Miss Lisa Romanese Name: _____________________________

Yanis Kacem Gr: ______________

A
DOZEN
CLASSICS

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 TABLE OF CONTENTS

1- The Boarded Window – by Ambrose Bierce (3-6)

2 - The Lottery Ticket – by Anton Chekhov (7-11)

3 - Bellflower – by Guy de Maupassant (12-15)

4 - The Coming Out of Maggie – by O. Henry (16-20)

5 - How the Leopard Got His Spots –

by Rudyard Kipling (21-24)

6 - Sredni Vashtar – by H.H Munro (25-28)

7 - The Sniper – by Liam O’Flaherty (29-31)

8 - The Tell Tale Heart– by Edgar Allan Poe (32-35)

9 - Luck – by Mark Twain (36-38)

10 - The Street That Got Mislaid –

by P. Waddington (39-43)

11- The Door – by E.B White (44-47)

12 - The Use of Force – by William Carlos Williams (48-51)

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The Boarded Window
by Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)
In 1830, only a few miles away from what is now the great city of Cincinnati, lay
an immense and almost unbroken forest. The whole region was sparsely settled by
people of the frontier—restless souls who no sooner had hewn fairly habitable
homes out of the wilderness and attained to that degree of prosperity which to-day
we should call indigence than impelled by some mysterious impulse of their nature
they abandoned all and pushed farther westward, to encounter new perils and
privations in the effort to regain the meagre comforts which they had voluntarily
renounced. Many of them had already forsaken that region for the remoter
settlements, but among those remaining was one who had been of those first
arriving. He lived alone in a house of logs surrounded on all sides by the great forest,
of whose gloom and silence he seemed a part, for no one had ever known him to
smile nor speak a needless word. His simple wants were supplied by the sale or
barter of skins of wild animals in the river town, for not a thing did he grow upon
the land which, if needful, he might have claimed by right of undisturbed possession.
There were evidences of "improvement"—a few acres of ground immediately about
the house had once been cleared of its
trees, the decayed stumps of which
were half concealed by the new
growth that had been suffered to repair
the ravage wrought by the ax.
Apparently the man's zeal for
agriculture had burned with a failing
flame, expiring in penitential ashes.

The little log house, with its chimney of sticks, its roof of warping clapboards
weighted with traversing poles and its "chinking" of clay, had a single door and,
directly opposite, a window. The latter, however, was boarded up—nobody could
remember a time when it was not. And none knew why it was so closed; certainly
not because of the occupant's dislike of light and air, for on those rare occasions
when a hunter had passed that lonely spot the recluse had commonly been seen
sunning himself on his doorstep if heaven had provided sunshine for his need. I
fancy there are few persons living to-day who ever knew the secret of that window,
but I am one, as you shall see.

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The man's name was said to be Murlock. He was apparently seventy years old,
actually about fifty. Something besides years had had a hand in his aging. His hair
and long, full beard were white, his gray, lustreless eyes sunken, his face singularly
seamed with wrinkles which appeared to belong to two intersecting systems. In
figure he was tall and spare, with a stoop of the shoulders—a burden bearer. I never
saw him; these particulars I learned from my grandfather, from whom also I got the
man's story when I was a lad. He had known him when living near by in that early
day.

One day Murlock was found in his cabin, dead. It was not a time and place for
coroners and newspapers, and I suppose it was agreed that he had died from natural
causes or I should have been told, and should remember. I know only that with what
was probably a sense of the fitness of things the body was buried near the cabin,
alongside the grave of his wife, who had preceded him by so many years that local
tradition had retained hardly a hint of her existence. That closes the final chapter of
this true story—excepting, indeed, the circumstance that many years afterward, in
company with an equally intrepid spirit, I penetrated to the place and ventured near
enough to the ruined cabin to throw a stone against it, and ran away to avoid the
ghost which every well-informed boy thereabout knew haunted the spot. But there
is an earlier chapter—that supplied by my grandfather.

When Murlock built his cabin and began laying sturdily about with his ax to hew
out a farm—the rifle, meanwhile, his means of support—he was young, strong and
full of hope. In that eastern country whence he came he had married, as was the
fashion, a young woman in all ways worthy of his honest devotion, who shared the
dangers and privations of his lot with a willing spirit and light heart. There is no
known record of her name; of her charms of mind and person tradition is silent and
the doubter is at liberty to entertain his doubt; but God forbid that I should share it!
Of their affection and happiness there is abundant assurance in every added day of
the man's widowed life; for what but the magnetism of a blessed memory could have
chained that venturesome spirit to a lot like that?

One day Murlock returned from gunning in a distant part of the forest to find his
wife prostrate with fever, and delirious. There was no physician within miles, no
neighbor; nor was she in a condition to be left, to summon help. So he set about the
task of nursing her back to health, but at the end of the third day she fell into
unconsciousness and so passed away, apparently, with never a gleam of returning
reason.

From what we know of a nature like his we may venture to sketch in some of the
details of the outline picture drawn by my grandfather. When convinced that she
was dead, Murlock had sense enough to remember that the dead must be prepared
for burial. In performance of this sacred duty he blundered now and again, did
certain things incorrectly, and others which he did correctly were done over and

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over. His occasional failures to accomplish some simple and ordinary act filled him
with astonishment, like that of a drunken man who wonders at the suspension of
familiar natural laws. He was surprised, too, that he did not weep—surprised and a
little ashamed; surely it is unkind not to weep for the dead. "To-morrow," he said
aloud, "I shall have to make the coffin and dig the grave; and then I shall miss her,
when she is no longer in sight; but now—she is dead, of course, but it is all right—
it must be all right, somehow. Things cannot be so bad as they seem."

He stood over the body in the fading light, adjusting the hair and putting the
finishing touches to the simple toilet, doing all mechanically, with soulless care.
And still through his consciousness ran an undersense of conviction that all was
right—that he should have her again as before, and everything explained. He had
had no experience in grief; his capacity had not been enlarged by use. His heart
could not contain it all, nor his imagination rightly conceive it. He did not know he
was so hard struck; that knowledge would come later, and never go. Grief is an artist
of powers as various as the instruments upon which he plays his dirges for the dead,
evoking from some the sharpest, shrillest notes, from others the low, grave chords
that throb recurrent like the slow beating of a distant drum. Some natures it startles;
some it stupefies. To one it comes like the stroke of an arrow, stinging all the
sensibilities to a keener life; to another as the blow of a bludgeon, which in crushing
benumbs. We may conceive Murlock to have been that way affected, for (and here
we are upon surer ground than that of conjecture) no sooner had he finished his
pious work than, sinking into a chair by the side of the table upon which the body
lay, and noting how white the profile showed in the deepening gloom, he laid his
arms upon the table's edge, and dropped his face into them, tearless yet and
unutterably weary. At that moment came in through the open window a long,
wailing sound like the cry of a lost child in the far deeps of the darkening wood! But
the man did not move. Again, and nearer than before, sounded that unearthly cry
upon his failing sense. Perhaps it was a wild beast; perhaps it was a dream. For
Murlock was asleep.

Some hours later, as it afterward appeared, this unfaithful watcher awoke and lifting
his head from his arms intently listened—he knew not why. There in the black
darkness by the side of the dead, recalling all without a shock, he strained his eyes
to see—he knew not what. His senses were all alert, his breath was suspended, his
blood had stilled its tides as if to assist the silence. Who—what had waked him, and
where was it?

Suddenly the table shook beneath his arms, and at the same moment he heard, or
fancied that he heard, a light, soft step—another—sounds as of bare feet upon the
floor!

He was terrified beyond the power to cry out or move. Perforce he waited—waited
there in the darkness through seeming centuries of such dread as one may know, yet

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live to tell. He tried vainly to speak the dead woman's name, vainly to stretch forth
his hand across the table to learn if she were there. His throat was powerless, his
arms and hands were like lead. Then occurred something most frightful. Some heavy
body seemed hurled against the table with an impetus that pushed it against his
breast so sharply as nearly to overthrow him, and at the same instant he heard and
felt the fall of something upon the floor with so violent a thump that the whole house
was shaken by the impact. A scuffling ensued, and a confusion of sounds impossible
to describe. Murlock had risen to his feet. Fear had by excess forfeited control of his
faculties. He flung his hands upon the table. Nothing was there!

There is a point at which terror may turn to madness; and madness incites to action.
With no definite intent, from no motive but the wayward impulse of a madman,
Murlock sprang to the wall, with a little groping seized his loaded rifle, and without
aim discharged it. By the flash which lit up the room with a vivid illumination, he
saw an enormous panther dragging the dead woman toward the window, its teeth
fixed in her throat! Then there were darkness blacker than before, and silence; and
when he returned to consciousness the sun was high and the wood vocal with songs
of birds.

The body lay near the window, where the beast had left it when frightened away by
the flash and report of the rifle. The clothing was deranged, the long hair in disorder,
the limbs lay anyhow. From the throat, dreadfully lacerated, had issued a pool of
blood not yet entirely coagulated. The ribbon with which he had bound the wrists
was broken; the hands were tightly clenched. Between the teeth was a fragment of
the animal's ear.

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The Lottery Ticket
by Anton Chekhov (1860-1904)
Ivan Dmitritch, a middle-class man who lived with his family on an income of
twelve hundred a year and was very well satisfied with his lot, sat down on the sofa
after supper and began reading the newspaper.

'I forgot to look at the newspaper today,' his wife said to him as she cleared the table.
'Look and see whether the list of drawings is there.'

'Yes, it is,' said Ivan Dmitritch; 'but hasn't your ticket lapsed?'

'No; I took the interest on Tuesday.'

'What is the number?'

'Series 9,499, number 26.'

'All right . . . we will look . . . 9,499 and 26.'

Ivan Dmitritch had no faith in lottery luck, and would not, as a rule, have consented
to look at the lists of winning numbers, but now, as he had nothing else to do and as
the newspaper was before his eyes, he passed his finger downwards along the
column of numbers. And immediately, as though in mockery of his scepticism, no
further than the second line from the top, his eye was caught by the figure 9,499!
Unable to believe his eyes, he hurriedly dropped the paper on his knees without
looking to see the number of the ticket, and, just as though some one had given him
a douche of cold water, he felt an agreeable chill in the pit of the stomach; tingling
and terrible and sweet!

'Masha, 9,499 is there!' he said in a hollow voice.

His wife looked at his astonished and panicstricken face, and realized that he was
not joking.

'9,499?' she asked, turning pale and dropping the folded tablecloth on the table.

'Yes, yes . . . it really is there!'

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'And the number of the ticket?'

'Oh yes! There's the number of the ticket too. But stay . . . wait! No, I say! Anyway,
the number of our series is there! Anyway, you understand....'

Looking at his wife, Ivan Dmitritch gave a broad, senseless smile, like a baby when
a bright object is shown it. His wife smiled too; it was as pleasant to her as to him
that he only mentioned the series, and did not try to find out the number of the
winning ticket. To torment and tantalize oneself with hopes of possible fortune is so
sweet, so thrilling!

'It is our series,' said Ivan Dmitritch, after a long silence. 'So there is a probability
that we have won. It's only a probability, but there it is!'

'Well, now look!'

'Wait a little. We have plenty of time to be disappointed. It's on the second line from
the top, so the prize is seventy-five thousand. That's not money, but power, capital!
And in a minute I shall look at the list, and there--26! Eh? I say, what if we really
have won?'

The husband and wife began laughing and staring at one another in silence. The
possibility of winning bewildered them; they could not have said, could not have
dreamed, what they both needed that seventy-five thousand for, what they would
buy, where they would go. They thought only of the figures 9,499 and 75,000 and
pictured them in their imagination, while somehow they could not think of the
happiness itself which was so possible.

Ivan Dmitritch, holding the paper in his hand, walked several times from corner to
corner, and only when he had recovered from the first impression began dreaming
a little.

'And if we have won,' he said--'why, it will be a new life, it will be a transformation!

The ticket is yours, but if it were mine I should, first of all, of course, spend twenty-
five thousand on real property in the shape of an estate; ten thousand on immediate
expenses, new furnishing . . . travelling . . . paying debts, and so on. . . . The other
forty thousand I would put in the bank and get interest on it.'

'Yes, an estate, that would be nice,' said his wife, sitting down and dropping her
hands in her lap.

'Somewhere in the Tula or Oryol provinces. . . . In the first place we shouldn't need
a summer villa, and besides, it would always bring in an income.'

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And pictures came crowding on his imagination, each more gracious and poetical
than the last. And in all these pictures he saw himself well-fed, serene, healthy, felt
warm, even hot! Here, after eating a summer soup, cold as ice, he lay on his back
on the burning sand close to a stream or in the garden under a lime-tree. . . . It is hot.
. . . His little boy and girl are crawling about near him, digging in the sand or
catching ladybirds in the grass. He dozes sweetly, thinking of nothing, and feeling
all over that he need not go to the office today, tomorrow, or the day after. Or, tired
of lying still, he goes to the hayfield, or to the forest for mushrooms, or watches the
peasants catching fish with a net. When the sun sets he takes a towel and soap and
saunters to the bathing shed, where he undresses at his leisure, slowly rubs his bare
chest with his hands, and goes into the water. And in the water, near the opaque
soapy circles, little fish flit to and fro and green water-weeds nod their heads. After
bathing there is tea with cream and milk rolls. . . . In the evening a walk or vint with
the neighbors.

'Yes, it would be nice to buy an estate,' said his wife, also dreaming, and from her
face it was evident that she was enchanted by her thoughts.

Ivan Dmitritch pictured to himself autumn with its rains, its cold evenings, and its
St. Martin's summer. At that season he would have to take longer walks about the
garden and beside the river, so as to get thoroughly chilled, and then drink a big
glass of vodka and eat a salted mushroom or a soused cucumber, and then--drink
another. . . . The children would come running from the kitchen-garden, bringing a
carrot and a radish smelling of fresh earth. . . . And then, he would lie stretched full
length on the sofa, and in leisurely fashion turn over the pages of some illustrated
magazine, or, covering his face with it and unbuttoning his waistcoat, give himself
up to slumber.

The St. Martin's summer is followed by cloudy, gloomy weather. It rains day and
night, the bare trees weep, the wind is damp and cold. The dogs, the horses, the
fowls--all are wet, depressed, downcast. There is nowhere to walk; one can't go out
for days together; one has to pace up and down the room, looking despondently at
the grey window. It is dreary!

Ivan Dmitritch stopped and looked at his wife.

'I should go abroad, you know, Masha,' he said.

And he began thinking how nice it would be in late autumn to go abroad somewhere
to the South of France . . . to Italy . . . to India!

'I should certainly go abroad too,' his wife said. 'But look at the number of the ticket!'

'Wait, wait! . . .'

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He walked about the room and went on thinking. It occurred to him: what if his wife
really did go abroad? It is pleasant to travel alone, or in the society of light, careless
women who live in the present, and not such as think and talk all the journey about
nothing but their children, sigh, and tremble with dismay over every farthing. Ivan
Dmitritch imagined his wife in the train with a multitude of parcels, baskets, and
bags; she would be sighing over something, complaining that the train made her
head ache, that she had spent so much money. . . . At the stations he would
continually be having to run for boiling water, bread and butter. . . . She wouldn't
have dinner because of its being too dear. . . .

'She would begrudge me every farthing,' he thought, with a glance at his wife. 'The
lottery ticket is hers, not mine! Besides, what is the use of her going abroad? What
does she want there? She would shut herself up in the hotel, and not let me out of
her sight. . . . I know!'

And for the first time in his life his mind dwelt on the fact that his wife had grown
elderly and plain, and that she was saturated through and through with the smell of
cooking, while he was still young, fresh, and healthy, and might well have got
married again.

'Of course, all that is silly nonsense,' he thought; 'but . . . why should she go abroad?
What would she make of it? And yet she would go, of course. . . . I can fancy. . . .
In reality it is all one to her, whether it is Naples or Klin. She would only be in my
way. I should be dependent upon her. I can fancy how, like a regular woman, she
will lock the money up as soon as she gets it. . . . She will look after her relations
and grudge me every farthing.'

Ivan Dmitritch thought of her relations. All those wretched brothers and sisters and
aunts and uncles would come crawling about as soon as they heard of the winning
ticket, would begin whining like beggars, and fawning upon them with oily,
hypocritical smiles. Wretched, detestable people! If they were given anything, they
would ask for more; while if they were refused, they would swear at them, slander
them, and wish them every kind of misfortune.

Ivan Dmitritch remembered his own relations, and their faces, at which he had
looked impartially in the past, struck him now as repulsive and hateful.

'They are such reptiles!' he thought.

And his wife's face, too, struck him as repulsive and hateful. Anger surged up in his
heart against her, and he thought malignantly:

'She knows nothing about money, and so she is stingy. If she won it she would give
me a hundred roubles, and put the rest away under lock and key.'

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And he looked at his wife, not with a smile now, but with hatred. She glanced at
him too, and also with hatred and anger. She had her own daydreams, her own plans,
her own reflections; she understood perfectly well what her husband's dreams were.
She knew who would be the first to try to grab her winnings.

'It's very nice making daydreams at other people's expense!' is what her eyes
expressed. 'No, don't you dare!'

Her husband understood her look; hatred began stirring again in his breast, and in
order to annoy his wife he glanced quickly, to spite her at the fourth page on the
newspaper and read out triumphantly:

'Series 9,499, number 46! Not 26!'

Hatred and hope both disappeared at once, and it began immediately to seem to Ivan
Dmitritch and his wife that their rooms were dark and small and low-pitched, that
the supper they had been eating was not doing them good, but Lying heavy on their
stomachs, that the evenings were long and wearisome. . . .

'What the devil's the meaning of it?' said Ivan Dmitritch, beginning to be ill-
humored. 'Wherever one steps there are bits of paper under one's feet, crumbs,
husks. The rooms are never swept! One is simply forced to go out. Damnation take
my soul entirely! I shall go and hang myself on the first aspen-tree!'

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Bellflower
by Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893)

How strange those old recollections are which haunt us, without our being able to
get rid of them!
This one is so very old that I cannot understand how it has clung so vividly and
tenaciously to my memory. Since then I have seen so many sinister things, which
were either affecting or terrible, that I am astonished at not being able to pass a
single day without the face of Mother Bellflower recurring to my mind’s eye, just
as I knew her formerly, now so long ago, when I was ten or twelve years old.
She was an old seamstress, who came to my parents house once a week, every
Thursday to mend the linen. My parents lived in one of those country houses
called châteaux, and which are merely old houses with pointed roofs, which are
surrounded by three or four farms.
The village, a large village, almost a small market town, was a few hundred
yards off, and lay closely round the church, a red brick church, which had become
black with age.
Well, every Thursday Mother Bellflower came between half-past six and seven
in the morning, and went immediately into the linen-room and began to work. She
was a tall, thin, bearded or rather hairy woman, for she had a beard all over her face,
a surprising, an unexpected beard, growing in tufts, in curly bunches, which looked
as if they had been sown by a madman over that great face of a gendarme in
petticoats. She had them on her nose, under her nose, round her nose, on her chin,
on her cheeks; and her eyebrows, which were extraordinarily thick and long, and
quite gray, bushy and bristling, looked exactly like a pair of moustaches stuck on
there by mistake.
She limped, but not like lame people generally do, but like a ship at anchor.
When she planted her great, bony, swerving body on her sound leg, she seemed to
be preparing to mount some enormous wave, and then suddenly she dipped as if to
disappear in an abyss, and buried herself in the ground. Her walk reminded one of
a storm, as she balanced herself at the same time, and her head, which was always
covered with an enormous white cap, whose ribbons fluttered down her back,
seemed to traverse the horizon from North to South and from South to North, at
each of her movements.
I adored Mother Bellflower. As soon as I was up I went into the linen-room,
where I found her installed at work, with a foot-warmer under her feet. As soon as
I arrived, she made me take the foot-warmer and sit upon it, so that I might not catch
cold in that large, chilly room under the roof.
She told me stories, while mending the linen with her long crooked nimble
fingers; her eyes behind her magnifying spectacles, for age had impaired her sight,
appeared enormous to me, strangely profound, double.

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 She had, as far as I can remember,
the things which she told me and by
which my childish heart was moved, the
large heart of a poor woman. She told
me what had happened in the village,
how a cow had escaped from the
cowhouse and had been found the next
morning in front of Prosper Malet’s
mill, looking at the sails turning, or
about a hen’s egg, which had been
found in the church belfry without
anyone being able to understand what
creature had been there to lay it, or the story of Jean–Jean Pila’s dog, who had been
ten leagues to bring back his master’s breeches, which a tramp had stolen while they
were hanging up to dry out of doors, after he had been in the rain. She told me these
simple adventures in such a manner, that in my mind they assumed the proportions
of never-to-be-forgotten dramas, of grand and mysterious poems; and the ingenious
stories invented by the poets which my mother told me in the evening had none of
the flavor, none of the fullness nor of the vigor of the peasant woman’s narratives.
Well, one Thursday, when I had spent all the morning in listening to Mother
Clochette, I wanted to go upstairs to her again during the day after picking hazelnuts
with the manservant in the wood behind the farm. I remember it all as clearly as
what happened only yesterday.
On opening the door of the linen-room, I saw the old seamstress lying on the
ground by the side of her chair, with her face to the ground and her arms stretched
out, but still holding her needle in one hand and one of my shirts in the other. One
of her legs in a blue stocking, the longer one, no doubt, was extended under her
chair, and her spectacles glistened against the wall, as they had rolled away from
her.
I ran away uttering shrill cries. They all came running, and in a few minutes I
was told that Mother Clochette was dead.
I cannot describe the profound, poignant, terrible emotion which stirred my
childish heart. I went slowly down into the drawing-room and went and hid myself
in a dark corner, in the depths of a great, old armchair, where I knelt and wept. I
remained there for a long time no doubt, for night came on. Suddenly somebody
came in with a lamp, without seeing me, however, and I heard my father and mother
talking with the medical man, whose voice I recognized.
He had been sent for immediately, and he was explaining the causes of the
accident, of which I understood nothing, however. Then he sat down and had a glass
of liquor and biscuit.
He went on talking, and what he then said will remain engraved on my mind
until I die! I think that I can give the exact words which he used.

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 “Ah!” said he, “the poor woman! She broke her leg the day of my arrival here,
and I had only not even had time to wash my hands after getting off the diligence
before I was sent for in all haste, for it was a bad case, very bad.
“She was seventeen, and a pretty girl, very pretty! Would anyone believe it? I
have never told her story before, and nobody except myself and one other person,
who is no longer living in this part of the country, ever knew it. Now that she is
dead, I may be less discreet.
“Just then a young assistant teacher came to live in the village; he was good-
looking and had the bearing of a sub-officer. All the girls ran after him, and he acted
the disdainful, and besides that, he was very much afraid of his superior, the
schoolmaster, old Grabu, who occasionally got out of bed the wrong foot first.
“Old Grabu already employed pretty Hortense, who has just died here, and who
was afterwards nicknamed Clochette. The assistant master singled out the pretty
young girl, who was no doubt flattered at being chosen by this impregnable
conqueror; at any rate, she fell in love with him, and he succeeded in persuading her
to give him a first meeting in the hay-loft behind the school, at night, after she had
done her day’s sewing.
“She pretended to go home, but instead of going downstairs when she left the
Grabu’s, she went upstairs and hid among the hay, to wait for her lover. He soon
joined her, and he was beginning to say pretty things to her, when the door of the
hay-loft opened and the schoolmaster appeared, and asked: ‘What are you doing up
there, Sigisbert?’ Feeling sure that he would be caught, the young schoolmaster lost
his presence of mind and replied stupidly: ‘I came up here to rest a little among the
bundles of hay, Monsieur Grabu.’
“The loft was very large and absolutely dark, and Sigisbert pushed the
frightened girl to the further end and said: ‘Go there and hide yourself. I shall lose
my situation, so get away and hide yourself.’
“When the schoolmaster heard the whispering, he continued: ‘Why, you are not
by yourself?’ ‘Yes, I am, Monsieur Grabu!’ ‘But you are not, for you are talking.’
‘I swear I am, Monsieur Grabu.’ ‘I will soon find out,’ the old man replied, and
double-locking the door, he went down to get a light.
“Then the young man, who was a coward such as one frequently meets, lost his
head, and he repeated, having grown furious all of a sudden: ‘Hide yourself, so that
he may not find you. You will deprive me of my bread for my whole life; you will
ruin my whole career. . . . Do hide yourself!’ They could hear the key turning in the
lock again, and Hortense ran to the window, which looked out onto the street,
opened it quickly, and then in a low and determined voice she said: ‘You will come
and pick me up when he is gone,’ and she jumped out.
“Old Grabu found nobody, and went down again in great surprise, and a quarter
of an hour later Monsieur Sigisbert came to me and related his adventure. The girl
had remained at the foot of the wall unable to get up, as she had fallen from the
second story, and I went with him to fetch her. It was raining in torrents, and I
brought the unfortunate girl home with me, for the right leg was broken in three

14
places, and the bones had come out through the flesh. She did not complain, and
merely said, with admirable resignation: ‘I am punished, well punished!’
“I sent for assistance and for the workgirl’s friends and told them a made-up
story of a runaway carriage which had knocked her down and lamed her, outside
my door. They believed me, and the gendarmes for a whole month tried in vain to
find the author of this accident.
“That is all! And I say that this woman was a heroine, and belonged to the race
of those who accomplished the grandest deeds in history.
“That was her only love affair, and she died a virgin. She was a martyr, a noble
soul, a sublimely devoted woman! And if I did not absolutely admire her, I should
not have told you this story, which I would never tell anyone during her life: you
understand why.”
The doctor ceased; Mamma cried and Papa said some words which I did not
catch; then they left the room, and I remained on my knees in the armchair and
sobbed, while I heard a strange noise of heavy footsteps and something knocking
against the side of the staircase. They were carrying away Clochette’s body.

15
The Coming Out of Maggie
by O. Henry (1862-1910)
Every Saturday night the Clover Leaf Social Club
gave a hop in the hall of the Give and Take Athletic
Association on the East Side. In order to attend one of
these dances you must be a member of the Give and
Take—or, if you belong to the division that starts off
with the right foot in waltzing, you must work in
Rhinegold's paper–box factory. Still, any Clover Leaf
was privileged to escort or be escorted by an outsider
to a single dance. But mostly each Give and Take
brought the paper–box girl that he affected; and few
strangers could boast of having shaken a foot at the
regular hops.
Maggie Toole, on account of her dull eyes, broad
mouth and left–handed style of footwork in the two–
step, went to the dances with Anna McCarty and her "fellow." Anna and Maggie
worked side by side in the factory, and were the greatest chums ever. So Anna
always made Jimmy Burns take her by Maggie's house every Saturday night so that
her friend could go to the dance with them.

The Give and Take Athletic Association lived up to its name. The hall of the
association in Orchard street was fitted out with muscle–making inventions. With
the fibres thus builded up the members were wont to engage the police and rival
social and athletic organisations in joyous combat. Between these more serious
occupations the Saturday night hop with the paper–box factory girls came as a
refining influence and as an efficient screen. For sometimes the tip went 'round, and
if you were among the elect that tiptoed up the dark back stairway you might see as
neat and satisfying a little welter–weight affair to a finish as ever happened inside
the ropes.
On Saturdays Rhinegold's paper–box factory closed at 3 P. M. On one such
afternoon Anna and Maggie walked homeward together. At Maggie's door Anna
said, as usual: "Be ready at seven, sharp, Mag; and Jimmy and me'll come by for
you."
But what was this? Instead of the customary humble and grateful thanks from the
non–escorted one there was to be perceived a high–poised head, a prideful dimpling
at the corners of a broad mouth, and almost a sparkle in a dull brown eye.
"Thanks, Anna," said Maggie; "but you and Jimmy needn't bother to–night. I've a
gentleman friend that's coming 'round to escort me to the hop."
The comely Anna pounced upon her friend, shook her, chided and beseeched her.
Maggie Toole catch a fellow! Plain, dear, loyal, unattractive Maggie, so sweet as a
chum, so unsought for a two–step or a moonlit bench in the little park. How was it?
When did it happen? Who was it?

16
"You'll see to–night," said Maggie, flushed with the wine of the first grapes she had
gathered in Cupid's vineyard. "He's swell all right. He's two inches taller than
Jimmy, and an up–to–date dresser. I'll introduce him, Anna, just as soon as we get
to the hall."
Anna and Jimmy were among the first Clover Leafs to arrive that evening. Anna's
eyes were brightly fixed upon the door of the hall to catch the first glimpse of her
friend's "catch."
At 8:30 Miss Toole swept into the hall with her escort. Quickly her triumphant eye
discovered her chum under the wing of her faithful Jimmy.
"Oh, gee!" cried Anna, "Mag ain't made a hit—oh, no! Swell fellow? well, I guess!
Style? Look at 'um."
"Go as far as you like," said Jimmy, with sandpaper in his voice. "Cop him out if
you want him. These new guys always win out with the push. Don't mind me. He
don't squeeze all the limes, I guess. Huh!"
"Shut up, Jimmy. You know what I mean. I'm glad for Mag. First fellow she ever
had. Oh, here they come."
Across the floor Maggie sailed like a coquettish yacht convoyed by a stately cruiser.
And truly, her companion justified the encomiums of the faithful chum. He stood
two inches taller than the average Give and Take athlete; his dark hair curled; his
eyes and his teeth flashed whenever he bestowed his frequent smiles. The young
men of the Clover Leaf Club pinned not their faith to the graces of person as much
as they did to its prowess, its achievements in hand–to–hand conflicts, and its
preservation from the legal duress that constantly menaced it. The member of the
association who would bind a paper–box maiden to his conquering chariot scorned
to employ Beau Brummel airs. They were not considered honourable methods of
warfare. The swelling biceps, the coat straining at its buttons over the chest, the air
of conscious conviction of the supereminence of the male in the cosmogony of
creation, even a calm display of bow legs as subduing and enchanting agents in the
gentle tourneys of Cupid—these were the approved arms and ammunition of the
Clover Leaf gallants. They viewed, then, genuflexions and alluring poses of this
visitor with their chins at a new angle.
"A friend of mine, Mr. Terry O'Sullivan," was Maggie's formula of introduction.
She led him around the room, presenting him to each new–arriving Clover Leaf.
Almost was she pretty now, with the unique luminosity in her eyes that comes to a
girl with her first suitor and a kitten with its first mouse.
"Maggie Toole's got a fellow at last," was the word that went round among the
paper–box girls. "Pipe Mag's floor–walker"—thus the Give and Takes expressed
their indifferent contempt.
Usually at the weekly hops Maggie kept a spot on the wall warm with her back. She
felt and showed so much gratitude whenever a self–sacrificing partner invited her
to dance that his pleasure was cheapened and diminished. She had even grown used
to noticing Anna joggle the reluctant Jimmy with her elbow as a signal for him to
invite her chum to walk over his feet through a two–step.

17
But to–night the pumpkin had turned to a coach and six. Terry O'Sullivan was a
victorious Prince Charming, and Maggie Toole winged her first butterfly flight. And
though our tropes of fairyland be mixed with those of entomology they shall not
spill one drop of ambrosia from the rose–crowned melody of Maggie's one perfect
night.
The girls besieged her for introductions to her "fellow." The Clover Leaf young
men, after two years of blindness, suddenly perceived charms in Miss Toole. They
flexed their compelling muscles before her and bespoke her for the dance.
Thus she scored; but to Terry O'Sullivan the honours of the evening fell thick and
fast. He shook his curls; he smiled and went easily through the seven motions for
acquiring grace in your own room before an open window ten minutes each day. He
danced like a faun; he introduced manner and style and atmosphere; his words came
trippingly upon his tongue, and—he waltzed twice in succession with the paper–
box girl that Dempsey Donovan brought.
Dempsey was the leader of the association. He wore a dress suit, and could chin the
bar twice with one hand. He was one of "Big Mike" O'Sullivan's lieutenants, and
was never troubled by trouble. No cop dared to arrest him. Whenever be broke a
pushcart man's head or shot a member of the Heinrick B. Sweeney Outing and
Literary Association in the kneecap, an officer would drop around and say:
"The Cap'n 'd like to see ye a few minutes round to the office whin ye have time,
Dempsey, me boy."
But there would be sundry gentlemen there with large gold fob chains and black
cigars; and somebody would tell a funny story, and then Dempsey would go back
and work half an hour with the six–pound dumbbells. So, doing a tight–rope act on
a wire stretched across Niagara was a safe terpsichorean performance compared
with waltzing twice with Dempsey Donovan's paper–box girl. At 10 o'clock the jolly
round face of "Big Mike" O'Sullivan shone at the door for five minutes upon the
scene. He always looked in for five minutes, smiled at the girls and handed out real
perfectos to the delighted boys.
Dempsey Donovan was at his elbow instantly, talking rapidly. "Big Mike" looked
carefully at the dancers, smiled, shook his head and departed.
The music stopped. The dancers scattered to the chairs along the walls. Terry
O'Sullivan, with his entrancing bow, relinquished a pretty girl in blue to her partner
and started back to find Maggie. Dempsey intercepted him in the middle of the floor.
Some fine instinct that Rome must have bequeathed to us caused nearly every one
to turn and look at them—there was a subtle feeling that two gladiators had met in
the arena. Two or three Give and Takes with tight coat sleeves drew nearer.
"One moment, Mr. O'Sullivan," said Dempsey. "I hope you're enjoying yourself.
Where did you say you live?"
The two gladiators were well matched. Dempsey had, perhaps, ten pounds of weight
to give away. The O'Sullivan had breadth with quickness. Dempsey had a glacial
eye, a dominating slit of a mouth, an indestructible jaw, a complexion like a belle's
and the coolness of a champion. The visitor showed more fire in his contempt and
less control over his conspicuous sneer. They were enemies by the law written when

18
the rocks were molten. They were each too splendid, too mighty, too incomparable
to divide pre–eminence. One only must survive.
"I live on Grand," said O'Sullivan, insolently; "and no trouble to find me at home.
Where do you live?"
Dempsey ignored the question.
"You say your name's O'Sullivan," he went on. "Well, 'Big Mike' says he never saw
you before."
"Lots of things he never saw," said the favourite of the hop.
"As a rule," went on Dempsey, huskily sweet, "O'Sullivans in this district know one
another. You escorted one of our lady members here, and we want a chance to make
good. If you've got a family tree let's see a few historical O'Sullivan buds come out
on it. Or do you want us to dig it out of you by the roots?"
"Suppose you mind your own business," suggested O'Sullivan, blandly.
Dempsey's eye brightened. He held up an inspired forefinger as though a brilliant
idea had struck him.
"I've got it now," he said cordially. "It was just a little mistake. You ain't no
O'Sullivan. You are a ring–tailed monkey. Excuse us for not recognising you at
first."
O'Sullivan's eye flashed. He made a quick movement, but Andy Geoghan was ready
and caught his arm.
Dempsey nodded at Andy and William McMahan, the secretary of the club, and
walked rapidly toward a door at the rear of the hall. Two other members of the Give
and Take Association swiftly joined the little group. Terry O'Sullivan was now in
the hands of the Board of Rules and Social Referees. They spoke to him briefly and
softly, and conducted him out through the same door at the rear.
This movement on the part of the Clover Leaf members requires a word of
elucidation. Back of the association hall was a smaller room rented by the club. In
this room personal difficulties that arose on the ballroom floor were settled, man to
man, with the weapons of nature, under the supervision of the board. No lady could
say that she had witnessed a fight at a Clover Leaf hop in several years. Its gentlemen
members guaranteed that.
So easily and smoothly had Dempsey and the board done their preliminary work
that many in the hall had not noticed the checking of the fascinating O'Sullivan's
social triumph. Among these was Maggie. She looked about for her escort.
"Smoke up!" said Rose Cassidy. "Wasn't you on? Demps Donovan picked a scrap
with your Lizzie–boy, and they've waltzed out to the slaughter room with him.
How's my hair look done up this way, Mag?"
Maggie laid a hand on the bosom of her cheesecloth waist.
"Gone to fight with Dempsey!" she said, breathlessly. "They've got to be stopped.
Dempsey Donovan can't fight him. Why, he'll—he'll kill him!"
"Ah, what do you care?" said Rosa. "Don't some of 'em fight every hop?"
But Maggie was off, darting her zig–zag way through the maze of dancers. She burst
through the rear door into the dark hall and then threw her solid shoulder against the
door of the room of single combat. It gave way, and in the instant that she entered

19
her eye caught the scene—the Board standing about with open watches; Dempsey
Donovan in his shirt sleeves dancing, light–footed, with the wary grace of the
modern pugilist, within easy reach of his adversary; Terry O'Sullivan standing with
arms folded and a murderous look in his dark eyes. And without slacking the speed
of her entrance she leaped forward with a scream—leaped in time to catch and hang
upon the arm of O'Sullivan that was suddenly uplifted, and to whisk from it the long,
bright stiletto that he had drawn from his bosom.
The knife fell and rang upon the floor. Cold steel drawn in the rooms of the Give
and Take Association! Such a thing had never happened before. Every one stood
motionless for a minute. Andy Geoghan kicked the stiletto with the toe of his shoe
curiously, like an antiquarian who has come upon some ancient weapon unknown
to his learning.
And then O'Sullivan hissed something unintelligible between his teeth. Dempsey
and the board exchanged looks. And then Dempsey looked at O'Sullivan without
anger, as one looks at a stray dog, and nodded his head in the direction of the door.
"The back stairs, Giuseppi," he said, briefly. "Somebody'll pitch your hat down after
you."
Maggie walked up to Dempsey Donovan. There was a brilliant spot of red in her
cheeks, down which slow tears were running. But she looked him bravely in the eye.
"I knew it, Dempsey," she said, as her eyes grew dull even in their tears. "I knew he
was a Guinea. His name's Tony Spinelli. I hurried in when they told me you and
him was scrappin'. Them Guineas always carries knives. But you don't understand,
Dempsey. I never had a fellow in my life. I got tired of comin' with Anna and Jimmy
every night, so I fixed it with him to call himself O'Sullivan, and brought him along.
I knew there'd be nothin' doin' for him if he came as a Dago. I guess I'll resign from
the club now."
Dempsey turned to Andy Geoghan.
"Chuck that cheese slicer out of the window," he said, "and tell 'em inside that Mr.
O'Sullivan has had a telephone message to go down to Tammany Hall."
And then he turned back to Maggie.

"Say, Mag," he said, "I'll see you home. And how about next Saturday night? Will
you come to the hop with me if I call around for you?"

It was remarkable how quickly Maggie's eyes could change from dull to a shining
brown.

"With you, Dempsey?" she stammered. "Say—will a duck swim?"

20
How the Leopard Got His Spots
by Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)

In the days when everybody started fair, Best Beloved, the Leopard lived in a place
called the High Veldt. 'Member it wasn't the Low Veldt, or the Bush Veldt, or the
Sour Veldt, but the 'sclusively bare, hot, shiny High Veldt, where there was sand
and sandy-coloured rock and 'sclusively tufts of sandy-yellowish grass. The Giraffe
and the Zebra and the Eland and the Koodoo and the Hartebeest lived there; and
they were 'sclusively sandy-yellow-brownish all over; but the Leopard, he was the
'sclusivist sandiest-yellowish-brownest of them all a greyish-yellowish catty-shaped
kind of beast, and he matched the Veldt to one hair. This was very bad for the Giraffe
and the Zebra and the rest of them; for he would lie down by a 'sclusively yellowish-
greyish-brownish stone or clump of grass, and when the Giraffe or the Zebra or the
Eland or the Koodoo or the Bush-Buck or the Bonte-Buck came by he would
surprise them out of their jumpsome lives. He would indeed! And, also, there was
an Ethiopian with bows and arrows (a 'sclusively greyish-brownish-yellowish man
he was then), who lived on the High Veldt with the Leopard; and the two used to
hunt together the Ethiopian with his bows and arrows, and the Leopard 'sclusively
with his teeth and claws till the giraffe and the Eland and the Koodoo and the
Quagga and all the rest of them didn't know which way to jump, Best Beloved. They
didn't indeed!

After a long time things lived for ever so long in those days they learned to avoid
anything that looked like a Leopard or an Ethiopian; and bit by bit the Giraffe began
it, because his legs were the longest they went away from the High Veldt. They
scuttled for days and days till they came to a great forest, 'sclusively full of trees and
bushes and stripy, speckly, patchy-blatchy shadows, and there they hid: and after
another long time, what with standing half in the shade and half out of it, and what
with the slippery-slidy shadows of the trees falling on them, the Giraffe grew
blotchy, and the Zebra grew stripy, and the Eland and the Koodoo grew darker, with
little wavy grey lines on their backs like bark on a tree trunk; and so, though you
could hear them and smell them, you could very seldom see them, and then only
when you knew precisely where to look. They had a beautiful time in the 'sclusively

21
speckly-spickly shadows of the forest, while the Leopard and the Ethiopian ran
about over the 'sclusively greyish-yellowish-reddish High Veldt outside, wondering
where all their breakfasts and their dinners and their teas had gone. At last they were
so hungry that they ate rats and beetles and rock-rabbits, the Leopard and the
Ethipian, and then they met Baviaan the dog-headed, barking Baboon, who is Quite
the Wisest Animal in All South Africa.

Said Leopard to Baviaan (and it was a very hot day), "Where has all the game gone?"
And Baviaan winked. He knew.
Said the Ethiopian to Baviaan, "Can you tell me the present habitat of the aboriginal
Fauna?" (That meant just the same thing, but the Ethiopian always used long words.
He was a grown-up.)

And Baviaan winked. He knew.

Then said Baviaan, "The game has gone into other spots; and my advice to you,
Leopard, is to go into other spots as soon as you can."
And the Ethiopian said, "That is all very fine, but I wish to know whither the
aboriginal Fauna has migrated."
Then said Baviaan, "The aboriginal Fauna has joined the aboriginal Flora because
it was high time for a change; and my advice to you, Ethiopian, is to change as soon
as you can."
That puzzled the Leopard and the Ethiopian, but they set off to look for the
aboriginal Flora, and presently, after ever so many days, they saw a great, high, tall
forest full of tree trunks all 'sclusively speckled and sprottled and spottled, dotted
and splashed and slashed and hatched and cross-hatched with shadows. (Say that
quickly aloud, and you will see how very shadowy the forest must have been.)
"What is this," said the Leopard, "that is so 'sclusively dark, and yet so full of little
pieces of light?"
"I don't know," said the Ethiopian, "but it ought to be the aboriginal Flora. I can
smell Giraffe, and I can hear Giraffe, but I can't see Giraffe."
"That's curious," said Leopard. "I suppose it is because we have just come in out of
the sunshine. I can smell Zebra, and I can hear Zebra, but I can't see Zebra."
"Wait a bit," said the Ethiopian. "It's a long time since we've hunted 'em. Perhaps
we've forgotten what they were like."
"Fiddle!" said the Leopard. "I remember them perfectly on the High Veldt,
especially their marrow bones. Giraffe is about seventeen feet high, of a 'sclusively
fulvous golden-yellow from head to heel; and Zebra is about four and a half feet
high, of a 'sclusively grey-fawn colour from head to heel."
"Ummm," said the Ethiopian, looking into the speckly-spickly shadows of the
aboriginal Flora-forest. "Then they ought to show up in this dark place like ripe
bananas in a smokehouse."
But they didn't. The Leopard and the Ethiopian hunted all day; and though they
could smell them and hear them, they never saw one of them.

22
For goodness sake," said the Leopard at tea-time, "let us wait till it gets dark. This
daylight hunting is a perfect scandal."
So they waited till dark, and then the Leopard heard something breathing sniffily in
the starlight that fell all stripy through the branches, and he jumped at the noise, and
it smelt like Zebra, and it felt like Zebra, and when he knocked it down it kicked
like Zebra, but he couldn't see it. So he said, "Be quiet, O you person without any
form. I am going to sit on your head till morning, because there is something about
you that I don't understand."
Presently he heard a grunt and a crash and a scramble, and the
Ethiopian called out, "I've caught a thing that I can't see. It smells
like Giraffe, and it kicks like Giraffe, but it hasn't any form."
"Don't you trust it," said the Leopard. "Sit on its head till the
morning same as me. They haven't any form any of 'em."
So they sat down on them hard till bright morning-time, and then
Leopard said, "What have you at your end of the table, Brother?"
The Ethiopian scratched his head and said, "It ought to be
'sclusively a rich fulvous orange-tawny from head to heel, and it ought to be Giraffe;
but it is covered all over with chesnut blotches. What have you at your end of the
table, Brother?"

And the Leopard scratched his head and said, "It ought to be 'sclusively a delicate
greyish-fawn, and it ought to be Zebra; but it is covered all over with black and
purple stripes. What in the world have you been doing to yourself, Zebra? Don't you
know that if you were on the High Veldt I could see you ten miles off? You haven't
any form."
"Yes," said the Zebra, "but this isn't the High Veldt. Can't you see?"
"I can now," said the Leopard. "But I couldn't all yesterday. How is it done?"
"Let us up," said the Zebra, "and we will show you."
They let the Zebra and the Giraffe get up; and Zebra moved away to some little
thorn-bushes where the sunlight fell all stripy, and Giraffe moved off to some tallish
trees where the shadows fell all blotchy.
"Now watch," said the Zebra and the Giraffe. "this is the way it's done. One two
three! And where's your breakfast?"
Leopard stared, and Ethiopian stared, but all they could see were stripy shadows and
blotched shadows in the forest, but never a sign of Zebra and Giraffe. They had just
walked off and hidden themselves in the shadowy forest.
"Hi! Hi!" said the Ethiopian. "That's a trick worth learning. Take a lesson by it,
Leopard. You show up in this dark place like a bar of soap in a coal-scuttle."
"Ho! Ho!" said the Leopard. "Would it surprise you very much to know that you
show up in this dark place like a mustard-plaster on a sack of coals?"
"Well, calling names won't catch dinner," said the Ethiopian. "The long and the little
of it is that we don't match our backgrounds. I'm going to take Baviaan's advice. He
told me I ought to change; and as I've nothing to change except my skin I'm going
to change that."

23
"What to?" said the Leopard, tremendously excited.
"To a nice working blackish-brownish colour, with a little purple in it, and touches
of slaty-blue. It will be the very thing for hiding in hollows and behind trees."
So he changed his skin then and there, and the Leopard was more excited than ever;
he had never seen a man change his skin before.
"But what about me?" he said, when the Ethiopian had worked his last little finger
into his fine new black skin.
"You take Baviaan's advice too. He told you to go into spots."
"So I did," said the Leopard. "I went into other spots as fast as I could. I went into
this spot with you, and a lot of good it has done me."
"Oh," said the Ethiopian, "Baviaan didn't mean spots in South Africa. He meant
spots on your skin."
"What's the use of that?" said the Leopard.
"Think of Giraffe," said the Ethiopian, "or if you prefer stripes, think of Zebra. They
find their spots and stripes give them perfect satisfaction."
"Umm," said the Leopard. "I wouldn't look like Zebra not for ever so."
"Well, make up your mind," said the Ethiopian, "because I'd hate to go hunting
without you, but I must if you insist on looking like a sun-flower against a tarred
fence."
"I'll take spots, then," said the Leopard; "but don't make 'em too vulgar-big. I
wouldn't look like giraffe not for ever so."
I'll make 'em with the tips of my fingers," said the Ethiopian. "There's plenty of
black left on my skin still. Stand over!"
Then the Ethiopian put his five fingers close together (there was plenty of black left
on his new skin still) and pressed them all over the Leopard, and wherever the five
fingers touched they left five little black marks, all close together. You can see them
on any Leopard's skin you like, Best Beloved. Sometimes the fingers slipped and
the marks got a little blurred; but if you look closely at any Leopard now you will
see that there are always five spots off five fat black finger-tips.
"Now you are a beauty!" said the Ethiopian. "You can lie out on the bare ground
and look like a heap of pebbles. You can lie out on the naked rocks and look like a
piece of pudding-stone. You can lie out on a leafy branch and look like sunshine
sifting through the leaves; and you can lie right across the centre of a path and look
like nothing in particular. Think of that and purr!"
"But if I'm all this," said the Leopard, "why didn't you go spotty too?"
"Oh, plain black's best," said the Ethiopian. "Now come along and we'll see if we
can't get even with Mr. One-Two-Three-Where's-your-Breakfast!"
So they went away and lived happily ever afterward, Best Beloved. That is all.
Oh, now and then you will hear grown-ups say, "Can the Ethiopian change his skin
or the Leopard his spots?" I don't think even grown-ups would keep on saying such
a silly thing if the Leopard and the Ethiopian hadn't done it once do you? But they
will never do it again, Best Beloved. They are quite contented as they are.

24
Sredni Vashtar
by H.H Munro (Saki) (1870-1916)

Conradin was ten years old, and the doctor had pronounced his professional opinion
that the boy would not live another five years. The doctor was silky and effete, and
counted for little, but his opinion was endorsed by Mrs. de Ropp, who counted for
nearly everything. Mrs. De Ropp was Conradin's cousin and guardian, and in his
eyes she represented those three-fifths of the world that are necessary and
disagreeable and real; the other two-fifths, in perpetual antagonism to the foregoing,
were summed up in himself and his imagination. One of these days Conradin
supposed he would succumb to the mastering pressure of wearisome necessary
things---such as illnesses and coddling restrictions and drawn-out dullness. Without
his imagination, which was rampant under the spur of loneliness, he would have
succumbed long ago.

Mrs. de Ropp would never, in her honestest moments, have confessed to herself that
she disliked Conradin, though she might have been dimly aware that thwarting him
"for his good" was a duty which she did not find particularly irksome. Conradin
hated her with a desperate sincerity which he was perfectly able to mask. Such few
pleasures as he could contrive for himself gained an added relish from the likelihood
that they would be displeasing to his guardian, and from the realm of his imagination
she was locked out--an unclean thing, which should find no entrance.

25
In the dull, cheerless garden, overlooked by so many windows that were ready to
open with a message not to do this or that, or a reminder that medicines were due,
he found little attraction. The few fruit-trees that it contained were set jealously apart
from his plucking, as though they were rare specimens of their kind blooming in an
arid waste; it would probably have been difficult to find a market-gardener who
would have offered ten shillings for their entire yearly produce. In a forgotten
corner, however, almost hidden behind a dismal shrubbery, was a disused tool-shed
of respectable proportions, and within its walls Conradin found a haven, something
that took on the varying aspects of a playroom and a cathedral. He had peopled it
with a legion of familiar phantoms, evoked partly from fragments of history and
partly from his own brain, but it also boasted two inmates of flesh and blood. In one
corner lived a ragged-plumaged Houdan hen, on which the boy lavished an affection
that had scarcely another outlet. Further back in the gloom stood a large hutch,
divided into two compartments, one of which was fronted with close iron bars. This
was the abode of a large polecat-ferret, which a friendly butcher- boy had once
smuggled, cage and all, into its present quarters, in exchange for a long-secreted
hoard of small silver. Conradin was dreadfully afraid of the lithe, sharp-fanged
beast, but it was his most treasured possession. Its very presence in the tool-shed
was a secret and fearful joy, to be kept scrupulously from the knowledge of the
Woman, as he privately dubbed his cousin. And one day, out of Heaven knows what
material, he spun the beast a wonderful name, and from that moment it grew into a
god and a religion. The Woman indulged in religion once a week at a church near
by, and took Conradin with her, but to him the church service was an alien rite in
the House of Rimmon. Every Thursday, in the dim and musty silence of the tool-
shed, he worshipped with mystic and elaborate ceremonial before the wooden hutch
where dwelt Sredni Vashtar, the great ferret. Red flowers in their season and scarlet
berries in the winter-time were offered at his shrine, for he was a god who laid some
special stress on the fierce impatient side of things, as opposed to the Woman's
religion, which, as far as Conradin could observe, went to great lengths in the
contrary direction. And on great festivals powdered nutmeg was strewn in front of
his hutch, an important feature of the offering being that the nutmeg had to be stolen.
These festivals were of irregular occurrence, and were chiefly appointed to celebrate
some passing event. On one occasion, when Mrs. de Ropp suffered from acute
toothache for three days, Conradin kept up the festival during the entire three days,
and almost succeeded in persuading himself that Sredni Vashtar was personally
responsible for the toothache. If the malady had lasted for another day the supply of
nutmeg would have given out.

The Houdan hen was never drawn into the cult of Sredni Vashtar. Conradin had long
ago settled that she was an Anabaptist. He did not pretend to have the remotest
knowledge as to what an Anabaptist was, but he privately hoped that it was dashing
and not very respectable. Mrs. de Ropp was the ground plan on which he based and
detested all respectability.

26
After a while Conradin's absorption in the tool-shed began to attract the notice of
his guardian. "It is not good for him to be pottering down there in all weathers," she
promptly decided, and at breakfast one morning she announced that the Houdan hen
had been sold and taken away overnight. With her short-sighted eyes she peered at
Conradin, waiting for an outbreak of rage and sorrow, which she was ready to
rebuke with a flow of excellent precepts and reasoning. But Conradin said nothing:
there was nothing to be said. Something perhaps in his white set face gave her a
momentary qualm, for at tea that afternoon there was toast on the table, a delicacy
which she usually banned on the ground that it was bad for him; also because the
making of it "gave trouble," a deadly offence in the middle-class feminine eye.

"I thought you liked toast," she exclaimed, with an injured air, observing that he did
not touch it.

"Sometimes," said Conradin.

In the shed that evening there was an innovation in the worship of the hutch-god.
Conradin had been wont to chant his praises, tonight he asked a boon.

"Do one thing for me, Sredni Vashtar."

The thing was not specified. As Sredni Vashtar was a god he must be supposed to
know. And choking back a sob as he looked at that other empty corner, Conradin
went back to the world he so hated.

And every night, in the welcome darkness of his bedroom, and every evening in the
dusk of the tool-shed, Conradin's bitter litany went up: "Do one thing for me, Sredni
Vashtar."

Mrs. de Ropp noticed that the visits to the shed did not cease, and one day she made
a further journey of inspection.

"What are you keeping in that locked hutch?" she asked. "I believe it's guinea-pigs.
I'll have them all cleared away."

Conradin shut his lips tight, but the Woman ransacked his bedroom till she found
the carefully hidden key, and forthwith marched down to the shed to complete her
discovery. It was a cold afternoon, and Conradin had been bidden to keep to the
house. From the furthest window of the dining-room the door of the shed could just
be seen beyond the corner of the shrubbery, and there Conradin stationed himself.
He saw the Woman enter, and then he imagined her opening the door of the sacred
hutch and peering down with her short-sighted eyes into the thick straw bed where
his god lay hidden. Perhaps she would prod at the straw in her clumsy impatience.
And Conradin fervently breathed his prayer for the last time. But he knew as he
prayed that he did not believe. He knew that the Woman would come out presently
with that pursed smile he loathed so well on her face, and that in an hour or two the
27
gardener would carry away his wonderful god, a god no longer, but a simple brown
ferret in a hutch. And he knew that the Woman, would triumph always as she
triumphed now, and that he would grow ever more sickly under her pestering and
domineering and superior wisdom, till one day nothing would matter much more
with him, and the doctor would be proved right. And in the sting and misery of his
defeat, he began to chant loudly and defiantly the hymn of his threatened idol:

Sredni Vashtar went forth,

His thoughts were red thoughts and his teeth were white.

His enemies called for peace, but he brought them death.

Sredni Vashtar the Beautiful.

And then of a sudden he stopped his chanting and drew closer to the window-pane.
The door of the shed still stood ajar as it had been left, and the minutes were slipping
by. They were long minutes, but they slipped by nevertheless. He watched the
starlings running and flying in little parties across the lawn; he counted them over
and over again, with one eye always on that swinging door. A sour-faced maid came
in to lay the table for tea, and still Conradin stood and waited and watched. Hope
had crept by inches into his heart, and now a look of triumph began to blaze in his
eyes that had only known the wistful patience of defeat. Under his breath, with a
furtive exultation, he began once again the paean of victory and devastation. And
presently his eyes were rewarded: out through that doorway came a long, low,
yellow-and-brown beast, with eyes a-blink at the waning daylight, and dark wet
stains around the fur of jaws and throat. Conradin dropped on his knees. The great
polecat-ferret made its way down to a small brook at the foot of the garden, drank
for a moment, then crossed a little plank bridge and was lost to sight in the bushes.
Such was the passing of Sredni Vashtar.

"Tea is ready," said the sour-faced maid; "where is the mistress?" "She went down
to the shed some time ago," said Conradin. And while the maid went to summon her
mistress to tea, Conradin fished a toasting-fork out of the sideboard drawer and
proceeded to toast himself a piece of bread. And during the toasting of it and the
buttering of it with much butter and the slow enjoyment of eating it, Conradin
listened to the noises and silences which fell in quick spasms beyond the dining-
room door. The loud foolish screaming of the maid, the answering chorus of
wondering ejaculations from the kitchen region, the scuttering footsteps and hurried
embassies for outside help, and then, after a lull, the scared sobbings and the
shuffling tread of those who bore a heavy burden into the house.

"Whoever will break it to the poor child? I couldn't for the life of me!" exclaimed a
shrill voice. And while they debated the matter among themselves, Conradin made
himself another piece of toast.

28
The Sniper
by Liam O’Flaherty (1897-1984)
The long June twilight faded into night. Dublin lay
enveloped in darkness but for the dim light of the moon
that shone through fleecy clouds, casting a pale light as
of approaching dawn over the streets and the dark waters
of the Liffey. Around the beleaguered Four Courts the
heavy guns roared. Here and there through the city,
machine guns and rifles broke the silence of the night,
spasmodically, like dogs barking on lone farms. Republicans and Free Staters were
waging civil war.

On a rooftop near O’Connell Bridge, a Republican sniper lay watching. Beside him
lay his rifle and over his shoulders was slung a pair of field glasses. His face was
the face of a student, thin and ascetic, but his eyes had the cold gleam of the fanatic.
They were deep and thoughtful, the eyes of a man who is used to looking at death.
He was eating a sandwich hungrily. He had eaten nothing since morning. He had
been too excited to eat. He finished the sandwich, and, taking a flask of whiskey
from his pocket, he took a short drought. Then he returned the flask to his pocket.
He paused for a moment, considering whether he should risk a smoke. It was
dangerous. The flash might be seen in the darkness, and there were enemies
watching. He decided to take the risk. Placing a cigarette between his lips, he struck
a match, inhaled the smoke hurriedly and put out the light. Almost immediately, a
bullet flattened itself against the parapet of the roof. The sniper took another whiff
and put out the cigarette. Then he swore softly and crawled away to the left.
Cautiously he raised himself and peered over the parapet. There was a flash and a
bullet whizzed over his head. He dropped immediately. He had seen the flash. It
came from the opposite side of the street. He rolled over the roof to a chimney stack
in the rear, and slowly drew himself up behind it, until his eyes were level with the
top of the parapet. There was nothing to be seen – just the dim outline of the opposite
housetop against the blue sky. His enemy was under cover. Just then an armoured
car came across the bridge and advanced slowly up the street. It stopped on the
opposite side of the street, fifty yards ahead. The sniper could hear the dull panting
of the motor. His heart beat faster. It was an enemy car. He wanted to fire, but he
knew it was useless. His bullets would never pierce the steel that covered the gray
monster. Then round the corner of a side street came an old woman, her head
covered by a tattered shawl. She began to talk to the man in the turret of the car. She
was pointing to the roof where the sniper lay. An informer. The turret opened. A
man’s head and shoulders appeared, looking toward the sniper. The sniper raised
his rifle and fired. The head fell heavily on the turret wall. The woman darted toward
the side street. The sniper fired again. The woman whirled round and fell with a
shriek into the gutter. Suddenly from the opposite roof a shot rang out and the sniper

29
dropped his rifle with a curse. The rifle clattered to the roof. The sniper thought the
noise would wake the dead. He stooped to pick the rifle up. He couldn’t lift it. His
forearm was dead. “I’m hit,” he muttered. Dropping flat onto the roof, he crawled
back to the parapet. With his left hand he felt the injured right forearm. The blood
was oozing through the sleeve of his coat. There was no pain--just a deadened
sensation, as if the arm had been cut off. Quickly he drew his knife from his pocket,
opened it on the breastwork of the parapet, and ripped open the sleeve. There was a
small hole where the bullet had entered. On the other side there was no hole. The
bullet had lodged in the bone. It must have fractured it. He bent the arm below the
wound. the arm bent back easily. He ground his teeth to overcome the pain. Then
taking out his field dressing, he ripped open the packet with his knife. He broke the
neck of the iodine bottle and let the bitter fluid drip into the wound. A paroxysm of
pain swept through him. He placed the cotton wadding over the wound and wrapped
the dressing over it. He tied the ends with his teeth. Then he lay still against the
parapet, and, closing his eyes, he made an effort of will to overcome the pain. In the
street beneath all was still. The armoured car had retired speedily over the bridge,
with the machine gunner’s head hanging lifeless over the turret. The woman’s
corpse lay still in the gutter. The sniper lay still for a long time nursing his wounded
arm and planning escape. Morning must not find him wounded on the roof. The
enemy on the opposite roof covered his escape. He must kill that enemy and he
could not use his rifle. He had only a revolver to do it. Then he thought of a plan.
Taking off his cap, he placed it over the muzzle of his rifle. Then he pushed the rifle
slowly upward over the parapet, until the cap was visible from the opposite side of
the street. Almost immediately there was a report, and a bullet pierced the centre of
the cap. The sniper slanted the rifle forward. The cap clipped down into the street.
Then catching the rifle in the middle, the sniper dropped his left hand over the roof
and let it hang, lifelessly. After a few moments he let the rifle drop to the street.
Then he sank to the roof, dragging his hand with him. Crawling quickly to his feet,
he peered up at the corner of the roof. His ruse had succeeded. The other sniper,
seeing the cap and rifle fall, thought that he had killed his man. He was now standing
before a row of chimney pots, looking across, with his head clearly silhouetted
against the western sky. The Republican sniper smiled and lifted his revolver above
the edge of the parapet. The distance was about fifty yards – a hard shot in the dim
light, and his right arm was paining him like a thousand devils. He took a steady
aim. His hand trembled with eagerness. Pressing his lips together, he took a deep
breath through his nostrils and fired. He was almost deafened with the report and
his arm shook with the recoil. Then when the smoke cleared, he peered across and
uttered a cry of joy. His enemy had been hit. He was reeling over the parapet in his
death agony. He struggled to keep his feet, but he was slowly falling forward as if
in a dream. The rifle fell from his grasp, hit the parapet, fell over, bounded off the
pole of a barber’s shop beneath and then clattered on the pavement. Then the dying
man on the roof crumpled up and fell forward. The body turned over and over in
space and hit the ground with a dull thud. Then it lay still. The sniper looked at his
enemy falling and he shuddered. The lust of battle died in him. He became bitten by

30
remorse. The sweat stood out in beads on his forehead. Weakened by his wound and
the long summer day of fasting and watching on the roof, he revolted from the sight
of the shattered mass of his dead enemy. His teeth chattered, he began to gibber to
himself, cursing the war, cursing himself, cursing everybody. He looked at the
smoking revolver in his hand, and with an oath he hurled it to the roof at his feet.
The revolver went off with a concussion and the bullet whizzed past the sniper’s
head. He was frightened back to his senses by the shock. His nerves steadied. The
cloud of fear scattered from his mind and he laughed. Taking the whiskey flask from
his pocket, he emptied it a drought. He felt reckless under the influence of the spirit.
He decided to leave the roof now and look for his company commander, to report.
Everywhere around was quiet. There was not much danger in going through the
streets. He picked up his revolver and put it in his pocket. Then he crawled down
through the skylight to the house underneath. When the sniper reached the laneway
on the street level, he felt a sudden curiosity as to the identity of the enemy sniper
whom he had killed. He decided that he was a good shot, whoever he was. He
wondered did he know him. Perhaps he had been in his own company before the
split in the army. He decided to risk going over to have a look at him. He peered
around the corner into O’Connell Street. In the upper part of the street there was
heavy firing, but around here all was quiet. The sniper darted across the street. A
machine gun tore up the ground around him with a hail of bullets, but he escaped.
He threw himself face downward beside the corpse. The machine gun stopped. Then
the sniper turned over the dead body and looked into his brother’s face.

31
The Tell-Tale Heart
by Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)
TRUE! --nervous --very, very dreadfully nervous I
had been and am; but why will you say that I am
mad? The disease had sharpened my senses --not
destroyed --not dulled them. Above all was the sense
of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and
in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then,
am I mad? Hearken! and observe how healthily --
how calmly I can tell you the whole story.

It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my

brain; but once conceived, it haunted me day and
night. Object there was none. Passion there was
none. I loved the old man. He had never wronged
me. He had never given me insult. For his gold I had
no desire. I think it was his eye! yes, it was this! He
had the eye of a vulture --a pale blue eye, with a film
over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees --very
gradually --I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself
of the eye forever.

Now this is the point. You fancy me mad. Madmen know nothing. But you should
have seen me. You should have seen how wisely I proceeded --with what caution -
-with what foresight --with what dissimulation I went to work! I was never kinder
to the old man than during the whole week before I killed him. And every night,
about midnight, I turned the latch of his door and opened it --oh so gently! And then,
when I had made an opening sufficient for my head, I put in a dark lantern, all
closed, closed, that no light shone out, and then I thrust in my head. Oh, you would
have laughed to see how cunningly I thrust it in! I moved it slowly --very, very
slowly, so that I might not disturb the old man's sleep. It took me an hour to place
my whole head within the opening so far that I could see him as he lay upon his bed.
Ha! would a madman have been so wise as this, And then, when my head was well
in the room, I undid the lantern cautiously-oh, so cautiously --cautiously (for the
hinges creaked) --I undid it just so much that a single thin ray fell upon the vulture
eye. And this I did for seven long nights --every night just at midnight --but I found
the eye always closed; and so it was impossible to do the work; for it was not the
old man who vexed me, but his Evil Eye. And every morning, when the day broke,
I went boldly into the chamber, and spoke courageously to him, calling him by name
in a hearty tone, and inquiring how he has passed the night. So you see he would
have been a very profound old man, indeed, to suspect that every night, just at
twelve, I looked in upon him while he slept.

32
Upon the eighth night I was more than usually cautious in opening the door. A
watch's minute hand moves more quickly than did mine. Never before that night had
I felt the extent of my own powers --of my sagacity. I could scarcely contain my
feelings of triumph. To think that there I was, opening the door, little by little, and
he not even to dream of my secret deeds or thoughts. I fairly chuckled at the idea;
and perhaps he heard me; for he moved on the bed suddenly, as if startled. Now you
may think that I drew back --but no. His room was as black as pitch with the thick
darkness, (for the shutters were close fastened, through fear of robbers,) and so I
knew that he could not see the opening of the door, and I kept pushing it on steadily,
steadily.

I had my head in, and was about to open the lantern, when my thumb slipped upon
the tin fastening, and the old man sprang up in bed, crying out --"Who's there?"

I kept quite still and said nothing. For a whole hour I did not move a muscle, and in
the meantime I did not hear him lie down. He was still sitting up in the bed listening;
--just as I have done, night after night, hearkening to the death watches in the wall.

Presently I heard a slight groan, and I knew it was the groan of mortal terror. It was
not a groan of pain or of grief --oh, no! --it was the low stifled sound that arises from
the bottom of the soul when overcharged with awe. I knew the sound well. Many a
night, just at midnight, when all the world slept, it has welled up from my own
bosom, deepening, with its dreadful echo, the terrors that distracted me. I say I knew
it well. I knew what the old man felt, and pitied him, although I chuckled at heart. I
knew that he had been lying awake ever since the first slight noise, when he had
turned in the bed. His fears had been ever since growing upon him. He had been
trying to fancy them causeless, but could not. He had been saying to himself --"It is
nothing but the wind in the chimney --it is only a mouse crossing the floor," or "It
is merely a cricket which has made a single chirp." Yes, he had been trying to
comfort himself with these suppositions: but he had found all in vain. All in vain;
because Death, in approaching him had stalked with his black shadow before him,
and enveloped the victim. And it was the mournful influence of the unperceived
shadow that caused him to feel --although he neither saw nor heard --to feel the
presence of my head within the room.

When I had waited a long time, very patiently, without hearing him lie down, I
resolved to open a little --a very, very little crevice in the lantern. So I opened it --
you cannot imagine how stealthily, stealthily --until, at length a simple dim ray, like
the thread of the spider, shot from out the crevice and fell full upon the vulture eye.

It was open --wide, wide open --and I grew furious as I gazed upon it. I saw it with
perfect distinctness --all a dull blue, with a hideous veil over it that chilled the very
marrow in my bones; but I could see nothing else of the old man's face or person:
for I had directed the ray as if by instinct, precisely upon the damned spot.

33
And have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but over-acuteness of
the sense? --now, I say, there came to my ears a low, dull, quick sound, such as a
watch makes when enveloped in cotton. I knew that sound well, too. It was the
beating of the old man's heart. It increased my fury, as the beating of a drum
stimulates the soldier into courage.

But even yet I refrained and kept still. I scarcely breathed. I

held the lantern motionless. I tried how steadily I could
maintain the ray upon the eve. Meantime the hellish tattoo
of the heart increased. It grew quicker and quicker, and
louder and louder every instant. The old man's terror must
have been extreme! It grew louder, I say, louder every
moment! --do you mark me well I have told you that I am
nervous: so I am. And now at the dead hour of the night,
amid the dreadful silence of that old house, so strange a
noise as this excited me to uncontrollable terror. Yet, for
some minutes longer I refrained and stood still. But the
beating grew louder, louder! I thought the heart must burst. And now a new anxiety
seized me --the sound would be heard by a neighbour! The old man's hour had come!
With a loud yell, I threw open the lantern and leaped into the room. He shrieked
once --once only. In an instant I dragged him to the floor, and pulled the heavy bed
over him. I then smiled gaily, to find the deed so far done. But, for many minutes,
the heart beat on with a muffled sound. This, however, did not vex me; it would not
be heard through the wall. At length it ceased. The old man was dead. I removed the
bed and examined the corpse. Yes, he was stone, stone dead. I placed my hand upon
the heart and held it there many minutes. There was no pulsation. He was stone
dead. His eve would trouble me no more.

If still you think me mad, you will think so no longer when I describe the wise
precautions I took for the concealment of the body. The night waned, and I worked
hastily, but in silence. First of all I dismembered the corpse. I cut off the head and
the arms and the legs.

I then took up three planks from the flooring of the chamber, and deposited all
between the scantlings. I then replaced the boards so cleverly, so cunningly, that no
human eye --not even his --could have detected any thing wrong. There was nothing
to wash out --no stain of any kind --no blood-spot whatever. I had been too wary for
that. A tub had caught all --ha! ha!

When I had made an end of these labors, it was four o'clock --still dark as midnight.
As the bell sounded the hour, there came a knocking at the street door. I went down
to open it with a light heart, --for what had I now to fear? There entered three men,
who introduced themselves, with perfect suavity, as officers of the police. A shriek
had been heard by a neighbour during the night; suspicion of foul play had been

34
aroused; information had been lodged at the police office, and they (the officers)
had been deputed to search the premises.

I smiled, --for what had I to fear? I bade the gentlemen welcome. The shriek, I said,
was my own in a dream. The old man, I mentioned, was absent in the country. I took
my visitors all over the house. I bade them search --search well. I led them, at length,
to his chamber. I showed them his treasures, secure, undisturbed. In the enthusiasm
of my confidence, I brought chairs into the room, and desired them here to rest from
their fatigues, while I myself, in the wild audacity of my perfect triumph, placed my
own seat upon the very spot beneath which reposed the corpse of the victim.

The officers were satisfied. My manner had convinced them. I was singularly at
ease. They sat, and while I answered cheerily, they chatted of familiar things. But,
ere long, I felt myself getting pale and wished them gone. My head ached, and I
fancied a ringing in my ears: but still they sat and still chatted. The ringing became
more distinct: --It continued and became more distinct: I talked more freely to get
rid of the feeling: but it continued and gained definiteness --until, at length, I found
that the noise was not within my ears.

No doubt I now grew very pale; --but I talked more fluently, and with a heightened
voice. Yet the sound increased --and what could I do? It was a low, dull, quick sound
--much such a sound as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton. I gasped for breath
--and yet the officers heard it not. I talked more quickly --more vehemently; but the
noise steadily increased. I arose and argued about trifles, in a high key and with
violent gesticulations; but the noise steadily increased. Why would they not be
gone? I paced the floor to and fro with heavy strides, as if excited to fury by the
observations of the men --but the noise steadily increased. Oh God! what could I
do? I foamed --I raved --I swore! I swung the chair upon which I had been sitting,
and grated it upon the boards, but the noise arose over all and continually increased.
It grew louder --louder --louder! And still the men chatted pleasantly, and smiled.
Was it possible they heard not? Almighty God! --no, no! They heard! --they
suspected! --they knew! --they were making a mockery of my horror!-this I thought,
and this I think. But anything was better than this agony! Anything was more
tolerable than this derision! I could bear those hypocritical smiles no longer! I felt
that I must scream or die! and now --again! --hark! louder! louder! louder! louder!

"Villains!" I shrieked, "dissemble no more! I admit the deed! --tear up the planks!
here, here! --It is the beating of his hideous heart!"

35
Luck
by Mark Twain, (a.k.a. Samuel Clemens) (1835-1910)

[NOTE. – This is not a fancy sketch. I got it from a clergyman who was an instructor
at Woolwich forty years ago, and who vouched for its truth. – M.T.]
It was at a banquet in London in honour of one of the two or three conspicuously
illustrious English military names of this generation. For reasons which will
presently appear, I will withhold his real name and titles, and call him Lieutenant-
General Lord Arthur Scoresby, V.C., K.C.B., etc., etc., etc. What a fascination there
is in a renowned name! There say the man, in actual flesh, whom I had heard of so
many thousands of times since that day, thirty years before, when his name shot
suddenly to the zenith from a Crimean battle-field, to remain for ever celebrated. It
was food and drink to me to look, and look, and look at that demigod; scanning,
searching, noting: the quietness, the reserve, the noble gravity of his countenance;
the simple honesty that expressed itself all over him; the sweet unconsciousness of
his greatness – unconsciousness of the hundreds of admiring eyes fastened upon
him, unconsciousness of the deep, loving, sincere worship welling out of the breasts
of those people and flowing toward him. The clergyman at my left was an old
acquaintance of mine – clergyman now, but had spent the first half of his life in the
camp and field, and as an instructor in the military school at Woolwich. Just at the
moment I have been talking about, a veiled and singular light glimmered in his eyes,
and he leaned down and muttered confidentially to me – indicating the hero of the
banquet with a gesture, – ‘Privately – his glory is an accident – just a product of
incredible luck.’ This verdict was a great surprise to me. If its subject had been
Napoleon, or Socrates, or Solomon, my astonishment could not have been greater.
Some days later came the explanation of this strange remark, and this is what the
Reverend told me. About forty years ago I was an instructor in the military academy
at Woolwich. I was present in one of the sections when young Scoresby underwent
his preliminary examination. I was touched to the quick with pity; for the rest of the
class answered up brightly and handsomely, while he – why, dear me, he didn’t
know anything, so to speak. He was evidently good, and sweet, and lovable, and
guileless; and so it was exceedingly painful to see him stand there, as serene as a
graven image, and deliver himself of answers which were veritably miraculous for
stupidity and ignorance. All the compassion in me was aroused in his behalf. I said
to myself, when he comes to be examined again, he will be flung over, of course; so
it will be simple a harmless act of charity to ease his fall as much as I can. I took
him aside, and found that he knew a little of Caesar’s history; and as he didn’t know
anything else, I went to work and drilled him like a galley-slave on a certain line of
stock questions concerning Caesar which I knew would be used. If you’ll believe

36
me, he went through with flying colours on examination day! He went through on
that purely superficial ‘cram’, and got compliments, too, while others, who knew a
thousand times more than he, got plucked. By some strangely lucky accident – an
accident not likely to happen twice in a century – he was asked no question outside
of the narrow limits of his drill. It was stupefying. Well, although through his course
I stood by him, with something of the sentiment which a mother feels for a crippled
child; and he always saved himself – just by miracle, apparently. Now of course the
thing that would expose him and kill him at last was mathematics. I resolved to
make his death as easy as I could; so I drilled him and crammed him, and crammed
him and drilled him, just on the line of questions which the examiner would be most
likely to use, and then launched him on his fate. Well, sir, try to conceive of the
result: to my consternation, he took the first prize! And with it he got a perfect
ovation in the way of compliments. Sleep! There was no more sleep for me for a
week. My conscience tortured me day and night. What I had done I had done purely
through charity, and only to ease the poor youth’s fall – I never had dreamed of any
such preposterous result as the thing that had happened. I felt as guilty and miserable
as the creator of Frankenstein. Here was a wooden-head whom I had put in the way
of glittering promotions and prodigious responsibilities, and but one thing could
happen: he and his responsibilities would all go to ruin together at the first
opportunity. The Crimean war had just broken out. Of course there had to be a war,
I said to myself: we couldn’t have peace and give this donkey a chance to die before
he is found out. I waited for the earthquake. It came. And it made me reel when it
did come. He was actually gazetted to a captaincy in a marching regiment! Better
men grow old and gray in the service before they climb to a sublimity like that. And
who could ever have foreseen that they would go and put such a load of
responsibility on such green and inadequate shoulders? I could just barely have
stood it if they had made him a cornet; but a captain – think of it! I thought my hair
would turn white. Consider what I did – I who so loved repose and inaction. I said
to myself, I am responsible to the country for this, and I must go along with him and
protect the country against him as far as I can. So I took my poor little capital that I
had saved up through years of work and grinding economy, and went with a sigh
and bought a cornetcy in his regiment, and away we went to the field. And there –
oh dear, it was awful. Blunders? why, he never did anything but blunder. But, you
see, nobody was in the fellow’s secret – everybody had him focused wrong, and
necessarily misinterpreted his performance every time – consequently they took his
idiotic blunders for inspirations of genius; they did honestly! His mildest blunders
were enough to make a man in his right mind cry; and they did make me cry – and
rage and rave too, privately. And the thing that kept me always in a sweat of
apprehension was the fact that every fresh blunder he made increased the lustre of
his reputation! I kept saying to myself, he’ll get so high that when discovery does
finally come it will be like the sun falling out of the sky. He went right along up,

37
from grade to grade, over the dead bodies of his superiors, until at last, in the hottest
moment of the battle of.... down went our colonel, and my heart jumped into my
mouth, for Scoresby was next in rank! Now for it, said I; we’ll all land in Sheol in
ten minutes, sure. The battle was awfully hot; the allies were steadily giving way all
over the field. Our regiment occupied a position that was vital; a blunder now must
be destruction. At this critical moment, what does this immortal fool do but detach
the regiment from its place and order a charge over a neighbouring hill where there
wasn’t a suggestion of an enemy! ‘There you go!’ I said to myself; ‘this is the end
at last.’ And away we did go, and were over the shoulder of the hill before the insane
movement could be discovered and stopped. And what did we find? An entire and
unsuspected Russian army in reserve! And what happened? We were eaten up? That
is necessarily what would have happened in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred. But
no; those Russians argued that no single regiment would come browsing around
there at such a time. It must be the entire English army, and that the sly Russian
game was detected and blocked; so they turned tail, and away they went, pell-mell,
over the hill and down into the field, in wild confusion, and we after them; they
themselves broke the solid Russia centre in the field, and tore through, and in no
time there was the most tremendous rout you ever saw, and the defeat of the allies
was turned into a sweeping and splendid victory! Marshal Canrobert looked on,
dizzy with astonishment, admiration, and delight; and sent right off for Scoresby,
and hugged him, and decorated him on the field in presence of all the armies! And
what was Scoresby’s blunder that time? Merely the mistaking his right hand for his
left – that was all. An order had come to him to fall back and support our right; and
instead he fell forward and went over the hill to the left. But the name he won that
day as a marvellous military genius filled the world with his glory, and that glory
will never fade while history books last. He is just as good and sweet and lovable
and unpretending as a man can be, but he doesn’t know enough to come in when it
rains. He has been pursued, day by day and year by year, by a most phenomenal and
astonishing luckiness. He has been a shining soldier in all our wars for half a
generation; he has littered his military life with blunders, and yet has never
committed one that didn’t make him a knight or a baronet or a lord or something.
Look at his breast; why, he is just clothed in domestic and foreign decorations. Well,
sir, every one of them is a record of some shouting stupidity or other; and, taken
together, they are proof that the very best thing in all this world that can befall a man
is to be born lucky.

38
The Street That Got Mislaid
by Patrick Waddington (1912-1973)
Marc Girondin had worked in the filing section of the city hall's engineering
department for so long that the city was laid out in his mind like a map, full of names
and places, intersecting streets and streets that led nowhere, blind alleys and winding
lanes.

In all Montreal no one possessed such knowledge; a dozen policemen and taxi
drivers together could not rival him. That is not to say that he actually knew the
streets whose names he could recite like a series of incantations, for he did little
walking. He knew simply of their existence, where they were, and in what relation
they stood to others.

But it was enough to make him a specialist. He was undisputed expert of the filing
cabinets where all the particulars of all the streets from Abbott to Zotique were
indexed, back, forward and across. Those aristocrats, the engineers, the inspectors
of water mains and the like, all came to him when they wanted some little particular,
some detail, in a hurry They might despise him as a lowly clerk, but they needed
him all the same.

Marc much preferred his office, despite the profound lack of excitement of his work,
to his room on Oven Street (running north and south from Sherbrooke East to St.
Catherine), where his neighbors were noisy and sometimes violent, and his landlady
consistently so. He tried to explain the meaning of his existence once to a fellow
tenant, Louis, but without much success. Louis, when he got the drift, was apt to
sneer.

"So Craig latches on to Bleury and Bleury gets to be Park, so who cares? Why the
excitement?"

"I will show you," said Marc. "Tell me, first, where you live."

"Are you crazy? Here on Oven Street. Where else?"

"How do you know?"

"How do I know? I'm here, ain't I? I pay my rent, don't I? I get my mail here, don't
I?"

Marc shook his head patiently.

"None of that is evidence," he said. "You live here on Oven Street because it says
so in my filing cabinet at city hall. The post office sends you mail because my card

39
index tells it to. If my cards didn't say so, you wouldn't exist and Oven Street
wouldn't either. That, my friend, is the triumph of bureaucracy."

Louis walked away in disgust. "Try telling that to the landlady," he muttered.

So Marc continued on his undistinguished career, his fortieth birthday came and
went without remark, day after day passed uneventfully. A street was renamed,
another constructed, a third widened; it all went carefully into the files, back,
forward and across.

And then something happened that filled him with amazement, shocked him beyond
measure, and made the world of the filing cabinets tremble to their steel bases.

One August afternoon, opening a drawer to its fullest extent, he felt something catch.
Exploring farther, he discovered a card stuck at the back between the top and
bottom. He drew it out and found it to be an old index card, dirty and torn, but still
perfectly decipherable. It was labeled RUE DE LA BOUTEILLE VERTE, or
GREEN BOTTLE STREET.

Marc stared at it in wonder. He had never heard of the place or of anything

resembling so odd a name. Undoubtedly it had been retitled in some other fashion
befitting the modern tendency. He checked the listed details and ruffled confidently
through the master file of street names. It was not there. He made another search,
careful and protracted, through the cabinets. There was nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Once more he examined the card. There was no mistake. The date of the last regular
street inspection was exactly fifteen years, five months and fourteen days ago.

As the awful truth burst upon him, Marc dropped the card in horror, then pounced
on it again fearfully, glancing over his shoulder as he did so.

It was a lost, a forgotten street. For fifteen years and more it had existed in the heart
of Montreal, not half a mile from city hall, and no one had known. It had simply
dropped out of sight, a stone in water.

In his heart, Marc had sometimes dreamed of such a possibility. There were so many
obscure places, twisting lanes and streets jumbled together as intricately as an
Egyptian labyrinth. But of course it could not happen, not with the omniscient file
at hand. Only it had. And it was dynamite. It would blow the office sky-high.

Vaguely, in his consternation, Marc remembered how, some time after he first
started to work, his section had been moved to another floor. The old-fashioned files
were discarded and all the cards made out afresh. It must have been at that time that
Green Bottle Street was stuck between the upper and lower drawers.

40
He put the card in his pocket and went home to reflect. That night he slept badly and
monstrous figures flitted through his dreams. Among them appeared a gigantic
likeness of his chief going mad and forcing him into a red-hot filing cabinet.

The next day he made up his mind. Pleading illness, he took the afternoon off and
with beating heart went looking for the street.

Although he knew the location perfectly, he passed it twice and had to retrace his
steps. Baffled, he closed his eyes, consulted his mind's infallible map and walked
directly to the entry. It was so narrow that he could touch the adjoining walls with
his outstretched hands. A few feet from the sidewalk was a tall and solid wooden
structure, much weather-beaten, with a simple latched door in the center. This he
opened and stepped inside. Green Bottle Street lay before him.

It was perfectly real, and reassuring as well. On either side of a cobbled pavement
were three small houses, six in all, each with a diminutive garden in front, spaced
off by low iron palings of a kind that has disappeared except in the oldest quarters.
The houses looked extremely neat and well kept and the cobbles appeared to have
been recently watered and swept. Windowless brick walls of ancient warehouses
encircled the six homes and joined at the farther end of the street.

At his first glance, Marc realized how it had gotten its unusual name. It was exactly
like a bottle in shape.

With the sun shining on the stones and garden plots, and the blue sky overhead, the
street gave him a momentary sense of well-being and peace. It was completely
charming, a scene from a print of fifty years ago.

A woman who Marc guessed was some sixty years of age was watering roses in the
garden of the first house to his right. She gazed at him motionless, and the water
flowed from her can unheeded to the ground. He took off his hat and announced,
"I'm from the city engineering department, madam."

The woman recovered herself and set her watering can down.

"So you have found out at last," she said.

At these words, Marc's reborn belief that after all he had made a harmless and
ridiculous error fled precipitately. There was no mistake.

"Tell me, please," he said tonelessly.

It was a curious story. For several years, she said, the tenants of Green Bottle Street
had lived in amity with each other and the landlord, who also resided in one of the

41
little houses. The owner became so attached to them that in a gesture of goodwill he
deeded them his property, together with a small sum of money, when he died.

"We paid our taxes," the woman said, "and made out a multitude of forms and
answered the questions of various officials at regular intervals about our property.
Then, after a while, we were sent no notices, so we paid no more taxes. No one
bothered us at all. It was a long time before we understood that in some way they'd
forgotten about us."

Marc nodded. Of course, if Green Bottle Street had dropped from the ken of city
hall, no inspectors would go there, no census takers, no tax collectors. All would
pass merrily by, directed elsewhere by the infallible filing cabinet.

"Then Michael Flanagan, who lives at number four," she went on, "a most
interesting man, you must meet him--Mr. Flanagan called us together and said that
if miracles happened, we should aid and abet them. It was he who had the door built
and put up at the entrance to keep out passersby or officials who might come along.
We used to keep it locked, but it's been so long since anyone came that we don't
bother now.

"Oh, there were many little things we had to do, like getting our mail at the post
office and never having anything delivered at the door. Now almost the only visits
we make to the outside world are to buy our food and clothes."

"And there has never been any change here all that time?" Marc asked.

"Yes, two of our friends died, and their rooms were empty for a while. Then Jean
Desselin--he's in number six and sometimes goes into the city--returned with a Mr.
Plonsky, a refugee. Mr. Plonsky was very tired and worn out with his travelings and
gladly moved in with us. Miss Hunter, in number three, brought home a very nice
person--a distant relative, I believe. They quite understand the situation."

"And you, madam?" Marc inquired.

"My name is Sara Trusdale, and I have lived here for more than twenty years. I hope
to end my days here as well."

She smiled pleasantly at him, apparently forgetting for the moment that he carried
in his pocket a grenade that could blow their little world to pieces.

All of them, it seemed, had had their troubles, their losses and failures, before they
found themselves in this place of refuge, this Green Bottle Street. To Marc,
conscious of his own unsatisfactory existence, it sounded entrancing. He fingered
the card in his pocket uncertainly. "Mr. Plonsky and Mr. Flanagan took a great liking
to each other," Miss Trusdale continued. "Both of them have been travelers and they
42
like to talk about the things they have seen. Miss Hunter plays the piano and gives
us concerts. Then there's Mr. Hazard and Mr. Desselin, who are very fond of chess
and who brew wine in the cellar. For myself, I have my flowers and my books. It
has been very enjoyable for all of us."

Marc and Miss Trusdale sat on her front step for a long time in silence. The sky's
blue darkened, the sun disappeared behind the warehouse wall on the left.

"You remind me of my nephew," Miss Trusdale said suddenly. "He was a dear boy.
I was heartbroken when he died in the influenza epidemic after the war. I'm the last
of my family, you know."

Marc could not recall when he had been spoken to with such simple, if indirect,
goodwill. His heart warmed to this old lady. Obscurely he felt on the verge of a great
moral discovery. He took the card out of his pocket.

"I found this yesterday in the filing cabinet," he said. "No one else knows about it
yet. If it should come out, there would be a great scandal, and no end of trouble for
all of you as well. Newspaper reporters, tax collectors . . ."

He thought again of his landlady, his belligerent neighbors, his room that defied
improvement. "I wonder," he said slowly, "I am a good tenant, and I wonder . . ."

"Oh yes," she leaned forward eagerly, "you could have the top floor of my house. I
have more space than I know what to do with. I'm sure it would suit you. You must
come and see it right away."

The mind of Marc Girondin, filing clerk, was made up. With a gesture of
renunciation he tore the card across and dropped the pieces in the watering can. As
far as he was concerned, Green Bottle Street would remain mislaid forever.

43
The Door
by E.B. White (1899-1985)
Everything (he kept saying) is something it
isn't. And everybody is always somewhere
else. Maybe it was the city, being in the
city, that made him feel how queer
everything was and that it was something
else. Maybe (he kept thinking) it was the
names of the things. The names were tex
and frequently koid. Or they were flex and
oid or they were duroid (sand) or flexsan
(duro), but everything was glass (but not
quite glass) and the thing that you touched
(the surface, washable, crease-resistant) was rubber, only it wasn't quite rubber and
you didn't quite touch it but almost. The wall, which was glass but turned out on
being approached not to be a wall, it was something else, it was an opening or
doorway--and the doorway (through which he saw himself approaching) turned out
to be something else, it was a wall. And what he had eaten not having agreed with
him.

He was in a washable house, but he wasn't sure. Now about those rats, he kept saying
to himself. He meant the rats that the Professor had driven crazy by forcing them to
deal with problems which were beyond the scope of rats, the insoluble problems.
He meant the rats that had been trained to jump at the square card with the circle in
the middle, and the card (because it was something it wasn't) would give way and
let the rat into a place where the food was, but then one day it would be a trick
played on the rat, and the card would be changed, and the rat would jump but the
card wouldn't give way, and it was an impossible situation (for a rat) and the rat
would go insane and into its eyes would come the unspeakably bright imploring
look of the frustrated, and after the convulsions were over and the frantic racing
around, then the passive stage would set in and the willingness to let anything be
done to it, even if it was something else.

He didn't know which door (or wall) or opening in the house to jump at, to get
through, because one was an opening that wasn't a door (it was a void, or kid) and
the other was a wall that wasn't an opening, it was a sanitary cupboard of the same
color. He caught a glimpse of his eyes staring into his eyes, in the and in them was
the expression he had seen in the picture of the rats--weary after convulsions and
the frantic racing around, when they were willing and did not mind having anything
done to them. More and more (he kept saying) I am confronted by a problem which
is incapable of solution (for this time even if he chose the right door, there would be
no food behind it) and that is what madness is, and things seeming different from

44
what they are. He heard, in the house where he was, in the city to which he had gone
(as toward a door which might, or might not, give way), a noise--not a loud noise
but more of a low prefabricated humming. It came from a place in the base of the
wall (or stat) where the flue carrying the filterable air was, and not far from the
Minipiano, which was made of the same material nailbrushes are made of, and
which was under the stairs. 'This, too, has been tested,' she said, pointing, but not at
it, 'and found viable.' It wasn't a loud noise, he kept thinking, sorry that he had seen
his eyes, even though it was through his own eyes that he had seen them.

First will come the convulsions (he said), then the exhaustion, then the willingness
to let anything be done. 'And you better believe it will be.'

All his life he had been confronted by situations which were incapable of being
solved, and there was a deliberateness behind all this, behind this changing of the
card (or door), because they would always wait until you had learned to jump at the
certain card (or door)--the one with the circle--and then they would change it on
you. There have been so many doors changed on me, he said, in the last twenty
years, but it is now becoming clear that it is an impossible situation, and the question
is whether to jump again, even though they ruffle you in the rump with a blast of
air--to make you jump. He wished he wasn't standing by the Minipiano. First they
would teach you the prayers and the Psalms, and that would be the right door(the
one with the circle) and the long sweet words with the holy sound, and that would
be the one to jump at to get where the food was. Then one day you jumped and it
didn't give way, so that all you got was the bump on the nose, and the first
bewilderment, the first young bewilderment.

I don't know whether to tell her about the door they substituted or not, he said, the
one with the equation on it and the picture of the amoeba reproducing itself by
division. Or the one with the photostatic copy of the check for thirty-two dollars and
fifty cents. But the jumping was so long ago, although the bump is . . . how those
old wounds hurt! Being crazy this way wouldn't be so bad if only, if only. If only
when you put your foot forward to take a step, the ground wouldn't come up to meet
your foot the way it does. And the same way in the street (only I may never get back
to the street unless I jump at the right door), the curb coming up to meet your foot,
anticipating ever so delicately the weight of the body, which is somewhere else. 'We
could take your name,' she said, 'and send it to you.' And it wouldn't be so bad if
only you could read a sentence all the way through without jumping (your eye) to
something else on the same page; and then (he kept thinking) there was that man
out in Jersey, the one who started to chop his trees down, one by one, the man who
began talking about how he would take his house to pieces, brick by brick, because
he faced a problem incapable of solution, probably, so he began to hack at the trees
in the yard, began to pluck with trembling fingers at the bricks in the house. Even if
a house is not washable, it is worth taking down. It is not till later that the exhaustion
sets in.

45
But it is inevitable that they will keep changing the doors on you, he said, because
that is what they are for; and the thing is to get used to it and not let it unsettle the
mind. But that would mean not jumping, and you can't. Nobody can not jump. There
will be no not-jumping. Among rats, perhaps, but among people never. Everybody
has to keep jumping at a door (the one with the circle on it) because that is the way
everybody is, especially some people. You wouldn't want me, standing here, to tell
you, would you, about my friend the poet (deceased) who said, 'My heart has
followed all my days something I cannot name'? (It had the circle on it.) And like
many poets, although few so beloved, he is gone. It killed him, the jumping. First,
of course, there were the preliminary bouts, the convulsions, and the calm and the
willingness.

I remember the door with the picture of the girl on it (only it was spring), her arms
outstretched in loveliness, her dress (it was the one with the circle on it) uncaught,
beginning the slow, clear, blinding cascade-and I guess we would all like to try that
door again, for it seemed like the way and for a while it was the way, the door would
open and you would go through winged and exalted (like any rat) and the food would
be there, the way the Professor had it arranged, everything O.K., and you had chosen
the right door for the world was young. The time they changed that door on me, my
nose bled for a hundred hours--how do you like that, Madam? Or would you prefer
to show me further through this so strange house, or you could take my name and
send it to me, for although my heart has followed all my days something I cannot
name, I am tired of the jumping and I do not know which way to go, Madam, and I
am not even sure that I am not tired beyond the endurance of man (rat, if you will)
and have taken leave of sanity. What are you following these days, old friend, after
your recovery from the last bump? What is the name, or is it something you cannot
name? The rats have a name for it by this time, perhaps, but I don't know what they
call it. I call it and it comes in sheets, something like insulating board, unattainable
and ugli-proof.

And there was the man out in Jersey, because I keep thinking about his terrible
necessity and the passion and trouble he had gone to all those years in the
indescribable abundance of a householder's detail, building the estate and the
planting of the trees and in spring the lawn-dressing and in fall the bulbs for the
spring burgeoning, and the watering of the

grass on the long light evenings in summer and the gravel for the driveway (all had
to be thought out, planned) and the decorative borders, probably, the perennials and
the bug spray, and the building of the house from plans of the architect, first the
sills, then the studs, then the full corn in the ear, the floors laid on the floor timbers,
smoothed, and then the carpets upon the smooth floors and the curtains and the rods
therefor. And then, almost without warning, he would be jumping at the same old
door and it wouldn't give: they had changed it on him, making life no longer
supportable under the elms in the elm shade, under the maples in the maple shade.

46
'Here you have the maximum of openness in a small room.'

It was impossible to say (maybe it was the city) what made him feel the way he did,
and I am not the only one either, he kept thinking--ask any doctor if I am. The
doctors, they know how many there are, they even know where the trouble is only
they don't like to tell you about the prefrontal lobe because that means making a
hole in your skull and removing the work of centuries. It took so long coming, this
lobe, so many, many years. (Is it something you read in the paper, perhaps?) And
now, the strain being so great, the door having been changed by the Professor once
too often . . . but it only means a whiff of ether, a few deft strokes, and the higher
animal becomes a little easier in his mind and more like the lower one. From now
on, you see, that's the way it will be, the ones with the small prefrontal lobes will
win because the other ones are hurt too much by this incessant bumping. They can
stand just so much, em, Doctor? (And what is that, pray, that you have in your
hand?) Still, you never can tell, em, Madam?

He crossed (carefully) the room, the thick carpet under him softly, and went toward
the door carefully, which was glass and he could see himself in it, and which, at his
approach, opened to allow him to pass through; and beyond he half expected to find
one of the old doors that he had known, perhaps the one with the circle, the one with
the girl her arms outstretched in loveliness and beauty before him. But he saw
instead a moving stairway, and descended in light (he kept thinking) to the street
below and to the other people. As he stepped off, the ground came up slightly, to
meet his foot.

47
The Use of Force
by William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)
They were new patients to me, all I had was the name, Olson. Please come down as
soon as you can; my daughter is very sick.

When I arrived I was met by the mother, a big startled looking woman, very clean
and apologetic who merely said, Is this the doctor? and let me in. In the back, she
added. You must excuse us, doctor, we have her in the kitchen where it is warm. It
is very damp here sometimes.

The child was fully dressed and sitting on her father's lap near the kitchen table. He
tried to get up, but I motioned for him not to bother, took off my overcoat and started
to look things over. I could see that they were all very nervous, eyeing me up and
down distrustfully. As often, in such cases, they weren't telling me more than they
had to, it was up to me to tell them; that's why they were spending three dollars on
me.

The child was fairly eating me up with her cold, steady eyes, and no expression to
her face whatever. She did not move and seemed, inwardly, quiet; an unusually
attractive little thing, and as strong as a heifer in appearance. But her face was
flushed, she was breathing rapidly, and I realized that she had a high fever. She had
magnificent blonde hair, in profusion. One of those picture children often
reproduced in advertising leaflets and the photogravure sections of the Sunday
papers.

She's had a fever for three days, began the father and we don't know what it comes
from. My wife has given her things, you know, like people do, but it don't do no
good. And there's been a lot of sickness around. So we tho't you'd better look her
over and tell us what is the matter.

As doctors often do I took a trial shot at it as a point of departure. Has she had a sore
throat?

Both parents answered me together, No . . . No, she says her throat don't hurt her.

Does your throat hurt you? added the mother to the child. But the little girl's
expression didn't change nor did she move her eyes from my face.
Have you looked?

I tried to, said the mother, but I couldn't see.

48
As it happens we had been having a number of cases of diphtheria in the school to
which this child went during that month and we were all, quite apparently,
thinking of that, though no one had as yet spoken of the thing.
Well, I said, suppose we take a look at the throat first. I smiled in my best
professional manner and asking for the child's first name I said, come on,
Mathilda, open your mouth and let's take a look at your throat.

Nothing doing.

Aw, come on, I coaxed, just open your mouth wide and let me take a look. Look, I
said opening both hands wide, I haven't anything in my hands. Just open up and let
me see.

Such a nice man, put in the mother. Look how kind he is to you. Come on, do what
he tells you to. He won't hurt you.

At that I ground my teeth in disgust. If only they wouldn't use the word "hurt" I
might be able to get somewhere. But I did not allow myself to be hurried or disturbed
but speaking quietly and slowly I approached the child again.

As I moved my chair a little nearer suddenly with one catlike movement both her
hands clawed instinctively for my eyes and she almost reached them too. In fact she
knocked my glasses flying and they fell, though unbroken, several feet away from
me on the kitchen floor.

Both the mother and father almost turned themselves inside out in embarrassment
and apology. You bad girl, said the mother, taking her and shaking her by one arm.
Look what you've done, The nice man...

For Heaven's sake, I broke in. Don't call me a nice man to her. I'm here to look at
her throat on the chance that she might have diphtheria and possibly die of it. But
that's nothing to her. Look here I said to the child, we are going to look at your
throat. You're old enough to understand what I'm saying. Will you open it now by
yourself or shall we have to open it for you?

Not a move. Even her expression hadn't changed. Her breaths however were coming
faster and faster. Then the battle began I had to do it. I had to have a throat culture
for her own protection. But first I told the parents that it was entirely up to them. I
explained the danger but said I would not insist on an examination so long as they
would take the responsibility. If you don't do what the doctor says you'll have to go
to the hospital, the mother admonished her severely.

Oh yeah? I had to smile to myself. After all, I had already fallen in love with the
savage brat, the parents were contemptible to me. In the ensuing struggle they grew

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more and more abject, crushed, exhausted while she surely rose to magnificent
heights of insane fury of effort bred of her terror of me.

The father tried his best, and he was a big man but the fact that she was his daughter,
his shame at her behavior and his dread of hurting her made him release her just at
the critical moment several times when I almost had achieved success, till I wanted
to kill him. But his dread also that she might have diphtheria made him tell me to
go on, go on though he himself was almost fainting, while the mother moved back
and forth behind us raising and lowering her hands in an agony of apprehension.

Put her in front of you on your lap, I ordered, and hold both her wrists.

But as soon as he did the child let out a scream. Don't, you’re hurting me. Let go of
my hands. Let them go I tell you. Then she shrieked terrifyingly, hysterically. Stop
it! Stop it! You re killing me! Do you think she can stand it, doctor! said the mother.

You get out, said the husband to his wife. Do you want her to die of diphtheria?
Come on now, hold her, I said.

Then I grasped the child's head with my left hand and tried to get the wooden tongue
depressor between her teeth. She fought, with clenched teeth, desperately! But now
I also had grown furious - at a child. I tried to hold myself down but I couldn't. I
know how to expose a throat for inspection. And I did my best. When finally I got
the wooden spatula behind the last teeth and just the point of it into the mouth cavity,
she opened up for an instant but before I could see anything she came down again
and gripping the wooden blade between her molars she reduced it to splinters before
I could get it out again.

Aren't you ashamed, the mother yelled at her. Aren't you ashamed to act like that in
front of the doctor?

Get me a smooth-handled spoon of some sort, I told the mother. We're going through
with this. The child's mouth was already bleeding. Her tongue was cut and she was
screaming in wild hysterical shrieks. Perhaps I should have desisted and come back
in an hour or more. No doubt it would have been better. But I have seen at least two
children lying dead in bed of neglect in such cases, and feeling that I must get a
diagnosis now or never I went at it again. But the worst of it was that I too had got
beyond reason. I could have torn the child apart in my own fury and enjoyed it. It
was a pleasure to attack her. My face was burning with it.

The damned little brat must be protected against her own idiocy, one says to one's
self at such times. Others must be protected against her. It is social necessity. And

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all these things are true. But a blind fury, a feeling of adult shame, bred of a longing
for muscular release are the operatives. One goes on to the end.

In a final unreasoning assault I overpowered the child's neck and jaws. I forced the
heavy silver spoon back of her teeth and down her throat till she gagged. And there
it was - both tonsils covered with membrane. She had fought valiantly to keep me
from knowing her secret. She had been hiding that sore throat for three days at least
and lying to her parents in order to escape just such an outcome as this.

Now truly she was furious. She had been on the defensive before but now she
attacked. Tried to get off her father's lap and fly at me while tears of defeat blinded
her eyes.

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 École Secondaire Jean-Baptiste-Meilleur

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