They had found the origin of the One world at a time anecdote in the voluminous Journals of Bronson Alcott, and had come upon the source of the I didn’t know we’d quarreled in a slim volume by Edward Emerson, entitled Henry Thoreau as Remembered by a Young Friend.
But they had found no reference to a noose and an Indian.
“It’s no use,” repeated Paul disconsolately. “We’ve been hunting for something that just doesn’t exist.”
“Nonsense! Consider what we’ve already established about those other two deathbed quotations. Now Bronson Alcott — that would be Louisa May Alcott’s father — and Edward Emerson — Ralph Waldo Emerson’s son — were both personal friends of Thoreau’s, so there’s little doubt that Thoreau did make the remarks they attributed to him. But you will notice that neither account purports to be setting down Thoreau’s last words, nor even to be reporting an incident from the day of his death.”
“Which doesn’t prove anything about what his last words really were.”
“Perhaps not, but—” Ponsonby paused, frowning. “Ann, are you quite certain that we’ve checked all your father’s books on Thoreau? What about the source materials he was actually working with the day he was attacked? Were there no books on his desk or perhaps scattered about this room?”
“There might have been,” said Ann, whose mounting disappointment during the search had been even more evident than Paul’s. “I remember putting some things in a cardboark box and pushing it — yes, there it is.”
Scrambling to her feet, Ann crossed the room and pulled a carton from under her father’s desk. She placed it on the desk, opened it, and lifted out a small pile of books and papers.
The top item was a slim brown volume; Ann glanced at the cover. “Thoreau, the Poet-Naturalist,” she read aloud, “by William Ellery Channing.” She handed it to Ponsonby atop his ladder perch. “Who was he?”
“A close friend of Thoreau’s. A fellow poet and fellow maverick who might well have asked Thoreau’s mother or sister to describe his good friend’s final — ahh!”
Ponsonby’s half sigh, half exclamation acted like a magnet on the attention of his companions, but not until he had spent several long tense minutes in silent reading did he finally end their suspense.
“Here we are, children,” he said at last. “Your father had even marked the place, Ann — the book fell open to it in my hand. It’s Channing’s report of Thoreau’s last few moments of life, and the lines we’ve been searching for are these:
“The last sentence he incompletely spoke contained but two distinct words: moose and Indians, showing how fixed in his mind was that relation. Then the world he had so long sung and delighted in faded tranquilly away from his eyes and hearing, till on that beautiful spring morning of May 6th, 1862, it closed on him.”
Long after he had finished reading, the echo of Ponsonby’s voice seemed to linger in the air of the hushed library. At last Paul broke the silence.
“Moose,” he said softly.
“Indians,” whispered Ann.
Gently, Ponsonby closed the book.
Post-Obit
by Elizabeth Palmer[6]
This is the 345th “first story” to be published by Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine… An off-trail, change-of-pace story that you will find provocative and puzzling. Our reading staff came up with four different interpretations. Which meaning will you think the correct one? Or will you come up with a fifth explanation?...
The author, Elizabeth Palmer, is in her late forties and a housewife. She and her husband are New Yorkers, and during most of her adult years Elizabeth Palmer “worked in or on the periphery of the publishing world.” Her writing had been “intermittent,” and in the past few years she has written several stories which she “didn’t enjoy and subsequently tore up.” (Which may be a great pity — who knows what she may have mistakenly destroyed?) Finally she decided to combine two genres she “dearly loves — fantasy and mystery fiction.”
Further comment after you’ve read Elizabeth Palmer’s story…
I am beginning this record primarily to prove to myself that I am able still to put coherent words on paper. I must decide if I have to deal with the truly fantastic or some nightmare creation of my own. If I am mad and they cart me off one day, at least the doctors can read this and it may help them to know the nature of my delusion.
That ghosts might be a subject for serious consideration had never crossed my mind, and this of course left me totally unprepared for my present predicament.
I read constantly, but my material is dictated mostly by my research needs and the desire to keep myself up to date on the work of my fellow historians. This covers a great deal of ground, but never has it provided me with information on the supernatural.
My extracurricular reading has included a bit of M. R. James, Walter de la Mare, Arthur Machen, and a few others, but none of them made a lasting impression on me. They hardly equipped me to deal personally with a ghost. My religious training, completely conventional and rather dimly remembered, has served me no better.
I think tonight I will try to describe this apparition. Seeing him transposed into precise, unemotional type may help me to retain my shaken grip on reality.
He seemed — still seems — so real, so solid, that at first I could not believe he was anything but flesh and blood. He stands at least six feet under a crop of startlingly blond hair. There is nothing misty or wavery about him. When he appears he is as much of a presence as my big oak desk. His features are pleasant; his extremely blue eyes express intelligence and promise humor. He looks like a man whose company I could enjoy despite an age difference of possibly 25 years and the fact that my bald pate reaches only to his chin.
He seems about 35 and very fit. If that last sounds ridiculous I can’t help it. That is exactly how he looks, fit and healthy. He doesn’t moan or clank. Sometimes he whistles softly. He doesn’t drift, he strides. One of the first emotions I was conscious of, after I had ascertained that he was indeed spectral, was resentment. What right has a ghost to look like that! According to my admittedly limited knowledge it is completely unorthodox. I think this prime-of-life aspect upsets me more than anything else. Perhaps I concentrate on resentment to help combat the terror that threatens to overwhelm me.
Looking back at what I wrote last night, it does help me to be more objective to see him described in uncompromising typewriter type. So I will continue.
I began to suspect the truth when I discovered he could neither see nor hear me. I will admit that for some days I almost accepted the premise that I was losing — or had lost — my mind. Then I made certain that solid though he might look, he was nothing but a phantom. I tried to attract his attention by putting my hand on his arm. Of course it took a while to get up enough courage to do this. Frankly, it took almost a week, but he did not appear every evening.