DEUS EX MACHINA: A stage device that allows the gods to descend out of the heavens into the midst of a play.

MATINEE IDOL: Usually a male star who, in romantic productions, is able to draw the adult female audience into the theaters. See comedies and comedy of humours.

School was now the beginning of new horizons: history, poetry and science. But some of the subjects were prosaic and dull, especially arithmetic: its addition and subtraction gave an image of a clerk and a cash register, its use, at best, a protection against being short-changed.

History was a record of wickedness and violence, a continual succession of regicides and kings murdering their wives, brothers and nephews; geography merely maps; poetry nothing more than exercising memory. Education bewildered me with knowledge and facts in which I was only mildly interested.

If only someone had used salesmanship, had read a stimulating performance to each study that could have titilated my mind, infused me with fancy instead of facts, amused and intrigued me with legeredemain of numbers, romanticized maps, given me a point of view about history and taught me the music of poetry, I might have become a scholar.

enigme (f); devinette; riddle

cent-quarante-trois; 143

connaissance; knowledge

tristesse (f); melancolie (f); sadness

***************merl |an (m) whiting; hairdresser; blackbird; white crow************************