J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit, or There and Back Again, was published on this day in 1937.
Chapter I
AN UNEXPECTED PARTY
In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty,
dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a
dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a
hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.
It had a perfectly round door like a porthole, painted
green, with a shiny yellow brass knob in the exact middle. The door opened on
to a tube-shaped hall like a tunnel: a very comfortable tunnel without smoke,
with panelled walls, and floors tiled and carpeted, provided with polished
chairs, and lots and lots of pegs for hats and coats—the hobbit was fond of
visitors. The tunnel wound on and on, going fairly but not quite straight into
the side of the hill—The Hill, as all the people for many miles round called
it—and many little round doors opened out of it, first on one side and then on
another. No going upstairs for the hobbit: bedrooms, bathrooms, cellars,
pantries (lots of these), wardrobes (he had whole rooms devoted to clothes),
kitchens, dining-rooms, all were on the same floor, and indeed on the same
passage. The best rooms were all on the left-hand side (going in), for these
were the only ones to have windows, deep-set round windows looking over his
garden, and meadows beyond, sloping down to the river.
This hobbit was a very well-to-do hobbit, and his name was
Baggins. The Bagginses had lived in the neighbourhood of The Hill for time out
of mind, and people considered them very respectable, not only because most of
them were rich, but also because they never had any adventures or did anything
unexpected: you could tell what a Baggins would say on any question without the
bother of asking him. This is a story of how a Baggins had an adventure, and
found himself doing and saying things altogether unexpected. He may have lost
the neighbours’ respect, but he gained—well, you will see whether he gained
anything in the end.
No comments:
Post a Comment