At Swim-two-birds Read Online Free PDF Page A

side, I explained to him my literary intentions in considerable detail – now reading, now discoursing, oratio recta and oratio obliqua.
    Extract from Manuscript as to nature of Red Swan premises, oratio recta
: The Red Swan premises in Lower Leeson Street are held in fee farm, thelandlord whosoever being pledged to maintain the narrow lane which marks its eastern boundary unimpeded and free from nuisance for a distance of seventeen yards, that is, up to the intersection of Peter Place. New Paragraph. A terminus of the Cornelscourt coach in the seventeenth century, the hotel was rebuilt in 1712 and afterwards fired by the yeomanry for reasons which must be sought in the quiet of its ruined garden, on the three-perch stretch that goes by Croppies’ Acre. Today, it is a large building of four storeys. The title is worked in snow-white letters along the circumference of the fanlight and the centre of the circle is concerned with the delicate image of a red swan, pleasingly conceived and carried out by a casting process in Birmingham delf. Conclusion of the foregoing.
    Further extract descriptive of Dermot Trellis rated occupier of the Red Swan Hotel, oratio recta
: Dennot Trellis was a man of average stature but his person was flabby and unattractive, partly a result of his having remained in bed for a period of twenty years. He was voluntarily bedridden and suffered from no organic or other illness. He occasionally rose for very brief periods in the evening to pad about the empty house in his felt slippers or to interview the slavey in the kitchen on the subject of his food or bedclothes. He had lost all physical reaction to bad or good weather and was accustomed to trace the seasonal changes of the year by inactivity or virulence of his pimples. His legs were puffed and affected with a prickly heat, a result of wearing his woollen undertrunks in bed. He never went out and rarely approached the windows.
    Tour de force by Brinsley, vocally interjected, being a comparable description in the Finn canon
: The neck to Trellis is house-thick and house-rough and is guarded by night and day against the coming of enemies by his old watchful boil. His bottom is the stern of a sea-blue schooner, his stomach is its mainsail with a filling of wind. His face is a snowfall on old mountains, the feet are fields.
    There was an interruption, I recall, at this stage. My uncle put his head through the door and looked at me in a severe manner, his face flushed from walking and an evening paper in his hand. He was about to address me when he perceived the shadow of Brinsley by the window.
    Well, well, he said. He came in in a genial noisy manner, closed the door with vigour and peered at the form of Brinsley. Brinsley took his hands from his pockets and smiled without reason in the twilight.
    Good evening to you, gentlemen, said my uncle.
    Good evening, said Brinsley.
    This is Mr Brinsley, a friend of mine, I said, raising my shoulders feebly from the bed. I gave a low moan of exhaustion.
    My uncle extended an honest hand in the grip of friendship.
    Ah, Mr Brinsley, how do you do? he said. How do you do; Sir? You are a University man, Mr Brinsley?
    Oh yes.
    Ah, very good, said my uncle. It’s a grand thing, that – a thing that will stand to you. It is certainly. A good degree is a very nice thing to have. Are the masters hard to please, Mr Brinsley?
    Well, no. As a matter of fact they don’t care very much.
    Do you tell me so! Well it was a different tale in the old days. The old schoolmasters believed in the big stick. Oh, plenty of that boyo.
    He gave a laugh here in which we concurred without emotion.
    The stick was mightier than the pen, he added, laughing again in a louder way and relapsing into a quiet chuckle. He paused for a brief interval as if examining something hitherto overlooked in the interior of his memory.
    And how is our friend? he inquired in the direction of my bed.
    Nature of my reply
: Civil, perfunctory,