Wednesday, November 29, 2006
Darn Your Books
Charles Dickens, Bleak House, chap. XXI:
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"Don't you read, or get read to?"Charles Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit, chap. XVI:
The old man shakes his head with sharp sly triumph. "No, no. We have never been readers in our family. It don't pay. Stuff. Idleness. Folly. No, no!"
"We are a busy people, sir," said one of the captains, who was from the West, "and have no time for reading mere notions. We don't mind 'em if they come to us in newspapers along with almighty strong stuff of another sort, but darn your books."
Here the general, who appeared to grow quite faint at the bare thought of reading anything which was neither mercantile nor political, and was not in a newspaper, inquired "if any gentleman would drink some?"
