Strange Stories , livre ebook

The Floating Press - Grant Allen

Découvre YouScribe en t'inscrivant gratuitement

Je m'inscris

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

196 pages

English

Vous pourrez modifier la taille du texte de cet ouvrage

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

A propos
Informations
Extrait

Description

A scientist and scholar by trade, Grant Allen was a prodigious writer who dabbled in many different genres over the course of his career, playing a significant role in the development of both detective fiction and science fiction. This collection of short stories runs the gamut in terms of theme and subject matter, but all of the tales highlight Allen's fascination with the weird, mysterious and uncanny.

Sujets

Short story

Informations

Publié par	The Floating Press
Date de parution	01 juillet 2014
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781776581931
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0134€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

STRANGE STORIES
* * *
GRANT ALLEN

*
Strange Stories First published in 1884 Epub ISBN 978-1-77658-193-1 Also available: PDF ISBN 978-1-77658-194-8 © 2013 The Floating Press and its licensors. All rights reserved. While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike. Visit www.thefloatingpress.com
Contents
*
Preface The Reverend John Creedy Dr. Greatrex's Engagement Mr. Chung The Curate of Churnside An Episode in High Life My New Years Eve Among the Mummies The Foundering of the "Fortuna" The Backslider The Mysterious Occurrence in Piccadilly Carvalho Pausodyne:A Great Chemical Discovery The Empress of Andorra The Senior Proctor's Wooing:A Tale of Two Continents The Child of the Phalanstery Our Scientific Observations on a Ghost Ram Das of Cawnpore Endnotes
Preface
*
It is with some little trepidation that I venture to submit to thecritical world this small collection of short stories. I feel that indoing so I owe some apology both to my readers and to the regularstory-tellers. Being by trade a psychologist and scientific journeyman,I have been bold enough at times to stray surreptitiously andtentatively from my proper sphere into the flowery fields of purefiction. Some of these my divarications from the strict path of sternerscience, however, having been already publicly performed under theincognito of "J. Arbuthnot Wilson," have been so far condoned bygenerous and kindly critics that I am emboldened to present them to thejudgment of readers under a more permanent form, and even to dispensewith the convenient cloak of a pseudonym, under which one can always soeasily cover one's hasty retreat from an untenable position. I can onlyhope that my confession will be accepted in partial extenuation of thisculpable departure from the good old rule, "Ne sutor ultra crepidam;"and that older hands at the craft of story-telling will pardon anamateur novice his defective workmanship on the general plea of hishumble demeanour.
I may perhaps also venture to plead in self-defence that though thesestories do not profess to be anything more than mere short sensationaltales, I have yet endeavoured to give to most of them some slight tingeof scientific or psychological import and meaning. "The Reverend JohnCreedy," for example, is a study from within of a singular persistenceof hereditary character, well known to all students of modernanthropological papers and reports. Members of barbarous or savageraces, trained for a time in civilized habits, are liable at any momentto revert naturally to their primitive condition, especially under thecontagious influence of companionship with persons of their own blood,and close subjection to the ancestral circumstances. The tale which Ihave based upon several such historical instances in real lifeendeavours briefly to hint at the modes of feeling likely to accompanysuch a relapse into barbarism in an essentially fine and sensitivesavage nature. To most European readers, no doubt, such a sheer fallfrom the pinnacle of civilization to the nethermost abysses of savagery,would seem to call for the display of no other emotion than pure disgustand aversion; but those who know intimately the whole gamut of theintensely impressionable African mind will be able to treat itstemptations and its tendencies far more sympathetically. In "The Curateof Churnside," again, I have tried to present a psychical analysis of atemperament not uncommon among the cultured class of the ItalianRenaissance, and less rare than many people will be inclined to imagineamong the colder type of our own emancipated and cultivated classes. Theunion of high intellectual and æsthetic culture with a total want ofmoral sensibility is a recognized fact in many periods of history,though our own age is singularly loth to admit of its possibility in itsown contemporaries. In "Ram Das of Cawnpore," once more, I haveattempted to depict a few circumstances of the Indian Mutiny as theymust naturally have presented themselves to the mind and feelings of ahumble native actor in that great and terrible drama. Accustomedourselves to looking always at the massacres and reprisals of the Mutinyfrom a purely English point of view, we are liable to forget that everyact of the mutineers and their aiders or abettors must have been fullyjustified in their own eyes, at the moment at least, as every act ofevery human being always is to his own inner personality. In hisconscience of conscience, no man ever really believes that under givencircumstances he could conceivably have acted otherwise than he actuallydid. If he persuades himself that he does really so believe, then heshows himself at once to be a very poor introspective psychologist. "TheChild of the Phalanstery," to take another case, is a more ideal effortto realize the moral conceptions of a community brought up under asocial and ethical environment utterly different from that by which weourselves are now surrounded. In like manner, almost all the stories(except the lightest among them) have their germ or prime motive in somescientific or quasi-scientific idea; and this narrow link which thusconnects them at bottom with my more habitual sphere of work must serveas my excuse to the regular story-tellers for an otherwise unwarrantableintrusion upon their private preserves. I trust they will forgive me onthis plea for my trespass on their legitimate domains, and allow me tooccupy in peace a little adjacent corner of unclaimed territory, whichlies so temptingly close beside my own small original freehold.
I should add that "The Reverend John Creedy," "The Curate of Churnside,""Dr. Greatrex's Engagement," and "The Backslider," have already appearedin the Cornhill Magazine ; while "The Foundering of the Fortuna " wasfirst published in Longman's Magazine . The remainder of the talescomprised in this volume have seen the light originally in the pages of Belgravia . I have to thank the courtesy of the publishers and editorsof those periodicals for kind permission to reprint them here.
G. A. THE NOOK, DORKING, October 12, 1884.
The Reverend John Creedy
*
I
"On Sunday next, the 14th inst., the Reverend John Creedy, B.A., ofMagdalen College, Oxford, will preach in Walton Magna Church, on behalfof the Gold Coast Mission." Not a very startling announcement that, andyet, simple as it looks, it stirred Ethel Berry's soul to its inmostdepths. For Ethel had been brought up by her Aunt Emily to look uponforeign missions as the one thing on earth worth living for and thinkingabout, and the Reverend John Creedy, B.A., had a missionary history ofhis own, strange enough even in these strange days of queerjuxtapositions between utter savagery and advanced civilization.
"Only think," she said to her aunt, as they read the placard on theschoolhouse-board, "he's a real African negro, the vicar says, takenfrom a slaver on the Gold Coast when he was a child, and brought toEngland to be educated. He's been to Oxford and got a degree; and nowhe's going out again to Africa to convert his own people. And he'scoming down to the vicar's to stay on Wednesday."
"It's my belief," said old Uncle James, Aunt Emily's brother, thesuperannuated skipper, "that he'd much better stop in England for ever.I've been a good bit on the Coast myself in my time, after palm oil andsuch, and my opinion is that a nigger's a nigger anywhere, but he's asight less of a nigger in England than out yonder in Africa. Take him toEngland, and you make a gentleman of him: send him home again, and thenigger comes out at once in spite of you."
"Oh, James," Aunt Emily put in, "how can you talk such unchristianliketalk, setting yourself up against missions, when we know that all thenations of the earth are made of one blood?"
"I've always lived a Christian life myself, Emily," answered UncleJames, "though I have cruised a good bit on the Coast, too, which isagainst it, certainly; but I take it a nigger's a nigger whatever you dowith him. The Ethiopian cannot change his skin, the Scripture says, northe leopard his spots, and a nigger he'll be to the end of his days; youmark my words, Emily."
On Wednesday, in due course, the Reverend John Creedy arrived at thevicarage, and much curiosity there was throughout the village of WaltonMagna that week to see this curious new thing, a coal-black parson. Nextday, Thursday, an almost equally unusual event occurred to Ethel Berry,for, to her great surprise, she got a little note in the morninginviting her up to a tennis party at the vicarage the same afternoon.Now, though the vicar called on Aunt Emily often enough, and acceptedher help readily for school feasts and other village festivities of themilder sort, the Berrys were hardly up to that level of society which iscommonly invited to the parson's lawn tennis parties. And the reason whyEthel was asked on this particular Thursday must be traced to a certainpious conspiracy between the vicar and the secretary of the Gold CoastEvangelistic Society. When those two eminent missionary advocates hadmet a fortnight before at Exeter Hall, the secretary had represented tothe vicar the desirability of young John Creedy's taking to himself anEnglish wife before his departure. "It will steady him, and keep himright on the Coast," he said, "and it will give him importance in theeyes of the natives as well." Whereto the vicar responded that he knewexactly the right girl to suit the place in his own parish, and that bya providential conjunction she already took a deep interest in foreignmissions. So these two good men conspi