| | 1 | Author: | Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 1804-1864 | Add | | | Title: | Dr. Heidegger's Experiment  | | | | Published: | 1996 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | THAT very singular man, old Dr. Heidegger, once invited four
venerable friends to meet him in his study. There were three
white-bearded gentlemen, Mr. Medbourne, Colonel Killigrew, and Mr.
Gascoigne, and a withered gentlewoman, whose name was the Widow
Wycherly. They were all melancholy old creatures, who had been
unfortunate in life, and whose greatest misfortune it was that they
were not long ago in their graves. Mr. Medbourne, in the vigor of his
age, had been a prosperous merchant, but had lost his all by a frantic
speculation, and was now little better than a mendicant. Colonel
Killigrew had wasted his best years, and his health and substance, in
the pursuit of sinful pleasures, which had given birth to a brood of
pains, such as the gout, and divers other torments of soul and body.
Mr. Gascoigne was a ruined politician, a man of evil fame, or at least
had been so till time had buried him from the knowledge of the present
generation, and made him obscure instead of infamous. As for the Widow
Wycherly, tradition tells us that she was a great beauty in her day;
but, for a long while past, she had lived in deep seclusion, on account
of certain scandalous stories which had prejudiced the gentry of the
town against her. It is a circumstance worth mentioning that each of
these three old gentlemen, Mr. Medbourne, Colonel Killigrew, and Mr.
Gascoigne, were early lovers of the Widow Wycherly, and had once been
on the point of cutting each other's throats for her sake. And, before
proceeding further, I will merely hint that Dr. Heidegger and all his
foul guests were sometimes thought to be a little beside
themselves,—as is not unfrequently the case with old people, when
worried either by present troubles or woful recollections. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
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