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- Herausgeber: Musaicum Books
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017
In Prentice Mulford's novel, 'THE SWAMP ANGEL,' readers are taken on a journey through the murky waters of a deep, mystical swamp where supernatural forces collide with human desires. Mulford's writing style is vivid and descriptive, creating a sense of eerie beauty within the swamp's dark depths. The novel's gothic elements and themes of greed and redemption place it within the context of 19th-century American literature, where supernatural tales were popularized. Mulford's exploration of the conflict between good and evil adds a philosophical depth to the story, making it a compelling read for fans of dark fantasy. Prentice Mulford, a prominent New Thought writer and a contemporary of Mark Twain, was known for his spiritual and metaphysical teachings. 'THE SWAMP ANGEL' reflects Mulford's interest in exploring the unseen world and the power of the human mind. His unique perspective on the supernatural and the human experience influenced his literary works, making him an intriguing figure in American literature. I highly recommend 'THE SWAMP ANGEL' to readers who enjoy gothic fiction with a philosophical twist. Mulford's blend of supernatural elements and moral dilemmas creates a captivating narrative that will leave a lasting impression on those who venture into the swamp with his characters.
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THE SWAMP ANGEL
Published by
Books
THE SWAMP ANGEL
1888
CHAPTER I.
ALPHA.
I had long entertained the idea of building for myself a house in the woods, and there living alone. Not that I was cynical, or disgusted with the world. I have no reason to be disgusted with the world. It has given me lots of amusement, sandwiched between headaches, periods of repentance, and sundry hours spent in the manufacture of good resolutions, many of which I could not keep, because they spoiled so quickly on my hands. I have tried to treat the world pretty well, and it has rewarded me. For the world invariably returns kick for kick, frown for frown, smile for smile; and if my reader is a pretty girl, you will keep your beauty far longer by having ever a smile on your face, that comes from the heart, and is not for company occasions, painted on the surface.
I found at last, in New Jersey, a piece of woods, a swamp, a spring near by, a rivulet, and, above all, a noble, wide-branching oak. The owner willingly consented to my building there, and under the oak I built.
That was five years ago. I was then forty-nine years of age, and feel no older now; in fact, not quite so old. What others may feel, about my “time of life,” is another affair. The main point is involved in one’s own feelings on this head. While a bottle of champagne is actively at work in a man’s organization, what does he care how others feel as to his condition or age?
I had seen, in these forty-nine years, two years of life as an indifferent sailor on a merchant vessel and whaler. On the latter I was cook, to the misery of all on board who came within the range of my culinary misdeeds. It was not discovered that I had never learned this noble and necessary art until our vessel was off soundings, and then it was too late to repair the damage. I was twelve years in California, where I dug a little gold and a good deal of dirt. I have taught school, tended bar, kept a grocery, run for the legislature, been a post officer, peddled a very tough article of beef on horseback, to the miners on the Tuolumne river bars and gulches, started a hog ranche and failed, served as a special policeman, and tax collector, kept an express office, prospected for silver in the Nevadas, found nothing but snow, scenery, and misery, pre-empted no end of land, laid out towns which are laid out yet, run a farm to weeds and farrow land, and lectured, and written a good deal for the papers. I have tried my constitution and its by-laws in ways both reputable and otherwise, but it’s sound yet, though I could have had as many diseases as I liked, by believing in them and paying the doctor and druggist for them. I have seen Cape Horn, London, Paris, Vienna, a whale in a “flurry,” a ship’s crew in mutiny, and a woman who did not want a new bonnet. But she was dead. I lived two years in England, had a splendid time on a very small capital, saw the land from the Scottish border to the Straits of Dover, and lived with over thirty families, high, low, rich, poor, patrician, and plebian, I have an ex-mother-in-law. Before I started out in life, when a boy of fourteen, I had charge of a country hotel, which I ran ashore in four years; but it never cost the girls and boys of my youthful era a cent for horse-hire out of my stables. I had a good time keeping that hotel, which my poor father, on dying, left to my mother. She had necessarily to give it largely in charge of her eldest and only son. I was that son. My mother disliked the business being soberly inclined, and I got her out of it as soon as possible, by managing, or rather mismanaging, things in such a way that the expenditures went considerably beyond the income. So I did a good thing for her, as well as having a good time myself. We kept a bar, which the boys of my own size patronized to a considerable extent, so their refreshments cost them little or nothing, generally nothing; which fact, though conducive to the general hilarity, did not increase the profits. My native village was a place where for a boy to tell his mother all he had thought, felt, and experienced for the last twenty-four hours, would have brought him enough scolding, and bald, ungilded admonition, as to terrify him out of all goodness and candor for a month; where the girls went regularly to the evening prayer-meetings, there to wish that the boys might not fail to be on the outside of the church, to see them home; where the boys systematically and conscientiously, and without a pang, lied to their fathers, as their fathers had lied to grandpa; where at fifteen they called mother the “old woman,” and at heart ridiculed her ignorance of numerous things outside of her kingdom, because they had caught the habit and idea from “pa”; where one-half the town were total teetotalers, who hated whiskey drinkers worse than they did whiskey, and called all who differed with them in belief and practice hard names at intemperate temperance meetings, and where the speakers got as drunk on zeal, enthusiasm, prejudice, and excitement, as other drunkards do on gin. I managed to abolish our bar in a few years, on the principle of making the expenditures over-size the income, and so did another good thing, as the young men had then to go elsewhere for their stimulant, and pay for it, too; a condition of affairs always promotive of temperance, if not of morality. When I had accomplished all this, and that’s a good deal to accomplish before reaching the age of eighteen, I went forth into the world to seek my fortune, and have been seeking it ever since, with results, of course, some for and some against me. But I’ve had a good time, anyway, and I intend to have better.
CHAPTER II.
LAYING THE CORNER-STONE.
I bought about fifty dollars’ worth of boards and joist, and had them carted and dumped under my oak. No hand save mine laid the foundations. I laid the floor first. I had no well-defined plan about building; I laid my floor boards first, because it came handiest so to do. It was so much of the house built, anyway. I let the structure grow naturally. I presume a professional carpenter would have put up the frame before laying the floor. But I felt that if I got the floor off my mind, the rest of the edifice would grow on it somehow, as it did. I know that I violated all the architectural proprieties in building as I did, and performed one hundred times the work necessary; yet the work to me was all play. For it was nothing but a big box of twelve-foot boards, and when completed, not near so ornate or regular in shape as those the manufacturers box up their horse-cars in, for shipping to distant places. But I was not building to suit propriety or other people. I was building to suit myself. I wanted entire liberty, for once in my life, to make blunders without being inspected, over-looked, criticised, and sermonized by other people. I had such liberty, and I made the blunders. Never during the two months that I was engaged in putting up this ramshackle shanty did a soul come near me to stare at me, and gape, and tell me I was doing things wrong; or even if such a pest did not say what he thought, to look as if he thought it all the same, and in so thinking make me feel that he thought it. Such people are pestiferous. I want to do things in my own way, and make my own mistakes, and learn as I go along; and when I get ready to ask how to do them better, of anyone that knows better, then, and not till then, do I want advice and suggestion. It is a luxury to go blundering on in this way; and I had it, and was willing to pay for it. My lot was at the end of a big corn-field, in sight of but one house; out of sight of all main roads, and nobody could get near me, unless they walked a mile to do so.
