LITTLE CLASSICS EDITED BY ROSSITER JOHNSON STORIES OF TRAGEDY [Illustration] BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY The Riverside Press Cambridge 1914 COPYRIGHT, 1874, BY JAMES R. OSGOOD & CO. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED [Illustration] CONTENTS. PAGE THE MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE _Edgar Allan Poe_ 7 THE LAUSON TRAGEDY _J. W. DeForest_ 56 THE IRON SHROUD _William Mudford_ 108 THE BELL-TOWER _Herman Melville_ 128 THE KATHAYAN SLAVE _Emily C. Judson_ 149 THE STORY OF LA ROCHE _Henry Mackenzie_ 165 THE VISION OF SUDDEN DEATH _Thomas De Quincey_ 182 [Illustration] [Illustration] THE MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE. BY EDGAR ALLAN POE. “What song the Syrens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women, although puzzling questions, are not beyond all conjecture.”—SIR THOMAS BROWNE. The mental features discoursed of as the analytical are, in themselves, but little susceptible of analysis. We appreciate them only in their effects. We know of them, among other things, that they are always to their possessor, when inordinately possessed, a source of the liveliest enjoyment. As the strong man exults in his physical ability, delighting in such exercises as call his muscles into action, so glories the analyst in moral activity which disentangles. He derives pleasure from even the most trivial occupations bringing his talent into play. He is fond of enigmas, of conundrums, of hieroglyphics; exhibiting in his solutions of each a degree of acumen which appears to the ordinary apprehension preternatural. His results, brought about by the very soul and essence of method, have, in truth, the whole air of intuition.