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The End of Phæacia In the Wrong Paradise A Cheap Nigger The Romance of the First Radical A Duchess's Secret The House of Strange Stories In Castle Perilous The Great Gladstone Myth My Friend the Beach-Comber
The End of Phæacia In the Wrong Paradise A Cheap Nigger The Romance of the First Radical A Duchess's Secret The House of Strange Stories In Castle Perilous The Great Gladstone Myth My Friend the Beach-Comber
"Have you seen the Clayville Dime?"
Moore chucked me a very shabby little sheet of printed matter. It fluttered feebly in the warm air, and finally dropped on my recumbent frame. I was lolling in a hammock in the shade of the verandah.
I did not feel much inclined for study, but I picked up the Clayville Dime and lazily glanced at that periodical, while Moore relapsed into the pages of Ixtlilxochitl. He was a literary character for a planter, had been educated at Oxford (where I made his acquaintance), and had inherited from his father, with a large collection of Indian and Mexican curiosities, a taste for the ancient history of the New World.
Sometimes I glanced at the newspaper; sometimes I looked out at the pleasant Southern garden, where the fountain flashed and fell among weeping willows, and laurels, orange-trees, and myrtles.
"Hullo!" I cried suddenly, disturbing Moore's Aztec researches, "here is a queer affair in the usually quiet town of Clayville. Listen to this;" and I read aloud the following "par," as I believe paragraphs are styled in newspaper offices:-
"'Instinct and Accident.-As Colonel Randolph was driving through our town yesterday and was passing Captain Jones's sample-room, where the colonel lately shot Moses Widlake in the street, the horses took alarm and started violently downhill. The colonel kept his seat till rounding the corner by the Clayville Bank, when his wheels came into collision with that edifice, and our gallant townsman was violently shot out. He is now lying in a very precarious condition. This may relieve Tom Widlake of the duty of shooting the colonel in revenge for his father. It is commonly believed that Colonel Randolph's horses were maddened by the smell of the blood which has dried up where old Widlake was shot. Much sympathy is felt for the colonel. Neither of the horses was injured.'"
"Clayville appears to be a lively kind of place," I said. "Do you often have shootings down here?"
"We do," said Moore, rather gravely; "it is one of our institutions with which I could dispense."
"And do you 'carry iron,' as the Greeks used to say, or 'go heeled,' as your citizens express it?"
"No, I don't; neither pistol nor knife. If any one shoots me, he shoots an unarmed man. The local bullies know it, and they have some scruple about shooting in that case. Besides, they know I am an awkward customer at close quarters."
Moore relapsed into his Mexican historian, and I into the newspaper.
"Here is a chance of seeing one of your institutions at last," I said.
I had found an advertisement concerning a lot of negroes to be sold that very day by public auction in Clayville. All this, of course, was "before the war."
"Well, I suppose you ought to see it," said Moore, rather reluctantly. He was gradually emancipating his own servants, as I knew, and was even suspected of being a director of "the Underground Railroad" to Canada.
"Peter," he cried, "will you be good enough to saddle three horses and bring them round?"
Peter, a "darkey boy" who had been hanging about in the garden, grinned and went off. He was a queer fellow, Peter, a plantation humourist, well taught in all the then unpublished lore of "Uncle Remus." Peter had a way of his own, too, with animals, and often aided Moore in collecting objects of natural history.
"Did you get me those hornets, Peter?" said Moore, when the black returned with the horses.
"Got 'em safe, massa, in a little box," replied Peter, who then mounted and followed at a respectful distance as our squire.
Without many more words we rode into the forest which lay between Clayville and Moore's plantation. Through the pine barrens ran the road, and on each side of the way was luxuriance of flowering creepers. The sweet faint scent of the white jessamine and the homely fragrance of honeysuckle filled the air, and the wild white roses were in perfect blossom. Here and there an aloe reminded me that we were not at home, and dwarf palms and bayonet palmettoes, with the small pointed leaf of the "live oak," combined to make the scenery look foreign and unfamiliar. There was a soft haze in the air, and the sun's beams only painted, as it were, the capitals of the tall pillar-like pines, while the road was canopied and shaded by the skeins of grey moss that hung thickly on all the boughs.
The trees grew thinner as the road approached the town. Dusty were the ways, and sultry the air, when we rode into Clayville and were making for "the noisy middle market-place." Clayville was but a small border town, though it could then boast the presence of a squadron of cavalry, sent there to watch the "border ruffians." The square was neither large nor crowded, but the spectacle was strange and interesting to me. Men who had horses or carts to dispose of were driving or riding about, noisily proclaiming the excellence of their wares. But buyers were more concerned, like myself, with the slave-market. In the open air, in the middle of the place, a long table was set. The crowd gathered round this, and presented types of various sorts of citizens. The common "mean white" was spitting and staring-a man fallen so low that he had no nigger to wallop, and was thus even more abject, because he had no natural place and functions in local society, than the slaves themselves. The local drunkard was uttering sagacities to which no mortal attended. Two or three speculators were bidding on commission, and there were a few planters, some of them mounted, and a mixed multitude of tradesmen, loafers, bar-keepers, newspaper reporters, and idlers in general. At either end of the long table sat an auctioneer, who behaved with the traditional facetiousness of the profession. As the "lots" came on for sale they mounted the platform, generally in family parties. A party would fetch from one thousand to fifteen hundred dollars, according to its numbers and "condition." The spectacle was painful and monstrous. Most of the "lots" bore the examination of their points with a kind of placid dignity, and only showed some little interest when the biddings grew keen and flattered their pride.
The sale was almost over, and we were just about to leave, when a howl of derision from the mob made us look round. What I saw was the apparition of an extremely aged and debilitated black man standing on the table. What Moore saw to interest him I could not guess, but he grew pale and uttered an oath of surprise under his breath, though he rarely swore. Then he turned his horse's head again towards the auctioneer. That merry tradesman was extolling the merits of nearly his last lot. "A very remarkable specimen, gentlemen! Admirers of the antique cannot dispense with this curious nigger-very old and quite imperfect. Like so many of the treasures of Greek art which have reached us, he has had the misfortune to lose his nose and several of his fingers. How much offered for this exceptional lot-unmarried and without encumbrances of any kind? He is dumb too, and may be trusted with any secret."
"Take him off!" howled some one in the crowd.
"Order his funeral!"
"Chuck him into the next lot."
"What, gentlemen, no bids for this very eligible nigger? With a few more rags he would make a most adequate scarecrow."
While this disgusting banter was going on I observed a planter ride up to one of the brokers and whisper for some time in his ear. The planter was a bad but unmistakable likeness of my friend Moore, worked over, so to speak, with a loaded brush and heavily glazed with old Bourbon whisky. After giving his orders to the agent he retired to the outskirts of the crowd, and began flicking his long dusty boots with a serviceable cowhide whip.
"Well, gentlemen, we must really adopt the friendly suggestion of Judge Lee and chuck this nigger into the next lot."
So the auctioneer was saying, when the broker to whom I have referred cried out, "Ten dollars."
"This is more like business," cried the auctioneer. "Ten dollars offered! What amateur says more than ten dollars for this lot? His extreme age and historical reminiscences alone, if he could communicate them, would make him invaluable to the student."
To my intense amazement Moore shouted from horseback, "Twenty dollars."
"What, you want a cheap nigger to get your hand in, do you, you blank-blanked abolitionist?" cried a man who stood near. He was a big, dirty-looking bully, at least half drunk, and attending (not unnecessarily) to his toilet with the point of a long, heavy knife.
Before the words were out of his mouth Moore had leaped from his horse and delivered such a right-handed blow as that wherewith the wandering beggar-man smote Irus of old in the courtyard of Odysseus, Laertes' son. "On his neck, beneath the ear, he smote him, and crushed in the bones; and the red blood gushed up through his mouth, and he gnashed his teeth together as he kicked the ground." Moore stooped, picked up the bowie-knife, and sent it glittering high through the air.
"Take him away," he said, and two rough fellows, laughing, carried the bully to the edge of the fountain that played in the corner of the square. He was still lying crumpled up there when we rode out of Clayville.
The bidding, of course, had stopped, owing to the unaffected interest which the public took in this more dramatic interlude. The broker, it is true, had bid twenty-five dollars, and was wrangling with the auctioneer.
"You have my bid, Mr. Brinton, sir, and there is no other offer. Knock down the lot to me."
"You wait your time, Mr. Isaacs," said the auctioneer. "No man can do two things at once and do them well. When Squire Moore has settled with Dick Bligh he will desert the paths of military adventure for the calmer and more lucrative track of commercial enterprise."
The auctioneer's command of long words was considerable, and was obviously of use to him in his daily avocations.
When he had rounded his period, Moore was in the saddle again, and nodded silently to the auctioneer.
"Squire Moore bids thirty dollars. Thirty dollars for this once despised but now appreciated fellow-creature," rattled on the auctioneer.
The agent nodded again.
"Forty dollars bid," said the auctioneer.
"Fifty," cried Moore.
The broker nodded.
"Sixty."
The agent nodded again.
The bidding ran rapidly up to three hundred and fifty dollars.
The crowd were growing excited, and had been joined by every child in the town, by every draggled and sunburnt woman, and the drinking-bar had disgorged every loafer who felt sober enough to stay the distance to the centre of the square.
My own first feelings of curiosity had subsided. I knew how strong and burning was Moore's hatred of oppression, and felt convinced that he merely wished at any sacrifice of money to secure for this old negro some peaceful days and a quiet deathbed.
The crowd doubtless took the same obvious view of the case as I did, and was now eagerly urging on the two competitors.
"Never say die, Isaacs."
"Stick to it, Squire; the nigger's well worth the dollars."
So they howled, and now the biddings were mounting towards one thousand dollars, when the sulky planter rode up to the neighbourhood of the table-much to the inconvenience of the "gallery"-and whispered to his agent. The conference lasted some minutes, and at the end of it the agent capped Moore's last offer, one thousand dollars, with a bid of one thousand two hundred.
"Fifteen hundred," said Moore, amidst applause.
"Look here, Mr. Knock-'em-down," cried Mr. Isaacs: "it's hot and thirsty work sitting, nodding here; I likes my ease on a warm day; so just you reckon that I see the Squire, and go a hundred dollars more as long as I hold up my pencil."
He stuck a long gnawed pencil erect between his finger and thumb, and stared impertinently at Moore. The Squire nodded, and the bidding went on in this silent fashion till the bids had actually run up to three thousand four hundred dollars. All this while the poor negro, whose limbs no longer supported him, crouched in a heap on the table, turning his haggard eye alternately on Moore and on the erect and motionless pencil of the broker. The crowd had become silent with excitement. Unable to stand the heat and agitation, Moore's unfriendly brother had crossed the square in search of a "short drink." Moore nodded once more.
"Three thousand six hundred dollars bid," cried the auctioneer, and looked at Isaacs.
With a wild howl Isaacs dashed his pencil in the air, tossed up his hands, and thrust them deep down between his coat collar and his body, uttering all the while yells of pain.
"Don't you bid, Mr. Isaacs?" asked the auctioneer, without receiving any answer except Semitic appeals to holy Abraham, blended with Aryan profanity.
"Come," said Moore very severely, "his pencil is down, and he has withdrawn his bid. There is no other bidder; knock the lot down to me."
"No more offers?" said the auctioneer slowly, looking all round the square.
There were certainly no offers from Mr. Isaacs, who now was bounding like the gad-stung Io to the furthest end of the place.
"This fine buck-negro, warranted absolutely unsound of wind and limb, going, going, a shameful sacrifice, for a poor three thousand six hundred dollars. Going, going-gone!"
The hammer fell with a sharp, decisive sound.
A fearful volley of oaths rattled after the noise, like thunder rolling away in the distance.
Moore's brother had returned from achieving a "short drink" just in time to see his coveted lot knocked down to his rival.
We left the spot, with the negro in the care of Peter, as quickly as might be.
"I wonder," said Moore, as we reached the inn and ordered a trap to carry our valuable bargain home in-"I wonder what on earth made Isaacs run off like a maniac."
"Massa," whispered Peter, "yesterday I jes' caught yer Brer Hornet a-loafin' around in the wood. 'Come wi' me,' says I, 'and bottled him in this yer pasteboard box,'" showing one which had held Turkish tobacco. "When I saw that Hebrew Jew wouldn't stir his pencil, I jes' crept up softly and dropped Brer Hornet down his neck. Then he jes' rose and went. Spec's he and Brer Hornet had business of their own."
"Peter," said Moore, "you are a good boy, but you will come to a bad end."
Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown by Andrew Lang
Andrew Lang was a Scottish writer best known for collecting folklore, legends, and fairy tales and making a compendium of them to celebrate ethnic heritage.
"It was just one night stand, and now I'm pregnant with triplets? Gosh!" Josephine Jade never thought that she would have to run away from her own family while pregnant. She was alone, without money, without connections, with three fetuses in her stomach. How can she survive? However, Josephine couldn't give up now, until she managed to reclaim her arbitrarily seized property and get back at everyone who tried to get rid of her. A sick child, a past crush that comes back, a mysterious eccentric man, and a family that hates her, will weave together the journey of Josephine Jade's new life. "You have no right to separate me from my children, you bastard! I will survive and you will submit to me. Just watch!"
Sunlit hours found their affection glimmering, while moonlit nights ignited reckless desire. But when Brandon learned his beloved might last only half a year, he coolly handed Millie divorce papers, murmuring, "This is all for appearances; we'll get married again once she's calmed down." Millie, spine straight and cheeks dry, felt her pulse go hollow. The sham split grew permanent; she quietly ended their unborn child and stepped into a new beginning. Brandon unraveled, his car tearing down the street, unwilling to let go of the woman he'd discarded, pleading for her to look back just once.
For two years, Ashton had poured his heart into his marriage, yet Emalee's heart remained cold. Despite his dedication, Emalee presented him with divorce papers. She bluntly stated she could not remain married to a man whose net worth was less than a million dollars. Ashton signed the papers, closing one chapter of his life and stepping into a new beginning. Then, Ashton revealed his secret identities: a music mogul, a medical expert, and a martial arts master—each persona impressive enough to stun the world. As Ashton’s true capabilities came to light, Emalee was overwhelmed with deep regret.
I was four months pregnant, a photographer excited for our future, attending a sophisticated baby brunch. Then I saw him, my husband Michael, with another woman, and a newborn introduced as "his son." My world shattered as a torrent of betrayal washed over me, magnified by Michael's dismissive claim I was "just being emotional." His mistress, Serena, taunted me, revealing Michael had discussed my pregnancy complications with her, then slapped me, causing a terrifying cramp. Michael sided with her, publicly shaming me, demanding I leave "their" party, as a society blog already paraded them as a "picture-perfect family." He fully expected me to return, to accept his double life, telling his friends I was "dramatic" but would "always come back." The audacity, the calculated cruelty of his deception, and Serena's chilling malice, fueled a cold, hard rage I barely recognized. How could I have been so blind, so trusting of the man who gaslighted me for months while building a second family? But on the plush carpet of that lawyer's office, as he turned his back on me, a new, unbreakable resolve solidified. They thought I was broken, disposable, easily manipulated – a "reasonable" wife who would accept a sham separation. They had no idea my calm acceptance was not surrender; it was strategy, a quiet promise to dismantle everything he held dear. I would not be handled; I would not understand; I would end this, and make sure their perfect family charade crumbled into dust.
Married for months but still a virgin. Drugged by her husband and stepsister, she ended up with a mysterious lover. Her husband accused her of infidelity and found a convenient reason to divorce her. She lost everything, her properties, her virginity, her inheritance and her home and was thrown on the street. No parents, no home, no roof over her head, Theresa Mo sought for death and wished she could stop living but death seemed to perceive her yearning and flee from her. She became pregnant and her world came crumbling. Where does she turn to when she doesn't even know who got her Pregnant? Junxie Lee, the youngest billionaire and a handsome dude, was in search of the woman he had a one night stand with… Four years later, Junxie Lee stumbled upon two boys who are a miniature of himself and thundered "who is your mother?"
Lyric had spent her life being hated. Bullied for her scarred face and hated by everyone-including her own mate-she was always told she was ugly. Her mate only kept her around to gain territory, and the moment he got what he wanted, he rejected her, leaving her broken and alone. Then, she met him. The first man to call her beautiful. The first man to show her what it felt like to be loved. It was only one night, but it changed everything. For Lyric, he was a saint, a savior. For him, she was the only woman that had ever made him cum in bed-a problem he had been battling for years. Lyric thought her life would finally be different, but like everyone else in her life, he lied. And when she found out who he really was, she realized he wasn't just dangerous-he was the kind of man you don't escape from. Lyric wanted to run. She wanted freedom. But she desired to navigate her way and take back her respect, to rise above the ashes. Eventually, she was forced into a dark world she didn't wish to get involved with.
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