The Land Beyond the Blow: After the method of Swift, who followed Lucian, and was himself followed by Voltaire and many others
()
About this ebook
Ambrose Bierce
Ambrose Bierce was an American writer, critic and war veteran. Bierce fought for the Union Army during the American Civil War, eventually rising to the rank of brevet major before resigning from the Army following an 1866 expedition across the Great Plains. Bierce’s harrowing experiences during the Civil War, particularly those at the Battle of Shiloh, shaped a writing career that included editorials, novels, short stories and poetry. Among his most famous works are “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” “The Boarded Window,” “Chickamauga,” and What I Saw of Shiloh. While on a tour of Civil-War battlefields in 1913, Bierce is believed to have joined Pancho Villa’s army before disappearing in the chaos of the Mexican Revolution.
Read more from Ambrose Bierce
The Weiser Book of Horror and the Occult: Hidden Magic, Occult Truths, and the Stories That Started It All Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Famous Modern Ghost Stories Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Classic American Short Story MEGAPACK ® (Volume 1): 34 of the Greatest Stories Ever Written Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Complete Short Stories of Ambrose Bierce Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Greatest Ghost and Horror Stories Ever Written: volume 4 (30 short stories) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Greatest Ghost and Horror Stories Ever Written: volume 1 (30 short stories) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge and Other Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hellbent Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Devil's Dictionary Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Devils Dictionary Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Greatest American Short Stories: 50+ Classics of American Literature Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWrite It Right Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Greatest American Short Stories (Vol. 1) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTRICK OR TREAT Boxed Set: 200+ Eerie Tales from the Greatest Storytellers: Horror Classics, Mysterious Cases, Gothic Novels, Monster Tales & Supernatural Stories: Sweeney Todd, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, Frankenstein, The Vampire, Dracula, Sleepy Hollow, From Beyond… Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Devil's Dictionary Illustrated Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings50 Masterpieces of Occult & Supernatural Fiction Vol. 1 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Collected Short Stories of Ambrose Bierce Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Devil's Dictionary: Satirical Definitions of Everyday Words Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCivil War Memories: Nineteen Stories of Battle, Bravery, Love, and Tragedy Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Ambrose Bierce’s Civil War Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related to The Land Beyond the Blow
Related ebooks
The Land Beyond the Blow Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Land Beyond the Blow: (After the method of Swift, who followed Lucian, and was himself followed by Voltaire and many others) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Land Beyond the Blow by Ambrose Bierce (Illustrated) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Yodel of Cthulhu: The Lisperer in Darkness: The Yodel of Cthulhu, #0 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCock-A-Doodle-Doo! Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Whisperer in Darkness Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Crystal Age: A Dystopia Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOn the Duty of Civil Disobedience Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Walden and Civil Disobedience Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Walden, or Life in the Woods Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Heritage Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBirds in Town and Village Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A Man and a Woman Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSketches and Eccentricities of Colonel David Crockett of West Tennessee Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWalden Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Illustrated Walden: or, Life in the Woods Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Crystal Age Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Crystal Age (Dystopian Classic) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Crystal Age: A Dystopia Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Gipsy (Vols I & II) A Tale Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDonald McElroy, Scotch Irishman Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWalden, Walking & Civil Disobedience: 3 Thoreau Classics Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWalden, Civil Disobedience & Walking (3 Classics in One Volume): Three Most Important Works of Thoreau, Including Author's Biography Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWalden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience: Bestsellers and famous Books Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ouroboros Cycle, Book One: A Monster’s Coming of Age Story Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Greatest Works of Henry David Thoreau: Walden + Civil Disobedience + Slavery in Massachusetts Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Valley of the Spiders (Cryptofiction Classics - Weird Tales of Strange Creatures) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Mummy!: Sci-Fi Novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Satire For You
The Sisters Brothers Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Shriver: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Clown Brigade Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mash: A Novel About Three Army Doctors Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Bonfire of the Vanities: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5As I Lay Dying Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Master & Margarita Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Going Postal Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5It Was Just Another Day in America Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHouse of Cards Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Kill for Love Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Robot Who Looked Like Me: Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Bestseller Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/51900: Or; The Last President Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Heart of a Dog Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Only Living Girl on Earth Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Five People You Meet in Hell: An Unauthorized Parody Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Little Old Lady Who Broke All the Rules: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Herland Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Utterly Uninteresting and Unadventurous Tales of Fred, the Vampire Accountant Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Candy Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Dog's Heart Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Mandibles: A Family, 2029-2047 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5No One Left to Come Looking for You: A Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Homeland: And Other Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Faggots Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Dice Man: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Trout Fishing in America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A History of the African-American People (Proposed) by Strom Thurmond: A Novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe White Boy Shuffle: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related categories
Reviews for The Land Beyond the Blow
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
The Land Beyond the Blow - Ambrose Bierce
Thither
Table of Contents
A crowd of men were assisting at a dog-fight. The scene was one of indescribable confusion. In the center of the tumult the dogs, obscure in a cloud of dust, rolled over and over, howling, yarring, tearing each other with sickening ferocity. About them the hardly less ferocious men shouted, cursed and struck, encouraged the animals with sibilant utterances and threatened with awful forms of death and perdition all who tried to put an end to the combat. Caught in the thick of this pitiless mob I endeavored to make my way to a place of peace, when a burly blackguard, needlessly obstructing me, said derisively:
I guess you are working pockets.
You are a liar!
I retorted hotly.
That is all the provocation that I remember to have given.
Sons of the Fair Star
Table of Contents
When consciousness returned the sun was high in the heavens, yet the light was dim, and had that indefinable ghastly quality that is observed during a partial eclipse. The sun itself appeared singularly small, as if it were at an immensely greater distance than usual. Rising with some difficulty to my feet, I looked about me. I was in an open space among some trees growing on the slope of a mountain range whose summit on the one hand was obscured by a mist of a strange pinkish hue, and on the other rose into peaks glittering with snow. Skirting the base at a distance of two or three miles flowed a wide river, and beyond it a nearly level plain stretched away to the horizon, dotted with villages and farmhouses and apparently in a high state of cultivation. All was unfamiliar in its every aspect. The trees were unlike any that I had ever seen or even imagined, the trunks being mostly square and the foliage consisting of slender filaments resembling hair, in many instances long enough to reach the earth. It was of many colors, and I could not perceive that there was any prevailing one, as green is in the vegetation to which I was accustomed. As far as I could see there were no grass, no weeds, no flowers; the earth was covered with a kind of lichen, uniformly blue. Instead of rocks, great masses of metals protruded here and there, and above me on the mountain were high cliffs of what seemed to be bronze veined with brass. No animals were visible, but a few birds as uncommon in appearance as their surroundings glided through the air or perched upon the rocks. I say glided, for their motion was not true flight, their wings being mere membranes extended parallel to their sides, and having no movement independent of the body. The bird was, so to say, suspended between them and moved forward by quick strokes of a pair of enormously large webbed feet, precisely as a duck propels itself in water. All these things excited in me no surprise, nor even curiosity; they were merely unfamiliar. That which most interested me was what appeared to be a bridge several miles away, up the river, and to this I directed my steps, crossing over from the barren and desolate hills to the populous plain.
For a full history of my life and adventures in Mogon–Zwair, and a detailed description of the country, its people, their manners and customs, I must ask the reader to await the publication of a book, now in the press, entitled A Blackened Eye; in this brief account I can give only a few of such particulars as seem instructive by contrast with our own civilization.
The inhabitants of Mogon–Zwair call themselves Golampis, a word signifying Sons of the Fair Star. Physically they closely resemble ourselves, being in all respects the equals of the highest Caucasian type. Their hair, however, has a broader scheme of color, hair of every hue known to us, and even of some imperceptible to my eyes but brilliant to theirs, being too common to excite remark. A Golampian assemblage with uncovered heads resembles, indeed, a garden of flowers, vivid and deep in color, no two alike. They wear no clothing of any kind, excepting for adornment and protection from the weather, resembling in this the ancient Greeks and the Japanese of yesterday; nor was I ever able to make them comprehend that clothing could be worn for those reasons for which it is chiefly worn among ourselves. They are destitute of those feelings of delicacy and refinement which distinguish us from the lower animals, and which, in the opinion of our acutest and most pious thinkers, are evidences of our close relation to the Power that made us.
Among this people certain ideas which are current among ourselves as mere barren faiths expressed in disregarded platitudes receive a practical application to the affairs of life. For example, they hold, with the best, wisest and most experienced of our own race, and one other hereafter to be described, that wealth does not bring happiness and is a misfortune and an evil. None but the most ignorant and depraved, therefore, take the trouble to acquire or preserve it. A rich Golampi is naturally regarded with contempt and suspicion, is shunned by the good and respectable and subjected to police surveillance. Accustomed to a world where the rich man is profoundly and justly respected for his goodness and wisdom (manifested in part by his own deprecatory protests against the wealth of which, nevertheless, he is apparently unable to rid himself) I was at first greatly pained to observe the contumelious manner of the Golampis toward this class of men, carried in some instances to the length of personal violence; a popular amusement being the pelting them with coins. These the victims would carefully gather from the ground and carry away with them, thus increasing their hoard and making themselves all the more liable to popular indignities.
When the cultivated and intelligent Golampi finds himself growing too wealthy he proceeds to get rid of his surplus riches by some one of many easy expedients. One of these I have just described; another is to give his excess to those of his own class who have not sufficient to buy employment and so escape leisure, which is considered the greatest evil of all.