Honors English 11
Summer Reading, Thinking, and
Writing Assignment
Council Rock High School South
1
Honors English 11
Summer Reading, Thinking, and Writing Assignment
Purpose:
You have elected to take Honors English 11, a challenging course that explores the American
Dream from its inception to its current condition. We invite you to begin your Honors English 11
experience this summer with in-depth reading and exploratory writing that delves into the
American experience. The most satisfying and thorough analytical writing comes from the close
reading of a text and the critical thinking skills that develop as a result of that close reading. In
order to become an active, close reader, you must reflect, analyze, question, and write about what
you have read. The following reading and writing assignments will enable you to come to class in
the fall with a developing perspective of American literature and life.
Directions:
Written Responses
1. For each reading (excluding The Crucible) you will be expected to write approximately a
page and a half to two pages, typed and double-spaced, of response and analysis. Use
the guiding questions on pages 3-4 to focus your analysis. Each paragraph that you write
should maintain a clear, specific focus; however, more importantly, your overall response
to each work may cover several different concepts.
2. You must provide at least one specific quote from the text per paragraph to reinforce your
analysis and interpretations. NO PLOT SUMMARY IS PERMITTED! React, Respond,
Question, and/or Challenge: Good thinking produces good writing. Here is a list of verbs
that will help you to think critically: describe, explain, predict, identify, differentiate,
translate, interpret, extrapolate, analyze, compare, classify, arrange, rearrange,
decide, assess, select, conclude, connect, evaluate.
3. Date and title each entry accordingly.
4. Value the opportunity to develop your own thoughts and opinions; the purpose of this
assignment is to start your critical and analytical thinking. Genuine responses are of much
greater value to you and your instructors than “right” answers that have been taken from
elsewhere. Any plagiarized responses will result in a zero.
Annotated Texts
1. You are required to read, highlight, and annotate each assigned text. See page 5 for an
example of thorough highlighting and annotating. Annotating can and should involve
connections to Americanism(s) and American thinking, questions, concerns, and ideas that
relate to 21st century thinking. No credit will be given for assignments not annotated.
Grading/Other Information:
Your annotations and responses for the short readings will count as 55 points while annotations
and responses for The Crucible will count as 35 points. All assignments will be assessed based
upon completion, format, and level of critical thinking demonstrated.
All work will be due on the first day of school. Please bring materials with you to class.
You will use your responses and annotated texts as resources during class discussion and also for
in-class essays that you will write after the discussion.
Remember, this assignment is your first opportunity to present yourself as a student who is ready
for the demands of the Honors English 11 curriculum.
2
Texts, Assignments, and Guiding Questions:
Literary Movement
Native American
Puritanism
Enlightenment
Romanticism
Realism
Modernism
Age of Anxiety
Reading Selection
Overview
“The Iroquois Creation Story”
Overview
The Crucible
Overview
From Letters from an American Farmer
Overview
“The Devil and Tom Walker”
Overview
Poetry
Overview
“Babylon Revisited”
Overview
The Crucible
Pages
6
7-9
10
Not Included
11
12-15
16
17-25
26
27-28
29
30-48
29 (bottom)
Not Included
“The Iroquois Creation Story”
How do the good mind and the bad mind reflect the duality that is found throughout the study of
American history? What aspects of the story show the roots of some of America’s songs and
traditions? How would such beliefs influence the Native American response to the arrival of
explorers and settlers? How would the visitors to the “New World” respond to the tale of Creation?
From Letters from an American Farmer by J. Hector St. John De Crevecoeur
If you were in Europe, reading Crevecoeur’s letter, what would entice you to come to America?
What elements in Letters from an American Farmer are reflected in the early words of the
Founding Fathers: “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”? What aspects of our inalienable
rights are present in the text? What elements of the American Dream begin to emerge in the text?
“The Devil and Tom Walker” by Washington Irving
What elements of the short story are uniquely American? What criticism(s) regarding the American
Dream are made in the text? How does the motif of business vs. religion develop a theme?
Poetry by Steven Crane
What is Crane saying about the relationship between people’s experiences and their perspectives?
Strengths and weaknesses exist within mankind; how do these poems convey these strengths and
weaknesses? Would you describe Crane’s poems as optimistic or pessimistic? How do Crane’s
poems illustrate the ideals of realism/naturalism?
3
“Babylon Revisited” by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Explore the significance of the short story’s title, citing your source(s) if necessary. How does
“Babylon Revisited” use elements of past, present, and future to create a theme? What elements of
the story address the mutability of the American Dream, and what conclusions do these elements
lead to? Do you think Charlie should be able to leave with Honoria? Why? Why not?
The Crucible by Arthur Miller (to be read after completing this packet)
Annotations and a total of three one page entries, typed and doublespaced, are required for The Crucible.
Either Post-it-Note the text or purchase a copy to highlight and
annotate as you read.
Use the list of topics below as a guide for annotating. Of course, in
literature, taking note of the characters and their actions, the settings
and their influences, and other literary devices always helps to make
meaning.
Much has been written about the Salem Witch Trials, but The
Crucible is also an amazing study in human nature, in the value of
reputation, in mob mentality, and about truth and perception.
Write one entry for each of the topics below. Again, select a passage from the text and include it in
each response.
1. The Power of Fear
2. The Power of the Physical Wilderness and Isolation
3. The Individual verses Society
4
5
Overview of Native American Oral Narrative
Native American stories, rich in tradition, are inextricably rooted in the things of tribal experiences;
and, because they are oral rather than written, the tales rely upon a performance dimension that is lost
to a reader. For instance, some Navajo and Iroquois stories are told in complex performances that, for
an understanding of their fullest dimensions, require the audience’s knowledge of the location of
particular places where events occurred and the specific voices in which certain characters are
speaking. Ritual dances in both cultures ascribe to certain locations inside the audience circle the
geographical places afar off that are mentioned in the stories. Sand paintings, in the Navajo traditions,
are ritualistic and sacred, for they symbolize sacred places and sacred acts that inform the Navajo
stories being told. The creation story of the Iroquois similarly relies upon the experiences known to the
listeners; the long houses of the sky dwellers in the Iroquois creation story resemble the long houses
traditional in Iroquois culture. Native American stories, then—whether they are chants, songs, or
narratives—rely upon a performance, a dramatic presentation that the written word for the most part
cannot convey.
Cycles of stories relate to the Native Americans’ subsistence experiences—planting, hunting, and
fishing—and to life experiences—birth, puberty, and death. Other stories explain the more distant
origin of the world and emergence of the people, the development of the particular Native American
population and crucial events in the history of that population, and the uncertain nature of human
existence. The latter groups of stories are offered here—stories of origin and emergence, historical
narratives, and trickster tales.
The Story of Pocahontas
Smith’s story of Pocahontas emerged among English-speakers as a talk of charity and bravery
of a young Indian maiden who was willing to sacrifice her life in order to save a man of
superior merit. In the nineteenth century, it attained the status of a myth justifying colonial
conquest and it became a symbol of the European imposition of “otherness” on inhabitants of
the New World. Myths, like Pocahontas, formed the belief that explorers who had come to the
Americas were much superior to the Native Americans already there because of their race,
religion, and so-called “civilization.” Whether Spanish or French or English, settlers became
very ethnocentric.
The Reality
Native Americans had century-old traditions, traditions antedating Christianity and Western
European social organizations.
The ‘Literature’
Knowledge of Native American culture as it was then is not available from written records;
instead, what little we know has been pieced together from: stone implements, pottery pieces
and shards, and oral stories.
Lost in Translation
Early Native American oral forms are known today primarily through written transmissions.
Because they are written, they cannot represent the cultural norms and circumstances under
which the narratives originally emerged. The narrator, the narrative scene, and the cultural
assumptions are lost in these written transmissions.
6
“The Iroquois Creation Story”[1]
A Tale of the Foundation of the Great Island, Now North America; the Two Infants Born, and the
Creation of the Universe (rec. 1827)
Among the ancients there were two worlds in existence. The lower world was in great darkness;—the
possession of the great monster; but the upper world was inhabited by humankind; and there was a
woman conceived[2] and would have the twin born. When her travail drew near, and her situation
seemed to produce a great distress on her mind, and she was induced by some of her relations to lay
herself on a mattress which was prepared, so as to gain refreshments to her wearied body; but while
she was asleep the very place sunk down towards the dark world.[3]
The monsters[4] of the great water were alarmed at her appearance of descending to the lower world; in
consequence all the species of the creatures were immediately collected into where it was expected she
would fall. When the monsters were assembled, and they made consultation, one of them was
appointed in haste to search the great deep, in order to procure some earth, if it could be obtained;
accordingly the monster descends, which succeeds, and returns to the place. Another requisition was
presented, who would be capable to secure the woman from the terrors of the great water, but none was
able to comply except a large turtle came forward and made proposal to them to endure her lasting
weight, which was accepted.
The woman was yet descending from a great distance. The turtle executes upon the spot, and a small
quantity of earth was varnished on the back part of the turtle. The woman alights on the seat prepared,
and she receives a satisfaction.[5] While holding her, the turtle increased every moment and became a
considerable island of earth, and apparently covered with small bushes. The woman remained in a state
of unlimited darkness, and she was overtaken by her travail to which she was subject.
While she was in the limits of distress one of the infants in her womb was moved by an evil opinion
and he was determined to pass out under the side of the parent's arm, and the other infant in vain
endeavored to prevent his design.[6] The woman was in a painful condition during the time of their
disputes, and the infants entered the dark world by compulsion, and their parent expired in a few
moments. They had the power of sustenance without a nurse, and remained in the dark regions.
After a time the turtle increased to a great Island and the infants were grown up, and one of them
possessed with a gentle disposition, and named Enigorio, i.e. the good mind. The other youth
possessed an insolence of character, and was named Enigonhahetgea, i.e. the bad mind.[7] The good
mind was not contented to remain in a dark situation, and he was anxious to create a great light in the
dark world; but the bad mind was desirous that the world should remain in a natural state.
The good mind determines to prosecute his designs, and therefore commences the world of creation.
At first he took the parent's head, (the deceased) of which he created an orb, and established it in the
centre of the firmament, and it became of a very superior nature to bestow light to the new world, (now
the sun) and again he took the remnant of the body and formed another orb, which was inferior to the
light (now moon). In the orb a cloud of legs appeared to prove it was the body of the good mind,
(parent). The former was to give light to the day and the latter to the night; and he also created
numerous spots of light, (now stars): these were to regulate the days, nights, seasons, years, etc.
Whenever the light extended to the dark world the monsters were displeased and immediately
concealed themselves in the deep places, lest they should be discovered by some human beings. The
7
good mind continued the works of creation, and he formed numerous creeks and rivers on the Great
Island, and then created numerous species of animals of the smallest and the greatest, to inhabit the
forests, and fishes of all kinds to inhabit the waters. When he had made the universe he was in doubt
respecting some being to possess the Great Island; and he formed two images of the dust of the ground
in his own likeness, female and male, and by his breathing into their nostrils he gave them the living
souls, and named them Ea-gwe-howe, i.e., a real people[8]; and he gave the Great Island all the animals
of game for their maintenance and he appointed thunder to water the earth by frequent rains, agreeable
of the nature of the system; after this the Island became fruitful and vegetation afforded the animals
subsistance.
The bad mind, while his brother was making the universe, went throughout the Island and made
numerous high mountains and falls of water, and great steeps, and also creates various reptiles which
would be injurious to humankind; but the good mind restored the Island to its former condition. The
bad mind proceeded further in his motives and he made two images of clay in the form of humankind;
but while he was giving them existence they became apes[9]; and when he had not the power to create
humankind he was envious against his brother; and again he made two of clay. The good mind
discovered his brother's contrivances, and aided in giving them living souls, (it is said these had the
most knowledge of good and evil).
The good mind now accomplishes the works of creation, notwithstanding the imaginations of the bad
mind were continually evil; and he attempted to enclose all the animals of game in the earth, so as to
deprive them from humankind; but the good mind released them from confinement, (the animals were
dispersed, and traces of them were made on the rocks near the cave where it was closed).
The good mind experiences that his brother was at variance with the works of creation, and feels not
disposed to favor any of his proceedings, but gives admonitions of his future state. Afterwards the
good mind requested his brother to accompany him, as he was proposed to inspect the game, etc., but
when a short distance from their monina[10] [sic] residence, the bad mind became so unmanly that he
could not conduct his brother any more.[11]
The bad mind offered a challenge to his brother and resolved that who gains the victory whould govern
the universe; and appointed a day to meet the contest. The good mind was willing to submit to the
offer, and he enters the reconciliation with his brother which he falsely mentions that by whipping with
flags would destroy his temporal life[12]; and he earnestly solicits his brother also to notice the
instrument of death, which he manifestly relates by the use of deer horns, beating his body he would
expire. On the day appointed the engagement commenced, which lasted for two days: after pulling up
the trees and mountains as the track of a terrible whirlwind, at last the good mind gained the victory by
using the horns, as mentioned the instrument of death, which he succeeded in deceiving his brother and
he crushed him in the earth; and the last words uttered from the bad mind were, that he would have
equal power over the souls of humankind after death; and he sinks down to eternal doom, and became
the Evil Spirit. After this tumult the good mind repaired to the battle ground, and then visited the
people and retires from the earth.[13]
__________________________________
Footnotes:
1 From Sketches of the Ancient History of the Six Nations (1827).
8
2 The woman who conceives in most Iroquois accounts of the creation is the second generation of sky
women to become pregnant without sexual activity. "Humankind" i.e. humans rather than
"monsters"—undefined creatures of a time before the world as we know it was established—although
these humans have powers quite different from those humans usually possess.
3 Other versions have Sky Woman either being pushed out of the upper world or accidentally falling.
4 In other versions the monsters are a variety of familiar animals. Cusick's sense of them as monsters
conveys the mysterious and dangerous state of affairs in teh as-yet-unformed universe.
5 I.e., she lands safely, without harm.
6 Other versions of the story have Sky Woman give birth to a daughter, who aagain becomes
supernaturally pregnant (perhaps by the spirit of the Turtle), and it is she who conceives the twns. The
twins argue even in the womb, the Evil Twin deciding not to be born in the natural way but to burst
through his mother's side, which leads to her death. The theme of rival twins is widespread in America.
7 More commonly, the Good Twin is called Tharonhiawagon (Sky-Grasper, Creator or Upholder of the
Heavens) and the Evil Twin is named Tawiscaron (Evil-Minded, Flint, Ice, Patron of Winter, and other
disasters). Cusick's Enigorio is a rough translation of the Tuscarora word for "good-minded" into
Mohawk which his Enigonhahetgea is an equally rough translation into Seneca, Onondaga, or Cayuga
of the Tuscarora word for "bad minded." Cusick has probably changed the Tuscarora words best
known to him into these ohter Iroquis languages, because they were considered to be more prestigious
than Tuscarora, the Tuscaroras only recently having joined the Iroquois Confederacy.
8 Humans. Ea-gwe-howe is a Tuscarora term used by speakers of all the languages of teh Six Nations
and, today, simply means Indian, or Indians.
9 Cusick may have seen an ape or a depiction of apes (there are no apes native to the New World) and
decided to name them as the creatures made by the Evil Twin in contrast to the humans made by the
Good Twin. John Buck and Chief John Gibson, in their later renditions of the Iroquis creation narrative
also refer to apes at this point in the narrative.
10 Cusick perhaps means nominal, their named or designated residence.
11 I.e., the Evil Twin became so rude and obnoxious that the Good Twin could not lead ("conduct") his
brother to the appointed place any longer.
12 The Good Twin tells his brother that he can be killed by being beaten with corn stalks, rushes,
reeds, or cattails. Cusick calls this a deception; other accounts treat it as a confession of weakness.
Below, teh Evil Twin admits that he would die if beated with the antlers of deer.
13 Other versions go on to say that the Good Twin teaches the people how to grow corn and how to
keep from harm by means of prayer and ritual.
__________________________________
From The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Shorter Fourth Edition, Eds. Nina Baym et al.,
New York: Norton, 1995, pp. 28-30.
9
Overview of Puritanism
(Read with The Crucible)
(1620-1720)
When most people think of Puritans, the infamous Salem Witch Trials are more likely to come to mind
than literature. In fact, some of the literature they left behind does deal with this, but they produced
many other works as well. The Puritans were literate and well-educated, and Puritan authors were
respected and regularly published in London.
Back in England, a literary culture was flourishing – superb poetry, first-rate drama, and the early
inklings of great novels. But in New England (i.e. America), the most literate men and women were
writing mostly diaries, letters, memoirs, sermons, historical records, and philosophical contemplations
about the New World.
The writings of the time were dominated by the strict religious beliefs of the Puritans. For example,
 a belief in Original Sin and the consequent sinfulness of all mankind.
 a belief in the heavenly virtue of hard, productive labor.
 a belief in the awesome power of a God in shoes hands rested everyone’s fate, both in life and
in the Everlasting Hereafter.
The Puritan government was a theocracy: Holy commonwealth governed by God and God’s
representatives. The constitution was the Bible, the government leaders were ministers, and the citizens
were the congregation.
While the Bible was indeed their primary reading material, they expounded upon its themes through
poetry and prose.
Poetry: Judgment and Struggles
Puritan poetry expressed themes such as humankind’s unworthiness before God, the
meaninglessness of possessions, the danger of vanity and the difficulties of life in a frontier setting.
Among the most important Puritan poets were Edward Taylor, Ann Bradstreet, and Michael
Wigglesworth. In a poem dealing with a fire that consumed her home, Bradstreet expressed the
insignificance of material things. Her later poetry reflects her personal struggles, such as the loss of
her grandson Simon and two other grandchildren.
Prose: Judgment and Victory
Sermons and histories were the most popular forms of Puritan prose, and these focused on
theological themes as well. The best-known authors were Jonathan Edwards and Cotton Mather.
Edwards’ “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” is one of the best-known sermons of all time.
He employed the natural and agricultural imagery with which his audience was familiar to describe
and communicate God’s wrath.
10
Overview of the Enlightenment
(1720-1820)
For the men of the Enlightenment the basic question of the age was:
How does one make mankind happy and rational and free?
Their basic answer was:
By discovering the underlying laws which would organize all knowledge into a clear,
rational system, enabling individuals to become enlightened, and the societies in which
they live to progress.
People of the Enlightenment believed human reason could:
 discover the natural laws of the universe.
 determine the natural rights of mankind
 promote unending progress in knowledge, technical achievement, and moral values.
 show life as it is, whereas imagination shows life as people wish it were or feared it may be.
 be used to combat ignorance, superstition, and tyranny.
The Enlightenment was an eighteenth century philosophical movement in American (and Europe),
which emphasized intellectual freedom and reason over tradition, questioning of authority, and an
empirical approach to science. This literary movement promoted a scientific approach to political and
social issues.
The Enlightenment was the product of a vast set of cultural and intellectual changes in Europe during
the 1500s and 1600s—changes that in turn produced the social values that permitted the Enlightenment
to sweep through Europe in the late 1600s and 1700s. One of the most important of these changes was
the Scientific Revolution of the 1500s and 1600s. During the Scientific Revolution, European thinkers
tore down the flawed set of “scientific” beliefs established by the ancients and maintained by the
Church. To replace this flawed knowledge, scientists sought to discover and convey the true laws
governing the phenomena they observed in nature.
The Enlightenment had a profound impact on the English colonies in America and ultimately on the
infant nation of the United States.
Some believed that the Enlightenment was a divine sign that America was headed for greatness;
therefore, a search for native literature because a national obsession. This optimism reflected a sense of
growing economic opportunity. Americans were exposed to, and contributed to, the leading works of
science, law, politics, and social order, yet lacked the traditions and conservatism that impeded the
European countries from truly changing their ways. America was founded as a deist country, giving
credit to some manner of natural God yet allowing diverse religious expression, and also continued in
the social and industrial veins that were begun in Europe.
11
From Letters from an American Farmer
“Letter III - What Is An American?”
by J. Hector St. John De Crevecoeur
I wish I could be acquainted with the feelings and thoughts which must agitate the heart and present
themselves to the mind of an enlightened Englishman, when he first lands on this continent. He must
greatly rejoice that he lived at a time to see this fair country discovered and settled; he must necessarily
feel a share of national pride, when he views the chain of settlements which embellishes these
extended shores. When he says to himself, this is the work of my countrymen, who, when convulsed
by factions, afflicted by a variety of miseries and wants, restless and impatient, took refuge here. They
brought along with them their national genius, to which they principally owe what liberty they enjoy,
and what substance they possess. Here he sees the industry of his native country displayed in a new
manner, and traces in their works the embryos of all the arts, sciences, and ingenuity which nourish in
Europe. Here he beholds fair cities, substantial villages, extensive fields, an immense country filled
with decent houses, good roads, orchards, meadows, and bridges, where an hundred years ago all was
wild, woody, and uncultivated! What a train of pleasing ideas this fair spectacle must suggest; it is a
prospect which must inspire a good citizen with the most heartfelt pleasure. The difficulty consists in
the manner of viewing so extensive a scene. He is arrived on a new continent; a modern society offers
itself to his contemplation, different from what he had hitherto seen. It is not composed, as in Europe,
of great lords who possess everything, and of a herd of people who have nothing. Here are no
aristocratical families, no courts, no kings, no bishops, no ecclesiastical dominion, no invisible power
giving to a few a very visible one; no great manufacturers employing thousands, no great refinements
of luxury. The rich and the poor are not so far removed from each other as they are in Europe. Some
few towns excepted, we are all tillers of the earth, from Nova Scotia to West Florida. We are a people
of cultivators, scattered over an immense territory, communicating with each other by means of good
roads and navigable rivers, united by the silken bands of mild government, all respecting the laws,
without dreading their power, because they are equitable. We are all animated with the spirit of an
industry which is unfettered and unrestrained, because each person works for himself. If he travels
through our rural districts he views not the hostile castle, and the haughty mansion, contrasted with the
clay- built hut and miserable cabin, where cattle and men help to keep each other warm, and dwell in
meanness, smoke, and indigence. A pleasing uniformity of decent competence appears throughout our
habitations. The meanest of our log-houses is a dry and comfortable habitation. Lawyer or merchant
are the fairest titles our towns afford; that of a farmer is the only appellation of the rural inhabitants of
our country. It must take some time ere he can reconcile himself to our dictionary, which is but short in
words of dignity, and names of honour. There, on a Sunday, he sees a congregation of respectable
farmers and their wives, all clad in neat homespun, well mounted, or riding in their own humble
waggons. There is not among them an esquire, saving the unlettered magistrate. There he sees a parson
as simple as his flock, a farmer who does not riot on the labour of others. We have no princes, for
whom we toil, starve, and bleed: we are the most perfect society now existing in the world. Here man
is free as he ought to be; nor is this pleasing equality so transitory as many others are. Many ages will
not see the shores of our great lakes replenished with inland nations, nor the unknown bounds of North
America entirely peopled. Who can tell how far it extends? Who can tell the millions of men whom it
will feed and contain? for no European foot has as yet travelled half the extent of this mighty
continent!
The next wish of this traveller will be to know whence came all these people? they are a mixture of
English, Scotch, Irish, French, Dutch, Germans, and Swedes. From this promiscuous breed, that race
now called Americans have arisen. The eastern provinces must indeed be excepted, as being the
unmixed descendants of Englishmen. I have heard many wish that they had been more intermixed also:
12
for my part, I am no wisher, and think it much better as it has happened. They exhibit a most
conspicuous figure in this great and variegated picture; they too enter for a great share in the pleasing
perspective displayed in these thirteen provinces. I know it is fashionable to reflect on them, but I
respect them for what they have done; for the accuracy and wisdom with which they have settled their
territory; for the decency of their manners; for their early love of letters; their ancient college, the first
in this hemisphere; for their industry; which to me who am but a farmer, is the criterion of everything.
There never was a people, situated as they are, who with so ungrateful a soil have done more in so
short a time. Do you think that the monarchical ingredients which are more prevalent in other
governments, have purged them from all foul stains? Their histories assert the contrary.
In this great American asylum, the poor of Europe have by some means met together, and in
consequence of various causes; to what purpose should they ask one another what countrymen they
are? Alas, two thirds of them had no country. Can a wretch who wanders about, who works and
starves, whose life is a continual scene of sore affliction or pinching penury; can that man call England
or any other kingdom his country?...Formerly they were not numbered in any civil lists of their
country, except in those of the poor; here they rank as citizens. By what invisible power has this
surprising metamorphosis been performed? By that of the laws and that of their industry….From
whence proceed these laws? From our government. Whence the government? It is derived from the
original genius and strong desire of the people ratified and confirmed by the crown.
What then is the American, this new man? He is either an European, or the descendant of an European,
hence that strange mixture of blood, which you will find in no other country…. He is an American,
who, leaving behind him all his ancient prejudices and manners, receives new ones from the new mode
of life he has embraced, the new government he obeys, and the new rank he holds. He becomes an
American by being received in the broad lap of our great Alma Mater. Here individuals of all nations
are melted into a new race of men, whose labours and posterity will one day cause great changes in the
world…. Here the rewards of his industry follow with equal steps the progress of his labour; his labour
is founded on the basis of nature, SELF-INTEREST: can it want a stronger allurement?...
British America is divided into many provinces, forming a large association, scattered along a coast
1500 miles extent and about 200 wide. This society I would fain examine, at least such as it appears in
the middle provinces; if it does not afford that variety of tinges and gradations which may be observed
in Europe, we have colours peculiar to ourselves….
Men are like plants; the goodness and flavour of the fruit proceeds from the peculiar soil and
exposition in which they grow. We are nothing but what we derive from the air we breathe, the climate
we inhabit, the government we obey, the system of religion we profess, and the nature of our
employment. Here you will find but few crimes; these have acquired as yet no root among us….
Those who live near the sea, feed more on fish than on flesh, and often encounter that boisterous
element. This renders them more bold and enterprising; this leads them to neglect the confined
occupations of the land. They see and converse with a variety of people, their intercourse with
mankind becomes extensive. The sea inspires them with a love of traffic, a desire of transporting
produce from one place to another; and leads them to a variety of resources which supply the place of
labour. Those who inhabit the middle settlements, by far the most numerous, must be very different;
the simple cultivation of the earth purifies them….Europe has no such class of men; the early
knowledge they acquire, the early bargains they make, give them a great degree of sagacity. As
freemen they will be litigious; pride and obstinacy are often the cause of law suits; the nature of our
laws and governments may be another. As citizens it is easy to imagine, that they will carefully read
13
the newspapers, enter into every political disquisition, freely blame or censure governors and others.
As farmers they will be careful and anxious to get as much as they can, because what they get is their
own. As northern men they will love the cheerful cup. As Christians, religion curbs them not in their
opinions; the general indulgence leaves everyone to think for themselves in spiritual matters; the laws
inspect our actions, our thoughts are left to God.
Now we arrive near the great woods, near the last inhabited districts; there men seem to be placed still
farther beyond the reach of government, which in some measure leaves them to themselves. How can it
pervade every corner; as they were driven there by misfortunes, necessity of beginnings, desire of
acquiring large tracts of land, idleness, frequent want of economy, ancient debts; the re-union of such
people does not afford a very pleasing spectacle. When discord, want of unity and friendship; when
either drunkenness or idleness prevail in such remote districts; contention, inactivity, and wretchedness
must ensue.…They are often in a perfect state of war; that of man against man, sometimes decided by
blows, sometimes by means of the law; that of man against every wild inhabitant of these venerable
woods, of which they are come to dispossess them. There men appear to be no better than carnivorous
animals of a superior rank, living on the flesh of wild animals when they can catch them, and when
they are not able, they subsist on grain. He who would wish to see America in its proper light, and
have a true idea of its feeble beginnings and barbarous rudiments, must visit our extended line of
frontiers where the last settlers dwell, and where he may see the first labours of settlement… They are
a kind of forlorn hope, preceding by ten or twelve years the most respectable army of veterans which
come after them…. In all societies there are off-casts; this impure part serves as our precursors or
pioneers; my father himself was one of that class, but he came upon honest principles, and was
therefore one of the few who held fast; by good conduct and temperance, he transmitted to me his fair
inheritance, when not above one in fourteen of his contemporaries had the same good fortune….
There is no wonder that this country has so many charms, and presents to Europeans so many
temptations to remain in it…. A traveller in Europe becomes a stranger as soon as he quits his own
kingdom; but it is otherwise here. We know, properly speaking, no strangers; this is every person's
country; the variety of our soils, situations, climates, governments, and produce, hath something which
must please everybody. No sooner does an European arrive, no matter of what condition, than his eyes
are opened upon the fair prospect; he hears his language spoke, he retraces many of his own country
manners, he perpetually hears the names of families and towns with which he is acquainted; he sees
happiness and prosperity in all places disseminated; he meets with hospitality, kindness, and plenty
everywhere; he beholds hardly any poor, he seldom hears of punishments and executions; and he
wonders at the elegance of our towns, those miracles of industry and freedom. He cannot admire
enough our rural districts, our convenient roads, good taverns, and our many accommodations; he
involuntarily loves a country where everything is so lovely. When in England, he was a mere
Englishman; here he stands on a larger portion of the globe, not less than its fourth part, and may see
the productions of the north, in iron and naval stores; the provisions of Ireland, the grain of Egypt, the
indigo, the rice of China. He does not find, as in Europe, a crowded society, where every place is overstocked; he does not feel that perpetual collision of parties, that difficulty of beginning, that contention
which oversets so many. There is room for everybody in America; has he any particular talent, or
industry? he exerts it in order to procure a livelihood, and it succeeds. Is he a merchant? the avenues of
trade are infinite; is he eminent in any respect? he will be employed and respected.
Does he love a country life? pleasant farms present themselves; he may purchase what he wants, and
thereby become an American farmer. Is he a labourer, sober and industrious? he need not go many
miles, nor receive many informations before he will be hired, well fed at the table of his employer, and
paid four or five times more than he can get in Europe. Does he want uncultivated lands? thousands of
14
acres present themselves, which he may purchase cheap. Whatever be his talents or inclinations, if they
are moderate, he may satisfy them. I do not mean that every one who comes will grow rich in a little
time; no, but he may procure an easy, decent maintenance, by his industry. Instead of starving he will
be fed, instead of being idle he will have employment; and these are riches enough for such men as
come over here. The rich stay in Europe, it is only the middling and the poor that emigrate. Would you
wish to travel in independent idleness, from north to south, you will find easy access, and the most
cheerful reception at every house; society without ostentation, good cheer without pride, and every
decent diversion which the country affords, with little expense. It is no wonder that the European who
has lived here a few years, is desirous to remain; Europe with all its pomp, is not to be compared to
this continent, for men of middle stations, or labourers.
An European, when he first arrives, seems limited in his intentions, as well as in his views; but he very
suddenly alters his scale; two hundred miles formerly appeared a very great distance, it is now but a
trifle; he no sooner breathes our air than he forms schemes, and embarks in designs he never would
have thought of in his own country. There the plenitude of society confines many useful ideas, and
often extinguishes the most laudable schemes which here ripen into maturity. Thus Europeans become
Americans.
After a foreigner from any part of Europe is arrived, and become a citizen; let him devoutly listen to
the voice of our great parent, which says to him, "Welcome to my shores, distressed European; bless
the hour in which thou didst see my verdant fields, my fair navigable rivers, and my green mountains!-If thou wilt work, I have bread for thee; if thou wilt be honest, sober, and industrious, I have greater
rewards to confer on thee--ease and independence. I will give thee fields to feed and clothe thee; a
comfortable fireside to sit by, and tell thy children by what means thou hast prospered; and a decent
bed to repose on. I shall endow thee beside with the immunities of a freeman. If thou wilt carefully
educate thy children, teach them gratitude to God, and reverence to that government, that philanthropic
government, which has collected here so many men and made them happy. I will also provide for thy
progeny; and to every good man this ought to be the most holy, the most powerful, the most earnest
wish he can possibly form, as well as the most consolatory prospect when he dies. Go thou and work
and till; thou shalt prosper, provided thou be just, grateful, and industrious."
15
Overview of Romanticism
(1840-1865)
From Enlightenment to Romanticism
The Enlightenment came to rational conclusions about the natural world, based on experimentation and
logical thinking; however, after fifty years the pendulum began to swing in a different direction. A
more Romantic way of thinking – less rational, more intuitive – came into vogue.
Reason, science, and logic are markers of truth.
Sincerity, spontaneity, and faith in emotion are markers of truth.
All humans are part of a “universal community” who share a single universal human nature.
Value is placed on the realization of individuality and the individual’s experience.
Freedom means being able to think rationally for yourself.
Freedom begins with faith in personal intuition.
Characteristics of Romanticism
Romanticism
Morals
Belief in the natural goodness of man, that man in a state of nature behaves well
but is hindered by civilization (“Noble Savage”).
Spirituality
Belief in perfectibility of man; spiritual force inherent not only in nature but in
mind of man.
Nature
Nature is a source of instruction, delight, nourishment, and inspiration for the
soul; life in nature often contrasted with the unnatural constraints of society.
Happiness
Belief that what is special in a man is to be valued over what is representative;
delight in self-analysis.
God
(Difference)
God is an external force.
Innate
Goodness
(Difference)
Literary
Style
(Difference)
There is an inherent darkness in human nature, as well as an inherent light.
Largely defined by its style – stresses the use of intuition over reason and effect
versus details; uses large contrasts and is concerned with the physical world.
16
“The Devil and Tom Walker”
By Washington Irving
A few miles from Boston, in Massachusetts, there is a deep inlet winding several miles into the interior
of the country from Charles Bay, and terminating in a thickly wooded swamp, or morass. On one side
of this inlet is a beautiful dark grove; on the opposite side the land rises abruptly from the water's edge,
into a high ridge on which grow a few scattered oaks of great age and immense size. Under one of
these gigantic trees, according to old stories, there was a great amount of treasure buried by Kidd the
pirate. The inlet allowed a facility to bring the money in a boat secretly and at night to the very foot of
the hill. The elevation of the place permitted a good look out to be kept that no one was at hand, while
the remarkable trees formed good landmarks by which the place might easily be found again. The old
stories add, moreover, that the devil presided at the hiding of the money, and took it under his
guardianship; but this, it is well known, he always does with buried treasure, particularly when it has
been ill gotten. Be that as it may, Kidd never returned to recover his wealth; being shortly after seized
at Boston, sent out to England, and there hanged for a pirate.
About the year 1727, just at the time when earthquakes were prevalent in New England, and shook
many tall sinners down upon their knees, there lived near this place a meagre miserly fellow of the
name of Tom Walker. He had a wife as miserly as himself; they were so miserly that they even
conspired to cheat each other. Whatever the woman could lay hands on she hid away: a hen could not
cackle but she was on the alert to secure the new-laid egg. Her husband was continually prying about
to detect her secret hoards, and many and fierce were the conflicts that took place about what ought to
have been common property. They lived in a forlorn looking house, that stood alone and had an air of
starvation. A few straggling savin trees, emblems of sterility, grew near it; no smoke ever curled from
its chimney; no traveller stopped at its door. A miserable horse, whose ribs were as articulate as the
bars of a gridiron, stalked about a field where a thin carpet of moss, scarcely covering the ragged beds
of pudding stone, tantalized and balked his hunger; and sometimes he would lean his head over the
fence, look piteously at the passer by, and seem to petition deliverance from this land of famine. The
house and its inmates had altogether a bad name. Tom's wife was a tall termagant, fierce of temper,
loud of tongue, and strong of arm. Her voice was often heard in wordy warfare with her husband; and
his face sometimes showed signs that their conflicts were not confined to words. No one ventured,
however, to interfere between them; the lonely wayfarer shrunk within himself at the horrid clamour
and clapper clawing; eyed the den of discord askance, and hurried on his way, rejoicing, if a bachelor,
in his celibacy.
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.
17
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."
18
"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 Salem witches."
"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:
19
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
Israel."
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: midnight came, but she did not make her appearance; morning, noon, night
returned, but still she did not come. Tom now grew uneasy for her safety; especially as he found she
had carried off in her apron the silver teapot and spoons and every portable article of value. Another
night elapsed, another morning came; but no wife. In a word, she was never heard of more.
20
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
21
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 Boston next month," said the black man.
"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 Boston. His
reputation for a ready moneyed man, who would lend money out for a good consideration, soon spread
abroad. Every body remembers the days of Governor Belcher, when money was particularly scarce. It
22
was a time of paper credit. The country had been deluged with government bills; the famous Land
Bank had been established; there had been a rage for speculating; the people had run mad with
schemes for new settlements; for building cities in the wilderness; land jobbers went about with maps
of grants, and townships, and Eldorados, lying nobody knew where, but which every body was ready
to purchase. In a word, the great speculating fever which breaks out every now and then in the country,
had raged to an alarming degree, and every body was dreaming of making sudden fortunes from
nothing. As usual the fever had subsided; the dream had gone off, and the imaginary fortunes with it;
the patients were left in doleful plight, and the whole country resounded with the consequent cry of
"hard times."
At this propitious time of public distress did Tom Walker set up as a usurer in Boston. His door was
soon thronged by customers. The needy and the adventurous; the gambling speculator; the dreaming
land jobber; the thriftless tradesman; the merchant with cracked credit; in short, every one driven to
raise money by desperate means and desperate sacrifices, hurried to Tom Walker.
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
23
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 India silk morning gown. He was on the point of
foreclosing a mortgage, by which he would complete the ruin of an unlucky land speculator for whom
he had professed the greatest friendship. The poor land jobber begged him to grant a few months
indulgence. Tom had grown testy and irritated and refused another day.
"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
24
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."
25
Overview of Realism
(1865-1895)
End of Civil War was clear dividing line between Romanticism and Realism.
Major contributing factors:
1. Social and human costs of war
2. Industrialism of the North
3. Expanding development/settlement
of the West
Distinguishing Characteristics:
1. Detailed portrayals of everyday people
2. Detailed descriptions of immediate
surroundings
3. Focused on the significance of ordinary
events
Realist writers felt that Romantic writers breed up literature of myths and fantasies of hopeless ideals
and useless delusions. It’s not that literature cannot contain miracles, but realist writers believe that
miracles must look and feel plausible when they occur. Because of steamships and trains, authors were
able to travel the country more easily to include the detail that is characteristic of Realism.
Realistic fiction should be “nothing more and nothing less than the truthful treatment of material,” said
William Dean Howells. “Let fiction cease to lie about life. Let it portray American people as they are,
with the motives and passions we know them to have.”
Regionalism and Local Color: An offshoot of realism that concentrates on the richness of culture,
customs and landscape of specific parts of the United States

Highlighted in picaresque novels like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
 Picaresque - Of or relating to an episodic style of fiction dealing with the adventures of
a rough and dishonest but appealing hero.
Naturalism (1895-1920): An extension of Realism, not a reaction to it. Naturalism is a darker version
of realism, describing life as a scientific observer would see it “telling it like it is.”

Reaction to the following:
o Westward expansion
o Capitalism’s driving of human exploitation
o Darwin’s theory of natural selection and Freud’s theories about the subconscious
o Marx’s belief in economic domination over people’s fates

Portrayed exploitation and human defeat at the hands of nature, society, and modern economy.
o Influenced by advancements in science and technology (industrial revolution).
o Lead to advancements in economy.
o Resulted in more production, profits, factories, jobs, and machinery; however, it also
resulted in less concern for people who generated that profit.

Promotes the concepts of:
o Nature over Nurture
o Predestination over Free Will
26
Realism/Naturalism Poetry by Stephan Crane
“To the Maiden”
To the maiden
The sea was blue meadow,
Alive with little froth-people
Singing.
To the sailor, wrecked,
The sea was dead grey walls
Superlative in vacancy,
Upon which nevertheless at fateful time
Was written
The grim hatred of nature.
The _____________ thinks the sea is _____________. Positive / Negative viewpoint.
The _____________ thinks the sea is _____________. Positive / Negative viewpoint.
Type of Irony: _______________________________________
(Hint: What do you expect of the sailor? Why? What is ironic about his viewpoint?)
“The Wayfarer”
The wayfarer,
Perceiving the pathway to truth,
Was struck with astonishment.
It was thickly grown with weeds.
“Ha,” he said,
“I see that none has passed here
In a long time.”
Later he saw that each weed
Was a singular knife.
“Well,” he mumbled at last,
“Doubtless there are other roads.”
A wayfarer is a ________________________.
Identify the symbolism of the following:
Pathway-
Weeds-
Singular Knife-
Other Roads-
27
“I Saw a Man”
I saw a man pursuing the horizon;
Round and round they sped.
I was disturbed at this;
I accosted the man.
"It is futile," I said,
"You can never -- "
"You lie," he cried,
And ran on.
What impossible task is attempted in this poem?
The horizon symbolizes _________________________________________.
The narrator is ___________ and tells the man ____________________________________.
The man says _______________________________ and he _________________________.
“A Man Said to the Universe”
A man said to the universe:
“Sir, I exist!"
“However,” replied the universe,
“The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation.”
The man tells the universe that he _______________________________________________.
The universe replies by saying _________________________________________________.
(Put into your own words)
28
Overview of Modernism
(1920-present)
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More
specifically, the term describes both a set of cultural tendencies and an array of associated
cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western
society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.
The term encompasses the activities and output of those who felt the "traditional" forms of art,
architecture, literature, religious faith, social organization and daily life were becoming outdated
in the new economic, social and political conditions of an emerging fully industrialized world.
Modernism rejected the lingering certainty of Enlightenment thinking, and also that of the
existence of a compassionate, all-powerful Creator.
Hallmarks of Modern Narratives:
 Abandonment of linear story telling for stream-of-consciousness (jumping around from
idea to idea and back again), fragmentary style
 Themes implied, uncertain (find evidence of possible contrasting themes)
 Economy of phrasing; poetic style
 Intentionally puzzling effects (evidence of ambiguity)
 Salvaging the best of the past (idealization)
 Psychological probing-anxiety and alienation
Some commentators approach Modernism as an overall socially progressive trend of thought that
affirms the power of human beings to create, improve, and reshape their environment, with the
aid of practical experimentation, scientific knowledge or technology.
From this perspective, Modernism encouraged the re-examination of every aspect of existence,
from commerce to philosophy, with the goal of finding that which was ‘holding back’ progress,
and replacing it with new ways of reaching the same end.
The Age of Disillusionment (1920-1945): The years from the end of the First World War to the
end of the Second constitute the age of disillusionment and despair. The Age of Disillusionment
reflects the fragmentation of a world impacted by war, and it was led by many disenchanted
expatriate (many writers lived in Europe). The term “The Lost Generation” was created to
describe those disillusioned by the war.
The Age of Anxiety (1945-present): An age where human individuality seems, to many people,
to have gotten swallowed up by technology and sheer numbers. Like writers in any period,
American writers since World War II have witnessed the social dilemmas of their time and made
literature out of them. But, unlike their predecessors, writers of the Age of Anxiety have had
very few answers to these dilemmas. Modern Americans have been put, psychologically
speaking, on the defensive and forced to question their identity, to wonder about their
significance, and to understand the threats placed on their individuality.
29
“BABYLON REVISITED”
By F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940)
Saturday Evening Post (21 February 1931)
"And where's Mr. Campbell?" Charlie asked.
"Gone to Switzerland. Mr. Campbell's a pretty sick man, Mr. Wales."
"I'm sorry to hear that. And George Hardt?" Charlie inquired.
"Back in America, gone to work."
"And where is the Snow Bird?"
"He was in here last week. Anyway, his friend, Mr. Schaeffer, is in Paris."
Two familiar names from the long list of a year and a half ago. Charlie scribbled an address in
his notebook and tore out the page.
"If you see Mr. Schaeffer, give him this," he said. "It's my brother-in-law's address. I haven't
settled on a hotel yet."
He was not really disappointed to find Paris was so empty. But the stillness in the Ritz bar was
strange and portentous. It was not an American bar any more--he felt polite in it, and not as if he
owned it. It had gone back into France. He felt the stillness from the moment he got out of the
taxi and saw the doorman, usually in a frenzy of activity at this hour, gossiping with a chasseur
by the servants' entrance.
Passing through the corridor, he heard only a single, bored voice in the once-clamorous women's
room. When he turned into the bar he travelled the twenty feet of green carpet with his eyes fixed
straight ahead by old habit; and then, with his foot firmly on the rail, he turned and surveyed the
room, encountering only a single pair of eyes that fluttered up from a newspaper in the corner.
Charlie asked for the head barman, Paul, who in the latter days of the bull market had come to
work in his own custom-built car--disembarking, however, with due nicety at the nearest corner.
But Paul was at his country house today and Alix giving him information.
"No, no more," Charlie said, "I'm going slow these days."
Alix congratulated him: "You were going pretty strong a couple of years ago."
"I'll stick to it all right," Charlie assured him. "I've stuck to it for over a year and a half now."
"How do you find conditions in America?"
30
"I haven't been to America for months. I'm in business in Prague, representing a couple of
concerns there. They don't know about me down there."
Alix smiled.
"Remember the night of George Hardt's bachelor dinner here?" said Charlie. "By the way, what's
become of Claude Fessenden?"
Alix lowered his voice confidentially: "He's in Paris, but he doesn't come here any more. Paul
doesn't allow it. He ran up a bill of thirty thousand francs, charging all his drinks and his lunches,
and usually his dinner, for more than a year. And when Paul finally told him he had to pay, he
gave him a bad check."
Alix shook his head sadly.
"I don't understand it, such a dandy fellow. Now he's all bloated up--" He made a plump apple of
his hands.
Charlie watched a group of strident queens installing themselves in a corner.
"Nothing affects them," he thought. "Stocks rise and fall, people loaf or work, but they go on
forever." The place oppressed him. He called for the dice and shook with Alix for the drink.
"Here for long, Mr. Wales?"
"I'm here for four or five days to see my little girl."
"Oh-h! You have a little girl?"
Outside, the fire-red, gas-blue, ghost-green signs shone smokily through the tranquil rain. It was
late afternoon and the streets were in movement; the bistros gleamed. At the corner of the
Boulevard des Capucines he took a taxi. The Place de la Concorde moved by in pink majesty;
they crossed the logical Seine, and Charlie felt the sudden provincial quality of the Left Bank.
Charlie directed his taxi to the Avenue de l'Opera, which was out of his way. But he wanted to
see the blue hour spread over the magnificent façade, and imagine that the cab horns, playing
endlessly the first few bars of La Plus que Lent, were the trumpets of the Second Empire. They
were closing the iron grill in front of Brentano's Book-store, and people were already at dinner
behind the trim little bourgeois hedge of Duval's. He had never eaten at a really cheap restaurant
in Paris. Five-course dinner, four francs fifty, eighteen cents, wine included. For some odd
reason he wished that he had.
As they rolled on to the Left Bank and he felt its sudden provincialism, he thought, "I spoiled
this city for myself. I didn't realize it, but the days came along one after another, and then two
years were gone, and everything was gone, and I was gone."
31
He was thirty-five, and good to look at. The Irish mobility of his face was sobered by a deep
wrinkle between his eyes. As he rang his brother-in-law's bell in the Rue Palatine, the wrinkle
deepened till it pulled down his brows; he felt a cramping sensation in his belly. From behind the
maid who opened the door darted a lovely little girl of nine who shrieked "Daddy!" and flew up,
struggling like a fish, into his arms. She pulled his head around by one ear and set her cheek
against his.
"My old pie," he said.
"Oh, daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy, dads, dads, dads!"
She drew him into the salon, where the family waited, a boy and girl his daughter's age, his
sister-in-law and her husband. He greeted Marion with his voice pitched carefully to avoid either
feigned enthusiasm or dislike, but her response was more frankly tepid, though she minimized
her expression of unalterable distrust by directing her regard toward his child. The two men
clasped hands in a friendly way and Lincoln Peters rested his for a moment on Charlie's
shoulder.
The room was warm and comfortably American. The three children moved intimately about,
playing through the yellow oblongs that led to other rooms; the cheer of six o'clock spoke in the
eager smacks of the fire and the sounds of French activity in the kitchen. But Charlie did not
relax; his heart sat up rigidly in his body and he drew confidence from his daughter, who from
time to time came close to him, holding in her arms the doll he had brought.
"Really extremely well," he declared in answer to Lincoln's question. "There's a lot of business
there that isn't moving at all, but we're doing even better than ever. In fact, damn well. I'm
bringing my sister over from America next month to keep house for me. My income last year
was bigger than it was when I had money. You see, the Czechs--"
His boasting was for a specific purpose; but after a moment, seeing a faint restiveness in
Lincoln's eye, he changed the subject:
"Those are fine children of yours, well brought up, good manners."
"We think Honoria's a great little girl too."
Marion Peters came back from the kitchen. She was a tall woman with worried eyes, who had
once possessed a fresh American loveliness. Charlie had never been sensitive to it and was
always surprised when people spoke of how pretty she had been. From the first there had been an
instinctive antipathy between them.
"Well, how do you find Honoria?" she asked.
"Wonderful. I was astonished how much she's grown in ten months. All the children are looking
well."
32
"We haven't had a doctor for a year. How do you like being back in Paris?"
"It seems very funny to see so few Americans around."
"I'm delighted," Marion said vehemently. "Now at least you can go into a store without their
assuming you're a millionaire. We've suffered like everybody, but on the whole it's a good deal
pleasanter."
"But it was nice while it lasted," Charlie said. "We were a sort of royalty, almost infallible, with
a sort of magic around us. In the bar this afternoon"--he stumbled, seeing his mistake--"there
wasn't a man I knew."
She looked at him keenly. "I should think you'd have had enough of bars."
"I only stayed a minute. I take one drink every afternoon, and no more."
"Don't you want a cocktail before dinner?" Lincoln asked.
"I take only one drink every afternoon, and I've had that."
"I hope you keep to it," said Marion.
Her dislike was evident in the coldness with which she spoke, but Charlie only smiled; he had
larger plans. Her very aggressiveness gave him an advantage, and he knew enough to wait. He
wanted them to initiate the discussion of what they knew had brought him to Paris.
At dinner he couldn't decide whether Honoria was most like him or her mother. Fortunate if she
didn't combine the traits of both that had brought them to disaster. A great wave of
protectiveness went over him. He thought he knew what to do for her. He believed in character;
he wanted to jump back a whole generation and trust in character again as the eternally valuable
element. Everything wore out.
He left soon after dinner, but not to go home. He was curious to see Paris by night with clearer
and more judicious eyes than those of other days. He bought a strapontin for the Casino and
watched Josephine Baker go through her chocolate arabesques.
After an hour he left and strolled toward Montmartre, up the Rue Pigalle into the Place Blanche.
The rain had stopped and there were a few people in evening clothes disembarking from taxis in
front of cabarets, and cocottes prowling singly or in pairs, and many Negroes. He passed a
lighted door from which issued music, and stopped with the sense of familiarity; it was
Bricktop's, where he had parted with so many hours and so much money. A few doors farther on
he found another ancient rendezvous and incautiously put his head inside. Immediately an eager
orchestra burst into sound, a pair of professional dancers leaped to their feet and a maître d'hôtel
swooped toward him, crying, "Crowd just arriving, sir!" But he withdrew quickly.
"You have to be damn drunk," he thought.
33
Zelli's was closed, the bleak and sinister cheap hotels surrounding it were dark; up in the Rue
Blanche there was more light and a local, colloquial French crowd. The Poet's Cave had
disappeared, but the two great mouths of the Café of Heaven and the Café of Hell still yawned-even devoured, as he watched, the meager contents of a tourist bus--a German, a Japanese, and
an American couple who glanced at him with frightened eyes.
So much for the effort and ingenuity of Montmartre. All the catering to vice and waste was on an
utterly childish scale, and he suddenly realized the meaning of the word "dissipate"--to dissipate
into thin air; to make nothing out of something. In the little hours of the night every move from
place to place was an enormous human jump, an increase of paying for the privilege of slower
and slower motion.
He remembered thousand-franc notes given to an orchestra for playing a single number,
hundred-franc notes tossed to a doorman for calling a cab.
But it hadn't been given for nothing.
It had been given, even the most wildly squandered sum, as an offering to destiny that he might
not remember the things most worth remembering, the things that now he would always
remember--his child taken from his control, his wife escaped to a grave in Vermont.
In the glare of a brasserie a woman spoke to him. He bought her some eggs and coffee, and then,
eluding her encouraging stare, gave her a twenty-franc note and took a taxi to his hotel.
II
He woke upon a fine fall day--football weather. The depression of yesterday was gone and he
liked the people on the streets. At noon he sat opposite Honoria at Le Grand Vatel, the only
restaurant he could think of not reminiscent of champagne dinners and long luncheons that began
at two and ended in a blurred and vague twilight.
"Now, how about vegetables? Oughtn't you to have some vegetables?"
"Well, yes."
"Here's épinards and chou-fleur and carrots and haricots."
"I'd like chou-fleur."
"Wouldn't you like to have two vegetables?"
"I usually only have one at lunch."
34
The waiter was pretending to be inordinately fond of children. "Qu'elle est mignonne la petite?
Elle parle exactement comme une Française."
"How about dessert? Shall we wait and see?"
The waiter disappeared. Honoria looked at her father expectantly.
"What are we going to do?"
"First, we're going to that toy store in the Rue Saint-Honoré and buy you anything you like. And
then we're going to the vaudeville at the Empire."
She hesitated. "I like it about the vaudeville, but not the toy store."
"Why not?"
"Well, you brought me this doll." She had it with her. "And I've got lots of things. And we're not
rich any more, are we?"
"We never were. But today you are to have anything you want."
"All right," she agreed resignedly.
When there had been her mother and a French nurse he had been inclined to be strict; now he
extended himself, reached out for a new tolerance; he must be both parents to her and not shut
any of her out of communication.
"I want to get to know you," he said gravely. "First let me introduce myself. My name is Charles
J. Wales, of Prague."
"Oh, daddy!" her voice cracked with laughter.
"And who are you, please?" he persisted, and she accepted a role immediately: "Honoria Wales,
Rue Palatine, Paris."
"Married or single?"
"No, not married. Single."
He indicated the doll. "But I see you have a child, madame."
Unwilling to disinherit it, she took it to her heart and thought quickly: "Yes, I've been married,
but I'm not married now. My husband is dead."
He went on quickly, "And the child's name?"
35
"Simone. That's after my best friend at school."
"I'm very pleased that you're doing so well at school."
"I'm third this month," she boasted. "Elsie"--that was her cousin--"is only about eighteenth, and
Richard is about at the bottom."
"You like Richard and Elsie, don't you?"
"Oh, yes. I like Richard quite well and I like her all right."
Cautiously and casually he asked: "And Aunt Marion and Uncle Lincoln--which do you like
best?"
"Oh, Uncle Lincoln, I guess."
He was increasingly aware of her presence. As they came in, a murmur of ". . . adorable"
followed them, and now the people at the next table bent all their silences upon her, staring as if
she were something no more conscious than a flower.
"Why don't I live with you?" she asked suddenly. "Because mamma's dead?"
"You must stay here and learn more French. It would have been hard for daddy to take care of
you so well."
"I don't really need much taking care of any more. I do everything for myself."
Going out of the restaurant, a man and a woman unexpectedly hailed him.
"Well, the old Wales!"
"Hello there, Lorraine. . . . Dunc."
Sudden ghosts out of the past: Duncan Schaeffer, a friend from college. Lorraine Quarrles, a
lovely, pale blonde of thirty; one of a crowd who had helped them make months into days in the
lavish times of three years ago.
"My husband couldn't come this year," she said, in answer to his question. "We're poor as hell.
So he gave me two hundred a month and told me I could do my worst on that. . . . This your little
girl?"
"What about coming back and sitting down?" Duncan asked.
"Can't do it." He was glad for an excuse. As always, he felt Lorraine's passionate, provocative
attraction, but his own rhythm was different now.
36
"Well, how about dinner?" she asked.
"I'm not free. Give me your address and let me call you."
"Charlie, I believe you're sober," she said judicially. "I honestly believe he's sober, Dunc. Pinch
him and see if he's sober."
Charlie indicated Honoria with his head. They both laughed.
"What's your address?" said Duncan sceptically.
He hesitated, unwilling to give the name of his hotel.
"I'm not settled yet. I'd better call you. We're going to see the vaudeville at the Empire."
"There! That's what I want to do," Lorraine said. "I want to see some clowns and acrobats and
jugglers. That's just what we'll do, Dunc."
"We've got to do an errand first," said Charlie. "Perhaps we'll see you there."
"All right, you snob. . . . Good-by, beautiful little girl."
"Good-by."
Honoria bobbed politely.
Somehow, an unwelcome encounter. They liked him because he was functioning, because he
was serious; they wanted to see him, because he was stronger than they were now, because they
wanted to draw a certain sustenance from his strength.
At the Empire, Honoria proudly refused to sit upon her father's folded coat. She was already an
individual with a code of her own, and Charlie was more and more absorbed by the desire of
putting a little of himself into her before she crystallized utterly. It was hopeless to try to know
her in so short a time.
Between the acts they came upon Duncan and Lorraine in the lobby where the band was playing.
"Have a drink?"
"All right, but not up at the bar. We'll take a table."
"The perfect father."
Listening abstractedly to Lorraine, Charlie watched Honoria's eyes leave their table, and he
followed them wistfully about the room, wondering what they saw. He met her glance and she
smiled.
37
"I liked that lemonade," she said.
What had she said? What had he expected? Going home in a taxi afterward, he pulled her over
until her head rested against his chest.
"Darling, do you ever think about your mother?"
"Yes, sometimes," she answered vaguely.
"I don't want you to forget her. Have you got a picture of her?"
"Yes, I think so. Anyhow, Aunt Marion has. Why don't you want me to forget her?"
"She loved you very much."
"I loved her too."
They were silent for a moment.
"Daddy, I want to come and live with you," she said suddenly.
His heart leaped; he had wanted it to come like this.
"Aren't you perfectly happy?"
"Yes, but I love you better than anybody. And you love me better than anybody, don't you, now
that mummy's dead?"
"Of course I do. But you won't always like me best, honey. You'll grow up and meet somebody
your own age and go marry him and forget you ever had a daddy."
"Yes, that's true," she agreed tranquilly.
He didn't go in. He was coming back at nine o'clock and he wanted to keep himself fresh and
new for the thing he must say then.
"When you're safe inside, just show yourself in that window."
"All right. Good-by, dads, dads, dads, dads."
He waited in the dark street until she appeared, all warm and glowing, in the window above and
kissed her fingers out into the night.
38
III
They were waiting. Marion sat behind the coffee service in a dignified black dinner dress that
just faintly suggested mourning. Lincoln was walking up and down with the animation of one
who had already been talking. They were as anxious as he was to get into the question. He
opened it almost immediately:
"I suppose you know what I want to see you about--why I really came to Paris."
Marion played with the black stars on her necklace and frowned.
"I'm awfully anxious to have a home," he continued. "And I'm awfully anxious to have Honoria
in it. I appreciate your taking in Honoria for her mother's sake, but things have changed now"--he
hesitated and then continued more forcibly--"changed radically with me, and I want to ask you to
reconsider the matter. It would be silly for me to deny that about three years ago I was acting
badly--"
Marion looked up at him with hard eyes.
"--but all that's over. As I told you, I haven't had more than a drink a day for over a year, and I
take that drink deliberately, so that the idea of alcohol won't get too big in my imagination. You
see the idea?"
"No," said Marion succinctly.
"It's a sort of stunt I set myself. It keeps the matter in proportion."
"I get you," said Lincoln. "You don't want to admit it's got any attraction for you."
"Something like that. Sometimes I forget and don't take it. But I try to take it. Anyhow, I couldn't
afford to drink in my position. The people I represent are more than satisfied with what I've
done, and I'm bringing my sister over from Burlington to keep house for me, and I want awfully
to have Honoria too. You know that even when her mother and I weren't getting along well we
never let anything that happened touch Honoria. I know she's fond of me and I know I'm able to
take care of her and--well, there you are. How do you feel about it?"
He knew that now he would have to take a beating. It would last an hour or two hours, and it
would be difficult, but if he modulated his inevitable resentment to the chastened attitude of the
reformed sinner, he might win his point in the end.
Keep your temper, he told himself. You don't want to be justified. You want Honoria.
39
Lincoln spoke first: "We've been talking it over ever since we got your letter last month. We're
happy to have Honoria here. She's a dear little thing, and we're glad to be able to help her, but of
course that isn't the question--"
Marion interrupted suddenly. "How long are you going to stay sober, Charlie?" she asked.
"Permanently, I hope."
"How can anybody count on that?"
"You know I never did drink heavily until I gave up business and came over here with nothing to
do. Then Helen and I began to run around with--"
"Please leave Helen out of it. I can't bear to hear you talk about her like that."
He stared at her grimly; he had never been certain how fond of each other the sisters were in life.
"My drinking only lasted about a year and a half--from the time we came over until I-collapsed."
"It was time enough."
"It was time enough," he agreed.
"My duty is entirely to Helen," she said. "I try to think what she would have wanted me to do.
Frankly, from the night you did that terrible thing you haven't really existed for me. I can't help
that. She was my sister."
"Yes."
"When she was dying she asked me to look out for Honoria. If you hadn't been in a sanitarium
then, it might have helped matters."
He had no answer.
"I'll never in my life be able to forget the morning when Helen knocked at my door, soaked to
the skin and shivering, and said you'd locked her out."
Charlie gripped the sides of the chair. This was more difficult than he expected; he wanted to
launch out into a long expostulation and explanation, but he only said: "The night I locked her
out--" and she interrupted, "I don't feel up to going over that again."
After a moment's silence Lincoln said: "We're getting off the subject. You want Marion to set
aside her legal guardianship and give you Honoria. I think the main point for her is whether she
has confidence in you or not."
40
"I don't blame Marion," Charlie said slowly, "but I think she can have entire confidence in me. I
had a good record up to three years ago. Of course, it's within human possibilities I might go
wrong any time. But if we wait much longer I'll lose Honoria's childhood and my chance for a
home." He shook his head, "I'll simply lose her, don't you see?"
"Yes, I see," said Lincoln.
"Why didn't you think of all this before?" Marion asked.
"I suppose I did, from time to time, but Helen and I were getting along badly. When I consented
to the guardianship, I was flat on my back in a sanitarium and the market had cleaned me out. I
knew I'd acted badly, and I thought if it would bring any peace to Helen, I'd agree to anything.
But now it's different. I'm functioning, I'm behaving damn well, so far as--"
"Please don't swear at me," Marion said.
He looked at her, startled. With each remark the force of her dislike became more and more
apparent. She had built up all her fear of life into one wall and faced it toward him. This trivial
reproof was possibly the result of some trouble with the cook several hours before. Charlie
became increasingly alarmed at leaving Honoria in this atmosphere of hostility against himself;
sooner or later it would come out, in a word here, a shake of the head there, and some of that
distrust would be irrevocably implanted in Honoria. But he pulled his temper down out of his
face and shut it up inside him; he had won a point, for Lincoln realized the absurdity of Marion's
remark and asked her lightly since when she had objected to the word "damn."
"Another thing," Charlie said: "I'm able to give her certain advantages now. I'm going to take a
French governess to Prague with me. I've got a lease on a new apartment--"
He stopped, realizing that he was blundering. They couldn't be expected to accept with
equanimity the fact that his income was again twice as large as their own.
"I suppose you can give her more luxuries than we can," said Marion. "When you were throwing
away money we were living along watching every ten francs. . . . I suppose you'll start doing it
again."
"Oh, no," he said. "I've learned. I worked hard for ten years, you know--until I got lucky in the
market, like so many people. Terribly lucky. It didn't seem any use working any more, so I quit.
It won't happen again."
There was a long silence. All of them felt their nerves straining, and for the first time in a year
Charlie wanted a drink. He was sure now that Lincoln Peters wanted him to have his child.
Marion shuddered suddenly; part of her saw that Charlie's feet were planted on the earth now,
and her own maternal feeling recognized the naturalness of his desire; but she had lived for a
long time with a prejudice--a prejudice founded on a curious disbelief in her sister's happiness,
and which, in the shock of one terrible night, had turned to hatred for him. It had all happened at
41
a point in her life where the discouragement of ill health and adverse circumstances made it
necessary for her to believe in tangible villainy and a tangible villain.
"I can't help what I think!" she cried out suddenly. "How much you were responsible for Helen's
death, I don't know. It's something you'll have to square with your own conscience."
An electric current of agony surged through him; for a moment he was almost on his feet, an
unuttered sound echoing in his throat. He hung on to himself for a moment, another moment.
"Hold on there," said Lincoln uncomfortably. "I never thought you were responsible for that."
"Helen died of heart trouble," Charlie said dully.
"Yes, heart trouble." Marion spoke as if the phrase had another meaning for her.
Then, in the flatness that followed her outburst, she saw him plainly and she knew he had
somehow arrived at control over the situation. Glancing at her husband, she found no help from
him, and as abruptly as if it were a matter of no importance, she threw up the sponge.
"Do what you like!" she cried, springing up from her chair. "She's your child. I'm not the person
to stand in your way. I think if it were my child I'd rather see her--" She managed to check
herself. "You two decide it. I can't stand this. I'm sick. I'm going to bed."
She hurried from the room; after a moment Lincoln said:
"This has been a hard day for her. You know how strongly she feels--" His voice was almost
apologetic: "When a woman gets an idea in her head."
"Of course."
"It's going to be all right. I think she sees now that you--can provide for the child, and so we can't
very well stand in your way or Honoria's way."
"Thank you, Lincoln."
"I'd better go along and see how she is."
"I'm going."
He was still trembling when he reached the street, but a walk down the Rue Bonaparte to the
quais set him up, and as he crossed the Seine, fresh and new by the quai lamps, he felt exultant.
But back in his room he couldn't sleep. The image of Helen haunted him. Helen whom he had
loved so until they had senselessly begun to abuse each other's love, tear it into shreds. On that
terrible February night that Marion remembered so vividly, a slow quarrel had gone on for hours.
There was a scene at the Florida, and then he attempted to take her home, and then she kissed
young Webb at a table; after that there was what she had hysterically said. When he arrived
42
home alone he turned the key in the lock in wild anger. How could he know she would arrive an
hour later alone, that there would be a snowstorm in which she wandered about in slippers, too
confused to find a taxi? Then the aftermath, her escaping pneumonia by a miracle, and all the
attendant horror. They were "reconciled," but that was the beginning of the end, and Marion,
who had seen with her own eyes and who imagined it to be one of many scenes from her sister's
martyrdom, never forgot.
Going over it again brought Helen nearer, and in the white, soft light that steals upon half sleep
near morning he found himself talking to her again. She said that he was perfectly right about
Honoria and that she wanted Honoria to be with him. She said she was glad he was being good
and doing better. She said a lot of other things--very friendly things--but she was in a swing in a
white dress, and swinging faster and faster all the time, so that at the end he could not hear
clearly all that she said.
IV
He woke up feeling happy. The door of the world was open again. He made plans, vistas, futures
for Honoria and himself, but suddenly he grew sad, remembering all the plans he and Helen had
made. She had not planned to die. The present was the thing--work to do and someone to love.
But not to love too much, for he knew the injury that a father can do to a daughter or a mother to
a son by attaching them too closely: afterward, out in the world, the child would seek in the
marriage partner the same blind tenderness and, failing probably to find it, turn against love and
life.
It was another bright, crisp day. He called Lincoln Peters at the bank where he worked and asked
if he could count on taking Honoria when he left for Prague. Lincoln agreed that there was no
reason for delay. One thing--the legal guardianship. Marion wanted to retain that a while longer.
She was upset by the whole matter, and it would oil things if she felt that the situation was still in
her control for another year. Charlie agreed, wanting only the tangible, visible child.
Then the question of a governess. Charlie sat in a gloomy agency and talked to a cross Béarnaise
and to a buxom Breton peasant, neither of whom he could have endured. There were others
whom he would see tomorrow.
He lunched with Lincoln Peters at Griffons, trying to keep down his exultation.
"There's nothing quite like your own child," Lincoln said. "But you understand how Marion feels
too."
"She's forgotten how hard I worked for seven years there," Charlie said. "She just remembers one
night."
43
"There's another thing." Lincoln hesitated. "While you and Helen were tearing around Europe
throwing money away, we were just getting along. I didn't touch any of the prosperity because I
never got ahead enough to carry anything but my insurance. I think Marion felt there was some
kind of injustice in it--you not even working toward the end, and getting richer and richer."
"It went just as quick as it came," said Charlie.
"Yes, a lot of it stayed in the hands of chasseurs and saxophone players and maîtres d'hôtel-well, the big party's over now. I just said that to explain Marion's feeling about those crazy years.
If you drop in about six o'clock tonight before Marion's too tired, we'll settle the details on the
spot."
Back at his hotel, Charlie found a pneumatique that had been redirected from the Ritz bar where
Charlie had left his address for the purpose of finding a certain man.
DEAR CHARLIE: You were so strange when we saw you the other day that I wondered if I did
something to offend you. If so, I'm not conscious of it. In fact, I have thought about you too
much for the last year, and it's always been in the back of my mind that I might see you if I came
over here. We did have such good times that crazy spring, like the night you and I stole the
butcher's tricycle, and the time we tried to call on the president and you had the old derby rim
and the wire cane. Everybody seems so old lately, but I don't feel old a bit. Couldn't we get
together some time today for old time's sake? I've got a vile hang-over for the moment, but will
be feeling better this afternoon and will look for you about five in the sweat-shop at the Ritz.
Always devotedly,
LORRAINE.
His first feeling was one of awe that he had actually, in his mature years, stolen a tricycle and
pedalled Lorraine all over the Étoile between the small hours and dawn. In retrospect it was a
nightmare. Locking out Helen didn't fit in with any other act of his life, but the tricycle incident
did--it was one of many. How many weeks or months of dissipation to arrive at that condition of
utter irresponsibility?
He tried to picture how Lorraine had appeared to him then--very attractive; Helen was unhappy
about it, though she said nothing. Yesterday, in the restaurant, Lorraine had seemed trite, blurred,
worn away. He emphatically did not want to see her, and he was glad Alix had not given away
his hotel address. It was a relief to think, instead, of Honoria, to think of Sundays spent with her
and of saying good morning to her and of knowing she was there in his house at night, drawing
her breath in the darkness.
At five he took a taxi and bought presents for all the Peters--a piquant cloth doll, a box of Roman
soldiers, flowers for Marion, big linen handkerchiefs for Lincoln.
44
He saw, when he arrived in the apartment, that Marion had accepted the inevitable. She greeted
him now as though he were a recalcitrant member of the family, rather than a menacing outsider.
Honoria had been told she was going; Charlie was glad to see that her tact made her conceal her
excessive happiness. Only on his lap did she whisper her delight and the question "When?"
before she slipped away with the other children.
He and Marion were alone for a minute in the room, and on an impulse he spoke out boldly:
"Family quarrels are bitter things. They don't go according to any rules. They're not like aches or
wounds; they're more like splits in the skin that won't heal because there's not enough material. I
wish you and I could be on better terms."
"Some things are hard to forget," she answered. "It's a question of confidence." There was no
answer to this and presently she asked, "When do you propose to take her?"
"As soon as I can get a governess. I hoped the day after tomorrow."
"That's impossible. I've got to get her things in shape. Not before Saturday."
He yielded. Coming back into the room, Lincoln offered him a drink.
"I'll take my daily whisky," he said.
It was warm here, it was a home, people together by a fire. The children felt very safe and
important; the mother and father were serious, watchful. They had things to do for the children
more important than his visit here. A spoonful of medicine was, after all, more important than
the strained relations between Marion and himself. They were not dull people, but they were
very much in the grip of life and circumstances. He wondered if he couldn't do something to get
Lincoln out of his rut at the bank.
A long peal at the door-bell; the bonne à tout faire passed through and went down the corridor.
The door opened upon another long ring, and then voices, and the three in the salon looked up
expectantly; Lincoln moved to bring the corridor within his range of vision, and Marion rose.
Then the maid came back along the corridor, closely followed by the voices, which developed
under the light into Duncan Schaeffer and Lorraine Quarrles.
They were gay, they were hilarious, they were roaring with laughter. For a moment Charlie was
astounded; unable to understand how they ferreted out the Peters' address.
"Ah-h-h!" Duncan wagged his finger roguishly at Charlie. "Ah-h-h!"
They both slid down another cascade of laughter. Anxious and at a loss, Charlie shook hands
with them quickly and presented them to Lincoln and Marion. Marion nodded, scarcely
speaking. She had drawn back a step toward the fire; her little girl stood beside her, and Marion
put an arm about her shoulder.
45
With growing annoyance at the intrusion, Charlie waited for them to explain themselves. After
some concentration Duncan said:
"We came to invite you out to dinner. Lorraine and I insist that all this shishi, cagy business 'bout
your address got to stop."
Charlie came closer to them, as if to force them backward down the corridor.
"Sorry, but I can't. Tell me where you'll be and I'll phone you in half an hour."
This made no impression. Lorraine sat down suddenly on the side of a chair, and focussing her
eyes on Richard, cried, "Oh, what a nice little boy! Come here, little boy." Richard glanced at his
mother, but did not move. With a perceptible shrug of her shoulders, Lorraine turned back to
Charlie:
"Come and dine. Sure your cousins won' mine. See you so sel'om. Or solemn."
"I can't," said Charlie sharply. "You two have dinner and I'll phone you."
Her voice became suddenly unpleasant. "All right, we'll go. But I remember once when you
hammered on my door at four A.M. I was enough of a good sport to give you a drink. Come on,
Dunc."
Still in slow motion, with blurred, angry faces, with uncertain feet, they retired along the
corridor.
"Good night," Charlie said.
"Good night!" responded Lorraine emphatically.
When he went back into the salon Marion had not moved, only now her son was standing in the
circle of her other arm. Lincoln was still swinging Honoria back and forth like a pendulum from
side to side.
"What an outrage!" Charlie broke out. "What an absolute outrage!" Neither of them answered.
Charlie dropped into an armchair, picked up his drink, set it down again and said:
"People I haven't seen for two years having the colossal nerve--"
He broke off. Marion had made the sound "Oh!" in one swift, furious breath, turned her body
from him with a jerk and left the room.
Lincoln set down Honoria carefully.
"You children go in and start your soup," he said, and when they obeyed, he said to Charlie:
46
"Marion's not well and she can't stand shocks. That kind of people make her really physically
sick."
"I didn't tell them to come here. They wormed your name out of somebody. They deliberately--"
"Well, it's too bad. It doesn't help matters. Excuse me a minute."
Left alone, Charlie sat tense in his chair. In the next room he could hear the children eating,
talking in monosyllables, already oblivious to the scene between their elders. He heard a murmur
of conversation from a farther room and then the ticking bell of a telephone receiver picked up,
and in a panic he moved to the other side of the room and out of earshot.
In a minute Lincoln came back. "Look here, Charlie. I think we'd better call off dinner for
tonight. Marion's in bad shape."
"Is she angry with me?"
"Sort of," he said, almost roughly. "She's not strong and--"
"You mean she's changed her mind about Honoria?"
"She's pretty bitter right now. I don't know. You phone me at the bank tomorrow."
"I wish you'd explain to her I never dreamed these people would come here. I'm just as sore as
you are."
"I couldn't explain anything to her now."
Charlie got up. He took his coat and hat and started down the corridor. Then he opened the door
of the dining room and said in a strange voice, "Good night, children."
Honoria rose and ran around the table to hug him.
"Good night, sweetheart," he said vaguely, and then trying to make his voice more tender, trying
to conciliate something, "Good night, dear children."
V
Charlie went directly to the Ritz bar with the furious idea of finding Lorraine and Duncan, but
they were not there, and he realized that in any case there was nothing he could do. He had not
touched his drink at the Peters', and now he ordered a whisky-and-soda. Paul came over to say
hello.
47
"It's a great change," he said sadly. "We do about half the business we did. So many fellows I
hear about back in the States lost everything, maybe not in the first crash, but then in the second.
Your friend George Hardt lost every cent, I hear. Are you back in the States?"
"No, I'm in business in Prague."
"I heard that you lost a lot in the crash."
"I did," and he added grimly, "but I lost everything I wanted in the boom."
"Selling short."
"Something like that."
Again the memory of those days swept over him like a nightmare--the people they had met
travelling; then people who couldn't add a row of figures or speak a coherent sentence. The little
man Helen had consented to dance with at the ship's party, who had insulted her ten feet from the
table; the women and girls carried screaming with drink or drugs out of public places---The men who locked their wives out in the snow, because the snow of twenty-nine wasn't real
snow. If you didn't want it to be snow, you just paid some money.
He went to the phone and called the Peters' apartment; Lincoln answered.
"I called up because this thing is on my mind. Has Marion said anything definite?"
"Marion's sick," Lincoln answered shortly. "I know this thing isn't altogether your fault, but I
can't have her go to pieces about it. I'm afraid we'll have to let it slide for six months; I can't take
the chance of working her up to this state again."
"I see."
"I'm sorry, Charlie."
He went back to his table. His whisky glass was empty, but he shook his head when Alix looked
at it questioningly. There wasn't much he could do now except send Honoria some things; he
would send her a lot of things tomorrow. He thought rather angrily that this was just money--he
had given so many people money. . . .
"No, no more," he said to another waiter. "What do I owe you?"
He would come back some day; they couldn't make him pay forever. But he wanted his child,
and nothing was much good now, beside that fact. He wasn't young any more, with a lot of nice
thoughts and dreams to have by himself. He was absolutely sure Helen wouldn't have wanted
him to be so alone.
48