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98775af
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It cannot be right to be the slave of one's household gods, and I protest that if my furniture ever annoyed me by wanting to be dusted when I wanted to be doing something else, and there was no one to do the dusting for me, I would cast it all into the nearest bonfire and sit and warm my toes at the flames with great contentment, triumphantly selling my dusters to the very next pedlar who was weak enough to buy them. Parsons
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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2d8fb35
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Why couldn't two unhappy people refresh each other on their way through this dusty business of life by a little talk - real, natural talk, about what they felt, what they would have liked, what they still tried to hope for?
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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5b4d9ee
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Tanto per cominciare, vorrei dire che sebbene genitori, mariti, figli, amanti e mariti siano tutti una gran bella cosa, non sono cani.
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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52a9e80
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Well, trials are the portion of mankind, and gardeners have their share, and in any case it is better to be tried by plants than persons, seeing that with plants you know that it is you who are in the wrong, and with persons it is always the other way about--and who is there among us who has not felt the pangs of injured innocence, and known them to be grievous?
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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e86361d
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Alteri e distaccati, eternamente rapiti in remote, misteriose meditazioni, [i gatti] si concedono all'altrui adorazione ed e difficile che diano qualcosa in cambio. Eccetto le fusa.
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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538955d
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Un'amicizia incapace di aiutare potrebbe benissimo fare a meno di esistere.
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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21e755e
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There was that in the atmosphere of San Salvatore which produced active-mindedness in all except the natives. They, as before, whatever the beauty around them, whatever the prodigal seasons did, remained immune from thoughts other than those they were accustomed to. All their lives they had seen, year by year, the amazing recurrent spectacle of April in the gardens, and custom had made it invisible to them. They were as blind to it, as unco..
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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e296e38
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Penso che un peccatore debba peccare con allegria, oppure non peccare affatto. [...] E' ben misero chi pecca dispiacendosene.
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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f652043
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Penso che risulterebbe stancante essere legati per l'eternita al culmine dei momenti piu ispirati dei massimi scrittori. Altitudini come quelle sarebbero inadatte a insetti come me. Su questi libri elevati me ne starei aggrappata alla bell'e meglio, con la testa e le ali penzolanti. E forse che anche l'anima non ha voglia, di tanto in tanto, di mettersi in vestaglia?
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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8e86f47
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Ora so che l'amore e l'unica cosa che valga davvero la pena di avere. Tutto il resto, talento, lavoro, arte, religione, conoscenza e tutti gli altri terreni affanni altro non sono che rimedi con i quali coloro che non amano, coloro che non sono amati, tentano di attenuare le loro pene, di anestetizzarsi.
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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77597c3
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Oh of course--how ridiculous of me!" cried Mrs. Wilkins, flushing scarlet. "It's because"--she floundered--"it's because the immortals somehow still seem alive, don't they--as if they were here, going to walk into the room in another minute--and one forgets they are dead. In fact one knows perfectly well that they're not dead--not nearly so dead as you and I even now," she assured"
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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297d057
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Aveva scoperto che lasciare non dette le cose che si ritenevano piu preziose procurava un terribile senso di solitudine.
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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3a168b1
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Straordinario come ci si sente soli, laggiu nel profondo dell'animo, se manca un compagno di esultanze.
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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b4777c6
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Perhaps,' she said, leaning forward a little, 'you will tell me your name. If we are to be friends' - she smiled her grave smile - 'as I hope we are, we had better begin at the beginning.
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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7a9037d
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Now nice people really were. When would she leave off making mistakes about them? She hadn't suspected this side of Mrs. Fisher, and she began to wonder whether those other sides of her with which alone she was acquainted had not perhaps after all been the effect of her own militant and irritating behaviour. Probably they were. How horrid, then, she must have been. She felt very penitent when she saw Mrs. Fisher beneath her eyes blossoming ..
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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6714275
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see a little village a mile ahead of us with a venerable church on a mound in the middle of it gravely presiding over the surrounding wide parish of corn.
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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05661e2
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Rooms in one of those spacious old houses with the large windows facing the sun, and plenty of books--if I were that abstracted but happy form of reptile called a bookworm, which I believed I am prevented from being only by my sex, the genus, I am told, being persistently male, I would take care to spend at least one of my life's winters in Putbus. How divinely quiet it would be. What a place for him who intends to pass an examination, to w..
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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ad9e923
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She had not had a question like that in her mind before. It had made her feel lonely. She wanted to be alone, but not lonely. That was very different; that was something that ached and hurt dreadfully right inside one. It was what one dreaded most. It was what made one go to so many parties; and lately even the parties had seemed once or twice not to be a perfectly certain protection. Was it possible that loneliness had nothing to do with c..
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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375a1bc
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He thought her delightful, - freckles, picnic-untidiness and all.
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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029d41c
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She had a sad face, yet she was evidently efficient. The combination used to make Mrs. Wilkins wonder, for she had been told by Mellersh, on days when she had only been able to get plaice, that if one were efficient one wouldn't be depressed, and that if one does one's job well one becomes automatically bright and brisk. About
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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e45cfc0
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Mrs. Fisher, her hands folded on her lap, was doing nothing, merely gazing fixedly into the fire. The lamp was arranged conveniently for reading, but she was not reading. Her great dead friends did not seem worth reading that night. They always said the same things now--over and over again they said the same things, and nothing new was to be got out of them any more for ever. No doubt they were greater than any one was now, but they had thi..
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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3a2da69
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It is after these rare calls that I experience the only moments of depression from which I ever suffer, and then I am angry at myself, a well-nourished person, for allowing even a single precious hour of life to be spoil: by anything so indifferent. That is the worst of being fed enough, and clothed enough, and warmed enough, and of having everything you can reasonably desire--on the least provocation you are made uncomfortable and unhappy ..
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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2499011
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Wissen Sie, was das fur ein Segen ist, die Werke eines Dichters zu lesen, seinen Geist zu kennen, das Beste an ihm, und dabei so entfernt von seiner Heimat, seiner Lebensgeschichte oder seinen Briefen zu leben, dass alles Geschwatz uber sein Privatleben und Kritik an seiner Moral nicht zu mir gedrungen ist?
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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a50d5d9
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If you weren't here I wouldn't see it," said Ingram, firmly believing it in the face of the fact that nothing ever escaped his acute vision. "I see all this only through you. You are my eyes. Without you I go blind, I grope about with the light gone out. You don't know what you are to me, you little shining crystal thing--you don't begin to realise it, my dear, my dear sweet Found-at-Last."
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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1b6243c
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Too often she had seen the first indignation of disappointed parents at the marriage of the their children harden into a matter of pride, a matter of doggedness and principle, and finally become ridiculous. If the marriages turned out happy, how absurd to persist in an antiquated disapproval; if they turned out wretched, then how urgent the special need for love.
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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d473b5a
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She did not like her name. It was a mean, small name, with a kind of facetious twist, she thought, about its end like the upward curve of a pug dog's tail.
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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e390e7a
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How passionately she longed to be important to somebody again--not important on platforms, not important as an asset in an organization, but privately important, just to one other person, quite privately, nobody else to know or notice. It didn't seem much to ask in a world so crowded with people, just to have one of them, only one out of all the millions, to oneself.
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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3af8cc1
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That evening was the evening of the full moon. The garden was an enchanted place where all the flowers seemed white. The lilies, the daphnes, the orange-blossom, the white stocks, the white pinks, the white roses - you could see these as plainly as in the daytime; but the coloured flowers existed only as fragrance.
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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0840a55
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Oh, I thought of calling it Journeyings in Germany. It sounds well, and would be correct. Or Jottings from German Journeyings--I haven't quite decided yet... (Minora)
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german
german-garden
minora
garden
journey
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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5c5ff79
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After tea, when both Mrs Fisher and Lady Caroline had disappeared again--it was quite evident that nobody wanted her--she was more dejected than ever, overwhelmed by the discrepancy between the splendour outside her, the warm, teeming beauty and self-sufficiency of nature, and the blank emptiness of her heart.
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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98d3427
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Les gens que j'aime sont toujours loin de moi, et dans l'impossibilite de venir me trouver, alors que je peux a tout instant remplir la maison d'hotes dont je ne me soucie pas le moins du monde. Peut-etre, si je les voyais plus souvent, aimerais-je moins ces amis absents - du moins est-ce ce que je pense lorsque le vent hurle autour de la maison et que la nature parait submergee de chagrin. Il m'est d'ailleurs arrive quelquefois de souhaite..
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amitié
maison
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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8de494c
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Oh Gertrud,' I cried, intolerably stirred by the bare mention of that bed, 'this is a bleak and mischievous world, isn't it? Do you think we shall ever be warm and comfortable and happy again?
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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276d089
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I wonder why I write about these things. As if I didn't know them! Why do I tell myself in writing what I already so well know? Don't I know about the mountain, and the brimming cup of blue light? It is because, I suppose, it's lonely to stay inside oneself. One has to come out and talk. And if there is no one to talk to one imagines someone, as though one were writing a letter to somebody who loves one, and who will want to know, with the ..
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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1306efc
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to go into the garden in its snowed-up state is like going into a bath of purity. The first breath on opening the door is so ineffably pure that it makes me gasp, and I feel a black and sinful object in the midst of all the spotlessness.
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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e3f230e
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Nobody told me about him [my grandfather], and he died when I was six, and yet within the last year or two, that strange Indian summer of remembrance that comes to us in the leisured times when the children have been born and we have time to think, has made me know him perfectly well. It is rather an uncomfortable thought for the grown-up, and especially for the parent, but of a salutary and restraining nature, that though children may not ..
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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8045d22
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Steadfast as the points of the compass to Mrs. Arbuthnot were the great four facts of life: God, Husband, Home, Duty. She had gone to sleep on these facts years ago, after a period of much misery, her head resting on them as on a pillow; and she had a great dread of being awakened out of so simple and untroublesome a condition. Therefore
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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6c8d51e
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Upon my word," thought Mrs Fisher, "the way one pretty face can turn a delightful man into an idiot is past all patience."
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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748b084
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I don't want to stay here without you,' said Dolly. 'This place is you. You've made it. It is soaked in you. I should feel haunted here without you. Why, I should feel lost.
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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e7e4140
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In this part of the world, the more you are pleased to see a person, the less is he pleased to see you; whereas if you are disagreeable, he will grow pleasant visibly, his countenance expanding into wider amiability the more your own is stiff and sour.
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interpersonal-communication
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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b791d48
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But while admiring my neighbour, I don't think I shall ever try to follow in her steps, my talents not being of the energetic and organising variety, but rather that of that order which makes their owner almost lamentably prone to take up a volume of poetry and wander out to where the kingcups grow, and, sitting on a willow trunk beside a little stream, forget the very existence of everything but green pastures and still waters, and the gla..
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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fb4f374
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There's no safety in love. You risk the whole of life. But the great thing is to risk--to believe, and to risk everything for your belief.
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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3f3c068
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And the more he treated her as though she were really very nice, the more Lotty expanded and became really very nice, and the more he, affected in his turn, became really very nice himself; so that they went round and round, not in a vicious but in a highly virtuous circle.
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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d28efd4
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What fun it all was, she thought, and how entirely new and delicious being taken care of as though she were a thing that mattered, a precious thing!
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Elizabeth von Arnim |
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813f191
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It is a beautiful spot, endless forest stretching along the shore as far as the eye can reach ; and after driving through it for miles you come suddenly, at the end of an avenue of arching trees, upon the glistening, oily sea, with the orange-coloured sails of distant fishing-smacks shining in the sunlight.
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Elizabeth von Arnim |