Tuesday, September 15, 2015

Dickensian Trope Trump

It came upon me as I watched him bloviate for an hour plus in TX last night. I've had this weird sense of deja vu all along with Trump, but I thought it stemmed from following his antics when I lived in NYC long ago. Wrong. He is a creature from another era.

"Here's the rule for bargains. 'Do other men, for they would do you.' That's the true business precept."

The very first word he learnt to spell was "gain" and the second (when he got into two syllables), "money.”

"Why, I don't exactly know about perjury, my dear sir," replied the little gentleman. "Harsh word, my dear sir, very harsh word indeed. It's a legal fiction, my dear sir, nothing more."

. . . still his philanthropy was of that gunpowderous sort that the difference between it and animosity was hard to determine.

Men were weighed by their dollars, measures gauged by their dollars; life was auctioneered, appraised, put up, and knocked down for its dollars.

“Tradesmen are not the same as they used to be, apprentices are not the same, business is not the same, business commodities are not the same.”

"A man can well afford to be as bold as brass, my good fellow, when he gets gold in exchange!"

"Why, what I may think after dinner," returns Mr. Jobling, "is one thing, my dear Guppy, and what I may think before dinner is another thing."

He wore a sprinkling of powder upon his head, as if to make himself look benevolent; but if that were his purpose, he would perhaps have done better to powder his countenance also, for there was something in its very wrinkles, and in his cold restless eye, which seemed to tell of cunning that would announce itself in spite of him.

The man who now confronted Gashford, was a squat, thickset personage, with a low, retreating forehead, a coarse shock head of hair, and eyes so small and near together, that his broken nose alone seemed to prevent their meeting and fusing into one of the usual size.

He had a certain air of being a handsome man—which he was not; and a certain air of being a well-bred man—which he was not. It was mere swagger and challenge; but in this particular, as in many others, blustering assertion goes for proof, half over the world.

1 comment:

Steve Adams said...

This is brilliant.