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I was pacing the Euston platform late one winter's night, waiting for the last train to Watford, when I noticed a man cursing an automatic machine. Twice he shook his fist at it. I expected every moment to see him strike it. Naturally curious, I drew near softly. I wanted to catch what he was saying. However, he heard my approaching footsteps, and turned on me. "Are you the man," said he, "who was here just now?"
"Just where?" I replied. I had been pacing up and down the platform for about five minutes.
"Why here, where we are standing," he snapped out. "Where do you think 'here' is--over there?" He seemed irritable.
"I may have passed this spot in the course of my peregrinations, if that is what you mean," I replied. I spoke with studied politeness; my idea was to rebuke his rudeness.
"I mean," he answered, "are you the man that spoke to me, just a minute ago?"
"I am not that man," I said; "good-night."
"Are you sure?" he persisted.
"One is not likely to forget talking to you," I retorted.
His tone had been most offensive. "I beg your pardon," he replied grudgingly. "I thought you looked like the man who spoke to me a minute or so ago."
I felt mollified; he was the only other man on the platform, and I had a quarter of an hour to wait. "No, it certainly wasn't me," I returned genially, but ungrammatically. "Why, did you want him?"
"Yes, I did," he answered. "I put a penny in the slot here," he continued, feeling apparently the need of unburdening himself: "wanted a box of matches. I couldn't get anything put, and I was shaking the machine, and swearing at it, as one does, when there came along a man, about your size, and--you're SURE it wasn't you?"
"Positive," I again ungrammatically replied; "I would tell you if it had been. What did he do?"
"Well, he saw what had happened, or guessed it. He said, 'They are troublesome things, those machines; they want understanding.' I said, 'They want taking up and flinging into the sea, that's what they want!' I was feeling mad because I hadn't a match about me, and I use a lot. He said, 'They stick sometimes; the thing to do is to put another penny in; the weight of the first penny is not always sufficient. The second penny loosens the drawer and tumbles out itself; so that you get your purchase together with your first penny back again. I have often succeeded that way.' Well, it seemed a silly explanation, but he talked as if he had been weaned by an automatic machine, and I was sawney enough to listen to him. I dropped in what I thought was another penny. I have just discovered it was a two-shilling piece. The fool was right to a certain extent; I have got something out. I have got this."
He held it towards me; I looked at it. It was a packet of Everton toffee.
"Two and a penny," he remarked, bitterly. "I'll sell it for a third of what it cost me."
"You have put your money (...)
(......)
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