Test VIII

1. Their upturned faced, lit with wrath, with malice, with despair, with cynical humor, were covered by long growths of beard, but with the exception of a few who had pined perceptibly away, they seemed to be a well-fed, healthy lot. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

2. “Maybe she’d like t’learna N’Yawk!” (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

3. In the cut-glass age, when young ladies had persuaded young men with long, curly moustaches to marry them, they sat down several months afterward and wrote thank-you notes for all sorts of cut-glass presents – punch-bowls, finger-bowls, dinner-glasses, wine-glasses, ice-cream dishes, bonbon dishes, decanters, and cases… (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

4. And then suddenly both of them were stiffened into marble at the sound of steps on the walk outside. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

5. I’ve been trying to tell you how much this reincarnation of myself in you has meant in the last few years … curiously alike we are … curiously alike. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

6. ROSALIND: Oh, nothing – only I want sentiment, real sentiment – and I never find it.

AMORY: I never find anything else in the world – and I loathe it.

(F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

7. Sometimes, when he was particularly loquacious, she went to sleep in his arms, but he loved that Rosalind – all Rosalinds as he had never in the world loved anyone else. Intangibly fleeting, unrememberable hours.

(F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

8. “’S a mental was’e,” he insisted with owl-like wisdom. “Two years my life spent inalleshual vacuity. Los’ idealism, got be physcal anmal,” he shook his fist expressively at Old King Cole, “got be Prussian ‘bout ev’thing, women ‘specially. Use’ be straight ‘bout women college. Now don’givadam.” (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

9. He clenched his teeth so that the tears streamed in a flood from his eyes.

“Oh … my baby girl, all I had, all I wanted!... Oh, my girl, come back, come back!... I need you … need you … we’re so pitiful … just misery brought each other … She’ll be shut away from me … I can’t see her; I can’t be her friend. It’s got to be my way – It’s got to be – ”

And then again:

“We’ve been so happy, so very happy …” (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

10. But we no sooner get a popular reformer or politician or soldier or writer or philosopher – a Roosevelt, a Tolstoy, a Wood, a Shaw, a Nietzsche, than the cross-currents of criticism wash him away. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

11. It was one of those days that New York gets sometimes in May, when the air on Fifth Avenue is a soft, light wine. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

12. There were days when Amory listened. These were when Tom, wreathed in smoke, indulged in the slaughter of American literature.

(F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

13. “Easter!” She turned up her nose. “Huh! Spring in corsets!”

(F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

14. “It was sorta crazy you takin’ all that blame. Is he pretty important? Kinda more important than you are?” (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

15. Unfortunately the spiritually married man, as a by-product of his money chase, has garnered in the great newspaper, the popular magazine, the influential weekly – so that Mrs. Newspaper, Mrs. Magazine, Mrs. Weekly – can have a better limousine than those oil people across the street or those cement people’ round the corner. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)