The Project Gutenberg eBook, Wessex Tales, by Thomas Hardy

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Title: Wessex Tales

Author: Thomas Hardy

Release Date: November 2, 2004 [eBook #3056]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WESSEX TALES***

Transcribed from the 1919 Macmillan and Co. edition by David Price, email
ccx074@coventry.ac.uk

WESSEX TALES

Contents:

Preface
An Imaginative Woman
The Three Strangers
The Withered Arm
Fellow-Townsmen
Interlopers at the Knap
The Distracted Preacher

PREFACE

An apology is perhaps needed for the neglect of contrast which is shown
by presenting two consecutive stories of hangmen in such a small
collection as the following. But in the neighbourhood of county-towns
tales of executions used to form a large proportion of the local
traditions; and though never personally acquainted with any chief
operator at such scenes, the writer of these pages had as a boy the
privilege of being on speaking terms with a man who applied for the
office, and who sank into an incurable melancholy because he failed to
get it, some slight mitigation of his grief being to dwell upon striking
episodes in the lives of those happier ones who had held it with success
and renown. His tale of disappointment used to cause some wonder why his
ambition should have taken such an unfortunate form, but its nobleness
was never questioned. In those days, too, there was still living an old
woman who, for the cure of some eating disease, had been taken in her
youth to have her 'blood turned' by a convict's corpse, in the manner
described in 'The Withered Arm.'

Since writing this story some years ago I have been reminded by an aged
friend who knew 'Rhoda Brook' that, in relating her dream, my
forgetfulness has weakened the facts our of which the tale grew. In
reality it was while lying down on a hot afternoon that the incubus
oppressed her and she flung it off, with the results upon the body of the
original as described. To my mind the occurrence of such a vision in the
daytime is more impressive than if it had happened in a midnight dream.
Readers are therefore asked to correct the