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The Great English Short-Story Writers, Volume 1

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Title: The Great English Short-Story Writers, Volume 1

Editor: W. J. Dawson

Contributor: John Brown
        Daniel Defoe
        Charles Dickens
        Thomas Hardy
        Bret Harte
        Nathaniel Hawthorne
        James Hogg
        Washington Irving
        Henry James
        Edgar Allan Poe
        Robert Louis Stevenson
        Frank R. Stockton
        Mark Twain

Editor: Coningsby Dawson


        
Release date: November 1, 2003 [eBook #10135]
                Most recently updated: October 28, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10135

Credits: E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, Josephine Paolucci, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GREAT ENGLISH SHORT-STORY WRITERS, VOLUME 1 ***

THE READERS'S LIBRARY

THE GREAT ENGLISH SHORT-STORY WRITERS

VOL. I

WITH INTRODUCTORY ESSAYS BY

WILLIAM J. DAWSON AND CONINGSBY W. DAWSON

MCMX






ACKNOWLEDGMENT

To the publishers and authors who have courteously permitted the use
of copyrighted material in these two volumes, a word of grateful
acknowledgment is hereby given by the editors.




CONTENTS

CHAP.


   I.  THE EVOLUTION OF THE SHORT-STORY

  II.  THE APPARITION OF MRS. VEAL. By Daniel Defoe (1661-1731)

 III.  THE MYSTERIOUS BRIDE. By James Hogg (1770-1835)

  IV.  THE DEVIL AND TOM WALKER. By Washington Irving (1783-1859)

   V.  DR. HEIDEGGER'S EXPERIMENT. By Nathaniel Hawthorne (1807-1864)

  VI.  THE PURLOINED LETTER. By Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)

 VII.  RAB AND HIS FRIENDS. By Dr. John Brown (1810-1882)

VIII.  THE BOOTS AT THE HOLLY-TREE INN. By Charles Dickens (1812-1870)

  IX.  A STORY OF SEVEN DEVILS. By Frank R. Stockton. (1834-1902)

   X.  A DOG'S TALE. By Mark Twain (1835)

  XI.  THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT. By Bret Harte (1839-1902)

 XII.  THE THREE STRANGERS. By Thomas Hardy (1840)

XIII.  JULIA BRIDE. By Henry James (1843)

 XIV.  A LODGING FOR THE NIGHT. By Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)

INDEX




The Evolution of the Short-Story


I

The short-story commenced its career as a verbal utterance, or, as
Robert Louis Stevenson puts it, with "the first men who told their
stories round the savage camp-fire."

It bears the mark of its origin, for even to-day it is true that the
more it creates the illusion of the speaking-voice, causing the reader
to listen and to see, so that he forgets the printed page, the better
does it accomplish its literary purpose. It is probably an instinctive
appreciation of this fact which has led so many latter-day writers
to narrate their short-stories in dialect. In a story which is
communicated by the living voice our attention is held primarily not
by the excellent deposition of adjectives and poise of style, but by
the striding progress of the plot; it is the plot, and action in the
plot, alone which we remember when the combination of words which
conveyed and made the story real to us has been lost to mind. "Crusoe
recoiling from the foot-print, Achilles shouting over against the
Trojans, Ulysses bending the great bow, Christian running with his
fingers in his ears; these are each culminating moments, and each has
been printed on the mind's eye for ever."[1]

[Footnote 1: A Gossip on Romance, from _Memories and Portraits_, by
R.L. Stevenson.]

The secondary importance of the detailed language in which an incident
is narrated, when compared with the total impression made by the
naked action contained in the incident, is seen in the case of
ballad poetry, where a man may retain a vivid mental picture of the
localities, atmosphere, and dramatic moments created by Coleridge's
_Ancient Mariner_, or Rossetti's _White Ship_, and yet be quite
incapable of repeating two consecutive lines of the verse. In
literature of narration, whether prose or verse, the dramatic worth of
the action related must be the first consideration.

In earlier days, when much of the current fiction was not written
down, but travelled from mouth to mouth, as it does in the Orient
to-day, this fact must have been realized--that, in the short-story,
plot is superior to style. Among modern writers, however, there has
been a growing tendency to make up for scantiness of plot by
high literary workmanship; the result has been in reality not a
short-story, but a descriptive sketch or vignette, dealing chiefly
with moods and landscapes. So much has this been the case that the
writer of a recent _Practical Treatise on the Art of the Short-Story_
has found it necessary to make the bald statement that "the first
requisite of a short-story is that the writer have a story to
tell."[2]

[Footnote 2: _Short-Story Writing_, by Charles Raymond Barrett.]

However lacking the stories which have come down to us from ancient
times may be in technique, they invariably narrate action--they have
something to tell. If they had not done so, they would not have been
interesting to the men who first heard them, and, had they not been
interesting, they would not have survived. Their paramount worth in
this respect of _action_ is proved by the constant borrowings which
modern writers have made from them. Take one case in illustration. In
the twenty-eighth chapter of Aristotle's _Secretum Secretorum_ appears
a story in which "a queen of India is said to have treacherously sent
to Alexander, among other costly presents, the pretended testimonies
of friendship, a girl of exquisite beauty, who, having been fed with
serpents from her infancy, partook of their nature." It comes to light
again, in an altered and expanded form, in the _Gesta Romanorum_, as
the eleventh tale, being entitled _Of the Poison of Sin_.

"Alexander was a prince of great power, and a disciple of Aristotle,
who instructed him in every branch of learning. The Queen of the
North, having heard of his proficiency, nourished her daughter from
the cradle upon a certain kind of deadly poison; and when she grew up,
she was considered so beautiful, that the sight of her alone affected
many to madness. The queen sent her to Alexander to espouse. He had no
sooner beheld her than he became violently enamoured, and with much
eagerness desired to possess her; but Aristotle, observing his
weakness, said: 'Do not touch her, for if you do, you will certainly
perish. She has been nurtured upon the most deleterious food, which
I will prove to you immediately. Here is a malefactor who is already
condemned to death. He shall be united to her, and you shall soon see
the truth of what I advance.'

"Accordingly the culprit was brought without delay to the girl;
and scarcely had he touched her lips, before his whole frame was
impregnated with poison, and he expired. Alexander, glad at his escape
from such imminent destruction, bestowed all thanks on his instructor,
and returned the girl to her mother."

After which follows the monkish application of the moral, as long as
the entire story: Alexander being made to stand for a good Christian;
the Queen of the North for "a superfluity of the things of life, which
sometimes destroys the spirit, and generally the body"; the Poison
Maid for luxury and gluttony, "which feed men with delicacies that
are poison to the soul"; Aristotle for conscience and reason, which
reprove and oppose any union which would undo the soul; and the
malefactor for the evil man, disobedient unto his God.

There have been at least three writers of English fiction who,
borrowing this germ-plot from the _Gesta Romanorum_, have handled it
with distinction and originality. Nathaniel Hawthorne, having changed
its period and given it an Italian setting, wove about it one of
the finest and most imaginative of his short-stories, _Rappaccini's
Daughter_. Oliver Wendell Holmes, with a freshness and vigor all his
own, developed out of it his fictional biography of _Elsie Venner_.
And so recent a writer as Mr. Richard Garnett, attracted by the subtle
and magic possibilities of the conception, has given us yet another
rendering, restoring to the story its classic setting, in _The
Poison Maid_.[3] Thus, within the space of a hundred years, three
master-craftsmen have found their inspiration in the slender anecdote
which Aristotle, in the opulence of his genius, was content to hurry
into a few sentences and bury beneath the mass of his material.

[Footnote 3: Vide _The Twilight of the Gods and Other Tales_,
published by John Lane, 1903.]


II

Probably the first stories of mankind were _true stories_, but the
true story is rarely good art. It is perhaps for this reason that few
true stories of early times have come down to us. Mr. Cable, in his
_Strange True Stories of Louisiana_, explains the difference between
the fabricated tale and the incident as it occurs in life. "The
relations and experiences of real men and women," he writes, "rarely
fall in such symmetrical order as to make an artistic whole. Until
they have had such treatment as we give stone in the quarry or gems in
the rough, they seldom group themselves with that harmony of values
and brilliant unity of interest that result when art comes in--not
so much to transcend nature as to make nature transcend herself." In
other words, it is not until the true story has been converted into
fiction by the suppression of whatever is discursive or ungainly,
and the addition of a stroke of fantasy, that it becomes integral,
balanced in all its parts, and worthy of literary remembrance.

In the fragments of fiction which have come down to us from the days
when books were not, odd chapters from the Fieldings and Smollets of
the age of Noah, remnants of the verbal libraries which men repeated
one to the other, squatting round "the savage camp-fire," when
the hunt was over and night had gathered, the stroke of fantasy
predominates and tends to comprise the whole. Men spun their fictions
from the materials with which their minds were stored, much as we do
to-day, and the result was a cycle of beast-fables--an Odyssey of the
brute creation. Of these the tales of Aesop are the best examples. The
beast-fable has never quite gone out of fashion, and never will so
long as men retain their world-wonder, and childishness of mind.
A large part of Gulliver's adventures belong to this class of
literature. It was only the other day that Mr. Kipling gave us his
_Just-so Stories_, and his _Jungle-Book_, each of which found an
immediate and secure place in the popular memory.

Mr. Chandler Harris, in his introduction to _Uncle Remus_, warns us
that however humorous his book may appear, "its intention is perfectly
serious." He goes on to insist on its historic value, as a revelation
of primitive modes of thought. At the outset, when he wrote his
stories serially for publication in _The Atlanta Constitution_, he
believed that he was narrating plantation legends peculiar to the
South. He was quickly undeceived. Prof. J.W. Powell, who was engaged
in an investigation of the mythology of the North American Indians,
informed him that some of Uncle Remus's stories appear "in a number of
different languages, and in various modified forms among the Indians."
Mr. Herbert H. Smith had "met with some of these stories among tribes
of South American Indians, and one in particular he had traced to
India, and as far east as Siam." "When did the negro or North American
Indian ever come in contact with the tribes of South America?"
Mr. Harris asks. And he quotes Mr. Smith's reply in answer to the
question: "I am not prepared to form a theory about these stories.
There can be no doubt that some of them, found among the negroes and
the Indians, had a common origin. The most natural solution would be
to suppose that they originated in Africa, and were carried to South
America by the negro slaves. They are certainly found among the Red
Negroes; but, unfortunately for the African theory, it is equally
certain that they are told by savage Indians of the Amazon's Valley,
away up on the Tapajos, Red Negro, and Tapura. These Indians hardly
ever see a negro.... It is interesting to find a story from Upper
Egypt (that of the fox who pretended to be dead) identical with an
Amazonian story, and strongly resembling one found by you among the
negroes.... One thing is certain. The animal stories told by the
negroes in our Southern States and in Brazil were brought by them
from Africa. Whether they originated there, or with the Arabs, or
Egyptians, or with yet more ancient nations, must still be an open
question. Whether the Indians got them from the negroes or from some
earlier source is equally uncertain." Whatever be the final solution
to this problem, enough has been said to show that the beast-fable is,
in all probability, the most primitive form of short-story which we
possess.


III

For our purpose, that of tracing the evolution of the English
short-story, its history commences with the _Gesta Romanorum_. At the
authorship of this collection of mediaeval tales, many guesses have
been made. Nothing is known with certainty; it seems probable,
however, judging from the idioms which occur, that it took its present
form in England, about the end of the thirteenth or the beginning of
the fourteenth century, and thence passed to the Continent. The work
is written in Latin, and was evidently compiled by a man in holy
orders, for its guiding purpose is to edify. In this we can trace the
influence of Aesop's beast-fables, which were moral lessons drawn from
the animal creation for the instruction of mankind. Every chapter of
the _Gesta Romanorum_ consists of a moral tale; so much so that in
many cases the application of the moral is as long as the tale itself.

The title of the collection, _The Deeds of the Romans_, is scarcely
justified; in the main it is a garnering of all the deathless plots
and dramatic motives which we find scattered up and down the ages, in
the legend and folklore of whatsoever nation. The themes of many of
its stories were being told, their characters passing under other
names, when Romulus and Remus were suckled by their wolf-mother,
before there was a Roman nation or a city named Rome.

In the Bible we have many admirable specimens of the short-story.
Jotham's parable of the trees of the wood choosing a king is as good
an instance of the nature-fable, touched with fine irony and humor, as
could be found. The Hebrew prophet himself was often a story-teller.
Thus, when Nathan would bring home the nature of his guilt to David,
he does it by a story of the most dramatic character, which loses
nothing, and indeed gains all its terrific impact, by being strongly
impregnated with moral passion. Many such instances will occur to
the student of the Bible. In the absence of a written or printed
literature the story-teller had a distinct vocation, as he still has
among the peoples of the East. Every visitor to Tangier has seen in
the market-place the professional story-teller, surrounded from morn
till night with his groups of attentive listeners, whose kindling
eyes, whose faces moved by every emotion of wonder, anger, tenderness,
and sympathy, whose murmured applause and absorbed silence, are the
witnesses and the reward of his art. Through such a scene we recover
the atmosphere of the Arabian Nights, and indeed look back into almost
limitless antiquity. Possibly, could we follow the story which is thus
related, we might discover that this also drew its elemental incidents
from sources as old as the times of Jotham and Nathan.

The most that can be said for the Latin origin of the _Gesta
Romanorum_ is that the nucleus is made up of extracts, frequently of
glaring inaccuracy, from Roman writers and historians. The Cologne
edition comprises one hundred and eighty-one chapters, each consisting
of a tale or anecdote followed by a moral application, commencing
formally with the words, "My beloved, the prince is intended to
represent any good Christian," or, "My beloved, the emperor is Christ;
the soldier is any sinner." They are not so much short-stories as
illustrated homilies. In the literary armory of the lazy parish priest
of the fourteenth century, the _Gesta Romanorum_ must have held the
place which volumes of sermon-outlines occupy upon the book-shelves of
certain of his brethren to-day.

"The method of instructing by fables is a practice of remote
antiquity; and has always been attended with very considerable
benefit. Its great popularity encouraged the monks to adopt this
medium, not only for the sake of illustrating their discourses, but of
making a more durable impression upon the minds of their illiterate
auditors. An abstract argument, or logical deduction (had they been
capable of supplying it), would operate but faintly upon intellects
rendered even more obtuse by the rude nature of their customary
employments; while, on the other hand, an apposite story would arouse
attention and stimulate that blind and unenquiring devotion which is
so remarkably characteristic of the Middle Ages."[4]

[Footnote 4: Introduction to _Gesta Romanorum_, translated by the Rev.
Charles Swan, revised and corrected by Wynnard Hooper, B.A.]

IV


The influence of the _Gesta Romanorum_ is most conspicuously to be
traced in the work of Gower, Chaucer, and Lydgate; but it has
served as a source of inspiration to the flagging ingenuity of each
succeeding generation. It would be tedious to enter on an enumeration
of the various indebtednesses of English literature to these early
tales. A few instances will serve as illustration.

It seems a far cry from the _The Ingoldsby Legends_ to _The Deeds of
the Romans_, nevertheless _The Leech of Folk-stone_ was directly taken
from the hundred and second tale, _Of the Transgressions and Wounds of
the Soul_. Shakespeare himself was a frequent borrower, and planned
his entire play of _Pericles, Prince of Tyre_, upon the hundred
and fifty-third tale, _Of Temporal Tribulation_. In some cases the
language is almost identical, as for instance in the fifth tale, where
the king warns his son, saying, "Son, I tell thee that thou canst
not confide in her, and consequently ought not to espouse her. _She
deceived her own father when she liberated thee from prison_; for this
did her father lose the price of thy ransom." Compare with this:

    "Look to her, Moor; have a quick eye to see;
    _She has deceived her father, and may thee_."[5]

[Footnote 5: _Othello_, act I, scene III.]

But the ethical treatment of the short-story, as exemplified in these
monkish fables, handicapped its progress and circumscribed its field
of endeavor. Morality necessitated the twisting of incidents, so that
they might harmonize with the sermonic summing-up that was in view.
Life is not always moral; it is more often perplexing, boisterous,
unjust, and flippant. The wicked dwell in prosperity. "There are no
pangs in their death; their strength is firm. They are not in trouble
as other men; neither are they plagued as other men. They have more
than heart could wish." But the art of the teller of tales "is
occupied, and bound to be occupied not so much in making stories true
as in making them typical."[6]

[Footnote 6: From a Humble Remonstrance, in _Memories and Portraits_,
by R.L. Stevenson.]

The ethical method of handling fiction falls between two stools; it
not only fails in portraying that which is true for the individual,
but it incurs the graver error of ceasing to be true to the race,
i.e., typical.

It would be interesting, had we space, to follow Shakespeare in his
borrowings, noticing what he adopts and incorporates in his work
as artistically true, and what he rejects. Like a water-color
landscape-painter, he pauses above the box of crude materials which
others have made, takes a dab here and a dab there with his brush,
rarely takes all of one color, blends them, eyes the result
judicially, and flashes in the combination with swiftness and
certainty of touch.

For instance, from the lengthy story which appears as the hundred and
first tale in Mr. Douce's edition of the _Gesta_, he selects but one
scene of action, yet it is the making of _Macbeth_--one would almost
suppose that this was the germ-thought which kindled his furious
fancy, preceding his discovery of the Macbeth tradition as related in
Holinshed's _Chronicle_.[7]

[Footnote 7: _The Chronicle of England and Scotland_, first published
in 1577.]

The Emperor Manelay has set forth to the Holy Land, leaving his
empress and kingdom in his brother's care. No sooner has he gone than
the regent commences to make love to his brother's wife. She rejects
him scornfully. Angered by her indignation, he leads her into a forest
and hangs her by the hair upon a tree, leaving her there to starve.
As good-fortune will have it, on the third day a noble earl comes by,
and, finding her in that condition, releases her, takes her home with
him, and makes her governess to his only daughter. A feeling of shame
causes her to conceal her noble rank, and so it comes about that the
earl's steward aspires to her affection. Her steadfast refusal of all
his advances turns his love to hatred, so that he plans to bring about
her downfall. Then comes the passage which Shakespeare seized upon
as vital: "It befell upon a night that the earl's chamber door was
forgotten and left unshut, which the steward had anon perceived; and
when they were all asleep he went and espied the light of the lamp
where the empress and the young maid lay together, and with that he
drew out his knife and cut the throat of the earl's daughter and put
the knife into the empress's hand, she being asleep, and nothing
knowing thereof, to the intent that when the earl awakened he should
think that she had cut his daughter's throat, and so would she be put
to a shameful death for his mischievous deed."

The laws of immediateness and concentration, which govern the
short-story, are common also to the drama; by reason of their brevity
both demand a directness of approach which leads up, without break of
sequence or any waste of words, through a dependent series of actions
to a climax which is final. It will usually be found in studying the
borrowings which the masters have made from such sources as the _Gesta
Romanorum_ that the portions which they have discriminated as worth
taking from any one tale have been the only artistically essential
elements which the narrative contains; the remainder, which they
have rejected, is either untrue to art or unnecessary to the plot's
development.

These tales, as told by their monkish compiler, lack "that harmony of
values and brilliant unity of interest that results when art comes
in"--they are splendid jewels badly cut.


V

As has been already stated, a short-story theme, however fine, can
only be converted into good art by the suppression of whatever is
discursive or ungainly, so that it becomes integral and balanced in
all its parts; and by the addition of a stroke of fantasy, so that it
becomes vast, despite its brevity, implying a wider horizon than it
actually describes; but, in excess of these qualities, there is a last
of still greater importance, without which it fails--_the power to
create the impression of having been possible_.

Now the beast-fable, as handled by Aesop, falls short of being high
art by reason of its overwhelming fantasy, which annihilates all
chance of its possibility. The best short-stories represent a struggle
between fantasy and fact. And the mediaeval monkish tale fails by
reason of the discursiveness and huddling together of incidents,
without regard to their dramatic values, which the moral application
necessitates. In a word, both are deficient in technique--the
concealed art which, when it has combined its materials so that they
may accomplish their most impressive effect, causes the total result
to command our credulity because it seems typical of human experience.

The technique of the English prose short-story had a tardy evolution.
That there were any definite laws, such as obtain in poetry, by
which it must abide was not generally realized until Edgar Allan Poe
formulated them in his criticism of Nathaniel Hawthorne.

As he states them, they are five in number, as follows: Firstly, that
the short-story must be short, i.e., capable of being read at one
sitting, in order that it may gain "the immense force derivable
from _totality_." Secondly, that the short-story must possess
_immediateness_; it should aim at a single or unique effect--"if the
very initial sentence tend not to the outbringing of this effect, then
it has failed in its first step." Thirdly, that the short-story must
be subjected to _compression_; "in the whole composition there should
not be one word written of which the tendency, direct or indirect, is
not to the one pre-established design." Fourthly, that it must assume
the aspect of _verisimilitude_; "truth is often, and in very great
degree, the aim of the tale--some of the finest tales are tales
of ratiocination." Fifthly, that it must give the impression of
_finality_; the story, and the interest in the characters which it
introduces, must begin with the opening sentence and end with the
last.

These laws, and the technique which they formulate, were first
discovered and worked out for the short-story in the medium of
poetry.[8] The ballad and narrative poem must be, by reason of their
highly artificial form, comparatively short, possessing totality,
immediateness, compression, verisimilitude, and finality. The old
ballad which commemorates the battle of Otterbourne, fought on August
10, 1388, is a fine example of the short-story method. Its opening
stanza speaks the last word in immediateness of narration:

    "It felle abowght the Lamasse tyde,
      When husbands wynn ther haye,
    The dowghtye Dowglasse bowynd hym to ryde
      In England to take a praye."

[Footnote 8: Poe himself implies this when he says, in an earlier
passage of his essay on Hawthorne: "The Tale Proper" (i.e.,
short-story), "in my opinion, affords unquestionably the fairest field
for the exercise of the loftiest talent which can be afforded by the
wide domains of mere prose. Were I bidden to say how the highest
genius could be most advantageously employed for the best display
of its own powers, I should answer, without hesitation, in the
composition of a rhymed poem, not to exceed in length what might be
perused in an hour. Within this limit alone can the highest order of
true poetry exist. I need only here say, upon this topic, that in
almost all classes of composition the unity of effect or impression
is a point of the greatest importance. _It is clear_, moreover, _that
this unity cannot be thoroughly preserved in productions whose perusal
cannot be completed at one sitting_."]

Thomas Hood's poem of _The Dream of Eugene Aram_, written at a time
when the prose short-story, under the guidance of Hawthorne and Poe,
was just beginning to take its place as a separate species of literary
art, has never been surpassed for short-story technique by any of the
practitioners of prose. Prof. Brander Matthews has pointed out that
"there were nine muses in Greece of old, and no one of these daughters
of Apollo was expected to inspire the writer of prose-fiction."[9]

[Footnote 9: In his introduction to _Materials and Methods of
Fiction_, by Clayton Hamilton, published by the Baker & Taylor Co.,
New York.]

He argues from this that "prose seemed to the Greeks, and even to the
Latins who followed in their footsteps, as fit only for pedestrian
purposes." It is more probable that, as regards prose-fiction, they
did not realize that they were called upon to explain the omission of
the tenth muse. Her exclusion was based on no reasoned principle, but
was due to a sensuous art-instinct: the Greeks felt that the unnatural
limitations of the poetic medium were more in keeping with the
unnatural[10] brevity of a story which must be short. The exquisite
prose tales which have been handed down to us belong to the age of
their decadence as a nation; in their great period their tellers of
brief tales unconsciously cast their rendering in the poetic mould.[11]
In natures of the highest genius the most arduous is instinctively the
favorite task.

[Footnote 10: "The short-story is artificial, and to a considerable
degree unnatural. It could hardly be otherwise, for it takes out of
our complex lives a single person or a single incident and treats
that as if it were complete in itself. Such isolation is not known
to nature."--Page 22 of _Short-Story Writing_, by Charles Raymond
Barrett, published by the Baker & Taylor Co., New York.]

[Footnote 11: For example, the story told by Demodocus of _The
Illicit Love of Ares for Aphrodite, and the Revenge which Hephaestus
Planned_--Odyssey, Bk. VIII.]

Chaucer, by reason of his intimate acquaintance with both the poetry
and prose-fiction of Boccaccio, had the opportunity to choose between
these two mediums of short-story narration; and he chose the former.
He was as familiar with Boccaccio's poetic method, as exemplified
in the _Teseide_, as with his prose, as exemplified at much greater
length in the _Decameron_, for he borrowed from them both. Yet in only
two instances in the _Canterbury Tales_ does he relapse into prose.

The _Teseide_ in Chaucer's hands, retaining its poetic medium, is
converted into the _Knight's Tale_; while the _Reeve's Tale_, the
_Franklin's_, and the _Shipman's_, each borrowed from the prose
version of the _Decameron_, are given by him a poetic setting. This
preference for poetry over prose as a medium for short-story narration
cannot have been accidental or unreasoned on his part; nor can it be
altogether accounted for by the explanation that "he was by nature a
poet," for he _did_ experiment with the prose medium to the extent of
using it twice. He had the brilliant and innovating precedent of
the _Decameron_, and yet, while adopting some of its materials, he
abandoned its medium. He was given the opportunity of ante-dating the
introduction of technique into the English prose short-story by four
hundred and fifty years, and he disregarded it almost cavalierly. How
is such wilful neglect to be accounted for? Only by his instinctive
feeling that the technique, which Boccaccio had applied in the
_Decameron_, belonged by right to the realm of poetry, had been
learned in the practising of the poetic art, and could arrive at its
highest level of achievement only in that medium.

That in Chaucer's case this choice was justified cannot be disputed;
the inferiority of the short-story technique contained in his two
prose efforts, when compared with that displayed in the remainder
of the _Canterbury Tales_, is very marked. Take, for instance,
the _Prioress' Tale_ and apply to it the five short-story tests
established by Poe, as a personal discovery, four and a half centuries
later; it survives them all. It attains, in addition, the crowning
glory, coveted by Stevenson, of appearing _typical_. There may never
have been a Christian child who was martyred by the Jews in the
particularly gruesome way described--probably there never was; but, in
listening to the Prioress, it does not enter into our heads to doubt
her word--the picture which she leaves with us of how the Christian
regarded the Jew in the Middle Ages is too vivid to allow any
breathing-space for incredulity. No knowledge of mediaeval anti-Jewish
legislation, however scholarly, can bring us to realize the fury of
race-hatred which then existed more keenly than this story of a little
over two thousand words. By its perusal we gain an illuminating
insight into that ill-directed religious enthusiasm which led men on
frenzied quests for the destruction of the heretic in their own land
and of the Saracen abroad, causing them to become at one and the same
time unjust and heroic. In a word, within the compass of three hundred
lines of verse, Chaucer contrives to body forth his age--to give us
something which is _typical_.

The _Morte D'Arthur_ of Malory is again a collection of traditional
stories, as is the _Gesta Romanorum_, and not the creative work of a
single intellect. As might be expected, it straggles, and overlays its
climax with a too-lavish abundance of incidents; it lacks the
_harmony of values_ which results from the introduction of a unifying
purpose--_i.e_., of art. Imaginative and full of action though the
books of the _Morte D'Arthur_ are, it remained for the latter-day
artist to exhaust their individual incidents of their full dramatic
possibilities. From the eyes of the majority of modern men the
brilliant quality of their magic was concealed, until it had
been disciplined and refashioned by the severe technique of the
short-story.

By the eighteenth century the influence of Malory was scarcely felt
at all; but his imaginativeness, as interpreted by Tennyson, in
_The Idylls of the King_, and by William Morris, in his _Defence
of Guinevere_, has given to the Anglo-Saxon world a new romantic
background for its thoughts. _The Idylls of the King_ are not
Tennyson's most successful interpretation. The finest example of his
superior short-story craftsmanship is seen in the triumphant use which
he makes of the theme contained in _The Book of Elaine_, in his poem
of _The Lady of Shalott_. Not only has he remodelled and added fantasy
to the story, but he has threaded it through with _atmosphere_--an
entirely modern attribute, of which more must be said hereafter.

So much for our contention that the laws and technique of the prose
short-story, as formulated by Poe, were first instinctively discovered
and worked out in the medium of poetry.


VI

"_The Golden Ass_ of Apuleius is, so to say, a beginning of modern
literature. From this brilliant medley of reality and romance, of wit
and pathos, of fantasy and observation, was born that new art,
complex in thought, various in expression, which gives a semblance of
frigidity to perfection itself. An indefatigable youthfulness is its
distinction."[12]

[Footnote 12: From the introduction, by Charles Whibley, to the Tudor
Translations' edition by W.E. Henley, of _The Golden Ass of Apuleius_,
published by David Nutt, London, 1893. All other quotations bearing
upon Apuleius are taken from the same source.]

_An indefatigable youthfulness_ was also the prime distinction of the
Elizabethan era's writings and doings; it was fitting that such a
period should have witnessed the first translation into the English
language of this Benjamin of a classic literature's old age.

Apuleius was an unconventional cosmopolitan in that ancient world
which he so vividly portrays; he was a barbarian by birth, a Greek by
education, and wrote his book in the Romans' language. In his use
of luminous slang for literary purposes he was Rudyard Kipling's
prototype.

"He would twist the vulgar words of every-day into quaint unheard-of
meanings, nor did he deny shelter to those loafers and footpads of
speech which inspire the grammarian with horror. On every page you
encounter a proverb, a catchword, a literary allusion, a flagrant
redundancy. One quality only was distasteful to him--the commonplace."

There are other respects in which we can trace Mr. Kipling's likeness:
in his youthful precocity--he was twenty-five when he wrote his
_Metamorphoses_; in his daring as an innovator; in his manly
stalwartness in dealing with the calamities of life; in his
adventurous note of world-wideness and realistic method of handling
the improbable and uncanny.

Like all great artists, he was a skilful borrower from the literary
achievements of a bygone age; and so successfully does he borrow that
we prefer his copy to the original. The germ-idea of Kipling's _Finest
Story in the World_ is to be found in Poe's _Tale of the Ragged
Mountains_; Apuleius's germ-plot, of the man who was changed by
enchantment into an ass, and could only recover his human shape by
eating rose-leaves, was taken either from Lucian or from Lucius
of Patrae. In at least three of his interpolations he remarkably
foreshadows the prose short-story method, upon which we are wont to
pride ourselves as being a unique discovery of the past eight decades:
these are _Bellepheron's Story; The Story of Cupid and Psyche_, one of
the most exquisite both in form and matter in any language or age; and
the story of _The Deceitful Woman and the Tub_, which Boccaccio made
use of in his _Decameron_ as the second novel for the seventh day.

In the intense and visual quality of the atmosphere with which he
pervades his narrative he has no equal among the writers of English
prose-fiction until Sir Walter Scott appears. "Apuleius has enveloped
his world of marvels in a heavy air of witchery and romance. You
wander with Lucius across the hills and through the dales of Thessaly.
With all the delight of a fresh curiosity you approach its far-seen
towns. You journey at midnight under the stars, listening in terror
for the howling of the wolves or the stealthy ambush. At other whiles
you sit in the robbers' cave and hear the ancient legends of Greece
retold. The spring comes on, and 'the little birds chirp and sing
their steven melodiously.' Secret raids, ravished brides, valiant
rescues, the gayest intrigues--these are the diverse matters of this
many-colored book."

But as a short-story writer he shares the failing of all his English
brothers in that art, until James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, penned
his tales--namely, that his short-stories do not stand apart, as
things total in themselves, but are woven into a larger narrative by
whose proportions they are dwarfed, so that their true completeness is
disguised. "He cares not how he loiters by the way; he is always ready
to beguile his reader with a Milesian story--one of those quaint and
witty interludes which have travelled the world over and become part,
not merely of every literature, but of every life." It is to three of
these chance loiterings of this Kipling of Rome in its decadence that
we owe the famous stories alluded to above.

To the Elizabethan period belong the most masterly translations of
which the English language is possessed; and this not by virtue of
their accuracy and scholarship, but because, to use Doctor Johnson's
words, the translator "exhibits his author's thoughts in such a dress
as the author would have given them had his language been English."
That same "indefatigable youthfulness" which converted courtiers into
sailors and despatched them into unknown seas to ransack new worlds,
urged men of the pen to seek out and to pillage, with an equal ardor
of adventure, the intellectual wealth of their contemporaries in other
lands and the buried and forgotten stores of the ancients upon their
own neighboring book-shelves. A universal and contagious curiosity
was abroad. To this age belong William Paynter's version of the
_Decameron_, entitled _The Palace of Pleasure_, 1566, from which
Shakespeare borrowed; Geoffrey Fenton's translation of Bandello's
_Tragical Discourses_, 1567; Sir Thomas North's rendering of
_Plutarch's Lives_, 1579; Thomas Underdowne's _Heliodorus_, 1587;
Thomas Shelton's _Don Quixote_, 1612; and others too numerous to
mention. It seems extraordinary at first sight that when such models
of advanced technique were set before them, Englishmen were so slow
to follow; for though Professor Baldwin is probably correct in his
analysis of the _Decameron_ when he states that, of the hundred tales,
over fifty are not much more than anecdotes, about forty are but
outlined plots, three follow the modern short-story method only part
way, and, of the hundred, two[13] alone are perfect examples, yet those
two perfect examples remained and were capable of imitation. The
explanation of this neglect is, perhaps, that the Elizabethans were
too busy originating to find time for copying; they were very willing
to borrow ideas, but must be allowed to develop them in their own
way--usually along dramatic lines for stage purposes, because this was
at that time the most financially profitable.

[Footnote 13: The second novel of the second day, and the sixth of the
ninth day.]


VII

The blighting influence of constitutional strife and intestine war
which followed in the Stuarts' reigns turned the serious artist's
thoughts aside to grave and prophetic forms of literary utterance,
while writers of the frivolous sort devoted their talent to a
lighter and less sincere art than that of the short-story--namely,
court-poetry. It was an age of extremes which bred despair and
religious fervor in men of the Puritan party, as represented by Bunyan
and Milton, and conscious artificiality and mock heroics in those
of the Cavalier faction, as represented by Herrick and the Earl of
Rochester.

The examples of semi-fictional prose which can be gathered from this
period serve only to illustrate how the short-story instinct, though
stifled, was still present. Isaak Walton as a diarist had it; Thomas
Fuller as an historian had it; John Bunyan as an ethical writer had
it. Each one was possessed of the short-story faculty, but only
manifested it, as it were, by accident. Not until Daniel Defoe and the
rise of the newspaper do we note any advance in technique. Defoe's
main contribution was the _short-story essay_, which stands midway
between the anecdote, or germ-plot, buried in a mass of extraneous
material, and the short-story proper. The growth of this form, as
developed by Swift, Steel, Addison, Goldsmith, and Lamb, has been
traced and criticised elsewhere.[14] It had this one great advantage
that, whatever its departures from the strict technique of the modern
short-story, it was capable of being read at one sitting, stood by
itself, and gained "the immense force derivable from _totality_."

[Footnote 14: In the third chapter of _The Great English Essayists_,
vol. iii of _The Reader's Library_, published by Messrs. Harper &
Brothers, 1909.]

In the _True Revelation of the Apparition of One Mrs. Veal_, Defoe
is again strangely in advance of his time, as he is in so many other
ways. Here is an almost perfect example of the most modern method of
handling a ghost-tale. Surely, in whatever department of literature
we seek, we shall find nothing to surpass it in the quality of
_verisimilitude_. The way in which Drelincourt's _Book on Death_ is
introduced and subsequently twice referred to is a master-stroke of
genius. In days gone by, before they were parted, we are told, Mrs.
Veal and Mrs. Bargrave "would often console each other's adverse
fortunes, and read together Drelincourt _On Death_ and other good
books." At the time when the story opens Mrs. Bargrave has gone to
live in Canterbury, and Mrs. Veal is in Dover. To Mrs. Bargrave in
Canterbury the apparition appears, though she does not know that it is
an apparition, for there is nothing to denote that it is not her old
friend still alive. One of the first things the apparition does is
"to remind Mrs. Bargrave of the many friendly offices she did her in
former days, and much of the conversation they had with each other in
the times of their adversity; what books they read, and what comfort
in particular they received from Drelincourt's _Book on Death_.
Drelincourt, she said, had the clearest notions of death and of the
future state of any who had handled that subject. Then she asked Mrs.
Bargrave whether she had Drelincourt. She said, 'Yes,' Says Mrs. Veal,
'Fetch it.' Some days after, when Mrs. Bargrave, having discovered
that the visitor was a ghost, has gone about telling her neighbors,
Defoe observes, 'Drelincourt's _Book on Death_ is, since this
happened, bought up strangely,'"

This masterpiece of Defoe is before its time by a hundred years;
nothing can be found in the realm of the English prose short-story to
approach it in symmetry until the Ettrick Shepherd commenced to write.

Of all the models of prose-fiction which the Tudor translations had
given to English literature, the first to be copied was that of
Cervantes's _Don Quixote_, rendered into English by Thomas Shelton in
1612. Swift must have had the rambling method of Cervantes well in
mind when he wrote his _Gulliver_; and Smollett confessedly took it as
his pattern and set out to imitate. The most that was required by such
a method in the way of initial construction was to select a hero, give
some account of his early history, from the day of his birth up to the
point where the true narrative commences, and then send him upon his
travels. Usually it was thought necessary to have a Sancho to act as
background to Don Quixote; thus Crusoe is given his Man Friday, Tom
Jones his Mr. Partridge, and Roderick Random his Strap; but this was
not always done, for both Gulliver and the hero of the _Sentimental
Journey_ set out on their journeyings unaccompanied. The story which
grew out of such a method usually consisted of a series of plots,
anecdotes, and incidents linked together only by the characters, and
governed by no unifying purpose which made each one a necessary and
ascending step toward a prearranged climax. These early novels are
often books of descriptive travel rather than novels in the modern
sense; the sole connection between their first incident and their last
being the long road which lies between them, and has been traversed
in the continual company of the same leading characters. Many of the
chapters, taken apart from their context, are short-story themes
badly handled. Some of them are mere interpolations introduced on
the flimsiest of excuses, which arrest the progress of the main
narrative--_i.e_., the travel--and give the author an opportunity to
use up some spare material which he does not know what to do with.
Such are "The Man of the Hill," in _Tom Jones_; "The History of
Melopoyn the Playwright" in _Roderick Random_; the "Memoirs of a Lady
of Quality," occupying fifty-three thousand words, in _Peregrine
Pickle_; "The Philosophic Vagabond," in the _Vicar of Wakefield_;
and "Wandering Willie's Tale," in _Redgauntlet_. The reason why
the eighteenth-century novelist did not know what to do with these
materials was, in certain cases, that he had discovered a true
short-story theme and was perplexed by it. He knew that it was
good--his artist's instinct made him aware of that; but somehow, to
his great bewilderment and annoyance, it refused to be expanded. So,
in order that it might not be entirely lost to him, he tied the little
boat on behind the great schooner of his main narration, and set them
afloat together.

By the modern reader, whether of the short-story or the novel,
the lack of atmosphere and of immediateness in eighteenth-century
prose-fiction is particularly felt. There is no use made of
landscapes, moods, and the phenomena of nature; the story happens
at almost any season of the year. Of these things and their use the
modern short-story writer is meticulously careful. By how much would
the worth of Hardy's _The Three Strangers_ be diminished if the
description of the March rain driving across the Wessex moorland were
left out? Before he commences the story contained in _A Lodging for
the Night_, Stevenson occupies three hundred words in painting the
picture of Paris under snow. In the same way, in his story of _The Man
Who Would Be King_, Kipling is at great pains to make us burn with the
scorching heat which, in the popular mind, is associated with India.
For such effects you will search the prose-fiction of the eighteenth
century in vain; whereas the use of _atmosphere_ has been carried to
such extremes to-day by certain writers that the short-story in their
hands is in danger of becoming all atmosphere and no story.

The impression created by the old technique, such as it was, when
contrasted with the new, when legitimately handled, is the difference
between reading a play and seeing it staged.

As regards immediateness of narration, Laurence Sterne may, perhaps,
be pointed out as an example. But he is not immediate in the true
sense; he is abrupt, and this too frequently for his own sly
purposes--which have nothing to do with either technique or the
short-story.

Most of the English short-stories, previous to those written by James
Hogg, are either prefaced with a biography of their main characters
or else the biography is made to do service as though it were a
plot--nothing is left to the imagination. Even in the next century,
when the short-story had come to be recognized in America, through the
example set by Hawthorne and Poe, as a distinct species of literary
art, the productions of British writers were too often nothing more
than compressed novels. In fact, it is true to say that there is more
of short-story technique in the short-story essays of Goldsmith and
Lamb than can be found in many of the brief tales of Dickens and
Anthony Trollope, which in their day passed muster unchallenged as
short-stories.


VIII

But between the irrelevant brief story, interpolated in a larger
narrative, and the perfect short-story, which could not be expanded
and is total in itself, of Hawthorne and Poe, there stands the work
of a man who is little known in America, and by no means popular in
England, that of the Ettrick Shepherd, James Hogg. He was born in
Scotland, among the mountains of Ettrick and Yarrow, the son of a
shepherd. When he was but six years old he commenced to earn his
living as a cowherd, and by his seventh year had received all the
schooling which he was destined to have--two separate periods of three
months. Matthew Arnold, when accounting for the sterility of Gray as
a poet, says that throughout the first nine decades of the eighteenth
century, until the French Revolution roused men to generosity, "a
spiritual east wind was blowing." Hogg's early ignorance of letters
had at least this advantage, that it saved him from the blighting
intellectual influences of his age--left him unsophisticated, free
to find in all things matter for wonder, and to work out his mental
processes unprejudiced by a restraining knowledge of other men's
past achievements. In his eighteenth year he taught himself to read,
choosing as his text-books Henry the Minstrel's _Life and Adventures
of Sir William Wallace_ and the _Gentle Shepherd_ of Allan Ramsay.
Not until his twenty-sixth year did he acquire the art of penmanship,
which he learned "upon the hillside by copying the Italian alphabet,
using his knee as his desk, and having the ink-bottle suspended from
his button." During the next fourteen years he followed his shepherd's
calling, making it romantic with sundry more or less successful
attempts at authorship. He had reached his fortieth year before he
abandoned sheep-raising and journeyed to Edinburgh, there definitely
to adopt the literary career. He was by this time firm in his
philosophy of life and established in his modes of thought; whatever
else he might not be, among townsmen and persons of artificial
training, his very simplicity was sure to make him original. In his
forty-seventh year, having so far cast his most important work
into the poetic form, he contributed to _Blackwood's Magazine_ his
_Shepherd's Calendar_, followed in the same year by the publishing of
_The Brownie of Bodsbeck_; these were his first two serious excursions
into the realm of prose-fiction. From then on until his death, in
1835, he continued his efforts in this direction, pouring out a mass
of country-side tradition and fairy-folklore, amazing in its fantasy
and wealth of drama.

For the imparting of _atmosphere_ to his stories, a talent so
conspicuously lacking not only in his predecessors, but also in many
of his contemporaries, he had a native faculty. The author of _Bonny
Kilmeny_ could scarcely fail in this respect, when he turned his
attention from poetry to prose. He had lived too close to nature to be
able ever to keep the green and silver of woods and rivers far from
his thoughts; they were the mirrors in which his fancy saw itself.
Professor Wilson, who had known him as a friend, writing of him in
_Blackwood's_ after his death, says: "Living for years in solitude,
he unconsciously formed friendships with the springs, the brooks,
the caves, the hills, and with all the more fleeting and faithless
pageantry of the sky, that to him came in place of those human
affections from whose indulgence he was debarred by the necessities
that kept him aloof from the cottage fire and up among the mists of
the mountain-top. The still green beauty of the pastoral hills and
vales where he passed his youth inspired him with ever-brooding
visions of fairyland, till, as he lay musing in his lonely shieling,
the world of fantasy seemed, in the clear depths of his imagination, a
lovelier reflection of that of nature, like the hills and heavens more
softly shining in the water of his native lake."

His taste is often defective, as is that of Burns on occasions. This
is a fault which might be expected in a man of his training; but the
vigor and essential worth of the matters which he relates are beyond
all question. He did not always know where to begin his short-story,
or where to terminate. Some of his tales, if edited with blue-pencil
erasures, would be found to contain a nucleus-technique which, though
far from perfect, is more than equal to that of Washington Irving,
who, like Apuleius, "cared not how he loitered by the way," and very
superior to that of most of his immediate successors in the art. His
story here included, of _The Mysterious Bride_,[15] could scarcely be
bettered in its method. To tell it in fewer words would be to obscure
it; to tell it at greater length would be to rob it of its mystery and
to make it obvious. Moreover, by employing atmosphere he tells it
in such a way as to leave the reader with the impression that this
occurrence, for all its magic, might not only be possible, but even
probable--which achievement is the greatest triumph of the short-story
writer's art.

[Footnote 15: Compare with Kipling's treatment of a similar theme in
_The Brushwood Boy_.]

As this history of the evolution of the English short-story commenced
with a poet, Chaucer,[16] who wrote all save two of his short-stories
in poetry, so it fittingly closes with a poet, the Ettrick Shepherd,
who wrote most of his short-stories in prose. It remained for yet
another poet, Edgar Allan Poe, who may never have heard the name
or have read a line from the writings of James Hogg, to bring to
perfection the task on which he had spent his labor.

[Footnote 16: The _Gesta Romanorum_ was written in Latin.]




THE APPARITION OF MRS. VEAL

_Daniel Defoe_ (1661-1731)


This thing is so rare in all its circumstances, and on so good
authority, that my reading and conversation have not given me anything
like it. It is fit to gratify the most ingenious and serious inquirer.
Mrs. Bargrave is the person to whom Mrs. Veal appeared after her
death; she is my intimate friend, and I can avouch for her reputation
for these fifteen or sixteen years, on my own knowledge; and I can
confirm the good character she had from her youth to the time of my
acquaintance. Though, since this relation, she is calumniated by some
people that are friends to the brother of Mrs. Veal who appeared, who
think the relation of this appearance to be a reflection, and endeavor
what they can to blast Mrs. Bargrave's reputation and to laugh the
story out of countenance. But by the circumstances thereof, and the
cheerful disposition of Mrs. Bargrave, notwithstanding the ill usage
of a very wicked husband, there is not yet the least sign of dejection
in her face; nor did I ever hear her let fall a desponding or
murmuring expression; nay, not when actually under her husband's
barbarity, which I have been a witness to, and several other persons
of undoubted reputation.

Now you must know Mrs. Veal was a maiden gentlewoman of about thirty
years of age, and for some years past had been troubled with fits,
which were perceived coming on her by her going off from her discourse
very abruptly to some impertinence. She was maintained by an only
brother, and kept his house in Dover. She was a very pious woman, and
her brother a very sober man to all appearance; but now he does all he
can to null and quash the story. Mrs. Veal was intimately acquainted
with Mrs. Bargrave from her childhood. Mrs. Veal's circumstances were
then mean; her father did not take care of his children as he ought,
so that they were exposed to hardships. And Mrs. Bargrave in those
days had as unkind a father, though she wanted neither for food nor
clothing; while Mrs. Veal wanted for both, insomuch that she would
often say, "Mrs. Bargrave, you are not only the best, but the only
friend I have in the world; and no circumstance of life shall ever
dissolve my friendship." They would often condole each other's adverse
fortunes, and read together _Drelincourt upon Death_, and other good
books; and so, like two Christian friends, they comforted each other
under their sorrow.

Some time after, Mr. Veal's friends got him a place in the
custom-house at Dover, which occasioned Mrs. Veal, by little and
little, to fall off from her intimacy with Mrs. Bargrave, though there
was never any such thing as a quarrel; but an indifferency came on by
degrees, till at last Mrs. Bargrave had not seen her in two years and
a half, though above a twelvemonth of the time Mrs. Bargrave hath been
absent from Dover, and this last half-year has been in Canterbury
about two months of the time, dwelling in a house of her own.

In this house, on the eighth of September, one thousand seven hundred
and five, she was sitting alone in the forenoon, thinking over her
unfortunate life, and arguing herself into a due resignation to
Providence, though her condition seemed hard: "And," said she, "I have
been provided for hitherto, and doubt not but I shall be still, and am
well satisfied that my afflictions shall end when it is most fit for
me." And then took up her sewing work, which she had no sooner done
but she hears a knocking at the door; she went to see who was there,
and this proved to be Mrs. Veal, her old friend, who was in a
riding-habit. At that moment of time the clock struck twelve at noon.

"Madam," says Mrs. Bargrave, "I am surprised to see you, you have been
so long a stranger"; but told her she was glad to see her, and offered
to salute her, which Mrs. Veal complied with, till their lips almost
touched, and then Mrs. Veal drew her hand across her own eyes, and
said, "I am not very well," and so waived it. She told Mrs. Bargrave
she was going a journey, and had a great mind to see her first. "But,"
says Mrs. Bargrave, "how can you take a journey alone? I am amazed at
it, because I know you have a fond brother." "Oh," says Mrs. Veal,
"I gave my brother the slip, and came away, because I had so great a
desire to see you before I took my journey." So Mrs. Bargrave went in
with her into another room within the first, and Mrs. Veal sat her
down in an elbow-chair, in which Mrs. Bargrave was sitting when she
heard Mrs. Veal knock. "Then," says Mrs. Veal, "my dear friend, I am
come to renew our old friendship again, and beg your pardon for my
breach of it; and if you can forgive me, you are the best of women."
"Oh," says Mrs. Bargrave, "do not mention such a thing; I have not had
an uneasy thought about it." "What did you think of me?" says Mrs.
Veal. Says Mrs. Bargrave, "I thought you were like the rest of the
world, and that prosperity had made you forget yourself and me." Then
Mrs. Veal reminded Mrs. Bargrave of the many friendly offices she did
her in former days, and much of the conversation they had with each
other in the times of their adversity; what books they read, and
what comfort in particular they received from Drelincourt's _Book of
Death_, which was the best, she said, on the subject ever wrote.
She also mentioned Doctor Sherlock, and two Dutch books, which were
translated, wrote upon death, and several others. But Drelincourt, she
said, had the clearest notions of death and of the future state of any
who had handled that subject. Then she asked Mrs. Bargrave whether she
had Drelincourt. She said, "Yes." Says Mrs. Veal, "Fetch it." And so
Mrs. Bargrave goes up-stairs and brings it down. Says Mrs. Veal, "Dear
Mrs. Bargrave, if the eyes of our faith were as open as the eyes of
our body, we should see numbers of angels about us for our guard.
The notions we have of Heaven now are nothing like what it is, as
Drelincourt says; therefore be comforted under your afflictions, and
believe that the Almighty has a particular regard to you, and that
your afflictions are marks of God's favor; and when they have done
the business they are sent for, they shall be removed from you. And
believe me, my dear friend, believe what I say to you, one minute of
future happiness will infinitely reward you for all your sufferings.
For I can never believe" (and claps her hand upon her knee with great
earnestness, which, indeed, ran through most of her discourse) "that
ever God will suffer you to spend all your days in this afflicted
state. But be assured that your afflictions shall leave you, or you
them, in a short time." She spake in that pathetical and heavenly
manner that Mrs. Bargrave wept several times, she was so deeply
affected with it.

Then Mrs. Veal mentioned Doctor Kendrick's _Ascetic_, at the end of
which he gives an account of the lives of the primitive Christians.
Their pattern she recommended to our imitation, and said, "Their
conversation was not like this of our age. For now," says she, "there
is nothing but vain, frothy discourse, which is far different from
theirs. Theirs was to edification, and to build one another up in
faith, so that they were not as we are, nor are we as they were. But,"
said she, "we ought to do as they did; there was a hearty friendship
among them; but where is it now to be found?" Says Mrs. Bargrave, "It
is hard indeed to find a true friend in these days." Says Mrs.
Veal, "Mr. Norris has a fine copy of verses, called _Friendship in
Perfection_, which I wonderfully admire. Have you seen the book?" says
Mrs. Veal. "No," says Mrs. Bargrave, "but I have the verses of my own
writing out." "Have you?" says Mrs. Veal; "then fetch them"; which
she did from above stairs, and offered them to Mrs. Veal to read, who
refused, and waived the thing, saying, "holding down her head would
make it ache"; and then desiring Mrs. Bargrave to read them to her,
which she did. As they were admiring _Friendship_, Mrs. Veal said,
"Dear Mrs. Bargrave, I shall love you forever." In these verses there
is twice used the word "Elysian." "Ah!" says Mrs. Veal, "these poets
have such names for Heaven." She would often draw her hand across her
own eyes, and say, "Mrs. Bargrave, do not you think I am mightily
impaired by my fits?" "No," says Mrs. Bargrave; "I think you look as
well as ever I knew you."

After this discourse, which the apparition put in much finer words
than Mrs. Bargrave said she could pretend to, and as much more than
she can remember--for it cannot be thought that an hour and three
quarters' conversation could all be retained, though the main of it
she thinks she does--she said to Mrs. Bargrave she would have her
write a letter to her brother, and tell him she would have him give
rings to such and such; and that there was a purse of gold in her
cabinet, and that she would have two broad pieces given to her cousin
Watson.

Talking at this rate, Mrs. Bargrave thought that a fit was coming upon
her, and so placed herself on a chair just before her knees, to keep
her from falling to the ground, if her fits should occasion it; for
the elbow-chair, she thought, would keep her from falling on either
side. And to divert Mrs. Veal, as she thought, took hold of her
gown-sleeve several times, and commended it. Mrs. Veal told her it
was a scoured silk, and newly made up. But, for all this, Mrs. Veal
persisted in her request, and told Mrs. Bargrave she must not deny
her. And she would have her tell her brother all their conversation
when she had the opportunity. "Dear Mrs. Veal," says Mrs. Bargrave,
"this seems so impertinent that I cannot tell how to comply with
it; and what a mortifying story will our conversation be to a young
gentleman. Why," says Mrs. Bargrave, "it is much better, methinks, to
do it yourself." "No," says Mrs. Veal; "though it seems impertinent to
you now, you will see more reasons for it hereafter." Mrs. Bargrave,
then, to satisfy her importunity, was going to fetch a pen and ink,
but Mrs. Veal said, "Let it alone now, but do it when I am gone; but
you must be sure to do it"; which was one of the last things she
enjoined her at parting, and so she promised her.

Then Mrs. Veal asked for Mrs. Bargrave's daughter. She said she was
not at home. "But if you have a mind to see her," says Mrs. Bargrave,
"I'll send for her." "Do," says Mrs. Veal; on which she left her, and
went to a neighbor's to see her; and by the time Mrs. Bargrave was
returning, Mrs. Veal was got without the door in the street, in the
face of the beast-market, on a Saturday (which is market-day), and
stood ready to part as soon as Mrs. Bargrave came to her. She asked
her why she was in such haste. She said she must be going, though
perhaps she might not go her journey till Monday; and told Mrs.
Bargrave she hoped she should see her again at her cousin Watson's
before she went whither she was going. Then she said she would take
her leave of her, and walked from Mrs. Bargrave, in her view, till a
turning interrupted the sight of her, which was three-quarters after
one in the afternoon.

Mrs. Veal died the seventh of September, at twelve o'clock at noon, of
her fits, and had not above four hours' senses before her death, in
which time she received the sacrament. The next day after Mrs. Veal's
appearance, being Sunday, Mrs. Bargrave was mightily indisposed with
a cold and sore throat, that she could not go out that day; but on
Monday morning she sends a person to Captain Watson's to know if Mrs.
Veal was there. They wondered at Mrs. Bargrave's inquiry, and sent
her word she was not there, nor was expected. At this answer, Mrs.
Bargrave told the maid she had certainly mistook the name or made some
blunder. And though she was ill, she put on her hood and went herself
to Captain Watson's, though she knew none of the family, to see if
Mrs. Veal was there or not. They said they wondered at her asking, for
that she had not been in town; they were sure, if she had, she would
have been there. Says Mrs. Bargrave, "I am sure she was with me on
Saturday almost two hours." They said it was impossible, for they must
have seen her if she had. In comes Captain Watson, while they were
in dispute, and said that Mrs. Veal was certainly dead, and the
escutcheons were making. This strangely surprised Mrs. Bargrave, when
she sent to the person immediately who had the care of them, and found
it true. Then she related the whole story to Captain Watson's family;
and what gown she had on, and how striped; and that Mrs. Veal told her
that it was scoured. Then Mrs. Watson cried out, "You have seen her
indeed, for none knew but Mrs. Veal and myself that the gown was
scoured." And Mrs. Watson owned that she described the gown exactly;
"for," said she, "I helped her to make it up." This Mrs. Watson blazed
all about the town, and avouched the demonstration of truth of Mrs.
Bargrave's seeing Mrs. Veal's apparition. And Captain Watson carried
two gentlemen immediately to Mrs. Bargrave's house to hear the
relation from her own mouth. And when it spread so fast that gentlemen
and persons of quality, the judicious and sceptical part of the world,
flocked in upon her, it at last became such a task that she was forced
to go out of the way; for they were in general extremely satisfied
of the truth of the thing, and plainly saw that Mrs. Bargrave was no
hypochondriac, for she always appears with such a cheerful air and
pleasing mien that she has gained the favor and esteem of all the
gentry, and it is thought a great favor if they can but get the
relation from her own mouth. I should have told you before that Mrs.
Veal told Mrs. Bargrave that her sister and brother-in-law were just
come down from London to see her. Says Mrs. Bargrave, "How came you to
order matters so strangely?" "It could not be helped," said Mrs. Veal.
And her brother and sister did come to see her, and entered the town
of Dover just as Mrs. Veal was expiring. Mrs. Bargrave asked her
whether she would drink some tea. Says Mrs. Veal, "I do not care if
I do; but I'll warrant you this mad fellow"--meaning Mrs. Bargrave's
husband--"has broke all your trinkets." "But," says Mrs. Bargrave,
"I'll get something to drink in for all that"; but Mrs. Veal waived
it, and said, "It is no matter; let it alone"; and so it passed.

All the time I sat with Mrs. Bargrave, which was some hours, she
recollected fresh sayings of Mrs. Veal. And one material thing more
she told Mrs. Bargrave, that old Mr. Bretton allowed Mrs. Veal ten
pounds a year, which was a secret, and unknown to Mrs. Bargrave till
Mrs. Veal told her.

Mrs. Bargrave never varies in her story, which puzzles those who
doubt of the truth, or are unwilling to believe it. A servant in the
neighbor's yard adjoining to Mrs. Bargrave's house heard her talking
to somebody an hour of the time Mrs. Veal was with her. Mrs. Bargrave
went out to her next neighbor's the very moment she parted with Mrs.
Veal, and told her what ravishing conversation she had had with an old
friend, and told the whole of it. Drelincourt's _Book of Death_ is,
since this happened, bought up strangely. And it is to be observed
that, notwithstanding all the trouble and fatigue Mrs. Bargrave has
undergone upon this account, she never took the value of a farthing,
nor suffered her daughter to take anything of anybody, and therefore
can have no interest in telling the story.

But Mr. Veal does what he can to stifle the matter, and said he would
see Mrs. Bargrave; but yet it is certain matter of fact that he has
been at Captain Watson's since the death of his sister, and yet never
went near Mrs. Bargrave; and some of his friends report her to be a
liar, and that she knew of Mr. Bretton's ten pounds a year. But the
person who pretends to say so has the reputation to be a notorious
liar among persons whom I know to be of undoubted credit. Now, Mr.
Veal is more of a gentleman than to say she lies, but says a bad
husband has crazed her; but she needs only present herself, and it
will effectually confute that pretence. Mr. Veal says he asked his
sister on her death-bed whether she had a mind to dispose of anything.
And she said no. Now the things which Mrs. Veal's apparition would
have disposed of were so trifling, and nothing of justice aimed at in
the disposal, that the design of it appears to me to be only in order
to make Mrs. Bargrave satisfy the world of the reality thereof as to
what she had seen and heard, and to secure her reputation among the
reasonable and understanding part of mankind. And then, again, Mr.
Veal owns that there was a purse of gold; but it was not found in
her cabinet, but in a comb-box. This looks improbable; for that Mrs.
Watson owned that Mrs. Veal was so very careful of the key of her
cabinet that she would trust nobody with it; and if so, no doubt she
would not trust her gold out of it. And Mrs. Veal's often drawing her
hands over her eyes, and asking Mrs. Bargrave whether her fits had not
impaired her, looks to me as if she did it on purpose to remind Mrs.
Bargrave of her fits, to prepare her not to think it strange that she
should put her upon writing to her brother, to dispose of rings and
gold, which look so much like a dying person's request; and it took
accordingly with Mrs. Bargrave as the effect of her fits coming upon
her, and was one of the many instances of her wonderful love to her
and care of her, that she should not be affrighted, which, indeed,
appears in her whole management, particularly in her coming to her in
the daytime, waiving the salutation, and when she was alone; and then
the manner of her parting, to prevent a second attempt to salute her.

Now, why Mr. Veal should think this relation a reflection--as it is
plain he does, by his endeavoring to stifle it--I cannot imagine;
because the generality believe her to be a good spirit, her discourse
was so heavenly. Her two great errands were, to comfort Mrs. Bargrave
in her affliction, and to ask her forgiveness for her breach of
friendship, and with a pious discourse to encourage her. So that,
after all, to suppose that Mrs. Bargrave could hatch such an invention
as this, from Friday noon to Saturday noon--supposing that she knew
of Mrs. Veal's death the very first moment--without jumbling
circumstances, and without any interest, too, she must be more witty,
fortunate, and wicked, too, than any indifferent person, I dare say,
will allow. I asked Mrs. Bargrave several times if she was sure she
felt the gown. She answered, modestly, "If my senses be to be relied
on, I am sure of it." I asked her if she heard a sound when she
clapped her hand upon her knee. She said she did not remember she did,
but said she appeared to be as much a substance as I did who talked
with her. "And I may," said she, "be as soon persuaded that your
apparition is talking to me now as that I did not really see her;
for I was under no manner of fear, and received her as a friend, and
parted with her as such. I would not," says she, "give one farthing to
make any one believe it; I have no interest in it; nothing but trouble
is entailed upon me for a long time, for aught I know; and, had it not
come to light by accident, it would never have been made public." But
now she says she will make her own private use of it, and keep herself
out of the way as much as she can; and so she has done since. She says
she had a gentleman who came thirty miles to her to hear the relation;
and that she had told it to a roomful of people at the time. Several
particular gentlemen have had the story from Mrs. Bargrave's own
mouth.

This thing has very much affected me, and I am as well satisfied as
I am of the best-grounded matter of fact. And why we should dispute
matter of fact, because we cannot solve things of which we can have no
certain or demonstrative notions, seems strange to me; Mrs. Bargrave's
authority and sincerity alone would have been undoubted in any other
case.




THE MYSTERIOUS BRIDE[1]

[Footnote 1: From _Tales and Sketches_, by the Ettrick Shepherd.]

_James Hogg_ (1770-1835)


A great number of people nowadays are beginning broadly to insinuate
that there are no such things as ghosts, or spiritual beings visible
to mortal sight. Even Sir Walter Scott is turned renegade, and, with
his stories made up of half-and-half, like Nathaniel Gow's toddy,
is trying to throw cold water on the most certain, though most
impalpable, phenomena of human nature. The bodies are daft. Heaven
mend their wits! Before they had ventured to assert such things, I
wish they had been where I have often been; or, in particular, where
the Laird of Birkendelly was on St. Lawrence's Eve, in the year 1777,
and sundry times subsequent to that.

Be it known, then, to every reader of this relation of facts that
happened in my own remembrance that the road from Birkendelly to the
great muckle village of Balmawhapple (commonly called the muckle town,
in opposition to the little town that stood on the other side of the
burn)--that road, I say, lay between two thorn-hedges, so well kept
by the Laird's hedger, so close, and so high, that a rabbit could not
have escaped from the highway into any of the adjoining fields. Along
this road was the Laird riding on the Eve of St. Lawrence, in a
careless, indifferent manner, with his hat to one side, and his cane
dancing a hornpipe before him. He was, moreover, chanting a song to
himself, and I have heard people tell what song it was too. There was
once a certain, or rather uncertain, bard, ycleped Robert Burns, who
made a number of good songs; but this that the Laird sang was an
amorous song of great antiquity, which, like all the said bard's best
songs, was sung one hundred and fifty years before he was born. It
began thus:

  "I am the Laird of Windy-wa's,
  I cam nae here without a cause,
  An' I hae gotten forty fa's
    In coming o'er the knowe, joe.
  The night it is baith wind and weet;
  The morn it will be snaw and sleet;
  My shoon are frozen to my feet;
    O, rise an' let me in, joe!
      Let me in this ae night," etc.

This song was the Laird singing, while, at the same time, he was
smudging and laughing at the catastrophe, when, ere ever aware, he
beheld, a short way before him, an uncommonly elegant and beautiful
girl walking in the same direction with him. "Aye," said the Laird to
himself, "here is something very attractive indeed! Where the deuce
can she have sprung from? She must have risen out of the earth, for I
never saw her till this breath. Well, I declare I have not seen such a
female figure--I wish I had such an assignation with her as the Laird
of Windy-wa's had with his sweetheart."

As the Laird was half-thinking, half-speaking this to himself, the
enchanting creature looked back at him with a motion of intelligence
that she knew what he was half-saying, half-thinking, and then
vanished over the summit of the rising ground before him, called the
Birky Brow. "Aye, go your ways!" said the Laird; "I see by you, you'll
not be very hard to overtake. You cannot get off the road, and I'll
have a chat with you before you make the Deer's Den."

The Laird jogged on. He did not sing the _Laird of Windy-wa's_ any
more, for he felt a stifling about his heart; but he often repeated to
himself, "She's a very fine woman!--a very fine woman indeed!--and to
be walking here by herself! I cannot comprehend it."

When he reached the summit of the Birky Brow he did not see her,
although he had a longer view of the road than before. He thought this
very singular, and began to suspect that she wanted to escape him,
although apparently rather lingering on him before. "I shall have
another look at her, however," thought the Laird, and off he set at a
flying trot. No. He came first to one turn, then another. There was
nothing of the young lady to be seen. "Unless she take wings and fly
away, I shall be up with her," quoth the Laird, and off he set at the
full gallop.

In the middle of his career he met with Mr. McMurdie, of Aulton, who
hailed him with, "Hilloa, Birkendelly! Where the deuce are you flying
at that rate?"

"I was riding after a woman," said the Laird, with great simplicity,
reining in his steed.

"Then I am sure no woman on earth can long escape you, unless she be
in an air balloon."

"I don't know that. Is she far gone?"

"In which way do you mean?"

"In this."

"Aha-ha-ha! Hee-hee-hee!" nichered McMurdie, misconstruing the Laird's
meaning.

"What do you laugh at, my dear sir? Do you know her, then?"

"Ho-ho-ho! Hee-hee-hee! How should I, or how can I, know her,
Birkendelly, unless you inform me who she is?"

"Why, that is the very thing I want to know of you. I mean the young
lady whom you met just now."

"You are raving, Birkendelly. I met no young lady, nor is there a
single person on the road I have come by, while you know that for a
mile and a half forward your way she could not get out of it."

"I know that," said the Laird, biting his lip and looking greatly
puzzled; "but confound me if I understand this; for I was within
speech of her just now on the top of the Birky Brow there, and, when I
think of it, she could not have been even thus far as yet. She had on
a pure white gauze frock, a small green bonnet and feathers, and a
green veil, which, flung back over her left shoulder, hung below her
waist, and was altogether such an engaging figure that no man could
have passed her on the road without taking some note of her. Are you
not making game of me? Did you not really meet with her?"

"On my word of truth and honor, I did not. Come, ride back with me,
and we shall meet her still, depend on it. She has given you the go-by
on the road. Let us go; I am only to call at the mill about some
barley for the distillery, and will return with you to the big town."

Birkendelly returned with his friend. The sun was not yet set, yet
M'Murdie could not help observing that the Laird looked thoughtful
and confused, and not a word could he speak about anything save this
lovely apparition with the white frock and the green veil; and lo!
when they reached the top of Birky Brow there was the maiden again
before them, and exactly at the same spot where the Laird first saw
her before, only walking in the contrary direction.

"Well, this is the most extraordinary thing that I ever knew!"
exclaimed the Laird.

"What is it, sir?" said M'Murdie.

"How that young lady could have eluded me," returned the Laird. "See,
here she is still!"

"I beg your pardon, sir, I don't see her. Where is she?"

"There, on the other side of the angle; but you are shortsighted. See,
there she is ascending the other eminence in her white frock and green
veil, as I told you. What a lovely creature!"

"Well, well, we have her fairly before us now, and shall see what she
is like at all events," said McMurdie.

Between the Birky Brow and this other slight eminence there is an
obtuse angle of the road at the part where it is lowest, and, in
passing this, the two friends necessarily lost sight of the object
of their curiosity. They pushed on at a quick pace, cleared the low
angle--the maiden was not there! They rode full speed to the top of
the eminence from whence a long extent of road was visible before
them--there was no human creature in view. McMurdie laughed aloud, but
the Laird turned pale as death and bit his lip. His friend asked him
good-humoredly why he was so much affected. He said, because he could
not comprehend the meaning of this singular apparition or illusion,
and it troubled him the more as he now remembered a dream of the same
nature which he had, and which terminated in a dreadful manner.

"Why, man, you are dreaming still," said McMurdie. "But never mind;
it is quite common for men of your complexion to dream of beautiful
maidens with white frocks, and green veils, bonnets, feathers, and
slender waists. It is a lovely image, the creation of your own
sanguine imagination, and you may worship it without any blame. Were
her shoes black or green? And her stockings--did you note them? The
symmetry of the limbs, I am sure you did! Good-bye; I see you are not
disposed to leave the spot. Perhaps she will appear to you again."

So saying, McMurdie rode on toward the mill, and Birkendelly, after
musing for some time, turned his beast's head slowly round, and began
to move toward the great muckle village.

The Laird's feelings were now in terrible commotion. He was taken
beyond measure with the beauty and elegance of the figure he had seen,
but he remembered, with a mixture of admiration and horror, that a
dream of the same enchanting object had haunted his slumbers all
the days of his life; yet, how singular that he should never have
recollected the circumstance till now! But farther, with the dream
there were connected some painful circumstances which, though terrible
in their issue, he could not recollect so as to form them into any
degree of arrangement.

As he was considering deeply of these things and riding slowly down
the declivity, neither dancing his cane nor singing the _Laird of
Windy-wa's_, he lifted up his eyes, and there was the girl on the same
spot where he saw her first, walking deliberately up the Birky Brow.
The sun was down, but it was the month of August and a fine evening,
and the Laird, seized with an unconquerable desire to see and speak
with that incomparable creature, could restrain himself no longer, but
shouted out to her to stop till he came up. She beckoned acquiescence,
and slackened her pace into a slow movement. The Laird turned the
corner quickly, but when he had rounded it the maiden was still there,
though on the summit of the brow. She turned round, and, with an
ineffable smile and curtsy, saluted him, and again moved slowly on.
She vanished gradually beyond the summit, and while the green feathers
were still nodding in view, and so nigh that the Laird could have
touched them with a fishing-rod, he reached the top of the brow
himself. There was no living soul there, nor onward, as far as his
view reached. He now trembled in every limb, and, without knowing what
he did, rode straight on to the big town, not daring well to return
and see what he had seen for three several times; and certain he would
see it again when the shades of evening were deepening, he deemed
it proper and prudent to decline the pursuit of such a phantom any
farther.

He alighted at the Queen's Head, called for some brandy and water,
quite forgot what was his errand to the great muckle town that
afternoon, there being nothing visible to his mental sight but lovely
images, with white gauze frocks and green veils. His friend M'Murdie
joined him; they drank deep, bantered, reasoned, got angry, reasoned
themselves calm again, and still all would not do. The Laird was
conscious that he had seen the beautiful apparition, and, moreover,
that she was the very maiden, or the resemblance of her, who, in the
irrevocable decrees of Providence, was destined to be his. It was in
vain that M'Murdie reasoned of impressions on the imagination, and

  "Of fancy moulding in the mind,
  Light visions on the passing wind."

Vain also was a story that he told him of a relation of his own, who
was greatly harassed by the apparition of an officer in a red uniform
that haunted him day and night, and had very nigh put him quite
distracted several times, till at length his physician found out the
nature of this illusion so well that he knew, from the state of his
pulse, to an hour when the ghost of the officer would appear, and by
bleeding, low diet, and emollients contrived to keep the apparition
away altogether.

The Laird admitted the singularity of this incident, but not that it
was one in point; for the one, he said, was imaginary, the other
real, and that no conclusions could convince him in opposition to the
authority of his own senses. He accepted of an invitation to spend
a few days with M'Murdie and his family, but they all acknowledged
afterward that the Laird was very much like one bewitched.

As soon as he reached home he went straight to the Birky Brow, certain
of seeing once more the angelic phantom, but she was not there. He
took each of his former positions again and again, but the desired
vision would in no wise make its appearance. He tried every day
and every hour of the day, all with the same effect, till he grew
absolutely desperate, and had the audacity to kneel on the spot and
entreat of Heaven to see her. Yes, he called on Heaven to see her once
more, whatever she was, whether a being of earth, heaven, or hell.

He was now in such a state of excitement that he could not exist; he
grew listless, impatient, and sickly, took to his bed, and sent for
M'Murdie and the doctor; and the issue of the consultation was that
Birkendelly consented to leave the country for a season, on a visit to
his only sister in Ireland, whither we must accompany him for a short
space.

His sister was married to Captain Bryan, younger, of Scoresby, and
they two lived in a cottage on the estate, and the Captain's parents
and sisters at Scoresby Hall. Great was the stir and preparation when
the gallant young Laird of Birkendelly arrived at the cottage,
it never being doubted that he came to forward a second bond of
connection with the family, which still contained seven dashing
sisters, all unmarried, and all alike willing to change that solitary
and helpless state for the envied one of matrimony--a state highly
popular among the young women of Ireland. Some of the Misses Bryan
had now reached the years of womanhood, several of them scarcely, but
these small disqualifications made no difference in the estimation of
the young ladies themselves; each and all of them brushed up for the
competition with high hopes and unflinching resolutions. True,
the elder ones tried to check the younger in their good-natured,
forthright Irish way; but they retorted, and persisted in their
superior pretensions. Then there was such shopping in the county town!
It was so boundless that the credit of the Hall was finally exhausted,
and the old Squire was driven to remark that "Och, and to be sure it
was a dreadful and tirrabell concussion, to be put upon the equipment
of seven daughters all at the same moment, as if the young gentleman
could marry them all! Och, then, poor dear shoul, he would be after
finding that one was sufficient, if not one too many. And therefore
there was no occasion, none at all, at all, and that there was not,
for any of them to rig out more than one."

It was hinted that the Laird had some reason for complaint at this
time, but as the lady sided with her daughters, he had no chance. One
of the items of his account was thirty-seven buckling-combs, then
greatly in vogue. There were black combs, pale combs, yellow combs,
and gilt ones, all to suit or set off various complexions; and if
other articles bore any proportion at all to these, it had been better
for the Laird and all his family that Birkendelly had never set foot
in Ireland.

The plan was all concocted. There was to be a grand dinner at the
Hall, at which the damsels were to appear in all their finery. A ball
to follow, and note be taken which of the young ladies was their
guest's choice, and measures taken accordingly. The dinner and
the ball took place; and what a pity I may not describe that
entertainment, the dresses, and the dancers, for they were all
exquisite in their way, and _outré_ beyond measure. But such details
only serve to derange a winter evening's tale such as this.

Birkendelly having at this time but one model for his choice among
womankind, all that ever he did while in the presence of ladies was to
look out for some resemblance to her, the angel of his fancy; and it
so happened that in one of old Bryan's daughters named Luna, or,
more familiarly, Loony, he perceived, or thought he perceived, some
imaginary similarity in form and air to the lovely apparition. This
was the sole reason why he was incapable of taking his eyes off from
her the whole of that night; and this incident settled the point, not
only with the old people, but even the young ladies were forced, after
every exertion on their own parts, to "yild the p'int to their sister
Loony, who certainly was not the mist genteelest nor mist handsomest
of that guid-lucking fimily."

The next day Lady Luna was dispatched off to the cottage in grand
style, there to live hand in glove with her supposed lover. There was
no standing all this. There were the two parrocked together, like a
ewe and a lamb, early and late; and though the Laird really appeared
to have, and probably had, some delight in her company, it was only in
contemplating that certain indefinable air of resemblance which she
bore to the sole image impressed on his heart. He bought her a white
gauze frock, a green bonnet and feather, with a veil, which she was
obliged to wear thrown over her left shoulder, and every day after,
six times a day, was she obliged to walk over a certain eminence at a
certain distance before her lover. She was delighted to oblige him;
but still, when he came up, he looked disappointed, and never said,
"Luna, I love you; when are we to be married?" No, he never said any
such thing, for all her looks and expressions of fondest love; for,
alas! in all this dalliance he was only feeding a mysterious flame
that preyed upon his vitals, and proved too severe for the powers
either of reason or religion to extinguish. Still, time flew lighter
and lighter by, his health was restored, the bloom of his cheek
returned, and the frank and simple confidence of Luna had a certain
charm with it that reconciled him to his sister's Irish economy. But a
strange incident now happened to him which deranged all his immediate
plans.

He was returning from angling one evening, a little before sunset,
when he saw Lady Luna awaiting him on his way home. But instead of
brushing up to meet him as usual, she turned, and walked up the rising
ground before him. "Poor sweet girl! how condescending she is," said
he to himself, "and how like she is in reality to the angelic being
whose form and features are so deeply impressed on my heart! I now see
it is no fond or fancied resemblance. It is real! real! real! How I
long to clasp her in my arms, and tell her how I love her; for, after
all, that is the girl that is to be mine, and the former a vision to
impress this the more on my heart."

He posted up the ascent to overtake her. When at the top she turned,
smiled, and curtsied. Good heavens! it was the identical lady of his
fondest adoration herself, but lovelier, far lovelier, than ever. He
expected every moment that she would vanish, as was her wont; but she
did not--she awaited him, and received his embraces with open arms.
She was a being of real flesh and blood, courteous, elegant, and
affectionate. He kissed her hand, he kissed her glowing cheek, and
blessed all the powers of love who had thus restored her to him again,
after undergoing pangs of love such as man never suffered.

"But, dearest heart, here we are standing in the middle of the
highway," said he; "suffer me to conduct you to my sister's house,
where you shall have an apartment with a child of nature having some
slight resemblance to yourself." She smiled, and said, "No, I will not
sleep with Lady Luna to-night. Will you please to look round you, and
see where you are." He did so, and behold they were standing on the
Birky Brow, on the only spot where he had ever seen her. She smiled at
his embarrassed look, and asked if he did not remember aught of his
coming over from Ireland. He said he thought he did remember something
of it, but love with him had long absorbed every other sense. He then
asked her to his own house, which she declined, saying she could only
meet him on that spot till after their marriage, which could not be
before St. Lawrence's Eve come three years. "And now," said she, "we
must part. My name is Jane Ogilvie, and you were betrothed to me
before you were born. But I am come to release you this evening, if
you have the slightest objection."

He declared he had none; and kneeling, swore the most solemn oath to
be hers forever, and to meet her there on St. Lawrence's Eve next,
and every St. Lawrence's Eve until that blessed day on which she had
consented to make him happy by becoming his own forever. She then
asked him affectionately to change rings with her, in pledge of their
faith and troth, in which he joyfully acquiesced; for she could not
have then asked any conditions which, in the fulness of his heart's
love, he would not have granted; and after one fond and affectionate
kiss, and repeating all their engagements over again, they parted.

Birkendelly's heart was now melted within him, and all his senses
overpowered by one overwhelming passion. On leaving his fair and kind
one, he got bewildered, and could not find the road to his own house,
believing sometimes that he was going there, and sometimes to his
sister's, till at length he came, as he thought, upon the Liffey, at
its junction with Loch Allan; and there, in attempting to call for a
boat, he awoke from a profound sleep, and found himself lying in his
bed within his sister's house, and the day sky just breaking.

If he was puzzled to account for some things in the course of his
dream, he was much more puzzled to account for them now that he was
wide awake. He was sensible that he had met his love, had embraced,
kissed, and exchanged vows and rings with her, and, in token of the
truth and reality of all these, her emerald ring was on his finger,
and his own away; so there was no doubt that they had met--by what
means it was beyond the power of man to calculate.

There was then living with Mrs. Bryan an old Scotswoman, commonly
styled Lucky Black. She had nursed Birkendelly's mother, and been
dry-nurse to himself and sister; and having more than a mother's
attachment for the latter, when she was married, old Lucky left her
country to spend the last of her days in the house of her beloved
young lady. When the Laird entered the breakfast-parlor that morning
she was sitting in her black velvet hood, as usual, reading _The
Fourfold State of Man_, and, being paralytic and somewhat deaf, she
seldom regarded those who went or came. But chancing to hear him say
something about the 9th of August, she quitted reading, turned round
her head to listen, and then asked, in a hoarse, tremulous voice:
"What's that he's saying? What's the unlucky callant saying about the
9th of August? Aih? To be sure it is St. Lawrence's Eve, although the
10th be his day. It's ower true, ower true, ower true for him an' a'
his kin, poor man! Aih? What was he saying then?"

The men smiled at her incoherent earnestness, but the lady, with true
feminine condescension, informed her, in a loud voice, that Allan had
an engagement in Scotland on St. Lawrence's Eve. She then started up,
extended her shrivelled hands, that shook like the aspen, and panted
out: "Aih, aih? Lord preserve us! Whaten an engagement has he on St.
Lawrence's Eve? Bind him! bind him! Shackle him wi' bands of steel,
and of brass, and of iron! O may He whose blessed will was pleased
to leave him an orphan sae soon, preserve him from the fate which I
tremble to think on!"

She then tottered round the table, as with supernatural energy, and
seizing the Laird's right hand, she drew it close to her unstable
eyes, and then perceiving the emerald ring chased in blood, she threw
up her arms with a jerk, opened her skinny jaws with a fearful gape,
and uttering a shriek that made all the house yell, and every one
within it to tremble, she fell back lifeless and rigid on the floor.
The gentlemen both fled, out of sheer terror; but a woman never
deserts her friends in extremity. The lady called her maids about her,
had her old nurse conveyed to bed, where every means were used to
restore animation. But, alas, life was extinct! The vital spark
had fled forever, which filled all their hearts with grief,
disappointment, and horror, as some dreadful tale of mystery was now
sealed up from their knowledge which, in all likelihood, no other
could reveal. But to say the truth, the Laird did not seem greatly
disposed to probe it to the bottom.

Not all the arguments of Captain Bryan and his lady, nor the simple
entreaties of Lady Luna, could induce Birkendelly to put off his
engagement to meet his love on the Birky Brow on the evening of the
9th of August; but he promised soon to return, pretending that some
business of the utmost importance called him away. Before he went,
however, he asked his sister if ever she had heard of such a lady in
Scotland as Jane Ogilvie. Mrs. Bryan repeated the name many times to
herself, and said that name undoubtedly was once familiar to her,
although she thought not for good, but at that moment she did not
recollect one single individual of the name. He then showed her the
emerald ring that had been the death of Lucky Black; but the moment
the lady looked at it, she made a grasp at it to take it off by force,
which she had very nearly effected. "Oh, burn it! burn it!" cried she;
"it is not a right ring! Burn it!"

"My dear sister, what fault is in the ring?" said he. "It is a very
pretty ring, and one that I set great value by."

"Oh, for Heaven's sake, burn it, and renounce the giver!" cried she.
"If you have any regard for your peace here or your soul's welfare
hereafter, burn that ring! If you saw with your own eyes, you would
easily perceive that that is not a ring befitting a Christian to
wear."

This speech confounded Birkendelly a good deal. He retired by himself
and examined the ring, and could see nothing in it unbecoming a
Christian to wear. It was a chased gold ring, with a bright emerald,
which last had a red foil, in some lights giving it a purple gleam,
and inside was engraven "_Elegit_," much defaced, but that his
sister could not see; therefore he could not comprehend her vehement
injunctions concerning it. But that it might no more give her offence,
or any other, he sewed it within his vest, opposite his heart, judging
that there was something in it which his eyes were withholden from
discerning.

Thus he left Ireland with his mind in great confusion, groping his
way, as it were, in a hole of mystery, yet with the passion that
preyed on his heart and vitals more intense than ever. He seems to
have had an impression all his life that some mysterious fate awaited
him, which the correspondence of his dreams and day visions tended
to confirm. And though he gave himself wholly up to the sway of one
overpowering passion, it was not without some yearnings of soul,
manifestations of terror, and so much earthly shame, that he never
more mentioned his love, or his engagements, to any human being, not
even to his friend M'Murdie, whose company he forthwith shunned.

It is on this account that I am unable to relate what passed between
the lovers thenceforward. It is certain they met at the Birky Brow
that St. Lawrence's Eve, for they were seen in company together; but
of the engagements, vows, or dalliance that passed between them I can
say nothing; nor of all their future meetings, until the beginning of
August, 1781, when the Laird began decidedly to make preparations for
his approaching marriage; yet not as if he and his betrothed had been
to reside at Birkendelly, all his provisions rather bespeaking a
meditated journey.

On the morning of the 9th he wrote to his sister, and then arraying
himself in his new wedding suit, and putting the emerald ring on his
finger, he appeared all impatience, until toward evening, when he
sallied out on horseback to his appointment. It seems that his
mysterious inamorata had met him, for he was seen riding through the
big town before sunset, with a young lady behind him, dressed in white
and green, and the villagers affirmed that they were riding at the
rate of fifty miles an hour! They were seen to pass a cottage called
Mosskilt, ten miles farther on, where there was no highway, at the
same tremendous speed; and I could never hear that they were any more
seen, until the following morning, when Birkendelly's fine bay horse
was found lying dead at his own stable door; and shortly after his
master was likewise discovered lying, a blackened corpse, on the Birky
Brow at the very spot where the mysterious but lovely dame had always
appeared to him. There was neither wound, bruise, nor dislocation in
his whole frame; but his skin was of a livid color, and his features
terribly distorted.

This woful catastrophe struck the neighborhood with great
consternation, so that nothing else was talked of. Every ancient
tradition and modern incident were raked together, compared, and
combined; and certainly a most rare concatenation of misfortunes was
elicited. It was authenticated that his father had died on the same
spot that day twenty years, and his grandfather that day forty years,
the former, as was supposed, by a fall from his horse when in liquor,
and the latter, nobody knew how; and now this Allan was the last of
his race, for Mrs. Bryan had no children.

It was, moreover, now remembered by many, and among the rest by the
Rev. Joseph Taylor, that he had frequently observed a young lady, in
white and green, sauntering about the spot on a St. Lawrence's Eve.

When Captain Bryan and his lady arrived to take possession of the
premises, they instituted a strict inquiry into every circumstance;
but nothing further than what was related to them by Mr. M'Murdie
could be learned of this Mysterious Bride, besides what the Laird's
own letter bore. It ran thus:

"DEAREST SISTER,--I shall before this time to-morrow be the most
happy, or most miserable, of mankind, having solemnly engaged myself
this night to wed a young and beautiful lady, named Jane Ogilvie, to
whom it seems I was betrothed before I was born. Our correspondence
has been of a most private and mysterious nature; but my troth is
pledged, and my resolution fixed. We set out on a far journey to the
place of her abode on the nuptial eve, so that it will be long before
I see you again. Yours till death,

"ALLAN GEORGE SANDISON.

"BIRKENDELLY, _August 8_, 1781."

That very same year, an old woman, named Marion Haw, was returned upon
that, her native parish, from Glasgow. She had led a migratory life
with her son--who was what he called a bell-hanger, but in fact a
tinker of the worst grade--for many years, and was at last returned
to the muckle town in a state of great destitution. She gave the
parishioners a history of the Mysterious Bride, so plausibly correct,
but withal so romantic, that everybody said of it (as is often said of
my narratives, with the same narrow-minded prejudice and injustice)
that it was a _made story_. There were, however, some strong
testimonies of its veracity.

She said the first Allan Sandison, who married the great heiress of
Birkendelly, was previously engaged to a beautiful young lady named
Jane Ogilvie, to whom he gave anything but fair play; and, as she
believed, either murdered her, or caused her to be murdered, in the
midst of a thicket of birch and broom, at a spot which she mentioned;
and she had good reason for believing so, as she had seen the red
blood and the new grave, when she was a little girl, and ran home and
mentioned it to her grandfather, who charged her as she valued her
life never to mention that again, as it was only the nombles and hide
of a deer which he himself had buried there. But when, twenty years
subsequent to that, the wicked and unhappy Allan Sandison was found
dead on that very spot, and lying across the green mound, then nearly
level with the surface, which she had once seen a new grave, she then
for the first time ever thought of a Divine Providence; and she added,
"For my grandfather, Neddy Haw, he dee'd too; there's naebody kens
how, nor ever shall."

As they were quite incapable of conceiving from Marion's description
anything of the spot, Mr. M'Murdie caused her to be taken out to the
Birky Brow in a cart, accompanied by Mr. Taylor and some hundreds of
the town's folks; but whenever she saw it, she said, "Aha, birkies!
the haill kintra's altered now. There was nae road here then; it gaed
straight ower the tap o' the hill. An' let me see--there's the thorn
where the cushats biggit; an' there's the auld birk that I ance fell
aff an' left my shoe sticking i' the cleft. I can tell ye, birkies,
either the deer's grave or bonny Jane Ogilvie's is no twa yards aff
the place where that horse's hind-feet are standin'; sae ye may howk,
an' see if there be ony remains."

The minister and M'Murdie and all the people stared at one another,
for they had purposely caused the horse to stand still on the very
spot where both the father and son had been found dead. They digged,
and deep, deep below the road they found part of the slender bones
and skull of a young female, which they deposited decently in the
church-yard. The family of the Sandisons is extinct, the Mysterious
Bride appears no more on the Eve of St. Lawrence, and the wicked
people of the great muckle village have got a lesson on divine justice
written to them in lines of blood.




THE DEVIL AND TOM WALKER [1]

[Footnote 1: From _The Money-diggers_.]

_Washington Irving_ (1783-1859)


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 lookout 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 that 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
traveller 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 shrank 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 homeward, 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 traveller 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, where the 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
firm piece of ground, which ran like a peninsula into the deep bosom
of the swamp. It had been one of the strongholds 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 old 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 swamps.

It was late in the dusk of evening when Tom Walker reached the old
fort, and he paused there awhile 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 times 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 it 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 heard nor seen
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 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 on 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 those of
his neighbors. 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 blow it down. On the bark of the tree was
scored the name of Deacon Peabody, an eminent man who had waxed
wealthy by driving shrewd bargains with the Indians. He now looked
around, and found most of the tall trees marked with the name of some
great man 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 a 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 consecrated this
spot, and in honor of whom they 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 hard-minded
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 homeward. The black man told
him of great sums of money 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 be easily 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 when 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's 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 burned, 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
toward 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 forbore 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 tea-pot 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 which have become
confounded by a variety of historians. Some asserted that she lost her
way among the tangled mazes of the swamp, and sank 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
surmised that the tempter had decoyed her into a dismal quagmire, on
the 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
set 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 nowhere 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 hovering about a cypress-tree. He
looked up 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 endeavor 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 checked apron, but, woful sight! found nothing but a heart and
liver tied up in it!

Such, according to this 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 found handfuls 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 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 toward the black woodsman, who, he considered, had done him
a kindness. He sought, therefore, to cultivate a further 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
the calling; 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 anything rather than not gain the
promised treasure, he met the black man one evening in his usual
woodsman's dress, with his axe on his shoulder, sauntering along the
swamp and humming a tune. He affected to receive Tom's advances 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-trader.

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 merchants to
bankruptcy--"

"I'll drive them to the devil," cried Tom Walker.

"_You_ are the usurer for my money!" said 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. Everybody remembers the time
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 everybody 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 everybody 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
usurer in Boston. His door was soon thronged by customers. The needy
and adventurous, the gambling speculator, the dreaming land-jobber,
the thriftless tradesman, the merchant with cracked credit--in short,
everyone driven to raise money by desperate means and desperate
sacrifices hurried to Tom Walker.

Thus Tom was the universal friend to the needy, and acted like "a
friend in need"; that is to say, he always exacted good pay and
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 fulness 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 of 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 in 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:

One hot summer afternoon in the dog-days, just as a terrible black
thunder-gust 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
delay.

"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 shrank
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 foreclose: never was sinner taken more unawares. The
black man whisked him like a child into the saddle, gave the horse the
lash, and away he galloped, with Tom on his back, in the midst of the
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 border 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 running to the window 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 toward
the old Indian fort, and that shortly after a thunder-bolt falling in
that direction 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 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 burned
to the ground.

Such was the end of Tom Walker and his ill-gotten wealth. Let all
gripping money-brokers lay this story to heart. The truth of it is not
to be doubted. The very hole under the oak-trees, whence he dug Kidd's
money, is to be seen to this day; and the neighboring swamp and
old Indian fort are often haunted in stormy nights by a figure on
horseback, in 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, so prevalent
throughout New England, of "The devil and Tom Walker."




DR. HEIDEGGER'S EXPERIMENT

_Nathaniel Hawthorne_ (1807-1864)


That very singular man, old Doctor Heidegger, once invited four
venerable friends to meet him in his study. There were three
white-bearded gentlemen, Mr. Medbourne, Colonel Killigrew, and Mr.
Gascoigne, and a withered gentlewoman whose name was the Widow
Wycherley. They were all melancholy old creatures, who had been
unfortunate in life, and whose greatest misfortune it was that they
were not long ago in their graves. Mr. Medbourne, in the vigor of his
age, had been a prosperous merchant, but had lost his all by a frantic
speculation, and was no little better than a mendicant. Colonel
Killigrew had wasted his best years, and his health and substance, in
the pursuit of sinful pleasures, which had given birth to a brood of
pains, such as the gout and divers other torments of soul and body.
Mr. Gascoigne was a ruined politician, a man of evil fame, or at
least had been so, till time had buried him from the knowledge of the
present generation, and made him obscure instead of infamous. As for
the Widow Wycherley, tradition tells us that she was a great beauty in
her day; but, for a long while past, she had lived in deep seclusion,
on account of certain scandalous stories which had prejudiced the
gentry of the town against her. It is a circumstance worth mentioning
that each of these three old gentlemen, Mr. Medbourne, Colonel
Killigrew, and Mr. Gascoigne, were early lovers of the Widow
Wycherley, and had once been on the point of cutting each other's
throats for her sake. And, before proceeding further, I will merely
hint that Doctor Heidegger and all his four guests were sometimes
thought to be a little beside themselves; as is not unfrequently the
case with old people, when worried either by present troubles or woful
recollections.

"My dear friends," said Doctor Heidegger, motioning them to be seated,
"I am desirous of your assistance in one of those little experiments
with which I amuse myself here in my study."

If all stories were true, Doctor Heidegger's study must have been a
very curious place. It was a dim, old-fashioned chamber, festooned
with cobwebs and besprinkled with antique dust. Around the walls stood
several oaken bookcases, the lower shelves of which were filled with
rows of gigantic folios and black-letter quartos, and the upper with
little parchment-covered duodecimos. Over the central bookcase was a
bronze bust of Hippocrates, with which, according to some authorities,
Doctor Heidegger was accustomed to hold consultations in all difficult
cases of his practice. In the obscurest corner of the room stood
a tall and narrow oaken closet, with its door ajar, within which
doubtfully appeared a skeleton. Between two of the bookcases hung a
looking-glass, presenting its high and dusty plate within a tarnished
gilt frame. Among many wonderful stories related of this mirror, it
was fabled that the spirits of all the doctor's deceased patients
dwelt within its verge, and would stare him in the face whenever he
looked thitherward. The opposite side of the chamber was ornamented
with the full-length portrait of a young lady, arrayed in the faded
magnificence of silk, satin, and brocade, and with a visage as faded
as her dress. Above half a century ago Doctor Heidegger had been on
the point of marriage with this young lady; but, being affected
with some slight disorder, she had swallowed one of her lover's
prescriptions, and died on the bridal evening. The greatest curiosity
of the study remains to be mentioned; it was a ponderous folio volume,
bound in black leather, with massive silver clasps. There were no
letters on the back, and nobody could tell the title of the book. But
it was well known to be a book of magic; and once, when a chambermaid
had lifted it, merely to brush away the dust, the skeleton had rattled
in its closet, the picture of the young lady had stepped one foot upon
the floor, and several ghastly faces had peeped forth from the mirror;
while the brazen head of Hippocrates frowned, and said: "Forbear!"

Such was Doctor Heidegger's study. On the summer afternoon of our tale
a small round table, as black as ebony, stood in the centre of the
room, sustaining a cut-glass vase of beautiful form and workmanship.
The sunshine came through the window, between the heavy festoons of
two faded damask curtains, and fell directly across this vase; so that
a mild splendor was reflected from it on the ashen visages of the five
old people who sat around. Four champagne glasses were also on the
table.

"My dear old friends," repeated Doctor Heidegger, "may I reckon on
your aid in performing an exceedingly curious experiment?"

Now Doctor Heidegger was a very strange old gentleman, whose
eccentricity had become the nucleus for a thousand fantastic stories.
Some of these fables, to my shame be it spoken, might possibly be
traced back to mine own veracious self; and if any passages of the
present tale should startle the reader's faith, I must be content to
bear the stigma of a fiction-monger.

When the doctor's four guests heard him talk of his proposed
experiment, they anticipated nothing more wonderful than the murder
of a mouse in an air-pump or the examination of a cobweb by the
microscope, or some similiar nonsense, with which he was constantly in
the habit of pestering his intimates. But without waiting for a reply,
Doctor Heidegger hobbled across the chamber, and returned with the
same ponderous folio, bound in black leather, which common report
affirmed to be a book of magic. Undoing the silver clasps, he opened
the volume, and took from among its black-letter pages a rose, or what
was once a rose, though now the green leaves and crimson petals had
assumed one brownish hue, and the ancient flower seemed ready to
crumble to dust in the doctor's hands.

"This rose," said Doctor Heidegger, with a sigh, "this same withered
and crumbling flower, blossomed five and fifty years ago. It was
given me by Sylvia Ward, whose portrait hangs yonder, and I meant to
wear it in my bosom at our wedding. Five and fifty years it has been
treasured between the leaves of this old volume. Now, would you deem
it possible that this rose of half a century could ever bloom again?"

"Nonsense!" said the Widow Wycherley, with a peevish toss of her head.
"You might as well ask whether an old woman's wrinkled face could ever
bloom again."

"See!" answered Doctor Heidegger.

He uncovered the vase, and threw the faded rose into the water which
it contained. At first, it lay lightly on the surface of the fluid,
appearing to imbibe none of its moisture. Soon, however, a singular
change began to be visible. The crushed and dried petals stirred, and
assumed a deepening tinge of crimson, as if the flower were reviving
from a death-like slumber; the slender stalk and twigs of foliage
became green; and there was the rose of half a century, looking as
fresh as when Sylvia Ward had first given it to her lover. It was
scarcely full blown; for some of its delicate red leaves curled
modestly around its moist bosom, within which two or three dewdrops
were sparkling.

"That is certainly a very pretty deception," said the doctor's
friends; careless, however, for they had witnessed greater miracles at
a conjurer's show; "pray how was it effected?"

"Did you ever hear of the 'Fountain of Youth,'" asked Doctor
Heidegger, "which Ponce de Leon, the Spanish adventurer, went in
search of, two or three centuries ago?"

"But did Ponce de Leon ever find it?" said the Widow Wycherley.

"No," answered Doctor Heidegger, "for he never sought it in the right
place. The famous Fountain of Youth, if I am rightly informed, is
situated in the southern part of the Floridian peninsula, not far from
Lake Macaco. Its source is overshadowed by several magnolias, which,
though numberless centuries old, have been kept as fresh as violets,
by the virtues of this wonderful water. An acquaintance of mine,
knowing my curiosity in such matters, has sent me what you see in the
vase."

"Ahem!" said Colonel Killigrew, who believed not a word of the
doctor's story; "and what may be the effect of this fluid on the human
frame?"

"You shall judge for yourself, my dear Colonel," replied Doctor
Heidegger; "and all of you, my respected friends, are welcome to so
much of this admirable fluid as may restore to you the bloom of youth.
For my own part, having had much trouble in growing old, I am in no
hurry to grow young again. With your permission, therefore, I will
merely watch the progress of the experiment."

While he spoke, Doctor Heidegger had been filling the four champagne
glasses with the water of the Fountain of Youth. It was apparently
impregnated with an effervescent gas; for little bubbles were
continually ascending from the depths of the glasses, and bursting
in silvery spray at the surface. As the liquor diffused a pleasant
perfume, the old people doubted now that it possessed cordial
and comfortable properties; and though utter sceptics as to its
rejuvenescent power, they were inclined to swallow it at once. But
Doctor Heidegger besought them to stay a moment.

"Before you drink, my respectable old friends," said he, "it would be
well that, with the experience of a lifetime to direct you, you should
draw up a few general rules for your guidance, in passing a second
time through the perils of youth. Think what a sin and shame it would
be if, with your peculiar advantages, you should not become patterns
of virtue and wisdom to all the young people of the age!"

The doctor's four venerable friends made him no answer, except by a
feeble and tremulous laugh; so very ridiculous was the idea that,
knowing how closely repentance treads behind the steps of error, they
should ever go astray again.

"Drink, then," said the doctor, bowing: "I rejoice that I have so well
selected the subjects of my experiment."

With palsied hands they raised the glasses to their lips. The liquor,
if it really possessed such virtues as Doctor Heidegger imputed to it,
could not have been bestowed on four human beings who needed it more
wofully. They looked as if they had never known what youth or pleasure
was, but had been the offspring of nature's dotage, and always the
gray, decrepit, sapless, miserable creatures, who now sat stooping
round the doctor's table, without life enough in their souls or bodies
to be animated even by the prospect of growing young again. They drank
off the water, and replaced their glasses on the table.

Assuredly there was an almost immediate improvement in the aspect of
the party, not unlike what might have been produced by a glass of
generous wine, together with a sudden glow of cheerful sunshine,
brightening over all their visages at once. There was a healthful
suffusion on their cheeks, instead of the ashen hue that had made them
look so corpselike. They gazed at one another, and fancied that
some magic power had really begun to smooth away the deep and sad
inscriptions which Father Time had been so long engraving on their
brows. The Widow Wycherley adjusted her cap, for she felt almost like
a woman again.

"Give us more of this wondrous water!" cried they, eagerly. "We are
younger--but we are still too old! Quick--give us more!"

"Patience! patience!" quoth Doctor Heidegger, who sat watching the
experiment with philosophic coolness. "You have been a long time
growing old. Surely you might be content to grow young in half an
hour! But the water is at your service."

Again he filled their glasses with the liquor of youth, enough of
which still remained in the vase to turn half the old people in the
city to the age of their own grandchildren. While the bubbles were yet
sparkling on the brim, the doctor's four guests snatched their glasses
from the table, and swallowed the contents at a single gulp. Was it
delusion? Even while the draught was passing down their throats it
seemed to have wrought a change on their whole systems. Their eyes
grew clear and bright; a dark shade deepened among their silvery
locks; they sat round the table, three gentlemen of middle age, and a
woman hardly beyond her buxom prime.

"My dear widow, you are charming!" cried Colonel Killigrew, whose eyes
had been fixed upon her face, while the shadows of age were flitting
from it like darkness from the crimson daybreak.

The fair widow knew of old that Colonel Killigrew's compliments were
not always measured by sober truth; so she started up and ran to the
mirror, still dreading that the ugly visage of an old woman would meet
her gaze. Meanwhile the three gentlemen behaved in such a manner
as proved that the water of the Fountain of Youth possessed some
intoxicating qualities, unless, indeed, their exhilaration of spirits
were merely a lightsome dizziness, caused by the sudden removal of
the weight of years. Mr. Gascoigne's mind seemed to run on political
topics, but whether relating to the past, present, or future could not
easily be determined, since the same ideas and phrases have been in
vogue these fifty years. Now he rattled forth full-throated sentences
about patriotism, national glory, and the people's rights; now he
muttered some perilous stuff or other, in a sly and doubtful whisper,
so cautiously that even his own conscience could scarcely catch the
secret; and now, again, he spoke in measured accents and a deeply
deferential tone, as if a royal ear were listening to his well-turned
periods. Colonel Killigrew all this time had been trolling forth a
jolly battle-song, and ringing his glass toward the buxom figure of
the Widow Wycherley. On the other side of the table Mr. Medbourne
was involved in a calculation of dollars and cents, with which was
strangely intermingled a project for supplying the East Indies with
ice, by harnessing a team of whales to the polar icebergs.

As for the Widow Wycherley, she stood before the mirror, courtesying
and simpering to her own image, and greeting it as the friend whom she
loved better than all the world beside. She thrust her face close to
the glass to see whether some long-remembered wrinkle or crow's-foot
had indeed vanished. She examined whether the snow had so entirely
melted from her hair that the venerable cap could be safely thrown
aside. At last, turning briskly away, she came with a sort of dancing
step to the table.

"My dear old doctor," cried she, "pray favor me with another glass!"

"Certainly, my dear madam, certainly!" replied the complaisant doctor.
"See! I have already filled the glasses."

There, in fact, stood the four glasses, brimful of this wonderful
water, the delicate spray of which, as it effervesced from the
surface, resembled the tremulous glitter of diamonds. It was now so
nearly sunset that the chamber had grown duskier than ever; but a mild
and moon-like splendor gleamed from within the vase, and rested alike
on the four guests, and on the doctor's venerable figure. He sat in a
high-backed, elaborately carved oaken chair, with a gray dignity of
aspect that might have well befitted that very Father Time, whose
power had never been disputed, save by this fortunate company. Even
while quaffing the third draught of the Fountain of Youth, they were
almost awed by the expression of his mysterious visage.

But the next moment the exhilarating gush of young life shot through
their veins. They were now in the happy prime of youth. Age, with its
miserable train of cares, and sorrows, and diseases, was remembered
only as the trouble of a dream, from which they had joyously awoke.
The fresh gloss of the soul, so early lost, and without which the
world's successive scenes had been but a gallery of faded pictures,
again threw its enchantment over all their prospects. They felt like
new-created beings in a new-created universe.

"We are young! We are young!" they cried, exultingly.

Youth, like the extremity of age, had effaced the strongly marked
characteristics of middle life, and mutually assimilated them all.
They were a group of merry youngsters, almost maddened with the
exuberant frolicsomeness of their years. The most singular effect of
their gayety was an impulse to mock the infirmity and decrepitude of
which they had so lately been the victims. They laughed loudly at
their old-fashioned attire--the wide-skirted coats and flapped
waistcoats of the young men, and the ancient cap and gown of the
blooming girl. One limped across the floor like a gouty grandfather;
one set a pair of spectacles astride of his nose, and pretended to
pore over the black-letter pages of the book of magic; a third seated
himself in an arm-chair, and strove to imitate the venerable dignity
of Doctor Heidegger. Then all shouted mirthfully, and leaped about
the room. The Widow Wycherley--if so fresh a damsel could be called a
widow--tripped up to the doctor's chair with a mischievous merriment
in her rosy face.

"Doctor, you dear old soul," cried she, "get up and dance with me!"
And then the four young people laughed louder than ever, to think what
a queer figure the poor old doctor would cut.

"Pray excuse me," answered the doctor, quietly. "I am old and
rheumatic, and my dancing days were over long ago. But either of these
gay young gentlemen will be glad of so pretty a partner."

"Dance with me, Clara!" cried Colonel Killigrew.

"She promised me her hand fifty years ago!" exclaimed Mr. Medbourne.

They all gathered round her. One caught both her hands in his
passionate grasp--another threw his arm about her waist--the third
buried his hand among the curls that clustered beneath the widow's
cap. Blushing, panting, struggling, chiding, laughing, her warm breath
fanning each of their faces by turns, she strove to disengage herself,
yet still remained in their triple embrace. Never was there a livelier
picture of youthful rivalship, with bewitching beauty for the prize.
Yet, by a strange deception, owing to the duskiness of the chamber and
the antique dresses which they still wore, the tall mirror is said
to have reflected the figures of the three old, gray, withered
grand-sires, ridiculously contending for the skinny ugliness of a
shrivelled grandam.

But they were young: their burning passions proved them so. Inflamed
to madness by the coquetry of the girl-widow, who neither granted
nor quite withheld her favors, the three rivals began to interchange
threatening glances. Still keeping hold of the fair prize, they
grappled fiercely at one another's throats. As they struggled to and
fro, the table was overturned, and the vase dashed into a thousand
fragments. The precious Water of Youth flowed in a bright stream
across the floor, moistening the wings of a butterfly, which, grown
old in the decline of summer, had alighted there to die. The insect
fluttered lightly through the chamber, and settled on the snowy head
of Doctor Heidegger.

"Come, come, gentlemen!--come, Madame Wycherley!" exclaimed the
doctor, "I really must protest against this riot."

They stood still and shivered; for it seemed as if gray Time were
calling them back from their sunny youth, far down into the chill and
darksome vale of years. They looked at old Doctor Heidegger, who sat
in his carved arm-chair, holding the rose of half a century which he
had rescued from among the fragments of the shattered vase. At the
motion of his hand the rioters resumed their seats, the more readily
because their violent exertions had wearied them, youthful though they
were.

"My poor Sylvia's rose!" ejaculated Doctor Heidegger, holding it in
the light of the sunset clouds; "it appears to be fading again."

And so it was. Even while the party were looking at it the flower
continued to shrivel up, till it became as dry and fragile as when the
doctor had first thrown it into the vase. He shook off the few drops
of moisture which clung to its petals.

"I love it as well thus as in its dewy freshness," observed he,
pressing the withered rose to his withered lips. While he spoke, the
butterfly fluttered down from the doctor's snowy head, and fell upon
the floor.

His guests shivered again. A strange dullness, whether of the body or
spirit they could not tell, was creeping gradually over them all. They
gazed at one another, and fancied that each fleeting moment snatched
away a charm, and left a deepening furrow where none had been before.
Was it an illusion? Had the changes of a lifetime been crowded into so
brief a space, and were they now four aged people, sitting with their
old friend, Doctor Heidegger?

"Are we grown old again so soon?" cried they, dolefully.

In truth, they had. The Water of Youth possessed merely a virtue
more transient than that of wine. The delirium which it created had
effervesced away. Yes, they were old again! With a shuddering impulse,
that showed her a woman still, the widow clasped her skinny hands over
her face, and wished that the coffin lid were over it, since it could
be no longer beautiful.

"Yes, friends, ye are old again," said Doctor Heidegger; "and lo! the
Water of Youth is all lavished on the ground. Well, I bemoan it not;
for if the fountain gushed at my doorstep, I would not stoop to bathe
my lips in it--no, though its delirium were for years instead of
moments. Such is the lesson ye have taught me!"

But the doctor's four friends had taught no such lesson to themselves.
They resolved forthwith to make a pilgrimage to Florida, and quaff at
morning, noon, and night from the Fountain of Youth.




THE PURLOINED LETTER[1]

[Footnote 1: The pattern in method for all detective stories.]

_Edgar Allan Poe_ (1809-1849)


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 troisième_, No. 33 Rue Dunôt, 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 Rogêt.
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
forebore 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 the
fashion of calling everything "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 toward 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 any one."

"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 non-appearance 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 the
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, recognizes 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
the 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 the 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 rigidly 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 is 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 doggrel myself."

"Suppose you detail," said I, "the particulars of your search."

"Why, the fact is, we took our time, and we searched _everywhere_. 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 gluing--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 bedclothes, 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 research 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 afterward 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 re-examination, 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, drawling, 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
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 thunder-stricken.
For some minutes he remained speechless and motionless, looking
incredulously at my friend with open mouth, and eyes that seemed
starting from their sockets; then apparently recovering himself 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 pocket-book; 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 explanation.

"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 school-boy 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 school-boy 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'; he guesses even, and wins. Now this mode
of reasoning in the school-boy, 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 school-boy lies at the bottom of all the spurious
profundity which has been attributed to Rochefoucault, 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 fail 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
retarding human ingenuity, to which the Prefect, in the long routine
of his duty, has been accustomed? Do you not see he had 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_
out-of-the-way hole or corner suggested by the same tenor of thought
which would urge a man to secrete a letter in a gimlet-hole bored in a
chair-leg? And do you not see, also, that such _recherché_ 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
_recherché_ 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, when the reward is
of magnitude--the qualities in question have _never_ been known to
fail. 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. I mean to say, 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 fail to be aware of the ordinary political 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 political 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.

"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 whole apartment, while seemingly intent only
upon the conversation of my host.

"I paid especial attention to a large writing-table 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 soiled 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 uppermost 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 consistent 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 upon a topic which I knew
well had never failed to interest and excite him, I kept my attention
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 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 terrified mob. D---- rushed to
a casement, threw it open, and looked out. In the mean time I stepped
to the card-rack, took the letter, put it in my pocket, and replaced
it by a _facsimile_ (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 afterward 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
_facsimile_? 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 that _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 I left for him in the card-rack."

"How? Did you put anything 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 clew. 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'Atrée, este digne de Thyeste.'

They are to be found in Crébillon's _Atrée_."




RAB AND HIS FRIENDS

_Dr. John Brown_ (1810-1882)


Four-and-thirty years ago, Bob Ainslie and I were coming up Infirmary
Street from the High School, our heads together, and our arms
intertwisted as only lovers and boys know how or why.

When we got to the top of the street and turned north we espied a
crowd at the Tron Church. "A dog-fight!" shouted Bob, and was off; and
so was I, both of us all but praying that it might not be over before
we got up! And is not this boy-nature, and human nature, too? And
don't we all wish a house on fire not to be out before we see it? Dogs
like fighting; old Isaac says they "delight" in it, and for the best
of all reasons; and boys are not cruel because they like to see
the fight. They see three of the great cardinal virtues of dog or
man--courage, endurance, and skill--in intense action. This is very
different from a love of making dogs fight, and aggravating and making
gain by their pluck. A boy--be he ever so fond himself of fighting, if
he be a good boy, hates and despises all this, but he would have run
off with Bob and me fast enough; it is a natural, and a not wicked,
interest that all boys and men have in witnessing intense energy in
action.

Does any curious and finely ignorant woman wish to know how Bob's eye
at a glance announced a dog-fight to his brain? He did not--he could
not--see the dogs fighting; it was a flash of an inference, a rapid
induction. The crowd round a couple of dogs fighting is a crowd
masculine mainly, with an occasional active, compassionate woman
fluttering wildly round the outside and using her tongue and her hands
freely upon the men, as so many "brutes"; it is a crowd annular,
compact, and mobile; a crowd centripetal, having its eyes and its
heads all bent downward and inward to one common focus.

Well, Bob and I are up, and find it is not over; a small thoroughbred,
white bull-terrier is busy throttling a large shepherd's dog,
unaccustomed to war but not to be trifled with. They are hard at
it; the scientific little fellow doing his work in great style, his
pastoral enemy fighting wildly, but with the sharpest of teeth and a
great courage. Science and breeding, however, soon had their own; the
Game Chicken, as the premature Bob called him, working his way up,
took his final grip of poor Yarrow's throat--and he lay gasping and
done for. His master, a brown, handsome, big, young shepherd from
Tweedsmuir, would have liked to have knocked down any man, would
"drink up Esil, or eat a crocodile," for that part, if he had a
chance; it was no use kicking the little dog; that would only make him
hold the closer. Many were the means shouted out in mouthfuls of the
best possible ways of ending it. "Water!" but there was none near, and
many cried for it who might have got it from the well at Blackfriar's
Wynd. "Bite the tail!" and a large, vague, benevolent, middle-aged
man, more desirous than wise, with some struggle got the bushy end of
Yarrow's tail into his ample mouth and bit it with all his might. This
was more than enough for the much-enduring, much-perspiring shepherd,
who, with a gleam of joy over his broad visage, delivered a terrific
facer upon our large, vague, benevolent, middle-aged friend, who went
down like a shot.

Still the Chicken holds; death not far off. "Snuff! a pinch of snuff!"
observed a calm, highly dressed young buck with an eye-glass in his
eye. "Snuff, indeed!" growled the angry crowd, affronted and glaring.
"Snuff! a pinch of snuff!" again observes the buck, but with more
urgency; whereon were produced several open boxes, and from a mull
which may have been at Culloden he took a pinch, knelt down, and
presented it to the nose of the Chicken, The laws of physiology and of
snuff take their course; the Chicken sneezes, and Yarrow is free!

The young pastoral giant stalks off with Yarrow in his
arms--comforting him.

But the bull-terrier's blood is up, and his soul unsatisfied; he grips
the first dog he meets, and, discovering she is not a dog, in Homeric
phrase, he makes a brief sort of _amende_ and is off. The boys, with
Bob and me at their head, are after him: down Niddry Street he goes,
bent on mischief; up the Cowgate like an arrow--Bob and I, and our
small men; panting behind.

There, under the single arch of the South Bridge, is a huge mastiff,
sauntering down the middle of the causeway, as if with his hands in
his pockets; he is old, brindled, as big as a little Highland bull,
and has the Shakespearean dewlaps shaking as he goes.

The Chicken makes straight at him, and fastens on his throat. To our
astonishment, the great creature does nothing but stand still, hold
himself up, and roar--yes, roar, a long, serious, remonstrative roar.
How is this? Bob and I are up to them. _He is muzzled_! The bailies
had proclaimed a general muzzling, and his master, studying strength
and economy mainly, had encompassed his huge jaws in a home-made
apparatus constructed out of the leather of some ancient _breechin_.
His mouth was open as far as it could; his lips curled up in rage--a
sort of terrible grin; his teeth gleaming, ready, from out the
darkness; the strap across his mouth tense as a bowstring; his whole
frame stiff with indignation and surprise; his roar asking us all
round, "Did you ever see the like of this?" He looked a statue of
anger and astonishment done in Aberdeen granite.

We soon had a crowd; the Chicken held on. "A knife!" cried Bob; and a
cobbler gave him his knife; you know the kind of knife, worn obliquely
to a point and always keen. I put its edge to the tense leather; it
ran before it; and then!--one sudden jerk of that enormous head, a
sort of dirty mist about his mouth, no noise, and the bright and
fierce little fellow is dropped, limp and dead. A solemn pause; this
was more than any of us had bargained for. I turned the little fellow
over, and saw he was quite dead: the mastiff had taken him by the
small of the back like a rat and broken it.

He looked down at his victim appeased, ashamed, and amazed; sniffed
him all over, stared at him, and, taking a sudden thought, turned
round and trotted off. Bob took the dead dog up, and said, "John,
we'll bury him after tea." "Yes," said I, and was off after the
mastiff. He made up the Cowgate at a rapid swing; he had forgotten
some engagement. He turned up the Candlemaker Row, and stopped at the
Harrow Inn.

There was a carrier's cart ready to start, and a keen, thin,
impatient, black-a-vised little man, his hand at his gray horse's
head, looking about angrily for something. "Rab, ye thief!" said he,
aiming a kick at my great friend, who drew cringing up, and, avoiding
the heavy shoe with more agility than dignity and watching his
master's eye? slunk dismayed under the cart--his ears down, and as
much as he had of tail down, too.

What a man this must be--thought I--to whom my tremendous hero turns
tail! The carrier saw the muzzle hanging, cut and useless, from
his neck, and I eagerly told him the story, which Bob and I always
thought, and still think, Homer, or King David, or Sir Walter alone
were worthy to rehearse. The severe little man was mitigated, and
condescended to say, "Rab, ma man--puir Rabbie," whereupon the stump
of a tail rose up, the ears were cocked, the eye

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