First Chapter Collection 08 by Various — Free Audiobook

1 01 - Buffalo Bill: Peacemaker 10:18

Buffalo Bill Peacemaker by Prentice Ingraham. First Chapter, Collection 8. Buffalo Bill, Peacemaker. Chapter One. The Prisoner in the Dugout. Fate was in a very capricious mood when Buffalo Bill and his pards carried their activities into the Lone Star State. They galloped over the plains and plunged full tilt into one of the most surprising misplays ever made by that errant gamester, Chance. There was a triangle of blunders, and it so happened that there was a pard in each corner, ready to take advantage of what came his way and turn Miss Fortune into fortune for Cattleman Perry, his daughter Hattie, and a worthy cowboy of the name of Dunbar. The powerful clique of cattle barons were beaten at their own game of freeze-out, and for this they had the scout and his pards to thank.

Buffalo Bill dropped into his corner of the complication on the wide grazing grounds, en route to the town of Hackamore, where he was to join Wild Bill, old Nomad the Trapper, who'd shared many dangers with the scout, Baron von Schutzenhauser, his Dutch Pard, and Little Cayuse, his Indian trailer. And when it is said that he dropped into the complication, the statement is to be taken literally. It was a night, a night made brilliant by moon and stars. The scout was two days from Portales, New Mexico, having diverged from the trail taken by his pards in order to halt for half a day in the town of Texaco. Buffalo Bill was off the trail, a planesman having shown him a shortcut that was to save many miles of saddle work.

As Bear Paw forged ahead at a slow, steady gallop, the scout rocked gently in his saddle, half-dozing. He did not see the stovepipe that rose out of the ground in front of him, nor did he see the little ridge-like lifting of the earth adjacent to the stovepipe. Bearpaw saw the pipe, however, and to evade it attempted to cross the small elevation. Intelligent, hoarse though he was, how was he to know that elevation was not solid earth? The black charger was in for a surprise. It was sprung with demoralizing suddenness. Two strides carried Bearpaw over the high point of the ridge. A third stride brought a crash under his rear hoofs, and the after part of his body slumped downward. A startled yell, seemingly coming out of the very earth, smote on the scout's ears.

Caught at a disadvantage by the accident, Buffalo Bill was thrown backward out of his saddle and clear of the struggling horse. Bearpaw's front hoofs were on solid ground, and with a prodigious effort he saved himself from sinking and clambered to safety beyond the deceptive ridge, but the scout dropped through the breach, grabbed at a log rafter, missed it, and fell in a huddle for a distance of ten feet. He brought up on all fours, jarred through and through, and blinking in a cloud of dust and a flood of lamplight, a clutter of dirt and broken poles lay around him. The transformation from an easy gallop over the cool open plain to this underground hole with its light and dust had been so abrupt that the scout was taken at a loss.

But he was not the only one taken at a loss. In front of him, as the flurry of dust was wafted aside, he saw a strapping figure in hickory shirt, homespun trousers, and cowhide boots, a figure topped with a mop of red hair, under which was a lean, leathery face. The face of the figure was blank. Two washed-out blue eyes stared at the scout, and the scout, on hands and knees, stared back. "'Who in blazes are ya?' demanded the red-headed man, all at once finding his voice. "'A stranger and a traveler,' answered the scout, the ludicrous nature of the situation gradually appealing to him. A man who—'choo!' "'Well, what do you mean by knocking a hole in the roof and slamming in on me like this?' Went the other, coming out of his surprise with a manner distinctly hostile.

The scout picked himself up slowly, felt of his bruises, and gave vent to a gruesome laugh. If you think, amigo, that I meant to knock a hole in your roof, said he, you've another guest coming. If I'd planned to pay you a visit, I wouldn't have gone about it like this, would I? Well, how do I know who you are or what you do? fumed the other. Far and away more savage than the scout thought the mishap warranted. I don't want no truck with ye anyways. If ye didn't allow to pay me a visit, and if ye ain't here from choice, then your next move is to get out as quick as you come in. Them's the stairs. He waved toward a ladder that led upward to a flat door in the roof. And at the same time we says hello, we also says goodbye.

Start yourself. I'm not inclined to stay here any longer than you want to have me, answered the scout. But I landed with something of a jolt. If it's all the same to you, I'll just catch my breath before I try the stairs. It ain't all the same to me, barked the man. I want you to go, and I want you to go to once. With this to back up the invite, I reckon you won't stand none on the order to hike. The red-haired man made a swipe at his belt and lifted a hairy hand with a six-shooter. Buffalo Bill looked him in the eye, and then coolly sat down on a two-legged stool that happened to be handy. "'I've heard a good deal about Texas hospitality,' said he. "'But you're giving it a hardware twist that I don't like.

And when I don't like a thing,' he added significantly, "'I'm apt to make it pretty plain.' "'You can't run in any ranny-kaboo on me,' snorted the red-haired person, jabbing the air with the point of his gun. You say your drapping in was an accident? I'm letting it go at that and giving you a chance to depart without any fireworks. And I ain't saying nothing about the damage you done to the dugout, no other. Pick up your hat and scatter. I'll count three. When I say one, you'll reach for the hat. When I say two, you'll be on the stairs. And when I say three, you'll either be through that door in the roof or I'll drop you in your tracks. The barbarous methods of this red-haired man were utterly uncalled for.

He was showing a spirit that needed taming. Buffalo Bill dropped his eyes to the litter on the floor. His hat lay there, and from under the brim of the hat showed two inches of revolver muzzle. One of the scout's six-shooters had been jarred from his belt and had fallen under the sombrero. One. The word was a yelp, and the blued barrel of the Texan's gun looked the scout full in the face. All right, said Buffalo Bill cheerily. He reached for his hat with both hands. But only one hand picked up the hat. The other caught the handle of the six-shooter. Then something happened which the Texan had not been looking for. As the scout arose from the stool, the report of a firearm split the air. A bullet passed through the crown of the sombrero, singed the Texan's ear, and clipped a lock of his red hair.

For an instant, barely an instant, the Texan's revolver shook uncertainly. That instant spelled opportunity for the scout. With the speed of thought, he grabbed the hostile gun, jerked it away, and looked over the sights at its owner. "'Why don't you count two?' inquired the scout pleasantly. But the Texan had lost the count. Instead of trying to find it and go on with it, he began to swear. "'Sit down,' ordered Buffalo Bill. "'I've caught my breath all right, but I want to read you a lesson in common civility.' and show you how to treat a traveler who accidentally drops in on you through the roof of your dugout. Someone laughed. It was not the red-haired man, of course, for he was in anything but a merry mood.

The laughter came from behind the scout, and it was the first intimation that there was anyone else in the place. The scout could not very well turn from the red-haired man and investigate. Who's doing that? he demanded. You get right out of here, flamed the red-haired man. This ain't none of your put-in or... I wasn't talking to you, cutting the scout sharply. Who are you behind there? Nate Dunbar, came the answer. If you're a friend of this redheaded rawhide Dunbar, proceeded the scout, why don't you step up behind me and help me put him out? For two reasons, answered the voice behind. First off, neighbor, I'm no friend of Ed Steves. Then again, I'm lashed and laid away on the shelf. If I was able to move, I'd take Red Steve down and choke the breath out of him.

"'Dunbar's a hoss thief that I've captured,' cried Red Steve, "'and I want you to go on about your business and leave us alone.' "'I'm no horse thief,' said Dunbar, "'and Red Steve talks crooked. "'He's working for Benner and Phelps "'and the rest of those cattle barons on the Brazos. "'It's tin horn work, too, and Red has to use the double tongue.'" I thought there was something more than just common incivility back of his treatment of me, observed the scout, a glitter rising in the eyes that looked across the revolver sights. Don't you try to talk, he said sternly to the man in front of him. Walk around and take the ropes off Dunbar. When I count one, you'll begin to move. When I say two, you'll begin on the ropes.

And when I finish with three, if Dunbar isn't clear of his bonds, I'll do something more than singe your ear and take a lock of your red hair. Chance, it seems, has bobbled, and dropped me into the right place at just about the right time. Now then. One. There was that in the scout's eyes and manner which caused Red Steve to start promptly toward the other side of the dugout. As he moved, the scout turned on the stool and let the revolver follow him.

2 02 - 365 Cakes and Cookies 1904 14:59

365 Cakes and Cookies.

By Various. 365 Cakes and Cookies. January. Rules for Cake Making. Read over the recipe carefully. Weigh or measure out all the ingredients to be used. Have the pans greased and floured or lined with greased paper. See that the oven is just right before mixing the cake. Always sift the flour before measuring, and after measuring, sift again with a baking powder. Beat the yolks of the eggs before mixing the cake, but do not beat the whites until ready to add them to the batter. Use fine granulated sugar unless the recipe specifies pulverized. Use pastry flour except when yeast is used. January. One, fruit cake number one. Take one pound of brown sugar, two cupfuls of molasses, six eggs, and one heaping cupful of butter.

Stir these together, then add gradually one ounce of cinnamon, one ounce of cloves, one nutmeg grated, one teaspoonful of mace, one wine glass full of wine, one of brandy, one of rose water, three pounds of seeded and chopped raisins, three pounds of cleaned currants, one half pound of citron shaved thin, one pound of dates, stoned and chopped fine, two and one half teaspoonfuls of baking powder, and flour enough to make a stiff batter. Bake in a slow oven. Two. Lemon layer cake number one. Cake. One half cupful of butter, one cupful of sugar, one half cupful of milk, two eggs, one pint of flour, two level teaspoonfuls of baking powder, one teaspoonful of lemon extract. Mix well and bake in layers.

Filling. The juice and grated rind of one lemon, one half cupful of sugar, one tablespoonful of water, one heaping teaspoonful of butter, beat all together and let it boil up once, then spread between the layers. Three. New Year's Cookies. Rub three-quarter cupful of butter into six cupfuls of flour. Pour one half cupful of boiling water over one and one half cupfuls of sugar and one half teaspoonful of soda. When sugar is melted, stir into the flour. Roll thin and cut with a round cutter. Four. Bread cake number one. Mix well together four cupfuls of bread dough, two cupfuls of sugar, one cupful of butter, one cupful of cream or milk, two eggs, one teaspoonful of baking powder, add a little flour and spice and fruit to taste.

Work well together and let it rise once before baking. Five. Cupcake. Mix in the usual way. One cupful of butter, two cupfuls of sugar, three cupfuls of pastry flour, four eggs, one cupful of milk. Bake in a loaf or as a jelly cake. Six. Alexandra cake. For a good-sized cake, use one half pound of butter, one half pound of sugar, one half pound of flour, three eggs, one half wine glass full of brandy, one quarter teaspoonful of soda, one dessert spoonful of hot water, and one half pound of seeded and chopped raisins. Bake in a hot oven about half an hour. Seven. Date Cake. Cake. One cupful of butter, two cupfuls of sugar, one teaspoonful of vanilla, three cupfuls of flour, one cupful of milk, two teaspoonfuls of baking powder, four eggs.

Bake in layers. Filling. Take two pounds of dates, remove the stones, and chop fine. Add cold water enough to make a smooth paste and spread between the layers. Ice the top with plain white icing. Eight. Dixie Cakes. Beat one half cupful of butter to a cream. Add one cupful of sugar, mix well, then add the yolks of five eggs. When thoroughly mixed, add three teaspoonfuls of cocoa dissolved in one cupful of water. Sift together 2 1⁄2 cupfuls of pastry flour, 1 teaspoonful of baking powder, and 2 tablespoonfuls of cornstarch. Add this and the well-beaten whites of the eggs alternately to the batter. Beat well. Bake in a moderate oven in gem pans. When cold, ice with chocolate icing flavored with vanilla.

Nine. Chocolate Cream Layer Cake. Beat together well two cupfuls of sugar and the yolks of four eggs. Add one teaspoonful of vanilla, two cupfuls of flour, a little at a time, one half cupful of cold water, and one half cupful of flour with one heaping teaspoonful of baking powder sifted into it. Cut the well-beaten whites of the eggs into this mixture and bake in three layers. Fill with the cream filling described under date of May 1st, only adding one ounce of grated chocolate. Ten. Old English Wafers. Melt one teacupful of butter and one half teacupful of lard. Mix them with one quart of flour, two well-beaten eggs, one teaspoonful of salt, and a wine glass full of wine. Add milk until of the right consistency to roll out.

Roll very thin and cut with a small round cutter. When baked, sprinkle over with sugar. Eleven. Sour Cream Cookies. Cream ¾ cupful of butter and add gradually 2 cupfuls of sugar, the beaten yolks of two eggs, 1 cupful of thick sour cream, 4 cupfuls of flour, sifted with 1 teaspoonful of soda, and lastly the well-beaten whites of the eggs. Roll out and cut with a round cutter. If too soft to roll, add a very little more flour. 12. Quick doughnuts. Cream together one cupful of sugar and three well-beaten eggs. Add to this one pint of sweet milk, a seasoning of nutmeg, one half teaspoonful of salt, and sufficient flour to make the batter thick enough to hold a spoon upright. When placed in the middle, add to the first cupful of flour used two teaspoonfuls of baking powder.

Roll out and cut in the usual way and fry in smoking fat. A piece of apple pairing or the skin of half a lemon fried with the donuts adds to the flavor. Roll in powdered sugar while hot. Thirteen. Cream loaf cake. Eat the yolks of four eggs until light. Add one cupful of sugar, and alternately in small quantities, one cupful of thick cream and two cupfuls of flour, into which has been sifted one half teaspoonful of soda and two of cream of tartar. Add a grating of lemon rind and the well-beaten whites of the eggs. Bake in a loaf pan for about 40 minutes. Fourteen. Cocoa biscuit. Melt two tablespoons of cocoa with enough hot milk to make a thin paste. Cook until thick. Add one tablespoonful of sugar, spread on unsalted zephyret biscuits, and place them in a hot oven for a few minutes.

Fifteen. Crisp cookies. With one quart of flour, use one cup full of butter, one cup full of sugar, three eggs, and one teaspoon full of soda dissolved in one tablespoon full of hot water and poured into the sugar and eggs after they are beaten. Work the butter into the flour and stir all together. Roll out thin and bake in a quick oven. 16. Daisy Cakes. Cut a sheet of sponge cake into small rounds. Dip each piece into chocolate icing. Drop a drop of yellow icing in the middle of each cake and lay split blanched almonds around it to represent the petals of a daisy. Seventeen. Orange Cake. Cake. Beat one quarter pound of butter and one half pound of powdered sugar together until very light. Stir in one gill of milk and add the whites of four eggs beaten to a stiff froth.

Mix one half pound of flour, one teaspoonful of baking powder, and two even teaspoonfuls of cornstarch. Sift into the cake, beating all the while. Add the grated rind and juice of one orange. Beat all smooth and bake in jelly tins. Filling. Put one quarter pound of sugar and one gill of water over the fire and stir until the sugar is dissolved. Then boil without stirring until it will form a thread when pulled between the fingers. Beat the white of one egg to a stiff froth and gradually beating all the while the hot syrup. Beat all cold and thick. Add one quarter teaspoonful of cream of tartar and enough orange juice to flavor. Spread between the layers and ice with orange icing. Icing. One cupful of powdered sugar, the grated rind of one orange, one tablespoonful of boiling water, and enough orange juice to moisten the sugar.

The icing should be spread immediately. Eighteen. Sponged jelly cake. Beat the yolks of five eggs, one cupful of sugar, and the grated rind of a lemon to a cream. Add the whites of the eggs beaten to a stiff froth, then one cupful of flour, and one even teaspoonful of baking powder. Bake in a dripping pan, and when done, spread jelly over it and roll. Or bake in layer cake tins and spread the jelly between the layers, icing the top one. Nineteen. Apricot squares. Cut a square loaf cake into thick slices. Cut these into squares. Cover with apricot jam. Put two together and cover the top with whipped cream. Scatter chopped candy cherries over the top if desired. Twenty. Arundel cakes. Into one pound of flour, rub one half pound of butter, then add one half pound of powdered sugar, one half pound of well-washed currants, and a pinch of powdered mace.

Mix these all together with four eggs, well beaten, roll out, and cut with a diamond-shaped cutter. Wash the tops with milk, sprinkle desiccated coconut over them, and bake. Twenty-one. Fairy Gingerbread. Mix together one half cupful of butter and one cupful of powdered sugar. Add 1 1⁄2 cupful of milk, a very little at a time, then 1 1⁄2 cupfuls of flour, into which 1 tablespoonful of ginger has been sifted. Spread very thin on dripping pans and mark in squares. Bake about 5 minutes in a moderate oven. As soon as you take them from the oven, cut the squares apart and roll into tubular shape. 22. Whole wheat fruitcake. Cream 1 1⁄2 cupful of butter with 1 1⁄2 cupfuls of sugar. Add one cupful of seeded raisins, then one beaten egg.

Sift together one-third cupful of pastry flour, two cupfuls of whole wheat flour, one-half teaspoonful of soda, and one and one-half teaspoonfuls of mixed spices. Add these in small quantities, alternately with one cupful of sour milk. Turn the mixture into small pans, sprinkle the tops with granulated sugar, and bake about 25 minutes. 23. Iroquois Cake Mix thoroughly 1 1⁄4 cupful of butter, 1 cupful of powdered sugar, 1 1⁄2 cupfuls of flour, 2 teaspoonfuls of baking powder, 1 1⁄2 cupful of milk, 1 teaspoonful of lemon flavoring, the whites of three eggs well beaten. Bake in two layers, spread with soft icing, and put one on top of the other. 24. Cinnamon Cake Without Eggs Dissolve 1 1⁄2 teaspoonfuls of baking soda in a little hot water.

Add it to ¾ cupful of molasses, ¾ pint of sour cream, ¾ pound of brown sugar, and ¼ cupfuls of flour. Beat well and add 2 tablespoonfuls of cinnamon, a pinch of allspice, and ¼ pounds of seeded raisins cut fine. Bake in loaf or gem pans in a moderate oven. Twenty-five. One egg cake. Take ½ cupful of butter and 1 cupful of sugar creamed. One egg beaten light, one cupful of milk, two cupfuls of flour, one teaspoonful of baking powder, and one teaspoonful of vanilla. Bake in a shallow pan in a moderate oven about half an hour and ice as desired. Twenty-six. Cold water cake. Beat together one and one half cupfuls of sugar, one quarter cupful of butter, two and one half cupfuls of flour, two eggs, one cupful of cold water, and two teaspoonfuls of baking powder.

Flavor with lemon or vanilla. Twenty-seven. Plain gingerbread. Mix together one pint of sifted flour, one half teaspoonful of salt, one teaspoonful of soda, one tablespoonful of ginger, one teaspoonful of cinnamon. Soften three tablespoonfuls of butter. Beat into it one half cupful of sugar, one half cupful of molasses, the flour mixture as above, and one half cupful of boiling water. Bake in a dripping pan. Twenty-eight. Marble cake. Cream one cupful of butter and two cupfuls of powdered sugar. Add four well-beaten eggs and one cupful of sweet milk. Beat well, then add three cupfuls of flour and one teaspoonful of baking powder. Beat again. Take out one-third of the batter and add to it two tablespoonfuls of grated chocolate mixed with one tablespoonful of milk.

Put into the pans a little of the yellow batter, then some of the chocolate, then some of the yellow, and so on. Bake in a moderate oven. Twenty-nine. Sponge drop cakes. Use one half pound of powdered sugar, four eggs, whites and yolks beaten separately, the juice of one lemon, one quarter pound of flour, beat hard, and drop on buttered paper. Bake in a hot oven. Thirty. Niton cakes. Cream one-half pound of butter with the like weight of powdered sugar. Then add the yolks of two eggs and a few caraway seeds. Then mix in lightly one pound of flour and sufficient milk to make it into a stiff paste. Roll out about a quarter of an inch thick. Cut with an oval cutter. Bake in a moderate oven. When cold, ice with water icing and pipe according to fancy.

Put in the center of each a thin slice of pink jujubes. Thirty-one. A good layer cake. Beat one half pound of butter to a cream. Add one cupful of sugar, beating as you add it. Then add the yolks of five eggs, then the whites beaten to a stiff froth. Then one and one half cupfuls of flour, two ounces of cornstarch, and one teaspoonful of baking powder. Bake in three layer cake tins and fill with any filling preferred.

3 03 - The Call of the Wild 21:52

The Call of the Wild by Jack London. First Chapter Collection 8. 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 Colleen McMahon.

The Call of the Wild. Chapter One. Into the Primitive. Old Longing's Nomadic Leap. Chafing at Customs Chain. Again, from its brummel sleep, wakens the furine strain. Buck did not read the newspapers, or he would have known that trouble was brewing, not alone for himself, but for every Tidewater dog, strong of muscle and with warm long hair, from Puget Sound to San Diego. Because men, groping in the Arctic darkness, had found the yellow metal, and because steamship and transportation companies were booming the find, Thousands of men were rushing into the Northland. These men wanted dogs, and the dogs they wanted were heavy dogs, with strong muscles by which to toil, and furry coats to protect them from the frost.

Buck lived at a big house in the sun-kissed Santa Clara Valley, Judge Miller's place it was called. It stood back from the road, half hidden among the trees, through which glimpses could be caught of the wide, cool veranda that ran around its four sides. The house was approached by gravel driveways, which wound about through widespread lawns and under the interlacing boughs of tall poplars. At the rear, things were on even a more spacious scale than at the front. There were great stables, where a dozen grooms and boys held forth, rows of vine-clad servants' cottages, an endless and orderly array of outhouses, long grape arbors, green pastures, orchards, and berry patches. Then there was the pumping plant for the artesian well, and the big cement tank where Judge Miller's boys took their morning plunge and kept cool in the hot afternoon.

And over this great domain, Buck ruled. Here he was born, and here he had lived the four years of his life. It was true there were other dogs. There could not be but other dogs on so vast a place, but they did not count. They came and went, resided in the populous kennels. Or lived obscurely in the recesses of the house after the fashion of Toots, the Japanese pug, or Isabel, the Mexican hairless. Strange creatures that rarely put nose out of doors or set foot to ground. On the other hand, there were the fox terriers, a score of them at least, who yelped fearful promises at Toots and Isabel looking out of the windows at them, and protected by a legion of housemaids armed with brooms and mops.

But Buck was neither house dog nor kennel dog. The whole realm was his. He plunged into the swimming tank or went hunting with the judge's sons. He escorted Molly and Alice, the judge's daughters, on long twilight or early morning rambles. On wintry nights, he lay at the judge's feet before the roaring library fire. He carried the judge's grandsons on his back or rolled them in the grass and guarded their footsteps through wild adventures down to the fountain in the stable yard and even beyond, where the paddocks were. And the berry patches. Among the terriers he stalked imperiously, and Toots and Isabel he utterly ignored, for he was king, king over all creeping, crawling, flying things of Judge Miller's place, humans included.

His father, Elmo, a huge St. Bernard, had been the Judge's inseparable companion, and Buck bid fair to follow in the way of his father. He was not so large. He weighed only 140 pounds, for his mother Shep had been a Scots Shepherd dog. Nevertheless, 140 pounds, to which was added the dignity that comes of good living and universal respect, enabled him to carry himself in right royal fashion. During the four years since his puppyhood, he had lived the life of a sated aristocrat. He had a fine pride in himself, was even a trifle egotistical, as country gentlemen sometimes become. Because of their insular situation. But he had saved himself by not becoming a mere pampered house dog. Hunting and kindred outdoor delights had kept down the fat and hardened his muscles.

And to him, as to the cold tubbing races, the love of water had been a tonic and a health preserver. And this was the manner of dog Buck was in the fall of 1897, when the Klondike Strike dragged men from all the world into the frozen north. But Buck did not read the newspapers, and he did not know that Manuel, one of the gardener's helpers, was an undesirable acquaintance. Manuel had one besetting sin. He loved to play Chinese lottery. Also, in his gambling, he had one besetting weakness, faith in a system, and this made his damnation certain. For to play a system requires money, while the wages of a gardener's helper do not lap over the needs of a wife and numerous progeny. The judge was at a meeting of the Raising Growers Association, and the boys were busy organizing an athletic club on the memorable night of Manuel's treachery.

No one saw him and Buck go off through the orchard on what Buck imagined was merely a stroll. And with the exception of a solitary man, no one saw them arrive at the little flag station known as College Park. This man talked with Manuel, and money chinked between them. You might wrap up the goods before you deliver them, the stranger said gruffly, and Manuel doubled a piece of stout rope around Buck's neck under the collar. Twisted, and you choke him plenty, said Manuel, and the stranger grunted a ready affirmative. Buck had accepted the rope with quiet dignity. To be sure, it was an unwanted performance, but he had learned to trust in men he knew, and to give them credit for a wisdom that outreached his own.

But when the ends of the rope were placed in the stranger's hands, he growled menacingly. He had merely intimated his displeasure, in his pride believing that to intimate was to command. But to his surprise, the rope tightened around his neck, shutting off his breath. In quick rage, he sprang at the man, who met him halfway, grappled him close by the throat, and with a deft twist threw him over on his back. Then the rope tightened mercilessly. While Buck struggled in a fury, his tongue lolling out of his mouth and his great chest panting futilely. Never in all his life had he been so vilely treated, and never in all his life had he been so angry. But his strength ebbed, his eyes glazed, and he knew nothing when the train was flagged and the two men threw him into the baggage car.

The next he knew, he was dimly aware that his tongue was hurting, and that he was being jolted along in some kind of a conveyance. The hoarse shriek of a locomotive whistling a crossing told him where he was. He had traveled too often with the judge, not to know the sensation of riding in a baggage car. He opened his eyes, and into them came the unbridled anger of a kidnapped king. The man sprang for his throat, but Buck was too quick for him. His jaws closed on the hand, nor did they relax till his senses were choked out of him once more. Yep, has fits, the man said, hiding his mangled hand from the baggage man who had been attracted by the sounds of struggle. I'm taking him up for the boss to Frisco.

A crack dog doctor there thinks he can cure him. Concerning that night's ride, the man spoke most eloquently for himself in a little shed back of a saloon on the San Francisco waterfront. All I get is fifty for it, he grumbled, and I wouldn't do it again for a thousand cold cash. His hand was wrapped in a bloody handkerchief, and the right trouser leg was ripped from knee to ankle. How much did the other mug get? The saloon keeper demanded. A hundred, was the reply. Wouldn't take a Sioux less, so help me. That makes a hundred and fifty, the saloon keeper calculated, and he's worth it or I'm a squarehead. The kidnapper undid the bloody wrappings and looked at his lacerated hand. If I don't get the hydrophobia.

It'll be because you was born to hang, laughed the saloon keeper. Here, lend me a hand before you pull your freight, he added. Dazed to suffering from intolerable pain from throat and tongue, with the life half throttled out of him, Buck attempted to face his tormentors. But he was thrown down and choked, repeatedly, till they succeeded in filing the heavy brass collar from off his neck. Then the rope was removed, and he was flung into a cage-like crate. There he lay for the remainder of the weary night, nursing his wrath and wounded pride. He could not understand what it all meant. What did they want with him, these strange men? Why were they keeping him pent up in this narrow crate? He did not know why, but he felt oppressed by the vague sense of impending calamity.

Several times during the night he sprang to his feet when the shed door rattled open. Expecting to see the judge, or the boys at least. But each time it was the bulging face of the saloon keeper that peered in at him by the sickly light of a tallow candle. And each time the joyful bark that trembled in Buck's throat was twisted into a savage growl. But the saloon keeper let him alone, and in the morning four men entered and picked up the crate. More tormentors, Buck decided, for they were evil-looking creatures, ragged and unkempt, and he stormed and raged at them through the bars. They only laughed and poked sticks at him, which he promptly assailed with his teeth, till he realized that was what they wanted, whereupon he lay down sullenly and allowed the crate to be lifted into a wagon.

Then he, and the crate in which he was imprisoned, began a passage through many hands. Clerks in the express office took charge of him. He was carted about in another wagon. A truck carried him, with an assortment of boxes and parcels, upon a ferry steamer. He was trucked off the steamer into a great railway depot, and finally he was deposited in an express car. For two days and nights, this express car was dragged along at the tail of shrieking locomotives, and for two days and nights Buck neither ate nor drank. In his anger, he had met the first advances of the express messengers with growls, and they retaliated by teasing him. When he flung himself against the bars, quivering and frothing, they laughed at him and taunted him.

They growled and barked like detestable dogs, mewed and flapped their arms and crowed. It was all very silly, he knew, but therefore the more outrage to his dignity, and his anger waxed and waxed. He did not mind the hunger so much, but the lack of water caused him severe suffering and fanned his wrath to fever pitch. For that matter, High-strung and finely sensitive, the ill treatment had flung him into a fever, which was fed by the inflammation of his parched and swollen throat and tongue. He was glad for one thing. The rope was off his neck. That had given them an unfair advantage, but now that it was off, he would show them. They would never get another rope around his neck. Upon that, he was resolved.

For two days and nights, he neither ate nor drank, and during those two days and nights of torment, He accumulated a fund of wrath that boded ill for whoever first fell foul of him. His eyes turned bloodshot, and he was metamorphosed into a raging fiend. So changed was he that the judge himself would not have recognized him, and the express messengers breathed with relief when they bundled him off the train at Seattle. Four men gingerly carried the crate from the wagon into a small, high-walled backyard. A stout man with a red sweater that sagged generously at the neck came out and signed the book for the driver. This was the man, Buck divined, the next tormentor, and he hurled himself savagely against the bars.

The man smiled grimly and brought out a hatchet and a club. You ain't gonna take him out now, the driver asked. Sure, the man replied, driving the hatchet into the crate for a pry. There was an instantaneous scattering of the four men who had carried it in. And from safe perches on top of the wall, they prepared to watch the performance. Buck rushed at the splintering wood, sinking his teeth into it, surging and wrestling with it. Wherever the hatchet fell on the outside, he was there on the inside, snarling and growling, as furiously anxious to get out, as the man in the red sweater was calmly intent on getting him out. Now, you red-eyed devil, he said, when he had made an opening sufficient for the passage of Buck's body.

At the same time, he dropped the hatchet and shifted the club to his right hand. And Buck was truly a red-eyed devil as he drew himself together for the spring, hair bristling, mouth foaming, a mad glitter in his bloodshot eyes. Straight at the man he launched his 140 pounds of fury, surcharged with the pent passion of two days and nights. In midair, just as his jaws were about to close on the man, He received a shock that checked his body and brought his teeth together with an agonizing clip. He whirled over, fetching the ground on his back and side. He had never been struck by a club in his life and did not understand. With a snarl that was part bark and more scream, he was again on his feet and launched into the air.

And again, the shock came, and he was brought crushingly to the ground. This time he was aware that it was the club, but his madness knew no caution. A dozen times he charged, and as often, the club broke the charge and smashed him down. After a particularly fierce blow, he crawled to his feet, two days to rush. He staggered limply about, the blood flowing from nose and mouth and ears, his beautiful coat sprayed and flecked with bloody slabber. Then the man advanced and deliberately dealt him a frightful blow on the nose. All the pain he had endured was as nothing compared with the exquisite agony of this. With a roar that was almost lion-like in its ferocity, he again hurled himself at the man.

But the man, shifting the club from right to left, coolly caught him by the underjaw, at the same time wrenching downward and backward. Buck described a complete circle in the air and half of another, then crashed to the ground on his head and chest. For the last time, he rushed. The men struck the shrewd blow he had purposely withheld for so long, and Buck crumpled up and went down, knocked utterly senseless. "'E's no slouch at dog break, and that's what I say," one of the men on the wall cried enthusiastically. "'D'rother break cayuses any day and twice on Sundays,' was the reply of the driver, as he climbed on the wagon and started the horses. Buck's senses came back to him, but not his strength.

He lay where he had fallen, and from there he watched the man in the red sweater. Answers to the name of Buck, the man soliloquized, quoting from the saloon keeper's letter which had announced the consignment of the crate and contents. Well, Buck, my boy, he went on in a genial voice, we've had our little ruction, and the best thing we can do is let it go at that. You've learned your place and I know mine. Be a good dog and all go well and the goose hang high. Be a bad dog, and I'll wail the stuffing out of you. Understand? As he spoke, he fearlessly patted the head he so mercilessly pounded, and though Buck's hair involuntarily bristled at the touch of the hand, he endured it without protest.

When the man brought him water, he drank eagerly, and later bolted a generous meal of raw meat, chunk by chunk, from the man's hand. He was beaten, he knew that, but he was not broken. He saw once for all that he stood no chance against a man with a club. He had learned the lesson, and in all his afterlife he never forgot it. That club was a revelation. It was his introduction to the reign of primitive law, and he met the introduction halfway. The facts of life took on a fiercer aspect, and while he faced that aspect uncowed, he faced it with all the latent cunning of his nature aroused. As the days went by, other dogs came. In crates and at the ends of ropes, some docilely and some raging and roaring as he had come, and one and all he watched them pass under the dominion of the man in the red sweater.

Again and again as he looked at each brutal performance, the lesson was driven home to Buck. A man with a club was a lawgiver, a master to be obeyed, though not necessarily conciliated. Of this last, Buck was never guilty. Though he did see beaten dogs that fawned upon the man and wagged their tails and licked his hand. Also, he saw one dog that would neither conciliate nor obey finally killed in the struggle for mastery. Now and again men came, strangers who talked excitedly, wheedlingly, and in all kinds of fashions to the man in the red sweater. And at such times that money passed between them, the strangers took one or more of the dogs away with them. Buck wondered where they went, for they never came back, but the fear of the future was strong upon him, and he was glad each time when he was not selected.

Yet his time came in the end, in the form of a little weazened man who spat broken English and many strange and uncouth exclamations which Buck could not understand. Sacre dame, he cried when his eyes lit upon Buck. That one damn bully dog, eh? How much? Three hundred, and a present at that, was the prompt reply of the man in the red sweater. And seem it's government money, you ain't got no kick coming, eh, Perot? Perot grinned. Considering that the price of dogs had been boomed skyward by the unwanted demand, it was not an unfair sum for so fine an animal. The Canadian government would be no loser, nor would its dispatches travel the slower. Perot knew dogs, and when he looked at Buck, he knew that he was one in a thousand.

One in ten thousand, he commented bentley. Buck saw money pass between them and was not surprised when Curly, a good-natured Newfoundland, and he were led away by the little weazened man. That was the last he saw of the man in the red sweater, and as Curly and he looked at receding Seattle from the deck of the narwhal, it was the last he saw of the warm Southland. Curly and he were taken below by Perot and turned over to a black-faced giant called Francois. Perrault was a French-Canadian and swarthy, but Francois was a French-Canadian half-breed and twice as swarthy. They were a new kind of men to buck, of which he was destined to see many more, and while he developed no affection for them, he nonetheless grew honestly to respect them.

He speedily learned that Perrault and Francois were fair men, calm and impartial in administering justice, and too wise in the way of dogs to be fooled by dogs. In the tween decks of the Narwhal, Buck and Curly joined two other dogs. One of them was a big Snow White fellow from Spitsbergen who had been brought away by a whaling captain, and who had later accompanied a geological survey into the Barrens. He was friendly in a treacherous sort of way, smiling into one's face the while he meditated some underhand trick, as for instance when he stole from Buck's food at the first meal. As Buck sprang to punish him, the lash of Francois' whip sang through the air, reaching the culprit first, and nothing remained to Buck but to recover the bone.

That was fair of Francois, he decided, and the half-breed began his rise in Buck's estimation. The other dog made no advances, nor received any. Also, he did not attempt to steal from the newcomers. He was a gloomy, morose fellow, and he showed Curly plainly that all he desired was to be left alone. And further, that there would be trouble if he were not left alone. Dave, he was called, and he ate and slept, or yawned between times, and took interest in nothing, not even when the narwhal crossed Queen Charlotte's Sound, and rolled and pitched and bucked like a thing possessed. When Buck and Curly grew excited, half-wild with fear, he raised his head as though annoyed, favored them with an incurious glance, yawned, and went to sleep again.

Day and night, the ship throbbed to the tireless pulse of the propeller, and though one day was very like another, it was apparent to Buck that the weather was steadily growing colder. At last, one morning, the propeller was quiet, and the narwhal was pervaded with an atmosphere of excitement. He felt it, as did the other dogs, and knew that a change was at hand. Francois leashed them and brought them on deck. At the first step upon the cold surface, Buck's feet sank into a white, mushy something very much like mud. He sprang back with a snort. More of this white stuff was falling through the air. He shook himself, but more of it fell upon him. He sniffed it curiously, then licked some up on his tongue.

It bit like fire, and the next instant was gone. This puzzled him. He tried it again with the same result. The onlookers laughed uproariously, and he felt ashamed. He knew not why. For it was his first snow.

of The Call of the Wild.

4 04 - Closing In: Marines in the Seizure of Iwo Jima 6:32

Closing in, Marines in the Seizure of Iwo Jima, by Colonel Joseph H. Alexander, United States Marine Corps, Retired. First Chapter Collection Eight. This is a LibriVox.

Closing in. Marines in the Seizure of Iwo Jima. Chapter One. Sunday, 4 March, 1945, marked the end of the second week of the U.S. invasion of Iwo Jima. By this point, the assault elements of the 3rd, 4th, and 5th Marine divisions were exhausted. Their combat efficiency reduced to dangerously low levels. The thrilling sight of the American flag being raised by the 28th Marines on Mount Siribaki had occurred ten days earlier, a lifetime on Sulphur Island. The landing forces of the 5th Amphibious Corps, VAC, had already sustained 13,000 casualties, including 3,000 dead. The front lines were a jagged serration across Iwo's fat northern half, still in the middle of the main Japanese defenses. Ahead, the going seemed all uphill against a well-disciplined, rarely visible enemy.

In the center of the island, the 3rd Marine Division units had been up most of the night, repelling a small but determined Japanese counter-attack, which had found the scene between the 21st and 9th Marines. Vicious close combat had cost both sides heavy casualties. The counterattack spoiled the division's preparations for a morning advance. Both regiments made regional gains against very stiff opposition. To the east, the 4th Marine Division had finally captured Hill 382, ending its long exposure in the amphitheater, but combat efficiency had fallen to 50%. It would drop another five points by nightfall. On this day, the 24th Marines, supported by flame tanks, advanced a total of 100 yards, Pausing to detonate more than a ton of explosives against enemy cave positions in that sector.

The 23rd and 25th Marines entered the most difficult terrain yet encountered. Broken ground had limited visibility to only a few feet. Along the western flank, the 5th Marine Division had just seized Nishi Ridge and Hill, three sixty two be the previous day. Suffering more than five hundred casualties. It, too, had been up most of the night, engaging a sizable force of infiltrators. The Sunday morning attacks lacked coordination, reflecting the division's collective exhaustion. Most rifle companies were at half strength. The net gain for the day, the division reported, was practically nil. But the battle was beginning to take its toll on the Japanese garrison as well. General Tadamachi Kurabayashi knew his One Hundred Ninth Division had inflicted heavy casualties on the attacking Marines, yet his own losses had been comparable.

The American capture of the Key Hills in the main defense sector the day before deprived him of his invaluable artillery observation sites. His brilliant chief of artillery, Colonel Kosaku Kaido, lay dying. On this date, Kiribayashi moved his own command post from the central highlands to a cave on the northwest coast. The usual blandishments from Imperial General Headquarters in Tokyo reached him by radio that afternoon. But Kuribayashi was in no mood for heroic rhetoric. Send me air and naval support, and I will hold the island, he signaled. Without them I cannot hold. That afternoon the fighting men of both sides witnessed a harbinger of Iwo Jima's fate. Through the overcast skies appeared a gigantic silver bomber, the largest aircraft anyone had ever seen.

It was the Boeing B-29 Super Fortress Dynamite. Crippled in the raid over Tokyo, seeking an emergency landing on the island's scruffy main airstrip. As the Americans in the vicinity held their breasts, the big bomber swooped in from the south, landed heavily, clipped the field telegraph pole with a wing, and shuddered to a stop less than fifty feet from the bitter end of the strip. Pilot Lieutenant Fred Mallow and his ten-man crew were extremely glad to be alive. But they didn't stay long. Every Japanese gunner within range wanted to bag this prize. Mechanics made field repairs within half an hour. Then the 65-ton superfort lumbered aloft through a hail of enemy fire, and headed back to its base in Tinian.

The Marines cheered. The Battle of Iwo Jima would rage on for another 22 days. Claiming eleven thousand more American casualties, and the lives of virtually the entire Japanese garrison. This was a colossal fight between two well-armed veteran forces, the biggest and bloodiest battle in the history of the United States Marine Corps. From the Fourth of March on, however, the leaders of both sides entertained no doubts as to the ultimate outcome.

End of chapter 1 Closing in Marines in the Seizure of Iwo Jima by Colonel Joseph H. Alexander. U.S. Marine Corps, Retired.

5 05 - Confutation of Church of Englandism 11:55

Confutation of Church of Englandism and Correct Exposition of the Catholic Faith on all points of controversy between the two churches by Alexander White.

Chapter One. Moved by the grace of God, I now enter on the confutation of that schism in which, alas, I lived for many years. I lived in it, it is true, not so much of my own choice as owing to the effects of a corrupt education. For, educated in schism from my infancy, I embraced error instead of truth, a sect instead of a church. Yet I adore the bounty of divine providence in affording me a liberal education. For, by means of the education which I received, and the assistance of the grace and blessing of God, not only was I restrained from the commission of many wicked crimes into which others plunged, but also the gloom of ignorance being dispelled, my mind was gradually prepared for embracing the true Catholic faith.

After the nefarious regicide of Charles I, King of Great Britain, to whose party I had always attached myself, I quitted the kingdom, and during my sojourn abroad began seriously to reflect on the great and manifold perils from which, through the mercy of God, I had already escaped. These considerations led me to think on the vanity, the uncertainty, the brief and fleeting duration of earthly joys and possessions, in the idle pursuit of which so much labor is expended, and so much anxiety felt by the great bulk of mankind. And whilst in this salutary frame of mind, I entered into the resolution of using for the future greater diligence in securing true and eternal happiness than I had theretofore employed.

One thing, however, caused me the greatest possible uneasiness, namely that I knew not with which church to associate myself. I believed in the existence of only one true church, but which that one was I knew not. I did not indeed at that time doubt but that the church which the king and the bishops of his persuasion had defended, and with which I had always held communion, was a true part of the church. But I could not find such a church out of my own country. I thought it possible that the church might never be restored, but it appeared to me most absurd to say the universal church should perish with it. I vehemently desired to find the truth. But my mind fluctuated as to the mode of arriving at it.

I supplicated Almighty God to grant me His assistance in this important affair, and pondered in my mind many considerations regarding it. But for the space of several months I was unable to arrive at any fixed conclusion. At length, after the most serious consideration, and after gravely and repeatedly reflecting on various plans, My mind became impressed with the absolute necessity of adopting the following. Namely, that I should consult the fathers and doctors of the primitive church, of whose fidelity and piety I could entertain no doubt, and who, because they flourished at a period so remote from our contentious times, I concluded were wholly free from party zeal, and should on that account be deemed impartial witnesses.

I determined, therefore, to devote some years to this study, firmly resolved on embracing the doctrine of faith handed down by them, and on joining communion with whatever church I should find teaching the same doctrine at the present day. After a course of reading which occupied seven years, and which by the grace of God I concluded with great delight, but with still greater fruit and advantage, I carefully read over the notes that I had choicely extracted during my previous course of study. Then, on comparing the doctrine of faith handed down by the primitive Catholic Church with that of the Church of England, to which I had before belonged, I found the former in many points at open variance with the latter, but discovered it to be the very same as that which the Roman Catholic Church teaches and promulgates at the present day.

Wherefore, I was at the same time affected with sorrow and joy, with sorrow, because I had so long lived in schism, with joy that I should at length, by the divine mercy and grace, be freed from it. I immediately fled from schism, and of my own accord presented myself as a suppliant, suing for peace from the Church, and this I obtained according to the usual form of reconciliation. Now that I have obtained my own reconciliation, I am induced to publish this treatise, for two reasons especially, one of which regards myself, the other my neighbour. One regards myself, for whilst I publicly refute the English schism, I also publicly declare myself to have been formerly ignorant and foolish. I lament indeed that I should have lived so long in ignorance and folly, yet I am not ashamed to confess it publicly.

Knowing that the more emphatically I declare my own misery and iniquity, the more do I magnify, in my own particular instance, the mercy and grace of God. Sorrow for sins committed and a public confession of them avail much to the penitent, but the ruinous and deadly false shame of confessing sins weighs the sinner down to hell. St. Augustine severely rebukes this false shame in the schismatic Vincentius. Why, he asks him, do you still hesitate to profess what you believe, unless because you are confounded at having formerly believed or defended a doctrine which you do not now believe? And whilst you are ashamed to confess your error, why are you not ashamed to persevere in error, which certainly is a thing far more shameful?

This is a subject on which the Scripture also is far from being silent. There is a confusion leading to sin. And there is a confusion leading to grace and glory. Confusion leads to sin, when a man is ashamed to change an erroneous opinion, lest he be deemed inconsistent, or lest, upon his own showing, he be pronounced to have remained long in error. Thus do they go down alive into hell. Alive. That means conscious that they are the authors of their own perdition, and that there would be persons of this description. was long ago foreshown in the case of Cor, Dathan, and Aberon, who were swallowed up in an opening of the earth. But confusion leads to grace and glory, when a man blushes at his own iniquity, does penance, and amends his life, which it grieveth you, who are wholly under the influence of that pernicious shame, to do, lest men who know not the meaning of the words should object against you, the following verse of St.

Paul. If I build up again the things I have destroyed, I make myself a prevaricator. But if these words could be urged against men who, when converted, proclaimed the truth which, while perverse, they assailed, they could then be advanced against St. Paul himself, in whom the churches of Christ magnified God, on hearing that he preached the faith which he had before endeavoured to destroy. The other reason that incites me to write proceeds from commiseration for my neighbor. How afflicted is my soul, as often as I call to mind, that they who were the partners of my numerous and severe trials, still persevere in the crime of schism, and are on that account wretched. Formerly I loved myself and them in the communion of schism.

Wherefore it is evident that I hated not loved myself and them, for he that loveth iniquity hateth his own soul. and he that loves others in sin hates their souls. But now, through means of God's grace, I love myself in the communion of Catholic truth and charity, and I vehemently desire to love them in the same communion. It is for this reason that I reprove their schism, whereby they are precluded from this communion, and I debarred of my wished-for delight. The more, says St. Augustin, vice displeases us, The less do we wish the wicked to die unamended. For it is an easy thing and agreeable to our inclination to hate the wicked, because they are wicked, but it is a rare and pious thing so to love them because they are men.

These are the words of St. Augustine. Such a my brethren as abandon schism and return to the communion of the Catholic Church will also love me in that communion. But they who persevere in schism will recompense me as the Corinthians recompense St. Paul, who burn with a divine charity towards them. For when writing to them, he says, And I most gladly will spend and be spent myself for your souls. Whereunto, he immediately adds, Although loving you more, I be loved less. Neither did he receive a better reward from the Galatians, when addressing whom he thus writes, Am I then become your enemy, because I tell you the truth? My brethren may recompense me as they please, yet will I act towards them as charity prescribes.

I will reprove their schism, publicly expose the heresy and other deadly errors in which they are involved. I will exhort them to peace and communion with the Catholic Church. And I hope that some, at least, will yield the desired fruit, not indeed that I rely on my own weakness, but upon the virtue of Christ, who, as the Apostle says, hath chosen the weak things of this world, that he may confound the strong. Wherefore St. Augustine, considering these words of the Apostle, says, Should a learned man be chosen, perhaps he would say he was so chosen, because he deserved to be chosen for his learning. Our Lord Jesus Christ, wishing to humble the necks of the proud, sought not to convert the fisherman by means of the orator, but gain the emperor by means of the fisherman.

Cyprian, the great orator, believed. But before him Peter the fisherman, through whom not only the orator, but the emperor too afterwards believed. No noble was at first elected, no learned man, for the weak things of the world hath God chosen, that he may confound the strong. So far, Augustine. I add that as Christ did before, infrequently, though not always, so doth he in the present day. Relying then, not on my own strength, but on the assistance of Christ, I descend into the arena. I will reprove, as I have already said, the English schism. I will publicly expose the heresy and other deadly errors in which my brethren are implicated. I will exhort them to peace and communion with the Catholic Church.

But before so doing, I shall offer a few prefatory observations on the nature of schism and heresy, and on the morals of schismatics and heretics.

6 06 - How the World Is Fed 8:28

How the World is Fed by Frank G. Carpenter. 1st Chapter, Collection 8. 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 Betty B. Foods, or How the World is Fed. 1. Introduction. We start today upon a series of travels which will take us all over the earth. Our object is to learn about the foods of the world and how they are used by man. In our journeys we shall visit the farms of many nations and see how the crops are raised. We shall go into the orchards and pick apples, oranges, and other fruits fresh from the trees. We shall penetrate the wilds to hunt the game which man eats, and we shall even look into the seas and study the fish, oysters, and other animals which live under the water.

As we go on with our travels, we shall see ships and cars carrying food from place to place, and, in the markets, we shall watch the exchanges of one thing for another. This will show us the commerce of the world as it affects our eating, while the work on the farms and in the orchards and the factories will show us the great industries which have grown up in raising food and preparing it for use. Indeed, all our journeys are to be along the lines of industry and commerce. They will deal with the world at work and the world of trade. We all know that man is an animal, and whenever we miss our meals, we realize that he is a hungry animal. Men seldom work except to satisfy their wants, and their wants along food lines are such that they devote the greater part of their lives to supplying them.

Indeed, the story of the growth of the easier ways of satisfying these wants forms a large part of the history of civilization. Ages ago, men ate their food raw. If they killed a wild animal, they tore it to pieces and devoured it. Some savage tribes do this today. The Australian Aborigines, for instance, know but little about cooking, and a part of their food is worms, which they dig from the trees and eat raw. The Abyssinians eat raw meat, And there are other Africans who live largely upon roots, wild vegetables, and fruit. Some of these people are not much better than the savages of the distant past. It was some time before men learned that food is better when cooked. How they found out, we do not know.

It may have been like the discovery of roast pig by Bobo, the Chinese boy, as told by Charles Lamb. Bobo was the son of the swineherd, Ho Ti, And, as you may remember, he accidentally set fire to his father's house, in which some little pigs were kept. The house burned to the ground, and the pigs were roasted. Bobo felt one of the sizzling carcasses to see if it might not still have life, and as it burned his fingers, he thrust them into his mouth. His pain turned to delight, as he got his first taste of the juicy cracklings which adhered to them. He told Ho T., and as the story goes, the two burned down house after house to get more roast pig. They were arrested, and at their trial some of the roast was given to the judge.

A few days later, the judge, having bought some little pigs of a neighbor, burned his own house. Others did likewise, until a sage discovered that a pig could be roasted on an ordinary fire, and after this, roasting became common throughout the nation. However true this story may be, we know that roasting was the first stage of food preparation, for it is common among all savage tribes. The next discovery was probably baking. Holes were made in the ground and lined with stones. Fire was then built, and when the stones were red-hot, the food, wrapped in leaves or skins, was there covered up to be cooked. Such bake-ovens are common today in the islands of the South Seas, and dressed pig or other animals are thus deliciously cooked.

The savages of Africa cook hippopotamus and elephant meat in stone-lined pits made red-hot by fire, and a delicious morsel to them is an elephant's foot placed in such a pit and allowed to remain until done. Boiling and steaming food came later. Our Indians sometimes cooked in this way, and one tribe of them, the Assiniboons, were known as the Stone Boilers, because they boiled their food with red-hot stones. Having killed a buffalo, they took off its skin and so fitted it into a hole in the ground that it was perfectly tight. They next poured water into the skin and placed pieces of the buffalo meat within it. Then, having made a fire nearby, they heated great stones red-hot and tumbled them into the water.

In time, the water boiled, and the meat was cooked. There are places on the earth where nature herself furnishes plenty of boiling water and steam. The Yellowstone Park, for instance, has boiling springs in which one can place a basket of eggs and have them cooked hard or soft, according to the time they are left in. and into which one can drop fish and bring them out ready to eat. In the Hot Springs region of New Zealand, there are pools of water which are always boiling, and also many wide cracks where the steam pours forth from the ground. Here Mother Earth does the cooking. The natives have steaming boxes with only network of ropes for a bottom. They put the food into the boxes and set them over the steam holes or cracks.

In a short time the food is cooked, Quite as well as in our own steamers. In one way or another, as time went on, the people of the world learned more about cooking. Their desire for different kinds of food and more food led them to trade with each other. Each learned what the others had discovered as to food-getting, food-keeping, and food manufacturing. They began to exchange foods, and through such exchanges grew up what we called civilization, and especially commerce. Our food now comes from all parts of the world, and our dinner tables have articles upon them which were brought thousands of miles for our use. The tea we drank today may have been picked by a Chinese boy or girl last year, and the sugar in it may have come from cane raised in Cuba.

The coffee was grown on bushes in southern Brazil, and if we could follow the pepper back to its home, we might find half-naked little brown boys of Java, or Sumatra playing among the vines on which it grew. If the loaf of bread could tell its story, it might speak of vast fields of golden wheat beyond the Great Lakes, and the roast beef, only a few weeks ago, was part of an animal which galloped over the Texas prairies with a cowboy behind it. Every meal we eat, in fact, has been brought to us from many parts of the earth, and the people who furnished it are probably eating some things supplied by us. In this way, the whole world is working for you and me, and we, in turn, are working for every nation which buys the things we make or raise to sell.

It is thus through commerce that food is carried all over the world, from the places where each kind can be raised the cheapest, and sold for money in exchange. As we proceed with our travels, we shall see that almost every locality produces some things better than others. so that a continual exchanging goes on, and cars and ships are always moving this way and that, carrying food products from country to country and from place to place. We ship quantities of food abroad every year, and compete in the markets of the world with all other nations, which have similar things to sell. In our travels, we must study this globe as a workshop and as a vast retail store. We must learn not only what we ourselves produce to eat and sell, But also what other nations raise and what they have to sell in competition with us.

We want to know which nations are our chief customers and what they send back to us in money or goods in exchange.

7 07 - Knowing and Being 15:06

Knowing and Being by John Vitch, 1829-1894. Knowing and Being Introductory The problem of philosophy may be said to be twofold. On the one side is the question, What do we know? On the other, What is? Obviously, the first question has its main interest for us as leading to the second. Our knowledge acquires interest and importance from what it teaches us regarding what is, regarding our own self, the world, and God. Knowledge is a means. not an end. We do not know merely that we may contemplate or speculate. We know that we may believe. As knowledge issues in belief, it further issues in action, for we act as we believe. I put the question as to knowing first, for it seems to me irrational to put that of being first, or to attempt to settle any question about being, about what is, first.

or apart from knowing. That is a vain method, it seems to me, though it is professed, but always inconsistently acted upon. Further, I put the question as to knowing not only first, but in this form, what do we know? In these times it will be found pretty frequently put as, what can we know? I have no objection to this form of the question. I think we must in the end come to it. We must consider the question as to the conditions, the reach, the limits of human knowledge. But I distinctly object to its being put first, and I find very great disadvantages arising from its being so put. The risk of giving it the first place is that we are apt to lay down conditions regarding perhaps one part or sphere of our knowledge only, and when we have got those partial conditions or limitations, we set them up as the laws of all knowledge, and come thus to exclude from knowledge many things that we do know.

Hence, I distinctly object to what is called the theory of knowledge, if this be not preceded by a thorough examination and analysis of what we do as a matter of fact know in and by consciousness in all its forms. From sense perception through memory, imagination, thinking, including concepts, judgments, reasonings, Up even to that side of our consciousness which is conversant with what we call the Infinite, the Absolute, the Unconditioned, the Divine. If, for example, we start simply with the knowledge we get in self-perception, and draw out its conditions and laws, and then carry them all through our knowledge as its laws, We shall make the blunder of limiting knowledge to a single, and perhaps comparatively insignificant, portion of its sphere.

The laws of our knowledge, the object in time and space, are not necessarily the laws of our knowing all objects. Yet this has been actually done in philosophy, and it has been done through our setting up the question as to what we can know, before that as to what we do know. In a word, we must have psychology, that is, a study of consciousness in its widest sphere, before we can have metaphysics, or the science of reality. And we must further have psychology in all its fullness before we can have what is called the theory of knowledge, for the simple reason that you cannot give the theory of a thing before you know what the thing is, and is in all its completeness. The mistake in ancient philosophy was to begin metaphysics before psychology.

The mistake common enough in modern philosophy is to begin the theory of knowledge before psychology, before we have any means of knowing what we know, or knowing knowledge as a fact of experience. In this connection there occurs to us the contrast between ancient and modern method, particularly between Aristotle and Descartes. In ancient philosophy, especially in Aristotelic, there is obviously a prominence of the object in the method of investigation, being as being, and the essential attributes of being as such, then a process downwards from this to its special forms, And although being does not appear as the summa genus of the categories of Aristoto, still it is there influentially. It is the objective forms, the forms of reality, as embodied chiefly in language, which determine the classification.

And it is the modes of real judgment, judgment about things, in which the logical forms in the organon are based. But chiefly these objective forms or facts cannot be considered apart. They are at first for us, as they are in knowledge, and knowing in every scheme of philosophy must come in for its share of attention and scrutiny. Things as they stand in relation to our acts of cognition. Ultimately, this is the point of view, not, however, taking them merely as they now stand in mature experience. But considering genesis, growth, increase of knowledge as well. The modern point of view, that of Descartes, is generally spoken of as rather the analysis of knowing than the analysis of being. And in a good sense it is so.

His cogito ergo sum has unquestionably its starting point in consciousness, and he proceeds to being through consciousness. Moreover, he inculcates the doctrine that the mind is better known than the body or object, and he seeks to build up philosophy on the basis of clear and distinct ideas, and mainly by deduction. But it would be a mistake to suppose that in the method itself, or even as unfolded by Descartes, there is any exclusion of a regard to the object or varied objects of knowledge. Descartes certainly never tried to evolve knowledge out of the simple acts or operations of knowledge, divorced from the variety of objects in experience, nor did he set up knowing as the instrument of philosophy to the exclusion of known being.

In the first principle of his philosophy, the immediate implication of self-being in self-consciousness There is ample recognition of being as known. The gulf supposed to exist between knowing and being is here at once bridged. For the being consciousness in a given instance is the being for the time, and knowing and being are fused in one intellectual comprehension.

Here subject is not divorced from object, but subject and object Become implicative. And whatever may be thought of his tendency to exaggeration in deduction from the clearness and distinctness of the idea, and its fatal consequences in absorbing being in knowing, making belief simply a harmony of concepts, carried to an extremity in Spinoza, There is both in the meditations and the principles a very ample recognition, in practice, of the need of studying mental operations in the light of their object. Thinkers may imagine that they can study knowing to the exclusion of the variety in the objects known. They delude themselves. The acts of cognition not only cease to be various, and thus adequate to reality, They actually ceased to be.

The study of being out of knowing is vain. Not less empty is the study of knowing apart from being. It may be said that on the whole the view which puts the investigation of knowing before being has prevailed in modern philosophy, and it is only lately that any unfaithfulness to the method has been shown. It is even true that psychology as a rule has gone before the theory of knowledge, though the psychological investigation has been hampered by hypothesis as to the supposed ability or inability of the mind to know in given spheres.

It will be found that the various doctrines and theories of sense-perception have turned a good deal, for example, on the question as to whether anything can be perceived which is not a sensation or mode of the mind, or idea in the mind. All this proceeds, as seems to me, on a misapplication of the true method. We set out to seek knowledge, and we hamper ourselves by a system or hypothesis about knowledge, already formed or traditionally got, and thus we frustrate our own efforts. It ought also to be kept in mind that knowing and being are abstractions. There is no knowing in our experience without a knower. There is no being realizable by us apart from something that actually is. Further, there is no knowing which is not a definite act of knowing, either perceiving or remembering or judging, or something else that is definite.

Hence we cannot set up knowing as a thing to be inquired into in the first place. We can deal only with this or that act of knowledge, and deal with these in succession until we have exhausted as to nature the possible acts of our knowledge. Thus, and thus only, can we set down the conditions, the essential conditions, of our knowing. Those apart from which there is no object of knowledge, those apart from which there is not this or that act of knowledge, and anything else is a mere abstraction, and a worthless abstraction, and its conditions are not the conditions of actual knowledge. In recent systems of philosophy, the whole of the true relations in these questions has been misconceived and perverted.

The same is true of the terms pure being, consciousness, thought. Being, or pure being, is simply qualityless being, being not determined by this or that. There is nothing corresponding to such a conception in reality. Being must be related to some definite subject. Here it can mean anything real or actual. Here, indeed, we can properly realize it as meaning anything. Every object of thought as thought is regarded as existing or real in the sense of its affirmation as an object of thought, whether it be the percept of a time object or the concept of that which may be at any time. Being is simply the abstraction or universalized concept of this fact. To be studied, being must be studied, not per se, but in its varied applications to real things.

But this application cannot come out of being per se. It must be helped or furnished from another source, a sphere beyond the limits of the abstraction. Pure Being is simply an empty notion. In the same way, there is no reality corresponding to the term consciousness, or even to a consciousness. That is, there is nothing in reality convertible to it. There are conscious acts, definite, individual, specific, successive, and coexisting in time. Consciousness represents their common element, abstracted by us, and raised into a concept. It is the element, so to speak, of knowledge, recognition, or awareness on our part of certain acts with definite contents. And we can put a meaning into consciousness by thinking it as exemplified in an apprehensive conscious act, real, or in a conceiving conscious act, Ideal.

But thus only has it reality. Far less is it a person or an actor. It ought not to be hypostatised and made to do what alone something more, that is, a conscious subject, can do. The same remarks apply to thought, which is an abstraction of precisely the same character and origin. It represents what is common to individual or definite acts of thought in different times. Yet it is set up to do and to be what only that which grounds it, a thinker, can do or be.

End of Knowing and Being Introductory by John Vitch. 1829 to 1894.

8 08 - Letters from Hell 25:47

Letters from Hell by Voldemar Adolph Theisted. First Chapter Collection Eight. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org.

Letters from Hell. Chapter One.

I felt myself to be dying. After a long period of unconsciousness, during which I had raved wildly under the influence of delirium, my senses returned once more. I was so weak that I could move neither hand nor foot, while my eyelids, unable to sustain their own weight, fell down again as soon as raised, and my tongue clung to the roof of my mouth. They were standing round my bedside. And I could hear them whispering to one another, "'Poor fellow, he does not suffer much.' But I did suffer, more, far more, than mortal man can imagine, for I plainly felt that I must die. The bare thought of dying had ever been a source of terror to me, but the dreadful reality of its meaning now burst on me in this hour for the first time.

I say in this hour, and yet I lay in this state several days, though indeed they were but one endless hour of agony. Where was my faith the while? Once I had had one, but that was long, long ago. In vain I tried to recall it, or at least some little portion of it. I had nothing to cling to in my fearful distress. I would have clutched at a straw, But my convulsive, groping hand found nothing to lay hold of. Nothing! Oh, the import of that terrible expression! I know of only one which is more terrible. Too late! But there was something which I did not grasp at, did not seek after, that forced itself upon me with a marvelous clearness and fullness. It was the life I had led. and which in a few moments more would be closed.

The good I had ever done was but little. The evil, oh, how great! It stood out before my eyes like a picture. I had lived only for myself and my own pleasure. Oh, terrible truth! I had been traveling along the broad road of death, not life's narrow path, from the very first. And now I was lying there, the victim of my own folly, utterly miserable, without hope of salvation. My sins stood arrayed before me, died in blood. But it was too late to repent. At that hour, indeed, I had no longer any conception of the meaning of the word repentance. I was the prey of despair. Not yet fifty years old, in possession of ample means, and to die so soon. It seemed an impossibility, and yet I knew that death was inevitable.

It was stealing fast upon me. I felt it in the dusky twilight of my sick room. I saw it in the face of those who stood by my bedside. I heard it in the deep silence that prevailed. It was a fearful scene, and I, the chief actor in it, lay there. All eyes bent on me, all ears listening eagerly to catch my last grasp. The death chill was already curdling my blood. It was as if I lay entombed alive. One. Only one source of comfort remained. It will not be worse for you than for many others. Nothing, perhaps, that I could say is better adapted to depict the utter wretchedness of my state than this miserable ground of consolation. But why dwell upon my last struggle? No living soul can realize what my sufferings were.

I had hell within me. Nay, hell was still looming before me. At length I once more opened my eyes and saw reflected on the faces of the bystanders the terror that was visible on my own. One long, deep-drawn sigh, one convulsive shudder, and I was no more. It was an indescribable feeling that I now experienced. Death was still quivering through my frame, but I felt myself released, freed, lightened. My consciousness, which for one moment had been extinguished, dawned once more the next. Where was I? Thick clouds and mists, a desolate void, hemmed me in on all sides. It was not, however, literally dark, for I could see, though no ray of light fell on my eyeballs. The first sensation I remember to have experienced was an icy chill.

It pierced me through and through till I shuddered again, and my teeth chattered in my head. The second was a feeling of sickness, not of that description which one calls in the world heart-sickness. Where was I? Involuntarily, the history of the rich man who awoke to find himself in the place of torment flashed through my mind. Could I be that rich man? But of him it is said that he pined for one drop of cold water. He must have been parched up then with heat, while I literally froze from cold, so that I gnashed my teeth. Yes, there is an allusion to that, too, in another place. It must be true then, and the other, the devouring flame, was true also. Terribly true. I was soon to realize it. Self-consciousness having returned, I perceived that I was naked.

Perhaps that was why I felt so terribly cold. At first I thought I was the same, unchanged, but I was only the shadow of what I had been. The eye which saw, the teeth which gnashed, were not really existent, neither was any other part of my body. I was a shadow, stripped bare to the very core of my heart. No wonder, then, that I froze. No wonder that I felt myself naked. And yet, with all this, no feeling of shame came over me, but I did feel myself to be endlessly wretched. All that manliness in my nature, of which I had formerly been so proud, was gone. In the world they call a human being of the most abject description a beggar. Alas, I was much, much lower. While my funeral doubtless was being celebrated by due pomp and magnificence in the world above, I was making my entrance into Hell, naked, incomparably miserable.

While the clergyman, maybe in unctuous words, was touching on my memory, and averring that I was now beyond the reach of pain and suffering, that Heaven was open to me, While, in a word, he was expending all the eulogiums on me which are customary on such occasions, I was sitting in the midst of Hell's torments. I went on. Was it the ground that I was standing on? It seemed like a swamp beneath my feet, a wondrous pavement. Perhaps it was the good intentions with which Hell is said to be paved. I went on. On through the fogs and darkness, far, far off, perhaps it was a thousand miles, I espied a light. I instinctively turned my steps toward it. The fog seemed to lift little by little. Perhaps it was unreal, a mirage, like those phantom castles and houses which emerged here and there out of the hazy atmosphere.

Sometimes it appeared as if I went through one of these airy buildings in my blind haste. I saw ghost-like shapes, too, first singly, now in troops. I trembled with fear, though I knew well enough that they were neither more nor less than beings like myself. All at once I found myself surrounded by a troop of them. I fled away in my terror, but only to fall into the hands of another band, I say hands, for they tore and pulled at me, though I did not feel their touches, as they sought in vain to hold me fast. Meanwhile they kept chattering and gibbering at each other. But, oh, what voices! It sounded in my ears like the faint, smothered creaking of a rusty wheel. In my fright I, too, uttered a cry, and heard the same abominable, doleful sound.

I could not understand what they were saying, and yet I fancied I could distinguish the words oft-times repeated. Whence? What news? O wretched man that I was! What news could I tell? Whence was not the idea that engrossed my thoughts, but whither? Happily, there were other poor wretches on the same road, and under similar circumstances to mine. So, whilst the roaming bands were chasing them, I managed to escape. Breathless I dashed along, breathless I mean in soul, not in body, till I found a lonely spot where I could rest awhile and collect my scattered thoughts. Alas, alas, what was there for me to collect? What to counsel about? Was I not lost for ever? Overwhelmed with grief, I sank down and began to meditate on my wretched condition.

So I was in the kingdom of death, in hell, in torments. Oh, that it should have come to this! Why had I halted between faith and disbelief, between heaven and hell, till the last moment? A few months, aye, a few days back, it would not, perhaps, have been too late to turn, and thus have avoided such a fearful fate. But I rushed into it blindly. I had deserved it, and I felt a certain bitter satisfaction at this last thought, for I detested myself with a burning, implacable hatred, even in the very midst of my self-love, which had been my second nature. and which I had brought with me undiminished in intensity. I could have torn myself into a thousand pieces when I reflected on the many so-called good intentions which I had never carried out in the days of my life of sin.

Had I then helped to pave Hell with them? And there was no sorrow, no remorse mingled with it. I was grieved, crushed, I cursed myself, but I could feel no sorrow. Oh, if I could only do so! I know so well what it is, but the power is gone forever. And yet, with all this hatred of myself, I felt the sincerest sympathy for myself. Oh, to have been able to shed only one tear! The rich man in the gospel sighed after one drop of water. I sighed. Oh, only for one single tear. I had an inward feeling that if I could only weep I should experience some relief. I writhed in agony. I wasted my strength in convulsive endeavors to try and weep one tear. Just then a voice addressed me, and I started up. It was a young woman who was standing before me, holding an infant in her arms.

Oh, leave off. It is all in vain, she said softly and earnestly, and yet the expression of tenderness was more in her looks than in her voice. I have tried myself too often, but all to no purpose. Here no drop of water is ever found. No, not even a teardrop. I felt too plainly that she spoke the truth. Once I could have wept, but not now. Now I wished to weep, but was unable. She sat down by my side, with her baby on her breast. Indescribable was the expression of gentleness mingled with pain with which she regarded it. It seemed to be newly born, one that had barely seen the light of day. After a short pause she turned towards me, but it was no longer with me that she was engrossed, but with her child.

It is not true, she said. The child lives. It is not dead. No, it is not dead, though it does lie so still, with its eyes closed. I certainly thought it was dead, but as I did not wish to add to the poor creature's grief, replied, Yes, I think it is a sleep. Little children generally sleep so much. Yes, yes, it sleeps. And she began to rocket to and fro on her knee. They said I had murdered it, she resumed, my own child. Oh, was it not a mad story? A mother to kill her own babe? And she pressed it to her bosom with convulsive energy. I could endure it no longer, so hurried away, and yet I experienced a certain degree of relief in occupying myself with another's grief than my own. But from the one I could fly away, from the other flight was impossible.

Still on, ever in the direction of the distant light, as if some magic power attracted me. Well-peopled was the land of darkness. Wondrous phantom shapes of endless variety, shadows of persons, shadows of things. There was much to terrify, much to cause pain, and yet gradually I began even to feel myself at home in this accursed state of negative existence. Gradually I began to gather experience, but I will pass this part of my history by in silence. I will only narrate one circumstance, because it was the first opportunity that presented itself of enabling me to learn what the actual conditions of the place were. I was standing outside one of those transparent phantom buildings I have alluded to.

It was intended to represent a tavern. In the world above, such low places had been far beneath my notice. Now everything was on the same level. Apparently, mirth and merriment prevailed inside, accompanied with drinking, card-playing, and dice. It was a hideous mirth those phantom shapes indulged in. One of them, the landlord, I presume, presently beckoned to me to enter. Allured by the fire that blazed cheerily on the hearth, I foolishly obeyed his signal. "'Cannot the man see the door?' he muttered in a peevish tone. Taking aback at his remark, I merely replied that I was freezing with cold. "'Blackhead! Then why go about naked?' he exclaimed in a demoniac grin. "'Only well-dressed persons enter here.' I know not how it was, but my thoughts immediately reverted to my old warm dressing-gown.

And in an instant I had it on me, and yet it did not cover my nakedness, nor did I feel any warmer than before. I therefore approached closer to the fire, but it did not give out the smallest vestige of warmth. The flame might as well have been a painted representation. Heart-sick, I was beginning to turn away when one of the guests called to me in a laughing tone, while another one handed me a flag in. A drinker I had never been, My taste had been in another direction, but now I eagerly seized it and placed it to my lips to quaff it down. Oh, that sensation of emptiness, that indescribable insipidity! A feeling of faintness came over me as I sought to quench my burning thirst in gulping draughts of pure nothingness.

It must have been plainly depicted on my face, For they laughed and grinned at me, and said humorous things at my expense. I learned to bear it. But there was something dreadful in their mirth that cut me to the heart. It was so hollow, so unnatural, not an atom of real merriment underlying it. The carousing and gambling began again. I sat buried in my own dark thoughts as I watched this strange scene. At length I summoned up courage to address the landlord. "'What sort of house is this?' I asked timidly. "'It is mine,' was the reply. Now this was no answer to my question, so after a pause I said again, "'How has this house—all this—come to be?' Some moments elapsed before he deigned to reply, during which he kept regarding me with a strange expression of countenance.

How has it come to be? Yah! I thought it, Blockhead. That's how it came to be. A new light burst on me. The house, then, was only a conception. Yes, comrade, exclaimed one of the guests, turning round from the card-table. Here we all are in the land of enchantment, about which there are so many stories in the world. No sooner have we conceived the idea of anything than it is ours. Hurrah, fragility, I say, and with a hideous grimace that betokened anything else than merriment, he rattled the dice on the board. It was all plain now. The house was unreal, the fire without warmth, the tapers without light, the cards, dice, and strong liquor, in short everything, down to the very patch on the landlord's white apron, where the bunch of keys that dangled there had worn a hole.

All was unreal. There was one thing, however, that was real. The terrible instinct that compelled these shadowy beings to carry on in the spirit and in appearance of what they had done in the flesh, and in real earnest. The landlord to keep a debauched tavern, the guests to gamble, drink, and curse. Though bitter despair is in their hearts, they are impelled to assume an appearance of merriment. It was terrible. Oh, more than terrible! I looked down at myself. This dress, then, I wore, which was insufficient to hide my nakedness or give me warmth, was nothing but a conjuring of my fancy. Away! Away! A voice sounded within me. Oh, that I could fly away! Away from myself! I could but leave my dressing-gown behind me!

and dash at once again in my nakedness while a demoniac laughter, like the hoarse distant croaking of frogs, sounded in my ears. How long my restless spirit rambled on I cannot say. I experienced many things on my journey—delusions, of course—but still I lived through much that was, not useful perhaps, but unfortunately a necessity. The light was my goal. It seemed to grow fainter. Was this, too, a delusion? No, there could be no doubt that it was fading. For now there was nothing but a faint dusky twilight. Soon it would be pitchy dark. I withdrew into myself out of reach of the well-peopled world of death. It is impossible for you, who live on the world above, to comprehend how far a person can withdraw into his own self.

I had sat thus for a long while, crouched up like a toad in a hole, when all at once my attention was aroused by hearing a deep sigh close to me. I started to my feet, and looked nervously about. There was just sufficient light left to be able to discern the outline of a hideous form crouching down but a few feet from me, and eyeing me with a stealthy glance. The features were marvelously contracted. A cord was tied round the neck, with one end of which its hands were incessantly playing, Now and then it put a hand up to its throat, as if to loosen the noose, by running the forefinger round its neck underneath the cord. All the while it spoke not a word, but kept staring at me intently, as if the eyes would have started from their very sockets.

The light is fading fast, I presently remarked, pointing in the direction where a faint glow was still visible. "'T'will soon be dark, I suppose.' Yes," it answered in a thick tone. The night is at hand. How long will it last? I inquired. How long? Maybe a couple of hours, maybe centuries. Of its duration none can form any idea. But long it always is, added the four, with a terrible groan. But surely the day will come back once more. Yes. If you call that day which on earth is named Twilight, lighter than that it never is here. I have a strong suspicion that there is no such thing as day. But, after all, what does it matter? But you are a stranger here, surely? It was my turn to sigh now, as I answered.

Yes, I died but a short while back. A natural death? It inquired earnestly. Yes, of course. My answer did not seem to please the shade, for it made fearful grimaces and was silent for a long time, while for my part I felt no desire to continue the conversation. But presently it began again. It is so dreadful to go about with one's life in one's own hands, as I am doing. Never a moment's rest. Always on the move. All are bent on taking away my life. You too. You would take it. I can see it in your eyes. But as yet you are too bewildered to entertain any evil purpose. Do you see this rope? It all depends on no one getting hold of the end of it, and therefore I never let it go out of my hand. Oh, if anyone did get hold of it, presto, I would be swung up in a twinkling.

After a long pause, the spirit continued. Of course, it is an illusion on my part and sheer nonsense. I know that well enough, when I am myself. No one can take away my life for the good reason that no one can take what does not exist. But I cannot help it. When this childish nervousness comes over me, I am forced to run as if I had a thousand lives to lose, and hell were full of murderers. With a deep sigh the ghost finished his tale, and loosened the cord round his neck, fell into a deep reverie. Thus we sat together for a while, but presently by accident I chanced to move my arm in the direction of my unfortunate comrade. Thinking, probably, that I was about to seize hold of the end of the rope, he vanished in the twinkling of an eye.

9 09 - Mexico 11:28

Mexico by Frank G. Carpenter. First Chapter Collection 7. 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 Betty B. Mexico. Chapter One. Just a word before we start. My travels in this book. Remind me of the Hindu who lusted for diamonds. He had a small farm in Madras, which he sold that he might hunt for these precious stones. He traveled far and wide over the world, and at last returned home to learn that the Koh-a-Noor, then the largest and finest diamond ever discovered, had been found on his own little farm. And so, for many years, I had traveled over the world, seeking the diamonds of human interest.

Before I discovered that one of the rarest of all countries in this respect lay almost under my feet. This country is Mexico. A land is picturesque and is full of strange customs, strange sights, and strange peoples as any in Europe. No billowy ocean with its horrid seasickness needs be sailed in order to visit it. It lies at our very front doors, and can be reached in comfortable sleepers which run every day. The only water between us is the little Rio Grande, and a trip of two or three days takes one into a world of new scenes. The past of Mexico is of unceasing interest. Again and again, the traveler stumbles on relics that indicate a history quite as interesting as that of the old world from which we came.

Long before the expedition of the Pilgrim Fathers was planned, Cortes and his soldiers had appeared in the land of the Aztecs, and discovered there a civilization that compared well with their own. They found Montezuma reigning in a healthful city, which a retinue of street cleaners swept and watered daily, so that In the words of an old Spaniard, a man could walk through it with as little danger of soiling his feet as his hands. The city was washed on all sides by a brackish lake, but pure water was piped into the fountains and fed the reservoirs of its noblemen's houses from a sweet spring on a lofty hill three miles away. The king lived in royal pomp in a huge building erected without a nail.

It's ceiling inlaid with cedar and other sweet-smelling woods. The Mexico of today is a world in itself. It has a population of 15 millions, of whom more than two-fifths are pure-blooded Indians of various tribes. These Indians cannot read or write, and in many respects their civilization is lower than was that of the Aztecs when the Spanish conquerors came. There are also about a million Creoles. or whites of pure Spanish lineage, who call themselves Mexicans. And between these two elements are the mestizos, or mixed bloods, the result of intermarriage of Spaniards and Indians. They are the leaders of the Mexico of today. Away down south in the state of Yucatan is a race distinct from the other Indians of Mexico.

It is the Mayas, an ancient people which was ruled, but never was conquered. They have seventeen different dialects of the same tongue. They are the direct descendants of the semi-civilized people who long, long before the advent of the Spaniards built the wonderful ruined cities of Uxmal and Chichen Itza. The mysterious characters on their temples and doorways long baffled the most expert archaeologists. Many of the manuscripts stored in these temples, which might have thrown light on the Mayan civilization, were destroyed by the Spaniards. These are some of the human aspects of the field of our travels. Let us now look at its physical side. There are only four other republics on this hemisphere that have as much land.

Mexico is equal to the whole United States, east of the Mississippi River. with the exception of the states of Michigan and Illinois. And its coastline on the Atlantic and the Pacific is so long that if its parts could be joined, it would extend from San Francisco to London and leave some to spare. It would more than reach from Los Angeles to Manila. The country is about as long as from New York to Salt Lake City, and its breadth at the top is equal to the distance from Philadelphia to Indianapolis. The land is shaped like a huge horn, with its roots fastened to the United States and the tip in Yucatan. The horn is bedded in the two oceans. It slopes from both sides to the top, where are ridges with great mountains upholding a vast rolling tableland that is for the most part a mile above the sea.

The mountains comprise some of the highest on the continent, Mount Orizaba being 18,000 feet in height. and Popocatapetl, only a few hundred feet lower. Mexico has volcanoes as lofty as Pikes Peak, the names of which we hardly know, and it has more than 15, ranging from two to three and one-half miles in altitude. On the plateau for most of the year, the climate is like that of Ohio in June. The air is as pure as the winter winds sweeping over Egypt from the Libyan desert. And Greece can furnish no more beautiful skies. From the coasts up to above 3,000 feet, the country is hot, with an average annual temperature of from 76 degrees to 88 degrees Fahrenheit. The temperate lands lie along the mountain slopes and in the lower plateaus at between 3,000 and 6,500 feet elevation, a zone that embraces most of the northern deserts.

In the Tierra Fria, or cold country, which is cold only by comparison with the coastlands, are included the high plateaus and the mountains, that part of Mexico lying between 6,500 and 12,500 feet of altitude. Here, the thermometer averages from 30 degrees to 60 degrees. About half of the inhabitants live in this cool belt. During my trips to Mexico, I have traveled over the whole mighty plateau. Upon it, the air is so clear that one can see miles farther than in the eastern parts of the United States, and it is so filled with ozone that one seems to be breathing champagne. The skies appear closer to the earth than at home, The moon has more brilliancy, and the diamond-like stars remind me of the luminous heavens which hang low at night over the Amazon or the Gulf of Siam.

Mexico has two seasons, the wet from June to September and the dry from October to May. Most travelers prefer to come during the winter, but the Mexicans themselves, especially those who live in the capital, like the summer, which is the healthiest time of the year. Then, daily showers of refreshing rain water the streets and flush out the sewers. Immediately after each shower, the sun comes out, and the atmosphere so quickly takes up the moisture that the streets are soon dry. Throughout the winter, there are clear and cloudless days, and all the year round in Mexico City and other places on the plateau, the cool nights call for a pair of warm blankets. The products are as varied as the climates.

In the low coast lands, American companies have set out banana plantations not far from the Mexican Gulf. A little higher up, coffee flourishes, and in some sections, rubber can be profitably raised. The high plateau grows all the crops of the temperate zone. Its irrigated regions produce large quantities of cotton. A fiber that was used by the Aztecs when Cortez first came. It yields Indian corn, the staple food of the people. And indeed, some claim that Mexico is the original home of this plant. I have seen soil that produces two crops of wheat in winter months, little fertilizers used, and the sun, the air, and the earth furnish the plant food. As to fruits, Mexico has all those of the tropics.

and the temperate zone, freshly ripened every month. I have eaten ripe strawberries in Mexico City at Christmas, and at Irapuato, some two hundred miles northwest of the capital, they are brought to the trains for sale the year round. Sugar-cane is grown in the south, and tobacco is a favorite crop with the natives. In Yucatan and Campeche is raised heniquin, or sisal hemp. The very mention of the Mexican mines gives one visions of inexhaustible riches. They have been producing millions ever since Cortez robbed the treasures of the Montezumas, and they are still turning out nearly $80 million worth of gold, silver, copper, and lead every 12 months. Mexico has also mountains of iron, and her subterranean lakes of petroleum are among the wonders of our modern oil world.

Few of us realize that we import oil from Mexico, that our wheat harvest is largely dependent on the binder twine made from its heniquin, and that all the lead and zinc and three-fourths of the silver we bring in from foreign lands come from this our sister republic. The Mexico of today is far more advanced than many suppose. Nearly all sections of the country are now accessible by railroad, and its trunk lines If stretched end to end, would reach more than halfway around the globe. More than 16,000 miles are in operation, and extensions are planned or in process of construction. The water powers of the country are being harnessed, and the steel posts of high-power transmission lines may be seen from the railway for miles up and down the plateau.

Among others, the falls of Wanakatlan, The Niagara of Mexico are generating electricity, and Boquias Dam in the state of Chihuahua has the largest storage reservoir on the North American continent. That body of water is 155 miles in circumference. It is used primarily to create light and power for the cities and mines, but it also irrigates thousands of acres formerly arid, changing them from a Sahara into a garden of Eden.

10 10 - The Natural History of Selborne 7:16

The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne in the County of Southampton by Gilbert White. First Chapter Collection 8. 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 Peter Yearsley. The Natural History of Selborne, Letter One to Thomas Pennant, Esquire. The parish of Silbourne lies in the extreme eastern corner of the county of Hampshire, bordering on the county of Sussex, and not far from the county of Surrey. It is about fifty miles south-west of London, in latitude fifty-one, and near midway between the towns of Alton and Petersfield. Being very large and extensive, it abuts on twelve parishes, two of which are in Sussex, namely Trotten and Rogate.

If you begin from the south and proceed westward, the adjacent parishes are Emshot, Newton-Valance, Farringdon, Hartley-Maudit, Great Ward-Leham, Kingsley, Headley, Bramshot, Trotten, Rogate, Lys, and Greatham. The soils of this district are almost as various and diversified as the views and aspects. The high part to the southwest consists of a vast hill of chalk, rising 300 feet above the village, and is divided into a sheep-down, the high wood, and a long hanging wood called the hanger. The covert of this eminence is altogether beech, the most lovely of all forest trees, whether we consider its smooth rind or bark, its glossy foliage, or graceful pendulous boughs. The Down, or Sheep Walk, is a pleasing park-like spot, of about one mile by half that space, jutting out on the verge of the hill country, where it begins to break down into the plains, and commanding a very engaging view, being an assemblage of hill, dale, woodlands, heath, and water.

The prospect is bounded to the south-east and east by the vast range of mountains called the Sussex Downs, by Guild Down near Guildford. and by the downs round Dorking and Rygate in Surrey to the north-east, which altogether, with the country beyond Alton and Farnham, form a noble and extensive outline. At the foot of this hill, one stage or step from the uplands, lies the village, which consists of one single straggling street, three-quarters of a mile in length, in a sheltered vale, and running parallel with the hangar. The houses are divided from the hill by a vein of stiff clay, good wheat land, yet stand on a rock of white stone, little in appearance removed from chalk, but seems so far from being calcareous that it endures extreme heat.

Yet that the free stone still preserves somewhat that is analogous to chalk is plain from the beaches, which descend as low as those rocks extend, and no farther, and thrive as well on them where the ground is steep as on the chalks. The cartway of the village divides in a remarkable manner two very incongruous soils. To the southwest is a rank clay that requires the labor of years to render it mellow, while the gardens to the northeast and small enclosures behind consist of a warm, forward, crumbling mold called Black Malm, which seems highly saturated with vegetable and animal manure, and these may perhaps have been the original site of the town, while the wood and coverts might extend down to the opposite bank.

At each end of the village, which runs from s e to n w, arises a small rivulet, that at the n w end frequently fails, but the other is a fine perennial spring, little influenced by drought or wet seasons, called Wellhead. This spring produced, September 14, 1781, after a severe hot summer and a preceding dry spring and winter, nine gallons of water in a minute, which is 540 in an hour, and 12,960, or 216 hogshead, in 24 hours or one natural day. At this time, many of the wells failed. And all the ponds in the vales were dry.

This breaks out of some high grounds joining to Knorr Hill, a noble Chalk Promontory, remarkable for sending forth two streams into two different seas. The one to the south becomes a branch of the Arun, running to Arundel, and so falling into the British Channel, the other to the north. The Selborne stream makes one branch of the way, and meeting the Blackdown stream at Headley, And the Alton and Farnham stream at Tilford Bridge swells into a considerable river, navigable at Godalwing, from whence it passes to Guildford, and so into the Thames at Weybridge, and thus at the Knorr into the German Ocean. Our wells, at an average, run to about sixty-three feet, and when sunk to that depth seldom fail, but produce a fine, limpid water, soft to the taste.

and much commended by those who drink the pure element, but which does not lather well with soap. To the northwest, north and east of the village, is a range of fair enclosures, consisting of what is called a white malm, a sort of rotten or rubble stone, which, when turned up to the frost and rain, moulders to pieces, and becomes manure to itself. This soil produces good wheat and clover. Still on to the northeast, and a step lower, is a kind of white land, neither chalk nor clay, neither fit for pasture nor for the plough, yet kindly for hops, which root deep into the freestone and have their poles, and wood for charcoal, growing just at hand. This white soil produces the brightest hops. As the parish still inclines down towards Walmer Forest, at the junction of the clays and sand, the soil becomes a wet, sandy loam, remarkable for timber and infamous for roads.

The oaks of Temple and Blackmore stand high in the estimation of purveyors, and have furnished much naval timber, while the trees on the freestone grow large, but are what workmen call shaky, and so brittle as often to fall to pieces in sawing. Beyond the sandy loam, the soil becomes an hungry, lean sand till it mingles with the forest, and will produce little without the assistance of lime and turnips.

11 11 - Dissertation on Oriental Gardening 13:11

Dissertation on Oriental Gardening by Sir William Chambers. First Chapter Collection 8. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the Dissertation on Oriental Gardening Preface Amongst the decorative arts, there is none of which the influence is so extensive as that of gardening. The productions of other arts have their separate classes of admirers, who alone relish or set any great value upon them. To the rest of the world they are indifferent, sometimes disgusting. A building affords no pleasure to the generality of men, but what results from the grandeur of the object, or the value of its materials. Nor doth a picture affect them but by its resemblance to life. A thousand other beauties of a higher kind are lost upon them.

For, in architecture, in painting, and indeed in most other arts, men must learn before they can admire. Their pleasure keeps pace with their judgment, and it is only by knowing much that they can be highly delighted. But gardening is of a different nature. Its dominion is general, its effects, upon the human mind, certain and invariable. Without any previous information, without being taught, all men are delighted with the gay, luxuriant scenery of summer, and depressed at the dismal aspect of autumnal prospects. The charms of cultivation are equally sensible to the ignorant and the learned, And they are equally disgusted at the rudeness of neglected nature. Lawns, woods, shrubberies, rivers, and mountains affect them both in the same manner, and every combination of these will excite similar sensations in the minds of both.

Nor are the productions of this art less permanent than general in their effects. Pictures, statues, buildings soon glut the sight, and grow indifferent to the spectator. But in gardens there is a continual state of fluctuation that leaves no room for satiety. The progress of vegetation, the vicissitudes of seasons, the changes of the weather, the different directions of the sun, the passage of clouds, the agitation and sounds produced by winds, together with the accidental intervention of living or moving objects, vary the appearances so often and so considerably that it is almost impossible to be cloyed even with the same prospects. Is it not singular, then, that an art with which a considerable part of our enjoyments is so universally connected should have no regular professors in our quarter of the world?

Upon the continent, it is a collateral branch of the architect's employment, who, immersed in the study and avocations of his own profession, finds no leisure for other disquisitions, and in this island it is abandoned to kitchen-gardeners, well-skilled in the culture of salads, but little acquainted with the principles of ornamental gardening. It cannot be expected that men, uneducated and doomed by the condition to waste the vigour of life in hard labour, should ever go far in so refined So difficult a pursuit. To this unaccountable want of regular masters may in a great measure be ascribed the scarcity of perfect gardens. There are, indeed, very few in our part of the globe wherein nature has been improved to the best advantage, or art employed with the soundest judgment.

The gardens of Italy, France, Germany, Spain, and of all the other countries where the ancient style still prevails are in general mere cities of verdure. Their walks, like streets, all conducted in straight lines, Diverge from different large open spaces, resembling public squares, and the hedges with which they are bordered rise in imitation of walls, adorned with pilasters, niches, windows, and doors, or they are cut into colonnades, arcades, and porticos, All the detached trees are shaped like obelisks, pyramids, and vases, and all the recesses in the thickets bear the names and forms of theatres, amphitheatres, temples, banqueting halls, ballrooms, cabinets, and saloons. The streets and squares are well manned with statues of marble or lead, ranged in regular lines like soldiers at a procession.

which, to make them more natural, are sometimes painted in proper colours, and finely gilt. The lakes and rivers, confined by keys of hewn stone, are taught to flow in geometric order, and the cascades glide from the heights by many a succession of marble steps. Not a twig is suffered to grow as nature directs, nor is a form admitted but what is scientific and determinable by the rule or compass. In England, where this ancient style is held in detestation, and where, in opposition to the rest of the world, a new manner is universally adopted, in which no appearance of art is tolerated, our gardens differ very little from common fields. So closely is vulgar nature copied in most of them. There is generally so little variety and so much want of judgment in the choice of the objects.

Such a poverty of imagination in the contrivance, and of art in the arrangement, that these compositions rather appear the offspring of chance than design, and a stranger is often at a loss to know whether he be walking in a common meadow, or in a pleasure-ground, made and kept at a very considerable expense. He finds nothing either to delight or to amuse him, nothing to keep up his attention or excite his curiosity. Little to flatter the senses, and less to touch the passions, or gratify the understanding. At his first entrance he sees a large green field, scattered over with a few straggling trees, and verged with a confused border of little shrubs and flowers. On farther inspection he finds a little serpentine path, twining in regular S's among the shrubs of the border, upon which he is to go round.

To look, on one side, at what he has already seen, the large green field, and on the other side at the boundary, which is never more than a few yards from him, and always obtruding upon his sight. From time to time he perceives a little seat or temple stuck up against the wall. Happy in the discovery, he sits down to rest his wearied limbs, and then, reels on again, cursing the line of beauty, till, spent with fatigue, half-roasted by the sun, for there is never any shade, and dying for want of entertainment, he resolves to see no more. Vain resolution. There is but one path. He must either drag on to the end, or return by the tedious way he came. Such is the favourite plan of all our smaller gardens.

And her larger works are only a repetition of the small ones. More green fields, more shrubberies, more serpentine walks, and more temples. Like the honest bachelor's feast, which consisted in nothing but a multiplication of his own dinner. Three legs of mutton and turnips, three roasted geese, and three buttered apple pies. Sometimes, indeed, by way of regale, where— Such dainties are attainable. You are treated with a serpentine river, that is, a stripe of stagnant water, waving in semicircles as far as it will reach, and finishing in a pretty little orderly step cascade that never runs but when it rains. The banks of these curious rivers are everywhere, uniform, parallel, level, smooth and green as a billiard table.

And the whole composition bears a great resemblance to the barge canals of Holland, the only difference being that the Dutch ditches are regularly straight, whilst ours are regularly crooked. Of the two, ours are certainly the most formal and affected. They are by no means the most picturesque. It is, I think, obvious that neither the artful nor the simple style of gardening here mentioned is right, the one being much too refined and too extravagant a deviation from nature, the other, like a Dutch picture, an affected adherence to her, without choice or judgment. One manner is absurd, the other is insipid and vulgar. A judicious mixture of art and nature, an extract of what is good in both manners, would certainly be more perfect than either.

Yet how this union can be effected is difficult to say. The men of art and the friends of nature are equally violent in defence of their favourite system, and, like all other partisans, loath to give up anything, however unreasonable. Such a coalition is therefore now not to be expected. Whoever should be bold enough to attempt it would probably incur the censure of both sides without reforming either. and consequently prejudice himself without doing service to the art. But though it may be impertinent as well as useless to start a new system of one's own, it cannot be improper nor totally unserviceable to publish that of others, especially of a people whose skill in gardening has often been the subject of praise, and whose manner has been set up amongst us as the standard of imitation.

Without ever having been properly defined, it is a common saying that from the worst things some good may be extracted, and even if what I have to relate should be inferior to what is already known, yet surely some useful hints may be collected from it. I may therefore, without danger to myself, and, it is hoped, without offence to others, offer the following account of the Chinese manner of gardening. Which is collected from my own observations in China, from conversations with their artists, and remarks transmitted to me at different times by travellers. A sketch of what I have now attempted to finish was published some years ago, and the favourable reception granted to that little performance induced me to collect materials for this.

Whether the Chinese manner of gardening be better or worse than those now in use amongst the Europeans, I will not determine. Comparison is the surest, as well as the easiest, test of truth. It is in every man's power to compare and to judge for himself. Should the present publication contain anything useful, my purpose will be fully answered. If not, it may perhaps afford some little entertainment, or serve at worst, to kill an idle hour. I must not enter upon my subject, without apologizing for the liberties here taken with our English gardens. There are indeed several that do not come within the compass of my description, some of which were laid out by their owners who are as eminently skilled in gardening as in many other branches of polite knowledge.

The rest owe most of their excellence to nature, and are, upon the whole, very little improved by the interposition of art, which, though it may have heightened some of their beauties, has totally robbed them of many others. It would be tedious to enumerate all the errors of a false taste, but the havoc it has made in our old plantations must ever be remembered with indignation. The axe has often, in one day, laid waste the growth of several ages, and thousands of venerable plants, whole woods of them, have been swept away to make room for a little grass and a few American weeds. Our virtuosi have scarcely left an acre of shade, nor three trees growing in a line from the land's end to the tweed.

And if their humour for devastation continues to rage much longer, there will not be a forest tree left standing in the whole kingdom.

12 12 - Pan Balcer w Brazylji (Polish) 12:44

to m się pocieszył, że już na zawadzie nie będzie teraz nic, nawet łza w oku. Okręt był wielki, głęboki w nasadzie, a choć wiatr tęgi zadymał mu z boku, ledwo się w sobie kolebał bez mała na linię, co się prężyła i drżała. Ha! w imię ojca i syna i ducha zrobiłem święty krzyż. Płynąć to płynąć. Człowiek nie plewa, wiatr go nie wydmucha, katolik przecie, Bóg nie da mu zginąć. I zaraz we mnie wstąpiła otucha, a że mnie jeden z fajeczką chciał minąć, więc ognia wziąłem i czapkę mnacisnął na ucho, kiedy nagle sygnał świsnął. Jest przeraźliwość jakaś niespodziana w takowem świście, co jeży ci włosy, boć to waleta przez ziemię ci dana, a ty się zbieraj i w garści dzierż losy. Więc się pode mną ugięły kolana i w oczach nieco zaczułem tej rosy, która, choć nikt cię nie żegna z żałobą, samego człeka używania nad sobą.

A już te czułna przewoźne, te łodzie, co do okrętu latały od brzega, tak się zwijając i goniąc po wodzie, jak stado rybitw, gdy płocia dostrzega, to wprost, to w ukos, to w tyle, to w przodzie, cała ta luza już od nas odbiega. Wtem działo w porcie ryknęło co garła, głos poszedł duży, lecz woda go zżarła. Znak to był, jako na grzbiecie już swoim, morze nas samo trzyma, bez kotwicy. Załopotały po boku oboim skrzydliska na kształt muińskiej śmigownicy. Nie czułem zrazu, czy płyniem, czy stoim, dym buchnął gęsty, jak z czarciej kuźnicy. Okręt choć trzeszczał, lecz mocny się zdawał i jak rak wodę łapami rozkrawiał. Tuż za nim, jako kiedy na nowinie, pług zajmie krojem skibę, a odwali, taka się połać skroś morza odwinie i szczerym ogniem po strzępach się pali.

Bo już się słońce nużało w głębinie, kolory dając ze siebie tej fali, co się waliła w żar, bruzda po bruździe, łódź czarną ciągnąc za sobą na uździe. Na statku wrzawa, komenda, tłok, krzyki, po ludziach depcą, jak w boru po chruście, człek się tu robi przemyślny, a dziki, ustąp się krokiem, to chybniesz w czeluście. Nie tak się niedźwiedź pilnuje muzyki, gdy mu gra cygan na drumli w odpuście, jak tu człek prawa morskiego i rządu, iż apelować daleko do lądu. Zrazum był jako więc wostęp wpędzony wprost na nagonkę w sam kocieł obławy ów szarak coto nie wie z jakiej strony słuchy ma wytknąć by nie dać odprawy. Świst wiatru w uszach i rozpęd szalony mało mnie z onej nie wymiótł precz nawy razem z magierką butami i pasem więcem się skulił by zając pod lasem.

Aż ci powoli cicho czem ja zwykał? Czy też tak woda po sobie rozniosła? A com rozumiał, że każdy w swą krzykał, jeden drugiego pędzając za posła. Nieprawda, tuman mi z głowy już znikał. Różny to urząd i różne rzemiosła. Nad wszystkiem stoi kapitan w honorze i w rozkazaniu, a nad nim zaś morze. Starsze ci ono nadwszystkie burmistrze, a każdy przed niem kiep i staje frontem. Gdy huknie, kiedy przyporwie się bystrze, to właśnie, jakbyś na działo szedł zlątem. Zwolnieje za się, potoczy się czystrze, pod drobną falą, jak gdyby pod gątem, to ci od miru tego, od tej łaski, na cały okół świata biją blaski. Ale nim sobie rozbierzesz to, człecze, już eś po częstnem szturhańców wziął siła. Już za kark pleszczę, już na łeb ci cieczę, już cię tu lina skrobnęła jak piła.

Tuś w łańcuch stąpnął, więc z tobą cię wleczę, tu pompa chlusła i gębę ci zmyła. Gdzie spojrzysz, wszędzie srogość i zawziątek, a morze kipi i bucha jak wrzątek. Toż i nie dziwo, żem zrazu w tym warze zgoła nie wiedział, co z naszą gromadą stalić tam w dymach kotłowych i w parze do kupy zbici, by owiec tych stado, gdy je zapłoszy wilk, spojrzałem w twarze. Te jedne sino mienią się, te blado, w oczach błąd, chłopom kolana dygocą, trzęcą się wargi ściskane przemocą. Więc gdym obaczył znagła te sukmany, co zwyczkiem siedzą schowane we zbożu, onto lęsi wełnami przetkany, na polskiej chaty przędzone za prożu, gdzie wiśnie kwitną, a dach jest słomiany. Jak dziś po wielkiem unoszą się morzu, za bujnym wiatrem wiewając po świecie, to muczył w piersiach mróz, a ciarki w grzbiecie.

Bo to już wybić musiała godzina sądna, I owe rokowe momenty, kiedy w narodzie tynk opadł i glina, a wyszły na jaw tajne fundamenty. Już być musiała nie byle przyczyna, gdy chłop w ostatnie jakby sakramenty opatrzył duszę i szuka sposobu za morzem, jakby z tamtej strony grobu. Kto powierzch ziemi siedzi, nie dziwota, łacno jest zemchów płytkiego wziąć grzyba, aleć kto dębem korzenie rozmota, skroś tej macierzy i czyja sadyba samo jej serce, tam twarda robota. Śmiertelny topór przyłożon jest chyba do pnia narodu, do rdzenia i miazgi, skoro z nas lecą za morze aż drzazgi. Boć ze rzemiosłem to jeszcze pół licha, człowiek jest światowy i luźny sam w sobie. Kunszt go prowadzi i wszędzie przepycha. Źle mi?

Poprawię. Straciłem. Zarobię. Ale chłop w sochę, co żywot wydycha, a ziemię tylko przewraca i skrobie, kiedy chce od niej, nie puszcza go, stęka, krwawe rozdarcie jest i śmierci męka. Więc gdy tak patrzą na one to brzegi, choć im i cudze były, i nielubne, na one wody pieniste by śniegi. Co walą z hukiem, a idą we śrubę, podobni ptactwu, co miewa noclegi, wśród niebnych drogach, a podczas i zgubę, od skrawka ziemi, niknącej w oddali, odjąć nie mogli oczu, i tak stali. A już te łuny ugasły na wodzie, z zachodowego pożaru i słońca, niebo się miało ku cichej pogodzie, otchnione parą, od końca do końca, le kuchna modrość szła po niem na wschodzie. Aż nagle pierwsza gwiazda błysła drżąca i liczko swoje zamglone i blade prosto na naszą zwróciła gromadę.

I patrz, jak dziwne są moce i siły w onychto światłach litosnych na ziemię. Wszystkie się głowy podniosły i wzbiły, jakoby tchnięte matczynem tchem w ciemie. Wszystkie się oczy rosami zaszkliły, a choć nikt znaku nie dał, lód jak brzemię z jękiem i z płaczem upadł na kolana. O gwiazdo morza, karmicielko pana! Szeroko pieśń się poniosła w przestworze, bo ludu kupa była, do tysiąca. Dołem jak organ dawało głos morze, powyż ta jedna gwiazda błyskająca. Gwiazda, co gdzieś tam po naszym ugorze, po naszych polach chodziła świetląca, a teraz przyszła tu zliczyć te głowy i dzieciąteczek posrebrzyć włospłowy. I tak nas zaszła noc nad tą głębiną z wyciągniętemi klęczących ramiony, jak te bociany, gdy loty rozwiną od gniazd, gdzie miały bezpieczne uchrony, a niewiedzące są.

Wrócą, czy zginą, czy koła dawne obaczą i brony, więc tylko skrzydła na wichrach położą i płyną niebem nakryte i zorzą. Zczerniały nagle wody, mroki duże tak się rozwlokły po nich jako chusta. Zlękli się ludzie, że będziemy mieć burzę, ale był płonny strach i trwoga pusta, bo może rado tak nosi się w chmurze i po omacku w ciemnościach się chlusta. A co o boki okrętu uderzy, to warknie jak zły pies i kływy szczerzy. A już szedł rozkaz i dzwon już znać dawał, żeby się wszyscy do miejsc swoich mieli. Więc naród chúrmem z tych klęczek powstawał i chúrmem schodził po stromej grądzieli pod pokład. Jeszcze dźwieczora był kawał, lecz każdy zawczasu pilnował swej ścieli, bo ludu było w okręcie jak mrowia i nie każdemu starczyło bez głowia.

Dopieroż to się zaczęła przeprawa, jako na wojnie bywa w batalii. Jeden drugiemu przed sobą nie dawa, na oślep pędzi i na zakręt szyi. Już się do bójki ma, już sroga wrzawa, gdy ja, na pomoc wezwawszy Maryi, klinem się puszczam w ciżbę, a ubę bodę i takem sobie zadobył gospodę. Nie przedniać była, na dworskim folwarku lepsze dla gęsi tucznych stawią kojce. Jeden pod tobą, a drugi na karku, a ty w pośrodku tkwisz jak ślimak w skojce. Dokoła wzdychań, chrapotu, po swarku, razem to dzieci i matki i ojce. Jeśliś ochludny, trzy razy się skóra wstrząśnie na tobie, nim w barłóg da sznura. Dziwnasz ta morska noc i dziwne spanie, jakiegoś nie znał człeku od jak żywa. Ledwo ci dusza ugaśnie, ustanie, aż cię tu jakaś dalekość porywa, jakaś cię rzuca moc i kołychanie.

Stój, krzyczysz, myślisz na poręcz, że grzywa, że koń cię poniósł wiecznemi kopyty, a lić wtem wyrżniesz łbem i padasz zbity. I nic, i znów ci powłuczą się oczy, aż tu nad tobą ratuj ta, kto wrzaśnie. I znów ci serce jak piłka wyskoczy, i znów się porwiesz, i nic, to cię właśnie tak zamdli, tak cię zanudzi, zamroczy, że drugi dobrze za północ nie zaśnie, i wzdycha tylko, i pot z niego kapie, i słucha jak w tym parze ci żwa chrapie. Ledwo nad ranem ustała ta zmora, i zaraz mnie też przychwycił sen tęgi, i ot mi w oczach stanęły jak wczora. Miasteczko kuźnia kowadło obcęgi słucham złąk leci gęganie gąsiora patrzę chłop szkapie przyciąga popręgi jasiek w miech dyma lśnią w słońcu ufnale a ja w podkowę co siły mam walę Hej, nie jeden tam śnić musiał tej nocy, o chacie, o tym zagonie, o rodzie.

Stękały chłopy, jak w ciężkiej niemocy, insze zaś w głos się śmiały, by przy miodzie. Nie jedna baba skoczyła, jak z procy, gdy ostrzej chybło pudlisko na wodzie. Wzdychań, pokrzyków niemało tam było. Tak nas to morze, jak wino, spoiło. Dzieciątka tylko pośpiły się ciche, jakby się nigdy przebudzić nie chciały. Pisklęta one, bez pióry i ciche, gdzie, które padło, jak padło, tak spały. Człowiek choć we śnie, a różną ma pychę i różną żądność, a taki ptak biały mógłby na piersiach Chrystusa spać pana, jak orzeczonem jest o głowie Jana.

End of. Pan Balcer w Brazylii by Maria Konopnicka.

13 13 - Pride and Prejudice 5:22

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. First Chapter Collection 8. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org.

It is the truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood. This truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families that he is considered the rightful property of someone or other of their daughters. My dear Mr. Bennet, said his lady to him one day, have you heard that Netherfield Park is lit at last? Mr. Bennet replied that he had not. But it is, returned she. For Mrs. Long had just been here and she told me all about it. Mr. Bennet made no answer. Do you not want to know who has taken it? cried his wife impatiently. You want to tell me, and I have no objection to hearing it.

This was invitation enough. Why, my dear, you must know, Mrs. Long says that Netherfield is taken by a young man of large fortune from the north of England, that he came down on Monday in a chaise-in-four to see the place. And was so much delighted with it, that he agreed with Mr. Morris immediately, that he is to take possession before Michaelmas, and some of his servants are to be in the house by the end of next week. What is his name? Bingley. Is he married or single? Oh, single, my dear, to be sure. A single man of large fortune, four or five thousand an ear. What a fine thing for our girls. How so? How can it affect them? My dear Mr. Bennett, replied his wife, how can you be so tiresome?

You must know that I am thinking of his marrying one of them. Is that his design unsettling here? Design? Nonsense, how can you talk so? But it is very likely that he may fall in love with one of them, and therefore you must visit him as soon as he comes. I see no occasion for that. You and the girls may go, or you may send them by themselves, which perhaps... Will be still better, for as you are as handsome as any one of them, Mr. Bingley may like you the best of the party. My dear, you flatter me. I certainly have had my share of beauty, but I do not pretend to be anything extraordinary now. When a woman has five grown-up daughters, she ought to give over thinking of her own beauty. In such cases, a woman has not often much beauty to think of.

But... My dear, you must indeed go and see Mr. Bingley when he comes into the neighbourhood. It is more than I engage for, I assure you. But consider your daughters. Only think of what an establishment it would be for one of them. Sir William and Lady Lucas are determined to go, merely on that account, for in general, you know, they visit no newcomers. Indeed you must go, for it will be impossible for us to visit him if you do not. You are over-scrupulous, surely. I dare say Mr. Bingley will be very glad to see you, and I will send a few lines by you to assure him of my hearty consent to his marrying whichever he chooses of the girls, though I must throw in a good word for my little Lizzie. I desire you will do no such thing.

Lizzie is not a bit better than the others. I am sure she is not half as handsome as Jane, nor half so good-humoured as Lydia. But you are always giving her the preference. They have none of them much to recommend them, replied he. They are all silly and ignorant like other girls, but Lizzie has something more of quickness than her sister's. Mr. Bennett, how can you abuse your own children in such a way? You take delight in vexing me. You have no compassion for my poor nerves. You mistake me, my dear. I have a high respect for your nerves. They are my old friends. I have heard you mention them with consideration these last twenty years at least. Ah, you do not know what I suffer. But I hope you will get over it and live to see many young men of four thousand a year come into the neighbourhood.

It will be no use to us if twenty such should come, since you will not visit them. Depend upon it, my dear, that when there are twenty, I will visit them all. Mr. Bennett was so odd a mixture of quick parts, sarcastic humor, reserve, and caprice that the experience of three and twenty years had been insufficient to make his wife understand his character. Her mind was less difficult to develop. She was a woman of mean understanding, little information, and uncertain temper. When she was discontented, she fancied herself nervous. The business of her life was to get her daughters married. Its solace was visiting and youth.

14 14 - The Song of Hiawatha 5:51

Introduction Should you ask me whence these stories, whence these legends, And traditions, with the odors of the forest, with the dew and damp of meadows, with the curling smoke of wigwams, with the rushing of great rivers, with their frequent repetitions and their wild reverberations as of thunder in the mountains, I should answer, I should tell you, from the forests and the prairies, from the great lakes of the Northland, from the land of the Ojibwe's, from the land of the Dakotas. From the mountains, moors, and fenlands, where the heron, the Shushuga, feeds among the reeds and rushes. I repeat them as I heard them from the lips of Nawadaha, the musician, the sweet singer. Should you ask where Nawadaha found these songs so wild and wayward, found these legends and traditions, I should answer, I should tell you.

In the birds' nests of the forest, in the lodges of the beaver, in the hoof-print of the bison, in the eyrie of the eagle. All the wild fowl sang them to him, in the moorlands and the fenlands, in the melancholy marshes. Chetawaiik, the plover, sang them. Maung, the loon, the wild goose, Wawa, the blue heron, the Shushuga, And the grouse, the Mushkadasa. If still further you should ask me, saying, Who was Nawa Daha? Tell us of this Nawa Daha. I should answer your enquiries straightway in such words as follow. In the vale of Tawasentha, in the green and silent valley, by the pleasant watercourses, dwelt the singer Nawa Daha. Round about the Indian village spread the meadows and the cornfields, and beyond them stood the forest, stood the groves of singing pine-trees, green in summer, white in winter, ever sighing, ever singing, and the pleasant water-courses, you could trace them through the valley, by the rushing in the springtime, by the alders in the summer, by the white fog in the autumn.

By the black line in the winter, and beside them dwelt the singer in the vale of Tawasentha in the green and silent valley. There he sang of Hiawatha, sang the song of Hiawatha, sang his wondrous birth and being, how he prayed and how he fasted, how he lived and toiled and suffered, that the tribes of men might prosper. That he might advance his people. Ye who love the haunts of nature, love the sunshine of the meadow, love the shadow of the forest, love the wind among the branches, and the rain-shower, and the snow-storm, and the rushing of great rivers through their palisades of pine-trees, and the thunder in the mountains, whose innumerable echoes flap like eagles in their earies. Listen. To these wild traditions, to this song of Hiawatha.

Ye who love a nation's legends, love the ballads of a people that, like voices from afar off, call to us to pause and listen, speak in tones so plain and childlike. Scarcely can the ear distinguish whether they are sung or spoken. Listen to this Indian legend. To this song of Hiawatha. Ye whose hearts are fresh and simple, who have faith in God and nature, who believe that in all ages every human heart is human, that in even savage bosoms there are longings, yearnings, strivings, for the good they comprehend not, that the feeble hands and helpless, groping blindly in the darkness, Touch God's right hand in that darkness, and are lifted up and strengthened. Listen to this simple story, to this song of Hiawatha.

Ye who sometimes in your rambles through the green lanes of the country, where the tangled barberry bushes hang their tufts of crimson berries over stone walls gray with mosses, Pause, by some neglected graveyard, for a while to muse and ponder on a half-effaced inscription, written with little skill of song-craft, homely phrases, but each letter full of hope and yet of heartbreak, full of all the tender pathos of the here and the hereafter. Stay and read this rude inscription. Read this song of Hiawatha.

15 15 - Through the Looking Glass 20:03

Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll. First Chapter Collection. Eight. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Through the Looking Glass, Chapter One. Looking Glass House. One thing was certain, that the white kitten had had nothing to do with it. It was the black kitten's fault entirely, for the white kitten had been having its face washed by the old cat for the last quarter of an hour, and bearing it pretty well considering. So you see that it couldn't have had any hand in the mischief. The way Dinah washed her children's faces was this. First she held the poor thing down by its ear with one paw.

And then, with the other paw, she rubbed its face all over the wrong way, beginning at the nose. And just now, as I said, she was hard at work on the white kitten, which was lying quite still and trying to purr, no doubt feeling that it was all meant for its good. But the black kitten had been finished with earlier in the afternoon, and so, while Alice was sitting, curled up in a corner of the great armchair, Half talking to herself and half asleep. The kitten had been having a grand game of romps with the ball of worsted Alice had been trying to wind up, and had been rolling it up and down till it had all come undone again. And there it was, spread over the hearthrug, all knots and tangles, with the kitten running after its own tail in the middle.

"'Oh, you wicked little thing!' cried Alice. Catching up the kitten and giving it a little kiss to make it understand that it was in disgrace. Really, Dinah ought to have taught you better manners. You ought, Dinah. You know you ought," she added, looking reproachfully at the old cat, and speaking in as cross a voice as she could manage. And then she scrambled back into the armchair, taking the kitten and the worsted with her, and began winding up the ball again. But she didn't get on very fast, as she was talking all the time, sometimes to the kitten, and sometimes to herself. Kitty sat very demurely on her knee, pretending to watch the progress of the winding, and now and then putting out one paw, and gently touching the ball, as if it would be glad to help, if it might.

"'Do you know what to-morrow is, Kitty?' Alice began. "'You'd have guessed it if you'd been up in the window with me.' Only Dinah was making you tidy so you couldn't. I was watching the boys getting in sticks for the bonfire. And it wants plenty of sticks, Kitty. Only it got so cold and it snowed so, they had to leave off. Never mind, Kitty. We'll go and see the bonfire tomorrow." Here Alice wound two or three turns of the worsted round the kitten's neck, just to see how it would look. This led to a scramble, in which the ball rolled down upon the floor, and yards and yards of it got unwound again. "'Do you know, I was so angry, Kitty,' Alice went on, as soon as they were comfortably settled again, "'when I saw all the mischief you had been doing, I was very nearly opening the window, and putting you out into the snow.

And you'd have deserved it, you little mischievous darling. What have you got to say for yourself?' "'Now don't interrupt me,' she went on, holding up one finger. "'I'm going to tell you all your faults. Number one, you squeaked twice while Dinah was washing your face this morning. Now you can't deny it, Kitty, I heard you. What's that you say?' pretending that the kitten was speaking. "'Her paw went into your eye. Well, that's your fault, for keeping your eyes open. If you'd shut them tight up, it wouldn't have happened.' Now, don't make any more excuses, but listen. Number two. You pulled Snowdrop away by the tail, just as I had put down the saucer of milk before her. What? You were thirsty, were you?

How do you know she wasn't thirsty, too? Now, for number three, you unwound every bit of the worsted while I wasn't looking. That's three faults, Kitty, and you've not been punished for any of them yet. "'You know I'm saving up all your punishments for Wednesday week.' "'Suppose they had saved up all my punishments,' she went on, talking more to herself than the kitten. "'What would they do at the end of a year? I should be sent to prison, I suppose, when the day came. Or, let me see, suppose each punishment was to be going without a dinner. Then, when the miserable day came, I should have to go without fifty dinners at once.' I shouldn't mind that much. I'd far rather go without them than eat them.

Do you hear the snow against the window panes, Kitty? How nice and soft it sounds, just as if someone was kissing the window all over outside. I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields, that it kisses them so gently, and then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt, and perhaps it says, Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again. And when they wake up in the summer, Kitty, they dress themselves all in green and dance about whenever the wind blows. Oh, that's very pretty," cried Alice, dropping the ball of worsted to clap her hands. And I do so wish it was true. I'm sure the woods look sleepy in the autumn, when the leaves are getting brown. Kitty, can you play chess?

Now don't smile, my dear. I'm asking it seriously, because when we were playing just now, you watched just as if you understood it, and when I said, check, you purred. Well, it was a nice check, Kitty, and really I might have won if it hadn't been for that nasty night that came wiggling down among my pieces. Kitty, dear, let's pretend. And here I wish I could tell you half the things Alice used to say, beginning with her favourite phrase, Let's pretend. She had had quite a long argument with her sister only the day before, all because Alice had begun with, Let's pretend we're kings and queens. And her sister, who liked being very exact, had argued that they couldn't, because there were only two of them.

And Alice had been reduced at last to say, Well, "'You can be one of them, then, and I'll be all the rest.' And once she had really frightened her old nurse by shouting suddenly in her ear, "'Nurse, do let's pretend that I'm a hungry hyena, and you're a bone.' But this is taking us away from Alice's speech to the kitten. "'Let's pretend that you're the Red Queen, Kitty. Do you know, I think if you sat up and folded your arms, you'd look exactly like her.' Now do try. There's a dear." And Alice got the Red Queen off the table, and set it up before the kitten as a model for it to imitate. However, the thing didn't succeed. Principally, Alice said, because the kitten wouldn't fold its arms properly.

So, to punish it, she held it up to the Looking-Glass, that it might see how sulky it was. "'And if you're not good directly,' she added, "'I'll put you through into Looking-Glass House.' How would you like that? Now, if you'll only attend Kitty and not talk so much, I'll tell you all my ideas about Looking Glass House. First, there's the room you can see through the glass. That's just the same as our drawing room, only the things go the other way. I can see all of it when I get upon a chair, all but the bit behind the fireplace. Oh, I do wish I could see that bit. I want so much to know whether they've a fire in the winter. You never can tell, you know, unless our fire smokes, and then smoke comes up in that room, too, but that may be only pretense, just to make it look as if they had a fire.

Well then, the books are something like our books, only the words go the wrong way. I know that because I've held up one of our books to the glass, and then they hold up one in the other room. How would you like to live in Looking Glass House, Kitty? I wonder if they'd give you milk in there. Perhaps Looking Glass milk isn't good to drink. But, oh, Kitty, now we come to the passage. You can just see a little peep of the passage in Looking Glass House if you leave the door of our drawing-room wide open, and it's very like our passage as far as you can see, only it may be quite different on beyond. Oh, Kitty, how nice it would be if we could only get through into Looking-Glass House. I'm sure it's got, oh, such beautiful things in it.

Let's pretend there's a way of getting through into it somehow, Kitty. Let's pretend the glass has got all soft like gauze, so that we can get through. Why, it's turning into a sort of mist now, I declare. It'll be easy enough to get through. She was up on the chimney-piece while she said this, though she hardly knew how she had got there, and certainly the glass was beginning to melt away, just like a bright silvery mist. In another moment Alice was through the glass, and had jumped lightly down into the looking-glass room. The very first thing she did was to look whether there was a fire in the fireplace. And she was quite pleased to find that there was a real one, blazing away as brightly as the one she had left behind.

"'So I shall be as warm here as I was in the old room,' thought Alice. "'Warmer, in fact, because there'll be no one here to scold me away from the fire. Oh, what fun it'll be when they see me through the glass in here and can't get at me.' Then she began looking about, and noticed that what could be seen from the old room was quite common and uninteresting, but that all the rest was as different as possible. For instance, the pictures on the wall next the fire seemed to be all alive, and the very clock on the chimney-piece—you know you can only see the back of it in the looking-glass—had got the face of a little old man, and grinned at her. "'They don't keep this room so tidy as the other,' Alice thought to herself.

As she noticed several of the chessmen down in the hearth among the cinders. But in another moment, with a little, oh, of surprise, she was down on her hands and knees, watching them. The chessmen were walking about, two and two. "'Here are the Red King and the Red Queen,' Alice said in a whisper, for fear of frightening them. "'And there are the White King and the White Queen, sitting on the edge of the shovel.' And here are two castles, walking arm in arm. I don't think they can hear me," she went on as she put her head closer down, and I'm nearly sure they can't see me. I feel somehow as if I were invisible. Here something began squeaking on the table behind Alice, and made her turn her head just in time to see one of the white pawns roll over and begin kicking.

She watched it with great curiosity to see what would happen next. "'It is the voice of my child,' the white queen cried out, as she rushed past the king so violently that she knocked him over among the cinders. "'My precious lily, my imperial kitten!' and she began scrambling wildly up the side of the fender. "'Imperial fiddlestick!' said the king, rubbing his nose, which had been hurt by the fall. He had a right to be a little annoyed with the queen, for he was covered with ashes from head to foot. Alice was very anxious to be of use, and as the poor little Lily was nearly screaming herself into a fit, she hastily picked up the Queen and set her on the table by the side of her noisy little daughter.

The Queen gasped and sat down. The rapid journey through the air had quite taken away her breath, and for a minute or two she could do nothing but hug the little Lily in silence. As soon as she had recovered her breath a little, she called out to the White King. who was sitting sulkily among the ashes. "'Mind the volcano?' "'What volcano?' said the king, looking up anxiously into the fire, as if he thought that was the most likely place to find one. "'Blew me up,' panted the queen, who was still a little out of breath. "'Mind you come up the regular way. Don't get blown up.' Alice watched the White King as he slowly struggled up from bar to bar. Till at last she said, Why, you'll be hours and hours getting to the table at that rate.

I'd far better help you, hadn't I? But the king took no notice of the question. It was quite clear that he could neither hear her nor see her. So Alice picked him up very gently, and lifted him across more slowly than she had lifted the queen, that she mightn't take his breath away. But before she put him on the table, she thought she might as well dust him a little. He was so covered with ashes. She said afterwards that she had never seen in all her life such a face as the king made, when he found himself held in the air by an invisible hand, and being dusted. He was far too much astonished to cry out. But his eyes and his mouth went on getting larger and larger and rounder and rounder, Till her hand shook so with laughing that she nearly let him drop upon the floor.

"'Oh, please don't make such faces, my dear,' she cried out, quite forgetting that the king couldn't hear her. "'You make me laugh so that I can hardly hold you. And don't keep your mouth so wide open. All the ashes will get into it.' "'There, now I think you're tidy enough,' she added, as she smoothed his hair and set him upon the table near the queen." The king immediately fell flat on his back, and lay perfectly still, and Alice was a little alarmed at what she had done, and went round to the room to see if she could find any water to throw over him. However, she could find nothing but a bottle of ink, and when she went back with it, she found he had recovered, and he and the queen were talking together in a frightened whisper, so low that Alice could hardly hear what they said.

The king was saying, I turned cold to the very ends of my whiskers. To which the queen replied, "'You haven't got any whiskers.' "'The horror of that moment,' the king went on, "'I shall never, never forget.' "'You will, though,' the queen said, "'if you don't make a memorandum of it.' Alice looked on with great interest, as the king took an enormous memorandum-book out of his pocket, and began writing. A sudden thought struck her, and she took hold of the end of the pencil, which came some way over his shoulder, and began writing for him. The poor king looked puzzled and unhappy, and struggled with the pencil for some time without saying anything. But alice was too strong for him, and at last he panted out, "'My dear, I really must get a thinner pencil.

I can't manage this one a bit. It writes all manner of things that I don't intend.' "'What manner of things?' said the queen, looking over the book, in which Alice had put, "'The white knight is sliding down the poker. He balances very badly.' "'That's not a memorandum of your feelings.' There was a book lying near Alice on the table, and while she sat watching the White King, for she was still a little anxious about him, and had the ink all ready to throw over him, in case he fainted again, She turned over the leaves to find some part she could read. "'For it's all in some language I don't know,' she said to herself. It was like this.

She puzzled over this for some time, but at last a bright thought struck her. Why, it's a looking-glass book, of course, and if I hold it up to a glass, the words will all go the right way again. This was the poem that Alice read. Jabberwocky. "'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the waebe. All mimsy were the borogoves, and the moam-raths outgrabe. Beware the Jabberwock, my son!" The jaws that bite, the claws that catch, beware the jub-jub bird, and shun the frumious pandersnatch. He took his four-pull sword in hand, long time the manksome foe he sought. So rested he by the tum-tum tree, and stood awhile in thought. And as in uffish thought he stood, the jabberwock, with eyes of flame, came whiffling through the tulgee wood, and burbled as it came.

One-two, one-two, and through and through, the vorpal blade went snickersnack. He left it dead, and with its head he went galumphing back. "'And hast thou slain the Jabberwock? Come to my arms, my beamish boy! O, frabjus day! K'loo, killay!' he chortled in his joy. "'Twas Brillig, and the slithy Toves did gire and gimble in the wabe. All mimsy were the Borogoves and the Mom Raths outgrabe. "'It seems very pretty,' she said, when she had finished it. "'But it's rather hard to understand. You see, she didn't like to confess even to herself that she couldn't make it out at all. Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas, only I don't exactly know what they are. However—' Somebody killed something.

That's clear, at any rate. But oh," thought Alice, suddenly jumping up, if I don't make haste, I shall have to go back through the looking-glass before I've seen what the rest of the house is like. Let's have a look at the garden first. She was out of the room in a moment, and ran down the stairs, or, at least, it wasn't exactly running, but a new invention of hers for getting downstairs quickly and easily. As Alice said to herself, she just kept the tips of her fingers on the handrail, and floated gently down, without even touching the stairs with her feet. Then she floated on through the hall, and would have gone straight out at the door in the same way, if she hadn't caught hold of the doorpost.

She was getting a little giddy with so much floating in the air, and was rather glad to find herself walking again in the natural way.

queue_music Chapters 15