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Page 102 of 1031929 · PDF PAGE 50
…ared not God, neither regarded man. He had been trying to persuade the guide to go down to Sulden by the Hintere Grat and the guide had cold feet. My arrival changed the situation. Once assured that I was flesh and blood, the guide plucked up a little courage, which the American further stimulated {101} by a promise of additional dollars. As I had come up alone, the three of us could evidently go down together. I agreed to accept the responsible position of last man and we roped up accordingly. But we were no sooner started than the guide again…
1929 · PDF PAGE 472
… saint of all time; and I was thinking that, as in the case of the Queen of Sheba, when she visited King Solomon, the half had not been told. I was aroused from this mood of mingled gratification and disappointment by a tap on the shoulder. A voice asked me to excuse its intrusion. Its owner explained that, seeing me reading cuttings with the superscription of a London firm, he assumed me to be at least English-speaking, in a city where Yiddish was the language of romance. If so, was I in favour of a square deal for Germany and Austria? I repli…
1929 · PDF PAGE 549
…matic reaction, are removed, and we do all in our power to mitigate the evil effects, the sting of the serpent loses its virus. It is an old saying that one sin provokes another. This is only true when the sinner, driven into a corner by the avengers, tries to escape by some desperate deed. Thus a boy robs the till to pay for his folly in gambling away his earnings, and being found out is maddened by the thought of jail, sees red and kills his employer. We should rather sterilize sin. The sense of shame is cowardly and servile. It is based on i…
1929 · PDF PAGE 535
…s obvious that any man in an outpost besieged by nature (such as is every new settlement outside New England, the Atlantic coast and the old settlements in the south) was really a traitor if he said, however truthfully, anything which might daunt the spirit of his comrades. Those men won out through sheer ignorance of the chances against them, stolid stupidity which blinded them to their desperate plight and bestial insensibility to the actual hardships which they had to endure. It was criminal to insist on the existence of evils for which ther…
1929 · PDF PAGE 36
…which honoured the poet; but it was as irrational as the rest of their beliefs. I can only imagine it as derived from their having been told at school that the English poets were the glory of humanity, for they certainly knew no poetry beyond "Casabianca" and "We are Seven". I discovered Shakespeare for myself. It happened that in the farmhouse at Forsinard were three old folio volumes. My mother had an edition of Shakespeare; but I had never read it, because it was permitted. At the farmhouse, however, there was nothing else {80} to read. I be…
1929 · PDF PAGE 554
…To that he stuck. It was useless to argue that the understanding of an 8° = 3ř has a technical definition, and that a child of two years old must understand the alphabet, if it is to be any use to it. Stupidities of this type were constantly coming up. In matters like chess, he was just as bad as he was about Magick. He begged me to teach him the game. I prescribed a system of study to be vitalized by daily practice with me over the board. For some reason which I never succeeded in grasping, he refused obstinately to follow my advice in any sin…
1929 · PDF PAGE 525
…advanced. During most of the winter I gave most of my spare time to the creation of literature which corresponded nobly with this three fold labour. I wrote the twelve stories Simon Iff in America. These were a continuation of the previous The Scrutinies of Simon Iff, but constructed for the most part on mere mechanical principles. I may even compare them to chess problems. The general method was to think of a situation as inexplicable as possible, then to stop up all chinks with putty, and having satisfied myself that no explanation was possib…
1929 · PDF PAGE 71
…im. His achievements are checked by his averages. But hardly any one in England at that time knew anything about mountaineering. Various old fogies, who could not have climbed the simplest rocks in Cumberland, or led across an easy Alpine pass, had been personally conducted by peasants {135} up a few mountains and written themselves up into fame. The appearance of the guideless climber was therefore a direct challenge. They tried every dirty trick to prevent the facts from leaking out. They refused to record the exploits of guideless men in the…
1929 · PDF PAGE 27
…n's side; and to this hour I cannot tell why. But I found myself as passionately eager to serve my new master as I had been to serve the old. I was anxious to distinguish myself by committing sin. Here again my attitude was extraordinarily subtle. It never occurred to me to steal or in any other way to infringe the decalogue. Such conduct would have been petty and contemptible. I wanted a supreme spiritual sin; and I had not the smallest idea how to set about it. There was a good deal of morbid curiosity among the saints about "the sin against …
1929 · PDF PAGE 375
… so far written, "The Wizard Way"; "At the Fork of the Roads", a true and fascinating story of one of my early magical experiences; The Soldier and the Hunchback ! and ? which I still think one of the subtlest analyses that has ever been written on ontology, with its conclusion: that ecstatic affirmation and sceptical negation are neither of them valid in themselves but are alternate terms in an infinite series, a progression which is in itself a sublime and delightful path to pursue. Disappointment arises from the fear that every joy is transi…
1929 · PDF PAGE 545
…nd having thus acquired good judgment and confidence, to develop intelligent initiative. One must show them how to choose the best hand holds and foot holds, but not let them acquire the habit of looking for the teacher to tell them what to do. They must be forced to find out for themselves how to meet any possible emergency. It is important to give them from the beginning as great a variety of crags as possible; smooth slabs, rough ridges, narrow chimneys, shallow gullies, straight faces, some with ample holds that they may select the best fro…
1929 · PDF PAGE 52
…ade and broken on unintelligible religious grounds. The family of the Lamberts was no exception to this. The eldest daughter was an acid old maid in the late twenties; the youngest was a hysterical monster of suppression. The middle girl was beautiful, voluptuous and normal. She was not sufficiently intelligent to revolt openly against her family; but her human instincts told her that something was wrong and that she had better get out of it. She was in love with a quite suitable young man and engaged to him on probation. The question was wheth…
1929 · PDF PAGE 60
…ard, but I on the point of his skate to the detriment of my much prized perineum. Being then a perfect young fool, as I am now a perfect old one, I supposed it incumbent on my race and caste to pretend not to be hurt, so I forced myself to go on skating despite agony so great that I could hardly bite back the tears, until I thought I had done enough for honour and felt free to slip away. I was engaged that night to a committee meeting of the Climbing Club at the rooms of H. V. Reade in Jermyn Street. I managed somehow to sit through the meeting…
1929 · PDF PAGE 522
…s. I had been childishly petulant in wanting to bathe in "Abana and Pharphar rivers of Damascus", and thinking myself insulted by being told that the petty trickle of Jordan, a stream that did not even lead to the ocean, would suffice to cleanse my limbs of leprosy. Somehow or other, the ghastly situation in which I found myself, the stagnation of my career and the paralysis of my powers were essential to my proper progress. I ceased to fret about the future, as to protest against the present. I took everything as it came almost without comment…
1929 · PDF PAGE 46
…t of all kinds of rock. Its condition varies at every step. Often one has to clear away an immense amount of debris in order to get any hold at all. Yet indiscretion in this operation might pull down a few hundred tons on one's head. One can hardly ever be sure that any given hold is secure. It is, therefore, a matter of the most exquisite judgment to put on it no more weight than is necessary. A jerk or a spring would almost infallibly lead to disaster. One does not climb the cliffs. One hardly even crawls. Trickles or oozes would perhaps be t…
1929 · PDF PAGE 498
… was --- prawns! On August 19th, I was obliged to go to New York for two days on O.T.O. business. The result was amusing. I called on my old friend Tony Sarg, the artist, and gave him an enthusiastic description of my holiday. "There is only one fly," I said, "in the apothecary's ointment. Like Adam in Eden, I lack an Eve." He laughed. "Don't worry! I know a girl game for any adventure. She has wonderful hair --- orange-red curls, calculated to produce delirium tremens at a moment's notice. Here's her name and address." At that moment a small c…
1906 · PDF PAGE 277
…hat a poem which authorises the Archbishop of Canterbury to convey Dr. Clitford’s pet trowels, and makes possible the Gilbertian (in the old sense of pertaining to W. S. Gilbert) position of the Free Kirk to-day, is a poem which had better be burnt, as the most sensible man of his time proposed to do with Homer, or at least left to the collector, as I believe is the case with the pub- lications of the late Isidore Liseux. Immoral is indeed no word for it. It is as criminal as the riddle in ‘‘ Pericles.” That Our Pantosympatheticist is himself a…
1906 · PDF PAGE 194
… her scornful eyes!” With this he makes his age contemp- tible by the drivel-pathos of ll. 156-158, ‘* Dear daughter, I confess that Iam old; Age is unnecessary: on my knees | beg (Kneeling) That you'll vouchsafe me raiment, bed, and food,” begging what none ever thought to deny him. Yet such is the patience of Goneril that even when goaded by all this infamous Billingsgate into speech, her rebuke is the temperate and modest Il. 198-200. ‘* Why not by the hand, sir? How have I offended? All’s not offence that indiscretion finds And dotage terms…
1906 · PDF PAGE 214
…away from under one, and there were some dread awakening in outer space amid the rush of incessant meteors—lost in the void. All this is old knowledge; but who has taken steps toalterit? The answer is forbidding: truth compels me to say, the mystics of all lands. Their endeavour has been to slow the rate of change; their methods perfect quietude of body and mind, produced in varied and too often vicious ways. Regularisation of the breathing is the best known formula. Their results are contemptible, we must admit; but only so because empirical. …
1906 · PDF PAGE 192
…age of sense,and who that of draggle-tailed emotionalism and tepid | melodrama. In the first scene the heroines, who do not care for the old fool their father—as how could any sane women? Remember Shakespeare is here about to show the folly of filial love as such—feel compelled, by an act of gracious generosity to a man they despise, yet pity, to say what they think will please the dotard’s vanity. Also no doubt the sound commercial instinct was touched by Lear’s promise to make acres vary as words, and they deter- mined to make a final effort …