Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, there's Chuck,
Speaker 1: there's Terry. Let's get reading. Yeah, this year we decided
Speaker 1: to do a little shorty Halloween too, because you know,
Speaker 1: we did our short stuff on Ambrose Beers started poking
Speaker 1: around his short stories, and he wrote some super short
Speaker 1: ones that are kind of tailor made for this. I think. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's almost like he was born in the nineteenth century
Speaker 1: thinking one day, Josh and Chuck are going to have
Speaker 1: short stuff. I want to give them something to work with. Maybe,
Speaker 1: so so to prepare everyone for our Halloween Spooktacular, which
Speaker 1: will be out tomorrow. We wanted to do this, right, Chuck,
Speaker 1: you want to start? Uh? Yeah, what's um? Let's start
Speaker 1: with the story One Summer Night. This is a good one.
Speaker 1: This is a good one. Here we go, One Summer
Speaker 1: Night by Ambrose Beers. The fact that Henry Armstrong was
Speaker 1: buried did not seem to him to prove that he
Speaker 1: was dead. He had always been a hard man to
Speaker 1: convince that he really was buried. The testimony of his
Speaker 1: senses compelled him to admit his posture flat upon his back,
Speaker 1: with his hands crossed upon his stomach and tied was
Speaker 1: something that he easily broke without profitably altering the situation.
Speaker 1: The strict confinement of his entire person, the black darkness
Speaker 1: and profound silence, made a body of evidence impossible to controvert,
Speaker 1: and he had accepted it without Cavill Henry Cavill, but dead. No,
Speaker 1: he was only very very ill. He had withal the
Speaker 1: invalid's apathy, and did not greatly concern himself about the
Speaker 1: uncommon fate that had been allotted to him. No philosopher,
Speaker 1: was he just a plain, commonplace person, gifted for the
Speaker 1: time being with a pathological indifference the organ that he
Speaker 1: feared consequences with his torpid so with no particular apprehension
Speaker 1: for his immediate future, he fell asleep and all was
Speaker 1: peace with Henry Armstrong. Before we go on here, Chuck,
Speaker 1: I just want to point out, so this man has
Speaker 1: come to his senses in a coffin, been like, well,
Speaker 1: I guess I'm dead, and then went to sleep. But
Speaker 1: then then he went to sleep. That's some mellow gold totally.
Speaker 1: You want me to pick up here, please, But something
Speaker 1: was going on overhead. There was a dark summer night
Speaker 1: shot through with in frequent shimmers of lightning silently firing
Speaker 1: a cloud lying low in the west, and pretending a storm.
Speaker 1: These brief, stammering illuminations brought out, with ghastly distinctness the
Speaker 1: monuments and headstones of the cemetery, and seemed to set
Speaker 1: them dancing. It was not a night in which any
Speaker 1: credible witness was likely to be straying about a cemetery,
Speaker 1: so the three men who were there digging into the
Speaker 1: grave of Henry Armstrong felt reasonably secure. Two of them
Speaker 1: were young students from a medical college a few miles away.
Speaker 1: The third was a gigantic man known as Jess. For
Speaker 1: many years, Jess had been employed about the cemetery as
Speaker 1: a man of all work, and it was his favorite
Speaker 1: pleasantry that he knew every soul in the place. From
Speaker 1: the nature of what he was now doing, it was
Speaker 1: inferable that the place was not so populous as this
Speaker 1: register may have shown it to be. Back to you, Charles,
Speaker 1: back to you outside the wall, at the part of
Speaker 1: the grounds farthest from the public road, or a horse
Speaker 1: in a light wagon waiting. The work of excavation was
Speaker 1: not difficult. The earth with which the grave had been
Speaker 1: loosely filled a few hours before, offered little resistance and
Speaker 1: was soon thrown out. So they're Grave Robin here, right.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it ties him very nice to do our
Speaker 1: episode on Grave Robins. Right. Removal of the casket from
Speaker 1: its box was less easy, but it was taken out
Speaker 1: where it was a prerequisite of Jess, who carefully unscrewed
Speaker 1: the cover and laid it aside, exposing the body in
Speaker 1: black trousers and white shirt. At that instant, the air
Speaker 1: sprang to flame. A cracking shock of thunder shook the
Speaker 1: stunned world, and Henry Armstrong tranquility sat up with inarticulate cries.
Speaker 1: The men fled in terror, each in a different direction,
Speaker 1: for nothing on earth could Two of them had been
Speaker 1: persuaded to return, but Jess was of another breed. In
Speaker 1: the gray of the morning, the two students, pallid and
Speaker 1: haggard from anxiety and with the terror of their adventure
Speaker 1: still beating tumultuously in their blood, met at the medical college.
Speaker 1: You saw it, cried one god, Yes, what are we
Speaker 1: to do? They went around to the rear of the building,
Speaker 1: where they saw a horse attached to a light wagon
Speaker 1: hitched to a gate post near the door of the
Speaker 1: dissecting room. Mechanically. They entered the room. On a bench
Speaker 1: in the obscurity sat Jess. He rose, grinning. I'm waiting
Speaker 1: for my pay, he said. Stretched naked on a long
Speaker 1: table lay the body of Henry Armstrong, the head defiled
Speaker 1: with blood and clay from a blow with a spade. Wow,
Speaker 1: so jest to care business? Huh he did? He said, Oh,
Speaker 1: you're gonna sit up right now while I'm trying to
Speaker 1: make some money. No, we're not going to have that.
Speaker 1: We're going to put you back in the grave. Well
Speaker 1: that was great, but we have more to come. Everyone.
Speaker 1: We have one more short story from the great Ambrose
Speaker 1: Beers that we will read after these commercial messages. All right,
Speaker 1: So Chuck, we're gonna do president a hanging it. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna start this one, all right. An old man
Speaker 1: named Daniel Baker, living near Lebanon, Iowa, was suspected by
Speaker 1: his neighbors of having murdered a peddler who had obtained
Speaker 1: permission to pass the night at his house. This was
Speaker 1: an eighteen fifty three when peddling was more common in
Speaker 1: the western country than it is now and was attended
Speaker 1: with considerable danger. The peddler with his pack, traversed the
Speaker 1: country by all manner of lonely roads, and was compelled
Speaker 1: to rely upon the country people for hospitality. This brought
Speaker 1: him into relation with queer characters, some of whom were
Speaker 1: not altogether scrupulous in their methods of making a living,
Speaker 1: murder being an acceptable means to that end. It occasionally
Speaker 1: occurred that a peddler with diminished pack and swollen purse
Speaker 1: would be traced to the lonely dwelling of some rough character,
Speaker 1: and never could be traced beyond. This was so in
Speaker 1: the case of old man Baker, as he was always called.
Speaker 1: Such names are given in the western settlements only to
Speaker 1: elderly persons who are not esteemed to the general disrepute
Speaker 1: of social and worth has affixed the special reproach of age.
Speaker 1: A peddler came to his house and none went away,
Speaker 1: and that is all that anybody knew. All right, So
Speaker 1: we're talking about peddler's being murdered on the road. I
Speaker 1: have to say, Ambrose beerst makes me look succinct. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he can write a paragraph about like a lightning bolt
Speaker 1: flashing the sky in parentheses. All right, here we go.
Speaker 1: Seven years later, the Reverend Mr Cummings, a Baptist minister
Speaker 1: well known in that part of the country, was driving
Speaker 1: by Baker's farm one night. It was not very dark.
Speaker 1: There was a bit of moon somewhere above the light
Speaker 1: veil of mists that lay along the earth. Mr Cummings,
Speaker 1: who was at all times a cheerful person, was whistling
Speaker 1: a tune which he would occasionally enter up to speak
Speaker 1: a word, a friendly encouragement to his horse. Get on, boy,
Speaker 1: like that, that's friendly. As he came to a little
Speaker 1: bridge across the dry ravine, he saw the figure of
Speaker 1: a man standing upon it, clearly outlined against the gray
Speaker 1: background of a misty forest. The man had something strapped
Speaker 1: on his back and carried a heavy stick, obviously an
Speaker 1: itinerant peddler. His attitude had in it a suggestion of abstraction,
Speaker 1: like that of a sleepwalker. Mr Cummings reined in his
Speaker 1: horse when he arrived in front of him, gave him
Speaker 1: a pleasant salutation and invited him to a seat in
Speaker 1: his vehicle. If you're going my way, he added. The
Speaker 1: man raised his head, looked him full in the face,
Speaker 1: but neither answered nor made any further movement. The minister,
Speaker 1: with good natured persistence, repeated his invitation. At this the
Speaker 1: man threw his right hand forward from his side and
Speaker 1: pointed word. As he stood on the extreme edge of
Speaker 1: the bridge. Mr Cummings looked past him over into the ravine,
Speaker 1: saw nothing unusual, and withdrew his eyes to address the
Speaker 1: man again. He had disappeared. Wow, I think you can
Speaker 1: take his home. Okay. The horse, which all this time
Speaker 1: had been uncommonly restless, gave at the same moment a
Speaker 1: snort of terror and started to run away. Before he
Speaker 1: had regained control of the animal, the minister was at
Speaker 1: the crest of the hill, a hundred yards along it's
Speaker 1: like a football field. He looked back and saw the
Speaker 1: figure again, at the same place and in the same
Speaker 1: attitude as when he had first observed it on the
Speaker 1: twenty yard line. Then, for the first time, he was
Speaker 1: conscious of a sense of the supernatural, and drove home
Speaker 1: as rapidly as his willing horse would go on. Arriving
Speaker 1: at home, he related his adventure to his family, and
Speaker 1: early the next morning, accompanied by two neighbors, John White
Speaker 1: Corwell and Abner Ray, Sir, surprised they didn't talk about
Speaker 1: those guys here, returned to the spot, they found the
Speaker 1: body of old man Baker hanging by the neck from
Speaker 1: one of the beams of the bridge. Immediately beneath the
Speaker 1: spot where the apparition had stood. A thick coating of dust,
Speaker 1: slightly dampened by the mist, covered the floor of the bridge,
Speaker 1: but the only footprints were those of Mr Cunning's horse.
Speaker 1: In taking down the body, the men disturbed the loose,
Speaker 1: freeable earth of the slope below it, disclosing human bones
Speaker 1: already nearly uncovered by the action of water and frost.
Speaker 1: They were identified as those of the lost peddler at
Speaker 1: the double inquest. The coroner's jury found that Daniel Baker
Speaker 1: died by his own hand while suffering from temporary insanity,
Speaker 1: and that Samuel Morritts was murdered by some person or
Speaker 1: persons to the jury unknown. The end one of the
Speaker 1: least satisfying endings of any short story, Samuel Moritz. They
Speaker 1: didn't even name the guy until that point. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I thought that was great. I mean, I love Ambrose
Speaker 1: Beers for some reasons, but not for that reason, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean, to get the feeling that like
Speaker 1: at the end of that book, he's just like, face
Speaker 1: down in a like a methodone torpor right, and a
Speaker 1: trough of whiskey. Well, Chuck, I think that was short stuff. Huh,
Speaker 1: that's right, Special Super Short Halloween Edition. The point of
Speaker 1: this is to get your prime for tomorrow's spectacular. So
Speaker 1: don't miss it, everybody. And because I said don't miss
Speaker 1: it everybody, that means short Stuff is Stuff you should know.
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