My
Favorite Literature Page 2
FAVORITE CHILDHOOD LITERATURE – PAGE 1
1824
by
Washington Irving
(1783-1859)
A few miles from
About the year 1727, just at the time when
earthquakes were prevalent in
One day that Tom Walker had been to a
distant part of the neighbourhood, he took what he considered a short cut
homewards through the swamp. Like most short cuts, it was an ill chosen route.
The swamp was thickly grown with great gloomy pines and hemlocks, some of them
ninety feet high; which made it dark at noonday, and a retreat for all the owls
of the neighbourhood. It was full of pits and quagmires, partly covered with
weeds and mosses; where the green surface often betrayed the traveller into a gulf
of black smothering mud; there were also dark and stagnant pools, the abodes of
the tadpole, the bull-frog, and the water snake, and where trunks of pines and
hemlocks lay half drowned, half rotting, looking like alligators, sleeping in
the mire.
Tom had long been picking his way
cautiously through this treacherous forest; stepping from tuft to tuft of
rushes and roots which afforded precarious footholds among deep sloughs; or
pacing carefully, like a cat, along the prostrate trunks of trees; startled now
and then by the sudden screaming of the bittern, or the quacking of a wild
duck, rising on the wing from some solitary pool. At length he arrived at a
piece of firm ground, which ran out like a peninsula into the deep bosom of the
swamp. It had been one of the strong holds of the Indians during their wars
with the first colonists. Here they had thrown up a kind of fort which they had
looked upon as almost impregnable, and had used as a place of refuge for their
squaws and children. Nothing remained of the Indian fort but a few embankments
gradually sinking to the level of the surrounding earth, and already overgrown
in part by oaks and other forest trees, the foliage of which formed a contrast
to the dark pines and hemlocks of the swamp.
It was late in the dusk of evening that Tom
Walker reached the old fort, and he paused there for a while to rest himself.
Any one but he would have felt unwilling to linger in this lonely melancholy
place, for the common people had a bad opinion of it from the stories handed
down from the time of the Indian wars; when it was asserted that the savages
held incantations here and made sacrifices to the evil spirit. Tom Walker,
however, was not a man to be troubled with any fears of the kind.
He reposed himself for some time on the
trunk of a fallen hemlock, listening to the boding cry of the tree toad, and
delving with his walking staff into a mound of black mould at his feet. As he
turned up the soil unconsciously, his staff struck against something hard. He
raked it out of the vegetable mould, and lo! a cloven skull with an Indian
tomahawk buried deep in it, lay before him. The rust on the weapon showed the
time that had elapsed since this death blow had been given. It was a dreary
memento of the fierce struggle that had taken place in this last foothold of
the Indian warriors.
"Humph!" said Tom Walker, as he
gave the skull a kick to shake the dirt from it.
"Let that skull alone!" said a
gruff voice.
Tom lifted up his eyes and beheld a great
black man, seated directly opposite him on the stump of a tree. He was
exceedingly surprised, having neither seen nor heard any one approach, and he
was still more perplexed on observing, as well as the gathering gloom would
permit, that the stranger was neither negro nor Indian. It is true, he was
dressed in a rude, half Indian garb, and had a red belt or sash swathed round
his body, but his face was neither black nor copper colour, but swarthy and
dingy and begrimed with soot, as if he had been accustomed to toil among fires
and forges. He had a shock of coarse black hair, that stood out from his head
in all directions; and bore an axe on his shoulder.
He scowled for a moment at Tom with a pair
of great red eyes.
"What are you doing in my
grounds?" said the black man, with a hoarse growling voice.
"Your grounds?" said Tom, with a
sneer; "no more your grounds than mine: they belong to Deacon
Peabody."
"Deacon Peabody be d——d," said
the stranger, "as I flatter myself he will be, if he does not look more to
his own sins and less to his neighbour's. Look yonder, and see how Deacon
Peabody is faring."
Tom looked in the direction that the
stranger pointed, and beheld one of the great trees, fair and flourishing
without, but rotten at the core, and saw that it had been nearly hewn through,
so that the first high wind was likely to below it down. On the bark of the
tree was scored the name of Deacon Peabody. He now looked round and found most
of the tall trees marked with the name of some great men of the colony, and all
more or less scored by the axe. The one on which he had been seated, and which
had evidently just been hewn down, bore the name of Crowninshield; and he
recollected a mighty rich man of that name, who made a vulgar display of
wealth, which it was whispered he had acquired by buccaneering.
"He's just ready for burning!"
said the black man, with a growl of triumph. "You see I am likely to have
a good stock of firewood for winter."
"But what right have you," said
Tom, "to cut down Deacon Peabody's timber?"
"The right of prior claim," said
the other. "This woodland belonged to me long before one of your white
faced race put foot upon the soil."
"And pray, who are you, if I may be so
bold?" said Tom.
"Oh, I go by various names. I am the
Wild Huntsman in some countries; the Black Miner in others. In this
neighbourhood I am known by the name of the Black Woodsman. I am he to whom the
red men devoted this spot, and now and then roasted a white man by way of sweet
smelling sacrifice. Since the red men have been exterminated by you white
savages, I amuse myself by presiding at the persecutions of quakers and
anabaptists; I am the great patron and prompter of slave dealers, and the grand
master of the
"The upshot of all which is, that, if
I mistake not," said Tom, sturdily, "you are he commonly called Old
Scratch."
"The same at your service!"
replied the black man, with a half civil nod.
Such was the opening of this interview,
according to the old story, though it has almost too familiar an air to be
credited. One would think that to meet with such a singular personage in this
wild lonely place, would have shaken any man's nerves: but Tom was a
hard-minded fellow, not easily daunted, and he had lived so long with a
termagant wife, that he did not even fear the devil.
It is said that after this commencement,
they had a long and earnest conversation together, as Tom returned homewards.
The black man told him of great sums of money which had been buried by Kidd the
pirate, under the oak trees on the high ridge not far from the morass. All
these were under his command and protected by his power, so that none could
find them but such as propitiated his favour. These he offered to place within
Tom Walker's reach, having conceived an especial kindness for him: but they
were to be had only on certain conditions. What these conditions were, may
easily be surmised, though Tom never disclosed them publicly. They must have
been very hard, for he required time to think of them, and he was not a man to
stick at trifles where money was in view. When they had reached the edge of the
swamp the stranger paused.
"What proof have I that all you have
been telling me is true?" said Tom.
"There is my signature," said the
black man, pressing his finger on Tom's forehead. So saying, he turned off
among the thickets of the swamp, and seemed, as Tom said, to go down, down,
down, into the earth, until nothing but his head and shoulders could be seen,
and so on until he totally disappeared.
When Tom reached home he found the black
print of a finger burnt, as it were, into his forehead, which nothing could
obliterate.
The first news his wife had to tell him was
the sudden death of Absalom Crowninshield the rich buccaneer. It was announced
in the papers with the usual flourish, that "a great man had fallen in
Tom recollected the tree which his black
friend had just hewn down, and which was ready for burning. "Let the
freebooter roast," said Tom, "who cares!" He now felt convinced
that all he had heard and seen was no illusion.
He was not prone to let his wife into his
confidence; but as this was an uneasy secret, he willingly shared it with her.
All her avarice was awakened at the mention of hidden gold, and she urged her
husband to comply with the black man's terms and secure what would make them
wealthy for life. However Tom might have felt disposed to sell himself to the
devil, he was determined not to do so to oblige his wife; so he flatly refused
out of the mere spirit of contradiction. Many and bitter were the quarrels they
had on the subject, but the more she talked the more resolute was Tom not to be
damned to please her. At length she determined to drive the bargain on her own
account, and if she succeeded, to keep all the gain to herself.
Being of the same fearless temper as her
husband, she set off for the old Indian fort towards the close of a summer's
day. She was many hours absent. When she came back she was reserved and sullen
in her replies. She spoke something of a black man whom she had met about
twilight, hewing at the root of a tall tree. He was sulky, however, and would
not come to terms; she was to go again with a propitiatory offering, but what
it was she forebore to say.
The next evening she set off again for the
swamp, with her apron heavily laden. Tom waited and waited for her, but in
vain:
What was her real fate nobody knows, in
consequence of so many pretending to know. It is one of those facts that have
become confounded by a variety of historians. Some asserted that she lost her
way among the tangled mazes of the swamp and sunk into some pit or slough;
others, more uncharitable, hinted that she had eloped with the household booty,
and made off to some other province; while others assert that the tempter had
decoyed her into a dismal quagmire on top of which her hat was found lying. In
confirmation of this, it was said a great black man with an axe on his shoulder
was seen late that very evening coming out of the swamp, carrying a bundle tied
in a check apron, with an air of surly triumph.
The most current and probable story,
however, observes that Tom Walker grew so anxious about the fate of his wife
and his property that he sat out at length to seek them both at the Indian
fort. During a long summer's afternoon he searched about the gloomy place, but
no wife was to be seen. He called her name repeatedly, but she was no where to
be heard. The bittern alone responded to his voice, as he flew screaming by; or
the bull frog croaked dolefully from a neighbouring pool. At length, it is
said, just in the brown hour of twilight, when the owls began to hoot and the
bats to flit about, his attention was attracted by the clamour of carrion crows
that were hovering about a cypress tree. He looked and beheld a bundle tied in
a check apron and hanging in the branches of the tree; with a great vulture
perched hard by, as if keeping watch upon it. He leaped with joy, for he
recognized his wife's apron, and supposed it to contain the household
valuables.
"Let us get hold of the
property," said he, consolingly to himself, "and we will endeavour to
do without the woman."
As he scrambled up the tree the vulture
spread its wide wings, and sailed off screaming into the deep shadows of the
forest. Tom seized the check apron, but, woful sight! found nothing but a heart
and liver tied up in it.
Such, according to the most authentic old
story, was all that was to be found of Tom's wife. She had probably attempted
to deal with the black man as she had been accustomed to deal with her husband;
but though a female scold is generally considered a match for the devil, yet in
this instance she appears to have had the worst of it. She must have died game
however; for it is said Tom noticed many prints of cloven feet deeply stamped
about the tree, and several handsful of hair, that looked as if they had been
plucked from the coarse black shock of the woodsman. Tom knew his wife's
prowess by experience. He shrugged his shoulders as he looked at the signs of a
fierce clapper clawing. "Egad," said he to himself, "Old Scratch
must have had a tough time of it!"
Tom consoled himself for the loss of his
property with the loss of his wife; for he was a man of fortitude. He even felt
something like gratitude towards the black woodsman, who he considered had done
him a kindness. He sought, therefore, to cultivate a farther acquaintance with
him, but for some time without success; the old black legs played shy, for
whatever people may think, he is not always to be had for calling for; he knows
how to play his cards when pretty sure of his game.
At length, it is said, when delay had
whetted Tom's eagerness to the quick, and prepared him to agree to any thing
rather than not gain the promised treasure, he met the black man one evening in
his usual woodman dress, with his axe on his shoulder, sauntering along the
edge of the swamp, and humming a tune. He affected to receive Tom's advance
with great indifference, made brief replies, and went on humming his tune.
By degrees, however, Tom brought him to
business, and they began to haggle about the terms on which the former was to
have the pirate's treasure. There was one condition which need not be
mentioned, being generally understood in all cases where the devil grants
favours; but there were others about which, though of less importance, he was
inflexibly obstinate. He insisted that the money found through his means should
be employed in his service. He proposed, therefore, that Tom should employ it
in the black traffick; that is to say, that he should fit out a slave ship.
This, however, Tom resolutely refused; he was bad enough in all conscience; but
the devil himself could not tempt him to turn slave dealer.
Finding Tom so squeamish on this point, he
did not insist upon it, but proposed instead that he should turn usurer; the
devil being extremely anxious for the increase of usurers, looking upon them as
his peculiar people.
To this no objections were made, for it was
just to Tom's taste.
"You shall open a broker's shop in
"I'll do it to-morrow, if you
wish," said Tom Walker.
"You shall lend money at two per cent.
a month."
"Egad, I'll charge four!" replied
Tom Walker.
"You shall extort bonds, foreclose
mortgages, drive the merchant to bankruptcy—"
"I'll drive him to the d——l,"
cried Tom Walker, eagerly.
"You are the usurer for my
money!" said the black legs, with delight. "When will you want the
rhino?"
"This very night."
"Done!" said the devil.
"Done!" said Tom Walker. —So they
shook hands, and struck a bargain.
A few days' time saw Tom Walker seated
behind his desk in a counting house in
At this propitious time of public distress
did Tom Walker set up as a usurer in
Thus Tom was the universal friend of the
needy, and he acted like a "friend in need;" that is to say, he
always exacted good pay and good security. In proportion to the distress of the
applicant was the hardness of his terms. He accumulated bonds and mortgages;
gradually squeezed his customers closer and closer; and sent them at length,
dry as a sponge from his door.
In this way he made money hand over hand;
became a rich and mighty man, and exalted his cocked hat upon change. He built
himself, as usual, a vast house, out of ostentation; but left the greater part
of it unfinished and unfurnished out of parsimony. He even set up a carriage in
the fullness of his vain glory, though he nearly starved the horses which drew
it; and as the ungreased wheels groaned and screeched on the axle trees, you
would have thought you heard the souls of the poor debtors he was squeezing.
As Tom waxed old, however, he grew
thoughtful. Having secured the good things of this world, he began to feel
anxious about those of the next. He thought with regret on the bargain he had
made with his black friend, and set his wits to work to cheat him out of the
conditions. He became, therefore, all of a sudden, a violent church goer. He
prayed loudly and strenuously as if heaven were to be taken by force of lungs.
Indeed, one might always tell when he had sinned most during the week, by the
clamour of his Sunday devotion. The quiet christians who had been modestly and
steadfastly travelling Zionward, were struck with self reproach at seeing themselves
so suddenly outstripped in their career by this new-made convert. Tom was as
rigid in religious, as in money matters; he was a stern supervisor and censurer
of his neighbours, and seemed to think every sin entered up to their account
became a credit on his own side of the page. He even talked of the expediency
of reviving the persecution of quakers and anabaptists. In a word, Tom's zeal
became as notorious as his riches.
Still, in spite of all this strenuous
attention to forms, Tom had a lurking dread that the devil, after all, would
have his due. That he might not be taken unawares, therefore, it is said he
always carried a small bible in his coat pocket. He had also a great folio
bible on his counting house desk, and would frequently be found reading it when
people called on business; on such occasions he would lay his green spectacles
on the book, to mark the place, while he turned round to drive some usurious
bargain.
Some say that Tom grew a little crack
brained in his old days, and that fancying his end approaching, he had his
horse new shod, saddled and bridled, and buried with his feet uppermost;
because he supposed that at the last day the world would be turned upside down;
in which case he should find his horse standing ready for mounting, and he was
determined at the worst to give his old friend a run for it. This, however, is
probably a mere old wives fable. If he really did take such a precaution it was
totally superfluous; at least so says the authentic old legend which closes his
story in the following manner.
On one hot afternoon in the dog days, just
as a terrible black thundergust was coming up, Tom sat in his counting house in
his white linen cap and
"My family will be ruined and brought
upon the parish," said the land jobber. "Charity begins at
home," replied Tom, "I must take care of myself in these hard
times."
"You have made so much money out of
me," said the speculator.
Tom lost his patience and his
piety—"The devil take me," said he, "if I have made a
farthing!"
Just then there were three loud knocks at
the street door. He stepped out to see who was there. A black man was holding a
black horse which neighed and stamped with impatience.
"Tom, you're come for!" said the
black fellow, gruffly. Tom shrunk back, but too late. He had left his little
bible at the bottom of his coat pocket, and his big bible on the desk buried
under the mortgage he was about to forclose: never was sinner taken more
unawares. The black man whisked him like a child astride the horse and away he
galloped in the midst of a thunder storm. The clerks stuck their pens behind
their ears and stared after him from the windows. Away went Tom Walker, dashing
down the streets; his white cap bobbing up and down; his morning gown
fluttering in the wind, and his steed striking fire out of the pavement at
every bound. When the clerks turned to look for the black man he had
disappeared.
Tom Walker never returned to foreclose the
mortgage. A countryman who lived on the borders of the swamp, reported that in
the height of the thunder gust he had heard a great clattering of hoofs and a
howling along the road, and that when he ran to the window he just caught sight
of a figure, such as I have described, on a horse that galloped like mad across
the fields, over the hills and down into the black hemlock swamp towards the
old Indian fort; and that shortly after a thunderbolt fell in that direction
which seemed to set the whole forest in a blaze.
The good people of Boston shook their heads
and shrugged their shoulders, but had been so much accustomed to witches and
goblins and tricks of the devil in all kinds of shapes from the first
settlement of the colony, that they were not so much horror struck as might
have been expected. Trustees were appointed to take charge of Tom's effects.
There was nothing, however, to administer upon. On searching his coffers all
his bonds and mortgages were found reduced to cinders. In place of gold and
silver his iron chest was filled with chips and shavings; two skeletons lay in
his stable instead of his half starved horses, and the very next day his great
house took fire and was burnt to the ground.
Such was the end of Tom Walker and his ill
gotten wealth. Let all griping money brokers lay this story to heart. The truth
of it is not to be doubted. The very hole under the oak trees, from whence he
dug Kidd's money is to be seen to this day; and the neighbouring swamp and old
Indian fort is often haunted in stormy nights by a figure on horseback, in a morning
gown and white cap, which is doubtless the troubled spirit of the usurer. In
fact, the story has resolved itself into a proverb, and is the origin of that
popular saying, prevalent throughout New-England, of "The Devil and Tom
Walker."
THE END
by Washington Irving
(1783-1859)
He that supper for
is dight,
He lyes full cold, I trow, this night!
Yestreen to chamber I him led,
This night Gray-steel has made his bed!
—Sir Eger, Sir Grahame, and Sir Gray-steel.
On the summit of one of the heights of the
Odenwald, a wild and romantic tract of Upper Germany that lies not far from the
confluence of the Main and the
The Baron was a dry branch of the great
family of Katzenellenbogen, and inherited the relics of the property and all
the pride of his ancestors. Though the warlike disposition of his predecessors
had much impaired the family possessions, yet the Baron still endeavored to
keep up some show of former state. The times were peaceable, and the German
nobles, in general, had abandoned their inconvenient old castles, perched like
eagles’ nests among the mountains, and had built more convenient residences in
the valleys; still the Baron remained proudly drawn up in his little fortress,
cherishing with hereditary inveteracy all the old family feuds; so that he was
on ill terms with some of his nearest neighbors, on account of disputes that
had happened between their great-great-grandfathers.
The Baron had but one child, a daughter;
but Nature, when she grants but one child, always compensates by making it a
prodigy; and so it was with the daughter of the Baron. All the nurses, gossips,
and country cousins, assured her father that she had not her equal for beauty
in all
Her aunts, too, having been great flirts
and coquettes in their younger days, were admirably calculated to be vigilant
guardians and strict censors of the conduct of their niece; for there is no
duenna so rigidly prudent, and inexorably decorous, as a superannuated coquette.
She was rarely suffered out of their sight; never went beyond the domains of
the castle, unless well attended, or, rather, well watched; had continual
lectures read to her about strict decorum and implicit obedience; and, as to
the men—pah! she was taught to hold them at such distance and distrust that,
unless properly authorized, she would not have cast a glance upon the
handsomest cavalier in the world—no, not if he were even dying at her feet.
The good effects of this system were
wonderfully apparent. The young lady was a pattern of docility and correctness.
While others were wasting their sweetness in the glare of the world, and liable
to be plucked and thrown aside by every hand, she was coyly blooming into fresh
and lovely womanhood under the protection of those immaculate spinsters, like a
rosebud blushing forth among guardian thorns. Her aunts looked upon her with
pride and exultation, and vaunted that though all the other young ladies in the
world might go astray, yet, thank Heaven, nothing of the kind could happen to
the heiress of Katzenellenbogen.
But however scantily the Baron Von
Landshort might be provided with children, his household was by no means a
small one, for
The Baron, though a small man, had a large
soul, and it swelled with satisfaction at the consciousness of being the
greatest man in the little world about him. He loved to tell long stories about
the stark old warriors whose portraits looked grimly down from the walls
around, and he found no listeners equal to those who fed at his expense. He was
much given to the marvelous, and a firm believer in all those supernatural
tales with which every mountain and valley in
At the time of which my story treats there
was a great family gathering at the castle, on an affair of the utmost
importance: it was to receive the destined bridegroom of the Baron’s daughter.
A negotiation had been carried on between the father and an old nobleman of
The castle was in a tumult of preparation
to give him a suitable welcome. The fair bride had been decked out with
uncommon care. The two aunts had superintended her toilet, and quarreled the
whole morning about every article of her dress. The young lady had taken
advantage of their contest to follow the bent of her own taste; and fortunately
it was a good one. She looked as lovely as youthful bridegroom could desire;
and the flutter of expectation heightened the luster of her charms.
The suffusions that mantled her face and
neck, the gentle heaving of the bosom, the eye now and then lost in reverie,
all betrayed the soft tumult that was going on in her little heart. The aunts
were continually hovering around her; for maiden aunts are apt to take great
interest in affairs of this nature: they were giving her a world of staid
counsel, how to deport herself, what to say, and in what manner to receive the
expected lover.
The Baron was no less busied in
preparations. He had, in truth, nothing exactly to do; but he was naturally a
fuming, bustling little man, and could not remain passive when all the world
was in a hurry. He worried from top to bottom of the castle, with an air of infinite
anxiety; he continually called the servants from their work to exhort them to
be diligent, and buzzed about every hall and chamber, as idle, restless, and
importunate as a bluebottle fly on a warm summer’s day.
In the meantime, the fatted calf had been
killed; the forests had rung with the clamor of the huntsmen; the kitchen was
crowded with good cheer; the cellars had yielded up whole oceans of Rhein-wein
and Ferne-wein, and even the great Heidelberg Tun had been laid under
contribution. Everything was ready to receive the distinguished guest with Saus
und Braus in the true spirit of German hospitality—but the guest delayed to
make his appearance. Hour rolled after hour. The sun that had poured his
downward rays upon the rich forests of the Odenwald, now just gleamed along the
summits of the mountains. The Baron mounted the highest tower, and strained his
eyes in hopes of catching a distant sight of the Count and his attendants. Once
he thought he beheld them; the sound of horns came floating from the valley,
prolonged by the mountain echoes: a number of horsemen were seen far below,
slowly advancing along the road; but when they had nearly reached the foot of
the mountain they suddenly struck off in a different direction. The last ray of
sunshine departed—the bats began to flit by in the twilight—the road grew
dimmer and dimmer to the view; and nothing appeared stirring in it but now and
then a peasant lagging homeward from his labor.
While the old
The young Count Von Altenburg was
tranquilly pursuing his route in that sober jog-trot way in which a man travels
toward matrimony when his friends have taken all the trouble and uncertainty of
courtship off his hands, and a bride is waiting for him, as certainly as a
dinner at the end of his journey. He had encountered at Wurtzburg a youthful
companion in arms, with whom he had seen some service on the frontiers: Herman
Von Starkenfaust, one of the stoutest hands and worthiest hearts of German
chivalry, who was now returning from the army. His father’s castle was not far
distant from the old fortress of Landshort, although a hereditary feud rendered
the families hostile and strangers to each other.
In the warm-hearted moment of recognition,
the young friends related all their past adventures and fortunes, and the Count
gave the whole history of his intended nuptials with a young lady whom he had
never seen, but of whose charms he had received the most enrapturing
descriptions.
As the route of the friends lay in the same
direction, they agreed to perform the rest of their journey together; and, that
they might do it more leisurely, set off from Wurtzburg at an early hour, the
Count having given directions for his retinue to follow and overtake him.
They beguiled their wayfaring with
recollections of their military scenes and adventures; but the Count was apt to
be a little tedious, now and then, about the reputed charms of his bride, and
the felicity that awaited him.
In this way they had entered among the
mountains of the Odenwald, and were traversing one of its most lonely and
thickly wooded passes. It is well known that the forests of
With his dying breath he entreated his
friend to repair instantly to the
Starkenfaust bestowed a sigh and a
soldier’s tear on the untimely fate of his comrade; and then pondered on the
awkward mission he had undertaken. His heart was heavy, and his head perplexed;
for he was to present himself an unbidden guest among hostile people, and to
damp their festivity with tidings fatal to their hopes. Still there were
certain whisperings of curiosity in his bosom to see this far-famed beauty of
Katzenellenbogen so cautiously shut up from the world; for he was a passionate
admirer of the sex, and there was a dash of eccentricity and enterprise in his
character that made him fond of all singular adventure.
Previous to his departure, he made all due
arrangements with the holy fraternity of the convent for the funeral
solemnities of his friend, who was to be buried in the cathedral of Wurtzburg,
near some of his illustrious relatives; and the mourning retinue of the Count
took charge of his remains.
It is now high time that we should return
to the ancient family of Katzenellenbogen, who were impatient for their guest,
and still more for their dinner; and to the worthy little Baron, whom we left
airing himself on the watch-tower.
Night closed in, but still no guest
arrived. The Baron descended from the tower in despair. The banquet, which had
been delayed from hour to hour, could no longer be postponed. The meats were
already overdone, the cook in an agony, and the whole household had the look of
a garrison that had been reduced by famine. The Baron was obliged reluctantly
to give orders for the feast without the presence of the guest. All were seated
at table, and just on the point of commencing, when the sound of a horn from
without the gate gave notice of the approach of a stranger. Another long blast
filled the old courts of the castle with its echoes, and was answered by the
warder from the walls. The Baron hastened to receive his future son-in-law.
The drawbridge had been let down, and the
stranger was before the gate. He was a tall gallant cavalier, mounted on a
black steed. His countenance was pale, but he had a beaming, romantic eye, and
an air of stately melancholy. The Baron was a little mortified that he should
have come in this simple, solitary style. His dignity for a moment was ruffled,
and he felt disposed to consider it a want of proper respect for the important
occasion, and the important family with which he was to be connected. He
pacified himself, however, with the conclusion that it must have been youthful
impatience which had induced him thus to spur on sooner than his attendants.
“I am sorry,” said the stranger, “to break
in upon you thus unseasonably—”
Here the Baron interrupted him with a world
of compliments and greetings; for, to tell the truth, he prided himself upon
his courtesy and his eloquence. The stranger attempted, once or twice, to stem
the torrent of words, but in vain; so he bowed his head and suffered it to flow
on. By the time the Baron had come to a pause they had reached the inner court
of the castle; and the stranger was again about to speak, when he was once more
interrupted by the appearance of the female part of the family, leading forth
the shrinking and blushing bride. He gazed on her for a moment as one
entranced; it seemed as if his whole soul beamed forth in the gaze, and rested
upon that lovely form. One of the maiden aunts whispered something in her ear;
she made an effort to speak; her moist blue eye was timidly raised, gave a shy
glance of inquiry on the stranger, and was cast again to the ground. The words
died away; but there was a sweet smile playing about her lips, and a soft
dimpling of the cheek, that showed her glance had not been unsatisfactory. It
was impossible for a girl of the fond age of eighteen, highly predisposed for
love and matrimony, not to be pleased with so gallant a cavalier.
The late hour at which the guest had
arrived left no time for parley. The Baron was peremptory, and deferred all
particular conversation until the morning, and led the way to the untasted
banquet.
It was served up in the great hall of the
castle. Around the walls hung the hard-favored portraits of the heroes of the
house of Katzenellenbogen, and the trophies which they had gained in the field
and in the chase. Hacked corselets, splintered jousting spears, and tattered
banners were mingled with the spoils of sylvan warfare: the jaws of the wolf
and the tusks of the boar grinned horribly among crossbows and battle-axes, and
a huge pair of antlers branched immediately over the head of the youthful
bridegroom.
The cavalier took but little notice of the
company or the entertainment. He scarcely tasted the banquet, but seemed
absorbed in admiration of his bride. He conversed in a low tone, that could not
be overheard—for the language of love is never loud; but where is the female
ear so dull that it cannot catch the softest whisper of the lover? There was a
mingled tenderness and gravity in his manner that appeared to have a powerful
effect upon the young lady. Her color came and went, as she listened with deep
attention. Now and then she made some blushing reply, and when his eye was
turned away she would steal a sidelong glance at his romantic countenance, and
heave a gentle sigh of tender happiness. It was evident that the young couple
were completely enamored. The aunts, who were deeply versed in the mysteries of
the heart, declared that they had fallen in love with each other at first
sight.
The feast went on merrily, or at least
noisily, for the guests were all blessed with those keen appetites that attend
upon light purses and mountain air. The Baron told his best and longest stories,
and never had he told them so well, or with such great effect. If there was
anything marvelous, his auditors were lost in astonishment; and if anything
facetious, they were sure to laugh exactly in the right place. The Baron, it is
true, like most great men, was too dignified to utter any joke but a dull one:
it was always enforced, however, by a bumper of excellent Hoch-heimer; and even
a dull joke, at one’s own table, served up with jolly old wine, is
irresistible. Many good things were said by poorer and keener wits that would
not bear repeating, except on similar occasions; many sly speeches whispered in
ladies’ ears that almost convulsed them with suppressed laughter; and a song or
two roared out by a poor, but merry and broadfaced cousin of the Baron, that
absolutely made the maiden aunts hold up their fans.
Amid all this revelry, the stranger-guest
maintained a most singular and unseasonable gravity. His countenance assumed a
deeper cast of dejection as the evening advanced, and, strange as it may
appear, even the Baron’s jokes seemed only to render him the more melancholy.
At times he was lost in thought, and at times there was a perturbed and
restless wandering of the eye that bespoke a mind but ill at ease. His
conversation with the bride became more and more earnest and mysterious.
Lowering clouds began to steal over the fair serenity of her brow, and tremors
to run through her tender frame.
All this could not escape the notice of the
company. Their gaiety was chilled by the unaccountable gloom of the bridegroom;
their spirits were infected; whispers and glances were interchanged,
accompanied by shrugs and dubious shakes of the head. The song and the laugh
grew less and less frequent: there were dreary pauses in the conversation,
which were at length succeeded by wild tales and supernatural legends. One
dismal story produced another still more dismal, and the Baron nearly
frightened some of the ladies into hysterics with the history of the goblin
horseman that carried away the fair Leonora—a dreadful, but true story, which
has since been put into excellent verse, and is read and believed by all the
world.
The bridegroom listened to this tale with
profound attention. He kept his eyes steadily fixed on the Baron, and, as the
story drew to a close, began gradually to rise from his seat, growing taller
and taller, until, in the Baron’s entranced eye, he seemed almost to tower into
a giant. The moment the tale was finished, he heaved a deep sigh, and took a
solemn farewell of the company. They were all amazement. The Baron was
perfectly thunderstruck.
“What! going to leave the castle at
The stranger shook his head mournfully and
mysteriously: “I must lay my head in a different chamber to-night!”
There was something in this reply, and the
tone in which it was uttered, that made the Baron’s heart misgive him; but he
rallied his forces, and repeated his hospitable entreaties. The stranger shook
his head silently, but positively, at every offer; and, waving his farewell to
the company, stalked slowly out of the hall. The maiden aunts were absolutely
petrified—the bride hung her head, and a tear stole to her eye.
The Baron followed the stranger to the
great court of the castle, where the black charger stood pawing the earth and
snorting with impatience. When they had reached the portal, whose deep archway
was dimly lighted by a cresset, the stranger paused, and addressed the Baron in
a hollow tone of voice, which the vaulted roof rendered still more sepulchral.
“Now that we are alone,” said he, “I will impart to you the reason of my going.
I have a solemn, an indispensable engagement—”
“Why,” said the Baron, “cannot you send
some one in your place?”
“It admits of no substitute—I must attend
it in person—I must away to Wurtzburg cathedral—”
“Ay,” said the Baron, plucking up spirit,
“but not until to-morrow—to-morrow you shall take your bride there.”
“No! no!” replied the stranger, with
tenfold solemnity, “my engagement is with no bride—the worms! the worms expect
me! I am a dead man—I have been slain by robbers—my body lies at Wurtzburg —at
midnight I am to be buried—the grave is waiting for me—I must keep my
appointment!”
He sprang on his black charger, dashed over
the drawbridge, and the clattering of his horse’s hoofs was lost in the
whistling of the nightblast.
The Baron returned to the hall in the
utmost consternation, and related what had passed. Two ladies fainted outright;
others sickened at the idea of having banqueted with a specter. It was the
opinion of some that this might be the wild huntsman famous in German legend.
Some talked of mountain sprites, of wood-demons, and of other supernatural
beings, with which the good people of
But, whatever may have been the doubts
entertained, they were completely put to an end by the arrival, next day, of
regular missives confirming the intelligence of the young Count’s murder, and
his interment in Wurtzburg cathedral.
The dismay at the castle may well be
imagined. The Baron shut himself up in his chamber. The guests who had come to
rejoice with him could not think of abandoning him in his distress. They
wandered about the courts, or collected in groups in the hall, shaking their
heads and shrugging their shoulders at the troubles of so good a man; and sat
longer than ever at table, and ate and drank more stoutly than ever, by way of
keeping up their spirits. But the situation of the widowed bride was the most
pitiable. To have lost a husband before she had even embraced him—and such a
husband! If the very specter could be so gracious and noble, what must have
been the living man? She filled the house with lamentations.
On the night of the second day of her
widowhood, she had retired to her chamber, accompanied by one of her aunts, who
insisted on sleeping with her. The aunt, who was one of the best tellers of
ghost stories in all
Of the two females, the aunt now required
the most soothing, for she was perfectly beside herself with terror. As to the
young lady, there was something, even in the specter of her lover, that seemed
endearing. There was still the semblance of manly beauty; and though the shadow
of a man is but little calculated to satisfy the affections of a lovesick girl,
yet, where the substance is not to be had, even that is consoling. The aunt
declared that she would never sleep in that chamber again; the niece, for once,
was refractory, and declared as strongly that she would sleep in no other in
the castle: the consequence was that she had to sleep in it alone; but she drew
a promise from her aunt not to relate the story of the specter, lest she should
be denied the only melancholy pleasure left her on earth—that of inhabiting the
chamber over which the guardian shade of her lover kept its nightly vigils.
How long the good old lady would have
observed this promise is uncertain, for she dearly loved to talk of the
marvelous, and there is a triumph in being the first to tell a frightful story;
it is, however, still quoted in the neighborhood, as a memorable instance of
female secrecy, that she kept it to herself for a whole week; when she was
suddenly absolved from all further restraint by intelligence brought to the breakfast-table
one morning that the young lady was not to be found. Her room was empty—the bed
had not been slept in—the window was open—and the bird had flown!
The astonishment and concern with which the
intelligence was received can only be imagined by those who have witnessed the
agitation which the mishaps of a great man cause among his friends. Even the
poor relations paused for a moment from the indefatigable labors of the
trencher; when the aunt, who had at first been struck speechless, wrung her hands
and shrieked out, “The goblin! the goblin! She’s carried away by the goblin!”
In a few words she related the fearful
scene of the garden, and concluded that the specter must have carried off his
bride. Two of the domestics corroborated the opinion, for they had heard the
clattering of a horse’s hoofs down the mountain about
What a lamentable situation was that of the
poor Baron! What a heartrending dilemma for a fond father, and a member of the
great family of Katzenellenbogen! His only daughter had either been rapt away
to the grave, or he was to have some wood-demon for a son-in-law, and,
perchance, a troop of goblin grandchildren. As usual, he was completely
bewildered, and all the castle in an uproar. The men were ordered to take horse
and scour every road and path and glen of the Odenwald. The Baron himself had
just drawn on his jack-boots, girded on his sword, and was about to mount his
steed to sally forth on the doubtful quest, when he was brought to a pause by a
new apparition. A lady was seen approaching the castle, mounted on a palfrey
attended by a cavalier on horseback. She galloped up to the gate, sprang from
her horse, and falling at the Baron’s feet, embraced his knees. It was his lost
daughter, and her companion—the Specter Bridegroom! The Baron was astounded. He
looked at his daughter, then at the specter, and almost doubted the evidence of
his senses. The latter, too, was wonderfully improved in his appearance, since
his visit to the world of spirits. His dress was splendid, and set off a noble
figure of manly symmetry. He was no longer pale and melancholy. His fine
countenance was flushed with the glow of youth, and joy rioted in his large
dark eyes.
The mystery was soon cleared up. The
cavalier (for, in truth, as you must have known all the while, he was no
goblin) announced himself as Sir Herman Von Starkenfaust. He related his
adventure with the young Count. He told how he had hastened to the castle to
deliver the unwelcome tidings, but that the eloquence of the Baron had interrupted
him in every attempt to tell his tale. How the sight of the bride had
completely captivated him, and that to pass a few hours near her he had tacitly
suffered the mistake to continue. How he had been sorely perplexed in what way
to make a decent retreat, until the Baron’s goblin stories had suggested his
eccentric exit. How, fearing the feudal hostility of the family, he had
repeated his visits by stealth—had haunted the garden beneath the young lady’s
window—had wooed—had won—had borne away in triumph—and, in a word, had wedded,
the fair.
Under any other circumstances the Baron
would have been inflexible, for he was tenacious of paternal authority and
devoutly obstinate in all family feuds; but he loved his daughter; he had
lamented her as lost; he rejoiced to find her still alive; and, though her
husband was of a hostile house, yet, thank Heaven, he was not a goblin. There
was something, it must be acknowledged, that did not exactly accord with his
notions of strict veracity, in the joke the knight had passed upon him of his
being a dead man; but several old friends present, who had served in the wars,
assured him that every stratagem was excusable in love, and that the cavalier
was entitled to especial privilege, having lately served as a trooper.
Matters therefore, were happily arranged.
The Baron pardoned the young people on the spot. The revels at the castle were
resumed. The poor relations overwhelmed this new member of the family with
loving-kindness; he was so gallant, so generous—and so rich. The aunts, it is
true, were somewhat scandalized that their system of strict seclusion and
passive obedience should be so badly exemplified, but attributed all to their
negligence in not having the windows grated. One of them was particularly
mortified at having her marvelous story marred, and that the only specter she
had ever seen should turn out a counterfeit; but the niece seemed perfectly
happy at having found him substantial flesh and blood—and so the story ends.
THE END
A Modest Proposal
BY: Jonathan Swift
(1729) A Modest Proposal for preventing the children of poor people in