My Life as an Author
, which blighted my youth and manhood from fifteen to thirty-five, obliging me to social humiliations of many kinds, to silence in class and on examination occas
d voice Milton's whole Paradise Lost and Regained, and the most of Cowper's poems! That was the sort of tongue-drill and nerve-quieting recommended and enforced for many hours a day, through weary months, by a certain Mr. C., while Dr. P., his successor to the well-named "patient," gave, first, emulcents, and then styptics, and was fortunately prevented in time by my father from some surgical experiments on the muscles of lip and tongue. However, nobody could cure me, until I cured myself; rather, let me gratefully and humbly confess, until God answered constant prayer, and granted stronger bodily health, and gave me good success in my literary life, and made me to feel I was equal in speec
is it not
ting in ever
ankles in the
ll in each d
ting pett
never look
ulness of my bu
never with
ved and long-e
but cannot ven
I ought, but mu
rk his quick
kindness t
lcome strangle
rrow, while
onverse, to be
cle, from a n
poignant co
tand aloof, n
good in ratio
rilliant quick
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open-hearted
self an iso
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knew well at a time when I had overcome my calamity; whereas he carried his to the grave with him; though he had frequent gleams of a forced and courageous eloquence, preac
ve me a farce or a story instead), and one moreover in which any fool well up to crammed book games may crow over the wisest of men in an easy, because stereotyped, checkmate. However, in this connection, I recollect a small experience which proves that positive ignorance of famous openings may sometimes be an advantage; just as the skilled fencer will be baffled by a brave boor rushing in against rules, and by close encounter unconventionally pinning him straight off. When a youth, just before matriculation, I was a guest at Culham of the good rector there, a chess-player to his own thinking indomitable, for none of the neighbours could checkmate him: so he thought to make quick work of a silent but thoughtful boy-stammerer,-by tempting him at an early period of the game to take, seemingly for nothing but advantage, a certain knight (his usual dodge, it appeared) which would have ensured an ultimate defeat. However, I declined the generous offer, which began to
t M.P. for his own ancestral Deptford. It was to me a triumph only to puzzle his shrewdness, "to make him think," as I used to say,-and if ever
out the Literary Life's frequent mental recreation, especia
he one who couldn't speak, and Mr. Biscoe in particular used to say when my turn came to read or to answer,-"Never mind, Mr. Tupper, I'm sure you know it,-please to go on, Mr. So-and-So." This habitual c
page or two, and would have rejoiced my piscatorial friends Kingsley and Leech in old days, and will not be unacceptable to Attwood Matthews, Cholmondeley Pennell, and the Marstons with their friend Mr. Senior in these. I have had vario
illage Queen of
st before the
musical laugh,
en sands, which
le-green kirtle
nd her tinkli
odies: quick,-y
efluence of t
rout, who shuns
rowler, loves
hold him bravel
own,-now madl
line among those
ds,-and hail, t
I
bbed the Nereids
fairy messen
very prankt wi
favourite page:
?a to her
ew-born founta
loving haste
cks, and through
me where coral
ea-nymph clasps
, terrible a
lissom rod, a
row the temptin
of trophies fr
I
Zephyr, waft m
ppling shall
l, whose calm
ambush, where
ping fly; there
ucus!-but he m
the monarch
ike a salmon's,
e, and waste hi
Damocles, a
ll to take this
ntly; quick, th
t the glitteri
dolphin, swe
Billionaires
Short stories
Romance
Romance
Romance
Billionaires