Verena in the Midst: A Kind of a Story

Chapter 23: XXII Horace Mun-Brown to Verena Raby

Open in WeRead

Explore more books like this:

About This Book

Presented as a sequence of letters, the work follows the responses of friends and relatives when a woman at her country home sustains a spinal injury and must remain flat for a long recovery. Correspondence records medical opinions, practical arrangements for nursing and household care, visitors and neighborhood support, and small domestic consolations such as reading aloud, recorded music, and an adapted form of solitaire. Through exchanges of news, requests, and observations, the letters map family connections and local characters while illustrating how community, resourcefulness, and affectionate concern reshape daily life during enforced convalescence.

XXII
Horace Mun-Brown to Verena Raby

Dear Aunt,—I am afraid I was over-sanguine about the name for my invention. I showed it to a friend, a very capable man at the Bar, and to my astonishment he pronounced “Ally” not as if it were the word signifying helper (as I had intended) but as though it were a diminutive of Alexander or Alfred, bringing to mind, most unsuitably, the vulgar paper Ally Sloper. Such a misconception, in a man of his ability, would mean that far too many people would make a similar mistake, so we must start again.—I am, yours sincerely,

Horace Mun-Brown