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Post by Harli on Jun 10, 2006 4:07:05 GMT -5
Stretching 1,244 km (773 mi) from east to west and 1,289 km (801 mi) from north to south, Texas, the Lone Star State, occupies almost 7.5% of the nation's total land area--a region as large as all of New England, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Illinois combined. With its 16,986,510 inhabitants (1990 resident census), Texas is the second most populous state in the country. It derives its name from the Spanish and Indian words tejas and techas, meaning "friends" or "allies."
Texas shows the influence of both the Indians and the Spanish, French, and other European explorers and missionaries. In 1820, Moses and Stephen F. Austin started the Anglo-American colonization that culminated in the organization of a provisional government at San Felipe on Nov. 3, 1835, and in independence from Mexico on Mar. 2, 1836. After almost ten years as an independent republic, Texas became a U.S. state on Dec. 29, 1845.
The modern economic development of Texas started in January 1901 with the eruption of an oil well drilled at Spindletop, near Beaumont. The rapid discovery of oil in various other parts of the state led to a boom that has never really stopped. The economy of Texas has become highly diversified, and its population has more than quadrupled during this century.
LAND AND RESOURCES
Topography and Soils:
Four major physiographic subdivisions of North America are found in Texas: the Gulf Coastal Plain in the east and southeast, the North Central Plains running north to southeastward in the center of the state, the Great High Plains in the northwest, and the Trans-Pecos Mountains to the extreme west and southwest. The topography of Texas rises gradually from east to west, reaching its highest point in Guadalupe Peak (2,667 m/8,749 ft) in the Trans-Pecos.
The Gulf Coastal Plain, extending about 80 to 100 km (50 to 60 mi) inland from the Gulf of Mexico, from sea level to an altitude of about 150 m (500 ft), has a rolling-to-hilly surface. Its western part consists of a fertile belt of land of irregular width known as the Blackland Prairie.
Inland from the Coastal Plain, the North Central Plains of Texas are the southern extension of the Great Plains and reach southwestward across the entire state to the Rio Grande. The plains' southern portion is known as the Edwards Plateau. The border of the North Central Plains on the west is the Staked Plain, or Llano Estacado in Spanish. It consists of a flat-topped tableland with an elevation of about 1,200 m (4,000 ft). Lying between Mexico and New Mexico, the barren Trans-Pecos region in southwestern Texas alternates between rolling hills in the Pecos River valley and the isolated high ridges of the Guadalupe and Davis mountains.
Texas is divided into 14 land resource areas that have similar or related soils, vegetation, topography, and climate. The soils vary greatly in depth from one region to another and show different physical properties; all need fertilizing, however, and some need irrigating to make them productive.
Rivers and Lakes
Texas has two sources of water: aquifers, found under more than half the state, and streams with their reservoirs. Water from the former has traditionally been an essential source of municipal supplies; because of falling water tables, however, cities more and more must now depend on surface reservoirs.
The state's 3,700 streams have a combined length of approximately 130,000 km (80,000 mi). Among the major rivers are the Rio Grande, which drops about 3,650 m (12,000 ft) from source to mouth and constitutes the border with Mexico; the Red River, which partly separates Texas from Oklahoma and Arkansas; the Colorado River of Texas (965 km/600 mi), which is the longest river entirely within the state; and the Sabine, which forms the southern half of the boundary between Texas and Louisiana. Other rivers include the Pecos and the Devils, both tributaries of the Rio Grande; the Nueces; and the Guadalupe.
Texas has relatively few natural lakes but hundreds of artificial ones. These were developed to provide hydroelectricity, to store water, or to irrigate farmland. Among the largest are Lake Texoma (partly in Oklahoma) on the Red River, the Falcon and Amistad reservoirs on the Rio Grande, Sam Rayburn Reservoir on the Angelina River in eastern Texas, Lake Texarkana on the Sulphur River, Toledo Bend Reservoir on the Sabine, Lake Travis on the Colorado, and Lake Livingston on the Trinity River north of Houston.
Climate
The climates of Texas range from the hot subhumid found in the Rio Grande valley to the cold semiarid of the northern part of the Panhandle, and from the warm humid in the east to the arid of the Trans-Pecos. Rainfall varies from 1,400 mm (55 in) in the east to less than 250 mm (10 in) in the west. The average number of days with some precipitation ranges from 44 in El Paso to 110 in Houston. Drought can be a serious problem, especially in the Great High Plains, where an average of seven droughts occur in a 10-year period. Temperatures, too, vary greatly, ranging from 49 deg C (120 deg F) to -31 deg C (-23 deg F). Each year about 100 tornadoes occur, most frequently in the Red River valley. Vegetation and Animal Life
The dense pine forests of eastern Texas contrast with the deserts of the western part of the state, and the grassy plains of the north contrast with the semiarid brushes of southern Texas. Eastern Texas vegetation is characterized by dense pine forests and a variety of hardwoods, including oak, hickory, ash, and magnolia. The central region is dominated by oak, elm, and pecan, as well as, on the Edwards Plateau, by cedar and mesquite. Shrubs of the grasslands of the lower altitudes of the west include acacia, mesquite, and mimosa; the Trans-Pecos Mountains have pine, fir, and spruce. The Rio Grande valley is mostly covered by brush, mesquite, cedar, post oak, and in places a dense growth of prickly pear. In the southwest are found cactus, agave, and yucca.
Texas is the temporary home every year for many migratory birds. Aransas Wildlife Refuge, for example, on the Gulf above Corpus Christi, provides the winter quarters for the almost extinct whooping crane. The state's indigenous animals include the mule and white-tailed deer, black bear, mountain lion, antelope, and bighorn, but the American bison, or buffalo, is found only in zoos and on a few ranches. Among the smaller mammals are the muskrat, raccoon, opossum, jackrabbit, fox, mink, coyote, and armadillo.
Resources
Minerals represent a very significant part of the state's natural wealth. The known petroleum deposits of Texas--about 8 billion barrels--make up approximately one-third of the known U. S. supply. The Texas Panhandle is one of the world's great natural-gas reservoirs. Mineral fuels generally account for over 90% of the value of all minerals produced in the state, although Texas is also a leading producer of natural graphite, magnesium, sulfur, and cement and has considerable reserves of lignite (low-grade coal). Uranium was discovered in 1954 in the Coastal Plain, and additional deposits have been found in various other parts of the state. The state's great variety of soils must also be considered as a resource.
PEOPLE
Although surpassed in population only by California and New York, Texas is still considerably less crowded than the nation as a whole; the huge area of Texas means that the state's population density is less than that of the nation as a whole. Yet the state's population has increased significantly in recent decades, more than doubling between 1940 and 1980 and increasing by 19.4 in the decade from 1980 to 1990 (well above the 1980-90 national average of 9.8%) The increases have resulted in part through in-migration, although there was also some out-migration during the 1980s. Texas' two extensive metropolitan areas are the Dallas-Fort Worth and the Houston-Galveston-Brazoria consolidated metropolitan statistical areas. Together they constitute about 45% of the state's population. In addition there are 23 metropolitan statistical areas (mainly single-city metropolitan regions) that together with the consolidated areas account for more than 80% of the population. Racially, Texas is made up of whites, who constitute about 75% of the population; blacks, about 12%; and other nonwhites, about 13%. Hispanics account for 25.5% of the population. European settlers during the 19th and early 20th centuries included Germans, Swedes, and Czechs.
Counties and Cities
Texas has 254 counties ranging in population from 107 (Loving County, 1990) to 2,818,199 (Harris, 1990), and in size from Rockwall's 386 sq km (149 sq mi) to Brewster's 16,035 sq km (6,191 sq mi), nearly equal to the combined areas of Connecticut and Rhode Island. Major cities include the capital, Austin; the state's largest city, Houston; and Dallas and Fort Worth, only about 50 km (30 mi) apart. San Antonio is a fast-growing shipping center for oil and agricultural products; other important commercial centers are Abilene, Amarillo, Beaumont, Brownsville, Corpus Christi, El Paso, Galveston, Laredo, Lubbock, Midland, Port Arthur, Waco, and Wichita Falls.
Education
In 1839, Texas president Mirabeau B. Lamar set aside land in each county for public schools and for a state university. Today the enrollment in Texas public schools exceeds 3 million, and higher education in the state includes about 100 public institutions (see State of Texas Universities). Additional thousands of elementary and secondary students attend private schools, and Texas has several dozen private institutions of higher education (including Baylor, Rice, and Southern Methodist Universities).
Culture and Historical Sites
Texas has several hundred public libraries--the largest being those in Dallas and Houston; the libraries of the University of Texas at Austin have the state's largest collections. There are more than 300 museums; and there are 3 major symphony orchestras--in Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio. Among the outstanding museums are the Dallas and Fort Worth museums of fine arts, the Marion Koogler McNay Art Institute and Witte Museum in San Antonio, the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston, and the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth. Well-known symphony orchestras are also in Amarillo, Fort Worth, and Austin. There are ballet companies in Austin and Houston, and the Alley Theatre in Houston has a national reputation. The Dallas Opera and the Houston Grand Opera are the state's major opera companies.
The Alamo in San Antonio is the most famous historical site; others are Mission San Jose (also in San Antonio), San Jacinto Monument east of Houston, Fort Davis National Historic Site, and the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library--part of the University of Texas in Austin.
Communications
The first newspaper in Texas, the Gaceta de Texas (Texas Gazette), was published in Spanish in 1813 at Nacogdoches. Among the oldest English newspapers are the Galveston News (1842) and the Dallas Morning News (1885). There are numerous other morning and evening dailies, and Texas is well supplied with radio stations, both AM and FM, as well as with television stations.
ECONOMIC ACTIVITY
For decades oil influenced every aspect of the economic development of Texas. This included the tax structure, since a high percentage of the state's tax revenues was derived from oil and gas. This changed in the mid-1980s when oil prices collapsed devastatingly, greatly diminishing tax revenues and adversely affecting not only oil-related industries but also many others, such as real estate and banking. Slow economic recovery began in 1987, however, helped by the diversification that had already begun in Texas and that was now intensified. The service industries, notably retail and wholesale trade, contribute well over half of the gross state product of Texas.
Agriculture
Texas is a leading agricultural state, frequently ranking third (after California and Iowa) in gross farm income. Agricultural statistics in Texas have been affected by modern technology, which increases productivity: in consequence, the number of persons living on farms has markedly decreased in recent decades. Another trend has been a decline in the total number of farms and ranches.
The largest share of agricultural income is derived from beef cattle. Texas leads the nation in number of beef, which usually exceed 14 million head. Cotton is the leading crop and the state's second-most-valuable farm product. Texas also leads in national production of grain sorghum, watermelons, cabbages, and spinach. Wheat, corn, and other grains are also important. There is good farmland located in most parts of the state, some of it made more productive by use of irrigation and of dry-farming techniques (used in the Panhandle, for example, for wheat production).
Forestry and Fishing
Production of timber--more softwoods than hardwoods--represents a small share of the gross state product of Texas, but shipments of lumber and wood products and of paper and allied products are worth many times that share. As for fishing, shrimp accounts for more than 90% of Texas's total commercial catch. Other species caught include crabs, oysters, flounder, and red snapper.
Mining
Texas is the nation's most important producer of minerals. It leads the nation in the production of mineral fuels, with petroleum the most valuable and natural gas the second most valuable. Texas in recent years (excepting the downturn of the mid-1980s) has supplied about one-third of the U. S. production of both oil and natural gas. A foremost state in nonfuel minerals, Texas is a leading producer of natural graphite, magnesium, sulfur, and cement. The eastern part of the state has lignite coal mines. Metals mined in Texas include iron, uranium, magnesium, and sodium.
Manufacturing
Before World War II, manufacturing in Texas centered on processing the raw materials, notably petroleum and agricultural products, available in the state. The decades since the war have seen an emphasis on diversification in manufacturing, however, as well as significant industrial expansion. In the late 1980s, in the wake of the disastrous slump, state leaders were attempting to attract more high-tech industries to Texas. Manufactures include a wide range of petroleum and coal products, nonelectrical machinery, chemicals, and food products. Other broad categories of Texan manufactures include electrical machinery and equipment, fabricated metals, primary metals, and transportation equipment. Specific manufactures include such diverse items as wristwatches, radios, cosmetics and drugs, leather goods, and mobile homes. A large number of the approximately 15% of the labor force employed in manufacturing in Texas work in the Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston metropolitan areas.
Tourism
Texas attracts millions of out-of-state visitors annually; its tourist-related businesses compete with California and Florida for the U.S. travel market. Many visitors explore Dallas, San Antonio, Houston, Fort Worth, El Paso, Austin, and other cities. Sites of special interest range from Nacogdoches in East Texas, one of the state's oldest cities, to the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center near Houston. Texas's two national parks, Big Bend and Guadalupe Mountains, are also popular, as are the numerous and varied state recreation areas. Hunting and fishing are popular pastimes for visitors and Texans alike, as are professional and college sports events.
Transportation and Foreign Trade
As befits its hugeness, Texas ranks first nationally in total highway and railroad mileage. It also has the most airports (about 1,200). There are 12 deepwater ports along the Gulf of Mexico, with Houston the busiest (and ranking among the most active of all U. S. ports). The year 1988 commemorated the 135th anniversary of the first railroad operation in Texas; railway mileage reached its peak in 1922 (approximately 27,500 km/17,000 mi), but the volume of rail freight started to increase again after World War II. Texas is a major exporter of manufactured goods, including chemical and allied products. Also exported are agricultural products--especially cotton and food grains. Texas is habitually the nation's leading exporter of sulfur; additionally, its exports of iron and steel scrap also rank high. Other exports include natural gas and fishery products, especially shrimp.
Energy
Texas consumes more energy than any other state--much of the natural gas and oil produced in the state never leave its borders. About 86% of the energy consumed in Texas comes from petroleum and natural gas.
GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS
The present Texas constitution was adopted on Feb. 15, 1876, but has been amended many times. The chief executive is the governor, who since 1975 serves for 4 years. Legislative authority is exercised by the senate, with 31 members elected for 4-year terms, and the house of representatives, with 150 members elected for 2-year terms. The legislature meets biennially in odd-numbered years. The highest courts of Texas include the nine-member supreme court and the nine-member court of criminal appeals. Judges of the two courts are elected to 6-year overlapping terms. The Texas state delegation to the U.S. House of Representatives was to gain three additional seats following the 1990 census.
In 1978 the state elected its first Republican governor (William P. Clements, Jr.) since 1870, although it returned a Democrat (Mark White) to the governorship in 1982. And Republican John Tower served in the U.S. Senate from 1961 until his retirement in 1985. Despite the popularity of some individual Republicans, including Ronald Reagan and George Bush, Democrats have dominated state-level politics since Reconstruction; competition occurs chiefly between the liberal and conservative wings of the Democratic party. Many Texans, such as former U.S. president Lyndon Johnson and former U.S. House Speaker Sam Rayburn, have played influential roles in national affairs. Henry Cisneros attracted national attention after he became (1981) the first Mexican-American mayor of a major U.S. city (San Antonio), although minority groups have generally been underrepresented in Texas politics.
HISTORY
Evidence of a meeting in eastern Texas between Middle American prehistoric cultures and temple Mound Builders from the eastern part of what is now the United States has been discovered in an Indian mound on the Neches River, and many tribal groups--including the Apache, Caddo, and Comanche--inhabited what is now Texas.
Conquest and Colonization
The first European explorers were the Spaniards Alvar Nunez Cabeza De Vaca (1528) and Francisco Coronado (1541). Other Spanish expeditions followed during the next century, and in 1682, Ysleta, near El Paso, became the first European settlement in Texas. Three years later Robert Cavalier, sieur de La Salle, brought the second flag (French) to Texas. He landed at the head of Lavaca Bay and established Fort Saint Louis. La Salle was killed by one of his own men in 1687, and his fort was destroyed by disease and the Indians. About 1714, however, the Spanish felt threatened by another Frenchman, the explorer and trader Louis Juchereau de Saint Denis. Although he claimed that his intention was simply to establish trade, he was arrested and sent to Mexico City. The Spanish then redoubled their efforts to settle Texas, and by the middle of the 18th century they had mounted more than 100 expeditions to the area.
American Interest in Texas
The sale (1803) of Louisiana to the United States increased interest in Texas from the east. Augustus Magee, a U.S. army officer in Louisiana, befriended the Mexican patriot Bernardo Gutierrez, who had been fighting for his country's independence from Spain. Together they led an expedition into Texas and captured Nacogdoches, Goliad, and San Antonio before Magee died mysteriously in Goliad.
In 1819, Dr. James Long of Natchez, Miss., led another expedition to Texas, hoping to make the region an independent state. He captured Nacogdoches but his forces were soon defeated. A year later, Moses Austin visited San Antonio and sought permission to settle Americans in Texas. Upon returning to Missouri, his dying request was that his son, Stephen Austin, carry out his plans, which the Spanish had approved.
In 1821 the white population of Texas was 7,000, with Goliad, San Antonio, and Nacogdoches the only towns of any size. During this period Mexico secured its independence from Spain, and, in 1823, Stephen Austin went to Mexico City to seek confirmation of his father's grant. A new law required that agents introduce at least 200 families of colonists, so Austin made an agreement with the Mexican governor to settle 300 American families. Colonization was so successful, however, that by 1836 the population of Texas was 50,000.
Revolution and Republic
Differences in language, culture, and religion soon led to difficulties between the new Anglo-American settlers and the Mexican government. Because of the great distance between Texas and Mexico City, cultural and commercial ties grew stronger with the United States, and some settlers hoped that U.S. boundaries would be extended to include Texas. In 1830 the Mexican congress enacted a law to limit immigration to Texas. But this only increased dissatisfaction, for neither the Mexican national constitution nor the constitution of 1827 for the state of Coahuila-Texas granted rights that Anglo-Americans considered inalienable, such as trial by jury and the right of bail. Most settlers also found unacceptable the requirement that they become Roman Catholics because most of them were Protestants.
War broke out between the American settlers and the Mexican government in 1835, and the Texans won the first battle at Gonzales on Oct. 2, 1835. The same year the Texans captured San Antonio after a devastating siege; a provisional government was set up on Mar. 2, 1836, and Sam Houston was named commander in chief of the Texas armies, Stephen Austin having gone to Washington to solicit aid from the U.S. government.
In February and March 1836 one of the most heroic battles in history occurred at the Alamo. The besieged Texas forces commanded by William B. Travis had been reduced to 157. He appealed for help, and about 30 additional men from Gonzales broke through the lines of the Mexican general, Antonio Santa Anna. The 187 defenders, commanded by Travis, James Bowie, and Davy Crockett, then held the Alamo for another 5 days before it fell. March also saw a massacre at Goliad, in which the outnumbered Texans, having surrendered after a battle on Coleto Creek, returned to Goliad only to be killed on the orders of Santa Anna.
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Post by Darkduskk on Jun 10, 2006 4:07:16 GMT -5
I make you wait for Duole.
I make you wait FOREVAH!
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Post by Harli on Jun 10, 2006 4:07:29 GMT -5
Despite reverses, the Texans declared their independence in a great spirit of resistance, and on Mar. 2, 1836, David Burnet was named provisional president. Thinking the war was over, Santa Anna moved eastward with his army. Sam Houston's troops--half the number of the Mexicans--occupied a position at the junction of the San Jacinto River and Buffalo Bayou, opposite Santa Anna's camp. On the afternoon of April 21 the Texans attacked while Santa Anna was having his siesta. Their battle cry was "Remember the Alamo; Remember Goliad." Santa Anna fled but was taken the next day and held prisoner for 6 months.
Statehood and the Mexican War
The Texas republic, whose independence had been recognized by the United States, Great Britain, France, Holland, and Belgium, was soon struggling with Indian wars, raids by Mexican forces, and financial problems. In September 1836, Texans voted for annexation by the United States; approval by the U.S. Congress was delayed until 1845, however, because of the northern states' opposition to the extension of slavery. On Dec. 29, 1845, the U.S. Congress accepted the Texas state constitution, and Texas became the 28th state, with legal slavery.
The Mexican War between the United States and Mexico followed within a few months of Texas' entry into the union. The U.S. victory in that war established the Rio Grande as the border between Mexico and the United States. Texas, however, claimed all the territory from the mouth of the Rio Grande to its source in southern Colorado, a claim vigorously opposed by those who wished to exclude slavery from the territories newly acquired from Mexico. In 1850, as part of the Compromise of 1850, Texas relinquished its claim to half of what today is New Mexico and portions of Colorado, Wyoming, Oklahoma, and Kansas in exchange for the sum of $10 million. Texas withdrew from the Union on Feb. 1, 1861. Little fighting took place on Texas soil during the Civil War, the most important engagements being the capture and recapture of Galveston, the principal port. A battle took place at Palmito Ranch near Brownsville, after General Lee had already surrendered at Appomattox.
Military rule following the Civil War was short-lived, but the state was inundated with carpetbaggers. On Mar. 30, 1870, Texas was readmitted to the Union after ratifying the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the U.S. Constitution. Following the Civil War cattle ranching became increasingly important to the economy, and vast herds were driven to the railroad in Kansas over the Chisholm Trail.
Modern Era
When the 20th century began, about 3 million people lived in Texas, and agriculture dominated the economy. Then in 1901, Spindletop, the state's first great oil gusher, was discovered. Soon oil was found in virtually every part of the state, and the great east Texas oil field, discovered in 1930, helped lessen the impact of the Depression. Racial segregation was a continuing issue throughout most of the 1950s and '60s, but by 1966, Texas ranked first among southern states in integrating its schools. The poll tax was abolished by court action in 1966. Another court decision led to redistricting the Texas legislature to conform to the Supreme Court policy of one person, one vote. Politically prominent Texans in the 1960s, 70s, 80s, and 90s included President Lyndon B. Johnson, Congresswoman Barbara Jordan, President George Bush, and Governor Ann Richards. In 1987 the Texas legislature approved a landmark $5.7 billion tax increase. Some critics complained that it did not completely correct Texas's past reliance on oil-industry taxes at a time when the state was becoming more dependent on service industries.
Facts About Texas
LAND
Area: 695,674 sq km (268,601 sq mi); rank: 2d. Capital: Austin (1996 census, 541,278). Largest city: Houston (1996 census, 1,744,058). Counties: 254. Elevations: highest--2,667 m (8,749 ft), at Guadalupe Peak; lowest--sea level, at the Gulf of Mexico.
PEOPLE
Population (1997 resident): 19,439,337; rank: 2nd; density(1990): 25 persons per sq km (64.9 per sq mi). Distribution (1990): 80.3% urban, 19.7% rural. Average annual change (1980-90): +1.9%.
EDUCATION
Public enrollment (1990): elementary--2,510,955; secondary--871,932; higher--802,314. Nonpublic enrollment (1980): elementary--94,200; secondary--20,200; combined--30,700; higher (1990)--99,123. Institutions of higher education (1988): 184.
ECONOMY
State personal income (1989): $266.8 billion; rank: 3d. Median family income (1989): $31,553; rank: 35th. Nonagricultural labor distribution (1989): manufacturing--970,000 persons; wholesale and retail trade--1,686,000; government--1,222,000; services--1,610,000; transportation and public utilities--401,000; finance, insurance, and real estate--433,000; construction--315,000. Agriculture: income (1989)--$10.8 billion. Fishing: value (1989)--$170 million. Lumber production (1991): 1.1 billion board feet. Mining (nonfuel): value (1988)--$1.5 billion. Manufacturing: value added (1987)--$63.9 billion. Services: value (1987)--$69.9 billion.
GOVERNMENT (1993)
Governor: George W Bush Jr (Republician) Lt. Governor (whom in this state is far more powerful than the Governor)-- Bob Bullock, U.S. Congress: Senate--2 Republicans; House--17 Democrats, 13 Republicans. Electoral college votes: 32. State legislature: 31 senators, 150 representatives.
STATE SYMBOLS
Statehood: Dec. 29, 1845; the 28th state. Nickname: Lone Star State; bird: mockingbird; flower: bluebonnet; tree: pecan; motto: Friendship; song: "Texas, Our Texas."
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Post by Harli on Jun 10, 2006 4:08:23 GMT -5
-twitch-
I make your life a living hell...FACE THE WRATH OF TEXAS HISTORY!!
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Post by Darkduskk on Jun 10, 2006 4:08:52 GMT -5
Lady with Lapdog - by Anton Chekov
It was said that a new person had appeared on the sea-front: a lady with a little dog. Dmitri Dmitritch Gurov, who had by then been a fortnight at Yalta, and so was fairly at home there, had begun to take an interest in new arrivals. Sitting in Verney's pavilion, he saw, walking on the sea-front, a fair-haired young lady of medium height, wearing a beret; a white Pomeranian dog was running behind her.
And afterwards he met her in the public gardens and in the square several times a day. She was walking alone, always wearing the same beret, and always with the same white dog; no one knew who she was, and every one called her simply "the lady with the dog."
"If she is here alone without a husband or friends, it wouldn't be amiss to make her acquaintance," Gurov reflected.
He was under forty, but he had a daughter already twelve years old, and two sons at school. He had been married young, when he was a student in his second year, and by now his wife seemed half as old again as he. She was a tall, erect woman with dark eyebrows, staid and dignified, and, as she said of herself, intellectual. She read a great deal, used phonetic spelling, called her husband, not Dmitri, but Dimitri, and he secretly considered her unintelligent, narrow, inelegant, was afraid of her, and did not like to be at home. He had begun being unfaithful to her long ago -- had been unfaithful to her often, and, probably on that account, almost always spoke ill of women, and when they were talked about in his presence, used to call them "the lower race."
It seemed to him that he had been so schooled by bitter experience that he might call them what he liked, and yet he could not get on for two days together without "the lower race." In the society of men he was bored and not himself, with them he was cold and uncommunicative; but when he was in the company of women he felt free, and knew what to say to them and how to behave; and he was at ease with them even when he was silent. In his appearance, in his character, in his whole nature, there was something attractive and elusive which allured women and disposed them in his favour; he knew that, and some force seemed to draw him, too, to them.
2
Experience often repeated, truly bitter experience, had taught him long ago that with decent people, especially Moscow people -- always slow to move and irresolute -- every intimacy, which at first so agreeably diversifies life and appears a light and charming adventure, inevitably grows into a regular problem of extreme intricacy, and in the long run the situation becomes unbearable. But at every fresh meeting with an interesting woman this experience seemed to slip out of his memory, and he was eager for life, and everything seemed simple and amusing.
One evening he was dining in the gardens, and the lady in the beret came up slowly to take the next table. Her expression, her gait, her dress, and the way she did her hair told him that she was a lady, that she was married, that she was in Yalta for the first time and alone, and that she was dull there. . . . The stories told of the immorality in such places as Yalta are to a great extent untrue; he despised them, and knew that such stories were for the most part made up by persons who would themselves have been glad to sin if they had been able; but when the lady sat down at the next table three paces from him, he remembered these tales of easy conquests, of trips to the mountains, and the tempting thought of a swift, fleeting love affair, a romance with an unknown woman, whose name he did not know, suddenly took possession of him.
He beckoned coaxingly to the Pomeranian, and when the dog came up to him he shook his finger at it. The Pomeranian growled: Gurov shook his finger at it again.
The lady looked at him and at once dropped her eyes.
"He doesn't bite," she said, and blushed.
"May I give him a bone?" he asked; and when she nodded he asked courteously, "Have you been long in Yalta?"
"Five days."
"And I have already dragged out a fortnight here."
There was a brief silence.
"Time goes fast, and yet it is so dull here!" she said, not looking at him.
"That's only the fashion to say it is dull here. A provincial will live in Belyov or Zhidra and not be dull, and when he comes here it's 'Oh, the dulness! Oh, the dust!' One would think he came from Grenada."
3
She laughed. Then both continued eating in silence, like strangers, but after dinner they walked side by side; and there sprang up between them the light jesting conversation of people who are free and satisfied, to whom it does not matter where they go or what they talk about. They walked and talked of the strange light on the sea: the water was of a soft warm lilac hue, and there was a golden streak from the moon upon it. They talked of how sultry it was after a hot day. Gurov told her that he came from Moscow, that he had taken his degree in Arts, but had a post in a bank; that he had trained as an opera-singer, but had given it up, that he owned two houses in Moscow. . . . And from her he learnt that she had grown up in Petersburg, but had lived in S---- since her marriage two years before, that she was staying another month in Yalta, and that her husband, who needed a holiday too, might perhaps come and fetch her. She was not sure whether her husband had a post in a Crown Department or under the Provincial Council -- and was amused by her own ignorance. And Gurov learnt, too, that she was called Anna Sergeyevna.
Afterwards he thought about her in his room at the hotel -- thought she would certainly meet him next day; it would be sure to happen. As he got into bed he thought how lately she had been a girl at school, doing lessons like his own daughter; he recalled the diffidence, the angularity, that was still manifest in her laugh and her manner of talking with a stranger. This must have been the first time in her life she had been alone in surroundings in which she was followed, looked at, and spoken to merely from a secret motive which she could hardly fail to guess. He recalled her slender, delicate neck, her lovely grey eyes.
"There's something pathetic about her, anyway," he thought, and fell asleep.
II
A week had passed since they had made acquaintance. It was a holiday. It was sultry indoors, while in the street the wind whirled the dust round and round, and blew people's hats off. It was a thirsty day, and Gurov often went into the pavilion, and pressed Anna Sergeyevna to have syrup and water or an ice. One did not know what to do with oneself.
4
In the evening when the wind had dropped a little, they went out on the groyne to see the steamer come in. There were a great many people walking about the harbour; they had gathered to welcome some one, bringing bouquets. And two peculiarities of a well-dressed Yalta crowd were very conspicuous: the elderly ladies were dressed like young ones, and there were great numbers of generals.
Owing to the roughness of the sea, the steamer arrived late, after the sun had set, and it was a long time turning about before it reached the groyne. Anna Sergeyevna looked through her lorgnette at the steamer and the passengers as though looking for acquaintances, and when she turned to Gurov her eyes were shining. She talked a great deal and asked disconnected questions, forgetting next moment what she had asked; then she dropped her lorgnette in the crush.
The festive crowd began to disperse; it was too dark to see people's faces. The wind had completely dropped, but Gurov and Anna Sergeyevna still stood as though waiting to see some one else come from the steamer. Anna Sergeyevna was silent now, and sniffed the flowers without looking at Gurov.
"The weather is better this evening," he said. "Where shall we go now? Shall we drive somewhere?"
She made no answer.
Then he looked at her intently, and all at once put his arm round her and kissed her on the lips, and breathed in the moisture and the fragrance of the flowers; and he immediately looked round him, anxiously wondering whether any one had seen them.
"Let us go to your hotel," he said softly. And both walked quickly.
The room was close and smelt of the scent she had bought at the Japanese shop. Gurov looked at her and thought: "What different people one meets in the world!" From the past he preserved memories of careless, good-natured women, who loved cheerfully and were grateful to him for the happiness he gave them, however brief it might be; and of women like his wife who loved without any genuine feeling, with superfluous phrases, affectedly, hysterically, with an expression that suggested that it was not love nor passion, but something more significant; and of two or three others, very beautiful, cold women, on whose faces he had caught a glimpse of a rapacious expression -- an obstinate desire to snatch from life more than it could give, and these were capricious, unreflecting, domineering, unintelligent women not in their first youth, and when Gurov grew cold to them their beauty excited his hatred, and the lace on their linen seemed to him like scales.
5
But in this case there was still the diffidence, the angularity of inexperienced youth, an awkward feeling; and there was a sense of consternation as though some one had suddenly knocked at the door. The attitude of Anna Sergeyevna -- "the lady with the dog" -- to what had happened was somehow peculiar, very grave, as though it were her fall -- so it seemed, and it was strange and inappropriate. Her face dropped and faded, and on both sides of it her long hair hung down mournfully; she mused in a dejected attitude like "the woman who was a sinner" in an old-fashioned picture.
"It's wrong," she said. "You will be the first to despise me now."
There was a water-melon on the table. Gurov cut himself a slice and began eating it without haste. There followed at least half an hour of silence.
Anna Sergeyevna was touching; there was about her the purity of a good, simple woman who had seen little of life. The solitary candle burning on the table threw a faint light on her face, yet it was clear that she was very unhappy.
"How could I despise you?" asked Gurov. "You don't know what you are saying."
"God forgive me," she said, and her eyes filled with tears. "It's awful."
"You seem to feel you need to be forgiven."
"Forgiven? No. I am a bad, low woman; I despise myself and don't attempt to justify myself. It's not my husband but myself I have deceived. And not only just now; I have been deceiving myself for a long time. My husband may be a good, honest man, but he is a flunkey! I don't know what he does there, what his work is, but I know he is a flunkey! I was twenty when I was married to him. I have been tormented by curiosity; I wanted something better. 'There must be a different sort of life,' I said to myself. I wanted to live! To live, to live! . . . I was fired by curiosity . . . you don't understand it, but, I swear to God, I could not control myself; something happened to me: I could not be restrained. I told my husband I was ill, and came here. . . . And here I have been walking about as though I were dazed, like a mad creature; . . . and now I have become a vulgar, contemptible woman whom any one may despise."
6
Gurov felt bored already, listening to her. He was irritated by the naive tone, by this remorse, so unexpected and inopportune; but for the tears in her eyes, he might have thought she was jesting or playing a part.
"I don't understand," he said softly. "What is it you want?"
She hid her face on his breast and pressed close to him.
"Believe me, believe me, I beseech you . . ." she said. "I love a pure, honest life, and sin is loathsome to me. I don't know what I am doing. Simple people say: 'The Evil One has beguiled me.' And I may say of myself now that the Evil One has beguiled me."
"Hush, hush! . . ." he muttered.
He looked at her fixed, scared eyes, kissed her, talked softly and affectionately, and by degrees she was comforted, and her gaiety returned; they both began laughing.
Afterwards when they went out there was not a soul on the sea-front. The town with its cypresses had quite a deathlike air, but the sea still broke noisily on the shore; a single barge was rocking on the waves, and a lantern was blinking sleepily on it.
They found a cab and drove to Oreanda.
"I found out your surname in the hall just now: it was written on the board -- Von Diderits," said Gurov. "Is your husband a German?"
"No; I believe his grandfather was a German, but he is an Orthodox Russian himself."
At Oreanda they sat on a seat not far from the church, looked down at the sea, and were silent. Yalta was hardly visible through the morning mist; white clouds stood motionless on the mountain-tops. The leaves did not stir on the trees, grasshoppers chirruped, and the monotonous hollow sound of the sea rising up from below, spoke of the peace, of the eternal sleep awaiting us. So it must have sounded when there was no Yalta, no Oreanda here; so it sounds now, and it will sound as indifferently and monotonously when we are all no more. And in this constancy, in this complete indifference to the life and death of each of us, there lies hid, perhaps, a pledge of our eternal salvation, of the unceasing movement of life upon earth, of unceasing progress towards perfection. Sitting beside a young woman who in the dawn seemed so lovely, soothed and spellbound in these magical surroundings -- the sea, mountains, clouds, the open sky -- Gurov thought how in reality everything is beautiful in this world when one reflects: everything except what we think or do ourselves when we forget our human dignity and the higher aims of our existence.
7
A man walked up to them -- probably a keeper -- looked at them and walked away. And this detail seemed mysterious and beautiful, too. They saw a steamer come from Theodosia, with its lights out in the glow of dawn.
"There is dew on the grass," said Anna Sergeyevna, after a silence.
"Yes. It's time to go home."
They went back to the town.
Then they met every day at twelve o'clock on the sea-front, lunched and dined together, went for walks, admired the sea. She complained that she slept badly, that her heart throbbed violently; asked the same questions, troubled now by jealousy and now by the fear that he did not respect her sufficiently. And often in the square or gardens, when there was no one near them, he suddenly drew her to him and kissed her passionately. Complete idleness, these kisses in broad daylight while he looked round in dread of some one's seeing them, the heat, the smell of the sea, and the continual passing to and fro before him of idle, well-dressed, well-fed people, made a new man of him; he told Anna Sergeyevna how beautiful she was, how fascinating. He was impatiently passionate, he would not move a step away from her, while she was often pensive and continually urged him to confess that he did not respect her, did not love her in the least, and thought of her as nothing but a common woman. Rather late almost every evening they drove somewhere out of town, to Oreanda or to the waterfall; and the expedition was always a success, the scenery invariably impressed them as grand and beautiful.
They were expecting her husband to come, but a letter came from him, saying that there was something wrong with his eyes, and he entreated his wife to come home as quickly as possible. Anna Sergeyevna made haste to go.
"It's a good thing I am going away," she said to Gurov. "It's the finger of destiny!"
She went by coach and he went with her. They were driving the whole day. When she had got into a compartment of the express, and when the second bell had rung, she said:
"Let me look at you once more . . . look at you once again. That's right."
She did not shed tears, but was so sad that she seemed ill, and her face was quivering.
8
"I shall remember you . . . think of you," she said. "God be with you; be happy. Don't remember evil against me. We are parting forever -- it must be so, for we ought never to have met. Well, God be with you."
The train moved off rapidly, its lights soon vanished from sight, and a minute later there was no sound of it, as though everything had conspired together to end as quickly as possible that sweet delirium, that madness. Left alone on the platform, and gazing into the dark distance, Gurov listened to the chirrup of the grasshoppers and the hum of the telegraph wires, feeling as though he had only just waked up. And he thought, musing, that there had been another episode or adventure in his life, and it, too, was at an end, and nothing was left of it but a memory. . . . He was moved, sad, and conscious of a slight remorse. This young woman whom he would never meet again had not been happy with him; he was genuinely warm and affectionate with her, but yet in his manner, his tone, and his caresses there had been a shade of light irony, the coarse condescension of a happy man who was, besides, almost twice her age. All the time she had called him kind, exceptional, lofty; obviously he had seemed to her different from what he really was, so he had unintentionally deceived her. . . .
Here at the station was already a scent of autumn; it was a cold evening.
"It's time for me to go north," thought Gurov as he left the platform. "High time!"
III
At home in Moscow everything was in its winter routine; the stoves were heated, and in the morning it was still dark when the children were having breakfast and getting ready for school, and the nurse would light the lamp for a short time. The frosts had begun already. When the first snow has fallen, on the first day of sledge-driving it is pleasant to see the white earth, the white roofs, to draw soft, delicious breath, and the season brings back the days of one's youth. The old limes and birches, white with hoar-frost, have a good-natured expression; they are nearer to one's heart than cypresses and palms, and near them one doesn't want to be thinking of the sea and the mountains.
9
Gurov was Moscow born; he arrived in Moscow on a fine frosty day, and when he put on his fur coat and warm gloves, and walked along Petrovka, and when on Saturday evening he heard the ringing of the bells, his recent trip and the places he had seen lost all charm for him. Little by little he became absorbed in Moscow life, greedily read three newspapers a day, and declared he did not read the Moscow papers on principle! He already felt a longing to go to restaurants, clubs, dinner-parties, anniversary celebrations, and he felt flattered at entertaining distinguished lawyers and artists, and at playing cards with a professor at the doctors' club. He could already eat a whole plateful of salt fish and cabbage.
In another month, he fancied, the image of Anna Sergeyevna would be shrouded in a mist in his memory, and only from time to time would visit him in his dreams with a touching smile as others did. But more than a month passed, real winter had come, and everything was still clear in his memory as though he had parted with Anna Sergeyevna only the day before. And his memories glowed more and more vividly. When in the evening stillness he heard from his study the voices of his children, preparing their lessons, or when he listened to a song or the organ at the restaurant, or the storm howled in the chimney, suddenly everything would rise up in his memory: what had happened on the groyne, and the early morning with the mist on the mountains, and the steamer coming from Theodosia, and the kisses. He would pace a long time about his room, remembering it all and smiling; then his memories passed into dreams, and in his fancy the past was mingled with what was to come. Anna Sergeyevna did not visit him in dreams, but followed him about everywhere like a shadow and haunted him. When he shut his eyes he saw her as though she were living before him, and she seemed to him lovelier, younger, tenderer than she was; and he imagined himself finer than he had been in Yalta. In the evenings she peeped out at him from the bookcase, from the fireplace, from the corner -- he heard her breathing, the caressing rustle of her dress. In the street he watched the women, looking for some one like her.
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Post by Darkduskk on Jun 10, 2006 4:09:23 GMT -5
10
He was tormented by an intense desire to confide his memories to some one. But in his home it was impossible to talk of his love, and he had no one outside; he could not talk to his tenants nor to any one at the bank. And what had he to talk of? Had he been in love, then? Had there been anything beautiful, poetical, or edifying or simply interesting in his relations with Anna Sergeyevna? And there was nothing for him but to talk vaguely of love, of woman, and no one guessed what it meant; only his wife twitched her black eyebrows, and said:
"The part of a lady-killer does not suit you at all, Dimitri."
One evening, coming out of the doctors' club with an official with whom he had been playing cards, he could not resist saying:
"If only you knew what a fascinating woman I made the acquaintance of in Yalta!"
The official got into his sledge and was driving away, but turned suddenly and shouted:
"Dmitri Dmitritch!"
"What?"
"You were right this evening: the sturgeon was a bit too strong!"
These words, so ordinary, for some reason moved Gurov to indignation, and struck him as degrading and unclean. What savage manners, what people! What senseless nights, what uninteresting, uneventful days! The rage for card-playing, the gluttony, the drunkenness, the continual talk always about the same thing. Useless pursuits and conversations always about the same things absorb the better part of one's time, the better part of one's strength, and in the end there is left a life grovelling and curtailed, worthless and trivial, and there is no escaping or getting away from it -- just as though one were in a madhouse or a prison.
Gurov did not sleep all night, and was filled with indignation. And he had a headache all next day. And the next night he slept badly; he sat up in bed, thinking, or paced up and down his room. He was sick of his children, sick of the bank; he had no desire to go anywhere or to talk of anything.
In the holidays in December he prepared for a journey, and told his wife he was going to Petersburg to do something in the interests of a young friend -- and he set off for S----. What for? He did not very well know himself. He wanted to see Anna Sergeyevna and to talk with her -- to arrange a meeting, if possible.
11
He reached S---- in the morning, and took the best room at the hotel, in which the floor was covered with grey army cloth, and on the table was an inkstand, grey with dust and adorned with a figure on horseback, with its hat in its hand and its head broken off. The hotel porter gave him the necessary information; Von Diderits lived in a house of his own in Old Gontcharny Street -- it was not far from the hotel: he was rich and lived in good style, and had his own horses; every one in the town knew him. The porter pronounced the name "Dridirits."
Gurov went without haste to Old Gontcharny Street and found the house. Just opposite the house stretched a long grey fence adorned with nails.
"One would run away from a fence like that," thought Gurov, looking from the fence to the windows of the house and back again.
He considered: to-day was a holiday, and the husband would probably be at home. And in any case it would be tactless to go into the house and upset her. If he were to send her a note it might fall into her husband's hands, and then it might ruin everything. The best thing was to trust to chance. And he kept walking up and down the street by the fence, waiting for the chance. He saw a beggar go in at the gate and dogs fly at him; then an hour later he heard a piano, and the sounds were faint and indistinct. Probably it was Anna Sergeyevna playing. The front door suddenly opened, and an old woman came out, followed by the familiar white Pomeranian. Gurov was on the point of calling to the dog, but his heart began beating violently, and in his excitement he could not remember the dog's name.
He walked up and down, and loathed the grey fence more and more, and by now he thought irritably that Anna Sergeyevna had forgotten him, and was perhaps already amusing herself with some one else, and that that was very natural in a young woman who had nothing to look at from morning till night but that confounded fence. He went back to his hotel room and sat for a long while on the sofa, not knowing what to do, then he had dinner and a long nap.
12
"How stupid and worrying it is!" he thought when he woke and looked at the dark windows: it was already evening. "Here I've had a good sleep for some reason. What shall I do in the night?"
He sat on the bed, which was covered by a cheap grey blanket, such as one sees in hospitals, and he taunted himself in his vexation:
"So much for the lady with the dog . . . so much for the adventure. . . . You're in a nice fix. . . ."
That morning at the station a poster in large letters had caught his eye. "The Geisha" was to be performed for the first time. He thought of this and went to the theatre.
"It's quite possible she may go to the first performance," he thought.
The theatre was full. As in all provincial theatres, there was a fog above the chandelier, the gallery was noisy and restless; in the front row the local dandies were standing up before the beginning of the performance, with their hands behind them; in the Governor's box the Governor's daughter, wearing a boa, was sitting in the front seat, while the Governor himself lurked modestly behind the curtain with only his hands visible; the orchestra was a long time tuning up; the stage curtain swayed. All the time the audience were coming in and taking their seats Gurov looked at them eagerly.
Anna Sergeyevna, too, came in. She sat down in the third row, and when Gurov looked at her his heart contracted, and he understood clearly that for him there was in the whole world no creature so near, so precious, and so important to him; she, this little woman, in no way remarkable, lost in a provincial crowd, with a vulgar lorgnette in her hand, filled his whole life now, was his sorrow and his joy, the one happiness that he now desired for himself, and to the sounds of the inferior orchestra, of the wretched provincial violins, he thought how lovely she was. He thought and dreamed.
A young man with small side-whiskers, tall and stooping, came in with Anna Sergeyevna and sat down beside her; he bent his head at every step and seemed to be continually bowing. Most likely this was the husband whom at Yalta, in a rush of bitter feeling, she had called a flunkey. And there really was in his long figure, his side-whiskers, and the small bald patch on his head, something of the flunkey's obsequiousness; his smile was sugary, and in his buttonhole there was some badge of distinction like the number on a waiter.
13
During the first interval the husband went away to smoke; she remained alone in her stall. Gurov, who was sitting in the stalls, too, went up to her and said in a trembling voice, with a forced smile:
"Good-evening."
She glanced at him and turned pale, then glanced again with horror, unable to believe her eyes, and tightly gripped the fan and the lorgnette in her hands, evidently struggling with herself not to faint. Both were silent. She was sitting, he was standing, frightened by her confusion and not venturing to sit down beside her. The violins and the flute began tuning up. He felt suddenly frightened; it seemed as though all the people in the boxes were looking at them. She got up and went quickly to the door; he followed her, and both walked senselessly along passages, and up and down stairs, and figures in legal, scholastic, and civil service uniforms, all wearing badges, flitted before their eyes. They caught glimpses of ladies, of fur coats hanging on pegs; the draughts blew on them, bringing a smell of stale tobacco. And Gurov, whose heart was beating violently, thought:
"Oh, heavens! Why are these people here and this orchestra! . . ."
And at that instant he recalled how when he had seen Anna Sergeyevna off at the station he had thought that everything was over and they would never meet again. But how far they were still from the end!
On the narrow, gloomy staircase over which was written "To the Amphitheatre," she stopped.
"How you have frightened me!" she said, breathing hard, still pale and overwhelmed. "Oh, how you have frightened me! I am half dead. Why have you come? Why?"
"But do understand, Anna, do understand . . ." he said hastily in a low voice. "I entreat you to understand. . . ."
She looked at him with dread, with entreaty, with love; she looked at him intently, to keep his features more distinctly in her memory.
"I am so unhappy," she went on, not heeding him. "I have thought of nothing but you all the time; I live only in the thought of you. And I wanted to forget, to forget you; but why, oh, why, have you come?"
On the landing above them two schoolboys were smoking and looking down, but that was nothing to Gurov; he drew Anna Sergeyevna to him, and began kissing her face, her cheeks, and her hands.
14
"What are you doing, what are you doing!" she cried in horror, pushing him away. "We are mad. Go away to-day; go away at once. . . . I beseech you by all that is sacred, I implore you. . . . There are people coming this way!"
Some one was coming up the stairs.
"You must go away," Anna Sergeyevna went on in a whisper. "Do you hear, Dmitri Dmitritch? I will come and see you in Moscow. I have never been happy; I am miserable now, and I never, never shall be happy, never! Don't make me suffer still more! I swear I'll come to Moscow. But now let us part. My precious, good, dear one, we must part!"
She pressed his hand and began rapidly going downstairs, looking round at him, and from her eyes he could see that she really was unhappy. Gurov stood for a little while, listened, then, when all sound had died away, he found his coat and left the theatre.
IV
And Anna Sergeyevna began coming to see him in Moscow. Once in two or three months she left S----, telling her husband that she was going to consult a doctor about an internal complaint -- and her husband believed her, and did not believe her. In Moscow she stayed at the Slaviansky Bazaar hotel, and at once sent a man in a red cap to Gurov. Gurov went to see her, and no one in Moscow knew of it.
Once he was going to see her in this way on a winter morning (the messenger had come the evening before when he was out). With him walked his daughter, whom he wanted to take to school: it was on the way. Snow was falling in big wet flakes.
"It's three degrees above freezing-point, and yet it is snowing," said Gurov to his daughter. "The thaw is only on the surface of the earth; there is quite a different temperature at a greater height in the atmosphere."
"And why are there no thunderstorms in the winter, father?"
He explained that, too. He talked, thinking all the while that he was going to see her, and no living soul knew of it, and probably never would know. He had two lives: one, open, seen and known by all who cared to know, full of relative truth and of relative falsehood, exactly like the lives of his friends and acquaintances; and another life running its course in secret. And through some strange, perhaps accidental, conjunction of circumstances, everything that was essential, of interest and of value to him, everything in which he was sincere and did not deceive himself, everything that made the kernel of his life, was hidden from other people; and all that was false in him, the sheath in which he hid himself to conceal the truth -- such, for instance, as his work in the bank, his discussions at the club, his "lower race," his presence with his wife at anniversary festivities -- all that was open. And he judged of others by himself, not believing in what he saw, and always believing that every man had his real, most interesting life under the cover of secrecy and under the cover of night. All personal life rested on secrecy, and possibly it was partly on that account that civilised man was so nervously anxious that personal privacy should be respected.
15
After leaving his daughter at school, Gurov went on to the Slaviansky Bazaar. He took off his fur coat below, went upstairs, and softly knocked at the door. Anna Sergeyevna, wearing his favourite grey dress, exhausted by the journey and the suspense, had been expecting him since the evening before. She was pale; she looked at him, and did not smile, and he had hardly come in when she fell on his breast. Their kiss was slow and prolonged, as though they had not met for two years.
"Well, how are you getting on there?" he asked. "What news?"
"Wait; I'll tell you directly. . . . I can't talk."
She could not speak; she was crying. She turned away from him, and pressed her handkerchief to her eyes.
"Let her have her cry out. I'll sit down and wait," he thought, and he sat down in an arm-chair.
Then he rang and asked for tea to be brought him, and while he drank his tea she remained standing at the window with her back to him. She was crying from emotion, from the miserable consciousness that their life was so hard for them; they could only meet in secret, hiding themselves from people, like thieves! Was not their life shattered?
"Come, do stop!" he said.
It was evident to him that this love of theirs would not soon be over, that he could not see the end of it. Anna Sergeyevna grew more and more attached to him. She adored him, and it was unthinkable to say to her that it was bound to have an end some day; besides, she would not have believed it!
He went up to her and took her by the shoulders to say something affectionate and cheering, and at that moment he saw himself in the looking-glass.
His hair was already beginning to turn grey. And it seemed strange to him that he had grown so much older, so much plainer during the last few years. The shoulders on which his hands rested were warm and quivering. He felt compassion for this life, still so warm and lovely, but probably already not far from beginning to fade and wither like his own. Why did she love him so much? He always seemed to women different from what he was, and they loved in him not himself, but the man created by their imagination, whom they had been eagerly seeking all their lives; and afterwards, when they noticed their mistake, they loved him all the same. And not one of them had been happy with him. Time passed, he had made their acquaintance, got on with them, parted, but he had never once loved; it was anything you like, but not love.
16
And only now when his head was grey he had fallen properly, really in love -- for the first time in his life.
Anna Sergeyevna and he loved each other like people very close and akin, like husband and wife, like tender friends; it seemed to them that fate itself had meant them for one another, and they could not understand why he had a wife and she a husband; and it was as though they were a pair of birds of passage, caught and forced to live in different cages. They forgave each other for what they were ashamed of in their past, they forgave everything in the present, and felt that this love of theirs had changed them both.
In moments of depression in the past he had comforted himself with any arguments that came into his mind, but now he no longer cared for arguments; he felt profound compassion, he wanted to be sincere and tender. . . .
"Don't cry, my darling," he said. "You've had your cry; that's enough. . . . Let us talk now, let us think of some plan."
Then they spent a long while taking counsel together, talked of how to avoid the necessity for secrecy, for deception, for living in different towns and not seeing each other for long at a time. How could they be free from this intolerable bondage?
"How? How?" he asked, clutching his head. "How?"
And it seemed as though in a little while the solution would be found, and then a new and splendid life would begin; and it was clear to both of them that they had still a long, long road before them, and that the most complicated and difficult part of it was only just beginning.
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Post by Harli on Jun 10, 2006 4:10:01 GMT -5
Buffalo Moon Pie Tree
You wash & wash, Washington - but never come clean.
*
You buff & buff, Buffalo - your moon still mean.
*
You prove & prove, Providence - moan, laundrymen.
- Henry the Cleaning Lady
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Note: In the phantom digital-terminal world, we are all still learning to
let our fingers do the talking. Through 1998 I was working on a very long
poem called STUBBORN GREW (which will be published this year by
Spuyten Duyvil Press in Brooklyn). Occasionally there are conjunctions
between events internal to the poem and the travails of the Clinton presidency.
Strangely, toward the end of 1998, I found myself enmeshed with others
in an internet struggle for legitimacy which paralleled events in Washington.
I found myself "impeached" (via censorship) from the influential "Poetics
List" poetry discussion sponsored by the Electronic Poetry Center at
SUNY Buffalo (http://wings.buffalo.edu/epc). The strains of this struggle
in November-December brought about the "resignation" of two of the list
managers, just as two Speakers of the House were brought down by the
impeachment battle. Now the Poetics List has been re-organized into a
more tightly-controlled discussion - "fully moderated", in list lingo;
and I, along with a few others, have been denied membership to the new
formation.
An entire spectrum of opinions has been voiced about what happened
on the Poetics List, portions of which can be found in the List's own
archives. This is not the place to argue the point one way or another;
my brief poem simply expresses what it feels like to be exiled, shut
out of a valued community. And I would like people interested in the
"poetry scene" to be aware of the depths and nuances entailed by any
form of editing or censorship (another name for "moderation"). I am not
saying that "editing" is always negative or unnecessary; only that it is
important to be aware of it, of how and in what forms it exists.
--Henry Gould]
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Post by Darkduskk on Jun 10, 2006 4:10:06 GMT -5
THAS OK!!
I'LL SHOW YA ALL THE SHORT STORIES YOU COULD EVER HANDLE!!!
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Post by Harli on Jun 10, 2006 4:10:29 GMT -5
The Long Poem Group Newsletter/Edited by Sebastian Barker and William Oxley/No.6 October 1998
Editorial addresses
Sebastian Barker, 70 Wargrave Avenue, London N15 6UB.
William Oxley, 6 The Mount, Furzeham, Brixham, Devon TQ5 8QY.
WRITING CASPER HAUSER
David Constantine
I wanted to write a long poem before I knew that I wanted to write a poem about Casper Hauser. Gradually the first wish concentrated on the second. Why want to write a long poem? In a good year I might write eight or nine lyric poems, and of these two or three will soon reveal themselves to have been mistakes or failures and will fall away. I find the long periods of absence and inability hard to bear. I felt I should like to have a poetic subject with me all the time, or at least for a long time. Though writing poetry always troubles me I like that state better than not being able to write.
I knew all about Casper long before I thought I could make him the subject of a poem. There is massive documentation of him in German and I had read most of it. I saw Herzog's film, which I loved, and Handke's play, which I hated, but otherwise kept clear of anyone else's fictional, poetic or dramatic presentation of him. Had I known all along that he would, in the end, haunt me poetically I might have read less about him at the outset. The other day I read a dissertation written by a student at the University of Bonn on my use of historical material in Casper Hauser. She was very thorough. I felt rather alarmed, and in the long poem or poetic drama I am writing now I at once backed off all further historical research, to give my own imagination a bit more room. Schiller warned poets off subjects that are in themselves intrinsically interesting. Interest should be engendered through poetic treatment, he thought: through how not what. Casper Hauser, endlessly fascinating, was in that sense a most unsuitable or risky subject.
I had to settle the form of it before I could begin. I wanted a verse that I could sustain and chose a loose version of terza rima. In every three lines two rhyme or assonate. The lines vary greatly in length. I like the feeling of longer or shorter breath, and the visible expansion and contraction of the lines is, I think, pleasurable for the eye. To give urgency and momentum there is a great deal of enjambment, from line to line and from unit to unit. Overall the form is retrospective. Three characters at the ends of their lives reflect more or less guiltily and unhappily on their dealings with Casper. This form suits me -- I did the same in my novel Davies -- and in working thus retrospectively I made room for much lyrical reflection, which, as I intended, contradicted the prime function of the epic poem, which is to tell a story. In Casper Hauser the story has, to a large extent, already been told. Daumer, Clara and Stanhope repeat their versions and reflect on it. A narrative voice moves among them, relating and commenting (mostly with some irony). I felt happy in this peculiar mixture. Straight storytelling is difficult in verse. You might do it much better in prose. If you find yourself saying in a fancy (`poetic') way what you could just as well or better say in prose, then you are going wrong and it all wants crossing out. That is why I slipped again and again into reflections and lyrical lament. There I felt on surer poetic ground.
In the Eighth Canto I took a great risk, and wrenched the poem into my own day and age and into the life on the streets of cities I am familiar with myself. There was some preparation for this in the narrator's voice and in his choice of similes, which are often anachronistic, i.e. modern. I did not want to write a poem whose interest would be largely antiquarian. And there was always a risk, the more I embedded myself in the fascinating biographical and historical context.
I wrote at the poem for fifteen months, doing some almost every day. During that time I wrote scarcely any other poems. When I finished Caspar he turned away from me as though I had failed him. I felt utterly disconsolate. I might say, to cheer myself up, that failure was not only inevitable but also in a sense appropriate. As in Davies the characters reflect on a person they have comprehended very imperfectly. Failure, like his absence, haunts them for the rest of their lives. Likewise for the rest of mine.
HOW LONG OR SHORT PERMIT TO HEAV'N
(Paradise Lost XI,554)
Gavin Bantock
The editor of a leading British poetry magazine wrote recently that long poems are `out of fashion nowadays'. Referring specifically to the `true epic' and the `need to memorise long stories for recitation', he says this `has now been completely obviated by the twin inventions of print and video recordings'.
I doubt this. Not all long poems are epics, and because something is out of fashion it does not mean it is irrelevant or lacking in quality. If good long poems are being written today they are no less valid as works of art than short poems are. I wish to remove immediately, however, any sense of rivalry between long and short poems. Who can say how long a short poem is or how short a long poem may be? Also, no true artist is a slave to fashion.
I have been writing poems, both long and short, for some forty years. My first major work, a 7,000-line pseudo-epic on Christ employed what has been rightly called a `rather simplistic' form, namely, sections based on the twenty six letters of the alphabet. Homer was my example: his two epics have twenty four books because there were twenty four letters in the Greek alphabet. Virgil followed this idea, but his Aeneid has only twelve books because he didn't complete it. Milton followed Virgil, perhaps not realising this.
Four later of my poems, Hiroshima, Person, Juggernaut and Ichor were written as what Fred Beake calls `spontaneous composition'. I was more concerned with content than form, but they each have, I found later, an inherent form. When I came to write Eirenikon (a proposition for peace) (Anvil, 1972), needing a more sturdy framework, I constructed the poem as a Euclidean theorem with five sections -- Given, R.T.P., Construction, Proof and Conclusion. These headings, used fairly loosely, give the poem, I believe, strength and cohesion.
For over twenty years I have been trying to write a long poem called SeaManShip. The theme and basic structure were always clear to me: `Sea' represented the natural world, `Man' human intellect, and `Ship' all that is man-made or `artificial'. It was to be a sort of personal manifesto. I just couldn't find a suitable form or poetic style for it -- until April of 1996, when I suddenly had the idea to create it in the form of a computer or software manual, giving it three parts, subdivided into nine -- Start Up, Desktop, Install, Open, Enter, Edit, Save, Print, Shut Down. Again, these headings are used loosely, but they provide the reader with a `sense of whereabouts' -- an essential ingredient, I believe, for any succesful long poem. SeaManShip is the first of my long poems to use stanzas of regular length and also to use rhyme. The rhymes hold together what amounts to a poem that is 90% free verse.
I do not agree with Poe's stricture (mentioned by William Oxley) that `the poetic impulse cannot be sustained beyond a certain duration or number of lines'. It took me over two years to write Christ and over three months to write SeaManShip (2,187 lines). The secret is to know when to switch off and take a rest. When the poem is going well and I have a clear idea how to continue, I always stop writing, just before the peak of a wave, so to speak, so that when I next continue I can begin at a high point. It is thus possible to sustain inspiration over a long period.
In my opinion there are too many poems being written today, and too little good poetry; there is too little linguistic inventiveness, too much flabbiness of imagery and content. Many poems seem to be dependent on the size of the paper they are (to be) printed on, and frequently reveal a lack of training. A good poem should never be limited by trivial considerations such as finance, magazine size, reader attention-span, etc. It is only the vision, the theme, the strength of inspiration, the form and language that count. A long poem may be a better vehicle for linguistic experimentation and evolution than a short poem. But I take no sides: I have written poems as short as one line and as long as 7,000 lines. In fashion or out of fashion, there is room in this world for poems of any length whatever. Live theatre (and its attendant need for memorization), for example, has not been `completely obviated' by the film and television industries. There is no reason to believe that long poems have had their day.
THE LONG POEM, THE SEQUENCE, AND THE CONCEPT POEM-BOOK
John Kinsella
In childhood two of my favourite poems were The Prelude and Paradise Lost -- I suppose it's not surprising that "the long poem" has been an obsession for me. But in terms of process I was more influenced by The Waste Land and the Cantos than any pre-twentieth century verse. I liked the fragmentation, the internalisation and breakdown of the narrative process which remains, nonetheless, like a ghost limb. Enzensberger's book-poem Titanic was another work that had this effect on me, though its "narrative" is in some senses more available, and recent long, linguistically innovative text by poets such as Lyn Hejinian and Susan Howe are of particular interest. But my tastes are diverse and eclectic -- for me, innovation and tradition are necessary to each other.
I'm interested in creating a hybrid poetry that incorporates elements of both. In recent years I've been involved in a number of long collaborative poems, such as D & G with Urs Jaeggi, and collaborative concept-book projects which include The Kangaroo Virus Project, with sound artist and photographer Ron Sims (to be released shortly as both book and cd). My next volume of poetry, The Visitation, is also an interactive thematic novella-poem book, and I've also completed a long sonnet sequence.
In the early nineties I received a couple of grants to enable me to work on developing techniques for the writing of long poems. Eventually these experiments resulted in two very contrasting works, Syzygy and The Silo. Both of these poem "sequences" originated in work being done in the mid to late eighties but it wasn't until 1993 (Syzygy) and 1995 (The Silo) that they appeared in their final forms. Both were opening gambits to more recent projects: the volume The Hunt and the cumulative work-in-progress Graphology. The long poem as "concept book" maybe.
The Hunt, like The Silo, is "pastoral", or as I prefer to call it "anti-pastoral", in tone -- exploring issues arising out of the introduction of European farming practices into what is now known as the wheatbelt area of South-West Australia. The world view is invasion rather than settlement, if you like. At the core of this project is the often unspoken destruction of indigenous cultures. The colonisation of environment, language, and culture. This is not a point that's necessarily approached directly but one that informs every line of the work. It is one of the sub-textual narrative threads that makes these works "single" poems, rather than collections of purely individual pieces. The ordering of poems in both books is the key to a collective reading (I like to think of them as poetry novellas in a sense).
The Silo is shaped around the five movements of Beethoven's Sixth Symphony, with each section working through and against the original model. Unlike Beethoven's utopian rural construct, the rural world I portray is above all else human. It has its good and bad points. The dark world of destruction and a malignant Fate that parallel every rural image I convey have often been termed "wheatbelt gothic", which is the title of a poem that appeared in my third full-length collection, Full Fathom Five. This connection isn't arbitrary -- all my work is connected in one way or another. I see my writing as a project, and it could be argued that all my poems are part of one long work or at least drafts towards one substantial piece of work.
The Hunt is not as rigidly constructed as The Silo, though the order of the individual poems is extremely important to the subtextual narrative that binds the work together.
Around 40 separate poems all interact with each other and come together in a distinct poetic narrative. It utilises, like , colloquial speech, which also plays into the tradition of the epic -- or anti-epic, another one of my "targets".
I studied The Iliad and The Odyssey at university after reading them in numerous translations as a child -- Lattimore's Iliad capturing my imagination most vividly. I loved the idea of a poem being handed down by word of mouth, of the need for the "text" to be visualised. Maybe that's why I deploy a variety of techniques that allow a poem, or section of a poem to be more easily memorised. The thing that fascinated me most about Homeric poetry was the idea of interpolation, particularly in The Odyssey. How much was added by whom and when and why. What constitutes the "original" text? This is particularly relevant in a time when "appropriation" is a catch-cry. Eliot works this superbly in The Waste Land. With colloquial voice we are establishing a network of appropriations -- alternative narrative threads are suggested within the primary story. Robert Frost has been a huge influence here and remains my favourite poet, despite our very different political concerns (coming from different "places" is not a problem!). These issues are explored in a variety of ways in both The Silo and The Hunt but are particularly relevant to Graphology.
Like Syzygy, Graphology is about the process of writing itself, as well as the language of observation. Graphology is the title of a booklet of mine but is also the name of a larger project. The eponymous Graphology was in fact part 2 -- the first part being another booklet published in 1996 entitled The Radotni Poems. Since then there have been Annotations, Superstitious Bookes. Graphology 5, etc. published in journals or on the internet. Sheep Dip, the next instalment, is due out in Ireland shortly. If the project is ever "completed" it will appear as one volume. Graphology has been conceived right from the earliest drafts as being the long poem that one writes over a lifetime.
Graphology is literally about how and why we write. It is about the word itself, about the line, the stanza, the typography, font, page itself. It is an interactive space. Parts of the text revert from palatino font into handwriting. We ask ourselves -- is speech closer to thought or is handwriting? But it's also a work that encapsulates many of the concerns of The Hunt and The Silo, in the same way that Syzygy does. It is landscape poetry as well as wordscape or linguistic poetry. It is also a work in which the landscapes of South-West Australia merge, interact, and work against the landscapes of England, particularly the fens (I live in Cambridge now). This is something that links strongly with my belief in what I call "international regionalism" -- a respect for regional integrity but in an environment of global communication. The element that binds these diverse works together, apart from technical devices, is landscape. To map place is integral to mapping language. And that's, for me, what a poet does.
THE LONG POEM AS BIOGRAPHY
William Oxley
Eric Ratcliffe, WELLINGTON A Broad Front, Astrapost, UKP 6.95/$ 12.00
Distributed by Drake International Services, Market Place, Deddington, Oxford OX15 0SE.
This long poem is an historical account of the campaigns of the first Duke of Wellington, from his exploits in India, to his defeat of Napoleon, and then onto the end of his life, both as a political and public figure of great importance in the 19th century. The character that emerges, and in my view lives, in this poem is that of a great and noble man: one who was, considering his remarkable achievements, most self-effacing. In short, a figure very, very hard to recognise in modern egotistical human terms. It is a long poem, self-evidentally well researched (there are extensive notes and bibliography, as well as a detailed dramatis personae appended).
However, due to special circumstances, I had the privilege of reading the poem anonymously, without any such appurtenances; and I did find it both well-orchestrated and readable. But, in truth, such are only the minimum requirements of any good long work, such as a novel. A poem has to be something in addition, namely, it must attain to a beautiful perfection of utterance, `the best words in the best order'. None among the greatest epic poets achieve this constantly; but Eric Ratcliffe not very often. So what I was admiring was, inter alia, the fact that `Ratcliffe deserves praise for what he has attempted', for having `addressed'... the key problems we have discussed [in the Long Poem Group] and made a long poem out of the attempt' -- if I may quote my co-editor.
But where my co-editor feels `the hero of the poem, Wellington, `never comes alive', I do. And I think this because, as may be inferred from what I said earlier, the kind of man that Wellington was (or is here presented), is not one to whom a late twentieth century readership can easily recognise as being `human', or easily relate to as a consequence: much in the way that the Media has almost no interest in good news, having long since equated the `human' with the `sensational' figure -- ie. one governed by the lower passions alone. For me, the chief weakness of this poem lies in the actual quality of the writing -- it being insufficiently poetic and musical in its expression -- it has too close a relationship with prose; or `chopped up prose' as is the negatively critical term often applied to late twentieth century metrical incompetence.
But that said, and all before, it entitles Wellington to be singled out among the more ambitious poetic works of the last year.
Checklist of Long Poems
(additions sent in by various correspondents to those listed in previous newsletters)
Yesterday in Cehyddion Valley, John Powell Ward, Anglo-Welsh Review, (Summer 1972).
There is a Green Hill, John Powell Ward, Planet 16, 1973.
Song of Anarchy, John Rety, Hearing Eye, 1989.
Nelson: The Golden Orb, John Twells, Ownart Ltd., 1995.
Entries On Light, Mimi Khalvati, Carcanet, 1997.
The Love of Strangers, Michael Schmidt, in Selected Poems 1972-1997, Smith/Doorstop Books, 1997.
Birthday Letters, Ted Hughes, Faber & Faber, 1998.
The Apocalypse of Quintilius, Peter Russell, Salzburg University, 1998.
Wellington, Eric Ratcliffe, Astrapost, 1998.
Harlowski, Gordon Wardman, Blade, 1998.
Fredy Neptune, Les A.Murray, Carcanet, 1998.
Touching The Earth, Grevel Lindop, Temenos Academy Review, 1998.
Elizabeth I, Wendy Bardsley, in Steel Wings, Headland, 1998.
Events Leading to the Conception of Solomon, The Wise Child, Dannie Abse, in Arcadia, One Mile, Hutchinson, 1998.
New Members' Applications
John Rety (London) is confirmed as a new member of the Long Poem Group in compliance with the criteria stated in the firsr newsletter.
This newletter is produced by Acumen Publications, 6 The Mount, Higher Furzeham, Brixham, South Devon, UK TQ5 8QY.
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Post by Darkduskk on Jun 10, 2006 4:10:59 GMT -5
Amy Foster - by Joseph Conrad
Kennedy is a country doctor, and lives in Colebrook, on the shores of Eastbay. The high ground rising abruptly behind the red roofs of the little town crowds the quaint High Street against the wall which defends it from the sea. Beyond the sea-wall there curves for miles in a vast and regular sweep the barren beach of shingle, with the village of Brenzett standing out darkly across the water, a spire in a clump of trees; and still further out the perpendicular column of a lighthouse, looking in the distance no bigger than a lead pencil, marks the vanishing-point of the land. The country at the back of Brenzett is low and flat, but the bay is fairly well sheltered from the seas, and occasionally a big ship, windbound or through stress of weather, makes use of the anchoring ground a mile and a half due north from you as you stand at the back door of the "Ship Inn" in Brenzett. A dilapidated windmill near by lifting its shattered arms from a mound no loftier than a rubbish heap, and a Martello tower squatting at the water's edge half a mile to the south of the Coastguard cottages, are familiar to the skippers of small craft. These are the official seamarks for the patch of trustworthy bottom represented on the Admiralty charts by an irregular oval of dots enclosing several figures six, with a tiny anchor engraved among them, and the legend "mud and shells" over all.
The brow of the upland overtops the square tower of the Colebrook Church. The slope is green and looped by a white road. Ascending along this road, you open a valley broad and shallow, a wide green trough of pastures and hedges merging inland into a vista of purple tints and flowing lines closing the view.
In this valley down to Brenzett and Colebrook and up to Darnford, the market town fourteen miles away, lies the practice of my friend Kennedy. He had begun life as surgeon in the Navy, and afterwards had been the companion of a famous traveler, in the days when there were continents with unexplored interiors. His papers on the fauna and flora made him known to scientific societies. And now he had come to a country practice - from choice. The penetrating power of his mind, acting like a corrosive fluid, had destroyed his ambition, I fancy. His intelligence is of a scientific order, of an investigating habit, and of that unappeasable curiosity which believes that there is a particle of a general truth in every mystery.
2
A good many years ago now, on my return from abroad, he invited me to stay with him. I came readily enough, and as he could not neglect his patients to keep me company, he took me on his rounds - thirty miles or so of an afternoon, sometimes. I waited for him on the roads; the horse reached after the leafy twigs, and, sitting in the dogcart, I could hear Kennedy's laugh through the half-open door left open of some cottage. He had a big, hearty laugh that would have fitted a man twice his size, a brisk manner, a bronzed face, and a pair of gray, profoundly attentive eyes. He had the talent of making people talk to him freely, and an inexhaustible patience in listening to their tales.
One day, as we trotted out of a large village into a shady bit of road, I saw on our left hand a low, black cottage, with diamond panes in the windows, a creeper on the end wall, a roof of shingle, and some roses climbing on the rickety trellis-work of the tiny porch. Kennedy pulled up to a walk. A woman, in full sunlight, was throwing a dripping blanket over a line stretched between two old apple-trees. And as the bobtailed, long-necked chestnut, trying to get his head, jerked the left hand, covered by a thick dogskin glove, the doctor raised his voice over the hedge: "How's your child, Amy?"
I had the time to see her dull face, red, not with a mantling blush, but as if her flat cheeks had been vigorously slapped, and to take in the squat figure, the scanty, dusty brown hair drawn into a tight knot at the back of the head. She looked quite young. With a distinct catch in her breath, her voice sounded low and timid.
"He's well, thank you."
We trotted again. "A young patient of yours," I said; and the doctor, flicking the chestnut absently, muttered, "Her husband used to be."
"She seems a dull creature," I remarked listlessly.
"Precisely," said Kennedy. "She is very passive. It's enough to look at the red hands hanging at the end of those short arms, at those slow, prominent brown eyes, to know the inertness of her mind - an inertness that one would think made it everlastingly safe from all the surprises of imagination. And yet which of us is safe? At any rate, such as you see her, she had enough imagination to fall in love. She's the daughter of one Isaac Foster, who from a small farmer has sunk into a shepherd; the beginning of his misfortunes dating from his runaway marriage with the cook of his widowed father - a well-to-do, apoplectic grazier, who passionately struck his name off his will, and had been heard to utter threats against his life. But this old affair, scandalous enough to serve as a motive for a Greek tragedy, arose from the similarity of their characters. There are other tragedies, less scandalous and of a subtler poignancy, arising from irreconcilable differences and from that fear of the Incomprehensible that hangs over all our heads - over all our heads..."
3
The tired chestnut dropped into a walk; and the rim of the sun, all red in a speckless sky, touched familiarly the smooth top of a ploughed rise near the road as I had seen it times innumerable touch the distant horizon of the sea. The uniform brownness of the harrowed field glowed with a rosy tinge, as though the powdered clods had sweated out in minute pearls of blood the toil of uncounted ploughmen. From the edge of a copse a wagon with two horses was rolling gently along the ridge. Raised above our heads upon the sky-line, it loomed up against the red sun, triumphantly big, enormous, like a chariot of giants drawn by two slow-stepping steeds of legendary proportions. And the clumsy figure of the man plodding at the head of the leading horse projected itself on the background of the Infinite with a heroic uncouthness. The end of his carter's whip quivered high up in the blue. Kennedy discoursed.
"She's the eldest of a large family. At the age of fifteen they put her out to service at the New Barns Farm. I attended Mrs. Smith, the tenant's wife, and saw that girl there for the first time. Mrs. Smith, a genteel person with a sharp nose, made her put on a black dress every afternoon. I don't know what induced me to notice her at all. There are faces that call your attention by a curious want of definiteness in their whole aspect, as, walking in a mist, you peer attentively at a vague shape which, after all, may be nothing more curious or strange than a signpost. The only peculiarity I perceived in her was a slight hesitation in her utterance, a sort of preliminary stammer which passes away with the first word. When sharply spoken to, she was apt to lose her head at once; but her heart was of the kindest. She had never been heard to express a dislike for a single human being, and she was tender to every living creature. She was devoted to Mrs. Smith, to Mr. Smith, to their dogs, cats, canaries; and as to Mrs. Smith's gray parrot, its peculiarities exercised upon her a positive fascination. Nevertheless, when that outlandish bird, attacked by the cat, shrieked for help in human accents, she ran out into the yard stopping her ears, and did not prevent the crime. For Mrs. Smith this was another evidence of her stupidity; on the other hand, her want of charm, in view of Smith's well-known frivolousness, was a great recommendation. Her short-sighted eyes would swim with pity for a poor mouse in a trap, and she had been seen once by some boys on her knees in the wet grass helping a toad in difficulties. If it's true, as some German fellow has said, that without phosphorus there is no thought, it is still more true that there is no kindness of heart without a certain amount of imagination. She had some. She had even more than is necessary to understand suffering and to be moved by pity. She fell in love under circumstances that leave no room for doubt in the matter; for you need imagination to form a notion of beauty at all, and still more to discover your ideal in an unfamiliar shape.
4
"How this aptitude came to her, what it did feed upon, is an inscrutable mystery. She was born in the village, and had never been further away from it than Colebrook or perhaps Darnford. She lived for four years with the Smiths. New Barns is an isolated farmhouse a mile away from the road, and she was content to look day after day at the same fields, hollows, rises; at the trees and the hedgerows; at the faces of the four men about the farm, always the same - day after day, month after month, year after year. She never showed a desire for conversation, and, as it seemed to me, she did not know how to smile. Sometimes of a fine Sunday afternoon she would put on her best dress, a pair of stout boots, a large gray hat trimmed with a black feather (I've seen her in that finery), seize an absurdly slender parasol, climb over two stiles, tramp over three fields and along two hundred yards of road - never further. There stood Foster's cottage. She would help her mother to give their tea to the younger children, wash up the crockery, kiss the little ones, and go back to the farm. That was all. All the rest, all the change, all the relaxation. She never seemed to wish for anything more. And then she fell in love. She fell in love silently, obstinately - perhaps helplessly. It came slowly, but when it came it worked like a powerful spell; it was love as the Ancients understood it: an irresistible and fateful impulse - a possession! Yes, it was in her to become haunted and possessed by a face, by a presence, fatally, as though she had been a pagan worshipper of form under a joyous sky - and to be awakened at last from that mysterious forgetfulness of self, from that enchantment, from that transport, by a fear resembling the unaccountable terror of a brute..."
With the sun hanging low on its western limit, the expanse of the grass-lands framed in the counter-scarps of the rising ground took on a gorgeous and somber aspect. A sense of penetrating sadness, like that inspired by a grave strain of music, disengaged itself from the silence of the fields. The men we met walked past slow, unsmiling, with downcast eyes, as if the melancholy of an over-burdened earth had weighted their feet, bowed their shoulders, borne down their glances.
5
"Yes," said the doctor to my remark, "one would think the earth is under a curse, since of all her children these that cling to her the closest are uncouth in body and as leaden of gait as if their very hearts were loaded with chains. But here on this same road you might have seen amongst these heavy men a being lithe, supple, and long-limbed, straight like a pine with something striving upwards in his appearance as though the heart within him had been buoyant. Perhaps it was only the force of the contrast, but when he was passing one of these villagers here, the soles of his feet did not seem to me to touch the dust of the road. He vaulted over the stiles, paced these slopes with a long elastic stride that made him noticeable at a great distance, and had lustrous black eyes. He was so different from the mankind around that, with his freedom of movement, his soft - a little startled - glance, his olive complexion and graceful bearing, his humanity suggested to me the nature of a woodland creature. He came from there."
The doctor pointed with his whip, and from the summit of the descent seen over the rolling tops of the trees in a park by the side of the road, appeared the level sea far below us, like the floor of an immense edifice inlaid with bands of dark ripple, with still trails of glitter, ending in a belt of glassy water at the foot of the sky. The light blur of smoke, from an invisible steamer, faded on the great clearness of the horizon like the mist of a breath on a mirror; and, inshore, the white sails of a coaster, with the appearance of disentangling themselves slowly from under the branches, floated clear of the foliage of the trees.
"Shipwrecked in the bay?" I said.
"Yes; he was a castaway. A poor emigrant from Central Europe bound to America and washed ashore here in a storm. And for him, who knew nothing of the earth, England was an undiscovered country. It was some time before he learned its name; and for all I know he might have expected to find wild beasts or wild men here, when, crawling in the dark over the sea-wall, he rolled down the other side into a dyke, where it was another miracle he didn't get drowned. But he struggled instinctively like an animal under a net, and this blind struggle threw him out into a field. He must have been, indeed, of a tougher fiber than he looked to withstand without expiring such buffetings, the violence of his exertions, and so much fear. Later on, in his broken English that resembled curiously the speech of a young child, he told me himself that he put his trust in God, believing he was no longer in this world. And truly - he would add - how was he to know? He fought his way against the rain and the gale on all fours, and crawled at last among some sheep huddled close under the lee of a hedge. They ran off in all directions, bleating in the darkness, and he welcomed the first familiar sound he heard on these shores. It must have been two in the morning then. And this is all we know of the manner of his landing, though he did not arrive unattended by any means. Only his grisly company did not begin to come ashore till much later in the day..."
6
The doctor gathered the reins, clicked his tongue; we trotted down the hill. Then turning, almost directly, a sharp corner into the High Street, we rattled over the stones and were home.
Late in the evening Kennedy, breaking a spell of moodiness that had come over him, returned to the story. Smoking his pipe, he paced the long room from end to end. A reading-lamp concentrated all its light upon the papers on his desk; and, sitting by the open window, I saw, after the windless, scorching day, the frigid splendor of a hazy sea lying motionless under the moon. Not a whisper, not a splash, not a stir of the shingle, not a footstep, not a sigh came up from the earth below - never a sign of life but the scent of climbing jasmine; and Kennedy's voice, speaking behind me, passed through the wide casement, to vanish outside in a chill and sumptuous stillness.
"... The relations of shipwrecks in the olden time tell us of much suffering. Often the castaways were only saved from drowning to die miserably from starvation on a barren coast; others suffered violent death or else slavery, passing through years of precarious existence with people to whom their strangeness was an object of suspicion, dislike or fear. We read about these things, and they are very pitiful. It is indeed hard upon a man to find himself a lost stranger, helpless, incomprehensible, and of a mysterious origin, in some obscure corner of the earth. Yet amongst all the adventurers shipwrecked in all the wild parts of the world there is not one, it seems to me, that ever had to suffer a fate so simply tragic as the man I am speaking of, the most innocent of adventurers cast out by the sea in the bight of this bay, almost within sight from this very window.
"He did not know the name of his ship. Indeed, in the course of time we discovered he did not even know that ships had names - 'like Christian people'; and when, one day, from the top of the Talfourd Hill, he beheld the sea lying open to his view, his eyes roamed afar, lost in an air of wild surprise, as though he had never seen such a sight before. And probably he had not. As far as I could make out, he had been hustled together with many others on board an emigrant-ship lying at the mouth of the Elbe, too bewildered to take note of his surroundings, too weary to see anything, too anxious to care. They were driven below into the 'tweendeck and battened down from the very start. It was a low timber dwelling - he would say - with wooden beams overhead, like the houses in his country, but you went into it down a ladder. It was very large, very cold, damp and somber, with places in the manner of wooden boxes where people had to sleep, one above another, and it kept on rocking all ways at once all the time. He crept into one of these boxes and laid down there in the clothes in which he had left his home many days before, keeping his bundle and his stick by his side. People groaned, children cried, water dripped, the lights went out, the walls of the place creaked, and everything was being shaken so that in one's little box one dared not lift one's head. He had lost touch with his only companion (a young man from the same valley, he said), and all the time a great noise of wind went on outside and heavy blows fell - boom! boom! An awful sickness overcame him, even to the point of making him neglect his prayers. Besides, one could not tell whether it was morning or evening. It seemed always to be night in that place.
7
"Before that he had been travelling a long, long time on the iron track. He looked out of the window, which had a wonderfully clear glass in it, and the trees, the houses, the fields, and the long roads seemed to fly round and round about him till his head swam. He gave me to understand that he had on his passage beheld uncounted multitudes of people - whole nations - all dressed in such clothes as the rich wear. Once he was made to get out of the carriage, and slept through a night on a bench in a house of bricks with his bundle under his head; and once for many hours he had to sit on a floor of flat stones dozing, with his knees up and with his bundle between his feet. There was a roof over him, which seemed made of glass, and was so high that the tallest mountain-pine he had ever seen would have had room to grow under it. Steam-machines rolled in at one end and out at the other. People swarmed more than you can see on a feast-day round the miraculous Holy Image in the yard of the Carmelite Convent down in the plains where, before he left his home, he drove his mother in a wooden cart - a pious old woman who wanted to offer prayers and make a vow for his safety. He could not give me an idea of how large and lofty and full of noise and smoke and gloom, and clang of iron, the place was, but some one had told him it was called Berlin. Then they rang a bell, and another steam-machine came in, and again he was taken on and on through a land that wearied his eyes by its flatness without a single bit of a hill to be seen anywhere. One more night he spent shut up in a building like a good stable with a litter of straw on the floor, guarding his bundle amongst a lot of men, of whom not one could understand a single word he said. In the morning they were all led down to the stony shores of an extremely broad muddy river, flowing not between hills but between houses that seemed immense. There was a steammachine that went on the water, and they all stood upon it packed tight, only now there were with them many women and children who made much noise. A cold rain fell, the wind blew in his face; he was wet through, and his teeth chattered. He and the young man from the same valley took each other by the hand.
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Post by Darkduskk on Jun 10, 2006 4:11:16 GMT -5
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"They thought they were being taken to America straight away, but suddenly the steam-machine bumped against the side of a thing like a house on the water. The walls were smooth and black, and there uprose, growing from the roof as it were, bare trees in the shape of crosses, extremely high. That's how it appeared to him then, for he had never seen a ship before. This was the ship that was going to swim all the way to America. Voices shouted, everything swayed; there was a ladder dipping up and down. He went up on his hands and knees in mortal fear of falling into the water below, which made a great splashing. He got separated from his companion, and when he descended into the bottom of that ship his heart seemed to melt suddenly within him.
"It was then also, as he told me, that he lost contact for good and all with one of those three men who the summer before had been going about through all the little towns in the foothills of his country. They would arrive on market days driving in a peasant's cart, and would set up an office in an inn or some other Jew's house. There were three of them, of whom one with a long beard looked venerable; and they had red cloth collars round their necks and gold lace on their sleeves like Government officials. They sat proudly behind a long table; and in the next room, so that the common people shouldn't hear, they kept a cunning telegraph machine, through which they could talk to the Emperor of America. The fathers hung about the door, but the young men of the mountains would crowd up to the table asking many questions, for there was work to be got all the year round at three dollars a day in America, and no military service to do.
"But the American Kaiser would not take everybody. Oh, no! He himself had a great difficulty in getting accepted, and the venerable man in uniform had to go out of the room several times to work the telegraph on his behalf. The American Kaiser engaged him at last at three dollars, he being young and strong. However, many able young men backed out, afraid of the great distance; besides, those only who had some money could be taken. There were some who sold their huts and their land because it cost a lot of money to get to America; but then, once there, you had three dollars a day, and if you were clever you could find places where true gold could be picked up on the ground. His father's house was getting over full. Two of his brothers were married and had children. He promised to send money home from America by post twice a year. His father sold an old cow, a pair of piebald mountain ponies of his own raising, and a cleared plot of fair pasture land on the sunny slope of a pine-clad pass to a Jew inn-keeper in order to pay the people of the ship that took men to America to get rich in a short time.
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"He must have been a real adventurer at heart, for how many of the greatest enterprises in the conquest of the earth had for their beginning just such a bargaining away of the paternal cow for the mirage or true gold far away! I have been telling you more or less in my own words what I learned fragmentarily in the course of two or three years, during which I seldom missed an opportunity of a friendly chat with him. He told me this story of his adventure with many flashes of white teeth and lively glances of black eyes, at first in a sort of anxious baby-talk, then, as he acquired the language, with great fluency, but always with that singing, soft, and at the same time vibrating intonation that instilled a strangely penetrating power into the sound of the most familiar English words, as if they had been the words of an unearthly language. And he always would come to an end, with many emphatic shakes of his head, upon that awful sensation of his heart melting within him directly he set foot on board that ship. Afterwards there seemed to come for him a period of blank ignorance, at any rate as to facts. No doubt he must have been abominably sea-sick and abominably unhappy - this soft and passionate adventurer, taken thus out of his knowledge, and feeling bitterly as he lay in his emigrant bunk his utter loneliness; for his was a highly sensitive nature. The next thing we know of him for certain is that he had been hiding in Hammond's pig-pound by the side of the road to Norton six miles, as the crow flies, from the sea. Of these experiences he was unwilling to speak: they seemed to have seared into his soul a somber sort of wonder and indignation. Through the rumors of the country-side, which lasted for a good many days after his arrival, we know that the fishermen of West Colebrook had been disturbed and startled by heavy knocks against the walls of weatherboard cottages, and by a voice crying piercingly strange words in the night. Several of them turned out even, but, no doubt, he had fled in sudden alarm at their rough angry tones hailing each other in the darkness. A sort of frenzy must have helped him up the steep Norton hill. It was he, no doubt, who early the following morning had been seen lying (in a swoon, I should say) on the roadside grass by the Brenzett carrier, who actually got down to have a nearer look, but drew back, intimidated by the perfect immobility, and by something queer in the aspect of that tramp, sleeping so still under the showers. As the day advanced, some children came dashing into school at Norton in such a fright that the schoolmistress went out and spoke indignantly to a 'horrid-looking man' on the road. He edged away, hanging his head, for a few steps, and then suddenly ran off with extraordinary fleetness. The driver of Mr. Bradley's milk-cart made no secret of it that he had lashed with his whip at a hairy sort of gypsy fellow who, jumping up at a turn of the road by the Vents, made a snatch at the pony's bridle. And he caught him a good one too, right over the face, he said, that made him drop down in the mud a jolly sight quicker than he had jumped up; but it was a good half-a-mile before he could stop the pony. Maybe that in his desperate endeavors to get help, and in his need to get in touch with some one, the poor devil had tried to stop the cart. Also three boys confessed afterwards to throwing stones at a funny tramp, knocking about all wet and muddy, and, it seemed, very drunk, in the narrow deep lane by the limekilns. All this was the talk of three villages for days; but we have Mrs. Finn's (the wife of Smith's wagoner) unimpeachable testimony that she saw him get over the low wall of Hammond's pig-pound and lurch straight at her, babbling aloud in a voice that was enough to make one die of fright. Having the baby with her in a perambulator, Mrs. Finn called out to him to go away, and as he persisted in coming nearer, she hit him courageously with her umbrella over the head and, without once looking back, ran like the wind with the perambulator as far as the first house in the village. She stopped then, out of breath, and spoke to old Lewis, hammering there at a heap of stones; and the old chap, taking off his immense black wire goggles, got up on his shaky legs to look where she pointed. Together they followed with their eyes the figure of the man running over a field; they saw him fall down, pick himself up, and run on again, staggering and waving his long arms above his head, in the direction of the New Barns Farm. From that moment he is plainly in the toils of his obscure and touching destiny. There is no doubt after this of what happened to him. All is certain now: Mrs. Smith's intense terror; Amy Foster's stolid conviction held against the other's nervous attack, that the man 'meant no harm'; Smith's exasperation (on his return from Darnford Market) at finding the dog barking himself into a fit, the back-door locked, his wife in hysterics; and all for an unfortunate dirty tramp, supposed to be even then lurking in his stackyard. Was he? He would teach him to frighten women.
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"Smith is notoriously hot-tempered, but the sight of some nondescript and miry creature sitting cross-legged amongst a lot of loose straw, and swinging itself to and fro like a bear in a cage, made him pause. Then this tramp stood up silently before him, one mass of mud and filth from head to foot. Smith, alone amongst his stacks with this apparition, in the stormy twilight ringing with the infuriated barking of the dog, felt the dread of an inexplicable strangeness. But when that being, parting with his black hands the long matted locks that hung before his face, as you part the two halves of a curtain, looked out at him with glistening, wild, black-and-white eyes, the weirdness of this silent encounter fairly staggered him. He had admitted since (for the story has been a legitimate subject of conversation about here for years) that he made more than one step backwards. Then a sudden burst of rapid, senseless speech persuaded him at once that he had to do with an escaped lunatic. In fact, that impression never wore off completely. Smith has not in his heart given up his secret conviction of the man's essential insanity to this very day.
"As the creature approached him, jabbering in a most discomposing manner, Smith (unaware that he was being addressed as 'gracious lord,' and adjured in God's name to afford food and shelter) kept on speaking firmly but gently to it, and retreating all the time into the other yard. At last, watching his chance, by a sudden charge he bundled him headlong into the wood-lodge, and instantly shot the bolt. Thereupon he wiped his brow, though the day was cold. He had done his duty to the community by shutting up a wandering and probably dangerous maniac. Smith isn't a hard man at all, but he had room in his brain only for that one idea of lunacy. He was not imaginative enough to ask himself whether the man might not be perishing with cold and hunger. Meantime, at first, the maniac made a great deal of noise in the lodge. Mrs. Smith was screaming upstairs, where she had locked herself in her bedroom; but Amy Foster sobbed piteously at the kitchen door, wringing her hands and muttering, 'Don't! don't!' I daresay Smith had a rough time of it that evening with one noise and another, and this insane, disturbing voice crying obstinately through the door only added to his irritation. He couldn't possibly have connected this troublesome lunatic with the sinking of a ship in Eastbay, of which there had been a rumor in the Darnford market-place. And I daresay the man inside had been very near to insanity on that night. Before his excitement collapsed and he became unconscious he was throwing himself violently about in the dark, rolling on some dirty sacks, and biting his fists with rage, cold, hunger, amazement, and despair.
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"He was a mountaineer of the eastern range of the Carpathians, and the vessel sunk the night before in Eastbay was the Hamburg emigrant-ship Herzogin Sophia-Dorothea, of appalling memory.
"A few months later we could read in the papers the accounts of the bogus 'Emigration Agencies' among the Sclavonian peasantry in the more remote provinces of Austria. The object of these scoundrels was to get hold of the poor ignorant people's homesteads, and they were in league with the local usurers. They exported their victims through Hamburg mostly. As to the ship, I had watched her out of this very window, reaching close - hauled under short canvas into the bay on a dark, threatening afternoon. She came to an anchor, correctly by the chart, off the Brenzett Coastguard station. I remember before the night fell looking out again at the outlines of her spars and rigging that stood out dark and pointed on a background of ragged, slaty clouds like another and a slighter spire to the left of the Brenzett church-tower. In the evening the wind rose. At midnight I could hear in my bed the terrific gusts and the sounds of a driving deluge.
"About that time the Coastguardmen thought they saw the lights of a steamer over the anchoring-ground. In a moment they vanished; but it is clear that another vessel of some sort had tried for shelter in the bay on that awful, blind night, had rammed the German ship amidships (a breach - as one of the divers told me afterwards - 'that you could sail a Thames barge through'), and then had gone out either scathless or damaged, who shall say; but had gone out, unknown, unseen, and fatal, to perish mysteriously at sea. Of her nothing ever came to light, and yet the hue and cry that was raised all over the world would have found her out if she had been in existence anywhere on the face of the waters.
"A completeness without a clue, and a stealthy silence as of a neatly executed crime, characterize this murderous disaster, which, as you may remember, had its gruesome celebrity. The wind would have prevented the loudest outcries from reaching the shore; there had been evidently no time for signals of distress. It was death without any sort of fuss. The Hamburg ship, filling all at once, capsized as she sank, and at daylight there was not even the end of a spar to be seen above water. She was missed, of course, and at first the Coastguardmen surmised that she had either dragged her anchor or parted her cable some time during the night, and had been blown out to sea. Then, after the tide turned, the wreck must have shifted a little and released some of the bodies, because a child - a little fair-haired child in a red frock - came ashore abreast of the Martello tower. By the afternoon you could see along three miles of beach dark figures with bare legs dashing in and out of the tumbling foam, and rough-looking men, women with hard faces, children, mostly fair-haired, were being carried, stiff and dripping, on stretchers, on wattles, on ladders, in a long procession past the door of the 'Ship Inn,' to be laid out in a row under the north wall of the Brenzett Church.
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Post by Darkduskk on Jun 10, 2006 4:11:37 GMT -5
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"Officially, the body of the little girl in the red frock is the first thing that came ashore from that ship. But I have patients amongst the seafaring population of West Colebrook, and, unofficially, I am informed that very early that morning two brothers, who went down to look after their cobble hauled up on the beach, found, a good way from Brenzett, an ordinary ship's hencoop lying high and dry on the shore, with eleven drowned ducks inside. Their families ate the birds, and the hencoop was split into firewood with a hatchet. It is possible that a man (supposing he happened to be on deck at the time of the accident) might have floated ashore on that hencoop. He might. I admit it is improbable, but there was the man - and for days, nay, for weeks - it didn't enter our heads that we had amongst us the only living soul that had escaped from that disaster. The man himself, even when he learned to speak intelligibly, could tell us very little. He remembered he had felt better (after the ship had anchored, I suppose), and that the darkness, the wind, and the rain took his breath away. This looks as if he had been on deck some time during that night. But we mustn't forget he had been taken out of his knowledge, that he had been sea-sick and battened down below for four days, that he had no general notion of a ship or of the sea, and therefore could have no definite idea of what was happening to him. The rain, the wind, the darkness he knew; he understood the bleating of the sheep, and he remembered the pain of his wretchedness and misery, his heartbroken astonishment that it was neither seen nor understood, his dismay at finding all the men angry and all the women fierce. He had approached them as a beggar, it is true, he said; but in his country, even if they gave nothing, they spoke gently to beggars. The children in his country were not taught to throw stones at those who asked for compassion. Smith's strategy overcame him completely. The wood-lodge presented the horrible aspect of a dungeon. What would be done to him next?... No wonder that Amy Foster appeared to his eyes with the aureole of an angel of light. The girl had not been able to sleep for thinking of the poor man, and in the morning, before the Smiths were up, she slipped out across the back yard. Holding the door of the wood-lodge ajar, she looked in and extended to him half a loaf of white bread - 'such bread as the rich eat in my country,' he used to say.
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"At this he got up slowly from amongst all sorts of rubbish, stiff, hungry, trembling, miserable, and doubtful. 'Can you eat this?' she asked in her soft and timid voice. He must have taken her for a 'gracious lady.' He devoured ferociously, and tears were falling on the crust. Suddenly he dropped the bread, seized her wrist, and imprinted a kiss on her hand. She was not frightened. Through his forlorn condition she had observed that he was good-looking. She shut the door and walked back slowly to the kitchen. Much later on, she told Mrs. Smith, who shuddered at the bare idea of being touched by that creature.
"Through this act of impulsive pity he was brought back again within the pale of human relations with his new surroundings. He never forgot it - never.
"That very same morning old Mr. Swaffer (Smith's nearest neighbor) came over to give his advice, and ended by carrying him off. He stood, unsteady on his legs, meek, and caked over in half-dried mud, while the two men talked around him in an incomprehensible tongue. Mrs. Smith had refused to come downstairs till the madman was off the premises; Amy Foster, far from within the dark kitchen, watched through the open back door; and he obeyed the signs that were made to him to the best of his ability. But Smith was full of mistrust. 'Mind, sir! It may be all his cunning,' he cried repeatedly in a tone of warning. When Mr. Swaffer started the mare, the deplorable being sitting humbly by his side, through weakness, nearly fell out over the back of the high two-wheeled cart. Swaffer took him straight home. And it is then that I come upon the scene.
"I was called in by the simple process of the old man beckoning to me with his forefinger over the gate of his house as I happened to be driving past. I got down, of course.
"'I've got something here,' he mumbled, leading the way to an outhouse at a little distance from his other farm-buildings.
"It was there that I saw him first, in a long low room taken upon the space of that sort of coach-house. It was bare and whitewashed, with a small square aperture glazed with one cracked, dusty pane at its further end. He was lying on his back upon a straw pallet; they had given him a couple of horse-blankets, and he seemed to have spent the remainder of his strength in the exertion of cleaning himself. He was almost speechless; his quick breathing under the blankets pulled up to his chin, his glittering, restless black eyes reminded me of a wild bird caught in a snare. While I was examining him, old Swaffer stood silently by the door, passing the tips of his fingers along his shaven upper lip. I gave some directions, promised to send a bottle of medicine, and naturally made some inquiries.
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"'Smith caught him in the stackyard at New Barns,' said the old chap in his deliberate, unmoved manner, and as if the other had been indeed a sort of wild animal. 'That's how I came by him. Quite a curiosity, isn't he? Now tell me, doctor - you've been all over the world - don't you think that's a bit of a Hindoo we've got hold of here.'
"I was greatly surprised. His long black hair scattered over the straw bolster contrasted with the olive pallor of his face. It occurred to me he might be a Basque. It didn't necessarily follow that he should understand Spanish; but I tried him with the few words I know, and also with some French. The whispered sounds I caught by bending my ear to his lips puzzled me utterly. That afternoon the young ladies from the Rectory (one of them read Goethe with a dictionary, and the other had struggled with Dante for years), coming to see Miss Swaffer, tried their German and Italian on him from the doorway. They retreated, just the least bit scared by the flood of passionate speech which, turning on his pallet, he let out at them. They admitted that the sound was pleasant, soft, musical - but, in conjunction with his looks perhaps, it was startling - so excitable, so utterly unlike anything one had ever heard. The village boys climbed up the bank to have a peep through the little square aperture. Everybody was wondering what Mr. Swaffer would do with him.
"He simply kept him.
"Swaffer would be called eccentric were he not so much respected. They will tell you that Mr. Swaffer sits up as late as ten o'clock at night to read books, and they will tell you also that he can write a check for two hundred pounds without thinking twice about it. He himself would tell you that the Swaffers had owned land between this and Darnford for these three hundred years. He must be eighty-five to-day, but he does not look a bit older than when I first came here. He is a great breeder of sheep, and deals extensively in cattle. He attends market days for miles around in every sort of weather, and drives sitting bowed low over the reins, his lank gray hair curling over the collar of his warm coat, and with a green plaid rug round his legs. The calmness of advanced age gives a solemnity to his manner. He is clean-shaved; his lips are thin and sensitive; something rigid and monarchal in the set of his features lends a certain elevation to the character of his face. He has been known to drive miles in the rain to see a new kind of rose in somebody's garden, or a monstrous cabbage grown by a cottager. He loves to hear tell of or to be shown something that he calls 'outlandish.' Perhaps it was just that outlandishness of the man which influenced old Swaffer. Perhaps it was only an inexplicable caprice. All I know is that at the end of three weeks I caught sight of Smith's lunatic digging in Swaffer's kitchen garden. They had found out he could use a spade. He dug barefooted.
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"His black hair flowed over his shoulders. I suppose it was Swaffer who had given him the striped old cotton shirt; but he wore still the national brown cloth trousers (in which he had been washed ashore) fitting to the leg almost like tights; was belted with a broad leathern belt studded with little brass discs; and had never yet ventured into the village. The land he looked upon seemed to him kept neatly, like the grounds round a landowner's house; the size of the cart-horses struck him with astonishment; the roads resembled garden walks, and the aspect of the people, especially on Sundays, spoke of opulence. He wondered what made them so hardhearted and their children so bold. He got his food at the back door, carried it in both hands carefully to his outhouse, and, sitting alone on his pallet, would make the sign of the cross before he began. Beside the same pallet, kneeling in the early darkness of the short days, he recited aloud the Lord's Prayer before he slept. Whenever he saw old Swaffer he would bow with veneration from the waist, and stand erect while the old man, with his fingers over his upper lip, surveyed him silently. He bowed also to Miss Swaffer, who kept house frugally for her father - a broad-shouldered, big-boned woman of forty-five, with the pocket of her dress full of keys, and a gray, steady eye. She was Church - as people said (while her father was one of the trustees of the Baptist Chapel) - and wore a little steel cross at her waist. She dressed severely in black, in memory of one of the innumerable Bradleys of the neighborhood, to whom she had been engaged some twenty-five years ago - a young farmer who broke his neck out hunting on the eve of the wedding day. She had the unmoved countenance of the deaf, spoke very seldom, and her lips, thin like her father's, astonished one sometimes by a mysteriously ironic curl.
"These were the people to whom he owed allegiance, and an overwhelming loneliness seemed to fall from the leaden sky of that winter without sunshine. All the faces were sad. He could talk to no one, and had no hope of ever understanding anybody. It was as if these had been the faces of people from the other world-dead people - he used to tell me years afterwards. Upon my word, I wonder he did not go mad. He didn't know where he was. Somewhere very far from his mountains - somewhere over the water. Was this America, he wondered?
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"If it hadn't been for the steel cross at Miss Swaffer's belt he would not, he confessed, have known whether he was in a Christian country at all. He used to cast stealthy glances at it, and feel comforted. There was nothing here the same as in his country! The earth and the water were different; there were no images of the Redeemer by the roadside. The very grass was different, and the trees. All the trees but the three old Norway pines on the bit of lawn before Swaffer's house, and these reminded him of his country. He had been detected once, after dusk, with his forehead against the trunk of one of them, sobbing, and talking to himself. They had been like brothers to him at that time, he affirmed. Everything else was strange. Conceive you the kind of an existence overshadowed, oppressed, by the everyday material appearances, as if by the visions of a nightmare. At night, when he could not sleep, he kept on thinking of the girl who gave him the first piece of bread he had eaten in this foreign land. She had been neither fierce nor angry, nor frightened. Her face he remembered as the only comprehensible face amongst all these faces that were as closed, as mysterious, and as mute as the faces of the dead who are possessed of a knowledge beyond the comprehension of the living. I wonder whether the memory of her compassion prevented him from cutting his throat. But there! I suppose I am an old sentimentalist, and forget the instinctive love of life which it takes all the strength of an uncommon despair to overcome.
"He did the work which was given him with an intelligence which surprised old Swaffer. By-and-by it was discovered that he could help at the ploughing, could milk the cows, feed the bullocks in the cattle-yard, and was of some use with the sheep. He began to pick up words, too, very fast; and suddenly, one fine morning in spring, he rescued from an untimely death a grand-child of old Swaffer.
"Swaffer's younger daughter is married to Willcox, a solicitor and the Town Clerk of Colebrook. Regularly twice a year they come to stay with the old man for a few days. Their only child, a little girl not three years old at the time, ran out of the house alone in her little white pinafore, and, toddling across the grass of a terraced garden, pitched herself over a low wall head first into the horsepond in the yard below.
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Post by Darkduskk on Jun 10, 2006 4:12:21 GMT -5
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"Our man was out with the wagoner and the plough in the field nearest to the house, and as he was leading the team round to begin a fresh furrow, he saw, through the gap of the gate, what for anybody else would have been a mere flutter of something white. But he had straight-glancing, quick, far-reaching eyes, that only seemed to flinch and lose their amazing power before the immensity of the sea. He was barefooted, and looking as outlandish as the heart of Swaffer could desire. Leaving the horses on the turn, to the inexpressible disgust of the wagoner he bounded off, going over the ploughed ground in long leaps, and suddenly appeared before the mother, thrust the child into her arms, and strode away.
"The pond was not very deep; but still, if he had not had such good eyes, the child would have perished - miserably suffocated in the foot or so of sticky mud at the bottom. Old Swaffer walked out slowly into the field, waited till the plough came over to his side, had a good look at him, and without saying a word went back to the house. But from that time they laid out his meals on the kitchen table; and at first, Miss Swaffer, all in black and with an inscrutable face, would come and stand in the doorway of the living-room to see him make a big sign of the cross before he fell to. I believe that from that day, too, Swaffer began to pay him regular wages.
"I can't follow step by step his development. He cut his hair short, was seen in the village and along the road going to and fro to his work like any other man. Children ceased to shout after him. He became aware of social differences, but remained for a long time surprised at the bare poverty of the churches among so much wealth. He couldn't understand either why they were kept shut up on week days. There was nothing to steal in them. Was it to keep people from praying too often? The rectory took much notice of him about that time, and I believe the young ladies attempted to prepare the ground for his conversion. They could not, however, break him of his habit of crossing himself, but he went so far as to take off the string with a couple of brass medals the size of a sixpence, a tiny metal cross, and a square sort of scapulary which he wore round his neck. He hung them on the wall by the side of his bed, and he was still to be heard every evening reciting the Lord's Prayer, in incomprehensible words and in a slow, fervent tone, as he had heard his old father do at the head of all the kneeling family, big and little, on every evening of his life. And though he wore corduroys at work, and a slop-made pepper-and-salt suit on Sundays, strangers would turn round to look after him on the road. His foreignness had a peculiar and indelible stamp. At last people became used to see him. But they never became used to him. His rapid, skimming walk; his swarthy complexion; his hat cocked on the left ear; his habit, on warm evenings, of wearing his coat over one shoulder, like a hussar's dolman; his manner of leaping over the stiles, not as a feat of agility, but in the ordinary course of progression - all these peculiarities were, as one may say, so many causes of scorn and offence to the inhabitants of the village. They wouldn't in their dinner hour lie flat on their backs on the grass to stare at the sky. Neither did they go about the fields screaming dismal tunes. Many times have I heard his high-pitched voice from behind the ridge of some sloping sheep-walk, a voice light and soaring, like a lark's, but with a melancholy human note, over our fields that hear only the song of birds. And I should be startled myself. Ah! He was different: innocent of heart, and full of good will, which nobody wanted, this castaway, that, like a man transplanted into another planet, was separated by an immense space from his past and by an immense ignorance from his future. His quick, fervent utterance positively shocked everybody. 'An excitable devil,' they called him. One evening, in the tap-room of the Coach and Horses (having drunk some whisky), he upset them all by singing a love song of his country. They hooted him down, and he was pained; but Preble, the lame wheelwright, and Vincent, the fat blacksmith, and the other notables too, wanted to drink their evening beer in peace. On another occasion he tried to show them how to dance. The dust rose in clouds from the sanded floor; he leaped straight up amongst the deal tables, struck his heels together, squatted on one heel in front of old Preble, shooting out the other leg, uttered wild and exulting cries, jumped up to whirl on one foot, snapping his fingers above his head - and a strange carter who was having a drink in there began to swear, and cleared out with his half-pint in his hand into the bar. But when suddenly he sprang upon a table and continued to dance among the glasses, the landlord interfered. He didn't want any 'acrobat tricks in the tap-room.' They laid their hands on him. Having had a glass or two, Mr. Swaffer's foreigner tried to expostulate: was ejected forcibly: got a black eye.
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"I believe he felt the hostility of his human surroundings. But he was tough - tough in spirit, too, as well as in body. Only the memory of the sea frightened him, with that vague terror that is left by a bad dream. His home was far away; and he did not want now to go to America. I had often explained to him that there is no place on earth where true gold can be found lying ready and to be got for the trouble of the picking up. How then, he asked, could he ever return home with empty hands when there had been sold a cow, two ponies, and a bit of land to pay for his going? His eyes would fill with tears, and, averting them from the immense shimmer of the sea, he would throw himself face down on the grass. But sometimes, cocking his hat with a little conquering air, he would defy my wisdom. He had found his bit of true gold. That was Amy Foster's heart; which was 'a golden heart, and soft to people's misery,' he would say in the accents of overwhelming conviction.
"He was called Yanko. He had explained that this meant little John; but as he would also repeat very often that he was a mountaineer (some word sounding in the dialect of his country like Goorall) he got it for his surname. And this is the only trace of him that the succeeding ages may find in the marriage register of the parish. There it stands - Yanko Goorall - in the rector's handwriting. The crooked cross made by the castaway, a cross whose tracing no doubt seemed to him the most solemn part of the whole ceremony, is all that remains now to perpetuate the memory of his name.
"His courtship had lasted some time - ever since he got his precarious footing in the community. It began by his buying for Amy Foster a green satin ribbon in Darnford. This was what you did in his country. You bought a ribbon at a Jew's stall on a fair-day. I don't suppose the girl knew what to do with it, but he seemed to think that his honorable intentions could not be mistaken.
"It was only when he declared his purpose to get married that I fully understood how, for a hundred futile and inappreciable reasons, how - shall I say odious? - he was to all the countryside. Every old woman in the village was up in arms. Smith, coming upon him near the farm, promised to break his head for him if he found him about again. But he twisted his little black moustache with such a bellicose air and rolled such big, black fierce eyes at Smith that this promise came to nothing. Smith, however, told the girl that she must be mad to take up with a man who was surely wrong in his head. All the same, when she heard him in the gloaming whistle from beyond the orchard a couple of bars of a weird and mournful tune, she would drop whatever she had in her hand - she would leave Mrs. Smith in the middle of a sentence - and she would run out to his call. Mrs. Smith called her a shameless hussy. She answered nothing. She said nothing at all to anybody, and went on her way as if she had been deaf. She and I alone all in the land, I fancy, could see his very real beauty. He was very good-looking, and most graceful in his bearing, with that something wild as of a woodland creature in his aspect. Her mother moaned over her dismally whenever the girl came to see her on her day out. The father was surly, but pretended not to know; and Mrs. Finn once told her plainly that 'this man, my dear, will do you some harm some day yet.' And so it went on. They could be seen on the roads, she tramping stolidly in her finery - gray dress, black feather, stout boots, prominent white cotton gloves that caught your eye a hundred yards away; and he, his coat slung picturesquely over one shoulder, pacing by her side, gallant of bearing and casting tender glances upon the girl with the golden heart. I wonder whether he saw how plain she was. Perhaps among types so different from what he had ever seen, he had not the power to judge; or perhaps he was seduced by the divine quality of her pity.
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"Yanko was in great trouble meantime. In his country you get an old man for an ambassador in marriage affairs. He did not know how to proceed. However, one day in the midst of sheep in a field (he was now Swaffer's under-shepherd with Foster) he took off his hat to the father and declared himself humbly. 'I daresay she's fool enough to marry you,' was all Foster said. 'And then,' he used to relate, 'he puts his hat on his head, looks black at me as if he wanted to cut my throat, whistles the dog, and off he goes, leaving me to do the work.' The Fosters, of course, didn't like to lose the wages the girl earned: Amy used to give all her money to her mother. But there was in Foster a very genuine aversion to that match. He contended that the fellow was very good with sheep, but was not fit for any girl to marry. For one thing, he used to go along the hedges muttering to himself like a dam' fool; and then, these foreigners behave very queerly to women sometimes. And perhaps he would want to carry her off somewhere - or run off himself. It was not safe. He preached it to his daughter that the fellow might ill-use her in some way. She made no answer. It was, they said in the village, as if the man had done something to her. People discussed the matter. It was quite an excitement, and the two went on 'walking out' together in the face of opposition. Then something unexpected happened.
"I don't know whether old Swaffer ever understood how much he was regarded in the light of a father by his foreign retainer. Anyway the relation was curiously feudal. So when Yanko asked formally for an interview - 'and the Miss too' (he called the severe, deaf Miss Swaffer simply Miss) - it was to obtain their permission to marry. Swaffer heard him unmoved, dismissed him by a nod, and then shouted the intelligence into Miss Swaffer's best ear. She showed no surprise, and only remarked grimly, in a veiled blank voice, 'He certainly won't get any other girl to marry him.'
"It is Miss Swaffer who has all the credit of the munificence: but in a very few days it came out that Mr. Swaffer had presented Yanko with a cottage (the cottage you've seen this morning) and something like an acre of ground - had made it over to him in absolute property. Willcox expedited the deed, and I remember him telling me he had a great pleasure in making it ready. It recited: 'In consideration of saving the life of my beloved grandchild, Bertha Willcox.'
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"Of course, after that no power on earth could prevent them from getting married.
"Her infatuation endured. People saw her going out to meet him in the evening. She stared with unblinking, fascinated eyes up the road where he was expected to appear, walking freely, with a swing from the hip, and humming one of the lovetunes of his country. When the boy was born, he got elevated at the 'Coach and Horses,' essayed again a song and a dance, and was again ejected. People expressed their commiseration for a woman married to that Jack-in-the-box. He didn't care. There was a man now (he told me boastfully) to whom he could sing and talk in the language of his country, and show how to dance by-and-by.
"But I don't know. To me he appeared to have grown less springy of step, heavier in body, less keen of eye. Imagination, no doubt; but it seems to me now as if the net of fate had been drawn closer round him already.
"One day I met him on the footpath over the Talfourd Hill. He told me that 'women were funny.' I had heard already of domestic differences. People were saying that Amy Foster was beginning to find out what sort of man she had married. He looked upon the sea with indifferent, unseeing eyes. His wife had snatched the child out of his arms one day as he sat on the doorstep crooning to it a song such as the mothers sing to babies in his mountains. She seemed to think he was doing it some harm. Women are funny. And she had objected to him praying aloud in the evening. Why? He expected the boy to repeat the prayer aloud after him by-and-by, as he used to do after his old father when he was a child - in his own country. And I discovered he longed for their boy to grow up so that he could have a man to talk with in that language that to our ears sounded so disturbing, so passionate, and so bizarre. Why his wife should dislike the idea he couldn't tell. But that would pass, he said. And tilting his head knowingly, he tapped his breastbone to indicate that she had a good heart: not hard, not fierce, open to compassion, charitable to the poor!
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"I walked away thoughtfully; I wondered whether his difference, his strangeness, were not penetrating with repulsion that dull nature they had begun by irresistibly attracting. I wondered..."
The Doctor came to the window and looked out at the frigid splendor of the sea, immense in the haze, as if enclosing all the earth with all the hearts lost among the passions of love and fear.
"Physiologically, now," he said, turning away abruptly, "it was possible. It was possible."
He remained silent. Then went on--
"At all events, the next time I saw him he was ill - lung trouble. He was tough, but I daresay he was not acclimatized as well as I had supposed. It was a bad winter; and, of course, these mountaineers do get fits of home sickness; and a state of depression would make him vulnerable. He was lying half dressed on a couch downstairs.
"A table covered with a dark oilcloth took up all the middle of the little room. There was a wicker cradle on the floor, a kettle spouting steam on the hob, and some child's linen lay drying on the fender. The room was warm, but the door opens right into the garden, as you noticed perhaps.
"He was very feverish, and kept on muttering to himself. She sat on a chair and looked at him fixedly across the table with her brown, blurred eyes. 'Why don't you have him upstairs?' I asked. With a start and a confused stammer she said, 'Oh! ah! I couldn't sit with him upstairs, Sir.'
"I gave her certain directions; and going outside, I said again that he ought to be in bed upstairs. She wrung her hands. 'I couldn't. I couldn't. He keeps on saying something - I don't know what.' With the memory of all the talk against the man that had been dinned into her ears, I looked at her narrowly. I looked into her short-sighted eyes, at her dumb eyes that once in her life had seen an enticing shape, but seemed, staring at me, to see nothing at all now. But I saw she was uneasy.
"'What's the matter with him?' she asked in a sort of vacant trepidation. 'He doesn't look very ill. I never did see anybody look like this before...'
"'Do you think,' I asked indignantly, 'he is shamming?'
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"'I can't help it, sir,' she said stolidly. And suddenly she clapped her hands and looked right and left. 'And there's the baby. I am so frightened. He wanted me just now to give him the baby. I can't understand what he says to it.'
"'Can't you ask a neighbor to come in tonight?' I asked.
"'Please, sir, nobody seems to care to come,' she muttered, dully resigned all at once.
"I impressed upon her the necessity of the greatest care, and then had to go. There was a good deal of sickness that winter. 'Oh, I hope he won't talk!' she exclaimed softly just as I was going away.
"I don't know how it is I did not see - but I didn't. And yet, turning in my trap, I saw her lingering before the door, very still, and as if meditating a flight up the miry road.
"Towards the night his fever increased.
"He tossed, moaned, and now and then muttered a complaint. And she sat with the table between her and the couch, watching every movement and every sound, with the terror, the unreasonable terror, of that man she could not understand creeping over her. She had drawn the wicker cradle close to her feet. There was nothing in her now but the maternal instinct and that unaccountable fear.
"Suddenly coming to himself, parched, he demanded a drink of water. She did not move. She had not understood, though he may have thought he was speaking in English. He waited, looking at her, burning with fever, amazed at her silence and immobility, and then he shouted impatiently, 'Water! Give me water!'
"She jumped to her feet, snatched up the child, and stood still. He spoke to her, and his passionate remonstrances only increased her fear of that strange man. I believe he spoke to her for a long time, entreating, wondering, pleading, ordering, I suppose. She says she bore it as long as she could. And then a gust of rage came over him.
"He sat up and called out terribly one word - some word. Then he got up as though he hadn't been ill at all, she says. And as in fevered dismay, indignation, and wonder he tried to get to her round the table, she simply opened the door and ran out with the child in her arms. She heard him call twice after her down the road in a terrible voice - and fled... Ah! but you should have seen stirring behind the dull, blurred glance of these eyes the specter of the fear which had hunted her on that night three miles and a half to the door of Foster's cottage! I did the next day.
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"And it was I who found him lying face down and his body in a puddle, just outside the little wicket-gate.
"I had been called out that night to an urgent case in the village, and on my way home at daybreak passed by the cottage. The door stood open. My man helped me to carry him in. We laid him on the couch. The lamp smoked, the fire was out, the chill of the stormy night oozed from the cheerless yellow paper on the wall. 'Amy!' I called aloud, and my voice seemed to lose itself in the emptiness of this tiny house as if I had cried in a desert. He opened his eyes. 'Gone!' he said distinctly. 'I had only asked for water - only for a little water...'
"He was muddy. I covered him up and stood waiting in silence, catching a painfully gasped word now and then. They were no longer in his own language. The fever had left him, taking with it the heat of life. And with his panting breast and lustrous eyes he reminded me again of a wild creature under the net; of a bird caught in a snare. She had left him. She had left him - sick - helpless - thirsty. The spear of the hunter had entered his very soul. 'Why?' he cried in the penetrating and indignant voice of a man calling to a responsible Maker. A gust of wind and a swish of rain answered.
"And as I turned away to shut the door he pronounced the word 'Merciful!' and expired.
"Eventually I certified heart-failure as the immediate cause of death. His heart must have indeed failed him, or else he might have stood this night of storm and exposure, too. I closed his eyes and drove away. Not very far from the cottage I met Foster walking sturdily between the dripping hedges with his collie at his heels.
"'Do you know where your daughter is?' I asked.
"'Don't I!' he cried. 'I am going to talk to him a bit. Frightening a poor woman like this.'
"'He won't frighten her any more,' I said. 'He is dead.'
"He struck with his stick at the mud.
"'And there's the child.'
"Then, after thinking deeply for a while--
"'I don't know that it isn't for the best.'
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"That's what he said. And she says nothing at all now. Not a word of him. Never. Is his image as utterly gone from her mind as his lithe and striding figure, his caroling voice are gone from our fields? He is no longer before her eyes to excite her imagination into a passion of love or fear; and his memory seems to have vanished from her dull brain as a shadow passes away upon a white screen. She lives in the cottage and works for Miss Swaffer. She is Amy Foster for everybody, and the child is 'Amy Foster's boy.' She calls him Johnny - which means Little John.
"It is impossible to say whether this name recalls anything to her. Does she ever think of the past? I have seen her hanging over the boy's cot in a very passion of maternal tenderness. The little fellow was lying on his back, a little frightened at me, but very still, with his big black eyes, with his fluttered air of a bird in a snare. And looking at him I seemed to see again the other one - the father, cast out mysteriously by the sea to perish in the supreme disaster of loneliness and despair."
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Post by Darkduskk on Jun 10, 2006 4:12:52 GMT -5
Desiderata - by Max Ehrmann
Go placidly amid the noise and the haste and remember what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly and listen to others, even the dull and ignorant; they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit. If you compare yourself to others you may be become vain and bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your career however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortune of time. Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you from what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism.
Be yourself, especially do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is as perennial as the grass.
Take kindly the councel of the years gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture the strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the Universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.
Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive him to be; and whatever your labours and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace with your soul. With all its shams, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.
Max Ehrmann
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Post by Darkduskk on Jun 10, 2006 4:13:18 GMT -5
The Jewel - by Thaddeus Golas
Once upon a time there dwelt an old King in a palace. In the center of a golden table in the main hall, there shone a large and magnificent jewel. Each day of the King's life, the stone sparkled more resplendently.
One day a thief stole the jewel and ran from the palace, hiding in a forest. As he stared with deep joy at the stone, to his amazement the image of the King appeared in it.
"I have come to thank you," said the King. "You have released me from my attachment to Earth. I thought I was freed when I acquired the jewel, but then I learned that I would be released only when I passed it on, with a pure heart, to another.
"Each day of my life I polished that stone, until finally this day arrived, when the jewel became so beautiful that you stole it, and I have passed it on, and am released.
"The jewel you hold is Understanding. You cannot add to its beauty by hiding it and hinting that you have it, nor yet by wearing it with vanity. Its beauty comes of the consciousness that others have of it. Honor that which gives it beauty."
Thaddeus Golas
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