I am elderly, grey-bearded and, according to my clerk, Alfred, disgustingly fat; I wear spectacles and get more and more bronchitic as I grow older. Still no young prince in a fairy story ever found an invisible princess more effectually hidden behind a hedge of dullness or more fast asleep than Nausicaa was when I woke her and hailed her as Authoress of the Odyssey. And there was no difficulty about it either—all one had to do was to go up to the front door and ring the bell.
Telemachus and Nicholas Nickleby
The virtuous young man defending a virtuous mother against a number of powerful enemies is one of the ignes fatui of literature. The scheme ought to be very interesting, and often is so, but it always fails as regards the hero who, from Telemachus to Nicholas Nickleby, is always too much of the good young man to please.
Gadshill and Trapani
While getting our lunch one Sunday at the east end of the long room in the Sir John Falstaff Inn, Gadshill, we overheard some waterside-looking dwellers in the neighbourhood talking among themselves. I wrote down the following:—
Bill: Oh, yes. I’ve got a mate that works in my shop; he’s chucked the Dining Room because they give him too much to eat. He found another place where they gave him four pennyworth of meat and two vegetables and it was quite as much as he could put up with.
George: You can’t kid me, Bill, that they give you too much to eat, but I’ll believe it to oblige you, Bill. Shall I see you to-night?
Bill: No, I must go to church.
George: Well, so must I; I’ve got to go.
So at Trapani, I heard two small boys one night on the quay (I am sure I have written this down somewhere, but it is less trouble to write it again than to hunt for it) singing with all their might, with their arms round one another’s necks. I should say they were about ten years old, not more.