33 лучших юмористических рассказа на английском / 33 Best Humorous Short Stories. Коллектив авторов

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СКАЧАТЬ full of dog’s-ears; and a broken pitch-pipe. As to the books and furniture of the schoolhouse, they belonged to the community, excepting Cotton Mather’s History of Witchcraft, a New England Almanac, and a book of dreams and fortune-telling; in which last was a sheet of foolscap much scribbled and blotted in several fruitless attempts to make a copy of verses in honor of the heiress of Van Tassel. These magic books and the poetic scrawl were forthwith consigned to the flames by Hans Van Ripper; who, from that time forward, determined to send his children no more to school, observing that he never knew any good come of this same reading and writing. Whatever money the schoolmaster possessed, and he had received his quarter’s pay but a day or two before, he must have had about his person at the time of his disappearance.

      The mysterious event caused much speculation at the church on the following Sunday. Knots of gazers and gossips were collected in the churchyard, at the bridge, and at the spot where the hat and pumpkin had been found. The stories of Brouwer, of Bones, and a whole budget of others were called to mind; and when they had diligently considered them all, and compared them with the symptoms of the present case, they shook their heads, and came to the conclusion that Ichabod had been carried off by the Galloping Hessian. As he was a bachelor, and in nobody’s debt, nobody troubled his head any more about him; the school was removed to a different quarter of the hollow, and another pedagogue reigned in his stead.

      It is true, an old farmer, who had been down to New York on a visit several years after, and from whom this account of the ghostly adventure was received, brought home the intelligence that Ichabod Crane was still alive; that he had left the neighborhood partly through fear of the goblin and Hans Van Ripper, and partly in mortification at having been suddenly dismissed by the heiress; that he had changed his quarters to a distant part of the country; had kept school and studied law at the same time; had been admitted to the bar; turned politician; electioneered; written for the newspapers; and finally had been made a justice of the Ten Pound Court. Brom Bones, too, who, shortly after his rival’s disappearance conducted the blooming Katrina in triumph to the altar, was observed to look exceedingly knowing whenever the story of Ichabod was related, and always burst into a hearty laugh at the mention of the pumpkin; which led some to suspect that he knew more about the matter than he chose to tell.

      The old country wives, however, who are the best judges of these matters, maintain to this day that Ichabod was spirited away by supernatural means; and it is a favorite story often told about the neighborhood round the winter evening fire. The bridge became more than ever an object of superstitious awe; and that may be the reason why the road has been altered of late years, so as to approach the church by the border of the millpond. The schoolhouse being deserted soon fell to decay, and was reported to be haunted by the ghost of the unfortunate pedagogue and the plowboy, loitering homeward of a still summer evening, has often fancied his voice at a distance, chanting a melancholy psalm tune among the tranquil solitudes of Sleepy Hollow.

      Stephen Leacock

      Nonsense Novels

      Maddened by Mystery: or, The Defective Detective

      The great detective sat in his office. He wore a long green gown and half a dozen secret badges pinned to the outside of it.

      Three or four pairs of false whiskers hung on a whisker-stand beside him.

      Goggles, blue spectacles and motor glasses lay within easy reach.

      He could completely disguise himself at a second’s notice.

      Half a bucket of cocaine and a dipper stood on a chair at his elbow.

      His face was absolutely impenetrable.

      A pile of cryptograms lay on the desk. The Great Detective hastily tore them open one after the other, solved them, and threw them down the cryptogram-shute at his side.

      There was a rap at the door.

      The Great Detective hurriedly wrapped himself in a pink domino, adjusted a pair of false black whiskers and cried,

      ‘Come in.’

      His secretary entered. ‘Ha,’ said the detective, ‘it is you!’

      He laid aside his disguise.

      ‘Sir,’ said the young man in intense excitement, ‘a mystery has been committed!’

      ‘Ha!’ said the Great Detective, his eye kindling, ‘is it such as to completely baffle the police of the entire continent?’

      ‘They are so completely baffled with it,’ said the secretary, ‘that they are lying collapsed in heaps; many of them have committed suicide.’

      ‘So,’ said the detective, ‘and is the mystery one that is absolutely unparalleled in the whole recorded annals of the London police?’

      ‘It is.’

      ‘And I suppose,’ said the detective, ‘that it involves names which you would scarcely dare to breathe, at least without first using some kind of atomiser or throat-gargle.’

      ‘Exactly.’

      ‘And it is connected, I presume, with the highest diplomatic consequences, so that if we fail to solve it England will be at war with the whole world in sixteen minutes?’

      His secretary, still quivering with excitement, again answered yes.

      ‘And finally,’ said the Great Detective, ‘I presume that it was committed in broad daylight, in some such place as the entrance of the Bank of England, or in the cloak-room of the House of Commons, and under the very eyes of the police?’

      ‘Those,’ said the secretary, ‘are the very conditions of the mystery.’

      ‘Good,’ said the Great Detective, ‘now wrap yourself in this disguise, put on these brown whiskers and tell me what it is.’

      The secretary wrapped himself in a blue domino with lace insertions, then, bending over, he whispered in the ear of the Great Detective:

      ‘The Prince of Wurttemberg has been kidnapped.’

      The Great Detective bounded from his chair as if he had been kicked from below.

      A prince stolen! Evidently a Bourbon! The scion of one of the oldest families in Europe kidnapped. Here was a mystery indeed worthy of his analytical brain.

      His mind began to move like lightning.

      ‘Stop!’ he said, ‘how do you know this?’

      The secretary handed him a telegram. It was from the Prefect of Police of Paris. It read: ‘The Prince of Wurttemberg stolen. Probably forwarded to London. Must have him here for the opening day of Exhibition. 1,000 pounds reward.’

      So! The Prince had been kidnapped out of Paris at the very time when his appearance at the International Exposition would have been a political event of the first magnitude.

      With the Great Detective to think was to act, and to act was to think.

      Frequently he could do both together.

      ‘Wire to Paris for a description of the Prince.’

      The secretary bowed and left.

      At the same moment there was slight scratching at the door.

      A СКАЧАТЬ