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Douglas, Norman, 1868-1952

"South Wind"

We can't talk about it here. You're not old enough yet.
I don't think I ought to tell you. It's too funny for words. . . ."
"You're a black-and-white man and I'm a writer, and really, you know,
we're a cut above all those sots on the balcony. Now just be reasonable
for a moment. Look here. Have you ever thought about the impossibility
of realizing colour description in landscape? It's struck me a good
deal lately, here, with this blue sea, and those orange tints on the
mountain, and all the rest of it. Take any page by a well-known
writer--take a description of a sunset by Symonds, for example. Well, he
names all the gorgeous colours, the yellow and red and violet, or
whatever it may be, as he saw them. But he can't make you see
them--damned if he can. He can only throw words at your head. I'm very
much afraid, my dear fellow, that humanity will never get its
colour-values straightened out by means of verbal symbols."
"I always know when a man is drunk, even when I'm drunk myself."
"When?"
"When he talks about colour-values.


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