Critical Reading For Exams / Short Reading Comprehension 9

The stories he told to amuse his children of adventures in the Alps—but accidents only happened, he would ex-  plain, if you were so foolish as to disobey your guides—or of those long walks, after one of which, from Cambridge  to London on a hot day, “I drank, I am sorry to say, rather more than was good for me,” were told very briefly, but  with a curious power to impress the scene. The things that he did not say were always there in the background. So,  too, though he seldom told anecdotes, and his memory for facts was bad, when he described a person—and he had  known many people, both famous and obscure—he would convey exactly what he thought of him in two or three  words. And what he thought might be the opposite of what other people thought. He had a way of upsetting estab-  lished reputations and disregarding conventional values that could be disconcerting, and sometimes perhaps wound-  ing, although no one was more respectful of any feeling that seemed to him genuine. But when, suddenly opening  his bright blue eyes and rousing himself from what had seemed complete abstraction, he gave his opinion, it was dif-  ficult to disregard it. It was a habit, especially when deafness made him unaware that this opinion could be heard,  that had its inconveniences.