Professional Documents
Culture Documents
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ILLUSTRATED BY
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Kurt Werth
COLLINS
NCE
33
go get it. H e put on his long dark coat and he lig hted his lantern and he went trudging through the cold dark lanes till he came to the graveyard. And he dug up E lvira and took the golden arm. H e tucked it under his long coat and started back hom e. On the way home it started to' rain, hail, snow, and blow. But he didn't think an ything of that. H e got home all right. When he got home he didn't know where to hide the golden arm, so he pushed it under the covers of the bed. Then he jumped into bed himself and shivered and shook. H e couldn't get warm because the golden arm was cold as ice. A nd the wind rose and he heard a voice wailing
W - H - E-E - R-E'-S M-Y G-0-0- L - D - E - N A-A-A-R-M ?
The man pulled the covers up over his head so he wouldn't hear it. But he heard it just the same. He heard it coming down the road. It was crying in the road
W - H - E - E - R -E' -S M- Y-Y
The man shivered and shook under the covers. Then he peeked out.
35
This is on e of the most famous scary stories told. It is said to have been told around every Boy and Girl Scout campfire ever kindled. This is the story Mark Twain used to tell to scare whole audiences. And he explained that it is the timing of the pause just before the pounce that makes for success or failure in the telling. If you get the pause just right, he said, someone in the audience will surely scream ! I have told the story here as well as I can remember of the way it was told to me in Shelburne County, Nova Scotia. It is a windy-night story, they say. Whenever the east wind howls loud and lonesome over a door at night, someone says, "Elvira wants her golden ann."