The Red Room - August Strindberg (best summer reads TXT) 📗
- Author: August Strindberg
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Please put the following paragraph into the Grey Bonnet; it will affect my medical degree.
Scientific Discovery: Cand. Med. Henrik Borg, one of our younger distinguished medical men has, while engaged in zootomic research on the skerries near Stockholm, discovered a new species of the family Clypeaster, to which he has given the very pertinent name of maritimus. Its characteristics may be described as follows: Cutaneous laminæ in five porous ambulacral shields and five interambulacral shields, with warts instead of pricks. The animal has excited much interest in the scientific world.
Arvid Falk to Beda Petterson
Nämdö, August 18—
As I walk along the seashore and see the roadweed growing in sand and pebbles, I think of you blossoming for a whole winter in an inn of old Stockholm.
I know nothing more delightful than to lie full length on a cliff and feel the fragments of gneiss tickling my ribs while I gaze seaward. It makes me feel proud, and I imagine that I am Prometheus, while the vulture—that is you—has to lie in a feather bed in Sandberg Street and swallow mercury.
Seaweed is of no use while it grows at the bottom of the sea; but when it decays on the shore it smells of iodine which is a cure for love, and bromide, which is a cure for insanity.
There was no hell until Paradise was quite complete, that is to say until woman was created (chestnut!).
Far away, by the open sea, there lives a pair of eider ducks, in an old quarter cask. If one considers that the stretched out wings of the eider measure two feet, it seems a miracle—and love is a miracle. The whole world is too small for me.
Beda Petterson to Mr. Falk
Stockholm, August 18—
Dear Frent—i have just receeved your letter, but i cannot say that i have understood it, i see you think that i am in Sandberg Street, but that is a grate lie and i can undertand why that blackgard says i am, it is a grate lie and i sware that i love you as much as befor, i often long to see you but it canot be yet.
Your fathfull Beda.
P.S. Dear Arvid, if you could lent me 30 crowns till the 15th, i sware i will pay it back on the 15th becos i shall receeve money then, i have been so ill and i am often so sad that i wish i was dead. The barmaid in the café was a horrid creechur who was jelous becaus of the stout Berglund and that is why i left. All they say of me is lies i hope you are well and dont forget your
The same.
You can send the money to Hulda in the Café then i shall get it.
Candidate Borg to Journalist Struve
Nämdö, August 18—
Conservative Blackguard—You must have embezzled the money, for instead of receiving cash, I received a request for payment from the Shoemakers’ Bank. Do you imagine a man has a right to steal because he has a wife and children? Render an account at once, else I shall come up to town and make a row.
I have read the paragraph, which, of course, was not without errors. It said “zoologic” instead of “zootomic,” and “Crypeaster” instead of “Clypeaster.” Nevertheless, I hope it will serve its purpose.
Falk went mad after receiving a letter in a feminine handwriting a day or two ago. One minute he was climbing trees, at the next he was diving to the bottom of the sea. I expect it was the crisis—I’ll talk to him like a father a little later on.
Isaac has sold his yacht without asking my permission, and for this reason we are, at the moment, enemies. He is at present reading the second book of Livy and founding a Fishing Company.
He has bought a strömming-net, a seal-gun, twenty-five pipe stems, a salmon line, two bass-nets, a shed for dragnets and a—church. The latter seems incredible, but it is quite true. I admit it was scorched a little by the Russians in 1719, but the walls are still standing. The parish possesses a new one which serves the ordinary purpose; the old one was used as a parochial storeroom. Isaac is thinking of making the Academy a present of it, in the hope of receiving the order of Vasa.
The latter has been given for less. Isaac’s uncle, who is an innkeeper, received it for treating the deaf and dumb to bread and butter and beer when they used the riding-ground in the autumn. He did it for six years. Then he received his reward. Now he takes no more notice of the deaf and dumb, which proves how fatal the order of Vasa may be under certain circumstances.
Unless I drown the rascal Isaac, he won’t rest until he has bought all Sweden.
Pull yourself together and behave like an honourable man, or I shall bear down upon you like Jehu, and then you’ll be lost.
H. B.
P.S. When you write the notice relating to the distinguished strangers at Dalarö, mention me and Falk, but ignore Isaac; his presence irritates me—he went and sold his yacht.
Send me some blank bills (blue ones, sola-bills) when you send the money.
Candidate Borg to Journalist Struve
Nämdö, September 18—
Man of honour!—Money arrived! Seems to have been exchanged, for the Architects’ Bank always pays in Scanian bills of fifty. However, never mind!
Falk is well; he has passed the crisis like a man; he has regained his self-confidence—a most important quality as far as worldly success goes, but a quality which, according to statistics is considerably weakened in children who lose their mothers at an early age. I gave him a prescription which he promised to try all the more readily as the same idea had occurred to
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