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legends dealing with events that have only a partial foundation of fact. A third type of story of adventure is purely imaginary: the events which it narrates never actually took place. The writer sees these imaginary events so vividly, however, that they seem as real as if they were matters of historical fact. An example is Poe's "The Masque of the Red Death," which you will read in this section of your book.

In all of these stories of adventure the element of imagination enters. Whether the author deals with an actual event, or an old legend, or a purely imaginary plot, he sees his story in action, just as if he were at the theater looking upon a story told through action. And he tells it to you in such a way that you, too, see it in action, as though you were at the theater by the author's side.

Now in this fact lies an important lesson. You must learn to see these stories; to visualize them as though they were little dramas. Many people do not do this. You may hear someone telling a story about an acquaintance: Mr. Smith did this or that, and then this or that happened, and probably Mr. Smith will do so and so. But these statements of what happened may not bring to your mind any pictures. You may know the events of the story, the setting in which it took place, and the names of the characters, without seeing these people in action, doing these things as though they were characters in a play.

You can train your mind to do this creative reading, so that your reading becomes as interesting as a play. As you read the following selections, try to cultivate this power by asking yourself, at each point in the story, how the persons of the story look and what the scene is. Try to plan how you would paint them if you were an artist, or to visualize what the pictures would look like if they were made for the moving picture show.

For your reading of stories of adventure is your own private moving picture show, if you wish to have it that way. Such reading is a never-ending source of delight.

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THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH *

EDGAR ALLAN POE

The "Red Death" had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its avatar and its seal the redness and the horror of blood. There were sharp pains and sudden dizziness, and then profuse bleeding at 5 the pores, with dissolution. The scarlet stains upon the body, and especially upon the face, of the victim were the pest ban which shut him out from the aid and from the sympathy of his fellow men. And the whole seizure, progress, and termination of the disease were the incidents of half an hour.

But the Prince Prospero was happy and dauntless and sagacious. When his dominions were half depopulated, he summoned to his presence a thousand hale and light-hearted friends from among the knights and dames of his court, and with these retired to the deep seclusion of one of his castellated abbeys. This was 15 an extensive and magnificent structure, the creation of the Prince's own eccentric yet august taste. A strong and lofty wall *See Silent and Oral Reading, page 11.

girdled it in. This wall had gates of iron. The courtiers, having entered, brought furnaces and massy hammers, and welded the bolts. They resolved to leave means neither of ingress nor egress to the sudden impulses of despair or of frenzy from within. The 5 abbey was amply provisioned. With such precautions the courtiers might bid defiance to contagion. The external world could take care of itself. In the meantime it was folly to grieve, or to think. The Prince had provided all the appliances of pleasure. There were buffoons, there were improvisatori, there were ballet10 dancers, there were musicians, there was Beauty, there was wine. All these and security were within. Without was the "Red Death."

It was toward the close of the fifth or sixth month of his seclusion, and while the pestilence raged most furiously abroad, 15 that the Prince Prospero entertained his thousand friends at a masked ball of the most unusual magnificence.

It was a voluptuous scene, that masquerade. But first let me tell of the rooms in which it was held. There were seven—an imperial suite. In many palaces, however, such suites form a 20 long and straight vista, while the folding-doors slide back nearly to the walls on either hand, so that the view of the whole extent is scarcely impeded. Here the case was very different, as might have been expected from the Prince's love of the bizarre. The apartments were so irregularly disposed that the vision embraced 25 but little more than one at a time. There was a sharp turn at every twenty or thirty yards, and at each turn a novel effect. To the right and left, in the middle of each wall, a tall and narrow Gothic window looked out upon a closed corridor which pursued the windings of the suite. These windows were of 30 stained glass, whose color varied in accordance with the prevailing hue of the decorations of the chamber into which it opened. That at the eastern extremity was hung, for example, in blueand vividly blue were its windows. The second chamber was purple in its ornaments and tapestries, and here the panes were 35 purple. The third was green throughout, and so were the case

ments. The fourth was furnished and lighted with orange, the fifth with white, the sixth with violet. The seventh apartment was closely shrouded in black velvet tapestries that hung all over the ceiling and down the walls, falling in heavy folds upon a 5 carpet of the same material and hue. But, in this chamber only, the color of the windows failed to correspond with the decorations. The panes here were scarlet-a deep blood-color. Now in no one of the seven apartments was there any lamp or candelabrum, amid the profusion of golden ornaments that lay scat10 tered to and fro or depended from the roof. There was no light. of any kind emanating from lamp or candle within the suite of chambers. But in the corridors that followed the suite there stood, opposite to each window, a heavy tripod, bearing a brazier of fire, that projected its rays through the tinted glass 15 and, so, glaringly illumined the room. And thus were produced a multitude of gaudy and fantastic appearances. But in the western or black chamber the effect of the firelight that streamed upon the dark hangings through the blood-tinted panes was ghastly in the extreme, and produced so wild a look upon the 20 countenances of those who entered that there were few of the company bold enough to set foot within its precincts at all.

It was in this apartment, also, that there stood against the western wall a gigantic clock of ebony. Its pendulum swung to and fro with a dull, heavy, monotonous clang; and when the 25 minute-hand made the circuit of the face, and the hour was to be stricken, there came from the brazen lungs of the clock a sound which was clear and loud and deep and exceedingly musical, but of so peculiar a note and emphasis that, at each lapse of an hour, the musicians of the orchestra were constrained to pause, mo30 mentarily, in their performance, to hearken to the sound; and thus the waltzers perforce ceased their evolutions; and there was a brief disconcert of the whole gay company; and, while the chimes of the clock yet rang, it was observed that the giddiest grew pale, and the more aged and sedate passed their hands over 35 their brows as if in confused revery or meditation. But when

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the echoes had fully ceased, a light laughter at once pervaded the assembly; the musicians looked at each other and smiled as if at their own nervousness and folly, and made whispering vows, each to the other, that the next chiming of the clock should produce 5 in them no similar emotion; and then, after a lapse of sixty minutes (which embrace three thousand and six hundred seconds of the Time that flies), there came yet another chiming of the clock, and then were the same disconcert and tremulousness and meditation as before.

But, in spite of these things, it was a gay revel. The tastes of the Prince were peculiar.

and magnificent He had a fine eye

for colors and effects. He disregarded the decora of mere fashion. His plans were bold and fiery, and his conceptions glowed with barbaric luster. There were some who would have 15 thought him mad. His followers felt that he was not. It was necessary to hear and see and touch him to be sure that he was not.

He had directed, in great part, the movable embellishments of the seven chambers, upon occasion of this great fête; and it was 20 his own guiding taste which had given character to the masqueraders. Be sure they were grotesque. There were much glare and glitter and piquancy and phantasm-much of what has been since seen in Hernani. There were arabesque figures with unsuited limbs and appointments. There were delirious fancies 25 such as the madman fashions. There was much of the beautiful, much of the wanton, much of the bizarre, something of the terrible, and not a little of that which might have excited disgust. To and fro in the seven chambers there stalked, in fact, a multitude of dreams. And these-the dreams-writhed in and about, 30 taking hue from the rooms, and causing the wild music of the orchestra to seem as the echo of their steps. And, anon, there strikes the ebony clock which stands in the hall of the velvet. And then, for a moment, all is still, and all is silent save the voice of the clock. The dreams are stiff-frozen as they stand. 35 But the echoes of the chime die away-they have endured but an

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