Classic Audiobook Collection - The Parenticide Club by Ambrose Bierce ~ Full Audiobook [comedy]

Episode Date: July 28, 2025

The Parenticide Club by Ambrose Bierce audiobook. Genre: comedy In The Parenticide Club, Ambrose Bierce invites you into a gentlemen's society with a single, unspeakable qualification: every member claims to have killed a parent. Framed as a series of club proceedings and confessions, the book unfolds through sharply drawn testimonies in which each speaker tries to justify the unforgivable, arguing motives that range from cold practicality to wounded pride to twisted ideas of mercy. As the narrator listens, Bierce turns the meeting room into a courtroom without a judge, where charm, logic, and self-serving storytelling compete to reshape guilt into righteousness. With his trademark wit and surgical prose, Bierce exposes how easily language can varnish violence and how respectability can coexist with depravity. The central tension is not a whodunit so much as a why-believe-it: each account dares you to decide what is true, what is performance, and what moral line can be talked away. Dark, brisk, and relentlessly ironic, these tales use their shocking premise to satirize hypocrisy, rationalization, and the stories people tell to live with themselves. For ad-free listening try our premium subscription Chapters (Approximate) (00:00:00) Chapter 1 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Parenthide Club by Ambrose Bierce, recording by Peter Yearsly. My favourite murder Having murdered my mother under circumstances of singular atrocity, I was arrested and put upon my trial, which lasted seven years. In charging the jury, the judge of the court of acquittal remarked that it was one of the most ghastly crimes that he had ever been called upon to explain away. At this, my attorney rose and said, May it please, Your Honor, crimes are ghastly or agreeable only by comparison.

If you are familiar with the details of my client's previous murder of his uncle, you would discern in his later offence, if offence it may be called, something in the nature of tender forbearance and filial consideration for the feelings of the victim. The appalling ferocity of the former assassination was indeed inconsistent with any hypothesis, with any hypothesis but that of guilt. And had it not been for the fact that the Honourable Judge before whom he was tried was the President of a Life Insurance Company that took risks on hanging and in which my client held a policy, it is hard to see how he could decently have been acquitted. If Your Honor would like to hear about it for instruction and guidance of your honour's mind,

this unfortunate man, my client, will consent to give himself the purpose. pain of relating it under oath. The district attorney said, Your honour, I object. Such a statement would be in the nature of evidence, and the testimony in this case is closed. The prisoner's statement should have been introduced three years ago in the spring of 1881. In a statutory sense, said the judge, you are right, and in the court of objections and technicalities, you would get a ruling in your favour, but not, in a court of acquittal, the objection is overruled. I accept, said the district attorney.

You cannot do that, the judge said. I must remind you that in order to take an exception, you must first get to this case transferred for a time to the court of exceptions on a formal motion duly supported by affidavits. A motion to that effect by your predecessor in office was denied by me during the first year of this trial. Mr. Clark swear the prisoner.

The customary oath having been administered I made the following statement which impressed the judge with so strong a sense of the comparative triviality of the offence for which I was on trial that he made no further search for mitigating circumstances

but simply instructed the jury to acquit and I left the court without a stain upon my reputation. I was born in 1856 in Calamackey Michigan, of honest and reputable parents, one of whom heaven has mercifully spared to comfort me in my later years. In 1867 the family came to California and settled near Nigger Head, where my father opened a road agency, and prospered beyond the dreams of Averis. He was a reticent saturnine man, then,

though his increasing years have now somewhat relaxed the austerity of his disposition, and I believe that nothing but his memory of the sad event for which I am now on trial prevents him from manifesting a genuine hilarity. Four years after we had set up the road agency, an itinerant preacher came along, and having no other way to pay for the night's lodging that we gave him, favoured us with an exhortation of such power that, praise God, we were all converted to religion. My father at once sent for his brother, the Honourable William Ridley of Stockton,

and on his arrival turned over the agency to him, charging him nothing for the franchise nor planned, the latter consisting of a Winchester rifle, a sword-off shotgun, and an assortment of masks made out of flower sacks. The family then moved to Ghost Rock and opened a dancehouse. It was called the Saints' Rest Herdy-Gurdy, and the preceding each night began with prayer.

It was there that my now sainted mother, by her grace in the dance, acquired the subriquet of the bucking walrus. In the fall of 75, I had occasion to visit Coyote on the road to Mahala and took the stage at Ghost Rock. There were four other passengers. About three miles beyond nigger head, persons whom I identified as my uncle William and his two sons held up the stage.

Finding nothing in the express box, they went through the passengers. I acted a most honourable party. in the affair, placing myself in line with the others, holding out my hands and permitting myself to be deprived of forty dollars and a gold watch. From my behaviour no one could have suspected that I knew the gentleman who gave the entertainment. A few days later, when I went to niggerhead and asked for the return of my money and watch, my uncle and cousins swore they knew nothing of the matter, and they affected a belief that my father and I had done the job ourselves in dishonest violation of commercial good faith.

Uncle William even threatened to retaliate by starting an opposition dancehouse at Ghost Rock. As the Saints' rest had become rather unpopular, I saw that this would assuredly ruin it and prove a paying enterprise, so I told my uncle that I was willing to overlook the past if he would take me into the scheme and keep the partnership a secret from my father. This fair offer he rejected, and I then perceived that it would be better and more satisfactory if he were dead. My plans to that end were soon perfected, and communicating them to my dear parents, I had the gratification of receiving their approval.

My father said he was proud of me, and my mother promised that although her religion forbade her to assist in taking human life, I should have the advantage of her prayers for my success. as a preliminary measure looking to my security in case of detection i made an application for membership in that powerful order the knights of murder and in due course was received as a member of the ghost rock commandery on the day that my probation ended i was for the first time permitted to inspect the records of the order and to learn who belonged to it all the rights of initiation having been conducted in masks fancy my delight when in looking over the role of membership, I found the third name to be that my uncle, who indeed was Junior Vice-Chancellor of the Order. Here was an opportunity exceeding my wildest dreams. To murder, I could add insubordination and treachery.

It was what my mother would have called a special providence. At about this time, something occurred which caused my cup of joy, already full, to overflow on all sides. A circular cataract of bliss. Three men, strangers in that locality, were arrested for the stage robbery in which I had lost my money and watch. They were brought to trial,

and, despite my efforts to clear them and fasten the guilt upon three of the most respectable and worthy citizens of Ghost Rock, convicted on the clearest proof. The murder would now be as wanton and reasonless as I could wish. One morning I shouldered my Winchester rifle and going over to my uncle's house near Niggerhead asked my aunt Mary, his wife, if he were at home, adding that I had come to kill him. My aunt replied with her peculiar smile that so many gentlemen called on that errand

and were afterwards carried away without having performed it, that I must excuse her for doubting my good faith in the matter. She said I did not look as if I would kill anybody. So as a proof of good faith I levelled my rifle and wounded a Chinaman who happened to be passing the house. She said she knew whole families that could do a thing of that kind, but Bill Ridley was a horse of another colour. She said, however, that I would find him over on the other side of the creek in the sheep lot, and she added that she hoped the best man would win. My Aunt Mary was one of the most fair-minded women that I have ever met. I found my uncle down on his knees engaged in skinning a sheep.

Seeing that he had neither gun nor pistol handy, I had not the heart to shoot him, so I approached him, greeted him pleasantly, and struck him a powerful blow on the head with the butt of my rifle. I have a very good delivery, and Uncle William lay down on his side, then rolled over on his back, spread out his fingers, and shivered. Before he could recover the use of his limbs, I seized the knife that he had been using and cut his hamstrings. You no doubtless that when you sever the Tendo Achilles, the patient has no further use. of his leg. It is just the same as if he had no leg. Well, I parted them both, and when he revived, he was at my service. As soon as he comprehended the situation, he said, Samuel, you've got the drop on me and can afford to be generous. I've only one thing to ask of you, and that is that you carry me to the house and finish me in the bosom of my family. I told him, I thought that,

a pretty reasonable request, and I would do so if he would let me put him into a week. to sack. He would be easier to carry that way, and if he was seen by the neighbours on route it would cause less remark. He agreed to that, and going to the barn I got a sack. This, however, did not fit him. It was too short and much wider than he, so I bent his legs, forced his knees up against his breast, and got him into it that way, tying the sack above his head. He was a heavy man, and I had all that I could do to get him on my back, but I staggered along for some disson. until I came to a swing that some of the children had suspended to the branch of an oak. Here I laid him down and sat upon him to rest,

and the sight of the rope gave me a happy inspiration. In twenty minutes, my uncle, still in the sack, swung free to the sport of the wind. I had taken down the rope, tied one end tightly about the mouth of the bag, thrown the other across the limb, and hauled him up about five feet from the ground. fastening the other end of the rope, also about the mouth of the sack, I had the satisfaction to see my uncle

converted into a large, fine pendulum. I must add that he was not himself entirely aware of the nature of the change that he had undergone in his relation to the exterior world, though injustice to a good man's memory I ought to say that I do not think he would in any case have wasted much of my time in vain remonstrance. Uncle William had a ram that was famous in all that region as a fighter. It was in a state of chronic constitutional indignation. Some deep disappointment in early life had soured its disposition, and it had declared war upon the whole world. To say that it would but anything accessible is but faintly to express the nature and scope of its military activity. The universe was its antagonist, its methods,

that of a projectile. It fought like the angels and devils, in mid-air, leaving the atmosphere like a bird, describing a parabolic curve and descending upon its victim at just the exact angle of incidents to make the most of its velocity and weight. Its momentum, calculated in foot tons, was something incredible. It had been seen to destroy a four-year-old bull by a single impact upon that animal's gnarly forehead. No stone wall had ever been known to resist its downward swoop. There were no trees tough enough to stay it. it would splinter them into matchwood and defile their leafy honours in the dust.

This irascible and implacable brute, this incarnate thunderbolt, this monster of the upper deep, I had seen reposing in the shade of an adjacent tree, dreaming dreams of conquest and glory. It was with a view to summoning it forth to the field of honour that I suspended its master in the manner described. Having completed my preparations, I imparted to the evuncular pendulum, a gentle oscillation, and, retiring to cover, behind a contiguous rock, lifted up my voice in a long, rasping cry, whose diminishing final note was drowned in a noise like that of a swearing cat, which emanated from the sack. That formidable sheep was upon its feet, and had taken in the military situation at a glance. In a few moments it had approached stamping to within 50 yards of the swinging foeman,

who now retreating and on advancing seemed to invite the fray. Suddenly I saw the beast's head drop earthward, as if depressed by the weight of its enormous horns. Then a dim, white, wavy streak of sheep prolonged itself from that spot in a generally horizontal direction to within about four yards of a point immediately beneath the enemy. There it struck sharply upward, and before it had faded from my gaze at the place whence it had set out, I heard a horrid thump and a piercing scream, and my poor uncle shot forward with a slack rope higher than the limb to which he was attached. Here the rope tortened with a jerk arresting his flight, and back he swung in a breathless curve to the other end of his arc. The ram had fallen, a heap of indistinguishable legs, wool and horns, but pulling itself together and

and dodging as its antagonist swept downward, it retired at random, alternately shaking its head and stamping its forefeet. When it had backed about the same distance as that from which it had delivered the assault, it paused again, bowed its head as if in prayer for victory, and again shot forward, dimly visible as before, a prolonging white streak with monstrous undulations, ending with a sharp ascension. Its course this time was at a right angle to its former one, his impatience, so great, that it struck the enemy before he had nearly reached the lowest point of his arc. In consequence, he went flying round and round in a horizontal circle, whose radius was about equal to half the length of the rope, which I forgot to say was nearly

twenty feet long. His shrieks, crescendo in approach and diminuendo in recession, made the rapidity of his revolution more obvious to the ear than to the eye. He had evidently not been struck in a vital spot. His posture in the sack and the distance from the ground at which he hung compelled the ram to operate upon his lower extremities and the end of his back. Like a plant that has struck its root into some poisonous mineral, my uncle was dying slowly upwards. After delivering its second blow, the ram had not again retired. The fever of battle burned hot in its heart. Its brain was intoxicated with the wine of strife. Like a pugilist who, in his rage, forgets his skill and fights ineffectively at half-arms length.

The angry beast endeavoured to reach its fleeting foe by awkward vertical leaps as he passed overhead, sometimes indeed succeeding in striking him feebly, but more frequently overthrown by its own misguided eagerness. But as the impetus was exhausted and the man's circles narrowed in scope and diminished in speed, bringing him nearer to the ground, these tactics produced better results. eliciting a superior quality of screams, which I greatly enjoyed. Suddenly, as if the bugles had sung truce, the ram suspended hostilities, and walked away, thoughtfully wrinkling and smoothing its great aquiline nose, and occasionally cropping a bunch of grass and slowly munching it.

It seemed to have tired of war's alarms, and resolved to beat the sword into a plough-share and cultivate the arts of peace. steadily it held its course away from the field of fame until it had gained a distance of nearly a quarter of a mile there it stopped and stood with its rear to the foe chewing its cud and apparently half asleep I observed however an occasional slight turn of its head as if its apathy were more affected than real

meanwhile Uncle William's shrieks had abated with his motion and nothing was heard from him but long low moans, and, at long intervals, my name, uttered in pleading tones exceedingly grateful to my ear. Evidently the man had not the faintest notion of what was being done to him, and was inexpressibly terrified. When death comes cloaked in mystery, he is terrible indeed. Little by little, my uncle's oscillations diminished, and finally he hung motioned. I went to him and was about to give him the coup de grace when I heard and felt a succession of smart shocks which shook the ground like a series of light earthquakes, and, turning in the direction of the ram, saw a long cloud of dust approaching me with inconceivable rapidity and alarming effect. At a distance of some thirty yards away it stopped short, and from the near end of it rose into the air what I at first thought a great white bird. Its ascent was so smooth and easy and regular that I could not realize its extraordinary celerity and was lost in admiration of its grace. To this day the impression remains that it was a slow, deliberate movement,

the ram, for it was that animal, being upborne by some power other than its own impetus, and supported through the successive stages of its flight with infinite tenderness and care. My eyes followed its progress through the air With unspeakable pleasure, All the greater by contrast With my former terror of its approach by land. Onward and upward, the noble animal sailed, Its head bent down almost between its knees,

Its four feet thrown back, Its hinder legs trailing to rear Like the legs of a soaring heron. At a height of forty or fifty feet, As fond recollection presents it, to view, it attained its zenith, and appeared to remain an instant stationary, then tilting suddenly forward without altering the relative position of its parts, it shot downward on a steeper and steeper course with augmenting velocity, passed immediately above me with a noise like the rush of a cannon shot,

and struck my poor uncle almost squarely on the top of the head. So frightful was the impact that not only the man's neck was broken, but the rope too, and the body of the deceased, forced against the earth, was crushed to pulp beneath the awful front of that meteoric sheep. The concussion stopped all the clocks between lone hand and Dutch downs, and Professor Davidson, a distinguished authority in matters seismic, who happened to be in the vicinity, promptly explained that the vibrations were from north to south-west. Altogether, I cannot help thinking that in point of artistic atrocity, my murder of Uncle William has seldom been excelled.

Oil of Dog My name is Boffa Bings. I was born of honest parents in one of the humbler walks of life, my father being a manufacturer of dog oil, and my mother having a small studio in the shadow of the village church, where she disposed of unwelcome babes. In my boyhood I was trained to habits of industry. I not only assisted my father in procuring dogs for his vats, but was frequently employed by my mother

to carry away the debris of her work in the studio. In performance of this duty, I sometimes had a need of all my natural intelligence, for all the law officers of the vicinity, were opposed to my mother's business. They were not elected on an opposition ticket, and the matter had never been made a political issue. It just happened so.

My father's business of making dog oil was naturally less unpopular, though the owners of missing dogs sometimes regarded him with suspicion, which was reflected to some extent upon me. My father had, as silent partners, all the physicians of the town, who seldom wrote a prescription which did not contain what they were pleased to designate as all can. It is really the most valuable medicine ever discovered.

But most persons are unwilling to make personal sacrifices for the afflicted, and it was evident that many of the fattest dogs in town had been forbidden to play with me, a fact which pained my young sensibilities, and at one time came near driving me to become a pirate. Looking back upon those days, I cannot but regret at times that by indirectly bringing my beloved parents to their children, death, I was the author of misfortunes profoundly affecting my future. One evening, while passing my father's oil factory with the body of a foundling from my mother's studio, I saw a constable who seemed to be closely watching my movements. Young as I was, I had learnt that a constable acts of whatever apparent character are prompted by the most

reprehensible motives, and I avoided him by dodging into the oilery by a side-dor-dour. By a side door which happened to stand ajar. I locked it at once, and was alone with my dead. My father had retired for the night. The only light in the place came from the furnace, which glowed a deep, rich crimson under one of the vats,

casting ruddy reflections on the walls. Within the cauldron the oil still rolled in indolent ebullition, occasionally pushing to the surface a piece of dog, seating myself to wait for the constable to go away, I held the naked body of the foundling in my lap, and tenderly stroked its short silken hair. Ah, how beautiful it was. Even at that early age I was passionately fond of children. And, as I looked upon this cherub, I could almost find it in my heart to wish that the small red wound upon its breast,

the work of my dear mother, had not been mortal. It had been my custom to throw the babes into the river which nature had thoughtfully provided for the purpose, but that night I did not dare to leave the oilery, a fear of the constable. After all, I said to myself, it cannot greatly matter if I put it into this cauldron. My father will never know the bones from those of a puppy, and the few deaths which may result from administering another kind of oil for the incomparable all can

are not important in a population which increases so rapidly. In short, I took the first step in crime and brought myself untold sorrow by casting the babe into the cauldron. The next day, somewhat to my surprise, my father, rubbing his hands with satisfaction, informed me and my mother that he had obtained the finest quality of oil that was ever seen, that the physicians to whom he had shown samples had so pronounced it. He added that he had no knowledge as to how the result was obtained. The dogs had been treated in all respect as usual, and were of an ordinary,

breed. I deemed it my duty to explain, which I did, though palsied would have been my tongue if I could have foreseen the consequences. Bewailing their previous ignorance of the advantages of combining their industries, my parents at once took measures to repair the error. My mother removed her studio to a wing of the factory building, and my duties in connection with the business ceased. I was no longer required to dispose of the bodies of the small superfluous, and there was no need of alluring dogs to their doom, for my father discarded them altogether, though they still had an honourable place in the name of the oil. So suddenly thrown into idleness, I might naturally have been expected to become vicious and dissolute, but I did not. The holy influence of my dear

mother was ever about me to protect me from the temptations which beset youth, and my father was a deacon in a church. Alas, that through my fault these estimable persons should have come to so bad an end. Finally a double profit in her business, my mother now devoted herself to it with a new assiduity. She removed not only superfluous and unwelcome babes to order, but went out into the highways and byways, gathering in children of a larger growth, and even such adults as she could entice to the oilery. My father, too, enamoured of the superior quality of the oil produced, purveyed for his vats with diligence and veal. The conversion of their neighbours into dog-oil became, in short, the one passion of their lives, an absorbing and overwhelming greed to possession of their souls,

and served them in place of a hope in heaven, by which also they were inspired. So enterprising had they now become that a public meeting was held, and, reserventersed, and, Passed, severely censoring them. It was intimated by the chairman that any future raids upon the population would be met in a spirit of hostility. My poor parents left them eating, broken-hearted, desperate, and, I believe, not altogether sane. Anyway, I deemed it prudent not to enter the oilery with them that night, but slept outside in a stable. At about midnight, some mysterious impulse caused me to rise. eyes and peer through a window into the furnace room where I knew my father now slept. The fires were burning as brightly as if the following day's harvest had been expected to be abandoned.

One of the large cauldrons was slowly walloping, with a mysterious appearance of self-restraint, as if it bided its time to put forth its full energy. My father was not in bed. He had risen in his nightclothes and was preparing a noose in a strong cord. From the looks which he cast at the door of my mother's bedroom, I knew too well the purpose he had in mind. Speechless and motionless with terror, I could do nothing in prevention or warning. Suddenly the door of my mother's apartment was opened noiselessly,

and the two confronted each other, both apparently surprised. The lady also was in her nightclothes, and she held in her right hand the tall of her trade, a long, narrow-bladed dagger. She too had been unable to deny herself the last profit Which the unfriendly action of the citizens And my absence had left her For one instant they looked into each other's blazing eyes

Then sprang together with indescribable fury Round and round the room they struggled The man cursing, the woman shrieking Both fighting like demons She to strike him with the dagger He to strangle her with his great bare hands I know not how long I had the unhappiness to observe this disagreeable instance of domestic infelicity, but at last,

after a more than usually vigorous struggle, the combatants suddenly moved apart. My father's breast and my mother's weapon showed evidence of contact. For another instant, they glared at each other in the most unamiable way. Then my poor wounded father, feeling the hand of death upon him, leapt forward, unmindful of resistance, grasped my dear mother in his arms, dragged her to the side of the boiling cauldron, collected all his failing energies, and sprang in with her. In a moment both had disappeared, and were adding their oil to that of the Committee of Citizens who had called the day before with an invitation to the public meeting. Convinced that these unhappy events closed to me every avenue to an honourable career in that town,

I removed to the famous city of Othumwe, where these memoirs are written, with a heart full of remorse for a heedless act entailing so dismal a commercial disaster. An imperfect conflagration. Early one June morning in 1872, I murdered my father, an act which made a deep impression on me at the time. This was before my marriage While I was living with my parents in Wisconsin My father and I were in the library of our home Dividing the proceeds of a burglary Which we had committed that night These consisted of household goods mostly

And the task of equitable division was difficult We got on very well with the napkins, towels and such things And the silverware was parted pretty nearly equally But you can see for yourself that when you try to divide a single music box by two without a remainder, you will have trouble. It was that music box which brought disaster and disgrace upon our family. If we had left it, my poor father might now be alive. It was a most exquisite and beautiful piece of workmanship,

inlaid with costly woods and carven very curiously, it would not only play a great variety of tunes, but would whistle like a quail, bark like a dog, crow every morning at daylight, whether it was wound up or not, and break the ten commandments. It was this last mentioned accomplishment that won my father's heart, and caused him to commit the only dishonourable act of his life, though possibly he would have committed more if he had been spared.

He tried to conceal that music-box from me, and declared upon his honour that he had not taken it, though I know very well that, so far as he was concerned, the burglary had been undertaken chiefly for the purpose of obtaining it. My father had the music-box hidden under his cloak. We had worn cloaks by way of disguise. He had solemnly assured me that he did not take it. I knew that he did, and knew something of which he was evidently ignorant,

namely that the box would crow at daylight and betray him if I could prolong the division of profits till that time. All occurred as I wished. As the gaslight began to pale in the library, and the shape of the windows was seen dimly behind the curtains, a long cock-a-doodle-do, came from beneath the old gentleman's cloak, followed by a few bars of an aria from Tanhauser, ending with a loud click. A small hand-axe, which we had used to break into the unlucky house, lay between us on the table. I picked it up. The old man, seeing that further concealment was useless,

took the box from under his cloak and set it on the table. Cut it in, too, if you prefer that plan, said he. I tried to save it from destruction. He was a passionate lover of music, and could himself play the concertina with expression and feeling. I said, I do not question the purity of your motive. it would be presumptuous of me to sit in judgment on my father.

But business is business, and with this axe, I am going to affect a dissolution of our partnership, unless you will consent in all future burglaries to wear a bell punch. No, he said after some reflection. No, I could not do that. It would look like a confession of dishonesty. People would say that you distrusted me. I could not help admiring his spirit and sentiment,

For a moment I was proud of him, and disposed to overlook his fault, but a glance at the richly dueled music-box decided me, and as I said I removed the old man from this veil of tears. Having done so, I was a trifle uneasy. Not only was he my father, the author of my being, but the body would be certainly discovered. It was now broad daylight, and my mother was likely to enter the library at any moment. Under the circumstances, I thought it expedient to remove her also, which I did. Then I paid off all the servants and discharged them. That afternoon I went to the chief of police, told him what I had done, and asked his advice.

It would be very painful to me if the facts became publicly known. My conduct would be generally condemned. The newspapers would bring it up against me, if ever I should run for office. The chief saw the force of these considerations. He was himself an assassin of wide experience. After consulting with the presiding judge of the Court of Variable Jurisdiction, he advised me to conceal the bodies in one of the bookcases, get a heavy insurance on the house, and burn it down.

This I proceeded to do. In the library was a bookcase which my father had recently purchased with some cranky inventor and had not filled. It was in shape and simple. size, something like the old-fashioned wardrobes, which one sees in bedrooms without closets, but opened all the way down like a woman's nightdress. It had glass doors. I had recently laid out my parents, and they were now rigid enough to stand erect, so I stood them in this bookcase, from which I had removed the shelves. I locked them in and tacked some curtains over the glass

doors. The inspector from the insurance office passed half a dozen times before the case without suspicion. That night, after getting my policy, I set fire to the house and started through the woods to town, two miles away, where I managed to be found about the time the excitement was at its height. With cries of apprehension for the fate of my parents, I joined the rush and arrived at the fire some two hours after I had kindled it. The whole town was there as I dashed up. The house was entirely consumed. But in one end of the level bed of glowing embers, bolt upright and uninjured, was that bookcase. The curtains had burned away, exposing the glass doors, through which the fierce red light illuminated the interior. There stood my dear father, in his habit as he lived,

and at his side the partner of his joys and sorrows. Not a hair of them was singed. Their clothing was intact. On their heads and throats, the injuries which, in the accomplishment of my designs I had been compelled to inflict, were conspicuous. As in the presence of a miracle, the people were silent. All and terror had stilled every tongue.

I was myself greatly affected. Some three years later, when the events herein related had nearly faded from my memory, I went to New York to assist in passing some counterfeit United States bonds. Carelessly looking into a furniture store one day, I saw the exact counterpart of that bookcase. I bought it for a trifle from a reformed inventor, the dealer explained. He said it was fireproof,

the pores of the wood being filled with alum under hydraulic pressure, and the glass made of asbestos. I don't suppose it is really fireproof. You can have it at the price of an ordinary bookcase. No, I said, if you cannot warrant it fireproof, I won't take it, and I bade him good morning. I would not have had it at any price. It revived memories that were exceedingly disagreeable. The hypnotist.

By those of my friends who happen to know that I sometimes amuse myself with hypnotism, mind-reading, and kindry phenomena, I am frequently asked if I have a clear conception of the nature, of whatever principle underlies them. To this question I always reply that I neither have nor desire to have. I am no investigator with an ear at the keyhole of nature's workshop, trying with vulgar curiosity to steal the secrets of her trade. The interests of science are as little to me as mine seem to have been to science. Doubtless the phenomena in question are simple enough, and in no way transcend our powers of comprehension, if only we could find the clue. But for my part, I prefer not to find it, for I am of a singularly romantic disposition, deriving more gratification from mystery than from knowledge.

It was commonly remarked of me when I was a child that my big blue eyes appeared to have been made rather to look into than look out of, Such was their dreamful beauty, and in my frequent periods of abstraction, their indifference to what was going on. In those peculiarities they resembled, I venture, to think, the soul which lies behind them, always more intent upon some lovely conception which it has created in its own image than concerned about the laws of nature and the material frame of things. All this irrelevant and egotistic, as it may seem, is related, by way that we are to of accounting for the meagerness of the light that I am able to throw upon a subject that

has engaged so much of my attention, and concerning which there is so keen and general a curiosity. With my powers and opportunities, another person might doubtless have an explanation for much of what I present simply as narrative. My first knowledge that I possessed unusual powers came to me in my fourteenth year when at school. Happening one day to have forgotten to bring my noonday luncheon, I gazed longingly at that of a small girl who was preparing to eat hers. Looking up, her eyes met mine, and she seemed unable to withdraw them. After a moment of hesitancy, she came forward in an absent kind of way, and without a word, surrendered her little basket with its tempting contents, and walked away.

inexpressibly pleased I relieved my hunger and destroyed the basket. After that I had not the trouble to bring a luncheon for myself. That little girl was my daily purveyor. And not infrequently, in satisfying my simple need from her frugal store, I combined pleasure and profit by constraining her attendance at the feast and making misleading proffer of the viands, which eventually I consumed to the last fragment. The girl was always persuaded that she had eaten all herself,

and later in the day her tearful complaint of hunger, surprised the teacher, entertained the pupils, earned for her the subriquet of greedy gut, and filled me with a peace past understanding. A disagreeable feature of this otherwise satisfactory condition of things was the necessary secrecy. The transfer of the luncheon, for example, had to be made at some distance from the madding crowd in a wood,

and I blushed to think of the many other unworthy subterfuges entailed by the situation. As I was, and am naturally of a frank and open disposition, these became more and more irksome, and but for the reluctance of my parents to renounce the obvious advantages of the new regime, I would gladly have reverted to the old. The plan that I finally adopted,

to free myself from the consequences of my own powers, excited a wide and keen interest at the time, and that part of it which consisted in the death of the girl, was severely condemned, but it is hardly pertinent to the scope of this narrative. For some years afterward, I had little opportunity to practice hypnotism, Some small essays, as I made at it, some small essays as I made at it, were commonly barren of other recognition than solitary confinement on a bread-and-water diet. Sometimes, indeed, they elicited nothing better than the Catherine Tales. It was when I was about to leave the scene of these small disappointments that my one really important feat was performed. I had been called into the warden's office, and given a suit of civilians' clothing,

a trifling sum of money, and a great deal of advice, which I am bound to confess, was of a much better quality than the clothing. As I was passing out of the gate into the light of freedom, I suddenly turned, and looking the warden gravely in the eye, soon had him in control. You are an ostrich, I said. At the post-mortem examination, the stomach was found to contain a great quantity of indigestible articles, mostly of wood and metal, stuck fast in the esophagus, and constituting, according to the coroner's jury the immediate cause of death, one doorknob. I was by nature, a good and affectionate son, but as I took my way into the great world

from which I had been so long secluded, I could not help remembering that all my misfortunes had flowed like a stream from the niggard economy of my parents in the matter of school luncheons, and I knew of no reason to think they had reformed. On the road between Sukhattash Hill and South Asphyxia is a little open field, which once contained a shanty known as Pete Gilstrap's place, where that gentleman used to murder travellers for a living. The death of Mr. Gilstrap and the diversion of nearly all the travel to another, the road occurred so nearly at the same time that no one has ever been able to say which was cause and which effect.

Anyhow, the field was now a desolation, and the place had long been burned. It was while going afoot to South Asphyxia, the home of my childhood, that I found both my parents on their way to the hill. They had hitched their team, and were eating luncheon under an oak tree in the centre of the field. The sight of the luncheon called up painful memories of my school days and roused the sleeping lion in my breast. Approaching the guilty couple who at once recognized me, I ventured to suggest that I share their hospitality. Of this cheer, my son, said the author of my being with characteristic pomposity which

age had not with it, there is sufficient for but too. I am not. not, I hope, insensible to the hunger-light in your eyes, but... My father has never completed that sentence. What he mistook for hunger-light was simply the earnest gaze of the hypnotist. In a few seconds he was at my service. A few more sufficed for the lady, and the dictates of a just resentment could be carried into effect. My former father, I said,

I presume that it is known to you that you and this lady are no longer what you were. I have observed a certain subtle change, as the rather dubious reply of the old gentleman, it is perhaps attributable to age. It is more than that, I explained. It goes to character, to species. You and the lady here are, in truth,

two broncos, wild stallions both, and unfriendly. "'Why, John!' exclaimed my dear mother. "'You don't mean to say that I am—' "'Madame,' I replied solemnly, fixing my eyes again upon hers, "'you are!' Scarcely had the words fallen from my lips, when she dropped upon her hands and knees,

and, backing up to the old man, squealed like a demon, and delivered a vicious kick upon his shin. An instant later he was himself down on all thaws, headed away from her and flinging his feet at her simultaneously and successively. With equal earnestness but inferior agility, because of her hampering body gear, she plied her own. Their flying legs crossed and mingled in the most bewildering way, their feet, sometimes meeting squarely in mid-air, their bodies thrust forward falling flat upon the ground and for a moment helpless.

On recovering themselves, they would resume the combat, uttering their frenzy in the nameless, of the furious brutes which they believed themselves to be. The whole region rang with their clamour. Round and round they wheeled, the blows of their feet falling like lightnings from the mountain cloud. They plunged and reared backward upon their knees, struck savagely at each other with awkward descending blows of both fists at once, and dropped again upon their hands as if unable to maintain the upright position of the body.

Grass and pebbles were torn from the soil by hands and hands, feet. Clothing, hair, faces, inexpressibly defiled with dust and blood, wild, inarticulate screams of rage, attested the delivery of the blows, groans, grunts, and gasps their receipt. Nothing more truly military was ever seen at Gettysburg or Waterloo. The valour of my dear parents in the hour of danger can never cease to be, to me, a source of pride and gratification. At the end of it all, two battered, tattered, bloody and fragmentary vestiges of mortality attested the solemn fact that the author of the strife was an orphan. Arrested for provoking a breach of the peace, I was, and have ever since been, tried in the

court of technicalities and continuances, whence, after fifteen years of proceedings, my attorney is moving heaven and earth to get the case taken to the court of remandment for new trials. Such are a few of my principal experiments in the mysterious force or agency known as hypnotic suggestion. Whether or not it could be employed by a bad man for an unworthy purpose, I am unable to say. End of recording of The Parenthide Club by Ambrose Bias. Recording by Peter Yearsley