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and perhaps more by next mail
Mar. 28th, 2014 02:04 amThe problem (she said, staring at the blank Word document, which is the modern version of staring at a blank page) is where to start.
An action scene, perhaps. Maybe getting a book semi-improperly. It's been a while since Irene did that. Or even properly, and then getting into trouble for it.
---
Then came Tom to the great land of Hearsay, in which are no less than thirty and odd kings, beside half a dozen Republics, and perhaps more by next mail.
And there he fell in with a deep, dark, deadly, and destructive war, waged by the princes and potentates of those parts, both spiritual and temporal, against what do you think? One thing I am sure of. That unless I told you, you would never know; nor how they waged that war either; for all their strategy and military art consisted in the safe and easy process of stopping their ears and screaming, “Oh, don’t tell us!” and then running away.
So when Tom came into that land, he found them all, high and low, man, woman, and child, running for their lives day and night continually, and entreating not to be told they didn’t know what: only the land being an island, and they having a dislike to the water (being a musty lot for the most part), they ran round and round the shore for ever, which (as the island was exactly of the same circumference as the planet on which we have the honour of living) was hard work, especially to those who had business to look after. But before them, as bandmaster and fugleman, ran a gentleman shearing a pig; the melodious strains of which animal led them for ever, if not to conquest, still to flight; and kept up their spirits mightily with the thought that they would at least have the pig’s wool for their pains.
-- The Water-Babies, Charles Kingsley
An action scene, perhaps. Maybe getting a book semi-improperly. It's been a while since Irene did that. Or even properly, and then getting into trouble for it.
---
Then came Tom to the great land of Hearsay, in which are no less than thirty and odd kings, beside half a dozen Republics, and perhaps more by next mail.
And there he fell in with a deep, dark, deadly, and destructive war, waged by the princes and potentates of those parts, both spiritual and temporal, against what do you think? One thing I am sure of. That unless I told you, you would never know; nor how they waged that war either; for all their strategy and military art consisted in the safe and easy process of stopping their ears and screaming, “Oh, don’t tell us!” and then running away.
So when Tom came into that land, he found them all, high and low, man, woman, and child, running for their lives day and night continually, and entreating not to be told they didn’t know what: only the land being an island, and they having a dislike to the water (being a musty lot for the most part), they ran round and round the shore for ever, which (as the island was exactly of the same circumference as the planet on which we have the honour of living) was hard work, especially to those who had business to look after. But before them, as bandmaster and fugleman, ran a gentleman shearing a pig; the melodious strains of which animal led them for ever, if not to conquest, still to flight; and kept up their spirits mightily with the thought that they would at least have the pig’s wool for their pains.
-- The Water-Babies, Charles Kingsley
