Alone By Norman Douglas













































































 -  Don't disturb me just now. I am watching the little
fishes. Life is so complicated! Let us pray. I have - Page 71
Alone By Norman Douglas - Page 71 of 151 - First - Home

Enter page number    Previous Next

Number of Words to Display Per Page: 250 500 1000

"Don't Disturb Me Just Now.

I am watching the little fishes.

Life is so complicated! Let us pray. I have begun a new novel and a new love-affair."

"God prosper both!" I replied, and began to move off.

"Thanks. But supposing the publisher always objects to your choicest paragraphs?"

"I am not altogether surprised, if they are anything like what you once read to me out of your unexpurgated 'House of the Seven Harlots.' Why not try another firm? They might be more accommodating. Try mine."

He shook his head dubiously.

"They are all alike. It is with publishers as with wives: one always wants somebody else's. And when you have them, where's the difference? Ah, let us pray. These little fishes have none of our troubles."

I inquired about the new romance. At first he refused to disclose anything. Then he told me it was to be entitled "With Christ at Harvard," and that it promised some rather novel situations. I shall look forward to its appearance.

What good things one could relate of M. M., but for the risk of incurring his wrath! It is a thousand pities, I often tell him, that he is still alive; I am yearning to write his biography, and cannot afford to wait for his dissolution.

"When I am dead," he always says.

"By that time, my dear M., I shall be in the same fix myself."

"Try to survive. You may find it worth your while, when you come to look into my papers. You don't know half. And I may be taking that little sleeping-draught of mine any one of these days...." [12]

Mused long that night, and not without a certain envy, on the lot of M. M. and other earthquake-connoisseurs - or rather on the lot of that true philosopher, if he exists, who, far from being damaged by such convulsions, distils therefrom subtle matter of mirth, I have only known one single man - it happened to be a woman, an Austrian - who approached this ideal of splendid isolation. She lived her own life, serenely happy, refusing to acquiesce in the delusions and conventionalities of the crowd; she had ceased to trouble herself about neighbours, save as a source of quiet amusement; a state of affairs which had been brought about by a succession of benevolent earthquakes that refined and clarified her outlook.

Such disasters, obviously, have their uses. They knock down obsolete rubbish and enable a man to start building anew. The most sensitive recluse cannot help being a member of society. As such, he unavoidably gathers about him a host of mere acquaintances, good folks who waste his time dulling the edge of his wit and infecting him with their orthodoxy. Then comes the cataclysm. He loses, let us say, all his money, or makes a third appearance in the divorce courts. He can then at last (so one of them expressed it to me) "revise his visiting-list," an operation which more than counterbalances any damage from earthquakes.

Enter page number   Previous Next
Page 71 of 151
Words from 35834 to 36339 of 77809


Previous 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 Next

More links: First 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
 110 120 130 140 150 Last

Display Words Per Page: 250 500 1000

 
Africa (29)
Asia (27)
Europe (59)
North America (58)
Oceania (24)
South America (8)
 

List of Travel Books RSS Feeds

Africa Travel Books RSS Feed

Asia Travel Books RSS Feed

Europe Travel Books RSS Feed

North America Travel Books RSS Feed

Oceania Travel Books RSS Feed

South America Travel Books RSS Feed

Copyright © 2005 - 2022 Travel Books Online