The Angel of the Odd by Edgar Allen Poe. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by David Patrick Lockhart. It was a chilly November afternoon. I had just consummated an unusually hearty dinner, of which the dispeptic trough formed not the least important item, and was sitting alone in the dining-room. With my feet upon the fender, and at my elbow a small table which I had rolled up to the fire, and upon which were some apologies for dessert, with some miscellaneous bottles of wine, spirit, and liquor. In the morning I had been reading Glover's Leonitis, Wilkie's Epiconiad, La Martin's Pilgrimage, Barlow's Columbia, Tuckerman's Sicily, and Griswold's Curiosities.  I made effort to arouse myself by frequent aid of lafite, and all failing I betook myself to astray newspaper and despair. Having carefully perused the column of Houses to Let, and the column of Dogs Lost, and then the columns of Wives and Apprentices run away, I attacked with great resolution the editorial matter, and reading it from beginning to end without understanding a syllable conceived the possibility of its being Chinese, and so re-read it from the end to the beginning, but with no more satisfactory result. I was about throwing it away and disgust, this folio of four pages, happy work which not even the critics criticize, when I felt my attention somewhat aroused by the paragraph which follows. The avenues to death are numerous and strange. A London paper mentions the decease of a person from a singular cause. He was playing at Puff the Dart, which had played with a long needle inserted in some worsted, and blown at a target through a tin tube. He placed the needle at the wrong end of the tube, and drawing his breath strongly to Puff the Dart forward with force, drew the needle into his throat. It entered the lungs, and a few days killed him. Upon seeing this, I fell into a great rage, without exactly knowing why. This thing, I exclaimed, is a contemptible falsehood. A poor hoax, the lease of the invention of some pitiable penny-eliner, of some rigid concoctor of accidents and cocaine. These fellows, knowing the extravagant gullibility of the age, set their wits to work in the imagination of improbable possibilities, of a hot accident as they termed them. But to a reflecting intellect, like mine, I added, in parentheses putting my forefinger unconsciously to the side of my nose, to a contemplative understanding such as I myself possess, it seems evident at once that the marvelous increase of late in these odd accidents is by far the oddest accident of all. For my own part, I intend to believe nothing henceforward that has anything of the singular about it.  At first I took it for a rumbling in my ears, such as a man sometimes experiences when getting very drunk, but upon second thought I considered the sound as more nearly resembling that which proceeds from an empty barrel, beaten with a big stick, and in fact this I should have concluded it to be, but for the articulation of the syllables and words. I am by no means naturally nervous, and the very few glasses of lafite which I had sipped served to embolden me a little, so that I felt nothing of trepidation, but merely uplifted my eyes with a leisurely movement and looked carefully around the room for the intrudal. I could not, however, perceive any one at all. Huff! Resumed the voice as I continued my survey, you must be so drunk as the pig, then, for not see me as I sit here by your side. Hereupon I thought me of looking immediately before my nose, and there, sure enough, confronting me at the table, set a personage, nondescript, although not altogether indescribable. His body was a wine pipe, or a rum-punchin, or something of that character, and had a truly false staffion air. In its neather extremity were inserted two kegs, which seemed to answer all the purposes of legs. For arms they were dangled from the upper portion of the carcass two tolerably long bottles with the necks outward for hands. All the head that I saw of the monster possessedo was one of those Hessian canteens, which resemble a large snuff-box with a hole in the middle of the lid. This canteen, with a funnel on its top like a cavalier cap slouched over the eyes, was set on edge upon the punchin, with a hole toward myself, and through this hole, which seemed puckered up like the mouth of a very precise old maid, the creature was emitting certain grumbling and grumbling noises which she evidently intended for intelligible talk. I say, said he, you must be drunk as the pig, for sit there and not see me sit here. And I say, do, you must be bigger wool as the goose, for to disbelieve what is print in the print, since the truth that it is every word of it. Who are you, I pray, said I, with much dignity, although somewhat puzzled. How did you get here, and what is it you're talking about? As for how I come here, replied the figure, that is none of your busyness. As for what I be talking about, I be talk about what I think proper. And as for who I be, by that is the very thing I come for to let you see for yourself.  He he he, said the fellow, who that you can't do? Can't do, said I. What do you mean I can't do what?  Upon this I made an effort to get up in order to put my threat into execution. But the ruffian just reached across the table, very deliberately, and hitting me a tap on the forehead with the neck of one of the long bottles, knocked me back into the armchair from which I had half arisen. I was utterly astounded, and for a moment was quite at a loss what to do. In the meantime, he continued his talk. You see, said he, it is best for to sit still, and now you shall know who I be. Look at me, see, I am the angel of the art. And art enough too, I ventured to reply. But I was always under the impression that an angel had wings. The wing, he cried, highly incensed. What I be do to me the wing?  No, no, I replied, much alarmed. You are no chicken, certainly not. Well then, sit still, and behave yourself, or a raper again, medivisit.  And I am the angel of the art. And your business with me at present is my busyness, ejaculated the thing. This language was rather more than I could bear, even from an angel. So, plucking up courage, I seized a salt cellar which lay within reach, and hurled it at the head of the intruder. Either he dodged, however, or my aim was inaccurate. For all I accomplished was demolished from the crystal, which protected the dial of the clock upon the mantelpiece. As for the angel, he evinced his sense of my assault by giving me two or three hard, consecutive wraps upon the forehead as before. Hereupon, the angel of the odd replenished my goblet, which was about a third full of port, with a colorless fluid that he poured from one of his hand-bottles. I observed that these bottles had labels about their necks, and that these labels were inscribed Christian wasser. The considerate kindness of the angel mollified me in no little measure, and aided by the water which he diluted my port more than once, I at length regained sufficient temper to listen to his very extraordinary discourse. I cannot pretend to recount all that he told me, but I gleaned from what he said that he was a genius, who presided over the contra-tomps of mankind, and whose business it was to bring about the odd accidents which are continually astonishing the skeptic. Once or twice upon my venturing to express my total incredulity in respect to his pretensions, he grew very angry indeed, so that at length I considered it the wiser policy to say nothing at all, and let him have his own way. He talked on, therefore, at great length, while I merely leaned back in my chair with my eyes shut, and amused myself with munching raisins and flilping the stems about the room. But by and by the angel suddenly construed this behavior of mine at a contempt. He rose in a terrible passion, slouched his funnel down over his eyes, swore a vast oath uttered a threat of some character, which I did not precisely comprehend, and finally made me a low bowed and departed, wishing me, in the language of the archbishop in Jules-Bass, his departure afforded me relief. The very few glasses of Luffy that I had sipped had the effect of rendering me drowsy, and I felt inclined to take a nap of some fifteen or twenty minutes, as is my custom after-dinner. At six I had an appointment of consequence, which it was quite indispensable that I should keep. The policy of insurance for my dwelling-house had expired the day before, and some dispute having arisen it was agreed that, at six, I should meet the board of directors of the company and settle the terms of a renewal. Glancing upward at the clock on the mantelpiece, for I felt too drowsy to take out my watch, I had the pleasure to find that I still had twenty-five minutes to spare. It was half past five. I could easily walk to the insurance office in five minutes, and my usual siestas had never been known to exceed five and twenty. I felt sufficiently safe, therefore, and composed myself to my slumber's forthwith. Having completed them to my satisfaction, I again looked toward the time-piece, and was half inclined to believe in the possibility of odd accidents when I found that, instead of my ordinary fifteen or twenty minutes, I had been dozing only three, for it still wanted seven and twenty of the appointed hour. I pitook myself again to my nap, and it blanked the second time awoke, when, to my utter amazement, it still wanted twenty-seven minutes of six. I jumped up to examine the clock, and found that it had ceased running. My watch informed me that it was half past seven, and, of course, having slept two hours, I was too late for my appointment. It will make no difference, I said. I can call at the office in the morning and apologize. In the meantime, what can be the matter of the clock? Upon examining it, I discovered that one of the raisin stems, which I had been philiping about the room during the discourse of the Angel of the Odd, had flown through the fractured crystal, and lodging singularly enough in the keyhole, with an N projecting outward, had thus arrested the revolution of the minute hand. Ah, said I, I see how it is, this thing speaks for itself, a natural accident such as will happen now and then. I gave the matter no further consideration, and at my usual hour, retired to bed. Here, having placed a candle upon a reading-stand at the bed-head, and having made an attempt to peruse some pages of the omnipresence of the deity, I, unfortunately, fell asleep in less than twenty seconds, leaving light burning as it was. My dreams were terribly disturbed by visions of the Angel of the Odd. Me thought he stood at the foot of the couch, drew aside the curtains, and in the hollow, detestable tones of a rum-puncheon, menaced me with bitterest vengeance for the contempt which I had treated him. He concluded along her rang by taking off his funnel-cap, inserting the tube into my gullet, and thus deluging me with an ocean of kershin-losser, which he poured in a continuous flood from one of the long-necked bottles that stood him instead of an arm. My agony was at length insufferable, and I awoke just in time to receive that a rat had run off with a lighted candle from the stand, but not in season to prevent his making his escape with it through the hole. Very soon a strong, suffocating odor assailed my nostrils, the house I clearly perceived was on fire. In a few minutes the blaze broke forth with violence, and in an incredibly brief period the entire building, all egress from my chamber, except through a window, was cut off. The crowd, however, quickly procured and raised a long ladder. By means of this I was descending rapidly, and in apparent safety, when a huge hog about whose retunned stomach and indeed about whose whole air and physiognomy there was something which reminded me of the Angel of the Odd. When this hog, I say, which hitherto had been quietly slumbering in the mud, took it suddenly into its head that his left shoulder needed scratching, and could find no more convenient rubbing post than that afforded by the foot of the ladder. In an instant I was precipitated and had the misfortune to fracture my arm. This accident, with the loss of my insurance, and the more serious loss of my hair, the hole of which had been singed off by the fire, predisposed me to serious impressions, so that finally I made up my mind to take a wife. There was a rich widow, disconsolent for the loss of her seventh husband, and to her wounded spirit I offered the balm of my vows. She yielded a reluctant consent to my prayers. I knelt at her feet in gratitude and adoration. She blushed and bowed her luxuriant tresses in close contact, but those supplied me temporarily by Grand Jean. I know not how the entanglement took place, but so it was. I arose with a shining pate, wiggless. She into stain and wrath, half-buried in alien hair. Thus ended my hopes of the widow by an accident which could not have been anticipated, to be sure, but which the natural sequence of events had brought about. Without despairing, however, I undertook the siege of a less implacable heart. The fates were again propitious for a brief period, but again a trivial incident interfered. Meeting my patrode in an avenue thronged with the elite of the city, I was hastening to greet her with one of my best-considered bows, when a small particle of some foreign matter lodging in the corner of my eye rendered me for the moment completely blind. Before I could recover my sight, the lady of my love had disappeared, irreparably affronted at what she chose to consider my premeditated rudeness in passing her by ungrateful. While I had stood bewildered at the suddenness of this accident, which might have happened nevertheless to anyone under the sun, and while I still continued incapable of sight, I was accosted by the angel of the odd, who proffered me his aid with a civility which I had no reason to expect. He examined my disordered eye with much gentleness and skill, informed me that I had a drop in it, and whatever a drop was, took it out and afforded me relief. I now considered it high time to die, since fortune had so determined to persecute me, and accordingly made my way to the nearest river.  No sooner had I entered the water than this bird took it into his head to fly away with the most indispensable portion of my apparel. Postponing, therefore, for the present my suicidal design, I just slipped my nether extremities into the sleeves of my coat, and they took myself to a pursuit of the felon with all the nimblest what's the case required, and its circumstances would admit. But my evil destiny attended me still. As I ran at full speed, with my nose up in the atmosphere, and intent only upon the poor loiner of my property, I suddenly perceived that my feet rested no longer upon terra firma. The fact is, I had thrown myself over a precipice, and should inevitably have been dashed to pieces, but for my good fortune in grasping the end of a long guide-rope, which depended from a passing balloon. As soon as I sufficiently recovered my senses to comprehend the terrific predicament in which I stood, or rather hung, I exerted all the power of my lungs to make that predicament known to the aeronaut overhead. But for a long time I exerted myself in vain. Either the fool could not, or the villain would not, perceive me. Meanwhile, the machine rapidly soared, while my strength even more rapidly failed. I was soon upon the point of resigning myself to my fate, and dropping quietly into the sea, when my spirits were suddenly revived by hearing a hollow voice from above, which seemed to be lazily humming an opera. Looking up, I perceived the angel of the odd. He was leaning with his arms folded over the rim of the car, and with a pipe in his mouth at which he puffed leisurely. Seemed to be upon excellent terms with himself and the universe. I was too much exhausted to speak, so I merely regarded him with an imploring air. For several minutes, although he looked me full in the face, he said nothing. At length, removing carefully his mursham from the right to the left corner of his mouth, he condescended to speak. Who, P.U., he asked. On what d'artuffe, you'll be to dare. To this piece of impudence, cruelty, and affectation, I could reply only by ejaculating the monosyllable. Help! Help! I echoed the ruffian. Not I. That is the bottle. Help yourself and be damped. With these words, he let fall a heavy bottle of kurschenwasser, which, dropping precisely upon the crown of my head, caused me to imagine that my brains were entirely knocked out. Impressed with this idea, I was about to relinquish my hold and give up the ghost with a good grace. When I was arrested by the cry of the angel, who baited me, hold on. Hold on, he said. Don't be in the hurry. Don't. Will you be to take hold of the bottle? Or have you got to be sober yet? Or come to your senses? I made haste tear upon to nod my head twice. Once in the negative, meaning thereby that I would prefer not taking the other bottle at present, and once in the affirmative, intending thus to imply that I was sober and had positively come to my senses. By these means, I somewhat softened the angel. On your belief, then, he inquired, at the last you believe, then, in the possibility of the odd. I again nodded my head in a scent. On your belief in me, the angel of the odd. I nodded again. On to acknowledge that you peaked the blind drunk anti-fool. I nodded once more. Put your right hand into your left preachy's pocket, then, in token of your full submission unto the angel of the odd. This thing, for very obvious reasons, I found it quite impossible to do. In the first place, my left arm had been broken in my fall from the latter, and therefore, had I let go my hold with my right hand, I must have let go altogether. In the second place, I could have no breaches until I came across the crow. And I was therefore obliged, much in my ret, to shake my head in the negative, intending thus to give the angel to understand that I found it inconvenient, just at that moment, to comply with his very reasonable demand. No sooner, however, had I ceased shaking my head, then, go to the tufelten, roared the angel of the odd. In pronouncing these words, he drew a sharp knife across the guide-rope by which I was suspended. And as we then happened to be precisely over my own house, which, during my peregrinations, had been handsomely rebuilt, is so occurred that I tumbled held long down the ample chimney and a lit upon the dining-room hearth. Upon coming to my senses, for the fall had very thoroughly stunned me, I found it about four o'clock in the morning. I lay outstretched where I had fallen from the balloon.  Thus revenged himself, the angel of the odd. The strictest measures were taken that the Yuskov's family secret might not leak out, and become generally known. Half of the servants were sent off to the theatre or the circus, and another half were sitting in the kitchen and not allowed to leave it. Orders were given that no one was to be admitted. The wife of the Colonel, her sister, and the governess, though they had been initiated into the secret, kept up a pretense of knowing nothing. They sat in the dining-room and did not show themselves in the drawing-room or the hall. Sasha Yuskov, the young man of twenty-five who was the cause of all the commotion, had arrived some time before, and by the advice of kind-hearted Ivan Markovich, his uncle, who was taking his part, he sat meekly in the hall by the door leading to the study, and prepared himself to make an open, candid explanation. The other side of the door, in the study, a family council was being held. The subject under discussion was an exceedingly disagreeable and delicate one. Sasha Yuskov had cashed at one of the banks a false promissory note, and it had become due for payment three days before, and now his two paternal uncles and Ivan Markovich, the brother of his dead mother, were deciding the question whether they should pay the money and save the family honor or wash their hands of it and leave the case to go for trial. To outsiders who have no personal interest in the matter, such questions seem simple. For those who are so unfortunate as to have to decide them in earnest, they are extremely difficult. The uncles had been talking for a long time. But the problem seemed no nearer decision. My friends, said the uncle who was a colonel, and there was a note of exhaustion and bitterness in his voice. Who says that family honor is a mere convention? I don't say that at all. I am only warning you against the false view. I am pointing out the possibility of an unpardonable mistake. How can you fail to see it? I am not speaking Chinese. I am speaking Russian. My dear fellow, we do understand, Ivan Markovich protested mildly. How can you understand if you say that I don't believe in family honor? I repeat once more. Family honor falsely understood is a prejudice, falsely understood. That's what I say. Whatever may be the motives for screening a scoundrel, whoever he may be, and helping him to escape punishment, it is contrary to law and unworthy of a gentleman. It's not saving the family honor, it's civil cowardice. Take the army, for instance. The honor of the army is more precious to us than any other honor. Yet we don't screen our guilty members, but condemn them. And does the honor of the army suffer in consequence? Quite the contrary. The other paternal uncle, an official in the treasury, a taciturn, dull-witted and rheumatic man, sat silent, or spoke only of the fact that the Yuskov's name would get into the newspapers if the case went for trial. His opinion was that the case ought to be hushed up from the first and not become public property. But apart from publicity in the newspapers, he advanced no other argument in support of his opinion. The maternal uncle, kind-hearted Ivan Markovich, spoke smoothly, softly, and with a tremor in his voice. He began with saying that youth has its rights and peculiar temperaments. Which of us has not been young, and who has not been let astray to say nothing of ordinary mortals, even great men have not escaped errors and mistakes in their youth? Take, for instance, the biography of great writers. Did not every one of them gamble, drink, and draw down upon himself the anger of right-thinking people in his young days? If Sasha's error bordered upon crime, they must remember that Sasha had received practically no education. He had been expelled from the high school in the fifth class. He had lost his parents in early childhood, and so had been left at the tenderest age without guidance and good benevolent influences. He was nervous, excitable, and had no firm ground under his feet, and above all, he had been unlucky, even if he were guilty. Anyway, he deserved indulgence and the sympathy of all compassionate souls. He ought, of course, to be punished, but he was punished as it was by his conscience and the agonies he was enduring now, while awaiting the sentence of his relations. The comparison with the army made by the Colonel was delightful, and did credit to his lofty intelligence. His appeal to their feeling of public duty spoke for the chivalry of his soul. But they must not forget that in each individual, the citizen is closely linked with the Christian. Shall we be false to civic duty? Ivan Markovich exclaimed passionately. If, instead of punishing an airing boy, we hold out to him a helping hand? Ivan Markovich talked further a family honor. He had not the honor to belong to the Ushkov family himself. But he knew their distinguished family went back to the thirteenth century. He did not forget for a minute, either, that his precious beloved sister had been the wife of one of the representatives of that name. In short, the family was dear to him for many reasons, and he refused to admit the idea that, for the sake of a paltry fifteen hundred rubles, a blot would be cast on the escutcheon that was beyond all price. If all the motives he had brought forward were not sufficiently convincing, he, Ivan Markovich, in conclusion, begged his listeners to ask themselves what was meant by crime. Crime is an immoral act founded upon ill will. But is the will of man free? Philosophy has not yet given a positive answer to that question. Different views were held by the learned. The latest school of Lombroso, for instance, denies the freedom of the will, and considers every crime as the product of the purely anatomical peculiarities of the individual. Ivan Markovich, said the Colonel, in a voice of entreaty, we are talking seriously about an important matter. And you bring in Lombroso? You clever fellow. Think a little. What are you saying all this for? Can you imagine that all your thunderings and rhetoric will furnish an answer to the questions? Sasha Yuskov sat at the door and listened. He felt neither terror, shame, nor depression, but only weariness and inward emptiness. It seemed to him that it made absolutely no difference to him whether they forgave him or not. He had come here to hear his sentence and to explain himself simply because kind-hearted Ivan Markovich had begged him to do so. He was not afraid of the future. It made no difference to him where he was, here in the hall, in prison, or in Siberia. If Siberia, then let it be Siberia, damn it all.  He was inextricably involved in debt. He had not a farthing in his pocket. His family had become detestable to him. He would have to part from his friends and his women sooner or later, and they had begun to be too contemptuous of his sponging on them. The future looked black. Sasha was indifferent and was only disturbed by one circumstance. The other side of the door, they were calling him a scoundrel and a criminal. Every minute he was on the point of jumping up, bursting into the study, and shouting an answer to the detestable metallic voice of the colonel, you are lying. Criminal was a dreadful word. That is what murderers, thieves, robbers are. In fact, wicked and morally hopeless people. And Sasha was very far from being all that. It was true he owed a great deal and did not pay his debts. But debt is not a crime, and it is unusual for a man not to be in debt. The colonel and Ivan Markovich were both in debt. What have I done wrong besides? Sasha wondered. He had discounted a forged note, but all the young men he knew did the same. Handrakov and Von Burst always forged IOUs from their parents or friends when their allowances were not paid at the regular time. And then, when they got their money from home, they redeemed them before they became due. Sasha had done the same, but had not redeemed the IOU because he had not got the money which Handrakov had promised to lend him. He was not to blame. It was the fault of circumstances. It was true that the use of another person's signature was considered reprehensible. But still it was not a crime, but a generally accepted dodge. An ugly formality which injured no one and was quite harmless. For enforcing the colonel's signature, Sasha had had no intention of causing anybody damage or loss. No. It doesn't mean that I am criminal, thought Sasha, and it's not in my character to bring myself to commit a crime. I am soft, emotional. When I have money, I help the poor. Sasha was musing after this fashion while they went on talking the other side of the door. But my friends, this is endless. The colonel declared, getting excited. Suppose we were to forgive him and pay the money. You know you would not give up leading a dissipated life, squandering money, making debts, going to our tailors and ordering suits in our names. Can you guarantee that this will be his last prank? As far as I'm concerned, I have no faith whatever in his reforming. The official of the treasury muttered something in reply. After him, Ivan Markovich began talking blandly and suavely again. The colonel moved his chair impatiently and drowned the other's words with his detestable metallic voice. At last the door opened and Ivan Markovich came out of the study. There were patches of red on his lean, shaven face. Come along, he said, taking Sasha by the hand. Come, and speak frankly from your heart. Without pride, my dear boy, humbly and from the heart. Sasha went into the study. The official of the treasury was sitting down. The colonel was standing before the table with one hand in his pocket and one knee on a chair. It was smoky and stifling in the study. Sasha did not look at the official or the colonel. He felt suddenly ashamed and uncomfortable. He looked uneasily at Ivan Markovich and muttered, I'll pay it. I will give it back. What did you expect when you discounted the IOU? He heard a metallic voice. I… Hondrakoff promised to lend me the money before now. Sasha could say no more. He went out of the study and sat down again on the chair near the door. He would have been glad to go away altogether at once, but he was choking with hatred and he awfully wanted to remain, to tear the colonel to pieces, to say something rude to him. He sat, trying to think of something violent and effective to say to his hated uncle. And at that moment a woman's figure, shrouded in the twilight, appeared at the drawing-room door. It was the colonel's wife. She beckoned Sasha to her and, ringing her hands, said, weeping, »Alexandria, I know you don't like me. But listen to me. Listen, I beg you. But, my dear, how can this have happened? Why, it's awful, awful! For goodness' sake, beg them! Defend yourself and treat them!« Sasha looked at her quivering shoulders, at the big tears that were rolling down her cheeks, hearing behind his back the hollow, nervous voice of worried and exhausted people, and shrugged his shoulders. He had not in the least expected that his aristocratic relations would raise such a tempest over a paltry fifteen hundred rubles. He could not understand her tears nor the quiver of their voices. An hour later he heard that the colonel was getting the best of it. The uncles were finally inclining to let the case go for trial. »The matter's settled,« said the colonel, sighing, »enough!« After this decision, all the uncles, even the emphatic colonel, became noticeably depressed. A silence followed. »Merciful heavens!« sighed Ivan Markovich, »my poor sister!« And he began saying in the subdued voice that most likely his sister, Sasha's mother, was present unseen in the study at that moment. He felt in his soul how the unhappy saintly woman was weeping, grieving, and begging for her boy. For the sake of her peace beyond the grave, they ought to spare Sasha. The sound of a muffled sob was heard. Ivan Markovich was weeping and muttering something which was impossible to catch through the door. The colonel got up and paced from corner to corner. The long conversation began over again. But then the clock and the drawing room struck two. The family council was over. To avoid seeing the person who had moved him to such wrath, the colonel went from the study, not into the hall, but into the vestibule. Ivan Markovich came out into the hall. He was agitated and rubbing his hands joyfully.  »Capitol!« he said to Sasha. »Thank God! You can go home, my dear, and sleep tranquilly. We have decided to pay the sum. But, on condition that you repent and come with me tomorrow into the country and set to work. A minute later Ivan Markovich and Sasha, in their great coats and caps, were going down the stairs. The uncle was muttering something edifying. Sasha did not listen, but he felt as though some uneasy weight were gradually slipping off his shoulders. They had forgiven him. He was free. A gust of joy sprang up within him and sent a sweet chill to his heart. He longed to breathe, to move swiftly, to live. Glancing at the streetlamps and the black sky, he remembered that Von Burst was celebrating his name-day that evening at the Bear, and again a rush of joy flooded his soul. »I am going« he decided. But then he remembered he had not a farthing that the companions he was going to would despise him at once for his empty pockets. He must get hold of some money, come what may. »Uncle, lend me a hundred rubles« he said to Ivan Markovich. His uncle, surprised, looked into his face and backed against the lamppost. »Give it to me« said Sasha, shifting impatiently from one foot to the other, and beginning to pant, »Uncle, I can treat you. Give me a hundred rubles«. His face worked, he trembled, and he seemed on the point of attacking his uncle. »Won't you« he kept asking, seeing that his uncle was still amazed and did not understand. »Listen, if you don't, I'll give myself up tomorrow. I won't let you pay the IOU. I'll present another false note tomorrow. Petrified, muttering something incoherent in his horror, Ivan Markovich took a hundred rubles note out of his pocketbook and gave it to Sasha. The young man took it and walked rapidly away from him. Taking a sledge, Sasha grew calmer, and felt a rush of joy within him again. The rites of youth of which kind-hearted Ivan Markovich had spoken at the family council woke up and asserted themselves. Sasha pictured the drinking party before him, and among the bottles, the women and his friends, the thought flashed through his mind. Now I see that I am a criminal. Yes, I am a criminal. End of The Problem, by Anton Shekhov. This recording is in the public domain. I often think of the Bureau of the Exchange Demo and the wondrously evil old man that sat therein. It stood in a little street that there is in Paris, its doorway made of three brown beams of wood, the top one overlapping the others like the Greek letter Pi, all the rest painted green, a house far lower and narrower than its neighbors, and infinitely stranger, a thing to take once fancy. And over the doorway, on the old brown beam and faded yellow letters, this legend ran, Bureau, Universal, the Exchange, Demo. I entered at once and accosted the listless man that lulled on a stool by his counter.  Such a man was my host, but above all the evil of him lay in his eyes, which lay so still, so apathetic, that you would have sworn that he was drugged or dead, like lizards motionless on a wall they lay, then suddenly they darted, and all his cunning flamed up and revealed itself in what one moment before seemed no more than a sleepy and ordinary wicked old man, and this was the object and trade of that peculiar shop, the Bureau, Universal, the Exchange, Demo. You paid twenty francs, which the old man proceeded to take from me, for admission to the Bureau, and then had the right to exchange any evil or misfortune with anyone on the premises for some evil or misfortune that he could afford, as the old man put it. There were four or five men in the dingy ends of that low-ceilinged room who gesticulated and muttered softly in twos as men who make a bargain, and now and then more came in, and the eyes of the flabby owner of the house, leaped up at them as they entered, seemed to know their errands at once, and each one's peculiar need, and fell back again into some nolence, receiving his twenty francs in an almost lifeless hand, and biting the coin as though in pure absence of mine. Some of my clients he told me, so amazing to me, was the trade of this extraordinary shop that I engaged the old man in conversation, repulsive though he was, and from his garrulity I gathered these facts. He spoke in perfect English though his utterance was somewhat thick and heavy. No language seemed to come amiss to him. He had been in business a great many years, how many he would not say, and was far older than he looked. All kinds of people did business in his shop. What they exchanged with each other he did not care, except that it had to be evils. He was not empowered to carry on any other kind of business. There was no evil, he told me, that was not negotiable there. No evil the old man knew had ever been taken away in despair from his shop.  But the old man had the addresses of all his clients, and shrewdly knew their needs, and soon the right to met and eagerly exchanged their commodities. Commodities was the old man's terrible word, said with a gruesome smack of his heavy lips, for he took pride in his business, and evils to him were goods. I learned from him in ten minutes very much of human nature, more than I have ever learned from any other man. I learned from him that a man's own evil is to him the worst thing there is or ever could be, and that an evil so unbalances all men's minds that they always seek for extremes in that small grim shop. A woman that had no children had exchanged with an impoverished half-med and creature with twelve, on one occasion, a man had exchanged wisdom for folly. While on earth did he do that, I said. None of my business, the old man answered in his heavy, indolent way. He merely took his twenty francs from each and ratified the agreement in the little room at the back, opening out of the shop where his clients do business.  But the other went thoughtfully away, wearing a troubled and very puzzled look. Almost always it seemed they did business in opposite evils. But the thing that puzzled me most in all my talks with that unwieldy man, the thing that puzzles me still, is that none that had once done business in that shop ever returned again. A man might come day after day for many weeks, but once do business and he never returned, so much the old man told me. But when I asked him why, he only muttered that he did not know. It was to discover the wherefore of this strange thing, and for no other reason at all, that I determined myself to do business sooner or later in the little room at the back of that mysterious shop. I determined to exchange some very trivial evil for some evil equally slight, to seek for myself an advantage so very small, as scarcely to give fate as it were a grip, for I deeply distrusted these bargains, knowing well that man has never yet benefited by the marvelous, and that the more miraculous his advantage appears to be, the more securely and tightly do the gods or the witches catch him. In a few days more I was going back to England and I was beginning to fear that I should be seasick. This fear of seasickness, not the actual malady, but only the mere fear of it, I decided to exchange for a suitably little evil. I did not know with whom I should be dealing, who in reality was the head of the firm, one never does when shopping. But I decided that neither Jew nor devil could make very much on so small a bargain as that. I told the old man my project, and he scoffed at the smallness of my commodity, trying to urge me to some darker bargain, but could not move me from my purpose. And then he told me tales with a somewhat boastful air of the big business, the great bargains that had passed through his hands. A man had once run in there to try and exchange death. He had swallowed poison by accident, and had only twelve hours to live. That sinister old man had been able to oblige him. A client was willing to exchange the commodity. But what did he give in exchange for death, I said? Life, said that grim old man with a furtive chuckle.  That was not my affair, the proprietor said, blazely rattling together as he spoke a little pocketful of twenty franc pieces. Strange business I watched in that shot for the next few days, the exchange of odd commodities, and heard strange mutterings in corners amongst couples who presently rose and went to the back room, the old man following to ratify. Twice a day for a week I paid my twenty francs, watching life with its great needs and its little needs morning and afternoon spread out before me in all its wonderful variety. And one day I met a comfortable man with only a little need. He seemed to have the very evil I wanted. He always feared the lift was going to break. I knew too much of hydraulics to fear things as silly as that, but it was not my business to cure his ridiculous fear. Very few words were needed to convince him that mine was the evil for him. He never crossed the sea, and I, on the other hand, could always walk upstairs. And I also felt at the time, as many must feel in that shop, that so absurd a fear could never trouble me, and yet at times it is almost the curse of my life. When we both had signed the parchment in the spidery back room and the old man had signed and ratified, for which we had to pay him fifty francs each, I went back to my hotel, and there I saw the deadly thing in the basement. They asked me if I would go upstairs in the lift. From force of habit I risked it, and I held my breath all the way and clenched my hands. Nothing will induce me to try such a journey again. I would sooner go up to my room in a balloon. And why? Because if a balloon goes wrong, you have a chance. It may spread out into a parachute after it is burst. It may catch in a tree. A hundred and one things may happen. But if the lift falls down its shaft, you are done. As for seasickness, I shall never be sick again. I cannot tell you why, except that I know that it is so. And the shop in which I made this remarkable bargain, the shop to which none return when their business is done, I set out for it next day. Blindfolded I could have found my way to the unfashionable quarter out of which a mean street runs, where you take the alley at the end, whence runs the cul-de-sac where the queer shop stood. A shop with pillars, fluted in painted red, stands on its near side. Its other neighbor is a low-class jeweler with little silver brooches in the window. In such a congruence company stood the shop with beams with its walls painted green. In half an hour I found the cul-de-sac to which I had gone twice a day for the last week.  But the greenhouse with the three beams was gone. Pulled down, you will say, although on a single night, that can never be the answer to the mystery. For the house of the fluted pillars painted on plaster, and the low-class jeweler's shop with its silver brooches, all of which I could identify one by one, were standing side by side. End of The Bureau of the Exchange Demo by Lord Dunsony. In The Graveyard by Anton Chekhov This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. In The Graveyard by Anton Chekhov The wind has got us up, friends, and it is beginning to get dark. Hadn't we better take ourselves off before it gets worse? The wind was frolicking among the yellow leaves of the old birch trees, and a shower of thick drops fell upon us from the leaves. One of our parties slipped on the clay-y soil, and clutched at a big gray cross to save himself from falling. Yegor Gryaz Narukov Titula Counselor and Cavalier He read, I knew that gentleman. He was fond of his wife. He wore the Stanislav Ribbon, and read nothing. His digestion worked well. Life was all right, wasn't it? One would have thought he had no reason to die. But alas, fate had its eye on him. The poor fellow fell a victim to his habits of observation. On one occasion, when he was listening at a keyhole, he got such a bang on the head from the door, that he sustained concussion of the brain. He had a brain, and died. And here, under this tombstone, lies a man who from his cradle detested verses and epigrams. As though to mock him, his whole tombstone is adorned with verses. There's someone coming. A man in a shabby overcoat, with a shaven, bluish crimson countenance, overtook us. He had a bottle under his arm, and a parcel of sausage was sticking out of his pocket. Where is the grave of Mushkin, the actor? He asked us in a husky voice. We conducted him towards the grave of Mushkin, the actor, who had died two years before.  We asked him. No, an actor. Nowadays it is difficult to distinguish actors from clerks of the consistory. No doubt you have noticed that. That's typical, but it's not very flattering for the government clerk. It was with difficulty that we found the actor's grave. It had sunken, was overgrown with weeds, and had lost all appearance of a grave. A cheap little cross that had begun to rot, and was covered with green moss blackened by the frost, had an air of aged ejection, and looked, as it were, ailing. Forgotten friend Mushkin, we read. Time had erased the never, and corrected the falsehood of man. A subscription for a monument to him was got up among actors and journalists, but they drank up the money, the dear fellows, sighed the actor, bowing down to the ground, and touching the wet earth with his knees and his cap. How do you mean drank it? That's very simple. They collected the money, published a paragraph about it in the newspaper, and spent it on drink. I don't say it to blame them. I hope it did them good, dear things. Good health to them, and eternal memory to him. Drinking means bad health, and eternal memory, nothing but sadness. God give us remembrance for a time. But eternal memory? What next? You're right there. Mushkin was a well-known man, you see. There were a dozen wreaths on the coffin, and he is already forgotten. Those to whom he was dear have forgotten him. But those to whom he did harm, remember him. I, for instance, shall never, never forget him. For I got nothing but harm from him. I have no love for the deceased. Oh, what harm did he do you? Great harm, sighed the actor, and an expression of bitter resentment overspread his face. To me he was a villain and a scoundrel. The kingdom of heaven be his. It was through looking at him and listening to him that I became an actor. By his art he'd lured me from the paternal home. He enticed me with the excitement of an actor's life, promised me all sorts of things, and brought tears and sorrow. An actor's lot is a bitter one. I have lost youth, sobriety, and the divine semblance. I haven't a half penny to bless myself with. My shoes are down to the heels. My breeches are frayed and patched. My face looks as if it had been gnawed by dogs.  He robbed me of my faith, my evil genius. It would have been something if I had talent. But as it is, I am ruined for nothing. It's cold, honoured friends. Won't you have some? There is enough for all. Let us drink to the rest of his soul. Though I don't like him and though he's dead, he was the only one I had in the world, the only one. It's the last time I shall visit him. The doctors say I shall soon die of drink. So here I have come to say goodbye. One must forgive one's enemies. We left the actor to converse with the dead Muschkin, and went on. They began drizzling a fine cold rain. At the turning into the principal avenue, strewn with gravel, we met a funeral procession. Four bears, wearing white calico sashes and muddy high boots with leaves sticking on them, carried the brown coffin. It was getting dark, and they hastened, stumbling and shaking their burden. We've only been walking here for a couple of hours, and that is the third broad inn already. Shall we go home, friends? For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The King of the Polar Bears by L. Frank Baum, read by Amy Conger. The King of the Polar Bears lived among the icebergs in the far north country. He was old and monstrous big. He was wise and friendly to all who knew him. His body was thickly covered with long white hair that glistened like silver under the rays of the midnight sun. His claws were strong and sharp that he might walk safely over the smooth ice, or grasp and tear the fishes and seals upon which he fed. The seals were afraid when he drew near and tried to avoid him, but the gulls, both white and gray, loved him because he left the remnants of his feasts for them to devour. Often his subjects, the Polar Bears, came to him for advice when ill or in trouble, but they wisely kept away from his hunting grounds, lest they might interfere with his sport and arouse his anger. The wolves, who sometimes came as far north as the icebergs, whispered among themselves that the King of the Polar Bears was either a magician or under the protection of a powerful fairy, for no earthly thing seemed able to harm him, and he never failed to secure plenty of food, and he grew bigger and stronger day by day and year by year. Yet the time came when this monarch of the north met man, and his wisdom failed him. He came out of his cave among the icebergs one day, and saw a boat moving through the strip of water which had been uncovered by the shifting of the summer ice. In the boat were men. The Great Bear had never seen such creatures before, and therefore advanced toward the boat, sniffing the strange scent with aroused curiosity, and wondering whether he might take them for friends or foes, food or carrion. When the King came near the water's edge, a man stood up in the boat, and with a queer instrument made a loud bang. The Polar Bear felt a shock. His brain became numb. His thoughts deserted him. His great limbs shook and gave way beneath him, and his body fell heavily upon the hard ice. That was all he remembered for a time. When he awoke, he was smarting with pain on every inch of his huge bulk. For the men had cut away his hide with its glorious white hair, and carried it with them to a distant ship. Above him circled thousands of his friends the gulls, wondering if their benefactor were really dead and it was proper to eat him. But when they saw him raise his head and groan and tremble, they knew he still lived, and one of them said to his comrades, The wolves were right. The King is a great magician, for even men cannot kill him. But he suffers for lack of covering. Let us repay his kindness to us, by each giving him as many feathers as we can spare. This idea pleased the gulls. One after another they plucked with their beaks the softest feathers from under their wings, and flying down dropped them gently upon the body of the King of the Polar Bears. Then they called to him in a chorus, Courage friend, our feathers are as soft and beautiful as your own shaggy hair. They will guard you from the cold winds and warm you while you sleep. Have courage then, and live. And the King of the Polar Bears had courage to bear his pain, and lived, and was strong again. The feathers grew as they had grown upon the bodies of the birds, and covered him as his own hair had done. Mostly they were pure white in color, but some from the gray gulls gave his majesty a slightly modeled appearance. The rest of that summer and all through the six months of night, the King left his icy cavern only to fish or catch seals for food. He felt no shame at his feathery covering, but it was still strange to him, and he avoided meeting any of his brother bears. During this period of retirement, he thought much of the men who had harmed him, and remembered the way that they had made the great bang. And he decided it was best to keep away from such fierce creatures. Thus he added to his store of wisdom. When the moon fell away from the sky, and the sun came to make the icebergs glitter with the gorgeous tintings of the rainbow, two of the polar bears arrived at the King's cavern to ask his advice about the hunting season. But when they saw his great body covered with feathers instead of hair, they began to laugh, and one said, Our mighty king has become a bird! Whoever before heard of a feathered polar bear. Then the King gave way to wrath. He advanced upon them with deep growls and stately tread, and with one blow of his monstrous paw stretched the mocker, lifeless at his feet. The other ran away to his fellows, and carried the news of the King's strange appearance. The result was a meeting of all the polar bears upon a broad-field device where they talked gravely of the remarkable change that had come upon their monarch. He is, in reality, no longer a bear, said one, nor can he justly be called a bird, but he is half-bird and half-bear, and so unfitted to remain our King. Then who shall take his place? asked another. He who can fight the bird bear and overcome him. Answered an aged member of the group, only the strongest is fit to rule our race. There was silence for a time, but at length a great bear moved to the front and said, I will fight him. I, wolf, the strongest of our race, and I will be King of the polar bears. The others nodded ascent and dispatched a messenger to the King to say he must fight the great wolf and master him, or resign his sovereignty. For a bear with feathers added the messenger is no bear at all, and the King we obey must resemble the rest of us. I wear feathers because it pleases me, growled the King. Am I not a great magician? But I will fight, nevertheless, and if wolf masters me, he shall be King in my stead. Then he visited his friends the gulls, who were even then feasting upon the dead bear, and told them of the coming battle. I shall conquer, he said proudly, yet my people are in the right for only a hairy one like themselves can hope to command their obedience. The Queen gull said, I met an eagle yesterday, which had made its escape from a big city of men, and the eagle told me that he had seen a monstrous polar bear skin thrown over the back of a carriage that rolled along the street.  Let them go, said the King gruffly, and the hundred gulls were soon flying rapidly southward. For three days they flew straight as an arrow until they came to scattered houses, to villages and to cities. Then their search began. The gulls were brave and cunning and wise. Upon the fourth day they reached the great metropolis and hovered over the streets until a carriage rolled along with a great white bear robe thrown over the back seat. Then the birds swooped down, whole hundred of them, and seizing the skin and their beaks flew quickly away. They were late. The King's great battle was upon the seventh day, and they must fly swiftly to reach the polar regions by that time. Meanwhile, the bird bear was preparing for his fight. He sharpened his claws and the small crevasses of the ice. He caught a seal and tested his big yellow teeth by crunching its bones between them. And the queen gull set her band to pluming the King bear's feathers until they lay smoothly upon his body. But every day they cast anxious glances into the southern sky, watching for the hundred gulls to bring back the King's own skin. The seventh day came, and all the polar bears in that region gathered around the King's cavern. Among them was Wolf, strong and confident of his success. The bird bear's feathers will fly fast enough when I get my claws upon him, he boasted, and the others laughed and encouraged him. The King was disappointed at not having recovered his skin, but he resolved to fight bravely without it. He advanced from the opening of his cavern with a proud and kingly bearing, and when he faced his enemy, he gave so terrible a growl that Wolf's heart stopped beating for a moment, and he began to realize that a fight with the wise and mighty King of his race was no laughing matter. After exchanging one or two heavy blows with his foe, Wolf's courage returned, and he determined to dishearten his adversary by bluster.  The defiance filled the King with rage. He ruffled his feathers as a bird does till he appeared to be twice his actual size.  While the assembled bears stood looking with fear and wonder at their fallen champion, the sky became darkened. A hundred gulls flew down from above and dropped upon the King's body a skin covered with pure white hair that glittered in the sun-like silver. And behold, the bears saw before them the well-known form of their wise and respected master, and with one accord they bowed their shaggy heads in homage to the mighty King of the Polar Bears. This story teaches us that true dignity and courage depend not upon outward appearance, but come rather from within. Also, that bragg and bluster are poor weapons to carry into battle. End of THE KING OF THE POLAR BEARS CUSHA A STUDY OF DUTCH LIFE This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org CUSHA A STUDY OF DUTCH LIFE by John Strange Winter Her name was CUSHA van Kampen, and she lived in Utrecht, that most quaint of quaint cities, the Venice of the North. All her life had been passed under the shadow of the grand old Dom Kerk. She had played bow-peep behind the columns and arcades of the ruined, moss-grown cloisters, had slipped up and fallen down the steps leading to the Gracht. Had once or twice, in this very early life, been fished out of those same, slimy, stagnant waters, had wandered under the great Linden's in the barn, and gazed curiously up at the stork's nest in the tree by the veterinary school, had patterned about the hollow-sounding streets in her noisy wooden clumpen, had danced and laughed, had quarreled and wept, and fought and made friends again to the tune of the silvery chimes high up in the Dom. Chimes that were sometimes old, nader-lenza hymns, sometimes Mendelssohn's melodies, and tender, leader-on-wort. But that was ever so long ago, and now she had left her romping childhood behind her, and had become a maidservant, a very dignified and aristocratic maidservant indeed, with no less a sum than eight pounds a year in wages. She lived in the house of a professor who dwelt on the Munster-Kerkhof, one of the most aristocratic parts of that wonderfully aristocratic city, and once or twice every week you might have seen her if you had been there to see, busily engaged in washing the red tile and blue slate pathway in front of the professor's house. You would have seen that she was very pleasant to look at. This kusha, very comely and clean, whether she happened to be very busy, or whether it had been Sunday, and with her very best gown on, she was out for a promenade in the barn after duly going to service as regularly as the Sabbath dawned in the grand old gothic choir of the cathedral. During the week she wore always the same costume as does every other servant in the country. A skirt of black stuff, short enough to show a pair of very neat set and well-turned ankles, clad in cloth shoes, and knitted stockings that showed no wrinkles. Over the skirt a bodice and a curdle of lilac, made with a needly gathered frilling about her round-brown throat.  But it was on Sunday that kusha shone forth in all the glory of a black gown and her jewellery, with great earrings to match the clasp of her necklace, and a heavy chain and cross to match that again, and one or two rings, while on her head she wore an immense cap, much too big to put a bonnet over, though for walking she was most particular to have gloves. Then indeed she was a young person to be treated with respect, and with respect she was undoubtedly treated. As she passed along the quaint, resounding streets, many a head was turned to look after her. But kusha went on her way, like the staid maiden she was, duly impressed with the fact that she was principal servant of Professor Van Dyke, the most celebrated authority on the study of esteology in Europe. So kusha never heeded the looks, turned her head neither to the right nor to the left, but went sedately on her business or pleasure, whichever it happened to be. It was not likely that such a treasure could remain long unnoticed and unsought after. Servants in the Netherlands I hear are not so good that they might be better, and most people knew what a treasure Professor Van Dyke had in kusha. However, as a professor conscientiously raised her wages from time to time, kusha never thought of leaving him. But there is one bribe no woman can resist, the bribe that is offered by love. As Professor Van Dyke had expected and feared, that bribe ere long was held out to kusha, and kusha was too weak to resist it. Not that he wished her to do so. If the girl had a chance of settling well and happily for life, he would be the last to dream of throwing any obstacle in her way. He had come to be an old man himself. He lived all alone, safer his servants, in a great rambling house, whose huge apartments were all set out with horrible anatomical preparations and grisly skeletons. And though the stately passages were paved with white marble, and led into rooms which would easily have accommodated crowds of guests, he went into no society save that of savants as old and fossil like as himself. In other words, he was an old bachelor who lived entirely for his profession, and the study of the great masters by the interpretation of a genuine old staravari. Yet the old professor had a memory. He recalled the time when he had been young, who now was old, the time when his heart was a good deal more tender, his blood a great deal warmer, and his fancy very much more easily stirred than nowadays. There was a dead and gone romance which had broken his heart. Sentimentally speaking, a romance long since crumbled into dust, which had sent him for comfort into the study of osteology and the music of the stratavari. Yet the memory thereof made him considerably more lenient to Kusha's weakness than Kusha herself had ever expected to find him. Not that she had intended to tell him at first, she was only three and twenty, and, though, Jan van der Velde, was as fine a fellow as could be seen in Utrecht, and had good wages and something put by, Kusha was by no means inclined to rush headlong into matrimony with undue hurry. It was more pleasant to live in the professor's good house, to have delightful walks arm in arm, with Jan under the trees in the barn, or around the signals, purting under the stars with many a lingering word and promise to meet again. It was during one of those very partings that the professor suddenly became aware, as he walked placidly home, of the change that had come into Kusha's life. However, Kusha told him blushingly that she did not wish to leave him just at present, so he did not trouble himself about the matter. He was a wise man, this old authority on osteology, and quoted often times, sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. So the courtship sped smoothly on, seeming for once to contradict the truth of the old saying, the course of true love never did run smooth. The course of their love did, of a truth run marvelously smooth indeed. Kusha, if a trifle coy, was pleasant and sweet, Jan as fine a fellow as ever waited around a corner on a cold winter night. So brightly the happy day slipped by, when suddenly a change was effected in the professor's household, which made, as a matter of course, somewhat of a change in Kusha's life. It came about in this wise. Kusha had been on an errand for the professor, one that kept her out of door some time, and it happened that night was bitterly cold. The cold indeed was fearful. The air had that damp rawness so noticeable in Dutch climate. A thick mist overhung the city, and a drizzling rain came down with a steady persistence, such as quickly soaked through the stoutest and thickest garments. The streets were well-nigh empty. The great thoroughfare, the oude gracht, was almost deserted, and as Kusha hurried along, minor broader strut, for she had a second commission there, she drew her great shawl more tightly round her, muttering crossly, what weather, yesterday so warm, today so cold, tis enough to give one the fever. She delivered her message, and ran through the oude keterkhoff as fast as her feet could carry her, when, just as she turned the corner into the dawn-plane, a fierce gust of wind accompanied by a blinding shower of rain assailed her. Her foot caught against something soft and heavy, and she fell. Bless us! she ejaculated blankly. What fool has left a bundle on the path, on such a night, pitch dark, with half the lamps out, and rain and mist enough to blind one? She gathered herself up, rubbing elbows and knees vigorously, casting the while, dark glances at the obnoxious bundle which had caused the disaster. Just then the wind was lulled, the lamp closed at hand, gave out a steady light, which shed its rays through the fog upon Kyusha and the bundle, from which, to the girl's horror and dismay, came a faint moan. Quickly she drew nearer, when she perceived that what she had believed to be a bundle was indeed a woman, apparently in the last stage of exhaustion. Kyusha tried to lift her, but the dead weight was beyond her. Young and strong as she was. Then the rain and the wind came on again in fiercer gas than before. The woman's moans grew louder and louder, and what to do Kyusha knew not. She struggled on for the few steps that lay between her and the professor's house, and then she rang a peal which resounded through the echoing passages, bringing Dorche the other maid running out, after the manner of her class, imagining all sorts of terrible catastrophes had happened. She uttered a cry of relief when she perceived it was only Kyusha, who, without vouchsafing any explanation, darted past her and ran straight into the professor's room. Oh, professor! she gasped out. But between her efforts to remove the woman, her struggle with the elements, and her race down the passage, her breath was utterly gone. The professor looked up from his book at his tea-tray in surprise. For a moment he thought that Kyusha, his domestic treasure, had altogether taken leave of her senses, for she was streaming with water, covered with mud, and head and cap were in a state of disorder, such as neither he nor any one else had ever seen them, since the last time she had been fished out of the new achracht. What is the matter, Kyusha? He asked, regarding her gravely over his spectacles. There's a woman outside, dying, she panted. I fell over her. You had better try to get her in then, the old gentleman said, in quite a relieved tone. You and Dorcha must bring her in, to your dear poor soul, but it's a dreadful night. The old gentleman shivered as he spoke, and drew a little nearer to the tall white porcelain stove. It was, as he had said a minute before, a terrible night. He could hear the wind beating about the house, and rattling about the casements, and moaning down the chimneys, and to think any poor soul should be out on such a night, dying, heaven preserve others who might be belated, or houseless in any part of the world. He fell into a fit of abstraction, a habit not uncommon with learned men, wondering why life should be so difficult with different people, why he should be in that warm, handsome room, with its soft, rich hangings in carpet, with its beautiful furniture of carved wood, its pictures, and the rare china scattered here and there among the grim array of skeletons, which were his delight. He wondered why he should have his take of tea, out of costly and valuable oriental china, sugar and cream, out of antique silver, while other poor souls had no tea at all, and nothing to take it out of even if they had. He wondered why he should have a lamp under his teapot that was a very marvel of art transparencies, why he should have every luxury and this poor creature should be dying in the street amid the wind and the rain. It was all very unequal. It was very odd, the Professor argued, leaning his back against the tall warm stove. It was very odd indeed. He began to feel that, grand as the study of osteology undoubtedly is, he ought not to permit it to become so engrossing as to blind him to the study of the greater philosophies of life. His reverie was, however, broken by the abrupt re-entrance of Cushia, who this time was a trifle less breathless than she had been before. We got her into the kitchen, Professor, she announced. She is a child, a mere baby, and so pretty. She has opened her eyes and spoken. Give her some soup and wine, hot, said the Professor, without stirring. But won't you come, she asked. The Professor hesitated. He hated attending in cases of illness, though he was a properly qualified doctor, and in an emergency would lay his prejudice aside. Or shall I run across for the good Dr. Smith? Cushia asked. He would come in a minute, only it is such a night. At that moment a fiercer gust than before rattled at the casements, and the Professor laid aside his scruples. He followed his housekeeper down the chilly, marble-flagged passage, into the kitchen, where he never went for months altogether. A cozy enough, pleasant place, with a deep valence hanging from the mantle-shelf, with great many copper pans, bright and shining as new gold, and furniture all scrubbed to the whiteness of snow. In an arm-chair before the open stove sat the rescued girl, a slight golden-haired thing, with wistful blue eyes and a frightened air. Every moment she caught her breath in a half hysterical sob, while violent shivers shook her from head to foot. The Professor went and looked at her over his spectacles, as if she had been some curious specimen of his favorite study, but at the same time he kept at a respectable distance from her. Give her some soup and wine, he said at length, putting his hand under the tails of his long dressing-gown of flowered cashmere. Some soup and wine, hot, and put her to bed. Is she then to remain for the night? Kusha asked, a little surprised. Oh, don't send me away! The golden-haired girl broke out, in a voice that was positively a whale, and clasping a pair of pretty slender hands in piteous supplication. Where'd you come from? The old gentleman asked, much as if he had expected she might suddenly jump up and bite him. From Byerland, my nair, she answered with a sob. So, Kusha, she is remarkably well dressed, is she not? The Professor said, glancing at the costly lace headgear, the heavy gold head-piece, which lay on the table together with the great gold-spiral ornaments and filigree pendants, a dazzling head of richness. He looked, too, at the girl's white hands, at the rich crape-laden gown, at their delicate beauty and shower of waving gold hair, which, released from the confinement of its cap, and head-piece floated in a rich mass of glittering beauty over the pillows which his servant had placed beneath her head. The Professor was old, the Professor was wholly given up to his profession, which he jokingly called his sweet heart, and, though he cut half of his acquaintances in the street, through inattention and the shortness of his sight, he had eyes in his head, and upon occasion could use them, he therefore repeated the question. Very well dressed indeed, Professor, returned Kusha promptly. And what are you doing in Utrecht? In such a plight is this, too. He asked, still keeping at a safe distance. Oh, my dear, I am all alone in the world, she answered, her blue, misty eyes, filled with tears. I had a month ago, a dear, good, kind father, but he has died, and I am indeed desolate. I always believed him rich, and to these things, with a gesture that included her dress and the ornaments on the table. I have ever been accustomed. Thus I ordered, without consideration, such clothes as I thought needful, and then I found there was nothing for me, not a hundred guilders, to call my own when always paid. He sent me here, my Nair, in his last illness, only of three days' duration, he bade me gather all together, and come to this city, where I was to ask for a Mevrabakya, his cousin. Mevrabakya of the Sigarin fabric? Said Dorche, in an aside to the others, I lived servant with her before I came here. I had heard very little about her, only my father had sometimes mentioned his cousin to me. They had once been betrothed, the stranger continued, but when I reached Utrecht I found she was dead, two years dead, but we had never heard of it. Dear, dear, dear, exclaimed the Professor pittingly, well, you had better let Kusha put you to bed, and we will see which can be done for you in the morning. Am I to make up a bed? Kusha asked, following him along the passage. The Professor wheeled round and faced her. She had better sleep in the guest-room, he said thoughtfully, regardless of the cold, which struck to a slipper-feet from the marble floor. That is the only room which does not contain specimens that would probably frighten the poor child. I am very much afraid, Kusha, he concluded doubtfully, that she is a lady, and what we are to do with a lady I can't think.  He'll never think of marrying her, mused Kusha rather blankly. If she had spoken the thoughts to the Professor himself, she would have received a very empathetic assurance of that, much as the study of osteology and the Stradivari had blinded him to the affairs of this workaday world. He was not yet so thoroughly foolish as to join his fossilized wisdom to the ignorance of a child of sixteen or seventeen. However, on the moral, matters assumed a somewhat different aspect. Gertrude van Vloet proved to be not exactly a gentlewoman. It is true that her father had been a well-to-do man for his station in life, and had very much spoiled and indulged his one motherless child. Yet her education was so slight that she could do little more than read and write, besides speaking a little English, which she had picked out from the yachtsmen, frequenting her native town. The Professor found that she had been but a distant relative of the Mevrau Bacchia, to seek whom she had come to Utrecht, and that she had no kinsfolk upon whom she could depend, a fact which accounted for the profusion of her jewellery, all her golden trinkets having descended to her as heirlooms. I can be your servant, my dear, she suggested. Indeed, I am a very useful girl, as you will find if you will but try me. Now, as a rule, the Professor vigorously set his face against admitting young servants into his house. They broke his china, they disarrayed his bones, they meddled with his papers, and made general havoc. So, in truth, he was not very willing to have Gertrude Vent Flute as a permanent member of his household, and he said so. But Cuscia had taken a fancy to the girl, and having an eye to her own departure at no very distant date, for she had been betrothed more than two years. She pleaded so hard to keep promising to train her in all the Professor's ways, to teach her the value of odd china and osteologic specimens, that eventually, with a good deal of grumbling, the old gentleman gave way, and, being a wise, as well as an old gentleman, went back to his studies dismissing Cuscia and the girl alike from his thoughts. Just at first Truid, poor child, was charmed. She put away her splendid ornaments and some lilac frocks and black skirts were purchased for her. Her box, which she had left at the station, supplied all that was necessary for Sunday. It was great fun, for a whole week this young person danced about the rambling old house, playing at being a servant. Then she began to grow a little weary of it all. She had been accustomed, of course, to performing such offices as Dutch ladies fulfill. The care of china, of linen, the dusting of rooms and the like. But she had done them as a mistress, not as an underling. And that was not the worst. It was when it came to her pretty feet, having to be thrust into clomping, and her having to take a pale and syringe, and mop and clean the windows and the pathway in the front of the house, that the game of maid-servant began to assume a very different aspect. When, after having been as free as air to come and go as she chose, she was only permitted to attend service on Sundays, and to take an hour's promenade with Dorche, who was dull and heavy and stupid, she began to feel positively desperate. And the result of it all was that when Jan van der Valde came, as he was accustomed to do nearly every evening to see Cushia, Miss Truud, from sheer longing for excitement and change, began to make eyes at him, with what effect I will endeavour to show. Just at first Cushia noticed nothing. She herself was of so faithful a nature that an idea, a suspicion of Jan's faithlessness, never entered her mind. When the girl laughed and blushed and dimpled and smiled, when she cast her great blue eyes at the big young fellow, Cushia only thought how pretty she was, and how it was must a thousand pitties she had not been born a great lady. And thus weeks slipped over. Never very demonstrative herself, Cushia saw nothing. Dorche, for her part, saw a great deal, but Dorche was a woman of few words, one who quite believed in the saying, if speech is silver, silence is gold, so she held her peace. Now Truud, rendered fairly frantic by her enforced confinement to the house, grew to look upon Jan as her only chance of excitement and distraction. And Jan, poor, thick-headed noodle of six feet high, was thoroughly wretched. What to do he knew not? A strange, mad, fierce passion for Truud had taken possession of him, and an utter distaste, almost dislike, had come in place of the old love for Cushia. Truud was unlike anything he had ever come in contact with before. She was so fairy-like, so light, so delicate, so dainty. Against Cushia's plumper, mature charms, she appeared to the infatuated young man, like if he had ever heard of it he would probably have said, like a Dresden China image. But, since he had not, he compared her in his own foolish heart to an angel. Her feet were so tiny, her hands so soft, her eyes so expressive, her waist so slim, her manner so bewitching. Somehow Cushia was altogether different. He could not endure the touch of her heavy hand, the tones of her less refined voice. He grew impatient at the denser perceptions of her mind. It was very foolish, very short-sighted. For the hands, though heavy, were clever and willing. The voice, though a trifle coarser and accent than Truud's childish tones, would never tell him a lie. The perceptions, though not brilliant, were the perceptions of good everyday common sense. It really was very foolish, for what charmed him most in Truud was the merest outside polish, a certain ease of manner which doubtless she had caught from the English aristocrats whom she had known in her native place. She had not half the sterling good qualities and steadfastness of Cushia. But Yan was in love, and did not stop to argue the matter as you or I are able to do. Men in love, very wise and great men too, are often like Yan van der Velde. They lay aside, pro tem, the whole amount, be it greater small of wisdom they possess. And it must be remembered that Yan van der Velde was neither a wise nor a great man. Well in the end there came what the French call, undenowment, what we enforceable modern English would call a smash. And it happened thus. One evening toward the summer that Cushia's eyes were suddenly opened, and she became aware of the free and easy familiarity of Truud's manner towards her betrothed lover Yan. It was some very slight and trivial thing that led her to notice it. But in an instant the whole truth flashed across her mind. Leave the kitchen, she said, in a tone of authority. But it happened that at the very instant she spoke Yan was furtively holding Truud's fingers under the cover of the tablecloth. And when, unhearing the sharp words, the girl would have snatched them away, he, with true masculine instinct of opposition, held them fast. What do you mean by speaking to her like that?  What is the maid to you? Cushia asked indignantly. May be more than you are, he retorted, an answer to which Cushia deliberately marched out of the kitchen, leaving them alone. To say she was indignant would be but very mildly to express the state of her feelings. She was furious. She knew that the end of her romance had come. No thoughts of making friends with Yan entered her mind. Only a great storm filled her heart till it was ready to burst with pain and anguish. As she went along the passage the professor's bell sounded, and Cushia, being close to the door, went abruptly in. The professor looked up in mild astonishment. Quickly enough changed to dismay as he cut the sight of his valued Cushia's face. From out of which anger seemed in a moment to have thrust all the bright, comely beauty. Oh no, my good Cushia, said the old gentleman, is ought to miss. Yes, professor, there is, returned Cushia, all in a blaze of anger, and moving as she spoke, the tea-tray which she set down upon the oaken buffet with a bang which made its fair and delicate freight fairly jingle again. But you needn't break my tie in a Cushia, suggested the old gentleman, mildly arising from his chair, and getting into his favorite attitude before the stove. Here, quite right, professor, returned Cushia curtly. She was sensible, even in her trouble. And what is the trouble? he asked gently. It's just this professor, cried Cushia, setting her arms a Kimball, and speaking in a high-pitched, shrill voice. You and I have been warming a viper in a bosom, and viper like she has turned around and bitten me. Is it true it? True it, she affirmed, disdainfully. Yes, it is true it, for who but me would be dead now of hunger and cold or worse. And she has been making love to that great fool Jan van der Velde, great oaf that he is, after all I have done for her, after my dragging her in out of the cold and rain, after all I have taught her. Professor, but it is a vile, venomous viper that we have been warming in our bosoms. I must beg, Cushia, said the old gentleman sedately, that you will exonerate me from any such proceedings. If you remember rightly I was altogether against your plan for keeping her in the house. He could not resist giving her that little dig, kind of hurt as he was. Serves me right for being so soft-hearted, thundered Cushia, I will be wiser next time I fall over a bundle and leave it where I find it. No, no, Cushia, don't say that. The old gentleman remonstrated gently. After all, it may be but a blessing in disguise. God sends all our trials for some good and wise purpose. Our heavy afflictions are often, nay, most times, Cushia, means to some great end, which, while the cloud of adversity hangs over us, we are unable to discern. Sniffed Cushia scornfully. This oaf, as I must say you justly term him, for you are a good clever woman, Cushia, as I can testify after the experience of years, has proved that he can be false. He has shown that he can throw away substance for shadow, for of a truth that poor pretty child would make a sad wife for a poor man. Yet it is better you should know it now than at some future date when—when there might be other ties to make the knowledge more bitter to you. Yes, that is true, said Cushia, passing the back of her hand across her trembling lips. She could not shed tears over her trouble, her eyes were dry and burning, as if anchor had scorched the blessed drops up ere they should fall. She went on washing the cups and saucers, or at least the cup and saucer, and other articles the professor had used for his tea, and after a few minutes silence he spoke again. What are you going to do, punish her, or turn her out, or what? I shall let him, marry her, replied Cushia, with a pretentious nod. The old gentleman couldn't help laughing.  Before long, answered Cushia grimly, she will find him out, as I have done. Then, having finished washing the tea-things, which the professor had shuttered to behold in her angry hands, she whirled herself out of the room and left him alone. Oh, these women, these women! he cried, in confidence, to the pictures and skeletons. What a worry they are! An old bachelor has the best of it in the main, I do believe. But, oh, Jan van der Velde, what a donkey you must be to get yourself mixed up in such a broil! And yet, ah! The fossilized old gentleman broke off with a sigh as he recalled the memory of a certain, dead-and-gone romance which had happened. Goodness only knows how many years before, when he, like Jan van der Velde, would have thrown the world away for a glance of a certain pair of blue eyes, at the biding of a certain English tongue, whose broken, nader lunt satal, was to him the sweetest music ever heard on earth. Sweeter even than the strains of the Stradivari, when from under his skillful fingers rose the perfect melodies of old masters. Ah! but the sweet eyes had been closed in death many a long year. The sweet voice hushed in silence. He had watched the dear life ebb away. The fire in the blue eyes fade out. He had felt each day that the clasp of the little greeting fingers was less close. Each day he had seen the outline of the face grow sharper. And at last there had come one when the poor little English woman met him with the gaze of one who knew him not, and babbled, not of green fields, but of horses and dogs, and of a brother Jack, who five years before, had gone down with her majesty's ship alligator in mid-Atlantic. Ah! but that was many, and many a year gone. His young, blue-eyed love stood out alone in life's history, a thing apart of the gentler sex, in a general way. The old professor had not seen that which had raised it in his estimation to the level of the one woman over whose memory hung a bright halo of romance. Fifteen years had passed away. The old professor of osteology had passed away with them, and in the large house on the dawn-plane lived a barren with a half-dozen noisy, happy, healthy children, young fraulas and young cares, who scampered up and down the marble passages, and fell headlong down the steep, narrow, unlighted stairways to the imminent danger of dislocating the aristocratic little necks. There was a new race of neat maids clad in the same neat livery of lilac and black, who scoured and cleaned just as Cushia and Dorchia had done in the old professor's day. You might indeed have heard the self-same names resounding through the echoing rooms. Cushia, Dorchia! But the Cushia and Dorchia were not the same. What had become of Dorchia, I cannot say. But on the left-hand side of the busy, bustling, picturesque Audigrasse, there was a handsome shop filled with all manner of cakes, sweeties, confections and liquors, from absinthe to benedictine, or arach to chateuse. In that shop was a handsome, prosperous, middle-aged woman, well dressed and well mannered. No longer Professor van Dijk's Cushia, but the G'Vrao van Kampen. Yes, Cushia had come to be a prosperous tradeswoman of good possession, respected by all. But she was Cushia van Kampen still. The romance which had come to so disastrous and abrupt an end had sufficed for her life. Many an offer had been made to her, it is true. But she had always declared that she had had enough of lovers. She had found out their real value. I must tell you that at the time of Jan's infidelity, after the first flush of rage was over, Cushia disdained to show any sign of grief or regret. She was very proud, this Netherland servant made, far too proud to let those by whom she was surrounded imagine she was wearing the willow for the faintless Jan. And when Dorchia, on the day of the wedding, remarked that for her part she had always considered Cushia remarkably cool on the subject of matrimony. Cushia, with a careless outturning of her hands, palms uppermost, answered that she was right. Very soon after their marriage Jan and his young wife left Utrecht for Arnhem, where Jan had promise of higher wages, and thus they passed as Cushia thought completely out of her life. I don't wish to hear any more about them if you please, she said, severely and emphatically to Dorchia. But not so. In time the professor died, leaving Cushia the large legacy with which she set out the handsome shop in the Utrecht. And several years passed on. It happened one day that Cushia was sitting in her shop sewing. In the large inner room a party of ladies and officers were eating cakes and drinking chocolates and liqueurs with a good deal of fun and laughter. When the door opened timidly, thereby letting in a gust of bitter wind, and a woman crept fearfully in, followed by two small crying children. Could the lady give her something to eat, she asked? They had had nothing during the day, and the little ones were almost famished.  Truet, for it was she, looked up in startled surprise. I did not know, or I would not have come in Cushia, she said humbly. For I treated you badly. Very badly, returned Cushia emphatically. Then where is Jean? Dead, murmured Truet sadly. Dead? So, ah, well, I suppose I must do something for you. Here, Yankee. Opening the door, she called, Yankee! Yeah, Yevral? A voice cried in reply. The next moment a maid came running into the shop. Take these people into the kitchen, and give them something to eat. Put them by the stove while you prepare it. There is some soup, and that smoked ham we had for coffee. Then come here and take my place for a while. Yeah, Yevral? said Yankee, disappearing again, followed by Truet and her children. Then Cushia sat down again, and began to think. I said, she mused presently, that night that the next time I fell over a bundle I'd leave it where I found it. Ah, well, I'm not a barbarian. I couldn't do that. I never thought, though, it would be Truet. Hi, Yevral? was called from the inner room. Yeah, Meneer? jumping up and going to her customers. She attended to their wants and presently bowed them out. I never thought it would be Truet, she repeated to herself, as she closed the door behind the last of the gay uniforms and jingling scabbards. Hence, Yankee's dead. Ah, well. Then she went into the kitchen, where the miserable children, girls, both of them, and pretty, had they been clean and less forlornly clad, were playing about the stove. So Yankee's dead, began Cushia, seating herself. Yes, Yankee's dead. Truet answered. And she left you nothing? Cushia asked. We had had nothing for a long time. Truet replied, in her sad, crushed voice. We didn't get on very well. He soon got tired of me. That was a weakness of his, remarked Cushia dryly. We lost five little ones, one after another. Truet continued. And Yan was fond of them, and sometimes it seemed to sour him. As for me, I was sorry enough, at the time, heaven knows, but it was as well.  And then he took to Jenevere, and then to wish for something stronger. So at last every stiver went for abstinence. And once or twice he beat me. And then he died. Just as well, muttered Cushia under her breath. It is very good of you to have fed in warm dust, Truet went on, in her faint, complaining tones. Many a one would have let me starve, and I should have deserved it. It was very good of you, and we are grateful. But at his time we're going. Cushia and Mina, then added, with a shake of her head. But I don't know where. Oh, you'd better stay, said Cushia hurriedly.  If your tongue is as glib as it used to be that is, you know some English too, don't you? A little. Truet answered eagerly. And after all, Cushia said, philosophically, shrugging her shoulders. You saved me from the beatings and the starvings and the rest. I owe you something for that. Why, if it hadn't been for you, I should have been silly enough to have married him. And then she went back to her shop, saying to herself, The professor said it was a blessing in disguise. God sends all our trials to work some great purpose. Yes, that was what he said, and he knew most things. Just think if I were trailing about now with those two little ones, with nothing to look back to, but a schnupps-drinking husband who beat me. Ah, well, well, things are best as they are. I don't know that I ought not to be very much obliged to her, and she'll be very useful in the shop. End of Cushia, a study of Dutch life.