The Gold-Bug
contributor: Eric Lease Morgan (Infomotions, Inc.)
creator: Poe, Edgar Allen
date: 0000-00-00
extent: 81274
format: text/plain
language: en
publisher: Eris Etext Project
rights: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/GPL/2.0/
source: 39
subject: jupiter
subject: legrand
subject: massa
subject: skull
subject: bug
subject: gold
subject: edgar
subject: allan
subject: poe
subject: fellow
subject: dancing
subject: mad
subject: allen
subject: american
subject: literature
type: text
local mirror: poe-gold-683.txt
concordance: http://infomotions.com/alex/cgi-bin/concordance.pl
plain html: poe-gold-683.htm
sort title: Gold-Bug, The
full text: 1843 THE GOLD-BUG by Edgar Allan Poe THE GOLD-BUG What ho! what ho! this fellow is dancing mad! He hath been bitten by the Tarantula. All in the Wrong. MANY years ago, I contracted an intimacy with a Mr. William Legrand. He was of an ancient Huguenot family, and had once been wealthy; but a series of misfortunes had reduced him to want. To avoid the mortification consequent upon his disasters, he left New Orleans, the city of his forefathers, and took up his residence at Sullivan's Island, near Charleston, South Carolina. This Island is a very singular one. It consists of little else than the sea sand, and is about three miles long. Its breadth at no point exceeds a quarter of a mile. It is separated from the main land by a scarcely perceptible creek, oozing its way through a wilderness of reeds and slime, a favorite resort of the marsh-hen. The vegetation, as might be supposed, is scant, or at least dwarfish. No trees of any magnitude are to be seen. Near the western extremity, where Fort Moultrie stands, and where are some miserable frame buildings, tenanted, during summer, by the fugitives from Charleston dust and fever, may be found, indeed, the bristly palmetto; but the whole island, with the exception of this western point, and a line of hard, white beach on the seacoast, is covered with a dense undergrowth of the sweet myrtle, so much prized by the horticulturists of England. The shrub here often attains the height of fifteen or twenty feet, and forms an almost impenetrable coppice, burthening the air with its fragrance. In the inmost recesses of this coppice, not far from the eastern or more remote end of the island, Legrand had built himself a small hut, which he occupied when I first, by mere accident, made his acquaintance. This soon ripened into friendship --for there was much in the recluse to excite interest and esteem. I found him well educated, with unusual powers of mind, but infected with misanthropy, and subject to perverse moods of alternate enth…