"Robert Charles Wilson - Julian- A Christmas Story" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wilson Robert Charles)

to the theater inebriated, causing the unhappy Denmark to seem to exclaim "Sea of troublesтАФ(an unprintable oath)тАФI
have troubles of my own," with more obscenities, and much inappropriate bell-ringing and vulgar whistling, until an
understudy could be hurried out to replace him. {return}


Not a talent that was born fully-formed, I should add. Only two years previously I had presented to Sam Godwin my
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first finished story, which I had called "A Western Boy: His Adventures in Enemy Europe." Sam had praised its style
and ambition, but called attention to a number of flaws: elephants, for instance, were not native to Brussels, and were
generally too massive to be wrestled to the ground by American lads; a journey from London to Rome could not be
accomplished in a matter of hours, even on "a very fast horse"тАФand Sam might have continued in this vein, had I not
fled the room in a condition of acute auctorial embarrassment. {return}


"Grasp it where its neck ought to be, behind the head; ignore the tail, however it may thrash; and crack its skull,
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hard and often enough to subdue it." I had recounted these instructions to Julian, whose horror of serpents far
exceeded my own: "Oh, I could never do such a thing!" he had exclaimed. This surfeit of timidity may surprise readers
who have followed his later career. {return}


Or "culs-de-sac"? My French is rudimentary. {return}
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Though Old Miami or Orlando might begin to fit the bill. {return}
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Julian's sense of timing was exquisite, perhaps as a result of his theatrical inclinations. {return}
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Once confined to the southeast, corn snakes have spread north with the warming climate. I have read that certain of
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the secular ancients used to keep them as petsтАФyet another instance of our ancestors' willful perversity. {return}