And the I'm going to be. Welcome to Snuscast, the podcast designed to help you fall asleep. On Snuscast, we read excerpts from Public Domain Works and occasionally original stories. We'd like to thank our listeners. If you enjoy our

show, please review us on Apple Podcasts and also share it with a friend. This episode is brought to you by

Noticable Patterns. Tonight we'll be reading from The Voyage Out by Virginia Wolf, first published in 1915.

In the story, Rachel Vinrace embarks for South America on her father's ship

and is launched on a course of self-discovery in a kind of modern

mythical voyage. The novel also introduces Clarissa Delaware, who would become a central character of Wolf's later novel, Mrs. Let's get cozy. Close your eyes. Relax your body into the softness of your bed.

Now take a few deep breaths.

Chapter 1, as the streets that lead from the Strand to the embankment are very narrow, it is better not to walk down them arm and arm.

If you persist, lawyers clerks will have to make flying leaps into the mud.

Young lady typists will have to fidget behind you.

In the streets of London, where beauty goes unregarded, eccentricity must pay the penalty, and it is

better not to be very tall, to wear a long blue cloak, or to beat the air with your left hand.

One afternoon in the beginning of October, when the traffic was becoming brisk, a tall man

strode along the edge of the pavement with a lady on his arm. The small agitated figures, agitated

with a lady on his arm.

Angry glances struck upon their backs.

The small agitated figures,

for in comparison with this couple most people look small

decorated with fountain pens and burdened with dispatch boxes

had appointments to keep and drew a weekly salary so that there was some reason for the unfriendly stare

which was bestowed upon Mr. Ambrose's height and upon Mrs. Ambrose's cloak. But some enchantment had put both man and woman

beyond the reach of malice and unpopularity. In his case, one might guess from the moving lips that it was thought and in hers from the eyes fixed stonily straight in front of her at a level above the eyes of most that it was sorrow. It was

...