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Selected Works Letters, Sketches and Stories - Voltairine de Cleyre · Erewhon

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  Speaker 1: Section one of selected works, letters, sketches and stories by
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  Speaker 1: Voltin declare. This is a librvox recording. All libryvox recordings
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: or in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer,
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: please vislibrarvox dot org. A rocket of Iron of selected works, letters,
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  Speaker 1: sketches and stories by Volter Indo Claire. It was one
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  Speaker 1: of those misty October night falls of the North, when
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  Speaker 1: the white fog creeps up from the river and winds
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  Speaker 1: itself like a corpse sheet around the black head like
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  Speaker 1: mass of human insignificance, a coldminace from nature to men,
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  Speaker 1: till the foreboding of that irresistible fatality which will one
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  Speaker 1: day lay us all beneath, as death sits upon your
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  Speaker 1: breast and stiffles you till you start up desperately crying,
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  Speaker 1: let me out, Let me out. For an hour I
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  Speaker 1: had been staring through the window at the chill steam
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  Speaker 1: thickening and blurring out the lines that dig zag through it,
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  Speaker 1: infinitely pale, drunken images of facts staggering against the invulnerable
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  Speaker 1: vaper that wauled me in in a sublimated grave marble,
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  Speaker 1: where they all ghust, those figures wandering across the white night,
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  Speaker 1: hardly distinguishable from the purse and pickets that were in
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  Speaker 1: and out, like half dismembered bodies arriving in pain. My
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  Speaker 1: own fingers were curious, linen and inert. Had I too
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  Speaker 1: become a shaddow. It grew unbearable at last, the pressure
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  Speaker 1: of the foreboding at my heart, the sense of that
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  Speaker 1: uncreeping of universal death. I ran out of doors, impelled
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  Speaker 1: by the vague impulse to assert my own being, to
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  Speaker 1: seek relief in struggle, even the four doom. Futile to
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  Speaker 1: seek warmth fellowship somewhere, though, but with those ineffective palers
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  Speaker 1: in the mist that dissolved even while I look at them.
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  Speaker 1: Once in the street, I ran on indifferently, glad to
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  Speaker 1: be just so, glad of the snarling of dogs and
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  Speaker 1: the curses of laborers calling to one another. The pennumber
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  Speaker 1: of the mist, but menacing dim foreshadow had not chilled bees.
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  Speaker 1: Then on on through the alleys where human flesh was closed,
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  Speaker 1: and when one listened one could hear breathings and many
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  Speaker 1: feet drifting at loss into a current that swept the
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  Speaker 1: main channel of the city. And presently where round in
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  Speaker 1: an eddy I hung myself steering through the open door
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  Speaker 1: of a great iron works. Perhaps it was the sensation
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  Speaker 1: of warmth that held me there first, some feeling of
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  Speaker 1: the exhilaration and weakening defiance in the flash and swell
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  Speaker 1: of the yellow flames. This mixed with an indistinct desire
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  Speaker 1: to clutch something, anything that seemed stationary in the midst
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  Speaker 1: of all this, that slipp and withered and fell away. No,
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  Speaker 1: I remember, now, there was something before that. There was
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  Speaker 1: a sound, a sound that had stopped my feet in
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  Speaker 1: their going and smoothed me with a long shudder. A
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  Speaker 1: sound of hammers beating, beating, beating, a terrific hil momentarily
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  Speaker 1: forced and louder, and in between a panting, as of
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  Speaker 1: some green monster catching breath beneath, driving over iron rain,
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  Speaker 1: faster faster clang, a long, rever brant shriek. The giant
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  Speaker 1: had rowed and shivered in his pain. Involuntarily, I was
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  Speaker 1: drawn down into the valley of the sound, words muttering
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  Speaker 1: themselves through my lips as I paused, forging, forging, What
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  Speaker 1: are they forging? There? Frankenstein makes his monster how the
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  Speaker 1: iron screams? But I heard it no more. Now I
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  Speaker 1: only saw saw the curling yellow flames, and the red
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  Speaker 1: red iron that panted, And the masters of the hammers,
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  Speaker 1: how they move there like demons in the abyss, their
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  Speaker 1: bodies swinging, their eyes s tens and egg glitter, their
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  Speaker 1: faces covered with the gloom of a torture chamber. Only
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  Speaker 1: one face, I so young and fair, young and very fair,
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  Speaker 1: whereon the gloom seemed not to settle. The skin of
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  Speaker 1: it was white and shining there in the midst of
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  Speaker 1: the black hairze. With the white forehead felt tumbling waves
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  Speaker 1: of thick brown hair. And two great dark eyes looked
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  Speaker 1: steadily into the red iron, as if they saw there
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  Speaker 1: insomething I did not see. Only now and then they
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  Speaker 1: were lifted and looked away upward, as if beyond the
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  Speaker 1: smoke pall the beheld division. Once he turned over, the
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  Speaker 1: rose light caused forth his profile as a silhouette, and
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  Speaker 1: I shivered. It was so fine and hard, with the
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  Speaker 1: hardness of beaten iron, and fine, with the fineness of
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  Speaker 1: the king cheeser. Had the hammers been beating on that
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  Speaker 1: fair young face, A comrade called a sudent, terrified cried.
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  Speaker 1: There was a wire rush, a mad stampede of feet,
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  Speaker 1: a horrible screech of hissing metal, and a rocket of
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  Speaker 1: iron shot upward toward the black roof, bursting and falling
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  Speaker 1: in a burning shower. Three figuresly riving along the floor
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  Speaker 1: among the leaping de Moniac's spokes. The first to leave
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  Speaker 1: them was the man with the white face. He had
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  Speaker 1: stood still in the storm and ran forward when the
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  Speaker 1: others shrank back. Now he paused by me, bearing his
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  Speaker 1: dying burden. And I saw nook weather upon brow ocean.
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  Speaker 1: Only when he laid it in the ambulance, I fancied.
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  Speaker 1: I saw opened the delicate curve lips, a line of
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  Speaker 1: purpose deepened, and the reflection of the iron fire glowed
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  Speaker 1: in the strange eyes, as if for an instant the
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  Speaker 1: door of a hidden furnace had been open, and smoldering
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  Speaker 1: coals had brother air. And even then he looked up,
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  Speaker 1: it was all over. In half an hour there would
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  Speaker 1: be weeping in three little homes, and one was dead,
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  Speaker 1: and one would die, and one would crawl a seared
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  Speaker 1: human stomp to the end of his weary days. The
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  Speaker 1: crowd that had covered was gone. They would not know
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  Speaker 1: the stone when it back from them with its main hands.
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  Speaker 1: Six months after, on some street corner thacky every would
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  Speaker 1: say and laugh. There would be an entry on the
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  Speaker 1: company's books, and a briefly in the newspapers next day.
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  Speaker 1: But the welding of the iron would go on, and
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  Speaker 1: the man who gave his easy money for it would
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  Speaker 1: fancy he had paid for it, not seeing the stiff
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  Speaker 1: figures in their graves, nor the crippled beggar, nor the
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  Speaker 1: broken holmes. The rocket of iron is already cold, dull, inert, fireless.
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  Speaker 1: The black fragments lie upon the floor whereon the lately
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  Speaker 1: rein their red revenge. Do with them what you will.
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  Speaker 1: You cannot undo their work. The men are clearing away.
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  Speaker 1: Only he with the white face does not go back
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  Speaker 1: to his place. Still set and silent, he takes his coat,
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  Speaker 1: presses his of her town upon his thick taiplocks, and
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  Speaker 1: goes out into the foggy night. So close he passed me.
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  Speaker 1: I might have touched him, but he never saw me.
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  Speaker 1: Perhaps he was still carrying the burden of the dying
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  Speaker 1: men upon his heart, perhaps a mightier burden. For one
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  Speaker 1: instant the shapy, boyish figure was in full light. Then
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  Speaker 1: it vanished away in the angle. Thing miss the misbeavou
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  Speaker 1: vision of him had made me forget, for I knew
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  Speaker 1: I had seen a man of iron, into whose soul
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  Speaker 1: the iron had driven, whose nerves were tempered as cold steel,
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  Speaker 1: but behind whose still impassive figures slumbered a white hot heart.
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  Speaker 1: And others should see a rocket in a ruin and
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  Speaker 1: feel the vengeance of Beason Iron before the mist comes
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  Speaker 1: and swallows all I had forgotten upon that face, that young,
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  Speaker 1: fair face, so smooth and fine, but even the black
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  Speaker 1: smoke would not rest upon it. There bloom the roses
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  Speaker 1: of early death, hot house flowers and of a rocket
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  Speaker 1: of iron. Section two of selected works, letters, ketchers and
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  Speaker 1: stories by Vulterin Declare. This is a LibriVox recording. All
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  Speaker 1: liburivox recordings or in the public domain. For more information
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. The chain
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: gang of selected works, letters, ketches and stories by Vulterin declare.
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  Speaker 1: It is far far down in the south lane, and
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  Speaker 1: I am back again, thanks b in the lene of
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  Speaker 1: wind and snow, where life lives. But that was in
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  Speaker 1: the days when I was a wretch thing that crept
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  Speaker 1: and crawled and shrunk when the wind blew, and feared
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  Speaker 1: the snow. So they sent me away down there to
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  Speaker 1: the world of the sun, where the wind and the
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  Speaker 1: snow are afraid, And the sun was kind to me,
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  Speaker 1: and the sofair that does not move lay around me
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  Speaker 1: like folds of dawn, and the poor creeping laugh in me.
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  Speaker 1: Winked in the light and teared out at the wide
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  Speaker 1: caressing air, stared away to the north, to the land
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  Speaker 1: of wind and rain, where my heart was, my heart
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  Speaker 1: that would be at home. Yes, there in the tender South.
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  Speaker 1: My heart was bitter and bowed for the love of
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  Speaker 1: the singing wind and the fruit whose edge was death.
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  Speaker 1: Bitter and bowed for the strength to bear that was gone,
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  Speaker 1: and the strength to love that abode. Day of the day,
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  Speaker 1: I climbed the hills with my face to the north
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  Speaker 1: and home, and there on the southern heights, where the
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  Speaker 1: air was raising and born, there smoothened my ears the
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  Speaker 1: sound that all the wind of the North can never
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  Speaker 1: sing down again. The sun I shall hear till I
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  Speaker 1: stand at the door of the lost silence, cling clung,
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  Speaker 1: cling from the Georgian hills. It sounds, and the snow
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  Speaker 1: and the storm cannot drown it. The fall of terrible
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  Speaker 1: music of the chain gang. I met it there on
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  Speaker 1: the road, face to face, with all the light of
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  Speaker 1: the stun upon it. Do you know what it is?
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  Speaker 1: Do you know that every day men run in long
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  Speaker 1: procession upon the roo. Would we built for other safe
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  Speaker 1: and easy going, bound to a chain, and that other
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  Speaker 1: men with guns open their shoulders right beside them, with
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  Speaker 1: orders to kill if the living links break. There stretched
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  Speaker 1: before me a serpent of human bodies, bound to the iron,
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  Speaker 1: and wrapped in the merciless folds of justified cruelty. Clang, cling, clang.
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  Speaker 1: There was an order given, the living chain divided groups
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  Speaker 1: felt to work upon the road. And then I saw
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  Speaker 1: and heard a miracle. Have you ever heart of a drowsy,
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  Speaker 1: lazy conviction that all knowledges, all arts, all dreams are
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  Speaker 1: only patient sums of many toils of many millions dead
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  Speaker 1: and living, suddenly started into an uncanny consciousness that knowledges
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  Speaker 1: and arts and dreams of things more real than any
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  Speaker 1: living being ever was, which suddenly revealed themselves, unhorsked and unawaited,
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  Speaker 1: in the most obscure corners of soul life, flashing out
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  Speaker 1: in prismatic glory to dazzle and shock all your security
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  Speaker 1: of thought, toppling it with vague questions of what is reality?
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  Speaker 1: That you cannot silence when you hear that an untaught
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  Speaker 1: child's able he knows not how to do the works
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  Speaker 1: of the magiciance of mathematics. Has it never seemed to
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  Speaker 1: you that suddenly all books were swept away and there
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  Speaker 1: before used to the superb sphinx like creation, mathematics itself
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  Speaker 1: pusing problems to men whose eyes are cursed down, and
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  Speaker 1: all at once out of whim, incorporating itself in that
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  Speaker 1: wide eyed, mysterious child. Have you ever felt that all
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  Speaker 1: the works of the masters were swept aside in the
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  Speaker 1: burst of a singing voice, unconscious that it sings, and
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  Speaker 1: that music itself, in master presence, has entered the throat
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  Speaker 1: and sung. No, you have never felt it, But you
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  Speaker 1: have never heard the changed gang sing. Their faces were
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  Speaker 1: black and brutal and hopeless. Their brows were blue, their
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  Speaker 1: jaws were heavy, their eyes were hard. Three hundred years
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  Speaker 1: of a scorn, but brands had burned its core upon
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  Speaker 1: the face and form of ignorance, ignorance that had sought dully, stupidly, blindly,
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  Speaker 1: and been answered with that pe less brown. But while
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  Speaker 1: beyond the limits of high men and his little scorn.
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  Speaker 1: The great sweet old music soul, the chords of the
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  Speaker 1: world smote through the black man's fiber in the days
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  Speaker 1: of the making of men, and it sings. It sings
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  Speaker 1: with its ever flowing strings, through all the voices of
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  Speaker 1: the chain gang, and never one so low that it
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  Speaker 1: does not fill with the humming vibrancy, but quivers and
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  Speaker 1: bursts out, singing things always new and new and new.
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  Speaker 1: I heard it that day. The leader struck his peak
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  Speaker 1: into the earth, and for a moment whistle like some wild,
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  Speaker 1: free living flute in the forest. Then his voice floated
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  Speaker 1: out like a low booming wind, crying an instant, and fell.
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  Speaker 1: There was the measure of a grave in the fall
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  Speaker 1: of it. Another voice rose up and lifted the dead
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  Speaker 1: node aloft, like a mourner, raising his beloved with a kiss.
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  Speaker 1: It drifted away to the hilts and the sun. Then
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  Speaker 1: many voices rolled forward, like a great plunging wave, in
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  Speaker 1: a chorus never heard before, perhaps never again, for each
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  Speaker 1: man sang his own song as it came, Yet all blunt,
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  Speaker 1: The words were a few, simple, filled with the great plaint.
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  Speaker 1: The wail of the sea was in it and no
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  Speaker 1: man knew what his brother would sing, yet added his
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  Speaker 1: own without thought, as the rhythm swept on, and others
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  Speaker 1: knew what note its fellow voice would sing, Yet they
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  Speaker 1: fell in one another as the billow force in the
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  Speaker 1: trough or rose to the crest, one upon the other,
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  Speaker 1: one within the other, other under all in the great wave,
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  Speaker 1: And now one lead, and others followed. Then he dropped back,
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  Speaker 1: and another swell upward, And every voice was solowish and chorister,
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  Speaker 1: and never one seemed conscious of itself, but only to
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  Speaker 1: sing out the great song. And always, as the voices
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  Speaker 1: rose and sank, the axes swrang and fell, and the
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  Speaker 1: lean white face of the man with the gun looked
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  Speaker 1: on with a stolid, paralyzed smile. O that while somber melody,
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  Speaker 1: that long appealing plaint, with its hope, laid beyond death,
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  Speaker 1: that melody that was made only there just now before me,
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  Speaker 1: and passing away before me, if I could only seize it,
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  Speaker 1: hold it, stop it from pausing. That all the world
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  Speaker 1: might hear the song of a chain gang, might not
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  Speaker 1: that hear in these red Georgian hills, convicts, black brutal convicts,
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  Speaker 1: or making the music that is of no man's compelling,
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  Speaker 1: that floods like the tide, and ebbs away like the tide,
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  Speaker 1: and will not be held, and is gone far away
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  Speaker 1: and forever, out into the abyss, where the voices of
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: the centuries have drifted and all lost. Something about Jesus
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: And a lamp in the darkness, a gulfing darkness, Oh,
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: in the mass of sunshine must be still, cry for
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: light all around the sweep, and the glory of shimmering
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: is fur sun, sun, a whirl of sun, and the
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: still calling for light, Sun for the road, send for stones,
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  Speaker 1: send for the red clay, And no light for his
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  Speaker 1: dark living clay. Only heat that burns, and blaze that blinds,
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  Speaker 1: but does not leave the darkness. And lead me to
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  Speaker 1: that lamp. Pathitic prayer for light went trembling away out
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  Speaker 1: into the luminous gulf of day, and the axes swung
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  Speaker 1: and fell, and the grim, dry face of the man
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  Speaker 1: with the gun looked on with its frozen smile. Slong
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: as they sing the work, said, the smile still and ironical.
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  Speaker 1: A friend to them that's got no friend. Men of
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: sorrows lifted up onto Golgota in the day when the
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  Speaker 1: forces of the law and the might of social order.
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  Speaker 1: Set you there in the moment of your pain and
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: desperate accusation against heaven, when that piercing eloi eloi la
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: massa bactani went up to the death sky. Did you
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: presage this desolate appeal coming to you out of the
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: unleaved depths of nineteen hundred years hopeless hope that crash
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: to the dead, futile pleading that the cup may pause,
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: while still the lips drink for us of all order
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: and the law. In shining helmets and gleaming spears ring
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: round the flon of Glgota, substands they still in that lean,
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: merciless f with its shouldered gun and passive smile. And
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: the moon that died within the place of skulls is
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: born again in this great dog cry rising up against
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: the sun. If but the living might hear it, not
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: the dead, for these or dead who walk about with
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: vengeance and despat within their hearts and scorn for things
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: dark and lowly, in the odor of self righteousness, with
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: self wanting with them in the souls and pride of
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: rais and iron shot odor, and the preservation of things
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: that are walking stones. Of these that cannot hear, but
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: the living of those who seek to know, who want
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: not of thing slowly or things high, but only a
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: thing's wonderful, And who turn sorrowfully from things that, all
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: hoping for things that. Maybe if these should hear the
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: chain gang chorus sees it, make all the living hear it,
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: see it, if from among themselves one man might find
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: the lamp, lift it up pain for all the world
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: with george and heels, the red sunburn roads, these troling
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: figures with a rhythmic access this brutal annial mined faces,
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: the grouping death covered and then unloose that sung upon
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: their ears, till they feel the smitten, quivering hearts of
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: a sense of music beating against their own, and under
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: and over and around it, the chain that the dead
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: have forged, clinking between the heartbeats, clang, cling, clang. It
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: is sundown. They are running over the red road. Now
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: the verses of silent only the chain clings and of
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: a chain gang. Section three of selected works, letters, Sketches
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: and Stories by Ulterine declare this is a libravox recording.
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: All Libravox recordings or in the public domain for more
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: information or to volunteer. Please visit libravox dot org. The
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: Heart of Angelillo of selected works, letters, ketches, and stories
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: by altering declare, some women are born to love stories.
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: As the spokes fly upward, You see it every time
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: they glance at you, and you feel it every time
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: they lay a finger on your sleeve. There was a
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: portive of the night, and a four year old baby,
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: who couldn't sleep for the nurse, crept down into the parlor,
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: half frightened to death, and transfixed with wonderment at the
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: crude performances of an obscuse visitor who was shouting out
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: the woes of othello. One kindly little woman took the
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: baby in her arms and said, what would they do
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: to you if you made all that noise with me?
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: Whispered the child, her round black eyes, half admiration and
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: half terror, and altogether coquettish, as she hid and peered
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: round the woman's neck, and every man in the room
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: forthwith fell in love with her, and wanted to smother
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: his face in the bewitching rings of dark hair that
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: crowned the dainty head, and carry her about on his shoulders,
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: or get down on his hands and knees. To play
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: horse for her all at her, walk on his neck,
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: or obiteriate his dignity in any other way she might prefer.
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: The boys tolerated their fathers with the superior her. Fourteen
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: or fifteen years from now, they will be playing the
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: humble cousin of the horse before the same little ring
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: haired lady, and having spotted nick Buttom's ears to no purpose,
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: half a dozen or souls go off and hang themselves,
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: or turn monk, or become bold bad men and revenge
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: themselves on the sex. But her conquests will go on,
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: And when those gracious rings are white asnow, the children
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: of those boys will follow in their grandfather's and father's
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: steps and dangle after her, and make drawings on the
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: fly leaves of the sweetis cup of the mouth of hers,
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: and call her their elder sister and other devotional names.
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: And the other girls of her generation, who were not
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: born with that marvelous entangling grass in every line and look,
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: will dread her, inspired her, and feel mean satisfaction. When
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: some poor old fool does swallow laudanum on her account,
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: smiles of glacial virtue will creep over their faces like
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: slippery sunshine. When one by one, her devotees, controlling off
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: to them to say that such a woman could never
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: feel immense heart, nor become the ornament of his hot stone,
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: required virtues that were or all their desire. Of course,
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: they have just been studying her character and that of
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: a foolishman who dance her attendance. But even those are
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: not doing it with any serious motives. And the neglected
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: girls will serve him with homemade cake and wine, which
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: he will presently convert into agony in that peer shall
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: ear of hers, and all the while the baby will
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: have done nothing but be what she was born to be,
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: full none of her own choosing, which is her lot
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: and portion. And that is another thing that gods will
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: have to explain when the day comes back they go
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: on trial before men, which is the real day of judgment.
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: But this isn't the baby story, which has yet to
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: be made, but the story of one who somehow received
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: a wrong portion. Some inadvertent little angel in the destined
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: shop took down her name when the heroine of the
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: Romans was called for, and put her where she should
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: not have been, and then ran off to play, no doubt,
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: not stopping to look twice for even the most insutient
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: angel that looked twice would have seen that if he
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: was no woman to play the game of hearts. And
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: there was only one thing more undiscerning than an angel,
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: and that is a social reformer, if he ran up
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: against both. They say she had blood in her girlhood,
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: that it shone red and steady through that thin, pure
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: skin of hers. But when I saw her with her
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: nursing baby in her arms, down in the smashing crime
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: of London, there was only a fluctuant blush, a sort
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: of pink gust of blood, hovering back and forth on
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: her face. And that was for shame of the poverty
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: of her need bare room, not that she had ever
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: known riches. She was the daughter of Scotch peasants, and
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: had gone out to service when she was still a child.
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: Her chest was swallowed in and her back board with
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: that unnatural labor. There was no glass on the pale
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: sandy hair, no wilding ten dress clinging round the straight,
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: smooth forehead, no light of coquetry or grace in the
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: glimmering blue eyes. No beauty in her at all, unless
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: it lay in the fine, hoards captured line of her
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: nose and mouth and chin. When she turned her head sideways.
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: You could read in that line that having spoken a
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: word to her heart, she would not forget it nor
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: answer it. And if it took her down into gatesman,
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: she would never cry out, though by all forsaken, and
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: that was where it had taken her. VN some ready,
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: condemner of all that has been tried for less than
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: a thousand years, will say it was because she had
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: the just reward of those who, holding that love is
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: its own sanction, and that it cannot be anything but
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: degraded by seeking permissions from social authorities leave their love lives.
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: We had the consent of church state. But you and
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: I knew that the same dog Gordon has awaited the
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: woman whose love has been blessed by both, and that
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: many such a life lamp has flickered out in the
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: night as profound as poverty and utter. Lonelius could make
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: it so. If it was justice to a fee, what
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: is it to that other woman? In truth, justice had
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: nothing to do with it. She'll love the wrong man,
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: that was all, and married or unmarried. It would have
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: been the same. For if formula doesn't make a man no,
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: the lack of it and make him the fellow was
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: superior in intellect. It is honesty only which can wring
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: so much from those who knew them. Both, for as
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: to any other thing, she sat as high over him
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: as the stars, or not that he was an actively
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: bad man, just one of those weak, uncertain, tumbling a
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: bad characters, having sense enough to know it is a
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: fine thing to stand alone, and vanity enough to want
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: the name without the game, and coward this enough to
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: creep around anything stronger than itself, and hang there and
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: spread itself about and say, lo, how straight am i?
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: And if the stronger thing happens to be a father
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: or a brother, or some such torerant piece of friendly,
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: self sufficient energy, he amuses himself a while and finally
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: gives the creeper if she can, says here, now go
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: hang on somebody else, if you can stand alone, and
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: the world says he should have done it before. But
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: if it happens to be a mother or a sister,
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: or a wife or a sweetheart, she encourages him to
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: think he is a wonderful person. But all she does
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: is really his own merit, and she is proud and
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: glad to serve him. If after a while she doesn't
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: exactly believe it any more. She says and does the same,
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: And the world says she's a fool, which she is.
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: But if in some sudden spurt of masculine self assor stiveness,
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: she decides to fling him off, the world says she
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: is an unwomanly woman, which again she is, so much
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: the better if his creeper double in the literature, he
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: wanteth to be a translator, and several other things. His
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: appearance was mild and gentlemanly, even supermodest. He always spoke
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: respectfully of Effie, and as if momentously impressed with a
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: sense of duty towards her. They had started out to
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: realize the free life together, and the glory of the
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: new idol had become ventforward, So no doubt to believe.
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: For Apprehender always deceives himself worse than anybody else. But
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: still at that particular period he used to droop his
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: head wearily and admit that he had made a great mistake.
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: It was nobody's thought but his own. But of course
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: a Fee and he were hardly fitted for each other.
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: She could not well enter into his hopes and ambitions,
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: never having had the opportunity to develop when she was younger.
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: He had hoped to stimulate her in that direction, but
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: he feared it was too late, so he said in
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: a delicate and gentlemany way as he went from one
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: house to the other, and was invited to dinner and supper,
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: and made himself believe he was looking for work a fee. Meanwhile,
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: was taking home boys caps to make, and roaring along
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: incredibly unbred and tea and walking the streets with the
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: baby in her arms when she had no caps to make.
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: Of course, when a man drinks other people's teas a
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: great many times, and sits in their houses and burrows
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: odd shillings now and then, and assumes the gentleman, he
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: is ultimately brought to the necessity of asking someone to
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: tea with him. So one spring night, the creeper approached
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: a few rather dubis sleep with a statement that he
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: had asked two of three acquaintances to come in the
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: next evening, and he supposed she would need to prepare
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: a tea. The girl was just fainting from starvation then,
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: and she asked him were really where he thought she
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: was to get it? He courst about a while in
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: his presillanimous way for things that she might do, and
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: finally proposed that she poured the baby's dress. The white
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: dress had made from one of her own girlhood dressers,
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: and the only thing it had to wear when she
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: took it out for air. But was the limit even
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: for if he She said she would take anything of
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: her own if she had it, but not the babies,
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: and she turned her face to the wall and clung
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: to the child. When the tea time came. Next day,
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: she went up with the baby and woke up and
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: down the surging London streets, looking in the windows and
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: crushing back tears. What the creeper did with his guests,
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: she never knew, for she did not return till long
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: after dusk, when she was too weary to wonder anymore,
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: And she found no one there but himself and a
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: dog stranger who spoke little and with an Italian accent,
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: but who measured her with serious, intense eyes. He listened
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: to the creeper, but he looked at her. She was
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: quite fagged out and more blood less than ever, as
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: she sat motionless on the edge of her bed. When
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: he went away, he lifted his hat to her with
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: the grace of an old time coachie, and begged her
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: pardon if he had intruded. Some days after that he
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: came in again and brought a toy for the baby,
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: and asked her if he might carry child out a
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: little for her. It looked sickly shut up there, but
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: he knew it must be heavy for her to carry
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: the creeper suddenly discovered that he could carry the baby.
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: All this happened in the days when a pious queen
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: sat on the throat of Spain with yest and upwarding
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: much holiness. She failed to see the things done in
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: her presence, or hear the groans that rose up from
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: the zero chamber in the fortress of montret the old
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: Europe heard, and even in America the equal range. Why
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: she told her bids, her minister gave the order to
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: torture the anarchists, and scared with red hot irons, mame
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: and deform, and madden with the nameless horrors, that the
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: good device to correct the bad. Even onto this day,
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: the evidences of that infamous order leave, But two men
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: do not leave, the one who gave her order and
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: the one who revenge. It happened one night in April
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: that Effie and the Creeper and their sometimes visitor met
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: all three in one of those long, loose, smothering London
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: halls where many movements have originated, which in their developed proportions,
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: have taken possession of the House of Commons and even
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: staggered the dust in the House of Lords. There was
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: a crowd of excited people, talking all degrees of sense
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: and nonsense in every language of the continent. Letters smuggled
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: from the prison had been received. New tays of torture
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: were pausing from mouth to mouth. Fresh propositions to arouse
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: a general protest from civilization were bubbling up, with the
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: anger of every indignant man and woman drifting to the
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: buzzing not if he heard someone translating. It was the
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: letter of a tortured Noggus, who a month later was
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: shown beneath the fortress wall the words smoot her ears
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: like something hurt and stinging. You know, I am one
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: of the free accusers, the other two or Assyri and Molas,
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: who figure in the trial. I could not bear the
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: atrocious tortures of so many days and my arress like spite.
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: Eight days without food or drink, obliged to walk continually
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: to and through or be flogged. And as if I
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: did not suffice, I was made to trot as to
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: ouray wholes trained at the riding school, until worn with fatigue.
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: I felt to the ground and then the hangman. But
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: my lips wavered hot irons. And when I declared myself
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: the offer of the attempt, they replied, you do not
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: tell the truth. We know that the offer is another one,
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: but we want to know your accomplices. Besides, you still
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: retain six bombs, and along with little Holor, you deposited
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: two bombs in the roof Vivaleer. Who are your accomplicers?
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: In spite of my desire to make and enovi it,
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: I could not answer anything. Whom should I accuse, since
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: all or innocent. Finally six comrades were placed before me,
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: whom I had to accuse, and of whom I beg pardon.
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: Thus the declarations and the accusations, but I made I
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: cannot finish. The high men are coming, No guess sick
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: with horror if you would have gone away, But her
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: feet were like lead. She heard the next letter, the
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: pathetic prayer of Sebastian Sonya indistinctly. The tortures had already
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: seared her ears, but the crying for help seemed to
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: go up over her head like great sobs. She felt
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: herself wash round, sinking in the desperate pain of it.
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: The piteous reiteration listen you with your hornes's hearts, you
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: with your pure souls, good and right minded people, good
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: and right feeling people wail through her like the while
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: pleading of a child who shrieking under the weep. Dear Papa, good,
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: sweet papa, Please don't wheep me, please please, seeks terror
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: wrung flattery to escape the lash. Fler's cry aid us,
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: in noble helplessness, think of our misery made her quiver
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: like a reed. She walked away and sat down in
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: a corner alone. What could she do? What could anyone do?
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: Miserable creature that she was herself, Her own misery seemed
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: so worthless beside that prison cry, and she thought an
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: why does he want to live at all? Why does
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: anyone want to live? Why do I want to leave myself?
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: After a while, the creeper and his friend came to her,
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: and the latter sat down beside her, undemonstrative. As usual
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: at the next burst in the room, they too well
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: left alone. She looked at him once as she said,
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: what do you think the people will do about it?
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: He glanced at the crowd with a thin smile. Doo
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: in a little time, he said, quietly, it does you
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: no good here. I will take you home and come
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: back for David afterward. She had no idea of contradicting him,
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: so they went out together. At the threshold of her room,
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: he said firmly, I will come in for a few minutes.
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: I have to speak to you. She struck a light,
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: put the baby on the bed and look at him questioningly.
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: He sat down with his back against the wall, and
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: with rigidly folded arms, stared straight ahead of him. Seeing
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: that he did not speak, she said softly, falling into
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: her native there like as all scotchwomen do when they
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: feel most I cannot get that poor courteous cries Atamahad
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: is no human No, he said shortly, and then with
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: a sudden look at her. If he what do you
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: think love is? She answered him with surprised eyes and
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: said nothing. He went on, You love a child, don't
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: you You do for it? You serve it? That shows
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: you love it. But do you think it's love that
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: makes David as he does to you. If he love you,
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: would he let you work as you work? Would he
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: leave of you? Wouldn't he wear the flesh of his
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: fingers instead of yours. He doesn't love you. He isn't
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: worth you. He isn't a bad man, but he isn't
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: worth you, And you make him less worth. You ruin him,
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: You ruin yourself, You kill the child. I can't see
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: it any more. I come here and I see you
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: weaker every time, whiter, thinner, and I know if you
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: keep on, you'll die. I can't see it. I want
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: you to leave him. Let me work for you. I
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: don't make much, but enough to let you rest, at
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: least till you're well. I would wait till you left
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: him of yourself, But I can't wait when I see
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: you dying like this. I don't want anything of you
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: except to serve you, to serve a child, because it's yours.
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: Come away tonight. You can have my room. I'll go
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: somewhere else tomorrow. I'll find you a better place. You
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: needn't see him anymore. I'll tell him myself. He won't
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: do anything. Don't be afraid come and he stood up
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: if he had sat astonished and dumb. Now, she looked
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: up at the dog ten's eyes above her and said quietly,
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: I did not understand. A sharp contraction went across the
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: strong band face. No, you don't understand what you're doing
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: with yourself. You don't understand that I love you, and
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: I can't see it. I don't ask you to love me.
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: I ask you to let me serve you only a little,
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: only so much as to give you health. Again, is
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: that too much? You don't know what you are to me.
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: Others love you beauty, but I I see in you
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: the eternal sacrifice, your thin fingers that always work your
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: face when I look at it, it's just a wide child.
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: You're the child of the people that dies without crying.
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: Will let me give yourself for you and leave this
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: man who doesn't care for you, does not know you,
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: thinks you beneath him, uses you. I don't want you
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: to be his slave anymore. If he clasp her hands
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: and look at them. Then she looked at the sleeping
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: baby smooth a quilt and said, quietly, I didn't take
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: him the day to leave him the morn. It's no,
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: my fault if you're deaf about me. The dog face
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: sharpened as one sees the agony in a dying man,
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: but his voice was very gentle, speaking always in his
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: blood English. No, there's no thought in you at all.
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: Did I accuse you? The girl walked to the window
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: and looked out someway. It was a relief from the
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: burning eyes which seemed to fail the room, no matter
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: that she did not look at them, and staring off
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: into the twinking London night, she heard again the terrible
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: sobs of sebastiansen years later, rising up and drowning her
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: with its misery. Without turning around, she said, low and hard,
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: I wonder you can think about the things and neon
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: dere's burning men alive. The man drew his hand across
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: his forehead. Would you like to hear that the one,
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: the worst of them was dead? I think the word
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: would not be muckle the world up, she answered, still
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: looking away from him. He came up and laid his
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: hand on her shoulder. Will you kiss me once? I'll
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: never ask again. She shook him off. I dinner, feel thought,
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: good bye. Then I'll go back for David, and he
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: returned to the hall and got the creeper and told
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: him very honestly what had taken place, And the creeper,
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: to his credit be it said, respected him for it,
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: and talk a great deal about being better in future
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: to the girl. The two men pottered at the foot
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: of the stairs, and the lost words that he could
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: for the hole they were, No, I am going away,
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: but you will hear of me some day. Now. What
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: went on in his heart that night, no one knows,
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: nor what indecision still kept him lingering fitfully about a
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: Fiel street a few days more, nor when the indecision
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: finally ceased, for no one spoke to him after that,
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: except as casual acquintances meet any In a week he
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: was gone. But what he did the whole ward knows.
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: For even the Queen of Spain came out of her
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: poyers to hear how her torturing prime minister had been
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: shot at Santa Agaida by a stern faceman, who, when
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: the widow grief mad spit in his face, quietly whipped
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: his cheeks, saying, madam, I have no quarrel with women.
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: A few weeks later they garroted him, and he said
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: one word before he died. One only geminal over there
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: in the long low London Hall. The gabbling was hushed,
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: and someone murmured how he had sat silent in the
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: corner that night when all were to the creeper purse
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: round a book containing the history of the tortures, watching
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: it jealously all the while, for said he angerly look
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: gave it to me himself, he had it in his
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: own hands. A feeling beside the baby in her room,
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: and hid her face in the pillow to keep out
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: the stairs of the burning eyes that were dead. And
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: over and over again she repeated, was it my fault?
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: Was it my fault? The hot summer air lay still
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: and smothering, and the immense murmur of the city came
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: muffur like thunder below the horizon. Her hearts im beating
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: against the walls of a padded room, and gradually, without
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: closing consciousness, she slipped into the world of illusion. Around
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: her groover stiffling atmosphere of the torture chamber of Mondred
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: and the chuck cries of men in agony. She was
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: sure that if she looked up she should see the
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: demoniac face of Porters, the torturer. She tried to cry, mercy, mercy, better,
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: dry lips clave. She had a whirling sensation and the
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: illusion change. Now there was the clack of soldier's arms,
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: a moment of insufferable stillness as the garage shape itself
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: out of the shadows in her eyes. Then loud and clear,
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: breaking the sullen quiet, like the shop ringing of a
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: storm bringing. When germinal she sprang up. The long vibration
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: of the bell of Saint Pacras was waving for a room,
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: but to her it was the prolungation of the word germinal, Germinal.
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: Then suddenly she threw out her arms in the darkness
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: and whispered hoarsely, Ah, I'll kiss you venu. An hour
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: later she was back at the old question. Was it
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: my fault? Poor girl? It is all over now, and
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: all the same to the grass that roots in her bone,
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: whether it was her ford or not. For the end
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: that the men who had loved her foresol came through.
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: It was slow in becoming. Let the creeper get credit
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: for all that he did. His deafenob in a your
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: sou and went to Paris and got some work, And
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: there the whole little creature went to him and wrote
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: to her old friends that she was better off at last,
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: But it was too late for that thin shell of
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: a body that had starved so much at the first trial,
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: she broke and died. And so she sleeps and is forgotten.
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: And the careless boy Angel who mixed all these destinies
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: so unobservantly, has never yet whispered her name in the
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: ear of a widowed lady Canovas del Castillo. Nor will
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: the birds that fly vither carry it now, for it
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: was not a fee and of the heart of Angelilu.
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: Section four of selected works, letters, sketches and Stories by
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: wilderin declare, this is a libraryvox recording or libraryvox recordings
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: or in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer,
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: please visit liebrivax dot org. The Reward of an apostate
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: of selected works, letters, sketches and Stories by Wilding Declare,
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: I have sinned, and I am rewarded according to my sin,
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: which was great. There is no forgiveness for me, and
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: let no man think there is forgiveness. Foresein, the gods
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: cannot forgive. This was my sin, and this is my punishment.
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: But I forsook my God to follow a stranger only
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: a while, a very brief, brief while, and I would
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: have returned. There was no more returning. I cannot worship
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: any more. That is my punishment. I cannot worship any more. Oh,
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: that my God will none of me. That is an
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: old sorrow. My God was beauty, and I am all
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: unbautiful and ever was. There is no grace in these
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: harsh limbs of my nor was at any time I
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: to whom the glory of a lit eye was as
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: the shining of stars in a deep well, have only
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: dull and faded eyes, and always had the schizoled lip
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: and chin whereover runs the radiance of life in bumbling glimpse.
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: The cup of living wine was never mind to taste
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: or kiss. I am earth colored, and for my own
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: ugliness sit in the shadow. But the sunlight may not
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: see me, nor the belove of my God. But once
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: in my hidden corner, behind the curtain of shadows, I
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: blink at the glory of the world, and had the
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: joy of it as only the au glinder, sitting silent
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: and worshiping forgetting themselves and forgotten. Here in my brain
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: it glowed the shimmering of the dying sun upon the shore,
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: the long row line between the sun and sea, where
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: the sliding foam caught fire and burned to death. Here
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: in my brain it shone the white moon and the
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: wrinkling river, running away, a dancing ghost line in the
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: illimitable night. Here in my brain rose the mountain curves,
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: the great steel world of stone, summit upon summit, sweeping skyward,
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: lonely and conquering. Here in my brain, my little brain,
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: behind this tiny, ugly wall of bone, stretched over with
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: its dirty yellow skin, glittered the four high blue desert
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: with its sand of stars, as I have washed it
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: nights and nights alone. Hid in the shadows of the
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: prairie grass. Here rolled and swelled, the seas of corn
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: and blossoming fields of nodding bloom and flower flies on
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: the hovering wings went flickering up and down, and the
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: quick spring of leaf limp things, when scattering dew across
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: the sun, and singing streams, when shining down the rocks,
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: spreading bright veils upon the crags. Here in my brain,
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: my silent, unrevealing brain, with the eyes I loved the lips.
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: I dared not kiss the sculptured heads, and tendrill hair.
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: They were here always, in my wonder house, my house
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: of beauty, the temple of my God. I shut the
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: door on common life and worship here, and no bright, living,
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: flying thing in whose body beauty dwells. As guests can
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: guess the ecstatic joy of a brown, silent creature, a
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: toad thing squatting on the shadowed ground, self blotted, motionless,
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: thrilling with the presence of poor beauty, though it has
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: no pot therein but the gods or many And once
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: a strange god came to me, sharp upon the shadowy ground.
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: He stood and beckoned me with knotted fingers. There was
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: no beauty in his lean figure and sunken cheeks, but
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: up and down the muscles ran like snakes beneath his skin,
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: and his dark eyes had somber fires in them. And
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: as I looked at him, I felt the leap of
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: prisoned forces in myself, in the earth, in the air,
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: in the sun, all throbed with the purse of the
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: wild god's heart. Beauty vanished from my wonder house, and
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: where his images had been, I heard the clang and
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: roar of machinery, the forging of links that stretched the
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: sun chained for the tides, changed for the winds and
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: curious light, when shining through thick walls, as through air,
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: and down through the shell of the world itself, to
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: the great furnaces within, into those seething depths. The God's
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: eyes beard smiling and triumphing. Then with an up glanced
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: at the sky, and he waste glanced at me. He
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: strode off. This is my great sin, for which there
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: is no pardon. I followed him, the rude god energy
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: followed him, and in that abundant moment, so to be
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: quit of beauty, which had given me nothing, and to
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: be worship of him, to whom I was a king,
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: ugly but sinuous, resolute, daring, defiant maker, and break off
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: things remolder of the world. I followed him. I would
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: have run abreast with him. I loved him, not with
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: a still ecstasy of flooding joy, wherewith my own god
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: filled meal of all, but with impetuous, eager fire, but
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: burd and beat through all the blood threats of me.
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: I love you, love me back, I cried, and would
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: have flung myself upon his neck. Then he turned on
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: me with a rothless blow and fled away over the
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: world leaving me crippled, stricken, powerless, a fire's pain driving
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: through my veins, gusts of pain, and I crept back
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: into my old cavern, stumbling blind and death on leaf
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: of a hunting vision of my shame, and the rushing
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: sound of fevered blood. But pain is gone, I see again.
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: I care no more for the taunt and blow of
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: the fire's God, who was never mine. But in my
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: wonder house it is all still and bare. No image
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: lingers on the black mirrors anymore, not singing, bare floats
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: in the echoless dome. Forms rise and pulse, But neither
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: mountain curve, nor sun, nor sea, nor shivering a river,
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: nor faces of the flowers, No flowering faces of my
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: God's beloved touch aught within me now, not one poor
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: thrill of vague delight for me who felt the glory
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: of the stalls within my fingertips. It dips post me
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: like water, brown without and clay within. No wonder now,
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: behind the ugly wall, an empty temple. I cannot worship,
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: I cannot love, I cannot care. All my life service
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: is unweighed against, as faithless hour of my foreswearing it
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: is just, It is the law. I am forsworn, and
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: the Gods have given me the reward of an apostate
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: and of the reward of an apostate. Section five of
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: selected works, Letters, Sketches, and Stories by Vulterin declare. This
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: is a libraryox recording all Library Box recordings or in
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: visit library box dot org at the end of the alley.
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: First of selected works, letters, sketches and Stories by Vulterin Declare.
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: It is a long, narrow pocket opening on a little
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: street which runs like a tortuous seam up and down
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: the city over there. It was at the end of
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: the summer, and in summer in the evening. The mouth
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: of a pocket is hard to find because of the
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: people in it and about who sit across the passage,
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: gasping at the dirty winds that come loafing down the street,
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: like crafty beggars seeking a hole to sleep in, like
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: mean beggars, be reef of the spirit of free wind hood.
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: Down in the pocket itself, the air is quite dead.
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: One feels oneself enveloped in a scum covered pool of it,
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: and at every breath, long filaments of invisible roots swamp
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: roots tear and tangle in your floundering lungs. I had
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: to go to the very end, to the bottom of
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: a pocket. There, in the deepest of his alley holes,
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: leaves the woman to whom I am in debted for
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: the whiteness of this waist I wear how she does it,
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: I don't know. Poverty works miracles like that, just as
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: the black marsh mud gives out lilies. At the very
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: loss door, I knock, and presently men's voice, weak and suffocated,
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: called from a window above. I explained, there's a chair there,
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: Sit down, she'll be home soon. And the voice was
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: caught in a cuff. This, then, was the consumptive husband
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: she had told me of. I looked up at the
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: square hole, dimly outlined in the darkness. Whence the cuff issued,
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: and suddenly felt a horrible pressure at my heart and
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: a curious sense of entanglement, as if all the invisible
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: webs of disease had momentarily acquired a conscious sense of
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: prey within their clutch and tightened on it like an octopus.
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: The haunting terror of the unknown, the dim horror of
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: an enemic presence, recoiled before the merciless creeping and floating
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: of an enemy one cannot grasp or fight, repulsive turning
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: from a thing that has reached behind while you have
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: been seeking to face it, that is there awaiting you
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: with the frightful, ironic laughter of the silence. All this
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: swept round and through me. As I stared up through
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: the night. Up there on the bed he was lying,
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: he who had been meshed in the fatal webbed for
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: three long years, and was struggling still in the darkness,
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: I felt his breath draw. The sharp balking of a
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: dog came as a relief. I turned to the broken
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: chair and sat down to wait. The alley was hemmed
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: in by a high wall, and from the further side
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: of it they towered a poor, magnificent old trees, whose
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: great crowns sent down a whispering legend of vanished forests,
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: and the limitless sweep of clean air that had washed
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: through them long ago, and that would never come again.
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: How long, how long since those four days of purity,
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: before the plague spot of men had crept upon them.
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: How strong those proud old giants were that had not
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: yet been strangled, How beautiful they were, How men and
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: ugly were the misshapen things that sat in the doorways
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: of the fall dance that they had made chattering, chattering,
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: as ages ago the apes had chattered in the forests.
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: What curious beasts they were, with their paws and heads
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: sticking out of the coverings they had twisted round their bodies, chattering, chattering,
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: always and always moving about, unable to understand the still
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: strong growths of silence. So a half hour past at
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: last I saw a parting in the group of bodies
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: across the entrance of a bucket, and a familiar, weary
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: figure carrying a basket coming down the brickway. She stopped halfway,
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: where a widening of the alley furnish the common drying place.
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: Any number of gloves lions crossed and recross each other,
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: casting a knot of shadows on the pavement of Terry
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: glanced at the sky which had clouded over. She sighed
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: heavily and again advanced in the sickly light of the
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: alley lap. The rounded shoulders seemed to droop like an
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: old crowns. Yet the woman was still young, that she
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: might not be startled. I called good evening. The answer
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: was spoken in that tone of forced cheerfulness, which the
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: rush always give to their employers. But she sank upon
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: the step with the habitual. My but I am glad
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: to sit down of one who seldom sits tired. I
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: suppose that he has been so hot. Yes, I've got
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: to go to work and iron again until eleven o'clock.
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: And it's awful hot in that kitchen. I don't mind
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: the washing so much in summer. I wash out here,
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: but it's hot ironing, or you ny hurry? I said, no?
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: And certain? How much frend do you pay? iOS? Seven dollars?
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: Three rooms? Yes, one other other. Yes, it's an awful one.
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: And he won't fix anything. The door is half of
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: its fingers, and the peoples a side. Have you lived
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: here a long over three years? We move here before
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: he got sick. I don't keep nothing right now, But
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: it used to be nice. It's so quiet back here,
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: away from the street. You don't hear no noise. That
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: fence ought to be whitewashed. I used to keep it
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: white and everything clean, and it was so nice to
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: sit out here in summer under the trees. You could
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: just think he were in the park. A curious wonder
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: went through me. Somewhere back in me, a voice was
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: saying to him that hath shall be given, and from
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: him that had not it shall be taken away, even
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: that which he had, this therrible pool had been nice
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: to her. Again, I felt that I be seizing me
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: with its tentacles, and high overhead in the tree crowns,
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: I seemed to hear a spectral mockery of water. Yes,
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: I forced myself to say, they are splendid trees. I
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: wonder they have lived so long. Tis funny at it.
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: That's a great big yard in there. The men that
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: used to earn it was a gardener, and there's a
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: lot of the curious as flowers there yet. But he's
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: dead now, and the fox that's got it don't keep
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: up nothing. They are waiting to sell it. I suppose.
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: Above over our heads the rocking cuff sounded again. Ain't
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: it terrible? She murmured, day and night, dear night. He
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: don't get no rest, and neither do I. It's no
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: wonder some people commit suicide. Does he ever speak of it?
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: I oss? Her voice dropped to a semi whisper. Not
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: now so much since the church papers got hold of him.
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: He used to I think he had done it if
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: it hadn't beat for them. But they've been kind of
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: talking to him lately and telling him it wouldn't be
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: right on account of the insurance. You know, my heart
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: gave a wild bound every world, and I shut my
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: teeth forced O man, man, what have you made of yourself?
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: More stupid than all the beasts of the earth? For
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: a doll of the things you make to be rubbed of, living,
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: to be robbed of and poison with you consent to
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: the death that eats with a million mouths. It's inexorably
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: you submit to unimable torture in the holy name of insurance.
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: And in the name of insurance, this miserable woman keeps
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: alive the bones of a man. I took my bundle
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: and went, and all the way I felt myself tearing
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: through the tendrils of death. But hung and swayed from
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: the noise and wall, and caught at things as they paused,
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: And all the way their pressed upon me pictures of
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: the skeleton and the woman cloth in film, flesh, young
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: and joyous and thrilling with the love of a well
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: and strong Ah. If some one had said to Heaven,
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: some day, you with slave to keep him alive through
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: footless agonies that for your lost reward you may take
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: the price of his pain. And at the end of
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: all first section six of selected works, Letters, Catchers and
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: Stories by flter In declare, this is a Library OX recording.
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: All Library OX recordings or in the public domain. For
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: more information or to volunteer, please visit library vox dot org.
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: I learned a second of selected works, Letters, Catchers and
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: Stories by Vulterine declare. I was wrong. I thought she
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: wanted the insurance money, but I misunderstood her. I found
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: it out one while October day, more than a year later,
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: when for the second time I saw the end of
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: the alley. The sufferer had suffered out, the gaunt and
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: wasted shell of a man laid no more by the
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: window in the upper story. The woman was free rest
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: at last. I fought for both of them. But it
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: was not as I thought. I expected east to come
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: into the woman's drawn face and relaxation to her stooping figure.
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: But something else came upon both, something quite unwanted and inexplicable,
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: A wandering look in the eyes, a stupid dropped to
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: the mouth, and uncertainty in her walk, as of one
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: who is half minded to go back and look for something.
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: There was too, an irritating irregularity in the performance of
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: her work, which began to be annoying. At last, on
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: that Octobody, this new and reliability reached the limit of provocation.
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: I was leaving the city. I needed my laundry, needed
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: it at once. And here It was four o'clock in
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: the afternoon, the train jew at night, and packing impossible
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: till the wash came. It was five days of a due.
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: The wind was howling furiously, the rain driving in sheets.
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: But there was no alternative. I must get to the
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: end of the alley and back somehow. The gray rain
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: ranch atmosphere was still grayer in the alley, still still
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: grayer at the end. And what with the gray of
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: it and the rain of it, I could scarcely sive
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: a thing that sat facing me when I opened the door,
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: a sort of human blood hunch in a rocking chair,
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: its head sunken on its breast. In response to my
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: total exclamation, the face was lifted vacantly for a second
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: and then dropped again. But I had seen drunk and dead, drunk,
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: and this woman had never drunk. I looked around the restroom,
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: by the window, where the gray light trailed in stood
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: a table covered with unwashed dishes. Some lit flags were
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: crawling in the gutters of slop, bested tall relics of insects,
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: stupidly staggering up and down. The crack china and the
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: stove stood this number of flat. Iions, but there was
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: no fire. A mass of an iron clothes lay on
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: an old couch, and over the backs of two unoccupied chairs,
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: and the wall above the couch hung the portrait of
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: the dead man. I walked to a slumping figure in
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: the rocker, and with ill contained brutality, demanded, so this
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: is why you did not bring my clothes? Were they?
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: I heard my own voice cutting like the edge of
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: a knife, and felt half a shave. And when that
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: week shaking thing lifted up its foolish face and stared
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: at me with watery and comprehending eyes, my clothes, I
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: reatterated over here or upstairs, so stammered the uncertain voice.
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: Guests sue nothing for it, but to find them myself,
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: I muttered, beginning the search through the pile on the couch.
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: Nothing of mine there, So I needs must climb to
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: the gulguta on the second floor, from which the cross
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: had disappeared, but which still boath traces of its victims
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: long crossifixion, a pair of old bed slippers still by
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: the window, a sleeping cap on the wall. Some cannot
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: but leave to the things that have touched their dead.
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: One by one. I found the rough dray garmets here
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: there in the hallway, in the garret, hanging or crumpled
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: up among dozens of others. And all the while I hunted,
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: the rain beat and the wind blew. Any low ferd
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: sound kept mingling with them rising from the lower floor.
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: My hurt smooed me when I heard it, for I
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: knew it was the woman sewing the self rightless farrisy
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: within me gave an impatience near alcoholed tears. But something
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: else clutched at my throat, and I found myself glancing
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: at the dead man's shoes. When I went downstairs, I
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: avoided the rocking chair, tied up my bundle, counted out
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: the money, laid it on the table, and then, turning round,
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: said deliberately and harshly, where is your money? Don't buy
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: a whiskey with it, missus Bauszart, crying at the little
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: sobered her. She looked up, still, with less light in
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: her face than in an intelligent dog's, but with some
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: dim self consciousness. It was as a face that had
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: appeared behind deforming bubbles of water. She half lifted her hands,
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: let it fall, and stammered, No, I won't, I won't it.
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: Don't do nobody no good. The senseless desire to preach
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: says hold of me, missus Bessart, I cried out, aren't
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: you ashamed of yourself? A woman like you, who went
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: through so much and so long and so bravely, and
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: now when you could get along all right to act
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: like this? The suggy mouth dropped upon the glazy eyes
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: tared at me, fixed and foolishly, then shifted to the
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: portrait on the wall, and with a mawkish simper as
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: of some old drab playing sixteen, she slobbered out, nodding
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: to the portrait. All for the love of him. It
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: was so utterly ludicrous, But I laughed. Then a courage
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: took me look here and said, and again I heard
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: my own voice, grim and quiet, cutting the air like
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: a whip. If you believe as I have heard you
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: say that your husband can look down on you from anywhere. Remember,
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: you couldn't do a thing to hurt him worse than
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: you are doing now. Love. Indeed, the lash went home,
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: the stricken figure hurdled closer. The voice came out like
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: a dumb things, mouron or I'm all alone. Then suddenly
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: I understood I had taken it for mockree and profanation,
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: that leering looked at the window on the wall, the
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: driveling stammer, all for the love of him. And it
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: had been a solemn thing. No lover's word spoken in
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: the morning of youth, with the untried day before it,
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: under the seductive witty of answering breath and kisses, rushing
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: blood and throbbing bodies. But the word of a woman
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: bent with service, seam with libor her god, with washing,
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: the word of a woman who at the washtub had
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: kept her sufferer by the work of her hands and
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: watching between the snatches of her steep, the immemorial passion
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: of a common heart that is not much, that had
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: not much, and has lost. All years were in it.
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: Four years. She had had her burden to carry, and
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: she had carried it to the edge of the grave.
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: There it had fallen from her, and her arms were empty,
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: nothing to do any more. Alone, she sat up suddenly,
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: with a momentary flare of light in her face. As
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: long as I had him, she said, I could do.
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: I thought i'd be glad when he was gone a
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: many and many a time, but rather he was up there.
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: Yet I did everything. I didn't put him away in
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: There was one hundred and twenty five dollars into her.
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: I spent it all on him. He was covered with flowers.
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: The flare died down, and she fell together like a
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: collapsing bag. I saw the grave acancy moving inward toward
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: the lost pop of intelligence in her eyes as an ashing,
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: cold whiteess inward toward the lost, the red point of fire.
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: Then this heap of rugs shuddered with an inhuman wine.
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: Alone in the crowding shadows, I felt the dissolution pressing
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: me likey eyes behind that sunken heap in the chair
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: gathered a midnight specter. For a moment I caught a
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: flash from its royal malignate eyes, the monarch of human rains,
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: the murderous bright groom of widowed souls, King Alcohol after
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: all as well that way as another emttered and aloud,
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: but the whip cold had gone out of my voice.
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: The money is on the table. She did not hear me.
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: The bradgroom had given his beloved sleep. I went out
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: softly into the wire rain, and overheard among the lashing
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: arms of the leafless trees, and around the alley look
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: at the wind was whining alone and of alone. Second
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: section seven of selected works, letters, sketches and Stories by
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: Voltaire in Declare. This is a libryvox recording. All librayvox
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: recordings or in the public domain. For more information or
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: to volunteer, please visit libryvox dot org. To strive and
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: fail of selected works, letters, ketches and stories by Vultail
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: in Declare. There was a lonely wind crying around the
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: house and walling away through the twilight, like a child
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: that has been refused and gone off, crying. Every now
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: and then the trees shivered with it and dropped a
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: few leaves that splashed against the windows like big soft tears,
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: and then fell down on the dark, dying grass, and
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: leave there until the next wind rose and whirled them away.
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: Rain was gathering close by the gray patch of light
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: within the room, a white faced back to the small table,
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: and dust, dim fingers, the strings of the scissar, the
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: low pathtic opening codes of Albert's horbsklegger well for a moment,
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: like the wind. Then a false note sounded, and the
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: player threw her arms across the table and rested her
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: face upon them. What was the use, she knew how
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: it ought to be, but she could never do it,
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: never make the strings strike through to the song that
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: was sounding within, sounding as the wind and the rain
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: and the fallen leaves sounded it, as long ago the
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: wizard Albert had heard and conjured it out of the
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: sound sea. Before the little black notes that carried the
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: message over the world were written. The wary brain wandered
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: away over the mystery of her notes, and she whispered
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: daily he signed to the eye, and his sound to
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: the ear, And that is his gift to the world,
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: his will, and his dead, dead dead. He was so great,
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: and they are so silly, those little black, foolish dots,
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: And yet they are there, and by them his soul sings.
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: The num pain at her heart forced some sharp tears
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: from the closed eyes. She beat and unbet her fingers
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: hopelessly two or three times, and then let them lie
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: out flat, and still it was not their fault, not
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: the finger's fault. They could learn to do it if
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: they only had the chance. But they could never, never
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: have the chance. They must always do something else, always
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: one hundred other things first, always save and spare, and
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: passion contrive. There was never time to do the thing
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: she longed foremost, niver ut moments, the unexpected freedom, the
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: stolen half hours in which to leave one's highest dream
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: and never cost it with time for one's soul. And
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: every year the flitting glory wan withered sunk away more
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: and more sorrowfully into the gray, soundless shadows of an
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: unlived life. Once she had heard it so clearly long
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: ago and before, of Sun's space wings singing fields of home,
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: the wild sweet chorrossers, the songs no men had ever sung.
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: Still she heard them sometimes in the twilight, in the night,
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: when she sat alone and work was over, high and
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: fain and fading on his sound ghosts, but still with
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: the incomparable glory of a first revelation, a song no
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: one else has ever heard, a movel to be seized
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: and bodied. Only they faded away into the nodding sleep
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: that would conquer, and in the light and rush of day,
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: were mournfully silent, and she never captured them, never would.
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: Life was half over. Now With the thought she started
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: struck the chords again, a world of plaint throbbing through
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: the strings. Surely the wizard himself would have been satisfied.
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: But ah, once more, the fatal uncertainty of the fingers.
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: She bit the left hands savagely, then touched it, surftling remorsefully,
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: with the other murmuring, poor fingers, not your fault. At
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: last she rose and stood at the window, looking out
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: into the night, and thinking of a rain gift, the
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: noblest gift that had been hers, and would die dumb,
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: thinking of the messages that had come to her out
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: of silent dog, and sank back into it, unsounded of
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: the versals she would have given, to the messages of
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: the monsters, and never would give now. And with the
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: bitter compression of the lips, she said, well, I was
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: born to strive and fail. And suddenly a rush of
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: feelings swept her own life out of sight, and every
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: way out in the deepening night, she saw the face
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: of an old, sharp chin, white haired, dead man. He
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: had been her father, once strong and young, with chestnut
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: hair and gleaming eyes, and with his own dream of
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: what he had to do in life. Perhaps he too
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: had heard sound singing in the air, a new message
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: waiting for deliverance. It was all over now. He had
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: grown old and thin faced and white, and had never
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: done anything in the world, at least nothing for himself,
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: his very own. He had schewn clovers thousands, millions of
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: stitches in his work weary life. No doubt there were
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: still in existence craps and fragments of his work, in
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: some old rack bag, perhaps beautiful fine stitches into which
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: the keen eyes sigh and the death hennad paused, still
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: showing the artist craftsman. But that was not his work.
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: That was the service society had asked of him, And
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: he had rendered himself his own soul. But wherein he
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: was different from other men the onboard thing, but the
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: souldiers for its own heart pouring. But was nowhere, and
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: over there, among the low mounts of the soldier's graves,
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: his bed was made, and he was lying in it,
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: straight and still, with the rain crying softly above him.
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: He had been so full of the loss of life,
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: so alert, so active, and nothing of it all poor
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: for you, fel too shimuttered softly. And then behind the
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: wraith of the dead man, there arose an older picture,
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: a face she had never seen, dead fifty years before.
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: But it shone through the other face, and out showed
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: it luminous with great suffering, much overcoming, and complete and
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: final failure. It was the face of a woman not
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: yet middle age, smitten with death, with a horror of
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: utter strangeness in the dying eyes, the face of a
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: woman lost in a strange city, of a strange land,
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: and with her little crying, helpless children about her, facing
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: the inexulable Agonivia on the pavement where she was sinking down,
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: and only foreign words falling in the dying ears. She
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: too had striven, How she had striven against the abyss
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: of poverty there in the old world, against the lood
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: laid on her by nature, law, society, the triant god
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: of terror, against the inertia of another will. She had
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: both coupled with blood and spared and saved, injured and waited.
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 1: She had bent the gods to her will. She had
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: sent her husband to America, the line of freedom and promise.
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: She had followed him at last, over the great blue
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: bitter water, with its sleeping mouths that had devoured one
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: of her till once upon the way. She had been
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: driven like a cow in the chambers. At the landing stage,
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: she had been robbed of old but her ticket, and
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: with her little children had hungered for three days on
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 1: the overland journey. She had leaved it through and set
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: foot in the promised land. But somehow the waiting face
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: was not there, had missed her or she him, and lost. Then,
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: alone with death and the starving babes, she sank at
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 1: the foot of the soldier's monument, and the black mists
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: came down on the courageous eyes, and the light was
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: flickering out forever. With a bitter cry, the living figure
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: in the room stretched its hands toward the vision in
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: the night. There was nothing there, she knew it, Nothing
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: in the heavens above, nor the earth beneath to hear
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: the cry, not so much as a crumbling bone anymore.
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: But she called brokenly, Oh, why must she die so
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: with nothing, nothing, and not one little reward after all
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: that struggle, to fall on the pavement, and die in
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: the hospital at lass and Shaddering with covered eyes and
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: heavy breath, she added, warily, no wonder that I fail.
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: I come of those who failed my father, his mother.
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 1: And before her, behind the fading picture stretched them long
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: shadows of silent generations, with rounded shoulders and bent backs
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: and sullen, conquered faces. And they had all most likely
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: dream of some wonderful thing they had to do in
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: the world, and all had died and left it undone.
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 1: And their work had been washed away, as if for
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: it in water, and no one knew their dreams. And
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: of the foot of their toil other men had eaten,
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: for that was the will of a tryant god. But
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 1: of themselves was left no trace, no sound, no word
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: in the worst glory, no coving up and stern, no
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: indomitable ghosts shining from a written sign, no song singing
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 1: out of black foolish spots on paper. Nothing. They were
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: as though they had not been, And as they all
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 1: had died, She too would die, slave of a triple terror,
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: sacrificing the highest to the meanest, that somewhere in some
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: lighted ballroom or gas bright theater, some piece of vacant
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: flesh might wear one more jewel inhabited hair. My soul,
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: she said, bitterly, my soul for the diamonds. It was
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 1: time to sleep for tomorrow, work enough to strive and fail.
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: Section eight of selected works, letters, sketches, and stories by
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: Vulterin Declare. This is a libryvox recording. All libryvox recordings
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 1: or in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer,
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 1: please visit libraryvox dot org. The Sorrows of a Body
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: of selected works, letters, sketches, and stories by Vulterin Declare.
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: I have never wanted anything more than the wild creatures
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: have a broad waft of clean air. It did to
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 1: lie on the gross at times, with nothing to do
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: but slip the blades through my fingers and look as
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: long as I pleased at the whole blue hawk and
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 1: the screens of greed and white between. Leave for a
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 1: month to float and float along the soal crest and
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: among the foam, or roll with my neked skin over
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 1: a clean, long stretch of sunshiny sand. Food that I
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: liked straight from a cool ground, and time to taste
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: its sweetness, and time to rest of the tasting sleep
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: when it came, and stillness, that the sleep might leave
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: me when it would not sooner, air, room, light, rest, nakedness,
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: when I would not be clothed, and when I would
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: be clothed, government that did not fetter, freedom to touch
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 1: my mother Earth, to be with her in storm and
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: shine as the wild things are. This is what I wanted,
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 1: This and free contact with my fellows. Not to love
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 1: and lie and be ashamed, but to love and say
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 1: I love, and be glad of it. To feel the
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: currents of ten thousand years of passion flooding me body
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 1: to body as the wild things meet. I have asked
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 1: no more, but I have not received. Over me. There
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: seats that pitiless tyrant, the soul, and I am nothing.
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: It has driven me to the city where the air
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 1: is fever and fire, and said, brave this I would learn.
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 1: I cannot learn in the empty fields. Temples are here. Stay.
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: And when my poor stiffer lungs have panted till it
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 1: see my chestmus burse, the soul has said, I will
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: allure you. Then an hour or two we will ride,
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 1: and I will take my book and read. Meanwhile, and
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: when my eyes have cried out with tears of pain
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: for the brief vision of freedom drifting by, And if
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: we leave to look at the great green and blue
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: an hour after the long, dull red horror of wars,
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: the soul has said, I cannot waste the time altogether.
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: I must know read, And when my ears have played
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 1: for the singing of the crickets and the music of
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: the night, the soul has answered, No gongs and whistle
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: and shrieks are unpleasant if you listen, But cool yourself
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: to hearken to the spiritual voice. And it will not matter.
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 1: When I have beat against my narrow confines of brick
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: and mortar, brick and motar, the soul has said, miserable slave,
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 1: why are you not as I who in one moment
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 1: flight to the utorous universe. It matters not where you are.
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 1: I am free. When I would have slept so that
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: the leads fell heavily and I could not leave them,
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: the soul has struck me with a lash crying awake.
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: Drink some stimulus for those shrinking nerves of yours. There's
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: no time to sleep till the work is done, and
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 1: the curse poison worked upon me till its will was done.
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: When I would have the lad over my food, The
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: soul has ordered, Hurry, hurry, do I have time to
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: waste on this disgusting scene? Feel yourself and begun. When
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: I have envied the very dog rubbing it to bear
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: back along the ground in the sunlight, the soul has exclaimed,
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: would you degrade me so far as to put yourself
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: on a level with beasts? And my bents were drawn
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 1: tighter when I have looked upon my can and long
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: to embrace them, hungered wildly for the press of arms
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 1: and lips, the soul has commanded, sternly seized, while creature
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: fleshly lust eternal reproach. Will you forever shame me with
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 1: your beastliness? And I have always yielded, mute, joyless, fettered.
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: I have tread the world of a sol, choosing and served,
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: and been unrewarded. Now I am broken before my time, bloodless, sleepless, breathless,
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 1: half blind, racked at every joint, trembling with every leaf.
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 1: Perhaps I have been too hard, said the soul. You
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 1: shall have a rest. The boon has come too late.
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: The roses are beneath my feet now, but the perfume
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 1: does not reach me. The willow's trail across my cheek,
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 1: and the great ark is overheard, but my eyes are
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 1: too wary to lift to it. The wind is upon
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: my face, but I cannot bear my throat to its caress.
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 1: Vaguely I hear the singing of the night for the
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: long watchers when sleep does not come, but the answering
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 1: vibration fries noble. Hence touch mind. I long for them
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 1: so once, but I am as a corpse. I remember
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 1: that I wanted all these things, But now the power
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: to want is crushed from me, and only the memory
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: of my denial throbs on with its never dying pain.
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 1: And still I think if I were left alone long enough.
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 1: But already I hear a tyrant up there plotting to
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: slay me. Yes, it keeps saying, it is about time.
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 1: I will not be chained to a rottin caucus. If
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: my days were to pause in perpetual idleness, I may
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 1: as well be annihilated. I will make the rush do
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 1: me one more service. You have claimed to be naked
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 1: in the water, Go now and lie in it forever. Yes,
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: that is what it is saying. And I the sea
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 1: stretches down there any of the sorrows of a body.
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 1: Section nine of selected works, letters, catches, and stories by
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 1: Vulterin Declare. This is a library box recording all library
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 1: Vox recordings or in the public domain. For more information
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 1: or to volunteer, please visit library vox dot org. The
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 1: Triumph of Youth of selected works, letters, sketches and stories
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 1: by Vulterine Declare. The afternoon blazed and glittered along the
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: motionless treetops and down into the yellow dust of the road,
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 1: under the shadows of the trees, among the powdered gross
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 1: and bushes, sat a woman and a man. The man
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 1: was young and handsome in a way, with a lean,
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 1: eager face and burning eyes, a forehead in the old
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 1: poetic mouth crowned by loose, dark waves of hair. His
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 1: chin was long, his lips potted devouringly, and his glances
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 1: seemed to eat his companion's face. It was not a
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 1: pretty face, not even ordinarily good looking, s not young,
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 1: only young, dish, But there was a peculiar mobility about
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: it that made one noticed it. She waved her hand
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 1: slowly from east to west, indicating the horizon, and said, dreamingly,
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 1: how wide it is, how far it is one can
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: get one's breath in the city I always feel that
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 1: the walls were squeezing matches. After a little silence, she asked,
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 1: without looking at him, what are you thinking of, Bernard?
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 1: You he murmured. She glanced at him under her lids,
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 1: musingly stretched out her hand and touched his eye lids
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 1: with her fingertips, and turned aside with a curious, fleeting smile.
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 1: He caught at her hand, but failing to touch it
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 1: as she drew it away, bit his lip and forcedly
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 1: looked off at the sky and the landscape. Yes, he said,
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 1: in a strained voice, it is beautiful after the city.
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 1: I wish we could stay in it. The woman sighed,
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 1: That's what I've been wishing for the last fifteen years.
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 1: He bent towards her eagerly. Do you think, he stopped
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 1: and stammered, you know, we have been planning a few
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 1: of us to club together and get a little farm
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 1: somewhere near. Do you think would you be one of us?
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 1: She laughed, a little sad laugh. I wouldn't be any good,
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: you know. I couldn't do the work that ought to
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: be done. I would come force enough, and I would try,
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 1: But I am a little to all Bernard. The rest
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 1: are young enough to make mistakes and leave to make
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 1: them good. But when I would have my lesson learned,
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 1: my strength would be gone. It's half gone now. No,
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 1: it isn't burst out there. You're worth her a dozen
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 1: of those young ones. Old old one would think you
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 1: were seventy, and you are not old. You will never
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 1: be old. She looked up where a krawd was wheeling
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 1: in the air. If, she said surly, following its motions
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 1: with her eyes, you once not your feet on my face,
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 1: and you will, you impish bird. My Bernard will sing
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 1: a different song. No Bernard won't, retorted the youth. Bernard
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 1: knows his own mind, even if he's a near boy.
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 1: I don't love you for your face. You, she interrupted him,
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 1: with a shrug and a bitter sneer. Evidently, who would
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 1: a look of mingled pain and annoyance overspread his features?
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 1: How you twist my words? You're beautiful to me, and
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 1: you know what I mean well, she said, throwing herself
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 1: backwards against a tree trunk and stretching out her feet
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 1: on the grass, Ripples of amusement wavering through the cloudy expression.
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 1: Tell me what do you love in me? He was silent,
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 1: beating his lower lip. I'll tell you, then, she said.
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 1: It's my energy, the life in me that is youth,
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 1: and my youth has overlive. It's time. I've had had
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 1: a long lease. But it's going to expire you soon,
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 1: so long as you don't see it, so long as
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 1: my life seems full of on yours well. But when
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 1: the failure of life become visible while your own is
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 1: still in its growth, you will turn away. When my
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 1: feet won't spring anymore, yours will still be dancing, and
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: you will want dancing feet with you. I will not,
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 1: he answered shortly. I've seen plenty of other women. I
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 1: saw all the crowd coming up this morning, and there
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 1: was not a woman there to compare with you. I
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 1: don't see. I will never love others, but now I
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 1: don't if I see another woman like you. But I
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 1: never could love one of those young girls. Sh sh,
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 1: she says, glancing down the road, where a whirl of
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: dust was making towards them, in the center of which
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 1: move a band of bright young figures. There they come, Now,
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 1: don't they look beautiful? There were four young girls in front,
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 1: their faces radiant with sun and air, and daisy refs
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 1: in their gleaming hair. They had their arms around each
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 1: other's waist and sang as they walked, with neither more
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 1: accord nor discord than the birds about them. The verses
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: were delicious in their youth and joy. One heard, but
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 1: they were singing not to produce a musical effect, but
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 1: from the mere wish to sing. Behind them came a
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 1: troop of young fellows, curves of heads bare, racing all
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 1: over the roadside, jostling each other and purposely provoking scrambles,
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 1: but tall as one had a numbers of bright curts
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 1: crowning a glowing face, dimpled and smoking as a child's.
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 1: The girls glanced shyly at him under their lushes as
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 1: he danced about, now in front and now behind them,
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 1: occasionally tossing them a flower, but mostly hustling his comrades about.
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 1: Behind these came older people with three or four very
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 1: little children riding on their backs. As the group came
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 1: abreast of our couple, they stopped to exchange a few words,
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 1: then went on when they had paused out of hearing.
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 1: The woman sat with a sphinx like stare in her eyes,
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 1: looking steadily at the spot where the bright head had
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 1: nodded to her as it paused like a wild flower
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 1: on his talk, She murmured softly, narrowing her eyes as
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 1: if to fix the vision, like a tall tiger lily.
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 1: Her companions faced dark and perceptibly. What do you mean,
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 1: What do you see, he asked? The vision of youth
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 1: and beauty, she answered, in the tone of a sleep walker,
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 1: And the glory and triumph of it, the immortality of it,
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 1: its splendid indifference to its ruined temples, and all its
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 1: sumple worshipers. Do you know, turning suddenly to him with
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 1: a sharp change in face and voice, what I would
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 1: be wicked enough to do if I could? He smiled delierently.
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 1: You wacked, dear one. You couldn't be wicked, Oh but
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 1: I could. If there were any way to fix Davy's
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 1: head forever, just as he paused, just now, forever, so
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 1: that all the world might keep it and see it
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 1: for all time, I would cut it off with his hand.
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 1: Yes I would. Her eyes glittered mercilessly. He shook his head, smiling.
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 1: You wouldn't kill a bug let alone, Davy, I tell
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 1: you I would. Do you remember when Natanielle died? I
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 1: felt bad enough. But do you know the week before,
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 1: when he was so very sick, I went out one
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 1: day to a beautiful glen we used to visit together.
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 1: They had been improving it. They had improved so much
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 1: that the water is all dying out of a creek,
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 1: the little birds that used to float like Bonlili's, like
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 1: all her place in the mud, and hardly a ribbon
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 1: of water goes over the fall. And the old giant
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 1: trees are withering. Oh, it hurt me so to think
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 1: the glory of a thousand years was vanishing before my eyes,
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 1: and I couldn't hold it. And suddenly the question came
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 1: into my head. If you had the power, would you
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 1: save Natalia's life or bring back the water to the glen?
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 1: And I didn't hesitate a minute. I said, let Nathaniel
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 1: die and all my best loved ones and I myself,
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 1: but bring back the glory of a glen. When I think,
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 1: she went on turning away and becoming dreamy again of
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 1: all the beauty that is gone. But I can never
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 1: see that is lost forever, the beauty that had to
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 1: alter and die. It stiffers me with the pain of it.
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 1: Why must it all die? He looked at her, wonderingly,
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 1: it seems to me, he said slowly, that beauty worship
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 1: is almost a disease with you. I wouldn't like to
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 1: care so much for mere outsides. We never long for
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 1: the thing we are rich in, she answered in a dry,
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 1: changed voice. Nevertheless, his face lighted. It was pleasant to
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 1: be rich in the thing she worship. He had gradually
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 1: drawn near her feet, and now suddenly bent forward and
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 1: kissed them passionately. Don't cratch sharply. It's too much like
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 1: self abasement. And besides, his face was white and quivering.
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 1: His voice choked, Well, what besides? The time will come
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 1: when you will wish you had reserved a kiss for
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 1: some other food, someone to whom it will all be new,
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 1: who will shudder with the joy of it, who will
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 1: meet you halfway, who will believe all that you say
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 1: and still lack things in fullness of heart? And I
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 1: perhaps will see you and know that in your heart.
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 1: You're sorry you gave something to me, but you would
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 1: have ungiven if you could. He buried his face in
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 1: his hands. You do not love me at all, he said,
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 1: You do not believe me. A curious softness came into
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 1: the answer. Oh, yes, dear, I believe you. Years ago
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 1: I believe myself when I said the same sort of thing.
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 1: But I told you I am getting old. I cannot
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 1: unmake what the years have made, nor bring back what
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 1: they have stolen. I love you for your face the
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 1: words had the sting in them, and for your soul too,
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 1: and I am glad to be loved by you. But
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 1: do you know what I'm thinking? He did not answer.
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 1: I am thinking, but as I sit here, beloved by
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 1: you and others who are young and beautiful, it is
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 1: no lie in a well, in a triumph I have
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 1: not sought, but which I am human enough to be
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 1: glad of, envied no doubt by those young girls. I
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 1: am thinking how the remorseless feet of the youth will
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 1: trample on me soon and carry you away, and very slowly.
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 1: In my idea of pain, you will not be near,
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 1: nor the others. I shall be alone, agent pain or unlovely.
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 1: You won't let me come near you, he said wildly.
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 1: I would do anything for you. I always want to
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 1: do things for you to spare you, and you never
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 1: let me. When you are in pain, you will push
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 1: me away. A fairly exultant glitter flash in her face. Yes,
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 1: she said, I know my secret. That is how I
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 1: have stayed young so long. See, she said, stretching out
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 1: her arms. Other women at my age op pause the
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 1: love of men. Their affections have gone to children. And
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 1: I have broken thelow of nature and prolonged the love
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 1: of youth because I have been strong and stood alone.
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 1: But there's an end. Things change, seasons change you, I
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 1: all change. What's the use of saying never, forever, forever never?
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 1: Like the old clock on the stairs. It's a big lie.
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 1: I won't talk any more, he said, But when the
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 1: time comes, you will see. She nodded, yes, I will see.
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 1: Do you think old people alike as like as aunts?
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 1: People of vessels which life feels and breaks as it
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 1: does trees and bees and other sorts of vessels? They
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: play when they are little, and when they love, and
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 1: when they have children, and when they die. Aunts do
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 1: the same, to be sure. But I don't deceive myself
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 1: as to the scoop of it. The crowd were returning now,
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 1: and by taxed consent, they arose and joined the group
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 1: down the road. They jumped the fence into a field
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 1: and had to cross a little stream. Where is our bridge,
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 1: called the boys. We made a bridge. Some one has
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 1: tolen our bridge. Oh come on, cried Davy. Let jump
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 1: it free, ran and sprang the lended, laughing and taunting
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 1: the rest. Beerard sort out his beloved. Shall I help
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 1: you over? He asked, No, she said shortly help the girls,
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 1: and brushing post him, she jumped, falling a little short
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 1: and meddying a foot, but scrambling unaided. Forest debated, seeking
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 1: an advantageous point. At last they found a big stone
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 1: in the middle, and, pulling off his shoes, Bernoud waded
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 1: in the creek, helping the girls across. The smallest one,
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 1: large eyed and timid, clung to his arm and let
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 1: him almost carry her over. He does it real natural,
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 1: observed Davy, who was whisking about in the dais They
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 1: fell like some flashing butterfly. They gathered daisies and laughed
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 1: and sang and shattered till the sun went loow. Then
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 1: they gathered under a big tree and spread their lunch
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 1: on the ground. And after they had eaten, the conversation
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 1: lay between the sallow faced woman and one of the
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 1: older men, A clever conversation filled with quaint observations and
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 1: curious sidelights. The boys sat all around the woman, questioning
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 1: her eagerly. But behind, in the shadow of the drooping
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 1: branches sat the girl's silent, unobtrusive holding each other's hands.
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 1: Now and then the talker caused a furtive glance from
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 1: Bernard's rather withdrawn face to the faces in the shadow,
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 1: and the enigmatic smile hovered and fitted over her lips.
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 1: Three years later, on the anniversary of that summer day,
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 1: the woman sat at an upstairs window in the house
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 1: and the little form but was a reality now, the
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 1: little cooperative form where ten free men and women labored
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 1: in love. She had come with the others and done
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 1: her best, but because of it, hard labor and merciless
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 1: pain was step on the face that look. From the window,
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 1: she was watching Bernard's figure as it came swinging through
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 1: the oatchard. Presently he came in and up the stairs.
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 1: His feet went past her door, bent turned back irresolutely,
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 1: and he low knoup followed her, eyebrows bent together, almost sternly,
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 1: as she answered, come in. He entered with a smile.
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 1: Can I do anything for you this morning? No, she said, quietly,
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 1: You know, I like my own cranky ways. I I'd
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 1: rather do things myself. You know that. I know I
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 1: always get the same answer. Sure, you go to the picnic.
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 1: You surely will keep our foundation day picnic, perhaps later
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 1: and perhaps not. There was a curious turn of repression
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 1: in the words. Well, he answered, good naturedly. If you
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 1: won't let me do anything for you, I'll have to
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 1: find someone who will. Is Billa ready to go? This
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 1: half hour? Bella? Here is Bernard? And Bella came in. Bella,
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 1: the timid girl with a brilliant complexion and gathers of eyes. Bella,
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 1: radiant in her youth and feminine datiness, more lovely than
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 1: she had been three years before. She gave Bernard a
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 1: lunch basket to carry any shawl, any work bag, and
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 1: a sun umbrella, and when they went out, she clung
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 1: to his arm. Besides, she stopped near one of their
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 1: own rose bushes and told him to choose a bird
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 1: for her, and she put it coquettishly in her dark care.
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 1: The woman watched them till they disappeared down the lane.
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 1: He had never once looked back. When her mouth settled
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 1: in a quiet sneer, and she murmured, how long is
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 1: forever three years. After a while, she rose and crossed
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 1: to an old mirror that hung on the opposite wall,
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 1: staring at the reflection he gave back. She whispered, drearily.
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 1: You are ugly, you are eaten with pain. You still
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 1: expect the dew of youth and beauty? Did you not
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 1: know it all long ago? Then something flash in the image,
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 1: something as if the features had caught fire and burned.
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 1: I will not, she said hoarsely, her fingers clenching. I
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 1: will not surrender. Was it he I love? It was
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 1: his youth, his beauty, his life, And younger youth shall
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 1: love me still stronger life. I will not. I will
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 1: not die alive. She turned away and ran down into
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 1: the yard and out into the fields. She would not
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 1: go on the common highway where all went. She would
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 1: find a hard way through woods and over hills, and
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 1: she would come there before them and sit and wait
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 1: for them where the ways met. Bareheaded, ill dressed, and careless,
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 1: she ran along, finding a fire's place, in trampling and
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 1: breaking the bush that impeded her. There was the road
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 1: at last, and ride ahead of her, an old old man,
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 1: holding along with bent back and eyes upon the ground.
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 1: Just before him was a bad hole in the road.
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 1: He stopped irresolute and looked around like a crippled insects,
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 1: stretching its ant he not to find a way for
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 1: its mangled feet. She called, cheerfully, let me help you.
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 1: He looked up with dim blue eyes, helplessly seeking. She
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 1: led him slowly around the dangerous place, and then they
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 1: sat down together and the little covered wooden bridge billion
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 1: armor murder. The old man shaking his head, It is
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 1: good to be young, And there was the ghost of
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 1: admiration in his watery eyes as he looked at her tall,
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 1: straight figure. Yes, she answered, sadly, looking away down the road,
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 1: where she saw Billah's white dress fluttering. It is good
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 1: to be young. The lover's pause, without noticing them absorbed
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 1: in each other. Presently, the old man whobbled away. It
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 1: will come to that too, she muttered, looking after him.
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 1: The Husks of Life and of the Triumph of Youth.
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 1: Section ten of selected works, letters, ketches and stories by
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 1: Volta in declare. This is a Libraryvox recording. All Libraryvox
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 1: recordings or in the public domain. For more information or
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 1: to volunteer, give visit libraryvox dot org. The old shoemaker
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 1: of selected works, letters, sketches and stories by Volta in Declaire.
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 1: He had lived a long time there in the house
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 1: at the end of the alley, and no one had
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 1: ever known that he was a great man. He was
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 1: lean and palsied, and had a crooked back. His bird
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 1: was gray and rugged, and his eyebrows came to fall forward.
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 1: There were seams and flaps in the empty, yellow old skid,
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 1: and he gaps horribly when he breathed, taking hold of
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 1: the lintel of the door to steady himself when he
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 1: stepped out on the broken bricks of the alley. He
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 1: lived the frightful old woman who scrubbed the floors of
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 1: a rag shop and drank beer and growled at the
• 1:33:59
  Speaker 1: children who pot got fun at her. He had lived
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 1: with her eighteen years, she said, stroking the fury little
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 1: kitten that curled up in her neck, as if she
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 1: had been beautiful. Eighteen years they had been drinking and
• 1:34:11
  Speaker 1: quarreling together, and suffering. She had seen the flesh stocking
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 1: away from the bones, and the skin falling in upon them,
• 1:34:19
  Speaker 1: and the long, lean fingers growing more lean and trembling
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 1: as they crooked around his shoemaking tools. It was very strange.
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 1: She had not grown thin. The beer had blotted her,
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 1: and rows of weak, shaking flesh lapped over the ridges
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 1: of her uncored figure. Her pale la cluster blue eyes
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 1: wandered aimlessly about as she talked. No, he had never
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 1: told her, not in then in the quarrels, not even
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 1: when they were drunken together, of a great visitor who
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 1: had come up the little alley yesterday, walking so stately
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 1: over the sun beaten bricks, taking no note of the others,
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 1: and coming in at the door without asking. She had
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 1: not expected such an one, How could she, But the
• 1:35:02
  Speaker 1: old shoemaker had shown no surprise At the Mighty One.
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 1: He smiled and sat down the tick up he was holding,
• 1:35:09
  Speaker 1: and entered into comunion with a stranger. He noticed no others,
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 1: but continued to smile, And the infinite dignity of the
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 1: unknown fell upon him and covered the wasted oil limbs
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 1: and the hard wizened faced, so that all we who
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 1: entered bowed and went out and did not speak. But
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 1: we understood, for the Mighty One gave understanding without words.
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 1: We had been in the presence of freedom. We had
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 1: stood at the foot of Tabor, and seen this worn
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 1: all world, soiled soul, lose all its dross and commonplace,
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 1: and pose upward, smiling to the transfiguration in the hands
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 1: of a mighty one. The cross had crumbled and dropped
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 1: away in impalpable powder. Sauls should be mixed of it
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 1: no more, only that which passed upward, the fine white
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 1: playing flame, the heart of the long lifelong watches of
• 1:35:59
  Speaker 1: patience shulariquin delvia in the perennal attention of a great
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 1: soul of men Enover or Shumiker.
• 1:36:11
  Speaker 2: Section eleven of selected works, letters, sketches and stories by
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 2: Voltavine declare this is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 2: are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer,
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 2: please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording by Lucy Perry, Where
• 1:36:30
  Speaker 2: the White Rose Died from selected works, letters, sketches and
• 1:36:34
  Speaker 2: stories by Volterine declare. It was late at night, a raw, rough,
• 1:36:39
  Speaker 2: shouldering night that shoved men in corners as having no
• 1:36:42
  Speaker 2: business in the street, and the few people in the
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 2: northbound car drew themselves into themselves, radiating hedgehog quills of
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 2: feeling at their neighbors. Presently there came in a curious figure,
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 2: clothed in the drapery of its country's honor, the blue
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 2: flannel flapping very much about its legs. I looked at
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 2: its feet, first, because as they were so very small
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 2: and girlish, and because the owner of them adjusted the
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 2: flapping pants with the coquetry of a maiden swishing her skirts.
• 1:37:07
  Speaker 2: Then I glanced at the hands. They also were small
• 1:37:10
  Speaker 2: and womanish and constantly in motion. At last, the face,
• 1:37:13
  Speaker 2: expecting a fresh young boys not long away from some
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 2: country village, it was the sunk seamed face of a
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 2: man of forty five, seared with iron gray eyebrows, but
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 2: lit by twinkling young eyes that gleamed at everything good humoredly.
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 2: The sailor's pancake, with its official lettering, was pushed rakishly
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 2: down and forward, and looking at the hat and wearer,
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 2: one instinctively turned milliner and decorated the shape with aigrette
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 2: and bows. They would nod so accordant with the flirting head. Presently,
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 2: the restless hands went up and gave the hat another tilt,
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 2: went down and straightened the divided skirt, folded themselves an
• 1:37:46
  Speaker 2: instant while the little feet began tattooing the car floor,
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 2: and the skin tillant eyes looked general invitation all round
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 2: the car. No perceptible shrinkage of quills, however, so the
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 2: eyes wandered over to their image in the plate glass,
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 2: and directly the hat got another coquetta, and the skirts
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 2: and of the flirt and settle. The conductor came in
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 2: some one to talk to. At last, will you let
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 2: me off at the ninth and Race? The dim chill
• 1:38:08
  Speaker 2: of a smile shivered over the other faces in the car.
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 2: Ninth and Race. Whoever heard a defender of his country's
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 2: gloriask a conductor on a street car in Philadelphia for
• 1:38:17
  Speaker 2: any other point than ninth and Race. The conductor nodded appreciatively.
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 2: Just come to the city, I suppose, he said, interlocutably.
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 2: The sailor plucked off his hat, exhibiting his labor with
• 1:38:28
  Speaker 2: childlike vanity. S s Alabama here for three days. Just
• 1:38:32
  Speaker 2: been over in New York like, it, remarked the conductor,
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 2: prolonging his stay inside the car. The hat went on again, proudly.
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 2: Sixteen years in the service, yes, sir, sixteen years. The
• 1:38:43
  Speaker 2: service is all right. The service is good enough for me.
• 1:38:47
  Speaker 2: Live there, expect to die there sixteen years. You won't
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 2: forget to let me off at ninth and Race. No
• 1:38:53
  Speaker 2: going to see Chinatown, Sure, Chinatown's all right. Seen it
• 1:38:57
  Speaker 2: in Hong Kong, Want to see it in Philadelphia, O,
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 2: cradle of my country's freedom. These are your defenders, these
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 2: to whom your chief delight is. Your stews and your brothels,
• 1:39:07
  Speaker 2: your phantans and europium dens, your sinks of filth, and
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 2: your cesspols of slime. Let them only be as they
• 1:39:13
  Speaker 2: were at Hong Kong, all worse, and the Service asks
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 2: no more. He will live in it and die in it,
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 2: and it's good enough for him. Oh, not your old
• 1:39:22
  Speaker 2: time patriotic legends, nor the halls of the great rebel Birth,
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 2: nor the solemn, silent bell that once proclaimed liberty throughout
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 2: the land, nor the piteous relics of your dead wise men,
• 1:39:32
  Speaker 2: nor any dream of your bright, pure young days when
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 2: yet you were a fair, green country towny swims up
• 1:39:38
  Speaker 2: in the vision of the Service when he sets his
• 1:39:40
  Speaker 2: foot within your borders, filling him with devotion to old
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 2: lady liberty and drawing him to new world. Pilgrim shrines
• 1:39:47
  Speaker 2: not these, oh no, not these, but your leper spot,
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 2: your old world plague house, your breeding ground of pest
• 1:39:53
  Speaker 2: begotten human vermin. So there is Chinatown, and electric glare
• 1:39:57
  Speaker 2: enough upon it, and ratold enough within it. The service
• 1:40:01
  Speaker 2: is good enough for him. He will shoot to order
• 1:40:03
  Speaker 2: in your defense till he dies. Rap tap tats went
• 1:40:06
  Speaker 2: the little feet upon the floor, and the pancake got
• 1:40:09
  Speaker 2: another rakish pull. Presently the active figure squared sharply about
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 2: and faced the door. The car had stopped, and a
• 1:40:14
  Speaker 2: drunken man was staggering in. The sailor caught him good
• 1:40:17
  Speaker 2: humoredly in his arms, swung him about, and seated him
• 1:40:20
  Speaker 2: beside himself with a comforting Now you're all right, sir,
• 1:40:23
  Speaker 2: Sit right here, my friend. The drunkard had a sodden,
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 2: stupid face and bleary eyes, from which the alcohol was oozing.
• 1:40:30
  Speaker 2: In his shaking hand, he held a bunch of delicate
• 1:40:33
  Speaker 2: half opened roses, hot house roses, cream and pink. The
• 1:40:37
  Speaker 2: odor of them drifted faintly through the car like a
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 2: whiff of summer. Something like a sigh of relaxation exhiled
• 1:40:42
  Speaker 2: from the hedgehogs, and a dozen commiserating eyes were fastened
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 2: on the ill fated flowers, so fragile, so sweet, so inoffensive,
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 2: so wantonly sacrificed. The hot, unsteady clutching hand had already
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 2: burned the stems, and the pale, helpless faces of the
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 2: roses drooped heavily. The drunkard, full berri effervescence, cast a
• 1:41:01
  Speaker 2: bubbling look over the car, and, spying a young lady opposite,
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 2: suddenly stood up and offered the bouquet to her. She
• 1:41:07
  Speaker 2: stared resolutely through him, seeing and hearing nothing, not even
• 1:41:10
  Speaker 2: the piteous child blossoms, with their pleading down bent heads,
• 1:41:14
  Speaker 2: and with the confused muttering of no offense, you know.
• 1:41:18
  Speaker 2: The man sank back again. As he did so, the
• 1:41:21
  Speaker 2: uncertain fingers released one stem, and a cream white bloom
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 2: went fluttering down, like a butterfly with broken wings. There
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 2: it lay, jolting back and forth on the dirty floor,
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 2: and no one dared to pick it up. Presently, the
• 1:41:33
  Speaker 2: drunkard sopped over comfortably on the sailor's shoulder, who, with
• 1:41:36
  Speaker 2: a generally directed wink of bonhomie, settled him easily, bestowing
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 2: a sympathetic pat upon the bloated cheek. The conductor disturbed
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 2: the situation by asking for his fare. The drunkard stupidly
• 1:41:46
  Speaker 2: rubbed his eyes and offered his flowers in place of
• 1:41:49
  Speaker 2: the nickel. Again, they were refused, and after a fluctuant
• 1:41:52
  Speaker 2: search in his pockets between intervals of nodding, the dirty,
• 1:41:55
  Speaker 2: over fingered bit of metal was produced, accepted, and the
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 2: still dying blossoms shivered in the tortuous hands. He was
• 1:42:01
  Speaker 2: drowsing off again when by some sudden turn of obstructed
• 1:42:05
  Speaker 2: machinery in his skull, his lids opened and he struggled up.
• 1:42:08
  Speaker 2: The image of myself must have swung suddenly across the
• 1:42:11
  Speaker 2: momentarily acting I nerve and with gurgling deference at the
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 2: imminent risk of losing his equilibrium once more, he proffered
• 1:42:18
  Speaker 2: the bouquet to me, grabbing the heads and presenting them
• 1:42:20
  Speaker 2: stemen towards a smothered snuffle went round the car. I
• 1:42:24
  Speaker 2: wanted them, Oh, how I wanted them. My heart beat
• 1:42:28
  Speaker 2: suffocatingly with the sense of baffled pity and rage and cowardice.
• 1:42:32
  Speaker 2: Who was he, that drunken sot with his smirching, wabbling hand,
• 1:42:36
  Speaker 2: that I should fear to take the roses from him?
• 1:42:38
  Speaker 2: Why must I grind my teeth and sit there helpless
• 1:42:40
  Speaker 2: while these beautiful things were crushed and blasted and torn
• 1:42:43
  Speaker 2: in living fragments. I could take them home, I could
• 1:42:46
  Speaker 2: give them drink. They would lift up their heads, they
• 1:42:48
  Speaker 2: would open wide for days, they would make the room sweet,
• 1:42:52
  Speaker 2: and the pale, soft glory of their inimitable petals would
• 1:42:55
  Speaker 2: shine like a luminous promise across the winter. Nobody wanted them,
• 1:42:58
  Speaker 2: nobody cared. This sodden beast, in the flare up of
• 1:43:01
  Speaker 2: his consciousness, wished to be quit of them. Why might
• 1:43:04
  Speaker 2: I not take them? Something sharp bit and burned my
• 1:43:07
  Speaker 2: eyelids as I glanced at the one on the floor.
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 2: The conductor had stepped on it and crushed it open.
• 1:43:12
  Speaker 2: And there lay the marvelous creamy leaves, curled at their
• 1:43:15
  Speaker 2: edges like kiss seeking lips, each with its glory greater
• 1:43:18
  Speaker 2: than Solomon's, all fowled and ruined in the human reek,
• 1:43:22
  Speaker 2: and I dared not save the others. Miserable coward, I
• 1:43:25
  Speaker 2: forced my hands tighter in my pockets and turned my
• 1:43:28
  Speaker 2: head away towards the outside night. In the backward slipping street.
• 1:43:31
  Speaker 2: Between me and it, a dim reflection wavered the image
• 1:43:34
  Speaker 2: of the thing that stood there before me, and somewhere,
• 1:43:37
  Speaker 2: like a far off dulled bell I heard the words,
• 1:43:40
  Speaker 2: and God created man in his own image, in the
• 1:43:42
  Speaker 2: image of God created he him the sailor, no doubt,
• 1:43:46
  Speaker 2: with the kindly intention of relieving me from annoyance, and
• 1:43:49
  Speaker 2: not a verse to play with anything. Made pretense of
• 1:43:51
  Speaker 2: seizing the roses. Then the drunkard, in an abandon of generosity,
• 1:43:55
  Speaker 2: began tearing off the blossoms by the heads, scrutinizing and
• 1:43:59
  Speaker 2: casting each away as unfit for the exalted service of
• 1:44:02
  Speaker 2: his friend, till the latter, reaching out, managed to get
• 1:44:05
  Speaker 2: hold of a white one with a stem. He trimmed
• 1:44:08
  Speaker 2: its sheltering green carefully, brought out a long black pin,
• 1:44:11
  Speaker 2: stuck it through the stalk, and fastened the pale, shining
• 1:44:14
  Speaker 2: head against his dark blue blouse. All the hedgehoggery smiled.
• 1:44:18
  Speaker 2: We had thrust the roses through with our forbidding quills.
• 1:44:21
  Speaker 2: What matter that a barbarian nail crucified this last one.
• 1:44:24
  Speaker 2: The drunkard slept again, limply holding his scattering bunch of
• 1:44:28
  Speaker 2: headless stems and torn foliage pink and cream. The petal
• 1:44:31
  Speaker 2: strewed the floor. Where was the loving hand that had
• 1:44:34
  Speaker 2: nursed them to bloom in this hard, unwonted weather, loved
• 1:44:37
  Speaker 2: and nursed and sold them ninth and race, sang out
• 1:44:41
  Speaker 2: the conductor. The sailor sprang up with a merry grin,
• 1:44:44
  Speaker 2: bowed gaily to everyone, twinkled his fingers in the air
• 1:44:46
  Speaker 2: with a blithe tatar, I'm off for China Town. As
• 1:44:50
  Speaker 2: he slid through the door and was away in a trice,
• 1:44:52
  Speaker 2: tripping down to the pestiferous sink that was awaiting him somewhere,
• 1:44:56
  Speaker 2: And on his breast he wore the pallid flower that
• 1:44:58
  Speaker 2: had offered its stainless beauty to me, that I had loved,
• 1:45:01
  Speaker 2: but had not loved enough to save. The rest were dead,
• 1:45:04
  Speaker 2: but that one, somewhere, down there in a den where
• 1:45:07
  Speaker 2: even the gas choked lights were leering like prostitute's eyes,
• 1:45:10
  Speaker 2: down there, in that trough of swollen swine, that pure
• 1:45:13
  Speaker 2: still thing had yet to die. End of where the
• 1:45:17
  Speaker 2: White Rose died. Recording by Lucy Perry in Bath on
• 1:45:21
  Speaker 2: February the twenty seventh, two thousand and nine.
• 1:45:28
  Speaker 3: Section twelve of selected works, letters, sketches and Stories by
• 1:45:33
  Speaker 3: Volterine declare this is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings
• 1:45:38
  Speaker 3: are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer,
• 1:45:42
  Speaker 3: please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording by Philippa a lance
• 1:45:48
  Speaker 3: for anarchy of selected works, letters, sketches and stories by
• 1:45:52
  Speaker 3: Volterine Declare. The perusal of doctor Carrous's article Freethought, its
• 1:45:58
  Speaker 3: truth and its error in the open Court of August six,
• 1:46:02
  Speaker 3: has impelled me to a parallel line of thought concerning
• 1:46:06
  Speaker 3: a doctrine, a principle less understood, more misinterpreted, both by
• 1:46:11
  Speaker 3: enemies and followers, than even that much abused, much misunderstood,
• 1:46:16
  Speaker 3: much misinterpreted, principle of free thought, And as is the
• 1:46:21
  Speaker 3: case with the latter, the greatest damage proceeds not so
• 1:46:24
  Speaker 3: much from the opposition of prejudice as from the profession
• 1:46:28
  Speaker 3: of ignorance. Free thought, says doctor Carras, has arisen in
• 1:46:34
  Speaker 3: revolution to blind obedience. It was indeed the great revolt
• 1:46:38
  Speaker 3: against human authority over the action of the mind. It
• 1:46:42
  Speaker 3: was not merely a negation. No revolt, ever is. It
• 1:46:46
  Speaker 3: was the assertion that the individual mind must think according
• 1:46:49
  Speaker 3: to necessity, according to its own law. And this assertion
• 1:46:54
  Speaker 3: rooted the negation of that authority which sought to interfere
• 1:46:57
  Speaker 3: with the law in the confusion working acaffort to build
• 1:47:00
  Speaker 3: all minds after one fixed pattern. Mark. It was the
• 1:47:05
  Speaker 3: very fact that thought is not cannot be free in
• 1:47:08
  Speaker 3: the absolute sense. Is not a thing of caprice, willing
• 1:47:12
  Speaker 3: to think this or that, but a thing of order,
• 1:47:15
  Speaker 3: constantly adapting itself to the relations of all other things,
• 1:47:19
  Speaker 3: constantly progressing in the knowledge of truth as it fulfills
• 1:47:23
  Speaker 3: the law of its growth. It was this which justified name,
• 1:47:28
  Speaker 3: made at all conceivable the revolt against dressed authority, that
• 1:47:33
  Speaker 3: is God, that is priests. Here was a contradiction, or,
• 1:47:38
  Speaker 3: as he would prefer to call it, an antinomy. To
• 1:47:41
  Speaker 3: delight the heart of prudence. Thought struggled for liberty because
• 1:47:46
  Speaker 3: of its fatalism. Conceiving the implacable authority of truth, it
• 1:47:51
  Speaker 3: denied authority. It would be free from men, because it
• 1:47:55
  Speaker 3: could not be free from self. With the light of
• 1:47:59
  Speaker 3: a widening infinite in its eyes. It denied the supremacy
• 1:48:03
  Speaker 3: of the sun. Carmen said, you are great, but you
• 1:48:07
  Speaker 3: are not all. Do not think, by your near shining
• 1:48:11
  Speaker 3: to shut out the stars. Now this precisely, this lies
• 1:48:16
  Speaker 3: at the root of that doubly abused misunderstood, misinterpreted word anarchism.
• 1:48:23
  Speaker 3: Anarchism is negation, you say, true of what the authority
• 1:48:29
  Speaker 3: of rulers, precisely as free thought negatives the authority of priests.
• 1:48:35
  Speaker 3: But why this negation, Because of the affirmation that every
• 1:48:39
  Speaker 3: individual is himself ruled by the fatalism of existence within
• 1:48:44
  Speaker 3: himself contains the law of right being from which he
• 1:48:48
  Speaker 3: can no more escape than sunlight can exist independent of
• 1:48:51
  Speaker 3: the sun, and a strict obedience to which is necessary
• 1:48:55
  Speaker 3: to that morality which doctor Karas has called living the truth,
• 1:49:00
  Speaker 3: disobedience in its stead, creating ever increasing confusion, only to
• 1:49:05
  Speaker 3: be wrought out and purified after many lives the weary
• 1:49:09
  Speaker 3: calmer of the race, and never wholly purged till the
• 1:49:12
  Speaker 3: wronged law receives its recompense, understanding and fulfilling. Hence this
• 1:49:20
  Speaker 3: negation of archism, which would maintain a puny, false authority,
• 1:49:25
  Speaker 3: denying the real one, hindering true order and progress. And
• 1:49:30
  Speaker 3: the real anarchist can truthfully say to the republican it
• 1:49:35
  Speaker 3: is you, not I who deny self government. I say
• 1:49:39
  Speaker 3: a real one. Because as there are freethinkers and freethinkers,
• 1:49:44
  Speaker 3: so there are anarchists and anarchists, and as I have intimated,
• 1:49:48
  Speaker 3: the greatest damage to either cause proceeds from the ignorant
• 1:49:52
  Speaker 3: profession of them by people of whose lives they form
• 1:49:55
  Speaker 3: no part. No real freethinker comprehending the laws of racial
• 1:50:00
  Speaker 3: growth will for a moment deny the value of the creeds,
• 1:50:03
  Speaker 3: so long as they were the highest possible conception of life,
• 1:50:07
  Speaker 3: that is, while humanity yet remained below the creed. Nor
• 1:50:11
  Speaker 3: will he deny that until a thinker has risen above
• 1:50:13
  Speaker 3: the creed, comprehending himself, realizing that the laws of his
• 1:50:18
  Speaker 3: mind's guidance exist with it, cannot be conceived apart the
• 1:50:22
  Speaker 3: one from the other. Until this conception of right guidance
• 1:50:26
  Speaker 3: from within has taken the place of the old idea
• 1:50:29
  Speaker 3: of a law descended from heaven, the freethinker will admit
• 1:50:33
  Speaker 3: that such a mind is better left among the orthodox
• 1:50:36
  Speaker 3: than to become so poor an apology for a reformer
• 1:50:39
  Speaker 3: as he must become by throwing away his old beliefs,
• 1:50:42
  Speaker 3: not replacing them with the faith of truth. So the
• 1:50:46
  Speaker 3: real anarchist, instead of maintaining as prejudice would have it appear,
• 1:50:51
  Speaker 3: the utter abolition of social restraint, the burstening of every
• 1:50:54
  Speaker 3: bond which man, by slow experience has found necessary to
• 1:50:58
  Speaker 3: order the inauguration of chaos, maintains, on the contrary, the
• 1:51:03
  Speaker 3: higher principle that every man must be a law unto himself,
• 1:51:08
  Speaker 3: embodying in himself all the truth of the codes, and
• 1:51:12
  Speaker 3: denying their authority. Beyond this, because he realizes this, knowing
• 1:51:17
  Speaker 3: the glory of the truth he holds, would maintain his
• 1:51:20
  Speaker 3: freedom to reach out after that which is higher, still
• 1:51:23
  Speaker 3: unknown but not unknowable. Anarchism is, in fact the assertion
• 1:51:29
  Speaker 3: of the highest morality, a conception of society without officials, police, military, bayonets, prisons,
• 1:51:37
  Speaker 3: and the thousand and one other symbols of force which
• 1:51:40
  Speaker 3: mark our present development, a dream of the day when each,
• 1:51:44
  Speaker 3: having mended one, all will be mended to him who
• 1:51:49
  Speaker 3: has arrived at such a conclusion. There is no morality
• 1:51:52
  Speaker 3: in obedience to outward authority, neither in the observance of formulas,
• 1:51:57
  Speaker 3: neither in doing what is written statute books. One is
• 1:52:01
  Speaker 3: moral only so far as he, by long struggle it
• 1:52:04
  Speaker 3: may probably will be makes right his nature him. What then,
• 1:52:11
  Speaker 3: does he therefore deny the value and the present necessity
• 1:52:15
  Speaker 3: of codes. Not at all? He would not if he
• 1:52:18
  Speaker 3: could sweep them at once from existence, well knowing that
• 1:52:22
  Speaker 3: as long as men are incapable of receiving the authority
• 1:52:25
  Speaker 3: of the inward, must they are incapable of living without statutes.
• 1:52:30
  Speaker 3: Yet prejudice and ignorance cry anarchy is the destruction of
• 1:52:34
  Speaker 3: the law. It is not the destruction of the law.
• 1:52:38
  Speaker 3: It is the fulfilling of the law. It is the
• 1:52:41
  Speaker 3: only logical outcome of free thought, the ripened fruit of
• 1:52:45
  Speaker 3: which freethinking is the potent seed, a small seed, as
• 1:52:49
  Speaker 3: doctor Karaus says, But it is a seed which was
• 1:52:52
  Speaker 3: planted in hard soil, watered by red rains, and nurtured
• 1:52:56
  Speaker 3: among jealous thorns. And yet the tree is scarcely blossoming.
• 1:53:02
  Speaker 3: And still we dare to dream of that russet warm
• 1:53:04
  Speaker 3: day of autumn future, when the promise of the siege
• 1:53:08
  Speaker 3: shall be fulfilled, when every mind shall think according to
• 1:53:11
  Speaker 3: its own law, and every life express itself freely, bounded
• 1:53:16
  Speaker 3: only by the equal freedom of others, So finding the
• 1:53:19
  Speaker 3: more quickly, the more surely the truth which alone shall live.
• 1:53:26
  Speaker 3: End of allance for anarchy.
• 1:53:33
  Speaker 1: Section thirteen of selected works, letters, ketches and stories by
• 1:53:37
  Speaker 1: vulte In Declair. This is a library box recording. All
• 1:53:41
  Speaker 1: library box recordings or in the public domain. For more
• 1:53:45
  Speaker 1: information or to volunteer, please visit library vox dot org.
• 1:53:50
  Speaker 1: Letter to Senator Wholly of selected works, letters, ketches, and
• 1:53:53
  Speaker 1: stories by vultein declar letter to Senator Holly in reply
• 1:53:58
  Speaker 1: to US Senator Joseph R. Holey remark in the wake
• 1:54:01
  Speaker 1: of a MacKinley assassination, that you would pay one thousand
• 1:54:04
  Speaker 1: dollars to have a shot at an anarchist, You may,
• 1:54:08
  Speaker 1: by merely paying your cofere to my home address below,
• 1:54:11
  Speaker 1: shoot at me for nothing. I will not resist. I
• 1:54:15
  Speaker 1: will stand straight before you at any distance you wish
• 1:54:17
  Speaker 1: me to, and you may shoot in the presence of witnesses.
• 1:54:21
  Speaker 1: Does not your American commercial instinct seize upon this as
• 1:54:24
  Speaker 1: a bargain. But if payment of the one thousand dollars
• 1:54:28
  Speaker 1: is the necessary part of your proposition, then when I
• 1:54:31
  Speaker 1: have given you a shot, I will give the money
• 1:54:33
  Speaker 1: to the propaganda of the idea of a free society
• 1:54:36
  Speaker 1: in which there shall be neither assassins, nor presidents, beggars,
• 1:54:40
  Speaker 1: nor senators. And of a letter to Senator Holly.
• 1:54:49
  Speaker 4: Section fourteen of selected works, Letters, sketches, and stories by
• 1:54:53
  Speaker 4: altering Declare. This is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings
• 1:54:59
  Speaker 4: from the public domain. For more information or to volunteer,
• 1:55:03
  Speaker 4: please visit LibriVox dot org. The Philosophy of Selfishness and
• 1:55:08
  Speaker 4: Metaphysical Ethics of selected works, letters, sketches and Stories by
• 1:55:14
  Speaker 4: Vulterine Declare. In number one hundred and ninety seven of
• 1:55:21
  Speaker 4: the Open Court appeared a criticism of the egoistic conception
• 1:55:25
  Speaker 4: of life from the pen of mister Slater, in which
• 1:55:29
  Speaker 4: I was deeply interested. Interested because I believe that, as
• 1:55:34
  Speaker 4: one of the leaders of the ethical movement, mister Slater
• 1:55:37
  Speaker 4: is aware that there is no more frequent or more
• 1:55:41
  Speaker 4: fatal error to overcome in his work than this very
• 1:55:45
  Speaker 4: philosophy of selfishness, and therefore should be one of those
• 1:55:50
  Speaker 4: best conversant with the proofs of its shallowness and falsity.
• 1:55:56
  Speaker 4: It is plain that the increasing interest in the ethical
• 1:56:00
  Speaker 4: problem is evident of the unrest which sits upon humanity.
• 1:56:04
  Speaker 4: In the presence of the destruction of its temple. Science
• 1:56:09
  Speaker 4: has torn the veil from the tabernacle of fear, man
• 1:56:13
  Speaker 4: has looked within, and the space he imagined filled with
• 1:56:17
  Speaker 4: terrible ghosts. Is seen to be empty. Only the darkness
• 1:56:22
  Speaker 4: kept him from knowing it. Now there is light, light everywhere,
• 1:56:28
  Speaker 4: and he no longer accepts the moral code obey. Yet
• 1:56:33
  Speaker 4: knowing this in the face of the death of God,
• 1:56:37
  Speaker 4: he finds himself only at the statement of the problem.
• 1:56:41
  Speaker 4: The symbols and the forms of religion, the vestments of
• 1:56:45
  Speaker 4: priests have become only mockeries, signs of the crude worship
• 1:56:50
  Speaker 4: of a half savage imagination, And still bound up in
• 1:56:56
  Speaker 4: them was a something that was true, some of which
• 1:57:00
  Speaker 4: he dares not let go, something that had served to
• 1:57:05
  Speaker 4: guide his actions and give meaning to life. This was
• 1:57:09
  Speaker 4: the ethical problem, to undress the truth and leave it nude, white,
• 1:57:15
  Speaker 4: shining a luminous point, moving before man into the infinite,
• 1:57:20
  Speaker 4: the future. To explain what good it was that wrapped
• 1:57:25
  Speaker 4: in the dogmas of the church nevertheless bound men together
• 1:57:30
  Speaker 4: and serve to lift the race slowly upward. It is
• 1:57:35
  Speaker 4: at this questioning point that radical free thought has too
• 1:57:40
  Speaker 4: often made its mistake. It falls into one of two errors,
• 1:57:45
  Speaker 4: And the most grievous, I believe, is this of making
• 1:57:48
  Speaker 4: self the center and circumference of all consideration. The most
• 1:57:54
  Speaker 4: brilliant of American orators, the idol of free thought has
• 1:57:58
  Speaker 4: been so mistaken, and all his writings are permeated with
• 1:58:03
  Speaker 4: the happiness philosophy. Grieved and disgusted with a world which,
• 1:58:09
  Speaker 4: for love of love has slain love, he has conceived
• 1:58:13
  Speaker 4: that the way to improve matters is to cease urging
• 1:58:16
  Speaker 4: the necessity of goodness and insist that people shall be happy,
• 1:58:21
  Speaker 4: his conclusion being that a happy man is a good man.
• 1:58:25
  Speaker 4: The same teaching, variously expressed by the most trenchant pens,
• 1:58:31
  Speaker 4: is to be found throughout the radical press. It says, practically,
• 1:58:36
  Speaker 4: the universe is purposeless. Man's actions are accountable to no one. Therefore,
• 1:58:43
  Speaker 4: let him be happy. Let him study to discover what
• 1:58:47
  Speaker 4: line of conduct will increase the sum of his agreeable sensations,
• 1:58:52
  Speaker 4: and follow it. The desire for such increase is the
• 1:58:56
  Speaker 4: motive to all action, whether of the barbaring or the
• 1:59:00
  Speaker 4: civilized man, the only difference being that the civilized man
• 1:59:05
  Speaker 4: has wider knowledge and a greater number of emotions. It
• 1:59:10
  Speaker 4: was the fundamental error of this reasoning which I had
• 1:59:14
  Speaker 4: hoped mister Slatter would have pointed out. Unfortunately, he falls
• 1:59:19
  Speaker 4: into the other mistake, the substance of his article being
• 1:59:23
  Speaker 4: comprised in the old metaphysical formula, do right because it
• 1:59:29
  Speaker 4: is right. People desire certain things or objects, and while
• 1:59:34
  Speaker 4: the getting of them gives us pleasure, it is not
• 1:59:36
  Speaker 4: so much the pleasure as the things we want. This
• 1:59:41
  Speaker 4: is an explanation which does not explain he is right
• 1:59:45
  Speaker 4: in saying that the getting of them gives us pleasure.
• 1:59:49
  Speaker 4: Pleasure is the result of action, not its cause. But
• 1:59:54
  Speaker 4: to substitute for the assertion I save a man's life
• 1:59:58
  Speaker 4: because it gives me pleasure. I save a man's life
• 2:00:01
  Speaker 4: because I want him to have his life, is to
• 2:00:04
  Speaker 4: get no farther on. It does not explain why I
• 2:00:09
  Speaker 4: want a thing which is of no particular benefit to myself,
• 2:00:13
  Speaker 4: and it is the why of the want that prompted
• 2:00:16
  Speaker 4: the action. It serves no purpose to tell people to
• 2:00:19
  Speaker 4: do right because it is right, unless they have a
• 2:00:23
  Speaker 4: means of determining what is right and why it is right.
• 2:00:28
  Speaker 4: Unless the ethical movement can answer this question, it has
• 2:00:31
  Speaker 4: furnished no enduring structure to replace the old. It has
• 2:00:36
  Speaker 4: not revealed the truth of the old. Science which has
• 2:00:40
  Speaker 4: shattered idols must explain religion. Nor is this so difficult
• 2:00:47
  Speaker 4: when once we have understood ourselves. Realizing that we are
• 2:00:53
  Speaker 4: parts of the universe subject to the same processes manifest
• 2:00:56
  Speaker 4: in all other forms of life. Realizing that our egos
• 2:01:01
  Speaker 4: are but social growths that develop according to inheritance and environment,
• 2:01:06
  Speaker 4: as do all other growths, we are prepared to realize
• 2:01:10
  Speaker 4: that our actions are prompted by the unconscious me, the man,
• 2:01:16
  Speaker 4: which has been accumulating, so to speak, for ages, the
• 2:01:21
  Speaker 4: social soul, which is the common inheritance of all. This
• 2:01:26
  Speaker 4: large me, which lies below our conscious selves, is the
• 2:01:30
  Speaker 4: result of all the untold struggle of man to come
• 2:01:35
  Speaker 4: out in harmony with his environment, and the same struggle
• 2:01:39
  Speaker 4: goes on in us will go on in the future.
• 2:01:44
  Speaker 4: Our pleasure is an insignificant quantity, having nothing whatever to
• 2:01:47
  Speaker 4: do with the question. Indeed, it is pain, not pleasure,
• 2:01:53
  Speaker 4: which unbars the gait of progress, since all progress comes
• 2:01:57
  Speaker 4: through a quickened consciousness that we are no longer in
• 2:02:01
  Speaker 4: harmony with our environment, an awakening to the fact that
• 2:02:04
  Speaker 4: the social ideal has moved forward and we must follow it.
• 2:02:09
  Speaker 4: To illustrate chattel, slavery was right so long as the
• 2:02:14
  Speaker 4: ideals of men had not advanced beyond it. The yoke
• 2:02:18
  Speaker 4: rested easily upon the body of the slave and the
• 2:02:21
  Speaker 4: soul of the master both were happy. Why have they
• 2:02:26
  Speaker 4: not remained so? Servants? Obey your masters was to do
• 2:02:31
  Speaker 4: right because it was right? Why not have continued? Because
• 2:02:36
  Speaker 4: with the development of the vast economies of modern production,
• 2:02:40
  Speaker 4: the chattel slave system no longer held its old relations
• 2:02:44
  Speaker 4: in society, the unconscious me clamored for adjustment. The social
• 2:02:50
  Speaker 4: ideal of larger liberty had extended to the black men.
• 2:02:55
  Speaker 4: In the end, armies killed each other for pleasure, hardly
• 2:03:02
  Speaker 4: for duty. Yes, to accomplish their ideal of right. It
• 2:03:08
  Speaker 4: is very shallow to retort that is the result of
• 2:03:11
  Speaker 4: the duty superstition. People kill each other as well. Blame
• 2:03:17
  Speaker 4: those who first conceived of communication between two villages for
• 2:03:21
  Speaker 4: building turnpikes instead of at once jumping to steel rails
• 2:03:25
  Speaker 4: and locomotives. The rightness of an action is measured by
• 2:03:30
  Speaker 4: its harmony with the ideal, which science points out as
• 2:03:34
  Speaker 4: the path of the social march. Upon this foundation, the
• 2:03:38
  Speaker 4: ethical movement may rest knowing the truth of the old
• 2:03:42
  Speaker 4: creeds that they bound men together and develop the social character,
• 2:03:48
  Speaker 4: repressing the instincts of selfishness instead of scattering, disintegrating, and
• 2:03:54
  Speaker 4: belittling men, which is the inevitable result of the egoistic philosophy.
• 2:04:00
  Speaker 4: The Gospel of Caprice. End of the Philosophy of Selfishness
• 2:04:07
  Speaker 4: and Metaphysical Ethics recording by Ronda Fettermann. End of selected works, letters, sketches,
• 2:04:16
  Speaker 4: and stories by Vulterin and declare