Regular followers of this channel will probably be aware of a contributor with an anatine bent. Since today is his birthday* it seems only fair to offer an appropriate theme.

Sadly, ducks are not as well represented in the Western Canon as they should be, so this quiz is a little** tricker than usual (with appreciably more non-fiction). Any vaguely intelligent guess is therefore likely to get a cute anime girl.

Two short poems are quoted in their entirety. The ‘no author repeated’ rule holds if one collaborative work is attributed to one author only. One or two works are attributed to their translators.

Translations marked [*]. Hints on request.


* Today may not be his birthday, but I have only about a 99.7% chance of failure. I like those odds.
** A lot.


The authors:

Douglas Adams, Hans Christian Andersen, Roy Chapman Andrews

Basho, L. Frank Baum, Isabella Beeton, Ambrose Bierce, R. D. Blackmore, Roberto Bolano, Richard Brautigan, Patrick O’Brian, William Cullen Bryant, Richard Francis Burton, Robert Burton

Italo Calvino, Thomas Carlyle, Lewis Carroll, Raymond Carver, Willa Cather, Geoffrey Chaucer, John Cheever, Anton Chekhov, Flanery O’Connor, John Crowley

Charles Darwin, Colin Dexter

Philip K. Dick, Charles Dickens, Isak Dinesen, Gerald Durrell, Lawrence Durrell

George Eliot, Bret Easton Ellis, Lucy Ellmann

M. F. K. Fisher, Marjorie Flack, Errol Flynn

Neil Gaiman, Francis Galton, William H. Gass, A. A. Gill, Kenneth Grahame, Robert Graves, Wilhelm & Jacob Grimm, Winston Groom

Lawrence Sargent Hall, F. W. Harvey, Seamus Heaney, Ernest Hemingway, O. Henry

Henrik Ibsen

Jerome K. Jerome, James Joyce

Garrison Keillor, Jack Kerouac, Dick King-Smith, Rudyard Kipling

R. A. Lafferty, D. H. Lawrence, Hugh Lofting

John Masefield, Guy De Maupassant, Cormac McCarthy, Robert McCloskey, Larry McMurtry, Prosper Montagné, Alice Munro

Vladimir Nabokov, Ogden Nash

George Orwell

Samuel Pepys, Fernando Pessoa, Beatrix Potter, Terry Pratchett, Marcel Proust, Thomas Pynchon

Saki, J. D. Salinger, Mark Salzman, Gary Snyder, J. M. Synge, Wallace Stevens, Robert Louis Stevenson, Rex Stout

Dylan Thomas, Flora Thompson, James Thurber, Alice B. Toklas,Leo Tolstoy, Mark Twain

Virgil

David Foster Wallace, Evelyn Waugh, Walt Whitman, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Henry Williamson, Edmund Wilson, P. G. Wodehouse, William Wordsworth

Zhuangzi

1)
Once upon a time there was a beautiful young duck named Ping. Ping lived with his mother and his father and two sisters and three brothers and eleven aunts and seven uncles and forty-two cousins.

Their home was a boat with two wise eyes on the Yangtze river.


2)
DUCK-SHOOTING. — Wooden ducks, ballasted with lead, and painted, may be used at night as decoy-ducks; or the skins of birds already shot, may be stuffed and employed for the same purpose. They should be anchored in the water, or made fast to a frame attached to the shooting-punt, and dressed with sedge. It is convenient to sink a large barrel into the flat marsh or mud, as a dry place to stand or sit in, when waiting for the birds to come. A lady suggests to me, that if the sportsman took a bottle of hot water to put under his feet, it would be a great comfort to him, and in this I quite agree; I would take a keg of hot water, when about it. If real ducks be used as decoy-birds, the males should be tied in one place and the females in another, to induce them to quack. An artificial island may be made to attract ducks, when there is no real one.


3)
She orders the red snapper with violets and pine nuts and for an appetizer a peanut butter soup with smoked duck and mashed squash which sounds strange but is actually quite good. New York magazine called it a “playful but mysterious little dish” and I repeat this to Patricia, who lights a cigarette while ignoring my lit match, sulkily slumped in her seat, exhaling smoke directly into my face, occasionally shooting furious looks at me which I politely ignore, being the gentleman that I can be.


4)
Odysseus married Penelope, daughter of Icarius and the Naiad Periboea; some say, at the request of Icarius’s brother Tyndareus, who arranged for him to win a suitors’ race down the Spartan street called ‘Apheta’. Penelope, formerly named Arnaea, or Arnacia, had been flung into the sea by Nauplius at her father’s order; but a flock of purplestriped ducks buoyed her up, fed her, and towed her ashore. Impressed by this prodigy, Icarius and Periboea relented, and Arnaea won the new name of Penelope, which means ‘duck’.


5)
I found out that if you gave a duck a piece of fatty pork, something in its intestinal makeup caused the bird to pass the pork within a minute or two. From beak to exit it was a spectacle you could observe very swiftly.

We had plenty of ducks in our back yard. I pondered a night over this.

It occurred to me that it would be interesting to tie a string about ten feet long to the pork.

Out came the pork, which I then gave to another duck with the same result, holding on to the string that enters the first duck’s mouth. In a few minutes I had a half-dozen ducks tied together beak to rectum on this greased string.

I was, in a stroke, and at the age of eight or nine, inventor of the first living bracelet. No scientist discoverer of an antibiotic could have been more enchanted than I.

6)
‘There is a word in Newspeak,’ said Syme, ‘I don’t know whether you know it: DUCKSPEAK, to quack like a duck. It is one of those interesting words that have two contradictory meanings. Applied to an opponent, it is abuse, applied to someone you agree with, it is praise.’


7)
“Well bourded!” quoth the ducke, “by my hat!
That men should loven alway causeless,
Who can a reason find, or wit, in that?
Danceth he merry, that is mirtheless?
Who shoulde reck of that is reckeless?
Yea! queke yet,” quoth the duck, “full well and fair
There be more starres, God wot, than a pair!”


8)
Leslie had returned from a trip to the mainland, loaded with game, and puffed up with pride. He had, he explained to us, pulled off his first left and right. He had to explain in detail, however, before we grasped the full glory of his action. Apparently a left-and-a-right in hunting parlance meant to shoot and kill two birds or animals in quick succession, first with your left barrel and then with your right. Standing in the great stone-flagged kitchen, lit by the red glow of the charcoal fires, he explained how the flock of ducks had come over in the wintry dawn, spread out across the sky. With a shrill whistle of wings they had swept overhead, and Leslie had picked out the leader, fired, turned his gun on to the second bird, and fired again with terrific speed, so that when he lowered his smoking barrels the two ducks splashed into the lake almost as one. Gathered in the kitchen, the family listened spellbound to his graphic description.


9)
. . . . Now mayst thou see
The various ocean-fowl and those that pry
Round Asian meads within thy fresher-pools,
Cayster, as in eager rivalry,
About their shoulders dash the plenteous spray,
Now duck their head beneath the wave, now run
Into the billows, for sheer idle joy
Of their mad bathing-revel.

[*]


10)
Gordon suddenly began to pooh-pooh her; he kept saying “Pooh!” (an annoying mannerism of his, I have always thought). He wouldn’t answer her arguments or even listen to them. That, of course, infuriated her. “Oh, pooh to you, too!” she finally more or less shouted. He snapped at her, “Quiet, for God’s sake! You’re yelling like a prizefight manager!” Enraged at that, she had recourse to her eyes as weapons and looked steadily at him for a while with the expression of one who is viewing a small and horrible animal, such as a horned toad. They then sat in moody and brooding silence for a long time, without moving a muscle, at the end of which, getting a hold on herself, Marcia asked him, quietly enough, just exactly what actor on the screen or on the stage, living or dead, he considered greater than Garbo. Gordon thought a moment and then said, as quietly as she had put the question, “Donald Duck.”

kys

11)
‘I beg your pardon!’ said the Mouse, frowning, but very politely. ‘Did you speak?’

‘Not I!’ said the Lory hastily.

‘I thought you did,’ said the Mouse. ‘ — I proceed. “Edwin and Morcar, the earls of Mercia and Northumbria, declared for him: and even Stigand, the patriotic archbishop of Canterbury, found it advisable — ” ’

‘Found *what*?’ said the Duck.

‘Found *it*,’ the Mouse replied rather crossly: ‘of course you know what “it” means.’

‘I know what “it” means well enough, when *I* find a thing,’ said the Duck: “it’s generally a frog or a worm. The question is, what did the Archbishop find?’


12)
With every fibre of his being he was convinced of what his instincts told him: there was no other way to live than the way he was living, and he had never done anything wrong in his life. He had no capacity for reflecting on how his actions might affect other people, or what the consequences of this or that action might be. He took it for granted that just as the duck was created to live on water, he was created by God to live on thirty thousand a year and occupy a high station in society.

[*]


13)
It happened upon a November evening (when I was about fifteen years old, and out-growing my strength very rapidly, my sister Annie being turned thirteen, and a deal of rain having fallen, and all the troughs in the yard being flooded, and the bark from the wood-ricks washed down the gutters, and even our water-shoot going brown) that the ducks in the court made a terrible quacking, instead of marching off to their pen, one behind another. Thereupon Annie and I ran out to see what might be the sense of it. There were thirteen ducks, and ten lily-white (as the fashion then of ducks was), not I mean twenty-three in all, but ten white and three brown-striped ones; and without being nice about their colour, they all quacked very movingly.


14)
Charlemagne was still more curious than anyone else about the things he saw around him. “Oh, ducks, ducks!” he exclaimed. A flock of them was moving through the fields beside the road. In the middle of the flock was a man, but no-one could make out what the devil he was doing. He was walking in a crouch, hands behind his back, plopping up and down on flat feet like web-toes, with his neck out, repeating, “Quà . . . quà . . . quà . . . ” The ducks took no notice of him, as if they considered him one of them.

[*]


15)
. . . “Out you come.”

With reluctance he abandoned the duck. Already its sharply-incised features had begun to soften; in future baths it would grow eyeless, then featureless; its broad beak would dwindle to a sparrow’s, then gone; then headless (he would be careful not to break its increasingly skinny neck, not wanting to interfere in its dissolution); at last shapeless, not a duck any more, a duck’s heart only, still pure, still floating.

16)
One day the ducklings hatched out. First came Jack, then Kack, and then Lack, then Mack and Nack and Ouack and Pack and Quack.


17)
Dawn – crows cawing,
ducks quack quacking,
Kitchen windows lighting


18)
When, with an expression so ill-bred as to be fatherless, I enjoin a small offensive fellow to ‘fuck a duck,’ I don’t mean he should. Nothing of the sort is in my mind. In a way I’ve used the words, yet I’ve quite ignored their content, and in that sense I’ve not employed them at all, they’ve only appeared. I haven’t even exercised the form. The command was not a command. ‘Go fly a kite’ only looks like ‘shut the door.’ At first glance it seems enough that the words themselves be shocking or offensive — that they dent the fender of convention at least a little — but there is always more to anything than that.


19)
“Here it comes!” the fisherman said tersely at last.

The boys quivered with quick relief. The flock came in downwind, quartering slightly, myriad, black, and swift.

“Beautiful — ” breathed the fisherman’s son.

“All right,” said the fisherman, intense and precise. “Aim at singles in the thickest part of the flock. Wait for me to fire and then don’t stop shooting till your gun’s empty.”


20)
Our nearest neighbour had a so-called bird dog, mongrel she certainly was, ruby coat like an Irish setter but her head was flat, her paws too large, her tail too short. We would see Diane on the road, she was not sympathetic. The large iron portals at Bilignin were sometimes left open when Gertrude Stein took the car out for a short while, and one morning Diane, finding them open, came into the court and saw the last of our Barbary ducks, Blanchette, because she was blue-black. Perhaps innocently perhaps not, opinion was divided later, she began to chase Blanchette. She would come running at the poor bewildered duck from a distance, charge upon her, retreat and recommence. The cook, having seen from the kitchen window what was happening, hastened out. The poor duck was on her back and Diane was madly barking and running about. By the time I got to the court the cook was tenderly carrying a limp Blanchette in her arms to the kitchen. Having chased Diane out of the court, I closed the portals and returned to my work in the vegetable garden supposing the episode to be over. Not at all. Presently the cook appeared, her face whiter than her apron. Madame, she said, poor Blanchette is no more. That wretched dog frightened her to death. Her heart was beating so furiously I saw there was but one thing to do. I gave her three tablespoonsfuls of *eau-de-vie*, that will give her a good flavour. And then I killed her. How does Madame wish her to be cooked. Surprised at the turn the affair had taken, I answered feebly, With orange sauce.

21)
I spent the summer in and out of Emory hospital but am hoping I can avoid it for the winter. I have got my last draft off to the publisher and now am raising ducks like a respectable citizen. I have twenty-one. However, if the Lord is willing, I am shortly going to eat all twenty-one of them and start another novel.


22)
In these islands a great loggerheaded duck or goose (Anas brachyptera), which sometimes weighs twenty-two pounds, is very abundant. These birds were in former days called, from their extraordinary manner of paddling and splashing upon the water, race-horses; but now they are named, much more appropriately, steamers. Their wings are too small and weak to allow of flight, but by their aid, partly swimming and partly flapping the surface of the water, they move very quickly. The manner is something like that by which the common house-duck escapes when pursued by a dog; but I am nearly sure that the steamer moves its wings alternately, instead of both together, as in other birds. These clumsy, loggerheaded ducks make such a noise and splashing, that the effect is exceedingly curious.


23)
The fact that perhaps most concerned his future, though he did not know it, was that Farmer Hogget had become fond of him. He liked to see the piglet pottering happily about the yard with Fly, keeping out of mischief, as far as he could tell, if you didn’t count moving the ducks around. He did this now with a good deal of skill, the farmer noticed, even to the extent of being able, once, to separate the white ducks from the brown, though that must just have been a fluke.


24)
Through the door one sees on the lake that the white duck swims
Away — and tells and tells the water tells
Of the image spreading behind it in idea.


25)
The thicket stretched down from the top of one of the sandy knolls, spreading and growing taller as it went, until it reached the margin of the broad, reedy fen, through which the nearest of the little rivers soaked its way into the anchorage. The marsh was steaming in the strong sun, and the outline of the Spy-glass trembled through the haze.

All at once there began to go a sort of bustle among the bulrushes; a wild duck flew up with a quack, another followed, and soon over the whole surface of the marsh a great cloud of birds hung screaming and circling in the air. I judged at once that some of my shipmates must be drawing near along the borders of the fen. Nor was I deceived, for soon I heard the very distant and low tones of a human voice, which, as I continued to give ear, grew steadily louder and nearer.

This put me in a great fear, and I crawled under cover of the nearest live-oak and squatted there, hearkening, as silent as a mouse.

26)
When morning came, the wild ducks flew up to have a look at their new companion. “What sort of creature are you?” they asked, as the duckling turned in all directions, bowing his best to them all. “You are terribly ugly,” they told him, “but that’s nothing to us so long as you don’t marry into our family.”

[*]


27)
27th. Busy all the morning at my office. At noon dined, and then I out of doors to my bookseller in Duck Lane, but su moher not at home, and it was pretty here to see a pretty woman pass by with a little wanton look, and je did sequi her round about the street from Duck Lane to Newgate Market, and then elle did turn back, and je did lose her.


28)
“ . . . One time in the garden of Eden, Adam, which was takin home a bucket of coal oil, see the frog a sittin a sleep in the grass, and then he see the duck. The duck it snook up and pecked the frog real cruel on the spine of its back. If you catch a frog you will see the hump where its back was broke.

Adam he said: ‘You gum dasted beast of the field, why did you do that?’

The duck tost its head contemptible and sed: ‘Cause he makes me tired, he is so disgustin clean, always takin a bath.’ . . . ”


29)
It had been badly shot.
While he was plucking it
he found, he says, the voice box —


30)
It was getting lighter now and the shooter could see the low line of the near point across the lagoon. Beyond that point he knew there were two other shooting posts and far beyond it there was more marsh and then the open sea. He loaded both his guns and checked the position of the boat that was putting out decoys.

From behind him, he heard the incoming whisper of wings and he crouched, took hold of his right-hand gun with his right hand as he looked up from under the rim of the barrel, then stood to shoot at the two ducks that were dropping down, their wings set to brake, coming down dark to the grey dim sky, slanting towards the decoys.

His head low, he swung the gun on a long slant, down, well and ahead of the second duck, then without looking at the result of his shot he raised the gun smoothly, up, up ahead and to the left of the other duck that was climbing to the left and as he pulled, saw it fold in flight and drop among the decoys in the broken ice. He looked to his right and saw the first duck a black patch on the same ice. He knew he had shot carefully on the first duck, far to the right of where the boat was and on the second, high out and to the left, letting the duck climb far up and to the left to be sure the boat was out of any line of fire. It was a lovely double, shot exactly as he should have shot, with complete consideration and respect for the position of the boat and he felt very good as he reloaded.

‘Listen,’ the man in the boat called. ‘Don’t shoot towards the boat.’

I’ll be a sad son of a bitch, the shooter said to himself. I will indeed.

31)
The ducks in St. James’ Park are so used to being fed bread by secret agents meeting clandestinely that they have developed their own Pavlovian reaction. Put a St. James’ Park duck in a laboratory cage and show it a picture of two men — one usually wearing a coat with a fur collar, the other something somber with a scarf — and it’ll look up expectantly. The Russian cultural attaché’s black bread is particularly sought after by the more discerning duck, while the head of MI9’s soggy Hovis with Marmite is relished by the connoisseurs.


32)
There was very little exciting to do that winter except look at sheep but Cameron found something to keep his spirits up.

Ducks and geese flew up and down the river all winter and the man who owned the sheep had given him and the other sheepherders a lot, an almost surrealistic amount, of 44:40 Winchester ammunition to keep the wolves away, though there weren’t any wolves in that country.

The owner of the sheep had a tremendous fear of wolves getting to his flock. It bordered on being ridiculous if you were to go by all the 44:40 ammunition he supplied his sheep-herders.

Cameron heavily favored this ammunition with his rifle that winter by shooting at the ducks and geese from a hillside about two hundred yards from the river. A 44:40 isn’t exactly the greatest bird gun in the world. It lets go with a huge slow-moving bullet like a fat man opening a door. Cameron wanted those kind of odds.


33)
Rosie Probert, thirty three Duck Lane. Come on up, boys, I’m dead.


34)
The only real mass harnessing of steam to the pleasures of the table that I know about is done by the Chinese, and I can, in my mind, be at this very minute in the alley doorway of a Cantonese restaurant just off Plymouth Square in San Francisco, watching the exciting rhythm of the steam cookery there.

Ducks and cabbages and bean sprouts and a curled carp are all under the one bell-like top, and a fine vapor rises from it, not mingled, not blurred in savor, as the helper raises and lowers it on a long rope according to the hissed, hectic directions of the cook. The hot room has an airiness about it unknown to most public kitchens, in spite of, or perhaps because of, the controlled clouds of steam.


35)
Vaucanson’s vainglorious Intent had been to repeat for Sex and Reproduction, the Miracles he’d already achiev’d for Digestion and Excretion. “Who knows? that final superaddition of erotick Machinery may have somehow nudged the Duck across some Threshold of self-intricacy, setting off this Explosion of Change, from Inertia toward *Independence, and Power*. Isn’t it like an old Tale? Has an Automatick Duck, like the Sleeping Beauty, been brought to life by the kiss of... *l’Amour?*”

“Oo-la-la,” comes a voice from the corner, “and toot ma flute.”

“Frenchies,— marvelous i’n’t it,” comments another, “ever at it, night and day.”

36)
It is to be regretted that domestication has seriously deteriorated the moral character of the duck. In a wild state, he is a faithful husband, desiring but one wife, and devoting himself to her; but no sooner is he domesticated than he becomes polygamous, and makes nothing of owning ten or a dozen wives at at a time.


37)
Over the blue of the waters ply
White ducks, a living flotilla of cloud;
And, look you, floating just thereby,
The blue-gleamed drake stems proud
Like Abraham, whose seed should multiply.


38)
And Gregory and Glasser walked on that unkempt ridge that rises above the Institute, and talked about various business while the flaming ducks still pelted down.

“What they are,” said Gregory, “is pieces of the sky. They break off and fall and catch fire. Ultimately the sky is made up entirely of ducks, though scripture mistranslates them as quails. It is because of this composition that we often hear the term ‘duck sky.’”

“I sure never heard such a term,” Glasser said.


39)
As I look at the full stream, the vivid grass, the delicate bright-green powder softening the outline of the great trunks and branches that gleam from under the bare purple boughs, I am in love with moistness, and envy the white ducks that are dipping their heads far into the water here among the withes, unmindful of the awkward appearance they make in the drier world above.


40)
The Darkness scratched the back of his head again without moving his head. His hands looked almost luminous against the black sleeves.

‘There’s these three statisticians gone duck hunting,’ he said. He paused. ‘They’re like statisticians by trade.’

‘I’m with you so far.’

‘And they gone off hunting duck, and they’re hunkered down in the muck of a duck blind, for hunting, in waders and hats and all, your top-of-the-line Winchester double-aughts, so on. And they’re quacking into one of them kazoos duck hunters always quack into.’

‘Duck-calls,’ I said.

‘There you go.’ Stice tried to nod against the window. ‘Well and here comes this one duck come flying on by overhead.’

‘Their quarry. The object of their being out there.’

‘Damn straight, their *raisin-debt* and what have you, and they’re getting set to blast the son of a whore into feathers and goo,’ Stice said. ‘And the first statistician, he brings up his Winnie and lets go, and the recoil goes and knocks him back on his ass kersplat in the muck, and but he’s missed the duck, just low, they saw. And so the second statistician he up and fires then, and back he goes too on his ass too, these Winnies got a fucker of a recoil on them, and back on his ass the second one goes, from firing, and they see his shot goes just high.’

‘Misses the duck as well.’

‘Misses her just high. At which and then the third statistician commences to whooping and jumping up and down to beat the band, hollering “We got him, boys, we done got him!” ’

41)
A wind came up that afternoon, bringing gusts of rain and sending the ducks up off the lake in black explosions looking for the quiet potholes in the timber. He was at the back of the house splitting firewood and saw the ducks cutting over the highway and dropping into the marsh behind the trees. He watched, groups of half a dozen, but mostly doubles, one bunch behind the other. Out over the lake it was already dark and misty and he could not see the other side, where the mill was. He worked faster, driving the iron wedge down harder into the big dry chunks, splitting them so far down that the rotten ones flew apart. On his wife’s clothesline, strung up between the two sugar pines, sheets and blankets popped shotlike in the wind. He made two trips and carried all the wood onto the porch before it started to rain.

‘Supper’s ready! she called from the kitchen.


42)
Some cannot endure cheese out of a secret antipathy, or to see a roasted duck, which to others is a delightsome meat.


43)
Mr. Stryker had a small pond on his place, and from the very first time I met him, his chief topic of conversation was the wild ducks that used to come to this pond. In his insensitive-sounding way he admired them, minutely observing their markings, and he cherished and protected them like pets. Several pairs, in fact, which he fed all the year round, settled permanently on the pond. He would call my attention in his hard accent to the richness of their chestnut browns; the ruddiness of their backs or breasts; their sharp contrasts of light with dark, and their white neck-rings and purple wing-bars, like the decorative liveries and insignia of some exalted order; the cupreous greens and blues that gave them the look of being expensively dressed.

Mr. Stryker was particularly struck by the idea that there was something princely about them — something which, as he used to say, Frick or Charlie Schwab couldn’t buy; and he would point out to me their majesty as they swam, cocking their heads with such dignity and nonchalantly wagging their tails. He was much troubled by the depredations of snapping turtles, which made terrible ravages on the ducklings. He would sit on his porch, he said, and see the little ducks disappear, as the turtles grabbed their feet and dragged them under, and feel sore at his helplessness to prevent it.


44)
Whither, ’midst falling dew,
While glow the heavens with the last steps of day,
Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue
Thy solitary way?


45)
“Hey, listen,” I said. “You know those ducks in that lagoon right near Central Park South? That little lake? By any chance, do you happen to know where they go, the ducks, when it gets all frozen over? Do you happen to know, by any chance?” I realized it was only one chance in a million.

He turned around and looked at me like I was a madman. “What’re ya tryna do, bud?” he said. “Kid me?”

46)
A group of figures lurched, staggered or in one case rolled through the fog like the Four Horsemen of a particularly small Apocalypse. One had a duck on his head, and because he was almost entirely sane apart from this one strange particular he was known as the Duck Man.


47)
The sea darkens:
the voices of wild ducks
are faintly white.

[*]


48)
There are no fish in Mono Lake — no frogs, no snakes, no polliwigs — nothing, in fact, that goes to make life desirable. Millions of wild ducks and sea-gulls swim about the surface, but no living thing exists *under* the surface, except a white feathery sort of worm, one half an inch long, which looks like a bit of white thread frayed out at the sides. If you dip up a gallon of water, you will get about fifteen thousand of these.


49)
All along the backwater,
Through the rushes tall,
Ducks are a-dabbling,
Up tails all!


50)
Saturday. Opening day of duck hunting. At three A.M. a basement light shines in the squat brick lodge of the Sons of Knute where Elmer is brewing three giant pots of coffee, a special Knutes blend, double-strength with two raw eggs per pot, guaranteed to open a dead man’s eyes. Other necessities have been hauled the day before to the Pete Peterson Memorial Blind — two fourteen-foot fiberglass duck decoys, a duckboat to retrieve the kill, carpet strips for the blind — and Edgar is bringing the brandy. Elmer had a good golden retriever once, named Duke, but he got too fond of coffee laced with brandy; two years ago he plunged in and paddled out for a dead duck and chewed it up and couldn’t be trusted again. The giant decoys were borrowed by Pete Peterson (1910-1978) from his friend Walt who built them for the 1972 Minneapolis Duck Show and who didn’t need them back. Walt’s theory was that ducks fly too high to see life-sized decoys, that giant decoys would appear life-sized from cruising altitude (though making the lake seem dramatically smaller by comparison) and thus would exert greater draw. Each decoy can hold two hunters, but unfortunately, the immense superstructure makes the vessels unseaworthy, and they leak slightly, due to the holes in the bottom for the uprights, and the hunters within — one of whom puts his head and shoulders in the duck’s head (which the other rotates with a hand-crank) and fires through the nostrils on the bill, an awkward shot at best, made more so by the tendency of the decoy to tip when a large man, excited by quacking aloft, jumps to his feet and pokes his shotgun out and begins to blast — tend to get wet and discouraged. A third decoy, the U.S.S. Pete, sank with Gus aboard in the fall of 1974. Gus heard incoming mallards and jumped to his hunting station, the Pete rolled to starboard, and Gus, trying to right it, stuck his big foot through the fiberglass shell and she descended into the drink tail first and he had to blow the head off to get out.

51)
Jemima alighted rather heavily, and began to waddle about in search of a convenient dry nesting-place. She rather fancied a tree-stump amongst some tall fox-gloves.

But — seated upon the stump, she was startled to find an elegantly dressed gentleman reading a newspaper.

He had black prick ears and sandy coloured whiskers.


52)
SARA. And asking your pardon, is it you’s the man killed his father?

CHRISTY. (sidling toward the nail where the glass was hanging) — I am, God help me!

SARA. (taking eggs she has brought) — Then my thousand welcomes to you, and I’ve run up with a brace of duck’s eggs for your food today. Pegeen’s ducks is no use, but these are the real rich sort. Hold out your hand and you’ll see it’s no lie I’m telling you.


53)
wild duck à la Walter Scott

Draw, singe and truss a wild duck. Cook in a pre-heated over at 220°C (425°F, gas 7). Meanwhile, fry the duck’s liver in butter, mash and mix it with 20 g (¾ oz) foie gras. Fry 2 croûtons in clarified butter and spread them with the liver paste. Core 2 apples, stud each with 4 cloves and cook as for apples, bonne femme. Dilute some Dundee marmalade with 2 tablespoons whisky and heat gently. When the duck is cooked, arrange it on a serving dish. Remove the cloves from the apples and place on the croûtons, then pour the marmalade into the holes in the apples. Arrange the croûtons around the duck. Serve with the cooking juices.

[*]


54)
But one incident she shared with Willie remained more vivid in her memory than the poetry readings or the scrapes he got into with other boys, such as being let down into a well by the chain to rescue a duck which had spent a day and a night, quacking loudly, as it searched in vain for a shore to that deep, narrow pool into which it had tumbled, or the time when the hayrick was on fire and, against the advice of older men, he climbed to the top to beat the burning thatch with a rake.


55)
I had made peanut-butter-and-marmalade sandwiches for the children and salmon-and-mayonnaise for us. But I had not put any lettuce in, and Andrew was disappointed.

“I didn’t have any,” I said.

“Couldn’t you have got some?”

“I’d have had to buy a whole head of lettuce just to get enough for sandwiches, and I decided it wasn’t worth it.”

This was a lie. I had forgotten.

“They’re a lot better with lettuce.”

“I didn’t think it made that much difference.” After a silence, I said, “Don’t be mad.”

“I’m not mad. I like lettuce on sandwiches.”

“I just didn’t think it mattered that much.”

“How would it be if I didn’t bother to fill up the gas tank?”

“That’s not the same thing.”

“Sing a song,” said Cynthia. She started to sing:

“Five little ducks went out one day,
Over the hills and far away.
One little duck went
‘Quack-quack-quack.’
Four little ducks came swimming back.”

Andrew squeezed my hand and said, “Let’s not fight.”

56)
There is a Gascon restaurant in London. The menu is what St Peter orders for lunch. It’s as close to heaven as we, or at least I, am ever going to get. Five sorts of *foie gras* for starters: a terrine, with artichokes, *bordelaise*, in a warm flan, carpaccio in a Xipister sauce. If you want something a little lighter, there’s *rilletes* (pig bits in lard), or *piperade* with beans (not essentially Gascon, but wholly welcome). There’s smoked eel in filo pastry, like a spring roll. And for main course, there is, naturally, an old-fashioned Toulouse cassoulet, roast *confit* of duck with cream, pigeon with more *foie gras* and a maize waffle, carpaccio of duck magret with anchovy sauce, and a kebab of duck hearts.

How utterly, utterly splendid.

‘Vegetables?’ I hear the paler of you whimper. Well, you can have grapes with your grilled *foie gras*. Or there’s a *galette* of ceps or mushrooms *bordelaise*. And then there are chips for the vegetarian: big, fat, duck-fried *frites*. Ha ha! We pretty much ate the card. I particularly recommend everything, but especially the kebab of duck hearts. So romantic to offer someone you love a duck heart on a stick.


57)
— Could you make a hole in another pint?

— Could a swim duck? says I.

— Same again, Terry, says Joe.


58)
“I guess you’d be happier if you tried to do something,” asserted Trot. “If you can’t do anything for yourself, you can do things for others, and then you’d get lots of friends and stop being lonesome.”

“Now you’re getting disagreeable,” said the Lonesome Duck, “and I shall have to go and leave you.”


59)
Behold the duck.
It does not cluck.
A cluck it lacks.
It quacks.


60)
Happily, Professor Zhou did exist. Not only did he exist, but when Mark went to look for him at Nanjing University (I was ill that day), he was actually in and agreed to come and have dinner with us at the Jing Ling Hotel (by which time I was better because it was quite a good restaurant).

He was a polite, kindly man of about sixty. He guided us graciously through the unfamiliar menu and introduced us to the local delicacy, namely Nanjing Duck. This turned out to be very similar to Peking Duck (or Beijing Duck, as we now know it — or, to be strictly accurate, Szechwan Duck, which is what we have been eating for years under the name Peking Duck. We had some wonderful Szechwan Duck in Beijing, because that’s what they eat there. Beijing Duck is something different and comes in two courses, the second of which is usually not worth bothering with). To conclude: Nanjing Duck turned out to be very similar to Szechwan Duck except that they spoil the thing by coating it with a solid half-inch layer of salt. Professor Zhou agreed that it didn’t taste nearly as pleasant that way, but that was how they did it in Nanjing.

61)
When they had walked for two hours, they came to a great stretch of water. ‘We cannot cross,’ said Hansel, ‘I see no foot-plank, and no bridge.’ ‘And there is also no ferry,’ answered Gretel, ‘but a white duck is swimming there: if I ask her, she will help us over.’

[*]


62)
‘ . . . A most capital dinner, upon my word. The duck was the best I have ever tasted.’

‘I was sorry to see you help yourself to him a fourth time: duck is a melancholy meat. In any case the rich sauce in which it bathed was not at all the thing for a subject of your corpulence. Apoplexy lurks in dishes of that kind. I signalled to you, but you did not attend.’


63)
They made their way through a maze of crates, piles of rags and paper, a stack of warped and mildewed lumber. Standing in the corner of the room was a punt gun some seven feet long which the old man reached and handed out to him. Holme took it and looked it over. It was crudely stocked with some porous swamp wood and encrusted with a yellow corrosion that looked and smelled of sulphur.

What ye done was to lay it acrost the front end of your skiff and drift down on em, the old man said. You’d pile it up with grass and float down and when ye got to about forty yards out touch her off into the thickest of em. See here. He took the gun from Holme and turned it. On the underside was an eyebolt brazed to the barrel. Ye had ye a landyard here, he said. To take up the kick. He cocked the huge serpentine hammer and let it fall. It made a dull wooden sound. She’s a little rusty but she’ll fire yet. You can charge her as heavy as you’ve got stomach for it. I’ve killed as high as a dozen ducks with one lick countin cripples I run down. They bought fifty cents apiece in them days and that was good money. I’d be a rich man today if I’d not blowed it in on whores and whiskey.


64)
We don’t even know if what ends with daylight terminates in us as useless grief, or if we are just an illusion among shadows, and reality just this vast silence without wild ducks that falls over the lakes where straight and stiff reeds swoon.

[*]


65)
Quoth the duck, “I fear lest some calamity come upon me by night, for no runaway can rid him of fate by flight.” Rejoined the peahen, “Abide with us, and be like unto, us;” and ceased not to persuade her, till she yielded, saying, “O my sister, thou knowest how weak is my resistance; but verily had I not seen thee here, I had not remained.” Said the peahen, “That which is on our foreheads we must indeed fulfil, and when our doomed day draweth near, who shall deliver us? But not a soul departeth except it have accomplished its predestined livelihood and term. Now the while they talked thus, a cloud of dust appeared and approached them, at sight of which the duck shrieked aloud and ran down into the sea, crying out, “Beware! beware! though flight there is not from Fate and Lot!”

[*]

66)
‘You’re pretty good at crosswords — ’

‘Not bad.’

‘You know anything about cricket?’

‘Not much. What’s the clue?’

‘“Bradman’s famous duck”.’

‘How many letters?’

‘Six. I saw Bradman at the Oval in 1948. He got a duck then.’

‘I shouldn’t worry too much about cricket,’ said Morse. ‘Just think about Walt Disney.’


67)
As I helped myself to clams I held my breath, because if you smell them, mixed with shallots, chives, chervil, mushrooms, breadcrumbs, sherry, and dry white wine, you take so many that you don’t leave enough room for the duckling roasted in cider with Spanish sauce as revised by Wolfe and Fritz, leaving out the carrot and parsley and putting anchovies in.


68)
Then the gentleman, who was sitting between Rose the Jade and the old peasant, began to wink knowingly at the ducks, whose heads were sticking out of the basket, and when he felt that he had fixed the attention of his public, he began to tickle them under their bills, and spoke funnily to them, to make the company smile.

“We have left our little pond, quack! quack! to make the acquaintance of the little spit, qu-ack! qu-ack!”

The unfortunate creatures turned their necks away, to avoid his caresses, and made desperate efforts to get out of their wicker prison, and then, suddenly, all at once, uttered the most lamentable quacks of distress. The women exploded with laughter. . . .

[*]


69)
Line 319: wood duck

A pretty conceit. The wood duck, a richly colored bird, emerald, amethyst, carnelian, with black and white markings, is incomparably more beautiful than the much-overrated swan, a serpentine goose with a dirty neck of yellowish plush and a frogman’s black rubber flaps.

Incidentally, the popular nomenclature of American animals reflects the simple utilitarian minds of ignorant pioneers and has not yet acquired the patina of European faunal names.


70)
‘We are going ahead,’ Mister Wilkins say. ‘You give the driver the note an he will take you there.’ So I gone on back to my room an put on a new shirt.

Anyhow, I find a cab in front of the hotel an get in, an he drive away. I be searchin for the note to give him, but by the time I figger out I must of lef it in my dirty shirt, we is long gone in the middle of town. The driver keep jabberin back at me, I reckon he’s axin me where I want to go, an I keep sayin, ‘Peking Duck, Peking Duck,’ but he be thowin up his hans an givin me a tour of the city.

All this go on for bout a hour, an let me tell you, I have seed some sights. Finally I tap him on the shoulder an when he turn aroun, I say, ‘Peking Duck,’ an start to flap my arms like they is ducks’ wings. All of a sudden, the driver get a big ole smile, an he start noddin an drive off. Ever once in a wile he look back at me, an I start flappin my wings again. Bout a hour later, he stop an I look out the winder an damn if he ain’t took me to the airport!

71)
“And is that true, Ivar, about the head ducks falling back when they are tired, and the hind ones taking their place?”

“Yes. The point of the wedge gets the worst of it; they cut the wind. They can only stand it there a little while — half an hour, maybe. Then they fall back and the wedge splits a little, while the rear ones come up the middle to the front. Then it closes up and they fly on, with a new edge. They are always changing like that, up in the air. Never any confusion; just like soldiers who have been drilled.”


72)
QUAPPING. Invented by me (in so far as I am aware) to express sound made by a duck quickly opening and shutting its beak when feeding.


73)
In the evening, when the first stars sprang out in the sky, I used to go and sit by the pond, and then the birds came home. Swimming birds have a purposeful flight, unlike that of other birds: they are on a journey, going from one place to another, — and what perspective is there not in the roading wild swimmers! The duck concluded their orbit over the glass-clear sky, to swoop noiselessly into the dark water like so many arrow-heads let off backwards by a heavenly archer. I once shot a crocodile in the pond, it was a strange thing, for he must have wandered twelve miles from the Athi river to get there. How did he know that there would be water now, where it had never been before?


74)
“ . . . Few people understand ducks. I can watch ’em for hours. They can march better than any company in the National Guard, and they can play ‘follow my leader’ better than the entire Democratic party. Their voices don’t amount to much, but I like to hear ’em. . . . ”


75)
“They sat together on Thursday night drinking martinis until two a.m.,” I informed him.

“Well,” he said presently. “Go on.”

“At one point — they were seated together on the couch — he put his arm around her and kissed her. On the mouth.”

Charley said nothing. But obviously he was listening. So I continued.

“Nathan didn’t actually come out and say that he loved your wife — ”

Charley interrupted. “I don’t give a damn.”

“How do you mean?” I said. “You mean you don’t give a damn about that particular piece of information or — ”

He interrupted, “I don’t give a damn about the whole subject.” He was silent for a long time and then he said, “What else happened at the old homestead during the week? And don’t give me any more on that topic, about him or her. Tell me about the ducks.”

“The ducks,” I said, glancing at my notes. “The ducks laid a total of thirty eggs since my last report. The Pekins laid the most of that, with the Rouens laying the least.”

He said nothing.

“What else would you like to know?” I asked. “How much egg-gro they consumed?” I had it both by weight and by volume.

“Okay, he said. “Tell me about that.”

76)
I was there twenty minutes before Rex. If I had to spend an evening with him, it should, at any rate, be in my own way. I remember the dinner well — soup of *oseille*, a sole quite simply cooked in a white wine sauce, a *caneton à la presse*, a lemon soufflé. At the last minute, fearing that the whole thing was too simple for Rex, I added *caviare aux blinis*. And for wine I let him give me a bottle of 1906 Montrachet, then at its prime, and, with the duck, a Clos de Bère of 1904.


77)
Blue Duck hobbled the horses, then came and looked down at her. “I got a treatment for women that try to run away,” he said casually. “I cut a little hole in their stomachs and pull out a gut and wrap it around a limb. Then I drag them thirty or forty feet and tie them down. That way they can watch the coyotes come and eat their guts.”


78)
There is hardly time to think now: for teal and wigeon like flung darts whistle over me and I begin to shoot slowly and methodically. Targets are so plentiful that it is often difficult to choose one in the split second during which it presents itself to the gun. Once or twice I catch myself taking a snap shot into a formation. If hit squarely a bird staggers and spins, pauses for a moment, and then sinks gracefully like a handkerchief from a lady’s hand. Reeds close over the brown bodies, but now the tireless Faraj is out poling about like mad to retrieve the birds. At times he leaps into the water with his galabeah tucked up to his midriff. His features blaze with excitement. From time to time he gives a shrill whoop.


79)
Over the globe of the moon,
Over the wood that glows.
Wings linked. Necks a-strain,
A rush and a wild crying.


80)
Teacher Zhu read last.

“My story is very common, because I am a very common man. In the winter of 1975 I traveled to Beijing. My relative in Beijing invited me to a restaurant famous for its Beijing duck. On a cold day we walked in the restaurant. Inside was warm and comfortable! We sat down and the banquet started. First we ate cold dishes, such as marinated pig stomach and sea slugs. Then we had steamed fish, then at last the duck arrived! The skin was brown and crisp and shiny, in my mouth it was like clouds disappearing. The sauces were various and delicious, and each piece of skin we put in a *bing* — Teacher Mark, how do you say *bing* in English?”

“We call them pancakes.”

“Pancakes. Each piece of skin we put in a ‘pancakes’ with sauce and scallions. Afterwards we had the duck meat with vegetables. After that we had duck bone soup and fruits.”

He seemed to be finished, but then he put his composition down and smiled sheepishly at me.

“Teacher Mark. I have to tell you something. Actually this story is true, but actually I have never been to Beijing. Can you guess? My wife went to Beijing and had this duck. But she often tells me about it again and again, and I think, even though I was not there, it is my happiest moment.”

81)
Long before daylight the alarm clock rings. Billie snuggles her head deeper into the pillow. “Why should anyone get up at this ungodly hour?” she murmurs. “You shoot your old ducks. I’m not going.”

“All right, darling,” I say, knowing full well she wouldn’t miss it for the world. “You go back to sleep. I’ll go alone.” So I start to dress. That does the trick. In a few minutes she says crossly, “I just don’t understand why ducks can’t be shot at a human hour. But I’m awake now. Go put the coffee on.”

So I start the coffee. When I return she is pulling on hip boots and sweater. Her eyes are shining. She runs to the window. “I can see a smitch of daylight already. Why didn’t you set the clock earlier? We’ll never get there in time. Reg and Frederick and Rodney will beat us.”


82)
My tread scares the wood-drake and wood-duck on my distant and day-long ramble,
They rise together, they slowly circle around.

I believe in those wing’d purposes,
And acknowledge red, yellow, white, playing within me,
And consider green and violet and the tufted crown intentional,
And do not call the tortoise unworthy because she is not something else,
And the jay in the woods never studied the gamut, yet trills pretty well to me,
And the look of the bay mare shames silliness out of me.


83)
I would not want to be one of those writers who begin each morning by exclaiming, “O Gogol, O Chekhov, O Thackeray and Dickens, what would you have made of a bomb shelter ornamented with four plaster-of-Paris ducks, a birdbath, and three composition gnomes with long beards and red mobcaps?”


84)
“Saint-Loup with helm of bronze,” said Bloch, “have a piece more of this duck with thighs heavy with fat, over which the illustrious sacrificer of birds has spilled numerous libations of red wine.”

[*]


85)
The wind was cooler now, and all along the creek bottoms flocks of wild ducks were rising, flying, settling again. Up from the creek came long lines of wild geese, forming in V’s for their flight farther south. The leader in front called to those behind him. “Honk?” he called. All down the lines the wild geese answered, one after another. “Honk.” “Honk.” “Honk.” Then he cried, “Honk!” And, “Honk-honk! Honk-honk!” the others answered him. Straight away south he flew on his strong wings, and the long lines evenly followed him.

The tree-tops along the creek were colored now. Oaks were reds and yellows and browns and greens. Cottonwoods and sycamores and walnuts were sunshiny yellow. The sky was not so brightly blue, and the wind was rough.

That afternoon the wind blew fiercely and it was cold. Ma called Mary and Laura into the house. She built up the fire and drew her rocker near it, and she sat rocking Baby Carrie and singing softly to her,

“By lo, baby bunting.
Papa’s gone a-hunting,
To get a rabbit skin
To wrap the baby bunting in.”

86)
We suspect that the city of *Know-not-where* might be called, with at least as much propriety, *Nobody-knows-where*, and is to be found in the kingdom of *Nowhere*. Again, the village of *Entepfuhl* — ‘Duck-pond,’ where the supposed Author of the work is said to have passed his youth, and that of *Hinterschlag*, where he had his education, are equally foreign to our geography. Duck-ponds enough there undoubtedly are in almost every village in Germany, as the traveller in that country knows too well to his cost, but any particular village denominated Duck-pond is to us altogether *terra incognita*.


87)
‘Country life has its conveniences,’ he would sometimes say. ‘You sit on the verandah and you drink tea, while your ducks swim on the pond, there is a delicious smell everywhere, and . . . and the gooseberries are growing.’

[*]


88)
World’s going to hell, with all these
villages and trails.
Wild duck flocks aren’t
what they used to be.
Aurochs grow rare.


89)
Dab-Dab, the duck, used to keep herself cool by jumping into the sea and swimming behind the ship. And every once in a while, when the top of her head got too hot, she would dive under the ship and come up on the other side. In this way, too, she used to catch herrings on Tuesdays and Fridays — when everybody on the boat ate fish to make the beef last longer.


90)
It is not too much to say that I was piqued to the tonsils.

I mean to say, one does not court praise. The adulation of the multitude means very little to one. But, all the same, when one has taken the trouble to whack out a highly juicy scheme to benefit an in-the-soup friend in his hour of travail, it’s pretty foul to find him giving the credit to one’s personal attendant, particularly if that personal attendant is a man who goes about the place not packing mess-jackets.

But after I had been splashing about in the porcelain for a bit, composure began to return. I have always found that in moments of heart-bowed-downness there is nothing that calms the bruised spirit like a good go at the soap and water. I don’t say I actually sang in the tub, but there were times when it was a mere spin of the coin whether I would do so or not.

The spiritual anguish induced by that tactless speech had become noticeably lessened.

The discovery of a toy duck in the soap dish, presumably the property of some former juvenile visitor, contributed not a little to this new and happier frame of mind. What with one thing and another, I hadn’t played with toy ducks in my bath for years, and I found the novel experience most invigorating. For the benefit of those interested, I may mention that if you shove the thing under the surface with the sponge and then let it go, it shoots out of the water in a manner calculated to divert the most careworn. Ten minutes of this and I was enabled to return to the bedchamber much more the old merry Bertram.

91)
— She was hit under the wing, and so she could not fly away.

— And then, I suppose, she dived to the bottom?

— Know all about that. Always so with wild ducks. Made for the bottom — as far as they can get, my lad — get caught in the tangle and the sea-weed — and all the damned stuff that’s down below there. And so they never come to the surface again.

— But, Lieutenant Ekdal, your wild duck came to the surface.

— He’d got a most remarkably clever dog, had your father. And the dog — dived after the duck and brought her up again.

[*]


92)
By the COURT. — During the period of her keeping company with Mr. Sanders, had received love letters, like other ladies. In the course of their correspondence Mr. Sanders had often called her a ‘duck,’ but never ‘chops,’ nor yet ‘tomato sauce.’ He was particularly fond of ducks. Perhaps if he had been as fond of chops and tomato sauce, he might have called her that, as a term of affection.


93)
I learned to combine cooking with history. I learned to combine cooking with the thankfulness and confusion I felt at the kindness of so many people, from my late sister to countless others. And let me explain something. When I say confusion, I also mean awe. In other words, the sense of wonderment at a marvelous thing, like the lilies that bloom and die in a single day, or azaleas, or forget-me-nots. But I also realized this wasn’t enough. I couldn’t live forever on my recipes for ribs, my famous recipes. Ribs were not the answer. You have to change. You have to turn yourself around and change. You have to know how to look even if you don’t know what you’re looking for. So those of you who are interested can take out pencil and paper now, because I’m going to read you a new recipe. It’s for duck à l’orange. This is not something you want to eat every day, because it isn’t cheap and it will take you an hour and a half, maybe more, to make, but every two months or when a birthday comes around, it isn’t bad. These are the ingredients, for four: a four-pound duck, two tablespoons of butter, four cloves of garlic, two cups of broth, a few sprigs of herbs, a tablespoon of tomato paste, four oranges, four tablespoons of sugar, three tablespoons of brandy, black pepper, oil, and salt.

[*]


94)
. . . the fact that you passed the tiny kitchen on the way to the tables and the chefs were knee-deep in ducks in there, raw ducks getting plucked, roasted ducks, fried duck legs, ducks cooked six ways from Sunday, the fact that what about that dish they had where the duck was served in a sea of green olives, just a sea, like two hundred olives at least . . .


95)
Ho! Get to lair! The sun’s aflare
Behind the breathing grass:
And creaking through the young bamboo
The warning whispers pass.
By day made strange, the woods we range
With blinking eyes we scan;
While down the skies the wild duck cries:
“*The Day — the Day to Man!*”

96)
He was really a most gentlemanly cat. A friend of mine, who believes in the doctrine of the transmigration of souls, was convinced that he was Lord Chesterfield. He never clamoured for food, as other cats do. He would sit beside me at meals, and wait till he was served. He would eat only the knuckle-end of a leg of mutton, and would never look at over-done beef. A visitor of ours once offered him a piece of gristle; he said nothing, but quietly left the room, and we did not see him again until our friend had departed.

But every one has his price, and Thomas Henry’s price was roast duck. Thomas Henry’s attitude in the presence of roast duck came to me as a psychological revelation. It showed me at once the lower and more animal side of his nature. In the presence of roast duck Thomas Henry became simply and merely a cat, swayed by all the savage instincts of his race. His dignity fell from him as a cloak. He clawed for roast duck, he grovelled for it. I believe he would have sold himself to the devil for roast duck.

We accordingly avoided that particular dish: it was painful to see a cat’s character so completely demoralised. Besides, his manners, when roast duck was on the table, afforded a bad example to the children.


97)
And as for the duck, I think God must have smiled a bit
Seeing those bright eyes blink on the day He fashioned it.


98)
*Canetons à la mode d’Amblève*. In thin gilt lettering on the creamy white of the menu how little those words conveyed to the bulk of the imperfectly educated diners. And yet how much specialized effort had been lavished, how much carefully treasured lore had been ungarnered, before those six words could be written. In the Department of Deux-Sèvres ducklings had lived peculiar and beautiful lives and died in the odour of satiety to furnish the main theme of the dish; champignons, which even a purist for Saxon English would have hesitated to address as mushrooms, had contributed their languorous atrophied bodies to the garnishing, and a sauce devised in the twilight reign of the Fifteenth Louis had been summoned back from the imperishable past to take its part in the wonderful confection.


99)
Words cannot paint the o’ershadowing yew-tree bough,
And dimly-gleaming Nest, — a hollow crown
Of golden leaves inlaid with silver down,
Fine as the mother’s softest plumes allow:
I gazed — and, self-accused while gazing, sighed
For human-kind, weak slaves of cumbrous pride!


100)
The duck’s legs are short, but to stretch them out would worry him; the crane’s legs are long, but to cut them down would make him sad. What is long by nature needs no cutting off; what is short by nature needs no stretching. That would be no way to get rid of worry. I wonder, then, whether benevolence and righteousness are part of man’s true form? Those benevolent men — how much worrying they do!

[*]

3. B. E. Ellis, American Psycho
26. H. C. Andersen, The Ugly Duckling
47. Would guess (haven't looked at author list) Kenkō
61. Brothers Grimm, Hansel and Gretel
69. Nabokov, Pale Fire?

>>25269498
*47. (and now I have); will correct that to Bashō (I mix those two up anyway).

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>>25269498
5 / 5 here to get things going:

>3. B. E. Ellis, American Psycho
"Mysterious but playful little dish" was in the film IIRC.

>26. H. C. Andersen, The Ugly Duckling
Translated by Jean Hersholt, not that it matters much. Hard to mess up HCA although I'm sure someone has tried, or will do.

>47. Would guess (haven't looked at author list) Kenkō
>make that Bashō
AFAIK, haiku aren't supposed to have "literary devices", so the synaesthesia might offend the purists. But B. doesn't care.

>61. Brothers Grimm, Hansel and Gretel
Dunno who translated it. (But as with HCA it's not the sort of thing where the translator makes or breaks it, really.)

>69. Nabokov, Pale Fire?
"Alas, the dingy cygnet never turned / Into a wood duck" being the bit of the poem he's talking about.

>>25269431
7 is chaucer im gessing
25 treasure island
63 cormac mccarthy the lack of punctuation leads me to believe that
99 wordsworth

>>25269625
13 lorna doone as well just spotted it mush

>>25269628
also just spoted 49- grahame wind in the willows chavvie

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>>25269625
All good here. As per the preamble I think an author is enough since the quiz is pretty tricky.

>7 is chaucer im gessing
Parliament of Fowls. The duck saying, be merry, don't worry about stuff, there's plenty more fish in the sea, etc.

>25 treasure island
"Spy-glass" is a hint (but maybe not necessary since the overall situation is quite distinctive).

>63 cormac mccarthy
Outer Dark. "Holme" = Culla Holme, 60% of the main characters (his sister RInthy being the other 40%).
>the lack of punctuation leads me to believe that
Not to mention, it's a pretty typical Cormac character speaking about pretty typical Cormac matters in a pretty typical Cormac style. He has quite a thing for grizzled old-timers with a wry comic tone. There's one in just about every book.

>99 wordsworth
Sonnet to a Wild Duck's Nest. WW in standard nature-worship mode.

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>>25269628

>13 lorna doone as well just spotted it mush
Correct. R.. D. Blackmore. Voted #1 favourite book by male Harvard students some time around the beginning of the 20th century as I recall.

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>>25269630
>49- grahame wind in the willows
Of course. Duck's Ditty by Ratty.

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This is an honor, Quizanon.

>Today may not be his birthday, but I have only about a 99.7% chance of failure. I like those odds.
You're only about a week early, which is close enough for me.

6) 1984
17) Could this be Kerouac? I recall him writing haiku.
45) Catcher in the Rye
77) Lonesome Dove

35 is the tale of the mechanical duck from Mason & Dixon. One of the funniest parts of the novel.

>>25269779
A few guesses after taking a closer look at the author list:

20) Is this Alice Toklas? Hemingway otherwise.
22) Sounds like something Charles Darwin might write.
41) Could this be Willa Cather?
50) Garrison Keillor?
62) P.G. Wodehouse?
85) Little House on the Prairie?
94) The fact that this sounds like Ducks, Newburyport

>>25269434
>1)
The Chinese leads me to Zhuangzi
>2)
I think this is Devil's Dictionary by Bierce
>3)
American Psycho seems like
>4)
Not translation? Is it because it is attributed to the translator? Reads like the Library of Apollodorus the way it lays out historical events and lineages

Never gotten this many in a row before if all correct
>>25269436
>6)
Newspeak tips to 1984 by Orwell
>>25269441
11)
Alice in Wonderland the drying after the tears

>>25269441
>12)
The Death of Ivan Iyich

>>25269447
>23)
Charlotte's Web?

>>25269449
>26)
Gotta be The Ugly Duckling

>>25269452
>31)
Spies, espionage, Pavlov, ducks
Guessing this is Gravity's Rainbow

>>25269452
>34)
I am going to guess Mark Twain solely because it is talking about steam and he loves steam boats

>>25269452
>>25270326
Wait, I recognize that one. Sorry, anon. but it's Good Omens.

>>25270345
Damn. Ridiculous Pavlov psychology mixed with espionage was very Gravity Rainbow sounding

>>25269474
>61)
The names Hansel and Gretel are right there so surely this isn't a trick and Grimm's Fairy Tale Hansel and Gretel

>>25269436
9 - Richard Burton - The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night

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>>25269779
All correct here.

>6) 1984
Right. A slightly odd bit since the whole point of Newspeak is to eliminate shades of meaning, irony, etc. If Orwell wanted to point out how that sort of thing will always creep back into the language he would have commented explicitly you would think.

>17) Could this be Kerouac? I recall him writing haiku.
Yes he wrote loads and some are not bad. Maybe I just prefer him in small doses.

>45) Catcher in the Rye
Would rather have real ducks than symbolic ducks but never mind.

>77) Lonesome Dove
Not a duck duck but we take what we can get. Peter Duck (the third Swallows and Amazons book) would have been a more pleasant character but not so memorable.

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>>25269781

>35 is the tale of the mechanical duck from Mason & Dixon.
Correct. It was a real thing which caused quite a stir, although it was actually a cheat, obviously (it just had duck excrement stored inside). Voltaire famously commented, “Without the voice of le Maure and Vaucanson’s duck, you would have nothing to remind you of the glory of France.” Probably he was being sarcastic though.

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>>25269854

5/7 here:

>20) Is this Alice Toklas?
Right. The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book. Gertrude Stein the big hint.
>Hemingway otherwise.
E.H. did hang around with them but it’s not going to be him. The syntax (all those brutal comma splices) isn't him. Also at the end the speaker admits saying something "feebly". Not likely to be Hemingway. He generally takes great pains to appear as the strongest, bravest, wisest guy around. And the humblest, of course.

>22) Sounds like something Charles Darwin might write.
Correct. Voyage of the Beagle. Talking about how some birds evolved to use wings for non-flight purposes.

>41) Could this be Willa Cather?
Could be but it isn't. A tricky one, since not a very distinctive passage and not a well-known work. But it is an opening, which maybe helps. And there IS a title drop in there.

>50) Garrison Keillor?
Correct. Lake Wobegone Days.

>62) P.G. Wodehouse?
I suppose it could almost be a Jeeves-Wooster exchange, but it isn't. The PGW entry is very distinctive.

>85) Little House on the Prairie?
Correct. Laura Ingalls Wilder. Always nice to get a chance to shill Laura.

>94) The fact that this sounds like Ducks, Newburyport
. . . the fact that she copies Wittgenstein's Mistress, the fact that she's pretty annoying but you can't really ignore her in a ducks quiz . . .

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>>25270220
A mixed bag here:

>1)
>The Chinese leads me to Zhuangzi
Nope. The Z. entry is marked [*] for translation.

>2)
>I think this is Devil's Dictionary by Bierce
Also nope. The DD is all ironic and this is pretty much straight advice. I suppose you *might* detect a dry note of sarcasm in there with the woman offering homely advice, but I think it's all basically sincere.

>3)
>American Psycho seems like
Correct although others got there already.

>4)
>Not translation? Is it because it is attributed to the translator? Reads like the Library of Apollodorus the way it lays out historical events and lineages
OK, this is a tricky one. Maybe I should have called it a translation, but it isn't really a "translation" of one particular work. I might as well go ahead and say, it's from Robert Graves’ "The Greek Myths". Apollodorus is one of his sources but only one.

>6)
>Newspeak tips to 1984 by Orwell
Right although again you're not the first.

>11)
>Alice in Wonderland the drying after the tears
Correct and this one is all yours. I wonder how many children get the joke? (The passage the Mouse is declaiming is a very DRY historical text.) One of those things where you realize it years later.

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>>25270241

>12)
>The Death of Ivan Iyich
Right author, wrong book. Let's compromise with a C. A. G. who isn't actually giving a thumbs-up.

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>>25270281

>23)
>Charlotte's Web?
Nope. Similar setting, but there's no E. B. White in the author list.

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>>25270284

>26)
>Gotta be The Ugly Duckling
Correct, although someone else got it before.

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>>25270326
>31)
>Spies, espionage, Pavlov, ducks
>Guessing this is Gravity's Rainbow
Nope. GR is found; it's #35.

>>25270345
>Wait, I recognize that one. Sorry, anon. but it's Good Omens.
Correct. Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett, but as per the preamble we'll say Neil Gaiman wrote it (because Pratchett appears elsewhere).

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>>25270341

>34)
>I am going to guess Mark Twain solely because it is talking about steam and he loves steam boats
Yes, he did love steam-boats on the Mississippi (hence his pen-name) but this is a humbler form of steam. Not MT. It's a food writer who wrote really well. The MT entry is pretty tricky I think. Not one of his most famous works.

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>>25270380

>61)
>The names Hansel and Gretel are right there so surely this isn't a trick and Grimm's Fairy Tale Hansel and Gretel
Correct although someone else got there before.

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>>25270646

>9 - Richard Burton - The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night
Not a bad guess. His version of the 1001 Nights does have loads of verses in. But it isn't that. It's from a (moderately) famous passage describing all the things animals (supposedly) do which show there's rain coming.

>>25269447
>21)
I know Emory is in Georgia which leads me to Flanery O Conner

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>>25272067

>I know Emory is in Georgia
Interesting line of approach . . .
>which leads me to Flanery O Conner
Correct. It's a letter (18th October, 1951) to someone called "Betty Boyd Love" (whoever that is). FO'C had just finished Wise Blood. Her main hobby was raising ducks, geese, peacocks etc.

>>25269467
51) Jemima Puddleduck, by Beatrix Potter. The character, at least. I believe there is a story called Jemima Puddleduck, but I'm not sure if the quote is from that story or a different one.

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>>25273035

>51) Jemima Puddleduck, by Beatrix Potter.
RIght.

>The character, at least. I believe there is a story called Jemima Puddleduck, but I'm not sure if the quote is from that story or a different one.
It's from that one. I did want to include "pit pat paddle pat, pit pat waddle pat" but that's just three incidental characters from a non-duck story (Tom Kitten) so I think Jemima had the edge.