Orientations

Orientations, by William Somerset Maugham

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Title: Orientations

Author: William Somerset Maugham

Release Date: February 17, 2010 [EBook #31308]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

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GOOD WORDS LIST PROVIDE FOR SMOOTH READING REFERENCE ONLY:

parlour favours Ij sombre labourer realisation odour honour fulness commonweal bo Amyntas Becke Blackstable Castilian D'you d'you de Dona Farrowham Howlett lol Losas Lucido Monnickendam one's Ously Sodina Tercanbury Tiefel Whittington Xiormonez

ORIENTATIONS

NOVELS AT SIX SHILLINGS EACH

Uniform with this Volume

=An Outcast of the Islands.= By JOSEPH CONRAD. Second Edition. =Almayer's Folly.= By JOSEPH CONRAD. =The Ebbing of the Tide.= By LOUIS BECKE. =A First Fleet Family.= By LOUIS BECKE and WALTER JEFFERY. =Paddy's Woman.= By HUMPHREY JAMES. =Clara Hopgood.= By MARK RUTHERFORD. Second Edition. =The Tales of John Oliver Hobbes.= Portrait of the Author. Second Edition. =The Stickit Minister.= By S. R. CROCKETT. =The Lilac Sunbonnet.= By S. R. CROCKETT. =The Raiders.= By S. R. CROCKETT. =The Grey Man.= By S. R. CROCKETT. =In a Man's Mind.= By J. R. WATSON. =A Daughter of the Fen.= By J. T. BEALBY. =The Herb-Moon.= By JOHN OLIVER HOBBES. =Nancy Noon.= By BENJAMIN SWIFT. =Hugh Wynne.= By S. WEIR MITCHELL. =The Tormentor.= By BENJAMIN SWIFT. =The Mutineer.= By LOUIS BECKE and WALTER JEFFERY. =The Destroyer.= By BENJAMIN SWIFT. =The Gods, Some Mortals, and Lord Wickenham.= By JOHN OLIVER HOBBES. =Mrs Keith's Crime.= By Mrs W. K. CLIFFORD. =Prisoners of Conscience.= By AMELIA E. BARR. =Pacific Tales.= By LOUIS BECKE. =The People of Clopton.= By GEORGE BARTRAM. =Outlaws of the Marches.= By Lord ERNEST HAMILTON. =The Silver Christ.= Stories by OUIDA. =The White-Headed Boy.= By GEORGE BARTRAM. =Tales of Unrest.= By JOSEPH CONRAD. =The School for Saints.= By JOHN OLIVER HOBBES. =Evelyn Innes.= By GEORGE MOORE. =Rodman, the Boatsteerer.= By LOUIS BECKE. =The Romance of a Midshipman.= By W. CLARK RUSSELL. =The Making of a Saint.= By W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM. =The Two Standards.= By W. BARRY, D.D. =The Mawkin of the Flow.= By Lord ERNEST HAMILTON. =Love is not so Light.= By CONSTANCE COTTERELL. =Moonlight.= By MARY E. MANN. =I, Thou, and the Other One.= By AMELIA E. BARR.

* * * * *

London

T. FISHER UNWIN, Paternoster Square, E.C.

ORIENTATIONS

By William Somerset Maugham Author of 'Liza of Lambeth,' 'The Making of a Saint'

[Illustration]

London T. Fisher Unwin Paternoster Square 1899

[All Rights reserved]

TO MRS EDWARD JOHNSTON

CONTENTS

PAGE

THE PUNCTILIOUSNESS OF DON SEBASTIAN 3

A BAD EXAMPLE 37

DE AMICITIA 97

FAITH 133

THE CHOICE OF AMYNTAS 165

DAISY 219

C'est surtout, par ses nouvelles d'un jeune ecrivain qu'on peut se rendre compte du tour de son esprit. Il y cherche la voie qui lui est propre dans une serie d'essais de genre et de style differents, qui sont comme des orientations, pour trouver son moi litteraire.

Orientations

THE PUNCTILIOUSNESS OF DON SEBASTIAN

I

Xiormonez is the most inaccessible place in Spain. Only one train arrives there in the course of the day, and that arrives at two o'clock in the morning; only one train leaves it, and that starts an hour before sunrise. No one has ever been able to discover what happens to the railway officials during the intermediate one-and-twenty hours. A German painter I met there, who had come by the only train, and had been endeavouring for a fortnight to get up in time to go away, told me that he had frequently gone to the station in order to clear up the mystery, but had never been able to do so; yet, from his inquiries, he was inclined to suspect--that was as far as he would commit himself, being a cautious man--that they spent the time in eating garlic and smoking execrable cigarettes. The guide-books tell you that Xiormonez possesses the eyebrows of Joseph of Arimathea, a cathedral of the greatest quaintness, and battlements untouched since their erection in the fourteenth century. And they strongly advise you to visit it, but recommend you before doing so to add Keating's insect powder to your other toilet necessaries.