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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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25 I do not think that even I could produce any effect on a character that according to his own brother’s admission is irretrievably weak and vacillating. Indeed I am not sure that I would desire to reclaim him. I am not in favour of this modern mania for turning bad people into good people at a moment’s notice. As a man sows so let him reap. You must put away your diary, Cecily. I really don’t see why you should keep a diary at all. CEC I keep a diary in order to enter the wonderful secrets of my life. If I didn’t write them down I should probably forget all about them. MISS PRI Memory, my dear Cecily, is the diary that we all carry about with us. CEC Yes, but it usually chronicles the things that have never happened, and couldn’t possibly have happened. I believe that Memory is responsible for nearly all the three-volume novels that Mudie sends us. MISS PRI Do not speak slightingly of the three-volume novel, Cecily. I wrote one myself in earlier days. CEC Did you really, Miss Prism? How wonderfully clever you are! I hope it did not end happily? I don’t like novels that end happily. They depress me so much. MISS PRI The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means. CEC I suppose so. But it seems very unfair. And was your novel ever published? MISS PRI Alas! no. The manuscript unfortunately was abandoned. I use the word in the sense of lost or mislaid. To your work, child, these speculations are profitless. CEC [Smiling.] But I see dear Dr. Chasuble coming up through the garden. MISS PRI [Rising and advancing.] Dr. Chasuble! This is indeed a pleasure. [Enter Canon Chasuble.] CHAS And how are we this morning? Miss Prism, you are, I trust, well? CEC Miss Prism has just been complaining of a slight headache. I think it would do her so much good to have a short stroll with you in the Park, Dr. Chasuble. |
