“The Ambitious Guest” by Nathaniel Hawthorne
One September night a family had gathered round their hearth and piled it high with the driftwood of mountain-streams, the dry cones of the pine, and the splintered ruins of great trees that had come crashing down the precipice. Up the chimney roared the fire, and brightened the room with its broad blaze. The faces of the father and mother had a sober gladness; the children laughed. The eldest daughter was the image of Happiness at seventeen, and the aged grandmother, who sat knitting in the warmest place, was the image of Happiness grown old. They had found the “herb heart’s-ease” in the bleakest spot of all New England. This family were situated in the Notch of the White Hills, where the wind was sharp throughout the year and pitilessly cold in the winter, giving their cottage all its fresh inclemency before it descended on the valley of the Saco. They dwelt in a cold spot and a dangerous one, for a mountain towered above their heads so steep that the stones would often rumble down its sides and startle them at midnight.
The daughter had just uttered some simple jest that filled them all with mirth, when the wind came through the Notch and seemed to pause before their cottage, rattling the door with a sound of wailing and lamentation before it passed into the valley. For a moment it saddened them, though there was nothing unusual in the tones. But the family were glad again when they perceived that the latch was lifted by some traveller whose footsteps had been unheard amid the dreary blast which heralded his approach and wailed as he was entering and went moaning away from the door.
Though they dwelt in such a solitude, these people held daily converse with the world. The romantic pass of the Notch is a great artery through which the life-blood of internal commerce is continually throbbing between Maine on one side and the Green Mountains and the shores of the St. Lawrence on the other. The stage-coach always drew up before the door of the cottage. The wayfarer with no companion but his staff paused here to exchange a word, that the sense of loneliness might not utterly overcome him ere he could pass through the cleft of the mountain or reach the first house in the valley. And here the teamster on his way to Portland market would put up for the night, and, if a bachelor, might sit an hour beyond the usual bedtime and steal a kiss from the mountain-maid at parting. It was one of those primitive taverns where the traveller pays only for food and lodging, but meets with a homely kindness beyond all price. When the footsteps were heard, therefore, between the outer door and the inner one, the whole family rose up, grandmother, children and all, as if about to welcome some one who belonged to them, and whose fate was linked with theirs. Continue reading ““The Ambitious Guest” — Nathaniel Hawthorne”
“Standing on the bare ground, my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball-I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me-I am part or particle of God” — Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature
* * * * *
Daughter: “Felt boots are not the correct thing.”
Father: “Yes they are clumsy, I’ll have to get leather ones.” The father fell ill and his deportation to Siberia was postponed.
Daughter: “You are not at all ill, father. Look, you have your coat and boots on….”
Father: “I long to be exiled to Siberia. One could sit somewhere by the Yenissey or Obi river and fish, and on the ferry there would be nice little convicts, emigrants…. Here I hate everything: this lilac tree in front of the window, these gravel paths….”
* * * * *
A bedroom. The light of the moon shines so brightly through the window that even the buttons on his night shirt are visible.
* * * * *
A nice man would feel ashamed even before a dog….
* * * * *
A certain Councillor of State, looking at a beautiful landscape, said:
“What a marvelous function of nature!” From the note-book of an old
dog: “People don’t eat slops and bones which the cooks throw away.
Fools!”* * * * *
He had nothing in his soul except recollections of his schooldays.
* * * * *
–From Anton Chekhov’s Note-Books.
Marvelous moment at 1:18:14 (in a film full of marvelous moments) worth transcribing here.
Frith says:
There’s not much that happens that wakes people up. People are very happy to receive all the time—information. This information is usually coming from central source, like a television station or a government. And people don’t question this at all, anymore. But there are some things you can do in cultural terms that will make people react in a different way. More–finding something in themselves that they didn’t know about. Because the kinds of concerts that we do, or theater events, or dance, or anything like this, when it works, it’s because it strikes a cord inside somebody, and they have to look at themselves, and they have to look at themselves in relation to the society that they’re in. And there aren’t many things that make people do that. Most of the time, people don’t even think about it.
(Via).
Biblioklept 