Читать книгу The Travel Tales of Mr. Joseph Jorkens - Edward 18th Baron of Dunsany Plunkett - Страница 3

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In recording these tales that I have had from Mr. Jorkens, as nearly verbatim as I am able to remember them, I trust that I may have filled a gap here and there amongst the experience of travellers. I even hope for these tales that they may at certain points advance the progress of Science, and establish our knowledge upon a firmer basis; yet should they fail to do so, I feel that they may at least be so fortunate as to add something of strangeness to parts of our planet, just as it was tending to grow too familiar, and so help to put our knowledge back on to a foundation on which it rested once, so airily shaky as to possess some interest for all that find any charm in the queer and elusive. If I have at any time appeared to imply that Mr. Jorkens exaggerates, such implication is illusory, and I wish my readers to be most solemnly assured that I have nowhere intended to cast any aspersions at all upon his veracity, such being entirely remote from my intention. To have implied that he is a bit fond of a drink is quite a different matter. This I have done because I know that it will cause no pain to Mr. Jorkens. On the contrary he likes it to be known that he needs an occasional stimulant, and values highly the offer of whiskey now and then from a friend. It is not so much the value of the whiskey itself that he thinks of, as the kind thought that prompts the offer of one. This he values equally with one other thing, that he holds to be just as much due to him from his friends, an absolute belief in his statements.