Adnam's Orchard

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  • Engels
  • Paperback
  • 9781406713978
  • 09 oktober 2007
  • 628 pagina's
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Samenvatting

CHAPTER I ALL over the countryside the first fragrant promise of spring in the air wrought happy trouble in the blood of sentient things. It was the first of March, and early morning about the time when the world goes to work. The birds were still at breakfast, and, except for chirrupings and cheeping, were silent for the most part, but here and there one sang wasting the precious time, a certain sort of observer would have said, betraying the limits of his own capacity by pointing an erroneous moral, as a certain sort of observer always does when pleasant things are in question the sort, in this case, who has no music in himself, and therefore has no perception of the good of music to men on the march or to birds on the nest to the weary with work and the weary with waiting the sore of body and the sick of soul. Not that there were many birds on the nest as yet, except the blackbirds, first builders of the year but everywhere there was busy preparation, and, as the day wore on, love and hope were voiced in low sweet notes, in passionate trills, in bursts of rapture, which caught and held the heart on a sudden, and roused the dormant senses once again to love and hope. Amongst the human beings that morning much the same order prevailed as amongst the birds, but more prosaically. Nature calls to the birds, and the birds obey her, and she gives them joy unmarred but man makes it his duty to thwart nature, who, to mark her displeasure, sees to it that ever with his dearest delight something of trouble is mixed. Labourers were at work in the fields busy women bustled about indoors loiterers lingered round breakfast tables the wastrels were still in bed but let them do or leave undone whatthey would, for them all there was care their songs were not whole-hearted, their loves were incomplete. From the side door of his substantial house old Emery Pratt, yeoman, emerged, a hard low-crowned hat on his head, a stout stick in his hand, not used as a support but grasped in the middle like a weapon, ready for attack or defence, as occasion might require. Two sporting dogs were bounding about him, and his eldest son, Seraph, followed at his heels. Father and son they undoubtedly were there was no mistaking the breed but in this last specimen the strain was no longer pure. The father, a splendid old man, was thoroughbred of his kind, the son was a mongrel. In the pure strain the Pratts had the large deliberation of the land itself the slow processes of nature were reflected in all their works and ways, its storms as well as its calms, its generous bounties. Physically they were fine men, with large limbs in perfect proportion, brains well balanced in their ample skulls, and colouring rich in health. But in Seraph there was a falling off in all these traits. Only in height did he approach his father. For the rest he was a weedy specimen, ill-proportioned, neutral-tinted, with a small insignificant head, and something furtive both in gait and manner which contrasted unfavourably with the solid, simple, self-respecting directness which was the prominent characteristic of his fathers family. He had none of the largeness of nature either, which made few words mean much from his forebears. Where they had needed to be nothing but laconic, he had been driven to loquaciousness, as though, by the incessant flow of his speech, he were trying to disguise its shallowness. But he could curb hisexuberance, too, on occasion, calling craft to his aid where his ancestors would have brandished an honest weapon. He had his good points however. He was excellent on the land, his fathers trustiest support...

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Inhoud

Taal
en
Bindwijze
Paperback
Oorspronkelijke releasedatum
09 oktober 2007
Aantal pagina's
628
Illustraties
Met illustraties

Betrokkenen

Hoofdauteur
Sarah Grand
Hoofduitgeverij
Read Books

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Extra groot lettertype
Nee
Verpakking breedte
140 mm
Verpakking hoogte
216 mm
Verpakking lengte
216 mm
Verpakkingsgewicht
788 g

EAN

EAN
9781406713978

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