Classics 1700-1920, Contemporized

By Marvin D. Hinten

At last you can read classics and understand them! Numerous great writers of the past--Alexander Pope, A. E. Housman, Edith Wharton, Henrik Ibsen, Guy de Maupassant, Henry Longfellow, and others--are here contemporized and excerpted for easy access. The classics have never been more interesting or understandable.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jun 12, 2013
• ISBN: 9781475993646

Marvin D. Hinten

Dr. Marvin D. Hinten of Friends University teaches a variety of college English classes, including World Masterpieces 1 and 2. His M.A. came from the University of Missouri and his Ph.D. from Bowling Green State. He has published eight books and numerous articles.

Book preview

THE BET

Anton Chekhov, 1889

It was a dark fall night. The banker, pacing the floor, was remembering the party he had given fifteen years earlier. People had been discussing capital punishment, which most of them thought was wrong. They were suggesting life imprisonment as an alternative.

I don’t agree, the banker had said. It seems to me capital punishment would actually be more humane than imprisonment for life. One punishment kills instantly, while the other in effect kills you over a period of years and years. If it’s the end of your regular life either way, wouldn’t you rather have it happen instantly rather than being dragged out?

A young man who had just graduated from law school was asked his opinion. He said, Well, they’re both obviously bad, but if I had the choice I’d take life imprisonment. Better alive than dead.

The banker, a hot-tempered man, said, You’re wrong. I’ll bet you two million you couldn’t last in a cell for even five years.

Yes, I could, responded the lawyer. In fact, I could make it for fifteen.

Fifteen? I’ll bet you on that. But what have you got to be against me?

You’re betting two million, I’m betting my freedom. It’s a bet.

And so they actually went through with it. The banker was loaded with money and during dinner said to the young attorney, All right, enough’s enough. Admit you’re wrong. Two million is nothing to me, but you have a chance to lose three or four of the best years of your life. I say three or four because there’s no way you’ll last any longer than that. Remember that you’ll have the right to call the bet off and walk out at any time, and most prisoners can’t do that. So why don’t you just admit I’m right?

That was fifteen years ago. And now the banker was pacing up and down in his house, wondering how he could have been so stupid. Why did I make such a stupid bet? What good does it do anybody? That guy loses years off his life and I lose millions, and no one comes out ahead. Is this going to settle anything? No, people are still going to argue about capital punishment. That lawyer was just greedy, and I was stupid.

The banker remembered it all. It had been decided that the lawyer would have to stay where he could be observed at all times, so he had been imprisoned in a large shed on the banker’s property. They had worked out all the details. The lawyer couldn’t set foot out of that shed. He couldn’t have any visitors, talk with anyone, or get letters or newspapers. He was allowed to read, write, eat, drink, and play a musical instrument. He could communicate his needs through a window. Anything he wanted, he simply had to pass a note through the window. They worked out all the details, and it was determined that to win the bet the lawyer had to stay in the shed from midnight on November 14, 1870 to midnight on November 14, 1885. If he left the shed for even two minutes during that time, for any reason, he forfeited the two million.

During the first year of imprisonment the lawyer seemed to go crazy with boredom. He could be heard playing the piano day and night. Since he hadn’t asked for any alcoholic beverages or tobacco, he was reminded in a note that he could have those things, but he turned them down. He wrote, Wine increases desire, and desire isn’t good for a prisoner. Tobacco would turn the air stale in here. During that first year the books he requested were comedies, crime novels, and novels where love would win out in the end after a series of complications.

The second year he started reading classics instead, and he stopped playing the piano. In year five he took up playing again, and also began drinking wine. People who watched him (for an observation deck had been installed above) said all he did (besides play the piano) was eat, drink, and lie on the bed. He read no books and seemed to talk to himself a lot, with irritation. Sometimes at night he started writing, but then in the morning he would tear it up. Sometimes he cried.

The sixth year he feverishly began to study: history, philosophy, foreign languages. In four years he went through 600 books. At the end of this time the prisoner sent a note to the banker. It read: Dear Jailer, I am writing this to you in six languages. Please have scholars read the sentences in the languages they specialize in. If they don’t find any mistake, please fire off a gun outside my shed so I will know I’m making progress. There are geniuses in every language, and now I can understand them. What happiness! Following the prisoner’s instructions, the banker had a gun fired.

In the eleventh year the prisoner read only one book: The Bible. The banker found it strange that a man who had gone through 600 thick academic works in four years should spend almost a whole year on one book. The lawyer followed that up by requesting books of theology and church history.

The last two years the lawyer read an enormous amount, seemingly at random. He’d read biology; then he’d read Shakespeare. One of his notes, for instance, asked for a chemistry book, a medical textbook, a theological tome, and a novel. It was like he was a desperate swimmer, but mentally rather than physically, doing anything to keep himself from going under.

And now the fifteen years were up—or almost up, anyway. The banker said to himself: Tomorrow at midnight he gets his freedom, and I lose two million, and then it’s all over for me.

Fifteen years ago the banker had been super-rich—but not now. He had repeatedly gambled in the stock market, at first to make himself richer, then to try to catch up, and now he was in such a state that the loss of two million would send him under for good.

Stupid bet! the banker snarled. Why couldn’t that guy die?! He’s only forty. He’ll get married, enjoy life, have fine things, and when I go into bankruptcy he’ll toss me a crumb since I helped him get rich. That’s too much to take! No, I have to take the only way out.

It was 3:00 A.M. Everyone in the house was asleep. The banker went to his safe and got the key to the shed, to the door which hadn’t been opened in fifteen years. It was pouring down rain outside. When the banker got to the shed he spoke the name of the watchman, but there was no answer. Apparently the watchman had decided there was no point being outside on a night like this and was sleeping somewhere. The banker thought, Good. I can put the blame on him.

The banker walked over to the shed window and looked inside. The prisoner was seated at the table, with one candle. There were open books on the table, both chairs, and the carpet. The banker watched for five minutes, and the prisoner never moved. After fifteen years of confinement, he was used to being still. The banker tapped on the window, but the prisoner didn’t look over. So the banker walked over to the door and unlocked it. He expected to hear something inside, but all was still silence. So the banker went in.

The man at the table didn’t look like a regular human being. He was extremely thin, like a skeleton, with shaggy hair and beard. His face was yellow, and he was turning prematurely gray; in fact, no one would have believed that the attorney was only forty years old. On the table, in front of his hand, was a piece of paper. The banker realized that the prisoner had fallen asleep there in his chair. He’s probably dreaming about my millions, thought the banker. He looks mostly dead already. All I have to do is smother him with a pillow, and no one can say he didn’t die of natural causes. But first I want to see what he’s written there.

The banker picked up the piece of paper. "Tomorrow at midnight the bet is over and I become officially free. But I want to make a final statement from this room. First, and this is the honest truth, I don’t crave freedom, health, or any of the things that people think make life worth living.

"For fifteen years I have studied life. I didn’t travel the earth or talk with anyone personally, but in books I went to parties, got drunk, went hunting, and fell in love. I saw cities burned to the ground, saw countries get conquered, and saw religions get started.

"The books gave me wisdom. Human thought throughout the centuries is now compressed into my skull. I know that I’m smarter than anyone else around.

"And now I despise the books, despise the wisdom. Everything here is a delusion, for you’re all going to die. All of you are going the wrong direction. You would think it strange if an apple tree produced lizards. I think it equally strange that you have traded heaven for earth. I don’t understand how your minds work and don’t really want to.

So that you’ll know I mean what I say, I’m giving up the two million that I once thought was so important. To make sure I don’t get the money, I’m leaving this room tomorrow, before midnight, and that will decide the bet against me. The money now means nothing to me.

When he finished reading the piece of paper, the banker put it back on the table, kissed the prisoner on the top of the head, and started crying. He left the shed. He had felt bad about his decision-making before, during his stock market failures, but he had never before felt like such a worthless human being. He went to his bed but, between crying and thinking, wasn’t able to sleep.

The next morning the watchman came running up and said that he had seen the prisoner climb through the window out of the shed, run away from the property, and disappear. The banker took two servants with him and got their affirmation that the prisoner had indeed escaped. He picked up the piece of paper from the table before anyone could read it, took it to his house, and locked it up in his safe.

THE ADVENTURE OF THE

BLUE CARBUNCLE

Arthur Conan Doyle, 1892

NOTE: Nowadays we would call a carbuncle a garnet, which is a gemstone normally red in color. Being blue would make the gem more valuable. Almost all of the Sherlock Holmes stories are told from the point of view of his friend Dr. John Watson, as is this one.

I called upon my friend Sherlock Holmes the second morning after Christmas, to wish him the compliments of the season. He was lounging upon the sofa, pipe-rack within reach, and a pile of crumpled morning papers, evidently newly studied, near at hand. Beside the couch was a wooden chair, and on one of its posts hung a very seedy felt hat. A lens upon the seat of the chair suggested that the hat had been suspended for examination.

Am I interrupting you? I asked.

Not at all. I am glad to have a friend with whom I can discuss my results. The matter is a trivial one, he said, jerking his thumb in the direction of the hat, but there are instructive points about it.

I seated myself and remarked, I suppose this thing has some deadly story connected with it.

No, no crime, said Holmes, laughing. Only one of those whimsical incidents that happens when you have four million human beings jostling one another in the space of a few square miles. This trophy was given to me by Officer Peterson.

Is it his hat?

No, he found it. The owner is unknown. Look upon it as an intellectual problem. First, as to how it came here: It arrived Christmas morning, in company with a good fat goose, which is perhaps even this moment roasting in front of Peterson’s fire. About 4:00 Peterson was returning home from some Christmas drinking when in front of him he saw, in the streetlight, a tall man, staggering a bit, carrying a goose over his shoulder. As he reached the corner of Goodge Street, he was attacked by a gang. One of the gang knocked off the man’s hat. As he swung his walking stick backward to defend himself, he accidentally broke a shop window. Peterson rushed forward to protect the man from the gang, but the man got scared at having broken the shop window and seeing a man in uniform rushing toward him. He dropped the goose and took off, as did the gang members. So Peterson was left with the hat and the goose.

Did he try to get them back to the owner?

The goose has ‘Mrs. Henry Baker’ attached to the leg, and the initials ‘H.B.’ are on the lining of the hat, but there are hundreds of Henry Bakers in a city of this size.

So what did Peterson do?

He brought me the goose and hat on Christmas morning, knowing that even the smallest problems interest me. The goose needed to be eaten, so Peterson has now taken it away to fulfill the ultimate destiny of a goose.

Do you have any clues as to Mr. Baker’s identity?

Only what we can deduce from his hat.

What can you figure out from a hat?

"Here is my lens. You know my methods. What can you figure out about the man who has worn this?

I took the tattered object in my hands. It was an ordinary black hat. The discolored lining was of red silk. The brim was pierced to install an elastic band, but the band was missing. It was cracked, dusty, spotted in several places, though the owner had attempted to hide some of the discoloration with ink. I can see nothing, I said, handing it back.

On the contrary, Watson, you can see everything. You fail, however, to reason from what you see.

Then pray tell me what it is that you infer from this hat.

Holmes gazed at it. The man was highly intellectual. He was financially well off three years ago, but not so much now. He doesn’t use as much foresight as he used to; perhaps he drinks more now, which would explain why his wife doesn’t love him anymore. He’s middle-aged, doesn’t get much exercise, has recently-cut gray hair, and I don’t think there’s a gas line to his house.

Holmes, you’re joking.

Not in the least. Is it possible you don’t make the connections even after I’ve pointed these things out to you?

I have no doubt I’m very stupid, but I must confess I am unable to follow you. For example, how do you deduce the man is intellectual.

Holmes clapped the hat upon his head. It came over his forehead and settled on his nose. It’s a matter of cubic capacity. A brain this large must have something in it.

Pray continue.

"The hat is three years old, as one can tell by the style. It’s expensive; look at the lining and the silk band. If a man could afford a