Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools Part 19

Husbands, I was shocked to find, wore their stockings into holes, and were always losing b.u.t.tons, and I was expected to "look to all that"; also it behooved me to learn to cook! no capable servant choosing to live at such an out-of-the-way place, and my husband having bad digestion, which complicated my difficulties dreadfully. The bread, above all, brought from Dumfries, [Footnote: Dumfries: a town in southern Scotland.] "soured on his stomach" and it was plainly my duty as a Christian wife to bake at home.

So I sent for Cobbett's "Cottage Economy," and fell to work at a loaf of bread. But, knowing nothing about the process of fermentation or the heat of ovens, it came to pa.s.s that my loaf got put into the oven at the time that myself ought to have been put into bed; and I remained the only person not asleep in a house in the middle of a desert.

One o'clock struck! and then two!! and then three!!! And still I was sitting there in the midst of an immense solitude, my whole body aching with weariness, my heart aching with a sense of forlornness and degradation. That I, who had been so petted at home, whose comfort had been studied by everybody in the house, who had never been required to do anything but cultivate my mind, should have to pa.s.s all those hours of the night in watching a loaf of bread--which mightn't turn out bread after all!

Such thoughts maddened me, till I laid down my head on the table and sobbed aloud. It was then that somehow the idea of Benvenuto Cellini [Footnote: Benvenuto Cellini: a famous Italian sculptor and worker in gold and silver. Born in 1500(?) died in 1571. His autobiography is one of the most famous of Italian cla.s.sics. The Perseus of Cellini stands in the Loggia dei Lanzi in Florence, and represents the helmeted hero holding up the severed head of Medusa.] sitting up all night watching his Perseus in the furnace came into my head, and suddenly I asked myself: "After all, in the sight of the upper Powers, what is the mighty difference between a statue of Perseus and a loaf of bread, so that each be the thing that one's hand has found to do? The man's determined will, his energy, his patience, his resource were the really admirable things of which his statue of Perseus was the mere chance expression. If he had been a woman, living at Craigenputtock with a dyspeptic husband, sixteen miles from a baker, and he a bad one, all these qualities would have come out more fitly in a good loaf of bread!"

I cannot express what consolation this germ of an idea spread over my uncongenial life during the years we lived at that savage place, where my two immediate predecessors had gone mad, and a third had taken to drink.

--JANE WELSH CARLYLE.

[Footnote: Does the opening paragraph give you any hint as to the source of this extract? What traits of character does the writer show? Can you show the evidence of Scotch Covenanter inheritance in the writer's philosophy? Do you imagine that the writer learned to make bread? Why?

In what does the humor of the account lie?]

A YOUTHFUL ACTOR

My dramatic career was brought to a close by an unfortunate circ.u.mstance. We were playing the drama of "William Tell, the Hero of Switzerland." Of course I was William Tell, in spite of Fred Langdon, who wanted to act that character himself. I wouldn't let him, so he withdrew from the company, taking the only bow and arrow we had. I made a cross-bow out of a piece of whalebone, and did very well without him.

We had reached that exciting scene where Gessler, the Austrian tyrant, commands Tell to shoot the apple from his son's head. Pepper Whitcomb, who played all the juvenile and women parts, was my son. To guard against mischance, a piece of pasteboard was fastened by a handkerchief over the upper portion of Whitcomb's face, while the arrow to be used was sewed up in a strip of flannel. I was a capital marksman, and the big apple, only two yards distant, turned its russet cheek fairly towards me.

I can see poor little Pepper now, as he stood without flinching, waiting for me to perform my great feat. I raised the cross-bow amid the breathless silence of the crowded audience,--consisting of seven boys and three girls, exclusive of Kitty Collins, who insisted on paying her way in with a clothes-pin. I raised the cross-bow, I repeat. Tw.a.n.g! went the whipcord; but, alas! instead of hitting the apple, the arrow flew right into Pepper Whitcomb's mouth, which happened to be open at the time, and destroyed my aim.

I shall never be able to banish that awful moment from my memory.

Pepper's roar, expressive of astonishment, indignation, and pain, is still ringing in my ears. I looked upon him as a corpse, and, glancing not far into the dreary future, pictured myself led forth to execution in the presence of the very same spectators then a.s.sembled.

Luckily poor Pepper was not seriously hurt.

--T. B. ALDRICH.

[Footnote: Would you imagine, from this extract, that the book from which it was taken would be interesting? Why? Notice the easy conversational way of telling the incident. What is gained by this? Do you sympathize with Pepper or the author? Why?]

WAR

What, speaking in quite unofficial language, is the net purpose and upshot of war? To my own knowledge, for example, there dwell and toil in the British village of Dumdrudge [Footnote: Dumdrudge: a fict.i.tious name.] usually some five hundred souls. From these there are successfully selected, during the French war, say thirty able-bodied men. Dumdrudge, at her own expense, has suckled and nursed them. She has, not without difficulty and sorrow, fed them up to manhood, and even trained them to crafts, so that one can weave, another build, another hammer, and the weakest can stand under thirty stone avoirdupois.

Nevertheless, amid much weeping and swearing, they are selected; all dressed in red; and s.h.i.+pped away at the public charges some two thousand miles, or say only to the south of Spain; and fed there until wanted.

And now to that same spot in the south of Spain, are thirty similar French artisans, from a French Dumdrudge, in like manner wending. At length, after infinite effort, the two parties come into actual juxtaposition; and thirty stands fronting thirty, each with a gun in his hand. Straightway the word "Fire!" is given, and they blow the souls out of one another. And in place of sixty brisk useful craftsmen, the world has sixty dead carca.s.ses, which it must bury and anew shed tears for.

Had these men any quarrel? Busy as the Devil is, not the smallest! They lived far enough apart, were the entirest strangers, nay, in so wide a universe, there was even unconsciously, by commerce, some mutual helpfulness between them. How then? Simpleton' their Governors had fallen out, and instead of shooting one another, had the cunning to make these poor blockheads shoot.

--CARLYLE.

[Footnote: Does Carlyle write from the usual military standpoint? Does war seem glorious or heroic from this point of view? Is ridicule an effective weapon against wrongs? Do you know of any abuses or wrongs that have been abolished by being shown up as ridiculous? Do you think it likely that the militaristic type of mind can have much sense of humor?]

c.o.o.n-HUNTING

'c.o.o.n-Hunting [Footnote: c.o.o.n: racc.o.o.n, an animal allied to the bears but much smaller. Its body is gray, varied with black and white, and it has a long full tail banded with black and gray.] is one of the truly American sports of the chase, though its devotees have found difficulty in persuading folks to take their sport seriously. It is, in truth, a comical aspect of hunting, and is scarcely less wanting in dignity than a 'possum [Footnote: Possum: opposum; this animal carries its young in a pouch, like the kangaroo.] chase, which confessedly has none at all. If 'c.o.o.n-hunting be regarded, as a step higher than that, it loses the advantage at the end, for a fat 'possum is certainly better eating than a 'c.o.o.n, however rotund. The chase, nevertheless, calls for endurance, since an old 'c.o.o.n may run four or five miles after he has been started, zigzagging hither and yon, circling round and round trees, leaving a track calculated to make a dog dizzy, swimming streams, and running along the tops of logs and snake-fences, [Footnote: Snake-fence (same as a worm-fence): a zigzag fence of rails which cross at the ends.] hiding his trail with the craftiness of a fox.

The hunt is always organized late at night. n.o.body ever heard of a real 'c.o.o.n-hunt by daylight. The animals are moving about then, leaving trails that, starting at the edge of the woods, lead into the fastnesses where they take refuge. Such trails would grow "cold" before noonday.

There are dogs called 'c.o.o.n-dogs, but of no particular breed or pedigree. A local pack will consist of Rag, Tag, and Bobtail, with all of Bobtail's friends and connections. One of them is known to be best and takes the lead. They call him the trailer. The rest rush yelping after, and as fast as possible follow the hunters, with torches or lanterns or by moonlight, carrying axes and hatchets, guns, and antidotes for snake-bite in flat, black bottles. Trailer's motley crew catch a sniff of the trail and disappear in the darkness of the brushy woods, baying, barking, yelping, squealing, each after its kind. After them go the whooping hunters, following by ear as the dogs do by nose, for none can use the sense of sight.

Finally a chorus of eager barking in a different tone from what has thus far been heard announces to experienced ears that the dogs have some game at bay. The hunters dispute as to what it is as they crash and stagger on through the gloom, each swearing he knows by his cur's voice what sort of an animal he has in view. Arrived at the scene of the clamor, the dogs are found in frantic excitement around the foot of a tree, in whose shadowy foliage something is supposed to be hidden. Will it be a 'c.o.o.n, or will it turn out a 'possum, a wild-cat, or mayhap an owl?

First of all a fire is lighted, and its upreaching blaze sends fitful rays of yellow light far among the overhanging branches. Now there may be discerned a hollow near the summit of the trunk, and as dead branches are heaped upon the fire, sharp eyes may detect a triangular head peering out of what was once, perhaps, the front door of a woodp.e.c.k.e.r's home, and the glints of green are reported to be the glare of a racc.o.o.n's eyes.

The nimblest man in the party is sent up the tree, and given a stick wherewith to frighten or poke or pry the cornered animal out of his castle. Compelled to leave the hole, it creeps out upon a limb, and squatting down, snarls at the stranger, who tries to shake loose its hold. But this is a vain attempt. A racc.o.o.n can cling like a burr. Try to drag your pet 'c.o.o.n off the top of a fence, and if he chooses to resist, you may pull him limb from limb before he will let go. So they take the severer method of chopping the branches, until the poor little beast has none left to clutch in falling, and comes down a heap of fur and teeth and claws into the midst of the dogs. Instantly there follows a scrimmage, where often an honest bark is changed in the middle to a yelp of pain, until many a time the melee changes to a ring of hurt and angry but vanquished curs around a 'c.o.o.n lying on his back, with b.l.o.o.d.y teeth and claws ready to try it again; and then he is shot by the hunters, merciless to the last. More often the whole tree must be cut down, and the brave 'c.o.o.n falls with it, and is dashed out among his enemies to fight for his life at the end of his fall.

--ERNEST INGERSOLL (adapted).

[Footnote: What does the phrase "the trails would grow cold" mean? What sense would you find most active if you were on the c.o.o.n-hunt? Does the author write as an enthusiastic hunter? What impresses you most in the account: the fun or the cruelty of hunting? Does the author succeed in giving you an idea of the excitement of c.o.o.n-hunting? Would the account have any added interest if it were told in the first person?]

SIGHT IN SAVAGES

In Patagonia [Footnote: Patagonia: the southern part of Argentine Republic.] I added something to my small stock of private facts concerning eyes--their appearance, color, and expression--and vision, subjects which have had a mild attraction for me as long as I can remember. When, as a boy, I mixed with the gauchos [Footnote: Gauchos: these people are of Spanish-American descent. They are the native inhabitants of the pampas, and live chiefly by cattle-raising.] of the pampas, [Footnote: Pampas: vast plains in the southern part of South America, chiefly in the Argentine Republic.] there was one among them who greatly awed me by his appearance and character. He was distinguished among his fellows by his tallness, the thickness of his eyebrows and the great length of his crow-black beard, the form and length of his "facon," or knife, which was nothing but a sword worn knife-wise, and the ballads he composed, in which were recounted, in a harsh tuneless voice to the strum-strum of a guitar, the hand-to-hand combats he had had with others of his cla.s.s--fighters and desperadoes--and in which he had always been the victor, for his adversaries had all been slain to a man. But his eyes, his most wonderful feature, impressed me more than anything else; for one was black and the other dark blue. All other strange and extranatural things in nature, of which I had personal knowledge, as, for instance, mushrooms growing in rings, and the shrinking of the sensitive plant when touched, and Will-o'-the-wisps, and crowing hens, and the murderous attack of social birds and beasts on one of their fellows, seemed less strange and wonderful than the fact that this man's eyes did not correspond, but were the eyes of two men, as if there had been two natures and souls in one body. My astonishment was, perhaps, not unaccountable, when we reflect that the eye is to us the window of the mind or soul, that it expresses the soul, and is, as it were, the soul itself materialized.

Some person lately published in England a book ent.i.tled "Soul-Shapes,"

treating not only of the shapes of souls but also of their color. The letter-press of this work interests me less than the colored plates adorning it. Pa.s.sing over the mixed and vari-colored souls, which resemble, in the ill.u.s.trations, colored maps in an atlas, we come to the blue soul, for which the author has a very special regard. Its blue is like that of the commonest type of blue eye. This curious fancy of a blue soul probably originated in the close a.s.sociation of eye and soul in the mind. It is worthy of note that while the mixed and other colored souls seem very much out of shape, like an old felt hat or a stranded jelly fish, the pure colored blue soul is round, like an iris, and only wanted a pupil to be made an eye.

Here again I recall an incident of my boyhood, and am not sure that it was not this that first gave me an interest in the subject.

One summer day, at home, I was attentively listening, out of doors, to a conversation between two men, both past middle life and about the same age, one an educated Englishman, wearing spectacles, the other a native, who was very impressive in his manner, and was holding forth in a loud authoritative voice on a variety of subjects. All at once he fixed his eyes on the spectacles worn by the other, and, bursting into a laugh, cried out, "Why do you always wear those eye-hiding gla.s.ses straddled across your nose? Are they supposed to make a man look handsomer or wiser than his fellows, or do you, a sensible person, really believe that you can see better than another man because of them? If so, then all I can say is that it is a fable, a delusion; no man can believe such a thing."

He was only expressing the feeling that all persons of his cla.s.s, whose lives are pa.s.sed in the semi-barbarous conditions of the gauchos on the pampas, experience at the sight of such artificial helps to vision as spectacles. They look through a pane of gla.s.s, and it makes the view no clearer, but rather dimmer--how can the two diminutive circular panes carried before the eyes produce any other effect? Besides, their sight as a rule is good when they are young, and as they progress in life they are not conscious of decadence in it; from infancy to old age the world looks, they imagine, the same; the gra.s.s as green, the sky as blue as ever, and the scarlet verbenas in the gra.s.s just as scarlet. The man lives in his sight; it is his life; he speaks of the loss of it as a calamity great as the loss of reason. To see spectacles amuses and irritates him at the same time; he has the monkey's impulse to s.n.a.t.c.h the idle things from his fellow's nose; for not only is it useless to the wearer, and a sham, but it is annoying to others, who do not like to look at a man and not properly see his eyes and the thought that is in them.

To the mocking speech he had made, the other good humoredly replied that he had worn gla.s.ses for twenty years, that not only did they enable him to see much better than he could without them, but they had preserved his sight from further decadence. Not satisfied with defending himself against the charge of being a fantastical person for wearing gla.s.ses, he in his turn attacked the mocker. "How do you know," he said, "that your own eyesight has not degenerated with time? You can only ascertain that by trying on a number of gla.s.ses suited to a variety of sights, all in some degree defective. A score of men with defective sight may be together, and in no two will the sight be the same. You must try on spectacles, as you try on boots, until you find a pair to fit you. You may try mine, if you like; our years are the same, and it is just possible that our eyes may be in the same condition."

The gaucho laughed a loud and scornful laugh, and exclaimed that the idea was too ridiculous. "What, see better with this thing!" and he took them gingerly in his hand, and held them up to examine them, and finally put them on his nose--something in the spirit of the person who takes a newspaper twisted into the shape of an extinguisher, and puts it on his head. He looked at the other, then at me, then stared all round him with an expression of utter astonishment, and in the end burst out in loud exclamations of delight. For, strange to say, the gla.s.ses exactly suited his vision, which, unknown to him, had probably been decaying for years.

"Angels of heaven, what is this I see!" he shouted. "What makes the trees look so green--they were never so green before! And so distinct--I can count their leaves! And the cart over there--why, it is red as blood!" And to satisfy himself that it had not just been freshly painted, he ran over to it and placed his hand on the wood. It proved hard to convince him that objects had once looked as distinct, and leaves as green, and the sky as blue, and red paint as red, to his natural sight, as they now did through those magical gla.s.ses. The distinctness and brightness seemed artificial and uncanny. But in the end he was convinced, and then he wanted to keep the spectacles, and pulled out his money to pay for them there and then, and was very much put out when their owner insisted on having them back. However, shortly afterwards a pair was got for him; and with these on his nose he galloped about the country, exhibiting them to all his neighbors, and boasting of the miraculous power they imparted to his eyes of seeing the world as no one else could see it.

--W.H. HUDSON.

[Footnote: What things in nature do you think most interested the writer? Do you imagine that he would be a good out-of-doors companion?

Why? Was the native in the story the sort of person whom you would expect to "hold forth in an authoritative voice on a variety of subjects"? Do you know what the general att.i.tude of the savage and semi-civilized people is toward strange things? Note the rambling, conversational style in which this sketch is written. Compare it with Stevenson, Aldrich, and Edwards. Note the delightfully whimsical quality of the humor. Can you see any likeness in this to Lamb and Hawthorne?]