Explore "Such is Life" by Joseph Furphy on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Sat. Feb. 9. Runnymede. To Alf Jones's.
Not much in that bill of fare, you think? Perhaps not. Nor was Count Federigo degli Alberighi's falcon much of a banquet for the Lady Giovanna, though that meagre catering cost a considerable jar to the sensibilities of the impoverished aristocrat -- accurately represented, in this instance, by the writer of these memoirs. Of course, I am committed to any narration imposed by my random election of dates; but just notice that perversity, that untowardness, that cussedness in the affairs of men, which brings me back to Runnymede, above all places in the spacious southwestern quarter of the Mother Province. The unforeseen sequences of that original option are masters of the situation, till they run their course -- and most tyrannical masters they are. They have tied me to a stake; I cannot fly, but, bear-like, I must fight the course. Ay! your first-person-singular novelist delights in relating his love-story, simply because he can invent something to pamper his own romantic notions; whereas, a similar undertaking makes the faithful chronicler squirm inasmuch as Oh! -- you'll find out soon enough.