The Castaway

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III THE BOOMERANG George Gordon There was an unaffected pleasure in the exclamation, and its echo in the answer: Sherry And young as ever, I'll be bound I heard last night at Lady Jersey's you were in London, said Sheridan, after the first greetings. So you've had enough of Greece, eh ? Three years...
More Description

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III THE BOOMERANG George Gordon There was an unaffected pleasure in the exclamation, and its echo in the answer: Sherry And young as ever, I'll be bound I heard last night at Lady Jersey's you were in London, said Sheridan, after the first greetings. So you've had enough of Greece, eh ? Three years What have you done in all that time ? I have dined the mufti of Thebes, I have viewed the harem of Ali Pasha, I have kicked an Athenian postmaster. I was blown ashore on the island of Salamis. I caught a fever going to Olympia. And I have found that I like to be back in England?the oddest thing of all Gordon ended half-earnestly. Threading the familiar thoroughfares, tasting the city's rush, its intermina- bleness, its counterplay and torsion of living, he had felt a sense of new appreciation. His months of freer breathing in the open spaces of the East had quickened his pulses. The pair strolled on together chatting, the old wit linking his arm in the younger man's. He had always liked Gordon and the appearance of his famous tour de force had lifted this liking into genuine admiration. Hobhouse says you've brought back another book, said he, presently. I've a portmanteau crammed with stanzas in Spenser's measure, but they're likely to be drivelling idiot- ism. I must leave that to the critics. I have heard their chorus of deep damnations once, Gordon added ruefully. But no doubt they've long ago forgotten my infantile ferocities. Sheridan shot a keen glance under his bushy brows. Could the other, he wondered, have so undervalued the vicious hatred his cutting Satire had raised in the ranks of the prigs and pamphleteers it pilloried? In his long foreign absence had he been ignorant of the flood of tales so assiduously circulated...