Ron Reads Boring Books
Are you tired? You will be. Because I will read to you a boring book and it will be worse than you doing nothing. This podcast is not intended to entertain you. It is intended to bore you. The length of each podcast will vary so you cannot plan your listening easily. Some reads will be short. Some will be excruciatingly long. There will be no intro or outro music. The only sound is my voice and other random sounds as they happen. I change my voice as I read the dialog. Also, I have a southern accent and do not read well. Thank you for listening.
Ron Reads Boring Books
No one will remember your name if you die tomorrow.
A mysterious traveler with grand ambitions finds shelter with a humble mountain family, leading to deep conversations about legacy and mortality before an unexpected avalanche changes everything. Hawthorne's tragic tale explores how quickly life's dreams can vanish and the ironic twist of fate that erases all evidence of their existence.
• Set in a dangerous mountain pass where a family lives beneath a threatening mountainside
• A nameless ambitious young traveler arrives seeking shelter and connection
• Family members share their humble dreams and future aspirations around the hearth
• The stranger reveals his burning desire for lasting recognition and legacy
• Grandmother expresses her unusual wish to see herself properly prepared after death
• Sudden avalanche destroys everything, tragically killing all who sought safety outside
• Cottage remains intact with fire still burning, as if expecting the family's return
• The ambitious guest vanishes without trace, his greatest fear of anonymity fulfilled
• Story becomes a lasting mountain legend despite the characters' forgotten identities
If you enjoyed this reading of Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Ambitious Guest," please subscribe to Ron Reads for more classic short stories from history's greatest authors.
Hello, are you tired? You will be Welcome to Ron Reads, the boring book series. We're going to read another Nathaniel Hawthorne short story. This one is called the Ambitious Guest.
Speaker 1:One September night, a family had gathered around their hearth and piled it high, with the driftwood of mountain streams, the dry cones of the pines and the splintered ruins of great trees that had come crashing down the precipice. Up, the chimney roared the fire and brightened the room with its broad blaze. The faces of the father and mother had a sober gladness. The children laughed. The eldest daughter was the image of happiness at seventeen. The aged grandmother who sat knitting in the warmest place was the image of happiness. Grown old, they had found the herb heart's ease in the bleakest spot of all New England.
Speaker 1:This family were situated in the notch of the White Hills, where the wind was sharp throughout the year and pitilessly cold in the winter. Cold in the winter, giving their cottage all its fresh inclemency before it descended on the valley of the Saco. They dwelt in a cold spot, and a dangerous one, for a mountain towered above their heads, so steep that the stones would often rumble down its sides and startle them at night. At midnight, the daughter had just uttered some simple jest that filled them all with mirth. Then the wind came through the notch and seemed to pause before their cottage, rattling the door with a sound of wailing and lamentation before it passed into the valley. For a moment it saddened them, though there was nothing unusual in the tones. But the family were glad again when they perceived that the latch was lifted by some traveler whose footsteps had been unheard amid the dreary blast which heralded his approach and wailed as he was entering and went moaning away from the door. Though they dwelt in such a solitude, these people held daily converse with the world. With the world, the romantic pass of the notch is a great artery through which the lifeblood of internal commerce is continually throbbing between Maine On the one side, in the green mountains, and the shores of the St Lawrence on the other.
Speaker 1:The stagecoach always drew up before the door of the cottage, the wayfarer, with no companion but his staff paused there to exchange a word. That the sense of loneliness might not utterly overcome him, ere he could pass through the cleft of the mountain or reach the first house in the valley. And here the teamster on his way to portland market would put up for the night. And if a bachelor might sit an hour beyond the usual bedtime and steal a kiss from the mountain maid at parting. It was one of those primitive tab taverns where the traveler pays only for food and lodging but meets with a homely kindness beyond all price.
Speaker 1:When the footsteps were heard, therefore, between the outer door and the inner one, the whole family rose up, grandmother, children and all, as if about to welcome someone who belonged to them and whose fate was linked with theirs. The door was opened by a young man. His face at first wore the melancholy expression, almost despondency, of one who travels a wild and bleak road at midnight and alone, but soon brightened up when he saw the kindly warmth of his reception. Alone. But soon brightened up when he saw the kindly warmth of his reception, he felt his heart spring forward to meet them all, from the old woman who wiped a chair with her apron to the little child that held out its arms to him. One glance and smile placed the stranger on a footing of innocent familiarity with the oldest daughter, eldest daughter. Ah, this fires the right thing, he cried, especially when there is such a pleasant circle around it. I'm quite benumbed, for the notch is just like the pipe of a great pair of bellows. It has blown a terrible blast in my face all the way from bartlett. Then are you going towards vermont, said the master of the house. Has he helped to make a light knapsack? To take a light knapsack off the young man's shoulders? I mean to have been at Ethan Crawford's tonight, but a pedestrian lingers along such roads as this. It's no matter, for when I saw this good fire and all your cheerful faces, I felt as if you had kindled it on purpose for me and were awaiting my arrival. So I shall sit down among you and make myself at home. So I shall sit down among you and make myself at home.
Speaker 1:The frank-hearted stranger had just drawn his chair to the fire when something like a heavy footstep was heard, without Rushing down the steep side of the mountain. As with long and rapid strides, taking such a leap and passing the cottage has to strike the opposite precipice. The family held their breath because they knew the sound and their guest was held by his instinct. The old mountain has thrown a stone at us, for we fear we should forget him, said the landlord, recovering himself. He sometimes nods his head and threatens to come down, but we are old neighbors, and we agree together pretty well upon the whole. Besides, we have a sure place of refuge. Hard by, if he should becoming in good earnest.
Speaker 1:Let us now suppose the stranger to have finished his supper of bear's meat and, by his natural felicity of manner, to have placed himself on a footing of kindness with the whole family so that they talked as freely together as if he belonged to their mountain brood. He was of a proud yet gentle spirit, haughty and reserved among the rich and great, but ever ready to stoop his head to the lowly cottage door and be like a brother or son at the poor man's fireside. In the household of the notch, he found warmth and simplicity of feeling, the pervading intelligence of New England and a poetry of native growth which had gathered, when they little thought of it, in the mountain peaks and chasms and at the very threshold of their romantic and dangerous abode. He had travelled far and alone. His whole life, indeed, had been a solitary path, for with lofty caution of his nature, he had kept himself apart from those who might otherwise have been his companions. The family too, thought so kind and hospitable, had that consciousness of unity among themselves and separation from the world at large which, in every domestic circle, should still keep a holy place where no stranger may intrude. But this evening, a prophetic sympathy impelled the refined and educated youth to pour out his heart before the simple mountaineers and constrained them to answer him with the same free confidence. And thus it should have been. Is not the kindred of a common fate a closer tie than that of birth? Not the kindred of a common fate a closer tie than that of birth?
Speaker 1:The secret of the young man's character was a high and abstracted ambition. He could have been born to live an undistinguished life, but not to be forgotten in the grave yearning. Desire had been transformed to hope, and hope long cherished had become like certainty that, obscurely as he journeyed now, a glory was to beam on all his pathways, though not perhaps while he was treading it. But when posterity should gaze back into the gloom of what was now present, they would trace the brightness of his footsteps, brightening as meaner glories faded, and confess that a gifted one had passed from his cradle to his tomb with none to recognize him as yet, cried the stranger, his cheek glowing and his eye flashing with enthusiasm.
Speaker 1:As yet I have done nothing. Were I to vanish from the earth tomorrow, none would know so much of me as you that a nameless youth came up at nightfall from the valley of the Saco and opened his heart to you in the evening and passed through the notch by sunrise and was seen no more. Not a soul would ask. Who was he? Whither did the wanderer go. But I cannot die till I have achieved my destiny. Then let death come, I shall have built my monument. Then let death come, I shall have built my monument. There was a continual flow of natural emotion gushing forth amid abstracted reverie, which enabled the family to understand this young man's sentiments, though so foreign from their own. With quick sensibility of the ludicrous, he blushed at the ardor into which he had been betrayed. You laugh at me, said he, taking the eldest daughter's hand and laughing himself. You think my ambition as nonsensical, as if I were to freeze myself to death on the top of Mount Washington, only that people might spy at me from the country round about.
Speaker 2:And truly that would be a noble pedestal for a man's statue it is better to sit here by this fire answered the girl blushing and be comfortable and contented, though nobody thinks about us and if my mind had been turned that way, I might have felt just the same.
Speaker 1:It is strange, wife, how this talk has set my head running on things that are pretty certain never to come to pass.
Speaker 3:Perhaps they may observed the wife.
Speaker 2:Is the man thinking what he would do when he is a widower?
Speaker 1:No, no, cried he, repelling the idea with reproachful kindness. When I think of your death, esther, I think of mine too, but I was wishing we had a good farm in Bartlett or Bethlehem or Littleton or some other township round the White Mountains, but not where they could tumble on our heads. I should want to stand well with my neighbors and be called squire and sent to the general court for a term or two, for a plain, honest man may do as much good there as a lawyer. And when I should be grown quite an old man and you an old woman, so as not to be long apart, I might die happy enough in my bed and leave you all crying around me.
Speaker 1:A slate gravestone would suit me as well as a marble one. Me, a slate gravestone would suit me as well as a marble one with just my name and age and a verse of a hymn and something to let people know that I lived an honest man and died a Christian. There. Now explained the stranger. It is our nature to desire a monument, be it slate or marble or pillar of granite, or glorious memory in the universal heart of man.
Speaker 1:We're in a strange way tonight said the wife with tears in her eyes.
Speaker 2:They say it's a sign of something when folks' minds go a-wondering. So hark to the children.
Speaker 1:They listened accordingly. The younger children had been put to bed in another room, but with an open door between, so they could be heard talking busily among themselves. One and all seemed to have caught the infection from the fireside circle and were out vying each other's wild wishes and childish projects of what they would do when they came to be men and women.
Speaker 2:At length, a little boy, instead of addressing his brothers and sisters, called out to his mother I'll tell you what I wish mother "'I want you and father and grandmum and all of us the stranger too "'to start right away and go and take a drink out of the basin of the flume'".
Speaker 1:Nobody could help laughing at the child's notion of leaving a warm bed and dragging them from a cheerful fire to visit the basin of the flume, a brook which tumbles over the precipice and deep within the notch. The boy had hardly spoken when a wagon rattled along the road and stopped a moment before the door. It appeared to contain two or three men who were cheering their hearts with the rough chorus of a song which resounded in broken notes between the cliffs, whilst the singers hesitated whether to continue their journey or put up here for the night.
Speaker 2:Father said the girl they are calling you by name.
Speaker 1:But the good man doubted whether they had really caught him and was unwilling to show himself too salacious of game by inviting people to patronize his house his house. He therefore did not hurry to the door and, the lash being soon applied, the travelers plunged into the notch, still singing and laughing, though their music and mirth came back drearily from the heart of the mountain their mother cried the boy again they have given us a ride to the flume again they laughed at the child's pernicious, pertinacious fancy for a night ramble.
Speaker 1:But it happened that a light cloud passed over the daughter's spirit. She looked gravely into the fire and drew a breath that was almost a sigh. It forced its way in spite of a little struggle to repress it. Then, starting and blushing, she looked quickly around the circle, as if they had caught a glimpse into her bosom. The stranger asked what she had been thinking of. Nothing she answered she with a downcast smile.
Speaker 2:Only I felt lonesome just then. Oh, I have always had a gift of feeling what is in other people's hearts.
Speaker 1:Oh, oh. I have always had a gift of feeling what is in other people's hearts, of feeling what is in other people's hearts, said he half seriously. Shall I tell the secrets of yours, for I know what to think when a young girl shivers by a warm hearth and complains of lonesomeness at her mother's side. Shall I put these feelings into words?
Speaker 2:They would not be a girl's feelings any longer if they could be put into words replied the mountain nymph, laughing but avoiding his eye.
Speaker 1:All this was set apart. Perhaps a germ of love was springing in their hearts, so pure that it might blossom in paradise, since it could not be matured on earth. For women worship such gentle dignity as his, and the proud, contemplative yet kindly soul is often captivated by a simplicity like hers. But while they spoke softly and he was watching the happy sadness, but while they spoke softly and he was watching the happy sadness, the lightsome shadows, the shy yearnings of a maiden's nature, the wind through the notch took a deeper. Who, in old Indian times, had their dwelling among these mountains and made their heights and recesses a sacred region.
Speaker 1:There was a wail along the road, as if a funeral were passing. To chase away the gloom, the family threw pine branches on the fire till the dry leaves crackled and the flame arose, discovering once again a scene of peace and humble happiness. The light hovered about them fondly and caressed them all. There were little faces of children peeping from their bed apart and here, the father's frame of strength, a mother's subdued and careful mane, the high-browed youth, the budding girl and the good old grand-ma'am, grandum, still knitting in the warmest place. The aged woman looked up from her task and, with fingers ever busy, was the next to speak ever busy was the next to speak.
Speaker 3:Old folks have their notions, she said, as well as young ones. You've been wishing and planning and letting your heads run on one thing and another. Do you set my mind a-wandering too? Now, what should an old woman wish for when she can go but a step or two before she comes to her grave children? It will haunt me night and day I tell you what is it mother?
Speaker 2:what is it mother?
Speaker 1:cried the husband and wife at once, then the old woman, with an air of mystery which drew the circle closer around the fire, finer sort than she had worn since her wedding day. But this evening an old superstition had strangely recurred to her. It used to be said in her younger days that if anything were amiss with a corpse, if only the ruff were not smooth or the cap did not set right the corpse in the coffin and beneath the clods would strive to put up its cold hands and arrange it. The bare thought made her nervous.
Speaker 2:Don't talk so, grandmother said the girl shuddering.
Speaker 1:Now continued the old woman with a singular earnestness, yet smiling strangely at her own folly.
Speaker 3:I want one of you, my children, when your mother is dressed and in the coffin, I want one of you to hold a looking-glass over my face. Who knows, but I may take a glimpse at myself and see whether it's all right.
Speaker 1:Old and young. We dream of graves and monuments, murmured the stranger youth. I wonder how mariners feel when the ship is sinking and they unknown and undist her hearers that a sound abroad in the night, rising like the roar of a blast, had grown broad, deep and terrible. Before the fainted group were conscious of it, the house and all within it trembled. The foundations of the earth seemed to be shaken, as if this awful sound were the peal of the last trump. Young and old exchanged one wild glance and remained an instant, pale, affrighted, without utterance or power to move. Then came the shriek burst simultaneously from all their lips. The slide.
Speaker 2:The slide.
Speaker 1:The simplest words must be intimate but do not portray the unutterable horror of the catastrophe. The victims rushed from their cottage and sought refuge in what they deemed a safer spot where, in contemplation of such an emergency, a sort of barrier had been reared. Alas, they had quitted their security and fled right into the pathway of destruction. Down came the whole side of the mountain in a cataract of ruin. Just before it reached the house, the stream broke into two branches, shivered not a window there, but overwhelmed the whole vicinity, blocked up the road and annihilated everything in its dreadful course. Long ere the thunder of the great slide had ceased to roar among the mountains. The mortal agony had been endured and the victims were at peace. Their bodies were never found.
Speaker 1:The next morning, the light smoke was seen stealing from the cottage chimney up the mountainside. Within, the fire was yet smoldering on the hearth. Within, the fire was yet smoldering on the hearth, and the chairs in a circle round it, as if the inhabitants had but gone forth to view the devastation of the slide and would shortly return to thank heaven for their miraculous escape. All had left separate tokens. All had left separate tokens by which those who had known the family were made to shed a tear for each who was not, who has not heard their name. The story has been told far and wide and will forever be a legend of these mountains. Poets have sung their fate.
Speaker 1:There were circumstances which led some to suppose that a stranger had been received into the cottage on this awful night and had shared the catastrophe of all its inmates. Others denied that there were sufficient grounds for such a conjecture. His dream of earthly immortality. His name and person, utterly unknown. His history, his way of life, his plans? A mystery never to be solved. His death and his existence? Equally a doubt. Whose was the agony of that death moment? This has been the Ambitious Guest by Nathaniel Hawthorne. You've been listening to Ron Reed's Another Boring Book. Thank you for listening.