Short Fiction by Herman Melville (leveled readers txt) đ
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Melvilleâs pen ranges far and wide in this collection of his short stories and novellas, with subjects including a faraway mountain lodge, a magnificent rooster, a haunted table, and of course the inimitable scrivener Bartleby, whose tale is now viewed as one of the great English short stories. While his earlier novels had been well received, by this point in his career his star had waned, and it was only in the early twentieth century that his work, including these short stories, started to get the recognition it still enjoys today.
This volume collects Melvilleâs short stories verified to be in the U.S. public domain, in the order they were originally published in Harperâs New Monthly Magazine and Putnamâs Monthly Magazine (along with âThe Piazzaâ which was written for the collection The Piazza Tales). The racism displayed in âBenito Cerenoâ against the African slaves is somewhat shocking to modern readers given our greater understanding of their story, but was common in the mid-nineteenth century.
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- Author: Herman Melville
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âWhy, do you not remember the words of the Psalmist?â ââThe Lord giveth snow like woolâ; meaning not only that snow is white as wool, but warm, too, as wool. For the only reason, as I take it, that wool is comfortable, is because air is entangled, and therefore warmed among its fibres. Just so, then, take the temperature of a December field when covered with this snow-fleece, and you will no doubt find it several degrees above that of the air. So, you see, the winterâs snow itself is beneficent; under the pretense of frostâ âa sort of gruff philanthropistâ âactually warming the earth, which afterward is to be fertilizingly moistened by these gentle flakes of March.â
âI like to hear you talk, dear Blandmour; and, guided by your benevolent heart, can only wish to poor Coulter plenty of this âPoor Manâs Manure.âââ
âBut that is not all,â said Blandmour, eagerly. âDid you never hear of the âPoor Manâs Eye-waterâ?â
âNever.â
âTake this soft March snow, melt it, and bottle it. It keeps pure as alcohol. The very best thing in the world for weak eyes. I have a whole demijohn of it myself. But the poorest man, afflicted in his eyes, can freely help himself to this same all-bountiful remedy. Now, what a kind provision is that!â
âThen âPoor Manâs Manureâ is âPoor Manâs Eye-waterâ too?â
âExactly. And what could be more economically contrived? One thing answering two endsâ âends so very distinct.â
âVery distinct, indeed.â
âAh! that is your way. Making sport of earnest. But never mind. We have been talking of snow; but common rainwaterâ âsuch as falls all the year roundâ âis still more kindly. Not to speak of its known fertilizing quality as to fields, consider it in one of its minor lights. Pray, did you ever hear of a âPoor Manâs Eggâ?â
âNever. What is that, now?â
âWhy, in making some culinary preparations of meal and flour, where eggs are recommended in the receipt-book, a substitute for the eggs may be had in a cup of cold rainwater, which acts as leaven. And so a cup of cold rainwater thus used is called by housewives a âPoor Manâs Egg.â And many rich menâs housekeepers sometimes use it.â
âBut only when they are out of henâs eggs, I presume, dear Blandmour. But your talk isâ âI sincerely say itâ âmost agreeable to me. Talk on.â
âThen thereâs âPoor Manâs Plasterâ for wounds and other bodily harms; an alleviative and curative, compounded of simple, natural things; and so, being very cheap, is accessible to the poorest sufferers. Rich men often use âPoor Manâs Plasterâ.â
âBut not without the judicious advice of a feeâd physician, dear Blandmour.â
âDoubtless, they first consult the physician; but that may be an unnecessary precaution.â
âPerhaps so. I do not gainsay it. Go on.â
âWell, then, did you ever eat of a âPoor Manâs Puddingâ?â
âI never so much as heard of it before.â
âIndeed! Well, now you shall eat of one; and you shall eat it, too, as made, unprompted, by a poor manâs wife, and you shall eat it at a poor manâs table, and in a poor manâs house. Come now, and if after this eating, you do not say that a âPoor Manâs Puddingâ is as relishable as a rich manâs, I will give up the point altogether; which briefly is: that, through kind Nature, the poor, out of their very poverty, extract comfort.â
Not to narrate any more of our conversations upon this subject (for we had severalâ âI being at that time the guest of Blandmour in the country, for the benefit of my health), suffice it that acting upon Blandmourâs hint, I introduced myself into Coulterâs house on a wet Monday noon (for the snow had thawed), under the innocent pretense of craving a pedestrianâs rest and refreshment for an hour or two.
I was greeted, not without much embarrassmentâ âowing, I suppose to my dressâ âbut still with unaffected and honest kindness. Dame Coulter was just leaving the washtub to get ready her one oâclock meal against her good manâs return from a deep wood about a mile distant among the hills, where he was chopping by dayâs workâ âseventy-five cents per day and found himself. The washing being done outside the main building, under an infirm-looking old shed, the dame stood upon a half-rotten soaked board to protect her feet, as well as might be, from the penetrating damp of the bare ground; hence she looked pale and chill. But her paleness had still another and more secret causeâ âthe paleness of a mother to be. A quiet, fathomless heart-trouble, too, couched beneath the mild, resigned blue of her soft and wife-like eye. But she smiled upon me, as apologizing for the unavoidable disorder of a Monday and a washing-day, and, conducting me into the kitchen, set me down in the best seat it hadâ âan old-fashioned chair of an enfeebled constitution.
I thanked her; and sat rubbing my hands before the ineffectual low fire, andâ âunobservantly as I couldâ âglancing now and then about the room, while the good woman, throwing on more sticks said she was sorry the room was no warmer. Something more she said, tooâ ânot repiningly, howeverâ âof the fuel, as old and damp; picked-up sticks in Squire Teamsterâs forest, where her husband was chopping the sappy logs of the living tree for the Squireâs fires. It needed not her remark, whatever it was, to convince me of the inferior quality of the sticks; some being quite mossy and toadstooled with long lying bedded among the accumulated dead leaves of many autumns. They made a sad hissing, and vain spluttering enough.
âYou must rest yourself here till dinnertime, at least,â said the dame; âwhat I have you are heartily welcome to.â
I thanked her again, and begged her not to heed my presence in the least, but go on with her usual affairs.
I was struck by the aspect of the room. The house was old, and constitutionally damp. The windowsills had beads of exuded dampness upon them. The shriveled sashes shook in their frames, and
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