Arthur Conan Doyle

Name: A Duet, with an Occasional Chorus — Chapter XII.
Author: Arthur Conan Doyle

A Duet, with an Occasional Chorus… (1899)

Summary

“A Duet, with an Occasional Chorus — Chapter XII.”, published in 1899, is a work by Arthur Conan Doyle. It explores elements such as Frank, cipher and Maude.

Quotes from A Duet, with an Occasional Chorus… (Arthur Conan Doyle)

Arthur Conan Doyle, A Duet, with an Occasional Chorus… (1899)

“ Maude was delighted. If he had proposed to read the rig-vedas in the original Sanskrit, Maude would have listened with a smiling face. It is in such trifles that a woman’s love is more than a man’s.
That night Frank came downstairs with a thick well-thumbed volume in his hand.
‘This is Mr. Pepys,’ said he solemnly.
‘What a funny name!’ cried Maude. ‘It makes me think of indigestion. Why? Oh yes, pepsine, of course.’
‘We shall take a dose of him every night after dinner to complete the resemblance. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Arthur Conan Doyle, A Duet, with an Occasional Chorus… (1899)

“ Pepys and the seventeenth century, and all that is lofty and instructive, and could fix upon nothing except those dear little wandering tendrils, and the white column on which they twined. Alas, that so small a thing can bring the human mind from its empyrean flights! Alas, that vague emotions can drag down the sovereign intellect! Alas, that even for an hour, a man should prefer the material to the spiritual!
But the man who doesn’t misses a good deal. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Arthur Conan Doyle, A Duet, with an Occasional Chorus… (1899)

“ Imagine the labour of it! So some one set to work to solve the cipher. This was about the year 1820. After three years they succeeded.’
‘How in the world did they do it?’
‘Well, they say that human ingenuity never yet invented a cipher which human ingenuity could not also solve. Anyhow, they did succeed. And when they had done so, and copied it all out clean, they found they had got hold of such a book as was never heard of before in the whole history of literature.’
Maude laid her sewing on her lap, and looked across with her lips parted and her eyebrows raised. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Arthur Conan Doyle, A Duet, with an Occasional Chorus… (1899)

“ Naturally, if you have six pigeons, and a lamprey, and a lobster, and a side of lamb, and a leg of mutton, and all these other things cooking at the same time, you would need a huge fire.’
‘The wonderful thing about Pepys,’ said Frank, looking thoughtfully over the pages, ‘is that he is capable of noting down the mean little impulses of human nature, which most men would be so ashamed of, that they would hasten to put them out of their mind. His occasional shabbiness in money matters, his jealousies, his envies, all his petty faults, which are despicable on account of their pettiness. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Arthur Conan Doyle, A Duet, with an Occasional Chorus… (1899)

“ Five or six evenings a week, she with her sewing and Frank with his book, settled down to such enjoyment as men go to the ends of the earth to seek, while it awaits them, if they will but atune their souls to sympathy, beside their own hearthstones. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Arthur Conan Doyle, A Duet, with an Occasional Chorus… (1899)

“ Remember the dignity of the man, a high government official, an orator, a writer, a patron of learning, and here you have the other side, the little thoughts, the mean ideas which may lurk under a bewigged head, and behind a solemn countenance. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Arthur Conan Doyle, A Duet, with an Occasional Chorus… (1899)

“ When he dined out, he says that his host gave him “the meanest dinner of beef, shoulder and umbles of venison, and a few pigeons, and all in the meanest manner that ever I did see, to the basest degree.”
‘What are umbles, dear?’
‘I have no idea.’
‘Well, whatever they are, it sounds to me a very good dinner. People must have lived very well in those days.’
‘They habitually over-ate and over-drank themselves. But Pepys gives us the menu of one of his own entertainments. I’ve marked it somewhere. Yes, here it is. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Arthur Conan Doyle, A Duet, with an Occasional Chorus… (1899)

“ It is not only that he tells of his daily doings, and gives us such an intimate picture of life in those days, as could by no other means have been conveyed, but it is as a piece of psychology that the thing is so valuable. ”

Arthur Conan Doyle

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Quotes from A Duet, with an Occasional Chorus… (Arthur Conan Doyle)

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