I have retrieved thousands of arrows from battlefields and, along the way, made some good friends. I have gathered arrows that were loose on the ground, pulled them from dead soldiers and horses, and even removed one from a mouse. (The mouse lived!)
My father, a rich landowner, didn't want me to become an arrow retriever. He wanted me to become a barrister. I thought he meant "bannister.""I don't want children sliding down on me!" I would yell. Finally, he relented and hired me an arrow-retrieval tutor.
When I finished my studies, I thought I knew everything there was to know about arrow retrieval. But I was young and naïve. I soon came to realize that finding an arrow on the battlefield is very different from finding one on a manicured lawn, with a servant pointing at it. And pulling an arrow out of a month-old corpse, provided by grave robbers, is much easier than pulling one out of a burly, muscular Viking-especially if he's still alive!
Using my father's connections, I joined the army of Hendric the Pecked. I had to start out as an apprentice retriever. That meant scaling tall oak trees, where you could be hit by falling acorns, or wading into bogs, where you could be bitten by salamanders.
Denne historien er fra May 13, 2024-utgaven av The New Yorker.
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Denne historien er fra May 13, 2024-utgaven av The New Yorker.
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GET IT TOGETHER
In the beginning was the mob, and the mob was bad. In Gibbon’s 1776 “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” the Roman mob makes regular appearances, usually at the instigation of a demagogue, loudly demanding to be placated with free food and entertainment (“bread and circuses”), and, though they don’t get to rule, they sometimes get to choose who will.
GAINING CONTROL
The frenemies who fought to bring contraception to this country.
REBELS WITH A CAUSE
In the new FX/Hulu series “Say Nothing,” life as an armed revolutionary during the Troubles has—at least at first—an air of glamour.
AGAINST THE CURRENT
\"Give Me Carmelita Tropicana!,\" at Soho Rep, and \"Gatz,\" at the Public.
METAMORPHOSIS
The director Marielle Heller explores the feral side of child rearing.
THE BIG SPIN
A district attorney's office investigates how its prosecutors picked death-penalty juries.
THIS ELECTION JUST PROVES WHAT I ALREADY BELIEVED
I hate to say I told you so, but here we are. Kamala Harris’s loss will go down in history as a catastrophe that could have easily been avoided if more people had thought whatever I happen to think.
HOLD YOUR TONGUE
Can the world's most populous country protect its languages?
A LONG WAY HOME
Ordinarily, I hate staying at someone's house, but when Hugh and I visited his friend Mary in Maine we had no other choice.
YULE RULES
“Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point.”