Description
Excerpt from Mothers and Children
The professor stopped and laughed; and with the pliability of youth, the class before him laughed in chorus. I myself laughed with the rest, but I laughed from sheer moral cowardice, for I had not found the story at all funny: Like Goldsmith, I had lived my life till then and had known nothing of Ezekiel be yond his name at the top of unread pages. And although I laughed, I hung my head.
Of course, as soon as the class was dismissed I went and looked up Ezekiel in the Bible and read with astonishment and delight the splendid passages in the eighteenth chapter; but this tardy knowledge seemed to me but scant atonement for my former ignorance. It was only when I discovered a class mate (one among those who had laughed loudest at Goldsmith''s simplicity) also surreptitiously investi gating Ezekiel that a gleam Of light filtered into my discouragement; and later, when tactful questioning Of my other classmates revealed the fact that not one of them had ever read a word Of Ezekiel, I was able once more to hold up my head.
The small incident stuck in my memory, and as my capacity for re?ection unfolded itself, it became, little by little, the peg on which many of my re?ec tions were hung. Almost at once it occurred to me that, no matter how ridiculous he might have seemed to his enlightened contemporaries, I personally owed Goldsmith a debt of gratitude for having directed my attention to a noble piece of ethical thought; but I was graduated from college before I awoke to the hilarious probability that it was more than likely that some of the very men whom Goldsmith had button holed on that evening had been as ignorant of Ezekiel as the class of school-children, almost two hundred years later. I had a delighted and amused mental picture of bewigged and beribboned great gentlemen trying to be genteelly casual, as they sought information on the subject from their clerical acquaintances. And upon that idea I rounded the corner suddenly into another conception, namely, that possibly the curates and clergymen themselves, though they had read Ezekiel, never, until Goldsmith simple-mindedly pointed it out, had been aware of the eloquence of the ancient Hebrew.
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Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com
This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
The professor stopped and laughed; and with the pliability of youth, the class before him laughed in chorus. I myself laughed with the rest, but I laughed from sheer moral cowardice, for I had not found the story at all funny: Like Goldsmith, I had lived my life till then and had known nothing of Ezekiel be yond his name at the top of unread pages. And although I laughed, I hung my head.
Of course, as soon as the class was dismissed I went and looked up Ezekiel in the Bible and read with astonishment and delight the splendid passages in the eighteenth chapter; but this tardy knowledge seemed to me but scant atonement for my former ignorance. It was only when I discovered a class mate (one among those who had laughed loudest at Goldsmith''s simplicity) also surreptitiously investi gating Ezekiel that a gleam Of light filtered into my discouragement; and later, when tactful questioning Of my other classmates revealed the fact that not one of them had ever read a word Of Ezekiel, I was able once more to hold up my head.
The small incident stuck in my memory, and as my capacity for re?ection unfolded itself, it became, little by little, the peg on which many of my re?ec tions were hung. Almost at once it occurred to me that, no matter how ridiculous he might have seemed to his enlightened contemporaries, I personally owed Goldsmith a debt of gratitude for having directed my attention to a noble piece of ethical thought; but I was graduated from college before I awoke to the hilarious probability that it was more than likely that some of the very men whom Goldsmith had button holed on that evening had been as ignorant of Ezekiel as the class of school-children, almost two hundred years later. I had a delighted and amused mental picture of bewigged and beribboned great gentlemen trying to be genteelly casual, as they sought information on the subject from their clerical acquaintances. And upon that idea I rounded the corner suddenly into another conception, namely, that possibly the curates and clergymen themselves, though they had read Ezekiel, never, until Goldsmith simple-mindedly pointed it out, had been aware of the eloquence of the ancient Hebrew.
About the Publisher
Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com
This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
Details
Publisher - Forgotten Books
Author(s) - Dorothy Canfield Fisher
Hardback
Published Date -
ISBN - 9780266822554
Dimensions - 22.9 x 15.2 x 2 cm
Page Count - 307
Paperback
Published Date -
ISBN - 9781331820024
Dimensions -
Page Count -
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