Short Stories - Volume II

Classic from the year 2009 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, , language: English, abstract: Familiar Epistle from a Parent to a Child Aged Two Years and Two Months

MY CHILD, To recount with what trouble I have brought you up--with what an anxious eye I have regarded your progress,--how late and how often I have sat up at night working for you,--and how many thousand letters I have received from, and written to your various relations and friends, many of whom have been of a querulous and irritable turn,--to dwell on the anxiety and tenderness with which I have (as far as I possessed the power) inspected and chosen your food; rejecting the indigestible and heavy matter which some injudicious but well-meaning old ladies would have had you swallow, and retaining only those light and pleasant articles which I deemed calculated to keep you free from all gross humours, and to render you an agreeable child, and one who might be popular with society in general,--to dilate on the steadiness with which I have prevented your annoying any company by talking politics--always assuring you that you would thank me for it yourself some day when you grew older,--to expatiate, in short, upon my own assiduity as a parent, is beside my present purpose, though I cannot but contemplate your fair appearance--your robust health, and unimpeded circulation (which I take to be the great secret of your good looks) without the liveliest satisfaction and delight. [...]

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A Flight

WHEN Don Diego de - I forget his name - the inventor of the last new Flying Machines, price so many francs for ladies, so many more for gentlemen - when Don Diego, by permission of Deputy Chaff-wax and his noble band, shall have taken out a Patent for the Queen's dominions, and shall have opened a commodious Warehouse in an airy situation; and when all persons of any gentility will keep at least a pair of wings, and be seen skimming about in every direction; I shall take a flight to Paris (as I soar round the world) in a cheap and independent manner. At present, my reliance is on the South-Eastern Railway Company, in whose Express Train here I sit, at eight of the clock on a very hot morning, under the very hot roof of the Terminus at London Bridge, in danger of being 'forced' like a cucumber or a melon, or a pine-apple. [...]

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