He ventured not to follow or detain her. Here he stood alone,
gazing at the stars; confounded as he was, here he stood.
Yes; there he stood. There seems to be no doubt about that.
Nearly half of this delirious story has now been delivered to the reader.
It seems a pity to reduce the other half to a cold synopsis.
Pity! it is more than a pity, it is a crime; for to synopsize McClintock
is to reduce a sky-flushing conflagration to dull embers, it is to
reduce barbaric splendor to ragged poverty. McClintock never wrote
a line that was not precious; he never wrote one that could be spared;
he never framed one from which a word could be removed without damage.
Every sentence that this master has produced may be likened to a
perfect set of teeth, white, uniform, beautiful. If you pull one,
the charm is gone.
Still, it is now necessary to begin to pull, and to keep it up;
for lack of space requires us to synopsize.
We left Elfonzo standing there amazed. At what, we do not know.
Not at the girl's speech. No; we ourselves should have been
amazed at it, of course, for none of us has ever heard anything
resembling it; but Elfonzo was used to speeches made up of noise
and vacancy, and could listen to them with undaunted mind like
the "topmost topaz of an ancient tower"; he was used to making
them himself; he--but let it go, it cannot be guessed out; we shall
never know what it was that astonished him.
Pages:
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116