a do-it-yourself MiSTing

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[Fade in. Readers Hugh, Meredith, David, Lucy and Linda are sitting around a table. Hugh is holding a sheaf of crumbling, yellowed newspapers: the Political Barometer of Poughkeepsie, New York, dated 1804. The others are holding books from 1811 and assorted later dates, all with the title Alonzo and Melissa.

[The real-life Hugh would like it made very clear that he considers Alonzo and Melissa to be one of the high points in the history of American literature, and would never dream of poking fun at it.]

Hugh [Crocodile Dundee voice]: You call that a title? This is a title:

David: That’s a warning, isn’t it?

Hugh: Ahem.

Meredith: Oh, all right. Written by Isaac Mitchell in 1804 and published in the newspaper he edited. Pirated in 1811 by Daniel Jackson.

Hugh: Junior.

Linda: His father must have been very, very proud of him.

Lucy: Not half as proud as Amelia Stratton Comfield’s father. Thirty years later she swiped it all over again, renamed the main characters—and donated the proceeds to charity.

David [Devil’s advocate]: How do we know it wasn’t written by Jackson in the first place and stolen by Mitchell to fill up column space?

Linda: Well, among other things, Jackson would have been only thirteen years old at the time.

Hugh [as editor of the Political Barometer]: Everyone stop what you’re doing. I want the author of this travesty to step forward, own up like a man, and put your money in the Violations Jar. You will then have half an— fifteen— no, ten minutes to rewrite it in the active voice, using strong, descriptive words, cutting the verbiage by at least half, and—

David [in “Please, sir, I want some more” tones]: Sir . . . Excuse me, sir . . . It was . . . Well . . . You wrote it, sir.

Hugh: You’re fired.

a firm reliance on Providence, however the affections might be at war with its dispen­sations, is the only source of consolation in the gloomy hours of affliction; and that generally such dependence, though crossed by difficulties and perplexities, will be crowned with victory at last.

Linda: If the characters took matters into their own hands, the whole story would be wrapped up in twenty pages.

It is also believed—

Hugh [as editor]: WHAT did I just get through— Oh. Right.

that the story contains no indecorous stimulants;

Lucy: It’s really true. I looked ahead. There’s one place where Alonzo orders ale but doesn’t drink it, and when you see wine it’s only as part of the background decoration.

Meredith: What about laudanum?

Lucy: No sign of it. If you need pain killers you’ll have to provide your own.

nor is it filled with unmeaning and inexplicated incidents sounding upon the senses, but imper­ceptible to the under­standing.

Readers [stare at each other in disbelief].

When anxieties have been excited by involved and doubtful events, they are afterwards elucidated by the consequences.

Linda: What fun is that?

Linda: Spoiler alert! Fingers in ears, everyone!

at the grave of Melissa, he poured the feelings of his anguished soul over her miniature by the “moon’s pale ray;”—when Melissa, sinking on her knees before her father, was received to his bosom as a beloved daughter risen from the dead.

Meredith: I guess that means I don’t have to read the book after all.

Hugh: You’ve already read it. The Preface started out as a Note printed at the end of the final installment.

If these scenes are not imperfectly drawn, they will not fail to interest the refined sensi­bilities of the reader.

Lucy: I can never get the hang of double negatives. [Reaches for eraser.]

If these scenes are       perfectly drawn, they will       interest the refined sensi­bilities of the reader.

David: And if they aren’t, they won’t.

Hugh: —the late American revolution.

Lucy: As opposed to all those other revolutions you might have thought he was talking about.

Meredith: Wasn’t there some business in France?

Lucy: Oh, right. But by 1811 that was all water under the bridge.

American revolution, two young gentlemen of Connecticut, who had formed an indissoluble friendship, graduated at Yale College in New Haven: their names were Edgar and Alonzo. Edgar was the son of a respectable farmer. Alonzo’s father was an eminent merchant. Edgar was designed for the desk,

David: He was chair-shaped?

Alonzo for the bar;

Meredith: He can’t have been. We just got through the “no indecorous stimulants”.

but as they were allowed some vacant time after their graduation before they entered upon their professional studies,

David: Now that they’ve had their fun at Yale, it’s time to hit the books.

they improved this interim in mutual, friendly visits, mingling with select parties in the amusements of the day, and in travelling through some parts of the United States.

Meredith: Uh, what United States? Does he mean the colonies?

David: He means Connecticut. This book is completely obsessed with Connecticut.

Linda: It’s like those English novels where someone asks if it’s your first visit to this part of the world, and they mean this district of England.

Edgar had a sister who, for some time, had resided with her cousin at New London.

Lucy: Time-honored solution to a time-honored problem. She was getting fatter in the middle and her waistband was riding higher, so she was packed off to stay with relatives until she got miraculously thin again.

She was now about to return,

Lucy: —due to return, nudge nudge wink wink.

and it was designed that Edgar should go and attend her home. Previous to the day on which he was to set out, he was unfor­tunately thrown from his horse, which so much injured him as to prevent his prosecuting his intended journey: he therefore invited Alonzo to supply his place;

David: Good practice for Alonzo, if he’s going to be a litigator.

Others: [Flat silence.]

which invitation he readily accepted, and on the day appointed set out for New London,

Lucy [finds map of Connecticut and spreads it out on table]: There’s New London, way over at the far edge of the st— colony. About 45 miles east of New Haven as the crow flies. You can do it in a day if there’s a road.

Meredith: I thought they’d been seeing the world.

David: Connecticut is the world.

Hugh [under his breath]: Cross out “the“, cross out “of”, change to “Edgar’s sister”.

was about sixteen years of age. She was not what is esteemed a striking beauty, but her appearance was pleasingly interesting. Her figure was elegant;

David: Now that they’ve taken care of the waistline problem.

her aspect was attempered—

Linda [reading from 1870 edition]: Or possibly “tempered”. We’re not sure what the word means, so let the readers take their pick.

Meredith: Ouch. Overdid it on the teeth-whitening.

Lucy [consulting reference work]: Erasmus Darwin, 1731–1802. “The Temple of Nature, or, The Origin of Society”.

David: Any relation to Charles?

Lucy: His grandfather. From the origin of society to the origin of species is but a small step.

Linda: From Alonzo and Melissa to literature, on the other hand, is a giant leap.

Her mind was adorned with those delicate graces which are the first ornaments of female excellence. Her manners were graceful without affectation, and her taste had been properly directed by a suitable education.

Meredith [as Melissa]: I don’t know anything about art, but my teacher said this is a good painting so I’ll go into raptures over it.

Alonzo was about twenty-one years old; he had been esteemed an excellent student.

Lucy: Until the day Housekeeping cleaned up his college rooms and found all those papers in other students’ handwriting.

Linda [1870 text]: I’ve got “pride or pomp”.

Meredith: The Constitutional Convention will spend weeks arguing points like that.

Lucy [after business with reference works]: This is the single longest quotation in the whole book—and it’s by a president of Yale. Timothy Dwight, 1752–1817, “The Conquest of Canaan”. Probably thought it meant New Canaan, Connecticut. The Cambridge History of Literature—sorry, English and American Literature—says it was “written by the time he was twenty-two, but published when he was thirty-three and should have known better.”

Meredith: Is that what you call damning with faint praise?

David: Sounds like damning with unambiguous damns to me.

It was evening when Alonzo arrived at the house of Edgar’s cousin. Melissa was at a ball which had been given on a matrimonial occasion in the town.

Lucy [glancing at Hugh]: Or, as we say in the vernacular, a wedding.

Her cousin waited on Alonzo to the ball, and introduced him to Melissa, who received him with politeness. She was dressed in white, embroidered and spangled with rich silver lace; a silk girdle, enwrought and tasseled with gold, surrounded her waist; her hair was unadorned—

Meredith: No powder? Eeeuw.

Linda: —making him a perfectly safe escort for anyone’s daughter.

aged about twenty-five. His address was easy, his manners rather voluptuous than refined; confident, but not ungraceful. He led the ton in fashionable circles;

Lucy: In unfashionable circles, the ton couldn’t be bothered.

Meredith: Ton of what?

Lucy: The ton, you ignorant lout. It means the, uh, the people who were so high-class, they had to describe themselves in French.

gave taste its zest, and was quite a favourite with the ladies generally. His name was Beauman.

Edmund [passing through]: As Beauman is plainly destined to be the rival of Alonzo of Yale, we might have suspected him to be a Harvard graduate. Nothing is said about this, however, and the reference to Beauman’s voluptuous manners makes it practically certain that he was a Princeton man.

David: Who the heck was that?

Lucy: Edmund Pearson, writing in The Bookman. Article reprinted in his 1928 collection Queer Books.

Linda: I’m biting my tongue.

Edgar’s cousin proposed to detain Alonzo and Melissa a few days, during which time they passed in visiting—

David: Huh?

Linda [1870 text]:

a few days, which time they passed in was visiting—

David: Wouldn’t you think that with five editions to choose from, at least one of them would have something that wasn’t perfect gibberish?

select friends and social parties. Beauman was an assiduous attendant upon Melissa. He came one afternoon to invite her to ride out;—she was indisposed and excused herself.

Meredith [as Melissa]: Not today, dear. I have a headache.

Linda: Cramps. That little, ahem, problem is safely in the past, and her physiology is back to normal.

At evening she proposed walking out with her cousin and his lady; but they were prevented from attending her by unexpected company. Alonzo offered to accompany her. It was one of those beautiful evenings in the month of June, when nature in those parts of America—

David: For “America,” read “Connecticut”.

Linda: For “Connecticut,” read “the known universe”.

is arrayed in her richest dress. They left the town and walked through fields adjoining the harbour.—The moon shone in full lustre, her white beams trembling upon the glassy main, where skiffs and sails of various descriptions were passing and repassing.

Hugh: Quick! Grab that sail! It’s just the kind I need for my schooner.

The shores of Long-Island and the other islands in the harbour,

David: Long Island, Fire Island, Staten Island . . . If you’ve seen one island, you’ve seen ’em all.

appeared dimly to float among the waves. The air was adorned with the fragrance of surrounding flowers; the sound of instrumental music—

Hugh: Of various instrumental music. We are at a high level of culture.

wafted from the town, rendered sweeter by distance,

Linda: Ouch! Did he just read that B flat as a B natural?

Meredith: Can’t tell from this distance.

while the whippoorwill’s sprightly song echoed along the adjacent groves.

Edmund [stuffily]: It is to the credit of the author that he employed native birds, rather than follow the custom of some of our early writers, who ruthlessly imported English skylarks and Italian nightingales, in defiance of all probability.

Far in the eastern horizon hung a pile of brazen clouds,

Meredith: The brazen audacity of those clouds! I’ve never seen such shameless behavior in a collection of water vapor.

which had passed from the north, over which, the crinkling red lightning momentarily darted, and at times, long peals of thunder were faintly heard. They walked to a point of the beach, where stood a large rock whose base was washed by every tide.

David [yawning]: OK, skip the next few pages. They’re going to get stranded.

Meredith: In the middle of a thunderstorm, surrounded by salt water. Good one, Alonzo.

On this rock they seated themselves, and enjoyed a while the splendours of the scene—the drapery of nature.

David: In Connecticut, Nature’s sole function is to act as theatrical backdrop to the conversation.

“To this place,” said Melissa, “have I taken many a solitary walk, on such an evening as this, and seated on this rock, have I experienced more pleasing sensations than I ever received in the most splendid ball-room.” The idea impressed the mind of Alonzo;

Edmund: —so profoundly that it rendered him absolutely speechless.

it was congenial with the feeling of his soul.

Hugh [under his breath]: Cross out “the”, cross out “of”, rewrite sentence as a single clause.

They returned at a late hour,

Linda: Hmmmm.

David [leafing back, puzzled]: Where’s the rest of the scene?

Edmund: It was clear to Melissa that she had said something so good that all further conversation was totally unnecessary, and that she had better be content with the amazing success of her first remark.

Meredith [in a lightning movement, whips around and grabs sheaf of typescript out of Edmund’s hand]: I knew it! He’s not making it up on the spur of the moment, he’s quoting himself.

and the next day set out for home. Beauman handed Melissa into the carriage, and he, with Edgar’s cousin and his lady, attended them on their first day’s journey.

David: Where’s Alonzo?

Lucy: Riding alongside the carriage to guard against banditti, desperadoes, highwaymen and other perils known to lurk in that part of Conn— of the world.

Linda [studying map]: He’s keeping a sharp eye out for ticks. They just passed Lyme.

They put up at night at the house of an acquaintance in Branford.

David [snatching map away from Linda]: Almost all the way back to New Haven.

Meredith: If cousin and Mrs. Cousin and Beauman all traveled with Melissa, what did Alonzo have to go out there for? He could have stopped halfway and met them in New Haven.

Linda: But then we’d have missed out on all that business with Melissa on the rock. And you wouldn’t expect a Princeton man to ride next to the carriage would you?

The next morning they parted; Melissa’s cousin, his lady and Beauman, returned to New London; Alonzo and Melissa pursued their journey, and at evening arrived at her father’s house, which was in the westerly part of the state.

Meredith [under her breath]: Colony.

Hugh [1804 newspaper text]:

TO BE CONTINUED

Meredith: But—but we can’t stop now! I won’t be able to sleep until I find out how Melissa escapes from—from—

David: From her father’s house.

Linda [biting nails in dread]: In western Connecticut.

Melissa was received with joyful tenderness by her friends. Edgar soon recovered from his fall, and cheerfulness again assumed its most pleasing aspect in the family.

Linda: —having previously worn one of its less pleasing aspects.

Meredith: Otherwise known as cheerlessness.

—Edgar’s father was a plain Connecticut farmer.

Lucy: As demonstrated by the fact that his daughter wore just one measly diamond in her hair at a country wedding.

He was rich, and his riches had been acquired by his diligent attention to business. He had loaned money, and taken mortgages on lands and houses for security; and as payment frequently failed,

Meredith: Most good businessmen try not to lend money to people who can’t pay.

he often had opportunities of purchasing the involved premises at his own price.

David: Sounds like a really swell guy. When did he have time for farming?

He well knew the worth of a shilling, and how to apply it to its best use; and in casting interest, he was sure never to lose a farthing.

Meredith: Note the author’s masterly command of a currency that had not been in use for twenty years.

Linda: A farthing on the shilling isn’t that much interest. It’s only about two percent.

Hugh: Weekly.

He had no other children except Edgar and Melissa, on whom he doated.—Destitute of literature himself, he had provided the means of obtaining it for his son, and as he was a rigid presbyterian, he considered that Edgar could nowhere figure so well, or gain more eminence, than in the sacred desk.

Lucy: Edgar’s own preferences do not, presumably, enter into the picture.

The time now arrived when Edgar and Alonzo were to part. The former repaired to New York, where he was to enter upon his professional studies. The latter entered in the office of an eminent attorney in his native town,

David: You can read law any old where, but to study for the ministry you have to venture into the stewpots of the big city.

which was about twenty miles distant from the village in which lived the family of Edgar and Melissa.

Hugh [looks around for blue pencil, but then sits back with a resigned shrug].

Alonzo was the frequent guest of this family; for though Edgar was absent, there was still a charm which attracted him hither.

Linda [1870 text]: Or possibly “thither”.

If he had admired the manly virtues of the brother, could he fail to adore the sublimer graces—

Linda [1870 text]: Sublimer than Edgar? Let’s make it plain “sublime”.

of the sister? If all the sympathies of the most ardent friendship had been drawn forth towards the former, must not the most tender passions of the soul be attracted by the milder and more refined excellencies of the other?

Linda [1870 text]: Of the latter.

Hugh: Touché.

Beauman had become the suitor of Melissa; but the distance of his residence rendered it inconvenient to visit her often. He came regularly, about once in two or three months; of course Alonzo and he sometimes met.

Meredith: Any mathematicians out there? Compute what proportion of his total time Alonzo would have to spend at Melissa’s house in order to make it statis­tically probable that he will encounter, at least twice, someone who visits every sixty to ninety days.

Lucy: Not enough information. Did Beauman show up in the evening and leave the next morning, or did he stay for a month and a half?

Beauman had made no serious pretensions, but his particularity indicated something more than fashionable politeness.

Meredith: He’s only her suitor. It doesn’t mean he’s serious about her.

Linda: Sometimes as often as once in six weeks.

an increasing anxiety took place in Alonzo’s bosom. He wished her to remain single; the idea of losing her by marriage, gave him inexpres­sible regret.

Lucy: Alonzo, can you say “dog in the manger”?

What substitute could supply the happy hours he had passed in her company? What charm could wing the lingering moments when she was gone? In the recess of his studies, he could, in a few hours, be at the seat of her father:

David: School recesses were apparently longer in 1804 than they are today.

there his cares were dissipated, and the troubles of life, real or imaginary, on light pinions, fleeted away.—How different would be the scene when debarred from the unreserved friendship and conversation of Melissa; And unreserved it could not be, were she not exclusively mistress of herself. But was there not something of a more refined texture than friendship in his predilection for the company of Melissa? If so, why not avow it? His prospects, his family, and of course his pretensions might not be inferior to those of Beauman. But perhaps Beauman was preferred. His oppor­tunities had been greater; he had formed an acquaintance with her.

Meredith [as Melissa]: Alonzo? We spent a few hours sitting on a rock one night, but I wouldn’t say we’re acquainted, exactly.

Distance proved no barrier to his addresses. His visits became more and more frequent.

Linda [as Melissa]: Why, Beauman! It’s only been a month. What brings you here so soon?

Was it not then highly probable that he had secured her affections? Thus reasoned Alonzo, but the reasoning tended not to allay the tempest which was gathering in his bosom. He ordered his horse, and was in a short time at the seat of Melissa’s father.

Lucy: The abovementioned plain Connecticut farmer. Next year he’ll start laying foundations in Newport, and then he’ll be a plain Rhode Island cottager.

It was summer,

David: How can it still be summer after all that stuff about Beauman visiting every two or three months?

Linda: It’s a year later. Time flies in Connecticut.

and towards evening when he arrived. Melissa was sitting by the window when he entered the hall. She arose and received him with a smile. “I have just been thinking of an evening’s walk,” said she, “but had no one to attend me, and you have come just in time to perform that office.

Meredith: With the evils of New York less than fifty miles away, walking alone would be unthinkable.

I will order tea—

Linda: English sympathizer! Boo, hiss! Good patriots drink coffee.

David: Full points for keen observation.

“which I sent by Beauman, to a lady in New London, and the careless man has lost it.”

Hugh: May as well give up, Alonzo. Those are obviously the words of a woman deeply in love.

Turning to Alonzo, “I forgot to tell you that your friend Beauman has been with us a few days;

David: Someone call back the mathematician; we’ve got the rest of the information.

Meredith: At Princeton you learn to remember these little niceties.

Alonzo bowed and turned the conversation.

David: Yale, on the other hand, goes for the strong silent approach.

David: They’re strolling around in the rain?

Linda: It sneaked up so silently, they didn’t notice until they were both soaked.

a thousand transitory gems trembled upon the foliage—

Meredith: The rain went away in a snit when it saw that nobody was paying any attention to it.

glittering the western ray.

Hugh: —to the western ray.

Linda: You may have the original text but my editor had a better grip on the language. Try “glittering in the western ray”.

—A bright rainbow—

Meredith: Oh, now I get it. It wasn’t real rain, it was just a stagehand bringing on the rainbow and the rest of the scenery.

sat upon a southern cloud;

Linda: By 1870, global climate changes had forced a cutback to “the southern cloud”.

the light gales whispered among the branches,

Lucy [consulting chart]: Moderate gale, 32–38 MPH. Fresh gale . . . Strong gale . . . Whole gale. Beyond that, you’re into storms and hurricanes. Nothing about light gales.

Meredith: In the old days, even the weather was better.

agitated the young harvest to billowy motion, or waved the tops of the distant deep green forest with majestic grandeur. Flocks, herds, and cottages were scattered over the varie­gated landscape.

David: Batten down the hatches—there’s a storm brewing!

Hugh: Too late. Your cows have been scattered all over the landscape.

Hills piled on hills,

Meredith: This is a serious storm. Maybe we should seek cover.

receding, faded from the pursuing eye, mingling with the blue mist which hovered around the extreme verge—

Hugh: Extremest.

Linda: Isn’t that like saying “more unique”? It’s either the extreme verge or it isn’t.

of the horizon. “This is a most beautiful scene,” said Melissa.

Meredith and Hugh [in unison]: Delightful scene.

David [as printer’s assistant]: Sir, the cat got into the quotation marks again.

Hugh [as editor]: Again? All right, switch over to “play” format.

Meredith: Fishing for compliments, Alonzo?

Melissa. I know not how it happened; but you are the only person who ever attended me there.

David: The author really doesn’t have much confidence in the reader’s memory, does he? Melissa said “many a solitary walk” when she took Alonzo to the rock, and he was with her when she left town the next morning, so she can’t have been there with anyone but him.

Meredith: Back then, they didn’t teach deductive reasoning at Yale.

Meredith and Hugh [in unison]: My beau-man. It’s a pun, get it?

Linda: Formerly what? Visited her?

Hugh [with exaggerated enunciation]: He for-mal-ly ad-dres-ses you.

David [after comparing texts with Lucy]: Will someone chase that cat out of the print shop!

Meredith [as Beauman]: Now that I have formally addressed you, nobody else is allowed to speak. That’s in the Rules.

David: What rules?

Meredith: The ones we Princeton men learn in the cradle and nobody else can hope to understand.

Meredith: Melissa’s education stopped short of mastering the difference between “who” and “whom”.

Lucy [sings]: How beautifully blue the sky / The glass is rising very high . . .

Lucy: I can’t believe it. Are we seeing humor here?

A pause ensued.

Meredith: Not to be confused with the pause that ensued two minutes ago.

They walked leisurely around the hill, and moved toward home. The sun sunk behind the western hills.—Twilight arose in the east,

David: In Isaac Mitchell’s world, twilight is a distinct celestial body.

and floated along the air. Darkness began to hover around the woodlands and vallies. The beauties of the landscape slowly receded.

Hugh: The stagehands quietly carried the landscape offstage so it could work the night shift in another novel.

“This reminds me of our walk at New London,” said Melissa. “Do you remember it?” enquired Alonzo. “Certainly I do,” she replied,

Meredith [as Melissa]: —seeing as how I just this second told you I was reminded of it.

Hugh [as Alonzo]: My mind was absent.

“I shall never forget the sweet pensive scenery of my favourite rock.” “Nor I neither,” said Alonzo with a deep drawn sigh.

Linda: —of exasperation, since they’ve spent the last ten minutes talking about the rock.

The next day Alonzo returned to his studies; but, different from his former visits to Melissa, instead of exhilarating his spirits, this had tended to depress them. He doubted whether Melissa was not already engaged to Beauman. His hopes would persuade him that this was not the case; but his fears declared otherwise.

Hugh: Otherways.

Meredith: Oh, stop quibbling.

TO BE CONTINUED

Lucy: I don’t think I can stand many more of these cliffhangers. I’m getting heart palpitations.

Linda: Two days to get there, five days’ visit, two days to go home, change lobsters and repeat.

—You will undoubtedly be a guest. We had expected that you would have put in your claims, from your particular attention to the lady. She is a fine girl, Alonzo.

Lucy: Signed, “A Friend”.

“I shall never be a guest at Melissa’s wedding,” said Alonzo, as he hastily paced the room; “but I must once again see her before that event takes place, when I lose her forever.” The next day he repaired to her father’s. He enquired for Melissa; she was gone with a party to the shores of the sound, attended by Beauman.

Meredith: —who complained nonstop about the mud, the inadequate rest rooms, the poor reception on his cell phone—

Hugh and Meredith [in unison]: “Conclusion, madam.”

Linda: Work fast, Alonzo—you’ve only got four days.

Alonzo observed that he took a tender leave of Melissa, telling her, in a low voice, that he should have the happiness of seeing her again within two or three weeks.

David: Two or three weeks? That means he has to stay with Melissa for three weeks at a stretch to make it add up to more than half his time.

Meredith: Knowing Melissa’s father, I bet he’s charging him rent.

After he was gone, as Melissa and Alonzo were sitting in a room alone,

Lucy: Does anyone else think this is a little odd? Melissa goes to a ball attended by a man who is in no way related to her; she takes walks after dark in the company of a man she has only just met; she sits alone in a room with the same man . . . Is the word “chaperone” not in her father’s vocabulary?

Linda: Apparently not, if she had to be packed off to stay with relatives at the beginning of the book.

“Well,” said she,

Hugh and Meredith [in unison]: “Well, sir.”

Linda: We’re on the brink of war. We don’t have time to toss around all those Sirs and Madams.

Lucy: Melissa’s education failed to explain the fine distinction between being a lady and talking like a godforsaken imbecile.

David [before Hugh and Meredith can speak]: Must yield its pretensions to—

Linda [sulkily]: All right then, you read it.

Linda: Perhaps you are simply too dim to live.

David: No, no, that was last time. This time she’s going for full-blown silence.

Linda: Why not? It worked so well in New London.

Hugh: If it be a proper one, period, new sentence. You are entitled . . .

Meredith: So in 1804 she had to tell the truth, regardless, but by 1811 she only had to be candid if it was a proper question?

Lucy: I think it means that in 1804 she didn’t have to answer improper questions at all. Later on, she had to answer but she was allowed to lie.

David: If Alonzo’s studying law, that’s just the kind of detail he would home in on.

David: Was that a yes or a no?

Hugh: Yale and Princeton are in a contest to see who blinks first.

Hugh [as Alonzo]: Will you stop futzing around and give me a straight answer to a straight question?

Meredith [as Melissa]: We just started planning the wedding and figured Pop would take the hint.

David [as Melissa’s father]: What are all these guests doing here? I’m not supposed to feed them, am I? Who’s that clergyman? Is someone getting married?

Meredith: Well, not in this type of book anyway.

Mel. (her cheeks suffused with a varying glow, her lips pale, her voice tremulous, her eyes still cast down.) My parents have informed me that it is improper to receive the parti­cular addresses of more than one.

Meredith [1811 text]: Address, singular.

David [writing]: “Beauman”—has he got a first name, by the way? he’ll need one to get married in—“New London, Connecticut”. That should be enough: everyone knows the Beaumans. “Alonzo—” Doesn’t he have a last name? “Alonzo in New York” isn’t much of a mailing address.

Linda: You’re confusing him with Edgar. “Alonzo who is studying law with nameless-attorney in nameless-village” should do fine.

I am conscious of my inadvertency, and that the reproof is just.

Meredith [as Melissa]: I’m just a plain farmer’s daughter. It never occurred to me it was wrong to let two different men believe I would marry them.

One therefore must be dismissed. But—(she hesitated.)

Linda [1870 text]: She blushed.

David: No reason she can’t do both.

Lucy: Oh, and you can stop calling yourself 1870. Evidence suggests you’re a reprint of the 1836 Boston edition.

Linda [to David]: Neener-neener, I’ve got seniority over you.

A considerable pause ensued.

David: Is anyone keeping track of these pauses? The author seems to throw one in whenever he needs time to figure out what happens next.

Meredith: You mean, like in real life?

Linda [as Judge Judy]: “Pause” is not an answer.

Lucy [overlapping]: You can’t put “Alonzo and Melissa” and “real life” into the same utterance. It’s a linguistic, um, thingy.

At length Alonzo arose—“I will not press you farther,” said he; “I know the delicacy of your feeling, I know your sincerity; I will not therefore insist on your performing the painful task of deciding against me. Your conduct in every point of view has been discreet.

David: So discreet that if he hadn’t twisted her arm, he wouldn’t even have known that she was playing exactly the same game with Beauman.

I could have no just claims, or if I had, your heart must sanction them, or they would be unhallowed and unjusti­fiable.

Linda [with eraser]: I could have no just claims       or they would be       unjusti­fiable.

Meredith: It’s a perfectly just claim, I just can’t justify it.

Hugh: Nonsense. Given enough hairline spaces, you can justify anything.

I shall ever pray for your felicity.—Our affections are not under our direction; our happiness depends on our obedience to their mandates. Whatever, then, may be my sufferings, you are unblameable and irreproachable.” He took his hat in extreme agitation, and prepared to take his leave.

Lucy: Good juxtaposition of the literal and figurative there. He takes his hat, and then he takes his leave.

Hugh: Look, I had to fill another two inches and I was running out of dialogue. You try if you can do better.

Melissa had recovered in some degree from her embarrassment, and collected her scattered spirits.

David: There’s one hiding behind the hat rack, and I saw one rolling under the dresser.

“Your conduct, Alonzo,” said she, “is generous and noble. Will you give yourself the trouble, and do me the honour to see me once more?” “I will,” said he, “at any time you shall appoint.”—“Four weeks then,” she said, “from this day,

Linda [leafing back]: Giving Beauman one to two weeks free of competition.

Meredith: It’s a handicap, like a head start in a race.

honour me with a visit, and you shall have my decision, and receive my final answer.” “I will be punctual to the day,” he replied, and bade her adieu.

Alonzo’s hours now winged heavily away.

David: Someone should tell Mitchell not to mess with established clichés. I don’t think he meant the reader to picture an overweight turkey.

Hugh [before Lucy can open her mouth]: It’s 1804. The stereotypy process, and hence the word “cliché”, haven’t been invented yet.

David: Touché.

His wonted cheerfulness fled; he wooed the silent and solitary haunts of “musing, moping melancholy.”

Lucy [usual business with reference works]: Act I, Scene 1 of The Upholsterer or What News, a 1758 play by Arthur Murphy. The speaker describes himself as a “musing, moping, melancholy lover”.

David: Just like Alonzo.

He loved to wander through lonely fields,

Meredith: In New York?

Linda: You’re thinking of Edgar again. Alonzo’s in Connecticut.

David: Western Connecticut.

Meredith [1811 text]: Darted his silvery et cetera.

Hugh: Early in the nineteenth century the moon toyed briefly with the idea of gender-reassignment surgery, but decided against it.

He was fondly indulging a tender passion which preyed upon his peace, and deeply disturbed his repose. He looked anxiously to the hour when Melissa was to make her decision. He wished, yet dreaded the event. In that he foresaw, or thought he foresaw, a withering blight to his budding hopes, and a final consummation to his fore­boding fears. He had pressed Melissa, perhaps too urgently, to a declaration.—Had her predi­lection been in his favour, would she have hesitated to avow it? Her parents had advised her to relin­quish, and had permitted her to retain one suitor,

David [as Melissa’s parents]: After sober consideration, we’ve decided to allow you to marry—but only to one man at the present time.

Lucy: Papa doesn’t want to cough up two dowries at once. If they lived in a bride-price culture he’d be happy to let her have as many husbands as she wanted.

nor had they attempted to influence or direct her choice.

Hugh: Forestall her choice.

Meredith: Wouldn’t that mean prevent her from choosing?

Meredith [1811 text]: Emotion, singular.

Hugh: Oh, cut it out.

Lucy: But I’m telling you anyway, just to rub it in.

David: By the time Alonzo figures out that “happy deity of the hymeneal sacrifice” means “bridegroom”, the initial pain will have passed.

I had this from his own declaration. He did not name the positive day, but it is certainly to be soon. You will undoubtedly, however, have timely notice, as a guest. We must pour a liberal libation upon the mystic altar, Alonzo,

Linda [1870 text]: To the mystic altar.

Hugh: And that’s supposed to make more sense?

David: More of a mess, I’d think, if they’re pouring it on the floor instead of on the altar.

and twine the nuptial garland with wreaths of joy.

Meredith: Does the guy always talk like this, or is it something about weddings that makes the synapses in his brain go haywire?

Beauman ought to devote a rich offering to so valuable a prize. He has been here for a week, and departed for New London yesterday, but is shortly to return.

Linda: That’s impossible. We’ve only got a four-week window, and when Beauman left he said he’d be back in two or three weeks.

Lucy [scribbling on calendar]: Call it fourteen days exactly. That’s two days to go home, ten days to look after his estates, two days coming back. Then five days for the visit, and—

Linda: Seven. He was here for a week.

Lucy: I’m working on the “as many thousands as must always be called ten” principle. A man who talks about mystic altars and hymeneal sacrifices is not a man who means precisely seven days when he says “a week”.

“And why have I ever doubted this event?” said Alonzo. “What infatuation hath thus led me on the pursuit of fantastic and unreal bliss? I have had, it is true, no positive assurance that Melissa would favour my addresses. But why did she ever receive them? Why did she enchantingly smile upon me? Why fascinate the tender powers of my soul by that winning mildness, and the favourable display of those complicated and superior attractions which she must have known were irresistible?

Meredith: Face it, Alonzo. She’s just a tease.

—Why did she not spurn me from her confidence, and plainly tell me that my attentions were untimely and improper?

David: Because then she wouldn’t have had anyone to sit on rocks with.

And now she would have me dance attendance to her decision in favour of Beauman—Insulting! Let Beauman and she make,

Hugh [as editor]: Did someone just say “Let she make”?

Lucy: Now that you mention it, Mitchell is guilty of a lot of literary crimes. But offenses against basic grammar don’t top the list.

as they have formed, this farcical decision; I absolutely will never attend it.—But stop: I have engaged to see her at an appointed time; my honour is therefore pledged for an interview; it must take place. I shall support it with becoming dignity, and I will convince both Melissa and Beauman that I am not the dupe of their caprices. But let me consider—What has Melissa done to deserve censure or reproach?

Meredith: You mean, other than tell him he’d have her decision in four weeks, and then merrily start planning her wedding with Beauman the moment his back is turned?

Linda: She didn’t say she’d make a decision in four weeks, she just said she’d tell him about it.

Meredith: When you show up as arranged, and find yourself a guest at a wedding, a person of ordinary intel—

David: This is Alonzo we’re talking about?

Her brother was my early friend: she has treated me as a friend to her brother. She was unconscious of—

Hugh: She was the unsuspecting object of my passion. She was unconscious of . . .

Meredith: Well, that’ll teach you to start two consecutive sentences with “She was”.

David: You’d think that somewhere along the line, some editor would have had the brains to change it to “fringe of lace”.

Lucy: You’re only allowed to change the text if the original was right and you’re making it wrong.

Her hair hung loosely upon her shoulders; she was contemplating a bouquet of flowers—

Meredith [as Melissa]: This calls for deep thought. Should I put them in a vase? Press them between the pages of the family Bible? Throw them in the face of the next man I see?

Linda: I vote for throwing. Tossing a bridal bouquet takes practice; you don’t want it to hit some innocent bystander.

Lucy [pedantically]: She doesn’t know how easy she’s got it. Roman brides threw a lit torch.

David: Sorry, Tullia, I was aiming for Lucretia. But I’m sure your hair will grow back.

which she held in her hand. Alonzo fancied she never appeared so lovely.

Meredith: But it was just an idle fancy. She was actually much lovelier the day before yesterday.

She arose to receive him. “We have been expecting you some time,” said Melissa; “we—

Hugh [embarrassed]: Oops, sorry about that. I forgot I wasn’t writing an editorial.

were anxious to inform you,

Linda [1836 text]: We are anxious.

Lucy: I like “were”. We got so tired of waiting that our initial anxiety passed off and now we really don’t give a hoot.

that we have just received a letter from my brother, in which he desires us to present you his most friendly respects, and complains of your not writing to him lately so frequently as usual.” Alonzo thanked her for the information; said that business had prevented him; he esteemed him as his most valuable friend,

Hugh and Meredith [in unison]: His most valued friend.

David: Pop’s obviously rolling in it, so “valuable” sounds about right to me.

Linda: Funny how that works.

Lucy: If he had had the forethought to be born on February 29th, he’d only have to feed all those people every four years.

David: And even then, he’d get a free ride in the year 1800.

when we are honoured with so numerous a company of uncles, aunts, cousins, nephews and nieces,

Meredith [sings]: His sisters and his cousins / Whom he reckons by the dozens . . .

Lucy [overlapping]: Aunts and cousins / By the baker’s dozen . . .

that were you present, you would suppose we were connected with half the families in Connecticut. The last of this company took their departure yesterday,

Linda: Hours later, it occurs to Alonzo to wonder why he wasn’t invited to this bash.

and I have only to regret, that I have for nearly a week, been prevented from visiting my favourite hill, to which you attended me when you was last here. It is much improved since then:

Lucy: The hill was feeling poorly, but it’s much better now, thank you for asking.

I have had a little arbour built under the large tree on its summit: you will have no objection to view it, Alonzo?” He assured her he accepted the invitation with pleasure, and towards evening

David: Is it against Melissa’s religion to take walks in broad daylight? No matter where she is or who she’s with, she never leaves the house until just before sunset.

Hugh: For the past eighteen months the earth has obligingly paused in its orbit so we can get the plot moving without the incon­venience of winter travel, but now it’s time for a change of season.

and a yellow hue was spread over the fading charms of nature. The withering forest began to shed its decaying foliage, which the light gales pursued along the russet fields.

Meredith: Again with the light gales.

Lucy: Oh, I forgot to say, I looked it up. The Beaufort scale hasn’t been invented yet, so you’re allowed to use “gale” for “breeze”.

The low sun extended the lengthening shadows;

David: Making them longer than they would have been if the shadows had been left to their own resources.

curling smoke ascended from the surrounding cottages. A thick fog crept along the vallies; a gray mist hovered over the tops of the mountains. The glassy surface of the sound glittered to the sun’s departing ray.

Linda: Didn’t he use that line before?

Hugh: That was at least a week ago. The reader can’t remember that long.

The solemn herds lowed in monotonous symphony.

Linda [1836 text]: Lowed in solemn— Oh. Oops. Forget I said anything.

The autumnal insects in sympathetic wafting,

Hugh: Sympathetic wailings.

Meredith: Sympathetic waftings.

Linda: Since when is “wafting” something you can hear?

Meredith [whining]: It’s not my fault there was a flyspeck on the newspaper. I thought it was an -ft- ligature.

Lucy: The autumnal insects, making assorted sound effects in the background—

plaintively predicted their approaching fate.

David: Chirp, chirp, we’re going to die. Hum, hum, we’re going to die. Buzz, buzz, we’re—

Hugh: Yes, fine, we get the idea.

“The scene is changed since we last visited this place,” said Melissa;

Meredith: That rock used to be stage left, and the backdrop had different cows on it.

David: Depends on how cold the winter gets. He means that he’ll be back when hell freezes over.

Mel. That probably may be, though it is nearly two months yet to winter.

Linda: Is she saying that she doesn’t care if he stays away for the next two or more months, or is she trying to hint that he doesn’t visit often enough?

David: Huh?

Hugh: I’m rather proud of those lines. On two consecutive occasions I avoided using the words “pause” or “silent”.

Lucy: Instead you said “reply” and “answer” with a wholly gratuitous use of synonyms for synonymy’s sake, just the way they teach you not to do in Journalism 101.

Al. I know, Melissa, that you are incapable of duplicity or evasion.

Linda: Except for that trivial incident four weeks ago when you said you’d give me your decision, and now you’re pretending you have no idea why I’m here.

Meredith: That wasn’t duplicity or evasion, it was just lying in her teeth.

I have promised, and now repeat the declaration, that I will silently submit to your decision. This you have engaged to make, and this is the time you have appointed. The pains of present suspense can scarcely be surpassed by the pangs of disap­pointment. On your part you have nothing to fear. I trust you have candidly determined, and will decide explicitly.

David: You have determined, and now you will decide?

Lucy: As opposed to deciding implicitly, like when she quietly starts planning the wedding with Candidate B, and lets people draw their own conclusions.

Mel. (sighing.) I am placed in an exceedingly delicate situation.

Linda [as Alonzo, losing his temper]: Listen, you heartless bitch, you created your own situation, so cut the crap willya?

Meredith: She didn’t stop to think that someone might notice she was planning a wedding.

David [to Hugh]: Ha ha, you used the P-word again.

Al. You see, Melissa, I am prepared for the event.—She was silent.

Hugh and Meredith [in unison]: “Still silent.”

Linda: In case you’d forgotten that she was also silent last time around.

Al. I have mentioned before, that, whatever be your decision, no impropriety can attach to you. I might not, indeed, from various circum­stances, and from the information I possess, I perhaps should not, have given you farther trouble on the occasion,

Meredith: Get a grip, Alonzo. You’re babbling.

Hugh: Demands it. The subject of the verb is justice, singular.

Others: Oh, shut up.

David: You got a problem with that?

Hugh and Meredith [in unison]: The stilly sound.

Linda [1836 text]: Oh, is that what you meant. I couldn’t make head or tail of it so I said distant sound.

David [apologetic]: I thought it was a quotation so I was afraid to change it.

Lucy: It is a quotation, but you got it wrong. The “stilly sound” phrase is from John Home’s 1756 play Douglas, Act IV, Scene 1.

of the low murmuring brook, and the far off water-fall, were faintly heard. The twinkling fire-fly arose from the surrounding verdure and illuminated the air with a thousand transient gleams. The mingling discordance of curs and watch-dogs echoed in the distant village, from whence the frequent lights darted their pale lustre thro’ the gloom. The solitary whippoor­wills—

Edmund [passing through again]: —who, by this time, are treated practically like hired musicians—

stationed themselves along the woody glens, the groves and rocky pastures, and sung a requiem—

Linda [1836 text]: Or, as we say in English, sang a requiem.

Hugh: But other subjects, plural.

Linda: What other subjects? He’s only had one thing on his mind since the beginning of the book. Besides [continuing under her breath] anyone who writes “the mental attention of Alonzo” isn’t in a real strong moral position to criticize other people’s use of the language.

Beauman arrived the next day.

Lucy: Fashionably 24 hours late, as befits a Princeton man. Alonzo showed up on schedule, so he ought to have won by default.

Meredith: For a given definition of “friend”. This is the first time in the book that he has uttered so much as one word to Alonzo.

You are both suitors to Melissa; while your addresses were merely formal, they were innocent; but when they became serious they were dangerous. Your pretensions I consider equal, and between honourable pretenders, who are worthy of my daughter, I shall not attempt to influence her choice. That choice, however, can rest only on one:

Lucy: Thanks to those boring old poops who decided to outlaw polyandry.

she has engaged to decide between you. I am come to make, in her name, this decision.

Linda: I thought that stuff about “shall not attempt to influence her choice” sounded fishy. He’s not influencing her at all. He’s out-and-out making the choice for her.

The following are my terms:—No quarrel or difficulty shall arise between you, gentlemen, in consequence of her deter­mination. Nothing shall go abroad respecting the affair; it shall be ended under my roof.

David [as Melissa’s father]: If word ever got out that two different men wanted to marry my daughter, I would never be able to hold up my head again.

As soon as I have pronounced her declaration, you shall both depart and absent my house for at least two weeks, as it would be improper for my daughter to see either of you at present:

Meredith: There’s a rule that says you’re not allowed to see your fiancé for two weeks? I think he’s getting it mixed up with the one about not seeing your bride on the wedding day.

after that period I shall be happy to receive your visits.”—Alonzo and Beauman pledged their honour to abide implicitly by these injunctions.

Hugh and Meredith: Abide explicitly.

Linda [overlapping]: —to these injunctions.

Her father then observed—“This, gentlemen, is all I require. I have observed that I considered your pretensions equal: so has my daughter treated them. You have both made professions to her; she has appointed a time to answer you. That time has now arrived, and I now inform you—

Hugh: Redundant. Delete the first “now”.

David and Linda: We did.

Meredith [loyally]: Well, I liked it.

that she has decided in favour of—

Lucy: —drumroll, flashes of lightning, moment of portentous silence—

Alonzo.”

Meredith: What?!

David: Impossible!

Linda: I never in a million, billion, trillion years would have seen that one coming.

The declaration of Melissa’s father burst upon the mental powers of Beauman, like a sudden and tremendous clap of thunder—

David: In other words, based on what we’ve been told so far about the local weather, he barely noticed it.

on the deep and solemn silence of night.

Linda [dutifully reading 1836 text]: Deep and sullen silence.

Lucy [turning pages in other book]: Hey, I recognize that wording. These words from Alida’s father, —comma— burst upon the mental powers of Bonville like sudden and tremendous thunder on the deep and sullen silence of night.

Hugh: Alida? I can see “Bonville”, but where’d the author get a silly name like Alida?

Lucy: She had to counterbalance the hero. His name got changed to Theodore.

Linda [1836 text]: Minutiae, you illiterates.

female volatility. He considered himself skilled in the language of the heart; and he trusted that from his pre-eminent powers in the science of affection, he had only to see, to sue and to conquer.

Lucy: Veni, postulavi, vici . . . Needs some work, Beauman.

He had frankly offered his hand to Melissa, and pressed her for a decisive answer. This from time to time she suspended, and finally appointed a day to give him and Alonzo a—

Hugh: To give both him and Alonzo.

David: Mitchell’s balloon payment is coming due, so he’s padding the word count like mad.

Lucy [counting on fingers]: “She considered her father . . .” “Her father considered himself . . .” It’s not word count. Mitchell just likes the passive voice.

Linda: A vote was taken in the meeting hall, and it was unanimously decided that her father was—

the most proper person to pronounce it.

David: It was suggested that Melissa might speak for herself, but the proposal was instantly hooted down.

Hugh: Just like Beauman’s proposal.

When Beauman had urged his suit to Melissa, he supposed that her hesitations, delays and suspensions, were only the effects of maiden diffidence and timidity. He had no suspicions of her ultimately rejecting it; and when she finally named the day of decision, he was confident that she would decide in his favour. These sentiments he had communi­cated to the person who had written to Alonzo, intimating that Melissa had fixed a time which was to crown his happiest wishes.

Linda: The whole plot would have fallen apart at this point if the friend’s social calendar hadn’t been perfectly empty, so that he didn’t bother asking about the exact date.

Lucy: This is “hymeneal sacrifice” guy we’re talking about. He’d never remember anything so mundane as a calendar date.

He had listened therefore attentively—

David: I don’t get “therefore”. If he thought it was a foregone conclusion, he’d have let his attention wander while he fantasized about how to spend Melissa’s money.

Linda: Beauman’s father has unexpectedly gone bust, and he was counting on Melissa’s money to restore his fortunes.

David: So that’s the “new arrangement” she was talking about last week. I thought the author was just playing games with us.

The rainbow glories which gilded his youthful horizon, had faded in an instant—the bright sun of his early hopes had set in mournful darkness. The summons of death would not have been more unexpected, or more shocking to his imagination.

Linda: He knows there are bill collectors parked on his doorstep in New London, and he was planning to fob them off with the newspaper announcement of his engagement.

Very different were the sensations which inspired the bosom of Alonzo. He had not even calculated on a decision in his own favour. He believed that Beauman would be the choice of Melissa. She had told him that the form of decision was necessary to save appear­ances: with this form he complied because she desired it, not because he expected the result would be in his favour. He had not therefore attended to the words of Melissa’s father—

Meredith: Rotten luck, dad. You carefully prepare and memorize your speech, and then nobody’s listening.

David: Except the servants. They’ve got their ears pressed to the keyhole.

with that eagerness which favourable anticipations commonly produce. But when his name was mentioned; when he found he was the choice—the happy favourite of Melissa’s affection, every tender passion of his soul became interested, and was suddenly aroused to the refinements of sensibility. Like an electric shock, it reanimated his whole frame, and vibrated every nerve of his heart. The glooms which hung about his mind were dissipated, and the bright morning of joy broke in upon his soul.

Linda: When you can’t get real scenery, a metaphor will have to do. For Beauman, the sun sets in mournful darkness; for Alonzo, it’s a bright morning of joy.

Meredith: Introduced by the very latest thing in alarm clocks: wake to an electric shock.

Thus were the expectations of Alonzo and Beauman disappointed—

David: Are you allowed to say “disappointed” when things turn out better than you expected?

Hugh: You are when you’re the editor.

how differently, the sequel has shown.

Linda: There’s a sequel? I’m leaving right now.

Melissa’s father retired immediately after pronouncing the declaration;

David [as father]: Young man, I leave everything in your hands. Here are the keys to the safe; here are the payroll records. If anyone needs me I’ll be in Aruba.

the two young gentlemen also soon after withdrew. Alonzo saw the tempest which tore the bosom of his rival,

Lucy: Being blessed with X-ray vision.

and he pitied him from his heart.

Linda: From his what? I thought they just had all-purpose bosoms.

Lucy [after rapid count]: I’ll be darned. They do have hearts. Thirty-eight of them, along with fifty-nine bosoms.

Meredith: That’s not enough hearts to go around. Someone should talk to the parents about sacrifice surgery.

A fortnight passed, and Alonzo felt all that anxiety and impatience which a separation from a beloved object can produce. He framed a thousand excuses to visit Melissa, yet he feared a visit might be premature.

Linda: Someone explained the superstition to Alonzo, but he misunder­stood. He thought it would be bad luck to set eyes on the bride at any time between the engagement and the wedding.

He was, however, necessitated to make a journey to a distant part—

Hugh: Into a different part.

of the country,

David: For “country”, read “Connecticut”.

Lucy: You can see Mitchell’s point. Even in 1804, it was hard to say “a distant part of Connecticut” with a straight face.

after which he resolved to see Melissa. He performed his business, and was returning.

Linda: When the entire universe can be covered in two days’ travel, the outhouse counts as distant.

It was toward evening, and the day had been uncommonly sultry for the autumnal season. A rising shower blackened the western hemisphere;

Lucy: All of it?

the dark vapor ascended in folding ridges,

Meredith: I’m having trouble working out exactly what meteoro­logical phenomenon he’s describing here.

and the thunder rolled at a distance. Alonzo saw he should be overtaken. He discovered an elegant seat about one hundred yards distant from the road;

Linda: Someone left a chair out in the middle of nowhere?

David: It’s Edgar! They told us he was designed for the desk.

thither he hastened to gain shelter from the approaching storm. The owner of the mansion met him at the door, politely invited him to alight and walk in,

Linda: He rode his horse up the front steps in approved Connecticut fashion.

while a servant stood ready to take his horse. He was ushered into a large room neatly furnished, where the family and several young ladies were sitting. As Alonzo glanced his eyes hastily around the room, he thought he recognized a familiar countenance. A hurried succession of confused ideas for a moment crossed his recollection. In a moment, however, he discovered that it was Melissa.

Hugh [as Alonzo]: I know I’ve seen that face before, I just can’t think where. No, wait, don’t tell me, it will come back to— Why, of course! It’s the woman I’ve been madly in love with for the past year and a half. I knew I’d remember sooner or later.

By this unexpected meeting they were both completely embarrassed.

Meredith: Melissa had been confident nobody would ever learn about the third man in her life, and Alonzo suddenly remembered the toupee and false teeth packed in the bottom of his saddlebags.

Melissa, however, arose, and in rather a confused manner, introduced Alonzo, as the classmate of her brother,

David: Much later, it occurred to Alonzo to wonder why she hadn’t introduced him as her fiancé.

Linda: So it isn’t just a weird quirk in Melissa. The Colonial legislature has banned recreational strolling by daylight.

Melissa told Alonzo that Mr. Simpson was a distant relative of her father; his family consisted of his wife, two amiable daughters, not far from Melissa’s age, and one son, named William, about seventeen years old. She had been—

Lucy: Wait! Stop the presses! Did everyone get that? We have a character with two names: William Simpson.

David: Could he be the third man? Seventeen seems a bit young; Melissa’s got to be seventeen or eighteen herself by now.

Linda: One thing’s for sure. With a full name, age and address, you know he’s going to play a vital role in the plot.

invited there to pass a week,

Lucy: In order to avoid meeting Alonzo, who might reasonably have been expected to show up at her father’s house during precisely this time period. No wonder she was embarrassed.

and expected to return within two days. And she added, smiling, “perhaps, Alonzo, we may have an opportunity once more to visit the bower on my prospect hill, before winter entirely destroys the remaining beauties of the summer.”

Hugh: Of Summer, capitalized.

Meredith: Having caught up on his mortgage payments, Mitchell is now free to omit words and to heck with the extra quarter-penny.

Alonzo felt all the force of the remark.

David: Oops, must have missed something [going over text again]. . . . before winter entirely destroys the remaining beauties of the summer. Sorry, Mitchell, I’m just not getting it. Maybe there’s a code word.

Hugh: What the—? I swear I’m going to shoot that cat. There should have been another column and a half of moving dialogue.

Linda: So the book’s finished, then. No more plot compli­cations; we can all go home.

They had not, it is true, been separated by wide seas, unfeeling parents,

David: I smell a rat.

Lucy: Ahem.

David: The title of the book specifically says “an unfeeling father”, so you know one of their fathers has to have a change of heart.

or the rigorous laws of war;

Linda: What laws? Haven’t they ever heard of camp followers?

David: It’s foreshadowing, I tell you. After “unfeeling father” in the title, the very first sentence gives you “the late revolution”. I think the war will turn out to be something more than background color.

Meredith: If it’s supposed to be background color it must be transparent. I haven’t seen a trace of any war yet.

Linda: Unfeeling father: check. War: check. That leaves the wide seas.

David: Red herring.

Lucy: Not at these latitudes. Either Alonzo or Melissa, but not both, is destined to go on a long voyage.

but troubles, vexations, doubts and difficulties, had thus far attended them, which had now disappeared, and they calculated on no unpropitious event which might thwart their future union. All the time that Alonzo could spare from his studies was devoted to Melissa, and their parents began to calculate on joining their hands as soon as Alonzo’s professional term of study was completed.

Linda: Three years of law school, so we’re looking at the summer after next.

Meredith: He’s not in school, he’s just reading with some guy in the next town. His studies will be completed when it’s convenient for the author.

The troubles which gave rise to the disseveration of England from America had already commenced, which broke out the ensuing spring into actual hostilities, by the battle at Lexington,

Linda [1836 text]: Of Lexington.

followed soon after by the battle at Bunker Hill.

Linda: Of Bunker Hill.

Hugh: Bunker’s Hill. Everyone gets it wrong.

Meredith: Didn’t it really happen on Breed Hill? I’m sure I read that somewhere.

The panic and general bustle which took place in America on these events, is yet well remembered by many.

Lucy: More to the point, the exact dates of these events are not only well remembered but clearly documented, so we’ve got— [portentous pause] —a Datable External Event.

Others [cheering, ad lib]: Yee haw! Woo hoo! Hurrah!

Lucy [continuing]: The battles will take place in the first half of 1775. That means we’re currently in the fall of 1774, and with the passage of time that we’ve already worked out, the story began in 1773.

They were not calculated to impress the mind of Melissa with the most pleasing sensations.

Meredith: The warmongers are going to be sorry they left Melissa’s mind out of their calculations.

She foresaw that the burden of the war must rest on the American youth, and she trembled in anticipation for the fate of Alonzo.

Linda: The fate of Beauman, on the other hand, is assured. At the first rumor of war, he paid an impoverished immigrant to take his place in the draft.

Meredith: I think that was a different war.

He, with others, should the war continue, must take the field, in defence of his country. The effects of such a separation were dubious and gloomy. Alonzo and she frequently discoursed, and they—

Hugh: Discoursed upon the subject.

David: Bills starting to pile up again, I see.

agreed to form the mystic union previous to any wide separation.

Meredith: Is a mystic union the same thing as a hymeneal sacrifice?

Lucy: Someone told Mitchell the H-word is spelled with a W. He wasn’t sure what they were talking about, so he decided it would be safest not to use any word beginning in W.

Linda: Including “who”, “what”, “when” . . .

One event tended to hasten this resolution. The attorney in whose office Alonzo was clerk, received a commission in the new raised American army,

David: If he’d talked to Beauman first, he would have learned how to get out of it.

Linda: By making his clerk Alonzo serve in his place.

and marched to the lines near Boston. His business was therefore suspended,

Lucy: The local farmers thoughtfully agreed to stop suing each other for the duration.

and Alonzo returned to the house of his father. He considered that he could not long remain a mere spectator of the contest, and that it might soon be his duty to take the field; he therefore concluded it best to hasten his marriage with Melissa. She consented to the propo­sition, and their parents made the necessary arrangements for the event. They had even fixed upon the place which was to be the future residence of this happy couple.

Meredith: I can’t get “they” to mean anything other than the parents.

It was a pleasantly situated village, surrounded by rugged elevations, which gave an air of serenity and seclusion to the valley they encircled. On the south arose a spacious hill, which was ascended by a gradual acclivity; its sides and summit interspersed with orchards, arbours, and cultivated fields.

Hugh: Cultured fields.

Linda [TV commercial]: Connecticut doesn’t want fields with good taste: they want fields that taste good.

On the west, forests unevenly lifted their rude heads, with here and there a solitary field, newly cleared, and thinly scattered with cottages. To the east, the eye extended over a soil,

David: Huh?

Lucy [emerging from dictionary]: Archaic term for a piece of land. He must have learned it from his parents; the citations are all from before 1800.

Linda: Another nail in the Jackson-as-author coffin.

at one time swelling into craggy elevations, and at another spreading itself into vales of the most enchanting verdure. To the north it extended over a vast succession of mountains, wooded to their summits, and throwing their shadows over intervales of equal wilderness, till at length it was arrested in its excursions

David: This is still the archaic soil we’re talking about? How do you arrest a piece of land?

Hugh [as Mitchell]: Don’t look at me. It was a long time ago; I can’t be expected to remember what I meant.

Meredith [after close study of last few lines]: I think he means the eye. It extends twice, in two consecutive sentences, and then it’s arrested.

Lucy: This kind of detail really makes you appreciate the Bill of Rights. Today, no eye could serve consecutive sentences before it has been formally arrested and charged.

David: And some won’t— especially those who have never been outside of Plattsburgh, New York.

A rivulet which rushed from the hills, formed a little lake on the borders of the village, which beautifully reflected the cottages from its transparent bosom.

Meredith: Well, no wonder there are so many of them. Even the lakes have bosoms.

Lucy: Some grammarians would argue that it is the village, not the lake, that is trans­parently endowed.

Amidst a cluster of locusts and weeping willows, rose the spire of the church, in the ungarnished decency of Sunday neatness. Fields, gardens, meadows, and pastures were spread around the valley, and on the sides of the declivities, yielding in their season the rich flowers, fruits and foliage of spring, summer and autumn. The inhabitants of this modern Auvernum were—

Hugh and Meredith: Avernum, you illiterates.

David: I’m going to go way out on a limb here and guess that we’re not talking about the RPG.

Lucy: If someone figures out what he is talking about I’d like to know, because the closest thing I can find is Lake Avernus, the gateway to the underworld.

mostly farmers. They were mild, sociable, moral and diligent. The produce of their own flocks and fields gave them most of their food and clothing. To dissipation they were strangers, and the luxuries of their tables were few.

Linda: You can see why Alonzo would want to settle there. The inhabitants are obviously desperate for the services of a good lawyer, and he’ll be able to name his own price.

Such was the place for—

Hugh: The place chosen for.

Meredith: Chosen by Melissa’s father, who is counting the days until Alonzo goes belly-up and he can buy his soil at foreclosure prices.

the residence of Alonzo and Melissa.

Hugh: The future residence.

David: The bill collectors are getting closer, and he needs to crank up that word count.

Linda: The character of Melissa’s father was closely patterned after certain of Mitchell’s most persistent creditors.

They had visited the spot, and were enraptured with its pensive, romantic beauties. A site was marked out whereon to erect their family mansion.

Lucy: Cheapskate. Everyone else has a seat, and he expects Melissa to settle for a lousy mansion.

It was on a little eminence which sloped gradually to the lake, in the most pleasant part of the village. “Here,” said Alonzo one day to Melissa, “will we pass our days in all that felicity of mind which the chequered scenes of life admit. In the spring we will rove among the flowers. In summer, we will gather strawberries in yonder fields, or whortle­berries from the adjacent shrubbery. The breezes of fragrant morning, and the sighs of the evening gale, will be mingled with the songs of the thousand various birds—

David: Nine hundred ninety-eight whippoorwills and a pair of chickadees that wandered in by mistake.

which frequent the surrounding groves. We will gather the bending fruits of autumn, and we will listen to the hoarse voice of winter, its whistling winds, its driving snow, and rattling hail, with delight.”

Linda: Alonzo has heard of winter, but has never actually seen one.

The bright gems of joy glistened in the eyes of Melissa. With Alonzo she anticipated approaching happiness, and her bosom beat in rapturous unison.

Meredith: Not her heart, just her bosom.

David: In unison with what? You can’t be in unison with yourself.

Winter came on; it rapidly passed away. Spring advanced, and the marriage day was appointed.

The spring opened with the din of preparation throughout America for defensive war.

Linda: The author has brilliantly anticipated the modern usage of “defensive” by, oh, about a century and a half.

It now was found that vigorous measures must be pursued to oppose the torrent which was preparing to overwhelm the colonies, which had now been dissevered from the British empire, by the declaration of independence.

Meredith: Bzzt! Datable External Event! Bzzt! Datable External Event!

Lucy: Declaration of Independence, July 1776. It’s in the past, and the season is spring, so that puts us in 1777 at the earliest.

David: What happened to 1775 and 1776?

Hugh [as Mitchell]: You know, I thought that tree had grown awfully fast.

The continental army was now raising,

Linda: Raising what? Cain?

Lucy: Standard usage in 1804. Language purists had screaming fits if you said that something was being raised.

and great numbers of American youth volunteered in the service of their country. A large army of reinforce­ments was soon expected from England to land on our shores, and “the confused noise of the warriors, and garments rolled in blood,”

Hugh: Warrior, you heathens. Isaiah, book 9, chapter 5: “For every battle of the warrior is with confused noise, and garments rolled in blood.”

were already anticipated.

Linda: A safe prediction, since the war has been going on for two years.

Alonzo had received a commission in a regiment of militia, and was pressed by several young gentlemen of his acquaintance, who had entered the army, to join it also.

Meredith: I don’t think you’re allowed to serve in two branches of the military at the same time.

David: Alonzo’s plan is to avoid serving in any branch of the military. He just has to find an exempt job that doesn’t require any actual work.

Linda: He tried to say he was a farmer, but when he repeated that line about listening with delight to the wind and hail, they laughed him out of the office.

He had an excuse.

Meredith: Oh, good.

Linda: This is where the judge loses patience and says I’m still waiting to hear your legal defense.

Alonzo stated these facts to his friends;

Meredith: Call the OED. We’ve found the earliest documented occurrence of copspeak in American English. For “stated”, read “told”; for “these facts”, read “his opinion”.

told them that on every occasion he should be ready to fly to the post of danger when his country was invaded, and that as soon as his father’s affairs should be settled, he would, if necessary, willingly join the army.

Lucy [as defendant in small-claims action]: I never said I wasn’t going to pay him, I just didn’t have the money. And then he kept harrassing me, so I don’t feel I have to enlist after all.

The day now rapidly approached when Alonzo was to make Melissa his own. Preparations for the hymeneal ceremony were making,

Meredith: Is that like “the army was raising”?

David: I probably don’t want to know this, but what exactly does “hymeneal” mean?

Lucy: Greek god of marriage. Not one of the Big Twelve, so you may not have heard of him.

and invitations had already gone abroad. Edgar, the brother of Melissa, had entered the army in the capacity of chaplain.

Hugh [as Alonzo]: Darn! Why didn’t I think of that? The next best thing to exemption is a non-combatant position that carries automatic officer rank.

David: Too much information, Jackson.

Hugh: Mitchell.

Linda and David [look at their own texts, look at Hugh and Meredith, and decide not to say anything].

Lucy: After this installment appeared, eighty-two subscribers wrote to point out that there is a modern Vaucluse—note spelling—dating back to 1793 when the French provinces were reorganized. Possibly the author meant the ancient spring of Vaucluse that the département was named after.

Meredith: The previous week, those same eighty-two know-it-alls asked why Alonzo and Melissa were taking up residence at the entrance to the underworld. Mitchell had to scramble around for a similar-sounding name, and hoped nobody would notice.

charmed with the secluded beauties of its situation. They passed a little time at the spot selected for their habitation; they projected the structure of the buildings, planned the gardens, the artificial groves, the walks, the mead, the fountains, and—

Hugh [making a heroic recovery]: The meads, plural. They’re not planning fountains of a mild honey-based alcoholic beverage.

the green retreat of the summer house, and they already saw, in anticipation,

David: If they’re getting married in three weeks, shouldn’t they be seeing these things in the final stages of construction?

Meredith: No hurry. The fairies will plant the trees and put up the buildings at the exact moment that Alonzo and Melissa say “I do”.

Lucy: Don’t let Beau Brummel hear you say that. In his lexicon, you take a walk and you take a liberty, but you drink tea.

Hugh: If they were English loyalists, they would eat tea.

Linda [1836 text]: Grove, singular.

Meredith: When Alonzo realized he couldn’t support his family on one uncontested will every few years and the occasional title search, he had to start selling off his land.

the air was freshened by light western breezes, bearing upon their wings all the entrancing odours of the season. Around the horizon, electric clouds raised their brazen summits, based in the black vapor of approaching night.

David: In Mitchell’s universe, darkness is caused by clouds of anti-photons.

They slowly ascended the hill south of the town, where they paused a few moments to enjoy the splendours of the evening scene. This hill, which commanded a prospect of all the surrounding country, the distant sound, and the adjacent towns and villages, presented to the eye, on a single view, perhaps one of the most picturesque draperies painted by nature.

Lucy: All the world’s a stage, and all the hills and forests merely paintings.

Linda [as Alonzo’s mother]: I thought we had agreed, dear, that you would phase out your Colombian trade.

Meredith: Yow! Bit of a personal question, isn’t it?

Alonzo, startled at so unexpected a question, replied, that such a proposal would be considered extra­ordinary, perhaps improper: besides, when Melissa had fixed the day, she mentioned that she had an uncle who lived near Charleston, in South Carolina, whose daughter was to pass the summer with Melissa,

Linda: This is the summer immediately following Melissa’s wedding we’re talking about?

Lucy: It’s either that or spend the summer listening to your unemployed husband rhapsodizing about Nature.

and was expected to arrive before the appointed day.

Linda: Oh, she’s one of those houseguests. Just when you’re thinking you have a comfortable 24 hours to deal with the three weeks’ worth of laundry piled on the guest bed, and clear away the sewing things and do something about the disassembled vacuum cleaner, she calls and says she got an earlier flight.

Hugh [emphatically]: The appointed marriage day.

Meredith: So on top of everything else, you’ve got to rearrange the seating and tell the caterer there will be an extra person at the “A” table.

It would, he said, be a delicate point for him to request her to anticipate the nuptials, unless he could give some cogent reasons for so doing;

David: I guess it’s no use saying he’s been slavering after Melissa since 1773 and would like a few days alone with her before the cousin moves in and takes over their lives.

Meredith [as Alonzo’s mother, sobbing]: Thirty years of marriage, and your father has never gone to bed without saying good night.

Linda: And the chicken bones picked out of the straw, and the leftover trenchers thrown to the dogs? Try “after the cloth was removed.”

Lucy [turns around and reaches for reference book. To forestall lecture on semantic change, David quickly continues reading.]

Hugh: But never at midday. That’s why God created the siesta.

to acquire independence and ease for myself and my family. To accomplish this, I became connected with some English importing merchants in a seaport town, and went largely into the English trade. Success crowned our endeavours; on balancing our accounts two years ago,

Linda: Early in 1775, immediately before the war broke out.

Meredith: So much the better. You can make a killing in profiteering and blockade-running.

embarrassments ensued, and by indubitable intelligence lately received, we find that our property in England has been sequestered; five of our ships, laden with English goods, lying in English harbours, and just ready to sail for America, have been seized as lawful prizes.

David: I could have told them it was a mistake to pay for those forged English documents with American money.

Added to this, three vessels from the Indies, laden with island produce,

Lucy: Well, that’s a write-off. Plantains and guavas don’t travel well.

have been taken on their homeward bound voyage, and one lost on her return from Holland.

Hugh: Mitchell’s grasp of geography weakens the further he gets from Connecticut.

David [as Alonzo’s father]: They assured me that going from Jamaica to New Haven via Amsterdam would save several weeks of travel time.

Linda: Moral arguments are so much easier when the immoral course of action is also the less profitable one.

I could not consent to banish myself from my country; to flee like a felon; to skulk from society with the base view of defrauding my creditors. No, I have lived honestly, and honestly will I die. By fair application and long industry my wealth has been obtained; and it shall never justly be said, that the reputation of my latter days was stained with acts of baseness. I have—

Meredith [with nods of agreement from Hugh and David]: Acts of baseness and meanness.

Linda: It was the cat. But look, the man isn’t making sense. [Reaches for pencil.]

it shall never justly be said, that the reputation of my latter days was stained with acts of baseness.

See? First he implies that it wouldn’t matter if someone said it unjustly, but then instead of making a point about actual baseness—

David: And meanness.

Linda: —he starts talking about his reputation.

Hugh [soothingly]: There, there. Only a few more pages, and you can take a break.

I have notified and procured a meeting of the creditors, and have laid the matter before them. Some appeared favourable to me; others insinuated that we were all connected in fraudulent designs, to swindle our creditors.

Lucy: You gotta admit it’s a lot more believable than his version. Nine ships unaccounted for, and all his partners vanished off the face of the earth? Sounds like the consortium drew straws and Alonzo’s father was left to put on the betrayed-innocent act.

This I repelled with becoming spirit,

Meredith: They didn’t draw straws, they picked him because he’s the best actor.

David: It’s that Connecticut scenery. It brings out the thespian in all of us.

Hugh [as Alonzo’s father, to servant]: How many times do I have to tell you? I am not at home to law enforcement before noon.

sent by the more inexorable creditors of Alonzo’s father and company, to level on the property of the former, which orders they faithfully executed, by seizing the lands, tenements—

Meredith: My sympathy just evaporated. When he said his property was tied up in real estate, I didn’t realize he meant he was a slumlord.

and furniture, and finally arresting the body of the old gentleman,

Linda: He died of shock when he saw they weren’t buying his story.

David [as sheriff]: Anyone who says the accused died in custody is a damned liar. He was already dead when we arrested him.

which was soon released by his friendly neighbours becoming bail for his appearance; but the property was soon after sold at public vendue, at less than half its value,

Lucy: —the bulk of it going to Melissa’s father.

and Alonzo’s father and mother were compelled to abandon the premises, and take shelter in a little hut, belonging to a neighbouring farmer, illy and temporarily furnished by the gratuitous liberality of a few friends

David [as neighbor]: Look, I can’t let you in the house or I’d have to lock away the valuables, but you can sleep in the toolshed tonight.

We will not stop the reader to moralize on this disastrous event. The feelings of the family can better be conceived than detailed.

Meredith [looking pointedly at Hugh]: Yeah, you wouldn’t want to write them or anything.

Hurled in a moment from the lofty summit of affluence to the low and barren vale of poverty! Philosophy came to the aid of the parents, but who can realise the feelings of the son! Thus suddenly cut short of his prospects, not only of future independence, but even of support,

David: He’d always taken it for granted that he would freeload off his parents until he inherited their property outright.

what would be the event of his suit to Melissa, and stipulated marriage? Was it not probable that her father would now cancel the contract? Could she consent to be his wife in his present penurious situation?—And indeed, could he himself consent to make her his wife, to make her miserable?

Linda: As a Yale-educated lawyer’s wife, the best she could ever aspire to would be abject poverty.

In this agitated frame of mind he received a letter from his friend in Melissa’s neigh­bourhood, requesting him to come immediately to his house, whither he repaired the following day. This person had ever been the unchanging friend of Alonzo;

Lucy: If this is the same friend who faithfully reported every bit of self-serving gossip passed on to him by Beauman, I wouldn’t rely on him as a source of information.

he had heard of the misfortunes of his family, and he deeply sympathized in his distress. He had lately married and settled in life: his name was Vincent.

David: It took Mitchell six weeks to think of a name.

Linda: He never needed one until he got married. The minister got as far as “Do you, comma,” and everything ground to a screeching halt.

Hugh: His friends are still ribbing him about the shortest-ever interval between the wedding and the christening.

When Alonzo arrived at the house of his friend, he was received with the same disin­terested ardour he ever had been in the day of his most unbounded prosperity.

David: Vincent spent the first three hours of Alonzo’s visit insisting that he didn’t like him one whit less just because his family wasn’t rich any more, nuh-uh, no sirree, the thought never even crossed my mind.

After being seated, Vincent told him that the occasion of his sending for him was to propose the adoption of certain measures which he doubted not might be considered highly beneficial as it respected his future peace and happiness.

Hugh [as editor, under his breath]: Fix squinting modifier, change “the occasion of his sending for him was to propose the adoption of” to “he had sent for him to suggest”, delete . . . .

“Your family misfortunes,” continued Vincent, “have reached the ears of Melissa’s father. I know that old gentleman too well to believe he will consent to receive you as his son-in-law, under your present embarrass­ments. Money is the god to which he implicitly bows.

Linda: That’s what he thinks. When the lights are out and the household is asleep, Melissa’s father opens his secret cupboard and makes offerings to the god of wealth. Nothing implicit about it.

The case is difficult, but not insurmountable. You must first see Melissa; she is now in the next room. I will introduce you in; converse with her, after which I will lay my plan before you.”

Meredith: Definitely an old friend of Alonzo. A casual acquaintance wouldn’t have known that you have to tell him what to do when he finds himself alone in a room with his fiancée.

Alonzo entered the room; Melissa was sitting by a window which looked into a pleasant garden, and over verdant meadows whose tall grass waved to the evening breeze.

Hugh: Alonzo timed his visit carefully, knowing that the author is only licensed to describe evenings.

Meredith [with Hugh nodding assent]: Of even. We’re trying to strike a poetic note here.

A mournfully murmuring rivulet purled at a little distance from the garden, on the borders of a small grove, from whence the American wild dove wafted her sympathetic moaning to the ear of Melissa. She sat leaning on a small table by the window, which was thrown up. Her attention was fixed. She did not perceive Vincent and Alonzo as they entered. They advanced towards her. She turned, started, and arose. With a melancholy smile, and tremulous voice, “I supposed,” she said, “that it was Mrs. Vincent who was—

David: It’s his last name?

Lucy: It’s his only name. Like Mr. and Mrs. Rabbit, Mr. and Mrs. Frog . . .

Hugh: Before her marriage, she was Miss Vincent.

approaching, as she has just left the room.” Her countenance appeared dejected,

Linda [1836 text]: Appeared to be dejected.

David: It wasn’t really dejected, it only seemed that way.

which, on seeing Alonzo,

Hugh [1804 text]: On her seeing Alonzo. Her countenance can’t see.

Meredith: That kind of logical thinking never stopped you before.

Lucy: I would love to pick apart that utterance and see if it sheds any light on what in God’s name could possibly go on inside Alonzo’s brain, but somehow I just haven’t got the energy.

David: I wish I understood this weird fascination the printer’s cat has with quotation marks.

Meredith: In a rare flash of intelligence, Alonzo remembers that Vincent’s information has not always been 100 percent reliable, so he’d better check with an independent source.

Linda: He leaped and danced with joy.

Lucy: Now I get it. Mitchell didn’t know how to do nested quotes, so he had to switch over to theatrical notation.

“your conduct has ever been that of a dutiful child; mine, of an indulgent parent.—My first, my ultimate wish, is to see my children, when settled in life, happy and honourably respected. For this purpose, I have bestowed on them a proper education, and design suitably to apportion my property between them.

David: Nine-tenths to Edgar, one-tenth to you, because you’re only a girl.

On their part, it is expected they will act prudently and discreetly, especially in those things which concern their future peace and welfare.—The principal requisite to ensure this is a proper connexion in marriage.” Here my father paused a considerable time,

Hugh: —while Melissa tries to remember what he said next.

Lucy: Connecticut’s marriage law was based on an extreme version of community property, under which any debts belonging to family members of either spouse automa­tically became the joint and several liability of all members of the other spouse’s family.

Thus spake my father,

Linda: You’ve got to be kidding. I’ve got “Thus spoke my father” and I thought that was pretentious enough.

David: Some men, in Alonzo’s position, would be asking what she wants to do.

Lucy: Vincent should have realized it isn’t enough to tell Alonzo to converse. He should have written out the standard speech: My sentiments have not changed and will never change, but if you feel that you must withdraw from our engagement, I can but honour your resolution, accept your decision with the deepest regret, and hope that we may always remain friends.

“It is difficult to determine,” replied Melissa. “Should my father expressly forbid our union, he will go all lengths to carry his commands into effect.

Linda: What lengths? She’s a minor. All he has to do is refuse consent.

Although a tender parent, he is violent in his prejudices, and resolute in his purposes. I would advise you to call at my father’s house tomorrow, with your usual freedom. Whatever may be the event, I shall deal sincerely with you. Mr. and Mrs. Vincent are now my only confidants. From them you will be enabled to obtain information, should I be debarred from seeing you. I am frequently here; they told me they expected you, but at what day was not known. Mrs. Vincent has been my friend and associate from my earliest years. Vincent you know. In In them—

Meredith: Wake up. You’re repeating yourself.

David: I’m going to fire that typesetter. Page-break duplications are the first thing you check for.

Lucy: My editor took the word “reprint” seriously. I’ve got the exact same typo.

we can place the utmost confidence.

Hugh: Since the two of us haven’t got three brain cells to rub together, we rely upon the Vincents to do our thinking for us.

My reliance on Providence, I trust, will never be shaken;

Linda: It better not be, or her father the Presbyterian will kill her.

David and Lucy: I will call at— Oops.

David [apologetic]: I guess “at you father’s” isn’t an acceptable variant reading, is it.

Linda: Not in Connecticut in 1777.

Melissa now prepared to return home; a whippoorwill tuned its nightly song at a little distance; but the sound, late so cheerful and sprightly, now passed heavily over their hearts.

Edmund: The situation is becoming too serious for whippoor­wills to be of any use.

Meredith: I wish he’d stop materializing like that. It’s really confusing.

When Alonzo returned, Vincent unfolded the plan he had projected. “No sooner,” said he, “was I informed of your misfortunes, than I was convinced that Melissa’s father would endeavour to dissolve your intended union with his daughter. I have known him many years, and however he may dote on his children, or value their happiness, he will not hesitate to sacrifice his other feelings to the acquirement of riches. It appeared that you had but one resource left. You and Melissa are now united by the most solemn ties—by every rite except those which are merely ceremonial.

Lucy: I hate to be the bearer of bad news, Vincent, but your inter­pretation of the legal and moral significance of a betrothal went out with the Reformation.

These I would advise you to enter into, and trust to the consequences. Mrs. Vincent has proposed the scheme to Melissa; but implicitly accustomed to filial obedience, she shudders at the idea of a clandestine marriage. But when her father shall proceed to rigorous measures, she will, I think, consent to the alternative.

Meredith: Oh, look, a kindred spirit. [Shows 1811 book, with handwritten notation in margin.]

Matter of fact I don’t think so—and something tells me you didn’t either.

And this measure, once adopted, her father must consent also; or, if not, you secure your own happiness, and, what you esteem more, that of Melissa.”

David: If her father doesn’t consent to his daughter marrying without his consent, then everyone will be happy.

Linda: For “a country like this”, read “a colony in the middle of a long, messy war for independence”.

Meredith: For “obtaining a competency”, read “getting locked up for refusing to enter military service after receiving a commission”.

Lucy: Hurry, hurry! It’s too early in the day to be outside.

Alonzo was received with a cool reserve—

Linda: A cold reserve.

Hugh: It’s that temperature inflation again.

by all except Melissa. Her father saluted him with a distant and retiring bow, as he passed with Melissa to her room.

David: Alonzo has decided to take his father’s advice and consummate the marriage at the earliest opportunity.

As soon as they were seated, a maiden aunt, who had doubled her teens,

Edmund: A haggard old crone of at least twenty-six.

Lucy: I say thirty-eight. You’re not officially an old maid until you hit thirty.

David [as irate father]: Go to your— Oh, oops, this is your room. Get out of your room.

Lucy: His legal training had taught him never to speak directly to opposing counsel.

He continued—“You yourself must acknowledge, that to burthen yourself with the expense of a family; to transfer a woman from affluence to poverty, without even an object in view to provide for either, would be the height of folly and extravagance.” Again he paused, but Alonzo was still silent. He proceeded—“Could you, Alonzo, suffer life, when you see the wife of your bosom, probably your infant children, pining in misery for want of bread? And what else have you to expect if you marry in your present situation? You have—

Hugh: You left out the core of his argument. [1804 text:]

—in your present situation? I know you have talents and have had an education. But what are they without means? You have friends and well wishers; but which of them will advance you four or five thousand pounds, as a gratuity?

David: Gratuity for what? He hasn’t done anything.

Lucy: It’s an anticipatory bribe. At the time of the late American revolution, a Yale degree and professional training didn’t count for squat unless you could buy your way into a job where you would then spend the rest of your life soaking up other people’s bribes.

My daughter must be supported according to her rank and standing in life. Are you enabled to do this? If not, you cannot reasonably suppose that I shall consent to your marrying her. You may say that your acquirements, your prudence, and your industry, will procure you a handsome support. This may well do in single life;

Meredith: An unmarried man never has to explain why the case requires him to come stumbling home at 7 A.M. with lipstick on his collar.

but to depend on these for the future exigencies of a family, is hazarding peace, honour and reputation, at a single game of chance. If, therefore, you have no resources or expectations but such as these, your own judgment will teach you the necessity of immediately relin­quishing all pretensions to the hand of Melissa”—and immediately left the room.

Hugh: You’re doing it again. Pay attention now:

—to the hand of Melissa.” Thus spake the father of Melissa, and immediately left the room.

Linda: Mitchell was so pleased with his “thus spake the father” line, he used it twice in case we missed it the first time around.

Why was Alonzo speechless through the whole of this discourse?—What reply could he have made? What were the prospects before him but penury, want, misery, and woe! Where, indeed, were the means by which Melissa was to be shielded from poverty, if connected with his fortunes. The idea was not new, but it came upon him with redoubled anguish. He arose and looked around for Melissa, but she was not to be seen. He left the house, and walked slowly towards Vincent’s. At a little distance he met Melissa, who had been strolling in an adjoining avenue.

Meredith: It never entered her mind that Alonzo might want to talk to her after meeting with her father, so she went for a walk.

David: Luckily it didn’t enter her father’s mind either, or he’d have locked her in the cellar.

He informed her of all that had passed; it was no more than they both expected, yet it was a shock their fortitude could scarcely sustain. Disap­pointment seldom finds her votaries prepared to receive her.

Linda: Sorry, Disappointment, can you give me a minute? I need to take the curlers out of my hair and empty the ashtrays.

Melissa told Alonzo, that her father’s determinations were unchangeable; that his sister (the before mentioned maiden lady) held a considerable influence over him, and dictated the concerns of the family; and that from her, there was nothing to hope in their favour. Her mother, she said, was her friend, but could not contradict—

Hugh [under his breath]: Counteract.

the will of her father.

David: With friends like these . . . .

Her brother would be at home in a few days; how he would act on this occasion she was unable to say: but were he even their friend he would have but feeble influence with her father and aunt. “What is to be the end of these troubles,” continued Melissa, “it is impos­sible to foresee. Let us trust in the mercy of heaven and submit to its dispen­sations.”

Meredith: Good plan. Saves the trouble of asking the Vincents to come up with a second idea after you’ve vetoed the first one.

Alonzo and Melissa, in their happier days, had, when absent, corresponded by letters.

Linda: They tried smoke signals first, but couldn’t get them to work properly in the rain.

This method it was now thought best to relinquish.

Lucy: You know, sometimes the passive voice is exactly what you need. It would never dawn on either Alonzo or Melissa that her father might intercept her mail, so it’s a good thing the thought was had by one of the Vincents.

Hugh, Meredith, David: Hey! You cut the best line.

Linda [sulkily]: So you read it.

Lucy: Fortunately his creditors were too cheap to hire a competent lawyer, so they were powerless to lay hands on these additional assets.

With this I have purchased—

Hugh: With part of this I have purchased.

a small, but well cultivated farm, with convenient tenements.

Meredith: Once slumlording gets into your blood, you’ll never get it out.

I have enough left to purchase what stock and other materials I need; and to spare some for your present exigencies, Alonzo.”

Linda: So long as you can make do with no more than four horses, the summer house in the Poconos, and that little pied-à-terre we agreed not to tell your mother about.

Alonzo thanked his father for his kindness, but told him that from his former liberality he had yet sufficient for his wants, and that he should soon find business which would amply support him.

David: He has arranged with his father’s Colombian connections to take over that side of the business.

Hugh: Illumined his troubled bosom. You people have no ear for poetry.

Meredith: I wish you hadn’t said that.

Linda: I’ve got morn’s gray hues.

Lucy: By 1836, coal smoke was a regular feature of the urban sky.

Hugh, Meredith, Linda, David [look expectantly at Lucy].

Lucy: No idea. It goes without saying that it shows up in Alida—why write your own cheesy poetry when you can crib someone else’s—but beyond that, all I know is that the whole thing is also quoted in Memoirs of the Notorious Stephen Burroughs.

David: With a title like that, it’s got to be better than Alonzo and Melissa.

Linda: Well, it could hardly be worse.

Lucy: You haven’t read Alida.

He thought of Melissa,

Hugh [1804 text]: Thought on Melissa.

from whom he had heard nothing since he last saw her.

Meredith: That’s the problem with agreeing not to write. You don’t get a lot of letters.

—He thought of—

Hugh: Thought on.

the difficulties which surrounded him. He thought of—

Hugh: Thought on.

David: Oh, shut up.

the barriers which were opposed to his happiness and the felicity of Melissa, and he set out for the house of Vincent.

Linda: A light bulb comes on in Alonzo’s head as he remembers they had arranged to meet at the Vincents’ as often as possible.

Alonzo arrived at the residence of Vincent near the close of day.

Hugh: Nature has been working matinees in New Haven, so it’s only available for evening performances.

Vincent and his lady were at tea with several young ladies who had passed the afternoon with Mrs. Vincent. Alonzo cast an active glance around the company, in hopes to find Melissa, but she was not there.

Lucy: Are you sure? Look carefully, now. Would you recognize Melissa if you saw her?

He was invited and accepted a seat at table. After tea Vincent led him into an adjoining room. “You have come in good time,” said he. “Something must speedily be done, or you lose Melissa forever. The day after you were here, her father received a letter from Beauman,

Meredith: Knowing that Vincent is an inveterate gossip who never bothers to check his sources, Beauman made sure to send him a copy.

in which, after mentioning the circumstance of your father’s insolvency, he hinted that the consequence would probably be a failure of her proposed marriage with you, which might essentially injure the reputation of a lady of her standing in life;

David: That’s a threat if I ever heard one. Beauman is prepared to tell the world that Alonzo’s financial troubles are a complete fiction and Melissa simply got dumped.

to prevent which, and to place her beyond the reach of calumny, he offered to marry her at any appointed day, provided he had her free consent.

Linda: This is one of those obscure technical usages of “free consent”, like a “consent decree” where you either do it or go to jail.

“As Beauman, by the recent death of his father, had been put in possession of a splendid fortune, the proposition allured her father, who wrote him a complaisant answer, with—

Meredith: —copy to Vincent.

David: Good thing Vincent had the forethought to plant bugs in every room of Melissa’s house, or we’d never have been able to get her answer in such detail.

Were he to command her to live single, life might be endured; but to give her hand to any except you, would be to perjure those principles of truth and justice which he himself had ever taught her to hold most inviolable. —Her father grew outrageous; charged her with disobedience,

Meredith [reaching for magnifying glass]: I really wish my blast from the past had written her comments in ink, or at least found a softer pencil.

[Prolonged examination and conference with others.] Well, thanks for that. Looks like “should like this story very well, did I not know it to be fictive”.

Lucy: Pearson says that the reason so many people were able to get their hands on the book is that it was “based on fact”, so it wasn’t locked away with the other novels.

Meredith: This was around the time when sales of the Brooklyn Bridge and Florida real estate first took off.

with a blind inconsiderate perverseness, by which she would bring ruin upon herself, and indelible disgrace upon her family. She answered only with her tears.

Linda: Also with a long, eloquent and well-argued speech, but unfor­tunately Vincent’s tape ran out.

Her mother interposed, and endeavoured to appease his anger; but he spurned her from him, and rushed out of the room, uttering a threat that force should succeed persuasion, if his commands were not obeyed. To add to Melissa’s distress, Beauman arrived at her father’s yesterday; and I hope, in some measure to alleviate it.

Meredith: I know that trick. First you do underhanded things to make her even more miserable, and then you turn around and comfort her so she thinks you’re her only friend.

Linda: I think Vincent means that he’s hoping to make Melissa feel better.

Readers [stop and compare texts].

David [in disgust]: One lousy punctuation typo and the whole thing turns into nonsense. And it was a pretty good parallel construction, too.

Meredith: On the one hand—

David: —the “let’s make Melissa miserable” hand—

Meredith: Beauman showed up yesterday.

Linda: And on the other hand—

Lucy: —the “I hope this will make Melissa feel better” hand—

Linda: Comma.

Edgar, her brother, came this morning.

David: Not to be confused with all the other Edgars we’ve been running into.

Mrs. Vincent has dispatched a message to inform Melissa of your arrival, and to desire her to come here immediately. She will undoubtedly comply with the invitation, if not prevented by something extra­ordinary. I should have written you had I not hourly expected you.”

Meredith: It’s like a rain dance. If you expect him long enough, eventually he’ll show up.

Mrs. Vincent now came to the door of the room and beckoned to her husband, who went out, but immediately returned, leading in Melissa after which he retired. “Oh, Alonzo!” was all she could say, and burst into tears. Alonzo led her to a seat, gently pressed her hand, and mingled his tears with hers, but was unable to speak.—Recovering at length, he begged her to moderate her grief. “Where,” said he, “is your fortitude and your firmness, Melissa,

David: Her what?

Linda: Shouldn’t it be “Where are your . . .”?

Meredith: Since Melissa’s firmness and fortitude have no existence outside of Alonzo’s imagination, I don’t think it matters.

Lucy: That’s exactly why it does matter. I’m pretty sure zero takes the singular.

which I have so often seen triumphing over affliction?”

David: Does anyone have the remotest idea what he’s talking about?

Her extreme anguish prevented a reply. Deeply affected and alarmed at the storm of distress which raged in her bosom, he endeavoured to console her, though consolation was a stranger to his own breast. “Let us not, Melissa,” said he, “increase our flood of affliction by a tide of useless sorrow. Perhaps more prosperous days are yet in reserve for us;—happiness may yet be ours.” “Never, never!” she exclaimed. “Oh, what will become of me!” “Heaven cannot desert you,” said Alonzo; “as well might it desert its angels. This thorny and gloomy path may lead to fair fields of light and verdure. Tempests are succeeded by calms; wars end in peace;

Hugh: It was supposed to be “war ends”, but I admit “wars end” works better.

the splendours of the brightest morning arise on the wings of blackest midnight.

Meredith: How would he know? The only time of day he’s familiar with is the hours between 4 and 8 P.M.

Troubles will not always last. Life at most is short. Death comes to the relief of the virtuous wretched, and transports them to another and a better world, where sighing and sorrows cease, and the tempestuous passions of life are known no more.”

Linda: Oh, thank you, Alonzo. That makes me feel so much better.

The rage of grief which had overwhelmed Melissa began now to subside, as the waves of the ocean gradually cease their tumultuous commotion, after the turbulent winds are laid asleep. Deep sobs and long drawn sighs succeeded to a suffocation of tears. The irritation of her feelings had caused a more than usual glow upon her cheek,

Lucy: Also a more than usually red nose and puffy, swollen eyes, but we’ll pretend not to notice those.

which faded away as she became composed, until a livid paleness spread itself over her features. Alonzo feared that the delicacy of her constitution—

David: What delicacy? First I’ve heard of it.

Meredith: Alonzo was in such a rush to get to Vincent’s house, he grabbed the wrong script.

Hugh: To prepare to become the wife of Beauman.

Linda: Not your happiness—that’s immaterial—just your prosperity.

“Marry Alonzo, you sink into obscurity, are condemned to drudgery, poorly fed, worse clothed, and your relations and acquain­tances shun and despise you.

David: Get him to put that part in writing, and she’ll marry Alonzo tomorrow.

Meredith: Having found by experiment that two days is the longest she can be locked in the cellar without losing some of her good looks.

at the end of that time I shall expect your decision, and hope you will decide discreetly.

Lucy: I think what we have here is an unusual manifestation of rural inbreeding, in the form of a congenital memory defect shared by almost everyone in the book.

David: Uh . . . In English?

Lucy: Melissa’s father has forgotten that three minutes ago he ordered her to marry Beauman. There’s nothing for her to decide.

But remember that you become the wife of Beauman, or you are no longer acknowledged as my daughter.”

Linda: Is that a promise?

Hugh: Beauman also misread that comma on the previous page as a full stop, and thought he was supposed to alleviate Melissa’s distress.

Meredith: Don’t even try. You need a CAT scan.

Lucy: In the final installment, it will turn out that Vincent has a long-standing and impla­cable grudge against Beauman, possibly for reasons involving Mrs. Vincent. He will therefore stop at nothing to thwart him, even if it means subsidizing Alonzo and Melissa for the rest of their lives.

“The measure would be hazardous,” remarked Melissa. “My circumstances—” said Alonzo. “Not on that account,” interrupted Melissa, “but my father’s displeasure—” “Will be the same, whether you marry Alonzo, or refuse to marry Beauman,” replied Vincent.

David: Tightening the screws.

Meredith: If they don’t like her decision, the Vincents will then lock Melissa in their cellar.

Hugh: The odor-flowering lilac.

and lofty elm, her white robes now invisible, now dimly seen as she turned the angles of the walk, until they were totally obscured, mingling with the gloom and darkness of the night. “Thus,” said Alonzo, “thus fades the angel of peace from the visionary eyes of the war-worn soldier, when it ascends in the dusky clouds of early morning, while he slumbers on the field of recent battle.”

Lucy: And we all know about Alonzo’s extensive personal experience on the field of battle.

With mournful forebodings he returned to the house of Vincent. He arose after a sleepless night and walked into an adjoining field. He stood leaning in deep contem­plation against a tree, when he heard quick footsteps behind him. He turned, and saw Edgar approaching: in a moment they were in each other’s arms, and mingled tears.

Linda [1836 text]: And mingling tears.

David: Two pages ago, Alonzo was mingling his tears with Melissa’s.

Meredith: Edgar, Melissa, it’s all the same, so long as he can get cheek to cheek with somebody.

Hugh: If Alonzo had been in a fit state to listen, that word “resigned” would have acted as a huge warning sign.

You, Alonzo, must exert your fortitude. The ways of Heaven are inscrutable, but they are right.

David: Is he trying to say that Melissa’s father is acting under direct orders from Above?

“We must acquiesce in its dealings. We cannot alter its decrees. Resignation to its will, whether merciful or afflictive, is one of those eminent virtues which adorn the good man’s character, and which ever find a brilliant reward in the regions of unsullied splendour, far beyond trouble and the tomb.”

Meredith: Edgar remembers that he is a clergyman.

Edgar told Alonzo that circumstances compelled him that day to depart for the army.

Linda [as drill sergeant]: I don’t care if it’s your own wedding. You show up for basic training when we tell you to.

“I would advise you,” said he, “to remain here until your affair comes to some final issue. It must, I think, ere long, be terminated.

Hugh: Be determined. If the affair were terminated, the book would be over.

David: Yes, and your point is . . . ?

Perhaps you and my sister may yet be happy.”

Meredith: And if not, well, c’est la vie.

Lucy: It’s no use saying that to a Yale man. A generation later, students at Yale asked to study French along with normal subjects like Greek and Latin. The president got all nasty and sarcastic and asked if they also wanted the college to teach whittling.

Hugh [coughing]: Go on, please. Something got stuck in my throat.

Meredith: I’m sure it will get better . . . immediately.

Linda [looking at 1836 text]: Speaking of removing, I deleted that last clause because it made no sense. Men of honor don’t break off engagements.

You cannot wish to involve Melissa in your present penurious condition, unless you wish to make her wretched. It therefore only remains for you to give me a writing, voluntarily resigning all pretensions to the hand of my daughter; and if you wish her to be happy, honourable, and respected in this life, this I say you will not hesitate to do.”

Meredith: Don’t do it, Alonzo! It’s a trap! The moment he signs, papa will have him up for breach of promise. That way, any property that Alonzo’s father ever recovers will go straight to Melissa’s father.

A considerable pause ensued. Alonzo at length replied, “I cannot perceive any parti­cular advantage that can accrue from such a measure. It will neither add nor diminish the power you possess to command obedience to your will, if you are determined to command it, either from your daughter, or your servant.”—

David: What do his servants have to do with anything? Does Alonzo have some kind of backstairs under­standing with the footman?

Lucy: He’s confused about the difference between corre­spondence and conversation, so he thinks “your servant” is a pronoun. I am and remain your faithful, humble and obedient servant, et cetera, et cetera.

“There, brother,” bawled the old maid, half squeaking through her nose, which was well charged with rappee, “did’nt I tell you so? I knew the fellow would not come to terms, no more than will your refractory daughter. This love fairly bewitches such foolish, crack-brained youngsters. But say Mr. ——, what’s your name,” addressing herself to Alonzo, “will love heat the oven? will love boil the pot? will love clothe the back? will love—”

Hugh: This speech was supposed to go in the previous installment, where it would have made some kind of narrative sense, but there wasn’t room.

“You will not,” interrupted Melissa’s father, speaking to Alonzo, “it seems, consent to my proposition? I have then, one demand to make, which of right you cannot deny. Promise me that you will never see my daughter again, unless by my permission.”

Lucy: Ordinarily, Melissa’s father would be perfectly correct. The young woman’s father has the right to refuse an unwelcome suitor the house, to exact a promise never to see his daughter again, or to forbid them to write to each other. But when he consents to an engagement, he gives up those rights.

Linda: Well, darn it. I was hoping for a loophole in the rules of etiquette, so he could say You may remain engaged to her as long as you like, provided you agree never to set eyes on her again.

Meredith: How can they tell?

David: “Betwattled”?

Lucy: Remember in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington when the old ladies have to explain what “pixilated” means? If you need an explanation, you’ll never understand.

I wish I had him to deal with. Things wasn’t so when I was a girl; I kept the rogues at a distance, I’ll warrant you.

Linda: Bragging about her own ability to remain unmarried doesn’t exactly help her brother’s cause.

I always told you, brother, what would come of your indulgence to your daughter.

Meredith [as aunt]: When I was a girl, my parents locked me in the cellar for weeks on end, and you can see how well I turned out.

Lucy: If the aunt is trying to make some kind of point, I can only say that it eludes me.

David [as Alonzo]: Excuse me, please, I’ve got a desk to rob.

Meredith and David: Flashed in resentment.

Linda: Flashed with resentment.

But he recollected that it was the father of Melissa who had thus insulted him,

Lucy: Alonzo strives heroically to overcome his inherited memory defect.

Meredith: Apprised of it, you illiterates. You appraise jewelry.

Hugh: Already apprised. If she already knows about it, then it won’t distress her to have Alonzo talk about it.

David: I hate it when he’s right.

The evening passed on, but Melissa came not. Alonzo grew restless and uneasy. He looked out, then at his watch. Vincent and his lady assured him that she would soon be there. He paced the room. Still he became more impatient. He walked out on the way she was expected to come. Sometimes he advanced hastily; at others he moved slowly; then stood motionless, listening in breathless silence, momentarily expecting to discover her white form approaching through the gloom, or to hear the sound of her footsteps advan­cing amidst the darkness. Shapeless objects, either real or imaginary, frequently crossed his sight, but, like the unreal phantoms of night, they suddenly passed away, and were seen no more. At length—

Meredith: Wait, wait, stop, hold it. Alonzo is now actively hallu­cinating—and the author just shrugs and carries on?

he perceived a dusky white form advancing in the distant dim obscurity. It drew near; his heart beat in quick succession;

Lucy: Don’t get excited, Alonzo. It’s only an unreal phantom of night.

Hugh: Can you all handle a major spoiler?

Others [ad lib]: Oh yes! Sure! You betcha! Absolutely!

Hugh: The stranger in the white coat will never appear in the story again in any capacity whatsover. It will be as if he never existed.

Others [ad lib]: No way! Impossible! I don’t believe it!

David: Mitchell miscounted the lines and his assistant had to add two column inches after he’d gone home. But he didn’t have the nerve to invent a meaningful episode or add any character development, so he had to put in this totally pointless incident.

Alonzo hesitated whether to advance or to return. It was possible, though not probable, that Melissa might have come some other way. He hastened back to Vincent’s—she had not arrived. “Something extra­ordinary,” said Mrs. Vincent, “has prevented her coming. Perhaps she is ill.”

Linda: And the prize for Most Complete and Perfect Oblivi­ousness to Recent Events goes to Mrs. Vincent, for her—

Meredith: I wouldn’t be too sure. Someone has to have been feeding Alonzo the idea that Melissa has a delicate constitution.

Lucy [twitching with excitement]: Ooh, ooh, I’ve figured it out. The Vincents coerce Alonzo and Melissa into getting married; after a few months they poison Melissa, attributing her death to her well-known sickliness; Alonzo inherits her money and makes a new will leaving it all to his kind benefactors, the Vincents.

Alonzo shuddered at the suggestion.

Linda: Now that was spooky. It’s as if Alonzo heard every word you said.

He looked at his watch; it was half past eleven o’clock. Again he hastily sallied out, and took the road to her father’s.

The night was exceedingly dark, and illuminated only by the feeble glimmering of the twinkling stars. When he came within sight of the house, and as he drew near no lights were visible—all was still and silent. He entered the yard, walked up the avenue, and approached the door. The familiar watch-dog, which lay near the threshold, fawned upon him, joyfully whining and wagging his tail.

David: He’ll be a lot less joyful tomorrow, when Melissa’s father trades him in for a dog that will attack Alonzo on sight.

“Thou still knowest me, Curlow,”

Linda [1836 text]: Carlow.

Lucy: There’s a dissertation in there somewhere. A generation earlier, the dog’s name would have been Ball, and now look. Here’s The Moral Picture Book—no date, but the pictures look pre-1850—with a dog named Carlo pulling his young master out of a muddy creek. Here’s “Carlo and Shag” in Bird Stories and Dog Stories, similar date. Here’s “Mabel and her Friend Carlo” in The Nursery for October, 1875. Here’s Carlo, or Kindness Rewarded, where he’s the star of his own book. And in case anyone missed the point, here’s a biography of philosopher Rudolph Eucken. Don’t look at me: I’ve never heard of him either. We may start from the data ‘All dogs are animals’ and ‘Carlo is a dog,’ and arrive very simply at the conclusion ‘Carlo is an animal’.

Hugh: . . . and therefore Carlow is mortal.

said Alonzo; “thou hast known me in better days; I am now poor and wretched, but thy friendship is the same.” A solemn stillness prevailed all around, interrupted only by the discordance of the nightly insects, and the hooting of the moping owl from the neighbouring forest.

Meredith: I always thought of moping as a silent activity, like sulking.

Lucy: Gray’s Elegy again. The moping owl does —you’d think it would be “doth”, wouldn’t you?— to the moon complain.

Linda [as owl]: Turn it down, willya? We’re trying to sleep down here.

The dwelling was shrouded in darkness. In Melissa’s room no gleam of light appeared. “They are all buried in sleep,” said Alonzo, deeply sighing, “and I have only to return in disap­pointment.”

Hugh: My bad. I did say it was half past eleven, but that was in the previous installment. Nobody could expect Alonzo to remember the time for a whole week.

He turned and walked towards the street; casting his eyes back, the blaze of a candle caught his sight. It passed rapidly along through the lower rooms, now gleaming, now intercepted, as the walls or the windows intervened,

David: I swear I’ve seen this sequence in a movie.

Linda: Except for the candle walking through walls. Mitchell made up that part.

and suddenly disappeared. Alonzo gazed earnestly a few moments, and hastily returned back. No noise was to be heard, no new objects were discernible.—He clambered over the garden wall, and went around to the back side of the house. Here all was solemn, dark and silent as in front. Immediately a faint light appeared through one of the chamber windows; it grew brighter; a candle entered the chamber; the sash was flung up, and Melissa seated herself at the window.”

Passing Stranger [glancing over David’s shoulder at 1851 text]: Why is there a close quote after window?

Linda: That’s like pawing through a landfill and saying, What’s this candy wrapper doing here?

The weather was sultry, she held a fan in her hand; her countenance, though stamped with deep dejection, was marked with serenity, but pale as the drooping lily of the valley. Alonzo placed himself directly under the window, and in a low voice called her by name. She started wildly, looked out, and faintly cried, “Who’s there?”

Meredith [as Melissa]: I simply can’t imagine who might be lurking under my window and calling me by name at this hour of the night.

Lucy: If he doesn’t personally witness Melissa’s father starving and beating her into submission, he can go right on saying he’s got her free consent.

after which there will undoubtedly be some alteration. Desire Mrs. Vincent to come here to-morrow; I believe they will let me see her.

Hugh [1804 text]: Will trust me to see her.

I can, from time to time, inform you of passing events, so that you may know what changes take place. I am placed under the care of my aunt, who suffers me not to step out of her sight.

Linda: I forgot to mention that she’s sitting two feet away, listening to every word we say.

We pass the night in an adjoining chamber—from whence, after she had fallen asleep, I stole out, and went down with a design of walking in the garden, but found the doors all locked and the keys taken out. I returned and raised this window—

Hugh: My window.

Meredith: The bedroom window next door belongs to her aunt, but this one is Melissa’s very own.

Edmund: Princeton has the ball, but it is not yet in Yale’s territory.

Lucy: Earlier in the article, Pearson went on and on about how Alonzo is the only Yale man in the history of literature who isn’t described as an excellent athlete.

Hugh: I guess it would be heartless to tell him that college football hasn’t been invented yet.

“Unfeeling and impertinent intruder?” retorted Alonzo,

Meredith: Are you asking us?

David [huffily]: If you’d clean your exclamation points now and then, they wouldn’t get misread as question marks.

Linda: I thought his name was Alonzo.

Lucy: Beauman’s showing off his education by making some kind of allusion to the seventh king of Rome, but he forgot that he’s talking to a Yale man.

Hugh: Were it on no other account.

must ever continue to despise and hate you.”

David: Where is he getting this “despise and hate” stuff? If Alonzo hadn’t come along, she’d have been ready to marry Beauman.

“Alonzo,” replied Beauman, “I perceive thou knowest me not. You and I were rivals in our pursuit—the hand of Melissa. Whether from freak or fortune, the preference was given to you, and I retired in silence. From coincidence of circum­stances, her father has now been induced to give the preference to me. My belief was, that Melissa would comply with her father’s will, especially after her prospects of connecting with you were cut off by the events which ruined your fortune.

Linda: Is he saying that Melissa’s father changed his mind about Alonzo before his family lost all their money?

You, Alonzo, have yet, I find, to learn the character of women. It has been my particular study. Melissa, now ardently impassioned by first impressions, irritated by recent disap­pointment, her passions delicate and vivid, her affections animated and unmixed, it would be strange, if she could suddenly relinquish primitive attachments founded on such premises, without a struggle. But remove her from your presence for one year, with only distant and uncertain prospects of seeing you again, admit me as the substitute in your absence, and she accepts my hand as freely as she would now receive yours. I had no design—it was never my wish to marry her without her consent.

Meredith: He doesn’t seem to have done a very good job of communi­cating this position to Melissa’s father.

Lucy: Or, failing those, from force and coercion.

Hugh: On the wrack. With a “w”.

Meredith: On the wreck.

David: Now he’s getting paid by the letter.

Linda: When you have a distinguishing personal feature, you don’t need a name.

had invited her to ride out with her. A carriage was provided, which, after a large trunk had been placed therein, drove off with Melissa and her aunt; that Melissa’s father had just been informing her that he had sent their daughter to a distant part of the country,

Hugh [1804 text]: To a different part of the country.

David: Not all the way back to New London, then.

where she was to reside with a friend until Alonzo should depart from the neigh­bourhood. The reason of this sudden resolution was his being informed by Beauman, that notwith­standing his precaution, Melissa and Alonzo had an interview the last evening. Where she was sent to, the old lady could not tell, but she was convinced that Melissa was not apprised of the design when she consented to go. Her aunt had heretofore been living with the different relatives of the family in various parts of the state.”

Meredith: Sooner or later, someone in the household always said Either she goes or I go.

Alonzo listened to Mrs. Vincent’s relation with inexpressible agitation. He sat silent a few moments; then suddenly starting up, “I will find her if she be on the earth!” said he, and in spite of Vincent’s attempts to prevent him, rushed out of the house, flew to the road, and was soon out of sight.

David [stands up and heads for the door].

Hugh: Where are you going?

David: With an obvious cliffhanger like that, I just assumed we’d reached the end of an installment.

Lucy: I find he knows not the character of our author.

Melissa had not, indeed, the most distant suspicion of the designs of her father and aunt. The latter informed her that she was going to take a morning’s ride, and invited Melissa to accompany her, to which she consented. She did not even perceive the trunk which was fastened on behind the carriage.

Meredith: If you can overlook an entire carriage after you’ve been clearly told you’re going for a ride, what’s a trunk or two?

They were attended by a single servant. They drove to a neighbouring town, where Melissa had frequently attended her father and mother

Hugh and Meredith: Her father or mother.

Lucy: Later in the nineteenth century, respectable married women would never think of traveling more than a quarter-mile without their husbands, but in 1811 it was still permissible.

Hugh: At another small village.

Lucy: I’ve never got the hang of these subtle New England gradations. A City is different from a Town, which is different from a Township, which is different from a Village, which in turn is completely different from a Small Village.

and alighted at an inn, where Melissa and her aunt tarried, while the servant was ordered out by the latter on some business unknown to Melissa. When they again got into the carriage she perceived several large packages and bundles, which had been deposited there since they left it. She enquired of her aunt what they contained. “Articles for family use, child,” she replied,

Linda [as aunt]: If you can’t be bothered to learn my name, then I won’t use yours either.

Lucy: Times like this, you really wish the budget had run to illus­trations. I’m picturing the bovine equivalent of a circus clown carrying a long ladder.

Meredith: Three long ladders. We’re in the Circus Cow Hall of Fame.

David: People who live in huts don’t merit the courtesy of a knock.

Hugh: They knocked on the cow, but nobody answered.

a woman who sat carding wool jumped up, “La me!” she cried, “here is Miss D——, welcome here again. How does madam do?” dropping a low curtsey. She was dressed in a linsey woolsey short gown, a petticoat of the same, her hair hanging about her ears, and barefoot.

Linda: Betcha she’s pregnant too.

Three dirty, ragged children were playing about the floor, and the furniture was of a piece with the building.

Meredith: In a small house, built-in furniture can be a great space-saver.

“Is my room in order?” enquired Melissa’s aunt. “It hasn’t been touched since madam was here,” answered the woman,

David: Was that a No?

and immediately stalked away to a little back apartment, which Melissa and her aunt entered. It was small, but neatly furnished, and contained a single bed. This appendage had been concealed from Melissa’s view, as it was the opposite side of the house from whence she alighted.

Lucy: If Melissa had known that the house had an appendage, she would have dug in her heels and refused to get out of the carriage.

“Where is John?” asked Melissa’s aunt. “My husband is in the garden,” replied the woman; “I will call him,” and out she scampered. John soon appeared, and exhibited an exact counter part of his wife.

David: He married twins?

“What does madam please to want?” said he, bowing three or four times. “I want you John,” she answered,

Linda: So that’s why she never married.

Hugh [1804 text]: To see the return of the carriage.

David: Coming soon to a theatre near you.

but was disappointed. When tea was made ready, she could neither eat nor drink. After her aunt had disposed of a dozen cups of tea,

Meredith: That’s a relief. At least you know their next few stops will have bathrooms.

and an adequate proportion of biscuit, butter and dried beef, she directed Melissa to prepare to take a walk. The sun was low; they proceeded through fields, in a foot path, over rough and uneven ways, directly towards the Sound. They walked about a mile, when they came to a large, old fashioned, castle-like building, surrounded by a high, thick wall,

Hugh: By high, thick walls, plural.

Linda: Between 1804 and 1811, all but one of the outer walls collapsed.

Meredith: Darn pacifist prim hedges!

David: Where does he get this “is not recollected”? If he means “I don’t remember” why doesn’t he say so?

Hugh: It’s the Editorial Passive.

Lucy: Anyway, it’s just another name for privet hedge. Ligustrum vulgare. You see them all over the place.

Meredith: Except in front of his own house. That one died in 1774. Over-watering, probably.

and green shrubbery. The gate which opened into the yard, was made of strong hard wood, thickly crossed on the outside with iron bars, and filled with old iron spikes. Melissa’s aunt unlocked the gate, and they entered the yard, which was overgrown with rank grass and rushes: the avenue which led to the house was almost in the same condition. The house was of real Gothic architecture, built of rude stone, with battlements.

Linda: It was built in western Europe between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, and later transported stone by stone to Connecticut.

The doors were constructed in the same manner as the gate at which they entered the yard. They unlocked the door, which creaked heavily on its hinges,

Meredith [1811 text]: Which screaked heavily.

Hugh: Oh, good word. Pity it isn’t what Mitchell wrote.

and went in. They ascended a flight of stairs, wound through several dark and empty rooms, till they came to one which was handsomely furnished, with a fire burning on the hearth. Two beds were in the room, with tables, chairs, and other conveniences for house keeping. “Here we are safe,” said Melissa’s aunt, “as I have taken care to lock all the doors and gates after me; and here, Melissa, you are in the mansion of your ancestors. Your great grandfather, who came over from England, built this house in the earliest settlements of the country,

Meredith: This house is 20,000 years old? I would never have guessed it.

and here he resided until his death. The reason why so high and thick a wall was built round it, and the doors and gates so strongly fortified, was to secure it against the Indians, who frequently committed depredations on the early settlers.

Lucy: The real reason is that we’ve got a conflict between Gothic novel conventions and the Age of Reason. It is absolutely necessary that the heroine be imprisoned in a castle at some point, but it is equally necessary that all implausible circum­stances be given a rational explanation.

Linda: Except the actions of the main characters. Those can’t be explained, so we won’t even try.

Your grandfather came into possession of this estate after his father’s death: it fell to me by will, with the lands surrounding it.

Meredith: The other siblings, including Melissa’s father, begged their father to leave the old maid a handsome property so they wouldn’t have to put up with her in their own homes.

The house has sometimes been tenanted, at others not. It has now been vacant for a few years. The lands are rented yearly. John, the person from whose house we last came, is my overseer and tenant. I had a small room built, adjoining that hut, where I generally reside for a week when I come to receive my rents.

David: I can see where getting rent payment out of someone occupying a heavily fortified castle might be a time-consuming process.

I have thought frequently of fitting up this place for my future residence, but circum­stances have hitherto hindered my carrying the scheme into effect, and now, perhaps, it will never take place.

Meredith: On the day Melissa marries Beauman, her father will reward the aunt by converting the property into condos at his own expense.

“Your perverseness, Melissa, in refusing to comply with the wishes of your friends, has induced us to adopt the method of bringing you here, where you are to remain until Alonzo leaves your neigh­bourhood, at least. Notwith­standing your father’s injunctions and my vigilance, you had a clandestine interview with him last night. So we were told by Beauman this morning,

Lucy: If Beauman had had two brain cells to rub together, he’d have kept it secret from Melissa’s family and used the knowledge as a threat to hang over her head instead.

before he set off for New London, who discovered him at your window.

Linda: Beauman, you are such a liar. If he had found Alonzo at Melissa’s window, he’d have raised the alarm so Alonzo could be locked up for trespassing and he’d have the field to himself. It’s just Alonzo’s bad luck that he tripped over Beauman when he climbed back over the wall.

David: Her father reared her in a splinter sect which says that taking the name of the Lord in vain is perfectly OK, so long as you’re rich enough that any fool can tell you’re one of the Elect.

“is it possible my father can be so cruel! Is he so unfeeling as to banish me from his house, and confine me within the walls of a prison, like a common malefactor?” She flung herself on the bed in a state little inferior to distraction.

Linda: Confusion, say, or mild puzzlement.

Hugh [1804 text]: Wild and agonizing.

Meredith: Her makeup was in such a mess, it was agony even to look at her.

but spoke not a word. Her aunt became alarmed. She applied stimulants to her temples and forehead, and persuaded her to take some cordials. She remained seemingly insen­sible through the night: just at morning, she fell into a slumber, interrupted by incoherent moanings, convulsive startings, long drawn sighs, intermitting sobs, and by frequent, sudden and restless turnings from side to side. At length she appeared to be in a calm and quiet sleep for about an hour. About sunrise she awoke—her aunt sat by her bed side. She gazed languidly about the room, and burst into tears. She wept a long time; her aunt strove to console her, for she truly began to tremble, lest Melissa’s distress should produce her immediate dissolution.

Linda: If Melissa dies, all financial arrangements are off.

Towards night, however, she became more calm and resigned; but a slight fever succeeded, which kept her confined for several days, after which she slowly recovered.

John came frequently to the house to receive the commands of Melissa’s aunt, and brought such things as they wanted. Her aunt also sometimes went home with him, leaving the keys of the house with Melissa, but locking the gate and taking the key of that with her. She generally returned before sunset.

Meredith: Mmm, first it’s “I want you, John”, and now this . . .

David: John’s wife isn’t very bright, is she?

Lucy: She’s from the non-bright social class. They say “La me!” instead of “Merciful heavens!”

Linda: Obviously not one of the Elect.

When Melissa was so far recovered as to walk out, she found that the house was situated on an eminence, about one hundred yards from the Sound. The yard was large and extensive. Within the enclosure was a spacious garden, now overrun with brambles and weeds. A few medinical and—

David: I didn’t just say that, did I.

Hugh and Meredith [1804 and 1811 texts]: Medical.

Linda [1836 text]: Medicinal.

odoriferous herbs were scattered here and there, and a few solitary flowers overtopped the tangling briars below; but there was plenty of fruit on the shrubbery and trees. The outbuildings were generally in a ruinous situation.

Linda: A ruinous condition.

The cemetery was the most perfect, as it was built of hewn stone and marble, and had best withstood the ravages of time. The rooms in the house were mostly empty and decaying: the main building was firm and strong, as was also the extended wall which enclosed the whole. She found that although her aunt, when they first arrived, had led her through several upper rooms to the chamber they inhabited,

Hugh: The chamber she inhabited.

yet there was from thence a direct passage to the hall.

Linda: This architectural detail will be of crucial significance to later plot developments.

Lucy: Or at least it would be, if Mitchell didn’t promptly forget all about it.

The prospect was not disagreeable.

Meredith: Well, thank God for that; heaven forbid she be held captive in a barren desert somewhere.

West, all was wilderness, from which a brook wound along—

Hugh: From a brook which wound along.

David: Does the wilderness emerge from the brook, or the brook from the wilderness?

a little distance from the garden wall. North, were the uneven grounds she had crossed when she came there, bounded by distant groves and hills. East, beautiful meadows and fields,

Lucy: Honestly, Mitchell, you’re not writing a text-adventure game.

Linda: The old maid didn’t pack Melissa’s swimsuit, so escaping by water is obviously out of the question.

arrayed in flowery green, sloped to the salt marshes or sandy banks of the Sound, or ended in the long white beaches which extended far into the sea. South, was the Sound of Long Island.

Hugh: The Sound and Long Island.

David: I guess it depends on visibility.

Melissa passed much of her time in tracing the ruins of this antiquated place, in viewing the white sails as they passed up and down the Sound, and in listening to the songs of the thousand various birds which frequented the garden and the forest. She could have been contented here to have buried her afflictions,

Hugh: Buried all her afflictions.

and for ever to retire from the world, could Alonzo but have resided within those walls. “What will he think has become of me,” she would say, while the disconsolate tear glittered in her eye.

Hugh: The disconsolate tear of reflection.

Her aunt had frequently urged her to yield to her father’s injunctions, regain her liberty, and marry Beauman; and she every day became more solicitous and impertinent.

Hugh: Importunate, you illiterates.

A subject so hateful to Melissa sometimes provoked her to tears; at others her keen resentment.

Meredith [reaching for magnifying glass]: Our soulmate from the past has an editorial comment.

Her keen and just resentment . . . Yeah, that about covers it.

Meredith: A late hour in the night.

David and Linda [in unison]: Of the night.

Hugh: For heaven’s sake, don’t quibble so. The important thing is that Melissa is alone.

Meredith: So’s John. He sent his wife and kids to spend the night with her mother so he could enjoy a nice long visit with the old maid.

she then went to the gate, and found it was fast locked, returned, locked and bolted the doors of the house, went to bed and slept as soundly as she had done since her residence in the old mansion.

Linda: Later in the night, when her aunt returned, Melissa put the blanket over her head and pretended not to hear her pounding at the house door.

Lucy: We know the season is autumn, so if we’re still on the English fiscal calendar, we’re talking Michaelmas quarter-day, or September 29.

I was detained until late by some of my tenants; John was out, and I dare not return in the night alone. I must go back to-day. It will take me a week to settle my business. If I am obliged to stay out again I will send one of John’s daughters to sleep with you.”

Meredith: Oh, yuk. They’ve probably got lice.

“You need not give yourself that trouble,” replied Melissa; “I am under no apprehension of staying here alone; nothing can get into or out of these premises.”

Linda [as aunt]: Nice try, kid, but it’s not your safety I’m thinking of.

Hugh: Hey! Wake up! It was extremely dark; she could discern nothing. All was still and she thought she might have been deceived.

Lucy: Sermons preaching filial obedience, novels depicting the dreadful fates of girls who opposed their parents’ wishes, and etiquette manuals for rich men’s wives.

Meredith [as Melissa]: Hello! Burglars and house­breakers! I’m up here!

She listened and—

Hugh [exasperated]: The more thrilling it gets, the more you start cutting lines. Pay attention now:

—held out the candle. She fancied she saw the glimpse of two or three dark forms pass swiftly along, but so indistinctly that it was impossible to determine whether they were real, or only shadows produced by objects intervening the light of the candle. She listened and gazed with anxious solicitude, but discovered nothing more. All was still;

Meredith, Linda, David [defiantly]: All was silent.

she shut the window, and in a short time went to bed.

Meredith: Being blessed with the nerves of your average turnip, Melissa instantly put the whole thing out of her mind and calmly went to sleep.

Some time in the night she was suddenly awakened by a sharp sound, apparently near her. She started in a trembling panic, but endeavoured to compose herself with the idea, that something had fallen from the shelves. As she lay musing upon the incident, she heard loud noises in the rooms below, succeeded by an irregular and confused number of voices, and presently after, footsteps ascending the stairs which led to her chamber. She trembled; a cold chilly sweat ran down her face. Directly the doors below opened and shut with a quick and violent motion. And soon after she was convinced that she distinctly heard a whispering in her room. She raised herself up in the bed and cast inquisitive eyes towards her chamber door.

David: Which one? It’s only a couple of pages since they made such a point of there being two ways into the room.

All was darkness—no new object was visible—no sound was heard, and she again lay down.

Linda: Light a candle, Melissa. You’ll see the intruders better.

Her mind was too much agitated and alarmed to sleep. She had evidently heard sounds, footsteps and voices in the house, and whisperings which appeared to be in her room. The yard gate was locked, of which John had the key. She was confident that no person could ascend or get over the wall of the enclosure. But if that were practicable, how was it possible that any human being could enter the house? She had the key of every door, and they were all fast locked, and yet she had heard them furiously open and shut. A thought darted into her mind,—was it not a plan which her aunt had contrived in order to frighten her into a compliance with her wishes? But then how could she enter the house without keys? This might be done with the use of a false key.

David: In 1804, the idea of a duplicate set of keys was alien to the American character.

But from whence did the whisperings proceed, which appeared close to her bedside? Possibly it might be conveyed through the key-hole of her chamber door.

Lucy: Singular. Second time this chapter.

Linda: Conveniently for the burglars, the fire itself shed no light.

Meredith: It’s one of those new Dark Fires™. The aunt had it installed just last month.

Her heart beat rapidly. She cast timid glances around the room, cautiously searching every corner, and examining the door.

Lucy: Three.

All things were in the same state she had left them when she went to bed. Her door was locked in the same manner;

Lucy: Four.

David: I think we’ll have to face up to it. Mitchell has forgotten that there are two doors.

Meredith: So much for Chekhov’s Door.

no visible being was in the room except herself. She sat down, pondering on these strange events.

Linda: She what? [Reads 1836 text:]

. . . except herself; how then could she account for these events?

Lucy: In 1836, young ladies knew better than to sit down and ponder when there were burglars in the house.

Was it not probable that—

Hugh: Was it not possible.

David: Does the reader really care if the odds are more or less than 50 percent?

she was right in her first conjectures respecting their being the works of her aunt, and effected by her agents and instru­mentality? All were possible, except the cold hand which had grasped her arm. Might not this be the effect of a terrified and heated imagination? Or if false keys had been made use of to enter the rooms below, might they not also be used to enter her chamber?

Linda: In case anyone cares, I cut that whole sentence on the grounds of point­lessness and redundancy.

Lucy: There’s a logical flaw in that argument, but I can’t put my finger on it.

But could her room be unlocked, persons enter,

Hugh: A person enter.

Meredith: By 1811, readers were willing to accept the idea of one person sneaking in. It was only if a whole crowd of house­breakers showed up that they’d start getting suspicious.

approach her bed, depart and re-lock the door, while she was awake, without her hearing them?

Lucy: Five.

She knew she could not go to sleep, and she determined not to go to bed again that night. She took up a book, but her spirits had been too much disordered by the past scenes to permit her to read. She looked out of the window. The moon had arisen and cast a pale, imperfect lustre over the landscape. She recollected the opening and shutting of the doors—perhaps they were still open. The thought was alarming.

David: If a perfect stranger could get in, then she might be able to . . . uhm . . . Oh, hurry, Melissa! Lock the doors!

She opened her chamber door,

Lucy: Six.

and with the candle in her hand, cautiously descended the stairs, casting an inquisitive eye in every direction, and stopping frequently to listen.—She advanced to the door; it was locked. She examined the others; they were in the same situation. She turned to go up stairs, when a loud whisper echoed through the hall expres­sing “Away! Away!”

Lucy: Where’s our OED list? That’s another example of copspeak: “express” introducing direct discourse.

She flew like lightning to her chamber, relocked the door—

Lucy: Seven.

David: I take it back. Mitchell didn’t forget about the second entrance; he changed his mind. And now he’s trying to pound his retconned reality into everyone’s head.

and flung herself, almost breath­less, into a chair.

Meredith: This is a new interpretation of the word “away” that I have never seen before.

As soon as her scattered senses collected, she concluded that whatever had been in the house—

Hugh: That whoever had been in the house.

Linda: Naah. “Whatever” is scarier.

was there still. She resolved to go out no more until day, which soon began to discolour the east with a fainter blue, then purple streaks, intermingled with a dusky whiteness, ascended in pyramidical columns—

Hugh: In pyramidal columns.

Meredith: In pyramidial columns.

Linda: What’s he describing anyway—some kind of obelisk?

David: I think it’s a headless mushroom cloud. At daybreak, photons move vertically.

Lucy: Oh, no fair. The author didn’t tell us there were chained prisoners and implements of torture to go with the Gothic motif.

David: A normal person at this juncture would be searching for a ladder.

Nothing could be discovered of any person having been recently there. She next walked around by the wall, the whole circle of the enclosure. She was convinced that the unusual height of the wall rendered it impossible for any one to get over it. It was constructed of several tier of hewed timbers, and both sides of it were as smooth as glass. On the top, long spikes were thickly driven in, sharpened at both ends.

Linda: Pointy sticks! Hurrah!

Hugh: “One . . . two . . . three . . . Yup. Still got all eleven.”

“and she will not be back under four or five more.” “Has the key of the gate been constantly in your possession?” asked she. “The keys of the gate and draw-bridge,” he replied, “have not been out of my possession for a moment since your aunt has been gone.” “Has any person been to enquire for me or my aunt,” she enquired, “since I have been here?”

David [as John]: There was some guy named Alonzo snooping around, but we buried him under the summer squash.

Meredith: It’s a good thing the author started out by saying Melissa didn’t know what to think. I count four ideas there, and not one of them has anything to do with any of the others.

Linda: I mean, it’s not like she’s a prisoner or anything, so there’s no reason not to give her the keys.

“for if you bar the gate and let down the bridge,

David: Doesn’t he mean raise the bridge?

Meredith: How thoughtful of the author to provide these details. Now every time anyone in coastal Connecticut sets foot on a beautiful meadow, they’ll stop and wonder whether they’re walking across a grave.

That night Melissa let down the bridge,

David: Following John’s advice.

locked and barred the gate, and the doors and windows of the house: she also went again over all parts of the building, strictly searching every place, though she was well convinced she should find nothing extra­ordinary. She then retired to her chamber, seated herself at a western window,

Linda [1836 text]: At the western window.

Lucy: Another iniquitous effect of the window tax.

and watched the slow declining sun, as it leisurely sunk behind the lofty groves. Pensive twilight spread her misty mantle over the landscape; the western horizon glowed with the spangles of evening. Deepening glooms advanced. The last beam of day faded from the view, and the world was enveloped in night. The owl hooted solemnly in the forest, and the whippoorwill sung cheerfully in the garden.

Edmund [reading from typescript half concealed under the table]: If it were possible to inter­view the rival claimants to Alonzo and Melissa, Daniel Jackson and Isaac Mitchell, it would be easy to find out which was the author. Simply introduce the subject of whippoor­wills and observe the result. The author of the work was hipped about them.

Hugh [1804 text]: She knew of no one she had injured. She knew of none she had displeased—

Meredith: You did it again. Two consecutive sentences starting “She knew”, and then you complain when one gets misplaced.

except her father, her aunt and Beauman.

Linda: And half a dozen others whose names she can’t remember at the moment.

If by any of those the late terrifying scenes had been wrought, she had now effectually precluded a recurrence thereof, for she was well convinced that no human being could now enter the enclosure without her permission.

Lucy: Since the compound was now in exactly the same condition it had been in last night.

Linda: On the off chance that someone might stop by and feel like taking a walk.

She went to the gate, and found all things as she had left them: She returned, fastened the doors as usual, examined all parts of the house, and again went ing very drowsy,

Meredith: Wake up! You missed something.

David: She . . . examined all parts of the house, and again went
ing very drowsy That’s what it says.

Lucy: Don’t look at me. I’m only a reprint.

[Hugh, Meredith and Linda share notes. Linda, who has the clearest print, reads.]

Hugh [1804 text]: She concluded to go to bed.

Meredith: So did she go or just decide to go?

David: Give me that gun, you incompetent. I swear you couldn’t hit the side of a barn if you were inside it.

Awakened so instantaneously, her recollection, for a time, was confused and imperfect. She was only sensible of a strong, sulphureous scent: but she soon remembered that she had left two candles burning, and every object was now shrouded in darkness. This alarmed her exceedingly. What could have become of the candles? They must have been blown out or taken away. What was the sound she had just heard?—What the sulphureous stench which had pervaded the room?—While she was thus musing in perplexity, a broad flash like that of lightning, transiently illuminated her chamber, followed by a long, loud, and deep roar, which seemed to shake the building to its centre. It did not appear like thunder; the sounds seemed to be in the rooms directly over her head.

Linda [1836 text]: The sound seemed to be in the room directly over . . .

Meredith: The stage manager complained bitterly about how they expected him to perform miracles after cutting his budget in half.

David: But only after rendering her temporarily deaf, so she would sleep right through it.

She listened for a repetition of the thunder—but a very different sound soon grated on her ear. A hollow, horrible groan echoed through her apartment, passing off in a faint dying murmur. It was evident that the groan proceeded from some person in the chamber. Melissa raised herself up in bed; a tall white form moved from the upper end of the room, glided slowly by her bed, and seemed to pass off near the foot. She then heard the doors below alternately open and shut, slapping furiously,

Hugh: Flapping furiously.

Lucy: Oh, come on. You’ve got long s’s.

and in quick succession, followed by violent noises in the rooms below, like the falling of heavy bodies and the crash of furniture. Clamorous voices succeeded, among which she could distinguish boisterous menaces and threatenings, and the plaintive tone of expostu­lation.—A momentary silence ensued,

Meredith: Followed by a burst of spontaneous applause from the New Haven Players, gathered in this isolated spot to rehearse their next production.

when the cry of “Murder! murder! murder!!” echoed through the building, followed by the report of a pistol, and shortly after, the groans of a person apparently in the agonies of death, which grew fainter and fainter until it died away in a seemingly expiring gasp. A dead silence prevailed for a few minutes, to which a loud hoarse peal of ghastly laughter succeeded—then again all was still. But she soon heard heavy footsteps ascending the stairs to her chamber door.

Lucy: Eight.

It was now she became terrified and alarmed beyond any former example.—“Gracious heaven, defend me!” she exclaimed; “what am I coming to!” Knowing that every avenue to the enclosure was effectually secured; knowing that all the doors and windows of the house, as also that which opened into her chamber,

Linda: Has anyone got a “those which”, plural? [Shaking of heads all around.]

Lucy: I’ll count that as nine. Methinks the author doth protest too much.

were fast locked, strictly bolted and barred; and knowing that all the keys were in her possession, she could not entertain the least doubt but the noises she had heard were produced by supernatural beings, and, she had reason to believe, of the most mischievous nature. She was now convinced that her father or her aunt could have no agency in the business. She even wished her aunt had returned. It must be exceedingly difficult to cross the moat, as the draw bridge was up;

David [rapidly leafing back]: This is probably not the time to remind Melissa that she deliberately let down the bridge before locking up the night before last.

it must be still more difficult to surpass the wall of the enclosure; it was impossible for any human being to enter the house, and still more impossible to enter her chamber.

Meredith: Um, I don’t think you can have degrees of impossi­bility.

While she lay thus ruminating in extreme agitation,

Linda: I can’t get the words “ruminate” and “agitation” to fit into my brain at the same time.

Lucy: Neither could Melissa. She was so busy ruminating, it never occurred to her to get out of bed and arm herself with the poker.

momentarily expecting to have her ears assailed with some terrific sound, a pale light dimly illuminated her chamber. It grew brighter. She raised herself up to look towards the door;—

Lucy: Ten.

David: Melissa has communicated her state of mind to the furniture.

and directly she perceived some person crawling on its foot.

Hugh: Crawling on to its foot.

Linda: I can’t decide which version is creepier.

Every consideration, except present safety, was relinquished; instan­taneously she sprang from the bed to the floor—with convulsive grasp, seized the candle, flew to the fire and lighted it. She gazed wildly around the room—no new object was visible. With timid step she approached the bed; she strictly searched all around and under it, but nothing strange could be found. A thought darted into her mind to leave the house immediately and fly to John’s: this was easy, as the keys of the gate and draw-bridge were in her possession.

David: In surveys of prison escapees, the home of the warden consistently ranks among the most popular destinations.

She stopped not to reconsider her determination, but seizing the keys, with the candle in her hand, she unlocked her chamber door,

Lucy: Eleven.

and proceeded cautiously down stairs, fearfully casting her eyes on each side, as she tremblingly advanced to the outer door. She hesitated a moment. To what perils was she about to expose herself, by thus venturing out at the dead of night, and proceeding such a distance alone? Her situation she thought could become no more hazardous, and she was about to unbar the door, when she was alarmed by—

Linda [1836 text]: She heard.

Lucy: Nerves of a turnip.

a deep, hollow sigh. She looked around and saw, stretched on one side of the hall, the same ghastly form which had so recently appeared standing by her bedside. The same haggard countenance, the same awful appearance of murderous death. A faintness came upon her; she turned to flee to her chamber—

Meredith: When you see something scary in a house, your natural impulse is to run upstairs, as far from the exit as possible.

the candle dropped from her trembling hand, and she was shrouded in impenetrable darkness. She groped to find the stairs: as she came near their foot, a black object, apparently in human shape, stood before her, with eyes which seemed to burn like coals of fire, and red flames issuing from its mouth. As she stood fixed a moment in inexpres­sible trepi­dation, a large ball of fire rolled along the hall, towards the door, and burst with an explosion which seemed to rock the building to its deepest foundation. Melissa closed her eyes and sunk senseless to the floor. She revived and got to her chamber, she hardly knew how; locked her door,

Lucy: Twelve. You have to give Mitchell credit for perseverance.

lighted another candle, and after again searching the room,

David: —and again failing to find the other door that the author has retconned out of existence—

Hugh: You’ve got it backward. He didn’t change his mind about the second door—the one opening directly from the upstairs hall. He got rid of the first door—the one that involves passing through a series of upstairs rooms.

Linda: So that’s how the burglars got in. They held their breath and squeezed through the gaping cracks in the walls.

Linda: Some refreshments.

David: I’ll have a large popcorn, easy on the butter, and a box of Junior Mints.

went down stairs: she found the doors and windows all fast as she had left them. She then again searched every room in the house, both above and below, and the cellar; but she discovered no appearance of there having been any person there. Not the smallest article was displaced; every thing appeared as it had formerly been.—She then went to the gate; it was locked as usual, and the draw-bridge was up.

Lucy: This ought to have aroused her suspicion, but with all the excitement she has completely forgotten that she ever lowered it.

Linda: Bore invigorating coolness.

Meredith: You’re just saying that because you don’t know what “revigorating” means.

Hugh: Neither did Jackson, but he never let that stop him.

on their wings as they tremulously agitated the foliage of the western forest, or fluttered among the branches of the trees surrounding the mansion.

David: This is some kind of bird we’re talking about?

The green splendours of spring had begun to fade into a yellow lustre, the flowery verdure of the fields were changing to a russet hue. A robin chirped on a neighbouring oak, a wren chattered beneath, swallows twittered around the decayed buildings, the ludicrous mocking bird sung sportively from the top of the highest elm and the surrounding groves rung with varying, artless melody;

Meredith: He would know from artless.

while deep in the adjacent wilderness the woodcock, hammering on some dry and blasted trees,

Hugh: Hammering on the hollow trunk of some dry and blasted tree.

filled the woods with reverberant echoes.

David: The readers were getting on his case about whippoor­wills, so he put [counting on fingers] five different birds into one paragraph just to show he could do it.

Lucy: Six, if you count the rare North American gale-bird.

The Sound was only ruffled by the lingering breezes, as they idly wandered over its surface. Long Island, now in possession of the British troops,

Linda: Does he mean Long Island Sound? The British troops fell in and the water clasped them to its briny bosom.

Hugh [grudgingly]: You’re really getting the hang of this.

was thinly enveloped in smoky vapor; scattered along its shores lay the numerous small craft and larger ships of the hostile fleet. A few skiffs were passing and repassing the Sound, and several American gun-boats lay off a point which jutted out from the main land, far to the eastward. Numberless summer insects mingled their discordant strains amidst the weedy herbage. A heavy black cloud was rising in the northwest,

Meredith: If the castle gets the Weather Channel she can watch the clouds approaching and will know exactly when it’s time to close the windows.

Linda: Melissa, you’re delirious. Alonzo has never been near this place.

raised in her bosom the sigh of deep regret. She entered the garden and traversed the alleys, now overgrown with weeds and tufted knot-grass. The flower beds were choaked with low running bramble and tangling five-finger; tall, rank rushes, mullens and daisies, had usurped the empire of the kitchen garden. The viny arbour was broken, and principally gone to decay; yet the “lonely wild rose” blushed mournfully amidst the ruins. As she passed from the garden she involun­tarily stopped at the cemetery:

Hugh: A bony arm reached up from a grave to hold her fast.

Lucy: But that’s normal cemetery behavior, so she thought nothing of it.

she paused in serious reflection:—“Here,” said she, “in this house of gloom rest, in undisturbed silence, my honourable ancestors,

David: That phrase just cries out for a phony Japanese accent.

once the active tenants of yonder mansion. Then, throughout these solitary demesnes,

Hugh: These now solitary demesnes.

Linda: If a plain Connecticut farmer can have a “seat”, then nothing less than a demesne will do for his ancestors.

Hugh: His honorable ancestors.

the busy occurrences of life glided in cheerful circles. Then, these now moss-clad alleys, and this wild weedy garden, were the resort of the fashionable and the gay.

Meredith: Beauman would have fit right in.

Then, evening music floated over the fields, while yonder halls and apartments shone with brilliant illumination. Now all is sad, solitary and dreary, the haunt of spirits and spectres—of nameless terror. All that now remains of the head that formed, the hand that executed,

Linda: Anyone who doesn’t get a mental picture of a guillotine is just not paying attention.

Hugh: Which slowly ascended.

Lucy: I just remembered. Personal income taxes didn’t exist in 1804, so he really is better off paying himself by the word.

Meredith: After that orgy of miscellaneous birds, I knew it couldn’t be long before he dragged in a whippoorwill.

David: What peculiarity is he talking about? Shrieking, or driving a garish van?

Linda: Soaring in the air. Normal birds sit politely in the trees and contribute sound effects.

which widening, more rapidly advanced, until “the heavens were arrayed in blackness.”

Lucy: He wouldn’t want anyone to think he was plagiarizing the Bible, so he made sure to put the phrase in quotation marks. Isaiah 50:3, “I clothe the heavens with blackness, and I make sackcloth their covering.”

Linda: Isaiah again? Sooner or later, someone will notice that he’s only read the one book.

The lightning broader and brighter flashed,

Hugh: More broader and brighter flashed.

Meredith: If you’re thinking of some kind of comparison between this and “The most unkindest cut of all”, you’re kidding yourself.

hurling down its forky streaming bolts—

Linda: Forky streaming bolts? Excellent!

far in the wilderness, its flaming path followed by the vollying artillery of the skies. Now bending its long, crinkling spires over the vallies, now glimmering along the summit of the hills. Convolving clouds poured smoky volumes through the expansion; a deep, hollow, distant roar, announced the approach of “summoned winds.”

David: Yo! Winds! C’mere a minute.

The whole forest bowed in awful grandeur, as from its dark bosom rushed the impetuous hurricane, twisting off, or tearing up by the roots, the stoutest trees, whirling the heaviest branches through the air with irresistible fury. It dashed upon the sea, tossed it into irregular mountains, or mingled its white foamy spray with the gloom of the turbid skies. Slantways, the large heavy drops of rain began to descend.

Meredith: It’s easy to see whose side God is on. On the very night Melissa first dares think of leaving the compound, you get the Storm of the Century.

Melissa hastened to the mansion; as she reached the door a very brilliant flash of light­ning, accompanied by a tremendous explosion, alarmed her. A thunder bolt had entered a large elm tree within the enclosure, and with a horrible crash, had shivered it from top to bottom. She unlocked the door—

David: Another rural myth laid to rest. I’d always heard that in the good old days, country people never bothered to lock their doors.

Linda: Most farmers didn’t have to worry about locking out ghosts. That would make a difference.

and hurried to her chamber. Deep night now filled the atmosphere;

Meredith: There’s your anti-photons again.

the rain poured in torrents, the wind rocked the building, and bellowed in the adjacent groves: the sea raged and roared, fierce lightnings rent the heavens, alternately involving the world in the sheeted flame of its many coloured fires; thunders rolled awfully around the firmament, or burst with horrid din, bounding and rever­berating among the surrounding woods, hills and valleys. It seemed nothing less than the crash of worlds—

Hugh and Meredith: The crush of worlds.

David: Hey, I’ve seen that movie. When Worlds Crash.

Meredith [as Melissa]: As long as I’m stuck here for another night, I may as well . . . uh . . . not go to bed.

She now suddenly recollected that in her haste to regain her chamber, she had forgotten to lock the outer door.

Hugh: You never know who might be strolling around on a night like this, rattling door­knobs and testing drawbridges.

The shock she had received when the lightning demolished the elm tree, was the cause of this neglect. She took the candle, ran hastily down, and fastened the door. As she was returning, she heard footsteps, and imperfectly saw the glance of something coming out of an adjoining room into the hall. Supposing some ghastly object was approaching, she averted her eyes and flew to the stairs.

Linda: Next best thing to putting your head under the covers. If you don’t see it, it doesn’t exist.

As she was ascending them, a voice behind her exclaimed, “Gracious heaven! Melissa!” The voice agitated her frame with a confused, sympathetic sensation. She turned, fixed her eyes upon the person who had spoken; unconnected ideas floated a moment in her imagination:

Lucy: I wish the author could have worked a masked ball into his plot. Melissa’s a natural for those scenes where a teeny little eye mask becomes an impenetrable disguise.

“Eternal powers!” she cried, “it is Alonzo.”

Hugh [1804 newspaper]:

TO BE CONTINUED

Meredith: Way to go, Mitchell! Only halfway through the serial, you’ve finally grasped the concept of a cliffhanger.

Alonzo and Melissa were equally surprised at so unexpected a meeting. They could scarcely credit their own senses.—How he had discovered her solitude—what led him to that lonely place—how he had got over the wall—were queries which first arose in her mind. He likewise could not conceive by what miracle he should find her in a remote, desolate building, which he had supposed to be uninhabited. With rapture he took her trembling hand; tears of joy choaked their utterance. “You are—

Linda: —all—

wet, Alonzo,”

David [overlapping, in Riff Raff voice]: “You’re wet.”

said Melissa at length;

Meredith [as Melissa]: Oh! Now I remember where I know you from! You’re that man who took shelter from a storm at the Simpsons’ house.

“we will go up to my chamber;

Linda: Melissa’s got this thing for dripping wet men.

Lucy: Insert wisecrack about “drips” ad lib.

I have a fire there, where you can dry your clothes.”

David: Since you won’t be needing them for a while, nudge nudge.

David: I’m contemplating, I’m contemplating.

Meredith: If Alonzo and Melissa had been children of nature, the plot would have taken a very different direction at this point.

After innumerable difficulties, troubles and perplexities; after vexing embarrass­ments, and a cruel separation, they were once more together, and for some time every other consi­deration was lost. The violence of the storm had not abated. The lightning still blazed, the thunder bellowed, the wind roared, the sea raged, the rain poured, mingled with heavy hail: Alonzo and Melissa heard a little of it.

Hugh and Meredith: Heard little of it.

Linda [sings]: What a difference an “a” makes.

She told him all that had happened to her since they parted, except the strange noises and awful sights which had terrified her during her confinement in that solitary building: this she considered unnecessary and untimely, in her present situation.

Meredith [to Lucy]: You were saying something earlier about what goes on inside Alonzo’s brain. I think Melissa’s brain works the same way.

Alonzo informed her, that as soon as he had learned the manner in which she had been sent away, he left the house of Vincent and went to her father’s to see if he could not find out by some of the domestics what course her aunt had taken.

Hugh: Her aunt and she had taken.

None of them knew any thing about it.

David: That’s what happens when your father goes bankrupt. You can’t pay the witnesses enough to refresh their memories when someone else has paid them to forget.

He did not put himself in the way of her father, as he was apprehensive of ill treatment thereby. He then went to several places among the relatives of the family where he had heretofore visited with Melissa, most of whom received him with a cautious coldness. At length he came to the house of Mr. Simpson, the gentleman to whose seat Alonzo was once driven by a shower, where he accidentally found Melissa on a visit, as mentioned before.

Meredith [1811 text]: Footnote, See page 26. [Turns pages.] “As Alonzo glanced his eyes hastily around the room, he thought he recognized a familiar countenance. A hurried—”

Hugh: Yes, thank you, we remember.

David: It does lie nearest his heart. He just has a different definition of “welfare”.

Meredith: As opposed to, uh, the family members who aren’t related to them?

Lucy: As opposed to the relatives who no longer consider themselves part of the family.

I will dispatch my son William among our connections, to see if he can find her out.”

Linda [wild excitement]: It’s William, the man with two names! I knew he’d be important!

David: If it’s his only son, why does he need to specify “my son William”?

Hugh: His older sons went over to the Loyalist side, so we don’t speak of them.

The next morning William departed, and was gone two days; but could not obtain the least intelligence either of Melissa or her aunt, although he had been the rounds among the relations of the family.

Lucy: The exact same people Alonzo has already questioned.

“There is some mystery in this affair,” said Mr. Simpson.

Linda: —submitting his entry in the Quickness of Uptake sweepstakes.

“I am very little acquainted with Melissa’s aunt. I have understood that she draws a decent support from her patrimonial resources, which, it is said, are pretty large, and that she resides alternately with her different relatives. I have understood also that my kinsman expects her fortune to come into his family, in case she never marries, which, in all proba­bility, she now will not, and that she, in consequence, holds considerable influence over him. It is not possible but that—

Hugh [1804 text]: It is possible that.

Meredith: Are you asking us to believe that your version uses fewer words and makes more sense?

Lucy: Melissa asked him to look up some points of law in the Yale library.

He then departed, and travelled through the neighbouring villages and adjoining neigh­bourhoods, making, at almost every house, such enquiries as he considered necessary on the occasion. He at length arrived at the inn in the last little village where Melissa and her aunt had stopped the day they came to the mansion. Here the inn-keeper informed him that two ladies, answering his description, had been at his house: he named the time, which was the day in which Melissa, with her aunt, left her father’s house. The inn-keeper told him that they purchased some articles in the village, and drove off to the south. Alonzo then traversed the country adjoining the Sound, far to the westward,

Meredith [as innkeeper]: Come back! Not that way! I said south, not sound.

and was returning eastward, when he was overtaken by the shower. No house being within sight, be betook himself—

Hugh: “. . . be betook himself”?

David: Oops.

Hugh, Meredith and Linda [in unison]: You’ve got a jeebie! You’ve got a jeebie!

David [sulkily]: All right then, you read it.

Hugh: A large, tall tree. The height is important.

which stood near him, on the verge of the moat, or rather in that place, was hurled from—

Lucy: I realize this is getting into “Dog Bites Man” territory, but I have to say I couldn’t make head or tail of that.

Hugh [huffily]: Neither could your typesetters. Pay attention now:

. . . a large, tall tree, which stood near him, on the verge of the moat, or rather in that place, river,

Hugh: Now do you get it? In that place, the moat is best described as a river.

was hurled from its foundation,

David [as contractor]: I told them you can’t install mature elm trees on slab, but would they listen?

and fell, with a hideous crash, across the moat, its top lodging on the wall. He scrambled up on the trunk, and made his way on to the wall. By the incessant glare of lightning he was able to see distinctly. The top of the tree was partly broken by the force of its fall, and hung down the other side of the wall. By these branches he let himself down into the yard, proceeded to the house, found the door open, which Melissa had left so in her fright, and entered into one of the rooms, where he proposed to stay until at least the shower was over,

Linda: To Melissa it’s a hurricane, to he-man Alonzo it’s a mere shower.

Meredith [ticking off points on fingers]: The keys to the prison are in her possession; there is no other human being for miles around; the hero is alive and unhurt, and has managed to find her . . . . [Shakes head sadly.] I can’t find any flaw in her reasoning. She’s trapped.

Alonzo was shocked at the alteration which appeared in the features of Melissa. The rose had faded from her cheek, except when it was transiently suffused with a hectic flush. A livid paleness sat upon her countenance, and her fine form was rapidly wasting.

Lucy: A week on bread and water will do that. While the aunt’s away, John and his family have been living high off the hog on the provisions meant for Melissa.

Meredith: Well, he could sneak up behind John, knock him unconscious and steal the— Oh, right. John doesn’t have the keys to Melissa’s prison, so no point to that.

David: He could feast his eyes on Melissa during the twenty-three hours of each day that John isn’t there. But when you’re used to seeing her for two or three hours at a stretch, at intervals of a week or so, I guess that wouldn’t be very satisfying.

Linda: He could sneak up behind Melissa, knock her unconscious, and leave her on the doorstep of the State Home for the Incurably Feeble-Minded.

Hugh: He could knock himself unconscious, and—

In this dilemma there was but one expedient. “Suffer me,” said Alonzo to Melissa, “to remove you from this solitary confinement. Your health is impaired. To you, your father is no more a father; he has steeled his bosom to paternal affection; he has banished you from his house, placed you under the tyranny of others, and confined you in a lonely, desolate dwelling, far from the sweets of society; and this only because you cannot heedlessly renounce a most solemn contract, formed under his eye, and sanctioned by his immediate consent and approbation. Pardon me, Melissa, I would not censure your father;

Hugh [1804 text]: I would not wish unjustly to censure your father.

Lucy: As a former law student, Alonzo knows that it doesn’t count as slander if it’s true.

Linda: One of the first duties.

David: By 1836, other duties might be allowed equal importance.

and have religiously practised thereon—but where, Alonzo, would you remove me?”

Meredith [as Melissa]: If you’re thinking of a cold-water walkup in the Bronx, let me tell you right now that I’d rather stay in prison.

Lucy: And if conciliation is not possible, her father will be powerless to recover a minor child being held without his consent in a known location near his own home.

This can be done without my being known to have any agency in the business.

Linda: Back in 1804, the Connecticut State Bar frowned on applicants with convictions for kidnapping.

David: Sooner or later, the author will have to explain why Melissa is covering for the ghosts and house­breakers.

To continue there—

Hugh: Hey!

Linda: My editor was so eager to get on with the plot, he started making wholesale cuts. What did I miss?

David [continues]:

—knew nothing of. But should she leave it in the way she had proposed, she was not sure but she would be immediately remanded back, more strictly guarded, and more severely treated. To continue there, under existing circum­stances, would be impossible, long to exist. She therefore came to a deter­mination—“I will go,” she said, “to Mr. Simpson’s.”

Lucy: If Simpson, Junior, is the unidentified Third Man, then Alonzo has played right into his hands by offering to bring her to him.

It was then agreed that Alonzo should proceed to Vincent’s, interest them in the plan, procure a carriage, and return at eleven o’clock the next night.

Meredith [as Melissa]: We’ve come up with an elaborate, brilliant— What? Leave now? You can’t be serious!

Melissa was to leave the draw-bridge down, and the gate open. If John should come to the house the succeeding day, she would persuade him to let her still keep the keys. But it was possible her aunt might return. This would render the execution of the scheme more hazardous and difficult. A signal was therefore agreed on;

Hugh: One if by land, two if by sea.

if her aunt should be there, a candle was to be placed at the window fronting the gate, in the room above; if not, it was to be placed against a similar window in the room below. In the first case Alonzo was to rap loudly at the door. Melissa was to run down, under pretence of seeing who was there,

Linda [as aunt]: Child, go see who that is knocking on the door inside a locked compound in the middle of the night.

David: If it’s a salesman, we don’t want any.

fly with Alonzo to the carriage,

Meredith: —which has been carefully prepared by greasing all moving parts and wrapping the horses’ hooves in burlap so it can pull up to the door without making a sound.

and leave her aunt to scrape acquaintance with the ghosts and goblins of the old mansion. For even if her aunt should return, which was extremely doubtful, she thought she could contrive to let down the bridge and unlock the gate in the evening without her knowledge.

Lucy: Since John, as previously noted, is not very bright, it didn’t occur to him to ask why Melissa needed two quarts of WD-40.

Linda: That surprises me every time. I keep assuming a mirror universe.

and Alonzo prepared to depart. Melissa accompanied him to the gate and the bridge, which was let down: he passed over, and she slowly withdrew, both frequently turning to look back. When she came to the gate, she stopped;—Alonzo stopped also. She waved a white handkerchief she had in her hand, and Alonzo bowed in answer to the sign. She then leisurely entered,

Meredith [as Melissa, yawning]: Well, that was a nice break. Now it’s back to the boring life of a prisoner.

Lucy: If we had an almanac, we could work out the exact date.

Linda: The author has dreams of English publication, so he has to explain things that would be perfectly obvious to every American reader.

The dusky shadows of night fled to the deep glens, and rocky caverns of the wilderness. The American lark—

Meredith: Thanks to the loan of a time machine, Mitchell got an advance look at Pearson’s article and hastily penciled in the word “American”.

soared high in the air,

David: —taking over from the nighthawk or male whippoorwill, which works the night shift and has just gone off duty.

Lucy: Since they’re the only human beings he has set eyes on in this desolate region, they can’t possibly have any connection with Melissa.

but made the best of his way to Vincent’s, where he arrived about noon.—Rejoiced to find that he had discovered Melissa, they applauded the plan of her removal, and assisted him in obtaining a carriage. A sedan was procured, and he set out to return, promising to see Vincent again, as soon as he had removed Melissa to Mr. Simpson’s. He made such use of his time as to arrive at the mansion at the hour appointed. He found the draw-bridge down, the gate open, and saw, as had been agreed upon, the light at the lower window, glimmering through the branches of trees. He was therefore assured that Melissa was alone. His heart beat; a joyful tremor seized his frame; Melissa was soon to be under his care, for a short time at least.—He drove up to the house, sprang out of the carriage, and fastened his horse to a locust tree: The door was open; he went in, flew lightly up stairs, entered her chamber—Melissa was not there!

Linda: Oh, no. It’s one of those social-class markers, like who sits where when two couples share a carriage. Alonzo automa­tically pulled up to the front door, the way he did at the Simpsons’. Meanwhile, Melissa has spent the last two hours sitting on her baggage at the carriage entrance.

Meredith: Hasn’t he got that backward? If she had left voluntarily, she wouldn’t have put up the signal. But if she was tricked or coerced into leaving after the candle was in place, there’s not much she could have done about it.

Perhaps, in a freakish moment, she had concealed herself for no other purpose than to cause him a little perplexity.

David: When she looked out the window and saw that he was planning to carry her off in a one-horse vehicle, she was so disgusted she hid in the attic.

He therefore took the candle and searched every corner of the chamber, and every room of the house, not even missing the garret and the cellar. He then placed the candle in a lantern, and went out and examined the out-houses: he next went round the garden and the yard, strictly exploring and investi­gating every place; but he found her not. He repeat­edly and loudly called her by name;

Hugh [as Alonzo]: Hello! Kidnappers! Here I am!

he was answered only by the solitary echoes of the wilderness.

Lucy: By the time it occurred to Alonzo to wonder how overgrown trees and brambles could send back such clear echoes, the painted backdrops had all been packed away for use in another novel.

Again he returned to the house, traversed the rooms, there also calling on the name of Melissa: his voice reverberated from the walls, dying away in solemn murmurs in the distant empty apartments. Thus did he continue his anxious scrutiny, alternately in the house and the enclosure, until day—but no traces could be discovered, nothing seen or heard of Melissa. What had become of her he could not form the most distant conjecture. Nothing was removed from the house; the beds, the chairs, the table, all the furniture remained in the same condition as when he was there the night before;

Meredith: Her clothes and personal belongings were gone, along with her aunt’s things, but it would have been improper and indelicate to look for those.

Lucy [automatically]: Gray’s Elegy, 1751.

upon the premises behind, sacred only for the treasure they lately possessed; then sunk backward in his seat, and was dragged slowly away.

Linda: Wild horses couldn’t drag him away, so it’s a good thing his carriage was harnessed to a tame one.

Hugh and Meredith: John stared in amazement.

Lucy: Catch your phlegmatic New Englander doing anything so dramatic as start visibly.

“Understanding,” said Alonzo, “that you have the charge of the old mansion—

Linda: Mitchell got a package rate on “old mansion”. He never calls it anything else, except sometimes “desolate” or “lonely”. Oh, and one time after he’d used up the package he had to say “antique”.

David [as John]: She never said anything about it when I gave her the keys.

Linda [1836 text]: That he was there.

Hugh: Same difference. He was there, and saw her.

and according to her request he had left the keys of the gate and bridge with her: he desired Alonzo to tarry there until he ran to the mansion.

Meredith: If Alonzo had really been desperate for information, that would have been his cue to offer to drive John the two-mile round trip.

He returned in about half an hour.

David: John strolled along until he was out of sight, had a leisurely smoke, and then strolled back.

Meredith: The aunt got bored with living in the castle and started having doubts about Melissa’s father’s promises, so she decided to hide Melissa somewhere else and ransom her to the highest bidder.

Linda: Illustrating once again why you should always do things yourself instead of bringing in co-conspirators.

Social intercourse had become suspended between the families of Vincent and Melissa’s father, as the latter had taxed the former with improperly endeavouring to promote the views of Alonzo. They therefore procured a neighbouring woman to visit Melissa’s mother, to see if any information could be obtained concerning Melissa;

Lucy: When you need information, always start by questioning the person who you already know doesn’t know anything. She, in turn, will be able to alert the people who do know something.

but the old lady had heard nothing of her since her departure with her aunt, who had never yet returned.—Alonzo left Vincent’s and went to Mr. Simpson’s. He told them all that had happened since he was there, of which, before, they had heard nothing. At the houses of Mr. Simpson and Vincent he resided some time, while they made the most diligent search to discover Melissa; but nothing could be learned of her fate.

David: Have you noticed how you never see Simpson and Vincent together? They might as well be the same person.

Meredith: They’re played by the same actor.

David [as John, whining]: She never told me the girl was a prisoner, so how was I supposed to guess?

From the discourse which my wife and I afterwards overheard between madam and the strange gentleman, I understood that young madam had been sent to reside with some friend or relation at a great distance, because her father wanted her to marry a man, and she wished to marry somebody else.”

Linda [as John’s wife]: Stop gabbling, John. The man doesn’t want to hear your gossip. Who did you say you were again, sir—the census taker?

From John’s plain and simple narrative, Alonzo concluded that Melissa had been removed by her father’s order, or through the agency, or instigation of her aunt.

David: Oh, what a relief. I was starting to be afraid she’d been abducted by aliens.

Whether his visit to the old mansion had been somehow discovered or suspected, or whether she was removed by some preconcerted or antecedent plan, he could not conjecture.

Meredith: He knew it couldn’t have anything to do with the two people who watched him sneaking out of Melissa’s prison. If they had had any connection with her, they would have come forward and introduced themselves.

Still, the situation in which he found the mansion the night he went to convey her away, left an inexplicable impression on his mind. He could in no manner account how the candle could be placed at the window according to agreement, unless it had been done by herself; and if so, how had she so suddenly been conveyed away?

Lucy: If she is capable of acting independently at some time between sundown and 11 P.M., it is mathe­matically impossible for her to have been under someone else’s control at a later time that same evening.

David: That would definitely exclude her brother.

Linda: Now that the aunt knows he will give the keys to anyone who asks, there’s no reason not to let him keep them.

Meredith: Alonzo, you’re an idiot. If you say you’re interested in buying, you can look over every inch of the property and ask detailed questions about the design and construc­tion.

Convinced now that Melissa was removed by the agency of her persecutors, he compared the circum­stances of John’s relation. “She had been sent to reside with some friend or relation at a great distance.” This great distance, he believed to be New London,

David: Now that is extremely sound reasoning. Since the world begins and ends with Connecticut, the greatest possible distance would be the opposite end of the state. It would be even better if they knew someone who lived inland, in the northeast corner of the universe.

Linda: You can talk all you like about being bankrupt, but when Alonzo needs money, where else is he going to go?

Linda: Clearly the author has never been to a farm; or possibly visited earth at all.

we live frugally, and realize the blessings of health, comfort, and contentment. Our only disquietude is on your account, Alonzo. Your affair with Melissa, I suppose, is not as favourable as you could wish. But despair not, my son; hope is the harbinger of fairer prospects: rely on Providence, which never deserts those who submissively bow to the justice of its dispen­sations.”

David: See, Alonzo? It’s all your fault for tampering with Fate by attempting to remove Melissa from the castle.

Unwilling to disturb the serenity of his parents, Alonzo did not tell them his troubles. He answered, that perhaps all might yet come right; but that, as in the present state of his mind he thought a change of situation might be of advantage, he asked liberty of his father to travel for some little time. To this his father consented, and offered him a part of the money he had on hand, which Alonzo refused, saying he did not expect to be long gone, and his resources had not failed him.

Hugh and Meredith: Not yet failed him.

Linda: Resources, don’t fail me now.

He then sold off his books, his horses, his carriages, &c. the insignia of his better days, but now useless appendages,

Meredith: When you’re planning a long overland trip, horses and carriages are about as useful as a second nose.

David: The carriages are all in the shop anyway, or he wouldn’t have needed to rent one to rescue Melissa.

Linda: So that’s why he always brings out the theatrical analogies when he’s describing Nature.

moved in melancholy succession over his mind. That day he grew more indisposed; he experienced an unusual languor, listlessness and debility; chills, followed by hot flashes, heavy pains in the head and back, with incessant and intolerable thirst.

David: He should never have made that return visit to John’s house. One of the children has just been diagnosed with cholera.

It was near night when he reached Killingsworth,

Linda: Killingworth.

Lucy [poring over map]: Oh, man, he is sick. Killingworth—no “s”—is at least five miles inland, and he should be sticking to the coast. At this rate he’s going to end up in Massa­chusetts.

Hugh: Demonstrating once again the truth of Mark Twain’s dictum that with proper treatment, deadly bacterial diseases can be cured in seven days, but if left to themselves they will hang on for a week.

He arrived at New London, and took lodgings with a private family of the name of Wyllis, in a retired part of the town.

Meredith: Names of hotel guests are recorded with the city magistrate, who is bound to be a friend of either Beauman or Melissa’s family, so Alonzo decides to keep a low profile.

Linda: Besides, hotels tend to insist on intimate personal information, like your last name.

The first object was to ascertain whether Melissa was at her cousin’s. But how should he obtain this information? He knew no person in the town except it was those whom he had reason to suppose were leagued against him. Should he go to the house of her cousin, it might prove an injury to her if she was there, and could answer no valuable purpose if she was not.—The evening after he arrived there he wrapped himself up in his cloak and took the street which led to the house of Melissa’s cousin: he stopped when he came against it, to see if he could make any discoveries.

David: He didn’t want to draw attention to himself by asking openly, so he pinned a sign to his back saying “Look at me! I’m a spy”.

As people were passing and repassing the street, he got over into a small enclosure which adjoined the house, and stood under a tree, about thirty yards from the house: he had not long occupied this station, before a lady came to the chamber window, which was flung up, opposite to the place where he stood; she leaned out, looked earnestly around for a few minutes, then shut it and retired. She had brought a candle into the room, but did not bring it to the window; of course he could not distinguish her features so as to identify them.

Hugh: He left his glasses at home because they didn’t go with the skulker costume.

He knew it was not the wife of Melissa’s cousin, and from her appearance he believed it to be Melissa. Again the window opened, again the same lady appeared;—she took a seat at a little distance within the room; she reclined with her head upon her hand, her arm appeared to be supported by a stand or table. Alonzo’s heart beat violently; he now had a side view of her face, and was more than ever convinced that it was Melissa. Her delicate features, though more pale and dejected than when last he saw her;—her brown hair,

Lucy: No way. Raven tresses, flaxen curls, golden locks: all legitimate choices. No romantic heroine ever had brown hair. What’s next—freckles?

Meredith [as Mrs. Wyllis]: How dare you accuse me of taking in lodgers! Alonzo is an old and dear friend, currently staying with us as a paying guest.

David: Clearly the right decision, since she’s now in a permanent decline with no hope of recovery.

Hugh: If she had stayed in Newport, she’d be in an irreversible coma by now.

“Do you not think,” said Mrs. Wyllis, “that she resembles her cousin Melissa, who resided there some time ago?” “Very much indeed,” replied her husband, “only she is not quite so handsome.”

Meredith: This is all leading up to some kind of identical-cousins gag, isn’t it? All that’s missing is the tiny little mask.

Again was Alonzo disappointed, and again did he experience a melancholy pleasure: he had the last night hoped that he had discovered Melissa; but to find her in a hopeless decline, was worse than that she should remain undiscovered.

Linda: Oh, pay attention, Alonzo. It isn’t Melissa who’s in a decline, it’s her cousin.

“It is reported,” said Mrs. Wyllis, “that Melissa has been upon the verge of matrimony, but that the treaty was somehow broken off;

David: “Reported”? “Treaty”? Who was she marrying—the King of Sweden?

Meredith: So Beauman’s getting in on the Loyalist side, then. Figures.

Lucy: I mean, it’s not like they could possibly have any information about Melissa, being her cousins and all, so let’s just scratch that one off the list.

How he was now to proceed, Alonzo could not readily decide. To return to his native place, appeared to be as useless as to tarry where he was. For many weeks had he travelled and searched every place where he thought it probable Melissa might be found, both among her relatives and elsewhere. He had made every effort to obtain some clue to her removal from the old mansion, but he could learn nothing but what he had been told by John. If his friends should ever hear of her, they could not inform him thereof, as no one knew where he was.

David: Because of the war, mail can be delivered to New London, but it can’t be sent from New London to other parts of the st— world.

David: But it turned out to be only an unreal phantom of night.

Linda: A Jack-a-lantern fancy.

She glided through several winding rooms, and at length he lost sight of her, and the light gradually fading away, he was involved in deep darkness.—He groped along, and at length saw a faint distant glimmer, the course of which he pursued, until he came into a large room, hung with black tapestry, and illuminated by a number of bright tapers. On one side of the room appeared a hearse, on which some person was laid: he went up to it—the first object that arrested his attention was the lovely form of Melissa, shrouded in the sable vestments of death! Cold and lifeless, she lay stretched upon the hearse, beautiful even in dissolution;

Meredith: I wish he wouldn’t use that word. I know it just means “death”, but I still get a picture of her crumbling to bits before our eyes.

the dying smile of complacency had not yet deserted her cheek.

David: Her lips had decomposed, but there was still a bit of one cheek left.

The music of her voice had ceased; her fine eyes were closed for ever. Insensible to objects in which she once delighted; to afflictions which had blasted her blooming prospects, and drained the streams of life, she lay like blossomed trees of spring, over­thrown by rude and boisterous winds. The deep groans which convulsed the distracted bosom, and shocked the trembling frame of Alonzo,

Hugh [1804 text]: And shook the trembling frame.

Linda: If he’s already trembling, how would you tell?

Lucy: So was it the first dream, or the second one, that confirmed his resolution to go back home? Or are we still waiting for the “incident”?

“Who knows,” he said, “but that this may finally be the case; but that the sun of peace may yet dispel these distressful hours!”

Hugh, Meredith, David [in unison]: Dispel the glooms of these distressful hours. The hours themselves aren’t going anywhere.

Linda [grumpily]: So you read it.

He arose, determined to return home in a few days. He went out and enjoyed his morning walk in a more composed frame of spirits than he had for some time experienced. He returned, and as he was entering the door he saw the weekly newspaper of the town, which had been published that morning, and which the carrier had just flung into the hall.—The family had not yet arisen. He took up the paper, carried it to his chamber, and opened it to read the news of the day. He ran his eye hastily over it, and was about to lay it aside, when the death list arrested his attention,

Linda [muttering]: —attracted his attention.

Linda: Oh, the irony.

“Miss Melissa D——, the amiable daughter of J—— D——, Esq. of *******, Connecticut, in the eighteenth year of her age.”

Meredith: Hooray!

The paper fell from his palsied hand—a sudden faintness came upon him—the room grew dark—he staggered, and fell senseless upon the floor.

David: So the book should really have been called Alonzo and Two-Thirds of Melissa. From here on, he’s soloing it.

Linda: I can never remember if “the eighteenth year of her age” means she was eighteen or seventeen.

Meredith: It means she’s been lying about her age. She was “about sixteen” in mid-1773 when the book started, and by now we’re in late 1777, so she’d have to be at least twenty.

Lucy [emerging from second book]: Amelia Stratton Comfield liked this scene so much, she made up a character just so she could kill him off and have someone read the obituary.

. . . the weekly newspaper arrived from the neighbouring village; he took it up, hoping to find something to amuse his thoughts; he opened it to read the news of the day; he ran his eye hastily over it, and was about to lay it aside, “when the death list arrested his attention by a display of broad black lines,”

Note the quotation marks, as if only that line had been stolen.

and he, who had not yet become reconciled to his present misfortune, was now about to experience another equally severe.

In this version, “he” is the father of Melissa, alias Alida, and his “present misfortune” is that his wife has just died. He has to remarry so the author has an excuse to move the story to New York.

What could equal his bitterness, his surprise and grief, when he read the disastrous news that his youngest son (who had lately gone on a foreign expedition) had died of a fever in a distant land a few weeks previous!

. . . and if you’re waiting for an explanation of how this got into a small-town weekly newspaper before anyone bothered to inform the family, don’t hold your breath. The only previous time the book mentions his sons, it’s to say that they’re both in business in New York.

The paper fell from his palsied hand,—a sudden faintness came over him,—he fell back almost senseless in his chair,—exhausted by excess of grief, he remained a long time in a—

Oh, sorry. That last bit comes later in Alonzo and Melissa. We haven’t got to it yet.

Linda: Just what we need. Sneak previews of Mitchell’s prose.

Hugh [1804 newspaper]:

TO BE CONTINUED

The incidents of our story will here produce a pause.

David: We’ve just had one, thanks.

The fanciful part of our readers may cast it aside—

Hugh [1804 text]: May be ready to cast it aside.

Meredith: So we’ve got to intercept them, quick.

in chagrin and disappointment. “Such an event,” may they say, “we were not prepared to expect.—After so many, and such various trials of heart; after innumerable difficulties surmounted; almost invincible objects overcome, and insuperable barriers removed—after attending the hero and heroine of your tale through the diversified scenes of anxiety, suspense, hope, disap­pointment, expectation, joy, sorrow, anticipated bliss, sudden and disastrous woe—after elevating them to the threshold of happiness, by the premature death of one,

Linda: I don’t think he meant that the way it came out.

to plunge the other, instantaneously, in deep and irretrievable despair, must not, cannot be right.—Your story will hereafter become languid and spiritless; the subject will be uninter­esting, the theme unengaging, since the genius—

Meredith: Ha!

Hugh [sulkily]: It was supposed to be geni.

Linda: The kind in a bottle?

David: This book would drive anyone to the bottle.

Meredith [sings]: I dream of Geni with the light brown . . .

Lucy: No, that’s Melissa. He said she has brown hair.

Meredith: Oh, I’m sure they all have, long before they got to this point.

Are we not detailing facts?

David: That was a rhetorical question, wasn’t it.

Shall we gloss them over with false colouring? Shall we describe things as they are, or as they are not?

Linda: I vote “are not”. You’ll sell more copies.

Shall we draw with the pencil of nature, or of art? Do we indeed paint life as it is, or as it is not? Cast thine eyes, reader, over the ephemeral circle of passing and fortuitous events; view the change of contin­gencies; mark well the varied and shifting scenery in the great drama of time;—seriously contemplate nature in her operations;

David: So long as Nature’s operations are limited to sunsets and thunder­storms, we’re all set.

Linda: Are you asking us or telling us?

Hugh: It was fine when I set the type. Arouse your hero, full stop.

Hugh [1804 text]: To what pathos of. Honestly, sometimes I think you guys aren’t even reading the text.

David: Full points for observation.

Linda: I wonder that every time I sit down and open the book.

Why was not my spirit permitted to take its flight to regions where my guardian angel is gone?

Meredith: Because if the reader has to suffer, so do you, Al.

Why am I cursed with memory? O that I might be blessed with forget­fulness! But why do I talk of blessings?—Heaven never had one in store for me. Where are fled my anticipated joys? To the bosom, the dark bosom of the oblivious tomb! There lie all the graces worthy of love in life—all the virtues worthy of lamentation in death! There lies perfection; perfec­tion has here been found. Was she not all that even Heaven could demand?—Fair, lovely, holy and virtuous.

Linda: Not much in the brains department, but you can’t have everything.

Her tender solicitudes, her enrapturing endearments, her soul-inspiring blandish­ments,—gone, gone for ever? That heavenly form, that discriminate mind—all lovely as light, all pure as a seraph’s—a prey to worms—mingled with incorporeal shadows, regardless of former inquietudes or delights, regardless of the keen anguish which now wrings tears of blood from—

Lucy: That isn’t blood, it’s just porph— Oh, sorry. Forgot where I was.

Meredith: So many possible comments, so little time . . .

He arose and flung himself on the bed in unspeakable agony. “And what, Alas!” he again exclaimed, “now remains for me? Existence and unparalleled misery. The consolation even of death is denied me. But Melissa! she—ah, where is she! Oh, reflection insup­portable! insufferable consi­deration! Must that heavenly frame putrify, moulder, and crumble into dust? Must the loathsome spider nestle on her lily bosom? the odious reptile riot on her delicate limbs? the worm revel amid the roses of her cheek, fatten on her temples, and bask in the lustre of her eyes?

Linda: Well, yeah, it must. But that doesn’t mean you have to dwell on it with such loving detail.

David: He’s repeating himself.

Lucy: No, that was Alida. She tacked this line onto the end of the Death Notices part.

until the servant summoned him to breakfast. He told the servant he was indisposed and requested he might not be disturbed. Mr. Wyllis and his lady came up, anxious to yield him any assistance in their power, and advised him to call a physician. He thanked them, but told them it was unnecessary; he only wanted rest. His extreme distress of mind brought on a relapse of fever, from which he had but imperfectly recovered. For several days he lay in a very dangerous and doubtful state. A physician was called, contrary to his choice or knowledge, as for the most part of the time his mind was delirious and sensation imper­fect. This was, probably, the cause of baffling the disorder. He was in a measure insensible to his woes. He did not oppose the prescrip­tions of the physician.

Hugh: Being unconscious at the time.

Meredith: Footnote, See page 39. [Turning pages.] “. . . when Melissa had fixed the day, she mentioned that she had an uncle who lived near Charleston, in South Carolina, whose daughter was to pass the summer with Melissa, and was expected to arrive before the appointed day.”

Meredith: But the day never came, so Alonzo never got to meet the cousin.

David: Now, is this the same cousin that he saw in New London and almost mistook for Melissa, or is there another cousin—and do they all look alike?

Linda [singing]: They’re cousins, identical cousins.

thither he supposed she had been sent by her father, when she was removed from the old mansion, in order to prevent his having access to her, and with a view to compel her to marry Beauman. Her appearance had indicated a deep decline when he last saw her. “There,” said he, “far removed from friends and acquaintance, there did she languish, there did she die—a victim to excessive grief, and cruel parental persecution.”

Meredith: Or possibly tuberculosis, but grief and persecution sounds better.

Hugh [as Isaac Mitchell]: Someone reach into the bin and grab me half a dozen adjectives.

Alonzo heard them not; he was insensible to all external objects, until he had imper­ceptibly wandered to the rock—

David: He has to sneak up on it quietly so it doesn’t turn around and sink its teeth into him.

Meredith: The author is deathly afraid that someone will say the earlier scene never happened and he’s just making it up retro­actively.

Had the whole artillery of Heaven burst, in sheeted flame, from the skies—had raging winds mingled the roaring waves with the mountains—had an instan­taneous earthquake burst beneath his feet, his frame would not have been so shocked, his soul so agitated!

Linda: The rock was gone!!!

Sudden as the blaze darts from the electric cloud was he aroused to a lively sense of blessings entombed! The memory of departed joys passed with rapidity over his imagi­nation; his first meeting with Melissa; the evening he had attended her to that place; her frequent allusions to the scenery there displayed, when they had traversed the fields, or reclined in the bower on her favourite hill; in fine, all the vicissitudes through which they had passed, were recalled to his mind. His fancy saw her—felt her gently leaning on his arm, while he tremblingly pressed her hand.—Again he saw smiling health crimsoning the lilies of her cheek; again he saw the bright soul of sympathetic feelings sparkling in her eye; the air of ease; the graces of attitude; her brown locks circling the borders of her snowy robe.

David: She cut off her hair and used it to trim her dress?

Again was he enraptured by the melody of her voice.—Once more would he have been happy, had not fancy changed the scene. But, alas! she shifted the curtain. He saw Melissa stretched on the sable hearse, wrapped in the dreary vestments of the grave; the roses withered; the lilies faded; motionless; the graces fled; her eyes fixed, and sealed in the glaze of death!

Lucy: Today’s morticians use a specially designed contact lens to make sure the eyes don’t reopen.

Hugh: Omniscient what?

David [1851 text]: Oh, oops. Omniscient dispenser. He misspelled “Controller” too. Obvi­ously losing his grip.

Linda: Same here, but it didn’t seem worth mentioning.

The beginning, the progression, the end is thine. Unsearchable are thy purposes! myste­rious thy movements! inscrutable thy operations! An atom of thy creation, wildered in the mazes of ignorance and woe, would bow to thy decrees. Surrounded with impenetrable gloom, unable to scrutinize the past, incompetent to explore the future—fain would he say, THY WILL BE DONE! And Oh, that it might be consistent with that HIGH WILL to call this atom from a dungeon of wretchedness, to worlds of light and glory, where his only CONSOLATION is gone.”

Meredith [as God]: Shut up, Alonzo.

Thus prayed the heart-broken Alonzo. It was indeed a worldly prayer; but perhaps as pure and as acceptable as many of our modern professors would have made on a similar occasion. He arose and repaired to his lodgings. One deter­mination only he had now fallen upon—to bury himself—

Lucy: We hear about people being buried alive, but Alonzo is the first to consider its possi­bilities as a means of suicide.

and his griefs from all with whom he had formerly been acquainted. Why should he return to the scenes of his former bliss and anxiety, where every door would be—

David: You left out a line. It’s “where every countenance would tend to renew his mourning; where every door” et cetera.

Linda: You ought to know by now that starting two consecutive phrases with the same words is asking for trouble.

Hugh [as Mitchell, stiffly]: I am sorry that I neglected to give adequate consi­deration to the needs of literary pirates.

inscribed with a memento mori, and where every object would he shrouded—

Meredith: “. . . he shrouded”?

David: ’Fraid so.

Hugh, Meredith and Linda [in unison]: Another jeebie! Now you’ve got a matched set.

in crape?

Meredith [reaching for eraser]: Must . . . resist . . . temptation . . . to remove “e”.

Linda [as recruiting officer]: Too feeble for the Army? Don’t you worry, my boy— the Marines will be happy to have you.

Alonzo prepared himself with all speed for the voyage. He sought, he wished no acquaintance. His only place of resort, except to his lodgings and the ship, was to Melissa’s favourite rock: there he bowed as to the shrine of her spirit, and there he consecrated his devotions.

David: The financial collapse was only a smokescreen. The real problem is that Melissa’s father had serious doubts about Alonzo’s religious orthodoxy.

As he was one day passing through the town, a gentleman stepped out of an adjoining house and accosted him. Alonzo immediately recognized him to be the cousin of Melissa, at whose house he had first seen her. He was dressed in full mourning, which was a sufficient indication that he was apprised of her death.

Meredith: Apprised of someone’s death, anyway. We’ve already been told that Alonzo is completely out of touch with the folks back home.

He invited Alonzo to his house, and he could not complaisantly refuse the invitation. He therefore accepted it, and passed an hour with him, from whom he learnt that Melissa had been sent to her uncle’s at Charleston, for the recovery of her health, where she died.

Linda: Thanks to his congenital memory problem, Alonzo has forgotten that this is exactly what the newspaper said.

Hugh: Newspaper editors work on the premise that nobody remembers what they read in the previous issue, let alone several weeks back.

“Her premature death,” said her cousin, “has borne so heavily upon her aged father, that it is feared he will not long survive.”—“Well may it wring his bosom,” thought Alonzo;—“his conscience can never be at peace.” Whether Melissa’s cousin had been informed of the particulars of Alonzo’s unfortunate attachment, was not known, as he instituted no conversation on the subject. Neither did he—

David and Lucy [in unison]: Whoops! “Oeither did he . . .”

Lucy: At least you’ve got an excuse. The bins for capital letters are in alphabetical order and the typesetter was in a hurry. My only excuse is that the editor of the reprint was an idiot.

enquire into Alonzo’s prospects; he only invited him to call again. Alonzo thanked him, but replied it would be doubtful, as he should shortly leave town. He made no one acquainted with his intentions.

Linda: It seemed best to keep a low profile, in case the colonists ended up losing the war.

The day at length arrived when the ship was to sail, and Alonzo to leave the shores of America. They spread their canvas to propitious gales; the breezes rushed from their woody coverts,

Hugh: The breezes rustled.

Meredith: Normally I’d back you up, but I like the picture of breezes racing out to get the ship underway.

and majestically wafted them from the harbour.

Linda: The breeze stops, catches its breath, and sends the ship on its way with a regal gesture.

Slowly the land receded; fields, forests, hills, mountains, towns and villages leisurely withdrew, until they were mingled in one common mass. The ocean opening, expanded and widened, presenting to the astonished eyes of the untried mariner its wilderness of waters.

Hugh: The wilderness of its waters.

Near sunset, Alonzo ascended the mast

Linda [as captain]: Will someone get that idiot down from the crow’s nest before he falls and makes a mess of the rigging.

to take a last view of a country once so dear, but whose charms were now lost forever. The land still appeared like a semicircular border of dark green velvet on the edge of a convex mirror.

David: This is some sort of fortune-telling device he’s describing?

The sun sunk in fleecy golden vapors behind it. It now dwindled to discoloured and irre­gular spots,

Meredith: Someone should have told the author not to look directly at the sun.

which appeared like objects floating, amidst the blue mists of distance, on the verge of the main, and immediately all was lost beneath the spherical, watery surface.

David: Alonzo discovers that the earth is round.

Linda: Either that, or the ship just sank without a trace.

Alonzo had fixed his eyes, as near as his judgment could direct, towards Melissa’s favourite rock, till nothing but sea was discoverable. With a heart-parting sigh he then descended. They had now launched into the illimitable world of billows, and the sable wings of night brooded over the boundless deep.

Hugh and Meredith [in unison]: Blue tumbling billows.

Lucy [usual business with reference books]: You’re right. It’s from the Anarchiad, a New England poem. Written in 1786–87 by a team of four: Joel Barlow 1754–1812, David Humphreys 1752–1818, John Trumbull 1750–1831, and Lemuel Hopkins 1750–1801.

David [mutters something under his breath about cooks and broth].

or gradually arising into mountainous waves. Often would he traverse the deck amid the still hours of midnight, when the moon silvered over the liquid surface: “Bright luminary of the lonely hour,” he would say, “that now sheddest thy mild and placid ray on the woe-worm head—

Hugh [with Meredith and Linda nodding assent]: The woe-worn head.

Lucy [loyally]: I like “woe-worm”. It gnaws its way into your heart, bringing misery in its path.

Linda: And leaving holes in your head.

David: This is going to be a whopper. Anything up to mountainous waves is just part of the scenery.

The wind began to blow strongly from the southwest, which soon increased to a violent gale. The dirgy scud first flew swiftly along the sky;

Hugh [1804 text]: The dingy scud.

Lucy: You wouldn’t think so, but he’s right.

Charles Dibdin, “Ev’ry Inch a Sailor”. English propagandist, but some of his stuff was so good it was swiped by the Colonies.

then dark and heavy clouds filled the atmosphere, mingling with the top-gallant streamers of the ship. Night hovered over the ocean, rendered horrible by the intermitting blaze of lightnings, the awful crash of thunder, and the deafening roar of winds and waves. The sea was rolled into mountains, capped with foaming fire. Now the ship was soaring among the thunders of heaven, now sunk in the abyss of waters.

David: In retrospect, trying to launch a seaplane in the middle of a thunderstorm was probably not the best idea.

Lucy: One more for the OED list. He accidentally used “fond” in the archaic sense of “foolish”.

might prove to be one of their own fleet, and accordingly made for it. The ship they were in pursuit of shortened sail, and towards noon wore round and bore down upon them, when they discovered that it was not a ship belonging to their convoy.

Linda: Oops.

Lucy: I thought I was kidding, but it really was a foolish hope.

David: He doesn’t remember it himself, so he’s using the time-honored “familiar to all” gimmick.

Mark [passing through in time to yank reference book out of Lucy’s hand]: He’s talking about the Trumbull. The duel leaving both ships wrecked was with the Watt in June 1780.

Meredith: The sailors were reduced to making faces and mooning each other from the railings.

or to get away, a large sail appeared, bearing down upon them, which soon came up and proved to be an English frigate, and which immediately took the American ship in tow, after removing the crew into the hold of the frigate. The crew of the British ship were also taken on board of the frigate, which was no sooner done than the ship went down and was for ever buried beneath mountains of ponderous waves. The frigate then, with the American ship in tow, made sail, and in a few days reached England.

Mark: Definitely the Trumbull. Its capture by the Iris in August 1781 agrees with its being separated from a convoy in a storm, captured and taken in tow.

David: We finally get rid of Edmund Pearson and now this know-it-all shows up.

Linda [pushing Mark out the door]: So when the author says “this action” he means two different actions separated by over a year, and when he says “the early stages of the war” he means towards the end of the war.

Mark [from the doorway]: And when he says “England” he means “New York”.

Lucy: I’m sure there’s something about this in the Geneva Convention.

Among these Alonzo observed one whose demeanor arrested his attention. A deep melancholy was impressed upon his features; his eye was wild and despairing; his figure was interesting, tall, elegant and handsome.

Meredith: Does that mean his figure was one, interesting, two, tall, three, elegant, and four, handsome—or does it mean that the interesting thing about his figure was that it was tall and elegant and handsome?

David: It means that the bill collectors were knocking on Mitchell’s door again.

Hugh: A shared theatrical background created an immediate bond between the two.

Linda: Stop the presses! We’ve got another man with two names.

my father was a clergyman in the west of England, and descended from one of the most respectable families in those parts. I received a classical education, and then entered the military school,

Lucy: Uh . . . What military school?

Linda [reaching behind Lucy to grab reference book]: The Royal Military Academy, set up to train engineers and artillerymen so they would know what they were doing. For everyone else it was enough to look good in scarlet and have the money to buy a commission.

as I was designed for the army, to which my earliest inclinations led. As soon as my education was considered complete, an ensign’s commission—

Lucy: In the army?

Linda [keeping a firm grip on book]: Yup. Until 1870, the starting rank for British infantry officers was ensign.

David: So when he says “my education was considered complete” he means “I was kicked out of the artillery training school for being a hopeless dunce”.

was procured for me in one of the regiments destined for the West Indies. Previous to its departure for those islands, I became acquainted with a Miss Vernon,

Meredith: Since Alonzo doesn’t know the lady, it would obviously be inappro­priate to tell him her first name.

who was a few years younger than myself, and the daughter of a gentleman farmer, who had recently purchased and removed on to an estate in my father’s parish. Every thing that was graceful and lovely appeared centered in her person; every thing that was virtuous and excellent in her mind.

Lucy: Goodness gracious me. Why, she could have been Melissa’s twin.

I sought her hand.

David: I’ve got an editorial comment in the margin, but I can’t make it out.

Hugh: I think he was trying to write “but slipt”, but his hand slipt.

Our souls soon became united by the indissoluble bonds of sincerest love,

Lucy: After he asked for her hand.

Meredith: I think that’s in The Rules.

and as there existed no parental or other impediments to our union, it was agreed that as soon as I returned from the Indies, where it was expected that my stay would be short,

David: Two months at sea, take on fresh water and provisions, turn around and come back.

Meredith: It’s called “Island time”. Anything under three years is considered a short stay.

The moment I got on land I hastened to the house of Mr. Vernon, to see the charmer of my soul. She received me with all the ardency of affection, and even shed tears of joy in my presence. I pressed her to name the day which was to perfect our union and happiness, and the next Sunday, four days only distant, was agreed upon for me to lead her to the altar.

Lucy [as Mr. Vernon]: Young lady, you should have your mouth washed out with soap. We’ve never had anything but banns in this family; you’ll wait three weeks and like it.

How did my heart bound at the prospect of making Miss Vernon my own!—of possessing in her all that could render life agreeable; I hastened home to my family and informed them of my approaching bliss, who all sympathized in the anticipated joy which swelled my bosom.

Linda: They have a cream to make those go down.

“I had a sister some years older than myself, who had been the friend and inmate of—

Hugh [1804 text]: Intimate of.

Lucy: Oh. I just assumed it had something to do with that “Asylum” subtitle.

my angel in my absence. They were now almost every day together, so that I had fre­quently oppor­tunities of her company.

Linda: Um . . . Of whose company? He’d see his sister every day anyway, and if he’s getting married in four days it would look odd if he didn’t call on Miss Vernon regularly.

Hugh: Uh-oh. This sounds suspiciously like the opening of Melissa’s father’s speech. There’s bad news coming up.

Nothing except this could extort the secret which I shall now disclose, and which has yet remained deposited in my own bosom: my duty to a brother whom I esteem dear as life, forbids me to remain silent. As an affectionate sister, I cannot tacitly see you thus imposed upon; I cannot see you the dupe and slave of an artful and insidious woman, who does not sincerely return your love; nor can I bear to see your marriage consummated with one whose soul and affections are placed upon another object.’

Lucy: If she means herself, she’s an idiot. Marrying your female sweetheart’s brother is the perfect camouflage for an ongoing relationship. And if the sister is “some years older than” her 25-year-old brother, she’s practically a confirmed old maid already, so nobody will be surprised when she goes to live with her married brother.

Meredith: In the passive voice. You told her yourself, didn’t you?

that she had a rival in the Indies; that you had there found an American beauty, on whom you lavished those endearments which belonged of right to her alone. This news made, at first, a deep impression on her mind, but it soon wore away; and whether from this cause, from fickleness of disposition, or that she never sincerely loved you, I know not; but this I do know, that a youth has been for some time past her almost constant companion.

Linda: Awright, Sis, come clean. Why are you trying to sabotage your best friend’s love life?

To convince you of this, you need only tomorrow evening, about sunset, conceal yourself near the long avenue by the side of the rivulet, back of Mr. Vernon’s country-house, where you will undoubtedly surprise Miss Vernon and her companion—

David: There’s your answer. She’s worried about the gene pool. If Miss Vernon is too dim-witted to tell her secret lover to make himself scarce for a few days until she’s safely married, this is not someone you want as mother to your nephews and nieces.

Hugh [exasperated]: Promised to obey.

Lucy: Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. All he’s got is his sister’s unsupported word.

Did not my continual letters breathe constant adoration? And did not yours portray the same sincerity of affection? No, it was not this that caused you to perjure your plighted vows. It was that damnable passion for novelty, which more or less holds a predominancy over your whole sex. To a new coat, a new face, a new lover, you will sacrifice honour, principle and virtue. And to those, backed by splendid power and splendid property,

Linda: It’s Beauman! He never went to New York; he headed straight for England.

David: Judging by that business with Alonzo’s ship, the author is a bit fuzzy on the difference between New York and England anyway.

you will forfeit your most sacred engagements, though made in the presence of heaven.”—Thus did I rave through a sleepless night.

Meredith: Alonzo immediately recognizes a kindred spirit.

“The next day I walked into the fields, and before the time my sister appointed had arrived, I had worked up my feelings almost to the frenzy of distraction. I repaired, however, to the spot, and concealed myself in the place she had named, which was a tuft of laurels by the side of the walk. I soon perceived Miss Vernon strolling down the avenue, arm in arm with a young man elegantly dressed, and of singular, delicate appearance. They were earnestly conversing in a low tone of voice; the hand of my false fair one was gently pressed in the hand of the stranger.

Linda [1836 text]: In the hands of the stranger.

Lucy: You gotta watch out for those three-armed rivals. A man who can walk arm in arm with a young lady and still have two free hands is a dangerous competitor.

As soon as they had passed the place of my concealment, they turned aside and seated themselves in a little arbour, a few yards distant from where I was. The stranger clasped Miss Vernon in his arms: ‘Dearest angel!’ he exclaimed, ‘what an interruption to our bliss by the return of my hated rival!’ With fond caresses and endearing blandish­ments, ‘fear nothing,’ she replied; ‘I have promised and must yield him my hand, but you shall never be excluded from my heart; we shall find sufficient oppor­tunities for private conference.’ I could contain myself no longer—my brain was on fire. Quick as lightning I sprang from my covert, and presenting a pistol which I had concealed under my robe,—‘Die!’ said I, ‘thou false and perjured wretch, by the hand thou hast dishonoured, a death too mild for so foul a crime!’ and immediately shot Miss Vernon through the head,

David: Gene pool, definitely. In the time it took him to get through that speech, she could have jumped up and run for safety while the lover wrested the pistol out of his grasp. Pistols in 1804 were only accurate up to about ten, twenty yards.

who fell lifeless at my feet! Then suddenly drawing my sword, ‘And thou, perfidious conta­minator and destroyer of my bliss!’ cried I— ‘go! attend thy companion in iniquity to the black regions of everlasting torment!’ So saying, I plunged my sword into his bosom.

Linda: The mystery of the military school is solved. He was expelled for excessive and inappro­priate use of deadly force.

A screech of agony, attended by the exclamation, “Henry, your wife! your sister!” awoke me, too late, to terrors unutterable, to anguish unspeakable, to woes irretrie­vable, and insup­portable despair! It was indeed my betrothed wife, it was indeed my affectionate sister, arrayed in man’s habit.

Meredith: I know that when I read the next page, I’m going to be disappointed as to what the explanation for this is.

The one lay dead before me, the other weltering in her blood! With a feeble and expiring voice, my sister informed me, that in a gay and incon­siderate moment they had concerted this plan, to try my jealousy, determining to discover themselves as soon as they had made the experiment.

Meredith: Yup. Disappointed. But it illustrates why the fidelity test in stories is always done with women. They don’t carry weapons.

“‘I forgive you, Henry,’ she said, ‘I forgive your mistake,’ and closed her eyes for ever in death! What a scene for sensi­bilities like mine!

Hugh: If he’d been your ordinary murdering lout it wouldn’t have bothered him, but Henry has refined sensi­bilities.

To paint or describe it, exceeds the power of language or imagination. I instantly turned the sword against my own bosom; an unknown hand arrested it, and prevented its entering my heart. The report of the pistol, and the dying screech of my sister, had alarmed Mr. Vernon’s family, who arrived at that moment, one of whom had seized my arm, and thus hindered me from destroying my own life. I submitted to be bound and conveyed to prison. My trial came on at the last assizes. I made no defence; was condemned to death.

David: Whew! What a good thing they didn’t let him kill himself, then.

Lucy: On the contrary, that’s what sealed his fate. Back then, suicide was a capital crime.

Linda: And none too soon.

Linda: Item: One dead girlfriend.

David: Check.

Linda: On Malcomb’s side: Died because he was an idiot.

David: On Alonzo’s side: Died because . . . uh . . . because she was an idiot.

Hugh: I hate to say it, but Alonzo is right. Malcomb’s situation is worse.

Lucy: I believe the verb he’s groping for is confiscate.

Linda: The underpaid prison guards made ends meet by helping themselves to convicts’ belongings and selling them on the black market.

Their allowance of provisions was scanty and poor. They were confined in the third story of a lofty prison.

Meredith: Outrageous. Officers are supposed to be housed on the topmost floor, befitting their rank.

David: If Alonzo is thinking of some kind of clever escape involving switched identities and a bribed hangman, he’d better get cracking.

His past and approaching fate filled the breast of Alonzo with sympathetic sorrow. He saw his venerable father, his mother, his friends and acquaintance, with several pious clergymen, frequently enter the prison to console and comfort him, and to prepare him for the unchangeable state on which he was soon to enter. He saw his mind softened by their advice and counsel;—frequently would he burst into tears;—often in the solitary hours of night was he heard addressing the throne of grace for mercy and forgiveness. But the grief that preyed at his heart had wasted him to a skeleton;

Linda and David [1836 and 1851 texts]: Can we make it a mere skeleton?

Hugh [grumbling]: Oh, all right.

a slow but deleterious fever had consequently implanted itself in his constitution. Exhausted nature could make but a weak struggle against disease and affliction like his, and about a week previous to the day appointed for his execution, he expired in peace and penitence,

Lucy: That was a close call. If he’d lived long enough to be executed for murder, his body would have been made available to medical schools for dissection.

trusting in the mercy of his Creator through the sufferings of a Redeemer.

Hugh: The merits of a Redeemer.

David: This is some kind of obscure theological point, isn’t it?

Soon after this event, orders came for removing some of the prisoners to a most loath­some place of confinement in the suburbs of the city.

Lucy: Imprisoned in the suburbs?! When Amnesty Inter­national hears about this, someone’s going to be in big trouble.

It fell to Alonzo’s lot to be one. He therefore formed a project for escaping. He had observed that the gratings in one of the windows of the apartment were loose and could easily be removed. One night when the prisoners were asleep, he stripped off his clothes, every article of which he cut into narrow strips,

Meredith [1811 text]: Narrow slips.

Linda: Using the scissors that the guards fortuitously overlooked when they confis— sorry, robbed him.

tied them together, fastened one end to one of the strongest gratings, removed the others until he had made an opening large enough to get out, and then, by the rope he had made of his clothes, let himself down—

Lucy: —landing with a bone-shattering crash when the last grating demonstrated that “strong” and “easily removed” are not mutually exclusive.

into the yard of the prison. There he found a long piece of timber, which he dragged to the wall, clambered up thereon, and sprang over into the street. His shoes and hat he had left in the prison, as a useless encumbrance—

Hugh [1804 text]: As useless encumbrances.

without his clothes, all which he had converted into the means of escape, so that he was now literally stark naked.

Lucy: As opposed to figuratively stark naked, the way he would be if he tried to pay a social call without his hat.

He stood a moment to reflect:—“Here am I,” said he, “freed from my local prison indeed, but in the midst of an enemy’s country, without a friend, without the means of obtaining one day’s subsistence, surrounded by the darkness of night, destitute of a single article of clothing, and even unable to form a resolution what step next to take.

Linda: His clothes wouldn’t quite reach, so he had to slice up part of his frontal lobe as well.

The ways of heaven are marvellous—may I silently bow to its dispen­sations!”

Meredith: God, he’s an idiot. I hope he gets hypothermia.

David: He won’t. There’s no weather in England, only in Connecticut.

Alonzo passed along the street in this forlorn condition, not knowing where to proceed, or what course to take. It was about three o’clock in the morning; the street was illumi­nated by lamps, and he feared falling into the hands of the watch.

Lucy: In London in 1780? He’s delirious.

Meredith: We will not speculate about why this decent-looking middle-aged sailor is walking the streets at three A.M.

Alonzo had often heard of the generosity and honourable conduct of the British tars: he therefore approached him and told him his real case, not even concealing his being taken in actual hostility to the British government, and his escape from prison. The sailor mused a few minutes. “Thy case,” said he, “is a little critical, but do not despair. Had I met thee as an enemy, I should have fought thee;

David: I thought Quakers were opposed to war.

but as it is, compassion is the first consideration. Perhaps I may be in as bad a situation before the war is ended.” Then slipping off his coat and giving it to Alonzo, “follow me,” he said, and turning, walked hastily along the street, followed by Alonzo; he passed into a bye-lane, entered a small house, and taking Alonzo into a back room, opened a trunk, and handed out a shirt: “there,” said he, pointing to a bed, “you can sleep till morning, when we will see what can be done.”

Linda: Hours later, Alonzo awoke to find himself bound and gagged, on a ship bound for parts unknown.

The next morning the sailor brought in a very decent suit of clothes—

Hugh: Minus their former owner.

and presented them to Alonzo. “You will make this place your home,” said he, “until more favourable prospects appear. In this great city you will be safe, for even your late gaoler would not recognize you in this dress. And perhaps some opportunity may offer by which you may return to your own country.” He told Alonzo that his name was Jack Brown;

David: They’re so darn formal in England. Everyone has two names.

that he was a midshipman—

Meredith [laughing]: Oh, come on. Isn’t a midshipman something like a corporal?

Lucy [consulting reference books]: More like an officer trainee. That explains what he’s doing out in the middle of the night: it’s a hazing ritual. He only just joined the Navy, and his fellow midshipmen are all in their late teens.

Linda: Either that, or he failed the officers’ exam so many times, they wouldn’t let him take it any more. In which case he and Alonzo ought to get along like a house on fire.

on board the Severn;

Lucy [turning pages]: You’d think Severn would be a safe name, since there have been at least seven of them—

David [dutifully]: Ha, ha.

Lucy: —in the British Navy. But there’s a yawning gap from 1759 to 1786. And Severn number three was conveniently wrecked in 1804, so the author didn’t have to worry about getting the details wrong.

David: Next time someone hauls out the OED, see when the word “security” first appeared in the language.

to see how the sick and disabled prisoners—

Hugh: American prisoners. He doesn’t give a hoot about the others.

Linda [1836 text]: You left out a line. It’s at Halifax and other places in America.

Others [in unison]: Huh?

Hugh [nastily]: Your editor’s mother-in-law came from Halifax and this was his way of sneaking in a crack at her.

Lucy [shuffling papers]: Wait, I just read something about this. August 1791:

William Cunningham, captain of the British provost in Boston and New York during the revolu­tionary war, executed in England for forgery. He confessed to have starved more than 2,000 American prisoners in New York, by stopping their rations, which he sold; and to have hanged upwards of 270 in a private manner.

David [as judge]: The Court would have been prepared to turn a blind eye on the 2,270 deaths, but forgery cannot be tolerated. You are hereby sentenced to hang.

Linda: In a public manner.

As he passed along the different apartments he was surprised at hearing his name called by a faint voice. He turned to the place from whence it proceeded, and saw stretched on a mattress, a person who appeared on the point of expiring. His visage was pale and emaci­ated, his countenance haggard and ghastly, his eyes inexpressive and glazy.

Meredith: Mitchell got a package rate on adjectives if he used them in sets of six.

He held out his withered hand, and feebly beckoned to Alonzo, who immediately approached him. His features appeared not unfamiliar to Alonzo, but for a moment he could not recollect him. “You do not know me,” said the apparently dying stranger. “Beauman!” exclaimed Alonzo, in surprise.

Lucy: Archaic usage meaning “with poorly concealed glee”.

“Yes,” replied the sick man, “it is Beauman; you behold me on the verge of eternity; I have but a short time to continue in this world.” Alonzo enquired how he came in the power of the enemy. “By the fate of war,” he replied; “I was taken in an action on York Island, carried on board a prison-ship in New York, and sent with a number of others for England. I had received a wound in my thigh, from a musket ball, during the action; the wound mortified, and my thigh was amputated on the voyage; since which I have been rapidly wasting away, and I now feel that the cold hand of death is laid upon me.”

Linda: I always thought that was just a figure of speech, but didn’t the same cold hand get laid on Melissa? It must be a forewarning, like the wail of the banshee.

Here he became exhausted, and for some time remained silent. Alonzo had not before disco­vered that he had lost his leg: he now found that it had been taken off close to his body, and that he was worn to a skeleton.

Hugh [as Alonzo]: I did think he looked skinny, but I thought it was just a trick of the light.

When Beauman revived, he enquired into Alonzo’s affairs.

David [as Beauman]: For starters, while I’ve still got the strength to summon a guard, tell me what you’re doing in England, well dressed and at perfect liberty.

Meredith: On second thought, I will say more, because you’re never too far gone to gloat.

to her uncle’s at Charleston, by her father, where I was soon to follow her. It was supposed that thus widely removed from all access to your company, she would yield to the persua­sion of her friends to renounce you: her unexpected death, however, frustrated every design of this nature, and overwhelmed her father and family in inexpres­sible woe.”

David: It was also the last straw for Beauman’s creditors, leaving him no choice but to join the army under an assumed name.

Here Beauman ceased. Alonzo found he wanted rest: he enquired whether he was in want of any thing to render him more comfortable.

Linda [as Alonzo]: A spot of arsenic in your tea, perhaps? A meat cleaver to your head? Or shall I just even out your legs for you?

Lucy: —he was greeted by three prison guards equipped with chains and handcuffs to take him back into custody.

he perceived an alarming alteration in Beauman. His extremities were cold, a chilling, clammy sweat stood upon his face, his respiration was short and interrupted, his pulse weak and intermitting. He took the hand of Alonzo, and feebly pressing it,—“I am dying,” said he in a faint voice. “If ever you return to America, inform my friends of my fate.” This Alonzo readily engaged to do,

Meredith: But only after coercing Beauman into making out a will leaving him all his property.

and told him also that he would not leave him.

David [as Alonzo]: No worries, Beauman. I wouldn’t miss your funeral for the world.

Beauman soon fell into a stupor; sensation became suspended; his eyes rolled up and fixed. Sometimes a partial revival would take place, when he would fall into incoherent mutterings, calling on the names of his deceased father, his mother and Melissa; his voice dying away in imperfect moanings, till his lips continued to move without sound.

Lucy: Wait, this sounds familiar. [Leafs through other book.] Yup. The author of Alida swiped this sequence to get rid of Bonville once and for all. In her version, Theodore and Alida have already gotten back together. Alida’s the main character, so she can’t die, not even offstage. The author’s only killing Bonville to punish him.

Hugh: With injuries incurred in the war of 1812 instead of in the late American revolu­tion?

Lucy: Oh, no. She’s much too squeamish to let any of her characters get hurt. In this book, “wounds” and “injuries” are always metaphorical. Here:

He was surprised to see him stretched on a mattress—I’d be surprised too, since Bonville’s in his own home and there’s no earthly reason for him not to be in a proper bed—his visage pale and emaciated, his countenance haggard—her source seems to have left out the “ghastly”—his eyes inexpressive and glaring. Someone didn’t know what “glazy” meant, so they changed it to “glaring”. He held out his hand and feebly beckoned to Theodore, who immediately approached the bed-side.

Meredith: Or mattress-side, as the case may be.

Lucy [reading]:

“You behold me, Theodore,” said he, “on the verge of eternity. I have but a short time to continue in this world.” He evidently appeared to have suffered much from the remem­brance of his ungenerous conduct towards Theodore.

And so on for about a page and a half. He even gets the “I could say more” line, but here he really doesn’t say any more.

David: He got sick and died just because he felt bad?

Lucy [turning pages]:

He evidently fell a victim to disappointed pride and remorse at the remembrance of his own baseness.

Hugh: He should have sent to Connecticut for a doctor. They seem to have been good with guilt-induced psycho­somatic illnesses.

Towards night he lay silent, and only continued to breathe with difficulty, till a slight convul­sion gave the freed spirit to the unknown regions of immaterial existence. Alonzo followed his remains to the grave: a natural stone was placed at its head, on which Alonzo, unob­served, carved the initials of the deceased’s name, with the date of his death,

David [as Alonzo]: Excuse me, gravediggers, could you please go somewhere and get roaring drunk for a few days while I carve some text into this stone with my trusty scissors.

and left him to moulder with his native dust.

Meredith: Beauman was English? I swear they never told us that before.

A few days after this event, Jack Brown informed Alonzo that he had procured the means of his escape. “A person with whom I am acquainted,” said he, “and whom I suppose to be a smuggler,

Linda: That’s why he never got promoted past midshipman. The authorities have grave reservations about his loyalty.

has agreed to carry you to France. There, by application to the American minister, you will be enabled to get to your own country, if that is your object. About midnight I will pilot you on board, and by to-morrow’s sun you may be in France.”

Lucy: Who’s got the almanac? Tide going out at midnight, followed by a steady north-by-northwest wind, should give us a pretty small range of dates.

At the time appointed, Jack set out bearing a large trunk on his shoulder, and directing Alonzo to follow him. They proceeded down to a quay, and went on board a small skiff. “Here,” said Jack to the captain, “is the gentleman I spoke to you about,” and delivered him the trunk. Then taking Alonzo aside, “in that trunk,” said he, “are a few changes of linen,

David: The remaining contents of the large trunk are for the use and benefit of Jack’s smuggler friend, so we won’t say any more about them.

and here is something to help you till you can help yourself.” So saying, he slipped ten guineas into his hand.

Edmund: This lavish generosity is probably accounted for by the fact that Jack is married, with four children, and naturally has to have a great deal of money.

Linda: That was irony, wasn’t it?

Alonzo expressed his gratitude with tears. “Say nothing,” said Jack, “we were born to help each other in distress, and may Jack never weather a storm or splice a rope, if he permits a fellow creature to suffer with want while he has a luncheon on board.” He then shook Alonzo by the hand, wishing him a good voyage, and went whistling away. The skiff soon sailed, and the next morning Alonzo was landed in France. Alonzo proceeded immediately to Paris,

Hugh: We’ll gloss over this part because we have no idea how far Paris is from the nearest seaport, or how you would get there when you don’t speak a word of French and have nothing but English money.

Lucy: Too bad Melissa kicked it. She had a “suitable education”, so she learned French. And Italian.

Meredith [turning back pages]: I remember the education, but where does it say French?

Lucy: Oh, sorry, I was still in Alida:

. . . a pattern of every female excellence, combined with a taste and judgment that had been properly directed by a suitable education.

Oops, no, that was Alida’s mother. Here’s the part I was thinking of:

. . . Alida, their youngest child, who at this time was placed at a boarding-school, at the village of ——, where she was taught, in addition to the different studies belonging to a Christian education, the French and Italian languages.

And, in case we missed it the first time around:

Among her favourite studies was the French language, which, at this period, was consi­dered as one of the necessary appendages to female education, when scarcely any new work could be read without a regret to those who did not understand it.

David: Maybe Presbyterians don’t feel the same way. Can we get back to Alonzo now?

not with a view to returning to America; he had yet no relish for revisiting the land of his sorrows, the scenes where at every step his heart must bleed afresh, though to bleed it had never ceased. But he was friendless in a strange land: perhaps, through the aid of the American minister, Dr. Franklin,

Meredith: Doctor? I thought he always made such a big deal about being a printer.

Lucy: Oxford gave him an honorary doctorate a while back. Guess they didn’t have a way to revoke it when the Colonies started getting uppity.

to whose fame Alonzo was no stranger, he might be placed in a situation to procure bread,

Hugh: Let him eat cake.

Meredith: This is like when a good actor guest-stars on a bad show and ends up looking uncom­fortable and out-of-place.

To be informed that he was an American and unfortunate, was sufficient to arouse the feelings of Franklin. He desired Alonzo to be seated, and to recite his history. This he readily complied with, not concealing his attachment to Melissa, her father’s barbarity, and her death in consequence, his own father’s failure, with all the particulars of—

David [as Franklin]: Look, when I asked for your history, I didn’t mean a complete cata­logue of every bad thing that has ever happened to you. Just tell me what you’re doing in Paris and what you want from me.

Edmund: —showing due regard for his reputation as sage and philosopher.

Hugh: Someone throw that man out. I’ve had it with his one-liners.

without speaking a word.

Meredith: Maybe he’s hoping Alonzo will leave?

He then took his pen, wrote a short note, directed it, and gave it to Alonzo: “Deliver this,” said he, “to the person to whom it is directed;

Linda: Half an hour in Alonzo’s company is enough to learn that you need to spell out these instructions.

he will find you employment, until something more favourable may offer.”

Lucy: Many highly respected citizens got their start as street-sweepers, so I don’t want to hear any complaints.

Alonzo took the note, thanked the doctor, and went in search of the person to whom it was addressed. He soon found the house, which was situated in one of the most popular streets in Paris. He knocked at the door, which was opened by an elderly looking man:

David: Those powdered wigs will fool you every time.

Alonzo enquired for the name to whom the note was addressed.

Linda [1836 text]: The man to whom et cetera.

Meredith: Alonzo doesn’t read French, so he needs someone to tell him who the note is addressed to.

The gentleman informed him that he was the man. Alonzo presented him the note, which having read, he desired him to walk in, and ordered supper.

Hugh [with mouth full]: You won’t mind sitting here watching me eat.

After supper he informed Alonzo that he was an English bookseller; that he should employ him as a clerk, and desired to know what wages he demanded. Alonzo replied that he should submit that to him, being unacquainted with the customary salary of clerks in that line of business. The gentleman told him that the matter should be arranged the next day.

Lucy: He needs to consult with his fellow booksellers about the standard schedule of deductions. By the end of the first three months, Alonzo will owe his employer ninety-seven crowns.

David: What? But you distinctly said he was to be a clerk in a bookstore!

Linda [1836 text]: No reason to complain.

Hugh: Oh, there were plenty of reasons. But Alonzo never let him get a word in edgewise.

nor had he any reason—

David [to Linda]: Your editor does that a lot, doesn’t he? He picks up a word from the next line, or the previous line, and re-uses it by mistake.

Linda [huffily]: Said the pot to the snowflake.

to be discontented with his situation. Mr. Grafton regularly advanced him twenty crowns at the commencement of every month,

Meredith: And took back thirty at month’s end.

and boarded him in his family. Alonzo dressed himself in deep mourning.

Linda [sulky]: In case anyone cares, I left out “himself”. Alonzo may have his limits, but nobody ever suggested he can’t put his own clothes on.

David: Alonzo’s really cleaning up, isn’t he? Ten guineas here, twenty crowns there—he’ll be able to pay off his father’s debts in no time.

and something at the bottom carefully wrapped in a piece of paper; he unfolded it, and was thunder­struck at beholding an elegant miniature of Melissa! Her sweetly pensive features, her expressive countenance, her soul-enlivening eye!

Linda: Alonzo, you need professional help. It’s just some Parisian chick with brown hair.

The shock was almost too powerful for his senses. Wildered in a maze of wonders, he knew not what to conjecture. Melissa’s miniature found in the streets of Paris, after she had some time been dead!

Lucy: By executive order, all paintings, silhouettes, drawings, and likenesses of any kind must be destroyed upon the death of their subject.

He viewed it, he clasped it to his bosom.—“Such,” said he, “did she appear, ere the corro­ding cankers of grief had blighted her heavenly charms!

Linda: And while you’re on that psychiatrist’s couch, see if you can do something about your morbid obsession with the physical facts of decom­position.

Hugh [1804 text]: Most invaluable.

Meredith: You can’t have degrees of invaluability. It’s like “most impossible”.

Linda [military tones]: The valuable we buy right away. The invaluable may take a little longer.

Hugh [1804 text]: Rue de Loire, with an “e”.

Linda: Touché.

Lucy: With an acute accent.

Meredith: Everyone settle down. We’re almost to the end of the section.

David: The words I was really hoping to hear were “We’re almost to the end of the book”.

Hugh: One hundred crowns, to be exact.

Determined to explicate the mystery, he proceeded immediately to the place, found the room mentioned in the bill, and knocked at the door. A servant appeared, of whom Alonzo enquired for the lodger. The servant answered him in French, which Alonzo did not under­stand:

Meredith: I guess they only get English-speaking customers at the bookstore. In France.

Linda: It’s an English bookstore. If you don’t understand English they make fun of you.

he replied in his own language, but found it was unintelligible to the servant.

David: Why can’t those damn Frogs speak English like human beings?

A grave middle aged gentleman then came to the door from within the room and ended their jabbering at each other: he, in the English language, desired Alonzo to walk in. It was an apartment, neatly furnished;

Linda: What else would it be? No interior space in this book has ever been described as anything other than an apartment.

Meredith: The point is that the inhabitant speaks English, so it isn’t an appartement.

no person was therein except the gentleman and servant before mentioned, and a person who sat writing in a corner of the room, with his back towards them.

Lucy: Makes me think of an adventure story I once read, where the main character was described as “clean-shaven except for a full beard, thick whiskers and a bristling mustache”. —No, wait, I tell a lie. It wasn’t a story, it was a made-up example in an article on how not to write.

Hugh: I can see the association of thoughts there.

Alonzo informed the gentleman that he had called according to the direction in a bill of adver­tisement to enquire for the person who the preceding night, had lost a purse and minia­ture. The person who was writing had hitherto taken no notice of what had passed; but at the sound of Alonzo’s voice, after he had entered the room, he started and turned about, and at mention of the miniature, he rose up. Alonzo fixed his eyes upon him: they both stood for a few moments silent: for a short time their recollection was confused and imperfect,

David: One of these days someone in this book will recognize an old friend at first sight, and I will fall over dead from shock.

but the mists of doubt were soon dissipated. “Edgar!”—“Alonzo!” they alternately exclaimed.

Lucy: It also works if you exclaim in two-part harmony, but this author seems to prefer the amœbic style.

David: Don’t ask her what “amœbic” means. I want to get out of here.

It was indeed Edgar,

Linda: Who?

the early friend and—

Lucy: Sorry, doesn’t ring a bell.

fellow student of Alonzo—

Meredith: Still drawing a blank.

the brother of Melissa!

David: Oh, that Edgar.

In an instant they were in each other’s arms.

Hugh [folding up newspaper]: And in another instant, the readers were gone.

Linda: You gotta hand it to the author. He’s really getting the hang—sorry—of these cliffhangers.

Edgar and Alonzo retired to a separate room. Edgar informed Alonzo that the news of Melissa’s death reached him, by a letter from his father, while with the army;

Meredith [1811 text]: While at the army.

Hugh [1804 text]: While he was at the army.

Lucy: So “Army” is a physical location, like a video arcade called The Library or a bar called AA Meeting.

that he immediately procured a furlough, and visited his father, whom, with his mother, he found in inconsolable distress.—“The letter which my uncle had written,” said Edgar, “announ­cing her death, mentioned with what patience and placidity she endured her malady, and with what calmness and resignation she met the approach of death. Her last moments, like her whole life, were unruffled and serene. She is in heaven Alonzo—she is an angel!”—Swelling grief here choaked the utterance of Edgar; for some time he could proceed no farther, and Alonzo, with bursting bosom, mingled his tears.

Linda: And assorted internal organs.

“My father,” resumed Edgar, “bent on uniting her to Beauman or at least of preventing her union with you, had removed her to a desolate family mansion, and placed her under the care of an aunt. At that place, he either suspected, or really discovered that you had recourse to her—

Lucy: I really hope the meaning of “had recourse to” has changed since 1804, because it sounds as if he’s saying . . . uhmm . . .

David: . . . something you wouldn’t usually say about your sister.

while my aunt was absent on business. She was therefore no longer entrusted to the care of her aunt, but my father immediately formed and executed the plan of sending her—

Hugh [as editor, under his breath]: —immediately sent her. And two nickels to the Violations Jar.

to his brother in South Carolina, under pretence of restoring her to health by change of climate, as her health in reality had began rapidly to decay. There it was designed that Beauman should shortly follow her, with recommen­dations from my father to her uncle, urging him to use all possible means which might tend to persuade her to become the wife of Beauman. But change of climate only encreased her load of sorrows,

Meredith [as Melissa]: As if I didn’t have problems enough, now I’ve got—swat!—these damned—swat!—mosquitoes—swat!—to contend with.

and she soon sunk beneath them.

Linda: Sorrows, my eye. It was the combination of malaria and yellow fever that did it.

Lucy [mechanically]: Twelfth Night, Act II, Scene 4.

“My father’s distress was excessive: often did he accuse himself of barbarity, and he once earnestly expressed a wish that he had consented to her union with you.

David: But only once. After a quick visit to his secret shrine to Mammon, he got a grip on himself.

My father, I know, is parsimonious, but he sincerely loved his children. Inflexible as is his nature, the untimely death of a truly affectionate and only daughter will, I much fear, preci­pitate him, and perhaps my mother also, to a speedy grave.

Meredith: By this time Edgar was tired of listening to them moaning about it, so he signed on as a missionary and caught the next boat to France.

Hugh: Where he got a nasty shock upon finding out that they have a state religion, and it isn’t Presbyterian.

Lucy: Oh, he knew that. Like all good Protestants of his time and place, he thinks that Catholics aren’t really Christians, so they’re in as much need of the Word as anyone.

David [muttered aside to Hugh]: She just makes this stuff up, you know.

“As soon as my feelings would permit, I repaired to your father’s, and made enquiry concerning you. I found your parents content in their humble state, except that your father had been ill, but was recovering. Of you they had heard nothing since your departure,

Linda: Someone really needs to take Alonzo by the hand, walk him to the post office and explain how to send mail. He doesn’t seem to grasp that letters can go from him as well as to him.

and they deeply lamented your absence. And from Vincent I could obtain no farther infor­mation.

Hugh: Like everyone else, Edgar forgot that Simpson and Vincent are different people, so he didn’t think to question each one separately.

“Sick of the world, I returned to the army. An American consul was soon to sail for Holland:

Lucy: Either we’ve skipped forward another fifteen years, or he’s saying “consul” when he means “envoy”. The first U.S. envoy to Holland was appointed in April 1782, but consuls by that name didn’t come along until the 1790’s.

I solicited and obtained the appointment of secretary.

David: The Army desperately needs more Congrega­tionalist chaplains, but they’re already at quota, so they can only do it if they transfer some of their surplus Presbyterian chaplains to other assignments.

I hoped by visiting distant countries, in some measure to relieve my mind—

Linda: Should have read the fine print, Edgar. It’s the Navy that does the distant countries.

from the deep melancholy with which it was oppressed. We were to proceed first to Paris, where we have been a few days; to-morrow we are to depart for Holland. The consul is the man who introduced you into the room where you found me.

Lucy [emerging from reference books]: Even if we call him an envoy we’ve still got a chrono­logy problem. The U.S. envoy—some guy named John Adams, wife Abigail, if anyone cares—has been moving back and forth between France and Holland since 1777 except for one spell in the first half of 1780 when he went home for a bit. So when did he pick up Edgar?

“Last evening I lost the miniature which I suppose you have found: the chain to which it was suspended around my neck, had broken while I was walking the street.

Hugh: The colonies forgot to budget for paying the envoy’s secretary, so Edgar had to find an alternative source of income.

I carefully wrapped it in paper and deposited it in my purse, which I probably dropped on replacing it in my pocket, and did not discover the loss until this morning.

Meredith: I’m giving you all these pointless details so you’ll believe it really belongs to me and not to the Third Man.

I immediately made diligent search,

David: Everywhere but the place where he actually dropped it, where Alonzo found it the next morning in plain sight.

but not finding it, I put up bills of advertisement.

Linda: With the aid of his local 24-hour print shop.

Lucy: Come to think of it, it’s a good thing Alonzo didn’t have to advertise, since he’d be hard pressed to find an English-speaking printer.

The likeness was taken in my sister’s happiest days. After I had entered upon my profes­sional studies in New York, I became acquainted with a miniature painter, who took my likeness. He afterwards went into the country, and as I found he was to pass near my father’s, I engaged him to call there and take my sister’s likeness also. We exchanged them soon after. It was dear to me, even while the original remained; but since she is gone it has become a most precious and valuable relique.”

Hugh [1804 text]: A most precious and invaluable relique.

Linda: We’ve been over this already.

All the tender powers of Alonzo’s soul were called into action by Edgar’s recital. The “days of other years”—

Lucy [mechanically]: Ossian, alias James McPherson. One of the great forgeries of all time.

the ghosts of sepulchred blessings,

Lucy: Sounds like another quote, but I haven’t pinned it down.

passed in painful review. Added to these, the penurious condition of his parents, his father’s recent illness, and his probable inability to procure the bread of his family, all tended more deeply to sink his spirits in the gulf of melancholy and misery. He however informed Edgar of all that had happened since they parted at Vincent’s—respecting the old mansion, Melissa’s extra­ordinary disap­pearance therefrom, the manner in which he was informed of her death, his departure from America, capture, escape,

Meredith: Franklin had to sit through the whole epic, so all that’s left for Edgar is the condensed version.

Beauman’s death, arrival in France, and his finding the miniature. To Edgar as well as Alonzo, Melissa’s sudden and unaccoun­table removal from the mansion was mysterious and . . .

David [trailing away]: Oh, sorry. My editor messed up, didn’t he? That line belongs about a chapter back.

Hugh [trying to be unobtrusive]: Dear me, is that the time? I’d love to continue this, but I’m afraid I—

Lucy: Mitchell, you’ve outdone yourself. Edgar knows why Melissa was removed from the castle; he got the whole story from his father. And he just finished explaining it all to Alonzo, so he knows too.

Meredith: Adams told him he should feel free to bring along any friend he might happen to run into.

and thence return with me to America. Necessity and duty require that I should not be long absent, as my parents want my assistance, and they are now childless.”

Linda: Well, that’s their fault isn’t it?

David: It’s the unfeeling father’s fault. Melissa’s mother didn’t do anything; she didn’t even know what was going on most of the time.

Linda: Then it’s her fault for being such a doormat.

“Suffer me,” answered Alonzo, “to bury myself in this city for the present: should I ever again awake to real life, I will seek you out if you are on the earth;

Meredith: He won’t find him, of course—he never does—but it’s the thought that counts.

Hugh and Meredith: About to part. Alonzo isn’t going anywhere.

Alonzo took Melissa’s miniature from his bosom, contemplated the picture a few moments with ardent emotion, and presented it to Edgar.

Hugh [as Alonzo]: Oh, um, here. I stole it from you when you were in the bathroom.

“Keep it,” said Edgar, “it is thine. I bestow it upon thee as I would the original, had not death become the rival of thy love, and my affection.—Suffer not the sacred symbol too tenderly to renew your sorrows. How swiftly, Alonzo, does this restless life fleet away!—How soon shall we pass the barriers of terrestrial existence!

David: Edgar falls into these fits now and then so we don’t forget he’s a clergyman.

Let us live worthy of ourselves, of our holy religion, of Melissa—Melissa, whom, when a few more suns have arisen and set, we shall meet in regions where all tears shall be eternally wiped from every eye.”

Meredith: Tears shall be eternally wiped? That doesn’t sound like a very happy place.

Lucy: What I don’t like is “a few more suns”. Makes it sound as if Edgar has some kind of inside knowledge.

Woman in black [drifting through]: What a lot of heathens. Cotton Mather’s last words were “I am going to where all tears will be wiped from my eyes.” The phrase comes at least twice in Revelations.

David [turning around, bewildered]: Who was that?

Lucy: Search me. Another asylum escapee, I guess.

Hugh [as Franklin]: Are you aware that your fly is unzipped?

“Young man, your views, your resolutions, and your present conduct, are totally wrong.

Linda: Say what? He’s working at the job that Franklin found for him.

Disappointment, you say, has driven you from your native country. Disap­pointment in what? In obtaining the object on which you most doated.

David: OK, what’s going on? Did Franklin have Adams’s office bugged?

Lucy: No, he’s continuing where they left off. If it takes him a solid quarter-hour of deep thought to come up with a suitable entry-level job, you can only imagine how long it must take to think his way through the rest of Alonzo’s issues.

And suppose this object had been obtained, would your happiness have been complete? Your own reason, if you coolly consult it, will convince you of the contrary. Do you not remember when an infant, how you cried, and teazed your nurse, or your parents, for a rattle, or some gay trinket? Your whole soul was fixed upon the enchanting bauble; but when obtained, you soon cast it away, and sighed as earnestly for—

Hugh [1804 text]: Sighed as ardently for.

some other trifle, some new toy.

David: I don’t know about the rest of you, but I honestly can’t say I remember my infancy in any great detail.

Thus it is through life; the fancied value of an object ceases with the attainment; it becomes familiar, and its charm is lost.

Meredith: Oh snap, Benjamin Franklin smackdown!

Lucy: If Alonzo weren’t so wrapped up in his personal problems, this would be a good time to point out that Franklin met his own wife when he was seventeen and she was fifteen—and he wrote an article advocating early marriage.

“Was it the splendours of beauty which enraptured you? Sickness may, and age must destroy the symmetry of the most finished form—the brilliancy of the finest features. Was it the graces of the mind? I tell you, that by familiarity, these allurements are lost, and the mind, left vacant,

David: Is this still Melissa he’s talking about, or has he moved on to Alonzo?

turns to some other source to supply vacuum.

Linda: Why would you need to supply vacuum to something that’s already vacant?

Hugh [as Mitchell]: When I—

David: Yes, yes, we know. It was fine when it had your name on it.

Lucy: If you must know, we’re dealing with a parallel sense of “supply”, meaning to fill the gap created by something. The two meanings ran neck and neck until the second half of the 19th century.

Hugh [1804 text]: All but their intrinsic value.

Meredith: Um, yeah, I guess that does make more sense. Selling old love letters to the recycling center doesn’t even pay for the gas, but find the right publisher and you’ve got it made.

Linda: Melissa’s father should have thought of that when he talked about how valuable Beauman’s wardrobe is. Cloth of gold doesn’t wear well.

On your part, indifference would consequently succeed: on the part of your partner, disap­pointment, jealousy, and disgust. What might follow is needless for me to name;—your soul must shudder at the idea of conjugal infidelity!

Lucy: We will tactfully refrain from speculation about how Franklin’s soul felt.

David: The spirit was willing but the flesh was weak. The man’s got to be in his seventies.

“But admitting the most favourable consequences; turn the brightest side of the picture; admitting as much happiness as the connubial state will allow: how might your bosom have been wounded by the sickness and death of your children, or their disorderly and disobedient conduct!

Meredith: Is he quoting Melissa’s father?

Lucy: No, it’s autobiography. One of Franklin’s sons died in childhood and the other one lived and died a Loyalist.

David [as Franklin]: Only think! If Melissa had not died, you would never have been privileged to meet me.

And suffer me to tell you, that in all my observations on life, I have always found that those connections which were formed from inordinate passion, or what some would call pure affection,

Hugh [1804 text]: What you would call pure affection.

have been ever the most unhappy. Examine the varied circles of society, you will there see this axiom demon­strated; you will there see how few among the senti­mentally refined are even apparently at ease; while those, insuscep­tible of what you name tender attachments, or who receive them only as things of course, plod on through life, without even experi­encing the least inconven­ience from a want of the pleasures they are supposed to bestow, or the pains they are sure to create.

Lucy: Then again, Franklin may just be in a bad mood and looking to take it out on someone unimportant.

David: It’s indigestion. The pleasures that were supposed to be bestowed by last night’s dinner have taken a back seat to the pains it was sure to create.

Beware, then, my son, beware of yielding the heart to the effeminacies of passion. Exqui­site sensi­bilities are ever subject to exquisite inquietudes. Counsel with correct reason, place entire dependence on the Supreme,

Hugh: People talk about how characters in British novels manage to pronounce paren­theses. Leave it to Benjamin Franklin to be able to pronounce small capitals.

Meredith: For half an hour or so, while collecting his thoughts for the next round.

Linda: Franklin, you know perfectly well you’re making that up. Wonder why he’s so anxious for Alonzo to leave France all of a sudden?

David: He just found out that Alonzo spent the night in John Adams’s hotel room.

All the parental feelings of Alonzo—

Lucy: I think he means filial feelings, unless there’s something the author hasn’t told us.

were now called into poignant action.—“You have left a country, bleeding at every pore, desolated by the ravages of war, wrecked by the thunders of battle, her heroes slain, her children captured. This country asks—she demands—you owe her your services:

Linda: Didn’t Franklin just get through saying Alonzo has to go back and help his parents? This new your-country-needs-you motif is just going to confuse him.

God and nature call upon you to defend her, while here you bury yourself in inglorious inac­tivity, pining for a hapless object,

Hugh [1804 text]: A hopeless object.

Meredith: Both, as it turned out.

David: Franklin didn’t even get a chance to bring out the thumbscrews.

“I will go to the relief of my parents—I will fly to the defence of my country!”

Linda: I take it back. Franklin obviously understands Alonzo’s character better than we do. If one argument is good, two completely unrelated arguments are even better.

“In former days,” continued Franklin, “I was well acquainted with your father.

Lucy: This would have been during Franklin’s Lost Years, which biographers have hitherto been unable to penetrate. Turns out he was in Connecticut the whole time.

As soon as you informed me of his failure, I wrote to my corres­pondent in England, and found, as I expected, that he had been overreached by swindlers and sharpers.—The pretended failure of the merchants with whom he was in company, was all a sham, as was also the reported loss of the ships in their employ.

David: Exactly what we’ve been saying all along.

The merchants fled to England: I have had them arrested,

Linda: That’s a pretty neat trick when you consider that Franklin’s country is currently at war with England.

and they have given up their effects to much more than the amount of their debts. I have there­fore procured a reversion of your father’s losses, which, with costs, damages, and interests, when legally stated, he will receive of my agent in Philadelphia, to whom I shall transmit sufficient documents by you, and I shall advance you a sum equal to the expenses of your voyage, which will be liquidated by the said agent.

Meredith: Oh Franklin, you turned out to be a deus ex machina. I’m so disappointed.

A ship sails in a few days from Havre, for Savannah in Georgia:

Meredith [before Lucy can say anything]: Wasn’t Georgia heavily controlled by the British during the war? Alonzo’s gonna get captured again as soon as he lands.

it would, indeed, be more convenient were she bound to some more northern port, but I know of no other which will sail for any part of America for some time. In her therefore I would advise you to take passage: it is not very material on what part of the continent you are landed;

David: After all, the whole thing’s only about a hundred miles from edge to— Oh, whoops, I’m thinking of Connecticut.

you will soon reach Philadelphia, transact your business, restore your father to his property, and be ready to serve your country.”

Meredith: I think Franklin’s hoping Alonzo will get killed in battle and his father will leave all his money to Franklin. Not a bad plan.

If any thing could have given Alonzo consolation, it must have been this noble, generous and disinter­ested conduct of the great Franklin in favour of his father, by which his family were restored to ease and to indepen­dence. Ah! had this but have happened in time to save a life far dearer than his own!

Lucy: Never mind that if Melissa hadn’t died, Alonzo would never have gone overseas in the first place, and if he hadn’t ended up in France he would never have met Franklin.

David: Oh, cut it out, Alonzo. You’ve never been to Charleston in your life.

Meredith: That didn’t stop Melissa when she was rhapsodizing about how she enjoyed the scenery around the castle with Alonzo.

Linda: But later on Alonzo did show up at the castle, so that made it OK. It was an antici­patory memory.

He arrived in that city in the afternoon, and at evening he walked out,

Hugh: In France and England it was safe to walk the streets at any hour of the day or night, but now that he’s back in America he’s not taking any chances.

Lucy: I don’t know why this didn’t occur to me sooner, but could he be some kind of vampire?

Linda: My money’s on ghoul. He’s got that obsession with decaying flesh, remember?

David: Oh, no! It’s John’s wife, sent down to Charleston to make sure Alonzo doesn’t try any funny business.

Hugh: It can’t be. He said elderly.

Meredith: She’s twenty-two. Spending your adult life barefoot and pregnant ages you prematurely.

Linda: Cleverly pretending to be unfamiliar with the name.

“Dear me! then you knew her, did you, sir?—Well, we have not her like left in Charleston; that we han’t;

Lucy: It’s been a bad season for young women. One whiff of the climate and they start dropping like flies.

David: Uh . . . tomb-stones, plural? She’s distributed among more than one grave?

Linda: They buried so many young ladies that day, the records got scrambled and they decided not to take any chances.

they are the largest and whitest in the whole burying-ground;

Meredith: The stonecutter used an extra layer of whitewash so the fake marble finish would last longer.

David: He’s got a nerve complaining about other people talking too much. He asked about Melissa and her uncle.

and with a bosom bursting with anguish, Alonzo paid for his ale without drinking it, bade her good night, and slowly proceeded to the church-yard. The moon, in full lustre, shone with solemn, silvery ray, on the sacred piles,

Hugh: The consecrated piles. If Edgar were here, he would explain the difference.

Linda: That’s a relief. I thought we were talking about some kind of embarrassing medical condition.

and funeral monuments—

Hugh [wearily]: Funereal monuments.

Meredith: We wouldn’t want you to think he’s sneaking in one of those unauthorized foreign birds that Pearson was talking about.

and a whippoorwill, Melissa’s favourite bird, whistled near the portico of the church.

David: It’s a recording set for automatic loop, but the visitor doesn’t need to know that.

The large white tomb-stones soon caught the eye of Alonzo. He approached them with tremulous step, and with feelings too agitated for description. On the head-stone—

Lucy: That’s what he meant by tombstones, plural. There’s also a footstone, like in a bed.

Hugh: They need a place to hang their clanking chains and other accessories when they rise from the grave.

Linda: That can’t be right. Didn’t we figure out that most of the romance happened in the spring and summer of 1777?

David: Chronology doesn’t seem to be Mitchell’s strong point. Ask him when something happens and he hasn’t a clue.

Hugh [as Mitchell]: The year of this event is not remembered.

David: They got that from the newspaper. I remember we worked out that she had to be at least twenty, and that was before we got to the Trumbull. If the naval engagement in 1781 happened pretty soon after she died—

Linda: —assuming for the sake of argument that August comes pretty soon after October—

David: —that would make her more like twenty-four.

Meredith: “In the 25th year of her age” just doesn’t sound as heart­breaking.

Alonzo bent, he kneeled, he prostrated himself, he clasped the green turf which enclosed her grave, he watered it with his tears, he warmed it with his sighs. “Where art thou, bright beam of heavenly light!” he said. “Come to my troubled soul, blessed spirit! Come, holy shade! come in all thy native loveliness, and cheer the bosom of wretched­ness, by thy grief dispersing smile!

Hugh: I have to say it would be pretty funny if Melissa’s ghost did show up at this point.

Lucy: Alas, poor Alonzo! I knew him well.

Linda: Oops, wrong miniature. You want the other one.

“how tenderly does she—

Hugh [1804 text]: How tenderly pensive.

David: Admit it: you just like the word. I counted an even dozen of them.

Hugh: If you knew anything at all about the newspaper business you would know that adjectives are always cheaper by the dozen.

beam her lovely eye upon me!

Hugh: Her lovely eyes, plural.

Meredith: In 1804 she still had two. By 1811, one had decomposed.

Linda: Eeuw. It’s the Miniature of Dorian Gray.

How often have I drank delicious extacy from the delicacy of those unrivalled charms!

Lucy [gagging]: Time out. Unscheduled break. I still had the picture of her decomposing eyeball in my mind when we got to the “delicious drink”.

Linda: Thank you for sharing.

How often have they taught me to anticipate superlative and uninter­rupted bliss! Mistaken and delusive hope! [returning the miniature to his bosom.]

David: Whoops! Ran short on quotation marks again.

Vain and presumptuous assurance. There [pointing to the grave] there behold how my dearest wishes, my fondest expectations are realized!—Hallowed turf! lie lightly on her bosom!—Sacred willows! sprinkle the dews gently over her grave, while the mourning breezes sigh sadly amid your branches! Here may the ‘widowed wild rose love to bloom!’

Lucy: Probably The Conquest of Canaan, but I don’t feel like looking it up.

Here may the first placid beams of morning delight to linger; from hence, the evening ray reluctantly withdraw!

Linda: In Connecticut they had dark photons. In Charleston, the latest thing is adhesive photons.

And when the final trump shall renovate and arouse the sleeping saint;—when on ‘buoyant step’ she soars to glory, may our meeting spirits join in beatifick transport! May my enrap­tured ear catch the first holy whisper of her consecrated lips.”

Meredith: Get some sleep, Alonzo. You’ll feel better.

Alonzo having thus poured out the effusions of an overcharged heart, pensively returned to the inn, which he entered and seated himself in the common room, in deep contem­plation. As usual at public inns, a number of people were in the room,

Linda: This is the same inn where he just spent half an hour letting the old lady talk his ear off because there wasn’t anyone else around?

Lucy: In retrospect, putting an alehouse right next to the cemetery may not have been such a great business decision.

among whom were several officers of the American army.

Meredith: No police officers, of course. Those were in the doughnut shop next door.

Alonzo was too deeply absorbed in melancholy reflection, to notice passing incidents, until a young officer came, seated himself by him, and entered into a conversation respecting the events of the war.

David: For conversation, read “monologue”. He was looking for someone who wouldn’t have the energy to tell him to shut up and go away, and Alonzo fit the bill.

He appeared to be about Alonzo’s age; his person was interesting, his manners sprightly, his observations correct.—Alonzo was, in some degree, aroused from his abstrac­tedness;—the manners of the stranger pleased him.

Lucy: He’s got a job to do, and he’s good at it: when you see an able-bodied man out of uniform, act friendly and get his story.

His frankness, his ease, his understanding, his urbanity, void of vanity or sophisti­cation, sympa­thetically caught the feelings of Alonzo, and he even felt a sort of solemn regret when the stranger departed.

David [as stranger]: Well, thanks for listening, but I’m back on duty in an hour and I need to sober up. Oh, by the way, I told the barman to put my drinks on your tab.

Meredith: Too bad there aren’t any unattached young ladies around. It’s just the time for a walk.

He was informed by the inn-keeper, that the theatre, which had been closed since the commencement of the war, was to be opened for that night only, with the tragedy of Gustavus,

Lucy [usual business with reference books]: Ooh, good one. Written by Henry Brooke in England in 1739, and promptly banned for political reasons. Its American premiere—which probably means world premiere—was on the 14th of June, 1782, in Baltimore.

Linda: So if this is the early part of the year, we’d have to be in at least 1783.

David [ticking off points]: Death of Melissa, Trumbull incident in late 1781, move forward no more than eighteen months. It fits!

Meredith: Except for those seven years that the author sort of misplaced.

and close with a representation of Burgoyne’s capture, and some other recent events of the American war.

David: Bzzt! Datable External Event! Bzzt!

Lucy [riffling through books]: Where are they getting “capture”? He surrendered—and then calmly went home to England and spent the rest of his life writing plays. That’s assuming they’re talking about the battle of Saratoga, in October . . . uh . . . 1777. Not exactly “recent”.

Hugh: If Melissa died in 1776 as it says on her tombstone, and it’s now eighteen months later, then October 1777 was only six months ago.

To “wing the hours with swifter speed,” Alonzo determined to go to the theatre,

Linda: How much swifter does he need to get? He’s already lived through ten years of recorded history in three years.

David: Yesterday the war, today the theater. Tomorrow night, he’s going to back Alonzo into a corner and explain how the third quarter of the Super Bowl should have been played, with particular attention to that grossly miscalled fumble.

Linda: Pity they didn’t bury Melissa in an open vault. He’d be able to go in and watch her decomposing.

Affection, passion, inclination, urged him to go and breathe a farewell sigh, to drop a final tear over the grave of Melissa. Discretion, reason, wisdom forbade it—forbade that he should re-pierce the ten thousand wounds of his bosom,

David: If he were a cartoon character, he’d be spurting blood like a colander.

Lucy [punching buttons on calculator]: I make it eight piercings per linear inch. More like a cheese grater.

Meredith: Good observation, Mitchell. With Alonzo, “gloomy” and “lucid” are mutually exclusive.

Linda [1836 text]: I’ve got “As yet a forfeit”. [Looking around.] Um. I guess not. He left out “youth”, too.

David: And this is astonishing because . . . ?

He replaced it and flung himself into bed. Sleep was far from him; he closed not his eyes till the portals of light were unbarred in the east,

Linda: Does that mean daylight, or sunrise? In this book, they seem to come about three hours apart.

Hugh [as editor]: It means it’s time to fire another writer and swap out the Violations Jar. It just overflowed.

Meredith: And most extraordinary of all if the stranger ever gets around to telling his name.

Linda: Two names would be unrealistic, so we won’t even consider it.

Hugh: No, no, you’ve got it backward. Now listen [1804 text]:

“Are you unmarried, sir?” “I am now, and have ever been single.”

Meredith: So that’s what he was getting at. I’ve got “married” and “now”, give or take a comma.

David: Something about that wording sounds horribly familiar.

Linda: It’s a relative of Melissa’s father! She made a last-minute will leaving everything to Alonzo, so he’s got to be quietly disposed of as soon as they’ve made sure of his identity.

“A young lady of this city, with whom I am well acquainted, and to whom, indeed, I am distantly related, whose father is affluent, whose connections are eminently respectable, whose manners are engaging, whose mind is virtue, whose elegance of form and personal beauty defy competition, is the cause, sir, of this mission.

Hugh [as Alonzo]: Sorry, not interested.

Early introduced into the higher walks of life, she has passed the rounds of fashionable company; numberless suitors have sighed for her hand, whom she complai­santly dismissed without disobliging, as her heart had not yet been touched by the tender passion of love.

Hugh [as Alonzo]: Did I mention that I’m not interested?

Surprising as it may, however, seem, it is now about six months since she saw in her dream the youth who possessed the power to inspire her with this passion. In her dream she saw a young gentleman whose interesting manners and appearance, impressed her so deeply that she found she must be unhappy without him.

Hugh [as Alonzo]: I’m really not—

David: You may as well save your breath. He’s not interested in your response.

She thought it was in a mixed company she saw him, but that she could not get an oppor­tunity to speak to him. It seemed that if she could but speak to him, all difficulties would at once be removed. At length he approached her, and just as he was about to address her, she awoke.

Linda: That was the first test. If the subject appears to believe this cockamamie story, it may be Alonzo, so proceed to the second test.

“This extraordinary dream she has communicated to several of her acquaintance.—Confident that she should some time or other behold the real person whose semblance she had seen in her dream, she has never since been perfectly at ease in her mind. Her father, who has but two children, one beside herself,

Hugh [1804 text]: Who has but two children besides herself.

David: That had better turn out to be significant.

being dotingly fond of her, has promised that if ever she meets this unknown stranger, he will not oppose their union, provided he is respectable, and that, if worthy of her hand, he will make him independent.

Linda: That was the second test. If the subject buys the idea that a young lady’s father could swallow the story—

“On my return from the inn the evening I first saw you, I told my sister—I beg pardon, sir—I was wandering from my subject—

Lucy: A-ha! He’s got a vested interest. He needs to locate his sister’s dream man and bump him off before their father can settle any money on him.

after I first met you at the inn, I fell in company with the lady, and in a rallying way told her that I had seen her invisible beau, as we used to call the gentleman of the dream. I super­ficially described your person, and descanted a little on the embellish­ments of your mind.

Meredith: I’m going to guess that “descanted” means “made it up off the top of my head”, because I can’t think of any other way that he would have information about Alonzo’s mind.

She listened with some curiosity and attention; but I had so often jested with her in this manner, that she thought but little of it. At the play last night, I had just been speaking to her when I came to your box: her eyes followed me,

David: Go for it, Alonzo. You don’t find that many women with X-ray vision. It might even be hereditary.

Linda: And that was the third test. If the subject doesn’t stop you at this point and say “The only thing that’s obvious is that your whole story is nonsense from beginning to end”—then you’ve almost certainly found Alonzo.

Even her father and mother are not informed of it, and should my mission prove unsuc­cessful, none except you, sir, she and myself, I hope and trust, will ever know any thing of the matter.

Lucy: At least until Alonzo gets home and starts dining out on the story of the wacko he met in Charleston.

“Now, sir, it is necessary for me farther to explain. As singular as the circum­stances which I have related may appear to you, to me they must appear as strange.—One valu­able purpose is, however, answered thereby; it will exclude the imputation of capri­ciousness—the freakish whim of love at first sight, which exists only in novels and romances. You, sir, are young, unmarried, unaffianced, your affec­tions free: such is the condition of the lady. She enquires not into the state of your property! she asks not riches:—If she obtains the object of her choice, on him, as I have told you, will her father bestow affluence.—Whatever, sir, may be your pretensions to eminence, and they may be many, the lady is not your inferior.

Meredith [as stranger]: She’s stark staring mad, of course, but I see no reason why that should weigh with you.

Hugh [1804 text]: Which led to—

Meredith: It’s not every day you receive an offer of marriage from a madwoman who has never exchanged one syllable with you. Anyone would be flattered.

Nor is it necessary that I should visit the lady, to confirm the truth of what you have related. You will not, sir, receive it as an adulatory compliment, when I say, that although our acquain­tance is short, yet my confidence in your integrity is such as to require no corro­borating facts to establish your declaration.

Linda: The lady herself may or may not be bonkers, but one of her near relatives certainly is. That’s enough information for me.

Hugh: In spite of the stranger’s touching confidence, Alonzo is not prepared to reciprocate by describing the exact nature of his fetish.

David [as stranger]: Dude, you’re not getting it. We’re talking a lot of money here.

“That day will never arrive, sir,” answered Alonzo: “I have had time for deliberate reflec­tion since the melancholy event took place. I have experienced a sufficient change of objects and of country; the effect is the same. The wound is still recent, and so it will ever remain:

Meredith: It will heal faster if you stop picking at it.

indeed I cannot wish it otherwise. There is a rich and sacred solemnity in my sorrows, sir, which I would not exchange for the most splendid acquirements of wealth, or the most digni­fied titles of fame.”

Lucy: Alonzo has fantasies of being pointed out at age fifty as the man with the nameless and mysterious sorrow in his past.

The young officer sat for some time silent.

Linda: A style of behavior made fashionable by Dr. Franklin.

David: In addition to the ten thousand puncture wounds, the autopsy revealed extensive blunt-force trauma to the upper torso.

Linda [as stranger]: We’ve been close friends for nearly 48 hours, so you know you can trust me.

Hugh [mutters something about pots and kettles].

but he told the stranger he would accompany him—who immediately stepped into the carriage, and they drove, by his direction, to an elegant house in a street at a little distance,

Lucy: The “street” part is to lull the reader’s suspicion. We’ve already been told that Colonel D—— lives outside of town, so this can’t possibly have anything to do with Melissa’s family.

Meredith: You’re sunk, Alonzo. These Southern families take the proprieties seriously. Five seconds alone in a closed room with a lady, and you’ll have to marry her.

The lady was sitting by a window at the lower end of the room, but arose as Alonzo was announced. She was dressed in sky-blue silk, embroidered with spangled lace; a gemmed tiara gathered her hair, from which was suspended a green veil, according to the mode of those times;

Linda: The ladies of Charleston never suspected that their leading dress designer was color-blind.

a silken girdle, with diamond clasps, surrounded her waist, and a brilliant sparkled upon her bosom.

Lucy: They also had no idea that in the rest of the Colonies, jewels for daytime wear had gone out of fashion at the beginning of the Revolution.

Meredith: She needn’t have bothered with the opaque green veil. A little bitty opera mask would have done the job.

Confused and hurried sensations, melancholy, yet pleasing; transporting as the recurrence of youthful joys, enrapturing as dreams of early childhood, passed in rapid succession over his imagination!

Linda: It’s his old nurse! They always told him she had died, but he had his suspicions.

She advanced towards him and turned aside her veil. Her eyes were suffused, and tears streamed down her cheeks.—Alonzo started—his whole frame shook—he gasped for breath!—“Melissa!” he convulsively exclaimed,—“God of infinite wonders, it is Melissa!”

David: Alonzo is the main character, so he’s allowed to take the Lord’s name in vain twice. Melissa and her father only get one each.

Hugh: To make up for it, she gets to say “Heaven!” three times while Alonzo only gets one.

Again will the incidents of our history produce a pause.

Linda: For “will”, read “did”. For “the incidents of our history”, read “our editorial action”.

Our sentimental readers will experience a recurrence of sympathetic sensi­bilities, and will attend more eagerly to the final scene of our drama.—“Melissa alive!” may they say—“impossible! Did not Alonzo see her death in the public prints?

Hugh and Meredith: —announced in the—

David: You mean they knew about it beforehand, like a wedding or a furniture sale?

Did not her cousin at New London inform him of the circumstances, and was he not in mourning? Did not the dying Beauman confirm the melancholy fact?

Lucy: Dying Declaration. Common exception to the hearsay rule. Obviously Alonzo has never seen Strangers on a Train.

And was not the unquestionable testimony of her brother Edgar sufficient to seal the truth of all of this? Did not the sexton’s wife who knew not Alonzo, corroborate it? And did not Alonzo finally read her name, her age, and the time of her death, on her tomb-stone, which exactly accorded with the publication of her death in the papers, and his own knowledge of her age? And is not this—

Hugh [1804 text]: Is not all this.

sufficient to prove, clearly and incontestibly prove, that she is dead?

Meredith: Well, let’s see. People who independently reported Melissa’s death [ticking off on fingers]: newspaper obituary writer, cousin, Beauman, Edgar, sexton’s wife—

Linda: Woman claiming to be the sexton’s wife. We have only her word for it, and why is a sexton’s wife hanging out in an alehouse with two small childen?

Meredith: —stone-cutter. Total, six. Number of people who personally witnessed Melissa’s death . . .

David [ostentatiously counting on fingers]: I make it zero.

Lucy: Call it Preponderance of the Evidence, but not Beyond a Reasonable Doubt. Might be enough to get her will into probate, though.

And yet here she is again, in all her primitive beauty and splendour! No, this surely can never be. However the author may succeed in his description, in painting reanimated nature,

Linda: If Mitchell is about to claim that the idea of Frankenstein was originally his, I’m going to need some hard proof.

Meredith: Uh, it’s been six months, I think.

Lucy: Eighteen. But he definitely isn’t up to speed on human-decomposition research.

and he has raised up some female Martin Guerre, or Thomas Hoag—

Linda: I remember Martin Guerre—there was a French movie about him—but who’s Thomas Hoag?

Lucy [riffling through books]: New York City bigamy case in—oh, lucky break for Mitchell!—1804. His readers had probably been slurping up every detail. Real name, Joseph Parker. He was acquitted and they never did find the real Hoag. The Martin Guerre impostor was more fun. He claimed he really was Guerre, and probably would have got away with it if the real one hadn’t turned up.

some person, from whose near resemblance to the deceased, he thinks to impose upon us and upon Alonzo also, for Melissa. But it will not do; it must be the identical Melissa herself, or it might as well be her likeness in a marble statue. What! can Alonzo realize the delicacies, the tenderness, the blandish­ments of Melissa in another? Can her substitute point him to the rock on New London beach, the bower on her favourite hill,

David: That’s a pretty good question—but first we’d have to know for certain that Melissa never told anyone but Alonzo. She could have babbled out anything when she was dying.

Meredith: And he could have babbled out anything at any time.

or so feelingly describe the charms of nature?

Lucy: Better not lay too much weight on that one. I don’t think a court would consider an ability to describe the charms of nature as dispositive evidence.

Can he, indeed, find in her representative those alluring graces, that pensive sweetness, those unrivalled virtues and matchless worth which he found in Melissa, and which attracted, fixed and secured the youngest affections of his soul? Impossible!—Or could the author even make it out that Alonzo was deceived by a person so nearly resembling Melissa that he could not distinguish the difference,

Linda: Based on our knowledge of Alonzo and his powers of observation—I’d say yes, easily.

yet to his readers he must unveil the deception, and, of course, the story will end in disap­pointment; it will leave an unpleasant and disagreeable impression on the mind of the reader,

Meredith: Truer words . . .

which in novel writing is certainly wrong. It is proved as clearly as facts can prove, that he has suffered Melissa to die; and since she is dead, it is totally beyond his power to bring her to life—

Meredith: The Imagined Reader apparently has a thin grasp on the concept of fiction.

and so his history is intrinsically good for nothing.”

Readers [ostentatiously look in five different directions, avoiding eye contact].

Be not quite so hasty, my zealous censor.

Meredith: Don’t tell me what to do, Jackson.

Hugh: Mitchell.

Meredith: Don’t tell me what to do, Mitchell.

Did we not tell you that we were detailing facts? Shall we disguise or discolour truth to please your taste?

Linda: Well, sure, if it sells more copies. We’ve been over this before.

Have we not told you that disappointments are the lot of life? Have we not, according to the advice of the moralist, led Alonzo to the temple of philosophy, the shrine of reason, and the sanctuary of religion?

Lucy: You can lead a man to philosophy but you can’t make him think.

If all these fail—if in these Alonzo cannot find a balsam sufficient to heal his wounded bosom; then if, in despite of graves and tomb-stones, Melissa will come to his relief—will pour the balm of consolation over his anguished soul, cynical critic, can the author help it?

David: If the author is asking us to believe that the character took on a life of her own and he never had any idea she was still alive, I’m not buying it.

It was indeed Melissa, the identical Melissa, whom Alonzo ascended a tree to catch a last glimpse of, as she walked up the avenue to the old mansion, after they had parted at the draw-bridge, on the morning of the day when she was so mysteriously removed.

Linda: Oh, thank you, Mitchell. I’d forgotten who this Melissa character was, and was hoping someone would jog my memory.

“Melissa!”—“Alonzo!”—were all they could articulate: and frown not, my fair readers, if we tell you that she was instantly in his arms, while he pressed his ardent lips to her glowing cheek.

David: That’s her brother’s cue to burst in with a shotgun.

Sneer not, ye callous hearted insensibles, ye fastidious prudes, if we inform you that their tears fell in one inter­mingling shower,

Hugh [1804 text]: In one immingling shower.

David: This is that “humor” thing again, isn’t it?

Meredith: Give it up, Mitchell. You haven’t got the knack.

The opening of the door, therefore, caused them quickly to change their position; not so hastily, however, but that the young officer who then entered the room had a glimpse of their situation.—“Aha!” said he, “have I caught you? Is my philosophic Plato so soon meta­morphosed to a bon ton enamarato? But a few hours ago, sir, and you were proof against the whole arcana of beauty,

Linda [1836 text]: The whole arena of . . . um . . . never mind.

and all the artillery of the graces; but no sooner are you for one moment tete a tete with a fashionable belle, than your heroism and your resolutions are vanquished, your former ties dissolved, and your deceased charmer totally forgotten or neglected, by the virtue of a single glance. Well, so it is: Amor vincit omnia is my motto;

Meredith: Save yourselves a trip to the dictionary. In my margin it says “Love conquers all”.

to thee all conquering beauty, our firmest determinations must bow. I cannot censure you for discovering, though late, that one living object is really of more intrinsic value than two dead ones.

Lucy: Two dead ones? Did I miss something?

Indeed, sir, I cannot but applaud your determination.”

Hugh [1804 text]: Your discrimination.

Linda: I like “determination”. Makes him sound sarcastic.

Hugh: The true novel style.

David: So is it true, or is it a novel?

Hugh: I don’t care, so long as you buy my newspaper.

but for the deceptive part, you may thank your little gipsey of a nymph there,”

Lucy: Mitchell was fresh out of adjectives but he found some usable nouns in the bargain bin.

Linda: For a given definition of “usable”. Just don’t ask him what a gipsy nymph is.

Hugh: I thought it was a stage in the development of an insect.

David: If her father were here, he would say she’ll burn in Hell for that remark. But since she’s spent the last year and a half being dead, she probably knows more about the subject than he does.

Linda: It’s no use objecting that this is the first you’ve heard of any deceased uncle. Melissa never knew about him either; she met him while she was dead.

David: Who the— Does she mean Captain Wilmot? Another person with two names?

Meredith: That makes four. William Simpson, Henry Malcomb, Jack Brown and now this cousin.

Lucy: Four and a half, if you give Melissa credit for the initial D.

Meredith: But she has to share that with her uncle—the one who isn’t deceased—and her parents and Edgar. Oh, and the old maid.

and her home.

Linda: I guess it would be tactless to ask whose house this is, if it isn’t any of theirs.

Hugh: The author rented it for a half-day to fool the reader.

Meredith: Thanks to his well-attested memory problem, he has long since forgotten that he had breakfast at the inn before leaving, and can’t understand why he feels so full already.

Hugh: Pay attention, will you? The eldest, comma, a son . . .

Lucy: It’s redundant either way. The firstborn is always a son, unless all the children are going to be daughters. Well-known biological fact, attested in hundreds of novels.

Hugh: Hey! You skipped a paragraph. [1804 text:]

Linda: Neener-neener, you used the n-word.

Hugh [huffily]: It doesn’t say the story is a novel. The reference is to the methods of novel writers.

Linda: Tell it to the judge.

we might close our history, and leave it for imagination to paint the sequel. But there are some mysteries, which if not elucidated, will render our story incomplete, and besides were we to stop here, the real finishing stroke would still be wanting;

Lucy: So long as one reader is left alive, the author’s job cannot be considered complete.

we shall therefore pass with as much rapidity as possible over the remaining incidents of our story,

Readers [ad lib]: Yay! Woo hoo! Hurrah!

Lucy: You know, I always wondered about that. The walled compound must be awfully small if you can hear from inside the house when someone’s at the main gate.

Hugh: The old maid made sure the intercom was kept in good working order, and changed the batteries regularly.

I immediately went to the gate, opened it, and let down the bridge. John informed me that my aunt had suddenly and unexpectedly arrived that morning in company with a strange gentleman, and that he had come for the keys, as my aunt was to visit the mansion that day. I strove to persuade John to leave the keys in my possession, and that I would make all easy with my aunt when she arrived.

David: Of course it would never enter her head to lie and say she doesn’t have them.

Meredith [as Melissa]: Keys? What keys? What are you talking about? My aunt gave you the keys so you could lock me in.

Linda [as Melissa]: What do you mean, give you the keys? I gave them back to you when I opened the gate. It’s not my fault if you’ve lost them.

This, though with much reluctance, he at length consented to, and departed. Soon after this my aunt came, and without much ceremony demanded the keys, insinuating that I had obtained them from John by imposition, and for the basest purposes.

David: Something baser than mere escape, obviously.

Linda: It wouldn’t have to be anything fancy. She could just lock up her aunt and leave her to starve.

This aroused me to indignation, and I answered by informing her that whatever purposes the persecution and cruelty of my family had compelled me to adopt, my conscience, under present circum­stances approved them, and I refused to give her the keys. She then ordered me to prepare to leave the mansion, and accompany her to her residence at the house of John.

Lucy: Since Melissa isn’t planning to escape anyway, this whole locked-in-a-castle business has become a pointless hassle.

I told her that I had been placed there by my father, and should not—

Hugh: Have subordinate clauses gone out of fashion? [1804 text:] I told her that as I had been placed there by my father, I should not—

David: Come to think of it, how does she know it was her father? If someone locked me in a castle, I’d want something more than my captor’s unsupported word that they were acting on my father’s instructions.

consent to a removal unless by his express orders.

Meredith: Melissa gives new meaning to the term “a model prisoner”.

Linda: Uh . . . why? Alonzo isn’t coming until eleven. Is she holding open house for the burglars?

I then returned to the mansion, and placed the candle, as we had concerted, at the window. Shortly after I heard a carriage roll over the bridge and proceed up the avenue.—My heart fluttered; I wished—I hardly know what I did wish;

David: Try wishing for a clock. It can’t possibly be eleven P.M. already.

Lucy [consulting almanac]: Even if we make it earlier in the year—say, mid-August rather than close to the equinox—it would be dark by seven-thirty or so.

but I feared I was about to act improperly, as I had no other idea but that it was you, Alonzo, who was approaching.

Meredith: Bit late to worry about the proprieties, since Alonzo is showing up by express arrangement—and you can’t get a whole lot more improper than sharing a closed carriage in the middle of the night.

Lucy: Spending a night alone together would be even worse, but— Oh, right, they’ve already done that.

Linda: Why bother? It’s not like she’d be missing anything.

“The carriage drove, as near as I could judge, about ten miles, when we stopped at an inn for the night, except my father, who returned home on horseback, leaving me at the inn in company with the servants,

Meredith: Melissa’s father has finally mastered the “chaperone” concept. The maid­servant’s job is to sleep in Melissa’s room.

Hugh and Meredith: A terrible fluster.

Lucy: Those -st- ligatures will trip you up every time.

he immediately ordered his carriage and directed us to attend him. He met your aunt at a tavern somewhere away back, and she told him that the gentleman who used to come to our house so much once, had contrived to carry you off from the place where you lived with her;

Linda: Melissa skipped the part where she blurted out the whole plan to her aunt because she’s—hang on, I know it’s in here somewhere—incapable of duplicity or evasion.

David: Or possibly because she’s a godforsaken imbecile.

Meredith: Melissa has a long history of disappearing for months at a stretch without saying a word to anyone, so her mother thought nothing of it.

Hugh [absent-mindedly]: Too wordy. Cut everything but “Melissa’s mother thought nothing”.

Hugh [1804 text]: A packet of letters.

Linda: Hence the term “packet boat”.

David: Can’t she keep her stories straight? First she said Alfred was the son of her deceased uncle; now it’s an aunt.

she married very young, to a gentleman in Hartford, of the name of Wilmot,

Meredith: It would be a lot funnier if his name had been something other than Wilmot, since we already know that’s Alfred’s last name.

who fell before the walls of Louisburg, in the old French war.

Lucy [reference books]: Otherwise known as the French and Indian war, 1754–1763. Siege of Louisbourg, Nova Scotia, summer 1758.

My aunt did not long survive him;—her health, which had been for some time declining, received so serious a shock by this catastrophe, that she died a few months after the melancholy tidings arrived, leaving Alfred, their only child, then an infant,

Linda: What did “infant” mean in 1804—under 21? The author thinks we’re in the first half of 1778, so if Alfred was an infant in 1758 he’d be around twenty, twenty-one. You’d have to do some serious juggling to get him to be “about Alonzo’s age”.

Meredith: While you’re juggling, see if you can figure out how old his mother was. If she married “very young” and her only child is in his early 20’s, she’d be at most in her early 40’s if she were still alive—but the author specifically said that the Colonel is the youngest, and that he’s about fifty.

David: Maybe her first child wasn’t born until ten years after she got married.

Meredith: Which wipes out the only reason for saying that she married “very young”.

Lucy: And, to wrap it up, the old maid hasn’t just “doubled her teens”, she has tripled or even quadrupled them.

Linda: I don’t usually ask for extra words, but I do wish he’d said “poor but honest”.

As soon as my grandfather was informed of this attachment, he, in a very peremptory manner, ordered my uncle to break off the connection on pain of his highest displeasure. But such is the force of early impressions, (Melissa sighed) that my uncle found it impos­sible to submit to these firm injunctions;

Hugh [1804 text]: These stern injunctions.

David: Father and grandfather really are two peas in a pod, aren’t they?

a clandestine marriage ensued, and my grandfather’s maledictions in consequence. The union was, however, soon dissolved;

Meredith: The Unfeeling Grandfather pulled strings to have it annulled.

Linda: Isn’t that a tautology?

where she remained until within about two years before I came here.

David: Making her about Melissa’s age, give or take a couple of years.

Meredith [slapping forehead]: Oh, of course! This is the cousin who was supposed to spend the summer with Melissa after the wedding that never happened. I thought the author had forgotten all about her.

Linda: That makes another relative who’s ten years older than he ought to be. I think the author just hit the wrong button on his calculator. If you put the four siblings in the forty-to-fifty range, instead of fifty and up, it works out a lot better. The evil aunt is still too old—but she probably lies about her age.

“Alfred was educated at Harvard College:

Lucy: That explains why we’ve never heard of these people before. The Yale and Harvard branches of the family don’t speak to each other.

David: Don’t forget “impartial” and “unbiased”.

of every particular circumstance, from the time of my first acquaintance with you until my arrival at his house.

Linda: Except for the episodes involving the ghostly house­breakers. Her non-disclosure agreement is still in effect there.

He sat some time silent,

Meredith: That Franklin guy has got a lot to answer for.

and then told me that my father, he believed, had drawn the worst side of the picture; and that he had urged him to exert every means in his power to reclaim me to obedience: That Beauman was to follow me in a few months, and that, if I still refused to yield him my hand, my father positively and solemnly declared that he would discard me forever, and strenu­ously enjoined it upon him to do the same.

Lucy: Melissa’s father is congenitally unable to imagine anyone disagreeing with him, let alone actively opposing him, no matter how many times it has happened in the past. So it would never enter his mind to make sure of the uncle’s position before entrusting Melissa to him.

‘I well know my brother’s temper,’ continued my uncle; ‘the case is difficult, but something must be done. I will immediately write to your father,

Meredith: Wouldn’t it be more useful to write to Alonzo?

desiring him—

Hugh [1804 text]: Advising him. Younger brothers do not give orders to older brothers.

David: Waste of time either way. Melissa’s father doesn’t take advice.

not to proceed too rashly; in the mean time we must consider what measures to pursue. You must not, my niece, you must not be sacrificed.’ So saying, he left me, highly consoled that, instead of a tyrant, I had found a friend in my new protector.

Linda: But only for as long as it takes for father to swing down from Connecticut, remove her from the uncle’s protection and proceed to Plan C.

“Alfred was made acquainted with the affair, and many were the plans projected for my benefit,

Lucy: When Yale’s best efforts fail, bring in Harvard.

and abandoned as indefeasible,

Meredith: Defying your father is tricky when you’re only prepared to defy him with his consent.

Hugh [with Meredith nodding assent]: Her health evidently decreasing after she came to this place.

Meredith: Cause and effect. The sexton’s wife already told us what an unhealthy place this is.

she was sent to a village on one of the high hills of Pedee, where she remained a consi­derable time; she then went to one of the inland towns in North Carolina, from whence she had but just returned with Alfred when I arrived. Afterwards I accompanied her to George­town,

Linda: I’m going to guess that they weren’t taking extension classes at Georgetown University, and that she doesn’t mean any of the Georgetowns west of the Mississippi or north of the Ohio. So is she talking about Georgetown, Delaware; Georgetown, Georgia; or Georgetown, South Carolina?

Lucy [reference books]: The one in South Carolina is on the coast, so there wouldn’t seem to be much point in going there instead of staying in Charleston. But it’s been around forever, while the one in Georgia is a one-horse town that wasn’t incorporated until 1859, and Dela­ware’s Georgetown only goes back to 1791.

and other places, attended by her father, so that she was little more known in Charleston than myself. But all answered no purpose to the restoration of her health; a confirmed hectic carried her off—

David: A confirmed hectic what?

Linda [before Lucy can reach for the books]: A high fever, associated with wasting diseases like consumption.

in the bloom of youth.

Meredith: Apart from being sickly all her life and dying of consumption, she was in the bloom of health.

“I was but a few months older than she; her name was Melissa, a name which a pious grandmother had borne, and was therefore retained—

Hugh [1804 text]: Was thereafter retained.

Meredith: I like “therefore”. Melissa’s father was hoping she’d grow up equally pious.

David: The other Melissa’s father was just trying to kiss up to the family after they’d disowned him.

in the family. Our similarity of age, and in some measure of appearance, our being so little known in Charleston, and our names being the same, suggested to Alfred the idea of imposing on my father, by passing off my cousin’s death as my own.

Lucy: And thanks to his Harvard education, he was able to pass off this harebrained scheme as a bright idea.

This would, at least, deter Beauman from prosecuting his intended journey to Charleston;

Linda: The strict code of Southern hospitality would have made it impossible for the uncle to refuse to let Beauman in the house. But nobody could take issue with “I’m sorry, you can’t see her because she’s dead.”

it would also give time for farther deliberation,

David: When you’re in prison for concealment of one death and falsely reporting another, you’ve got a lot of time to think.

Hugh [as uncle]: Just show me—sob—where to sign.

He however entrusted Alfred to act with full powers, and to use his name for my interest, if necessary.

David [as Alfred]: My uncle is too distraught over his visiting niece’s death to answer polite inquiries about his own daughter.

Meredith: Not half as distraught as the daughter herself. She’s wearing Melissa’s clothes, has made herself up to look like her—and she has miraculously been cured of consump­tion, so the doctor need never again set eyes on her.

David [as Alfred]: I’m sorry, officer, but my uncle is too distraught to discuss the sudden disap­pearance of his daughter’s doctor.

Alfred therefore procured a publication, as of my death, in the Connecticut papers, parti­cularly at New London, the native place of Beauman. In Charleston it was also generally supposed that it was the niece, and not the daughter of Col. D——, who had died.

Linda: Fortunately the other Melissa had no friends and had already broken off ties with everyone in Boston who knew her handwriting.

This imposition was likewise practised on the sexton,

Lucy: Alfred crosses his fingers and hopes that by the time the Colonel recuperates from his real daughter’s death and starts asking questions, the statute of limitations will have run out.

Hugh: The author wouldn’t want anyone to think he was simply making it up.

Alfred then wrote a letter to my father, in my uncle’s name, stating the particulars of my cousin’s death, and applying them to me. The epitaph on her tombstone was likewise so devised that it would with equal propriety apply either to her or to me.

David: Apart from the trivial detail of saying she was the colonel’s niece rather than his daughter, and leaving out all mention of her birthdate.

“To undeceive you, Alonzo,” continued Melissa, “was the next object.

Meredith [as Melissa]: My mother, brother and everyone else in the world can rot for all I care.

I consulted with Alfred how this should be done.

David: I’d like to consult with Alfred too, because the more I try to make sense of this scenario, the more confused I get. Right now—which is really eighteen months ago, because Melissa is telling the story to Alonzo—everyone in the universe thinks Melissa is dead, except her cousin Alfred and her uncle the Colonel.

Hugh: Don’t forget Mrs. Colonel and their three children, aged ten, seven and four. Minus eighteen months. Just the age to be entrusted with a life-or-death secret.

Meredith: The Colonel shouldn’t have been in such a hurry to dispose of the doctor. He could have surgically removed the children’s tongues. Instead, it will have to be house arrest for all of them.

Linda: And the servants.

Lucy: And a few hundred slaves. Last time I looked, Charleston was in the South, and Melissa did say he’d racked up a fortune.

Hugh: A splendid fortune.

‘My sister,’ he said, (in our private circles he always called me by the tender name of sister,)

David: She’s just saying that so Alonzo won’t ask awkward questions about what she’s been doing to pass the time for the last eighteen months.

‘I am determined to see you happy before I relinquish the business I have undertaken: letters are a precarious mode of communi­cation; I will make a journey to Connecticut, find out Alonzo, visit your friends, and see how the plan operates. I am known to your father, who has ever treated me as a relative.

Meredith: But he is a—

Hugh: He is not. He’s only his . . . uhm . . . sister’s son.

Linda: I wouldn’t have thought the human doormat could keep any secret from her husband, let alone a whopper like this one. But I guess Melissa knows her mother better than we do.

Meredith: She knows her father better. He never tells his wife anything, and has never listened to a word she says.

and, if he found it expedient, to Vincent and Mr. Simpson, in whose friendship and fidelity I was sure he might safely confide.

David: In fact, what the heck, tell everyone. Print a retraction in the newspaper. Put up a billboard. Just don’t let Melissa’s father know.

“He soon departed, and returned in about two months. He found my father and mother in extreme distress on account of my supposed death: my mother’s grief had brought her on to the bed of sickness; but when Alfred had undeceived her she rapidly revived.

Lucy: Since Melissa’s father never pays attention to anything his wife does, this abrupt change in demeanor passed unnoticed.

My father told Alfred that he seriously regretted opposing my inclinations, and that, were it possible he could retrace the steps he had taken, he should conduct in a very different manner, as he was not only deprived of you,

Meredith [after exchanging glances with others]: Uh, I think you meant “deprived of me”. It’s still Melissa speaking.

Linda [to Hugh, kindly]: This is not Mitchell’s best day, is it?

but Edgar also, who had gone to Holland in an official capacity, soon after receiving the tidings of my death.

David: Darn! Just missed him.

Lucy: I think Edgar just missed Alfred. [Turning back pages and reaching for pencil and paper.] The whole Eastern seaboard is at war, so mail delivery wouldn’t be much faster than regular travel time. Maybe even slower, if mail gets intercepted and read a few times. Say two weeks for Alfred’s letter to reach Melissa’s father. A little longer for Alfred himself to reach Connecticut. At the same time, Melissa’s father is writing to Edgar in the Army—more slow mail—and then Edgar has to get a furlough and travel home. In November, in Connecticut, with a war on. I don’t see how he can even have reached his father’s house yet, let alone leave for Holland.

“I am now childless,” said my father in—

Linda: crocodile—

Hugh [glaring at others]: You had gone in search of me. Vincent conjectured that you had gone to New London.

judging possibly that you would find me there. Alfred therefore determined to proceed to that place immediately. He then confi­dentially unfolded—

Linda [1836 text]: He then confidently unf . . . Uh . . . I’ll just go sit in the corner with Mitchell, shall I?

Meredith: I like it. He’s absolutely confident nobody will utter a word of doubt or criticism.

Lucy: A pretty neat trick, since the interview can’t possibly have happened yet. [Ticks off points on fingers.] Alonzo reads about Melissa’s death in a weekly paper, so the news would be up to six days old, plus the time it took to reach the newspaper in the first place. He then spends some indeter­minate time in delirium before his talk with the cousin. He was probably semi-conscious at the Wyllis’ house the whole time Alfred was in New London looking for him.

but from whence you then came, to where you went, he knew not; and after making the strictest enquiry,

Linda: Thanks to Alonzo’s earlier military history, it would never have entered Alfred’s mind to ask the Navy to check their records.

he could hear nothing more of you. By a vessel in that port, bound directly for Holland, he wrote an account of the whole affair to Edgar,

Meredith: That will teach him to rely on the cousin’s precognition. He could have just swung by Melissa’s home on the way back, and told Edgar.

Linda: No, Edgar’s still waiting for the military authorities to process his furlough request. Alonzo has to have at least six or eight weeks’ head start to allow for his time in prison, “several weeks” hiding out at Jack Brown’s house, and then traveling from London to Paris.

David: What friends? The ones who were completely clueless when Alonzo was trying to find Melissa a few months ago?

Linda: Alfred has an air that invites people to spill their guts. That’s what makes him such a good recruiting officer. Alonzo hasn’t got it, so nobody would tell him anything.

The morning you left me you was discovered by my aunt, who was passing the road in a chair with a gentleman, whom she had then but recently become acquainted with. My aunt knew you. They immediately drove to John’s hut. On finding that John had left the keys with me, she sent him for them;

Hugh: You wouldn’t expect her to make a two-mile round trip on foot just because her meal ticket is about to slip from her grasp.

and on my refusing to give them up, she came herself, as I have before related; and as she succeeded no better than John, she returned—

Meredith: Providing Melissa with two separate opportunities for a last-minute escape.

David: She could have escaped at any time, even without the keys. All she had to do was hide near the gate, wait for John to let himself in—you know he won’t bother to lock the gate behind him—and slip out while he’s knocking on the house door.

and dispatched a message to my father, informing him of the circum­stances, and her suspi­cions of your having been to the mansion, and that, from my having possession of the keys and refusing to yield them up, there was little doubt but that we had formed a plan for my escape.

Linda: Since counting days is not John’s strong point, the aunt doesn’t know that Melissa has had the keys for ages, on the off chance that Alonzo might randomly happen to stumble across the castle in a thunder­storm.

“Alarmed at this information, my father immediately ordered his carriage, drove to the mansion, and removed me, as I have before informed you.

David: So the people who know the story are [ticking off names] Melissa’s father, the evil aunt, John . . . and Mrs. John, and possibly the evil aunt’s mysterious gentleman friend. One of those five is a double agent and leaked the information to someone on Melissa’s side.

Hugh: My money is on John’s wife. She’d jump at the chance to make trouble for the aunt.

“I ought to have told you, that the maid and man servant who attended me to Charles­ton, not liking the country, and growing sickly,

Linda: Like everyone else who sets foot in Charleston.

were sent back by my uncle, after they had been there about two months.”

Hugh: So don’t expect to trip me up with inconvenient questions about how they kept Melissa’s father’s servants from talking. They’d already been gotten out of the way.

Meredith: Unlike, say, keeping your daughter locked up in a castle, which nobody could possibly object to once they knew the story.

“Hamblin was the name which this man assumed: he said he had been an eminent merchant in New York, and had left it about the time it was taken by the British.

Lucy: Taking with him all the loose treasure he could lay his— Oops, sorry. I was thinking of Aeneas sneaking out of Troy.

He lodged at an inn where my aunt frequently stopped when she was out collecting her rents, where he first intro­duced himself to her acquain­tance, and ingratiated himself into her favour by art and insidi­ousness. He accom­panied her on her visits to her tenants, and assisted her in collecting her rents.

David: He had that unmistakable look of someone who’d break your arm for two cents.

He told her, that when the war came on, he had turned his effects into money, which he had with him, and was now in pursuit of some country place—

Linda: When Alonzo saw them, the aunt was giving Hamblin the hard sell on the castle and its luxurious grounds, while making up excuses why he couldn’t view the interior just yet.

where he might purchase a residence to remain during the war.

Lucy: Or at least until it became obvious which side was winning, so he could make money selling out the losers.

To cut the story as short as possible, he finally initiated himself so far in my aunt’s favour that she accepted his hand, and, contrary to my father’s opinion,

Meredith: Up until this moment, he had thought they were just good friends.

she married him,

Hugh: As far as the aunt is concerned, yielding to your family’s wishes is for the little people.

and he soon after persuaded her to sell her property, under pretence of removing to some populous town, and living in style. Her property, however, was no sooner sold (which my father bought for ready cash, at a low price)

Lucy: Dog Bites Man.

Linda: If she had known at the beginning that his name came before hers in the alphabet, she would never have trusted him for a moment.

that he had left a wife and family in Virginia in indigent circumstances, where he had spent an ample fortune, left him by his father, in debauchery, and involved himself deeply in debt. He had scarcely time to get off with the booty he swindled from my aunt, when his credi­tors from Virginia were at his heels. He fled to the British at New York, where he rioted for a few months,

David: All by himself?

was finally stabbed by a soldier in a fracas, and died the next day. He was about thirty-five years old.

Meredith: Making him the perfect match for the evil aunt, whose youngest brother is fifty.

“All these troubles bore so heavily upon my aunt, that she went into a decline, and died about six months ago.

Hugh [apologetic]: Mitchell wanted to come up with a really good fate for the aunt, like dancing in red-hot boots until she dropped dead, or at least going mad and being locked up in the castle for her own safety, but he was getting tired.

“After Alfred returned from Connecticut, he wrote frequently to Vincent and Mr. Simp­son, but could obtain no intelligence concerning you.

Lucy: Here is where you run into the slight problem with Alfred’s scheme. If he doesn’t immediately find Alonzo and move on to Phase Two, they’re stuck maintaining this fake-death charade indefinitely. Sooner or later it’s bound to blow up in his face.

It would be needless, Alonzo, to describe my conjectures, my anxieties, my feelings!

David: Even Melissa can nebulously sense that she’s going to feel like a total imbecile if it turns out Alonzo was killed in the war and it was all for nothing.

The death of my cousin and aunt had kept me in crape—

Meredith [snickers].

until, at the instance of Alfred, I put it off yesterday morning—

Linda [to Lucy]: Do you have anything there about mourning conventions? I make it twelve months of full mourning for her cousin, followed by only six months for her aunt. Seems like it ought to be the other way around.

at my uncle’s house, which—

Hugh [1804 text]: My uncle’s house in town.

Lucy: So that’s what that conveniently vacant house was. The Colonel happened to have a spare house sitting around, so why not get some use out of it.

Alfred had proposed for the scene of action, after he had discovered the cause of my fainting at the theatre. I did not readily come into Alfred’s plan to deceive you: ‘Suffer me,’ he said, ‘to try the constancy of your Leander;—I doubt whether he would swim the Helles­pont for you.’

Meredith: Maybe because he found out what happened to the original Leander.

Hugh: By now, he can recite it in his sleep, since he’s already told the identical story to Franklin and to Edgar.

At the mention of Beauman’s fate Melissa sighed. “With how many vain fears,” said she, “was I perplexed, lest, by some means he should discover my existence and place of resi­dence, after he, alas, was silent in the tomb!”

David: That was 1777-speak for “Do you mean to tell me I wasted eighteen months shut up in this mosquito-infested hellhole pretending to be in mourning when I could have been living a normal life?”

Alonzo told Melissa that he had received a letter from Edgar, after he arrived in Holland, and that he had written him an answer, just as he left Paris, informing him of his reasons for returning to America.

Linda: The author has only just realized that there’s some crucial piece of information Edgar needs to get from Alonzo, so he retro­actively made up this exchange of letters.

When the time arrived that Alonzo and Melissa were to set out for Connecticut, Melissa’s uncle and Alfred accompanied them as far as Georgetown,

Lucy: This would have been a priceless opportunity for the travel agent to screw up and dump them in Georgetown, Connecticut, just down the road from Melissa’s home, but the name doesn’t seem to have been in use back then.

Meredith: It was perfectly proper for them to travel halfway across the country together, but let’s not give Vincent any room for gossip.

Hugh: If it were anyone but Melissa’s mother, my imagination would paint her whaling the tar out of her daughter and then disowning her for pulling such a sadistic trick.

Meredith: Your editor’s getting tired, isn’t he?

David [as 1851 editor]: Uhmm . . . “I after E, except before C, or when . . .” Oh, well. Something like that, anyway.

and he had been compelled to sell most of his stock to answer pressing demands.

Lucy: He shouldn’t have been so free with his money back in chapter 13. You never, ever sell your breeding stock or your seed corn.

With great joy they welcomed Alonzo, whom they had given up as lost. “You still find your father poor, Alonzo,” said the old gentleman, “but you find him still honest.—From my inability to labor, we have latterly been a little more pressed than usual;

Hugh [as father]: May I offer you a stewed boot, or some boiled wheat stalks? They’re quite tasty when you get used to them.

Linda: Another chapter in Franklin’s Lost Years.

Lucy [reaching for calculator]: Alonzo was “about 21” when he left college in 1773, or possibly ’74 or ’76. He’s an only child—or at least the only surviving child. His father is described as an old man, meaning at least fifty. Even with a very late marriage you can’t push his birthdate back past the early teens; more likely he was born in the 1720’s. Franklin, meanwhile, was born in 1706.

Meredith: Alonzo’s father is far sicker than anyone suspects. It was his father, Alonzo’s grandfather, who was Franklin’s contemporary.

“and were intimately acquainted after we became young men in business for ourselves.

Linda [shaking head sadly]: There comes a time when all you can do is nod and smile and humor them.

We have done each other favours; I once divided my money with Franklin on an urgent occasion to him; he afterwards repaid me with ample interest—he will never forget it.”

Lucy: Because of this incident, Federal banking regulations and Pennsylvania state law both include strict provisions against usury.

Alonzo then related to his father all the incidents of his travels, minutely particu­larizing the disin­terested conduct of Franklin, and then presented his father with the reversion of his estate. The old man fell on his knees, and with tears streaming down his withered cheeks, offered devout thanks to the great Dispenser of all mercies.

David: If he means Franklin, I call that profane.

Alonzo then visited Melissa’s father, who received him with much complacency.

Linda [as Melissa’s father]: Ha ha, sucker, you’ll never marry her now. She’s dead, in case you hadn’t heard.

David [as Alonzo]: Can’t remember her name, but you know who I mean.

was the object of my earliest affection—

Hugh and Meredith: The subject of my earliest affection.

Lucy: Alonzo was asleep the day they explained the difference between the nominative and accusative cases.

an affection which my bosom must ever retain; but being separated by the will of Provi­dence—for I view Provi­dence as overruling all events for wise purposes—I betook myself to travel. Time, you know it is said, sir, will blunt the sharpest thorns of sorrow.—[The old man sighed.]—In my travels I have found a lady so nearly resembling your daughter, that I was induced to sue for her hand,

Meredith: So long as she’s got the right shade of brown hair, details like personality and family are irrelevant.

and have been so happy as to gain the promise of it. The favour I have to ask of you, sir, is only that you will permit the marriage ceremony to be celebrated in your house, as you know my father is poor, his house small and inconvenient,

Linda: By Connecticut custom, marriages are celebrated in the home of the groom, not the bride, so her parents’ house doesn’t enter into the discussion.

and that you will also honour me by giving the lady away.

Lucy: Someone call Miss Manners. All this time I thought the fixation with finding a man to give the bride away—any man, so long as he’s got a Y chromosome—was a Hollywood invention. There’s nothing about it in the Book of Common Prayer; it just says her father “or friends”.

In receiving her from your hands, I shall in some measure realize former antici­pations;

Hugh [1804 text]: Former happy anticipations.

Linda: —revving up slowly as he prepares to slam Alonzo—

“were it in my power—

David [as Melissa’s father]: But by that time, I expect to be in prison, contentedly awaiting my trial for murder.

Linda: Item: The last time Melissa’s father saw Alonzo, he ordered him out of his sight.

David: Item: Thanks to Alonzo’s persistent courtship, the loving father was forced to send his daughter away to an unhealthy climate, where she soon died.

Linda: Item: Alonzo’s undying love—the only possible justifi­cation for his earlier behavior—didn’t even last two years.

David: Item: On Alonzo’s return, the first words out of his mouth are a request that Melissa’s father pay for the wedding of a total stranger who has no possible claim on him.

Linda: Item: The bride is, to all appearances, a penniless orphan without a single friend or relative of her own, so there is no chance of anyone recipro­cating such an act of extra­vagant kindness.

David: From where I’m sitting, it sounds like justifiable homicide. He’ll be out with Time Served.

Hugh and Meredith: Bowed his head in gratitude.

Meredith: Namely, that he was ashamed of his own home, and the bride had none. Perfectly under­standable.

Meredith: Did Alfred’s letter miss him, or did the author simply forget?

Lucy: The letter reached Holland several months before Edgar did, and Alfred hadn’t marked it “Hold For Arrival”, so it went straight into the dead-letter bin.

when he immediately hastened to Vincent’s. He told them that he did not stay long in Holland; that after receiving Alonzo’s letter from Paris, he felt an uncon­querable propensity to return, and soon sailed for America,

David: As it turns out, it doesn’t matter that the author forgot all about Alfred’s letter to Holland, because Edgar would have done exactly the same things anyway.

arrived at Boston, came to New Haven, took orders in the ministry,

Hugh: His previous ordination expired because he forgot to renew it before leaving the country.

Meredith: Since they didn’t have the ordinary common sense to do it when they had a whole castle to themselves and Alonzo was looking for an excuse to take his clothes off anyway.

No cross purposes stood ready to intervene their happiness, no obdurate father,

Hugh and Meredith: No determined rival, no obdurate father.

David: The printer’s cat got tired of stealing quotation marks and ran off with the rival instead.

no watchful, scowling aunt, to interrupt their transports. It was the latter end of May; nature was arrayed in her richest ornaments, and adorned with her sweetest perfumes.

Linda: Since only Connecticut has weather, both Alonzo and Melissa have been suffering severe withdrawal symptoms for the past year and a half.

The sun blended its mild lustre with the landscape’s lovely green; silk-winged breezes frolicked amidst the flowers;

Meredith: Oh, how pretty! They’re breeze-butterflies, to go with the gale-birds from a few chapters back.

Linda: The colon meaning that he’s directly quoting the birds?

Lucy: Directly quoting someone, anyway. You have to say this in Mitchell’s defense: he didn’t inflict his own poetry on us.

Hugh: Or possibly bonds.

Lucy: Our oldest quote yet: Spenser, Amoretti VI, from 1595.

When the hour arrived, they repaired to the house of Melissa’s father, where numerous guests had assembled. Melissa was introduced into the bridal apartment, and took her seat among a brilliant circle of ladies. She was attired in robes “white as the southern clouds,”

Lucy: Oops.

David: Oh, come on. They’re allowed to have clouds outside of Connecticut.

Lucy: Not the kind that go baa. The only pre-1804 source I could find for this line was a translation of Salomon Gessner—and he’s talking about sheep. Later on, someone used the line in English, and again they were describing sheep.

Linda: So she wore wool for her May wedding. Must have been a cold year.

spangled with silver, and trimmed with deep gold lace; her hair hung loosely upon her shoulders, encircled by a wreath of artificial—

Hugh: What? [1804 text:] A wreath of flowers. Period.

Meredith: Blame it on industrialization. By 1811 the real flowers had been replaced with artificial ones.

flowers. She had regained all her former loveliness; the rose and the lily again blended their tinges in her cheek; again pensive spright­liness—

Lucy: I’m not falling for that one. “Pensive” and “sprightly” are two of Mitchell’s favorite words; he’s quoting himself.

David: Makes it sound like a good old-fashioned shotgun wedding. The young couple are hemmed in from both sides so neither one can run away.

Hugh: It’s to keep people from getting too close to the bride. Up until this moment, not one person has taken a second look, done a double-take and blurted out “Hey! That’s Melissa!”

Meredith: By this time, the only person who doesn’t know what’s going on is her own father, standing to her immediate left.

Edgar then came and took his seat in front; after which the guests were summoned, who filled the room. Edgar then rising, motioned to the intended bride and bridegroom to rise also. He next turned to Alonzo’s father for his sanction, who bowed assent. Then addres­sing his own father, with emotions that scarcely suffered him to articulate. “Do you, sir,” said he, “give this lady to that gentleman?”

Lucy: She’s not his to give, so it’s no skin off his nose. He just wishes Edgar would say her name, so he can pretend to have known it all along when it’s time for the receiving line.

David: Saving Edgar the embarrassment of having to cut him off because it isn’t time for speeches yet.

Linda: Now he understands why the wedding planner insisted on the ridiculous innova­tion of chairs for the bridal party, even though the last thing you’re going to do at your own wedding is sit down.

“My daughter!” he cried—“God of mysterious mercy! it is my daughter!”

Meredith: God really gets a workout in this book, doesn’t He? For Alonzo it’s God of infinite wonders; for Melissa’s father it’s God of mysterious mercy. I think Franklin piles on some descriptors, too.

David: And don’t forget that whole catalogue when Alonzo revisits Melissa’s favorite rock.

Linda [sings]: Rock of New London, cleft for me!

Lucy [turning back pages:] Infinite ruler of all events, great sovereign of this ever changing world, omnipotent controller of vicissitudes . . . and last but not least, omniscient dispenser of destinies!

The guests caught the contagious sympathy; convulsive sobs arose from all parts of the room. Melissa’s father clasped her in his arms—

Linda: Calling on his wife to bring the handcuffs and the key to the cellar.

“And do I receive thee as from the dead!” he said.

David [as Melissa’s father]: You really played me for a sucker, didn’t you? But the game’s over. You’re getting married here and now to the man of my choosing, or you’ll spend the rest of your life locked in the cellar.

Hugh: Just don’t ask the richest unmarried man in the room to step forward. It might turn out to be Alonzo.

Meredith: When Alonzo’s father lost his money, Melissa’s father knew about it almost before Alonzo did. But this time, his spies have let him down in a big way.

Linda: So much the better. Alonzo and Melissa can sponge off of him until Alonzo’s father dies.

“Leave that to me, my young friend,” replied her father. “I have enough: my children are restored, and I am happy.”

David: Edgar was never exactly in danger. He went from a non-combatant position to a desk job thousands of miles away from the combat zone.

Lucy: If you’re in Holland, you might as well be dead.

Hugh: If he had allowed Alonzo to tell his own story, the guests would have been there all night.

The guests listened with attention: they applauded the conduct of our new bride and bridegroom,

David: If your father is opposed to your marriage, fake your own death and make every­one—including the man you’re supposedly in love with—spend eighteen months in misery. They’re just other people, after all. It’s not like they have real feelings or anything.

in which Melissa’s father cordially joined. They rejoiced to find that Alonzo’s father had regained his fortune, and copious libations were poured forth—

Linda: On the hymeneal altar.

in honour of the immortal Franklin.

Meredith: Anyone else notice a recurring confusion between God and Benjamin Franklin?

And now, reader of sensibility, indulge the pleasing sensations of thy bosom—for Alonzo and Melissa are MARRIED.

Linda: Whew. Thought we’d never get there. Are we finished?

Hugh: If I can have everyone’s attention for a moment—

(Concluded in our next.)

David: Those have got to be the most beautiful words in the entire book.

Alonzo’s father was soon in complete repossession of his former property. The premises from which he had been driven by his unfeeling creditors, were yielded up without difficulty, and to which he immediately removed. He not only recovered the principal of the fortune he had lost, but the damages and the interest; so that, although like Job, he had seen affliction,

Linda [glancing at 1836 text]: Possibly even afflictions, plural.

like him his latter days were better than his beginning. But wearied with the bustles of life,

Linda [1836 text]: —the business of life.

he did not again enter into the mercantile business,

David [to Linda]: There’s your editor again. Business—business.

Linda: In 1836, nobody understood about dyslexia.

but placing his money at interest in safe hands, lived retired on his little farm.

Lucy [turning pages in other book]: Thought that sounded familiar. Alida’s father hauls her off to New York to steal descriptions of scenery, and Theodore quietly disappears from the story. When he remater­ializes, it turns out he was in England performing magic on the creditors, since Franklin isn’t around to play Deus ex machina. And then . . . although like Job, he had seen affliction —singular— like him . . . latter days . . . Wearied of the business —not “bustles”— of life, he did not again enter into its affairs, but placing his money at interest in safe hands, he lived retired on his estate.

David: Somebody put that book on the fire.

Lucy: I could name you a dozen published writers who would have liked to put the author on the fire.

A few days after the wedding, as Melissa was sitting with Alonzo, Edgar and her parents, she asked her father whether the old mansion was inhabited.

David: Hey, come to think of it, wonder who inherited it? The aunt’s marriage was never valid, so even if her husband hadn’t died first, he wouldn’t get anything.

Linda: By the time she died, she didn’t own any real estate. She sold it off so her husband could drink the proceeds, remember?

“Not by human beings,” he replied. “Since it has fallen into my hands—

Meredith: For “it has fallen into my hands”, read “I grabbed it cheap because blood may be thicker than water but gold is thicker than everything.”

I have leased it to three or four different families, who all left it—

Hugh [1804 text]: Who all soon left it.

Linda: Up until this moment, she was under a post-hypnotic directive not to talk about it. The phrase “rats and mice” lifted the command.

Exceedingly astonished at her relation; it was agreed that Edgar and Alonzo, properly attended, should proceed to the mansion, in order to find whether any discoveries could be made which might tend to the elucidation—

Hugh: Might lead to.

Lucy: In 1804, we were still firmly in the Age of Reason. People were confident that everything could be elucidated.

Meredith: Are they going to stab the ghosts?

David: Only if shooting them doesn’t work.

and proceeded to the place, where they arrived in the dusk of the evening, having chosen that season as the most favourable to their designs.

Linda: Twilight is a celestial body, and evening is a season. We are in an alternative universe.

They found the drawbridge up, and the gate locked, as Edgar’s father said he had left them. They entered and secured them in the same manner.

Hugh: To make sure the ghosts don’t try to escape.

When they came to the house, they cautiously unlocked the door, and proceeded to the chamber, where they struck a fire and lit candles, which they had brought with them.

Lucy: In case the candles already in the castle were poisoned, or had been treated with halluci­nogens.

David: If anyone trips over you, pretend to be an old tree root and don’t shoot.

Meredith: The gunsmith’s apprentice mixed up the barrels and there wasn’t time to redo the order, so they’re carrying pistols slung over their backs and muskets in holsters.

and posted themselves with the five men in the chamber, taking care that the lights should not shine against the window shutters, so that nothing should be discovered from without.

Linda: In 1783, a room could be flooded with light and still remain perfectly undetectable so long as you didn’t point your candle directly at the window.

Lucy: I think I read a monograph on those. Unidirectional Candles: A Lost Art of the Eigh­teenth Century. Melissa used the same kind of candle when she looked out the window to see if anyone was there.

Things thus arranged, they observed almost an implicit silence,

David: Except for one guy who was slow on the uptake and had to be told explicitly to shut up.

David: Just so nobody forgets we’re back in Connecticut.

Lucy: That’s enough to alarm anyone. They’d been led to expect talking parrots.

Alonzo and Edgar, then taking each a pistol in one hand, and a drawn sword in the other,

Meredith: Before they started, Edgar made sure Alonzo understood that the sword and pistol have to be in different hands, and the sword has to be out of its scabbard.

ordered their men to follow them, prepared for action. Coming to the head of the stairs, they saw a brilliant light streaming into the hall; they therefore concluded to take no candles, and to prevent discovery they took off their shoes.

Linda: If your prey is in the dark it doesn’t matter how loudly you stomp, but when they’re in a brilliantly lit room you have to sneak in quietly and carry no lights of your own.

When they came into the hall opposite the door of the room from whence the light and noises proceeded, they discovered ten men genteelly dressed, sitting around a table, on which was placed a considerable quantity of gold and silver coin, a number of glasses and several decanters of wine.

Hugh: Prohibitionists need have no worries. The wine is merely a stage prop.

Lucy: So that’s how you pronounce a dash. I always wondered.

Hugh and Meredith: Well, well, never—

Linda: As the nineteenth century progressed, life moved at a faster pace. Nobody had time for a second “well”.

Lucy: “Lips that touch liquor will never touch mine!”

David: Excellent choice of a secret alarm signal. Nobody would ever say “Look out!” by accident.

and immediately the discharge of several guns was heard around the mansion. One of the men flew up stairs and brought a light; but, to their utter amazement, no person was to be discovered in the room except their own party. The table, with its apparatus, and the chairs on which these now invisible beings had sat, had all disappeared, not a single trace of them being left.

Linda: In Melissa’s exhaustive and repeated searches, she was so fixated on the walls, she never noticed that each floor of the castle was in excess of six feet thick.

Hugh: In 1804, the definition of “dangerous” was narrower than it is today.

Lucy [as Alonzo]: Well . . . I guess we don’t really have much choice, since you’re a wounded prisoner and there are twenty-two of us.

This they readily agreed to, on condition that he would conceal nothing from them—

David [as prisoner]: Word of honor as a gentleman—and we are all gentlemen here, aren’t we?

Meredith: My spiritual ancestor left an editorial comment. But I think she meant to put it on the facing page, where the table and chairs disappear.

men who had combined for the purpose of carrying on a secret and illegal commerce with the British army on Long Island, whom, contrary to the existing laws,

Linda: What existing laws? The Constitution won’t be written until years after the war is over. The only laws are British laws, which probably require you to support the troops.

David: That’s the illegal part. They’re supposed to be giving them food and lodging for free.

they supplied with provisions, and brought off English goods, which they sold at a very extortionate price. But this was not all; they also brought over large quantities of counter­feit continental money,

Hugh: It gives me a warm fuzzy feeling to know that America’s tradition of easy-to-counterfeit currency dates back all the way to 1776.

which they put off among the Americans for live stock, poultry, produce, &c. which they carried to the Island. The counterfeit money they purchased by merely paying for the printing; the British having obtained copies of the American emission, struck immense quantities of it in New York, and insidiously sent it out into the country, in order to sink our currency.

David: Waste of effort. War is inflationary anyway; you don’t have to do anything.

Hugh, Meredith, Linda [in unison]: Which had heretofore been.

David: Oh, sorry. I was thinking of Melissa’s grandmother.

only in the open woods.

Linda: They should have rented John’s hut. He’d have let them have it for a nickel.

Hugh: Counterfeit.

To cross the moat, we dragged up an old canoe from the sea shore, which we concealed in the bushes as soon as we recrossed from the old mansion.

Hugh [stuffily]: The mansion, period. Good writers try not to reuse adjectives within the same sentence.

Meredith: And your point is . . . ?

To get over the wall we used ladders of ropes, placing a flat piece of thick board on the top of the spikes driven into the wall. We found more difficulty in getting into the house:

David: Gentlemen don’t break windows, so they had to come up with an alternative solution.

we however at length succeeded, by tearing away a part of the back wall, where we fitted in a door so exactly, and so nicely painted it, that it could not be distin­guished from the wall itself.

Lucy: So long as you don’t notice that this is the only point on the entire exterior that isn’t covered with several decades’ growth of ivy.

This door was so constructed, that on touching a spring, it would fly open,

Hugh [1804 text]: It would suddenly fly open.

Linda: As opposed to flying open slowly and at leisure.

and when unrestrained, would shut to with violence. Finding the apartment so eligible for our purpose, and fearing that at some future time we might be disturbed either by the owner of the building or some tenant, we cut similar doors into every room of the house, so that on an emergency we could traverse every apartment without access to the known doors. Trap-doors on a similar construction, communicated with the cellar:

Meredith: It never occurred to Melissa to wonder why there was an elegant dining table, set for twelve, in an unused cellar room.

the table, which you saw us sitting around, stood on one of these, which, on your abrupt appearance, as soon as the candles were extinguished, was with its contents, precipitated below, and we made our escape by those secret doors,

David: Serious miscalculation. They should have waited quietly in their hidey-hole within the thickness of the floor until Alonzo’s gang got bored and left.

Lucy: After discarding Option A—to hide outside until they could get more information—and Option B—to send in one person as a spy.

and soon discovered that some person was in the chamber from whence we had seen the light.

Linda: That explains it. They could never have made this discovery without firsthand investi­gation as a group.

We remained until all was silent, and then entered the chamber by one of our secret doors,

Meredith: Later, it occurred to them that it would have been wiser to use the regular door, rather than risk betraying themselves if the person turned out to be awake.

and to our inexpressible surprise, beheld a beautiful young lady asleep on the only bed in the room.

Hugh [1804 text]: Asleep in the only bed in the room.

David [Baby Bear voice]: Someone’s been sleeping in my bed!

We cautiously retired, and reconnoitering all parts of the mansion, found that she was the only inhabitant except ourselves.

Linda: Problem solved. They drew straws, sent in one man to kill her, and quietly buried the body, disguising the grave with the same skill they had applied to their dozens of secret doors.

The singularity of her being there alone, is a circumstance we have never been able to discover, but it gave us fair hopes of easily procuring her ejectment.

Hugh [as captive]: We may be smugglers and counter­feiters, but we’re not murderers.

Meredith: And, since she is obviously a lady and we are all gentlemen, we will not discuss Option B.

Lucy: It’s a pity the smugglers all had deprived childhoods. If any of their mothers had told them the story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Option C would have instantly presented itself.

We then immediately withdrew, and made preparations to dispossess the fair tenant of premises to which we considered ourselves more properly entitled, as possessing a prior incumbency.

David: Plan One: Put on simple masks, point your weapons at her and order her to get out and stay out. And keep quiet if she knows what’s good for her.

Linda: Rejected unanimously as being impossibly simple and straight­forward.

“We did not effect the completion of our apparatus under three or four days. As soon as we were prepared, we returned to the mansion. As we approached the house, it appears the lady heard us, for again she suddenly flung up a window and held out a candle: we skulked from the light, but feared she had a glimpse of us.—After we had got into the house we were still until we supposed her to be asleep, which we found to be the case on going to her chamber.

Meredith: Would have been a bit awkward if they had found it not to be the case at this point.

“We then stationed one near her bed, who, by a loud rap upon the floor with a cane, appeared to arouse her in a fright. Loud noises were then made below, and some of them ran heavily up the stairs which led to her chamber; the person stationed in the room whispering near her bed—she raised herself up, and he fled behind the curtains. Soon after she again lay down;

Linda: Fortunately they had allowed for the contingency of her having the nerves of a turnip, so they weren’t out of ideas yet.

David: That way, she would be able to tell the entire story immediately, rather than let us take ungentle­manly advantage by making a leisurely departure while she was recuperating.

we concluded we had sufficiently alarmed her, and having extinguished the lights, were about to depart, when we heard her descending the stairs. She came down and examined the doors, when one of our party, in a loud whisper, crying ‘away! away;’

Hugh: His share in the following month’s take included a little something extra as a bonus for clever improvi­sation.

Lucy: Since the poem Casabianca has not been written yet, let alone shoved down every schoolchild’s throat, the smugglers don’t understand that Melissa considers herself to be under orders to stay, and will not budge even if the castle goes up in flames.

As it was late when we arrived, she was wrapped in sleep, and we found that more forcible measures must be resorted to before we could remove her, and for such measures we were amply prepared.”

David: Option D: Bind and gag her, carry her to the nearest town and dump her on any convenient doorstep. Repeat as needed until she gets the message.

The stranger then unfolded the mysteries of that awful night, when Melissa was so terri­fied by horrible appearances. One of the tallest and most robust of the gang, was attired, as has been described, when he appeared by her bed side. The white robe was an old sheet, stained in some parts with a liquid red mixture; the wound in his breast was arti­ficial, and the blood issuing therefrom was only some of this mixture, pressed from a small bladder, concealed under his robe. On his head and face he wore a mask, with glass eyes—the mask was painted to suit their purposes. The bloody dagger was of wood, and painted.

Linda: What a sad waste of talent. If they hadn’t fallen into this smuggling gig, they could have found honest employment in any major theater’s props department.

Thus accoutred, he took his stand near Melissa’s bed, having first blown out the candles she had left burning, and discharged a small pistol. Perceiving this had awakened her, a train of powder was fired in the adjoining room opposite the secret door, which was left open, in order that the flash might illuminate her apartment; then several large cannon balls were rolled through the rooms over her head, imitative of thunder.

David: But not imitative enough [turning back pages]: It did not appear like thunder; the sounds seemed to be in the rooms directly over her head. The smugglers must be from out of state. If they had grown up in Connecticut they’d have known how to make convincing effects.

The person in her room then uttered a horrible groan, and gliding along by her bed, took his stand behind the curtains, near the foot. The noises below, the cry of murder, the firing of the second pistol, and the running up stairs, were all corres­ponding scenes to impress terror on her imagination. The pretended ghost then advanced in front of her bed, while lights were slowly introduced, which first shone faintly,

Meredith: Benjamin Franklin invented the rheostat in a spare moment, but he forgot to patent it.

until they were ushered into the room by the private door, exhibiting the person before her in all his horrific appearances. On her shrieking, and shrinking into the bed, the lights were suddenly extinguished, and the person, after commanding her to be gone in a hoarse voice, passed again to the foot of the bed, shook it violently, and made a seeming attempt to get onto it, when, perceiving her to be springing up, he fled out of the room—

Lucy: And who could blame him? When you find a gopher on your lawn and try to chase it away, you don’t expect it to turn around and come at you.

Linda: If Melissa’s father had allowed her to attend the theatre more often, she wouldn’t have made such a silly mistake. A tragedy is when the main character dies in the end.

David: In this case, the main character is Melissa.

Linda: Hm, yes, I see the problem.

Meredith: Anyone got any foxfire handy? I’m having trouble visualizing bright whitish coals, with or without the faint light.

made into the likeness of human eyes, some material—

Hugh [1804 text]: Some of the same material. He means foxfire, not cloth.

being placed in its mouth, around which was a piece of the thinnest scarlet tiffany, in order to make it appear of a flame colour. They had also constructed a large combustible ball, of several thicknesses of paste-board, to which a match was placed. The image was to be conveyed into her room, and placed, in the dark, before her bed;—and while in that position, the ball was to be rubbed over with phosphorus, the match set on fire, and rolled across her chamber, and when it burst, the image was to vanish, by being suddenly conveyed out of the private door, which was to close the scene for that night.

David: I hope they had a dress rehearsal. I can see a lot of places where things might go wrong.

But as Melissa had now arisen and lighted candles, the plan was defeated.

Meredith: Just as well. The combustible ball would probably have blown up.

While they were consulting how to proceed, they heard her unlock her chamber door, and slowly descend the stairs. Fearing a discovery, they retired with their lights,

Linda: To debate whether it was time to set aside their principles and simply kill her.

and the person who had been in her chamber, not having yet stripped off his ghostly habiliments, laid himself down on one side of the hall. The man who had the image, crowded himself with it under the stairs she was descending. On her dropping the candle, when she turned to flee to her chamber, from the sight of the same object which had appeared at her bed-side, the person under the stairs presented the image at their foot, and at the same instant the combustible ball was prepared, and rolled through the hall;

Lucy: At this point the smugglers almost betrayed themselves by breaking into spon­taneous cheers.

and when on its bursting she fainted, they began to grow alarmed;

David: If she’s unconscious, she’ll miss the rest of the show, after they went to all that trouble.

Hugh: Nobody had the heart to tell him that Melissa’s departure was purely coincidental and had nothing to do with the smugglers’ elaborate theatrical effects.

Several attempts were afterwards made to occupy the house, but we always succeeded in soon frightening the inhabitants away.”

Meredith: Since those later inhabitants weren’t under strict parental orders, they had nothing to lose but their life savings.

Edgar and Alonzo then requested their prisoner to show them the springs of the secret doors, and how they were opened. The springs were sunk in the wood, which being touched by entering a gimblet hole with a piece of pointed steel, which each of the gang always had about him,

Lucy: If the prisoner had been Mrs. John or anyone of her class, she would have immedi­ately tried a knitting needle.

the door would fly open, and fasten again in shutting to. On opening the trap-door over which the gang had sat when they first discovered them, they found the table and chairs, with the decanters broken, and the money, which they secured. In one part of the cellar they were shown a kind of cave, its mouth covered with boards and earth—here the company kept their furniture, and to this place would they have removed it, had they not been so suddenly frightened away. The canoe they found secreted in the bushes beyond the canal.

Meredith, Linda, David, Lucy [begin to get up and put books away with exaggerated sighs of relief].

Hugh: Wait, there’s more.

(Contrary to our intention we are compelled to postpone the residue until next week.)

Meredith, Linda, David, Lucy [converge on Hugh and beat him about the head and arms with their books].

It was then agreed that the man should go before the proper authorities in a neigh­bouring town, and there, as state’s evidence, make affidavit of what he had recited, and as complete a development of the characters concerned in the business as possible, when he was to be released.

Linda: The opinions of the judge and the district attorney being, once again, completely immaterial.

Meredith: Not to say irrelevant, incompetent and argumentative.

Hugh: Calling for facts not in evidence.

Lucy: In the universe of Alonzo and Melissa, “calling for facts not in evidence” falls under the heading of “Dog Bites Man”.

The man enquired to what town they were to go, which, when they had informed him,

Hugh [reaching for blue pencil]: This sentence doesn’t hang together.

Linda: Why should it be any different from the rest of the book?

Meredith: Wasn’t it our own deus ex machina Dr. Franklin who said that if we don’t all hang together we’ll all hang separately?

David: Hanging is too good for this author.

“Then,” said he, “it will be in my power to perform one deed of justice before I leave the country, as leave it I must, immediately after I have given in my testimony,

Linda: The DA could have arranged for protective custody, but no one asked him.

or I shall be assassinated by some of those who will be implicated in the transaction I have related.”

Lucy: I don’t think it qualifies as assassination when a crook bumps off a stool pigeon. It’s more of what big-city cops call a “No Human Involvement” crime.

He then informed them, that while he, with the gang, was prosecuting the illicit trade,

Linda: We’re really not leaving much for the DA to do, are we?

a British ship came and anchored in the Sound, which they supplied with provisions,

David: The ship supplied the Sound with provisions?

Hugh: Sure. They tossed out some fish food with lead weights tied to its feet.

but that having at one time a considerable quantity on hand, the ship sent its boat on shore, with an officer and five men, to fetch it; the officer came with them on shore, leaving the men in the boat:

Lucy: Stop, please, I’m getting a headache. Can someone please explain to me what they had a considerable quantity of, and what “it” was that they were fetching, and why they had to fetch it if they already had it on hand, and who the officer came on shore with if it wasn’t the men?

Hugh [offended]: The sentence is perfectly clear. The smugglers provisioned the British ship, and the officer went on shore with the smugglers.

“As we were about to carry the provisions on board the boat,” continued the man, “a party of Americans fired upon us, and wounded the officer in the thigh, who fell: ‘I shall be made prisoner,’ said he, taking out his purse; ‘keep this, and if I live and regain my liberty, perhaps you may have an opportunity of restoring it:

Meredith: When a wounded and outnumbered man on enemy territory gives you his purse, only the lowest and meanest sort of cad would think of abusing his trust.

Linda: Being the gentleman of honor that he is.

The man farther informed them, that they had several times come near being taken, and the last trip they were fired upon, and one of their party killed.

David: Hey, that explains the . . . [turning pages] No, wait. What “one of their party”? Did my text leave something out?

Hugh: Earlier in the narrative there was a dramatic scene involving Melissa tripping over a ghastly corpse, with adjectives. But Mitchell got a last-minute banner ad and had to cut three paragraphs to make room.

They immediately set out for the aforesaid town, after having dismissed their fifteen men;

Lucy: Fifteen? They started out with twenty. What happened to the other five?

and when they arrived there, Alonzo and Edgar accompanied their prisoner to the gaol. On making the proper enquiries, they were conducted into a dark and dirty apartment of the gaol, where were several prisoners in irons. The British officer was soon distin­guished among them by his regimentals. Though enveloped in filth and dust, his countenance appeared familiar to Alonzo; and on a few moments recollection,

David: C’mon, Alonzo! You can do it!

he recognized in the manacled officer, the generous midshipman, Jack Brown,

Hugh [1804 text]: John Brown. Proper record-keeping requires full and correct given names.

Meredith [sings]: Jack Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the jail . . .

Linda [to Hugh and Meredith]: Speaking of jail, how come you guys spell it with a “j” and we spell it British-style? Shouldn’t it be the other way around?

Linda: In case you’d forgotten, Alonzo, you’re at war.

Meredith: Hastily changing the subject as he recollects certain details of his relationship with Jack Brown.

David [as Jack]: Nooooo! Not the barber! It’s all healed, I tell you, I don’t need a barber!

Lucy: You’re not in England any more, Jack. In the rest of the world, barbers cut hair, and surgery is done by doctors.

cleaned,

Linda [1836 text]: Cleansed.

Hugh: He’s only dirty. He doesn’t need to be purified, sanitized and disinfected.

furnished with a change of clothes, and soon appeared in a new attitude.

Lucy: Cocksure, obnoxious and irritating.

He informed Alonzo, that soon after he left England, his ship was ordered for America:

Linda [under her breath]: Ordered to America.

that the price of provisions growing high, it had taken almost all his wages to support his family;

Hugh: He was beginning to worry that he would have to tell his wife about the prize-money which is the only reason anyone would join the Navy instead of the Army.

that he had sent home his last remittance—

Linda: Three shillings and sixpence.

just before he was taken, reserving only the twenty-five guineas which had been restored him that day.

Lucy: Twenty-five guineas wouldn’t have fed his family for more than a year or two, so no reason to mention it.

—“But I have never despaired,” said he; “the great Commodore of life orders all for the best. My tour of duty is to serve my king and country, and provide for my dear Poll and her chicks,

David: That’s why he’s keeping the big money to himself. They’re his wife’s children, not his own.

Meredith: Especially the twins who were born ten months after he left England.

David: And there’s more where that came from—so long as you continue not to breathe a word to a living soul.

and it may assist you in buffeting the billows of life.”—The generous tar shed tears of grati­tude, and Alonzo enjoyed the pleasure of seeing him depart, calling down blessings on the head of his reciprocal benefactor.

Meredith: On the whole, the newly married Alonzo would prefer to have an ocean separating him from any man who has seen him naked.

The man who came with Alonzo and Edgar from the mansion, then went before the magistrates of the town,

Linda [1836 text]: I’ve got “magistrate”, singular. Budget cuts, I guess.

and gave his testimony and affidavit, by which it appeared that several eminent characters of Connecticut were concerned in this illicit trade. They then released him, gave him the money they had found in the cellar at the mansion,

Hugh: His attorney argued that they couldn’t prove it was the proceeds of crime rather than his legitimate personal savings.

Meredith: Come clean, Mitchell, you cribbed that from a Latin textbook. It reads like a clunky translation.

Lucy [riffling through assorted books before throwing them aside in disgust]: Everyone said “so many terrors”. Milton, Virgil, the Church fathers . . .

It was now that Alonzo turned his attention to future prospects. It was time to select a place for domestic residence.

David: What with all the excitement of the past eight years, Alonzo has entirely forgotten that he and Melissa spent most of the fifth installment admiring their future home.

Linda: The owner forgot too. He sold it to someone else years ago.

Meredith: Footnote: See pages 34 and 36. [Turns pages.] “They had even fixed upon the place which was to be—”

David: Yes, yes, we know. The reader of 1811 was in advanced senile decay and had to be reminded of everything.

This intimation accorded with the ardent wishes of Alonzo. The site—

Hugh [1804 text]: This intimation according with the ardent wishes of Alonzo, comma, the site—

Lucy: Italicized so you will know he lifted this phrase from the Bible.

Edgar was called to the pastoral charge of this unsophis­ticated people. Here did Melissa and Alonzo repose after the storms of adversity were past. Here did they realize all the happiness which the sublunary hand of time appor­tions to mortals. The varying seasons diversified their joys, except when Alonzo was called with the militia of his country, wherein he bore an eminent commission,

Linda: Another commission? Add this to the one he got in 1777 and ignored because he didn’t feel like going, and the one in the Navy that evaporated when he was listed as a POW, and if he plays his cards right he may end up collecting three pensions.

Lucy: Oh, I know this one. It’s an Edna Ferber story. An old sea captain retires to a house surrounded by wheat fields because the waving grain reminds him of the ocean.

in which, after pouring forth abundance of gratitude, he informed, that on returning to England he procured his discharge from the navy, sold his house, and moved into the country, where he had set up an inn with the sign of The Grateful American.

David: Excellent choice of names. Someone should introduce him to the innkeeper in Charleston who thought it would be a good idea to build an alehouse right next to the cemetery.

David: Parents? He got through the whole book without dropping the teeniest hint that Alonzo has a mother, and now suddenly he’s got parents, plural?

Meredith [leafing back]: No, here she is, when Alonzo’s father springs the bad news. Alonzo and his mother were much amazed at so strange a proceeding. She shows up a few more times as an adjunct to his father, but it’s strictly a non-speaking role.

were their frequent visitors, as were also Vincent and his lady, with many others of their acquain­tance, who all rejoiced in their happy situation, after such a diversity of troubles. Alfred was generally once a year their guest, until at length he married and settled in the mercantile business in Charleston, South Carolina.

Linda: They put up with Alfred for old times’ sake, but nobody can stand his wife, and as for that pack of undisci­plined brats . . .

To our hero and heroine, the rural charms of their secluded village were a source of ever pleasing variety. Spring, with its verdured fields—

Lucy [after looking at David, who has remained silent]: Um, I’ve got verdurous fields.

David: You can’t. You’re a reprint. You even kept all those embarrassing typos like “Oeither” for “Neither”.

Lucy [shows book. The 1864 edition has the last two pages of the 1851 edition—one full page and a few lines of overflow—packed into a single page, reset in a noticeably smaller font.]

Linda: There it is, by golly: your very own variant reading.

Readers [exchange high-fives all around].

flowery meads, and vocal groves: its vernal gales, purling rills,

Lucy: In the autumn, when everything is reversed, they’ll be knitting rills.

and its evening whippoorwill: summer, with its embowering shades, reflected in the glassy lake, and the long, pensive, yet sprightly notes of the solitary strawberry-bird;* its lightning and its thunder; autumn with its mellow fruit, its yellow foliage and decaying verdure; winter, with its hoarse, rough blasts, its icy beard and snowy mantle,

David: They have winter in Connecticut? Sorry, Mitchell, but I’m going to need something more than your unsupported word on this. The entire book took place in summer, with a few forays into spring and autumn.

Linda: That’s it? The very last words in the book, and it’s a footnote about some stupid bird?

Lucy: He needed a way to sneak in one last “sprightly”. That makes eleven. And sixteen “melancholy”.

Meredith: That’s nothing. Fifty-nine bosoms, remember?

David: Fifty-nine? How can you have an odd number of—

Hugh: You both lose. Sixty-two mansions. Some of them old.

Meredith, Linda, David, Lucy [stand up and return books to shelf].

Hugh: Wait! There’s an Afterword!

Meredith, Linda, David, Lucy [with fingers in ears, hum loudly as they walk out].

Hugh [continues to read on his own].

The critical & curious reader will discover, perhaps, many errors in the above story.

Hugh [raised voice]: I heard that snicker!

Of some, the writer, on retrospection, is already sensible; in one instance he has erred by an anachronism which was not discovered until too late to correct the error.

Voice [from next room]: One instance? I counted thirty-seven!

But for mistakes and deficiencies, the writer has an excuse.

Voice [from next room]: Sure he does.

The incidents from which this tale was formed, were only to be found, in his memory.

Voice [from next room]: In his what?

David [poking head in door]: Did he just say, with a straight face, that he didn’t only want to expand the important scenes but also to pad out the unimportant ones?

To this the writer answers, that it was his first intention that those scenes should be full and complete. It was intended to introduce a number of other characters, both European and American, into the body of the work, and annex to them conspicuous and interesting parts of the drama, some of which were to have been connected with the most important events of the American war; but it was soon foreseen that this would extend the story beyond the limits of a weekly paper, and at least beyond the patience of readers,

Hugh [pauses in expectation of sarcastic comment before reading on].

Meredith [from next room]: Hah!

and should they do this before they are legally prevented, he cautions the public against purchasing them, as in due time they will be presented with a more perfect and complete edition, greatly enlarged. Besides, the Novel as extracted into the papers we have seen, is materially incorrect; some words left out, others misspelt, and in several instances one word is given for another, which renders the sentence unintel­ligible, or entirely alters the sense;

Hugh [pauses in reading to engage in prolonged fit of coughing].

so that an edition published from those copies would be exceedingly incorrect, and not agreeing with the original.—What we mean by legal prevention, is that we design, at an early day, to anticipate a copy-right,

Voice [from next room, in ostentatiously carrying tones]: You’d think a newspaper editor would know that it isn’t enough to plan to think about a copyright. You have to actually get one.

Lucy: Just don’t expect a copyright to protect you from Alida.

Hugh [folds up newspaper and puts it away with a sigh of relief].

• [  1]   In the time of the late [American] revolution . . .
• [  2]   Melissa was received with joyful tenderness . . .
• [  3]   It was some time before Alonzo renewed his visit.
• [  4]   Alonzo’s hours now winged heavily away.
• [  5]   The declaration of Melissa’s father . . .
• [  6]   The spring opened with the din of preparation . . .
• [  7]   Alonzo entered the room; Melissa was sitting by a window . . .
• [  8]   Alonzo arrived at the residence of Vincent . . .
• [  9]   The night was exceedingly dark . . .
• [10]   John came frequently to the house . . .
• [11]   That night Melissa let down the bridge . . .
• [12]   Alonzo and Melissa were equally surprised . . .
• [13]   Alonzo had understood from Melissa, that John’s hut . . .
• [14]   The incidents of our story will here produce a pause.
• [15]   A new scene was now opened to Alonzo . . .
• [16]   Alonzo passed along the street . . .
• [17]   Edgar and Alonzo retired to a separate room.
• [18]   Alonzo having thus poured out . . .
• [19]   Again will the incidents of our history produce a pause.
• [20]   “To undeceive you, Alonzo,”
• [21]   Alonzo’s father was soon . . .
• [22]   It was then agreed that the man should . . .
• [PS]   Afterword