I have long felt that I
want never again to read anything about the sea, except the advertisements
of auxiliary yawls and cutters in the _Yachting World_. I recommend these
advertisements as a balm for sores caused by rhymed marine Jingoism.
A BOOK IN A RAILWAY ACCIDENT
[_20 July '11_]
Books are undoubtedly cursed, and rendered unreadable in a new sense. I
don't know how many years it is since I was informed that Villiers de
l'Isle-Adam's "L'Eve Future" was a really fine novel. I bought it, and I
was so upset, in my narrow youthfulness, to find that the author had made
a hero of Thomas Alva Edison, and called him by his name, that I could not
accomplish more than two chapters. Later I was again informed that "L'Eve
Future" was a really fine novel, and I had another brief tussle with it,
and was vanquished by its dullness. I received a third warning, and
started yet again, and disliked the book rather less, and then I
completely lost it in a removal. After months or years it mysteriously
turned up, like a fox-terrier who has run off on an errand of his own. But
I did not resume it. And then after another long interval the idea that I
absolutely must read "L'Eve Future" gathered force in my mind, and I
decided that the next time I went away for a week-end I would take it with
me.
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