The Fiend's Delight - Ambrose Bierce (fantasy novels to read .TXT) 📗

the window. A smell of scorching fur pervaded the place, and under cover of it the aged spectre walked into the mirror, vanishing like a dream. "Love's Labour Lost."

Joab was a beef, who was tired of being courted for his clean, smooth skin. So he backed through a narrow gateway six or eight times, which made his hair stand the wrong way. He then went and rubbed his fat sides against a charred log. This made him look untidy. You never looked worse in your life than Joab did.

"Now," said he, "I shall be loved for myself alone. I will change my name, and hie me to pastures new, and all the affection that is then lavished upon me will be pure and disinterested."

So he strayed off into the woods and came out at old Abner Davis' ranch. The two things Abner valued most were a windmill and a scratching-post for hogs. They were equally beautiful, and the fame of their comeliness had gone widely abroad. To them Joab naturally paid his attention. The windmill, who was called Lucille Ashtonbury Clifford, received him with expressions of the liveliest disgust. His protestations of affection were met by creakings of contempt, and as he turned sadly away he was rewarded by a sound spank from one of her fans. Like a gentlemanly beef he did not deign to avenge the insult by overturning Lucille Ashtonbury; and it is well for him that he did not, for old Abner stood by with a pitchfork and a trinity of dogs.

Disgusted with the selfish heartlessness of society, Joab shambled off and was passing the scratching-post without noticing her. (Her name was Arabella Cliftonbury Howard.) Suddenly she kicked away a multitude of pigs who were at her feet, and called to the rolling beef of uncanny exterior:

"Comeer!"

Joab paused, looked at her with his ox-eyes, and gravely marching up, commenced a vigorous scratching against her.

"Arabella," said he, "do you think you could love a shaggy-hided beef with black hair? Could you love him for himself alone?"

Arabella had observed that the black rubbed off, and the hair lay sleek when stroked the right way.

"Yes, I think so; could you?"

This was a poser: Joab had expected her to talk business. He did not reply. It was only her arch way; she thought, naturally, that the best way to win any body's love was to be a fool. She saw her mistake. She had associated with hogs all her life, and this fellow was a beef! Mistakes must be rectified very speedily in these matters.

"Sir, I have for you a peculiar feeling; I may say a tenderness. Hereafter you, and you only, shall scratch against Arabella Cliftonbury Howard!"

Joab was delighted; he stayed and scratched all day. He was loved for himself alone, and he did not care for anything but that. Then he went home, made an elaborate toilet, and returned to astonish her. Alas! old Abner had been about, and seeing how Joab had worn her smooth and useless, had cut her down for firewood. Joab gave one glance, then walked solemnly away into a "clearing," and getting comfortably astride a blazing heap of logs, made a barbacue of himself!

After all, Lucille Ashtonbury Clifford, the light-headed windmill, seems to have got the best of all this. I have observed that the light-headed commonly get the best of everything in this world; which the wooden-headed and the beef-headed regard as an outrage. I am not prepared to say if it is or not. A Comforter.

William Bunker had paid a fine of two hundred dollars for beating his wife. After getting his receipt he went moodily home and seated himself at the domestic hearth. Observing his abstracted and melancholy demeanour, the good wife approached and tenderly inquired the cause. "It's a delicate subject, dear," said he, with love- light in his eyes; "let's talk about something good to eat."

Then, with true wifely instinct she sought to cheer him up with pleasing prattle of a new bonnet he had promised her. "Ah! darling," he sighed, absently picking up the fire-poker and turning it in his hands, "let us change the subject."

Then his soul's idol chirped an inspiring ballad, kissed him on the top of his head, and sweetly mentioned that the dressmaker had sent in her bill. "Let us talk only of love," returned he, thoughtfully rolling up his dexter sleeve.

And so she spoke of the vine-enfolded cottage in which she fondly hoped they might soon sip together the conjugal sweets. William became rigidly erect, a look not of earth was in his face, his breast heaved, and the fire-poker quivered with emotion. William felt deeply. "Mine own," said the good woman, now busily irrigating a mass of snowy dough for the evening meal, "do you know that there is not a bite of meat in the house?"

It is a cold, unlovely truth-a sad, heart-sickening fact-but it must be told by the conscientious novelist. William repaid all this affectionate solicitude-all this womanly devotion, all this trust, confidence, and abnegation in a manner that needs not be particularly specified.

A short, sharp curve in the middle of that iron fire-poker is eloquent of a wrong redressed. Little Isaac.

Mr. Gobwottle came home from a meeting of the Temperance Legion extremely drunk. He went to the bed, piled himself loosely atop of it and forgot his identity. About the middle of the night, his wife, who was sitting up darning stockings, heard a voice from the profoundest depths of the bolster: "Say, Jane?"

Jane gave a vicious stab with the needle, impaling one of her fingers, and continued her work. There was a long silence, faintly punctuated by the bark of a distant dog. Again that voice--"Say-Jane!"

The lady laid aside her work and wearily, replied: "Isaac, do go to sleep; they are off."

Another and longer pause, during which the ticking of the clock became painful in the intensity of the silence it seemed to be measuring. "Jane, what's off!" "Why, your boots, to be sure," replied the petulant woman, losing patience; "I pulled them off when you first lay down."

Again the prostrate gentleman was still. Then when the candle of the waking housewife had burned low down to the socket, and the wasted flame on the hearth was expiring bluely in convulsive leaps, the head of the family resumed: "Jane, who said anything about boots?"

There was no reply. Apparently none was expected, for the man immediately rose, lengthened himself out like a telescope, and continued: "Jane, I must have smothered that brat, and I'm 'fernal sorry!"

"What brat?" asked the wife, becoming interested.

"Why, ours-our little Isaac. I saw you put 'im in bed last week, and I've been layin' right onto 'im!"

"What under the sun do you mean?" asked the good wife; "we haven't any brat, and never had, and his name should not be Isaac if we had. I believe you are crazy."

The man balanced his bulk rather unsteadily, looked hard into the eyes of his companion, and triumphantly emitted the following conundrum: "Jane, look-a-here! If we haven't any brat, what'n thunder's the use o' bein' married!"

Pending the solution of the momentous problem, its author went out and searched the night for a whisky-skin.


The Heels of Her.


Passing down Commercial-street one fine day, I observed a lady standing alone in the middle of the sidewalk, with no obvious business there, but with apparently no intention of going on. She was outwardly very calm, and seemed at first glance to be lost in some serene philosophical meditation. A closer examination, however, revealed a peculiar restlessness of attitude, and a barely noticeable uneasiness of expression. The conviction came upon me that the lady was in distress, and as delicately as possible I inquired of her if such were not the case, intimating at the same time that I should esteem it a great favour to be permitted to do something. The lady smiled blandly and replied that she was merely waiting for a gentleman. It was tolerably evident that I was not required, and with a stammered apology I hastened away, passed clear around the block, came up behind her, and took up a position on a dry-goods box; it lacked an hour to dinner time, and I had leisure. The lady maintained her attitude, but with momently increasing impatience, which found expression in singular wave-like undulations of her lithe figure, and an occasional unmistakeable contortion. Several gentlemen approached, but were successively and politely dismissed. Suddenly she experienced a quick convulsion, strode sharply forward one step, stopped short, had another convulsion, and walked rapidly away. Approaching the spot I found a small iron grating in the sidewalk, and between the bars two little boot heels, riven from their kindred soles, and unsightly with snaggy nails.

Heaven only knows why that entrapped female had declined the proffered assistance of her species-why she had elected to ruin her boots in preference to having them removed from her feet. Upon that day when the grave shall give up its dead, and the secrets of all hearts shall be revealed, I shall know all about it; but I want to know now. A Tale of Two Feet.

My friend Zacharias was accustomed to sleep with a heated stone at his feet; for the feet of Mr. Zacharias were as the feet of the dead. One night he retired as usual, and it chanced that he awoke some hours afterwards with a well-defined smell of burning leather, making it pleasant for his nostrils.

"Mrs. Zacharias," said he, nudging his snoring spouse, "I wish you would get up and look about. I think one of the children must have fallen into the fire."

The lady, who from habit had her own feet stowed comfortably away against the warm stomach of her lord and master, declined to make the investigation demanded, and resumed the nocturnal melody. Mr. Zacharias was angered; for the first time since she had sworn to love, honour, and obey, this female was in open rebellion. He decided upon prompt and vigorous action. He quietly moved over to the back side of the bed and braced his shoulders against the wall. Drawing up his sinewy knees to a level with his breast, he placed the soles of his feet broadly against the back of the insurgent, with the design of propelling her against the opposite wall. There was a strangled snort, then a shriek of female agony, and the neighbours came in.

Mutual explanations followed, and Mr. Zacharias walked the streets of Grass Valley next day as if he were treading upon eggs worth a dollar a dozen. The Scolliver Pig.

One of Thomas Jefferson's maxims is as follows: "When angry, count ten before you speak; if very angry, count a hundred." I once knew a man to square his conduct by this rule, with a most gratifying result. Jacob Scolliver, a man prone to bad temper, one day started across the fields to visit his father, whom he generously permitted to till a small corner of the old homestead. He found the old gentleman behind the barn, bending over a barrel that was canted over at an angle of seventy degrees, and from which issued a cloud of steam. Scolliver p¦re was evidently scalding one end of a dead pig-an operation essential to the loosening of the hair, that the corpse may be plucked and shaven.

"Good morning, father," said Mr. Scolliver, approaching, and displaying a long, cheerful smile. "Got a nice roaster there?" The elder gentleman's head turned slowly and steadily, as upon a swivel, until his eyes pointed