Short Fiction, Edgar Allan Poe [best autobiographies to read TXT] 📗

defeated our hopes. For about half an hour the conversation ran upon ordinary topics, but at last, we contrived, quite naturally, to give it the following turn: Capt. Pratt

“Well I have been absent just one year.⁠—Just one year today, as I live⁠—let me see! yes!⁠—this is October the tenth. You remember, Mr. Rumgudgeon, I called, this day year to bid you goodbye. And by the way, it does seem something like a coincidence, does it not⁠—that our friend, Captain Smitherton, here, has been absent exactly a year also⁠—a year today!”

Smitherton

“Yes! just one year to a fraction. You will remember, Mr. Rumgudgeon, that I called with Capt. Pratol on this very day, last year, to pay my parting respects.”

Uncle

“Yes, yes, yes⁠—I remember it very well⁠—very queer indeed! Both of you gone just one year. A very strange coincidence, indeed! Just what Doctor Dubble L. Dee would denominate an extraordinary concurrence of events. Doctor Dub⁠—”

Kate

Interrupting. “To be sure, papa, it is something strange; but then Captain Pratt and Captain Smitherton didn’t go altogether the same route, and that makes a difference, you know.”

Uncle

“I don’t know any such thing, you hussy! How should I? I think it only makes the matter more remarkable, Doctor Dubble L. Dee⁠—”

Kate

“Why, papa, Captain Pratt went round Cape Horn, and Captain Smitherton doubled the Cape of Good Hope.”

Uncle

“Precisely!⁠—the one went east and the other went west, you jade, and they both have gone quite round the world. By the by, Doctor Dubble L. Dee⁠—”

Myself

Hurriedly. “Captain Pratt, you must come and spend the evening with us tomorrow⁠—you and Smitherton⁠—you can tell us all about your voyage, and we’ll have a game of whist and⁠—”

Pratt

“Wist, my dear fellow⁠—you forget. Tomorrow will be Sunday. Some other evening⁠—”

Kate

“Oh, no, fie!⁠—Robert’s not quite so bad as that. Today’s Sunday.”

Pratt

“I beg both your pardons⁠—but I can’t be so much mistaken. I know tomorrow’s Sunday, because⁠—”

Smitherton

Much surprised. “What are you all thinking about? Wasn’t yesterday, Sunday, I should like to know?”

All

“Yesterday indeed! you are out!”

Uncle

“Today’s Sunday, I say⁠—don’t I know?”

Pratt

“Oh no!⁠—tomorrow’s Sunday.”

Smitherton

“You are all mad⁠—every one of you. I am as positive that yesterday was Sunday as I am that I sit upon this chair.”

Kate

Jumping up eagerly. “I see it⁠—I see it all. Papa, this is a judgment upon you, about⁠—about you know what. Let me alone, and I’ll explain it all in a minute. It’s a very simple thing, indeed. Captain Smitherton says that yesterday was Sunday: so it was; he is right. Cousin Bobby, and uncle and I say that today is Sunday: so it is; we are right. Captain Pratt maintains that tomorrow will be Sunday: so it will; he is right, too. The fact is, we are all right, and thus three Sundays have come together in a week.”

Smitherton

After a pause. “By the by, Pratt, Kate has us completely. What fools we two are! Mr. Rumgudgeon, the matter stands thus: the earth, you know, is twenty-four thousand miles in circumference. Now this globe of the earth turns upon its own axis⁠—revolves⁠—spins round⁠—these twenty-four thousand miles of extent, going from west to east, in precisely twenty-four hours. Do you understand, Mr. Rumgudgeon?⁠—”

Uncle

“To be sure⁠—to be sure⁠—Doctor Dub⁠—”

Smitherton

Drowning his voice. “Well, sir; that is at the rate of one thousand miles per hour. Now, suppose that I sail from this position a thousand miles east. Of course I anticipate the rising of the sun here at London by just one hour. I see the sun rise one hour before you do. Proceeding, in the same direction, yet another thousand miles, I anticipate the rising by two hours⁠—another thousand, and I anticipate it by three hours, and so on, until I go entirely round the globe, and back to this spot, when, having gone twenty-four thousand miles east, I anticipate the rising of the London sun by no less than twenty-four hours; that is to say, I am a day in advance of your time. Understand, eh?”

Uncle

“But Double L. Dee⁠—”

Smitherton

Speaking very loud. “Captain Pratt, on the contrary, when he had sailed a thousand miles west of this position, was an hour, and when he had sailed twenty-four thousand miles west, was twenty-four hours, or one day, behind the time at London. Thus, with me, yesterday was Sunday⁠—thus, with you, today is Sunday⁠—and thus, with Pratt, tomorrow will be Sunday. And what is more, Mr. Rumgudgeon, it is positively clear that we are all right; for there can be no philosophical reason assigned why the idea of one of us should have preference over that of the other.”

Uncle

“My eyes!⁠—well, Kate⁠—well, Bobby!⁠—this is a judgment upon me, as you say. But I am a man of my word⁠—mark that! you shall have her, boy, (plum and all), when you please. Done up, by Jove! Three Sundays all in a row! I’ll go, and take Dubble L. Dee’s opinion upon that.”

The Oval Portrait

The château into which my valet had ventured to make forcible entrance, rather than permit me, in my desperately wounded condition, to pass a night in the open air, was one of those piles of commingled gloom and grandeur which have so long frowned among the Appennines, not less in fact than in the fancy of Mrs. Radcliffe. To all appearance it had been temporarily and very lately abandoned. We established ourselves in one of the smallest and least sumptuously furnished apartments. It lay in a remote turret of the building. Its decorations were rich, yet tattered and antique. Its walls were hung with tapestry and bedecked with manifold and multiform armorial trophies, together with an unusually great number of very spirited modern paintings in frames of rich golden arabesque. In these paintings, which depended from the walls not only in their main surfaces, but in very many nooks which the bizarre architecture of the château rendered necessary⁠—in these paintings my incipient delirium, perhaps,