A Charmed Life

Name: A Charmed Life
Author: Richard Harding Davis

by Richard Harding Davis

Pages: about 17
Category: Literature & Fiction
Language: English
Reading time: 19 min at 250 wpm

Start readingThe whole book, as cards or one word at a time. 11 min at 450 wpm in Read mode.

From the opening

She loved him so, that when he went away to a little war in which his country was interested she could not understand, nor quite forgive.
As the correspondent of a newspaper, Chesterton had looked on at other wars; when the yellow races met, when the infidel Turk spanked the Christian Greek; and one he had watched from inside a British square, where he was greatly alarmed lest he should be trampled upon by terrified camels. This had happened before he and she had met. After they met, she told him that what chances he had chosen to take before he came into her life fell outside of her jurisdiction. But now that his life belonged to her, this talk of his standing up to be shot at was wicked. It was worse than wicked; it was absurd.
When the Maine sank in Havana harbor and the word “war” was appearing hourly in hysterical extras, Miss Armitage explained her position.
“You mustn’t think,” she said, “that I am one of those silly girls who would beg you not to go to war.”
At the moment of speaking her cheek happened to be resting against his, and his arm was about her, so he humbly bent his head and kissed her, and whispered very proudly and softly, “No, dearest.”
“No! I’m not a bit like those girls,” she proclaimed. “I merely tell you YOU CAN’T GO! My gracious!” she cried, helplessly. She knew the words fell short of expressing her distress, but her education had not supplied her with exclamations of greater violence.
“My goodness!” she cried. “How can you frighten me so? It’s not like you,” she reproached him. “You are so unselfish, so noble. You are always thinking of other people. How can you talk of going to war--to be killed--to me? And now, now that you have made me love you so?”

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A Charmed Life

From the opening

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