English 22.
Joseph
A, Cone.
First Year Special.
April 23, 1895.
Theme
#13,
Third
Connected Theme
I think you do not get
near enough to your characters – you hold them off at arm’s length and make
them perform at your bidding instead of living in them. Your conversation is
still strained and bookish and your phrasing more or less conventional. Miss Roberts
is not sufficiently individualized – further use of gesture, facial expression,
intonation would help to make her more real. I think you make a mistake in
speaking of her as “coy” – but perhaps I misapprehended her character.
Your incidents are
plausible this time, but your language does not yet redeem your work from the
commonplace.
Rewrite
F.E.F.
{A Month at Mountview}
CHAPTER III.
Haskell was up early
the next morning. He threw up his windows and Miss Cummings, who was out in the
garden for flowers for the breakfast table, heard the busy click of a typewriter
coming from his room.
“Well, that is
strange,” she mused; “Mr. Haskell claiming to know nothing of literature or
writers, using a typewriter. O, well, I suppose he is one of those business men
who cannot leave business at home when they go health seeking,” and dismissing
the thought from her mind she went on snipping roses, and humming softly (a flower amongst flowers.) of doubtful value
Meanwhile the
typewriter clicked on and on, till a two-column article for “The Tribune” was
completed. Haskell was so much surprised at Miss Robert’s remarkable beauty and
serenity of disposition that he could not resist the temptation of attacking
her once more through the column of his favorite paper. It was the most
sarcastic bit of work he had ever sent out, and he chuckled to himself as he
dropped it into an envelope, which was addressed to his friend Grant. He took
this course so that anyone handling the hotel mail would not suspect him of
being connected with “The Tribune.” Then he went down stairs and out into the
grounds where he had passed an hour the evening before.
A short distance from
the hotel lay a charming sheet of water, known to tourists as “Troutlair.” This
was the lake which Mather had often described to Haskell, and the one which Mr. Cummings had praised so
highly the morning they rode over in the buckboard. Since his arrival he had
not given the lake much thought, but now, when he spied it glimmering through
the trees, he strolled down towards the thickly wooded shore. Scarcely a sound
disturbed the perfect morning. The sun was struggling to get here and there a
narrow ray through the thick foliage, and the dew on either side of the path
lay still full The best word? and sparkling. With
each step the young writer lost himself Idiomatic? more and more to the deep spell of Nature. Her very stillness
thrilled him, and as he drew nearer the lake he felt almost irritated
upon hearing a faint, gurgling splash, as though if Hills Found-ation
p.156 some
one were bailing water out of a boat, and dropping it over the side.
“Ah!” he said to himself, stopping to listen; “Some
old fellow going out for an early fish. ? I wish I had my
tackle, I would go out with him; by Cap.jove, I would.”
Then he stepped briskly
in the direction whence the sound came. The shore was still hidden by the dense
undergrowth, and not until he came to the very water’s edge could he see the
skiff. There, leaning over the side, in graceful posture, was, not the old
fisherman he had pictured to himself, but his new acquaintance, Miss Roberts.
He gave a step backward, but it was too late. A dry stick beneath his feet
snapped loudly and she looked up.
“Good morning, Mr.
Haskell,” she said, cheerily; “you quite startled me; I thought you were a
bear; or perhaps a deer.”
“So I am,” said
Haskell, put at ease by her affable manner.
“Yes, but which?” she
asked, coyly. Is this the word
you want?
“O, the former, of
course; bears always startle people, so I must be a bear; however, one all alone in the woods at such an early hour should
expect to be startled. Are you contemplating
a row, or are you employed by the hotel at bailing out boats?” Not colloquial
enough
“I am about to take my
morning spin,” she replied. “This is one of my daily exercises, before
breakfast.”
“What, every morning?”
he asked.
“Every morning.”
“And all alone?”
“All alone; nobody is allowed
to touch this boat but myself.”
“But isn’t it taking
almost too great a risk, coming out here all by yourself; so far from
everybody? There must be either a very
lazy or a stupid set of fellows in that hotel.”
“O, no;” she replied,
lightly; “I can row like a professional; swim like a fish, and scream like a freshman natural simile?; shall I show you how
well?”
“Never mind about the
screaming; I will believe you without; as to the rowing, I shwould prefer to witness
that;, providing I could go along with
you, and carefully watch your stroke.” Again not colloquial
“I hardly know what to
say to that,” she answered, with will feigned earnestness; “I have never had a
man in the boat with me, therefore so I do not know just how one might act. However, if
you will promise to sit in the middle, and keep very still, I will try you for
this once.”
“I will promise anything,”
said Haskell, “in order to get a sail? on such a morning as
this.”
In a few moments they
pushed from shore, and it seemed to the young man at the tiller that never
before had he been so happy. He did not undertake to define his feelings; he
feared to do so lest he it should break the spell. He was
content to float on and on, listening to the dip of her oars, and the music of
her voice. “Journalism”, “Bacon-Shakespeare”, all was forgotten now. He was
afloat upon a sea of new hopes and ambitions, and he cared not whither he
drifted. Every now and then he was aroused by his companion’s saying Cap. “look out, Mr. Haskell, you will steer me into an island,” or, Cap. “a little more to the left, please.” And Sso the moments sped away, and by the time they had reached
the shore again, the sound of the breakfast horn came rolling through the
woodland, echoing and re-echoing from mountain to mountain, both above and
below the lake.
The remainder of the day
Haskell felt was wretched. He was half
sorry now that he had sent so harsh an article to “The Tribune”. But it was too
late to make an attempt to modify it; at noon, the day following, the papers
would be there. He had received a cheery letter from Grant, which was mostly in
praise of some new and striking feature he had discovered in Miss Stearnfield.
Haskell smiled knowingly, as he read it.
“Poor Grant,” he mused;
“so open; so easily read; but a gem in his way.”
All that night and the
next forenoon it rained heavily. A (goodly
number) Avoid this phrase of the guests, among
whom were Haskell and Miss Roberts, were
grouped upon the front veranda, watching the disappearing storm as it played
over the distant mountains. Suddenly Miss cummings, with a paper in her hand,
and a look of indignation on her face, stood before them.
“O, Miss Roberts!” she
cried, “that villain has written a horrid, insulting piece about you; just read
it,” and she threw the paper into the young author’s lap.
Instantly there was a
stampede towards the office for papers. Haskell thought at first he should have
to leave, but with an effort, he calmed himself, and watched Miss Roberts
closely as her eyes ran rapidly over the article. Many of her friends had
gathered around her waiting to hear what
her opinion was to be. At last, looking
up into their faces, she said coolly, but with fine sarcasm in her voice, “Some
people would call an article of this kind clever, and so it is, from one point
of view, but as for me, I have only contempt for the man who could write
anything so unfair and unjust.” Tautologous
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