"Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again; Knowing I Must Say Good-Bye..."

Life thwarts me.

In the last hour, I have gone from exceedingly excited, to depressed, to very happy, to deeply melancholy, to content, to miserable, to angry, to pleased, to frustrated, to squiggly, to feeling dreadful. I assume it's getting to be that time of the month goddammit again, but frankly I wish I could just pick an emotion and stay with it.

At any rate, if I'm not careful, my Gideon fic is going to turn into a furious anti-war rant, so I must needs be careful. *taps Gideon on the tam* Be hushed, my boy; your war was at least rather more justifiable.

Waen asks me to cater for her party, plans out the cake she wants me to make, and then turns about asks my worst bloody enemy to make a cake too. I am never forgiving her. If she wants a cake so very badly, she can make it herself.

Ha, right. I shall get up early to-morrow and make it. I always do. *is pathetic doormat*

"One Kiss, My Bonny Sweetheart; I'm After a Prize To-night..."

I finished Child of the Cavern, by the way.

This book is beautiful. It's just beautiful. I cannot wrap my head around the fact that Jules Verne wrote it. I do think he's a brilliant man, but he tends to write characters who are very inhuman, very unlikely, altogether too perfect. In Child of the Cavern, he made real people. Pardon whilst I facepalm.

At any rate, I shall now provide excerpts, because this book is so obscure we nearly sent out of state to get it, and besides, excerpts rock.

From Chapter IV:

'"Decidedly, I have not your legs, my lad," said the engineer [to Harry], panting... "Formerly, when I was twenty, I could have gone down all at a breath..."'

He writes like me! 'Decidedly, sentence'... 'Formerly, sentence'. Ha.

From Chapter V:

'It was a good Scotch dinner. First they ate 'hotpotch', soup with the meat swimming in capital broth. As old Simon said, his wife knew no rival in the art of preparing hotchpotch... It was the same with the 'cockyleeky', a cock stewed with leeks, which merited high praise. The whole was washed down with excellent ale, obtained from the best brewery in Edinburgh... But the principal dish consisted of 'haggis', the national pudding, made of meat and barley-meal. This remarkable dish, which inspired the poet Burns with one of his best odes, shared the fate of all the good things in this world--it passed away like a dream.'

He so researched Scotland on the 1860 equivalent of Google, and then showed us his leet Scottish knowledge. ^_^ *pets Jules Verne* He does tend to do that, though. It's just... very him.

From Chapter XIV:

'...Harry had drawn the body from the recess to the bottom of the shaft, and, seizing his lamp, he cast its light on what he had found, exclaiming immediately, "Why, it is a child!" ...The child still breathed, but so very feebly that Harry expected it to cease every instant. Not a moment was to be lost; he must carry this poor little creature out of the pit, and take it home to his mother as quickly as he could'.

*cries* Beautiful. I don't know. I just have the most beautiful picture in my head of Harry lifting Nell and saying, 'Why, it is a child!'. And then taking her home to his mother! I don't know. Wah.

From Chapter XVI:

'"I can listen to nothing till you tell my how Nell is," interrupted Jack Ryan.

"Nell is all right, Jack--so much so, in fact, that I hope in a month or six weeks--"

"To marry her, Harry?"

"Jack, you don't know what you are talking about!"

"Ah, that's very likely; but I know quite well what I shall do."

"What will you do?"

"Marry her myself, if you don't; so look sharp," laughed Jack. "By Saint Mungo! I think an immense deal of bonny Nell! A fine young creature like that, who has been brought up in the mine, is just the very wife for a miner. She is an orphan--and so am I; and if you don't care much for her, and if she will have me--"

Harry looked gravely at Jack, and let him talk without trying to stop him.

"Don't you begin to feel jealous, Harry?" asked Jack in a more serious tone.

"Not at all," answered Harry quietly.

"But if you don't marry Nell yourself, you surely can't expect her to remain a spinster?"

"I expect nothing," said Harry.'

I love Jack Ryan very dearly. I believe this book shall soon become one of Waen's Orlandos, too, so I am going to fangirl now, while I still can, before she forbids me. Ha. Jack Ryan is lovely to my mind.

And, from later on in the chapter:

'"I say! [" called Jack,] do you know what Nell will like better than either sun, moon, or stars, after she's seen the whole of them?"

"No, Jack!"

"Why, you yourself, old fellow! still you! always you!"'

He's sweet. I must needs love him.

From Chapter XVII:

'"But to-night the moon is in the last quarter, shorn of her just proportions, and friend Jack's grand silver plate looks more like a barber's basin [," said James Starr.]."

"Oh, Mr. Starr, what a base comparison!" he [Jack] exclaimed. "I was just going to begin a sonnet to the moon, but your barber's basin has destroyed all chance of inspiration!"'

From Chapter XVIII:

'"These stories of combat are kept in mind for ages."

"And are perpetuated in song," added Jack Ryan; and to prove what he said, the young fellow struck up the finest verse of an old song relating the exploits of Allaster McGregor of Glenstrae against Sir Humphrey Colquhoun of Luss.

Nell listened, but these fighting stories made her sad. Why all that bloodshed on plains which to her seemed enormous, and where surely there must have been room for everybody?'

Did Jules Verne write this? It's too compassionate for Jules Verne! He's splendid, but far too scientific; I've never seen him doing something like this before.

From Chapter XIX:

[Loch Katherine has just been entirely drained]

'Of Sir Walter Scott's favourite loch, there was not left enough water to wet the pretty foot of the Lady of the Lake; all that remained was a pond of a few acres at the furthest extremity... This catastrophe would have been the death of Sir Walter Scott, had he still been in the world.'

Damn right it would have. Good heavens, my dear man! I shall never forgive him for that.

Also from Chapter XIX, much later on:

'When Harry came home in the evening, she [Nell] could not restrain expressions of child-like joy, very unlike her usual manner, which was rather reserved than demonstrative. As soon as the day broke, she was astir before anyone else, and her constant uneasiness lasted all day until the hour of return home from work.'

She is so dear. I love her. Poor sweet Nell.

At any rate. You lot should read this book. It made Soujin cry (not a difficult feat at all, but...). It is splendid, and not a thing like the other Jules Vernes I've read (this is by no means to say I do not like all Jules Verne, but generally he's purely plot-driven). It's beautiful. I love it. That's my random pimping for the day.

Oh, and Jules-Descartes Ferat illustrated it.

*uses Harbert icon*

Dude, by the way. It took me an hour to type this all up.