Absolute Paternal Care :: SteynOnline

For the last two years, throughout the Permanent Abnormal, the lights have stayed on at SteynOnline, even as they have flickered and dimmed at concert halls and theatres and other entertainment venues. We’re very proud that this website now offers more free content than at any time in our nineteen-year history. But we also provide some premium extras especially for our Mark Steyn Club members, such as these nightly serializations of classic fiction and our Sunday Poems.

This weekend’s Easter verse contained at least one line that caught the eye of Diane Calabrese, a Maryland member of The Mark Steyn Club:

Thank you…

‘…die of absolute paternal care…’ T S Eliot.

Our world to be sure…

Indeed, Diane. And also the world President Neverbend wants to usher in on a small island in the South Pacific. In tonight’s episode of The Fixed Period by Anthony Trollope, President Neverbend stands on the eve of greatness:

I was well aware even then that my theory was true. The old and effete should go, in order that the strong and manlike might rise in their places and do the work of the world with the wealth of the world at their command. Take the average of mankind all round, and there would be but the lessening of a year or two from the life of them all. Even taking those men who had arrived at twenty-five, to how few are allotted more than forty years of life! But yet how large a proportion of the wealth of the world remains in the hands of those who have passed that age, and are unable from senile imbecility to employ that wealth as it should be used!

It all makes perfect sense until the day of the first “deposition” dawns.

Members of The Mark Steyn Club can hear me read Part Seventeen of The Fixed Period simply by clicking here and logging-in. Earlier episodes can be found here.

If you enjoy me in audio, you might like to check out my appearances with my EIB comrade Mister Snerdley on New York’s radio powerhouse 77 WABC. The latest episode can be heard here.

Membership in The Mark Steyn Club is not for everyone, but, if you’ve a pal who enjoys classic fiction, we’d love to welcome him or her to our ranks via the birthday present that lasts all year: A gift membership in the Steyn Club, which comes with access to our entire archive of Tales for Our Time, including Nineteen Eighty-Four, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, The Time Machine and many more. For more details on our special Gift Membership, see here. And please join me tomorrow evening for Part Eighteen of The Fixed Period.