The Sketch Book, going into the country

Washington Irving published 1820 499 characters hard

THE stranger who would form a correct opinion of the English character, must not confine his observations to the metropolis. He must go forth into the country; he must sojourn in villages and hamlets; he must visit castles, villas, farm-houses, cottages; he must wander through parks and gardens; along hedges and green lanes; he must loiter about country churches; attend wakes and fairs, and other rural festivals; and cope with the people in all their conditions, and all their habits and humors.

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About this text

The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon came out in parts in 1819 and 1820, while Irving was living in England. The same book holds Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. It was one of the first American books to sell well on both sides of the Atlantic. Project Gutenberg carries the whole collection.

Where this text comes fromThe argument is that you cannot see England from London. Irving sets out to prove it by insisting that the character of the country lives in places a visitor to the capital never reaches, and the passage builds that case by piling clause upon clause until the reader concedes from sheer weight. It is a traveler writing for other travelers, and it worked: this book made an American writer readable in Britain, which had not happened before.

What you might not noticeThe first word of the passage is set entirely in capitals, THE, a printer’s convention for opening a chapter that has been reproduced exactly rather than normalized. Source

What it trainsSeven semicolons in 499 characters, a count nothing else here reaches, and on the US layout that mark carries no Shift, so seven of them cost the little finger nothing. What they cost is attention. They are doing structural work here, dividing a single argument into stages rather than separating list items, so losing one changes the sense. The first word is set in full capitals, which means three Shift presses before you have typed anything else. Two sentences average forty-one words. Six commas and one hyphen complete the load.

From our blogHow to Learn Touch Typing Without Bad Habits

Read the full text at the publisher: Project Gutenberg