Anonymouṡ
7/12/2025, 9:42:38 PM
No.24544025
76)
Hummel put an asbestos glove on his left hand and plucked a broad scrap of tin from the heap. With the cutters he sliced into the center and, abruptly deft, cleverly folded the piece into a cupped shield, which he fitted around the arrow at the back of Caldwell’s ankle. “So you won’t feel the heat so much,” he explained, and snapped the fingers of his ungloved hand. “Archy, could I have the torch a minute now?”
The helper, careful to keep his feet from tangling in the trailing wire, brought over the acetylene torch. It was a little black jug spitting white flame edged with green. Where the flame streamed from the spout there was a transparent gap. Caldwell locked his jaw on his panic. The arrow had been revealed to him as a live nerve. He braced for the necessary pain.
77)
Nearer he drew, and many a walk travers’d
Of stateliest Covert, Cedar, Pine, or Palm,
Then voluble and bold, now hid, now seen
Among thick-wov’n Arborets and Flowers
Imborder’d on each Bank, the hand of Eve:
Spot more delicious then those Gardens feign’d
Or of reviv’d Adonis, or renown’d
Alcinous, host of old Laertes’ Son,
Or that, not Mystic, where the Sapient King
Held dalliance with his fair Egyptian Spouse.
78)
It is a pardonable whim in men of consequence, to place their exterior advantages in concealment now and then, so as to allow their own internal human nature to operate with the greater purity. For this reason the incognito of princes, and the adventures resulting therefrom, are always highly pleasing: these appear disguised divinities, who can reckon at double its value all the good offices shown to them as individuals, and are in such a position that they can either make light of the disagreeable or avoid it. That Jupiter should be well pleased in his incognito with Philemon and Baucis, and Henry the Fourth with his peasants after a hunting-party, is quite conformable to nature, and we like it well; but that a young man, without importance or name, should take it into his head to derive some pleasure from an incognito, might be construed by many as an unpardonable piece of arrogance.
[*]
79)
I push my big grey wet snout through the green,
Dreaming the flower I have never seen.
80)
Since the war began Barbara had taken to breakfasting downstairs in the mistaken belief that it caused less trouble. Instead of the wicker bed-table tray, a table had to be laid in the small dining-room, the fire had to be lit there two hours earlier, silver dishes had to be cleaned and the wicks trimmed under them. It was an innovation deplored by all.
Basil found her crouched over the fire with her cup of coffee; she turned her curly black head and smiled; both of them had the same devastating combination of dark hair and clear blue eyes. Narcissus greeted Narcissus from the watery depths as Basil kissed her.
‘Spooney,’ she said.
Hummel put an asbestos glove on his left hand and plucked a broad scrap of tin from the heap. With the cutters he sliced into the center and, abruptly deft, cleverly folded the piece into a cupped shield, which he fitted around the arrow at the back of Caldwell’s ankle. “So you won’t feel the heat so much,” he explained, and snapped the fingers of his ungloved hand. “Archy, could I have the torch a minute now?”
The helper, careful to keep his feet from tangling in the trailing wire, brought over the acetylene torch. It was a little black jug spitting white flame edged with green. Where the flame streamed from the spout there was a transparent gap. Caldwell locked his jaw on his panic. The arrow had been revealed to him as a live nerve. He braced for the necessary pain.
77)
Nearer he drew, and many a walk travers’d
Of stateliest Covert, Cedar, Pine, or Palm,
Then voluble and bold, now hid, now seen
Among thick-wov’n Arborets and Flowers
Imborder’d on each Bank, the hand of Eve:
Spot more delicious then those Gardens feign’d
Or of reviv’d Adonis, or renown’d
Alcinous, host of old Laertes’ Son,
Or that, not Mystic, where the Sapient King
Held dalliance with his fair Egyptian Spouse.
78)
It is a pardonable whim in men of consequence, to place their exterior advantages in concealment now and then, so as to allow their own internal human nature to operate with the greater purity. For this reason the incognito of princes, and the adventures resulting therefrom, are always highly pleasing: these appear disguised divinities, who can reckon at double its value all the good offices shown to them as individuals, and are in such a position that they can either make light of the disagreeable or avoid it. That Jupiter should be well pleased in his incognito with Philemon and Baucis, and Henry the Fourth with his peasants after a hunting-party, is quite conformable to nature, and we like it well; but that a young man, without importance or name, should take it into his head to derive some pleasure from an incognito, might be construed by many as an unpardonable piece of arrogance.
[*]
79)
I push my big grey wet snout through the green,
Dreaming the flower I have never seen.
80)
Since the war began Barbara had taken to breakfasting downstairs in the mistaken belief that it caused less trouble. Instead of the wicker bed-table tray, a table had to be laid in the small dining-room, the fire had to be lit there two hours earlier, silver dishes had to be cleaned and the wicks trimmed under them. It was an innovation deplored by all.
Basil found her crouched over the fire with her cup of coffee; she turned her curly black head and smiled; both of them had the same devastating combination of dark hair and clear blue eyes. Narcissus greeted Narcissus from the watery depths as Basil kissed her.
‘Spooney,’ she said.