Front matter
Reading edition
OTHER BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR Fiction Parnassus on Wheels The Haunted Bookshop Kathleen Tales from a Rolltop Desk Where the Blue Begins Pandora Lifts the Lid (with Don Marquis) Essays Shandygaff Mince Pie Pipefuls Plum Pudding Travels in Philadelphia The Powder of Sympathy Inward Ho! Religio Journalistici Poetry Songs for a Little House The Rocking Horse Hide and Seek Chimneysmoke Translations from the Chinese Parsons’ Pleasure Plays One Act Plays
Thunder ON The LEFT
Among the notionable dictes of antique Rome was the fancy that when men heard thunder on the left the gods had somewhat of speciall advertisement to impart. Then did the prudent pause and lay down their affaire to studye what omen Jove intended.
—SIR EUSTACE PEACHTREE. THE DANGERS OF THIS MORTALL LIFE.
By Christopher Morley
Garden City New York DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 1925
COPYRIGHT, 1925, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. COPYRIGHT, 1925, BY HARPER & BROTHERS. PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES AT THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y. FIRST EDITION
TO S. A. E.
The undertaking a comedy not merely sentimental was very dangerous.
—Oliver Goldsmith.
On parla des passions. “Ah! qu’elles sont funestes!” disait Zadig.—“Ce sont les vents qui enflent les voiles du vaisseau,” repartit l’ermite: “elles le submergent quelquefois; mais sans elles il ne pourrait voguer. La bile rend colère et malade; mais sans la bile l’homme ne saurait vivre. Tout est dangereux ici-bas, et tout est nécessaire.”
—Voltaire, Zadig.
“Your mind had to be tormented and fevered and exalted before you could see a god.”
“It was cruel of you to do this,” she said.
—James Stephens, In the Land of Youth.
THUNDER ON THE LEFT
Thunder on the Left