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- 9235
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:52.921Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 9190
- text
- It was a thin, tattered, dried-fish-like thing; printed with blurred ink
upon mean, sleazy paper. It seemed the opening pages of some ruinous old
pamphlet--a pamphlet containing a chapter or so of some very voluminous
disquisition. The conclusion was gone. It must have been accidentally
left there by some previous traveler, who perhaps in drawing out his
handkerchief, had ignorantly extracted his waste paper.
There is a singular infatuation in most men, which leads them in odd
moments, intermitting between their regular occupations, and when they
find themselves all alone in some quiet corner or nook, to fasten with
unaccountable fondness upon the merest rag of old printed paper--some
shred of a long-exploded advertisement perhaps--and read it, and study
it, and reread it, and pore over it, and fairly agonize themselves over
this miserable, sleazy paper-rag, which at any other time, or in any
other place, they would hardly touch with St. Dunstan's long tongs. So
now, in a degree, with Pierre. But notwithstanding that he, with most
other human beings, shared in the strange hallucination above
mentioned, yet the first glimpse of the title of the dried-fish-like,
pamphlet-shaped rag, did almost tempt him to pitch it out of the window.
For, be a man's mood what it may, what sensible and ordinary mortal
could have patience for any considerable period, to knowingly hold in
his conscious hand a printed document (and that too a very blurred one
as to ink, and a very sleazy one as to paper), so metaphysically and
insufferably entitled as this:--"Chronometricals & Horologicals?"
Doubtless, it was something vastly profound; but it is to be observed,
that when a man is in a really profound mood, then all merely verbal or
written profundities are unspeakably repulsive, and seem downright
childish to him. Nevertheless, the silence still continued; the road ran
through an almost unplowed and uninhabited region; the slumberers still
slumbered before him; the evil mood was becoming well nigh insupportable
to him; so, more to force his mind away from the dark realities of
things than from any other motive, Pierre finally tried his best to
plunge himself into the pamphlet.
II.
Sooner or later in this life, the earnest, or enthusiastic youth comes
to know, and more or less appreciate this startling solecism:--That
while, as the grand condition of acceptance to God, Christianity calls
upon all men to renounce this world; yet by all odds the most Mammonish
part of this world--Europe and America--are owned by none but professed
Christian nations, who glory in the owning, and seem to have some reason
therefor.
- title
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