The Project Gutenberg EBook of Moon-Face and Other Stories, by Jack London

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Title: Moon-Face and Other Stories

Author: Jack London

Posting Date: July 31, 2008 [EBook #1089]
Release Date: November, 1997

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MOON-FACE AND OTHER STORIES ***

Produced by Espen Ore, Steve Henshaw, and Andrew Sly

MOON-FACE AND OTHER STORIES

By Jack London

CONTENTS

MOON-FACE
THE LEOPARD MAN'S STORY
LOCAL COLOR
AMATEUR NIGHT
THE MINIONS OF MIDAS
THE SHADOW AND THE FLASH
ALL GOLD CANYON
PLANCHETTE

MOON-FACE

John Claverhouse was a moon-faced man. You know the kind, cheek-bones
wide apart, chin and forehead melting into the cheeks to complete the
perfect round, and the nose, broad and pudgy, equidistant from the
circumference, flattened against the very centre of the face like a
dough-ball upon the ceiling. Perhaps that is why I hated him, for truly
he had become an offense to my eyes, and I believed the earth to
be cumbered with his presence. Perhaps my mother may have been
superstitious of the moon and looked upon it over the wrong shoulder at
the wrong time.

Be that as it may, I hated John Claverhouse. Not that he had done me
what society would consider a wrong or an ill turn. Far from it. The
evil was of a deeper, subtler sort; so elusive, so intangible, as to
defy clear, definite analysis in words. We all experience such things
at some period in our lives. For the first time we see a certain
individual, one who the very instant before we did not dream existed;
and yet, at the first moment of meeting, we say: "I do not like that
man." Why do we not like him? Ah, we do not know why; we know only that
we do not. We have taken a dislike, that is all. And so I with John
Claverhouse.

What right had such a man to be happy? Yet he was an optimist. He was
always gleeful and laughing. All things were always all right, curse
him! Ah I how it grated on my soul that he should be so happy! Other
men could laugh, and it did not bother me. I even used to laugh
myself--before I met John Claverhouse.

But his laugh