How would love for books be developed?
W Somerset
Maugham: Philip starts reading
From:
W Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage,
ch. 9
Page 3
Mrs. Carey could not sleep that afternoon, and
by four o'clock she was so wide awake that she came downstairs. She
thought she would hear Philip his collect so that he should make no
mistakes when he said it to his uncle. His uncle then would be pleased; he
would see that the boy's heart was in the right place. But when Mrs. Carey
came to the dining-room and was about to go in, she heard a sound that
made her stop suddenly. Her heart gave a little jump. She turned away and
quietly slipped out of the front-door. She walked round the house till she
came to the dining-room window and then cautiously looked in. Philip was
still sitting on the chair she had put him in, but his head was on the
table buried in his arms, and he was sobbing desperately. She saw the
convulsive movement of his shoulders. Mrs. Carey was frightened. A thing
that had always struck her about the child was that he seemed so
collected. She had never seen him cry. And now she realised that his
calmness was some instinctive shame of showing his feelings: he hid
himself to weep.
Without thinking that her husband disliked being
awakened suddenly, she burst into the drawing-room.
"William, William," she said.
"The boy's crying as though his heart would break."
Mr. Carey sat up and disentangled himself from
the rug about his legs.
"What's he got to cry about?"
"I don't know.... Oh, William, we can't let
the boy be unhappy. D'you think it's our fault? If we'd had children we'd
have known what to do."
Mr. Carey looked at her in perplexity: He felt
extraordinarily helpless.
Cf. Somerset Maugham, Discovering
the unreal [at Kierkegaard's margin]
|
Rilke, Letter to a Young Poet |
Plato, Whom are we talking to? |
Kierkegaard, My work as an author
| Emerson, Self-knowledge |
Gibson - McRury, Discovering one's face |
Emerson, We differ in art,
not in wisdom
| Joyce,
Portrait of the Artist
