10th Grade English Summer Work
Choose two of the stories below. All of the stories are printed at the end of this document, or are
available online.
“The Devil and Tom Walker,” by Washington Irving (1824)
“Roger Malvin's Burial,” by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1832)
“The Purloined Letter,” by Edgar Allen Poe (1845)
“Feathertop,” by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1852)
“Liar!,” by Isaac Asimov (1941)
You must write two essays total. You may choose either option (both on option 1, or both
on option 2, or two different ones), but you must write two essays on two different stories.
Option 1: Choose one story above, and look at the period in which the work was written. In a full
essay, explain how historical events or historical climate at the time this work was written affect
the main focus of the work. (For example, The Crucible was written about the time period of the
Salem Witch Trials, but it was actually written in the 1950’s when a “witch hunt” was going on
in the U.S.)
Don’t just summarize! Stick to what is being asked!
Option 2: Choose one story above, and consider the social criticism – what social issue is the
story discussing or criticizing? (For example, The Great Gatsby is criticizing the excess and
carelessness of the super-wealthy society.)
Don’t just summarize, analyze!
The Devil and Tom Walker
Washington Irving (1824)
A few miles from Boston, in Massachusetts, there is
a deep inlet winding several miles into the interior of
the country from Charles Bay, and terminating in a
thickly wooded swamp, or morass. On one side of this
inlet is a beautiful dark grove; on the opposite side the
land rises abruptly from the water’s edge, into a high
ridge on which grow a few scattered oaks of great age
and immense size. Under one of these gigantic trees,
according to old stories, there was a great amount of
treasure buried by Kidd the pirate. The inlet allowed a
facility to bring the money in a boat secretly and at night
to the very foot of the hill. The elevation of the place
permitted a good look out to be kept that no one was at
hand, while the remarkable trees formed good
landmarks by which the place might easily be found
again. The old stories add, moreover, that the devil
presided at the hiding of the money, and took it under
his guardianship; but this, it is well known, he always
does with buried treasure, particularly when it has been
ill gotten. Be that as it may, Kidd never returned to
recover his wealth; being shortly after seized at Boston,
sent out to England, and there hanged for a pirate.
About the year 1727, just at the time when
earthquakes were prevalent in New England, and shook
many tall sinners down upon their knees, there lived
near this place a meagre miserly fellow of the name of
Tom Walker. He had a wife as miserly as himself; they
were so miserly that they even conspired to cheat each
other. Whatever the woman could lay hands on she hid
away: a hen could not cackle but she was on the alert to
secure the new-laid egg. Her husband was continually
prying about to detect her secret hoards, and many and
fierce were the conflicts that took place about what
ought to have been common property. They lived in a
forlorn looking house, that stood alone and had an air of
starvation. A few straggling savin trees, emblems of
sterility, grew near it; no smoke ever curled from its
chimney; no traveler stopped at its door. A miserable
horse, whose ribs were as articulate as the bars of a
gridiron, stalked about a field where a thin carpet of
moss, scarcely covering the ragged beds of pudding
stone, tantalized and balked his hunger; and sometimes
he would lean his head over the fence, look piteously at
the passer by, and seem to petition deliverance from this
land of famine. The house and its inmates had altogether
a bad name. Tom’s wife was a tall termagant, fierce of
temper, loud of tongue, and strong of arm. Her voice
was often heard in wordy warfare with her husband; and
his face sometimes showed signs that their conflicts
were not confined to words. No one ventured, however,
to interfere between them; the lonely wayfarer shrunk
within himself at the horrid clamor and clapper clawing;
eyed the den of discord askance, and hurried on his way,
rejoicing, if a bachelor, in his celibacy.
One day that Tom Walker had been to a distant part
of the neighborhood, he took what he considered a short
cut homewards through the swamp. Like most short
cuts, it was an ill chosen route. The swamp was thickly
grown with great gloomy pines and hemlocks, some of
them ninety feet high; which made it dark at noonday,
and a retreat for all the owls of the neighborhood. It was
full of pits and quagmires, partly covered with weeds
and mosses; where the green surface often betrayed the
traveler into a gulf of black smothering mud; there were
also dark and stagnant pools, the abodes of the tadpole,
the bull-frog, and the water snake, and where trunks of
pines and hemlocks lay half drowned, half rotting,
looking like alligators, sleeping in the mire.
Tom had long been picking his way cautiously
through this treacherous forest; stepping from tuft to tuft
of rushes and roots which afforded precarious footholds
among deep sloughs; or pacing carefully, like a cat,
along the prostrate trunks of trees; startled now and then
by the sudden screaming of the bittern, or the quacking
of a wild duck, rising on the wing from some solitary
pool. At length he arrived at a piece of firm ground,
which ran out like a peninsula into the deep bosom of
the swamp. It had been one of the strong holds of the
Indians during their wars with the first colonists. Here
they had thrown up a kind of fort which they had looked
upon as almost impregnable, and had used as a place of
refuge for their squaws and children. Nothing remained
of the Indian fort but a few embankments gradually
sinking to the level of the surrounding earth, and already
overgrown in part by oaks and other forest trees, the
foliage of which formed a contrast to the dark pines and
hemlocks of the swamp.
It was late in the dusk of evening that Tom Walker
reached the old fort, and he paused there for a while to
rest himself. Any one but he would have felt unwilling
to linger in this lonely melancholy place, for the
common people had a bad opinion of it from the stories
handed down from the time of the Indian wars; when it
was asserted that the savages held incantations here and
made sacrifices to the evil spirit. Tom Walker, however,
was not a man to be troubled with any fears of the kind.
He reposed himself for some time on the trunk of a
fallen hemlock, listening to the boding cry of the tree
toad, and delving with his walking staff into a mound of
black mould at his feet. As he turned up the soil
unconsciously, his staff struck against something hard.
He raked it out of the vegetable mould, and lo! a cloven
skull with an Indian tomahawk buried deep in it, lay
before him. The rust on the weapon showed the time
that had elapsed since this death blow had been given.
It was a dreary memento of the fierce struggle that had
taken place in this last foothold of the Indian warriors.
“Humph!” said Tom Walker, as he gave the skull a
kick to shake the dirt from it.
“Let that skull alone!” said a gruff voice.
Tom lifted up his eyes and beheld a great black man,
seated directly opposite him on the stump of a tree. He
was exceedingly surprised, having neither seen nor
heard any one approach, and he was still more
perplexed on observing, as well as the gathering gloom
would permit, that the stranger was neither negro nor
Indian. It is true, he was dressed in a rude, half Indian
garb, and had a red belt or sash swathed round his body,
but his face was neither black nor copper color, but
swarthy and dingy and begrimed with soot, as if he had
been accustomed to toil among fires and forges. He had
a shock of coarse black hair, that stood out from his
head in all directions; and bore an axe on his shoulder.
He scowled for a moment at Tom with a pair of great
red eyes.
“What are you doing in my grounds?” said the black
man, with a hoarse growling voice.
“Your grounds?” said Tom, with a sneer; “no more
your grounds than mine: they belong to Deacon
Peabody.”
“Deacon Peabody be damned,” said the stranger,
“as I flatter myself he will be, if he does not look more
to his own sins and less to his neighbor’s. Look yonder,
and see how Deacon Peabody is faring.”
Tom looked in the direction that the stranger
pointed, and beheld one of the great trees, fair and
flourishing without, but rotten at the core, and saw that
it had been nearly hewn through, so that the first high
wind was likely to below it down. On the bark of the
tree was scored the name of Deacon Peabody. He now
looked round and found most of the tall trees marked
with the name of some great men of the colony, and all
more or less scored by the axe. The one on which he had
been seated, and which had evidently just been hewn
down, bore the name of Crowninshield; and he
recollected a mighty rich man of that name, who made
a vulgar display of wealth, which it was whispered he
had acquired by buccaneering.
“He’s just ready for burning!” said the black man,
with a growl of triumph. “You see I am likely to have a
good stock of firewood for winter.”
“But what right have you,” said Tom, “to cut down
Deacon Peabody’s timber?”
“The right of prior claim,” said the other. “This
woodland belonged to me long before one of your white
faced race put foot upon the soil.”
“And pray, who are you, if I may be so bold?” said
Tom.
“Oh, I go by various names. I am the Wild
Huntsman in some countries; the Black Miner in others.
In this neighborhood I am known by the name of the
Black Woodsman. I am he to whom the red men
devoted this spot, and now and then roasted a white man
by way of sweet smelling sacrifice. Since the red men
have been exterminated by you white savages, I amuse
myself by presiding at the persecutions of Quakers and
Anabaptists; I am the great patron and prompter of slave
dealers, and the grand master of the Salem witches.”
“The upshot of all which is, that, if I mistake not,”
said Tom, sturdily, “you are he commonly called Old
Scratch.”
“The same at your service!” replied the black man,
with a half civil nod.
Such was the opening of this interview, according
to the old story, though it has almost too familiar an air
to be credited. One would think that to meet with such
a singular personage in this wild lonely place, would
have shaken any man’s nerves: but Tom was a hardminded fellow, not easily daunted, and he had lived so
long with a termagant wife, that he did not even fear the
devil.
It is said that after this commencement, they had a
long and earnest conversation together, as Tom returned
homewards. The black man told him of great sums of
money which had been buried by Kidd the pirate, under
the oak trees on the high ridge not far from the morass.
All these were under his command and protected by his
power, so that none could find them but such as
propitiated his favor. These he offered to place within
Tom Walker’s reach, having conceived an especial
kindness for him: but they were to be had only on
certain conditions. What these conditions were, may
easily be surmised, though Tom never disclosed them
publicly. They must have been very hard, for he
required time to think of them, and he was not a man to
stick at trifles where money was in view. When they had
reached the edge of the swamp the stranger paused.
“What proof have I that all you have been telling me
is true?” said Tom.
“There is my signature,” said the black man,
pressing his finger on Tom’s forehead. So saying, he
turned off among the thickets of the swamp, and
seemed, as Tom said, to go down, down, down, into the
earth, until nothing but his head and shoulders could be
seen, and so on until he totally disappeared.
When Tom reached home he found the black print
of a finger burnt, as it were, into his forehead, which
nothing could obliterate.
The first news his wife had to tell him was the
sudden death of Absalom Crowninshield the rich
buccaneer. It was announced in the papers with the
usual flourish, that “a great man had fallen in Israel.”
Tom recollected the tree which his black friend had
just hewn down, and which was ready for burning. “Let
the freebooter roast,” said Tom, “who cares!” He now
felt convinced that all he had heard and seen was no
illusion.
He was not prone to let his wife into his confidence;
but as this was an uneasy secret, he willingly shared it
with her. All her avarice was awakened at the mention
of hidden gold, and she urged her husband to comply
with the black man’s terms and secure what would make
them wealthy for life. However Tom might have felt
disposed to sell himself to the devil, he was determined
not to do so to oblige his wife; so he flatly refused out
of the mere spirit of contradiction. Many and bitter were
the quarrels they had on the subject, but the more she
talked the more resolute was Tom not to be damned to
please her. At length she determined to drive the bargain
on her own account, and if she succeeded, to keep all
the gain to herself.
Being of the same fearless temper as her husband,
she set off for the old Indian fort towards the close of a
summer’s day. She was many hours absent. When she
came back she was reserved and sullen in her replies.
She spoke something of a black man whom she had met
about twilight, hewing at the root of a tall tree. He was
sulky, however, and would not come to terms; she was
to go again with a propitiatory offering, but what it was
she forebore to say.
The next evening she set off again for the swamp,
with her apron heavily laden. Tom waited and waited
for her, but in vain: midnight came, but she did not make
her appearance; morning, noon, night returned, but still
she did not come. Tom now grew uneasy for her safety;
especially as he found she had carried off in her apron
the silver teapot and spoons and every portable article
of value. Another night elapsed, another morning came;
but no wife. In a word, she was never heard of more.
What was her real fate nobody knows, in
consequence of so many pretending to know. It is one
of those facts that have become confounded by a variety
of historians. Some asserted that she lost her way among
the tangled mazes of the swamp and sunk into some pit
or slough; others, more uncharitable, hinted that she had
eloped with the household booty, and made off to some
other province; while others assert that the tempter had
decoyed her into a dismal quagmire on top of which her
hat was found lying. In confirmation of this, it was said
a great black man with an axe on his shoulder was seen
late that very evening coming out of the swamp,
carrying a bundle tied in a check apron, with an air of
surly triumph.
The most current and probable story, however,
observes that Tom Walker grew so anxious about the
fate of his wife and his property that he sat out at length
to seek them both at the Indian fort. During a long
summer’s afternoon he searched about the gloomy
place, but no wife was to be seen. He called her name
repeatedly, but she was no where to be heard. The
bittern alone responded to his voice, as he flew
screaming by; or the bull frog croaked dolefully from a
neighboring pool. At length, it is said, just in the brown
hour of twilight, when the owls began to hoot and the
bats to flit about, his attention was attracted by the
clamor of carrion crows that were hovering about a
cypress tree. He looked and beheld a bundle tied in a
check apron and hanging in the branches of the tree;
with a great vulture perched hard by, as if keeping watch
upon it. He leaped with joy, for he recognized his wife’s
apron, and supposed it to contain the household
valuables.
“Let us get hold of the property,” said he,
consolingly to himself, “and we will endeavour to do
without the woman.”
As he scrambled up the tree the vulture spread its
wide wings, and sailed off screaming into the deep
shadows of the forest. Tom seized the check apron, but,
woeful sight! found nothing but a heart and liver tied up
in it.
Such, according to the most authentic old story, was
all that was to be found of Tom’s wife. She had
probably attempted to deal with the black man as she
had been accustomed to deal with her husband; but
though a female scold is generally considered a match
for the devil, yet in this instance she appears to have had
the worst of it. She must have died game however; for
it is said Tom noticed many prints of cloven feet deeply
stamped about the tree, and several handsful of hair, that
looked as if they had been plucked from the coarse
black shock of the woodsman. Tom knew his wife’s
prowess by experience. He shrugged his shoulders as he
looked at the signs of a fierce clapper clawing. “Egad,”
said he to himself, “Old Scratch must have had a tough
time of it!”
Tom consoled himself for the loss of his property
with the loss of his wife; for he was a man of fortitude.
He even felt something like gratitude towards the black
woodsman, who he considered had done him a
kindness. He sought, therefore, to cultivate a farther
acquaintance with him, but for some time without
success; the old black legs played shy, for whatever
people may think, he is not always to be had for calling
for; he knows how to play his cards when pretty sure of
his game.
At length, it is said, when delay had whetted Tom’s
eagerness to the quick, and prepared him to agree to any
thing rather than not gain the promised treasure, he met
the black man one evening in his usual woodman dress,
with his axe on his shoulder, sauntering along the edge
of the swamp, and humming a tune. He affected to
receive Tom’s advance with great indifference, made
brief replies, and went on humming his tune.
By degrees, however, Tom brought him to business,
and they began to haggle about the terms on which the
former was to have the pirate’s treasure. There was one
condition which need not be mentioned, being generally
understood in all cases where the devil grants favors;
but there were others about which, though of less
importance, he was inflexibly obstinate. He insisted that
the money found through his means should be
employed in his service. He proposed, therefore, that
Tom should employ it in the black traffic; that is to say,
that he should fit out a slave ship. This, however, Tom
resolutely refused; he was bad enough in all conscience;
but the devil himself could not tempt him to turn slave
dealer.
Finding Tom so squeamish on this point, he did not
insist upon it, but proposed instead that he should turn
usurer; the devil being extremely anxious for the
increase of usurers, looking upon them as his peculiar
people.
To this no objections were made, for it was just to
Tom’s taste.
“You shall open a broker’s shop in Boston next
month,” said the black man.
“I’ll do it to-morrow, if you wish,” said Tom
Walker.
“You shall lend money at two per cent. a month.”
“Egad, I’ll charge four!” replied Tom Walker.
“You shall extort bonds, foreclose mortgages, drive
the merchant to bankruptcy…”
“I’ll drive him to the devil,” cried Tom Walker,
eagerly.
“You are the usurer for my money!” said the black
legs, with delight. “When will you want the rhino?”
“This very night.”
“Done!” said the devil.
“Done!” said Tom Walker. So they shook hands,
and struck a bargain.
A few days’ time saw Tom Walker seated behind
his desk in a counting house in Boston. His reputation
for a ready moneyed man, who would lend money out
for a good consideration, soon spread abroad. Every
body remembers the days of Governor Belcher, when
money was particularly scarce. It was a time of paper
credit. The country had been deluged with government
bills; the famous Land Bank had been established; there
had been a rage for speculating; the people had run mad
with schemes for new settlements; for building cities in
the wilderness; land jobbers went about with maps of
grants, and townships, and Eldorados, lying nobody
knew where, but which every body was ready to
purchase. In a word, the great speculating fever which
breaks out every now and then in the country, had raged
to an alarming degree, and every body was dreaming of
making sudden fortunes from nothing. As usual the
fever had subsided; the dream had gone off, and the
imaginary fortunes with it; the patients were left in
doleful plight, and the whole country resounded with
the consequent cry of “hard times.”
At this propitious time of public distress did Tom
Walker set up as a usurer in Boston. His door was soon
thronged by customers. The needy and the adventurous;
the gambling speculator; the dreaming land jobber; the
thriftless tradesman; the merchant with cracked credit;
in short, every one driven to raise money by desperate
means and desperate sacrifices, hurried to Tom Walker.
Thus Tom was the universal friend of the needy, and
he acted like a “friend in need;” that is to say, he always
exacted good pay and good security. In proportion to
the distress of the applicant was the hardness of his
terms. He accumulated bonds and mortgages; gradually
squeezed his customers closer and closer; and sent them
at length, dry as a sponge from his door.
In this way he made money hand over hand; became
a rich and mighty man, and exalted his cocked hat upon
change. He built himself, as usual, a vast house, out of
ostentation; but left the greater part of it unfinished and
unfurnished out of parsimony. He even set up a carriage
in the fullness of his vain glory, though he nearly
starved the horses which drew it; and as the ungreased
wheels groaned and screeched on the axle trees, you
would have thought you heard the souls of the poor
debtors he was squeezing.
As Tom waxed old, however, he grew thoughtful.
Having secured the good things of this world, he began
to feel anxious about those of the next. He thought with
regret on the bargain he had made with his black friend,
and set his wits to work to cheat him out of the
conditions. He became, therefore, all of a sudden, a
violent church goer. He prayed loudly and strenuously
as if heaven were to be taken by force of lungs. Indeed,
one might always tell when he had sinned most during
the week, by the clamor of his Sunday devotion. The
quiet Christians who had been modestly and steadfastly
travelling Zionward, were struck with self reproach at
seeing themselves so suddenly outstripped in their
career by this new-made convert. Tom was as rigid in
religious, as in money matters; he was a stern supervisor
and censurer of his neighbors, and seemed to think
every sin entered up to their account became a credit on
his own side of the page. He even talked of the
expediency of reviving the persecution of Quakers and
Anabaptists. In a word, Tom’s zeal became as notorious
as his riches.
Still, in spite of all this strenuous attention to forms,
Tom had a lurking dread that the devil, after all, would
have his due. That he might not be taken unawares,
therefore, it is said he always carried a small bible in his
coat pocket. He had also a great folio bible on his
counting house desk, and would frequently be found
reading it when people called on business; on such
occasions he would lay his green spectacles on the
book, to mark the place, while he turned round to drive
some usurious bargain.
Some say that Tom grew a little crack brained in his
old days, and that fancying his end approaching, he had
his horse new shod, saddled and bridled, and buried
with his feet uppermost; because he supposed that at the
last day the world would be turned upside down; in
which case he should find his horse standing ready for
mounting, and he was determined at the worst to give
his old friend a run for it. This, however, is probably a
mere old wives fable. If he really did take such a
precaution it was totally superfluous; at least so says the
authentic old legend which closes his story in the
following manner.
On one hot afternoon in the dog days, just as a
terrible black thundergust was coming up, Tom sat in
his counting house in his white linen cap and India silk
morning gown. He was on the point of foreclosing a
mortgage, by which he would complete the ruin of an
unlucky land speculator for whom he had professed the
greatest friendship. The poor land jobber begged him to
grant a few months indulgence. Tom had grown testy
and irritated and refused another day.
“My family will be ruined and brought upon the
parish,” said the land jobber. “Charity begins at home,”
replied Tom, “I must take care of myself in these hard
times.”
“You have made so much money out of me,” said
the speculator.
Tom lost his patience and his piety—”The devil take
me,” said he, “if I have made a farthing!”
Just then there were three loud knocks at the street
door. He stepped out to see who was there. A black man
was holding a black horse which neighed and stamped
with impatience.
“Tom, you’re come for!” said the black fellow,
gruffly. Tom shrunk back, but too late. He had left his
little bible at the bottom of his coat pocket, and his big
bible on the desk buried under the mortgage he was
about to forclose: never was sinner taken more
unawares. The black man whisked him like a child
astride the horse and away he galloped in the midst of a
thunder storm. The clerks stuck their pens behind their
ears and stared after him from the windows. Away went
Tom Walker, dashing down the streets; his white cap
bobbing up and down; his morning gown fluttering in
the wind, and his steed striking fire out of the pavement
at every bound. When the clerks turned to look for the
black man he had disappeared.
Tom Walker never returned to foreclose the
mortgage. A countryman who lived on the borders of
the swamp, reported that in the height of the thunder
gust he had heard a great clattering of hoofs and a
howling along the road, and that when he ran to the
window he just caught sight of a figure, such as I have
described, on a horse that galloped like mad across the
fields, over the hills and down into the black hemlock
swamp towards the old Indian fort; and that shortly after
a thunderbolt fell in that direction which seemed to set
the whole forest in a blaze.
The good people of Boston shook their heads and
shrugged their shoulders, but had been so much
accustomed to witches and goblins and tricks of the
devil in all kinds of shapes from the first settlement of
the colony, that they were not so much horror struck as
might have been expected. Trustees were appointed to
take charge of Tom’s effects. There was nothing,
however, to administer upon. On searching his coffers
all his bonds and mortgages were found reduced to
cinders. In place of gold and silver his iron chest was
filled with chips and shavings; two skeletons lay in his
stable instead of his half starved horses, and the very
next day his great house took fire and was burnt to the
ground.
Such was the end of Tom Walker and his ill gotten
wealth. Let all griping money brokers lay this story to
heart. The truth of it is not to be doubted. The very hole
under the oak trees, from whence he dug Kidd’s money
is to be seen to this day; and the neighboring swamp and
old Indian fort is often haunted in stormy nights by a
figure on horseback, in a morning gown and white cap,
which is doubtless the troubled spirit of the usurer. In
fact, the story has resolved itself into a proverb, and is
the origin of that popular saying, prevalent throughout
New-England, of “The Devil and Tom Walker.”
Roger Malvin’s Burial
by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1832)
From Mosses from an Old Manse
ONE of the few incidents of Indian warfare
naturally susceptible of the moonlight of romance
was that expedition undertaken for the defence of
the frontiers in the year 1725, which resulted in the
well-remembered “Lovell’s Fight.” Imagination, by
casting certain circumstances judicially into the
shade, may see much to admire in the heroism of a
little band who gave battle to twice their number in
the heart of the enemy’s country. The open bravery
displayed by both parties was in accordance with
civilized ideas of valor; and chivalry itself might
not blush to record the deeds of one or two
individuals. The battle, though so fatal to those who
fought, was not unfortunate in its consequences to
the country; for it broke the strength of a tribe and
conduced to the peace which subsisted during
several ensuing years. History and tradition are
unusually minute in their memorials of their affair;
and the captain of a scouting party of frontier men
has acquired as actual a military renown as many a
victorious leader of thousands. Some of the
incidents contained in the following pages will be
recognized, notwithstanding the substitution of
fictitious names, by such as have heard, from old
men’s lips, the fate of the few combatants who
were in a condition to retreat after “Lovell’s Fight.”
.........
The early sunbeams hovered cheerfully
upon the tree-tops, beneath which two weary and
wounded men had stretched their limbs the night
before. Their bed of withered oak leaves was
strewn upon the small level space, at the foot of a
rock, situated near the summit of one of the gentle
swells by which the face of the country is there
diversified. The mass of granite, rearing its smooth,
flat surface fifteen or twenty feet above their heads,
was not unlike a gigantic gravestone, upon which
the veins seemed to form an inscription in forgotten
characters. On a tract of several acres around this
rock, oaks and other hard-wood trees had supplied
the place of the pines, which were the usual growth
of the land; and a young and vigorous sapling stood
close beside the travelers.
The severe wound of the elder man had
probably deprived him of sleep; for, so soon as the
first ray of sunshine rested on the top of the highest
tree, he reared himself painfully from his
recumbent posture and sat erect. The deep lines of
his countenance and the scattered gray of his hair
marked him as past the middle age; but his
muscular frame would, but for the effect of his
wound, have been as capable of sustaining fatigue
as in the early vigor of life. Languor and exhaustion
now sat upon his haggard features; and the
despairing glance which he sent forward through
the depths of the forest proved his own conviction
that his pilgrimage was at an end. He next turned
his eyes to the companion who reclined by his side.
The youth--for he had scarcely attained the years of
manhood--lay, with his head upon his arm, in the
embrace of an unquiet sleep, which a thrill of pain
from his wounds seemed each moment on the point
of breaking. His right hand grasped a musket; and,
to judge from the violent action of his features, his
slumbers were bringing back a vision of the
conflict of which he was one of the few survivors.
A shout deep and loud in his dreaming fancy-found its way in an imperfect murmur to his lips;
and, starting even at the slight sound of his own
voice, he suddenly awoke. The first act of reviving
recollection was to make anxious inquiries
respecting the condition of his wounded fellowtraveller. The latter shook his head.
“Reuben, my boy,” said he, “this rock
beneath which we sit will serve for an old hunter’s
gravestone. There is many and many a long mile of
howling wilderness before us yet; nor would it
avail me anything if the smoke of my own chimney
were but on the other side of that swell of land. The
Indian bullet was deadlier than I thought.”
“You are weary with our three days’
travel,” replied the youth, “and a little longer rest
will recruit you. Sit you here while I search the
woods for the herbs and roots that must be our
sustenance; and, having eaten, you shall lean on
me, and we will turn our faces homeward. I doubt
not that, with my help, you can attain to some one
of the frontier garrisons.”
“There is not two days’ life in me, Reuben,”
said the other, calmly, “and I will no longer burden
you with my useless body, when you can scarcely
support your own. Your wounds are deep and your
strength is failing fast; yet, if you hasten onward
alone, you may be preserved. For me there is no
hope, and I will await death here.”
“If it must be so, I will remain and watch by
you,” said Reuben, resolutely
“No, my son, no,” rejoined his companion.
“Let the wish of a dying man have weight with
you; give me one grasp of your hand, and get you
hence. Think you that my last moments will be
eased by the thought that I leave you to die a more
lingering death? I have loved you like a father,
Reuben; and at a time like this I should have
something of a father’s authority. I charge you to
be gone that I may die in peace.”
“And because you have been a father to me,
should I therefore leave you to perish and to lie
unburied in the wilderness?” exclaimed the youth.
“No; if your end be in truth approaching, I will
watch by you and receive your parting words. I will
dig a grave here by the rock, in which, if my
weakness overcome me, we will rest together; or, if
Heaven gives me strength, I will seek my way
home.”
“In the cities and wherever men dwell,”
replied the other, “they bury their dead in the earth;
they hide them from the sight of the living; but
here, where no step may pass perhaps for a hundred
years, wherefore should I not rest beneath the open
sky, covered only by the oak leaves when the
autumn winds shall strew them? And for a
monument, here is this gray rock, on which my
dying hand shall carve the name of Roger Malvin,
and the traveler in days to come will know that here
sleeps a hunter and a warrior. Tarry not, then, for a
folly like this, but hasten away, if not for your own
sake, for hers who will else be desolate.”
Malvin spoke the last few words in a
faltering voice, and their effect upon his companion
was strongly visible. They reminded him that there
were other and less questionable duties than that of
sharing the fate of a man whom his death could not
benefit. Nor can it be affirmed that no selfish
feeling strove to enter Reuben’s heart, though the
consciousness made him more earnestly resist his
companion’s entreaties.
“How terrible to wait the slow approach of
death in this solitude!” exclaimed he. “A brave man
does not shrink in the battle; and, when friends
stand round the bed, even women may die
composedly; but here--”
“I shall not shrink even here, Reuben
Bourne,” interrupted Malvin. “I am a man of no
weak heart, and, if I were, there is a surer support
than that of earthly friends. You are young, and life
is dear to you. Your last moments will need
comfort far more than mine; and when you have
laid me in the earth, and are alone, and night is
settling on the forest, you will feel all the bitterness
of the death that may now be escaped. But I will
urge no selfish motive to your generous nature.
Leave me for my sake, that, having said a prayer
for your safety, I may have space to settle my
account undisturbed by worldly sorrows.”
“And your daughter,--how shall I dare to
meet her eye?” exclaimed Reuben. “She will ask
the fate of her father, whose life I vowed to defend
with my own. Must I tell her that he travelled three
days’ march with me from the field of battle and
that then I left him to perish in the wilderness?
Were it not better to lie down and die by your side
than to return safe and say this to Dorcas?”
“Tell my daughter,” said Roger Malvin,
“that, though yourself sore wounded, and weak,
and weary, you led my tottering footsteps many a
mile, and left me only at my earnest entreaty,
because I would not have your blood upon my soul.
Tell her that through pain and danger you were
faithful, and that, if your lifeblood could have
saved me, it would have flowed to its last drop; and
tell her that you will be something dearer than a
father, and that my blessing is with you both, and
that my dying eyes can see a long and pleasant path
in which you will journey together.”
As Malvin spoke he almost raised himself
from the ground, and the energy of his concluding
words seemed to fill the wild and lonely forest with
a vision of happiness; but, when he sank exhausted
upon his bed of oak leaves, the light which had
kindled in Reuben’s eye was quenched. He felt as if
it were both sin and folly to think of happiness at
such a moment. His companion watched his
changing countenance, and sought with generous
art to wile him to his own good.
“Perhaps I deceive myself in regard to the
time I have to live,” he resumed. “It may be that,
with speedy assistance, I might recover of my
wound. The foremost fugitives must, ere this, have
carried tidings of our fatal battle to the frontiers,
and parties will be out to succor those in like
condition with ourselves. Should you meet one of
these and guide them hither, who can tell but that I
may sit by my own fireside again?”
A mournful smile strayed across the
features of the dying man as he insinuated that
unfounded hope,--which, however, was not without
its effect on Reuben. No merely selfish motive, nor
even the desolate condition of Dorcas, could have
induced him to desert his companion at such a
moment--but his wishes seized on the thought that
Malvin’s life might be preserved, and his sanguine
nature heightened almost to certainty the remote
possibility of procuring human aid.
“Surely there is reason, weighty reason, to
hope that friends are not far distant,” he said, half
aloud. “There fled one coward, unwounded, in the
beginning of the fight, and most probably he made
good speed. Every true man on the frontier would
shoulder his musket at the news; and, though no
party may range so far into the woods as this, I
shall perhaps encounter them in one day’s march.
Counsel me faithfully,” he added, turning to
Malvin, in distrust of his own motives. “Were your
situation mine, would you desert me while life
remained?”
“It is now twenty years,” replied Roger
Malvin,--sighing, however, as he secretly
acknowledged the wide dissimilarity between the
two cases,-”it is now twenty years since I escaped
with one dear friend from Indian captivity near
Montreal. We journeyed many days through the
woods, till at length overcome with hunger and
weariness, my friend lay down and besought me to
leave him; for he knew that, if I remained, we both
must perish; and, with but little hope of obtaining
succor, I heaped a pillow of dry leaves beneath his
head and hastened on.”
“And did you return in time to save him?”
asked Reuben, hanging on Malvin’s words as if
they were to be prophetic of his own success.
“I did,” answered the other. “I came upon
the camp of a hunting party before sunset of the
same day. I guided them to the spot where my
comrade was expecting death; and he is now a hale
and hearty man upon his own farm, far within the
frontiers, while I lie wounded here in the depths of
the wilderness.”
This example, powerful in affecting
Reuben’s decision, was aided, unconsciously to
himself, by the hidden strength of many another
motive. Roger Malvin perceived that the victory
was nearly won.
“Now, go, my son, and Heaven prosper
you!” he said. “Turn not back with your friends
when you meet them, lest your wounds and
weariness overcome you; but send hitherward two
or three, that may be spared, to search for me; and
believe me, Reuben, my heart will be lighter with
every step you take towards home.” Yet there was,
perhaps, a change both in his countenance and
voice as he spoke thus; for, after all, it was a
ghastly fate to be left expiring in the wilderness.
Reuben Bourne, but half convinced that he
was acting rightly, at length raised himself from the
ground and prepared himself for his departure. And
first, though contrary to Malvin’s wishes, he
collected a stock of roots and herbs, which had
been their only food during the last two days. This
useless supply he placed within reach of the dying
man, for whom, also, he swept together a bed of
dry oak leaves. Then climbing to the summit of the
rock, which on one side was rough and broken, he
bent the oak sapling downward, and bound his
handkerchief to the topmost branch. This
precaution was not unnecessary to direct any who
might come in search of Malvin; for every part of
the rock, except its broad, smooth front, was
concealed at a little distance by the dense
undergrowth of the forest. The handkerchief had
been the bandage of a wound upon Reuben’s arm;
and, as he bound it to the tree, he vowed by the
blood that stained it that he would return, either to
save his companion’s life or to lay his body in the
grave. He then descended, and stood, with
downcast eyes, to receive Roger Malvin’s parting
words.
The experience of the latter suggested much
and minute advice respecting the youth’s journey
through the trackless forest. Upon this subject he
spoke with calm earnestness, as if he were sending
Reuben to the battle or the chase while he himself
remained secure at home, and not as if the human
countenance that was about to leave him were the
last he would ever behold. But his firmness was
shaken before he concluded.
“Carry my blessing to Dorcas, and say that
my last prayer shall be for her and you. Bid her to
have no hard thoughts because you left me here,” -Reuben’s heart smote him,--”for that your life
would not have weighed with you if its sacrifice
could have done me good. She will marry you after
she has mourned a little while for her father; and
Heaven grant you long and happy days, and may
your children’s children stand round your death
bed! And, Reuben,” added he, as the weakness of
mortality made its way at last, “return, when your
wounds are healed and your weariness refreshed,-return to this wild rock, and lay my bones in the
grave, and say a prayer over them.”
An almost superstitious regard, arising
perhaps from the customs of the Indians, whose
war was with the dead as well as the living, was
paid by the frontier inhabitants to the rites of
sepulture; and there are many instances of the
sacrifice of life in the attempt to bury those who
had fallen by the “sword of the wilderness.”
Reuben, therefore, felt the full importance of the
promise which he most solemnly made to return
and perform Roger Malvin’s obsequies. It was
remarkable that the latter, speaking his whole heart
in his parting words, no longer endeavored to
persuade the youth that even the speediest succor
might avail to the preservation of his life. Reuben
was internally convinced that he should see
Malvin’s living face no more. His generous nature
would fain have delayed him, at whatever risk, till
the dying scene were past; but the desire of
existence and the hope of happiness had
strengthened in his heart, and he was unable to
resist them.
“It is enough,” said Roger Malvin, having
listened to Reuben’s promise. “Go, and God speed
you!”
The youth pressed his hand in silence,
turned, and was departing. His slow and faltering
steps, however, had borne him but a little way
before Malvin’s voice recalled him.
“Reuben, Reuben,” said he, faintly; and
Reuben returned and knelt down by the dying man.
“Raise me, and let me lean against the
rock,” was his last request. “My face will be turned
towards home, and I shall see you a moment longer
as you pass among the trees.”
Reuben, having made the desired alteration
in his companion’s posture, again began his solitary
pilgrimage. He walked more hastily at first than
was consistent with his strength; for a sort of guilty
feeling, which sometimes torments men in their
most justifiable acts, caused him to seek
concealment from Malvin’s eyes; but after he had
trodden far upon the rustling forest leaves he crept
back, impelled by a wild and painful curiosity, and,
sheltered by the earthy roots of an uptorn tree,
gazed earnestly at the desolate man. The morning
sun was unclouded, and the trees and shrubs
imbibed the sweet air of the month of May; yet
there seemed a gloom on Nature’s face, as if she
sympathized with mortal pain and sorrow Roger
Malvin’s hands were uplifted in a fervent prayer,
some of the words of which stole through the
stillness of the woods and entered Reuben’s heart,
torturing it with an unutterable pang. They were the
broken accents of a petition for his own happiness
and that of Dorcas; and, as the youth listened,
conscience, or something in its similitude, pleaded
strongly with him to return and lie down again by
the rock. He felt how hard was the doom of the
kind and generous being whom he had deserted in
his extremity. Death would come like the slow
approach of a corpse, stealing gradually towards
him through the forest, and showing its ghastly and
motionless features from behind a nearer and yet a
nearer tree. But such must have been Reuben’s own
fate had he tarried another sunset; and who shall
impute blame to him if he shrink from so useless a
sacrifice? As he gave a parting look, a breeze
waved the little banner upon the sapling oak and
reminded Reuben of his vow.
...........
Many circumstances combined to retard the
wounded traveler in his way to the frontiers. On the
second day the clouds, gathering densely over the
sky, precluded the possibility of regulating his
course by the position of the sun; and he knew not
but that every effort of his almost exhausted
strength was removing him farther from the home
he sought. His scanty sustenance was supplied by
the berries and other spontaneous products of the
forest. Herds of deer, it is true, sometimes bounded
past him, and partridges frequently whirred up
before his footsteps; but his ammunition had been
expended in the fight, and he had no means of
slaying them. His wounds, irritated by the constant
exertion in which lay the only hope of life, wore
away his strength and at intervals confused his
reason. But, even in the wanderings of intellect,
Reuben’s young heart clung strongly to existence;
and it was only through absolute incapacity of
motion that he at last sank down beneath a tree,
compelled there to await death.
In this situation he was discovered by a
party who, upon the first intelligence of the fight,
had been dispatched to the relief of the survivors.
They conveyed him to the nearest settlement,
which chanced to be that of his own residence.
Dorcas, in the simplicity of the olden time,
watched by the bedside of her wounded lover, and
administered all those comforts that are in the sole
gift of woman’s heart and hand. During several
days Reuben’s recollection strayed drowsily among
the perils and hardships through which he had
passed, and he was incapable of returning definite
answers to the inquiries with which many were
eager to harass him. No authentic particulars of the
battle had yet been circulated; nor could mothers,
wives, and children tell whether their loved ones
were detained by captivity or by the stronger chain
of death. Dorcas nourished her apprehensions in
silence till one afternoon when Reuben awoke from
an unquiet sleep, and seemed to recognize her more
perfectly than at any previous time. She saw that
his intellect had become composed, and she could
no longer restrain her filial anxiety.
“My father, Reuben?” she began; but the
change in her lover’s countenance made her pause.
The youth shrank as if with a bitter pain,
and the blood gushed vividly into his wan and
hollow cheeks. His first impulse was to cover his
face; but, apparently with a desperate effort, he half
raised himself and spoke vehemently, defending
himself against an imaginary accusation.
“Your father was sore wounded in the
battle, Dorcas; and he bade me not burden myself
with him, but only to lead him to the lakeside, that
he might quench his thirst and die. But I would not
desert the old man in his extremity, and, though
bleeding myself, I supported him; I gave him half
my strength, and led him away with me. For three
days we journeyed on together, and your father was
sustained beyond my hopes, but, awaking at sunrise
on the fourth day, I found him faint and exhausted;
he was unable to proceed; his life had ebbed away
fast; and--”
“He died!” exclaimed Dorcas, faintly.
Reuben felt it impossible to acknowledge
that his selfish love of life had hurried him away
before her father’s fate was decided. He spoke not;
he only bowed his head; and, between shame and
exhaustion, sank back and hid his face in the
pillow. Dorcas wept when her fears were thus
confirmed; but the shock, as it had been long
anticipated. was on that account the less violent.
“You dug a grave for my poor father in the
wilderness, Reuben?” was the question by which
her filial piety manifested itself.
“My hands were weak; but I did what I
could,” replied the youth in a smothered tone.
“There stands a noble tombstone above his head;
and I would to Heaven I slept as soundly as he!”
Dorcas, perceiving the wildness of his latter
words, inquired no further at the time; but her heart
found ease in the thought that Roger Malvin had
not lacked such funeral rites as it was possible to
bestow. The tale of Reuben’s courage and fidelity
lost nothing when she communicated it to her
friends; and the poor youth, tottering from his sick
chamber to breathe the sunny air, experienced from
every tongue the miserable and humiliating torture
of unmerited praise. All acknowledged that he
might worthily demand the hand of the fair maiden
to whose father he had been “faithful unto death;”
and, as my tale is not of love, it shall suffice to say
that in the space of a few months Reuben became
the husband of Dorcas Malvin. During the marriage
ceremony the bride was covered with blushes, but
the bridegroom’s face was pale.
There was now in the breast of Reuben
Bourne an incommunicable thought--something
which he was to conceal most heedfully from her
whom he most loved and trusted. He regretted,
deeply and bitterly, the moral cowardice that had
restrained his words when he was about to disclose
the truth to Dorcas; but pride, the fear of losing her
affection, the dread of universal scorn, forbade him
to rectify this falsehood. He felt that for leaving
Roger Malvin he deserved no censure. His
presence, the gratuitous sacrifice of his own life,
would have added only another and a needless
agony to the last moments of the dying man; but
concealment had imparted to a justifiable act much
of the secret effect of guilt; and Reuben, while
reason told him that he had done right, experienced
in no small degree the mental horrors which punish
the perpetrator of undiscovered crime. By a certain
association of ideas, he at times almost imagined
himself a murderer. For years, also, a thought
would occasionally recur, which, though he
perceived all its folly and extravagance, he had not
power to banish from his mind. It was a haunting
and torturing fancy that his father-in-law was yet
sitting at the foot of the rock, on the withered forest
leaves, alive, and awaiting his pledged assistance.
These mental deceptions, however, came and went,
nor did he ever mistake them for realities: but in the
calmest and clearest moods of his mind he was
conscious that he had a deep vow unredeemed, and
that an unburied corpse was calling to him out of
the wilderness. Yet such was the consequence of
his prevarication that he could not obey the call. It
was now too late to require the assistance of Roger
Malvin’s friends in performing his long-deferred
sepulture; and superstitious fears, of which none
were more susceptible than the people of the
outward settlements, forbade Reuben to go alone.
Neither did he know where in the pathless and
illimitable forest to seek that smooth and lettered
rock at the base of which the body lay: his
remembrance of every portion of his travel thence
was indistinct, and the latter part had left no
impression upon his mind. There was, however, a
continual impulse, a voice audible only to himself,
commanding him to go forth and redeem his vow;
and he had a strange impression that, were he to
make the trial, he would be led straight to Malvin’s
bones. But year after year that summons, unheard
but felt, was disobeyed. His one secret thought
became like a chain binding down his spirit and
like a serpent gnawing into his heart; and he was
transformed into a sad and downcast yet irritable
man.
In the course of a few years after their
marriage changes began to be visible in the external
prosperity of Reuben and Dorcas. The only riches
of the former had been his stout heart and strong
arm; but the latter, her father’s sole heiress, had
made her husband master of a farm, under older
cultivation, larger, and better stocked than most of
the frontier establishments. Reuben Bourne,
however, was a neglectful husbandman; and, while
the lands of the other settlers became annually
more fruitful, his deteriorated in the same
proportion. The discouragements to agriculture
were greatly lessened by the cessation of Indian
war, during which men held the plough in one hand
and the musket in the other, and were fortunate if
the products of their dangerous labor were not
destroyed, either in the field or in the barn, by the
savage enemy. But Reuben did not profit by the
altered condition of the country; nor can it be
denied that his intervals of industrious attention to
his affairs were but scantily rewarded with success.
The irritability by which he had recently become
distinguished was another cause of his declining
prosperity, as it occasioned frequent quarrels in his
unavoidable intercourse with the neighboring
settlers. The results of these were innumerable
lawsuits; for the people of New England, in the
earliest stages and wildest circumstances of the
country, adopted, whenever attainable, the legal
mode of deciding their differences. To be brief, the
world did not go well with Reuben Bourne; and,
though not till many years after his marriage, he
was finally a ruined man, with but one remaining
expedient against the evil fate that had pursued
him. He was to throw sunlight into some deep
recess of the forest, and seek subsistence from the
virgin bosom of the wilderness.
The only child of Reuben and Dorcas was a
son, now arrived at the age of fifteen years,
beautiful in youth, and giving promise of a glorious
manhood. He was peculiarly qualified for, and
already began to excel in, the wild
accomplishments of frontier life. His foot was fleet,
his aim true, his apprehension quick, his heart glad
and high; and all who anticipated the return of
Indian war spoke of Cyrus Bourne as a future
leader in the land. The boy was loved by his father
with a deep and silent strength, as if whatever was
good and happy in his own nature had been
transferred to his child, carrying his affections with
it. Even Dorcas, though loving and beloved, was far
less dear to him; for Reuben’s secret thoughts and
insulated emotions had gradually made him a
selfish man, and he could no longer love deeply
except where he saw or imagined some reflection
or likeness of his own mind. In Cyrus he
recognized what he had himself been in other days;
and at intervals he seemed to partake of the boy’s
spirit, and to be revived with a fresh and happy life.
Reuben was accompanied by his son in the
expedition, for the purpose of selecting a tract of
land and felling and burning the timber, which
necessarily preceded the removal of the household
gods. Two months of autumn were thus occupied,
after which Reuben Bourne and his young hunter
returned to spend their last winter in the
settlements.
...........
It was early in the month of May that the
little family snapped asunder whatever tendrils of
affections had clung to inanimate objects, and bade
farewell to the few who, in the blight of fortune,
called themselves their friends. The sadness of the
parting moment had, to each of the pilgrims, its
peculiar alleviations. Reuben, a moody man, and
misanthropic because unhappy, strode onward with
his usual stern brow and downcast eye, feeling few
regrets and disdaining to acknowledge any. Dorcas,
while she wept abundantly over the broken ties by
which her simple and affectionate nature had bound
itself to everything, felt that the inhabitants of her
inmost heart moved on with her, and that all else
would be supplied wherever she might go. And the
boy dashed one tear-drop from his eye, and thought
of the adventurous pleasures of the untrodden
forest.
Oh, who, in the enthusiasm of a daydream,
has not wished that he were a wanderer in a world
of summer wilderness, with one fair and gentle
being hanging lightly on his arm? In youth his free
and exulting step would know no barrier but the
rolling ocean or the snow-topped mountains;
calmer manhood would choose a home where
Nature had strewn a double wealth in the vale of
some transparent stream; and when hoary age, after
long, long years of that pure life, stole on and found
him there, it would find him the father of a race, the
patriarch of a people, the founder of a mighty
nation yet to be. When death, like the sweet sleep
which we welcome after a day of happiness, came
over him, his far descendants would mourn over the
venerated dust. Enveloped by tradition in
mysterious attributes, the men of future generations
would call him godlike; and remote posterity would
see him standing, dimly glorious, far up the valley
of a hundred centuries.
The tangled and gloomy forest through
which the personages of my tale were wandering
differed widely from the dreamer’s land of fantasy;
yet there was something in their way of life that
Nature asserted as her own, and the gnawing cares
which went with them from the world were all that
now obstructed their happiness. One stout and
shaggy steed, the bearer of all their wealth, did not
shrink from the added weight of Dorcas; although
her hardy breeding sustained her, during the latter
part of each day’s journey, by her husband’s side.
Reuben and his son, their muskets on their
shoulders and their axes slung behind them, kept an
unwearied pace, each watching with a hunter’s eye
for the game that supplied their food. When hunger
bade, they halted and prepared their meal on the
bank of some unpolluted forest brook, which, as
they knelt down with thirsty lips to drink,
murmured a sweet unwillingness, like a maiden at
love’s first kiss. They slept beneath a hut of
branches, and awoke at peep of light refreshed for
the toils of another day. Dorcas and the boy went
on joyously, and even Reuben’s spirit shone at
intervals with an outward gladness; but inwardly
there was a cold, cold sorrow, which he compared
to the snowdrifts lying deep in the glens and
hollows of the rivulets while the leaves were
brightly green above.
Cyrus Bourne was sufficiently skilled in the
travel of the woods to observe that his father did
not adhere to the course they had pursued in their
expedition of the preceding autumn. They were
now keeping farther to the north, striking out more
directly from the settlements, and into a region of
which savage beasts and savage men were as yet
the sole possessors. The boy sometimes hinted his
opinions upon the subject, and Reuben listened
attentively, and once or twice altered the direction
of their march in accordance with his son’s
counsel; but, having so done, he seemed ill at ease.
His quick and wandering glances were sent forward
apparently in search of enemies lurking behind the
tree trunks, and, seeing nothing there, he would cast
his eyes backwards as if in fear of some pursuer.
Cyrus, perceiving that his father gradually resumed
the old direction, forbore to interfere; nor, though
something began to weigh upon his heart, did his
adventurous nature permit him to regret the
increased length and the mystery of their way.
On the afternoon of the fifth day they
halted, and made their simple encampment nearly
an hour before sunset. The face of the country, for
the last few miles, had been diversified by swells of
land resembling huge waves of a petrified sea; and
in one of the corresponding hollows, a wild and
romantic spot, had the family reared their hut and
kindled their fire. There is something chilling, and
yet heart-warming, in the thought of these three,
united by strong bands of love and insulated from
all that breathe beside. The dark and gloomy pines
looked down upon them, and, as the wind swept
through their tops, a pitying sound was heard in the
forest; or did those old trees groan in fear that men
were come to lay the axe to their roots at last?
Reuben and his son, while Dorcas made ready their
meal, proposed to wander out in search of game, of
which that day’s march had afforded no supply.
The boy, promising not to quit the vicinity of the
encampment, bounded off with a step as light and
elastic as that of the deer he hoped to slay; while
his father, feeling a transient happiness as he gazed
after him, was about to pursue an opposite
direction. Dorcas in the meanwhile, had seated
herself near their fire of fallen branches upon the
mossgrown and moldering trunk of a tree uprooted
years before. Her employment, diversified by an
occasional glance at the pot, now beginning to
simmer over the blaze, was the perusal of the
current year’s Massachusetts Almanac, which, with
the exception of an old black-letter Bible,
comprised all the literary wealth of the family.
None pay a greater regard to arbitrary divisions of
time than those who are excluded from society; and
Dorcas mentioned, as if the information were of
importance, that it was now the twelfth of May. Her
husband started.
“The twelfth of May! I should remember it
well,” muttered he, while many thoughts
occasioned a momentary confusion in his mind.
“Where am I? Whither am I wandering? Where did
I leave him?”
Dorcas, too well accustomed to her
husband’s wayward moods to note any peculiarity
of demeanor, now laid aside the almanac and
addressed him in that mournful tone which the
tender hearted appropriate to griefs long cold and
dead.
“It was near this time of the month, eighteen
years ago, that my poor father left this world for a
better. He had a kind arm to hold his head and a
kind voice to cheer him, Reuben, in his last
moments; and the thought of the faithful care you
took of him has comforted me many a time since.
Oh, death would have been awful to a solitary man
in a wild place like this!”
“Pray Heaven, Dorcas,” said Reuben, in a
broken voice,-- “pray Heaven that neither of us
three dies solitary and lies unburied in this howling
wilderness!” And he hastened away, leaving her to
watch the fire beneath the gloomy pines.
Reuben Bourne’s rapid pace gradually
slackened as the pang, unintentionally inflicted by
the words of Dorcas, became less acute. Many
strange reflections, however, thronged upon him;
and, straying onward rather like a sleep walker than
a hunter, it was attributable to no care of his own
that his devious course kept him in the vicinity of
the encampment. His steps were imperceptibly led
almost in a circle; nor did he observe that he was on
the verge of a tract of land heavily timbered, but
not with pine-trees. The place of the latter was here
supplied by oaks and other of the harder woods;
and around their roots clustered a dense and bushy
under-growth, leaving, however, barren spaces
between the trees, thick strewn with withered
leaves. Whenever the rustling of the branches or the
creaking of the trunks made a sound, as if the forest
were waking from slumber, Reuben instinctively
raised the musket that rested on his arm, and cast a
quick, sharp glance on every side; but, convinced
by a partial observation that no animal was near, he
would again give himself up to his thoughts. He
was musing on the strange influence that had led
him away from his premeditated course, and so far
into the depths of the wilderness. Unable to
penetrate to the secret place of his soul where his
motives lay hidden, he believed that a supernatural
voice had called him onward, and that a
supernatural power had obstructed his retreat. He
trusted that it was Heaven’s intent to afford him an
opportunity of expiating his sin; he hoped that he
might find the bones so long unburied; and that,
having laid the earth over them, peace would throw
its sunlight into the sepulcher of his heart. From
these thoughts he was aroused by a rustling in the
forest at some distance from the spot to which he
had wandered. Perceiving the motion of some
object behind a thick veil of undergrowth, he fired,
with the instinct of a hunter and the aim of a
practiced marksman. A low moan, which told his
success, and by which even animals cars express
their dying agony, was unheeded by Reuben
Bourne. What were the recollections now breaking
upon him?
The thicket into which Reuben had fired
was near the summit of a swell of land, and was
clustered around the base of a rock, which, in the
shape and smoothness of one of its surfaces, was
not unlike a gigantic gravestone. As if reflected in a
mirror, its likeness was in Reuben’s memory. He
even recognized the veins which seemed to form an
inscription in forgotten characters: everything
remained the same, except that a thick covert of
bushes shrouded the lower part of the rock, and
would have hidden Roger Malvin had he still been
sitting there. Yet in the next moment Reuben’s eye
was caught by another change that time had
effected since he last stood where he was now
standing again behind the earthy roots of the uptorn
tree. The sapling to which he had bound the
bloodstained symbol of his vow had increased and
strengthened into an oak, far indeed from its
maturity, but with no mean spread of shadowy
branches. There was one singularity observable in
this tree which made Reuben tremble. The middle
and lower branches were in luxuriant life, and an
excess of vegetation had fringed the trunk almost to
the ground; but a blight had apparently stricken the
upper part of the oak, and the very topmost bough
was withered, sapless, and utterly dead. Reuben
remembered how the little banner had fluttered on
that topmost bough, when it was green and lovely,
eighteen years before. Whose guilt had blasted it?
...........
Dorcas, after the departure of the two
hunters, continued her preparations for their
evening repast. Her sylvan table was the mosscovered trunk of a large fallen tree, on the broadest
part of which she had spread a snow-white cloth
and arranged what were left of the bright pewter
vessels that had been her pride in the settlements. It
had a strange aspect that one little spot of homely
comfort in the desolate heart of Nature. The
sunshine yet lingered upon the higher branches of
the trees that grew on rising ground; but the
shadows of evening had deepened into the hollow
where the encampment was made, and the firelight
began to redden as it gleamed up the tall trunks of
the pines or hovered on the dense and obscure mass
of foliage that circled round the spot. The heart of
Dorcas was not sad; for she felt that it was better to
journey in the wilderness with two whom she loved
than to be a lonely woman in a crowd that cared not
for her. As she busied herself in arranging seats of
moldering wood, covered with leaves, for Reuben
and her son, her voice danced through the gloomy
forest in the measure of a song that she had learned
in youth. The rude melody, the production of a bard
who won no name, was descriptive of a winter
evening in a frontier cottage, when, secured from
savage inroad by the high-piled snow-drifts, the
family rejoiced by their own fireside. The whole
song possessed the nameless charm peculiar to
unborrowed thought, but four continually-recurring
lines shone out from the rest like the blaze of the
hearth whose joys they celebrated. Into them,
working magic with a few simple words, the poet
had instilled the very essence of domestic love and
household happiness, and they were poetry and
picture joined in one. As Dorcas sang, the walls of
her forsaken home seemed to encircle her; she no
longer saw the gloomy pines, nor heard the wind
which still, as she began each verse, sent a heavy
breath through the branches, and died away in a
hollow moan from the burden of the song. She was
aroused by the report of a gun in the vicinity of the
encampment; and either the sudden sound, or her
loneliness by the glowing fire, caused her to
tremble violently. The next moment she laughed in
the pride of a mother’s heart.
“My beautiful young hunter! My boy has
slain a deer!” she exclaimed, recollecting that in the
direction whence the shot proceeded Cyrus had
gone to the chase.
She waited a reasonable time to hear her
son’s light step bounding over the rustling leaves to
tell of his success. But he did not immediately
appear; and she sent her cheerful voice among the
trees in search of him.
“Cyrus! Cyrus!”
His coming was still delayed; and she
determined, as the report had apparently been very
near, to seek for him in person. Her assistance, also,
might be necessary in bringing home the venison
which she flattered herself he had obtained. She
therefore set forward, directing her steps by the
long-past sound, and singing as she went, in order
that the boy might be aware of her approach and
run to meet her. From behind the trunk of every
tree, and from every hiding-place in the thick
foliage of the undergrowth, she hoped to discover
the countenance of her son, laughing with the
sportive mischief that is born of affection. The sun
was now beneath the horizon, and the light that
came down among the leaves was sufficiently dim
to create many illusions in her expecting fancy.
Several times she seemed indistinctly to see his
face gazing out from among the leaves; and once
she imagined that he stood beckoning to her at the
base of a craggy rock. Keeping her eyes on this
object, however, it proved to be no more than the
trunk of an oak fringed to the very ground with
little branches, one of which, thrust out farther than
the rest, was shaken by the breeze. Making her way
round the foot of the rock, she suddenly found
herself close to her husband, who had approached
in another direction. Leaning upon the butt of his
gun, the muzzle of which rested upon the withered
leaves, he was apparently absorbed in the
contemplation of some object at his feet.
“How is this, Reuben? Have you slain the
deer and fallen asleep over him?” exclaimed
Dorcas, laughing cheerfully, on her first slight
observation of his posture and appearance.
He stirred not, neither did he turn his eyes
towards her; and a cold, shuddering fear, indefinite
in its source and object, began to creep into her
blood. She now perceived that her husband’s face
was ghastly pale, and his features were rigid, as if
incapable of assuming any other expression than
the strong despair which had hardened upon them.
He gave not the slightest evidence that he was
aware of her approach.
“For the love of Heaven, Reuben, speak to
me!” cried Dorcas; and the strange sound of her
own voice affrighted her even more than the dead
silence.
Her husband started, stared into her face,
drew her to the front of the rock, and pointed with
his finger.
Oh, there lay the boy, asleep, but dreamless,
upon the fallen forest leaves! His cheek rested upon
his arm--his curled locks were thrown back from
his brow--his limbs were slightly relaxed. Had a
sudden weariness overcome the youthful hunter?
Would his mother’s voice arouse him? She knew
that it was death.
“This broad rock is the gravestone of your
near kindred, Dorcas,” said her husband. “Your
tears will fall at once over your father and your
son.”
She heard him not. With one wild shriek,
that seemed to force its way from the sufferer’s
inmost soul, she sank insensible by the side of her
dead boy. At that moment the withered topmost
bough of the oak loosened itself in the stilly air, and
fell in soft, light fragments upon the rock, upon the
leaves, upon Reuben, upon his wife and child, and
upon Roger Malvin’s bones. Then Reuben’s heart
was stricken, and the tears gushed out like water
from a rock. The vow that the wounded youth had
made the blighted man had come to redeem. His sin
was expiated,--the curse was gone from him; and in
the hour when he had shed blood dearer to him than
his own, a prayer, the first for years, went up to
Heaven from the lips of Reuben Bourne.
The Purloined Letter
by Edgar Allan Poe (1845)
Nil sapientiae odiosius acumine nimio.
Nothing is more hateful to wisdom than
excessive cleverness. - Seneca
At Paris, just after dark one gusty evening in
the autumn of 18--, I was enjoying the twofold
luxury of meditation and a meerschaum, in
company with my friend C. Auguste Dupin, in his
little back library, or book-closet, au troisieme, No.
33, Rue Dunot, Faubourg St. Germain. For one
hour at least we had maintained a profound silence;
while each, to any casual observer, might have
seemed intently and exclusively occupied with the
curling eddies of smoke that oppressed the
atmosphere of the chamber. For myself, however, I
was mentally discussing certain topics which had
formed matter for conversation between us at an
earlier period of the evening; I mean the affair of
the Rue Morgue, and the mystery attending the
murder of Marie Roget. I looked upon it, therefore,
as something of a coincidence, when the door of
our apartment was thrown open and admitted our
old acquaintance, Monsieur G--, the Prefect of the
Parisian police.
We gave him a hearty welcome; for there
was nearly half as much of the entertaining as of
the contemptible about the man, and we had not
seen him for several years. We had been sitting in
the dark, and Dupin now arose for the purpose of
lighting a lamp, but sat down again, without doing
so, upon G.'s saying that he had called to consult
us, or rather to ask the opinion of my friend, about
some official business which had occasioned a
great deal of trouble.
“If it is any point requiring reflection,”
observed Dupin, as he forbore to enkindle the wick,
“we shall examine it to better purpose in the dark.”
“That is another of your odd notions,” said
the Prefect, who had a fashion of calling every
thing “odd” that was beyond his comprehension,
and thus lived amid an absolute legion of
“oddities.”
“Very true,” said Dupin, as he supplied his
visitor with a pipe, and rolled towards him a
comfortable chair.
“And what is the difficulty now?” I asked.
“Nothing more in the assassination way, I hope?”
“Oh no; nothing of that nature. The fact is,
the business is very simple indeed, and I make no
doubt that we can manage it sufficiently well
ourselves; but then I thought Dupin would like to
hear the details of it, because it is so excessively
odd.”
“Simple and odd,” said Dupin.
“Why, yes; and not exactly that, either. The
fact is, we have all been a good deal puzzled
because the affair is so simple, and yet baffles us
altogether.”
“Perhaps it is the very simplicity of the thing
which puts you at fault,” said my friend.
“What nonsense you do talk!” replied the
Prefect, laughing heartily.
“Perhaps the mystery is a little too plain,”
said Dupin.
“Oh, good heavens! who ever heard of such
an idea?”
“A little too self-evident.”
“Ha! ha! ha! --ha! ha! ha! --ho! ho! ho!” -roared our visitor, profoundly amused, “oh, Dupin,
you will be the death of me yet!”
“And what, after all, is the matter on hand?”
I asked.
“Why, I will tell you,” replied the Prefect, as
he gave a long, steady, and contemplative puff, and
settled himself in his chair. “I will tell you in a few
words; but, before I begin, let me caution you that
this is an affair demanding the greatest secrecy, and
that I should most probably lose the position I now
hold, were it known that I confided it to anyone.”
“Proceed,” said I.
“Or not,” said Dupin.
“Well, then; I have received personal
information, from a very high quarter, that a certain
document of the last importance, has been
purloined from the royal apartments. The individual
who purloined it is known; this beyond a doubt; he
was seen to take it. It is known, also, that it still
remains in his possession.”
“How is this known?” asked Dupin.
“It is clearly inferred,” replied the Prefect,
“from the nature of the document, and from the
nonappearance of certain results which would at
once arise from its passing out of the robber's
possession; --that is to say, from his employing it as
he must design in the end to employ it.”
“Be a little more explicit,” I said.
“Well, I may venture so far as to say that the
paper gives its holder a certain power in a certain
quarter where such power is immensely valuable.”
The Prefect was fond of the cant of diplomacy.
“Still I do not quite understand,” said Dupin.
“No? Well; the disclosure of the document to
a third person, who shall be nameless, would bring
in question the honor of a personage of most
exalted station; and this fact gives the holder of the
document an ascendancy over the illustrious
personage whose honor and peace are so
jeopardized.”
“But this ascendancy,” I interposed, “would
depend upon the robber's knowledge of the loser's
knowledge of the robber. Who would dare--”
“The thief,” said G., “is the Minister D--,
who dares all things, those unbecoming as well as
those becoming a man. The method of the theft was
not less ingenious than bold. The document in
question --a letter, to be frank --had been received
by the personage robbed while alone in the royal
boudoir. During its perusal she was suddenly
interrupted by the entrance of the other exalted
personage from whom especially it was her wish to
conceal it. After a hurried and vain endeavor to
thrust it in a drawer, she was forced to place it,
open as it was, upon a table. The address, however,
was uppermost, and, the contents thus unexposed,
the letter escaped notice. At this juncture enters the
Minister D--. His lynx eye immediately perceives
the paper, recognises the handwriting of the
address, observes the confusion of the personage
addressed, and fathoms her secret. After some
business transactions, hurried through in his
ordinary manner, he produces a letter somewhat
similar to the one in question, opens it, pretends to
read it, and then places it in close juxtaposition to
the other. Again he converses, for some fifteen
minutes, upon the public affairs. At length, in
taking leave, he takes also from the table the letter
to which he had no claim. Its rightful owner saw,
but, of course, dared not call attention to the act, in
the presence of the third personage who stood at
her elbow. The minister decamped; leaving his own
letter --one of no importance --upon the table.”
“Here, then,” said Dupin to me, “you have
precisely what you demand to make the ascendancy
complete --the robber's knowledge of the loser's
knowledge of the robber.”
“Yes,” replied the Prefect; “and the power
thus attained has, for some months past, been
wielded, for political purposes, to a very dangerous
extent. The personage robbed is more thoroughly
convinced, every day, of the necessity of
reclaiming her letter. But this, of course, cannot be
done openly. In fine, driven to despair, she has
committed the matter to me.”
“Than whom,” said Dupin, amid a perfect
whirlwind of smoke, “no more sagacious agent
could, I suppose, be desired, or even imagined.”
“You flatter me,” replied the Prefect; “but it
is possible that some such opinion may have been
entertained.”
“It is clear,” said I, “as you observe, that the
letter is still in possession of the minister; since it is
this possession, and not any employment of the
letter, which bestows the power. With the
employment the power departs.”
“True,” said G. “and upon this conviction I
proceeded. My first care was to make thorough
search of the minister's hotel; and here my chief
embarrassment lay in the necessity of searching
without his knowledge. Beyond all things, I have
been warned of the danger which would result from
giving him reason to suspect our design.”
“But,” said I, “you are quite au fait in these
investigations. The Parisian police have done this
thing often before.”
“Oh yes; and for this reason I did not
despair. The habits of the minister gave me, too, a
great advantage. He is frequently absent from home
all night. His servants are by no means numerous.
They sleep at a distance from their master's
apartment, and, being chiefly Neapolitans, are
readily made drunk. I have keys, as you know, with
which I can open any chamber or cabinet in Paris.
For three months a night has not passed, during the
greater part of which I have not been engaged,
personally, in ransacking the D-- Hotel. My honor
is interested, and, to mention a great secret, the
reward is enormous. So I did not abandon the
search until I had become fully satisfied that the
thief is a more astute man than myself. I fancy that
I have investigated every nook and corner of the
premises in which it is possible that the paper can
be concealed.”
“But is it not possible,” I suggested, “that
although the letter may be in possession of the
minister, as it unquestionably is, he may have
concealed it elsewhere than upon his own
premises?”
“This is barely possible,” said Dupin. “The
present peculiar condition of affairs at court, and
especially of those intrigues in which D-- is known
to be involved, would render the instant availability
of the document --its susceptibility of being
produced at a moment's notice --a point of nearly
equal importance with its possession.”
“Its susceptibility of being produced?” said I.
“That is to say, of being destroyed,” said
Dupin.
“True,” I observed; “the paper is clearly then
upon the premises. As for its being upon the person
of the minister, we may consider that as out of the
question.”
“Entirely,” said the Prefect. “He has been
twice waylaid, as if by footpads, and his person
rigorously searched under my own inspection. “
“You might have spared yourself this
trouble,” said Dupin. “D--, I presume, is not
altogether a fool, and, if not, must have anticipated
these waylayings, as a matter of course.”
“Not altogether a fool,” said G., “but then
he's a poet, which I take to be only one remove
from a fool.”
“True,” said Dupin, after a long and
thoughtful whiff from his meerschaum, “although I
have been guilty of certain doggerel myself.”
“Suppose you detail,” said I, “the particulars
of your search.”
“Why the fact is, we took our time, and we
searched every where. I have had long experience
in these affairs. I took the entire building, room by
room; devoting the nights of a whole week to each.
We examined, first, the furniture of each apartment.
We opened every possible drawer; and I presume
you know that, to a properly trained police agent,
such a thing as a secret drawer is impossible. Any
man is a dolt who permits a 'secret' drawer to
escape him in a search of this kind. The thing is so
plain. There is a certain amount of bulk --of space -to be accounted for in every cabinet. Then we have
accurate rules. The fiftieth part of a line could not
escape us. After the cabinets we took the chairs.
The cushions we probed with the fine long needles
you have seen me employ. From the tables we
removed the tops.”
“Why so?”
“Sometimes the top of a table, or other
similarly arranged piece of furniture, is removed by
the person wishing to conceal an article; then the
leg is excavated, the article deposited within the
cavity, and the top replaced. The bottoms and tops
of bedposts are employed in the same way.”
“But could not the cavity be detected by
sounding?” I asked.
“By no means, if, when the article is
deposited, a sufficient wadding of cotton be placed
around it. Besides, in our case, we were obliged to
proceed without noise.”
“But you could not have removed --you
could not have taken to pieces all articles of
furniture in which it would have been possible to
make a deposit in the manner you mention. A letter
may be compressed into a thin spiral roll, not
differing much in shape or bulk from a large
knitting-needle, and in this form it might be
inserted into the rung of a chair, for example. You
did not take to pieces all the chairs?”
“Certainly not; but we did better --we
examined the rungs of every chair in the hotel, and,
indeed, the jointings of every description of
furniture, by the aid of a most powerful
microscope. Had there been any traces of recent
disturbance we should not have failed to detect it
instantly. A single grain of gimlet-dust, for
example, would have been as obvious as an apple.
Any disorder in the glueing --any unusual gaping in
the joints --would have sufficed to insure
detection.”
“I presume you looked to the mirrors,
between the boards and the plates, and you probed
the beds and the bed-clothes, as well as the curtains
and carpets.”
“That of course; and when we had absolutely
completed every particle of the furniture in this
way, then we examined the house itself. We
divided its entire surface into compartments, which
we numbered, so that none might be missed; then
we scrutinized each individual square inch
throughout the premises, including the two houses
immediately adjoining, with the microscope, as
before.”
“The two houses adjoining!” I exclaimed;
“you must have had a great deal of trouble.”
“We had; but the reward offered is
prodigious.
“You include the grounds about the houses?”
“All the grounds are paved with brick. They
gave us comparatively little trouble. We examined
the moss between the bricks, and found it
undisturbed.”
“You looked among D--'s papers, of course,
and into the books of the library?”
“Certainly; we opened every package and
parcel; we not only opened every book, but we
turned over every leaf in each volume, not
contenting ourselves with a mere shake, according
to the fashion of some of our police officers. We
also measured the thickness of every book-cover,
with the most accurate admeasurement, and applied
to each the most jealous scrutiny of the microscope.
Had any of the bindings been recently meddled
with, it would have been utterly impossible that the
fact should have escaped observation. Some five or
six volumes, just from the hands of the binder, we
carefully probed, longitudinally, with the needles.”
“You explored the floors beneath the
carpets?”
“Beyond doubt. We removed every carpet,
and examined the boards with the microscope.”
“And the paper on the walls?”
“Yes.
“You looked into the cellars?”
“We did.”
“Then,” I said, “you have been making a
miscalculation, and the letter is not upon the
premises, as you suppose.
“I fear you are right there,” said the Prefect.
“And now, Dupin, what would you advise me to
do?”
“To make a thorough re-search of the
premises.”
“That is absolutely needless,” replied G--. “I
am not more sure that I breathe than I am that the
letter is not at the Hotel.”
“I have no better advice to give you,” said
Dupin. “You have, of course, an accurate
description of the letter?”
“Oh yes!” --And here the Prefect, producing
a memorandum-book, proceeded to read aloud a
minute account of the internal, and especially of the
external appearance of the missing document. Soon
after finishing the perusal of this description, he
took his departure, more entirely depressed in
spirits than I had ever known the good gentleman
before.
In about a month afterwards he paid us
another visit, and found us occupied very nearly as
before. He took a pipe and a chair and entered into
some ordinary conversation. At length I said,-“Well, but G--, what of the purloined letter?
I presume you have at last made up your mind that
there is no such thing as overreaching the
Minister?”
“Confound him, say I --yes; I made the
reexamination, however, as Dupin suggested --but
it was all labor lost, as I knew it would be.”
“How much was the reward offered, did you
say?” asked Dupin.
“Why, a very great deal --a very liberal
reward --I don't like to say how much, precisely;
but one thing I will say, that I wouldn't mind giving
my individual check for fifty thousand francs to
any one who could obtain me that letter. The fact
is, it is becoming of more and more importance
every day; and the reward has been lately doubled.
If it were trebled, however, I could do no more than
I have done.”
“Why, yes,” said Dupin, drawlingly,
between the whiffs of his meerschaum, “I really -think, G--, you have not exerted yourself--to the
utmost in this matter. You might --do a little more,
I think, eh?”
“How? --In what way?”
“Why --puff, puff --you might --puff, puff -employ counsel in the matter, eh? --puff, puff, puff.
Do you remember the story they tell of
Abernethy?”
“No; hang Abernethy!”
“To be sure! hang him and welcome. But,
once upon a time, a certain rich miser conceived
the design of spunging upon this Abernethy for a
medical opinion. Getting up, for this purpose, an
ordinary conversation in a private company, he
insinuated his case to the physician, as that of an
imaginary individual.
“'We will suppose,' said the miser, 'that his
symptoms are such and such; now, doctor, what
would you have directed him to take?'
“'Take!' said Abernethy, 'why, take advice, to
be sure.'“
“But,” said the Prefect, a little discomposed,
“I am perfectly willing to take advice, and to pay
for it. I would really give fifty thousand francs to
any one who would aid me in the matter.”
“In that case,” replied Dupin, opening a
drawer, and producing a check-book, “you may as
well fill me up a check for the amount mentioned.
When you have signed it, I will hand you the
letter.”
I was astounded. The Prefect appeared
absolutely thunderstricken. For some minutes he
remained speechless and motionless, less, looking
incredulously at my friend with open mouth, and
eyes that seemed starting from their sockets; then,
apparently in some measure, he seized a pen, and
after several pauses and vacant stares, finally filled
up and signed a check for fifty thousand francs, and
handed it across the table to Dupin. The latter
examined it carefully and deposited it in his pocketbook; then, unlocking an escritoire, took thence a
letter and gave it to the Prefect. This functionary
grasped it in a perfect agony of joy, opened it with
a trembling hand, cast a rapid glance at its contents,
and then, scrambling and struggling to the door,
rushed at length unceremoniously from the room
and from the house, without having uttered a
syllable since Dupin had requested him to fill up
the check.
When he had gone, my friend entered into
some explanations.
“The Parisian police,” he said, “are
exceedingly able in their way. They are
persevering, ingenious, cunning, and thoroughly
versed in the knowledge which their duties seem
chiefly to demand. Thus, when G-- detailed to us
his mode of searching the premises at the Hotel D-, I felt entire confidence in his having made a
satisfactory investigation --so far as his labors
extended.”
“So far as his labors extended?” said I.
“Yes,” said Dupin. “The measures adopted
were not only the best of their kind, but carried out
to absolute perfection. Had the letter been
deposited within the range of their search, these
fellows would, beyond a question, have found it.”
I merely laughed --but he seemed quite
serious in all that he said.
“The measures, then,” he continued, “were
good in their kind, and well executed; their defect
lay in their being inapplicable to the case, and to
the man. A certain set of highly ingenious resources
are, with the Prefect, a sort of Procrustean bed, to
which he forcibly adapts his designs. But he
perpetually errs by being too deep or too shallow,
for the matter in hand; and many a schoolboy is a
better reasoner than he. I knew one about eight
years of age, whose success at guessing in the game
of 'even and odd' attracted universal admiration.
This game is simple, and is played with marbles.
One player holds in his hand a number of these
toys, and demands of another whether that number
is even or odd. If the guess is right, the guesser
wins one; if wrong, he loses one. The boy to whom
I allude won all the marbles of the school. Of
course he had some principle of guessing; and this
lay in mere observation and admeasurement of the
astuteness of his opponents. For example, an arrant
simpleton is his opponent, and, holding up his
closed hand, asks, 'are they even or odd?' Our
schoolboy replies, 'odd,' and loses; but upon the
second trial he wins, for he then says to himself, the
simpleton had them even upon the first trial, and
his amount of cunning is just sufficient to make
him have them odd upon the second; I will
therefore guess odd'; --he guesses odd, and wins.
Now, with a simpleton a degree above the first, he
would have reasoned thus: 'This fellow finds that in
the first instance I guessed odd, and, in the second,
he will propose to himself upon the first impulse, a
simple variation from even to odd, as did the first
simpleton; but then a second thought will suggest
that this is too simple a variation, and finally he
will decide upon putting it even as before. I will
therefore guess even' guesses even, and wins. Now
this mode of reasoning in the schoolboy, whom his
fellows termed “lucky,” --what, in its last analysis,
is it?”
“It is merely,” I said, “an identification of the
reasoner's intellect with that of his opponent.”
“It is,” said Dupin;” and, upon inquiring of
the boy by what means he effected the thorough
identification in which his success consisted, I
received answer as follows: 'When I wish to find
out how wise, or how stupid, or how good, or how
wicked is any one, or what are his thoughts at the
moment, I fashion the expression of my face, as
accurately as possible, in accordance with the
expression of his, and then wait to see what
thoughts or sentiments arise in my mind or heart, as
if to match or correspond with the expression.' This
response of the schoolboy lies at the bottom of all
the spurious profundity which has been attributed
to Rochefoucauld, to La Bougive, to Machiavelli,
and to Campanella.”
“And the identification,” I said, “of the
reasoner's intellect with that of his opponent,
depends, if I understand you aright upon the
accuracy with which the opponent's intellect is
admeasured.”
“For its practical value it depends upon this,”
replied Dupin; and the Prefect and his cohort fall so
frequently, first, by default of this identification,
and, secondly, by ill-admeasurement, or rather
through non-admeasurement, of the intellect with
which they are engaged. They consider only their
own ideas of ingenuity; and, in searching for
anything hidden, advert only to the modes in which
they would have hidden it. They are right in this
much --that their own ingenuity is a faithful
representative of that of the mass; but when the
cunning of the individual felon is diverse in
character from their own, the felon foils them, of
course. This always happens when it is above their
own, and very usually when it is below. They have
no variation of principle in their investigations; at
best, when urged by some unusual emergency --by
some extraordinary reward --they extend or
exaggerate their old modes of practice, without
touching their principles. What, for example, in this
case of D--, has been done to vary the principle of
action? What is all this boring, and probing, and
sounding, and scrutinizing with the microscope,
and dividing the surface of the building into
registered square inches --what is it all but an
exaggeration of the application of the one principle
or set of principles of search, which are based upon
the one set of notions regarding human ingenuity,
to which the Prefect, in the long routine of his duty,
has been accustomed? Do you not see he has taken
it for granted that all men proceed to conceal a
letter, --not exactly in a gimlet-hole bored in a
chair-leg --but, at least, in some hole or corner
suggested by the same tenor of thought which
would urge a man to secrete a letter in a gimlethole bored in a chair-leg? And do you not see also,
that such recherches nooks for concealment are
adapted only for ordinary occasions, and would be
adopted only by ordinary intellects; for, in all cases
of concealment, a disposal of the article concealed -a disposal of it in this recherche manner, --is, in
the very first instance, presumable and presumed;
and thus its discovery depends, not at all upon the
acumen, but altogether upon the mere care,
patience, and determination of the seekers; and
where the case is of importance --or, what amounts
to the same thing in the policial eyes, when the
reward is of magnitude, --the qualities in question
have never been known to fall. You will now
understand what I meant in suggesting that, had the
purloined letter been hidden anywhere within the
limits of the Prefect's examination --in other words,
had the principle of its concealment been
comprehended within the principles of the Prefect -its discovery would have been a matter altogether
beyond question. This functionary, however, has
been thoroughly mystified; and the remote source
of his defeat lies in the supposition that the Minister
is a fool, because he has acquired renown as a poet.
All fools are poets; this the Prefect feels; and he is
merely guilty of a non distributio medii in thence
inferring that all poets are fools.”
“But is this really the poet?” I asked. “There
are two brothers, I know; and both have attained
reputation in letters. The Minister I believe has
written learnedly on the Differential Calculus. He is
a mathematician, and no poet.”
“You are mistaken; I know him well; he is
both. As poet and mathematician, he would reason
well; as mere mathematician, he could not have
reasoned at all, and thus would have been at the
mercy of the Prefect.”
“You surprise me,” I said, “by these
opinions, which have been contradicted by the
voice of the world. You do not mean to set at
naught the well-digested idea of centuries. The
mathematical reason has long been regarded as the
reason par excellence.
“'Il y a a parier,'“ replied Dupin, quoting
from Chamfort, “'que toute idee publique, toute
convention recue, est une sottise, car elle a convenu
au plus grand nombre.' The mathematicians, I grant
you, have done their best to promulgate the popular
error to which you allude, and which is none the
less an error for its promulgation as truth. With an
art worthy a better cause, for example, they have
insinuated the term 'analysis' into application to
algebra. The French are the originators of this
particular deception; but if a term is of any
importance --if words derive any value from
applicability --then 'analysis' conveys 'algebra'
about as much as, in Latin, 'ambitus' implies
'ambition,' 'religio' religion or 'homines honesti,' a
set of honorable men.”
“You have a quarrel on hand, I see,” said I,
“with some of the algebraists of Paris; but
proceed.”
“I dispute the availability, and thus the value,
of that reason which is cultivated in any especial
form other than the abstractly logical. I dispute, in
particular, the reason educed by mathematical
study. The mathematics are the science of form and
quantity; mathematical reasoning is merely logic
applied to observation upon form and quantity. The
great error lies in supposing that even the truths of
what is called pure algebra, are abstract or general
truths. And this error is so egregious that I am
confounded at the universality with which it has
been received. Mathematical axioms are not axioms
of general truth. What is true of relation --of form
and quantity --is often grossly false in regard to
morals, for example. In this latter science it is very
usually untrue that the aggregated parts are equal to
the whole. In chemistry also the axiom falls. In the
consideration of motive it falls; for two motives,
each of a given value, have not, necessarily, a value
when united, equal to the sum of their values apart.
There are numerous other mathematical truths
which are only truths within the limits of relation.
But the mathematician argues, from his finite
truths, through habit, as if they were of an
absolutely general applicability --as the world
indeed imagines them to be. Bryant, in his very
learned 'Mythology,' mentions an analogous source
of error, when he says that 'although the Pagan
fables are not believed, yet we forget ourselves
continually, and make inferences from them as
existing realities.' With the algebraists, however,
who are Pagans themselves, the 'Pagan fables' are
believed, and the inferences are made, not so much
through lapse of memory, as through an
unaccountable addling of the brains. In short, I
never yet encountered the mere mathematician who
could be trusted out of equal roots, or one who did
not clandestinely hold it as a point of his faith that x
squared + px was absolutely and unconditionally
equal to q. Say to one of these gentlemen, by way
of experiment, if you please, that you believe
occasions may occur where x squared + px is not
altogether equal to q, and, having made him
understand what you mean, get out of his reach as
speedily as convenient, for, beyond doubt, he will
endeavor to knock you down.
I mean to say,” continued Dupin, while I
merely laughed at his last observations, “that if the
Minister had been no more than a mathematician,
the Prefect would have been under no necessity of
giving me this check. I knew him, however, as both
mathematician and poet, and my measures were
adapted to his capacity, with reference to the
circumstances by which he was surrounded. I knew
him as a courtier, too, and as a bold intriguant.
Such a man, I considered, could not fall to be aware
of the ordinary policial modes of action. He could
not have failed to anticipate --and events have
proved that he did not fail to anticipate --the
waylayings to which he was subjected. He must
have foreseen, I reflected, the secret investigations
of his premises. His frequent absences from home
at night, which were hailed by the Prefect as certain
aids to his success, I regarded only as ruses, to
afford opportunity for thorough search to the
police, and thus the sooner to impress them with
the conviction to which G--, in fact, did finally
arrive --the conviction that the letter was not upon
the premises. I felt, also, that the whole train of
thought, which I was at some pains in detailing to
you just now, concerning the invariable principle of
policial action in searches for articles concealed --I
felt that this whole train of thought would
necessarily pass through the mind of the Minister.
It would imperatively lead him to despise all the
ordinary nooks of concealment. He could not, I
reflected, be so weak as not to see that the most
intricate and remote recess of his hotel would be as
open as his commonest closets to the eyes, to the
probes, to the gimlets, and to the microscopes of
the Prefect. I saw, in fine, that he would be driven,
as a matter of course, to simplicity, if not
deliberately induced to it as a matter of choice. You
will remember, perhaps, how desperately the
Prefect laughed when I suggested, upon our first
interview, that it was just possible this mystery
troubled him so much on account of its being so
very self-evident.”
“Yes,” said I, “I remember his merriment
well. I really thought he would have fallen into
convulsions.”
“The material world,” continued Dupin,
“abounds with very strict analogies to the
immaterial; and thus some color of truth has been
given to the rhetorical dogma, that metaphor, or
simile, may be made to strengthen an argument, as
well as to embellish a description. The principle of
the vis inertiae, for example, seems to be identical
in physics and metaphysics. It is not more true in
the former, that a large body is with more difficulty
set in motion than a smaller one, and that its
subsequent momentum is commensurate with this
difficulty, than it is, in the latter, that intellects of
the vaster capacity, while more forcible, more
constant, and more eventful in their movements
than those of inferior grade, are yet the less readily
moved, and more embarrassed and full of hesitation
in the first few steps of their progress. Again: have
you ever noticed which of the street signs, over the
shop doors, are the most attractive of attention?”
“I have never given the matter a thought,” I
said.
“There is a game of puzzles,” he resumed,
“which is played upon a map. One party playing
requires another to find a given word --the name of
town, river, state or empire --any word, in short,
upon the motley and perplexed surface of the chart.
A novice in the game generally seeks to embarrass
his opponents by giving them the most minutely
lettered names; but the adept selects such words as
stretch, in large characters, from one end of the
chart to the other. These, like the over-largely
lettered signs and placards of the street, escape
observation by dint of being excessively obvious;
and here the physical oversight is precisely
analogous with the moral inapprehension by which
the intellect suffers to pass unnoticed those
considerations which are too obtrusively and too
palpably self-evident. But this is a point, it appears,
somewhat above or beneath the understanding of
the Prefect. He never once thought it probable, or
possible, that the Minister had deposited the letter
immediately beneath the nose of the whole world,
by way of best preventing any portion of that world
from perceiving it.
“But the more I reflected upon the daring,
dashing, and discriminating ingenuity of D--; upon
the fact that the document must always have been
at hand, if he intended to use it to good purpose;
and upon the decisive evidence, obtained by the
Prefect, that it was not hidden within the limits of
that dignitary's ordinary search --the more satisfied
I became that, to conceal this letter, the Minister
had resorted to the comprehensive and sagacious
expedient of not attempting to conceal it at all.
“Full of these ideas, I prepared myself with a
pair of green spectacles, and called one fine
morning, quite by accident, at the Ministerial hotel.
I found D-- at home, yawning, lounging, and
dawdling, as usual, and pretending to be in the last
extremity of ennui. He is, perhaps, the most really
energetic human being now alive --but that is only
when nobody sees him.
“To be even with him, I complained of my
weak eyes, and lamented the necessity of the
spectacles, under cover of which I cautiously and
thoroughly surveyed the apartment, while
seemingly intent only upon the conversation of my
host.
“I paid special attention to a large writingtable near which he sat, and upon which lay
confusedly, some miscellaneous letters and other
papers, with one or two musical instruments and a
few books. Here, however, after a long and very
deliberate scrutiny, I saw nothing to excite
particular suspicion.
“At length my eyes, in going the circuit of
the room, fell upon a trumpery filigree card-rack of
pasteboard, that hung dangling by a dirty blue
ribbon, from a little brass knob just beneath the
middle of the mantelpiece. In this rack, which had
three or four compartments, were five or six
visiting cards and a solitary letter. This last was
much soiled and crumpled. It was torn nearly in
two, across the middle --as if a design, in the first
instance, to tear it entirely up as worthless, had
been altered, or stayed, in the second. It had a large
black seal, bearing the D-- cipher very
conspicuously, and was addressed, in a diminutive
female hand, to D--, the minister, himself. It was
thrust carelessly, and even, as it seemed,
contemptuously, into one of the upper divisions of
the rack.
“No sooner had I glanced at this letter, than I
concluded it to be that of which I was in search. To
be sure, it was, to all appearance, radically different
from the one of which the Prefect had read us so
minute a description. Here the seal was large and
black, with the D-- cipher; there it was small and
red, with the ducal arms of the S-- family. Here, the
address, to the Minister, was diminutive and
feminine; there the superscription, to a certain royal
personage, was markedly bold and decided; the size
alone formed a point of correspondence. But, then,
the radicalness of these differences, which was
excessive; the dirt; the soiled and torn condition of
the paper, so inconsistent with the true methodical
habits of D--, and so suggestive of a design to
delude the beholder into an idea of the
worthlessness of the document; these things,
together with the hyperobtrusive situation of this
document, full in the view of every visitor, and thus
exactly in accordance with the conclusions to
which I had previously arrived; these things, I say,
were strongly corroborative of suspicion, in one
who came with the intention to suspect.
“I protracted my visit as long as possible,
and, while I maintained a most animated discussion
with the Minister, on a topic which I knew well had
never failed to interest and excite him, I kept my
attention really riveted upon the letter. In this
examination, I committed to memory its external
appearance and arrangement in the rack; and also
fell, at length, upon a discovery which set at rest
whatever trivial doubt I might have entertained. In
scrutinizing the edges of the paper, I observed them
to be more chafed than seemed necessary. They
presented the broken appearance which is
manifested when a stiff paper, having been once
folded and pressed with a folder, is refolded in a
reversed direction, in the same creases or edges
which had formed the original fold. This discovery
was sufficient. It was clear to me that the letter had
been turned, as a glove, inside out, re-directed, and
re-sealed. I bade the Minister good morning, and
took my departure at once, leaving a gold snuff-box
upon the table.
“The next morning I called for the snuff-box,
when we resumed, quite eagerly, the conversation
of the preceding day. While thus engaged,
however, a loud report, as if of a pistol, was heard
immediately beneath the windows of the hotel, and
was succeeded by a series of fearful screams, and
the shoutings of a mob. D-- rushed to a casement,
threw it open, and looked out. In the meantime, I
stepped to the card-rack, took the letter, put it in my
pocket, and replaced it by a fac-simile, (so far as
regards externals,) which I had carefully prepared
at my lodgings; imitating the D-- cipher, very
readily, by means of a seal formed of bread.
“The disturbance in the street had been
occasioned by the frantic behavior of a man with a
musket. He had fired it among a crowd of women
and children. It proved, however, to have been
without ball, and the fellow was suffered to go his
way as a lunatic or a drunkard. When he had gone,
D-came from the window, whither I had followed
him immediately upon securing the object in view.
Soon afterwards I bade him farewell. The
pretended lunatic was a man in my own pay.
“But what purpose had you,” I asked, in
replacing the letter by a fac-simile? Would it not
have been better, at the first visit, to have seized it
openly, and departed?”
“D--,” replied Dupin, “is a desperate man,
and a man of nerve. His hotel, too, is not without
attendants devoted to his interests. Had I made the
wild attempt you suggest, I might never have left
the Ministerial presence alive. The good people of
Paris might have heard of me no more. But I had an
object apart from these considerations. You know
my political prepossessions. In this matter, I act as
a partisan of the lady concerned. For eighteen
months the Minister has had her in his power. She
has now him in hers; since, being unaware that the
letter is not in his possession, he will proceed with
his exactions as if it was. Thus will he inevitably
commit himself, at once, to his political
destruction. His downfall, too, will not be more
precipitate than awkward. It is all very well to talk
about the facilis descensus Averni; but in all kinds
of climbing, as Catalani said of singing, it is far
more easy to get up than to come down. In the
present instance I have no sympathy --at least no
pity --for him who descends. He is the monstrum
horrendum, an unprincipled man of genius. I
confess, however, that I should like very well to
know the precise character of his thoughts, when,
being defied by her whom the Prefect terms 'a
certain personage,' he is reduced to opening the
letter which I left for him in the card-rack.”
“How? did you put any thing particular in
it?”
“Why --it did not seem altogether right to
leave the interior blank --that would have been
insulting. D--, at Vienna once, did me an evil turn,
which I told him, quite good-humoredly, that I
should remember. So, as I knew he would feel
some curiosity in regard to the identity of the
person who had outwitted him, I thought it a pity
not to give him a clue. He is well acquainted with
my MS., and I just copied into the middle of the
blank sheet the words---Un dessein si funeste, S'il n'est digne
d'Atree, est digne de Thyeste.
(If such a sinister design isn't worthy of
Atreus, it is worthy of Thyestes.)
They are to be found in Crebillon's 'Atree.'“
Feathertop
by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1852)
from Mosses from an Old Manse
“DICKSON” cried Mother Rigby, “a coal for
my pipe!”
The pipe was in the old dame’s mouth when
she said these words. She had thrust it there after
filling it with tobacco, but without stooping to light
it at the hearth, where indeed there was no
appearance of a fire having been kindled that
morning. Forthwith, however, as soon as the order
was given, there was an intense red glow out of the
bowl of the pipe, and a whiff of smoke came from
Mother Rigby’s lips. Whence the coal came, and
how brought thither by an invisible hand, I have
never been able to discover.
“Good!” quoth Mother Rigby, with a nod of
her head. “Thank ye, Dickon! And now for making
this scarecrow. Be within call, Dickon, in case I
need you again.”
The good woman had risen thus early (for as
yet it was scarcely sunrise) in order to set about
making a scarecrow, which she intended to put in
the middle of her corn-patch. It was now the latter
week of May, and the crows and blackbirds had
already discovered the little, green, rolledup leaf of
the Indian corn just peeping out of the soil. She was
determined, therefore, to contrive as lifelike a
scarecrow as ever was seen, and to finish it
immediately, from top to toe, so that it should begin
its sentinel’s duty that very morning. Now Mother
Rigby (as everybody must have heard) was one of
the most cunning and potent witches in New
England, and might, with very little trouble, have
made a scarecrow ugly enough to frighten the
minister himself. But on this occasion, as she had
awakened in an uncommonly pleasant humor, and
was further dulcified by her pipe tobacco, she
resolved to produce something fine, beautiful, and
splendid, rather than hideous and horrible.
“I don’t want to set up a hobgoblin in my own
corn-patch, and almost at my own doorstep,” said
Mother Rigby to herself, puffing out a whiff of
smoke; “I could do it if I pleased, but I’m tired of
doing marvellous things, and so I’ll keep within the
bounds of every-day business just for variety’s sake.
Besides, there is no use in scaring the little children
for a mile roundabout, though ‘t is true I’m a
witch.”
It was settled, therefore, in her own mind, that
the scarecrow should represent a fine gentleman of
the period, so far as the materials at hand would
allow. Perhaps it may be as well to enumerate the
chief of the articles that went to the composition of
this figure.
The most important item of all, probably,
although it made so little show, was a certain
broomstick, on which Mother Rigby had taken
many an airy gallop at midnight, and which now
served the scarecrow by way of a spinal column, or,
as the unlearned phrase it, a backbone. One of its
arms was a disabled flail which used to be wielded
by Goodman Rigby, before his spouse worried him
out of this troublesome world; the other, if I mistake
not, was composed of the pudding stick and a
broken rung of a chair, tied loosely together at the
elbow. As for its legs, the right was a hoe handle,
and the left an undistinguished and miscellaneous
stick from the woodpile. Its lungs, stomach, and
other affairs of that kind were nothing better than a
meal bag stuffed with straw. Thus we have made
out the skeleton and entire corporosity of the
scarecrow, with the exception of its head; and this
was admirably supplied by a somewhat withered
and shrivelled pumpkin, in which Mother Rigby cut
two holes for the eyes and a slit for the mouth,
leaving a bluish-colored knob in the middle to pass
for a nose. It was really quite a respectable face.
“I’ve seen worse ones on human shoulders, at
any rate,” said Mother Rigby. “And many a fine
gentleman has a pumpkin head, as well as my
scarecrow.”
But the clothes, in this case, were to be the
making of the man. So the good old woman took
down from a peg an ancient plum-colored coat of
London make, and with relics of embroidery on its
seams, cuffs, pocket-flaps, and button-holes, but
lamentably worn and faded, patched at the elbows,
tattered at the skirts, and threadbare all over. On the
left breast was a round hole, whence either a star of
nobility had been rent away, or else the hot heart of
some former wearer had scorched it through and
through. The neighbors said that this rich garment
belonged to the Black Man’s wardrobe, and that he
kept it at Mother Rigby’s cottage for the
convenience of slipping it on whenever he wished
to make a grand appearance at the governor’s table.
To match the coat there was a velvet waistcoat of
very ample size, and formerly embroidered with
foliage that had been as brightly golden as the
maple leaves in October, but which had now quite
vanished out of the substance of the velvet. Next
came a pair of scarlet breeches, once worn by the
French governor of Louisbourg, and the knees of
which had touched the lower step of the throne of
Louis le Grand. The Frenchman had given these
small-clothes to an Indian powwow, who parted
with them to the old witch for a gill of strong
waters, at one of their dances in the forest.
Furthermore, Mother Rigby produced a pair of silk
stockings and put them on the figure’s legs, where
they showed as unsubstantial as a dream, with the
wooden reality of the two sticks making itself
miserably apparent through the holes. Lastly, she
put her dead husband’s wig on the bare scalp of the
pumpkin, and surmounted the whole with a dusty
three-cornered hat, in which was stuck the longest
tail feather of a rooster.
Then the old dame stood the figure up in a
corner of her cottage and chuckled to behold its
yellow semblance of a visage, with its nobby little
nose thrust into the air. It had a strangely selfsatisfied aspect, and seemed to say, “Come look at
me!”
“And you are well worth looking at, that’s a
fact!” quoth Mother Rigby, in admiration at her
own handiwork. “I’ve made many a puppet since
I’ve been a witch, but methinks this is the finest of
them all. ‘Tis almost too good for a scarecrow. And,
by the by, I’ll just fill a fresh pipe of tobacco and
then take him out to the corn-patch.”
While filling her pipe the old woman
continued to gaze with almost motherly affection at
the figure in the corner. To say the truth, whether it
were chance, or skill, or downright witchcraft, there
was something wonderfully human in this
ridiculous shape, bedizened with its tattered finery;
and as for the countenance, it appeared to shrivel its
yellow surface into a grin--a funny kind of
expression betwixt scorn and merriment, as if it
understood itself to be a jest at mankind. The more
Mother Rigby looked the better she was pleased.
“Dickon,” cried she sharply, “another coal for
my pipe!”
Hardly had she spoken, than, just as before,
there was a red-glowing coal on the top of the
tobacco. She drew in a long whiff and puffed it
forth again into the bar of morning sunshine which
struggled through the one dusty pane of her cottage
window. Mother Rigby always liked to flavor her
pipe with a coal of fire from the particular chimney
corner whence this had been brought. But where
that chimney corner might be, or who brought the
coal from it,--further than that the invisible
messenger seemed to respond to the name of
Dickon,--I cannot tell.
“That puppet yonder,” thought Mother Rigby,
still with her eyes fixed on the scarecrow, “is too
good a piece of work to stand all summer in a cornpatch, frightening away the crows and blackbirds.
He’s capable of better things. Why, I’ve danced
with a worse one, when partners happened to be
scarce, at our witch meetings in the forest! What if I
should let him take his chance among the other men
of straw and empty fellows who go bustling about
the world?”
The old witch took three or four more whiffs
of her pipe and smiled.
“He’ll meet plenty of his brethren at every
street corner!” continued she. “Well; I didn’t mean
to dabble in witchcraft to-day, further than the
lighting of my pipe, but a witch I am, and a witch
I’m likely to be, and there’s no use trying to shirk it.
I’ll make a man of my scarecrow, were it only for
the joke’s sake!”
While muttering these words, Mother Rigby
took the pipe from her own mouth and thrust it into
the crevice which represented the same feature in
the pumpkin visage of the scarecrow.
“Puff, darling, puff!” said she. “Puff away, my
fine fellow! your life depends on it!”
This was a strange exhortation, undoubtedly,
to be addressed to a mere thing of sticks, straw, and
old clothes, with nothing better than a shrivelled
pumpkin for a head,--as we know to have been the
scarecrow’s case. Nevertheless, as we must
carefully hold in remembrance, Mother Rigby was a
witch of singular power and dexterity; and, keeping
this fact duly before our minds, we shall see nothing
beyond credibility in the remarkable incidents of
our story. Indeed, the great difficulty will be at once
got over, if we can only bring ourselves to believe
that, as soon as the old dame bade him puff, there
came a whiff of smoke from the scarecrow’s mouth.
It was the very feeblest of whiffs, to be sure; but it
was followed by another and another, each more
decided than the preceding one.
“Puff away, my pet! puff away, my pretty
one!” Mother Rigby kept repeating, with her
pleasantest smile. “It is the breath of life to ye; and
that you may take my word for.”
Beyond all question the pipe was bewitched.
There must have been a spell either in the tobacco
or in the fiercely-glowing coal that so mysteriously
burned on top of it, or in the pungently-aromatic
smoke which exhaled from the kindled weed. The
figure, after a few doubtful attempts at length blew
forth a volley of smoke extending all the way from
the obscure corner into the bar of sunshine. There it
eddied and melted away among the motes of dust. It
seemed a convulsive effort; for the two or three next
whiffs were fainter, although the coal still glowed
and threw a gleam over the scarecrow’s visage. The
old witch clapped her skinny hands together, and
smiled encouragingly upon her handiwork. She saw
that the charm worked well. The shrivelled, yellow
face, which heretofore had been no face at all, had
already a thin, fantastic haze, as it were of human
likeness, shifting to and fro across it; sometimes
vanishing entirely, but growing more perceptible
than ever with the next whiff from the pipe. The
whole figure, in like manner, assumed a show of
life, such as we impart to ill-defined shapes among
the clouds, and half deceive ourselves with the
pastime of our own fancy.
If we must needs pry closely into the matter, it
may be doubted whether there was any real change,
after all, in the sordid, wornout worthless, and illjointed substance of the scarecrow; but merely a
spectral illusion, and a cunning effect of light and
shade so colored and contrived as to delude the eyes
of most men. The miracles of witchcraft seem
always to have had a very shallow subtlety; and, at
least, if the above explanation do not hit the truth of
the process, I can suggest no better.
“Well puffed, my pretty lad!” still cried old
Mother Rigby. “Come, another good stout whiff,
and let it be with might and main. Puff for thy life, I
tell thee! Puff out of the very bottom of thy heart, if
any heart thou hast, or any bottom to it! Well done,
again! Thou didst suck in that mouthful as if for the
pure love of it.”
And then the witch beckoned to the
scarecrow, throwing so much magnetic potency into
her gesture that it seemed as if it must inevitably be
obeyed, like the mystic call of the loadstone when it
summons the iron.
“Why lurkest thou in the corner, lazy one?”
said she. “Step forth! Thou hast the world before
thee!”
Upon my word, if the legend were not one
which I heard on my grandmother’s knee, and
which had established its place among things
credible before my childish judgment could analyze
its probability, I question whether I should have the
face to tell it now.
In obedience to Mother Rigby’s word, and
extending its arm as if to reach her outstretched
hand, the figure made a step forward--a kind of
hitch and jerk, however, rather than a step--then
tottered and almost lost its balance. What could the
witch expect? It was nothing, after all, but a
scarecrow stuck upon two sticks. But the strongwilled old beldam scowled, and beckoned, and
flung the energy of her purpose so forcibly at this
poor combination of rotten wood, and musty straw,
and ragged garments, that it was compelled to show
itself a man, in spite of the reality of things. So it
stepped into the bar of sunshine. There it stood,
poor devil of a contrivance that it was!--with only
the thinnest vesture of human similitude about it,
through which was evident the stiff, rickety,
incongruous, faded, tattered, good-for-nothing
patchwork of its substance, ready to sink in a heap
upon the floor, as conscious of its own
unworthiness to be erect. Shall I confess the truth?
At its present point of vivification, the scarecrow
reminds me of some of the lukewarm and abortive
characters, composed of heterogeneous materials,
used for the thousandth time, and never worth
using, with which romance writers (and myself, no
doubt, among the rest) have so overpeopled the
world of fiction.
But the fierce old hag began to get angry and
show a glimpse of her diabolic nature (like a
snake’s head, peeping with a hiss out of her bosom),
at this pusillanimous behavior of the thing which
she had taken the trouble to put together.
“Puff away, wretch!” cried she, wrathfully.
“Puff, puff, puff, thou thing of straw and emptiness!
thou rag or two! thou meal bag! thou pumpkin
head! thou nothing! Where shall I find a name vile
enough to call thee by? Puff, I say, and suck in thy
fantastic life with the smoke! else I snatch the pipe
from thy mouth and hurl thee where that red coal
came from.”
Thus threatened, the unhappy scarecrow had
nothing for it but to puff away for dear life. As need
was, therefore, it applied itself lustily to the pipe,
and sent forth such abundant volleys of tobacco
smoke that the small cottage kitchen became all
vaporous. The one sunbeam struggled mistily
through, and could but imperfectly define the image
of the cracked and dusty window pane on the
opposite wall. Mother Rigby, meanwhile, with one
brown arm akimbo and the other stretched towards
the figure, loomed grimly amid the obscurity with
such port and expression as when she was wont to
heave a ponderous nightmare on her victims and
stand at the bedside to enjoy their agony. In fear and
trembling did this poor scarecrow puff. But its
efforts, it must be acknowledged, served an
excellent purpose; for, with each successive whiff,
the figure lost more and more of its dizzy and
perplexing tenuity and seemed to take denser
substance. Its very garments, moreover, partook of
the magical change, and shone with the gloss of
novelty and glistened with the skilfully embroidered
gold that had long ago been rent away. And, half
revealed among the smoke, a yellow visage bent its
lustreless eyes on Mother Rigby.
At last the old witch clinched her fist and
shook it at the figure. Not that she was positively
angry, but merely acting on the principle--perhaps
untrue, or not the only truth, though as high a one as
Mother Rigby could be expected to attain--that
feeble and torpid natures, being incapable of better
inspiration, must be stirred up by fear. But here was
the crisis. Should she fail in what she now sought to
effect, it was her ruthless purpose to scatter the
miserable simulacre into its original elements.
“Thou hast a man’s aspect,” said she, sternly.
“Have also the echo and mockery of a voice! I bid
thee speak!”
The scarecrow gasped, struggled, and at
length emitted a murmur, which was so
incorporated with its smoky breath that you could
scarcely tell whether it were indeed a voice or only
a whiff of tobacco. Some narrators of this legend
hold the opinion that Mother Rigby’s conjurations
and the fierceness of her will had compelled a
familiar spirit into the figure, and that the voice was
his.
“Mother,” mumbled the poor stifled voice, “be
not so awful with me! I would fain speak; but being
without wits, what can I say?”
“Thou canst speak, darling, canst thou?” cried
Mother Rigby, relaxing her grim countenance into a
smile. “And what shalt thou say, quoth-a! Say,
indeed! Art thou of the brotherhood of the empty
skull, and demandest of me what thou shalt say?
Thou shalt say a thousand things, and saying them a
thousand times over, thou shalt still have said
nothing! Be not afraid, I tell thee! When thou
comest into the world (whither I purpose sending
thee forthwith) thou shalt not lack the wherewithal
to talk. Talk! Why, thou shall babble like a millstream, if thou wilt. Thou hast brains enough for
that, I trow!”
“At your service, mother,” responded the
figure.
“And that was well said, my pretty one,”
answered Mother Rigby. “Then thou speakest like
thyself, and meant nothing. Thou shalt have a
hundred such set phrases, and five hundred to the
boot of them. And now, darling, I have taken so
much pains with thee and thou art so beautiful, that,
by my troth, I love thee better than any witch’s
puppet in the world; and I’ve made them of all
sorts--clay, wax, straw, sticks, night fog, morning
mist, sea foam, and chimney smoke. But thou art
the very best. So give heed to what I say.”
“Yes, kind mother,” said the figure, “with all
my heart!”
“With all thy heart!” cried the old witch,
setting her hands to her sides and laughing loudly.
“Thou hast such a pretty way of speaking. With all
thy heart! And thou didst put thy hand to the left
side of thy waistcoat as if thou really hadst one!”
So now, in high good humor with this
fantastic contrivance of hers, Mother Rigby told the
scarecrow that it must go and play its part in the
great world, where not one man in a hundred, she
affirmed, was gifted with more real substance than
itself. And, that he might hold up his head with the
best of them, she endowed him, on the spot, with an
unreckonable amount of wealth. It consisted partly
of a gold mine in Eldorado, and of ten thousand
shares in a broken bubble, and of half a million
acres of vineyard at the North Pole, and of a castle
in the air, and a chateau in Spain, together with all
the rents and income therefrom accruing. She
further made over to him the cargo of a certain ship,
laden with salt of Cadiz, which she herself, by her
necromantic arts, had caused to founder, ten years
before, in the deepest part of mid-ocean. If the salt
were not dissolved, and could be brought to market,
it would fetch a pretty penny among the fishermen.
That he might not lack ready money, she gave him a
copper farthing of Birmingham manufacture, being
all the coin she had about her, and likewise a great
deal of brass, which she applied to his forehead,
thus making it yellower than ever.
“With that brass alone,” quoth Mother Rigby,
“thou canst pay thy way all over the earth. Kiss me,
pretty darling! I have done my best for thee.”
Furthermore, that the adventurer might lack no
possible advantage towards a fair start in life, this
excellent old dame gave him a token by which he
was to introduce himself to a certain magistrate,
member of the council, merchant, and elder of the
church (the four capacities constituting but one
man), who stood at the head of society in the
neighboring metropolis. The token was neither
more nor less than a single word, which Mother
Rigby whispered to the scarecrow, and which the
scarecrow was to whisper to the merchant.
“Gouty as the old fellow is, he’ll run thy
errands for thee, when once thou hast given him that
word in his ear,” said the old witch. “Mother Rigby
knows the worshipful Justice Gookin, and the
worshipful Justice knows Mother Rigby!”
Here the witch thrust her wrinkled face close
to the puppet’s, chuckling irrepressibly, and
fidgeting all through her system, with delight at the
idea which she meant to communicate.
“The worshipful Master Gookin,” whispered
she, “hath a comely maiden to his daughter. And
hark ye, my pet! Thou hast a fair outside, and a
pretty wit enough of thine own. Yea, a pretty wit
enough! Thou wilt think better of it when thou hast
seen more of other people’s wits. Now, with thy
outside and thy inside, thou art the very man to win
a young girl’s heart. Never doubt it! I tell thee it
shall be so. Put but a bold face on the matter, sigh,
smile, flourish thy hat, thrust forth thy leg like a
dancing-master, put thy right hand to the left side of
thy waistcoat, and pretty Polly Gookin is thine
own!”
All this while the new creature had been
sucking in and exhaling the vapory fragrance of his
pipe, and seemed now to continue this occupation
as much for the enjoyment it afforded as because it
was an essential condition of his existence. It was
wonderful to see how exceedingly like a human
being it behaved. Its eyes (for it appeared to possess
a pair) were bent on Mother Rigby, and at suitable
junctures it nodded or shook its head. Neither did it
lack words proper for the occasion: “Really!
Indeed! Pray tell me! Is it possible! Upon my word!
By no means! Oh! Ah! Hem!” and other such
weighty utterances as imply attention, inquiry,
acquiescence, or dissent on the part of the auditor.
Even had you stood by and seen the scarecrow
made, you could scarcely have resisted the
conviction that it perfectly understood the cunning
counsels which the old witch poured into its
counterfeit of an ear. The more earnestly it applied
its lips to the pipe, the more distinctly was its
human likeness stamped among visible realities, the
more sagacious grew its expression, the more
lifelike its gestures and movements, and the more
intelligibly audible its voice. Its garments, too,
glistened so much the brighter with an illusory
magnificence. The very pipe, in which burned the
spell of all this wonderwork, ceased to appear as a
smoke-blackened earthen stump, and became a
meerschaum, with painted bowl and amber
mouthpiece.
It might be apprehended, however, that as the
life of the illusion seemed identical with the vapor
of the pipe, it would terminate simultaneously with
the reduction of the tobacco to ashes. But the
beldam foresaw the difficulty.
“Hold thou the pipe, my precious one,” said
she, “while I fill it for thee again.
It was sorrowful to behold how the fine
gentleman began to fade back into a scarecrow
while Mother Rigby shook the ashes out of the pipe
and proceeded to replenish it from her tobacco-box.
“Dickon,” cried she, in her high, sharp tone,
“another coal for this pipe!”
No sooner said than the intensely red speck of
fire was glowing within the pipe-bowl; and the
scarecrow, without waiting for the witch’s bidding,
applied the tube to his lips and drew in a few short,
convulsive whiffs, which soon, however, became
regular and equable.
“Now, mine own heart’s darling,” quoth
Mother Rigby, “whatever may happen to thee, thou
must stick to thy pipe. Thy life is in it; and that, at
least, thou knowest well, if thou knowest nought
besides. Stick to thy pipe, I say! Smoke, puff, blow
thy cloud; and tell the people, if any question be
made, that it is for thy health, and that so the
physician orders thee to do. And, sweet one, when
thou shalt find thy pipe getting low, go apart into
some corner, and (first filling thyself with smoke)
cry sharply, ‘Dickon, a fresh pipe of tobacco!’ and,
‘Dickon, another coal for my pipe!’ and have it into
thy pretty mouth as speedily as may be. Else,
instead of a gallant gentleman in a gold-laced coat,
thou wilt be but a jumble of sticks and tattered
clothes, and a bag of straw, and a withered
pumpkin! Now depart, my treasure, and good luck
go with thee!”
“Never fear, mother!” said the figure, in a
stout voice, and sending forth a courageous whiff of
smoke, “I will thrive, if an honest man and a
gentleman may!”
“Oh, thou wilt be the death of me!” cried the
old witch, convulsed with laughter. “That was well
said. If an honest man and a gentleman may! Thou
playest thy part to perfection. Get along with thee
for a smart fellow; and I will wager on thy head, as
a man of pith and substance, with a brain and what
they call a heart, and all else that a man should
have, against any other thing on two legs. I hold
myself a better witch than yesterday, for thy sake.
Did not I make thee? And I defy any witch in New
England to make such another! Here; take my staff
along with thee!”
The staff, though it was but a plain oaken
stick, immediately took the aspect of a gold-headed
cane.
“That gold head has as much sense in it as
thine own,” said Mother Rigby, “and it will guide
thee straight to worshipful Master Gookin’s door.
Get thee gone, my pretty pet, my darling, my
precious one, my treasure; and if any ask thy name,
it is Feathertop. For thou hast a feather in thy hat,
and I have thrust a handful of feathers into the
hollow of thy head, and thy wig, too, is of the
fashion they call Feathertop,--so be Feathertop thy
name!”
And, issuing from the cottage, Feathertop
strode manfully towards town. Mother Rigby stood
at the threshold, well pleased to see how the
sunbeams glistened on him, as if all his
magnificence were real, and how diligently and
lovingly he smoked his pipe, and how handsomely
he walked, in spite of a little stiffness of his legs.
She watched him until out of sight, and threw a
witch benediction after her darling, when a turn of
the road snatched him from her view.
Betimes in the forenoon, when the principal
street of the neighboring town was just at its acme
of life and bustle, a stranger of very distinguished
figure was seen on the sidewalk. His port as well as
his garments betokened nothing short of nobility.
He wore a richly-embroidered plum-colored coat, a
waistcoat of costly velvet, magnificently adorned
with golden foliage, a pair of splendid scarlet
breeches, and the finest and glossiest of white silk
stockings. His head was covered with a peruke, so
daintily powdered and adjusted that it would have
been sacrilege to disorder it with a hat; which,
therefore (and it was a gold-laced hat, set off with a
snowy feather), he carried beneath his arm. On the
breast of his coat glistened a star. He managed his
gold-headed cane with an airy grace, peculiar to the
fine gentlemen of the period; and, to give the
highest possible finish to his equipment, he had lace
ruffles at his wrist, of a most ethereal delicacy,
sufficiently avouching how idle and aristocratic
must be the hands which they half concealed.
It was a remarkable point in the accoutrement
of this brilliant personage that he held in his left
hand a fantastic kind of a pipe, with an exquisitely
painted bowl and an amber mouthpiece. This he
applied to his lips as often as every five or six
paces, and inhaled a deep whiff of smoke, which,
after being retained a moment in his lungs, might be
seen to eddy gracefully from his mouth and nostrils.
As may well be supposed, the street was all
astir to find out the stranger’s name.
“It is some great nobleman, beyond question,”
said one of the townspeople. “Do you see the star at
his breast?”
“Nay; it is too bright to be seen,” said another.
“Yes; he must needs be a nobleman, as you say. But
by what conveyance, think you, can his lordship
have voyaged or travelled hither? There has been no
vessel from the old country for a month past; and if
he have arrived overland from the southward, pray
where are his attendants and equipage?”
“He needs no equipage to set off his rank,”
remarked a third. “If he came among us in rags,
nobility would shine through a hole in his elbow. I
never saw such dignity of aspect. He has the old
Norman blood in his veins, I warrant him.”
“I rather take him to be a Dutchman, or one of
your high Germans,” said another citizen. “The men
of those countries have always the pipe at their
mouths.”
“And so has a Turk,” answered his
companion. “But, in my judgment, this stranger
hath been bred at the French court, and hath there
learned politeness and grace of manner, which none
understand so well as the nobility of France. That
gait, now! A vulgar spectator might deem it stiff--he
might call it a hitch and jerk--but, to my eye, it hath
an unspeakable majesty, and must have been
acquired by constant observation of the deportment
of the Grand Monarque. The stranger’s character
and office are evident enough. He is a French
ambassador, come to treat with our rulers about the
cession of Canada.”
“More probably a Spaniard,” said another,
“and hence his yellow complexion; or, most likely,
he is from the Havana, or from some port on the
Spanish main, and comes to make investigation
about the piracies which our government is thought
to connive at. Those settlers in Peru and Mexico
have skins as yellow as the gold which they dig out
of their mines.”
“Yellow or not,” cried a lady, “he is a
beautiful man!--so tall, so slender! such a fine,
noble face, with so well-shaped a nose, and all that
delicacy of expression about the mouth! And, bless
me, how bright his star is! It positively shoots out
flames!”
“So do your eyes, fair lady,” said the stranger,
with a bow and a flourish of his pipe; for he was
just passing at the instant. “Upon my honor, they
have quite dazzled me.”
“Was ever so original and exquisite a
compliment?” murmured the lady, in an ecstasy of
delight.
Amid the general admiration excited by the
stranger’s appearance, there were only two
dissenting voices. One was that of an impertinent
cur, which, after snuffing at the heels of the
glistening figure, put its tail between its legs and
skulked into its master’s back yard, vociferating an
execrable howl. The other dissentient was a young
child, who squalled at the fullest stretch of his
lungs, and babbled some unintelligible nonsense
about a pumpkin.
Feathertop meanwhile pursued his way along
the street. Except for the few complimentary words
to the lady, and now and then a slight inclination of
the head in requital of the profound reverences of
the bystanders, he seemed wholly absorbed in his
pipe. There needed no other proof of his rank and
consequence than the perfect equanimity with
which he comported himself, while the curiosity
and admiration of the town swelled almost into
clamor around him. With a crowd gathering behind
his footsteps, he finally reached the mansion-house
of the worshipful Justice Gookin, entered the gate,
ascended the steps of the front door, and knocked.
In the interim, before his summons was answered,
the stranger was observed to shake the ashes out of
his pipe.
“What did he say in that sharp voice?”
inquired one of the spectators.
“Nay, I know not,” answered his friend. “But
the sun dazzles my eyes strangely. How dim and
faded his lordship looks all of a sudden! Bless my
wits, what is the matter with me?”
“The wonder is,” said the other, “that his pipe,
which was out only an instant ago, should be all
alight again, and with the reddest coal I ever saw.
There is something mysterious about this stranger.
What a whiff of smoke was that! Dim and faded did
you call him? Why, as he turns about the star on his
breast is all ablaze.”
“It is, indeed,” said his companion; “and it
will go near to dazzle pretty Polly Gookin, whom I
see peeping at it out of the chamber window.”
The door being now opened, Feathertop
turned to the crowd, made a stately bend of his body
like a great man acknowledging the reverence of the
meaner sort, and vanished into the house. There was
a mysterious kind of a smile, if it might not better
be called a grin or grimace, upon his visage; but, of
all the throng that beheld him, not an individual
appears to have possessed insight enough to detect
the illusive character of the stranger except a little
child and a cur dog.
Our legend here loses somewhat of its
continuity, and, passing over the preliminary
explanation between Feathertop and the merchant,
goes in quest of the pretty Polly Gookin. She was a
damsel of a soft, round figure, with light hair and
blue eyes, and a fair, rosy face, which seemed
neither very shrewd nor very simple. This young
lady had caught a glimpse of the glistening stranger
while standing on the threshold, and had forthwith
put on a laced cap, a string of beads, her finest
kerchief, and her stiffest damask petticoat in
preparation for the interview. Hurrying from her
chamber to the parlor, she had ever since been
viewing herself in the large looking-glass and
practising pretty airs-now a smile, now a
ceremonious dignity of aspect, and now a softer
smile than the former, kissing her hand likewise,
tossing her head, and managing her fan; while
within the mirror an unsubstantial little maid
repeated every gesture and did all the foolish things
that Polly did, but without making her ashamed of
them. In short, it was the fault of pretty Polly’s
ability rather than her will if she failed to be as
complete an artifice as the illustrious Feathertop
himself; and, when she thus tampered with her own
simplicity, the witch’s phantom might well hope to
win her.
No sooner did Polly hear her father’s gouty
footsteps approaching the parlor door, accompanied
with the stiff clatter of Feathertop’s high-heeled
shoes, than she seated herself bolt upright and
innocently began warbling a song.
“Polly! daughter Polly!” cried the old
merchant. “Come hither, child.”
Master Gookin’s aspect, as he opened the
door, was doubtful and troubled.
“This gentleman,” continued he, presenting
the stranger, “is the Chevalier Feathertop,--nay, I
beg his pardon, my Lord Feathertop, --who hath
brought me a token of remembrance from an
ancient friend of mine. Pay your duty to his
lordship, child, and honor him as his quality
deserves.”
After these few words of introduction, the
worshipful magistrate immediately quitted the
room. But, even in that brief moment, had the fair
Polly glanced aside at her father instead of devoting
herself wholly to the brilliant guest, she might have
taken warning of some mischief nigh at hand. The
old man was nervous, fidgety, and very pale.
Purposing a smile of courtesy, he had deformed his
face with a sort of galvanic grin, which, when
Feathertop’s back was turned, he exchanged for a
scowl, at the same time shaking his fist and
stamping his gouty foot--an incivility which brought
its retribution along with it. The truth appears to
have been that Mother Rigby’s word of
introduction, whatever it might be, had operated far
more on the rich merchant’s fears than on his good
will. Moreover, being a man of wonderfully acute
observation, he had noticed that these painted
figures on the bowl of Feathertop’s pipe were in
motion. Looking more closely he became convinced
that these figures were a party of little demons, each
duly provided with horns and a tail, and dancing
hand in hand, with gestures of diabolical merriment,
round the circumference of the pipe bowl. As if to
confirm his suspicions, while Master Gookin
ushered his guest along a dusky passage from his
private room to the parlor, the star on Feathertop’s
breast had scintillated actual flames, and threw a
flickering gleam upon the wall, the ceiling, and the
floor.
With such sinister prognostics manifesting
themselves on all hands, it is not to be marvelled at
that the merchant should have felt that he was
committing his daughter to a very questionable
acquaintance. He cursed, in his secret soul, the
insinuating elegance of Feathertop’s manners, as
this brilliant personage bowed, smiled, put his hand
on his heart, inhaled a long whiff from his pipe, and
enriched the atmosphere with the smoky vapor of a
fragrant and visible sigh. Gladly would poor Master
Gookin have thrust his dangerous guest into the
street; but there was a constraint and terror within
him. This respectable old gentleman, we fear, at an
earlier period of life, had given some pledge or
other to the evil principle, and perhaps was now to
redeem it by the sacrifice of his daughter.
It so happened that the parlor door was partly
of glass, shaded by a silken curtain, the folds of
which hung a little awry. So strong was the
merchant’s interest in witnessing what was to ensue
between the fair Polly and the gallant Feathertop
that, after quitting the room, he could by no means
refrain from peeping through the crevice of the
curtain.
But there was nothing very miraculous to be
seen; nothing--except the trifles previously noticed-to confirm the idea of a supernatural peril
environing the pretty Polly. The stranger it is true
was evidently a thorough and practised man of the
world, systematic and self-possessed, and therefore
the sort of a person to whom a parent ought not to
confide a simple, young girl without due
watchfulness for the result. The worthy magistrate
who had been conversant with all degrees and
qualities of mankind, could not but perceive every
motion and gesture of the distinguished Feathertop
came in its proper place; nothing had been left rude
or native in him; a well-digested conventionalism
had incorporated itself thoroughly with his
substance and transformed him into a work of art.
Perhaps it was this peculiarity that invested him
with a species of ghastliness and awe. It is the effect
of anything completely and consummately artificial,
in human shape, that the person impresses us as an
unreality and as having hardly pith enough to cast a
shadow upon the floor. As regarded Feathertop, all
this resulted in a wild, extravagant, and fantastical
impression, as if his life and being were akin to the
smoke that curled upward from his pipe.
But pretty Polly Gookin felt not thus. The pair
were now promenading the room: Feathertop with
his dainty stride and no less dainty grimace, the girl
with a native maidenly grace, just touched, not
spoiled, by a slightly affected manner, which
seemed caught from the perfect artifice of her
companion. The longer the interview continued, the
more charmed was pretty Polly, until, within the
first quarter of an hour (as the old magistrate noted
by his watch), she was evidently beginning to be in
love. Nor need it have been witchcraft that subdued
her in such a hurry; the poor child’s heart, it may
be, was so very fervent that it melted her with its
own warmth as reflected from the hollow
semblance of a lover. No matter what Feathertop
said, his words found depth and reverberation in her
ear; no matter what he did, his action was heroic to
her eye. And by this time it is to be supposed there
was a blush on Polly’s cheek, a tender smile about
her mouth and a liquid softness in her glance; while
the star kept coruscating on Feathertop’s breast, and
the little demons careered with more frantic
merriment than ever about the circumference of his
pipe bowl. O pretty Polly Gookin, why should these
imps rejoice so madly that a silly maiden’s heart
was about to be given to a shadow! Is it so unusual
a misfortune, so rare a triumph?
By and by Feathertop paused, and throwing
himself into an imposing attitude, seemed to
summon the fair girl to survey his figure and resist
him longer if she could. His star, his embroidery,
his buckles glowed at that instant with unutterable
splendor; the picturesque hues of his attire took a
richer depth of coloring; there was a gleam and
polish over his whole presence betokening the
perfect witchery of well-ordered manners. The
maiden raised her eyes and suffered them to linger
upon her companion with a bashful and admiring
gaze. Then, as if desirous of judging what value her
own simple comeliness might have side by side
with so much brilliancy, she cast a glance towards
the full-length looking-glass in front of which they
happened to be standing. It was one of the truest
plates in the world and incapable of flattery. No
sooner did the images therein reflected meet Polly’s
eye than she shrieked, shrank from the stranger’s
side, gazed at him for a moment in the wildest
dismay, and sank insensible upon the floor.
Feathertop likewise had looked towards the mirror,
and there beheld, not the glittering mockery of his
outside show, but a picture of the sordid patchwork
of his real composition stripped of all witchcraft.
The wretched simulacrum! We almost pity
him. He threw up his arms with an expression of
despair that went further than any of his previous
manifestations towards vindicating his claims to be
reckoned human, for perchance the only time since
this so often empty and deceptive life of mortals
began its course, an illusion had seen and fully
recognized itself.
Mother Rigby was seated by her kitchen
hearth in the twilight of this eventful day, and had
just shaken the ashes out of a new pipe, when she
heard a hurried tramp along the road. Yet it did not
seem so much the tramp of human footsteps as the
clatter of sticks or the rattling of dry bones.
“Ha!” thought the old witch, “what step is
that? Whose skeleton is out of its grave now, I
wonder?”
A figure burst headlong into the cottage door.
It was Feathertop! His pipe was still alight; the star
still flamed upon his breast; the embroidery still
glowed upon his garments; nor had he lost, in any
degree or manner that could be estimated, the aspect
that assimilated him with our mortal brotherhood.
But yet, in some indescribable way (as is the case
with all that has deluded us when once found out),
the poor reality was felt beneath the cunning
artifice.
“What has gone wrong?” demanded the witch.
“Did yonder sniffling hypocrite thrust my darling
from his door? The villain! I’ll set twenty fiends to
torment him till he offer thee his daughter on his
bended knees!”
“No, mother,” said Feathertop despondingly;
“it was not that.”
“Did the girl scorn my precious one?” asked
Mother Rigby, her fierce eyes glowing like two
coals of Tophet. “I’ll cover her face with pimples!
Her nose shall be as red as the coal in thy pipe! Her
front teeth shall drop out! In a week hence she shall
not be worth thy having!”
“Let her alone, mother,” answered poor
Feathertop; “the girl was half won; and methinks a
kiss from her sweet lips might have made me
altogether human. But,” he added, after a brief
pause and then a howl of self-contempt, “I’ve seen
myself, mother! I’ve seen myself for the wretched,
ragged, empty thing I am! I’ll exist no longer!”
Snatching the pipe from his mouth, he flung it
with all his might against the chimney, and at the
same instant sank upon the floor, a medley of straw
and tattered garments, with some sticks protruding
from the heap, and a shrivelled pumpkin in the
midst. The eyeholes were now lustreless; but the
rudely-carved gap, that just before had been a
mouth still seemed to twist itself into a despairing
grin, and was so far human.
“Poor fellow!” quoth Mother Rigby, with a
rueful glance at the relics of her ill-fated
contrivance. “My poor, dear, pretty Feathertop!
There are thousands upon thousands of coxcombs
and charlatans in the world, made up of just such a
jumble of wornout, forgotten, and good-for-nothing
trash as he was! Yet they live in fair repute, and
never see themselves for what they are. And why
should my poor puppet be the only one to know
himself and perish for it?”
While thus muttering, the witch had filled a
fresh pipe of tobacco, and held the stem between
her fingers, as doubtful whether to thrust it into her
own mouth or Feathertop’s.
“Poor Feathertop!” she continued. “I could
easily give him another chance and send him forth
again tomorrow. But no; his feelings are too tender,
his sensibilities too deep. He seems to have too
much heart to bustle for his own advantage in such
an empty and heartless world. Well! well! I’ll make
a scarecrow of him after all. ‘Tis an innocent and
useful vocation, and will suit my darling well; and,
if each of his human brethren had as fit a one, ‘t
would be the better for mankind; and as for this pipe
of tobacco, I need it more than he.”
So saying Mother Rigby put the stem between
her lips. “Dickon!” cried she, in her high, sharp
tone, “another coal for my pipe!”
Liar!
By Isaac Asimov (1941)
ALFRED LANNING LIT HIS CIGAR
CAREFULLY, BUT the tips of his fingers were
trembling slightly. His gray eyebrows hunched low
as he spoke between puffs.
“It reads minds all right-damn little doubt
about that! But why?” He looked at Mathematician
Peter Bogert, “Well?”
Bogert flattened his black hair down with both
hands, “That was the thirty-fourth RB model we’ve
turned out, Lanning. All the others were strictly
orthodox.”
The third man at the table frowned. Milton
Ashe was the youngest officer of U. S. Robot &
Mechanical Men, Inc., and proud of his post.
“Listen, Bogert. There wasn’t a hitch in the
assembly from start to finish. I guarantee that.”
Bogert’s thick lips spread in a patronizing
smile, “Do you? If you can answer for the entire
assembly line, I recommend your promotion. By
exact count, there are seventy-five thousand, two
hundred and thirtyfour operations necessary for the
manufacture of a single positronic brain, each
separate operation depending for successful
completion upon any number of factors, from five
to a hundred and five. If any one of them goes
seriously wrong, the `brain’ is ruined. I quote our
own information folder, Ashe.”
Milton Ashe flushed, but a fourth voice cut off
his reply.
“If we’re going to start by trying to fix the
blame on one another, I’m leaving.” Susan
Calvin’s hands were folded tightly in her lap, and
the little lines about her thin, pale lips deepened,
“We’ve got a mind-reading robot on our hands and
it strikes me as rather important that we find out
just why it reads minds. We’re not going to do that
by saying, `Your fault! My fault!’ “
Her cold gray eyes fastened upon Ashe, and he
grinned.
Lanning grinned too, and, as always at such
times, his long white hair and shrewd little eyes
made him the picture of a biblical patriarch, “True
for you, Dr. Calvin.”
His voice became suddenly crisp, “Here’s
everything in pill-concentrate form. We’ve
produced a positronic brain of supposedly ordinary
vintage that’s got the remarkable property of being
able to tune in on thought waves. It would mark the
most important advance in robotics in decades, if
we knew how it happened. We don’t, and we have
to find out. Is that clear?”
“May I make a suggestion?” asked Bogert.
“Go ahead!”
“I’d say that until we do figure out the mess and as a mathematician I expect it to be a very devil
of a mess- we keep the existence of RD-34 a secret.
I mean even from the other members of the staff.
As heads of the departments, we ought not to find
it an insoluble problem, and the fewer know about
it-”
“Bogert is right,” said Dr. Calvin. “Ever since
the Interplanetary Code was modified to allow
robot models to be tested in the plants before being
shipped out to space, antirobot propaganda has
increased. If any word leaks out about a robot being
able to read minds before we can announce
complete control of the phenomenon, pretty
effective capital could be made out of it.”
Lanning sucked at his cigar and nodded
gravely. He turned to Ashe, “I think you said you
were alone when you first stumbled on this
thought-reading business.”
“I’ll say I was alone- I got the scare of my life.
RB-34 had just been taken off the assembly table
and they sent him down to me. Obermann was off
somewheres, so I took him down to the testing
rooms myself- at least I started to take him down.”
Ashe paused, and a tiny smile tugged at his lips,
“Say, did any of you ever carry on a thought
conversation without knowing it?”
No one bothered to answer, and he continued,
“You don’t realize it at first, you know. He just
spoke to me - as logically and sensibly as you can
imagine - and it was only when I was most of the
way down to the testing rooms that I realized that I
hadn’t said anything. Sure, I thought lots, but that
isn’t the same thing, is it? I locked that thing up and
ran for Lanning. Having it walking beside me,
calmly peering into my thoughts and picking and
choosing among them gave me the willies.”
“I imagine it would,” said Susan Calvin
thoughtfully. Her eyes fixed themselves upon Ashe
in an oddly intent manner. “We are so accustomed
to considering our own thoughts private.”
Lanning broke in impatiently, “Then only the
four of us know. All right! We’ve got to go about
this systematically. Ashe, I want you to check over
the assembly line from beginning to end everything. You’re to eliminate all operations in
which there was no possible chance of an error, and
list all those where there were, together with its
nature and possible magnitude.”
“Tall order,” grunted Ashe.
“Naturally! Of course, you’re to put the men
under you to work on this - every single one if you
have to, and I don’t care if we go behind schedule,
either. But they’re not to know why, you
understand.”
“Hm-m-m, yes!” The young technician
grinned wryly. “It’s still a lulu of a job.”
Lanning swiveled about in his chair and faced
Calvin, “You’ll have to tackle the job from the
other direction. You’re the robo-psychologist of
the plant, so you’re to study the robot itself and
work backward. Try to find out how he ticks. See
what else is tied up with his telepathic powers, how
far they extend, how they warp his outlook, and just
exactly what harm it has done to his ordinary RB
properties. You’ve got that?”
Lanning didn’t wait for Dr. Calvin to answer.
“I’ll co-ordinate the work and interpret the
findings mathematically.” He puffed violently at
his cigar and mumbled the rest through the smoke,
“Bogert will help me there, of course.”
Bogert polished the nails of one pudgy hand
with the other and said blandly, “I dare say. I know
a little in the line.”
“Well! I’ll get started.” Ashe shoved his chair
back and rose. His pleasantly youthful face
crinkled in a grin, “I’ve got the darnedest job of any
of us, so I’m getting out of here and to work.”
He left with a slurred, “B’ seein’ ye!”
Susan Calvin answered with a barely
perceptible nod, but her eyes followed him out of
sight and she did not answer when Lanning grunted
and said, “Do you want to go up and see RB-34
now, Dr. Calvin?”
RB-34’s photoelectric eyes lifted from the
book at the muffled sound of binges turning and he
was upon his feet when Susan Calvin entered.
She paused to readjust the huge “No Entrance”
sign upon the door and then approached the robot.
“I’ve brought you the texts upon hyperatomic
motors, Herbie - a few anyway. Would you care to
look at them?”
RB-34 -otherwise known as Herbie- lifted the
three heavy books from her arms and opened to the
title page of one:
“Hm-m-m! ‘Theory of Hyperatomics.’ “ He
mumbled inarticulately to himself as he flipped the
pages and then spoke with an abstracted air, “Sit
down, Dr. Calvin! This will take me a few
minutes.”
The psychologist seated herself and watched
Herbie narrowly as he took a chair at the other side
of the table and went through the three books
systematically.
At the end of half an hour, he put them down,
“Of course, I know why you brought these.”
The corner of Dr. Calvin’s lip twitched, “I was
afraid you would. It’s difficult to work with you,
Herbie. You’re always a step ahead of me.”
“It’s the same with these books, you know, as
with the others. They just don’t interest me.
There’s nothing to your textbooks. Your science is
just a mass of collected data plastered together by
make-shift theory - and all so incredibly simple,
that it’s scarcely worth bothering about.
“It’s your fiction that interests me. Your
studies of the interplay of human motives and
emotions” - his mighty hand gestured vaguely as
he sought the proper words.
Dr. Calvin whispered, “I think I understand.”
“I see into minds, you see,” the robot
continued, “and you have no idea how complicated
they are. I can’t begin to understand everything
because my own mind has so little in common with
them - but I try, and your novels help.”
“Yes, but I’m afraid that after going through
some of the harrowing emotional experiences of
our present-day sentimental novel” - there was a
tinge of bitterness in her voice - “you find real
minds like ours dull and colorless.”
“But I don’t!”
The sudden energy in the response brought the
other to her feet. She felt herself reddening, and
thought wildly, “He must know!”
Herbie subsided suddenly, and muttered in a
low voice from which the metallic timbre departed
almost entirely. “But, of course, I know about it,
Dr. Calvin. You think of it always, so how can I
help but know?”
Her face was hard. “Have you - told anyone?”
“Of course not!” This, with genuine surprise.
“No one has asked me.”
“Well, then,” she flung out, “I suppose you
think I am a fool.”
“No! It is a normal emotion.”
“Perhaps that is why it is so foolish.” The
wistfulness in her voice drowned out everything
else. Some of the woman peered through the layer
of doctorhood. “I am not what you would call attractive.”
“If you are referring to mere physical
attraction, I couldn’t judge. But I know, in any
case, that there are other types of attraction.”
“Nor young.” Dr. Calvin had scarcely heard
the robot.
“You are not yet forty.” An anxious insistence
had crept into Herbie’s voice.
“Thirty-eight as you count the years; a
shriveled sixty as far as my emotional outlook on
life is concerned. Am I a psychologist for
nothing?”
She drove on with bitter breathlessness, “And
he’s barely thirty-five and looks and acts younger.
Do you suppose he ever sees me as anything but...
but what I am?”
“You are wrong!” Herbie’s steel fist struck the
plastictopped table with a strident clang. “Listen to
me-”
But Susan Calvin whirled on him now and the
hunted pain in her eyes became a blaze, “Why
should I? What do you know about it all, anyway,
you... you machine. I’m just a specimen to you; an
interesting bug with a peculiar mind spread-eagled
for inspection. It’s a wonderful example of
frustration, isn’t it? Almost as good as your books.”
Her voice, emerging in dry sobs, choked into
silence.
The robot cowered at the outburst. He shook
his head pleadingly. “Won’t you listen to me,
please? I could help you if you would let me.”
“How?” Her lips curled. “By giving me good
advice?”
“No, not that. It’s just that I know what other
people think - Milton Ashe, for instance.”
There was a long silence, and Susan Calvin’s
eyes dropped. “I don’t want to know what he
thinks,” she gasped. “Keep quiet.”
“I think you would want to know what he
thinks”
Her head remained bent, but her breath came
more quickly. “You are talking nonsense,” she
whispered.
“Why should I? I am trying to help. Milton
Ashe’s thoughts of you-” he paused.
And then the psychologist raised her head,
“Well?”
The robot said quietly, “He loves you.”
For a full minute, Dr. Calvin did not speak.
She merely stared. Then, “You are mistaken! You
must be. Why should he?”
“But he does. A thing like that cannot be
hidden, not from me.”
“But I am so... so- “she stammered to a halt.
“He looks deeper than the skin, and admires
intellect in others. Milton Ashe is not the type to
marry a head of hair and a pair of eyes.”
Susan Calvin found herself blinking rapidly
and waited before speaking. Even then her voice
trembled, “Yet he certainly never in any way
indicated-”
“Have you ever given him a chance?”
“How could I? I never thought that-”
“Exactly!”
The psychologist paused in thought and then
looked up suddenly. “A girl visited him here at the
plant half a year ago. She was pretty, I suppose blond and slim. And, of course, could scarcely add
two and two. He spent all day puffing out his chest,
trying to explain how a robot was put together.”
The hardness had returned, “Not that she
understood! Who was she?”
Herbie answered without hesitation, “I know
the person you are referring to. She is his first
cousin, and there is no romantic interest there, I
assure you.”
Susan Calvin rose to her feet with a vivacity
almost girlish. “Now isn’t that strange? That’s
exactly what I used to pretend to myself
sometimes, though I never really thought so. Then
it all must be true.”
She ran to Herbie and seized his cold, heavy
hand in both hers. “Thank you, Herbie.” Her voice
was an urgent, husky whisper. “Don’t tell anyone
about this. Let it be our secret - and thank you
again.” With that, and a convulsive squeeze of
Herbie’s unresponsive metal fingers, she left.
Herbie turned slowly to his neglected novel,
but there was no one to read his thoughts.
Milton Ashe stretched slowly and
magnificently, to the tune of cracking joints and a
chorus of grunts, and then glared at Peter Bogert,
Ph.D.
“Say,” he said, “I’ve been at this for a week
now with just about no sleep. How long do I have
to keep it up? I thought you said the positronic
bombardment in Vac Chamber D was the
solution.”
Bogert yawned delicately and regarded his
white hands with interest. “It is. I’m on the track.”
“I know what that means when a
mathematician says it. How near the end are you?”
“It all depends.”
“On what?” Ashe dropped into a chair and
stretched his long legs out before him.
“On Lanning. The old fellow disagrees with
me.” He sighed, “A bit behind the times, that’s the
trouble with him. He clings to matrix mechanics as
the all in all, and this problem calls for more
powerful mathematical tools. He’s so stubborn.”
Ashe muttered sleepily, “Why not ask Herbie
and settle the whole affair?”
“Ask the robot?” Bogert’s eyebrows climbed.
“Why not? Didn’t the old girl tell you?”
“You mean Calvin?”
“Yeah! Susie herself. That robot’s a
mathematical wiz. He knows all about everything
plus a bit on the side. He does triple integrals in his
head and eats up tensor analysis for dessert.”
The mathematician stared skeptically, “Are
you serious?”
“So help me! The catch is that the dope
doesn’t like math. He would rather read slushy
novels. Honest! You should see the tripe Susie
keeps feeding him: ‘Purple Passion’ and ‘Love in
Space.’ “
“Dr. Calvin hasn’t said a word of this to us.”
“Well, she hasn’t finished studying him. You
know how she is. She likes to have everything just
so before letting out the big secret.”
“She’s told you.”
“We sort of got to talking. I have been seeing
a lot of her lately.” He opened his eyes wide and
frowned, “Say, Bogie, have you been noticing
anything queer about the lady lately?”
Bogert relaxed into an undignified grin,
“She’s using lipstick, if that’s what you mean.”
“Hell, I know that. Rouge, powder and eye
shadow, too. She’s a sight. But it’s not that. I can’t
put my finger on it. It’s the way she talks - as if she
were happy about something.” He thought a little,
and then shrugged.
The other allowed himself a leer, which, for a
scientist past fifty, was not a bad job, “Maybe she’s
in love.”
Ashe allowed his eyes to close again, “You’re
nuts, Bogie. You go speak to Herbie; I want to stay
here and go to sleep.”
“Right! Not that I particularly like having a
robot tell me my job, nor that I think he can do it!”
A soft snore was his only answer.
Herbie listened carefully as Peter Bogert,
hands in pockets, spoke with elaborate
indifference.
“So there you are. I’ve been told you
understand these things, and I am asking you more
in curiosity than anything else. My line of
reasoning, as I have outlined it, involves a few
doubtful steps, I admit, which Dr. Lanning refuses
to accept, and the picture is still rather incomplete.”
The robot didn’t answer, and Bogert said,
“Well?”
“I see no mistake,” Herbie studied the
scribbled figures.
“I don’t suppose you can go any further than
that?”
“I daren’t try. You are a better mathematician
than I, and - well, I’d hate to commit myself.”
There was a shade of complacency in Bogert’s
smile, “I rather thought that would be the case. It is
deep. We’ll forget it.” He crumpled the sheets,
tossed them down the waste shaft, turned to leave,
and then thought better of it.
“By the way-”
The robot waited.
Bogert seemed to have difficulty. “There is
something -that is, perhaps you can-” He stopped.
Herbie spoke quietly. “Your thoughts are
confused, but there is no doubt at all that they
concern Dr. Lanning. It is silly to hesitate, for as
soon as you compose yourself, I’ll know what it is
you want to ask.”
The mathematician’s hand went to his sleek
hair in the familiar smoothing gesture. “Lanning is
nudging seventy,” he said, as if that explained
everything.
“I know that.”
“And he’s been director of the plant for almost
thirty years.” Herbie nodded.
“Well, now,” Bogert’s voice became
ingratiating, “you would know whether... whether
he’s thinking of resigning. Health, perhaps, or
some other-”
“Quite,” said Herbie, and that was all.
“Well, do you know?”
“Certainly.”
“Then-uh-could you tell me?”
“Since you ask, yes.” The robot was quite
matter-of-fact about it. “He has already resigned!”
“What!” The exclamation was an explosive,
almost inarticulate, sound. The scientist’s large
head hunched forward, “Say that again!”
“He has already resigned,” came the quiet
repetition, “but it has not yet taken effect. He is
waiting, you see, to solve the problem of -er myself. That finished, he is quite ready to turn the
office of director over to his successor.”
Bogert expelled his breath sharply, “And this
successor? Who is he?” He was quite close to
Herbie now, eyes fixed fascinatedly on those
unreadable dull-red photoelectric cells that were
the robot’s eyes.
Words came slowly, “You are the next
director.”
And Bogert relaxed into a tight smile, “This is
good to know. I’ve been hoping and waiting for
this. Thanks, Herbie.”
Peter Bogert was at his desk until five that
morning and he was back at nine. The shelf just
over the desk emptied of its row of reference books
and tables, as he referred to one after the other. The
pages of calculations before him increased
microscopically and the crumpled sheets at his feet
mounted into a hill of scribbled paper.
At precisely noon, he stared at the final page,
rubbed a blood-shot eye, yawned and shrugged.
“This is getting worse each minute. Damn!”
He turned at the sound of the opening door and
nodded at Lanning, who entered, cracking the
knuckles of one gnarled hand with the other.
The director took in the disorder of the room
and his eyebrows furrowed together.
“New lead?” he asked.
“No,” came the defiant answer. “What’s
wrong with the old one?”
Lanning did not trouble to answer, nor to do
more than bestow a single cursory glance at the top
sheet upon Bogert’s desk. He spoke through the
flare of a match as he lit a cigar.
“Has Calvin told you about the robot? It’s a
mathematical genius. Really remarkable.”
The other snorted loudly, “So I’ve heard. But
Calvin had better stick to robopsychology. I’ve
checked Herbie on math, and he can scarcely
struggle through calculus.”
“Calvin didn’t find it so.”
“She’s crazy.”
“And I don’t find it so.” The director’s eyes
narrowed dangerously.
“You!” Bogert’s voice hardened. “What are
you talking about?”
“I’ve been putting Herbie through his paces all
morning, and he can do tricks you never heard of.”
“Is that so?”
“You sound skeptical!” Lanning flipped a
sheet of paper out of his vest pocket and unfolded
it. “That’s not my handwriting, is it?”
Bogert studied the large angular notation
covering the sheet, “Herbie did this?”
“Right! And if you’ll notice, he’s been
working on your time integration of Equation 22.
It comes” -Lanning tapped a yellow fingernail
upon the last step- “to the identical conclusion I
did, and in a quarter the time. You had no right to
neglect the Linger Effect in positronic
bombardment.”
“I didn’t neglect it. For Heaven’s sake,
Lanning, get it through your head that it would
cancel out-”
“Oh, sure, you explained that. You used the
Mitchell Translation Equation, didn’t you? Well it doesn’t apply.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’ve been using hyperimaginaries, for one thing.”
“What’s that to do with?”
“Mitchell’s Equation won’t hold when-”
“Are you crazy? If you’ll reread Mitchell’s
original paper in the Transactions of the Far-”
“I don’t have to. I told you in the beginning
that I didn’t like his reasoning, and Herbie backs
me in that.”
“Well, then,” Bogert shouted, “let that
clockwork contraption solve the entire problem for
you. Why bother with nonessentials?”
“That’s exactly the point. Herbie can’t solve
the problem. And if he can’t, we can’t - alone. I’m
submitting the entire question to the National
Board. It’s gotten beyond us.”
Bogert’s chair went over backward as he
jumped up a-snarl, face crimson. “You’re doing
nothing of the sort.”
Lanning flushed in his turn, “Are you telling
me what I can’t do?”
“Exactly,” was the gritted response. “I’ve got
the problem beaten and you’re not to take it out of
my hands, understand? Don’t think I don’t see
through you, you desiccated fossil. You’d cut your
own nose off before you’d let me get the credit for
solving robotic telepathy.”
“You’re a damned idiot, Bogert, and in one
second
I’ll
have
you
suspended
for
insubordination” - Lanning’s lower lip trembled
with passion.
“Which is one thing you won’t do, Lanning.
You haven’t any secrets with a mind-reading robot
around, so don’t forget that I know all about your
resignation.”
The ash on Lanning’s cigar trembled and fell,
and the cigar itself followed, “What... what-”
Bogert chuckled nastily, “And I’m the new
director, be it understood. I’m very aware of that;
don’t think I’m not. Damn your eyes, Lanning, I’m
going to give the orders about here or there will be
the sweetest mess that you’ve ever been in.”
Lanning found his voice and let it out with a
roar. “You’re suspended, d’ye hear? You’re
relieved of all duties. You’re broken, do you
understand?”
The smile on the other’s face broadened,
“Now, what’s the use of that? You’re getting
nowhere. I’m holding the trumps. I know you’ve
resigned. Herbie told me, and he got it straight from
you.”
Lanning forced himself to speak quietly. He
looked an old, old man, with tired eyes peering
from a face in which the red had disappeared,
leaving the pasty yellow of age behind, “I want to
speak to Herbie. He can’t have told you anything
of the sort. You’re playing a deep game, Bogert,
but I’m calling your bluff. Come with me.”
Bogert shrugged, “To see Herbie? Good!
Damned good!”
It was also precisely at noon that Milton Ashe
looked up from his clumsy sketch and said, “You
get the idea? I’m not too good at getting this down,
but that’s about how it looks. It’s a honey of a
house, and I can get it for next to nothing.”
Susan Calvin gazed across at him with melting
eyes. “It’s really beautiful,” she sighed. “I’ve often
thought that I’d like to-” Her voice trailed away.
“Of course,” Ashe continued briskly, putting
away his pencil, “I’ve got to wait for my vacation.
It’s only two weeks off, but this Herbie business
has evervthing up in the air.” His eyes dropped to
his fingernails, “Besides, there’s another point - but
it’s a secret.”
“Then don’t tell me.”
“Oh, I’d just as soon, I’m just busting to tell
someone - and you’re just about the best -erconfidante I could find here.” He grinned
sheepishly.
Susan Calvin’s heart bounded, but she did not
trust herself to speak.
“Frankly,” Ashe scraped his chair closer and
lowered his voice into a confidential whisper, “the
house isn’t to be only for myself. I’m getting
married!”
And then he jumped out of his seat, “What’s
the matter?”
“Nothing!” The horrible spinning sensation
had vanished, but it was hard to get words out.
“Married? You mean-”
“Why, sure! About time, isn’t it? You
remember that girl who was here last summer.
That’s she! But you are sick. You-”
“Headache!” Susan Calvin motioned him
away weakly. “I’ve... I’ve been subject to them
lately. I want to... to congratulate you, of course.
I’m very glad-” The inexpertly applied rouge made
a pair of nasty red splotches upon her chalk-white
face. Things had begun spinning again. “Pardon
me- please-”
The words were a mumble, as she stumbled
blindly out the door. It had happened with the
sudden catastrophe of a dream - and with all the
unreal horror of a dream.
But how could it be? Herbie had saidAnd Herbie knew! He could see into minds!
She found herself leaning breathlessly against
the door jamb, staring into Herbie’s metal face. She
must have climbed the two flights of stairs, but she
had no memory of it. The distance had been
covered in an instant, as in a dream.
As in a dream!
And still Herbie’s unblinking eyes stared into
hers and their dull red seemed to expand into dimly
shining nightmarish globes.
He was speaking, and she felt the cold glass
pressing against her lips. She swallowed and
shuddered into a pertain awareness of her
surroundings.
Still Herbie spoke, and there was agitation in
his voice - as if he were hurt and frightened and
pleading.
The words were beginning to make sense.
“This is a dream,” he was saying, “and you mustn’t
believe in it. You’ll wake into the real world soon
and laugh at yourself. He loves you, I tell you. He
does, he does! But not here! Not now! This is an
illusion.”
Susan Calvin nodded, her voice a whisper,
“Yes! Yes!” She was clutching Herbie’s arm,
clinging to it, repeating over and over, “It isn’t true,
is it? It isn’t, is it?”
Just how she came to her senses, she never
knew - but it was like passing from a world of misty
unreality to one of harsh sunlight. She pushed him
away from her, pushed hard against that steely arm,
and her eyes were wide.
“What are you trying to do?” Her voice rose to
a harsh scream. “What are you trying to do?”
Herbie backed away, “I want to help”
The psychologist stared, “Help? By telling me
this is a dream? By trying to push me into
schizophrenia?” A hysterical tenseness seized her,
“This is no dream! I wish it were!”
She drew her breath sharply, “Wait! Why...
why, I understand. Merciful Heavens, it’s so
obvious.”
There was horror in the robot’s voice, “I had
to!”
“And I believed youl I never thought-”
Loud voices outside the door brought her to a
halt. She turned away, fists clenching
spasmodically, and when Bogert and Lanning
entered, she was at the far window. Neither of the
men paid her the slightest attention.
They approached Herbie simultaneously;
Lanning angry and impatient, Bogert, coolly
sardonic. The director spoke first.
“Here now, Herbie. Listen to me!”
The robot brought his eyes sharply down upon
the aged director, “Yes, Dr. Lanning.”
“Have you discussed me with Dr. Bogert?”
“No, sir.” The answer came slowly, and the
smile on Bogert’s face flashed off.
“What’s that?” Bogert shoved in ahead of his
superior and straddled the ground before the robot.
“Repeat what you told me yesterday.”
“I said that “ Herbie fell silent. Deep within
him his metallic diaphragm vibrated in soft
discords.
“Didn’t you say he had resigned?” roared
Bogert. “Answer me!”
Bogert raised his arm frantically, but Lanning
pushed him aside, “Are you trying to bully him into
lying?”
“You heard him, Lanning. He began to say
‘Yes’ and stopped. Get out of my way! I want the
truth out of him, understandl”
“I’ll ask him!” Lanning turned to the robot.
“All right, Herbie, take it easy. Have I resigned?”
Herbie stared, and Lanning repeated
anxiously, “Have I resigned?” There was the
faintest trace of a negative shake of the robot’s
head. A long wait produced nothing further.
The two men looked at each other and the
hostility in their eyes was all but tangible.
“What the devil,” blurted Bogert, “has the
robot gone mute? Can’t you speak, you
monstrosity?”
“I can speak,” came the ready answer.
“Then answer the question. Didn’t you tell me
Lanning had resigned? Hasn’t he resigned’
And again there was nothing but dull silence,
until from the end of the room, Susan Calvin’s
laugh rang out suddenly, high-pitched and semihysterical.
The two mathematicians jumped, and Bogerts
eyes narrowed, “You here? What’s so funny?”
“Nothing’s funny.” Her voice was not quite
natural. “It’s just that I’m not the only one that’s
been caught. There’s irony in three of the greatest
experts in robotics in the world falling into the
same elementary trap, isn’t there?” Her voice
faded, and she put a pale hand to her forehead, “But
it isn’t funny!”
This time the look that passed between the two
men was one of raised eyebrows. “What trap are
you talking about?” asked Lansing stiffly. “Is
something wrong with Herbie?”
“No,” she approached them slowly, “nothing
is wrong with him - only with us.” She whirled
suddenly and shrieked at the robot, “Get away from
me! Go to the other end of the room and don’t let
me look at you.”
Herbie cringed before the fury of her eyes and
stumbled away in a clattering trot.
Lanning’s voice was hostile, “What is all this,
Dr. Calvin?”
She faced them and spoke sarcastically,
“Surely you know the fundamental First Law of
Robotics.”
The other two nodded together. “Certainly,”
said Bogert, Irritably, “a robot may not injure a
human being or, through inaction, allow him to
come to harm”
“How nicely put,” sneered Calvin. “But what
kind of harm?”
“Why - any kind.”
“Exactly! Any kind! But what about hurt
feelings? What about deflation of one’s ego? What
about the blasting of one’s hopes? Is that injury?”
Lanning frowned, “What would a robot know
about-” And then he caught himself with a gasp.
“You’ve caught on, have you? This robot
reads minds. Do you suppose it doesn’t know
everything about mental injury? Do you suppose
that if asked a question, it wouldn’t give exactly
that answer that one wants to hear? Wouldn’t any
other answer hurt us, and wouldn’t Herbie know
that?”
“Good Heavens!” muttered Bogert.
The psychologist cast a sardonic glance at
him, “I take it you asked him whether Lanning had
resigned. You wanted to hear that he had resigned
and so that’s what Herbie told you.”
“And I suppose that is why,” said Lanning,
tonelessly, “it would not answer a little while ago.
It couldn’t answer either way without hurting one
of us.”
There was a short pause in which the men
looked thoughtfully across the room at the robot,
crouching in the chair by the bookcase, head
resting in one hand.
Susan Calvin stared steadfastly at the floor,
“He knew of all this. That... that devil knows
everything - including what went wrong in his
assembly.” Her eyes were dark and brooding.
Lanning looked up, “You’re wrong there, Dr.
Calvin. He doesn’t know what went wrong. I asked
him.”
“What does that mean?” cried Calvin. “Only
that you didn’t want him to give you the solution.
It would puncture your ego to have a machine do
what you couldn’t. Did you ask him?” she shot at
Bogert.
“In a way.” Bogert coughed and reddened.
“He told me he knew very little about
mathematics.”
Lanning laughed, not very loudly and the
psychologist smiled caustically. She said, “I’ll ask
him! A solution by him won’t hurt my ego” She
raised her voice into a cold, imperative, “Come
here!”
Herbie rose and approached with hesitant
steps.
“You know, I suppose,” she continued, “just
exactly at what point in the assembly an extraneous
factor was introduced or an essential one left out.”
“Yes,” said Herbie, in tones barely heard.
“Hold on,” broke in Bogert angrily. “That’s
not necessary true. You want to hear that, that’s
all.”
“Don’t be a fool,” replied Calvin. “He
certainly knows as much math as you and Lanning
together, since he can read minds. Give him his
chance.”
The mathematician subsided, and Calvin
continued, “All right, then, Herbie, give! We’re
waiting.” And in an aside, “Get pencils and paper,
gentlemen.”
But Herbie remained silent, and there was
triumph in the psychologist’s voice, “Why don’t
you answer, Herbie?”
The robot blurted out suddenly, “I cannot. You
know I cannot! Dr. Bogert and Dr. Lanning don’t
want me to.”
“They want the solution.”
“But not from me.”
Lanning broke in, speaking slowly and
distinctly, “Don’t be foolish, Herbie. We do want
you to tell us.”
Bogert nodded curtly.
Herbie’s voice rose to wild heights, “What’s
the use of saying that? Don’t you suppose that I can
see past the superficial skin of your mind? Down
below, you don’t want me to. I’m a machine, given
the imitation of life only by virtue of the positronic
interplay in my brain-which is man’s device. You
can’t lose face to me without being hurt. That is
deep in your mind and won’t be erased. I can’t give
the solution.”
“We’ll leave,” said Dr. Lanning. “Tell
Calvin.”
“That would make no difference,” cried
Herbie, “since you would know anyway that it was
I that was supplying the answer.”
Calvin resumed, “But you understand, Herbie,
that despite that, Drs. Lanning and Bogert want that
solution.”
“By their own efforts!” insisted Herbie.
“But they want it, and the fact that you have it
and won’t give it hurts them. You see that, don’t
you?”
“Yes! Yes!”
“And if you tell them that will hurt them, too”
“Yes! Yes!” Herbie was retreating slowly, and
step by step Susan Calvin advanced. The two men
watched in frozen bewilderment.
“You can’t tell them,” droned the psychologist
slowly, “because that would hurt and you mustn’t
hurt. But if you don’t tell them, you hurt, so you
must tell them. And if you do, you will hurt and
you mustn’t, so you can’t tell them; but if you
don’t, you hurt, so you must; but if you do, you
hurt, so you mustn’t; but if you don’t, you hurt, so
you must; but if you do, you-”
Herbie was up against the wall, and here he
dropped to his knees. “Stop!” he shrieked. “Close
your mind! It is full of pain and frustration and
hate! I didn’t mean it, I tell you! I tried to help! I
told you what you wanted to hear. I had to!”
The psychologist paid no attention. “You must
tell them, but if you do, you hurt, so you mustn’t;
but if you don’t, you hurt, so you must; but-”
And Herbie screamed!
It was like the whistling of a piccolo many
times magnified - shrill and shriller till it keened
with the terror of a lost soul and filled the room
with the piercingness of itself.
And when it died into nothingness, Herbie
collapsed into a huddled heap of motionless metal.
Bogert’s face was bloodless, “He’s dead!”
“No!” Susan Calvin burst into body-racking
gusts of wild laughter, “not dead - merely insane. I
confronted him with the insoluble dilemma, and he
broke down. You can scrap him now-because he’ll
never speak again.”
Lanning was on his knees beside the thing that
had been Herbie. His fingers touched the cold,
unresponsive metal face and he shuddered. “You
did that on purpose.” He rose and faced her, face
contorted.
“What if I did? You can’t help it now.” And in
a sudden access of bitterness, “He deserved it.”
The director seized the paralysed, motionless
Bogert by the wrist, “What’s the difference. Come,
Peter.” He sighed, “A thinking robot of this type is
worthless anyway.” His eyes were old and tired,
and he repeated, “Come, Peter!”
It was minutes after the two scientists left that
Dr. Susan Calvin regained part of her mental
equilibrium. Slowly, her eyes turned to the livingdead Herbie and the tightness returned to her face.
Long she stared while the triumph faded and the
helpless frustration returned - and of all her
turbulent thoughts only one infinitely bitter word
passed her lips.
“Liar!”