of a distinct, hollow, metallic, and clangorous yet apparently muffled reverberation. Completely un

nerved, I leaped to my feet; but the measured rocking movement of Usher was undisturbed. I rushed to the chair in which he sat. His eyes were bent fixedly before him, and throughout his whole countenance there reigned a stony rigidity. But, as I placed hand upon my his shoulder, there came a strong shudder over his whole person; a sickly smile quivered about his lips; and I saw that he spoke in a low, hurried, and gibbering murmur, as if unconscious of my presence. Bending closely over him, I at length drank in the hideous import of his words.

"Not hear it? yes, I hear it, and have heard it. Long-long-long- many minutes, many hours, many days, have I heard it, yet I dared not — oh, pity me, miserable wretch that I am! I dared not -I dared not speak! We have put her living in the tomb!1 Said I not that my senses were acute? I now tell you that I heard her first feeble movements in the hollow coffin. I heard them many, many days ago-yet I dared not-I dared not speak! And now-to-night- Ethelred-ha! ha!-the breaking of the hermit's door, and the death-cry of the dragon, and the clangor of the shield!-say, rather, the rending of her coffin, and the grating of the iron hinges of her prison, and her struggles within the coppered archway of the vault! Oh, whither shall I fly? Will she not be here anon? Is she not hurrying to upbraid me for my haste? Have I not heard

1 Poe was morbidly interested in the subject of supposed deaths and premature burials. He introduces it, for example, in the present tale, in Ligeia, in Premature Burial, and in the extravaganza, Loss of Breath.

her footstep on the stair? Do I not distinguish that heavy and horrible beating of her heart? Madman!" -here he sprang furiously to his feet, and shrieked out his syllables, as if in the effort he were giving up his soul "Madman! I tell you that she now stands

without the door!"

As if in the superhuman energy of his utterance there had been found the potency of a spell, the huge antique panels to which the speaker pointed threw slowly back, upon the instant, their ponderous and ebony jaws. It was the work of the rushing gust but then without those doors there did stand the lofty and enshrouded figure of the lady Madeline of Usher! There was blood upon her white robes, and the evidence of some bitter struggle upon every portion of her emaciated frame. For a moment she remained trembling and reeling to and fro upon the threshold — then, with a low moaning cry, fell heavily inward upon the person of her brother, and, in her violent and now final death agonies, bore him to the floor a corpse, and a victim to the terrors he had anticipated.

From that chamber and from that mansion I fled aghast. The storm was still abroad in all its wrath as I found myself crossing the old causeway. Suddenly there shot along the path a wild light, and I turned to see whence a gleam so unusual could have issued; for the vast house and its shadows were alone behind me. The radiance was that of the full, setting, and blood-red moon, which now shone vividly through that once barely-discernible fissure, of which I have before spoken as extending from the roof of the building, in a zigzag direction, to the base. While I gazed, this fissure rapidly widened - there came

a fierce breath of the whirlwind the entire orb of the satellite burst at once upon my sight — my brain reeled as I saw the mighty walls rushing asunder — there was a long, tumultuous shouting sound like the voice of a thousand waters - and the deep and dank tarn at my feet closed sullenly and silently over the fragments of the "House of Usher."

PATRICK HENRY.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.

AMONG the group of men whose energy and patriotism produced the American Revolution Patrick Henry stood preeminent for one special gift. In ability to shape the action of men by persuasive and effective speech he was far in advance of his contemporaries. This gift was rather a mark of genius than the result of severe effort toward attainment. In fact there was nothing in Patrick Henry's early training that would mark him as likely to become one of the great figures of a period prolific of famous men. Born May 29, 1736, in Hanover County, Virginia, he enjoyed few early advantages. His father was a good man and a man of some education. His mother belonged to a family considered somewhat more clever than the average. For a few years he attended school more or less willingly, and learned a little Latin and Greek, but he was unpromising as a scholar, and whiled away a good deal of time with rod and gun. Between the ages of fifteen and twenty-four he made a failure of everything he tried. Although he was a poor storekeeper and, if anything, a worse farmer, this did not deter him from getting married at eighteen, and thus assuming the task of providing for two before he had demonstrated his ability to provide for one.

But in 1760 a change occurred. He hastily read a little law in a very brief space of time, and went down to Williamsburg to get admitted to the bar. At first he did

not make a favorable impression; but when John Randolph, one of the examiners, affected to dissent from his opinions to draw him out, he defended his ideas with such force and vigor as to make evident a nature which had mastered the principles of close observation and accurate reasoning. Taking the candidate to his office and opening some of his books, Randolph said, "Behold the force of natural reason! You have never seen these books before nor this principle of law; yet you are right and I am wrong. . . . Mr. Henry, if your industry be only half equal to your genius, I augur that you I will do well and become an ornament and an honor to your profession."

...

Henry returned to his father-in-law's tavern to establish a practice. In spite of stories to the contrary, it seems tolerably certain that clients soon began to come to him, and that he mended the deficiencies in his earlier legal training. At any rate, a chance came to demonstrate whether he could win a hard case. A dispute arose between the clergymen of Virginia and the vestrymen over the payment of the parsons' salaries. The Virginia legislature made a law against the parsons; the king in England annulled the law as unjust, which it probably was. In a case in Louisa County, when the court had decided in favor of the parsons and left the jury to determine the amount of the payment, Henry was called in to represent the vestrymen. So persuasive was his speech that the jury quietly brought in a verdict of only one penny for the clergymen. It is well to note here that while Henry was perhaps in this case opposed to absolute justice, he was nevertheless on the side which stood for Virginia's right to regulate her own affairs without the interference of the king. In fact, he maintained this so stubbornly that some called out "Treason!"

This celebrated case brought its quick reward in popularity, and early in 1765 Henry's gaunt figure appeared in the House of Burgesses at the colonial capital, as the member from Louisa County. It was soon seen that he was