Читать книгу Follies in Fiction - Стивен Ликок - Страница 6

Table of Contents

Note. (This story originally contained two hundred and fifty thousand words. But by a marvellous feat of condensation it is reduced, without the slightest loss, to a hundred and six words.)

I

Edward Endless lived during his youth

in Maine,

in New Hampshire,

in Vermont,

in Massachusetts,

in Rhode Island,

in Connecticut.

II

Then the lure of the city lured him. His fate took him to

New York, to Chicago, and to Philadelphia.

In Chicago he lived,

in a boarding house on La Salle Avenue,

then he boarded,—

in a living house on Michigan Avenue.

In New York he

had a room in an eating house on Forty-first Street,

and then,—

ate in a rooming house on Forty-Second Street.

In Philadelphia he

used to sleep on Chestnut Street,

and then,—

slept on Maple Street.

During all this time women were calling to him. He knew and came to be friends with,—

Margaret Jones,

Elizabeth Smith,

Arabella Thompson,

Jane Williams,

Maud Taylor.

And he also got to know, pretty well,

Louise Quelquechose,

Antoinette Alphabette,

and Estelle Etcetera.

And during this time Art began to call him,—

Pictures began to appeal to him,

Statues beckoned to him,

Music maddened him,

and any form of Recitation or

Elocution drove him beside himself.

III

Then, one day, he married Margaret Jones.

As soon as he had married her

he was disillusioned.

How he hated her.

Then he lived with Elizabeth Smith,—

He had no sooner sat down with her, than,

He hated her.

Half mad, he took his things over to Arabella Thompson’s flat to live with her.

The moment she opened the door of the apartment, he loathed her.

He saw her as she was.

Driven sane with despair, he then,—

(Our staff here cut the story off. There are hundreds and hundreds of pages after this. They show Edward Endless grappling in the fight for clean politic. The last hundred pages deal with religion. Edward finds it after a big fight. But no one reads these pages. There are no women in them. Our staff cut them out and merely show at the end,—

Edward Purified,—

Uplifted,—

Transluted.

The whole story is perhaps the biggest thing ever done on this continent. Perhaps!)