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by prousuarios-softlibre＠lists.ourproject.org 27 Nov '09

27 Nov '09

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new-born bab
by Alai 31 Aug '09

31 Aug '09

Confidentially foretold. The plot of the romance is therefore universally admitted to be the best that Dickens has ever invented. Its leading events are, as we read the story consecutively, artistically necessary, yet, at the same time, the processes are artistically concealed. We follow the movement of a logic of passion and character, the real premises of which we detect only when we are startled by the conclusions. The plot of "Great Expectations" is also noticeable as indicating, better than any of his previous stories, the individuality of Dickens's genius. Everybody must have discerned in the action of his mind two diverging tendencies, which, in this novel, are harmonized. He possesses a singularly wide, clear, and minute power of accurate observation, both of things and of persons; but his observation, keen and true to actualities as it independently is, is not a dominant faculty, and is opposed or controlled by the strong tendency of his disposition to pathetic or humorous idealization. Perhaps in "The Old Curiosity Shop" these qualities are best seen in their struggle and divergence, and the result is a magnificent juxtaposition of romantic tenderness, melodramatic improbabilities, and broad farce. The humorous characterization is joyously exaggerated into caricature,--the serious characterization into romantic unreality, Richard Swiveller and Little Nell refuse to combine. There is abundant evidence of genius both in the humorous and the pathetic parts, but the artistic impression is one of anarchy rather than unity. In "Great Expectations," on the contrary, Dickens seems to have attained the mastery of powers which formerly more or less mastered him. He has fairly discovered that he cannot, like Thackeray, narrate a story as if he were a mere looker-on, a mere "knowing" observer of what he describes and represents; and he has therefore taken observation simply as the basis of his plot and his characterization. As we read "Vanity Fair" and "The Newcomes," we are impressed with the actuality of the persons and incidents. There is an absence both of directing ideas and disturbing idealizations. Everything drifts to its end, as in real life. In "Grea

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Ion. She persisted, knowing what she would have to suffer from he
by Shoultz Charbonneaux 31 Aug '09

31 Aug '09

E des Deux Mondes_ on the corner of the table, and the absence of all bows or draperies from the furniture. Miss Kimpsey's own parlor was excrescent with bows and draperies. "She is above them," thought Miss Kimpsey, with a little pang. The room was so dark that she could not see how old the _Revue_ was; she did not know either that it was always there, that unexceptionable Parisian periodical, with Dante in the original and red leather, _Academy Notes_, and the _Nineteenth Century_, all helping to furnish Mrs. Leslie Bell's drawing-room in a manner in accordance with her tastes; but if she had, Miss Kimpsey would have been equally impressed. It took intellect even to select these things. The other books, Miss Kimpsey noticed by the numbers labelled on their backs, were mostly from the circulating library--"David Grieve," "Cometh up as a Flower," "The Earthly Paradise," Ruskin's "Stones of Venice," Marie Corelli's "Romance of Two Worlds." The mantelpiece was arranged in geometrical disorder, but it had a gilt clock under a glass shade precisely in the middle. When the gilt clock indicated, in a mincing way, that Miss Kimpsey had been kept waiting fifteen minutes, Mrs. Bell came in. She had fastened her last button and assumed the expression appropriate to Miss

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cond or t
by Honnen 28 Aug '09

28 Aug '09

it was under protest--under pretty much the same protest with which you care for me. You were both times carried away so by your own passion that for the moment your mental reservations were in abeyance. And although perhaps a breath of that same passion stirred me--I can admit it now when the distance between us will not make that admission a weapon in your hands--yet there was somewhere in me a little voice whispering: "Sophie, it won't do. You can't mix oil and water." There is a streak of my poor weak and passionate mother in me. But there is also a counterbalancing streak of my father's deliberate judgment. He has schooled me for my ultimate protection--as he has often made plain--to think, to know why I do a thing, to look, even if ever so briefly, before I leap. And I cannot help it, if when I felt tempted to say the word that would have given me the right to feel the ecstasy of your arms drawing me close and your lips pressed on mine, if in the same breath I was looking ahead and getting a disillusioning glimpse of what life together would mean for you and me, you with your deeply implanted prejudices, your hard and fast conceptions of good and evil, of right and wrong--I what I am, a creature craving pleasure, joy, luxury, if possible, happiness wherever and whenever I can assure myself I have really found it. I wouldn't make a preacher's wife at all, I know. I'd stifle in that sort of atmosphere. Even if you were not a minister--if you were just plain man--and I wish you were--I don't know. I have to try my wings, now that I have the opportunity. How do I know what turn my vagrant impulses may take? I may be one of those queer, perverted creatures (_vide_ Havelock Ellis. You'll find two volumes of his psychology of sex among dad's books) whose instincts incline toward many men in turn. I don't believe I am. A woman's destiny, in so far as I have been able to grasp the feminine function by what I've read and observed in a limited way, is to mate and to rear children. I don't think I'm a variation from the normal type, except

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rown o
by Fallon Mailhot 25 Aug '09

25 Aug '09

Y bank she brought up with a jerk that dragged her mount together, and at the same moment slipped to the ground. Running open the noose of the lariat, she dropped it surely over his shoulders. The other end of the rope was fastened to the saddle-horn, and the cow-pony, used to roping and throwing steers, braced itself with wide-planted front feet for the shock. "Can you get your arm through the loop?" cried the girl. His arms were like lead, and almost powerless. With one hand he knew he could not hang on. Nor did he try longer than for that one desperate instant when he shot his fist through the loop. The wall of water swept him away, but the taut rope swung him shoreward. Little hands caught hold of him and fought with the strong current for the body of the almost unconscious man; fought steadily and strongly, for there was strength in the small wrists and compact muscle in the shapely arms. She was waist deep in the wate

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attraction for her was compo
by McQuarrie Dajer 23 Aug '09

23 Aug '09

Rved, "when they married her to a good man with a fine property." "That is just the ghastly part of it!" cried Hadria; "from ferocious enemies a girl might defend herself, but what is she to do against the united efforts of devoted friends?" "I don't suppose Mrs. Gordon is aware that she is so ill-used!" "Another gruesome circumstance!" cried Hadria, with a half laugh; "for that only proves that her life has dulled her self-respect, and destroyed her pride." "But, my dear, every woman is in the same predicament, if predi

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