Carnival

Carnival

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Carnival by Compton MacKenzie

Published:

1912

Pages:

326

Downloads:

1,549

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Carnival

By

0
(0 Reviews)
Life is a comedy, a carnival, and all of us wear masks. So Compton Mackenzie would have us feel, if we can judge from the spirit of his "Carnival," a story hailed by the New York Times as "about the best novel published this season." The central figure of the book is Jenny, a cockney ballet-girl, who shows herself a true daughter of the carnival, a Columbine in actuality. At her birth the fairies had endowed her with the gift of rhythm. "She had deliciously slim legs and a figure as lithe as a hazel wand. Her almond eyes were of some fantastic shade of sapphire— blue with deep gray twilights in them and sea-green laughter."

Book Excerpt

hough I believe there are now many infant foods very highly recommended even by doctors."

Perhaps it was the pride of chemical ancestry that sustained Miss Frances Horner through the indelicacy of the last announcement. But old maids' flesh was weak, and the carmine suffusing her waxen cheeks drove the eldest sister into an attempt to cover her confusion by adding that she, for one, was glad in these days of neglected duties to see a mother nursing her own child.

"We feel," she went on, "that the arrival of a little girl shows very clearly that the Almighty intended us to adopt her. Had it--had she proved to be a boy, we should have made no suggestions about her, except, perhaps, that her name should be Frederick after our father, the chemist."

"With possibly Philip as a second name," Miss Mary Horner put in.

"Philip?" her sisters asked.

And now Miss Mary blushed, whether on account of a breach of sisterly etiquette, or whether for some guilty memory of a long-withered affec

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