Johnyxxx
Senior Member
- Joined
- Oct 28, 2014
- Member Type
- Interested in Language
- Native Language
- Czech
- Home Country
- Czech Republic
- Current Location
- Czech Republic
Hello,
I am not sure if I understand the bold text correctly. Does it mean, If there is any truth that coming events are foreshadowed, then it was the right moment to prove it was true? I have never seen
“Well,” I said slowly, “maybe there isn’t. Probably it’s just my imagination working overtime. There’s something about this place that makes you do more wondering than thinking, anyhow. But if I were making a complicated piece of electrical machinery, I don’t think I’d bother to shroud it over so even a Maine farmer’s wife couldn’t look at it. It’s a stupid sort of precaution. A bit of dust wouldn’t matter enough to go to all that trouble, and Mrs Marcy couldn’t grasp the least thing about it by looking at it. And Mrs Walters is right there, she says, all the time she’s sweeping.”
“Yes . . .” Anne agreed without conviction. “Maybe they’re afraid it would scare her.”
If there were any truth at all in the superstition that coming events are foreshadowed, then was the moment for it to have been revealed. But I heard those casual words of Anne’s with no reaction, no feeling of prescience. I laughed—and I should like to be able to call back that laughter now—without bothering to retort. The idea was so simple that it could not be true. Only later, when I saw the figures which are now nothing but puddled lumps of melted wire, did I think of Anne’s remark again. A great many more important things than the first sight of those seven . . . things. . . happened to me before I saw the last of the house on Setauket Point, but none that come up more easily against the dark side of my lids when my eyes are closed.
William Sloane, Edge of Running Water, 1939.
Thank you.
I am not sure if I understand the bold text correctly. Does it mean, If there is any truth that coming events are foreshadowed, then it was the right moment to prove it was true? I have never seen
“Well,” I said slowly, “maybe there isn’t. Probably it’s just my imagination working overtime. There’s something about this place that makes you do more wondering than thinking, anyhow. But if I were making a complicated piece of electrical machinery, I don’t think I’d bother to shroud it over so even a Maine farmer’s wife couldn’t look at it. It’s a stupid sort of precaution. A bit of dust wouldn’t matter enough to go to all that trouble, and Mrs Marcy couldn’t grasp the least thing about it by looking at it. And Mrs Walters is right there, she says, all the time she’s sweeping.”
“Yes . . .” Anne agreed without conviction. “Maybe they’re afraid it would scare her.”
If there were any truth at all in the superstition that coming events are foreshadowed, then was the moment for it to have been revealed. But I heard those casual words of Anne’s with no reaction, no feeling of prescience. I laughed—and I should like to be able to call back that laughter now—without bothering to retort. The idea was so simple that it could not be true. Only later, when I saw the figures which are now nothing but puddled lumps of melted wire, did I think of Anne’s remark again. A great many more important things than the first sight of those seven . . . things. . . happened to me before I saw the last of the house on Setauket Point, but none that come up more easily against the dark side of my lids when my eyes are closed.
William Sloane, Edge of Running Water, 1939.
Thank you.
