Page:Edgar Allan Poe - how to know him.djvu/152

132 story now under review. In fact, we see, or fancy that we see, numerous traces of indecision—traces which a dexterous supervision of the complete work might have enabled him to erase. We have already spoken of the intermission of a lustrum. The opening speeches of old Chester are by far too truly gentlemanly for his subsequent character. The wife of Varden, also, is too wholesale a shrew to be converted into the quiet wife—the original design was to punish her. At page 16, we read thus—Solomon Daisy is telling his story:

"'I put as good a face upon it as I could, and muffling myself up, started out with a lighted lantern in one hand and the key of the church in the other'—at this point of the narrative, the dress of the strange man rustled as if he had turned to hear more distinctly."

Here the design is to call the reader's attention to a point in the tale; but no subsequent explanation is made. Again, a few lines below—

"The houses were all shut up, and the folks in doors, and perhaps there is only one man in the world who knows how dark it really was."

Here the intention is still more evident, but there is no result. Again, at page 54, the idiot draws Mr. Chester to the window, and directs his attention to the clothes hanging upon the lines in the yard:

"'Look down,' he said softly; 'do you mark how they whisper in each other's ears, then dance and leap