holocaust in GR

[alice wellintown]

Those priggish and bookish Puritans were wont to cast even the truth
of the human heart into parables of holocausts and allegories not even
those of us raised on the New England Primer, the Baltimore Catechism,
Warrimer's Grammar, Strunk & Whites Elements of Style,  William
Safire's On Language, and Noam Chomsky & Stephen Pinker can not knot
into.

MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE
By Nathaniel Hawthorne
EARTH'S HOLOCAUST



Once upon a time--but whether in the time past or time to come is a
matter of little or no moment--this wide world had become so
overburdened with an accumulation of worn-out trumpery, that the
inhabitants determined to rid themselves of it by a general bonfire.
The site fixed upon at the representation of the insurance
companies, and as being as central a spot as any other on the globe,
was one of the broadest prairies of the West, where no human
habitation would be endangered by the flames, and where a vast
assemblage of spectators might commodiously admire the show.  Having
a taste for sights of this kind, and imagining, likewise, that the
illumination of the bonfire might reveal some profundity of moral
truth heretofore hidden in mist or darkness, I made it convenient to
journey thither and be present.  At my arrival, although the heap of
condemned rubbish was as yet comparatively small, the torch had
already been applied.  Amid that boundless plain, in the dusk of the
evening, like a far off star alone in the firmament, there was merely
visible one tremulous gleam, whence none could have anticipated so
fierce a blaze as was destined to ensue.  With every moment,
however, there came foot-travellers, women holding up their aprons,
men on horseback, wheelbarrows, lumbering baggage-wagons, and other
vehicles, great and small, and from far and near, laden with
articles that were judged fit for nothing but to be burned.

"My dear sir," said I to the desperate bookworm, "is not nature
better than a book?  Is not the human heart deeper than any system
of philosophy?  Is not life replete with more instruction than past
observers have found it possible to write down in maxims?  Be of
good cheer.  The great book of Time is still spread wide open before
us; and, if we read it aright, it will be to us a volume of eternal
truth."

"O, my books, my books, my precious printed books!" reiterated the
forlorn bookworm.  "My only reality was a bound volume; and now they
will not leave me even a shadowy pamphlet!"




On Mon, Sep 28, 2009 at 7:55 AM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I am rereading GR again. The Holocaust is still not in it but
> I have run across lower-case holocaust twice I believe. Once used
> to describe Slothrop's tongue during the English candy Drill.
>
> And, of course, The Oven is in GR.
>
>
>
>