Music Welcome to snoozecast. The podcast design to help you fall asleep. Find us at snoozecast.com and if you enjoy our show, please share as with a friend. If you would like to get an email once a week with upcoming sleep stories and other news, subscribe to the snooze letter at snoozecast.com. This episode is brought to you by the hearth's cheerful glow. Tonight, we'll read a short story titled The Great Car's cheerful glow.

Tonight we'll read a short story titled The Great Carbuncle written by Nathaniel Haathorn and published in 1835. Set in the white mountains of New Hampshire, a band of eight adventurers gather together. They are each on a personal quest for the great Carbuncle, a brilliant gem, legendary, and its elusiveness. Hawthorne explores the importance of honesty, simplicity, and selflessness in the great Carbuncle. These positive characteristics are most often demonstrated by the newlywed couple during the search for the Carbuncle. They sacrifice personal gain, alter their goals, pivot their actions to assist others for the good of the group. Let's get cozy. Close your eyes. Relax your body into the softness of your bed. Now, take a few deep breaths. At nightfall, once in the olden time, on the rugged side of one of the crystal hills, a party of adventurers were refreshing themselves after a toil-sum and fruitless quest for the great Carbuncle. They had come, either, not as friends nor partners in the enterprise, but each save one youthful pair impelled by his own selfish and sautery longing for this wondrous gem. Their feeling of brotherhood, however, was strong enough to induce them to contribute a a mutual aid in building a root hot of branches,

and kindling a great fire of shattered pines that had drifted down to the headlong current of the Amonisuk River, on the lower bank of which they were to pass the night, there was but one of their number perhaps, who had become so estranged from natural sympathies by the absorbing spell of the pursuit as to acknowledge no satisfaction at the sight of human faces, in the remote and solitary region whether they had ascended. A vast extent of wilderness lay between them and the nearest settlement, while scant mile above their heads was that black verge where the hills throw off their shaggy mantle of forest trees, and either rob themselves and clouds

were tower naked into the sky. The roar of the Amanosuk would have been too awful for endurance if only a solitary man had listened while the mountain stream talked with the wind.

The adventure Terry Man had listened while the mountain stream talked with the wind. The adventurers, therefore, exchanged hospitable greetings and welcomed one another to the hut where each man was the host and all were the guests of the whole company. They spread their individual supplies of food on the flat surface of a rock, and part took of a general repast at the close of which a sentiment of good fellowship was perceptible among the party, though repressed by the idea that the renewed search for the great car-bunkle must make them strangers again in the morning. Seven men and one young woman, they warmed themselves together at the fire, which extended its bright wall along the whole front of their wigwam, as they observed the various and contrasted figures that made up the assemblage. Each man looking like a character of himself, in the steady light that flickered over him, they came mutually to the conclusion that an outer society had never met, in city or wilderness, one mountain or plain. The eldest of the group, a tall, lean, whether be in man, some 60 years of age, was clad in the skins of wild animals whose fashion of dress he did well to imitate since the deer, the wolf, and the bear had long been his most intimate companions. He was one of those ill-fated mortals whom, in their early youth, the great car-bunkel smote with a peculiar madness, and became the passionate dream of their existence. All who visited that region knew him as the seeker, and by no other name, as none could remember when he first took up the search. There went a fable in the valley of the Seiko, that for his inordinate lust after the great car-buncle, he had been condemned to wander among the mountains till the end of time, still with the same feverish hopes at sunrise, the same despair at Eve. Near this seeker sat a little elderly person, wearing a high-crowned hat, shaped somewhat like a crucible. He was from beyond the sea. A doctor cacophotal who had wilted and dried himself into a mummy by continually stooping over charcoal furnaces and inhaling unwholesome fumes during his researches and chemistry and alchemy. Another one of the adventures was Master Baud Piksnort, a weighty merchant and selector in Boston, and an elder of the famous Mr. Norton's church. His enemies had a ridiculous story that Master Pigsnaut was accustomed to spend a whole hour after prayer time every morning and evening in the following naked among enements quantity of pine tree shillings, which were the earliest silver coinage of Massachusetts. fourth forth whom we shall notice had no name that his companions knew of, and was chiefly distinguished by a sneer that always contorted his thin visage, and by a prodigious pair of spectacles which were supposed to deform and discolor the whole face of nature to this gentleman's perception. The fifth adventurer likewise lacked a name, which was the greater pity as he appeared to be a poet. He was a bright eyed man, but woefully pined, which was no more than natural, if, as some people affirmed, his ordinary diet was fog, morning mist, and a slice of the densest cloud within his reach, sauceed with moonshine whenever he could get it. Certainly, it is that the poetry which flowed from him had a smack of all these dainty's. The sixth of the party was a young man of hotty mean and sat somewhat apart from the rest, wearing his plume hat loftily among his elders, while the fire glittered on the rich embroidery of his

dress and gleamed intensely on the jeweled pommel of his sword. This was the Lord Devere,

who, when at home, was set to spend much of his time in the burial vault of his dead progenitors, rummaging their moldy coffins in search of all the earthly pride and vain glory that was hidden among dust. Lastly, there was a handsome youth in rustic garb, and by his side a blooming little person in whom a delicate shade of maiden reserve was just melting into the rich glow of a young wife's affection. Her name was Hannah, and her husband's Matthew. Two homely names, yet well enough adapted to the simple pair, who seemed strangely out of place among the whimsical fraternity whose wits had been set a gog by the great car-bunkle. beneath the shelter of one hut in the bright blaze of the same fire sat this varied group of adventurers, all so intent upon a single object that of whatever else they began to speak, their closing words were sure to be illuminated with the great garb uncle. Several related circumstances that brought them thither. One had listened to a traveler's tale of this marvelous stone in his own distant country, and had immediately been seized with such a thirst for beholding it, as could only be quenched in its intense lustre. Another, so long ago as when the famous captain Smith visited these coasts, had seen it blazing far at sea, and had felt no rest in all the intervening years till now that he took up the search. A third, being camped on a hunting expedition full forty miles south of the White Mountains, a walk at midnight, and beheld the great Carbuncle, gleaming like a, so that the shadows of the trees fell backward from it. They spoke of the innumerable attempts which had been made to reach the spot, and of the singular fatality which had hitherto withheld success from all adventures. it might seem so easy to follow to its source a light that overpowered the moon and almost matched the sun, it was observable that each smiled scornfully at the madness of every other in anticipating better fortune than the past, yet nourished a scarcely hidden conviction that he would himself be the favorite one. In a pause of the conversation, the wearer of the prodigious spectacles looked round upon the party, making each individual in turn the object of this sneer which invariably dwelt upon his countenance. Here we are, seven wise men and one fair damsel, who, dealtless, is as wise as any great beard of the company. Here we are, I say, all bound on the same goodly enterprise. Meetings now, it were not a miss that each of us declare what he proposes to do with the great Carbuncle. Provided he have the good, hap to clutch it.

What say our friend in the bear skin? How mean you good, sir, to enjoy the prize which you have been seeking? The Lord knows how long, among the crystal hills. How enjoy it? exclaimed the aged seeker bitterly.

I hope for no enjoyment from it. That folly has passed long ago. I keep up the search for this accursed stone, because the vain ambition of my youth has become a fate upon me in old age. The pursuit alone is my strength, the energy of my soul. Having found it, I shall bear to it a certain cavern that I what of, in there, grasping it in my arms. Lie down and die, and keep it buried with me forever.

Oh, Rich, regardless of the interests of science, cried Dr. Kekaphoto with philosophic indignation, thou are not worthy to behold, even from afar off the luster of this most precious gem that ever was concocted in the laboratory of nature. Mine is the sole purpose for which a wise man may desire the possession of the great carbuncle. Immediately on obtaining it, for I have a presentment, good people, that the prize is reserved to crown my scientific reputation. And I shall return to Europe and employ my remaining years in reducing it to its first elements. A portion of the stone will I grind to impeppable powder. Other parts shall be dissolved in acids, or whatever solvents will act upon so admirable composition. And the remainder I design to melt in the crucible, or set on fire with the blowpipe. By these various methods I shall gain an accurate analysis, and finally bestow the result of my labors upon the world in a folio volume. Excellent! Quote the man with the spectacles, nor need you hesitate, learn it, sir, on account of the necessary destruction of the gem, since the perusal of your folio may teach every mother's son of us to concoct a great car-buncle of his own." But verily, said Master Ickabod Pigsnort, for my known part, I object to the making of these counterfeits, as being calculated to reduce the marketable value of the true gem. I tell ye frankly, sirs, I have an interest in keeping up the price. Here have I quitted my regular traffic, leaving my warehouse in the care of my clerks, and putting my credit to

great hazard. Now think ye that I would have done this grievous wrong to my soul, body, reputation, and estate without a reasonable chance of profit. Not high, pious master pig snort, said the man with the spectacles, and I never lead

such a great folly to thy charge. "'Truly I hope not,' said the merchant. "'Now as touching this great car-buncle, I am free to own that I have never had a glimpse of it. But be it only the hundredth part so bright as

people tell, it will surely outvalue the great mogul's best diamond, which he holds at an incalculable sum. Therefore, I am minded to put the great carbuncle on shipboard and and voyage with it to England, France, Spain, Italy, or into Heathendom. If Providence should send me Thither, and in a word dispose of the gem to the best bitter among the potentiates of the earth, that he may place it among his crown jewels. any of ye have a wiser plan, let him expound it. That have I, thou sordid man, exclaimed the poet, dost thou desire nothing brighter than gold that thou wouldst transmute all this ethereal luster into such dross as thou wallowest in already. For myself, hiding the jewel under my cloak, I shall hide me back to my attic chamber in one of the darksome alleys of London. There, night and day will I gaze upon it. My soul shall drink its radiance. It shall be diffused throughout my intellectual powers and gleam brightly in every line of poetry that I indict. Thus, long ages after I am gone, the splendor of the great Carbuncle will blaze around my name.

Well... long ages after I am gone, the splendor of the great car-buncle will blaze around my name. Well-set, Master Poet, cried he of the spectacles, hide it under thy cloak, sayest thou, why, it will gleam through the holes and make thee look like a jackal lantern. to think,' said the Lord Devere, rather to himself than his companions, the best of whom he had held utterly unworthy of his intercourse. To think that a fellow in a tattered cloak should talk of conveying the great car-buncle to a garret and grub-street. Have not I resolved within myself that the whole earth contains no fitter ornament for the great hall of my ancestral castle? There shall it flame for ages, making a noon day of midnight, glittering on the suits of armor, the banners, that hang around the wall and keeping bright the memory of heroes, and never on the diadem of the white mountains did the great Carbuncle hold place, half so honored as is reserved for it in the hall of the de Viers. It is a noble thought, said the cynic, with an obsequious snare, yet might I presume to say so that the gem would make a rare sepulchro lamp, and would display the glories of your Lordships' progenitors more truly in the ancestral vault than the castle hall.

Nay, for sooth observed Matthew, the young rustic, who sat hand in hand with his bride. The gentleman has bethought himself of a profitable use for the bright stone. Hannah here and I are seeking

it for a like purpose. How fellow exclaimed his lordship in surprise what castle hall has thou to hang it in? castle replied Matthew, but as need to cottage as any within sight of the crystal hills. He must know friends that Hannah and I, being wedded the last week, have taken up the search of the great car-buncle, because we shall need its light in long winter evenings, And it will be such a pretty thing to show the neighbors when they visit us. It will shine through the house so that we may pick up a pin in any corner and will set all the windows of glowing as if there were a great fire of pine knots in the chimney. And then how pleasant when we awaken the night to be able to see one another's faces. There was a general smile among the adventurers at the simplicity of the young couple's project in regard to this wondrous and invaluable stone with which the greatest monarch on earth might have been proud to adorn his palace. The great car-buncle answered the cynic with an effable scorn, why, I have come three thousand miles and in resolve to set my foot on every peak of these mountains and poke my head into every chasm for the sole purpose of demonstrating to the satisfaction of any man one went less and asked the nice self that the great carbuncle is all humbug. As the cynic spoke, several of the party were startled by a gleam of red splendor that showed the huge shapes of the surrounding mountains and the rockbed of the turbulent river with an illumination unlike that of their fire on the trunks and black boughs of the forest trees. They listened for the role of thunder, but heard nothing and were glad that the tempest came not near them.

The stars, those dial points of heaven, now mourned the adventures to close their eyes on the blazing logs and open them in dreams to the glow of the great car-buncle. The young couple had taken their lodgings in the farthest corner of the wigwam and were separated from the rest of the party by a curtain of curiously woven twigs, such as might f-hung in deep festoons around the bridle-bower of Eve. The modest little wife had wrought this piece of tapestry while the other guests were talking. She and her husband fell asleep with hands tenderly clasped and awoke from visions of unearthly radiance to meet the more blessed light of one another's eyes. They awoke at the same instant, and with one happy smile beaming over their two phases, which grew brighter with their consciousness of the reality of life and love. But no sooner did she recollect where they were, than the bride peeped through the interstices of the leafy curtain, and saw that the outer room of the hut was deserted. Up to your Matthew, cried she, in haste, the strange folk are all gone, up this very minute, when we shall lose the great car-buncle. In truth, so little did these poor young people deserve the mighty prize which had learned them them to there, that they had slept peacefully all night, until the summits of the hills were glittering with sunshine, while the other adventurers had tossed their limbs in feverish wakefulness, or dreamed of climbing precipices, and set off to realize their dreams with the earliest peep of dawn.

But Matthew and Hanna, after their calm rest, were as light as two young deer, and merely stopped to wash themselves in a cold pool of the Amanosuk, and then to taste a morsel of food, air they turned their faces to the mountain side. After several little accidents such as a torn robe, a lost shoe, and the entanglement of Hannah's hair, in a bow, they reached the upper verge of the forest and were now to pursue a more adventurous course. The innumerable trunks and heavy foliage of the trees had hither too shut in their thoughts, which now shrank a frightened from the region of wind and clouds, and naked rocks and desolate sunshine that rose and measurably above them. They gazed back at the obscure wilderness which they had traversed, and longed to be buried again in its depths rather than trust themselves to so vast and visible a solitude. Shall we go on?" said Matthew, throwing his arm round Hannah's waist, both the protector and to comfort his heart by drawing her close to it. Let us climb a little higher, whispered she, yet tremulously as she turned her face upward to the lonely sky. And upward, accordingly, went the pilgrims of the great car-buncle, now treading upon the tops, thickly interwoven branches of dwarf pines, which by the growth of centuries, though mossy with age had barely reached three feet in altitude. Next, they came to masses and fragments of naked rock heaped confusingly together, like caron reared by giants in memory of a giant chief. In this bleak realm of upper air, nothing breathed, nothing grew. There was no life, but what was concentrated in their two hearts. They had climbed so high that nature herself seemed no longer to keep them company. She lingered beneath them within the verge of the forest trees and sent a farewell glance after her children as they strayed where her own green footprints had never been. But soon they were to be hidden from her eye. Densely and dark the mists began to gather below, casting black spots of shadow on the vast landscape, and sailing heavily to one center, as if the loftiest mountain peak had summoned a council of its kindred clouds. Finally, the vapors welded themselves as it were, into a mass, presenting the appearance of a pavement over which the wanderers might have trodden, but where they would vainly have sought an avenue to the blessed earth, which they had lost. And the lovers yearned to behold that green earth again, more intensely, alas, than beneath a clouded sky they had ever desired a glimpse of heaven. They even felt it a relief to their desolation when the mists, creeping gradually up the mountain, concealed its lonely peak, and thus annihilated, at least for them, the whole region of visible space. But they drew closely together, with a fond and melancholy gaze, dreading lest the universal cloud should snatch them from each other's sight. Still, perhaps, they would have been resolute to climb as far and as high between earth and heaven as they could find foothold. If Hannah's strength had not begun to fail, and with that, her courage also, at last, she sank down on one of the rocky steps. Dear heart, we will yet be happy there," answered Matthew. Look, in this direction, the sunshine penetrates the dismal mist. By its aid, I can direct our course to the passage of the notch. Let us go back, love, and dream no more of the great car-buncle. The sun cannot be under," said Hannah, with respondents. By this time, it must be noon. If there could ever be any sunshine here, it would come from above our heads. But look, repeated Matthew, in a somewhat altered tone. It is brightening every moment, if not sunshine, what can it be? Nor could the young bride any longer deny that

her audience was breaking through the mist and changing its dim hue to a dusky red, which continually grew more vivid as if brilliant particles were interfused with the gloom. Now also the cloud began to roll away from the mountain. While, as it heavily withdrew, one object after another started out of its impenetrable obscurity into sight, with precisely the effect of a new creation, before the indistinctness of the old chaos had been completely swallowed up. As the process went on, they saw the gleaming of water close at their feet and found themselves on the very border of a mountain lake. Deep, bright, clear, and calmly beautiful, breading from brim to brim of a basin that had been scooped out of the solid rock. A ray of glory flashed across its surface. The pilgrims looked once it should proceed, but closed their eyes with a thrill of awful admiration, to exclude the fervid splendor that glowed from the brow of a cliff impending over the enchanted lake. For the simple pair had reached that lake of mystery, and found the long sock trine of the great car-buncle. They threw their arms around each other, and trembled at their own success, for as the legends of this wondrous gem rushed thick upon their memory, they felt themselves marked out by fate, and the consciousness was fearful. Often, from childhood upward, they had seen it shining like a distant star. And now that star was throwing its intensest luster on their hearts. They seemed changed to one another's eyes. In the red brilliancy that flamed upon their cheeks, while it lent the same fire to the lake, the rocks and sky, and to the mists which had rolled back before its power. The great car-bunkel cried a peevish voice behind them. The great humbug, if you have found it, prily pointed out to me. They turned their heads, and there was the cynic. With his prodigious spectacles set carefully on his nose, staring now at the lake, now at the rocks, now at the distant masses of vapor, now right at the great car-bunkle itself, yet seemingly as unconscious of its light as if all the scattered clouds were condensed about his person. Though its radiance actually threw the shadow of the unbeliever at his own feet, as he turned his back upon the glorious jewel, he would not be convinced that there was the least glimmer there. There, said Matthew, turning the cynic round towards the illuminated cliff, take off those spectacles, and you cannot help seeing it. Now these colored spectacles proudly darkened the cynic sight, and at least as great a degree as the smoked glasses through which people glaze at an eclipse, and he was blinded. "'Math you,' said Hannah, clinging to him. "'Let us go hence,' yes, dearest,' cried Matthew. Pressing her tremulous form to his breast, we will go hence, and return to our humble cottage, the blessed sunshine and the quiet moonlight shall come through our window. We will kindle the cheerful glow of our hearth, and even tide, and be happy in its light. But never again will we desire more light than all the world may share with us. No, said the bride. For how could we live by day or sleep by night in this blaze of the great car-bunkle? Out of the hollow of their hands they drink each a draft from the lake, which presented them its waters uncontaminated by an earthly lip. Then lending their guidance to the blinded cynic, who uttered not a word, they began to descend the mountain. Yet, as they left the shore, till then untrodden of the spirit's lake, they threw a farewell glance towards the cliff, and beheld the vapors gathering in dense volumes through which the gem burned duskily, as touching the other pilgrims of the great car-buncle. The legend goes on to tell that the worshipful master Ik Ikbalak Picksnort, soon gave up the quest as a desperate speculation, and wisely resolved to betake himself again to his warehouse near the town dock in Boston. Dr. Kakafoto, the alchemist, returned to his laboratory with a fragment of granite which he ground to powder, dissolved in acids, melted in the crucible, and burned with the blowpipe, and published the result of his experiments in one of the heaviest folios of the day.

And for all these purposes, the gem itself could not have answered better than the granite.

The poet, by a somewhat similar mistake, made prize of a great piece of ice,

which he found in a sunless chasm of the mountains, and swore that it corresponded in all points with his idea of the great Carbuncle. The Lord Devere went back to his ancestral Hall where he contented himself with a wax-lighted chandelier. Matthew and his bride spent many peaceful years and were fond of telling the legend of the great Carbuncle. detail, however, towards the close of their lengthened lives,

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