fiction and short story

[*زهره*]

HOW MUCH LAND DOES A MAN NEED? by Leo Tolstoy

HOW MUCH LAND DOES A MAN NEED? by Leo Tolstoy

IV
As soon as Pahóm and his family arrived at their new abode, he applied for admission into the Commune of a large village. He stood treat to the Elders, and obtained the necessary documents. Five shares of Communal land were given him for his own and his sons' use: that is to say -- 125 acres (not all together but in different fields) besides the use of the Communal pasture. Pahóm put up the buildings he needed, and bought cattle. Of the Communal land alone he had three times as much as at his former home, and the land was good corn-land. He was ten times better off than he had been. He had plenty of arable land and pasturage, and could keep as many head of cattle as he liked.
At first, in the bustle of building and settling down, Pahóm was pleased with it all, but when he got used to it he began to think that even here he had not enough land. The first year, he sowed wheat on his share of the Communal land, and had a good crop. He wanted to go on sowing wheat, but had not enough Communal land for the purpose, and what he had already used was not available; for in those parts wheat is only sown on virgin soil or on fallow land. It is sown for one or two years, and then the land lies fallow till it is again overgrown with prairie grass. There were many who wanted such land, and there was not enough for all; so that people quarrelled about it. Those who were better off, wanted it for growing wheat, and those who were poor, wanted it to let to dealers, so that they might raise money to pay their taxes. Pahóm wanted to sow more wheat; so he rented land from a dealer for a year. He sowed much wheat and had a fine crop, but the land was too far from the village -- the wheat had to be carted more than ten miles. After a time Pahóm noticed that some peasant-dealers were living on separate farms, and were growing wealthy; and he thought:
'If I were to buy some freehold land, and have a homestead on it, it would be a different thing altogether. Then it would all be nice and compact.'
The question of buying freehold land recurred to him again and again.
He went on in the same way for three years: renting land and sowing wheat. The seasons turned out well and the crops were good, so that he began to lay money by. He might have gone on living contentedly, but he grew tired of having to rent other people's land every year, and having to scramble for it. Wherever there was good land to be had, the peasants would rush for it and it was taken up at once, so that unless you were sharp about it you got none. It happened in the third year that he and a dealer together rented a piece of pasture land from some peasants; and they had already ploughed it up, when there was some dispute, and the peasants went to law about it, and things fell out so that the labour was all lost.
'If it were my own land,' thought Pahóm, 'I should be independent, and there would not be all this unpleasantness.'
So Pahóm began looking out for land which he could buy; and he came across a peasant who had bought thirteen hundred acres, but having got into difficulties was willing to sell again cheap. Pahóm bargained and haggled with him, and at last they settled the price at 1,500 roubles, part in cash and part to be paid later. They had all but clinched the matter, when a passing dealer happened to stop at Pahóm's one day to get a feed for his horses. He drank tea with Pahóm, and they had a talk. The dealer said that he was just returning from the land of the Bashkírs, far away, where he had bought thirteen thousand acres of land, all for 1,000 roubles. Pahóm questioned him further, and the tradesman said:
'All one need do is to make friends with the chiefs. I gave away about one hundred roubles, worth of dressing-gowns and carpets, besides a case of tea, and I gave wine to those who would drink it; and I got the land for less than twopence an acre3. And he showed Pahóm the title-deeds, saying:
'The land lies near a river, and the whole prairie is virgin soil.'
Pahóm plied him with questions, and the tradesman said:
'There is more land there than you could cover if you walked a year, and it all belongs to the Bashkírs. They are as simple as sheep, and land can be got almost for nothing.'
'There now,' thought Pahóm, 'with my one thousand roubles, why should I get only thirteen hundred acres, and saddle myself with a debt besides. If I take it out there, I can get more than ten times as much for the money.'
Pahóm inquired how to get to the place, and as soon as the tradesman had left him, he prepared to go there himself. He left his wife to look after the homestead, and started on his journey taking his man with him. They stopped at a town on their way, and bought a case of tea, some wine, and other presents, as the tradesman had advised. On and on they went until they had gone more than three hundred miles, and on the seventh day they came to a place where the Bashkírs had pitched their tents. It was all just as the tradesman had said. The people lived on the steppes, by a river, in felt-covered tents4. They neither tilled the ground, nor ate bread. Their cattle and horses grazed in herds on the steppe. The colts were tethered behind the tents, and the mares were driven to them twice a day. The mares were milked, and from the milk kumiss was made. It was the women who prepared kumiss, and they also made cheese. As far as the men were concerned, drinking kumiss and tea, eating mutton, and playing on their pipes, was all they cared about. They were all stout and merry, and all the summer long they never thought of doing any work. They were quite ignorant, and knew no Russian, but were good-natured enough.
As soon as they saw Pahóm, they came out of their tents and gathered round their visitor. An interpreter was found, and Pahóm told them he had come about some land. The Bashkírs seemed very glad they took Pahóm and led him into one of the best tents, where they made him sit on some down cushions placed on a carpet, while they sat round him. They gave him tea and kumiss, and had a sheep killed, and gave him mutton to eat. Pahóm took presents out of his cart and distributed them among the Bashkírs, and divided amongst them the tea. The Bashkírs were delighted. They talked a great deal among themselves, and then told the interpreter to translate.
'They wish to tell you,' said the interpreter, 'that they like you, and that it is our custom to do all we can to please a guest and to repay him for his gifts. You have given us presents, now tell us which of the things we possess please you best, that we may present them to you.'
'What pleases me best here,' answered Pahóm 'is your land. Our land is crowded, and the soil is exhausted; but you have plenty of land and it is good land. I never saw the like of it.'
The interpreter translated. The Bashkírs talked among themselves for a while. Pahóm could not understand what they were saying, but saw that they were much amused, and that they shouted and laughed. Then they were silent and looked at Pahóm while the interpreter said:
'They wish me to tell you that in return for your presents they will gladly give you as much land as you want. You have only to point it out with your hand and it is yours.'
The Bashkírs talked again for a while and began to dispute. Pahóm asked what they were disputing about, and the interpreter told him that some of them thought they ought to ask their Chief about the land and not act in his absence, while others thought there was no need to wait for his return.
VI
While the Bashkírs were disputing, a man in a large fox-fur cap appeared on the scene. They all became silent and rose to their feet. The interpreter said, 'This is our Chief himself.'
Pahóm immediately fetched the best dressing-gown and five pounds of tea, and offered these to the Chief. The Chief accepted them, and seated himself in the place of honour. The Bashkírs at once began telling him something. The Chief listened for a while, then made a sign with his head for them to be silent, and addressing himself to Pahóm, said in Russian:
'Well, let it be so. Choose whatever piece of land you like; we have plenty of it.'
'How can I take as much as I like?' thought Pahóm. 'I must get a deed to make it secure, or else they may say, "It is yours," and afterwards may take it away again.'
'Thank you for your kind words,' he said aloud. 'You have much land, and I only want a little. But I should like to be sure which bit is mine. Could it not be measured and made over to me? Life and death are in God's hands. You good people give it to me, but your children might wish to take it away again.'
'You are quite right,' said the Chief. 'We will make it over to you.'
'I heard that a dealer had been here,' continued Pahóm, 'and that you gave him a little land, too, and signed title-deeds to that effect. I should like to have it done in the same way.'
The Chief understood.
'Yes,' replied he, 'that can be done quite easily. We have a scribe, and we will go to town with you and have the deed properly sealed.'
'And what will be the price?' asked Pahóm.
'Our price is always the same: one thousand roubles a day.'
Pahóm did not understand.
'A day? What measure is that? How many acres would that be?'
'We do not know how to reckon it out,' said the Chief. 'We sell it by the day. As much as you can go round on your feet in a day is yours, and the price is one thousand roubles a day.'
Pahóm was surprised.
'But in a day you can get round a large tract of land,' he said.
The Chief laughed.
'It will all be yours!' said he. 'But there is one condition: If you don't return on the same day to the spot whence you started, your money is lost.'
'But how am I to mark the way that I have gone?'
'Why, we shall go to any spot you like, and stay there. You must start from that spot and make your round, taking a spade with you. Wherever you think necessary, make a mark. At every turning, dig a hole and pile up the turf; then afterwards we will go round with a plough from hole to hole. You may make as large a circuit as you please, but before the sun sets you must return to the place you started from. All the land you cover will be yours.'
Pahóm was delighted. It was decided to start early next morning. They talked a while, and after drinking some more kumiss and eating some more mutton, they had tea again, and then the night came on. They gave Pahóm a feather-bed to sleep on, and the Bashkírs dispersed for the night, promising to assemble the next morning at daybreak and ride out before sunrise to the appointed spot.​

 

[*زهره*]

HOW MUCH LAND DOES A MAN NEED? by Leo Tolstoy

HOW MUCH LAND DOES A MAN NEED? by Leo Tolstoy

VII​

Pahóm lay on the feather-bed, but could not sleep. He kept thinking about the land.​

'What a large tract I will mark off!' thought he. 'I can easily do thirty-five miles in a day. The days are long now, and within a circuit of thirty-five miles what a lot of land there will be! I will sell the poorer land, or let it to peasants, but I'll pick out the best and farm it. I will buy two ox-teams, and hire two more labourers. About a hundred and fifty acres shall be plough-land, and I will pasture cattle on the rest.'​

Pahóm lay awake all night, and dozed off only just before dawn. Hardly were his eyes closed when he had a dream. He thought he was lying in that same tent, and heard somebody chuckling outside. He wondered who it could be, and rose and went out and he saw the Bashkír Chief sitting in front of the tent holding his sides and rolling about with laughter. Going nearer to the Chief, Pahóm asked: 'What are you laughing at?' But he saw that it was no longer the Chief, but the dealer who had recently stopped at his house and had told him about the land. Just as Pahóm was going to ask, 'Have you been here long?' he saw that it was not the dealer, but the peasant who had come up from the Volga, long ago, to Pahóm's old home. Then he saw that it was not the peasant either, but the Devil himself with hoofs and horns sitting there and chuckling, and before him lay a man barefoot, prostrate on the ground, with only trousers and a shirt on. And Pahóm dreamt that he looked more attentively to see what sort of a man it was that was lying there, and he saw that the man was dead and that it was himself! He awoke horror-struck.​

'What things one does dream,' thought he.​

Looking round he saw through the open door that the dawn was breaking.​

'It's time to wake them up,' thought he. 'We ought to be starting.'​

He got up, roused his man (who was sleeping in his cart), bade him harness; and went to call the Bashkírs.​

'It's time to go to the steppe to measure the land,' he said.​

The Bashkírs rose and assembled, and the Chief came too. Then they began drinking kumiss again, and offered Pahóm some tea, but he would not wait.​

'If we are to go, let us go. It is high time,' said he.​

VIII​

The Bashkírs got ready and they all started: some mounted on horses, and some in carts. Pahóm drove in his own small cart with his servant, and took a spade with him. When they reached the steppe, the morning red was beginning to kindle. They ascended a hillock (called by the Bashkírs a shikhan) and dismounting from their carts and their horses, gathered in one spot. The Chief came up to Pahóm and stretching out his arm towards the plain:​

'See,' said he, 'all this, as far as your eye can reach, is ours. You may have any part of it you like.'​

Pahóm's eyes glistened: it was all virgin soil, as flat as the palm of your hand, as black as the seed of a poppy, and in the hollows different kinds of grasses grew breast high.​

The Chief took off his fox-fur cap, placed it on the ground and said:​

'This will be the mark. Start from here, and return here again. All the land you go round shall be yours.'​

Pahóm took out his money and put it on the cap. Then he took off his outer coat, remaining in his sleeveless under-coat. He unfastened his girdle and tied it tight below his stomach, put a little bag of bread into the breast of his coat, and tying a flask of water to his girdle, he drew up the tops of his boots, took the spade from his man, and stood ready to start. He considered for some moments which way he had better go -- it was tempting everywhere.​

'No matter,' he concluded, 'I will go towards the rising sun.'​

He turned his face to the east, stretched himself and waited for the sun to appear above the rim.​

'I must lose no time,' he thought, 'and it is easier walking while it is still cool.'​

The sun's rays had hardly flashed above the horizon, before Pahóm, carrying the spade over his shoulder went down into the steppe.​

Pahóm started walking neither slowly nor quickly. After having gone a thousand yards he stopped, dug a hole, and placed pieces of turf one on another to make it more visible. Then he went on; and now that he had walked off his stiffness he quickened his pace. After a while he dug another hole.​

Pahóm looked back. The hillock could be distinctly seen in the sunlight, with the people on it, and the glittering tyres of the cart-wheels. At a rough guess Pahóm concluded that he had walked three miles. It was growing warmer; he took off his under-coat, flung it across his shoulder, and went on again. It had grown quite warm now; he looked at the sun, it was time to think of breakfast.​

'The first shift is done, but there are four in a day, and it is too soon yet to turn. But I will just take off my boots,' said he to himself.​

He sat down, took off his boots, stuck them into his girdle, and went on. It was easy walking now.​

'I will go on for another three miles,' thought he, 'and then turn to the left. This spot is so fine, that it would be a pity to lose it. The further one goes, the better the land seems.'​

He went straight on for a while, and when he looked round, the hillock was scarcely visible and the people on it looked like black ants, and he could just see something glistening there in the sun.​

'Ah,' thought Pahóm, 'I have gone far enough in this direction, it is time to turn. Besides I am in a regular sweat, and very thirsty.'​

He stopped, dug a large hole, and heaped up pieces of turf. Next he untied his flask, had a drink, and then turned sharply to the left. He went on and on; the grass was high, and it was very hot.​

Pahóm began to grow tired: he looked at the sun and saw that it was noon.​

'Well,' he thought, 'I must have a rest.'​

He sat down, and ate some bread and drank some water; but he did not lie down, thinking that if he did he might fall asleep. After sitting a little while, he went on again. At first he walked easily: the food had strengthened him; but it had become terribly hot, and he felt sleepy; still he went on, thinking: 'An hour to suffer, a life-time to live.'​

He went a long way in this direction also, and was about to turn to the left again, when he perceived a damp hollow: 'It would be a pity to leave that out,' he thought. 'Flax would do well there.' So he went on past the hollow, and dug a hole on the other side of it before he turned the corner. Pahóm looked towards the hillock. The heat made the air hazy: it seemed to be quivering, and through the haze the people on the hillock could scarcely be seen.​

'Ah!' thought Pahóm, 'I have made the sides too long; I must make this one shorter.' And he went along the third side stepping faster. He looked at the sun: it was nearly half way to the horizon, and he had not yet done two miles of the third side of the square. He was still ten miles from the goal.​

'No,' he thought, 'though it will make my land lop-sided, I must hurry back in a straight line now. I might go too far, and as it is I have a great deal of land.'​

So Pahóm hurriedly dug a hole, and turned straight towards the hillock.​

IX​

Pahóm went straight towards the hillock, but he now walked with difficulty. He was done up with the heat, his bare feet were cut and bruised, and his legs began to fail. He longed to rest, but it was impossible if he meant to get back before sunset. The sun waits for no man, and it was sinking lower and lower.​

'Oh dear,' he thought, 'if only I have not blundered trying for too much! What if I am too late?'​

He looked towards the hillock and at the sun. He was still far from his goal, and the sun was already near the rim​

Pahóm walked on and on; it was very hard walking, but he went quicker and quicker. He pressed on, but was still far from the place. He began running, threw away his coat, his boots, his flask, and his cap, and kept only the spade which he used as a support.​

'What shall I do,' he thought again, 'I have grasped too much, and ruined the whole affair. I can't get there before the sun sets.'​

And this fear made him still more breathless. Pahóm went on running, his soaking shirt and trousers stuck to him, and his mouth was parched. His breast was working like a blacksmith's bellows, his heart was beating like a hammer, and his legs were giving way as if they did not belong to him. Pahóm was seized with terror lest he should die of the strain.​

Though afraid of death, he could not stop. 'After having run all that way they will call me a fool if I stop now,' thought he. And he ran on and on, and drew near and heard the Bashkírs yelling and shouting to him, and their cries inflamed his heart still more. He gathered his last strength and ran on.​

The sun was close to the rim, and cloaked in mist looked large, and red as blood. Now, yes now, it was about to set! The sun was quite low, but he was also quite near his aim. Pahóm could already see the people on the hillock waving their arms to hurry him up. He could see the fox-fur cap on the ground, and the money on it, and the Chief sitting on the ground holding his sides. And Pahóm remembered his dream.​

'There is plenty of land,' thought he, 'but will God let me live on it? I have lost my life, I have lost my life! I shall never reach that spot!'​

Pahóm looked at the sun, which had reached the earth: one side of it had already disappeared. With all his remaining strength he rushed on, bending his body forward so that his legs could hardly follow fast enough to keep him from falling. Just as he reached the hillock it suddenly grew dark. He looked up -- the sun had already set! He gave a cry: 'All my labour has been in vain,' thought he, and was about to stop, but he heard the Bashkírs still shouting, and remembered that though to him, from below, the sun seemed to have set, they on the hillock could still see it. He took a long breath and ran up the hillock. It was still light there. He reached the top and saw the cap. Before it sat the Chief laughing and holding his sides. Again Pahóm remembered his dream, and he uttered a cry: his legs gave way beneath him, he fell forward and reached the cap with his hands.​

'Ah, that's a fine fellow!' exclaimed the Chief 'He has gained much land!'​

Pahóm's servant came running up and tried to raise him, but he saw that blood was flogging from his mouth. Pahóm was dead!​

The Bashkírs clicked their tongues to show their pity.​

His servant picked up the spade and dug a grave long enough for Pahóm to he in, and buried him in it. Six feet from his head to his heels was all he needed​

 

[*زهره*]

Humiliation BY GUY de MAUPASSANT

Humiliation BY GUY de MAUPASSANT

THE TWO YOUNG WOMEN had the appearance of being buried in a bed of flowers. They were alone in an immense landau filled with bouquets like a giant basket. Upon the seat before them were two small hampers full of Nice violets, and upon the bearskin which covered their knees was a heap of roses, gillyflowers, marguerites, tuberoses and orange flowers, bound together with silk ribbons, which seemed to crush the two delicate bodies, only allowing to appear above the spread-out, perfumed bed the shoulders, arms and a little of their bodices, one of which was blue and the other lilac.

The coachman's whip bore a sheath of anemones; the horses' heads were decorated with wallflowers; the spokes of the wheels were clothed in mignonette, and in place of lanterns, there were two round, enormous bouquets, which seemed like the two eyes of this strange, rolling, flowery beast.

The landau went along Antibes Street at a brisk trot, preceded, followed and accompanied by a crowd of other garlanded carriages full of women concealed under a billow of violets. For it was the Flower Festival at Cannes

They arrived at the Fonciere Boulevard where the battle took place. The whole length of the immense avenue, a double line of bedecked equipages was going and coming, like a ribbon without end. They threw flowers from one to the other. Flowers passed in the air like balls, hit the fair faces, hovered and fell in the dust where an army of street urchins gathered them.

A compact crowd, clamorous but orderly' looked on, standing in rows upon the sidewalks and held in place by policemen on horseback who passed along, pushing back the curious brutally with their feet, in order that the villains might not mingle with the rich.

Now the people in the carriages recognized each other, called to each other and bombarded one another with roses. A chariot full of pretty young women, clothed in red like devils, attracted and held all eyes. One gentleman who resembled the portraits of Henry IV, threw repeatedly, with joyous ardor, a huge bouquet retained by an elastic. At the threat of the blow the women lowered their heads and hid their eyes, but the gracious projectile only described a curve and again returned to its master, who immediately threw it again to a new face.

The two young women emptied their arsenal with full hands and received a shower of bouquets; then after an hour of battle, a little wearied at the last, they ordered the coachman to take the road to the Juan Gulf, which skirts the sea.

The sun disappeared behind the Esterel, outlining in black upon a background of fire the lacy silhouette of the stretched-out mountain. The calm sea was spread out blue and clear as far as the horizon, where it mingled with the sky and with the squadron anchored in the middle of the gulf, having the appearance of a troop of monstrous beasts, unmovable upon the water, apocalyptic animals, humpbacked and clothed in coats of mail, capped with thin masts like plumes and with eyes that lighted up when night came on.

The young women, stretched out under the fur robe, looked upon it languidly. Finally one of them said:

"How delicious these evenings are! Everything seems good. Is it not so, Margot?"

The other replied: "Yes, it is good. But there is always something, lacking."

What is it? For my part, I am completely happy. I have need of nothing."

"Yes? You think so, perhaps. But whatever well-being surrounds our bodies, we always desire something more--for the heart."

Said the other, smiling: "A little love?"

"Yes."

They were silent, looking straight before them; then the one called Marguerite said: "Life does not seem supportable to me without that. I need to be loved, if only by a dog. And we are all so, whatever you may say, Simone."

"No, no, my dear. I prefer not to be loved at all than to be loved by no one of importance. Do you think, for example, that it would be agreeable to me to be loved by--by---"

She looked for someone by whom she could possibly be loved, casting her eyes over the neighboring country. Her eyes, after having made the tour of the whole horizon, fell upon the two metal buttons shining on the coachman's back, and she continued, laughing, "By my coachman?"

Mlle Marguerite scarcely smiled as she replied:

"I can assure you it is very amusing to be loved by a domestic. This has happened to me two or three times. They roll their eyes so queerly that one is dying to laugh. Naturally, the more one is loved, the more severe she becomes, since otherwise, one puts herself in the way of being made ridiculous for some very slight cause, if anyone happened to observe it."

Mlle Simone listened, her look fixed straight before her; then she declared:

"No, decidedly, the heart of my valet at my feet would not appear to me sufficient. But tell me how you perceived that you were loved."

"I perceived it in them as I do in other men; they become so stupid!"

"But others do not appear so stupid to me when they are in love."

"Idiots, my dear, incapable of chatting, of answering, of comprehending anything."

"And you? What effect did it have on you to be loved by a domestic? Were you moved--flattered?"

"Moved? No. Flattered? Yes, a little. One is always flattered by the love of a man, whoever he may be."

"Oh, now, Margot!"

"Yes, my dear. Wait! I will tell you a singular adventure that happened to me. You will see what curious things take place among us in such cases.

"It was four years ago in the autumn, when I found myself without a maid. I had tried five or six, one after the other, all of them incompetent, and almost despaired of finding one, when I read in the advertisements of a newspaper of a young girl knowing how to sew, embroider and dress hair, who was seeking a place and could furnish the best of references. She could also speak English.

"I wrote to the address given, and the next day the person in question presented herself. She was rather tall, thin, a little pale, with a very timid air. She had beautiful black eyes, a charming color, and she pleased me at once. I asked for her references; she gave me one written in English, because she had come, she said, from the house of Lady Ryswell, where she had been for ten years.

"The certificate attested that the girl was returning to France of her own will and that she had nothing to reproach her for during her long service with her, except a little of the French coquettishness.

"The modest turn of the English phrase made me smile a little, and I engaged the maid immediately. She came to my house the same day; she called herself Rose.

"At the end of a month I adored her. She was a treasure, a pearl, phenomenon.

"She could dress my hair with exquisite taste; she could flute the lace of a cap better than the best of the professionals, and she could make frocks. I was amazed at her ability. Never had I been so well served.

"She dressed me rapidly with an astonishing lightness of hand. I never felt her fingers upon my skin, and nothing is more disagreeable to me than contact with a maid's hand. I immediately got into excessively idle habits, so pleasant was it to let her dress me from head to foot, from chemise to gloves--this tall, timid girl, always blushing a little and never speaking. After my bath she would rub me and massage me while I slept a little while on my divan; indeed, I came to look upon her more as a friend in poorer circumstances than a servant.

"One morning the concierge, with some show of mystery, said he wished to speak to me. I was surprised but let him enter. He was an old soldier, once orderly for my husband.

"He appeared to hesitate at what he was going to say. Finally he said stammeringly: 'Madame, the police captain for this district is downstairs.'

"I asked: 'What does he want?'

"'He wants to search the house.'

"Certainly the police are necessary, but I do detest them. I never can make it seem a noble profession. And I answered, irritated as well as wounded:

"'Why search here? For what purpose? There has been no burglary?'

He answered:

"'He thinks that a criminal is concealed somewhere here.'

"I began to be a little afraid and ordered the police captain to be brought that I might have some explanation. He was a man rather well brought up and decorated with the Legion of Honor. He excused himself, asked my pardon. then asserted that I had among my servants a convict!

"I was thunderstruck and answered that I could vouch for every one of them and that I would make a review of them for his satisfaction.

"'There is Peter Courtin, an old soldier.'

"It was not he.

"'The coachman, Francis Pingau, a peasant, son of my father's farmer.'

"It was not he.

"'A stableboy, also from Champagne and also a son of peasants I had known, and no more except the footman, whom you have seen.'

"It was not any of them.

"'Then, sir, you see that you have been deceived.'

"'Pardon me, madame, but I am sure I am not deceived. As he has not at all the appearance of a criminal, will you have the goodness to have all your servants appear here before you and me, all of them?'

"I hesitated at first, then I yielded, summoning all my people, men and women.

"He looked at them all for an instant, then declared:

"'This is not all.'

"'Your pardon, sir,' I replied; 'this is all, except my own maid who could not possibly be confounded with a convict.'

"He asked: 'Could I see her too?'

"'Certainly.'

"I rang and Rose appeared immediately. Scarcely had she entered when he gave a signal, and two men, whom I had not seen, concealed behind the door, threw themselves upon her, seized her hands and bound them with cords.

"I uttered a cry of fury and was going to try and defend her. The captain stopped me:

"'This girl, madame, is a man who calls himself John Nicholas Lecapet, condemned to death in 1879 for assassination preceded by violation. His sentence was changed to life imprisonment. He escaped four months ago. We have been on the search for him ever since.'

"I was dismayed, struck dumb. I could not believe it. The policeman continued, laughing:

"'I can only give you one proof. His right arm is tattooed.'

"His sleeve was rolled up. It was true. The policeman added, certainly in bad taste:

"'Doubtless you will be satisfied without the other proofs.'

"And he led away my maid!

"Well, if you will believe it, the feeling which was uppermost in me was that of anger at having been played with in this way, deceived and made ridiculous; it was not shame at having been dressed, undressed, handled and touched by this man, but--a--profound humiliation--the humiliation of a woman. Do you understand?"

"No, not exactly."

"Let us see. Think a minute. He had been condemned--for violation, this young man--and that--that humiliated me--there! Now do you understand?"

And Mlle Simone did not reply. She looked straight before her, with her eyes singularly fixed upon the two shining buttons of the livery and with that sphinx's smile that women have sometimes.
​

 

[*زهره*]

I'M A FOOL by Sherwood Anderson

I'M A FOOL by Sherwood Anderson

It was a hard jolt for me, one of the most bitterest I ever had to face. And it all came about through my own foolishness too [SIZE=-2]. [/SIZE] Even yet sometimes, when I think of it, I want to cry or swear or kick myself Perhaps, even now, after all this time, there will be a kind of satisfaction in making myself look cheap by telling of it.
It began at three o'clock one October afternoon as I sat in the grandstand at the fall trotting and pacing meet at Sandusky, Ohio.
To tell the truth, I felt a little foolish that I should be sitting in the grandstand at all. During the summer before I had left my home town with Harry Whitehead and, with a nigger named Burt, had taken a job as swipe with one of the two horses Harry was campaigning through the fall race meets that year. Mother cried and my sister Mildred, who wanted to get a job as a school teacher in our town that fall, stormed and scolded about the house all during the week before I left. They both thought it something disgraceful that one of our family should take a place as a swipe with race horses. I've an idea Mildred thought my taking the place would stand in the way of her getting the job she'd been working so long for.
But after all I had to work, and there was no other work to be got. A big lumbering fellow of nineteen couldn't just hang around the house and I had got too big to mow people's lawns and sell newspapers. Little chaps who could get next to people's sympa
2
thies by their sizes were always getting jobs away from me. There was one fellow who kept saying to everyone who wanted a lawn mowed or a cistern cleaned, that he was saving money to work his way through college, and I used to lay awake nights thinking up ways to injure him without being found out. I kept thinking of wagons running over him and bricks falling on his head as he walked along the street. But never mind him.
I got the place with Harry and I liked Burt fine. We got along splendid together. He was a big nigger with a lazy sprawling body and soft, kind eyes, and when itcame [SIZE=-2]to [/SIZE]a fight he could hit like Jack Johnson. He had Bucephalus, a big black pacing stallion that could do 2.09 or 2. 10, if he had to, and I had a little gelding named Doctor Fritz that never lost a race all fall when Harry wanted him to win.
We set out from home late in July in a box car with the two horses and after that, until late November, we kept moving along to the race meets and the fairs. It was a peachy time for me, I'll say that. Sometimes now I think that boys who are raised regular in houses, and never have a fine nigger like Burt for best friend, and go to high schools and college, and never steal anything, or get drunk a little, or learn to swear from fellows who know how, or come walking up in front of a grandstand in their shirt sleeves and with dirty horsey pants on when the races are going on and the grandstand is full of people all dressed up--what's the use of talking about it? Such fellows don't know nothing at all. They've never had no opportunity.
But I did. Burt taught me how to rub down a horse and put the bandages on after a race and steam a horse out and a lot of valuable things for any man to know. He could wrap a bandage on a horse's leg so smooth that if it had been the same color you would think it was his skin, and I guess he'd have been a big driver tooand got to the toplike Murphy and Walter Cox and the others if he hadn't been black.
Gee whizz, it was fun. You got to a county seat town, maybe say on a Saturday or Sunday, and the fair began the next Tuesday and lasted until Friday afternoon. Doctor Fritz would be, say in the 2.25 trot on Tuesday afternoon and on Thursday afternoon
3
Bucephalus would knock 'em cold in the "free-for-all" pace. It left you a lot of time [SIZE=-2]to [/SIZE]hang around and listen to horse talk, and see Burt knock some yap cold that got too gay, and you'd find out about horses and men and pick up a lot of stuffyou could use all the rest of your life, if you had some sense and salted down what you heard and felt and saw.
And then at the end of the week when the race meet was over, and Harry had run home to tend up to his livery stable business, you and Burt hitched the [SIZE=-2]two [/SIZE]horses to carts and drove slow and steady across country to the place for the next meeting, so as to not over-heat the horses, etc., etc., you know.
Gee whizz, gosh amighty, the nice hickorynut and beechnut and oaks and other kinds of trees along the roads, all brown and red, and the good smells, and Burt singing a song that was called Deep River, and the country girls at the windows of houses and everything. You can stick your colleges up your nose for all me. I guess I know where I got my education.
Why, one of those little burgs of towns you come to on the way, say now on a Saturday afternoon, and Burt says, "Let's lay up here." And you did.
And you took the horses to a livery stable and fed them, and you got your good clothes out of a box and put them on.
And the town was full of farmers gaping, because they could see you were race horse people, and the kids maybe never see a nigger before and was afraid and run away when the [SIZE=-2]two [/SIZE]of us walked down their main street.
And that was before prohibition and all that foolishness, and so you went into a saloon, the [SIZE=-2]two [/SIZE]of you, and all the yaps come and stood around, and there was always someone pretended he was horsey and knew things and spoke up and began asking questions, and all you did was to lie and lie all you could about what horses you had, and I said I owned them, and then some fellow said "will you have a drink of whiskey" and Burt knocked his eye out the way he could say, offhand like, "Oh well, all right, I'm agreeable to a little nip. I'll split a quart with you." Gee whizz.
4
But that isn't what I want to tell my story about. We got home late in November and I promised mother I'd quit the race horses for good. There's a lot of things you've got to promise a mother because she don't know any better.
And so, there not being any work in our town any more than when I left there to go to the races, I went off to Sandusky and got a pretty good place taking care of horses for a man who owned a teaming and delivery and storage and coal and real estate business there. It was a pretty good place with good eats, and a day off each week, and sleeping on a cot in a big barn, and mostly just shovelling in hay and oats to a lot of big good-enough skates of horses, that couldn't have trotted a race with a toad. I wasn't dissatisfied and I could send money home.
And then, as I started to tell you, the fall races come to Sandusky and I got the day offend I went. I left the job at noon and had on my good clothes and my new brown derby hat, I'd just bought the Saturday before, and a stand-up collar.
First of all I went downtown and walked about with the dudes. I've always thought to myself, "Put up a good front" and so I did it. I had forty dollars in my pocket and so I went into the West House, a big hotel, and walked up to the cigar stand. "Give me three twenty-five cent cigars, " I said. There was a lot of horsemen and strangers and dressed-up people from other towns standing around in the lobby and in the bar, and I mingled amongst them In the bar there was a fellow with a cane and a Windsor tie on t hat it made me sick to look at him. I like a man to be a man and dress up, but not to
5
please and looking down on the swipes coming out with their horses, and with their dirty horsey pants on and the horse blankets swung over their shoulders, same as I had been doing all the year before. I liked one thing about the same as the other, sitting up there and feeling grand and being down there and looking up at the yaps and feeling grander and more important too. One thing's about as good as another, if you take it just right. I've often said that.
Well, right in front of me, in the grandstand that day, there was a fellow with a couple of girls and they was about my age. The young fellow was a nice guy all right. He was the kind maybe that goes to college and then comes to be a lawyer or maybe a newspaper editor or something like that, but he wasn't stuck on himself. There are some of that kind are all right and he was one of the ones.
He had his sister with him and another girl and the sister looked around over his shoulder, accidental at first, not intending to start anything--she wasn't that kind--and her eyes and mine happened to meet.
You know how [SIZE=-2]it [/SIZE]is. Gee, she was a peach! She had on a soft dress, kind of a blue stuff and it looked carelessly made, but was well sewed and made and everything. I knew that much. I blushed when she looked right at me and so did she. She was the nicest girl I've ever seen in my life. She wasn't stuck on herself and she could talk proper grammar without being like a school teacher or something like that. What I mean is, she was O.K. I think maybe her father was well-to-do, but not rich to make her chesty because she was his daughter, as some are. Maybe he owned a drug store or a drygoods store in their home town, or something like that She never told me and I never asked.
My own people are all O.K. too when you come to that. My grandfather was Welsh and over in the old country, in Wales h was--but never mind that.
The first heat of the first race come off and the young fellow setting there with the two girls left them and went down to make
6
a bet. I knew what he was up to, but he didn't talk big and noisy and let everyone around know he was a sport as some do. He wasn't that kind. Well, he come back and I heard him tell the two girls what horse he'd bet on, and when the heat was trotted they all halfgot to their feet and acted in the excited, sweaty way people do when they've got money down on a race, and the horse they bet on is up there pretty close at the end, and they think maybe he'll come on with a rush, but he never does because he hasn't got the old juice in him, come right down to it.
And then, pretty soon, the horses came out for the 2.18 pace and there was a horse in it I knew. He was a horse Bob French had in his string but Bob didn't own him. He was a horse owned by a Mr. Mathers down at Marietta, Ohio.
This Mr. Mathers had a lot of money and owned some coal mines or something, and he had a swell place out in the country, and he was stuck on race horses, but was a Presbyterian or something, and I think more than likely his wife was one too, maybe a stiffer one than himself. So he never raced his horses hisself, and the story round the Ohio race tracks was that when one of his horses got ready to go to the races he turned him over to Bob French and pretended to his wife he was sold.
So Bob had the horses and he did pretty much as he pleased and you can't blame Bob, at least I never did. Sometimes he was out to win and sometimes he wasn't. I never cared much about that when I was swiping a horse. What I did want to know was that my horse had the speed and could go [SIZE=-2]out [/SIZE]in front if you wanted him to.
- And, as I'm telling you, there was Bob in this race with one of Mr. Mathers' horses, was named About Ben Ahem or something like that, and was fast as a streak. He was a gelding and had a mark of 2.21, but could step in .08 or .09.
Because when Burt and I were out, as I've told you, the year before, there was a nigger Burt knew, worked for Mr. Mathers, and we went out there one day when we didn't have no race on at the Marietta Fair and our boss Harry was gone home.
And so everyone was gone to the fair but just this one nigger​

 

[*زهره*]

I'M A FOOL by Sherwood Anderson

I'M A FOOL by Sherwood Anderson

7
and he took us all through Mr. Mathers' swell house and he and Burt tapped a bottle of wine Mr. Mathers had hid in his bedroom, back in a doset, without his wife knowing, and he showed us this Ahem horse. Burt was always stuck on being a driver but didn't have much chance to get to the top, being a rigger, and he and the other nigger gulped that whole bottle of wine and Burt got a little lit up.
So the nigger let Burt take this About Ben Ahem and step him a mile in a track Mr. Mathers had all to himself, right there on the farm. And Mr. Mathers had one child, a daughter, Linda sick and not very good looking, and she came home and we had to hustle and get About Ben Ahem stuck back in the barn.
I'm only telling you to get everything straight. At Sandusky, that afternoon I was at the fair, this young fellow with the two girls was fussed, being with the girls and losing his bet. You know how a fellow is that way. One of them was his girl and the other his sister. I had figured that out.
"Gee whizz," I says to myself, "I'm going to give him the dope."
He was mighty nice when I touched him on the shoulder. He and the girls were nice to me right from the start and clear to the end. I'm not blaming them.
And so he leaned back and I give him the dope on About Ben Ahem. "Don't bet a cent on this first heat because he'll go like an oxen hitched to a plow, but when the first heat is over go right down and lay on your pile." That's what I told him.
Well, I never saw a fellow treat any one swelter. There was a fat man sitting beside the little girl, that had looked at me twice by this time, and I at her, and both blushing, and what did he do but have the nerve to turn and ask the fat man to get up and change places with me so I could set with his crowd.
Gee whizz, craps amighty. There I was. What a chump I was to go and get gay up there in the West House bar, and just because that dude was standing there with a cane and that kind of a necktie on, to go and get all balled up.and drink that whiskey, just to show off.​

.

8​

Of course she would know, me setting right beside her and letting her smell of my breath. I could have kicked myself right down out of that grandstand and all around that race track and made a faster record than most of the skates of horses they had there that year.​

Because thee girl wasn't any mutt of a girl. What wouldn't I have give right then for a stick of chewing gum to chew, or a lozenger,or some liquorice, or most anything. I was glad I had those twenty-five cent cigars in my pocket and right away I give that fellow one and lit one myself. Then that fat man got up and we changed places and there I was, plunked right down beside her.​

They introduced themselves and the fellow's best girl he had with him was named Miss Elinor Woodbury, and her father was a manufacturer of barrels from a place called Tiffm, Ohio. And the fellow himelf was named Wilbur Wessen and his sister was Miss Lucy Wessen.​

I suppose it was their having such swell names got me off my trolley. A fellow, just because he has been a swipe with a race horse and works taking care of horses for a man in the teaming, delivery, and storage business, isn't any better or worse than anyone else. I've often thought *at, and said it too.​

But you know how a fellow is. There's something in that kind of nice clothes, and the kind of nice eyes she had, and the way she had looked at me, awhile before, over her brother's shoulder, and me looking back at her, and both of us blushing.​

I couldn't show her up for a book, could I?​

I made a fool of myself, that's what I did. I said my name was Walter Mathers from Marietta, Ohio, and then I told all three of them the smashingest lie you ever heard. What I said was that my father owned the horse About Ben Ahem and that he had let him out to this Bob French for racing purposes, because our family was proud and had never gone into racing that way, in our own name, I mean. Then I had got started and they were all leaning over and listening, and Miss Lucy Wessen's eyes were shining, and I went the whole hog.​

9​

I told about our place down at Marietta, and about the big stables and the grand brick house we had on a hill, up above the Ohio River, but I knew enough not to do it in no bragging way. What I did was to start things and then let them drag the rest out of me. I acted just as reluctant to tell as I could. Our family hasn't got any barrel factory, and, since I've known us, we've always been pretty poor, but not asking anything of anyone at that, and my grandfather, over in Wales--but never mind that.​

We set there talking like we had known each other for years and years, and I went and told them that my father had been expecting maybe this Bob French wasn't on the square, and had sent me up to Sandusky on the sly to find out what I could.​

And I bluffed it through I had found out all about the 2.18 pace, in which About Ben Ahem was to start.​

I said he would lose the first heat by pacing like a lame cow and then he would come back and skin 'em alive after that. And to back up what I said I took thirty dollars [SIZE=-2]out [/SIZE]of my pocket and handed it to Mr. Wilbur Wessen and asked him, would he mind, after the first heat, to go down and place it on About Ben Ahem for whatever odds he could get. What I said was that I didn't want Bob French to see me and none of the swipes.​

Sure enough the first heat come off and About Ben Ahem went offhis stride up the back stretch and looked like a wooden horse or a sick one and come in to be last. Then this Wilbur Wessen went down to the betting place under the grandstand and there I was with the [SIZE=-2]two [/SIZE]girls, and when that Miss Woodbury was looking the other way once, Lucy Wessen Linda, with her shoulder you know, Linda touched me. Not just tucking down, I don't mean. You know how a woman can do. They get close, but not getting gay either. You know what they do. Gee whizz.​

And then they give me a jolt. What they had done, when I didn't know, was to get together, and they had decided Wilbur Wessen would bet fifty dollars, and the [SIZE=-2]two [/SIZE]girls had gone and put in ten dollars each, of their own money too. I was sick then, but I was sicker later.​

10​

About the gelding, About Ben Ahem, and their winning their money, I wasn't worried a lot about that. It come out O.K. Ahem stepped the next three heats like a bushel of spoiled eggs going to market before they could be found out, and Wilbur Wessen had got nine to two for the money. There was something else eating et met​

Because Wilbur come back after he had bet the money, and after that he spent most of his time talking to that Miss Woodbury, and Lucy Wessen and I was left alone together like on a desert island. Gee, if I'd only been on the square or if there had been any way of getting myself on the square. There ain't any Walter Mathers, like I said to her and them, and there hasn't ever been one, but if there was, I bet I'd go to Marietta, Ohio, and shoot him tomorrow.​

There I was, big book that I am. Pretty soon the race was over, and Wilbur had gone down and collected our money, and we had a hack downtown, and he stood us a swell supper at the West House, and a bottle of champagne beside.​

And I was with that girl and she wasn't saying much, and I wasn't saying much either. One thing I know. She wasn't stuck on me because of the lie about my father being rich and all that. There's a way you know . . . Craps amighty. There's a kind of girl you see just once in your life, and if you don't get busy and make hay, then you're gone for good and all, and might as well go jump offa bridge. They give you a look from inside of them somewhere, and it ain't no vamping, and what it means is--you want that girl to be your wife, and you want nice things around her like flowers and swell clothes, and you want her to have the kids you're going to have, and you want good music played and no rag time. Gee whizz.​

There's a place over near Sandusky, across a kind of bay, and it's called Cedar Point. And after we had supper we went over to it in a launch, all by ourselves. Wilbur and Miss Lucy and that Miss Woodbury had to catch a ten o'clock train back to Tiffin, Ohio, because, when you're out with girls like that, you can't get careless and miss any trains and stay out all night, like you can​

 

[*زهره*]

I'M A FOOL by Sherwood Anderson

I'M A FOOL by Sherwood Anderson

11​

with some kinds of Janes.​

And Wilbur browed himself to the launch and it [SIZE=-2]CoSt [/SIZE]him fifteen cold plunks, but I wouldn't never have knew if I hadn't listened. He wasn't no tin horn kind of a sport.​

Over at the Cedar Point place, we didn't stay around where there was a gang of common kind of cattle at all.​

There was big dance halls and dining places for yaps, and there was a beach you could walk along and get where it was dark, and we went there.​

She didn't talk hardly at all and neither did I, and I was thinking how glad I was my mother was all right, and always made us kids learn to eat with a fork at table, and not swill soup, and not be noisy and rough like a gang you see around a race track that way.​

Then Wilbur and his girl went away up the beacn ana Quay and I sat down in a dark place, where there was some roots of old trees the water had washed up, and after that the time, till we had to go back in the launch and they had [SIZE=-2]to [/SIZE]catch their trains, wasrit nothing at all. It went like winking your eye.​

Here's how it was. The place we were setting in was dark, like I said, and there was the roots from that old stump sticking up like arms, and there was a watery smell, and the night was like--as if you could put your hand out and feel it--so warm and soft and dark and sweet like an orange.​

I most cried and I most swore and I most jumped up and danced, I was so mad and happy and sad.​

When Wilbur come back from being alone with his girl, and she saw him coming, Lucy she says, "We got to go to the train now," and she was most crying too, but she never knew nothing I knew, and she couldn't be so all busted up. And then, before Wilbur and Miss Woodbury got up to where we was, she put her face up and kissed me quick and put her head up against me and she was all quivering and--gee whizz.​

Sometimes I hope I have cancer and die. I guess you know what I mean. We went in the launch across the bay to the train​

12​

like that, and it was dark too. She whispered and said it was like she and I could get out of the boat and walk on the water, and it sounded foolish, but I knew what she meant.​

And then quick we were right at the depot, and there was a big gang of yaps, the kind that goes to the fairs, and crowded and milling around like cattle, and how could I tell her? "It won't be long because you'll write and I'll write to you." That's all she said.​

I got a chance like a hay barn afire. A swell chance I got.​

And maybe she would write me, down at Marietta that way, and the letter would come back, and stamped on the front of it by the U.S.A. "there ain't any such guy," or something like that, whatever they stamp on a letter that way.​

And me trying to pass myself off for a bighug and a swell--to her, as decent a little body as God ever made. Craps amighty--a swell chance I got!​

And then the train come in, and she got on it, and Wilbur Wessen he come and shook hands with me, and that Miss Woodbury was nice too and bowed to me, and I at her, and the train went and I busted out and cried like a kid.​

Gee, I could have run after that train and made Dan Patch look like a freight train after a wreck but, socks amighty, what was the use? Did you ever see such a fool?​

I'll bet you what--if I had an arm broke right now or a train had run over my foot--I wouldn't go to no doctor at all. I'd go set down and let her hurt and hurt--that's what I'd do.​

I'll bet you what--if I hadn't a drunk that booze I'd a never been such a boob as to go tell such a lie--that couldn't never be made straight to a lady like her.​

I wish I had that fellow right here that had on a Windsor tie and carried a cane. I'd smash him for fair. Gosh darn his eyes. He's a big fool--that's what he is.​

And if I'm not another you just go find me one and I'll quit working and be a bum and give him my job. I don't care nothing for working, and earning money, and saving it for no such boob as myself​

 

[sahar68]

داستان

داستان

​

داستان عاشقانه​

[FONT=&quot]Once a Girl when having a conversation with her lover, asked
Why do you like me..? Why do you love me?
I can't tell the reason... but I really like you
You can't even tell me the reason... how can you say you like me?
How can you say you love me?[/FONT]​

[FONT=&quot]یك بار دختری حین صحبت با پسری كه عاشقش بود، ازش پرسید[/FONT][FONT=&quot]
[/FONT][FONT=&quot]چرا دوستم داری؟ واسه چی عاشقمی؟[/FONT][FONT=&quot]
[/FONT][FONT=&quot]دلیلشو نمیدونم ...اما واقعا"‌دوست دارم[/FONT][FONT=&quot]
[/FONT][FONT=&quot]تو هیچ دلیلی رو نمی تونی عنوان كنی... پس چطور دوستم داری؟[/FONT][FONT=&quot]
[/FONT][FONT=&quot]چطور میتونی بگی عاشقمی؟[/FONT]​

[FONT=&quot]I really don't know the reason, but I can prove that I love U
Proof ? No! I want you to tell me the reason
Ok..ok!!! Erm... because you are beautiful,
because your voice is sweet,
because you are caring,
because you are loving,
because you are thoughtful,
because of your smile,[/FONT]​

[FONT=&quot]من جدا"دلیلشو نمیدونم، اما میتونم بهت ثابت كنم[/FONT][FONT=&quot]
[/FONT][FONT=&quot]ثابت كنی؟ نه! من میخوام دلیلتو بگی[/FONT][FONT=&quot]
[/FONT][FONT=&quot]باشه.. باشه!!! میگم... چون تو خوشگلی،[/FONT][FONT=&quot]
[/FONT][FONT=&quot]صدات گرم و خواستنیه،[/FONT][FONT=&quot]
[/FONT][FONT=&quot]همیشه بهم اهمیت میدی،[/FONT][FONT=&quot]
[/FONT][FONT=&quot]دوست داشتنی هستی،[/FONT][FONT=&quot]
[/FONT][FONT=&quot]با ملاحظه هستی،[/FONT][FONT=&quot]
[/FONT][FONT=&quot]بخاطر لبخندت،[/FONT]​

بخاطر لبخندت،​

[FONT=&quot]The Girl felt very satisfied with the lover's answer
Unfortunately, a few days later, the Lady met with an accident and went in coma
The Guy then placed a letter by her side
Darling, Because of your sweet voice that I love you, Now can you talk?
No! Therefore I cannot love you
Because of your care and concern that I like you Now that you cannot show them, therefore I cannot love you
Because of your smile, because of your movements that I love you
Now can you smile? Now can you move? No , therefore I cannot love you[/FONT]​

[FONT=&quot]دختر از جوابهای اون خیلی راضی و قانع شد[/FONT][FONT=&quot]
[/FONT][FONT=&quot]متاسفانه، چند روز بعد، اون دختر تصادف وحشتناكی كرد و به حالت كما رفت[/FONT][FONT=&quot]
[/FONT][FONT=&quot]پسر نامه ای رو كنارش گذاشت با این مضمون[/FONT][FONT=&quot]
[/FONT][FONT=&quot]عزیزم، گفتم بخاطر صدای گرمت عاشقتم اما حالا كه نمیتونی حرف بزنی، میتونی؟[/FONT][FONT=&quot]
[/FONT][FONT=&quot]نه ! پس دیگه نمیتونم عاشقت بمونم[/FONT][FONT=&quot]
[/FONT][FONT=&quot]گفتم بخاطر اهمیت دادن ها و مراقبت كردن هات دوست دارم اما حالا كه نمیتونی برام اونجوری باشی، پس منم نمیتونم دوست داشته باشم[/FONT][FONT=&quot]
[/FONT][FONT=&quot]گفتم واسه لبخندات، برای حركاتت عاشقتم[/FONT][FONT=&quot]
[/FONT][FONT=&quot]اما حالا نه میتونی بخندی نه حركت كنی پس منم نمیتونم عاشقت باشم[/FONT]​

[FONT=&quot]If love needs a reason, like now, There is no reason for me to love you anymore
Does love need a reason?
NO! Therefore!!
I Still LOVE YOU...
True love never dies for it is lust that fades away
Love bonds for a lifetime but lust just pushes away[/FONT]​

[FONT=&quot]اگه عشق همیشه یه دلیل میخواد مثل همین الان، پس دیگه برای من دلیلی واسه عاشق تو بودن وجود نداره[/FONT][FONT=&quot]
[/FONT][FONT=&quot]عشق دلیل میخواد؟[/FONT][FONT=&quot]
[/FONT][FONT=&quot]نه!معلومه كه نه[/FONT][FONT=&quot]!!
[/FONT][FONT=&quot]پس من هنوز هم عاشقتم[/FONT][FONT=&quot]
[/FONT][FONT=&quot]عشق واقعی هیچوقت نمی میره[/FONT][FONT=&quot]
[/FONT][FONT=&quot]این هوس است كه كمتر و كمتر میشه و از بین میره[/FONT]​

[FONT=&quot]Immature love says: "I love you because I need you"
Mature love says "I need you because I love you"
"Fate Determines Who Comes Into Our Lives, But Heart Determines Who Stays"[/FONT]​

[FONT=&quot]"[/FONT][FONT=&quot]عشق خام و ناقص میگه:"من دوست دارم چون بهت نیاز دارم[/FONT][FONT=&quot]
"[/FONT][FONT=&quot]ولی عشق كامل و پخته میگه:"بهت نیاز دارم چون دوست دارم[/FONT][FONT=&quot]
"[/FONT][FONT=&quot]سرنوشت تعیین میكنه كه چه شخصی تو زندگیت وارد بشه، اما قلب حكم می كنه كه چه شخصی در قلبت بمون[/FONT]​

 

[*زهره*]

Ligeia by Edgar Allen Poe

Ligeia by Edgar Allen Poe

And the will therein lieth, which dieth not. Who knoweth the mysteries of the will, with its vigor? For God is but a great will pervading all things by nature of its intentness. Man doth not yield himself to the angels, nor unto death utterly , save only through the weakness of his feeble will. ------Joseph Glanvill
I cannot, for my soul, remember how, when, or even precisely where, I first became acquianted with the lady Ligeia. Long years have since elapsed, and my memory is feeble through much suffering. Or, perhaps, I cannot now bring these points to mind, because, in truth, the character of my beloved, her rare learning, her singular yet placid cast of beauty, and the thrilling and enthralling eloquence of her low musical language, made their way into my heart by paces so steadily and stealthily progressive, that they have been unnoticed and unknown. Yet I believe that I met her first and most frequently in some large, old, decaying city near the Rhine. Of her family--I have surely heard her speak. That it is of a remotely ancient date cannot be doubted. Ligeia! Ligeia! Buried in studies of a nature more than all else adapted to deaden impressions of the outward world, it is by that sweet word alone--by Ligeia--that I bring before mine eyes in fancy the image of her who is no more. And now, while I write, a recollection flashes upon me that I have never known the paternal name of her who was my friend and my betrothed, and who became the partner of my studies, and finally the wife of my bosom. Was it a playful charge by Ligeia? Or was it a test of my strength of affection, that I should institute no inquiries upon this point? Or was it rather a caprice of my own--a wildly romantic offering on the shrine of the most passionate devotion? I but indistinctly recall the fact itself--what wonder that I have utterly forgotten the circumstances which orginated or attended it? And, indeed, if ever that spirit which is entitled Romance--if ever she, the wan and misty-winged Ashtophet of idolatrous Egypt, presided, as they tell, over marriages ill-omened, then most surely she presided over mine.
There is one dear topic, however, on which my memory fails me not. It is the person of Ligeia. In stature she was tall, somewhat slender, and, in her latter days, even emaciated. I would in vain attempt to portray the majesty, the quiet ease of her demeanor, or the incomprehensible lightness and elasticity of her footfall. She came and departed as a shadow. I was never made aware of her entrance into my closed study, save by the dear music of her low sweet voice, as she placed her marble hand upon my shoulder. In beauty of face no maiden ever equalled her. It was the radiance of an opium-dream--an airy and spirit-lifting vision more wildly divine than the phantasies which hovered about the slumbering souls of the daughters of Delos. Yet her features were not of that regular mold which we have been falsely taught to worship in the classical labors of the heathen. "There is no equisite beauty," says Bacon, Lord Veralum, speaking truly of all the forms and genera of beauty, "without some strangenes in the proportion." Yet, although I saw that the features of Ligeia were not of a classic regularity--although I perceived that her loveliness was indeed "equisite," and felt that there was much of "strangeness" pervading it, yet I have tried in vain to detect the irregularity and to trace home my own perception of "the strange." I examined the contour of the lofty and pale forehead--it was faultless--how cold indeed that word when applied to a majest so divine! The skin rivalling the purest ivory, the commanding extent and repose, the gentle prominence of the regions above the temples; and then the raven-black, the glossy, the luxuriant, and naturally-curling tresses, setting forth the full force of the Homeric ephitet, "hyacinthe!" I looked at the delicate outlines of the nose--and nowhere but in the graceful medallions of the Hebrews had I beheld a similar perfection. There was the same luxurious smoothness of surface, the same scarcely perceptible tendency to the equiline, the same harmoniously curved nostrils speaking the free spirit. I regarded the sweet mouth. Here was indeed the triumph of all things heavenly--the magnificent turn of the short upper lip--the soft, voluptous slumber of the under--the dimples which sported, and the color which spoke--the teeth glancing back, with a brilliancy almost startling, every ray of the holy light which fell upon them in her serene and placid yet most exultingly radiant of all smiles. I scrutinized the formation of the chin--and, here too, I found the gentleness of breadth, the softness and the majesty, the fullness and the spirituality, of the Greek--the contour which the god Apollo revealed but in a dream, to Cleomenes, the son of the Athenian. And then I peered into the large eyes of Ligeia.
For eyes we have no models in the remotely antique. It might have been, too, that in these eyes of my beloved lay the secret to which Lord Veralum alludes. They were, I must believe, far larger than the ordinary eyes of our own race. They were even fuller than the fullest of the gazelle eyes of the tribe of the valley of Nourjahad. Yet it was only at intervals--in moments of intense excitement--that this peculiarity became more than slightly noticeable in Legeia. And at such moments was her beauty--in my heated fancy thus it appeared perhaps--the beauty of beings either above or apart from the earth--the beauty of the fabulous Houri of the Turk. The hue of the orbs was the most brilliant of black, and, far over them, hung jetty lashes of great length. The brows, slightly irregular in outline, had the same tint. The "strangeness," however, which I found in the eyes was of a nature distinct from the formation, or the color, or the brilliancy of the features, and must, after all, be referred to the expression. Ah, word of no meaning! Behind those vast latitude of mere sound we intrench our ignorance of so much of the spiritual. The expression of the eyes of Ligeia! How for long hours have I pondered upon it! How have I, through the whole of a midsummer night, struggled to fathom it! What was it--that something more profound than the well of Democritus--which lay far within the pupils of beloved? What was it? I was possessed with a passion to discover. Those eyes! Those large, those shining, those divine orbs! They became to me twin stars of Leda, and I to them devoutest of astrologers.
There is no point, among the many incomprehensible anomalies of the science of mind, more thrillingly exciting than the fact--never, I believe, noticed in the schools--that in our endeavors to recall to memory something long forgotten, we often find ourselves upon the very verge of remembrance, without being able, in the end, to remember. And thus how frequently, in my intense scrutiny of Ligeia's eyes, have I felt approaching the full knowledge of their expression--felt it approaching--yet not quite be mine--and so at length entirely depart! And (strange, oh, strangest mystery of all!) I found, in the commonest objects of the universe, a circle of analogies to that expression. I mean to say that, subsequently to the period when Legeia's beauty passed into my spirit, there dwelling is in a shrine, I derived, from many existences in the material world, a sentiment such as I felt always around, within me, by her large and luminous orbs. Yet not the more could I define that sentiment, or analyze, or even steadily view it. I recognized it, let me repeat, sometimes in the survey of a rapidly growing vine--in the contemplation of a moth, a butterfly, a chrysalis, a stream of running water. I have felt it in the ocean--in the falling of a meteor. I have felt in the glances of unusually aged people. And there are one or two stars in heaven (one especially, a star of the sixth magnitude, double and changeable, to be found near the large star of Lyra) in a telescopic scrutiny of which I have been made aware of the feeling. I have been filled with it by certain sounds from stringed instruments, and not unfrequently by passages from books. Among innumerable other instances, I well remember something in a volume of Joseph Glanvill, which (perhaps merely from its quiantness--who shall say?) never failed to inspire me with the sentiment: "And the will therein leith, which dieth not. Who knoweth the mysteries of the will, with its vigor? For God is but a great will pervading all things by nature of its intentness. Man doth not yield him to the angels, nor unto death utterly, save only through the weakness of his feeble will."
Length of years and subsequent reflection have enabled me to trace, indeed, some remote connection between this passage in the English moralist and a portion of the character of Ligeia. An intensity in thought, action, or speech was possibly, in her, a result, or at least an index, of that gigantic volition which, during our long intercourse, failed to give other and more immediate evidence of its existence. Of all the women whom I have ever known, she, the outwardly calm, the ever-placid Ligeia, was the most violently a prey to the tumultuous vultures of stern passion. And of such passion I could form no estimate, save by the miraculous expansion of those eyes which at once so delighted and appalled me--by the almost magical melody, modulation, distinctness, and placidity of her very low voice--and by the fierce energy (rendered doubly effective by contrast with her manner of utterance) of the wild words which she habitually uttered.
I have spoken of the learning of Ligeia: it was immense--such as I have never known in woman. In the classical tongues she was deeply proficient, and as far as my own acquiantance extended in regard to the modern dialects of Europe, I have never known her at fault. Indeed upon any theme of the most admired because simply the most abstruse of the boasted erudition of the Academy, have I ever found Ligeia at fault? How singularly--how thrillingly, this one point in the nature of my wife has forced itself, at this late period only, upon my attention! I said her knowledge was such as I have never known in woman--but where breathes the man who has traversed, and successfully, all feel, as she bent over me in studies but little sought--but less known--that delicious vista by slow degrees expanding before me, down whose long, gorgeous, and all untrodden path, I might at length pass onward to the goal of a wisdom too divinely precious not to be forbidden! the wide areas of moral, physical, and mathematical science? I saw not then what I now clearly perceive, that the acquisitions of Ligeia were gigantic, were astounding; yet I was sufficiently aware of her infinite supremacy to resign myself, with a child-like confidence, to her guidance through the chaotic world of metaphysical investigation at which I was most busily occupied during the earlier years of our marriage. With how vast a triumph--with how vivid a delight--with how much of all that is ethereal in hope did I
How poignant, then, must have been the grief with which, after some years, I beheld my well-grounded expectations take wings to themselves and fly away! Without Ligeia I was but as a child groping benighted. Her presence, her readings alone, rendered vividly luminous the many mysteries of the transcendentalism in which we were immersed. Wanting the radiant lustre of her eyes, letters, Iambent and golden, grew duller than Saturnian lead. And now those eyes shone less and less frequently upon the pages over which I pored. Ligeia grew ill. The wild eyes blazed with a too--too glorious effulgence; the pale fingers became of the transparent waxen hue of the grave; and the blue veins upon the lofty forehead swelled and sank impetuously with the tides of the most gentle emotion. I saw that she must die--and I struggled desperately in spirit with the grim Azrael. And the struggles of the passionate wife were, to my astonishment, even more energetic than my own. There had been much in her stern nature to impress me with the belief that, to her, death would have come without its terrors; but not so. Words are impotent to convey any just idea of the fierceness of resistance with whcih she wrestled with the Shadow. I groaned in anguish at the pitiable spectacle. I would have soothed--I would have reasoned; bu in the intensity of her wild desire for life--for life-- but for life--solace and reason were alike the uttermost of folly. Yet not until the last instance, amid the most convulsive writhings of her fierce spirit, was shaken the external placidity of her demeanor. Her voice grew more gentle--grew more low--yet I would not wish to dwell upon the wild meaning of the quietly uttered words. My brain reeled as I hearkened, entranced to a melody more than mortal--to assumptions and aspirations which mortality had never before known.
. ​

 

[*زهره*]

Ligeia by Edgar Allen Poe

Ligeia by Edgar Allen Poe

That she loved me I should not have doubted; and I might have been easily aware taht, in a bosom such as hers, love would have reigned no ordinary passion. But in death only was I fully impressed with the strength of her affection. For long hours, detaining my hand, would she pour out before me the overflowing of a heart whose more than passionate devotion amounted to idolatry. How had I deserved to be so blessed by such confessions?---how had I deserved to be so cursed with the removal of my beloved in the hour of my making them? But upon this subject I cannot bear to dilate. Let me say only, that in Ligeia's more than womanly abandonment to a love, alas! All unmerited, all unworthily bestowed, I at length recognized the principle of her longing, wit so wildly earnest a desire, for the life which was now fleeing so rapidly away. It is this wild longing--it is this eager vehemence of desire for life--but for life--that I have no power to portray--no utterance capable of expressing
​

At high noon of the night in which she departed, beckoning me, premptorily, to her side, she bade me repeat certain verses composed by herself not many days before. I obeyed her. They were these:​

Lo! tis a gala night
Within the lonesome latter years!
An angel throng, bewinged, bedight
In veils, and drowned in tears,
Sit in a theatre, to see
A play of hopes and fears,
While the orchestra breathes fitfully
The music of the spheres. Mimes, in the form of God on high,
Mutter and mumble low,
And hither and thither fly;
Mere puppets they, who come and go
At bidding of vast formless things
That shift the scenery to and fro,
Flapping from out their condor wings
Invisible Woe!
That motley drama!--oh, be sure
It shall not be forgot!
With its Phantom chased for evermore,
By a crowd that seize it not,
Through a circle that ever returneth in
To the self-same spot;
And much of Madness, and more of Sin
And Horror, the soul of the plot!
But see, amid the mimic rout
A crawling shape intrude!
A blood-red thing that writhes from out
The scenic solitude!
It writhes--it writhes!--with mortal pangs
The mimes become its food,
And the seraphs sob at vermin fangs
In human gore imbued.
Out--out are the lights--out all!
And over each quivering form,
The curtain, a funeral pall,
Comes down with the rush of a storm--
And the angels, all pallid and wan,
Uprising, unveiling, affirm
That the play is the tragedy, "Man,"
And its hero the conqueror Worm.
​

".O God!" half shrieked Ligeia, leaping to her feet and extending her arms aloft with a spasmodic movement, as I made an end of these lines--"O God! O Divine Father!--shall these things be undeviatingly so?--shall this conqueror be not once conquered? Are we not part and parcel in Thee? Who--who knoweth the mysteries of the will with its vigor? Man doth not yield him to the angels, nor unto death utterly, save only through the weakness of his feeble will."

And now, as if exhausted with emotion, she suffered her white arms to fall, and returned solemnly to her bed of death. And as she breathed her last sighs, there came mingled with them a low murmur from her lips. The passage of Glanvill: "Man doth not yield him to the angels, nor unto death utterly, save only through the weakness of his feeble will." ​

She died: and I, crushed into the very dust with sorrow, could no longer endure the lonely desolation of my dwelling in the dim and decaying city by the Rhine. I had no lack of what the world calls wealth. Ligeia had brought me far more, very far more, than ordinarily falls to the lot of mortals. After a few months, therefore, of weary and aimless wandering, I purchased and put in some repair, an abbey, which I shall not name, in one of the wildest and least frequented portions of fair England. The gloomy and dreary grandeur of the building, the almost savage aspect of the domain, the many melancholy and time-honored memories connected with both, had much in unison with the feelings of utter abandonment which had driven me into that remote and unsocial region of the country. Yet although the external abbey, with its verdant decay hanging about it, suffered by little alteration, I gave way, with a child-like perversity, and perchance with a faint hope of alleviating my sorrows, to a display of more than regal magnificence within. For such follies, even in childhood, I had imbibed a taste, and now they came back to me as if in the dotage of grief. Alas, I feel how much even of incipient madness might have been discovered in the gorgeous and fantastic draperies, in the solemn carvings of Egypt, in the world cornices and furniture, in the Bedlam patterns of the carpets of tufted gold! I had become a bounden slave in the trammels of opium, and my labors and my orders had taken a coloring from my dreams. But these absurdities I must not pause to detail. Let me speak only of that one chamber, ever accursed, whither, in a moment of mental alienation, I led from the altar as my bride--as the successor of the unforgotten Ligeia--the fair-haired and blue-eyed Lady Rowena Trevanion, of Tremaine.​

There was no individual portion of the architecture and decoration of that bridal chamber which is not now visibly before me. Where were the souls of the haughty family of the bride, whe, through thirst of gold, the permitted to pass the threshold of an apartment so bedecked, a maiden and a daughter so beloved? I have said, that I minutely remember the details of the chamber--yet I am sadly forgetful on topics of deep moment; and here there was no system, no keeping, in the fantastic display, to take hold upon the memory. The room lay in a high turret of the castellated abbey, was pentagonal in shape, and of capacious size. Occupying the whole southern face of the pentagon was the sole window--an immense sheet of unbroken glass from Venice--a single pane, and tinted of a leaden hue, so that the rays of either the sun or moon passing through it, fell with a ghastly lustre on the objects within. Over the upper portion of this huge window, extended the trellis-work of an aged vine, which clambered up the massy walls of the turret. The ceiling, of gloomy-looking oak, was excessively lofty, vaulted, and elaborately fretted with the wildest and most grotesque specimens of a semi-Gothic, semi-Druidical device. From out the most central recess of this melancholy vaulting, depended, by a single chain of gold with long links, a huge censer of the same metal, Saracenic in pattern, and with many perforations so contrived that there writhed in and out of them, as if endued with a serpent vitality, a continual succession of parti-colored fires. ​

​

 

[*زهره*]

Ligeia by Edgar Allen Poe

Ligeia by Edgar Allen Poe

Some few ottomans and golden candelabra, of Eastern figure, were in various stations about; and there was the couch, too--the bridal couch--of an Indian model, and low, and sculptured of solid ebony, with a pall-like canopy above. In each of the angles of the chamber stood on end a gigantic sarcophagus of black granite, from the tombs of the kings over against Luxor, with their aged lids full of immemorial sculpture. But in the draping of the apartment lay, alas! The chief phantasy of all. The lofty walls, gigantic in height--even unproportionally so--were hung from summit to foot, in vast folds, with a heavy and massive-looking tapestry--tapestry of a material which was found alike as a carpet on the floor, as a covering for the ottomans and the ebony bed, as a canopy for the bed and as the gorgeous volutes o the curtains which partially shaded the window. The material was the richest cloth of gold. It was spotted all over, at irregular intervals, with arabesque figures, about a foot in diameter, and wrought upon the cloth in patterns of the most jetty black. But these figures partook of the true character of the arabesque only when regarded from a single point of view. By a contrivance now common, and indeed traceable to a very remote period of antiquity, they were made of simple monstrosities; but upon a farther advance, this appearance gradually departed; and, step by step, as the visitor moved his station in the chamber, he saw himself surrounded by an endless succession of the ghastly forms which belong to the superstition of the Norman, or arise in the guilty slumbers of the monk. The phantasmagoric effect was vastly heightened by the artificial introduction of a strong continual current wind behind the draperies--giving a hideous and uneasy animation to the whole.​

In halls such as these--in a bridal chamber such as this--I passed, with the Lady of Tremaine, the unhallowed hours of the first month of our marriage--passed them with but little disquietude. That my wife dreaded the fierce moodiness of my temper--that she shunned me, and loved me but little--I could not help perceiving; but it gave me rather pleasure than otherwise. I loathed her with a hatred belonging more to demon than to man. My memory flew back (oh, with what intensity of regret!) to Ligeia, the beloved, the august, the beautiful, the entombed. I revelled in recollections of her purity, of her wisdom, of her lofty--her ethereal nature, of her passionate, her idolatrous love. Now, then, did my spirit fully and freely burn with more than all the fires of her own. In the excitement of my opium dreams (for I was habitually fettered in the shackles of the drug), I would call aloud upon her name, during the silence of the night, or among the sheltered recesses of the glens by day, as if, through the wild eagerness, the solemn passion, the consuming ardor of my longing for the departed, I could restore her to the pathways she had abandoned--ah, could it be for ever?--upon earth. ​

About the commencement of the second month of he marriage, the Lady Rowena was attacked with sudden illness, from which her recovery was slow. The fever which consumed her rendered her nights uneasy; and in her perturbed state of half-slumber, she spoke of sounds, and of motions, in and about the chamber of the turret, which I concluded had no origin save in the distemper of her fancy, or perhaps in the phantasmagoric influences of the chamber itself. She became at length convalescent--finally, well. Yet but a brief period elapsed, ere a second more violent disorder again threw her upon a bed of suffering; and from this attack her frame, at all times feeble, never altogether recovered. Her illnesses were, after this epoch, of alarming character, and of more alarming recurrence, defying alike the knowledge and the great exertions of her physicians. WIth the increase of the chronic disease, whic had thus, apparently, taken too sure hold upon her constitution to be eradicated by human means, I could not fail to observe a similar increase in the nervous irritation of her temperament, and in her excitability by trivial causes of fear. She spoke again, and now more frequently and pertinaciously, of the sounds--of the slight sounds--and of the unusual motions among the tapestries, to which she had formerly alluded.​

One night, near the closing in of September, she pressed this distressing subject with more than usual emphasis upon my attention. She had just awakened from an unquiet slumber, and I had been watching, with feelings half of anxiety, half of vague terror, the workings of her emaciated countenance. I sat by the side of her ebony bed, upon one of the ottomans of India. She partly arose, and spoke, in an earnest low whisper, of sounds which she then heard, but which I could not hear--of motions which she then all believe) that those almost inarticulate breathings, and those very gentle variations of the figures upon the wall, were but the natural effects of that customary rushing of the wind. But a deadly pallor, overspreading her face, had proved to me that my exertions to reassure her would be fruitless. She appeared to be fainting, and no attendants were within call. I remembered where was deposited a decanter of light wine which had been ordered by her physicians, and hastened across the chamber to procure it. But, as I stepped beneath the light of the censer, two circumstances of a startling nature attracted my attention. I had felt that some palpable although invisible object had passed lightly by my person; and I saw that there lay upon the golden carpet, in the very middle of the rich lustre thrown from the censer, a shadow--a faint, indefinite shadow of angelic aspect--such as might be fancied for the shadow of a shade. But I was wild with the excitement of an immoderate dose of opium, and heeded these things but little, nor spoke of them to Rowena. Having found the wine, I recrossed the chamber, and poured out a gobletful, which I held to the lips of the fainting lady. She had now partially recovered, however, and took the vessel herself, while I sank upon an ottoman near me, with my eyes fastened upon her person. It was then that I became distinctly aware of a gentle foot-fall upon the carpet, and near the couch; and in a second thereafter, as Rowena was in the act of raising the wine to her lips I saw, or may have dreamed that I saw, fall within goblet, as if from some invisible spring in the atmosphere of the room, three or four large drops of a brilliant and ruby colored fluid. If this I saw--not so Rowena. She swallowed the wine unhesitatingly, and I forebore to speak to her of a circumstance which must, after all, I considered, have been but the suggestion of a vivid imagination, rendered morbidly active by the terror of the lady, by the opium, and by the hour. saw, but which I could not perceive. The wind was rushing hurriedly behind the tapestries, and I wished to show her (what, let me confess it, I could not ​

Yet I cannot conceal it from my own perception that, immediately subsequent to the fall of the ruby drops, a rapid change for the worse took place in the disorder of my wife; so that, on the third subsequent night, the hands of her menials prepared her for the tomb, and on the fourth, I sat alone, with her shrouded body, in that fantastic chamber which had received her as my bride. Wild visions, opium-engendered, flitted, shadow-like, before me. I gazed with unquiet eye upon the sarcophagi in the angles of the room, upon the varying figures of the drapery, and upon the writhing of the parti-colored fires in the censer overhead. My eyes then fell, as I called to mind the circumstances of a former night, to the spot beneath the glare of the censer where I had seen the faint traces of the shadow. It was there, however, no longer; and breathing with greater freedom, I turned my glances to the pallid and rigid figure upon the bed. Then rushed upon me a thousand memories of Ligeia--and then came back upon my heart, with the turbulent violence of a flood, the whole of that unutterable woe with which I had regarded her thus enshrouded. The night waned; and still, with a bosom full of bitter thoughts of the one only and supremely beloved, I remained gazing upon the body of Rowena. ​

It might have been midnight, or perhaps earlier, or later, for I had taken no note of time, when a sob, low, gentle, but very distinct, startled me from my revery. I felt that it came from the bed of ebony--the bed of death. I listened in agony of superstitious terror--but there was no reptition of the sound. I strained my vision to detect any motion in the corpse--but there was not the slightest perceptible. Yet I could not have been deceived. I had heard the noise, however faint, and my soul was awakened within me. I resolutely and perseveringly kept my attention riveted upon the body. Many minutes elapsed before any circumstance occurred tending to throw light upon the mystery. At length it became evident that a slight, a very feeble, and barely noticeable tinge of color had flushed up within the cheeks, and along the sunken small veins of the eyelids. Through a species of unutterable horror and awe, for which the language of mortality has no sufficiently energetic expression, I felt my heart cease to beat, my limbs grow rigid where I sat. Yet a sense of duty finally operated to restore my self-possession. I could no longer doubt that we had been precipitate in our preparations--that Rowena still lived. It ws necessary that some immediate exertion be made; yet the turret was altogether apart from the portion of the abbey tenanted by the servants--there were none within call--I had no means of summoning them to my aid without leaving the room for many minutes--and this I could not venture to do. I therefore struggled alone in my endeavors to call back the spirit still hovering. In a short period it was certain, however, that a relapse had taken place; the color disappeared from both eyelid and cheek, leaving a wanness even more than that of marble; the lips became doubly shrivelled and pinched up in the ghastly expression of death; a repulsive clamminess and coldness overspread rapidly the surface of the body; and all the usual rigorous stiffness immediately supervened. I fell back with a shudder upon the couch from which I had been so startingly aroused, and again gave myself up to passionate waking visions of Ligeia. ​

An hour thus elapsed, when (could it be possible?) I was a second time aware of some vague sound issuing from the region of the bed. I listened--in extremity of horror. The sound came again--it ws a sigh. Rushing to the corpse, I saw--distinctly saw--a tremor upon the lips. In a minute afterward they relaxed, disclosing a bright line of the pearly teeth. Amazement now struggled in my bosom with profound awe which had hitherto reignd there alone. I felt that my vision grew dim, that my reason wandered; and it was only by a violent effort that I at length succeeded in nerving myself to the task which duty thus once more had pointed out. There was now a partial glow upon the forehead and upon the cheek and throat; a perceptible warmth pervaded the whole frame; there was even a slight pulsation at the heart​

 

[*زهره*]

Ripe Figs by Kate Chopin

Ripe Figs by Kate Chopin

MAMAN-NAINAINE said that when the figs were ripe Babette might go to visit her cousins down on the Bayou-Lafourche where the sugar cane grows. Not that the ripening of figs had the least thing to do with it, but that is the way Maman-Nainaine was.
It seemed to Babette a very long time to wait; for the leaves upon the trees were tender yet, and the figs were like little hard, green marbles.
But warm rains came along and plenty of strong sunshine, and though Maman-Naiaine was as patient as the statue of la Madone, and Babette as restless as a humming-bird, the first thing they both knew it was hot summer-time. Every day Babette danced out to where the fig-trees were in a long line against the fence. She walked slowly beneath them, carefully peering between the gnarled, spreading branches. But each time she came disconsolate away again. What she saw there finally was something that made her sing and dance the whole long day.
When Maman-Nainaine sat down in her stately way to breakfast, the following morning, her muslin cap standing like an aureole about her white, placid face, Babette approached. She bore a dainty porcelain platter, which she set down before her godmother. It contained a dozen purple figs, fringed around with their rich, green leaves.
"Ah," said Maman-Nainaine, arching her eyebrows, "how early the figs have ripened this year!"
"Oh," said Babette, "I think they have ripened very late."
"Babette," continued Maman-Nainaine, as she peeled the very plumpest figs with her pointed silver fruit-knife, "you will carry my love to them all down on Bayou-Lafourche. And tell your Tante Frosine I shall look for her at Toussaint - when the chrysanthemums are in bloom."​

 

[samira_3001]

Here is a short story with a beautiful message...
Little girl and her father were crossing a bridge.
The father was kind of scared so he asked his little daughter,
'Sweetheart, please hold my hand so that you don't fall into the river.'
The little girl said, 'No, Dad. You hold my hand.'
'What's the difference?' Asked the puzzled father.
'There's a big difference,' replied the little girl.
'If I hold your hand and something happens to me,
chances are that I may let your hand go.
But if you hold my hand, I know for sure that no matter what happens,
you will never let my hand go.' ..........


داستانی کوتاه که پیامی زیبا داره:

دختره کوچکی با پدرش از روی پلی رد میشدن
پدر کمی ترسیده بود پس از دختره کوچکش خواست که:
عزیزم لطفا دست من رو بگیر که تو توی رودخانه نیفتی.
دختر کوچک گفت : نه پدر تو دست من رو بگیر.
پدر که متعجب شده بود پرسید: فرقشان در چیست؟!
دختر در جواب گفت: فرق بزرگی میکنند.
اگر من دست تورو بگیرم و بلایی سر من بیاد و چیزی بشه
ممکن هست که من دستتو رها کنم
ولی اگر تو دست من رو بگیری من مطمئنم که هر چیزی که بشه
تو هیچ وقت دست من رو ول نمیکنی......

 

[*زهره*]

Luck BY MARK TWAIN

Luck BY MARK TWAIN

[Note—This is not a fancy sketch. I got it from a clergyman who was an instructor at Woolwich forty years ago, and who vouched for its truth.—M.T.]

It was at a banquet in London in honor of one of the two or three conspicuously illustrious English military names of this generation. For reasons which will presently appear, I will withhold his real name and titles, and call him Lieutenant General Lord Arthur Scoresby, V.C., K.C.B., etc., etc., etc. What a fascination there is in a renowned name! There sat the man, in actual flesh, whom I had heard of so many thousands of times since that day, thirty years before, when his name shot suddenly to the zenith from a Crimean battlefield, to remain forever celebrated. It was food and drink to me to look, and look, and look at that demigod; scanning, searching, noting: the quietness, the reserve, the noble gravity of his countenance; the simple honesty that expressed itself all over him; the sweet unconsciousness of his greatness—unconsciousness of the hundreds of admiring eyes fastened upon him, unconsciousness of the deep, loving, sincere worship welling out of the breasts of those people and flowing toward him.

The clergyman at my left was an old acquaintance of mine—clergyman now, but had spent the first half of his life in the camp and field, and as an instructor in the military school at Woolwich. Just at the moment I have been talking about, a veiled and singular light glimmered in his eyes, and he leaned down and muttered confidentially to me—indicating the hero of the banquet with a gesture:

"Privately—he's an absolute fool."

This verdict was a great surprise to me. If its subject had been Napoleon, or Socrates, or Solomon, my astonishment could not have been greater. Two things I was well aware of: that the Reverend was a man of strict veracity, and that his judgement of men was good. Therefore I knew, beyond doubt or question, that the world was mistaken about this hero: he was a fool. So I meant to find out, at a convenient moment, how the Reverend, all solitary and alone, had discovered the secret.


Some days later the opportunity came, and this is what the Reverend told me.

About forty years ago I was an instructor in the military academy at Woolwich. I was present in one of the sections when young Scoresby underwent his preliminary examination. I was touched to the quick with pity; for the rest of the class answered up brightly and handsomely, while he—why, dear me, he didn't know anything, so to speak. He was evidently good, and sweet, and lovable, and guileless; and so it was exceedingly painful to see him stand there, as serene as a graven image, and deliver himself of answers which were veritably miraculous for stupidity and ignorance. All the compassion in me was aroused in his behalf. I said to myself, when he comes to be examined again, he will be flung over, of course; so it will be simply a harmless act of charity to ease his fall as much as I can. I took him aside, and found that he knew a little of Cæsar's history; and as he didn't know anything else, I went to work and drilled him like a galley slave on a certain line of stock questions concerning Cæsar which I knew would be used. If you'll believe me, he went through with flying colors on examination day! He went through on that purely superficial "cram," and got compliments too, while others, who knew a thousand times more than he, got plucked. By some strangely lucky accident—an accident not likely to happen twice in a century—he was asked no question outside of the narrow limits of his drill.

It was stupefying. Well, all through his course I stood by him, with something of the sentiment which a mother feels for a crippled child; and he always saved himself—just by miracle, apparently.

Now of course the thing that would expose him and kill him at last was mathematics. I resolved to make his death as easy as I could; so I drilled him and crammed him, and crammed him and drilled him, just on the line of questions which the examiners would be most likely to use, and then launching him on his fate. Well, sir, try to conceive of the result: to my consternation, he took the first prize! And with it he got a perfect ovation in the way of compliments.

Sleep? There was no more sleep for me for a week. My conscience tortured me day and night. What I had done I had done purely through charity, and only to ease the poor youth's fall—I never had dreamed of any such preposterous result as the thing that had happened. I felt as guilty and miserable as the creator of Frankenstein. Here was a woodenhead whom I had put in the way of glittering promotions and prodigious responsibilities, and but one thing could happen: he and his responsibilities would all go to ruin together at the first opportunity.

The Crimean war had just broken out. Of course there had to be a war, I said to myself: we couldn't have peace and give this donkey a chance to die before he is found out. I waited for the earthquake. It came. And it made me reel when it did come. He was actually gazetted to a captaincy in a marching regiment! Better men grow old and gray in the service before they climb to a sublimity like that. And who could ever have foreseen that they would go and put such a load of responsibility on such green and inadequate shoulders? I could just barely have stood it if they had made him a cornet; but a captain—think of it! I thought my hair would turn white.

Consider what I did—I who so loved repose and inaction. I said to myself, I am responsible to the country for this, and I must go along with him and protect the country against him as far as I can. So I took my poor little capital that I had saved up through years of work and grinding economy, and went with a sigh and bought a cornetcy in his regiment, and away we went to the field.

And there—oh dear, it was awful. Blunders? Why, he never did anything but blunder. But, you see, nobody was in the fellow's secret—everybody had him focused wrong, and necessarily misinterpreted his performance every time—consequently they took his idiotic blunders for inspirations of genius; they did, honestly! His mildest blunders were enough to make a man in his right mind cry; and they did make me cry—and rage and rave too, privately. And the thing that kept me always in a sweat of apprehension was the fact that every fresh blunder he made increased the luster of his reputation! I kept saying to myself, he'll get so high, that when discovery does finally come, it will be like the sun falling out of the sky.

He went right along up, from grade to grade, over the dead bodies of his superiors, until at last, in the hottest moment of the battle of ------- down went our colonel, and my heart jumped into my mouth, for Scoresby was next in rank! Now for it, said I; we'll all land in Sheol in ten minutes, sure.

The battle was awfully hot; the allies were steadily giving way all over the field. Our regiment occupied a position that was vital; a blunder now must be destruction. At this crucial moment, what does this immortal fool do but detach the regiment from its place and order a charge over a neighboring hill where there wasn't a suggestion of an enemy! "There you go!" I said to myself; "this is the end at last."

And away we did go, and were over the shoulder of the hill before the insane movement could be discovered and stopped. And what did we find? An entire and unsuspected Russian army in reserve! And what happened? We were eaten up? That is necessarily what would have happened in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred. But no, those Russians argued that no single regiment would come browsing around there at such a time. It must be the entire English army, and that the sly Russian game was detected and blocked; so they turned tail, and away they went, pell-mell, over the hill and down into the field, in wild confusion, and we after them; they themselves broke the solid Russian center in the field, and tore through, and in no time there was the most tremendous rout you ever saw, and the defeat of the allies was turned into a sweeping and splendid victory! Marshal Canrobert looked on, dizzy with astonishment, admiration,and delight; and sent right off for Scoresby, and hugged him, and decorated him on the field, in presence of all the armies!

And what was Scoresby's blunder that time? Merely the mistaking his right hand for his left—that was all. An order had come to him to fall back and support our right; and instead, he fell forward and went over the hill to the left. But the name he won that day as a marvelous military genius filled the world with his glory, and that glory will never fade while history books last.

He is just as good and sweet and lovable and unpretending as a man can be, but he doesn't know enough to come in when it rains. Now that is absolutely true. He is the supremest ass in the universe; and until half an hour ago nobody knew it but himself and me. He has been pursued, day by day and year by year, by a most phenomenal and astonishing luckiness. He has been a shining soldier in all our wars for a generation; he has littered his whole military life with blunders, and yet has never committed one that didn't make him a knight or a baronet or a lord or something. Look at his breast; why, he is just clothed in domestic and foreign decorations. Well, sir, every one of them is the record of some shouting stupidity or other; and taken together, they are proof that the very best thing in all this world that can befall a man is to be born lucky. I say again, as I said at the banquet, Scoresby's an absolute fool.
​

 

[*زهره*]

Old Rogaum and His Theresa by Theodore Dreiser

Old Rogaum and His Theresa by Theodore Dreiser

In all Bleecker Street was no more comfortable doorway than that of the butcher Rogaum, even if the first floor was given over to meat market purposes. It was to one side of the main entrance, which gave ingress to the butcher shop, and from it led up a flight of steps, at least five feet wide, to the living rooms above. A little portico stood out in front of it, railed on either side, and within was a second or final door, forming, with the outer or storm door, a little area, where Mrs. Rogaum and her children sat of a summer's evening. The outer door was never locked, owing to the inconvenience it would inflict on Mr. Rogaum, who had no other way of getting upstairs. In winter, when all had gone to bed, there had been cases in which belated travelers had taken refuge there from snow and sleet. One or two newsboys occasionally slept there, until routed out by Officer Maguire, who, seeing it half open one morning at two o'clock, took occasion to look in. He jogged the newsboys sharply with his stick, and then, when they were gone, tried the inner door, which was locked. “You ought to keep that outer door locked, Rogaum,” he observed to the phlegmatic butcher the next evening, as he was passing, “people might get in. A couple o' kids was sleepin' in there last night.”
“Ach, dot iss no difference,” answered Rogaum pleasantly. “I haf der inner door locked, yet. Let dem sleep. Dot iss no difference.”
“Better lock it,” said the officer, more to vindicate his authority than anything else. “Something will happen there yet.”
The door was never locked, however, and now of a summer evening Mrs. Rogaum and the children made pleasant use of its recess, watching the rout of streetcars and occasionally belated trucks go by. The children played on the sidewalk, all except the budding Theresa (eighteen just turning), who, with one companion of the neighborhood, the pretty Kenrihan girl, walked up and down the block, laughing, glancing and watching the boys. Old Mrs. Kenrihan lived in the next block, and there, sometimes the two stopped. There, also, they most frequently pretended to be when talking with the boys in the intervening side street. Young “Connie” Almerting and George Goujon were the bright particular mashers who held the attention of the maidens in this block. These two made their acquaintance in the customary bold, boyish way, and thereafter the girls an urgent desire to be out in the street together after eight, and to linger where the boys could see and over take them. Old Mrs. Rogaum never knew. She was a particularly fat, old German lady, completely dominated by her liege and portly lord, and at nine o'clock regularly, as he had long ago deemed meet her fit, she was wont to betake her way upward and so to bed. Old Rogaum himself, at that hour, closed the market and went to his chamber.
Before that all the children were called sharply, once from the doorstep below, and once from the window above, only Mrs. Rogaum did it first and Rogaum last. It had come, because of the shade of lenience, not wholly apparent in the father's nature, that the older of the children needed two callings and sometimes three. Theresa, now that she had “got in” with the Kenrihan maiden, needed that many calls and even more.
She was just at the age for which mere thoughtless, sensory life holds its greatest charm. She loved to walk up and down in the as yet bright street where were voices and laughter, and occasionally moonlight streaming down. What a nuisance it was to be called at nine, anyhow. Why should one have to go in then, anyhow. What old fogies her parents were, wishing to go to bed so early. Mrs. Kenrihan was not so strict with her daughter. It made her pettish when Rogaum insisted calling as he often did in German, “Come you now,” in a very hoarse and belligerent voice.
She came, eventually, frowning and wretched, all the moonlight calling her, all the voices of the night urging her to come back. Her innate opposition due to her urgent youth made her coming later and later, however, until now, by August of this, her eighteenth year, it was nearly ten when she entered, and Rogaum was almost invariably angry.
“I vill lock you oudt,” he declared, in strongly accented English, while she tried to slip by him each time. “I vill show you. Du sollst come ven I say, yet. Hear now.”
“I'll not,” answered Theresa, but was always under her breath.
Poor Mrs. Rogaum troubled at hearing the wrath in her husband's voice. It spoke of harder and fiercer times, which had been with her. Still she was not power enough in the family councils to put in a weighty word. So Rogaum fumed unrestricted.
There were other nights, however, many of them, and now that the young sparks of the neighborhood had enlisted the girls attention, it was a more trying time tan ever. Never did a street seem more beautiful. Its shabby red walls, dusty pavements and protruding store steps and iron railings seemed bits of the ornamental paraphernalia of Heaven itself. These lights, the cars, the moon, the street lamp! Theresa had a tender eye for the dashing Almerting, a young idler and loafer of the district, the son of a stationer farther up the street. What a fine fellow he was, indeed! What a handsome nose and chin! What eyes! What authority! His cigarette was always cocked at a high angle, in her presence, and his hat had the least suggestion of being set to one side. He had a shrewd way of winking one eye, taking her boldly by the arm, hailing her as, “Hey, Pretty!” and was strong and athletic and worked (when he worked) in a tobacco factory. His was a trade, indeed, nearly acquired, as he said, and his jingling pockets attested that he had money of his own. Altogether, he was very captivating.
“Aw, whaddy ya want to go in for?” he used to say to her, tossing his head gayly on one side to listen and holding her by the arm, as old Rogaum called.
“Tell um yuh didn't hear.”
“No, I've got to go,” said the girl, who was soft and plump and fair-a Rhine maiden type. “Well, yuh don't have to go just yet. Stay another minute. George, what was the fellow's name that tried to sass us the other day?”
“Theresa!” roared Rogaum forcefully. “If you don't now come! Ve vill see!”
“I've got to go,” said Theresa with a faint effort toward starting. “Can't you hear? Don't hold me. I haf to.”
“Aw, whaddy ya want to be such a coward for? Y' don't have to go. He won't do nothin' tuh yuh. My old man was always hollerin' like that up tuh a coupla years ago. Let him holler! Say, kid, but yuh got sweet eyes! They're as blue! An' your mouth,”
“Now stop! You hear me!” Theresa would protest softly, as, swiftly, he would slip an arm about her waist and draw her to him, sometimes in vain, sometimes in a successful effort to kiss her.
As a rule she managed to interpose an elbow between her face and his, but even then he would manage to touch an ear or a cheek or her neck-sometimes her mouth, full and warm- before she would develop sufficient energy to push him away and herself free. Then she would protest mock earnestly or sometimes run away.
“Now, I'll never speak to you any more, if that's the way you're going to do. My father don't allow me to kiss boys, anyhow,” and then she would run, half ashamed, half smiling to herself as he would stare after her, or if she lingered, develop a kind of anger and even rage. “Aw, cut it! Whaddy ya want to be so shy for? Dontcha like me? What's getting into yuh anyhow? Hey?”
.......................
​

 

[*زهره*]

Old Rogaum and His Theresa by Theodore Dreiser

Old Rogaum and His Theresa by Theodore Dreiser

In the meantime George Goujon and Myrtle Kenrihan, their companions, might be sweeting and going through similar contest, perhaps a hundred feet up the street, or near at hand. The quality of old Rogaum voice would by now become so raucous, however, that Theresa would have lost all comfort in the scene and, becoming frightened, hurry away. Then it was often that both Almerting and Goujon as well as Myrtle Kenrihan would follow her to the corner, almost in sight of the irate butcher.
“Let him call,” young Almerting would insist, laying a final hold on her soft white fingers and causing her to quiver thereby.
“Oh, no,” she would gasp nervously. “I can't.”
“Well, go on, then,” he would say, and with a flip of his heel would turn back, leaving Theresa to wonder whether she had alienated him forever or no. Then she would hurry to her father's door.
“Muss ich all my time spenden calling, mit you on de streeds oudt?” old Rogaum would roar wrathfully, the while his fat hand would descend on her back. “Take dot now. Vy don'd you come ven I call? In now, I vill show you. Und come you yussed vunce more at dis time-ve vill see if I am the boss in my own house, aber! Komst du vun minute nach ten to-morrow und you vill see vot you vill get. I vill der door lock. Du sollst not in kommen. Mark! Oudt sollst du stayen- oudt!” and he would glare wrathfully at her retreating figure.
Sometimes Theresa would whimper, sometimes cry or sulk. She almost hated her father for his cruelty, “the big, fat, rough thing,” and just because she wanted to stay out in the bright streets, too. Because he was old and stout and wanted to go to bed at ten, he thought everyone else did. And outside was the dark sky with its stars, the street lamps, the tinkle and laughter of eternal life.
“Oh!” she would sigh as she undressed and crawled into her small neat bed. To think that she had to live like this all of her days! At same time, old Rogaum was angry, and equally determined. It was not so much that he imagined his Theresa was in bad company as yet, but he wished to forefend against any possible danger. This was not a good neighborhood by any means. The boys around here were tough. He wanted Theresa to pick some nice sober youth from among the other Germans he and his wife knew here and there-at the Lutheran Church, for instance. Otherwise she shouldn't marry. He knew she only walked from his shop to the door of the Kenrihan's and back again. Had not his wife told him so? If he had thought upon what far pilgrimage her feet had already ventured, or had even seen the dashing Almerting hanging near, then had there been wrath indeed. As it was, his mind was more or less at ease.
On many, many evenings it was much the same. Sometimes she got in on time, sometimes not, but more and more “Connie” Almerting claimed her for his “steady” and bought her ice cream. In the range of the short block and its confining corners it was done, lingering by the curbstone and strolling a half block either way in the side streets, until she had offended seriously at home, and the threat was repeating anew. He often tried to persuade her to go on picnics or outings of various kinds, but this, somehow, was not to be thought of at her age-at least with him. She knew her father would never endure the thought, and never even had the courage to mention it, let alone run away. Mere lingering with him at the adjacent street corners brought stronger and stronger admonishments-even more blows and the threat that she should not get in at all.
Well enough she meant to obey, but on one radiant night late in June the time fled too fast. The moon was so bright, the air so soft. The feel of far summer things was in the wind and even in the dusty street. Theresa, in a newly starched white summer dress, had been loitering up and down with Myrtle when as usual they encountered Almerting and Goujon. Now it was ten, and the regular calls were beginning.
“Aw, wait a minute,” said “Connie.” “Stand still. He won't lock yuh out.”
“But he will, though,” said Theresa. “You don't know him.”
“Well, if he does, come on back to me. I'll take care of yuh. I'll be here. But he won't though. If you stayed out a little while he'd letcha in all right. That's the way my old man used to try to do me but it didn't work with me. I'd stay out an' he'd let me in, just the same. Don'tcha let him kidja.” He jingles some loose change in his pocket.
Never in his life had he had a girl on his hands at any unseasonable hour, but it was nice to talk big, and there was a club to which he belonged. The Varick Street Roosters, and to which he had a key. It would be closed and empty at this hour, and she could stay there until morning, if need be or with Myrtle Kenrihan. He would take her there if she insisted. There was a sinister grin on the youth's face.
By now Theresa's affections had carried her far. This youth with his slim body, his delicate strong hands, his fine chin, straight moth and hard dark eyes-how wonderful he seemed! He was but nineteen to her eighteen but cold, shrewd, and daring. Yet how tender he seemed to her, how well worth having! Always, when he kissed her now, she trembled in the balance. There was something in the iron grasp of his fingers that went through her like fire. His glance held hers at times when she could scarcely endure it.
“I'll wait, anyhow,” he insisted.
Longer and longer she lingered, but now for once no voice came.
She began to feel that something was wrong-a greater strain than if old Rogaum's voice had been filling the whole neighborhood.
“I've got to go,” she said.
“Gee, but you're a coward, yuh are!” said he derisively. “What'r yuh always so scared about? He always says he'll lock yuh out, but he never does.”
“Yes, but he will,” she insisted nervously. “I think he has this time. You don't know him. He's something awful when he gets real mad. Oh, Connie, I must go!” For the sixth or seventh time she moved, and once more he caught her arm and waist and tried to kiss her, but she slipped away from him.
“Ah, yuh!” he exclaimed. “ I wish he would lock yuh out!”
At her own doorstep, she paused momentarily, more to soften he progress than anything. The outer door was open as usual, but not the inner. She tried it, but it would not give. It was locked! For a moment she paused, cold fear racing over her body, and then knocked.
No answer.
Again she rattled the door, this time nervously, and was about to cry.
Still no answer.
At last she heard her father's voice, hoarse and indifferent, not addressed to her at all, to her mother.
“Let her go, now,” it said savagely, from the front room where he supposed she could not hear. “ I vill her a lesson teach.”
“Hadn't you better let her in now, yet?” pleaded Mrs. Rogaum faintly.
“No,” insisted Mr. Rogaum. “Nefer! Let her go now. If she vill alvays stay oudt, let her stay now. Ve vill see how she likes dot.”
His voice was rich in wrath, and he was saving up a good beating for her into the bargain, that she knew. She would have to wait and wait and plead, and when she was thoroughly wretched and subdued he would let her in and beat her-such a beating as she had never received in all her born days.
Again the door rattled and she still got no answer. Not even her call brought a sound. Now, strangely, a new element, not heretofore apparent in her nature but nevertheless wholly there, was called into life, springing in action as Diana, full formed. Why should he always be so harsh? She hadn't don anything but stay out a little later than usual. He was always so anxious to keep her in and subdue her. For once the cold chills of her girlish fears left her, and she answered angrily.
"All right," she said, some old German stubbornness springing up, "I won't knock. You don't let me in, then."
A suggestion of tears was in her eyes, but she backed firmly out into the stoop and sat down, hesitating. Old Rogaum saw her, lowering down from the lattice, but said nothing. He would teach her for once what were proper hours!
At the corner, standing, Almerting also saw her. He recognized the simple white dress, and paused steadily, a strange thrill racing over him. Really they had locked her out! Gee, this was new. It was great, in a way. There she was, white, quiet, shut out, waiting at her father's doorstep.
Sitting thus, Theresa pondered a moment, her girlish rashness and anger dominating her. Her pride was hurt and she felt revengeful. They would shut her out, would they? All right, she would go out and they should look to it how they would get her back-the old curmudgeons. For the moment the home of Myrtle Kenrihan came to her as possible refuge, but he decided that she need not go there yet. She had better wait a while and see-or walk and frighten them. He would beat her, would he? Well maybe he would, and maybe he wouldn't. She might come back, but still that was a thing afar off. Just now it didn't matter so much. "Connie" was still there on the corner. He loved her dearly. She felt it.
Getting up, she stepped to the now quieting sidewalk and strolled up the street. It was a rather nervous procedure, however. There were street cars still, and stores lighted and people passing, but soon these would not be, and she was locked out. The streets were already more than long silent walks and gleaming rows of lamps.
At the corner her youthful lover almost pounced upon her.
"Locked out, are yuh?" he asked, his eyes shining.
For the moment she was delighted to see him, for a nameless dread had already laid hold of her. Home meant so much. Up to now it had been her whole life.
"Yes," she answered feebly.
"Well, let's stroll on a little," said the boy. He had not as yet quite made up his mind what to do, but the night was young. It was so fine to have with him-his.
At the farther corner they passed Officers Maguire and Delahanty, idly swinging their clubs and discussing politics.
" 'Tis a shame," Officer Delehanty was saying, "the way things are run now," but he paused to add, "Ain't that old Rogaum's girl over there with young Almerting?"
"It is," replied Maguire looking after her.
"Well, I'm thinkin' he'd better be keepin' an eye on her," said the former.
"She's too young to be runnin' around with the likes o' him."
Maguire agreed. "He's a young tough," he observed. "I never liked him. He's too fresh. He works over here in Myer's tobacco factory, and belongs to the Roosters. He's up to no good, I'll warrant that."
"Teach 'em a lesson, I would," Almerting was saying to Theresa as they strolled on. "We'll walk around a while an' make 'em think yuh mean business. They won't lock yuh out any more. If they don't let yuh in when we come back I'll find yuh a place, all right."
His sharp eyes were gleaming as he looked around into her own. Already he had made up his mind that she should not go back if he could help it. He knew a better place than home for this night, anyhow-the club room of the Roosters, if nowhere else. They could stay there for a time, anyhow.
By now old Rogaum, who had seen her walking up the street alone, was marveling at her audacity, but thought she would soon come back. It was amazing that she could exhibit such temerity, but he would teach her! Such a whipping! At half-past ten, however, he stuck his head out of the open window and saw nothing of her. At eleven, the same! Then he walked the floor.
At first wrathful, then nervous, then nervous and wrathful, he finally ended all nervous, without a scintilla of wrath. His stout wife sat up in bed and began to wring her hands.
"Lie down!" he commanded. "You make me sick. I know vot I am doing!"
"Is she still at der door?" pleaded the mother.
"No," he said. "I don't tink so. She should come ven I call."
His nerves were weakening, however, and now they finally collapsed.
"She vent de stread up," he said anxiously after a time. "I vill go after."
Slipping on his coat, he went down the stairs and out into the night. It was growing late, and the stillness and gloom of midnight were nearing. Nowhere in sight was Theresa. First one way and then another he went, looking here, there, everywhere, finally groaning.
"Ach, Gott!" he said, the sweat bursting out on his brow, "vot in Teufal's name iss dis?"
........................
​

 

[*زهره*]

Old Rogaum and His Theresa by Theodore Dreiser

Old Rogaum and His Theresa by Theodore Dreiser

He thought he would seek a policeman, but there was none. Officer Maguire ah d long since gone for a quiet game in one of the neighboring saloons. His partner had temporarily returned to his own beat. Still old Rogaum hunted on, worrying more and more.
Finally he bethought him to hasten home again, for she must have got back. Mrs. Rogaum, too, would be frantic if she had not. If she were not there he must go to the police. Such a night! And his Theresa-This thing could not go on.
As he turned into his own corner he almost ran, coming up to the little portico wet and panting. At a puffing step he turned, and almost fell over a white body at his feet, a prone and writhing woman.
"Ach, Gott!" he cried aloud, almost shouting in his distress and excitement. "Theresa, vot iss dis? Wilhelmina, a light now. Bring a light now, I say, for himmel's sake! Theresa hat sich umgebracht.Help!"
He had fallen to his knees and was turning over the writhing, groaning figure. By the pale light of the street, however, he could make out that it was not his Theresa, fortunately, as he had at first feared, but another and yet there was something very like her in the figure.
"Um!" said the stranger weakly. "Ah!"
The dress was grey, not white as was his Theresa's, but the body was round and plump. It cut the fiercest cords of his intensity, this thought of death to a young woman, but there was something else about the situation which made him forget his own troubles.
Mrs. Rogaum, loudly admonished, almost tumbled down the stairs. At the foot she held the light she had brought --a small glass oil-lamp --and then nearly dropped it. A fairly attractive figure, more girl than woman, rich in all her physical charms that characterize a certain type, lay hear to dying. Her soft hair had fallen back over a good forehead, now quite white. Her pretty hands, well decked with rings, were clutched tightly in an agonized grip. At her neck a blue silk shirtwaist and a light lace collar were torn away where she had clutched herself, and on the white flesh was a yellow stain as of one who had been burned. A strange odor reeked in the area, and in one corner was a spilled bottle.
"Ach, Gott!" exclaimed Mrs. Rogaum. "It iss a vooman! She haf herself gekilt. Run for der police! Oh my! Oh my!"
Rogaum did not kneel for more than moment. Somehow, this creature's fate seemed in some psychic way identified with that of his own daughter. He bounded up, and jumping out his front door, he began to call lustily for the police. Officer Maguire, at a social game nearby, heard the very first cry and came running.
"What's the matter here, now?" he exclaimed, rushing up full and ready for murder, robbery, fire, or indeed, anything in the whole roster of human calamities. "A vooman!" said Rogaum excitedly. "She haf herself umgebracht. She iss dying. Ach, Gott! in my own doorstep, yet!"
"Vere iss der hospital?" put in Mrs. Rogaum, thinking clearly of an ambulance, but not being able to express it. "She iss gekilt, sure. Oh! Oh!" and banding over her the poor motherly soul stroked the tightened hands, and trickled tears upon the blue shirtwaist. "Ach, vy did you do dot?" she said. "Ach, for vy?"
Officer Maguire was essentially a man of action. He jumped to the sidewalk, amid the gathering company, and beat aloud with his club upon the stone flagging. Then he ran to the nearest police phone, returning to aid in another way he might. A milk wagon passing on its way from the Jersey ferry with a few tons of fresh milk aboard, he held it up and demanded a helping.
"Give us quart there, will you? he said authoritatively. "A woman's swallowed acid in here."
"Sure," said the driver, anxious to learn the cause of the excitement. "Got a glass, anybody?"
Maguire ran back and returned bearing a measure. Mrs. Rogaum stood looking nervously on, while the stocky officer raised the golden head and poured the milk.
"Here, now, drink this," he said. "Come on. Try an' swallow it."
The girl, a blonde of a type the world too well knows, opened her eyes, and looked, groaning a little.
"Drink it," shouted the officer fiercely. "Do you want to die? Open your mouth!"
Used to a fear of the law in all her days, she obeyed now, even in death.
The lips parted, the fresh milk was drained to the end, some spilling on neck and cheek.
While they were working old Rogaum came back and stood looking on, by the side of his wife. Also Officer Delahanty, having heard the peculiar wooden ring of the stick upon the stone in the night, had come up.
"Ach, ach," exclaimed Rogaum rather distractedly, "und she iss oudt yet. I could not find her. Oh, oh!"
There was a clang of a gong up the street as the racing ambulance turned in rapidly. A young hospital surgeon dismounted, and seeing the woman's condition, ordered immediate removal. Both officers and Rogaum, as well as the surgeon, helped place her in the ambulance. After a moment the lone bell, ringing wildly in the night, was all the evidence remaining that tragedy had been here.
"Do you know how she came here?" asked officer Delahanty, coming back to get Rogaum's testimony for the police.
"No, no," answered Rogaum wretchedly. "She vass here alretty. I vass for my daughter loog. Ach, himmel, I haf my daughter lost. She iss avay."
Mrs. Rogaum also chattered, the significance of Theresa's absence all the more painfully emphasized this.
The officer did not at first get the import of this. He was only interested in the facts of the present case.
"You say she was here when you come. Where was you?"
"I vass for my daughter loog. I come here, und der vooman vass here now alretty."
"Yes. What time was this?"
"Only now yet. Yussed a half-hour."
Officer Maguire had strolled up, after chasing away a small crowd that had gathered with fierce and unholy threats. For the first time now he noticed the peculiar perturbation of the usually placid German couple.
"What about your daughter?" he asked, catching a word as to that.
Both old people raised their voices at once.
"She haf gone. She haf run avay. Ach, himmel, ve must for her loog. Quick-she could not get in. Ve had der door shut."
"Locked her out, eh?" inquired Maguire after a long time, hearing much of the rest of the story.
"Yes,"explained Rogaum. "It was to schkare her a liddle. She vould not come ven I called."
"Sure, that's the girl we saw walkin' with young Almerting, do ye mind? The one in the white dress," said Delahanty to Maguire.
"White dress, yah!" echoed Rogaum, and then the fact of her walking with someone had come home like a blow.
"Did you hear dot?" he exclaimed even as Mrs. Rogaum did likewise. "Mein Gott, hast du das gehoert?
He fairly jumped as he said it. His hands flew up to his stout and ruddy head.
"Whaddy ya want to let her out for nights?" asked Maguire roughly, catching the drift of the situation. "That's no time for young girls to be out, anyhow, and with these toughs around here. Sure, I saw her, nearly two hours ago."
"Ach," groaned Rogaum. "Two hours yet. Ho, ho, ho!" His voice was quite histeric.
"Well, go on in," said Officer Delahanty. "There's no use in yelling out here. Give us a description of her an' we'll send out an alarm. You won't be able to find her walkin' around."
Her parents described exactly. The two men turned to the nearest police box and then disappeared, leaving the old German couple in the throws of distress. A time-worn old church-clock nearby now chimed out one and then two. The note cut like knives. Mrs Rogaum began fearfully to cry. Rogaum walked and blustered to himself.
"It's a queer case, that,"said officer Delahanty to Maguire after having reported the matter of Theresa, but referring solely to the outcast of the doorway so recently sent away and in whose fate they were much more interested. She was being a part of the commercialized vice of the city, they were curios as to the cause of her suicide. "I think I know that woman. I think I know where she came from. You do, too-Adele's around the corner, eh?She didn't come into that doorway by herself, either. She was put there. You know how they do."
"You're right," said Maguire. "She was put there, all right, and that's just where she came from,too."
The two of them now tipped up there noses and cocked their eyes significantly.
"Let's go around," added Maguire.
They went, the significant red light over the transom at 68 telling its own story.Strolling leisurely up, they knocked. At the very first sound a painted denizen of the half-world opened the door.
"Where's Adele?" asked Maguire as the two, hats on as usual, stepped in.
"She's gone to bed."
"Tell her to come down."
They seated themselves deliberately in the gaudy mirrored parlor and waited, conversing between themselves in whispers. Presently a sleepy-looking woman of forty in a gaudy robe of a heavy texture, and slippered in red appeared.
"We're here about the suicide case you had tonight. What about it? Who she was? How'd she come to be in the doorway around the corner"Come now," Maguire added, as the madam assumed an air of mingled injured and ignorant innocence, "you know. Can that stuff! How did she come to take poison?"
"I don't know what you're talking about," said the woman with the utmost air of innocence. "I never heard of any suicide."
"Aw, come now," insisted Delahanty, "the girl around the corner. You know. We know you've got a pull, but we've got to know about this case, just the same. Come across now. It won't be published. What made her take the poison?"
Under the steady eyes of the officers the woman hesitated, but finally weakened.
"Why-why-her lover went back on her-that's all. She got so blue, we just couldn't do anything with her. I tried to, but she wouldn't listen."
"Lover, eh?" put in Maguire as thought that were the most unheard-of thing in the world. "What is his name?"
"i don't know. You can never tell that."
"What was her name-Annie?" asked Delahanty wisely, as though he knew but was merely inquiring for form's sake.
"No-Emily."
"Well, how did she come to get over there, anyhow?" inquired Maguire most pleasantly.
"George took her," she replied, referring to a man-of-all-work about the place.
Then little by little as they sat there the whole miserable story came out, miserable as all the wilfulness and error and suffering in the world.
"How old was she?"
"Oh, twenty-one."
"Well, where'd she come from?"
"Oh, here in New York. Her family locked her out one night, I think."
.....................
​

 

[*زهره*]

Old Rogaum and His Theresa by Theodore Dreiser

Old Rogaum and His Theresa by Theodore Dreiser

Something in the way the woman said this last brought old Rogaum and his daughter back to the policeman's minds. They had forgotten all about her by now, although they had turned in alarm. Fearing to interfere too much with this well-known and politically controlled institution, the two men left, but outside they to talking of the other case.
"We ought to tell old Rogaum about her some time," said Maguire to Delahanty cynically. "He locked his kid out to-night."
"Yes, it might be a good thing for him to hear that," replied the other."We'd better go round there an' see if his girl's back yet. She may be back by now," and so they returned but a little disturbed by the joint miseries.
At Rogaum's door they once more knocked loudly.
"Is your daughter back again?" asked Maguire when a reply was had.
"Ach, no," replied Mrs. Rogaum, who was quite alone now. "My husband he haf gone oudt again to loog vunce more. Oh,my! Oh, my!"
"Well, that's what you get for lockin' her out," returned Maguire loftily, the other story was fresh in his mind. "That other girl downstairs her tonight was locked out too, once." He chanced to have a girl-child of his own and somehow he was in the mood for pointing out moral. "you oughtn't to do anything like that. Where d'yuh expect she's goin' to if you lock her out?"
Mrs Rogaum groaned. She explained it was not her fault, but anyhow it was carrying coals to Newcastle to talk to her so. The advice was better for her husband.
The pair finally returned to the station to see if the call had been attended to.
"Sure," said the sergeant, "certainly. Whaddy ya think?" and he heard from the blotter before him:
" 'Look out for girl, Theresa Rogaum. Aged 18; height, about 5,3; light hair, blue eyes, white cotton dress, trimmed with blue ribbon. Lat seen with lad named Almerting, about 19 years of age, about 5,9; weight 135 pounds.' "
There were more details even more pointed out and conclusive. For over an hour now, supposedly, policemen from the Battery to Harlem, and far beyond, had been scanning long streets and dim shadows for a girl in a white dress with a youth of nineteen-supposedly.
Officer Halsey, another of this region, which took in a portion of Washington Square, has seen a many couple this pleasant summer evening since the description of Theresa and Almerting had been read to him over the telephone, but non that answered to these. Like Maguire and Delahanty, he was more or less indifferent to all such cases, but idling on a corner near the park at about three a.m., a brother officer, one Paisly by name, came up and casually mentioned the missing pair also.
"I bet I saw that couple, not over an hour ago. She was dressed in white, and looked to me as if she didn't want to be out. I didn't happen to think at the time, but now I remember. They acted sort o' funny. She did, anyhow. They went in this park down at the Fourth street end there."
"Supposing we beat it, then," suggested Halsey, weary for something to do.
"Sure ," said the other quickly, and together they began a careful search, kicking around in te moonlight under the trees. The moonlight was leaning moderately toward the west, and all the branches were silvered with light and dew. Among the flowers, past clumps of bushes, near the fountain, they searched, each one going his was alone. At last, the wondering Halsey pushed beside a thick clump of flaming bushes, ruddy, slightly, even in the light. A murmur of voices greeted him, and something was very much like the sound of a sob.
"What's that?" he said mentally, drawing near and listening.
"Why don't you come on now?" said the first of the voices heard. "They won't let you in anymore. You're with me, ain't you? What's the use cryin'?"
No answer to this, but no sobs. She must have been crying silently.
"Come on. i can take care of yuh. We can live in Hoboken. I know a place we can go to-night. That's all right."
There was a movement as if the speaker were patting her on the shoulder.
"What's the use of cryin'? Don't you believe I love yuh?"
The officer who had stolen quietly around to get a better view now came closer. He wanted to see for himself. In the moonlight, from a comfortable distance, he could see them seated. The tall bushes were almost all about the bench. In the arms of the youth was the girl in white, held very close. Leaning over to get a better view, he saw him kiss her and hold her-hold her in such a way that she could but yield to him, whatever her slight disinclination.
It was a common affair at earlier hours, but rather interesting now. The officer was interested. He crept nearer.
"What are you two doin' here?" he suddenly inquired, rising before them, as though he had not seen.
The girl tumbled out of her compromising position, speechless and blushing violently. The young man stood up, nervous, but defiant.
"Aw, we were just sittin' here," he replied.
"Yes? Well, say, what's your name? I think we're lookin' for you two, anyhow. Almerting?"
"That's me," said the youth.
"And yours?" he adds, addressing Theresa.
"Theresa Rogaum," replied the latter brokenly, beginning to cry.
"Well, you two'll have to come along with me," he added laconically. "The Captain wants to see both of you," and he marched them solely away.
"What for?" young Almerting ventured to inquire after a time, blanched with fright.
"Never mind," replied the policeman irritably. "Come along, you'll find out at the station house. We want you both. That's enough."
At the other end of the park Paisly joined them, and, at the station-house, the girl was given a chair. She was all tears and meloncholy with a modicum possibly of relief at being thus rescued from the world. Her companion, for all his youth, was defiant if circumspect, a natural animal defeated of its aim.
"Better go for her father," commented the sergeant, and by four in the morning old Rogaum, who had still been up walking the floor, was rushing stationward. From the earlier rage he had passed to an almost killing grief, but now at the thought that he might possibly see his daughter alive and well once more he was overflowing with a mingled emotion which contained fear, rage, sorrow,and a number of other things. What should he do to her if she were alive? Beat her? Kiss her? Or what? Arrived at the station, however, and seeing his fair Theresa in the hands of the police, and this young stranger lingering near, also detained, he was beside himself with fear, rage, and affection.
"You! You!" he exclaimed at once , glaring at the imperturbable Almerting, when told that the young man was found with his girl. Then, seized with a sudden horror, he added, turning to Theresa, "Vot haf you done?Oh, oh! You! You!" he repeated again to Almerting angrily now that he felt his daughter was safe. "Come not near my tochter any more! I vill preak your effery pone, du teufel, du!"
He made a move toward the incarcerated lover, but here the sergeant interfered.
"Stop that, now," he said calmly. "Take you daughter out of her and go home, or I'll lock you both up. We don't want any fighting in here. D'ye hear? Keep your daughter off the streets hereafter, then she won't get into trouble. Don't let her run around with such young toughs as this." Almerting winced. "Then there won't anything happen to her. We' ll do whatever punishing'sa to be done."
"Aw, what's eatin' him!" commented Almerting dourly, now that he felt himself reasonably say from a personal encounter. "What have I done? He locked her out didn't he? I was just keepin' her company till morning."
"Yes, we know all about that," said the sergeant, "and about you, too. You shut up, or you'll go downtown to Special Sessions. I want no guff out o' you." Still he ordered the butcher angrily to be gone.
Old Rogaum heard nothing. He had his daughter. He was taking her home. She was not dead-not even morally injured in so far as he could learn. He was a compound of wondrous feelings. What to do was beyond him.
At the corner near the butcher shop they encountered the wakeful Maguire, still idling, as they passed. He was pleased to see that Rogaum had his Theresa once more. It raised him to a high, moralizing height.
"Don't lock her out any more," he called significantly. "That's what brought the other girl to your door, you know!"
"Vot iss dot?" said Rogaum.
"I say the other girl was locked out. That's why she committed suicide."
"Ach, I know," said the husky German under his breath, but he had no intention of locking her out. He did not what he would do until they were in the presence of his crying wife, who fell upon Theresa, weeping. Then he decided to be reasonably lenient.
"She vass like you," said the old mother to the wandering Theresa, ignorant of the seeming lesson brought to their very door. "She vass loog like you."
"I vill not vip you now," said the old butcher solemnly, too delighted to think of punishment after having feared every horror under the sun, "aber, go not oudt any more. Keep off the streets so late. I von't hav it. Dot loafer, aber- let him yussed come here for some more! I fix him!"
"No, no," said the fat mother tearfully, smoothing her daughter's hair. "She vouldn't run avay no more yet, no, no." Old Mrs. Rogaum was all mother.
"Well, you wouldn't let me in," insists Theresa, "and I didn't have any place to go. What do you want me to do? I'm not going to stay in the house all the time."
"I fix him!" roared Rogaum, unloading all his rage now on the recreant lover freely. "Yussed let him come some more! Der penitentiary he should haf!"
"Oh, he's not so bad," Theresa told her mother, almost a heroine now that she was home and safe. "He's Mr. Almerting, the stationer's boy. They live here in the next block."
"Don't you ever bother that girl again," the sergeant was saying to young Almerting as he turned him loose an hour later. "If you do, we'll get you, and you won'd get off under six moths. Y'hear me, do you?"
"Aw, I don't want 'er," replied the boy truculently and cynically. "Let him have his old daughter. What'd he want to lock'er out for? They'd better not lock'er out again though, that's all I say. I don't want 'er."
"Beat it!" replied the sergeant, and away he went​

 

[*زهره*]

THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT By Bret Harte

THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT By Bret Harte

As Mr. John Oakhurst, gambler, stepped into the main street of Poker Flat on the morning of the twenty-third of November, 1850, he was conscious of a change in its moral atmosphere since the preceding night. Two or three men, conversing earnestly together, ceased as he approached, and exchanged significant glances. There was a Sabbath lull in the air which, in a settlement unused to Sabbath influences, looked ominous.
Mr. Oakhurst's calm, handsome face betrayed small concern in these indications. Whether he was conscious of any predisposing cause was another question. "I reckon they're after somebody," he reflected; "likely it's me." He returned to his pocket the handkerchief with which he had been whipping away the red dust of Poker Flat from his neat boots, and quietly discharged his mind of any further conjecture.
In point of fact, Poker Flat was "after somebody." It had lately suffered the loss of several thousand dollars, two valuable horses, and a prominent citizen. It was experiencing a spasm of virtuous reaction, quite as lawless and ungovernable as any of the acts that had provoked it. A secret committee had determined to rid the town of all improper persons. This was done permanently in regard of two men who were then hanging from the boughs of a sycamore in the gulch, and temporarily in the banishment of certain other objectionable characters. I regret to say that some of these were ladies. It is but due to the ***, however, to state that their impropriety was professional, and it was only in such easily established standards of evil that Poker Flat ventured to sit in judgment.
Mr. Oakhurst was right in supposing that he was included in this category. A few of the committee had urged hanging him as a possible example, and a sure method of reimbursing themselves from his pockets of the sums he had won from them. "It's agin justice," said Jim Wheeler, "to let this yer young man from Roaring Camp--an entire stranger--carry away our money." But a crude sentiment of equity residing in the breasts of those who had been fortunate enough to win from Mr. Oakhurst overruled this narrower local prejudice.
Mr. Oakhurst received his sentence with philosophic calmness, none the less coolly that he was aware of the hesitation of his judges. He was too much of a gambler not to accept Fate. With him life was at best an uncertain game, and he recognized the usual percentage in favor of the dealer.
A body of armed men accompanied the deported wickedness of Poker Flat to the outskirts of the settlement. Besides Mr. Oakhurst, who was known to be a coolly desperate man, and for whose intimidation the armed escort was intended, the expatriated party consisted of a young woman familiarly known as the "Duchess"; another, who had won the title of "Mother Shipton"; and "Uncle Billy," a suspected sluice-robber and confirmed drunkard. The cavalcade provoked no comments from the spectators, nor was any word uttered by the escort. Only, when the gulch which marked the uttermost limit of Poker Flat was reached, the leader spoke briefly and to the point. The exiles were forbidden to return at the peril of their lives.
As the escort disappeared, their pent-up feelings found vent in a few hysterical tears from the Duchess, some bad language from Mother Shipton, and a Parthian volley of expletives from Uncle Billy. The philosophic Oakhurst alone remained silent. He listened calmly to Mother Shipton's desire to cut somebody's heart out, to the repeated statements of the Duchess that she would die in the road, and to the alarming oaths that seemed to be bumped out of Uncle Billy as he rode forward. With the easy good humor characteristic of his class, he insisted upon exchanging his own riding horse, "Five Spot," for the sorry mule which the Duchess rode. But even this act did not draw the party into any closer sympathy. The young woman readjusted her somewhat draggled plumes with a feeble, faded coquetry; Mother Shipton eyed the possessor of "Five Spot" with malevolence, and Uncle Billy included the whole party in one sweeping anathema.
The road to Sandy Bar--a camp that, not having as yet experienced the regenerating influences of Poker Flat, consequently seemed to offer some invitation to the emigrants--lay over a steep mountain range. It was distant a day's severe travel. In that advanced season, the party soon passed out of the moist, temperate regions of the foothills into the dry, cold, bracing air of the Sierras. The trail was narrow and difficult. At noon the Duchess, rolling out of her saddle upon the ground, declared her intention of going no farther, and the party halted.
The spot was singularly wild and impressive. A wooded amphitheater, surrounded on three sides by precipitous cliffs of ***** granite, sloped gently toward the crest of another precipice that overlooked the valley. It was, undoubtedly, the most suitable spot for a camp, had camping been advisable. But Mr. Oakhurst knew that scarcely half the journey to Sandy Bar was accomplished, and the party were not equipped or provisioned for delay. This fact he pointed out to his companions curtly, with a philosophic commentary on the folly of "throwing up their hand before the game was played out." But they were furnished with liquor, which in this emergency stood them in place of food, fuel, rest, and prescience. In spite of his remonstrances, it was not long before they were more or less under its influence. Uncle Billy passed rapidly from a bellicose state into one of stupor, the Duchess became maudlin, and Mother Shipton snored. Mr. Oakhurst alone remained erect, leaning against a rock, calmly surveying them.
Mr. Oakhurst did not drink. It interfered with a profession which required coolness, impassiveness, and presence of mind, and, in his own language, he "couldn't afford it." As he gazed at his recumbent fellow exiles, the loneliness begotten of his pariah trade, his habits of life, his very vices, for the first time seriously oppressed him. He bestirred himself in dusting his black clothes, washing his hands and face, and other acts characteristic of his studiously neat habits, and for a moment forgot his annoyance. The thought of deserting his weaker and more pitiable companions never perhaps occurred to him. Yet he could not help feeling the want of that excitement which, singularly enough, was most conducive to that calm equanimity for which he was notorious. He looked at the gloomy walls that rose a thousand feet sheer above the circling pines around him; at the sky, ominously clouded; at the valley below, already deepening into shadow. And, doing so, suddenly he heard his own name called.
A horseman slowly ascended the trail. In the fresh, open face of the newcomer Mr. Oakhurst recognized Tom Simson, otherwise known as the "Innocent" of Sandy Bar. He had met him some months before over a "little game," and had, with perfect equanimity, won the entire fortune--amounting to some forty dollars--of that guileless youth. After the game was finished, Mr. Oakhurst drew the youthful speculator behind the door and thus addressed him: "Tommy, you're a good little man, but you can't gamble worth a cent. Don't try it over again." He then handed him his money back, pushed him gently from the room, and so made a devoted slave of Tom Simson.
There was a remembrance of this in his boyish and enthusiastic greeting of Mr. Oakhurst. He had started, he said, to go to Poker Flat to seek his fortune. "Alone?" No, not exactly alone; in fact (a giggle), he had run away with Piney Woods. Didn't Mr. Oakhurst remember Piney? She that used to wait on the table at the Temperance House? They had been engaged a long time, but old Jake Woods had objected, and so they had run away, and were going to Poker Flat to be married, and here they were. And they were tired out, and how lucky it was they had found a place to camp and company. All this the Innocent delivered rapidly, while Piney, a stout, comely damsel of fifteen, emerged from behind the pine tree, where she had been blushing unseen, and rode to the side of her lover.
Mr. Oakhurst seldom troubled himself with sentiment, still less with propriety; but he had a vague idea that the situation was not fortunate. He retained, however, his presence of mind sufficiently to kick Uncle Billy, who was about to say something, and Uncle Billy was sober enough to recognize in Mr. Oakhurst's kick a superior power that would not bear trifling. He then endeavored to dissuade Tom Simson from delaying further, but in vain. He even pointed out the fact that there was no provision, nor means of making a camp. But, unluckily, the Innocent met this objection by assuring the party that he was provided with an extra mule loaded with provisions and by the discovery of a rude attempt at a log house near the trail. "Piney can stay with Mrs. Oakhurst," said the Innocent, pointing to the Duchess, "and I can shift for myself."
Nothing but Mr. Oakhurst's admonishing foot saved Uncle Billy from bursting into a roar of laughter. As it was, he felt compelled to retire up the canyon until he could recover his gravity. There he confided the joke to the tall pine trees, with many slaps of his leg, contortions of his face, and the usual profanity. But when he returned to the party, he found them seated by a fire--for the air had grown strangely chill and the sky overcast--in apparently amicable conversation. Piney was actually talking in an impulsive, girlish fashion to the Duchess, who was listening with an interest and animation she had not shown for many days. The Innocent was holding forth, apparently with equal effect, to Mr. Oakhurst and Mother Shipton, who was actually relaxing into amiability. "Is this yer a damned picnic?" said Uncle Billy with inward scorn as he surveyed the sylvan group, the glancing firelight, and the tethered animals in the foreground. Suddenly an idea mingled with the alcoholic fumes that disturbed his brain. It was apparently of a jocular nature, for he felt impelled to slap his leg again and cram his fist into his mouth.
As the shadows crept slowly up the mountain, a slight breeze rocked the tops of the pine trees, and moaned through their long and gloomy aisles. The ruined cabin, patched and covered with pine boughs, was set apart for the ladies. As the lovers parted, they unaffectedly exchanged a kiss, so honest and sincere that it might have been heard above the swaying pines. The frail Duchess and the malevolent Mother Shipton were probably too stunned to remark upon this last evidence of simplicity, and so turned without a word to the hut. The fire was replenished, the men lay down before the door, and in a few minutes were asleep.
Mr. Oakhurst was a light sleeper. Toward morning he awoke benumbed and cold. As he stirred the dying fire, the wind, which was now blowing strongly, brought to his cheek that which caused the blood to leave it--snow!
He started to his feet with the intention of awakening the sleepers, for there was no time to lose. But turning to where Uncle Billy had been lying, he found him gone. A suspicion leaped to his brain and a curse to his lips. He ran to the spot where the mules had been tethered; they were no longer there. The tracks were already rapidly disappearing in the snow. ​

.

 

[*زهره*]

THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT By Bret Harte

THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT By Bret Harte

The momentary excitement brought Mr. Oakhurst back to the fire with his usual calm. He did not waken the sleepers. The Innocent slumbered peacefully, with a smile on his good-humored, freckled face; the virgin Piney slept beside her frailer sisters as sweetly as though attended by celestial guardians; and Mr. Oakhurst, drawing his blanket over his shoulders, stroked his mustaches and waited for the dawn. It came slowly in a whirling mist of snowflakes that dazzled and confused the eye. What could be seen of the landscape appeared magically changed. He looked over the valley, and summed up the present and future in two words--"snowed in!"
A careful inventory of the provisions, which, fortunately for the party, had been stored within the hut and so escaped the felonious fingers of Uncle Billy, disclosed the fact that with care and prudence they might last ten days longer. "That is," said Mr. Oakhurst, sotto voce to the Innocent, "if you're willing to board us. If you ain't--and perhaps you'd better not--you can wait till Uncle Billy gets back with provisions." For some occult reason, Mr. Oakhurst could not bring himself to disclose Uncle Billy's rascality, and so offered the hypothesis that he had wandered from the camp and had accidentally stampeded the animals. He dropped a warning to the Duchess and Mother Shipton, who of course knew the facts of their associate's defection. "They'll find out the truth about us all when they find out anything," he added, significantly, "and there's no good frightening them now."
Tom Simson not only put all his worldly store at the disposal of Mr. Oakhurst, but seemed to enjoy the prospect of their enforced seclusion. "We'll have a good camp for a week, and then the snow'll melt, and we'll all go back together." The cheerful gaiety of the young man, and Mr. Oakhurst's calm, infected the others. The Innocent with the aid of pine boughs extemporized a thatch for the roofless cabin, and the Duchess directed Piney in the rearrangement of the interior with a taste and tact that opened the blue eyes of that provincial maiden to their fullest extent. "I reckon now you're used to fine things at Poker Flat," said Piney. The Duchess turned away sharply to conceal something that reddened her cheeks through its professional tint, and Mother Shipton requested Piney not to "chatter." But when Mr. Oakhurst returned from a weary search for the trail, he heard the sound of happy laughter echoed from the rocks. He stopped in some alarm, and his thoughts first naturally reverted to the whisky, which he had prudently cached. "And yet it don't somehow sound like whisky," said the gambler. It was not until he caught sight of the blazing fire through the still-blinding storm and the group around it that he settled to the conviction that it was "square fun."
Whether Mr. Oakhurst had cached his cards with the whisky as something debarred the free access of the community, I cannot say. It was certain that, in Mother Shipton's words, he "didn't say cards once" during that evening. Haply the time was beguiled by an accordion, produced somewhat ostentatiously by Tom Simson from his pack. Notwithstanding some difficulties attending the manipulation of this instrument, Piney Woods managed to pluck several reluctant melodies from its keys, to an accompaniment by the Innocent on a pair of bone castanets. But the crowning festivity of the evening was reached in a rude camp-meeting hymn, which the lovers, joining hands, sang with great earnestness and vociferation. I fear that a certain defiant tone and Covenanter's swing to its chorus, rather than any devotional quality, caused it speedily to infect the others, who at last joined in the refrain:
"I'm proud to live in the service of the Lord, And I'm bound to die in His army."
The pines rocked, the storm eddied and whirled above the miserable group, and the flames of their altar leaped heavenward as if in token of the vow.
At midnight the storm abated, the rolling clouds parted, and the stars glittered keenly above the sleeping camp. Mr. Oakhurst, whose professional habits had enabled him to live on the smallest possible amount of sleep, in dividing the watch with Tom Simson somehow managed to take upon himself the greater part of that duty. He excused himself to the Innocent by saying that he had "often been a week without sleep." "Doing what?" asked Tom. "Poker!" replied Oakhurst, sententiously; "when a man gets a streak of luck,--nigger luck--he don't get tired. The luck gives in first. Luck," continued the gambler, reflectively, "is a mighty queer thing. All you know about it for certain is that it's bound to change. And it's finding out when it's going to change that makes you. We've had a streak of bad luck since we left Poker Flat--you come along, and slap you get into it, too. If you can hold your cards right along you're all right. For," added the gambler, with cheerful irrelevance,
"'I'm proud to live in the service of the Lord, And I'm bound to die in His army.'"
The third day came, and the sun, looking through the white- curtained valley, saw the outcasts divide their slowly decreasing store of provisions for the morning meal. It was one of the peculiarities of that mountain climate that its rays diffused a kindly warmth over the wintry landscape, as if in regretful commiseration of the past. But it revealed drift on drift of snow piled high around the hut--a hopeless, uncharted, trackless sea of white lying below the rocky shores to which the castaways still clung. Through the marvelously clear air the smoke of the pastoral village of Poker Flat rose miles away. Mother Shipton saw it, and from a remote pinnacle of her rocky fastness hurled in that direction a final malediction. It was her last vituperative attempt, and perhaps for that reason was invested with a certain degree of sublimity. It did her good, she privately informed the Duchess. "Just you go out there and cuss, and see." She then set herself to the task of amusing "the child," as she and the Duchess were pleased to call Piney. Piney was no chicken, but it was a soothing and original theory of the pair thus to account for the fact that she didn't swear and wasn't improper.
When night crept up again through the gorges, the reedy notes of the accordion rose and fell in fitful spasms and long-drawn gasps by the flickering campfire. But music failed to fill entirely the aching void left by insufficient food, and a new diversion was proposed by Piney--storytelling. Neither Mr. Oakhurst nor his female companions caring to relate their personal experiences, this plan would have failed too but for the Innocent. Some months before he had chanced upon a stray copy of Mr. Pope's ingenious translation of the ILIAD. He now proposed to narrate the principal incidents of that poem--having thoroughly mastered the argument and fairly forgotten the words--in the current vernacular of Sandy Bar. And so for the rest of that night the Homeric demigods again walked the earth. Trojan bully and wily Greek wrestled in the winds, and the great pines in the canyon seemed to bow to the wrath of the son of Peleus. Mr. Oakhurst listened with quiet satisfaction. Most especially was he interested in the fate of "Ash-heels," as the Innocent persisted in denominating the "swift-footed Achilles."
So with small food and much of Homer and the accordion, a week passed over the heads of the outcasts. The sun again forsook them, and again from leaden skies the snowflakes were sifted over the land. Day by day closer around them drew the snowy circle, until at last they looked from their prison over drifted walls of dazzling white that towered twenty feet above their heads. It became more and more difficult to replenish their fires, even from the fallen trees beside them, now half-hidden in the drifts. And yet no one complained. The lovers turned from the dreary prospect and looked into each other's eyes, and were happy. Mr. Oakhurst settled himself coolly to the losing game before him. The Duchess, more cheerful than she had been, assumed the care of Piney. Only Mother Shipton--once the strongest of the party--seemed to sicken and fade. At midnight on the tenth day she called Oakhurst to her side. "I'm going," she said, in a voice of querulous weakness, "but don't say anything about it. Don't waken the kids. Take the bundle from under my head and open it." Mr. Oakhurst did so. It contained Mother Shipton's rations for the last week, untouched. "Give 'em to the child," she said, pointing to the sleeping Piney. "You've starved yourself," said the gambler. "That's what they call it," said the woman, querulously, as she lay down again and, turning her face to the wall, passed quietly away.
The accordion and the bones were put aside that day, and Homer was forgotten. When the body of Mother Shipton had been committed to the snow, Mr. Oakhurst took the Innocent aside, and showed him a pair of snowshoes, which he had fashioned from the old pack saddle. "There's one chance in a hundred to save her yet," he said, pointing to Piney; "but it's there," he added, pointing toward Poker Flat. "If you can reach there in two days she's safe." "And you?" asked Tom Simson. "I'll stay here," was the curt reply.
The lovers parted with a long embrace. "You are not going, too?" said the Duchess as she saw Mr. Oakhurst apparently waiting to accompany him. "As far as the canyon," he replied. He turned suddenly, and kissed the Duchess, leaving her pallid face aflame and her trembling limbs rigid with amazement.
Night came, but not Mr. Oakhurst. It brought the storm again and the whirling snow. Then the Duchess, feeding the fire, found that someone had quietly piled beside the hut enough fuel to last a few days longer. The tears rose to her eyes, but she hid them from Piney.
The women slept but little. In the morning, looking into each other's faces, they read their fate. Neither spoke; but Piney, accepting the position of the stronger, drew near and placed her arm around the Duchess's waist. They kept this attitude for the rest of the day. That night the storm reached its greatest fury, and, rending asunder the protecting pines, invaded the very hut.
Toward morning they found themselves unable to feed the fire, which gradually died away. As the embers slowly blackened, the Duchess crept closer to Piney, and broke the silence of many hours: "Piney, can you pray?" "No, dear," said Piney, simply. The Duchess, without knowing exactly why, felt relieved, and, putting her head upon Piney's shoulder, spoke no more. And so reclining, the younger and purer pillowing the head of her soiled sister upon her virgin breast, they fell asleep.
The wind lulled as if it feared to waken them. Feathery drifts of snow, shaken from the long pine boughs, flew like white-winged birds, and settled about them as they slept. The moon through the rifted clouds looked down upon what had been the camp. But all human stain, all trace of earthly travail, was hidden beneath the spotless mantle mercifully flung from above.
They slept all that day and the next, nor did they waken when voices and footsteps broke the silence of the camp. And when pitying fingers brushed the snow from their wan faces, you could scarcely have told from the equal peace that dwelt upon them which was she that had sinned. Even the law of Poker Flat recognized this, and turned away, leaving them still locked in each other's arms.
But at the head of the gulch, on one of the largest pine trees, they found the deuce of clubs pinned to the bark with a bowie knife. It bore the following, written in pencil, in a firm hand:
BENEATH THIS TREE LIES THE BODY OF JOHN OAKHURST, WHO STRUCK A STREAK OF BAD LUCK ON THE 23D OF NOVEMBER, 1850, AND HANDED IN HIS CHECKS ON THE 7TH DECEMBER, 1850.​

And pulseless and cold, with a Derringer by his side and a bullet in his heart, though still calm as in life, beneath the snow lay he who was at once the strongest and yet the weakest of the outcasts of Poker Flat​

 

[*زهره*]

Regret by kate Chopin

Regret by kate Chopin

MAMZELLE Aurélie possessed a good strong figure, ruddy cheeks, hair that was changing from brown to gray, and a determined eye. She wore a man's hat about the farm, and an old blue army overcoat when it was cold, and sometimes topboots.
Mamzelle Aurélie had never thought of marrying. She had never been in love. At the age of twenty she had received a proposal, which she had promptly declined, and at the age of fifty she had not yet lived to regret it. So she was quite alone in the world, except for her dog Ponto, and the negroes who lived in her cabins and worked her crops, and the fowls, a few cows, a couple of mules, her gun (with which she shot chicken-hawks), and her religion.
One morning Mamzelle Aurélie stood upon her gallery, contemplating, with arms akimbo, a small band of very small children who, to all intents and purposes, might have fallen from the clouds, so unexpected and bewildering was their coming, and so unwelcome. They were the children of her nearest neighbor, Odile, who was not such a near neighbor, after all.
The young woman had appeared but five minutes before, accompanied by these four children. In her arms she carried little Elodie; she dragged Ti Nomme by an unwilling hand; while Marcéline and Marcélette followed with irresolute steps.
Her face was red and disfigured from tears and excitement. She had been summoned to a neighboring parish by the dangerous illness of her mother; her husband was away in Texas - it seemed to her a million miles away; and Valsin was waiting with the mule-cart to drive her to the station.
"It's no question, Mamzelle Aurélie; you jus' got to keep those youngsters fo' me tell I come back. Dieu sait, I would n'botha you with 'em if it was any otha way to do! Make 'em mine you, Mamzelle Aurélie; don' spare 'em. Me, there, I'm halfcrazy between the chil'ren, an' Leon not home, an' maybe not even to fine po' maman alive encore!" -a harrowing possibility which drove Odile totake a final hasty and convulsive leave of her disconsolate family.
She left them crowded into the narrow strip of shade on the porch of the long, low house; the white sunlight was beating in on the white old boards; some chickens were scratching in the grass at the foot of the steps, and one had boldly mounted, and was stepping heavily, solemnly, and aimlessly across the gallery. There was a pleasant odor of pinks in the air, and the sound of negroes' laughter was coming across the flowering cotton-field.
Mamzelle Aurélie stood contemplating the children. She looked with a critical eye upon Marcéline, who had been left staggering beneath the weight of the chubby Elodie. She surveyed with the same calculating air Marcélette mingling her silent tears with the audible grief and rebellion of Ti Nomme. During those few contemplative moments she was collecting herself, determining upon a line of action which should be identical with a line of duty. She began by feeding them.
If Mamzelle Aurélie's responsibilities might have begun and ended there, they could easily have been dismissed; for her larder was amply provided against an emergency of this nature. But little children are not little pigs; they require and demand attentions which were wholly unexpected by Mamzelle Aurélie, and which she was ill prepared to give.
She was, indeed, very inapt in her management of Odile's children during the first few days. How could she know that Marcélette always wept when spoken to in a loud and commanding tone of voice? It was a peculiarity of Marcélette's. She became acquainted with Ti Nomme's passion for flowers only when he had plucked all the choicest gardenias and pinks for the apparent purpose of critically studying their botanical construction.
"'Tain't enough to tell 'im, Mamzelle Aurélie," Marcéline instructed her; "you got to tie 'im in a chair. It's w'at maman all time do w'en he's bad: she tie 'im in a chair." The chair in which Mamzelle Aurélie tied Ti Nomme was roomy and comfortable,and he seized the opportunity to take a nap in it, the afternoon being warm.
At night, when she ordered them one and all to bed as she would have shooed the chickens into the hen-house, they stayed uncomprehending before her. What about the little white nightgowns that had to be taken from the pillow-slip in which they were brought over, and shaken by some strong hand till they snapped like ox-whips? What about the tub of water which had to be brought and set in the middle of the floor, in which the little tired, dusty, sunbrowned feet had every one to be washed sweet and clean? And it made Marcéline and Marcélette laugh merrily - the idea that Mamzelle Aurélie should for a moment have believed that Ti Nomme could fall asleep without being told the story of Croque-mitaine or Loup-garou, or both; or that Elodie could fall asleep at all without being rocked and sung to.
"I tell you, Aunt Ruby," Mamzelle Aurélie informed her cook in confidence; "me, I'd rather manage a dozen plantation' than fo' chil'ren. It's terrassent! Bonté! Don't talk to me about chil'ren!"
"'Tain' ispected sich as you would know airy thing 'bout 'em, Mamzelle Aurélie. I see dat plainly yistiddy w'en I spy dat li'le chile playin' wid yo' baskit o' keys. You don' know dat makes chillun grow uphard-headed, to play wid keys? Des like it make 'em teeth hard to look in a lookin'-glass. Them's the things you got to know in the raisin' an' manigement o' chillun."
Mamzelle Aurélie certainly did not pretend or aspire to such subtle and far-reaching knowledge on the subject as Aunt Ruby possessed, who had "raised five an' bared (buried) six" in her day. She was glad enough to learn a few little mother-tricks to serve the moment's need.
Ti Nomme's sticky fingers compelled her to unearth white aprons that she had not worn for years, and she had to accustom herself to his moist kisses - the expressions of an affectionate and exuberant nature. She got down her sewing-basket, which she seldom used, from the top shelf of the armoire, and placed it within the ready and easy reach which torn slips and buttonless waists demanded. It took her some days to become accustomed to the laughing, the crying, the chattering that echoed through the house and around it all day long. And it was not the first or the second night that she could sleep comfortably with little Elodie's hot, plump body pressed close against her, and the little one's warm breath beating her cheek like the fanning of a bird's wing.
But at the end of two weeks Mamzelle Aurélie had grown quite used to these things, and she no longer complained. It was also at the end of two weeks that Mamzelle Aurélie, one evening, looking away toward the crib where the cattle were being fed, saw Valsin's blue cart turning the bend of the road. Odile sat beside the mulatto, upright and alert. As they drew near, the young woman's beaming face indicated that her homecoming was a happy one.
But this coming, unannounced and unexpected, threw Mamzelle Aurélie into a flutter that was almost agitation. The children had to be gathered. Where was Ti Nomme? Yonder in the shed, putting an edge on his knife at the grindstone. And Marcéline and Marcélette? Cutting and fashioning doll-rags in the corner of the gallery. As for Elodie, she was safe enough in Mamzelle Aurélie's arms; and she had screamed with delight at sight ofthe familiar blue cart which was bringing her mother back to her.
The excitement was all over, and they were gone. How still it was when they were gone! Mamzelle Aurélie stood upon the gallery, looking and listening. She could no longer see the cart; the red sunset and the blue-gray twilight had together flung a purple mist across the fields and road that hid it from her view. She could no longer hear the wheezing and creaking of its wheels. But she could still faintly hear the shrill, glad voices of the children.
She turned into the house. There was much work awaiting her, for the children had left a sad disorder behind them; but she did not at once set about the task of righting it. Mamzelle Aurélie seated herself beside the table. She gave one slow glance through the room, into which the evening shadows were creeping and deepening around her solitary figure. She let her head fall down upon her bended arm, and began to cry. Oh, but she cried! Not softly, as women often do. She cried like a man, with sobs that seemed to tear her very soul. She did not notice Ponto licking her hand.​

 

[elhamanwar]

the story of jeans

the story of jeans

داستان پیدایش شلوار لی

​

The year is 1853, and the palace is California. People are coming to California from many countries. They are looking for gold. They think that they are going to get​

​

rich. Levi Strauss is one of these people .He’s twenty-four years old, and he too want to get rich .He is from Germany. He has cloth from Germany to make tents for the gold miners

A man asks him: What are you going to do with that cloth

Strauss answers: I’m going to make tents

The man says: I don’t need a tent, but I want a strong pair of pants. Look at my pants they’re full of holes

Levi makes a pair of pants from the strong cloth. The man is happy with the pants. They’re a big success. Soon everyone wants a pair of pants just like the man’s pair. Levi makes one more, ten more hundreds more thousands more. That’s the history of your jeans​

سال 1853 مردم از برخی کشورها به کالیفرنیا می آمدند.آنها به دنبال طلا میگشتند.آنها به پولدار شدن فکر میکردند.لیوای استروس یکی از آنها بود.او 24 سال داشت و آلمانی تبار بود و نیز مانند بقیه به دنبال پولدار شدن و کشف طلا...

او پارچه ای از کشور آلمان برای ساخت چادر (خیمه گاه) در معدن طلا با خود آورده بود.

مردی از او پرسید: میخواهی با این پارچه چه کار کنی؟

او گفت: میخواهم چادر (خیمه گاه) بسازم.

مرد گفت: من به چادر نیاز ندارم اما من یک شلوار خیلی مقاوم لازم دارم!

شلوار من رو نگاه کن.پر از سوراخ است!

لیوای استروس شلواری از آن پارچه ی مقاوم ساخت.آن مرد بابت شلوار خوشحال شد. آنها به یک موفقیت بزرگ دست پیدا کردند.به زودی تک تک مردم خواستار شلواری فقط با جنس آن پارچه ی آلمانی شدند! لیوای از آن شلوار ده ها ، صد ها و هزار ها ساخت. و این بود داستان ساخت و پیدایش شلوار جین شما!​

 

[samira_3001]

The story I heard is different than yours.

let me put it here:

The sailors from India brought their jeans in the Americas with them on their voyages of discovery. Farmers and ranchers in the states soon adopted and slowly made their way west to be adopted by cowboys and miners of the time. One day a merchant named Levi Strauss noticed a miner remains in buying the fabric to strengthen the pants he wore that kept ripping, while working in the mines. The miner finally decided to strengthen their pants with rivets copper in areas that are prone to be broken. Levi suggested going into business together and the rivet Jean was born

یعنی لیوس گل میخ هارو اضافه کرده به جین ها و وارده این حرفه شده.
طبق داستانی که خونده بودم همه از پاره شدن جیب هاشون (جاهایی که الان گل میخ داره) ناراضی بودن و گل میخ برای مقاوم کردن این درز ها اومد نه زیبایی و لیوس هم اینجا بود که شلوار لی با گل میخ سازی رو شروع کرد..........

But I don't know which of the stories are true!

 

[elhamanwar]

tanx for the contenu of the story...

 

[elhamanwar]

One day a student was taking a very difficult essay exam. At the end of the test, the prof asked all the students to put their pencils down and immediately hand in their tests. The young man kept writing furiously, although he was warned that if he did not stop immediately he would be disqualified. He ignored the warning, finished the test. Minutes later, and went to hand the test to his instructor. The instructor told him he would not take the test.
The student asked, "Do you know who I am?"
The prof said, "No and I don't care."
The student asked again, "Are you sure you don't know who I am?"
The prof again said no. Therefore, the student walked over to the pile of tests, placed his in the middle, then threw the papers in the air "Good" the student said, and walked out. He passed. ​

روزي يك دانش‌آموز يك آزمون خيلي سخت داشت. در آخر امتحان، استاد از همه‌ي دانش‌آموزان خواست كه قلم‌هايشان را پايين بگذارند و بلافاصله دست خود را در روي برگه خود بگذارند. مرد جوان با خشم به نوشتن ادامه داد، گو اينكه او مطلع بود كه اگر او بلافاصله دست نگه ندارد او محروم خواهد شد. او اخطار را ناديده گرفت و امتحان را تمام كرد. دقايقي بعد، با برگه‌ي آزمون به سوي آموزگار خود رفت. آموزگار به او گفت كه برگه امتحاني او را نخواهد گرفت.
دانش آموز پرسيد: «مي داني من چه كسي هستم»
استاد گفت: «نه و اهميتي نمي دم»
دانش آموز دوباره پرسيد: «مطمئني كه مرا نمي شناسي؟»
استاد دوباره گفت نه. بنابراین دانش آموز رفت سمت برگه‌ها و برگه خودشو وسط اونا جا داد (جوری که استاد نمی‌تونست بفهمه که کدوم برگه اونه!) اونوقت [با خوشحالی] کاغذهایی که تو دستش بود رو به هوا پرت کرد و گفت: ایول (یا همان خوب!) و رفت سمت بیرون.

 

[elhamanwar]

Miss Green had a heavy cupboard in her bedroom. Last Sunday she said, 'I don't like this cupboard in my bedroom. The bedroom's very small, and the cupboard's very big. I'm going to put it in a bigger room.' But the cupboard was very heavy, and Miss Green was not very strong. She went to two of her neighbors and said, 'Please carry the cupboard for me.' Then she went and made some tea for them. ​

The two men carried the heavy cupboard out of Miss Green's bedroom and came to the stairs. One of them was in front of the cupboard, and the other was behind it. They pushed and pulled for a long time, and then they put the cupboard down. ​

'Well,' one of the men said to the other, 'we're never going to get this cupboard upstairs.' ​

'Upstairs?' the other man said. 'Aren't we taking it downstairs? ​

خانم گرين كابينت سنگيني در اتاق خوابش داشت. يكشنبه گذشته گفت: من كابينت اتاق داخل اتاق‌خوابم را دوست ندارم. اتاق خوابم خيلي كوچك و كابينت خيلي بزرگ. مي‌خواهم اين (كابينت) را در اتاق بزرگ‌تري قرار دهم. اما كابينت خيلي سنگين بود و خانم گرين خيلي قوي نبود. او پيش دو تا از همسايه‌هايش رفت و گفت: لطفا كابينت را براي من حمل كنيد. بعد او رفت تا براي آن‌ها چاي درست كند. ​

آن دو مرد آن كابينت سنگين را از اتاق‌خواب خانم گرين بيرون آورند و به سوي پله‌ها رفتند. يكي از آن‌ها در جلوي كابينت بود، و ديگري در پيشت كابينت. آن‌ها براي مدت طولاني (كابينت را) هل دادن و كشيدند، و سپس كابينت را زمين گذاشتند.​

يكي از مردها به ديگري گفت: خوب، ما كه نمي‌توانيم كابينت را به بالاي پله ها ببريم.​

مرد ديگر گفت: بالاي پله‌ها؟ مگر نمي‌خواهيم آن را پايين ببريم.​

 

[elhamanwar]

A little girl asked her father
"How did the human race appear?"​

دختر کوچولویی از پدرش سوال کرد"چطور نژاد انسانها بوجود آمد؟"​

The Father answered "God made Adam and Eve; they had children; and so all mankind was made"​

پدر جواب داد"خدا آدم و حوا را خلق کرد, آنها بچه آوردند سپس همه نوع بشر بوجود آمدند"​

Two days later the girl asked her mother the same question.​

دو روز بعد دختره همون سوال را از مادرش پرسید .​

The mother answered
"Many years ago there were monkeys from which the human race evolved."​

مادر جواب داد "سالها پیش میمونها وجود داشتنداز اونها هم نژاد انسانها بوجود اومد."​

The confused girl went back to her father and said " Daddy, how is it possible that you told me human race was created God and Mommy said they developed from monkeys?"​

دختر گیج شده به طرف پدرش برگشت و پرسید"پدر چطور این ممکنه که شما به من گفتین نژاد انسانها را خدا خلق کرده است و مامان گفت آنها تکامل یافته از میمونها هستند؟"​

The father answered "Well, Dear, it is very simple. I told you about my side of the family and your mother told you about her." ​

پدر جواب داد " خوب عزیزم خیلی ساده است .من در مورد فامیلهای خودم گفته ام و مادرت در مورد فامیلهای خودش!!"​

 

[elhamanwar]

The Peacock and the Tortoise​

ONCE upon a time a peacock and a tortoise became great friends. The peacock lived on a tree by the banks of the stream in which the tortoise had his home. Everyday, after he had a drink of water, the peacock will dance near the stream to the amusement of his tortoise friend.
One unfortunate day, a bird-catcher caught the peacock and was about to take him away to the market. The unhappy bird begged his captor to allow him to bid his friend, the tortoise good-bye.
The bird-catcher allowed him his request and took him to the tortoise. The tortoise was greatly disturbed to see his friend a captive.
The tortoise asked the bird-catcher to let the peacock go in return for an expensive present. The bird-catcher agreed. The tortoise then, dived into the water and in a few seconds came up with a handsome pearl, to the great astonishment of the bird-catcher. As this was beyond his exceptions, he let the peacock go immediately.
A short time after, the greedy man came back and told the tortoise that he had not paid enough for the release of his friend, and threatened to catch the peacock again unless an exact match of the pearl is given to him. The tortoise, who had already advised his friend, the peacock, to leave the place to a distant jungle upon being set free, was greatly enraged at the greed of this man.
“Well,” said the tortoise, “if you insist on having another pearl like it, give it to me and I will fish you out an exact match for it.” Due to his greed, the bird-catcher gave the pearl to the tortoise, who swam away with it saying, “I am no fool to take one and give two!” The tortoise then disappeared into the water, leaving the bird-catcher without a single pearl.​

طاووس و لاک پشت​

روزی روزگاری،طاووس و لاک پشتی بودن که دوستای خوبی برای هم بودن.طاووس نزدیک درخت کنار رودی که لاک پشت زندگی می کرد، خونه داشت.. هر روز پس از اینکه طاووس نزدیک رودخانه آبی می خورد ، برای سرگرم کردن دوستش می رقصید.
یک روز بدشانس، یک شکارچی پرنده، طاووس را به دام انداخت و خواست که اونو به بازار ببره. پرنده غمگین، از شکارچی اش خواهش کرد که بهش اجازه بده از لاک پشت خداحافظی کنه.
شکارچی خواهش طاووس رو قبول کرد و اونو پیش لاک پشت برد. لاک پشت از این که میدید دوستش اسیر شده خیلی ناراحت شد.اون از شکارچی خواهش کرد که طاووس رو در عوض دادن هدیه ای باارزش رها کنه. شکارچی قبول کرد.بعد، لاکپشت داخل آب شیرجه زد و بعد از لحظه ای با مرواریدی زیبا بیرون اومد. شکارچی که از دیدن این کار لاک پشت متحیر شده بود فوری اجازه داد که طاووس بره. مدت کوتاهی بعد از این ماجرا، مرد حریص برگشت و به لاک پشت گفت که برای آزادی پرنده ، چیز کمی گرفته و تهدید کرد که دوباره طاووس رو اسیر میکنه مگه اینکه مروارید دیگه ای شبیه مروارید قبلی بگیره. لاک پشت که قبلا به دوستش نصیحت کرده بود برای آزاد بودن ، به جنگل دوردستی بره ،خیلی از دست مرد حریص، عصبانی شد.
لاک پشت گفت:بسیار خوب، اگه اصرار داری مروارید دیگه ای شبیه قبلی داشته باشی، مروارید رو به من بده تا عین اونو برات پیدا کنم. شکارچی به خاطر طمعش ،مروارید رو به لاک پشت داد. لاک پشت درحالیکه با شنا کردن از مرد دور می شد گفت: من نادان نیستم که یکی بگیرم و دوتا بدم. بعد بدون اینکه حتی یه مروارید به شکارجی بده، در آب ناپدید شد.​

 

[elhamanwar]

I was walking down the street when I was accosted by a particularly dirty and shabby-looking homeless woman who asked me for a couple of dollars for dinner.​

در حال قدم زدن در خیابان بودم که با خانمی نسبتا کثیف و کهنه پوشی که شبیه زنان بی خانه بود روبرو شدم که از من 2 دلار برای تهیه ناهار درخواست کرد.​

I took out my wallet, got out ten dollars and asked, 'If I give you this money, will you buy wine with it instead of dinner?'​

من کیف پولم را در آوردم و 10 دلار برداشتم و ازش پرسیدم اگر من این پول را بهت بدم تو مشروب بجای شام می خری؟!​

'No, I had to stop drinking years ago' , the homeless woman told me.​

نه,من نوشیدن مشروب را سالها پیش ترک کردم,زن بی خانه به من گفت.​

'Will you use it to go shopping instead of buying food?' I asked.​

ازش پرسیدم آیا از این پول برای خرید بجای غذا استفاده می کنی؟​

'No, I don't waste time shopping,' the homeless woman said. 'I need to spend all my time trying to stay alive.'​

زن بی خانه گفت:نه, من وقتم را یرای خرید صرف نمی کنم من همه وقتم را تلاش برای زنده ماندن نیاز دارم.​

'Will you spend this on a beauty salon instead of food?' I asked.​

من پرسیدم :آیا تو این پول را بجای غذا برای سالن زیبایی صرف می کنی؟​

'Are you NUTS!' replied the homeless woman. I haven't had my hair done in 20 years!'​

تو خلی!زن بی خانه جواب داد.من موهایم را طی 20 سال شانه نکردم!​

'Well, I said, 'I'm not going to give you the money. Instead, I'm going to take you out for dinner with my husband and me tonight.'​

گفتم , خوب ,من این پول را بهت نمیدم در عوض تو رو به خانه ام برای صرف شام با من و همسرم می برم.​

The homeless Woman was shocked. 'Won't your husband be furious with you for doing that? I know I'm dirty, and I probably smell pretty disgusting.' ​

زن بی خانه شوکه شد .همسرت برای این کارت تعصب و غیرت نشان نمی دهد؟من می دانم من کثیفم و احتمالا یک کمی هم بوی منزجر کننده دارم.​

I said, 'That's okay. It's important for him to see what a woman looks like after she has given up shopping, hair appointments, and wine.' ​

گفتم:آن درست است . برای او مهم است دیدن زنی شبیه خودش بعد اینکه خرید و شانه کردن مو و مشروب را ترک کرده است!​

 

[elhamanwar]

A man with a gun goes into a bank and demands their money. ​

مردي با اسلحه وارد يك بانك شد و تقاضاي پول كرد. ​

Once he is given the money, he turns to a customer and asks, 'Did you see me rob this bank?' ​

وقتي پول ها را دريافت كرد رو به يكي از مشتريان بانك كرد و پرسيد : آيا شما ديديد كه من از اين بانك دزدي كنم؟ ​

The man replied, 'Yes sir, I did.' ​

مرد پاسخ داد : بله قربان من ديدم. ​

The robber then shot him in the temple , killing him instantly. ​

.سپس دزد اسلحه را به سمت شقيقه مرد گرفت و او را در جا كشت ​

He then turned to a couple standing next to him and asked the man, 'Did you see me rob this bank?' ​

او مجددا رو به زوجي كرد كه نزديك او ايستاده بودند و از آن ها پرسيد آيا شما ديديد كه من از اين بانك دزدي كنم؟ ​

The man replied, 'No sir, I didn't, but my wife did!' ​

مرد پاسخ داد : نه قربان. من نديدم اما همسرم ديد. ​

Moral - When Opportunity knocks.... MAKE USE OF IT! ​

نكته اخلاقي: وقتي شانس در خونه شما را ميزند. از آن استفاده كنيد!

 

[elhamanwar]

Harry did not stop his car at some traffic-lights when they were red, and he hit another car. Harry jumped out and went to it. There was an old man in the car. He was very frightened and said to Harry, 'What are you doing? You nearly killed me!'


'Yes,' Harry answered, 'I'm very sorry.' He took a bottle out of his car and said, 'Drink some of this. Then you’ll feel better.' He gave the man some whisky, and the man drank it, but then he shouted again,'You nearly killed me.'


Harry gave him the bottle again, and the old man drank a lot of the whisky. Then he smiled and said to Harry, 'Thank you. I feel much better now. But why aren't you drinking?'


'Oh, well,' Harry answered, 'I don't want any whisky now. I'm going to sit here and wait for the police.'



هري از چند چراغ راهنمايي وقتي كه قرمز بود عبور كرد وتوقف نكرد، و به ماشين ديگه‌اي زد. هري (از ماشينش) خارج شد و به سمت آنماشين رفت. در آن ماشين پيرمردي بود. خيلي ترسيده بود و به هري گفت: چي كارمي‌كني، كم مونده بود منو بكشي!


هري پاسخ داد: بله، خيلي متأسفم. يك بطري از ماشينش درآوردو گفت: مقداري از اين بنوشيد. پس از آن احساس بهتري خواهيد داشت. او به آنمرد مقداري ويسكي داد، و آن مرد آن را نوشيد، اما دوباره او فرياد زد: كممونده بود منو بكشي.


هري دوباره بطري را به او داد، و پيرمرد مقداري ويسكينوشيد. پس از آن خنديد و به هري گفت: متشكرم، حالا احساس مي‌كنم خيلي بهترشدم. اما شما چرا نمي‌نوشي؟


هري پاسخ داد: آه، بله، من الان ويسكي نمي‌خواهم. مي‌خواهماينجا منتظر پليس بنشينم.​