The Devil and Tom Walker 1

NARRATOR #3: Under one of these gigantic trees, according to old stories, there was a great amount of treasure buried by Kidd the pirate. The inlet allowed a facility to bring the money in a boat secretly and at night to the very foot of the hill.

NARRATOR #1: The elevation of the place permitted a good look-out to be kept that no one was at hand.

NARRATOR #2: And the remarkable trees formed good landmarks by which the place might easily be found again.

NARRATOR #3: The old stories add, moreover, that the devil himself presided at the hiding of the money and took it under his guardianship!

NARRATOR #1: But as everyone knows, THE DEVIL AND TOM WALKER this is what he always does with buried BY WASHINGTON IRVING treasure— particularly when it has been ill gotten. CAST NARRATOR #2: As for Captain Kidd, he NARRATOR #1 One Who Narrates never returned to recover his wealth. NARRATOR #2 Another Who Narrates Shortly afterward he was seized at Boston, NARRATOR #3 Another Who Narrates sent out to England, and there hanged for a TOM WALKER Greedy New-Englander pirate. DEVIL Strange, Hairy Man (shouting of an angry mob) WIFE Tom’s Wife SPECULATOR Ruined Land Investor NARRATOR #3: About the year 1727, just about the time when earthquakes were NARRATOR #1: A few miles from Boston, prevalent in New England and shook many Massachusetts, there is a deep inlet which tall sinners down upon their knees… terminates in a thickly wooded swamp. On one side of this inlet is a beautiful dark (rumbling of earthquake) grove. NARRATOR #1: There lived near this NARRATOR #2: On the opposite side the place a meager, miserly fellow by the name land rises abruptly from the water's edge, of Tom Walker. into a high ridge on which grow a few NARRATOR #2: Tom had a wife as scattered oaks of great age and immense miserly as himself. They were so miserly size.

Copyright © 2015 Zachary Hamby Mythologyteacher.com The Devil and Tom Walker 2 that they even conspired to cheat each a tall termagant, fierce of temper, loud of other. Whatever the woman could lay tongue, and strong of arm. Her voice was hands on she hid away. often heard in wordy warfare with her husband. NARRATOR #3: A hen could not cackle but she was on the alert to secure the new- WIFE: Where have you been, you laid egg. worthless sack of nothing!

NARRATOR #1: Her husband was TOM: Leave me alone, you old shrew! continually prying about to detect her secret hoards, and many and fierce were the WIFE: I’ll teach you to talk back to me! conflicts that took place about what ought (sound of a slap) to have been common property. NARRATOR #2: And Tom’s face WIFE: And just where did you get that egg, sometimes showed signs that their conflicts Tom Walker! were not confined to words.

TOM: None of your business, woman! This NARRATOR #3: No one ventured, here egg is mine! however, to interfere between them.

NARRATOR #2: They lived in a forlorn NARRATOR #1: If a lonely wayfarer looking house that stood alone and had an happened by, he shrunk within himself air of starvation. A few straggling savin when he heard the horrid clamor and trees, emblems of sterility, grew near it. clapper-clawing from within the house. NARRATOR #3: No smoke ever curled Then he hurried on his way, rejoicing, if a from its chimney. bachelor, in his celibacy.

NARRATOR #1: No traveler stopped at its NARRATOR #2: One day that Tom Walker door. had been to a distant part of the neighborhood, he took what he considered NARRATOR #2: A miserable horse, whose a short cut homewards through the swamp. ribs were as articulate as the bars of a gridiron, stalked about a field where a thin NARRATOR #3: Like most short cuts, it carpet of moss, scarcely covering the ragged was an ill chosen route. The swamp was beds of pudding stone, tantalized and thickly grown with great gloomy pines and balked his hunger. hemlocks, some of them ninety feet high; which made it dark at noonday, and a (sad whinny of a horse) retreat for all the owls of the neighborhood.

NARRATOR #3: Sometimes he would lean (hooting of owls) his head over the fence, look piteously at the passerby, and seem to petition NARRATOR #1: It was full of pits and deliverance from this land of famine. quagmires, partly covered with weeds and mosses, where the green surface often NARRATOR #1: The house and its inmates betrayed the traveler into a gulf of black had altogether a bad name. Tom's wife was smothering mud.

NARRATOR #2: There were also dark and had a bad opinion of it from the stories stagnant pools, the abodes of the tadpole, handed down from the time of the Indian the bull-frog, and the water snake, and wars—when it was asserted that the where trunks of pines and hemlocks lay half savages held incantations here and made drowned, half rotting, looking like sacrifices to the evil spirit. alligators, sleeping in the mire. NARRATOR #2: Tom Walker, however, NARRATOR #3: Tom had long been was not a man to be troubled with any fears picking his way cautiously through this of the kind. He reposed himself for some treacherous forest; stepping from tuft to tuft time on the trunk of a fallen hemlock, of rushes and roots which afforded listening to the boding cry of the tree toad, precarious footholds among deep sloughs; and delving with his walking staff into a or pacing carefully, like a cat, along the mound of black mold at his feet. prostrate trunks of trees; startled now and then by the sudden screaming of the bittern, NARRATOR #3: As he turned up the soil or the quacking of a wild duck, rising on the unconsciously, his staff struck against wing from some solitary pool. something hard. He raked it out of the vegetable mold, and lo! a cloven skull with NARRATOR #1: At length he arrived at a an Indian tomahawk buried deep in it, lay piece of firm ground, which ran out like a before him. peninsula into the deep bosom of the swamp. It had been one of the strong holds TOM: What’s this? of the Indians during their wars with the NARRATOR #1: The rust on the weapon first colonists. showed the time that had elapsed since this NARRATOR #2: Here they had thrown up death blow had been given. It was a dreary a kind of fort which they had looked upon memento of the fierce struggle that had as almost impregnable, and had used as a taken place in this last foothold of the place of refuge for their squaws and Indian warriors. children. TOM: Humph!

NARRATOR #3: Nothing remained of the NARRATOR #2: He gave the skull a kick Indian fort but a few embankments to shake the dirt from it. A gruff voice gradually sinking to the level of the suddenly appeared in the air. surrounding earth, and already overgrown in part by oaks and other forest trees, the DEVIL: Let that skull alone! foliage of which formed a contrast to the dark pines and hemlocks of the swamp. NARRATOR #3: Tom lifted up his eyes and beheld a great black man, seated NARRATOR #1: It was late in the dusk of directly opposite him on the stump of a tree. evening that Tom Walker reached the old He was exceedingly surprised, having fort, and he paused there for a while to rest neither seen nor heard anyone approach, himself. Anyone but he would have felt and he was still more perplexed on unwilling to linger in this lonely observing, as well as the gathering gloom melancholy place, for the common people

Copyright © 2015 Zachary Hamby Mythologyteacher.com The Devil and Tom Walker 4 would permit, that the stranger was neither NARRATOR #2: On the bark of the tree negro nor Indian. was scored the name of Deacon Peabody. He now looked round and found most of NARRATOR #1: It is true, he was dressed the tall trees marked with the name of some in a rude, half Indian garb, and had a red great men of the colony, and all more or less belt or sash swathed round his body, but his scored by the axe. face was neither black nor copper color, but swarthy and dingy and begrimed with soot, NARRATOR #3: The one on which he had as if he had been accustomed to toil among been seated, and which had evidently just fires and forges. He had a shock of coarse been hewn down, bore the name of black hair that stood out from his head in all Crowninshield. directions, he bore an axe on his shoulder. TOM: Crowinshield? I recollect a mighty NARRATOR #2: He scowled for a moment rich man of that name. He made a vulgar at Tom with a pair of great red eyes and display of his wealth. It was a rumor that he spoke with a hoarse and growling voice. had acquired that money by being a pirate.

DEVIL: What are you doing in my DEVIL: He's just ready for burning! (growl grounds? of triumph) You see I am likely to have a good stock of firewood for winter. TOM: (scoffing laugh) Your grounds? They’re no more your grounds than mine! TOM: But what right do you have to cut They belong to Deacon Peabody." down Deacon Peabody's timber?

DEVIL: Deacon Peabody be danged! DEVIL: The right of prior claim! This woodland belonged to me long before one NARRATOR #3: The strange, dark man of your white faced race put foot upon the actually said something much worse, but soil." we’ll refrain from using it in mixed company. TOM: And pray, who are you, if I may be so bold? DEVIL: But I’m getting ahead of myself. Deacon Peabody will be danged if he does DEVIL: Oh, I go by various names. I am not look more to his own sins and less to his the Wild Huntsman in some countries. In neighbor’s. Look yonder, and see how others I am called the Black Miner. In this Deacon Peabody is faring. neighborhood I am known by the name of the Black Woodsman. I am he to whom the NARRATOR #1: Tom looked in the red men devoted this spot, and now and direction that the stranger pointed, and then roasted a white man by way of sweet beheld one of the great trees, fair and smelling sacrifice. Since the red men have flourishing without, but rotten at the core, been exterminated by you white savages, I and saw that it had been nearly hewn amuse myself by presiding at the through, so that the first high wind was persecutions of Quakers and Anabaptists. I likely to below it down. am the great patron and prompter of slave

TOM: The upshot of all which is—if I am TOM: What proof have I that all you have not mistaken—you are he commonly called been telling me is true? Old Scratch. DEVIL: There is my signature. DEVIL: The same at your service! NARRATOR #2: The black man pressed NARRATOR #1: Such was the opening of his finger on Tom's forehead. So saying, he this interview, according to the old story, turned off among the thickets of the swamp though it has almost too familiar an air to be and seemed to go down, down, down, into credited. One would think that to meet with the earth, until nothing but his head and such a singular personage in this wild shoulders could be seen, and so on until he lonely place would have shaken any man's totally disappeared. nerves: but Tom was a hard-minded fellow, not easily daunted, and he had lived so long TOM: Hmmm. with a termagant wife, that he did not even NARRATOR #3: When Tom reached fear the devil. home, he found the black print of a finger NARRATOR #2: It is said that after this burnt into his forehead, which nothing commencement, they had a long and could obliterate. earnest conversation together, as Tom WIFE: Where have you been? There’s been returned homewards. The black man told some news in the papers! Absalom him of great sums of money which had Crowninshield, the rich buccaneer, died been buried by Kidd the pirate, under the suddenly. The papers said it all with their oak trees on the high ridge not far from the usual flourish—“a great man has fallen in morass. Israel.”

NARRATOR #3: All these were under his TOM: Hmmm. command and protected by his power, so that none could find them but such as NARRATOR #1: Tom recollected the tree propitiated his favor. These he offered to which his black friend had just hewn down place within Tom Walker's reach, having and which was ready for burning. conceived an especial kindness for him: but they were to be had only on certain TOM: Ah. Let the freebooter roast. Who conditions. cares?

NARRATOR #1: What these conditions NARRATOR #2: He now felt convinced were may easily be surmised, though Tom that all he had heard and seen was no never disclosed them publicly. They must illusion. have been very hard, for he required time to NARRATOR #3: He was not prone to let think of them, and he was not a man to stick his wife into his confidence; but as this was at trifles where money was in view. When an uneasy secret, he willingly shared it with

Copyright © 2015 Zachary Hamby Mythologyteacher.com The Devil and Tom Walker 6 her. All her avarice was awakened at the WIFE: Nevermind. mention of hidden gold. NARRATOR #2: The next evening she set WIFE: Well, this sounds simple! You must off again for the swamp, with her apron comply with the black man’s terms! Secure heavily laden. Tom waited and waited for us enough gold to make us wealthy for life! her, but in vain.

NARRATOR #1: However Tom might NARRATOR #3: Midnight came, but she have felt disposed to sell himself to the did not make her appearance. devil, he was determined not to do so to oblige his wife. NARRATOR #1: Morning, noon, night returned, but still she did not come. Tom TOM: I’ll not do it! now grew uneasy for her safety; especially as he found she had carried off in her apron WIFE: You’ll sell your soul to the Devil—or the silver teapot and spoons and every else! portable article of value.

NARRATOR #2: Many and bitter were the NARRATOR #2: Another night elapsed, quarrels they had on the subject, but the another morning came—but no wife. In a more she talked the more resolute was Tom word, she was never heard of more. not to be sent to hell just to please her. NARRATOR #3: What was her real fate WIFE: Well, then I’ll agree to the Devil’s nobody knows. It is one of those facts that bargain! At least one of us has some sense. have become confounded by a variety of But then I’ll be keeping my gain all to historians. myself! NARRATOR #1: Some asserted that she NARRATOR #3: Being of the same fearless lost her way among the tangled mazes of temper as her husband, she set off for the the swamp and sunk into some pit or old Indian fort towards the close of a slough. summer's day. She was many hours absent. NARRATOR #2: Others, more TOM: I wonder what is keeping her. My uncharitable, hinted that she had eloped interview with the Devil didn’t take half with the household booty, and made off to this long. some other province.

NARRATOR #1: Finally she came back, NARRATOR #3: While others assert that but she was reserved and sullen in her the tempter had decoyed her into a dismal replies. quagmire on top of which her hat was WIFE: I met a black man—about twilight— found lying. hewing at the root of a tall tree. He was NARRATOR #1: In confirmation of this, it sulky though and would not come to terms was said a great black man with an axe on with me. I’m supposed to go again with an his shoulder was seen late that very evening offering next time. coming out of the swamp, carrying a bundle TOM: What kind of offering?

Copyright © 2015 Zachary Hamby Mythologyteacher.com The Devil and Tom Walker 7 tied in a check apron, with an air of surly NARRATOR #1: Such, according to the triumph. most authentic old story, was all that was to be found of Tom's wife. NARRATOR #2: The most current and probable story, however, observes that Tom TOM: She must have attempted to deal Walker grew so anxious about the fate of with the black man as she has been his wife and his property that he sat out at accustomed to deal with me. Huh. I always length to seek them both at the Indian fort. thought a female scold was generally considered a match for the devil, yet in this NARRATOR #3: During a long summer's instance she appears to have had the worst afternoon he searched about the gloomy of it. place, but no wife was to be seen. He called her name repeatedly, but she was nowhere NARRATOR #2: She must have died to be heard. fighting however; for it is said Tom noticed many prints of cloven feet deeply stamped NARRATOR #1: The bittern alone about the tree, and several handsful of hair, responded to his voice, as he flew that looked as if they had been plucked screaming by—or the bull frog croaked from the coarse black shock of the dolefully from a neighboring pool. At woodsman. Tom knew his wife's prowess length, it is said, just in the brown hour of by experience. He shrugged his shoulders twilight, when the owls began to hoot and as he looked at the signs of a fierce clapper the bats to flit about, his attention was clawing. attracted by the clamor of carrion crows that were hovering about a cypress tree. TOM: Egad! Old Scratch must have had a tough time of it! (cawing of crows) NARRATOR #3: Tom consoled himself for NARRATOR #2: He looked and beheld a the loss of his property with the loss of his bundle tied in a check apron and hanging in wife. the branches of the tree; with a great vulture perched hard by, as if keeping watch upon TOM: Well, I may have lost my property, it. He leaped with joy, for he recognized his but at least I lost my wife as well. wife's apron, and supposed it to contain the household valuables. NARRATOR #1: After all, he was a man of fortitude. He even felt something like TOM: At least I will get ahold of my gratitude towards the black woodsman, property and attempt to do without the who he considered had done him a woman. kindness.

NARRATOR #3: As he scrambled up the NARRATOR #2: He sought, therefore, to tree, the vulture spread its wide wings and cultivate a farther acquaintance with him, sailed off screaming into the deep shadows but for some time without success. of the forest. Tom seized the check apron, but, woeful sight! found nothing but a heart NARRATOR #3: The old black legs played and liver tied up in it. shy, for whatever people may think, he is not always to be had for calling for. He

NARRATOR #1: At length, it is said, when DEVIL: Go into the black trafficking. Fit delay had whetted Tom's eagerness to the out a slave ship. quick, and prepared him to agree to any thing rather than not gain the promised TOM: I absolutely refuse! treasure, he met the black man one evening DEVIL: (growling) What? in his usual woodman dress, with his axe on his shoulder, sauntering along the edge of TOM: Not even the Devil himself can the swamp, and humming a tune. tempt me to turn slave dealer!

DEVIL: (humming) Oh, hello there. You DEVIL: Well, I did not expect you to be so again? squeamish on that point. But if you insist, there is another option. TOM: Yes. I’ve come to deal. TOM: Let’s hear it. DEVIL: Deal? Whatever do you mean? (humming) DEVIL: You shall take my money and turn usurer, a moneylender. I am eager to see an TOM: You know what I mean! I’ve come to increase of usurers—they are my special make a bargain. people, you know.

NARRATOR #2: The black man affected to TOM: Hmmm. I have no objections to this. receive Tom's advance with great It is to my taste. indifference, made brief replies, and went on humming his tune. By degrees, however, DEVIL: You shall open a broker's shop in Tom brought him to business, and they Boston next month. began to haggle about the terms on which the former was to have the pirate's treasure. TOM: I'll do it to-morrow, if you wish.

DEVIL: You shall have the treasure, but DEVIL: You shall lend money at two you must understand, it is generally percent a month. understood in these situations where I grant TOM: Egad! So low? I'll charge four! favors, there is one condition that concerns your soul. NARRATOR #1: The black man raised his eyebrows, impressed by Tom’s bravado. NARRATOR #3: Tom agreed to this, but there were others conditions which, though DEVIL: You shall extort bonds! Foreclose of less importance, the black man was mortgages! Drive the merchant to inflexibly obstinate. bankruptcy—

DEVIL: Any money found by me must be TOM: (eagerly) I'll drive him to the devil! employed in my service.

DEVIL: (evil laugh) You are the merchant were left in doleful plight, and the whole for my money! When will you want the country resounded with the consequent cry rhino? of "hard times."

TOM: This very night. NARRATOR #2: At this propitious time of public distress did Tom Walker set up as a DEVIL: Done! usurer in Boston. His door was soon TOM: Done! thronged by customers.

NARRATOR #2: So they shook hands, and NARRATOR #3: The needy and the struck a bargain. A few days' time saw Tom adventurous; the gambling speculator, the Walker seated behind his desk in a counting dreaming land jobber, the thriftless house in Boston. tradesman, the merchant with cracked credit. In short, every one driven to raise NARRATOR #3: His reputation for a ready money by desperate means and desperate moneyed man, who would lend money out sacrifices, hurried to Tom Walker. for a good consideration, soon spread abroad. Everybody remembers the days of NARRATOR #1: Thus Tom was the Governor Belcher, when money was universal friend of the needy, and he acted particularly scarce. It was a time of paper like a "friend in need;" that is to say, he credit. always exacted good pay and good security. In proportion to the distress of the applicant NARRATOR #1: The country had been was the hardness of his terms. He deluged with government bills. The famous accumulated bonds and mortgages, Land Bank had been established. There had gradually squeezed his customers closer been a rage for speculating. and closer, and sent them at length, dry as a sponge from his door. NARRATOR #2: The people had run mad with schemes for new settlements, for NARRATOR #2: In this way he made building cities in the wilderness. Land money hand over hand and became a rich jobbers went about with maps of grants, and mighty man, and exalted his cocked hat and townships, and El Dorados, lying upon change. He built himself, as usual, a nobody knew where, but which everybody vast house, out of ostentation; but left the was ready to purchase. greater part of it unfinished and unfurnished out of stinginess. NARRATOR #3: In a word, the great speculating fever which breaks out every NARRATOR #3: He even set up a carriage now and then in the country, had raged to in the fullness of his vain glory, though he an alarming degree, and everybody was nearly starved the horses which drew it; dreaming of making sudden fortunes from and as the ungreased wheels groaned and nothing. screeched on the axle trees, you would have thought you heard the souls of the poor NARRATOR #1: As usual the fever had debtors he was squeezing. subsided; the dream had gone off, and the imaginary fortunes with it. The patients

NARRATOR #1: As Tom waxed old, people called on business. On such however, he grew thoughtful. Having occasions he would lay his green spectacles secured the good things of this world, he on the book, to mark the place, while he began to feel anxious about those of the turned round to drive some usurious next. bargain.

NARRATOR #2: He thought with regret on NARRATOR #2: Some say that Tom grew the bargain he had made with his black a little crack brained in his old days, and friend, and set his wits to work to cheat him that fancying his end approaching, he had out of the conditions. He became, therefore, his horse new shod, saddled and bridled, all of a sudden, a violent church goer. and buried with his feet uppermost because he supposed that at the last day the world NARRATOR #3: He prayed loudly and would be turned upside down. In which strenuously as if heaven were to be taken by case he should find his horse standing force of lungs. Indeed, one might always tell ready for mounting, and he was determined when he had sinned most during the week, at the worst to give his old friend a run for by the clamor of his Sunday devotion. The it. quiet Christians who had been modestly and steadfastly travelling Zionward, were NARRATOR #3: This, however, is struck with self-reproach at seeing probably a mere old wives fable. If he really themselves so suddenly outstripped in their did take such a precaution it was totally career by this new-made convert. superfluous; at least so says the authentic old legend which closes his story in the NARRATOR #1: Tom was as rigid in following manner. religious, as in money matters; he was a stern supervisor and censurer of his NARRATOR #1: On one hot afternoon in neighbors, and seemed to think every sin the dog days, just as a terrible black entered up to their account became a credit thundergust was coming up, Tom sat in his on his own side of the page. counting house in his white linen cap and India silk morning gown. NARRATOR #2: He even talked of the expediency of reviving the persecution of NARRATOR #2: He was on the point of Quakers and Anabaptists. In a word, Tom's foreclosing a mortgage, by which he would zeal became as notorious as his riches. complete the ruin of an unlucky land speculator for whom he had professed the NARRATOR #3: Still, in spite of all this greatest friendship. strenuous attention to forms, Tom had a lurking dread that the devil, after all, would SPECULATOR: Please, Tom! Grant me a have his due. That he might not be taken few more months on my debt! unawares, therefore, it is said he always carried a small Bible in his coat pocket. TOM: No! I refuse you to keep this debt to me a day longer! NARRATOR #1: He had also a great folio Bible on his counting house desk, and would frequently be found reading it when

SPECULATOR: My family will be ruined NARRATOR #2: The clerks stuck their and will depend upon the charity of the pens behind their ears and stared after him church! from the windows. Away went Tom Walker, dashing down the streets; his white TOM: Charity begins at home! I must take cap bobbing up and down; his morning care of myself in these hard times." gown fluttering in the wind, and his steed SPECULATOR: You have made so much striking fire out of the pavement at every money out of me! bound. When the clerks turned to look for the black man he had disappeared. NARRATOR #3: Tom lost his patience and his piety. NARRATOR #3: Tom Walker never returned to foreclose the mortgage. A TOM: The devil take me if I have made a countryman who lived on the borders of the farthing off you! swamp, reported that in the height of the thunder gust he had heard a great clattering NARRATOR #1: Just then there were three of hoofs and a howling along the road, and loud knocks at the street door. that when he ran to the window he just caught sight of a figure, such as I have (three loud knocks) described, on a horse that galloped like mad TOM: That’s odd! Who could that be? across the fields, over the hills and down into the black hemlock swamp towards the NARRATOR #2: Tom stepped out to see old Indian fort; and that shortly after a who was there. A black man was holding a thunderbolt fell in that direction which black horse which neighed and stamped seemed to set the whole forest in a blaze. with impatience. NARRATOR #1: The good people of DEVIL: Tom, you're come for! Boston shook their heads and shrugged their shoulders, but had been so much TOM: I—I—I… accustomed to witches and goblins and NARRATOR #3: Tom shrunk back, but too tricks of the devil in all kinds of shapes late. He had left his little Bible at the bottom from the first settlement of the colony, that of his coat pocket, and his big bible on the they were not so much horror struck as desk buried under the mortgage he was might have been expected. about to foreclose: Never was a sinner taken NARRATOR #2: Trustees were appointed more unawares. to take charge of Tom's effects. There was DEVIL: (loud laughter) nothing, however, to administer upon. On searching his coffers all his bonds and NARRATOR #1: The black man whisked mortgages were found reduced to cinders. him like a child astride the horse and away he galloped in the midst of a thunder storm. NARRATOR #3: In place of gold and silver his iron chest was filled with chips and (thunder and horsehooves) shavings; two skeletons lay in his stable instead of his half-starved horses, and the

Copyright © 2015 Zachary Hamby Mythologyteacher.com The Devil and Tom Walker 12 very next day his great house took fire and (or other evil, supernatural entity) in was burnt to the ground. exchange for something.

NARRATOR #1: Such was the end of Tom Walker and his ill-gotten wealth. Let all griping money brokers lay this story to heart. The truth of it is not to be doubted.

NARRATOR #2: The very hole under the oak trees, from whence he dug Kidd's money is to be seen to this day; and the neighboring swamp and old Indian fort is often haunted in stormy nights by a figure on horseback, in a morning gown and white cap, which is doubtless the troubled spirit of the usurer.

NARRATOR #3: In fact, the story has resolved itself into a proverb, and is the origin of that popular saying, prevalent throughout New-England of "The Devil and Tom Walker."

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. What are some clues that Washington Irving intended this story to be humorous? 2. What are some examples of social commentary in this story? 3. Is the Devil (or “Old Scratch”) painted in a serious or silly light? Explain. 4. What is the moral of this tale and other deals-with-the-devil stories? Explain. 5. A Faustian tale is a story in which a character makes a deal with the Devil. In the medieval legend of Faust, the titular doctor sold his soul to the Devil in exchange for unlimited knowledge. Is knowledge a nobler goal than money? Explain. 6. Write your own Faustian tale, where a character makes a deal with the Devil