| | 1 | Author: | Peattie, Elia Wilkinson, 1862-1935 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | The Shape of Fear, and other ghostly tales  | | | | Published: | 1998 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | TIM O'CONNOR—who was descended from the O'Conors with one N—started
life as a poet and an enthusiast. His mother had designed him for the
priesthood, and at the age of fifteen, most of his verses had an
ecclesiastical tinge, but, somehow or other, he got into the newspaper
business instead, and became a pessimistic gentleman, with a literary
style of great beauty and an income of modest proportions. He fell in
with men who talked of art for art's sake,—though what right they had
to speak of art at all nobody knew,—and little by little his view of
life and love became more or less profane. He met a woman who sucked his
heart's blood, and he knew it and made no
protest; nay, to the great amusement of the fellows who talked of art
for art's sake, he went the length of marrying her. He could not in
decency explain that he had the traditions of fine gentlemen behind him
and so had to do as he did, because his friends might not have
understood. He laughed at the days when he had thought of the
priesthood, blushed when he ran across any of those tender and exquisite
old verses he had written in his youth, and became addicted to absinthe
and other less peculiar drinks, and to gaming a little to escape a
madness of ennui. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
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