A familiar story.
Two different tellings.

Marley was dead: to begin with. There was no doubt about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it, and Scrooge’s name was trusted in the business world for anything he chose to put his hand to. The narrator says that old Marley was as dead as a door-nail. The narrator says that he does not know, of his own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. He might have been inclined to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of iron in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the saying, and his unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the country is done for. Therefore, the narrator repeats emphatically that Marley was as dead as a door-nail. Did Scrooge know that Marley was dead? Of course he did. How could it be otherwise? Scrooge and Marley had been partners for a very long time. Scrooge was Marley’s sole executor, sole administrator, sole assign, sole residuary legatee, sole friend, and sole mourner. Even Scrooge was not so terribly upset by the sad event that he could not be an excellent man of business on the very day of the funeral. He made the funeral itself a business bargain. The mention of Marley’s funeral brings the narrator back to the point he started from. There is no doubt that Marley was dead. This must be understood clearly, or nothing wonderful can come of the story. The narrator says that if we were not perfectly convinced that Hamlet’s Father died before the play began, there would be nothing more remarkable in his taking a stroll at night, in an easterly wind, upon his own ramparts, than there would be in any other middle-aged gentleman rashly turning out after dark in a breezy place, such as Saint Paul’s Churchyard, to astonish his son’s weak mind. Scrooge never painted out old Marley’s name. It stood, years afterwards, above the warehouse door: Scrooge and Marley. The firm was known as Scrooge and Marley. Sometimes people new to the business called Scrooge Scrooge, and sometimes Marley, but he answered to both names. It was all the same to him. Oh, but he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! He was a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner. He was hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire. He was secret, self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait, made his eyes red, and made his thin lips blue. It spoke out sharply in his grating voice. A frosty coating was on his head, eyebrows, and wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him. He iced his office in the hottest days, and did not thaw it one degree at Christmas. External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth could warm him, and no wintry weather could chill him. No wind that blew was more bitter than he was, no falling snow was more determined to reach its purpose, and no pelting rain was less willing to listen to pleas. Bad weather did not know where to have him. The heaviest rain, snow, hail, and sleet could boast of an advantage over him in only one respect. They often came down generously, and Scrooge never did. Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, with glad looks, “My dear Scrooge, how are you? When will you come to see me?” No beggars begged him for a small gift. No children asked him what time it was. No man or woman ever once in all his life asked Scrooge the way to such and such a place. Even the blind men’s dogs seemed to know him. When they saw him coming, they would tug their owners into doorways and up courtyards, and then wag their tails as though they said that having no eyes at all was better than seeing such an evil eye, dark master. But what did Scrooge care? It was the very thing he liked. To push his way along the crowded paths of life, warning all human sympathy to keep its distance, was what clever people call a great pleasure to Scrooge. Once upon a time—of all the good days in the year, on Christmas Eve—old Scrooge sat busy in his counting-house. It was cold, bleak, biting weather, and foggy withal. He could hear the people in the court outside going wheezing up and down, beating their hands upon their breasts, and stamping their feet upon the pavement-stones to warm them. The city clocks had only just gone three, but it was quite dark already. It had not been light all day, and candles were flaring in the windows of the neighbouring offices like red smears upon the thick brown air. The fog came pouring in at every crack and keyhole. It was so dense outside that, although the court was very narrow, the houses opposite were mere phantoms. To see the dirty cloud come drooping down, hiding everything, one might have thought that Nature lived nearby and was brewing on a large scale. The door of Scrooge’s counting-house was open so that he might keep his eye upon his clerk. The clerk sat in a dismal little cell beyond, a sort of tank, copying letters. Scrooge had a very small fire, but the clerk’s fire was so much smaller that it looked like one coal. The clerk could not replenish it, because Scrooge kept the coal-box in his own room. Whenever the clerk came in with the shovel, Scrooge said that it would be necessary for them to part. So the clerk put on his white comforter and tried to warm himself at the candle. In that effort, not being a man of strong imagination, he failed. “A merry Christmas, uncle! God save you!” cried a cheerful voice. It was the voice of Scrooge’s nephew, who came upon him so quickly that this was the first sign Scrooge had of his approach. “Bah!” said Scrooge. “Humbug!” He had heated himself with rapid walking in the fog and frost, this nephew of Scrooge’s. He was all in a glow. His face was ruddy and handsome, his eyes sparkled, and his breath smoked again. “Christmas a humbug, uncle!” said Scrooge’s nephew. “You don’t mean that, I am sure.” “I do,” said Scrooge. “Merry Christmas! What right have you to be merry? What reason have you to be merry? You’re poor enough.” “Come, then,” returned the nephew gaily. “What right have you to be dismal? What reason have you to be morose? You’re rich enough.” Scrooge had no better answer ready at once, so he said “Bah!” again, and followed it with “Humbug.” “Don’t be cross, uncle,” said the nephew. “What else can I be,” returned the uncle, “when I live in such a world of fools as this? Merry Christmas! Out upon merry Christmas! What’s Christmas time to you but a time for paying bills without money; a time for finding yourself a year older, and not an hour richer; a time for balancing your books and having every item in them through a round dozen of months presented dead against you? If I could work my will,” said Scrooge indignantly, “every idiot who goes about with ‘Merry Christmas’ on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart. He should!” “Uncle!” pleaded the nephew. “Nephew!” returned the uncle sternly. “Keep Christmas in your own way, and let me keep it in mine.” “Keep it!” repeated Scrooge’s nephew. “But you don’t keep it.” “Let me leave it alone, then,” said Scrooge. “Much good may it do you! Much good it has ever done you!” “There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say,” returned the nephew. “Christmas is among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round, as a good time. Apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin—if anything belonging to it can be apart from that—it is a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time. It is the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!” The clerk in the tank involuntarily applauded. Becoming immediately sensible of the impropriety, he poked the fire and extinguished the last frail spark for ever. “Let me hear another sound from you,” said Scrooge, “and you’ll keep your Christmas by losing your situation. You’re quite a powerful speaker, sir,” he added, turning to his nephew. “I wonder you don’t go into Parliament.” “Don’t be angry, uncle. Come! Dine with us to-morrow.” Scrooge said that he would see him—yes, indeed he did. He used the whole expression, and said that he would see him in that extremity first. “But why?” cried Scrooge’s nephew. “Why?” “Why did you get married?” said Scrooge. “Because I fell in love.” “Because you fell in love!” growled Scrooge, as if that were the only one thing in the world more ridiculous than a merry Christmas. “Good afternoon!” “Nay, uncle, but you never came to see me before that happened. Why give it as a reason for not coming now?” “Good afternoon,” said Scrooge. “I want nothing from you; I ask nothing of you; why cannot we be friends?” “Good afternoon,” said Scrooge. “I am sorry, with all my heart, to find you so resolute. We have never had any quarrel to which I have been a party. But I have made the trial in homage to Christmas, and I’ll keep my Christmas humour to the last. So a Merry Christmas, uncle!” “Good afternoon!” said Scrooge. “And a Happy New Year!” “Good afternoon!” said Scrooge. His nephew left the room without an angry word, notwithstanding. He stopped at the outer door to give the greetings of the season to the clerk. The clerk, cold as he was, was warmer than Scrooge, for he returned them cordially. “There’s another fellow,” muttered Scrooge, who overheard him. “My clerk, with fifteen shillings a week, and a wife and family, talking about a merry Christmas. I’ll retire to Bedlam.” This lunatic, in letting Scrooge’s nephew out, had let two other people in. They were portly gentlemen, pleasant to behold, and now stood, with their hats off, in Scrooge’s office. They had books and papers in their hands, and bowed to him. “Scrooge and Marley’s, I believe,” said one of the gentlemen, referring to his list. “Have I the pleasure of addressing Mr. Scrooge, or Mr. Marley?” “Mr. Marley has been dead these seven years,” Scrooge replied. “He died seven years ago, this very night.” “We have no doubt his liberality is well represented by his surviving partner,” said the gentleman, presenting his credentials. It certainly was, for they had been two kindred spirits. At the ominous word “liberality,” Scrooge frowned, shook his head, and handed the credentials back. “At this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge,” said the gentleman, taking up a pen, “it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir.” “Are there no prisons?” asked Scrooge. “Plenty of prisons,” said the gentleman, laying down the pen again. “And the Union workhouses?” demanded Scrooge. “Are they still in operation?” “They are. Still,” returned the gentleman. “I wish I could say they were not.” “The treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?” said Scrooge. “Both very busy, sir.” “Oh! I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had occurred to stop them in their useful course,” said Scrooge. “I’m very glad to hear it.” “Under the impression that they scarcely furnish Christian cheer of mind or body to the multitude,” returned the gentleman, “a few of us are endeavouring to raise a fund to buy the poor some meat and drink, and means of warmth. We choose this time, because it is a time, of all others, when Want is keenly felt, and Abundance rejoices. What shall I put you down for?” “Nothing!” Scrooge replied. “You wish to be anonymous?” “I wish to be left alone,” said Scrooge. “Since you ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer. I don’t make merry myself at Christmas, and I can’t afford to make idle people merry. I help to support the establishments I have mentioned: they cost enough, and those who are badly off must go there.” “Many can’t go there; and many would rather die.” “If they would rather die,” said Scrooge, “they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population. Besides—excuse me—I don’t know that.” “But you might know it,” observed the gentleman. “It’s not my business,” Scrooge returned. “It’s enough for a man to understand his own business, and not to interfere with other people’s. Mine occupies me constantly. Good afternoon, gentlemen!” Seeing clearly that it would be useless to pursue their point, the gentlemen withdrew. Scrooge resumed his labours with a better opinion of himself, and in a more joking temper than was usual with him. Meanwhile the fog and darkness thickened so that people ran about with flaming torches, offering their services to go before horses in carriages and guide them on their way. The ancient tower of a church, whose gruff old bell was always peeping slyly down at Scrooge out of a Gothic window in the wall, became invisible, and struck the hours and quarters in the clouds, with trembling vibrations afterwards, as if its teeth were chattering in its frozen head up there. The cold became intense. In the main street, at the corner of the court, some labourers were repairing the gas-pipes, and had lighted a great fire in a brazier. A party of ragged men and boys gathered round it, warming their hands and winking their eyes before the blaze in delight. The water-plug being left in solitude, its overflowings sullenly congealed, and turned to ice that seemed to hate people. The brightness of the shops, where holly sprigs and berries crackled in the lamp-heat of the windows, made pale faces ruddy as they passed. Poultry sellers’ and grocers’ trades became a splendid joke, a glorious pageant, with which it was next to impossible to believe that such dull principles as bargain and sale had anything to do. The Lord Mayor, in the stronghold of the mighty Mansion House, gave orders to his fifty cooks and butlers to keep Christmas as a Lord Mayor’s household should. Even the little tailor, whom he had fined five shillings on the previous Monday for being drunk and ready to fight in the streets, stirred up to-morrow’s pudding in his garret, while his lean wife and the baby went out to buy the beef. Foggier yet, and colder! Piercing, searching, biting cold. The narrator says that if the good Saint Dunstan had nipped the Evil Spirit’s nose with a touch of such weather as that, instead of using his usual weapons, then indeed the Evil Spirit would have roared loudly. The owner of one scant young nose, gnawed and mumbled by the hungry cold as bones are gnawed by dogs, stooped down at Scrooge’s keyhole to give him a Christmas carol. But at the first sound of— “God bless you merry gentleman! May nothing you dismay!” Scrooge seized the ruler with such energy of action that the singer fled in terror, leaving the keyhole to the fog and the frost, which suited it even better. At length the hour of shutting up the counting-house arrived. With an ill-will Scrooge dismounted from his stool, and silently admitted the fact to the expectant clerk in the tank, who instantly snuffed his candle out and put on his hat. “You’ll want all day to-morrow, I suppose?” said Scrooge. “If quite convenient, sir.” “It’s not convenient,” said Scrooge, “and it’s not fair. If I was to take away half a crown for it, you’d think yourself treated unfairly, I’ll be bound?” The clerk smiled faintly. “And yet,” said Scrooge, “you don’t think me treated unfairly, when I pay a day’s wages for no work.” The clerk observed that it was only once a year. “A poor excuse for picking a man’s pocket every twenty-fifth of December!” said Scrooge, buttoning his great-coat to the chin. “But I suppose you must have the whole day. Be here all the earlier next morning!” The clerk promised that he would, and Scrooge walked out with a growl. The office was closed in a twinkling. The clerk, with the long ends of his white comforter dangling below his waist, for he boasted no great-coat, went down a slide on Cornhill, at the end of a row of boys, twenty times, in honour of its being Christmas Eve. Then he ran home to Camden Town as fast as he could, to play at blind man’s buff. Scrooge took his gloomy dinner in his usual gloomy tavern. Having read all the newspapers, and beguiled the rest of the evening with his bank account book, he went home to bed. He lived in chambers which had once belonged to his deceased partner. They were a gloomy suite of rooms, in a tall and gloomy pile of building up a yard, where it had so little business to be that one could scarcely help fancying it must have run there when it was a young house, playing at hide-and-seek with other houses, and have forgotten the way out again. It was old enough now, and dreary enough, for nobody lived in it but Scrooge. The other rooms were all let out as offices. The yard was so dark that even Scrooge, who knew its every stone, was forced to grope with his hands. The fog and frost so hung about the black old gateway of the house that it seemed as if the spirit of the weather sat in sad thought on the threshold. Now, the narrator says, it is a fact that there was nothing at all particular about the knocker on the door, except that it was very large. It is also a fact that Scrooge had seen it night and morning during his whole residence in that place. It is also a fact that Scrooge had as little of what is called fancy about him as any man in the City of London, even including the City’s leaders and officials. Let it also be borne in mind that Scrooge had not bestowed one thought on Marley since his last mention of his seven-years-dead partner that afternoon. And then let any man explain, if he can, how it happened that Scrooge, having his key in the lock of the door, saw in the knocker, without its undergoing any intermediate process of change, not a knocker, but Marley’s face. Marley’s face! It was not in thick shadow as the other objects in the yard were, but had a dismal light about it, like a bad lobster in a dark cellar. It was not angry or ferocious, but looked at Scrooge as Marley used to look, with ghostly spectacles turned up upon its ghostly forehead. The hair was curiously stirred, as if by breath or hot air. Though the eyes were wide open, they were perfectly motionless. That, and its pale, ghastly colour, made it horrible. But its horror seemed to be, in spite of the face and beyond its control, rather than a part of its own expression. As Scrooge looked fixedly at this phenomenon, it was a knocker again. To say that he was not startled, or that his blood was not aware of a terrible sensation to which it had been a stranger from infancy, would be untrue. But he put his hand upon the key he had let go of, turned it sturdily, walked in, and lighted his candle. He did pause, with a moment’s hesitation, before he shut the door. He did look cautiously behind it first, as if he half-expected to be terrified with the sight of Marley’s pigtail sticking out into the hall. But there was nothing on the back of the door, except the screws and nuts that held the knocker on, so he said, “Pooh, pooh!” and closed it with a bang. The sound resounded through the house like thunder. Every room above, and every cask in the wine merchant’s cellars below, appeared to have a separate peal of echoes of its own. Scrooge was not a man to be frightened by echoes. He fastened the door, and walked across the hall, and up the stairs, slowly too, trimming his candle as he went. The narrator says that people may talk vaguely about driving a coach-and-six up a good old flight of stairs, or through a bad young Act of Parliament, but he means to say that you might have got a hearse up that staircase, and taken it broadwise, with the front bar towards the wall and the door towards the railing, and done it easily. There was plenty of width for that, and room to spare. This is perhaps the reason why Scrooge thought he saw a moving hearse going on before him in the gloom. Half a dozen gas-lamps out of the street would not have lighted the entry too well, so you may suppose that it was pretty dark with Scrooge’s candle. Up Scrooge went, not caring at all for that. Darkness is cheap, and Scrooge liked it. But before he shut his heavy door, he walked through his rooms to see that all was right. He had just enough recollection of the face to desire to do that. Sitting-room, bed-room, storage-room. All as they should be. Nobody under the table, nobody under the sofa. A small fire in the fireplace; spoon and basin ready; and the little saucepan of thin porridge, because Scrooge had a cold in his head, upon the stove. Nobody under the bed; nobody in the closet; nobody in his dressing-gown, which was hanging up in a suspicious attitude against the wall. The storage-room was as usual: old fire-screen, old shoes, two fish-baskets, washstand on three legs, and a poker. Quite satisfied, he closed his door, and locked himself in. He double-locked himself in, which was not his custom. Thus secured against surprise, he took off his neckcloth, put on his dressing-gown and slippers and his nightcap, and sat down before the fire to take his thin porridge. It was a very low fire indeed, nothing on such a bitter night. He was obliged to sit close to it, and brood over it, before he could extract the least sensation of warmth from such a handful of fuel. The fireplace was an old one, built by some Dutch merchant long ago, and paved all round with old-fashioned Dutch tiles, designed to illustrate the Bible. There were Cain and Abel, Pharaoh’s daughters, Queens of Sheba, angels descending through the air on clouds like feather-beds, Abraham, Belshazzar, apostles putting off to sea in butter boats, and hundreds of figures to attract his thoughts. And yet that face of Marley, seven years dead, came like the old prophet’s rod, and swallowed up the whole. If each smooth tile had been a blank at first, with power to shape some picture on its surface from the broken pieces of his thoughts, there would have been a copy of old Marley’s head on every one. “Humbug!” said Scrooge, and walked across the room. After several turns, he sat down again. As he threw his head back in the chair, his glance happened to rest upon a bell, a bell no longer used, that hung in the room and was connected for some purpose now forgotten with a chamber in the top floor of the building. It was with great astonishment, and with a strange, inexplicable dread, that as he looked, he saw this bell begin to swing. It swung so softly in the outset that it scarcely made a sound, but soon it rang out loudly, and so did every bell in the house. This might have lasted half a minute, or a minute, but it seemed an hour. The bells ceased as they had begun, together. They were succeeded by a clanking noise, deep down below, as if some person were dragging a heavy chain over the casks in the wine merchant’s cellar. Scrooge then remembered that he had heard that ghosts in haunted houses were described as dragging chains. The cellar-door flew open with a booming sound, and then he heard the noise much louder on the floors below, then coming up the stairs, then coming straight towards his door. “It’s humbug still!” said Scrooge. “I won’t believe it.” His face changed colour, though, when, without a pause, it came on through the heavy door and passed into the room before his eyes. Upon its coming in, the dying flame leaped up, as though it cried, “I know him! Marley’s Ghost!” and fell again. The same face: the very same. Marley in his pigtail, usual waistcoat, tights, and boots. The tassels on the boots were bristling, like his pigtail, his coat-skirts, and the hair upon his head. The chain he drew was clasped about his middle. It was long, and wound about him like a tail. It was made, for Scrooge observed it closely, of cash boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, and heavy purses made of steel. His body was see-through, so that Scrooge, observing him and looking through his waistcoat, could see the two buttons on his coat behind. Scrooge had often heard it said that Marley had no bowels, but he had never believed it until now. No, nor did he believe it even now. Though he looked the phantom through and through, and saw it standing before him; though he felt the chilling influence of its death-cold eyes; and marked the very texture of the folded kerchief bound about its head and chin, which wrapper he had not observed before, he was still incredulous, and fought against his senses. “What do you want with me?” said Scrooge, sharp and cold as ever. “Much!” said Marley’s voice, no doubt about it. “Who are you?” “Ask me who I was.” “Who were you then?” said Scrooge, raising his voice. “You’re particular—for a shade.” He was going to say “to a shade,” but substituted this, as more appropriate. “In life I was your partner, Jacob Marley.” “Can you—can you sit down?” asked Scrooge, looking doubtfully at him. “I can.” “Do it then.” Scrooge asked the question because he did not know whether a ghost so see-through might find himself in a condition to take a chair. He felt that, if it were impossible, it might involve the necessity of an embarrassing explanation. But the ghost sat down on the opposite side of the fireplace, as if he were quite used to it. “You don’t believe in me,” observed the Ghost. “I don’t,” said Scrooge. “What evidence would you have of my reality, beyond that of your senses?” “I don’t know,” said Scrooge. “Why do you doubt your senses?” “Because,” said Scrooge, “a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. You may be an undigested bit of beef, a spot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There’s more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!” Scrooge was not much in the habit of cracking jokes, nor did he feel, in his heart, by any means joking then. The truth is, that he tried to be smart as a means of distracting his own attention and keeping down his terror, for the spectre’s voice disturbed the very marrow in his bones. To sit, staring at those fixed, glazed eyes, in silence for a moment, would play, Scrooge felt, terrible tricks with him. There was something very awful, too, in the spectre’s being provided with a hellish atmosphere of its own. Scrooge could not feel it himself, but this was clearly the case, for though the Ghost sat perfectly motionless, its hair, skirts, and tassels were still agitated as by the hot vapour from an oven. “You see this toothpick?” said Scrooge, returning quickly to the charge, for the reason just assigned, and wishing, though it were only for a second, to divert the vision’s stony gaze from himself. “I do,” replied the Ghost. “You are not looking at it,” said Scrooge. “But I see it,” said the Ghost, “notwithstanding.” “Well!” returned Scrooge. “I have but to swallow this, and be for the rest of my days persecuted by an army of goblins, all of my own creation. Humbug, I tell you—humbug!” At this, the spirit raised a frightful cry, and shook its chain with such a dismal and appalling noise that Scrooge held on tight to his chair, to save himself from falling in a faint. But how much greater was his horror when the phantom, taking off the bandage round its head as if it were too warm to wear indoors, let its lower jaw drop down upon its breast! Scrooge fell upon his knees, and clasped his hands before his face. “Mercy!” he said. “Dreadful ghost, why do you trouble me?” “Man of the worldly mind!” replied the Ghost. “Do you believe in me or not?” “I do,” said Scrooge. “I must. But why do spirits walk the earth, and why do they come to me?” “It is required of every man,” the Ghost returned, “that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide. If that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death. It is doomed to wander through the world—oh, woe is me!—and witness what it cannot share, but might have shared on earth, and turned to happiness!” Again the spectre raised a cry, and shook its chain, and wrung its shadowy hands. “You are chained,” said Scrooge, trembling. “Tell me why?” “I wear the chain I forged in life,” replied the Ghost. “I made it link by link, and yard by yard. I put it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it. Is its pattern strange to you?” Scrooge trembled more and more. “Or would you know,” pursued the Ghost, “the weight and length of the strong coil you bear yourself? It was full as heavy and as long as this, seven Christmas Eves ago. You have worked on it since. It is a ponderous chain!” Scrooge glanced about him on the floor, in the expectation of finding himself surrounded by some fifty or sixty long lengths of iron cable, but he could see nothing. “Jacob,” he said, imploringly. “Old Jacob Marley, tell me more. Speak comfort to me, Jacob.” “I have none to give,” the Ghost replied. “It comes from other regions, Ebenezer Scrooge, and is conveyed by other ministers, to other kinds of men. Nor can I tell you what I would. A very little more is all permitted to me. I cannot rest, I cannot stay, I cannot linger anywhere. My spirit never walked beyond our counting-house—mark me!—in life my spirit never roved beyond the narrow limits of our money-changing hole, and weary journeys lie before me!” It was a habit with Scrooge, whenever he became thoughtful, to put his hands in his trousers pockets. Pondering on what the Ghost had said, he did so now, but without lifting up his eyes or getting off his knees. “You must have been very slow about it, Jacob,” Scrooge observed, in a business-like manner, though with humility and deference. “Slow!” the Ghost repeated. “Seven years dead,” mused Scrooge. “And travelling all the time?” “The whole time,” said the Ghost. “No rest, no peace. Incessant torture of remorse.” “You travel fast?” said Scrooge. “On the wings of the wind,” replied the Ghost. “You might have got over a great quantity of ground in seven years,” said Scrooge. The Ghost, on hearing this, set up another cry, and clanked its chain so hideously in the dead silence of the night that the court would have been justified in punishing it for making a nuisance. “Oh, captive, bound, and chained with double iron,” cried the phantom, “not to know that ages of incessant labour by immortal beings, for this earth must pass into eternity before all the good of which it is able to receive is developed! Not to know that any Christian spirit working kindly in its little sphere, whatever it may be, will find its mortal life too short for its vast means of usefulness! Not to know that no space of regret can make amends for one life’s opportunities misused! Yet such was I! Oh! such was I!” “But you were always a good man of business, Jacob,” faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself. “Business!” cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. “Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business. Charity, mercy, patience, and kindness were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the great ocean of my business!” It held up its chain at arm’s length, as if that were the cause of all its unavailing grief, and flung it heavily upon the ground again. “At this time of the turning year,” the spectre said, “I suffer most. Why did I walk through the crowds of fellow people with my eyes turned down, and never raise them to that blessed Star which led the Wise Men to a poor home? Were there no poor homes to which its light would have conducted me?” Scrooge was very much dismayed to hear the spectre going on at this rate, and began to shake exceedingly. “Hear me!” cried the Ghost. “My time is nearly gone.” “I will,” said Scrooge. “But don’t be hard upon me! Don’t be fancy, Jacob! Pray!” “How it is that I appear before you in a shape that you can see, I may not tell. I have sat invisible beside you many and many a day.” It was not an agreeable idea. Scrooge shivered, and wiped the sweat from his brow. “That is no light part of my punishment,” pursued the Ghost. “I am here to-night to warn you that you have yet a chance and hope of escaping my fate. A chance and hope of my helping to get, Ebenezer.” “You were always a good friend to me,” said Scrooge. “Thank’ee!” “You will be haunted,” resumed the Ghost, “by Three Spirits.” Scrooge’s face fell almost as low as the Ghost’s had done. “Is that the chance and hope you mentioned, Jacob?” he demanded, in a faltering voice. “It is.” “I—I think I’d rather not,” said Scrooge. “Without their visits,” said the Ghost, “you cannot hope to avoid the path I tread. Expect the first to-morrow, when the bell strikes one.” “Couldn’t I take ’em all at once, and have it over, Jacob?” hinted Scrooge. “Expect the second on the next night at the same hour. The third upon the next night when the last stroke of twelve has stopped ringing. Look to see me no more, and look that, for your own sake, you remember what has passed between us!” When it had said these words, the spectre took its kerchief from the table and bound it round its head, as before. Scrooge knew this by the sharp sound its teeth made when the jaws were brought together by the bandage. He ventured to raise his eyes again, and found his supernatural visitor confronting him in an upright position, with its chain wound over and about its arm. The apparition walked backward from him, and at every step it took, the window raised itself a little, so that when the spectre reached it, it was wide open. It gestured to Scrooge to approach, which he did. When they were within two paces of each other, Marley’s Ghost held up its hand, warning him to come no nearer. Scrooge stopped. Not so much in obedience, as in surprise and fear, for on the raising of the hand, he became aware of confused noises in the air: confused sounds of grief and regret, wailings inexpressibly sorrowful and blaming themselves. The spectre, after listening for a moment, joined in the sad song, and floated out upon the cold, dark night. Scrooge followed to the window, desperate in his curiosity. He looked out. The air was filled with ghosts, wandering hither and thither in restless haste, and moaning as they went. Every one of them wore chains like Marley’s Ghost. Some few, who might be guilty governments, were linked together. None were free. Many had been personally known to Scrooge in their lives. He had been quite familiar with one old ghost, in a white waistcoat, with a huge iron safe attached to its ankle, who cried pitifully at being unable to assist a poor woman with a baby, whom it saw below, upon a doorstep. The misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in human matters, and had lost the power for ever. Whether these creatures faded into mist, or mist covered them, he could not tell. But they and their spirit voices faded together, and the night became as it had been when he walked home. Scrooge closed the window, and examined the door by which the Ghost had entered. It was double-locked, as he had locked it with his own hands, and the bolts were undisturbed. He tried to say “Hum-bug!” but stopped at the first syllable. Being, from the emotion he had undergone, or the fatigues of the day, or his glimpse of the invisible world, or the dull conversation of the Ghost, or the lateness of the hour, much in need of rest, he went straight to bed without undressing, and fell asleep at once.

Scrooge woke in the middle of a loud snore and sat up in bed to get his thoughts together. He did not need to be told that the clock had struck one again. He felt that he had been brought back to consciousness at just the right time for a meeting with the second spirit sent to him through Jacob Marley’s help. But when he began to wonder which of his bed curtains the new spirit would draw back, he felt uncomfortably cold. So he pushed every curtain aside with his own hands, lay down again, and kept a sharp watch all around the bed. He wanted to challenge the spirit the moment it appeared, and he did not want to be surprised or made nervous. Scrooge was ready for a wide range of strange appearances. Nothing between a baby and a rhinoceros would have astonished him very much. But although he was prepared for almost anything, he was not prepared for nothing. When the clock struck one and no shape appeared, he began to tremble violently. Five minutes passed, then ten, then a quarter of an hour, and still nothing came. All this time he lay on his bed in the very center of a blaze of red light. The light had streamed upon the bed when the clock struck the hour. Because it was only light, it was more alarming than a dozen ghosts. Scrooge could not make out what it meant or what it wanted. At times he feared that he might be bursting into flames by himself, without even having the comfort of knowing it. At last he began to think of what you or I would have thought at once. People who are not in trouble always seem to know what should be done. He thought that the source of the ghostly light might be in the next room. When he looked more closely, the light seemed to shine from there. The idea took full hold of his mind. He got up softly and shuffled in his slippers to the door. The moment Scrooge’s hand touched the lock, a strange voice called him by name and told him to enter. He obeyed. It was his own room. There was no doubt about that. But it had changed in a surprising way. The walls and ceiling were hung with living green, so that the room looked like a perfect grove. Bright berries glistened everywhere. The crisp leaves of holly, mistletoe, and ivy reflected the light, as if many little mirrors had been scattered there. A great fire roared up the chimney, a blaze that the dull, cold hearth had never known in Scrooge’s time, or in Marley’s time, or for many winter seasons before. Heaped up on the floor, to form a kind of throne, were turkeys, geese, wild birds, chickens, meat, young roast pigs, long strings of sausages, mince-pies, plum-puddings, barrels of oysters, red-hot chestnuts, red-cheeked apples, juicy oranges, sweet pears, large Christmas cakes, and steaming bowls of punch. The steam from the punch made the room dim with its delicious smell. Sitting easily on this heap of food was a jolly giant, glorious to see. He carried a glowing torch shaped like a horn of plenty, and he held it high to shine its light on Scrooge as Scrooge peeped around the door. “Come in!” said the spirit. “Come in, and know me better, man!” Scrooge entered timidly and hung his head before the spirit. He was not the stubborn Scrooge he had been. Although the spirit’s eyes were clear and kind, Scrooge did not like to meet them. “I am the Ghost of Christmas Present,” said the spirit. “Look upon me!” Scrooge looked with respect. The spirit was clothed in one simple deep green robe, bordered with white fur. The robe hung so loosely that its broad chest was bare, as if it refused to be covered or hidden. Its feet, visible beneath the wide folds of the robe, were also bare. On its head it wore nothing but a wreath of holly, set here and there with shining icicles. Its dark brown curls were long and free, free as its friendly face, its sparkling eye, its open hand, its cheerful voice, its easy manner, and its joyful air. Around its middle was an old sword case, but there was no sword inside, and the old sheath was eaten up with rust. “You have never seen the like of me before!” said the spirit. “Never,” Scrooge answered. “Have you never walked with the younger members of my family?” asked the spirit. “I mean my elder brothers born in these later years, for I am very young.” “I don’t think I have,” said Scrooge. “I am afraid I have not. Have you had many brothers, spirit?” “More than eighteen hundred,” said the ghost. “A tremendous family to provide for!” muttered Scrooge. The Ghost of Christmas Present rose. “Spirit,” said Scrooge humbly, “lead me where you will. I went out last night because I was forced to, and I learned a lesson that is working now. Tonight, if you have anything to teach me, let me profit by it.” “Touch my robe!” Scrooge did as he was told and held it fast. At once the holly, mistletoe, red berries, ivy, turkeys, geese, wild birds, chickens, meat, pigs, sausages, oysters, pies, puddings, fruit, and punch vanished. So did the room, the fire, the red glow, and the hour of night. Scrooge and the spirit stood in the city streets on Christmas morning. The weather was severe, and the people made a rough but brisk and not unpleasant kind of music as they scraped snow from the pavement in front of their houses and from the tops of their roofs. It was great fun for the boys to watch the snow come plumping down into the road below and split into little artificial snowstorms. The fronts of the houses looked black enough, and the windows looked blacker still. They contrasted with the smooth white sheet of snow on the roofs and with the dirtier snow on the ground. The snow on the ground had been ploughed into deep furrows by the heavy wheels of carts and wagons. These furrows crossed and recrossed hundreds of times where the great streets branched off, making strange channels hard to trace in the thick yellow mud and icy water. The sky was gloomy, and the shortest streets were choked with a dingy mist, half thawed and half frozen. Heavier particles fell from it like a shower of sooty atoms, as if all the chimneys in Great Britain had agreed to catch fire and were blazing away to their hearts’ content. There was nothing very cheerful in the weather or the town, and yet there was an air of cheerfulness abroad that the clearest summer air and the brightest summer sun might have tried to spread in vain. The people shoveling snow on the house-tops were cheerful and full of joy. They called out to one another from the parapets and now and then exchanged a playful snowball, a much kinder missile than many a sharp word. They laughed heartily if it went right, and not less heartily if it went wrong. The poulterers’ shops were still half open, and the fruiterers’ shops were radiant in their glory. There were great, round, pot-bellied baskets of chestnuts, shaped like the waistcoats of jolly old gentlemen, lolling at the doors and tumbling out into the street in fat, overflowing abundance. There were ruddy, brown-faced, broad-girthed Spanish onions, shining in their fatness and seeming to wink slyly from their shelves at the girls as they passed and glanced demurely at the hung-up mistletoe. There were pears and apples piled high in blooming pyramids. There were bunches of grapes, hung from conspicuous hooks by the shopkeepers’ kindness, so that people’s mouths might water for free as they passed. There were piles of hazelnuts, mossy and brown, recalling in their fragrance old walks among the woods and pleasant shuffling through withered leaves ankle-deep. There were small dark Norfolk apples, setting off the yellow of the oranges and lemons, and seeming, in their compact juicy bodies, to beg to be carried home in paper bags and eaten after dinner. Even the gold and silver fish, set among these choice fruits in a bowl, though members of a dull and sluggish race, seemed to know that something was going on. They went circling round and round their little world in slow, passionless excitement. The grocers’ shops! Oh, the grocers’ shops! They were nearly closed, with perhaps two shutters down, or only one. But through those gaps there were such glimpses! It was not only that the scales descending on the counter made a merry sound, or that the twine and roller parted company so briskly, or that the canisters were rattled up and down like juggling tricks. It was not only that the blended scents of tea and coffee were so pleasant to the nose, or that the raisins were so plentiful and rare, the almonds so extremely white, the sticks of cinnamon so long and straight, the other spices so delicious, and the candied fruits so caked and spotted with molten sugar that even the coldest lookers-on felt faint and then sick. Nor was it only that the figs were moist and pulpy, or that the French plums blushed in modest tartness from their highly decorated boxes, or that everything was good to eat and dressed for Christmas. The customers were all so hurried and so eager in the hopeful promise of the day that they tumbled up against one another at the door, clashing their wicker baskets wildly. They left their purchases on the counter, came running back to fetch them, and made hundreds of similar mistakes in the best possible humor. Meanwhile the grocer and his people were so frank and fresh that the polished hearts with which they fastened their aprons behind might have been their own, worn outside for general inspection, and for Christmas birds to peck at if they chose. Soon the steeples called good people to church and chapel, and away they came, flocking through the streets in their best clothes and with their gayest faces. At the same time, innumerable people emerged from scores of by-streets, lanes, and nameless turnings, carrying their dinners to the bakers’ shops. The sight of these poor revellers seemed to interest the spirit very much. The spirit stood with Scrooge in a baker’s doorway, and as the bearers passed, he lifted the covers and sprinkled sweet-smelling incense on their dinners from his torch. It was a very uncommon kind of torch. Once or twice, when there were angry words between some dinner-carriers who had jostled one another, the spirit shed a few drops of water on them from it, and their good humor was restored at once. For they said it was a shame to quarrel on Christmas Day. And so it was! God love it, so it was! In time the bells ceased, and the bakers’ shops were shut up. Yet there was still a friendly sign of all these dinners and the progress of their cooking in the thawed blotch of wet above each baker’s oven, where the pavement smoked as if its stones were cooking too. “Is there a peculiar flavor in what you sprinkle from your torch?” asked Scrooge. “There is,” said the spirit. “My own.” “Would it apply to any kind of dinner on this day?” asked Scrooge. “To any kindly given,” said the spirit. “To a poor one most.” “Why to a poor one most?” asked Scrooge. “Because it needs it most.” “Spirit,” said Scrooge after a moment’s thought, “I wonder that you, of all the beings in the many worlds about us, should wish to take away these people’s chances of innocent enjoyment.” “I!” cried the spirit. “You would deprive them of their means of dining every seventh day,” said Scrooge, “often the only day on which they can be said to dine at all. Wouldn’t you?” “I!” cried the spirit. “You seek to close these places on the Seventh Day?” said Scrooge. “And it comes to the same thing.” “I seek!” exclaimed the spirit. “Forgive me if I am wrong,” said Scrooge. “It has been done in your name, or at least in that of your family.” “There are some upon this earth of yours,” returned the spirit, “who claim to know us, and who do their deeds of passion, pride, ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness in our name. They are as strange to us and all our family as if they had never lived. Remember that, and charge their doings on themselves, not us.” Scrooge promised that he would. They went on, invisible as they had been before, into the suburbs of the town. It was a remarkable quality of the ghost, which Scrooge had noticed at the baker’s, that although he was gigantic, he could fit himself into any place with ease. He stood beneath a low roof as gracefully and as much like a supernatural creature as he could have stood in any lofty hall. Perhaps it was the pleasure the good spirit had in showing off this power, or perhaps it was his own kind, generous, hearty nature and his sympathy with all poor men, that led him straight to Scrooge’s clerk’s house. There he went, and took Scrooge with him, holding to his robe. On the threshold of the door the spirit smiled and stopped to bless Bob Cratchit’s dwelling with the sprinklings of his torch. Think of that! Bob earned only fifteen shillings a week. On Saturdays he pocketed only fifteen copies of his Christian name. And yet the Ghost of Christmas Present blessed his four-roomed house! Then Mrs. Cratchit, Bob’s wife, rose up. She was dressed out but poorly in a gown that had been turned and mended, but she was proud of her ribbons, which were cheap and made a fine show for sixpence. She laid the cloth, helped by Belinda Cratchit, the second of her daughters, who was also proud of her ribbons. Meanwhile Peter Cratchit plunged a fork into the saucepan of potatoes. He put the corners of his huge shirt-collar into his mouth. The collar was Bob’s private property, given to his son and heir in honor of the day. Peter rejoiced to find himself so gallantly dressed and longed to show his linen in the fashionable parks. Now two smaller Cratchits, a boy and a girl, came tearing in, screaming that outside the baker’s they had smelled the goose and known it for their own. Basking in luxurious thoughts of sage and onion, the young Cratchits danced about the table and praised Master Peter Cratchit to the skies. Peter, not proud although his collars nearly choked him, blew the fire until the slow potatoes, bubbling up, knocked loudly at the saucepan lid to be let out and peeled. “What has ever got your precious father then?” said Mrs. Cratchit. “And your brother, Tiny Tim? And Martha wasn’t as late last Christmas Day by half an hour!” “Here’s Martha, mother!” said a girl, appearing as she spoke. “Here’s Martha, mother!” cried the two young Cratchits. “Hurrah! There’s such a goose, Martha!” “Why, bless your heart alive, my dear, how late you are!” said Mrs. Cratchit, kissing her a dozen times and taking off her shawl and bonnet for her with eager care. “We had a great deal of work to finish up last night,” replied the girl, “and had to clear away this morning, mother!” “Well! Never mind so long as you are come,” said Mrs. Cratchit. “Sit down before the fire, my dear, and have a warm, Lord bless you!” “No, no! There’s father coming,” cried the two young Cratchits, who were everywhere at once. “Hide Martha, hide!” So Martha hid herself, and in came little Bob, the father, with at least three feet of comforter hanging down before him, not counting the fringe. His threadbare clothes had been darned and brushed to look seasonable. Tiny Tim was on his shoulder. Alas for Tiny Tim, he carried a little crutch, and his limbs were supported by an iron frame! “Why, where’s our Martha?” cried Bob Cratchit, looking around. “Not coming,” said Mrs. Cratchit. “Not coming!” said Bob, with a sudden drop in his high spirits. He had been Tiny Tim’s pretend horse all the way from church and had come home full of high spirits. “Not coming on Christmas Day!” Martha did not like to see him disappointed, even if it was only in joke. So she came out early from behind the closet door and ran into his arms. Meanwhile the two young Cratchits hustled Tiny Tim and carried him off into the laundry, so that he might hear the pudding singing in the large copper pot. “And how did little Tim behave?” asked Mrs. Cratchit, after she had teased Bob for believing the joke and Bob had hugged his daughter to his heart’s content. “As good as gold,” said Bob, “and better. Somehow he gets thoughtful sitting by himself so much, and thinks the strangest things you ever heard. He told me, coming home, that he hoped the people saw him in the church, because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember on Christmas Day who made lame beggars walk and blind men see.” Bob’s voice trembled when he told them this, and trembled more when he said that Tiny Tim was growing strong and hearty. His active little crutch was heard upon the floor, and back came Tiny Tim before another word was spoken, escorted by his brother and sister to his stool beside the fire. Bob turned up his cuffs, as if, poor fellow, they were capable of being made more shabby, and mixed a hot drink in a jug with gin and lemons. He stirred it round and round and put it on the hob to simmer. Meanwhile Peter and the two everywhere-present young Cratchits went to fetch the goose, and soon returned with it in high procession. Such a bustle followed that you might have thought a goose the rarest of all birds, a feathered wonder, to which a black swan would have seemed ordinary. In truth, it was something very like that in that house. Mrs. Cratchit made the gravy, ready beforehand in a little saucepan, hissing hot. Peter mashed the potatoes with incredible vigor. Belinda sweetened the apple-sauce. Martha dusted the hot plates. Bob took Tiny Tim beside him in a tiny corner at the table. The two young Cratchits set chairs for everybody, not forgetting themselves. They mounted guard at their posts and crammed spoons into their mouths, lest they should shriek for goose before their turn came to be helped. At last the dishes were set on, and grace was said. It was followed by a breathless pause as Mrs. Cratchit, looking slowly along the carving-knife, prepared to plunge it into the breast of the goose. But when she did, and when the long-expected gush of stuffing came forth, one murmur of delight arose all around the table. Even Tiny Tim, excited by the two young Cratchits, beat on the table with the handle of his knife and feebly cried, “Hurrah!” There never was such a goose. Bob said he did not believe there ever was such a goose cooked. Its tenderness and flavor, size and cheapness, were praised by everyone. Helped out by the apple-sauce and mashed potatoes, it was a sufficient dinner for the whole family. Indeed, as Mrs. Cratchit said with great delight, surveying one small atom of a bone on the dish, they had not eaten it all at last! Yet everyone had had enough, and the youngest Cratchits in particular were steeped in sage and onion to the eyebrows. But now, the plates having been changed by Belinda, Mrs. Cratchit left the room alone, too nervous to bear witnesses, to take the pudding up and bring it in. Suppose it should not be done enough! Suppose it should break in turning out! Suppose somebody should have got over the wall of the back-yard and stolen it while they were merry with the goose! At this supposition the two young Cratchits became pale. All sorts of horrors were supposed. Hallo! A great deal of steam! The pudding was out of the copper. A smell like a washing-day! That was the cloth. A smell like an eating-house, and a pastry cook’s next door to each other, with a laundress’s next door to that! That was the pudding. In half a minute Mrs. Cratchit entered, flushed but smiling proudly, with the pudding. It was like a speckled cannon-ball, so hard and firm, blazing in a little burning brandy, and decorated with Christmas holly stuck into the top. Oh, a wonderful pudding! Bob Cratchit said, and calmly too, that he regarded it as the greatest success achieved by Mrs. Cratchit since their marriage. Mrs. Cratchit said that now the weight was off her mind, she would confess she had had her doubts about the quantity of flour. Everyone had something to say about it, but nobody said or thought it was at all a small pudding for a large family. It would have been flat heresy to do so. Any Cratchit would have blushed to hint at such a thing. At last the dinner was all done, the cloth was cleared, the hearth was swept, and the fire was made up. The drink in the jug was tasted and considered perfect. Apples and oranges were put upon the table, and a shovel-full of chestnuts on the fire. Then all the Cratchit family drew round the hearth in what Bob Cratchit called a circle, meaning half a one. At Bob Cratchit’s elbow stood the family display of glass: two tumblers and a custard-cup without a handle. These held the hot drink from the jug as well as golden goblets would have done. Bob served it out with beaming looks, while the chestnuts on the fire sputtered and crackled noisily. Then Bob proposed: “A Merry Christmas to us all, my dears. God bless us!” All the family repeated it. “God bless us every one!” said Tiny Tim, the last of all. He sat very close to his father’s side upon his little stool. Bob held his withered little hand in his, as if he loved the child, wished to keep him by his side, and dreaded that he might be taken from him. “Spirit,” said Scrooge, with an interest he had never felt before, “tell me if Tiny Tim will live.” “I see a vacant seat,” replied the ghost, “in the poor chimney corner, and a crutch without an owner, carefully preserved. If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, the child will die.” “No, no,” said Scrooge. “Oh no, kind spirit! Say he will be spared.” “If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future,” returned the ghost, “none other of my race will find him here. What then? If he be like to die, he had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.” Scrooge hung his head to hear his own words quoted by the spirit, and was overcome with penitence and grief. “Man,” said the ghost, “if man you be in heart, not stone, forbear that wicked talk until you have discovered what the surplus is and where it is. Will you decide what men shall live and what men shall die? It may be that in the sight of Heaven you are more worthless and less fit to live than millions like this poor man’s child. Oh God! to hear the insect on the leaf pronouncing on the too much life among his hungry brothers in the dust!” Scrooge bent before the ghost’s rebuke and trembling cast his eyes upon the ground. But he raised them speedily on hearing his own name. “Mr. Scrooge!” said Bob. “I’ll give you Mr. Scrooge, the Founder of the Feast!” “The Founder of the Feast indeed!” cried Mrs. Cratchit, reddening. “I wish I had him here. I’d give him a piece of my mind to feast upon, and I hope he’d have a good appetite for it.” “My dear,” said Bob, “the children; Christmas Day.” “It should be Christmas Day, I am sure,” said she, “on which one drinks the health of such an odious, stingy, hard, unfeeling man as Mr. Scrooge. You know he is, Robert! Nobody knows it better than you do, poor fellow!” “My dear,” was Bob’s mild answer, “Christmas Day.” “I’ll drink his health for your sake and the Day’s,” said Mrs. Cratchit, “not for his. Long life to him! A Merry Christmas and a happy new year! He’ll be very merry and very happy, I have no doubt!” The children drank the toast after her. It was the first of their proceedings which had no heartiness in it. Tiny Tim drank it last of all, but he didn’t care twopence for it. Scrooge was the ogre of the family. The mention of his name cast a dark shadow on the party, which was not dispelled for full five minutes. After it had passed away, they were ten times merrier than before, from the mere relief of Scrooge the Baleful being done with. Bob Cratchit told them how he had a situation in his eye for Peter, which would bring in, if obtained, full five-and-sixpence weekly. The two young Cratchits laughed tremendously at the idea of Peter’s being a man of business. Peter himself looked thoughtfully at the fire from between his collars, as if he were deliberating what particular investments he should favor when he came into the receipt of that bewildering income. Martha, who was a poor apprentice at a milliner’s, then told them what kind of work she had to do, how many hours she worked at a stretch, and how she meant to lie in bed the next morning for a good long rest. The next day was a holiday she passed at home. She also told them how she had seen a countess and a lord some days before, and how the lord was much about as tall as Peter. At this Peter pulled up his collars so high that you couldn’t have seen his head if you had been there. All this time the chestnuts and the jug went round and round. By and by they had a song, about a lost child traveling in the snow, from Tiny Tim, who had a plaintive little voice and sang it very well indeed. There was nothing of high mark in this. They were not a handsome family. They were not well dressed. Their shoes were far from being waterproof. Their clothes were scanty. Peter might have known, and very likely did, the inside of a pawnbroker’s. But they were happy, grateful, pleased with one another, and contented with the time. When they faded, and looked happier yet in the bright sprinklings of the spirit’s torch at parting, Scrooge had his eye upon them, and especially on Tiny Tim, until the last. By this time it was getting dark, and snowing pretty heavily. As Scrooge and the spirit went along the streets, the brightness of the roaring fires in kitchens, parlors, and all sorts of rooms was wonderful. Here the flickering of the blaze showed preparations for a cozy dinner, with hot plates baking through and through before the fire, and deep red curtains ready to be drawn to shut out cold and darkness. There all the children of the house were running out into the snow to meet their married sisters, brothers, cousins, uncles, and aunts, and to be the first to greet them. Here again were shadows on the window-blind of guests assembling. There a group of handsome girls, all hooded and fur-booted, and all chattering at once, tripped lightly off to some near neighbor’s house. The narrator says they were like artful witches, and that a single man who saw them enter would be in a glow. But if you had judged from the numbers of people on their way to friendly gatherings, you might have thought that no one was at home to give them welcome when they got there. Instead, every house was expecting company and piling up its fires half-chimney high. Blessings on it, how the ghost exulted! How it bared its broad breast, opened its capacious palm, and floated on, outpouring with a generous hand its bright and harmless mirth on everything within its reach! The very lamplighter, who ran on before, dotting the dusky street with specks of light, and who was dressed to spend the evening somewhere, laughed out loudly as the spirit passed. The lamplighter little knew that he had any company but Christmas. And now, without a word of warning from the ghost, they stood upon a bleak and desert moor. Monstrous masses of rough stone were cast about, as though it were the burial-place of giants. Water spread itself wherever it listed, or would have done so, but for the frost that held it prisoner. Nothing grew but moss and furze, and coarse, rank grass. Down in the west the setting sun had left a streak of fiery red, which glared upon the desolation for an instant like a sullen eye. Then, frowning lower, lower, lower yet, it was lost in the thick gloom of darkest night. “What place is this?” asked Scrooge. “A place where miners live, who labor in the bowels of the earth,” returned the spirit. “But they know me. See!” A light shone from the window of a hut, and swiftly they advanced towards it. Passing through the wall of mud and stone, they found a cheerful company assembled round a glowing fire. An old, old man and woman were there, with their children, their children’s children, and another generation beyond that, all decked out gaily in their holiday attire. The old man, in a voice that seldom rose above the howling of the wind upon the barren waste, was singing them a Christmas song. It had been a very old song when he was a boy, and from time to time they all joined in the chorus. So surely as they raised their voices, the old man got quite blithe and loud. So surely as they stopped, his vigor sank again. The spirit did not tarry here, but bade Scrooge hold his robe. Passing on above the moor, they sped on. To Scrooge’s horror, looking back, he saw the last of the land, a frightful range of rocks, behind them. His ears were deafened by the thundering of water, as it rolled, and roared, and raged among the dreadful caverns it had worn, and fiercely tried to undermine the earth. Built upon a dismal reef of sunken rocks, some league or so from shore, on which the waters chafed and dashed the wild year through, there stood a solitary lighthouse. Great heaps of sea-weed clung to its base, and storm-birds, born of the wind one might suppose, as sea-weed of the water, rose and fell about it like the waves they skimmed. But even here, two men who watched the light had made a fire, that through the loophole in the thick stone wall shed out a ray of brightness on the awful sea. Joining their horny hands over the rough table at which they sat, they wished each other Merry Christmas in their can of grog. One of them, the elder too, with his face all damaged and scarred with hard weather, as the figure-head of an old ship might be, struck up a sturdy song that was like a gale in itself. Again the ghost sped on, above the black and heaving sea, on, on, until, being far away, as he told Scrooge, from any shore, they lighted on a ship. They stood beside the helmsman at the wheel, the look-out in the bow, and the officers who had the watch. They were dark, ghostly figures in their several stations. But every man among them hummed a Christmas tune, or had a Christmas thought, or spoke below his breath to his companion of some bygone Christmas Day, with homeward hopes belonging to it. Every man on board, waking or sleeping, good or bad, had had a kinder word for another on that day than on any day in the year. Each had shared to some extent in its festivities, had remembered those he cared for at a distance, and had known that they delighted to remember him. It was a great surprise to Scrooge, while listening to the moaning of the wind and thinking what a solemn thing it was to move on through the lonely darkness over an unknown abyss whose depths were secrets as profound as death, to hear a hearty laugh. It was a much greater surprise to Scrooge to recognize it as his own nephew’s, and to find himself in a bright, dry, gleaming room, with the spirit standing smiling by his side and looking at that same nephew with approving friendliness. “Ha, ha!” laughed Scrooge’s nephew. “Ha, ha, ha!” The narrator says that if anyone has a better laugh than Scrooge’s nephew, he would like to know that person too. The narrator also says that while disease and sorrow can spread, nothing in the world is so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humor. When Scrooge’s nephew laughed in this way, holding his sides, rolling his head, and twisting his face into the most extravagant contortions, Scrooge’s niece, by marriage, laughed as heartily as he. Their assembled friends were not a bit behindhand, but roared out lustily. “Ha, ha! Ha, ha, ha, ha!” “He said that Christmas was a humbug, as I live!” cried Scrooge’s nephew. “He believed it too!” “More shame for him, Fred!” said Scrooge’s niece, indignantly. The narrator says that women never do anything by halves and are always in earnest. She was very pretty, exceedingly pretty. She had a dimpled, surprised-looking face, a ripe little mouth that seemed made to be kissed, and all kinds of good little dots about her chin that melted into one another when she laughed. She had the sunniest pair of eyes you ever saw in any little creature’s head. Altogether, the narrator says, she was what you would have called provoking, but satisfactory too. Oh, perfectly satisfactory! “He’s a comical old fellow,” said Scrooge’s nephew, “that’s the truth, and not so pleasant as he might be. However, his offenses carry their own punishment, and I have nothing to say against him.” “I am sure he is very rich, Fred,” hinted Scrooge’s niece. “At least you always tell me so.” “What of that, my dear!” said Scrooge’s nephew. “His wealth is of no use to him. He doesn’t do any good with it. He doesn’t make himself comfortable with it. He hasn’t the satisfaction of thinking, ha, ha, ha, that he is ever going to benefit us with it.” “I have no patience with him,” observed Scrooge’s niece. Scrooge’s niece’s sisters, and all the other ladies, expressed the same opinion. “Oh, I have!” said Scrooge’s nephew. “I am sorry for him. I couldn’t be angry with him if I tried. Who suffers by his ill whims? Himself, always. Here, he takes it into his head to dislike us, and he won’t come and dine with us. What’s the consequence? He doesn’t lose much of a dinner.” “Indeed, I think he loses a very good dinner,” interrupted Scrooge’s niece. Everybody else said the same, and they must be allowed to have been competent judges, because they had just had dinner. With the dessert upon the table, they were clustered round the fire, by lamplight. “Well! I am very glad to hear it,” said Scrooge’s nephew, “because I haven’t any great faith in these young housekeepers. What do you say, Topper?” Topper had clearly got his eye upon one of Scrooge’s niece’s sisters, for he answered that a bachelor was a wretched outcast, who had no right to express an opinion on the subject. Whereat Scrooge’s niece’s sister, the plump one with the lace tucker, not the one with the roses, blushed. “Do go on, Fred,” said Scrooge’s niece, clapping her hands. “He never finishes what he begins to say! He is such a ridiculous fellow!” Scrooge’s nephew revelled in another laugh, and as it was impossible to keep the infection off, though the plump sister tried hard to do it with aromatic vinegar, his example was unanimously followed. “I was only going to say,” said Scrooge’s nephew, “that the consequence of his taking a dislike to us, and not making merry with us, is, as I think, that he loses some pleasant moments, which could do him no harm. I am sure he loses pleasanter companions than he can find in his own thoughts, either in his mouldy old office, or his dusty chambers. I mean to give him the same chance every year, whether he likes it or not, for I pity him. He may rail at Christmas till he dies, but he can’t help thinking better of it, I defy him, if he finds me going there, in good temper, year after year, and saying Uncle Scrooge, how are you? If it only puts him in the vein to leave his poor clerk fifty pounds, that’s something; and I think I shook him, yesterday.” It was their turn to laugh now at the notion of his shaking Scrooge. But being thoroughly good-natured, and not much caring what they laughed at, so that they laughed at any rate, he encouraged them in their merriment and passed the bottle joyously. After tea, they had some music. For they were a musical family, and knew what they were about when they sang a glee or catch, the narrator assures us. Especially Topper, who could growl away in the bass like a good one, and never swell the large veins in his forehead, or get red in the face over it. Scrooge’s niece played well upon the harp, and played among other tunes a simple little air, a mere nothing, you might learn to whistle it in two minutes, which had been familiar to the child who fetched Scrooge from the boarding-school, as he had been reminded by the Ghost of Christmas Past. When this strain of music sounded, all the things that ghost had shown him came upon his mind. He softened more and more, and thought that if he could have listened to it often, years ago, he might have cultivated the kindnesses of life for his own happiness with his own hands, without resorting to the sexton’s spade that buried Jacob Marley. But they didn’t devote the whole evening to music. After a while they played at forfeits, for it is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child himself. Stop! There was first a game at blindman’s buff. Of course there was. The narrator says he no more believes Topper was really blind than he believes Topper had eyes in his boots. The narrator’s opinion is that it was a done thing between Topper and Scrooge’s nephew, and that the Ghost of Christmas Present knew it. The way Topper went after that plump sister in the lace tucker was an outrage on the credulity of human nature. Knocking down the fire-irons, tumbling over the chairs, bumping up against the piano, smothering himself among the curtains, wherever she went, there went he. He always knew where the plump sister was. He wouldn’t catch anybody else. If you had fallen up against him, as some of them did, and stood there, he would have made a feint of endeavoring to seize you, which would have been an affront to your understanding, and would instantly have sidled off in the direction of the plump sister. She often cried out that it wasn’t fair, and it really was not. But when at last he caught her, when, in spite of all her silken rustlings and her rapid flutterings past him, he got her into a corner whence there was no escape, then his conduct was the most execrable. For his pretending not to know her, his pretending that it was necessary to touch her head-dress, and further to assure himself of her identity by pressing a certain ring upon her finger and a certain chain about her neck, was vile, monstrous! The narrator says no doubt she told him her opinion of it when, another blind-man being in office, they were so very confidential together behind the curtains. Scrooge’s niece was not one of the blind-man’s buff party, but was made comfortable with a large chair and a footstool, in a snug corner, where the ghost and Scrooge were close behind her. But she joined in the forfeits, and loved her love to admiration with all the letters of the alphabet. Likewise at the game of How, When, and Where, she was very great, and to the secret joy of Scrooge’s nephew, beat her sisters hollow, though they were sharp girls too, as Topper could have told you. There might have been twenty people there, young and old, but they all played, and so did Scrooge. For, wholly forgetting in the interest he had in what was going on that his voice made no sound in their ears, he sometimes came out with his guess quite loud, and very often guessed right too. The narrator says the sharpest needle, best Whitechapel, warranted not to cut in the eye, was not sharper than Scrooge, blunt as he took it in his head to be. The ghost was greatly pleased to find him in this mood, and looked upon him with such favor that he begged like a boy to be allowed to stay until the guests departed. But this the spirit said could not be done. “Here’s a new game,” said Scrooge. “One half hour, spirit, only one!” It was a game called Yes and No, where Scrooge’s nephew had to think of something, and the rest must find out what. He only answered their questions yes or no as the case was. The brisk fire of questioning to which he was exposed elicited from him that he was thinking of an animal, a live animal, rather a disagreeable animal, a savage animal, an animal that growled and grunted sometimes, and talked sometimes, and lived in London, and walked about the streets, and wasn’t made a show of, and wasn’t led by anybody, and didn’t live in a menagerie, and was never killed in a market, and was not a horse, or an ass, or a cow, or a bull, or a tiger, or a dog, or a pig, or a cat, or a bear. At every fresh question that was put to him, this nephew burst into a fresh roar of laughter, and was so inexpressibly tickled that he was obliged to get up off the sofa and stamp. At last the plump sister, falling into a similar state, cried out: “I have found it out! I know what it is, Fred! I know what it is!” “What is it?” cried Fred. “It’s your Uncle Scro-o-o-o-oge!” Which it certainly was. Admiration was the universal sentiment, though some objected that the reply to “Is it a bear?” ought to have been “Yes,” inasmuch as an answer in the negative was sufficient to have diverted their thoughts from Mr. Scrooge, supposing they had ever had any tendency that way. “He has given us plenty of merriment, I am sure,” said Fred, “and it would be ungrateful not to drink his health. Here is a glass of mulled wine ready to our hand at the moment; and I say, ‘Uncle Scrooge!’” “Well! Uncle Scrooge!” they cried. “A Merry Christmas and a happy New Year to the old man, whatever he is!” said Scrooge’s nephew. “He wouldn’t take it from me, but may he have it, nevertheless. Uncle Scrooge!” Uncle Scrooge had imperceptibly become so gay and light of heart that he would have pledged the unconscious company in return, and thanked them in an inaudible speech, if the ghost had given him time. But the whole scene passed off in the breath of the last word spoken by his nephew, and he and the spirit were again upon their travels. Much they saw, and far they went, and many homes they visited, but always with a happy end. The spirit stood beside sick beds, and they were cheerful. On foreign lands, and they were close at home. By struggling men, and they were patient in their greater hope. By poverty, and it was rich. In almshouse, hospital, and jail, in misery’s every refuge, where vain man in his little brief authority had not made fast the door and barred the spirit out, he left his blessing and taught Scrooge his precepts. It was a long night, if it were only a night, but Scrooge had his doubts of this, because the Christmas Holidays appeared to be condensed into the space of time they passed together. It was strange, too, that while Scrooge remained unaltered in his outward form, the ghost grew older, clearly older. Scrooge had observed this change, but never spoke of it, until they left a children’s Twelfth Night party. Then, looking at the spirit as they stood together in an open place, he noticed that its hair was gray. “Are spirits’ lives so short?” asked Scrooge. “My life upon this globe is very brief,” replied the ghost. “It ends tonight.” “Tonight!” cried Scrooge. “Tonight at midnight. Hark! The time is drawing near.” The chimes were ringing the three quarters past eleven at that moment. “Forgive me if I am not justified in what I ask,” said Scrooge, looking intently at the spirit’s robe, “but I see something strange, and not belonging to yourself, protruding from your skirts. Is it a foot or a claw?” “It might be a claw, for the flesh there is upon it,” was the spirit’s sorrowful reply. “Look here.” From the foldings of its robe, it brought two children, wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable. They knelt down at its feet and clung upon the outside of its garment. “Oh, Man! look here. Look, look, down here!” exclaimed the ghost. They were a boy and girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish, but prostrate too in their humility. Where graceful youth should have filled their features out and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing. The narrator says no change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters half so horrible and dread. Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them shown to him in this way, he tried to say they were fine children, but the words choked themselves, rather than be parties to a lie of such enormous magnitude. “Spirit! are they yours?” Scrooge could say no more. “They are Man’s,” said the spirit, looking down upon them. “And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it!” cried the spirit, stretching out its hand towards the city. “Slander those who tell it ye! Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse! And bide the end!” “Have they no refuge or resource?” cried Scrooge. “Are there no prisons?” said the spirit, turning on him for the last time with his own words. “Are there no workhouses?” The bell struck twelve. Scrooge looked about him for the ghost, and saw it not. As the last stroke ceased to vibrate, he remembered the prediction of old Jacob Marley, and lifting up his eyes, beheld a solemn phantom, draped and hooded, coming, like a mist along the ground, towards him.

Duke Orsino of Illyria was so much in love that he asked for music. He said that if music was the food of love, he wanted more and more of it, until his appetite grew sick and died. He listened to a sad song and said it had a dying fall. At first it had come over his ear like sweet breath on a bank of violets, stealing and giving odour, but then he said enough, because it was not so sweet now as it had been before. He said love was quick and fresh, and like the sea it swallowed everything and made it seem worthless in a minute. Curio asked whether the Duke would go hunting. Orsino asked what he should hunt. Curio said the hart. Orsino said he was hunting the noblest hart he had. When he first saw Olivia, he thought she had purified the air of pestilence, and at that instant he was turned into a hart, and his desires, like cruel hounds, had pursued him ever since. He asked for news from Olivia. Valentine came back and reported that he had not been admitted to see her. Olivia's maid had given this answer: for seven years she would not let anyone see her face openly. She would walk veiled like a nun, and once a day she would water her room with tears, to keep fresh the love she had for her dead brother. Orsino said that if she could love a brother so deeply, she would love even more when love filled her whole being—liver, brain, and heart—with one king. He told his attendants to lead him to beds of flowers, where love-thoughts lay rich under shady trees. In another part of Illyria, Viola had survived a shipwreck with a captain and a few sailors. She asked what country they were in, and the captain said it was Illyria. Viola wondered what she should do there. She said her brother was in Elysium, but perhaps he was not drowned, and asked the sailors what they thought. The captain said it was only by chance that she herself had been saved. Viola said, "O my poor brother, and so perhaps he may be." The captain said true, madam, and to comfort her with chance, he told her that after their ship split, when she and the few saved with her hung on their driving boat, he had seen her brother bind himself, courage and hope teaching him, to a strong mast that lived on the sea. There, like Orion on a dolphin's back, he had seen him hold on to the waves as long as he could see. Viola gave the captain gold, because her own escape made her hope that her brother had done the same. She asked whether he knew the country. The captain said he knew it well, for he had been born not three hours' travel from that very place. Viola asked who governed there. The captain said a noble Duke, in nature as in name. Viola asked his name. The captain said Orsino. Viola said she had heard her father name him, and that he had been a bachelor then. The captain said he was so now, or had been so very late, for but a month ago he had gone from there, and then people were talking about how he sought the love of fair Olivia. Viola asked who Olivia was. The captain reported that she was a virtuous maid, the daughter of a Count who had died about a year earlier, leaving her in the care of her brother, who had also died soon after. People said she had given up seeing and meeting men because of her love for her brother. Viola said she wished she could serve that lady and might not be known to the world until she could make her own situation better. The captain said that would be hard, because Olivia admitted no suitors, not even the Duke's. Viola said she trusted the captain's fair behaviour, and though a beautiful outside sometimes hid a bad mind, she believed his mind matched his fair outside. She asked him, for good pay, to hide what she was and help her disguise herself. She said she would serve the Duke, and he should present her to him as a eunuch, a male servant. She said it might be worth his pains, for she could sing and speak to him in many kinds of music, so he would find her service worthwhile. She left the rest to time and asked him to keep her plan secret. The captain said be you his eunuch, and your mute I'll be; when his tongue blabs, then let his eyes not see. Viola thanked him and told him to lead her on. At Olivia's house, Sir Toby Belch, Olivia's uncle, complained that his niece was taking her brother's death too seriously, because care was an enemy to life. Maria, one of Olivia's women, told him that he must come in earlier at night, because his cousin, my lady, objected to his late hours. Sir Toby said let her object, but he would not be kept out. Maria said he must confine himself within modest limits. Sir Toby said he would confine himself no finer than he was: these clothes were good enough to drink in, and so were these boots; and if they were not, let them hang themselves in their own straps. Maria said his drinking would undo him, and that Olivia had talked about it yesterday, and about a foolish knight Sir Toby had brought in one night to be her suitor. Sir Toby asked who, Sir Andrew Aguecheek? Maria said him. Sir Toby said he was as tall a man as any in Illyria. Maria asked what that had to do with it. Sir Toby said he had three thousand ducates a year. Maria said he would have but a year in all these ducates, because he was a very fool and a spendthrift. Sir Toby said fie that she would say so, because he played on the viol-de-gamboys, spoke three or four languages word for word without a book, and had all the good gifts of nature. Maria said he had indeed, almost natural, for besides being a fool he was a great quarreller, and unless his cowardice kept him from fighting, wise people thought he would soon have the gift of a grave. Sir Toby called those who said that scoundrels. Maria said they added that he was drunk nightly in Sir Toby's company. Sir Toby said he drank toasts to his niece and would drink to her as long as there was a throat in Illyria; anyone who would not drink to his niece was a coward. Then Sir Andrew came in. Sir Andrew greeted Sir Toby and blessed Maria, fair shrew. Maria said and you too, sir. Sir Toby told Sir Andrew to accost Maria, meaning to approach her, but Sir Andrew asked what that was. Sir Toby said she was his niece's chamber-maid. Maria said good mistress accost, she desired better acquaintance, and gave her name as Mary. Sir Andrew said good mistress Mary, accost. Sir Toby said he mistook, knight: accost was front her, board her, woo her, assail her. Sir Andrew said by his troth he would not undertake her in this company, and asked if that was the meaning of accost. Maria said fare you well, gentlemen. Sir Toby said if she let part so, Sir Andrew, he wished he might never draw sword again. Sir Andrew said if she parted so, mistress, he wished he might never draw sword again, and asked if she thought he had fools in hand. Maria said she had not him by the hand. Sir Andrew said marry, but she should have, and offered his hand. Maria said now, sir, thought was free, and asked him to bring his hand to the buttery bar and let it drink. Sir Andrew asked wherefore, sweet-heart, and what her metaphor was. Maria said it was dry, sir. Sir Andrew said he thought so too, because he was not such an ass but he could keep his hand dry, and asked what her jest was. Maria said a dry jest, sir. Sir Andrew asked if she was full of them. Maria said she had them at her fingers' ends, but now that she let go his hand, she was barren. Sir Toby said O knight, he lacked a cup of Canary, because he had never seen him so put down. Sir Andrew said never in his life, he thought, unless he saw Canary put him down; sometimes he had no more wit than a Christian or an ordinary man had, but he was a great eater of beef, and he believed that did harm to his wit. Sir Toby said no question. Sir Andrew said if he thought that, he would forswear it, and that he would ride home tomorrow. Sir Toby asked purquoy, my dear knight. Sir Andrew asked what purquoy was, do or not do, and said he wished he had spent his time learning languages instead of fencing, dancing, and bear-baiting; O had he but followed the arts. Sir Toby said then he would have had an excellent head of hair. Sir Andrew asked why, would that have mended his hair. Sir Toby said past question, for he saw it would not cool his nature. Sir Andrew said but it became him well enough, did it not. Sir Toby said excellent, it hung like flax on a distaff, and he hoped to see a housewife take him between her legs and spin it off. Sir Andrew said faith he would home tomorrow, because his niece would not be seen, or if she were, it was four to one she would none of him, because the Count himself here hard by wooed her. Sir Toby said she would none o'th Count, she would not match above her degree, neither in estate, years, nor wit; he had heard her swear it; tut, there was life in't, man. Sir Andrew said he would stay a month longer, because he was a fellow o'th strangest mind in the world and delighted in masks and revels sometimes altogether. Sir Toby asked if he was good at these kickshawses, knight. Sir Andrew said as any man in Illyria, whatsoever he be, under the degree of his betters, and yet he would not compare with an old man. Sir Toby asked what was his excellence in a galliard, knight. Sir Andrew said faith, he could cut a caper. Sir Toby said and he could cut the mutton to't. Sir Andrew said he thought he had the back-trick, simply as strong as any man in Illyria. Sir Toby asked wherefore these things were hid, wherefore these gifts had a curtain before them, whether they were like to take dust like mistress Mall's picture, and why he did not go to church in a galliard and come home in a coranto. Sir Toby said his very walk should be a jig, and he would not so much as make water but in a sink-a-pace; what did he mean, was it a world to hide virtues in? He said he had thought by the excellent constitution of his leg it was formed under the star of a galliard. Sir Andrew said it was strong, and it did indifferent well in a dam'd colour'd stock, and asked if they should sit about some revels. Sir Toby said what should they do else, were they not born under Taurus? Sir Andrew said Taurus, that sides and heart. Sir Toby said no sir, it was legs and thighs, and told him to let him see him caper. He said ha, higher, ha, ha, excellent. Later, Viola, disguised as a young man and called Cesario, met Valentine. Valentine said that if the Duke continued these favours towards him, Cesario, he was like to be much advanced, because the Duke had known him but three days, and already he was no stranger. Viola said Valentine either feared the Duke's humour or his negligence, since he called in question the continuance of his love, and asked whether the Duke was inconstant in his favours. Valentine said no, believe him. Then Duke Orsino came with Curio and attendants. Viola said he thanked Valentine, for here came the Count. The Duke asked who saw Cesario, ho. Viola said on his attendance, my lord, here. The Duke told him to stand a while aloof, and said Cesario knew no less but all, because he had unclasped to him the book even of his secret soul. He told him, good youth, to address his gate unto Olivia, be not denied access, stand at her doors, and tell them there his fixed foot should grow till he had audience. Viola said sure, my noble lord, if she was so abandoned to her sorrow as it was spoke, she never would admit him. The Duke said be clamorous, and leap all civil bounds, rather than make unprofitable return. Viola asked, say he did speak with her, my lord, what then. The Duke said then he should unfold the passion of his love, surprise her with discourse of his dear faith, and that it would become him well to act his woes, because she would attend it better in his youth than in a nuncio's of more grave aspect. Viola said he thought not so, my lord. The Duke said dear lad, believe it, for they shall yet belie his happy years that say he is a man: Diana's lip was not more smooth and rubious, his small pipe was as the maiden's organ, shrill and sound, and all was semblative a woman's part. He said he knew his constellation was right apt for this affair, and gave him some four or five attendants, all if he would, because he himself was best when least in company. He told him to prosper well in this, and he should live as freely as his lord, to call his fortunes his. Viola said he would do his best to woo the lady, yet it was a barren strife, because whoever he wooed, himself would be his wife. At Olivia's house, Maria told the Clown that either he must tell where he had been, or she would not open her lips so wide as a bristle may enter, in way of his excuse, because my lady would hang him for his absence. The Clown said let her hang him, because he that was well hanged in this world needed to fear no colours. Maria asked him to make that good. The Clown said he should see none to fear. Maria said that was a good Lenten answer, and she could tell him where that saying was born, of I fear no colours. The Clown asked where, good mistress Mary. Maria said in the wars, and that he might be bold to say in his foolery. The Clown said well, God give them wisdom that had it, and those that were fools, let them use their talents. Maria said yet he would be hanged for being so long absent, or to be turned away, and asked if that was not as good as a hanging to him. The Clown said many a good hanging prevented a bad marriage, and for turning away, let summer bear it out. Maria asked if he was resolute then. The Clown said not so neither, but he was resolved on two points. Maria said that if one broke, the other would hold, or if both broke, his gaskins would fall. The Clown said apt in good faith, very apt, and told her to go her way, because if Sir Toby would leave drinking, she was as witty a piece of Eve's flesh as any in Illyria. Maria told him peace, you rogue, no more o'that, because here came my lady, and he had best make his excuse wisely. Olivia came in with Malvolio. The Clown said wit, and it be his will, put him into good fooling, because those wits that thought they had wit did very oft prove fools, and he that was sure he lacked wit might pass for a wise man. He asked what Quinapalus said, better a witty fool than a foolish wit, and said God bless her, lady. Olivia said take the fool away. The Clown said do you not hear, fellows, take away the lady. Olivia said go to, he was a dry fool, she would no more of him, and besides he grew dishonest. The Clown said two faults, madona, that drink and good counsel would amend: for give the dry fool drink, then was the fool not dry; bid the dishonest man mend himself, if he mended, he was no longer dishonest; if he could not, let the botcher mend him; anything that was mended was but patched; virtue that transgressed was but patched with sin, and sin that amended was but patched with virtue. If that simple syllogism would serve, so; if it would not, what remedy? As there was no true cuckold but calamity, so beauty was a flower; the lady had bade them take away the fool, therefore he said again, take her away. Olivia said sir, she had bade them take away him. The Clown said misprision in the highest degree, and said lady, cucullus non facit monachum, that was as much to say as he wore not motley in his brain; good madona, give him leave to prove her a fool. Olivia asked if he could do it. The Clown said dexterously, good madona. Olivia told him to make his proof. The Clown said he must catechize her for it, madona, and asked good mouse of virtue to answer him. Olivia said well sir, for want of other idleness, she would bide his proof. The Clown asked good madona, why mourned she. Olivia said good fool, for her brother's death. The Clown said he thought his soul was in hell, madona. Olivia said she knew his soul was in heaven, fool. The Clown said the more fool, madona, to mourn for her brother's soul, being in heaven, and told the gentlemen to take away the fool. Olivia asked Malvolio what he thought of this fool, whether he did not mend. Malvolio said yes, and should do till the pangs of death shook him, because infirmity that decayed the wise did ever make the better fool. The Clown said God send him, sir, a speedy infirmity, for the better increasing of his folly, because Sir Toby would be sworn that he was no fox, but he would not pass his word for two pence that Malvolio was no fool. Olivia asked Malvolio how he said to that. Malvolio said he marvelled her ladyship took delight in such a barren rascal, because he had seen him put down the other day with an ordinary fool that had no more brain than a stone; look you now, he was out of his guard already, and unless she laughed and ministered occasion to him, he was gagged; he protested he took these wise men that crowed so at these set kinds of fools no better than the fools' zanies. Olivia said O, he was sick of self-love, Malvolio, and tasted with a distempered appetite; to be generous, guiltless, and of free disposition was to take those things for bird-bolts that he deemed cannon bullets; there was no slander in an allowed fool, though he did nothing but rail, nor no railing in a known discreet man, though he did nothing but reprove. The Clown said now Mercury endue her with leasing, for she spoke well of fools. Maria came in and said madam, there was at the gate a young gentleman who much desired to speak with her. Olivia asked if it was from Count Orsino. Maria said she knew not, madam, but he was a fair young man and well attended. Olivia asked who of her people held him in delay. Maria said Sir Toby, madam, her kinsman. Olivia said fetch him off, she prayed him, because he spoke nothing but madman; fie on him. She told Malvolio to go, and if it was a suit from the Count, to say she was sick, or not at home, or what he would, to dismiss it. Then she told the Clown that now he saw how his fooling grew old, and people disliked it. The Clown said she had spoke for them, madona, as if her eldest son should be a fool, whose skull Jove crammed with brains, for here he came. Sir Toby came in. The Clown said one of her kin had a most weak pia-mater. Olivia said by her honour, half drunk, and asked what he was at the gate, cousin. Sir Toby said a gentleman. Olivia asked a gentleman, what gentleman. Sir Toby said 'twas a gentleman here, a plague o'these pickled herring, and asked how now, sot. The Clown said good Sir Toby. Olivia said cousin, cousin, how had he come so early by this lethargy. Sir Toby said lechery, he defied lechery, and said there was one at the gate. Olivia asked I marry, what was he. Sir Toby said let him be the devil and he would, he cared not; give me faith, say he; well, it was all one, and went away. Olivia asked the fool what a drunken man was like. The Clown said like a drowned man, a fool, and a mad man: one draught above heat made him a fool, the second madded him, and a third drowned him. Olivia told him to go and seek the crowner, and let him sit o'my coz, because he was in the third degree of drink, he was drowned, and to go look after him. The Clown said he was but mad yet, madona, and the fool should look to the madman. Malvolio came back and said madam, yond young fellow swore he would speak with her. He had told him she was sick, but he took on him to understand so much, and therefore came to speak with her. He had told him she was asleep, but he seemed to have a foreknowledge of that too, and therefore came to speak with her. He asked what was to be said to him, lady, because he was fortified against any denial. Olivia told him to tell him he should not speak with her. Malvolio said he had been told so, and he said he would stand at her door like a sheriff's post, and be the supporter to a bench, but he would speak with her. Olivia asked what kind of man he was. Malvolio said why, of mankinde. Olivia asked what manner of man. Malvolio said of very ill manner, because he would speak with her, will she or no. Olivia asked of what personage and years he was. Malvolio said not yet old enough for a man, nor young enough for a boy: as a squash is before 'tis a peascod, or a codling when 'tis almost an apple; 'twas with him in standing water, between boy and man. He said he was very well-favour'd, and he spoke very shrewishly, and one would think his mother's milk were scarce out of him. Olivia said let him approach, and call in her gentlewoman. Malvolio called gentlewoman, my lady calls. Olivia asked for her veil and said come, throw it over her face, they would once more hear Orsino's embassy. Viola came in and asked which was the honourable lady of the house. Olivia said speak to her, she would answer for her, and asked his will. Viola said most radiant, exquisite, and unmatchable beauty, and prayed her to tell him if this was the lady of the house, for he never saw her. He said he would be loath to cast away his speech, because besides that it was excellently well penned, he had taken great pains to con it; good beauties, let him sustain no scorn, for he was very compatible, even to the least sinister usage. Olivia asked whence he came. Viola said he could say little more than he had studied, and that question was out of his part; good gentle one, give him modest assurance if she was the lady of the house, that he might proceed in his speech. Olivia asked if he was a comedian. Viola said no, his profound heart, and yet by the very fangs of malice he swore he was not that he played, and asked if she was the lady of the house. Olivia said if she did not usurp herself, she was. Viola said most certain, if she was she, she did usurp herself, for what was hers to bestow was not hers to reserve; but this was from his commission, and he would on with his speech in her praise, and then show her the heart of his message. Olivia said come to what was important in it, she forgave him the praise. Viola said alas, he had taken great pains to study it, and it was poetical. Olivia said it was the more like to be feigned, and prayed him to keep it in; she had heard he was saucy at her gates, and had allowed his approach rather to wonder at him than to hear him; if he was not mad, be gone; if he had reason, be brief, for it was not that time of moon with her to make one in so skipping a dialogue. Maria said will you hoist sail, sir, here lies your way. Viola said no, good swabber, he was to hull there a little longer, and asked some mollification for her giant, sweet lady, and told him his mind, for he was a messenger. Olivia said sure he had some hideous matter to deliver, when the courtesy of it was so fearful, and told him to speak his office. Viola said it alone concerned her ear; he brought no overture of war, no taxation of homage; he held the olive in his hand, and his words were as full of peace as matter. Olivia said yet he began rudely, and asked what he was and what he would. Viola said the rudeness that had appeared in him he had learned from his entertainment; what he was and what he would were as secret as maidenhead: to her ears, divinity; to any others, profanation. Olivia said give them the place alone, they would hear this divinity. When they were gone, she asked now sir, what was his text. Viola said most sweet lady. Olivia said that was a comfortable doctrine, and much might be said of it, and asked where lay his text. Viola said in Orsino's bosom. Olivia asked in his bosom, in what chapter of his bosom. Viola said to answer by the method, in the first of his heart. Olivia said O, she had read it, it was heresy, and asked if he had no more to say. Viola said good madam, let him see her face. Olivia asked if he had any commission from his lord to negotiate with her face, and said he was now out of his text, but they would draw the curtain and show him the picture; look you sir, such a one she was this present, and asked if it was not well done. Viola said excellently done, if God did all. Olivia said it was in grain, sir, it would endure wind and weather. Viola said it was beauty truly blent, whose red and white Nature's own sweet and cunning hand had laid on; lady, she was the cruellest she alive, if she would lead these graces to the grave and leave the world no copy. Olivia said O sir, she would not be so hard-hearted; she would give out divers schedules of her beauty, it should be inventoried and every particle and utensil labelled to her will: as, item two lips indifferent red, item two grey eyes, with lids to them, item one neck, one chin, and so forth; she asked if he was sent hither to praise her. Viola said he saw what she was, she was too proud, but if she were the devil, she was fair; his lord and master loved her, O such love could be but recompensed, though she were crowned the nonpareil of beauty. Olivia asked how he loved her. Viola said with adorations, fertile tears, with groans that thundered love, and sighs of fire. Olivia said her lord did know her mind, she could not love him; yet she supposed him virtuous, knew him noble, of great estate, of fresh and stainless youth, in voices well divulged, free, learned, and valiant, and in dimension and the shape of nature a gracious person; but yet she could not love him; he might have taken his answer long ago. Viola said if he did love her in his master's flame, with such a suffering, such a deadly life, in her denial he would find no sense, he would not understand it. Olivia asked why, what would he. Viola said make him a willow cabin at her gate, and call upon his soul within the house, write loyal cantons of contemned love, and sing them loud even in the dead of night; hallow her name to the reverberate hills, and make the babbling gossip of the air cry out Olivia; O she should not rest between the elements of air and earth, but she should pity him. Olivia said he might do much, and asked what was his parentage. Viola said above his fortunes, yet his state was well: he was a gentleman. Olivia said get him to his lord, she could not love him, let him send no more, unless perchance he came to her again to tell her how he took it; fare him well, she thanked him for his pains, and gave him money to spend for her. Viola said he was no fee'd post, lady, let her keep her purse, because his master, not himself, lacked recompense; love make his heart of flint that she should love, and let her fervour like his master's be placed in contempt; farewell, fair cruelty. After Viola left, Olivia repeated his words about parentage and being a gentleman, and said she would be sworn he was one, because his tongue, face, limbs, actions, and spirit gave him five-fold blazon. She told herself not too fast, soft, soft, unless the master were the man. She asked how now, even so quickly might one catch the plague. She said she thought she felt this youth's perfections with an invisible and subtle stealth creep in at her eyes, and said well, let it be. She called Malvolio. He came and said here, madam, at her service. Olivia told him to run after that same peevish messenger, the Count's man, because he had left this ring behind him, would she or not; tell him she would none of it; desire him not to flatter with his lord, nor hold him up with hopes, because she was not for him; if that the youth would come this way tomorrow, she would give him reasons for it, and told him to hie him, Malvolio. Malvolio said madam, he would. Olivia said she did I know not what, and feared to find her eye too great a flatterer for her mind; fate, show thy force, themselves they did not owe, what was decreed must be, and be this so.

Viola, who was disguised as a young man named Cesario, met the clown and greeted him kindly. She asked whether he lived by his music and his tabor. The clown answered that he did not live by his tabor, but by the Church. Viola asked whether he was a churchman, and the clown explained that he meant only that he lived in a house, and his house stood by the Church. Viola joked that, by that reasoning, one might say the king lived by a beggar if a beggar lived near him, or that the Church stood by the tabor if the tabor stood by the Church. The clown admired how quickly a clever remark could be turned around. Viola said that people who play too nicely with words can soon make them behave badly. The clown wished his sister had had no name, because her name was a word, and playing with that word might make his sister wanton. He said that words had become very dishonest, since they had been disgraced by bonds. Viola asked his reason, and the clown said he could give none without words, and words had grown so false that he was loath to prove reason with them. Viola said she was sure he was a merry fellow who cared for nothing. The clown said he did care for something, but not for Viola. If caring for nothing meant not caring for her, he wished it would make her invisible. Viola asked whether he was Lady Olivia’s fool. The clown said no, because Lady Olivia had no folly and would keep no fool until she was married. He said fools were as like husbands as pilchers were to herrings, the husbands being the bigger. He said he was not her fool, but her corrupter of words. Viola said she had seen him lately at Count Orsino’s house. The clown said foolery walked about the world like the sun and shone everywhere. He said he would be sorry if the fool were not as often with Viola’s master as with his mistress, and he thought he had seen Viola’s wisdom there. Viola said that if he passed upon her, she would have no more to do with him, and she gave him money for expenses. The clown prayed that Jove, in his next commodity of hair, would send her a beard. Viola said she was almost sick for one, though she would not have it grow on her chin. She asked whether his lady was within. The clown asked whether a pair of legs would not have bred, and Viola answered that they might, if kept together and put to use. The clown said he would play Lord Pandarus of Phrygia and bring a Cressida to this Troilus. Viola said she understood him and that it was well begged. The clown said he hoped the matter was not great, for begging was but a beggar, and Cressida had been a beggar. He said his lady was within and that he would explain to them where Viola came from, but who Viola was and what Viola wanted were out of his sky, or element, though that word was worn out. Then he went away. Viola said that this fellow was wise enough to play the fool, and that doing that well required a kind of wit. He had to observe the mood of the people he joked with, the quality of persons, and the time. Like a haggard, he had to check at every feather that came before his eye. She said this was a practice as full of labor as a wise man’s art, because folly that he showed wisely was fit, but a wise man’s folly, when it failed, quite tainted his wit. Sir Toby and Sir Andrew came to Viola. Sir Toby greeted her, and Sir Andrew greeted her in French. Viola answered in French, and Sir Andrew said he hoped she was, and that he was hers. Sir Toby asked whether she would enter the house, because his niece was desirous that she should enter, if her business was with her. Viola said she was bound to his niece and meant that she was the list of her voyage. Sir Toby told her to taste her legs and put them to motion. Viola said her legs understood her better than she understood what he meant by bidding her taste her legs. Sir Toby said he meant to go, to enter. Viola said she would answer him with gate and entrance, but they were prevented, for Olivia came out with a gentlewoman. Viola greeted Olivia as most excellent accomplished lady and said the heavens rained odours on her. Sir Andrew said that youth was a rare courtier, and he liked the word odours. Viola said her matter had no voice, Lady, but to Olivia’s own most pregnant and vouchsafed ear. Sir Andrew said he would get odours, pregnant, and vouchsafed all three already. Olivia told them to shut the garden door and leave her to her hearing, and she asked Viola for her hand. Viola gave her duty and most humble service. Olivia asked her name, and Viola said Cesario was her servant’s name, fair princess. Olivia said, “My servant, sir? ’Twas never merry world since lowly feigning was called complement.” She said Viola was servant to Count Orsino. Viola said that Orsino was Olivia’s, and his must needs be hers, and that her servant’s servant was her servant, madam. Olivia said that for him, she thought not on him, and for his thoughts, she wished they were blanks rather than filled with her. Viola said she came to whet Olivia’s gentle thoughts on his behalf. Olivia said, by her leave, she had bidden her never speak again of him, but if Viola would undertake another suit, she had rather hear her solicit that than music from the spheres. Viola said, “Dear lady.” Olivia begged leave to speak and said she had sent after Viola, after the last enchantment she had heard, a ring in chase of her. She said she had abused herself, her servant, and, she feared, Viola. She said she must sit under Viola’s hard construction, to force that on her in a shameful cunning which Viola knew none of hers. She asked what Viola might think, and whether Viola had not set her honor at the stake and baited it with all the unmuzzled thoughts that a tyrannous heart can think. She said that to one of Viola’s receiving, enough was shown, and that a cypress, not a bosom, hid her heart. She asked Viola to speak. Viola said she pitied Olivia. Olivia said that was a degree to love. Viola said it was not a grize, for it was a vulgar proof that very often people pity enemies. Olivia said that then, she thought, it was time to smile again, and she said, “O world, how apt the poor are to be proud?” She said that if one should be a prey, it was much better to fall before the lion than the wolf. The clock struck. Olivia said the clock upbraided her with the waste of time. She told Viola not to be afraid, good youth, and said she would not have her. Yet she said that when wit and youth came to harvest, Viola’s wife was like to reap a proper man, and that there lay her way, due west. Viola said, “Then westward, hoe,” and wished grace and good disposition to attend her ladyship. She asked whether Olivia had nothing for her lord by her. Olivia told her to stay and asked what she thought of her. Viola said that Olivia thought she was not what she was. Olivia said that if she thought so, she thought the same of Viola. Viola said that then she thought right, for she was not what she was. Olivia said she would Viola were as she would have her be. Viola asked whether it would be better, madam, than she was, and said she wished it might, for now she was Olivia’s fool. Olivia said that a great deal of scorn looked beautiful, and that in the contempt and anger of his lip, a murderous guilt showed itself not sooner than love that would seem hid. She said love’s night was noon. She swore by the roses of the spring, by maidhood, honor, truth, and everything, that she loved Viola so that, despite all Viola’s pride, neither wit nor reason could hide her passion. She told Viola not to extort reasons from that clause, for because she wooed, Viola therefore had no cause, but rather to reason thus with reason’s fetter: love sought is good, but given unsought is better. Viola swore by innocence and by her youth that she had one heart, one bosom, and one truth, and that no woman had it, nor never none should be mistress of it, save herself alone. She said farewell, good madam, and said she would never more deplore her master’s tears to Olivia. Olivia said, “Yet come again,” for perhaps Viola might move that heart which now abhorred to like his love. Then they parted. Meanwhile, Sir Toby, Sir Andrew, and Fabian were together. Sir Andrew said that no faith, he would not stay a jot longer. Sir Toby asked his reason, dear venom, and Fabian said he must needs yield his reason, Sir Andrew. Sir Andrew said that he had seen Sir Toby’s niece do more favors to the Count’s serving-man than she had ever bestowed upon him. He had seen it in the orchard. Sir Toby asked whether she saw him while she did it, old boy, and told him to say that. Sir Andrew said it was as plain as he saw him now. Fabian said this was a great argument of love in her toward him. Sir Andrew said, “Slight, will you make an ass of me?” Fabian said he would prove it legitimate, sir, upon the oaths of judgment and reason. Sir Toby said they had been grand jury men since before Noah was a sailor. Fabian said that Olivia had shown favor to the youth in Sir Andrew’s sight only to exasperate him, to awake his dormouse valour, to put fire in his heart and brimstone in his liver. He said Sir Andrew should then have accosted her, and with some excellent jests, fire-new from the mint, should have banged the youth into dumbness. This was looked for at his hand, and this was balked. The double gilt of this opportunity he had let time wash off, and he was now sailed into the north of my lady’s opinion, where he would hang like an icicle on a Dutchman’s beard, unless he redeemed it by some laudable attempt, either of valour or policy. Sir Andrew said that if it must be any way, it must be with valour, for policy he hated. He said he had as lief be a Brownist as a politician. Sir Toby said that then he should build his fortunes upon the basis of valour. He told him to challenge the Count’s youth to fight with him, hurt him in eleven places, and said his niece would take note of it. He said there was no love-broker in the world that could more prevail in a man’s commendation with woman than report of valour. Fabian said there was no way but this, Sir Andrew. Sir Andrew asked whether either of them would bear him a challenge to him. Sir Toby told him to write it in a martial hand, be curst and brief. He said it was no matter how witty, so it were eloquent and full of invention. He told him to taunt him with the license of ink, and if he “thoued” him some thrice, it should not be amiss, and as many lies as would lie in his sheet of paper, although the sheet were big enough for the bed of Ware in England, set them down. He said there should be gall enough in his ink, though he wrote with a goose-pen, no matter. Sir Andrew asked where he should find them, and Sir Toby said they would call him at the cubiculo. Sir Andrew went away. Fabian said this was a dear manakin to Sir Toby. Sir Toby said he had been dear to him, lad, some two thousand strong, or so. Fabian said they should have a rare letter from him, but he would not deliver it. Sir Toby said never trust him then, and by all means stir on the youth to an answer. He thought oxen and wain-ropes could not hale them together. For Andrew, if he were opened and anyone found so much blood in his liver as would clog the foot of a flea, he would eat the rest of the anatomy. Fabian said that his opposite, the youth, bore in his visage no great presage of cruelty. Maria came in. Sir Toby said, “Look where the youngest wren of mine comes.” Maria said that if they desired the spleen and would laugh themselves into stitches, they should follow her. She said yond gull Malvolio was turned heathen, a very renegado, for there was no Christian that meant to be saved by believing rightly could ever believe such impossible passages of grossness. She said he was in yellow stockings. Sir Toby asked whether he was cross-gartered. Maria said most villanously, like a pedant that kept a school in the church. She said she had dogged him like his murderer. He did obey every point of the letter that she had dropped to betray him. He did smile his face into more lines than were in the new map, with the augmentation of the Indies. She said they had not seen such a thing as it was, and she could hardly forbear hurling things at him. She knew her lady would strike him, and if she did, he would smile and take it for a great favor. Sir Toby told her to bring them where he was, and they all went away. At another part of the town, Sebastian and Antonio were together. Sebastian said he would not by his will have troubled Antonio, but since Antonio made his pleasure of his pains, he would no further chide him. Antonio said he could not stay behind him. His desire, more sharp than filed steel, had spurred him forth, and not all love to see him, though so much as might have drawn one to a longer voyage, but jealousy what might befall his travel, being skilless in these parts, which to a stranger, unguided and unfriended, often proved rough and unhospitable. His willing love, the rather by these arguments of fear, had set forth in his pursuit. Sebastian called him kind Antonio and said he could make no other answer but thanks, and thanks, and ever oft good turns were shuffled off with such uncurrent pay. He said that were his worth as his conscience firm, Antonio should find better dealing. He asked what was to do, and whether they should go see the relics of that town. Antonio said tomorrow, sir, and that it was best first to go see his lodging. Sebastian said he was not weary, and it was long to night, and he prayed Antonio to let them satisfy their eyes with the memorials and the things of fame that did renown that city. Antonio asked him to pardon him, for he did not without danger walk those streets. Once in a sea-fight against the Count’s gallies, he had done some service of such note indeed that, were he taken there, it would scarce be answered. Sebastian said, “Belike you slew great number of his people.” Antonio said the offence was not of such a bloody nature, albeit the quality of the time and quarrel might well have given them bloody argument. It might have since been answered in repaying what they took from them, which for traffic’s sake most of their city did. Only himself stood out, for which, if he were lapsed in that place, he should pay dear. Sebastian told him not to walk too open. Antonio said it did not fit him, and gave him his purse. He said that in the south suburbs, at the Elephant, it was best to lodge. He would bespeak their diet while Sebastian beguiled the time and fed his knowledge with viewing of the town, and there Sebastian should have him. Sebastian asked why he gave him his purse. Antonio said haply his eye might light upon some toy he had desire to purchase, and his store, he thought, was not for idle markets, sir. Sebastian said he would be his purse-bearer and leave him for an hour. Antonio said, “To the Elephant.” Sebastian said he did remember. Then they parted. Back at Olivia’s house, Olivia said she had sent after him, and he said he would come. She asked how she should feast him and what she should bestow of him, for youth was bought more oft than begged or borrowed. She said she spoke too loud, and asked where Malvolio was. She said he was sad and civil, and suited well for a servant with her fortunes. She asked where Malvolio was. Maria said he was coming, madam, but in very strange manner, and she was sure he was possessed, madam. Olivia asked why, what was the matter, and whether he raved. Maria said no, madam, he did nothing but smile, and her ladyship were best to have some guard about her, if he came, for sure the man was tainted in his wits. Olivia told her to go call him hither. She said she was as mad as he, if sad and merry madness equal were. Malvolio came in and said, “Sweet lady, ho, ho.” Olivia asked whether he smiled, for she had sent for him upon a sad occasion. Malvolio said, “Sad lady, I could be sad. This does make some obstruction in the blood, this cross-gartering, but what of that? If it please the eye of one, it is with me as the very true sonnet is: Please one, and please all.” Olivia asked how he did, man, and what was the matter with him. Malvolio said he was not black in his mind, though yellow in his legs. He said it did come to his hands, and commands should be executed. He said he thought they did know the sweet Roman hand. Olivia asked whether he would go to bed, Malvolio. Malvolio said, “To bed? I, sweet heart, and I’ll come to thee.” Olivia said God comfort him, and asked why he smiled so and kissed his hand so oft. Maria asked how he did, Malvolio. Malvolio said, “At your request. Yes, nightingales answer daws.” Maria asked why he appeared with that ridiculous boldness before her lady. Malvolio said, “Be not afraid of greatness. ’Twas well writ.” Olivia asked what he meant by that, Malvolio. Malvolio said, “Some are born great.” Olivia said, “Ha?” Malvolio said, “Some achieve greatness.” Olivia asked what he said. Malvolio said, “And some have greatness thrust upon them.” Olivia said, “Heaven restore thee.” Malvolio said, “Remember who commended thy yellow stockings.” Olivia asked, “Thy yellow stockings?” Malvolio said, “And wished to see thee cross-gartered.” Olivia asked, “Cross-gartered?” Malvolio said, “Go too, thou art made, if thou desirest to be so.” Olivia asked, “Am I made?” Malvolio said, “If not, let me see thee a servant still.” Olivia said, “Why, this is very Midsummer madness.” A servant came and said, madam, the young gentleman of Count Orsino’s was returned, and he could hardly entreat him back. He said he attended her ladyship’s pleasure. Olivia said she would come to him. She told Maria to let that fellow be looked to, and asked where her cousin Toby was. She said let some of her people have a special care of him, for she would not have him miscarry for the half of her dowry. Then she went away. Malvolio said, “Oh ho, do you come near me now? No worse man than Sir Toby to look to me.” He said this concurred directly with the letter, and that she sent him on purpose, that he might appear stubborn to him, for she incited him to that in the letter. He said, “Cast thy humble slough,” says she. He said, “Be opposite with a kinsman, surly with servants, let thy tongue linger with arguments of state, put thyself into the trick of singularity,” and so forth. He said she set down the manner how, as a sad face, a reverend carriage, a slow tongue, in the habit of some sir of note. He said he had limed her, but it was Jove’s doing, and Jove make him thankful. He said that when she went away now, she said, “Let this fellow be looked to.” He said, “Fellow? Not Malvolio, nor after my degree, but fellow.” He said why everything adhered together, that no dram of a scruple, no scruple of a scruple, no obstacle, no incredulous or unsafe circumstance could come between him and the full prospect of his hopes. He said, “Well, Jove, not I, is the doer of this, and he is to be thanked.” Sir Toby, Fabian, and Maria came in. Sir Toby asked which way he was, in the name of sanctity. He said if all the devils of hell were drawn in little, and Legion himself possessed him, yet he would speak to him. Fabian said here he was, here he was, and asked how it was with him, sir, and how it was with him, man. Malvolio said, “Go off, I discard you. Let me enjoy my private. Go off.” Maria said, “Lo, how hollow the fiend speaks within him. Did not I tell you? Sir Toby, my lady prays you to have a care of him.” Malvolio said, “Ah ha, does she so?” Sir Toby said, “Go too, go too. Peace, peace. We must deal gently with him. Let me alone. How do you, Malvolio? How is’t with you? What man, defy the devil. Consider, he’s an enemy to mankind.” Malvolio asked whether they knew what they said. Maria said, “La you, and you speak ill of the devil, how he takes it at heart. Pray God he be not bewitched.” Fabian said, “Carry his water to the wise woman.” Maria said, “Marry, and it shall be done tomorrow morning, if I live. My lady would not lose him for more than I’ll say.” Malvolio asked how now, mistress. Maria said, “Oh Lord.” Sir Toby said, “Prithee hold thy peace. This is not the way. Do you not see you move him? Let me alone with him.” Fabian said, “No way but gentleness. Gently, gently. The fiend is rough, and will not be roughly used.” Sir Toby said, “Why, how now, my bawcock? How dost thou, chuck?” Malvolio said, “Sir.” Sir Toby said, “I biddy, come with me. What man, ’tis not for gravity to play at cherry-pit with Satan. Hang him, foul collier.” Maria said, “Get him to say his prayers, good Sir Toby, get him to pray.” Malvolio said, “My prayers, minx.” Maria said, “No, I warrant you, he will not hear of godliness.” Malvolio said, “Go hang yourselves all. You are idle, shallow things. I am not of your element. You shall know more hereafter.” Then he went away. Sir Toby asked, “Is’t possible?” Fabian said that if this were played upon a stage now, he could condemn it as an improbable fiction. Sir Toby said his very genius had taken the infection of the device, man. Maria said, “Nay, pursue him now, lest the device take air and taint.” Fabian said, “Why, we shall make him mad indeed.” Maria said, “The house will be the quieter.” Sir Toby said, “Come, we’ll have him in a dark room and bound. My niece is already in the belief that he’s mad. We may carry it thus for our pleasure, and his penance, till our very pastime, tired out of breath, prompt us to have mercy on him. At which time we will bring the device to the bar and crown thee for a finder of madmen. But see, but see.” Sir Andrew came in. Fabian said, “More matter for a May morning.” Sir Andrew said, “Here’s the challenge. Read it. I warrant there’s vinegar and pepper in’t.” Fabian asked whether it was so saucy. Sir Andrew said, “Is’t? I warrant him. Do but read.” Sir Toby said, “Give me.” He read: “Youth, whatsoever thou art, thou art but a scurvy fellow.” Fabian said, “Good, and valiant.” Sir Toby read: “Wonder not, nor admire not in thy mind why I do call thee so, for I will show thee no reason for’t.” Fabian said, “A good note, that keeps you from the blow of the law.” Sir Toby read: “Thou com’st to the Lady Olivia, and in my sight she uses thee kindly, but thou liest in thy throat. That is not the matter I challenge thee for.” Fabian said, “Very brief, and to exceeding good senseless.” Sir Toby read: “I will waylay thee going home, where if it be thy chance to kill me.” Fabian said, “Good.” Sir Toby read: “Thou kill’st me like a rogue and a villain.” Fabian said, “Still you keep o’ the windy side of the law. Good.” Sir Toby read: “Farewell, and God have mercy upon one of our souls. He may have mercy upon mine, but my hope is better, and so look to thyself. Thy friend, as thou usest him, and thy sworn enemy, Andrew Aguecheek.” Sir Toby said that if this letter moved him not, his legs could not, and he would give it him. Maria said they might have very fit occasion for it, for he was now in some commerce with her lady, and would by and by depart. Sir Toby told Sir Andrew to go and scout him at the corner of the orchard like a bum-baily. He said as soon as ever he saw him, draw, and as he drew, swear horrible, for it came to pass oft that a terrible oath, with a swaggering accent sharply twanged off, gave manhood more approbation than ever proof itself would have earned him. He told him away. Sir Andrew said, “Nay, let me alone for swearing,” and went away. Sir Toby said that now he would not deliver his letter, for the behavior of the young gentleman gave him out to be of good capacity and breeding, and his employment between his lord and his niece confirmed no less. Therefore, this letter, being so excellently ignorant, would breed no terror in the youth. He would find it came from a clod-pole. But, sir, he said, he would deliver his challenge by word of mouth, set upon Aguecheek a notable report of valour, and drive the gentleman, as he knew his youth would aptly receive it, into a most hideous opinion of his rage, skill, fury, and impetuosity. This would so fright them both that they would kill one another by the look, like cockatrices. Olivia and Viola came in. Fabian said here he came with Sir Toby’s niece, and told them to give them way till he took leave, and presently after him. Sir Toby said he would meditate the while upon some horrid message for a challenge. Olivia said she had said too much unto a heart of stone, and laid her honor too unchary on it. She said there was something in her that reproved her fault, but such a headstrong potent fault it was that it but mocked reproof. Viola said that with the same humour that her passion bore, went on her master’s griefs. Olivia gave her a jewel and said she should wear it for her, for it was her picture. She told her not to refuse it, for it had no tongue to vex her, and she besought her to come again tomorrow. She asked what Viola should ask of her that she would deny, that honour saved might upon asking give. Viola said nothing but this: her true love for her master. Olivia asked how with her honour she might give him that which she had given to Viola. Viola said she would acquit her. Olivia said, “Well, come again tomorrow. Fare thee well. A fiend like thee might bear my soul to hell.” Sir Toby and Fabian came in. Sir Toby said, “Gentleman, God save thee.” Viola said, “And you, sir.” Sir Toby said that that defence she had, she should betake to it. He said of what nature the wrongs were that she had done him, he knew not, but her intercepter, full of despite, bloody as the hunter, attended her at the orchard end. He told her to dismount her tuck, be yare in her preparation, for her assailant was quick, skilful, and deadly. Viola said he mistook her, she was sure, and no man had any quarrel to her. She said her remembrance was very free and clear from any image of offence done to any man. Sir Toby said she would find it otherwise, he assured her, and therefore, if she held her life at any price, she should betake her to her guard, for her opposite had in him what youth, strength, skill, and wrath could furnish man withal. Viola asked, “I pray you, sir, what is he?” Sir Toby said he was a knight dubbed with unhatched rapier, and on carpet consideration, but he was a devil in private brawl. He said souls and bodies had he divorced three, and his incensement at that moment was so implacable that satisfaction could be none but by pangs of death and sepulchre. He said “Hob, nob” was his word: give it or take it. Viola said she would return again into the house and desire some conduct of the lady. She said she was no fighter, and she had heard of some kind of men that put quarrels purposely on others, to taste their valour. She said belike this was a man of that quirk. Sir Toby said, “Sir, no. His indignation derives itself out of a very computent injury. Therefore get you on, and give him his desire. Back you shall not to the house, unless you undertake that with me, which with as much safety you might answer him. Therefore on, or strip your sword stark naked, for meddle you must, that’s certain, or forswear to wear iron about you.” Viola said this was as uncivil as strange. She besought him to do her this courteous office, as to know of the knight what her offence to him was. She said it was something of her negligence, nothing of her purpose. Sir Toby said he would do so, and told Signior Fabian to stay by that gentleman till his return. Then Sir Toby went away. Viola asked Fabian whether he knew of this matter. Fabian said he knew the knight was incensed against her, even to a mortal arbitrement, but nothing of the circumstance more. Viola asked, “I beseech you, what manner of man is he?” Fabian said there was nothing of that wonderful promise to read him by his form, as she was like to find him in the proof of his valour. He said he was indeed, sir, the most skilful, bloody, and fatal opposite that she could possibly have found in any part of Illyria. He asked whether she would walk towards him, and said he would make her peace with him, if he could. Viola said she should be much bound to him for it, for she was one that had rather go with sir priest than sir knight. She said she cared not who knew so much of her mettle. Then they went away. Sir Toby and Sir Andrew came back. Sir Toby said, “Why, man, he’s a very devil. I have not seen such a firago. I had a pass with him, rapier, scabbard, and all, and he gives me the stuck in with such a mortal motion that it is inevitable, and on the answer, he pays you as surely as your feet hit the ground they step on. They say he has been fencer to the Sophy.” Sir Andrew said, “Pox on’t, I’ll not meddle with him.” Sir Toby said, “I, but he will not now be pacified. Fabian can scarce hold him yonder.” Sir Andrew said, “Plague on’t, and I thought he had been valiant, and so cunning in fence, I’d have seen him damned ere I’d have challenged him. Let him let the matter slip, and I’ll give him my horse, gray Capilet.” Sir Toby said he would make the motion, and told him to stand there and make a good show on’t. He said this should end without the perdition of souls, but marry, he would ride his horse as well as he rode him. Fabian and Viola came in. Sir Toby said he had his horse to take up the quarrel, and he had persuaded him the youth was a devil. Fabian said he was as horribly conceited of him, and panted and looked pale, as if a bear were at his heels. Sir Toby said there was no remedy, sir, he would fight with her for his oath’s sake. He said he had better bethought him of his quarrel, and he found that now scarce to be worth talking of. He told her to draw for the supportance of his vow, for he protested he would not hurt her. Viola said, “Pray God defend me. A little thing would make me tell them how much I lack of a man.” Fabian said, “Give ground if you see him furious.” Sir Toby said, “Come, Sir Andrew, there’s no remedy. The gentleman will, for his honour’s sake, have one bout with you. He cannot by the duello avoid it. But he has promised me, as he is a gentleman and a soldier, he will not hurt you. Come on, to’t.” Sir Andrew said, “Pray God he keep his oath.” Antonio came in. Viola said she did assure them it was against her will. Antonio told them to put up their sword, and said if that young gentleman had done offence, he took the fault on him. He said if they offended him, he for him defied them. Sir Toby asked, “You, sir? Why, what are you?” Antonio said, “One, sir, that for his love dares yet do more than you have heard him brag to you he will.” Sir Toby said, “Nay, if you be an undertaker, I am for you.” Officers came in. Fabian said, “O good Sir Toby, hold. Here come the officers.” Sir Toby said he would be with him anon. Viola asked Antonio to put his sword up, if he pleased. Sir Andrew said, “Marry, will I, sir. And for that I promised you, I’ll be as good as my word. He will bear you easily, and rains well.” The first officer said, “This is the man. Do thy office.” The second officer said, “Antonio, I arrest thee at the suit of Count Orsino.” Antonio said they did mistake him, sir. The first officer said no, sir, no jot, and that he knew his favour well, though now he had no sea-cap on his head. He told them to take him away, for he knew he knew him well. Antonio said he must obey. He said this came with seeking him, but there was no remedy, he should answer it. He asked what Viola would do, and said now his necessity made him ask her for his purse. He said it grieved him much more for what he could not do for her than what befell himself. He said she stood amazed, but should be of comfort. The second officer said, “Come, sir, away.” Antonio said he must entreat of her some of that money. Viola asked what money, sir. She said for the fair kindness he had shown her there, and part being prompted by his present trouble, out of her lean and low ability she would lend him something. She said her having was not much, and she would make division of her present with him. She gave him half her coffer. Antonio asked whether she would deny him now, and whether it was possible that his deserts to her could lack persuasion. He told her not to tempt his misery, lest that it make him so unsound a man as to upbraid her with those kindnesses that he had done for her. Viola said she knew of none, nor knew him by voice, or any feature. She said she hated ingratitude more in a man than lying, vainness, babbling drunkenness, or any taint of vice whose strong corruption inhabited their frail blood. Antonio said, “O heavens themselves.” The second officer said, “Come, sir, I pray you go.” Antonio said let him speak a little. He said this youth that they saw there, he had snatched one half out of the jaws of death, relieved him with such sanctity of love, and to his image, which he thought did promise most venerable worth, he had done devotion. The first officer said, “What’s that to us? The time goes by. Away.” Antonio said, “But oh, how vile an idol proves this God. Thou hast Sebastian done good feature, shame. In Nature, there’s no blemish but the mind. None can be called deformed, but the unkind. Virtue is beauty, but the beauteous evil are empty trunks, over-flourished by the devil.” The first officer said the man grew mad, and told them to away with him. He said, “Come, come, sir.” Antonio said, “Lead me on.” Then he was taken away. Viola said she thought his words did from such passion fly that he believed himself, so did not she. She said, “Prove true imagination, oh prove true, that I, dear brother, be now ta’en for you.” Sir Toby called Sir Andrew and Fabian to come hither, and said they would whisper o’er a couplet or two of most sage saws. Viola said he had named Sebastian. She said she knew her brother yet living in her glass. She said even such, and so in favour was her brother, and he went still in this fashion, colour, ornament, for her imitation. She said, “O, if it prove, tempests are kind, and salt waves fresh in love.” Sir Toby said Viola was a very dishonest paltry boy, and more a coward than a hare. He said her dishonesty appeared in leaving her friend there in necessity, and denying him, and for her cowardship they should ask Fabian. Fabian said she was a coward, a most devout coward, religious in it. Sir Andrew said, “Slid, I’ll after him again, and beat him.” Sir Toby said, “Do, cuff him soundly, but never draw thy sword.” Sir Andrew said, “And I do not.” Fabian said, “Come, let’s see the event.” Sir Toby said he dared lay any money it would be nothing yet.

Many years ago, I became friends with a man named William Legrand. He came from an old family of French Protestants, and he had once been wealthy. But a long run of bad luck had left him poor. To escape the shame of his losses, he left New Orleans, where his family had lived for generations, and moved to Sullivan’s Island, near Charleston, South Carolina. Sullivan’s Island was a strange place. It was mostly sea sand, about three miles long, and never more than a quarter of a mile wide. A thin, slow creek separated it from the mainland, winding through reeds and mud where marsh birds liked to gather. The plants on the island were small and sparse. Near the western end, where Fort Moultrie stood, there were a few poor wooden houses used in summer by people trying to escape the dust and fever of Charleston. There, a few palmetto bushes grew. But most of the island, except for that western point and a strip of hard white beach, was covered with thick sweet myrtle bushes. These bushes often grew fifteen or twenty feet high and formed such a dense thicket that it was almost impossible to pass through. Their scent filled the air. Deep in this thicket, not far from the eastern end of the island, Legrand had built a small hut. That was where I first met him, by accident. Our meeting soon grew into friendship, because there was much about him that made people interested and respectful. I found him well educated and unusually clever, but he disliked people and often changed between excitement and sadness. He had many books, but he rarely read them. His favorite pleasures were hunting, fishing, walking along the beach, and wandering through the myrtle bushes looking for shells or insects. His collection of insects was so fine that other collectors might have envied it. Legrand was usually accompanied by Jupiter, an older Black man who had been freed from slavery before Legrand’s family lost their money. Jupiter would not leave him, no matter what threats or promises were made. He believed it was his right to follow his young master everywhere. I sometimes thought that Legrand’s relatives, fearing he was not quite steady in his mind, had encouraged Jupiter to stay with him so that someone would watch over him. Winters on Sullivan’s Island were rarely very cold, and in autumn it was unusual for anyone to need a fire. But one October, around the middle of the month, there came a day of sharp chill. Just before sunset, I pushed my way through the evergreen bushes to Legrand’s hut. I had not visited him for several weeks, because I was living in Charleston, about nine miles away, and traveling back and forth was much harder then than it is now. When I reached the hut, I knocked, as I usually did. There was no answer, so I found the key where I knew it was hidden, unlocked the door, and went in. A bright fire was burning in the fireplace. It was a welcome surprise. I took off my coat, sat in an armchair near the crackling logs, and waited for my friends to return. Soon after dark they arrived and greeted me warmly. Jupiter grinned from ear to ear and hurried about preparing marsh birds for supper. Legrand was in one of his excited moods. He had found an unknown shell that seemed to belong to a new kind, and, with Jupiter’s help, he had also caught a beetle that he believed was entirely new. He wanted my opinion about it the next morning. “Why not tonight?” I asked, rubbing my hands over the fire and wishing the whole tribe of beetles were far away. “Ah, if I had only known you were here!” Legrand said. “It has been so long since I saw you, and how could I guess you would visit tonight of all nights? On my way home I met Lieutenant G—— from the fort, and, foolishly, I lent him the bug. You cannot see it until morning. Stay here tonight, and I will send Jupiter for it at sunrise. It is the loveliest thing in creation!” “What? The sunrise?” I asked. “No, nonsense! The bug,” he said. “It is a brilliant gold color, about the size of a large hickory nut. It has two jet-black spots near one end of its back and another, longer spot at the other end. The antennae are—” “There is no tin in him, Master Will,” Jupiter interrupted. “I keep telling you. The bug is a gold bug, solid every bit of him, inside and all, except his wings. I never felt a bug so heavy in my life.” “Well, suppose it is, Jupiter,” Legrand said, sounding more serious than the matter seemed to require. “Is that any reason for letting the birds burn?” Then he turned to me. “The color really almost supports Jupiter’s idea. You never saw a more brilliant metallic shine than the scales give off, but you cannot judge that until tomorrow. In the meantime, I can show you the shape.” He sat down at a small table where there were pen and ink, but no paper. He looked in a drawer and found none. “Never mind,” he said at last. “This will answer.” From his waistcoat pocket he took a dirty scrap that I thought was paper, and he made a rough drawing on it. While he did this, I stayed by the fire, because I was still cold. When he finished, he handed me the paper without getting up. Just as I took it, a loud growl was heard, followed by scratching at the door. Jupiter opened it, and a large Newfoundland dog belonging to Legrand rushed in, leaped on my shoulders, and covered me with caresses. I had been kind to him on earlier visits. When the dog’s jumping was over, I looked at the paper. To tell the truth, I was puzzled by what my friend had drawn. “Well,” I said after looking at it for a few minutes, “this is a strange beetle, I must confess. It is new to me. I never saw anything like it before—unless it was a skull, or a death’s-head, which it resembles more than anything else I have seen.” “A death’s-head!” Legrand echoed. “Oh—yes—well, it does look something like that on paper, no doubt. The two upper black spots look like eyes, don’t they? And the longer one at the bottom looks like a mouth. Then the whole shape is oval.” “Perhaps so,” I said. “But, Legrand, I fear you are no artist. I must wait until I see the beetle itself if I am to form any idea of its real appearance.” “Well, I don’t know,” he said, a little annoyed. “I draw tolerably—at least I should. I have had good masters, and I flatter myself that I am not quite a blockhead.” “But, my dear fellow, you are joking then,” I said. “This is a very passable skull—indeed, a very excellent skull, according to common ideas about such things. And your beetle must be the queerest beetle in the world if it resembles it. Why, we might make up a thrilling superstition from this hint. I suppose you will call the bug something like ‘man-head beetle.’ But where are the antennae you spoke of?” “The antennae!” Legrand said, growing strangely warm on the subject. “I am sure you must see the antennae. I made them as clear as they are in the real insect, and I suppose that is enough.” “Well, well,” I said, “perhaps you have—still, I don’t see them.” I handed him the paper without saying more, because I did not wish to make him angry. But I was surprised at the turn things had taken. His bad temper puzzled me. As for the drawing, there were positively no antennae visible, and the whole thing did look very much like the usual pictures of a death’s-head. He took the paper peevishly and seemed about to crumple it and throw it into the fire. Then a casual glance at the drawing suddenly fixed his attention. In an instant his face grew very red, and then very pale. For some minutes he sat where he was, examining the drawing closely. At last he rose, took a candle from the table, and went to sit on a sea-chest in the farthest corner of the room. There he examined the paper again, turning it in every direction. He said nothing, and his behavior greatly astonished me. Still, I thought it best not to make his growing mood worse by saying anything. Soon he took a wallet from his coat pocket, placed the paper carefully inside it, and put both into a writing-desk, which he locked. He became calmer in manner, but his earlier excitement had disappeared. He did not seem sulky so much as lost in thought. As the evening went on, he became more and more absorbed in his own thoughts, and nothing I said could bring him out of them. I had meant to spend the night at the hut, as I often had before, but seeing him in this mood, I decided it was better to leave. He did not urge me to stay, but when I went away, he shook my hand with even more warmth than usual. About a month passed, and during that time I saw nothing of Legrand. Then Jupiter came to visit me in Charleston. I had never seen the good old man look so sad, and I feared some serious trouble had happened to my friend. “Well, Jupiter,” I said, “what is the matter now? How is your master?” “To tell the truth, master,” he said, “him not so very well as he ought to be.” “Not well! I am truly sorry to hear it. What does he complain of?” “That is the trouble,” Jupiter said. “He never complains of anything, but he is very sick for all that.” “Very sick, Jupiter! Why didn’t you say so at once? Is he confined to bed?” “No, he is not,” Jupiter said. “He is not found anywhere. That is just where the shoe pinches. My mind is getting very heavy about poor Master Will.” “Jupiter, I should like to understand what you are talking about. You say your master is sick. Hasn’t he told you what ails him?” “Why, master,” Jupiter said, “it is not worth while to get mad about the matter. Master Will says nothing is the matter with him. But then what makes him go about looking this way, with his head down and his shoulders up, and as white as a goose? And then he keeps a syphon all the time—” “Keeps a what, Jupiter?” “Keeps a syphon with the figures on the slate—the queerest figures I ever did see. I am getting scared, I tell you. I have to keep a mighty tight eye on him. The other day he gave me the slip before sunrise and was gone the whole blessed day. I had a big stick ready to give him a good beating when he came back, but I am such a fool that I hadn’t the heart after all. He looked so very poorly.” “Eh? What? Ah, yes! Upon the whole, I think you had better not be too severe with the poor fellow. Don’t flog him, Jupiter. He can’t very well stand it. But can you form no idea of what has caused this illness, or rather this change of conduct? Has anything unpleasant happened since I saw you?” “No, master,” Jupiter said. “There hasn’t been anything unpleasant since then. It was before then, I am afraid. It was the very day you were there.” “How? What do you mean?” “Why, master,” Jupiter said, “I mean the bug—there now.” “The what?” “The bug,” Jupiter said. “I am very certain that Master Will has been bitten somewhere about the head by that gold bug.” “And what cause have you, Jupiter, for such a supposition?” “Claws enough, master, and mouth too,” Jupiter said. “I never did see such a bug. He kicked and he bit everything that came near him. Master Will caught him first, but had to let him go mighty quick, I tell you. That was the time he must have got the bite. I didn’t like the look of the bug’s mouth myself, so I wouldn’t take hold of him with my finger. I caught him with a piece of paper that I found. I wrapped him up in the paper and stuffed a piece of it into his mouth. That was the way.” “And you think, then, that your master was really bitten by the beetle, and that the bite made him sick?” “I don’t think anything about it,” Jupiter said. “I know it. What makes him dream about gold so much, if it isn’t because he was bitten by the gold bug? I have heard about gold bugs before this.” “But how do you know he dreams about gold?” “How do I know?” Jupiter said. “Because he talks about it in his sleep. That is how I know.” “Well, Jupiter, perhaps you are right,” I said. “But to what fortunate circumstance am I to attribute the honor of a visit from you today?” “What is the matter, master?” Jupiter asked. “Did you bring any message from Mr. Legrand?” “No, master,” he said. “I bring this here paper.” Then he handed me a note that read: My dear ——, Why have I not seen you for so long a time? I hope you have not been so foolish as to take offense at any little brusquerie of mine; but no, that is improbable. Since I saw you I have had great cause for anxiety. I have something to tell you, yet scarcely know how to tell it, or whether I should tell it at all. I have not been quite well for some days past, and poor old Jup annoys me, almost beyond endurance, by his well-meant attentions. Would you believe it? He had prepared a huge stick, the other day, with which to chastise me for giving him the slip, and spending the day, alone, among the hills on the mainland. I verily believe that my ill looks alone saved me a flogging. I have made no addition to my cabinet since we met. If you can, in any way, make it convenient, come over with Jupiter. Do come. I wish to see you tonight, upon business of importance. I assure you that it is of the highest importance. Ever yours, William Legrand There was something in the tone of this note that gave me great uneasiness. Its whole style was different from Legrand’s usual style. What could he be dreaming of? What new idea possessed his excitable brain? What “business of the highest importance” could he possibly have to transact? Jupiter’s account of him did not sound good. I feared that the continued pressure of misfortune had at last unsettled the reason of my friend. Without a moment’s hesitation, I prepared to go with Jupiter. When we reached the wharf, I noticed a scythe and three spades, all apparently new, lying in the bottom of the boat in which we were to embark. “What is the meaning of all this, Jupiter?” I asked. “Him scythe, master, and spade,” he said. “Very true; but what are they doing here?” “Him the scythe and the spade what Master Will set me to buy for him in town,” Jupiter said, “and the devil’s own lot of money I had to give for them.” “But what, in the name of all that is mysterious, is your Master Will going to do with scythes and spades?” “That is more than I know,” Jupiter said, “and the devil take me if I don’t believe it is more than he knows too. But it all comes from the bug.” Finding that no satisfaction was to be obtained from Jupiter, whose whole mind seemed to be absorbed by “the bug,” I stepped into the boat and made sail. With a fair and strong breeze we soon ran into the little cove to the north of Fort Moultrie, and a walk of about two miles brought us to the hut. It was about three in the afternoon when we arrived. Legrand had been waiting for us in eager expectation. He grasped my hand with a nervous eagerness that alarmed me and strengthened the suspicions I already had. His face was pale even to ghastliness, and his deep-set eyes glared with unnatural brightness. After some questions about his health, I asked him, not knowing what better to say, if he had yet obtained the beetle from Lieutenant G——. “Oh, yes,” he replied, coloring violently. “I got it from him the next morning. Nothing should tempt me to part with that beetle. Do you know that Jupiter is quite right about it?” “In what way?” I asked, with a sad foreboding at heart. “In supposing it to be a bug of real gold,” he said. He said this with an air of profound seriousness, and I felt inexpressibly shocked. “This bug is to make my fortune,” he continued, with a triumphant smile. “It is to put me back in possession of my family property. Is it any wonder, then, that I prize it? Since Fortune has thought fit to bestow it upon me, I have only to use it properly and I shall arrive at the gold of which it is the index. Jupiter, bring me that beetle!” “What! The bug, master?” Jupiter said. “I would rather not go for trouble that bug. You must get him for your own self.” Legrand rose with a grave and stately air and brought me the beetle from a glass case in which it was enclosed. It was a beautiful beetle and, at that time, unknown to naturalists. Of course, it was a great prize from a scientific point of view. There were two round black spots near one end of its back and a long one near the other. The scales were exceedingly hard and glossy, with all the appearance of burnished gold. The weight of the insect was very remarkable. Taking all things into consideration, I could hardly blame Jupiter for his opinion about it. But what to make of Legrand’s agreement with that opinion, I could not, for the life of me, tell. “I sent for you,” Legrand said in a grandiloquent tone, when I had finished examining the beetle, “I sent for you, that I might have your counsel and assistance in furthering the views of Fate and of the bug—” “My dear Legrand,” I cried, interrupting him, “you are certainly unwell, and had better use some little precautions. You shall go to bed, and I will remain with you a few days, until you get over this. You are feverish and—” “Feel my pulse,” he said. I felt it, and, to say the truth, found not the slightest indication of fever. “But you may be ill and yet have no fever,” I said. “Allow me this once to prescribe for you. In the first place, go to bed. In the next—” “You are mistaken,” he interposed. “I am as well as I can expect to be under the excitement which I suffer. If you really wish me well, you will relieve this excitement.” “And how is this to be done?” I asked. “Very easily,” he said. “Jupiter and myself are going upon an expedition into the hills, upon the mainland, and, in this expedition, we shall need the aid of some person in whom we can confide. You are the only one we can trust. Whether we succeed or fail, the excitement which you now perceive in me will be equally allayed.” “I am anxious to oblige you in any way,” I replied, “but do you mean to say that this infernal beetle has any connection with your expedition into the hills?” “It has,” he said. “Then, Legrand, I can become a party to no such absurd proceeding.” “I am sorry—very sorry—for we shall have to try it by ourselves.” “Try it by yourselves! The man is surely mad! But stay! How long do you propose to be absent?” “Probably all night,” he said. “We shall start immediately, and be back, at all events, by sunrise.” “And will you promise me, upon your honor, that when this freak of yours is over, and the bug business—good God!—settled to your satisfaction, you will then return home and follow my advice implicitly, as that of your physician?” “Yes; I promise,” he said. “And now let us be off, for we have no time to lose.” With a heavy heart I accompanied my friend. We started about four o’clock—Legrand, Jupiter, the dog, and myself. Jupiter had with him the scythe and spades—the whole of which he insisted upon carrying—more through fear, it seemed to me, of trusting either of the implements within reach of his master, than from any excess of industry or complaisance. His demeanor was dogged in the extreme, and “that d——d bug” were the sole words which escaped his lips during the journey. For my own part, I had charge of a couple of dark lanterns, while Legrand contented himself with the beetle, which he carried attached to the end of a bit of whip-cord, twirling it to and fro, with the air of a conjuror, as he went. When I observed this last, plain evidence of my friend’s aberration of mind, I could scarcely refrain from tears. I thought it best, however, to humor his fancy, at least for the present, or until I could adopt some more energetic measures with a chance of success. In the meantime I endeavored, but all in vain, to sound him in regard to the object of the expedition. Having succeeded in inducing me to accompany him, he seemed unwilling to hold conversation upon any topic of minor importance, and to all my questions vouchsafed no other reply than “we shall see!” We crossed the creek at the head of the island by means of a skiff, and, ascending the high grounds on the shore of the mainland, proceeded in a northwesterly direction, through a tract of country excessively wild and desolate, where no trace of a human footstep was to be seen. Legrand led the way with decision, pausing only for an instant, here and there, to consult what appeared to be certain landmarks of his own contrivance upon a former occasion. In this manner we journeyed for about two hours, and the sun was just setting when we entered a region infinitely more dreary than any yet seen. It was a kind of table land, near the summit of an almost inaccessible hill, densely wooded from base to pinnacle, and interspersed with huge crags that appeared to lie loosely upon the soil, and in many cases were prevented from tumbling into the valleys below merely by the support of the trees against which they leaned. Deep ravines, in various directions, gave an air of still sterner solemnity to the scene. The natural platform to which we had clambered was thickly overgrown with brambles, through which we soon discovered that it would have been impossible to force our way but for the scythe. Jupiter, by direction of his master, proceeded to clear for us a path to the foot of an enormously tall tulip-tree, which stood, with some eight or ten oaks, upon the level, and far surpassed them all, and all other trees which I had then ever seen, in the beauty of its foliage and form, in the wide spread of its branches, and in the general majesty of its appearance. When we reached this tree, Legrand turned to Jupiter and asked him if he thought he could climb it. The old man seemed a little staggered by the question, and for some moments made no reply. At length he approached the huge trunk, walked slowly around it, and examined it with minute attention. When he had completed his scrutiny, he merely said, “Yes, master, Jupiter can climb any tree he ever saw in his life.” “Then up with you as soon as possible,” Legrand said, “for it will soon be too dark to see what we are about.” “How far must I go up, master?” Jupiter asked. “Get up the main trunk first,” Legrand said, “and then I will tell you which way to go. And here—stop! Take this beetle with you.” “The bug, Master Will! The gold bug!” cried Jupiter, drawing back in dismay. “What for must I tote the bug way up the tree?—d——n if I do!” “If you are afraid, Jupiter,” Legrand said, “a great big man like you, to take hold of a harmless little dead beetle, why, you can carry it up by this string. But if you do not take it up with you in some way, I shall be under the necessity of breaking your head with this shovel.” “What is the matter now, master?” said Jupiter, evidently shamed into compliance. “Always want to raise a fuss with old Jupiter. I was only funning, anyhow. Me afraid of the bug! What do I care for the bug?” Here he took cautiously hold of the extreme end of the string, and, maintaining the insect as far from his person as circumstances would permit, prepared to ascend the tree. In youth, the tulip-tree, the most magnificent of American forest trees, has a trunk peculiarly smooth, and often rises to a great height without side branches. But, in its riper age, the bark becomes gnarled and uneven, while many short limbs make their appearance on the stem. Thus the difficulty of ascension, in the present case, lay more in appearance than in reality. Embracing the huge cylinder, as closely as possible, with his arms and knees, seizing with his hands some projections, and resting his naked toes upon others, Jupiter, after one or two narrow escapes from falling, at length wriggled himself into the first great fork, and seemed to consider the whole business as virtually accomplished. The risk of the achievement was, in fact, now over, although the climber was some sixty or seventy feet from the ground. “Which way must I go now, Master Will?” he asked. “Keep up the largest branch—the one on this side,” said Legrand. The old man obeyed him promptly, and apparently with but little trouble, ascending higher and higher, until no glimpse of his squat figure could be obtained through the dense foliage which enveloped it. Presently his voice was heard in a sort of halloo. “How much farther is there to go?” “How high up are you?” asked Legrand. “Ever so far,” replied Jupiter. “I can see the sky through the top of the tree.” “Never mind the sky,” said Legrand, “but attend to what I say. Look down the trunk and count the limbs below you on this side. How many limbs have you passed?” “One, two, three, four, five—I have passed five big limbs, master, on this side.” “Then go one limb higher.” In a few minutes the voice was heard again, announcing that the seventh limb was attained. “Now, Jupiter,” cried Legrand, evidently much excited, “I want you to work your way out upon that limb as far as you can. If you see anything strange, let me know.” By this time what little doubt I might have entertained of my poor friend’s insanity was put finally at rest. I had no alternative but to conclude him stricken with lunacy, and I became seriously anxious about getting him home. While I was pondering upon what was best to be done, Jupiter’s voice was again heard. “I am almost afraid to venture upon this limb very far,” he said. “It is a dead limb pretty much all the way.” “Did you say it was a dead limb, Jupiter?” cried Legrand in a quavering voice. “Yes, master,” said Jupiter. “It is dead as a door-nail—done up for certain—done departed this here life.” “What in the name of heaven shall I do?” asked Legrand, seemingly in the greatest distress. “Do!” said I, glad of an opportunity to interpose a word. “Why, come home and go to bed. Come now! That is a fine fellow. It is getting late, and, besides, you remember your promise.” “Jupiter,” cried Legrand, without heeding me in the least, “do you hear me?” “Yes, Master Will,” said Jupiter. “I hear you ever so plain.” “Try the wood well, then, with your knife, and see if you think it very rotten.” “It is rotten, master, sure enough,” replied Jupiter in a few moments, “but not so very rotten as it might be. I might venture out a little way upon the limb by myself, that is true.” “By yourself! What do you mean?” cried Legrand. “Why, I mean the bug,” said Jupiter. “It is a very heavy bug. Suppose I drop him down first, and then the limb won’t break with just the weight of one man.” “You infernal scoundrel!” cried Legrand, apparently much relieved. “What do you mean by telling me such nonsense as that? As sure as you let that beetle fall I’ll break your neck. Look here, Jupiter! Do you hear me?” “Yes, master,” said Jupiter. “You needn’t hollo at poor Jupiter in that style.” “Well! Now listen!” said Legrand. “If you will venture out on the limb as far as you think safe, and not let go the beetle, I’ll make you a present of a silver dollar as soon as you get down.” “I’m going, Master Will—indeed I am,” replied Jupiter very promptly. “I am almost out to the end now.” “Out to the end!” here fairly screamed Legrand. “Do you say you are out to the end of that limb?” “I shall soon be to the end, master,” said Jupiter. “O-o-o-o-oh! Lord have mercy! What is this here upon the tree?” “Well!” cried Legrand, highly delighted. “What is it?” “Why, it is nothing but a skull,” said Jupiter. “Somebody has left his head up the tree, and the crows have done gobble every bit of the meat off.” “A skull, you say! Very well! How is it fastened to the limb? What holds it on?” “Sure enough, master,” said Jupiter. “I must look. Why, this is a very curious circumstance, upon my word—there is a great big nail in the skull, which fastens it on to the tree.” “Well now, Jupiter,” said Legrand, “do exactly as I tell you—do you hear?” “Yes, master.” “Pay attention, then! Find the left eye of the skull.” “Hum! Hoo! That is good!” said Jupiter. “Why, there is no left eye at all.” “Curse your stupidity!” cried Legrand. “Do you know your right hand from your left?” “Yes, I know that,” said Jupiter. “I know all about that. It is my left hand that I chop wood with.” “To be sure! You are left-handed,” said Legrand, “and your left eye is on the same side as your left hand. Now, I suppose, you can find the left eye of the skull, or the place where the left eye has been. Have you found it?” Here was a long pause. At length Jupiter asked, “Is the left eye of the skull on the same side as the left hand of the skull, too?—because the skull hasn’t got a bit of a hand at all. Never mind! I have got the left eye now—here is the left eye! What must I do with it?” “Let the beetle drop through it, as far as the string will reach,” said Legrand, “but be careful and not let go your hold of the string.” “All that done, Master Will,” said Jupiter. “It is a mighty easy thing to put the bug through the hole. Look out for him down below!” During this conversation no portion of Jupiter’s person could be seen, but the beetle, which he had suffered to descend, was now visible at the end of the string, and glistened, like a globe of burnished gold, in the last rays of the setting sun, some of which still faintly illumined the eminence upon which we stood. The beetle hung quite clear of any branches, and, if allowed to fall, would have fallen at our feet. Legrand immediately took the scythe, and cleared with it a circular space, three or four yards in diameter, just beneath the insect, and, having accomplished this, ordered Jupiter to let go the string and come down from the tree. Driving a peg, with great nicety, into the ground, at the precise spot where the beetle fell, my friend now produced from his pocket a tape-measure. Fastening one end of this at that point of the trunk of the tree which was nearest the peg, he unrolled it till it reached the peg, and thence farther unrolled it, in the direction already established by the two points of the tree and the peg, for the distance of fifty feet—Jupiter clearing away the brambles with the scythe. At the spot thus attained a second peg was driven, and about this, as a centre, a rude circle, about four feet in diameter, was described. Taking now a spade himself, and giving one to Jupiter and one to me, Legrand begged us to set about digging as quickly as possible. To speak the truth, I had no especial relish for such amusement at any time, and, at that particular moment, would most willingly have declined it, for the night was coming on, and I felt much fatigued with the exercise already taken. But I saw no mode of escape, and was fearful of disturbing my poor friend’s equanimity by a refusal. Could I have depended, indeed, upon Jupiter’s aid, I would have had no hesitation in attempting to get the lunatic home by force. But I was too well assured of the old man’s disposition, to hope that he would assist me, under any circumstances, in a personal contest with his master. I made no doubt that the latter had been infected with some of the innumerable Southern superstitions about money buried, and that his fancy had received confirmation by the finding of the beetle, or, perhaps, by Jupiter’s obstinacy in maintaining it to be “a bug of real gold.” A mind disposed to lunacy would readily be led away by such suggestions—especially if chiming in with favorite preconceived ideas—and then I called to mind the poor fellow’s speech about the beetle’s being “the index of his fortune.” Upon the whole, I was sadly vexed and puzzled, but, at length, I concluded to make a virtue of necessity—to dig with a good will, and thus the sooner to convince the visionary, by actual proof, of the fallacy of the opinions he entertained. The lanterns having been lit, we all fell to work with a zeal worthy a more rational cause. As the glare fell upon our persons and implements, I could not help thinking how picturesque a group we composed, and how strange and suspicious our labors must have appeared to any interloper who, by chance, might have stumbled upon our whereabouts. We dug very steadily for two hours. Little was said, and our chief embarrassment lay in the yelpings of the dog, who took exceeding interest in our proceedings. He, at length, became so obstreperous that we grew fearful of his giving the alarm to some stragglers in the vicinity—or, rather, this was the apprehension of Legrand. For myself, I should have rejoiced at any interruption which might have enabled me to get the wanderer home. The noise was, at length, very effectually silenced by Jupiter, who, getting out of the hole with a dogged air of deliberation, tied the brute’s mouth up with one of his suspenders, and then returned, with a grave chuckle, to his task. When the time mentioned had expired, we had reached a depth of five feet, and yet no signs of any treasure became manifest. A general pause ensued, and I began to hope that the farce was at an end. Legrand, however, although evidently much disconcerted, wiped his brow thoughtfully and recommenced. We had excavated the entire circle of four feet diameter, and now we slightly enlarged the limit, and went to the farther depth of two feet. Still nothing appeared. The gold-seeker, whom I sincerely pitied, at length clambered from the pit, with the bitterest disappointment imprinted upon every feature, and proceeded, slowly and reluctantly, to put on his coat, which he had thrown off at the beginning of his labor. In the meantime I made no remark. Jupiter, at a signal from his master, began to gather up his tools. This done, and the dog having been unmuzzled, we turned in profound silence towards home. We had taken, perhaps, a dozen steps in this direction, when, with a loud oath, Legrand strode up to Jupiter, and seized him by the collar. The astonished old man opened his eyes and mouth to the fullest extent, let fall the spades, and fell upon his knees. “You scoundrel,” said Legrand, hissing out the syllables from between his clenched teeth, “you infernal black villain! Speak, I tell you! Answer me this instant, without prevarication! Which—which is your left eye?” “Oh, my golly, Master Will! Isn’t this here my left eye for certain?” roared the terrified Jupiter, placing his hand upon his right eye, and holding it there with a desperate pertinacity, as if in immediate dread of his master’s attempt at a gouge. “I thought so! I knew it! Hurrah!” vociferated Legrand, letting the old man go, and executing a series of curvets and caracols, much to the astonishment of his attendant, who, arising from his knees, looked, mutely, from his master to myself, and then from myself to his master. “Come! We must go back,” said Legrand. “The game’s not up yet.” And he again led the way to the tulip-tree. “Jupiter,” said he, when we reached its foot, “come here! Was the skull nailed to the limb with the face outward, or with the face to the limb?” “The face was out, master,” said Jupiter, “so that the crows could get at the eyes good, without any trouble.” “Well, then,” said Legrand, “was it this eye or that through which you let fall the beetle?” Here Legrand touched each of Jupiter’s eyes. “It was this eye, master—the left eye—just as you tell me,” said Jupiter, and here it was his right eye that the old man indicated. “That will do—we must try it again,” said Legrand. Here my friend, about whose madness I now saw, or fancied that I saw, certain indications of method, removed the peg which marked the spot where the beetle fell, to a spot about three inches to the westward of its former position. Taking, now, the tape-measure from the nearest point of the trunk to the peg, as before, and continuing the extension in a straight line to the distance of fifty feet, a spot was indicated, removed, by several yards, from the point at which we had been digging. Around the new position a circle, somewhat larger than in the former instance, was now described, and we again set to work with the spades. I was dreadfully weary, but, scarcely understanding what had occasioned the change in my thoughts, I felt no longer any great aversion from the labor imposed. I had become most unaccountably interested—nay, even excited. Perhaps there was something, amid all the extravagant demeanor of Legrand—some air of forethought, or of deliberation, which impressed me. I dug eagerly, and now and then caught myself actually looking, with something that very much resembled expectation, for the fancied treasure, the vision of which had demented my unfortunate companion. At a period when such vagaries of thought most fully possessed me, and when we had been at work perhaps an hour and a half, we were again interrupted by the violent howlings of the dog. His uneasiness, in the first instance, had been, evidently, but the result of playfulness or caprice, but he now assumed a bitter and serious tone. Upon Jupiter’s again attempting to muzzle him, he made furious resistance, and, leaping into the hole, tore up the mould frantically with his claws. In a few seconds he had uncovered a mass of human bones, forming two complete skeletons, intermingled with several buttons of metal, and what appeared to be the dust of decayed woollen. One or two strokes of a spade upturned the blade of a large Spanish knife, and, as we dug farther, three or four loose pieces of gold and silver coin came to light. At sight of these the joy of Jupiter could scarcely be restrained, but the countenance of his master wore an air of extreme disappointment. He urged us, however, to continue our exertions, and the words were hardly uttered when I stumbled and fell forward, having caught the toe of my boot in a large ring of iron that lay half buried in the loose earth. We now worked in earnest, and never did I pass ten minutes of more intense excitement. During this interval we had fairly unearthed an oblong chest of wood, which, from its perfect preservation and wonderful hardness, had plainly been subjected to some mineralizing process—perhaps that of the Bi-chloride of Mercury. This box was three feet and a half long, three feet broad, and two and a half feet deep. It was firmly secured by bands of wrought iron, riveted, and forming a kind of trellis-work over the whole. On each side of the chest, near the top, were three rings of iron—six in all—by means of which a firm hold could be obtained by six persons. Our utmost united endeavors served only to disturb the coffer very slightly in its bed. We at once saw the impossibility of removing so great a weight. Luckily, the sole fastenings of the lid consisted of two sliding bolts. These we drew back—trembling and panting with anxiety. In an instant, a treasure of incalculable value lay gleaming before us. As the rays of the lanterns fell within the pit, there flashed upwards, from a confused heap of gold and of jewels, a glow and a glare that absolutely dazzled our eyes. I shall not pretend to describe the feelings with which I gazed. Amazement was, of course, predominant. Legrand appeared exhausted with excitement, and spoke very few words. Jupiter’s countenance wore, for some minutes, as deadly a pallor as it is possible, in nature of things, for any man’s visage to assume. He seemed stupified—thunderstricken. Presently he fell upon his knees in the pit, and, burying his naked arms up to the elbows in gold, let them there remain, as if enjoying the luxury of a bath. At length, with a deep sigh, he exclaimed, as if in a soliloquy, “And all this comes from the gold bug! The pretty gold bug! The poor little gold bug, what I abused in that savage kind of style! Aren’t you ashamed of yourself, Jupiter? Answer me that!” It became necessary, at last, that I should arouse both master and attendant to the expediency of removing the treasure. It was growing late, and it behooved us to make exertion, that we might get everything housed before daylight. It was difficult to say what should be done, and much time was spent in deliberation—so confused were the ideas of all. We, finally, lightened the box by removing two thirds of its contents, when we were enabled, with some trouble, to raise it from the hole. The articles taken out were deposited among the brambles, and the dog left to guard them, with strict orders from Jupiter neither, upon any pretence, to stir from the spot, nor to open his mouth until our return. We then hurriedly made for home with the chest, reaching the hut in safety, but after excessive toil, at one o’clock in the morning. Worn out as we were, it was not in human nature to do more just then. We rested until two, and had supper, starting for the hills immediately afterwards, armed with three stout sacks, which, by good luck, were upon the premises. A little before four we arrived at the pit, divided the remainder of the booty, as equally as might be, among us, and, leaving the holes unfilled, again set out for the hut, at which, for the second time, we deposited our golden burdens, just as the first streaks of the dawn gleamed from over the tree-tops in the East. We were now thoroughly broken down, but the intense excitement of the time denied us repose. After an unquiet slumber of some three or four hours’ duration, we arose, as if by preconcert, to make examination of our treasure. The chest had been full to the brim, and we spent the whole day, and the greater part of the next night, in a scrutiny of its contents. There had been nothing like order or arrangement. Everything had been heaped in promiscuously. Having assorted all with care, we found ourselves possessed of even vaster wealth than we had at first supposed. In coin there was rather more than four hundred and fifty thousand dollars—estimating the value of the pieces, as accurately as we could, by the tables of the period. There was not a particle of silver. All was gold of antique date and of great variety—French, Spanish, and German money, with a few English guineas, and some counters, of which we had never seen specimens before. There were several very large and heavy coins, so worn that we could make nothing of their inscriptions. There was no American money. The value of the jewels we found more difficulty in estimating. There were diamonds—some of them exceedingly large and fine—a hundred and ten in all, and not one of them small. There were eighteen rubies of remarkable brilliancy, three hundred and ten emeralds, all very beautiful, and twenty-one sapphires, with an opal. These stones had all been broken from their settings and thrown loose in the chest. The settings themselves, which we picked out from among the other gold, appeared to have been beaten up with hammers, as if to prevent identification. Besides all this, there was a vast quantity of solid gold ornaments—nearly two hundred massive finger and earrings, rich chains—thirty of these, if I remember—eighty-three very large and heavy crucifixes, five gold censers of great value, a prodigious golden punch-bowl, ornamented with richly chased vine-leaves and Bacchanalian figures, with two sword-handles exquisitely embossed, and many other smaller articles which I cannot recollect. The weight of these valuables exceeded three hundred and fifty pounds avoirdupois, and in this estimate I have not included one hundred and ninety-seven superb gold watches. Three of the number were worth each five hundred dollars, if one. Many of them were very old, and as time keepers valueless, the works having suffered, more or less, from corrosion—but all were richly jewelled and in cases of great worth. We estimated the entire contents of the chest, that night, at a million and a half of dollars, and, upon the subsequent disposal of the trinkets and jewels (a few being retained for our own use), it was found that we had greatly undervalued the treasure. When, at length, we had concluded our examination, and the intense excitement of the time had, in some measure, subsided, Legrand, who saw that I was dying with impatience for a solution of this most extraordinary riddle, entered into a full detail of all the circumstances connected with it. “You remember,” said he, “the night when I handed you the rough sketch I had made of the beetle. You recollect also, that I became quite vexed at you for insisting that my drawing resembled a death’s-head. When you first made this assertion I thought you were jesting, but afterwards I called to mind the peculiar spots on the back of the insect, and admitted to myself that your remark had some little foundation in fact. Still, the sneer at my graphic powers irritated me—for I am considered a good artist—and, therefore, when you handed me the scrap of parchment, I was about to crumple it up and throw it angrily into the fire.” “The scrap of paper, you mean,” said I. “No,” said Legrand, “it had much of the appearance of paper, and at first I supposed it to be such, but when I came to draw upon it, I discovered it, at once, to be a piece of very thin parchment. It was quite dirty, you remember. Well, as I was in the very act of crumpling it up, my glance fell upon the sketch at which you had been looking, and you may imagine my astonishment when I perceived, in fact, the figure of a death’s-head just where, it seemed to me, I had made the drawing of the beetle. For a moment I was too much amazed to think with accuracy. I knew that my design was very different in detail from this—although there was a certain similarity in general outline. Presently I took a candle, and seating myself at the other end of the room, proceeded to scrutinize the parchment more closely. Upon turning it over, I saw my own sketch upon the reverse, just as I had made it. My first idea, now, was mere surprise at the really remarkable similarity of outline—at the singular coincidence involved in the fact, that unknown to me, there should have been a skull upon the other side of the parchment, immediately beneath my figure of the beetle, and that this skull, not only in outline, but in size, should so closely resemble my drawing. I say the singularity of this coincidence absolutely stupified me for a time. This is the usual effect of such coincidences. The mind struggles to establish a connexion—a sequence of cause and effect—and, being unable to do so, suffers a species of temporary paralysis. But, when I recovered from this stupor, there dawned upon me gradually a conviction which startled me even far more than the coincidence. I began distinctly, positively, to remember that there had been no drawing on the parchment when I made my sketch of the beetle. I became perfectly certain of this, for I recollected turning up first one side and then the other, in search of the cleanest spot. Had the skull been then there, of course I could not have failed to notice it. Here was indeed a mystery which I felt it impossible to explain, but, even at that early moment, there seemed to glimmer, faintly, within the most remote and secret chambers of my intellect, a glow-worm-like conception of that truth which last night’s adventure brought to so magnificent a demonstration. I arose at once, and putting the parchment securely away, dismissed all farther reflection until I should be alone. “When you had gone, and when Jupiter was fast asleep, I betook myself to a more methodical investigation of the affair. In the first place I considered the manner in which the parchment had come into my possession. The spot where we discovered the beetle was on the coast of the mainland, about a mile eastward of the island, and but a short distance above high water mark. Upon my taking hold of it, it gave me a sharp bite, which caused me to let it drop. Jupiter, with his accustomed caution, before seizing the insect, which had flown towards him, looked about him for a leaf, or something of that nature, by which to take hold of it. It was at this moment that his eyes, and mine also, fell upon the scrap of parchment, which I then supposed to be paper. It was lying half buried in the sand, a corner sticking up. Near the spot where we found it, I observed the remnants of the hull of what appeared to have been a ship’s long boat. The wreck seemed to have been there for a very great while, for the resemblance to boat timbers could scarcely be traced. “Well, Jupiter picked up the parchment, wrapped the beetle in it, and gave it to me. Soon afterwards we turned to go home, and on the way met Lieutenant G——. I showed him the insect, and he begged me to let him take it to the fort. On my consenting, he thrust it forthwith into his waistcoat pocket, without the parchment in which it had been wrapped, and which I had continued to hold in my hand during his inspection. Perhaps he dreaded my changing my mind, and thought it best to make sure of the prize at once—you know how enthusiastic he is on all subjects connected with Natural History. At the same time, without being conscious of it, I must have deposited the parchment in my own pocket. “You remember that when I went to the table, for the purpose of making a sketch of the beetle, I found no paper where it was usually kept. I looked in the drawer, and found none there. I searched my pockets, hoping to find an old letter—and then my hand fell upon the parchment. I thus detail the precise mode in which it came into my possession, for the circumstances impressed me with peculiar force. “No doubt you will think me fanciful—but I had already established a kind of connexion. I had put together two links of a great chain. There was a boat lying on a sea-coast, and not far from the boat was a parchment—not a paper—with a skull depicted on it. You will, of course, ask ‘where is the connexion?’ I reply that the skull, or death’s-head, is the well-known emblem of the pirate. The flag of the death’s-head is hoisted in all engagements. “I have said that the scrap was parchment, and not paper. Parchment is durable—almost imperishable. Matters of little moment are rarely consigned to parchment, since, for the mere ordinary purposes of drawing or writing, it is not nearly so well adapted as paper. This reflection suggested some meaning—some relevancy—in the death’s-head. I did not fail to observe, also, the form of the parchment. Although one of its corners had been, by some accident, destroyed, it could be seen that the original form was oblong. It was just such a slip, indeed, as might have been chosen for a memorandum—for a record of something to be long remembered and carefully preserved.” “But,” I interposed, “you say that the skull was not upon the parchment when you made the drawing of the beetle. How then do you trace any connexion between the boat and the skull—since this latter, according to your own admission, must have been designed (God only knows how or by whom) at some period subsequent to your sketching the beetle?” “Ah, hereupon turns the whole mystery,” said Legrand, “although the secret, at this point, I had comparatively little difficulty in solving. My steps were sure, and could afford but a single result. I reasoned, for example, thus: When I drew the beetle, there was no skull apparent on the parchment. When I had completed the drawing, I gave it to you, and observed you narrowly until you returned it. You, therefore, did not design the skull, and no one else was present to do it. Then it was not done by human agency. And nevertheless it was done. “At this stage of my reflections I endeavored to remember, and did remember, with entire distinctness, every incident which occurred about the period in question. The weather was chilly (oh rare and happy accident!), and a fire was blazing on the hearth. I was heated with exercise and sat near the table. You, however, had drawn a chair close to the chimney. Just as I placed the parchment in your hand, and as you were in the act of inspecting it, Wolf, the Newfoundland, entered, and leaped upon your shoulders. With your left hand you caressed him and kept him off, while your right, holding the parchment, was permitted to fall listlessly between your knees, and in close proximity to the fire. At one moment I thought the blaze had caught it, and was about to caution you, but, before I could speak, you had withdrawn it, and were engaged in its examination. When I considered all these particulars, I doubted not for a moment that heat had been the agent in bringing to light, on the parchment, the skull which I saw designed on it. You are well aware that chemical preparations exist, and have existed time out of mind, by means of which it is possible to write on either paper or vellum, so that the characters shall become visible only when subjected to the action of fire. Zaffre, digested in aqua regia, and diluted with four times its weight of water, is sometimes employed; a green tint results. The regulus of cobalt, dissolved in spirit of nitre, gives a red. These colors disappear at longer or shorter intervals after the material written on cools, but again become apparent upon the re-application of heat. “I now scrutinized the death’s-head with care. Its outer edges—the edges of the drawing nearest the edge of the vellum—were far more distinct than the others. It was clear that the action of the caloric had been imperfect or unequal. I immediately kindled a fire, and subjected every portion of the parchment to a glowing heat. At first, the only effect was the strengthening of the faint lines in the skull, but, on persevering in the experiment, there became visible, at the corner of the slip, diagonally opposite to the spot in which the death’s-head was delineated, the figure of what I at first supposed to be a goat. A closer scrutiny, however, satisfied me that it was intended for a kid.” “Ha! ha!” said I, “to be sure I have no right to laugh at you—a million and a half of money is too serious a matter for mirth—but you are not about to establish a third link in your chain—you will not find any especial connexion between your pirates and a goat—pirates, you know, have nothing to do with goats; they appertain to the farming interest.” “But I have just said that the figure was not that of a goat,” said Legrand. “Well, a kid then—pretty much the same thing,” said I. “Pretty much, but not altogether,” said Legrand. “You may have heard of one Captain Kidd. I at once looked on the figure of the animal as a kind of punning or hieroglyphical signature. I say signature, because its position on the vellum suggested this idea. The death’s-head at the corner diagonally opposite, had, in the same manner, the air of a stamp, or seal. But I was sorely put out by the absence of all else—of the body to my imagined instrument—of the text for my context.” “I presume you expected to find a letter between the stamp and the signature,” said I. “Something of that kind,” said Legrand. “The fact is, I felt irresistibly impressed with a presentiment of some vast good fortune impending. I can scarcely say why. Perhaps, after all, it was rather a desire than an actual belief. But do you know that Jupiter’s silly words, about the bug being of solid gold, had a remarkable effect on my fancy? And then the series of accidents and coincidences—these were so very extraordinary. Do you observe how mere an accident it was that these events should have occurred on the sole day of all the year in which it has been, or may be, sufficiently cool for fire, and that without the fire, or without the intervention of the dog at the precise moment in which he appeared, I should never have become aware of the death’s-head, and so never the possessor of the treasure?” “But proceed—I am all impatience,” said I. “Well,” said Legrand, “you have heard, of course, the many stories current—the thousand vague rumors afloat about money buried, somewhere on the Atlantic coast, by Kidd and his associates. These rumors must have had some foundation in fact. And that the rumors have existed so long and so continuously, could have resulted, it appeared to me, only from the circumstance of the buried treasure still remaining entombed. Had Kidd concealed his plunder for a time, and afterwards reclaimed it, the rumors would scarcely have reached us in their present unvarying form. You will observe that the stories told are all about money-seekers, not about money-finders. Had the pirate recovered his money, there the affair would have dropped. It seemed to me that some accident—say the loss of a memorandum indicating its locality—had deprived him of the means of recovering it, and that this accident had become known to his followers, who otherwise might never have heard that treasure had been concealed at all, and who, busying themselves in vain, because unguided attempts, to regain it, had given first birth, and then universal currency, to the reports which are now so common. Have you ever heard of any important treasure being unearthed along the coast?” “Never,” said I. “But that Kidd’s accumulations were immense, is well known,” said Legrand. “I took it for granted, therefore, that the earth still held them, and you will scarcely be surprised when I tell you that I felt a hope, nearly amounting to certainty, that the parchment so strangely found, involved a lost record of the place of deposit.” “But how did you proceed?” I asked. “I held the vellum again to the fire, after increasing the heat,” said Legrand, “but nothing appeared. I now thought it possible that the coating of dirt might have something to do with the failure, so I carefully rinsed the parchment by pouring warm water over it, and, having done this, I placed it in a tin pan, with the skull downwards, and put the pan upon a furnace of lighted charcoal. In a few minutes, the pan having become thoroughly heated, I removed the slip, and, to my inexpressible joy, found it spotted, in several places, with what appeared to be figures arranged in lines. Again I placed it in the pan, and suffered it to remain another minute. On taking it off, the whole was just as you see it now.” Here Legrand, having re-heated the parchment, submitted it to my inspection. The following characters were rudely traced, in a red tint, between the death’s-head and the goat: 5 3 ‡ ‡ † 3 0 5 ) ) 6 * ; 4 8 2 6 ) 4 ‡ . ) 4 ‡ ) ; 8 0 6 * ; 4 8 † 8 ¶ 6 0 ) ) 8 5 ; ; ] 8 * ; : ‡ * 8 † 8 3 ( 8 8 ) 5 * † ; 4 6 ( ; 8 8 * 9 6 * ? ; 8 ) * ‡ ( ; 4 8 5 ) ; 5 * † 2 : * ‡ ( ; 4 9 5 6 * 2 ( 5 * — 4 ) 8 ¶ 8 * ; 4 0 6 9 2 8 5 ) ; ) 6 † 8 ) 4 ‡ ‡ ; 1 ( ‡ 9 ; 4 8 0 8 1 ; 8 : 8 ‡ 1 ; 4 8 † 8 5 ; 4 ) 4 8 5 † 5 2 8 8 0 6 * 8 1 ( ‡ 9 ; 4 8 ; ( 8 8 ; 4 ( ‡ ? 3 4 ; 4 8 ) 4 ‡ ; 1 6 1 ; : 1 8 8 ; ‡ ? ; “But,” said I, returning him the slip, “I am as much in the dark as ever. Were all the jewels of Golconda awaiting me on my solution of this enigma, I am quite sure that I should be unable to earn them.” “And yet,” said Legrand, “the solution is by no means so difficult as you might be led to imagine from the first hasty inspection of the characters. These characters, as any one might readily guess, form a cipher—that is to say, they convey a meaning. But then, from what is known of Kidd, I could not suppose him capable of constructing any of the more abstruse cryptographs. I made up my mind, at once, that this was of a simple species—such, however, as would appear, to the crude intellect of the sailor, absolutely insoluble without the key.” “And you really solved it?” I asked. “Readily,” said Legrand. “I have solved others of an abstruseness ten thousand times greater. Circumstances, and a certain bias of mind, have led me to take interest in such riddles, and it may well be doubted whether human ingenuity can construct an enigma of the kind which human ingenuity may not, by proper application, resolve. In fact, having once established connected and legible characters, I scarcely gave a thought to the mere difficulty of developing their import. “In the present case—indeed in all cases of secret writing—the first question regards the language of the cipher, for the principles of solution, so far, especially, as the more simple ciphers are concerned, depend upon, and are varied by, the genius of the particular idiom. In general, there is no alternative but experiment (directed by probabilities) of every tongue known to him who attempts the solution, until the true one be attained. But, with the cipher now before us, all difficulty is removed by the signature. The pun on the word ‘Kidd’ is appreciable in no other language than the English. But for this consideration I should have begun my attempts with the Spanish and French, as the tongues in which a secret of this kind would most naturally have been written by a pirate of the Spanish main. As it was, I assumed the cryptograph to be English. “You observe there are no divisions between the words. Had there been divisions, the task would have been comparatively easy. In such case I should have commenced with a collation and analysis of the shorter words, and, had a word of a single letter occurred, as is most likely, (a or I, for example,) I should have considered the solution as assured. But, there being no division, my first step was to ascertain the predominant letters, as well as the least frequent. Counting all, I constructed a table, thus: Of the character 8 there are 33. ; there are 26. 4 there are 19. ‡ ) there are 16. * there are 13. 5 there are 12. 6 there are 11. † 1 there are 8. 0 there are 6. 9 2 there are 5. : 3 there are 4. ? there are 3. ¶ there are 2. ] — . there are 1. “Now, in English, the letter which most frequently occurs is e. Afterwards, the succession runs thus: a o i d h n r s t u y c f g l m w b k p q x z. E, however, predominates so remarkably that an individual sentence of any length is rarely seen, in which it is not the prevailing character. “Here, then, we have, in the very beginning, the groundwork for something more than a mere guess. The general use which may be made of the table is obvious—but, in this particular cipher, we shall only very partially require its aid. As our predominant character is 8, we will commence by assuming it as the e of the natural alphabet. To verify the supposition, let us observe if the 8 be seen often in couples—for e is doubled with great frequency in English—in such words, for example, as ‘meet,’ ‘fleet,’ ‘speed,’ ‘seen,’ ‘been,’ ‘agree,’ &c. In the present instance we see it doubled no less than five times, although the cryptograph is brief. “Let us assume 8, then, as e. Now, of all words in the language, ‘the’ is most usual. Let us see, therefore, whether there are not repetitions of any three characters, in the same order of collocation, the last of them being 8. If we discover repetitions of such letters, so arranged, they will most probably represent the word ‘the.’ On inspection, we find no less than seven such arrangements, the characters being ;48. We may, therefore, assume that the semicolon represents t, that 4 represents h, and that 8 represents e—the last being now well confirmed. Thus a great step has been taken. “But, having established a single word, we are enabled to establish a vastly important point—that is to say, several commencements and terminations of other words. Let us refer, for example, to the last instance but one, in which the combination ;48 occurs—not far from the end of the cipher. We know that the semicolon immediately ensuing is the commencement of a word, and, of the six characters succeeding this ‘the,’ we are cognizant of no less than five. Let us set these characters down, thus, by the letters we know them to represent, leaving a space for the unknown— t eeth. “Here we are enabled, at once, to discard the ‘th,’ as forming no portion of the word commencing with the first t, since, by experiment of the entire alphabet for a letter adapted to the vacancy, we perceive that no word can be formed of which this th can be a part. We are thus narrowed into t ee, and, going through the alphabet, if necessary, as before, we arrive at the word ‘tree,’ as the sole possible reading. We thus gain another letter, r, represented by (, with the words ‘the tree’ in juxtaposition. “Looking beyond these words, for a short distance, we again see the combination ;48, and employ it by way of termination to what immediately precedes. We have thus this arrangement: the tree;4(‡?34 the, or, substituting the natural letters, where known, it reads thus: the tree thr‡?3h the. “Now, if, in place of the unknown characters, we leave blank spaces, or substitute dots, we read thus: the tree thr...h the, when the word ‘through’ makes itself evident at once. But this discovery gives us three new letters, o, u and g, represented by ‡? and 3. “Looking now, narrowly, through the cipher for combinations of known characters, we find, not very far from the beginning, this arrangement, 83(88, or egree, which, plainly, is the conclusion of the word ‘degree,’ and gives us another letter, d, represented by †. “Four letters beyond the word ‘degree,’ we perceive the combination ;46(;88* “Translating the known characters, and representing the unknown by dots, as before, we read thus: th . rtee. an arrangement immediately suggestive of the word ‘thirteen,’ and again furnishing us with two new characters, i and n, represented by 6 and *. “Referring, now, to the beginning of the cryptograph, we find the combination, 53‡‡†. “Translating, as before, we obtain . good, which assures us that the first letter is A, and that the first two words are ‘A good.’ “To avoid confusion, it is now time that we arrange our key, as far as discovered, in a tabular form. It will stand thus: 5 represents a † represents d 8 represents e 3 represents g 4 represents h 6 represents i * represents n ‡ represents o ( represents r ; represents t “We have, therefore, no less than ten of the most important letters represented, and it will be unnecessary to proceed with the details of the solution. I have said enough to convince you that ciphers of this nature are readily soluble, and to give you some insight into the rationale of their development. But be assured that the specimen before us appertains to the very simplest species of cryptograph. It now only remains to give you the full translation of the characters upon the parchment, as unriddled. Here it is: ‘A good glass in the bishop's hostel in the devil's seat twenty-one degrees and thirteen minutes northeast and by north main branch seventh limb east side shoot from the left eye of the death's-head a bee line from the tree through the shot fifty feet out.’” “But,” said I, “the enigma seems still in as bad a condition as ever. How is it possible to extort a meaning from all this jargon about ‘devil’s seats,’ ‘death’s heads,’ and ‘bishop’s hotels?’” “I confess,” replied Legrand, “that the matter still wears a serious aspect, when regarded with a casual glance. My first endeavor was to divide the sentence into the natural division intended by the cryptographist.” “You mean, to punctuate it?” said I. “Something of that kind,” said Legrand. “But how was it possible to effect this?” I asked. “I reflected,” said Legrand, “that it had been a point with the writer to run his words together without division, so as to increase the difficulty of solution. Now, a not over-acute man, in pursuing such an object, would be nearly certain to overdo the matter. When, in the course of his composition, he arrived at a break in his subject which would naturally require a pause, or a point, he would be exceedingly apt to run his characters, at this place, more than usually close together. If you will observe the MS., in the present instance, you will easily detect five such cases of unusual crowding. Acting on this hint, I made the division thus: ‘A good glass in the Bishop’s hostel in the Devil’s seat—twenty-one degrees and thirteen minutes—northeast and by north—main branch seventh limb east side—shoot from the left eye of the death’s-head—a bee-line from the tree through the shot fifty feet out.’” “Even this division,” said I, “leaves me still in the dark.” “It left me also in the dark,” replied Legrand, “for a few days, during which I made diligent inquiry, in the neighborhood of Sullivan’s Island, for any building which went by the name of the ‘Bishop’s Hotel,’ for, of course, I dropped the obsolete word ‘hostel.’ Gaining no information on the subject, I was on the point of extending my sphere of search, and proceeding in a more systematic manner, when, one morning, it entered into my head, quite suddenly, that this ‘Bishop’s Hostel’ might have some reference to an old family, of the name of Bessop, which, time out of mind, had held possession of an ancient manor-house, about four miles to the northward of the Island. I accordingly went over to the plantation, and re-instituted my inquiries among the older people of the place. At length one of the most aged of the women said that she had heard of such a place as Bessop’s Castle, and thought that she could guide me to it, but that it was not a castle, nor a tavern, but a high rock. “I offered to pay her well for her trouble, and, after some demur, she consented to accompany me to the spot. We found it without much difficulty, when, dismissing her, I proceeded to examine the place. The ‘castle’ consisted of an irregular assemblage of cliffs and rocks—one of the latter being quite remarkable for its height as well as for its insulated and artificial appearance. I clambered to its apex, and then felt much at a loss as to what should be next done. “While I was busied in reflection, my eyes fell upon a narrow ledge in the eastern face of the rock, perhaps a yard below the summit on which I stood. This ledge projected about eighteen inches, and was not more than a foot wide, while a niche in the cliff just above it, gave it a rude resemblance to one of the hollow-backed chairs used by our ancestors. I made no doubt that here was the ‘devil’s seat’ alluded to in the MS., and now I seemed to grasp the full secret of the riddle. “The ‘good glass,’ I knew, could have reference to nothing but a telescope, for the word ‘glass’ is rarely employed in any other sense by seamen. Now here, I at once saw, was a telescope to be used, and a definite point of view, admitting no variation, from which to use it. Nor did I hesitate to believe that the phrases, ‘twenty-one degrees and thirteen minutes,’ and ‘northeast and by north,’ were intended as directions for the levelling of the glass. Greatly excited by these discoveries, I hurried home, procured a telescope, and returned to the rock. “I let myself down to the ledge, and found that it was impossible to retain a seat on it unless in one particular position. This fact confirmed my preconceived idea. I proceeded to use the glass. Of course, the ‘twenty-one degrees and thirteen minutes’ could allude to nothing but elevation above the visible horizon, since the horizontal direction was clearly indicated by the words, ‘northeast and by north.’ This latter direction I at once established by means of a pocket-compass; then, pointing the glass as nearly at an angle of twenty-one degrees of elevation as I could do it by guess, I moved it cautiously up or down, until my attention was arrested by a circular rift or opening in the foliage of a large tree that overtopped its fellows in the distance. In the centre of this rift I perceived a white spot, but could not, at first, distinguish what it was. Adjusting the focus of the telescope, I again looked, and now made it out to be a human skull. “On this discovery I was so sanguine as to consider the enigma solved,” said Legrand, “for the phrase ‘main branch, seventh limb, east side,’ could refer only to the position of the skull on the tree, while ‘shoot from the left eye of the death’s-head’ admitted, also, of but one interpretation, in regard to a search for buried treasure. I perceived that the design was to drop a bullet from the left eye of the skull, and that a bee-line, or, in other words, a straight line, drawn from the nearest point of the trunk through ‘the shot,’ (or the spot where the bullet fell,) and thence extended to a distance of fifty feet, would indicate a definite point—and beneath this point I thought it at least possible that a deposit of value lay concealed.” “All this,” I said, “is exceedingly clear, and, although ingenious, still simple and explicit. When you left the Bishop’s Hotel, what then?” “Why,” said Legrand, “having carefully taken the bearings of the tree, I turned homewards. The instant that I left ‘the devil’s seat,’ however, the circular rift vanished, nor could I get a glimpse of it afterwards, turn as I would. What seems to me the chief ingenuity in this whole business, is the fact (for repeated experiment has convinced me it is a fact) that the circular opening in question is visible from no other attainable point of view than that afforded by the narrow ledge on the face of the rock. “In this expedition to the ‘Bishop’s Hotel’ I had been attended by Jupiter, who had, no doubt, observed, for some weeks past, the abstraction of my demeanor, and took especial care not to leave me alone. But, on the next day, getting up very early, I contrived to give him the slip, and went into the hills in search of the tree. After much toil I found it. When I came home at night my attendant proposed to give me a flogging. With the rest of the adventure I believe you are as well acquainted as myself.” “I suppose,” said I, “you missed the spot, in the first attempt at digging, through Jupiter’s stupidity in letting the bug fall through the right instead of through the left eye of the skull.” “Precisely,” said Legrand. “This mistake made a difference of about two inches and a half in the ‘shot’—that is to say, in the position of the peg nearest the tree. And had the treasure been beneath the ‘shot,’ the error would have been of little moment. But ‘the shot,’ together with the nearest point of the tree, were merely two points for the establishment of a line of direction. Of course the error, however trivial in the beginning, increased as we proceeded with the line, and by the time we had gone fifty feet, threw us quite off the scent. But for my deep-seated conviction that treasure was here somewhere actually buried, we might have had all our labor in vain.” “I presume the fancy of the skull—of letting fall a bullet through the skull’s-eye—was suggested to Kidd by the piratical flag,” said I. “No doubt he felt a kind of poetical consistency in recovering his money through this ominous insignium.” “Perhaps so,” said Legrand. “Still I cannot help thinking that common-sense had quite as much to do with the matter as poetical consistency. To be visible from the Devil’s seat, it was necessary that the object, if small, should be white, and there is nothing like your human skull for retaining and even increasing its whiteness under exposure to all vicissitudes of weather.” “But your grandiloquence, and your conduct in swinging the beetle—how excessively odd! I was sure you were mad. And why did you insist on letting fall the bug, instead of a bullet, from the skull?” “Why, to be frank,” said Legrand, “I felt somewhat annoyed by your evident suspicions touching my sanity, and so resolved to punish you quietly, in my own way, by a little bit of sober mystification. For this reason I swung the beetle, and for this reason I let it fall from the tree. An observation of yours about its great weight suggested the latter idea.” “Yes, I perceive,” said I. “And now there is only one point which puzzles me. What are we to make of the skeletons found in the hole?” “That is a question I am no more able to answer than yourself,” said Legrand. “There seems, however, only one plausible way of accounting for them—and yet it is dreadful to believe in such atrocity as my suggestion would imply. It is clear that Kidd—if Kidd indeed secreted this treasure, which I doubt not—it is clear that he must have had assistance in the labor. But, the worst of this labor concluded, he may have thought it expedient to remove all participants in his secret. Perhaps a couple of blows with a mattock were sufficient, while his helpers were busy in the pit. Perhaps it required a dozen—who shall tell?”

In Athens, Duke Theseus was about to marry Hippolyta, the warrior queen. He told her that their wedding day was coming soon, in four days, but the old moon seemed to move very slowly. He said it felt as if the moon were keeping him waiting, like a grudging old woman who makes a young man wait for what he needs. Hippolyta answered that four days would pass quickly into night, four nights would pass quickly in dreams, and then the new moon would look like a silver bow in the sky and shine on their wedding feast. Theseus sent for Philostrate, who was in charge of the Duke’s entertainments. He told Philostrate to wake up the young people of Athens and fill them with mirth and celebration. He said that sadness belonged at funerals, not at his wedding. Then he spoke to Hippolyta. He said he had won her love by fighting against her, but he promised to marry her with joy, triumph, and dancing. While they were speaking, Egeus came in with his daughter Hermia, and with Lysander, Helena, and Demetrius. Egeus greeted the Duke and said he had come full of trouble. He complained against Hermia, his daughter. He said that Demetrius had his permission to marry her, but Hermia would not agree. He pointed to Lysander and said that Lysander had stolen Hermia’s heart. Egeus said Lysander had given her poems, exchanged love tokens with her, sung under her window by moonlight, and filled her imagination with false love. He said Lysander had used gifts such as bracelets, rings, trinkets, flowers, and sweet things, which are powerful over young hearts, and had turned Hermia’s obedience away from him. Egeus asked Theseus to let him use the old law of Athens. He said Hermia was his daughter, and he could decide what would happen to her. If she would not marry Demetrius, she must either die or live a life of prayer and never marry. Theseus asked Hermia what she had to say. He told her that her father had the right to decide for her. He said she should look at things with her father’s judgment, not only with her own eyes. He said Demetrius was a worthy young man. Hermia answered that Lysander was worthy too. Theseus said Lysander was worthy in himself, but because Hermia’s father did not choose him, Demetrius must be considered the better match. Hermia said she wished her father could see things as she did. Theseus said her eyes must learn to look with her father’s judgment. Hermia asked the Duke to forgive her for speaking boldly in his presence. She said she did not know how it was proper for a young woman to speak her thoughts before such a great company, but she asked what the worst thing would be if she refused to marry Demetrius. Theseus told her plainly that she must either die or live forever without the company of men. He told her to think carefully about her youth and her feelings. He asked whether she could bear to live as a nun, shut away in a quiet place, singing cold hymns to the moon, never marrying. He said that those who could master their own hearts and live that way were blessed, but he also said that a rose is happier when it is picked and used than when it withers on the bush without being loved. Hermia said she would rather grow, live, and die that way than give her heart to a husband she did not choose. Theseus gave her time to think. He said that on the next new moon, which was also his wedding day, she must either die for disobeying her father, marry Demetrius, or swear to live alone forever at the temple of the goddess Diana. Demetrius asked Hermia to be kind and told Lysander to give up his claim. Lysander answered that Demetrius had Egeus’s love, but he asked to have Hermia. Egeus said that what was his, his love would give to Demetrius, and he gave all his rights over Hermia to Demetrius. Lysander said he was as well born as Demetrius, as rich, and richer in love. He said his fortune was as good as Demetrius’s, and, more than all that, Hermia loved him. He then said that Demetrius had once made love to Helena, the daughter of old Nedar, and had won her heart. He said Helena still loved Demetrius deeply, even though Demetrius had proved false and unfaithful. Theseus said he had heard something like that before and had meant to speak to Demetrius about it, but his own affairs had made him forget. He told Demetrius and Egeus to come with him, because he had some private words for them. He told Hermia to prepare herself to obey her father, or else the law of Athens would give her up to death or to a life of prayer. Then he took Hippolyta with him, and Egeus and Demetrius followed. When they were gone, Lysander asked Hermia why her cheeks were so pale. Hermia said they were pale because she needed rain, and she could water them with tears from her own eyes. Lysander said that, as far as he had ever read or heard, the course of true love never ran smoothly. Sometimes lovers were of different ranks in society, and Hermia said that was cruel if love was forbidden because of high birth. Sometimes love failed because of difference in age, and Hermia said that was cruel if one was too old to be bound to the young. Sometimes friends chose for them, and Hermia said it was terrible to choose love by another person’s eyes. Lysander said that even when lovers chose well, war, death, or sickness could attack their love and make it as brief as a sound, a shadow, a dream, or a flash of lightning in a dark night. Hermia said that if true lovers had always been crossed, then they must learn patience, because trouble seemed to be a familiar companion to love, like thoughts, dreams, sighs, wishes, and tears. Lysander said that was good advice, and then he told Hermia his plan. He said he had a wealthy widow aunt who had no children and loved him like a son. Her house was seven leagues away from Athens, and the sharp Athenian law could not reach them there. He asked Hermia to steal out of her father’s house the next night and meet him in the wood a league outside the town, where they had once met Helena to keep the May morning festival. Hermia swore by Cupid’s strongest bow, by his golden arrow, by the simplicity of Venus’s doves, by the power that knits souls and helps love, and by the fire that burned the queen of Carthage when the false Trojan sailed away. She swore that she would meet Lysander in that place the next day. Lysander told her to keep her promise, and then he saw Helena coming. Helena came in, and Hermia greeted her. Helena said that Hermia called her fair, but she wished she could take back the word “fair,” because Demetrius loved Hermia’s fairness. She said Hermia’s eyes were like guiding stars, and her voice was sweeter than a lark’s song to a shepherd’s ear when wheat is green and hawthorn buds appear. She said sickness was catching, and she wished favor were catching too, so that she could catch Hermia’s voice, Hermia’s eyes, and Hermia’s sweet speech. She said that if the world were hers, except for Demetrius, she would give it all to be changed into Hermia. She asked Hermia to teach her how to look and how to win Demetrius’s heart. Hermia said she frowned at Demetrius, yet he still loved her. Helena wished her own smiles could teach her frowns such skill. Hermia said she gave him curses, yet he gave her love. Helena wished her prayers could move such affection. Hermia said the more she hated him, the more he followed her. Helena said the more she loved him, the more he hated her. Hermia said Demetrius’s foolishness was not her fault. Helena said it was the fault of Hermia’s beauty, and she wished that fault were hers. Hermia then told Helena that she and Lysander would leave Athens. She said that before she knew Lysander, Athens had seemed like a paradise to her, but now, because Lysander had turned her away, it seemed like hell. Lysander said they would tell Helena their plan. He said that the next night, when the moon looked down on the water and made the grass shine with dew, they would steal out through the gates of Athens. Hermia said they would meet in the wood where she and Helena had often lain on primrose beds and shared their secrets. She told Helena to pray for them and wished her good luck with Demetrius. Then Hermia and Lysander left. Helena stayed alone and said how happy some people were compared with others. She said that in Athens people thought she was as fair as Hermia, but Demetrius did not think so. He refused to see what everyone else could see. She said that just as he made a mistake by loving Hermia’s eyes, she made a mistake by admiring him. She said love could turn base and vile things into things of form and dignity. She said love does not look with the eyes but with the mind, and that is why winged Cupid is painted blind. She said love has no taste for judgment, and because love is often cheated in choosing, it is said to be a child. She said that just as naughty boys break their promises in games, so the boy Love breaks his promises everywhere. She said that before Demetrius looked at Hermia, he had sworn that he was hers alone. But when Hermia’s beauty warmed him, his vows melted like hail. Helena decided to tell Demetrius about Hermia’s flight. She thought he would go into the wood the next night to follow Hermia. She said that if she received thanks for telling him, it would be a costly reward, but she hoped to comfort herself by seeing him go there and come back. Meanwhile, a group of working men from Athens met to plan a play. They were Peter Quince the carpenter, Nick Bottom the weaver, Francis Flute the bellows-mender, Tom Snout the tinker, Robin Starveling the tailor, and Snug the joiner. Quince asked whether everyone was there. Bottom said he should call them one by one from the list. Quince read the names of the men chosen to play before the Duke and Duchess on the Duke’s wedding night. Quince said their play was the most lamentable comedy and the most cruel death of Pyramus and Thisbe. Bottom said it was a very good piece of work and merry. Quince called the names and gave the parts. Bottom was chosen to play Pyramus. Bottom asked whether Pyramus was a lover or a tyrant. Quince said he was a lover who killed himself for love. Bottom said that would need tears, and he would move storms if he performed it well. Then he said his chief humor was for a tyrant, and he could play Hercules or a part that would make rocks split and prison gates break. He said that was a tyrant’s style, but a lover was more pitying. Quince called Flute and gave him the part of Thisbe. Flute asked whether Thisbe was a wandering knight. Quince said Thisbe was the lady whom Pyramus must love. Flute said he could not play a woman, because his beard was growing. Quince said he could wear a mask and speak in a small voice. Bottom said that if he could hide his face, he could play Thisbe too, in a monstrous little voice. Quince said no, Bottom must play Pyramus and Flute must play Thisbe. Quince gave Starveling the part of Thisbe’s mother, Snout the part of Pyramus’s father, and himself the part of Thisbe’s father. He gave Snug the part of the lion. Snug asked whether the lion’s part was written down, because he was slow to learn. Quince said he could do it without study, because it was nothing but roaring. Bottom said he could play the lion too and roar so gently that the Duke would ask him to roar again. Quince said if he roared too terribly, he would frighten the Duchess and the ladies, and that would be enough to hang them all. The men agreed that frightening the ladies would be dangerous. Bottom said he would roar as gently as a sucking dove or a nightingale. Quince said Bottom could play no part but Pyramus, because Pyramus was a sweet-faced, proper, lovely gentleman. Bottom asked what color beard he should wear. Quince said any color he liked. Bottom said he could wear a straw-colored beard, an orange-tawny beard, a purple-in-grain beard, or a French crown-colored beard, which was perfect yellow. Quince said some French crowns had no hair at all, and then Bottom would play bare-faced. Quince gave them their parts and asked them to learn them by the next night. He told them to meet in the palace wood, a mile outside the town, by moonlight, because if they rehearsed in the city, people would crowd around them and learn their plan. He said he would make a list of the props the play needed. Bottom said they would meet and rehearse most obscenely and courageously. Quince said they would meet at the Duke’s oak. Bottom said enough, and they left. At another place, a fairy met Robin Goodfellow, also called Puck. Puck asked the fairy where she wandered. The fairy said she wandered over hill, over dale, through bush, through brier, over park, over pale, through flood, through fire. She said she was swifter than the moon’s sphere and served the fairy queen by putting dew on the grass. She said the tall cowslips were the queen’s pensioners, and the spots on their gold coats were rubies, fairy favors, in which their scents lived. She said she must go seek dewdrops and hang a pearl in every cowslip’s ear. She told Puck farewell and said the queen and all the elves would come there soon. Puck said the fairy king was keeping his revels there that night. He told the fairy to be careful that the queen did not come within the king’s sight, because Oberon was very angry. He said Titania had stolen a lovely boy from an Indian king, and she had never had so sweet a changeling. Jealous Oberon wanted the boy to be a knight in his train, to follow him through the wild forests. But Titania kept the boy, crowned him with flowers, and made him all her joy. Puck said that because of their quarrel, the fairies no longer met in groves, greens, fountains, or starlight without fighting, and all the elves crept into acorn cups and hid there. The fairy looked at Puck and said either she mistook his shape completely or he was the shrewd and knavish sprite called Robin Goodfellow. She asked whether he was the one who frightened village maidens, skimmed milk, worked at the quern, made the housewife churn in vain, made drink not foam, misled night wanderers, and laughed at their harm. She said people called him Hobgoblin and sweet Puck, and that he did their work and brought them good luck. Puck said she spoke rightly. He said he was the merry wanderer of the night. He said he joked with Oberon and made him smile when he tricked a fat bean-fed horse by neighing like a young filly. He said he sometimes hid in a gossip’s bowl in the shape of a roasted crab, and when she drank, he bobbed against her lips and poured ale on her withered chin. He said he sometimes made a wise aunt mistake him for a three-footed stool, so that she slipped and fell, and the whole company laughed until they coughed and swore that no merrier hour had ever been wasted. Then he told the fairy to make room, because Oberon was coming. The fairy said her mistress was coming too, and she wished Oberon were gone. Oberon, king of the fairies, came in with his train, and Titania, queen of the fairies, came in with hers. Oberon said, “Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania.” Titania answered, “What, jealous Oberon?” She told the fairy to skip away, because she had forsworn his bed and company. Oberon told her to stay, rash wanton, and asked whether he was not her lord. Titania said then she must be his lady, but she knew when he had stolen away from fairy land and, in the shape of Corin, had sat all day playing on pipes of corn and singing love verses to amorous Phillida. She asked why he had come from the farthest steppe of India. She said it was because the bouncing Amazon, his mistress and warrior love, was to be married to Theseus, and he had come to give their marriage joy and prosperity. Oberon asked how she could shamefully cast doubt on his honor by mentioning Hippolyta, when he knew her love for Theseus. He said she had led Theseus through the glimmering night from Perigenia, whom he had wronged, and had made him break his faith with Ariadne and Antiope. Titania said these were the forgeries of jealousy. She said that since the middle of summer, whenever they had met on hill, in dale, in forest, in meadow, by paved fountain, by rushy brook, or by the beach of the sea to dance their ringlets in the wind, Oberon’s quarrels had disturbed their sport. She said the winds, piping to them in vain, had sucked up contagious fogs from the sea in revenge. When those fogs fell on the land, every small river had become so proud that it had overflowed its banks. The ox had strained at his plow in vain, the ploughman had lost his sweat, and the green corn had rotted before it had a beard. The fold stood empty in the drowned field, and crows were fat with the dead flock. The nine men’s Morris dance was filled with mud, and the pretty mazes in the grass could not be found for lack of footsteps. Human mortals lacked their winter here, and no night was blessed with hymn or carol. The moon, the governor of floods, was pale in anger and washed the air so that rheumatic diseases abounded. Through this disturbance, the seasons were changed. Hoary-headed frosts fell in the fresh lap of the crimson rose, and on old Winter’s icy crown was set a fragrant chaplet of summer buds. Spring, summer, childing autumn, and angry winter changed their usual clothing, and the confused world did not know which was which. Titania said this progeny of evils came from their debate and dissension, and they were its parents and origin. Oberon said she should amend it, because it lay in her. He asked why Titania should cross Oberon. He said he only begged a little changeling boy to be his henchman. Titania told him to set his heart at rest. She said the fairy land would not buy the boy from her. She said the boy’s mother had been a votress of her order, and in the spiced Indian air by night she had often sat gossiping by Titania’s side. They had sat together on Neptune’s yellow sands, watching the traders on the flood. They had laughed to see the sails swell and grow big-bellied with the wanton wind. The mother, with pretty swimming steps, had imitated the sails and sailed upon the land to fetch Titania trifles, returning as if from a voyage rich with merchandise. But she, being mortal, had died of that boy, and for her sake Titania reared up her boy. For her sake, Titania said, she would not part with him. Oberon asked how long she intended to stay in the wood. Titania said perhaps until after Theseus’s wedding day. She said if he would patiently dance in their round and see their moonlight revels, he could go with them; if not, he should shun her, and she would spare his haunts. Oberon said give him the boy, and he would go with her. Titania said not for his fairy kingdom. She told the fairies to away, because if she stayed longer they would quarrel outright. Then she and her fairies left. Oberon said she could go her way, but she would not leave that grove until he tormented her for this injury. He called his gentle Puck and asked whether Puck remembered when he sat on a promontory and heard a mermaid on a dolphin’s back singing such sweet and harmonious breath that the rough sea grew calm at her song, and certain stars shot madly from their spheres to hear the sea-maid’s music. Puck said he remembered. Oberon said that at that very time he had seen, though Puck could not, Cupid flying between the cold moon and the earth, all armed. Cupid had taken aim at a fair vestal throned by the west and had loosed his love-shaft smartly from his bow, as if it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts. But Oberon had seen young Cupid’s fiery shaft quenched in the chaste beams of the watery moon, and the imperial votress had passed on in maiden meditation, free from fancy. Yet Oberon had marked where the bolt of Cupid fell. It had fallen upon a little western flower, before milk-white, now purple with love’s wound, and maidens called it love-in-idleness. He told Puck to fetch that flower, the herb he had shown him once. He said the juice of it, laid on sleeping eyelids, would make man or woman madly dote upon the next live creature it saw. He told Puck to fetch the herb and return before the Leviathan could swim a league. Puck said he would put a girdle round about the earth in forty minutes. Oberon said that once he had the juice, he would watch Titania when she was asleep and drop the liquor in her eyes. The next thing she looked on when she woke, whether lion, bear, wolf, bull, meddling monkey, or busy ape, she would pursue with the soul of love. Before he took the charm from her sight, he would make her give up her page to him. Then he said someone was coming. He said he was invisible and would overhear their conference. Demetrius came in, with Helena following him. Demetrius said he did not love her and told her not to pursue him. He asked where Lysander and fair Hermia were. He said he would stay one and the other stayed him. He said Helena had told him they had stolen into the wood, and he was there, mad within the wood, because he could not meet Hermia. He told her to get gone and follow him no more. Helena said he drew her, hard-hearted Adamant, but he did not draw iron, because her heart was true as steel. She said if he left his power to draw, she would have no power to follow him. Demetrius asked whether he enticed her or spoke fair to her, or whether he plainly told her that he did not and could not love her. Helena said even for that she loved him the more. She said she was his spaniel, and the more he beat her, the more she would fawn on him. She asked him to use her as he used his spaniel, to spurn her, strike her, neglect her, lose her, only give her leave, unworthy as she was, to follow him. She asked what worse place she could beg in his love, though even that place would be a place of high respect to her, than to be used as he used his dog. Demetrius said she tempted too much the hatred of his spirit, because he was sick when he looked on her. Helena said she was sick when she did not look on him. Demetrius said she impeached her modesty too much by leaving the city and committing herself into the hands of one who did not love her, trusting the opportunity of night and the ill counsel of a desert place with the rich worth of her virginity. Helena said his virtue was her privilege. She said it was not night when she saw his face, so she did not think she was in the night, nor did the wood lack worlds of company, because he, in her respect, was all the world. She asked how it could be said she was alone when all the world was there to look on her. Demetrius said he would run from her and hide in the brakes and leave her to the mercy of wild beasts. Helena said the wildest beast did not have such a heart as he. She said he could run when he would, but the story would be changed: Apollo flew and Daphne held the chase, the dove pursued the griffin, and the mild hind made speed to catch the tiger. She said it was bootless speed when cowardice pursued and valour fled. Demetrius said he would not stay her questions and told her to let him go, or if she followed him, not to believe but that he would do her mischief in the wood. Helena said he did her mischief in the temple, in the town, in the field. She said his wrongs set a scandal on her sex, because women could not fight for love as men might. They should be wooed and were not made to woo. She said she would follow him and make a heaven of hell, to die upon the hand she loved so well. Oberon, still invisible, said farewell, nymph. He said before Demetrius left that grove, Helena would flee from him and he would seek her love. He asked Puck whether he had the flower. Puck came in and said there it was. Oberon asked him to give it to him. Oberon said he knew a bank where the wild thyme blew, where oxlips and nodding violets grew, overcanopied with luscious woodbine, sweet musk-roses, and eglantine. There Titania sometimes slept at night, lulled in flowers with dances and delight. There the snake threw off her enameled skin, weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in. With the juice of the flower, Oberon said he would streak Titania’s eyes and make her full of hateful fantasies. He told Puck to take some of the juice and seek through the grove. He said a sweet Athenian lady was in love with a disdainful youth, and Puck was to anoint his eyes when the next thing he espied might be the lady. He said Puck would know the man by the Athenian garments he wore. He told Puck to do it with care, so that the man might prove more fond on Helena than she was on her love, and to meet him before the first cock crowed. Puck said fear not, my lord, your servant shall do so. Titania came in with her train. She told the fairies to come, now a roundel and a fairy song. Then, for the third part of a minute, some were to kill cankers in the musk-rose buds, some to war with reemice for their leather wings to make small elf coats, and some to keep back the clamorous owl that nightly hooted and wondered at their quaint spirits. She told them to sing her to sleep, then go to their offices and let her rest. The fairies sang a lullaby. They told spotted snakes with double tongue, thorny hedgehogs, newts, and blindworms not to come near their fairy queen. They asked Philomel to sing in their sweet lullaby, that no harm, spell, or charm might come near their lovely lady. One fairy told weaving spiders to come not there, and long-legged spinners, black beetles, worms, and snails to do no offense. Another fairy said hence away, now all was well, and one fairy stood aloof as sentinel. Oberon came near Titania and whispered his charm. He said what she saw when she woke, she should take for her true love’s sake and languish for it. Be it ounce, cat, bear, pard, or boar with bristled hair, whatever appeared in her eye when she woke, it would be her dear. He said wake when some vile thing is near. Lysander and Hermia came into the wood. Lysander said fair love, she fainted with wandering in the wood, and to speak truth, he had forgotten their way. He said they would rest if she thought it good and wait for the comfort of day. Hermia said it should be so, and told him to find a bed, because she would rest her head on that bank. Lysander said one turf would serve as a pillow for them both, one heart, one bed, two bosoms, and one troth. Hermia said, by good Lysander, for her sake, he should lie further off and not lie so near. Lysander said she must take the sense of his innocence. He said love took the meaning in love’s conference. He meant that his heart was knit to hers, so that they could make but one heart of it, two bosoms interchained with an oath, two bosoms and a single troth. He said she should not deny him bed-room by her side, because lying so, Hermia, he did not lie. Hermia said Lysander riddled prettily. She said much beshrew her manners and pride if Hermia meant to say Lysander lied. But she asked him, for love and courtesy, to lie further off in human modesty, such separation as might well be said to become a virtuous bachelor and a maid. She said so far be distant, and good night, sweet friend. She said his love never alter till his sweet life end. Lysander said amen to that fair prayer, and then end life when he ended loyalty. He said there was his bed, and sleep give her all his rest. Hermia said with half that wish the wisher’s eyes be pressed. Puck came in. He said through the forest he had gone, but he had found no Athenian on whose eyes he might prove the flower’s force in stirring love. He said night and silence, and asked who was there. He said the man wore weeds of Athens, and this was he, as his master had said, who had despised the Athenian maid. He said here was the maiden sleeping sound on the dank and dirty ground. He said the pretty soul did not dare lie near this lack-love, this kill-courtesy. He said churl, upon his eyes he would throw all the power the charm owed, and when he woke, love forbid sleep his seat on his eyelids. He said so awake when he was gone, for he must now to Oberon. Demetrius and Helena came running. Helena said stay, though he kill her, sweet Demetrius. Demetrius charged her to go and not haunt him thus. Helena asked whether he would leave her in the dark, and he said stay on her peril, he alone would go. Helena said she was out of breath in that fond chase, and the more her prayer, the lesser her grace. She said happy was Hermia wherever she lay, because she had blessed and attractive eyes. She asked how Hermia’s eyes came so bright, not with salt tears, because if so, her own eyes were oftener washed than Hermia’s. She said no, she was as ugly as a bear, and beasts that met her ran away for fear, so no marvel though Demetrius flew her presence as a monster. She asked what wicked and dissembling glass had made her compare herself with Hermia’s eyes. Then she saw Lysander on the ground. She asked whether he was dead or asleep. She saw no blood, no wound. She said Lysander, if he lived, good sir, awake. Lysander woke and said he would run through fire for her sweet sake. He said transparent Helena, nature showed art that through her bosom made him see her heart. He asked where Demetrius was and said how fit a word that vile name was to perish on his sword. Helena told him not to say so. She said what though he loved Hermia? Hermia still loved him, so he should be content. Lysander said content with Hermia? No, he repented the tedious minutes he had spent with her. He said not Hermia, but Helena he loved. He asked who would not change a raven for a dove. He said the will of man was by his reason swayed, and reason said Helena was the worthier maid. He said things growing were not ripe until their season, and he, being young, till now had not been ripe to reason. He said touching now the point of human skill, reason became the marshal to his will and led him to her eyes, where he overloved love’s stories written in love’s richest book. Helena asked wherefore she was born to such keen mockery. She asked when, at his hands, she had deserved such scorn. She said it was not enough that she had never, no nor never could, deserve a sweet look from Demetrius’s eye, but he must flout her insufficiency. She said he did her wrong in such disdainful manner to woo her. She said fare you well, and perforce she must confess she thought him lord of more true gentleness. She said O that a lady of one man refused should of another therefore be abused. Then she left. Lysander said she saw not Hermia. He told Hermia to sleep there and never come near Lysander. He said as a surfeit of the sweetest things brought the deepest loathing to the stomach, or as the heresies that men left were hated most by those they had deceived, so Hermia, his surfeit and heresy, should be hated by all, but most by him. He said all his powers addressed their love and might to honor Helena and to be her knight. Then he left. Hermia woke and cried for help. She asked Lysander to help her pluck the crawling serpent from her breast. She said alas, for pity, what a dream was there. She asked Lysander to look how she quaked with fear. She said she thought a serpent ate her heart away, and he sat smiling at his cruel prey. She asked where Lysander was, removed, out of hearing, gone, no sound, no word. She said alack, where were you, speak, and if she heard, speak, of all loves, she had swooned almost with fear. She said no, then she well perceived he was not nigh, and either death or him she would find immediately. Then she left. The mechanicals came into the wood. Bottom asked whether they were all met. Quince said pat, pat, and here was a marvelous convenient place for their rehearsal. He said this green plot should be their stage, this hawthorn brake their tiring house, and they would do it in action as they would do it before the Duke. Bottom called Peter Quince. Quince asked what he said, bully Bottom. Bottom said there were things in the comedy of Pyramus and Thisbe that would never please. First, Pyramus must draw a sword to kill himself, which the ladies could not abide. He asked how they would answer that. Snout said byrlakin, a parlous fear. Starveling said he believed they must leave the killing out when all was done. Bottom said not a whit, he had a device to make all well. He said let them write a prologue, and let the prologue seem to say they would do no harm with their swords, and that Pyramus was not killed indeed. For the more better assurance, let them tell them that he, Pyramus, was not Pyramus, but Bottom the weaver. That would put them out of fear. Quince said well, they would have such a prologue, and it should be written in eight and six. Bottom said no, make it two more, let it be written in eight and eight. Snout asked whether the ladies would be afraid of the lion. Starveling said he feared it. Bottom said masters, they ought to consider with themselves to bring in, God shield them, a lion among ladies, which was a most dreadful thing, because there was not a more fearful wild fowl than a lion living, and they ought to look to it. Snout said therefore another prologue must tell he was not a lion. Bottom said nay, they must name his name, and half his face must be seen through the lion’s neck, and he himself must speak through, saying, or to the same effect, ladies or fair ladies, he wished them, requested them, intreated them not to fear, not to tremble, his life for theirs. If they thought he came there as a lion, it were pity of his life. No, he was no such thing, he was a man as other men were, and there let him name his name and tell them plainly he was Snug the joiner. Quince said well, it should be so, but there were two hard things: to bring the moonlight into a chamber, because Pyramus and Thisbe met by moonlight. Snug asked whether the moon shone that night they played their play. Bottom said a calendar, a calendar, look in the almanack, find out moonshine, find out moonshine. Quince said yes, it did shine that night. Bottom said then they might leave a casement of the great chamber window open, and the moon might shine in at the casement. Quince said yes, or else one must come in with a bush of thorns and a lantern and say he came to disfigure or present the person of moonshine. Then there was another thing: they must have a wall in the great chamber, because Pyramus and Thisbe talked through the chink of a wall. Snout said they could never bring in a wall. He asked what Bottom said. Bottom said some man or other must present wall, and let him have some plaster, or some loam, or some roughcast about him to signify wall, or let him hold his fingers thus, and through that cranny Pyramus and Thisbe should whisper. Quince said if that might be, then all was well. He told them to sit down, every mother’s son, and rehearse their parts. He told Pyramus to begin, and when he had spoken his speech, enter into that brake, and so every one according to his cue. Puck came in. He said what hempen homespuns had they swaggering there so near the cradle of the fairy queen. He asked what, a play toward, he would be an auditor, an actor too perhaps if he saw cause. Quince told Pyramus to speak and Thisbe to stand forth. Pyramus began, “Thisbe, the flowers of odious savors sweet.” Quince said odors, odorous. Pyramus said odors, savors sweet, so hath thy breath, my dearest Thisbe dear. But hark, a voice, stay thou but here a while, and by and by I will to thee appear. Then he went into the brake. Quince said a stranger Pyramus than e’er played here. Thisbe asked whether she must speak now. Quince said yes, marry must she, because he went but to see a noise that he heard and was to come again. Thisbe said most radiant Pyramus, most lily-white of hue, of color like the red rose on triumphant brier, most brisky juvenal, and eke most lovely jewel, as true as truest horse that yet would never tire, I’ll meet thee, Pyramus, at Ninny’s tomb. Quince said Ninus’ tomb, man, why must she not speak that yet, that she must answer to Pyramus. He said she spoke all her part at once, cues and all. He told Pyramus to enter, because his cue was past, it was never tire. Thisbe said O, as true as truest horse that yet would never tire. Pyramus said if I were fair, Thisbe, I were only thine. Then Puck changed Bottom’s head into an ass’s head. Quince cried O monstrous, O strange, they were haunted. He told masters to fly, masters, help. Puck said he would follow them, he would lead them about a round, through bog, through bush, through brake, through brier. Sometime he would be a horse, sometime a hound, a hog, a headless bear, sometime fire, and neigh, bark, grunt, roar, and burn like horse, hound, hog, bear, fire at every turn. Then he left. Bottom asked why they ran away. He said this was a knavery of them to make him afraid. Snout came in and said O Bottom, thou art changed, what do I see on thee. Bottom said what do you see, you see an ass head of your own, do you. Quince came in and said bless thee Bottom, bless thee, thou art translated. Then he left. Bottom said he saw their knavery. He said this was to make an ass of him and fright him if they could, but he would not stir from that place, do what they could. He said he would walk up and down there and sing, that they should hear he was not afraid. He sang about the woosel cock, black of hue, with orange-tawny bill, the throstle with his note so true, the wren with little quill, the finch, the sparrow, and the lark, the plainsong cuckoo gray, whose note full many a man did mark and dared not answer nay. He said indeed who would set his wit to so foolish a bird, who would give a bird the lie though he cried cuckoo never so. Titania woke and said what angel woke her from her flowery bed. Bottom sang on. Titania said I pray thee, gentle mortal, sing again. Her ear was much enamored of his note, and her eye was enthralled to his shape, and his fair virtues’ force perforce moved her on the first view to say, to swear, she loved him. Bottom said methinks mistress, she should have little reason for that, and yet to say the truth, reason and love kept little company together nowadays. He said the more pity that some honest neighbors would not make them friends. Nay, he could gleek upon occasion. Titania said thou art as wise as thou art beautiful. Bottom said not so neither, but if he had wit enough to get out of that wood, he had enough to serve his own turn. Titania said out of that wood he should not desire to go, he should remain there whether he would or no. She said she was a spirit of no common rate, the summer still did tend upon her state, and she loved him, therefore go with her. She said she would give him fairies to attend on him, and they should fetch him jewels from the deep and sing while he on pressed flowers slept. She said she would purge his mortal grosseness so that he should like an airy spirit go. She called Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Moth, and Mustardseed. The fairies came and said ready, and I, and I, and I, where shall we go. Titania told them to be kind and courteous to that gentleman, hop in his walks and gambol in his eyes, feed him with apricocks and dewberries, with purple grapes, green figs, and mulberries, steal the honey bags from the humble bees, and for night tapers crop their waxen thighs and light them at the fiery glowworm’s eyes, to have her love to bed and to arise, and pluck the wings from painted butterflies to fan the moonbeams from his sleeping eyes. She told them to nod to him, elves, and do him courtesies. One fairy said hail, mortal, hail. Another said hail. Another said hail. Bottom said I cry your worships mercy, heartily, he besought their worship’s name. Cobweb said Cobweb. Bottom said he should desire more acquaintance, good master Cobweb, if he cut his finger, he would make bold with him. He asked the honest gentleman’s name. Peaseblossom said Peaseblossom. Bottom said he prayed him commend him to mistress Squash, his mother, and to master Peascod, his father. Good master Peaseblossom, he should desire more acquaintance too. He asked his name. Mustardseed said Mustardseed. Bottom said good master Mustardseed, he knew his patience well. That same cowardly, giantlike ox-beef had devoured many a gentleman of his house. He promised his kindred had made his eyes water ere now. He desired more acquaintance, good master Mustardseed. Titania said come wait upon him, lead him to her bower. She said the moon, she thought, looked with a watery eye, and when she wept, wept every little flower, lamenting some enforced chastity. She said tie up her lover’s tongue, bring him silently. Then they left. Oberon and Puck came in. Oberon said he wondered if Titania were awake, and then what it was that next came in her eye, which she must dote on in extremity. He said here comes my messenger. He asked how now, mad spirit, what night rule now about that haunted grove. Puck said his mistress with a monster was in love. Near to her close and consecrated bower, while she was in her dull and sleeping hour, a crew of patches, rude mechanicals, who worked for bread on Athenian stalls, were met together to rehearse a play intended for great Theseus’s nuptial day. The shallowest thickskin of that barren sort, who Pyramus presented in their sport, forsook his scene and entered in a brake. When Puck took him at that advantage, he fixed an ass’s nose on his head. Anon his Thisbe must be answered, and forth came his minnick. When they spied him, as wild geese that the creeping fowler eye, or russet-pated choughes, many in sort rising and cawing at the gun’s report, severed themselves and madly swept the sky, so at his sight away his fellows flew, and at their stamp here and there one fell. He cried murder, and help from Athens called. Their sense, thus weak, lost with their fears, thus strong, made senseless things begin to do them wrong, for briers and thorns at their apparel snatch, some sleeves, some hats, from yielders all things catch. Puck led them on in that distracted fear and left sweet Pyramus translated there. When in that moment, so it came to pass, Titania waked and straightway loved an ass. Oberon said this fell out better than he could devise. He asked whether Puck had yet latched the Athenian’s eyes with the love juice, as he had bid him do. Puck said he took him sleeping, that was finished to, and the Athenian woman by his side, that when he waked, of force she must be eyed. Demetrius and Hermia came in. Oberon said stand close, this was the same Athenian. Puck said this was the woman, but not this the man. Demetrius asked why she rebuked him that loved her so, and laid breath so bitter on her bitter foe. Hermia said now she but chided, but she should use him worse, for she feared he had given her cause to curse. She said if he had slain Lysander in his sleep, being over shoes in blood, plunge in the deep and kill her too. She said the sun was not so true unto the day as he to her. Would he have stolen away from sleeping Hermia? She would believe as soon that the whole earth might be bored, and that the moon might through the center creep and so displease her brother’s noontide with the Antipodes. It could not be but he had murdered him. She said so should a murderer look, so dead, so grim. Demetrius said so should the murdered look, and so should he, pierced through the heart with her stern cruelty. Yet she, the murderer, looked as bright and clear as yonder Venus in her glimmering sphere. Hermia asked what that had to do with her Lysander, and where he was. She said ah good Demetrius, would he give him to her. Demetrius said he had rather give his carcass to his hounds. Hermia said out dog, out cur, he drove her past the bounds of maiden patience. She asked whether he had slain him, and said henceforth he should never be numbered among men. She said O, once tell true, tell true even for her sake. Durst he have looked upon him being awake, and had he killed him sleeping? O brave touch, could not a worm, an adder do so much? An adder did it, for with double tongue than his, thou serpent, never adder stung. Demetrius said she spent her passion on a misprised mood. He said he was not guilty of Lysander’s blood, nor was he dead for ought that he could tell. Hermia prayed him tell her then that he was well. Demetrius said and if he could, what should he get therefore. Hermia said a privilege never to see him more, and from his hated presence she would part, see him no more, whether he were dead or no. Then she left. Demetrius said there was no following her in that fierce vein. He said there therefore for a while he would remain. He said sorrow’s heaviness did heavier grow, for debt that bankrupt slip did sorrow owe, which now in some slight measure it would pay, if for his tender there he made some stay. Then he lay down. Oberon said what had Puck done, he had mistaken quite and laid the love juice on some true love’s sight. He said of his misprision must perforce ensue some true love turned, and not a false turned true. Puck said then fate overruled, that one man holding troth, a million failed, confounding oath on oath. Oberon told him about the wood go swifter than the wind, and Helena of Athens look him find. He said all fancy sick she was and pale of cheer, with sighs of love that cost the fresh blood dear. By some illusion see he bring her there, he would charm his eyes against she do appear. Puck said I go, I go, look how I go, swifter than arrow from the Tartar’s bow. Oberon said flower of this purple dye, hit with Cupid’s archery, sink in apple of his eye. When his love he doth espy, let her shine as gloriously as the Venus of the sky. When thou wak’st, if she be by, beg of her for remedy. Puck came in and said captain of our fairy band, Helena was there at hand, and the youth mistook by him pleading for a lover’s fee. He asked whether they should see their fond pageant, Lord what fools these mortals be. Oberon said stand aside, the noise they made would cause Demetrius to awake. Puck said then will two at once woo one, that must needs be sport alone, and those things do best please him that befall prepost’rously. Lysander and Helena came in. Lysander asked why she thought he wooed in scorn. He said scorn and derision never came in tears. He said look when he vowed, he wept, and vows so born in their nativity all truth appeared. He asked how these things in him could seem scorn to her, bearing the badge of faith to prove them true. Helena said he did advance his cunning more and more. When truth killed truth, O devilish holy fray. She said these vows were Hermia’s. Would he give her over? Weigh oath with oath, and they would nothing weigh. She said his vows to her and Hermia, put in two scales, would even weigh, and both as light as tales. Lysander said he had no judgment when to her he swore. Helena said nor none in her mind now he gave her over. Lysander said Demetrius loved her, and he loved not her. Demetrius woke and said O Helen, goddess, nymph, perfect divine, to what, my love, should he compare her eyes. He said crystal was muddy. He said O how ripe in show her lips, those kissing cherries, tempting grew. He said that pure concealed white, high Taurus snow, fanned with the eastern wind, turned to a crow when she held up her hand. He said O let him kiss that princess of pure white, that seal of bliss. Helena said O spite, O hell, she saw they all were bent to set against her for their merriment. If they were civil and knew courtesy, they would not do her thus much injury. She asked whether they could not hate her, as she knew they did, but they must join in souls to mock her too. If they were men, as men they were in show, they would not use a gentle lady so, to vow and swear and superpraise her parts when she was sure they hated her with their hearts. She said they both were rivals and loved Hermia, and now both rivals to mock Helena. She said a trim exploit, a manly enterprise, to conjure tears up in a poor maid’s eyes with their derision. None of noble sort would so offend a virgin and extort a poor soul’s patience, all to make them sport. Lysander said he was unkind, Demetrius, be not so, for he loved Hermia, this he knew he knew. He said hear, with all good will, with all his heart, in Hermia’s love he yielded him his part, and Helena’s love to him bequeath, whom he did love and will do till his death. Helena said never did mockers waste more idle breath. Demetrius said Lysander keep his Hermia, he would none. If ever he loved her, all that love was gone. He said his heart to her but as guestwise sojourned, and now to Helen was it home returned, there to remain. Lysander said Helen, it is not so. Demetrius said disparage not the faith he knew not, lest to his peril he abide it dear. He said look where his love came, yonder was his dear. Hermia came in. She said dark night, that from the eye his function takes, the ear more quick of apprehension made. Wherein it did impair the seeing sense, it paid the hearing double recompense. She said she was not by her eye Lysander found, her ear, she thanked it, brought her to his sound. She asked why, unkindly, he had left her so. Lysander said why should he stay whom love did press to go. Hermia asked what love could press Lysander from her side. Lysander said Lysander’s love, that would not let him bide, fair Helena, who more engilded the night than all yon fiery oes and eyes of light. He asked why she sought him, could not this make her know the hate he bore her made him leave her so. Hermia said he spake not as he thought, it could not be. Helena said lo, she was one of this confederacy. Now she perceived they had conjoined all three to fashion this false sport in spite of her. She said injurious Hermia, most ungrateful maid, had they conspired, had they with these contrived to bait her with this foul derision. She asked whether all the counsel they two had shared, the sisters’ vows, the hours they had spent, when they had chid the hasty-footed time for parting them, O, was all forgot, all school-days’ friendship, childhood innocence. She said they, Hermia, like two artificial gods, had with their needles created both one flower, both on one sampler, sitting on one cushion, both warbling of one song, both in one key, as if their hands, their sides, voices, and minds had been incorporate. She said so they grew together, like to a double cherry, seeming parted, but yet an union in partition, two lovely berries moulded on one stem, so with two seeming bodies, but one heart, two of the first life coats in heraldry, due but to one and crowned with one crest. She asked whether Hermia would rend their ancient love asunder to join with men in scorning her poor friend. She said it was not friendly, it was not maidenly. Their sex, as well as she, might chide her for it, though she alone did feel the injury. Hermia said she was amazed at her words, she scorned her not, it seemed Helena scorned her. Helena asked whether Hermia had not set Lysander, as in scorn, to follow her and praise her eyes and face, and made her other love, Demetrius, who even but now had spurned her with his foot, to call her goddess, nymph, divine, and rare, precious, celestial. She asked wherefore he spake this to her he hated, and wherefore Lysander denied Hermia’s love, so rich within his soul, and tendered her, forsooth, affection, but by Hermia’s setting on, by her consent. She asked what though she were not so in grace as Hermia, so hung upon with love, so fortunate, but miserable most to love unloved, Hermia should pity rather than despise. Hermia said she understood not what Helena meant by this. Helena said she did, persevere, counterfeit sad looks, make mouths upon her when she turned her back, wink each at other, hold the sweet jest up. She said this sport, well carried, should be chronicled. If they had any pity, grace, or manners, they would not make her such an argument. But fare ye well, it was partly her own fault, which death or absence soon should remedy. Lysander said stay, gentle Helena, hear his excuse, his love, his life, his soul, fair Helena. Helena said O excellent. Hermia said sweet, do not scorn her so. Demetrius said if she could not entreat, he could compel. Lysander said he could compel no more than she intreat, his threats had no more strength than her weak praise. He said Helen, he loved her, by his life he did, he swore by that which he would lose for her to prove him false that said he loved her not. Demetrius said he said he loved her more than he could do. Lysander said if he said so, withdraw and prove it to. Demetrius said quick, come. Hermia asked Lysander whereunto tended all this. Lysander said away, thou Ethiopian. Demetrius said no, no, he would seem to break loose, take on as he would follow, but yet come not, he was a tame man, go. Lysander said hang off, thou cat, thou bur, vile thing, let loose, or he would shake her from him like a serpent. Hermia asked why he was grown so rude, what change was this, sweet love. Lysander said thy love, out, tawny Tartar, out, out loathed medicine, O hated potion, hence. Hermia asked whether he did not jest. Helena said yes, sooth, and so did she. Lysander said Demetrius, he would keep his word with him. Demetrius said he would he had his bond, for he perceived a weak bond held him, he would not trust his word. Lysander said what, should he hurt her, strike her, kill her dead, although he hated her, he would not harm her so. Hermia asked what, could he do her greater harm than hate, hate her wherefore, O me, what news, my love, am not I Hermia, are not you Lysander, she was as fair now as she was erewhile. Since night he loved her, yet since night he left her. Why then he left her, the gods forbid, in earnest, shall she say. Lysander said ay, by his life, and never did desire to see her more. Therefore be out of hope, of question, of doubt, be certain, nothing truer, it was no jest that he did hate her and love Helena. Hermia said O me, thou juggler, thou canker blossom, thou thief of love, what, had she come by night and stolen his love’s heart from him. Helena said fine, i’ faith, had she no modesty, no maiden shame, no touch of bashfulness, what, would she tear impatient answers from her gentle tongue, fy, fy, thou counterfeit, thou puppet, thou. Hermia said puppet, why so, ay, that way went the game. Now she perceived she had made compare between their statures, she had urged her height, and with her personage, her tall personage, her height, forsooth, she had prevailed with him. She asked whether they were grown so high in his esteem because she was so dwarfish and so low. How low was she, thou painted maypole, speak, how low was she, she was not yet so low but that her nails could reach unto his eyes. Helena prayed them, though they mocked her, gentleman, let her not hurt her. She said she was never curst, she had no gift at all in shrewishness, she was a right maid for her cowardice, let her not strike her. She said they perhaps might think because she was something lower than herself, that she could match her. Hermia said lower, harke again. Helena said good Hermia, do not be so bitter with her, she evermore did love her, did ever keep her counsels, never wronged her, save that in love, unto Demetrius, she told him of her stealth unto this wood. He followed her, for love she followed him. But he had chid her hence and threatened her to strike her, spurn her, nay to kill her too. And now, if Hermia would let her quiet go, to Athens she would bear her folly back and follow her no further. Let her go, they saw how simple and how fond she was. Hermia said why, get you gone, who was it that hindered her. Helena said a foolish heart, that she left here behind. Hermia asked what, with Lysander. Helena said with Demetrius. Lysander said be not afraid, she should not harm her, Helena. Demetrius said no sir, she should not, though he took her part. Helena said O, when she was angry, she was keen and shrewd, she was a vixen when she went to school, and though she were but little, she was fierce. Hermia said little again, nothing but low and little, why would they suffer her to flout her thus, let her come to her. Lysander said get you gone, thou dwarf, thou minimus of hindring knotgrass made, thou bead, thou acorn. Demetrius said he was too officious in her behalf that scorned his services, let her alone, speak not of Helena, take not her part, for if he did intend never so little show of love to her, he should abide it. Lysander said now she held him not, now follow, if he durst, to try whose right, of his or his, was most in Helena. Demetrius said follow, nay, he would go with him, cheek by jowl. Hermia said thou mistress, all this coil is long of you, nay, go not back. Helena said she would not trust her, nor longer stay in her curst company. Her hands than hers were quicker for a fray, her legs were longer though, to run away. Hermia said she was amazed and knew not what to say. Then they left. Oberon said this was Puck’s negligence, still he mistook, or else committed his knavery wilfully. Puck said believe him, king of shadows, he mistook. Had not Oberon told him he should know the man by the Athenian garments he had on, and so far blameless proved his enterprise, that he had nointed an Athenian’s eyes, and so far was he glad it so did sort, as this their jangling he esteemed a sport. Oberon said he saw these lovers seek a place to fight. He told Puck to hy therefore, Robin, overcast the night, the starry welkin cover thou anon with drooping fog as black as Acheron, and lead these testy rivals so astray as one come not within another’s way. Like to Lysander sometime frame his tongue, then stir Demetrius up with bitter wrong, and sometime rail he like Demetrius, and from each other look he lead them thus, till o’er their brows death-counterfeiting sleep with leaden legs and batty wings did creep. Then crush this herb into Lysander’s eye, whose liquor hath this virtuous property to take from thence all error with his might and make his eyeballs roll with wonted sight. When they next wake, all this derision shall seem a dream and fruitless vision, and back to Athens shall the lovers wend with league whose date till death shall never end. Whiles he in this affair did him employ, he would to his queen and beg her Indian boy, and then he would her charmed eye release from monster’s view, and all things should be peace. Puck said my fairy lord, this must be done with haste, for night’s swift dragons cut the clouds full fast, and yonder shone Aurora’s harbinger, at whose approach ghosts, wandering here and there, trooped home to churchyards, damned spirits all, that in crossways and floods had burial, already to their wormy beds were gone, for fear least day should look their shames upon, they wilfully themselves exile from light and must for aye consort with black-browed night. Oberon said but they were spirits of another sort. He said he with the morning’s love had oft made sport, and like a forester the groves might tread even till the eastern gate all fiery red, opening on Neptune with fair blessed beams, turned into yellow gold his salt green streams. But notwithstanding, haste, make no delay, they might effect this business yet ere day. Puck said up and down, up and down, he would lead them up and down, he was feared in field and town, goblin, lead them up and down. Lysander came in and asked where thou art, proud Demetrius, speak thou now. Puck said here, villain, drawn and ready, where art thou. Lysander said he would be with him straight. Puck said follow him then to plainer ground. Demetrius came in and said Lysander, speak again, thou runaway, thou coward, art thou fled, speak in some bush, where dost thou hide thy head. Puck said thou coward, art thou bragging to the stars, telling the bushes that thou look’st for wars and wilt not come, come, recreant, come thou child, he will whip thee with a rod, he is defiled that draws a sword on thee. Demetrius said yea, art thou there. Puck said follow my voice, they will try no manhood here. Then they left. Lysander said he went before him and still dared him on, when he came where he called, then he was gone. The villain was much lighter heeled than he, he followed fast, but faster he did fly, that fallen he was in dark uneven way, and there he would rest him. He said come, thou gentle day, for if but once she showed him her gray light, he would find Demetrius and revenge this spite. Puck and Demetrius came in. Puck said ho, ho, ho, coward, why com’st thou not. Demetrius said abide him, if he durst, for well he wot he ran before him, shifting every place, and durst not stand nor look him in the face, where was he now. Puck said come hither, he was here. Demetrius said nay then he mocked him, he should buy this dear if ever he saw his face by daylight. Now go thy way, faintness constrained him to measure out his length on that cold bed, by day’s approach look to be visited. Then he lay down. Helena came in. She said O weary night, O long and tedious night, abate thy hours, shine comforts from the east, that she might back to Athens by daylight from these that her poor company detested. She said sleep, that sometimes shut up sorrow’s eye, steal her a while from her own company. Then she slept. Puck said yet but three, come one more, two of both kinds makes up four. He said here she came, curst and sad, Cupid was a knavish lad, thus to make poor females mad. Hermia came in. She said never so weary, never so in woe, bedabbled with the dew and torn with briers, she could no further crawl, no further go, her legs could keep no pace with her desires. There she would rest her till the break of day, heavens shield Lysander if they meant a fray. Puck said on the ground sleep sound, he would apply her eye, gentle lover, remedy. When she waked, she took true delight in the sight of her former lady’s eye, and the country proverb known, that every man should take his own, in her waking should be shown. Jack shall have Jill, nought shall go ill, the man shall have his mare again, and all shall be well. Titania came in with Bottom and the fairies, and Oberon behind them. Titania said come sit thee down upon that flowery bed, while she his amiable cheeks did coy, and stick musk-roses in his sleek smooth head, and kiss his fair large ears, her gentle joy. Bottom asked where was Peaseblossom. Peaseblossom said ready. Bottom said scratch his head, Peaseblossom, where was Monsieur Cobweb. Cobweb said ready. Bottom said Monsieur Cobweb, good Monsieur, get him his weapons in his hand and kill him a red-hipped humble bee on the top of a thistle, and good Monsieur bring him the honey bag. Do not fret himself too much in the action, Monsieur, and good Monsieur have a care the honey bag break not, he would be loath to have him overflowed with a honey bag, signior. Where was Monsieur Mustardseed. Mustardseed said ready. Bottom said give him his neaf, Monsieur Mustardseed, pray him leave his curtsy, good Monsieur. Mustardseed said what’s your will. Bottom said nothing, good Monsieur, but to help Cavalery Cobweb to scratch. He must to the barber’s, Monsieur, for methinks he was marvelous hairy about the face, and he was such a tender ass, if his hair did but tickle him, he must scratch. Titania asked whether he would hear some music, her sweet love. Bottom said he had a reasonable good ear in music, let them have the tongs and the bones. Titania said or say, sweet love, what he desired to eat. Bottom said truly a peck of provender, he could munch his good dry oats, methinks he had a great desire to a bottle of hay, good hay, sweet hay had no fellow. Titania said she had a venturous fairy that should seek the squirrel’s hoard and fetch him new nuts. Bottom said he had rather have a handful or two of dried peas, but he prayed them let none of her people stir him, he had an exposition of sleep come upon him. Titania said sleep thou, and she would wind him in her arms, fairies be gone and be always away. She said so did the woodbine the sweet honeysuckle gently entwist, the female ivy so enrings the barky fingers of the elm. O, how she loved him, how she doted on him. Puck came in. Oberon said welcome, good Robin, seest thou this sweet sight, her dotage now he did begin to pity. For meeting her of late behind the wood, seeking sweet favors for that hateful fool, he had upbraided her and fallen out with her. For she his hairy temples then had rounded with a coronet of fresh and fragrant flowers, and that same dew, which sometime on the buds was wont to swell like round and orient pearls, stood now within the pretty flowrets’ eyes like tears that did their own disgrace bewail. When he had at his pleasure taunted her, and she in mild terms begged his patience, he then did ask of her her changeling child, which straight she gave him, and her fairy sent to bear him to his bower in fairy land. And now he had the boy, he would undo that hateful imperfection of her eyes. He told gentle Puck to take that transformed scalp from off the head of that Athenian swain, that he, awaking when the other did, might all to Athens back again repair and think no more of this night’s accidents but as the fierce vexation of a dream. But first he would release the fairy queen. He said be as thou wast wont to be, see as thou wast wont to see, Dian’s bud or Cupid’s flower hath such force and blessed power. Now, my Titania, wake you, my sweet queen. Titania woke and said my Oberon, what visions have I seen, methought I was enamored of an ass. Oberon said there lies your love. Titania asked how came these things to pass, O how her eyes did loath his visage now. Oberon said silence a while, Robin take off this head, Titania music call, and strike more dead than common sleep of all these fine the sense. Titania said music, how music, such as charmeth sleep. Puck said now when thou wak’st with thine own fool’s eyes peep. Oberon said sound music, come my queen, take hands with me, and rock the ground whereon these sleepers be. Now thou and I are new in amity, and will tomorrow midnight solemnly dance in Duke Theseus’ house triumphantly and bless it to all fair prosperity. There shall the pairs of faithful lovers be wedded with Theseus all in jollity. Puck said fairy king, attend and mark, he did hear the morning lark. Oberon said then my queen in silence sad, trip we after night’s shade, they the globe could compass soon, swifter than the wandering moon. Titania said come my lord, and in our flight tell me how it came this night that she sleeping there was found with these mortals on the ground. Then they left, and a wind horn sounded. Theseus came in with all his train. He said go one of you, find out the forester, for now their observation was performed. And since they had the vaward of the day, his love should hear the music of his hounds. He told them to uncouple in the western valley, let them go, dispatch, he said, and find the forester. He said they would, fair queen, up to the mountains top and mark the musicall confusion of hounds and echo in conjunction. Hippolyta said she was with Hercules and Cadmus once, when in a wood of Crete they bayed the bear with hounds of Sparta, never did she hear such gallant chiding, for besides the groves, the skies, the fountains, every region near seemed all one mutual cry, she never heard so musical a discord, such sweet thunder. Theseus said his hounds were bred out of the Spartan kind, so flewed, so sanded, and their heads were hung with ears that swept away the morning dew, crook-kneed, and dewlapped like Thessalian bulls, slow in pursuit, but matched in mouth like bells, each under each. A cry more tunable was never hallowed to, nor cheered with horn, in Crete, in Sparta, nor in Thessaly, judge when they heard. But soft, what nymphs were these. Egeus said my lord, this was his daughter there asleep, and this Lysander, this Demetrius was, this Helena, old Nedar’s Helena. He wondered of their being there together. Theseus said no doubt they rose up early to observe the right of May, and hearing their intent, came there in grace of their solemnity. But speak, Egeus, was not this the day that Hermia should give answer of her choice. Egeus said it was, my lord. Theseus said go, bid the huntsmen wake them with their horns. Shouts within, and they all started up. Wind horns sounded. Theseus said good morrow, friends, Saint Valentine is past, begin these wood birds but to couple now. Lysander said pardon, my lord. Theseus said I pray you all stand up, he knew they two were rival enemies, how came this gentle concord in the world, that hatred was so far from jealousy to sleep by hate and fear no enmity. Lysander said my lord, he should reply amazedly, half sleep, half waking, but as yet he swore he could not truly say how he came there. But as he thought, for truly would he speak, and now he did bethink him, so it was, he came with Hermia thither, their intent was to be gone from Athens, where they might without the peril of the Athenian law. Egeus said enough, enough, my lord, he had enough, he begged the law, the law upon his head, they would have stolen away, they would, Demetrius, thereby to have defeated him and Egeus, him of his wife and Egeus of his consent, of his consent that she should be his wife. Demetrius said my lord, fair Helen told him of their stealth, of this their purpose hither to this wood, and he in fury hither followed them, fair Helena in fancy following him. But my good lord, he wot not by what power, but by some power it was, his love to Hermia, melted as the snow, seemed to him now as the remembrance of an idle gaud, which in his childhood he did dote upon, and all the faith, the virtue of his heart, the object and the pleasure of his eye, was only Helena. To her, my lord, was he betrothed ere he saw Hermia, but like a sickness did he loath this food, but as in health come to his natural taste, now he did wish it, love it, long for it, and will forevermore be true to it. Theseus said fair lovers, they were fortunately met, of this discourse they would more hear anon. Egeus, he would overbear his will, for in the temple by and by with them, these couples should eternally be knit. And for the morning now was something worn, their purposed hunting should be set aside. Away with them to Athens, three and three, they would hold a feast in great solemnity. Come Hippolyta. Demetrius said these things seemed small and indistinguishable, like far off mountains turned into clouds. Hermia said methought she saw these things with parted eye, when everything seemed double. Helena said so methought, and she had found Demetrius like a jewel, mine own and not mine own. Demetrius asked whether they were sure that they were awake, it seemed to him that yet they slept, they dreamed, did not they think the Duke was there and bid them follow him. Hermia said yea, and my father. Helena said and Hippolyta. Lysander said and he did bid them follow to the temple. Demetrius said why then they were awake, let them follow him, and by the way let them recount their dreams. Bottom woke and said when his cue came, call him, and he would answer, his next was most fair Pyramus. Hey ho, Peter Quince, Flute the bellows-mender, Snout the tinker, Starveling, God’s my life, stolen hence and left him asleep. He said he had had a most rare vision, he had had a dream past the wit of man to say what dream it was. Man was but an ass if he went about to expound this dream. He thought he was, there was no man could tell what. He thought he was, and he thought he had, but man was but patched a fool if he would offer to say what he thought he had. The eye of man had not heard, the ear of man had not seen, man’s hand was not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report what his dream was. He said he would get Peter Quince to write a ballad of this dream, it should be called Bottom’s Dream, because it had no bottom, and he would sing it in the latter end of a play before the Duke. Peradventure, to make it the more gracious, he would sing it at her death. Quince, Flute, Thisbe, and the rabble came in. Quince asked whether they had sent to Bottom’s house, was he come home yet. Flute said he could not be heard of, out of doubt he was transported. Thisbe said if he came not, then the play was marred, it went not forward, did it. Quince said it was not possible, they had not a man in all Athens able to discharge Pyramus but he. Thisbe said no, he had simply the best wit of any handicraftsman in Athens. Quince said yea, and the best person to, and he was a very paramour for a sweet voice. Thisbe said they must say paragon, a paramour was, God bless them, a thing of nought. Snug came in and said masters, the Duke was coming from the temple, and there were two or three lords and ladies more married. If their sport had gone forward, they had all been made men. Thisbe said O sweet bully Bottom, thus had he lost sixpence a day during his life, he could not have escaped sixpence a day, and the Duke had not given him sixpence a day for playing Pyramus, he would be hanged, he would have deserved it, sixpence a day in Pyramus or nothing. Bottom came in and asked where were these lads, where were these hearts. Quince said Bottom, O most courageous day, O most happy hour. Bottom said masters, he was to discourse wonders, but ask him not what, for if he told them, he was not true Athenian, he would tell them everything right as it fell out. Quince said let them hear, sweet Bottom. Bottom said not a word of him, all that he would tell them was that the Duke had dined. Get their apparel together, good strings to their beards, new ribands to their pumps, meet presently at the palace, every man look over his part, for the short and the long was, their play was preferred. In any case let Thisbe have clean linen, and let not him that played the lion pare his nails, for they shall hang out for the lion’s claws. And most dear actors, eat no onions nor garlic, for they were to utter sweet breath, and he did not doubt but to hear them say it was a sweet comedy. No more words, away, go away. Theseus, Hippolyta, and Philostrate came in. Hippolyta said it was strange, my Theseus, that these lovers spoke of. Theseus said more strange than true, he never might believe these antique fables nor these fairy toys. Lovers and madmen had such seething brains, such shaping fantasies, that apprehended more than cool reason ever comprehended. The lunatic, the lover, and the poet were of imagination all compact. One saw more devils than vast hell could hold, that was the madman. The lover, all as frantic, saw Helen’s beauty in a brow of Egypt. The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, did glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven, and as imagination bodies forth the forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen turned them to shapes and gave to airy nothing a local habitation and a name. Such tricks had strong imagination, that if it would but apprehend some joy, it comprehended some bringer of that joy, or in the night, imagining some fear, how easy was a bush supposed a bear. Hippolyta said but all the story of the night told over, and all their minds transfigured so together, more witnessed than fancy’s images, and grew to something of great constancy, but howsoever, strange and admirable. The lovers came in, Lysander, Demetrius, Hermia, and Helena. Theseus said here came the lovers, full of joy and mirth, joy, gentle friends, joy and fresh days of love accompany their hearts. Lysander said more than to them waited in their royal walks, their board, their bed. Theseus said come now, what masks, what dances should they have to wear away that long age of three hours between or after supper and bedtime, where was their usual manager of mirth, what revels were in hand, was there no play to ease the anguish of a torturing hour, call Philostrate. Philostrate said here, mighty Theseus. Theseus said say what abridgement he had for that evening, what mask, what music, how should they beguile the lazy time, if not with some delight. Philostrate said there was a brief how many sports were ripe, make choice of which his Highness would see first. Theseus said the battle with the Centaurs to be sung by an Athenian eunuch to the harp, they would none of that, that had he told his love in glory of his kinsman Hercules. The riot of the tipsy Bacchanals, tearing the Thracian singer in their rage, that was an old device, and it was played when he from Thebes came last a conqueror. The thrise three Muses mourning for the death of learning, late deceased in beggary, that was some satire keen and critical, not sorting with a nuptial ceremony. A tedious brief scene of young Pyramus and his love Thisbe, very tragical mirth, merry and tragical, tedious and brief, that was hot ice and wondrous strange snow, how should they find the concord of this discord. Philostrate said a play there was, my lord, some ten words long, which was as brief as he had known a play, but by ten words, my lord, it was too long, which made it tedious, for in all the play there was not one word apt, one player fitted. And tragical, my noble lord, it was, for Pyramus therein did kill himself, which when he saw rehearsed, he must confess made his eyes water, but more merry tears the passion of loud laughter never shed. Theseus asked what were they that did play it. Philostrate said hard-handed men that worked in Athens there, which never labored in their minds till now, and now had toiled their unbreathed memories with that same play against their nuptial. Theseus said and they would hear it. Philostrate said no, my noble lord, it was not for them, he had heard it over, and it was nothing, nothing in the world, unless they could find sport in their intents, extremely stretched and clogged with cruel pain to do them service. Theseus said he would hear that play, for never anything could be amiss when simpleness and duty tendered it. Go bring them in, and take your places, ladies. Hippolyta said she loved not to see wretchedness o’ercharged, and duty in his service perishing. Theseus said why gentle sweet, she should see no such thing. He said they could do nothing in this kind, the kinder they to give them thanks for nothing, their sport should be to take what they mistook, and what poor duty cannot do, noble respect took it in might, not merit. Where he had come, great clerks had purposed to greet him with premeditated welcomes, where he had seen them shiver and look pale, make periods in the midst of sentences, throttle their practiced accent in their fears, and in conclusion dumbly have broke off, not paying him a welcome. Trust me, sweet, out of that silence yet he had picked a welcome, and in the modesty of fearful duty he read as much as from the rattling tongue of saucy and audacious eloquence. Love therefore and tongue-tied simplicity in least spoke most to his capacity. Philostrate said so please your Grace, the prologue was addressed. Duke said let him approach. The prologue came in and said if they offended, it was with their good will, that they should think they came not to offend, but with good will, to show their simple skill, that was the true beginning of their end. Consider then, they came but in despite, they did not come as minding to content them, their true intent was, all for their delight, they were not there, that they should there repent them, the actors were at hand, and by their show they should know all that they were like to know. Theseus said this fellow did not stand upon points. Lysander said he had rid his prologue like a rough colt, he knew not the stop, a good moral, my lord, it was not enough to speak, but to speak true. Hippolyta said indeed he had played on this prologue like a child on a recorder, a sound, but not in government. Theseus said his speech was like a tangled chain, nothing impaired, but all disordered, who was next. Pyramus, Thisbe, Wall, Moonshine, and Lion came in. The prologue said gentles, perchance they wondered at that show, but wonder on till truth make all things plain. This man was Pyramus, if they would know, this beautiful lady Thisbe was certain. This man with lime and roughcast did present wall, that vile wall which did these lovers sunder, and through wall’s chink, poor souls, they were content to whisper, at the which let no man wonder. This man with lantern, dog, and bush of thorn presented moonshine, for if they would know, by moonshine did these lovers think no scorn to meet at Ninus’ tomb, there, there to woo. This grisly beast, which lion hight by name, the trusty Thisbe, coming first by night, did scare away, or rather did affright, and as she fled, her mantle she did fall, which lion vile with bloody mouth did stain. Anon came Pyramus, sweet youth and tall, and found his trusty Thisbe’s mantle slain, whereat with blade, with bloody blameful blade, he bravely broached his boiling bloody breast, and Thisbe, tarrying in mulberry shade, his dagger drew, and died. For all the rest, let lion, moonshine, wall, and lovers twain at large discourse while there they did remain. Theseus said he wondered if the lion were to speak. Demetrius said no wonder, my lord, one lion may when many asses do. Lion, Thisbe, and Moonshine went out. Wall said in this same interlude it doth befall that I, one Snout by name, presented a wall, and such a wall as he would have them think that had in it a crannied hole or chink, through which the lovers, Pyramus and Thisbe, did whisper often very secretly. This lime, this roughcast, and this stone did show that he was that same wall, the truth was so, and this the cranny was, right and sinister, through which the fearful lovers were to whisper. Theseus said would they desire lime and hair to speak better. Demetrius said it was the wittiest partition that ever he heard discourse, my lord. Theseus said Pyramus drew near the wall, silence. Pyramus said O grim-looked night, O night with hue so black, O night which ever art when day is not, O night, O night, alack, alack, alack, he feared his Thisbe’s promise was forgot. And thou, O wall, O sweet, O lovely wall, that stoodst between her father’s ground and mine, thou wall, O wall, O sweet and lovely wall, show me thy chink to blink through with mine eyne. Thanks, courteous wall, Jove shield thee well for this. But what saw he, no Thisbe did he see, O wicked wall through whom he saw no bliss, curst be thy stones for thus deceiving him. Theseus said the wall, methinks, being sensible, should curse again. Pyramus said no, in truth, sir, he should not, deceiving him was Thisbe’s cue, she was to enter now, and he was to spy her through the wall, they should see it would fall pat as he told them, yonder she came. Thisbe came in and said O wall, full often hast thou heard my moans for parting my fair Pyramus and me, my cherry lips have often kissed thy stones, thy stones with lime and hair knit up again. Pyramus said I see a voice, now will I to the chink to spy and I can hear my Thisbe’s face, Thisbe. Thisbe said my love thou art, my love I think. Pyramus said think what thou wilt, I am thy lover’s grace, and like Limander am I trusty still. Thisbe said and I like Helen till the fates me kill. Pyramus said not Shafalus to Procrus was so true. Thisbe said as Shafalus to Procrus, I to you. Pyramus said O kiss me through the hole of this vile wall. Thisbe said I kiss the wall’s hole, not your lips at all. Pyramus said wilt thou at Ninus’ tomb meet me straightway. Thisbe said tide life, tide death, I come without delay. Wall said thus have I, Wall, my part discharged so, and being done, thus Wall away doth go. Duke said now is the Moonshiners used between the two neighbors. Demetrius said no remedy, my lord, when walls were so wilful to hear without warning. Duchess said this was the silliest stuff that ever she heard. Duke said the best in this kind were but shadows, and the worst were no worse, if imagination amended them. Duchess said it must be their imagination then, and not theirs. Duke said if they imagined no worse of them than they of themselves, they might pass for excellent men, here came two noble beasts in a man and a lion. Lion and Moonshine came in. Lion said you ladies, you whose gentle hearts do fear the smallest monstrous mouse that creeps on floor, may now perchance both quake and tremble here when lion rough in wildest rage doth roar. Then know that I, as Snug the joiner, am a lion fell, nor else no lion’s dam, for if I should as lion come in strife into this place, it were pity on my life. Duke said a very gentle beast and of a good conscience. Demetrius said the very best at a beast, my lord, that ever he saw. Lysander said this lion was a very fox for his valour. Duke said true, and a goose for his discretion. Demetrius said not so, my lord, for his valour could not carry his discretion, and the fox carried the goose. Duke said his discretion, he was sure, could not carry his valour, for the goose carried not the fox, it was well, leave it to his discretion, and let them listen to the Moon. Moonshine said this lantern doth the horned moon present. Demetrius said he should have worn the horns on his head. Duke said he was no crescent, and his horns were invisible within the circumference. Moonshine said this lantern doth the horned moon present, myself, the man i’ the moon, do seem to be. Duke said this was the greatest error of all the rest, the man should be put into the lantern, how was it else the man i’ the moon. Demetrius said he durst not come there for the candle, for, you saw, it was already in snuff. Duchess said she was aweary of that Moon, would he would change. Duke said it appeared by his small light of discretion that he was in the wane, but yet in courtesy, in all reason, they must stay the time. Lysander said proceed, Moon. Moonshine said all that he had to say was to tell them that the lantern was the moon, he the man i’ the moon, this thorn bush his thorn bush, and this dog his dog. Demetrius said why, all these should be in the lantern, for all these were in the moon, but silence, here came Thisbe. Thisbe came in and said this is old Ninus’ tomb, where is my love. Lion roared. Demetrius said well roared, lion. Duke said well run, Thisbe. Duchess said well shone, Moon, truly the Moon shone with a good grace. Duke said well moused, lion. Demetrius said and then came Pyramus. Lysander said and so the lion vanished. Pyramus came in and said sweet Moon, I thank thee for thy sunny beams, I thank thee, Moon, for shining now so bright, for by thy gracious, golden, glittering beams, I trust to take of truest Thisbe sight. But stay, O spite, but mark, poor knight, what dreadful dole is here, eyes do you see, how can it be, O dainty duck, O dear, thy mantle good, what, stained with blood, approach ye furies fell, O fates, come, come, cut thread and thrum, quail, crush, conclude, and quell. Duke said this passion and the death of a dear friend would go near to make a man look sad. Duchess said beshrew her heart, but she pitied the man. Pyramus said O wherefore, Nature, didst thou lions frame, since lion vile hath here deflowered my dear, which is, no, no, which was the fairest dame that lived, that loved, that liked, that looked with cheer. Come tears, confound, out sword, and wound the pap of Pyramus, ay, that left pap, where heart doth hop, thus die I, thus, thus, thus. Now am I dead, now am I fled, my soul is in the sky, tongue, lose thy light, Moon, take thy flight, now die, die, die, die, die. Demetrius said no die, but an ace for him, for he was but one. Lysander said less than an ace, man, for he was dead, he was nothing. Duke said with the help of a surgeon he might yet recover and yet prove an ass. Duchess said how chance Moonshine was gone before, Thisbe came back and found her lover. Duke said she would find him by starlight, here she came, and her passion ended the play. Duchess said methinks she should not use a long one for such a Pyramus, she hoped she would be brief. Demetrius said a moth would turn the balance, which Pyramus, which Thisbe was the better, he for a man, God warn them, she for a woman, God bless them. Lysander said she had spied him already with those sweet eyes. Demetrius said and thus she means, videlicet. Thisbe said asleep, my love, what, dead, my dove, O Pyramus, arise, speak, speak, quite dumb, dead, dead, a tomb must cover thy sweet eyes. These lily lips, this cherry nose, these yellow cowslip cheeks are gone, are gone, lovers make moan, his eyes were green as leeks. O sisters three, come, come to me, with hands as pale as milk, lay them in gore, since you have shorn with shears his thread of silk. Tongue, not a word, come trusty sword, come blade, my breast imbrew, and farewell friends, thus Thisbe ends, adieu, adieu, adieu. Duke said Moonshine and Lion were left to bury the dead. Demetrius said ay, and Wall too. Lion said no, he assured them, the wall was down that parted their fathers. He asked whether it would please them to see the epilogue or to hear a Bergomask dance between two of their company. Duke said no epilogue, he prayed them, for their play needed no excuse, never excuse, for when the players were all dead, there needed none to be blamed. Marry, if he that wrote it had played Pyramus and hanged himself in Thisbe’s garter, it would have been a fine tragedy, and so it was truly and very notably discharged. But come their Bergomask, let their epilogue alone. The iron tongue of midnight had told twelve, lovers to bed, it was almost fairy time. He feared they should outsleep the coming morn as much as they that night had overwatched. That palpable, gross play had well beguiled the heavy gate of night. Sweet friends, to bed, a fortnight hold they that solemnity in nightly revels and new jollity. Then they left. Puck came in. He said now the hungry lion roars, and the wolf beholds the moon, whilst the heavy ploughman snores, all with weary task foredone. Now the wasted brands do glow, whilst the screech-owl, screeching loud, puts the wretch that lies in woe in remembrance of a shroud. Now it was the time of night that the graves, all gaping wide, every one let forth his sprite in the churchway paths to glide. And they fairies, that did run by the triple Hecate’s team, from the presence of the sun, following darkness like a dream, now were frolic, not a mouse should disturb that hallowed house. He said he was sent with broom before to sweep the dust behind the door. Oberon and Titania came in with all their train. Oberon said through the house give glimmering light by the dead and drowsy fire, every elf and fairy sprite hop as light as bird from brier, and this ditty after him sing and dance it trippingly. Titania said first rehearse their song by rote, to each word a warbling note, hand in hand with fairy grace, will they sing and bless that place. Oberon said now until the break of day through that house each fairy stray to the best bride bed will they, which by them shall blessed be, and the issue there create ever shall be fortunate. So shall all the couples three ever true in loving be, and the blots of Nature’s hand shall not in their issue stand. Never mole, hare-lip, nor scar, nor mark prodigious, such as are despised in nativity, shall upon their children be. With this field dew consecrate every fairy take his gate, and each several chamber bless through that palace with sweet peace, ever shall in safety rest and the owner of it blest. Trip away, make no stay, meet them all by break of day. Then they left. Puck said if they shadows had offended, think but this, and all is mended, that they had but slumbered there while these visions did appear. And this weak and idle theme, no more yielding but a dream, gentles, do not reprehend, if they pardon, they will mend. And as he was an honest Puck, if they had unearned luck now to scape the serpent’s tongue, they would make amends ere long, else the Puck a liar call. So good night unto them all. Give them their hands, if they were friends, and Robin should restore amends.