Charles Brockden Brown

Edgar Huntley Charles Brockden Brown

Publisher Marketing: Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: ture, that this person was asleep. Such instances were not unknown to me, through the medium of conversation and books. Never, indeed, had it fallen under my own observation till now, and now it was conspicuous and environed with all that could give edge to suspicion, and vigor to inquiry. To stand here was no longer of use, and I turned my steps toward my uncle's habitation. CHAPTER II. I Had food enough for the longest contemplation. My steps partook, as usual, of the vehemence of my thoughts, and I reached my uncle's gate before I believed myself to have lost sight of the Elm. I looked up and discovered the well known habitation. I could not endure that my reflections should so speedily be interrupted. I, therefore, passed the gate, and stopped not till I had reached a neighboring summit, crowned with chesnut-oaks and poplars. Here I more deliberately reviewed the incidents that had just occurred. The inference was just, that the man, half- clothed and digging, was a sleeper; but what was the cause of mis morbid activity9 What was the mournful vision that dissolved him in tears, and extorted from him tokens of inconsolable distress9 What did he seek, or what endeavor to conceal in this fatal spot9 The incapacity of sound sleep denotes a mind sorely wounded. It is thus that atrocious criminals denote the possession of some dreadful secret. The thoughts, which considerations of safety enable them to suppress or disguise during wakefulness, operate without impediment, and exhibit their genuine effects, when the notices of sense are partly excluded, and they are shut out from a knowledge of their entire condition. This is the perpetrator of some nefarious deed. What but the murder of Waldegrave could direct his steps hither 9 His employment was part of some fantastic dr... Contributor Bio:  Brown, Charles Brockden Charles Brockden Brown was an American novelist, historian, and editor of the Early National period. He is generally regarded by scholars as the most ambitious and accomplished American novelist before James Fenimore Cooper. Brown is the most frequently studied and republished practitioner of the "early American novel" and a significant public intellectual in the wider Atlantic print culture. Brown's novels are often characterized as Gothic fiction, although the model he develops is far from the Gothic romance mode of writers such as Ann Radcliffe. Wieland is the first as well as the most famous American Gothic novel.