2016年7月21日星期四

the conversation

She drove out solemnly in their great family coach with them, and Miss Wirt their governess, that raw-boned Vestal. They took her to the ancient concerts by way of a treat, and to the oratorio, and to St. Paul’s to see the charity children, where in such terror was she of her friends, she almost did not dare be affected by the hymn the children sang. Their house was comfortable; their papa’s table rich and handsome; their society solemn and genteel; their self-respect prodigious; they had the best pew at the Foundling: all their habits were pompous and orderly, and all their amusements intolerably dull and decorous. After every one of her visits (and oh how glad she was when they were over!) Miss Osborne and Miss Maria Osborne, and Miss Wirt, the vestal governess, asked each other with increased wonder, “What could George find in that creature?”

How is this? some carping reader exclaims. How is it that Amelia, who had such a number of friends at school, and was so beloved there, comes out into the world and is spurned by her discriminating sex? My dear sir, there were no men at Miss Pinkerton’s establishment except the old dancing-master; and you would not have had the girls fall out about him? When George, their handsome brother, ran off directly after breakfast, and dined from home half-a-dozen times a week, no wonder the neglected sisters felt a little vexation. When young Bullock (of the firm of Hulker, Bullock & Co., Bankers, Lombard Street), who had been making up to Miss Maria the last two seasons, actually asked Amelia to dance the cotillon, could you expect that the former young lady should be pleased?



And yet she said she was, like an artless forgiving creature. “I’m so delighted you like dear Amelia,” she said quite eagerly to Mr. Bullock after the dance. “She’s engaged to my brother George; there’s not much in her, but she’s the best-natured and most unaffected young creature: at home we’re all so fond of her.” Dear girl! who can calculate the depth of affection expressed in that enthusiastic so?Miss Wirt and these two affectionate young women so earnestly and frequently impressed upon George Osborne’s mind the enormity of the sacrifice he was making, and his romantic generosity in throwing himself away upon Amelia, that I’m not sure but that he really thought he was one of the most deserving characters in the British army, and gave himself up to be loved with a good deal of easy resignation.

Somehow, although he left home every morning, as was stated, and dined abroad six days in the week, when his sisters believed the infatuated youth to be at Miss Sedley’s apron-strings: he was not always with Amelia, whilst the world supposed him at her feet. Certain it is that on more occasions than one, when Captain Dobbin called to look for his friend, Miss Osborne (who was very attentive to the Captain, and anxious to hear his military stories, and to know about the health of his dear Mamma), would laughingly point to the opposite side of the square, and say, “Oh, you must go to the Sedleys’ to ask for George; we never see him from morning till night.” At which kind of speech the Captain would laugh in rather an absurd constrained manner, and turn off, like a consummate man of the world, to some topic of general interest, such as the Opera, the Prince’s last ball at Carlton House, or the weather—that blessing to society.

2016年7月11日星期一

a man of heart


As he rose up to greet his friend, she looked so grave, and pale, and sad, that he could not but note her demeanour. “Bon Dieu! had anything happened?”“Ce pauvre général is ill, very ill Philip,” Smolensk said, in her grave voice.He was so gravely ill, madame said, that his daughter had been sent for.“Had she come?” asked Philip, with a start.“You think but of her — you care not for the poor old man. You are all the same, you men. All egotists — all. Go! I know you! I never knew one that was not,” said madame reenex.

Philip has his little faults: perhaps egotism is one of his defects. Perhaps it is yours, or even mine.“You have been here a week since Thursday last, and you have never written or sent to a woman who loves you well. Go! It was not well, Monsieur Philippe.”As soon as he saw her, Philip felt that he had been neglectful and ungrateful. We have owned so much already. But how should madame know that he had returned on Thursday week? When they looked up after her reproof, his eager eyes seemed to ask this question.

“Could she not write to me and tell me that you were come back? Perhaps she knew that you would not do so yourself. A woman’s heart teaches her these experiences
early,”continued the lady, sadly; then she added: “I tell you, you are good-for-nothings, all of you! And I repent me, see you, of having had the bêtise to pity you!”“I shall have my quarter’s pay on Saturday, I was coming to you then,” said Philip.“Was it that I was speaking of? What! you are all cowards, men, all! Oh, that I have been beast, beast, to think at last I had found kinomap !”

How much or how often this poor Ariadne had trusted and been forsaken, I have no means of knowing, or desire of inquiring. Perhaps it is as well for the polite reader, who is taken into my entire confidence, that we should not know Madame de Smolensk’s history from the first page to the last. Granted that Ariadne was deceived by Theseus: but then she consoled herself, as we may all read in Smith’s Dictionary; and then she must have deceived her father in order to run away with Theseus sigelei 150w.


I suspect — I suspect, I say — that these women who are so very much betrayed, are — but we are speculating on this French lady’s antecedents, when Charlotte, her lover, and her family are the persons with whom we have mainly to do. These two, I suppose, forgot self, about which each for a moment had been busy, and madame resumed:— “Yes, you have reason; Miss is here. It was time. Hold! Here is a note from her.” And Philip’s kind messenger once more put a paper into his hands.

2016年6月19日星期日

a report of Annie's marriage

 Why should they? People were always falling down stairs. 41 Why had she killed them? He seemed to hear Annie's answers in his mind. The answers were absolutely mad, and Paul knew they were right. I killed her because she played the radio late at night; I killed her because she let her boyfriend kiss her too much; I killed her because I caught her cheating; I killed her because she caught me cheating. I killed her to see whether I could. What does it matter? She was just a Miss Clever - so I killed her disrupter mod.



The next page of the album showed that Annie had graduated as a nurse and had got a job at St Joseph's Hospital in Pennsylvania. There followed several pages containing short newspaper reports of deaths at the hospital. There was nothing suspicious about any of these deaths. Most of the people were old and had been ill for a long time. Some were young - one was even a child - but they all had serious illnesses or injuries. And what were these reports doing in Annie's album? She had killed them all. The reports were so short that several could fit on a single page of the album - and the album was thick. Again Paul asked the question: Why, Annie? Why kill these people? Again he heard Annie's voice echoing in his mind: Because they were rats in a trap SmarTone.



And he remembered Annie's tears falling on the rat she held in her hand, while she said: 'Poor, poor things.' Over the next few years she had moved from hospital to hospital around the country. The pattern in the album was always the same: first, the list of new hospital staff, with Annie's name among them; then pages of short reports of deaths. In 1978, nine years ago, she had arrived at a hospital in Denver, Colorado. The usual pattern began again with a report of the death of an elderly woman. Then the pattern changed. Instead of reports of deaths there was to a man called Ralph Dugan, a doctor. There was a photograph of the house they had bought outside Sidewinder in 1979 - this house. Several months had passed without any killings Exchange Opportunities.



It was unbelievable, but Annie must have been happy! 42 Then there was a report, from August 1980, of their divorce. It was clear that he had divorced her rather than the other way round. He had understood something about her. Maybe he had seen the cat at the top of the stairs - the one he was supposed to fall over. Annie had torn into this report with a pen as she wrote vicious words across it, so that Paul had difficulty reading it. Annie moved to a hospital in Boulder, Colorado. It was clear that she was very hurt and very angry, because the killings started again, and more often than before: the newspaper reports came every few days. God, how many did she kill? Why did nobody guess? At last, in 1982, Annie made a mistake. She moved to the childbirth department of the hospital. Annie had carefully kept a record of the whole story. Killing new-born babies is different from killing badly injured or seriously ill adults. Babies don't often die and people notice if they do.

2015年10月4日星期日

The war had become impossible



Even my wife and I shared a bit in the bewilderment of our boys in the streets of Petrograd at hearing Russian, and seeing the Russian signs on the shops. We had been away from the capital for ten years. When we left our oldest boy was only a little over a year old; the younger one had been born in Vienna.

The Petrograd garrison was enormous, but it was no longer solid in its allegiances. The soldiers sang revolutionary songs as they marched, and sported red ribbons on their tunics. It all seemed as incredible as a dream. The tram-cars were full of soldiers. Military training was still going on in the wider streets. Riflemen would squat to charge, run a distance in a line, and then squat again. War, the gigantic monster, was still standing behind the revolution, throwing its shadow upon it. But the masses no longer believed in the war, and it seemed as if the training were going on only because no one had thought of stopping it.  but the liberals (Kadets) had not yet begun to understand that fucoidan, nor had the leaders of the so-called “revolutionary democracy.” They were mortally afraid to let go of the skirts of the Entente.

I knew Tzereteli only slightly, Kerensky not at all, and Chiedze somewhat better. Skobelev was an old pupil of mine. With Chernov I had had many passages at arms in the debates abroad. G?tz I now met for the first time. And this was the ruling group of the Soviet democracy.

Tzereteli was unquestionably head and shoulders above the others. I first met him at the London congress of 1907, when he represented the Social Democratic faction in the Second Duma. Even in those early days, he was a splendid speaker whose moral integrity made a strong appeal. His years of hard-labor in Siberia advanced his political authority. He returned to the revolutionary arena a mature man and immediately took a foremost place among his confrères and allies. He was the only one of my opponents to be taken seriously. But, as is often the case in history, it took a revolution to prove that Tzereteli was not a revolutionary hem tags. One had to approach the Russian revolution from the world point of view, rather than from that of Russia, to avoid getting lost in complexities. Yet Tzereteli approached it with the background of his experience in Georgia, supplemented by that in the Second Duma. His political outlook proved to be hopelessly narrow, his education superficially literary. He had a profound respect for liberalism; he viewed the irresistible dynamics of revolution with the eyes of a half-educated bourgeois, terrified for the safety of culture. The awakened masses seemed to him more and more like a mutinous mob. From his very first words, I realized that he was an enemy. Lenin called him a “dullard.” It was cruel, but apt — Tzereteli was a gifted and honest but limited man.

Lenin called Kerensky a “petty braggart.” Even now there is little one can add to that. Kerensky was and still is an adventitious figure part time diploma course business, a ruling favorite of the historical moment. Every mighty wave of revolution, as it draws in the virgin masses not yet trained to discrimination, inevitably raises on its crest such heroes for a day, heroes who are instantly blinded by their own effulgence. Kerensky followed in the direct line of Father Gapon and Khrustalyov. He personified the accidental in an otherwise continuous causation. His best speeches were merely a sumptuous pounding of water in a mortar. In 1917, the water boiled and sent up steam, and the clouds of steam provided a halo.

2015年8月28日星期五

which recommended it to the ancient


You have too much learning, CLEANTHES, to be at all surprised at this opinion, which, you know, was maintained by almost all the Theists of antiquity, and chiefly prevails in their discourses and reasonings. For though, sometimes, the ancient philosophers reason from final causes, as if they thought the world the workmanship of God; yet it appears rather their favourite notion to consider it as his body, whose organisation renders it subservient to him. And it must be confessed, that, as the universe resembles more a human body than it does the works of human art and contrivance, if our limited analogy could ever, with any propriety, be extended to the whole of nature Diamond water, the inference seems juster in favour of the ancient than the modern theory.
There are many other advantages, too, in the former theory,  theologians. Nothing more repugnant to all their notions, because nothing more repugnant to common experience, than mind without body; a mere spiritual substance, which fell not under their senses nor comprehension, and of which they had not observed one single instance throughout all nature. Mind and body they knew, because they felt both: an order, arrangement, organisation, or internal machinery, in both, they likewise knew, after the same manner: and it could not but seem reasonable to transfer this experience to the universe; and to suppose the divine mind and body to be also coeval, and to have, both of them, order and arrangement naturally inherent in them, and inseparable from them.
Here, therefore, is a new species of Anthropomorphism, CLEANTHES, on which you may deliberate; and a theory which seems not liable to any considerable difficulties. You are too much superior, surely, to systematical prejudices, to find any more difficulty in supposing an animal body to be, originally, of itself, or from unknown causes, possessed of order and organisation, than in supposing a similar order to belong to mind. But the vulgar prejudice, that body and mind ought always to accompany each other, ought not hong kong company formation, one should think, to be entirely neglected; since it is founded on vulgar experience, the only guide which you profess to follow in all these theological inquiries. And if you assert, that our limited experience is an unequal standard, by which to judge of the unlimited extent of nature; you entirely abandon your own hypothesis, and must thenceforward adopt our Mysticism, as you call it, and admit of the absolute incomprehensibility of the Divine Nature.
This theory, I own, replied CLEANTHES, has never before occurred to me, though a pretty natural one; and I cannot readily, upon so short an examination and reflection, deliver any opinion with regard to it. You are very scrupulous, indeed, said PHILO: were I to examine any system of yours, I should not have acted with half that caution and reserve, in starting objections and difficulties to it. However, if any thing occur to you, you will oblige us by proposing it.
Why then, replied CLEANTHES, it seems to me, that, though the world does, in many circumstances, resemble an animal body; yet is the analogy also defective in many circumstances the most material: no organs of sense; no seat of thought or reason; no one precise origin of motion and action. In short, it seems to bear a stronger resemblance to a vegetable than to an animal, and your inference would be so far inconclusive in favour of the soul of the world.
But, in the next place, your theory seems to imply the eternity of the world; and that is a principle, which, I think, can be refuted by the strongest reasons and probabilities. I shall suggest an argument to this purpose, which, I believe, has not been insisted on by any writer. Those, who reason from the late origin of arts and sciences, though their inference wants not force, may perhaps be refuted by considerations derived from the nature of human society, which is in continual revolution, between ignorance and knowledge Veda Salon, liberty and slavery, riches and poverty; so that it is impossible for us, from our limited experience, to foretell with assurance what events may or may not be expected. Ancient learning and history seem to have been in great danger of entirely perishing after the inundation of the barbarous nations; and had these convulsions continued a little longer, or been a little more violent, we should not probably have now known what passed in the world a few centuries before us. Nay, were it not for the superstition of the Popes, who preserved a little jargon of Latin, in order to support the appearance of an ancient and universal church, that tongue must have been utterly lost; in which case, the Western world, being totally barbarous, would not have been in a fit disposition for receiving the GREEK language and learning, which was conveyed to them after the sacking of CONSTANTINOPLE. When learning and books had been extinguished, even the mechanical arts would have fallen considerably to decay; and it is easily imagined, that fable or tradition might ascribe to them a much later origin than the true one. This vulgar argument, therefore, against the eternity of the world, seems a little precarious.
But here appears to be the foundation of a better argument. LUCULLUS was the first that brought cherry-trees from ASIA to EUROPE; though that tree thrives so well in many EUROPEAN climates, that it grows in the woods without any culture. Is it possible, that throughout a whole eternity, no EUROPEAN had ever passed into ASIA, and thought of transplanting so delicious a fruit into his own country? Or if the tree was once transplanted and propagated, how could it ever afterwards perish? Empires may rise and fall, liberty and slavery succeed alternately, ignorance and knowledge give place to each other; but the cherry-tree will still remain in the woods of GREECE, SPAIN, and ITALY, and will never be affected by the revolutions of human society.

2015年8月12日星期三

There was one terrible manifestation



Perhaps the first woman in history to sleep in a Trappist bed, I was allotted the abbot’s bag bed and seaweed pillow, and the sawn-off log for my chair or table. I woke to hear the natives singing a Gregorian chant in the little chapel near by. Half clothed and, for all the untiring work of the missioners, still but half-civilized, they comprised the Nyool-nyool tribe dermes, of the totem of a local species of snake. Most of the women and men had their two front teeth knocked out, and some still wore bones through their noses. Infant cannibalism was practised, where it could not be prevented-as it still is among all circumcised groups. One of the old men, Bully-bulluma, having been an epic meat-hunter in his day, had eight wives. Another, Goodowel, was dressed in trousers and shirt, one stocking, his face painted red with white stripes from each corner of his mouth in broad lines. A red band was round his head, the hair drawn back to form a tight knob, and stuck in the knob was a tuft of white cockatoo feathers and a small wooden emblem. I know now that he was in the sixth degree of initiation.

Although they had tried their hardest, with prayer and precept, to teach these natives cleanliness and Christian living, giving their very lives to the work in torture and privation dermes , those Spanish priests could hope for little headway in the first generation.  of savagery that I can never forget.

A man had been found dying of spear-wounds out in the bush, and carried to the Mission as he was breathing his last. I watched two of the lay brothers bearing the stretcher to one of the huts, a horde of natives following. I noticed that they held their burden curiously high in the air. Suddenly, as it was lowered for entry to a doorway, the natives crowding round, to my horror, fell upon the body of the dying man, and put their lips to his in a brutal eagerness to inhale the last breath. They believed that in so doing they were absorbing his strength and virtue, and his very vital spark, and all the warnings of the “white father” would not keep them from it. The man was of course dead when we extricated him, and it was a ghastly sight to see the lucky “breath catcher” scoop in his cheeks as he swallowed the “spirit breath” that gave him double hunting power.

I was awakened by the sound of the conch shell which did duty for a monastery bell in that primitive spot, and when I went out into the open I was surrounded by all the women and children, a bright, pleasant little crowd, but oh! how dirty! Although the monks for some years had issued the dictum “No bath, no breakfast,” the natives preferred the lesser of two evils dermes, and went hungry until the ban was lifted. Shack dormitories had been erected for the unmarried girls and men, but most of the natives came in from the camps in the bush where they slept under the trees. Their beds were hollows scooped in the sand where a fire had been burning, the sand and the stones sometimes so hot that they left raw wounds in the flesh. Father Nicholas told us that they ate dirt in handfuls, and that the women sometimes ate their new-born babies, but that since the advent of the Mission, with its admonitions and its daily distribution of pumpkin and rice and tea and flour, cannibalism was not nearly so much in evidence.

2015年8月3日星期一

fired both barrels


The conversation turns on the power of animals to make their wants understood in moments of danger or excitement. Says the Yahudi, craning his long neck round to see that everyone within half a mile is listening, and interrupting one of my choicest anecdotes, which, I am led to believe, I tell with considerable success:— ‘That recalls to my mind a singular adventure in Japan reenex . One day, accompanied only by my dog, I was enjoying a morning’s shooting, when I noticed a fine cluster of ducks upon a neighbouring lagoon. To reach them without attracting attention was a difficult matter, for, barring a tree and a monster log some eighty yards to its right, there was no cover of any sort to be seen. Creeping warily along, I gained the shelter of the tree, and thence proceeded to wriggle myself under cover of the log. Once there, I took careful aim,  and brought down eight duck, two teal, a snipe, and a woodpigeon; but imagine my astonishment, when the smoke cleared away, at seeing the log, behind which I was crouching, rise up, wheel slowly round, and look me in the face. You may stare, gentlemen, but you cannot stare away the fact that it was an alligator, thirty-five feet long and four feet through, with a mouth like the entrance to the Bottomless Pit, yawning in my face. I took one good look at him, then went for the tree at express rate, leaving my gun behind me — not that, mind you, I had any fault to find with the gun, but because my mind was so set upon reaching the tree, that I had no time to think of other things. With the noise of a steam roller, the alligator came behind me, and we took our places — he at the bottom of the tree, I at the top. It was a moment of intense excitement, and I assure you that his conversation was as clear to me as noonday reenex.

‘” Good morning! “ he began. “ You seem to have had an excellent day’s sport. Pray come down and let me assist you in collecting your bag! ”

‘” I thank you,” was my reply, at the same time taking a tighter grasp of my situation, as I noticed, with modesty, the appetite the sight of my legs was occasioning him, “ but at present I am too much entranced with the beauty of the landscape around me, to care much for fame as a sportsman. Pray collect and accept my game yourself reenex! ”

‘This affability on my part caused him to betray his real feelings.

‘” Many thanks,” he replied, “ but wild duck requires too much hanging for my taste. Your legs, now — but there, do pray come down.” So saying, he opened his mouth and yawned till I could plainly see the undigested boots and celluloid collar of his last victim. After that we both felt that nothing further could pass between us.

‘Look me in the face, ladies and gentlemen, if you please. I assure you that for no less than eighteen hours I remained in that uncomfortable position, clinging to that branch, with the alligator’s mouth yawning like a gravel pit beneath me. You will ask why I did not shoot him. I reply, because my gun was on the plain, and my cartridges were in my pouch, and my pouch was with my faithful dog, and my faithful dog was in the interior of the alligator. Eighteen hours, nineteen hours, and even twenty hours went by, and still no chance of escape presented itself. I began to be annoyed, for my hunger was excruciating. At last a brilliant idea flashed through my brain dermes.