Thursday, November 16, 2006

Appreciation: Mr. Dick Flies His Kite

Mr. Dick labors tirelessly and it seems interminably on the preparation of his great memorial. But he finds surcease:

Mr. Dick and I soon became the best of friends, and very often, when his day’s work was done, went out together to fly the great kite. . . . It was quite an affecting sight, I used to think, to see him with the kite when it was up at a great height in the air … when he was out, looking up at the kite in the sky, and feeling it pull and tug at his hand. He never looked so serene as he did then. I used to fancy, as I sat by him of an evening, on a green slope, and saw him watch the kite high in the quiet air, that it lifted his mind out of its confusion, and bore it (such was my boyish thought) into the skies. As he wound the string in, and it came lower and lower down out of the beautiful light, until it fluttered to the ground, and lay there like a dead thing, he seemed to wake gradually out of a dream, and I remember to have seen him take it up, and look about him in a lost way, as if they had both come down together, so I pitied him with all my heart.

David Copperfield, Chapter XV

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