The Automaton Ear, and Other Sketches

NOTE.—Some of the sketches and tales in this volume were contributed to “Scribner’s Monthly,” “Appleton’s Journal,” and the “Lakeside Magazine,” and are used here, in a revised...

I went to St. Paul’s on the Sabbath. There was no worship in the operatic voluntary sung by hired voices; it did not stir my soul, and their cold hymns did not warm with praise...

Around the porch there hung that day a crimson glory. It was the climbing rose about the door displaying its gorgeous bloom in a thousand crowns. Green, grass-green were the hil...

An uneasy feeling of dread oppressed her, she knew not why. The heavy perfume of the honeysuckle suddenly make her sick and faint. The tall and prickly cedar stood up straight a...

The Spring! Hannah hardly dared to think what might happen then. Every day, as she watched her mother, the dread upon her grew stronger. She would have held back the coming of t...

Through this tower, every evening, the miners, when dismissed for the day, are compelled to pass out one by one, and submit themselves to an examination, where their clothes are...

I felt glad I had brought my cloak, for it was cold, very cold, and I would have been almost numb without it. I knew by the position of the moon that it must be somewhere near e...

Old Mounse was a besotted beggar round town who had arrived at the state where the rims of his eyelids appeared to be turned inside out and resembled raw beefsteak. The landlady...

My interest being awakened, I secretly determined that I would try to discover who accepted this situation, and notice, if possible, what effect it would produce upon the keeper...

There was only the dog that he could fly to in his agony, but it, too, had a strange appearance and answered his call by low plaintive howls that sent a shiver through his frame...

The Professor is an old man now, and the fame of his learning has become great in the land. And all the people tell about his funeral; and how, every Christmas since, in his sca...

It was at the breakfast-table that the company were discussing the “sights” of the neighborhood, and debating whether they would take him first over to Paint Creek upon a fishin...

He was right. The day wore on without any apparent change until about the going down of the sun, when the old man moved a little. They had once or twice dropped a few drops of w...

“Well, Erckman, she does look thin and delicate-like, but sewing won’t hurt her, not a bit. She’ll be better when she’s got something to do. She can’t exist on air, and she can’...

But Franz played on mechanically, with the pang of despair at his heart. Suddenly, half-way in a bar, in the very midst of a single note almost, a sensation of fear came upon hi...