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    Trivia
    Trivia
    Trivia
    Ebook92 pages1 hour

    Trivia

    By Logan Pearsall Smith

    4/5

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    Read preview
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateJan 1, 2010
    Trivia

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    • 4/5
      Odd snippets of almost dreamlike oddness: musings and thought-experiments.
    • 4/5
      Delightful excursion into the mostly brief reflections of the American-born Oxford-educated author as he carefully observes those around him and his inner feelings. There are a few brilliant parts, a few melancholy ones, and some longer sections that tell charming stories.

    Book preview

    Trivia - Logan Pearsall Smith

    The Project Gutenberg EBook of Trivia, by Logan Pearsall Smith

    This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

    Title: Trivia

    Author: Logan Pearsall Smith

    Release Date: July, 2005 [EBook #8544] This file was first posted on July 21, 2003 Last Updated: May 13, 2013

    Language: English

    *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TRIVIA ***

    Produced by Joris Van Dael, Charles Aldarondo, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team

    TRIVIA

    By Logan Pearsall Smith

    1917

    Bibliographical Note

    Some of these pieces were privately printed at the Chiswick

    Press in 1902. Others have appeared in the New Statesman and

    The New Republic, and are here reprinted with the Editors'

    permission.

    Preface

    You must beware of thinking too much about Style, said my kindly adviser, or you will become like those fastidious people who polish and polish until there is nothing left.

    Then there really are such people? I asked, lost in the thought of how much I should like to meet them. But the well-informed lady could give me no precise information about them.

    I often hear of them in this tantalizing manner, and perhaps one day I shall get to know them. They sound delightful.

    The Author

    These pieces of moral prose have been written, dear Reader, by a large Carnivorous Mammal, belonging to that suborder of the Animal Kingdom which includes also the Orang-outang, the tusked Gorilla, the Baboon with his bright blue and scarlet bottom, and the long-eared Chimpanzee.

    List of Contents

    BOOK I

    Preface

    The Author

    Happiness

    To-day

    The Afternoon Post

    The Busy Bees

    The Wheat

    The Coming of Fate

    My Speech

    Stonehenge

    The Stars

    Silvia Doria

    Bligh House

    In Church

    Parsons

    The Sound of a Voice

    What Happens

    A Precaution

    The Great Work

    My Mission

    The Birds

    High Life

    Empty Shells

    Dissatisfaction

    A Fancy

    They

    In the Pulpit

    Human Ends

    Lord Arden

    The Starry Heaven

    My Map

    The Snob

    Companions

    Edification

    The Rose

    The Vicar of Lynch

    Tu Quoque Fontium

    The Spider

    BOOK II

    L'Oiseau Bleu

    At the Bank

    Mammon

    I See the World

    Social Success Apotheosis

    The Spring in London

    Fashion Plates

    Mental Vice

    The Organ of Life

    Humiliation

    Green Ivory

    In the Park

    The Correct

    Where Do I Come In?

    Microbes

    The Quest

    The Kaleidoscope

    Oxford Street

    Beauty

    The Power of Words

    Self-Analysis

    The Voice of the World

    And Anyhow

    Drawbacks

    Talk

    The Church of England

    Misgiving

    Sanctuaries

    Symptoms

    Shadowed

    The Incredible

    Terror

    Pathos

    Inconstancy

    The Poplar

    On the Doorstep Old Clothes

    Youth

    Consolation

    Sir Eustace Carr

    The Lord Mayor

    The Burden

    Under an Umbrella

    TRIVIA

    BOOK I

    How blest my lot, in these sweet fields assign'd Where Peace and Leisure soothe the tuneful mind.

    SCOTT, of Amwell, Moral Eclogues (1773)

    Happiness

    Cricketers on village greens, haymakers in the evening sunshine, small boats that sail before the wind—all these create in me the illusion of Happiness, as if a land of cloudless pleasure, a piece of the old Golden World, were hidden, not (as poets have imagined), in far seas or beyond inaccessible mountains, but here close at hand, if one could find it, in some undiscovered valley. Certain grassy lanes seem to lead between the meadows thither; the wild pigeons talk of it behind the woods.

    To-Day

    I woke this morning out of dreams into what we call Reality, into the daylight, the furniture of my familiar bedroom—in fact into the well-known, often-discussed, but, to my mind, as yet unexplained Universe.

    Then I, who came out of Eternity and seem to be on my way thither, got up and spent the day as I usually spend it. I read, I pottered, I talked, and took exercise; and I sat punctually down to eat the cooked meals that appeared at stated intervals.

    The Afternoon Post

    The village Post Office, with its clock and letter-box, its postmistress lost in tales of love-lorn Dukes and coroneted woe, and the sallow-faced grocer watching from his window opposite, is the scene of a daily crisis in my life, when every afternoon I walk there through the country lanes and ask that well-read young lady for my letters. I always expect good news and cheques; and then, of course, there is the magical Fortune which is coming, and word of it may reach me any day. What it is, this strange Felicity, or whence it shall come, I have no notion; but I hurry down in the morning to find the news on the breakfast table, open telegrams in delighted panic, and say to myself Here it is! when at night I hear wheels approaching along the road. So, happy in the hope of Happiness, and not greatly concerned with any other interest or ambition, I live on in my quiet, ordered house; and so I shall live perhaps until the end. Is it, indeed, merely the last great summons and revelation for which I am waiting? I do not know.

    The Busy Bees

    Sitting for hours idle in the shade of an apple tree, near the garden-hives, and under the aerial thoroughfares of those honey-merchants—sometimes when the noonday heat is loud with their minute industry, or when they fall in crowds out of the late sun to their night-long labours-I have sought instruction from the Bees, and tried to appropriate to myself the old industrious lesson.

    And yet, hang it all, who by rights should be the teachers and who the learners? For those peevish, over-toiled, utilitarian insects, was there no

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