I am grateful to Serial Susan for allowing me to write the lead entry on the text for this week, as I have had a few suggestions that I have hoped to share with the entire group. First, I would like to suggest that after we complete this worldly book, we turn to a course of enlightening and strengthening reading for the better guidance of our spirits. Yes! The Strength of our Spirits! I suggest not that we read about Christ, nor about God, but proper, beautiful, English, moral readings, which I will be happy to mark for all readers to help you find the most profitable sections, where you might wonder “is this me?” Tracts such as “Satin in the Library,” “The Serpent of Suspense,” and “The Letters and Remembrances of Mrs. Molly Earnest-Prune” would be excellent places for our group to begin. I find this serial group so happily suited to such readings, as it gives us the time for pious reflection on each section before advancing to the next.
I know that you, my serious serial reader friends, will understand the comfort and joy I felt at dear Mr. Godfrey finding himself free of the distractions and, I fear, profaning attentions of Rachel, allowing him to return to his Ladies and Charities. The later slander which the odious Mr. Blake’s and Betteredge’s narratives hint at about Godfrey, are merely the vile jealousy of lesser men.
Were Kari writing this herself, instead of ceding the space to me, I must in honesty acknowledge that she would speculate as to the possibility of a doppelganger for Mr. Blake. But OH! What a sadly German term for a sadly profane concept, and how sorrowful I am to consider that she would so profligately waste time on wondering about what might happen when she might use that time modestly and honorably at charitable work, such as preventing young children from stealing candy or handing out tracts warning about profanity at sporting events.
How joyful I am that I have had this opportunity to share just a few improving ideas with the group! I thank Serial Susan for the opportunity, and I hope to be asked to comment again!
For next week, continue with Mr. Blake’s narrative, as in June 1868, Chapters 4-8 were released.
1 comment:
A coincidence, indeed, that Readerann has invited me to stand in for her this week. I took great pleasure in Miss Clack’s entry. Permit me to add there was nothing in her words which made any reply needful on my part—and yet, I am persuaded to reply. I have just come in from the garden, however, where I witnessed Mr. Gardener and Sgt. Cuff in another of their supercilious rows over the dog-rose. Desperate to put myself right, I am sitting with my pipe tobacco and Robinson Crusoe. I consider nothing more curative of bad spirits,as you are well aware, than a few pages of his wisdom. I am of the opinion that you as well might find solace in this particular quotation:
"Upon the whole, here was an undoubted Testimony, that there was scarce any Condition in the World so miserable, but there was something Negative or something Positive to be thankful for in it; and let this stand as a Direction from the Experience of the most miserable of all conditions in this World, that we may always find in it something to comfort our selves from, and to set in the description of Good and Evil, on the Credit Side of the Account." (p. 50) I must bid farewell. My apologies for so soon taking leave. I hear "Last Rose of Summer" whistling down the hallway, heading this way. Just as I was about to comment on the others' testimony too. Lord, what excitement we have in store in the pages ahead! Yours, Betteredge
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