The Girls in Their Summer Dresses

The Girls in Their Summer Dresses

by Irwin Shaw (1913-____ )

Word Count: 3211


Fifth Avenue was shining in the sun when they left the Brevoort and started walking toward Washington Square. The sun was warm, even though it was November, and everything looked like Sunday morning--the buses, and the well-dressed people walking slowly in couples and the quiet buildings with the windows closed.

Michael held Frances' arm tightly as they walked downtown in the sunlight. They walked lightly, almost smiling, because they had slept late and had a good breakfast and it was Sunday. Michael unbuttoned his coat and let it flap around him in the mild wind. They walked, without saying anything, among the young and pleasant-looking people who somehow seem to make up most of the population of that section of New York City.

"Look out," Frances said, as they crossed Eighth Street. "You'll break your neck."

Michael laughed and Frances laughed with him.

"She's not so pretty, anyway," Frances said. "Anyway, not pretty enough to take a chance breaking your neck looking at her."

Michael laughed again. He laughed louder this time, but not as solidly. "She wasn't a bad-looking girl. She had a nice complexion. Country-girl complexion. How did you know I was looking at her?" Frances cocked her head to one side and smiled at her husband under the tip-tilted brim of her hat. "Mike, darling . . ." she said.

Michael laughed, just a little laugh this time. "Okay," he said. "The evidence is in. Excuse me. It was the complexion. It's not the sort of complexion you see much in New York. Excuse me."

Frances patted his arm lightly and pulled him along a little faster toward Washington Square.

"This is a nice morning," she said. "This is a wonderful morning. When I have breakfast with you it makes me feel good all day."

"Tonic," Michael said. "Morning pickup. Rolls and coffee with Mike and you're on the alkali side, guaranteed."

"That's the story. Also, I slept all night, wound around you like a rope."

"Saturday night," he said. "I permit such liberties only when the week's work is done."

"You're getting fat," she said.

"Isn't it the truth? The lean man from Ohio."

"I love it," she said, "an extra five pounds of husband."

"I love it, too," Michael said gravely.

"I have an idea," Frances said.

"My wife has an idea. That pretty girl."

"Let's not see anybody all day," Frances said. "Let's just hang around with each other. You and me. We're always up to our neck in people, drinking their Scotch, or drinking our Scotch, we only see each other in bed . . ."

"The Great Meeting Place," Michael said. "Stay in bed long enough and everybody you ever knew will show up there."

"Wise guy," Frances said. "I'm talking serious."

"Okay, I'm listening serious."

"I want to go out with my husband all day long. I want him to talk only to me and listen only to me."

"What's to stop us?" Michael asked. "What party intends to prevent me from seeing my wife alone on Sunday? What party?"

"The Stevensons. They want us to drop by around one o'clock and they'll drive us into the country."

"The lousy Stevensons," Mike said. "Transparent. They can whistle. They can go driving in the country by themselves. My wife and I have to stay in New York and bore each other tˆte-…-tˆte."

"Is it a date?"

"It's a date."

Frances leaned over and kissed him on the tip of the ear.


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"Darling," Michael said. "This is Fifth Avenue."

"Let me arrange a program," Frances said. "A planned Sunday in New York for a young couple with money to throw away."

"Go easy."

"First let's go see a football game. A professional football game," Frances said, because she knew Michael loved to watch them. "The Giants are playing. And it'll be nice to be outside all day today and get hungry and later we'll go down to Cavanagh's and get a steak as big as a blacksmith's apron, with a bottle of wine, and after that, there's a new French picture at the Filmarte that everybody says... Say, are you listening to me?"

"Sure," he said. He took his eyes off the hatless girl with the dark hair, cut dancer-style, like a helmet, who was walking past him with the self-conscious strength and grace dancers have. She was walking without a coat and she looked very solid and strong and her belly was flat, like a boy's, under her skirt, and her hips swung boldly because she was a dancer and also because she knew Michael was looking at her. She smiled a little to herself as she went past and Michael noticed all these things before he looked back at his wife. "Sure," he said, "we're going to watch the Giants and we're going to eat steak and we're going to see a French picture. How do you like that?"





"That's it," Frances said flatly. "That's the program for the day. Or maybe you'd just rather walk up and down Fifth Avenue."

"No," Michael said carefully. "Not at all."

"You always look at other women," Frances said. "At every damn woman in the city of New York."

"Oh, come now," Michael said, pretending to joke. "Only pretty ones. And, after all, how many pretty women are there in New York? Seventeen?"

"More. At least you seem to think so. Wherever you go."

"Not the truth. Occasionally, maybe, I look at a woman as she passes. In the street. I admit, perhaps in the street I look at a woman once in a while. . . ."

"Everywhere," Frances said. "Every damned place we go. Restaurants, subways, theaters, lectures, concerts."

"Now, darling," Michael said. "I look at everything. God gave me eyes and I look at women and men and subway excavations and moving pictures and the little flowers of the field. I casually inspect the universe."

"You ought to see the look in your eye," Frances said, "as you casually inspect the universe on Fifth Avenue."

"I'm a happily married man." Michael pressed her elbow tenderly, knowing what he was doing. "Example for the whole twentieth century, Mr. and Mrs. Mike Loomis."

"You mean it?"

"Frances, baby . . ."

"Are you really happily married?"

"Sure," Michael said, feeling the whole Sunday morning sinking like lead inside him. "Now what the hell is the sense in talking like that?"

"I would like to know." Frances walked faster now, looking straight ahead, her face showing nothing, which was the way she always managed it when she was arguing or feeling bad.

"I'm wonderfully happily married," Michael said patiently. "I am the envy of all men between the ages of fifteen and sixty in the state of New York."

"Stop kidding," Frances said.

"I have a fine home," Michael said. "I got nice books and a phonograph and nice friends. I live in a town I like the way I like and I do the work I like and I live with the woman I like. Whenever something good happens, don't I run to you? When something bad happens, don't I cry on your shoulder?"

"Yes," Frances said. "You look at every woman that passes."

"That's an exaggeration."

"Every woman." Frances took her hand off Michael's arm. "If she's not pretty you turn away fairly quickly. If she's halfway pretty you watch her for about seven steps. . . ."

"My Lord, Frances!"

"If she's pretty you practically break your neck . . ."

"Hey, let's have a drink," Michael said, stopping.

"We just had breakfast."

"Now, listen, darling," Mike said, choosing his words with care, "it's a nice day and we both feel good and there's no reason why we have to break it up. Let's have a nice Sunday."

"I could have a fine Sunday if you didn't look as though you were dying to run after every skirt on Fifth Avenue."

"Let's have a drink," Michael said.

"I don't want a drink."

"What do you want, a fight?"

"No," Frances said, so unhappily that Michael felt terribly sorry for her. "I don't want a fight. I don't know why I started this. All right, let's drop it. Let's have a good time."





They joined hands consciously and walked without talking among the baby carriages and the old Italian men in their Sunday clothes and the young women with Scotties in Washington Square Park.

"I hope it's a good game today," Frances said after a while, her tone a good imitation of the tone she had used at breakfast and at the beginning of their walk. "I like professional football games. They hit each other as though they're made out of concrete. When they tackle each other," she said, trying to make Michael laugh, "they make divots. It's very exciting."

"I want to tell you something," Michael said very seriously. "I have not touched another woman. Not once. In all the five years."

"All right," Frances said.

"You believe that, don't you?"

"All right."

They walked between the crowded benches, under the scrubby citypark trees.

"I try not to notice it," Frances said, as though she were talking to herself. "I try to make believe it doesn't mean anything. Some men're like that, I tell myself, they have to see what they're missing."





"Some women're like that, too," Michael said. "In my time I've seen a couple of ladies."

"I haven't even looked at another man," Frances said, walking straight ahead, "since the second time I went out with you."

"There's no law," Michael said.

"I feel rotten inside, in my stomach, when we pass a woman and you look at her and I see that look in your eye and that's the way you looked at me the first time, in Alice Maxwell's house. Standing there in the living room, next to the radio, with a green hat on and all those people."

"I remember the hat," Michael said.

"The same look," Frances said. "And it makes me feel bad. It makes me feel terrible."

"Sssh, please, darling, sssh. . . ."

"I think I would like a drink now," Frances said.

They walked over to a bar on Eighth Street, not saying anything, Michael automatically helping her over curbstones and guiding her past automobiles. He walked, buttoning his coat, looking thoughtfully at his neatly shined heavy brown shoes as they made the steps toward the bar. They sat near a window in the bar and the sun streamed in, and there was a small cheerful fire in the fireplace. A little Japanese waiter came over and put down some pretzels and smiled happily at them.

"What do you order after breakfast?" Michael asked.

"Brandy, I suppose," Frances said.

"Courvoisier," Michael told the waiter. "Two Courvoisier."

The waiter came with the glasses and they sat drinking the brandy in the sunlight. Michael finished half his and drank a little water.

"I look at women," he said. "Correct. I don't say it's wrong or right, I look at them. If I pass them on the street and I don't look at them, I'm fooling you, I'm fooling myself."

"You look at them as though you want them," Frances said, playing with her brandy glass. "Every one of them."

"In a way," Michael said, speaking softly and not to his wife, "in a way that's true. I don't do anything about it, but it's true."

"I know it. That's why I feel bad."

"Another brandy," Michael called. "Waiter, two more brandies."

"Why do you hurt me?" Frances asked. "What're you doing?"

Michael sighed and closed his eyes and rubbed them gently with his fingertips. "I love the way women look. One of the things I like best about New York is the battalions of women. When I first came to New York from Ohio that was the first thing I noticed, the million wonderful women, all over the city. I walked around with my heart in my throat."

"A kid," Frances said. "That's a kid's feeling."

"Guess again," Michael said. "Guess again. I'm older now, I'm a man getting near middle age, putting on a little fat and I still love to walk along Fifth Avenue at three o'clock on the east side of the street between Fiftieth and Fifty-seventh streets, they're all out then, making believe they're shopping, in their furs and their crazy hats, everything all concentrated from all over the world into eight blocks, the best furs, the best clothes, the handsomest women, out to spend money and feeling good about it, looking coldly at you, making believe they're not looking at you as you go past."

The Japanese waiter put the two drinks down, smiling with great happiness.

"Everything is all right?" he asked.

"Everything is wonderful," Michael said.

"If it's just a couple of fur coats," Frances said, "and forty-five-dollar hats . . ."

"It's not the fur coats. Or the hats. That's just the scenery for that particular kind of woman. Understand," he said, "you don't have to listen to this."

"I want to listen."

"I like the girls in the offices. Neat, with their eyeglasses, smart, chipper, knowing what everything is about, taking care of themselves all the time." He kept his eye on the people going slowly past outside the window. "I like the girls on Forty-fourth Street at lunchtime, the actresses, all dressed up on nothing a week, talking to the good-looking boys, wearing themselves out being young and vivacious outside Sardi's, waiting for producers to look at them. I like the salesgirls in Macy's, paying attention to you first because you're a man, leaving lady customers waiting, flirting with you over socks and books and phonograph needles. I got all this stuff accumulated in me because I've been thinking about it for ten years and now you've asked for it and here it is."

"Go ahead," Frances said.

"When I think of New York City, I think of all the girls, the Jewish girls, the Italian girls, the Irish, Polack, Chinese, German, Negro, Spanish, Russian girls, all on parade in the city. I don't know whether it's something special with me or whether every man in the city walks around with the same feeling inside him, but I feel as though I'm at a picnic in this city. I like to sit near the women in the theaters, the famous beauties who've taken six hours to get ready and look it. And the young girls at the football games, with the red cheeks, and when the warm weather comes, the girls in their summer dresses . . ." He finished his drink. "That's the story. You asked for it, remember. I can't help but look at them. I can't help but want them."

"You want them," Frances repeated without expression. "You said that."

"Right," Michael said, being cruel now and not caring, because she had made him expose himself. "You brought this subject up for discussion, we will discuss it fully."

Frances finished her drink and swallowed two or three times extra. "You say you love me?"

"I love you, but I also want them. Okay."

"I'm pretty, too," Frances said. "As pretty as any of them."

"You're beautiful," Michael said, meaning it.

"I'm good for you," Frances said, pleading. "I've made a good wife, a good housekeeper, a good friend. I'd do any damn thing for you."

"I know," Michael said. He put his hand out and grasped hers.

"You'd like to be free to . . ." Frances said.

"Sssh."

"Tell the truth." She took her hand away from under his.

Michael flicked the edge of his glass with his finger. "Okay," he said gently. "Sometimes I feel I would like to be free."

"Well," Frances said defiantly, drumming on the table, "anytime you say . . ."

"Don't be foolish." Michael swung his chair around to her side of the table and patted her thigh.

She began to cry, silently, into her handkerchief, bent over just enough so that nobody else in the bar would notice. "Someday," she said, crying, "you're going to make a move . . ."

Michael didn't say anything. He sat watching the bartender slowly peel a lemon.

"Aren't you?" Frances asked harshly. "Come on, tell me. Talk. Aren't you?"

"Maybe," Michael said. He moved his chair back again. "How the hell do I know?"

"You know," Frances persisted. "Don't you know?"

"Yes," Michael said after a while. "I know."

Frances stopped crying then. Two or three snuffles into the handkerchief and she put it away and her face didn't tell anything to anybody. "At least do me one favor," she said.

"Sure."

"Stop talking about how pretty this woman is, or that one. Nice eyes, nice breasts, a pretty figure, good voice," she mimicked his voice. "Keep it to yourself. I'm not interested."

"Excuse me." Michael waved to the waiter. "I'll keep it to myself."

Frances flicked the corner of her eyes. "Another brandy," she told the waiter.

"Two," Michael said.

"Yes, ma'am, yes, sir," said the waiter, backing away.

Frances regarded him coolly across the table. "Do you want me to call the Stevensons?" she asked. "It'll be nice in the country."

"Sure," Michael said. "Call them up."

She got up from the table and walked across the room toward the telephone. Michael watched her walk, thinking, What a pretty girl, what nice legs.

The Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin

"The Story of An Hour"
Kate Chopin (1894)
Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, great care was taken to break to her as gently as possible the news of her husband's death.
It was her sister Josephine who told her, in broken sentences; veiled hints that revealed in half concealing. Her husband's friend Richards was there, too, near her. It was he who had been in the newspaper office when intelligence of the railroad disaster was received, with Brently Mallard's name leading the list of "killed." He had only taken the time to assure himself of its truth by a second telegram, and had hastened to forestall any less careful, less tender friend in bearing the sad message.

She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance. She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister's arms. When the storm of grief had spent itself she went away to her room alone. She would have no one follow her.

There stood, facing the open window, a comfortable, roomy armchair. Into this she sank, pressed down by a physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to reach into her soul.

She could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that were all aquiver with the new spring life. The delicious breath of rain was in the air. In the street below a peddler was crying his wares. The notes of a distant song which some one was singing reached her faintly, and countless sparrows were twittering in the eaves.

There were patches of blue sky showing here and there through the clouds that had met and piled one above the other in the west facing her window.

She sat with her head thrown back upon the cushion of the chair, quite motionless, except when a sob came up into her throat and shook her, as a child who has cried itself to sleep continues to sob in its dreams.

She was young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and even a certain strength. But now there was a dull stare in her eyes, whose gaze was fixed away off yonder on one of those patches of blue sky. It was not a glance of reflection, but rather indicated a suspension of intelligent thought.

There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully. What was it? She did not know; it was too subtle and elusive to name. But she felt it, creeping out of the sky, reaching toward her through the sounds, the scents, the color that filled the air.

Now her bosom rose and fell tumultuously. She was beginning to recognize this thing that was approaching to possess her, and she was striving to beat it back with her will--as powerless as her two white slender hands would have been. When she abandoned herself a little whispered word escaped her slightly parted lips. She said it over and over under hte breath: "free, free, free!" The vacant stare and the look of terror that had followed it went from her eyes. They stayed keen and bright. Her pulses beat fast, and the coursing blood warmed and relaxed every inch of her body.

She did not stop to ask if it were or were not a monstrous joy that held her. A clear and exalted perception enabled her to dismiss the suggestion as trivial. She knew that she would weep again when she saw the kind, tender hands folded in death; the face that had never looked save with love upon her, fixed and gray and dead. But she saw beyond that bitter moment a long procession of years to come that owuld belong to her absolutely. And she opened and spread her arms out to them in welcome.

There would be no one to live for during those coming years; she would live for herself. There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they ahve a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature. A kind intention or a cruel intention made the act seem no less a crime as she looked upon it in that brief moment of illumination.

And yet she had loved him--sometimes. Often she had not. What did it matter! What could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in the face of this possession of self-assertion which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being!

"Free! Body and soul free!" she kept whispering.

Josephine was kneeling before the closed door with her lips to the keyhold, imploring for admission. "Louise, open the door! I beg; open the door--you will make yourself ill. What are you doing, Louise? For heaven's sake open the door."

"Go away. I am not making myself ill." No; she was drinking in a very elixir of life through that open window.

Her fancy was running riot along those days ahead of her. Spring days, and summer days, and all sorts of days that would be her own. She breathed a quick prayer that life might be long. It was only yesterday she had thought with a shudder that life might be long.

She arose at length and opened the door to her sister's importunities. There was a feverish triumph in her eyes, and she carried herself unwittingly like a goddess of Victory. She clasped her sister's waist, and together they descended the stairs. Richards stood waiting for them at the bottom.

Some one was opening the front door with a latchkey. It was Brently Mallard who entered, a little travel-stained, composedly carrying his grip-sack and umbrella. He had been far from the scene of the accident, and did not even know there had been one. He stood amazed at Josephine's piercing cry; at Richards' quick motion to screen him from the view of his wife.

When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease--of the joy that kills.






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Reading response:
Pick out at least five phrases which you think are especially important to the story (what you might mark on a printed text.) Briefly describe why you chose each.
What questions about character or motivation or plot does this story leave in your mind?
Now go to the study text

The Birthmark by Nathaniel Hawthorne

In the latter part of the last century there lived a man of science, an eminent proficient in every branch of natural philosophy, who not long before our story opens had made experience of a spiritual affinity more attractive than any chemical one. He had left his laboratory to the care of an assistant, cleared his fine countenance from the furnace smoke, washed the stain of acids from his fingers, and persuaded a beautiful woman to become his wife. In those days when the comparatively recent discovery of electricity and other kindred mysteries of Nature seemed to open paths into the region of miracle, it was not unusual for the love of science to rival the love of woman in its depth and absorbing energy. The higher intellect, the imagination, the spirit, and even the heart might all find their congenial aliment in pursuits which, as some of their ardent votaries believed, would ascend from one step of powerful intelligence to another, until the philosopher should lay his hand on the secret of creative force and perhaps make new worlds for himself. We know not whether Aylmer possessed this degree of faith in man's ultimate control over Nature. He had devoted himself, however, too unreservedly to scientific studies ever to be weaned from them by any second passion. His love for his young wife might prove the stronger of the two; but it could only be by intertwining itself with his love of science, and uniting the strength of the latter to his own.

Such a union accordingly took place, and was attended with truly remarkable consequences and a deeply impressive moral. One day, very soon after their marriage, Aylmer sat gazing at his wife with a trouble in his countenance that grew stronger until he spoke.

"Georgiana," said he, "has it never occurred to you that the mark upon your cheek might be removed?"

"No, indeed," said she, smiling; but perceiving the seriousness of his manner, she blushed deeply. "To tell you the truth it has been so often called a charm that I was simple enough to imagine it might be so."

"Ah, upon another face perhaps it might," replied her husband; "but never on yours. No, dearest Georgiana, you came so nearly perfect from the hand of Nature that this slightest possible defect, which we hesitate whether to term a defect or a beauty, shocks me, as being the visible mark of earthly imperfection."

"Shocks you, my husband!" cried Georgiana, deeply hurt; at first reddening with momentary anger, but then bursting into tears. "Then why did you take me from my mother's side? You cannot love what shocks you!"

To explain this conversation it must be mentioned that in the centre of Georgiana's left cheek there was a singular mark, deeply interwoven, as it were, with the texture and substance of her face. In the usual state of her complexion--a healthy though delicate bloom--the mark wore a tint of deeper crimson, which imperfectly defined its shape amid the surrounding rosiness. When she blushed it gradually became more indistinct, and finally vanished amid the triumphant rush of blood that bathed the whole cheek with its brilliant glow. But if any shifting motion caused her to turn pale there was the mark again, a crimson stain upon the snow, in what Aylmer sometimes deemed an almost fearful distinctness. Its shape bore not a little similarity to the human hand, though of the smallest pygmy size. Georgiana's lovers were wont to say that some fairy at her birth hour had laid her tiny hand upon the infant's cheek, and left this impress there in token of the magic endowments that were to give her such sway over all hearts. Many a desperate swain would have risked life for the privilege of pressing his lips to the mysterious hand. It must not be concealed, however, that the impression wrought by this fairy sign manual varied exceedingly, according to the difference of temperament in the beholders. Some fastidious persons--but they were exclusively of her own sex--affirmed that the bloody hand, as they chose to call it, quite destroyed the effect of Georgiana's beauty, and rendered her countenance even hideous. But it would be as reasonable to say that one of those small blue stains which sometimes occur in the purest statuary marble would convert the Eve of Powers to a monster. Masculine observers, if the birthmark did not heighten their admiration, contented themselves with wishing it away, that the world might possess one living specimen of ideal loveliness without the semblance of a flaw. After his marriage,--for he thought little or nothing of the matter before,--Aylmer discovered that this was the case with himself.

Had she been less beautiful,--if Envy's self could have found aught else to sneer at,--he might have felt his affection heightened by the prettiness of this mimic hand, now vaguely portrayed, now lost, now stealing forth again and glimmering to and fro with every pulse of emotion that throbbed within her heart; but seeing her otherwise so perfect, he found this one defect grow more and more intolerable with every moment of their united lives. It was the fatal flaw of humanity which Nature, in one shape or another, stamps ineffaceably on all her productions, either to imply that they are temporary and finite, or that their perfection must be wrought by toil and pain. The crimson hand expressed the ineludible gripe in which mortality clutches the highest and purest of earthly mould, degrading them into kindred with the lowest, and even with the very brutes, like whom their visible frames return to dust. In this manner, selecting it as the symbol of his wife's liability to sin, sorrow, decay, and death, Aylmer's sombre imagination was not long in rendering the birthmark a frightful object, causing him more trouble and horror than ever Georgiana's beauty, whether of soul or sense, had given him delight.

At all the seasons which should have been their happiest, he invariably and without intending it, nay, in spite of a purpose to the contrary, reverted to this one disastrous topic. Trifling as it at first appeared, it so connected itself with innumerable trains of thought and modes of feeling that it became the central point of all. With the morning twilight Aylmer opened his eyes upon his wife's face and recognized the symbol of imperfection; and when they sat together at the evening hearth his eyes wandered stealthily to her cheek, and beheld, flickering with the blaze of the wood fire, the spectral hand that wrote mortality where he would fain have worshipped. Georgiana soon learned to shudder at his gaze. It needed but a glance with the peculiar expression that his face often wore to change the roses of her cheek into a deathlike paleness, amid which the crimson hand was brought strongly out, like a bass-relief of ruby on the whitest marble.

Late one night when the lights were growing dim, so as hardly to betray the stain on the poor wife's cheek, she herself, for the first time, voluntarily took up the subject.

"Do you remember, my dear Aylmer," said she, with a feeble attempt at a smile, "have you any recollection of a dream last night about this odious hand?"

"None! none whatever!" replied Aylmer, starting; but then he added, in a dry, cold tone, affected for the sake of concealing the real depth of his emotion, "I might well dream of it; for before I fell asleep it had taken a pretty firm hold of my fancy."

"And you did dream of it?" continued Georgiana, hastily; for she dreaded lest a gush of tears should interrupt what she had to say. "A terrible dream! I wonder that you can forget it. Is it possible to forget this one expression?--'It is in her heart now; we must have it out!' Reflect, my husband; for by all means I would have you recall that dream."

The mind is in a sad state when Sleep, the all-involving, cannot confine her spectres within the dim region of her sway, but suffers them to break forth, affrighting this actual life with secrets that perchance belong to a deeper one. Aylmer now remembered his dream. He had fancied himself with his servant Aminadab, attempting an operation for the removal of the birthmark; but the deeper went the knife, the deeper sank the hand, until at length its tiny grasp appeared to have caught hold of Georgiana's heart; whence, however, her husband was inexorably resolved to cut or wrench it away.

When the dream had shaped itself perfectly in his memory, Aylmer sat in his wife's presence with a guilty feeling. Truth often finds its way to the mind close muffled in robes of sleep, and then speaks with uncompromising directness of matters in regard to which we practise an unconscious self-deception during our waking moments. Until now he had not been aware of the tyrannizing influence acquired by one idea over his mind, and of the lengths which he might find in his heart to go for the sake of giving himself peace.

"Aylmer," resumed Georgiana, solemnly, "I know not what may be the cost to both of us to rid me of this fatal birthmark. Perhaps its removal may cause cureless deformity; or it may be the stain goes as deep as life itself. Again: do we know that there is a possibility, on any terms, of unclasping the firm gripe of this little hand which was laid upon me before I came into the world?"

"Dearest Georgiana, I have spent much thought upon the subject," hastily interrupted Aylmer. "I am convinced of the perfect practicability of its removal."

"If there be the remotest possibility of it," continued Georgiana, "let the attempt be made at whatever risk. Danger is nothing to me; for life, while this hateful mark makes me the object of your horror and disgust,--life is a burden which I would fling down with joy. Either remove this dreadful hand, or take my wretched life! You have deep science. All the world bears witness of it. You have achieved great wonders. Cannot you remove this little, little mark, which I cover with the tips of two small fingers? Is this beyond your power, for the sake of your own peace, and to save your poor wife from madness?"

"Noblest, dearest, tenderest wife," cried Aylmer, rapturously, "doubt not my power. I have already given this matter the deepest thought--thought which might almost have enlightened me to create a being less perfect than yourself. Georgiana, you have led me deeper than ever into the heart of science. I feel myself fully competent to render this dear cheek as faultless as its fellow; and then, most beloved, what will be my triumph when I shall have corrected what Nature left imperfect in her fairest work! Even Pygmalion, when his sculptured woman assumed life, felt not greater ecstasy than mine will be."

"It is resolved, then," said Georgiana, faintly smiling. "And, Aylmer, spare me not, though you should find the birthmark take refuge in my heart at last."

Her husband tenderly kissed her cheek--her right cheek--not that which bore the impress of the crimson hand.

The next day Aylmer apprised his wife of a plan that he had formed whereby he might have opportunity for the intense thought and constant watchfulness which the proposed operation would require; while Georgiana, likewise, would enjoy the perfect repose essential to its success. They were to seclude themselves in the extensive apartments occupied by Aylmer as a laboratory, and where, during his toilsome youth, he had made discoveries in the elemental powers of Nature that had roused the admiration of all the learned societies in Europe. Seated calmly in this laboratory, the pale philosopher had investigated the secrets of the highest cloud region and of the profoundest mines; he had satisfied himself of the causes that kindled and kept alive the fires of the volcano; and had explained the mystery of fountains, and how it is that they gush forth, some so bright and pure, and others with such rich medicinal virtues, from the dark bosom of the earth. Here, too, at an earlier period, he had studied the wonders of the human frame, and attempted to fathom the very process by which Nature assimilates all her precious influences from earth and air, and from the spiritual world, to create and foster man, her masterpiece. The latter pursuit, however, Aylmer had long laid aside in unwilling recognition of the truth--against which all seekers sooner or later stumble--that our great creative Mother, while she amuses us with apparently working in the broadest sunshine, is yet severely careful to keep her own secrets, and, in spite of her pretended openness, shows us nothing but results. She permits us, indeed, to mar, but seldom to mend, and, like a jealous patentee, on no account to make. Now, however, Aylmer resumed these half-forgotten investigations; not, of course, with such hopes or wishes as first suggested them; but because they involved much physiological truth and lay in the path of his proposed scheme for the treatment of Georgiana.

As he led her over the threshold of the laboratory, Georgiana was cold and tremulous. Aylmer looked cheerfully into her face, with intent to reassure her, but was so startled with the intense glow of the birthmark upon the whiteness of her cheek that he could not restrain a strong convulsive shudder. His wife fainted.

"Aminadab! Aminadab!" shouted Aylmer, stamping violently on the floor.

Forthwith there issued from an inner apartment a man of low stature, but bulky frame, with shaggy hair hanging about his visage, which was grimed with the vapors of the furnace. This personage had been Aylmer's underworker during his whole scientific career, and was admirably fitted for that office by his great mechanical readiness, and the skill with which, while incapable of comprehending a single principle, he executed all the details of his master's experiments. With his vast strength, his shaggy hair, his smoky aspect, and the indescribable earthiness that incrusted him, he seemed to represent man's physical nature; while Aylmer's slender figure, and pale, intellectual face, were no less apt a type of the spiritual element.

"Throw open the door of the boudoir, Aminadab," said Aylmer, "and burn a pastil."

"Yes, master," answered Aminadab, looking intently at the lifeless form of Georgiana; and then he muttered to himself, "If she were my wife, I'd never part with that birthmark."

When Georgiana recovered consciousness she found herself breathing an atmosphere of penetrating fragrance, the gentle potency of which had recalled her from her deathlike faintness. The scene around her looked like enchantment. Aylmer had converted those smoky, dingy, sombre rooms, where he had spent his brightest years in recondite pursuits, into a series of beautiful apartments not unfit to be the secluded abode of a lovely woman. The walls were hung with gorgeous curtains, which imparted the combination of grandeur and grace that no other species of adornment can achieve; and as they fell from the ceiling to the floor, their rich and ponderous folds, concealing all angles and straight lines, appeared to shut in the scene from infinite space. For aught Georgiana knew, it might be a pavilion among the clouds. And Aylmer, excluding the sunshine, which would have interfered with his chemical processes, had supplied its place with perfumed lamps, emitting flames of various hue, but all uniting in a soft, impurpled radiance. He now knelt by his wife's side, watching her earnestly, but without alarm; for he was confident in his science, and felt that he could draw a magic circle round her within which no evil might intrude.

"Where am I? Ah, I remember," said Georgiana, faintly; and she placed her hand over her cheek to hide the terrible mark from her husband's eyes.

"Fear not, dearest!" exclaimed he. "Do not shrink from me! Believe me, Georgiana, I even rejoice in this single imperfection, since it will be such a rapture to remove it."

"Oh, spare me!" sadly replied his wife. "Pray do not look at it again. I never can forget that convulsive shudder."

In order to soothe Georgiana, and, as it were, to release her mind from the burden of actual things, Aylmer now put in practice some of the light and playful secrets which science had taught him among its profounder lore. Airy figures, absolutely bodiless ideas, and forms of unsubstantial beauty came and danced before her, imprinting their momentary footsteps on beams of light. Though she had some indistinct idea of the method of these optical phenomena, still the illusion was almost perfect enough to warrant the belief that her husband possessed sway over the spiritual world. Then again, when she felt a wish to look forth from her seclusion, immediately, as if her thoughts were answered, the procession of external existence flitted across a screen. The scenery and the figures of actual life were perfectly represented, but with that bewitching, yet indescribable difference which always makes a picture, an image, or a shadow so much more attractive than the original. When wearied of this, Aylmer bade her cast her eyes upon a vessel containing a quantity of earth. She did so, with little interest at first; but was soon startled to perceive the germ of a plant shooting upward from the soil. Then came the slender stalk; the leaves gradually unfolded themselves; and amid them was a perfect and lovely flower.

"It is magical!" cried Georgiana. "I dare not touch it."

"Nay, pluck it," answered Aylmer,--"pluck it, and inhale its brief perfume while you may. The flower will wither in a few moments and leave nothing save its brown seed vessels; but thence may be perpetuated a race as ephemeral as itself."

But Georgiana had no sooner touched the flower than the whole plant suffered a blight, its leaves turning coal-black as if by the agency of fire.

"There was too powerful a stimulus," said Aylmer, thoughtfully.

To make up for this abortive experiment, he proposed to take her portrait by a scientific process of his own invention. It was to be effected by rays of light striking upon a polished plate of metal. Georgiana assented; but, on looking at the result, was affrighted to find the features of the portrait blurred and indefinable; while the minute figure of a hand appeared where the cheek should have been. Aylmer snatched the metallic plate and threw it into a jar of corrosive acid.

Soon, however, he forgot these mortifying failures. In the intervals of study and chemical experiment he came to her flushed and exhausted, but seemed invigorated by her presence, and spoke in glowing language of the resources of his art. He gave a history of the long dynasty of the alchemists, who spent so many ages in quest of the universal solvent by which the golden principle might be elicited from all things vile and base. Aylmer appeared to believe that, by the plainest scientific logic, it was altogether within the limits of possibility to discover this long-sought medium; "but," he added, "a philosopher who should go deep enough to acquire the power would attain too lofty a wisdom to stoop to the exercise of it." Not less singular were his opinions in regard to the elixir vitae. He more than intimated that it was at his option to concoct a liquid that should prolong life for years, perhaps interminably; but that it would produce a discord in Nature which all the world, and chiefly the quaffer of the immortal nostrum, would find cause to curse.

"Aylmer, are you in earnest?" asked Georgiana, looking at him with amazement and fear. "It is terrible to possess such power, or even to dream of possessing it."

"Oh, do not tremble, my love," said her husband. "I would not wrong either you or myself by working such inharmonious effects upon our lives; but I would have you consider how trifling, in comparison, is the skill requisite to remove this little hand."

At the mention of the birthmark, Georgiana, as usual, shrank as if a redhot iron had touched her cheek.

Again Aylmer applied himself to his labors. She could hear his voice in the distant furnace room giving directions to Aminadab, whose harsh, uncouth, misshapen tones were audible in response, more like the grunt or growl of a brute than human speech. After hours of absence, Aylmer reappeared and proposed that she should now examine his cabinet of chemical products and natural treasures of the earth. Among the former he showed her a small vial, in which, he remarked, was contained a gentle yet most powerful fragrance, capable of impregnating all the breezes that blow across a kingdom. They were of inestimable value, the contents of that little vial; and, as he said so, he threw some of the perfume into the air and filled the room with piercing and invigorating delight.

"And what is this?" asked Georgiana, pointing to a small crystal globe containing a gold-colored liquid. "It is so beautiful to the eye that I could imagine it the elixir of life."

"In one sense it is," replied Aylmer; "or, rather, the elixir of immortality. It is the most precious poison that ever was concocted in this world. By its aid I could apportion the lifetime of any mortal at whom you might point your finger. The strength of the dose would determine whether he were to linger out years, or drop dead in the midst of a breath. No king on his guarded throne could keep his life if I, in my private station, should deem that the welfare of millions justified me in depriving him of it."

"Why do you keep such a terrific drug?" inquired Georgiana in horror.

"Do not mistrust me, dearest," said her husband, smiling; "its virtuous potency is yet greater than its harmful one. But see! here is a powerful cosmetic. With a few drops of this in a vase of water, freckles may be washed away as easily as the hands are cleansed. A stronger infusion would take the blood out of the cheek, and leave the rosiest beauty a pale ghost."

"Is it with this lotion that you intend to bathe my cheek?" asked Georgiana, anxiously.

"Oh, no," hastily replied her husband; "this is merely superficial. Your case demands a remedy that shall go deeper."

In his interviews with Georgiana, Aylmer generally made minute inquiries as to her sensations and whether the confinement of the rooms and the temperature of the atmosphere agreed with her. These questions had such a particular drift that Georgiana began to conjecture that she was already subjected to certain physical influences, either breathed in with the fragrant air or taken with her food. She fancied likewise, but it might be altogether fancy, that there was a stirring up of her system--a strange, indefinite sensation creeping through her veins, and tingling, half painfully, half pleasurably, at her heart. Still, whenever she dared to look into the mirror, there she beheld herself pale as a white rose and with the crimson birthmark stamped upon her cheek. Not even Aylmer now hated it so much as she.

To dispel the tedium of the hours which her husband found it necessary to devote to the processes of combination and analysis, Georgiana turned over the volumes of his scientific library. In many dark old tomes she met with chapters full of romance and poetry. They were the works of philosophers of the middle ages, such as Albertus Magnus, Cornelius Agrippa, Paracelsus, and the famous friar who created the prophetic Brazen Head. All these antique naturalists stood in advance of their centuries, yet were imbued with some of their credulity, and therefore were believed, and perhaps imagined themselves to have acquired from the investigation of Nature a power above Nature, and from physics a sway over the spiritual world. Hardly less curious and imaginative were the early volumes of the Transactions of the Royal Society, in which the members, knowing little of the limits of natural possibility, were continually recording wonders or proposing methods whereby wonders might be wrought.

But to Georgiana the most engrossing volume was a large folio from her husband's own hand, in which he had recorded every experiment of his scientific career, its original aim, the methods adopted for its development, and its final success or failure, with the circumstances to which either event was attributable. The book, in truth, was both the history and emblem of his ardent, ambitious, imaginative, yet practical and laborious life. He handled physical details as if there were nothing beyond them; yet spiritualized them all, and redeemed himself from materialism by his strong and eager aspiration towards the infinite. In his grasp the veriest clod of earth assumed a soul. Georgiana, as she read, reverenced Aylmer and loved him more profoundly than ever, but with a less entire dependence on his judgment than heretofore. Much as he had accomplished, she could not but observe that his most splendid successes were almost invariably failures, if compared with the ideal at which he aimed. His brightest diamonds were the merest pebbles, and felt to be so by himself, in comparison with the inestimable gems which lay hidden beyond his reach. The volume, rich with achievements that had won renown for its author, was yet as melancholy a record as ever mortal hand had penned. It was the sad confession and continual exemplification of the shortcomings of the composite man, the spirit burdened with clay and working in matter, and of the despair that assails the higher nature at finding itself so miserably thwarted by the earthly part. Perhaps every man of genius in whatever sphere might recognize the image of his own experience in Aylmer's journal.

So deeply did these reflections affect Georgiana that she laid her face upon the open volume and burst into tears. In this situation she was found by her husband.

"It is dangerous to read in a sorcerer's books," said he with a smile, though his countenance was uneasy and displeased. "Georgiana, there are pages in that volume which I can scarcely glance over and keep my senses. Take heed lest it prove as detrimental to you."

"It has made me worship you more than ever," said she.

"Ah, wait for this one success," rejoined he, "then worship me if you will. I shall deem myself hardly unworthy of it. But come, I have sought you for the luxury of your voice. Sing to me, dearest."

So she poured out the liquid music of her voice to quench the thirst of his spirit. He then took his leave with a boyish exuberance of gayety, assuring her that her seclusion would endure but a little longer, and that the result was already certain. Scarcely had he departed when Georgiana felt irresistibly impelled to follow him. She had forgotten to inform Aylmer of a symptom which for two or three hours past had begun to excite her attention. It was a sensation in the fatal birthmark, not painful, but which induced a restlessness throughout her system. Hastening after her husband, she intruded for the first time into the laboratory.

The first thing that struck her eye was the furnace, that hot and feverish worker, with the intense glow of its fire, which by the quantities of soot clustered above it seemed to have been burning for ages. There was a distilling apparatus in full operation. Around the room were retorts, tubes, cylinders, crucibles, and other apparatus of chemical research. An electrical machine stood ready for immediate use. The atmosphere felt oppressively close, and was tainted with gaseous odors which had been tormented forth by the processes of science. The severe and homely simplicity of the apartment, with its naked walls and brick pavement, looked strange, accustomed as Georgiana had become to the fantastic elegance of her boudoir. But what chiefly, indeed almost solely, drew her attention, was the aspect of Aylmer himself.

He was pale as death, anxious and absorbed, and hung over the furnace as if it depended upon his utmost watchfulness whether the liquid which it was distilling should be the draught of immortal happiness or misery. How different from the sanguine and joyous mien that he had assumed for Georgiana's encouragement!

"Carefully now, Aminadab; carefully, thou human machine; carefully, thou man of clay!" muttered Aylmer, more to himself than his assistant. "Now, if there be a thought too much or too little, it is all over."

"Ho! ho!" mumbled Aminadab. "Look, master! look!"

Aylmer raised his eyes hastily, and at first reddened, then grew paler than ever, on beholding Georgiana. He rushed towards her and seized her arm with a gripe that left the print of his fingers upon it.

"Why do you come hither? Have you no trust in your husband?" cried he, impetuously. "Would you throw the blight of that fatal birthmark over my labors? It is not well done. Go, prying woman, go!"

"Nay, Aylmer," said Georgiana with the firmness of which she possessed no stinted endowment, "it is not you that have a right to complain. You mistrust your wife; you have concealed the anxiety with which you watch the development of this experiment. Think not so unworthily of me, my husband. Tell me all the risk we run, and fear not that I shall shrink; for my share in it is far less than your own."

"No, no, Georgiana!" said Aylmer, impatiently; "it must not be."

"I submit," replied she calmly. "And, Aylmer, I shall quaff whatever draught you bring me; but it will be on the same principle that would induce me to take a dose of poison if offered by your hand."

"My noble wife," said Aylmer, deeply moved, "I knew not the height and depth of your nature until now. Nothing shall be concealed. Know, then, that this crimson hand, superficial as it seems, has clutched its grasp into your being with a strength of which I had no previous conception. I have already administered agents powerful enough to do aught except to change your entire physical system. Only one thing remains to be tried. If that fail us we are ruined."

"Why did you hesitate to tell me this?" asked she.

"Because, Georgiana," said Aylmer, in a low voice, "there is danger."

"Danger? There is but one danger--that this horrible stigma shall be left upon my cheek!" cried Georgiana. "Remove it, remove it, whatever be the cost, or we shall both go mad!"

"Heaven knows your words are too true," said Aylmer, sadly. "And now, dearest, return to your boudoir. In a little while all will be tested."

He conducted her back and took leave of her with a solemn tenderness which spoke far more than his words how much was now at stake. After his departure Georgiana became rapt in musings. She considered the character of Aylmer, and did it completer justice than at any previous moment. Her heart exulted, while it trembled, at his honorable love--so pure and lofty that it would accept nothing less than perfection nor miserably make itself contented with an earthlier nature than he had dreamed of. She felt how much more precious was such a sentiment than that meaner kind which would have borne with the imperfection for her sake, and have been guilty of treason to holy love by degrading its perfect idea to the level of the actual; and with her whole spirit she prayed that, for a single moment, she might satisfy his highest and deepest conception. Longer than one moment she well knew it could not be; for his spirit was ever on the march, ever ascending, and each instant required something that was beyond the scope of the instant before.

The sound of her husband's footsteps aroused her. He bore a crystal goblet containing a liquor colorless as water, but bright enough to be the draught of immortality. Aylmer was pale; but it seemed rather the consequence of a highly-wrought state of mind and tension of spirit than of fear or doubt.

"The concoction of the draught has been perfect," said he, in answer to Georgiana's look. "Unless all my science have deceived me, it cannot fail."

"Save on your account, my dearest Aylmer," observed his wife, "I might wish to put off this birthmark of mortality by relinquishing mortality itself in preference to any other mode. Life is but a sad possession to those who have attained precisely the degree of moral advancement at which I stand. Were I weaker and blinder it might be happiness. Were I stronger, it might be endured hopefully. But, being what I find myself, methinks I am of all mortals the most fit to die."

"You are fit for heaven without tasting death!" replied her husband "But why do we speak of dying? The draught cannot fail. Behold its effect upon this plant."

On the window seat there stood a geranium diseased with yellow blotches, which had overspread all its leaves. Aylmer poured a small quantity of the liquid upon the soil in which it grew. In a little time, when the roots of the plant had taken up the moisture, the unsightly blotches began to be extinguished in a living verdure.

"There needed no proof," said Georgiana, quietly. "Give me the goblet I joyfully stake all upon your word."

"Drink, then, thou lofty creature!" exclaimed Aylmer, with fervid admiration. "There is no taint of imperfection on thy spirit. Thy sensible frame, too, shall soon be all perfect."

She quaffed the liquid and returned the goblet to his hand.

"It is grateful," said she with a placid smile. "Methinks it is like water from a heavenly fountain; for it contains I know not what of unobtrusive fragrance and deliciousness. It allays a feverish thirst that had parched me for many days. Now, dearest, let me sleep. My earthly senses are closing over my spirit like the leaves around the heart of a rose at sunset."

She spoke the last words with a gentle reluctance, as if it required almost more energy than she could command to pronounce the faint and lingering syllables. Scarcely had they loitered through her lips ere she was lost in slumber. Aylmer sat by her side, watching her aspect with the emotions proper to a man the whole value of whose existence was involved in the process now to be tested. Mingled with this mood, however, was the philosophic investigation characteristic of the man of science. Not the minutest symptom escaped him. A heightened flush of the cheek, a slight irregularity of breath, a quiver of the eyelid, a hardly perceptible tremor through the frame,--such were the details which, as the moments passed, he wrote down in his folio volume. Intense thought had set its stamp upon every previous page of that volume, but the thoughts of years were all concentrated upon the last.

While thus employed, he failed not to gaze often at the fatal hand, and not without a shudder. Yet once, by a strange and unaccountable impulse he pressed it with his lips. His spirit recoiled, however, in the very act, and Georgiana, out of the midst of her deep sleep, moved uneasily and murmured as if in remonstrance. Again Aylmer resumed his watch. Nor was it without avail. The crimson hand, which at first had been strongly visible upon the marble paleness of Georgiana's cheek, now grew more faintly outlined. She remained not less pale than ever; but the birthmark with every breath that came and went, lost somewhat of its former distinctness. Its presence had been awful; its departure was more awful still. Watch the stain of the rainbow fading out the sky, and you will know how that mysterious symbol passed away.

"By Heaven! it is well-nigh gone!" said Aylmer to himself, in almost irrepressible ecstasy. "I can scarcely trace it now. Success! success! And now it is like the faintest rose color. The lightest flush of blood across her cheek would overcome it. But she is so pale!"

He drew aside the window curtain and suffered the light of natural day to fall into the room and rest upon her cheek. At the same time he heard a gross, hoarse chuckle, which he had long known as his servant Aminadab's expression of delight.

"Ah, clod! ah, earthly mass!" cried Aylmer, laughing in a sort of frenzy, "you have served me well! Matter and spirit--earth and heaven --have both done their part in this! Laugh, thing of the senses! You have earned the right to laugh."

These exclamations broke Georgiana's sleep. She slowly unclosed her eyes and gazed into the mirror which her husband had arranged for that purpose. A faint smile flitted over her lips when she recognized how barely perceptible was now that crimson hand which had once blazed forth with such disastrous brilliancy as to scare away all their happiness. But then her eyes sought Aylmer's face with a trouble and anxiety that he could by no means account for.

"My poor Aylmer!" murmured she.

"Poor? Nay, richest, happiest, most favored!" exclaimed he. "My peerless bride, it is successful! You are perfect!"

"My poor Aylmer," she repeated, with a more than human tenderness, "you have aimed loftily; you have done nobly. Do not repent that with so high and pure a feeling, you have rejected the best the earth could offer. Aylmer, dearest Aylmer, I am dying!"

Alas! it was too true! The fatal hand had grappled with the mystery of life, and was the bond by which an angelic spirit kept itself in union with a mortal frame. As the last crimson tint of the birthmark--that sole token of human imperfection--faded from her cheek, the parting breath of the now perfect woman passed into the atmosphere, and her soul, lingering a moment near her husband, took its heavenward flight. Then a hoarse, chuckling laugh was heard again! Thus ever does the gross fatality of earth exult in its invariable triumph over the immortal essence which, in this dim sphere of half development, demands the completeness of a higher state. Yet, had Alymer reached a profounder wisdom, he need not thus have flung away the happiness which would have woven his mortal life of the selfsame texture with the celestial. The momentary circumstance was too strong for him; he failed to look beyond the shadowy scope of time, and, living once for all in eternity, to find the perfect future in the present.

Comparing The Birthmark and Dr. Heidegger's Experiment

Comparing Nathaniel Hawthorne

"Dr Heidegger's Experiment"

An eccentric aging physician, Dr. Heidegger, calls together his old
friends and contemporaries to test his waters of the "fountain of
youth." As the doctor himself sits by to enjoy the show, each of his
four aged friends eagerly quaffs more and more of the magic potion,
each draught further carrying them backwards into their shared youth.
Having grown young, smooth-skinned and agile again, the three men begin
to fight for the favors of the fourth compatriot now restored to her
former beauty. In the heat of the fracas, they begin to grow tired and
within minutes the effect of the "waters" has worn away. The
participants in the brief respite from old age are devastated by the
transience of the experience. Despite Heidegger's warning that he has
learned to appreciate the advantage of age by watching the four of them
make themselves fools, they learned no such lesson and resolve to make
a pilgrimage to Florida to seek the Fountain.

"The Birthmark"

A devoted scientist, in a brief step from his laboratory pursuits,
marries a beautiful woman with a single physical flaw: a birthmark on
her face. Aylmer becomes obsessed with the imperfection and needs to
remove it, to be happy with his wife. The tale evolves around his
progressive frenzy to use his scientific skills to render his bride
perfect and the faith of his submissive wife that the union can survive
only if he accomplishes his goal. The author tells us that Aylmer "had
devoted himself, however, too unreservedly to scientific studies..."
and, in the secrecy of his laboratory he prepares the potion for
Georgiana that results in the disappearance of the birthmark and the
death of Aylmer's experimental subject.

Comparison

"Dr. Heidegger's Experiment" and "The Birthmark" can be compared in
many aspects. Nathaniel Hawthorne used many of the same writing
techniques in both stories. Both pieces share two common reoccuring
themes. Also, the symbols in the story have like meanings. In both
"Dr. Heidegger's Experiment" and "The Birthmark", Hawthorne uses the
same writing style. In both stories Nathaniel Hawthorne writes as a
realist, as opposed to a romancer. In "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment"
Hawthorne writes about an actual event in history, Ponce de Leon's
search for the Fountain of Youth on the Florida Peninsula. It does not
matter if the Fountain of Youth exists or not it is a "real" legend.
"Dr Heidegger's Experiment" is a situation that could have taken
place. It is not a fantasy. "The Birthmark" is also a piece that
could have happened. A beautiful woman could certainly be born with a
disturbing birthmark on her face. In "The Birthmark" Hawthorne writes
about a real situation with real characters. Again in both "Dr
Heidegger's Experiment" and "The Birthmark", Hawthorne uses a very
vague title. For the purpose of "Dr Heidegger's Experiment", Hawthorne
wants you to ponder on what kind of experiment Heidegger was
conducting, psychological or p! hysical. In the case of "The
Birthmark", Hawthorne wants you to think if the birthmark was what
made the main character, Aylmer, kills his wife or if it went beyond
just that physical marking. Furthermore, in the pair of stories
Hawthorne uses several of the same literary devices, for instance,
symbolism. In "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment"

Along with the same writing techniques, Nathaniel Hawthorne also used
two of the same themes in the stories. Hawthorne uses reoccurring
themes of his writing in many of his stories. In both "Dr. Heidegger's
Experiment" and "The Birthmark" Hawthorne uses, the impossibility of
earthly perfection moreover the loss of innocence. In "Dr. Heidegger's
Experiment" the doctor's four friends are all in search of earthly
perfection. This is why they choose to drink the water from the
Fountain of Youth, to become forever young. The friends are made young
again by the water, but their youth soon wears away. If it had
remained for ever they would have achieved earthly perfection, and that
is impossible. In "The Birthmark", Georgiana is almost a model of
earthly perfection except for that horrid birthmark. Aylmer believes
that Georgiana can be that model of perfection and he can get rid of
the birthmark. He is successful in getting rid of Georgiana's
birthmark and she is perfect, b! ut dead. Hawthorne is saying that
she could not live and be perfect, hence the impossibility of earthly
perfection. In "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment" the theme of the loss of
innocence is loosely addressed. Dr. Heidegger says: "Think what a sin
and shame it would be, if, with your peculiar advantages, you should
not become patterns of virtue and wisdom to all the young people of the
age!" Heidegger tells his friends that they have already lost their
innocence and gained wisdom in their old age, and what a thing it would
be if they could have that wisdom and be youthful at the same time.
Yet, when the friends return to their youth the friends are innocent,
naive, and even foolish beings. In "The Birthmark" Georgiana is
completely innocent with her birthmark, which represents her
innocence. When Aylmer removes the birthmark, not only has her
innocence been taken but also her life.

Similarly as Hawthorne used like writing techniques and themes in both
"Dr. Heidegger's Experiment" and "The Birthmark", he also used symbols
to represent the same ideas. In "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment" Hawthorne
uses Dr Heidegger's friends to represent flawed beings. Their flaw is
their age. In "The Birthmark", Hawthorne uses the birthmark to
symbolize a flaw on a perfect being as well. In this case it is
Georgiana. In both stories that was an object that represented the
"right" thing to do. In the case of "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment" the
symbol of write and wrong was the near dead butterfly who was brought
back to life by the spilt water of youth. The butterfly is
traditionally a symbol of metamorphosis, and it makes you wonder is if
is right to change the natural metamorphic of a person's life. In "The
Birthmark", Aminidad, Aylmer's assistant symbolizes the right choice.
He is aware that the potion that will remove Georgiana's birthmark will
also kill her. Amini! dad does not speak to Aylmer about this because
he "has no right" being only Aylmer's assistant. The last of the
symbols that connect "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment" and "The Birthmark"
are the Water of Youth and Aylmer's potion. In "Dr. Heidegger's
Experiment" the water from the Fountain of Youth symbolizes a
disturbance of nature. It is natural for a person to age and the
potion defies nature's law if age. In "The Birthmark" the potion also
symbolizes a disturbance of natural. Georgiana's birthmark was
natural, and when Aylmer removed it with the potion, nature was again
defied.

Nathaniel Hawthorne's two writings, "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment" and
"The Birthmark" contain many parallels. These, like other Hawthorne
stories share many of the same themes and morals. Hawthorne had his own
obsessions that included a horrified fascination with "cold
philosophy." He approached the romantic notion of the ability of
science to destroy nature as fictive "horror stories" of biological
research out of control. He embodied this concern in his several
characterizations of scientists, who were also physicians, working in
isolation in their laboratories to gain intellectual control over the
mysteries of nature. Although the notion of amoral, or immoral,
experimentation is dated in these period pieces, the concerns remain
ethical problems in the modern world of medicine

Dr. Heidegger's Experient by Nathaniel Hawthorne

That very singular man, old Dr. Heidegger, once invited four venerable friends to meet him in his study. There were three white-bearded gentlemen, Mr. Medbourne, Colonel Killigrew, and Mr. Gascoigne, and a withered gentlewoman, whose name was the Widow Wycherly. They were all melancholy old creatures, who had been unfortunate in life, and whose greatest misfortune it was that they were not long ago in their graves. Mr. Medbourne, in the vigor of his age, had been a prosperous merchant, but had lost his all by a frantic speculation, and was now little better than a mendicant. Colonel Killigrew had wasted his best years, and his health and substance, in the pursuit of sinful pleasures, which had given birth to a brood of pains, such as the gout, and divers other torments of soul and body. Mr. Gascoigne was a ruined politician, a man of evil fame, or at least had been so till time had buried him from the knowledge of the present generation, and made him obscure instead of infamous. As for the Widow Wycherly, tradition tells us that she was a great beauty in her day; but, for a long while past, she had lived in deep seclusion, on account of certain scandalous stories which had prejudiced the gentry of the town against her. It is a circumstance worth mentioning that each of these three old gentlemen, Mr. Medbourne, Colonel Killigrew, and Mr. Gascoigne, were early lovers of the Widow Wycherly, and had once been on the point of cutting each other's throats for her sake. And, before proceeding further, I will merely hint that Dr. Heidegger and all his foul guests were sometimes thought to be a little beside themselves,--as is not unfrequently the case with old people, when worried either by present troubles or woful recollections.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"See!" answered Dr. Heidegger.

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

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

"Did you never hear of the 'Fountain of Youth?' " asked Dr. Heidegger, "which Ponce De Leon, the Spanish adventurer, went in search of two or three centuries ago?"

"But did Ponce De Leon ever find it?" said the Widow Wycherly.

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

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

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

While he spoke, Dr. Heidegger had been filling the four champagne glasses with the water of the Fountain of Youth. It was apparently impregnated with an effervescent gas, for little bubbles were continually ascending from the depths of the glasses, and bursting in silvery spray at the surface. As the liquor diffused a pleasant perfume, the old people doubted not that it possessed cordial and comfortable properties; and though utter sceptics as to its rejuvenescent power, they were inclined to swallow it at once. But Dr. Heidegger besought them to stay a moment.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Dance with me, Clara!" cried Colonel Killigrew

"No, no, I will be her partner!" shouted Mr. Gascoigne.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

lists of short stories with a twist

"The Storm"---------------------Kate Chopin

"Desiree"s Baby"--------------Kate Chopin

"Story of an Hour"-------------Kate Chopin

"Cask of Amontillado"--------Edgar Allen Poe

"Lamb to the Slaughter"-----Roald Dahl

"Man from the South"---------Roald Dahl

"Monkey's Paw"----------------Jacobsen

"Button, Button"------------------Mathison

"Contents of a Dead Man's Pocket"-----Jack Finney

"One Ordinary Day, With Peanuts"-------Shirley Jackson

"The Lottery"-----------------------Shirley Jackson

"Charles"----------------------------Shirley Jackson

"Wolf"----------------------------------H.H.Munro

"Pig"---------------------------------Roald Dahl

"Night Drive" ----------------------Lucille Fletcher

"The Plot"--------------------------Tom Herzog

"The Necklace" ----------------- Guy de Maupassant

"The Open Window" ----------- Saki

"The Interlopers" --------------- Saki

"The Luncheon" --------------- W. Somerset Maugham

"Roman Fever" ----------------- Edith Wharton

"Footfalls" ------------------------ Wilbur Daniel Steel

"Grand Inquisitor" ------------- Gladys Bronwyn Stern

"Beware of the Dog"-----------Dahl

August Heat--------------------

"A Rose for Emily"---------- by William Faulkner

"Strawberry Spring" -----------by Stephen King

"Dr. Heidegger's Experiment" ------by Nathaniel Hawthorne

"The Black Cat"------------------ by Edgar Allan Poe

"Helping Hand"--------------------H.H.Munro

"Big Black Good Man"-----------Richard Wright

"Good Country People"---------Flannery O'Connor

"The Necklace" --------------------by Guy de Maupassant

"The Bet"------------------------- by Anton Chekhov

"The Pedestrian"----------------- by Ray Bradbury

"Everyday Use"------------------- by Alice Walker

"The Pit and the Pendulum"----- by Edgar Allan Poe

"The Black Cat"------------------- by Edgar Allan Poe

"The Tell-Tale Heart" -----------by Edgar Allan Poe

"A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings"--------- by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

"The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World"--------- by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

"The Gift of the Magi" ------------by O. Henry

"The Ransom of Red Chief"---- by O. Henry

"The Last Leaf"--------------------- by O. Henry

"The Cop and the Anthem" -----by O. Henry

"Poison"------------------------------ by Roald Dahl

"Most Dangerous Game"-------- by Richard Connell

"The Lady or the Tiger?"------- by Frank Stockton

"By the Shores of Babylon"----- by Stephen Vincent Benet

"The Invisible Man"--------------- by Gilbert Keitih Chesterton

"Why Don't You Look Where You're Going?" by Walter Van Tilburg Clark

"Young Goodman Brown"---- by Nathaniel Hawthorne

"The Minister's Black Veil"----- by Nathaniel Hawthorne

"Dr. Rappacinni's Daughter"--- by Nathaniel Hawthorne

"The Legend of Sleepy Hollow"- by Washington Irving

"The Devil and Tom Walker"---- by Washington Irving

"He Thinks He's Wonderful"-----by F. Scott Fitzgerald

"The Jilting of Granny Weatherall"----- by Katherine Anne Porter

"The Far and Near"------------by Thomas Wolfe

"The Rocking-Horse Winner-----" by D. H. Lawrence

"The Landlady"--------- by Roald Dahl

"Lather and Nothing Else"--------- by Hernando Tellez

"Death Trap" ----------by Paul Gallico

"Test"------------------ by Theodore L. Thomas

"He Thinks He's Wonderful" by F. Scott Fitzgerald

After the college-board examinations in June, Basil Duke Lee and
five other boys from St. Regis School boarded the train for the
West. Two got out at Pittsburgh, one slanted south toward St.
Louis and two stayed in Chicago; from then on Basil was alone. It
was the first time in his life that he had ever felt the need of
tranquillity, but now he took long breaths of it; for, though
things had gone better toward the end, he had had an unhappy year
at school.

He wore one of those extremely flat derbies in vogue during the
twelfth year of the century, and a blue business suit become a
little too short for his constantly lengthening body. Within he
was by turns a disembodied spirit, almost unconscious of his person
and moving in a mist of impressions and emotions, and a fiercely
competitive individual trying desperately to control the rush of
events that were the steps in his own evolution from child to man.
He believed that everything was a matter of effort--the current
principle of American education--and his fantastic ambition was
continually leading him to expect too much. He wanted to be a
great athlete, popular, brilliant and always happy. During this
year at school, where he had been punished for his "freshness," for
fifteen years of thorough spoiling at home, he had grown uselessly
introspective, and this interfered with that observation of others
which is the beginning of wisdom. It was apparent that before he
obtained much success in dealing with the world he would know that
he'd been in a fight.

He spent the afternoon in Chicago, walking the streets and avoiding
members of the underworld. He bought a detective story called "In
the Dead of the Night," and at five o'clock recovered his suitcase
from the station check room and boarded the Chicago, Milwaukee and
St. Paul. Immediately he encountered a contemporary, also bound
home from school.

Margaret Torrence was fourteen; a serious girl, considered
beautiful by a sort of tradition, for she had been beautiful as a
little girl. A year and a half before, after a breathless
struggle, Basil had succeeded in kissing her on the forehead. They
met now with extraordinary joy; for a moment each of them to the
other represented home, the blue skies of the past, the summer
afternoons ahead.

He sat with Margaret and her mother in the dining car that night.
Margaret saw that he was no longer the ultraconfident boy of a year
before; his brightness was subdued, and the air of consideration in
his face--a mark of his recent discovery that others had wills as
strong as his, and more power--appeared to Margaret as a charming
sadness. The spell of peace after a struggle was still upon him.
Margaret had always liked him--she was of the grave, conscientious
type who sometimes loved him and whose love he could never return--
and now she could scarcely wait to tell people how attractive he
had grown.

After dinner they went back to the observation car and sat on the
deserted rear platform while the train pulled them visibly westward
between the dark wide farms. They talked of people they knew, of
where they had gone for Easter vacation, of the plays they had seen
in New York.

"Basil, we're going to get an automobile," she said, "and I'm going
to learn to drive."

"That's fine." He wondered if his grandfather would let him drive
the electric sometimes this summer.

The light from inside the car fell on her young face, and he spoke
impetuously, borne on by the rush of happiness that he was going
home: "You know something? You know you're the prettiest girl in
the city?"

At the moment when the remark blurred with the thrilling night in
Margaret's heart, Mrs. Torrence appeared to fetch her to bed.

Basil sat alone on the platform for a while, scarcely realizing
that she was gone, at peace with himself for another hour and
content that everything should remain patternless and shapeless
until tomorrow.


II


Fifteen is of all ages the most difficult to locate--to put one's
fingers on and say, "That's the way I was." The melancholy Jacques
does not select it for mention, and all one can know is that
somewhere between thirteen, boyhood's majority, and seventeen, when
one is a sort of counterfeit young man, there is a time when youth
fluctuates hourly between one world and another--pushed ceaselessly
forward into unprecedented experiences and vainly trying to
struggle back to the days when nothing had to be paid for.
Fortunately none of our contemporaries remember much more than we
do of how we behaved in those days; nevertheless the curtain is
about to be drawn aside for an inspection of Basil's madness that
summer.

To begin with, Margaret Torrence, in one of those moods of idealism
which overcome the most matter-of-fact girls, gave it as her rapt
opinion that Basil was wonderful. Having practised believing
things all year at school, and having nothing much to believe at
that moment, her friends accepted the fact. Basil suddenly became
a legend. There were outbreaks of giggling when girls encountered
him on the street, but he suspected nothing at all.

One night, when he had been home a week, he and Riply Buckner went
on to an after-dinner gathering on Imogene Bissel's veranda. As
they came up the walk Margaret and two other girls suddenly clung
together, whispered convulsively and pursued one another around the
yard, uttering strange cries--an inexplicable business that ended
only when Gladys Van Schellinger, tenderly and impressively
accompanied by her mother's maid, arrived in a limousine.

All of them were a little strange to one another. Those who had
been East at school felt a certain superiority, which, however, was
more than counterbalanced by the fact that romantic pairings and
quarrels and jealousies and adventures, of which they were
lamentably ignorant, had gone on while they had been away.

After the ice cream at nine they sat together on the warm stone
steps in a quiet confusion that was halfway between childish
teasing and adolescent coquetry. Last year the boys would have
ridden their bicycles around the yard; now they had all begun to
wait for something to happen.

They knew it was going to happen, the plainest girls, the shyest
boys; they had begun to associate with others the romantic world of
summer night that pressed deeply and sweetly on their senses.
Their voices drifted in a sort of broken harmony in to Mrs. Bissel,
who sat reading beside an open window.

"No, look out. You'll break it. Bay-zil!"

"Rip-lee!"

"Sure I did!"

Laughter.


"--on Moonlight Bay
We could hear their voices call--"


"Did you see--"

"Connie, don't--don't! You tickle. Look out!"

Laughter.

"Going to the lake tomorrow?"

"Going Friday."

"Elwood's home."

"Is Elwood home?"


"--you have broken my heart--"


"Look out now!"

"Look out!"

Basil sat beside Riply on the balustrade, listening to Joe Gorman
singing. It was one of the griefs of his life that he could not
sing "so people could stand it," and he conceived a sudden
admiration for Joe Gorman, reading into his personality the
thrilling clearness of those sounds that moved so confidently
through the dark air.

They evoked for Basil a more dazzling night than this, and other
more remote and enchanted girls. He was sorry when the voice died
away, and there was a rearranging of seats and a businesslike quiet--
the ancient game of Truth had begun.

"What's your favorite color, Bill?"

"Green," supplies a friend.

"Sh-h-h! Let him alone."

Bill says, "Blue."

"What's your favorite girl's name?"

"Mary," says Bill.

"Mary Haupt! Bill's got a crush on Mary Haupt!"

She was a cross-eyed girl, a familiar personification of
repulsiveness.

"Who would you rather kiss than anybody?"

Across the pause a snicker stabbed the darkness.

"My mother."

"No, but what girl?"

"Nobody."

"That's not fair. Forfeit! Come on, Margaret."

"Tell the truth, Margaret."

She told the truth and a moment later Basil looked down in surprise
from his perch; he had just learned that he was her favorite boy.

"Oh, yes-s!" he exclaimed sceptically. "Oh, yes-s! How about
Hubert Blair?"

He renewed a casual struggle with Riply Buckner and presently they
both fell off the balustrade. The game became an inquisition into
Gladys Van Schellinger's carefully chaperoned heart.

"What's your favorite sport?"

"Croquet."

The admission was greeted by a mild titter.

"Favorite boy."

"Thurston Kohler."

A murmur of disappointment.

"Who's he?"

"A boy in the East."

This was manifestly an evasion.

"Who's your favorite boy here?"

Gladys hesitated. "Basil," she said at length.

The faces turned up to the balustrade this time were less teasing,
less jocular. Basil depreciated the matter with "Oh, yes-s! Sure!
Oh, yes-s!" But he had a pleasant feeling of recognition, a
familiar delight.

Imogene Bissel, a dark little beauty and the most popular girl in
their crowd, took Gladys' place. The interlocutors were tired of
gastronomic preferences--the first question went straight to the
point.

"Imogene, have you ever kissed a boy?"

"No." A cry of wild unbelief. "I have not!" she declared
indignantly.

"Well, have you ever been kissed?"

Pink but tranquil, she nodded, adding, "I couldn't help it."

"Who by?"

"I won't tell."

"Oh-h-h! How about Hubert Blair?"

"What's your favorite book, Imogene?"

"Beverly of Graustark."

"Favorite girl?"

"Passion Johnson."

"Who's she?"

"Oh, just a girl at school."

Mrs. Bissel had fortunately left the window.

"Who's your favorite boy?"

Imogene answered steadily, "Basil Lee."

This time an impressed silence fell. Basil was not surprised--we
are never surprised at our own popularity--but he knew that these
were not those ineffable girls, made up out of books and faces
momentarily encountered, whose voices he had heard for a moment in
Joe Gorman's song. And when, presently, the first telephone rang
inside, calling a daughter home, and the girls, chattering like
birds, piled all together into Gladys Van Schellinger's limousine,
he lingered back in the shadow so as not to seem to be showing off.
Then, perhaps because he nourished a vague idea that if he got to
know Joe Gorman very well he would get to sing like him, he
approached him and asked him to go to Lambert's for a soda.

Joe Gorman was a tall boy with white eyebrows and a stolid face who
had only recently become one of their "crowd." He did not like
Basil, who, he considered, had been "stuck up" with him last year,
but he was acquisitive of useful knowledge and he was momentarily
overwhelmed by Basil's success with girls.

It was cheerful in Lambert's, with great moths batting against the
screen door and languid couples in white dresses and light suits
spread about the little tables. Over their sodas, Joe proposed
that Basil come home with him to spend the night; Basil's
permission was obtained over the telephone.

Passing from the gleaming store into the darkness, Basil was
submerged in an unreality in which he seemed to see himself from
the outside, and the pleasant events of the evening began to take
on fresh importance.

Disarmed by Joe's hospitality, he began to discuss the matter.

"That was a funny thing that happened tonight," he said, with a
disparaging little laugh.

"What was?"

"Why, all those girls saying I was their favorite boy." The remark
jarred on Joe. "It's a funny thing," went on Basil. "I was sort
of unpopular at school for a while, because I was fresh, I guess.
But the thing must be that some boys are popular with boys and some
are popular with girls."

He had put himself in Joe's hands, but he was unconscious of it;
even Joe was only aware of a certain desire to change the subject.

"When I get my car," suggested Joe, up in his room, "we could take
Imogene and Margaret and go for rides."

"All right."

"You could have Imogene and I'd take Margaret, or anybody I wanted.
Of course I know they don't like me as well as they do you."

"Sure they do. It's just because you haven't been in our crowd
very long yet."

Joe was sensitive on that point and the remark did not please him.
But Basil continued: "You ought to be more polite to the older
people if you want to be popular. You didn't say how do you do to
Mrs. Bissel tonight."

"I'm hungry," said Joe quickly. "Let's go down to the pantry and
get something to eat."

Clad only in their pajamas, they went downstairs. Principally to
dissuade Basil from pursuing the subject, Joe began to sing in a
low voice:


"Oh, you beautiful doll,
You great--big--"


But the evening, coming after the month of enforced humility at
school, had been too much for Basil. He got a little awful. In
the kitchen, under the impression that his advice had been asked,
he broke out again:

"For instance, you oughtn't to wear those white ties. Nobody does
that that goes East to school." Joe, a little red, turned around
from the ice box and Basil felt a slight misgiving. But he pursued
with: "For instance, you ought to get your family to send you East
to school. It'd be a great thing for you. Especially if you want
to go East to college, you ought to first go East to school. They
take it out of you."

Feeling that he had nothing special to be taken out of him, Joe
found the implication distasteful. Nor did Basil appear to him at
that moment to have been perfected by the process.

"Do you want cold chicken or cold ham?" They drew up chairs to the
kitchen table. "Have some milk?"

"Thanks."

Intoxicated by the three full meals he had had since supper, Basil
warmed to his subject. He built up Joe's life for him little by
little, transformed him radiantly from what was little more than a
Midwestern bumpkin to an Easterner bursting with savoir-faire and
irresistible to girls. Going into the pantry to put away the milk,
Joe paused by the open window for a breath of quiet air; Basil
followed. "The thing is if a boy doesn't get it taken out of him
at school, he gets it taken out of him at college," he was saying.

Moved by some desperate instinct, Joe opened the door and stepped
out onto the back porch. Basil followed. The house abutted on the
edge of the bluff occupied by the residential section, and the two
boys stood silent for a moment, gazing at the scattered lights of
the lower city. Before the mystery of the unknown human life
coursing through the streets below, Basil felt the purport of his
words grow thin and pale.

He wondered suddenly what he had said and why it had seemed
important to him, and when Joe began to sing again softly, the
quiet mood of the early evening, the side of him that was best,
wisest and most enduring, stole over him once more. The flattery,
the vanity, the fatuousness of the last hour moved off, and when he
spoke it was almost in a whisper:

"Let's walk around the block."

The sidewalk was warm to their bare feet. It was only midnight,
but the square was deserted save for their whitish figures,
inconspicuous against the starry darkness. They snorted with glee
at their daring. Once a shadow, with loud human shoes, crossed the
street far ahead, but the sound served only to increase their own
unsubstantiality. Slipping quickly through the clearings made by
gas lamps among the trees, they rounded the block, hurrying when
they neared the Gorman house as though they had been really lost in
a midsummer night's dream.

Up in Joe's room, they lay awake in the darkness.

"I talked too much," Basil thought. "I probably sounded pretty
bossy and maybe I made him sort of mad. But probably when we
walked around the block he forgot everything I said."

Alas, Joe had forgotten nothing--except the advice by which Basil
had intended him to profit.

"I never saw anybody as stuck up," he said to himself wrathfully.
"He thinks he's wonderful. He thinks he's so darn popular with
girls."


III


An element of vast importance had made its appearance with the
summer; suddenly the great thing in Basil's crowd was to own an
automobile. Fun no longer seemed available save at great
distances, at suburban lakes or remote country clubs. Walking
downtown ceased to be a legitimate pastime. On the contrary, a
single block from one youth's house to another's must be navigated
in a car. Dependent groups formed around owners and they began to
wield what was, to Basil at least, a disconcerting power.

On the morning of a dance at the lake he called up Riply Buckner.

"Hey, Rip, how you going out to Connie's tonight?"

"With Elwood Leaming."

"Has he got a lot of room?"

Riply seemed somewhat embarrassed. "Why, I don't think he has.
You see, he's taking Margaret Torrence and I'm taking Imogene
Bissel."

"Oh!"

Basil frowned. He should have arranged all this a week ago. After
a moment he called up Joe Gorman.

"Going to the Davies' tonight, Joe?"

"Why, yes."

"Have you got room in your car--I mean, could I go with you?"

"Why, yes, I suppose so."

There was a perceptible lack of warmth in his voice.

"Sure you got plenty of room?"

"Sure. We'll call for you quarter to eight."

Basil began preparations at five. For the second time in his life
he shaved, completing the operation by cutting a short straight
line under his nose. It bled profusely, but on the advice of
Hilda, the maid, he finally stanched the flow with little pieces of
toilet paper. Quite a number of pieces were necessary; so, in
order to facilitate breathing, he trimmed it down with a scissors,
and with this somewhat awkward mustache of paper and gore clinging
to his upper lip, wandered impatiently around the house.

At six he began working on it again, soaking off the tissue paper
and dabbing at the persistently freshening crimson line. It dried
at length, but when he rashly hailed his mother it opened once more
and the tissue paper was called back into play.

At quarter to eight, dressed in blue coat and white flannels, he
drew one last bar of powder across the blemish, dusted it carefully
with his handkerchief and hurried out to Joe Gorman's car. Joe was
driving in person, and in front with him were Lewis Crum and Hubert
Blair. Basil got in the big rear seat alone and they drove without
stopping out of the city onto the Black Bear Road, keeping their
backs to him and talking in low voices together. He thought at
first that they were going to pick up other boys; now he was
shocked, and for a moment he considered getting out of the car, but
this would imply that he was hurt. His spirit, and with it his
face, hardened a little and he sat without speaking or being spoken
to for the rest of the ride.

After half an hour the Davies' house, a huge rambling bungalow
occupying a small peninsula in the lake, floated into sight.
Lanterns outlined its shape and wavered in gleaming lines on the
gold-and-rose colored water, and as they came near, the low notes
of bass horns and drums were blown toward them from the lawn.

Inside Basil looked about for Imogene. There was a crowd around
her seeking dances, but she saw Basil; his heart bounded at her
quick intimate smile.

"You can have the fourth, Basil, and the eleventh and the second
extra. . . . How did you hurt your lip?"

"Cut it shaving," he said hurriedly. "How about supper?"

"Well, I have to have supper with Riply because he brought me."

"No, you don't," Basil assured her.

"Yes, she does," insisted Riply, standing close at hand. "Why
don't you get your own girl for supper?"

--but Basil had no girl, though he was as yet unaware of the fact.

After the fourth dance, Basil led Imogene down to the end of the
pier, where they found seats in a motorboat.

"Now what?" she said.

He did not know. If he had really cared for her he would have
known. When her hand rested on his knee for a moment he did not
notice it. Instead, he talked. He told her how he had pitched on
the second baseball team at school and had once beaten the first in
a five-inning game. He told her that the thing was that some boys
were popular with boys and some boys were popular with girls--he,
for instance, was popular with girls. In short, he unloaded
himself.

At length, feeling that he had perhaps dwelt disproportionately on
himself, he told her suddenly that she was his favorite girl.

Imogene sat there, sighing a little in the moonlight. In another
boat, lost in the darkness beyond the pier, sat a party of four.
Joe Gorman was singing:


"My little love--
--in honey man,
He sure has won my--"


"I thought you might want to know," said Basil to Imogene. "I
thought maybe you thought I liked somebody else. The truth game
didn't get around to me the other night."

"What?" asked Imogene vaguely. She had forgotten the other night,
all nights except this, and she was thinking of the magic in Joe
Gorman's voice. She had the next dance with him; he was going to
teach her the words of a new song. Basil was sort of peculiar,
telling her all this stuff. He was good-looking and attractive and
all that, but--she wanted the dance to be over. She wasn't having
any fun.

The music began inside--"Everybody's Doing It," played with many
little nervous jerks on the violins.

"Oh, listen!" she cried, sitting up and snapping her fingers. "Do
you know how to rag?"

"Listen, Imogene"--He half realized that something had slipped away--
"let's sit out this dance--you can tell Joe you forgot."

She rose quickly. "Oh, no, I can't!"

Unwillingly Basil followed her inside. It had not gone well--he
had talked too much again. He waited moodily for the eleventh
dance so that he could behave differently. He believed now that he
was in love with Imogene. His self-deception created a tightness
in his throat, a counterfeit of longing and desire.

Before the eleventh dance he was aware that some party was being
organized from which he was purposely excluded. There were
whisperings and arguings among some of the boys, and unnatural
silences when he came near. He heard Joe Gorman say to Riply
Buckner, "We'll just be gone three days. If Gladys can't go, why
don't you ask Connie? The chaperons'll--" he changed his sentence
as he saw Basil--"and we'll all go to Smith's for ice-cream soda."

Later, Basil took Riply Buckner aside but failed to elicit any
information: Riply had not forgotten Basil's attempt to rob him of
Imogene tonight.

"It wasn't about anything," he insisted. "We're going to Smith's,
honest. . . . How'd you cut your lip?"

"Cut it shaving."

When his dance with Imogene came she was even vaguer than before,
exchanging mysterious communications with various girls as they
moved around the room, locked in the convulsive grip of the Grizzly
Bear. He led her out to the boat again, but it was occupied, and
they walked up and down the pier while he tried to talk to her and
she hummed:


"My little lov-in honey man--"


"Imogene, listen. What I wanted to ask you when we were on the
boat before was about the night we played Truth. Did you really
mean what you said?"

"Oh, what do you want to talk about that silly game for?"

It had reached her ears, not once but several times, that Basil
thought he was wonderful--news that was flying about with as much
volatility as the rumor of his graces two weeks before. Imogene
liked to agree with everyone--and she had agreed with several
impassioned boys that Basil was terrible. And it was difficult not
to dislike him for her own disloyalty.

But Basil thought that only ill luck ended the intermission before
he could accomplish his purpose; though what he had wanted he had
not known.

Finally, during the intermission, Margaret Torrence, whom he had
neglected, told him the truth.

"Are you going on the touring party up to the St. Croix River?" she
asked. She knew he was not.

"What party?"

"Joe Gorman got it up. I'm going with Elwood Leaming."

"No, I'm not going," he said gruffly. "I couldn't go."

"Oh!"

"I don't like Joe Gorman."

"I guess he doesn't like you much either."

"Why? What did he say?"

"Oh, nothing."

"But what? Tell me what he said."

After a minute she told him, as if reluctantly: "Well, he and
Hubert Blair said you thought--you thought you were wonderful."
Her heart misgave her.

But she remembered he had asked her for only one dance. "Joe said
you told him that all the girls thought you were wonderful."

"I never said anything like that," said Basil indignantly, "never!"

He understood--Joe Gorman had done it all, taken advantage of
Basil's talking too much--an affliction which his real friends had
always allowed for--in order to ruin him. The world was suddenly
compact of villainy. He decided to go home.

In the coat room he was accosted by Bill Kampf: "Hello, Basil, how
did you hurt your lip?"

"Cut it shaving."

"Say, are you going to this party they're getting up next week?"

"No."

"Well, look, I've got a cousin from Chicago coming to stay with us
and mother said I could have a boy out for the week-end. Her name
is Minnie Bibble."

"Minnie Bibble?" repeated Basil, vaguely revolted.

"I thought maybe you were going to that party, too, but Riply
Buckner said to ask you and I thought--"

"I've got to stay home," said Basil quickly.

"Oh, come on, Basil," he pursued. "It's only for two days, and
she's a nice girl. You'd like her."

"I don't know," Basil considered. "I'll tell you what I'll do,
Bill. I've got to get the street car home. I'll come out for the
week-end if you'll take me over to Wildwood now in your car."

"Sure I will."

Basil walked out on the veranda and approached Connie Davies.

"Good-by," he said. Try as he might, his voice was stiff and
proud. "I had an awfully good time."

"I'm sorry you're leaving so early, Basil." But she said to
herself: "He's too stuck up to have a good time. He thinks he's
wonderful."

From the veranda he could hear Imogene's laughter down at the end
of the pier. Silently he went down the steps and along the walk to
meet Bill Kampf, giving strollers a wide berth as though he felt
the sight of him would diminish their pleasure.

It had been an awful night.

Ten minutes later Bill dropped him beside the waiting trolley. A
few last picnickers sauntered aboard and the car bobbed and clanged
through the night toward St. Paul.

Presently two young girls sitting opposite Basil began looking over
at him and nudging each other, but he took no notice--he was
thinking how sorry they would all be--Imogene and Margaret, Joe and
Hubert and Riply.

"Look at him now!" they would say to themselves sorrowfully.
"President of the United States at twenty-five! Oh, if we only
hadn't been so bad to him that night!"

He thought he was wonderful!


IV


Ermine Gilberte Labouisse Bibble was in exile. Her parents had
brought her from New Orleans to Southampton in May, hoping that the
active outdoor life proper to a girl of fifteen would take her
thoughts from love. But North or South, a storm of sappling arrows
flew about her. She was "engaged" before the first of June.

Let it not be gathered from the foregoing that the somewhat hard
outlines of Miss Bibble at twenty had already begun to appear. She
was of a radiant freshness; her head had reminded otherwise not
illiterate young men of damp blue violets, pierced with blue
windows that looked into a bright soul, with today's new roses
showing through.

She was in exile. She was going to Glacier National Park to
forget. It was written that in passage she would come to Basil as
a sort of initiation, turning his eyes out from himself and giving
him a first dazzling glimpse into the world of love.

She saw him first as a quiet handsome boy with an air of
consideration in his face, which was the mark of his recent re-
discovery that others had wills as strong as his, and more power.
It appeared to Minnie--as a few months back it had appeared to
Margaret Torrence, like a charming sadness. At dinner he was
polite to Mrs. Kampf in a courteous way that he had from his
father, and he listened to Mr. Bibble's discussion of the word
"Creole" with such evident interest and appreciation that Mr.
Bibble thought, "Now here's a young boy with something TO him."

After dinner, Minnie, Basil and Bill rode into Black Bear village
to the movies, and the slow diffusion of Minnie's charm and
personality presently became the charm and personality of the
affair itself.

It was thus that all Minnie's affairs for many years had a family
likeness. She looked at Basil, a childish open look; then opened
her eyes wider as if she had some sort of comic misgivings, and
smiled--she smiled--

For all the candor of this smile, the effect--because of the
special contours of Minnie's face and independent of her mood--was
sparkling invitation. Whenever it appeared Basil seemed to be
suddenly inflated and borne upward, a little farther each time,
only to be set down when the smile had reached a point where it
must become a grin, and chose instead to melt away. It was like a
drug. In a little while he wanted nothing except to watch it with
a vast buoyant delight.

Then he wanted to see how close he could get to it.

There is a certain stage of an affair between young people when the
presence of a third party is a stimulant. Before the second day
had well begun, before Minnie and Basil had progressed beyond the
point of great gross compliments about each other's surpassing
beauty and charm, both of them had begun to think about the time
when they could get rid of their host, Bill Kampf.

In the late afternoon, when the first cool of the evening had come
down and they were fresh and thin-feeling from swimming, they sat
in a cushioned swing, piled high with pillows and shaded by the
thick veranda vines; Basil put his arm around her and leaned toward
her cheek and Minnie managed it that he touched her fresh lips
instead. And he had always learned things quickly.

They sat there for an hour, while Bill's voice reached them, now
from the pier, now from the hall above, now from the pagoda at the
end of the garden, and three saddled horses chafed their bits in
the stable and all around them the bees worked faithfully among the
flowers. Then Minnie reached up to reality, and they allowed
themselves to be found--

"Why, we were looking for you too."

And Basil, by simply waving his arms and wishing, floated
miraculously upstairs to brush his hair for dinner.

"She certainly is a wonderful girl. Oh, gosh, she certainly is a
wonderful girl!"

He mustn't lose his head. At dinner and afterward he listened with
unwavering deferential attention while Mr. Bibble talked of the
boll weevil.

"But I'm boring you. You children want to go off by yourselves."

"Not at all, Mr. Bibble. I was very interested--honestly."

"Well, you all go on and amuse yourselves. I didn't realize time
was getting on. Nowadays it's so seldom you meet a young man with
good manners and good common sense in his head, that an old man
like me is likely to go along forever."

Bill walked down with Basil and Minnie to the end of the pier.
"Hope we'll have a good sailing tomorrow. Say, I've got to drive
over to the village and get somebody for my crew. Do you want to
come along?"

"I reckon I'll sit here for a while and then go to bed," said
Minnie.

"All right. You want to come, Basil?"

"Why--why, sure, if you want me, Bill."

"You'll have to sit on a sail I'm taking over to be mended."

"I don't want to crowd you."

"You won't crowd me. I'll go get the car."

When he had gone they looked at each other in despair. But he did
not come back for an hour--something happened about the sail or the
car that took a long time. There was only the threat, making
everything more poignant and breathless, that at any minute he
WOULD be coming.

By and by they got into the motorboat and sat close together
murmuring: "This fall--" "When you come to New Orleans--" "When
I go to Yale year after next--" "When I come North to school--"
"When I get back from Glacier Park--" "Kiss me once more." . . .
"You're terrible. Do you know you're terrible? . . . You're
absolutely terrible--"

The water lapped against the posts; sometimes the boat bumped
gently on the pier; Basil undid one rope and pushed, so that they
swung off and way from the pier, and became a little island in the
night. . .

. . . next morning, while he packed his bag, she opened the door of
his room and stood beside him. Her face shone with excitement; her
dress was starched and white.

"Basil, listen! I have to tell you: Father was talking after
breakfast and he told Uncle George that he'd never met such a nice,
quiet, level-headed boy as you, and Cousin Bill's got to tutor this
month, so father asked Uncle George if he thought your family would
let you go to Glacier Park with us for two weeks so I'd have some
company." They took hands and danced excitedly around the room.
"Don't say anything about it, because I reckon he'll have to write
your mother and everything. Basil, isn't it wonderful?"

So when Basil left at eleven, there was no misery in their parting.
Mr. Bibble, going into the village for a paper, was going to escort
Basil to his train, and till the motor-car moved away the eyes of
the two young people shone and there was a secret in their waving
hands.

Basil sank back in the seat, replete with happiness. He relaxed--
to have made a success of the visit was so nice. He loved her--he
loved even her father sitting beside him, her father who was
privileged to be so close to her, to fuddle himself at that smile.

Mr. Bibble lit a cigar. "Nice weather," he said. "Nice climate up
to the end of October."

"Wonderful," agreed Basil. "I miss October now that I go East to
school."

"Getting ready for college?"

"Yes, sir; getting ready for Yale." A new pleasurable thought
occurred to him. He hesitated, but he knew that Mr. Bibble, who
liked him, would share his joy. "I took my preliminaries this
spring and I just heard from them--I passed six out of seven."

"Good for you!"

Again Basil hesitated, then he continued: "I got A in ancient
history and B in English history and English A. And I got C in
algebra A and Latin A and B. I failed French A."

"Good!" said Mr. Bibble.

"I should have passed them all," went on Basil, "but I didn't study
hard at first. I was the youngest boy in my class and I had a sort
of swelled head about it."

It was well that Mr. Bibble should know he was taking no dullard to
Glacier National Park. Mr. Bibble took a long puff of his cigar.

On second thought, Basil decided that his last remark didn't have
the right ring and he amended it a little.

"It wasn't exactly a swelled head, but I never had to study very
much, because in English I'd usually read most of the books before,
and in history I'd read a lot too." He broke off and tried again:
"I mean, when you say swelled head you think of a boy just going
around with his head swelled, sort of, saying, 'Oh, look how much I
know!' Well, I wasn't like that. I mean, I didn't think I knew
everything, but I was sort of--"

As he searched for the elusive word, Mr. Bibble said, "H'm!" and
pointed with his cigar at a spot in the lake.

"There's a boat," he said.

"Yes," agreed Basil. "I don't know much about sailing. I never
cared for it. Of course I've been out a lot, just tending boards
and all that, but most of the time you have to sit with nothing to
do. I like football."

"H'm!" said Mr. Bibble. "When I was your age I was out in the Gulf
in a catboat every day."

"I guess it's fun if you like it," conceded Basil.

"Happiest days of my life."

The station was in sight. It occurred to Basil that he should make
one final friendly gesture.

"Your daughter certainly is an attractive girl, Mr. Bibble," he
said. "I usually get along with girls all right, but I don't
usually like them very much. But I think your daughter is the most
attractive girl I ever met." Then, as the car stopped, a faint
misgiving overtook him and he was impelled to add with a
disparaging little laugh. "Good-by. I hope I didn't talk too
much."

"Not at all," said Mr. Bibble. "Good luck to you. Goo'-by."

A few minutes later, when Basil's train had pulled out, Mr. Bibble
stood at the newsstand buying a paper and already drying his
forehead against the hot July day.

"Yes, sir! That was a lesson not to do anything in a hurry," he
was saying to himself vehemently. "Imagine listening to that fresh
kid gabbling about himself all through Glacier Park! Thank the
good Lord for that little ride!"


On his arrival home, Basil literally sat down and waited. Under no
pretext would he leave the house save for short trips to the drug
store for refreshments, whence he returned on a full run. The
sound of the telephone or the door-bell galvanized him into the
rigidity of the electric chair.

That afternoon he composed a wondrous geographical poem, which he
mailed to Minnie:


Of all the fair flowers of Paris,
Of all the red roses of Rome,
Of all the deep tears of Vienna
The sadness wherever you roam,
I think of that night by the lakeside,
The beam of the moon and stars,
And the smell of an aching like perfume,
The tune of the Spanish guitars.


But Monday passed and most of Tuesday and no word came. Then, late
in the afternoon of the second day, as he moved vaguely from room
to room looking out of different windows into a barren lifeless
street, Minnie called him on the phone.

"Yes?" His heart was beating wildly.

"Basil, we're going this afternoon."

"Going!" he repeated blankly.

"Oh, Basil, I'm so sorry. Father changed his mind about taking
anybody West with us."

"Oh!"

"I'm so sorry, Basil."

"I probably couldn't have gone."

There was a moment's silence. Feeling her presence over the wire,
he could scarcely breathe, much less speak.

"Basil, can you hear me?"

"Yes."

"We may come back this way. Anyhow, remember we're going to meet
this winter in New York."

"Yes," he said, and he added suddenly: "Perhaps we won't ever meet
again."

"Of course we will. They're calling me, Basil. I've got to go.
Good-by."

He sat down beside the telephone, wild with grief. The maid found
him half an hour later bowed over the kitchen table. He knew what
had happened as well as if Minnie had told him. He had made the
same old error, undone the behavior of three days in half an hour.
It would have been no consolation if it had occurred to him that it
was just as well. Somewhere on the trip he would have let go and
things might have been worse--though perhaps not so sad. His only
thought now was that she was gone.

He lay on his bed, baffled, mistaken, miserable but not beaten.
Time after time, the same vitality that had led his spirit to a
scourging made him able to shake off the blood like water not to
forget, but to carry his wounds with him to new disasters and new
atonements--toward his unknown destiny.


Two days later his mother told him that on condition of his keeping
the batteries on charge, and washing it once a week, his
grandfather had consented to let him use the electric whenever it
was idle in the afternoon. Two hours later he was out in it,
gliding along Crest Avenue at the maximum speed permitted by the
gears and trying to lean back as if it were a Stutz Bearcat.
Imogene Bissel waved at him from in front of her house and he came
to an uncertain stop.

"You've got a car!"

"It's grandfather's," he said modestly. "I thought you were up on
that party at the St. Croix."

She shook her head. "Mother wouldn't let me go--only a few girls
went. There was a big accident over in Minneapolis and mother
won't even let me ride in a car unless there's someone over
eighteen driving."

"Listen, Imogene, do you suppose your mother meant electrics?"

"Why, I never thought--I don't know. I could go and see."

"Tell your mother it won't go over twelve miles an hour," he called
after her.

A minute later she ran joyfully down the walk. "I can go, Basil,"
she cried. "Mother never heard of any wrecks in an electric.
What'll we do?"

"Anything," he said in a reckless voice. "I didn't mean that about
this bus making only twelve miles an hour--it'll make fifteen.
Listen, let's go down to Smith's and have a claret lemonade."

"Why, Basil Lee!"








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