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  • The Furnished Room

    The Furnished Room
    2025/10/25
    The Furnished Room O. Henry Restless, shifting, fugacious as time itself is a certain vast bulk of the population of the red brick district of the lower West Side. Homeless, they have a hundred homes. They flit from furnished room to furnished room, transients forever--transients in abode, transients in heart and mind. They sing "Home, Sweet Home" in ragtime; they carry their lares et penates in a bandbox; their vine is entwined about a picture hat; a rubber plant is their fig tree. Hence the houses of this district, having had a thousand dwellers, should have a thousand tales to tell, mostly dull ones, no doubt; but it would be strange if there could not be found a ghost or two in the wake of all these vagrant guests. One evening after dark a young man prowled among these crumbling red mansions, ringing their bells. At the twelfth he rested his lean hand-baggage upon the step and wiped the dust from his hatband and forehead. The bell sounded faint and far away in some remote, hollow depths. To the door of this, the twelfth house whose bell he had rung, came a housekeeper who made him think of an unwholesome, surfeited worm that had eaten its nut to a hollow shell and now sought to fill the vacancy with edible lodgers. He asked if there was a room to let. "Come in," said the housekeeper. Her voice came from her throat; her throat seemed lined with fur. "I have the third floor back, vacant since a week back. Should you wish to look at it?" The young man followed her up the stairs. A faint light from no particular source mitigated the shadows of the halls. They trod noiselessly upon a stair carpet that its own loom would have forsworn. It seemed to have become vegetable; to have degenerated in that rank, sunless air to lush lichen or spreading moss that grew in patches to the staircase and was viscid under the foot like organic matter. At each turn of the stairs were vacant niches in the wall. Perhaps plants had once been set within them. If so they had died in that foul and tainted air. It may be that statues of the saints had stood there, but it was not difficult to conceive that imps and devils had dragged them forth in the darkness and down to the unholy depths of some furnished pit below. "This is the room," said the housekeeper, from her furry throat. "It's a nice room. It ain't often vacant. I had some most elegant people in it last summer--no trouble at all, and paid in advance to the minute. The water's at the end of the hall. Sprowls and Mooney kept it three months. They done a vaudeville sketch. Miss B'retta Sprowls--you may have heard of her--Oh, that was just the stage names --right there over the dresser is where the marriage certificate hung, framed. The gas is here, and you see there is plenty of closet room. It's a room everybody likes. It never stays idle long." "Do you have many theatrical people rooming here?" asked the young man. "They comes and goes. A good proportion of my lodgers is connected with the theatres. Yes, sir, this is the theatrical district. Actor people never stays long anywhere. I get my share. Yes, they comes and they goes." He engaged the room, paying for a week in advance. He was tired, he said, and would take possession at once. He counted out the money. The room had been made ready, she said, even to towels and water. As the housekeeper moved away he put, for the thousandth time, the question that he carried at the end of his tongue. "A young girl--Miss Vashner--Miss Eloise Vashner--do you remember such a one among your lodgers? She would be singing on the stage, most likely. A fair girl, of medium height and slender, with reddish, gold hair and a dark mole near her left eyebrow." "No, I don't remember the name. Them stage people has names they change as often as their rooms. They comes and they goes. No, I don't call that one to mind." No. Always no. Five months of ceaseless interrogation and the inevitable negative. So much time spent by day in questioning managers, agents, schools and choruses; by night among the audiences of theatres from all-star casts down to music halls so low that he dreaded to find what he most hoped for. He who had loved her best had tried to find her. He was sure that since her disappearance from home this great, water-girt city held her somewhere, but it was like a monstrous quicksand, shifting its particles constantly, with no foundation, its upper granules of to-day buried to-morrow in ooze and slime. The furnished room received its latest guest with a first glow of pseudo-hospitality, a hectic, haggard, perfunctory welcome like the specious smile of a demirep. The sophistical comfort came in reflected gleams from the decayed furniture, the raggcd brocade upholstery of a couch and two chairs, a footwide cheap pier glass between the two windows, from one or two gilt picture frames and a brass bedstead in a corner. The guest reclined, inert, upon a chair, while the room, confused in speech as though it were an apartment in Babel, ...
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    21 分
  • The Open Window

    The Open Window
    2025/10/25
    The Open Window HH Munro (Saki) "My aunt will be down presently, Mr. Nuttel," said a very self-possessed young lady of fifteen; "in the meantime you must try and put up with me." Framton Nuttel endeavored to say the correct something which should duly flatter the niece of the moment without unduly discounting the aunt that was to come. Privately he doubted more than ever whether these formal visits on a succession of total strangers would do much towards helping the nerve cure which he was supposed to be undergoing "I know how it will be," his sister had said when he was preparing to migrate to this rural retreat; "you will bury yourself down there and not speak to a living soul, and your nerves will be worse than ever from moping. I shall just give you letters of introduction to all the people I know there. Some of them, as far as I can remember, were quite nice." Framton wondered whether Mrs. Sappleton, the lady to whom he was presenting one of the letters of introduction came into the nice division. "Do you know many of the people round here?" asked the niece, when she judged that they had had sufficient silent communion. "Hardly a soul," said Framton. "My sister was staying here, at the rectory, you know, some four years ago, and she gave me letters of introduction to some of the people here." He made the last statement in a tone of distinct regret. "Then you know practically nothing about my aunt?" pursued the self-possessed young lady. "Only her name and address," admitted the caller. He was wondering whether Mrs. Sappleton was in the married or widowed state. An undefinable something about the room seemed to suggest masculine habitation. "Her great tragedy happened just three years ago," said the child; "that would be since your sister's time." "Her tragedy?" asked Framton; somehow in this restful country spot tragedies seemed out of place. "You may wonder why we keep that window wide open on an October afternoon," said the niece, indicating a large French window that opened on to a lawn. "It is quite warm for the time of the year," said Framton; "but has that window got anything to do with the tragedy?" "Out through that window, three years ago to a day, her husband and her two young brothers went off for their day's shooting. They never came back. In crossing the moor to their favorite snipe-shooting ground they were all three engulfed in a treacherous piece of bog. It had been that dreadful wet summer, you know, and places that were safe in other years gave way suddenly without warning. Their bodies were never recovered. That was the dreadful part of it." Here the child's voice lost its self-possessed note and became falteringly human. "Poor aunt always thinks that they will come back someday, they and the little brown spaniel that was lost with them, and walk in at that window just as they used to do. That is why the window is kept open every evening till it is quite dusk. Poor dear aunt, she has often told me how they went out, her husband with his white waterproof coat over his arm, and Ronnie, her youngest brother, singing 'Bertie, why do you bound?' as he always did to tease her, because she said it got on her nerves. Do you know, sometimes on still, quiet evenings like this, I almost get a creepy feeling that they will all walk in through that window--" She broke off with a little shudder. It was a relief to Framton when the aunt bustled into the room with a whirl of apologies for being late in making her appearance. "I hope Vera has been amusing you?" she said. "She has been very interesting," said Framton. "I hope you don't mind the open window," said Mrs. Sappleton briskly; "my husband and brothers will be home directly from shooting, and they always come in this way. They've been out for snipe in the marshes today, so they'll make a fine mess over my poor carpets. So like you menfolk, isn't it?" She rattled on cheerfully about the shooting and the scarcity of birds, and the prospects for duck in the winter. To Framton it was all purely horrible. He made a desperate but only partially successful effort to turn the talk on to a less ghastly topic, he was conscious that his hostess was giving him only a fragment of her attention, and her eyes were constantly straying past him to the open window and the lawn beyond. It was certainly an unfortunate coincidence that he should have paid his visit on this tragic anniversary. "The doctors agree in ordering me complete rest, an absence of mental excitement, and avoidance of anything in the nature of violent physical exercise," announced Framton, who labored under the tolerably widespread delusion that total strangers and chance acquaintances are hungry for the least detail of one's ailments and infirmities, their cause and cure. "On the matter of diet they are not so much in agreement," he continued. "No?" said Mrs. Sappleton, in a voice which only replaced a yawn at the last moment. Then she suddenly brightened into alert attention--but ...
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    10 分
  • A Rose for Emily

    A Rose for Emily
    2025/10/24
    This is a long one (for a short story), and Faulkner is known for his use of words that are difficult to grasp and pronounce. So don't get stressed. Relax. And you will enjoy this to the end. WHEN Miss Emily Grierson died, our whole town went to her funeral: the men through a sort of respectful affection for a fallen monument, the women mostly out of curiosity to see the inside of her house, which no one save an old man-servant--a combined gardener and cook--had seen in at least ten years. It was a big, squarish frame house that had once been white, decorated with cupolas and spires and scrolled balconies in the heavily lightsome style of the seventies, set on what had once been our most select street. But garages and cotton gins had encroached and obliterated even the august names of that neighborhood; only Miss Emily's house was left, lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps-an eyesore among eyesores. And now Miss Emily had gone to join the representatives of those august names where they lay in the cedar-bemused cemetery among the ranked and anonymous graves of Union and Confederate soldiers who fell at the battle of Jefferson. Alive, Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town, dating from that day in 1894 when Colonel Sartoris, the mayor--he who fathered the edict that no Negro woman should appear on the streets without an apron-remitted her taxes, the dispensation dating from the death of her father on into perpetuity. Not that Miss Emily would have accepted charity. Colonel Sartoris invented an involved tale to the effect that Miss Emily's father had loaned money to the town, which the town, as a matter of business, preferred this way of repaying. Only a man of Colonel Sartoris' generation and thought could have invented it, and only a woman could have believed it. When the next generation, with its more modern ideas, became mayors and aldermen, this arrangement created some little dissatisfaction. On the first of the year they mailed her a tax notice. February came, and there was no reply. They wrote her a formal letter, asking her to call at the sheriff's office at her convenience. A week later the mayor wrote her himself, offering to call or to send his car for her, and received in reply a note on paper of an archaic shape, in a thin, flowing calligraphy in faded ink, to the effect that she no longer went out at all. The tax notice was also enclosed, without comment. They called a special meeting of the Board of Aldermen. A deputation waited upon her, knocked at the door through which no visitor had passed since she ceased giving china-painting lessons eight or ten years earlier. They were admitted by the old Negro into a dim hall from which a stairway mounted into still more shadow. It smelled of dust and disuse--a close, dank smell. The Negro led them into the parlor. It was furnished in heavy, leather-covered furniture. When the Negro opened the blinds of one window, they could see that the leather was cracked; and when they sat down, a faint dust rose sluggishly about their thighs, spinning with slow motes in the single sun-ray. On a tarnished gilt easel before the fireplace stood a crayon portrait of Miss Emily's father. They rose when she entered--a small, fat woman in black, with a thin gold chain descending to her waist and vanishing into her belt, leaning on an ebony cane with a tarnished gold head. Her skeleton was small and spare; perhaps that was why what would have been merely plumpness in another was obesity in her. She looked bloated, like a body long submerged in motionless water, and of that pallid hue. Her eyes, lost in the fatty ridges of her face, looked like two small pieces of coal pressed into a lump of dough as they moved from one face to another while the visitors stated their errand. She did not ask them to sit. She just stood in the door and listened quietly until the spokesman came to a stumbling halt. Then they could hear the invisible watch ticking at the end of the gold chain. Her voice was dry and cold. "I have no taxes in Jefferson. Colonel Sartoris explained it to me. Perhaps one of you can gain access to the city records and satisfy yourselves." "But we have. We are the city authorities, Miss Emily. Didn't you get a notice from the sheriff, signed by him?" "I received a paper, yes," Miss Emily said. "Perhaps he considers himself the sheriff . . . I have no taxes in Jefferson." "But there is nothing on the books to show that, you see We must go by the--" "See Colonel Sartoris. I have no taxes in Jefferson." "But, Miss Emily--" "See Colonel Sartoris." (Colonel Sartoris had been dead almost ten years.) "I have no taxes in Jefferson. Tobe!" The Negro appeared. "Show these gentlemen out." II So SHE vanquished them, horse and foot, just as she had vanquished their fathers thirty years before about the smell. That was two years after her father's death and a...
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    30 分
  • Bartleby

    Bartleby
    2025/10/21
    Bartleby Herman Melville I am an old lawyer, and I have three men working for me. My business continued to grow and so I decided to get one more man to help write legal papers. I have met a great many people in my days, but the man who answered my advertisement was the strangest person I have ever heard of or met. He stood outside my office and waited for me to speak. He was a small man, quiet and dressed in a clean but old suit of clothes. I asked him his name. It was Bartleby. At first Bartleby almost worked himself too hard writing the legal papers I gave him. He worked through the day by sunlight, and into the night by candlelight. I was happy with his work, but not happy with the way he worked. He was too quiet. But, he worked well…like a machine, never looking or speaking. One day, I asked Bartleby to come to my office to study a legal paper with me. Without moving from his chair, Bartleby said: "I do not want to." I sat for a short time, too surprised to move. Then I became excited. "You do not want to. What do you mean, are you sick? I want you to help me with this paper." "I do not want to." His face was calm. His eyes showed no emotion. He was not angry. This is strange, I thought. What should I do? But, the telephone rang, and I forgot the problem for the time being. A few days later, four long documents came into the office. They needed careful study, and I decided to give one document to each of my men. I called and all came to my office. But not Bartleby. "Bartleby, quick, I am waiting." He came, and stood in front of me for a moment. "I don't want to," he said then turned and went back to his desk. I was so surprised, I could not move. There was something about Bartleby that froze me, yet, at the same time, made me feel sorry for him. As time passed, I saw that Bartleby never went out to eat dinner. Indeed, he never went anywhere. At eleven o'clock each morning, one of the men would bring Bartleby some ginger cakes. "Umm. He lives on them," I thought. "Poor fellow!" He is a little foolish at times, but he is useful to me. "Bartleby," I said one afternoon. "Please go to the post office and bring my mail." "I do not want to." I walked back to my office too shocked to think. Let's see, the problem here is…one of my workers named Bartleby will not do some of the things I ask him to do. One important thing about him though, he is always in his office. One Sunday I walked to my office to do some work. When I placed the key in the door, I couldn't open it. I stood a little surprised, then called, thinking someone might be inside. There was. Bartleby. He came from his office and told me he did not want to let me in. The idea of Bartleby living in my law office had a strange effect on me. I slunk away much like a dog does when it has been shouted at…with its tail between its legs. Was anything wrong? I did not for a moment believe Bartleby would keep a woman in my office. But for some time he must have eaten, dressed and slept there. How lonely and friendless Bartleby must be. I decided to help him. The next morning I called him to my office. "Bartleby, will you tell me anything about yourself?" "I do not want to." I sat down with him and said, "You do not have to tell me about your personal history, but when you finish writing that document… "I have decided not to write anymore," he said. And left my office. What was I to do? Bartleby would not work at all. Then why should he stay on his job? I decided to tell him to go. I gave him six days to leave the office and told him I would give him some extra money. If he would not work, he must leave. On the sixth day, somewhat hopefully, I looked into the office Bartleby used. He was still there. The next morning, I went to the office early. All was still. I tried to open the door, but it was locked. Bartleby's voice came from inside. I stood as if hit by lightening. I walked the streets thinking. "Well, Bartleby, if you will not leave me, I shall leave you." I paid some men to move all the office furniture to another place. Bartleby just stood there as the men took his chair away. "Goodbye Bartleby, I am going. Goodbye and God be with you. Here take this money." I placed it in his hands. It dropped to the floor; and then, strange to say, I had difficulty leaving the person I wanted to leave me. A few days later, a stranger visited me in my new office. "You are responsible for the man you left in your last office," he said. The owner of the building has given me a court order which says you must take him away. We tried to make him leave, but he returned and troubles the others there. I went back to my old office and found Bartleby sitting on the empty floor. "Bartleby, one of two things must happen. I will get you a different job, or you can go to work for some other lawyer." He said he did not like either choice. "Bartleby, will you come home with me and stay there until we decide what you will do?" He answered softly, "No...
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    12 分
  • An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge

    An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
    2025/10/20
    Narrator: A man stood on a railroad bridge in Alabama looking down into the swift waters of the Owl Creek River below. The mans hands were tied behind his back. There was a rope around his neck. The rope was tied to part of the bridge above him. Three soldiers of the northern army stood near the prisoner, waiting for their captains orders to hang him. Everybody was ready. The prisoner stood quietly. His eyes were not covered. He looked down and saw the water under the bridge. Now, he closed his eyes. He wanted his last thoughts to be of his wife and children. But, as he tried to think of them, he heard sounds -- again and again. The sounds were soft. But they got louder and louder and started to hurt his ears. The pain was strong. He wanted to shout. But the sounds he heard were just those of the river running swiftly under the bridge. The prisoner quickly opened his eyes and looked at the water. "If I could only free my hands," he thought. "Then I could get the rope off my neck and jump into the river. I could swim under the water and escape the fire of their guns. I could reach the other side of the river and get home through the forest. My house is outside of their military area, and my wife and children are safe there. I would be, too…" While these thoughts raced through the prisoners mind, the captain gave the soldiers the order to hang him. A soldier quickly obeyed. He made the rope firm around the prisoners neck. Then he dropped him through a hole in the bridge. As the prisoner fell, everything seemed black and empty. But then he felt a sharp pain in his neck and could not breathe. There were terrible pains running from his neck down through his body, his arms and his legs. He could not think. He could only feel, a feeling of living in a world of pain. Then, suddenly, he heard a noise…something falling into the water. There was a big sound in his ears. Everything around him was cold and dark. Now he could think. He believed the rope had broken and that he was in the river. But the rope was still around his neck, and his hands were tied. He thought: "How funny. How funny to die of hanging at the bottom of a river!" Then he felt his body moving up to the top of the water. The prisoner did not know what he was doing. But his hands reached the rope on his neck and tore it off. Now he felt the most violent pain he had ever known. He wanted to put the rope back on his neck. He tried but could not. His hands beat the water and pushed him up to the top. His head came out of the water. The light of the sun hurt his eyes. His mouth opened, and he swallowed air. It was too much for his lungs. He blew out the air with a scream. Now the prisoner could think more clearly. All his senses had returned. They were even sharper than before. He heard sounds he never heard before -- that no mans ears ever heard -- the flying wings of small insects, the movement of a fish. His eyes saw more than just the trees along the river. They saw every leaf on the trees. And they saw the thin lines in the leaves. And he saw the bridge, with the wall at one end. He saw the soldiers and the captain on the bridge. They shouted, and they pointed at him. They looked like giant monsters. As he looked, he heard gunfire. Something hit the water near his head. Now there was a second shot. He saw one soldier shooting at him. He knew he had to get to the forest and escape. He heard an officer call to the other soldiers to shoot. The prisoner went down into the river, deep, as far as he could. The water made a great noise in his ears, but he heard the shots. As he came up to the top again, he saw the bullets hit the water. Some of them touched his face and hands. One even fell into the top of his shirt. He felt the heat of the bullet on his back. When his head came out of the water for air, he saw that he was farther away from the soldiers. And he began swimming strongly. As he swam, the soldiers fired their rifles. Then they fired their cannon at him. But nothing hit him. Then, suddenly, he could not swim. He was caught in a whirlpool which kept turning him around and around. This was the end, he thought. Then, just as suddenly as it had caught him, the whirlpool lifted him and threw him out of the river. He was on land! He kissed the ground. He looked around him. There was a pink light in the air. The wind seemed to make music as it blew through the trees. He wanted to stay there. But the cannon fired again, and he heard the bullets above his head. He got up and ran into the forest. At last, he found a road toward his house. It was a wide, straight road. Yet it looked like a road that never had any travelers on it. No farms. No houses on its sides, only tall black trees. In the tall black trees, the prisoner heard strange voices. Some of them spoke in words that he could not understand. His neck began to hurt. When he touched it, it felt very large. His eyes hurt so much that he could not close them. His feet moved, but he could ...
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    9 分
  • The Tell Tale Heart (Good for learning English. Follow along with the text)

    The Tell Tale Heart (Good for learning English. Follow along with the text)
    2025/10/20
    True! Nervous -- very, very nervous I had been and am! But why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses -- not destroyed them. Above all was the sense of hearing. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in the underworld. How, then, am I mad? Observe how healthily -- how calmly I can tell you the whole story. It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain. I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult. For his gold I had no desire. I think it was his eye! Yes, it was this! He had the eye of a bird, a vulture -- a pale blue eye, with a film over it. Whenever it fell on me, my blood ran cold; and so -- very slowly -- I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and free myself of the eye forever. Now this is the point. You think that I am mad. Madmen know nothing. But you should have seen me. You should have seen how wisely and carefully I went to work! I was never kinder to the old man than during the whole week before I killed him. And every night, late at night, I turned the lock of his door and opened it – oh, so gently! And then, when I had made an opening big enough for my head, I put in a dark lantern, all closed that no light shone out, and then I stuck in my head. I moved it slowly, very slowly, so that I might not interfere with the old mans sleep. And then, when my head was well in the room, I undid the lantern just so much that a single thin ray of light fell upon the vulture eye. And this I did for seven long nights -- but I found the eye always closed; and so it was impossible to do the work; for it was not the old man who was a problem for me, but his Evil Eye. On the eighth night, I was more than usually careful in opening the door. I had my head in and was about to open the lantern, when my finger slid on a piece of metal and made a noise. The old man sat up in bed, crying out "Whos there?" I kept still and said nothing. I did not move a muscle for a whole hour. During that time, I did not hear him lie down. He was still sitting up in the bed listening -- just as I have done, night after night. Then I heard a noise, and I knew it was the sound of human terror. It was the low sound that arises from the bottom of the soul. I knew the sound well. Many a night, late at night, when all the world slept, it has welled up from deep within my own chest. I say I knew it well. I knew what the old man felt, and felt sorry for him, although I laughed to myself. I knew that he had been lying awake ever since the first noise, when he had turned in the bed. His fears had been ever since growing upon him. When I had waited a long time, without hearing him lie down, I decided to open a little -- a very, very little -- crack in the lantern. So I opened it. You cannot imagine how carefully, carefully. Finally, a single ray of light shot from out and fell full upon the vulture eye. It was open -- wide, wide open -- and I grew angry as I looked at it. I saw it clearly -- all a dull blue, with a horrible veil over it that chilled my bones; but I could see nothing else of the old mans face or person. For I had directed the light exactly upon the damned spot. And have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but a kind of over-sensitivity? Now, there came to my ears a low, dull, quick sound, such as a watch makes when inside a piece of cotton. I knew that sound well, too. It was the beating of the old mans heart. It increased my anger. But even yet I kept still. I hardly breathed. I held the lantern motionless. I attempted to keep the ray of light upon the eye. But the beating of the heart increased. It grew quicker and quicker, and louder and louder every second. The old mans terror must have been extreme! The beating grew louder, I say, louder every moment! And now at the dead hour of the night, in the horrible silence of that old house, so strange a noise as this excited me to uncontrollable terror. Yet, for some minutes longer I stood still. But the beating grew louder, louder! I thought the heart must burst. And now a new fear seized me -- the sound would be heard by a neighbor! The old mans hour had come! With a loud shout, I threw open the lantern and burst into the room. He cried once -- once only. Without delay, I forced him to the floor, and pulled the heavy bed over him. I then smiled, to find the action so far done. But, for many minutes, the heart beat on with a quiet sound. This, however, did not concern me; it would not be heard through the wall. At length, it stopped. The old man was dead. I removed the bed and examined the body. I placed my hand over his heart and held it there many minutes. There was no movement. He was stone dead. His eye would trouble me no more. If still you think me mad, you will think so no longer when I describe the wise steps I ...
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    13 分
  • Legend of Sleepy Hollow (Perfect for studying English)

    Legend of Sleepy Hollow (Perfect for studying English)
    2025/10/19
    The Legend of Sleepy Hollow Narrator: The valley known as Sleepy Hollow hides from the world in the high hills of New York state. There are many stories told about the quiet valley. But the story that people believe most is about a man who rides a horse at night. The story says the man died many years ago during the American revolutionary war. His head was shot off. Every night he rises from his burial place, jumps on his horse and rides through the valley looking for his lost head. Near Sleepy Hollow is a village called Tarry Town. It was settled many years ago by people from Holland. The village had a small school. And one teacher, named Ichabod Crane. Ichabod Crane was a good name for him, because he looked like a tall bird, a crane. He was tall and thin like a crane. His shoulders were small, joined two long arms. His head was small, too, and flat on top. He had big ears, large glassy green eyes and a long nose. Ichabod did not make much money as a teacher. And although he was tall and thin, he ate like a fat man. To help him pay for his food he earned extra money teaching young people to sing. Every Sunday after church Ichabod taught singing. Among the ladies Ichabod taught was one Katrina Van Tassel. She was the only daughter of a rich Dutch farmer. She was a girl in bloom…much like a round red, rosy apple. Ichabod had a soft and foolish heart for the ladies, and soon found himself interested in Miss Van Tassel. Ichabods eyes opened wide when he saw the riches of Katrinas farm: the miles of apple trees and wheat fields, and hundreds of fat farm animals. He saw himself as master of the Van Tassel farm with Katrina as his wife. But there were many problems blocking the road to Katrinas heart. One was a strong young man named Brom Van Brunt. Brom was a hero to all the young ladies. His shoulders were big. His back was wide. And his hair was short and curly. He always won the horse races in Tarry Town and earned many prizes. Brom was never seen without a horse. Sometimes late at night Brom and his friends would rush through town shouting loudly from the backs of their horses. Tired old ladies would awaken from their sleep and say: "Why, there goes Brom Van Brunt leading his wild group again!" Such was the enemy Ichabod had to defeat for Katrinas heart. Stronger and wiser men would not have tried. But Ichabod had a plan. He could not fight his enemy in the open. So he did it silently and secretly. He made many visits to Katrinas farm and made her think he was helping her to sing better. Time passed, and the town people thought Ichabod was winning. Broms horse was never seen at Katrinas house on Sunday nights anymore. One day in autumn Ichabod was asked to come to a big party at the Van Tassel home. He dressed in his best clothes. A farmer loaned him an old horse for the long trip to the party. The house was filled with farmers and their wives, red-faced daughters and clean, washed sons. The tables were filled with different things to eat. Wine filled many glasses. Brom Van Brunt rode to the party on his fastest horse called Daredevil. All the young ladies smiled happily when they saw him. Soon music filled the rooms and everyone began to dance and sing. Ichabod was happy dancing with Katrina as Brom looked at them with a jealous heart. The night passed. The music stopped, and the young people sat together to tell stories about the revolutionary war. Soon stories about Sleepy Hollow were told. The most feared story was about the rider looking for his lost head. One farmer told how he raced the headless man on a horse. The farmer ran his horse faster and faster. The horseman followed over bush and stone until they came to the end of the valley. There the headless horseman suddenly stopped. Gone were his clothes and his skin. All that was left was a man with white bones shining in the moonlight. The stories ended and time came to leave the party. Ichabod seemed very happy until he said goodnight to Katrina. Was she ending their romance? He left feeling very sad. Had Katrina been seeing Ichabod just to make Brom Van Brunt jealous so he would marry her? Well, Ichabod began his long ride home on the hills that surround Tarry Town. He had never felt so lonely in his life. He began to whistle as he came close to the tree where a man had been killed years ago by rebels. He thought he saw something white move in the tree. But no, it was only the moonlight shining and moving on the tree. Then he heard a noise. His body shook. He kicked his horse faster. The old horse tried to run, but almost fell in the river, instead. Ichabod hit the horse again. The horse ran fast and then suddenly stopped, almost throwing Ichabod forward to the ground. There, in the dark woods on the side of the river where the bushes grow low, stood an ugly thing. Big and black. It did not move, but seemed ready to jump like a giant monster. Ichabods hair stood straight up. It was too late to run, and in his fear, he did the only ...
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    12 分
  • Fired for Speech?

    Fired for Speech?
    2025/09/23
    Strummin' Through the Ashes of Free Speech The college town of Crestview, Oregon, was a tinderbox in October 2025, its streets a circus of protest signs and kombucha-stained hoodies, the air thick with rage and Wi-Fi. Papa, a grizzled drifter with a face like a sun-baked saddle and eyes sharp as a hawk's talon, leaned against a graffiti-smeared lamppost, his busted six-string guitar slung across his back, its strings twanging like a bar fight in a junkyard. He wasn't a scholar—his voice was a gravelly snarl, forged in truck stops and fistfights—but tonight, he was Papa of 4 Da Boys, spinning a tale for his imagined sons about a woke mob spewin' fire, caught on a camera phone, and burned by their own words. They'd cry "cancel culture," but schools and bosses would clap back: free speech ain't a shield from the mess you make. The Right's been dodgin' this axe for half a decade; now the Left's reapin' what they sowed. Papa's guitar wailed, a jagged chord like a pie splatterin' a protester's face, as he watched the chaos unfold in Crestview's quad, a lesson in consequences sharper than a switchblade. Segment 1: The Demonstration – A Verbal Molotov Cocktail The sun dipped low over Crestview College's quad, where a mob of 60 students and local activists gathered, their signs blazin' like torches: "Smash Capitalism!" "Death to Fascists!" And "Kirk had it. Comin'" The spark? A conservative professor, Dr. Ellis, had dared lecture on "Charlie Kirk, God and Capitalism" in an economics class, triggerin' a meltdown among the woke brigade. Leading the charge was Max, a 23-year-old gender studies major with green hair and a megaphone that screeched like a cat in a blender. "Ellis is a fascist pig! And Kirk chowed down on Lead!" Max hollered, his voice crackin' like cheap glass. "String Ellis up next!, burn his books!" His sidekick, Jade, a barista with a septum piercing and a TikTok obsession, piled on. "Torch his office, let's cleanse this campus!" she screamed, her fist pumpin' like a piston. The crowd roared, chantin' "No justice, no peace—guillotine the elite! Martyr the Martyrs!" and "Eat the rich! Let's get Kirk some company in Hell" Their words were verbal Molotovs, each syllable uglier than the last, spittle flyin' like confetti in a riot. At the quad's edge, a quiet sophomore, Sarah, held her iPhone 14, recordin' the madness, her thumb twitchin' over "upload" like a gunslinger's trigger. Papa strummed a chord, a sour twang like a firecracker in a porta-potty. "These kids thought they were Che Guevara, boys," he cackled, "but they were just tossin' gasoline on their own futures. Free speech? Sure. But consequences? Comin' faster than a hangover." Segment 2: The Video Ignites the Internet Sarah, sick of Max's crew doxxin' her for likin' a pro-2A X post, hit "upload" at midnight. Titled "Crestview Woke Meltdown," the video exploded online, rackin' up 3 million views by dawn. Max's "string him up," anti-Kirk rhetoric, and Jade's "torch his office" lines looped like a bad remix, their faces clear as a mugshot. Comments lit up: "These clowns need a job!" "Expel 'em!" "Abettin' the Assasin!" And "Have some Decency!" The Left cried "misrepresented!" but the internet was a unanimous jury, and the verdict was brutal. By noon, Crestview's admin was swamped with angry emails from donors. Max, a TA at the college, got a termination notice from HR: "Conduct unbecoming." Jade, slingin' lattes at Brewed Awakening, was fired by 2 p.m., her boss tweetin': "Threats don't brew coffee." Crestview suspended Max, Jade, and 12 others, pendin' expulsion, citin' "threatening behavior" in the student code. Scholarships? Gone. Futures? Teeterin' like a drunk on a tightrope. Papa's guitar wailed, a riff like a clown car crashin' into a dumpster. "They thought they were untouchable, boys," he hooted, "but one iPhone turned their revolution into a roast. You wanna dance with fire? Don't cry when you get burned." Segment 3: The Cry of "Cancel Culture" Max and Jade hit X, wailin' like cats in a rainstorm. "Cancel culture at its worst!" Max posted, claimin' his "string him up" was "just hyperbole." Jade screeched, "We're silenced for speakin' truth!" Their crew rallied, callin' it a "fascist purge," but the public wasn't buyin'. Alumni yanked fundin', parents pulled applications, and Crestview's board doubled down: "Free speech doesn't mean free rides." Brewed Awakening's owner tweeted: "You got rights to yell. We got rights to fire. Oregon's at-will, deal with it." For half a decade, the Right had faced the same guillotine—canceled speakers, fired pundits, deplatformed voices like Charlie Kirk. Now the Left was tastin' their own medicine, their "accountability culture" turnin' on 'em like a rabid dog. Online consensus, "Left's reapin' what they sowed!" Papa strummed, a chord like a balloon animal poppin'. "They loved the axe till it swung their way, boys," he laughed, dark as a grave...
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    16 分