The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Blue Man, by Mary Hartwell Catherwood

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Title: The Blue Man
From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899

Author: Mary Hartwell Catherwood

Release Date: October 30, 2007 [EBook #23249]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BLUE MAN ***

Produced by David Widger

THE BLUE MAN

From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899

By Mary Hartwell Catherwood

The lake was like a meadow full of running streams. Far off indeed it
seemed frozen with countless wind-paths traversing the ice, so level
and motionless was the surface under a gray sky. But summer rioted in
verdure over the cliffs to the very beaches. From the high greenery of
the island could be heard the tink-tank of a bell where some cow sighed
amid the delicious gloom.

East of the Giant's Stairway in a cove are two round rocks with young
cedars springing from them. It is easy to scramble to the flat top of
the first one and sit in open ambush undetected by passers. The world's
majority is unobservant. Children with their nurses, lovers, bicyclists
who have left their wheels behind, excursionists--fortunately headed
towards this spot in their one available hour--an endless procession,
tramp by on the rough, wave-lapped margin, never wearing it smooth.

Amused by the unconsciousness of the reviewed, I found myself
unexpectedly classed with the world's majority. For on the east round
rock, a few yards from my seat on the west round rock, behold a man
had arranged himself, his back against the cedars, without attracting
notice. While the gray weather lightened and wine-red streaks on the
lake began to alternate with translucent greens, and I was watching
mauve plumes spring from a distant steamer before her whistles could
be heard, this nimble stranger must have found his own amusement in the
blindness of people with eyes.

He was not quite a stranger. I had seen him the day before; and he was
a man to be remembered on account of a peculiar blueness of the skin,
in which, perhaps, some drug or chemical had left an unearthly haze over
the natural flush of blood. It might have appeared the effect of
sky