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@RyanFleck
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Minimalist web design for an article.
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<title>Simplicity-1</title>
<meta charset="utf-8" />
<meta
name="viewport"
content="width=device-width,initial-scale=1,shrink-to-fit=no"
/>
<style>
html {
scroll-behavior: smooth;
overflow-y: scroll;
overflow-x: hidden;
-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased !important;
-moz-osx-font-smoothing: auto !important;
font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace !important;
padding: 1rem;
font-size: 17px;
max-width: 100%;
color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.9);
background: rgb(235, 213, 198);
overflow-wrap: break-word;
word-wrap: break-word;
-ms-word-break: break-all;
word-break: break-all;
word-break: break-word;
-ms-hyphens: auto;
-moz-hyphens: auto;
-webkit-hyphens: auto;
hyphens: auto;
}
body {
margin: 0 auto;
max-width: 60ch;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<p>
Title: Where do we go when we sleep?
<br />Subtitle: A short article on dreamtime.
<br />Date: 2019-06-17
<br />Author: Ryan Fleck
<br />Tags: [sleep, waking, dreams]
<br />Links: [<a href="#">home</a>, <a href="#">catalogue</a>]
<br />===========================================================
</p>
<p>
"What can I do for you, Mr. Gray?" he said, rubbing his fat freckled
hands. "I thought I would do myself the honour of coming round in person.
I have just got a beauty of a frame, sir. Picked it up at a sale. Old
Florentine. Came from Fonthill, I believe. Admirably suited for a
religious subject, Mr. Gray."
</p>
<p>
"I am so sorry you have given yourself the trouble of coming round, Mr.
Hubbard. I shall certainly drop in and look at the frame--though I don't
go in much at present for religious art--but to-day I only want a picture
carried to the top of the house for me. It is rather heavy, so I thought I
would ask you to lend me a couple of your men."
</p>
<p>
"No trouble at all, Mr. Gray. I am delighted to be of any service to you.
Which is the work of art, sir?"
</p>
<p>
"This," replied Dorian, moving the screen back. "Can you move it, covering
and all, just as it is? I don't want it to get scratched going upstairs."
</p>
<p>
"There will be no difficulty, sir," said the genial frame-maker,
beginning, with the aid of his assistant, to unhook the picture from the
long brass chains by which it was suspended. "And, now, where shall we
carry it to, Mr. Gray?"
</p>
<p>
"I will show you the way, Mr. Hubbard, if you will kindly follow me. Or
perhaps you had better go in front. I am afraid it is right at the top of
the house. We will go up by the front staircase, as it is wider."
</p>
<p>
He held the door open for them, and they passed out into the hall and
began the ascent. The elaborate character of the frame had made the
picture extremely bulky, and now and then, in spite of the obsequious
protests of Mr. Hubbard, who had the true tradesman's spirited dislike of
seeing a gentleman doing anything useful, Dorian put his hand to it so as
to help them.
</p>
<p>
"Something of a load to carry, sir," gasped the little man when they
reached the top landing. And he wiped his shiny forehead.
</p>
<p>
"I am afraid it is rather heavy," murmured Dorian as he unlocked the door
that opened into the room that was to keep for him the curious secret of
his life and hide his soul from the eyes of men.
</p>
<p>
He had not entered the place for more than four years--not, indeed, since
he had used it first as a play-room when he was a child, and then as a
study when he grew somewhat older. It was a large, well-proportioned room,
which had been specially built by the last Lord Kelso for the use of the
little grandson whom, for his strange likeness to his mother, and also for
other reasons, he had always hated and desired to keep at a distance. It
appeared to Dorian to have but little changed. There was the huge Italian
cassone, with its fantastically painted panels and its tarnished gilt
mouldings, in which he had so often hidden himself as a boy. There the
satinwood book-case filled with his dog-eared schoolbooks. On the wall
behind it was hanging the same ragged Flemish tapestry where a faded king
and queen were playing chess in a garden, while a company of hawkers rode
by, carrying hooded birds on their gauntleted wrists. How well he
remembered it all! Every moment of his lonely childhood came back to him
as he looked round. He recalled the stainless purity of his boyish life,
and it seemed horrible to him that it was here the fatal portrait was to
be hidden away. How little he had thought, in those dead days, of all that
was in store for him!
</p>
<p>
But there was no other place in the house so secure from prying eyes as
this. He had the key, and no one else could enter it. Beneath its purple
pall, the face painted on the canvas could grow bestial, sodden, and
unclean. What did it matter? No one could see it. He himself would not see
it. Why should he watch the hideous corruption of his soul? He kept his
youth--that was enough. And, besides, might not his nature grow finer,
after all? There was no reason that the future should be so full of shame.
Some love might come across his life, and purify him, and shield him from
those sins that seemed to be already stirring in spirit and in
flesh--those curious unpictured sins whose very mystery lent them their
subtlety and their charm. Perhaps, some day, the cruel look would have
passed away from the scarlet sensitive mouth, and he might show to the
world Basil Hallward's masterpiece.
</p>
<p>
No; that was impossible. Hour by hour, and week by week, the thing upon
the canvas was growing old. It might escape the hideousness of sin, but
the hideousness of age was in store for it. The cheeks would become hollow
or flaccid. Yellow crow's feet would creep round the fading eyes and make
them horrible. The hair would lose its brightness, the mouth would gape or
droop, would be foolish or gross, as the mouths of old men are. There
would be the wrinkled throat, the cold, blue-veined hands, the twisted
body, that he remembered in the grandfather who had been so stern to him
in his boyhood. The picture had to be concealed. There was no help for it.
</p>
<p>
"Bring it in, Mr. Hubbard, please," he said, wearily, turning round. "I am
sorry I kept you so long. I was thinking of something else."
</p>
<p>
"Always glad to have a rest, Mr. Gray," answered the frame-maker, who was
still gasping for breath. "Where shall we put it, sir?"
</p>
<p>
"Oh, anywhere. Here: this will do. I don't want to have it hung up. Just
lean it against the wall. Thanks."
</p>
</body>
</html>
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