Thanks to all who are following this blog! In the future, I plan to post new reflections on Tuesdays and a featured passage from that book on Thursday. But before we get too far from Hardy, here's a passage I loved from Far From the Madding Crowd. There is a plot spoiler, but it occurs 30 pages into the book, so I don't think you lose too much suspense by reading this.
Farmer Oak makes his living as a shepherd and has a good flock going when his inexperienced and over-zealous sheep dog drives the flock off a cliff, leaving Oak a destitute man. Now the passage; enjoy!
"[The dog] had done his work so thoroughly that he was considered too good a workman to live, and was in fact, taken and tragically shot at twelve o'clock that same day--another instance of the untoward fate which so often attends dogs and other philosophers who follow out a train of reasoning to its logical conclusion, and attempt perfectly consistent conduct in a world made up so largely of compromise."
