40 Fun Facts About The Devil and Tom Walker

In The Devil and Tom Walker, what does Tom find tied up in his missing wife's checked apron?

A heart and liver are all that remain of her, hanging in a swamp tree. Tom had scrambled up hoping to recover the valuables she carried off.

Which business does Tom Walker flatly refuse to enter, even though the devil proposes it first?

The slave trade is the one line Tom will not cross: the devil wants him to fit out a ship, and the miser says no. He happily settles for ruining borrowers as a usurer instead.

Why does Tom Walker at first turn down the devil's offer of a pirate's buried treasure?

To spite his wife, who nags him to accept, Tom refuses out of sheer contradiction. The narrator says he would not be damned just to please her.

By which folksy nickname does Tom Walker identify the devil during their first meeting in the swamp?

Old Scratch is the name Tom throws at the stranger, who answers with a half-civil nod. The devil has just listed his other titles, including grand master of the Salem witches.

After Tom Walker vanishes, what do trustees find filling his iron chest in place of his fortune?

Chips and shavings fill the chest, as if swept from the devil's woodpile. Tom's bonds and mortgages have turned to cinders, and two skeletons lie in the stable where his horses were.

What does Tom Walker feel toward the devil after learning what became of his quarrelsome wife?

Gratitude, of all things: Tom decides the devil has done him a kindness. He consoles himself for the loss of his property with the loss of his wife.

In The Devil and Tom Walker, which real pirate is said to have buried treasure under the oaks?

Captain Kidd hid his gold beneath a giant oak, the old stories say, and the devil took it under his guardianship. The narrator adds that he always does so with ill-gotten treasure.

What mark does the devil leave on Tom Walker's forehead as proof that the treasure is real?

A burnt fingerprint is the devil's signature, pressed on with a single touch. Tom later finds the dark print scorched into his skin, and nothing will rub it off.

What does Tom Walker find cut into the bark of the tall trees in the devil's swamp?

Names of leading colonists mark the trunks, one tree for each great man of the colony. A tree comes down when its owner dies, and the devil claims it.

In his fearful old age, what does Tom Walker always carry in his coat pocket?

A small Bible rides in his pocket so the devil can never catch him unprotected. A great folio copy sits on his desk too, with his green spectacles marking the page while he drives hard bargains.

In which city does Tom Walker open his counting house once the devil's bargain is struck?

Boston is where Tom sets up, a few miles from his swamp, just as hard times have left the colony short of cash. Desperate borrowers soon crowd his door.

What does the devil carry on his shoulder when Tom Walker first sees him sitting on a stump?

An axe rests on the stranger's shoulder, and the freshly felled tree Tom is sitting on shows he has been busy. He also has a red sash, wild dark hair and a pair of great red eyes.

Why is Tom Walker crossing the gloomy swamp on the evening he first meets the devil?

Taking a shortcut home puts Tom among quagmires and rotting trunks. The narrator notes dryly that, like most short cuts, it was an ill-chosen route.

Tom Walker's bargain is often compared to which German legend, later reworked by Goethe?

Faust, the scholar who sells his soul for knowledge and pleasure, is the model. Washington Irving swaps the learned doctor for a New England miser who only wants gold.

How does the aging Tom Walker try to cheat the devil out of the terms of their bargain?

Going loudly to church is his plan: Tom prays as if heaven could be taken by force of lungs. The louder his Sunday devotion, the more he has sinned that week.

What happens to Tom Walker's grand house soon after the devil carries him away?

It burns to the ground, the last of his wealth to vanish. The trustees sent to settle his estate had already found nothing left to administer.

Why, the narrator jokes, does Tom Walker feel no fear on meeting the devil?

Years with a fierce wife have hardened him, the narrator explains. Tom had lived so long with a scold that the devil himself held no terrors.

Which Washington Irving character from before Tom Walker sleeps through the American Revolution?

Rip Van Winkle dozes off in the Catskills and wakes two decades later. Irving published that tale in 1819, five years before sending Tom Walker into the swamp.

What does Tom Walker do in a flash of temper moments before three loud knocks sound at his door?

Swears a careless oath: denying he has made any profit from the man begging for mercy, Tom names the devil as his forfeit. The devil takes him at his word and is waiting outside with an impatient horse.

Which group does the narrator of The Devil and Tom Walker warn directly in the closing lines?

Money-brokers get the warning, and the narrator calls them griping ones. The tale ends as a sermon against anyone who grows rich by squeezing the desperate.

What does Tom Walker's walking staff turn up from the soil as he rests deep in the swamp?

A cloven skull turns up with a tomahawk still buried in it, a relic of old frontier wars. Tom gives it a kick, and a gruff voice orders him to leave it alone.

What does Tom Walker's wife carry into the swamp as a peace offering for the devil?

The household silver goes with her: the teapot, the spoons and every portable thing of value, bundled in her apron. Tom frets over the property at least as much as over his wife.

Whose mortgage is Tom Walker about to foreclose at the moment the devil comes for him?

A land speculator, a man Tom had professed to love as a friend, begs for a few months' grace. Tom refuses him even one more day.

The devil tells Tom Walker to lend at two percent a month; what does Tom offer to do?

Double it is Tom's instant answer: he swears he will charge four. The devil is so delighted with his pupil that the two shake hands on the bargain at once.

How does the newly rich Tom Walker treat the vast house he builds to show off his wealth?

Leaves it unfinished and unfurnished, because finishing would cost him. The narrator blames ostentation for the building and parsimony for the bare rooms.

How is Tom Walker said to have buried his saddled horse, ready to outrun the devil on the last day?

Upside down, feet uppermost: Tom reasoned the world would be turned over on the last day, leaving the horse ready to mount. The narrator calls it probably an old wives' fable.

Which real statesman defends a farmer's soul in a 1936 story inspired by Tom Walker's tale?

Daniel Webster argues the case before a jury of the damned in Stephen Vincent Benét's story. Benét drew much of his inspiration from Washington Irving's miser and his swamp devil.

In The Devil and Tom Walker, why did the pirate never come back for the gold he buried?

He was hanged as a pirate after being seized in the colony and shipped across the Atlantic. That left the gold under the oaks in the devil's keeping until Tom came along.

Washington Irving, creator of Tom Walker, was an early American writer of which literary movement?

Romanticism prized imagination, wild nature and the supernatural, all on show in Tom's haunted swamp. Irving's Gothic stories of 1819 and 1820 were among the first American works in that vein.

What does the narrator say the screeching, ungreased wheels of Tom Walker's carriage sound like?

Souls of his debtors, groaning as he squeezes them, is the narrator's comparison. Tom keeps the carriage out of vanity but grudges the grease, and he half starves the horses too.

Tom Walker's story first appeared in which 1824 Washington Irving collection, compiled in Europe?

Tales of a Traveller placed the story in its section called The Money-Diggers, among yarns of buried pirate gold. Irving compiled the book while living mainly in Germany and Paris.

The narrator sets Tom Walker's story at a time when what was prevalent in New England?

Earthquakes were shaking many tall sinners down upon their knees, the narrator quips. He dates the tale to about 1727, when Tom was known only as a meagre, miserly fellow.

Which groups does the devil enjoy seeing persecuted, as the elderly Tom Walker later urges too?

Quakers and Anabaptists are the devil's favorite victims in the swamp scene. In old age Tom talks of reviving their persecution, unknowingly echoing the devil's own hobby.

Which churchman, the devil tells Tom Walker, will be damned unless he looks to his own sins?

Deacon Peabody holds title to the swamp, or so Tom insists when the devil calls the place his own. The devil scoffs that the deacon should worry less about his neighbor's sins.

Tom Walker thrives as a usurer in the hard times of which real colonial Massachusetts governor?

Jonathan Belcher governed Massachusetts from 1730 to 1741, and the narrator recalls his day as a time when cash was scarce. Paper credit and wild schemes had left the whole country crying hard times.

Under which pen name did Washington Irving publish the 1824 book containing Tom Walker's story?

Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., was the persona Irving had been writing behind since 1819. The same imaginary gentleman's name stands on the book that holds Tom Walker's story.

By which name does the devil say he is known in Tom Walker's own neighborhood?

The Black Woodsman is his local title. Elsewhere, he tells Tom, he passes as the Wild Huntsman or the Black Miner, and he claims the woods were his long before any settlers arrived.

What does Tom Walker's ghost wear as it rides near the swamp on stormy nights?

A morning gown and white cap are what Tom had on in his counting house when the devil whisked him onto the horse. His ghost has ridden in that outfit ever since.

Which old-fashioned insult does the narrator pin on Tom Walker's tall, loud wife?

Termagant, a word for a nagging, quarrelsome woman, is the narrator's label for her. Tom's face, he adds, sometimes showed that their conflicts were not confined to words.

What is the devil casually doing when Tom Walker, now eager to deal, finds him at the swamp's edge?

Humming a tune, he pretends not to care, and keeps on humming while Tom makes his pitch. The devil had kept away for some time so that delay would sharpen Tom's eagerness.