 |
unearths some literary gems.
From Septimus, by William J. Locke:
***She would plunge into the great swelling sea of Life. She would drink sunshine and fill her soul with laughter. She would do a million hyperbolic things, the mention of which mightily confused her mother.***"Why should you be happier if I took care of your money?""I shouldn't spend it. I might meet a man who wanted to sell me a gas-engine.""But you needn't buy it.""These fellows are so persuasive, you see. At Rotterdam last year, a man made me buy a second-hand dentist's chair.""Are you a dentist?" asked Zora."Lord, no! If I were I could have used the horrible chair.""What did you do with it?""I had it packed up and despatched, carriage paid, to an imaginary person at Singapore."He made this announcement in his tired, gentle manner, without the flicker of a smile. He added, reflectively—"That sort of thing becomes expensive. Don't you find it so?""I would defy anybody to sell me a thing I didn't want," she replied."Ah, that," said he with a glance of wistful admiration, "that is because you have red hair."[...]"What has my red hair to do with it?" she asked pleasantly."It was a red-haired man who sold me the dentist's chair."***"Why are you called Septimus?""I'm the seventh son. All the others died young. I never could make out why I didn't.""Perhaps," said Zora with a laugh, "you were thinking of something else at the time and lost the opportunity."***"Some fellows have a gift for collecting Toby jugs. Everywhere they go they discover a Toby jug. I couldn't find one if I tried for a year."***"I feel as if I had been talking to a typhoon," said Septimus.[N.B. He really means a (metaphorical) typhoon--it's not the clichéd malapropism for "tycoon."]***When she came to examine the poor dragon in the cool light of her own reason it appeared at the worst to be but a pushful patent medicine of an inferior order which, on account of its cheapness and the superior American skill in distributing it, was threatening to drive Sypher's Cure off the market."I'll strangle it as Hercules strangled the dog-headed thing," cried Sypher.He meant the Hydra, which wasn't dog-headed and which Hercules didn't strangle. But a man can be at once unmythological and sincere.***Thus it fell out that Septimus heard of Mordaunt Prince, whose constant appearance in Emmy's London circle of friends Zora had viewed with plentiful lack of interest.***Mrs. Middlemist, looking like a rose in June, had already irradiated the wan November garden. Miss Oldrieve he likened to a spring crocus, and Septimus (with a slap on the back) could choose the vegetable he would like to resemble.***"You always think of Zora.""To think of her," replied Septimus, vaguely allusive, "is a liberal education."***[The cab] was haunted by the ghosts of a fourpenny cigar and a sixpenny bottle of scent which continued a lugubrious flirtation.***"The Vicar will be so shocked and hurt—and what Cousin Jane will say when she hears of it—"She raised her mittened hands and let them fall into her lap. The awfulness of Cousin Jane's indignation transcended the poor lady's powers of description.***"'You know me.'—And I does, ma'am. The outlandish things he does, ma'am, would shock an alligator.—'I should forget the day,' says he. 'I should lose the ring. I should marry the wrong party.'"***Septimus, with his mild blue eyes and upstanding hair, looking like the conventional picture of one who sees a ghost....***They spoke in French, for only one word of English had Hégisippe and his aunt between them, and that being "Howdodogoddam" was the exclusive possession of the former.***"I also don't see how I can get out of the Hôtel Godet. I've been there some time, and I don't know how much to give the servants in tips. The only thing is to stay on."***"Humph!" said Cousin Jane.If the late Rev. Laurence Sterne had known Cousin Jane, "Tristram Shandy" would have been the richer by a chapter on "Humphs." He would have analyzed this particular one with a minute delicacy beyond the powers of Clem Sypher through whose head rang the echo of the irritating vocable for some time afterwards.***"The atmosphere," said Rattenden, "is so rarified that the kettle refuses to boil properly. That is why we always have cold tea at literary gatherings."***She began to wonder whether she was not chasing the phantom of a wild goose.[A *ghost* of a wild goose surely one-ups a plain old wild goose, eh?]***"[The baby is] in Paris just now.""Paris?" she echoed."Oh, he's not by himself, you know," Septimus hastened to reassure her, lest she might think that the babe was alone among the temptations and dissipations of the gay city.***
|
