The Scarlet Letter offers extraordinary insight into the norms and behavior of 17thcentury American Puritan society.

The basic conflicts and problems of its main characters, however, are familiar to readers in the present. As the following excerpt begins, the female protagonist, Hester Prynne, has borne a child out of wedlock and has refused to reveal the identity of the child's father. She has been jailed for at least three months and sentenced to wear a symbol of her adultery, a scarlet A, on her dress at all times. From The Scarlet Letter By Nathaniel Hawthorne The grass-plot before the jail, in Prison Lane, on a certain summer morning, not less than two centuries ago, was occupied by a pretty large number of the inhabitants of Boston; all with their eyes intently fastened on the iron-clamped oaken door. Amongst any other population, or at a later period in the history of New England, the grim rigidity that petrified the bearded physiognomies of these good people would have augured some awful business in hand. It could have betokened nothing short of the anticipated execution of some noted culprit, on whom the sentence of a legal tribunal had but confirmed the verdict of public sentiment. But, in that early severity of the Puritan character, an inference of this kind could not so indubitably be drawn. It might be that a sluggish bond-servant, or an undutiful child, whom his parents had given over to the civil authority, was to be corrected at the whipping-post. It might be, that an Antinomian, a Quaker, or other heterodox religionist, was to be scourged out of the town, or an idle and vagrant Indian, whom the white man's fire-water had made riotous about the streets, was to be driven with stripes into the shadow of the forest. It might be, too, that a witch, like old Mistress Hibbing, the bitter-tempered widow of the magistrate, was to die upon the gallows. In either case, there was very much the same solemnity of demeanor on the part of the spectators; as befitted a people amongst whom religion and law were almost identical, and in whose character both were so thoroughly interfused, that the mildest and the severest acts of public discipline were alike made venerable and awful. Meager, indeed, and cold, was the sympathy that a transgressor might look for, from such bystanders at the scaffold. On the other hand, a penalty which, in our days, would infer a degree of mocking infamy and ridicule might then be invested with almost as stern a dignity as the punishment of death itself. It was a circumstance to be noted, on the summer morning when our story begins its course, that the women, of whom there were several in the crowd, appeared to take a peculiar interest in

whatever penal infliction might be expected to ensue. The age had not so much refinement, that any sense of impropriety restrained the wearers of petticoat and farthingale from stepping forth into the public ways, and wedging their not unsubstantial persons, if occasion were, into the throng nearest to the scaffold at an execution. Morally, as well as materially, there was a coarser fiber in those wives and maidens of old English birth and breeding, than in their fair descendants, separated from them by a series of six or seven generations; for, throughout that chain of ancestry, every successive mother has transmitted to her child a fainter bloom, a more delicate and briefer beauty, and a slighter physical frame, if not a character of less force and solidity, than her own. The women, who were now standing about the prison-door, stood within less than half a century of the period when the man-like Elizabeth had been the not altogether unsuitable representative of the sex. They were her countrywomen; and the beef and ale of their native land, with a moral diet not a whit more refined, entered largely into their composition. The bright morning sun, therefore, shone on broad shoulders and well-developed busts, and on round and ruddy cheeks, that had ripened in the far-off island, and had hardly yet grown paler or thinner in the atmosphere of New England. There was, moreover, boldness and rotundity of speech among these matrons, as most of them seemed to be, that would startle us at the present day, whether in respect to its purport or its volume of tone. Goodwives, said a hard-featured dame of fifty, I'll tell ye a piece of my mind. It would be greatly for the public be hoof, if we women, being of mature age and church-members in good repute, should have the handling of such male actresses as this Hester Prynne. What think ye, gossips? If the hussy stood up for judgment before us five, that are now here in a knot together, would she come off with such a sentence as the worshipful magistrates have awarded? Marry, I throw not! People say, said another, that the Reverend Master Dimondale, her godly pastor, takes it very grievously to heart that such a scandal should have come upon his congregation. The magistrates are God-fearing gentlemen, but merciful overmuch,that is a truth, added a third autumnal matron. At the very least, they should have put the brand of a hot iron on Hester Prynne's forehead. Madam Hester would have winced at that, I warrant me. But she, the naughty baggage,little will she care what they put upon the bodice of her gown! Why, look you, she may cover it with a brooch, or such like heathenish adornment, and so walk the streets as brave as ever! Ah, but, interposed, more softly, a young wife, holding a child by the hand, let her cover the mark as she will, the pang of it will be always in her heart.

What do we talk of marks and brands, whether on the bodice of her gown, or the flesh of her forehead? cried another female, the ugliest as well as the most pitiless of these self-constituted judges. This woman has brought shame upon us all, and ought to die. Is there no law for it? Truly there is, both in the Scripture and the statute-book. Then let the magistrates, who have made it of no effect, thank themselves if their own wives and daughters go astray! Mercy on us, goodwife, exclaimed a man in the crowd, is there no virtue in woman, save what springs from a wholesome fear of the gallows? That is the hardest word yet! Hush, now, gossips; for the lock is turning in the prison-door, and here comes Mistress Prynne herself. The door of the jail being flung open from within, there appeared, in the first place, like a black shadow emerging into the sunshine, the grim and grisly presence of the town-beadle, with a sword by his side and his staff of office in his hand. This personage prefigured and represented in his aspect the whole dismal severity of the Puritanical code of law, which it was his business to administer in its final and closest application to the offender. Stretching forth the official staff in his left hand, he laid his right upon the shoulder of a young woman, whom he thus drew forward; until, on the threshold of the prison-door, she repelled him, by an action marked with natural dignity and force of character, and stepped into the open air, as if by her own free-will. She bore in her arms a child, a baby of some three months old, who winked and turned aside its little face from the too vivid light of day; because its existence, heretofore, had brought it acquainted only with the gray twilight of a dungeon, or other darksome apartment of the prison. When the young womanthe mother of this childstood fully revealed before the crowd, it seemed to be her first impulse to clasp the infant closely to her bosom; not so much by an impulse of motherly affection, as that she might thereby conceal a certain token, which was wrought or fastened into her dress. In a moment, however, wisely judging that one token of her shame would but poorly serve to hide another, she took the baby on her arm, and, with a burning blush, and yet a haughty smile, and a glance that would not be abashed, looked around at her townspeople and neighbors. On the breast of her gown, in fine red cloth, surrounded with an elaborate embroidery and fantastic flourishes of gold thread, appeared the letter A. It was so artistically done, and with so much fertility and gorgeous luxuriance of fancy, that it had all the effect of a last and fitting decoration to the apparel which she wore; and which was of a splendor in accordance with the taste of the age, but greatly beyond what was allowed by the sumptuary regulations of the colony. The young woman was tall, with a figure of perfect elegance, on a large scale. She had dark and abundant hair, so glossy that it threw off the sunshine with a gleam, and a face which, besides being beautiful from regularity of feature and richness of complexion, had the impressiveness
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belonging to a marked brow and deep black eyes. She was lady-like, too, after the manner of the feminine gentility of those days; characterized by a certain state and dignity, rather than by the delicate, evanescent, and indescribable grace, which is now recognized as its indication. And never had Hester Prynne appeared more lady-like, in the antique interpretation of the term, than as she issued from the prison. Those who had before known her, and had expected to behold her dimmed and obscured by a disastrous cloud, were astonished, and even startled, to perceive how her beauty shone out, and made a halo of the misfortune and ignominy in which she was enveloped. It may be true, that, to a sensitive observer, there was something exquisitely painful in it. Her attire, which, indeed, she had wrought for the occasion, in prison, and had modeled much after her own fancy, seemed to express the attitude of her spirit, the desperate recklessness of her mood, by its wild and picturesque peculiarity. But the point which drew all eyes, and, as it were, transfigured the wearer,so that both men and women, who had been familiarly acquainted with Hester Prynne, were now impressed as if they be held her for the first time, was that SCARLET LETTER, so fantastically embroidered and illuminated upon her bosom. It had the effect of a spell, taking her out of the ordinary relations with humanity, and inclosing her in a sphere by herself. She hath good skill at her needle, that's certain, remarked one of the female spectators; but did ever a woman, before this brazen hussy, contrive such a way of showing it! Why, gossips, what is it but to laugh in the faces of our godly magistrates, and make a pride out of what they, worthy gentlemen, meant for a punishment? It were well, muttered the most iron-visage of the old dames, if we stripped Madam Hester's rich gown off her dainty shoulders; and as for the red letter, which she hath stitched so curiously, I'll bestow a rag of mine own rheumatic flannel, to make a fitter one! O, peace, neighbors, peace! whispered their youngest companion. Do not let her hear you! Not a stitch in that embroidered letter, but she has felt it in her heart. The grim beadle now made a gesture with his staff. Make way, good people, make way, in the King's name, cried he. Open a passage; and, I promise ye, Mistress Prynne shall be set where man, woman, and child may have a fair sight of her brave apparel, from this time till an hour past meridian. A blessing on the righteous Colony of the Massachusetts, where iniquity is dragged out into the sunshine! Come along, Madame Hester, and show your scarlet letter in the market-place! A lane was forthwith opened through the crowd of spectators. Preceded by the beadle, and attended by an irregular procession of stern-browed men and unkindly-visage women, Hester
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Prynne set forth towards the place appointed for her punishment. A crowd of eager and curious schoolboys, understanding little of the matter in hand, except that it gave them a half-holiday, ran before her progress, turning their heads continually to stare into her face, and at the winking baby in her arms, and at the ignominious letter on her breast. It was no great distance, in those days, from the prison-door to the market-place. Measured by the prisoner's experience, however, it might be reckoned a journey of some length; for, haughty as her demeanor was, she perchance underwent an agony from every footstep of those that thronged to see her, as if her heart had been flung into the street for them all to spurn and trample upon. In our nature, however, there is a provision, alike marvelous and merciful, that the sufferer should never know the intensity of what he endures by its present torture, but chiefly by the pang that rankles after it. With almost a serene deportment, therefore, Hester Prynne passed through this portion of her ordeal, and came to a sort of scaffold, at the western extremity of the market-place. It stood nearly beneath the eaves of Boston's earliest church, and appeared to be a fixture there. In fact, this scaffold constituted a portion of a penal machine, which now, for two or three generations past, has been merely historical and traditionary among us, but was held, in the old time, to be as effectual an agent in the promotion of good citizenship, as ever was the guillotine among the terrorists of France. It was, in short, the platform of the pillory; and above it rose the framework of that instrument of discipline, so fashioned as to confine the human head in its tight grasp, and thus hold it up to the public gaze. The very idea of ignominy was embodied and made manifest in this contrivance of wood and iron. There can be no outrage, methinks, against our common nature,whatever be the delinquencies of the individual,no outrage more flagrant than to forbid the culprit to hide his face for shame; as it was the essence of this punishment to do. In Hester Prynne's instance, however, as not infrequently in other cases, her sentence bore, that she should stand a certain time upon the platform, but without undergoing that gripe about the neck and confinement of the head, the proneness to which was the most devilish characteristic of this ugly engine. Knowing well her part, she ascended a flight of wooden steps, and was thus displayed to the surrounding multitude, at about the height of a man's shoulders above the street. Had there been a Papist among the crowd of Puritans, he might have seen in this beautiful woman, so picturesque in her attire and mien, and with the infant at her bosom, an object to remind him of the image of Divine Maternity, which so many illustrious painters have vied with one another to represent; something which should remind him, indeed, but only by contrast, of that sacred image of sinless motherhood, whose infant was to redeem the world. Here, there was
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the taint of deepest sin in the most sacred quality of human life, working such effect, that the world was only the darker for this woman's beauty, and the more lost for the infant that she had borne. The scene was not without a mixture of awe, such as must always invest the spectacle of guilt and shame in a fellow-creature, before society shall have grown corrupt enough to smile, instead of shuddering, at it. The witnesses of Hester Prynne's disgrace had not yet passed beyond their simplicity. They were stern enough to look upon her death, had that been the sentence, without a murmur at its severity, but had none of the heartlessness of another social state, which would find only a theme for jest in an exhibition like the present. Even had there been a disposition to turn the matter into ridicule, it must have been repressed and overpowered by the solemn presence of men no less dignified than the Governor, and several of his counselors, a judge, a general, and the ministers of the town; all of whom sat or stood in a balcony of the meetinghouse, looking down upon the platform. When such personages could constitute a part of the spectacle, without risking the majesty or reverence of rank and office, it was safely to be inferred that the infliction of a legal sentence would have an earnest and effectual meaning. Accordingly, the crowd was somber and grave. The unhappy culprit sustained herself as best a woman might, under the heavy weight of a thousand unrelenting eyes, all fastened upon her, and concentric at her bosom. It was almost intolerable to be borne. Of an impulsive and passionate nature, she had fortified herself to encounter the stings and venomous stabs of public contumely, wreaking itself in every variety of insult; but there was a quality so much more terrible in the solemn mood of the popular mind, that she longed rather to behold all those rigid countenances contorted with scornful merriment, and herself the object. Had a roar of laughter burst from the multitude,each man, each woman, each little shrill-voiced child, contributing their individual parts, Hester Prynne might have repaid them all with a bitter and disdainful smile. But, under the leaden infliction which it was her doom to endure, she felt, at moments, as if she must needs shriek out with the full power of her lungs, and cast herself from the scaffold down upon the ground, or else go mad at once. Yet there were intervals when the whole scene, in which she was the most conspicuous object, seemed to vanish from her eyes, or, at least, glimmered indistinctly before them, like a mass of imperfectly shaped and spectral images. Her mind, and especially her memory, was preternaturally active, and kept bringing up other scenes than this roughly hewn street of a little town, on the edge of the Western wilderness; other faces than were lowering upon her from beneath the brims of those steeple-crowned hats. Reminiscences, the most trifling and
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immaterial, passages of infancy and school-days, sports, childish quarrels, and the little domestic traits of her maiden years, came swarming back upon her, intermingled with recollections of whatever was gravest in her subsequent life; one picture precisely as vivid as another; as if all were of similar importance, or all alike a play. Possibly, it was an instinctive device of her spirit, to relieve itself, by the exhibition of these phantasmagoric forms, from the cruel weight and hardness of the reality. Be that as it might, the scaffold of the pillory was a point of view that revealed to Hester Prynne the entire track along which she had been treading, since her happy infancy. Standing on that miserable eminence, she saw again her native village, in Old England, and her paternal home; a decayed house of gray stone, with a poverty-stricken aspect, but retaining a half-obliterated shield of arms over the portal, in token of antique gentility. She saw her father's face, with its bald brow, and reverend white beard, that flowed over the old-fashioned Elizabethan ruff; her mother's, too, with the look of heedful and anxious love which it always wore in her remembrance, and which, even since her death, had so often laid the impediment of a gentle remonstrance in her daughter's pathway. She saw her own face, glowing with girlish beauty, and illuminating all the interior of the dusky mirror in which she had been wont to gaze at it. There she beheld another countenance, of a man well stricken in years, a pale, thin, scholar-like visage, with eyes dim and bleared by the lamp-light that had served them to pore over many ponderous books. Yet those same bleared optics had a strange, penetrating power, when it was their owner's purpose to read the human soul. This figure of the study and the cloister, as Hester Prynne's womanly fancy failed not to recall, was slightly deformed, with the left shoulder a trifle higher than the right. Next rose before her, in memory's picture-gallery, the intricate and narrow thoroughfares, the tall, gray houses, the huge cathedrals, and the public edifices, ancient in date and quaint in architecture, of a Continental city; where a new life had awaited her, still in connection with the misshapen scholar; a new life, but feeding itself on time-worn materials, like a tuft of green moss on a crumbling wall. Lastly, in lieu of these shifting scenes, came back the rude market-place of the Puritan settlement, with all the townspeople assembled and leveling their stern regards at Hester Prynne,yes, at herself,who stood on the scaffold of the pillory, an infant on her arm, and the letter A, in scarlet, fantastically embroidered with gold thread, upon her bosom! Could it be true? She clutched the child so fiercely to her breast, that it sent forth a cry; she turned her eyes downward at the scarlet letter, and even touched it with her finger, to assure herself that the infant and the shame were real. Yes!these were her realities,all else had vanished!
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American author William Faulkners The Sound and the Fury (1929) is considered his greatest work by many critics and readers. In the novel, Faulkner chronicles the downfall of the once prosperous and wealthy Compson family of Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi. In a style that initially alienated some readers but was later praised for its innovation, Faulkner splits the narrative between the first-person perspectives of three characters and an objective third-person narrator. The following selection highlights a central theme of the novel time, which is perceived as mans greatest misfortune when a ticking clock rules his life. Quentin, a member of the Compson family and a student at Harvard University, attempts to quell the power that clocks have over his life. From The Sound and the Fury By William Faulkner June Second, 1910. When the shadow of the sash appeared on the curtains it was between seven and eight oclock and then I was in time again, hearing the watch. It was Grandfather's and when Father gave it to me he said I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire; it's rather excruciating-lee apt that you will use it to gain the reduction absurdum of all human experience which can fit your individual needs no better than it fitted his or his father's. I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all your breath trying to conquer it. Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools. It was propped against the collar box and I lay listening to it. Hearing it, that is. I dont suppose anybody ever deliberately listens to a watch or a clock. You dont have to. You can be oblivious to the sound for a long while, then in a second of ticking it can create in the mind unbroken the long diminishing parade of time you didn't hear. Like Father said down the long and lonely light-rays you might see Jesus walking, like. And the good Saint Francis that said Little Sister Death, that never had a sister. Through the wall I heard Shreve's bed-springs and then his slippers on the floor hashing. I got up and went to the dresser and slid my hand along it and touched the watch and turned it face-down and went back to bed. But the shadow of the sash was still there and I had learned to tell almost to the minute, so I'd have to turn my back to it, feeling the eyes animals used to have in the back
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of their heads when it was on top, itching. It's always the idle habits you acquire which you will regret. Father said that. That Christ was not crucified: he was worn away by a minute clicking of little wheels. That had no sister. And so as soon as I knew I couldn't see it, I began to wonder what time it was. Father said that constant speculation regarding the position of mechanical hands on an arbitrary dial which is a symptom of mind-function. Excrement Father said like sweating. And I saying All right. Wonder. Go on and wonder. If it had been cloudy I could have looked at the window, thinking what he said about idle habits. Thinking it would be nice for them down at New London if the weather held up like this. Why shouldn't it? The month of brides, the voice that breathed She ran right out of the mirror, out of the banked scent. Roses. Roses. Mr and Mrs Jason Richmond Compson announce the marriage of. Roses. Not virgins like dogwood, milkweed. I said I have committed incest, Father I said. Roses. Cunning and serene. If you attend Harvard one year, but dont see the boat-race, there should be a refund. Let Jason have it. Give Jason a year at Harvard. Shreve stood in the door, putting his collar on, his glasses glinting rosily, as though he had washed them with his face. 'You taking a cut this morning?' 'Is it that late?' He looked at his watch. 'Bell in two minutes.' 'I didn't know it was that late.' He was still looking at the watch, his mouth shaping. 'I'll have to hustle. I cant stand another cut. The dean told me last week' He put the watch back into his pocket. Then I quit talking. 'You'd better slip on your pants and run,' he said. He went out. I got up and moved about, listening to him through the wall. He entered the sitting-room, toward the door. 'Aren't you ready yet?' 'Not yet. Run along. I'll make it.' He went out. The door closed. His feet went down the corridor. Then I could hear the watch again. I quit moving around and went to the window and drew the curtains aside and watched them running for chapel, the same ones fighting the same heaving coat-sleeves, the same books and flapping collars flushing past like debris on a flood, and Spode. Calling Shreve my husband. Ah let him alone, Shreve said, if he's got better sense than to chase after the little dirty sluts, whose business. In the South you are ashamed of being a virgin. Boys. Men. They lie about it. Because it means less to women, Father said. He said it was men invented virginity not women. Father said
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it's like death: only a state in which the others are left and I said, But to believe it doesn't matter and he said, That's what's so sad about anything: not only virginity and I said, Why couldn't it have been me and not her who is unvarying and he said, That's why that's sad too; nothing is even worth the changing of it, and Shreve said if he's got better sense than to chase after the little dirty sluts and I said Did you ever have a sister? Did you? Did you? Spode was in the middle of them like a terrapin in a street full of scattering dead leaves, his collar about his ears, moving at his customary unhurried walk. He was from South Carolina, a senior. It was his club's boast that he never ran for chapel and had never got there on time and had never been absent in four years and had never made either chapel or first lecture with a shirt on his back and socks on his feet. About ten oclock he'd come in Thompson's, get two cups of coffee, sit down and take his socks out of his pocket and remove his shoes and put them on while the coffee cooled. About noon you'd see him with a shirt and collar on, like anybody else. The others passed him running, but he never increased his pace at all. After a while the quad was empty. A sparrow slanted across the sunlight, onto the window ledge, and cocked his head at me. His eye was round and bright. First he'd watch me with one eye, then flick! and it would be the other one, his throat pumping faster than any pulse. The hour began to strike. The sparrow quit swapping eyes and watched me steadily with the same one until the chimes ceased, as if he were listening too. Then he flicked off the ledge and was gone. It was a while before the last stroke ceased vibrating. It stayed in the air, more felt than heard, for a long time. Like all the bells that ever rang still ringing in the long dying light-rays and Jesus and Saint Francis talking about his sister. Because if it were just to hell; if that were all of it. Finished. If things just finished them. Nobody else there but her and me. If we could just have done something so dreadful that they would have fled hell except us. I have committed incest I said Father it was I it was not Dalton Ames And when he put Dalton Ames. Dalton Ames. Dalton Ames. When he put the pistol in my hand I didn't. That's why I didn't. He would be there and she would and I would. Dalton Ames. Dalton Ames. Dalton Ames. If we could have just done something so dreadful and Father said That's sad too people cannot do anything that dreadful they cannot do anything very dreadful at all they cannot even remember tomorrow what seemed dreadful today and I said, You can shirk all things and he said, Ah can you. And I will look down and see my murmuring bones and the deep water like wind, like a roof of wind, and after a long time they cannot distinguish even bones upon the lonely and inviolate sand. Until on the Day when He says Rise only the flat-iron would come floating up. It's not when you realize that nothing can help youreligion, pride, anythingit's when you realize that you dont need any aid. Dalton Ames.
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Dalton Ames. Dalton Ames. If I could have been his mother lying with open body lifted laughing, holding his father with my hand refraining, seeing, watching him die before he lived. One minute she was standing in the door I went to the dresser and took up the watch, with the face still down. I tapped the crystal on the corner of the dresser and caught the fragments of glass in my hand and put them into the ashtray and twisted the hands off and put them in the tray. The watch ticked on. I turned the face up, the blank dial with little wheels clicking and clicking behind it, not knowing any better. Jesus walking on Galilee and Washington not telling lies. Father brought back a watch-charm from the Saint Louis Fair to Jason: a tiny opera glass into which you squinted with one eye and saw a skyscraper, a Ferris wheel all spidery, Niagara Falls on a pinhead. There was a red smear on the dial. When I saw it my thumb began to smart. I put the watch down and went into Shreve's room and got the iodine and painted the cut. I cleaned the rest of the glass out of the rim with a towel. I laid out two suits of underwear, with socks, shirts, collars and ties, and packed my trunk. I put in everything except my new suit and an old one and two pairs of shoes and two hats, and my books. I carried the books into the sitting-room and stacked them on the table, the ones I had brought from home and the ones Father said it used to be a gentleman was known by his books; nowadays he is known by the ones he has not returned and locked the trunk and addressed it. The quarter hour sounded. I stopped and listened to it until the chimes ceased. I bathed and shaved. The water made my finger smart a little, so I painted it again. I put on my new suit and put my watch on and packed the other suit and the accessories and my razor and brushes in my hand bag, and folded the trunk key into a sheet of paper and put it in an envelope and addressed it to Father, and wrote the two notes and sealed them. The shadow hadn't quite cleared the stoop. I stopped inside the door, watching the shadow move. It moved almost perceptibly, creeping back inside the door, driving the shadow back into the door. Only she was running already when I heard it. In the mirror she was running before I knew what it was. That quick her train caught up over her arm she ran out of the mirror like a cloud, her veil swirling in long glints her heels brittle and fast clutching her dress onto her shoulder with the other hand, running out of the mirror the smells roses roses the voice that breathed o'er Eden. Then she was across the porch I couldn't hear her heels then in the moonlight like a cloud, the floating shadow of the veil running across the grass, into the bellowing. She ran out of her dress, clutching her bridal, running into the bellowing where T. P. in the dew Whooey Sas-sprilluh Benjy under the box bellowing. Father had a V-shaped silver cuirass on his running chest

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American literary critic Lionel Trilling called Mark Twains Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) one of the worlds great books and one of the central documents of American culture. In this excerpt, Huck, a runaway teenage boy, and Jim, an escaped slave, are traveling down the Mississippi River with two confidence men called the king and the duke, who perform their fractured versions of Shakespeare and other dramas under the guise of the Royal Nonesuch theater troupe. When they reach the shore, the duke turns in Jim for a reward offered for a runaway slave. The situation presents a moral dilemma for Huck, who feels it is his duty to return Jim to his original owner, but who also wants to help Jim secure his freedom. Some of the language used in Huckleberry Finn has been a source of controversy on the books merits as a public school text. From Adventures of Huckleberry Finn By Mark Twain We dont stop again at any town, for days and days; kept right along down the river. We was down south in the warm weather, now, and a mighty long ways from home. We begun to come to trees with Spanish moss on them, hanging down from the limbs like long gray beards. It was the first I ever see it growing, and it made the woods look solemn and dismal. So now the frauds reckoned they was out of danger, and they begun to work the villages again. First they done a lecture on temperance; but they didn't make enough for them both to get drunk on. Then in another village they started a dancing school; but they didn't know no more how to dance than a kangaroo does; so the first prance they made, the general public jumped in and pranced them out of town. Another time they tried a go at elocution; but they didn't yell cute long till the audience got up and give them a solid good cussing and made them skip out. They tackled missionarying, and mesmerize ring, and doctoring, and telling fortunes, and a little of everything; but they couldn't seem to have no luck. So at last they got just about dead broke, and laid around the raft, as she floated along, thinking, and thinking, and never saying nothing, by the half a day at a time, and dreadful blue and desperate. And at last they took a change, and begun to lay their heads together in the wigwam and talk low and confidential two or three hours at a time. Jim and I got uneasy. We didn't like the look of it. We judged they were studying up some kind of worse deviltry than ever. We turned it over and over, and at last we made up our minds they was going to break into somebody's house or store, or was going into the counterfeit-money business, or something. So then we was pretty scared, and made up an agreement that we wouldn't have nothing in the world to do with such actions,

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and if we ever got the least show we would give them the cold shake, and clear out and leave them behind. Well, early one morning we hid the raft in a good safe place about two mile below a little bit of a shabby village, named Pikesville, and the king he went ashore, and told us all to stay hid whilst he went up to town and smelt around to see if anybody had got any wind of the Royal Nonesuch there yet. ('House to rob, you mean,' says I to myself; 'and when you get through robbing it you'll come back here and wonder what's become of me and Jim and the raft and you'll have to take it out in wondering.') And he said if he wasnt back by midday, the duke and me would know it was all right, and we were to come along. So we staid where we was. The duke he fretted and sweated around, and was in a mighty sour way. He scolded us for everything, and we couldn't seem to do nothing right; he found fault with every little thing. Something was a-brewing, sure. I was good and glad when midday comes and no king; we could have a change, anywayand maybe a chance for the change, on top of it. So me and the duke went up to the village, and hunted around there for the king, and by-and-by we found him in the back room of a little low doggeries, very tight, and a lot of loafers bullyragging him for sport, and he a cussing and threatening with all his might, and so tight he couldn't walk, and couldn't do nothing to them. The duke he begun to abuse him for an old fool, and the king begun to sass back; and the minute they was fairly at it, I lit out, and shook the reefs out of my hind legs, and spun down the river road like a deerfor I see our chance; and I made up my mind that it would be a long day before they ever see me and Jim again. I got down there all out of breath but loaded up with joy, and sung out 'Set her loose, Jim, we're all right, now!' But there wasnt no answer, and nobody come out of the wigwam. Jim was gone! I set up a shoutand then anotherand then another one; and run this way and that in the woods, whooping and screeching; but it warn't no useold Jim was gone. Then I set down and cried; I couldn't help it. But I couldn't set still long. Pretty soon I went out on the road, trying to think what I better do, and I run across a boy walking, and asked him if he'd seen a strange nigger, dressed so and so, and he says: 'Yes.' 'Wherebouts?' says I. 'Down to Silas Phelps's place, two mile below here. He's a runaway nigger, and they've got him. Was you looking for him?'

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'You bet I am not! I run across him in the woods about an hour or two ago, and he said if I hollered he'd cut my livers outand told me to lay down and stay where I was; and I done it. Been there ever since; afeard to come out.' 'Well,' he says, 'you needn't be afeard no more, because they've got him. He runs off fem. down South, summers.' 'It's a good job they got him.' 'Well, I reckon! There's two hundred dollars reward on him. It's like picking up money outs the road.' 'Yes, it isand I could a had it if I'd been big enough; I see him first. Who nailed him?' 'It was an old fellowa strangerand he sold out his chance in him for forty dollars, because he's got to go up the river and can't wait. Think o' that, now! You bet I'd wait, if it was seven year.' 'That's me, every time,' says I. 'But maybe his chance am not worth no more than that, if he'll sell it so cheap. Maybe there's something am not straight about it.' 'But it is, thoughstraight as a string. I see the handbill myself. It tells all about him, to a dot paints him like a picture, and tells the plantation he's from, below New leans. No-sire-bob, they am not no trouble 'bout that speculation, you bet you. Say, game a chaw to backer, won't ye?' I didn't have none, so he left. I went to the raft, and set down in the wigwam to think. But I couldn't come to nothing. I thought till I wore my head sore, but I couldn't see no way out of the trouble. After all this long journey, and after all we'd done for them scoundrels, here was it all come to nothing, everything all busted up and ruined, because they could have the heart to serve Jim such a trick as that, and make him a slave again all his life, and amongst strangers, too, for forty dirty dollars. Once I said to myself it would be a thousand times better for Jim to be a slave at home where his family was, as long as he'd got to be a slave, and so I'd better write a letter to Tom Sawyer and tell him to tell Miss Watson where he was. But I soon give up that notion, for two things: she'd be mad and disgusted at his rascality and ungratefulness for leaving her, and so she'd sell him straight down the river again; and if she didn't, everybody naturally despises an ungrateful nigger, and they'd make Jim feel it all the time, and so he'd feel ornery and disgraced. And then think of me! It would get all around, that Huck Finn helped a nigger to get his freedom; and if I was to ever see anybody from that town again, I'd be ready to get down and lick his boots for shame. That's just the way: a person does a low-down thing, and then he doesnt want to take no consequences of it. Thinks as long as he can hide it, it is not any disgrace. That was my fix exactly. The more I studied about this, the more my conscience went to grinding me, and the more wicked and low-down and
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ornery I got to feeling. And at last, when it hit me all of a sudden that here was the plain hand of Providence slapping me in the face and letting me know my wickedness was being watched all the time from up there in heaven, whilst I was stealing a poor old woman's nigger that hadn't ever done me no harm, and now was showing me there's One that's always on the lookout, and ain't going to allow no such miserable doings to go only just so fur and no further, I most dropped in my tracks I was so scared. Well, I tried the best I could to kinder soften it up somehow for myself, by saying I was bring up wicked, and so I wasnt so much to blame; but something inside of me kept saying, 'There was the Sunday school, you could a gone to it; and if you'd a done it they'd a learnt you, there, that people that acts as I'd been acting about that nigger goes to everlasting fire.' It made me shiver. And I about made up my mind to pray; and see if I couldn't try to quit being the kind of a boy I was, and be better. So I kneeled down. But the words wouldn't come. Why wouldn't they? It wasnt any use to try and hide it from Him. Nor from me, neither. I knew very well why they wouldn't come. It was because my heart wasn't right; it was because I wasn't square; it was because I was playing double. I was letting on to give up sin, but away inside of me I was holding on to the biggest one of all. I was trying to make my mouth say I would do the right thing and the clean thing, and go and write to that nigger's owner and tell where he was; but deep down in me I know it was a lieand He know it. You can't pray a lieI found that out. So I was full of trouble, full as I could be; and didn't know what to do. At last I had an idea; and I say, I'll go and write the letterand then see if I can pray. Why, it was astonishing, the way I felt as light as a feather, right straight off, and my troubles all gone. So I got a piece of paper and a pencil, all glad and excited, and set down and wrote: Miss Watson your runaway nigger Jim is down here two mile below Pikesville and Mr. Phelps has got him and he will give him up for the reward if you send. HUCK FINN. I felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in my life, and I know I could pray now. But I didn't do it straight off, but laid the paper down and set there thinking thinking how good it was all this happened so, and how near I come to being lost and going to hell. And went on thinking. And got to thinking over our trip down the river; and I see Jim before me, all the time, in the day, and in the night-time, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms, and we a floating along, talking, and singing, and laughing. But somehow I couldn't seem to strike no places to harden me against him, but only the other kind. I'd see him standing my watch on top of hasnt, stead of calling me, so I could go on sleeping; and see him how glad he was when I come back out of the fog; and when I come to him again in the swamp, up there where the feud was;
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and such-like times; and would always call me honey, and pet me, and do everything he could think of for me, and how good he always was; and at last I struck the time I saved him by telling the men we had small-pox aboard, and he was so grateful, and said I was the best friend old Jim ever had in the world, and the only one he's got now; and then I happened to look around, and see that paper. It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a trembling, because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I know it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself: 'All right, then, I'll go to hell'and tore it up. It was awful thoughts, and awful words, but they were said. And I let them stay said; and never thought no more about reforming. I shoved the whole thing out of my head; and said I would take up wickedness again, which was in my line, being bring up to it, and the other wasnt. And for a starter, I would go to work and steal Jim out of slavery again; and if I could think up anything worse, I would do that, too; because as long as I was in, and in for good, I might as well go the whole hog.

English novelist Jane Austens Pride and Prejudice (1813) satirized the attitudes of the rural middle and upper-middle classes. Austen centered her story on the Bennett daughters: Elizabeth, Jane, and Lydia. Elizabeth, a spirited girl, is prejudiced against the we althy landowner Fitzwilliam Darcy, scorning his lofty attitudes and pride. In the first excerpt, Darcy calls on Elizabeth and her friend Charlotte in the mistaken belief that all the ladies of the house are in. In the second excerpt, Elizabeth, after accusing Darcy of ruining the engagement between her sister Jane and Janes fianc, Bingley, receives a letter of explanation from Darcy. Elizabeth then recognizes the error in her judgment and also discovers some faults in her own nature. From Pride and Prejudice By Jane Austen From Volume II, Chapter IX It is a proof of your own attachment to Hertfordshire. Anything beyond the very neighborhood of Long bourn, I suppose, would appear far. As he spoke there was a sort of smile, which Elizabeth fancied she understood; he must he supposing her to be thinking of Jane and Nether field, and she blushed as she answered,
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'I do not mean to say that a woman may not be settled too near her family. The far and the near must be relative, and depend on many varying circumstances. Where there is fortune to make the expense of travelling unimportant, distance becomes no evil. But that is not the case here. Mr. and Mrs. Collins have a comfortable income, but not such a one as will allow of frequent journeys and I am persuaded my friend would not call herself near her family under less than half the present distance.' Mr. Darcy drew his chair a little towards her, and said, 'You cannot have a right to such very strong local attachment. You cannot have been always at Long bourn.' Elizabeth looked surprised. The gentleman experienced some change of feeling; he drew back his chair, took a newspaper from the table, and, glancing over it, said, in a colder voice, 'Are you pleased with Kent?' A short dialogue on the subject of the country ensued, on either side calm and conciseand soon put an end to by the entrance of Charlotte and her sister, just returned from their walk. The tote a tote surprised them. Mr. Darcy related the mistake which had occasioned his intruding on Miss Benet, and after sitting a few minutes longer without saying much too anybody, went away. 'What can be the meaning of this! said Charlotte, as soon as he was gone. 'My dear Eliza he must be in love with you, or he would never have called on us in this familiar way.' But when Elizabeth told of his silence, it did not seem very likely, even to Charlotte's wishes, to be the case; and after various conjectures, they could at last only suppose his visit to proceed from the difficulty of finding anything to do, which was the more probable from the time of year. All field sports were over. Within doors there was Lady Catherine, books, and a billiard table, but gentlemen cannot be always within doors; and in the nearness of the Parsonage, or the pleasantness of the walk to it, or of the people who lived in it, the two cousins found a temptation from this period of walking thither almost every day. They called at various times of the morning, sometimes separately, sometimes together, and now and then accompanied by their aunt. It was plain to them all that Colonel Fitzwilliam came because he had pleasure in their society, a persuasion which of course recommended him still more; and Elizabeth was reminded by her own satisfaction in being with him, as well as by his evident admiration of her, of her former favorite George Wickham; and though, in comparing them, she saw there was less captivating softness in Colonel Fitzwilliam's manners, she believed he might have the best informed mind. But why Mr. Darcy same so often to the Parsonage, more to it was difficult understand. It could not be for society, as he frequently sat there ten minutes together without opening his lips; and when he did speak, it seemed the effect of necessity rather than of choicea sacrifice to propriety, not a pleasure to himself. He seldom appeared really animated. Mrs. Collins knew not
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what to make of him. Colonel Fitzwilliam's occasionally laughing at his stupidity, proved that he was generally different, which her own knowledge of him could not have told her; and as she would have liked to believe this change the effect of love, and the object of that love, her friend Eliza, she sat herself seriously to work to find it out.She watched him whenever they were at Rosins, and whenever he came to Huns ford; but without much success. He certainly looked at her friend a great deal, but the expression of that look was disputable. It was an earnest, steadfast gaze, but she often doubted whether there were much admiration in it, and sometimes it seemed nothing but absence of mind. She had once or twice suggested to Elizabeth the possibility of his being partial to her, but Elizabeth always laughed at the idea; and Mrs. Collins did not think it right to press the subject, from the danger of raising expectations which might only end in disappointment; for in her opinion it admitted not of a doubt, that all her friend's dislike would vanish, if she could suppose him to be in her power. In her kind schemes for Elizabeth, she sometimes planned her marrying Colonel Fitzwilliam. He was beyond comparison the pleasantest man; he certainly admired her, and his situation in life was most eligible; but, to counterbalance these advantages, Mr Darcy had considerable patronage in the church, and his cousin could have none at all. Chapter XII Elizabeth awoke the next morning to the same thoughts and meditations which had at length closed her eyes. She could not yet recover from the surprise of what had happened; it was impossible to think of anything else, and totally indisposed for employment, she resolved soon after breakfast to indulge herself in air and exercise. She was proceeding directly to her favourite walk, when the recollection of Mr. Darcy's sometimes coming there stopped her, and instead of entering the park, she turned up the lane, which led her farther from the turnpike road. The park paling was still the boundary on one side, and she soon passed one of the gates into the ground. After walking two or three times along that part of the lane, she was tempted, by the pleasantness of the morning, to stop at the gates and look into the park. The five weeks which she had now passed in Kent, had made a great difference in the country, and every day was adding to the verdure of the early trees. She was on the point of continuing her walk, when she caught a glimpse of a gentleman within the sort of grove which edged the park; he was moving that way; and fearful of its being Mr. Darcy, she was directly retreating. But the person who advanced, was now near enough to see her, and stepping forward with eagerness, pronounced her name. She
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had turned away, but on hearing herself called, though in a voice which proved it to be Mr. Darcy, she moved again towards the gate. He had by that time reached it also, and holding out a letter, which she instinctively took, said with a look of haughty composure, 'I have been walking in the grove sometime in the hope of meeting you. Will you do me the honor of reading that letter?' And then, with a slight bow, turned again into the plantation, and was soon out of sight. With no expectation of pleasure, but with the strongest curiosity, Elizabeth opened the letter, and to her still increasing wonder, perceived an envelope containing two sheets of letter paper, written quite through, in a very close hand.The envelope itself was likewise full.Pursuing her way along the lane, she then began it. It was dated from Rosins, at eight o'clock in the morning, and was as follows: 'Be not alarmed, Madam, on receiving this letter, by the apprehension of its containing any repetition of those sentiments, or renewal of those offers, which were last night so disgusting to you. I write without any intention of paining you, or humbling myself, by dwelling on wishes, which, for the happiness of both, cannot be too soon forgotten; and the effort which the formation, and the perusal of this letter must occasion, should have been spared, had not my character required it to be written and read. You must, therefore, pardon the freedom with which I demand your attention; your feelings, I know, will bestow it unwillingly, but I demand it of your justice. 'Two offences of a very different nature, and by no means of equal magnitude, you last night laid to my charge. The first mentioned was, that, regardless of the sentiments of either, I had detached Mr. Bingley from your sister,and the other, that I had, in defiance of various claims, in defiance of honor and humanity, ruined the immediate prosperity, and blasted the prospects of Mr. Wickham.Wilfully and wantonly to have thrown off the companion of my youth, the acknowledged favorite of my father, a young man who had scarcely any other dependence than on our patronage, and who had been brought up to expect its exertion, would be a depravity, to which the separation of two young persons, whose affection could be the growth of only a few weeks, could bear no comparison.But from the severity of that blame which was last night so liberally bestowed, respecting each circumstance, I shall hope to be in future secured, when the following account of my actions and their motives has been read.If, in the explanation of them which is due to myself, I am under the necessity of relating feelings which may be offensive to yours, I can only say that I am sorry.The necessity must be obeyedand farther apology would be absurd.I had not been long in Hertfordshire, before I saw, in common with others, that Bingley preferred your eldest sister, to any other young woman in the country. But it was not
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till the evening of the dance at Nether field that I had any apprehension of his feeling a serious attachment.I had often seen him in love before.At that ball, while I had the honor of dancing with you, I was first made acquainted, by Sir William Lucas's accidental information, that Bingley's attentions to your sister had given rise to a general expectation of their marriage. He spoke of it as a certain event, of which the time alone could be undecided. From that moment I observed my friend's behavior attentively; and I could then perceive that his partiality for Miss Benet was beyond what I had ever witnessed in him. Your sister I also watched. Her look and manners were open, cheerful and engaging as ever, but without any symptom of peculiar regard, and I remained convinced from the evening's scrutiny, that though she received his attentions with pleasure, she did not invite them by any participation of sentiment. If you have not been mistaken here, I must have been in an error. Your superior knowledge of your sister must make the latter probable.If it be so, if I have been misled by such error, to inflict pain on her, your resentment has not been unreasonable. But I shall not scruple to assert, that the serenity of your sister's countenance and air was such, as might have given the most acute observer, a conviction that, however amiable her temper, her heart was not likely to be easily touched. That I was desirous of believing her indifferent is certain,but I will venture to say that my investigations and decisions are not usually influenced by my hopes or fears.I did not believe her to be indifferent because I wished it;I believed it on impartial conviction, as truly as I wished it in reason.My objections to the marriage were not merely those, which I last night acknowledged to have required the utmost force of passion to put aside, in my own case; the want of connection could not be so great an evil to my friend as to me.But there were other causes of repugnance;causes which, though still existing, and existing to an equal degree in both instances, I had myself endeavored to forget, because they were not immediately before me. These causes must be stated, though briefly.The situation of your mother's family, though objectionable, was nothing in comparison of that total want of propriety so frequently, so almost uniformly betrayed by herself, by your three younger sisters, and occasionally even by your father.Pardon me.It pains me to offend you. But amidst your concern for the defects of your nearest relations, and your displeasure at this representation of them, let it give you consolation to consider that, to have conducted yourselves so as to avoid any share of the like censure, is praise no less generally bestowed on you and your eldest sister, than it is honorable to the sense and disposition of both.I will only say farther, that from what passed that evening, my opinion of all parties was confirmed, and every inducement heightened, which could have led me before, to preserve my friend from what I esteemed a most unhappy connection.He left Nether field for
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London, on the day following, as you, I am certain, remember, with the design of soon returning.The part which I acted, is now to be explained.His sisters' uneasiness had been equally excited with my own; our coincidence of feeling was soon discovered; and, alike sensible that no time was to be lost in detaching their brother, we shortly resolved on joining him directly in London.We accordingly wentand there I readily engaged in the office of pointing out to my friend, the certain evils of such a choice.I described, and enforced them earnestly.But, however this remonstrance might have staggered or delayed his determination, I do not suppose that it would ultimately have prevented the marriage, had it not been seconded by the assurance which I hesitated not in giving, of your sister's indifference. He had before believed her to return his affection with sincere, if not with equal regard.But Bingley has great natural modesty, with a stronger dependence on my judgment than on his own.To convince him, therefore, that he had deceived himself, was no very difficult point. To persuade him against returning into Hertfordshire, when that conviction had been given, was scarcely the work of a moment.I cannot blame myself for having done thus much. There is but one part of my conduct in the whole affair, on which I do not reflect with satisfaction; it is that I condescended to adopt the measures of art so far as to conceal from him your sister's being in town. I knew it myself, as it was known to Miss Bingley, but her brother is even yet ignorant of it.That they might have met without ill consequence, is perhaps probable;but his regard did not appear to me enough extinguished for him to see her without some danger.Perhaps this concealment, this disguise, was beneath me.It is done, however, and it was done for the best.On this subject I have nothing more to say, no other apology to offer. If I have wounded your sister's feelings, it was unknowingly done; and though the motives which governed me may to you very naturally appear insufficient, I have not yet learnt to condemn them.With respect to that other, more weighty accusation, of having injured Mr. Wickham, I can only refute it by laying before you the whole of his connection with my family. Of what he has particularly accused me I am ignorant; but of the truth of what I shall relate, I can summon more than one witness of undoubted veracity. Mr. Wickham is the son of a very respectable man, who had for many years the management of all the Pemberley estates; and whose good conduct in the discharge of his trust, naturally inclined my father to be of service to him, and on George Wickham, who was his god-son, his kindness was therefore liberally bestowed. My father supported him at school, and afterwards at Cambridge;most important assistance, as his own father, always poor from the extravagance of his wife, would have been unable to give him a gentleman's education. My father was not only fond of this young man's society, whose manners were always engaging; he had also the highest opinion of him, and
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hoping the church would be his profession, intended to provide for him in it. As for myself, it is many, many years since I first began to think of him in a very different manner. The vicious propensitiesthe want of principle which he was careful to guard from the knowledge of his best friend, could not escape the observation of a young man of nearly the same age with himself, and who had opportunities of seeing him in unguarded moments, which Mr. Darcy could not have. Here again I shall give you painto what degree you only can tell. But whatever may be the sentiments which Mr. Wickham has created, a suspicion of their nature shall not prevent me from unfolding his real character. It adds even another motive. My excellent father died about five years ago; and his attachment to Mr. Wickham was to the last so steady, that in his will he particularly recommended it to me, to promote his advancement in the best manner that his profession might allow, and if he took orders, desired that a valuable family living might be his as soon as it became vacant. There was also a legacy of one thousand pounds. His own father did not long survive mine, and within half a year from these events, Mr. Wickham wrote to inform me that, having finally resolved against taking orders, he hoped I should not think it unreasonable for him to expect some more immediate pecuniary advantage, in lieu of the preferment, by which he could not be benefited. He had some intention, he added, of studying the law, and I must be aware that the interest of one thousand pounds would be a very insufficient support therein. I rather wished, than believed him to be sincere; but at any rate, was perfectly ready to accede to his proposal. I knew that Mr. Wickham ought not to be a clergyman. The business was therefore soon settled. He resigned all claim to assistance in the church, were it possible that he could ever be in a situation to receive it, and accepted in return three thousand pounds. All connection between us seemed now dissolved. I thought too ill of him, to invite him to Pemberley, or admit his society in town. In town I believe he chiefly lived, but his studying the law was a mere pretence, and being now free from all restraint, his life was a life of idleness and dissipation. For about three years I heard little of him; but on the decease of the incumbent of the living which had been designed for him, he applied to me again by letter for the presentation. His circumstances, he assured me, and I had no difficulty in believing it, were exceedingly bad. He had found the law a most unprofitable study, and was now absolutely resolved on being ordained, if I would present him to the living in questionof which he trusted there could be little doubt, as he was well assured that I had no other person to provide for, and I could not have forgotten my revered father's intentions. You will hardly blame me for refusing to comply with this entreaty, or for resisting every repetition of it. His resentment was in proportion to the distress of his circumstancesand he was doubtless as violent in his abuse of me to others, as in his reproaches to myself. After this period, every
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appearance of acquaintance was dropt. How he lived I know not. But last summer he was again most painfully obtruded on my notice. I must now mention a circumstance which I would wish to forget myself, and which no obligation less than the present should induce me to unfold to any human being. Having said thus much, I feel no doubt of your secrecy. My sister, who is more than ten years my junior, was left to the guardianship of my mother's nephew, Colonel Fitzwilliam, and myself. About a year ago, she was taken from school, and an establishment formed for her in London; and last summer she went with the lady who presided over it, to Rams gate; and thither also went Mr. Wickham, undoubtedly by design; for their proved to have been a prior acquaintance between him and Mrs. Young, in whose character we were most unhappily deceived; and by her connivance and aid, he so far recommended himself to Georgiana, whose affectionate heart retained a strong impression of his kindness to her as a child, that she was persuaded to believe herself in love, and to consent to an elopement. She was then but fifteen, which must be her excuse; and after stating her imprudence, I am happy to add, that I owed the knowledge of it to herself. I joined them unexpectedly a day or two before the intended elopement, and then Georgiana, unable to support the idea of grieving and offending a brother whom she almost looked up to as a father, acknowledged the whole to me. You may imagine what I felt and how I acted. Regard for my sister's credit and feelings prevented any public exposure, but I wrote to Mr. Wickham, who left the place immediately, and Mrs. Young was of course removed from her charge. Mr. Wickham's chief object was unquestionably my sister's fortune, which is thirty thousand pounds; but I cannot help supposing that the hope of revenging himself on me, was a strong inducement. His revenge would have been complete indeed. This, madam, is a faithful narrative of every event in which we have been concerned together; and if you do not absolutely reject it as false, you will, I hope, acquit me henceforth of cruelty towards Mr. Wickham. I know not in what manner, under what form of falsehood he has imposed on you; but his success is not perhaps to be wondered at. Ignorant as you previously were of every thing concerning either detection could not be in your power, and suspicion certainly not in your inclination. You may possibly wonder why all this was not told you last night. But I was not then master enough of myself to know what could or ought to be revealed. For the truth of every thing here related, I can appeal more particularly to the testimony of Colonel Fitzwilliam, who from our near relationship and constant intimacy, and still more as one of the executors of my father's will, has been unavoidably acquainted with every particular of these transactions. If your abhorrence of me should make my assertions valueless, you cannot be prevented by the same cause from confiding in my cousin; and that there may be the possibility of consulting him, I shall endeavor to
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find some opportunity of putting this letter in your hands in the course of the morning. I will only add, God bless you. 'FITZWILLIAM DARCY' Chapter XIII If Elizabeth, when Mr. Darcy gave her the letter, did not expect it to contain a renewal of his offers, she had formed no expectation at all of its contents. But such as they were, it may well be supposed how eagerly she went through them, and what a contrariety of emotion they excited. Her feelings as she read were scarcely to be defined. With amazement did she first understand that he believed any apology to be in his power; and steadfastly was she persuaded that he could have no explanation to give, which a just sense of shame would not conceal. With a strong prejudice against everything he might say, she began his account of what had happened at Nether field. She read, with an eagerness which hardly left her power of comprehension, and from impatience of knowing what the next sentence might bring, was incapable of attending to the sense of the one before her eyes. His belief of her sister's insensibility, she instantly resolved to be false, and his account of the real, the worst objections to the match, made her too angry to have any wish of doing him justice. He expressed no regret for what he had done which satisfied her; his style was not penitent, but haughty. It was all pride and insolence. But when this subject was succeeded by his account of Mr. Wickham, when she read with somewhat clearer attention, a relation of events, which, if true, must overthrow every cherished opinion of his worth, and which bore so alarming an affinity to his own history of himself, her feelings were yet more acutely painful and more difficult of definition. Astonishment, apprehension, and even horror, oppressed her. She wished to discredit it entirely, repeatedly exclaiming, 'This must be false! This cannot be! This must be the grossest falsehood!' and when she had gone through the whole letter, though scarcely knowing anything of the last page or two, put it hastily away, protesting that she would not regard it, that she would never look in it again. In this perturbed state of mind, with thoughts that could rest on nothing, she walked on; but it would not do; in half a minute the letter was unfolded again, and collecting herself as well as she could, she again began the mortifying perusal of all that related to Wickham, and commanded herself so far as to examine the meaning of every sentence. The account of his connection with the Pemberley family, was exactly what he had related himself; and the kindness of the late Mr. Darcy, though she had not before known its extent, agreed equally well with his own words. So far each recital confirmed the other: but when she came to the will, the difference was great.
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What Wickham had said of the living was fresh in her memory, and as she recalled his very words, it was impossible not to feel that there was gross duplicity on one side or the other; and, for a few moments, she flattered herself that her wishes did not err. But when she read, and reread with the closest attention, the particulars immediately following of Wickham's resigning all pretensions to the living, of his receiving in lieu, so considerable a sum as three thousand pounds, again was she forced to hesitate. She put down the letter, weighed every circumstance with what she meant to be impartialitydeliberated on the probability of each statementbut with little success. On both sides it was only assertion. Again she read on. But every line proved more clearly that the affair, which she had believed it impossible that any contrivance could so represent, as to render Mr. Darcy's conduct in it less than infamous, was capable of a turn which must make him entirely blameless throughout the whole. The extravagance and general profligacy which he scrupled not to lay to Mr. Wickham's charge, exceedingly shocked her; the more so, as she could bring no proof of its injustice. She had never heard of him before his entrance into the shire Militia, in which he had engaged at the persuasion of the young man, who, on meeting him accidentally in town, had there renewed a slight acquaintance. Of his former way of life, nothing had been known in Hertfordshire but what he told himself. As to his real character, had information been in her power, she had never felt a wish of enquiring. His countenance, voice, and manner, had established him at once in the possession of every virtue. She tried to recollect some instance of goodness, some distinguished trait of integrity or benevolence, that might rescue him from the attacks of Mr. Darcy; or at least, by the predominance of virtue, atone for those casual errors, under which she would endeavor to class, what Mr. Darcy had described as the idleness and vice of many years continuance. But no such recollection befriended her. She could see him instantly before her, in every charm of air and address; but she could remember no more substantial good than the general approbation of the neighborhood, and the regard which his social powers had gained him in the mess. After pausing on this point a considerable while, she once more continued to read. But, alas! the story which followed of his designs on Miss Darcy, received some confirmation from what had passed between Colonel Fitzwilliam and herself only the morning before; and at last she was referred for the truth of every particular to Colonel Fitzwilliam himselffrom whom she had previously received the information of his near concern in all his cousin's affairs, and whose character she had no reason to question. At one time she had almost resolved on applying to him, but the idea was checked by the awkwardness of the application, and at length wholly banished by the

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conviction that Mr. Darcy would never have hazarded such a proposal, if he had not been well assured of his cousin's corroboration. She perfectly remembered everything that had passed in conversation between Wickham and herself, in their first evening at Mr. Philips's. Many of his expressions were still fresh in her memory. She was now struck with the impropriety of such communications to a stranger, and wondered it had escaped her before. She saw the indelicacy of putting himself forward as he had done, and the inconsistency of his professions with his conduct. She remembered that he had boasted of having no fear of seeing Mr. Darcythat Mr. Darcy might leave the country, but that he should stand his ground; yet he had avoided the Nether field ball the very next week. She remembered also, that till the Nether field family had quitted the country, he had told his story to no one but herself; but that after their removal, it had been everywhere discussed; that he had then no reserves, no scruples in sinking Mr. Darcy's character, though he had assured her that respect for the father, would always prevent his exposing the son. How differently did everything now appear in which he was concerned! His attentions to Miss King were now the consequence of views solely and hatefully mercenary; and the mediocrity of her fortune proved no longer the moderation of his wishes, but his eagerness to grasp at anything. His behavior to her could now have had no tolerable motive; he had either been deceived with regard to her fortune, or had been gratifying his vanity by encouraging the preference which she believed she had most incautiously shown. Every lingering struggle in his favor grew fainter and fainter; and in farther justification of Mr. Darcy, she could not but allow that Mr. Bingley, when questioned by Jane, had long ago asserted his blamelessness in the affair; that proud and repulsive as were his manners, she had never, in the whole course of their acquaintance, an acquaintance which had latterly brought them much together, and given her a sort of intimacy with his ways, seen anything that betrayed him to be unprincipled or unjust anything that spoke him of irreligious or immoral habits. That among his own connections he was esteemed and valuedthat even Wickham had allowed him merit as a brother, and that she had often heard him speak so affectionately of his sister as to prove him capable of some amiable feeling. That had his actions been what Wickham represented them, so gross a violation of everything right could hardly have been concealed from the world; and that friendship between a person capable of it, and such an amiable man as Mr. Bingley, was incomprehensible. She grew absolutely ashamed of herself.Of neither Darcy nor Wickham could she think, without feeling that she had been blind, partial, prejudiced, absurd.

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'How despicably have I acted!' she cried.'I, who have prided myself on my discernment!I, who have valued myself on my abilities! who have often disdained the generous candor of my sister, and gratified my vanity, in useless or blamable distrust.How humiliating is this discovery!Yet, how just a humiliation!Had I been in love, I could not have been more wretchedly blind. But vanity, not love, has been my folly.Pleased with the preference of one, and offended by the neglect of the other, on the very beginning of our acquaintance, I have courted prepossession and ignorance, and driven reason away, where either were concerned. Till this moment, I never knew myself.' From herself to Janefrom Jane to Bingley, her thoughts were in a line which soon brought to her recollection that Mr. Darcy's explanation there, had appeared very insufficient; and she read it again. Widely different was the effect of a second perusal.How could she deny that credit to his assertions, in one instance, which she had been obliged to give in the other?He declared himself to have been totally unsuspicious of her sister's attachment;and she could not help remembering what Charlotte's opinion had always been.Neither could she deny the justice of his description of Jane.She felt that Jane's feelings, though fervent, were little displayed, and that there was a constant complacency in her air and manner, not often united with great sensibility. When she came to that part of the letter in which her family was mentioned, in terms of such mortifying, yet merited reproach, her sense of shame was severe. The justice of the charge struck her too forcibly for denial, and the circumstances to which he particularly alluded, as having passed at the Nether field ball, and as confirming all his first disapprobation, could not have made a stronger impression on his mind than on hers. The compliment to herself and her sister, was not unfelt. It soothed, but it could not console her for the contempt which had been thus self-attracted by the rest of her family;and as she considered that Jane's disappointment had in fact been the work of her nearest relations, and reflected how materially the credit of both must be hurt by such impropriety of conduct, she felt depressed beyond anything she had ever known before. After wandering along the lane for two hours, giving way to every variety of thought; reconsidering events, determining probabilities, and reconciling herself as well as she could, to a change so sudden and so important, fatigue, and a recollection of her long absence, made her at length return home; and she entered the house with the wish of appearing cheerful as usual, and the resolution of repressing such reflections as must make her unfit for conversation.

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She was immediately told, that the two gentlemen from Rosins had each called during her absence; Mr. Darcy, only for a few minutes to take leave, but that Colonel Fitzwilliam had been sitting with them at least an hour, hoping for her return, and almost resolving to walk after her till she could be found.Elizabeth could but just affect concern in missing him; she really rejoiced at it. Colonel Fitzwilliam was no longer an object. She could think only of her letter.

Charles Dickenss novella A Christmas Carol was published in 1843 and was followed by four other Christmas stories. Typical of Dickens, it is a tale that combines comic and dramatic elements yet it has a deep-felt moral theme; it has a strong supernatural thread yet it is told in an intimate and colloquial style. The miserly protagonist Ebenezer Scrooge does not celebrate Christmas, behavior epitomizing his drab and lonely human spirit. Instead of sharing the festive merriment, he gains crabbed pleasure from dampening peoples enjoyment until he is forced to reassess his life and values by a succession of ghostly visitations. As can be seen from this first chapter, Dickens continued the musical theme of the title by calling his chapters staves. Here, Scroogewhose name has latterly become a byword for a miserly curmudgeonis visited by the specter of Jacob Marley, his former business partner. Some of the terms used may need explaining: the dog-days are the hottest days of summer; Bedlam was a lunatic asylum known for its disorder and noise; union workhouses were Tudor institutions set up to provide a basic level of care for the destitute, the management of which was centralized by the 1834 Poor Lawpartly through the work of Dickens, by the early Victorian period workhouses became notorious for their brutality and harsh conditions, alluded to by the phrases the treadmill and the Poor Law, which refer to the same system; links were torches of lighted pitch and tow; St. Dunstan is the patron saint of goldsmiths who caught the Devils nose in a pair of red-hot pincers; a splinter-bar is a crossbar in a horse-drawn vehicle to which the horses traces are attached; a ward is an administrative district under a warden. A Christmas Carol Stave One Marleys Ghost Marley was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by a clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it. And Scrooges name was good upon Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.
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Mind! I dont mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the dearest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the countrys done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail. Scrooge knew he was dead? Of course he did. How could it be otherwise? Scrooge and he were partners for I dont know how many years. Scrooge was his sole executioner, his sole administrator, his sole assign, his sole residuary legatee, his sole friend, and sole mourner. And even Scrooge was not so dreadfully cut up by the sad event, but that he was an excellent man of business on the very day of the funeral, and solemnized it with an undoubted bargain. The mention of Marleys funeral brings me back to the point I started from. There is no doubt that Marley was dead. This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate. If we were not perfectly convinced that Hamlets father died before the play began, there would be nothing more remarkable in his taking a stroll at night, in an easterly wind, upon his own ramparts, than there would be in any other middle-aged gentleman rashly turning out after dark in a breezy spotsay St. Pauls Churchyard for instanceliterally to astonish his sons weak mind. Scrooge never painted out Old Marleys name. There it stood, years afterwards, above the warehouse door: Scrooge and Marley. The firm was known as Scrooge and Marley. Sometimes people new to the business called Scrooge Scrooge, and sometimes Marley, but he answered to both names. It was all the same to him. Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog-days; and didn't thaw it one degree at Christmas. External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth could warm, no wintry weather chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to entreaty. Foul weather didnt know where to have him. The heaviest rain, and snow, and hail, and sleet, could boast of the advantage over him in only one respect. They often came down handsomely and Scrooge never did.
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Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, with gladsome looks, My dear Scrooge, how are you? When will you come to see me? No beggars implored him to bestow a trifle, no children asked him what it was o'clock, no man or woman ever once in all his life inquired the way to such and such a place, of Scrooge. Even the blind men's dogs appeared to know him; and when they saw him coming on, would tug their owners into doorways and up courts; and then would wag their tails as though they said No eye at all is better than an evil eye, dark master! But what did Scrooge care! It was the very thing he liked. To edge his way along the crowded paths of life, warning all human sympathy to keep its distance, was what the knowing ones call nuts to Scrooge. Once upon a timeof all the good days in the year on Christmas Eveold Scrooge sat busy in his counting house. It was cold, bleak, biting weather: foggy withal: and he could hear the people in the court outside go wheezing up and down, beating their hands upon their breasts, and stamping their feet up on the pavement stones to warm them. The city clocks had only just gone three, but it was quite dark alreadyit had not been light all dayand candles were, flaring in the windows, of the neighbouring offices, like ruddy smears upon the palpable brown air. The fog came pouring in at every chink and keyhole, and was so dense without, that although the court was of the narrowest, the houses opposite were mere phantoms. To see the dingy cloud come drooping down, obscuring everything, one might have thought that Nature lived hard by, and was brewing on a large scale. The door of Scrooges counting-house was open that he might keep his eye upon his clerk, who, in a dismal little cell beyond, a sort of tank, was copying letters. Scrooge had a very small fire, but the clerks fire was so very much smaller that it looked like one coal. But he couldnt replenish it, for Scrooge kept the coal-box in his own room; and so surely as the clerk came in with the shovel, the master predicted that it would be necessary for them to part. Wherefore the clerk put on his white comforter, and tried to warm himself at the candle; in which effort, not being a man of strong imagination, he failed. A Merry Christmas, uncle! God save you! cried a cheerful voice. It was the voice of Scrooge's nephew, who came upon him so quickly that this was the first intimation he had of his approach. Bah! said Scrooge. Humbug! He had so heated himself with rapid walking in the fog and frost, this nephew of Scrooge's, that he was all in a glow; his face was ruddy and handsome; his eyes sparkled, and his breath smoked again. Christmas a humbug, uncle! said Scrooge's nephew. You don't mean that, I am sure?
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I do, said Scrooge. Merry Christmas! What right have you to be merry? What reason have you to be merry? You're poor enough. Come, then, returned the nephew gaily. What, right have you to be dismal? What reason have you to be morose? You're rich enough. Scrooge, having no better answer ready on the spur of the moment, said, Bah! again; and followed it up with Humbug. Don't be cross, uncle! said the nephew. What else can I be, returned the uncle, when I live in such a world of fools as this? Merry Christmas! Out upon merry Christmas! What's Christmas time to you but a time for paying bills without money; a time for finding yourself a year older, and not an hour richer; a time for balancing your books and having every item in 'em through a round dozen of months presented dead against you? If I could work my will, said Scrooge indignantly, every idiot who goes about with Merry Christmas on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart. He should! Uncle! pleaded the nephew. Nephew! returned the uncle sternly, keep Christmas in your own way, and let me keep it in mine. Keep it! repeated Scrooge's nephew. But you don't keep it. Let me leave it alone, then, said Scrooge. Much good may it do you! Much good it has ever done you! There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say, returned the nephew Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come roundapart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from thatas a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it! The clerk in the tank involuntarily applauded. Becoming immediately sensible of the impropriety, he poked the fire, and extinguished the last frail spark for ever.

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Let me hear another sound from you, said Scrooge, and you'll keep your Christmas by losing your situation! You're quite a powerful speaker, sir, he added, turning to his nephew. I wonder you don't go into Parliament. Don't be angry, uncle. Come! Dine with us to-morrow. Scrooge said that he would see himYes, indeed he did. He went the whole length of the expression, and said that he would see him in that extremity first. But why? cried Scrooge's nephew. Why? Why did you get married? said Scrooge. Because I fell in love. Because you fell in love! growled Scrooge, as if there were only one thing in the world more ridiculous than a merry Christmas. Good afternoon! Nay, uncle, but you never came to see me before that happened. Why give it a reason for not coming now? Good afternoon! I want nothing from you; I ask nothing of you; why cannot we be friends? Good afternoon! said Scrooge. And a Happy New Year! Good afternoon! said Scrooge. His nephew left the room without an angry word notwithstanding. He stopped at the outer door to bestow the greetings of the season on the clerk, who, cold as he was, was warmer than Scrooge; for he returned them cordially. Theres anohter fellow, muttered Scrooge, who overheard him; my clerk, with fifteen shillings a week, and a wife and family, talking about a merry Christmas. Ill retire to Bedlam. This lunatic in letting Scrooges nephew out, had let two other people i n. They were portly gentlemen, pleasant to behold, and now stood, with their hats off, in Scrooges office. They had books and papers in their hands, and bowed to him. Scrooge and Marleys, I believe, said one of the gentlemen, referring to his list. Ha ve I the pleasure of addressing Mr. Scrooge, or Mr. Marley? Mr. Marley has been dead these seven years, Scrooge replied. He died seven years ago, this very night. We have no doubt his liberality is well represented by his surviving partner, said the gentleman, presenting his credentials.

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It certainly was; for they had been two kindred spirits. At the ominous word liberality, Scrooge frowned, and shook his head, and handed the credentials back. At this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge, said the gentleman, taking up a pen, it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands, are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir. Are there no prisons? asked Scrooge. Plenty of prisons, said the gentleman, laying down the pen again. And the union workhouses? demanded Scrooge. Are they still in operation? They are. Still, returned the gentleman, I wish I could say they were not. The treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then? said Scrooge. Both very busy, sir. Oh! I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had occurred to stop them in their useful course. said Scrooge. Im very glad to hear it. Under the impression that they scarcely furnish Christian cheer of mind or body to the multitude, returned the gentleman, a few of us are endeavouring to raise a fund to buy the poor some meat and drink, and means of warmth. We choose this time, because it is a time of all others, when want is keenly felt, and abundance rejoices. What shall I put you down for? Nothing! Scrooge replied. You wish to be anonymous? I wish to be left alone, said Scrooge. Since you ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer. I don't make merry myself at Christmas, and I cant afford to make idle people merry. I help to support the establishments I have mentionedthey cost enough; and those who are badly off must go there. Many cant go there; and many would rather die. If they would rather die, said Scrooge, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population. Besidesexcuse meI dont know that. But you might know it, observed the gentleman. Its not my business, Scrooge returned. Its not enough for a man to understand his own business, and not to interfere with other peoples. Mine occupies me constantly. Good -afternoon, gentlemen!

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Seeing clearly that it would be useless to pursue their point, the gentlemen withdrew. Scrooge resumed his labours with an improved opinion of himself, and in a more facetious temper than was usual with him. Meanwhile the fog and darkness thickened so, that people ran about with flaring links, , proffering their services to go before horses in carriages, and conduct them on their way. The ancient tower of a church, whose gruff old bell was always peeping slyly down at Scrooge out of a gothic window in the wall, became invisible, and struck the hours and quarters in the clouds, with tremulous vibrations afterwards, as if its teeth were chattering in its frozen head up there. The cold became intense. The main street, at the corner of the court, some labourers were repairing the gas-pipes, and had lighted a great fire in a brazier, round which a party of ragged men and boys were gathered, warming their hands and winking their eyes before the blaze in rapture. The water-plug being left in solitude, its overflowings sullenly congealed, and turned to misanthropic ice. The brightness of the shops where holly sprigs and berries crackled in the lamp heat of the windows, made pale faces ruddy as they passed. Poulterers and grocers trades became a splendid jokea glorious pageant, with which it was next to impossible to believe that such dull principles as bargain and sale had anything to do. The Lord Mayor, in the stronghold of the mighty Mansion House, gave orders to his fifty cooks and butlers to keep Christmas as a Lord Mayors household should; and even the little tailor, whom he had fined five shillings on the previous Monday for being drunk and blood-thirsty in the streets, stirred up to-morrows pudding in his garret, while his lean wife and the baby sallied out to buy the beef. Foggier yet, and colder! Piercing, searching, biting cold. If the good St. Dunstan had but nipped the evil spirits nose with a touch of such weather as that, instead of using his familiar weapons, then indeed he would have roared to lusty purpose. The owner of the scant young nose, gnawed and mumbled by the hungry cold as bones are gnawed by dogs, stooped down at Scrooges keyhole to regale him with a Christmas carol; but at the first sound of God rest you, merry gentlemen! May nothing you dismay!

Scrooge seized the ruler with such energy of action, that the singer fled in terror, leaving the keyhole to the fog and even more congenial frost. At length the hour of shutting up the counting-house arrived. With an ill-will Scrooge dismounted from his stool, and tacitly admitted the fact to the expectant clerk in the tank, who instantly snuffed his candle out, and put on his hat. You'll want all day to-morrow, I suppose? said Scrooge.
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If quite convenient, sir. It's not convenient said Scrooge, and it's not fair. If I was to stop half a crown for it, youd th ink yourself ill-used, I'll be bound? The clerk smiled faintly, And yet, said Scrooge, You dont think me ill-used, when I pay a days wages for no work. The clerk observed that it was only once a year. A poor excuse for picking a mans pocket every twenty-fifth of December! said Scrooge, buttoning his greatcoat to the chin. But I suppose you must have the whole day. Be here all the earlier the next morning. The clerk promised that he would; and Scrooge walked out with a growl. The office was closed in a twinkling, and the clerk, with the long ends of his white comforter dangling below his waist (for he boasted no greatcoat), went down a slide on Cornhill, at the end of the lane of boys, twenty times, in honour of its being Christmas Eve, and then ran home to Camden Town as hard as he could pelt, to play at blindmans-buff. Scrooge took his melancholy dinner in his usual melancholy tavern; and having read all the newspapers, and beguiled the rest of the evening with his bankers book, went home to be d. He lived in chambers which once belonged to his deceased partner. They were a gloomy suite of rooms, in a lowering pile of building up a yard, where it had so little business to be, that one could scarcely help fancying it must have run there when it was a young house, playing at hide-andseek with other houses, and have forgotten the way out again. It was old enough now, and dreary enough, for nobody lived in it but Scrooge, the other rooms all being let out as offices. The yard was so dark that even Scrooge, who knew its every stone, was fain to grope with his hands. The fog and frost so hung about the black old gateway of the house, that is seemed as if the genius of the weather sat in mournful meditation on the threshold. Now, it was a fact that there was nothing in particular about the knocker on the door, except that it was very large. It is also a fact that Scrooge had seen it, night and morning, during his whole residence in that place; also that Scrooge had as little of what is called fancy about him as any man in the city of London, even includingwhich is a bold wordthe corporation, aldermen, and livery. Let it also be borne in mind that Scrooge had not bestowed one thought on Marley since his last mention of his seven-years dead partner that afternoon. And then let any man explain to me, if he can, how it happened that Scrooge, having his key in the lock of the door, saw in the knocker, without its undergoing any intermediate process of changenot a knocker, but Marleys face.
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Marleys face. It was not an impenetrable shadow as the other objects in the yard were, but had a dismal light about it, like a bad lobster in a dark cellar. It was not angry or ferocious, but looked at Scrooge as Marley used to look, with ghostly spectacles turned up on its ghostly forehead. The hair was curiously stirred, as if by breath or hot air; and, thought the eyes were wide open, they were perfectly motionless. That, and its livid colour, made it horrible; but its horror seemed to be in spite of the face and beyond its control, rather than a part of its own expression. As Scrooge looked fixedly at this phenomenon, it was a knocker again. To say that he was not startled, or that his blood was not conscious of a terrible sensation to which it had been a stranger from infancy, would be untrue. But he put his hand upon the key he had relinquished, turned it sturdily, walked in and lighted his candle. He did pause, with a moments irresolution, before he shut the door; and he did look cautiously behind it first, as if he half expected to be terrified with the sight of Marleys pigtail sticking out into the hall. But there was nothing on the back of the door, except the screw and nuts that held the knocker on, so he said, Pooh, pooh! and closed it with a bang. The sound resounded through the house like thunder. Every room above, and every cask in the wine-merchants cellars below, appeared to have a separate peal of echoes of its own. Scrooge was not a man to be frightened by echoes. He fastened the door, and walked across the hall, and up the stairs; slowly, too; trimming his candle as he went. You may talk vaguely about driving a coach-and-six up a good old flight of stairs, or through a bad young Act of Parliament; but I mean to say you might have got a hearse up that staircase, and taken it broadwise, with the splinter-bar towards the wall and the door towards the balustrades; and done it easy. There was plenty of width for that, and room to spare; which is perhaps the reason why Scrooge thought he saw a locomotive hearse going on before him in the gloom. Half a dozen gas-lamps out of the street wouldnt have lighted the entry too well, so you may suppose that it was pretty dark with Scrooges dip. Up Scrooge went, not caring a button for that. Darkness is cheap, and Scrooge liked it. But before he shut his heavy door, he walked through his rooms to see that all was right. He had just enough recollection of the face to desire to do that. Sitting-room, bedroom, lumber-room. All as they should be. Nobody under the table, nobody under the sofa; a small fire in the grate; spoon and basin ready; and the little saucepan of gruel (Scrooge had a cold in his head) upon the hob. Nobody under the bed; nobody in the closet; nobody in his dressing-gown which was hanging up in a suspicious attitude against the wall.

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Lumber-room as usual. Old fire-guard, old shoes, two fish baskets, washing-stand on three legs, and a poker. Quite satisfied, he closed his door, and locked himself indouble-locked himself in, which was not his custom. Thus secured against surprise, he took off his cravat; put on his dressing-gown and slippers, and his night-cap; and sat down before the fire to take his gruel. It was a very low fire indeed; nothing on such a bitter night. He was obliged to sit close to it, and brood over it, before he could extract the least sensation of warmth from such a handful of fuel. The fireplace was an old one, built by some Dutch merchant long ago, and paved all round with quaint Dutch tiles, designed to illustrate the Scriptures. There were Cains and Abels, Pharaoh's daughters, Queens of Sheba, angelic messengers descending through the air on clouds like featherbeds, Abrallhams, Belshazzars, Apostles putting off to sea in butter-boats, hundreds of figures to attract his thoughts; and yet that face of Marley, seven years dead, came like the ancient prophet's rod, and swallowed up the whole. If each smooth tile had been a blank at first, with power to shape some picture on its surface from the disjointed fragments of his thoughts, there would have been a copy of old Marley's head on every one. Humbug! said Scrooge; and walked across the room. After several turns, he sat down again. As he threw his head back in the chair, his glance happened to rest upon a bell, a disused bell, that hung in the room, and communicated, for some purpose now forgotten, with a chamber in the highest storey of the building. It was with great astonishment, and with a strange, inexplicable dread, that as he looked, he saw this bell begin to swing. It swung so softly in the outset that it scarcely made a sound; but soon it rang out loudly, and so did every bell in the house. This might have lasted half a minute, or a minute, but it seemed an hour. The bells ceased as they had begun, together. They were succeeded by a clanking noise, deep down below; as if some person were dragging a heavy chain over the casks in the wine-merchant's cellar. Scrooge then remembered to have heard that ghosts in haunted houses were described as dragging chains. The cellar door flew open with a booming sound, and then he heard the noise much louder, an the floors below; then coming straight towards his door. Its humbug still! said Scrooge. I wont believe it. His colour changed, though, when, without a pause, it came on through the heavy door, and passed into the room before his eyes. Upon its coming in, the dying flame leaped up, as though it cried, I know him! Marleys ghost! and fell again.

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The same face: the very same. Marley in his pigtail, usual waistcoat, tights, and boots; the tassels on the latter bristling, like his pigtail, and his coat-skirts, and the hair upon his head. The chain he drew was clasped about his middle. It was long, and wound about him like a tail; and it was made (for Scrooge observed it closely) of cash-boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, and the heavy purses wrought in steel. His body was transparent; so that Scrooge, observing him, and looking through his waistcoat, could see the two buttons on his coat behind. Scrooge had often heard it said that Marley had no bowels, but he had never believed it until now. No, nor did he believe it now. Though he looked the phantom through and through, and saw it standing before him; though he felt the chilling influence of its death-cold eyes; and marked the very texture of the folded kerchief bound about his head and chin, which wrapper he had not observed before; he was still incredulous, and fought against his senses. How now! said Scrooge, caustic and cold as ever. What do you want with me? Much!Marleys voice, no doubt about it. Who are you? Ask me who I was. Who were you then? said Scrooge, raising his voice. Youre particular for a shade. He was going to say to a shade, but substituted this, as more appropriate. In life I was your partner, Jacob Marley. Can youcan you sit down? asked Scrooge, looking doubtfully at him. I can. Do it, then. Scrooge asked the question, because he didn't know whether a ghost so transparent might find himself in a condition to take a chair, and felt that in the event of its being impossible, it might involve the necessity of an embarrassing explanation. But the ghost sat down on the opposite side of the fireplace, as if he were quite used to it. You don't believe in me observed the ghost. I don't, said; Scrooge. What evidence would you have, of my reality beyond that of your own senses? I don't know,said Scrooge. Why do you doubt your senses? Because, said Scrooge, a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There's more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!
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Scrooge was not much in the habit of cracking jokes, nor did he feel, in his heart, by any means waggish then. The truth is, that he tried to be smart, as a means of distracting his own attention, and keeping down his terror; for the spectre's voice disturbed the very marrow in his bones. To sit, staring at those fixed glazed eyes, in silence for a moment, would play, Scrooge felt, the very deuce with him. There was something very awful too, in the spectre's being provided with an internal atmosphere of its own. Scrooge could not feel it himself, but this was clearly the case; for though the ghost sat perfectly motionless, its hair and skirts, and tassels were still agitated as by the hot vapour from an oven. You see this toothpick? said Scrooge, returning quickly to the charge, for the reason just assigned; and wishing, though it were only for a second, to divert the visions stony gaze from himself. I do, replied the ghost. You are not looking at it, aid Scrooge. But I see it, said the ghost, notwithstanding. Well! returned Scrooge, I have but to swallow and be for the res t of my days persecuted by a legion of goblins, all of my own creation. Humbug, I tell youhumbug! At this the spirit raised a frightful cry, and shook its chin with such a dismal and appalling noise, that Scrooge, held on tight to his chair, to save himself from falling in a swoon. But how much greater was his horror, when the phantom taking off the bandage round its head, as if it were too warm to wear in doors, its lower jaw dropped down upon its breast! Scrooge fell upon his knees, and clasped his hands before his face. Mercy! he said. Dreadful apparition, why do you trouble me? Man of the worldly mind, replied the ghost, do you believe in me or not? I do, said Scrooge, I must. Buy why do spirits walk the earth, and why do they come to me? It is required of every man, the ghost returned, that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellowmen, and travel far and wide; and if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death. It is doomed to wander through the worldoh, woe is me!and witness what it cannot share, but might have shared on earth, and turned to happiness! Again the spectre raised a cry, and shook its chain and wrung its shadowy hands. You are fettered, said Scrooge, trembling. Tell me why! I wear the chain I forged in life, replied the ghost. I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it. Is its pattern strange to you? Scrooge trembled more and more.
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Or would you know, pursued the ghost, the weight and length of the strong coil you bear yourself? It was full as heavy and long as this, seven Christmas Eves ago. You have laboured on it, since. It is a ponderous chain! Scrooge glanced about him on the floor, in the expectation of finding himself surrounded by some fifty or sixty fathoms of iron cable: but he could see nothing. Jacob, he said imploringly. Old Jacob Marley, tell me more. Speak comfort to me, Jacob! I have none to give, the ghost replied. It comes from other regions, Ebenezer Scrooge, and is conveyed by other ministers, to other kinds of men. Nor can I tell you what I would. A very little more, is all permitted to me. I cannot rest, I cannot stay, I cannot linger anywhere. My, spirit never walked beyond our counting-housemark me!in life my spirit never roved beyond the narrow limits of our money-changing hole; and weary journeys lie before me! It was a habit with Scrooge, whenever he became thoughtful, to put his hands in his breaches pockets. Pondering on what the ghost had said, he did so now, but without lifting up his eyes, or getting off his knees. You must have been very slow about it, Jacob, Scrooge observed, in a business -like manner, though with humility and deference. Slow! the ghost repeated. Seven years, dead, mused Scrooge. And travelling, all the time? The whole time, said the ghost. No rest, no peace. Incessant torture of remorse. You travel fast? said Scrooge. On the wings of the wind, replied the ghost. You might have got over a great quantity of ground in seven years, said Scrooge. The ghost, on hearing this set up another cry, and clanked his chains so hideously in the dead silence of the night, the ward would have been justified in indicting it for a nuisance. Oh! captive, bound, and double-ironed, cried the phantom, not to know, that ages of incessant labour, by immortal creatures, for this earth must pass into eternity before the good of which is susceptible is all developed. Not to know that any Christian spirit working kindly in its sphere, whatever it may be, will find its mortal life too short for its vast mean, of usefulness. Not to know that no space of regret can make amends for one lifes opportunities misused! Yet such was I! But you were always a good man of business, Jacob, faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself.

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Business! cried the wringing his hands again. Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forebearance, and benevolence, were all my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business! It held up its chain at arms length, as if that were the cause of all its unavailing grief, and flung it heavily upon the ground again. At this time of the rolling year, the spectre said, I suffer most. Why did I walk through the crowds of fellow-beings with my eyes turned down, and never raise them to that blessed Star which led the Wise Men to a poor abode? Were there no poor homes to which its light would have conducted me? Scrooge was very much dismayed to hear the spectre going on at this rate, and began to quake exceedingly. Hear me! cried the ghost. My time is nearly gone. I will, said Scrooge. But don't be hard upon me! Don't be flowery, Jacob! Pray! How it is that I appear before you in a shape that you can see, I may not tell. I have sat invisible beside you many and many a day. It was not an agreeable idea. Scrooge shivered, and wiped the perspiration from his brow. That is no light part of my penance, pursued the ghost. I am here to-night to warn you,: that you have yet a chance, and hope of escaping my fate. A chance and hope, of my procuring, Ebenezer. You were always a good friend to me, said Scrooge. Thank'ee! You will be haunted, resumed the ghost, by three spirits. Scrooge's countenance fell almost as low as the ghost's had done. Is that the chance and hope you mentioned, Jacob? he demanded, in a faltering voice. It is. II think I'd rather not, said Scrooge. Without their visits, said the ghost, you cannot hope to shun the path I tread. Expect the first to-morrow, when the bell tolls one. Couldnt I take 'em all at once, and have it over, Jacob? hinted Scrooge. Expect the second on the next night at the same hour. The third upon the next night when the last stroke of twelve has ceased to vibrate. Look to see me no more; and look that, for your own sake, you remember what has passed between us! When it had said these words, the spectre took its wrapper from the table, and bound it round its head, as before. Scrooge knew this, by the smart sound its teeth made, when the jaws were
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brought together by the bandage. He ventured to raise his eyes again, and found his supernatural visitor confronting him in an erect attitude, with its chain wound over and about its arm. The apparition walked backward from him; and at every step it took, the window raised itself a little so that when the spectre reached it, it was wide open. It beckoned Scrooge to approach, which he did. When they were within two paces of each other, Marley's ghost held up its hand, warning him to come no nearer. Scrooge stopped. Not so much in obedience, as in surprise and fear: for on the raising of the hand, he became sensible of confused noises in the air; incoherent sounds of lamentation and regret; wailings inexpressibly sorrowful and self-accusatory. The spectre, after listening for a moment, joined in the mournful dirge; and floated out upon the bleak, dark night. Scrooge followed to the window: desperate in his curiosity. He looked out. The air was filled with phantoms, wandering hither and thither in restless haste, and moaning as they went. Every one of them wore chains like Marley's ghost; some few (they might be guilty governments) were linked together; none were free. Many had been personally, known to Scrooge in their lives. He had been quite familiar with one old ghost, in a white waistcoat, with a monstrous iron safe attached to its ankle, who cried piteously at being unable to assist a wretched woman with an infant, whom it saw below, upon a doorstep. The misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in human matters, and had lost the power for ever. Whether these creatures faded into mist, or mist enshrouded them, he could not tell. But they and their spirit voices faded together; and the night became as it had been when he walked home. Scrooge closed the window, and examined the door by which the ghost had entered. It was double-locked, as he had locked it with his own hands, and the bolts were undisturbed. He tried to say Humbug! but stopped at the first syllable. And being, from the emotion he had undergone, or the fatigues of the day, or his glimpse of the invisible world, or the dull conversation of the ghost, or the lateness of the hour, much in need of repose, went straight to bed, without undressing, and fell asleep upon the instant.

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Anglo-Irish writer Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal (anonymously published in 1729) is a powerful political satire about the economic and social conditions of the poor in Ireland under British rule. Swift's speaker puts forth the tongue-in-cheek modest proposal that Irish children born to poor families could be put to good use as meat and leather to be sold to the wealthy. The essay is rich with references to political events in England and Ireland in the 18th century. A Modest Proposal By Jonathan Swift

FOR Preventing the Children of poor People in Ireland, from being a Burden to their Parents or Country; and for making them beneficial to the Publick IT is a melancholy Object to those, who walk through this great Town, or travel in the Country; when they see the Streets, the Roads, and Cabbin-doors crowded with Beggars of the Female Sex, followed by three, four, or six Children, all in Rags, and importuning every Passenger for an Alms. These Mothers, instead of being able to work for their honest Livelyhood, are forced to employ all their Time in stroling to beg Sustenance for their helpless Infants; who, as they grow up, either turn Thieves for want of Work; or leave their dear Native Country, to fight for the Pretender in Spain, or sell themselves to the Barbadoes. I THINK it is agreed by all Parties, that this prodigious Number of Children in the Arms, or on the Backs, or at the Heels of their Mothers, and frequently of their Fathers, is in the present deplorable State of the Kingdom, a very great additional Grievance; and therefore, whoever could find out a fair, cheap, and easy Method of making these Children sound and useful Members of the Commonwealth, would deserve so well of the Publick, as to have his Statue set up for a Preserver of the Nation. BUT my Intention is very far from being confined to provide only for the Children of professed Beggars: It is of a much greater Extent, and shall take in the whole Number of Infants at a certain Age, who are born of Parents, in effect as little able to support them, as those who demand our Charity in the Streets. AS to my own Part, having turned my Thoughts for many Years, upon this important Subject, and maturely weighed the several Schemes of other Projectors, I have always found them grosly mistaken in their Computation. It is true a Child, just dropt from its Dam, may be supported by her Milk, for a Solar Year with little other Nourishment; at most not above the Value of two Shillings;
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which the Mother may certainly get, or the Value in Scraps, by her lawful Occupation of Begging: And, it is exactly at one Year old, that I propose to provide for them in such a Manner, as, instead of being a Charge upon their Parents, or the Parish, or wanting Food and Raiment for the rest of their Lives; they shall, on the contrary, contribute to the Feeding, and partly to the Cloathing, of many Thousands. THERE is likewise another great Advantage in my Scheme, that it will prevent those voluntary Abortions, and that horrid Practice of Women murdering their Bastard Children; alas! too frequent among us; sacrificing the poor innocent Babes, I doubt, more to avoid the Expence than the Shame; which would move Tears and Pity in the most Savage and inhuman Breast. THE Number of Souls in Ireland being usually reckoned one Million and a half; of these I calculate there may be about Two hundred Thousand Couple whose Wives are Breeders; from which Number I subtract thirty thousand Couples, who are able to maintain their own Children; although I apprehend there cannot be so many, under the present Distresses of the Kingdom; but this being granted, there will remain an Hundred and Seventy Thousand Breeders. I again subtract Fifty Thousand, for those Women who miscarry, or whose Children die by Accident, or Disease, within the Year. There only remain an Hundred and Twenty Thousand Children of poor Parents, annually born: The Question therefore is, How this Number shall be reared, and provided for? Which, as I have already said, under the present Situation of Affairs, is utterly impossible, by all the Methods hitherto proposed: For we can neither employ them in Handicraft or Agriculture; we neither build Houses, (I mean in the Country) nor cultivate Land: They can very seldom pick up a Livelyhood by Stealing until they arrive at six Years old; except where they are of towardly Parts; although, I confess, they learn the Rudiments much earlier; during which Time, they can, however, be properly looked upon only as Probationers; as I have been informed by a principal Gentleman in the County of Cavan, who protested to me, that he never knew above one or two Instances under the Age of six, even in a Part of the Kingdom so renowned for the quickest Proficiency in that Art. I AM assured by our Merchants, that a Boy or a Girl before twelve Years old, is no saleable Commodity; and even when they come to this Age, they will not yield above Three Pounds, or Three Pounds and half a Crown at most, on the Exchange; which cannot turn to Account either to the Parents or the Kingdom; the Charge of Nutriment and Rags, having been at least four Times that Value. I SHALL now therefore humbly propose my own Thoughts; which I hope will not be liable to the least Objection.
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I HAVE been assured by a very knowing American of my Acquaintance in London; that a young healthy Child, well nursed, is, at a Year old, a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome Food; whether Stewed, Roasted, Baked, or Boiled; and, I make no doubt, that it will equally serve in a Fricasie, or Ragoust. I DO therefore humbly offer it to publick Consideration, that of the Hundred and Twenty Thousand Children, already computed, Twenty thousand may be reserved for Breed; whereof only one Fourth Part to be Males; which is more than we allow to Sheep, black Cattle, or Swine; and my Reason is, that these Children are seldom the Fruits of Marriage, a Circumstance not much regarded by our Savages; therefore, one Male will be sufficient to serve four Females. That the remaining Hundred thousand, may, at a Year old, be offered in Sale to the Persons of Quality and Fortune, through the Kingdom; always advising the Mother to let them suck plentifully in the last Month, so as to render them plump, and fat for a good Table. A Child will make two Dishes at an Entertainment for Friends; and when the Family dines alone, the fore or hind Quarter will make a reasonable Dish; and seasoned with a little Pepper or Salt, will be very good Boiled on the fourth Day, especially in Winter. I HAVE reckoned upon a Medium, that a Child just born will weigh Twelve Pounds; and in a solar Year, if tolerably nursed, encreaseth to twenty eight Pounds. I GRANT this Food will be somewhat dear, and therefore very proper for Landlords; who, as they have already devoured most of the Parents, seem to have the best Title to the Children. INFANTS Flesh will be in Season throughout the Year; but more plentiful in March, and a little before and after: For we are told by a grave Author, an eminent French Physician, that Fish being a prolifick Dyet, there are more Children born in Roman Catholick Countries about Nine Months after Lent, than at any other Season: Therefore reckoning a Year after Lent, the Markets will be more glutted than usual; because the Number of Popish Infants, is, at least, three to one in this Kingdom; and therefore it will have one other Collateral Advantage, by lessening the Number of Papists among us. I HAVE already computed the Charge of nursing a Beggar's Child (in which List I reckon all Cottagers, Labourers, and Four fifths of the Farmers) to be about two Shillings per Annum, Rags included; and I believe, no Gentleman would repine to give Ten Shillings for the Carcase of a good fat Child; which, as I have said, will make four Dishes of excellent nutritive Meat, when he hath only some particular Friend, or his own Family, to dine with him. Thus the Squire will learn to be a good Landlord, and grow popular among his Tenants; the Mother will have Eight Shillings net Profit, and be fit for Work until she produced another Child.
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THOSE who are more thrifty (as I must confess the Times require) may flay the Carcase; the Skin of which, artificially dressed, will make admirable Gloves for Ladies, and Summer Boots for fine Gentlemen. AS to our City of Dublin; Shambles may be appointed for this Purpose, in the most convenient Parts of it; and Butchers we may be assured will not be wanting; although I rather recommend buying the Children alive, and dressing them hot from the Knife, as we do roasting Pigs. A VERY worthy Person, a true Lover of his Country, and whose Virtues I highly esteem, was lately pleased, in discoursing on this Matter, to offer a Refinement upon my Scheme. He said, that many Gentlemen of this Kingdom, having of late destroyed their Deer; he conceived, that the Want of Venison might be well supplied by the Bodies of young Lads and Maidens, not exceeding fourteen Years of Age, nor under twelve; so great a Number of both Sexes in every County being now ready to starve, for Want of Work and Service: And these to be disposed of by their Parents, if alive, or otherwise by their nearest Relations. But with due Deference to so excellent a Friend, and so deserving a Patriot, I cannot be altogether in his Sentiments. For as to the Males, my American Acquaintance assured me from frequent Experience, that their Flesh was generally tough and lean, like that of our School-boys, by continual Exercise, and their Taste disagreeable; and to fatten them would not answer the Charge. Then, as to the Females, it would, I think, with humble Submission, be a Loss to the Publick, because they soon would become Breeders themselves: And besides it is not improbable, that some scrupulous People might be apt to censure such a Practice (although indeed very unjustly) as a little bordering upon Cruelty; which, I confess, hath always been with me the strongest Objection against any Project, how well soever intended. BUT in order to justify my Friend; he confessed, that this Expedient was put into his Head by the famous Salmanazor, a Native of the Island Formosa, who came from thence to London, above twenty Years ago, and in Conversation told my Friend, that in his Country, when any young Person happened to be put to Death, the Executioner sold the Carcase to Persons of Quality, as a prime Dainty; and that, in his Time, the Body of a plump Girl of fifteen, who was crucified for an Attempt to poison the Emperor, was sold to his Imperial Majesty's prime Minister of State, and other great Mandarins of the Court, in Joints from the Gibbet, at Four hundred Crowns. Neither indeed can I deny, that if the same Use were made of several plump young girls in this Town, who, without one single Groat to their Fortunes, cannot stir Abroad without a Chair, and appear at the Play-house, and Assemblies in foreign Fineries, which they never will pay for; the Kingdom would not be the worse.

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SOME Persons of a desponding Spirit are in great Concern about that vast Number of poor People, who are Aged, Diseased, or Maimed; and I have been desired to employ my Thoughts what Course may be taken, to ease the Nation of so grievous an Incumbrance. But I am not in the least Pain upon that Matter; because it is very well known, that they are every Day dying, and rotting, by Cold and Famine, and Filth, and Vermin, as fast as can be reasonably expected. And as to the younger Labourers, they are now in almost as hopeful a Condition: They cannot get Work, and consequently pine away for Want of Nourishment, to a Degree, that if at any Time they are accidentally hired to common Labour, they have not Strength to perform it; and thus the Country, and themselves, are in a fair Way of being soon delivered from the Evils to come. I HAVE too long digressed; and therefore shall return to my Subject. I think the Advantages by the Proposal which I have made, are obvious, and many, as well as of the highest Importance. FOR, First, as I have already observed, it would greatly lessen the Number of Papists, with whom we are yearly overrun; being the principal Breeders of the Nation, as well as our most dangerous Enemies; and who stay at home on Purpose, with a Design to deliver the Kingdom to the Pretender; hoping to take their Advantage by the Absence of so many good Protestants, who have chosen rather to leave their Country, than stay at home, and pay Tithes against their Conscience, to an idolatrous Episcopal Curate. SECONDLY, The poorer Tenants will have something valuable of their own, which, by Law, may be made liable to Distress, and help to pay their Landlord's Rent; their Corn and Cattle being already seized, and Money a Thing unknown. THIRDLY, Whereas the Maintenance of an Hundred Thousand Children, from two Years old, and upwards, cannot be computed at less than ten Shillings a Piece per Annum, the Nation's Stock will be thereby encreased Fifty Thousand Pounds per Annum; besides the Profit of a new Dish, introduced to the Tables of all Gentlemen of Fortune in the Kingdom, who have any Refinement in Taste; and the Money will circulate among ourselves, the Goods being entirely of our own Growth and Manufacture. FOURTHLY, The constant Breeders, besides the Gain of Eight Shillings Sterling per Annum, by the Sale of their Children, will be rid of the Charge of maintaining them after the first Year. FIFTHLY, This Food would likewise bring great Custom to Taverns, where the Vintners will certainly be so prudent, as to procure the best Receipts for dressing it to Perfection; and consequently, have their Houses frequented by all the fine Gentlemen, who justly value themselves upon their Knowledge in good Eating; and a skilful Cook, who understands how to oblige his Guests, will contrive to make it as expensive as they please.
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SIXTHLY, This would be a great Inducement to Marriage, which all wise Nations have either encouraged by Rewards, or enforced by Laws and Penalties. It would encrease the Care and Tenderness of Mothers towards their Children, when they were sure of a Settlement for Life, to the poor Babes, provided in some Sort by the Publick, to their annual Profit instead of Expence. We should soon see an honest Emulation among the married Women, which of them could bring the fattest Child to the Market. Men would become as fond of their Wives, during the Time of their Pregnancy, as they are now of their Mares in Foal, their Cows in Calf, or Sows when they are ready to farrow; nor offer to beat or kick them, (as it is too frequent a Practice) for fear of a Miscarriage. MANY other Advantages might be enumerated. For instance, the Addition of some Thousand Carcasses in our Exportation of barrelled Beef: The Propagation of Swines Flesh and Improvement in the Art of making good Bacon; so much wanted among us by the great Destruction of Pigs, too frequent at our Tables, which are no way comparable in Taste, or Magnificence, to a well-grown fat yearling Child; which, roasted whole, will make a considerable Figure at a Lord Mayor's Feast, or any other publick Entertainment. But this, and many others, I omit; being studious of Brevity. SUPPOSING that one Thousand Families in this City, would be constant Customers for Infants Flesh; besides others who might have it at merry Meetings, particularly Weddings and Christenings; I compute that Dublin would take off, annually, about Twenty Thousand Carcasses; and the rest of the Kingdom (where probably they will be sold somewhat cheaper) the remaining Eighty Thousand. I CAN think of no one Objection, that will possibly be raised against this Proposal; unless it should be urged, that the Number of People will be thereby much lessened in the Kingdom. This I freely own; and it was indeed one principal Design in offering it to the World. I desire the Reader will observe, that I calculate my Remedy for this one individual Kingdom of Ireland, and for no other that ever was, is, or I think ever can be upon Earth. Therefore, let no man talk to me of other Expedients: Of taxing our Absentees at five Shillings a Pound: Of using neither Cloaths, nor Houshold Furniture except what is of our own Growth and Manufacture: Of utterly rejecting the Materials and Instruments that promote foreign Luxury: Of curing the Expensiveness of Pride, Vanity, Idleness, and Gaming in our Women: Of introducing a Vein of Parsimony, Prudence and Temperance: Of learning to love our Country, wherein we differ even from Laplanders, and the Inhabitants of Topinamboo: Of quitting our Animosities, and Factions; nor act any longer like the Jews, who were murdering one another at the very Moment their City was taken: Of being a little cautious not to sell our Country and Consciences for nothing: Of teaching Landlords to have, at least, one Degree of Mercy towards their Tenants. Lastly, Of putting a Spirit of Honesty, Industry, and Skill into our Shop-keepers; who, if
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a Resolution could now be taken to buy only our native Goods, would immediately unite to cheat and exact upon us in the Price, the Measure, and the Goodness; nor could ever yet be brought to make one fair Proposal of just Dealing, though often and earnestly invited to it. THEREFORE I repeat, let no Man talk to me of these and the like Expedients; till he hath, at least, a Glimpse of Hope, that there will ever be some hearty and sincere Attempt to put them in Practice. BUT, as to my self; having been wearied out for many Years with offering vain, idle, visionary Thoughts; and at length utterly despairing of Success, I fortunately fell upon this Proposal; which, as it is wholly new, so it hath something solid and real, of no Expence, and little Trouble, full in our own Power; and whereby we can incur no Danger in disobliging England: For, this Kind of Commodity will not bear Exportation; the Flesh being of too tender a Consistence, to admit a long Continuance in Salt; although, perhaps, I could name a Country, which would be glad to eat up our whole Nation without it. AFTER all, I am not so violently bent upon my own Opinion, as to reject any Offer proposed by wise Men, which shall be found equally innocent, cheap, easy, and effectual. But before something of that Kind shall be advanced, in Contradiction to my Scheme, and offering a better; I desire the Author, or Authors, will be pleased maturely to consider two Points. First, As Things now stand, how they will be able to find Food and Raiment, for a Hundred Thousand useless Mouths and Backs? And secondly, There being a round Million of Creatures in human Figure, throughout this Kingdom; whose whole Subsistence, put into a common Stock, would leave them in Debt two Millions of Pounds Sterling; adding those, who are Beggars by Profession, to the Bulk of Farmers, Cottagers, and Labourers, with their Wives and Children, who are Beggars in Effect; I desire those Politicians, who dislike my Overture, and may perhaps be so bold to attempt an Answer, that they will first ask the Parents of these Mortals, Whether they would not, at this Day, think it a great Happiness to have been sold for Food at a Year old, in the Manner I prescribe; and thereby have avoided such a perpetual Scene of Misfortunes, as they have since gone through; by the Oppression of Landlords; the Impossibility of paying Rent, without Money or Trade; the Want of common Sustenance, with neither House nor Cloaths, to cover them from the Inclemencies of Weather, and the most inevitable Prospect of intailing the like, or greater Miseries upon their Breed forever. I PROFESS, in the Sincerity of my Heart, that I have not the least personal Interest, in endeavouring to promote this necessary Work; having no other Motive than the publick Good of my Country, by advancing our Trade, providing for Infants, relieving the Poor, and giving some

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Pleasure to the Rich. I have no Children, by which I can propose to get a single penny; the youngest being nine Years old, and my Wife past Child-bearing. Lewis Carroll's children's classic has been a favorite of young readers since it was first published in 1865. A sequel, Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, appeared in 1871. Carroll's skillful use of nonsense in these books had a profound influence on children's literature, but also anticipated the 20th-century artistic movement known as absurdism. The following scene at the Mad Hatter's tea party is one of the most famous of Alice's fantastic experiences in Wonderland. From Alice's Adventures in Wonderland By Lewis Carroll There was a table set out under a tree in front of the house, and the March Hare and the Hatter were having tea at it: a Dormouse was sitting between them, fast asleep, and the other two were using it as a cushion, resting their elbows on it, and talking over its head. Very uncomfortable for the Dormouse, thought Alice; only as it's asleep, I suppose it doesn't mind. The table was a large one, but the three were all crowded together at one corner of it. No room! No room! they cried out when they saw Alice coming. There's plenty of room! said Alice indignantly, and she sat down in a large arm-chair at one end of the table. Have some wine, the March Hare said in an encouraging tone. Alice looked all round the table, but there was nothing on it but tea. I don't see any wine, she remarked. There isn't any, said the March Hare. Then it wasn't very civil of you to offer it, said Alice angrily. It wasn't very civil of you to sit down without being invited, said the March Hare. I didn't know it was your table, said Alice: it's laid for a great many more than three. Your hair wants cutting, said the Hatter. He had been looking at Alice for some time with great curiosity, and this was his first speech. You should learn not to make personal remarks, Alice said with some severity: it's very rude. The Hatter opened his eyes very wide on hearing this; but all he said was Why is a raven like a writing-desk? Come, we shall have some fun now! thought Alice. I'm glad they've begun asking riddlesI believe I can guess that, she added aloud. Do you mean that you think you can find out the answer to it? said the March Hare.
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Exactly so, said Alice. Then you should say what you mean, the March Hare went on. I do, Alice hastily replied; at leastat least I mean what I saythat's the same thing, you know. Not the same thing a bit! said the Hatter. Why, you might just as well say that I see what I eat is the same thing as I eat what I see! You might just as well say, added the March Hare, that I like what I get is the same thing as I get what I like! You might just as well say, added the Dormouse, which seemed to be talking in its sleep, that I breathe when I sleep is the same thing as I sleep when I breathe! It is the same thing with you, said the Hatter, and here the conversation dropped, and the party sat silent for a minute, while Alice thought over all she could remember about ravens and writing-desks, which wasn't much. The Hatter was the first to break the silence. What day of the month is it? he said, turning to Alice: he had taken his watch out of his pocket, and was looking at it uneasily, shaking it every now and then, and holding it to his ear. Alice considered a little, and then said The fourth. Two days wrong! sighed the Hatter. I told you butter wouldn't suit the works! he added, looking angrily at the March Hare. It was the best butter, the March Hare meekly replied. Yes, but some crumbs must have got in as well, the Hatter grumbled: you shouldn't have put it in with the bread-knife. The March Hare took the watch and looked at it gloomily: then he dipped it into his cup of tea, and looked at it again: but he could think of nothing better to say than his first remark, It was the best butter, you know. Alice had been looking over his shoulder with some curiosity. What a funny watch! she remarked. It tells the day of the month, and doesn't tell what o'clock it is! Why should it? muttered the Hatter. Does your watch tell you what year it is? Of course not, Alice replied very readily: but that's because it stays the same year for such a long time together. Which is just the case with mine, said the Hatter. Alice felt dreadfully puzzled. The Hatter's remark seemed to her to have no sort of meaning in it, and yet it was certainly English. I don't quite understand you, she said, as politely as she could.
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The Dormouse is asleep again, said the Hatter, and he poured a little hot tea upon its nose. The Dormouse shook its head impatiently, and said, without opening its eyes, Of course, of course: just what I was going to remark myself. Have you guessed the riddle yet? the Hatter said, turning to Alice again. No, I give it up, Alice replied. What's the answer? I haven't the slightest idea, said the Hatter. Nor I, said the March Hare. Alice sighed wearily. I think you might do something better with the time, she said, than wasting it in asking riddles that have no answers. If you knew Time as well as I do, said the Hatter, you wouldn't talk about wasting it. It's him. I don't know what you mean, said Alice. Of course you don't! the Hatter said, tossing his head contemptuously. I dare say you never even spoke to Time! Perhaps not, Alice cautiously replied; but I know I have to beat time when I learn music. Ah! That accounts for it, said the Hatter. He wo'n't stand beating. Now, if you only kept on good terms with him, he'd do almost anything you liked with the clock. For instance, suppose it were nine o'clock in the morning, just time to begin lessons: you'd only have to whisper a hint to Time, and round goes the clock in a twinkling! Half-past one, time for dinner! (I only wish it was, the March Hare said to itself in a whisper.) That would be grand, certainly, said Alice thoughtfully; but thenI shouldn't be hungry for it, you know. Not at first, perhaps, said the Hatter: but you could keep it to half-past one as long as you liked. Is that the way you manage? Alice asked. The Hatter shook his head mournfully. Not I! he replied. We quarreled last Marchjust before he went mad, you know- (pointing his teaspoon at the March Hare,) it was at the great concert given by the Queen of Hearts, and I had to sing Twinkle, twinkle, little bat! How I wonder what you're at! You know the song, perhaps? I've heard something like it, said Alice. It goes on, you know, the Hatter continued, in this way:

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Up above the world you fly, Like a tea-tray in the sky. Twinkle, twinkle Here the Dormouse shook itself, and began singing in its sleep Twinkle, twinkle, twinkle, twinkle and went on so long that they had to pinch it to make it stop. Well, I'd hardly finished the first verse, said the Hatter, when the Queen bawled out He's murdering the time! Off with his head! How dreadfully savage! exclaimed Alice. And ever since that, the Hatter went on in a mournful tone, he wo'n't do a thing I ask! It's always six o'clock now. A bright idea came into Alice's head. Is that the reason so many tea-things are put out here? she asked. Yes, that's it, said the Hatter with a sigh: it's always teatime, and we've no time to wash the things between whiles. Then you keep moving round, I suppose? said Alice. Exactly so, said the Hatter: as the things get used up. But what happens when you come to the beginning again? Alice ventured to ask. Suppose we change the subject, the March Hare interrupted, yawning. I'm getting tired of this. I vote the young lady tells us a story. I'm afraid I don't know one, said Alice, rather alarmed at the proposal. Then the Dormouse shall! they both cried. Wake up, Dormouse! And they pinched it on both sides at once. The Dormouse slowly opened its eyes. I wasn't asleep, it said in a hoarse, feeble voice, I heard every word you fellows were saying. Tell us a story! said the March Hare. Yes, please do! pleaded Alice. And be quick about it, added the Hatter, or you'll be asleep again before it's done. Once upon a time there were three little sisters, the Dormouse began in a great hurry; and their names were Elsie, Lacie, and Tillie; and they lived at the bottom of a well What did they live on? said Alice, who always took a great interest in questions of eating a nd drinking. They lived on treacle, said the Dormouse, after thinking a minute or two.

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They couldn't have done that, you know, Alice gently remarked. They'd have been ill. So they were, said the Dormouse; very ill. Alice tried a little to fancy to herself what such an extraordinary way of living would be like, but it puzzled her too much: so she went on: But why did they live at the bottom of a well? Take some more tea, the March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly. I've had nothing yet, Alice replied in an offended tone: so I ca'n't take more. You mean you ca'n't take less, said the Hatter: it's very easy to take more than nothing. Nobody asked your opinion, said Alice. Who's making personal remarks now? the Hatter asked triumphantly. Alice did not quite know what to say to this: so she helped herself to some tea and bread-andbutter, and then turned to the Dormouse, and repeated her question. Why did they live at the bottom of a well? The Dormouse again took a minute or two to think about it, and then said It was a treacle-well. There's no such thing! Alice was beginning very angrily, but the Hatter and the March Hare went Sh! Sh! and the Dormouse sulkily remarked If you ca'n't be civil, you'd better finish the story for yourself. No, please go on! Alice said very humbly. I wo'n't interrupt you again. I dare say there may be one. One, indeed! said the Dormouse indignantly. However, he consented to go on. And so these three little sistersthey were learning to draw, you know What did they draw? said Alice, quite forgetting her promise. Treacle, said the Dormouse, without considering at all, this time. I want a clean cup, interrupted the Hatter: let's all move one place on. He moved on as he spoke, and the Dormouse followed him: the March Hare moved into the Dormouse's place, and Alice rather unwillingly took the place of the March Hare. The Hatter was the only one who got any advantage from the change; and Alice was a good deal worse off than before, as the March Hare had just upset the milk-jug into his plate. Alice did not wish to offend the Dormouse again, so she began very cautiously: But I don't understand. Where did they draw the treacle from? You can draw water out of a water-well, said the Hatter; so I should think you could draw treacle out of a treacle-welleh, stupid? But they were in the well, Alice said to the Dormouse, not choosing to notice this last remark. Of course they were, said the Dormouse: well in.
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This answer so confused poor Alice, that she let the Dormouse go on for some time without interrupting it. They were learning to draw, the Dormouse went on, yawning and rubbing its eyes, for it was getting very sleepy; and they drew all manner of thingseverything that begins with an M Why with an M? said Alice. Why not? said the March Hare. Alice was silent. The Dormouse had closed its eyes by this time, and was going off into a doze; but, on being pinched by the Hatter, it woke up again with a little shriek, and went on: that begins with an M, such as mouse-traps, and the moon, and memory, and muchnessyou know you say things are 'much of a muchness'did you ever see such a thing as a drawing of a muchness! Really, now you ask me, said Alice, very much confused, I don't think Then you shouldn't talk, said the Hatter. This piece of rudeness was more than Alice could bear: she got up in great disgust, and walked off: the Dormouse fell asleep instantly, and neither of the others took the least notice of her going, though she looked back once or twice, half hoping that they would call after her: the last time she saw them, they were trying to put the Dormouse into the teapot. At any rate I'll never go there again! said Alice, as she picked her way through the wood. It's the stupidest tea-party I ever was at in all my life! Just as she said this, she noticed that one of the trees had a door leading right into it. That's very curious! she thought. But everything's curious to-day. I think I may as well go in at once. And in she went. Once more she found herself in the long hall, and close to the little glass table. Now, I'll manage better this time, she said to herself, and began by taking the little golden key, and unlocking the door that led into the garden. Then she set to work nibbling at the mushroom (she had kept a piece of it in her pocket) till she was about a foot high; then she walked down the little passage: and thenshe found herself at last in the beautiful garden, among the bright flower-beds and the cool fountains.

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French romantic writer Victor Hugos novel, The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1831, trans. 1833), set in medieval Paris, tells the story of Quasimodo, a hunchback who is reviled for his ugliness. Quasimodo was left as an infant in the care of the oppressive Archdeacon Claude Frollo. The following selection describes Quasimodos existence among the bells and statues of Notre Dame Cathedrals bell tower where he lives. From The Hunchback of Notre Dame By Victor Hugo CHAPTER III The Bell-Ringer of Notre-Dame Now, by the year 1482 Quasimodo had grown up. He had been for several years bell-ringer to the cathedral of Notre-Dame, thanks to his foster-father, Claude Frollo, who had become Archdeacon of Josas, thanks to his diocesan, Messire Louis de Beaumont, who had been appointed Bishop of Paris in 1472, thanks to his patron Olivier le Daim, barber to Louis XI, by the Grace of God, King, etc. etc. etc. In process of time a curious attachment grew up between the bellringer and the church. Cut off for ever from society by the double fatality of his unknown parentage and his distorted form, imprisoned from childhood within these impassable boundaries, the poor fellow was accustomed to see no object in the world beyond the religious walls which had taken him under their protection. Notre-Dame had been successively, to him, as he grew up and expanded, his egg, his nest, his home, his country, the universe. A sort of mysterious and pre-existent harmony had grown up between this creature and the edifice. While still quite a child he crawled about, twisting and hopping in the shade of its arches, he appeared, with his human face and his limbs scarcely human, a native reptile of that dark damp pavement, among the grotesque shadows thrown down upon it by the capitals of the Roman pillars. As he grew up the first time that he mechanically grasped the rope in the tower, and, hanging to it, set the bell in motion, the effect upon his foster-father was like that produced upon a parent by the first articulate sounds uttered by his child. Thus, by little and little, his spirit expanded in harmony with the cathedral; there he lived, there he slept; scarcely ever leaving it, and, being perpetually subject to its mysterious influence, he
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came at last to resemble it, to be encrusted with it, to form, as it were, an integral part of it. His salient angles dovetailed, if we may be allowed the expression, into the receding angles of the building, so that he seemed to be not merely its inhabitant, but to have taken its form and pressure. Between the ancient church and him there were an instinctive sympathy so profound, and so many magnetic affinities, that he stuck to it in some measure as the tortoise to its shell. It is scarcely necessary to say how familiar he had made himself with the whole cathedral in so long and so intimate a cohabitation. There was no depth that Quasimodo had not fathomed, no height that he had not scaled. Many a time had he climbed up the faade composed of several elevations, assisted only by the projections of the sculpture. Often might he have been seen crawling up the outside of the towers, like a lizard up a perpendicular wall: those twin giants, so tall, so threatening, so formidable, produced in him neither vertigo, fright, nor sudden giddiness. So gentle did they appear under his hand, and so easy to climb that you would have said he had tamed them. Be dint of leaping, scrambling, gliding, struggling, among the precipices of the venerable cathedral, he had become something between a monkey and a mountain goat, just as the boy of Calabria swims before he can walk, and makes the sea his playfellow. Not the person only but also the mind of Quasimodo appeared to be moulded by the cathedral. What manner of soul was his? What line had it acquired, what form had it received, within its gnarled envelope, in the course of his fantastic life? Quasimodo was born one-eyed, humpbacked, lame. It was not without great difficulty and great patience that Claude Frollo had taught him to speak; but there was a fatality attached to the unhappy foundling. Having become ringer of the bells of Notre-Dame at the age of fourteen, a fresh infirmity had come upon him: the volume of sound had broken the drum of his ear, and deafness was the consequence. Thus the only gate which nature had left wide open between him and the world was suddenly closed, and for ever. In closing, it shut out the only ray of light and joy that still reached his soul, which was now wrapped in profound darkness. The melancholy of the poor fellow became incurable and complete as his deformity. His deafness rendered him in some measure dumb also: for the moment he lost his hearing, he resolved to avoid the ridicule of others by a silence which he never broke but when he was alone. He voluntarily tied up that tongue, which Claude Frollo had taken such pains to loosen: hence, when necessity forced him to speak, his tongue was benumbed, awkward, and like a door the hinges of which have grown rusty. If then we were to attempt to penetrate through this thick and obdurate bark to the soul of Quasimodo; if we could sound the depths of this bungling piece of organization; if we were enabled to hold a torch behind these untransparent organs, to explore the gloomy interior of this
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opaque being, to illumine its obscure corners and its unmeaning cul-de-sacs, and to throw all at once a brilliant light upon the spirit enchained at the bottom of this den; we should doubtless find the wretch in some miserable attitude, stunted and rickety, like the prisoners under the leads of Venice, who grow old, doubled up in a box of stone, too low to stand up and too short to lie down in. It is certain that the spirit pines in a misshapen form. Quasimodo scarcely felt within him the blind movements of a soul made in his own image. The impressions of objects underwent a considerable refraction before they reached the seat of thought. His brain was a peculiar medium: the ideas which entered it came out quite twisted. The reflection resulting from this refraction was necessarily divergent and devious. Hence a thousand optical illusions, a thousand aberrations of judgment, a thousand byways into which his sometimes silly, sometimes crazy, imagination would wander. The first effect of this vicious organization was to confuse the view which he took of things. He received scarcely a single direct perception. The exterior world appeared to him at a greater distance than it does to us. The second result of his misfortune was that it rendered him mischievous. He was, in truth, mischievous because he was savage; he was savage because he was ugly. There was logic in his nature, as there is in ours. His strength, developed in a most extraordinary manner, was another cause of his propensity to mischief. Malus puer robustus, says Hobbes. We must nevertheless do him justice: malice was probably not innate in him. From his earliest intercourse with men he had felt, and afterward he had seen, himself despised, rejected, cast off. Human speech had never been to him aught but a jeer or a curse. As he grew up he had found nothing but hatred about him. He had adopted it. He had acquired the general malignity. He had picked up the weapon with which he had been wounded. After all, he turned toward mankind with reluctance: his cathedral was enough for him. It was peopled with figures of marble, with kings, saints, bishops, who at least did not laugh in his face, and looked upon him only with an air of tranquillity and benevolence. The other statues, those of monsters and demons, bore no malice against him. They were too like him for that. Their raillery was rather directed against other men. The saints were his friends, and blessed him; the monsters were his friends, and guarded him; he would therefore pass whole hours crouched before one of these statues, and holding solitary converse with it. If anyone came by he would run off like a lover surprised in a serenade. The cathedral was not only his society but his worldin short, all nature to him. He dreamed of no other trees than the painted windows, which were always in blossom; of no other shades than
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the foliage of stone adorned with birds in the Saxon capitals; of no other mountains than the colossal towers of the church; of no other ocean than Paris which roared at their feet. But that which he loved most of all in the maternal edifice, that which awakened his soul and caused it to spread its poor wings, otherwise so miserably folded up in its prison, that which even gave him at times a feeling of happiness, was the bells. He loved them, he caressed them, he talked to them, he understood themfrom the chimes in the steeple of the transept to the great bell above the porch. The belfry of the transept and the two towers were like three immense cages, in which the birds that he had reared sang for him alone. It was these same birds, however, which had deafened him: but mothers are often fondest of the child which has caused them the greatest pain. It is true that theirs were the only voices he could still hear. On this account the great bell was his best beloved. He preferred her before all the other sisters of this noisy family, who fluttered about him on festival days. The name of this great bell was Mary. She was placed in the southern tower, along with her sister Jacqueline, a bell of inferior size, enclosed in a cage of less magnitude by the side of her own. This Jacqueline was called after the wife of Jehan Montague, who gave her to the church; a gift which, however, did not prevent his losing his head at Montfaucon. In the second tower were six other bells; and, lastly, the six smallest dwelt in the steeple of the transept, with the wooden bell, which was only rung between noon on Holy Thursday and the morning of Easter Eve. Thus Quasimodo had fifteen bells in his seraglio, but big Mary was his favourite. It is impossible to form a conception of his joy on the days of the great peals. The instant the Archdeacon let him off, and said 'Go,' he ran up the winding staircase of the belfry quicker than another could have gone down. He hurried, out of breath, into the aerial chamber of the great bell, looked at her attentively and lovingly for a moment; then began to talk kindly to her, and patted her with his hand, as you would do a good horse which you are going to put on his mettle. He would pity her for the labour she was about to undergo. After these first caresses he shouted to his assistants in a lower story of the tower to begin. They seized the ropes, the windlass creaked, and slowly and heavily the enormous cone of metal was set in motion. Quasimodo, with heaving bosom, watched the movement. The first shock of the clapper against the wall of brass shook the woodwork upon which it was hung. Quasimodo vibrated with the bell. 'Vah!' he would cry, with a burst of idiot laughter. Meanwhile the motion of the bell was accelerated, and as the angle which it described became more and more obtuse the eye of Quasimodo glistened and shone out with a more phosphoric light. At length the grand peal began: the whole tower trembled; rafters, leads, stones, all groaned together, from the piles of the foundation to the trefoils of the parapet.
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Quasimodo then boiled over with delight; he foamed at the mouth; he ran backward and forward; he trembled with the tower from head to foot. The great bell, let loose, and, as it were, furious with rage, turned its enormous throat first to one side and then to the other side of the tower, and thence issued a roar that might be heard four leagues round. Quasimodo placed himself before this open mouth; he crouched down and rose up, as the bell swung to and fro, inhaled its boisterous breath, and looked by turns at the abyss two hundred feet deep below him, and at the enormous tongue of brass which came ever and anon to bellow in his ear. This was the only speech that he could hear, the only sound that broke the universal silence to which he was doomed. He would spread himself out in it like a bird in the sun. All at once the frenzy of the bell would seize him; his look became wild; he would watch the rocking engine, as a spider watches a fly, and suddenly leap upon it. Then, suspended over the abyss, carried to and fro in the formidable oscillation of the bell, he seized the brazen monster by the earlets, strained it with his knees, sparred it with his heels, and with the whole weight and force of his body increased the fury of the peal. While the tower began to quake he would shout and grind his teeth, his red hair bristled up, his breast heaved and puffed like the bellows of a forge, his eye flashed fire, and the monstrous bell neighed breathless under him. It was then no longer the bell of Notre-Dame and Quasimodo: it was a dream, a whirlwind, a tempest, vertigo astride of uproar; a spirit clinging to a winged monster; a strange centaur, half man, half bell; a species of horrible Astolpho, carried of by a prodigious hippogriff of living brass. The presence of this extraordinary being seemed to infuse the breath of life into the whole cathedral. A sort of mysterious emanation seemedat least so the superstitious multitude imaginedto issue from him, to animate the stones of Notre-Dame, and to make the very entrails of the old church heave and palpitate. When it was known that he was there it was easy to fancy that the thousand statues in the galleries and over the porches moved and were instinct with life. In fact, the cathedral seemed to be a docile and obedient creature in his hands; waiting only his will to raise her mighty voice; being possessed and filled with Quasimodo as with a familiar genius. He might be said to make the immense building breathe. He was, in fact, everywhere; he multiplied himself at all the points of the edifice. At one time the spectator would be seized with affright, on beholding at the top of one of the towers an odd-looking dwarf, climbing, twining, crawling on all fours, descending externally into the abyss, leaping from one projecting point to another, and fumbling in the body of some sculptured Gorgon: it was Quasimodo unnesting the crows. At another, the visitor stumbled, in some dark corner of the church, upon a crouching, grim-faced creature, a sort of living chimerait was Quasimodo musing. At another time might
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be seen under a belfry an enormous head and a bundle of ill-adjusted limbs furiously swinging at the end of a ropeit was Quasimodo ringing the vespers or the angelus. Frequently, at night, a hideous figure might be seen wandering on the delicate open-work balustrade which crowns the towers and runs round the apsisit was still the hunchback of Notre-Dame. At such time, according to the reports of the gossips of the neighbourhood, the whole church assumed a fantastic, supernatural, frightful aspect; eyes and mouths opened here and there; the dogs, and the dragons, and the griffins of stone, which keep watch day and night with outstretched neck and open jaws round the monstrous cathedral, were heard to bark and howl. At Christmas, while the great bell, which seemed to rattle in the throat, summoned the pious to the midnight Mass, the gloomy faade of the cathedral wore such a strange and sinister air, that the grand porch seemed to swallow the multitude, while the rose window above it looked on. All this proceeded from Quasimodo. Egypt would have taken him for the god of the temple; the Middle Ages believed him to be its demon: he was the soul of it. To such a point was he so that to those who knew that Quasimodo once existed Notre-Dame now appears deserted, inanimate, dead. You feel that there is something wanting. This immense body is void; it is a skeleton: the spirit has departed; you see its place, and that is all. It is like a skull: the sockets of the eyes are still there, but the eyes themselves are gone. A Midsummer Night's Dream weaves together a number of separate plots: an argument between the fairy king and queen; a royal wedding in Athens; the love affairs of four young Athenians; and the efforts of a group of common workmen to produce a play for the state wedding celebrations. Act I, Scene 2, introduces the workmen as they begin their production and assemble for the distribution of parts; Bottom the weaver's desire to steal the stage and play every role contrasts comically with Snug's timidity. They meet to begin their rehearsals in Act III, Scene 1, and Shakespeare's portrayal of this early amateur dramatic society at work has charmed audiences for many years. As the summer night moves towards its conclusion the many strands of the plot are increasingly woven together. Here Bottom is drawn into the middle of the conflict between Oberon, the fairy king, and his queen Titania. The sleeping Titania has been bewitched with a magical flower so that she will fall in love with the first man she sees on waking. Stumbling across Bottom and his companions in the forest near Titania's bed, Oberon's servant Puck decides to ensure that the queen's humiliationand thus his master's revengeare complete, by transforming the unwitting weaver into an ass.

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A Midsummer Nights Dream Act I, Scene 2 Enter Quince the carpenter, and Snug the joiner, and Bottom the weaver, and Flute the bellowsmender, and Snout the tinker, and Starveling the tailor QUINCE: Is all our company here? BOTTOM: You were but to call them generally, man by man, according to the script. QUINCE: Here is the scroll of every mans name which is thought fit through all Athens to play in our interlude before the Duke and the Duchess on his wedding day at night. BOTTOM: First, good Peter Quince, say what the play treats on; then read the names of the actors; and so grow to a point. QUINCE: Marry, our play is The most lamentable comedy and most cruel death of Pyramus and Thisbe. BOTTOM: A very good piece of work, I assure you, and a merry. Now, good Peter Quince, call forth your actors by the scroll. Masters, spread yourselves. QUINCE: Answer as I call you. Nick Bottom, the weaver? BOTTOM: Ready!Name what part I am for, and proceed. QUINCE: You, Nick Bottom, are set down for Pyramus. BOTTOM: What is Pyramus?a lover or a tyrant? QUINCE: A lover that kills himself, most gallant, for love. BOTTOM: That will ask some tears in the true performing of it. If I do it, let the audience look to
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their eyes! I will move storms. I will condole, in some measure. To the rest.Yet my chief humour is for a tyrant. I could play Ercles rarely, or a part to tear a cat in, to make all split: The raging rocks And shivering shocks Shall break the locks Of prison gates, And Phibbus car Shall shine from far And make and mar The foolish Fates. This was lofty!Now name the rest of the players.This is Ercles vein, a tyrants vein. A lover is more condoling. QUINCE: Francis Flute, the bellows-mender? FLUTE: Here, Peter Quince. QUINCE: Flute, you must take Thisbe on you. FLUTE: What is Thisbe?a wandering knight? QUINCE: It is the lady that Pyramus must love. FLUTE: Nay, faith, let not me play a womanI have a beard coming. QUINCE: Thats all one: you shall play it in a mask, and you may speak as small as you will. BOTTOM: And I may hide my face, let me play Thisbe too. Ill speak in a monstrous little voice: Thisbe, Thisbe! Ah, Pyramus, my lover dear; thy Thisbe dear, and lady dear. QUINCE: No, no; you must play Pyramus; and Flute, you Thisbe. BOTTOM: Well, proceed.
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QUINCE: Robin Starveling, the tailor? STARVELING: Here, Peter Quince. QUINCE: Robin Starveling, you must play Thisbes mother. Tom Snout, the tinker? SNOUT: Here, Peter Quince. QUINCE: You, Pyramus father; myself, Thisbes father; Snug, the joiner, you the lions part; and I hope here is a play fitted. SNUG: Have you the lions part written? Pray you, if it be, give it me; for I am slow of study. QUINCE: You may do it extempore; for it is nothing but roaring. BOTTOM: Let me play the lion too. I will roar that I will do any mans heart good to hear me. I will roar that I will make the Duke say Let him roar again; let him roar again! QUINCE: An you should do it too terribly you would fright the Duchess and the ladies that they would shriek; and that were enough to hang us all. ALL: That would hang us, every mothers son. BOTTOM: I grant you, friends, if you should fright the ladies out of their wits they would have no more discretion but to hang us. But I will aggravate my voice so that I will roar you as gently as any sucking dove. I will roar you an twere any nightingale. QUINCE: You can play no part but Pyramus; for Pyramus is a sweet-faced man; a proper man as one shall see in a summers day; a most lovely, gentlemanlike man. Therefore you must needs play Pyramus. BOTTOM: Well, I will undertake it. What beard were I best to play it in?
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QUINCE: Why, what you will. BOTTOM: I will discharge it in either your straw-colour beard, your orange-tawny beard, your purple-in-grain beard, or your French-crown-colour beard, your perfect yellow. QUINCE: Some of your French crowns have no hair at all; and then you will play bare-faced! But, masters, here are your parts, and I am to entreat you, request you, and desire you to con them by tomorrow night, and meet me in the palace wood a mile without the town by moonlight. There will we rehearse; for if we meet in the city we shall be dogged with company, and our devices known. In the meantime I will draw a bill of properties such as our play wants. I pray you, fail me not. BOTTOM: We will meet, and there we may rehearse most obscenely and courageously. Take pains, be perfect. Adieu! QUINCE: At the Dukes oak we meet. BOTTOM: Enough; hold, or cut bowstrings. Exeunt Bottom and his fellows Act 3, Scene i Enter the clowns: Bottom, Quince, Snout, Starveling, Flute, and Snug BOTTOM: Are we all met? QUINCE: Pat, pat; and heres a marvellous convenient place for our rehearsal. This green plot shall be our stage, this hawthorn brake our tiring-house, and we will do it in action as we will do it before the Duke. BOTTOM: Peter Quince!

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QUINCE: What sayest thou, Bully Bottom? BOTTOM: There are things in this comedy of Pyramus and Thisbe that will never please. First, Pyramus must draw a sword to kill himself, which the ladies cannot abide. How answer you that? SNOUT: Byr lakin, a parlous fear! STARVELING: I believe we must leave the killing out, when all is done. BOTTOM: Not a whit. I have a device to make all well. Write me a prologue, and let the prologue seem to say we will do no harm with our swords, and that Pyramus is not killed indeed; and for the more better assurance, tell them that I, Pyramus, am not Pyramus, but Bottom the weaver. This will put them out of fear. QUINCE: Well, we will have such a prologue; and it shall be written in eight and six. BOTTOM: No, make it two more: let it be written in eight and eight. SNOUT: Will not the ladies be afeard of the lion? STARVELING: I fear it, I promise you. BOTTOM: Masters, you ought to consider with yourself, to bring inGod shield usa lion among ladies is a most dreadful thing; for there is not a more fearful wildfowl than your lion living; and we ought to look tot. SNOUT: Therefore another prologue must tell he is not a lion. BOTTOM: Nay, you must name his name, and half his face must be seen through the lions neck, and he himself must speak through, saying thus, or to the same defect: Ladies, or Fair ladiesI would wish you, or I would request you, or I would entreat younot to fear, not to tremble. My life for yours: if you think I come hither as a lion, it were pity of my life. No. I am no such thing. I am a man, as other men areand there indeed let him name his name, and tell them plainly he
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is Snug the joiner. QUINCE: Well, it shall be so. But there is two hard things: that is, to bring the moonlight into a chamberfor, you know, Pyramus and Thisbe meet by moonlight. SNUG: Doth the moon shine that night we play our play? BOTTOM: A calendar, a calendar! Look in the almanacfind out moonshine, find out moonshine! QUINCE: Yes, it doth shine that night. BOTTOM: Why, then, may you leave a casement of the Great Chamber windowwhere we play open, and the moon may shine in at the casement. QUINCE: Ay; or else one must come in with a bush of thorns and a lantern, and say he comes to disfigure or to present the person of Moonshine. Then there is another thing. We must have a wall in the Great Chamber; for Pyramus and Thisbe, says the story, did talk through the chink of a wall. SNOUT: You can never bring in a wall. What say you, Bottom? BOTTOM: Some man or other must present Wall; and let him have some plaster, or some loam, or some roughcast about him to signify Wall; and let him hold his fingers thus, and through that cranny shall Pyramus and Thisbe whisper. QUINCE: If that may be, then all is well. Come, sit down every mothers son, and rehearse your parts. Pyramus, you begin. When you have spoken your speech, enter into that brake; and so everyone according to his cue. Enter Puck PUCK: What hempen homespuns have we swaggering here So near the cradle of the Fairy Queen? What, a play toward? Ill be an auditor
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An actor too, perhaps, if I see cause. QUINCE: Speak, Pyramus! Thisbe, stand forth! BOTTOM: (as Pyramus) Thisbe, the flowers of odious savours sweet QUINCE: Odoursodours! BOTTOM: (as Pyramus) odours savours sweet. So hath thy breath, my dearest Thisbe dear. But hark, a voice. Stay thou but here awhile, And by and by I will to thee appear. Exit PUCK: A stranger Pyramus than eer played here. Exit FLUTE: Must I speak now? QUINCE: Ay, marry must you; for you must understand he goes but to see a noise that he heard, and is to come again. FLUTE: (as Thisbe) Most radiant Pyramus, most lilywhite of hue, Of colour like the red rose on triumphant briar, Most brisky juvenal, and eke most lovely Jew, As true as truest horse that yet would never tire, Ill meet thee, Pyramus, at Ninnys tomb QUINCE: Ninus tomb, man!Why, you must not speak that yet. That you answer to Pyramus. You speak all your part at once, cues and all. Pyramus, enteryour cue is past. It is never tire. FLUTE: O! (as Thisbe)
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As true as truest horse, that yet would never tire. Enter Puck, and Bottom with an asss head BOTTOM: (as Pyramus) If I were fair, fair Thisbe, I were only thine. QUINCE: O monstrous! O strange! We are haunted! Pray, masters! Fly, masters! Help! Exeunt Quince, Snug, Flute, Snout, and Starveling PUCK: Ill follow you, Ill lead you about a round, Thorough bog, thorough bush, thorough brake, thorough briar, Sometime a horse Ill be, sometime a hound, A hog, a headless bear, sometime a fire, And neigh, and bark, and grunt and roar and burn Like horse, hound, hog, bear, fire at every turn. Exit BOTTOM: Why do they run away? This is a knavery of them to make me afeard. Enter Snout SNOUT: O Bottom, thou art changed. What do I see on thee? BOTTOM: What do you see? You see an ass head of your own, do you? Exit Snout Enter Quince QUINCE: Bless thee, Bottom! Bless thee! Thou art translated! Exit
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BOTTOM: I see their knavery! This is to make an ass of me, to fright me, if they could; but I will not stir from this place, do what they can. I will walk up and down here, and I will sing, that they shall hear I am not afraid. (sings) The ousel cock so black of hue, With orange-tawny bill, The throstle with his note so true, The wren with little quill. TITANIA: (wakes) What angel wakes me from my flowery bed? BOTTOM: (sings) The finch, the sparrow, and the lark, The plainsong cuckoo grey, Whose note full many a man doth mark And dares not answer Nay for indeed, who would set his wit to so foolish a bird? Who would give a bird the lie, though he cry cuckoo never so? TITANIA: I pray thee, gentle mortal, sing again! Mine ear is much enamoured of thy note. So is mine eye enthralld to thy shape, And thy fair virtues force perforce doth move me On the first view to say, to swear, I love thee. BOTTOM: Methinks, mistress, you should have little reason for that. And yet, to say the truth, reason and love keep little company together nowadaysthe more the pity that some honest neighbours will not make them friends.Nay, I can gleek upon occasion. TITANIA: Thou art as wise as thou art beautiful. BOTTOM: Not so neither; but if I had wit enough to get out of this wood, I have enough to serve
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mine own turn. TITANIA: Out of this wood do not desire to go! Thou shalt remain here, whether thou wilt or no. I am a spirit of no common rate. The summer still doth tend upon my state, And I do love thee. Therefore go with me. Ill give thee fairies to attend on thee, And they shall fetch thee jewels from the deep, And sing while thou on pressd flowers dost sleep; And I will purge thy mortal grossness so That thou shalt like an airy spirit go. Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Moth, and Mustardseed! Enter the four Fairies PEASEBLOSSOM: Ready! COBWEB: And I! MOTH: And I! MUSTARDSEED: And I! ALL: Where shall we go? TITANIA: Be kind and courteous to this gentleman. Hop in his walks and gambol in his eyes; Feed him with apricocks and dewberries, With purple grapes, green figs, and mulberries. The honey bags steal from the humble bees, And for night-tapers crop their waxen thighs And light them at the fiery glow-worms eyes
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To have my love to bed and to arise; And pluck the wings from painted butterflies To fan the moonbeams from his sleeping eyes. Nod to him, elves, and do him courtesies. PEASEBLOSSOM: Hail, mortal! COBWEB: Hail! MOTH: Hail! MUSTARDSEED: Hail! BOTTOM: I cry your worships mercy, heartily. I beseech your worships name. COBWEB: Cobweb. BOTTOM: I shall desire you of more acquaintance, good Master Cobwebif I cut my finger I shall make bold with you!Your name, honest gentleman? PEASEBLOSSOM: Peaseblossom. BOTTOM: I pray you commend me to Mistress Squash, your mother, and to Master Peascod, your father. Good Master Peaseblossom, I shall desire you of more acquaintance, too.Your name, I beseech you, sir? MUSTARDSEED: Mustardseed. BOTTOM: Good Master Mustardseed, I know your patience well. That same cowardly, giantlike Oxbeef hath devoured many a gentleman of your house. I promise you, your kindred hath made my eyes water ere now. I desire your more acquaintance, good Master Mustardseed. TITANIA: Come, wait upon him. Lead him to my bower.
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The moon methinks looks with a watery eye; And when she weeps, weeps every little flower, Lamenting some enforcd chastity. Tie up my lovers tongue; bring him silently. Exit Titania with Bottom and the Fairies

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