Sir John Constantine: Memoirs of His Adventures At Home and Abroad and Particularly in the Island of Corsica: Beginning with the Year 1756Quiller-Couch, Arthur
General
Sir John Constantine: Memoirs of His Adventures At Home and Abroad and Particularly in the Island of Corsica: Beginning with the Year 1756
Quiller-Couch, Arthur
Corsica (France) -- Fiction
I remember once listening in our summer-house, upon St. Swithun's
feast, while my dear brother-in-law disputed with Mr. Grylls upon
action and contemplation--which of them was the properer end of man.
I thought then that each of them, though they talked up and down and
at large, was in truth defending his own temperament: and, because I
loved them both, that neither needed defending. For my own part, the
small daily cares of Constantine have stolen away from me, not
altogether unhappily, the time of choosing, and I ask now but to
follow that counsel of the Apostle wherewith my master Walton closed
his book, and "Study to be Quiet."
G.A.
[1] Here--for it scarcely appears in the narrative--let me say that
my sister was an exemplary wife and, while fate spared her, a devoted
mother. I knew my brother-in-law for a great man, incapable of a
thought or action less than kingly, and I worshipped him (as Ben
Jonson would say) "on this side idolatry"; but if the Constantines
have a fault, it is that they demand too much of life, and exact it
somewhat too much as a matter of course. I have heard this fault
attributed to other great men.--G.A.
FINIS
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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