[on transcribing a love letter that has no punctuation:]
Where I could make it sense by stopping it, I have. The original is all written post. Cupid never stops to bait. Then he has no eyes, you know; which is an excuse for bad spelling, and confusion in the sense. Poor blind boy! It's very well he can contrive to write at all. ...Oh Love, almighty Love, with what eloquence does adoration of thee inspire thy votaries!
--Love and Madness, Herbert Croft
Reminds me of
Legolas by Laura.
EDIT: Just came across this bizarre passage, which Croft's narrator claims to have quoted from "Tissot": “There have been many instances of literary persons, who thought themselves metamorphosed into lanterns; and who complained of having lost their thighs.” Ummmm… O_o Did he mean lights…?
EDIT: This book is an epistolary novel, and one of the letters seems to have been less a letter than a DISSERTATION on the subject of
Thomas Chatterton. The letter was ONE HUNDRED TWENTY PAGES LONG (out of a 310-page novel). I just ran across this line in a later letter: "But I would give a good deal were it possible for me never again to think about Chatterton, or about his death, as long as I live". You and me both, man. You and me both.
EDIT: There's this popping noise outside, and I thought it was a kid with a cap gun. But I just looked, and it's a young woman standing between the firehouse and our backyard, apparently practicing cracking a bullwhip.
artekka