Assorted Prose Read Online Free

critic who most firmly fixed the chronology was, apparently, myself), somewhere within the dotage of Andrew Marvell; and that in the one consists the penitential rock borne by the other, who, his gaze welded to his feet, must travel for many years the circuit of barren terraces:
    Cosi a sé e noi buona ramogna
      quell’ombre orando, andavan sotto il pondo,
      simile a quel che tal volta si sogna,
    disparmente angosciate tutte a tondo
      e lasse su per la prima cornice,
      purgando la caligine del mondo.
    * An address delivered before the Fifth Form of the High Wycombe Episcopal Academy in 1952 and subsequently developed for delivery before a polylingual audience in Prague in 1954. It was published in the trimonthly magazine
quarto
and issued in hard covers under the title
The Uses of Assonance
.
    1 I have used for this and following quotations the Frederick Warne and Company (London) edition. Neither authoritative nor complete, and furnished with illustrations by Miss Kate Greenaway that invariably afford me a shudder, the book was the nearest to hand.
    2 As to ‘prettiness,’ I can only recommend the reader to conceive of a sunflower seed placed next to Wren’s original designs for the Cathedral of St. Paul.

  DRINKING FROM A CUP MADE CINCHY
    (After Reading Too Many Books on How to Play Golf)
    I N MY TOURS around the nation I am frequently asked, “Have you
ever
broken a cup?” Of course I have. Don’t let anybody kid you on that score.
Everyone
who regularly drinks from china, no matter how adept he has become, has had his share of ruined tablecloths and scalded knees.
No human being
is born with the ability to take liquid from a cup successfully; you can easily prove this by trying to feed a baby. Those of us who have attained some proficiency have done so at the price of long hours of systematic application. Without these long hours our natural grace and poise would never have evolved into
skill
. I would not say that everyone is endowed equally; I
do
say that everyone, no matter how clumsy, can reduce his accidents to a minimum that will amaze his wife and friends. He can do this by rigorously adhering to a few simple principles that I have discovered through painful trial-and-error. Had these principles been available in legible form when I was young, my present eminence would have been attained by me
years ago
.
    I have analyzed drinking from a cup into three three-part stages: (1) Receipt, (2) The Cooling Pause, and (3) Consummation. However, bear in mind that in practice these “compartments” are run together in one fluid, harmonious social action.
I. Receipt
    (1) Address the cup by sitting erect, your chest at right angles to the extended arm of the cup-offerer, or “hostess.” Even if this person is aspouse or close relative, do not take a relaxed, slouching position, with the frontal plane of your rib cage related obliquely to the cup’s line of approach. Such an attitude, no matter how good-naturedly it is assumed, has the inevitable effect of making one of your arms feel shorter than the other, a hopeless handicap at this crucial juncture, where 30 percent of common errors occur. The reason:
both hands should move toward the saucer simultaneously
.
    (2) In seizure, first touch, with feathery lightness, the rim of the saucer with the pad of the index finger of the right hand. (Left-handers: read all these sentences backward.) A split-second—perhaps .07—later, the first knuckle of the middle, “big” finger, sliding toward the center of the saucer’s invisible underside, and the tip of the thumb
must
coördinate in a prehensile “pinching” motion.
This motion must occur
. The two remaining fingers of the right hand of necessity accompany the big finger, but should not immediately exert pressure, despite their deep-seated instinct to do so. Rather, the wrist is gently supinated. This brings the two passive fingers into contact with the underside of the saucer while at the same time