England -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction
He had barely time to catch a bouquet from her hand, when the train was
flying through the night. Round the paper that enfolded it was bravely
written (doubtless by the nephew who held the pen of an Angel), "Homage
to the friend of the friendless."
"Not bad people, Bebelle!" said Mr. The Englishman, softly drawing the
mantle a little from her sleeping face, that he might kiss it, "though
they are so--"
Too "sentimental" himself at the moment to be able to get out that word,
he added nothing but a sob, and travelled for some miles, through the
moonlight, with his hand before his eyes.
CHAPTER III--HIS BROWN-PAPER PARCEL
My works are well known. I am a young man in the Art line. You have
seen my works many a time, though it's fifty thousand to one if you have
seen me. You say you don't want to see me? You say your interest is in
my works, and not in me? Don't be too sure about that. Stop a bit.
Let us have it down in black and white at the first go off, so that there
may be no unpleasantness or wrangling afterwards. And this is looked
over by a friend of mine, a ticket writer, that is up to literature. I
am a young man in the Art line--in the Fine-Art line. You have seen my
works over and over again, and you have been curious about me, and you
think you have seen me. Now, as a safe rule, you never have seen me, and
you never do see me, and you never will see me. I think that's plainly
put--and it's what knocks me over.
If there's a blighted public character going, I am the party.
It has been remarked by a certain (or an uncertain,) philosopher, that
the world knows nothing of its greatest men. He might have put it
plainer if he had thrown his eye in my direction. He might have put it,
that while the world knows something of them that apparently go in and
win, it knows nothing of them that really go in and don't win. There it
is again in another form--and that's what knocks me over.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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