M & D deep duck: section 4 -- orders not to sail. Puzzled.

[alice malice]

The Chapter opens with free indirect from the frame narrator who has a
privilege of Wicks's musings on Epictetus. Then Cousin Ethelmer, a lad
who meets the description of the  "useful" young who love evil
Creatures and Slaughter, and in so doing temper Mortality's clamor.
Cousin Ethelmer, a rival to Wicks and his narrative, his grace under
fire, pretends to a conventional morality, he should have prayed, but,
Brae and the elders are not convinced by the young man who, to keep
himself in good standing, and benefit from his Uncles favor, though
the source of it, profiteering is somehow immoral to him,  G-rates his
story though Brae baits him with flirtations.  The old man may spin
his yarns with violent battles at sea and so on, as he is a broken
remembrancer,  possibly mad, and surely the family outcast castaway,
but the Cousin is young and the children are too much at his heels to
hear of his adventures just now. Perhaps youth is not wasted on the
young, nor even the Slaughtering or Love of Evil Creatures, not so
long as the elders can take some heat from youthful passions and warm
their cooling hearts.

On Sun, Jan 25, 2015 at 7:17 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
> So, Page 37 bottom.
> from "One reason Humans remain young so long,....etc.
>
> pretty amazing aside to me. Do we have some later-in-history
> psychological explanation here from the Rev or wha?
>
> A--and, the effect on the adults' fear of death????
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l