Great pirates of Penzance! says I; of all the impudent
But I glanced at Bill, and hesitated. He had the most appealing look in his eyes I ever saw on the face of a dumb or a talking brute.
Sam, says he, whats two hundred and fifty dollars, after all? Weve got the money. One more night of this kid will send me to a bed in Bedlam[211]. Besides being a thorough gentleman, I think Mr. Dorset is a spendthrift for making us such a liberal offer. You aint going to let the chance go, are you?
But I glanced at Bill, and hesitated. He had the most appealing look in his eyes I ever saw on the face of a dumb or a talking brute.
Sam, says he, whats two hundred and fifty dollars, after all? Weve got the money. One more night of this kid will send me to a bed in Bedlam[211]. Besides being a thorough gentleman, I think Mr. Dorset is a spendthrift for making us such a liberal offer. You aint going to let the chance go, are you?
Tell you the truth, Bill, says I, this little he ewe lamb has somewhat got on my nerves too. Well take him home, pay the ransom and make our get-away.
We took him home that night. We got him to go by telling him that his father had bought a silver-mounted rifle and a pair of moccasins for him, and we were going to hunt bears the next day.
It was just twelve oclock when we knocked at Ebenezers front door. Just at the moment when I should have been abstracting the fifteen hundred dollars from the box under the tree, according to the original proposition, Bill was counting out two hundred and fifty dollars into Dorsets hand.
When the kid found out we were going to leave him at home he started up a howl like a calliope and fastened himself as tight as a leech to Bills leg. His father peeled him away gradually, like a porous plaster.
How long can you hold him? asks Bill.
Im not as strong as I used to be, says old Dorset, but I think I can promise you ten minutes.
Enough, says Bill. In ten minutes I shall cross the Central, Southern and Middle Western States, and be legging it trippingly for the Canadian border.
And, as dark as it was, and as fat as Bill was, and as good a runner as I am, he was a good mile and a half out of Summit before I could catch up with him.
Edgar Allan Poe
The Fall of the House of Usher
Son cœur est un luth suspendu;
Sitôt quon le touche il résonne.[212]
De Béranger.[213]During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. I know not how it was but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I say insufferable; for the feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurable, because poetic, sentiment, with which the mind usually receives even the sternest natural images of the desolate or terrible. I looked upon the scene before me upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain upon the bleak walls upon the vacant eye-like windows upon a few rank sedges and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees with an utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the after-dream of the reveler upon opium the bitter lapse into every-day life the hideous dropping off of the veil. There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime. What was it I paused to think what was it that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of Usher? It was a mystery all insoluble; nor could I grapple with the shadowy fancies that crowded upon me as I pondered. I was forced to fall back upon the unsatisfactory conclusion that while, beyond doubt, there are combinations of very simple natural objects which have the power of thus affecting us, still the analysis of this power lies among considerations beyond our depth. It was possible, I reflected, that a mere different arrangement of the particulars of the scene, of the details of the picture, would be sufficient to modify, or perhaps to annihilate its capacity for sorrowful impression; and, acting upon this idea, I reined my horse to the precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn that lay in unruffled luster by the dwelling, and gazed down but with a shudder even more thrilling than before upon the remodeled and inverted images of the gray sedge, and the ghastly tree stems, and the vacant and eye-like windows.
Nevertheless, in this mansion of gloom I now proposed to myself a sojourn of some weeks. Its proprietor, Roderick Usher, had been one of my boon companions in boyhood; but many years had elapsed since our last meeting. A letter, however, had lately reached me in a distant part of the country a letter from him which, in its wildly importunate nature, had admitted of no other than a personal reply. The MS. gave evidence of nervous agitation. The writer spoke of acute bodily illness of a mental disorder which oppressed him, and of an earnest desire to see me, as his best, and indeed his only personal friend, with a view of attempting, by the cheerfulness of my society, some alleviation of his malady. It was the manner in which all this, and much more, was said it was the apparent heart that went with his request which allowed me no room for hesitation; and I accordingly obeyed forthwith what I still considered a very singular summons.