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    The Parenticide Club
    The Parenticide Club
    The Parenticide Club
    Ebook49 pages38 minutes

    The Parenticide Club

    By Ambrose Bierce

    3.5/5

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    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateFeb 1, 2008
    Author

    Ambrose Bierce

    Ambrose Bierce was an American writer, critic and war veteran. Bierce fought for the Union Army during the American Civil War, eventually rising to the rank of brevet major before resigning from the Army following an 1866 expedition across the Great Plains. Bierce’s harrowing experiences during the Civil War, particularly those at the Battle of Shiloh, shaped a writing career that included editorials, novels, short stories and poetry. Among his most famous works are “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” “The Boarded Window,” “Chickamauga,” and What I Saw of Shiloh. While on a tour of Civil-War battlefields in 1913, Bierce is believed to have joined Pancho Villa’s army before disappearing in the chaos of the Mexican Revolution.

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    3.5/5

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    • 4/5
      This is a short collection of four very odd, very nasty Bierce stories, where the narrator's parents end up dying in each case, though it may not strictly be parenticide. "Oil of Dog" is perhaps the best known of these, as I have seen it anthologized before. These stories seem to be set in an alternate universe with a far different legal system than ours and with much different attitudes about crime, especially murder. (Apparently Bierce did not have a good relationship with his own parents....)
    • 3/5
      How very, very odd.

    Book preview

    The Parenticide Club - Ambrose Bierce

    The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Parenticide Club, by Ambrose Bierce

    This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

    almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or

    re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

    with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

    Title: The Parenticide Club

    Author: Ambrose Bierce

    Posting Date: May 13, 2009 [EBook #3715]

    Release Date: February, 2003

    Language: English

    *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PARENTICIDE CLUB ***

    Produced by Paul J. Hollander. HTML version by Al Haines.

    THE PARENTICIDE CLUB

    by

    Ambrose Bierce

    CONTENTS

    My Favorite Murder

    Oil of Dog

    An Imperfect Conflagration

    The Hypnotist

    MY FAVORITE MURDER

    Having murdered my mother under circumstances of singular atrocity, I was arrested and put upon my trial, which lasted seven years. In charging the jury, the judge of the Court of Acquittal remarked that it was one of the most ghastly crimes that he had ever been called upon to explain away.

    At this, my attorney rose and said:

    May it please your Honor, crimes are ghastly or agreeable only by comparison. If you were familiar with the details of my client's previous murder of his uncle you would discern in his later offense (if offense it may be called) something in the nature of tender forbearance and filial consideration for the feelings of the victim. The appalling ferocity of the former assassination was indeed inconsistent with any hypothesis but that of guilt; and had it not been for the fact that the honorable judge before whom he was tried was the president of a life insurance company that took risks on hanging, and in which my client held a policy, it is hard to see how he could decently have been acquitted. If your Honor would like to hear about it for instruction and guidance of your Honor's mind, this unfortunate man, my client, will consent to give himself the pain of relating it under oath.

    The district attorney said: Your Honor, I object. Such a statement would be in the nature of evidence, and the testimony in this case is closed. The prisoner's statement should have been introduced three years ago, in the spring of 1881.

    In a statutory sense, said the judge, you are right, and in the Court of Objections and Technicalities you would get a ruling in your favor. But not in a Court of Acquittal. The objection is overruled.

    I except, said the district attorney.

    You cannot do that, the judge said. I must remind you that in order to take an exception you must first get this case transferred for a time to the Court of Exceptions on a formal motion duly supported by affidavits. A motion to that effect by your predecessor in office was denied by me during the first year of this trial. Mr. Clerk, swear the prisoner.

    The customary oath having been administered, I made the following statement, which impressed the judge with so strong a sense of the comparative triviality of the offense for which I was on trial that he made no further search for mitigating circumstances, but simply instructed

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