red rose.'
From her nest in the holm-oak tree the Nightingale heard him, and she
looked out through the leaves, and wondered.
'No red rose in all my garden!' he cried, and his beautiful eyes filled
with tears. 'Ah, on what little things does happiness depend! I have read all
that the wise men have written, and all the secrets of philosophy are mine,
yet for want of a red rose is my life made wretched.'
'Here at last is a true lover,' said the Nightingale. 'Night after night
have I sung of him, though I knew him not: night after night have I told his
story to the stars, and now I see him. His hair is dark as the
hyacinth-blossom, and his lips are red as the rose of his desire; but passion
has made his lace like pale Ivory, and sorrow has set her seal upon his
brow.'
'The Prince gives a ball to-morrow night,' murmured the young
Student, 'and my love will be of the company. If I bring her a red rose she
will dance with me till dawn. If I bring her a red rose, I shall hold her in my
arms, and she will lean her head upon my shoulder, and her hand will be
clasped in mine. But there is no red rose in my garden, so I shall sit lonely,
and she will pass me by. She will have no heed of me, and my heart will
break.'
'Here indeed is the true lover,' said the Nightingale. 'What I sing of he
suffers: what is joy to me, to him is pain. Surely Love is a wonderful thing.
It is more precious than emeralds, and dearer than fine opals. Pearls and
pomegranates cannot buy it, nor is it set forth in the market-place. it may
not be purchased of the merchants, 'or can it be weighed out in the balance
for gold.'
<2>
'The musicians will sit in their gallery,' said the young Student, 'and
play upon their stringed instruments, and my love will dance to the sound of
the harp and the violin. She will dance so lightly that her feet will not touch
the floor, and the courtiers in their gay dresses will throng round her. But
22
with me she will not dance, for I have no red rose to give her;' and he flung
himself down on the grass, and buried his face in his hands, and wept.
'Why is he weeping?' asked a little Green Lizard, as he ran past him
with his tail in the air.
'Why, indeed?' said a Butterfly, who was fluttering about after a
sunbeam.
'Why, indeed?' whispered a Daisy to his neighbour, in a soft, low
voice.
'He is weeping for a red rose,' said the Nightingale.
'For a red rose!' they cried; 'how very ridiculous!' and the little Lizard,
who was something of a cynic, laughed outright.
But the Nightingale understood the secret of the Student's sorrow, and
she sat silent in the oak-tree, and thought about the mystery of Love.
Suddenly she spread her brown wings for flight, and soared into the air. She
passed through the grove like a shadow, and like a shadow she sailed across
the garden.
In the centre of the grass-plot was standing a beautiful Rose-tree, and
when she saw it, she flew over to it, and lit upon a spray.
'Give me a red rose,' she cried, 'and I will sing you my sweetest song.'
But the Tree shook its head.
'My roses are white,' it answered; 'as white as the foam of the sea, and
whiter than the snow upon the mountain. But go to my brother who grows
round the old sun-dial, and perhaps he will give you what you want.'
<3>
So the Nightingale flew over to the Rose-tree that was growing round
the old sun-dial.
'Give me a red rose,' she cried, 'and I will sing you my sweetest song.'
But the Tree shook its head.
'My roses are yellow,' it answered; 'as yellow as the hair of the
mermaiden who sits upon an amber throne, and yellower than the daffodil
that blooms in the meadow before the mower comes with his scythe. But go
to my brother who grows beneath the Student's window, and perhaps he
will give you what you want.'
So the Nightingale flew over to the Rose-tree that was growing
beneath the Student's window.
23
'Give me a red rose,' she cried, 'and I will sing you my sweetest song.'
But the Tree shook its head.
'My roses are red,' it answered, 'as red as the feet of the dove, and
redder than the great fans of coral that wave and wave in the ocean-cavern.
But the winter has chilled my veins, and the frost has nipped my buds, and
the storm has broken my branches, and I shall have no roses at all this year.'
'One red rose is all I want,' cried the Nightingale, 'only one red rose! Is
there no way by which I can get it?'
'There is a way,' answered the Tree; 'but it is so terrible that I dare not
tell it to you.'
'Tell it to me,' said the Nightingale, 'I am not afraid.'
'If you want a red rose,' said the Tree, 'you must build it out of music
by moonlight, and stain it with your own heart's-blood. You must sing to
me with your breast against a thorn. All night long you must sing to me, and
the thorn must pierce your heart, and your life-blood must flow into my
veins, and become mine.'
<4>
'Death is a great price to pay for a red rose,' cried the Nightingale, 'and
Life is very dear to all. It is pleasant to sit in the green wood, and to watch
the Sun in his chariot of gold, and the Moon in her chariot of pearl. Sweet is
the scent of the hawthorn, and sweet are the bluebells that hide in the valley,
and the heather that blows on the hill. Yet Love is better than Life, and what
is the heart of a bird compared to the heart of a man?'
So she spread her brown wings for flight, and soared into the air. She
swept over the garden like a shadow, and like a shadow she sailed through
the grove.
The young Student was still lying on the grass, where she had left him,
and the tears were not yet dry in his beautiful eyes.
'Be happy,' cried the Nightingale, 'be happy; you shall have your red
rose. I will build it out of music by moonlight, and stain it with my own
heart's-blood. All that I ask of you in return is that you will be a true lover,
for Love is wiser than Philosophy, though she is wise, and mightier than
Power, though he is mighty. Flame-coloured are his wings, and coloured
like flame is his body. His lips are sweet as honey, and his breath is like
frankincense.'
24
The Student looked up from the grass, and listened, but he could not
understand what the Nightingale was saying to him, for he only knew the
things that are written down in books.
But the Oak-tree understood, and felt sad, for he was very fond of the
little Nightingale who had built her nest in his branches.
'Sing me one last song,' he whispered; 'I shall feel very lonely when
you are gone.'
So the Nightingale sang to the Oak-tree, and her voice was like water
bubbling from a silver jar.
<5>
When she had finished her song the Student got lip, and pulled a
note-book and a lead-pencil out of his pocket.
'She has form,' he said to himself, as he walked away through the
grove - 'that cannot be denied to her; but has she got feeling? I am afraid not.
In fact, she is like most artists; she is all style, without any sincerity. She
would not sacrifice herself for others. She thinks merely of music, and
everybody knows that the arts are selfish. Still, it must be admitted that she
has some beautiful notes in her voice. What a pity it is that they do not
mean anything, or do any practical good.' And he went into his room, and
lay down on his little pallet-bed, and began to think of his love; and, after a
time, he fell asleep.
And when the Moon shone in the heavens the Nightingale flew to the
Rose-tree, and set her breast against the thorn. All night long she sang with
her breast against the thorn, and the cold crystal Moon leaned down and
listened. All night long she sang, and the thorn went deeper and deeper into
her breast, and her life-blood ebbed away from her.
She sang first of the birth of love in the heart of a boy and a girl. And
on the topmost spray of the Rose-tree there blossomed a marvellous rose,
petal following petal, as song followed song. Yale was it, at first, as the
mist that hangs over the river - pale as the feet of the morning, and silver as
the wings of the dawn. As the shadow of a rose in a mirror of silver, as the
shadow of a rose in a water-pool, so was the rose that blossomed on the
topmost spray of the Tree.
25
But the Tree cried to the Nightingale to press closer against the thorn.
'Press closer, little Nightingale,' cried the Tree, 'or the Day will come before
the rose is finished.'
So the Nightingale pressed closer against the thorn, and louder and
louder grew her song, for she sang of the birth of passion in the soul of a
man and a maid.
<6>
And a delicate flush of pink came into the leaves of the rose, like the
flush in the face of the bridegroom when he kisses the lips of the bride. But
the thorn had not yet reached her heart, so the rose's heart remained white,
for only a Nightingale's heart's-blood can crimson the heart of a rose.
And the Tree cried to the Nightingale to press closer against the thorn.
'Press closer, little Nightingale,' cried the Tree, 'or the Day will come before
the rose is finished.'
So the Nightingale pressed closer against the thorn, and the thorn
touched her heart, and a fierce pang of pain shot through her. Bitter, bitter
was the pain, and wilder and wilder grew her song, for she sang of the Love
that is perfected by Death, of the Love that dies not in the tomb.
And the marvellous rose became crimson, like the rose of the eastern
sky. Crimson was the girdle of petals, and crimson as a ruby was the heart.
But the Nightingale's voice grew fainter, and her little wings began to beat,
and a film came over her eyes. Fainter and fainter grew her song, and she
felt something choking her in her throat.
Then she gave one last burst of music. The white Moon heard it, and
she forgot the dawn, and lingered on in the sky. The red rose heard it, and it
trembled all over with ecstasy, and opened its petals to the cold morning air.
Echo bore it to her purple cavern in the hills, and woke the sleeping
shepherds from their dreams. It floated through the reeds of the river, and
they carried its message to the sea.
'Look, look!' cried the Tree, 'the rose is finished now;' but the
Nightingale made no answer, for she was lying dead in the long grass, with
the thorn in her heart.
And at noon the Student opened his window and looked out.
<7>
26
'Why, what a wonderful piece of luck! he cried; 'here is a red rose! I
have never seen any rose like it in all my life. It is so beautiful that I am
sure it has a long Latin name;' and he leaned down and plucked it.
Then he put on his hat, and ran up to the Professor's house with the rose in
his hand.
The daughter of the Professor was sitting in the doorway winding blue
silk on a reel, and her little dog was lying at her feet.
'You said that you would dance with me if I brought you a red rose,' cried
the Student. Here is the reddest rose in all the world. You will wear it
to-night next your heart, and as we dance together it will tell you how I love
you.'
But the girl frowned.
'I am afraid it will not go with my dress,' she answered; 'and, besides,
the Chamberlain's nephew has sent me some real jewels, and everybody
knows that jewels cost far more than flowers.'
'Well, upon my word, you are very ungrateful,' said the Student angrily; and
he threw the rose into the street, where it fell into the gutter, and a
cart-wheel went over it.
'Ungrateful!' said the girl. 'I tell you what, you are very rude; and, after
all, who are you? Only a Student. Why, I don't believe you have even got
silver buckles to your shoes as the Chamberlain's nephew has;' and she got
up from her chair and went into the house.
'What a silly thing Love is,' said the Student as he walked away. 'It is
not half as useful as Logic, for it does not prove anything, and it is always
telling one of things that are not going to happen, and making one believe
things that are not true. In fact, it is quite unpractical, and, as in this age to
be practical is everything, I shall go back to Philosophy and study
Metaphysics.'
<8>
So he returned to his room and pulled out a great dusty book, and
began to read.
27
The Selfish Giant
Every afternoon, as they were coming from school, the children used
to go and play in the Giant's garden.
It was a large lovely garden, with soft green grass. Here and there over
the grass stood beautiful flowers like stars, and there were twelve
peach-trees that in the spring-time broke out into delicate blossoms of pink
and pearl, and in the autumn bore rich fruit. The birds sat on the trees and
sang so sweetly that the children used to stop their games in order to listen
to them. "How happy we are here!" they cried to each other.
One day the Giant came back. He had been to visit his friend the
Cornish ogre, and had stayed with him for seven years. After the seven
years were over he had said all that he had to say, for his conversation was
limited, and he determined to return to his own castle. When he arrived he
saw the children playing in the garden.
"What are you doing here?" he cried in a very gruff voice, and the
children ran away.
"My own garden is my own garden," said the Giant; "any one can
understand that, and I will allow nobody to play in it but myself." So he
built a high wall all round it, and put up a notice-board.
TRESPASSERS
WILL BE
PROSECUTED
He was a very selfish Giant.
The poor children had now nowhere to play. They tried to play on the
road, but the road was very dusty and full of hard stones, and they did not
like it. They used to wander round the high wall when their lessons were
over, and talk about the beautiful garden inside. "How happy we were
there," they said to each other.
Then the Spring came, and all over the country there were little
blossoms and little birds. Only in the garden of the Selfish Giant it was still
winter. The birds did not care to sing in it as there were no children, and the
trees forgot to blossom. Once a beautiful flower put its head out from the
grass, but when it saw the notice-board it was so sorry for the children that
28
it slipped back into the ground again, and went off to sleep. The only people
who were pleased were the Snow and the Frost. "Spring has forgotten this
garden," they cried, "so we will live here all the year round." The Snow
covered up the grass with her great white cloak, and the Frost painted all the
trees silver. Then they invited the North Wind to stay with them, and he
came. He was wrapped in furs, and he roared all day about the garden, and
blew the chimney-pots down. "This is a delightful spot," he said, "we must
ask the Hail on a visit." So the Hail came. Every day for three hours he
rattled on the roof of the castle till he broke most of the slates, and then he
ran round and round the garden as fast as he could go. He was dressed in
grey, and his breath was like ice.
"I cannot understand why the Spring is so late in coming," said the
Selfish Giant, as he sat at the window and looked out at his cold white
garden; "I hope there will be a change in the weather."
But the Spring never came, nor the Summer. The Autumn gave golden
fruit to every garden, but to the Giant's garden she gave none. "He is too
selfish," she said. So it was always Winter there, and the North Wind, and
the Hail, and the Frost, and the Snow danced about through the trees.
One morning the Giant was lying awake in bed when he heard some
lovely music. It sounded so sweet to his ears that he thought it must be the
King's musicians passing by. It was really only a little linnet singing outside
his window, but it was so long since he had heard a bird sing in his garden
that it seemed to him to be the most beautiful music in the world. Then the
Hail stopped dancing over his head, and the North Wind ceased roaring,
and a delicious perfume came to him through the open casement. "I believe
the Spring has come at last," said the Giant; and he jumped out of bed and
looked out.
What did he see?
He saw a most wonderful sight. Through a little hole in the wall the
children had crept in, and they were sitting in the branches of the trees. In
every tree that he could see there was a little child. And the trees were so
glad to have the children back again that they had covered themselves with
blossoms, and were waving their arms gently above the children's heads.
The birds were flying about and twittering with delight, and the flowers
were looking up through the green grass and laughing. It was a lovely scene,
29
only in one corner it was still winter. It was the farthest corner of the garden,
and in it was standing a little boy. He was so small that he could not reach
up to the branches of the tree, and he was wandering all round it, crying
bitterly. The poor tree was still quite covered with frost and snow, and the
North Wind was blowing and roaring above it. "Climb up! little boy," said
the Tree, and it bent its branches down as low as it could; but the boy was
too tiny.
And the Giant's heart melted as he looked out. "How selfish I have
been!" he said; "now I know why the Spring would not come here. I will
put that poor little boy on the top of the tree, and then I will knock down the
wall, and my garden shall be the children's playground for ever and ever."
He was really very sorry for what he had done.
So he crept downstairs and opened the front door quite softly, and
went out into the garden. But when the children saw him they were so
frightened that they all ran away, and the garden became winter again. Only
the little boy did not run, for his eyes were so full of tears that he did not see
the Giant coming. And the Giant stole up behind him and took him gently
in his hand, and put him up into the tree. And the tree broke at once into
blossom, and the birds came and sang on it, and the little boy stretched out
his two arms and flung them round the Giant's neck, and kissed him. And
the other children, when they saw that the Giant was not wicked any longer,
came running back, and with them came the Spring. "It is your garden now,
little children," said the Giant, and he took a great axe and knocked down
the wall. And when the people were going to market at twelve o'clock they
found the Giant playing with the children in the most beautiful garden they
had ever seen.
All day long they played, and in the evening they came to the Giant to
bid him good-bye.
"But where is your little companion?" he said: "the boy I put into the
tree." The Giant loved him the best because he had kissed him.
"We don't know," answered the children; "he has gone away."
"You must tell him to be sure and come here to-morrow," said the
Giant. But the children said that they did not know where he lived, and had
never seen him before; and the Giant felt very sad.
30
Every afternoon, when school was over, the children came and played
with the Giant. But the little boy whom the Giant loved was never seen
again. The Giant was very kind to all the children, yet he longed for his first
little friend, and often spoke of him. "How I would like to see him!" he used
to say.
Years went over, and the Giant grew very old and feeble. He could not play
about any more, so he sat in a huge armchair, and watched the children at
their games, and admired his garden. "I have many beautiful flowers," he
said; "but the children are the most beautiful flowers of all."
One winter morning he looked out of his window as he was dressing.
He did not hate the Winter now, for he knew that it was merely the Spring
asleep, and that the flowers were resting.
Suddenly he rubbed his eyes in wonder, and looked and looked. It
certainly was a marvellous sight. In the farthest corner of the garden was a
tree quite covered with lovely white blossoms. Its branches were all golden,
and silver fruit hung down from them, and underneath it stood the little boy
he had loved.
Downstairs ran the Giant in great joy, and out into the garden. He hastened
across the grass, and came near to the child. And when he came quite close
his face grew red with anger, and he said, "Who hath dared to wound thee?"
For on the palms of the child's hands were the prints of two nails, and the
prints of two nails were on the little feet.
"Who hath dared to wound thee?" cried the Giant; "tell me, that I may
take my big sword and slay him."
"Nay!" answered the child; "but these are the wounds of Love."
"Who art thou?" said the Giant, and a strange awe fell on him, and he
knelt before the little child.
And the child smiled on the Giant, and said to him, "You let me play
once in your garden, to-day you shall come with me to my garden, which is
Paradise."
And when the children ran in that afternoon, they found the Giant
lying dead under the tree, all covered with white blossoms.
31
Guy de Maupassant
French writer Guy de Maupassant is famous for his short stories,
which paint a fascinating picture of French life in the 19th century. He was
prolific, publishing over 300 short stories and six novels, but died at a
young age after ongoing struggles with both physical and mental health.
32
The Necklace
by Guy de Maupassant
She was one of those pretty and charming girls born, as though fate
had blundered over her, into a family of artisans. She had no marriage
portion, no expectations, no means of getting known, understood, loved,
and wedded by a man of wealth and distinction; and she let herself be
married off to a little clerk in the Ministry of Education. Her tastes were
simple because she had never been able to afford any other, but she was as
unhappy as though she had married beneath her; for women have no caste
or class, their beauty, grace, and charm serving them for birth or family,
their natural delicacy, their instinctive elegance, their nimbleness of wit, are
their only mark of rank, and put the slum girl on a level with the highest
lady in the land.
She suffered endlessly, feeling herself born for every delicacy and
luxury. She suffered from the poorness of her house, from its mean walls,
worn chairs, and ugly curtains. All these things, of which other women of
her class would not even have been aware, tormented and insulted her. The
sight of the little Breton girl who came to do the work in her little house
aroused heart-broken regrets and hopeless dreams in her mind. She
imagined silent antechambers, heavy with Oriental tapestries, lit by torches
in lofty bronze sockets, with two tall footmen in knee-breeches sleeping in
large arm-chairs, overcome by the heavy warmth of the stove. She imagined
vast saloons hung with antique silks, exquisite pieces of furniture
supporting priceless ornaments, and small, charming, perfumed rooms,
created just for little parties of intimate friends, men who were famous and
sought after, whose homage roused every other woman's envious longings.
When she sat down for dinner at the round table covered with a
three-days-old cloth, opposite her husband, who took the cover off the
soup-tureen, exclaiming delightedly: "Aha! Scotch broth! What could be
better?" she imagined delicate meals, gleaming silver, tapestries peopling
the walls with folk of a past age and strange birds in faery forests; she
imagined delicate food served in marvellous dishes, murmured gallantries,
listened to with an inscrutable smile as one trifled with the rosy flesh of
trout or wings of asparagus chicken.
< 2 >
33
She had no clothes, no jewels, nothing. And these were the only
things she loved; she felt that she was made for them. She had longed so
eagerly to charm, to be desired, to be wildly attractive and sought after.
She had a rich friend, an old school friend whom she refused to visit,
because she suffered so keenly when she returned home. She would weep
whole days, with grief, regret, despair, and misery.
*
One evening her husband came home with an exultant air, holding a large
envelope in his hand.
"Here's something for you," he said.
Swiftly she tore the paper and drew out a printed card on which were
these words:
"The Minister of Education and Madame Ramponneau request the
pleasure of the company of Monsieur and Madame Loisel at the Ministry
on the evening of Monday, January the 18th."
Instead of being delighted, as her husband hoped, she flung the
invitation petulantly across the table, murmuring:
"What do you want me to do with this?"
"Why, darling, I thought you'd be pleased. You never go out, and this
is a great occasion. I had tremendous trouble to get it. Every one wants one;
it's very select, and very few go to the clerks. You'll see all the really big
people there."
She looked at him out of furious eyes, and said impatiently: "And
what do you suppose I am to wear at such an affair?"
He had not thought about it; he stammered:
"Why, the dress you go to the theatre in. It looks very nice, to me . . ."
He stopped, stupefied and utterly at a loss when he saw that his wife
was beginning to cry. Two large tears ran slowly down from the corners of
her eyes towards the corners of her mouth.
< 3 >
"What's the matter with you? What's the matter with you?" he
faltered.
But with a violent effort she overcame her grief and replied in a calm
voice, wiping her wet cheeks:
"Nothing. Only I haven't a dress and so I can't go to this party. Give
34
your invitation to some friend of yours whose wife will be turned out better
than I shall."
He was heart-broken.
"Look here, Mathilde," he persisted. "What would be the cost of a
suitable dress, which you could use on other occasions as well, something
very simple?"
She thought for several seconds, reckoning up prices and also
wondering for how large a sum she could ask without bringing upon herself
an immediate refusal and an exclamation of horror from the careful-minded
clerk.
At last she replied with some hesitation:
"I don't know exactly, but I think I could do it on four hundred
francs."
He grew slightly pale, for this was exactly the amount he had been
saving for a gun, intending to get a little shooting next summer on the plain
of Nanterre with some friends who went lark-shooting there on Sundays.
Nevertheless he said: "Very well. I'll give you four hundred francs.
But try and get a really nice dress with the money."
The day of the party drew near, and Madame Loisel seemed sad,
uneasy and anxious. Her dress was ready, however. One evening her
husband said to her:
"What's the matter with you? You've been very odd for the last three
days."
"I'm utterly miserable at not having any jewels, not a single stone, to
wear," she replied. "I shall look absolutely no one. I would almost rather not
go to the party."
< 4 >
"Wear flowers," he said. "They're very smart at this time of the year.
For ten francs you could get two or three gorgeous roses."
She was not convinced.
"No . . . there's nothing so humiliating as looking poor in the middle
of a lot of rich women."
"How stupid you are!" exclaimed her husband. "Go and see Madame
Forestier and ask her to lend you some jewels. You know her quite well
enough for that."
35
She uttered a cry of delight.
"That's true. I never thought of it."
Next day she went to see her friend and told her her trouble.
Madame Forestier went to her dressing-table, took up a large box,
brought it to Madame Loisel, opened it, and said:
"Choose, my dear."
First she saw some bracelets, then a pearl necklace, then a Venetian
cross in gold and gems, of exquisite workmanship. She tried the effect of
the jewels before the mirror, hesitating, unable to make up her mind to leave
them, to give them up. She kept on asking:
"Haven't you anything else?"
"Yes. Look for yourself. I don't know what you would like best."
Suddenly she discovered, in a black satin case, a superb diamond
necklace; her heart began to beat covetously. Her hands trembled as she
lifted it. She fastened it round her neck, upon her high dress, and remained
in ecstasy at sight of herself.
Then, with hesitation, she asked in anguish:
"Could you lend me this, just this alone?"
"Yes, of course."
She flung herself on her friend's breast, embraced her frenziedly, and
went away with her treasure. The day of the party arrived. Madame Loisel
was a success. She was the prettiest woman present, elegant, graceful,
smiling, and quite above herself with happiness. All the men stared at her,
inquired her name, and asked to be introduced to her. All the
Under-Secretaries of State were eager to waltz with her. The Minister
noticed her.
< 5 >
She danced madly, ecstatically, drunk with pleasure, with no thought
for anything, in the triumph of her beauty, in the pride of her success, in a
cloud of happiness made up of this universal homage and admiration, of the
desires she had aroused, of the completeness of a victory so dear to her
feminine heart.
She left about four o'clock in the morning. Since midnight her
husband had been dozing in a deserted little room, in company with three
other men whose wives were having a good time. He threw over her
36
shoulders the garments he had brought for them to go home in, modest
everyday clothes, whose poverty clashed with the beauty of the ball-dress.
She was conscious of this and was anxious to hurry away, so that she should
not be noticed by the other women putting on their costly furs.
Loisel restrained her.
"Wait a little. You'll catch cold in the open. I'm going to fetch a cab."
But she did not listen to him and rapidly descended the staircase.
When they were out in the street they could not find a cab; they began to
look for one, shouting at the drivers whom they saw passing in the distance.
They walked down towards the Seine, desperate and shivering. At
last they found on the quay one of those old nightprowling carriages which
are only to be seen in Paris after dark, as though they were ashamed of their
shabbiness in the daylight.
It brought them to their door in the Rue des Martyrs, and sadly they
walked up to their own apartment. It was the end, for her. As for him, he
was thinking that he must be at the office at ten.
She took off the garments in which she had wrapped her shoulders, so
as to see herself in all her glory before the mirror. But suddenly she uttered
a cry. The necklace was no longer round her neck!
< 6 >
"What's the matter with you?" asked her husband, already half
undressed.
She turned towards him in the utmost distress.
"I . . . I . . . I've no longer got Madame Forestier's necklace. . . ."
He started with astonishment.
"What! . . . Impossible!"
They searched in the folds of her dress, in the folds of the coat, in the
pockets, everywhere. They could not find it.
"Are you sure that you still had it on when you came away from the
ball?" he asked.
"Yes, I touched it in the hall at the Ministry."
"But if you had lost it in the street, we should have heard it fall."
"Yes. Probably we should. Did you take the number of the cab?"
"No. You didn't notice it, did you?"
"No."
37
They stared at one another, dumbfounded. At last Loisel put on his
clothes again.
"I'll go over all the ground we walked," he said, "and see if I can't
find it."
And he went out. She remained in her evening clothes, lacking
strength to get into bed, huddled on a chair, without volition or power of
thought.
Her husband returned about seven. He had found nothing.
He went to the police station, to the newspapers, to offer a reward, to
the cab companies, everywhere that a ray of hope impelled him.
She waited all day long, in the same state of bewilderment at this
fearful catastrophe.
Loisel came home at night, his face lined and pale; he had discovered
nothing.
< 7 >
"You must write to your friend," he said, "and tell her that you've
broken the clasp of her necklace and are getting it mended. That will give
us time to look about us."
She wrote at his dictation.
*
By the end of a week they had lost all hope.
Loisel, who had aged five years, declared:
"We must see about replacing the diamonds."
Next day they took the box which had held the necklace and went to
the jewellers whose name was inside. He consulted his books.
"It was not I who sold this necklace, Madame; I must have merely
supplied the clasp."
Then they went from jeweller to jeweller, searching for another
necklace like the first, consulting their memories, both ill with remorse and
anguish of mind.
In a shop at the Palais-Royal they found a string of diamonds which
seemed to them exactly like the one they were looking for. It was worth
forty thousand francs. They were allowed to have it for thirty-six thousand.
They begged the jeweller not to sell it for three days. And they
arranged matters on the understanding that it would be taken back for
38
thirty-four thousand francs, if the first one were found before the end of
February.
Loisel possessed eighteen thousand francs left to him by his father.
He intended to borrow the rest.
He did borrow it, getting a thousand from one man, five hundred
from another, five louis here, three louis there. He gave notes of hand,
entered into ruinous agreements, did business with usurers and the whole
tribe of money-lenders. He mortgaged the whole remaining years of his
existence, risked his signature without even knowing if he could honour it,
and, appalled at the agonising face of the future, at the black misery about
to fall upon him, at the prospect of every possible physical privation and
moral torture, he went to get the new necklace and put down upon the
jeweller's counter thirty-six thousand francs.
< 8 >
When Madame Loisel took back the necklace to Madame Forestier,
the latter said to her in a chilly voice:
"You ought to have brought it back sooner; I might have needed it."
She did not, as her friend had feared, open the case. If she had noticed
the substitution, what would she have thought? What would she have said?
Would she not have taken her for a thief?
*
Madame Loisel came to know the ghastly life of abject poverty. From
the very first she played her part heroically. This fearful debt must be paid
off. She would pay it. The servant was dismissed. They changed their flat;
they took a garret under the roof.
She came to know the heavy work of the house, the hateful duties of
the kitchen. She washed the plates, wearing out her pink nails on the coarse
pottery and the bottoms of pans. She washed the dirty linen, the shirts and
dish-cloths, and hung them out to dry on a string; every morning she took
the dustbin down into the street and carried up the water, stopping on each
landing to get her breath. And, clad like a poor woman, she went to the
fruiterer, to the grocer, to the butcher, a basket on her arm, haggling,
insulted, fighting for every wretched halfpenny of her money.
Every month notes had to be paid off, others renewed, time gained.
Her husband worked in the evenings at putting straight a merchant's
39
accounts, and often at night he did copying at twopence-halfpenny a page.
And this life lasted ten years.
At the end of ten years everything was paid off, everything, the
usurer's charges and the accumulation of superimposed interest.
Madame Loisel looked old now. She had become like all the other
strong, hard, coarse women of poor households. Her hair was badly done,
her skirts were awry, her hands were red. She spoke in a shrill voice, and
the water slopped all over the floor when she scrubbed it. But sometimes,
when her husband was at the office, she sat down by the window and
thought of that evening long ago, of the ball at which she had been so
beautiful and so much admired.
< 9 >
What would have happened if she had never lost those jewels. Who
knows? Who knows? How strange life is, how fickle! How little is needed
to ruin or to save!
One Sunday, as she had gone for a walk along the Champs-Elysees to
freshen herself after the labours of the week, she caught sight suddenly of a
woman who was taking a child out for a walk. It was Madame Forestier,
still young, still beautiful, still attractive.
Madame Loisel was conscious of some emotion. Should she speak to
her? Yes, certainly. And now that she had paid, she would tell her all. Why
not?
She went up to her.
"Good morning, Jeanne."
The other did not recognize her, and was surprised at being thus
familiarly addressed by a poor woman.
"But . . . Madame . . ." she stammered. "I don't know . . . you must be
making a mistake."
"No . . . I am Mathilde Loisel."
Her friend uttered a cry.
"Oh! . . . my poor Mathilde, how you have changed! . . ."
"Yes, I've had some hard times since I saw you last; and many
sorrows . . . and all on your account."
"On my account! . . . How was that?"
"You remember the diamond necklace you lent me for the ball at the
40
Ministry?"
"Yes. Well?"
"Well, I lost it."
"How could you? Why, you brought it back."
"I brought you another one just like it. And for the last ten years we
have been paying for it. You realize it wasn't easy for us; we had no
money. . . . Well, it's paid for at last, and I'm glad indeed."
< 10 >
Madame Forestier had halted.
"You say you bought a diamond necklace to replace mine?"
"Yes. You hadn't noticed it? They were very much alike."
And she smiled in proud and innocent happiness.
Madame Forestier, deeply moved, took her two hands.
"Oh, my poor Mathilde! But mine was imitation. It was worth at the
very most five hundred francs! . . . "
41
William Somerset Maugham
English playwright and author wrote Of Human Bondage (1915). Born
on 25 December 1874 at the British Embassy in Paris, France. At the age
of ten he was orphaned after the death of his mother from tuberculosis
and his father of cancer. He was sent to live with his Aunt. William
suffered from a stutter and his lack of proficiency in English and loss of
his parents could not have helped matters when he was taunted and
bullied by classmates. But his aunt and uncle did the best they could in
raising such a young boy, themselves never having had children.
Maugham attended King's School in Canterbury before travelling to
Germany at the age of sixteen to study literature and philosophy at
Heidelberg University. Back in England, he studied medicine. Although
he never practiced, As a medical student Maugham had seen first-hand
the poor and suffering of the shabby working classes in London's
Lambeth slum area while apprenticing as midwife. The experience would
serve him well in writing vivid physical descriptions of his fictional
characters, and in realistic portrayals of the seedier aspects of life and its
consequences on the human psyche.
In 1947 Maugham instituted the Somerset Maugham Award for the
encouragement and support of British writers under the age of thirty-five.
He himself received many honours during his lifetime including the
Queen's Companion of Honour (1954); Fellow of the Library of Congress,
Washington, DC, U.S.A.; an Honorary Doctorate from the University of
Toulouse, France; and Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
William Somerset Maugham died in Nice, France on 16 December 1965.
42
The Luncheon
by Somerset Maugham
I caught sight of her at the play and in answer to her beckoning I
went over during the interval and sat down beside her. It was long
since I had last seen her and if someone had not mentioned her name,
I hardly think I would have recognized her. She addressed me brightly.
“Well, its many years since we first met. How time does fly! We’re none
of us getting any younger. Do you remember the first time I saw you?
You asked me to luncheon.” Did I remember?
It was twenty years ago and I was living in Paris. I had a tiny
apartment in the Latin Quarter overlooking a cemetery and I was
earning barely enough money to keep body and soul together. She had
read a book of mine and had written to me about it. I answered, thanking
her, and presently I received from her another letter saying she was
passing through Paris and would like to have a chat with me; but her time
was limited and the only free moment she had was on the following
Thursday; she was spending the morning at the Luxembourg and would I
give her a little luncheon at Foyot’s afterwards? Foyot’s is a restaurant at
which the French senators eat and it was so far beyond my means that I
had never even thought of going there. But I was flattered and I was too
young to have learned to say no to a woman. (Few men, I may add, learn
this until they are too old to make it of any consequence to a woman what
they say.) I had eighty francs (gold francs) to last me the rest of the
month and a modest luncheon should not cost more than fifteen. If I cut
out coffee for the next two weeks I could manage well enough.
I answered that I would meet my friend—by correspondence—at
Foyot’s on Thursday at half-past twelve. She was not so young as I
expected and in appearance imposing rather than attractive. She was in
fact a woman of forty (a charming age, but not one that excites a sudden
and devastating passion at first sight), and she gave me the impression of
having more teeth, white and large and even, than were necessary for any
practical purpose. She was ‘ talkative, but since she seemed inclined to
talk about me I was prepared to be an attentive listener.
43
I was startled when the bill of fare was brought, for, the prices were a
great deal higher than I had anticipated. But she reassured me. “I never
eat anything for luncheon”, she said.
“Oh, don’t say that!” I answered generously.
“I never eat more than one thing. I think people eat far too much
nowadays. A little fish, perhaps. I wonder if they have any salmon.”
Well, it was early in the year for salmon and it was not on the bill of
fare, but I asked the waiter if there was, any. Yes, a beautiful salmon
had just come in, it was the first they had had. I ordered it for my
guest.The waiter asked her if she would have something while it was
being cooked. “No”, she answered, “I never eat more than one thing,
unless you had a little caviare. I never mind caviare.”
My heart sank a little. I knew I could not afford caviare, but I could not
very well tell her that. I told the waiter by all means to bring caviare. For
myself I chose the cheapest dish on the menu and that was a mutton
chop.
“I think you’re unwise to eat meat,” she said. “I don’t know how you
can expect to work after eating heavy things like chops. I don’t believe in
overloading my stomach.”
Then came the question of drink.
“I never drink anything for luncheon,” she said.
“Neither do I,” I answered promptly.
“Except white wine,” she proceeded as though I had not spoken. “These
French white wines are so light. They’re wonderful for the digestion.”
“What would you like?” I asked, hospitable still, but not exactly effusive.
She gave me a bright and amicable flash of her white teeth.
“My doctor won’t let me drink anything but champagne.”
I fancy I turned a trifle pale. I ordered half a bottle. I mentioned
casually that my doctor had absolutely forbidden me to drink
champagne.
“What are you going to drink, then?”
“Water.”
44
She ate the caviare and she ate the salmon. She talked gaily of art
and literature and music. But I wondered what the bill would come to.
When my mutton chop arrived she took me quite seriously to task.
“I see that you’re in the habit of eating a heavy luncheon. I’m sure
it’s a mistake. Why don’t you follow my example and just eat one thing?
I’m sure you’d feel ever so much better for it.”
“I am only going to eat one thing,” I said as the waiter came again with
the bill of fare.
She waved him aside with an airy gesture.
“No, no, I never eat anything for luncheon. Just a bite, I never want
more than that, and I eat that more as an excuse for conversation than
anything else. I couldn’t possibly eat anything more—unless they had
some of those giant asparagus. I should be sorry to leave Paris without
having some of them.”
My heart sank. I had seen them in the shops and I knew that they were
horribly expensive. My mouth had often watered at the sight of them.
“Madame wants to know if you have any of those giant asparagus,” I
asked the waiter.
I tried with all my might to will him to say no. A happy smile spread over
his broad, priest-like face, and he assured me that they had some so large, so
splendid, so tender, that it was a marvel.
“I’m not in the least hungry,” my guest sighed, “but if you insist I don’t
mind having some asparagus.” I ordered them.
“Aren’t you going to have any?” “No, I never eat
asparagus.”
“I know there are people who don’t like them. The fact is, you ruin your
palate by all the meat you eat.”
We waited for the asparagus to be cooked. Panic seized me. It was not a
question now how much money I should have left over for the rest of the
month, but whether I had enough to pay the bill. It would be mortifying
to find myself ten francs short and be obliged to borrow from my guest. I
could not bring myself to do that. I knew exactly how much I had and if
the bill came to more I made up my mind that I would put my hand in my
pocket and with a dramatic cry start up and say it had been picked. Of
course it would be awkward if she had not money enough either to
45
pay the bill. Then the only thing would be to leave my watch and say I
would come back and pay later.
The asparagus appeared. They were enormous, succulent and appetising.
The smell of the melted butter tickled my nostrils as the nostrils of Jehovah
were tickled by the burned offerings of the virtuous Semites. I watched the
abandoned woman thrust them down her throat in large voluptuous
mouthful and in my polite way I discoursed on the condition of the drama in
the Balkans. At last she finished.
“Coffee?” I said.
“Yes, just an ice-cream and coffee,” she answered.
I was past caring now, so I ordered coffee for myself and an ice-cream
and coffee for her.
“You know, there’s one thing I thoroughly believe in”, she said, as she
ate the ice-cream. “One should always get up from a meal feeling one
could eat a little more.”
“Are you still hungry?” I asked faintly.
“Oh, no, I’m not hungry, you see, I don’t eat luncheon. I have a
cup of coffee in the morning and then dinner, but I never eat more than
one thing for luncheon. I was speaking for you.”
“Oh, I see”
Then a terrible thing happened. While we were waiting for the
coffee, the head waiter, with an ingratiating smile on his false face, came up
to us bearing a large basket full of huge peaches. They had the blush of an
innocent girl; they had the rich tone of an Italian landscape. But surely
peaches were not in season then? Lord knew what they cost. I knew
too—a little later, for my guest, going on with her conversation,
absentmindedly took one.
“You see, you’ve filled your stomach with a lot of meat”—my one
miserable little chop—”and you can’t eat 30 any more. But I’ve just had
a snack and I shall enjoy a peach.”
The bill came and when I paid it I found that I had only enough for a quite
inadequate tip. Her eyes rested for an instant on the three francs I left for
the waiter and I knew that she thought me mean. But when I walked out
of the restaurant I had the whole month before me and not a penny in my
pocket.
46
“Follow my example,” she said as we shook hands, “and never eat
more than one thing for luncheon.”
“I’ll do better than that,” I retorted, “I’ll eat nothing for dinner
to-night.”
“Humorist!” she cried gaily, jumping into a cab. “You’re quite a
humorist!”
But I have had my revenge at last. I do not believe that I am a vindictive
man, but when the immortal gods take a hand in the matter it is pardonable
to observe the result with complacency. Today she weighs twenty-one
stone.
47
James Thurber
James Grove Thurber was born on December 8, 1894, in Columbus,
Ohio. The family soon moved to Virginia where his father was employed as
a secretary to a congressman. While playing with his older brother, Thurber
was permanently blinded in his left eye after being shot with an arrow.
Problems with his eyesight would plague Thurber for much of his life. He
attended Ohio State University—though he never took a degree—and
worked for some years afterwards in Ohio as a journalist.
Thurber moved to New York City in 1926 and a year later he met
writer E. B. White (1899–1985) and was taken onto the staff of the New
Yorker magazine. In collaboration with White he produced his first book, Is
Sex Necessary? (1929). By 1931 his first cartoons began appearing in the
New Yorker. These primitive yet highly stylized characterizations included
seals, sea lions, strange tigers, harried men, determined women, and, most
of all, dogs. Thurber's dogs became something like a national comic
institution, and they dotted the pages of a whole series of books.
Thurber's life were filled with material and professional success in
spite of his handicap. He published at least fifteen books. A number of his
short stories were made into movies, including "The Secret Life of Walter
Mitty" (1947), which is also regarded as one of the best short stories written
in the twentieth century.
Thurber died of pneumonia (an infection of the lungs) on November 2,
1961. He left behind a peculiar and unique comic world that was populated
by his curious animals, who watched close by as aggressive women ran to
ground apparently spineless men. But beneath their tame and defeated
exteriors, Thurber's men dreamed of wild escape and epic adventure and, so,
in their way won out in the battle of the sexes.
48
The Owl Who Was God
by James Thurber
Once upon a starless midnight there was an owl who sat on the branch
of an oak tree. Two ground moles tried to slip quietly by,
unnoticed. "You!" said the owl. "Who?" they quavered, in fear and
astonishment, for they could not believe it was possible for anyone to see
them in that thick darkness. "You two!" said the owl. The moles hurried
away and told the other creatures of the field and forest that the owl was the
greatest and wisest of all animals because he could see in the dark and
because he could answer any question. "I’ll see about that, "said a
secretary bird, and he called on the owl one night when it was again very
dark. "How many claws am I holding up?" said the secretary bird. "Two,"
said the owl, and that was right. "Can you give me another expression for
‘that is to say’ or ‘namely’?" asked the secretary bird. "To wit," said the
owl. "Why does the lover call on his love?" "To woo," said the owl.
The secretary bird hastened back to the other creatures and reported
that the owl indeed was the greatest and wisest animal in the world because
he could see in the dark and because he could answer any question. "Can
he see in the daytime, too?" asked a red fox? "Yes," answered a dormouse
and a French poodle. "Can he see in the daytime, too?" All the other
creatures laughed loudly at this silly question, and they set upon the red fox
and his friends and drove them out of the region. They sent a messenger to
the owl and asked him to be their leader.
When the owl appeared among the animals it was high noon and the sun
was shining brightly. He walked very slowly, which gave him an
appearance of great dignity, and he peered about him with large, staring
eyes, which gave him an air of tremendous importance. "He’s God!"
screamed a Plymouth rock hen. And the others took up the cry "He’s
God!" So they followed him wherever he went and when he bumped into
things they began to bump into things, too. Finally he came to a concrete
highway and he started up the middle of it and all the other creatures
followed him. Presently a hawk, who was acting as outrider, observed a
truck coming toward them at fifty miles an hour, and he reported to the
49
secretary bird and the secretary bird reported to the owl. "There’s danger
ahead," said the secretary bird. "To wit?" said the owl. The secretary bird
told him. "Aren’t you afraid?" he asked. "Who?" said the owl calmly, for
he could not see the truck. "He’s God!" cried all the creatures again, and
they were still crying "He’s God" when the truck hit them and ran them
down. Some of the animals were merely injured, but most of them,
including the owl, were killed.
50
The Unicorn in the Garden
by James Thurber
Once upon a sunny morning a man who sat in a breakfast nook looked
up from his scrambled eggs to see a white unicorn with a golden horn
quietly cropping the roses in the garden. The man went up to the bedroom
where his wife was still asleep and woke her. "There's a unicorn in the
garden," he said. "Eating roses." She opened one unfriendly eye and looked
at him.
"The unicorn is a mythical beast," she said, and turned her back on him.
The man walked slowly downstairs and out into the garden. The unicorn
was still there; now he was browsing among the tulips. "Here, unicorn,"
said the man, and he pulled up a lily and gave it to him. The unicorn ate it
gravely. With a high heart, because there was a unicorn in his garden, the
man went upstairs and roused his wife again. "The unicorn," he said,"ate a
lily." His wife sat up in bed and looked at him coldly. "You are a booby,"
she said, "and I am going to have you put in the booby-hatch."
The man, who had never liked the words "booby" and "booby-hatch," and
who liked them even less on a shining morning when there was a unicorn in
the garden, thought for a moment. "We'll see about that," he said. He
walked over to the door. "He has a golden horn in the middle of his
forehead," he told her. Then he went back to the garden to watch the
unicorn; but the unicorn had gone away. The man sat down among the roses
and went to sleep.
As soon as the husband had gone out of the house, the wife got up and
dressed as fast as she could. She was very excited and there was a gloat in
her eye. She telephoned the police and she telephoned a psychiatrist; she
51
told them to hurry to her house and bring a strait-jacket. When the police
and the psychiatrist arrived they sat down in chairs and looked at her, with
great interest.
"My husband," she said, "saw a unicorn this morning." The police
looked at the psychiatrist and the psychiatrist looked at the police. "He told
me it ate a lilly," she said. The psychiatrist looked at the police and the
police looked at the psychiatrist. "He told me it had a golden horn in the
middle of its forehead," she said. At a solemn signal from the psychiatrist,
the police leaped from their chairs and seized the wife. They had a hard
time subduing her, for she put up a terrific struggle, but they finally
subdued her. Just as they got her into the strait-jacket, the husband came
back into the house.
"Did you tell your wife you saw a unicorn?" asked the police. "Of
course not," said the husband. "The unicorn is a mythical beast." "That's all
I wanted to know," said the psychiatrist. "Take her away. I'm sorry, sir, but
your wife is as crazy as a jaybird."
So they took her away, cursing and screaming, and shut her up in an
institution. The husband lived happily ever after.
Moral: Don't count your boobies until they are hatched.
52
THE LOTTERY
by Shirley Jackson
The morning of June 27th was clear and sunny, with the fresh warmth
of a full-summer day; the flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass
was richly green. The people of the village began to gather in the square,
between the post office and the bank, around ten o'clock. In some towns
there were so many people that the lottery took two days and had to be
started on June 26th, but in this village, where there were only about three
hundred people, the whole lottery took less than two hours, so it could
begin at ten o'clock in the morning and still be through in time to allow the
villagers to get home for noon dinner.
The children assembled first, of course. School was recently over for
the summer, and the feeling of liberty sat uneasily on most of them; they
tended to gather together quietly for a while before they broke into
boisterous play. And their talk was still of the classroom and the teacher, of
books and reprimands.
Bobby Martin had already stuffed his pockets full of stones, and the
other boys soon followed his example, selecting the smoothest and roundest
stones; Bobby and Harry Jones and Dickie Delacroix-- the villagers
pronounced this name "Dellacroy"--eventually made a great pile of stones
in one corner of the square and guarded it against the raids of the other boys.
The girls stood aside, talking among themselves, looking over their
shoulders at the boys. And the very small children rolled in the dust or
clung to the hands of their older brothers or sisters.
Soon the men began to gather, surveying their own children, speaking
of planting and rain, tractors and taxes. They stood together, away from the
pile of stones in the corner, and their jokes were quiet and they smiled
rather than laughed.
The women, wearing faded house dresses and sweaters, came shortly
after their menfolk. They greeted one another and exchanged bits of gossip
as they went to join their husbands. Soon the women, standing by their
husbands, began to call to their children, and the children came reluctantly,
having to be called four or five times. Bobby Martin ducked under his
mother's grasping hand and ran, laughing, back to the pile of stones. His
father spoke up sharply, and Bobby came quickly and took his place
53
between his father and his oldest brother.
The lottery was conducted--as were the square dances, the teen club,
the Halloween program--by Mr. Summers. who had time and energy to
devote to civic activities. He was a round-faced, jovial man and he ran the
coal business. And people were sorry for him because he had no children
and his wife was a scold.
When he arrived in the square, carrying the black wooden box, there
was a murmur of conversation among the villagers, and he waved and
called. "Little late today, folks." The postmaster, Mr. Graves, followed him,
carrying a three- legged stool, and the stool was put in the center of the
square and Mr. Summers set the black box down on it. The villagers kept
their distance, leaving a space between themselves and the stool. And when
Mr. Summers said, "Some of you fellows want to give me a hand?" there
was a hesitation before two men, Mr. Martin and his oldest son, Baxter,
came forward to hold the box steady on the stool while Mr. Summers stirred
up the papers inside it.
The original paraphernalia for the lottery had been lost long ago, and
the black box now resting on the stool had been put into use even before
Old Man Warner, the oldest man in town, was born. Mr. Summers spoke
frequently to the villagers about making a new box, but no one liked to
upset even as much tradition as was represented by the black box. There
was a story that the present box had been made with some pieces of the box
that had preceded it, the one that had been constructed when the first people
settled down to make a village here. Every year, after the lottery, Mr.
Summers began talking again about a new box, but every year the subject
was allowed to fade off without anything's being done.
The black box grew shabbier each year: by now it was no longer
completely black but splintered badly along one side to show the original
wood color, and in some places faded or stained.
Mr. Martin and his oldest son, Baxter, held the black box securely on
the stool until Mr. Summers had stirred the papers thoroughly with his hand.
Because so much of the ritual had been forgotten or discarded, Mr.
Summers had been successful in having slips of paper substituted for the
chips of wood that had been used for generations. Chips of wood, Mr.
Summers had argued, had been all very well when the village was tiny, but
54
now that the population was more than three hundred and likely to keep on
growing, it was necessary to use something that would fit more easily into
he black box. The night before the lottery, Mr. Summers and Mr. Graves
made up the slips of paper and put them in the box, and it was then taken to
the safe of Mr. Summers' coal company and locked up until Mr. Summers
was ready to take it to the square next morning. The rest of the year, the box
was put way, sometimes one place, sometimes another. It had spent one
year in Mr. Graves's barn and another year underfoot in the post office. And
sometimes it was set on a shelf in the Martin grocery and left there.
There was a great deal of fussing to be done before Mr. Summers
declared the lottery open. There were the lists to make up--of heads of
families, heads of households in each family, members of each household in
each family. There was the proper swearing-in of Mr. Summers by the
postmaster, as the official of the lottery. At one time, some people
remembered, there had been a recital of some sort, performed by the official
of the lottery, a perfunctory, tuneless chant that had been rattled off duly
each year. Some people believed that the official of the lottery used to stand
just so when he said or sang it, others believed that he was supposed to
walk among the people, but years and years ago this part of the ritual had
been allowed to lapse. There had been, also, a ritual salute, which the
official of the lottery had had to use in addressing each person who came up
to draw from the box, but this also had changed with time, until now it was
felt necessary only for the official to speak to each person approaching.
Mr. Summers was very good at all this. In his clean white shirt and
blue jeans, with one hand resting carelessly on the black box, he seemed
very proper and important as he talked interminably to Mr. Graves and the
Martins.
Just as Mr. Summers finally left off talking and turned to the
assembled villagers, Mrs. Hutchinson came hurriedly along the path to the
square, her sweater thrown over her shoulders, and slid into place in the
back of the crowd.
"Clean forgot what day it was," she said to Mrs. Delacroix, who stood
next to her, and they both laughed softly. "Thought my old man was out
back stacking wood," Mrs. Hutchinson went on, "and then I looked out the
window and the kids was gone, and then I remembered it was the
55
twenty-seventh and came a-running."
She dried her hands on her apron, and Mrs. Delacroix said, "You're in
time, though. They're still talking away up there."
Mrs. Hutchinson craned her neck to see through the crowd and found
her husband and children standing near the front. She tapped Mrs.
Delacroix on the arm as a farewell and began to make her way through the
crowd. The people separated good-humoredly to let her through. Two or
three people said, in voices just loud enough to be heard across the crowd,
"Here comes your Missus, Hutchinson," and "Bill, she made it after all."
Mrs. Hutchinson reached her husband, and Mr. Summers, who had been
waiting, said cheerfully: "Thought we were going to have to get on without
you, Tessie." Mrs. Hutchinson said, grinning, "Wouldn't me leave m'dishes
in the sink, now, would you, Joe?," and soft laughter ran through the crowd
as the people stirred back into position after Mrs. Hutchinson's arrival.
"Well, now." Mr. Summers said soberly, "guess we better get started,
get this over with, so's we can go back to work. Anybody ain't here?"
"Dunbar," several people said. "Dunbar, Dunbar."
Mr. Summers consulted his list. "Clyde Dunbar," he said. "That's right.
He's broke his leg, hasn't he? Who's drawing for him?"
"Me. I guess," a woman said, and Mr. Summers turned to look at her.
"Wife draws for her husband." Mr. Summers said. "Don't you have a grown
boy to do it for you, Janey?" Although Mr. Summers and everyone else in
the village knew the answer perfectly well, it was the business of the
official of the lottery to ask such questions formally. Mr. Summers waited
with an expression of polite interest while Mrs. Dunbar answered. "Horace's
not but sixteen yet." Mrs. Dunbar said regretfully. "Guess I gotta fill in for
the old man this year."
"Right," Mr. Summers said. He made a note on the list he was holding.
Then he asked, "Watson boy drawing this year?"
A tall boy in the crowd raised his hand. "Here," he said. "I'm drawing
for my mother and me." He blinked his eyes nervously and ducked his head
as several voices in the crowd said things like "Good fellow, Jack," and
"Glad to see your mother's got a man to do it."
"Well," Mr. Summers said, "guess that's everyone. Old Man Warner
make it?"
56
"Here," a voice said, and Mr. Summers nodded.
A sudden hush fell on the crowd as Mr. Summers cleared his throat
and looked at the list. "All ready?" he called. "Now, I'll read the
names--heads of families first--and the men come up and take a paper out of
the box. Keep the paper folded in your hand without looking at it until
everyone has had a turn. Everything clear?"
The people had done it so many times that they only half listened to
the directions: most of them were quiet, wetting their lips, not looking
around. Then Mr. Summers raised one hand high and said, "Adams." A man
disengaged himself from the crowd and came forward. "Hi Steve," Mr.
Summers said, and Mr. Adams said "Hi Joe." They grinned at one another
humorlessly and nervously. Then Mr. Adams reached into the black box and
took out a folded paper. He held it firmly by one corner as he turned and
went hastily back to his place in the crowd, where he stood a little apart
from his family, not looking down at his hand.
"Allen," Mr. Summers said. "Anderson.... Bentham."
"Seems like there's no time at all between lotteries any more." Mrs.
Delacroix said to Mrs. Graves in the back row.
"Seems like we got through with the last one only last week."
"Time sure goes fast.-- Mrs. Graves said.
"Clark.... Delacroix"
"There goes my old man." Mrs. Delacroix said. She held her breath
while her husband went forward.
"Dunbar," Mr. Summers said, and Mrs. Dunbar went steadily to the
box while one of the women said. "Go on, Janey," and another said, "There
she goes."
"We're next." Mrs. Graves said. She watched while Mr. Graves came
around from the side of the box, greeted Mr. Summers gravely and selected
a slip of paper from the box. By now, all through the crowd there were men
holding the small folded papers in their large hand, turning them over and
over nervously. Mrs. Dunbar and her two sons stood together, Mrs. Dunbar
holding the slip of paper.
"Harburt.... Hutchinson."
"Get up there, Bill," Mrs. Hutchinson said. And the people near her
laughed.
57
"Jones."
"They do say," Mr. Adams said to Old Man Warner, who stood next to
him, "that over in the north village they're talking of giving up the lottery."
Old Man Warner snorted. "Pack of crazy fools," he said. "Listening to
the young folks, nothing's good enough for them. Next thing you know,
they'll be wanting to go back to living in caves, nobody work any more, live
that way for a while.
Used to be a saying about 'Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon.' First
thing you know, we'd all be eating stewed chickweed and acorns. There's
always been a lottery," he added petulantly. "Bad enough to see young Joe
Summers up there joking with everybody."
"Some places have already quit lotteries," Mrs. Adams said.
"Nothing but trouble in that," Old Man Warner said stoutly. "Pack of
young fools."
"Martin." And Bobby Martin watched his father go forward.
"Overdyke.... Percy."
"I wish they'd hurry," Mrs. Dunbar said to her older son. "I wish they'd
hurry."
"They're almost through," her son said.
"You get ready to run tell Dad," Mrs. Dunbar said.
Mr. Summers called his own name and then stepped forward precisely
and selected
a slip from the box. Then he called, "Warner."
"Seventy-seventh year I been in the lottery," Old Man Warner said as
he went through the crowd. "Seventy-seventh time."
"Watson" The tall boy came awkwardly through the crowd. Someone
said, "Don't be
nervous, Jack," and Mr. Summers said, "Take your time, son."
"Zanini."
After that, there was a long pause, a breathless pause, until Mr. Summers.
holding his slip of paper in the air, said, "All right, fellows." For a minute,
no one moved, and then all the slips of paper were opened. Suddenly, all the
women began to speak at once, saving, "Who is it?," "Who's got it?," "Is it
the Dunbars?," "Is it the Watsons?" Then the voices began to say, "It's
Hutchinson. It's Bill," "Bill Hutchinson's got it."
58
"Go tell your father," Mrs. Dunbar said to her older son.
People began to look around to see the Hutchinsons. Bill Hutchinson
was standing quiet, staring down at the paper in his hand. Suddenly. Tessie
Hutchinson shouted to Mr. Summers. "You didn't give him time enough to
take any paper he wanted. I saw you. It wasn't fair!" "Be a good sport,
Tessie." Mrs. Delacroix called, and Mrs. Graves said, "All of us took the
same chance."
"Shut up, Tessie," Bill Hutchinson said.
"Well, everyone," Mr. Summers said, "that was done pretty fast, and
now we've got to be hurrying a little more to get done in time." He
consulted his next list. "Bill," he said, "you draw for the Hutchinson family.
You got any other households in the Hutchinsons?"
"There's Don and Eva," Mrs. Hutchinson yelled. "Make them take their
chance!"
"Daughters draw with their husbands' families, Tessie," Mr. Summers
said gently. "You know that as well as anyone else."
"It wasn't fair," Tessie said.
"I guess not, Joe." Bill Hutchinson said regretfully. "My daughter
draws with her husband's family; that's only fair. And I've got no other
family except the kids."
"Then, as far as drawing for families is concerned, it's you," Mr.
Summers said in explanation, "and as far as drawing for households is
concerned, that's you, too. Right?"
"Right," Bill Hutchinson said.
"How many kids, Bill?" Mr. Summers asked formally.
"Three," Bill Hutchinson said. "There's Bill, Jr., and Nancy, and little
Dave. And Tessie and me."
"All right, then," Mr. Summers said. "Harry, you got their tickets
back?"
Mr. Graves nodded and held up the slips of paper. "Put them in the box,
then," Mr. Summers directed. "Take Bill's and put it in."
"I think we ought to start over," Mrs. Hutchinson said, as quietly as she
could.
"I tell you it wasn't fair. You didn't give him time enough to choose.
Everybody saw that."
59
Mr. Graves had selected the five slips and put them in the box, and he
dropped all the papers but those onto the ground, where the breeze caught
them and lifted them off.
"Listen, everybody," Mrs. Hutchinson was saying to the people around
her.
"Ready, Bill?" Mr. Summers asked, and Bill Hutchinson, with one
quick glance around at his wife and children, nodded.
"Remember," Mr. Summers said. "take the slips and keep them folded
until each person has taken one. Harry, you help little Dave." Mr. Graves
took the hand of he little boy, who came willingly with him up to the box.
"Take a paper out of the box, Davy," Mr. Summers said. Davy put his hand
into the box and laughed.
"Take just one paper." Mr. Summers said. "Harry, you hold it for him."
Mr. Graves took the child's hand and removed the folded paper from the
tight fist and held it while little Dave stood next to him and looked up at
him wonderingly.
"Nancy next," Mr. Summers said. Nancy was twelve, and her school
friends breathed heavily as she went forward switching her skirt, and took a
slip daintily from the box. "Bill, Jr.," Mr. Summers said, and Billy, his face
red and his feet overlarge, near knocked the box over as he got a paper out.
"Tessie," Mr. Summers said. She hesitated for a minute, looking around
defiantly, and then set her lips and went up to the box. She snatched a paper
out and held it behind her.
"Bill," Mr. Summers said, and Bill Hutchinson reached into the box
and felt around, bringing his hand out at last with the slip of paper in it.
The crowd was quiet. A girl whispered, "I hope it's not Nancy," and the
sound of the whisper reached the edges of the crowd.
"It's not the way it used to be," Old Man Warner said clearly. "People
ain't the way they used to be."
"All right," Mr. Summers said. "Open the papers. Harry, you open little
Dave's."
Mr. Graves opened the slip of paper and there was a general sigh through
the crowd as he held it up and everyone could see that it was blank. Nancy
and Bill, Jr., opened theirs at the same time, and both beamed and laughed,
turning around to the crowd and holding their slips of paper above their
60
heads.
"Tessie," Mr. Summers said. There was a pause, and then Mr.
Summers looked at Bill Hutchinson, and Bill unfolded his paper and
showed it. It was blank.
"It's Tessie," Mr. Summers said, and his voice was hushed. "Show us
her paper, Bill."
Bill Hutchinson went over to his wife and forced the slip of paper out of her
hand. It had a black spot on it, the black spot Mr. Summers had made the
night before with the heavy pencil in the coal company office. Bill
Hutchinson held it up, and there was a stir in the crowd.
"All right, folks." Mr. Summers said. "Let's finish quickly."
Although the villagers had forgotten the ritual and lost the original
black box, they still remembered to use stones. The pile of stones the boys
had made earlier was ready; there were stones on the ground with the
blowing scraps of paper that had come out of the box. Mrs. Delacroix
selected a stone so large she had to pick it up with both hands and turned to
Mrs. Dunbar. "Come on," she said. "Hurry up."
Mr. Dunbar had small stones in both hands, and she said, gasping for
breath, "I can't run at all. You'll have to go ahead and I'll catch up with you."
The children had stones already. And someone gave little Davy
Hutchinson a few pebbles.
Tessie Hutchinson was in the center of a cleared space by now, and she held
her hands out desperately as the villagers moved in on her. "It isn't fair," she
said. A stone hit her on the side of the head. Old Man Warner was saying,
"Come on, come on, everyone." Steve Adams was in the front of the crowd
of villagers, with Mrs. Graves beside him.
"It isn't fair, it isn't right," Mrs. Hutchinson screamed, and then they were
upon her.
61
Behind the Story
In 1948, The New Yorker published the most controversial short story
in its history: “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, a 31-year-old wife and
mother living in Vermont. The simply told tale covers a ritual lottery in a
sunny, rural town. But what starts out bathed in warmth and charm grows
eerier and eerier, until the horrific purpose of the lottery is revealed in the
story’s final paragraphs. Soon after the piece was published, angry letters
poured in to The New Yorker. Readers canceled their subscriptions. And
while many claimed they didn’t understand the story, the intense reaction
indicated they understood it all too well.
“The Lottery” was published at a time when America was scrambling
for conformity. Following World War II, the general public wanted to leave
behind the horrors of war and genocide. They craved comfort, normalcy,
and old-fashioned values. Jackson’s story was a cutting commentary on the
dangers of blind obedience to tradition, and she threw it, like a grenade, into
a complacent post-war society.
Shirley Jackson was not the kind of person you’d expect to be a
literary firebrand. Shy and high-strung, she dropped out of the University of
Rochester in 1935. Her second stab at school was more successful. At age
20, she enrolled at Syracuse University, where she met her future husband,
Stanley Edgar Hyman. Together, they published a short-lived literary
magazine calledThe Spectre.
After graduating from Syracuse, the two got married and moved to
New York City, where Jackson gave birth to the first of her four children.
Soon after, in 1945, Hyman got a job teaching at Bennington College in
Vermont. The family moved to North Bennington, a tiny, rural town that
later became the setting for “The Lottery.” While Stanley taught, Jackson
wrote. She penned a few offbeat stories for The New Yorker, but mostly she
produced mainstream pieces for women’s periodicals such as Good
Housekeeping and Ladies’ Home Journal. After several years of living in
Vermont, Jackson had another child and was carrying a third. From a
62
distance, her life seemed tranquil and wholesome. But something darker
was brewing inside.
On a sunny June day in 1948, while taking a long walk, that darkness
emerged. Several months pregnant and pushing a baby carriage loaded with
groceries, Jackson found the trip more difficult than she’d anticipated. The
entire time, she couldn’t stop thinking about the book her husband had
shown her on ancient rites of human sacrifice.
As soon as Jackson got home, she wrote the 3,378 words of “The
Lottery.” It took her just two hours, and seemed to flow out of her nearly
perfect. “Except for one or two minor corrections,” she remembered later,
“It needed no changes.”
Her husband quickly recognized the story was genius, and Jackson
sent it on to her editor at The New Yorker. Soon, her life would change.
63
Suzanne Collins
Born: 1962
Birthplace: Connecticut
Suzanne Collins is the author of several novels for younger readers,
including a best-selling trilogy that began with 2008's The Hunger Games.
With a college background in theater and a graduate degree in fine arts, she
began her writing career in television. Collins spent the 1990s writing kids'
shows for Nickelodeon, including Clarissa Explains It All (1993) and The
Mystery Files of Shelby Woo (1997-98). She switched to writing novels for
young readers, and between 2003 and 2007 published five novels in The
Underland Chronicles series. She then wrote The Hunger Games, a dystopic
tale of a teen girl forced to fight for her life in a fallen, futuristic U.S.A.
Collins eagerly admits her stories are informed by the war experiences
of her father, a veteran of the Vietnam War, and her childhood as a military
brat. Her skill at cliff-hanging storytelling is what made The Hunger Games
popular, and what was intended as a novel for teenagers became a hit with
readers of all ages. Collins followed with Catching Fire (2009) and
Mockingjay (2009), and both books entered the market as bestsellers. The
success of the trilogy led to the movie version of The Hunger Games, and
by 2012 Collins was heir apparent in the fantasy-lit franchise realm,
following the career paths of authors such as J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter)
and Stephenie Meyer (Twilight).
http://www.infoplease.com/biography/var/suzannecollins.html
64
Hunger Games
By Suzanne Collins
When we finish our business at the market, we go to the back door of the
mayor’s house to sell half the strawberries, knowing he has a particular
fondness for them and can afford our price. The mayor’s daughter, Madge,
opens the door. She’s in my year at school. Being the mayor’s daughter,
you’d expect her to be asnob, but she’s all right. She just keeps to herself.
Like me. Since neither of us really has a group of friends, we seem to end
up together a lot at school. Eating lunch, sitting next to each other at
assemblies, partnering for sports activities. We rarely talk, which suits us
both just fine. Today her drab school outfit has been replaced by an
expensive white dress, and her blonde hair is done up with a pink ribbon.
Reaping clothes. “Pretty dress,” says Gale. Madge shoots him a look, trying
to see if it’s a genuine compliment or if he’s just being ironic. It is a pretty
dress, but she would never be wearing it ordinarily. She presses her lips
together and then smiles. “Well, if I end up going to the Capitol, I want to
look nice, don’t I?” Now it’s Gale’s turn to be confused. Does she mean it?
Or is she messing with him? I’m guessing the second. “You won’t be going
to the Capitol,” says Gale coolly. His eyes land on a small, circular pin that
adorns her dress. Real gold. Beautifully crafted. It could keep a family in
bread for months. “What can you have? Five entries? I had six when I was
just twelve years old.” “That’s not her fault,” I say. “No, it’s no one’s fault.
Just the way it is,” says Gale. Madge’s face has become closed off. She puts
the money for the berries in my hand. “Good luck, Katniss.”
“You, too,” I say, and the door closes. We walk toward the Seam in silence.
I don’t like that Gale took a dig at Madge, but he’s right, of course. The
reaping system is unfair, with the poor getting the worst of it. You become
eligible for the reaping the day you turn twelve. That year, your name is
entered once. At thirteen, twice. And so on and so on until you reach the age
of eighteen, the final year of eligibility, when your name goes into the pool
seven times. That’s true for every citizen in all twelve districts in the entire
country of Panem. But here’s the catch. Say you are poor and starving as we
were. You can opt to add your name more times in exchange for tesserae.
Each tessera is worth a meager year’s supply ofgrain and oil for one person.
You may do this for each of your family members as well. So, at the age of
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twelve, I had my name entered four times. Once, because I had to, and three
times for tesserae for grain and oil for myself, Prim, and my mother. In fact,
every year I have needed to do this. And the entries are cumulative. So now,
at the age of sixteen, my name will be in the reaping twenty times. Gale,
who is eighteen and has been either helping or single-handedly feeding a
family of five for seven years, will have his name in forty-two times. You
can see why someone like Madge, who has never been at risk of needing a
tessera, can set him off. The chance of her name being drawn is very slim
compared to those of us wholive in the Seam. Not impossible, but slim. And
even though the rules were set up by the Capitol, not the districts, certainly
not Madge’s family, it’s hard not to resent those who don’t have to sign up
for tesserae. Gale knows his anger at Madge is misdirected. On other days,
deep in the woods, I’ve listened to him rant about how the tesserae are just
another tool to cause misery in our district. A way to plant hatred between
the starving workers of the Seam and those who can generally count on
supper and thereby ensure we will never trust one another. “It’s to the
Capitol’s advantage to have us divided among ourselves,” he might say if
there were no ears to hear but mine. If it wasn’t reaping day. If a girl with a
gold pin and no tesserae hadnot made what I’m sure she thought was a
harmless comment. As we walk, I glance over at Gale’s face, still
smoldering underneath his stony expression. His rages seem pointless to me,
although I never say so. It’s not that I don’t agree with him. I do. But what
good is yelling about the Capitol in the middle of the woods? It doesn’t
change anything. It doesn’t make things fair. It doesn’t fill our stomachs. In
fact, it scares off the nearby game. I let him yell though. Better he does it in
the woods than in the district. Gale and I divide our spoils, leaving two fish,
a couple of loaves of good bread, greens, a quart of strawberries, salt,
paraffin, and a bit of money for each. “See you in the square,” I say.
“Wear something pretty,” he says flatly. At home, I find my mother and
sister are ready to go. My mother wears a fine dress from her apothecary
days. Prim is in my first reaping outfit, a skirt and ruffled blouse. It’s a bit
big on her, but my mother has made it stay with pins. Even so, she’s having
trouble keeping the blouse tucked in at the back. A tub of warm water waits
for me. I scrub off the dirt and sweat from the woods and even wash my
hair. To my surprise, my mother has laid out one of her own lovely dresses
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for me. A soft blue thing with matching shoes. “Are you sure?” I ask. I’m
trying to get past rejecting offers of help from her. For a while, I was so
angry, I wouldn’t allow her to do anything for me. And this is something
special. Her clothes from her past are very precious to her. “Of course. Let’s
put your hair up, too,” she says. I let her towel-dry it and braid it up on my
head. I can hardly recognize myself in the cracked mirror that leans against
the wall. “You look beautiful,” says Prim in a hushed voice. “And nothing
like myself,” I say. I hug her, because I know these next few hours will be
terrible for her. Her first reaping. She’s about as safe as you can get, since
she’s only entered once. I wouldn’t let her take out any tesserae. But she’s
worried about me. That the unthinkable might happen. I protect Prim in
every way I can, but I’m powerless against the reaping. The anguish I
always feel when she’s in pain wells up in mychest and threatens to register
on my face. I notice her blouse has pulled out of her skirt in the back again
and force myself to stay calm. “Tuck your tail in, little duck,” I say,
smoothing the blouse back in place. Prim giggles and gives me a small
“Quack.” “Quack yourself,” I say with a light laugh. The kind only Prim
can draw out of me. “Come on, let’s eat,” I say and plant a quick kiss on the
top of her head. The fish and greens are already cooking in a stew, but that
will be for supper. We decide to save the strawberries and bakery bread for
this evening’s meal, to make it special we say. Instead we drink milk from
Prim’s goat, Lady, and eat the rough bread made from the tessera grain,
although no one has much appetite anyway. At one o’clock, we head for the
square. Attendance is mandatory unless you are on death’s door. This
evening, officials will come around and check to see if this is the case. If
not, you’ll be imprisoned. It’s too bad, really, that they hold the reaping in
the square—one of the few places in District 12 that can be pleasant. The
square’s surrounded by shops, and on public market days, especially if
there’s good weather, it has a holiday feel to it. But today, despite the bright
banners hanging on the buildings, there’s an air of grimness. The camera
crews, perched like buzzards on rooftops, only add to the effect. People file
in silently and sign in. The reaping is a good opportunity for the Capitol to
keep tabs on the population as well. Twelve-through eighteen-year-olds are
herded into roped areas marked off by ages, the oldest in the front, the
young ones, like Prim, toward the back. Family members line up around the
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perimeter, holding tightly to one another’s hands. But there are others, too,
who have no one they love at stake, or who no longer care, who slip among
the crowd, taking bets on the two kids whose names will be drawn. Odds
are given on their ages, whether they’re Seam or merchant, if they will
break down and weep. Most refuse dealing with the racketeers but carefully,
carefully. These same people tend to be informers, and who hasn’t broken
the law? I could be shot on a daily basis for hunting, but the appetites of
those in charge protect me. Not everyone can claim the same. Anyway, Gale
and I agree that if we have to choose between dying of hunger and a bullet
in the head, the bullet would be much quicker. The space gets tighter, more
claustrophobic as people arrive. The square’s quite large, but not enough to
hold District 12’s population of about eight thousand. Latecomers are
directed to the adjacent streets, where they can watch the event on screens
as it’s televised live by the state. I find myself standing in a clump of
sixteens from the Seam. We all exchange terse nods then focus our attention
on the temporary stage that is set up before the Justice Building. It holds
three chairs, a podium, and two large glass balls, one for the boys and one
for thegirls. I stare at the paper slips in the girls’ ball. Twenty of them have
Katniss Everdeen written on them in careful handwriting. Two of the three
chairs fill with Madge’s father, Mayor Undersee, who’s a tall, balding man,
and Effie Trinket, District 12’s escort, fresh from the Capitol with her scary
white grin, pinkish hair, and spring green suit. They murmur to each other
and then look with concern at the empty seat. Just as the town clock strikes
two, the mayor steps up to the podium and begins to read. It’s the same
story every year. He tells of the history of Panem, the country that rose up
out of the ashes of a place that was once called North America. He lists the
disasters, the droughts, the storms, the fires, the encroaching seas that
swallowed up so much of the land, the brutal war for what little sustenance
remained. The result was Panem, a shining Capitol ringed by thirteen
districts, which brought peace and prosperity to its citizens. Then came the
Dark Days, the uprising of the districts against the Capitol. Twelve were
defeated, the thirteenth obliterated. The Treaty of Treason gave us the new
laws to guarantee peace and, as our yearly reminder that the Dark Days
must never be repeated, it gave us the Hunger Games. The rules of the
Hunger Games are simple. In punishment for the uprising, each of the
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twelve districts must provide one girl and one boy, called tributes, to
participate. The twenty-four tributes will be imprisoned in a vast outdoor
arena that could hold anything from a burning desert to a frozen wasteland.
Over a period of several weeks, the competitors must fight to the death. The
last tribute standing wins. Taking the kids from our districts, forcing them to
kill one another while we watch—this is the Capitol’s way of reminding us
how totally we are at their mercy. How little chance we would stand of
surviving another rebellion. Whatever words they use, the real message is
clear. “Look how we take your children and sacrifice them and there’s
nothing you can do. If you lift a finger, we will destroy every last one of
you. Just as we did in District Thirteen.” To make it humiliating as well as
torturous, the Capitol requires us to treat the Hunger Games as a festivity, a
sporting event pitting every district against the others. The last tribute alive
receives a life of ease back home, and their district will be showered with
prizes, largely consisting of food. All year, the Capitol will show the
winning district gifts of grain and oil and even delicacies like sugar while
the rest of us battle starvation. “It is both a time for repentance and a time
for thanks,” intones the mayor. Then he reads the list of past District 12
victors. In seventy-four years, we have had exactly two. Only one is still
alive. Haymitch Abernathy, a paunchy, middle-aged man, who at this
moment appears hollering something unintelligible, staggers onto the stage,
and falls into the third chair. He’s drunk. Very. The crowd responds with its
token applause, but he’s confused and tries to give Effie Trinket a big hug,
which she barely manages to fend off.
The mayor looks distressed. Since all of this is being televised, right
now District 12 is the laughingstock of Panem, and he knows it. He quickly
tries to pull the attention back to the reaping by introducing Effie Trinket.
Bright and bubbly as ever, Effie Trinket trots to the podium and gives her
signature, “Happy Hunger Games! And may the odds be ever in your
favor!” Her pink hair must be a wig because her curls have shifted slightly
off-center since her encounter with Haymitch. She goes on a bit about what
an honor it is to be here, although everyone knows she’s just aching to get
bumped up to a better district where they have proper victors, not drunks
who molest you in front of the entire nation. Through the crowd, I spot Gale
looking back at me with a ghost of a smile. As reapings go, this one at least
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has a slight entertainment factor. But suddenly I am thinking of Gale and
his forty-two names in that big glass ball and how the odds are not in his
favor. Not compared to a lot of the boys. And maybe he’s thinking the
same thing about me because his face darkens and he turns away. “But there
are still thousands of slips,” I wish I could whisper to him. It’s time for the
drawing. Effie Trinket says as she always does, “Ladies first!” and crosses
to the glass ball with the girls’ names. She reaches in, digs her hand deep
into the ball, and pulls out a slip of paper. The crowd draws in a collective
breath and then you can hear a pin drop, and I’m feeling nauseous and so
desperately hoping that it’s not me, that it’s not me, that it’s not me. Effie
Trinket crosses back to the podium, smoothes the slip of paper, and reads
out the name in a clear voice. And it’s not me.
It’s Primrose Everdeen.
2
One time, when I was in a blind in a tree, waiting motionless for game to
wander by, I dozed off and fell ten feet to the ground, landing on my back.
It was as if the impact had knocked every wisp of air from my lungs, and I
lay there struggling to inhale, to exhale, to do anything. That’s how I feel
now, trying to remember how to breathe, unable to speak, totally stunned as
the name bounces around the inside of my skull. Someone is gripping my
arm, a boy from the Seam, and I think maybe I started to fall and he caught
me. There must have been some mistake. This can’t be happening. Prim
was one slip of paper in thousands! Her chances of being chosen so remote
that I’d not even bothered to worry about her. Hadn’t I done everything?
Taken the tesserae, refused to let her do the same? One slip. One slip in
thousands. The odds had been entirely in her favor. But it hadn’t mattered.
Somewhere far away, I can hear the crowd murmuring unhappily as they
always do when a twelve-year-old gets chosen because no one thinks this is
fair. And then I see her, the blood drained from her face, hands clenched in
fists at her sides, walking with stiff, small steps up toward the stage, passing
me, and I see the back of her blouse has become untucked and hangs out
over her skirt. It’s this detail, the untucked blouse forming a ducktail, that
brings me back to myself. “Prim!” The strangled cry comes out of my throat,
and my muscles begin to move again. “Prim!” I don’t need to shove through
the crowd. The other kids make way immediately allowing me a straight
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path to the stage. I reach her just as she is about to mount the steps. With
one sweep of my arm, I push her behind me.
“I volunteer!” I gasp. “I volunteer as tribute!” There’s some confusion on
the stage. District 12 hasn’t had a volunteer in decades and the protocol has
become rusty. The rule is that once a tribute’s name has been pulled from
the ball, another eligible boy, if a boy’s name has been read, or girl, if a
girl’s name has been read, can step forward to take his or her place. In some
districts, in which winning the reaping is such a great honor, people are
eager to risk their lives, the volunteering is complicated. But in District 12,
where the word tribute is pretty much synonymous with the word corpse,
volunteers are all but extinct. “Lovely!” says Effie Trinket. “But I believe
there’s a small matter of introducing the reaping winner and then asking for
volunteers, and if one does come forth then we, um…” she trails off, unsure
herself. “What does it matter?” says the mayor. He’s looking at me with a
pained expression on his face. He doesn’t know me really, but there’s a faint
recognition there. I am the girl who brings the strawberries. The girl his
daughter might have spoken of on occasion. The girl who five years ago
stood huddled with her mother and sister, as he presented her, the oldest
child, with a medal of valor. A medal for her father, vaporized in the mines.
Does he remember that? “What does it matter?” he repeats gruffly. “Let her
come forward.” Prim is screaming hysterically behind me. She’s wrapped
her skinny arms around me like a vice. “No, Katniss! No! You can’t go!”
“Prim, let go,” I say harshly, because this is upsetting me and I don’t want
to cry. When they televise the replay of the reapings tonight, everyone will
make note of my tears, and I’ll be marked as an easy target. A weakling. I
will give no one that satisfaction. “Let go!” I can feel someone pulling her
from my back. I turn and see Gale has lifted Prim off the ground and she’s
thrashing in his arms. “Up you go, Catnip,” he says, in a voice he’s fighting
to keep steady, and then he carries Prim off toward my mother. I steel
myself and climb the steps.
“Well, bravo!” gushes Effie Trinket. “That’s the spirit of the Games!”
She’s pleased to finally have a district with a little action going on in it.
“What’s your name?” I swallow hard. “Katniss Everdeen,” I say. “I bet my
buttons that was your sister. Don’t want her to steal all the glory, do we?
Come on, everybody! Let’s give a big round of applause to our newest
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tribute!” trills Effie Trinket. To the everlasting credit of the people of
District 12, not one person claps. Not even the ones holding betting slips,
the ones who are usually beyond caring. Possibly because they know me
from the Hob, or knew my father, or have encountered Prim, who no one
can help loving. So instead of acknowledging applause, I stand there
unmoving while they take part in the boldest form of dissent they can
manage. Silence. Which says we do not agree. We do not condone. All of
this is wrong. Then something unexpected happens. At least, I don’t expect
it because I don’t think of District 12 as a place that cares about me. But a
shift has occurred since I stepped up to take Prim’s place, and now it seems
I have become someone precious. At first one, then another, then almost
every member of the crowd touches the three middle fingers of their left
hand to their lips and holds it out to me. It is an old and rarely used gesture
of our district, occasionally seen at funerals. It means thanks, it means
admiration, it means good-bye to someone you love. Now I am truly in
danger of crying, but fortunately Haymitch chooses this time to come
staggering across the stage to congratulate me. “Look at her. Look at this
one!” he hollers, throwing an arm around my shoulders. He’s surprisingly
strong for such a wreck. “I like her!” His breath reeks of liquor and it’s been
a long time since he’s bathed. “Lots of…” He can’t think of the word for a
while. “Spunk!” he says triumphantly. “More than you!” he releases me and
starts for the front of the stage. “More than you!” he shouts, pointing
directly into a camera.
Is he addressing the audience or is he so drunk he might actually be
taunting the Capitol? I’ll never know because just as he’s opening his
mouth to continue, Haymitch plummets off the stage and knocks himself
unconscious. He’s disgusting, but I’m grateful. With every camera gleefully
trained on him, I have just enough time to release the small, choked sound
in my throat and compose myself. I put my hands behind my back and stare
into the distance. I can see the hills I climbed this morning with Gale. For a
moment, I yearn for something…the idea of us leaving the district…making
our way in the woods…but I know I was right about not running off.
Because who else would have volunteered for Prim?
The Hunger Games Trilogy (chapter 1~chapter 2). Scholastic Books. Kindle Edition.
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Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Poe was born in Boston on January 19, 1809. Her mother died
when Edgar was 2 years old. Edgar was adopted by Mr. and Mrs. John
Allan, who was a successful merchant, so Edgar grew up in good
surroundings and went to good schools.
When Poe was 6, he went to school in England for 5 years. He later
returned to school in America and continued his studies. Edgar Allan went
to the University of Virginia in 1826. Although Edgar had done well in his
studies, he started to drink heavily and quickly became in debt. He had to
quit school less than a year later. Having no money, no job skills and
shunned by his adopted father, he went to Boston and joined the U.S. Army
in 1827. In 1830, Edgar Allan entered West Point as a cadet. He didn't stay
long because John Allan refused to send him any money. It is thought that
Edgar purposely broke the rules and ignored his duties so he would be
dismissed.
In 1831, Edgar Allan Poe went to New York City where he had some
of his poetry published. He submitted stories to a number of magazines and
they were all rejected. Poe had no friends, no job, and was in financial
trouble. He sent a letter to John Allan begging for help but none came. John
Allan died in 1834 and did not mention Edgar in his will. In 1835, Edgar
finally got a job as an editor of a newspaper, but he soon quit complaining
about the low pay. In 1837, Edgar went to New York and managed to
publish several books with little financial support.
The Raven and Other Poems (1845), is what made Edgar Allan Poe
famous, not only in the States, but abroad as well. His recognition from
this work had catapulted Poe from a well respected editor and critic, to the
spotlight in which his genius deserved.
His wife passed away in 1847, and he started courting, Sarah Helen
Whitman, but on returning to Richmond, he fell in love with his childhood
sweetheart Elmira Royster and planned on marriage. On the trip North to
pick up his Aunt for the wedding, Poe ended up consuming too much
alcohol and died a few days later from this binge drinking.
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The Black Cat
by Edgar Allan Poe
For the most wild, yet most homely narrative which I am about to
pen, I neither expect nor solicit belief. Mad indeed would I be to expect it,
in a case where my very senses reject their own evidence. Yet, mad am I
not —and very surely do I not dream. But to-morrow I die, and to-day I
would unburden my soul. My immediate purpose is to place before the
world, plainly, succinctly, and without comment, a series of mere household
events. In their consequences, these events have terrified —have
tortured —have destroyed me. Yet I will not attempt to expound them. To
me, they have presented little but Horror —to many they will seem less
terrible than barroques. Hereafter, perhaps, some intellect may be found
which will reduce my phantasm to the common-place —some intellect
more calm, more logical, and far less excitable than my own, which will
perceive, in the circumstances I detail with awe, nothing more than an
ordinary succession of very natural causes and effects.
From my infancy I was noted for the docility and humanity of my
disposition. My tenderness of heart was even so conspicuous as to make me
the jest of my companions. I was especially fond of animals, and was
indulged by my parents with a great variety of pets. With these I spent most
of my time, and never was so happy as when feeding and caressing them.
This peculiar of character grew with my growth, and in my manhood, I
derived from it one of my principal sources of pleasure. To those who have
cherished an affection for a faithful and sagacious dog, I need hardly be at
the trouble of explaining the nature or the intensity of the gratification thus
derivable. There is something in the unselfish and self-sacrificing love of a
brute, which goes directly to the heart of him who has had frequent
occasion to test the paltry friendship and gossamer fidelity of mere Man.
I married early, and was happy to find in my wife a disposition not
uncongenial with my own. Observing my partiality for domestic pets, she
lost no opportunity of procuring those of the most agreeable kind. We had
birds, gold fish, a fine dog, rabbits, a small monkey, and a cat.
This latter was a remarkably large and beautiful animal, entirely
black, and sagacious to an astonishing degree. In speaking of his
intelligence, my wife, who at heart was not a little tinctured with
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superstition, made frequent allusion to the ancient popular notion, which
regarded all black cats as witches in disguise. Not that she was ever serious
upon this point —and I mention the matter at all for no better reason than
that it happens, just now, to be remembered.
Pluto —this was the cat's name —was my favorite pet and playmate.
I alone fed him, and he attended me wherever I went about the house. It was
even with difficulty that I could prevent him from following me through the
streets.
Our friendship lasted, in this manner, for several years, during which
my general temperament and character —through the instrumentality of the
Fiend Intemperance —had (I blush to confess it) experienced a radical
alteration for the worse. I grew, day by day, more moody, more irritable,
more regardless of the feelings of others. I suffered myself to use
intemperate language to my wife. At length, I even offered her personal
violence. My pets, of course, were made to feel the change in my
disposition. I not only neglected, but ill-used them. For Pluto, however, I
still retained sufficient regard to restrain me from maltreating him, as I
made no scruple of maltreating the rabbits, the monkey, or even the dog,
when by accident, or through affection, they came in my way. But my
disease grew upon me —for what disease is like Alcohol! —and at length
even Pluto, who was now becoming old, and consequently somewhat
peevish —even Pluto began to experience the effects of my ill temper.
One night, returning home, much intoxicated, from one of my haunts
about town, I fancied that the cat avoided my presence. I seized him; when,
in his fright at my violence, he inflicted a slight wound upon my hand with
his teeth. The fury of a demon instantly possessed me. I knew myself no
longer. My original soul seemed, at once, to take its flight from my body;
and a more than fiendish malevolence, gin-nurtured, thrilled every fibre of
my frame. I took from my waistcoat-pocket a pen-knife, opened it, grasped
the poor beast by the throat, and deliberately cut one of its eyes from the
socket! I blush, I burn, I shudder, while I pen the damnable atrocity.
When reason returned with the morning —when I had slept off the
fumes of the night's debauch —I experienced a sentiment half of horror,
half of remorse, for the crime of which I had been guilty; but it was, at best,
a feeble and equivocal feeling, and the soul remained untouched. I again
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plunged into excess, and soon drowned in wine all memory of the deed.
In the meantime the cat slowly recovered. The socket of the lost eye
presented, it is true, a frightful appearance, but he no longer appeared to
suffer any pain. He went about the house as usual, but, as might be expected,
fled in extreme terror at my approach. I had so much of my old heart left, as
to be at first grieved by this evident dislike on the part of a creature which
had once so loved me. But this feeling soon gave place to irritation. And
then came, as if to my final and irrevocable overthrow, the spirit of
perversness. Of this spirit philosophy takes no account. Yet I am not more
sure that my soul lives, than I am that perverseness is one of the primitive
impulses of the human heart —one of the indivisible primary faculties, or
sentiments, which give direction to the character of Man. Who has not, a
hundred times, found himself committing a vile or a silly action, for no
other reason than because he knows he should not? Have we not a perpetual
inclination, in the teeth of our best judgment, to violate that which is Law,
merely because we understand it to be such? This spirit of perverseness, I
say, came to my final overthrow. It was this unfathomable longing of the
soul to vex itself —to offer violence to its own nature —to do wrong for the
wrong's sake only —that urged me to continue and finally to consummate
the injury I had inflicted upon the unoffending brute. One morning, in cool
blood, I slipped a noose about its neck and hung it to the limb of a
tree; —hung it with the tears streaming from my eyes, and with the bitterest
remorse at my heart; —hung it because I knew that it had loved me, and
because I felt it had given me no reason of offence; —hung it because I
knew that in so doing I was committing a sin —a deadly sin that would so
jeopardize my immortal soul as to place it —if such a thing were
possible —even beyond the reach of the infinite mercy of the Most
Merciful and Most Terrible God.
On the night of the day on which this cruel deed was done, I was
aroused from sleep by the cry of fire. The curtains of my bed were in flames.
The whole house was blazing. It was with great difficulty that my wife, a
servant, and myself, made our escape from the conflagration. The
destruction was complete. My entire worldly wealth was swallowed up, and
I resigned myself thenceforward to despair.
I am above the weakness of seeking to establish a sequence of cause
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and effect, between the disaster and the atrocity. But I am detailing a chain
of facts —and wish not to leave even a possible link imperfect. On the day
succeeding the fire, I visited the ruins. The walls, with one exception, had
fallen in. This exception was found in a compartment wall, not very thick,
which stood about the middle of the house, and against which had rested the
head of my bed. The plastering had here, in great measure, resisted the
action of the fire —a fact which I attributed to its having been recently
spread. About this wall a dense crowd were collected, and many persons
seemed to be examining a particular portion of it with every minute and
eager attention. The words "strange!" "singular!" and other similar
expressions, excited my curiosity. I approached and saw, as if graven in bas
reliefupon the white surface, the figure of a gigantic cat. The impression
was given with an accuracy truly marvellous. There was a rope about the
animal's neck.
When I first beheld this apparition —for I could scarcely regard it as
less —my wonder and my terror were extreme. But at length reflection
came to my aid. The cat, I remembered, had been hung in a garden adjacent
to the house. Upon the alarm of fire, this garden had been immediately
filled by the crowd —by some one of whom the animal must have been cut
from the tree and thrown, through an open window, into my chamber. This
had probably been done with the view of arousing me from sleep. The
falling of other walls had compressed the victim of my cruelty into the
substance of the freshly-spread plaster; the lime of which, had then with the
flames, and the ammonia from the carcass, accomplished the portraiture as I
saw it.
Although I thus readily accounted to my reason, if not altogether to
my conscience, for the startling fact just detailed, it did not the less fail to
make a deep impression upon my fancy. For months I could not rid myself
of the phantasm of the cat; and, during this period, there came back into my
spirit a half-sentiment that seemed, but was not, remorse. I went so far as to
regret the loss of the animal, and to look about me, among the vile haunts
which I now habitually frequented, for another pet of the same species, and
of somewhat similar appearance, with which to supply its place.
One night as I sat, half stupefied, in a den of more than infamy, my
attention was suddenly drawn to some black object, reposing upon the head
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of one of the immense hogsheads of Gin, or of Rum, which constituted the
chief furniture of the apartment. I had been looking steadily at the top of
this hogshead for some minutes, and what now caused me surprise was the
fact that I had not sooner perceived the object thereupon. I approached it,
and touched it with my hand. It was a black cat —a very large one —fully
as large as Pluto, and closely resembling him in every respect but one. Pluto
had not a white hair upon any portion of his body; but this cat had a large,
although indefinite splotch of white, covering nearly the whole region of
the breast.
Upon my touching him, he immediately arose, purred loudly, rubbed
against my hand, and appeared delighted with my notice. This, then, was
the very creature of which I was in search. I at once offered to purchase it of
the landlord; but this person made no claim to it —knew nothing of it —had
never seen it before.
I continued my caresses, and, when I prepared to go home, the animal
evinced a disposition to accompany me. I permitted it to do so; occasionally
stooping and patting it as I proceeded. When it reached the house it
domesticated itself at once, and became immediately a great favorite with
my wife.
For my own part, I soon found a dislike to it arising within me. This
was just the reverse of what I had anticipated; but I know not how or why it
was —its evident fondness for myself rather disgusted and annoyed. By
slow degrees, these feelings of disgust and annoyance rose into the
bitterness of hatred. I avoided the creature; a certain sense of shame, and the
remembrance of my former deed of cruelty, preventing me from physically
abusing it. I did not, for some weeks, strike, or otherwise violently ill use it;
but gradually —very gradually —I came to look upon it with unutterable
loathing, and to flee silently from its odious presence, as from the breath of
a pestilence.
What added, no doubt, to my hatred of the beast, was the discovery, on
the morning after I brought it home, that, like Pluto, it also had been
deprived of one of its eyes. This circumstance, however, only endeared it to
my wife, who, as I have already said, possessed, in a high degree, that
humanity of feeling which had once been my distinguishing trait, and the
source of many of my simplest and purest pleasures.
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With my aversion to this cat, however, its partiality for myself seemed
to increase. It followed my footsteps with a pertinacity which it would be
difficult to make the reader comprehend. Whenever I sat, it would crouch
beneath my chair, or spring upon my knees, covering me with its loathsome
caresses. If I arose to walk it would get between my feet and thus nearly
throw me down, or, fastening its long and sharp claws in my dress, clamber,
in this manner, to my breast. At such times, although I longed to destroy it
with a blow, I was yet withheld from so doing, partly it at by a memory of
my former crime, but chiefly —let me confess it at once —by absolutedread
of the beast.
This dread was not exactly a dread of physical evil - and yet I should
be at a loss how otherwise to define it. I am almost ashamed to own —yes,
even in this felon's cell, I am almost ashamed to own —that the terror and
horror with which the animal inspired me, had been heightened by one of
the merest chimaeras it would be possible to conceive. My wife had called
my attention, more than once, to the character of the mark of white hair, of
which I have spoken, and which constituted the sole visible difference
between the strange beast and the one I had destroyed. The reader will
remember that this mark, although large, had been originally very indefinite;
but, by slow degrees —degrees nearly imperceptible, and which for a long
time my Reason struggled to reject as fanciful —it had, at length, assumed a
rigorous distinctness of outline. It was now the representation of an object
that I shudder to name —and for this, above all, I loathed, and dreaded, and
would have rid myself of the monster had I dared —it was now, I say, the
image of a hideous —of a ghastly thing —of the GALLOWS! —oh,
mournful and terrible engine of Horror and of Crime —of Agony and of
Death!
And now was I indeed wretched beyond the wretchedness of mere
Humanity. And a brute beast —whose fellow I had contemptuously
destroyed —a brute beast to work out for me —for me a man, fashioned in
the image of the High God —so much of insufferable woe! Alas! neither by
day nor by night knew I the blessing of Rest any more! During the former
the creature left me no moment alone; and, in the latter, I started, hourly,
from dreams of unutterable fear, to find the hot breath of the thing upon my
face, and its vast weight —an incarnate Night-Mare that I had no power to
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shake off —incumbent eternally upon my heart!
Beneath the pressure of torments such as these, the feeble remnant of
the good within me succumbed. Evil thoughts became my sole
intimates —the darkest and most evil of thoughts. The moodiness of my
usual temper increased to hatred of all things and of all mankind; while,
from the sudden, frequent, and ungovernable outbursts of a fury to which I
now blindly abandoned myself, my uncomplaining wife, alas! was the most
usual and the most patient of sufferers.
One day she accompanied me, upon some household errand, into the
cellar of the old building which our poverty compelled us to inhabit. The cat
followed me down the steep stairs, and, nearly throwing me headlong,
exasperated me to madness. Uplifting an axe, and forgetting, in my wrath,
the childish dread which had hitherto stayed my hand, I aimed a blow at the
animal which, of course, would have proved instantly fatal had it descended
as I wished. But this blow was arrested by the hand of my wife. Goaded, by
the interference, into a rage more than demoniacal, I withdrew my arm from
her grasp and buried the axe in her brain. She fell dead upon the spot,
without a groan.
This hideous murder accomplished, I set myself forthwith, and with
entire deliberation, to the task of concealing the body. I knew that I could
not remove it from the house, either by day or by night, without the risk of
being observed by the neighbors. Many projects entered my mind. At one
period I thought of cutting the corpse into minute fragments, and destroying
them by fire. At another, I resolved to dig a grave for it in the floor of the
cellar. Again, I deliberated about casting it in the well in the yard —about
packing it in a box, as if merchandize, with the usual arrangements, and so
getting a porter to take it from the house. Finally I hit upon what I
considered a far better expedient than either of these. I determined to wall it
up in the cellar —as the monks of the middle ages are recorded to have
walled up their victims.
For a purpose such as this the cellar was well adapted. Its walls were
loosely constructed, and had lately been plastered throughout with a rough
plaster, which the dampness of the atmosphere had prevented from
hardening. Moreover, in one of the walls was a projection, caused by a false
chimney, or fireplace, that had been filled up, and made to resemble the rest
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of the cellar. I made no doubt that I could readily displace the bricks at this
point, insert the corpse, and wall the whole up as before, so that no eye
could detect anything suspicious.
And in this calculation I was not deceived. By means of a crow-bar I
easily dislodged the bricks, and, having carefully deposited the body against
the inner wall, I propped it in that position, while, with little trouble, I
re-laid the whole structure as it originally stood. Having procured mortar,
sand, and hair, with every possible precaution, I prepared a plaster which
could not be distinguished from the old, and with this I very carefully went
over the new brick-work. When I had finished, I felt satisfied that all was
right. The wall did not present the slightest appearance of having been
disturbed. The rubbish on the floor was picked up with the minutest care. I
looked around triumphantly, and said to myself —"Here at least, then, my
labor has not been in vain."
My next step was to look for the beast which had been the cause of so
much wretchedness; for I had, at length, firmly resolved to put it to death.
Had I been able to meet with it, at the moment, there could have been no
doubt of its fate; but it appeared that the crafty animal had been alarmed at
the violence of my previous anger, and forebore to present itself in my
present mood. It is impossible to describe, or to imagine, the deep, the
blissful sense of relief which the absence of the detested creature
occasioned in my bosom. It did not make its appearance during the
night —and thus for one night at least, since its introduction into the house,
I soundly and tranquilly slept; aye, slept even with the burden of murder
upon my soul!
The second and the third day passed, and still my tormentor came not.
Once again I breathed as a free-man. The monster, in terror, had fled the
premises forever! I should behold it no more! My happiness was supreme!
The guilt of my dark deed disturbed me but little. Some few inquiries had
been made, but these had been readily answered. Even a search had been
instituted —but of course nothing was to be discovered. I looked upon my
future felicity as secured.
Upon the fourth day of the assassination, a party of the police came,
very unexpectedly, into the house, and proceeded again to make rigorous
investigation of the premises. Secure, however, in the inscrutability of my
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place of concealment, I felt no embarrassment whatever. The officers bade
me accompany them in their search. They left no nook or corner unexplored.
At length, for the third or fourth time, they descended into the cellar. I
quivered not in a muscle. My heart beat calmly as that of one who slumbers
in innocence. I walked the cellar from end to end. I folded my arms upon
my bosom, and roamed easily to and fro. The police were thoroughly
satisfied and prepared to depart. The glee at my heart was too strong to be
restrained. I burned to say if but one word, by way of triumph, and to render
doubly sure their assurance of my guiltlessness.
"Gentlemen," I said at last, as the party ascended the steps, "I delight
to have allayed your suspicions. I wish you all health, and a little more
courtesy. By the bye, gentlemen, this —this is a very well constructed
house." (In the rabid desire to say something easily, I scarcely knew what I
uttered at all.) —"I may say an excellently well constructed house. These
walls —are you going, gentlemen? —these walls are solidly put together";
and here, through the mere frenzy of bravado, I rapped heavily, with a cane
which I held in my hand, upon that very portion of the brick-work behind
which stood the corpse of the wife of my bosom.
But may God shield and deliver me from the fangs of the Arch-Fiend!
No sooner had the reverberation of my blows sunk into silence than I was
answered by a voice from within the tomb! —by a cry, at first muffled and
broken, like the sobbing of a child, and then quickly swelling into one long,
loud, and continuous scream, utterly anomalous and inhuman —a howl —a
wailing shriek, half of horror and half of triumph, such as might have arisen
only out of hell, conjointly from the throats of the damned in their agony
and of the demons that exult in the damnation.
Of my own thoughts it is folly to speak. Swooning, I staggered to the
opposite wall. For one instant the party upon the stairs remained motionless,
through extremity of terror and of awe. In the next, a dozen stout arms were
toiling at the wall. It fell bodily. The corpse, already greatly decayed and
clotted with gore, stood erect before the eyes of the spectators. Upon its
head, with red extended mouth and solitary eye of fire, sat the hideous beast
whose craft had seduced me into murder, and whose informing voice had
consigned me to the hangman. I had walled the monster up within the tomb!
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The Tell-Tale Heart
by Edgar Allan Poe
TRUE! nervous, very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but
why WILL you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses,
not destroyed, not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I
heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell.
How then am I mad? Hearken! and observe how healthily, how calmly, I
can tell you the whole story.
It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain, but, once
conceived, it haunted me day and night. Object there was none. Passion
there was none. I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had
never given me insult. For his gold I had no desire. I think it was his eye!
Yes, it was this! One of his eyes resembled that of a vulture -- a pale blue
eye with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me my blood ran cold, and so
by degrees, very gradually, I made up my mind to take the life of the old
man, and thus rid myself of the eye for ever.
Now this is the point. You fancy me mad. Madmen know nothing. But
you should have seen me. You should have seen how wisely I proceeded -with what caution -- with what foresight, with what dissimulation, I went to
work! I was never kinder to the old man than during the whole week before
I killed him. And every night about midnight I turned the latch of his door
and opened it oh, so gently! And then, when I had made an opening
sufficient for my head, I put in a dark lantern all closed, closed so that no
light shone out, and then I thrust in my head. Oh, you would have laughed
to see how cunningly I thrust it in! I moved it slowly, very, very slowly, so
that I might not disturb the old man's sleep. It took me an hour to place my
whole head within the opening so far that I could see him as he lay upon his
bed. Ha! would a madman have been so wise as this? And then when my
head was well in the room I undid the lantern cautiously -- oh, so cautiously
-- cautiously (for the hinges creaked), I undid it just so much that a single
thin ray fell upon the vulture eye. And this I did for seven long nights, every
night just at midnight, but I found the eye always closed, and so it was
impossible to do the work, for it was not the old man who vexed me but his
Evil Eye. And every morning, when the day broke, I went boldly into the
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chamber and spoke courageously to him, calling him by name in a hearty
tone, and inquiring how he had passed the night. So you see he would have
been a very profound old man, indeed , to suspect that every night, just at
twelve, I looked in upon him while he slept.
Upon the eighth night I was more than usually cautious in opening the
door. A watch's minute hand moves more quickly than did mine. Never
before that night had I felt the extent of my own powers, of my sagacity. I
could scarcely contain my feelings of triumph. To think that there I was
opening the door little by little, and he not even to dream of my secret deeds
or thoughts. I fairly chuckled at the idea, and perhaps he heard me, for he
moved on the bed suddenly as if startled. Now you may think that I drew
back -- but no. His room was as black as pitch with the thick darkness (for
the shutters were close fastened through fear of robbers), and so I knew that
he could not see the opening of the door, and I kept pushing it on steadily,
steadily.
I had my head in, and was about to open the lantern, when my thumb
slipped upon the tin fastening , and the old man sprang up in the bed, crying
out, "Who's there?"
I kept quite still and said nothing. For a whole hour I did not move a muscle,
and in the meantime I did not hear him lie down. He was still sitting up in
the bed, listening; just as I have done night after night hearkening to the
death watches in the wall.
Presently, I heard a slight groan, and I knew it was the groan of mortal
terror. It was not a groan of pain or of grief -- oh, no! It was the low stifled
sound that arises from the bottom of the soul when overcharged with awe. I
knew the sound well. Many a night, just at midnight, when all the world
slept, it has welled up from my own bosom, deepening, with its dreadful
echo, the terrors that distracted me. I say I knew it well. I knew what the old
man felt, and pitied him although I chuckled at heart. I knew that he had
been lying awake ever since the first slight noise when he had turned in the
bed. His fears had been ever since growing upon him. He had been trying to
fancy them causeless, but could not. He had been saying to himself, "It is
nothing but the wind in the chimney, it is only a mouse crossing the floor,"
or, "It is merely a cricket which has made a single chirp." Yes he has been
trying to comfort himself with these suppositions ; but he had found all in
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vain. ALL IN VAIN, because Death in approaching him had stalked with
his black shadow before him and enveloped the victim. And it was the
mournful influence of the unperceived shadow that caused him to feel,
although he neither saw nor heard, to feel the presence of my head within
the room.
When I had waited a long time very patiently without hearing him lie
down, I resolved to open a little -- a very, very little crevice in the lantern.
So I opened it -- you cannot imagine how stealthily, stealthily -- until at
length a single dim ray like the thread of the spider shot out from the
crevice and fell upon the vulture eye.
It was open, wide, wide open, and I grew furious as I gazed upon it. I
saw it with perfect distinctness -- all a dull blue with a hideous veil over it
that chilled the very marrow in my bones, but I could see nothing else of the
old man's face or person, for I had directed the ray as if by instinct precisely
upon the damned spot.
And now have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but
over-acuteness of the senses? now, I say, there came to my ears a low, dull,
quick sound, such as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton. I knew that
sound well too. It was the beating of the old man's heart. It increased my
fury as the beating of a drum stimulates the soldier into courage.
But even yet I refrained and kept still. I scarcely breathed. I held the lantern
motionless. I tried how steadily I could maintain the ray upon the eye.
Meantime the hellish tattoo of the heart increased. It grew quicker and
quicker, and louder and louder, every instant. The old man's terror must
have been extreme! It grew louder, I say, louder every moment! -- do you
mark me well? I have told you that I am nervous: so I am. And now at the
dead hour of the night, amid the dreadful silence of that old house, so
strange a noise as this excited me to uncontrollable terror. Yet, for some
minutes longer I refrained and stood still. But the beating grew louder,
louder! I thought the heart must burst. And now a new anxiety seized me -the sound would be heard by a neighbour! The old man's hour had come!
With a loud yell, I threw open the lantern and leaped into the room. He
shrieked once -- once only. In an instant I dragged him to the floor, and
pulled the heavy bed over him. I then smiled gaily, to find the deed so far
done. But for many minutes the heart beat on with a muffled sound. This,
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however, did not vex me; it would not be heard through the wall. At length
it ceased. The old man was dead. I removed the bed and examined the
corpse. Yes, he was stone, stone dead. I placed my hand upon the heart and
held it there many minutes. There was no pulsation. He was stone dead. His
eye would trouble me no more.
If still you think me mad, you will think so no longer when I describe
the wise precautions I took for the concealment of the body. The night
waned, and I worked hastily, but in silence.
I took up three planks from the flooring of the chamber, and deposited all
between the scantlings. I then replaced the boards so cleverly so cunningly,
that no human eye -- not even his -- could have detected anything wrong.
There was nothing to wash out -- no stain of any kind -- no blood-spot
whatever. I had been too wary for that.
When I had made an end of these labours, it was four o'clock -- still
dark as midnight. As the bell sounded the hour, there came a knocking at
the street door. I went down to open it with a light heart, -- for what had I
now to fear? There entered three men, who introduced themselves, with
perfect suavity, as officers of the police. A shriek had been heard by a
neighbour during the night; suspicion of foul play had been aroused;
information had been lodged at the police office, and they (the officers) had
been deputed to search the premises.
I smiled, -- for what had I to fear? I bade the gentlemen welcome. The
shriek, I said, was my own in a dream. The old man, I mentioned, was
absent in the country. I took my visitors all over the house. I bade them
search -- search well. I led them, at length, to his chamber. I showed them
his treasures, secure, undisturbed. In the enthusiasm of my confidence, I
brought chairs into the room, and desired them here to rest from their
fatigues, while I myself, in the wild audacity of my perfect triumph, placed
my own seat upon the very spot beneath which reposed the corpse of the
victim.
The officers were satisfied. My MANNER had convinced them. I was
singularly at ease. They sat and while I answered cheerily, they chatted of
familiar things. But, ere long, I felt myself getting pale and wished them
gone. My head ached, and I fancied a ringing in my ears; but still they sat,
and still chatted. The ringing became more distinct : I talked more freely to
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get rid of the feeling: but it continued and gained definitiveness -- until, at
length, I found that the noise was NOT within my ears.
No doubt I now grew VERY pale; but I talked more fluently, and with
a heightened voice. Yet the sound increased -- and what could I do? It was
A LOW, DULL, QUICK SOUND -- MUCH SUCH A SOUND AS A
WATCH MAKES WHEN ENVELOPED IN COTTON. I gasped for breath,
and yet the officers heard it not. I talked more quickly, more vehemently
but the noise steadily increased. I arose and argued about trifles, in a high
key and with violent gesticulations; but the noise steadily increased. Why
WOULD they not be gone? I paced the floor to and fro with heavy strides,
as if excited to fury by the observations of the men, but the noise steadily
increased. O God! what COULD I do? I foamed -- I raved -- I swore! I
swung the chair upon which I had been sitting, and grated it upon the
boards, but the noise arose over all and continually increased. It grew louder
-- louder -- louder! And still the men chatted pleasantly , and smiled. Was it
possible they heard not? Almighty God! -- no, no? They heard! -- they
suspected! -- they KNEW! -- they were making a mockery of my horror! -this I thought, and this I think. But anything was better than this agony!
Anything was more tolerable than this derision! I could bear those
hypocritical smiles no longer! I felt that I must scream or die! -- and now -again -- hark! louder! louder! louder! LOUDER! -"Villains!" I shrieked, "dissemble no more! I admit the deed! -- tear up the
planks! -- here, here! -- it is the beating of his hideous heart!"
87
Mary Shelly
Born August 30, 1797, in London, England, Mary Shelley came from a
rich literary heritage. She was the daughter of William Godwin, a political
theorist, novelist, and publisher who introduced her to eminent intellectuals
and encouraged her youthful efforts as a writer; and of Mary Wollstonecraft,
a writer and early feminist thinker, who died of puerperal fever 10 days
after her daughter's birth.
In her childhood, Mary Shelley educated herself amongst her father's
intellectual circle, which included critic William Hazlitt, essayist Charles
Lamb and poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Another prominent intellectual in
Godwin's circle was poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Mary met Percy Shelley in
1812, when she was fifteen. Shelley was married at the time, but the two
spent the summer of 1814 traveling together. A baby girl was born
prematurely to the couple in February, 1815, and died twelve days later. In
her journal of March 19, 1815, Mary recorded the following dream, a
possible inspiration for Frankenstein: "Dream that my little baby came to
life again - that it had only been cold & that we rubbed it before the fire & it
lived." A son, William, was born to the couple in January, 1816.
In the summer of 1816, Percy Shelley and 19-year-old Mary visited the
poet Lord Byron at his villa beside Lake Geneva in Switzerland. Stormy
weather frequently forced them indoors, where they and Byron's other
guests sometimes read from a volume of ghost stories. One evening, Byron
challenged his guests to write one themselves. Mary's story became
Frankenstein.
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was published in 1818, when Mary was
21, and became a huge success. The first edition of the book had an
unsigned preface by Percy Shelley. Many, disbelieving that a 19-year-old
woman could have written such a horror story, thought that it was his novel.
Mary and Percy Shelley were married December 30, 1816, just weeks
after Shelley's first wife, Harriet, drowned.
In 1818, the Shelleys left England for Italy. In 1819, following the
death of 3-year-old William, Mary suffered a nervous breakdown. Of the
Shelleys' children, only one, Percy Florence, born in 1819, survived past
childhood. Further tragedy struck Mary in 1822 when her husband Percy
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Shelley drowned during a heavy squall in the Gulf of Spezia near Livorna.
Mary, only 25 years old and a widow, returned to England with her son,
determined not to marry again. She devoted herself to her son's welfare and
education, and continued her career as a professional writer. Shelley gave
up writing long fiction when realism started to gain popularity, exemplified
by the works of Charles Dickens. She wrote numerous short stories for
periodicals, particularly The Keepsaker, and produced several volumes of
Lives for Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopedia and the first authoritative edition of
Shelley's poems (1839, 4 vols.).
Mary Shelley lived in England until her death from a brain tumor in
Bournemouth, England, on February 1, 1851. She was 54 years old.
89
Frankenstein
By Mary Shelly
Remember, I am not recording the vision of a madman. The sun does
not more certainly shine in the heavens, than that which I now affirm is true.
Some miracle might have produced it, yet the stages of the discovery were
distinct and probable. After days and nights of incredible labour and fatigue,
I succeeded in discovering the cause of generation and life; nay, more, I
became myself capable of bestowing animation upon lifeless matter.
The astonishment which I had at first experienced on this discovery
soon gave place to delight and rapture. After so much time spent in painful
labour, to arrive at once at the summit of my desires was the most gratifying
consummation of my toils. But this discovery was so great and
overwhelming that all the steps by which I had been progressively led to it
were obliterated, and I beheld only the result. What had been the study and
desires of the wisest men since the creation of the world was now within
my grasp. Not that, like a magic scene, it all opened upon me at once: the
information I had obtained was of a nature rather to direct my endeavours
so soon as I should point them towards the object of my search, than to
exhibit that object already accomplished. I was like the Arabian who had
been buried with the dead, and found a passage to life, aided only by one
glimmering, and seemingly ineffectual, light.
I see by your eagerness, and the wonder and hope which your eyes
express, my friend, that you expect to be informed of the secret with which
I am acquainted; that cannot be: listen patiently until the end of my story,
and you will easily perceive why I am reserved upon that subject. I will not
lead you on, unguarded and ardent as I then was, to your destruction and
infallible misery. Learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least by my
example, how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge, and how much
happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he
who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow.
When I found so astonishing a power placed within my hands, I
hesitated a long time concerning the manner in which I should employ it.
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Although I possessed the capacity of bestowing animation, yet to prepare a
frame for the reception of it, with all its intricacies of fibres, muscles, and
veins, still remained a work of inconceivable difficulty and labour. I
doubted at first whether I should attempt the creation of a being like myself,
or one of simpler organisation; but my imagination was too much exalted
by my first success to permit me to doubt of my ability to give life to an
animal as complex and wonderful as man. The materials at present within
my command hardly appeared adequate to so arduous an undertaking; but I
doubted not that I should ultimately succeed. I prepared myself for a
multitude of reverses; my operations might be incessantly baffled, and at
last my work be imperfect: yet, when I considered the improvement which
every day takes place in science and mechanics, I was encouraged to hope
my present attempts would at least lay the foundations of future success.
Nor could I consider the magnitude and complexity of my plan as any
argument of its impracticability. It was with these feelings that I began the
creation of a human being. As the minuteness of the parts formed a great
hinderance to my speed, I resolved, contrary to my first intention, to make
the being of a gigantic stature; that is to say, about eight feet in height, and
proportionably large. After having formed this determination, and having
spent some months in successfully collecting and arranging my materials, I
began.
No one can conceive the variety of feelings which bore me onwards,
like a hurricane, in the first enthusiasm of success. Life and death appeared
to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through, and pour a torrent of
light into our dark world. A new species would bless me as its creator and
source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me. No
father could claim the gratitude of his child so completely as I should
deserve theirs. Pursuing these reflections, I thought, that if I could bestow
animation upon lifeless matter, I might in process of time (although I now
found it impossible) renew life where death had apparently devoted the
body to corruption.
These thoughts supported my spirits, while I pursued my undertaking with
unremitting ardour. My cheek had grown pale with study, and my person
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had become emaciated with confinement. Sometimes, on the very brink of
certainty, I failed; yet still I clung to the hope which the next day or the next
hour might realise. One secret which I alone possessed was the hope to
which I had dedicated myself; and the moon gazed on my midnight labours,
while, with unrelaxed and breathless eagerness, I pursued nature to her
hiding-places. Who shall conceive the horrors of my secret toil, as I dabbled
among the unhallowed damps of the grave, or tortured the living animal to
animate the lifeless clay? My limbs now tremble and my eyes swim with
the remembrance; but then a resistless, and almost frantic, impulse urged
me forward; I seemed to have lost all soul or sensation but for this one
pursuit. It was indeed but a passing trance that only made me feel with
renewed acuteness so soon as, the unnatural stimulus ceasing to operate, I
had returned to my old habits. I collected bones from charnel houses; and
disturbed, with profane fingers, the tremendous secrets of the human frame.
In a solitary chamber, or rather cell, at the top of the house, and separated
from all the other apartments by a gallery and staircase, I kept my workshop
of filthy creation: my eye-balls were starting from their sockets in attending
to the details of my employment. The dissecting room and the
slaughterhouse furnished many of my materials; and often did my human
nature turn with loathing from my occupation, whilst, still urged on by an
eagerness which perpetually increased, I brought my work near to a
conclusion.
The summer months passed while I was thus engaged, heart and soul,
in one pursuit. It was a most beautiful season; never did the fields bestow a
more plentiful harvest, or the vines yield a more luxuriant vintage: but my
eyes were insensible to the charms of nature. And the same feelings which
made me neglect the scenes around me caused me also to forget those
friends who were so many miles absent, and whom I had not seen for so
long a time. I knew my silence disquieted them; and I well remembered the
words of my father: "I know that while you are pleased with yourself, you
will think of us with affection, and we shall hear regularly from you. You
must pardon me if I regard any interruption in your correspondence as a
proof that your other duties are equally neglected."
….
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It was on a dreary night of November that I beheld the accomplishment of
my toils. With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the
instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the
lifeless thing that lay at my feet. It was already one in the morning; the rain
pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out,
when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow
eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated
its limbs.
How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe, or how delineate
the wretch whom with such infinite pains and care I had endeavoured to
form? His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as
beautiful. Beautiful!--Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work
of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and
flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed
a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same
colour as the dun white sockets in which they were set, his shrivelled
complexion and straight black lips.
The different accidents of life are not so changeable as the feelings of
human nature. I had worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole purpose
of infusing life into an inanimate body. For this I had deprived myself of
rest and health. I had desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation;
but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and
breathless horror and disgust filled my heart. Unable to endure the aspect of
the being I had created, I rushed out of the room, and continued a long time
traversing my bedchamber, unable to compose my mind to sleep. At length
lassitude succeeded to the tumult I had before endured; and I threw myself
on the bed in my clothes, endeavouring to seek a few moments of
forgetfulness. But it was in vain: I slept, indeed, but I was disturbed by the
wildest dreams. I thought I saw Elizabeth, in the bloom of health, walking
in the streets of Ingolstadt. Delighted and surprised, I embraced her; but as I
imprinted the first kiss on her lips, they became livid with the hue of death;
her features appeared to change, and I thought that I held the corpse of my
dead mother in my arms; a shroud enveloped her form, and I saw the
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grave-worms crawling in the folds of the flannel. I started from my sleep
with horror; a cold dew covered my forehead, my teeth chattered, and every
limb became convulsed: when, by the dim and yellow light of the moon, as
it forced its way through the window shutters, I beheld the wretch -- the
miserable monster whom I had created. He held up the curtain of the bed;
and his eyes, if eyes they may be called, were fixed on me. His jaws opened,
and he muttered some inarticulate sounds, while a grin wrinkled his cheeks.
He might have spoken, but I did not hear; one hand was stretched out,
seemingly to detain me, but I escaped, and rushed down stairs. I took refuge
in the courtyard belonging to the house which I inhabited; where I remained
during the rest of the night, walking up and down in the greatest agitation,
listening attentively, catching and fearing each sound as if it were to
announce the approach of the demoniacal corpse to which I had so
miserably given life.
Oh! no mortal could support the horror of that countenance. A mummy
again endued with animation could not be so hideous as that wretch. I had
gazed on him while unfinished; he was ugly then; but when those muscles
and joints were rendered capable of motion, it became a thing such as even
Dante could not have conceived.
I passed the night wretchedly. Sometimes my pulse beat so quickly and
hardly that I felt the palpitation of every artery; at others, I nearly sank to
the ground through languor and extreme weakness. Mingled with this horror,
I felt the bitterness of disappointment; dreams that had been my food and
pleasant rest for so long a space were now become a hell to me; and the
change was so rapid, the overthrow so complete!
94
Bram Stocker
Bram Stoker was born on November 8, 1847, in Clontarf, north of
Dublin, Ireland. He was very ill as a child. When he was sick, Stoker read
many books and listened to the horror tales his mother told him. These led
Stoker to start writing ghost stories, even as a child. After graduating from
Trinity College, Dublin in 1868 with honors in mathematics, Stoker took a
civil service position, but he most enjoyed going to the theater in his free
time. Then Stoker offered to write unpaid reviews of the theatrical
performances for the Dublin Mail. In 1878, he was appointed manager of
the Lyceum Theater in London.
At the same time, Stoker began to publish his own works. In 1882,
Stoker published his first book, Under the Sunset, a book of twisted
children's stories. Eight years later, he published his first novel, The Snake's
Pass (1890). However, it was not until the 1897 publication of Dracula that
Stoker received real attention from the critics, and even then it was mixed.
However, it was a popular success.
In 1905, Stoker had a stroke At the end of his life, Stoker and his wife
became increasingly poor, and he looked to others for assistance. However,
he continued to write. His works in this late stage include Lady Athlyne
(1908), The Lady of the Shroud (1909), and The Lair of the White Worm
(1911). Stoker died on April 20, 1912, in London. However, Stoker's
Dracula has lived on and has since overshadowed its author.
95
Dracula
Jonathan Harker's Journal Continued
5 May.--I must have been asleep, for certainly if I had been fully awake I
must have noticed the approach of such a remarkable place. In the gloom
the courtyard looked of considerable size, and as several dark ways led
from it under great round arches, it perhaps seemed bigger than it really is. I
have not yet been able to see it by daylight.
When the caleche stopped, the driver jumped down and held out his
h$and to assist me to alight. Again I could not but notice his prodigious
strength. His hand actually seemed like a steel vice that could have crushed
mine if he had chosen. Then he took my traps, and placed them on the
ground beside me as I stood close to a great door, old and studded with
large iron nails, and set in a projecting doorway of massive stone. I could
see even in the dim light that the stone was massively carved, but that the
carving had been much worn by time and weather. As I stood, the driver
jumped again into his seat and shook the reins. The horses started forward,
and trap and all disappeared down one of the dark openings.
I stood in silence where I was, for I did not know what to do. Of bell or
knocker there was no sign. Through these frowning walls and dark window
openings it was not likely that my voice could penetrate. The time I waited
seemed endless, and I felt doubts and fears crowding upon me. What sort of
place had I come to, and among what kind of people? What sort of grim
adventure was it on which I had embarked? Was this a customary incident
in the life of a solicitor's clerk sent out to explain the purchase of a London
estate to a foreigner? Solicitor's clerk! Mina would not like that. Solicitor,
for just before leaving London I got word that my examination was
successful, and I am now a full-blown solicitor! I began to rub my eyes and
pinch myself to see if I were awake. It all seemed like a horrible nightmare
to me, and I expected that I should suddenly awake, and find myself at
home, with the dawn struggling in through the windows, as I had now and
again felt in the morning after a day of overwork. But my flesh answered
the pinching test, and my eyes were not to be deceived. I was indeed awake
and among the Carpathians. All I could do now was to be patient, and to
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wait the coming of morning.
Just as I had come to this conclusion I heard a heavy step approaching
behind the great door, and saw through the chinks the gleam of a coming
light. Then there was the sound of rattling chains and the clanking of
massive bolts drawn back. A key was turned with the loud grating noise of
long disuse, and the great door swung back.
Within, stood a tall old man, clean shaven save for a long white
moustache, and clad in black from head to foot, without a single speck of
colour about him anywhere. He held in his hand an antique silver lamp, in
which the flame burned without a chimney or globe of any kind, throwing
long quivering shadows as it flickered in the draught of the open door. The
old man motioned me in with his right hand with a courtly gesture, saying
in excellent English, but with a strange intonation.
"Welcome to my house! Enter freely and of your own free will!" He
made no motion of stepping to meet me, but stood like a statue, as though
his gesture of welcome had fixed him into stone. The instant, however, that
I had stepped over the threshold, he moved impulsively forward, and
holding out his hand grasped mine with a strength which made me wince,
an effect which was not lessened by the fact that it seemed cold as ice, more
like the hand of a dead than a living man. Again he said.
"Welcome to my house! Enter freely. Go safely, and leave something
of the happiness you bring!" The strength of the handshake was so much
akin to that which I had noticed in the driver, whose face I had not seen,
that for a moment I doubted if it were not the same person to whom I was
speaking. So to make sure, I said interrogatively, "Count Dracula?"
He bowed in a courtly was as he replied, "I am Dracula, and I bid you
welcome, Mr. Harker, to my house. Come in, the night air is chill, and you
must need to eat and rest."As he was speaking, he put the lamp on a bracket
on the wall, and stepping out, took my luggage. He had carried it in before I
could forestall him. I protested, but he insisted.
"Nay, sir, you are my guest. It is late, and my people are not available.
Let me see to your comfort myself."He insisted on carrying my traps along
the passage, and then up a great winding stair, and along another great
passage, on whose stone floor our steps rang heavily. At the end of this he
threw open a heavy door, and I rejoiced to see within a well-lit room in
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which a table was spread for supper, and on whose mighty hearth a great
fire of logs, freshly replenished, flamed and flared.
The Count halted, putting down my bags, closed the door, and crossing
the room, opened another door, which led into a small octagonal room lit by
a single lamp, and seemingly without a window of any sort. Passing
through this, he opened another door, and motioned me to enter. It was a
welcome sight. For here was a great bedroom well lighted and warmed with
another log fire, also added to but lately, for the top logs were fresh, which
sent a hollow roar up the wide chimney. The Count himself left my luggage
inside and withdrew, saying, before he closed the door.
"You will need, after your journey, to refresh yourself by making your
toilet. I trust you will find all you wish. When you are ready, come into the
other room, where you will find your supper prepared."
The light and warmth and the Count's courteous welcome seemed to
have dissipated all my doubts and fears. Having then reached my normal
state, I discovered that I was half famished with hunger. So making a hasty
toilet, I went into the other room.
I found supper already laid out. My host, who stood on one side of the
great fireplace, leaning against the stonework, made a graceful wave of his
hand to the table, and said,
"I pray you, be seated and sup how you please. You will I trust, excuse
me that I do not join you, but I have dined already, and I do not sup."
I handed to him the sealed letter which Mr. Hawkins had entrusted to
me. He opened it and read it gravely. Then, with a charming smile, he
handed it to me to read. One passage of it, at least, gave me a thrill of
pleasure.
"I must regret that an attack of gout, from which malady I am a
constant sufferer, forbids absolutely any travelling on my part for some time
to come. But I am happy to say I can send a sufficient substitute, one in
whom I have every possible confidence. He is a young man, full of energy
and talent in his own way, and of a very faithful disposition. He is discreet
and silent, and has grown into manhood in my service. He shall be ready to
attend on you when you will during his stay, and shall take your instructions
in all matters."
The count himself came forward and took off the cover of a dish, and I
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fell to at once on an excellent roast chicken. This, with some cheese and a
salad and a bottle of old tokay, of which I had two glasses, was my supper.
During the time I was eating it the Count asked me many question as to my
journey, and I told him by degrees all I had experienced.
By this time I had finished my supper, and by my host's desire had
drawn up a chair by the fire and begun to smoke a cigar which he offered
me, at the same time excusing himself that he did not smoke. I had now an
opportunity of observing him, and found him of a very marked
physiognomy.
His face was a strong, a very strong, aquiline, with high bridge of the
thin nose and peculiarly arched nostrils, with lofty domed forehead, and
hair growing scantily round the temples but profusely elsewhere. His
eyebrows were very massive, almost meeting over the nose, and with bushy
hair that seemed to curl in its own profusion. The mouth, so far as I could
see it under the heavy moustache, was fixed and rather cruel-looking, with
peculiarly sharp white teeth. These protruded over the lips, whose
remarkable ruddiness showed astonishing vitality in a man of his years. For
the rest, his ears were pale, and at the tops extremely pointed. The chin was
broad and strong, and the cheeks firm though thin. The general effect was
one of extraordinary pallor.
Hitherto I had noticed the backs of his hands as they lay on his knees
in the firelight, and they had seemed rather white and fine. But seeing them
now close to me, I could not but notice that they were rather coarse, broad,
with squat fingers. Strange to say, there were hairs in the centre of the palm.
The nails were long and fine, and cut to a sharp point. As the Count leaned
over me and his hands touched me, I could not repress a shudder. It may
have been that his breath was rank, but a horrible feeling of nausea came
over me, which, do what I would, I could not conceal.
The Count, evidently noticing it, drew back. And with a grim sort of
smile, which showed more than he had yet done his protruberant teeth, sat
himself down again on his own side of the fireplace. We were both silent for
a while, and as I looked towards the window I saw the first dim streak of
the coming dawn. There seemed a strange stillness over everything. But as I
listened, I heard as if from down below in the valley the howling of many
wolves. The Count's eyes gleamed, and he said.
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"Listen to them, the children of the night. What music they make!"
Seeing, I suppose, some expression in my face strange to him, he
added,"Ah, sir, you dwellers in the city cannot enter into the feelings of the
hunter." Then he rose and said.
"But you must be tired. Your bedroom is all ready, and tomorrow you
shall sleep as late as you will. I have to be away till the afternoon, so sleep
well and dream well!" With a courteous bow, he opened for me himself the
door to the octagonal room, and I entered my bedroom.
I am all in a sea of wonders. I doubt. I fear. I think strange things,
which I dare not confess to my own soul. God keep me, if only for the sake
of those dear to me!
7 May.--It is again early morning, but I have rested and enjoyed the last
twenty-four hours. I slept till late in the day, and awoke of my own accord.
When I had dressed myself I went into the room where we had supped, and
found a cold breakfast laid out, with coffee kept hot by the pot being placed
on the hearth. There was a card on the table, on which was written-"I have to be absent for a while. Do not wait for me. D." I set to and
enjoyed a hearty meal. When I had done, I looked for a bell, so that I might
let the servants know I had finished, but I could not find one. There are
certainly odd deficiencies in the house, considering the extraordinary
evidences of wealth which are round me. The table service is of gold, and
so beautifully wrought that it must be of immense value. The curtains and
upholstery of the chairs and sofas and the hangings of my bed are of the
costliest and most beautiful fabrics, and must have been of fabulous value
when they were made, for they are centuries old, though in excellent order. I
saw something like them in Hampton Court, but they were worn and frayed
and moth-eaten. But still in none of the rooms is there a mirror. There is not
even a toilet glass on my table, and I had to get the little shaving glass from
my bag before I could either shave or brush my hair. I have not yet seen a
servant anywhere, or heard a sound near the castle except the howling of
wolves. Some time after I had finished my meal, I do not know whether to
call it breakfast of dinner, for it was between five and six o'clock when I
had it, I looked about for something to read, for I did not like to go about
the castle until I had asked the Count's permission. There was absolutely
100
nothing in the room, book, newspaper, or even writing materials, so I
opened another door in the room and found a sort of library. The door
opposite mine I tried, but found locked.
In the library I found, to my great delight, a vast number of English
books, whole shelves full of them, and bound volumes of magazines and
newspapers. A table in the center was littered with English magazines and
newspapers, though none of them were of very recent date. The books were
of the most varied kind, history, geography, politics, political economy,
botany, geology, law, all relating to England and English life and customs
and manners. There were even such books of reference as the London
Directory, the "Red" and "Blue" books, Whitaker's Almanac, the Army and
Navy Lists, and it somehow gladdened my heart to see it, the Law List.
Whilst I was looking at the books, the door opened, and the Count
entered. He saluted me in a hearty way, and hoped that I had had a good
night's rest. Then he went on.
"I am glad you found your way in here, for I am sure there is much that
will interest you. These companions," and he laid his hand on some of the
books, "have been good friends to me, and for some years past, ever since I
had the idea of going to London, have given me many, many hours of
pleasure. Through them I have come to know your great England, and to
know her is to love her. I long to go through the crowded streets of your
mighty London, to be in the midst of the whirl and rush of humanity, to
share its life, its change, its death, and all that makes it what it is. But alas!
As yet I only know your tongue through books. To you, my friend, I look
that I know it to speak."
"But, Count," I said, "You know and speak English thoroughly!" He
bowed gravely.
"I thank you, my friend, for your all too-flattering estimate, but yet I
fear that I am but a little way on the road I would travel. True, I know the
grammar and the words, but yet I know not how to speak them.
"Indeed," I said, "You speak excellently."
"Not so," he answered. "Well, I know that, did I move and speak in
your London, none there are who would not know me for a stranger. That is
not enough for me. Here I am noble. I am a Boyar. The common people
know me, and I am master. But a stranger in a strange land, he is no one.
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Men know him not, and to know not is to care not for. I am content if I am
like the rest, so that no man stops if he sees me, or pauses in his speaking if
he hears my words, `Ha, ha! A stranger!' I have been so long master that I
would be master still, or at least that none other should be master of me.
You come to me not alone as agent of my friend Peter Hawkins, of Exeter,
to tell me all about my new estate in London. You shall, I trust, rest here
with me a while, so that by our talking I may learn the English intonation.
And I would that you tell me when I make error, even of the smallest, in my
speaking. I am sorry that I had to be away so long today, but you will, I
know forgive one who has so many important affairs in hand." Of course I
said all I could about being willing, and asked if I might come into that
room when I chose. He answered, "Yes, certainly," and added.
"You may go anywhere you wish in the castle, except where the doors
are locked, where of course you will not wish to go. There is reason that all
things are as they are, and did you see with my eyes and know with my
knowledge, you would perhaps better understand." I said I was sure of this,
and then he went on.
"We are in Transylvania, and Transylvania is not England. Our ways
are not your ways, and there shall be to you many strange things. Nay, from
what you have told me of your experiences already, you know something of
what strange things there may be."
This led to much conversation, and as it was evident that he wanted to
talk, if only for talking's sake, I asked him many questions regarding things
that had already happened to me or come within my notice. Sometimes he
sheered off the subject, or turned the conversation by pretending not to
understand, but generally he answered all I asked most frankly. Then as
time went on, and I had got somewhat bolder, I asked him of some of the
strange things of the preceding night, as for instance, why the coachman
went to the places where he had seen the blue flames. He then explained to
me that it was commonly believed that on a certain night of the year, last
night, in fact, when all evil spirits are supposed to have unchecked sway, a
blue flame is seen over any place where treasure has been concealed.
"That treasure has been hidden," he went on, "in the region through
which you came last night, there can be but little doubt. For it was the
ground fought over for centuries by the Wallachian, the Saxon, and the Turk.
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Why, there is hardly a foot of soil in all this region that has not been
enriched by the blood of men, patriots or invaders. In the old days there
were stirring times, when the Austrian and the Hungarian came up in hordes,
and the patriots went out to meet them, men and women, the aged and the
children too, and waited their coming on the rocks above the passes, that
they might sweep destruction on them with their artificial avalanches. When
the invader was triumphant he found but little, for whatever there was had
been sheltered in the friendly soil."
"But how," said I, "can it have remained so long undiscovered, when
there is a sure index to it if men will but take the trouble to look? "The
Count smiled, and as his lips ran back over his gums, the long, sharp,
canine teeth showed out strangely. He answered.
"Because your peasant is at heart a coward and a fool! Those flames
only appear on one night, and on that night no man of this land will, if he
can help it, stir without his doors. And, dear sir, even if he did he would not
know what to do. Why, even the peasant that you tell me of who marked the
place of the flame would not know where to look in daylight even for his
own work. Even you would not, I dare be sworn, be able to find these
places again?"
"There you are right," I said. "I know no more than the dead where
even to look for them." Then we drifted into other matters.
"Come," he said at last, "tell me of London and of the house which you
have procured for me." With an apology for my remissness, I went into my
own room to get the papers from my bag. Whilst I was placing them in
order I heard a rattling of china and silver in the next room, and as I passed
through, noticed that the table had been cleared and the lamp lit, for it was
by this time deep into the dark. The lamps were also lit in the study or
library, and I found the Count lying on the sofa, reading, of all things in the
world, and English Bradshaw's Guide. When I came in he cleared the books
and papers from the table, and with him I went into plans and deeds and
figures of all sorts. He was interested in everything, and asked me a myriad
questions about the place and its surroundings. He clearly had studied
beforehand all he could get on the subject of the neighborhood, for he
evidently at the end knew very much more than I did. When I remarked this,
he answered.
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"Well, but, my friend, is it not needful that I should? When I go there I
shall be all alone, and my friend Harker Jonathan, nay, pardon me. I fall into
my country's habit of putting your patronymic first, my friend Jonathan
Harker will not be by my side to correct and aid me. He will be in Exeter,
miles away, probably working at papers of the law with my other friend,
Peter Hawkins. So!"
We went thoroughly into the business of the purchase of the estate at
Purfleet. When I had told him the facts and got his signature to the
necessary papers, and had written a letter with them ready to post to Mr.
Hawkins, he began to ask me how I had come across so suitable a place. I
read to him the notes which I had made at the time, and which I inscribe
here.
"At Purfleet, on a by-road, I came across just such a place as seemed to
be required, and where was displayed a dilapidated notice that the place was
for sale. It was surrounded by a high wall, of ancient structure, built of
heavy stones, and has not been repaired for a large number of years. The
closed gates are of heavy old oak and iron, all eaten with rust.
"The estate is called Carfax, no doubt a corruption of the old Quatre
Face, as the house is four sided, agreeing with the cardinal points of the
compass. It contains in all some twenty acres, quite surrounded by the solid
stone wall above mentioned. There are many trees on it, which make it in
places gloomy, and there is a deep, dark-looking pond or small lake,
evidently fed by some springs, as the water is clear and flows away in a
fair-sized stream. The house is very large and of all periods back, I should
say, to mediaeval times, for one part is of stone immensely thick, with only
a few windows high up and heavily barred with iron. It looks like part of a
keep, and is close to an old chapel or church. I could not enter it, as I had
not the key of the door leading to it from the house, but I have taken with
my Kodak views of it from various points. The house had been added to,
but in a very straggling way, and I can only guess at the amount of ground it
covers, which must be very great. There are but few houses close at hand,
one being a very large house only recently added to and formed into a
private lunatic asylum. It is not, however, visible from the grounds."
When I had finished, he said, "I am glad that it is old and big. I myself
am of an old family, and to live in a new house would kill me. A house
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cannot be made habitable in a day, and after all, how few days go to make
up a century. I rejoice also that there is a chapel of old times. We
Transylvanian nobles love not to think that our bones may lie amongst the
common dead. I seek not gaiety nor mirth, not the bright voluptuousness of
much sunshine and sparkling waters which please the young and gay. I am
no longer young, and my heart, through weary years of mourning over the
dead, is attuned to mirth. Moreover, the walls of my castle are broken. The
shadows are many, and the wind breathes cold through the broken
battlements and casements. I love the shade and the shadow, and would be
alone with my thoughts when I may." Somehow his words and his look did
not seem to accord, or else it was that his cast of face made his smile look
malignant and saturnine.
Presently, with an excuse, he left me, asking me to pull my papers
together. He was some little time away, and I began to look at some of the
books around me. One was an atlas, which I found opened naturally to
England, as if that map had been much used. On looking at it I found in
certain places little rings marked, and on examining these I noticed that one
was near London on the east side, manifestly where his new estate was
situated. The other two were Exeter, and Whitby on the Yorkshire coast.
It was the better part of an hour when the Count returned. "Aha!" he
said. "Still at your books? Good! But you must not work always. Come! I
am informed that your supper is ready." He took my arm, and we went into
the next room, where I found an excellent supper ready on the table. The
Count again excused himself, as he had dined out on his being away from
home. But he sat as on the previous night, and chatted whilst I ate. After
supper I smoked, as on the last evening, and the Count stayed with me,
chatting and asking questions on every conceivable subject, hour after hour.
I felt that it was getting very late indeed, but I did not say anything, for I felt
under obligation to meet my host's wishes in every way. I was not sleepy, as
the long sleep yesterday had fortified me, but I could not help experiencing
that chill which comes over one at the coming of the dawn, which is like, in
its way, the turn of the tide. They say that people who are near death die
generally at the change to dawn or at the turn of the tide. Anyone who has
when tired, and tied as it were to his post, experienced this change in the
atmosphere can well believe it. All at once we heard the crow of the cock
105
coming up with preternatural shrillness through the clear morning air.
Count Dracula, jumping to his feet, said, "Why there is the morning
again! How remiss I am to let you stay up so long. You must make your
conversation regarding my dear new country of England less interesting, so
that I may not forget how time flies by us," and with a courtly bow, he
quickly left me.
I went into my room and drew the curtains, but there was little to
notice. My window opened into the courtyard, all I could see was the warm
grey of quickening sky. So I pulled the curtains again, and have written of
this day.
8 May.--I began to fear as I wrote in this book that I was getting too diffuse.
But now I am glad that I went into detail from the first, for there is
something so strange about this place and all in it that I cannot but feel
uneasy. I wish I were safe out of it, or that I had never come. It may be that
this strange night existence is telling on me, but would that that were all! If
there were any one to talk to I could bear it, but there is no one. I have only
the Count to speak with, and he-- I fear I am myself the only living soul
within the place. Let me be prosaiac so far as facts can be. It will help me to
bear up, and imagination must not run riot with me. If it does I am lost. Let
me say at once how I stand, or seem to.
I only slept a few hours when I went to bed, and feeling that I could
not sleep any more, got up. I had hung my shaving glass by the window,
and was just beginning to shave. Suddenly I felt a hand on my shoulder, and
heard the Count's voice saying to me, "Good morning." I started, for it
amazed me that I had not seen him, since the reflection of the glass covered
the whole room behind me. In starting I had cut myself slightly, but did not
notice it at the moment. Having answered the Count's salutation, I turned to
the glass again to see how I had been mistaken. This time there could be no
error, for the man was close to me, and I could see him over my shoulder.
But there was no reflection of him in the mirror! The whole room behind
me was displayed, but there was no sign of a man in it, except myself.
This was startling, and coming on the top of so many strange things,
was beginning to increase that vague feeling of uneasiness which I always
have when the Count is near. But at the instant I saw the the cut had bled a
106
little, and the blood was trickling over my chin. I laid down the razor,
turning as I did so half round to look for some sticking plaster. When the
Count saw my face, his eyes blazed with a sort of demoniac fury, and he
suddenly made a grab at my throat. I drew away and his hand touched the
string of beads which held the crucifix. It made an instant change in him,
for the fury passed so quickly that I could hardly believe that it was ever
there.
"Take care," he said, "take care how you cut yourself. It is more
dangerous that you think in this country." Then seizing the shaving glass, he
went on, "And this is the wretched thing that has done the mischief. It is a
foul bauble of man's vanity. Away with it!" And opening the window with
one wrench of his terrible hand, he flung out the glass, which was shattered
into a thousand pieces on the stones of the courtyard far below. Then he
withdrew without a word. It is very annoying, for I do not see how I am to
shave, unless in my watch-case or the bottom of the shaving pot, which is
fortunately of metal.
When I went into the dining room, breakfast was prepared, but I could
not find the Count anywhere. So I breakfasted alone. It is strange that as yet
I have not seen the Count eat or drink. He must be a very peculiar man!
After breakfast I did a little exploring in the castle. I went out on the stairs,
and found a room looking towards the South.
The view was magnificent, and from where I stood there was every
opportunity of seeing it. The castle is on the very edge of a terrific precipice.
A stone falling from the window would fall a thousand feet without
touching anything! As far as the eye can reach is a sea of green tree tops,
with occasionally a deep rift where there is a chasm. Here and there are
silver threads where the rivers wind in deep gorges through the forests.
But I am not in heart to describe beauty, for when I had seen the view I
explored further. Doors, doors, doors everywhere, and all locked and bolted.
In no place save from the windows in the castle walls is there an available
exit. The castle is a veritable prison, and I am a prisoner!
107
DRAMA
108
Shakespeare
William Shakespeare (April 26, 1564 (baptism) - April 23, 1616) was
an English poet and playwright widely regarded as the greatest writer of the
English language, as well as one of the greatest in Western literature, and
the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He wrote about thirty-eight plays and
154 sonnets, as well as a variety of other poems. Already a popular writer in
his own lifetime, Shakespeare's reputation became increasingly celebrated
after his death and his work adulated by numerous prominent cultural
figures through the centuries. In addition, Shakespeare is the most quoted
writer in the literature and history of the English-speaking world.
Shakespeare is believed to have produced most of his work between
1586 and 1616, although the exact dates and chronology of the plays
attributed to him are often uncertain. He is counted among the very few
playwrights who have excelled in both tragedy and comedy, and his plays
combine popular appeal with complex characterisation, poetic grandeur and
philosophical depth.
Shakespeare's works have been translated into every major living
language, and his plays are continually performed all around the world. In
addition, many quotations and neologisms from his plays have passed into
everyday usage in English and other languages.
109
Romeo and Juliet
Original Text
Modern Translation
Scene II
Capulet's orchard.
Enter Romeo.
ROM:
He jests at scars that never felt a wound. He laughs at the scars of love when he’s
never felt love’s pain.
ROM:
Enter Juliet above at a window.
But soft! What light through yonder
window breaks?
It is the East, and Juliet is the sun!
Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious
moon,
Who is already sick and pale with
grief(5)
That thou her maid art far more fair
than she.
Be not her maid, since she is envious.
Her vestal livery is but sick and green,
And none but fools do wear it. Cast it
off.
It is my lady; O, it is my love!(10)
O that she knew she were!
She speaks, yet she says nothing. What
of that?
Her eye discourses; I will answer it.
I am too bold; 'tis not to me she speaks.
Two of the fairest stars in all the
heaven,(15)
Having some business, do entreat her
eyes
To twinkle in their spheres till they
Quiet! what light breaks through that
window?
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun rising!
Arise, fair sun, and kill the jealous moon,
Who is already sick and pale with grief,
That you, her maid, are far more beautiful
than she is.
Don’t be her maid, since she is so jealous.
Her chaste, white gown is only sick and
green,
And only fools wear it. Take it off and
throw it away.
It is my lady; O, it is my love!
O, I wish she knew that she was my love!
She speaks, but she says nothing. what
does that mean?
Her eye seems to be talking. I will answer
it.
I am too bold, she’s not speaking to me.
Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven,
Having some business, do beg her eyes
To twinkle in their sockets till the stars
return.
What if her eyes were there, they in her
110
Original Text
Modern Translation
head?
What if her eyes were there, they in her The brightness of her cheek would shame
head?
those stars,
The brightness of her cheek would
As daylight shames a lamp; her eyes in
shame those stars
heaven
As daylight doth a lamp; her eyes in
Would stream so brightly through the skies
heaven
That birds would sing and think it was
Would through the airy region stream so morning.
bright
See how she leans her cheek upon her
return.
That birds would sing and think it were
not night.
See how she leans her cheek upon her
hand!
O I wish I were a glove on that hand
So that I might touch that cheek!
hand!
O that I were a glove upon that hand,
That I might touch that cheek!(25)
JUL:
JUL:
Ay me!
Ah me!
ROM:
ROM:
She speaks.
O, speak again, bright angel! for you are
As glorious to this night, that is over my
head,
As is a wingéd messenger of heaven
To the white, upturned, wondering eyes
She speaks.
O, speak again, bright angel! for thou
art
As glorious to this night, being o'er my
head,
As is a winged messenger of
Of mortals that fall back to gaze on him
Unto the white-upturned wond'ring eyes When he crosses the slow moving clouds
Of mortals that fall back to gaze on him And sails upon the heart of the wind.
heaven(30)
When he bestrides the lazy-pacing
clouds
And sails upon the bosom of the air.
JUL:
O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou
JUL:
O Romeo, Romeo! Why are you
111
Original Text
Modern Translation
Romeo?(35)
And I'll no longer be a Capulet.
“Romeo?”
Deny your father and refuse to be called by
your name;
Or, if you won’t, swear you are my love,
And I'll no longer be called a Capulet.
ROM:
ROM:
Deny thy father and refuse thy name!
Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my
love,
Aside.
Shall I hear more, or shall I speak at
Shall I hear more, or shall I speak at this?
this?
JUL:
'Tis but thy name that is my enemy.(40)
Thou art thyself, though not a
Montague.
What's Montague? it is nor hand, nor
foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other
name!
What's in a name? That which we call a
rose(45)
By any other name would smell as
sweet.
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo
call'd,
Retain that dear perfection which he
owes
Without that title. Romeo, doff thy
name;
JUL:
It’s only your name that is my enemy;
You are yourself, not even a Montague.
What's “Montague?” It is not a hand, or a
foot,
Or an arm, or a face, or any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other
name!
What's in a name? that which we call a
rose
Would smell as sweet if it had any other
name.
So Romeo, if he wasn’t called “Romeo,”
would
Retain that dear perfection which he has
Without that title. Romeo, throw your
name away;
And for that name, which isn’t part of you,
Take all of me.
And for that name, which is no part of
thee,(50)
Take all myself.
ROM:
ROM:
112
Original Text
Modern Translation
I take thee at thy word.
I take you at your word.
Only call me “love,” and I'll be baptized
with a new name.
From now on, I’ll never be “Romeo.”
Call me but love, and I'll be new
baptiz'd;
Henceforth I never will be Romeo.
JUL:
What man art thou that,
thus bescreen'd in night,(55)
So stumblest on my counsel?
ROM:
By a name
I know not how to tell thee who I am.
My name, dear saint, is hateful to
myself,
Because it is an enemy to thee.(60)
Had I it written, I would tear the word.
JUL:
My ears have yet not drunk a hundred
words
Of that tongue's utterance, yet I know
the sound.
JUL:
What man are you who, wrapped in the
cover of night,
Stumbles on my private thoughts?
ROM:
By a name that
I don’t know how to tell you who I am.
My name, dear saint, is hateful to me
Because it is an enemy to you.
If I had written it down on paper, I would
tear the word from the page.
JUL:
My ears haven’t yet heard a hundred words
Of that tongue's speech, and yet I know the
sound;
Aren’t you Romeo, and a Montague?
Art thou not Romeo, and a Montague?
ROM:
Neither, fair maid, if either thee
ROM:
Neither one, fair saint, if you dislike them.
dislike.(65)
JUL:
How cam'st thou hither, tell me, and
wherefore?
The orchard walls are high and hard to
climb,
And the place death, considering who
thou art,
JUL:
How did you come here, tell me, and why?
The orchard walls are high and hard to
climb.
And the place means death, considering
who you are,
If any of my kinsmen find you here.
113
Modern Translation
Original Text
If any of my kinsmen find thee here.
Therefore thy kinsmen are no stop to
ROM:
With love's light wings did I fly over these
walls;
For rocky mountains cannot hold love out,
And what love can do, love dares to
attempt;
Therefore your kinsmen are no threat to
me.
me.
JUL:
JUL:
If they see you, they will murder you.
ROM:
With love's light wings did I o'erperch
these walls;(70)
For stony limits cannot hold love out,
And what love can do, that dares love
attempt.
If they do see thee, they will murder
thee.
ROM:
It’s a shame, there is more danger in your
eye
ROM:
Alack, there lies more peril in thine
eye(75)
Than twenty of their swords! Look thou
but sweet,
And I am proof against their enmity.
JUL:
I would not for the world they saw thee
here.
ROM:
I have night's cloak to hide me from
their eyes;
And but thou love me, let them find me
here.(80)
My life were better ended by their hate
Than twenty of their swords. if you will
just look sweet,
Then I am protected against their hate.
JUL:
I wouldn’t have them see you here for the
world.
ROM:
I have night's cloak to hide me from their
sight;
And, if you love me, let them find me here.
My life were better ended by their hate
Than death postponed, wanting your love.
Than death prorogued, wanting of thy
love.
JUL:
By whose direction found'st thou out
JUL:
Who gave you the directions to this place?
114
Original Text
Modern Translation
this place?
As that vast shore wash'd with the
ROM:
Love, that first prompted me to ask;
He gave me advice, and I gave him eyes.
I am no sea captain, but, if you were as far
away
As that vast shore washed with the furthest
sea,
farthest sea,
I would risk everything for such a cargo.
ROM:
By love, that first did prompt me to
inquire.
He lent me counsel, and I lent him
eyes.(85)
I am no pilot; yet, wert thou as far
I would adventure for such
merchandise.
JUL:
Thou knowest the mask of night is on
my face;
Else would a maiden blush bepaint my
cheek(90)
JUL:
You know that the night hides my face;
Otherwise, a maiden’s blush would paint
my cheek
For what you overheard me say tonight.
For that which thou hast heard me speak Gladly I would dwell on form, gladly,
gladly deny
Fain would I dwell on form, fain, fain
What I have spoken; but farewell polite
deny
words!
What I have spoke; but
Do you love me? I know you will say,
farewell complement!
“Yes,”
Dost thou love me? I know thou wilt say And I will take your word. but, if you
‘Ay’;
swear,
to-night.
And I will take thy word. Yet, if thou
swear'st,(95)
Thou mayst prove false. At
lovers’ perjuries,
They say Jove laughs. O gentle Romeo,
If thou dost love, pronounce it
faithfully.
Or if thou thinkest I am too quickly
You may prove false. At lovers' lies,
They say Jove laughs. O gentle Romeo,
If you do love, pronounce it faithfully.
Or if you think I am too quickly won,
I'll frown, and be wicked, and tell you,
“No,”
So you will court me. but otherwise, not
for the world.
115
Original Text
Modern Translation
won,
In truth, fair Montague, I am too
affectionate;
And, therefore, you may think my
behavior light.
But trust me, gentleman, I'll prove more
true
Than those that have more knowledge to
be unfriendly.
I should have been more unfriendly, I must
I'll frown, and be perverse, and say thee
nay,(100)
So thou wilt woo; but else, not for the
world.
In truth, fair Montague, I am too fond,
And therefore thou mayst think my
haviour light;
But trust me, gentleman, I'll prove more
confess,
Than those that have more cunning to be But you overheard, before I was aware of
strange.(105)
you,
I should have been more strange, I must My true love’s passion. Therefore, pardon
confess,
me,
But that thou overheard'st, ere I
And not attribute this surrender to light
was ware,
love,
My true love's passion. Therefore
Which the dark night has discovered.
true
pardon me,
And not impute this yielding to light
love,
Which the dark night hath so
discovered.(110)
ROM:
Lady, by yonder blessed moon I swear,
That tips with silver all these fruit-tree
tops—
ROM:
Lady, by the blessed moon up there,
That tips with silver all these fruit-tree
tops, I swear
JUL:
O, swear not by the moon, the inconstant O, don’t swear by the moon, the inconstant
moon,
moon,
That monthly changes in her circled
That monthly goes through changes in her
orb,
circled orbit,
Lest that thy love prove likewise
For fear that your love prove as variable as
JUL:
116
Original Text
Modern Translation
variable.(115)
the moon.
ROM:
ROM:
What shall I swear by?
What shall I swear by?
Which is the god of my idolatry,
JUL:
Don’t swear at all;
Or if you will, swear by your own gracious
self,
Which is the god that I worship,
And I'll believe thee.(120)
And I'll believe you.
ROM:
ROM:
If my heart's dear love,
JUL:
Do not swear at all;
Or if thou wilt, swear by thy gracious
self,
If my heart's dear love—
JUL:
Well, do not swear. Although I joy in
thee,
I have no joy of this contract to-night.
JUL:
Well, don’t swear. Although I have joy in
you,
I have no joy of this contract tonight;
It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden;
Too like the lightning, which doth cease Too like the lightning, which ceases to
to be(125)
exist
Ere one can say ‘It lightens.’ Sweet,
Before one can say, “It’s lightning.” Sweet,
good night!
good night!
This bud of love, by summer's ripening This bud of love, ripen by summer's
breath,
breezes,
May prove a beauteous flower when
May become a beautiful flower when next
It is too rash, too unadvis'd, too sudden;
we meet.
Good night, good night! As sweet repose Good night, good night! May sweet repose
and rest
and rest
Come to thy heart as that within my
Come to your heart such as that is within
breast!(130)
my breast!
next we meet.
ROM:
O, wilt thou leave me so unsatisfied?
ROM:
O, will you leave me so unsatisfied?
117
Original Text
Modern Translation
JUL:
JUL:
What satisfaction can you have tonight?
What satisfaction canst thou have
to-night?
ROM:
Th’ exchange of thy love's faithful vow
for mine.
ROM:
The exchange of your love's faithful vow
for mine.
I gave thee mine before thou didst
JUL:
I gave you my vow before you asked for it,
request it;
And yet, I wish I could give it again.
JUL:
And yet I would it were to give
again.(135)
ROM:
Would'st thou withdraw it? For what
ROM:
Would you take it away? Why, love?
purpose, love?
JUL:
JUL:
But to be frank, and give it thee again.
Only to be honest and give it to you again.
And still I wish but for the thing that I
already have.
My treasure has no boundaries, just like
the sea,
My love is as deep as the sea; the more I
give to you,
The more I have, for both my love and the
And yet I wish but for the thing I have.
My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
My love as deep; the more I give to
thee,(140)
The more I have, for both are infinite.
I hear some noise within. Dear love,
adieu!
sea are infinite.
I hear some noise within. Dear love,
goodbye!
Nurse calls within.
Anon, good nurse! Sweet Montague, be
true.
Stay but a little, I will come again.
Right away, good nurse! Sweet Montague,
be true.
Stay here a minute. I’ll be right back.
Exit.
118
Original Text
Modern Translation
ROM:
ROM:
O blessed, blessed night! I am afraid,
O blessed, blessed night! I am
afeard,(145)
Standing in this night, that all this is only a
dream,
Too promising and sweet to be real.
Being in night, all this is but a dream,
Too flattering-sweet to be substantial.
Enter Juliet above.
JUL:
JUL:
Three words, dear Romeo, and good
Three words, dear Romeo, and good night
indeed.
If that your love is honorable,
Your intention marriage, send me word
tomorrow,
By one that I'll get to come to you,
Where and what time you will marry me,
And I’ll lay all my fortunes at your feet,
night indeed.
If that thy bent of love be honourable,
Thy purpose marriage, send me word
to-morrow,(150)
By one that I'll procure to come to thee,
Where and what time thou wilt perform
the rite;
And all my fortunes at thy foot I'll lay
And follow thee my lord throughout the
And follow you, my lord, throughout the
world.
world.
NURSE:
Within.
NURSE:
Madam!
Madam!(155)
JUL:
JUL:
I come, anon.—But if thou meanest not
I come right away. But if you don’t mean
well,
I beg you,
well,
I do beseech thee—
NURSE:
Within.
NURSE:
Madam!
Madam!
JUL:
By-and-by, I come.—
JUL:
I’m coming
119
Original Text
Modern Translation
To cease thy suit and leave me to my
To end your pursuit of me and leave me to
my grief.
I’ll send tomorrow.
grief.(160)
To-morrow will I send.
ROM:
So thrive my soul—
JUL:
A thousand times good night!
ROM:
I’ll be waiting,
JUL:
A thousand times good night!
Exit.
ROM:
A thousand times the worse, to want thy A thousand times the worse for me, to
light!
want your light!
Love goes toward love as schoolboys
Love goes toward love as schoolboy away
from their books;(165)
from their books;
But love from love, towards school with But love goes from love, like boys towards
ROM:
heavy looks.
school with heavy looks.
Enter Juliet again, above.
JUL:
Hist! Romeo, hist! O for a falconer's
voice
To lure this tassel-gentle back again!
Bondage is hoarse and may not speak
aloud;
Else would I tear the cave where Echo
lies,(170)
And make her airy tongue more hoarse
than mine
With repetition of my Romeo's name.
JUL:
Listen, Romeo, listen! O I wish I had a
falconer's voice
To lure this hawk back to me again!
Being a slave has a hoarse voice and may
not speak aloud;
Or else I would go to the cave where Echo
lives,
And make her airy voice more hoarse than
mine is,
With the repetition of my Romeo's name.
Romeo!
ROM:
It is my soul that calls upon my name.
ROM:
It is my soul that calls my name.
120
Original Text
Modern Translation
How silver-sweet sound lovers’ tongues
How silver-sweet is the sound of lovers'
voices by night,
Like softest music to listening ears!
by night,(175)
Like softest music to attending ears!
JUL:
Romeo!
ROM:
My dear?
JUL:
What o'clock to-morrow
Shall I send to thee?(180)
ROM:
By the hour of nine.
JUL:
Romeo!
ROM:
My dear?
JUL:
What time tomorrow
Should I send someone to you?
ROM:
At nine.
JUL:
I will not fail. 'Tis twenty years till then. I will not fail! It’s going feel like twenty
I have forgot why I did call thee back.
years until then.
JUL:
I have forgotten why I called you back.
ROM:
Let me stand here till thou remember it.
JUL:
I shall forget, to have thee still stand
there,(185)
ROM:
Let me stand here until you remember.
JUL:
I shall forget just to have you stand there,
Remembering how I love your company.
Remembering how I love thy company.
ROM:
And I'll still stay, to have thee still
forget,
ROM:
And I'll still stay, to have you still forget,
Forgetting any other home but this one.
Forgetting any other home but this.
JUL:
'Tis almost morning. I would have thee
gone—
JUL:
It is almost morning; I want you to leave,
And yet I don’t want you to go any farther
121
Original Text
Modern Translation
And yet no farther than a
than a naughty child’s bird,
Who lets the bird hop a little from her
hand,
Like a poor prisoner in his twisted ankle
bracelet,
And, with a silk thread, plucks the bird
back again,
So loving, but jealous, of his liberty.
wanton’s bird,(190)
That lets it hop a little from her hand,
Like a poor prisoner in his
twisted gyves,
And with a silk thread plucks it back
again,
So loving-jealous of his liberty.
ROM:
I would I were thy bird.(195)
JUL:
Sweet, so would I.
Yet I should kill thee with much
cherishing.
Good night, good night! Parting is such
sweet sorrow,
That I shall say good night till it be
morrow.
ROM:
I wish I were your bird.
JUL:
Sweet, so do I.
But I should kill you with much
cherishing.
Good night, good night! Parting is such
sweet sorrow
That I shall say good night until it’s
tomorrow.
Exit.
ROM:
Sleep dwell upon thine eyes, peace in
thy breast!(200)
Would I were sleep and peace, so sweet
to rest!
Hence will I to my ghostly father's cell,
His help to crave and my dear hap to
tell.
ROM:
Sleep dwell upon your eyes, peace in your
breast!
I wish I were sleep and peace, so sweet to
rest!
I will go right away to my ghostly priest's
house,
To get his help and to tell him about my
dear good fortune.
Exit.
122
POETRY
123
Shall I Compare Thee
Shall I compare thee to a Summer's day?
Thou are more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And Summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd:
But thy eternal Summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st:
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
William Shakespeare
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How do I love thee? Let me count the ways
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of every day's
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as [they]1 turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I [seemed]2 to lose
With my lost saints, - I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! -- and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
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She Walks In Beauty
She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellow'd to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impair'd the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o'er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.
And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!
Lord Byron
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A Red, Red Rose
O my luve's like a red, red rose.
That's newly sprung in June;
O my luve's like a melodie
That's sweetly play'd in tune.
As fair art thou, my bonnie lass,
So deep in luve am I;
And I will love thee still, my Dear,
Till a'the seas gang dry.
Till a' the seas gang dry, my Dear,
And the rocks melt wi' the sun:
I will luve thee still, my Dear,
While the sands o'life shall run.
And fare thee weel my only Luve!
And fare thee weel a while!
And I will come again, my Luve,
Tho' it were ten thousand mile!
Robert Burns
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Annabelle Lee
It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.
I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea;
But we loved with a love that was more than loveI and my Annabel Lee;
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.
And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsman came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulcher
In this kingdom by the sea.
The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me
Yes! that was the reason
(as all men know, In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.
But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we
Of many far wiser than we
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And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.
For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling, my darling, my life and my bride,
In the sepulcher there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea.
Edgar Allan Poe
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Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,
And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.
I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.
Emily Dickinson
130
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
Robert Frost
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The Road Not Taken
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and II took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Robert Frost
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Daffodils
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
William Wordsworth
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O Captain My Captain
O Captain my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up--for you the flag is flung for you the bugle trills,
For you bouquets and ribboned wreaths for you the shores
a-crowding,
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head!
It is some dream that on the deck,
You've fallen cold and dead.
My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;
The ship is anchored safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;
Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
But I, with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
Walt Whitman
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NON-FICTION
135
Chief Seattle's Letter
"The President in Washington sends word that he wishes to buy our
land. But how can you buy or sell the sky? the land? The idea is strange to
us. If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water,
how can you buy them?
Every part of the earth is sacred to my people. Every shining pine
needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every meadow,
every humming insect. All are holy in the memory and experience of my
people.
We know the sap which courses through the trees as we know the
blood that courses through our veins. We are part of the earth and it is part
of us. The perfumed flowers are our sisters. The bear, the deer, the great
eagle, these are our brothers. The rocky crests, the dew in the meadow, the
body heat of the pony, and man all belong to the same family.
The shining water that moves in the streams and rivers is not just water,
but the blood of our ancestors. If we sell you our land, you must remember
that it is sacred. Each glossy reflection in the clear waters of the lakes tells
of events and memories in the life of my people. The water's murmur is the
voice of my father's father.
The rivers are our brothers. They quench our thirst. They carry our
canoes and feed our children. So you must give the rivers the kindness that
you would give any brother.
If we sell you our land, remember that the air is precious to us, that the
air shares its spirit with all the life that it supports. The wind that gave our
grandfather his first breath also received his last sigh. The wind also gives
our children the spirit of life. So if we sell our land, you must keep it apart
and sacred, as a place where man can go to taste the wind that is sweetened
by the meadow flowers.
Will you teach your children what we have taught our children? That
the earth is our mother? What befalls the earth befalls all the sons of the
earth.
This we know: the earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the
earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. Man did not
weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the
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web, he does to himself.
One thing we know: our God is also your God. The earth is precious to
him and to harm the earth is to heap contempt on its creator.
Your destiny is a mystery to us. What will happen when the buffalo are
all slaughtered? The wild horses tamed? What will happen when the secret
corners of the forest are heavy with the scent of many men and the view of
the ripe hills is blotted with talking wires? Where will the thicket be? Gone!
Where will the eagle be? Gone! And what is to say goodbye to the swift
pony and then hunt? The end of living and the beginning of survival.
When the last red man has vanished with this wilderness, and his
memory is only the shadow of a cloud moving across the prairie, will these
shores and forests still be here? Will there be any of the spirit of my people
left?
We love this earth as a newborn loves its mother's heartbeat. So, if we
sell you our land, love it as we have loved it. Care for it, as we have cared
for it. Hold in your mind the memory of the land as it is when you receive it.
Preserve the land for all children, and love it, as God loves us.
As we are part of the land, you too are part of the land. This earth is
precious to us. It is also precious to you.
One thing we know - there is only one God. No man, be he Red man
or White man, can be apart. We ARE all brothers after all."
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The Gettysburg Address
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
November 19, 1863
On June 1, 1865, Senator Charles Sumner commented on what is now
considered the most famous speech by President Abraham Lincoln. In his
eulogy on the slain president, he called it a "monumental act." He said
Lincoln was mistaken that "the world will little note, nor long remember
what we say here." Rather, the Bostonian remarked, "The world noted at
once what he said, and will never cease to remember it. The battle itself was
less important than the speech."
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this
continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the
proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation,
or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met
on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of
that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that
that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do
this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who
struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or
detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but
it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be
dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have
thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the
great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take
increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of
devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in
vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and
that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not
perish from the earth.
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A FABLE FOR TOMORROW
There was once a town in the heart of America where all life seemed to
live in harmony with its surroundings. The town lay in the midst of a
checkerboard of prosperous farms, with fields of grain and hillsides of
orchards where, in spring, white clouds of bloom drifted above the green
fields. In autumn, oak and maple and birch set up a blaze of color that
flamed and flickered across a backdrop of pines. Then foxes barked in the
hills and deer silently crossed the fields, half hidden in the mists of the fall
mornings.
Along the roads, laurel, viburnum and alder, great ferns and
wildflowers delighted the traveler's eye through much of the year. Even in
winter the road- sides were places of beauty, where countless birds came to
feed on the berries and on the seed heads of the dried weeds rising above
the snow. The country- side was, in fact, famous for the abundance and
variety of its bird life, and when the flood of migrants was pouring through
in spring and fall people traveled from great distances to observe them.
Others came to fish the streams, which flowed clear and cold out of the hills
and contained shady pools where trout lay. So it had been from the days
many years ago when the first settlers raised their houses, sank their wells,
and built their barns.
Then a strange blight crept over the area and everything began to
change. Someevil spell had settled on the community: mysterious maladies
swept the flocks of chickens; the cattle and sheep sickened and died.
Everywhere was a shadow of death. The farmers spoke of much illness
among their families. In the town the doctors had become more and more
puzzled by new kinds of sickness appearing among their patients. There had
been several sudden and unexplained deaths, not only among adults but
even among children, who would be stricken suddenly while at play and die
within a few hours.
There was a strange stillness. The birds, for example where had they
gone? Many people spoke of them, puzzled and disturbed. The feeding
stations in the backyards were deserted. The few birds seen anywhere were
moribund; they trembled violently and could not fly. It was a spring without
voices. On the mornings that had once throbbed with the dawn chorus of
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robins, catbirds, doves, jays, wrens, and scores of other bird voices there
was now no sound; only silence lay over the fields and woods and marsh.
On the farms the hens brooded, but no chicks hatched. The farmers
complained that they were unable to raise any pigs the litters were small
and the young survived only a few days. The apple trees were coming into
bloom but no bees droned among the blossoms, so there was no pollination
and there would be no fruit.
The roadsides, once so attractive, were now lined with browned and
249 withered vegetation as though swept by fire. These, too, were silent,
deserted by all living things. Even the streams were now lifeless. Anglers
no longer Rachel Carson visited them, for all the fish had died.
In the gutters under the eaves and between the shingles of the roofs, a
white granular powder still showed a few patches; some weeks before it had
fallen like snow upon the roofs and the lawns, the fields and streams.
No witchcraft, no enemy action had silenced the rebirth of new life in
this stricken world. The people had done it themselves.
This town does not actually exist, but it might easily have a thousand
counterparts in America or elsewhere in the world. I know of no community
that has experienced all the misfortunes I describe. Yet every one of these
disasters has actually happened somewhere, and many real communities
have already suffered a substantial number of them. A grim specter has
crept upon us almost unnoticed, and this imagined tragedy may easily
become a stark reality we all shall know. ...
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The Diary of Anne Frank
SATURDAY, JUNE 20,1942
Writing in a diary is a really strange experience for someone like me.
Not only because I've never written anything before, but also because it
seems to me that later on neither I nor anyone else will be interested in the
musings of a thirteen-year-old schoolgirl. Oh well, it doesn't matter. I feel
like writing, and I have an even greater need to get all kinds of things off
my chest.
"Paper has more patience than people." I thought of this saying on one
of those days when I was feeling a little depressed and was sitting at home
with my chin in my hands, bored and listless, wondering whether to stay in
or go out. I finally stayed where I was, brooding. Yes, paper does have more
patience, and since I'm not planning to let anyone else read this stiff-backed
notebook grandly referred to as a "diary," unless I should ever find a real
friend, it probably won't make a bit of difference.
Now I'm back to the point that prompted me to keep a diary in the first
place: I don't have a friend.
Let me put it more clearly, since no one will believe that a thirteen
year-oldgirl is completely alone in the world. And I'm not. I have loving
parents and a sixteen-year-old sister, and there are about thirty people I can
call friends. I have a throng of admirers who can't keep their adoring eyes
off me and who sometimes have to resort to using a broken pocket mirror to
try and catch a glimpse of me in the classroom. I have a family, loving
aunts and a good home. No, on the surface I seem to have everything,
except my one true friend. All I think about when I'm with friends is having
a good time. I can't bring myself to talk about anything but ordinary
everyday things. We don't seem to be able to get any closer, and that's the
problem. Maybe it's my fault that we don't confide in each other. In any
case, that's just how things are, and unfortunately they're not liable to
change. This is why I've started the diary.
To enhance the image of this long-awaited friend in my imagination, I
don't want to jot down the facts in this diary the way most people would do,
but I want the diary to be my friend, and I'm going to call this friend Kitty.
Since no one would understand a word of my stories to Kitty if I were to
plunge right in, I'd better provide a brief sketch of my life, much as I dislike
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doing so.
My father, the most adorable father I've ever seen, didn't marry my
mother until he was thirty-six and she was twenty-five. My sister Margot
was born in Frankfurt am Main in Germany in 1926. I was born on June 12,
1929. I lived in Frankfurt until I was four. Because we're Jewish, my father
immigrated to Holland in 1933, when he became the Managing Director of
the Dutch Opekta Company, which manufactures products used in making
jam. My mother, Edith Hollander Frank, went with him to Holland in
September, while Margot and I were sent to Aachen to stay with our
grandmother. Margot went to Holland in December, and I followed in
February, when I was plunked down on the table as a birthday present for
Margot.
I started right away at the Montessori nursery school. I stayed there
until I was six, at which time I started first grade. In sixth grade my teacher
was Mrs. Kuperus, the principal. At the end of the year we were both in
tears as we said a heartbreaking farewell, because I'd been accepted at the
Jewish Lyceum, where Margot also went to school.
Our lives were not without anxiety, since our relatives in Germany
were suffering under Hitler's anti-Jewish laws. After the pogroms in 1938
my two uncles (my mother's brothers) fled Germany, finding safe refuge in
North America. My elderly grandmother came to live with us. She was
seventy-three years old at the time.
After May 1940 the good times were few and far between: first there
was the war, then the capitulation and then the arrival of the Germans,
which is when the trouble started for the Jews. Our freedom was severely
restricted by a series of anti-Jewish decrees: Jews were required to wear a
yellow star; Jews were required to turn in their bicycles; Jews were
forbidden to use street-cars; Jews were forbidden to ride in cars, even their
own; Jews were required to do their shopping between 3 and 5 P.M.; Jews
were required to frequent only Jewish-owned barbershops and beauty
parlors; Jews were forbidden to be out on the streets between 8 P.M. and 6
A.M.; Jews were forbidden to attend theaters, movies or any other forms of
entertainment; Jews were forbidden to use swimming pools, tennis courts,
hockey fields or any other athletic fields; Jews were forbidden to go rowing;
Jews were forbidden to take part in any athletic activity in public; Jews
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were forbidden to sit in their gardens or those of their friends after 8 P.M.;
Jews were forbidden to visit Christians in their homes; Jews were required
to attend Jewish schools, etc. You couldn't do this and you couldn't do that,
but life went on. Jacque always said to me, "I don't dare do anything
anymore, 'cause I'm afraid it's not allowed."
In the summer of 1941 Grandma got sick and had to have an operation,
so my birthday passed with little celebration. In the summer of 1940 we
didn't do much for my birthday either, since the fighting had just ended in
Holland. Grandma died in January 1942. No one knows how often I think
of her and still love her. This birthday celebration in 1942 was intended to
make up for the others, and Grandma's candle was lit along with the rest.
The four of us are still doing well, and that brings me to the present date of
June 20, 1942, and the solemn dedication of my diary.
SATURDAY, JUNE 20, 1942
Dearest Kitty! Let me get started right away; it's nice and quiet now.
Father and Mother are out and Margot has gone to play Ping-Pong with
some other young people at her friend Trees's. I've been playing a lot of
Ping-Pong myself lately. So much that five of us girls have formed a club.
It's called "The Little Dipper Minus Two." A really silly name, but it's
based on a mistake. We wanted to give our club a special name; and
because there were five of us, we came up with the idea of the Little Dipper.
We thought it consisted of five stars, but we turned out to be wrong. It has
seven, like the Big Dipper, which explains the "Minus Two." Ilse Wagner
has a Ping-Pong set, and the Wagners let us play in their big dining room
whenever we want. Since we five Ping-Pong players like ice cream,
especially in the summer, and since you get hot playing Ping-Pong, our
games usually end with a visit to the nearest ice-cream parlor that allows
Jews: either Oasis or Delphi.
We've long since stopped hunting around for our purses or money -most of the time it's so busy in Oasis that we manage to find a few generous
young men of our acquaintance or an admirer to offer us more ice cream
than we could eat in a week. You're probably a little surprised to hear me
talking about admirers at such a tender age. Unfortunately, or not, as the
case may be, this vice seems to be rampant at our school. As soon as a boy
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asks if he can bicycle home with me and we get to talking, nine times out of
ten I can be sure he'll become enamored on the spot and won't let me out of
his sight for a second. His ardor eventually cools, especially since I ignore
his passionate glances and pedal blithely on my way. If it gets so bad that
they start rambling on about "asking Father's permission," I swerve slightly
on my bike, my schoolbag falls, and the young man feels obliged to
get off his bike and hand me the bag, by which time I've switched the
conversation to another topic. These are the most innocent types. Of course,
there are those who blow you kisses or try to take hold of your arm, but
they're definitely knocking on the wrong door. I get off my bike and either
refuse to make further use of their company or act as if I'm insulted and tell
them in no uncertain terms to go on home without me. There you are.
We've now laid the basis for ourfriendship. Until tomorrow.
Yours, Anne
WEDNESDAY, JULY 8, 1942
Dearest Kitty,
It seems like years since Sunday morning. So much has happened it's as if
the whole world had suddenly turned upside down. But as you can see,
Kitty, I'm still alive, and that's the main thing, Father says. I'm alive all right,
but don't ask where or how. You probably don't understand a word I'm
saying today, so I'll begin by telling you what happened Sunday afternoon.
At three o'clock (Hello had left but was supposed to come back later), the
doorbell rang. I didn't hear it, since I was out on the balcony, lazily reading
in the sun. A little while later Margot appeared in the kitchen doorway
looking very agitated. "Father has received a call-up notice from the SS,"
she whispered. "Mother has gone to see Mr. van Daan" (Mr. van Daan is
Father's business partner and a good friend.)
I was stunned. A call-up: everyone knows what that means. Visions of
concentration
camps and lonely cells raced through my head. How could we let Father go
to such a fate? "Of course he's not going," declared Margot as we waited for
Mother in the living room. "Mother's gone to Mr. van Daan to ask whether
we can move to our hiding place tomorrow. The van Daans are going with
us. There will be seven of us altogether." Silence. We couldn't speak. The
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thought of Father off visiting someone in the Jewish Hospital and
completely unaware of what was happening, the long wait for Mother, the
heat, the suspense -- all this reduced us to silence.
Suddenly the doorbell rang again. "That's Hello," I said.
"Don't open the door!" exclaimed Margot to stop me. But it wasn't
necessary, since we heard Mother and Mr. van Daan downstairs talking to
Hello, and then the two of them came inside and shut the door behind them.
Every time the bell rang, either Margot or I had to tiptoe downstairs to see
if it was Father, and we didn't let anyone else in. Margot and I were sent
from the room, as Mr. van Daan wanted to talk to Mother alone.
When she and I were sitting in our bedroom, Margot told me that the
call-up was not for Father, but for her. At this second shock, I began to cry.
Margot is sixteen -- apparently they want to send girls her age away on their
own. But thank goodness she won't be going; Mother had said so herself,
which must be what Father had meant when he talked to me about our
going into hiding. Hiding. . . where would we hide? In the city? In the
country? In a house? In a shack? When, where, how. . . ? These were
questions I wasn't allowed to ask, but they still kept running through my
mind.
Margot and I started packing our most important belongings into a
schoolbag. The first thing I stuck in was this diary, and then curlers,
handkerchiefs, schoolbooks, a comb and some old letters. Preoccupied by
the thought of going into hiding, I stuck the craziest things in the bag, but
I'm not sorry. Memories mean more to me than dresses.
Father finally came hQme around five o'clock, and we called Mr. Kleiman
to ask if he could come by that evening. Mr. van Daan left and went to get
Miep. Miep arrived and promised to return later that night, taking with her a
bag full of shoes, dresses, jackets, underwear and stockings. After that it
was quiet in our apartment; none of us felt like eating. It was still hot, and
everything was very strange.We had rented our big upstairs room to a Mr.
Goldschmidt, a divorced man in his thirties, who apparently had nothing to
do that evening, since despite all our polite hints he hung around until ten
o'clock. Miep and Jan Gies came at eleven. Miep, who's worked for Father's
company since 1933, has become a close friend, and so has her husband Jan.
Once again, shoes, stockings, books and underwear disappeared into Miep's
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bag and Jan's deep pockets.
At eleven-thirty they too disappeared.
I was exhausted, and even though I knew it'd be my last night in my own
bed, I fell asleep right away and didn't wake up until Mother called me at
five-thirty the next morning. Fortunately, it wasn't as hot as Sunday; a warm
rain fell throughout the day. The four of us were wrapped in so many layers
of clothes it looked as if we were going off to spend the night in a
refrigerator, and all that just so we could take more clothes with us. No Jew
in our situation would dare leave the house with a suitcase full of clothes. I
was wearing two undershirts, three pairs of underpants, a dress, and over
that a skirt, a jacket, a raincoat, two pairs of stockings, heavy shoes, a cap, a
scarf and lots more. I was suffocating even before we left the house, but no
one bothered to ask me how I felt.
Margot stuffed her schoolbag with schoolbooks, went to get her bicycle and,
with Miep leading the way, rode off into the great unknown. At any rate,
that's how I thought of it, since I still didn't know where our hiding place
was.
At seven-thirty we too closed the door behind us; Moortje, my cat, was the
only living creature I said good-bye to. According to a note we left for Mr.
Goldschmidt, she was to be taken to the neighbors, who would give her a
good home.
The stripped beds, the breakfast things on the table, the pound of meat for
the cat in the kitchen -- all of these created the impression that we'd left in a
hurry. But we weren't interested in impressions. We just wanted to get out
of there, to get away and reach our destination in safety. Nothing else
mattered.
More tomorrow.
Yours, Anne
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