Poe, Edgar Allen - The Works of Edgar Allen Poe - Volume 04

VIP免费

2024-11-30 0 0 467.06KB 149 页 5.9玖币

侵权投诉

The Works of Edgar Allan Poe

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

THE WORKS OF

EDGAR ALLAN POE

VOLUME FOUR

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

The Works of Edgar Allan Poe

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

Contents

The Devil in the Belfry

Lionizing

X-ing a Paragrab

Metzengerstein

The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether

The Literary Life of Thingum Bob, Esq.

How to Write a Blackwood article

A Predicament

Mystification

Diddling

The Angel of the Odd

Mellonia Tauta

The Duc de l'Omlette

The Oblong Box

Loss of Breath

The Man That Was Used Up

The Business Man

The Landscape Garden

Maelzel's Chess-Player

The Power of Words

The Colloquy of Monas and Una

The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion

Shadow.--A Parable

======

The Works of Edgar Allan Poe

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

THE DEVIL IN THE BELFRY

What o'clock is it? -- _Old Saying_.

EVERYBODY knows, in a general way, that the finest place in the world

is -- or, alas, was -- the Dutch borough of Vondervotteimittiss. Yet

as it lies some distance from any of the main roads, being in a

somewhat out-of-the-way situation, there are perhaps very few of my

readers who have ever paid it a visit. For the benefit of those who

have not, therefore, it will be only proper that I should enter into

some account of it. And this is indeed the more necessary, as with

the hope of enlisting public sympathy in behalf of the inhabitants, I

design here to give a history of the calamitous events which have so

lately occurred within its limits. No one who knows me will doubt

that the duty thus self-imposed will be executed to the best of my

ability, with all that rigid impartiality, all that cautious

examination into facts, and diligent collation of authorities, which

should ever distinguish him who aspires to the title of historian.

By the united aid of medals, manuscripts, and inscriptions, I am

enabled to say, positively, that the borough of Vondervotteimittiss

has existed, from its origin, in precisely the same condition which

it at present preserves. Of the date of this origin, however, I

grieve that I can only speak with that species of indefinite

definiteness which mathematicians are, at times, forced to put up

with in certain algebraic formulae. The date, I may thus say, in

regard to the remoteness of its antiquity, cannot be less than any

assignable quantity whatsoever.

Touching the derivation of the name Vondervotteimittiss, I confess

myself, with sorrow, equally at fault. Among a multitude of opinions

upon this delicate point- some acute, some learned, some sufficiently

the reverse -- I am able to select nothing which ought to be

considered satisfactory. Perhaps the idea of Grogswigg- nearly

coincident with that of Kroutaplenttey -- is to be cautiously

preferred. -- It runs: -- Vondervotteimittis -- Vonder, lege Donder

-- Votteimittis, quasi und Bleitziz- Bleitziz obsol: -- pro Blitzen."

This derivative, to say the truth, is still countenanced by some

traces of the electric fluid evident on the summit of the steeple of

the House of the Town-Council. I do not choose, however, to commit

myself on a theme of such importance, and must refer the reader

desirous of information to the "Oratiunculae de Rebus

Praeter-Veteris," of Dundergutz. See, also, Blunderbuzzard "De

Derivationibus," pp. 27 to 5010, Folio, Gothic edit., Red and Black

character, Catch-word and No Cypher; wherein consult, also, marginal

notes in the autograph of Stuffundpuff, with the Sub-Commentaries of

Gruntundguzzell.

Notwithstanding the obscurity which thus envelops the date of the

foundation of Vondervotteimittis, and the derivation of its name,

there can be no doubt, as I said before, that it has always existed

as we find it at this epoch. The oldest man in the borough can

The Works of Edgar Allan Poe

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

remember not the slightest difference in the appearance of any

portion of it; and, indeed, the very suggestion of such a possibility

is considered an insult. The site of the village is in a perfectly

circular valley, about a quarter of a mile in circumference, and

entirely surrounded by gentle hills, over whose summit the people

have never yet ventured to pass. For this they assign the very good

reason that they do not believe there is anything at all on the other

side.

Round the skirts of the valley (which is quite level, and paved

throughout with flat tiles), extends a continuous row of sixty little

houses. These, having their backs on the hills, must look, of course,

to the centre of the plain, which is just sixty yards from the front

door of each dwelling. Every house has a small garden before it, with

a circular path, a sun-dial, and twenty-four cabbages. The buildings

themselves are so precisely alike, that one can in no manner be

distinguished from the other. Owing to the vast antiquity, the style

of architecture is somewhat odd, but it is not for that reason the

less strikingly picturesque. They are fashioned of hard-burned little

bricks, red, with black ends, so that the walls look like a

chess-board upon a great scale. The gables are turned to the front,

and there are cornices, as big as all the rest of the house, over the

eaves and over the main doors. The windows are narrow and deep, with

very tiny panes and a great deal of sash. On the roof is a vast

quantity of tiles with long curly ears. The woodwork, throughout, is

of a dark hue and there is much carving about it, with but a trifling

variety of pattern for, time out of mind, the carvers of

Vondervotteimittiss have never been able to carve more than two

objects -- a time-piece and a cabbage. But these they do exceedingly

well, and intersperse them, with singular ingenuity, wherever they

find room for the chisel.

The dwellings are as much alike inside as out, and the furniture is

all upon one plan. The floors are of square tiles, the chairs and

tables of black-looking wood with thin crooked legs and puppy feet.

The mantelpieces are wide and high, and have not only time-pieces and

cabbages sculptured over the front, but a real time-piece, which

makes a prodigious ticking, on the top in the middle, with a

flower-pot containing a cabbage standing on each extremity by way of

outrider. Between each cabbage and the time-piece, again, is a little

China man having a large stomach with a great round hole in it,

through which is seen the dial-plate of a watch.

The fireplaces are large and deep, with fierce crooked-looking

fire-dogs. There is constantly a rousing fire, and a huge pot over

it, full of sauer-kraut and pork, to which the good woman of the

house is always busy in attending. She is a little fat old lady, with

blue eyes and a red face, and wears a huge cap like a sugar-loaf,

ornamented with purple and yellow ribbons. Her dress is of

orange-colored linsey-woolsey, made very full behind and very short

in the waist -- and indeed very short in other respects, not reaching

below the middle of her leg. This is somewhat thick, and so are her

ankles, but she has a fine pair of green stockings to cover them. Her

The Works of Edgar Allan Poe

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

shoes -- of pink leather -- are fastened each with a bunch of yellow

ribbons puckered up in the shape of a cabbage. In her left hand she

has a little heavy Dutch watch; in her right she wields a ladle for

the sauerkraut and pork. By her side there stands a fat tabby cat,

with a gilt toy-repeater tied to its tail, which "the boys" have

there fastened by way of a quiz.

The boys themselves are, all three of them, in the garden attending

the pig. They are each two feet in height. They have three-cornered

cocked hats, purple waistcoats reaching down to their thighs,

buckskin knee-breeches, red stockings, heavy shoes with big silver

buckles, long surtout coats with large buttons of mother-of-pearl.

Each, too, has a pipe in his mouth, and a little dumpy watch in his

right hand. He takes a puff and a look, and then a look and a puff.

The pig- which is corpulent and lazy -- is occupied now in picking up

the stray leaves that fall from the cabbages, and now in giving a

kick behind at the gilt repeater, which the urchins have also tied to

his tail in order to make him look as handsome as the cat.

Right at the front door, in a high-backed leather-bottomed armed

chair, with crooked legs and puppy feet like the tables, is seated

the old man of the house himself. He is an exceedingly puffy little

old gentleman, with big circular eyes and a huge double chin. His

dress resembles that of the boys -- and I need say nothing farther

about it. All the difference is, that his pipe is somewhat bigger

than theirs and he can make a greater smoke. Like them, he has a

watch, but he carries his watch in his pocket. To say the truth, he

has something of more importance than a watch to attend to -- and

what that is, I shall presently explain. He sits with his right leg

upon his left knee, wears a grave countenance, and always keeps one

of his eyes, at least, resolutely bent upon a certain remarkable

object in the centre of the plain.

This object is situated in the steeple of the House of the Town

Council. The Town Council are all very little, round, oily,

intelligent men, with big saucer eyes and fat double chins, and have

their coats much longer and their shoe-buckles much bigger than the

ordinary inhabitants of Vondervotteimittiss. Since my sojourn in the

borough, they have had several special meetings, and have adopted

these three important resolutions:

"That it is wrong to alter the good old course of things:"

"That there is nothing tolerable out of Vondervotteimittiss:" and-

"That we will stick by our clocks and our cabbages."

Above the session-room of the Council is the steeple, and in the

steeple is the belfry, where exists, and has existed time out of

mind, the pride and wonder of the village -- the great clock of the

borough of Vondervotteimittiss. And this is the object to which the

eyes of the old gentlemen are turned who sit in the leather-bottomed

arm-chairs.

文档加载中……请稍候！
如果长时间未打开，您也可以点击刷新试试。

下载文档到电脑，查找使用更方便

5.9 玖币 0人已下载

立即下载 VIP免费下载

摘要：

TheWorksofEdgarAllanPoeGetanybookforfreeon:www.Abika.com1THEWORKSOFEDGARALLANPOEVOLUMEFOURGetanybookforfreeon:www.Abika.comTheWorksofEdgarAllanPoeGetanybookforfreeon:www.Abika.com2ContentsTheDevilintheBelfryLionizingX-ingaParagrabMetzengersteinTheSystemofDoctorTarrandProfessorFetherTheLiteraryLifeof...

展开>> 收起<<

Poe, Edgar Allen - The Works of Edgar Allen Poe - Volume 04.pdf

共149页,预览5页

还剩页未读，继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

Poe, Edgar Allen - The Works of Edgar Allen Poe - Volume 04

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: