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Group Work on Short Stories

Read and analyse your short story.

Prepare a group presentation of about 15 minutes (equal participation, interesting beginning, good

structure).

Concentrate on the following aspects:

• Give a summary of the plot.

• Give essential, relevant information on the author (origin, significance, background of the story) and

story (year of publication).

• Choose a short extract that seems worth presenting and read it to the class in an appropriate way.

• Analyse and interpret literary and rhetoric devices and their effect on the reader: Include setting,

atmosphere and the characters (protagonist(s) and/ or a character constellation scheme) as well as

narrative techniques.

• Evaluate the character(s) with regard to gender roles.

• Discuss whether your text is a typical short story.

• Prepare a fact sheet (1 page, font size 12) for your classmates. It should include detailed notes on

analysis and interpretation giving evidence through references from the text. Its layout should be well

designed to support the message. Remember correct spelling and reference to your sources (Internet or

books).

Hand in the fact sheet as a printed handout to your teacher until 17.1.2017 (blue teacher’s box).

You’ll get a mark on the presentation and another mark on your handout.

Content of this reader:

Jamaica Kincaid: Girl ......................................................................................................... 2

Kate Chopin: Desire’s Baby ............................................................................................... 3

Herbert George Wells: The Remarkable Case of Davidson's Eyes ................................... 7

Oscar Wilde: The Happy Prince ....................................................................................... 12

Ernest Hemingway: A Clean, Well-Lighted Place ........................................................... 16

Ernest Hemingway: Indian Camp .................................................................................... 20

Edgar Allan Poe: The Tell-Tale Heart ............................................................................ 23

William Faulkner: A Rose for Emily ............................................................................... 26

2

Jamaica Kincaid: Girl

Wash the white clothes on Monday and put them on the stone heap; wash the color clothes on Tuesday

and put them on the clothesline to dry; don’t walk bare-head in the hot sun; cook pumpkin fritters in

very hot sweet oil; soak your little cloths right after you take them off; when buying cotton to make

yourself a nice blouse, be sure that it doesn’t have gum in it, because that way it won’t hold up well

after a wash; soak salt fish overnight before you cook it; is it true that you sing benna in Sunday

school?; always eat your food in such a way that it won’t turn someone else’s stomach; on Sundays try

to walk like a lady and not like the slut you are so bent on becoming; don’t sing benna in Sunday

school; you mustn’t speak to wharf-rat boys, not even to give directions; don’t eat fruits on the

street—flies will follow you; but I don’t sing benna on Sundays at all and never in Sunday school; this

is how to sew on a button; this is how to make a buttonhole for the button you have just sewed on; this

is how to hem a dress when you see the hem coming down and so to prevent yourself from looking

like the slut I know you are so bent on becoming; this is how you iron your father’s khaki shirt so that

it doesn’t have a crease; this is how you iron your father’s khaki pants so that they don’t have a crease;

this is how you grow okra—far from the house, because okra tree harbors red ants; when you are

growing dasheen, make sure it gets plenty of water or else it makes your throat itch when you are

eating it; this is how you sweep a corner; this is how you sweep a whole house; this is how you sweep

a yard; this is how you smile to someone you don’t like too much; this is how you smile to someone

you don’t like at all; this is how you smile to someone you like completely; this is how you set a table

for tea; this is how you set a table for dinner; this is how you set a table for dinner with an important

guest; this is how you set a table for lunch; this is how you set a table for breakfast; this is how to

behave in the presence of men who don’t know you very well, and this way they won’t recognize

immediately the slut I have warned you against becoming; be sure to wash every day, even if it is with

your own spit; don’t squat down to play marbles—you are not a boy, you know; don’t pick people’s

flowers—you might catch something; don’t throw stones at blackbirds, because it might not be a

blackbird at all; this is how to make a bread pudding; this is how to make doukona; this is how to

make pepper pot; this is how to make a good medicine for a cold; this is how to make a good medicine

to throw away a child before it even becomes a child; this is how to catch a fish; this is how to throw

back a fish you don’t like, and that way something bad won’t fall on you; this is how to bully a man;

this is how a man bullies you; this is how to love a man, and if this doesn’t work there are other ways,

and if they don’t work don’t feel too bad about giving up; this is how to spit up in the air if you feel

like it, and this is how to move quick so that it doesn’t fall on you; this is how to make ends meet;

always squeeze bread to make sure it’s fresh; but what if the baker won’t let me feel the bread?; you

mean to say that after all you are really going to be the kind of woman who the baker won’t let near

the bread?

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1978/06/26/girl

3

Kate Chopin: Desire’s Baby

As the day was pleasant, Madame Valmonde drove over to L'Abri to see Desiree and the baby.

It made her laugh to think of Desiree with a baby. Why, it seemed but yesterday that Desiree was little

more than a baby herself; when Monsieur in riding through the gateway of Valmonde had found her

lying asleep in the shadow of the big stone pillar.

The little one awoke in his arms and began to cry for "Dada." That was as much as she could do or

say. Some people thought she might have strayed there of her own accord, for she was of the toddling

age. The prevailing belief was that she had been purposely left by a party of Texans, whose canvas-

covered wagon, late in the day, had crossed the ferry that Coton Mais kept, just below the plantation.

In time Madame Valmonde abandoned every speculation but the one that Desiree had been sent to her

by a beneficent Providence to be the child of her affection, seeing that she was without child of the

flesh. For the girl grew to be beautiful and gentle, affectionate and sincere,--the idol of Valmonde.

It was no wonder, when she stood one day against the stone pillar in whose shadow she had lain

asleep, eighteen years before, that Armand Aubigny riding by and seeing her there, had fallen in love

with her. That was the way all the Aubignys fell in love, as if struck by a pistol shot. The wonder was

that he had not loved her before; for he had known her since his father brought him home from Paris, a

boy of eight, after his mother died there. The passion that awoke in him that day, when he saw her at

the gate, swept along like an avalanche, or like a prairie fire, or like anything that drives headlong over

all obstacles.

Monsieur Valmonde grew practical and wanted things well considered: that is, the girl's obscure

origin. Armand looked into her eyes and did not care. He was reminded that she was nameless. What

did it matter about a name when he could give her one of the oldest and proudest in Louisiana? He

ordered the corbeille from Paris, and contained himself with what patience he could until it arrived;

then they were married.

Madame Valmonde had not seen Desiree and the baby for four weeks. When she reached L'Abri she

shuddered at the first sight of it, as she always did. It was a sad looking place, which for many years

had not known the gentle presence of a mistress, old Monsieur Aubigny having married and buried his

wife in France, and she having loved her own land too well ever to leave it. The roof came down steep

and black like a cowl, reaching out beyond the wide galleries that encircled the yellow stuccoed house.

Big, solemn oaks grew close to it, and their thick-leaved, far-reaching branches shadowed it like a pall.

Young Aubigny's rule was a strict one, too, and under it his negroes had forgotten how to be gay, as

they had been during the old master's easy-going and indulgent lifetime.

The young mother was recovering slowly, and lay full length, in her soft white muslins and laces,

upon a couch. The baby was beside her, upon her arm, where he had fallen asleep, at her breast. The

yellow nurse woman sat beside a window fanning herself.

Madame Valmonde bent her portly figure over Desiree and kissed her, holding her an instant tenderly

in her arms. Then she turned to the child.

"This is not the baby!" she exclaimed, in startled tones. French was the language spoken at Valmonde

in those days.

"I knew you would be astonished," laughed Desiree, "at the way he has grown. The little cochon de

lait! Look at his legs, mamma, and his hands and fingernails,--real finger-nails. Zandrine had to cut

them this morning. Isn't it true, Zandrine?"

The woman bowed her turbaned head majestically, "Mais si, Madame."

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"And the way he cries," went on Desiree, "is deafening. Armand heard him the other day as far away

as La Blanche's cabin."

Madame Valmonde had never removed her eyes from the child. She lifted it and walked with it over to

the window that was lightest. She scanned the baby narrowly, then looked as searchingly at Zandrine,

whose face was turned to gaze across the fields.

"Yes, the child has grown, has changed," said Madame Valmonde, slowly, as she replaced it beside its

mother. "What does Armand say?"

Desiree's face became suffused with a glow that was happiness itself.

"Oh, Armand is the proudest father in the parish, I believe, chiefly because it is a boy, to bear his

name; though he says not,--that he would have loved a girl as well. But I know it isn't true. I know he

says that to please me. And mamma," she added, drawing Madame Valmonde's head down to her, and

speaking in a whisper, "he hasn't punished one of them--not one of them--since baby is born. Even

Negrillon, who pretended to have burnt his leg that he might rest from work--he only laughed, and

said Negrillon was a great scamp. oh, mamma, I'm so happy; it frightens me."

What Desiree said was true. Marriage, and later the birth of his son had softened Armand Aubigny's

imperious and exacting nature greatly. This was what made the gentle Desiree so happy, for she loved

him desperately. When he frowned she trembled, but loved him. When he smiled, she asked no greater

blessing of God. But Armand's dark, handsome face had not often been disfigured by frowns since the

day he fell in love with her.

When the baby was about three months old, Desiree awoke one day to the conviction that there was

something in the air menacing her peace. It was at first too subtle to grasp. It had only been a

disquieting suggestion; an air of mystery among the blacks; unexpected visits from far-off neighbors

who could hardly account for their coming. Then a strange, an awful change in her husband's manner,

which she dared not ask him to explain. When he spoke to her, it was with averted eyes, from which

the old love-light seemed to have gone out. He absented himself from home; and when there, avoided

her presence and that of her child, without excuse. And the very spirit of Satan seemed suddenly to

take hold of him in his dealings with the slaves. Desiree was miserable enough to die.

She sat in her room, one hot afternoon, in her peignoir, listlessly drawing through her fingers the

strands of her long, silky brown hair that hung about her shoulders. The baby, half naked, lay asleep

upon her own great mahogany bed, that was like a sumptuous throne, with its satin-lined half-canopy.

One of La Blanche's little quadroon boys--half naked too--stood fanning the child slowly with a fan of

peacock feathers. Desiree's eyes had been fixed absently and sadly upon the baby, while she was

striving to penetrate the threatening mist that she felt closing about her. She looked from her child to

the boy who stood beside him, and back again; over and over. "Ah!" It was a cry that she could not

help; which she was not conscious of having uttered. The blood turned like ice in her veins, and a

clammy moisture gathered upon her face.

She tried to speak to the little quadroon boy; but no sound would come, at first. When he heard his

name uttered, he looked up, and his mistress was pointing to the door. He laid aside the great, soft fan,

and obediently stole away, over the polished floor, on his bare tiptoes.

She stayed motionless, with gaze riveted upon her child, and her face the picture of fright.

Presently her husband entered the room, and without noticing her, went to a table and began to search

among some papers which covered it.

"Armand," she called to him, in a voice which must have stabbed him, if he was human. But he did not

notice. "Armand," she said again. Then she rose and tottered towards him. "Armand," she panted once

more, clutching his arm, "look at our child. What does it mean? tell me."

5

He coldly but gently loosened her fingers from about his arm and thrust the hand away from him. "Tell

me what it means!" she cried despairingly.

"It means," he answered lightly, "that the child is not white; it means that you are not white."

A quick conception of all that this accusation meant for her nerved her with unwonted courage to deny

it. "It is a lie; it is not true, I am white! Look at my hair, it is brown; and my eyes are gray, Armand,

you know they are gray. And my skin is fair," seizing his wrist. "Look at my hand; whiter than yours,

Armand," she laughed hysterically.

"As white as La Blanche's," he returned cruelly; and went away leaving her alone with their child.

When she could hold a pen in her hand, she sent a despairing letter to Madame Valmonde.

"My mother, they tell me I am not white. Armand has told me I am not white. For God's sake tell them

it is not true. You must know it is not true. I shall die. I must die. I cannot be so unhappy, and live."

The answer that came was brief:

"My own Desiree: Come home to Valmonde; back to your mother who loves you. Come with your

child."

When the letter reached Desiree she went with it to her husband's study, and laid it open upon the desk

before which he sat. She was like a stone image: silent, white, motionless after she placed it there.

In silence he ran his cold eyes over the written words.

He said nothing. "Shall I go, Armand?" she asked in tones sharp with agonized suspense.

"Yes, go."

"Do you want me to go?"

"Yes, I want you to go."

He thought Almighty God had dealt cruelly and unjustly with him; and felt, somehow, that he was

paying Him back in kind when he stabbed thus into his wife's soul. Moreover he no longer loved her,

because of the unconscious injury she had brought upon his home and his name.

She turned away like one stunned by a blow, and walked slowly towards the door, hoping he would

call her back.

"Good-by, Armand," she moaned.

He did not answer her. That was his last blow at fate.

Desiree went in search of her child. Zandrine was pacing the sombre gallery with it. She took the little

one from the nurse's arms with no word of explanation, and descending the steps, walked away, under

the live-oak branches.

It was an October afternoon; the sun was just sinking. Out in the still fields the negroes were picking

cotton.

Desiree had not changed the thin white garment nor the slippers which she wore. Her hair was

uncovered and the sun's rays brought a golden gleam from its brown meshes. She did not take the

6

broad, beaten road which led to the far-off plantation of Valmonde. She walked across a deserted field,

where the stubble bruised her tender feet, so delicately shod, and tore her thin gown to shreds.

She disappeared among the reeds and willows that grew thick along the banks of the deep, sluggish

bayou; and she did not come back again.

Some weeks later there was a curious scene enacted at L'Abri. In the centre of the smoothly swept

back yard was a great bonfire. Armand Aubigny sat in the wide hallway that commanded a view of the

spectacle; and it was he who dealt out to a half dozen negroes the material which kept this fire ablaze.

A graceful cradle of willow, with all its dainty furbishings, was laid upon the pyre, which had already

been fed with the richness of a priceless layette. Then there were silk gowns, and velvet and satin ones

added to these; laces, too, and embroideries; bonnets and gloves; for the corbeille had been of rare

quality.

The last thing to go was a tiny bundle of letters; innocent little scribblings that Desiree had sent to him

during the days of their espousal. There was the remnant of one back in the drawer from which he took

them. But it was not Desiree's; it was part of an old letter from his mother to his father. He read it. She

was thanking God for the blessing of her husband's love:--

"But above all," she wrote, "night and day, I thank the good God for having so arranged our lives that

our dear Armand will never know that his mother, who adores him, belongs to the race that is cursed

with the brand of slavery."

http://www.pbs.org/katechopin/library/desireesbaby.html

7

Herbert George Wells: The Remarkable Case of Davidson's Eyes

I.

The transitory mental aberration of Sidney Davidson, remarkable enough in itself, is still more

remarkable if Wade's explanation is to be credited.

It sets one dreaming of the oddest possibilities of intercommunication in the future, of spending an

intercalary five minutes on the other side of the world, or being watched in our most secret operations

by unsuspected eyes. It happened that I was the immediate witness of Davidson's seizure, and so it

falls naturally to me to put the story upon paper.

When I say that I was the immediate witness of his seizure, I mean that I was the first on the scene.

The thing happened at the Harlow Technical College, just beyond the Highgate Archway. He was

alone in the larger laboratory when the thing happened. I was in a smaller room, where the balances

are, writing up some notes. The thunderstorm had completely upset my work, of course. It was just

after one of the louder peals that I thought I heard some glass smash in the other room. I stopped

writing, and turned round to listen. For a moment I heard nothing; the hail was playing the devil's

tattoo on the corrugated zinc of the roof. Then came another sound, a smash--no doubt of it this time.

Something heavy had been knocked off the bench. I jumped up at once and went and opened the door

leading into the big laboratory.

I was surprised to hear a queer sort of laugh, and saw Davidson standing unsteadily in the middle of

the room, with a dazzled look on his face. My first impression was that he was drunk. He did not

notice me. He was clawing out at something invisible a yard in front of his face. He put out his hand,

slowly, rather hesitatingly, and then clutched nothing. "What's come to it?" he said. He held up his

hands to his face, fingers spread out. "Great Scott!" he said. The thing happened three or four years

ago, when every one swore by that personage. Then he began raising his feet clumsily, as though he

had expected to find them glued to the floor.

"Davidson!" cried I. "What's the matter with you?" He turned round in my direction and looked about

for me. He looked over me and at me and on either side of me, without the slightest sign of seeing me.

"Waves," he said; "and a remarkably neat schooner. I'd swear that was Bellow's voice.

_Hullo_!" He shouted suddenly at the top of his voice.

I thought he was up to some foolery. Then I saw littered about his feet the shattered remains of the

best of our electrometers. "What's up, man?" said I. "You've smashed the electrometer!"

"Bellows again!" said he. "Friends left, if my hands are gone. Something about electrometers. Which

way _are_ you, Bellows?" He suddenly came staggering towards me. "The damned stuff cuts like

butter," he said. He walked straight into the bench and recoiled. "None so buttery that!" he said, and

stood swaying.

I felt scared. "Davidson," said I, "what on earth's come over you?"

He looked round him in every direction. "I could swear that was Bellows. Why don't you show

yourself like a man, Bellows?"

It occurred to me that he must be suddenly struck blind. I walked round the table and laid my hand

upon his arm. I never saw a man more startled in my life. He jumped away from me, and came round

into an attitude of self-defence, his face fairly distorted with terror. "Good God!" he cried. "What was

that?"

"It's I--Bellows. Confound it, Davidson!"

He jumped when I answered him and stared--how can I express it?—right through me. He began

talking, not to me, but to himself. "Here in broad daylight on a clear beach. Not a place to hide in." He

looked about him wildly. "Here! I'm _off_." He suddenly turned and ran headlong into the big electro-

magnet--so violently that, as we found afterwards, he bruised his shoulder and jawbone cruelly. At that

he stepped back a pace, and cried out with almost a whimper, "What, in Heaven's name, has come

over me?" He stood, blanched with terror and trembling violently, with his right arm clutching his left,

where that had collided with the magnet.

By that time I was excited and fairly scared. "Davidson," said I, "don't be afraid."

He was startled at my voice, but not so excessively as before. I repeated my words in as clear and as

firm a tone as I could assume. "Bellows," he said, "is that you?"

"Can't you see it's me?"

He laughed. "I can't even see it's myself. Where the devil are we?"

"Here," said I, "in the laboratory."

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"The laboratory!" he answered in a puzzled tone, and put his hand to his forehead. "I _was_ in the

laboratory--till that flash came, but I'm hanged if I'm there now. What ship is that?"

"There's no ship," said I. "Do be sensible, old chap."

"No ship!" he repeated, and seemed to forget my denial forthwith. "I suppose," said he slowly, "we're

both dead. But the rummy part is I feel just as though I still had a body. Don't get used to it all at once,

I suppose. The old shop was struck by lightning, I suppose. Jolly quick thing, Bellows--eigh?"

"Don't talk nonsense. You're very much alive. You are in the laboratory, blundering about. You've just

smashed a new electrometer. I don't envy you when Boyce arrives."

He stared away from me towards the diagrams of cryohydrates. "I must be deaf," said he. "They've

fired a gun, for there goes the puff of smoke, and I never heard a sound."

I put my hand on his arm again, and this time he was less alarmed. "We seem to have a sort of

invisible bodies," said he. "By Jove! there's a boat coming round the headland. It's very much like the

old life after all--in a different climate."

I shook his arm. "Davidson," I cried, "wake up!"

II.

It was just then that Boyce came in. So soon as he spoke Davidson exclaimed: "Old Boyce! Dead too!

What a lark!" I hastened to explain that Davidson was in a kind of somnambulistic trance. Boyce was

interested at once. We both did all we could to rouse the fellow out of his extraordinary state. He

answered our questions, and asked us some of his own, but his attention seemed distracted by his

hallucination about a beach and a ship. He kept interpolating observations concerning some boat and

the davits, and sails filling with the wind. It made one feel queer, in the dusky laboratory, to hear him

saying such things.

He was blind and helpless. We had to walk him down the passage, one at each elbow, to Boyce's

private room, and while Boyce talked to him there, and humoured him about this ship idea, I went

along the corridor and asked old Wade to come and look at him. The voice of our Dean sobered him a

little, but not very much. He asked where his hands were, and why he had to walk about up to his

waist in the ground. Wade thought over him a long time--you know how he knits his brows--and then

made him feel the couch, guiding his hands to it. "That's a couch," said Wade. "The couch in the

private room of Professor Boyce. Horse-hair stuffing."

Davidson felt about, and puzzled over it, and answered presently that he could feel it all right, but he

couldn't see it.

"What _do_ you see?" asked Wade. Davidson said he could see nothing but a lot of sand and broken-

up shells. Wade gave him some other things to feel, telling him what they were, and watching him

keenly.

"The ship is almost hull down," said Davidson presently, _apropos_ of nothing.

"Never mind the ship," said Wade. "Listen to me, Davidson. Do you know what hallucination means?"

"Rather," said Davidson.

"Well, everything you see is hallucinatory."

"Bishop Berkeley," said Davidson.

"Don't mistake me," said Wade. "You are alive and in this room of Boyce's. But something has

happened to your eyes. You cannot see; you can feel and hear, but not see. Do you follow me?"

"It seems to me that I see too much." Davidson rubbed his knuckles into his eyes. "Well?" he said.

"That's all. Don't let it perplex you. Bellows here and I will take you home in a cab."

"Wait a bit." Davidson thought. "Help me to sit down," said he presently; "and now--I'm sorry to

trouble you--but will you tell me all that over again?"

Wade repeated it very patiently. Davidson shut his eyes, and pressed his hands upon his forehead.

"Yes," said he. "It's quite right. Now my eyes are shut I know you're right. That's you, Bellows, sitting

by me on the couch. I'm in England again. And we're in the dark."

Then he opened his eyes. "And there," said he, "is the sun just rising, and the yards of the ship, and a

tumbled sea, and a couple of birds flying. I never saw anything so real. And I'm sitting up to my neck

in a bank of sand."

He bent forward and covered his face with his hands. Then he opened his eyes again. "Dark sea and

sunrise! And yet I'm sitting on a sofa in old Boyce's room!... God help me!"

III.

That was the beginning. For three weeks this strange affection of Davidson's eyes continued unabated.

It was far worse than being blind. He was absolutely helpless, and had to be fed like a newly-hatched

bird, and led about and undressed. If he attempted to move, he fell over things or struck himself

9

against walls or doors. After a day or so he got used to hearing our voices without seeing us, and

willingly admitted he was at home, and that Wade was right in what he told him. My sister, to whom

he was engaged, insisted on coming to see him, and would sit for hours every day while he talked

about this beach of his. Holding her hand seemed to comfort him immensely. He explained that when

we left the College and drove home--he lived in Hampstead village--it appeared to him as if we drove

right through a sandhill--it was perfectly black until he emerged again--and through rocks and trees

and solid obstacles, and when he was taken to his own room it made him giddy and almost frantic with

the fear of falling, because going upstairs seemed to lift him thirty or forty feet above the rocks of his

imaginary island. He kept saying he should smash all the eggs. The end was that he had to be taken

down into his father's consulting room and laid upon a couch that stood there.

He described the island as being a bleak kind of place on the whole, with very little vegetation, except

some peaty stuff, and a lot of bare rock. There were multitudes of penguins, and they made the rocks

white and disagreeable to see. The sea was often rough, and once there was a thunderstorm, and he lay

and shouted at the silent flashes. Once or twice seals pulled up on the beach, but only on the first two

or three days. He said it was very funny the way in which the penguins used to waddle right through

him, and how he seemed to lie among them without disturbing them.

I remember one odd thing, and that was when he wanted very badly to smoke. We put a pipe in his

hands--he almost poked his eye out with it--and lit it. But he couldn't taste anything. I've since found

it's the same with me--I don't know if it's the usual case--that I cannot enjoy tobacco at all unless I can

see the smoke.

But the queerest part of his vision came when Wade sent him out in a Bath-chair to get fresh air. The

Davidsons hired a chair, and got that deaf and obstinate dependant of theirs, Widgery, to attend to it.

Widgery's ideas of healthy expeditions were peculiar. My sister, who had been to the Dogs' Home, met

them in Camden Town, towards King's Cross, Widgery trotting along complacently, and Davidson,

evidently most distressed, trying in his feeble, blind way to attract Widgery's attention.

He positively wept when my sister spoke to him. "Oh, get me out of this horrible darkness!" he said,

feeling for her hand. "I must get out of it, or I shall die." He was quite incapable of explaining what

was the matter, but my sister decided he must go home, and presently, as they went uphill towards

Hampstead, the horror seemed to drop from him. He said it was good to see the stars again, though it

was then about noon and a blazing day.

"It seemed," he told me afterwards, "as if I was being carried irresistibly towards the water. I was not

very much alarmed at first. Of course it was night there--a lovely night."

"Of course?" I asked, for that struck me as odd.

"Of course," said he. "It's always night there when it is day here... Well, we went right into the water,

which was calm and shining under the moonlight--just a broad swell that seemed to grow broader and

flatter as I came down into it. The surface glistened just like a skin--it might have been empty space

underneath for all I could tell to the contrary. Very slowly, for I rode slanting into it, the water crept up

to my eyes. Then I went under and the skin seemed to break and heal again about my eyes. The moon

gave a jump up in the sky and grew green and dim, and fish, faintly glowing, came darting round me--

and things that seemed made of luminous glass; and I passed through a tangle of seaweeds that shone

with an oily lustre. And so I drove down into the sea, and the stars went out one by one, and the moon

grew greener and darker, and the seaweed became a luminous purple-red. It was all very faint and

mysterious, and everything seemed to quiver. And all the while I could hear the wheels of the Bath-

chair creaking, and the footsteps of people going by, and a man in the distance selling the special _Pall

Mall_.

"I kept sinking down deeper and deeper into the water. It became inky black about me, not a ray from

above came down into that darkness, and the phosphorescent things grew brighter and brighter. The

snaky branches of the deeper weeds flickered like the flames of spirit-lamps; but, after a time, there

were no more weeds. The fishes came staring and gaping towards me, and into me and through me. I

never imagined such fishes before. They had lines of fire along the sides of them as though they had

been outlined with a luminous pencil. And there was a ghastly thing swimming backwards with a lot

of twining arms. And then I saw, coming very slowly towards me through the gloom, a hazy mass of

light that resolved itself as it drew nearer into multitudes of fishes, struggling and darting round

something that drifted. I drove on straight towards it, and presently I saw in the midst of the tumult,

and by the light of the fish, a bit of splintered spar looming over me, and a dark hull tilting over, and

some glowing phosphorescent forms that were shaken and writhed as the fish bit at them. Then it was

I began to try to attract Widgery's attention. A horror came upon me. Ugh! I should have driven right

10

into those half-eaten--things. If your sister had not come! They had great holes in them, Bellows, and

... Never mind. But it was ghastly!"

IV.

For three weeks Davidson remained in this singular state, seeing what at the time we imagined was an

altogether phantasmal world, and stone blind to the world around him. Then, one Tuesday, when I

called I met old Davidson in the passage. "He can see his thumb!" the old gentleman said, in a perfect

transport. He was struggling into his overcoat. "He can see his thumb, Bellows!" he said, with the tears

in his eyes. "The lad will be all right yet."

I rushed in to Davidson. He was holding up a little book before his face, and looking at it and laughing

in a weak kind of way.

"It's amazing," said he. "There's a kind of patch come there." He pointed with his finger. "I'm on the

rocks as usual, and the penguins are staggering and flapping about as usual, and there's been a whale

showing every now and then, but it's got too dark now to make him out. But put something _there_,

and I see it--I do see it. It's very dim and broken in places, but I see it all the same, like a faint spectre

of itself. I found it out this morning while they were dressing me. It's like a hole in this infernal

phantom world. Just put your hand by mine. No—not there. Ah! Yes! I see it. The base of your thumb

and a bit of cuff! It looks like the ghost of a bit of your hand sticking out of the darkling sky. Just by it

there's a group of stars like a cross coming out."

From that time Davidson began to mend. His account of the change, like his account of the vision, was

oddly convincing. Over patches of his field of vision, the phantom world grew fainter, grew

transparent, as it were, and through these translucent gaps he began to see dimly the real world about

him. The patches grew in size and number, ran together and spread until only here and there were

blind spots left upon his eyes. He was able to get up and steer himself about, feed himself once more,

read, smoke, and behave like an ordinary citizen again. At first it was very confusing to him to have

these two pictures overlapping each other like the changing views of a lantern, but in a little while he

began to distinguish the real from the illusory.

At first he was unfeignedly glad, and seemed only too anxious to complete his cure by taking exercise

and tonics. But as that odd island of his began to fade away from him, he became queerly interested in

it. He wanted particularly to go down into the deep sea again, and would spend half his time

wandering about the low-lying parts of London, trying to find the water-logged wreck he had seen

drifting. The glare of real daylight very soon impressed him so vividly as to blot out everything of his

shadowy world, but of a night-time, in a darkened room, he could still see the white-splashed rocks of

the island, and the clumsy penguins staggering to and fro. But even these grew fainter and fainter, and,

at last, soon after he married my sister, he saw them for the last time.

V.

And now to tell of the queerest thing of all. About two years after his cure I dined with the Davidsons,

and after dinner a man named Atkins called in. He is a lieutenant in the Royal Navy, and a pleasant,

talkative man. He was on friendly terms with my brother-in-law, and was soon on friendly terms with

me. It came out that he was engaged to Davidson's cousin, and incidentally he took out a kind of

pocket photograph case to show us a new rendering of his _fiancée_. "And, by-the-by," said he, "here's

the old _Fulmar_."

Davidson looked at it casually. Then suddenly his face lit up. "Good heavens!" said he. "I could almost

swear----"

"What?" said Atkins.

"That I had seen that ship before."

"Don't see how you can have. She hasn't been out of the South Seas for six years, and before then----"

"But," began Davidson, and then, "Yes--that's the ship I dreamt of; I'msure that's the ship I dreamt of.

She was standing off an island that swarmed with penguins, and she fired a gun."

"Good Lord!" said Atkins, who had now heard the particulars of the seizure. "How the deuce could

you dream that?"

And then, bit by bit, it came out that on the very day Davidson was seized, H.M.S. _Fulmar_ had

actually been off a little rock to the south of Antipodes Island. A boat had landed overnight to get

penguins' eggs, had been delayed, and a thunderstorm drifting up, the boat's crew had waited until the

morning before rejoining the ship. Atkins had been one of them, and he corroborated, word for word,

the descriptions Davidson had given of the island and the boat. There is not the slightest doubt in any

11

of our minds that Davidson has really seen the place. In some unaccountable way, while he moved

hither and thither in London, his sight moved hither and thither in a manner that corresponded, about

this distant island. _How_ is absolutely a mystery.

That completes the remarkable story of Davidson's eyes. It's perhaps the best authenticated case in

existence of real vision at a distance. Explanation there is none forthcoming, except what Professor

Wade has thrown out. But his explanation invokes the Fourth Dimension, and a dissertation on

theoretical kinds of space. To talk of there being "a kink in space" seems mere nonsense to me; it may

be because I am no mathematician. When I said that nothing would alter the fact that the place is eight

thousand miles away, he answered that two points might be a yard away on a sheet of paper, and yet

be brought together by bending the paper round. The reader may grasp his argument, but I certainly do

not. His idea seems to be that Davidson, stooping between the poles of the big electro-magnet, had

some extraordinary twist given to his retinal elements through the sudden change in the field of force

due to the lightning.

He thinks, as a consequence of this, that it may be possible to live visually in one part of the world,

while one lives bodily in another. He has even made some experiments in support of his views; but, so

far, he has simply succeeded in blinding a few dogs. I believe that is the net result of his work, though

I have not seen him for some weeks. Latterly I have been so busy with my work in connection with the

Saint Pancras installation that I have had little opportunity of calling to see him. But the whole of his

theory seems fantastic to me. The facts concerning Davidson stand on an altogether different footing,

and I can testify personally to the accuracy of every detail I have given.

http://www.online-literature.com/wellshg/2867/

12

Oscar Wilde: The Happy Prince

High above the city, on a tall column, stood the statue of the Happy Prince. He was gilded all over

with thin leaves of fine gold, for eyes he had two bright sapphires, and a large red ruby glowed on his

sword-hilt.

He was very much admired indeed.'He is as beautiful as a weathercock,' remarked one of the Town

Councillors who wished to gain a reputation for having artistic taste; 'only not quite so useful,' he

added, fearing lest people should think him unpractical, which he really was not.

'Why can't you be like the Happy Prince?' asked a sensible mother of her little boy who was crying

for the moon. 'The Happy Prince never dreams of crying for anything.'

'I am glad there is some one in the world who is quite happy', muttered a disappointed man as he

gazed at the wonderful statue.

'He looks just like an angel,' said the Charity Children as they came out of the cathedral in their

bright scarlet cloaks, and their clean white pinafores.

'How do you know?' said the Mathematical Master, 'you have never seen one.'

'Ah! but we have, in our dreams,' answered the children; and the Mathematical Master frowned and

looked very severe, for he did not approve of children dreaming.

One night there flew over the city a little Swallow. His friends had gone away to Egypt six weeks

before, but he had stayed behind, for he was in love with the most beautiful Reed. He had met her

early in the spring as he was flying down the river after a big yellow moth, and had been so attracted

by her slender waist that he had stopped to talk to her.

'Shall I love you said the Swallow', who liked to come to the point at once, and the Reed made him

a low bow. So he flew round and round her, touching the water with his wings, and making silver

ripples. This was his courtship, and it lasted all through the summer.

'It is a ridiculous attachment,' twittered the other Swallows, 'she has no money, and far too many

relations;' and indeed the river was quite full of Reeds. Then, when the autumn came, they all flew

away.

After they had gone he felt lonely, and began to tire of his lady-love. 'She has no conversation,' he

said, 'and I am afraid that she is a coquette, for she is always flirting with the wind.' And certainly,

whenever the wind blew, the Reed made the most graceful curtsies. I admit that she is domestic,' he

continued, 'but I love travelling, and my wife, consequently, should love travelling also.'

'Will you come away with me?' he said finally to her; but the Reed shook her head, she was so

attached to her home.

'You have been trifling with me,' he cried, 'I am off to the Pyramids. Good-bye!' and he flew away.

All day long he flew, and at night-time he arrived at the city. 'Where shall I put up?' he said 'I hope

the town has made preparations.'

Then he saw the statue on the tall column. 'I will put up there,' he cried; 'it is a fine position with

plenty of fresh air.' So he alighted just between the feet of the Happy Prince.

'I have a golden bedroom,' he said softly to himself as he looked round, and he prepared to go to

sleep; but just as he was putting his head under his wing, a large drop of water fell on him.'What a

curious thing!' he cried, 'there is not a single cloud in the sky, the stars are quite clear and bright, and

yet it is raining. The climate in the north of Europe is really dreadful. The Reed used to like the rain,

but that was merely her selfishness.'

Then another drop fell.

'What is the use of a statue if it cannot keep the rain off?' he said; 'I must look for a good chimney-

pot,' and he determined to fly away.

But before he had opened his wings, a third drop fell, and he looked up, and saw - Ah! what did he

see?

The eyes of the Happy Prince were filled with tears, and tears were running down his golden

cheeks. His face was so beautiful in the moonlight that the little Swallow was filled with pity.

'Who are you?' he said.

'I am the Happy Prince.'

'Why are you weeping then?' asked the Swallow; 'you have quite drenched me.'

'When I was alive and had a human heart,' answered the statue, 'I did not know what tears were, for

I lived in the Palace of Sans-Souci where sorrow is not allowed to enter. In the daytime I played with

my companions in the garden, and in the evening I led the dance in the Great Hall. Round the garden

13

ran a very lofty wall, but I never cared to ask what lay beyond it, everything about me was so

beautiful. My courtiers called me the Happy Prince, and happy indeed I was, if pleasure be happiness.

So I lived, and so I died. And now that I am dead they have set me up here so high that I can see all the

ugliness and all the misery of my city, and though my heart is made of lead yet I cannot choose but

weep.'

'What, is he not solid gold?' said the Swallow to himself. He was too polite to make any personal

remarks out loud.

'Far away,' continued the statue in a low musical voice,'far away in a little street there is a poor

house. One of the windows is open, and through it I can see a woman seated at a table. Her face is thin

and worn, and she has coarse, red hands, all pricked by the needle, for she is a seamstress. She is

embroidering passion-fowers on a satin gown for the loveliest of the Queen's maids-of-honour to wear

at the next Court-ball. In a bed in the corner of the room her little boy is lying ill. He has a fever, and

is asking for oranges. His mother has nothing to give him but river water, so he is crying. Swallow,

Swallow, little Swallow, will you not bring her the ruby out of my sword-hilt? My feet are fastened to

this pedestal and I cannot move.'

'I am waited for in Egypt,' said the Swallow. 'My friends are flying up and down the Nile, and

talking to the large lotus flowers. Soon they will go to sleep in the tomb of the great King. The King is

there himself in his painted coffin. He is wrapped in yellow linen, and embalmed with spices. Round

his neck is a chain of pale green jade, and his hands are like withered leaves.'

'Swallow, Swallow, little Swallow,' said the Prince,'will you not stay with me for one night, and be

my messenger? The boy is so thirsty, and the mother so sad.

'I don't think I like boys,' answered the Swallow. 'Last summer, when I was staying on the river,

there were two rude boys, the miller's sons, who were always throwing stones at me. They never hit

me, of course; we swallows fly far too well for that, and besides, I come of a family famous for its

agility; but still, it was a mark of disrespect.'

But the Happy Prince looked so sad that the little Swallow was sorry. 'It is very cold here,' he said

'but I will stay with you for one night, and be your messenger.'

'Thank you, little Swallow,' said the Prince.

So the Swallow picked out the great ruby from the Prince's sword, and flew away with it in his

beak over the roofs of the town.

He passed by the cathedral tower, where the white marble angels were sculptured. He passed by the

palace and heard the sound of dancing. A beautiful girl came out on the balcony with her lover. 'How

wonderful the stars are,' he said to her,'and how wonderful is the power of love!' 'I hope my dress will

be ready in time for the State-ball,' she answered; 'I have ordered passion-flowers to be embroidered

on it; but the seamstresses are so lazy.'

He passed over the river, and saw the lanterns hanging to the masts of the ships. He passed over the

Ghetto, and saw the old Jews bargaining with each other, and weighing out money in copper scales. At

last he came to the poor house and looked in. The boy was tossing feverishly on his bed, and the

mother had fallen asleep, she was so tired. In he hopped, and laid the great ruby on the table beside the

woman's thimble. Then he flew gently round the bed, fanning the boy's forehead with his wings. 'How

cool I feel,' said the boy, 'I must be getting better;' and he sank into a delicious slumber.

Then the Swallow flew back to the Happy Prince, and told him what he had done. 'It is curious,' he

remarked, 'but I feel quite warm now, although it is so cold.'

'That is because you have done a good action,' said the Prince. And the little Swallow began to

think, and then he fell asleep. Thinking always made him sleepy.

When day broke he flew down to the river and had a bath.

'What a remarkable phenomenon,' said the Professor of Omithology as he was passing over the

bridge. 'A swallow in winter!' And he wrote a long letter about it to the local newspaper. Every one

quoted it, it was full of so many words that they could not understand.

'To-night I go to Egypt,' said the Swallow, and he was in high spirits at the prospect. He visited all

the public monuments, and sat a long time on top of the church steeple. Wherever he went the

Sparrows chirruped, and said to each other, 'What a distinguished stranger!' so he enjoyed himself very

much.

When the moon rose he flew back to the Happy Prince. 'Have you any commissions for Egypt?' he

cried; 'I am just starting.'

'Swallow, Swallow, little Swallow,' said the Prince, 'will you not stay with me one night longer?'

14

'I am waited for in Egypt,' answered the Swallow. To-morrow my friends will fly up to the Second

Cataract. The river-horse couches there among the bulrushes, and on a great granite throne sits the

God Memnon. All night long he watches the stars, and when the morning star shines he utters one cry

of joy, and then he is silent. At noon the yellow lions come down to the water's edge to drink. They

have eyes like green beryls, and their roar is louder than the roar of the cataract.'

'Swallow, Swallow, little Swallow,' said the Prince,'far away across the city I see a young man in a

garret. He is leaning over a desk covered with papers, and in a tumbler by his side there is a bunch of

withered violets. His hair is brown and crisp, and his lips are red as a pomegranate, and he has large

and dreamy eyes. He is trying to finish a play for the Director of the Theatre, but he is too cold to write

any more. There is no fire in the grate, and hunger has made him faint.'

'I will wait with you one night longer,' said the Swallow, who really had a good heart. 'Shall I take

him another ruby?'

'Alas! I have no ruby now,' said the Prince; 'my eyes are all that I have left. They are made of rare

sapphires, which were brought out of India a thousand years ago. Pluck out one of them and take it to

him. He will sell it to the jeweller, and buy food and firewood, and finish his play.'

'Dear Prince,' said the Swallow,'I cannot do that;' and he began to weep.

'Swallow, Swallow, little Swallow,' said the Prince, 'do as I command you.'

So the Swallow plucked out the Prince's eye, and flew away to the student's garret. It was easy

enough to get in, as there was a hole in the roof. Through this he darted, and came into the room. The

young man had his head buried in his hands, so he did not hear the flutter of the bird's wings, and

when he looked up he found the beautiful sapphire lying on the withered violets.

'I am beginning to be appreciated,' he cried; 'this is from some great admirer. Now I can finish my

play,' and he looked quite happy.

The next day the Swallow flew down to the harbour. He sat on the mast of a large vessel and

watched the sailors hauling big chests out of the hold with ropes. 'Heave a-hoy!' they shouted as each

chest came up. 'I am going to Egypt!' cried the Swallow, but nobody minded, and when the moon rose

he flew back to the Happy Prince.

'I am come to bid you good-bye,' he cried.

'Swallow, Swallow, little Swallow,' said the Prince,'will you not stay with me one night longer?'

'It is winter,' answered the Swallow, and the chill snow will soon be here. In Egypt the sun is warm

on the green palm-trees, and the crocodiles lie in the mud and look lazily about them. My companions

are building a nest in the Temple of Baalbec, and the pink and white doves are watching them, and

cooing to each other. Dear Prince, I must leave you, but I will never forget you, and next spring I will

bring you back two beautiful jewels in place of those you have given away. The ruby shall be redder

than a red rose, and the sapphire shall be as blue as the great sea.

'In the square below,' said the Happy Prince, 'there stands a little match-girl. She has let her

matches fall in the gutter, and they are all spoiled. Her father will beat her if she does not bring home

some money, and she is crying. She has no shoes or stockings, and her little head is bare. Pluck out my

other eye, and give it to her, and her father will not beat her.

'I will stay with you one night longer,' said the Swallow,'but I cannot pluck out your eye. You

would be quite blind then.'

'Swallow, Swallow, little Swallow,' said the Prince, 'do as I command you.'

So he plucked out the Prince's other eye, and darted down with it. He swooped past the match-girl,

and slipped the jewel into the palm of her hand. 'What a lovely bit of glass,' cried the little girl; and she

ran home, laughing.

Then the Swallow came back to the Prince. 'You are blind now,' he said, 'so I will stay with you

always.'

'No, little Swallow,' said the poor Prince, 'you must go away to Egypt.'

'I will stay with you always,' said the Swallow, and he slept at the Prince's feet.

All the next day he sat on the Prince's shoulder, and told him stories of what he had seen in strange

lands. He told him of the red ibises, who stand in long rows on the banks of the Nile, and catch gold

fish in their beaks; of the Sphinx, who is as old as the world itself, and lives in the desert, and knows

everything; of the merchants, who walk slowly by the side of their camels, and carry amber beads in

their hands; of the King of the Mountains of the Moon, who is as black as ebony, and worships a large

crystal; of the great green snake that sleeps in a palm-tree, and has twenty priests to feed it with honey-

cakes; and of the pygmies who sail over a big lake on large flat leaves, and are always at war with the

butterflies.

15

'Dear little Swallow,' said the Prince, 'you tell me of marvellous things, but more marvellous than

anything is the suffering of men and of women. There is no Mystery so great as Misery. Fly over my

city, little Swallow, and tell me what you see there.'

So the Swallow flew over the great city, and saw the rich making merry in their beautiful houses,

while the beggars were sitting at the gates. He flew into dark lanes, and saw the white faces of starving

children looking out listlessly at the black streets. Under the archway of a bridge two little boys were

lying in one another's arms to try and keep themselves warm. 'How hungry we are' they said. 'You

must not lie here,' shouted the Watchman, and they wandered out into the rain.

Then he flew back and told the Prince what he had seen.

'I am covered with fine gold,' said the Prince, 'you must take it off, leaf by leaf, and give it to my

poor; the living always think that gold can make them happy.'

Leaf after leaf of the fine gold the Swallow picked off, till the Happy Prince looked quite dull and

grey. Leaf after leaf of the fine gold he brought to the poor, and the children's faces grew rosier, and

they laughed and played games in the street. 'We have bread nod' they cried.

Then the snow came, and after the snow came the frost. The streets looked as if they were made of

silver, they were so bright and glistening; long icicles like crystal daggers hung down from the eaves

of the houses, everybody went about in furs, and the little boys wore scarlet caps and skated on the ice.

The poor little Swallow grew colder and colder, but he would not leave the Prince, he loved him

too well. He picked up crumbs outside the baker's door when the baker was not looking, and tried to

keep himself warm by flapping his wings.

But at last he knew that he was going to die. He had just strength to fly up to the Prince's shoulder

once more.'Good-bye, dear Prince!' he murmured, 'will you let me kiss your hand?'

'I am glad that you are going to Egypt at last, little Swallow,' said the Prince, 'you have stayed too

long here; but you must kiss me on the lips, for I love you.'

'It is not to Egypt that I am going,' said the Swallow. I am going to the House of Death. Death is the

brother of Sleep, is he not?'

And he kissed the Happy Prince on the lips, and fell down dead at his feet.

At that moment a curious crack sounded inside the statue, as if something had broken. The fact is

that the leaden heart had snapped right in two. It certainly was a dreadfully hard frost.

Early the next morning the Mayor was walking in the square below in company with the Town

Councillors. As they passed the column he looked up at the statue: 'Dear me! how shabby the Happy

Prince looks!' he said.

'How shabby indeed!' cried the Town Councillors, who always agreed with the Mayor, and they

went up to look at it.

'The ruby has fallen out of his sword, his eyes are gone, and he is golden no longer,' said the

Mayor; 'in fact, he is little better than a beggar!'

'Little better than a beggar,' said the Town Councillors.

'And there is actually a dead bird at his feet,' continued the Mayor. 'We must really issue a

proclamation that birds are not to be allowed to die here.' And the Town Clerk made a note of the

suggestion.

So they pulled down the statue of the Happy Prince. 'As he is no longer beautiful he is no longer

useful,' said the Art Professor at the University.

Then they melted the statue in a furnace, and the Mayor held a meeting of the Corporation to

decide what was to be done with the metal. 'We must have another statue, of course,' he said, 'and it

shall be a statue of myself.'

'Of myself,' said each of the Town Councillors, and they quarrelled. When I last heard of them they

were quarrelling still.

'What a strange thing!' said the overseer of the workmen at the foundry.'This broken lead heart will

not melt in the furnace. We must throw it away.' So they threw it on a dust-heap where the dead

Swallow was also lying.

'Bring me the two most precious things in the city,' said God to one of His Angels; and the Angel

brought Him the leaden heart and the dead bird.

'You have rightly chosen,' said God,'for in my garden of Paradise this little bird shall sing for

evermore, and in my city of gold the Happy Prince shall praise me.'

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/902/902-h/902-h.htm

16

Ernest Hemingway: A Clean, Well-Lighted Place

It was very late and everyone had left the cafe except an old man who sat in the shadow the leaves of

the tree made against the electric light. In the day time the street was dusty, but at night the dew settled

the dust and the old man liked to sit late because he was deaf and now at night it was quiet and he felt

the difference. The two waiters inside the cafe knew that the old man was a little drunk, and while he

was a good client they knew that if he became too drunk he would leave without paying, so they kept

watch on him.

"Last week he tried to commit suicide," one waiter said.

"Why?"

"He was in despair."

"What about?"

"Nothing."

"How do you know it was nothing?"

"He has plenty of money."

They sat together at a table that was close against the wall near the door of the cafe and looked at the

terrace where the tables were all empty except where the old man sat in the shadow of the leaves of the

tree that moved slightly in the wind. A girl and a soldier went by in the street. The street light shone on

the brass number on his collar. The girl wore no head covering and hurried beside him.

"The guard will pick him up," one waiter said.

"What does it matter if he gets what he's after?"

"He had better get off the street now. The guard will get him. They went by five minutes ago."

The old man sitting in the shadow rapped on his saucer with his glass. The younger waiter went over

to him.

"What do you want?"

The old man looked at him. "Another brandy," he said.

"You'll be drunk," the waiter said. The old man looked at him. The waiter went away.

"He'll stay all night," he said to his colleague. "I'm sleepy now.I never get into bed before three

o'clock. He should have killed himself last week."

The waiter took the brandy bottle and another saucer from the counter inside the cafe and marched out

to the old man's table. He put down the saucer and poured the glass full of brandy.

"You should have killed yourself last week," he said to the deaf man. The old man motioned with his

finger. "A little more," he said. The waiter poured on into the glass so that the brandy slopped over and

ran down the stem into the top saucer of the pile."Thank you," the old man said. The waiter took the

bottle back inside the cafe. He sat down at the table with his colleague again.

"He's drunk now," he said.

17

"He's drunk every night."

"What did he want to kill himself for?"

"How should I know."

"How did he do it?"

"He hung himself with a rope."

"Who cut him down?"

"His niece."

"Why did they do it?"

"Fear for his soul."

"How much money has he got?"

"He's got plenty."

"He must be eighty years old."

"Anyway I should say he was eighty."

"I wish he would go home. I never get to bed before three o'clock.What kind of hour is that to go to

bed?"

"He stays up because he likes it."

"He's lonely. I'm not lonely. I have a wife waiting in bed for me."

"He had a wife once too."

"A wife would be no good to him now."

"You can't tell. He might be better with a wife."

"His niece looks after him. You said she cut him down."

"I know."

"I wouldn't want to be that old. An old man is a nasty thing."

"Not always. This old man is clean. He drinks without spilling. Even now, drunk. Look at him."

"I don't want to look at him. I wish he would go home. He has no regard for those who must work."

The old man looked from his glass across the square, then over at the waiters.

"Another brandy," he said, pointing to his glass. The waiter who was in a hurry came over.

"Finished," he said, speaking with that omission of syntax stupid people employ when talking to

drunken people or foreigners. "Nomore tonight. Close now."

"Another," said the old man.

18

"No. Finished." The waiter wiped the edge of the table with a towel and shook his head.

The old man stood up, slowly counted the saucers, took a leathercoin purse from his pocket and paid

for the drinks, leaving half a peseta tip. The waiter watched him go down the street, a very old man

walking unsteadily but with dignity.

"Why didn't you let him stay and drink?" the unhurried waiter asked. They were putting up the

shutters. "It is not half-past two."

"I want to go home to bed."

"What is an hour?"

"More to me than to him."

"An hour is the same."

"You talk like an old man yourself. He can buy a bottle and drink at home."

"It's not the same."

"No, it is not," agreed the waiter with a wife. He did not wish to be unjust. He was only in a hurry.

"And you? You have no fear of going home before your usual hour?"

"Are you trying to insult me?"

"No, hombre, only to make a joke."

"No," the waiter who was in a hurry said, rising from pulling down the metal shutters. "I have

confidence. I am all confidence."

"You have youth, confidence, and a job," the older waiter said."You have everything."

"And what do you lack?"

"Everything but work."

"You have everything I have."

"No. I have never had confidence and I am not young."

"Come on. Stop talking nonsense and lock up."

"I am of those who like to stay late at the cafe," the older waiter said.

"With all those who do not want to go to bed. With all those who need a light for the night."

"I want to go home and into bed."

"We are of two different kinds," the older waiter said. He was now dressed to go home. "It is not only

a question of youth and confidence although those things are very beautiful. Each night I am reluctant

to close up because there may be some one who needs the cafe."

"Hombre, there are bodegas open all night long."

19

"You do not understand. This is a clean and pleasant cafe. It is well lighted. The light is very good and

also, now, there are shadows of the leaves."

"Good night," said the younger waiter.

"Good night," the other said. Turning off the electric light he continued the conversation with himself,

It was the light of course but it is necessary that the place be clean and pleasant. You do not want

music. Certainly you do not want music. Nor can you stand before a bar with dignity although that is

all that is provided for these hours. What did he fear? It was not a fear or dread, It was a nothing that

he knew too well. It was all a nothing and a man was a nothing too. It was only that and light was all it

needed and a certain cleanness and order. Some lived in it and never felt it but he knew it all was nada

y pues nada y naday pues nada. Our nada who art in nada, nada be thy name thy kingdom nada thy

will be nada in nada as it is in nada. Give usthis nada our daily nada and nada us our nada as we nada

our nadas and nada us not into nada but deliver us from nada; pues nada. Hail nothing full of nothing,

nothing is with thee. He smiled and stood before a bar with a shining steam pressure coffee machine.

"What's yours?" asked the barman.

"Nada."

"Otro loco mas," said the barman and turned away.

"A little cup," said the waiter.

The barman poured it for him.

"The light is very bright and pleasant but the bar is unpolished,"the waiter said.

The barman looked at him but did not answer. It was too late at night for conversation.

"You want another copita?" the barman asked.

"No, thank you," said the waiter and went out. He disliked bars and bodegas. A clean, well-lighted

cafe was a very different thing. Now, without thinking further, he would go home to his room. He

would lie in the bed and finally, with daylight, he would go to sleep. After all, he said to himself, it's

probably only insomnia. Many must have it.

http://www.mrbauld.com/hemclean.html

20

Ernest Hemingway: Indian Camp

At the lake shore there was another rowboat drawn up. The two Indians stood waiting.

Nick and his father got in the back of the boat and the Indians pushed it off and one of them got in to

row. Uncle George sat in the back of the camp rowboat. The young Indian pushed the camp boat off

and got in to row Uncle George.

The two boats started off in the dark. Nick heard the oars of the other boat quite a way ahead of them

in the mist. The Indians rowed with fast, short strokes that did not cut deeply in the water. Nick lay

back with his father's arm around him. It was cold on the water. The Indian who was rowing them was

working very hard, but the other boat moved further ahead in the mist all the time.

"Where are we going, Dad?" Nick asked.

"Over to the Indian camp. There is an Indian lady very sick."

"Oh," said Nick.

Across the lake they found the other boat on the beach. Uncle George was smoking a cigar in the dark.

The young Indian pulled their boat way up on the beach. Uncle George gave both the Indians cigars.

They walked up from the beach through a grassy field that was wet with dew. The young Indian went

first, carrying a lantern to light the way. Then they went into the woods and followed a path that led to

the logging road that ran back into the hills. It was much lighter on the logging road as the trees were

cut away on both sides. The young Indian stopped and blew out his lantern and they all walked on

along the road.

They came around a bend and a dog came out barking. Ahead were the lights of the shanties where the

Indians lived. Most of them made their living by taking the bark off trees as they were cut down. More

dogs ran out at them. The two Indians sent them back to the shanties. In the shanty nearest the road

there was a light in the window. An old woman stood at the door holding a lamp.

Inside on a wooden bunk lay a young Indian woman. She had been trying to have her baby for two

days. All the old women in the camp had been helping her. The men had moved off up the road to sit

in the dark and smoke out of range of the noise she made. She screamed just as Nick and the two

Indians followed his father and Uncle George into the shanty. She lay in the lower bunk, very big

under a heavy blanket. Her head was turned to one side. In the upper bunk was her husband. He had

cut his foot very badly with an ax three days before. He was smoking a pipe. The room smelled very

bad.

Nick's father ordered some water to be put on the stove, and while it was heating he spoke to Nick.

"This lady is going to have a baby, Nick," he said.

"I know," said Nick.

"You don't know," said his father. "Listen to me. What she is going through is called being in labor.

The baby wants to be born and she wants it to be born. All her muscles are trying to get the baby born.

That is what is happening when she screams."

"I see," Nick said.

Just then the woman cried out.

"Oh, Daddy, can't you give her something to make her stop screaming?" asked Nick.

"No. I haven't anything to stop the pain with me," his father said. "But her screams are not important. I

don't hear them because they are not important."

The husband in the upper bunk rolled over against the wall.

The woman in the kitchen motioned to the doctor that the water was hot. Nick's father went into the

kitchen and poured about half of the water out of the big kettle into a basin. Into the water left in the

kettle he put several things he unwrapped from a handkerchief.

"Those must boil," he said, and began to wash his hands in the basin of hot water with a cake of soap

he had brought from the camp. Nick watched his father's hands cleaning each other with the soap.

21

While his father washed every part of his hands very carefully, he talked.

"You see, Nick, babies are supposed to be born head first but sometimes they're not. When they're not

they make a lot of trouble for everybody. Maybe I'll have to operate on this lady. We'll know in a little

while."

When he was satisfied with his hands he went in and went to work.

"Pull back that blanket, will you, George?" he said. "I'd rather not touch it."

Later when he started to operate Uncle George and three Indian men held the woman still. She bit

Uncle George on the arm and Uncle George said some rude words to her. The young Indian who had

rowed Uncle George over laughed at him. Nick held the basin for his father. It all took a long time.

His father picked the baby up, hit it on the bottom to make it breathe, and handed it to the old woman.

"See, it's a boy, Nick," he said. "How do you like being an assistant doctor?"

Nick said. "All right." He was looking away so as not to see what his father was doing.

"There. That gets it," said his father and put something into the basin.

Nick didn't look at it.

"Now," his father said, "there's some stitches to put in. You can watch this or not, Nick, just as you

like.

I'm going to sew up the cut I made."

Nick did not watch. His interest in looking on had been gone for a long time.

His father finished and stood up. Uncle George and the three Indian men stood up. Nick put the basin

out in the kitchen.

Uncle George looked at his arm. The young Indian smiled as he thought back on what had happened.

"I'll put something on that, George," the doctor said.

He bent over the Indian woman. She was quiet now and her eyes were closed. She looked very pale.

She did not know what had become of the baby or anything.

"I'll be back in the morning." the doctor said, standing up.

"The nurse should be here from St. Ignace by midday and she'll bring everything we need."

He was feeling as excited and talkative as football players are in the dressing room after a game.

"That's one for the medical books, George," he said. "Delivering a baby by cutting a woman open with

a pocket-knife and sewing her up with fishing line."

Uncle George was standing against the wall, looking at his arm.

"Oh, you're a great man, all right," he said.

"Ought to have a look at the proud father. They're usually the worst sufferers when their wives are

giving birth," the doctor said. "I must say he took it all pretty quietly."

He pulled back the blanket from the Indian's head. His hand came away wet. He stood on the edge of

the lower bunk with the lamp in one hand and looked in. The Indian lay with his face toward the wall.

His throat had been cut from ear to ear. The blood had flowed down into a pool where his body

pressed down into the bunk. His head rested on his left arm. A sharp knife lay, edge up, in the

blankets.

"Take Nick outside, George," the doctor said.

There was no need of that. Nick was standing in the door of the kitchen. He had a good view of the

upper bunk when his father, the lamp in one hand, tipped the Indian's head back.

It was just beginning to be daylight when they walked along the logging road back toward the lake.

"I'm terribly sorry I brought you along, Nickie," said his father. All his excitement following the

successful had operation gone. "It was an awful mess to put you through."

"Do ladies always have such a hard time having babies?" Nick asked.

"No, that was very, very unusual."

"Why did he kill himself, Daddy?"

"I don't know, Nick. He couldn't stand things, I guess."

"Do many men kill themselves, Daddy?"

"Not very many, Nick."

"Do many women?"

22

"Hardly ever."

"Don't they ever?"

"Oh, yes. They do sometimes."

"Daddy?"

"Yes."

"Where did Uncle George go?"

"He'll turn up all right."

"Is dying hard, Daddy?"

"No, I think it's pretty easy, Nick. It all depends."

They were seated in the boat. Nick in the back, his father rowing. The sun was coming up over the

hills. A large fish jumped, making a circle in the water. Nick put his hand in the water. It felt warm in

the cold air of the morning.

In the early morning on the lake sitting in the back of the boat with his father rowing, he felt quite sure

that he would never die.

https://archive.org/stream/IndianCampErnestHemingway_661/IndianCampByErnestHemingway_djvu

.txt

23

Edgar Allan Poe: The Tell-Tale Heart

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.

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

24

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.

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 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

25

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!"

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/poe/telltale.html

26

William Faulkner: A Rose for Emily

I

WHEN Miss Emily Grierson died, our whole town went to her funeral: the men through a sort of

respectful affection for a fallen monument, the women mostly out of curiosity to see the inside of her

house, which no one save an old man-servant--a combined gardener and cook--had seen in at least ten

years.

It was a big, squarish frame house that had once been white, decorated with cupolas and spires and

scrolled balconies in the heavily lightsome style of the seventies, set on what had once been our most

select street. But garages and cotton gins had encroached and obliterated even the august names of that

neighborhood; only Miss Emily's house was left, lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above the

cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps-an eyesore among eyesores. And now Miss Emily had gone to

join the representatives of those august names where they lay in the cedar-bemused cemetery among

the ranked and anonymous graves of Union and Confederate soldiers who fell at the battle of

Jefferson.

Alive, Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the

town, dating from that day in 1894 when Colonel Sartoris, the mayor--he who fathered the edict that

no Negro woman should appear on the streets without an apron- - remitted her taxes, the dispensation

dating from the death of her father on into perpetuity. Not that Miss Emily would have accepted

charity. Colonel Sartoris invented an involved tale to the effect that Miss Emily's father had loaned

money to the town, which the town, as a matter of business, preferred this way of repaying. Only a

man of Colonel Sartoris' generation and thought could have invented it, and only a woman could have

believed it.

When the next generation, with its more modern ideas, became mayors and aldermen, this

arrangement created some little dissatisfaction. On the first of the year they mailed her a tax notice.

February came, and there was no reply. They wrote her a formal letter, asking her to call at the

sheriff's office at her convenience. A week later the mayor wrote her himself, offering to call or to

send his car for her, and received in reply a note on paper of an archaic shape, in a thin, flowing

calligraphy in faded ink, to the effect that she no longer went out at all. The tax notice was also

enclosed, without comment.

They called a special meeting of the Board of Aldermen. A deputation waited upon her, knocked at the

door through which no visitor had passed since she ceased giving china-painting lessons eight or ten

years earlier. They were admitted by the old Negro into a dim hall from which a stairway mounted

into still more shadow. It smelled of dust and disuse -- a close, dank smell. The Negro led them into

the parlor. It was furnished in heavy, leather-covered furniture. When the Negro opened the blinds of

one window, they could see that the leather was cracked; and when they sat down, a faint dust rose

sluggishly about their thighs, spinning with slow motes in the single sun-ray. On a tarnished gilt easel

before the fireplace stood a crayon portrait of Miss Emily's father.

They rose when she entered -- a small, fat woman in black, with a thin gold chain descending to her

waist and vanishing into her belt, leaning on an ebony cane with a tarnished gold head. Her skeleton

was small and spare; perhaps that was why what would have been merely plumpness in another was

obesity in her. She looked bloated, like a body long submerged in motionless water, and of that pallid

hue. Her eyes, lost in the fatty ridges of her face, looked like two small pieces of coal pressed into a

lump of dough as they moved from one face to another while the visitors stated their errand.

She did not ask them to sit. She just stood in the door and listened quietly until the spokesman came to

a stumbling halt. Then they could hear the invisible watch ticking at the end of the gold chain.

Her voice was dry and cold. "I have no taxes in Jefferson. Colonel Sartoris explained it to me. Perhaps

one of you can gain access to the city records and satisfy yourselves."

"But we have. We are the city authorities, Miss Emily. Didn't you get a notice from the sheriff, signed

by him?"

"I received a paper, yes," Miss Emily said. "Perhaps he considers himself the sheriff . . . I have no

taxes in Jefferson."

"But there is nothing on the books to show that, you see. We must go by the--"

"See Colonel Sartoris. I have no taxes in Jefferson."

"But, Miss Emily--"

"See Colonel Sartoris." (Colonel Sartoris had been dead almost ten years.) "I have no taxes in

Jefferson. Tobe!" The Negro appeared. "Show these gentlemen out."

27

II

So SHE vanquished them, horse and foot, just as she had vanquished their fathers thirty years before

about the smell.

That was two years after her father's death and a short time after her sweetheart--the one we believed

would marry her --had deserted her. After her father's death she went out very little; after her

sweetheart went away, people hardly saw her at all. A few of the ladies had the temerity to call, but

were not received, and the only sign of life about the place was the Negro man--a young man then--

going in and out with a market basket.

"Just as if a man--any man--could keep a kitchen properly, "the ladies said; so they were not surprised

when the smell developed. It was another link between the gross, teeming world and the high and

mighty Griersons.

A neighbor, a woman, complained to the mayor, Judge Stevens, eighty years old.

"But what will you have me do about it, madam?" he said.

"Why, send her word to stop it," the woman said. "Isn't there a law? "

"I'm sure that won't be necessary," Judge Stevens said. "It's probably just a snake or a rat that nigger of

hers killed in the yard. I'll speak to him about it."

The next day he received two more complaints, one from a man who came in diffident deprecation.

"We really must do something about it, Judge. I'd be the last one in the world to bother Miss Emily,

but we've got to do something." That night the Board of Aldermen met--three graybeards and one

younger man, a member of the rising generation.

"It's simple enough," he said. "Send her word to have her place cleaned up. Give her a certain time to

do it in, and if she don't. .."

"Dammit, sir," Judge Stevens said, "will you accuse a lady to her face of smelling bad?"

So the next night, after midnight, four men crossed Miss Emily's lawn and slunk about the house like

burglars, sniffing along the base of the brickwork and at the cellar openings while one of them

performed a regular sowing motion with his hand out of a sack slung from his shoulder. They broke

open the cellar door and sprinkled lime there, and in all the outbuildings. As they recrossed the lawn, a

window that had been dark was lighted and Miss Emily sat in it, the light behind her, and her upright

torso motionless as that of an idol. They crept quietly across the lawn and into the shadow of the

locusts that lined the street. After a week or two the smell went away.

That was when people had begun to feel really sorry for her. People in our town, remembering how

old lady Wyatt, her great-aunt, had gone completely crazy at last, believed that the Griersons held

themselves a little too high for what they really were. None of the young men were quite good enough

for Miss Emily and such. We had long thought of them as a tableau, Miss Emily a slender figure in

white in the background, her father a spraddled silhouette in the foreground, his back to her and

clutching a horsewhip, the two of them framed by the back-flung front door. So when she got to be

thirty and was still single, we were not pleased exactly, but vindicated; even with insanity in the

family she wouldn't have turned down all of her chances if they had really materialized.

When her father died, it got about that the house was all that was left to her; and in a way, people were

glad. At last they could pity Miss Emily. Being left alone, and a pauper, she had become humanized.

Now she too would know the old thrill and the old despair of a penny more or less.

The day after his death all the ladies prepared to call at the house and offer condolence and aid, as is

our custom Miss Emily met them at the door, dressed as usual and with no trace of grief on her face.

She told them that her father was not dead. She did that for three days, with the ministers calling on

her, and the doctors, trying to persuade her to let them dispose of the body. Just as they were about to

resort to law and force, she broke down, and they buried her father quickly.

We did not say she was crazy then. We believed she had to do that. We remembered all the young men

her father had driven away, and we knew that with nothing left, she would have to cling to that which

had robbed her, as people will.

III

SHE WAS SICK for a long time. When we saw her again, her hair was cut short, making her look like

a girl, with a vague resemblance to those angels in colored church windows--sort of tragic and serene.

The town had just let the contracts for paving the sidewalks, and in the summer after her father's death

they began the work. The construction company came with niggers and mules and machinery, and a

foreman named Homer Barron, a Yankee--a big, dark, ready man, with a big voice and eyes lighter

28

than his face. The little boys would follow in groups to hear him cuss the niggers, and the niggers

singing in time to the rise and fall of picks. Pretty soon he knew everybody in town. Whenever you

heard a lot of laughing anywhere about the square, Homer Barron would be in the center of the group.

Presently we began to see him and Miss Emily on Sunday afternoons driving in the yellow-wheeled

buggy and the matched team of bays from the livery stable.

At first we were glad that Miss Emily would have an interest, because the ladies all said, "Of course a

Grierson would not think seriously of a Northerner, a day laborer." But there were still others, older

people, who said that even grief could not cause a real lady to forget noblesse oblige- -

without calling it noblesse oblige. They just said, "Poor Emily. Her kinsfolk should come to her." She

had some kin in Alabama; but years ago her father had fallen out with them over the estate of old lady

Wyatt, the crazy woman, and there was no communication between the two families. They had not

even been represented at the funeral.

And as soon as the old people said, "Poor Emily," the whispering began. "Do you suppose it's really

so?" they said to one another. "Of course it is. What else could . . ." This behind their hands; rustling

of craned silk and satin behind jalousies closed upon the sun of Sunday afternoon as the thin, swift

clop-clop-clop of the matched team passed: "Poor Emily."

She carried her head high enough--even when we believed that she was fallen. It was as if she

demanded more than ever the recognition of her dignity as the last Grierson; as if it had wanted that

touch of earthiness to reaffirm her imperviousness. Like when she bought the rat poison, the arsenic.

That was over a year after they had begun to say "Poor Emily," and while the two female cousins were

visiting her.

"I want some poison," she said to the druggist. She was over thirty then, still a slight woman, though

thinner than usual, with cold, haughty black eyes in a face the flesh of which was strained across the

temples and about the eyesockets as you imagine a lighthouse-keeper's face ought to look. "I want

some poison," she said.

"Yes, Miss Emily. What kind? For rats and such? I'd recom--"

"I want the best you have. I don't care what kind."

The druggist named several. "They'll kill anything up to an elephant. But what you want is--"

"Arsenic," Miss Emily said. "Is that a good one?"

"Is . . . arsenic? Yes, ma'am. But what you want--"

"I want arsenic."

The druggist looked down at her. She looked back at him, erect, her face like a strained flag. "Why, of

course," the druggist said. "If that's what you want. But the law requires you to tell what you are going

to use it for."

Miss Emily just stared at him, her head tilted back in order to look him eye for eye, until he looked

away and went and got the arsenic and wrapped it up. The Negro delivery boy brought her the

package; the druggist didn't come back. When she opened the package at home there was written on

the box, under the skull and bones: "For rats."

IV

So THE NEXT day we all said, "She will kill herself"; and we said it would be the best thing. When

she had first begun to be seen with Homer Barron, we had said, "She will marry him." Then we said,

"She will persuade him yet," because Homer himself had remarked--he liked men, and it was known

that he drank with the younger men in the Elks' Club--that he was not a marrying man. Later we said,

"Poor Emily" behind the jalousies as they passed on Sunday afternoon in the glittering buggy, Miss

Emily with her head high and Homer Barron with his hat cocked and a cigar in his teeth, reins and

whip in a yellow glove.

Then some of the ladies began to say that it was a disgrace to the town and a bad example to the young

people. The men did not want to interfere, but at last the ladies forced the Baptist minister--Miss

Emily's people were Episcopal-- to call upon her. He would never divulge what happened during that

interview, but he refused to go back again. The next Sunday they again drove about the streets, and the

following day the minister's wife wrote to Miss Emily's relations in Alabama.

So she had blood-kin under her roof again and we sat back to watch developments. At first nothing

happened. Then we were sure that they were to be married. We learned that Miss Emily had been to

the jeweler's and ordered a man's toilet set in silver, with the letters H. B. on each piece. Two days

later we learned that she had bought a complete outfit of men's clothing, including a nightshirt, and we

29

said, "They are married." We were really glad. We were glad because the two female cousins were

even more Grierson than Miss Emily had ever been.

So we were not surprised when Homer Barron--the streets had been finished some time since--was

gone. We were a little disappointed that there was not a public blowing-off, but we believed that he

had gone on to prepare for Miss Emily's coming, or to give her a chance to get rid of the cousins. (By

that time it was a cabal, and we were all Miss Emily's allies to help circumvent the cousins.) Sure

enough, after another week they departed. And, as we had expected all along, within three days Homer

Barron was back in town. A neighbor saw the Negro man admit him at the kitchen door at dusk one

evening.

And that was the last we saw of Homer Barron. And of Miss Emily for some time. The Negro man

went in and out with the market basket, but the front door remained closed. Now and then we would

see her at a window for a moment, as the men did that night when they sprinkled the lime, but for

almost six months she did not appear on the streets. Then we knew that this was to be expected too; as

if that quality of her father which had thwarted her woman's life so many times had been too virulent

and too furious to die.

When we next saw Miss Emily, she had grown fat and her hair was turning gray. During the next few

years it grew grayer and grayer until it attained an even pepper-and-salt iron-gray, when it ceased

turning. Up to the day of her death at seventy-four it was still that vigorous iron-gray, like the hair of

an active man.

From that time on her front door remained closed, save for a period of six or seven years, when she

was about forty, during which she gave lessons in china-painting. She fitted up a studio in one of the

downstairs rooms, where the daughters and granddaughters of Colonel Sartoris' contemporaries were

sent to her with the same regularity and in the same spirit that they were sent to church on Sundays

with a twenty-five-cent piece for the collection plate. Meanwhile her taxes had been remitted.

Then the newer generation became the backbone and the spirit of the town, and the painting pupils

grew up and fell away and did not send their children to her with boxes of color and tedious brushes

and pictures cut from the ladies' magazines. The front door closed upon the last one and remained

closed for good. When the town got free postal delivery, Miss Emily alone refused to let them fasten

the metal numbers above her door and attach a mailbox to it. She would not listen to them.

Daily, monthly, yearly we watched the Negro grow grayer and more stooped, going in and out with

the market basket. Each December we sent her a tax notice, which would be returned by the post

office a week later, unclaimed. Now and then we would see her in one of the downstairs windows--she

had evidently shut up the top floor of the house--like the carven torso of an idol in a niche, looking or

not looking at us, we could never tell which. Thus she passed from generation to generation--dear,

inescapable, impervious, tranquil, and perverse.

And so she died. Fell ill in the house filled with dust and shadows, with only a doddering Negro man

to wait on her. We did not even know she was sick; we had long since given up trying to get any

information from the Negro

He talked to no one, probably not even to her, for his voice had grown harsh and rusty, as if from

disuse.

She died in one of the downstairs rooms, in a heavy walnut bed with a curtain, her gray head propped

on a pillow yellow and moldy with age and lack of sunlight.

V

THE NEGRO met the first of the ladies at the front door and let them in, with their hushed, sibilant

voices and their quick, curious glances, and then he disappeared. He walked right through the house

and out the back and was not seen again.

The two female cousins came at once. They held the funeral on the second day, with the town coming

to look at Miss Emily beneath a mass of bought flowers, with the crayon face of her father musing

profoundly above the bier and the ladies sibilant and macabre; and the very old men --some in their

brushed Confederate uniforms--on the porch and the lawn, talking of Miss Emily as if she had been a

contemporary of theirs, believing that they had danced with her and courted her perhaps, confusing

time with its mathematical progression, as the old do, to whom all the past is not a diminishing road

but, instead, a huge meadow which no winter ever quite touches, divided from them now by the

narrow bottle-neck of the most recent decade of years.

30

Already we knew that there was one room in that region above stairs which no one had seen in forty

years, and which would have to be forced. They waited until Miss Emily was decently in the ground

before they opened it.

The violence of breaking down the door seemed to fill this room with pervading dust. A thin, acrid

pall as of the tomb seemed to lie everywhere upon this room decked and furnished as for a bridal:

upon the valance curtains of faded rose color, upon the rose-shaded lights, upon the dressing table,

upon the delicate array of crystal and the man's toilet things backed with tarnished silver, silver so

tarnished that the monogram was obscured. Among them lay a collar and tie, as if they had just been

removed, which, lifted, left upon the surface a pale crescent in the dust. Upon a chair hung the suit,

carefully folded; beneath it the two mute shoes and the discarded socks.

The man himself lay in the bed.

For a long while we just stood there, looking down at the profound and fleshless grin. The body had

apparently once lain in the attitude of an embrace, but now the long sleep that outlasts love, that

conquers even the grimace of love, had cuckolded him. What was left of him, rotted beneath what was

left of the nightshirt, had become inextricable from the bed in which he lay; and upon him and upon

the pillow beside him lay that even coating of the patient and biding dust.

Then we noticed that in the second pillow was the indentation of a head. One of us lifted something

from it, and leaning forward, that faint and invisible dust dry and acrid in the nostrils, we saw a long

strand of iron-gray hair.

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~drbr/wf_rose.html

31

Group Work on Short Stories

Read and analyse your short story.

Prepare a group presentation of about 15 minutes (equal participation, interesting beginning, good structure).

Concentrate on the following aspects:

• Give a summary of the plot.

• Give essential, relevant information on the author (origin, significance, background of the story) and story (year of

publication).

• Choose a short extract that seems worth presenting and read it to the class in an appropriate way.

• Analyse and interpret literary and rhetoric devices and their effect on the reader: Include setting, atmosphere and the

characters (protagonist(s) and/ or a character constellation scheme) as well as narrative techniques.

• Evaluate the character(s) with regard to gender roles.

• Discuss whether your text is a typical short story.

• Prepare a fact sheet (1 page, font size 12) for your classmates. It should include detailed notes on analysis and interpretation

giving evidence through references from the text. Its layout should be well designed to support the message. Remember

correct spelling and reference to your sources (Internet or books).

Hand in the fact sheet as a printed handout to your teacher until 17.1.2017 (blue teacher’s box).

You’ll get a mark on the presentation and another mark on your handout.

Group Work on Short Stories

Read and analyse your short story.

Prepare a group presentation of about 15 minutes (equal participation, interesting beginning, good structure).

Concentrate on the following aspects:

• Give a summary of the plot.

• Give essential, relevant information on the author (origin, significance, background of the story) and story (year of

publication).

• Choose a short extract that seems worth presenting and read it to the class in an appropriate way.

• Analyse and interpret literary and rhetoric devices and their effect on the reader: Include setting, atmosphere and the

characters (protagonist(s) and/ or a character constellation scheme) as well as narrative techniques.

• Evaluate the character(s) with regard to gender roles.

• Discuss whether your text is a typical short story.

• Prepare a fact sheet (1 page, font size 12) for your classmates. It should include detailed notes on analysis and interpretation

giving evidence through references from the text. Its layout should be well designed to support the message. Remember

correct spelling and reference to your sources (Internet or books).

Hand in the fact sheet as a printed handout to your teacher until 17.1.2017 (blue teacher’s box).

You’ll get a mark on the presentation and another mark on your handout.

Group Work on Short Stories

Read and analyse your short story.

Prepare a group presentation of about 15 minutes (equal participation, interesting beginning, good structure).

Concentrate on the following aspects:

• Give a summary of the plot.

• Give essential, relevant information on the author (origin, significance, background of the story) and story (year of

publication).

• Choose a short extract that seems worth presenting and read it to the class in an appropriate way.

• Analyse and interpret literary and rhetoric devices and their effect on the reader: Include setting, atmosphere and the

characters (protagonist(s) and/ or a character constellation scheme) as well as narrative techniques.

• Evaluate the character(s) with regard to gender roles.

• Discuss whether your text is a typical short story.

• Prepare a fact sheet (1 page, font size 12) for your classmates. It should include detailed notes on analysis and interpretation

giving evidence through references from the text. Its layout should be well designed to support the message. Remember

correct spelling and reference to your sources (Internet or books).

Hand in the fact sheet as a printed handout to your teacher until 17.1.2017 (blue teacher’s box).

You’ll get a mark on the presentation and another mark on your handout.