Flapper

“ Later in the evening Garland said: "I saw you this morning crossing the plaza with Monica. When I told you everybody in this town loved her, was I right?"
"Absolutely!" assented Everett. "But why didn't you tell me she was a flapper?"
"I don't know what a flapper is," promptly retorted Garland. "And if I did, I wouldn't call Monica one."
"A flapper is a very charming person," protested Everett. "I used the term in its most complimentary sense. It means a girl between fourteen and eighteen. It's English slang, and in England at the present the flapper is very popular. ”

“ The flapper played her ancient game of looking at him in that curious way. Grandma looked at them both, then meaningly at Bean. She spoke.
"I'll say very frankly that I wouldn't marry you myself."
He blinked, then he pretended to search with his eyes for their vanished waiter. But it was no good. He had to face the Demon, helpless.
"But that's nothing to your discredit, and it isn't a question of me," she added dispassionately.
His inner voice chanted, "Play the waiting game; play the waiting game."
"Every woman with a head on her knows what she wants when she sees it. ”

“ It was the waiter who raised him from this other abyss where he had been like to perish, the waiter and the things, including tea: plates, forks, napkins, cups and saucers, tea and hot water, jam, biscuit, toast. There was something particularly reassuring about that plate of nicely matched triangles of buttered toast. It spoke of a sane and orderly world where you were never taken off your feet.
"How many lumps?" demanded the pouring flapper. ”

“ Swift, the description of these flappers, and the use they were of to your friends the Laputans; whose minds (Gulliver says) are so taken up with intense speculations, that they neither can speak, nor attend to the discourses of others, without being roused by some external taction upon the organs of speech and hearing; for which reason, those people who are able to afford it, always keep a flapper in their family, as one of their domestics, nor ever walk about, or make visits, without him. ”

“ The more or less supreme being of the Fuegians is angry—if you shoot flappers. 'Very bad to shoot little duck, come rain, come wind, blow, very much blow.' [14] The 'great black man, who cannot be escaped, and who influences the weather according to men's conduct,' is right about the flappers. ”

“ The unique term will come more quickly to one than another, at one time than another, according also to the kind of matter in question. Quickness and slowness, ease and closeness alike, have nothing to do with the artistic character of the true word found at last. As there is a charm of ease, so there is also a special charm in the signs of discovery, of effort and contention towards a due end, as so often with Flaubert himself—in the style which has [32] been pliant, as only obstinate, durable metal can be, to the inherent perplexities and recusancy of a certain difficult thought. ”

“ Ah, Miss Falconer, you are the very princess of censors; and I am glad you saw the fault, before it might have been too late to remedy it. But 'use doth breed a habit in a man,' as the great poet says; and painters are only flesh and blood, after all. This comes of taking my first lessons in painting, among the lagoons of Carolina. I must look close: I warrant me, I have stuck a live-oak into the picture also."
"Really, sir," said Miss Falconer, whom the opportunity of playing the critic seemed to have put into a better humour, "I must beg pardon for my ignorance. ”

“ As she had now become wealthy, she wore a large lace collar over her vest of smooth black velvet; and her wide trousers of poppy-coloured silk, clinging closely to her figure, and drawn tight round her waist by a cashmere scarf, had all over their seams little natural white camellias. Her pale face, a little puffed, and with the nose somewhat retroussé, looked all the more pert from the disordered appearance of her wig, over which she had with a touch of her hand clapped a man's grey felt hat, so that it covered her right ear ”

“ Pray, my dears, don't look so foolish and deplorable, but get the young people together, and let us make a start. Mr. Flaps is a person of strong common sense, a quality for which I myself have always been remarkable, and I thoroughly endorse and support his excellent advice, of which I am the best judge. ”

“ Falconer, 'a most perfect emblem of purity, and in that sense alone there can be no fitter image to be presented to the minds of young women.'
'Very true,' said the doctor. 'And very strange withal,' he thought to himself.
The sisters sang their hymn, made their obeisance, and departed.
The Rev. Dr. Opimian. The hands of these young women do not show signs of menial work.
Mr. Falconer. They are the regulating spirits of the household. They have a staff of their own for the coarser and harder work. ”

“ It is boasted by the admirers of Flaubert that his style is an enamel, and those who say this perhaps forget that the beauty of an enamel resides wholly in its surface and not at all in the substance below it. This is the danger which lies in wait for those who consider too exquisitely the value and arrangement of their words. Their style becomes too glossy, too highly varnished, and attracts too much attention to itself. The greatest writing is that which in its magnificent spontaneity carries the reader with it in its flight ”

“ Think of as many tools as you can that the women used.
How Flaker Learned to Make Weapons of Bone
Before Flaker was hurt he and Fleetfoot had planned to do many things. But now Flaker was lame, and all the Cave-men knew he would never be able to hunt.
When Flaker first knew it, he was very sad. And so Fleetfoot tried to comfort him. Each day he brought him a bird or a rabbit, and he told him all that had happened.
For a while Flaker thought that if a man could not hunt, there was nothing else for him to do. But soon he found there were many things to do besides going out to hunt. ”

“ That night when Fleetfoot came home, Flaker gave him a dagger of reindeer horn. Fleetfoot showed it to Bighorn, who took it, then tossed it on the ground.
Bighorn had never seen such a dagger. He thought a good dagger had to be made of stone. So he made fun of Flaker’s weapon, then thought no more about it.
But Greybeard and Chipper did not make fun of the weapons Flaker made. They tried the dagger next day, and found that it stood the test. So they asked Flaker to make each of them daggers and javelins of reindeer horn.
THINGS TO DO
Tell all you know about the antlers of full-grown stags. ”

“ If followed, he opens a flap in his forehead from under which an extraordinary brilliant and dazzling light issues, proceeding from a precious stone; any foolhardy person who ventures to grasp at it is blinded, the flap is let down under the long black hair and the animal disappears into darkness. ”

“ By ERNEST THOMPSON SETON The fable and the proverb are much alike in that both are highly condensed, and both are told to instruct. The short, direct, applied narratives known as “Fables” are among the oldest ancestors of the short story. Even in the most ancient times there were fables, those of Æsop having been told perhaps as early as the sixth century, B.C. Many familiar fables have animals for their characters, their known characteristics needing no comment. Thus the fox and the wolf appear frequently, their mere names suggesting traits of character. ”

“ He was very hot when he sat down; she, with bowed head, went on with her sewing; her neck was very white under the light of the lamp; but Falk, hiding his face in the palms of his hands, shuddered faintly. He drew them down, even to his beard, and his uncovered eyes astonished me by their tense and irrational expression--as though he had just swallowed a heavy gulp of alcohol. ”

“ This Fable teaches that we should weigh carefully the words of flatterers; for they often betray themselves by their own words, no matter how artfully they conceal their meaning.
(Fables de Mkhithar Goch, Journal Asiatique, Ser. 9, Vol. 19.)
THE PLUM, THE PRUNE AND THE APRICOT
THE Plum, the Prune and the Apricot were once reproached for setting on edge the teeth of those who eat them. They answered: "You do not know what you are talking about. All doctors know that we often upset the stomach. Nevertheless people insist upon eating us. ”

“ Her eyelids seemed chiselled expressly for her long amorous looks in which the pupil disappeared, while a strong inspiration expanded her delicate nostrils and raised the fleshy corner of her lips, shaded in the light by a little black down. One would have thought that an artist apt in conception had arranged the curls of hair upon her neck; they fell in a thick mass, negligently, and with the changing chances of their adultery, that unbound them every day. ”

“ Though the poor Traveller in the fable was not guilty of any real crime in what he did, yet one cannot help approving the honest simplicity of the Satyr, who could not be reconciled to such double dealing. In the moral sense of the fable, nothing can be more offensive to one of a sincere heart, than he that blows with a different breath from the same mouth; who flatters a man to his face, and reviles him behind his back. ”

“ Many of these unpretending allegories have been familiar to us all, in childhood, in a great variety of dresses, and have long formed a standard part of our literature —congenial alike to nursery days and to mature age.
The fables contained in the little collection here translated are not, with one or two exceptions, found among the widely popular and familiar fables to which we have alluded. They were written in a foreign tongue, less generally understood, among us, than some other of the European languages; and they are designed for a special and somewhat abstruse purpose. ”

“ It's all in the day's work and must be endured. But for one's body to go to the milliner's is intolerable. Intolerable.' The little creature suddenly swallowed its rage, and continued more sweetly: 'Now, as to the Flamp. What you want, Toby, is a Flamp compass.'
'What's that?' Tobene asked.
'Why, an ordinary compass points to the north, doesn't it? Well, a Flamp compass points to the Flamp,' said the wren. ”

“ One needs a certain vivacity to write good things! What can one do to get it again? How can one proceed, to avoid thinking continually about one's miserable person? The sickest thing in me is my humor: the rest doubtless would go well. You see, dear, good master, that I am right to spare you my letters. Nothing is as imbecile as the whiners.
CCXCII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
Thursday morning, 10th June, 1875
We are leaving, Lina and I, on Saturday morning, and up to then we shall be on the move. If you wanted to come to dine with us Friday at Magny's at six o'clock, at least we could say farewell. ”

“ And each of those stories, to mean something, must justify itself in its own way to the conscience of each successive reader.
Falk—the second story in the volume—offended the delicacy of one critic at least by certain peculiarities of its subject. But what is the subject of Falk? I personally do not feel so very certain about it. He who reads must find out for himself. My intention in writing Falk was not to shock anybody. As in most of my writings I insist not on the events but on their effect upon the persons in the tale. ”

“ THE FLAX
The flax was in full bloom; it had pretty little blue flowers as delicate as the wings of a moth, or even more so. The sun shone, and the showers watered it, so that it became very beautiful.
“People say that I look exceedingly well,” said the flax, “and that I am so fine and long, that I shall make an excellent piece of linen. How fortunate I am! it makes me so happy; it is such a pleasant thing to know that something can be made of me. How the sunshine cheers me, and how sweet and refreshing is the rain! no one in the world can feel happier than I do.” ”

“ The Flopper licked his lips, and renewed the appeal he had been making for nearly five minutes.
"Ain't no one goin' to drive me out to de Patriarch's?"
"Horses are all busy in the fields," said a voice, uncompromisingly.
"Yes," said the Flopper, with bitter irony, "drivin' each other around, while youse are here starin' at me an' won't help." ”

“ How far the Author of the following Fables, written for the amusement of an exalted Personage, may have succeeded, in descriptive fancy, as a poet: it is hoped, that, the moral and refined admonitions which may be found to breathe, from the fragrant bosom of a silver-robed Lily, or a blooming Jonquil, will throw a veil over any poetical inaccuracies; for who can paint like Nature? ”

“ The crowd of men who remained standing on the floor with their hats in their hands seemed, at some distance, like one black mass, into which the ribbons in the button-holes introduced red points here and there, and rendered all the more dull the monotonous whiteness of their cravats. With the exception of the very young men with the down on their faces, all appeared to be bored. ”

“ It is pretty certain that hieroglyphics have been the source of the men with dogs' heads, or feet of goats, &c. Fables also arise from the adoption of strange words whose sound is something like another word in the borrowing language connected with other ideas, and the connection between the two has to be made by fable. ”

“ The people of the middle ages, who took their word fable from the Latin fabula, which they appear to have understood as a mere term for any short narration, included under it the stories told by the mimi and jougleurs; but, in the fondness of the middle ages for diminutives, by which they intended to express familiarity and attachment, applied to them more particularly the Latin fabella, which in the old French became fablel, or, more usually, fabliau. The fabliaux of the jougleurs form a most important class of the comic literature of the middle ages. ”