My friend loaned me an...interesting...book the other day, and I thought I'd share a few parts of it with you-all. The book's title is
Earth's Enigmas, by Charles G. D. Roberts, and was published by L. C. Page & Company in May, 1903. Here's the "prefatory note." (everything in
red is my input)
"Most of the stories in this collection attempt to present on or another of those problems of life or nature to which, as it appears to many of us, there is no adequate solution within sight. Others are the almost literal transcript of dreams which seemed to me to have a coherency, completeness, and symbolic significance sufficiently marked to justify me in setting them down. The rest are scenes from that simple life of Canadian backwoods and tide-country with which my earlier years made me familiar.
This edition
(the book was published twice, the first time was in 1895 by Lamson, Wolffe and Company) is enlarged by the inclusion of three new stories, entitled "The House at Stony Lonesome," "The Hill of Chastisement," and "On the Tantramar Dyke;" and what is more important, it is enriched by the drawings of Mr. Charles Livingston Bull, for whose sympathetic interpretations I take this opportunity of expressing my gratitude.
C. G. D. R.
New York, April, 1903"
Now, I will not type out the whole book for you, or at least I won't do that today, but I will share a story or two. Let me warn you, though, that they are mildly morbid! Just a little on the weird side. I'll start with one of the ones I am pretty sure was a "transcript of [a] dream."
In the Accident Ward
The grass was gray, of a strange and dreadful pallor, but long and soft. Unbroken, and bending all one way, as if to look at something, it covered the wide, low, rounded hill that rose before me. Over the hill the sky hung close, gray and thick, with the color of a parched interminable twilight. Dew or a drop of rain could not be thought of as coming from such a sky.
Along the base of the low hill ran a red road of baked clay, blood red, and beaten with nameless and innumerable feet. I stood in the middle of this road and prepared to ascend the hill obliquely by a narrow footpath, red as blood, which divided the soft gray bending of the grasses. Behind me the road made a sharp turn, descending out of thick clouds into a little blood-red hollow, where it was crossed by an open gate. In this gate, through which I had somehow come, stood two gray leopards and a small ape. The beasts stood on tip-toe and eyed me with a dreadful curiosity; and from somewhere in the little hollow I heard a word whispered which I could not understand. But the beasts heard it, and drew away through the open gate, and disappeared.
Between the footpath (which all the time gleamed redly through the over-gathering grasses) and the rounded brink of the gulf there seemed to be a fence of some sort, so fine that I could not quite distinguish it, but which I knew to be there.
I turned my eyes to the low summit of the hill. There I saw a figure, all gray, cleaving the grasses in flight as swift as an arrow. Behind, in pursuit, came another figure, of the color of the grasses, tall and terrible beyond thought. This being, as it seemed to me, was the Second Death, and my knees trembled with horror and a sort of loathing. Then I saw that he who fled made directly for me; and as they sped I could hear a strange hissing and rustling of their garments cleaving the grasses. When the fleeing ghost reached me, and fell at my feet, and clasped my knees in awful fear, I felt myself grow strong, and all the dread left my soul. I reached forth my right hand and grasped the pursuing horror by the throat.
I heard the being laugh, and the iron grip of my own strong and implacable fingers seemed to close with a keen agony upon my own throat, and a curtain seemed to fall over my eyes. Then I gasped for breath, and a warm pungent smell clung in my nostrils, and a white light swam into my eyes, and I hear a voice murmuring far off, but in an accent strangely familiar and commonplace, "He's coming round alright now."
I opened my eyes with a dim wonder, and found myself surrounded by the interested faces of the doctors and the clean white walls of the hospital ward. I heard a sound of someone breathing hoarsely near by, and a white-capped nurse with kind eyes stepped up to my pillow, and I perceived that the heavy breather was myself. I was lying with my head and neck swathed in bandages, and a sharp pain at my throat. Then flashed across my memory the crash and sickening upheaval of the collision. I wondered feebly how it had fared with my fellow-passengers, and again I saw that instant's vision of wild and startled faces as the crowded car rose and pitched downward, I knew not whither. With a sense of inexpressible weariness, my brain at once allowed the terrible scene to slip from its grasp, and I heard a doctor, who was standing at the bedside watch in hand, say, quietly, "He'll sleep now for a couple of hours."
The End.
Different, isn't it? That sounds just like a dream; confusing. I think that maybe he could have let up a bit on the details of his surroundings at the beginning. I would go ahead and type up another story, but I think two dream sequences in one post would be a little confusing, don't you? And my fingers are getting tired. So I don't think I shall type up much more tonight.
so how are you-all doing? I haven't been getting many comments lately...*cough*...so I don't know what y'all are up to, or what you think of my blog, or
anything! Speak up! :D
And I'll leave it at that. There ought to be a picture post on my photo blog within the hour; go check it out!
~Kiwi~
