'William Wilson,' by Edgar Allan Poe, Part One

01William Wilson, Part 1 Let me call myself, for the present, William Wilson.

02That is not my real name.

03That name has already been the cause of the horror, of the anger of my family.

04Have not the winds carried my name with my loss of honor to the ends of the earth?

05Am I not forever dead to the world, to its honors, to its flowers, to its golden hopes?

06And a cloud heavy and endless, does it not hang forever between my hopes and my heaven?

07Men usually become bad by degrees.

08But I let all goodness fall from me in a single moment, as if I had dropped a coat.

09From small acts of darkness I passed in one great step into the blackest evil ever known.

10Listen while I tell you of the cause that made this happen.

11Death is near, and its coming has softened my spirit.

12I desire in passing through this dark valley the understanding of other men.

13I wish them to believe that I have been in some ways in the power of forces beyond human control.

14I wish them to find for me in the story I am about to tell some small fact that proves I could only have done what I did.

15I would have them agree that what happened to me never happened to other men.

16Is it not true that no one has ever suffered as I do?

17Have I not indeed been living in a dream?

18And am I not now, dying from the horror and the unanswered question?

19The mystery of the wildest dream ever dreamed on earth.

20I am one of a family well known for their busy minds.

21As a small child I showed clearly that I too had the family character.

22As I became older it grew more powerful in me.

23For many reasons it became a cause of talk among friends.

24And the hurt it did me was great.

25I wanted people always to do things my way.

26I acted like a fool.

27I let my desires control me.

28My father and mother, weak in body and mind, could do little to hold me back.

29When their efforts failed, of course, my will grew stronger.

30And from then on my voice in the house was law.

31At an age when few children are allowed to be free, I was left to be guided by my own desires.

32I became the master of my own actions.

33I remember my first school.

34It was in a large house, about three hundred years old, in a small town in England, among a great number of big trees.

35All of the houses there were very old.

36In truth, it was a dreamlike and spirit-quieting place, that old town.

37At this moment I seemed to feel the pleasant coolness under the shade of the trees.

38I remember the sweetness of the flowers.

39I hear again with delight, I cannot explain, the deep sound of the church bell, each hour breaking the stillness of the day.

40It gives me pleasure to think about this school, as much pleasure, perhaps, as I am now able to experience.

41Deep in suffering as I am, suffering only too real.

42Perhaps no one will object if for a short time I forget my troubles and tell a little about this period.

43Moreover, the period and place are important.

44It was then and there that I first saw hanging over me the terrible promise of things to come.

45Ah, let me remember.

46The house where we boys lived and went to school was, as I have said, old and wide.

47The grounds about it were large, and there was a high wall around the outside of the whole school.

48Beyond this wall we went three times in each week, on one day to take short walks in the neighboring fields, and two times on Sunday to go to church.

49This was the one church in the village, and the head teacher of our school was also the head of the church.

50With a spirit of deep wonder and of doubt, I used to watch him there.

51This man with slow step and quiet, thoughtful face, in clothes so different and shining clean, could this be the same man who with a hard face and clothes far from clean stood ready to strike us if we did not follow the rules of the school?

52Oh, great and terrible question, beyond my small power to answer.

53I well remember our playground, which was behind the house.

54There were no trees, and the ground was as hard as stone.

55In front of the house there was a small garden, but we stepped into this garden only at very special times, such as when we first arrived at school, or when we left it for the last time, or perhaps when father or mother or a friend came to take us away for a few days.

56But the house!

57What a delightful old building it was!

58To me, truly a palace!

59There was really no end to it.

60I was not always able to say certainly which of its two floors I happened to be on.

61From each room to every other there were always three or four steps either up or down.

62Then the rooms branched into each other, and these branches were too many to count, and often turned and came back upon themselves.

63Our ideas about the whole great house were not very far different from the thoughts we had about time without end.

64During the five years I was there, I could never have told anyone how to find the little room where I and some eighteen or twenty other boys slept.

65The schoolroom was the largest room in the house, and I couldn't help thinking it was the largest in the world.

66It was long and low, with pointed windows and heavy wood overhead.

67In a far corner was the office of our headteacher, Mr.

68Pransby.

69This office had a thick door, and we would rather have died than open it when he was not there.

70Inside the thick walls of this old school I passed my years from ten to fifteen.

71Yet I always found it interesting.

72A child's mind does not need the outside world.

73In the quiet school I found more bright pleasure than I found later as a young man in riches or as an older man in wrongdoing.

74Yet I must have been different indeed from most boys.

75Few men remember much of their early life.

76My early days stand out as clear and plain as if they had been cut in gold.

77In truth, the hotness of my character and my desire to lead and command soon separated me from the others.

78Slowly I gained control over all who were not greatly older than myself.

79Over all.

80Except one.

81This exception was a boy who, though not of my family, had the same name as my own.

82William Wilson.

83This boy was the only one who ever dared to say he did not believe all I told him and who would not follow my commands.

84This troubled me greatly.

85I tried to make the others think that I didn't care.

86The truth was that I felt afraid of him.

87I had to fight to appear equal with him.

88But he easily kept himself equal with me.

89Yet no one else felt, as I did, that this proved him the better of the two.

90Indeed, no one else saw the battle going on between us.

91All his attempts to stop me in what I wanted to do were made when no one else could see or hear us.

92He did not desire, as I did, to lead the other boys.

93He seemed only to want to hold me back.

94Sometimes with wonder and always without pleasure.

95I saw that his manner seemed to show a kind of love for me.

96I did not feel thankful for this.

97I thought it meant only that he thought himself to be very fine indeed, better than me.

98Perhaps it was this love he showed for me added to the fact that we had the same name and also that we had entered the school on the same day, which made people say that we were brothers.

99Wilson did not belong to my family, even very distantly.

100But if we had been brothers, we would have been near to each other indeed, for I learned that we were both born on the 19th of January, 1809.

101This seemed a strange and wonderful thing.

102I was born to be a man who was born and I was born and I was born and I was born and I was born and I was born and I was born and I was born and I was born and I was born and I was born and I was born and I was born and I was born and I was born and I was born