Join Host Bree Carlile as she reads the thirteenth chapter of Frankenstein by Mary Shelley.

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Take a look and a book and let's see what we can find.

Take a chapter by chapter one fight at a time So many adventures and mountains we can climb Take it word for word, line by line we fight at a time.

Video welcome to Bite.

At a Time Books, where we read you your favorite classics one byte at a time.

My name is Brie Carlyle and I love to read and wanted to share.

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Be continuing Frankenstein by Mary Shelley.

Chapter 13 I now hastened to the more moving part of my story.

I shall relate events that impressed me with feelings which, from what I had been, have made me what I am.

Spring advanced rapidly, the weather became fine and the skies cloudless.

It surprised me that what before was desert and gloomy should now bloom with the most beautiful flowers and verdure.

My scenes were gratified and refreshed by a thousand scents of delight and a thousand sights of beauty.

It was on one of these days when my cottagers periodically rested from labor.

The old man played on his guitar, and the children listened to him.

That I observed the countenance of Felix was melancholy beyond expression.

He sighed frequently, and once his father paused in his music, and I conjectured by his manner that he inquired the cause of his son's sorrow.

Felix replied in a cheerful accent, and the old man was recommencing his music when someone tapped at the door.

It was a lady on horseback, accompanied by a country man as a guide.

The lady was dressed in a dark suit and covered with a thick black veil.

Agatha asked a question to which the stranger only replied by pronouncing in a sweet accent the name of Felix.

Her voice was musical, but unlike that of either of my friends.

On hearing this word, Felix came up hastily to the lady, who, when she saw him through a purvail and I beheld accountants of angelic beauty and expression.

Her hair of a shining raven, black and curiously braided.

Her eyes were dark but gentle, although animated, her features of a regular proportion, and her complexion wondrously fair, each cheek tinged with a lovely pink.

Felix seemed ravished with delight when he saw her.

Every trait of sorrow vanished from his face, and it instantly expressed a degree of ecstatic joy of which I could hardly have believed it capable.

His eyes sparkled as his cheek flushed with pleasure, and at that moment I thought him as beautiful as a stranger.

She appeared affected by different feelings.

Wiping a few tears from her lovely eyes, she held out her hand to Felix, who kissed it rapturously and called her, as well as I could distinguish, his sweet Arabian.

She did not appear to understand him, but smiled.

He assisted her to dismount, and, dismissing her guide, conducted her into the cottage.

Some conversation took place between him and his father, and the young stranger knelt at the old man's feet and would have kissed his hand, but he raised her and embraced her affectionately.

I soon perceived that although the stranger uttered articulate sounds and appeared to have a language of her own, she was neither understood by nor herself understood the cottagers.

They made many signs which I did not comprehend, but I saw that her presence diffused gladness through the cottage, dispelling their sorrow as the sun dissipates the morning mists.

Felix seemed peculiarly happy, and with smiles of delight welcomed his Arabian, Agatha.

The ever gentle Agatha kissed the hands of the lovely stranger, and pointing to her brother, made signs which appeared to me to mean that he had been sorrowful until she came.

Some hours passed thus while they by their countenances expressed joy, the cause of which I did not comprehend.

Presently I found by the frequent recurrence of some sound which the stranger repeated after them, that she was endeavoring to learn their language.

And the idea instantly occurred to me that I should make use of the same instructions to the same end.

A stranger learned about 20 words at the first lesson.

Most of them, indeed, were those which I had before understood, but I profited by the others.

As night came on, Agatha and the Arabian retired early.

When they separated, Felix kissed the hand of the stranger and said, Good night, sweet safety.

He sat up much longer, conversing with his father, and by the frequent repetition of her name I conjectured that their lovely guest was the subject of their conversation.

I ardently desired to understand them, and been every faculty towards that purpose, but found it utterly impossible.

The next morning Felix went out to his work, and after the usual occupations of Agatha were finished.

The Arabian sat at the feet of the old man and taking his guitar, played some airs so entrancingly beautiful that they at once drew tears of sorrow and delight from my eyes she sang, and her voice flowed in a rich cadence, swelling or dying away like a nightingale in the woods.

When she had finished, she gave the guitar to Agatha, who at first declined it.

She played a simple air, and her voice accompanied it in sweet accents.

But unlike the wondrous strain of the stranger, the old man appeared enraptured and said some words which Agatha endeavored to explain to Safety, and by which he appeared to wish to express that she bestowed on him the greatest delight by her music.

The days now passed as peaceably as before, with the sole alteration that joy had taken place of sadness in the countenances of my friends.

Safety was always gay and happy.

She and I improved rapidly in the knowledge of language, so that in two months I began to comprehend most of the words uttered by my protectors.

In the meanwhile.

Also the black ground was covered with herbage, and the green banks interspersed with innumerable flowers, sweet to the scent and the eyes.

Stars of pale radiance among the moonlight woods.

The sun became warmer, the nights clear and balmy, and my nocturnal rambles were an extreme pleasure to me, although they were considerably shortened by the late setting and early rising of the sun, for I never ventured abroad during daylight, fearful of meeting with the same treatment I had formerly endured in the first village which I entered.

My days were spent in close attention that I might more speedily master the language, and I may boast that I improved more rapidly than the Arabian, who understood very little and conversed in broken accents, whilst I comprehended and could imitate almost every word that was spoken.

While I improved in speech, I also learned the science of letters, as it was taught to the stranger, and this opened before me a wide field for wonder and delight.

The book from which Felix instructed safety was Vulner's ruins of empires.

I should not have understood the purport of this book had not Felix, and reading it given very minute explanations.

He had chosen.

This work, he said, because of the declamatory style, was framed in imitation of the Eastern authors.

Through this work I obtained a cursory knowledge of History and a view of the several Empires at present existing in the world.

It gave me an insight into the Manners, Governments and Religions of the different nations of the Earth.

I heard of the slothful Asiatics, of the stupendous genius and mental Activity of the Grecians of the wars and wonderful virtue of the early Romans of their subsequent Degenerating of the decline of that mighty Empire of Chivalry, Christianity and kings.

I heard of the discovery of the American Hemisphere and wept with Safety over the hapless fate of its original inhabitants.

These wonderful narrations inspired me with strange feelings.

Was man indeed at once so powerful, so virtuous and magnificent, yet so vicious and base?

He appeared at one time a mere scion of the evil principle.

And at another, as all that can be conceived of noble and Godlike to be a great and virtuous man appeared the highest honor that can befall a sensitive being, to be base and vicious as many on record have been, appeared the lowest degradation a condition more abject than that of the blind mole or harmless worm.

For a long time I could not conceive how one man could go forth to murder his fellow or even why there were laws and governments.

But when I heard the details of vice and bloodshed my wonder ceased and I turned away with disgust and loathing.

Every conversation of the cottagers now opened new wonders to me.

While I listened to the instructions which Felix bestowed upon the Arabian the strange system of human society was explained to me.

I heard of the division of property of immense wealth and swallid poverty, of rank, dissent and noble blood.

The words induced me to turn towards myself.

I learned that the possessions most esteemed by your fellow creatures were high and unsullied descent united with riches.

A man might be respected with only one of these advantages but without either he was considered, except in very rare instances, as a vagabond and a slave doomed to waste his powers for the profits of the chosen few.

And what was I?

My creation and creator.

I was absolutely ignorant but I knew that I possessed no money, no friends, no kind of property.

I was, besides, endued with a figure hideously deformed and loathed.

Some I was not even of the same nature as man.

I was more agile than they and could subsist upon coarser diet.

I bore the extremes of heat and cold with less injury to my frame.

My stature far exceeded theirs.

When I looked around, I saw and heard of none like me.

Was I then?

A monster.

A blot upon the earth from which all men fled and whom all men disowned?

I could not describe to you the agony that these reflections inflicted upon me.

I tried to dispel them, but sorrow only increased with knowledge.

Oh, that I had forever remained in my native wood nor known nor felt beyond the sensations of hunger, thirst and heat.

What a strange nature is knowledge.

It clings to the mind when it has once seized on it like a lichen on the rock.

I wished sometimes to shake off all thought and feeling but I learned that there was but one means to overcome the sensation of pain and that was death.

A state which I feared yet did not understand.

I admired virtue and good feelings and loved the gentle manners and amiable qualities of my cottagers but I was shut out from intercourse with them except through means which I obtained by stealth when I was unseen and unknown and which rather increased than satisfied the desire I had of becoming one among my fellows.

The gentle words of Agatha and the animated smiles of the charming Arabian were not for me.

The mild exhortations of the old man and the lively conversations of the loved Felix were not for me miserable, unhappy wretch.

Other lessons were impressed upon me even more deeply.

I heard of the difference of sexes and the birth and growth of children how the father doted on the smiles of the infant and the lively sallies of the older child how all the life and cares of the mother were wrapped up in the precious charge how the mind of youth expanded and gained knowledge of brother.

Sister and all the various relationships which bind one human being to another in mutual bonds.

But where were my friends and relations?

No father had watched my infant days, no mother had blessed me with smiles and caresses or if they had all my past life was now a blot, a blind vacancy in which I distinguished nothing.

From my earliest remembrance I had been, as I then was, in height and proportion.

I had never yet seen a being resembling me, or who claimed any intercourse with me.

What was I?

The question again recurred, to be answered only with groans.

I will soon explain to what these feelings tended.

But allow me now to return to.

The cottagers whose story excited in me.

Such various feelings of indignation delight and wonder, but which all terminated an additional love and reverence for my protectors for so I loved, and an innocent, half painful selfdeceeved to call them.

Thank you for joining Bite at a.

Time Books today while we read a bite of one of your favorite classics.

Again, my name is Brie Carlyle and.

I hope you come back tomorrow for the next bite of Frankenstein.

Don't forget to tag us on your social media posts at Bite at a Time Books, and we hope to be able to feature you in this Saturday segment.

Check out the show notes or our website by the Time Books for the links for our show.

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