Реферат: Excerpts From Joseph Freeman

’s NEVER CALL RETREAT Essay, Research Paper

It was for her sake that he was occasionally invited to the house, for there was little

love lost between Father and Uncle Peter. The latter, a devout Catholic, had objected to

his sister’s marrying "a freethinker, a Mason, a downright infidel." This

my father never forgave him, especially since he did not like Uncle Peter and called him a

"superstitious relic of the Middle Ages."

At some of our Saturday night parties, Uncle Peter would sit in the corner near me,

listen to the Babel of argument and drop caustic remarks in an undertone. He would puff

hard at his pipe, stroke his walrus mustache and grumble through clouds of smoke:

"Ah, they’ve found salvation at last. . . . It’s all in the magic word new!"

A monarchist and clerical, Uncle Peter was especially irritated becasue he knew that

sometimes, after most of the guests had left and a few intimate friends sat down with

Father around a fresh bottle of wine, there was even talk about a "new society."

The fact is, my father had begun calling himself a socialist. I doubt whether he

belonged to any political party; more likely dramatic criticism had led him from a

consideration of social problems as presented in the theater to a consideration of social

problems as they appeared in real life. His views on the evils of the old order and the

marvels of the new were abstract and for the most part, I suspect, a tribute to a

prevailing literary fashion. But my father was an eloquent man; when he denounced the

evils of "child labor, imperialist exploitation, poverty, inequality and war,"

my young heart trembled with a nameless fear and hatred for the prevailing world. On the

other hand, his glowing pictures of the future classless society filled me with a

wonderful sense of hope and longing, though if anyone had asked me what it was I longed

for, I would have had a hard time explaining.

While my parents loved me, they neglected me a great deal, too. Father had to write an

article a day for his paper, but into that one piece went months of the most complex

social life and all the intricate intrigues of the theater and the literary caf?s. I

didn’t see him all day; at night I saw him sometimes only after the theater. Mother

had little life outside of her husband’s; all her time and attention were devoted to