I have a confession to make. I have done very little reading over the last week (as you can see). Its positively shameful. It's a combination of having a million other things to do and just not being horribly motivated to read. But I have read a little, a few pages here and there, and the good news is, I'm already way ahead of schedule so I'm not too worried and you shouldn't be either!
I noticed, now that I'm halfway through the book, that Trollope has given several of his characters rather clever names, so in lieu of a vocabulary word, I thought I'd share a few of them with you today. There's the slimy Mr. Slope, whose father, Trollope tells us, added the 'e' to his name to make it sound better, so of course his name would have been Mr. Slop before. Then there's the slightly arrogant Bishop and Mrs. Proudie, and the minor character Farmer Subsoil. And last but not least, there's Mr. and Mrs. Quiverful with their fourteen children (in case you're not familiar withe the Bible, Psalm 127:4-5 says, "Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, are the sons of one's youth. Happy is the man who has his quiver full of them.")
And finally, a funny quote for you today. In this passage the archdeacon and Mr. Thorne, who farms, are having lunch. Trollope writes:
"The archdeacon made a very good lunch, and talked to his host about turnip-drillers and new machines for reaping, while the host, thinking it only polite to attend to a stranger, and fearing that perhaps he might not care about turnip crops on a Sunday, mooted all manner of ecclesiastical subjects."
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