Cub cadet xt2 riding lawn mower
Clio Token Size As Text Size By Tier Comparison [Mega Text Wall For Enjoyers of Scrolling]
2023.06.07 03:20 Personal_Hippo1277 Clio Token Size As Text Size By Tier Comparison [Mega Text Wall For Enjoyers of Scrolling]
When I was brand new to NovelAi I had no idea how 2048 tokens really looked as text. So for anyone looking at the tiers, trying to decide how many tokens they want for Clio with the new update, I've tokenized Part of The Great Gatsby by Scott Fitzgerald (public domain since 2021).
That way new users can more easily visualize what the AI's maximum context is for each tier. According to the UI Clio uses the NerdStash Tokenizer, as different tokenizers will convert text to tokens their own way.
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In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.
“Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”
He didn’t say any more, but we’ve always been unusually communicative in a reserved way, and I understood that he meant a great deal more than that. In consequence, I’m inclined to reserve all judgements, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores. The abnormal mind is quick to detect and attach itself to this quality when it appears in a normal person, and so it came about that in college I was unjustly accused of being a politician, because I was privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men. Most of the confidences were unsought—frequently I have feigned sleep, preoccupation, or a hostile levity when I realized by some unmistakable sign that an intimate revelation was quivering on the horizon; for the intimate revelations of young men, or at least the terms in which they express them, are usually plagiaristic and marred by obvious suppressions. Reserving judgements is a matter of infinite hope. I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth.
And, after boasting this way of my tolerance, I come to the admission that it has a limit. Conduct may be founded on the hard rock or the wet marshes, but after a certain point I don’t care what it’s founded on. When I came back from the East last autumn I felt that I wanted the world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever; I wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart. Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was exempt from my reaction—Gatsby, who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn. If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away. This responsiveness had nothing to do with that flabby impressionability which is dignified under the name of the “creative temperament”—it was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again. No—Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men.
My family have been prominent, well-to-do people in this Middle Western city for three generations. The Carraways are something of a clan, and we have a tradition that we’re descended from the Dukes of Buccleuch, but the actual founder of my line was my grandfather’s brother, who came here in fifty-one, sent a substitute to the Civil War, and started the wholesale hardware business that my father carries on today.
I never saw this great-uncle, but I’m supposed to look like him—with special reference to the rather hard-boiled painting that hangs in father’s office. I graduated from New Haven in 1915, just a quarter of a century after my father, and a little later I participated in that delayed Teutonic migration known as the Great War. I enjoyed the counter-raid so thoroughly that I came back restless. Instead of being the warm centre of the world, the Middle West now seemed like the ragged edge of the universe—so I decided to go East and learn the bond business. Everybody I knew was in the bond business, so I supposed it could support one more single man. All my aunts and uncles talked it over as if they were choosing a prep school for me, and finally said, “Why—ye-es,” with very grave, hesitant faces. Father agreed to finance me for a year, and after various delays I came East, permanently, I thought, in the spring of twenty-two.
The practical thing was to find rooms in the city, but it was a warm season, and I had just left a country of wide lawns and friendly trees, so when a young man at the office suggested that we take a house together in a commuting town, it sounded like a great idea. He found the house, a weather-beaten cardboard bungalow at eighty a month, but at the last minute the firm ordered him to Washington, and I went out to the country alone. I had a dog—at least I had him for a few days until he ran away—and an old Dodge and a Finnish woman, who made my bed and cooked breakfast and muttered Finnish wisdom to herself over the electric stove.
It was lonely for a day or so until one morning some man, more recently arrived than I, stopped me on the road.
“How do you get to West Egg village?” he asked helplessly.
I told him. And as I walked on I was lonely no longer. I was a guide, a pathfinder, an original settler. He had casually conferred on me the freedom of the neighbourhood.
And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.
There was so much to read, for one thing, and so much fine health to be pulled down out of the young breath-giving air. I bought a dozen volumes on banking and credit and investment securities, and they stood on my shelf in red and gold like new money from the mint, promising to unfold the shining secrets that only Midas and Morgan and Maecenas knew. And I had the high intention of reading many other books besides. I was rather literary in college—one year I wrote a series of very solemn and obvious editorials for the Yale News—and now I was going to bring back all such things into my life and become again that most limited of all specialists, the “well-rounded man.” This isn’t just an epigram—life is much more successfully looked at from a single window, after all.
It was a matter of chance that I should have rented a house in one of the strangest communities in North America. It was on that slender riotous island which extends itself due east of New York—and where there are, among other natural curiosities, two unusual formations of land. Twenty miles from the city a pair of enormous eggs, identical in contour and separated only by a courtesy bay, jut out into the most domesticated body of salt water in the Western hemisphere, the great wet barnyard of Long Island Sound. They are not perfect ovals—like the egg in the Columbus story, they are both crushed flat at the contact end—but their physical resemblance must be a source of perpetual wonder to the gulls that fly overhead. To the wingless a more interesting phenomenon is their dissimilarity in every particular except shape and size.
I lived at West Egg, the—well, the less fashionable of the two, though this is a most superficial tag to express the bizarre and not a little sinister contrast between them. My house was at the very tip of the egg, only fifty yards from the Sound, and squeezed between two huge places that rented for twelve or fifteen thousand a season. The one on my right was a colossal affair by any standard—it was a factual imitation of some Hôtel de Ville in Normandy, with a tower on one side, spanking new under a thin beard of raw ivy, and a marble swimming pool, and more than forty acres of lawn and garden. It was Gatsby’s mansion. Or, rather, as I didn’t know Mr. Gatsby, it was a mansion inhabited by a gentleman of that name. My own house was an eyesore, but it was a small eyesore, and it had been overlooked, so I had a view of the water, a partial view of my neighbour’s lawn, and the consoling proximity of millionaires—all for eighty dollars a month.
Across the courtesy bay the white palaces of fashionable East Egg glittered along the water, and the history of the summer really begins on the evening I drove over there to have dinner with the Tom Buchanans. Daisy was my second cousin once removed, and I’d known Tom in college. And just after the war I spent two days with them in Chicago.
Her husband, among various physical accomplishments, had been one of the most powerful ends that ever played football at New Haven—a national figure in a way, one of those men who reach such an acute limited excellence at twenty-one that everything afterward savours of anticlimax. His family were enormously wealthy—even in college his freedom with money was a matter for reproach—but now he’d left Chicago and come East in a fashion that rather took your breath away: for instance, he’d brought down a string of polo ponies from Lake Forest. It was hard to realize that a man in my own generation was wealthy enough to do that.
Why they came East I don’t know. They had spent a year in France for no particular reason, and then drifted here and there unrestfully wherever people played polo and were rich together. This was a permanent move, said Daisy over the telephone, but I didn’t believe it—I had no sight into Daisy’s heart, but I felt that Tom would drift on forever seeking, a little wistfully, for the dramatic turbulence of some irrecoverable football game.
And so it happened that on a warm windy evening I drove over to East Egg to see two old friends whom I scarcely knew at all. Their house was even more elaborate than I expected, a cheerful red-and-white Georgian Colonial mansion, overlooking the bay. The lawn started at the beach and ran towards the front door for a quarter of a mile, jumping over sundials and brick walks and burning gardens—finally when it reached the house drifting up the side in bright vines as though from the momentum of its run. The front was broken by a line of French windows, glowing now with reflected gold and wide open to the warm windy afternoon, and Tom Buchanan in riding clothes was standing with his legs apart on the front porch.
He had changed since his New Haven years. Now he was a sturdy straw-haired man of thirty, with a rather hard mouth and a supercilious manner. Two shining arrogant eyes had established dominance over his face and gave him the appearance of always leaning aggressively forward. Not even the effeminate swank of his riding clothes could hide the enormous power of that body—he seemed to fill those glistening boots until he strained the top lacing, and you could see a great pack of muscle shifting when his shoulder moved under his thin coat. It was a body capable of enormous leverage—a cruel body.
His speaking voice, a gruff husky tenor, added to the impression of fractiousness he conveyed. There was a touch of paternal contempt in it, even toward people he liked—and there were men at New Haven who had hated his guts.
“Now, don’t think my opinion on these matters is final,” he seemed to say, “just because I’m stronger and more of a man than you are.” We were in the same senior society, and while we were never intimate I always had the impression that he approved of me and wanted me to like him with some harsh, defiant wistfulness of his own.
We talked for a few minutes on the sunny porch.
“I’ve got a nice place here,” he said, his eyes flashing about restlessly.
Turning me around by one arm, he moved a broad flat hand along the front vista, including in its sweep a sunken Italian garden, a half acre of deep, pungent roses, and a snub-nosed motorboat that bumped the tide offshore.
“It belonged to Demaine, the oil man.” He turned me around again, politely and abruptly. “We’ll go inside.”
We walked through a high hallway into a bright rosy-coloured space, fragilely bound into the house by French windows at either end. The windows were ajar and gleaming white against the fresh grass outside that seemed to grow a little way into the house. A breeze blew through the room, blew curtains in at one end and out the other like pale flags, twisting them up toward the frosted wedding-cake of the ceiling, and then rippled over the wine-coloured rug, making a shadow on it as wind does on the sea.
The only completely stationary object in the room was an enormous couch on which two young women were buoyed up as though upon an anchored balloon. They were both in white, and their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house. I must have stood for a few moments listening to the whip and snap of the curtains and the groan of a picture on the wall. Then there was a boom as Tom Buchanan shut the rear windows and the caught wind died out about the room, and the curtains and the rugs and the two young women ballooned slowly to the floor.
The younger of the two was a stranger to me. She was extended full length at her end of the divan, completely motionless, and with her chin raised a little, as if she were balancing something on it which was quite likely to fall. If she saw me out of the corner of her eyes she gave no hint of it—indeed, I was almost surprised into murmuring an apology for having disturbed her by coming in.
The other girl, Daisy, made an attempt to rise—she leaned slightly forward with a conscientious expression—then she laughed, an absurd, charming little laugh, and I laughed too and came forward into the room.
“I’m p-paralysed with happiness.”
She
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laughed again, as if she said something very witty, and held my hand for a moment, looking up into my face, promising that there was no one in the world she so much wanted to see. That was a way she had. She hinted in a murmur that the surname of the balancing girl was Baker. (I’ve heard it said that Daisy’s murmur was only to make people lean toward her; an irrelevant criticism that made it no less charming.)
At any rate, Miss Baker’s lips fluttered, she nodded at me almost imperceptibly, and then quickly tipped her head back again—the object she was balancing had obviously tottered a little and given her something of a fright. Again a sort of apology arose to my lips. Almost any exhibition of complete self-sufficiency draws a stunned tribute from me.
I looked back at my cousin, who began to ask me questions in her low, thrilling voice. It was the kind of voice that the ear follows up and down, as if each speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again. Her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it, bright eyes and a bright passionate mouth, but there was an excitement in her voice that men who had cared for her found difficult to forget: a singing compulsion, a whispered “Listen,” a promise that she had done gay, exciting things just a while since and that there were gay, exciting things hovering in the next hour.
I told her how I had stopped off in Chicago for a day on my way East, and how a dozen people had sent their love through me.
“Do they miss me?” she cried ecstatically.
“The whole town is desolate. All the cars have the left rear wheel painted black as a mourning wreath, and there’s a persistent wail all night along the north shore.”
“How gorgeous! Let’s go back, Tom. Tomorrow!” Then she added irrelevantly: “You ought to see the baby.”
“I’d like to.”
“She’s asleep. She’s three years old. Haven’t you ever seen her?”
“Never.”
“Well, you ought to see her. She’s—”
Tom Buchanan, who had been hovering restlessly about the room, stopped and rested his hand on my shoulder.
“What you doing, Nick?”
“I’m a bond man.”
“Who with?”
I told him.
“Never heard of them,” he remarked decisively.
This annoyed me.
“You will,” I answered shortly. “You will if you stay in the East.”
“Oh, I’ll stay in the East, don’t you worry,” he said, glancing at Daisy and then back at me, as if he were alert for something more. “I’d be a God damned fool to live anywhere else.”
At this point Miss Baker said: “Absolutely!” with such suddenness that I started—it was the first word she had uttered since I came into the room. Evidently it surprised her as much as it did me, for she yawned and with a series of rapid, deft movements stood up into the room.
“I’m stiff,” she complained, “I’ve been lying on that sofa for as long as I can remember.”
“Don’t look at me,” Daisy retorted, “I’ve been trying to get you to New York all afternoon.”
“No, thanks,” said Miss Baker to the four cocktails just in from the pantry. “I’m absolutely in training.”
Her host looked at her incredulously.
“You are!” He took down his drink as if it were a drop in the bottom of a glass. “How you ever get anything done is beyond me.”
I looked at Miss Baker, wondering what it was she “got done.” I enjoyed looking at her. She was a slender, small-breasted girl, with an erect carriage, which she accentuated by throwing her body backward at the shoulders like a young cadet. Her grey sun-strained eyes looked back at me with polite reciprocal curiosity out of a wan, charming, discontented face. It occurred to me now that I had seen her, or a picture of her, somewhere before.
“You live in West Egg,” she remarked contemptuously. “I know somebody there.”
“I don’t know a single—”
“You must know Gatsby.”
“Gatsby?” demanded Daisy. “What Gatsby?”
Before I could reply that he was my neighbour dinner was announced; wedging his tense arm imperatively under mine, Tom Buchanan compelled me from the room as though he were moving a checker to another square.
Slenderly, languidly, their hands set lightly on their hips, the two young women preceded us out on to a rosy-coloured porch, open toward the sunset, where four candles flickered on the table in the diminished wind.
“Why candles?” objected Daisy, frowning. She snapped them out with her fingers. “In two weeks it’ll be the longest day in the year.” She looked at us all radiantly. “Do you always watch for the longest day of the year and then miss it? I always watch for the longest day in the year and then miss it.”
“We ought to plan something,” yawned Miss Baker, sitting down at the table as if she were getting into bed.
“All right,” said Daisy. “What’ll we plan?” She turned to me helplessly: “What do people plan?”
Before I could answer her eyes fastened with an awed expression on her little finger.
“Look!” she complained; “I hurt it.”
We all looked—the knuckle was black and blue.
“You did it, Tom,” she said accusingly. “I know you didn’t mean to, but you did do it. That’s what I get for marrying a brute of a man, a great, big, hulking physical specimen of a—”
“I hate that word ‘hulking,’ ” objected Tom crossly, “even in kidding.”
“Hulking,” insisted Daisy.
Sometimes she and Miss Baker talked at once, unobtrusively and with a bantering inconsequence that was never quite chatter, that was as cool as their white dresses and their impersonal eyes in the absence of all desire. They were here, and they accepted Tom and me, making only a polite pleasant effort to entertain or to be entertained. They knew that presently dinner would be over and a little later the evening too would be over and casually put away. It was sharply different from the West, where an evening was hurried from phase to phase towards its close, in a continually disappointed anticipation or else in sheer nervous dread of the moment itself.
“You make me feel uncivilized, Daisy,” I confessed on my second glass of corky but rather impressive claret. “Can’t you talk about crops or something?”
I meant nothing in particular by this remark, but it was taken up in an unexpected way.
“Civilization’s going to pieces,” broke out Tom violently. “I’ve gotten to be a terrible pessimist about things. Have you read The Rise of the Coloured Empires by this man Goddard?”
“Why, no,” I answered, rather surprised by his tone.
“Well, it’s a fine book, and everybody ought to read it. The idea is if we don’t look out the white race will be—will be utterly submerged. It’s all scientific stuff; it’s been proved.”
“Tom’s getting very profound,” said Daisy, with an expression of unthoughtful sadness. “He reads deep books with long words in them. What was that word we—”
“Well, these books are all scientific,” insisted Tom, glancing at her impatiently. “This fellow has worked out the whole thing. It’s up to us, who are the dominant race, to watch out or these other races will have control of things.”
“We’ve got to beat them down,” whispered Daisy, winking ferociously toward the fervent sun.
“You ought to live in California—” began Miss Baker, but Tom interrupted her by shifting heavily in his chair.
“This idea is that we’re Nordics. I am, and you are, and you are, and—” After an infinitesimal hesitation he included Daisy with a slight nod, and she winked at me again. “—And we’ve produced all the things that go to make civilization—oh, science and art, and all that. Do you see?”
There was something pathetic in his concentration, as if his complacency, more acute than of old, was not enough to him any more. When, almost immediately, the telephone rang inside and the butler left the porch Daisy seized upon the momentary interruption and leaned towards me.
“I’ll tell you a family secret,” she whispered enthusiastically. “It’s about the butler’s nose. Do you want to hear about the butler’s nose?”
“That’s why I came over tonight.”
“Well, he wasn’t always a butler; he used to be the silver polisher for some people in New York that had a silver service for two hundred people. He had to polish it from morning till night, until finally it began to affect his nose—”
“Things went from bad to worse,” suggested Miss Baker.
“Yes. Things went from bad to worse, until finally he had to give up his position.”
For a moment the last sunshine fell with romantic affection upon her glowing face; her voice compelled me forward breathlessly as I listened—then the glow faded, each light deserting her with lingering regret, like children leaving a pleasant street at dusk.
The butler came back and murmured something close to Tom’s ear, whereupon Tom frowned, pushed back his chair, and without a word went inside. As if his absence quickened something within her, Daisy leaned forward again, her voice glowing and singing.
“I love to see you at my table, Nick. You remind me of a—of a rose, an absolute rose. Doesn’t he?” She turned to Miss Baker for confirmation: “An absolute rose?”
This was untrue. I am not even faintly like a rose. She was only extemporizing, but a stirring warmth flowed from her, as if her heart was trying to come out to you concealed in one of those breathless, thrilling words. Then suddenly she threw her napkin on the table and excused herself and went into the house.
Miss Baker and I exchanged a short glance consciously devoid of meaning. I was about to speak when she sat up alertly and said “Sh!” in a warning voice. A subdued impassioned murmur was audible in the room beyond, and Miss Baker leaned forward unashamed, trying to hear. The murmur trembled on the verge of coherence, sank down, mounted excitedly, and then ceased altogether.
“This Mr. Gatsby you spoke of is my neighbour—” I began.
“Don’t talk. I want to hear what happens.”
“Is something happening?” I inquired innocently.
“You mean to say you don’t know?” said Miss Baker, honestly surprised. “I thought everybody knew.”
“I don’t.”
“Why—” she said hesitantly. “Tom’s got some woman in New York.”
“Got some woman?” I repeated blankly.
Miss Baker nodded.
“She might have the decency not to telephone him at dinner time. Don’t you think?”
Almost before I had grasped her meaning there was the flutter of a dress and the crunch of leather boots, and Tom and Daisy were back at the table.
“It couldn’t be helped!” cried Daisy with tense gaiety.
She sat down, glanced searchingly at Miss Baker and then at me, and continued: “I looked outdoors for a minute, and it’s very romantic outdoors. There’s a bird on the lawn that I think must be a nightingale come over on the Cunard or White Star Line. He’s singing away—” Her voice sang: “It’s romantic, isn’t it, Tom?”
“Very romantic,” he said, and then miserably to me: “If it’s light enough after dinner, I want to take you down to the stables.”
The telephone rang inside, startlingly, and as Daisy shook her head decisively at Tom the subject of the stables, in fact all subjects, vanished into air. Among the broken fragments of the last five minutes at table I remember the candles being lit again, pointlessly, and I was conscious of wanting to look squarely at everyone, and yet to avoid all eyes. I couldn’t guess what Daisy and Tom were thinking, but I doubt if even Miss Baker, who seemed to have mastered a certain hardy scepticism, was able utterly to put this fifth guest’s shrill metallic urgency out of mind. To a certain temperament the situation might have seemed intriguing—my own instinct was to telephone immediately for the police.
The horses, needless to say, were not mentioned again. Tom and Miss Baker, with several feet of twilight between them, strolled back into the library, as if to a vigil beside a perfectly tangible body, while, trying to look pleasantly interested and a little deaf, I followed Daisy around a chain of connecting verandas to the porch in front. In its deep gloom we sat down side by side on a wicker settee.
Daisy took her face in her hands as if feeling its lovely shape, and her eyes moved gradually out into the velvet dusk. I saw that turbulent emotions possessed her, so I asked what I thought would be some sedative questions about her little girl.
“We don’t know each other very well, Nick,” she said suddenly. “Even if we are cousins. You didn’t come to my wedding.”
“I wasn’t back from the war.”
“That’s true.” She hesitated. “Well, I’ve had a very bad time, Nick, and I’m pretty cynical about everything.”
Evidently she had reason to be. I waited but she
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didn’t say any more, and after a moment I returned rather feebly to the subject of her daughter.
“I suppose she talks, and—eats, and everything.”
“Oh, yes.” She looked at me absently. “Listen, Nick; let me tell you what I said when she was born. Would you like to hear?”
“Very much.”
“It’ll show you how I’ve gotten to feel about—things. Well, she was less than an hour old and Tom was God knows where. I woke up out of the ether with an utterly abandoned feeling, and asked the nurse right away if it was a boy or a girl. She told me it was a girl, and so I turned my head away and wept. ‘All right,’ I said, ‘I’m glad it’s a girl. And I hope she’ll be a fool—that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.’
“You see I think everything’s terrible anyhow,” she went on in a convinced way. “Everybody thinks so—the most advanced people. And I know. I’ve been everywhere and seen everything and done everything.” Her eyes flashed around her in a defiant way, rather like Tom’s, and she laughed with thrilling scorn. “Sophisticated—God, I’m sophisticated!”
The instant her voice broke off, ceasing to compel my attention, my belief, I felt the basic insincerity of what she had said. It made me uneasy, as though the whole evening had been a trick of some sort to exact a contributory emotion from me. I waited, and sure enough, in a moment she looked at me with an absolute smirk on her lovely face, as if she had asserted her membership in a rather distinguished secret society to which she and Tom belonged.
Inside, the crimson room bloomed with light. Tom and Miss Baker sat at either end of the long couch and she read aloud to him from the Saturday Evening Post—the words, murmurous and uninflected, running together in a soothing tune. The lamplight, bright on his boots and dull on the autumn-leaf yellow of her hair, glinted along the paper as she turned a page with a flutter of slender muscles in her arms.
When we came in she held us silent for a moment with a lifted hand.
“To be continued,” she said, tossing the magazine on the table, “in our very next issue.”
Her body asserted itself with a restless movement of her knee, and she stood up.
“Ten o’clock,” she remarked, apparently finding the time on the ceiling. “Time for this good girl to go to bed.”
“Jordan’s going to play in the tournament tomorrow,” explained Daisy, “over at Westchester.”
“Oh—you’re Jordan Baker.”
I knew now why her face was familiar—its pleasing contemptuous expression had looked out at me from many rotogravure pictures of the sporting life at Asheville and Hot Springs and Palm Beach. I had heard some story of her too, a critical, unpleasant story, but what it was I had forgotten long ago.
“Good night,” she said softly. “Wake me at eight, won’t you.”
“If you’ll get up.”
“I will. Good night, Mr. Carraway. See you anon.”
“Of course you will,” confirmed Daisy. “In fact I think I’ll arrange a marriage. Come over often, Nick, and I’ll sort of—oh—fling you together. You know—lock you up accidentally in linen closets and push you out to sea in a boat, and all that sort of thing—”
“Good night,” called Miss Baker from the stairs. “I haven’t heard a word.”
“She’s a nice girl,” said Tom after a moment. “They oughtn’t to let her run around the country this way.”
“Who oughtn’t to?” inquired Daisy coldly.
“Her family.”
“Her family is one aunt about a thousand years old. Besides, Nick’s going to look after her, aren’t you, Nick? She’s going to spend lots of weekends out here this summer. I think the home influence will be very good for her.”
Daisy and Tom looked at each other for a moment in silence.
“Is she from New York?” I asked quickly.
“From Louisville. Our white girlhood was passed together there. Our beautiful white—”
“Did you give Nick a little heart to heart talk on the veranda?” demanded Tom suddenly.
“Did I?” She looked at me. “I can’t seem to remember, but I think we talked about the Nordic race. Yes, I’m sure we did. It sort of crept up on us and first thing you know—”
“Don’t believe everything you hear, Nick,” he advised me.
I said lightly that I had heard nothing at all, and a few minutes later I got up to go home. They came to the door with me and stood side by side in a cheerful square of light. As I started my motor Daisy peremptorily called: “Wait!”
“I forgot to ask you something, and it’s important. We heard you were engaged to a girl out West.”
“That’s right,” corroborated Tom kindly. “We heard that you were engaged.”
“It’s a libel. I’m too poor.”
“But we heard it,” insisted Daisy, surprising me by opening up again in a flower-like way. “We heard it from three people, so it must be true.”
Of course I knew what they were referring to, but I wasn’t even vaguely engaged. The fact that gossip had published the banns was one of the reasons I had come East. You can’t stop going with an old friend on account of rumours, and on the other hand I had no intention of being rumoured into marriage.
Their interest rather touched me and made them less remotely rich—nevertheless, I was confused and a little disgusted as I drove away. It seemed to me that the thing for Daisy to do was to rush out of the house, child in arms—but apparently there were no such intentions in her head. As for Tom, the fact that he “had some woman in New York” was really less surprising than that he had been depressed by a book. Something was making him nibble at the edge of stale ideas as if his sturdy physical egotism no longer nourished his peremptory heart.
Already it was deep summer on roadhouse roofs and in front of wayside garages, where new red petrol-pumps sat out in pools of light, and when I reached my estate at West Egg I ran the car under its shed and sat for a while on an abandoned grass roller in the yard. The wind had blown off, leaving a loud, bright night, with wings beating in the trees and a persistent organ sound as the full bellows of the earth blew the frogs full of life. The silhouette of a moving cat wavered across the moonlight, and, turning my head to watch it, I saw that I was not alone—fifty feet away a figure had emerged from the shadow of my neighbour’s mansion and was standing with his hands in his pockets regarding the silver pepper of the stars. Something in his leisurely movements and the secure position of his feet upon the lawn suggested that it was Mr. Gatsby himself, come out to determine what share was his of our local heavens.
I decided to call to him. Miss Baker had mentioned him at dinner, and that would do for an introduction. But I didn’t call to him, for he gave a sudden intimation that he was content to be alone—he stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way, and, far as I was from him, I could have sworn he was trembling. Involuntarily I glanced seaward—and distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and far away, that might have been the end of a dock. When I looked once more for Gatsby he had vanished, and I was alone again in the unquiet darkness.
II
About halfway between West Egg and New York the motor road hastily joins the railroad and runs beside it for a quarter of a mile, so as to shrink away from a certain desolate area of land. This is a valley of ashes—a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of ash-grey men, who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air. Occasionally a line of grey cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak, and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-grey men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud, which screens their obscure operations from your sight.
But above the grey land and the spasms of bleak dust which drift endlessly over it, you perceive, after a moment, the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg. The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are blue and gigantic—their retinas are one yard high. They look out of no face, but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a nonexistent nose. Evidently some wild wag of an oculist set them there to
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2023.06.07 02:45 kaylakaykes John Deere vs Toro mower
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2023.06.07 00:39 Joey6D9 We asked a warehouse employee to ride on a lawn mower for fun! He did!
2023.06.06 19:50 Regret50tons Need Replacement Engine for Simplicity Riding Lawn Mower - Help
Have a 2007 Simplicity Regent 38" Deck Riding Lawn Mower 2690572 and the 18 Hp Kohler Engine PA SV540-3225 has a crack engine block. I have looked for a replacement engine however the exhaust mounts don't line up with the Simplicity tractor. Does anyone have any thoughts on what I can do short of the purchase of a new mower? Thank you.
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2023.06.06 19:34 Regret50tons Simplicity Mower Engine Replacement
Looking for a new engine to replace my Kohler PA SV540-3225 engine that is used in a Simplicity Regent 2007 38” deck 2690572 riding lawn mower. The engine block is cracked.
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2023.06.06 18:43 dsaling Looking for new zero turn 54 inch
| Ok so I've been looking for a residential 54 inch zero turn, been doing research online and think I have it narrowed down. In my research I've come across something that is mixed on reviews....my narrowed down search WAS a Husqvarna z254, Cub Cadet zt1 54, or Hustler Raptor xl 54. But when looking at the worst number "4" and "7"talk about the Cub and Husqvarna, on the flip side they make the best list and i can't find a review on Hustler. So my question is who has an honest opinion and/or a recommendation. Thank you. submitted by dsaling to lawnmowers [link] [comments] |
2023.06.06 11:23 webuyequipment Different Ways to Use a Trencher Equipment Planet Equipment
| There are different ways to use a trencher. It digs a trench and there are additional applications for this type of equipment. This article will teach you how to utilize a trencher in five different ways for your next construction project. What Is a Trencher? Trenchers are earthmoving equipment that use a metal chain with high-strength steel teeth to rip into the ground, similar to how a chainsaw would cut down a tree. Trenchers, like excavators, break up the dirt and any roots in the path when digging a trench. Digging a trench by hand might take several hours and multiple personnel. Trenchers can help you save time and money by reducing the number of people you need to finish a project. https://preview.redd.it/re1uvglk8d4b1.png?width=578&format=png&auto=webp&s=6fb38f925dc2c8e60c63be0dd41d07521c572408 Types of Trenchers There are two types of trenchers available for rent: wheel trenchers and chain trenchers. When compared to walk-behind trenchers, ride-on trenchers provide better performance and cover greater digging depths. Wheel trenchers and chain trenchers are the two types of trenchers that can be rented. Wheel trenchers: This trencher includes a toothed metal wheel that may be used on both hard and soft soils. Wheel trenchers are best used in locations with numerous rock formations. Trenchers, sometimes known as rockwheels, cut pavement and provide utility companies with access beneath highways. They contain six to eight cutting components arranged around the wheel, allowing the wheel to cut at different depths. Spacers and ejectors move excavated items away from the trench’s edges. Chain trenchers: This trencher resembles a chainsaw in appearance. Its belt wraps around a boom, a metal frame that may be easily modified to change the cut depth.. Its bucket-type excavator aids in the cutting of tough ground. Because of its versatility, chain trenchers can cut both small and deep trenches for utility providers. Use a Trencher For Cutting Pavement With wheel trenchers, you may cut through rock, pavement, or concrete.. Wheel trenchers generate clean, straight ditches even in difficult ground conditions. They can also be used to repair and replace joints on highways, streets, and interstates. Creating Drainage You can save money and time by not having to excavate many feet of ground when utilizing chain trenchers to create drainage trenches for water or sewage discharge. After excavating out the dirt with a portable trencher, you may run sprinkler or irrigation pipes underground. Shoveling Perhaps you’re a homeowner who wants to avoid hours of agonizing shoveling that leaves your hands scorched. A smaller walk-behind trencher can reduce the amount of time it takes to accomplish a job. With this smaller version, dig 3 to 4 feet deep. Digging for Electrical Wires To dig underground for electrical or telecommunication wires, chain trenchers can be utilized from the power pole to the dwelling. Trenches could also be used to bury wire for an electric dog fence or landscape lighting. The trencher’s conveyor belt transports the excavated objects away. The time it takes to dig the trench is reduced when you use a trencher, allowing you to spend more time securing the wires in place. Snipping Roots In addition to cutting concrete and making rows in the soil, portable trenchers contain a blade that rotates like a lawn mower blade and severs roots. If you come across roots when working the earth, hold the trencher’s chain blade in place while the blade rotates. Allow the blade to move carefully through the roots and cut through them. https://preview.redd.it/mv7fhllm8d4b1.png?width=1000&format=png&auto=webp&s=4b4416ce6ce11d933361d2c9705374f81fc03231 Use Extreme Caution Trenchers should be avoided in areas where there are rocks. The teeth of the equipment are unable to cut through solid rock or rock-like sediments. Metal shards can get caught in ripped teeth, causing problems with the machinery. Furthermore, before you begin digging, you should check with the local utility companies to see if the area is safe to dig in. Despite the fact that trenchers may be utilized for a variety of construction activities, it is advisable to rent rather than own these machines. You may then be certain that you have the greatest one for all of your requirements. submitted by webuyequipment to equipmentbuyandsell [link] [comments] |
2023.06.06 03:49 keradius Deck Motor Fault, LT42e 2020
| I have an XT1 LT42e that i purchased back in 2020. It has about 40 hours of total run on it (it spent more days in the shop than hours mowing). I have a couple acres to mow. This year i managed to have a few runs but on the last one the motors shut off with Deck Motor Fault. Initially I assumed it may have overheated or the cables disconnected again from the vibrations (which happens regularly). However each time I try to restart the blades, they just engage and within milliseconds they stop and I get the "Deck Motor Fault" again. I removed the deck, cleaned it, removed and cleaned the blades, but still same behavior :( This mower has been nothing but pain. I already had 2 warranty calls on it with motors being swapped each time. But every trip to the shop costs me $250 to haul the mower there (not under warranty) and hundreds to have my property mowed by professionals as it usually takes weeks to repair. So i am hoping to avoid yet another trip to the shop. Are there any ways to diagnose further? Any advice on how to best engage Cub Cadet on this? I am still under warranty this year. submitted by keradius to cubcadet [link] [comments] |
2023.06.06 00:35 Marcbmann Feedback on My Plan to Restart Lawn?
Hey all,
So, I am in zone 7a. My soil is about 76% sand, so high drainage. It's getting late in the season, but I'm a new homeowner and kinda scrambling to get things done. And I'm on a tighter budget.
- My lawn is all weeds. Like, basically no grass. And courtesy of the insanely high drainage in my "soil", everything died the moment the temperature hit 75 degrees. So I have a dead lawn that is almost entirely weeds. Yay.
- So, going to start off by scalping the lawn and killing everything with roundup first. I have a riding mower with the bins in the back to collect trimmings.
- I plan on just addressing the front of my house. That's an area of about 5,000 square feet. So, I'm trucking in about 20 yards of a 1:1 mix of top soil and compost and spreading it evenly over the area. Then tilling the entire area to work the fresh soil and compost into the top layer of my dead lawn.
- I'll then put down 45lbs of GCI Cool Blue. It seems like this type of grass is drought resistant and will put down long roots if taken care of.
- Finish off by putting down Milorganite 4 weeks later. Slow release should help considering the high drainage.
And for spreading seed and fertilizer, I'll grab the Echo RB-60 that everyone on this sub seems to love.
Other than watering schedule, am I missing anything? Am I doing anything stupid?
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lawncare [link] [comments]
2023.06.06 00:24 MaverickToboggan Battery on garden tractor keeps dying after use
I have a cub cadet gt2554 with a ch23 engine. It runs great but recently we’ve been having an issue where if you mow the lawn and shut the tractor off afterwards, the battery dies IMMEDIATELY. Any guesses?
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2023.06.05 16:34 OttomaychunMan Makita Riding Lawn Mower?
Think Makita would make a small riding mower? I'm in the market to replace an aging gas rider thats actually too big for my yard. Not so much in the sense of yard size just that I have a lot of uneven ground so the large deck doesn't cut well. I have been looking at some of the electric riding mower options and since I'm all in on Makita tool architecture already, I'm curious if Makita may make one one day. The runtime and max mowing area statistics of other brands riding mowers are well within my needs. I've just read some bad reviews of the ones I've been looking at.
It seems like it could be done even with the current LXT battery architecture. XGT for sure.
Any thoughts. Or recommendations of currently available electric riding mowers?
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2023.06.05 15:30 Seven118t2 Leaking Gas
I have a 15 year old Cub Cadet push mower with a Briggs & Stratton engine. Recently it started leaking gas out of the carburetor as soon as I start filling the tank. I thought it was an issue with the carburetor gasket or float valve so I replaced the entire carburetor assembly, but the problem persists. Any recommendations on what to do next?
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2023.06.05 13:44 Rich-Record5371 Riding lawn mower - basic repair
Edit : Solved,I think.
I have any of Briggs and Stratton 407777 riding mower, but one of the belts slipped. I don't know anything about engines or cars even, so I was wondering how to look at the system of pulley's and figure out where the belt should go.
There's two pulley's under the seat and it looks like four over the deck. It's the pulley's that control the motor running front to back, the one running side to side is fine
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2023.06.05 13:36 IT_Chef How to get smell out of snowblower
In-laws moved 3 hours south and no longer need their large snow blowethrower.
It has sat in a garage for about 10 years (getting used every winter) with a 40 year old riding lawn mower that leaked gas and oil constantly. Said mower made everything in their garage smell too.
The snowblower has taken on the smell of the in-laws garage, and is now making my garage stink like oil/gas.
Can I wash the snowblower? If so, what can I use to strip away the bulk of the smell.
I have set it out in the sun for days on end and it seems to have no impact on the smell.
The tires are rubber on this, so I suspect quite a bit of smell is coming from those.
I was thinking of using something like a foamy engine degreaser spray...is this going to accomplish anything?
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2023.06.05 02:18 David_Mason1116 Looking for a reddit for help fixing my lawn mower
I have a cub cadet XT1 riding lawnmower. My dad replaced the carburator and a couple ither things and now it wont get fuel. Whats a reddit where i can get help troubleshooting?
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findareddit [link] [comments]
2023.06.04 15:55 voyager1ednamode Lowes Coupons for Riding Lawn Mowers
Visit this page for
Lowes Coupons for Riding Lawn Mowers. The website offers a wide selection of coupons, promo codes, and discount deals that are updated regularly, just visit the website to find the perfect one for you.
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2023.06.04 05:00 BlindLDTBlind Summary of the Holden, MO investigation site:
| (475) BIGFOOT! AMERICA'S CREEK DEVIL Bigfoot in Missouri, new activity with Carol Episode 221 - YouTube Please listen to the entire episode before reading, so it makes sense... 797 SW 1101 Road Holden, MO Here is my summary: The site where she was living is basically a giant trash heap of old cars, mowers, junk, and a trailer that looks like it was in a war zone in Nigeria. There is so much stuff stacked up everywhere you can barely see the woods behind it. However, the place is very eerie. There are fences to the north and behind the trailer clearly smashed down with game trails of raw dirt going back into the woods. It looks like the damage from 4-wheelers but there are no tire tracks. To me it does look like something big and heavy has smashed the fences and is traveling through the trails. They are about 3 feet wide and have zero plant growth on the trails. The woods behind the house are very thick. It's a great place to hide. I met the neighbor to the west. She calls herself "Chaquita" (Cha-kee-ta) and seems to be part black, part Hispanic. She is a very odd person. When I first met her she was very friendly, but her demeanor changes very quickly and starts acting out things, showing signs of histrionic disorders, and contradicting herself. She told me that when she saw me driving by slowly, she thought that she should "call 911 and get my tag number". I drive a fairly new truck and had my windows down to wave at people. She seemed paranoid, and schizophrenia affected to some degree. She told me that for about 7 months out of the year she sleeps on the front open porch. I thought that was odd, given the potential for mosquitos from the Carol Johnson trash heap across the road, about 500 feet away. I asked her about any "bigfoot" activity and she said "oh you mean Yeti?". I asked her if she had seen anything and she laughed hysterically and said "oh my God no. None ever". I don't find "Chaquita" credible whatsoever. She's bat shit crazy and paranoid. She was mowing the lawn when I met her, which Carol had a lot to say about her "mowing". I drove into town and went by Carol's house. She was outside watering her plants on the back porch. I pulled up and said "hello Carol" and it really caught her off guard. I told her that I knew Tom from Creek Devil and she said ok, and asked me to park and come speak with her. The conversation with Carol was odd, but interesting. She is very coherent, aware, sensible and logical. Most people would think that because of her story that she is completely delusional and has totally lost it. I don't find that, but I do wonder if she is the only one seeing the creatures like she does. She goes back and forth a bit on her mother and whether she had seen them or not. At times she tells me about her mother seeing them, and then later says her mother questions the existence of them. To Carol's credit, her mother suffered from dementia in her later years, so that might explain it. One thing that is odd, but might be explained by the effects of PTSD, is that she is still seeing the creatures at her new home in Holden, MO inside of town. It's right off the main road, highway 58 (her address is 711 South Pine). It's in a residential section backing up to some commercial properties a few blocks away. She is convinced that the creatures are coming in through an area heavily wooded by a baseball field, and that they only come on nights when it's raining outside. She cannot explain how she knows this, she just "does". There was a red flag that popped up when I asked her if the investigation team with Creek Devil had seen anything out at the property, she shrugged her shoulders and motioned like she didn't know. I told her that Tom from Creek Devil told me that the team had seen something on the property and she looked utterly shocked, her eyes popping out of her head. This was a major red flag because she should have been "blank faced" as if "of course they did" nodding her head. Maybe I am reading her wrong, but I don't think so. That was the one thing that stood out to me that maybe she knew that she's been making this all up. Like I said before, maybe she's the only one seeing them. Maybe not. Her emotions seem very real, that is for certain. Carol's story is very consistent. Her dates of times and events are very accurate. When I told Carol I met "Chaquita", she just kind of sighed and mumbled "oh yeah..." Carol said that Chaquita mows the yard incessantly. She will be out mowing all day, and into the night. She said sometimes she's still mowing at 11 pm at night, in the dark. I believe this, and confirms my theories on Chaquita's mania, paranoia, whatever. Carol said that it was her that was attacked by the BF and tried to eat her intestines, according to the official Carol story on Creek Devil, episode 221. Carol looked confused when I told her that Chaquita says that nothing is going on out there. Carol went on to becoming very unstable and emotionally distraught and described seeing a "dogman" type creature out there. Large, black and with a snout, teeth. Also, that her and her mother have seen on two different occasions a red orb about the size of a basketball floating down the highway. It followed her car north on 1101 Rd. for a while. Another odd one was when the riding mower ran out of gas, they left it overnight in the field south of the trailer. In the morning she said it was flipped over and pushed near the pond. In conclusion, I'm left with more questions than answers. This feels like the time when I mixed real butter with "I can't believe it's not butter", and I was left confused, wondering what to believe. ??? I don't know.... Is something going on out there? Yes, I think so. Is Carol nuts? I don't think so. Is she and her mother the only ones seeing anything? Maybe. There is a neighbor to the south whose father claims to have seen them, and they have calves and pigs go missing. I spoke with them on the phone a few days ago. Can they all be crazy? Probably not. I have an interview coming up with another guy that lives about 2 miles from the Carol site. He claims to have seen one run across the road in the area. Follow up: The other day I got a threatening phone call warning me about "staying away from there", and I better "watch out". This was from some hillbilly idiot from Texarkana area. I told him what to go do, and it wasn't pleasant. submitted by BlindLDTBlind to bigfoot [link] [comments] |
2023.06.04 02:04 snkde [Walmart] HART 80-Volt 30" Deck Lithium-Ion Riding Lawn Mower $2999 + Free Shipping
2023.06.04 02:02 BroMandi [Walmart] HART 80-Volt 30" Deck Lithium-Ion Riding Lawn Mower $2999 + Free Shipping [Deal: $2,999.00, Actual: $3,897.00]
2023.06.04 00:00 SpeedyBoiCyclist A Humbling Repair Experience
On Thursday, my Cub Cadet self-propelled unit started surging. It has a GCV160.
I figured it had been caused by a strike in my truck box while working. I took apart the carb, cleaned it, and resassbled it. I checked the fuel filter and flushed out the fuel hoses and tank. I cleaned the relatively new spark plug and swapped air filters from my other mower. This did not work.
It was the top governor spring. A neighbor who had done landscaping for 20 years pointed out that a branch must have got caught and unwound it just enough to cause a problem. 1.5 hours spent on such a simple solution. At least my carb is clean now.
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2023.06.03 23:28 AnonymousMidiMan Boom sprayer?
Anybody ever try adding a multi nozzle boom attachment to a Ryobi sprayer? Then idk...maybe slapping the tank (backpack style, perhaps) on the backrest of your riding mower with the boom thingy hanging off the back somehow so you could drive around and spray chem over a lawn...? You know... Something crazy like that..
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2023.06.03 02:22 SensationalSixties 3rd party lawn rollers
for zero turns. does anyone use them? thinking about the check mate lawn striping kit for my cub cadet steering wheel zero turn.
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