Genre Fiction. Page - 251

ons and discover that, though childless, she couldattract the love of other people's children if she chose. The tendermoment was fleet. She looked at Amanda and Philip and saw in them onlytwo children prone to evil, requiring stern disciplining.

"Now don't go far from the house," said Mrs. Reist later, "for yourother dress is soon ready to fit. As soon as Aunt Rebecca gets thepleats basted in the skirt."

"I'll soon get them in. But it's foolishness to go to all that botherwhen gathers would do just as good and go faster."

Amanda turned away and a moment later she and Phil were seated on thelong wooden settee in the kitchen. The boy had silently agreed to atemporary truce so that the game of counting might be played. He wouldpay back his sister some other time. Gee, it was easy to get her goat--just a little thing like a caterpillar dropped down her neck would makeher holler!

"Gee, Manda, I thought of a bully thing!" the boy whispered. "If thatold crosspatch Rebecca says 'My goodness' t

nglish. In this process Homer must lose at least half his charm, his bright and equable speed, the musical current of that narrative, which, like the river of Egypt, flows from an indiscoverable source, and mirrors the temples and the palaces of unforgotten gods and kings. Without this music of verse, only a half truth about Homer can be told, but then it is that half of the truth which, at this moment, it seems most necessary to tell. This is the half of the truth that the translators who use verse cannot easily tell. They MUST be adding to Homer, talking with Pope about 'tracing the mazy lev'ret o'er the lawn,' or with Mr. Worsley about the islands that are 'stars of the blue Aegaean,' or with Dr. Hawtrey about 'the earth's soft arms,' when Homer says nothing at all about the 'mazy lev'ret,' or the 'stars of the blue Aegaean,' or the 'soft arms' of earth. It would be impertinent indeed to blame any of these translations in their place. They give that which the romantic reader of poetry, or the student of th

out the air lock or loafing on the surface. You wouldn't believe how blue the waves could be. They tell me on Rustum you can't come down off the mountain tops."

"But we'd have the whole planet to ourselves," said Teresa Zeleny.

One with a gentle scholar's face answered: "That may be precisely the trouble, my dear. Three thousand of us, counting children, totally isolated from the human mainstream. Can we hope to build a civilization? Or even maintain one?"

"Your problem, pop," said the officer beside him dryly, "is that there are no medieval manuscripts on Rustum."

[Illustration]

"I admit it," said the scholar. "I thought it more important my children grow up able to use their minds. But if it turns out they can do so on Earth--How much chance will the first generations on Rustum have to sit down and really think, anyway?"

"Would there even be a next generation on Rustum?"

"One and a quarter gravities--I can feel it now."

"Synthetics, year after year of

l make it. My dear Paul, it's very weak and silly of me, I know, to be so trembly and shaky from head to foot; but I am so very queer that I must ask you for a glass of wine and a morsel of that cake.'

Mr Dombey promptly supplied her with these refreshments from a tray on the table.

'I shall not drink my love to you, Paul,' said Louisa: 'I shall drink to the little Dombey. Good gracious me!--it's the most astonishing thing I ever knew in all my days, he's such a perfect Dombey.'

Quenching this expression of opinion in a short hysterical laugh which terminated in tears, Louisa cast up her eyes, and emptied her glass.

'I know it's very weak and silly of me,' she repeated, 'to be so trembly and shaky from head to foot, and to allow my feelings so completely to get the better of me, but I cannot help it. I thought I should have fallen out of the staircase window as I came down from seeing dear Fanny, and that tiddy ickle sing.' These last words originated in a sudden vivid reminiscence

the ancient methods of industry madethis possible would delay us too much. I shall only stop now tosay that interest on investments was a species of tax in perpetuityupon the product of those engaged in industry which a personpossessing or inheriting money was able to levy. It must not besupposed that an arrangement which seems so unnatural andpreposterous according to modern notions was never criticized byyour ancestors. It had been the effort of lawgivers and prophetsfrom the earliest ages to abolish interest, or at least to limit it tothe smallest possible rate. All these efforts had, however, failed,as they necessarily must so long as the ancient social organizationsprevailed. At the time of which I write, the latter part ofthe nineteenth century, governments had generally given uptrying to regulate the subject at all.

By way of attempting to give the reader some general impressionof the way people lived together in those days, andespecially of the relations of the rich and poor to one

nd and wife. We infantrymen must bring the child into the world when a victory is to be born. The artillery has only the pleasure, just like a man's part in love. It is not until after the child has been baptized that he comes strutting out proudly. Am I not right, Captain?" he asked, appealing to the cavalry officer. "You are an equestrian on foot now, too."

The captain boomed his assent. In his summary view, members of the Reichstag who refused to vote enough money for the military, Socialists, pacifists, all men, in brief, who lectured or wrote or spoke superfluous stuff and lived by their brains belonged in the same category as the Philosopher. They were all "bookworms."

"Yes, indeed," he said in his voice hoarse from shouting commands. "A philosopher like our friend here is just the right person for the artillery. Nothing to do but wait around on the top of a hill and look on. If only they don't shoot up our own men! It is easy enough to dispose of the fellows on the other side, in front of

The reference was clearly to a nonhuman species of incredible properties, not indigenous to Earth. A species, I hasten to point out, customarily masquerading as ordinary human beings. Their disguise, however, became transparent in the face of the following observations by the author. It was at once obvious the author knew everything. Knew everything--and was taking it in his stride. The line (and I tremble remembering it even now) read:

... his eyes slowly roved about the room.

Vague chills assailed me. I tried to picture the eyes. Did they roll like dimes? The passage indicated not; they seemed to move through the air, not over the surface. Rather rapidly, apparently. No one in the story was surprised. That's what tipped me off. No sign of amazement at such an outrageous thing. Later the matter was amplified.

... his eyes moved from person to person.

There it was in a nutshell. The eyes had clearly come apart from the rest of him and were on their own.

increasing prospect tires our wandering eyes,Hills peep o'er hills and Alps on Alps arise!

A perfect judge will read each work of witWith the same spirit that its author writSurvey the whole nor seek slight faults to findWhere nature moves and rapture warms the mind,Nor lose for that malignant dull delightThe generous pleasure to be charmed with witBut in such lays as neither ebb nor flow,Correctly cold and regularly lowThat, shunning faults, one quiet tenor keep;We cannot blame indeed--but we may sleep.In wit, as nature, what affects our heartsIs not the exactness of peculiar parts,'Tis not a lip, or eye, we beauty call,But the joint force and full result of all.Thus, when we view some well proportioned dome(The worlds just wonder, and even thine, O Rome!), [248]No single parts unequally surprise,All comes united to the admiring eyes;No monstrous height or breadth, or length, appear;The whole at once is bold, and regular.

Whoever thinks

you, if you should happen to meet someone you think you like better than me? You've promised to be my wife, you know."

"Yes, I know, Tony, but I also know you are too much of a sportsman to hold me to my promise if I should happen to fall in love with another man," Myra responded. "That isn't in the least likely to happen, Tony dear, and I am truly trying to love you in the way a girl should love the man she has promised to marry, as I have already told you. Let me have my freedom and my fling for a few months longer."

"Well, I suppose it isn't any use my trying to bully you into marrying me at once," said Tony, with a shrug, a sigh, and a wry smile. "But you know I'm tremendously in love with you, darling, and I can't help feeling jealous of the fellows who still go on dancing attendance on you although you are engaged to me. I'm haunted by the fear of someone stealing you from me."

"Tony, darlint, you've no need to be jealous," Myra smilingly assured him, and patted his cheek. "There is