[george kaplan]

Helen Keller?

[JohnRice]

You fell for it. Sorry, that's not it.

[JohnRice]

Quote:

Then her soul sat on her lips, and language flowed, from what source I cannot tell: has a girl of fourteen a heart large enough, vigorous enough to hold the swelling spring of pure, full, fervid eloquence? Such was the characteristic of Helen's discourse on that, to me, memorable evening; her spirit seemed hastening to live within a very brief span as much as many live during a protracted existance.

That is the title character referring to her good friend Helen Burns at the Lowood School, and the title character is, Jane Eyre.


I'll be back in a few with a new quote. This time it will be from a short story, just to let everyone know.

[JohnRice]

This is a long one. Remember, it is from a short story.

Quote:

I let him go ahead and I walked behind him, looking at his shoulders and thinking of all the goodbyes he had made. When father drowned, he went to church and said goodbye to father. It was only three years later that he concluded that mother was frivolous and said goodbye to her. In his freshman year at college, he had been very good friends with his roomate, but the man drank too much, and at the beginning of the spring term Lawrence changed roommates and said goodbye to his friend. When he had been in college for two years, he concluded that the atmostphere was too sequestered and he said goodbye to Yale. He enrolled at Columbia and got his law degree there, but he found his employer dishonest, and at the end of six months he said goodbye to a good job. He married Ruth in City Hall and said goodbye to the Protestant Episcopal Church; they went to live on a back street in Tuckahoe and said goodbye to the middle class. In 1938, he went to Washington to work as a government lawyer, saying goodbye to private enterprise, but the Roosevelt administration was sentimental and he said goodbye to it. They left Washington for a suburb of Chicago, where he said goodbye to his neighbors, one by one, on counts of drunkenness, boorishness and stupidity. He said goodbye to Chicago and went to Kansas; he said goodbye to Kansas and went to Cleveland. Now he had said goodbye to Cleveland and come East again, stopping at Laud's Head long enough to say goodbye to the sea.

If nobody gets this one, I promise I'll post one tomorrow that someone will get.

[george kaplan]

I don't think you guys understand what the word "easy" means.

An easy one would be something like "I do not like them, Sam I am."

[Matthias Wolf]

Sounds like John Cheever, but it has been ages since I read some of his stories and not being a native English speaker, I cheated to find the story it belongs to:

Spoiler:

Goodbye, My Brother

[JohnRice]

Matthias is correct about it being John Cheever. I guess I'll go ahead and post an "easy" one to replace it, since the author of the current one is revealed. Give me a few.

BTW, it was John Cheever's Goodbye, My Brother.

[JohnRice]

Ok, this is about as easy as I dare go.

Quote:

It is those we live with and love and should know who elude us.

Now nearly all those I loved and did not understand when I was young are dead, but I still reach out to them.

...The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.

I am haunted by waters.

I have added some. This is so freaking easy now, someone please get it.

[JohnRice]

Nobody? If I make it any easier than this, I don't know what is the point.

[JohnRice]

OK, I've added some to the quote, skipping a couple lines that would completely give it away. Someone has to get it now.