The Death Of The Moth

by: Virginia Woolf

Moths that fly by day are not properly to be called moths; they do not
excite that pleasant sense of dark autumn nights and ivy-blossom which
the commonest yellow-underwing asleep in the shadow of the curtain
never fails to rouse in us. They are hybrid creatures, neither gay like
butterflies nor sombre like their own species. Nevertheless the present
specimen, with his narrow hay-coloured wings, fringed with a tassel of the
same colour, seemed to be content with life. It was a pleasant morning,
mid-September, mild, benignant, yet with a keener breath than that of the
summer months. The plough was already scoring the field opposite the
window, and where the share had been, the earth was pressed flat and
gleamed with moisture. Such vigour came rolling in from the fields and the
down beyond that it was difficult to keep the eyes strictly turned upon the
book. The rooks too were keeping one of their annual festivities; soaring
round the tree tops until it looked as if a vast net with thousands of black
knots in it had been cast up into the air; which, after a few moments sank
slowly down upon the trees until every twig seemed to have a knot at the
end of it. Then, suddenly, the net would be thrown into the air again in a
wider circle this time, with the utmost clamour and vociferation, as though
to be thrown into the air and settle slowly down upon the tree tops were a
tremendously exciting experience.

The same energy which inspired the rooks, the ploughmen, the horses, and
even, it seemed, the lean bare-backed downs, sent the moth fluttering from
side to side of his square of the window-pane. One could not help watching
him. One was, indeed, conscious of a queer feeling of pity for him. The
possibilities of pleasure seemed that morning so enormous and so various
that to have only a moth's part in life, and a day moth's at that, appeared a
hard fate, and his zest in enjoying his meagre opportunities to the full,
pathetic. He flew vigorously to one corner of his compartment, and, after
waiting there a second, flew across to the other. What remained for him but
to fly to a third corner and then to a fourth? That was all he could do, in
spite of the size of the downs, the width of the sky, the far-off smoke of
houses, and the romantic voice, now and then, of a steamer out at sea.
What he could do he did. Watching him, it seemed as if a fibre, very thin but
pure, of the enormous energy of the world had been thrust into his frail and
diminutive body. As often as he crossed the pane, I could fancy that a
thread of vital light became visible. He was little or nothing but life.
 Yet, because he was so small, and so simple a form of the energy that was
rolling in at the open window and driving its way through so many narrow
and intricate corridors in my own brain and in those of other human beings,
there was something marvellous as well as pathetic about him. It was as if
someone had taken a tiny bead of pure life and decking it as lightly as
possible with down and feathers, had set it dancing and zig-zagging to show
us the true nature of life. Thus displayed one could not get over the
strangeness of it. One is apt to forget all about life, seeing it humped and
bossed and garnished and cumbered so that it has to move with the
greatest circumspection and dignity. Again, the thought of all that life
might have been had he been born in any other shape caused one to view
his simple activities with a kind of pity.

After a time, tired by his dancing apparently, he settled on the window

ledge in the sun, and, the queer spectacle being at an end, I forgot about
him. Then, looking up, my eye was caught by him. He was trying to resume
his dancing, but seemed either so stiff or so awkward that he could only
flutter to the bottom of the window-pane; and when he tried to fly across it
he failed. Being intent on other matters I watched these futile attempts for
a time without thinking, unconsciously waiting for him to resume his flight,
as one waits for a machine, that has stopped momentarily, to start again
without considering the reason of its failure. After perhaps a seventh
attempt he slipped from the wooden ledge and fell, fluttering his wings, on
to his back on the window sill. The helplessness of his attitude roused me. It
flashed upon me that he was in difficulties; he could no longer raise
himself; his legs struggled vainly. But, as I stretched out a pencil, meaning
to help him to right himself, it came over me that the failure and
awkwardness were the approach of death. I laid the pencil down again.

The legs agitated themselves once more. I looked as if for the enemy
against which he struggled. I looked out of doors. What had happened
there? Presumably it was midday, and work in the fields had stopped.
Stillness and quiet had replaced the previous animation. The birds had
taken themselves off to feed in the brooks. The horses stood still. Yet the
power was there all the same, massed outside indifferent, impersonal, not
attending to anything in particular. Somehow it was opposed to the little
hay-coloured moth. It was useless to try to do anything. One could only
watch the extraordinary efforts made by those tiny legs against an
oncoming doom which could, had it chosen, have submerged an entire city,
not merely a city, but masses of human beings; nothing, I knew, had any
chance against death.Nevertheless after a pause of exhaustion the legs
 fluttered again.It was superb this last protest, and so frantic that he
succeeded at last in righting himself. One's sympathies, of course, were all
on the side of life. Also, when there was nobody to care or to know, this
gigantic effort on the part of an insignificant little moth, against a power of
such magnitude, to retain what no one else valued or desired to keep,
moved one strangely. Again, somehow, one saw life, a pure bead. I lifted the
pencil again, useless though I knew it to be. But even as I did so, the
unmistakable tokens of death showed themselves. The body relaxed, and
instantly grew stiff. The struggle was over. The insignificant little creature
now knew death. As I looked at the dead moth, this minute wayside triumph
of so great a force over so mean an antagonist filled me with wonder. Just
as life had been strange a few minutes before, so death was now as strange.
The moth having righted himself now lay most decently and
uncomplainingly composed. O yes, he seemed to say, death is stronger
than I am.
 The Last Leaf
by: O. Henry

In a small part of the city west of Washington Square, the

streets have gone wild. They turn in different directions. They are broken
into small pieces called “places.” One street goes across itself one or two
times. A painter once discovered something possible and valuable about
this street. Suppose a painter had some painting materials for which he had
not paid. Suppose he had no money. Suppose a man came to get the
money. The man might walk down that street and suddenly meet himself
coming back, without having received a cent!.
This part of the city is called Greenwich Village. And to old
Greenwich Village the painters soon came. Here they found rooms they like,
with good light and at a low cost.
Sue and Johnsy lived at the top of a building with three floors.
One of these young women came from Maine, the other from California.
They had met at a restaurant on Eighth Street. There they discovered that
they liked the same kind of art, the same kind of food, and the same kind of
clothes. So they decided to live and work together.
That was in the spring.
Toward winter a cold stranger entered Greenwich Village. No one
could see him. He walked around touching one person here and another
there with his icy fingers. He was a bad sickness. Doctors called him
Pneumonia. On the east side of the city he hurried, touching many people;
but in the narrow streets of Greenwich Village he did not move so quickly.
Mr. Pneumonia was not a nice old gentleman. A nice old
gentleman would not hurt a weak little woman from California. But Mr.
Pneumonia touched Johnsy with his cold fingers. She lay on her bed almost
without moving, and she looked through the window at the wall of the
house next to hers.
One morning the busy doctor spoke to Sue alone in the hall,
where Johnsy could not hear.
“She has a very small chance,” he said. “She has a chance, if she
wants to live. If people don’t want to live, I can’t do much for them. Your
little lady has decided that she is not going to get well. Is there something
that is troubling her?”
“She always wanted to go to Italy and paint a picture of the Bay
of Naples,” said Sue.
“Paint! Not paint. Is there anything worth being troubled about?
A man?”
 “A man?” said Sue. “Is a man worth—No, doctor. There is not a
man.”
“It is weakness,” said the doctor. “I will do all I know how to do.
But when a sick person begins to feel that he’s going to die, half my work is
useless. Talk to her about new winter clothes. If she were interested in the
future, her chances would be better.”
After the doctor had gone, Sue went into the workroom to cry.
Then she walked into Johnsy’s room. She carried some of her painting
materials, and she was singing.
Johnsy lay there, very thin and very quiet. Her face was turned
toward the window. Sue stopped singing, thinking that Johnsy was asleep.
Sue began to work. As she worked she heard a low sound, again
and again. She went quickly to the bedside.
Johnsy’s eyes were open wide. She was looking out the window
and counting—counting back.
“Twelve,” she said; and a little later, “Eleven”; and then, “Ten,”
and, “Nine”; and then, “Eight,” and, “Seven,” almost together.
Sue looked out the window. What was there to count? There was
only the side wall of the next house, a short distance away. The wall had no
window. An old, old tree grew against the wall. The cold breath of winter
had already touched it. Almost all its leaves had fallen from its dark
branches.
“What is it, dear?” asked Sue.
“Six,” said Johnsy, in a voice still lower. “They’re falling faster
now. Three days ago there were almost a hundred. It hurt my head to count
them. But now it’s easy. There goes another one. There are only five now.”
“Five what, dear? Tell your Sue.”
“Leaves. On the tree. When the last one falls, I must go, too. I’ve
known that for three days. Didn’t the doctor tell you?”
“Oh, I never heard of such a thing,” said Sue. “It doesn’t have any
sense in it. What does an old tree have to do with you? Or with your getting
well? And you used to love that tree so much. Don’t be a little fool. The
doctor told me your chances for getting well. He told me this morning. He
said you had very good chances! Try to eat a little now. And then I’ll go back
to work. And then I can sell my picture, and then I can buy something more
for you to eat to make you strong.”
“You don’t have to buy anything for me,” said Johnsy. She still
looked out the window. “There goes another. No, I don’t want anything to
eat. Now there are four. I want to see the last one fall before night. Then I’ll
go, too.”
 “Johnsy, dear,” said Sue, “will you promise me to close your eyes
and keep them closed? Will you promise not to look out the window until I
finish working? I must have this picture ready tomorrow. I need the light; I
can’t cover the window.”
“Couldn’t you work in the other room?” asked Johnsy coldly.
“I’d rather be here by you,” said Sue. “And I don’t want you to look
at those leaves.”
“Tell me as soon as you have finished,” said Johnsy. She closed her
eyes and lay white and still. “Because I want to see the last leaf fall. I have
done enough waiting. I have done enough thinking. I want to go sailing
down, down, like one of those leaves.”
“Try to sleep,” said Sue. “I must call Behrman to come up here. I
want to paint a man in this picture, and I’ll make him look like Behrman. I
won’t be gone a minute. Don’t try to move till I come back.”
Old Behrman was a painter who lived on the first floor of their
house. He was past sixty. He had had no success as a painter. For forty
years he had painted, without ever painting a good picture. He had always
talked of painting a great picture, a masterpiece, but he had never yet
started it.
He got a little money by letting others paint pictures of him. He
drank too much. He still talked of his great masterpiece. And he believed
that it was his special duty to do everything possible to help Sue and
Johnsy.
Sue found him in his dark room, and she knew that he had been
drinking. She could smell it. She told him about Johnsy and the leaves on
the vine. She said that she was afraid that Johnsy would indeed sail down,
down like the leaf. Her hold on the world was growing weaker.
Old Behrman shouted his anger over such an idea.
“What!” he cried. “Are there such fools? Do people die because
leaves drop off a tree? I have not heard of such a thing. No, I will not come
up and sit while you make a picture of me. Why do you allow her to think
such a thing? That poor little Johnsy!”
“She is very sick and weak,” said Sue. “The sickness has put these
strange ideas into her mind. Mr. Behrman, if you won’t come, you won’t. But
I don’t think you’re very nice.”
“This is like a woman!” shouted Behrman. “Who said I will not come?
Go. I come with you. For half an hour I have been trying to say that I will
come. God! This is not any place for someone so good as Johnsy to lie sick.
Some day I shall paint my masterpiece, and we shall all go away from here.
God! Yes.”
 Johnsy was sleeping when they went up. Sue covered the window,
and took Behrman into the other room. There they looked out the window
fearfully at the tree. Then they looked at each other for a moment without
speaking. A cold rain was falling, with a little snow in it too.
Behrman sat down, and Sue began to paint.
She worked through most of the night.
In the morning, after an hour’s sleep, she went to Johnsy’s
bedside. Johnsy with wide-open eyes was looking toward the window. “I
want to see,” she told Sue.
Sue took the cover from the window.
But after the beating rain and the wild wind that had not stopped
through the whole night, there still was one leaf to be seen against the wall.
It was the last on the tree. It was still dark green near the branch. But at the
edges it was turning yellow with age. There it was hanging from a branch
nearly twenty feet above the ground.
“It is the last one,” said Johnsy. “I thought it would surely fall
during the night. I heard the wind. It will fall today, and I shall die at the
same time.”
“Dear, dear Johnsy!” said Sue. “Think of me, if you won’t think of
yourself. What would I do?”
But Johnsy did not answer. The most lonely thing in the world is a
soul when it is preparing to go on its far journey. The ties that held her to
friendship and to earth were breaking, one by one.
The day slowly passed. As it grew dark, they could still see the leaf
hanging from its branch against the wall. And then, as the night came, the
north wind began again to blow. The rain still beat against the windows.
When it was light enough the next morning, Johnsy again
commanded that she be allowed to see.
The leaf was still there.
Johnsy lay for a long time looking at it. And then she called to Sue,
who was cooking something for her to eat.
“I’ve been a bad girl, Sue,” said Johnsy. “Something has made that
last leaf stay there to show me how bad I was. It is wrong to want to die. I’ll
try to eat now. But first bring me a looking-glass, so that I can see myself.
And then I’ll sit up and watch you cook.”
An hour later she said, “Sue, some day I hope to paint the Bay of
Naples.”
The doctor came in the afternoon. Sue followed him into the hall
outside Johnsy’s room to talk to him.
 “The chances are good,” said the doctor. He took Sue’s thin,
shaking hand in his. “Give her good care, and she’ll get well. And now I must
see another sick person in this house. His name is Behrman. A painter, I
believe. Pneumonia, too. Mike is an old, weak man, and he is very ill. There
is no hope for him. But we take him to the hospital today. We’ll make it as
easy for him as we can.”
The next day the doctor said to Sue: “She’s safe. You have done it.
Food and care now—that’s all.”
And that afternoon Sue came to the bed where Johnsy lay. She put
one arm around her.
“I have something to tell you,” she said. “Mr. Behrman died of
pneumonia today in the hospital. He was ill only two days. Someone found
him on the morning of the first day, in his room. He was helpless with pain.”
“His shoes and his clothes were wet and as cold as ice. Everyone
wondered where he had been. The night had been so cold and wild.
“And then they found some things. There was a light that he had
taken outside. And there were his materials for painting. There was paint,
green paint and yellow paint. And—
“Look out the window, dear, at the last leaf on the wall. Didn’t you
wonder why it never moved when the wind was blowing? Oh, my dear, it is
Behrman’s great masterpiece—he painted it there the night that the last
leaf fell.”
 "The Story of An Hour"
Kate Chopin (1894)
Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, great care
was taken to break to her as gently as possible the news of her husband's
death.
It was her sister Josephine who told her, in broken sentences; veiled hints
that revealed in half concealing. Her husband's friend Richards was there,
too, near her. It was he who had been in the newspaper office when
intelligence of the railroad disaster was received, with Brently Mallard's
name leading the list of "killed." He had only taken the time to assure
himself of its truth by a second telegram, and had hastened to forestall
any less careful, less tender friend in bearing the sad message.
She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a
paralyzed inability to accept its significance. She wept at once, with
sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister's arms. When the storm of grief
had spent itself she went away to her room alone. She would have no one
follow her.
There stood, facing the open window, a comfortable, roomy armchair. Into
this she sank, pressed down by a physical exhaustion that haunted her
body and seemed to reach into her soul.
She could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that
were all aquiver with the new spring life. The delicious breath of rain was
in the air. In the street below a peddler was crying his wares. The notes of
a distant song which some one was singing reached her faintly, and
countless sparrows were twittering in the eaves.
There were patches of blue sky showing here and there through the
clouds that had met and piled one above the other in the west facing her
window.
She sat with her head thrown back upon the cushion of the chair, quite
motionless, except when a sob came up into her throat and shook her, as a
child who has cried itself to sleep continues to sob in its dreams.
She was young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and
even a certain strength. But now there was a dull stare in her eyes, whose
gaze was fixed away off yonder on one of those patches of blue sky. It was
not a glance of reflection, but rather indicated a suspension of intelligent
thought.
 There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully.
What was it? She did not know; it was too subtle and elusive to name. But
she felt it, creeping out of the sky, reaching toward her through the
sounds, the scents, the color that filled the air.
Now her bosom rose and fell tumultuously. She was beginning to
recognize this thing that was approaching to possess her, and she was
striving to beat it back with her will--as powerless as her two white slender
hands would have been. When she abandoned herself a little whispered
word escaped her slightly parted lips. She said it over and over under hte
breath: "free, free, free!" The vacant stare and the look of terror that had
followed it went from her eyes. They stayed keen and bright. Her pulses
beat fast, and the coursing blood warmed and relaxed every inch of her
body.
She did not stop to ask if it were or were not a monstrous joy that held
her. A clear and exalted perception enabled her to dismiss the suggestion
as trivial. She knew that she would weep again when she saw the kind,
tender hands folded in death; the face that had never looked save with
love upon her, fixed and gray and dead. But she saw beyond that bitter
moment a long procession of years to come that would belong to her
absolutely. And she opened and spread her arms out to them in welcome.
There would be no one to live for during those coming years; she would
live for herself. There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind
persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to
impose a private will upon a fellow-creature. A kind intention or a cruel
intention made the act seem no less a crime as she looked upon it in that
brief moment of illumination.
And yet she had loved him--sometimes. Often she had not. What did it
matter! What could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in the face of
this possession of self-assertion which she suddenly recognized as the
strongest impulse of her being!
"Free! Body and soul free!" she kept whispering.
Josephine was kneeling before the closed door with her lips to the
keyhold, imploring for admission. "Louise, open the door! I beg; open the
door--you will make yourself ill. What are you doing, Louise? For heaven's
sake open the door."
"Go away. I am not making myself ill." No; she was drinking in a very elixir
of life through that open window.
Her fancy was running riot along those days ahead of her. Spring days, and
summer days, and all sorts of days that would be her own. She breathed a
quick prayer that life might be long. It was only yesterday she had thought
with a shudder that life might be long.
She arose at length and opened the door to her sister's importunities.
There was a feverish triumph in her eyes, and she carried herself
unwittingly like a goddess of Victory. She clasped her sister's waist, and
together they descended the stairs. Richards stood waiting for them at
the bottom.
Some one was opening the front door with a latchkey. It was Brently
Mallard who entered, a little travel-stained, composedly carrying his grip-
sack and umbrella. He had been far from the scene of the accident, and
did not even know there had been one. He stood amazed at Josephine's
piercing cry; at Richards' quick motion to screen him from the view of his
wife.
When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease--of the joy
that kills.