Slow Read: Middlemarch Book 3, Chapters 23-27

My days are just packed. I've been reading this, as well as another very long book. This coming week I start co-teaching that class at the Zen Center, and that involves the class time as well as preparation and an extra meeting each week. To top it off, I signed up for a training at work this week. Oh, and Dharma School starts this Sunday...not next Sunday. So....gonna be a little behind on the reflective blogging bit.

BOOK III. WAITING FOR DEATH.
CHAPTER XXIII. "Your horses of the Sun," he said, "And first-rate whip Apollo! Whate'er they be, I'll eat my head, But I will beat them hollow."

And Fred winced under the idea of being looked down upon as wanting funds for small debts. Thus it came to pass that the friend whom he chose to apply to was at once the poorest and the kindest--namely, Caleb Garth.

Oh Fred Fred Fred.  Bad idea.  Way to ruin things with Mary.

Fred believed in the excellence of his bargain, and even before the fair had well set in, had got possession of the dappled gray, at the price of his old horse and thirty pounds in addition--only five pounds more than he had expected to give.

Oh Fred Fred Fred, way to fall from the frying pan into the fire. You got all excited about that horse sight unseen, so of course you didn't see the flaws.

CHAPTER XXIV. "The offender's sorrow brings but small relief To him who wears the strong offence's cross." --SHAKESPEARE: Sonnets.
Fred...

had not occupied himself with the inconvenience and possible injury that his breach might occasion them, for this exercise of the imagination on other people's needs is not common with hopeful young gentlemen.

That's putting it lightly. Foolish, happy-go-lucky, selfish Fred.

W. Blake

CHAPTER XXV. "Love seeketh not itself to please, Nor for itself hath any care But for another gives its ease And builds a heaven in hell's despair. . . . . . . . Love seeketh only self to please, To bind another to its delight, Joys in another's loss of ease, And builds a hell in heaven's despite." --W. BLAKE: Songs of Experience
And here are your consequences, Fred:

"I will try to be anything you like, Mary, if you will say that you love me." "I should be ashamed to say that I loved a man who must always be hanging on others, and reckoning on what they would do for him. What will you be when you are forty?

CHAPTER XXVI. "He beats me and I rail at him: O worthy satisfaction! would it were otherwise--that I could beat him while he railed at me.--" --Troilus and Cressida.

Fred takes ill, Wrench barely does his duty as doc, and the Vincys take on Lydgate for a doctor. Gossip ensues, romance soon to follow.

CHAPTER XXVII. Let the high Muse chant loves Olympian: We are but mortals, and must sing of man.

Girl flirts with Doctor, considers herself practically engaged. Doctor flirts with girl, thinking that's just what they do.

It is true, Lydgate had the counter-idea of remaining unengaged; but this was a mere negative, a shadow east by other resolves which themselves were capable of shrinking. Circumstance was almost sure to be on the side of Rosamond's idea, which had a shaping activity and looked through watchful blue eyes, whereas Lydgate's lay blind and unconcerned as a jelly-fish which gets melted without knowing it.

Lydgate sure has been blind to her possible effect on him, as his mind has been more on research and doctoring than on girls.